C.J.: Reading

C.J. Mahaney's recommended reading list for pastors. I especially affirm #12.

Also: C.J. on "Interrogating the Legalist Within."

T4G 2006 Panels

Ligonier is streaming the videos of Together for the Gospel from two years ago.

Mark 2-3 and Questions

All through Mark 2 and into chapter 3 Jesus is barraged with questions from doubters, and it's interesting to note that all but one time he himself responds with a question.

2:1-12 - Jesus heals the paralytic lowered through the roof and declares his sins forgiven.
Scribes: "Who can forgive sins but God alone?"
Jesus: "Why do you question these things in your heart? Which is easier...?"

2:13-17 - Jesus eats with sinners and tax collectors.
Scribes: "Why does he eat with sinners?"
(Jesus: here a statement: "It's the sick who need a doctor, not the healthy.")

2:18-22 - Jesus' disciples are conspicuously not fasting.
People: "Who do John's disciples and the Pharisees fast, but your disciples don't?"
Jesus: "Can the wedding guests fast while the bridegroom is with them?"

2:23-27 - Jesus' disciples pluck grain in a field on the sabbath.
Pharisees: "Why are they doing what isn't lawful on the sabbath?"
Jesus: "Have you never read what David did...?"

3:1-6 - Jesus enters the synagogue and heals a man with a withered hand on the sabbath.
This time Jesus initiates the question, noticing that "they watched Jesus, to see whether he would heal him on the sabbath, so that they might accuse him" (3:2).
Jesus: "Is it lawful on the sabbath to do good or to do harm, to save life or to kill?"
Doubters: "But they were silent" (3:4).

What do you make of this? This seems to be climactic in some way because it is finally at this point that "the Pharisees went out and immediately held counsel with the Herodians against him, how to destroy him" (3:6).

Jesus always had a response, and almost always seems to have put the ball back in the court of his interlocuters, implying that it was they who needed to answer and give an account, not Jesus. Jesus always had a response; the doubters did not.

Brooklyn Tab

The Brooklyn Tabernacle in New York City has from day one in 1971 been structured centrally around a Tuesday night prayer evening, in which I had the privilege of participating a few years ago. Pastor Cymbala discusses.

Blocher: NPP

After noting several currently disputed Pauline passages in Rom, Gal, and Philp, Henri Blocher writes:

A remarkable contrast emerges: whereas the new perspective strategy consists in narrowing down the issue, to zero in on what was really of burning interest to Paul, Jew-Gentile relations, Paul's strategy constantly seeks to broaden horizons and to bring into the discussion the more global truths of the gospel.

--p. 488 of "Justification of the Ungodly: Theological Reflections," in Justification and Variegated Nomism, Vol. 2.

That's one of a dozen or so equally helpful quotes from a chapter for which I'm very thankful.

'Eternity Is Coming: What Do You Most Want?'

Listened today, once again, to this message from Zack Eswine, my old homiletics prof at Covenant Seminary. So helpful. Cardiologically deconstructive.

Justification: Jesus --> Paul

The last sentence of Richard Gaffin's fascinating article "Justification in Luke-Acts," in Right with God, edited by D. A. Carson, is:

The gospel of justification by faith advocated by Paul is the fruition, the doctrinally more explicit and developed delineation, of the good news of repentance for the forgiveness of sins which was announced by Jesus, and which, more importantly, was actualised in his death, resurrection, ascension, and baptism with the Holy Spirit. (p. 125)

Matthew 22: Testing

In Matthew 22 Jesus finds himself on the receiving end of a number of tests.

First the Pharisees ask a tough question about paying taxes to Caesar or not - political testing.

Then the Sadduccees approach Jesus to ask about the seven brothers who were all married to the same woman and the state of this strange marital situation in the afterlife - theological testing.

Next, the Pharisees once again take Jesus on, this time asking which commandment is the greatest - moral testing.

Finally, Jesus turns the tables on his interrogators. He asks them a question: whose son in the Christ? The son of David, they say. Then how, asks Jesus, can David call him Lord in Psalm 110? "And no one was able to answer him a word, nor did anyone dare from that day on to question him any longer" (22:46).

The Freeness of Justification

Read this today at the very end of Edwards' multiple-part sermon series of 1734, "Justification by Faith Alone." This series was instrumental in the local revival God sent to Northampton in 1734-35. This quote comes from the fifth and final section of JBFA, concerning "the importance of the doctrine," in which Edwards is explaining how a works + faith = justification view of the gospel "derogates much from the honor of God."

[S]eeing we are such infinitely sinful and abominable creatures in God's sight, and by our infinite guilt have brought ourselves into such wretched and deplorable circumstances, and all our righteousnesses are nothing, and ten thousand times worse than nothing (if God looks upon them as they are in themselves) is it not immensely more worthy of the infinite majesty and glory of God, to deliver and make happy such poor filthy worms, such wretched vagabonds and captives, without any money or price of theirs, or any manner of expectation of any excellency or virtue in them, in any wise to recommend them? Will it not betray a foolish exalting opinion of ourselves, and a mean one of God, to have a thought of offering anything of ours, to recommend us to the favor of being brought from wallowing like filthy swine in the mire of our sins, and from the enmity and misery of devils in the lowest hell, to the state of God's dear children, in the everlasting arms of his love, in heavenly glory?

--Works of JE, Yale ed., 19:241

I love it...

Today I received my first 2008-published book, Michael Gorman's little Reading Paul, part of a series called Cascade Companions by Wipf and Stock. On the inside cover I discovered a forthcoming book with the best title I've seen in a long time:

ipod, YouTube, Wii Play: Theological Engagements with Entertainment, by Brent Laytham

Is that good or what!