Category: Tolle Lege

Readability :  3

Length:  206 pp

Author:  Leon Morris

How does the Bible speak of the atonement?  What words and images does it use?  Leon Morris does an excellent service to us in this work.  Although primarily a word study Morris is always sure that his theology is Biblical as well, that is, he always lets the context and Biblical storyline determine the ultimate meaning of the word.  Many word studies are attempts to violate the clear meaning of the storyline, this is not one.  Although The Atonement is the laymen’s version of his previous work, The Apostolic Preaching of the Cross, it is still a very scholarly work.  While it is readable, understand what it is, it is not simply reflections, sermons, or exhortations concerning the cross, but a deep study of the meaning of the cross.  Morris deals with images such as covenant, sacrifice, redemption, and reconciliation among others.  If ever we need push ourselves to read deep hard books, it is concerning books of this ilk, books on God’s masterpiece of atonement.

When God gave them commandments in the wilderness, the writer says, the Israelites complained.  But God replied that they were his slaves: ‘For this reason have I redeemed you, that you might give decrees and you should keep them.’  Here the thought is plainly expressed that Israel was not redeemed for the people’s own personal convenience but in order that they might be the servants of God.  The redemption from Egypt was the redemption of a community which was to be in a unique sense bound to God as the people of God.

That peace has a very different content in the Bible from that which we normally give the term is clear from some words towards the end of Romans.  The writer assured his readers that ‘The God of peace will soon crush Satan under your feet’ (Rom. 16:20).  God is characterized as ‘the God of peace’ by the very fact that he performs a warlike action!  This is strange language to us, but the overthrow of Satan was a necessary ingredient in peace as the men of the New Testament understood it.  So it is quite natural for one of them to speak in this way of God as the God of peace as he crushes the evil one.  What could more vividly show what ‘peace’ means?

Peace means the defeat of evil.  Peace means the breaking down the barrier between man and God.  Peace means the presence of God’s rich and abundant blessing.  Peace means positiveness; it is not the absence of anything – the barrier that separated us from God or anything else.  Peace is presence, the presence of God.  Christ ‘is our peace’.

Readability :  1

Length:  125 pp

Author:  R.C. Sproul

R.C.  Sproul’s little book is a great, clear, and simple explanation as to both why and how you should study the Bible.  What I always love about Dr. Sproul’s teaching is that by simple I do not mean watered down.  Although concise and easily readable, Sproul tackles big ideas and communicates them as a master teacher.  This is one of those books every child of God ought to have read because I think they will profit by reading it.  Never ignore a book that is rightly used to generate a love for the Book of books.

The preponderance of boredom that people experience with the Bible came home to me several years ago when I was hired to teach the Scriptures in required Bible courses at a Christian college.  The president of the institution phoned me and said, ‘We need someone young and exciting, someone with a dynamic method who will be able to make the Bible come alive.’  I had to force myself to swallow my words.  I wanted to say, ‘You want me to make the Bible come alive?  I didn’t know that it had died.  In fact, I never even heard that it was ill.  Who was the attending physician at the Bible’s demise?’  No, I can’t make the Bible come alive for anyone.  The Bible is already alive.  It makes me come alive.

No Christian can avoid theology.  Every Christian is a theologian.  Perhaps not a theologian in the technical sense, but a theologian nevertheless.  The issue for Christians is not whether we are going to be theologians but whether we are going to be good theologians of bad ones.  A good theologian is one who is instructed by God.

Readability :  1

Length:  195 pp

Author:  D.A. Carson

D.A. Carson’s Love in Hard Places touched the whole of me.  It fed my mind, enflamed my heart, convicted my conscience, and compelled me to action.  Carson is in my humble opinion (though it is substantiated by many  of higher  acumen) the best New Testament Scholar currently living, and it shows in this masterful examination of the difficult command of God to love our neighbor as ourselves.  Carson deals with loving enemies big (those who would persecute us physically or mentally) and small (that annoying co-worker).  One chapter, a most rewarding one, is dedicated toward teasing out two especially difficult cases, racism and Osama bin Laden.  In all of this Carson never ceases to be gospel, Christ, and God-centered.  This is among my most favorite of books, I highly recommend it.

