Category Archives: Book Discussion

Found to be misrepresenting God?

11 Friday May 2012

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To get this book from Amazon, click on the book cover.

Thomas Brooks’ book Precious Remedies Against Satan’s Devices talks about various ways the Christian is dissuaded from the life Christ wants him or her to live. One such idea is to present God as made up entirely of mercy, to the exclusion of other things which can be said about him.

One way the Christian can fight the urge of our time to view God this way is to consider that the people of God who have gone before didn’t consider God’s mercy as an excuse to sin. The psalmist wrote,

3 For your steadfast love is before my eyes,
and I walk in your faithfulness.

4 I do not sit with men of falsehood,
nor do I consort with hypocrites.
5 I hate the assembly of evildoers,
and I will not sit with the wicked.

–Psalm 26:3-5, ESV

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Out of a Far Country

03 Wednesday Aug 2011

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Christopher Yuan

A review of Christopher Yuan‘s book. A copy of this book was graciously provided by Christopher for the purposes of this review. Thanks, Christopher!

Christopher’s book is certainly a page-turner. Co-written with his mother Angela, it details Christopher’s journey of repentance from rebellion against God to being reconciled to Christ by faith, orchestrated by difficult life experiences and a mother who spent her energies praying for Christopher and learning to love the Gospel. The format itself keeps the pages turning because Christopher and Angela speak in alternating chapters while on the same timeline, which creates a great deal of interest and forward motion to the story.

Christopher does an excellent job walking through the various time frames in which his story is set. When he’s describing the club scene, you can hear the bump of the music deafening you and see the people around. And you can feel the desperation of Angela as she prays for her son to know Christ as his sole sufficiency.

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Strategies to Keep from Falling

15 Wednesday Dec 2010

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What should pastors do to keep their noses clean…or, as we say in the Christian world, themselves pure?  Randy Alcorn has an article which has been highly distributed over the years which I would like to comment on.

In 1989, the book Sins of the Body was published in The Leadership Library, edited by Terry Muck.  It featured articles written by a wide variety of Christian authors.  The article which shares the same name as this blog post, was written by Randy Alcorn.  Christianity Today has the article available on its website here. Recently, some folks asked me what I thought of Randy Alcorn.  It’s been a significant amount of time since I’ve read a book by him, but I wanted to sketch out the apprehension I have for Alcorn using this article as a foil.

My operating assumption is that Randy Alcorn doesn’t understand law and gospel properly and therefore gives rather toxic advice.  Alcorn offers himself as the example instead of Christ and in doing so, contributes to the problem.

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Getting Used to Justification

08 Monday Nov 2010

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For my Spiritual and Ministry Formation class, we’re assigned blog summaries in which we interact with material assigned the previous week.  This week’s assignment was to read the Lutheran view of Sanctification as discussed in Christian Spirituality: Five Views of Sanctification, edited by Donald Alexander, published by IVP.  The Lutheran view was articulated by Gerhard Forde.  I figured I’d share my assignment on my blog.

Dr. Forde begins his discussion of sanctification as “the art of getting used to the unconditional justification wrought by the grace of God for Jesus’ sake.  It is what happens when we are grasped by the fact that God alone justifies.”  In other words, Dr. Forde asserts that sanctification is the natural byproduct of justification and thus, all of it is indeed brought about by none other than the Christ who bought us.  Many people view sanctification as the “getting down to business” of the Christian life.  It’s what we bring to the table after Christ saves us and is (so it is thought, anyway) the way we stay in God’s good graces.  This is, Dr. Forde asserts, “entirely false.  According to Scripture, God is always the acting subject, even in sanctification. ”

Repeatedly, Dr. Forde calls attention to the dangers of speaking of sanctification.  All the discussion appeals to the old man, he says, becoming a verbal exercise which sounds very impressive, but lacking the necessary foundation of love which the old man is completely incapable of laying himself.

Sanctification, as well as justification, is rooted in the unconditional promise of God.  This is something the old man does not know how to handle because “as old beings, we simply cannot understand or cope with the unconditional promise of justification pronounced in the name of Jesus.  What we don’t see is that what the unconditional promose is calling forth is a new being.  The justification of God promised in Jesus is not an ‘offer’ made to us as old beings; [instead,] it is our end, our death.”

Are you putting YOUR old man to death?

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Update and new book!

16 Thursday Sep 2010

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First, I haven’t fallen off the radar completely.  I’ve been swamped with reading for my Covenant Theology class, as well as learning Greek and doing my first outline for Sermon Preparation and Delivery.  Pretty stoked.

I’m also a reader for another student (meaning, I read their assignments onto an mp3 file and then send it to them). It pays pretty well and it’s a class I’ll have to take in the future, so I’ll have read most of the materials for those classes when I get there.  Pretty excited about that, actually.  But what that means is I fell behind in reading a little bit this week and spent 8 hours reading, 2 for the other guy, 6 for me…just to get caught up.  Then I came back from class today and read for over 2 hours for the other guy.  Now I’m taking a break from Greek to write this.

Washed and Waiting, by Wes Hill

But another distraction has arrived.  Amazon just sent me the copy of Washed and Waiting by Wes Hill. I couldn’t put it down and spent an hour this afternoon reading it. It warrants its own post, but allow me to quote from page 42 (which is, of course, the answer to life, the universe, everything):

A sexual orientation is such a complex and, in most cases, it seems, intractable thing; I for one cannot imagine what ‘healing’ from my orientation would look like, given that it seems to manifest itself not only in physical attraction to male bodies but also in a preference for male company, with all that it entails, such as conversation and emotional intimacy and quality time spent together.

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Ok, who gets what?

