Two important articles have been posted that are desperately needed today:
1) Battling Sinful Sarcasm by Lindsey Carlson.
2) Cultivating a Gracious Climate in Your Church by Jared Wilson.
If you are sarcastic, you cannot exude grace. Or can you? What do you think?
Here are a few recommended books to read particularly if you are a new believer. However, these are good books for any Christian to read.
I have listed the books in an order that should build a solid foundation of the Christian Gospel upon which our faith is built. What books would you recommend?
What is the Gospel by Greg Gilbert
Gospel by JD Greear
Gospel Primer for Christians by Milton Vincent
Gospel Deeps by Jared Wilson
Gospel-Centered Discipleship by Jonathan Dodson and Matt Chandler
Gospel as Center by various
Grace Transforming by Philip Ryken
A Hunger for God by John Piper
Jesus + Nothing = Everything by Tullian Tchividjian
Stop Asking Jesus into Your Heart by JD Greear
Respectable Sins by Jerry Bridges
Living the Cross Centered Life by CJ Mahaney
Embracing Obscurity by Anonymous
Disciplines of a Godly Man by R. Kent Hughes
The Gospel for Real Life by Jerry Bridges
If God is Good by Randy Alcorn
The Practice of Godliness by Jerry Bridges
The Transforming Power of the Gospel by Jerry Bridges
When People are Big and God is Small by Edward T. Welch
Who Do You Think You Are? by Mark Driscoll
The Work of Christ by RC Sproul
You Can Change by Tim Chester
Other recommendations:
Creature of the Word: The Jesus-Centered Church by Matt Chandler
Christian Beliefs by Wayne Grudem
Basic Christianity by John Stott
Reason for God by Tim Keller
Reasons for Belief by Norman Geisler
Why Church Matters by Joshua Harris
Everyday Church by Tim Chester
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Other recommendations:
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You can get ebooks. For free! Seriously. Here are three for you to check out:
*If you use Google Chrome, you can install the Magicscroll extension, sign up (it’s free) and read ePub files in Chrome. Very handy.
No doubt exists that God changes you and begins transforming you at the time of conversion (Philippians 1:6).
But are all changes God makes in your life visible?
The oft asked question, “does your life look the same after conversion as it did before conversion?” is really the wrong question to ask.
Sure, many people’s lives will dramatically change after conversion. Drug users will quit cold turkey, alcoholics will end their abuse, money launderers will cease and desist and even repay what was taken, but what about the people who are law-abiding citizens, ethical and moral in their behavior and speech?
For some people, their lives will change dramatically; others’ lives ever so slightly
We love to make the point that every life will change dramatically. But this is not always the case.
The real change is in motivation
For whose glory are we doing something?
If for the glory of self, then we will pursue money laundering, alcohol, drugs, sex, escape from reality because they become not only an end to themselves but a false ultimate end.
But if we do everything to God’s glory, we may not change what we do but why we do it. The change is invisible to the naked eye:
1 Corinthians 10:31 – So, whether you eat or drink, or whatever you do, do all to the glory of God.
1. Every human is created in the image of God. (Genesis 1:26-27)
26 Then God said, âLet us make man in our image, after our likeness. And let them have dominion over the fish of the sea and over the birds of the heavens and over the livestock and over all the earth and over every creeping thing that creeps on the earth.â
27 So God created man in his own image,
in the image of God he created him;
male and female he created them.
2. The Covenant blessing is to all nations. (Genesis 12:1-3)
12:1 Now the Lord said to Abram, âGo from your country and your kindred and your fatherâs house to the land that I will show you. 2 And I will make of you a great nation, and I will bless you and make your name great, so that you will be a blessing. 3 I will bless those who bless you, and him who dishonors you I will curse, and in you all the families of the earth shall be blessed.â
3. The pathetic example of Jonahâs racism. (Jonah 4:1)
But it displeased Jonah exceedingly, and he was angry.
