That the glory of the Lord might cover the dry land as the waters cover the sea
I’ve just started reading the second volume of Dr. Nettles’s trilogy on the Baptists, and here’s an important word:
“When the church has wielded the greatest amount of worldly power it has had the greatest tendency to corruption and impurity. When it has sought to pursue its mission apart from any worldly power, and has instead endured persecution, it has manifested fewer errors and exhibited a more powerful and persevering discipleship” (19).
Stephen J. Nichols has done it again! Following a number of helpful books along these lines, Nichols has once again provided a masterful summary that would benefit every Christian.
This book gives a bird’s eye view of the whole Reformation (don’t be misled by the subtitle, it is about much more than just brother Martin). Here we have a balanced presentation of everything from the standard Reformers to the Anabaptists, with a helpful chapter on the untold story of significant women of the Reformation.
The book has its own website, with a gallery of sketches of key figures and events, helpful charts, pointers on what to read next, and links to significant sights of the Reformation. You can download the introduction and chapter 1 here, and you can search the whole book on the Crossway site.
This book tells the story so well that I’m going to suggest that my wife read it (and I’m very selective about this, so that’s a high compliment), and this is one we’ll be keeping on hand in our church book stall. Enjoy!
We who steward the mysteries of God have been given a sacred trust, and some of us have been given the unspeakable privilege of learning to read the Bible in the languages in which it was written.
Denny Burk gives a moving testimony to a godly man, now gone to glory, who was a faithful steward of what was given to him. Read this, and may the Lord make us all so faithful to maintain and transmit not only a knowledge of Greek, but a love for the Lord and his Word.
Set to appear in the “Forum” section of the next edition of SBJT. Posted here with the editor’s permission.
“Mercy and truth have met together. Righteousness and peace have kissed each other” (Ps 85:10).
The problem with penal substitutionary atonement isn’t the idea that God could be wrathful. Anyone who believes the Bible—and reads it—will see that. Nor is it that penal substitution is dependant upon an outdated, unbiblical cultural framework that has been imposed on the text of Scripture. God gave the sacrificial system. He spoke of atonement being made and his wrath being appeased. He revealed all this. Penal substitionary atonement is in the Bible. Woven all through seamlessly. But if these things aren’t the problem with penal substation, what is?
The problem with penal substitution is that we have not sufficiently realized this doctrine. We have not yet considered the depths of our own sin. We have not yet considered the holiness and majesty of God. We have not seen the enormity of the fury of his righteous indignation. We have not yet considered what torments we deserve. We have not yet considered the worth of Christ. We have not sufficiently pondered the fact that for us and for our salvation the Pure One was defiled, the First Born forsaken, the One who knew no sin was made sin, the Righteous One was put forward as a sacrifice of propitiation, all so that we might be cleansed, that we might be adopted, that we might have his righteousness, that we might be forgiven. He was broken that we might be healed, slain that we might live. You may be reading this and thinking to yourself, “I have thought through all these things before,” and yet there remain depths that cannot be sounded.
We think we know all this. We act as though we have it in our back pockets. We assume it. But go to most “churches” and the infinite wealth of these riches of the Gospel of Jesus Christ will not be sung in the songs and preached in the sermons. It is not because there are no songs that sing these truths, nor is there a shortage of relevant passages from the Bible that could be preached. That is not where the problem lies.
The problem lies with us. We are the problem with penal substitution.
Going to some of these “churches” can only lead to the conclusion that we think that other things are better to sing about in “worship” and that other things are more relevant for the “sermon.” Listening to some of these “preachers” certainly leads to the conclusion that what the Bible teaches doesn’t matter very much. If it mattered, they would preach it. But it doesn’t matter, and the fact that it comes in a book is problematic, since they have no time to read and they can’t be bothered with things like genre, or context, or the progress of redemptive history, or the grand story the Bible tells, or, for that matter, the ineffable glory of God, the righteousness of his justice, his commitment to his name, and the awful unmixed wrath of the full fury of his holiness that is being stored up against those who do not honor him as God and give thanks to him.
