Sovereign grace o’er sin abounding!
Ransomed souls, the tidings swell;
’Tis a deep that knows no sounding;
Who its breadth or length can tell?
On its glories,
Let my soul for ever dwell.

What from Christ that soul can sever,
Bound by everlasting bands?
Once in Him, in Him for ever;
Thus the eternal covenant stands.
None shall take Thee
From the Strength of Israel’s hands.

Heirs of God, joint-heirs with Jesus,
Long ere time its race begun;
To His name eternal praises;
O what wonders love has done!
One with Jesus,
By eternal union one.

On such love, my soul, still ponder,
Love so great, so rich, so free;
Say, while lost in holy wonder,
Why, O Lord, such love to me?
Hallelujah!
Grace shall reign

John Kent

From Jared C. Wilson at First Things:

Gospel deficiency is the major crisis of the evangelical church. The good news has been replaced by many things, most often a therapeutic, self-help approach to biblical application. The result is a Church that, ironically enough, preaches works, not grace, and a growing number of Christians who neither understand the gospel nor revel in its scandal.

There are lots of good reasons to reclaim the centrality of the good news of Jesus in our preaching and teaching and writing and blogging, and I’ve come up with four basic arguments for (what I’m calling) The Gospel Imperative, but perhaps defining our terms is in order. It’s no good going on about making the gospel the center of our worship and discipleship if we are not on the same page for what the gospel actually is.

Like many others, I affirm that the gospel is big. I favor a robust gospel, a good news proclamation with many facets and ramifications. It is everywhere in the shadows and in the light of the Old Testament Israelites’ desert wandering, and it encompasses the brilliant kingdom landscape of Jesus’ Sermon on the Mount. It is in God’s gracious covering of the freshly fallen Adam and Eve (and in the cursing of the serpent) in Genesis, and it is in the awesome return of the tattooed, sword-wielding Jesus 65 books later in Revelation. I agree with Tim Keller, who argues that the gospel is “both one and more than that.” It is certainly “more than that.” But it is also “one,” which is why a nutshell like “The wages of sin is death, but the gift of God is eternal life in Christ Jesus our Lord” (Rom. 6:23) can work well.

While acknowledging that the gospel is about the inbreaking kingdom of God setting a fallen world back to rights, the gospel I am speaking about here is the “essential” gospel, which is the news that Jesus has died to make atonement and risen bodily to establish his Lordship and has thereby murdered sin and conquered death.

Pretty powerful stuff, ain’t it? And yet many of our churches consider this news, which eternal angels still long to gaze into, merely introductory stuff.

Here are four basic reasons for evangelicalism’s reclamation of the gospel:

1. Because We Are Forgetful

Forgetting God’s goodness is part of our fallen DNA. The Bible demonstrates this vividly. Studying the Gospel of John with some friends once upon a time, we puzzled initially over the way the disciples believed in Jesus after his turning water to wine. Now, of course that would be cause for belief, but John’s Gospel tells us just one chapter earlier that Jesus’ self-attestation and his ability to know them (he reads Nathanel like a book) cause them to believe in him. Which was it?
Well, it’s both. Certainly Jesus gives us endless reasons to worship him as Lord, but I am convinced that he does this graciously as we endlessly “forget” his Lordship. In the Old Testament, God sets the enslaved Israelites free in a mighty act of deliverance (that whole Red Sea parting thing) and one day later they’re complaining about not having anything to eat. And that’s just the beginning. God keeps providing; the Israelites keep grumbling.

We have met the enemy, and the enemy is us. We are fickle, self-righteous, forgetful people. Yet we serve a steadfast, gracious, faithful God. Many preachers are fearful of highlighting the gospel every time they speak for fear of it appearing stale. But gospel redundancy is a good thing! We need it. We need the gospel every day (His mercies are new every morning) because we forget it and we sin every day.

Do not aid your community in its forgetfulness by relegating the gospel to the periphery of your proclamation. We need to be reminded of it constantly.

2. Because It is the Power to Save

We all want to grow the kingdom, right? We all want to seek and save the lost, right? We all want to lead as many people as possible to salvation, right?
Then, why, for the love of God, do we preach all manner of behavior modification, none of which could save a single one of us, when only the gospel saves?
Paul writes in Romans 1:16, ” I am not ashamed of the gospel, because it is the power of God for the salvation of everyone who believes.”
Yet if we could label our churches with the Nutrition Facts found on your can of soup, I reckon many would say in the fine print, “Not a significant source of gospel.” Are we ashamed?
If the gospel is the power to save, shouldn’t it be the meat of the message, not saved for the add-on invitation or for a special service every few weeks?

