Josh King

Tolle Lege: Am I Really a Christian?

Readability: 1

Length: 148 pp

If you are struggling as to whether or not you are a Christian I am going to recommend that you read two books: 1 John and Am I Really a Christian? By Mike McKinley. I am deeply thankful for Mike’s book as this is one of the foremost concerns brought to me as a minister. And yet, I think more people need to ask themselves this question. Many people are not doubting that likely need to. I believe this is especially true in the Bible Belt where many have been assured that they are saved because they have prayed some prayer, walked an isle, or some other action. You are not a Christian because of anything you do, but because of what Christ has done. Therefore we don’t need to see if we have done the proper action(s) so that we are a Christian, but we need to see if there is fruit in our lives as a result of our being a Christian. Mike will not speak “peace” to you when there is no peace – and that is why this book has so much potential to give you true peace; either if you are doubting, or if you should.

Imagine for a minute that we’re all running in a race. According to the rules of this race, it doesn’t matter how we place, but it is absolutely critical that we finish. Not only that, our eternal destiny hangs on whether we finish this race. Finishing means eternal joy. Failing to finish, for whatever reason, means eternal suffering. This would be a pretty important race, would it not?

Now imagine that, looking along the racecourse, we see people dressed in running shorts and fancy sneakers, but for some reason they are sitting by the side of the road. Other people are crouched down, still as statues, tense, poised, and ready in the starting blocks. But they never move; they just stay there. Some people are wandering around in circles. Still others are running the wrong way.

Suppose then we stop to talk to these wayward runners and non-runners. Quickly it becomes clear that they are convinced they’re running well. They say they’re looking forward to completing the race and receiving the substantial reward. They smile and talk dreamily about life beyond the finish line. The problem is, we know that they will never finish the race given their pace or direction.

Tell me: What would be the loving thing to do in that case? Would love motivate us to ignore their confusion? Would love motivate us to politely nod and say nothing? Of course not. Love would require us to warn them, to convince them, to plead with them to change their course.

That is the spirit in which I offer this book to you. I hope to serve you by helping you determine if you are “running your race” in the right direction.

[T]he important question is not, “Have I professed faith in Christ in the past?” but rather, “Am I trusting Christ right now for my salvation?” If you must point back to some distant event for evidence that you have an interest in Christ, you might wonder if you genuinely saved. But if you have continued trusting Christ over time, you have reason to have hope in your salvation.

www.amireallyachristian.com

WTS Books: $10.15 Amazon:$10.28

The Pugilist: The True Experts on Sin are the Saints

It is only the saint who knows what sin is; for only the saint knows it in contrast with salvation, experienced and understood. And it is only the sinning saint who knows what salvation is: for it is only the joy that is lost and then found again that is fully understood. The depths of David’s knowledge, the poignancy of his conceptions—of God, and sin, and salvation—carrying him far beyond the natural plane of his time and the development of the religious consciousness of Israel, may be accounted for, it would seem, by these facts. He who had known the salvation of God and basked in its joy, came to know through his dreadful sin what sin is, and its terrible entail; and through this horrible experience, to know what the joy of salvation is— the joy which he had lost and only through the goodness of God could hope to have restored. In the biting pain of his remorse, it all becomes clear to him. His sinful nature is revealed to him; and the goodness of God; his need of the Spirit; the joy of acceptance with God; the delight of abiding with Him in His house. Hence his profound disgust at himself; his passionate longing for that purity without which he could not see God. And hence his culminating prayer: ‘Restore unto me the joy of Thy salvation.’

Matthew 6:19-24 & Heavenly Math

God doesn’t give us our money, He entrusts us with His money. It’s not a question of how much of our money will we give to Him, but how much of His money are we bold enough to keep for ourselves. When Jesus uses strong language to rouse us to this reality He is not seeking to rob our joy. This command and the reward for obeying it are not about merit – they both come as further lavish grace in Christ – they are grace upon grace. Jesus wants us to unfurl our sinful fingers and give away temporal pebbles so that our hands are open to receive eternal diamonds.

Live on less, give more, and receive even more, this is heavenly math.

