Notes on *Gentle and Lowly*

Gentle and Lowly: The Heart of Christ for Sinners and Sufferers, Dane Ortlund (Crossway, 2020)

Main Idea/Takeaway

The heart of Jesus, according to his own testimony, is gentle and lowly to all who cry to him for help, which cannot be over-celebrated or too exaggerated.

• “Gentle and lowly" This, according to his own testimony, is Christ's very heart. This is who he is. Tender. Open. Welcoming. Accommodating. Understanding. Willing. If we are asked to say only one thing about who Jesus is, we would be honoring Jesus's own teaching if our answer is, gentle and lowly." (21)

• “This is the one whose deepest heart is, more than anything else, gentle and lowly.” (24)

Interaction

• "Miracles are the only truly natural thing in a world fallen to unnatural, demonized." (31)

• "Jesus has felt the full force of our temptation because he endured it unto purity whereas we give in. Jesus endured temptation all the way to purity, thus enduring temptation longer, more fully." (48)

• "This truth changes everything in our experience of pain." (50)

• "I see the grammatical similarity, but what is the implication? Co-suffer/restrained passion?" (52)

• "Our places of most severe brokenness are the places where Jesus is most strongly drawn." (83)

• "'Most humble' In what moment was he most humble? The cross. Humility is not a virtue for tranquility, but for chaos." (97)

• "We must understand anger as a form of love- a defense of our loves against threats." (109)

• "God with us became God in us." (124)

• "His anger requires provocation." (148)

• "What are the implications here for how to treat fellow Christians who differ on convictions? We may disagree with them, but they are so loved by God. Tread carefully with God's beloved." (173)

• "Best page in the book!" (179)

• "Oh to see the brethren this way!" (187)

• "Good Friday meditation" (200)

• "Crucial qualification" (204)

• "All good things do not come to an end, because the best of things will last forever and only get better throughout eternity." (213)

• "On applying to life." (215)

Table of Contents

Introduction

I. His Very Heart

II. His Heart in Action

III. The Happiness of Christ

IV. Able to Sympathize

V. He Can Deal Gently

VI. I Will Never Cast Out

VII. What Our Sins Evoke

VIII. To the Uttermost

IX. An Advocate

X. The Beauty of the Heart of Christ

XI. The Emotional Life of Christ

XII. A Tender Friend

XIII. Why the Spirit?

XIV. Father of Mercies

XV. His "Natural" Work and His "Strange" Work

XVI. The Lord, the Lord

XVII. His Ways Are Not Our Ways

XVIII. Yearning Bowels

XIX. Rich in Mercy

XX. Our Law-ish Hearts, His Lavish Heart

XXI. He Loved Us Then; He'll Love Us Now

XXII. To the End

XXIII. Buried in His Heart Forevermore

Epilogue

Favorite Quotes by Chapter

Introduction

• “This is a book about the heart of Christ. Who is he? Who is he really? What is most natural to him? What ignites within him most immediately as he moves toward sinners and sufferers? What flows out most freely, most instinctively? Who is he?” (13)

• “We are not focusing centrally on what Christ has done. We are considering who he is. The two matters are bound up together and indeed interdependent. But they are distinct. The gospel offers us not only legal exoneration--in-violably precious truth! -it also sweeps us into Christ's very heart.” (15)

I. His Very Heart

• “One thing to get straight right from the start is that when the Bible speaks of the heart, whether Old Testament or New, it is not speaking of our emotional life only but of the central animating center of all we do.” (18)

• “The point in saying that Jesus is lowly is that he is accessible. For all his resplendent glory and dazzling holiness, his supreme uniqueness and otherness, no one in human history has ever been more approachable than Jesus Christ. No prerequisites. No hoops to jump through.” (20)

• “You don't need to unburden or collect yourself and then come to Jesus. Your very burden is what qualifies you to come. No payment is required; he says, "I will give you rest." His rest is gift, not transaction.” (21)

• “This is not who he is to everyone, indiscriminately. This is who he is for those who come to him, who take his yoke upon them, who cry to him for help.” (21)

II. His Heart in Action

• “But the dominant note left ringing in our ears after reading the Gospels, the most vivid and arresting element of the portrait, is the way the Holy Son of God moves toward, touches, heals, embraces, and forgives those who least deserve it yet truly desire it.” (27)

• “The Jesus given to us in the Gospels is not simply one who loves, but one who is love; merciful affections stream from his innermost heart as rays from the sun.” (27)

• “This is deeper than saying Jesus is loving or merciful or gracious. The cumulative testimony of the four Gospels is that when Jesus Christ sees the fallenness of the world all about him, his deepest impulse, his most natural instinct, is to move toward that sin and suffering, not away from it.” (30)

• "When Jesus, the Clean One, touched an unclean sinner, Christ did not become unclean. The sinner became clean." (31)

• "We are so used to a fallen world that sickness, disease, pain, and death seem natural. In fact, they are the interruption." (31)

• "The New Testament teaches that we are united to Christ, a union so intimate that whatever our own body parts do, Christ's body can be said to do (1 Cor. 6:15-1). Jesus Christ is closer to you today than he was to the sinners and sufferers he spoke with and touched in his earthly ministry." (33)

III. The Happiness of Christ

• “He drew near to us in the incarnation so that his joy and ours could rise and fall together-his in giving mercy, ours in receiving it.” (37)

• “We tend to think that when we approach Jesus for help in our need and mercy amid our sins, we somehow detract from him, lessen him, impoverish him. Goodwin argues otherwise. Jesus surprises us in "exercising acts of grace, and from his continual doing good unto and for his members ... from his filling them with all mercy, grace, comfort, and felicity, himself becoming yet more full, by filling them."4 As truly God, Christ cannot become any more full; he shares in his Father's immortal, eternal, unchangeable fullness. Yet as truly man, Christ's heart is not drained by our coming to him; his heart is filled up all the more by our coming to him.” (38)

• “When we today partake of that atoning work, coming to Christ for forgiveness, communing with him despite our sinfulness, we are laying hold of Christ's own deepest longing and joy.” (40)

IV. Able to Sympathize

• “The reason that Jesus is in such close solidarity with us is that the difficult path we are on is not unique to us.” (47)

• “That enticing * temptation, that sore trial, that bewildering perplexity- he has been there. Indeed, his utter purity suggests that he has felt these pains more acutely than we sinners ever could.” (48)

• “One is that Jesus's sinlessness means that he knows temptation better than we ourselves do. C. S. Lewis made this point by speaking of a man walking against the wind. Once the wind of temptation gets strong enough, the man lies down, giving in-and thus not knowing what it would have been like ten minutes later. Jesus never lay down; he endured all our temptations and testings without ever giving in. He therefore knows the strength of temptation better than any of us. Only he truly knows the cost." (49)

• “He himself is not trapped in the hole of sin with us; he alone can pull us out. His sinlessness is our salvation.” (49)

• “Not only can he alone pull us out of the hole of sin; he alone desires to climb in and bear our burdens. Jesus is able to sympathize.” (49)

• “If you are in Christ, you have a Friend who, in your sorrow, will never lob down a pep talk from heaven. He cannot bear to hold himself at a distance. Nothing can hold him back. His heart is too bound up with yours.” (50)

V. He Can Deal Gently

• “What elicits tenderness from Jesus is not the severity of the sin but whether the sinner comes to him. Whatever our offense, he deals gently with us. If we never come to him, we will experience a judgment so fierce it will be like a double-edged sword coming out of his mouth at us (Rev. 1:16; 2:12; 19:15, 21). If we do come to him, as fierce as his lion-like judgment would have been against us, so deep will be his lamb-like tenderness for us (cf. Rev. 5:5-6; Isa. 40:10-11). We will be enveloped in one or the other. To no one will Jesus be neutral.” (54)

• “This very care, this gentle dealing with all kinds of sinners, is what is most natural to him. Owen goes on to say that Christ "does not, in his dealings with us, more properly or more fully set out any property of his nature than he does his compassion, long-suffering, and forbearance."4 In other words, when Jesus "deals gently" with us, he is doing what is most fitting and natural to him.” (56)

• “Our sinfulness runs so deep that a tepid measure of gentleness from Jesus would not be enough; but as deep our sinfulness runs, ever deeper runs his gentleness.” (56)

• “Contrary to what we expect to be the case, therefore, the deeper into weakness and suffering and testing we go, the deeper Christ's solidarity with us. As we go down into pain and anguish, we are descending ever deeper into Christ's very heart, not away from it.” (57)

VI. I Will Never Cast Out

• “So with Christ. We cling to him, to be sure. But our grip is that of a two-year-old amid the stormy waves of life. His sure grasp never falters. Psalm 63:8 expresses the double-sided truth: "My soul clings to you; your right hand upholds me.” (65)

• “We have come, more deeply, to the doctrine of the perseverance of the heart of Christ. Yes, professing Christians can fall away, proving that they were never truly in Christ. Yes, once a sinner is united to Christ, there is nothing that can dis-unite them. But within the skeletal structure of these doctrines, what is the beating heart of God, made tangible in Christ? What is most deeply instinctive to him as our sins and sufferings pile up? What keeps him from growing cold? The answer is, his heart.” (66)

VII. What Our Sins Evoke

• “But the grace of God comes to us no more and no less than Jesus Christ comes to us. In the biblical gospel we are not given a thing; we are given a person.” (69)

• “If you are part of Christ's own body, your sins evoke his deepest heart, his compassion and pity. He "takes part with you"-that is, he's on your side. He sides with you against your sin, not against you because of your sin. He hates sin. But he loves you. We understand this, says Goodwin, when we consider the hatred a father has against a terrible disease afflicting his child--the father hates the disease while loving the child. Indeed, at some level the presence of the disease draws out his heart to his child all the more.” (71)

• “God is not a platonic ideal, immovably austere, beyond the reach of meaningful human engagement. God is free of all fallen emotion, but not all emotion (or feeling) whatsoever--where do our own emotions come from, we who are made in his image?” (74)

• “The Bible says that when God looks at his people's sinfulness, his transcendent holiness-

  -his God-ness, his very divinity, that about God which makes him not us--is what makes him unable to come down on his people in wrath.” (74)

• “The sins of those who belong to God open the floodgates of his heart of compassion for us. The dam breaks. It is not our loveliness that wins his love. It is our unloveliness.” (75)

VIII. To the Uttermost

• “It is the most counterintuitive aspect of Christianity, that we are declared right with God not once we begin to get our act together but once we collapse into honest acknowledgment that we never will.” (78)

• “And the present manifestation of his heart for his people is his constant interceding on their behalf.” (79)

• “What then does it mean for Christ to intercede? Who are the parties involved? God the Father, on the one hand, and we believers, on the other. But why would Jesus need to intercede for us? After all, haven't we been completely justified already? What is there for Christ to plead on our behalf? Hasn't he already done all that is needed to fully acquit us? In other words, does the doctrine of Christ's heavenly intercession mean that something was left incomplete in his atoning work on the cross? If we speak of the finished work of Christ on the cross, does the doctrine of intercession suggest that the cross was actually left unfinished? The answer is that intercession applies what the atonement accomplished. Christ's present heavenly intercession on our behalf is a reflection of the fullness and victory and completeness of his earthly work, not a reflection of anything lacking in his earthly work. The atonement accomplished our salvation; intercession is the moment-by-moment application of that atoning work.” (79)

• “Intercession is the constant hitting "refresh" of our justification in the court of heaven.” (80)

• “The Son's intercession does not reflect the coolness of the Father but the sheer warmth of the Son.” (80)

• “But the Father's own deepest delight is to say yes to the Son's pleading on our behalf.” (80)

• “To the uttermost" in Hebrews 7:25 means: God's forgiving, redeeming, restoring touch reaches down into the darkest crevices of our souls, those places where we are most ashamed, most defeated. More than this: those crevices of sin are themselves the places where Christ loves us the most. His heart willingly goes there. His heart is most strongly drawn there.” (83)

• “This is the explicit acknowledgment that we Christians are ongoing sinners. Christ continues to intercede on our behalf in heaven because we continue to fail here on earth. He does not forgive us through his work on the cross and then hope we make it the rest of the way.” (84)

IX. An Advocate

• “To come to the Father without an advocate is hopeless. To be allied with an advocate, one who came and sought me out rather than waiting for me to come to him, one who is righteous in all the ways I am not--this is calm and confidence before the Father.” (89)

• “Your salvation is not merely a matter of a saving formula, but of a saving person. When you sin, his strength of resolve rises all the higher. When his brothers and sisters fail and stumble, he advocates on their behalf because it is who he is. He cannot bear to leave us alone to fend for ourselves.” (91)

X. The Beauty of the Heart of Christ

• "Everything that is lovely in God is in Christ, and everything that 15 or can be lovely in any man is in him: for he is man as well as God, and he is the holiest, meekest, most humble, and every way the most excellent man that ever was." (97)

• “In our churches today we often refer to the glory of God and the glory of Christ. But what is it about God's glory that draws us in and causes us to conquer our sins and makes us radiant people? Is it the sheer size of God, a consideration of the immensity of the universe and thus of the Creator, a sense of God's transcendent greatness, that pulls us toward him? No, Edwards would say; it is the loveliness of his heart. It is, he says, a "sight of the divine beauty of Christ, that bows the wills, and draws the hearts of men. A sight of the greatness of God in his attributes, may overwhelm men.” (97)

• “Seeing only his greatness, "the enmity and opposition of the heart, may remain in its full strength, and the will remain inflexible; whereas, one glimpse of the moral and spiritual glory of God, and supreme amiableness of Jesus Christ, shining into the heart, overcomes and abolishes this opposition, and inclines the soul to Christ, as it were, by an omnipotent power." (98)

• “In other words, when we come to Christ, we are startled by the beauty of his welcoming heart. The surprise is itself what draws us in.” (98)

• "There is no love so great and so wonderful as that which is in the heart of Christ." How might we, in our own way and time, do the same?” (100)

• “But at the center, our job is to show our kids that even our best love is a shadow of a greater love. To put a sharper edge on it: to make the tender heart of Christ irresistible and unforgettable. Our goal is that our kids would leave the house at eighteen and be unable to live the rest of their lives believing that their sins and sufferings repel Christ." (100)

• “But there's something he has shown me that runs even deeper than truth about God, and that is the heart of God, proven in Christ, the friend of sinners. Dad made that heart beautiful to me He didn't crowbar me into that; he drew me in.” (101)

XI. The Emotional Life of Christ

• “The Son of God clothed himself with humanity and will never unclothe him-self. He became a man and always will be. This is the significance of the doctrine of Christ's ascension: he went into heaven with the very body, reflecting his full humanity, that was raised out of the tomb.” (103)

• “One implication of this truth of Christ's permanent humanity is that when we see the feeling and passions and affections of the incarnate Christ toward sinners and sufferers as given to us in the four Gospels, we are seeing who Jesus is for us today.” (104)

• “Our emotions are diseased by the fall, of course, just as every part of fallen humanity is affected by the fall. But emotions are not themselves a result of the fall. Jesus experienced the full range of emotions that we do (Heb. 2:17; 4:15).” (104)

• “Yes, Jesus pronounced searing denunciations on those who cause children to sin, saying it would be a better fate if they were drowned (Matt. 18:6), not because he gleefully enjoys torturing the wicked but most deeply because he loves little children. It is his heart of love, not a gleeful exacting of justice, that rises up from his soul to elicit such a fearsome pronouncement of woe.” (109)

• “What we are saying is that, yes, Christ got angry and still gets angry, for he is the perfect human, who loves too much to remain indifferent. And this righteous anger reflects his heart, his tender compassion. But because his deepest heart is tender compassion, he is the quickest to get angry and feels anger most furiously- and all without a hint of sin tainting that anger.” (110)

• “While Christ is a lion to the impenitent, he is a lamb to the penitent--the reduced, the open, the hungry, the desiring, the confessing, the self-effacing. He hates with righteous hatred all that plagues you.” (111)

• “As you consider those who have wronged you, let Jesus be angry on your behalf. His anger can be trusted. For it is an anger that springs from his compassion for you. The indignation he felt when he came upon mistreatment of others in the Gospels is the same indignation he feels now in heaven upon mistreatments of you.” (112)

XII. A Tender Friend

• “The very two groups of people whom Jesus is accused of befriending in Matthew 11 are those who can't stay away from him in Luke 15. They are at ease around him. They sense something different about him.” (114)

• “In Jesus Christ, we are given a friend who will always enjoy rather than refuse our presence.” (115)

• “To be sure, Christ is indeed our ruler, our authority, the one to whom all allegiance and obedience are reverently due. Sibbes reminds us of that explicitly as he reflects on the friendship of Christ ("As he is our friend, so he is our king."). But equally, and perhaps less obvious or intuitive to us, the condescension of God in the person of his Son means that he approaches us on our own terms and befriends us for both his and our mutual delight.” (119)

XIII. Why the Spirit?

• “The Spirit takes what we read in the Bible and believe on paper about Jesus's heart and moves it from theory to reality, from doctrine to experience.” (122)

• “What is the advantage of the Spirit coming? The natural reading is that he will rectify something that is wrong. And what is wrong? "Sorrow has filled your heart" John 16:6). Apparently the coming of the Spirit will do the opposite: fill their hearts with joy. The Spirit replaces sorrow with joy.” (123)

• “The Spirit is the continuation of the heart of Christ for his people after the departure of Jesus to heaven.” (123)

• “All that we see and hear of the gracious heart of Jesus in his earthly life will, during his ascended state, enter into the consciousness of his people as experiential reality.” (125)

XIV. Father of Mercies

• “The key is to understand that at the level of legal acquittal, the Father's wrath had to be assuaged in order for sinners to be brought back into his favor, but at the level of his own internal desire and affection, he was as eager as the Son for this atonement to take place. Objectively, the Father was the one needing to be placated; subjectively, his heart was one with the Son. We err when we draw conclusions about who he is subjectively based on what needed to happen objectively.” (128)

• “What should come into our mind when we think about God The triune God is three in one, a fountain of endless mercies extending to, meeting, and over-flowingly providing for us in all our many needs and failures and wanderings. This is who he is, Father no less than Son, Son no less than Father.” (132)

• “He is the tangible epitomization of God. Jesus Christ is the visible manifestation of the invisible God (2 Cor. 4:4, 6).” (133)

• “When we see the heart of Christ, then, throughout the four Gospels, we are seeing the very compassion and tenderness of who God himself most deeply is.” (133)

XV. His "Natural" Work and His "Strange" Work

• “Jesus provides new sharpness to who God is, but not fundamentally new content.” (135)

• “But when he comes to show mercy, to manifest that it is his nature and disposition, it is said that he does it with his whole heart. There is nothing at all in him that is against it. The act itself pleases him for itself. There is no reluctance in him.” (139)

• “Theologians speak of God's simplicity, by which we mean that God is not the sum total of a number of attributes, like pieces of a pie making a whole pie; rather, God is every attribute perfectly. God does not have parts. He is just. He is wrathful. He is good. And so on, each in endless perfection.” (140)

