If it has been a while since you have read any articles by Tim Keller or Jerry Bridges, it may be time for you to give them another careful read. God has graciously grown these two men in their understand of the gospel and its implications. So we would do well to read what they have written fairly often. My personal goal is to read each of their articles at least three times a year. Why? I am so quick to functionally forget the objective truth of the gospel and its penetrating implications.

Over the next 2 weeks I will be posting the links to particular articles they have written. Please receive these posts as encouragements to give your mind to the gospel afresh. Today’s post:

Tim Keller: The Centrality of the Gospel (pdf)

A birthday is a wonderful thing especially when the added year is accompanied by growth in the gospel (or should I say “growth that is caused by the gospel”). Well, June 30th is one such birthday. Not only does my youngest brother turn 32 tomorrow (a definite cause for celebration!), but he also gives me cause to rejoice because I have observed growth in his life this past year that is the fruit of the gospel’s work in his life (a much greater cause for celebration!!). So happy birthday, David!

Your present is on the way!

I’ve been tagged for this book meme by Mick Porter of Unveiled Face! So here it goes:

Total number of books I’ve ever owned: I would guess a few thousand. I’m really not sure though. I’ve been heard saying that I would rather buy a book and read it then purchase food or clothing. I don’t read as much as I would like too though (time and brain constraints).

Last book I bought: The Drama of Scripture: Finding Our Place in the Biblical Story by Craig Bartholomew and Michael Goheen. It has been a good read thus far.

Last book I read: River Town: Two Years on the Yangtze by Peter Hessler. It is a book about the author’s experience in the city where we are going to serve in an orphanage, namely, Fuling, China.

Five books that mean a lot to me:

1. The Bible: There are many books that I would like to master. There is something ennobling about thinking the thoughts of great men. But the Bible is the one book that I want to master me.

2. Preaching the Whole Bible as Christian Scripture by Graeme Goldsworthy: This book was recommended to me when I was seeking to understand how to interpret/preach the Bible from a gospel-centered perspective. This is a must multiple-read for all Christians (not just for all pastors).

3. The Pleasures of God by John Piper. I consider this book to be Piper’s best. It has been a few years since I’ve read it. So I think it’s about time to pick it up again to drink deep.

4. The Christian Doctrine of God: One Being, Three Persons by Thomas F. Torrance. As far as I’m concerned, this book is without peer in its presentation of the beauty of our God who is Father, Son, and Holy Spirit.

5. The Mediation of Christ by Thomas F. Torrance. If I had to pick the one book that I think is helping me understand and apply the gospel more than any other book I’ve ever read, it would be this one.

Occasionally I will alert you to what I think are some very helpful (i.e. edifying) gospel-centered posts by other bloggers. Today I would like to recommend three excellent posts by David Bish (thebluefish blogger of the UK). They provided rich gospel food for me this past week (seeing that I struggle with the very same things). So let me encourage you to take a trip across the pond to read David’s gospel-centered posts.

Aircon for My Soul

Part 1
Part 2
Part 3

“Leadership in the Home: Morals-Driven or Gospel-Driven?” has finally been published. It is my first published magazine article. I was a little disappointed that no pictures of bobble heads were added, but then I remembered that we do not live in a perfect world. Take a look: Read the rest of this entry »

Eucatastrophe has received a significant amount of first time visitors the past few days. If you are curious as to why, it’s not because of any articles I’ve written lately. It’s not because people want to read my article about the Hypostatic Union and gospel-centered preaching. Nope. So what has generated such an increased interest in my blog? Answer: a bobble head. It’s not just any bobble head though…it is the Phil Johnson Bobble Head and it has become quite the rage. I know you will want to purchase one right away but hold off on that for a few more days. Why hold off? Because I’m hoping to get all eucatastrophe blog readers a discount since the bobble head idea originated here (note comment #10). So do your very best to hold off on purchasing one for a few more days.

Consider Paul David Tripp’s commentary on Hebrews 3:12-13 (”Take care, brothers, lest there be in any of you an evil, unbelieving heart, leading you to fall away from the living God. 13 But exhort one another every day, as long as it is called “today,” that none of you may be hardened by the deceitfulness of sin.”).

“Since each of us still has sin remaining in us, we will have pockets of spiritual blindness. . . Our most important vision system is nor our physical eyes. We can be physically blind and live quite well. But when we are spiritually blind, we cannot live as God intended . . . Physically blind people are always aware of their deficit and spend much of their lives learning to live with its limitations. But the Bible says that we can be spiritually blind and yet think we see quite well. . . The reality of spiritual blindness has important implications for the Christian community. The Hebrews passage clearly teaches that personal insight is the product of community. I need you in order to really see and know myself. Otherwise, I will listen to my own arguments, believe my own lies, and buy into my own delusions. My self-perception is as accurate as a carnival mirror. If I am going to see myself clearly, I need you to hold the mirror of God’s Word in front of me” (Paul David Tripp, Instruments in the Redeemer’s Hands, pp. 53-54).