3. Because It is of First Importance

If holding the gospel as the power to save doesn’t push us toward greater gospel-centeredness, certainly Paul’s claim that it is of “first importance” (1 Cor. 15:3) should do the trick. But, again, we hold off on the gospel. We make it occasional or half-hearted, thereby ascribing it lesser worth than our very important and self-devised Six Steps for Successful Living.
In a recent White Horse Inn podcast, the fellows warned listeners to beware the preacher who says, “Well, of course the gospel.” The point here is that they are highlighting so much of what they do that is not the gospel and then when asked about the gospel’s absence, they say, “Well, of course the gospel.” In such churches the gospel is implied. Which means it is an afterthought. An implied gospel is a gospel FAIL.

The gospel should not be implied. It is of first importance. It should be the clearest, most prevalent message and theme of all a community’s worship and focus.

4. Because It Glorifies God

The gospel is not advice. It is news.
It is not “Do more, be more, try more.” It is the message that the work is done.
The gospel does not say “Pull yourself up by your bootstraps.” It says “It is finished!”

Our flesh hates this contrast. We hate it because the gospel says to us “You can’t do it; you are unable; you are deficient.” And we don’t like to hear that. Nobody wants to hear that we are incapable of saving ourselves, that in our insidest insides we are broken and cannot repair ourselves.

But this is what the gospel forces us to admit. And because it forces us to admit we are sinners deserving punishment with no inherent means of rescue, it forces us to admit that only God can save us, which forces us to reckon with the gospel truth that salvation is God’s work, not ours. God gets the credit. Grace means getting what we didn’t deserve, and the gospel of grace announces that “While we were yet sinners, Christ died for us” (Rom. 5:8).

When we insist on preaching about our efforts and making the gospel an afterthought, we have begun glorifying our works, glorifying ourselves. But when we center on the gospel and revel in its proclamation, we are glorifying God, because we are holding Christ’s finished good work more important than our insufficient good works.

The gospel is the hope of the world. It is my hope and it is yours. It should be our prayer and our humble insistence, then, that the people named for the gospel live and preach true to their name once again.

Online magazine, The Atlantic, posted a scathing article on the prosperity gospel called, Did Christianity Cause the Crash?  The main focus of the article is a pastor/real estate agent in Virginia who tells his congregation that God wants his people to own houses.  Some highlights are found below:

Pastor Garay, 48, is short and stocky, with thick black hair combed back. In his off hours, he looks like a contented tourist, in his printed Hawaiian shirts or bright guayaberas. But he preaches with a ferocity that taps into his youth as a cocaine dealer with a knife in his back pocket. “Fight the attack of the devil on my finances! Fight him! We declare financial blessings! Financial miracles this week, NOW NOW NOW!” he preached that Sunday. “More work! Better work! The best finances!” Gonzales shook and paced as the pastor spoke, eventually leaving his wife and three kids in the family section to join the single men toward the front, many of whom were jumping, raising their Bibles, and weeping. On the altar sat some anointing oils, alongside the keys to the Mercedes Benz.

It can be hard to get used to how much Garay talks about money in church, one loyal parishioner, Billy Gonzales, told me one recent Sunday on the steps out front. Back in Mexico, Gonzales’s pastor talked only about “Jesus and heaven and being good.” But Garay talks about jobs and houses and making good money, which eventually came to make sense to Gonzales: money is “really important,” and besides, “we love the money in Jesus Christ’s name! Jesus loved money too!” That Sunday, Garay was preaching a variation on his usual theme, about how prosperity and abundance unerringly find true believers. “It doesn’t matter what country you’re from, what degree you have, or what money you have in the bank,” Garay said. “You don’t have to say, ‘God, bless my business. Bless my bank account.’ The blessings will come! The blessings are looking for you! God will take care of you. God will not let you be without a house!”

