Fear and Trembling

“The bad news is far worse than making mistakes or failing to live up to the legalistic standards of fundamentalism. It is that the best efforts of the best Christians, on the best days, in the best frame of heart and mind, with the best motives fall short of that true righteousness and holiness that God requires. Our best efforts cannot satisfy God’s justice. Yet the good news is that God has satisfied his own justice and reconciled us to himself through the life, death, and resurrection of his Son. God’s holy law can no longer condemn us because we are in Christ.” — Michael Horton, Christless Christianity (Grand Rapids, Mi.: Baker Books, 2008), 91.

A prominent Christian minister comments on the Parable of the Prodigal Son : What must we do, then, to be saved? To find God we must repent of the things we have done wrong, but if that is all you do, you may remain just an elder brother. To truly become a Christian we must also repent of the reasons we ever did anything right. Pharisees only repent of their sins, but Christians repent for the very roots of their righteousness, too. We must learn how to repent of the sin under all our other sins and under all our righteousness – the sin of seeking to be our own Savior and Lord. We must admit that we’ve put our ultimate hope in both our wrongdoing and right doing we have been seeking to get around God or get control of God in order to get hold of those things. It is only when you see the desire to be your own Savior and Lord—lying beneath both your sins and your moral goodness—that you are on the verge of becoming a Christian indeed. When you realize that the antidote to being bad...

I find a particular set of questions show up when I share the gospel with atheists on the internet. I want to adapt some of those questions as given here and give my answer and / or explanation. The objections are boldface. My comments are regular script. “God has no right to impose punishment on me because he is the one who made his laws so I could not follow them. The God who makes the laws, decides if you broke the law or not and determines the punishment.” You assume that the law of God is arbitrary, that God could choose to make the law be whatever He wanted it to be. God could no more make the moral law in a different way than he could make the laws of mathematics a different way. All of these abstract laws are an expression of His nature and character. God’s character is the basis for good attitudes. God’s actions are the basis for good behavior. God’s character and morality cannot change because His being cannot change. God’s knowledge is the basis for the laws of...

The debate on justification between the New Perspective on Paul and the traditional reformation view at the recent Evangelical Theological Society meeting. My personal views are here and here . Ligonier Ministries’ opinion is linked to  here , with some more helpful links here . The Heidelblog weighs in here . Trevin Wax has some helpful links here . Collin Hansen weighs in with a particularly helpful post here .

See the chart here .

Charles Finney Part 1: Theology Charles G. Finney (1792-1875) ministered at the end of the "Second Great Awakening," a revival that swept America. Finney came out of a Presbyterian background. As recounted in several of his sermons, Finney one day experienced a "baptism of the Holy Ghost… [that] seemed to come in waves of liquid love.” He began to conduct revivals. He preached revival sermons to many people in many different tent revivals. No preacher from his time has had more influence on the modern evangelical church and its methods for evangelism. From mass evangelistic crusades to the church growth movement, Finney’s massive influence lives on. But every preacher’s work flows from his view of theology, and Finney’s theology would not be recognized by most of the modern preachers who have followed his lead. Finney denied that Christ died for our sins. He said, "The doctrine of imputed righteousness, or that Christ’s obedience to the law was accounted as ...

See here and here for summaries of the Tabletalk Issue dealing with the teaching of N. T. Wright. [2/6/10]  See more links and info. on Wright and justification in general  here.

Thanks to Justin Talyor for this quote: “Saying “Preach the gospel; if necessary use words” is like saying “Tell me your phone number; if necessary use digits.”” – J. D. Greear

Follow this link to a great statement of the gospel for those of us who struggle with sin.  Here's an excerpt: When the major stress in pulpit and curriculum shifts from "Christ outside of me, dying for me" to "Christ inside of me, improving me," the upshot is always the same: many broken, sad ex-Christians who despair of being able to live the Christian life as the Bible describes it. So they do what is really a sane thing to do -- they leave. The way it looks to them is that "the message of Christianity has broken them on the rack." To put it bluntly, it feels better to have some earthly happiness as a pagan and then be damned than it feels to be trying every day as a Christian to do something that is one continuous failure -- and then be damned anyway...What the "sad alumni" need to hear (perhaps for the first time) is that Christian failures are going to walk into heaven, be welcomed into heaven, leap into heaven like a calf leaping ou...