4. The gospel-melted heart is that of the tax collector not the Pharisee. (Luke 18:9-14)
9 He also told this parable to some who trusted in themselves that they were righteous, and treated others with contempt: 10 âTwo men went up into the temple to pray, one a Pharisee and the other a tax collector. 11 The Pharisee, standing by himself, prayed [1] thus: âGod, I thank you that I am not like other men, extortioners, unjust, adulterers, or even like this tax collector. 12 I fast twice a week; I give tithes of all that I get.â 13 But the tax collector, standing far off, would not even lift up his eyes to heaven, but beat his breast, saying, âGod, be merciful to me, a sinner!â 14 I tell you, this man went down to his house justified, rather than the other. For everyone who exalts himself will be humbled, but the one who humbles himself will be exalted.â
5. The Lamb was slaughtered for the world. (John 1:29)
29 The next day he saw Jesus coming toward him, and said, âBehold, the Lamb of God, who takes away the sin of the world!
6. We are justified by faith not race. (Romans 3:28-30)
28 For we hold that one is justified by faith apart from works of the law. 29 Or is God the God of Jews only? Is he not the God of Gentiles also? Yes, of Gentiles also, 30 since God is oneâwho will justify the circumcised by faith and the uncircumcised through faith.
7. Christ has broken down the dividing wall of hostility. (Ephesians 2:11-22)
13 But now in Christ Jesus you who once were far off have been brought near by the blood of Christ. 14 For he himself is our peace, who has made us both one and has broken down in his flesh the dividing wall of hostility 15 by abolishing the law of commandments expressed in ordinances, that he might create in himself one new man in place of the two, so making peace, 16 and might reconcile us both to God in one body through the cross, thereby killing the hostility.
8. Racism, by definition, counts âusâ better than âthemâ. (Philippians 2:3)
Do nothing from rivalry or conceit, but in humility count others more significant than yourselves.
9. Racism is not âin step with the gospelâ. (Galatians 2:11-14)
11 But when Cephas came to Antioch, I opposed him to his face, because he stood condemned. 12 For before certain men came from James, he was eating with the Gentiles; but when they came he drew back and separated himself, fearing the circumcision party. 13 And the rest of the Jews acted hypocritically along with him, so that even Barnabas was led astray by their hypocrisy. 14 But when I saw that their conduct was not in step with the truth of the gospel, I said to Cephas before them all, âIf you, though a Jew, live like a Gentile and not like a Jew, how can you force the Gentiles to live like Jews?â
10. Racism categorizes while the gospel unites. (Galatians 3:28-29)
28 There is neither Jew nor Greek, there is neither slave [1] nor free, there is no male and female, for you are all one in Christ Jesus. 29 And if you are Christâs, then you are Abrahamâs offspring, heirs according to promise.
11. Partiality gives glory to someone. The gospel gives glory to Christ. (James 2:1)
My brothers, show no partiality as you hold the faith in our Lord Jesus Christ, the Lord of glory.
12. The gospel creates one race. (1 Peter 2:9)
But you are a chosen race, a royal priesthood, a holy nation, a people for his own possession, that you may proclaim the excellencies of him who called you out of darkness into his marvelous light.
13. Racists will be uncomfortable in heaven. (Revelation 5:8-10)
8 And when he had taken the scroll, the four living creatures and the twenty-four elders fell down before the Lamb, each holding a harp, and golden bowls full of incense, which are the prayers of the saints. 9 And they sang a new song, saying,
âWorthy are you to take the scroll
and to open its seals,
for you were slain, and by your blood you ransomed people for God
from every tribe and language and people and nation,
10 and you have made them a kingdom and priests to our God,
and they shall reign on the earth.â
âI must make two honest confessions to you, my Christian and Jewish brothers. First, I must confess that over the past few years I have been gravely disappointed with the white moderate. I have almost reached the regrettable conclusion that the Negroâs great stumbling block in his stride toward freedom is not the White Citizenâs Councilor or the Ku Klux Klanner, but the white moderate, who is more devoted to âorderâ than to justice; who prefers a negative peace which is the absence of tension to a positive peace which is the presence of justice; who constantly says: âI agree with you in the goal you seek, but I cannot agree with your methods of direct actionâ; who paternalistically believes he can set the timetable for another manâs freedom; who lives by a mythical concept of time and who constantly advises the Negro to wait for a âmore convenient season.â Shallow understanding from people of good will is more frustrating than absolute misunderstanding from people of ill will. Lukewarm acceptance is much more bewildering than outright rejection.â (Dr. Martin Luther King, âLetter from Birmingham Jail)
By: Chris Gonzalez
Tim Challies is spot on. Hammer? Meet nail.