It is not all that surprising that the prosperity gospel persists despite its obvious failure to pay off. Much of popular religion these days is characterized by a vast gap between aspirations and reality. Few of Sarah Palin’s religious compatriots were shocked by her messy family life, because they’ve grown used to the paradoxes; some of the most socially conservative evangelical churches also have extremely high rates of teenage pregnancies, out-of-wedlock births, and divorce. As Garay likes to say, “What you have is nothing compared to what you will have.” The unpleasant reality—an inadequate paycheck, a pregnant daughter, a recession—is invisible. It’s your ability to see beyond such things, your willing blindness to even the most hopeless-seeming circumstances, that makes you a certain kind of modern Christian, and a 21st-century American.

Once, I asked Garay how you would know for certain if God had told you to buy a house, and he answered like a roulette dealer. “Ten Christians will say that God told them to buy a house. In nine of the cases, it will go bad. The 10th one is the real Christian.” And the other nine? “For them, there’s always another house.”

How sweet and awful is the place
With Christ within the doors,
While everlasting love displays
The choicest of her stores.

While all our hearts and all our songs
Join to admire the feast,
Each of us cry, with thankful tongues,
“Lord, why was I a guest?”

“Why was I made to hear Thy voice,
And enter while there’s room,
When thousands make a wretched choice,
And rather starve than come?”

‘Twas the same love that spread the feast
That sweetly drew us in;
Else we had still refused to taste,
And perished in our sin.

Pity the nations, O our God,
Constrain the earth to come;
Send Thy victorious Word abroad,
And bring the strangers home.

We long to see Thy churches full,
That all the chosen race
May, with one voice and heart and soul,
Sing Thy redeeming grace.

Isaac Watts

Just How Pro-Life Are You Really?
Michael S. Horton, D.Phil.
(First published in Modern Reformation, July/Aug 1992 issue)

This essay first appeared in the July/August1992 issue of Modern Reformation magazine, when it was under the auspices of CURE (Christians United for Reformation), the predecessor to White Horse Media.

Readers familiar with CURE know that we are a group committed to recovering the essence of the Christian message. That means that what you see and hear from us will usually be in the form of doctrinal discussions, issues, and debates written with the thinking layperson in mind.

Nevertheless, there are some practical issues that walk that razor’s edge between faith and practice, to the point where it is difficult to tell whether one who engages in a certain practice is actually denying a certain essential doctrine by doing so. If, for instance, one were to cast one’s gaze on an attractive body at the beach for more than passing appreciation (it’s not difficult to figure out in which part of the country I live), that would be a sin (lust, since many of us have forgotten), but it would not involve a matter of doctrine. I can and, in fact, do engage in sins that do not affect my faith in God, in Christ, or my convictions about the way in which I am saved. While sin tolerated can often undermine confidence in any doctrine that fails to flatter our own indulgences, most of our daily failures to conform to God’s revealed will are of a practical rather than doctrinal sort.

But, as I say, there are exceptions. Abortion is one such exception. In order to engage in this serious sin, a Christian must actually deny a cardinal doctrine of the Christian faith. He or she must deny that God is the Sovereign author of life who alone has the power and right to give and take away human breath, and we also deny the creature we destroy his or her dignity as an image-bearer of God himself. In Christian belief, the significance of human beings over all other species of animal life resides in the image of God (imago Dei) stamped on each person, as an artist signs his masterpieces. Although God created all things, only humans bear his likeness, and they bear it from conception. As Calvin put it, “Though the primary seat of the divine image was in the mind and the heart, or in the soul and its powers, there was no part even of the body in which some rays of glory did not shine” (Institutes 1:15.3). Bavinck, the great Reformed dogmatist, argued that “as long as Man remains Man, he bears the image of God,” however tarnished and effaced.

If this doctrine is lacking in the church, surely it will be lacking in society. Before the late Francis Schaeffer, a Reformation thinker, reminded the evangelical and fundamentalist world of this biblical doctrine, there was virtually no response from the evangelical church to the atrocity of abortion. Roman Catholics, of course, had a theological impetus behind their opposition, but it was obscured by their inclusion of birth control as well as abortion.

And now, thanks to the efforts of the Schaeffers and their many co-laborers, a wide cross section of the evangelical movement supports the protection of human life in its most vulnerable phase. Clearly, humanity is determined by the imago Dei, not by concepts such as “viability.” Nevertheless, because we evangelicals over the last two centuries have been given to feverish activity without much theological reflection (”Don’t bother with all that ‘head stuff’ – let’s just get out there and get it done!”), we are single-issue people. We can only handle one issue at a time. As important as the abortion debate is, the anger that people such as Francis Schaeffer felt in response to it was motivated by a theological conviction–the same well-spring that produced anger at the pollution of the environment (cf. his freshly released Pollution & the Death of Man), outrage at the racism rampant in evangelical circles (cf. Two Contents, Two Realities), and frustration over the injustices of the powerful over the weak.