There is a sense in which the followers of Jesus are to see themselves, as it were, as an outpost within time, within the time of fallenness, of the consummated kingdom still to come.

[In response to the accusation that Christian brotherly love is a lesser kind of love] More to the point, in one crucial chapter in John’s gospel, God’s intra-Trinitarian love is set forth as the model and standard of Christians loving Christians.  “I have made you known to them,” Jesus tells his Father, “and will continue to make you known in order that the love you have for me may be in them and that I myself may be in them” (John 17:26).  It is very difficult to deprecate the love of Christians, without simultaneously deprecating God’s intra-Trinitarian love and the very unity of the Godhead.

That is why, in the ultimate sense, only God has the ultimate right to forgive sins, all sins – for all sins have first and foremost been committed against him, as David himself recognized (Ps. 51:4).  This is not to deny that many others may be abused, violated, offended; it is to say that in the ultimate sense, what gives sin its deepest odium, its most heinous hue, is that it offends the God who made us and stands as our judge.

What this suggests, then, is that moral indignation, even moral outrage, may on occasion be proof of love – love for the victim, love for the church of God, love for the truth, love for God and his glory.  Not to be outraged may in such cases be evidence, not of gentleness and love, but of a failure of love.

There are four things I think every Christian should consistently read about.  If they read no more than four books a year, those four books should deal with the following subjects:

1. God or Theology proper – Read books on the attributes of God and the nature of God.  If worship is intense without this, it is false.  If it is apathetic, this is where to begin.  When people encounter God the last thing they are is bored.
2. Sin – Know the bane of your soul.  If affections for Christ as your Savior are small I would venture that you know little of the horrors of sin you were rescued from.  If you don’t want to study sin, ask yourself why.  I believe the answer, the true answer, will be deeply convicting.
3. Jesus Christ (His life, death, and resurrection), The Cross, Soteriology – It is no shame for a new Christian to have to learn some terminology that is foreign to them; it is a shame for aged Christians not to have an understanding of justification, redemption, propitiation, reconciliation, regeneration, and penal substitutionary atonement.  If you read only one book a year, make it a book about the cross of Christ.
4. Christian Biography – Especially missionary biography.  Hero standards have been dumbed down.  Reading good Christian Biographies will elevate them.  Christian Biography is a great balm for both pride and discouragement.   Pride because when I think I have really done something a glimpse, just a glimpse of someone like John Paton will waken me to my foolishness; discouragement because they were just men.  What He has done once in a Whitefield he can do again through some humble servant.  Admire not the men of God more than the God of men.  Admire them not in themselves, but in their reflecting – they are all lunar, God is solar.

I cannot too strongly celebrate the publication of this book. Owing in part to several decades of dispute over justification and how a person is set right with God, we have tended to neglect another component of conversion no less important. Conversion under the terms of the new covenant is more than a matter of position and status in Christ, though never less: it includes miraculous Spirit-given transformation, something immeasurably beyond mere human resolution. It is new birth; it makes us new creatures; it demonstrates that the gospel is the power of God unto salvation. All the creedal orthodoxy in the world cannot replace it. The reason why “You must be born again” is so important is that you must be born again.   – D. A. Carson, Trinity Evangelical Divinity School

When I was a boy my grandmother asked me, ‘Have you been born again?’ Though I didn’t understand what she meant at the time, that question led to my conversion to Christ. In this wonderful book, Pastor John Piper rescues the term ‘born again’ from the abuse and overuse to which it is subject in our culture today. This is a fresh presentation of the evangelical doctrine of the new birth, a work filled with theological insight and pastoral wisdom.   – Timothy George, Dean of Beeson Divinity School, Samford University