• “God is unswervingly just. But what is his disposition? What is he on the edge of his seat eager to do? Ir you catch me off guard, what will leap out of me before I have time to regain composure will likely be grouchiness. If you catch God off guard, what leaps out most freely is blessing. The impulse to do good. The desire to swallow us up in joy." (140)

• “For God to be merciful is for God to be God. Left to our own natural intuitions about God, we will conclude that mercy is his strange work and judgment his natural work. Rewiring our vision of God as we study the Scripture, we see, helped by the great teachers of the past, that judgment is his strange work and mercy his natural work.” (144)

XVI. The Lord, the Lord

• “When we speak of God's glory, we are speaking of who God is, what he is like, his distinctive resplendence, what makes God God. And when God himself sets the terms on what his glory is, he surprises us into wonder.” (147)

• “The bent of God's heart is mercy. His glory is his goodness. His glory is his lowliness. "Great is the glory of the LoRD. For though the Lord is high, he regards the lowly" (Ps. 138:5-6).” (147)

• “But not once are we told that God is "provoked to love" or "provoked to mercy." His anger requires provocation; his mercy is pent up, ready to gush forth.” (148)

• "Keeping steadfast love for thousands." This could equally be translated "keeping steadfast love to a thousand generations," as is explicitly stated in Deuteronomy 7:9: "Know therefore that the LORD your God is God, the faithful God who keeps covenant and steadfast love with those who love him and keep his commandments, to a thousand generations." This does not mean that his goodness shuts off with generation number 1,001. It is God's own way of saying. There is no termination date on my commitment to you. You can't get rid of my grace to you. You can't outrun my mercy. You can't evade my goodness. My heart is set on you.” (149)

XVII. His Ways Are Not Our Ways

• “So God tells us in plain terms how tiny our natural views of his heart are. His thoughts are not our thoughts. His ways are not our ways. And not because we're just a few degrees off. No, "as high as the heavens are above the earth"-a Hebrew way of expressing spatial infinitude-_-"so are my ways higher than your ways and my thoughts than your thoughts" (v. 9). In verse 8 God says his ways and ours are different; in verse 9 he gets more specific and says his thoughts are higher. It's as if God is saying in verse 8 that he and we think very differently, whereas in verse 9 he is saying precisely how, namely, his "thoughts" (the Hebrew word doesn't merely mean 'passing mental reflection" but "plans," " devices," "intentions," "purposes") are higher, grander, enveloped in a compassion for which we fallen sinners have no natural category.” (158)

• “There is indeed a great distance between God and us; we think small thoughts of God's heart, but he knows his heart is inviolably, expansively, invincibly set on us.”(159)

• “He intends to restore you into the radiant resplendence for which you were created. And that is dependent not on you keeping yourself clean but on you taking your mess to him. He doesn't limit himself to working with the unspoiled parts of us that remain after a lifetime of sinning. His power runs so deep that he is able to redeem the very worst parts of our past into the most radiant parts of our future. But we need to take those dark miseries to him.” (161)

XVIII. Yearning Bowels

• “Whom do you perceive him to be, in your sin and your suffer-ing? Who do you think God is-_-not just on paper but in the kind of person you believe is hearing you when you pray? How does he feel about you? His saving of us is not cool and calculating. It is a matter of yearning not yearning for the Facebook you, the you that you project to everyone around you. Not the you that you wish you were. Yearning for the real you. The you underneath everything you present to others.” (166)

• “Out of his heart flows mercy; out of ours, reluctance to receive it.” (166)

• “If the intensity of love maps onto the intensity of misery in the one beloved, and if our greatest misery is our sinfulness, then God's most intense love flows down to us in our sinfulness. Yes, God has hatred, Goodwin says--toward sin. And the combination of love for us plus hatred for sin equals the most omnipotent certainty possible that he will see us through to final liberation from sin and unfiltered basking in his own joyous heart for us one day.” (168)

XIX. Rich in Mercy

• “It means the Christian life is a lifelong shedding of tepid thoughts of the goodness of God. In his justice, God is exacting; in his mercy, God is overflowing.” (172)

• “But if he is essentially merciful, then for him to pour out mercy is for him to act in accord with who he is. It is simply for him to be God. When God shows mercy, he is acting in a way that is true to himself.” (173)

• “Perhaps you carry a pain that will never heal till you are dead. If my life is any evidence of the mercy of God in Christ, you might think, I'm not impressed. To you I say, the evidence of Christ's mercy toward you is not your life. The evidence of his mercy toward you is his--mistreated, misunderstood, betrayed, abandoned. Eternally. In your place. If God sent his own Son to walk through the valley of condemnation, rejection, and hell, you can trust him as you walk through your own valleys on your way to heaven.” (179)

• “To you I say, do you know what Jesus does with those who squander his mercy? He pours out more mercy. God is rich in mercy. That's the whole point.” (179)

• “That God is rich in mercy means that your regions of deepest shame and regret are not hotels through which divine mercy passes but homes in which divine mercy abides. It means the things about you that make you cringe most, make him hug hardest.” (179)

XX. Our Lawish Hearts, His Lavish Heart

• “There are two ways to live the Christian life. You can live it either for the heart of Christ or from the heart of Christ. You can live for the smile of God or from it.” (181)

• “A healthy Christian life is built on both the objective and the subjective sides of the gospel--the justification that flows from the work of Christ, and the love that flows from the heart of Christ.” (183)

• “As the gospel sinks in more deeply over time, and we wade ever deeper into the heart of Christ, one of the first outer shells of our old life that the gospel pierces is the doing of works unto approval.” (185)

• “There is an entire psychological substructure that, due to the fall, is a near-constant manufacturing of relational leveraging, fear-stuffing, nervousness, score-keeping, neurotic controlling, anxiety-festering silliness that is not something we say or even think so much as something we exhale.” (185)

• “The felt love of Christ really is what brings rest, wholeness, flourishing, shalom-that existential calm that for brief, gospel-sane moments settles over you and lets you step in out of the storm of of-works-ness.” (186)

• “And the Christian life is simply the process of bringing my sense of self, my Identity with a capital "I," the ego, my swirling internal world of fretful panicky-ness arising out of that gospel deficit, into alignment with the more fundamental truth. The gospel is the invitation to let the heart of Christ calm us into joy, for we've already been discovered, included, brought in. We can bring our up-and-down moral performance into subjection to the settled fixedness of what Jesus feels about us.” (187)

• “In the gospel, we are free to receive the comforts that are due us. Don't turn them off. Open the vent of your heart to the love of Christ, who loved you and gave himself for you.” (188)

XXI. He Loved Us Then; He'll Love Us Now

• “Perhaps, as believers today, we know God loves us. We really believe that. But if we were to more closely examine how we actually relate to the Father moment by moment-_-which reveals our actual theology, whatever we say we believe on paper--many of us tend to believe it is a love infected with disappointment.” (189)

• “God didn't meet us halfway. He refused to hold back, cautious, assessing our worth. That is not his heart. He and his Son took the initiative. On terms of grace and grace alone. In defiance of what we deserved. When we, despite our smiles and civility, were running from God as fast as we could, building our own kingdoms and loving our own glory, lapping up the fraudulent pleasures of the world, repulsed by the beauty of God and shutting up our ears at his calls to come home--it was then, in the hollowed-out horror of that revolting existence, that the prince of heaven bade his adoring angels farewell. It was then that he put himself into the murderous hands of these very rebels in a divine strategy planned from eternity past to rinse muddy sinners clean and hug them into his own heart despite their squirmy attempt to get free and scrub themselves clean on their own.” (191)

• “In Christ's death, God is confronting our dark thoughts of him and our chronic insistence that divine love must have an endpoint, a limit, a point at which it finally runs dry/Christ died to confound our intuitive assumptions that divine love has an expiration date. He died to prove that God's love is, as Jonathan Edwards put it, "an ocean without shores or bottom. God's love is as boundless as God himself. This is why the apostle Paul speaks of divine love as a reality that stretches to an immeasurable "breadth and length and height and depth" (Eph. 3:18)-the only thing in the universe as immeasurable as that is God himself. God's love is as expansive as God himself.” (192)

• “What's the ultimate point Paul is driving at in Romans 5:6-11? Not God's past work, mainly. Paul's deepest burden is our present security, given that past work.” (193)

• “Conversion isn't a fresh start. Conversion, authentic regeneration, is the invincibilizing of our future.” (193)

• “We will be less sinful in the next life than we are now, but we will not be any more secure in the next life than we are now.” (195)

XXII. To the End

• “This is not who Christ is indiscriminately. The text says it is "his own" whom he loves to the end.” (203)

• “To those who are not his own, Jesus is a fearful judge, one whose wrath cannot be assuaged or dampened; the Bible teaches that Jesus will one day be "revealed from heaven with his mighty angels in flaming fire, inflicting vengeance on those who do not know God and on those who do not obey the gospel of our Lord Jesus" (2 Thess. 1:7-8)." (204)

• "That passage goes on to say those who do not belong to Christ "will suffer the punishment of eternal destruction" (1:9). But for his own, Jesus himself endured that punishment. He set his heart on his own. They are his. "There is not the meanest, the weakest, the poorest believer on the earth," wrote Owen, "but Christ prizes him more than all the world." (204)

XXIII. Buried in His Heart Forevermore

• “When we live to glorify God, we step into the only truly humanizing way of living.”(205)

• “The creation of the world, and the ruinous fall into sin that called for a re-creative work, un-dammed the heart of Chris, And Christs heart food is how God's glory surges forth further and brighter than it ever could otherwise.” (207)

• “The creation of the world was to give vent to the gracious heart of Christ. And the joy of heaven is that we will enjoy that unfettered and undiluted heart forevermore.” (208)

• “The point of unending eternal life in the new heavens and the new earth is that God "might show the immeasurable riches of his grace in kindness toward us in Christ Jesus.” (209)

• “The very point of heaven and eternity is to enjoy his "grace in kindness." (209)

• “That thing we've done that sent our life into meltdown-that is where God in Christ becomes more real than ever in this life and more wonderful to us in the next. (And those of us who have been pretty squeaky clean will get there one day and realize more than ever how deeply sin and self-righteousness and pride and all kinds of willful subconscious rebellions were way down deep inside us, and how all that sends God's grace in kindness soaring, and we too will stand, astonished, at how great his heart is for us.” (210)

• “He sends his grace to us, personally, individually, eternally. Indeed, he sends himself--there's no such "thing" as grace (remembering that such a view is Roman Catholic teaching). He sends not grace in the abstract but Christ himself. That's why Paul immediately adds "in Christ Jesus." (211)

• “If are in Christ, you have been eternally invincibilized.” (211)

• “For those in Christ, for whom Ephesians 2:7 is the eternal vista just around the next bend in the road, this life is the worst it will ever get.” (212)

Epilogue

• "The Christian life boils down to two steps: (216)

  1. Go to Jesus.

  2. See #1."

• “Whatever is crumbling all around you in your life, wherever you feel stuck, this remains, un-deflectable: his heart for you, the real you, is gentle and lowly. So go to him. That place in your life where you feel most defeated, he is there; he lives there, right there, and his heart for you, not on the other side of it but in that darkness, is gentle and lowly.” (216)

Notable Content

• “As we zero in on the affectionate heart of Christ, how do we ensure that we are growing in a healthy understanding of the whole counsel of God and a comprehensive and therefore proportionate vision of who Christ is?" (29)

  1. First, the wrath of Christ and the mercy of Christ are not at odds with one another, like a see-saw, one diminishing to the degree that the other is held up.Rather, the two rise and fall together.

  2. Second, in speaking specifically of the heart of Christ (and the heart of God in the Old Testament), we are not really on the wrath-mercy spectrum anyway. His heart is his heart.

  3. Third, we are simply seeking to follow the biblical witness in speaking of Christ's heart of affection toward sinners and sufferers.

     In other words, if there appears to be some sense of disproportion in the Bible's portrait of Christ, then let us be accordingly disproportionate. Better to be biblical than artificially "balanced."

  4. In short: it is impossible for the affectionate heart of Christ to be over-celebrated, made too much of, exaggerated.

Notes on *The Preacher’s Catechism*

The Preacher’s Catechism, Lewis Allen (Crossway, 2018)

Main Idea/Takeaway

• The single most important thing for preachers is to be overcome by the gospel they proclaim. 

• "Our first calling is not to preach him, but to love him and to walk with him." (13)

Table of Contents

1. Preaching, above All

2. Enjoying God

3. The One We Preach

4. By the Book

5. Preaching Christ

6. All Our Days

7. Confident of This

8. Called to Preach

9. For God, for People

10. Not a Square Inch

11. Sin

12. Weakness

13. Knowing Jesus

14. For His Name's Sake

15. Rewarded

16. This Solid Ground

17. Lavish Love

18. Holiness

19. Journey's End

20. The Grace of Law

21. Obedience

22. Love's Choice

23. Image Rights?

24. Our Honor or His?

25. Stop!

26. Respect

27. Servant-Hearted Servants

28. Faithful Attraction

29. Give

30. True to His Word

31. Resist

32. The Heart of the Law

33. Trusting Ministry

34. At the Cross

35. The Courage of Our Convictions

36. Ministering Sacraments

37. Take Them to the Water

38. To Supper

39. Seek First

40. Praying, for His Glory

41. Trust Issues

42. Confession Time

43. All for the King

Favorite Quotes by Chapter

Introduction

• "Skills have an essential place, but more essential to our calling are a heart and mind captivated by God and his gospel." (17)

• "A fruitful ministry comes from the heart of a contented preacher. It's not about getting your life circumstances right (be that church, salary, peer recognition, or work-life balance). Some of the most impacting ministries have been carried out through truly wretched situations, filled with years of stress and opposition. So many preachers have stood firm and persevered with fruit owing to their deep heart contentment in the God of the gospel. Christ must be a treasure of ever-deepening worth to us." (18)

• "A preacher whose pulpit freshness comes from a living relationship with Jesus is a great blessing to the church."(19)

• "The Devil love a discouraged preacher, and his infernal crosshairs are always trained on us." (20)

• "Those who keep going in their preaching ministry do so only as they learn to nurture their own souls. Even the strongest of us are fragile men. It's not enough to preach grace; we need it ourselves." (20)

Preaching, above All

• "Above everything else, those of us who are called to preach need to know that God is love (1 John 4:8)." (27)

• "God loves, and shows that love, because he is love. Love is of God's essence. And so the source of all reality is a God of ardent, consuming, and delighting love. This is who he is." (28)

• "Our infinite happiness, as saved sinners, consists in enjoying the Son of God. Delight in Jesus is distinctly godlike, and is God's redemption purpose for the world. The Father is redeeming sinners to be delighters in his Son." (29)

• "What is your heartbeat? Do you love to preach, or do you love the One you preach? Do you love to prep your sermons, enjoying the hard mental and spiritual work, or do you love the One you are discovering more about." (30)

• "We must teach others that God is love, and that life on earth is an invitation from heaven to know that love and to live in the light of it." (30)

• "You can only preach what you love. You can only truly love if you know and are daily fed by the love of God. God is always preaching himself, as the God of love. He has no greater message, no other gospel, and no greater purpose. Neither do we."(30)

Enjoying God

• “God loves a cheerful preacher. Our ever-blessed, ever-joyful God wants to be proclaimed by those who are brimful of the joy his grace in Christ brings. He calls us to delight in him and, out of that joy,

  to call others to the feast. Preacher and sermon must be filled with gospel joy.” (31)

• “Why single out joy when joy is so often crowded out by almost anything else? The reason is that joy, like nothing else, shows whether we really believe the gospel. Joy is gospel authenticity. Joy is not an emotional buzz, an escape from the difficulties we face. To know Jesus Christ means to taste, and to want to taste more, the delights of peace with God the Father, who cares for and smiles on us, the Son, who journeys with us, and the Spirit, who empowers us.” (32)

• “Life in Christ is not, above all, a set

  of commands to obey externally but the inward work of the Holy Spirit to remake our minds and hearts.” (32)

• “The Christian life begins with hearing the Word of God in the power of the Spirit and responding to Jesus Christ in repentance and faith. Christian maturity is an ongoing experience of the same:

  we see Christ in his Word, and we worship him, gladly giving our hearts to his lordship.” (33)

• “God designs that his church be served by Word-soaked, joy-seeking, and joy-sharing

  preachers of his delightful gospel.” (34)

The One We Preach

• “Preachers have a single calling, to express who and what God is. This is our mandate, to declare what God has revealed about himself.” (35) 

• “The preacher must teach people of God so that they can worship him with all their might. He must preach God so that they learn to adore the God who loves lost people because he chooses to, with no compulsion whatsoever, except the compulsion of the overflowing love of the Trinity.” (37)

By the Book

• “Why is the Bible such a thrilling and powerful book? Simply because it is all about Jesus Christ.” (40)

• “The Bible is Jesus's book, all that God has to show us about his Son, and all that we need to come to his Son and to be transformed by him. Make the Bible anything less than the discovery of Jesus, and no wonder we can so easily be dull preachers and disciples.“ (40)

1. Preaching Christ

• “Preaching, though, is ultimately divine activity. J. I. Packer says that it is "the event of God himself bringing to an audience a Bible-based, Christ-related, life-impacting message of instruction and direction through the words of a spokesperson.” (44)

• “The Emmaus road gives us a vital principle (Luke 24:25-27, 45): hearts that hear Christ in his Word and are opened to him are burning hearts.” (44)

All Our Days

• “Self-pity is as much out of place in Christian ministry as self-promotion is. Worship him because of who he is, the Lord of heaven and earth.” (49)

• “The life of a Christian, and of a Christian preacher, is a moment-by-moment giving of all his heart to God and God's grace, in the power of the Holy Spirit.” (50)

• “Get your heart pulled in its deepest impulses to God in Jesus Christ, and your preaching ministry, however difficult, will be a fitting expression of your life's worship.” (50)

Confident of This

• “The question we must face, and which our post-sermon activities betray, is this: can we find heart peace as we trust that God is at work? Whether we're jogging off our adrenaline or collapsed on the sofa, is there trust in our hearts? Do we really believe that

  our preaching will achieve God’s work?” (54)

Called to Preach

• “John Calvin identified the two aspects of a call of God to ministry: the individual's inner compulsion ("I have to do this") and the church's recognition of the man's necessary godliness and gifts in handling God's Word.” (56)

• “Only the servant-hearted are called to be servants of the Word.” (59)

For God, for People

• “You cannot honor God unless you are ministering the fullness of the gospel with gospel love for the good of the lost and the saved. Preaching to the glory of God is all about helping others to grasp and delight in the truth of the gospel. God's glory revealed in the cross of Christ and declared in preaching is the good of grace-hungry people. "The eternal salvation of the human soul, through the presentation of divine truth, is the end of preaching," William Shedd wrote. That is what God wants from you, and that is what your hearers need from you, regardless of whether they currently understand that or actually want it. Anything less is just bad preaching.” (62)

• “Preaching must always be an exercise in self-effacement, not self-promotion, or even self-fulfillment. Jesus says, "Feed my sheep,"not "Feed your ego." People must be led to Christ, and led on with Christ through preaching.”(62)

• “Our goal is to deepen the joy of our hearers in Jesus Christ.” (64)

• “Ministry is the battle against mistrust and misapplied confidence, in our own lives as well as in the lives of those we preach to.” (64)

• “God has invested his glory in his children seeing and delighting in the saving grace of his Son in his proclaimed Word.” (64)

Not a Square Inch

• “It's no good being convinced that the Lord wants you in the pulpit if you're not really sure about his involvement in the world beyond your allotted few square feet of activity each Sunday.” (65)

• “You are preaching into a universe ruled by King Jesus. This life-changing truth must be the solid ground for all your preaching. Believe it, and preach it.” (66)

• “Our calling is to speak gospel words in what often appears to be the chaos of our lives and the lives of our congregations. “Our God reigns" must never sound trite. It must always be heard for what it is, a uniquely hope-filled and peace-bringing claim.” (66)

• “Preachers are, by most measurements, believers with a good deal of faith. Because of that, it's

  all too easy to fail to appreciate the struggles many of our hearers have in believing. There again, time spent with fellow Christians who suffer, or time spent in our own trials, brings home the fact that faith is anything but natural or straightforward.” (67)

Sin

• The last Adam was a preacher as fearless as he was sinless. He always spoke God's Word in obedience to his Father and in the service of his listeners. His loyalty to God's Word took him to another tree, the cross, to die there as our Sin-Bearer (1 Per. 2:24).” (73)

Weakness

• “Perhaps we feel so low on Mondays precisely because we are low. Mondays have lessons of grace to teach us. We need the Monday gospel. Left to ourselves, we are all without hope.” (77)

Knowing Jesus

• “So if we want to find our strength again, we need to go back to Jesus, look to him, and live.” (80) 

• “With a daily walk with Jesus those fears don’t vanish, but they are brought under his control.” (82)

• “So, put Christ before you. Study him and speak to him. Give him your heart.” (82)

For His Name's Sake

• “Endure hardship" is the motto of apostolic ministry (see 2 Tim. 2:3; 4:5). Endure hardship. Not because it is good for you, like a diet or exercise, but because Jesus did, and our calling is to be transformed in the image of his holiness.” (84)

• “Self-sacrifice brought Christ into the world.