All this is irrelevant. And since all this is irrelevant, it matters little that Jesus was and is fully God and fully man, that the Father granted him to have life in himself, that only one of infinite worth could satisfy the infinite, just wrath of the Father against our sin.
None of this counts for very much—at least, that’s the impression you’ll get by going to most “churches.” What they care about is having more people in the pews, and if those people aren’t interested in all that God stuff, and if they have no desire to study an old boring book like the Bible, they’ve come to the right place. What these “churches” seem to care about involves more campuses, more hype, more technology, more humor, more of all the stuff you might see on TV—minus the violence, nudity, and profanity.
That’s the problem with penal substitution.
In order to care about it you have to care about God. You have to believe in the authority of the Bible, so that if it tells you that God is wrathful against sin, you conclude that wrath is not beneath God. So that if it tells you that God put forward his Son to propitiate his own wrath, you marvel that this expression of the almighty wrath of God is simultaneously a display of mercy. Wonder of wonders. Salvation comes through judgment. God shows himself just, and he has devised a way to be justly merciful. A mercy so great it leaves us stammering about unsearchable ways, untraceable paths, depths of wisdom and knowledge, about all things being from him and through him. And in the end, we exclaim, “Glory to him, forever! Amen.”
If you come to care about all this, it will be because you know that your biggest problem is that one day you have to stand before God and account for yourself. In fact, you will know that this is everyone’s biggest problem. This, of course, will re-order your reckoning of relevance.
You might begin to think that the Bible has relevant things to say after all. You might begin to think that reading is important since God has been pleased to reveal himself in written texts. You might begin to think that since God has revealed himself in these texts, they’re actually worth preaching. You might begin to think that since God has revealed himself in the words and statements made in this old book, it’s actually not boring, its genres are worth learning about, and understanding context and redemptive history really does matter.
And if you begin to think all this, don’t be surprised if you start preaching and teaching quite a lot about penal substitutionary atonement. It’s all through the Bible, and if you methodically work your way through the whole thing (all of it is, after all, inspired)—avoiding the temptation to skip from hobby horse to hobby horse—you will come up against it.
The set of concerns the Bible will give to you—concern for God’s glory and holiness, concern for people’s souls as they show boldness against God when they sin, concern for God’s own faithfulness to what he has said he will do, concern for people to be duly astonished at the free mercy of God in the Gospel—all this will make the phrase “penal substitutionary atonement” a set of precious words. Not for the words themselves, but because you love the Gospel. And you will have ceased to be the problem with penal substitution.
If you’re in the DFW area, perhaps you’ll be interested in this conference taking place this weekend.
I’ll be leading a breakout session on Biblical Manhood and Womanhood on Friday night, and I’m the unlisted preacher for the Saturday morning general worship session.
May the Lord use this conference mightily for his glory!
Alex Chediak gives young men a good word here.
1 Thessalonians 5:23 (ESV)
Now may the God of peace himself sanctify you completely, and may your whole spirit and soul and body be kept blameless at the coming of our Lord Jesus Christ. He who calls you is faithful; he will surely do it. Brothers, pray for us.
One of the great blessings of the blog-world is that it helps us find like-minded people.
I am delighted to announce the new blog of Pastor Eric Redmond, Senior Pastor of Hillcrest Baptist Church in Temple Hills, MD. 
Thabiti has interviewed Eric here, and you can check out Eric’s blog here.
May the Lord use A Man From Issachar and the people who will connect with him and Hillcrest Baptist through it to spread revival and reformation in our day!
I’ve only read the preface so far, but this new book from B&H looks exciting.
The preface opens with a parable, of sorts, about someone taking a class on Mark Twain’s Tom Sawyer. Instead of studying the whole story, individual episodes and themes from the book are focused on and analyzed. The student benefits greatly from the class’s attention to these selected episodes and themes, but never bothers to read the whole story.