I am an introvert. But I have to do extrovert-type things at times. However, I must prepare mentally for my non-introverted activities, and those activities tire me out. Like speaking in front of people. I don’t fear it so much as I have to prepare for it.
This is what makes it difficult to be in a group setting in which the speaker / teacher specifically calls on me to answer a question.
Pure panic.
And then I provide the wrong answer.
But as Challies says, “introversion is what I am, not who I am.”
Who am I?
In timely fashion, Challies also wrote a review of Mark Driscoll’s new book, Who Do you Think You Are. Tim writes,
At the heart of it all is our identity as Godâs image-bearers. We have been created in Godâs image and this gives us inherent worth and dignity. We are created as worshippers, yet by falling into sin we worship all the wrong things, leading us to craft idolatrous identities for ourselves. Instead of being identified first and foremost in our relationship to God, we ignore the Creator and craft other identities. It is the gospel, the good news of what Christ has done, that transforms, or re-forms, our identity. Driscoll writes, âOnly by knowing our false identity apart from Christ in relation to our true identity in him can we rightly deal with and overcome the issues in our lives.â Identity is a matter of life and death.
My identity is in Christ.
This year is the year of CrossTraining. CrossTraining is all about two things . . . bringing others to the cross and taking up our own.
Matthew 10:38; Matthew 16:24; Mark 8:34; Luke 9:23; 1 Corinthians 2:2; Romans 6:6;
Come CrossTraining with me. You won’t regret it.
Have you struggled with the way life is and the way it should be?
People fall into one of three philosophies of thought when struggling through this tension: Theist (We can know God), Agnostic (I’m not sure God exists or that we can know), and Atheist (We cannot know).
For the theist, the presence of evil is proof God exists; for the agnostic, evil creates a huge question in the mind; Atheists see evil as proof God does not exist.
At best, I am a theist. At worst, I am agnostic of the Mark 9:24 variety. Doubting Dawkins and Atheism’s Strength demonstrate the achilles heal of Atheism. Atheism is not a tenable option for me.
One honest atheist explains (please pardon some of the wording),
In a godless universe shit happens without rhyme nor reason. Life is predatory from the ground up. Creatures eat one another by trapping unsuspecting victims in unusual ways, launching surprise attacks out of the blue, and hunting in packs by overpowering prey with brute force and numbers. Sometimes a creature just goes wacko for no reason at all. Humans are not exempt. Sometimes the wiring in our brains goes haywire and we snap. We too are violent and we inherited this trait from our animal predecessors. We also show care and concern to our kith and kin but we can lash out in horrific ways at what we consider an uncaring world.
David Heddle remarks,
On the one hand, a very illuminating observation. On the other hand it is nothing more than yet another attempt at the proof of godlessness by the existence of evil. Axiomatic atheism is, if you will, a one-trick pony: Bad things happen, ergo no god. They also throw in âshow me god existsâ â a reasonable request from their perspectiveâbut this is a negative statement rather than a positive. The only positive argument atheism has is, as Loftus puts it, shit happens. He writes:
In a universe where there is an all powerful, perfectly good, all knowing God this tragedy is not what we would expect to happen.
Here Loftus is 100% wrong. He is operating under the misguided assumption that Christianity is a religion that teaches shit never happens.
The bible teaches us to enjoy life, Godâs bounty, and temporal happiness. It also promises, like a prescription medication: side effects may include pain, despair, suffering, lapses into grievous sin, weakness, apparent senselessness, persecution, misery, and physical death. Why atheists think that fallen man in a fallen world behaving exactly as the bible tells us is somehow a problem for Christianity is unfathomable. Shit happens. Loftus is correct that a godless world predicts as much. He is incorrect that a world with the god of the bible does not. Both hypotheses fit the data.
