No, Mr. President

The Bible's purpose - 2 views

Tim Keller contrasts 2 approaches to scripture's purpose:

“The Bible’s purpose is not so much to show you how to live a good life. The Bible’s purpose is to show you how God’s grace breaks into your life against your will and saves you from the sin and brokenness otherwise you would never be able to overcome… religion is ‘if you obey, then you will be accepted’. But the Gospel is, ‘if you are absolutely accepted, and sure you’re accepted, only then will you ever begin to obey’. Those are two utterly different things. Every page of the Bible shows the difference.”

- Timothy Keller

Mike Horton interview: the gospel-driven church

Mike Horton was on Issues, Etc., discussing "The Gospel-Driven Church":

Here's the link

thought-provoking questions

I have taken a paragraph from Mike Horton's new book, Christless Christianity and split it up into bullet points for thoughtful reflection:

• Does Christ come merely to improve our existence in Adam or to end it, sweeping us into his new creation?

• Is Christianity all about spiritual and moral makeovers or about death and resurrection — radical judgment and radical grace?

• Is the Word of God a resource for what we have already decided we want and need, or is it God’s living and active criticism of our religion, morality, and pious experience?

In other words, is the Bible God’s story, centering on Christ’s redeeming work, that rewrites our stories, or is it something we use to make our stories a little more exciting and interesting?

Worst pun of all time?

I'm thinking so...

from racism to reconciliation

The power of the gospel is clear in this powerful reunion.

Jesus anime demoniac concept

"You have heard it said... but I say to you..."

Ever wonder why Jesus says this? It sounds at first as if He's contradicting the law of Moses. Intimating that the law got it wrong, but "here's what you should REALLY do." Indeed, that's probably what the Pharisees and the strict followers of Moses thought - it was even shocking for His own disciples to hear no doubt.

Here's some helpful commentary on this topic from Lee Irons in his article A New Locus of Authority:

"Perhaps an analogy may help. The constitution of the United States and the constitution of England may have many points in common. I don’t know for sure, but I wouldn’t be surprised if the constitution of England (even if based on common law) contained similar provisions concerning civil liberties such as the right to freedom of religion or freedom of speech. But are citizens of the United States bound by these provisions in the constitution of the England? No. We fought a Revolutionary War, broke from England, and we are now bound by the constitution of the United States. The fact that there are points of similarity and continuity doesn’t change that fundamental legal fact. We can trace lines of organic, historic continuity from the Magna Carta to the Bill of Rights. But, legally, we Americans are not under the Magna Carta or the constitution of England.

So with the new covenant. We Christians are members of a new polity called the new covenant. We are not bound by the constitution of Israel (the Mosaic Law). We are not Jews. Are there points of similarity and continuity between the old covenant and the new? Of course. Every moral teaching contained in the old covenant is carried forward into the new. Christians are still obligated to flee idolatry, sexual immorality, murder, and so on. If anything, our view of what is entailed by God’s moral law is expanded and heightened in the new covenant. The prohibition against murder entails a prohibition against hating our neighbor in our heart. The prohibition against adultery includes the prohibition against lust. Neighbor-love is expanded to enemy-love. And so on. But in reality, even these heart attitudes were always a part of the moral law. They are just more clearly seen in Christ and made more explicit through his teaching."

Read the whole article

who are we attracting?

This is thought-provoking:

“Jesus’s teaching consistently attracted the irreligious while offending the Bible-believing, religious people of his day. However, in the main, our churches today do not have this effect. The kind of outsiders Jesus attracted are not attracted to contemporary churches, even our most avant-garde ones. We tend to draw conservative, buttoned-down, moralistic people. The licentious and liberated or the broken and marginal avoid church. That can only mean one thing. If the preaching of our ministers and the practice of our parishioners do not have the same effect on people that Jesus had, then we must not be declaring the same message that Jesus did.”

- Timothy Keller, The Prodigal God

The Price that Love Pays

“God’s love is his holiness reaching out to sinners; grace is but the price that his love pays to his holiness; the cross is but its victory over sin and death; and faith is but the way in which we bring our worship to him who is holy.”

- David F. Wells, The Courage to be Protestant

How much do you have to hate somebody NOT to proselytize?

