Strawberry-Rhubarb?

A few people have asked about the title of this blog recently, so: we must have the right recipe to make a pie (strawberry-rhubarb is my favorite), yet the pie exists to be eaten and enjoyed; similarly, we must have right doctrine, yet it exists to be enjoyed--specifically, to enable enjoying God.

Some of us tend to love the recipe, yet we then take a piece of the pie and place it on a Petry dish and put on the lab coat and analyze it under a microscope and consider ourselves successful chefs. Others of us are of the ilk that loves to eat pie but we tend to neglect getting the measurements just right that the recipe calls for.

We must get the recipe right; the way to maximally enjoy the pie is not by circumventing the cookbook but by observing it, learning it, knowing it. But it is one thing to know how to bake a pie, and another to know how it tastes. To know the recipe and not enjoy the pie betrays the very reason for the recipe.

Delighting in Unbelievers

Why did Jerram Barrs come to teach at Covenant Seminary 20 years ago?

I came to teach at Covenant because I felt constrained by the Lord to be of some service in helping men and women who are going into ministry to love non-Christians rather than to be afraid of them, to delight in building friendships with unbelievers rather than retreating from them . . .

This is not propaganda--he teaches it and does it. It's one reason I bless God for bringing me to Covenant Seminary in 2002. And I would like to become more like this.

Read more here.

The Treasures of the Trial

'Jesus Draw Me Ever Nearer'
Keith Getty

Jesus draw me ever nearer
As I labour through the storm.
You have called me to this passage,
and I'll follow, though I'm worn.

Jesus guide me through the tempest;
Keep my spirit staid and sure.
When the midnight meets the morning,
Let me love You even more.

Let the treasures of the trial
Form within me as I go -
And at the end of this long passage,
Let me leave them at Your throne.

Hear sample here at the Getty's website.

The 'Christification' of the OT

I continue to learn more about the relation between the testaments in Greg Beale's seminar on the OT in the NT. It is a fascinating topic and this seminar has been very helpful. I'm thankful for the foundation that was laid in biblical theology and the united storyline of the Bible during my five years at Covenant Seminary. Still, this class is taking those conversations to the next level. I am grateful.

One book I read this week was Christopher Stanley's Arguing with Scripture, on Paul's rhetorical use in his quotations of the OT. I found it too frustrating to try to say anything here about it without falling into sin of some kind. I'll just acknowledge it was very disappointing.

On the other hand, Hans LaRondelle's The Israel of God in Prophecy proved much more fruitful this week and I'm happy to quote a few statements from LaRondelle, whose book is meant to be a rebuttal of dispensationalism but which has lots of good stuff even if one has already settled for oneself the legitimacy or illegitimacy of dispensational biblical theology.

As the appointed representative of Israel, Jesus recapitulated--that is, he repeated and consummated--God's plan with Israel, and through Israel, with man. He deliberately went over the same ground in order to conquer where Israel had failed. (64)

And, on the transformation of the land promise to the patriarchs--

An underlying principle seems to govern Christ's applications of Israel's promises: the removal of the old ethnic restriction among the new-covenant people entails the removal of the old geographic Middle East center for Christ's Church. Wherever Christ is, there is the holy space. This is the essence of the New Testament application of Israel's holy territory. For the holiness of old Jerusalem, the New Testament substitutes the holiness of Jesus Christ. It 'christifies' the old territorial holiness and thus transcends its limitations. This should not be regarded as the New Testament rejection of Israel's territorial promise, but rather as its fulfillment and confirmation in Christ. (142)

But God

The gospel in two words: "But God."

But God remembered Noah . . . (Gen 8:1)

But God will ransom my soul . . . (Ps 48:15)

But God raised him on the third day . . . (Acts 10:40)

But God, who comforts the downcast . . . (2 Cor 7:6)

But God, being rich in mercy . . . (Eph 2:4)

But God. I have given the Lord every reason to say and. I hated him. Gave him the finger. He should have said and. He said but. And would have sent me to hell. But sent Christ to earth and heaven to me. All praise to him.

This thought formed while listening to a sermon, typically refreshing and helpful, from Zack Eswine, entitled "Ministry as a Human Being," on 2 Cor 5, preached Feb 15 2009.