The Pugilist: Harmonizing Scripture

If we cannot harmonize without straining, let us leave unharmonized. It is not necessary for us to see the harmony that it should exist or even be recognized by us as existing. -B.B. Warfiled, The Real Problem of Inspiration

Tolle Lege: Managing God’s Money

Readability: 1

Length: 254 pp

Author: Randy Alcorn

If The Treasure Principle is a guided missile towards our hearts concerning the issue of money, and Money, Possessions, and Eternity is an invasion by the whole army, then perhaps Managing God’s Money is the air force sent in to knock out most of the enemy forces. Behind all three books there is no better general in my opinion to help use our money strategically – Randy Acorn. I think every Christian should read The Treasure Principle, but if after reading it you want a refresher, or a more through dealing with the various facets of using our money well with out treating the subject exhaustively, then managing God’s Money is perfect.

Many who say, “I have nothing to give,” spend large amounts of discretionary income on cars, clothes, coffee, entertainment, phones, computers, and so on. They have nothing to give when they’re done spending, precisely because they’re never done spending

It’s not how much money we make that grabs hold of our hearts. It’s how much we keep.

Whatever “king’s kid” the prosperity proponents are speaking of, it obviously isn’t Jesus!

We need to stop thinking of ourselves as owners and instead see ourselves as God’s couriers. Just because God puts his money in our hands doesn’t mean he intends for it to stay there!

Much of our “giving” is merely discarding.

If I’m devoted to “simple living,” I might reject a computer because it’s modern and nonessential. But if I live a … strategic lifestyle, the computer may serve as a tool for Kingdom purposes. In my case, I use it daily to serve God in my writing. A microwave oven isn’t essential. But it’s handy and labor saving and can free up time to engage in Kingdom causes. Simple living may be self-centered. Strategic living is Kingdom centered.

Amazon: $5.99

The Pugilist: If you Discredit the Apostles You Discredit Jesus

This may be made plain at once by the very obvious remark that we have no Christ except the one whom the apostles have given to us. Jesus Himself left no treatises on doctrine. He left no written dialogues. We are dependent on the apostles for our whole knowledge of Him, and of what He taught. The portraiture of Jesus which has glorified the world’s literature as well as blessed all ages and races with the revelation of a God-man come down from heaven to save the world, is limned by his followers’ pencils alone. The record of that teaching which fell from His lips as living water, which if a man drink of he shall never thirst again, is a record by his followers’ pens alone. They have painted for us, of course, the Jesus that they knew, and as they knew Him. They have recorded for us the teachings that they heard, and as they heard them. Whatever untrustworthiness attaches to them as deliverers of doctrine, must in some measure shake also our confidence in their report of what their Master was and taught.

But the logic cuts even deeper. For not only have we no Christ but Him whom we receive at the apostles’ hands, but this Christ is committed to the trustworthiness of the apostles as teachers. His credit is involved in their credit. He represents His words on earth as but the foundation of one great temple of doctrine, the edifice of which was to be built up by Him through their mouths, as they spoke moved by His Spirit; and thus He makes Himself an accomplice before the fact in all they taught. In proportion as they are discredited as doctrinal guides, in that proportion He is discredited with them. -B.B. Warfield, The Real Problem of Inspiration

Romans 8:18-25 & The Weight of Glory

Our future glory is not light, ethereal, and floaty, but weighty, massive, and solid. It’s as weighty as the earth in multiple ways. Too many Christians have far more in common with Plato than Paul in their conception of heaven. It was the Greeks, not Jesus or Paul, who sought to be liberated from their bodies and the physical. Paul and Jesus spoke of their redemption and resurrection. The earth is both literally and figuratively tilted, eagerly awaiting our revealing (8:19), knowing that because it is our inheritance (Matthew 5:5), it will be caught up in our freedom and redemption (8:21). Where does the power for such cosmic resurrection come from? This Big Bang occurred 2000 years ago in the death and resurrection of our Lord Jesus Christ.

Just how weighty is this future glory? So weighty that it renders our present sufferings as nothing in comparison (8:18). Paul here is not making light of our sufferings, but much of the our future glory. Give suffering is full weight and credit, don’t minimize it in any way; then think of your greatest sufferings and imagine experiencing a joy so great that when the two are place on the scales it is as if you are comparing a speck of pollen to an anvil.

But we have not yet even begun to imagine the weight Paul is calculating here. Paul is not saying that there is a glory so substantial that it outweighs your sufferings as an individual, but that it outweighs all of our collective sufferings (8:18). So gather all the tears and pains of all the saints, pile them on the scale and see it hit the ground with such a thud that it causes a fissure in the earth. Then imagine a future glory so massive that it topples and crushes the scales making all of our sufferings in comparison as particulate floating in the light of His majesty.

