Category Archives: Gospel

→ 5 reflections from a life-time

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Paul Barnett—New Testament scholar, author, former bishop of North Sydney—on 5 epiphanies he has had over his 55 years of being a Christian regarding the historical reliability of the New Testament.

So why are these men who fill the pages of Josephus forgotten today and Jesus is a household word?  It’s because history is full of people who blaze briefly like comets and are then forgotten.  But Jesus claimed to be the Son of Man who forgave sins, who healed the sick and raised the dead, who entered Jerusalem as its Messiah-king, whose teaching on love and forgiveness was profound and unheard of, and who himself was resurrected from the dead.  Without the resurrection Jesus would have been just another mistaken prophet whose death guaranteed his relegation to obscurity, like the shadowy figure of the Teacher of Righteousness, the founder of the Dead Sea Sect, whose name we do not even know.

As Paul concludes, “I could not reject the historical reliability of the New Testament, even if I wanted to”.

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A son for sacrifice

Thought, Sola Panel

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It’s nearly Christmas. My children read stories about lambs and donkeys visiting a baby, but the story I’m up to my Bible reading plan shows the season in a different light…

Rembrandt: The sacrifice of Isaac (detail)

How strange Genesis 22 has always seemed to me. Why would God ask Abraham to sacrifice his son? What kind of Father asks another father to kill his child? Did Sarah know what was going to happen as her husband and son left that day? What psychological scars did Isaac carry into adulthood? (A very modern question, I know.)

What did it cost Abraham to take each step on that three-day journey? (more…)

→ Moral imperatives

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Frank Turk:

… it’s one of those stories where all manner of addled thinking comes to the surface from everyone on the spectrum of lifestyle blogging—from the secular liberals and conservatives to the panoply of Christian bloggers in the weird polygon of ideas bounded by points produced by mixing the adjectives “conservative,” “liberal,” “radical,” “progressive,” “traditional,” “biblical,” and “missional,” with the proper noun “Christian.”

[…]

Dear Son,

Since you have made your confession about your situation, let me confess mine: I have never really been a good man at all. I could make a list here of all the times I have failed you, and your mother, and your siblings, and my employer, and the elders at church, and so on — but I’ll bet you can make that list also. You may remember some things I have forgotten, and I’ll simply stipulate to the entire exercise. I want you to know that I know I am not a good man, and I come to this problem we now face as a man who, at the end of the day, can’t advise you from the moral high ground.
I can only advise you, my son, as a man who has spent his life utterly at the mercy of Jesus Christ.

Turk only really gets going in the second half of the post, so stick with it, because it’s got a twist in the end.

 

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Stop preaching only to the choir?

Pastoral Ministry, Sola Panel

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It’s hard to manage expectations about how much our regular church meetings are for evangelism!

Last weekend, I received this feedback from a very mature and committed member, via our comment cards.
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The Agony

Life, Sola Panel

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Some people would call me aesthetically challenged: I don’t know much about art and music and poetry and literature—but I know what I like. And I’m more a low-brow sort of guy, crime fiction rather than the English classics. (more…)

Teaching our kids Two Ways to Live

Everyday Ministry, Life, Sola Panel

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by Andy, age 5

The other day, my husband Steve told our four children to grab a piece of paper and a pen. Then he rolled out those old, familiar words: “God is the loving ruler of the world…”.

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Two love stories – or three

Life, Sola Panel

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flickr: kelsey_lovefusionphoto

‘Every adult life is defined by two great love stories,’ writes author and philosopher Alain de Botton. On the one hand, there is our well-charted quest for romantic love, and on the other, our quest for love from the world (‘a more secret and shameful tale’). In his book Status Anxiety, de Botton argues this second love story ‘is no less intense than the first…and its setbacks are no less painful.’

-From Candice Chung’s article Finding success later in life in Sunday Life magazine, July 10th, 2011.

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Unlovely

Life, Sola Panel

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flickr: gogoloopie

Sometimes I feel so unlovely.

Sometimes it rises up and sickens me: the horror of my lovelessness, the ugliness of my self-absorption, the scandal of my greed. How God hates my impurity and despises my pride and abhors my complaining (Psalm 26:5; Proverbs 6:16-19; 1 Cor 10:10; Ephesians 5:5).

I’m left gasping for breath, as if the possibility of God’s love has been sucked from the air. My sudden self-awareness squeezes out any sense of God’s grace. Stripped of my defences, I’m naked, ashamed, exposed.

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Are we devoted to the public reading of Scripture? Part 8: ‘Public’ reading

Pastoral Ministry

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Until I come, devote yourself to the public reading of Scripture, to exhortation, to teaching. (1 Tim 4:13)

This is the final post in Scott’s series on the public reading of Scripture. You may want to read the first part, the second part, the third part, the fourth part, the fifth part, the sixth part, or the seventh part of this series.

As we move into the last post in this series, I want us to finally ask what ‘public’ reading involves.

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Are we devoted to the public reading of Scripture? Part 7: Why we must

Pastoral Ministry

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Until I come, devote yourself to the public reading of Scripture, to exhortation, to teaching. (1 Tim 4:13)

This is the seventh post in Scott’s series on the public reading of Scripture. You may want to read the first part, the second part, the third part, the fourth part, the fifth part and the sixth part of this series.

We are in deeply serious trouble if I have to justify the need for devotion to the public reading of Scripture. They sound like fighting words, don’t they? But they’re not. They’re words of plea, with tears in my eyes, that you let God be heard. He doesn’t need us of course, but surely the sheep who know their shepherd’s voice would want to hear that voice as often as they can.

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Are we devoted to the public reading of Scripture? Part 6: Where do we expect God to work?

Pastoral Ministry

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Until I come, devote yourself to the public reading of Scripture, to exhortation, to teaching. (1 Tim 4:13)

This is the sixth post in Scott’s series on the public reading of Scripture. You may want to read the first part, the second part, the third part, the fourth part, and the fifth part of this series.

In my last post, I made one observation about why we perhaps don’t change in this matter: fear. There is another, although not one I say easily. It’s a simple reason, if appalling; perhaps some aren’t devoted to the public reading of Scripture because they no longer believe it’s worthwhile. The next post will dwell much on the infinite worth of reading the Bible to each other. But first, to our possible unbelief.

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Are we devoted to the public reading of Scripture? Part 5: Why we aren’t

Pastoral Ministry

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Until I come, devote yourself to the public reading of Scripture, to exhortation, to teaching. (1 Tim 4:13)

This is the fifth post in Scott’s series on the public reading of Scripture. You may want to read the first part, the second part, the third part or the fourth part of this series.

We’ve already touched on some reasons why we may not be devoted to the public reading of Scripture, especially in the second post. Nevertheless, in this fifth post, I want to draw some of these out and push us further.

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Are we devoted to the public reading of Scripture? Part 4: ‘Devotion’ in readers and the church

Pastoral Ministry

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Until I come, devote yourself to the public reading of Scripture, to exhortation, to teaching. (1 Tim 4:13)

This is the fourth post in Scott’s series on the public reading of Scripture. You may want to read the first part, the second part or the third part of this series.

In this fourth post, we turn to think about the implications of devotion to the public reading of Scripture for readers and congregations.

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