[For background, see here .] Here’s an excerpt from Sproul’s comments : The Manhattan Declaration confuses common grace and special grace by combining them. While I would march with the bishop of Rome and an Orthodox prelate to resist the slaughter of innocents in the womb, I could never ground that cobelligerency on the assumption that we share a common faith and a unified understanding of the gospel.

I recently read the Kindle for iPhone Edition of Unfashionable by Tullian Tchividjian . This is an excellent book written at a popular level to help Christians see that they “make a difference in this world by being different from this world; they don’t make a difference by being the same” (Location 284). That makes sense. If you want to change something, you have to make it different in some way. If what you want to change is a culture / people group / nation, you have to create a different culture within it. One excerpt: Ironically, the more we Christians pursue worldly relevance, the more we’ll render ourselves irrelevant to the world around us. There’s an irrelevance to pursuing relevance … To be truly relevant, you have to say things that are unfashionable eternal, not trendy. It’s the timeless things that are most relevant to most people, and we dare not forget this fact in our pursuit of relevance. (Location 405) There is another way to look at this. A subject’s relevanc...

One of my favorite quotes from Martin Luther: If you are a preacher of mercy, do not preach an imaginary but the true mercy. If the mercy is true, you must therefore bear the true, not an imaginary sin. God does not save those who are only imaginary sinners. Be a sinner, and let your sins be strong (sin boldly), but let your trust in Christ be stronger, and rejoice in Christ who is the victor over sin, death, and the world. We will commit sins while we are here, for this life is not a place where justice resides. We, however, says Peter (2. Peter 3:13) are looking forward to a new heaven and a new earth where justice will reign. (from Letter 99, Paragraph 13. Erika Bullmann Flores, Tr. from: Dr. Martin Luther's Saemmtliche Schriften Dr. Johann Georg Walch Ed. (St. Louis: Concordia Publishing House, N.D.), Vol. 15, cols. 2585-2590.) Are we daring enough to live  this? 

Follow the conversation between Charles Simeon and John Wesley here .

Today’s BreakPoint commentary by Prison Fellowship Mark Early tells a story that speaks clearly to the best answer to our crime problem. Here’s the conclusion: And as we go about doing what God commanded—visiting those in prison and sharing the good news—it won’t just make a difference in private attitudes, but in public safety. So that the next time [criminals and victims] meet, it can be across the pew instead of across the barrel of a pistol. BreakPoint links to related news stories here and here . It sounds trite, but we must share the gospel, or they may kill us .

Much has been said by leaders in the modern church about “felt needs” and the necessity of reaching the lost by an appeal to those “felt needs.” I will pretend to be a non-Christian for a minute. I will speak from the perspective of “ the mind set on the flesh .” My number one felt need at this point in my life is a Victory Red, 2009 Chevrolet ZR1 Corvette . Motor Trend Magazine’s article sold me on the idea. It’s hard to beat a 620 horsepower engine in a 3,324 pound car. Plus the typical Corvette suspension package and amenities. I guarantee that if your church buys me this Corvette, meeting the felt need of my heart, I will attend each and every Sunday morning for the rest of my life. I will constantly and enthusiastically tell everyone I meet about the great things happening at your church, and I will invite everyone I know to the church that is serious about meeting our felt needs. That church will be successful in the way that the modern church measures success: numerical growth....