  And self-sacrifice will lead us, his followers, not away from but into the midst of men. Wherever men suffer, there will we be to comfort.” (85)

Rewarded

• “The gospel makes no sense and has no power unless judgment is real and heaven’s reward is eternal.” (88)

• “The Lord of the harvest alone can give the increase; but he has given us the mandate of wielding prayer and the Word in order to see people brought to Christ and built up in him.”(90)

This Solid Ground

• "Because of him you are in Christ Jesus, who became to us wisdom from God, righteousness and sanctification and redemption." We preachers can never get enough of this truth. It must master us, subduing our pride in success, and lifting and comforting us in disaster.” (92)

• “We shall never find happiness by looking at our prayers, our doings, or our feelings; it is what Jesus is, not what we are, that gives rest to the soul." (94)

Lavish Love

• “Most of us who preach lurch between pride and despait, often in the same day. We puff ourselves up, delighted to be preachers. Says Spurgeon, «The pride of knowing replaces the humility of being known." And then, we fail in our task and are in the depths.

  The remedy is never that we should seek some stoic resignation in the highs and lows of ministry--never too up, never too down. The remedy is in the gospel, and especially in the gospel truth that in Christ we are adopted into God's family. The doctrine of adoption is vital for the preacher. We are not preachers first; we are not primarily servants, called to a round of preaching and teaching. Those things are secondary at best. Above everything else, we are sons, the adopted sons of God. We are children, with all of God's people. The Father has lavished his great

  love upon us to make us the children of God (1 John 3:1). The Son has given us the right to become those children John 1:12), and declares his delight in us as his brothers (Heb. 2:12-13).” (96)

• “Hard work for his sake is the privilege we get to do as

  an act of worship. It is the natural activity of children who know their Father's smile.” (97)

Holiness

• “In the light of God's Word we must identify

  our sins and repent of them; in their place we must think through new habits of godliness; we must pray specific prayers with discipline; we must put ourselves right into the fellowship of God's

  people, serving, sharing, and learning; we must learn to live out our baptism, take the Lord's Supper, and sit under good preaching.” (100) 

• ”Preaching is the commitment to showing our hearers from the Word that Jesus is powerfully real. Our growth in grace must not only back up our words; it must also display the real and powerful Jesus in our lives.” (100)

• “We must be holy. If we neglect this calling, we may well end up preaching ourselves, or getting in the way of our Master. If so, our unholiness will actually obscure the glory of Christ. If we are dull, if we are unmoved by the truths we handle in the pulpit, if

  an illustration we use is self-promoting or inappropriate for some other reason, if our words aren't conveying love and tenderness

  (the list could go on), then we are getting in the way of the beauty of Jesus.” (101)

• “The Lord might not give us crowds, but as M'Cheyne himself prayed, our longing should be to be as holy as a pardoned sinner can be. Only as we grow to be like Jesus are we effective in showing him to others in our lives and through our proclamation.” (101)

Journey's End

• “Even if we have sixty years of preaching behind us and have led thousands to a closer walk with Christ, it will be Christ alone who acquits us. We will never earn our salvation.” (105)

The Grace of Law

• “Preachers of Jesus must be like Jesus. No one will listen to a man to learn Christ if they cannot look at him and see Christ.” (109)

Obedience

• “Christ alone keeps the law for us in his obe-

  dience for our sakes, and he alone dies for us under the penal sentence of God for our lawbreaking. Slaves are redeemed and adopted into God's family, and a new nature is given to us.” (115)

Love's Choice

• “Will you really believe that your God can and will

meet all your needs, so that you will bring him all of the love and trust he is so very worthy of? He wants all of your heart, preacher, and unless he has that, he is satisfied by none of your ministry.” (122)

Image Rights?

• “The opposite of love is not hatred; it's indifference-

  "I don't care." But love does care. God will have us for himself. And that is the call, and the power,

  of the gospel?” (125)

Stop!

• “We are to enjoy our Sundays, not as anxious performers but as Christ-satisfied disciples.

  We give ourselves to God in worship and to our church families in fellowship. And we refuse to try to justify ourselves by our preaching. We yield to Jesus, surrender to his righteousness, and rest in his love.” (135)

Respect

• “Church members live in a secular environment of disrespect. Backbiting, disloyalty, and worse are the everyday hazards of their workplace. When they come to church, they must discover the freedom and peace of being in an utterly different culture. Respect

  and honor must be the tone of all relationships in the body of Christ. So it is with the preacher.” (139)

Faithful Attraction

• “Keep yourselves in the love of God" (Jude 1:21). If you are this loved through Christ, then explore it, stay in it, allow it to satisfy you. ‘Keep your heart with all vigilance, for from it flow the springs of life. (Prov. 4:23).” (147)

Give

• “Giving suffcient time each week to preparing sermons is an act of will. It is a commitment to self-discipline, and when we decide to do it, it will put pressure on the rest of our schedules. It is,

  though, supremely an act of love.” (151)

True to His Word

• “Obedience to the commandment "Do not lie

  does not mean "tell the truth regardless of whom you crush under it," but it means "tell the truth in order to serve others in love.” (154)

• “The truth of God, the whole truth, with Jesus at the center, will become a chore, because it doesn't achieve your appointed goals. The Word preached faithfully deeply inconveniences you as well as your hearers with its demands. Your pride won't allow that

  for very many years. In time, you'll preach less of the Word and more of yourself.” (156)

• “If your ministry is a journey in self-love, then no one gets served, you least of all. If by grace you lay your heart and work before the King of kings, then your words will be filled with truth and love. Only then do preachers truly serve the King.” (156)

• “If your ministry is a journey in self-love, then no one gets served, you least of all. If by grace you lay your heart and work before the King of kings, then your words will be filled with truth and love. Only then do preachers truly serve the King.” (156)

Resist

• “One of the greatest psychological pressures for any preacher is being content with our current experience of God's grace and managing our longings for so much more blessing.” (157)

• “Coveting, at root, is a refusal to recognize God as God.” (158)

The Heart of the Law

• “Preachers are ambitious. At least, we should be. If we don't long that people will meet the risen Christ through our ministry, then what do we want to achieve through preaching?” (163) 

• “You and I must strive for excellence as we preach, without ever losing sight of the excellence the Lord calls for: ultimately, loving him and our neighbors is all that counts. That's our highest calling, in the pulpit and out of it.” (163)

Trusting Ministry

• “Salvation is of the Lord, and that includes the gift of faith in order to receive the saving work of Christ (Eph. 2:8; cf. 1:19). True saving faith is nothing less than the work of the Spirit of Christ in our hearts.” (169)

• “And the more you grow in the Spirit's power in response to the Word, the deeper your confidence in this Word will be, whether privately read or

  publicly preached.” (170)

• “Jesus offers himself through his Word in the gospel. Stand on the rock of this truth.” (170)

At the Cross

• “The gospel we preach must be the gospel we consciously rely on. And what we rely on, we love. Our greatest need, then, is a sight of our sins, and serious repentance at the cross for them. As we bring both our sin and our sorrow for it to the cross, we discover again the life Jesus died to bring us. There worship flows as we see our Savior in his life-bringing glory?” (172) 

• “Repentance isn't the soul wallowing in its muck (leave that to the pigs), it is the soul forsaking everything to find forgiveness and life in Jesus?” (174)

• “Commenting on Galatians 3:1, John Calvin said,

  ‘Let those who would discharge aright the ministry of the Gospel learn not merely to speak and declaim, but to penetrate into the consciences of men, to make them see Christ crucified, and feel the shedding

  of his blood.’ Preachers who know their own need of Jesus can do so, and will?” (174)

The Courage of Our Convictions

• “Would you lose your sorrows? Would you drown your cares? Then go, plunge yourself in the Godhead's deepest sea; be lost in his immensity; and you shall come forth as from a couch of rest, refreshed and invigorated. I know nothing

  which can so comfort the soul; so calm the swelling billows of grief and sorrow; so speak peace to the winds of trial, as a devout musing upon the subject of the Godhead.” (178)

Ministering Sacraments

• “We must also recover our belief, then, that the pulpit needs to share its message with the baptistery and the Table, and that they must be given their rightful places in the drama of redeeming grace.” (181)

• “If your preaching is mediocre at times, or worse than that, don't indulge in despair: the Lord is

  near in his sacraments.” (181)

• “The sacraments are to show us the gospel and to strengthen our gospel faith, as we've seen. They teach us who belongs to Christ and who doesn't. And so, they call us to renewed trust in Christ and to enduring obedience to him, by his grace. We have

  been washed by Christ, and we are feeding on him. Could we need anything else? So finish your sermon on time, preacher. Don't weary your hearers. They've heard the gospel from you. And now, in water, bread, and wine, let them see it and celebrate it.” (182)

Seek First

• “If you wait until your day is less busy, your heart is less burdened, your moods make it feel exciting, or your sin takes wings and flies away, you will never pray.” (192)

• “The Westminster Shorter Catechism states that prayer is "an offering up of our desires unto God for things agreeable to his will, in the name of Christ, with confession of our sins, and thankful acknowledgment of his mercies." (193)

• “Only a living, honest relationship with God nurtured and expressed in prayer, will keep us from hellish hypocrisy and fill us with the life of Christ.” (193)

• “Prayer is recapturing a Christ-centered worldview,

  in which we celebrate again his loving rule. Problems might not go away, but they regain their God-ordained perspective.“ (195)

Praying, for His Glory

• “Preaching easily falls into a default setting of "Yours be the glory, O Lord; and a little to me, too, please." We need to root out that spirit of pride, that clawing, grasping, insecure longing for the praise of men. We do so with prayer. Pray that the Father would set a delight in his glory in Christ deep in your affections

  so that the thought of even trying to snatch a hint of the glory due God alone would disgust you.” (199)

• “You are praying and working not to grow a big church but to serve a church so that people will increasingly yield their lives to Jesus Christ.” (200)  

Trust Issues

• “His presence can still racing thoughts, give hope

  for despairing preachers, and bring back restless, wandering desires to him. You believe that for your congregation, don't you? Believe it for yourself. And experience it as the gift of God to his praying children, including his preachers.” (203)

Confession Time

• “The preacher who repents will live and thrive. Try it. And the ministry that is bathed in repentance and enjoying renewing grace will be a truly gospel one, and will bear the hallmarks of authenticity.” (208) 

All for the King

• “When our hearts bow joyfully to the King, then, and only then, will our preaching have any integrity and impact.” (210)

• “Love only the work, and the work will crush us. Of course it will; the needs of a struggling church and a broken world are completely overwhelming. And while we effectively forget who God is in his gospel love, we will think that he achieves some satisfaction

  (some glory, even) in our being overworked and beaten down.”(210)

• “Preaching is the declaration of the God we know. Preaching is one broken sinner saying to others with exactly the same struggles, "This is the grace I'm discovering, which I long for you to know with me." (210)

• “You can see and you can hear when people are contented. The church can see and hear when those in the pulpit are delighting in Christ and satisfied

  in him. True contentment is as powerful as it is visible.” (211)

• “And so we dare to pursue contentment in God. We dare believe that there is such a place of settled joy and peace in Jesus. We really can make him our treasure when life and ministry are painful, as much as when they are exciting. We can, and we must. To him be the glory, forever.” (211)

Notable Content 

Six questions to help asses whether sin has crept into your preaching. (73)

1. What happens in my heart when people thank me for my preaching? Do I straight away silently thank God that they were blessed? Or do I thank myself for my skills as a preacher?

2. When I preach a terrible sermon, why does it devastate me? Is it because I don't think that Christ's sheep have been fed? Or is it because my ego hasn't been stroked?

3. Do I preach to serve my hearers or to scratch my own preaching itches? Do I choose passages for the pulpit because I know they will serve where my hearers are in need or because I prefer them and think I preach them well?

4. When someone says something critical that is true but painful about my preaching (to me or to someone else, and it has gotten back to me), is my first response angry self-pity, or do I give God thanks for this Spirit-given opportunity to grow in my preaching?

5. Should I adopt a different preaching tone and style or perhaps preach shorter sermons in order to reach my hearers more effectively? Or do pride and fear tie me to preaching as I always have?

6. Do I ever have the courage to ask those closest to me (my wife or the church's leaders) about my preaching? Am I prepared for honest and loving feedback, or do I wish to keep justifying my ministry exactly as it is?

Ten Commandments, re-written: (116)

1. Put nothing in the place of Jesus.

2. Make nothing which gets in the way of your love for Jesus.

3. Honor Jesus' Name in all you do.

4. Seek your soul's rest in Jesus.

5. Honor your parents, as a love-expression for Jesus.

6. Do not murder, as Jesus brings life, never death.

7. Keep sexually pure, because Jesus has won your body, as well as your heart.

8. Do not steal, because Jesus is enough.

9. Do not lie, because Jesus is the truth, and loves the truth.

10. Don't set your heart on anything, because Jesus really is enough.

    Four pointers to obey the commandment concerning contentment: (159)

    1. Believe that God is who he is.

    2. Identify your discontentment, and starve it.

    3. List your blessings, and celebrate them.

    4. Knowing Jesus is contentment. 

Notes on *Repentance*

Repentance: A Daring Call to Surrender, Jack Miller, (CLC Publications, 1975, 2009)

Note-taker’s Preface: The resurgence of gospel-centeredness over the last 20+ years is owed in large part, humanly speaking, to the ministries of men like Tim Keller. But behind his ministry is the influence of Jack Miller and Richard Lovelace, among others, who helped shaped Keller during his days at Westminster Seminary. You can see traces of the influence in the primary sources of Miller and Lovelace. For example, consider these words from Lovelace in Dynamics of Spiritual Life (1979):

The beginning place for personal renewal is a preaching and teaching ministry that emphasizes depth proclamation of the gospel. …We must first make real to them the grace of God in accepting them daily, not because of their spirituality, but because of the perfect righteousness of Christ. (211)

Have you ever heard a sermon from Tim Keller? This is precisely what Keller does, and it’s worth emulating, by God’s grace. As for Jack Miller, his work is as relevant for us now as it was 50 years ago. I think of A Faith Worth Sharing and Outgrowing the Ingrown Church. And, of course, there is his small book Repentance. This book is one that I’ve read and reread for years, together with other men. I will let it speak for itself:

Main Idea/Takeaway

• A life of daily repentance is vital for centering the gospel of God's undeserved grace in Christ.

