Blog, page 6

John Wesley, in his sermon Salvation by Faith on Ephesians 2:8 (italics mine):

[T]hat faith which the Apostles themselves had while our Lord was on earth… acknowledges the necessity and merit of his death, and the power of his resurrection. It acknowledges his death as the only sufficient means of redeeming man from death eternal, and his resurrection as the restoration of us all to life and immortality; inasmuch as he “was delivered for our sins, and rose again for our justification.” Christian faith is then, not only an assent to the whole gospel of Christ, but also a full reliance on the blood of Christ; a trust in the merits of his life, death, and resurrection; a recumbency upon him as our atonement and our life, as given for us, and living in us; and, in consequence hereof, a closing with him, and cleaving to him, as our “wisdom, righteousness, sanctification, and redemption,” or, in one word, our salvation.¹

Footnotes

1. (2011-09-01). The Great Books Reader, Excerpts and Essays on the Most Influential Books in Western Civilization (p. 473). Baker Publishing Group. Kindle Edition. ↩

John Stott in The Cross of Christ:

…[T]here is of course a great danger of presumption. This is partly because what actually happened when ‘God was reconciling the world to himself in Christ’ is a mystery whose depths we shall spend eternity plumbing; and partly because it would be most unseemly to feign a cool detachment as we contemplate Christ’s cross. For willy-nilly we are involved. Our sins put him there. So, far from offering us flattery, the cross undermines our self-righteousness. We can stand before it only with a bowed head and a broken spirit. And there we remain until the Lord Jesus speaks to our hearts his word of pardon and acceptance, and we, gripped by his love and brimful of thanksgiving, go out into the world to live our lives in his service.¹

Footnotes

1. Stott, John (2012-12-28). The Cross of Christ (p. 12). InterVarsity Press. Kindle Edition. ↩

Excerpt from Gregory of Nazianzus at Think Theology:

He was tempted as Man, but he conquered as God. He hungered, but he fed thousands. He thirsted, but he cried, “If any man thirst, let him come unto Me and drink.” He was wearied, but he is the Rest of them that are weary and heavy laden. He was heavy with sleep, but he walked lightly over the sea; he rebuked the winds, and he made Peter light as he began to sink.

Reminds me of Augustine’s Confessions:

Do greater things contain more of thee, and smaller things less? Or, is it not rather that thou art wholly present everywhere, yet in such a way that nothing contains thee wholly? . . . What, therefore, is my God? . . . most merciful and most just; most secret and most truly present . . . unchangeable, yet changing all things; never new, never old; making all things new . . . always working, ever at rest . . . seeking, and yet possessing all things. Thou dost love, but without passion . . . Yet, O my God, my life, my holy Joy, what is this that I have said? What can any man say when he speaks of thee?¹

Footnotes

1. (2011-09-01). The Great Books Reader, Excerpts and Essays on the Most Influential Books in Western Civilization (p. 105). Baker Publishing Group. Kindle Edition. ↩

John Perkins:

There is no alternative to these times. They develop our character and mold our calling. We have to go through a sifting process whereby God alone is the object of our desires, passions, and motives to serve. This process culminates in the refiner’s fire, where all the impurities are painfully burned from the metal until eventually there is the prize of pure, undefiled gold. I say these words not as one who has acquired this undefiled status but as one who is still being tried by the fire.

We do, of course, have One who has gone before. Jesus was despised and rejected. He did not manage his aloneness as super-God. No, he asked the disciples three times to stay awake with him as he pled for mercy. He screamed out in agony, “My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?”(Matt. 27:46), while the crowds looked on in shame and mocked this pitiful, naked criminal who went about claiming to be God. Three times he asked his friend Peter, “Do you really love me?”(John 21:15–17). Denied that love at his most vulnerable hour, Jesus pursued their friendship even after his resurrection.¹

Footnotes

1. Perkins, John (1993-07-01). Beyond Charity: The Call to Christian Community Development (pp. 175-176). Baker Publishing Group. Kindle Edition. ↩

Ben Sasse speaking about “what Washington has to do with Jerusalem:”

Increasingly, we live in an age when people want to project great meaning on politics. This won’t work. We live in a time when people want the dividing line — the Manichaean line between good and evil — to run between political parties. It’s not going to fulfill them. It’s not going to satisfy them. We live in an age that yearns for a city that has foundations; that’s normal, that’s natural…

Update: During the interview portion, Sasse is asked what’s been surprising as a senator. His response: “I’ve realized that if you say, ‘Washington shouldn’t be your god,’ that some people respond that they want to kill you. That’s a surprise.”

