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  • About Gospel Centric

    Gospel Centric is a place where I share my thoughts and ideas on the gospel, culture, and life and seek to equip and empower believers with Biblical resources and assorted posts from around the web.

    You are welcome to use the resources and I hope that you will be encouraged and equipped, as well as challenged and convicted by the content.

    I have many faults. Thankfully the gospel is true and Jesus is working on me, in me, and through me. This blog represents a journey to know the one true God, and Christ Jesus whom he has sent.

May 23 2011

The Perfection’s of God’s Transforming Word

Posted in Biblical Theology, HermaneuticsNo comments

What are the particular traits or characteristics of God’s Word that render it so useful a tool and so powerful a weapon in the hand of the Holy Spirit? Hebrews 4:12 and Psalm 19:7-9 address this question directly. From Hebrews 4:12, we learn that God’s Word is quick and powerful. From Psalm 19:7-9, we learn that God’s Word is perfect and sure; right, pure, and clean; true and righteous altogether.

First, God’s Word is quick and powerful. By quick is meant “living or imbued with life.” This life of the Word is no less than the life of God Himself, for as God is, so must His Word be. This life is also power and energy, power harnessed for work. The life of God’s Word is ordered and applied to the accomplishment of His purposes (Isa. 55:11). As living seed, God’s Word has power to bring froth fruit in the lives of believers, as described in the parable of the sower, where “the seed is the word of God” (Luke 8:11). Because the Word of God “liveth and abideth forever” (1 Pet. 1:23), it’s vitality and potency remain both unexhausted and undiminished through time. Believers discover with Martin Luther that “the Bible is alive, it speaks to me; it has feet, it runs after me; it has hands, it lays hold on me. The Bible is not antique, or modern. It is eternal.”

Second, God’s Word is perfect and sure. On the one hand, God’s Word is perfectly complete. It is everything God intends it to be. This is the organic perfection of the rose and not the mechanical perfection of, say, the internal-combustion engine. The one is perfect and complete at every stage of its unfolding; the other is the result of much trial and error by way of inventive effort. The unfolding history of redemption is also the unfolding history of revelation. At every point, God’s Word furnished believers with all they need for faith and life.

God’s Word is also free from any imperfection or blemish introduced by the hand of man. Because it is perfect, God’s Word is also sure. As a testimony of witness, it is true and trustworthy. God’s Word is sure as a revelation of what man is to believe concerning God and as a rule of what God requires of man. As Jehovah “changeth not” (Mal. 3:6), so His Word stands forever sure as truth unchanging and unchangeable. (Ps. 119:89)

Third, God’s Word is right, pure, and clean. Here is the Old Testament statement of the doctrine of biblical inerrancy. The Word is said to be right or straight because it does not deviate from perfect conformity to any just standard by which truth is measurable. The Word is pure as a pure light is clear and bright. Here is a lamp whose flame does not flicker and whose rays pierce to the depths of man’s darkness. The Word is clean because it is free from all corruption and from anything that corrupts or defiles.

Fourth, God’s Word is true and righteous altogether. More precisely, God’s Word is truth (Ps. 19:9; Jn. 17:17). It is a book of truth, with no admixture of falsehood or error. It is likewise a book of righteousness, through and through. It is righteous in what it demands from man as God’s creature and servant, righteous in the judgment it pronounces against all ungodliness and unrighteousness of men, and righteous in the promise it holds forth of justification by faith and peace with God through our Lord Jesus Christ.

-excerpt from chapter of same name in Sola Scriptura by Joel R. Beeke and Ray B. Lanning

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May 20 2011

Spiritual Muscle Development

Posted in Christian Living, Practical TheologyNo comments

Waiting always presents me with a spiritual choice-point. Will I allow myself to question God’s goodness and progressively grow weaker in faith, or will I embrace the opportunity of faith that God is giving me and build my spiritual muscles?

It’s so easy to question your belief system when you are not sure what God is doing. It’s so easy to give way to doubt when you are being called to wait. It’s so easy to forsake good habits and to take up habits of unfaith that weaken the muscles of the heart.

Let me suggest some habits of unfaith that cause waiting to be a time of increasing weakness rather than of building strength:

1. Giving way to doubt. There’s a fine line between the struggle to wait and giving way to doubt. When you are called to wait, you are being called to do something that wasn’t part of your plan and is therefore something that you struggle to see as good. Because you are convinced that what you want is right and good, it doesn’t seem loving that you are being asked to wait. You can see how tempting it is then to begin to consider questions of God’s wisdom, goodness, and love.

2. Giving way to anger. It’s very easy to look around and begin to think that the bad guys are being blessed and the good guys are getting hammered (see Psalm 73). There will be times when it simply doesn’t seem right that you have to wait for something that seems to be obviously good to you. It will feel that you are being wronged, and when it does, it seems right to be angry. Because of this, it’s important to understand that the anger you feel in these moments is more than anger with the people or circumstances that are the visible cause for your waiting. No, your anger is actually anger with the One who is in control of those people and those circumstances. You are actually giving way to thinking that you have been wronged by Him.

3. Giving way to discouragement. This is where I begin to let me heart run away with the “If only _____,” the “What if _____,” and the “What will happen if _____.” I begin to give my mind to thinking about what will happen if my request isn’t answered soon, or what in the world will happen if it’s not answered at all. This kind of meditation makes me feel that my life is out of control. Rather than my heart being filled with joy, my heart gets flooded with worry and dread. Free mental time is spent considering my dark future, with all the resulting discouragement that will always follow.