The point, of course, is that this is the way that the Bible has been taught for a long time–without reference to the meta-narrative. So Preben Vang and Terry Carter have given us Telling God’s Story: The Biblical Narrative from Beginning to End.
The story related in the preface includes an account of the first two questions on the final exam: “Retell the story of Tom Sawyer in your own words from beginning to end,” and “What is the purpose of the story?”
If you can’t retell the story of the Bible in your own words from beginning to end, or if you’re not sure of its purpose, this book is for you.
Each month ChristianAudio is excited to give away one free audio book download. The books we give away are free for only one month. After that they are sold at the regular price. So make sure that you check back regularly and download these great Christian Classics for FREE!
Use this coupon code – MAY2007 – to redeem the free book of the month.
 | The Reformed Pastor (Unabridged) Author: Richard Baxter In his introduction, “Take heed therefore unto yourselves, and to all the flock, over which the Holy Ghost hath made you overseers, to feed the church of God, which he hath purchased with his own blood.” This charge from Acts 20:28 only is the beginning of a solemn and overarching task to be personally involved and disciple all of your congregants. Richard Baxter�s plea for shepherding his flock continues with a charge to pastors to verify their own spiritual walk and then walks them through various disciplines, strategies and goals to guide and instruct their congregation. |
Stop whatever you are doing and go read this post on these three men:
Ugur Yuksel |
Tilman Geske with his wife and three children |
Necati Aydin |
I have often heard John Piper say that the Muslim world will not be won without martyrs. May the Lord be pleased to use the testimony of these men to bring many Muslims to faith.
If you’ve heard of “Federal Vision, which is synonymous with “Auburn Avenue Theology,” this committee from the PCA:
Committee Members:
TE Paul Fowler, Chairman
TE Grover Gunn, Secretary
TE Ligon Duncan
TE Sean Lucas
RE Robert Mattes
RE William Mueller
RE John White.has done you a favor. They have carefully described Federal Vision, along with summarizing the New Perspective on Paul. In addition, they have compared Federal Vision and the New Perspective to the Westminster Confession of Faith. You can read the whole thing here.
Perhaps best of all–this is so rare in our day, they actually tell you what they think about the whole thing: “The fourth section sets forth nine features of NPP and FV teaching that the committee finds to be contrary to the Westminster Standards.”
In a previous post I wondered whether Wright includes the notion of God’s wrath being satisfied by Christ on the cross in his thinking about Penal Substitution. Several quotes have come to my attention that indicate that he has affirmed this idea in writing, so to my thinking he has answered that question. Here are the quotes:
Wright, Matthew for Everyone:
“The Old Testament prophets speak darkly about the ‘cup of YHWH’s wrath.’ These passages talk of what happens when the one God, grieving over the awful wickedness of the world, steps in at last to give the violent and bloodthirsty, the arrogant and oppressors, the reward for their ways and deeds. It’s as though God’s holy anger against such people is turned into wine: dark, sour wine which will make them drunk and helpless. They will be forced to ‘drink the cup,’ to drain to the dregs the wrath of the God who loves and vindicates the weak and helpless. The shock of this passage is that Jesus speaks of drinking this cup himself” [pp. 60, 61]
From Wright’s Romans commentary:
“No clearer statement is found in Paul, or indeed anywhere else in all early Christian literature, of the early Christian belief that what happened on the cross was the judicial punishment of sin. Taken in conjunction with 8:1 and the whole argument of the passage, not to mention the partial parallels in 2 Cor 5:21 and Gal 3:13, it is clear that Paul intends to say that in Jesus’ death the damnation that sin deserved was meted out fully and finally, so that sinners over whose heads that condemnation had hung might be liberated from this threat once and for all.”
From ch. 12 of Wright’s Jesus and the Victory of God:
“God, because in His mercy He willed to forgive sinful men and, being truly merciful, willed to forgive them righteously, that is, without in any way condoning their sin, purposed to direct against His own very Self in the person of His Son the full weight of that righteous wrath which they deserved.”