It isn’t that our sufferings are so small, but that this glory is so big. The future world, the new heavens and the new earth will be far more solid than this one, far more weighty.

Tolle Lege: Tempted and Tried

Readability: 1

Length: 196 pp

Author: Russell Moore

Tempted and Tried is an excellent book. What makes its such? Moore is an excellent writer and has a penchant for peculiar illustrations and bizarre analogies, and while that certainly makes for an interesting read, it doesn’t grasp excellency, at least not in the Edwardsian sense. What is remarkable here is that the Scriptures are so well exegeted and applied, exposing our sinful bent in a contemporary and Biblical way while reveling in the victory of Christ for us over temptation. The result: we hate sin more and love Christ more, specifically we hate sin more because we love Christ more. Any book that will do this for me is excellent.

Temptation is so strong in our lives precisely because it’s not about us. Temptation is an assault by the demonic powers on the rival empire of the Messiah. That’s why conversion to Christ doesn’t diminish the power of temptation—as we often assume—but actually, counterintuitively, ratchets it up.

Temptation—for the entire human race, for the people of Israel, and for each of us personally—starts with a question of identity, moves to a confusion of the desires, and ultimately heads to a contest of futures. In short, there’s a reason you want what you don’t want to want. Temptation is embryonic, personality specific, and purpose directed.

But Jesus hungered with us, and for us. He is the firstborn son of the kingdom, the true humanity, and the true Israel of God. Jesus understood what his fathers in the garden and in the wilderness didn’t. When confronted with the question, “Are you the Son of God?” he heard the word of his Father more loudly than the word of his own grumbling stomach.

WTS Books: $10.04 Amazon:$10.19

The Pugilist: If You Ditch Inspiration You Ditch Jesus

We must go on to say that that “particular theory of inspiration” is the theory of the apostles and of the Lord, and that in abandoning it we are abandoning them as our doctrinal teachers and guides… -B.B. Warfiled, The Real Problem of Inspiration

Romans 3:21-25 & “All” of “Us”

“…for all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God…”

Romans 3:23 – doesn’t it seem out of place?

To see why you must understand that from Romans 1-3 there are at least 4 different things that are said to be revealed. The first is the “righteousness of God”, that is the righteousness God credits to us through faith in Jesus Christ. This is the revelation, the “manifestation” that Paul is returning to in 1:21. He is returning to it because up to this point he has emphasized two other revelations. In 1:18 Paul says “the wrath of God is revealed from heaven against all ungodliness and unrighteousness.” This wrath is being manifest against man because man has rejected yet another revelation – the revelation of God’s attributes communicated to man by creation (1:19-20). The fourth revelation is that in God’s providing and manifesting this gospel righteousness He was also “showing” His righteousness that He might be “just and the justifier (3:25b-26).” He wasn’t just providing a righteousness, He was magnifying Himself as righteousness. He doesn’t pass over sins, He deals with them.

So up to 3:21 Paul has been emphasizing our depravity which evokes the wrath of God. “But now” then introduces the gospel, it introduces good news. In light of this doesn’t 3:23 seem like a retrogression? It isn’t that I don’t believe that it is true, but isn’t it out of place? Shouldn’t it come before the “but now,” not after? Why is 3:23 here and not there? The answer lies in understanding who “all” is. Romans 3:23 by itself is true of all humanity, but that isn’t who “all” is in 3:23. The “all” who are sinners are said to be justified in 3:24. The “all” in 3:23 is the same “all” of 3:22 – they are believers. All of us who believe and are justified are sinners, that is why “there is no distinction (3:22).”

If you have grown up in church and “done” everything, you bring nothing more to the table than the most repulsive sinner. The only thing any of us bring to the table is pure grotesque sin. You don’t add one ounce to the megatons of righteousness that are yours in Christ alone. You are not more accepted or loved by God because of your prayers, church attendance, denominational affiliation, offerings, ministry, good deeds, walking an isle, being baptized, partaking of communion, going to church camp, listening to and singing the right kind of music, attending a small group, being accountability or avoiding certain sins. There is no distinction! If you appear just before God it is wholly because of an alien righteousness which you graciously receive through faith in Jesus Christ. The righteousness you have before God, magnifies Him, not you. It is a righteousness you have before God and from God.

Sola gratia, sola fide, solus Christus, sola Deo Gloria!

By grace alone, through faith alone, in Christ alone, tot eh glory of God alone!