Gentleness

I am in the Pastorals again (1-2 Tim, Titus), which for me are the most personally precious section of Scripture in this season of life as a young male preparing for what Timothy and Titus were doing when Paul wrote to them. What if the Apostle wrote me a letter in February 2009? I don't have to wonder. These three letters are as close as anything in the Bible to what he would have said.

What is striking me is the repeated emphasis on the tongue. Paul won't leave it alone. One of the dimensions of the critical importance of using our mouths in a life-giving rather than a life-sucking way is to be gentle.

23 Have nothing to do with foolish, ignorant controversies; you know that they breed quarrels. 24 And the Lord's servant must not be quarrelsome but kind to everyone, able to teach, patiently enduring evil, 25 correcting his opponents with gentleness. --2 Tim 2:23-25

Is it me or do we not think about this much, hear about it much? I would like to think about it more and cultivate more gentleness in the way I use words. When discussing the Bible or theology in a doctoral seminar, or with a stranger at Starbucks, or with a new believing friend who thinks differently, it is easy to confuse passion for the truth with passion for myself, the latter of which is far more common yet which always feels like the former. One way forward, straight from the Apostle, the same man who wrote Gal 1 and 2 Cor 10-13: cultivate gentleness.

Turning Faith into Its Opposite

We must always come back to what faith truly is, resisting the tendency to turn it into its opposite. Faith is looking trustingly to Christ rather than ourselves. Yet as soon as I begin to self-contemplate and consider the relative strength of my faith, I have aborted faith itself! Assessing what we bring to the table is the opposite of faith--and this includes assessing the strength of our faith. We assess the strength of Christ, period. As as we do so, that is faith.

I was reminded of this a few days ago by Schlatter. At age 85 in 1937, in the last of over 440 written publications, as Germany was sliding into moral chaos, Schlatter wrote:

We . . . must not attain righteousness by viewing our faith as a particularly meritorious type of conduct, as though through our faith we could persuade God to acquit us and to take us into his kingdom. The effective power of faith does not attach to the inner procedure that takes place in us when Jesus' Word makes us believe. Faith rather is rendered effective through the One in whom we believe, because he gives us everything he promises us.

--Adolf Schlatter, Do We Know Jesus? (trans. Koestenberger and Yarbrough; Kregel 2005), 109

Grove Chapel, London

I am enjoying and benefiting from Mark Johnston's sermons at Grove Chapel in south London these days. Follows the text, centers on Christ, illustrates effectively, loves his people. Podcast is available.

I Charge You

Could Paul have given a more solemn final charge to his young, timid, and sickly seminary student Timothy at the end of his first letter to him than this?

13 I charge you in the presence of God, who gives life to all things, and of Christ Jesus, who in his testimony before Pontius Pilate made the good confession, 14 to keep the commandment unstained and free from reproach until the appearing of our Lord Jesus Christ, 15 which he will display at the proper time--he who is the blessed and only Sovereign, the King of kings and Lord of lords, 16 who alone has immortality, who dwells in unapproachable light, whom no one has ever seen or can see. To him be honor and eternal dominion. Amen. (1 Tim 6:13-16)

The nagging question is: what is "the commandment" at the center of Paul's charge (v. 14)? Bill Mounce's commentary on the Pastorals in my favorite, despite coming as it does in one of my least favorite commentary series, WBC. I am convinced by what he writes, and stirred. He says "the commandment" encompasses

Timothy's commitment to Christ and his ministry, a commitment to preach the gospel that included righteousness, godliness, faith, love, endurance, and meekness . . . and a commitment that demanded perseverance until the Lord returned.

--Mounce, The Pastoral Epistles, 357

A Transfer of Revelation

Just got Bauckham's Jesus and the God of Israel, a reprint of the 60-page God Crucified along with a number of other essays on NT christology, arguing in various ways that the NT writers understood Jesus to be part of the divine identity of the Hebrew God, Yahweh. Only read one essay so far; found it typically fascinating. Here's a quote (p. 267) from it ("God's Self-Identification with the Godforsaken in the Gospel of Mark").

The rending of the veil of the temple, if we read it in parallel with the rending of the heavens in Mark's account of Jesus' baptism (1:10), signifies revelation. It signifies that this godforsaken death is the climactic event of revelation in the Gospel narrative. More than that, it transfers the place of God's presence from its hiddenness in the holy of holies to the openly godforsaken cross of the dead Jesus.