Penn Jillette, a comedian and illusionist who happens to be an atheist, describing a recent encounter he had with a Christian:

The Inexpressible Gift

The Inexpressible Gift
from Of First Importance by fredeaton

“What we see at the cross is the white-hot revelation of the character of God, of his love providing the price that holiness requires. The cross was his means of redeeming lost sinners and reconciling them to himself, but it was also a profound disclosure of his mercy. It is, in Paul’s words, an ‘inexpressible gift’ that leads us to wonder and worship, to praise and adore the God who has given himself to us in this way.”

- David F. Wells, The Courage to be Protestant

holiness must only be seen through grace

“Biblical holiness begins with the Holy. But the holy, by its very nature, can be approached only when we come as sinners. He is never accessible to us as consumers. We come in sackcloth and ashes, not as buyers. Indeed, we cannot approach the Holy at all on our own terms. We must see that the Holy has first approached us in Christ and, through him, reconciled us to himself.

The revelation of the Holy would be unbearable were we to see it in any other way than from within Christ. In Christ, what we are seeing is God’s holiness in its action on our sin. Without Christ we would have to bear that judgment in ourselves What we see instead is holiness coming down in grace and, in Christ, going forth against our sin in triumph.”

- David F. Wells

The stone will be rolled away for each of us

“He came back.

After that brutal Friday, and that long, quiet Saturday, he came back.

And that one intake of breath in the tomb changes everything. It changes the very reason I drew breath today and the way I move about in this world because I believe he’s coming back again. The world has gone on for more than two millennia since Jesus’ feet tread the earth he made. What would they have said back then if someone had told them that some two thousand years later we’d still be waiting? They would’ve thought back to that long Saturday and said, ‘Two thousand years will seem like a breath to you when you finally lay your crown at his feet. We don’t even remember what we were doing on that Saturday, but let me tell you about Sunday morning. Now that was something.’

These many years of waiting will only be a sentence in the story. This long day will come to an end, and I believe it will end in glory, when we will shine like suns and stride the green hills with those we love and the One who loves. We will look with our new eyes and speak with our new tongues and turn to each other and say, ‘Do you remember the waiting? The long years, the bitter pain, the gnawing doubt, the relentless ache?’ And like Mary at the tomb, we will say: ‘I remember only the light, and the voice calling my name, and the overwhelming joy that the waiting was finally over.’

The stone will be rolled away for each of us. May we wait with faithful hearts.”

—Andrew Peterson, CD liner notes for Resurrection Letters Volume II (Centricity Music: 2008)

HT: - First Importance by Bart

2 great quotes on grace

“Knowing God without knowing our own wretchedness makes for pride.

Knowing our own wretchedness without knowing God makes for despair.

Knowing Jesus Christ strikes the balance because he shows us both God and our own wretchedness.”

- Blaise Pascal

“When our depravity meets his divinity it is a beautiful collision.”

—David Crowder

The Wrong Righteousness

“Before you can ever make a clean and unamended confession of your sin, you have to first begin by confessing your righteousness. It’s not just your sin that separates you from God; your righteousness does as well. Because, when you are convinced you are righteous, you don’t seek the forgiving, rescuing, and restoring mercy that can be found only in Jesus Christ.”

- Paul David Tripp

from Of First Importance by fredeaton

Confession

by R.C. Sproul

Confession
After expressing adoration, we must come with hearts of confession. Remember that we have no right to come before God at all, apart from the finished work of Christ. We can make no claim, in and of ourselves, to the ear of God. We have no intrinsic right to his presence. The Scriptures tell us that God is too holy to even look at sin. God delights in the prayers of the righteous, but we are not very righteous in our daily lives. Nevertheless, the God we serve invites us into his presence in spite of our sin.

The blessing of Christ’s kingly office for us

“The happiness promised us in Christ does not consist in outward advantages—such as leading a joyous and peaceful life, having rich possessions, being safe from all harm, and abounding with delights such as the flesh commonly longs after. No, our happiness belongs to the heavenly life.

Christ enriches his people with all things necessary for the eternal salvation of souls and fortifies them with courage to stand unconquerable against all the assaults of spiritual enemies. From this we infer that he rules—inwardly and outwardly—more for our own sake than his.

Thus it is that we may patiently pass through this life with its misery, hunger, cold, contempt, reproaches, and other troubles—content with this one thing: that our King will never leave us destitute, but will provide for our needs until, our warfare ended, we are called to triumph.”

—John Calvin, Institutes of the Christian Religion,
from Of First Importance

Prop-egg-anda

laughing baby

So cute.