Growing In Grace

For my last post of the year I am going to be answering a couple reoccurring questions about why I make such a big deal about the gospel, and if this post raises more questions for you then please write me and I would love to discuss these things further. First Question: Why do I have such a single minded emphasis on the gospel? 1 Corinthians 15:1-3 says, "Now I would remind you, brothers, of the gospel I preached to you, which you received, in which you stand, and by which you are being saved, if you hold fast to the word I preached to you—unless you believed in vain. For I delivered to you as of first importance what I also received: that Christ died for our sins in accordance with the Scriptures." This passage is incredible for it's placement and it's directness. Paul is nearing the end of his letter to a church with many problems. They have arrogantly been dividing into splits arguing that the teacher they follow is the best. There is a man who is sleeping

I have come to believe that, sadly, most churches today have been assuming the gospel. Even the best Bible believing and teaching churches have allowed the gospel to play second fiddle to various other things. Many of these things are good things, for example my own church background proclaims that we are to keep, "The main thing, the main thing" referring to teaching straight through the Bible. However, in many cases teaching "line upon line" has caused us to treat Bible teaching as something that can (and/or should) be leveraged over and above the gospel. This is so grieving because it means that we have reduced the gospel to something that get's us in, but doesn't keep us and grow us. I have come to agree with Tim Keller when he says, "The gospel is not the ABC's of Christianity, it is the A-Z's." In this post I want to propose a way of viewing Scripture as a twofold breakdown of Law and Gospel. Martin Luther, Theodore Beza and many o

In the Old Testament we get an unfolding vision of God and His attributes through the stories of the people that He called. First we see that He is the creator that made man in His image, giving man the commission as the 'king priest' of the garden, ruling and subduing creation while expanding the borders of the Garden. Adam failed to crush the serpent and so he was removed from the Garden temple sanctuary. God repeated Adam's commission to his children, choosing Abram to be the father of a new nation (a corporate Adam) that would once again be commissioned to be a nation of priests.  Eventually God gave them the Holy Land (a new Garden for corporate Adam) and called them to grow it's boarders. Just as the Garden had been the place where man "walked with God" experiencing God's presence, the land of Israel was home to the tabernacle which was where the presence of God rested. The purpose of these stories in their fullness is to teach us that God is incre

I am sure that many of you will recognize the title of this post as being spoken by Cotton's Parrot in the "Pirates Of The Caribbean." Whatever your take on the movie may have been, this is a deeply theological statement and one that I want to unpack from Scripture. I believe that this is one of the most misunderstood Biblical teachings, and the implications of misunderstanding this teaching are huge for our understanding of the gospel. Ephesians 2:1a&4-6 says, "And you were dead in your sins and trespasses ... But God, being rich in mercy because of the great love with which he loved us, even when we were dead in our trespasses made us alive together with Christ - by grace you have been saved - and raised us up with Him and seated us with Him in the heavenly places in Christ Jesus. The Apostle Paul spells out for us just how bad a state we were in - we were dead. To be sure this is not to say that we were "mostly dead" but completely and totally de

Galatians 3:13-14 says, "Christ redeemed us from the curse of the law having become a curse for us - it is written, 'Cursed is everyone who hangs on a tree' - in order that in Christ Jesus the blessing of Abraham might come to the Gentiles, so that we would receive the promise of the Spirit through faith." Abraham was promised a blessing, a Descendant, and land, and in Galatians 3 we see that Christ is the fulfillment of the 'blessing promise' by bringing salvation to the Jews and Gentiles. Paul quotes the Old Testament saying, "Cursed is everyone that does not abide by all things written in the Book of the Law, to perform them." Jesus became cursed for us by hanging on the tree so that the blessing of Abraham would be passed on to those who believe through faith. Paul goes on in vs 16 to say that Christ is also the ultimate fulfillment of the Descendant or Seed promise. Paul is exegeting (interpreting/expounding) the promises to Abraham from Gene

Most people are familiar with the Bible's opening line, "In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth." From this verse we must recognize that before there was a beginning, God was. Clearly God could not have created something "in the beginning" if He was not already preexisting. John picks this theme up for us in the intro to his gospel. "In the beginning was the Word and the Word was with God, and the Word was God." John unfolds for us that this Word is the preexisting God come in the flesh as the God-man Jesus. John continues that everything was made "through" Him and, as the Genesis narrative continues to unfold the story of the creation account, we see that Adam was the crowning achievement of God's creation. Adam was created in perfection in the Garden of Eden and God told him to be fruitful and multiply by having dominion over the whole earth. The image is of Adam and Even expanding the perfection of the Garden to the e

