I recently finished Thabiti Anyabwile’s new book, Finding Faithful Elders and Deacons. I particularly appreciated his comments on 1 Timothy 4:10 (we have our hope set on the living God).
We pastors face constant temptation to do pastoral ministry in our own strength and wisdom. We are invited on so many occasions to be men of strength and spiritual courage that we begin to believe that such strength and courage are matters of self-exertion. We may imagine ourselves mustering enough willpower to push our way to any goal.
But this brief phrase from Paul’s letter confronts every pastor with the question, Where have we put our hope?
Sometimes we place hope in our study and preparation. Sometimes we place our hope in books read and the convincing arguments they contain. Other times we place hope in relationships, in the affection we share with others in the body. Or we place hope in our articulate expression, clever counsel, and good sermons. Our hope soars when things go well, when people seem pleased with our performance.
All of these hopes are deadly temptations! All of them fade, weaken, and disappoint.
I recently finished Tullian Tchividjian’s new book, Jesus + Nothing = Everything. His book is full of great stuff. Please pick up a copy and read it. There is far too much to summarize, but let me offer two statements he made about preaching.
Moralistic preaching is stimulated by a fear of the scandalous freedom that gospel grace promotes and promises. The perceived fear is this: if we think too much and talk to much about grace and the radical freedom it brings, we’ll go off the deep end with it. We’ll abuse it. So to balance things out, we need to throw some law in there, to help make sure Christian people walk the straight and narrow. (p. 50)
Preachers these days are expected to major in “Christian moral renovation.” They are expected to provide a practical to-do list, rather than announce, “It is finished.” They are expected to do something other than, more than, placarding before their congregation’s eyes Christ’s finished work, preaching a full absolution soley on the basis of the complete righteousness of Another. The irony is, of course, that when preachers cave in to this pressure, moral renovation does not happen. To focus on how I’m doing, more than on what Christ has done, is Christian narcissism (an oxymoron if I ever heard one)– the poison of self-absorption which undermines the power of the gospel in our lives. (p.117)
I just finished reading a little book called, Cruciform: Living the Cross-Shaped Life. I found this quote from the book to be quite powerful. It is taken from George Whitefield.
You must be brought to see that God may damn you for the best prayer you every put up . . . that all your duties . . . are so far from recommending you to God. . . . you must not only be sick of your original and actual sin, but you must be made sick of your righteousness, of all your duties and performances.
I recently finished Joe Thorn’s helpful little book, Note to Self. Would recommend you read it. A lot of good stuff in his book, but in particular I was reminded of chapter 35 (Stop Complaining) this past week as our family vacation had some minor inconveniences.
You complain because you misunderstand (or just miss altogether) the grace you have received and the purposes of God in your life. You misunderstand the grace you have received by not recognizing it and receiving it with gratitude. Life, breath, and all of God’s provisions for your life are acts of his kindness and are truly wonderful, and yet they all seem to disappear when the small inconveniences of life appear.
Read this stinging statement from D. A. Carson today. Pay careful attention to the last two sentences.
It is true, of course, that no man enters the kingdom because of his obedience; but it is equally true that no man enters the kingdom who is not obedient. It is true that men are saved by God’s grace through faith in Christ; but it is equally true that God’s grace in a man’s life inevitably results in obedience. Any other view of grace cheapens grace, and turns it into something unrecognizable. Cheap grace preaches forgiveness without repentance, church membership without rigorous church discipline, discipleship without obedience, blessing without persecution, joy without righteousness, results without obedience. In the entire history of the church, has there ever been another generation with so many nominal Christians and so few real (i.e., obedient) ones? And where nominal Christianity is compounded by spectacular profession, it is especially likely to manufacture its own false assurance.
D. A. Carson, Jesus’ Sermon on the Mount, p. 139-140.
Found this statement by Dietrich Bonhoeffer to be excellent.
The most experienced psychologist or observer of human nature knows infinitely less of the human heart than the simplest Christian who lives beneath the Cross of Jesus. The greatest psychological insight, ability and experience cannot grasp this one thing: what sin is. Worldly wisdom knows what distress and weakness and failure are, but it does not know the godlessness of man. And so it does not know that man is destroyed only by his sin and can be healed only by forgiveness. Only the Christian knows this. In the presence of a psychiatrist I can only be a sick man; in the presence of a Christian brother I can dare to be a sinner. The psychiatrist must first search my heart and yet he never plumbs its ultimate depth. The Christian brother knows when I come to him: here is a sinner like myself, a godless man who wants to confess and yearns for God’s forgiveness. The psychiatrist views me as if there were no God. The brother views me as I am before the judging and merciful God in the Cross of Jesus Christ.
Taken from David Powlison’s chapter “The Pastor as a Counselor” in For the Fame of God’s Name: Essays in Honor of John Piper, eds., Sam Storms and Justin Taylor.
I like this quote by R. Kent Hughes.
The cross is the ultimate evidence that there is no length the love of God will refuse to go in effecting reconciliation.
R. Kent Hughes, Colossians and Philemon: The Supremacy of Christ, p. 38
I found Doug Moo’s comments on Colossians 2:12 helpful and interesting.
Paul’s logic runs like this: you have been spiritually “circumcised.” This circumcision took place when you were buried with Christ and raised with him. And this burial and resurrection with Christ happened when you were baptized. As this paraphrase of Paul’s argument also reveals, the popular explanation that Paul uses baptism as a symbol of our death to the old life (when we are plunged beneath the water) and resurrection to the new life (when we arise out of the water) is also wide of the mark. Baptism does not symbolize what happened when we were converted; it somehow is integrally involved in that conversion itself. The best way to account for this and at the same time to do justice to Paul’s constant emphasis on our faith as the key to our coming to Christ (as he does at the end of this very verse, as if to guard against a possible misunderstanding) is again to recognize a broadly attested New Testament theological concept dubbed by James Dunn “conversion-initiation.” The New Testament connects our coming to Christ (being converted and initiated in the new covenant community) to faith, to repentance, to the gift of the Spirit, and to water baptism, in various combinations. Any of these, in a kind of metonymy, could be used to connote the whole experience–implying, of course, in each instance, the presence of all the others. Water baptism, then, as a critical New Testament rite intimately connected to our conversion experience, could be used as shorthand for the whole experience.
Douglas Moo, The Letters to the Colossians and to Philemon, p. 202
The catholicity of the gospel is a token of its divine origin and power.
F. F. Bruce, The Epistles to the Colossians, to Philemon, and to the Ephesians, pp. 79-80
Just finished teaching on the Kingdom of God at our church. In my opinion, Anthony Hoekema still has the best definition of the Kingdom of God.
The kingdom of God, therefore, is to be understood as the reign of God dynamically active in human history through Jesus Christ, the purpose of which is the redemption of God’s people from sin and from demonic powers, and the final establishment of the new heavens and new earth. It means that the great drama of the history of salvation has been inaugurated, and that the new age has been ushered in. The kingdom must not be understood as merely the salvation of certain individuals or even as the reign of God in the hearts of people; it means nothing less than the reign of God over his entire created universe.
Hoekema, The Bible and the Future, p. 45
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