Giving way to envy. When I am waiting, it’s very tempting to look over the fence and wish for the life of someone who doesn’t appear to have been called to wait. It’s very easy to take on an “I wish I were that guy” way of living. You can’t give way to envy without questioning God’s wisdom and his love. Here is the logic: if God really loves you as much as he loves that other guy, you would have what the other guy has. Envy is about feeling forgotten and forsaken, coupled with a craving to have what your neighbor enjoys.

4. Giving way to inactivity. The result of giving way to all of these things is inactivity. If God isn’t as good and wise as I once thought he was, if he withholds good things from his children, and if he plays favorites, then why would I continue to pursue Him? Maybe all those habits of faith aren’t helping me after all; maybe I’ve been kidding myself.

Sadly, this is the course that many people take as they wait. Rather than growing in faith, their motivation for spiritual exercise is destroyed by doubt, anger, discouragement, and envy, and the muscles of faith that were once robust and strong are now atrophied and weak.

The reality of waiting is that it’s an expression of God’s goodness. He is wise and loving. His timing is always right and His focus isn’t so much on what you will experience and enjoy, but on what you will become. He is committed to using every tool at His disposal to rescue you from yourself and to shape you into the likeness of His Son. The fact is that waiting is one of his primary shaping tools.

Application:

Is God asking you to wait?
What is happening to your muscles?
So, how do you build your spiritual muscles during the wait?
What is the equipment in God’s gym of faith?

- excerpt from A Shelter in the Time of Storm by Paul David Tripp and originally posted here

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May 19 2011

When Christians Would Be Utterly Insane

Posted in PrayerNo comments

Extemporaneous moments in corporate worship are sometimes the parts that stick with us the most. One such moment came in John Piper’s concluding prayer of a recent sermon on John 8:30-36.

Lord, I want to be free. I want my desires so changed into accord with reality so that I can do what I want to do and never regret it. That’s what I want. And so I’m going hard after Jesus to change me, because many of my desires are stupid.

It occurs to me to say, Father, that we Christians would be utterly insane to envy people who pitch themselves out of the window of sin—on top of a skyscraper—to enjoy a vapor’s exhilaration of the freefall of greed, or the freefall of drugs, or power, or fame, or sex, or job success—and then death. We would just be insane to envy the world. Forgive us for our folly.

And right now I plead with you that everyone in the hearing of my voice would wake up from the dreamworld that says this kind of freefall is freedom. Catch us. Snatch us right now I pray.

And I pray this in the liberating name the one who said, “You will know the truth and truth shall you free. If the son shall set you free, you will be free indeed.” Amen.

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May 19 2011

Free Will, What Is It?

Posted in theologyNo comments

It is a way to retain a sense that we are active agents and not cosmic puppets. It is responding, in part, to those who take a strong position on God’s sovereignty. Especially when it comes to human wrongdoing, free will wants to tip the scales in favor of human agency and go lighter on God’s sovereignty.

How do we think biblically about it? Though seemingly innocent, free will suggests that there is a no man’s land between the kingdom of heaven and the realm of Satan’s darkness in which we have some autonomy. It leans toward deism, i.e., God is occasionally passive in dealing with world events. He is letting things run their course until he returns. In response, Scripture makes it clear that each person is responsible for his or her own sin, and sin certainly can have dire consequences on others. Yet the cross of Christ demonstrates that God will even use the evil of humanity to serve his purposes of bringing glory to himself. He is the sovereign God. The world is not merely billions of people exerting their free will. It is where God brings history to its certain climax.

-excerpt from an article, Biblical Counseling’s “Dirty” Words by Ed Welch

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May 19 2011

Tribal or Missional?

Posted in Christian Living, Church Life, Evangelism, Gospel, Practical TheologyNo comments

These two mindsets involve fundamentally different values. The highest value of a community with a tribal mindset is self-preservation. A tribal community exists solely for itself, and those within it keep asking, “How can we protect ourselves from those who are different from us?” A tribal mindset is marked by an unbalanced patriotism. It typically elevates personal and cultural preferences to absolute principles: If everybody were more like us, this world would be a better place.

But in a missional-minded community, teh highest value isn’t self-preservation but self-sacrifice. A missional community exists not primarily for itself but for others. It’s a community willing to be inconvenienced and discomforted, willing to expend itself for others on God’s behalf.

A tribal mindset is antithetical to the gospel. The gospel demands that we be missional, because the gospel is the story of God sacrificing himself for his enemies. The tribal mindset runs from his enemies; God and by extension – the missional mindset, runs toward their enemies. Tribal people serve themselves; God and the missional people serve the world.

Here’s the real tragedy: by nature, we’re all tribal, in the root sense of being fundamentally self-centered. We’re all convinced that if only everyone else was more like us, this world would enjoy smooth sailing. And because of that self-centeredness, our heart’s default mode is self-preservation, not self-sacrifice. Our hearts naturally drift toward self-righteousness.

And for that to change, we need to be gripped by the missional heart of God.

Reflection:

1. Do you see areas of unbalanced patriotism in your life?
2. In what ways do you find your personal and cultural principles shaping your worldview?
3. How do you see yourself defaulting toward self-preservation instead of self-sacrifice?
4. What opportunities exist around you where you could live self-sacrificially?
5. Are you willing to have your heart conformed to God’s missional heart?
6. What would that look like?

-excerpts from Suprised by Grace by Tullian Tchividjian

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