No Other Boast

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DugDownDeep_Carnahan.mov from Covenant Life Church on Vimeo.

Readability:  1

Length: 234 pgs

Author:  Joshua Harris

Are you looking for a book that would serve as an introduction to theological terms such as: theology, orthodoxy, doctrine, omnipotence, omnipresence, omniscient, inerrancy, clarity, sufficiency, the person of Christ, incarnation, atonement, penal substitution, propitiation, regeneration, justification, adoption, sanctification, indwelling sin, spiritual gifts, the church?  Do you also want the book to be practical, applying these doctrines and truths to everyday life?  Do you further desire that the book be deeply honest and personal coming from a humble author giving great illustrations from his own life?  Do you think your desires to be too big to ever be realized?  Read Joshua Harris’ Dug Down Deep.

Harris doesn’t wade in the deep end of the pool, but he helps you to get there and makes you want to dive… or dig.  Theology matters – Harris humbly seeks to convince you of this, and I think he does an excellent job.  If you are new to the Christian faith, or new to that faith being talked about in vibrant, robust theological terms this would be a great theological primer.

But the hardest work of all is putting truth into practice. … Church affiliation and a list of beliefs are never enough.  Doctrine and theology are always meant to be applied to our lives – to shape and reshape not only a statement of faith but also the practical decisions of how think and act.  Book knowledge about building on rock has no value if we’re still resting on shifting sand.

Once when my little brother Isaac was four years old, he grabbed a shovel and headed toward the woods.  My mom asked what he was doing.  He answered, “I’m going to dig for holes.”  The story has become family favorite, and Isaac is tired of having it repeated.  But it’s a good description of what we do when we study and argue over beliefs without putting them into practice.  We’re digging for holes.

We need to dig for rock.

[http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=N_lUDZD0Wqc]

Readability:  1

Length: 234 pgs

Author:  Kevin DeYoung and Ted Kluck

I love Kevin DeYoung’s writing (Ted’s as well, he makes me laugh).  I love that he loves the church, so much so that he wrote a book about it.  This is my favorite DeYoung book alongside Just Do Something.  Why We Love the Church is an unfortunately an unusual book.  Go to your Christian bookstore and it will be easy to pile up a plethora of books criticizing the church.  Without covering any of her warts this pair of gifted writers wants to remind us of her beauty. 

Kevin spends his time responding to four categories of reasons why the church is not currently loved; the misssiological, personal, historical, and theological reasons.  Ted gives humorous and honest personal reflections in-between.

Kevin has a habit of writing books I recommend a lot, not only because they are so well written, but also because he has written on such pertinent issues.  At a time when so many loud voices are calling for an exodus from the church, DeYoung and Kluck are calling for a return.  May God bless this book toward that end for many.

If decapitation, form the Latin word caput, means to cut off the head, then it stands to reason that decorpulation, from the Latin word corpus, should refer to cutting off the body.  It’s the perfect word to describe the content of this book.  If our editors had been asleep at the wheel, we could have called it Recent Trends in Decorpulation.

Readability:  2

Length: 300 pgs

Author:  O. Palmer Robertson

Too many Christians fail at understanding the Scriptures because they don’t understand the Scriptures.  That is, they fail to understand a certain Biblical text, say Leviticus 4, because they don’t understand the larger context that Leviticus 4 finds itself in.  That is to say not simply that they haven’t thoroughly digested Leviticus, or even the Pentateuch, but the Bible as a whole.  Funny that we refer to the Bible as a book, fail to realize that it is composed of 66 books, and then further fail to recognize the great overarching, unifyingstoryline that binds it all together.  The fancy word for this big story is metanarrative.  We read all the mini-narratives forgetting to place them within the metanarrative.

To Johnny-pew-sitter I must say that preachers and teachers are primarily to blame for such ignorance.  People in the pew don’t get the metanarrative because the sermons are too small to contain it.

Towards understanding is understanding the concept of covenant.  Covenant frames all of Scripture.  It is the bones of Scripture.  Throughout Scripture God only relates to man within covenant, never outside of it.  Everyone stands in relation to God either as a covenant breaker, or covenant keeper.  You are either heir to the promises of the covenants, or under the curse for violating covenant.

In The Christ of the Covenants O. Palmer Robertson masterfully deals with the covenants of scripture.  In part one he deals with the nature, extent, unity, and diversity of the divine covenants.  In parts two and three he then goes on to treat each of the covenants we see in the Bible: the covenant of creation, the Adamic covenant, the Noahic covenant, the Abrahamic covenant, the Mosaic covenant, the Davidic covenant, and the New Covenant.

This book is not self-help, it is not immediately practical, it is not pragmatic, but it is epic.  You will be left stunned by the wonder of God’s one plan of redemption as it unfolds progressively through the covenants.  This ain’t no Little Golden Book, it is a book about the biggest story ever.

A covenant is a bond in blood sovereignly administered.  When God enters into a covenantal relationship with men, he sovereignly institutes a life-and-death bond.  A covenant is a bond in blood, or a bond of life and death sovereignly administered.