Righteous men amid the evils of earth seek a theodicy—they want a justification of God; sinners do not need a theodicy—all too clear to them is the reason of their sufferings—they want a consolation, a justification from God. Paul’s words are in essence, then, not a theodicy but a consolation. Such a consolation can rest on nothing but a revelation; and Paul founds it on a revelation which he represents as of immanent knowledge in the Church: ‘We know,’ says he, “that all things work together for good to them that love God.” We bless God that we know it! For we are sinners, and what hope have we save in a God who is gracious rather than merely just? – B.B. Warfield, All Things Work Together for Good
Author: Josh King
Tolle Lege: What I Learned in Narnia
Readability: 1
Length: 168 pp
Author: Douglas Wilson
This recommendation isn’t for everyone. What I Learned in Narnia is for those who “grew up” in Narnia, either as children, or as adults who wish that they had lived their longer. If you then are one for whom this recommendation does not pertain, then I suggest you remedy the situation by making it pertain to you. The Chronicles of Narnia is recommended for everyone, no matter their age. You can “grow up” here. You can learn things here.
For those who already love Narnia, Wilson will thrill your eyes with truths you may not have noticed, warmly remind you of some you may have forgot, and freshly capture those you have long adored. Don’t worry about Wilson ruining Narnia by moralizing it. Wilson is not some disinterested scientist dissecting Narnia, he is a resident. He is a longtime disciple of Lewis having grown up Narnia himself.
A rush to moralize has wrecked many a good story, and I don’t want to do that here. But at the same time, good stories are the sorts of stories you do learn from – as C.S. Lewis knew fully well. And if we learn from his wonderful stories we should be albe to discuss it.
You should never trust people who have strong views of authority when talking about people under them, but have very weak views of authority when talking about people over them.
True submission never grovels, true authority never accepts flattery.
Aslan cares about confession of sin, but there is always something beyond it. In other words, being honest about our faults and failings is like washing up for dinner, so you can enjoy that dinner with clean hands. But imagine if someone just washed up for dinner, all the time, over and over, but they never came to the table? Washing is important, but it is so that we can enjoy the meal.
Stories are powerful things, and that is why the villains always try to undermine them from within. It is far easier for bad guys to mix a true story in with their lies than to invent a new story from scratch, because by doing so they can take advantage of the power of true stories while twisting them to their own needs.
This is why Lewis said that a good adventure story is truer than a dull history. The events in the story might not have happened, but it more closely resembles the type of world that God made than a soulless retelling of true events. And when we finally enter heaven we will realize in full how all the best stories were prefiguring that last, greatest story of all.
Beware of anyone who claims to be neutral, for they always have an agenda.
The Pugilist: God Will Take the Field
The Christian life on earth is a conflict with sin. And therein is the dreadfulness of our situation on earth displayed. But we are not left to fight the battle alone. The Christian life is a conflict of God— not of us—with sin. And therein is the joy and glory of our situation on earth manifested. As sinners we are in terrible plight. As the servants of God, fighting His battle, we are in glorious case. -B.B. Warfield, All Things Working Together for Good
Matthew 9:1-8 & Rejoice That It Was Blasphemy
Logic is a powerful tool, but tools can destroy as well as build. Used wrongly a tool can be deadly to the user. The Pharisee’s logic here is valid. They think Jesus is blaspheming. In Mark they are recorded as thinking, “Who can forgive sins but God alone?” They are right. God is always the most offended party in our sin, it is ultimately His prerogative to forgive sin. Your sin never hates anyone as much as it hates God. Sin mocks and belittles all that God is. Think of an attribute of God, then meditate a little, it shouldn’t take long to see how even the smallest sin laughs at that attribute. “Your omnipotent God, do something about this! You are all wise; well I think this is the better way to live. All seeing, do you see this? Your gracious, you’ll forgive this sin.” Sin is the hating of God, the seeking to de-god God. So the Pharisees rightly reason thus:
Only God can forgive sin.
Jesus is a man.
Therefore Jesus cannot forgive sin.