FYI: John Piper preached at the PCA General Assembly this past Thursday night, June 16th. You can find a summary of his sermon notes at Jollyblogger.

I’ve added a new link category to my sidebar. It lists eucatastrophe articles that specifically unpack some of the various facets of gospel-centeredness. For those of you who are relatively new to eucatastrophe, here is the primary object of this blog: to explore the beauty and implications of the gospel of Christ for all of life. So with that objective in mind, I added “B 2: eucatastrophe articles” to our link categories.

If you’ve visited my blog several times, you have probably observed a strong emphasis upon the gospel. The primary objective for my blog is to focus weekly on the centrality of the gospel in all of life. Behind almost every post of mine is this conviction, as Tim Keller puts it, the gospel is not just the A-B-C’s of the Christian life but the A to Z of the Christian life. If I were asked to choose what I believed was the text behind this conviction, I would choose Galatians 2:11-16. So what I wish to do is unpack this text’s teaching concerning the centrality of the gospel for all of life (I am profoundly indebted to Tim Keller’s exposition of this text in his article entitled, “The Centrality of the Gospel.” You can find it in the article section of the far right column of my blog.) Read the rest of this entry »

Today is my middle brother’s birthday. He knows his present is in the mail and is probably fairly certain that it is a book or a dvd of some epic movie (actually he’s getting two excellent books from me this time). I hope you enjoy your birthday and the books. Your birthday will be over today but the books can be your friends for life (especially these two books :-))! I love you, bro! Thank you for our fellowship in the gospel. It is great to have brothers with whom one can have rich fellowship in the gospel of Christ.

Love,

Dan

P.S. In case you are wondering, “HB to SC!” is shorthand for “Happy Birthday to Stephen Cruver!”

If you’ve never read anything by T.F. Torrance, you need to pick up one of his books. I would recommend starting with The Mediation of Christ. He is not easy to read but who cares about easy when you can find hundreds of paragraphs like the following:

“This does not mean that all our knowledge of God can be reduced to Christology, but that, as there is only one Mediator between God and man, who is himself both God and Man, and only one revelation of God in which he himself is its actual content, all authentic knowledge of God is derived and understood in accordance with the incarnate reality of God’s self-revelation in Jesus Christ, and is formulated in doctrinal coherence with Christology. That is to say, doctrinal statements about God are possible and true only when Christologically grounded” (T.F. Torrance, The Christian Doctrine of God, p. 17).

If you are not familiar with the Warnie Award, it is an award given by Adrian Warnock to a blog that he considers destined for blogdom “prominence” :-). The recipient of the latest Warnia Award? PyroManiac, the blog of Phil Johnson. Do I believe Phil is destined for blogdom “supremacy”? Absolutely. My first introduction to Phil Johnson in blogdom (I’ve been aware of Phil’s Bookmarks for some 6-8 years) was on Sharper Iron where he received no small amount of attention. So take a look at his blog. He will not bore you.

Recently I’ve wondered if there is a correlation between a superficial understanding of worldliness and an incomplete understanding of the significance and applicability of the gospel. In other words, I have wondered if the view that thinks of worldliness primarily in external terms (i.e. where you go; what you do; etc) is due, in some measure, to a failure to understand the breadth and depth of the gospel. It seems to me that there is a very strong correlation between the two, but before we consider the precise nature of it let’s briefly consider the biblical presentation of worldliness. Read the rest of this entry »

Both Adrian Warnock and David Wayne are linking an interesting discussion started at Stronger Church. It asks the following question: “If you could only have five books out of your library to keep to help you prepare sermons, what would they be?” I want to modify the question slightly. “If you could only have five books to aide you in your study of Scripture for personal holiness, what would they be?” So feel free to answer from either perspective.

Here is David Wayne’s answer:

Actually, for about the last seven or eight years I’ve been using Logos Software and accumulating all kinds of stuff from them so I would just ask for my laptop and my Logos disks and could be very happy. But, since that’s not the question I’ll play along.

Spirit of the Reformation Study Bible
International Standard Bible Encyclopedia - ok, this has four volumes so I’m done, but if you’ll allow me to count it as one volume I’d go with the following three others.
Systematic Theology by Wayne Grudem (betcha thought I was going to say Berkhof, didn’t ya?)
According to Plan - Graeme Goldsworthy
Your Best Life Now - Joel Osteen - kidding - just checking to see if anybody’s really reading this. How about Young’s Analytical Concordance so I can have a language reference.