20 Friday Aug 2010

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Part 8 of a series discussing C. F. W. Walther’s important treatise Law and Gospel: How to Read and Apply the Bible.

So far, we’ve enumerated five differences between law and gospel.  They are,

  1. Law and Gospel differ as to how they were revealed to us.  The Law was written on our hearts and can indeed be found in other religions, but Christianity is the sole steward of the Gospel.
  2. The contents of the Law and Gospel are different.  The Law demands…the Gospel takes nothing but only gives.
  3. The Law and Gospel give us different promises.  The Law offers us salvation, but doesn’t give us any means to lay hold of it.  The Gospel tells us that Someone has laid hold of that salvation in our place.
  4. The Gospel does not threaten us; indeed it removes the believer’s desire to sin.  The Law, on the other hand, is nothing but threats.
  5. The effects of the Law are threefold.
    • The Law tells us what to do, but gives us no way to carry that out, instead prompting us in an unwillingness to keep the Law.
    • The Law uncovers a person’s sins, but offers the sinner no help to free himself from sin and hurls him into despair.
    • The Law creates feelings of contrition by showing terrors of hell, death and the wrath of God, but it never offers one drop of comfort to that sinner.  If the Law is the only teaching applied to people, then they must all despair, die and perish in their sins.
  • The effects of the Gospel are threefold.
    • What the Gospel demands (namely, faith), it provides.
    • The Gospel does not rebuke sinners.  Instead, it takes all terror away from them, filling them with peace and joy in the Holy Spirit.
    • “The Gospel,” as Walther says, “does not require people to furnish anything good–neither a good heart nor a good disposition nor an improvement of their condition, neither piousness nor love–whether toward God of men.  The Gospel issues no orders. Rather, it changes people.  It demands nothing, but gives all.”

The sixth and final difference between Law and Gospel relates to the persons to whom each must be preached.  The Law must be preached to secure sinners and the Gospel to those who are alarmed in their sin.

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Only the Law, Ma’am

04 Wednesday Aug 2010

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In part 6 of my ongoing series on C. F. W. Walther’s  Law and Gospel: How to Read and Apply the Bible, I said:

…if the only teaching applied to people is the Law, then they despair, die and perish in their sin.  More on this in a future post…

Here is that future post.

This statement is one side of a coin.  Some people grow up, live and die under all-law preaching and never have this melt-down I’ve described, or better put, never realize that this is what’s ticking under their hood.

The other alternative is for a person to be crushed under the weight of the fact that they don’t love the Lord with all of who they are…and to not let themselves off the hook because they realize that they do not keep the law perfectly.

Obey! No exceptions! This is the demand of the Law.

Teaching people that “it takes more than faith to really please God” is, in reality, extremely cruel.  To those who are convinced of their own righteousness, it pushes them on in their odious good works.  Telling the ones who despair of their sin such a thing drives them further and further away from the Gospel…that Christ has obeyed perfectly in their place all that the law demands.

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It Slices! It dices!

03 Tuesday Aug 2010

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Part 7 of a series discussing C. F. W. Walther’s important treatise Law and Gospel: How to Read and Apply the Bible.

The effects of the Gospel are entirely different in nature when compared to the Law.  The Law, as we’ve discussed, breathes threats and does not give us any means by which to fulfill those demands.

Could the people at your church wear this shirt and not be sued for false advertising?

The Gospel, as some of you will rightly point out, does demand faith.  “Repent and believe the good news!” is indeed the way the Gospel is to be preached, for it is the very message the Lord Himself gave us to dispense.

The second component of this point, however, may have escaped the notice of some, so I’ll flesh it out here:  The Gospel gives the very faith it demands.  When we preach “Believe in Christ!”, God gives them faith through our preaching.  It’s not, of course, the physical sound of the spoken word which saves…it’s the content of the preaching.

The Gospel doesn’t condemn or rebuke those who hear it.  Rather, it takes all the terror, fear and anguish away from them, filling them with peace and joy in the Holy Spirit.  Think about the prodigal father:  he lavishes his riches on his wayward son.  In this same way, Christ has welcomed us, his wayward and hateful children, into His home where he eats with us and us with Him.

Furthermore, the Gospel never requires anything good from the person:  not a good heart, not an improvement in behavior, not piety…not even love.

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You’re Having an Effect On Me

27 Tuesday Jul 2010

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Part 6 of a series discussing C. F. W. Walther’s important treatise Law and Gospel: How to Read and Apply the Bible.

The Law tells us what to do.  It doesn’t give us the strength to carry out its demands; instead, it urges us on in an unwillingness to keep the Law.  When the Law has forced its way into the heart, the heart rebels against it (against God himself) and becomes furious at the idea that God would demand such impossible things from him/her.  This even leads to them cursing God and wishing Him dead.  “The effect of preaching the Law, then, is to increase people’s lust for sinning,” says Walther.

Second, the Law offers the person no means to free himself from sin and throws him into despair.

Third, if the only teaching applied to people is the Law, then they despair, die and perish in their sin.  More on this in a future post…

Come on, Dave you may say.  Where is THIS taught in Scripture?

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Are you threatening me?

14 Wednesday Jul 2010

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Part 5 of a series discussing C. F. W. Walther’s important treatise Law and Gospel: How to Read and Apply the Bible.

There is a marked difference between the Law and the Gospel in the aspect of threats: namely, that the Law is nothing but threats and that the Gospel contains no threats of any kind.  The Gospel contains only words of consolation: “Your sins are forgiven,” “Christ came to save sinners of whom I am the foremost,” and so on.  Should you come across a passage with a threat in Scripture, you can be sure it’s Law. Continue reading →