The abortion debate has been led, like the abolitionist and civil rights movements, as a protest against the oppression of the weak by the strong, picking up on the rich biblical language. “Blessed is he who has regard for the weak” (Psalm 41:1); God “will deliver the needy who cry out, the afflicted who have no one to help. He will take pity on the weak and the needy and save the needy from death. He will rescue them from oppression and violence, for precious is their blood in his sight” (Psalm 72:12-14). And yet, while many evangelicals oppose abortion, there is a curious silence on nearly every other issue where the pro-life ethic, commanded by Scripture, is at risk. One cursory glance at a concordance will reveal how concerned God is about the treatment of the homeless, the poor, the weak, the minorities (”aliens and strangers”), and others too often marginalized.

Words like “oppress,” and pejorative barbs from God about “you cows of Bashan on Mount Samaria, you women who oppress the poor and crush the needy and say to your husbands, ‘Bring us some drinks!’” (Amos 4:1). “‘1 will tear down the winter house along with the summer house; the houses adorned with ivory will be destroyed and the mansions will be demolished,’ declares the Lord” (Amos 3:15). The people of God are entrusted with a special obligation to social justice: “Defend the cause of the weak and fatherless; maintain the rights of the poor and oppressed. Rescue the weak and needy” (Psalm 82:3-4). God hates oppression with the same intensity with which he hates abortion, but are we as consistent in our righteous indignation?

Like abortion, apartheid is a theological as well as an ethical question. To deny life and justice to the unborn or to the un-white is not only a serious sin (such as selfishness or racism), but a deliberate system, complete with biblical proof-texts twisted beyond recognition. While those committed to being faithful to the Christian creeds and Reformation confessions declared apartheid in South Africa a heresy, evangelicals here at home have shown more ambivalence. While Jerry Falwell and other leaders of the Christian Right courageously defended the human rights of the unborn, Falwell returned from his trip to South Africa declaring that Archbishop Desmond Tutu, whose pleas for a peaceful transition from apartheid to democracy have kept south Africa from bloodshed thus far, was “a phony” and urged Christians to support the racist government of P.W. Botha. In the meantime, Jessie Jackson expressed outrage at Democratic presidential nominee Bill Clinton’s criticisms of a rap song encouraging black violence against whites. When will “reverends” transcend pagan party lines?

Think of our other issues involving the doctrine of the image of God. It is the motivation behind our concern for the victim of a savage murder; our horror at seeing children searching for food in garbage bins behind a restaurant while their mothers hold up signs that read, “Will Work for Food and Diapers.” It is that conviction that breaks our heart when we see a prostitute selling her body to keep alive, while others (including those who participate in the same industry through pornography and other forms of sexual entertainment) pour shame and contempt on her. It is that conviction, that religious belief, that binds us to our neighbors and to their interests, regardless of whether they are believers or share our same values or our ethnic, cultural, or linguistic heritage. Not long ago, a friend and I went through the drive-through window at a fast food spot. The fact that the server had a thick foreign accent, characteristic of fast food franchises in Southern California, and that my friend never shied away from making his racism a matter of public record, made me cringe as I prepared for the inevitable. Sure enough, this friend made some typically racist remark. The sad thing is, he’s a pastor. The odd thing is, he’s a rabid opponent of abortion. But is he consistently pro-life?

Evangelicals raise no qualms when the United States commits millions to Israel or spends millions on a military campaign to free a tiny, but wealthy, oil state with no regard for democracy, but when it comes to talking about the emergency in Somalia, Africa, with hundreds dying every day from starvation, the sentiment seems to be, “We have our own problems here at home.” Evangelicals rightly protest the murder of the unborn and decry the silence of those who refuse to defend those who have no voice to defend themselves. Nevertheless, that same silence hovers secretly over the same impassioned group when children die senselessly after they are born. Shouldn’t there be an outrage of equal proportions? Isn’t life life? Or are we just caught up in the glitz and glamour of political debates? Are we really pro-life?