Interaction 

• "Not to undermine asiety, but to emphasize the humility of covenant." (12)

• "Our works- for self-justification- are actually a criticism of God." (21)

• "Isaiah saw God!" (22)

• "Point to Christ as our only Mediator." (27)

• "Priesthood of believers." (27)

• "Consider repentance in light of new creation." (33)

• "Repentance is hearing again and again, "You're wrong and you're loved." (37)

• "Spirit-filled life: Love (affection & obedience); Humility (repentance everyday)." (41)

• "When the stress is experienced, the focus becomes more external, not of the heart." (42)

• "Spirit-filled life is repentant, not 'perfect'." (43)

• "cf. CSL on forgiveness: We are often harsher with other people's sin than we are our own."(43)

• "Which can only happen if we care more about what He thinks than we do what others think. If we care about what other's think, we'll only "repent" when our performance suffers, not our heart motives." (43)

• "I'm not. I can't. I won't. You are. You can. You will." (47)

• "God commands repentance." (61)

• "Far worse than we ever imagined, far more loved than we ever dared dream." (66)

• "How have we seen the power of guilt play out in people's lives? Our own?" (70)

• "Penance, self-reliance, guilt in 'gospel-centered' guise?" (77)

• "Counseling as expository in one-on-one...find those places to go." (79)

• "Consider the tonic of silence before God." (82)

• "So much of prayer is navigating through trifles (which is why it's hard)." (85)

• "Devil's tactic in you praying with fluency." (85)

• "Why collision matters: 1.) power of testimony; 2.) the tonic of silence before God, not prayerlessness. 3.) Compassion is a fruit of repentance. 4.) Because there is where we remember Jesus is real." (83)

• "Wash their feet." (86)

• "Beware the self-righteousness of gospel-centeredness. We're addicts at self-congratulations, (i.e., work progress)." (87)

• "Epilogue by Jack's widow , 1996." (98)

Table of Contents

Foreword

A Note to the Reader

I. Repentance: The Foundation of Life

II. Repentance and Its Counterfeit

III. What Is True Repentance?

IV. Repentance and the Spirit-filled Life

V. Repentance and the Carnal Christian

VI. Repentance and God's Mercy

VII. Repentance and Counseling

VIII. Repentance and Sharing Christ

Epilogue

Favorite Quotes by Chapter

I. Repentance: The Foundation of Life

• "What we all desperately need to see is that the love of a holy God is manifested covenantally at the cross. In the sacrifice of the Lamb of God, the Father promises to receive contrite sinners on a daily-no, hourly-basis." (11)

• "The Father, in the gift of His Son, has put Himself under eternal obligation to returning children. Having satisfied the demands of His own holy law, the Father/must open His mighty arms and embrace every returning child." (12)

• "To be near God and to have God near us is the whole purpose of human life. But without sincere repentance there can be no face-to-face fellowship with the Father of lights." (12)

• "Once tasted, repentance would speak to them of communion with Christ and of self-forgetting fruitfulness and of Kingdom power (Mark 1:15)." (13)

• "In our pride we would never think of ourselves in connection with Ananias and Sapphira. But our sin bears a very close resemblance to theirs. They wanted to pretend to be near God when they were not." (14)

• "The world of humanity in our generation has been dominated by lies, broken promises, shattered illusions and just general sham. People are sick and tired of role-players and plastic goods, slickly turned out and calculated to deceive. Therefore, if we wish to be effective, we must see that our own pharisaic pretense will eventually be discovered by the people we meet and rebuked by our own consciences." (15)

• "Ask the Holy Spirit to make you willing to be searched by God (Ps. 139:23-24). Do not expect the process of searching to be always painless and pleasant. No, hardly. But you will begin to have the joy of a clear conscience and a deepening fellowship with Christ." (16)

II. Repentance and Its Counterfeit

• "Penance is not merely a sacrament of the Roman Catholic Church. Rather, it is a religious attitude deeply rooted in the human heart which prompts people to attempt to pay for their own sins by good works and sufferings. Self-justification is the goal of this effort." (17)

• "So long as we look within ourselves for the source of our life, we know nothing of Christ." (18)

• "What these people seek from God is enough grace to be strong in themselves. They do not need or want a constant flow of water from heaven." (19)

• "For truly repentant sinners have discovered, through the renewing work of the Holy Spirit, that all their doing is full of sin. Their doing is the source of their wretched emptiness, their black depression and their self-despising. But now they have come undone. They turn from their sinful doing and trust in what Christ has done." (20)

• "Penance is centered in human emotions and perceptions. But repentance to life is God-centered." (20)

• "As a natural consequence, those doing penance will God as owing them a debt; living in self-pity, they become almost unshakably convinced that if there is any forgiving to do, they must forgive God for making them such rotten sinners." (21)

• "Humanity has an immense pride. This is the basis of the self-pity which leads people to condemn God for what seems to them bad management of human affairs. But one real meeting with the living God puts all this self-righteous junk into its true perspective. You just don't argue with holy fire. You submit to it." (23)

• "For the sure mark of authentic repentance is boldness and joyous enthusiasm for the things of God." (23)

• "We are not to make men and women our own disciples, but to make them disciples of the Lord. Therefore, repentance means that people must turn from trusting in empty cisterns like ourselves and thirst and drink from Christ alone (John 7:37-38). Pastors and Christian workers are not merely to accept l believers this as an interesting insight which is mildly relevant to their work. It is, in fact, a matter of spiritual life and death." (27)

III. What Is True Repentance?

• "This motivation for changing one's mind and life-direction is the lordship of the crucified Savior." (31)

• "In the presence of this exalted Lord, self-defense is foolishness, but self-examination aided by the Holy Spirit is everything. Stated practically, our self-examination before the Lord must deal with two kinds of sins. For the purpose of easier understanding, we shall call one kind branch-sins and the other root-sins." (33)

• "Be encouraged then, fellow believer. In calling you to daily repentance, the Lord Jesus is not simply giving you good advice. He is saying, "If you are mine, you must continue to repent.'" (37)

• "Take care not to rob someone of "godly grief" over sin. For if you rob them of the grief, you will also rob them of the joy which comes as a consequence of a hearty repentance." (39)

IV. Repentance and the Spirit-filled Life

• "I want to set down two closely related criteria for the Spirit-filled life: The first is sincere love to the Lord Jesus Christ as the gift of the Father's love, and the second is a genuine repentance which causes us to be broken down before God." (43)

• "For to have the Holy Spirit in you is to have more of Christ in you, to be more like Christ and to bear the fruit of the Spirit which comes through faith in Christ and His merits (Gal. 5:22-23)." (46)

• "There must be a daily conversion of the heart to God (Col. 2:6). And the more you deepen your repentance, the more room you have in your heart for the rivers of living water. The more you know that you are stained to the bone with selfish impulses, the more you see how you hold out against the will of the Lord, then the more you will go to Christ as a thirsty sinner who finds deeper cleansing, more life and greater joy through the Spirit." (47)

• "Repentance prepares the way so that the Lord of glory can enter into the spirit and be adored as the new center of heavenly life. Before, such people were consumed by self-love, but once the Spirit convicted them of sin and turned them to the cross, self-love was crowded out by love to the Lord Jesus Christ." (47)

V. Repentance and the Carnal Christian

• "Backsliding is not a category or a stage in Christian development, but it is living, unrepentant, in a state of sin on the part of those who know better." (51)

• "Definitely, elements of carnality still plague the new Christian. The same can be said of the mature believer. But so long as God's people continue to repent and cling to Christ for growth in grace, they are not carnal in the Pauline sense. They are going forward- sometimes only creeping on hands and knees- but they are not sliding backward like stubborn brute beasts." (52)

• "It should, therefore, be fully understood that in the New Testament the lordship of Christ is the basis of evangelism. It underlies the Great Commission (Matt. 28:18-20), it stands at the center of Paul's great definition of the gospel (1 Cor. 15:3-5), and it is a truth heralded with flaming power at Pentecost (Acts 2:36). With respect to evangelism, G. Campbell Morgan says, "To preach the living lordship of Christ is to create the necessity for His cross.""(53)

• "But, as has been stressed in this study, repentance has nothing to do with what we have done. Rather, it is our coming undone in respect to all human righteousness, followed by going outside ourselves in faith to Christ alone for salvation." (53)

• "There is no greater stumbling block to the salvation of pseudo-Christians than the insistence of believing relatives and friends that the unsaved loved one is already in Christ." (56)

• "I do not mean to imply for a moment that every believer's religious life should be modeled along the same lines. Christian piety can take many different forms. But whenever there is genuine life, this life will produce the fruit of the Spirit (Gal. 5:2)." (56)

• "It is the nature of the authentic Christian to respond with repentance and deeds of righteousness when corrected by the Word." (57)

• "If people are really carnally minded, they are lost and yet in their sins." (57)

• "It is exceedingly important that we do not allow anything to blur the radical difference between the old and the new creation. To do so is to obscure the glory of the Christian hope and the transforming power of grace. We must give all the energy of faith to preaching that Christ of God who gives a totally new life with fullness of spiritual being." (59)

VI. Repentance and God's Mercy

• "God has entered into history, and this gives people everywhere a powerful, unprecedented reason for repenting." (61)

• "What can be done for sinners like these? They are dominated by an iron self-assertion which prefers their own glory to the glory of God (John 5:39-47, 12:41-43). Even more, what can be done for us, since we all participate in that spirit of unbelief which sent the Lord of glory to the cross? The answer is the cross itself. We have all sinned against the law of God, and now this rebellion has come to climactic expression in our sinning against the ultimate gift of God. But the cross includes in it payment for this worst sin of all--the scorning of it." (64)

• "Unbelief is the supreme transgression of the world. and as your sin too, it is most dangerous to your spiritual life. Specifically, unbelief kills our love and feeds our pride." (65)

• "Jesus then teaches us that repentance for the worst of sins is freely given to believers on the basis of the greatest of gifts. Thus, it is not just the sight of my unbelief that makes me wish to repent, but my seeing the magnitude of the heavenly love." (66)

• "Repentance thus is the more negative side of conversion, the overturning of the idols and the turning to God; saving faith is the more positive side of conversion." (67)

VII. Repentance and Counseling

• "But to evade God's condemnation, people erect about themselves a protective wall of self-righteousness." (69)

• "No matter how hard people try, they cannot finally escape from this inner torment by moving rapidly through the outer physical spaces though this is a favorite device adopted by those who live in a self-energized speed culture." (70)

• "The mystery is that Christ's sacrifice includes in it payment for our despisal and indifference- and you repent of such a sin by trusting in Jesus blood for cleansing." (77)

• "It points up the danger which constantly faces both new believers and long-time Christians. It is the temptation to think of the first conversion as everything and to forget that repentance and faith include a continuing, radical reorientation of the life toward God. Hear what John Murray says: "Christ's blood is the laver of initial cleansing but it is also the fountain to which the believer must continuously repair. It is at the cross of Christ that repentance has its beginning; it is at the cross of Christ that it must continue to pour out its heart in the tears of confession and contrition." (77)

• "Our work is to teach and preach the gospel in a searching manner, to lay the basis for repentance by showing sinners how much they need the Lord of glory as Savior from their guilt and filth. It is a solemn fact that God has ordained that men and women be saved through preaching." (78)

• "Effective counseling is principally a carrying forward in private of specific applications of the preaching ministry in the church! The gospel message is announced boldly in a public context, then given added effectiveness by a one-to- one follow-up in dealing with particular idols which Christ wants removed from each of our lives." (79)

• "The gospel message is a mirror in which all repentant sinners behold the image of Christ and are being transformed from glory to glory through the power of the Spirit. Do not underestimate it. For the gospel enables those who are new creations to face their own sins squarely, confess them and forsake them. Do not underestimate it. For the gospel brings forgiveness to us through Christ's death." (82)

VIII. Repentance and Sharing Christ

• "Until we have experienced the breaking down of pride by the Holy Spirit, we do not understand what witnessing is all about." (83)

• "The awareness of great weakness paves the way for a thoroughgoing repentance that results in a filling with the Holy Spirit's power. Your conviction of sin is used by the Lord to bring you to claim the victory of grace in Him." (84)

• "These wiles of Satan are countered by honesty in prayer. Honest prayer unmasks your real need and puts you in the presence of a rich Christ who wants to meet you as you really are-"wretched, miserable, poor, blind, and naked" (Rev. 3:17). (85)

• "So in your confession to God you fight to name your sin-and to give your sin its right name. Then you hand it over to Christ by faith and taste the happiness of guilt forgiven (Ps. 32:1) and find the deliverance from hypocrisy which comes through honest confession (Ps. 32:2-5)."(85)

• "God loves you where you are, not where you have been pretending to be. There is a natural transition now to start loving other sinners where they are, not where they pretend to be- or where you think they should be." (86)

• "Humility and sincere love appeal in any age. But in ours these qualities become especially magnetic."(87)

• "As their repentance deepens they learn to see other people compassionately. They know that God broke through their own thick shell, and that all good in themselves originated with a sovereign invasion from without." (89)

• "You find witnessing power only by going to the throne of grace and coming to Christ to get yourself clean and under the blessing of God. From there you go forth to share what you have received firsthand from the Father. This is the beating heart of Christian witness. In evangelism everything depends upon a humble, self-forgetting boldness before God and humanity. Pray boldly and you will witness boldly (Eph. 6:18-20, 1 Thess. 1:5, Acts 4:29-31). Confess your sins freely before God, and you will have freedom to confess Christ before others." (90)

• "John Calvin says, "Fear hinders us from preaching Christ openly and fearlessly, while the absence of all restraint and disguise in confessing Christ is demanded from His ministers. The remedy for this timidity is to carry the sin directly to God in prayer until He fills the penitent heart with an ongoing love that refuses to be stopped by the resistance of sinners to the gospel." (91)

Epilogue

• "My hope and prayer is that God will continue to use this small book to teach the joy of repentance, humility and a life lived in service to our faithful Savior, Jesus Christ." (98)

Notable Content

• Root-sins: pride, unbelief, lust. (15)

• Branch sins and Root sins. (33)

• Reasons for praying privately in coming to Christ: (82)

  1. First, prayer in private makes it more difficult for people to use the counselor as a priest and hopefully brings them to rely on Christ on Christ alone for salvation.

  2. Secondly, prayer alone brings the glory of Christ into sharp focus by moving the counselor out of the sinner's line of vision.

Notes on *Spurgeon on the Christian Life*

Spurgeon on the Christian Life: Alive in Christ (Theologians on the Christian Life), Michael Reeves, (Crossway, 2018)

Main Idea/Takeaway

• The legacy of Spurgeon's theology of the Christian life is Christ-centered joy rooted in the gospel of grace, and very much alive.

• "This is a book about Spurgeon's theology of the Christian life, and those were the concerns that lay at the heart of it. Spurgeon was unreservedly Christ-centered and Christ-shaped in his theology; and he was equally insistent on the vital necessity of the new birth. The Christian life is a new life in Christ, given by the Spirit and won by the blood of Jesus shed on the cross." (16)

• "Rooted in glory, and gravitating to glory: that, according to Spurgeon, is the nature of the Christian life." (180)

Table of Contents

Introduction

Part I: Charles Spurgeon

I. A Man Full of Life

Part II: Christ the Center

II. Christ and the Bible

III. Puritanism, Calvinism, and Christ

IV. Christ and Preaching

Part III. The New Birth

V. New Birth and Baptism

VI. Human Sin and God's Grace

VII. The Cross and New Birth

Part IV. The New Life

VIII. The Holy Spirit and Sanctification

IX. Prayer

X. The Pilgrim Army

XI. Suffering and Depression

XII. Final Glory 

Favorite Quotes by Chapter

Introduction

• "Spurgeon concretely lived out his belief that the Christian life is not a dull, ethereal existence on some higher, invisible plane. It is being more full, more human--brighter, more involved and more lively." (17)

• "Brethren, we should cultivate a clear style. When a man does not make me understand what he means, it is because he does not himself know what he means. ... If you look down into a well, if it be empty, it will appear to be very deep; but if there be water in it, you will see its brightness. I believe that many "deep" preachers are simply so because they are like dry wells with nothing whatever in them, except decaying leaves, a few stones, and perhaps a dead cat or two. If there be living water in your preaching, it may be very deep, but the light of the truth will give clearness to it." - CHS (19)

• "Some preachers seem to be afraid lest their sermons should be too rich in doctrine, and so injure the spiritual digestions of their hearers. The fear is superfluous. ... This is not a theological age, and therefore it rails at sound doctrinal teaching, on the principle that ignorance despises wisdom. The glorious giants of the Puritan age fed on something better than the whipped creams and pastries which are now so much in vogue." -CHS (20)

• "That combination of concerns, for theological depth with plainness of speech, made Spurgeon a preeminent pastorally minded theologian." -CHS (21)

Part I: Charles Spurgeon

I. A Man Full of Life

• "And while he surely struggled, it would be wildly misguided to think of Spurgeon as a fragile pushover. It would be far better to say that tenderness saved him: it kept his robustness of character from steamrolling those weaker than himself, and channeled it for their benefit." (27)

• "Spurgeon was an unmistakably and deliberately earnest man. With a deep concern for the glory of Christ and the fate of the lost, he believed that Christians should be able to say with our master, "Zeal for your house will consume me" (John 2:17; cf. Ps. 69:9)." (29)

• "But perhaps it is Spurgeon's cigar smoking that best reveals his sunny playfulness as well as his vivacious willingness to enjoy created things." (30)

• "Humor, he believed, is normally the fruit of something deeper. Sometimes it can come from no more than high spirits--and this, he admitted, was a temperamental challenge for him.

• We must-some of us especially must-conquer our tendency to levity. Agreat distinction exists between holy cheerfulness, which is a virtue, and that general levity, which is a vice. There is a levity which has not enough heart to laugh, but trifles with everything; it is flippant, hollow, unreal." (31)

• "Most essentially, though, Spurgeon's sunny manner was a manifestation of that happiness and cheer which is found in Christ, the light of the world. The "levity" he found in himself, and questioned, was inextricably related to his clear refusal to take himself-or any other sinner-too seriously." (32)

• "Rather like Jonathan Edwards, Spurgeon believed that it is right to "read" creation as a book full of testimony to the Creator and his ways." (34)

• "Christ is the logic and the light of the world; the gospel is the sum of all wisdom; the Scriptures are able to make us wise-and not just for salvation. Christians should therefore be wise and omnivorous people of comprehensive intellect." (36)

Part II: Christ the Center

II. Christ and the Bible

• "It is blessed to eat into the very soul of the Bible until, at last, you come to talk in Scriptural language, and your very style is fashioned upon Scripture models, and, what is better still, your spirit is flavoured with the words of the Lord. I would quote John Bunyan as an instance of what I mean. Read anything of his, and you will see that it is almost like reading the Bible itself. He... cannot give us his Pilgrim's Progress--that sweetest of all prose poems,-without continually making us feel and say, "Why, this man is a living Bible!" Prick him anywhere; and you will find that his blood is Bibline, the very essence of the Bible flows from him. He cannot speak without quoting a text, for his soul is full of the Word of God." -CHS (39)

• "There is a peculiar majesty, a remarkable fulnes, a singular potency, a divine sweetness, in any word of God, which is not discoverable, nor anything like it, in the word of man. ... It is God's inspired teaching, infallible, and infinitely pure. We accept it as the very word of the living God, every jot and tittle of it, not so much because there are external evidences which go to show its authenticity, -a great many of us do not know anything about those evidences, and probably never shall,-but because we discern an inward evidence in the words themselves. They have come to us with a power that no other words ever had in them, and we cannot be argued out of our conviction of their superlative excellence and divine authority." -CHS (41)

• "The book is the revelation of Christ, who is the eternal Word and revelation of his Father; as such, it cannot be considered apart from Christ. The book is living and active because Christ is living and active. And just as Christ cannot be left out of Scripture, so Scripture cannot be apart from Christ." (42)

• "He treasured the Bible and held it to be entirely trustworthy because he treasured Christ and held him to be entirely trustworthy." (42)

• "The fact that scripture is the Word of Christ, that its purpose and mail theme is Christ, served as a strong melodic line throughout Spurgeon's thought and ministry." (43)

•  "In this way, Spurgeon saw theology much like astronomy: as the solar system makes sense only when the sun is central, so systems of theological thought are coherent only when Christ is central. Every doctrine must find its place and meaning in its proper relation to Christ." (44)

• "Christ himself is the truth we know, the object and reward of our faith, and the light that illumines every part of a true theological system." (44)

• "Jesus is the Truth. We believe in him,- not merely in his words. He himself is Doctor and Doctrine, Revealer and Revelation, the Illuminator and the Light of Men. He is exalted in every word of truth, because he is its sum and substance. He sits above the gospel, like a prince on his own throne. Doctrine is most precious when we see it distilling from his lips and embodied in his person. Sermons are valuable in proportion as they speak of him and point to him. A Christless gospel is no gospel and a Christless discourse is the cause of merriment to devlis." -CHS (45)

