On the Importance of Reading Church History

“When I started reading (The Descent of the Dove by Charles) Williams, I was a sectarian, ‘related’ only to a small coterie of people who lived and thought and prayed like me.  When I finished, I was part of a congregation centuries deep and continents wide.” 

Eugene Peterson
Take and Read: Spiritual Reading--An Annotated List

Reducing the Bible to One Sentence

Dane Ortlund had a really neat post over at his blog today.  He asked a number of prominent pastors and theologians an interesting question and compiled their answers for our perusal.  The question: "What's the message of the Bible in one sentence?"

Among the answers I really enjoyed were the following:

Kevin DeYoung: A holy God sends his righteous Son to die for unrighteous sinners so we can be holy and live happily with God forever.

George Robertson: The Bible is the record of God's promise of and deliverance through Jesus Christ.

Jay Sklar: The first sentence that comes to mind is that of my colleague Michael D. Williams, who describes the Bible's story about the world as follows: God made it, we broke it, Jesus fixes it!

Erik Thoennes: The main message of the Bible is that the one true God is displaying his glory primarily in redeeming and restoring his fallen creation by fulfilling his covenant promises and commands through the glorious person and atoning work of Christ.

Doug Wilson: Scripture tells us the story of how a Garden is transformed into a Garden City, but only after a dragon had turned that Garden into a howling wilderness, a haunt of owls and jackals, which lasted until an appointed warrior came to slay the dragon, giving up his life in the process, but with his blood effecting the transformation of the wilderness into the Garden City.

You can read the whole post here.

Wednesday's Words of Wisdom

"From heaven to earth, rather than from earth to heaven, is the flow of movement and energy, the direction of travel that we see in Scripture.  The biblical hope is not one of man going to God.  It is not the story of the ascent of man.  Rather, it is the story of God coming to man, in man’s createdness, redeeming both man and the creation.  In short, the biblical hope is the descent of God."

Michael D. Williams
Far As the Curse Is Found, p. 281.

Joy to the World (part 2)

In Genesis 3:17-19, we read God's proclamation to Adam of the curse that is a result of his sin.  "Because you have listened to the voice of your wife and have eaten of the tree of which I commanded you, 'You shall not eat of it,' cursed is the ground because of you; in pain you shall eat of it all the days of your life; thorns and thistles it shall bring forth for you; and you shall eat the plants of the field. By the sweat of your face you shall eat bread, till you return to the ground, for out of it you were taken; for you are dust, and to dust you shall return."

Adam was originally created and placed by God in the Garden that he might tend it.  Work existed before the Fall and it was good.  We might struggle to understand this today, but that is because the very nature of work, just like all of creation, was dramatically changed as a result of Adam's sin.  What once was wholly good, became hard and painful and frustrating.  But this is not where the story ends.

As previous hymns in this series have suggested, God's plan of redemption is not just for the people he has created, but for his creation as a whole.  Often in the Church, we think of the ultimate goal of the Christian life as the escape from this world (to heaven).  But the Bible actually teaches a different thing.  It tells us in Revelation 21:1-3 that ultimately it is not we who will go to be with God in heaven, but rather, it is he who will bring heaven with him as he comes to be with us.

You see, Christ came to redeem his creation, that his redeemed people might eternally inhabit it.  One of my seminary professors, Michael Williams, has written, "To suggest that the sin of man so corrupted his creation that God cannot fix it but can only junk it in favor of some other world is to say that ultimately the kingdom of evil is more powerful than the kingdom of God.  It makes sin more powerful than redemption, and Satan the victor over God."

This Advent, let us remember that Christ came not only that I might be forgiven of my sins, but that I might one day live free of sin altogether.  And he came not to get rid of this creation, but ultimately to restore it to its original functionality, beauty and grandeur.  As Dr. Williams often said in class, God doesn't make junk, and God doesn't junk what he's made.  So it is that throughout Advent, and the rest of the year as well, we look forward to the great day of restoration when the words of the hymn will be realized,

No more let sin and sorrow grow,
Nor thorns infest the ground;
He comes to make his blessings flow
Far as the curse was found,
Far as the curse was found,
Far as, far as the curse was found.

Previous posts in this series:

O Come, O Come, Emmanuel (part 1)

O Come, O Come, Emmanuel (part 2)
O Little Town of Bethlehem 

God Rest Ye Merry Gentlemen

O Holy Night
Joy to the World (part 1)