The logic is valid; the problem is that the second premise is false. Jesus is more than a man. That’s the point of this text, the healing of this paralytic is a subplot. Jesus is the God-man with authority to deal with all of our problems at the root. Jesus doesn’t come as the Great Physician to merely alleviate symptoms, but to do radical surgery by His own wounds.
All sickness is due to sin. It may or may not be due to a particular sin in your life, but all sickness is ultimately due to sin, namely the sin of Adam. Sickness then is a vivid, pervasive picture of the heinousness of a greater plague of which we all suffer, sin. The greatest disease is not to be dreaded as much as the least sin.
Jesus comes to make all things new; a new heaven and a new earth with no more sickness, pain, or death. In order to do this He will have to deal decisively with sin. This He did on the cross, as the God-man. As Anslem would reason, only God can deal with sin, only man ought to, and only in Jesus do the can and ought meet.
So it is the Pharisees, not Jesus, who blasphemed that day. I do not rejoice that the Pharisees blasphemed, but I do rejoice that it was blasphemy. Jesus does have the authority to forgive sin.
The Pugilist: Dignity Found in Submission
And what is the characteristic of the Christian man but just this: that he has found his Captain and receives his orders from Him? “What shall I do, Lord?”— that is the note of his life. And is it not clear that it is the source of an added dignity and worth to his life? Just as the soldier is nothing but the hoodlum licked into shape by coming under orders —under the establishing and forming influence of legitimate and wise authority—so the Christian is nothing but the sinner, come under the formative influence of the Captain of us all. -B.B. Warfield in Surrender and Consecration
Matthew 8:28-34 & Irony and Insanity
Irony: the disciples who after seeing Jesus’ supremacy over the storm, ask, “What kind of man is this?” receive their answer from demons once they come ashore. Jesus is the Son of God, the Sovereign Judge before whom demons fall, beg, and tremble, the One who in the weakness of His exhausted human flesh beats up a legion of demons with a single word. Learn from the demons not only who Jesus is, but that intellectual assent is not enough (James 2:19).
Insanity: the locals learn to tolerate the kingdom of darkness, but when Jesus demonstrates His power over the realm of evil they beg Him to leave. They prefer pigs to persons and swine to the Savior.
Tolle Lege: A Praying Life
Readability: 1
Length: 268 pp
Author: Paul Miller
Next to A Call to Spiritual Reformation, Paul Miller’s A Praying Life is my favorite book on prayer. You won’t just learn about prayer, you will be moved to pray.
Still I offer one caution. I am hesitant to say anything because I like to use these posts for book recommendations, not book reviews. I am thankful for reviews, but may aim is to commend more than critique. I never agree with everything in a book and I assume my readers understand this. For this reason I think a mystical reference here and a poor use of the text there unworthy of mention. Yet there is some language here that makes me quite uncomfortable.
The opening words of the Lord’s Prayer are Our Father. You are the center of your heavenly Father’s affection. That is where you find rest for your soul. If you remove prayer from the welcoming heart of God (as much teaching on the Lord’s Prayer does), prayer becomes a legalistic chore.
I agree that we must remember that we pray to our Father, not so that He will be our Father, or fatherly to us, but because He is our Father, yet, I wish that Paul would have said that Jesus is central to the Father’s affections, and that because we are in Christ we are loved. We are not loved with a different love, rather the love that the Father has toward the Son is His love to us. We are loved in the Beloved. The Son is chief in His Father’s affections, and this adds more stability, more power, and more warmth not less. I am unshakably and eternally loved in the Son.
Elsewhere, and more troubling to me, Paul writes,
The Father deliberately delayed a book [that Paul was writing] about the beauty of his Son for the sake of Kim [Paul’s daughter] for the sake of Kim being able to speak more clearly. He put Kim ahead of His own Son’s honor. I do not understand that kind of love. I guess that is what the cross is all about.