• "You cannot taste the sweetness of any doctrine till you have remembered Christ's connection with it." -CHS (45)

• "True Bible reading thus requires wakeful, attentive study and deep reflection on what is written." (47)

• "Scripture is the Spirit-breathed Word of God: we read it to know him, and we need his help." (47)

• "We are begotten by the word of God: it is the instrumental means of regeneration. Therefore love your Bibles. Keep close to your Bibles." (49)

III. Puritanism, Calvinism, and Christ

• "The rise of theological liberalism and Anglo-Catholicism in his day tended to make Calvinistic Puritanism look quaintly olde worlde and not a little pea-brained. More remarkable still was the unbigoted way in which he held this theology. Being so out of step with the theological climate of his day could easily have made him prickly and clannish, yet for all his unbending theological resolution, Spurgeon was strikingly broad-minded. " (51)

• "Yet even more than all the Bunyan references and imagery in Spurgeon's sermons and writings, Bunyan helped shape the very way Spurgeon spoke and wrote. Spurgeon instinctively disliked the flowery pretentiousness of Latinate words, but it was from Bunyan more than any other that Spurgeon learned the power and the simplicity of plain and homely Anglo-Saxon." (53)

• "He was emphatic that the purpose of his Pastors' College was to raise up pastors who would be thoroughly "Puritanic." (55)

• "In Puritan hands, deep and thoughtful theology was never allowed to become a game for the intelligentsia: it fueled worship and it built up the church. This concern he shared with them, for a heartfelt knowledge of the truth--beyond mere intellectual assent to the doctrines of the gospel-entirely shaped his vision for the Pastors' College." (55)

• "Calvinism means the placing of the eternal God at the head of all things. I look at everything through its relation to God's glory." -CHS (57)

• "Calvin's theology, in contrast, is the system of doctrine which most clearly magnifies Christ as a Savior and ascribes all the glory to God, and thus best captures the truth we shall sing for eternity as we gather around God's throne and praise him." (57)

• "God's glory being what it is, Spurgeon argued that Calvinistic theology is that in which Christians will find the greatest joy. Calvinism's deep view of sin and high view of God's grace are not harsh dogmas, except to those who would rather not think of themselves as sinners. They are liberating, joy-giving truths." (57)

• "For, to preach this "Calvinism" is really just to preach the gospel: justification by faith, without works; the sovereignty of God; the eternal, all-conquering love of God; the effective redemption of Christ; and the fact that God is powerful to save and keep to the uttermost." (57)

• "In part, Spurgeon's catholicity reflected a generosity of spirit and a humanity that preferred to treat people as people rather than theological specimens. He had a distaste for bigotry and what Philipp Melanchthon called the rabies theologorum that drives theologians, like dogs, to treat doctrines as bones to bark over." (62)

• "He wanted Christians to have more than a formal confession of faith, however orthodox and Christ-centered. For Spurgeon, healthy theology must involve an earnest and warm affection for the Christ who stands above and before all/Christ must be central, but he is truly central only when he is supremely adored." (63)

IV. Christ and Preaching

• "The special work of our ministry is to lay open Christ, to hold up the tapestry and unfold the mysteries of Christ." (66)

• "Since Christ's great and eternal purpose- and the very reason for his death-is to win for himself a bride, the preacher's purpose is, as it were, to woo for Christ. Preachers are called to make Christ known in all his goodness, beauty, and truth, that his people might yield themselves to him, delight in him, and be one with him." (66)

• "In the pulpit he sought not merely to inform his listeners about the Word of God but also to draw both believers and unbelievers to Christ. His aim was to see people transformed at the very deepest level, their affections and desires turning away from their naturally cherished sins to Christ." (66)

• "The object of all true preaching is the heart: we aim at divorcing the heart from sin, and wedding it to Christ. Our ministry has failed, and has not the divine seal set upon it, unless it makes men tremble, makes them sad, and then anon brings them to Christ, and causes them to rejoice." -CHS (66)

• "As well as distinguishing preaching from mere data-dumping, Spurgeon was clear that "to preach" is not the same thing as "to moralise." "Remember," he told his students, "you are not sent to whiten tombs, but to open them." The transformation he longed for in his listeners was not merely at the superficial behavioral level (though he wanted to see godly behavior), but also at the very core of their being. Through preaching the gospel, he wanted to see the spiritually dead come to new life in Christ, and the living to become more gloriously Christlike and alive." (67)

• "First, the preacher must clearly and faithfully preach Christ. He is "Scripture's great theme" and the bridegroom that the servants are sent forth to make known." (71)

• "'to preach Christ' involves preaching all the doctrines that set him forth. It is a stretching and not a limiting mandate for the preacher. Christ must, after all, be preached for who he is and what he has done in his entirety." (71)

• "Spurgeon was emphatic that keeping Christ central, prominent, and clear was the reason for the fruitfulness of his ministry." (74)

• "Next, if he is to be preached faithfully, the Christ who is the light and glory of God must be preached both clearlyand beautifully." (76)

• "Preachers who woo for Christ, aiming at divorcing hearts from sin and wedding them to Christ, must view themselves as standing in Christ's stead." (78) 

• "In order to serve as a faithful ambassador of Christ, and to dare to stand in his stead, the preacher must embody the new life Christ offers. He should both know and enjoy the truth he seeks to share if he is to share it successfully." (79)

• "Not only must the preacher generally embody new life in Christ; he must, more specifically, embody the actual text he expounds. Spurgeon himself always preached best, he found, if he managed to "bathe" or "soak" in his text, to let the text soak into him." (80)

• "All this advice was summed up in an address he gave at the Pastors' College in 1881, titled "Preach Christ in a Christly Manner." His students were all expecting him to urge them to preach Christ, and he did not disappoint: "Ministers of the gospel, let Christ be your subject, and let Christ be your model: find in him not only the truth you utter, but the way and life of your utterance." (80)

• "As we share the gospel with friends and neighbors, Spurgeon reminds us that it is Christ--in all the multifaceted glories of his person and work-who must be the focal point of our message and the treasure we offer. And as we do that, we will properly adorn our message as we share Christ's own zeal, Christ's own courageous meekness and simplicity, and Christ's own love for both God and neighbor." (82)

Part III. The New Birth

V. New Birth and Baptism

• "He remained a stalwart and passionate Baptist for the rest of his life. What matters for us here, though, is that his Baptistic convictions were not a mere matter of his having to choose a denominational alignment: they were an integral part of his theology of the Christian life." (88)

• "The particular doctrine adhered to by Baptists is that they acknowledge no authority unless it comes from the Word of God. ... If we could find infant baptism in the Word of God, we should adopt it. It would help us out of a great difficulty, for it would take away from us that reproach which is attached to us, -that we are odd, and do not as other people do. But we have looked well through the Bible, and cannot find it."-CHS (88)

• "Spurgeon's passionate commitment to baptistic theology was part and parcel of his commitment to the importance of the new birth and faith in Christ." (91)

• "Regeneration was something he always expected to see as he preached the gospel. A friend of his once came to him, depressed because for three months of ministry he had not seen a single conversion. Spurgeon slyly asked, "Do you expect the Lord to save souls every time you open your mouth?" Embarrassed, the man answered "Oh, no, sir!" "Then, Spurgeon replied, "that is just the reason why you have not had conversions: 'According to your faith be it unto you." (92)

VI. Human Sin and God's Grace

• "The desires of our hears, which should incline us to Christ, incline sinners away from him to anything else." (94)

• "I believe the Eternal might sooner forgive the sin of ascribing the creation of the heavens and the earth to an idol, than that of ascribing the works of grace to the efforts of the flesh, or to anyone but himself."-CHS (98)

• "While God uses his truth, his final object is not the head but the heart. Through his Word he enlightens minds in order that hearts might be healed and won to himself. Preachers, therefore, must avoid vacuousness in their preaching, and they must avoid heartless intellectualism. The object of all true preaching, after all, is the heart, and preaching has failed "unless it makes men tremble, makes them sad, and then anon brings them to Christ, and causes them to rejoice. Sermons are to be heard in thousands, and yet how little comes of them all, because the heart is not aimed at, or else the archers miss the mark." (98)

• The cross-that deepest revelation of the glory of God- is the great weapon that breaks down the heart's defenses. Where the good news of Christ crucified is passed over, preaching must lack the power of God to save sinners." (99)

• "The gift of a"new heart" means the radical transformation of our affections and desires. "The affections are the most powerful part of our nature, they to a great extent mould even the understanding itself, and if the heart be defiled all the mental faculties become disturbed in their balance. God, therefore, commences at the heart."- CHS (101)

• "Here again Spurgeon inserted a helpful pastoral lesson. We must not mistake natural tenderness for this "heart of flesh." Some people are born constitutionally sensitive, but that does not mean they are spiritually sensitive. It may well be that they are simply impressionable and can be influenced quickly for evil as well as good." (103)

• "Regeneration is a work of pure grace- and those the Lord regenerates, he will indwell." (103)

VII. The Cross and New Birth

• "In the end, all talk of the centrality of Christ would, for Spurgeon, be inaccurate if we separated Christ from his work and failed to mention his crucifixion." (105)

• "The cross is the pinnacle of Christ's work and the clearest window into his identity: it was the key and the plumb line for Spurgeon as he contemplated Christ and the new life he offers." (105)

• "The most educated must find their wisdom in the cross, or die fools." -CHS (106)

• "All good things lie within the compass of the cross, its outstretched arms overshadow the whole world of thought; from the east even unto the west it sheds a hallowed influence; meanwhile, its foot is planted deep in the eternal mysteries, and its top pierces all earth-born clouds, and rises to the throne of the Most High." -CHS (106)

• "The cross being so pivotal, Spurgeon made it the emblem of his Pastors' College, surrounding it with the motto Et Teneo Et Tenor, "I Hold and Am Held (fig. 2): "I hold" because Christ crucified is the saving and sanctifying truth we must hold out to all people; "I am held" because the blood of Christ is what attracts us to Christ and what holds us safe in Christ." (107)

• "Spurgeon taught that the minister's "great object of glorifying God" is mainly achieved through the preaching of "Christ and him crucified." There the true wisdom, power, holiness, goodness, love, and sovereignty of God are revealed in all their surprising beauty, winning the hearts of those who look to him." (116)

• "When the glory of God is displayed in the cross, we get to see all God's perfections. We see that God is not merely helpful to the weak but also long-suffering and infinitely merciful to great sinners. We see the riches of his grace, his sovereign power to save, his holy justice, and his love. And never does one attribute clash with another." (117)

• "At the heart of the cross, then, was a work of penal substitution, and Spurgeon would be both persistent and outspoken in teaching and defending this theme." (119)

• "Christs substitutionary sacrifice  is essential to the gospel and to faithful preaching, Spurgeon believed. It is the only message which allows-yes, and demands-us to put all our trust in Christ and none in ourselves for salvation. After all, if Christ is our perfect substitute-if our sin is imputed to him and his righteousness to us--then no merit of ours can be necessary. A penal substitutionary atonement means that we can accept by simple faith (and faith alone) what Christ has done for us."(120)

Part IV. The New Life

VIII. The Holy Spirit and Sanctification

• "Growth in the Christian life is not, therefore, something very different from the initial experience of conversion. It is, first and foremost, about turning to Christ in faith and love. It is, consequently, about increasing likeness to Christ." (126)

• "When considering the work of the spirit in believers, Spurgeon liked to speak of how the Spirit of life makes lively people. As the Son of God is dynamically and fully alive in the Spirit, so he makes the children of God spiritually active and energetic. This is what life means. The idea of a passive Christian, content in sin, content not to know God better, was simply anathema to this understanding of the Spirit." (130)

• "In order to make us holy, the spirit animates us to a particular sort of love above all: that love which finds its joy in God. Spurgeon wrote and preached a good deal on joy." (135)

• "What is the gospel?" he once asked. "Glad tidings of great joy." And why? For the gospel reveals a happy God. The happiness of God was a theme Spurgeon returned to again and again. He held that it "enters into the essential idea of God that he is superlatively blessed. We cannot conceive of a God who should be infinitely miserable." Being infinitely full of happiness, God is a God who delights to share his happiness, and who created us for that very reason. "He is the happy God; ineffable bliss is the atmosphere in which he lives, and he would have his people to be happy... for a joyous God desires a joyous people." (136-137)

• "The Christian life, then, is one of entering into what Spurgeon called"the noblest and truest immortality," whereby we "live as God liveth, in peace and joy, and happiness."'S By rejoicing in the Lord, we "commence our heaven here below." (137)

• "Above all, though-above all the blessings of salvation and adoption--it is God in himself who is the great object of our joy. Thus when our hearts or circumstances leave us feeling that we cannot rejoice in anything else, we can still rejoice, for we rejoice in One who is unchangeably joy-giving." (137)

• "Man cannot please God without bringing to himself a great amount of happiness."- CHS (138)

• "True Christlikeness involves desiring to enjoy God ever more." (138)

• "As Spurgeon saw it, joy in God is part of the very fiber of Christian vitality, and thus he would connect it to every other aspect of holiness." (139)

• "Since we are made to be happy in Christ, joy is an essential part of human health. When a person is full of joy, "it shines out of his eyes, it sparkles in his countenance.. it quickens the flowing of the blood in the veins; it is a healthy thing in all respects." (139)

• "Joy in the Lord has the power to strengthen believers against temptation, for when we find our happiness and satisfaction in him, we will not seek it elsewhere. Joy has a medicinal power to cure the ills that come from grumbling. It therefore has the ability to drive away quarreling and promote peace. It is the cure for fretfulness and anxiety. And it is a contagious good, as cheer in one quickens cheerfulness in others, so spreading its own benefits." (140)

• "Christians must, then, fight for joy, and fight for that intimacy with God that fosters joy." (140)

• "So take care that you rejoice in the Lord when you have other things to rejoice in. When he loads your table with good things, and your cup is overflowing with blessings, rejoice in him more than in them."- CHS (140)

• "The spirit's enlightening work over the years that follow is thus quite bittersweet, for enlightening means not only knowing God better but also knowing self better. The Spirit enables us to see ever deeper into our own darkness, the depths of which would simply overwhelm the young believer. Mature Christians therefore feel themselves to be greater sinners than do young Christians. It is not that they are; rather, the Spirit has made them more sensitive to sin and more averse to it. Those sins we once ignored as petty and worth no attention become to us a source of ever-deeper pain." (141)

• "I do not know, beloved, when I am more perfectly happy than when I am weeping for sin at the foot of the cross." -CHS (142)

IX. Prayer

• "Prayer is communion with God, which is the very nature of eternal life. It is faith in action. It is a taste on earth of the everlasting life of praise Christians will enjoy before the throne of heaven." (144)

• "The habit of private prayer, and the constant practice of heart fellowship with the Most High, are the surest indicators of the work of the Holy Spirit upon the heart." (144)

• "Prayer must not only be the living breath of the new life: it must also be the breath of any faithful ministry. Because of what prayer is, no amount of talent or education--wonderful gifts though they may be to the church-can substitute for it." (146)

• "As a rule, we ministers ought never to be many minutes without actually lifting up our hearts in prayer. Some of us could honestly say that we are seldom a quarter of an hour without speaking to God, and that not as a duty but as an instinct, a habit of the new nature for which we claim no more credit than a babe does for crying after its mother."-CHS (147)

• "To come before God as our Father means that we can pray with boldness, assurance, and even joyful familiarity. It means we are not approaching a stranger or an enemy." (151)

• "It is when we do not feel fit to pray that we most need it. In such times we must pray for prayer--or, as Spurgeon liked to put it, "pray till we pray." And in those times when we do not feel fit for prayer, we must strike quickly, for that is the Devil's hour." (152)

•  "If you cannot speak, cry; if you cannot cry, groan; and if you cannot even groan to God, "let thy prayer be at least a breathing, a vital, sincere desire, the outpouring of thine inner life in the simplest and weakest form, and God will accept it. In a word, when you cannot pray as you would, take care to pray as you can."- CHS (153)

X. The Pilgrim Army

• "Two of Spurgeon is favorite books were by john Bunyan: The Pilgrims Progress and The Holy War; and together they represent two key aspects of the Christian life as Spurgeon saw it." (155)

• "Machismo is a distorted, cartoonish caricature of the human flourishing of manhood Spurgeon promoted. What he longed to see was more strength exercised (and restrained) in the name of love for Christ. In other words, he wanted believers to have a backbone to their faith." (158)

• "The Christian life is one of sharing the self giving life of God. l must then be a proactively generous life committed to blessing others. And it is then that we experience more richly God's own joy." (160)

• "Faithful activism for Christ is a manifestation of affections that have been reordered to share Christ's passions. Thus Spurgeon held that earnest zeal for the glory of God is the most essential quality in a Christian minister." (162)

• "Only with such heartfelt love for God can the Christian truly share the life of Christ, who was consumed by zeal for God's house John 2:17). Only that way can they be faithful and resolute for him.'s Only that way can they be most truly joyous and alive, for to "live entirely for the Lord is to live indeed, all else is mere existing." (162)

XI. Suffering and Depression

• "Knowing by most painful experience what deep depression of split means, being visited therewith at seasons by no means few or far between, I thought it might be consolatory to some of my brethren if gave my thoughts thereon, that younger men might not fancy that some strange thing had happened to them when they became for a season possessed by melancholy; and that sadder men might know that one upon whom the sun has shone right joyously did not always walk in the light." -CHS (164)

• "The gods of other religions might give ease to the good and health to the worthy. Not so in Christianity, where "goodness" is Christ himself, and conformity to him. God will not therefore simply reward believers with ease in this life, for that would make ease, rather than Christ, the greater prize. Suffering is therefore a "covenant mark," a proof that God is our Father and therefore cares enough about us to do everything necessary to mold and clip us into the likeness of his happily holy son." (165)

• "When a pastor patiently endures difficulty and affliction, and keeps rejoicing in God, it powerfully commends the gospel as glad tidings of great joy. The pastor-or, indeed, any Christian who ministers to another--can prove the comfort that is to be found in God in such times. God therefore often leads his under-shepherds through trials, "not so much for their own benefit as for the sake of those to whom they may afterwards minister." (168)

• "Christian ministers should therefore expect a special degree of suffering to be given to them as a way of forming them for Christlike, compassionate ministry." (169)

• "Just now, when anguish fills the heart, and the spirits are bruised with sore pain and travail, it is not the best season for forming a candid judgment of our own condition, or of anything else; let the judging faculty lie by, and let us with tears of loving confession throw ourselves upon our Father's bosom, and looking up into his face believe that he loves us with all his infinite heart." (172)

• "In suffering then, it is not only the case that we get to draw neater to Christ, becoming more like him and leaning more fully on him. In such times Christ draws near to us to walk with his people in the furnace. And not only to walk with us, but to bear us through." (174)

XII. Final Glory 

• "Spurgeon clearly saw that the Christian hope is to enjoy both communion with God and communion with the people of God." (176)

• "Heaven is heavenly precisely because it is the place of communion with Christ, where his glory is enjoyed. And hell is hellish because it is the place of cast-out Christlessness." (177)

• "Spurgeon's theology of the Christian life was one compassed about on all sides by the glory of God. We have life and new life because of the glory of God, and the glory of God is what we live, hope, and aim for. It is our whence, our whither, our where, and our why?" (179)

• "God's greatest glory is that he is good. The brightest gem in the crown of God is his goodness." (179)

• "The glory of the living God is a self giving, fertile glory. He rejoices to give and share his eternal happiness and life, and he has proved this on the cross." (179)

• "The outgoing, self-giving nature of God's glory is the reason for all created life, and it is the reason we have a gospel of grace. But there is a gracious undertow to God's expansive glory: as God in his glory gives out, so in that same glory he draws his creation in to enjoy his life-giving presence." (180)

• "The Christian life blooms and flourishes in the light of God's glory, where God both gives out and draws in. Having received new life in Christ from God's glorious grace, we find ourselves drawn in to enjoy him and to long for more of him." (180)

Notable Content

• How to Read the Bible: (46-48)

  1. The reader must understand what is written.

  2. The reader must seek out Scripture's meaning and intent. 

  3. Scripture reading is profitable.

• Advice for Preachers: (71-82)

  1. Preach Christ 

  2. Preach Clearly and Beautifully

  3. Stand in Christ's Stead

  4. Seek to Embody the Text

  5. Preach Christ in a Christly Manner

• Two essential reasons for opposing infant baptism: (90-91)

  1. First, to give even the impression that dropping water on a head can save a soul undermines entirely the gospel's call for people to be born again.