Great charts and data on the growing urban/rural political divide.

See also the most detailed election map ever. Forget county-level maps; with this one you can zoom all the way into a single precinct, see the actual number of votes, and the percentage breakdown between candidates.

CS Lewis:

If anything extraordinary seems to have happened, we can always say that we have been the victims of an illusion. If we hold a philosophy that excludes the supernatural, this is what we always shall say. What we learn from experience depends on the kind of philosophy we bring to experience. It is therefore useless to appeal to experience before we have settled, as well as we can, the philosophical question.¹

Footnotes

1. CS Lewis, Miracles, pp. 1-2 ↩

Relevant Magazine on the growth of churches and Christianity in New York City over the last 20 years:

“I’ve never seen so many pastors collaborate with each other—they’re sharing encouragement, strategy, communication,” Cabrera says. “Everybody is now realizing that God didn’t assign one church to reach the whole city.”

Kelsey echoes Cabrera’s sentiment. “New Yorkers are leading the way in terms of church unity,” he says. “They really want to see each other’s ministries succeed. We actually are for each other. If we want to see this city saved, to look like His kingdom … we would need a hundred Redeemer Presbyterians, a hundred Hillsongs.”

Update: Also, listen to this conversation with Tim Keller on gospel movements.

Breakpoint:

Rod Dreher’s “The Benedict Option” is one of the most anticipated and talked-about Christian books in recent memory. How do Christians carry on and live out the faith in this “new Dark Age,” as Dreher puts it? We’ve asked leading Christian writers and thinkers to share their thoughts on “The Benedict Option.”

I haven’t yet read Dreher’s book, but the opinions expressed in these reflections vary widely.

Update: Andy Crouch gives one of the clearest and most succinct summaries of “BenOp” and its controversy.

Another update:“Ten theses” on BenOp from Andrew Wilson.

Two of today’s best thinkers in one forum:

Watch on YouTube

As a Green Bay fan, it pains me to post something about a loss, but this is too weird to pass up:

On December 15, [1929] the week after the NFL season ended, the Green Bay Packers, undefeated NFL champions, came to town for what they expected to be an easy exhibition game. After all, opponents had scored only three touchdowns against the Packers all season. But Saunders and Maxwell had been negotiating a surprise. When the NFL season ended, Saunders paid two league players to come to Memphis. One of them was Joe Kopcha from the Chicago Bears. 8000 fans jammed the stadium and the sidelines.

h/t my mom

The Atlas of ReUrbanism:

The Atlas of ReUrbanism is an evolving and expanding tool, allowing users to explore the built environment of American cities, block by block. Using our maps, you can interact with data on your city’s built assets, and click to layer demographic, economic, and environmental data from the U.S. Census, American Community Survey, and more. The maps focus on the Character Score for buildings and blocks across 50 U.S. cities…

Ambitious project that attempts to quantify and visualize the qualitative character of neighborhoods.

Richard Florida maps the economies of cities relative to nations:

Although it’s common to rate and rank the economic power of nations—think of all the articles you’ve read about China catching up with and eventually overtaking the United States in terms of GDP—the real economic power centers of the world economy are cities and metro areas.

To put that into perspective, let’s look at how the economies of the world’s largest metros match up to national economies.

James Sharp walks through some verses in the book of Proverbs on the subject of “reproof:”

In a sense, reproof presents a fork in the road for a sinful heart. Will we cringe at correction, like a curse? Or will we embrace rebuke as a blessing?

Made me think of this piece by Conor Friedersdorf in the Atlantic.

Andrew Wilson on “vision” in a local church:

Hopefully, of course, the vision you have and the vision you say you have are the same. But in my experience they often aren’t.

How do you tell whether the vision you (or they) say you have is the vision you (or they) actually have? Well: the vision you say you have is the one on your website, poster, flyer, bulletin, billboard, projector screen, video, order of service or whatever else you do. That much seems clear. The vision you actually have, though it is not as immediately obvious, can fairly easily be identified by asking five questions.