God puts nothing before or above the honor of His Son. All things were created through Him and for Him that in everything He might be preeminent. The cross and everything else works together for His eternal glory. Paul’s book about Christ being delayed does not mean the putting of Kim above the Son, but the magnifying of the Son in a different way. One notable way is in Paul’s Christ-like, Spirit-empowered self-sacrifice for his daughter.
I think Paul would agree with me as to the Father’s chief love and aim in all things, so perhaps the issues here are pastoral more than theological. Read the book yourself and note the context. But even despite these huge issues I highly commend this book because it is otherwise so solid and good.
Oddly enough, many people struggle to learn how to pray because they are focusing on praying, not on God. Making prayer the center is like making conversation the center of a family mealtime. In prayer, focusing on the conversation is like trying to drive while looking at the windshield instead of through it. It freezes us, making us unsure of where to go. Conversation is only the vehicle through which we experience one another. Consequently, prayer is not the center of this book. Getting to know a person, God, is the center.
The great struggle of my life is not trying to discern God’s will; it is trying to discern and then disown my own.
I have prayed for humility, and it dawned on me that God was answering my prayer. I would have preferred humility to come over me like magic. Instead, God teaches humility in humble places. He keeps me sane by letting me pick up dog manure after I’ve spoken at a conference.
Prayer is where I do my best work as a husband, dad, worker, and friend.
The Pugilist: Prayer is Abiding
It is impossible to conceive of a praying man, therefore, as destitute of grace. If he prays, really prays, he draws near to God with heart open for grace, humbly depending on Him for its gift. And he certainly receives it. To say, Behold he prayeth! is equivalent, then, to saying, Behold a man in Christ! -B.B. Warfield, Prayer as a Means of Grace
Matthew 8:23-27 & The Awesome
But that little ship did present a figure of the Church, in that she is disquieted ‘in the sea,’ that is, in the world, ‘by the waves,’ that is, by persecutions and temptations; the Lord, through patience, sleeping as it were, until, roused in their last extremities by the prayers of the saints, He checks the world, and restores tranquility to His own. – Tertullian
So the boat is the church, the sea the world, the waves persecution and temptation, Jesus’ sleeping His patience, the disciples cries the prayers of the church, and Jesus stilling the storm His deliverance? Nope. That is a horrible way to read this text. The boat is… a boat. The sea is the sea, the waves are waves, Jesus is Jesus, and the disciples are disciples. What then is the point of this story? How are we to relate to it? You are meant to with these disciples, as disciples, marvel at the Christ.
While few may be in danger of allegorizing the text as Turtullian did, many may spiritualize the text and make application in a similar way. “Come to Jesus when the storms of life suddenly arise and you will have peace.” There is truth in that, but that is not the point of this text. Jesus says, “Peace, be still” and all is calm except for their hearts. Luke says “they were afraid and they marveled.” Mark adds further insight recording they were “filled with great fear.” The storm is stilled but they are still in awe. Something more awesome remains in their presence.
“Awesome” has to be one of the most abused words in the English language. Films are awesome, CDs are awesome, clothes are awesome, gadgets are awesome, you might even have a friend who is awesome. No, that which is awesome arouses a complex mixture of dread, wonder, and veneration. Storms are awesome, tornadoes are awesome, hurricanes are awesome, earthquakes are awesome, volcanoes are awesome, tsunamis are awesome. Here these disciples encounter the exceedingly awesome. When sinful men encounter the glory of the holy Christ, they are filled with awe.
The tragedy of their fear and little faith is that they were more in awe of the storm than the Sovereign, but that soon changed. They caught a glimpse of Jesus, and when they did faith flourished, worry wilted, and fear was properly redirected.
The tragedy of all humanity is that we were made for the Awesome, but we are enamored with the trivial. No wonder our faith is so small and our fears are so big.
The Pugilist: True Doctrine Begets Prayer
Every type of religious teaching will inevitably beget its corresponding type of religious life. And that teaching alone which calls upon man to depend wholly on the Lord God Almighty—our loving Father who has given His Son to die for us —for all the exercises of grace, will make Christians whose whole life is a prayer. -B.B. Warfield in Prayer as a Means of Grace
No Other Boast 