Until Christians put their theology first, their activism will be little more rationally motivated than that of Hare Krishnas passing out flowers in airports. We will be moved along, one issue at a time, by charismatic and energetic leaders and our internal contradictions (such as calling ourselves “pro-life” when in truth we rarely speak up for the poor and oppressed after they’re born) will not win for evangelicalism respect in the eyes of the world for having the courage of its convictions. What convictions? Activism, agendas, and practical involvement are not convictions. Indeed, these things mean nothing without convictions, and convictions come from deeply held beliefs about God and ourselves. And folks, that’s theology.

©2004 Westminster Seminary California All rights reserved

Dr. Michael Horton, professor at Westminster Seminary California, has answered three common questions asked of Two Kingdom Theology on the White horse Inn blog.  The three posts have been combined into one essay, and made available in pdf  format.

From Paul Vander Klay at Think Christian:

Protestants used to claim that Roman Catholics were idolaters because they had statues in their buildings. A couple of years ago an elder from a conservative Protestant denomination explained to me how Vietnamese people more easily came to Roman Catholicism from Buddhism because both religions worshiped idols. A new wave of literature is no longer so facile on this, understanding sin as idolatry is something deeper than carvings of wood and stone. Idolatry is making a publishing comeback. Tim Keller’s latest book “Counterfeit Gods” puts in book form many of the themes his sermons have had for years. G.K. Beale, a New Testament scholar recently authored “We Become What We Worship: A Biblical Theology of Idolatry” where traces these themes through the Bible. Jewish scholars Moshe Halbertal and Avishai Margalit have their own book from Harvard University Press on the subject.

For most today self-definition and determination is seen as a foundational birthright of our existence. Not only does nobody put baby in a corner, but unless baby is defining herself and keeping herself out of a corner, she is failing to live up to her existential mandate. Most self-help remedies for a variety of identity ills prescribe self-definition through self-assertion. I must take control of my life by constructing a preferred identity, living that out maximizing individuality and authenticity.

If one pursues this long enough they begin to realize that this is a incredible amount of work and a tremendous burden. Not only do we have to construct this from the cultural materials available, but the merchants of cool are perpetually infusing every fresh cultural wave with yet more artifacts and options to add or replace what we’ve already accumulated. We are crushed by the pace of fashion, unable to strip ourselves fast enough of yesterday’s dowdy threads and incapable of assimilating quickly enough tomorrow’s new authenticity. We stand naked in the whirlwind trying to build a life from the debris blowing around us.

Such desperation drives us to turn good things into ultimate things. We begin to look to our jobs, our familial roles, our attributes, our gender identities, the brands in the market place for permanence and meaning. GK Beale’s title is a short cut. We need to become something so locate our selves in the roles we must play or the things we buy or the communities we choose and the daily maintenance of those things becomes our worship even if we don’t call it that. Habit and worship unites and we get what we asked for. We asked these things to fill us and now they have and will finally displace us. In CS Lewis’ “The Great Divorce” the shadows of hell were once people with attributes, but the identification has gone so far they are merely the attribute.

God is the only safe thing to worship because only God is secure enough, wealthy enough, self-sufficient enough to not need to consume us. See CS Lewis’ description of distinction from Screwtape Letters. Idolatries never satisfy and always enslave. Identities are received, not achieved and there is only one ultimate giver of our identity that will not only satisfy us, but fill us without consuming us.

Posted by Dr. Kim Riddlebarger at the Riddleblog:

Wes Bredenhof recently posted a portion of Guido de Bres’ letter to his mother, written shortly before his execution in May of 1567 (http://www.bredenhof.ca/).

This is a very moving and encouraging letter, especially when we consider that de Bres was imprisoned under the worst of conditions (in the sewage of the prison).  But as he wrote to his mother, de Bres seems to bask in the assurance of his salvation and the hope of the resurrection.  No doubt, this is what Tertullian meant when he said that the that “the blood of the martyrs is the seed of the church.”

For background, here’s Rev. Bredenhof’s discussion of de Bres’s martyrdom, followed by the first portion of de Bres’ letter to his mother.

http://ia311027.us.archive.org/1/items/BredenhofArticles1/TheMartyrdomOfGuidoDeBres.pdf

http://ia341335.us.archive.org/0/items/HeartAflame/HeartAflame.pdf

Thanks Wes, for posting this wonderful letter!