  2. Second, infant baptism not only conceals our need to be born again; it also draws people to trust in something other than Christ.

• "Third Nature" see footnote 34. (101)

• Sermons on joy. (135)

Notes on *The Pilgrim’s Progress*

The Pilgrim’s Progress, John Bunyan, 1678, (Banner of Truth)

Note-taker’s Preface: John Bunyan’s classic, The Pilgrim’s Progress, is a book unlike any other. Originally published in 1678, it has sold more than any other book in the English language at around 250 million copies. It’s popularity is due to its profundity. The relevance of Bunyan’s allegory for Christian discipleship, even so many years removed from when he wrote, is simply stunning. I hope that these notes can be a quick-reference guide to some key parts of the story, and that you can consult these notes for illustration helps. My personal goal is to eventually be so acquainted with the novel that I can use Christian”s journey as a field guide for my own, and for those I shepherd.

Lastly, my favorite edition of the book is a recent release from Banner of Truth. It is an elegant, 7x5 hardcover with the original etchings by William Strang.

Interaction 

• "The two children: Patience and Passion" (28)

• "The fire burns hotter and brighter" (30)

• "At the Palace Beautiful = the local church" (46)

• "The effect of Christian fellowship." (58)

• "How the church's fellowship builds us up" (58)

• "Would that this be enough for my rest!" (62)

• "Faithful is murdered by the jury in Vanity Fair." (110)

• "After the death of Faithful, Hopeful steps up to befriend Christian." (112)

• "Christian and Hopeful mutually encourage one another, each for the other at different times." (158)

• "What a sinner's prayer!" (164)

Characters 

Part I

• Christian

  Husband and father stricken by spiritual crisis. Christian is told by a messenger to leave his doomed city and begin a journey of progress toward spiritual achievement.

• Evangelist

  The messenger carrying the Gospel, or word of Christ, to Christian. Evangelist spurs Christian on his journey to the Celestial City.

• Obstinate

  A neighbor of Christian’s in the City of Destruction who refuses to accompany him.

• Pliable

  A neighbor of Christian’s who accompanies him for a while. After falling in the Slough of Despond, Pliable is discouraged and returns home, only to be mocked by the townsfolk.

• Help

  Fellow pilgrim who helps pull Christian from the Slough of Despond.

• Worldly Wiseman

  A reasonable and practical man whom Christian encounters early in his journey. Worldly Wiseman tries unsuccessfully to urge Christian to give up his religious foolishness and live a contented secular life.

• Formalist

  A traveler whom Christian meets along the wall of Salvation. With his companion Hypocrisy, Formalist sneaks over the wall, instead of following the strait and narrow as Christian did.

• Hypocrisy

  Formalist’s travel companion.

• Discretion

  One of the four mistresses of the Palace Beautiful. Discretion takes Christian in and feeds him.

• Piety

  One of the four mistresses of the Palace Beautiful. Piety asks Christian about his journey so far.

• Prudence

  One of the four mistresses of the Palace Beautiful. Prudence tries to understand Christian’s purpose in traveling to Mount Zion.

• Charity

  One of the four mistresses of the Palace Beautiful. Charity asks Christian why he did not bring his family, which causes him to weep.

• The Interpreter

  Spiritual guide who shelters Christian. The Interpreter instructs Christian in the art of reading religious meanings hidden in everyday objects and events, which he houses in his Significant Rooms.

• Apollyon

  Fierce monster with fish scales, bear feet, and dragon wings. Apollyon threatens Christian and fights him with sword until Christian defeats him.

• Shining Ones

  Three celestial creatures who clothe Christian with new garments and give him the certificate. The Shining Ones act as guardians throughout Christian’s journey.

• Faithful

  Fellow pilgrim from Christian’s hometown who reports on the city they both left behind. Faithful loyally accompanies Christian until he is executed in the town of Vanity for the crime of disrespecting the local Satan-worshipping religion.

• Talkative

  Fellow pilgrim who travels alongside Christian and Faithful for a while. Talkative is spurned by Christian for valuing spiritual words over religious deeds.

• Mr. By-ends

  A user of religion for personal ends and social profit. Mr. By-ends accompanies Christian briefly after Christian escapes from Vanity.

• Hopeful

  Pilgrim who replaces Faithful as Christian’s travel companion and confidant after leaving Vanity, all the way to the Celestial City. Hopeful saves Christian’s life in the river before the gates to Mount Zion.

• Giant Despair

  Master of the Doubting Castle. Giant Despair imprisons Hopeful and Christian for trespassing on his domain and is later killed by Great-heart and Christiana’s sons.

• Diffidence

  Giant Despair’s wife. She encourages the harsh punishment of Hopeful and Christian in the Doubting Castle.

• Demas

  Gentlemanly figure who tries to entice Christian and Hopeful with silver and dreams of wealth.

• Temporary

  A would-be pilgrim whom Christian speaks of in a cautionary way, warning of Temporary’s backsliding before his spiritual progress was complete.

Part II

• Sagacity

  An elderly man who visits the narrator in his dream. After the narrator asks after Christian’s family, Sagacity offers to take the narrator’s place as the storyteller and recount Christiana’s journey.

• Christiana

  Christian’s wife and the titular pilgrim in Part II. As a spiritual voyager and a guide to her children, Christiana shows remarkable strength and resilience on the journey.

• Mercy

  Christiana’s neighbor employed by her as a servant on her pilgrimage. She later marries Matthew, Christiana’s eldest son.

• Matthew

  Christiana’s eldest son, who eventually marries Mercy. After stealing fruit from the devil’s garden, Matthew must be healed by Dr. Skill.

• Joseph

  A son of Christiana.

• Samuel

  A son of Christiana.

• James

  Christiana’s youngest son.

• Ill-Favored Ones

  Two strangers who attempt to harm Christiana and Mercy.

• Reliever

  Fellow pilgrim who rescues Christiana and Mercy from the two Ill-Favored Ones.

• Mr. Great-heart

  The Interpreter’s manservant. He protects and guides Christiana and Mercy on their way up the hill of Difficulty and toward the House Beautiful.

• Watchful

  Porter of the House Beautiful.

• Grim

  Master of the lions, who threatens Christiana and Mercy on their way to the House Beautiful.

• Maul

  A giant killed by Great-heart. He accuses Great-heart of kidnapping the pilgrims.

• Mr. Brisk

  Mercy’s suitor. He ends their affair because she is too involved in charity work.

• Old Honest

  An elderly pilgrim. While accompanying Christiana and her group, he relates the sad demise of the pilgrim Fearing.

• Mr. Fearing

  A pilgrim who accompanies Honest for some time. Mr. Fearing is courageous in the face of physical danger but insufficiently certain about his desire to reach the Celestial City.

• Gaius

  A homeowner and host who welcomes Christiana and her group. Two of Gaius’s daughters marry two of Christiana’s sons.

• Giant Good-Slay

  A giant slain by Gaius, Great-heart, and others. He almost devours the pilgrim Feeble-mind.

• Heedless

  A pilgrim who falls asleep near the end of his pilgrimage and talks in his sleep, showing his basic failure to understand pilgrimage.

• Too-bold

  Heedless’s cohort.

• Madam Bubble

  A tall, attractive, dark-skinned temptress. Madam Bubble offers Standfast herself and her money if he will stay with her.

• Standfast

  The last pilgrim met by Christiana. Standfast is found kneeling on the ground and praying in thanks for having been delivered from the temptation of Madam Bubble.

• Mr. Feeble-Mind

  A mentally slow pilgrim captured and nearly killed by the giant Good-Slay. Mr. Feeble-Mind is rescued by Gaius and joins Christiana’s group of pilgrims.

• Mr. Ready-to-Halt

  A handicapped pilgrim who joins Christiana’s group on crutches.

• Mr. Mnason

  Pilgrim with whom Christiana’s group lodges. Two of Mnason’s daughters are married off to Christiana’s sons.

• Contrite

  Friend of Mnason’s, who says that the locals feel a burden of guilt after the unjust execution of Christian’s friend Faithful.

• Valiant-for-truth

  A strong, sword-wielding pilgrim. Valiant-for-truth drives off three attackers single-handedly and joins Christiana’s group at the end of their journey.

Favorite Quotes by Chapter

The Author's Apology for His Book

• "Which way it pleases God: For who knows how, Better than he that taught us first to Plough, To guide our Mind and Pens for his Design? And he makes base things usher in Divine." (xiii)

Part I: The Pilgrim's Progress: in the similitude of a dream

• "I dreamed, and behold I saw a Man clothed with rags, standing in a certain place, with his face from his own house, a Book in his hand, and a great Burden upon his back." (1)

• "So I saw in my dream that the Man began to run; Now he had not run far from his own door, but his Wife and Children perceiving it, began to cry after him to return; but the Man put his fingers in his ears, and ran on crying, Life! Life! Eternal Life! So he looked not behind him, but fled towards the middle of the Plain." (5)

• "World. Wilt thou hearken to me if I give thee counsel? Chr. If it be good, I will; for I stand in need of good counsel." (13)

• "Chr. Why, Sir, this Burden upon my back is more terrible to me, than are all these things which you have mentioned" (14)

• "The man that met thee, is one Worldly-Wiseman, and rightly is he so called; partly, because he savoureth only the doctrine of this world; (therefore he always goes to the town of Morality to church) and partly, because he loveth that doctrine best; for it saveth him from the Cross; and because he is of this carnal temper, therefore he seeketh to pervert my ways, though right." (18)

• "So he had him into a private room, and bid his man open a door; the which when he had done, Christian saw the picture of a very grave Person hang up against the wall; and this was the fashion of it, It had eyes lifted up to Heaven, the best of Books in his hand, the Law of Truth was written upon his lips, the World was behind his back; it stood as if it pleaded with men, and a Crown of Gold did hang over its head." (26)

• "The man whose picture this is, is one of a thousand; he can beget children, travel in birth with children, and nurse them himself when they are born. And whereas thou seest him with eyes lift up to Heaven, the best of Books in his hand, and the Law of Truth writ on his lips; it is to shew thee, that his work is to know and unfold dark things to Sinners; even as also thou seest him stand as if he pleaded with men; and whereas thou seest the World as cast behind him, and that a Crown hangs over his head; that is to shew thee, that slighting and despising the things that are present, for the love that he hath to his Master's service, he is sure in the World that comes next, to have Glory for his reward." (26-27)

• "Chr. Then said Christian, Now I see that Patience has the best Wisdom, and that upon many accounts. 1. Because he stays for the best things. 2. And also because he will have the Glory of his, when the other has nothing but rags." (29)

• "The Interpreter answered, This is Christ, who continually with the Oil of his Grace maintains the work already begun in the heart: By the means of which, notwithstanding what the Devil can do, the souls of his people prove gracious still. And in that thou sawest, that the Man stood behind the wall to maintain the Fire; this is to teach thee, That it is hard for the Tempted to see how this Work of Grace is maintained in the soul." (30-31)

• "Then was Christian glad and lightsome, and said with releases us of our Guilt and a merry heart, He hath given me Rest by his Sorrow, and Burden, we Life by his Death. Then he stood still a while to look and wonder; for it was very surprising to him, that the sight of the Cross should thus ease him of his Burden. He looked therefore, and looked again, even till the springs that were in his head sent the waters down his cheeks." (38)

• "Chr. I walk by the Rule of my Master, you walk by the rude working of your fancies." (40)

• "Sometimes he sighed, sometimes he wept, and oftentimes he chid himself for being so foolish to fall asleep in that place which was erected only for a little refreshment from his weariness." (45)

• "Fear not the Lions, for they are chain'd, and are placed there for Trial of Faith, where it is, and for Discovery of those that have none: Keep in the midst of the Path, and no hurt shall come unto thee." (47)

• "Piety. But did you not come by the House of the Interpreter? Chr. Yes, and did see such things there, the remembrance of which will stick by me as long as I live: Especially three things, to wit, How Christ, in despite of Satan, maintains his Work of Grace in the heart; how the Man had sinned himself quite out of hopes of God's Mercy; and also the dream of him that thought in his sleep the Day of Judgment was come." (50)

• "Prud. Can you remember by what Means you find your annoyances at times, as if they were vanquished? Chr. Yes, when I think what I saw at the Cross, that will do it; and when I look upon my 'broidered Coat, that will do it; also when I look into the Roll that I carry in my bosom, that will do it; and when my thoughts wax warm about whither I am going, that will do it." (52)

• "The name of the chamber was Peace, where he slept till break of Day, and then he awoke and sang,

Where am I now! Is this the Love and Care

Of Jesus; for the men that Pilgrims are,

Thus to provide! That I should be forgiven,

And divel already the next door to Heaven!" (56)

• "Whilst Christian is among his godly friends, Their golden mouths make him sufficient 'mends For all his griefs; and when they let him go, He's clad with northern steel from top to toe." (58)

• "Chr. All this is true, and much more, which thou hast left out; but the Prince whom I serve and honour, is merciful and ready to forgive: But besides, these Infirmities possessed me in thy Country; for there I sucked them in, and I have groaned under them, been sorry for them, and have obtained Pardon of my Prince." (62)

• "And I thought again, this Shame tells me what men are; but it tells me nothing what God or the Word of God is. And I thought moreover, That at the Day of Doom we shall not be doomed to Death or Life, according to the hectoring spirits of the world, but according to the Wisdom and Law of the Highest. Therefore, thought I, what God says, is best, though all the men in the world are against it: Seeing then that God prefers his Religion; seeing God prefers a tender Conscience; seeing they that make themselves fools for the Kingdom of Heaven, are wisest; and that the poor man that loveth Christ, is richer than the greatest man in the world that hates him; Shame, depart, thou art an Enemy to my Salvation; shall I entertain thee against my Sovereign Lord? How then shall I look him in the Face at his Coming? Should I now be ashamed of his Ways and Servants, how can I expect the blessing?"(82)

• "Faith. Oh! a great deal: A man may cry out against Sin, of Policy, but he cannot abhor it but by virtue of a godly antipathy against it. I have heard many cry out against Sin in the Pulpit, who yet can abide it well enough in the Heart, House, and Conversation." (91)

• "They therefore brought him out, to do with him according to their Law; and first they scourged him, then they buffeted him, then they lanced his flesh with knives: after that they stoned him with stones, then pricked him with their swords; and last of all, they burnt him to ashes at the Stake. Thus came Faithful to his end." (110) 

• "Now I saw in my dream, that Christian went not forth alone; for there was one whose name was Hopeful, (being made so by the beholding of Christian and Faithful in their words and behaviour, in their sufferings at the Fair) who joined himself unto him, and entering into a brotherly covenant, told him, that he would be his companion. Thus one died to make testimony to the Truth, and another rises out of his ashes to be a companion with Christian in his Pilgrimage." (112)

• "Hope. My Brother, said he, remembrest thou not, how valiant thou hast been heretofore?" (135)

• "Hopeful comforts him again by calling former things to remembrance." (135)

• "Now, a little before it was Day, good Christian, as one half amazed, brake out in this passionate speech; What a Fool, quoth he, am I, thus to lie in a stinking dungeon, when I may as well walk at liberty? I have a key in my bosom, called Promise, that will I am persuaded open any lock in Doubting-Castle. Then said Hopeful, That's good news, good brother, pluck it out of thy bosom and try." (136-137)

• "Let us lie down here, and take one nap. Chr. By no means, (said the other) lest sleeping we never awake more." (158)

• "Hope. Another thing that hath troubled me even since my late amendments is, that if I look narrowly into the best of what I do now, I still see Sin, new Sin, mixing itself with the best of that I do; so that now I am forced to conclude, that notwithstanding my former fond Conceits of myself and duties, I have committed Sin enough in one duty to send me to Hell, tho' my former life had been faultless." (162)

• "God be merciful to me a Sinner, and make me to know and believe in Jesus Christ; for I see, that if his Righteousness had not been, or I have not Faith in that Righteousness, I am utterly cast away. Lord, I have heard that thou art a merciful God, and hast ordained that thy Son Jesus Christ should be the Saviour of the World; and moreover, that thou art willing to bestow upon such a poor sinner as I am, (and I am a sinner indeed) Lord, take therefore this opportunity, and magnify thy Grace in the Salvation of my soul, through thy Son Jesus Christ. Amen." (164)

• "Now I further saw, that betwixt them and the Gate was a River, but there was no bridge to go over, and the river was very deep."(181)

• "They then addressed themselves to the Water, and entering, Christian began to sink, and crying out to his good friend Hopeful, he said, I sink in deep Waters; the Billows go over my head, all the Waves go over me. Selah. Then said the other, Be of good cheer, my Brother, I feel the bottom, and it is good." (182)

• "Then I saw in my dream, That Christian was as in a muse  a while. To whom also Hopeful added these words, Be of good cheer, Jesus Christ maketh thee whole: And with that Christian brake out with a loud voice, Oh, I see him again! and he tells me, When thou passest through the Waters, I will be with thee; and through the Rivers, they shall not overflow thee. Then they both took courage, and the Enemy was after that as still as a stone, until they were gone over." (184)

• "Now, just as the Gates were opened to let in the men, I looked in after them; and behold the City shone like the Sun, the streets also were paved with Gold, and in them walked many men with Crowns on their heads, Palms in their hands, and Golden Harps to sing praises withal." (188)

Part II: The Pilgrim's Progress: from this world to that which is to come

• "Then said the Visiter, Christiana! the Bitter is before the Sweet. Thou must through Troubles, as did he that went before thee, enter this Celestial City." (210)

• "The Bitter must come before the Sweet, and that also will make the Sweet the sweeter."