Heddle is spot on. But further, I would say that many people see God as a Ivory-Tower God, a God that is disconnected from His creation in any meaningful way.
If God were an Ivory-Tower God, then Atheists would be correct
But God is not an Ivory-Tower God but a God who can identify with our suffering.
Dietrich Bonhoeffer wrote, “The joy of God has gone through the poverty of the manger and the agony of the cross; that is why it is invincible, irrefutable.” We need a suffering Savior. We need a Savior who has tasted the cup of horror we are being forced to drink.
But more to the point, as Peter Kreeft goes so far as to say, “If good and evil exist, God exists. The struggle of life is a struggle for faith, but not just faith but faith in Jesus, our Emmanuel.
Much like the Gospels, the Old Testament only makes sense in light of the Person and Work of Jesus, His death, and resurrection.
The Gospels are not just bald, objective video recordings of the life and teachings of Jesus; rather they are inspired, theological retellings/interpretations after the crucial reality of the death and resurrection of Jesus. God raising Jesus from the dead changes everything for the Gospel writers. Once they were writing after this fact and the giving of the Holy Spirit at Pentecost, they could see significance in things that Jesus said and did that they could not have seen previously. And this is precisely what is given to us in the testimonial history of the Gospels.
-J. Pennington, Reading the Gospels Wisely, 153-154
What does Gospel-Centered mean? you ask.
First, let’s define the Gospel
The Gospel is,
The Person and Work of Jesus; Jesus, Who is God, was born of a virgin, lived a sinless life (fulfilling everything God demands of us), yet died on the cross and became sin for us, paid for our sin and guilt with His life, was buried, and on the third day rose again according to the Scriptures.
This is the Gospel in a nutshell.
But what does “Gospel-Centered” mean?
In essence, Gospel-Centered means the Gospel is placed front and center of our theology and life. The Gospel is that which makes everything else make sense.
What is the justification of being Gospel-Centered?
Let’s park on The Glory of God for a bit
Fact: God’s glory is the root of all I see in Scripture.
This is the paradigm by which I read and interpret Scripture. I determine the genre and interpret the text both literally and theologically with this overarching question:
How does this text reveal God’s glory?
Think of it this way. All of history and all of Scripture is hinged upon the Glory of God; but more specifically, everything hinges on the Glory of God in Christ.
I love what Jeremy Weaver says about the glory of God as our hermeneutic:
And the Word became flesh and dwelt among us, and we have seen his glory, glory as of the only Son from the Father, full of grace and truth. (John bore witness about him, and cried out, “This was he of whom I said, ‘He who comes after me ranks before me, because he was before me.'”) And from his fullness we have all received, grace upon grace. For the law was given through Moses; grace and truth came through Jesus Christ. No one has ever seen God; the only God, who is at the Father’s side, he has made him known. (John 1:14-18) Philip said to him, “Lord, show us the Father, and it is enough for us.” Jesus said to him, “Have I been with you so long, and you still do not know me, Philip? Whoever has seen me has seen the Father. How can you say, ‘Show us the Father’? (John 14:8-9)
Long ago, at many times and in many ways, God spoke to our fathers by the prophets, but in these last days he has spoken to us by his Son, whom he appointed the heir of all things, through whom also he created the world. He is the radiance of the glory of God and the exact imprint of his nature, and he upholds the universe by the word of his power. After making purification for sins, he sat down at the right hand of the Majesty on high, having become as much superior to angels as the name he has inherited is more excellent than theirs. (Hebrews 1:1-4)
For God, who said, “Let light shine out of darkness,” has shone in our hearts to give the light of the knowledge of the glory of God in the face of Jesus Christ. (2 Corinthians 4:6) He has delivered us from the domain of darkness and transferred us to the kingdom of his beloved Son, in whom we have redemption, the forgiveness of sins. He is the image of the invisible God, the firstborn of all creation. For by him all things were created, in heaven and on earth, visible and invisible, whether thrones or dominions or rulers or authorities–all things were created through him and for him. And he is before all things, and in him all things hold together. And he is the head of the body, the church. He is the beginning, the firstborn from the dead, that in everything he might be preeminent. For in him all the fullness of God was pleased to dwell, (Colossians 1:13-19)
This means that my hermeneutic now becomes Christological in nature.