This is a subject that has really grieved me at times because it has, on occasion, seemed to be a focus of theology that can turn our eyes away from the ultimate purpose of worship which I discussed in the last post. While eschatology is very important, it seems that it has been made the main focus, or even the only area of theological study for many Christians. I know many Christians that can tell you extensive information about eschatology, they can take you to the verses and argue for the pre-trib rapture, the seven year great tribulation, the war of Gog and Magog etc. But sadly many of these same people would be hard pressed to expound their knowledge of the attributes of God: His goodness, righteousness and wrath, knowledge, power, etc. And I know very few Christians that have had any contact with the more abstract things found from studying the doctrine of God such as His transcendence and immanence, necessity, aseity, Trinity, etc., and yet some of these doctrines are foundat

"...it is the goal of good theology to humble us before the truine God of majesty and grace." - Michael Horton from The Christian Faith. I love theology! I have entire shelves dedicated to theology books in my office, but I need to be constantly reminded that any study of theology that doesn't cause us to be more in love with Jesus is empty. Last time the post began with the reminder that the "chief end of man is to worship God and to enjoy Him forever." We have been created to find our purpose, joy, and fulfillment in the God of the universe who loved and died for us. In Joshua Harris' book "Dug Down Deep" (a great intro for someone that has never studied theology before) he also speaks about the goal of studying and learning theology and the doctrine of God in particular. He says, "When we study the doctrine of God, there should be a sense of awe in our hearts. We should be like children with a telescope under a starry night sky. Then w

The Westminster Shorter Catechism opens with the famous question, "What is the chief end of man?" To which the answer is, "Man's chief end is to glorify God, and to enjoy Him forever." If this is true, and I believe that it certainly is, then all sin is stealing God's glory. We sin whenever we fail to give God the glory that He is due by not obeying and loving Him supremely. There are a number of very distinct examples of glory thieves in the Bible such as Pharaoh and Nebuchadnezzar. Pharaoh was seen as godlike in Egypt and he was furious at the demands of Yahweh's servant Moses that Pharaoh was to obey this greater authority. The children's movie account of the Exodus "The Prince of Egypt" portrays Pharaoh's self love so well when Pharaoh says, "I am the morning and the evening star." Pharaoh exulted in his power and position, but God was unrelenting in His demonstration of His sovereign power and Pharaoh's hardness of

My daughter just completed Kindergarten and she has been learning to read. I love reading with her, it is such a joy! We read her "Jesus Storybook Bible" by Sally Lloyd-Jones (an excellent children's Bible!) together and she slowly makes her way through sounding out the larger words. At times she will finish reading a paragraph, point to a couple words from one sentence and say, "That doesn't make any sense." I then show her how the words fit together within the context of the sentence and then the larger context of the paragraph which can help clarify the confusion for her. On occasion she will still say that it doesn't make sense. At that point, I zoom all the way out and I remind her of the big picture that the story is telling, and then work my way back in close to explain what is being said in light of the story. This usually clears things up nicely, but sometimes confusion remains and so I have one final pedagogical (teaching) aid that I offer to

I am learning that in every situation in life we must always come back to the gospel, and that this is especially true in interpersonal relationships. Most of our lives are spent in relationship with other people, and since no two people on earth are going to be able to agree on absolutely every issue conflict is a natural part of every relationship. I want to look at some practical ways that the gospel should change how we as believers interact with other people, but first we need to consider a few foundational principles. We are all creatures of habit. Some fight against this more than others, but to some degree we all have our little routines that we can't live without. Perhaps some would try to argue that this is not the case for them because they intentionally avoid routine, but avoidance would still be classified as a routine. Since we are creatures of habit, for the most part, we are going to continue to resort to many of the same thought and action patterns that we have

For many years, having grown up in the church, I had always read and understood Jesus' words in John 14:15 in what seemed to be a pretty straightforward way. In that verse Jesus said, "If you love me, you will obey my commandments." These words were so important to the Apostle John that he repeated them in his epistles numerous times (1 John 3:23, 1 John 5:2-3 & 2 John 5). It seemed plain enough to me, that if we really love God then we will prove it by obeying what He commanded of us. Maybe many of you have had similar thoughts regarding these verses. Jesus Himself said that the greatest commandment was to love God and the second greatest commandment is like it, to love our neighbors as ourselves. Naturally we realize that the greatest commandments were summary statements and that the implications of them are quite far reaching. Elsewhere Jesus would say that the love believers are to have for one another should cause the world to recognize that we are His disciple

One of my favorite verses is Romans 1:16 - "For I am not ashamed of the gospel for it is the power of God for salvation to everyone who believes,..." The Apostle Paul wrote this just after the introduction to his letter to the Roman believers in which he gave them a brief summary of the gospel saying, "Paul, a servant of Christ Jesus, called to be an apostle, set apart for the gospel of God, which he promised beforehand through his prophets in the holy Scriptures, concerning his Son, who was descended from David according to the flesh and was declared to be the Son of God in power according to the Spirit of holiness by his resurrection from the dead, Jesus Christ our Lord, through whom we have received grace and apostleship to bring about the obedience of faith for the sake of his name among all the nations, including you who are called to belong to Jesus Christ," (Romans 1:1-6 ESV). For Paul the gospel was not merely something that was to be shared with a non bel