• "Rel. It is not always necessary to grant things not asked for, lest by so doing, they become of little esteem; but when the Want of a thing is felt, it then comes under, in the eyes of him that feels it, that estimate, that properly is its due, and so consequently will be hereafter used." (230)

• "the Interpreter takes them apart again, and has them first into a room, where was a Man that could look no way but downwards, with a muckrake in his hand: There stood also one over his head, with a Celestial Crown in his hand, and proffered to give him that Crown for his muckrake; but the man did neither look up, nor regard, but raked to himself the straws, the small sticks, and dust of the floor."(234)

• "Give me not Riches, is scarce the prayer of one of ten thousand. Straws and sticks, and dust, with most, are the great things now looked after." (236)

•  "It was fine Linen white and clean. When the women were thus adorned, they seemed to be a terror one to the other; for that they could not see that Glory each one on herself, which they could see in each other. Now therefore they began to esteem each other better than themselves. For you are fairer than I am, said one; and you are more comely than I am, said another."

• "Pilgrims should watch, and remember what they have already received under their greatest enjoyments; but for want of doing so, ofttimes their rejoicing ends in tears, and their sun-shine in a Cloud." (258)

• "Jos. That Sin is so great and mighty a Tyrant, that none can pull us out of its clutches, but God; and that God is so good and loving to Man, as to pull him indeed out of this miserable state. Prud. What is God's design in saving of poor men? Jos. The glorifying of his Name, of his Grace, and Justice, and the everlasting Happiness of his Creature." (268)

• "Pray how fareth it with you in your Pilgrimage? (331)

• "Hon. It happens to us, as it happeneth to wayfaring men; sometimes our Way is clean, sometimes foul; sometimes up hill, sometimes down hill; we are seldom at a certainty: The wind is not always on our backs, nor is every one a Friend that we meet with in the Way. We have met with some notable rubs already; and what are yet behind we know not; but for the most part we find it true, that has been talked of of old: A good man must suffer trouble."(331)

• "My marks and scars I carry with me, to be a witness for me, that I have fought His battles, who now will be my Rewarder." (373)

• "The waters indeed are to the palate bitter, and to the stomach cold; yet the thoughts of what I am going to, and of the conduct that waits for me on the other side, doth lie as a glowing coal at my heart." (375)

• "I heard one say, that they were yet alive, and so would be for the increase of the Church in that place where they were, for a time." (376)

Notable Content

• Four Reasons for Backsliding (176-178)

Notes on *Tech-Wise Family*

The Tech-Wise Family: Everyday Steps for Putting Technology in Its Proper Place, Andy Crouch (Baker, 2017)

Main Idea/Takeaway

• The parental calling to cultivate wisdom & courage in their children is the grid through which we assess the use of technology. 

Table of Contents

Preface: The Proper Place

Introduction: Help!

Ten Tech-Wise Commitments

Part 1: The Three Key Decisions of a Tech-Wise Family

I. Choosing Character

II. Shaping Space

III. Structuring Time

Part 2: Daily Life

IV. Waking and Sleeping

V. Learning and Working

VI. The Good News About Boredom

VII. The Deep End of the (Car) Pool

VIII. Naked and Unashamed

Part 3: What Matters Most

IX. Why Singing Matters

X. In Sickness and in Health

Favorite Quotes by Chapter

Preface: The Proper Place

• "The pace of technological change has surpassed anyone's capacity to develop enough wisdom to handle it. We are stuffing our lives with technology's new promises, with no clear sense of whether technology will help us keep the promises we've already made." (17)

• "If we don't learn to put technology, in all its forms, in its proper place, we will miss out on many of the best parts of life in a family." (17)

• "The proper place for technology won't be exactly the same for every family, and it is not the same at every season of our lives." (19)

Introduction: Help!

• "An awful lot of children born in 2007, turning ten years old as this book is published, have been competing with their parents' screens for attention their whole lives." (26)

• "There is a better way...and this better way is radical." (28)

• "It requires making choices that most of our neighbors in church aren't making. Let me put it this way: you don't have to become Amish, but you probably have to become closer to Amish than you think." (29)

• "This better way involves radically recommitting ourselves to what family is about- what real life is about. Our homes aren't meant to be just refueling stations, places where we and our devices rest briefly, top up our charge, and then go back to frantic activity. They are meant to be places where the very best of life happens." (29)

• "We benefit from all kinds of devices, but we don't build our lives around them. We haven't eliminated devices from our lives by any means, but we go to great lengths to prevent them from taking over our lives."

• "For now, I can almost always settle for simply sitting where no screens are in sight. It's a simple, low-friction decision that has made countless hours at friends' homes and at restaurants much more meaningful and memorable than they would have been otherwise. You might call it a nudge." (33)

• "Nudges are small changes in the environment around us that make it easier for us to make the choices we want to make or want others to make." (33)

• "They don't focus so much on changing anything about out own preferences and ability to choose well; they simply put the best choice right in front of us and make the wrong choice harder." (33)

• "We are continually being nudged by our devices toward a set of choices. The question is whether those choices are leading us to the life we actually want. I want a life of conversation and friendship, not distraction and entertainment; but every day, many times a day, I'm nudged in the wrong direction. One key part of the art of living faithfully with technology is setting up better nudges for ourselves." (35)

• "The central disciplines of the spiritual life, as taught by generations of Christian saints, have stayed the same for twenty centuries now: solitude, silence, and fasting. Each of them pushes us beyond our natural limits, and all of them give us spiritual resources for everyday life that we can't gain any other way." (36)

• "The most powerful choices we will make in our lives are not about specific decisions but about patterns of life: the nudges and disciplines that will shape all our other choices. This is especially true with technology. Technology comes with a powerful set of nudges- the default settings of our "easy-everywhere" culture. Because technology is devoted primarily to making our lives easier, it discourages us from disciplines, especially ones that involve disentangling ourselves from technology itself." (37)

Ten Tech-Wise Commitments

• See Notable Content

Part 1: The Three Key Decisions of a Tech-Wise Family

I. Choosing Character

• "Increasingly, our lives have been colonized by things that don't just help us accomplish a task but do the task for us." (49)

• "Now, technology is everywhere. I don't mean just glowing screens and digital services; I mean the whole apparatus of "easy everywhere" that has come into existence in just over the span of one human lifetime." (49)

• 'In its early days, the internet was more lie a tool. People would "go online." It was someplace you had to "go." And it was finicky- slow and complicated. Now it just works. And it's not somewhere you go. It's like air. It's everywhere." (50)

• "We are in the midst of the greatest revolution in easy everywhere the world has ever known and it may just be getting started." (52)

• "Family is about the forming of persons. Being a person is a gift, like life itself- we are born as human beings made in the image of God." (52)

• "Family helps form us into persons who have acquired wisdom and courage. (53)

• "Wisdom is not just knowledge--mastering information about particular aspects of the world. Wisdom is understanding. It's the kind of understanding, specifically, that guides action. It's knowing, in a tremendously complex world, what the right thing to do is--what will be most honoring of our Creator and our fellow creatures." (53)

• "Because we need not just to understand our place in the world and the faithful way to proceed- we also need the conviction and character to act." (56)

• "Life is difficult. In fact, if you do life properly- with wisdom- life gets more difficult as you go." (56)

• "And even though it's incredibly hard simply to know what we should do, it's even harder to actually act on what we should do. Because almost all the time, the most faithful, the most loving, and the wisest thing to do is scary, hard, and painful- even, in some ways, dangerous." (56-57)

• "How can we become the kind of people who have wisdom and courage? The only way to do it is with other people." (57)

• "As a Christian, I actually don't believe the biological family is the main place we are meant to be known and loves in a way that leads us to wisdom and courage." (60)

• "The first family for everyone who wants wisdom and courage in the way of Jesus is the church- the community of disciples who are looking to Jesus to reshape their understanding and their character." (60)

• "If our families are to be all that they are meant to be- schools of wisdom and courage- they will have to become more like the church, households where we are actively formed into something more than our culture would ask us to be. And if our churches are to be all they are meant to be, they will have to become more like a family--household-like contexts of daily life where we are all nurtured and developed into the persons we are meant to be and can become." (62)

• "So here's where we have to start if we are going to live as flourishing families in an age of easy everywhere: we are going to have to decide, together, that nothing is more important than becoming people of wisdom and courage. We are going to have to commit to make every major decision, and many small decisions, on the basis of these questions: Will this help me become less foolish and more wise? Will this help me become less fearful and more courageous?" (67)

II. Shaping Space

• "Fill the center of your life together- the literal center, the heart of your home, the place where you spend the most time together--with the things that reward creativity, relationship, and engagement. Push technology and cheap thrills to the edges; move deeper and more lasting things to the core." (71)

• "So here is a simple test of whether your home is a tech-wise space: find the place that is its emotional center-the place where your family spends the most time and the most energy- and take an inventory of what you see there?" (73)

• "So if you do only one thing in response to this book, I urge you to make it this: Find the room where your family spends the most time and ruthlessly eliminate the things that ask little of you and develop little in you." (79)

• "This is the central nudge of the tech-wise life: to make the place where we spend the most time the place where easy everywhere is hardest to find."(80)

III. Structuring Time

• "Work is the fruitful transformation of the world through human effort and skill, in ways that serve our shared human needs and give glory to God." (83)

• "If toil is fruitless labor, you could think of leisure as fruitless escape from labor. It's a kind of rest that doesn't really restore our souls, doesn't restore our relationships with others or God. And crucially, it is the kind of rest that doesn't give others the chance to rest. Leisure is purchased from other people who have to work to provide us our experiences of entertainment and rejuvenation." (87)

• "There is one thing most of us can do- and all of us are meant to do. It is to rediscover rest: real rest, in harmony with one another, our Creator, and all of creation. The biblical word for this kind of rest is Sabbath." (92)

• "A life of abundance, gratitude, rest, and quiet. It will only happen if we choose it, but if we choose it, the experience of our family and many friends has been that God blesses it." (97)

• "So I suggest a simple, minimal pattern of Sabbath: we choose to turn our devices off not just one day every week but also one hour (or more) every day and one week (or more) every year."  (98)

• "In this area, as in all of life, the path toward real freedom- including the freedom to actually choose freedom, rather than imprisoning ourselves in our too-small substitutes for real life-is to embrace disciplines." (102)

• "One hour a day, one day a week, one week a year-set it all aside." (105)

Part 2: Daily Life

IV. Waking and Sleeping

• "God's unsleeping care is good news: we sleepy creatures can trust that our needs will be provided for while we can do nothing on our own behalf." (112)

• "Nothing about our lives at home has been so thoroughly disrupted by technology as sleep." (114)

• "Under the covers, as alerts light up the night, anxieties and fantasies are fed as often as they are allayed-for parents as much as children. And we lose out on what we were really made for: the deep rest that would make us more cognitively, emotionally, physically, and spiritually fit for the challenges the next day will bring. The lilies of the field close up their blooms at night and rest patiently for the next day, but we, 

  cloaked in ghostly light, make tomorrow's troubles today's and tonight's instead. The devices we carry to

  bed to make us feel connected and safe actually prevent us from trusting in the One who knows our needs

  and who alone can protect us through the dangers and sorrows of any night." (118)

V. Learning and Working

• "The last thing you need when you are learning, at any age but especially in childhood, is to have things made too easy. Difficulty and resistance, as long as they are age appropriate and not too discouraging, are actually what press our brains and bodies to adapt and learn." (127)

• "The truth is that our children, just like us, will spend far too much of their lives tethered to glowing rectangles. We owe them, at the very minimum, early years of real, embodied, difficult, rewarding learning, the kind that screens cannot provide." (131)

• "The less we rely on screens to occupy and entertain our children, the more they become capable of occupying and entertaining themselves." (133)

VI. The Good News About Boredom

• "In the history of the human race, boredom: is practically brand new- less than three hundred years old." (139)

• "Boredom is actually a crucial warning sign-as important in its own way as physical pain. It's a sign that our capacity for wonder and delight, contemplation and attention, real play and fruitful work, has been dangerously depleted?" (146)

• "We are not bored, exactly, just as someone eating potato chips is not hungry, exactly. But overconsumption of distraction is just as unsatisfying, and ultimately sickening, as overconsumption of junk food." (147)

VII. The Deep End of the (Car) Pool

• "All true conversations, really are risks, exercises in improvisation where we have to listen and respond without knowing, fully, what is coming next, even out of our own mouths." (157)

• "A conversation interrupted several times before the seven-minute mark does not get deeper more slowly; it stays shallow, as each party makes room for the other to opt out and return to their device. What might be on the other side of the seven-minute mark, we never find out." (158)

• "We solve the immediate problem of how to keep small, squirmy children from going ballistic in the backseat, but we also teach our children, sometimes before they can talk, that the car is a place to be entertained, one more boring spot where, thanks to technology, you don't have to notice how bored you really are." (159)

VIII. Naked and Unashamed

• "There is nothing in our society that has surrendered more completely, and more catastrophically, to technology's basic promise, easy everywhere, than sex." (165)

• "With sex dissociated so completely from the family, it is perhaps not surprising that family itself, so totally the opposite of easy-everywhere life, is being reconfigured."(168)

• "We rob the easy-everywhere world of its power to seduce us not so much by the rules we put in place as by the dependence on one another we cultivate- depending on one another to help us be our best selves, growing in wisdom and courage and serving one another, in a world that wants to make us into shallow slaves of the self." (178-179) 

Part 3: What Matters Most

IX. Why Singing Matters

• "The reorientation of our musical lives around consumption is robbing us of something deeper; it is robbing us of a fundamental form of worship." (186)

• "Every family that cares about wisdom and courage needs to be part of a community larger than itself- a community that takes us deeper in our understanding of the world's beauty and brokenness, and that calls us to greater character than we would ever muster on our own." (187)

• "And the most distinctive thing the church does- the thing that most directly develops wisdom and courage in us, from childhood through old age--is call us to worship the God who made us in his image." (187)

• "Worship calls us out of the small pleasures of an easy-everywhere world to the real joy and burden of bearing the image of God in a world where nothing is easy, everything is broken, and yet redemption is possible." (189)

• "And so worship is the most important thing a family can do. It is the most important thing to teach our children and the most important thing to rehearse throughout our lives." (190)

X. In Sickness and in Health

• "Early in our marriage, Catherine and I made a commitment that has in turn dictated a hundred other decisions over the years. We decided that every time we were invited to a wedding or a funeral, unless circumstances made it truly impossible, at least one of us would go." (197)

• "Only by showing up in person can we feel and grasp the full weight, joy, and vulnerability of the most important experiences in human life." (199)

• "We will put love into practice in the most profound possible way, by being present with one another in person at the greatest and most difficult moments of life." (203)

• "We are meant to build this kind of life together: the kind of life that, at the end, is completely dependent upon one another; the kind of life that ultimately transcends, and does not need, the easy solutions of technology because it is caught up in something more true and more lasting than any alchemy our technological world can invent." (204)

• "We are meant to die in one another's arms, surrounded by prayer and song, knowing beyond knowing that we are loved." (204-205)

• "We are meant for so much more than technology can ever give us- above all, for the wisdom and courage that it will never give us. We are meant to spur one another along on the way to a better life, the life that really is life." (205)

Notable Content

• Six guides to know that technology is kept in its proper place. (20-21)

• "The Ten Commitments begin with three choices that are especially fundamental:

  1. The first and deepest is to choose character- to make the mission of our family, for children and adults alike, the cultivation of wisdom and courage. 

  2. The second is to shape space- to make choices about the place where we live that put the development of character and creativity at the heart of our home.

  3. And the third is to structure time- to build rhythms into our lives, on a daily, weekly, and annual basis, that make it possible for us to get to know one another, God, and our world in deeper and deeper ways." (38-39)

• "Ten Tech-Wise Commitments" (41-42)

  1. We develop wisdom and courage together as a family.

  2. We want to create more than we consume. So we fill the center of our home with things that reward skill and active engagement.

  3. We are designed for a rhythm of work and rest. So one hour a day, one day a week, and one week a year, we turn off our devices and worship, feast, play and rest together.

  4. We wake up before our devices do, and they "go to bed" before we do.

  5. We aim for "no screens before double digits" at school and at home.

  6. We use screen for a purpose, and we use them together, rather than using them aimlessly alone.

  7. Car time is conversation time.

  8. Spouses have one another's passwords, and parents have total access to children's devices/

  9. We learn to sing together, rather than letting recorded and amplified music take over our lives and worship.

  10. We show up in person for the big events of life. We learn how to be human by being fully present at our moments of greatest vulnerability. We hope to die in one another's arms. 