I note also that in their response to Wright, the editors of Pierced for Our Transgressions say that the disagreement is methodological, and they don’t question his commitment to Penal Substitution.
UPDATE: Mike Bird has a helpful post here.
May the Lord give his people unity on this central aspect of the Gospel!
Doug McHone will be live blogging The Northbrook Conference on Biblical Manhood and Womanhood with Randy Stinson beginning tonight.
Watch Eric Schumacher’s blog, or check back here, for the audio.
N. T. Wright has written an essay in which he “strongly” affirms penal substitutionary atonement. Adrian Warnock has thoughts on how this relates to the theological controversy in the UK. Justin Taylor quotes important excerpts from an insightful review by D. A. Carson on one of Wright’s recent books.
Wright claims to “strongly” affirm penal substation, but he never says that Christ satisfies the just wrath of God against sin. He rejects the caricature of a vengeful Father, but vengeance is not the same thing as just wrath. Wright speaks of Jesus absorbing evil and dying in place of his people, but he seems to carefully avoid stating that Jesus satisfied the just wrath of God against sin, which is at the heart of the traditional understanding of penal substitionary atonement. We are left wondering whether or not he thinks that God feels personal wrath against sin, and whether he includes this in his understanding of penal substitution. If he does not, even though he claims to strongly affirm the doctrine, one must wonder whether he is affirming what most others who affirm it mean by it.
On October 4, 2005, I preached on Revelation 19:11-21. I just found the sermon online here.
May the Lord prosper his word!
Every issue of the reactivated Criswell Theological Review has been both timely and engaging. They’ve done it again with the latest issue on war and peace.
Daryl Charles’s essay on Just War Theory is a helpful primer on both the biblical texts and the early fathers.
Richard Land’s applications of these principles to the situations in North Korea, Rwanda, and Darfur, was so fascinating that I read every word slowly. You can check it out here.
The consistent relevance of this journal and the impressive quality of its discussions force the conclusion that those who are not subscribed are only troubling themselves with the problem of having to access this journal through a library or some other means. You have to read it, and it’ll be so much easier to sign up and let them bring it to your doorstep.
Here’s an excerpt from Dr. Mohler’s post, “Does Motherhood Mean Anything?”
Iran scored a huge publicity coup in the capture and release of 15 British sailors and Royal Marines in recent days. Iran has played this game before, and is likely to play it again. The tactic puts the nation directly into the headlines around the world — and that is the whole point.
Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad played the media like a musical instrument, greeting the captives just prior to their release. The Muslim world loved it. Tragically, the most damaging element of Ahmadinejad’s media triumph was handed to him by the Royal Navy in the person of Leading Seaman Faye Turney, the only woman among the captives and the mother of a 3-year-old daughter.
Her presence among the captives taken from the British patrol vessel gave Ahmadinejad the opportunity to make this observation:
“You will know that among the detainees there is one lady who is a mother of a child. Why is it that the most difficult work like patrolling at sea should be given to a woman?
“Why is there no respect for motherhood? Why does the West not value its women?”
Ahmadinejad’s questions still reverberate around the Muslim world. Nothing could more effectively demonstrate the immorality of Western values before Muslim eyes than this — a mother of a little girl sent as a warrior.
As Kathleen Parker remarked in The Washington Post:
On any given day, one isn’t likely to find common cause with Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad. He’s a dangerous, lying, Holocaust- denying, Jew-hating cutthroat thug — not to put too fine a point on it.
But he was dead-on when he wondered why a once-great power such as Britain sends mothers of toddlers to fight its battles.
Driven by a fanatical ideology of feminism, the West has turned its back on a reality as basic as motherhood. We have adopted a new morality that insists — nature’s obstinacy notwithstanding — that there is no difference between men and women. This produces mothers of babies and toddlers in uniform and in the killing zones.
