Back February 1

Due to a January filled with wonderful things for which I am grateful, no blogging this month. I sign off with this remarkably clarifying and perspective-returning reminder from the gangly sinner who knew God so well three hundred years ago in a small Massachussetts town.

The future world was designed to be our settled and everlasting abode. Here it was intended that we should be fixed, and here alone is a lasting habitation, and a lasting inheritance, and enjoyments to be had. We are designed for this future world. . . .

There we shall serve God perfectly. We shall glorify him in an exalted manner, and to the utmost of the powers and capacity of our nature. Then we shall perfectly give up ourselves to God; then will our hearts be wholly a pure and holy offering to God, offered all in the flame of divine love.

In heaven alone is attainment of our highest good. God is the highest good of the reasonable creature. The enjoyment of him is our proper happiness, and is the only happiness with which our souls can be satisfied. To go to heaven, fully to enjoy God, is infinitely better than the most pleasant accommodations here: better than fathers and mothers, husbands, wives, or children, or the company of any or all earthly friends. These are but shadows; but God is the substance. These are but scattered beams; but God is the sun. These are but streams; but God is the fountain. These are but drops; but God is the ocean.

Praise the Lord.

--Jonathan Edwards, 'The Christian Pilgrim,' in Sermons and Discourses 1730-1733, Vol 17 in The Works of Jonathan Edwards (ed. Mark Valeri; New Haven: Yale University Press, 1999), 437-38

Frame: Maxims for Theologians

In an appendix to his Doctrine of the Knowledge of God, John Frame compiles a good list of 62 "maxims for theologians," dos and don'ts that essentially summarize the entire book. A few that helped me today are:

6. Do not seek to do theology without a personal knowledge of God as your friend through Christ.

39. Do engage in biblical theology, but not in a cultic spirit.

40. Do not regard your theological system as superior in any way (materially or formally) to Scripture itself. Make sure your emotional attachments and attitudes are consistent with this resolution.

59. Do admit it when you don't know the answer.

--John Frame, The Doctrine of the Knowledge of God (P&R, 1987), 375-79

Yarbrough: Schlatter

For anyone wanting an introduction to Adolf Schlatter, who has meant a lot to me in recent years, I encourage you to listen to the series of lectures on Schlatter by Bob Yarbrough at Covenant Seminary in 1995. Dr. Yarbrough knows Schlatter as well as anyone in the English-speaking world, and it is an illuminating series of talks.

Calvin: Loving Others

[H]e lives the best and holiest life who lives and strives for himself as little as he can.

--John Calvin, Institutes, 2.8.54

Goldsworthy: According to Plan

Graeme Goldsworthy's According to Plan: The Unfolding Revelation of God in the Bible (IVP 1991) is a very helpful introduction to biblical theology, to reading the whole Bible as a unified story culminating in Christ. For someone not yet convinced, or only fuzzily, that the Bible is a single story with a single Hero, this is the place to start, and to encourage others to start. It is more substantive as well as more satisfyingly christocentric than Alexander's From Eden to the New Jerusalem, less focused only on individuals (and a bit less preachy) than Clowney's The Unfolding Mystery, more accessible than the massive tomes trying to do similar whole-Bible theologies such as Geerhardus Vos' Biblical Theology or Charles Scobie's more recent The Ways of Our God, and is all focused on the beginner--for example, there are zero footnotes, terms like eschatology and biblical theology and covenant are defined, and dozens of charts clarify his ideas. (These other works are, however, all very helpful too, along with, in particular, Bavinck, Beale, Poythress, Greidanus, and Gaffin.)

Most importantly, Goldsworthy is clearer than anyone else I've yet come across in showing two things: (1) that Jesus is the meaning and fulfillment and integrative center of the biblical narrative; and (2) that the gospel is central to the message of the Bible and that this gospel ought not to be confused with its corollaries (such as faith and repentance, etc).

Here's a good representative statement with regard to (1).

Significant figures, such as priests and kings, who mediated salvation for the many in Israel, point to the One who comes as the true Israelite representing the many. On the basis of this interpretation of the prophetic promises, the Jews were waiting for a return of a great crowd of people to the Promised Land. Even the remnant would be a considerable group. They were not prepared for the true people of God to be one man. They could not see that everything that God had intended for Adam and then for Israel was being fulfilled in the perfectly sinless human existence of Jesus. (204)

Stepping out with, not from, the Gospel

Few would argue with the statement that we are converted by believing the gospel. But how does the gospel figure into Christian growth or sanctification? Examination of the New Testament documents shows that growth is not stepping out from the gospel, but rather stepping out with the gospel. Many of the problems dealt with in the epistles arise from a failure to apply the gospel to some aspect of life. The solution to this problem is to restore the gospel to its rightful place at the center of our thinking and doing.

Yes!

--Graeme Goldsworthy, According to Plan: The Unfolding Revelation of God in the Bible (IVP 1991), 219

Clowney: The Unfolding Mystery

For a fascinating and clarifying look at how several of the Old Testament saints pointed toward Christ, it's hard to beat Ed Clowney's The Unfolding Mystery: Discovering Christ in the Old Testament (P & R, 1988). I remember Bryan Chapell in a homiletics course at Covenant Seminary speaking of how Dr. Clowney, who went to be with the Lord a few years ago, was for many years a lone voice crying for Christ-centered preaching in evangelical and reformed pulpits. It is striking to see how his influence, under God, has spread in recent decades, and continues to. I've found the iTunes course he taught in 2001 at RTS ('Preaching Christ in a Postmodern World,' with Tim Keller) very helpful.

Here's a good statement that gives a sense of the flavor of the book, in the course of comparing the testing in Eden with Christ's testing in the wilderness.

Adam and Eve tempted God by daring Him, as it were, to carry out His threatened punishment, for disobedience. Satan wanted Christ to challenge God's faithfulness in a much less direct way, but he wanted Him to act on doubt of the same kind. There would be no other reason to leap from the Temple roof except to determine, once and for all, whether God would keep His promise. To Eve, Satan essentially said, 'Eat, you will not surely die--for God has lied to you.' To Christ he said, 'Jump, You will not surely die--unless God has lied to you.' (pp. 30-31; emphasis original)

Of my Strength and Wisdom Spoiled

The first three verses of 'Jesus, Cast a Look on Me':

Jesus, cast a look on me
Give me sweet simplicity
Make me poor and keep me low
Seeking only Thee to know

All that feeds my busy pride
Cast it evermore aside
Bid my will to thine submit
Lay me humbly at your feet

Make me like a little child
Of my strength and wisdom spoiled
Seeing only in Thy light
Walking only in Thy might

--John Berridge

Substitution

The concept of substitution may be said . . . to lie at the heart of both sin and salvation. For the essence of sin is man substituting himself for God, while the essence of salvation is God substituting himself for man.

--John Stott, The Cross of Christ (IVP 1988), 160

Plow Deep

Plow deep in me, great Lord, Heavenly Husbandman,
That my being may be a tilled field,
The roots of grace spreading far and wide
Until You alone are seen in me,
Thy beauty golden like summer harvest,
Thy fruitfulness as autumn plenty.

I have no Master but You,
No law but Your will,
No delight but Yourself,
No good apart from You,
No peace, but that You bestow it.
I can be nothing unless your grace adorns me.

Quarry me deep, dear Lord,
And then fill me to overflowing with living water.

--'The Deeps,' from The Valley of Vision