Quote of the day: personal relationship

R.C.Sproul, on White Horse Inn:

Atonement is a non-negotiable concept. What do you put in its place? What happens is that the gospel becomes, "I can have a personal relationship with Jesus." The devil has a personal relationship with Jesus. But what kind of personal relationship? And what is the ground of that personal relationship? Obviously, being a Christian involves having a personal relationship with Jesus, but there's content to that relationship that defines that relationship, and to just call it a "personal relationship" I don't think's very helpful.

And now for some hilarious illustration of what the good news most certainly isn't:

[Extra points for spotting full-blown Pelagianism and Holiness teaching. And it just gets creepier.] Ah, it'd even lead me to sign up to Blanchard & Lucarini, but not for their reasons...

Quote of the Day: the Redeemer's righteousness

I came across an address of my grandfather's, on Justification, wandering round the internet: How can man be just with God? His concern to combat the false teaching of the day, on which he had taken a stand from when he was a student, is shown clearly to be motivated by his love for the people to whom he ministers the gospel.

So then we are called upon in our day to do battle for this truth, to proclaim it and glory in it, as the Reformers did. It was for this very doctrine that the apostle Paul made such a stand in the Epistle to the Galatians. He “yielded by way of subjection, no, not for an hour, that the truth of the gospel might continue with us”. Yea, he pronounced the tremendous anathema of God upon those undermining it. He did this out of a passionate love for the truth and for the souls of men. May the same love mark us today!

If some reader is not yet arrayed in the spotless robe of the Redeemer’s righteousness, let him come, like Bunyan’s pilgrim to the cross, to receive pardon of all his sins and a wondrous “change of raiment”. Then he can go on his way with a song on his lips and in the strength of the Lord over hills of difficulty and through valleys of shadow till at last he passes triumphant into the city of God.

Look out!

Look out!

Don't look in.

You are a disgusting sinner. Don't look in: look to Jesus, your Saviour.
Look to Jesus, and you see that you're a sinner: but you also see your Saviour.
Look to Him: could you dare to say his life given isn't sufficient, or his atonement incomplete?

Have you faith enough in Jesus to be saved? Irrelevant. Jesus had faithfulness enough to save you.
Can you muster enough will-power to trust in Him? Irrelevant. He set his face steadfastly to go to the cross for you.
Not sure whether you have it in you to keep going as a Christian? Dead right. We have it in Jesus, and we are in Him, and he in us by his Spirit. Look to Jesus.

This is Christianity. We're not to search for the Disney hero within. We're not to embrace who we are. We're not to look for the silver lining. We're to look to Jesus, author and perfecter of our faith, who for the joy set before him, endured the cross, scorning its shame, and sat down at the right hand of the Father, where he always lives to intercede for us. If that is not true, we are the most pitiful fools in the universe.

Don't look in.

Look out!

Bish helpfully concludes with where this ends up - as we look to Christ, we get on with loving others. False spirituality, sin, is man curved in on himself. True religion, looking to a righteousness foreign to us in Christ, turns man out to love God and others.

Over-boiling it down

For a while now I've been summarising our basis for evangelism as two points:

Jesus is Lord, so we must worship Him.
This is the Bible's teaching come to a point: it starts with Genesis 1.1 - there is one Creator-sustainer God, and Psalm 96 which most clearly links this with the call-command for all the earth to worship Him. It comes to the peak in Jesus, that he is announced as Lord in His gospel, and is due worship. See Psalm 2. Sometimes this has been forgotten - pietism tended away from it towards personal me & my relationship with God piety which possibly de-emphasised the global, communal and holistic nature of Jesus' Lordship. But that Jesus is Lord isn't good news to rebellious, ungrateful creatures seeking independence and autonomy, seeking to establish their own righteousness and be their own lords! Some people have made Jesus is Lord out to be the good news in its entirity, but this is not good news to us. Thus our second material foundation:

Jesus is Saviour, so we can worship Him.
This is crucial to the good news! Such creatures as are called to worship God, in Jesus are saved to do so! It starts in Genesis 3 (well, it's agree to to the glory of God's grace well before then - Eph.1.4) with God taking rebellious, autonomy-seeking people he created to love, and clothing them to cover their shame having shed the blood of an innocent animal in their place. He doesn't announce to them His Lordship: that is all too clear. In grace He announces to them a Saviour, a serpent-crusher. Thus there is the possibility in Psalm 2: "Kiss the Son (enthroned as Lord over all), lest he be angry, and you perish in the way, for his wrath is quickly kindled. Blessed are all who take refuge in him."

Such good news I cannot possibly capture in a few paragraphs - and I was only seeking to sum up the foundation of the good news and our evangelism, not the whole thing. Yet easily we slip into reductionism. At the White Horse Inn they discussed N.T.Wright and "New Perspective on Paul" and this cropped up, in an enjoyable conversation.

We love old ladies

Ant is celebrating the value of the elderly in our churches. I'd just like to chime in: I'm so grateful for having been brought up in a church of mostly elderly ladies!

Get your own here

John Piper's talks from Forum are now available on desiringgod.org -
Ruth 1 - Sweet and bitter providence (My French relay worker asked what providence is: why did I not think to say, "God's providence is his completely holy, wise and powerful preserving and governing every creature and every action"? I'm out of practice...)
Ruth 2 - Under the Wings of God
Ruth 3 - Strategic Righteousness
Ruth 4 - May the Redeemer's name be renowned

From the World Service night,
As the Father has sent me...
...so send I you.

Pouring out your life in the mud

I sit in an old country house, the sun sinking over tree-fringed fields, with the buzz of students milling below around three large multicoloured marquees and a big top, and the strains of 'It is well with my soul' drifting up to the window in male four part harmony. I'm pretty sure the main voice is Welsh, and would hazard a guess at their being Relay workers. I'm not sure whether they're singing it referring to the weather we've been having, but it may well be significant that the previous song I heard coming from them so beautifully was of an anchor that keeps the soul safe and secure while the billows roll... The rain has been pouring down on the campsite since 750 student CU leaders arrived on Monday for their UCCF training conference, and some would say the defining feature of this year's Forum has been the general descent into mud (never seen the like) and the flooding of tents. But that has not been the defining feature of Forum. What I'll remember this Forum for, more than John Piper's Bible preaching, the big top worship, the workshop I led or the joys of going into it on the back of a week of Relay training conference; what I'll remember this Forum for is the joyful Spirit-ful gospel response of the students to their circumstances. Their neighbours' tent flooded: they serve them and clean up for them. They haven't grumbled or grown bitter. They've got on with joyfully receiving the word which is able to save their souls, and humbly serving each other. They may have bad nights of sleep but they refocus on their Saviour in the morning, praise Him, and love each other. Why? Do they not have rights? They've paid to come to this conference! The answer comes in the song that's now started to ascend from the impromptu Welsh-led quartet beneath my window, whose numbers seem to have swelled: "And can it be that I should gain an interest in the Saviour's blood? ... 'Tis mercy all! Let earth adore!" We have nothing of which to complain.

Bish, of course, is liveblogging Forum - notes on the talks and other miscellanies.