I finished the book Crazy Love: Overwhelmed by a Relentless God by Francis Chan (Colorado Springs, Colorado: David C. Cook, 2008) . The book is a strong call to the kind of Christian discipleship that can change a person’s life and change our world for the better. (See also the website associated with this book for information and supplemental videos and other materials.) This book is a strong call to the life of obedience that necessarily follows faith in Christ. But anytime a strong call to discipleship and obedience is issued, it can be misunderstood. I wanted to post a quick look at the underlying assumption of the book: the grace of Almighty God as demonstrated in the life, death and resurrection of Christ. This grace is the righteousness of God that is earned for us in Jesus and credited to us through faith ( Romans 3:21-31 ). Our constant and consistent sin against a Holy God is a source of guilt and shame among Christians. Chan describes the problem and provides help: S...

I finished a book a few weeks ago by Michael Horton called Christless Christianity: The Alternative Gospel of the American Church (Grand Rapids, Michigan: Baker, 2008). The book is intended to diagnose and describe formidable problems facing the evangelical church in the U. S. In blogging terms, the book is a ‘rant,’ but it’s a powerful one. (Horton promises a “more constructive sequel “ to propose solutions (p. 27), and I look forward to that book.) Horton applies his keen, analytical mind in a devastating critique of a church that consumes a “regular diet” of “do more, try harder.” The book resonates with me as I have endured this many times. I have sat through sermon after sermon of “weekly calls to action” instead of the clear and simple statement of the gospel of salvation apart from my own works. (17) I have found much of what our Southern Baptist churches do to be vulnerable to Horton’s pointed criticism. He says of our theologically vacuous teaching that it “is not profound e...

A quote from John Newton given by The Andrew Fuller Center for Baptist Studies is here . Here’s the quote: The message I would bear is Jesus Christ and him crucified and from the consideration of the great things he has done, to recommend and enforce Gospel holiness and Gospel love, and to take as little notice of our fierce contests, controversies and divisions as possible. My desire is to lift up the banner of the Lord, and to draw the sword of the Spirit not against names, parties and opinions, but against the world, the flesh and the devil; and to invite poor perishing sinners not to espouse a system of my own or any man’s, but to fly to the Lord Jesus, the sure and only city of refuge and the ready, compassionate and all sufficient Saviour of those that trust in him. [Cited Marylynn Rouse, “An important turn to my future life”, The John Newton Project Prayer Letter (October/November 2008), p.1].

About 1.2 million people in America identify themselves as homosexual (see here on the difficulties and assumptions for this estimation). Those in the Christian church have written much about the homosexual agenda. However, many of these writings do not show any evidence of an honest desire to show Christ’s love to those struggling with this form of sin (see and inciteful article here ). I wanted to make a small effort at outreach, and I hope that the reader would hear me out. I was raised in a small-town Southern-Baptist church. Was the church a little backward? Yes. Was the pastor a fundamentalist? Yes. Did he clearly preach the Bible’s main message? Yes, thank God. One part of the Bible he preached was the condemnation of homosexuality in Romans, Chapter 1. I became a Christian because of a particular sermon on Romans 1:18-32 . I heard the sermon when I was seven years old. There are many things in that passage that a seven-year-old in a small town in 1976 did not under...

“…if you simply address the God-shaped blank that people think they’ve got, the God you end up with is the God shaped by the blank. The real God specializes in taking the blanks in people’s lives and pulling and tugging and turning them into a new shape.” – N. T. Wright as quoted in “Mere Mission” in Christianity Today , January 2007, Volume 51, Number 1, p. 38-41. N. T. Wright is right about this one. Trends toward seeker-sensitive and seeker-sensible preaching stress meeting the non-Christian at the point of his “felt need.” The felt need is the thing that the non-Christian thinks is practical for his life. The felt need is useful advice to make his life easier. The problem is that all too often the preacher ends up using the Bible’s moral requirements as practical advice for living. This is not entirely wrong-headed, but the preacher forgets that what he is preaching is God’s law. These are God’s requirements. Man’s duty. And it is a duty that we cannot fulfill ( Matthew 5:4...