My answer is the result of about 5 minutes of thinking. It would probably change if I thought about it a few more minutes, but right now I’m satisfied. Also, I’m assuming that I will have my BibleWorks computer program which allows me to reference the biblical languages :-).

1. ESV Bible
2. Preaching the Gospel in a Post-Modern World (Tim Keller)
3. Preaching the Whole Bible as Christian Scripture (Graeme Goldsworthy)
4. Gustav Oehler’s Old Testament Theology
5. New Testament Theology: Many Witnesses, One Gospel (I. Howard Marshall)

What 5 books would you choose?

I am always on the lookout for gospel-centered blogs though I don’t actively search for them very often (time issue). If you take a look, you’ll notice that I’ve created a new link category that lists a few gospel-centered blogs that I have found. These are blogs that make much about the centrality of the gospel for all of life. Making much of the gospel of Christ is to what I have dedicated my blog. Here are those who are currently on my gospel-centered blog list:

Adrian Warnock’s UK Evangelical Blog
Beginning with Moses
Dave Bish - thebluefish
Dave Cruver - to tell you the truth
Paul Schafer - Glorious Gospel of Christ Group
David Wayne - Jolly Blogger
Rob Wilkerson - My Miscellanies on the Gospel

May the tribe of gospel-centered bloggers increase. I would love to see more bloggers who not only hold the following beliefs but also occasionally blog about them:

1. As Tim Keller writes, “The gospel is not just the A-B-C’s but the A to Z of Christianity.” It is not merely that which gives us entrance into the Christian life but also that which grows us in the Christian life. Therefore, gospel-centered bloggers do not address sanctification issues without reference to the gospel of God.

2. The gospel is the hermeneutical key to unlocking the Scriptures. Graeme Goldsworthy: “By referring to the gospel as the hermeneutical key I mean that proper interpretation of any part of the Bible requires us to relate it to the person and work of Jesus.” Therefore, gospel-centered bloggers do not interpret and apply texts without reference to Scripture’s overarching story-line of the gospel.

3. “The light of the knowledge of the glory of God in the face of Jesus Christ” is seen in the gospel (2 Corinthians 4:3-6). God shines this light in our hearts with saving and sanctifying effect through the preaching of the gospel. Therefore, gospel-centered blogs will make much of the gospel of Christ in their blogging.

As I mentioned in a recent post, the ascension of Christ should receive much more air-time than it currently does. Though ascension was separated chronologically from the resurrection by 40 days, we must be careful not to separate it theologically (Romans 8:34). Christ’s ascension to the Father’s right hand was the inevitable and necessary consequence of his resurrection. It signifies Christ’s defeat of death and the powers of evil, the inauguration of his heavenly priestly ministry, and the Father’s full acceptance of him, his work, and all who died with him, were buried with him, and were raised with him (see Charles H. H. Scobie, The Ways of Our God: An Approach to Biblical Theology 457) (Colossians 2-3). Charles Scobie writes:

“The Ascension and session complete the Christ event. They underline forcefully that the resurrection of Jesus was not merely the resuscitation of a corpse. In the cases of Jairus’s daughter, the widow of Nain’s son, and Lazarus, all of whom were raised by Jesus from the dead, we are left to assume that they resumed their normal life here on earth, only to face death again in due course. Jesus’ triumph over death is of a totally different order, though it does guarantee the ultimate resurrection of believers. God not only raised Jesus from the dead; he also took him to be with him in the highest position of power and authority. To believe in Christ’s ascension and session at God’s right hand is therefore to believe that the Christ event is God’s final and decisive act within human history for the salvation of humankind. The ascension and session complete the full NT pattern of preexistence/incarnation/exaltation. Thus, ‘so far from being incredible, the Ascension is an indispensable part of the Christian message, without which that message would not be complete or intelligible’” (Argyle 1955: 241) (The Ways of Our God: An Approach to Biblical Theology 465).

It seems to me that if the gospel would not be complete or intelligible without the ascension of Christ, than his ascension must hold an indispensable place in gospel-centered living. In Colossians 3:1-3, Paul is clear that the ascension and session of Christ is to have a central place in the thinking of gospel-centered people.

“If then you have been raised with Christ, seek the things that are above, where Christ is, seated at the right hand of God. Set you minds on things that are above, not on things that are on earth. For you have died, and your life is hidden with Christ in God.”

Gospel-centered people are those who minute by minute set their minds on the Christ who is seated at the right hand of God. Certainly, the ascension of Christ is essential to gospel-centered living. Read the rest of this entry »