This conclusion is supported by the following verses:
And he said to them, “O foolish ones, and slow of heart to believe all that the prophets have spoken! Was it not necessary that the Christ should suffer these things and enter into his glory?” And beginning with Moses and all the Prophets, he interpreted to them in all the Scriptures the things concerning himself. (Luke 24:25-27)
If I alone bear witness about myself, my testimony is not deemed true. There is another who bears witness about me, and I know that the testimony that he bears about me is true. You sent to John, and he has borne witness to the truth. Not that the testimony that I receive is from man, but I say these things so that you may be saved. He was a burning and shining lamp, and you were willing to rejoice for a while in his light. But the testimony that I have is greater than that of John. For the works that the Father has given me to accomplish, the very works that I am doing, bear witness about me that the Father has sent me. And the Father who sent me has himself borne witness about me. His voice you have never heard, his form you have never seen, and you do not have his word abiding in you, for you do not believe the one whom he has sent. You search the Scriptures because you think that in them you have eternal life; and it is they that bear witness about me, yet you refuse to come to me that you may have life. I do not receive glory from people. But I know that you do not have the love of God within you. I have come in my Father’s name, and you do not receive me. If another comes in his own name, you will receive him. How can you believe, when you receive glory from one another and do not seek the glory that comes from the only God? Do not think that I will accuse you to the Father. There is one who accuses you: Moses, on whom you have set your hope. If you believed Moses, you would believe me; for he wrote of me. But if you do not believe his writings, how will you believe my words?” (John 5:31-47) But as for you, continue in what you have learned and have firmly believed, knowing from whom you learned it and how from childhood you have been acquainted with the sacred writings, which are able to make you wise for salvation through faith in Christ Jesus. (2 Timothy 3:14-15)
From these verses we learn that Scripture is not only about God’s glory, it is about the One through whom He has most perfectly revealed His glory, that is, His only Son. All of Scripture is about Him. I find Bryan Chapell’s statement most helpful when looking for Christ in the Scriptures.
“In its context, every passage possesses one or more of four redemptive foci. Every text is predictive of the work of Christ, preparatory for the work of Christ, reflective of the work of Christ, and/or resultant of the work of Christ.” Bryan Chapell, Christ-Centered Preaching: Redeeming the expository Sermon (1994; Grand Rapids: Baker Books), 275.
- Predictive: these passages include specific prophecies, Messianic Psalms, and many of the ceremonial laws, which make no specific reference to Christ and yet are revealed to be about Christ when we read the New Testament.
- Preparatory: Some of the Old Testament passages were meant to prepare God’s people for the coming of Christ. God’s covenants with man in Old Testament were preparatory in this sense.
- Reflective: According to Chappell,
“Where the text neither plainly predicts nor prepares for the Redeemer’s work the expositor simply should explain how the text reflects key facets of the redemptive message…What does this text reflect of: God’s nature that provides the ministry of Christ; and/or human nature that requires the ministry of Christ?” Ibid., 277.
- Resultant: These are passages that tell us how we should live based upon Christ’s work. It is important to recognize that these are not guidelines for earning God’s favor, but the results of the heart set free by Christ. (Points 1-4 summarized from Christ-Centered Preaching: Redeeming the Expository Sermon, by Bryan Chapell, pp.275-279.)
Now, none of what has been written in this post is to the neglect of the literal interpretation of Scripture. It is all founded upon the literal reading of texts in their historical contexts. It is not a method of reading Christ into the text (eisogesis), finding where He really is in the text. For example, in Genesis 1 Christ. But if we read John 1 literally we find that He is there. And further, if we read the passages listed above literally, then we must conclude that Christ permeates the pages of both the Old and New Testaments. And to interpret Scripture ignoring this fact is to miss the point altogether.
See A Gospel-Centered Manifesto Part 2
SEe A Gospel-Centered Manifesto Part 3