Regeneration, or new birth, meaning simply the new you through, with, in, and under Christ, is a largely neglected theme today, but this fine set of sermons, criss-crossing the New Testament data with great precision, goes far to fill the gap. Highly recommended.   – J .I. Packer, Professor of Theology, Regent College, Vancouver, Canada

I read the endorsements and reviews, I was skeptical.  Not that I wouldn’t enjoy a new John Piper book, but is it that good?  Yes. Piper’s powerful exposition of Biblical texts dealing with the new birth left me with an alloy of joy and awe that exclaimed, “What hath God wrought?”  I will defiantly read this book again; I need to read this book again.  That is always a good test for a book; upon putting it down, do I wish to take it up again?  This doctrine is precious, may I grow in my realization of how precious it is every day.  This book is a tool towards that end.

I want to say loud and clear that when the Barna Group uses the term born again to describe American church-goers whose lives are indistinguishable from the world, and who sin as much as the world, and sacrifice for others as little as the world, and embrace injustice as readily as the world, and covet things as greedily as the world, and enjoy God-ignoring entertainment as enthusiastically as the world—when the term born again is used to describe these professing Christians, the Barna Group is making a  profound mistake. It is using the biblical term born again in a way that would make it unrecognizable by Jesus and the biblical writers….

The Bible is profoundly aware of such people in the church. That is one reason why 1 John was written. But instead of following the Barna Group, the Bible says that the research is not finding that born again people are permeated with worldliness; the research is finding that the church is permeated by people who are not born again.

Clear, concise, and convicting – that’s a great way to describe Mark Dever’s teaching on evangelism in this little book.  Nothing astounding here, just good teaching on a good subject, a subject too often ignored in both teaching and practice.  Dever answers seven questions in seven short chapters:  Why don’t we evangelize?  What is the gospel?  Who should evangelize?  How should we evangelize?  What isn’t evangelism?  What should we do after we evangelize? And why should we evangelize?  This book is defiantly worth the hour or two to read.

So that’s the balance we want to see – honesty, urgency, and joy.  Honesty and urgency with no joy gives us a grim determination (read Philippians).  Honest y and joy with no urgency gives us a carelessness about time (read 2 Peter).  And urgency and joy with no honesty leads us into distorted claims about the immediate benefits of the gospel (Read 1 Peter).

Clarity with the claims of Christ will certainly include the translation of the gospel into words that our hearer understands, but it doesn’t necessarily mean translating it into words that our hearers will like.  Too often, advocates of relevant evangelism verge over into being advocates r irrelevant non-evangelism.  A gospel that in no way offends the sinner has not been understood.

Each year I try to pick out some particular study of theology and plan some reading on it.  This year I am devoting some reading to spiritual warfare and the first book on my list was Thomas Brook’s Precious Remedies Against Satan’s Devices.  If by spiritual warfare you are thinking casting out demons and such this is not the book to read; it deals with the much more ordinary and common warfare which Satan wages on our souls every day.  There are four main sections to the book and an appendix.  The first section deals with several devices Satan uses to draw the soul to sin, the second several devices he uses to keep men from holy duties, the third several devices he uses to keep souls in a sad doubting condition, and the fourth several devices he has against particular sorts and ranks of men.  After presenting a particular device he then presents remedies to counter it.  What are the remedies?  Truth, scriptural truth; this is why I think you should read this book.  It gives an awareness of the real spiritual battle you wage every day, it exposes Satan’s lies, and it gives you truth to meditate on to counter those lies.  I don’t think every section will be equally helpful to all.  I found the first most powerful and from there the book dwindled in its impact on me.  Regardless I think the first section should be read by all Christians.  Brooks is one of the more accessible Puritan writers and the paperback version has likely been modernized in language (though I didn’t read this version most of the Puritan Paperbacks I have compared have been).