Our revels now are ended. These our actors,
As I foretold you, were all spirits, and
Are melted into air, into thin air:
And like the baseless fabric of this vision,
The cloud-capp’d tow’rs, the gorgeous palaces,
The solemn temples, the great globe itself,
Yea, all which it inherit, shall dissolve,
And, like this insubstantial pageant faded,
Leave not a rack behind. We are such stuff
As dreams are made on; and our little life
Is rounded with a sleep.

– William Shakespeare, The Tempest

Yesterday during the sermon at City Church York, our minister, Aaron Anderson, referenced an article by Tim Keller on Hell.   The article  addresses the need to stress the importance of the bible’s teaching on Hell.  It also confronts the argument that a loving God would not condemn to eternal punishment those who do not believe.  Read the article here.  Below are a few highlights:

“Virtually all commentators and theologians believe that the Biblical images of fire and outer darkness are metaphorical. (Since souls are in hell right now, without bodies, how could the fire be literal, physical fire?) Even Jonathan Edwards pointed out that the Biblical language for hell was symbolic, but, he added, ‘when metaphors are used in Scripture about spiritual things . . . they fall short of the literal truth.” (from “The Torments of Hell are Exceeding Great” in volume 14 of the Yale edition of Edwards works.) To say that the Scriptural image of hell-fire is not wholly literal is of no comfort whatsoever. The reality will be far worse than the image. What, then, are the ‘fire’ and ‘darkness’ symbols for? They are vivid ways to describe what happens when we lose the presence of God. Darkness refers to the isolation, and fire to the disintegration of being separated from God. Away from the favor and face of God, we literally, horrifically, and endlessly fall apart.”

“In the parable of Luke 16:19ff, Jesus tells us of a rich man who goes to hell and who is now in torment and horrible thirst because of the fire (v.24) But there are interesting insights into what is going on in his soul. He urges Abraham to send a messenger to go and warn his still-living brothers about the reality of hell. Commentators have pointed out that this is not a gesture of compassion, but rather an effort at blame-shifting. He is saying that he did not have a chance, he did not have adequate information to avoid hell. That is clearly his point, because Abraham says forcefully that people in this life have been well-informed through the Scriptures. It is intriguing to find exactly what we would expect-even knowing he is in hell and knowing God has sent him there, he is deeply in denial, angry at God, unable to admit that it was a just decision, wishing he could be less miserable (v.24) but in no way willing to repent or seek the presence of God….  We run from the presence of God and therefore God actively gives us up to our desire (Romans 1:24, 26.) Hell is therefore a prison in which the doors are first locked from the inside by us and therefore are locked from the outside by God (Luke 16:26.) Every indication is that those doors continue to stay forever barred from the inside. Though every knee and tongue in hell knows that Jesus is Lord (Philippians 2:10-11,) no one can seek or want that Lordship without the Holy Spirit (1 Corinthians 12:3.This is why we can say that no one goes to hell who does not choose both to go and to stay there. What could be more fair than that?”

“In Matthew 10:28 Jesus says that no physical destruction can be compared with the spiritual destruction of hell, of losing the presence of God. But this is exactly what happened to Jesus on the cross-he was forsaken by the Father (Matthew 27:46.) In Luke 16:24 the rich man in hell is desperately thirsty (v.24) and on the cross Jesus said “I thirst” (John 19:28.) The water of life, the presence of God, was taken from him. The point is this. Unless we come to grips with this “terrible” doctrine, we will never even begin to understand the depths of what Jesus did for us on the cross. His body was being destroyed in the worst possible way, but that was a flea bite compared to what was happening to his soul. When he cried out that his God had forsaken him he was experiencing hell itself.”

“Conclusion: The doctrine of hell is crucial-without it we can’t understand our complete dependence on God, the character and danger of even the smallest sins, and the true scope of the costly love of Jesus. Nevertheless, it is possible to stress the doctrine of hell in unwise ways. Many, for fear of doctrinal compromise, want to put all the emphasis on God’s active judgment, and none on the self-chosen character of hell. Ironically, as we have seen, this unBiblical imbalance often makes it less of a deterrent to non-believers rather than more of one. And some can preach hell in such a way that people reform their lives only out of a self-interested fear of avoiding consequences, not out of love and loyalty to the one who embraced and experienced hell in our place. The distinction between those two motives is all-important. The first creates a moralist, the second a born-again believer.”

From Justin Taylor at Between Two Worlds:

John Piper on John Sailhamer’s just-published magnum opus, The Meaning of the Pentateuch (IVP, 2009):

To all pastors and serious readers of the Old Testament—geek, uber geek, under geek, no geek—if  you graduated from high school and know the word “m e a n i n g,” sell your latest Piper or Driscoll book and buy Sailhamer.

There is nothing like it. It will rock your world. You will never read the “Pentateuch” the same again. It is totally readable. You can skip all the footnotes and not miss a beat.

Last week, when Piper got the book, he tweeted: “I feel like a greedy miser over a chest of gold.”

You can read the Introduction of the book online for free.

What The Bible is All About
R. Scott Clark
First published in Modern Reformation, Vol. 16 No. 2

The hit TV show Seinfeld has been called a show about nothing. One of the most pernicious falsehoods about the Bible is that it, too, is a book about nothing, that it is a random collection of ancient myths and moral aphorisms. Strangely, some Christians seem to regard Scripture this way. Others find unity in Scripture around God’s plan for national Israel and/or a time of millennial glory. Still others treat the Bible as if it is about the reader, as if there is no such thing as a “text” or authorial intent but only the reader’s experience of the text. Even more crassly, the Bible is read as if the reader (and his or her prosperity and happiness) is at the center of the story.

Reading the Bible the New Testament Way

These errant approaches to the Scriptures are borne from the misapprehension that the biblical writers themselves did not understand themselves to be contributing to a larger unified story and that they did not have a way of reading the Scriptures. There are writers who admit that such a unity and way of reading Scripture exists, but they contend Scripture is inspired and therefore it is beyond our ability to imitate the biblical hermeneutic. This view is mistaken. Scripture is inspired, but the biblical hermeneutic is not-at least not so that we cannot observe and imitate it. That is precisely what we shall begin to do in this essay.

The Scriptures are organized around God the Son who was “manifested in the flesh, vindicated by the Spirit, seen by angels, proclaimed among the nations, believed on in the world, taken up in glory” (1 Tim. 3:16; esv).

Jesus’ Hermeneutic

Our Lord himself claimed throughout his ministry to be not only God the Son incarnate but also to be at the center of God’s saving purposes and revelation. Indeed, he attacked the hermeneutic of the Pharisees as wrongheaded. “You search the Scriptures because you think that in them you have eternal life,” but the Scribes and Pharisees missed the unifying message of the history of redemption and revelation: the Scriptures “bear witness about” Jesus (John 5:39). The Pharisees claimed to believe Moses, but they did not, because Moses, “on whom you have set your hope” (John 5:45) accuses them. The Pharisees missed the point of the Pentateuch: “If you believed Moses, you would believe me; for he wrote of me” (John 5:46).

One of the great and common misunderstandings of the Bible is that, before the incarnation, believers had direct, immediate access to God the Father and that the mediating work of the Son began only with his incarnation. Such a view is directly contradictory to the explicit teaching of Jesus. He said the Father’s “voice you have never heard, his form you have never seen.” He was even more explicit in John 6:46 that no one has “seen the Father except him who is from God ….” If anyone would see the Father he must look at Jesus, the image of God (2 Cor. 4:4; Col. 1:15). According to Jesus, his mediation does not mean less access to the Father, but more: “Whoever has seen me has seen the Father” (John 14:9). Jesus was conscious of his office as the “revelation” of God (John 1:1). He knew that “No one has ever seen God. The only begotten God … has revealed him” (John 1:18). Read the rest of this entry »

With Melting Heart and Weeping Eyes – John Fawcett, 1740-1817

With melting heart and weeping eyes,

My guilty soul for mercy cries;

What shall I do, or wither flee,

To rid the vengeance due of me?

Till late I saw no danger nigh,

I lived at ease nor feared to die;

Wrapped up in self conceit and pride,

“I shall have peace at last,” I cried.

But when great God thy light divine,

Had shone on this dark soul of mine,

Then I beheld with trembling awe,

The terrors of Thy holy law.

Should vengeance still my soul pursue

Death and destruction are my due;

Yet mercy can my guilt forgive,

And bid this dying sinner live.

Does not Thy sacred word proclaim,

Salvation free in Jesus’ name?

To him I look and humbly cry,

“Lord, save a wretch condemned to die!”

1 in 4 pastors suffer from depression. So says this article from USA Today reporting on a number of pastor suicides that have occured in recent weeks.