Many long to be meddling with the murdering morsels of sin, which nourish not, but rend and consume the belly, the soul that receives them. Many eat that on earth that they digest in hell. Sin’s murdering morsels will deceive those that devour them. Adam’s apple was a bitter sweet; Esau’s mess was a bitter sweet; the Israelites’ quails a bitter sweet; Jonathan’s honey a bitter sweet; and Adonijah’s dainties a bitter sweet. After the meal is ended, then comes the reckoning. Men must not think to dance and dine with the devil, and then to sup with Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob in the kingdom of heaven; to feed upon the poison of asps, and yet that the viper’s tongue should not slay them.

As long as there is fuel in our hearts for a temptation, we cannot be secure. He that hath gunpowder about him had need keep far enough off from sparkles.

Thou art as well able to melt adamant, as to melt thine own heart; to turn a flint into flesh, as to turn thine own heart to the Lord; to raise the dead and to make a world, as to repent. Repentance is a flower that grows not in nature’s garden.

Outside of God’s Holy Word, what are the most influential (not necessarily the best, but the ones that most radically shaped who you are) books you have read.  Here are mine:

1. Desiring God by John Piper
2. The Cross of Christ by John R.W. Stott
3. The Mortification of Sin by John Owen
4. The Knowledge of the Holy by A.W. Tozer
5. Spiritual Depression by D. Martyn Lloyd-Jones

I hate watered down answers to the problem of pain, they do not sustain.  I hate it when Christians feel ashamed of the greatness of God, the sovereignty of God, the wisdom of God, and the goodness of God in the midst of catastrophe.  When God is made less of in an attempt to make us feel better in our pain the bandage will soon fall off and the deadly wound will be revealed to not have been healed.  This book is no such answer.  It gives strength to suffer not by making less of God, but much of God.

At the all-important pivot of human history, the worst sin ever committed served to show the greatest glory of Christ and obtain the sin-conquering gift of God’s grace. God did not just overcome evil at the cross. He made evil serve the overcoming of evil. He made evil commit suicide in doing its worst evil.

Evil is anything and everything opposed to the fullest display of the glory of Christ. That’s the meaning of evil. In the death of Christ, the powers of darkness did their best to destroy the glory of the Son of God. This is the apex of evil. But instead they found themselves quoting the script of ancient prophecy and acting the part assigned by God. Precisely in putting Christ to death, they put his glory on display—the very glory that they aimed to destroy. The apex of evil achieved the apex of the glory of Christ. The glory of grace.

My aim is to show that sin and evil, no matter how spectacular, never nullify the decisive, Christ-exalting purposes of God. No, my aim is more than that. These spectacular sins do not just fail to nullify God’s purpose to glorify Christ, they succeed, by God’s unfathomable providence, in making his gracious purpose come to pass. This truth is the steel God offers to put in the spine of his people as they face the worst calamities. There will be tenderness in due time. But if the back of our faith is broken because we think God is evil or absent, who will welcome him when he comes with caresses?

The best gift I received this Christmas was one I already had, kind of.  Previously the same poem was available under the title The Misery of Job and the Mercy of God by John Piper with photography by Ric Ergunbright.  This reissue, titled simply Jōb, with illustrations by Chirstopher Koelle is amazing; the art is married to and seemingly birthed out of the poetry.  This is excellent tonic for the suffering soul.  I highly recommend that you do three things in relation to it:

1. Buy it for yourself.
2. Read / Listen (an audio recording comes with the gift set) to the book with your family
3. Buy extra copies to give away to the suffering.

And now come, broken, to the cross,

Where Christ embraced all human loss,

And let us bow before the throne

Of God, who gives and takes his own,

And promises – whatever toll

He takes – to satisfy our soul.

Come learn the lesson of the rod:

The treasure that we have in God.

He is not poor nor much enticed

Who loses everything but Christ.

 www.jobthebook.com

[http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4zWQ8EjoN94]