Notes on *Reading Scripture Canonically*

Reading Scripture Canonically: Theological Instincts for Old Testament Interpretation, Mark S. Gignilliat, (Baker Academic, 2019)

Main Idea/Takeaway

• How and why should we read the material of Scripture — words, sentences, paragraphs, books, and so forth — in conjunction with Scripture's theological subject matter? (xiv)

Interaction 

• "Has Sailhamer (JS) described this best in his Old Testament theology on text vs. event"? (15)

• "Revelation is in the text." (18)

• "Note how JS places canonical reading along criticisms" (21)

• "Not less than historical, but absolutely more, and when understood as witness, the question on what to preach is clear. Final form!" (31)

• "In short, the canonical approach places highest focus on the text as God has given it to us. And we should preach this way!" (31)

• "LXX as a kind of commentary." (71)

• "Yes, only because we know that God is the ultimate author of Scripture." (94)

• "Intertextuality- relationship between various books of OT; Innertextuality- book's own textual composition; Contextuality- final shape of canon" (100)

• "See Michael Reeves, 'Delighting in the Trinity.'" (101)

• "But does YHWH 'reveal' himself 'personally' if no particular person should be in view. (see fn.29)" (112)

• "We believe God is the ultimate author of Scripture." (113)

• "We believe the Bible is ultimately about God and is by God." (113)

• "Instincts and Expectations." (116)

• "Sounds like reader-determinate meaning which is a slippery slope?! How does this not also open us up to reader response? The answer it seems, is Scripture's subject matter, God. That he is the ultimate author. KJV speaks of canonical fittingness." " (97)

Table of Contents

Introduction

Part 1: Scripture's Material Form

I. Scripture and Canon

II. Sanding with the Grain: Final Form and Canonical Shape 

III. Canonical Intentionality

IV. Canon and Textual Criticism: The Search for the Christian Bible

Part 2: Scripture's Subject Matter

V. God as Triune, and Exegetical Metaphysics

VI. The Trinity and the Old Testament

Epilogue

Favorite Quotes by Chapter

Introduction

• "The posture, expectations, and (dreaded word) "methods" that one brings to the Holy Scripture will either serve or obstruct Scripture's reason for existence." (xii)

• "The New Testament authors and early church theologians read the Old Testament as a Christian witness. This kind of reading instinct and strategy has always been with the church."(xii)

Part 1: Scripture's Material Form

I. Scripture and Canon

• "A "canon consciousness" is actually embedded in the literature itself, and it exerted pressure on various religious bodies in the creaturely act of canonization or the forming of set lists." (7)

• "While the human and institutional agents attached to the writing, editing, and preserving of the biblical books should never be diminished, Christians around the world today and from the church's inception dive headlong into the Scriptures for the sake of hearing the word of God." (9)

• "As this book hopes to demonstrate, the confession of faith regarding Scripture's nature (or ontology, "what it is") impinges on the interpretive approach taken. In other words, the subject matter being studied shapes the interpretive methods used to understand it." (10)

• "God's self-determination to be a God in fellowship with humanity. On this account, Scripture is the loving gift of God to his people so they may continually seek him and order their lives toward him, while resting in the confidence that God has not left our desire to know him within the realm of human self-achievement." (11)

• "As Webster puts the matter, "Holy Scripture is a function of God. Therefore, Holy Scripture's canonical role as the normative guide for Christian thought and life derives its authority from the loving rule of God. Its textual character remains a dynamic means of continued divine self-disclosure. It is not a static "textual deposit."(11)

• "God as object and Scripture as approach are determinate within the redemptive economy for how God orders the goal and means of our theological pursuits." (12)

• "The differentiated-though-fitting relationship between God and Scripture demands the church's continued giving of itself to the exegesis of Holy Scripture. Because Scripture is not God, while at the same time remaining a sanctified means for apprehension of God, it follows necessarily that the exegesis of Holy Scripture continues as a never-ceasing activity of Christ's church." (13)

• "The prophetic word of God continues to effect repentance in the hearts of hearers around the world." (17)

• "The cognitive principle of Scripture, with God as its object of inquiry, shapes the intellectual approach and method of inquiry. While all the elements of a humanly authored document are true of Holy Scripture, the ontological principle will not allow our method of reading to be hemmed in by its creaturely status." (18)

II. Sanding with the Grain: Final Form and Canonical Shape 

• "But because the canonical approach insists on the character of Israel's Scriptures as witness rather than source, the final form of the biblical text is the privileged form." (25)

• "The problem with this newer redactional analysis is that under the guise of diversity the biblical text is subjected to the criteria of rigorous, conceptual coherence which has been defined according to modern rational categories." In other words, a modern account of conceptual coherence may be an imposition onto the authors and shapers of the biblical material." (36)

• "Childs had no misgivings about the ends toward which critical tools are used: as an aid to hearing the final form of the text well. Childs's clarity on the goal of such critical utilization comes from his commitment to reading the Old Testament as witness to God's identity and ways with his people." (37)

• "Christopher Seitz says it best when he identifies the canonical approach this way: "Canonical reading is therefore not an exact science, but a theological decision about what the proper parameters for interpretation are: the final form presentation and the arrangement and sequencing that it exhibits, over against the simple history of the text's development as this is critically reconstructed." (40)

III. Canonical Intentionality

• "The canonical approach, on the other hand, conceives of intentionality more broadly as it identifies the authorial voice of the text with its final form, along with its privileged arrangement and deployment of texts, traditions, or prophetic oracles whose initial intention(s) may have had a more narrow range of effects. One could construe intentionality of this kind as "thick" rather than "thin." A thin account locates intentionality within a narrow frame of individual authorship. A thick account takes into view a providentially constructed understanding of history where a wide range of historical figures and inspired words are deemed relevant to the texts as they come to their full form. The term associated with this particular understanding is canonical intentionality?"(44)

• "The recognition of the canon's intention, as a theological understanding of the text's ability, to render God's identity and will for future generations has exegetical warrant." (48)

•  "Does the canon expect its readers to come to it with a set of assumptions and anticipations about the text and the reading process? Can one decision about a reading strategy claim a superior status to others? The canonical approach, in accord with the received reading practices of the church, says yes. When believers read Israel's canon in the anticipation of hearing an authoritative word whose source is the communicative action of God, they read Scripture according to its own intention." (51)

• "The glory of the Christian canon is its ability to do this kind of work continually in the life of Christ's church, requiring a robust doctrine of the Holy Spirit to fuel its fire."(55)

• "The gap between text and interpreter is not bridged by more refined hermeneutical tools, helpful as these may be. The gap is bridged by a Person." (56)

• "John Webster is right to claim, "Whether done well or ill, theology and the study of Scripture are spiritual tasks, and the conditions for their flourishing include spiritual conditions." (56)

IV. Canon and Textual Criticism: The Search for the Christian Bible

• "If, however, Scripture functions canonically as the rule of faith for Christian life and doctrine despite questions at the margins regarding the canon's scope, then the settling of the canon's scope is not determinative of the canonical role that Scripture plays even when levels of uncertainty at the margins remain." (75)

V. God as Triune, and Exegetical Metaphysics

• "Freewheeling hermeneutical reflections apart from the nitty-gritty details of textual engagement run counter to the material sufficiency of Scripture. Texts and their language matter. At the same time, biblical texts cannot be separated from their subject matter." (86)

• "Modern biblical criticism is a rich and varied thing, whose results provide important avenues of inquiry and appreciation for Scripture's linguistic, poetic, and historical depth. But somewhere lurking in the shadows, or perhaps dancing in full view, is the historicist resistance to metaphysics as a critical tool for reading historical texts. Brian Daley does not dance around the issue when he claims that historical criticism often operates "methodologically atheistic." (89)

• "When Isaiah or Moses or Jeremiah utter a prophetic word, do not their language and verbal expressions say more than they could grasp?" (93)

• "Does the whole Christian canon as a two-Testament witness pressure us to see the Old Testament's subject as our Triune God, with the Tetragrammaton (the divine name YHWH) as best predicated on the essence of God revealed In the tripersonal naming of God as Father, Son, and Holy Spirit more of this in the next chapter)?" (93)

• "Therefore, the prophetic word of the Old Testament is an extension of Yhwh's own revealed self, fitted as it is to the singularity of the divine being in tripersonal relation." (94)

• "The source of the Bible's language is the infinite plenitude of the divine being, revealing himself by means of the Word's agency." (94)

VI. The Trinity and the Old Testament

• "Moreover, if as Christians we affirm the triune character of our God, then a question regarding the identity of Yhwh in the Old Testament follows. Is Yhwh a persona of the divine essence or the ousia itself? Put in other terms, is Yhwh the Father or the divine essence of three personae?" (101)

• "Yhwh's proclamation of his own name is the revelation of his glory. The thirteen middot (attributes) of God listed by Yhwh himself (34:6-7) reveal the character of the divine name and in so doing reveal the character of Yhwh." (106)

• "Yhwh's mission to create and redeem does not exhaust the scope of God's being. As various episodes within the Old Testament attest, the being of God resists domestication of any sort."(107)

Epilogue

• "The church's long-term health and faithful witness rests on its commitment to seeking after God's Word in Holy Scripture. Of course, other ecclesial matters are important. But a doctrine of Scripture's sufficiency means that the church's access, to what gives it life, the person and work of Jesus Christ, is through the front doors of Holy Scripture." (115)

• "Still, it is the open Bible that sustains and energizes every component of pastoral ministry and, for that matter, Christian existence. People need Jesus. And Jesus Christ stands at the door of his own Word and knocks." (117)

Notable Content

• Defining Terms. (6)

• Canon and Scripture Ontology. (10)

• The Canonical Approach in Modern Guise:

"While drawing on the resources and instincts of the church's premodern reading of Scripture, the canonical approach makes judicious use of modern criticism's literary engagement with the text's compositional history. The key term is judicious because the canonical approach makes appreciative use of critical tools while at the same time resisting modern criticism's interpretive goals and methodological hegemony." (25)

• Textual Final Form: 

"The final form also leaves an interpretive imprint on the text, rendering the whole as more than the sum total of its parts; it is the culmination of God's revealed word in time, and renders an authoritative frame of reference for the parts leading to the whole--a witness to God's revelation rather than a source for critical reconstruction." (27)

• Canonical Intentionality: 

"The canonical approach conceives of the text's intentionality in the authorial voice of the text's final form. While the religiohistorical phenomena producing the various canonical voices are not denied, the canonical approach understands the text's intentionality as "loosened" from these historical forces for the sake of an enduring witness to divine self-revelation." (46)

• See John Sailhamer categories. (48)

• Textual Pluriformity/Uniformity: 

"The plethora of text and text types discovered in the twentieth century complicates the text-critical pursuit of an "original" Old Testament text. A standard view of the Old Testament's textual history is that a pluriform text type--multiple and divergent texts and text types-in time yielded to a uniform text associated with rabbinic Judaism of the era after AD 70. This chapter makes a different claim: uniformity and pluriformity existed on parallel historical tracks, rather than pluriformity leading genetically into uniformity." (63)

• Hebrew or Greek or Both?:

"The translations of the Hebrew Scriptures into Greek remain a significant historical and theological phenomenon. Undoubtedly the Septuagint (LXX) played a formative role in the shaping of the New Testament and early Christianity. The evidence suggests that this historical accident tells much about the translatability of the Old Testament, but it does not necessarily place the Septuagint translation above its Hebrew parent text." (76)

• Fixity: 

"The verbal character of the Old Testament in its literal sense opens up to the future: much like the literal sense of Cézanne's life opens up to the future of his work. Yet in this opening up, the Old Testament's "life" or literal sense or given verbal form is not left behind for greener New Testament pastures. As Cézanne's paintings provide a necessary entry point to the fixity of his life, so too does the trinitarian subject matter of Scripture provide an entry point to the fixity of the Old Testament's verbal character." (98)

Notes on *Possessed by God*

Possessed by God: A New Testament Theology of Sanctification and Holiness, David Peterson (IVP, 1995)

Main Idea/Takeaway

Moral holiness in the Christian life, typically called "progressive sanctification" is better understood and practiced in the biblical terms of renewal, transformation, and growth — expressions of our definitive sanctification.

• "I will argue that definitive sanctification is a more important theme in the New Testament than has generally been acknowledged. Rightly understood, this doctrine is a key to holy living and a way through the impasse created by much previous debate. God calls us and enables us in Christ to live as those possessed by God and empowered by his Holy Spirit. This is the theme of the first three chapters of this book. The fourth chapter then examines New Testament exhortations to pursue holiness and considers the sense in which sanctification is a process of 'becoming' and 'acting'."(14)

• "The overall aim will be to hear afresh God's challenge to holiness, encouraged by the promises on which it is grounded and guided by the teaching with which it is associated." (16)

• "Sanctification is commonly regarded as a process of moral and 'spiritual transformation following conversion. In the New Testament, however, it primarily refers to God's way of taking possession of us in Christ, setting us apart to belong to him and to fulfil his purpose for us. Sanctification certainly has present and ongoing effects, but when the verb 'to sanctify' (Gk. hagiazein) and the noun 'sanctification' (Gk. hagiasmos) are used, the emphasis is regularly on the saving work of God in Christ, applied to believers through the ministry of the Holy Spirit." (27)

• "It would be more accurate to say that renewal and change flow from the regeneration and sanctification that God has already accomplished in our lives." (136)

• "Instead of speaking in terms of progressive sanctification, the New Testament more regularly employs the language of renewal, transformation and growth, to describe what God is doing with us here and now." (136)

• "In New Testament terms, we are to live as those who have been brought from death to life, discharged from the law to belong to Christ, led by the Spirit in a continuing struggle with the flesh. We are to live with a confidence in what God has already done for us and trust in him to continue his transforming work in us until we see him face to face." (137)

Interaction 

• The holiness of God, cf. Webster. (16)

• "But they are unable to effect such living" (21)

• On mission: "Mission is clearly the goal of sanctification in John17." (30)

• "Are you living by your assessment of your life or God's?" (49)

• "Believe the gospel. Embrace your identity in Christ. Live by God's assessment of your life." (49)

• "Think in terms not of measurable maturity, but trajectories of current devotion & practice. The "Pilgrim's Progress" allegory is again masterful." (91)

• cf. Beale article: relation between new creation and reconciliation in 2 Corinthians. (133)

• Present experience of glorification. (133)

Table of Contents

Introduction

I. The biblical starting-point

II. Sanctified in Christ

III. Sanctified by word and Spirit

IV. Pursuing holiness

V. Living between the cross and the resurrection

VI. Transformation, renewal, and growth

Appendix A: The meaning of hagiasmos in the New Testament

Appendix B: Sanctification and God's law

Favorite Quotes by Chapter

Introduction

• "Considering the passion for holiness expressed by writers and preachers in former generations, James Packer may be right to claim that 'holiness is a neglected priority throughout the modern church generally' and 'specifically a fading glory in today's evangelical world' (1984: 99)." (11)

• "Despite the significant work of Packer and others, there is room for a fresh look at the subject, with a particular focus on what the New Testament teaches about the way holiness is achieved and expressed."(12)

• "The assumption is generally made that sanctification is simply the process by which we become more and more holy." (13)

• "It obscures the distinctive meaning and value of the terminology in the New Testament, confusing sanctification with renewal and transformation." (13)

• "Sanctification is a state in which believers find themselves because of the work of Christ and the operation find themselves because of the work of Christ and the operation of his Spirit in their lives. They are called to remain in that state 'by living in correspondence to their given holiness' (614)." (14)

• "In sum, sanctification in the New Testament is seen as 'a one-time event and as a process, the believers being and becoming holy and acting correspondingly' (614)." (14)

I. The biblical starting- point

• "Even though the holiness of God cannot be adequately conveyed in vision or word, angelic beings declared that it could be encountered in our universe, which is like a vast temple dedicated to his use and the display of his glory. God's glory is his holiness revealed."(18)

• "The covenant relationship established by God contained at its heart the assurance that he would be their God and they would be his people (e.g. n. 17:7-8; Ex. 6:7). Consequently, he would be uniquely with them, to fulfil his purposes and bring blessing to them (e.g. Gn. 28:13-15; Ex. 3:7-8)." God's sanctifying presence would continue to mark them as a holy people and demand holiness of living as a response." (21)

• "Holiness cannot simply be acquired by human effort. It is a status or condition which God imparts to those whom he chooses to bring into a special relationship with himself through covenant and redemption. But it is a status that carries with it particular responsibilities."(23)

• "Just as Israel was made holy by God's saving activity in the time of Moses, and again in the restoration after the Babylonian Exile, so sanctification in the New Testament is an integral part of the redemptive work of Jesus Christ. It is regularly portrayed as a once-for-all, definitive act and primarily has to do with the holy status or position of those who are 'in Christ'." (24)

• "Christians are sustained in holiness by the ongoing presence of the Holy Spirit and the trust that he gives in the finished work of Christ. The essential work of the Spirit is to enable belief in the gospel, so that the blessings it offers may be continually enjoyed by God's people." (24)

• "Christians are called to live out the practical consequences of knowing God in Jesus Christ and of being consecrated by his saving work. Everything that is said about moral change and personal transformation in the New Testament is to be related to God's sanctifying initiative in Christ." (25)

• "...sanctification in Christ has to do with a profound re-orientation of values and behavior. Beginning with the 'heart' and reaching out to touch the life and witness of God's people at every level, God's word and God's Spirit bring change and transformation. In us and through us, something of God's holiness is revealed to the world." (25)

II. Sanctified in Christ

• "At the heart of the revelation that Jesus brings is the proclamation of God's redemptive achievement in the death of his Son. In his death, Jesus demonstrates the love which God has for the world and which he desires to see reflected in the life of his people. With the gospel message about Jesus and his work, God imparts his Spirit to us and binds us to himself in love. That same word keeps us in holiness and love, enabling us to share in his mission to the world." (33)

• "By his sovereign action in Christ, God sets apart and binds to himself those who have been purified from the defilement of sin. This objective, consecrating work of God has profound implications for the attitude and behavior of those who believe." (34)

• "Although Israel under the Old Covenant was able to draw near to God through the mediation of priests and the operation of the sacrificial system, the people were not 'perfected' in their approach to God (gf. 7:11; 10:1-2). However, with Jesus, 'a better hope' has been introduced by which we may draw near to him (7:19; 10:14)." (36)

• "This better hope is based on the 'better covenant', which has been enacted through 'better promises' (8:6). Here and now, we are 'qualified' to draw near to God with the certainty of sins forgiven and the confidence that we are in an eternally secure relationship with God (c/. 7:19; 9:9; 10:1-4, 14-23; 12:22-24). Our hope is also to meet God face-to-face, in the glory of his eternal kingdom (c/. 2:10; 4:9-10; 12:14, 22-24; 13:14), and so perfection in Hebrews involves ultimate glorification. Even so, what we have yet to experience is only an unfolding of what has already been achieved for us by Christ's sacrifice." (36)

• "The terminology of perfection is used to proclaim the fulfilment or consummation of men and women in a permanent, direct and personal relationship with God."(36)

• "Jesus' death brings about a cleansing from sin and a definitive consecration to God in the present. It also secures for us a share in the future that God has promised. We can draw near to God now with the directness and certainty that belong to the final state of his people (cf. 4:16; 10:19-22: 12:22-24). The perfecting of believers involves all of that. Our sanctification or consecration to God is only a part of the process of eschatological perfection, achieved through the perfecting of Christ (2:10; 5:9; 7:28)." (37)

• "The New Covenant promise of a renewed 'heart' is fulfilled when people are set free from the burden of unforgiven sins through trusting in the effectiveness of Christ's sacrifice (9:14; 10:22). They are thus renewed in faith and sincerity towards God. Only the cleansing provided by Christ can definitively free us to worship or serve the living God (9:14, Gk. latreuein) in a way that pleases him and truly honors him." (39)

• "Sanctification means being appropriated by God and dedicated to him by the saving work of his Son. The terminology is associated with the beginning of the Christian life and highlights the corporate dimension to sanctification in Paul's thinking. Sanctification has to do with the identity and status of those who are 'in Christ'. It also points to the lifestyle that is consistent with God's calling." (40)

• "The next clause, 'to those sanctified in Christ' (Ck. hegiasmenois en Christo), amplifies what it means to be God's church. The Corinthian Christians were a holy and distinct people in that corrupt and godless city. This was so because of God's initiative, drawing them into an exclusive relationship with himself.? What he had done for them "in Christ Jesus' had made them part of his eschatological community. Here the perfect passive participle "sanctified' should be understood as another way of speaking about their conversion and incorporation into Christ. It can hardly refer to their holiness of character or conduct, since Paul spends much time in this letter challenging their values and their behavior, calling them to holiness in an ethical sense. He does this on the basis that they are already sanctified in a relational sense, but need to express that sanctification in lifestyle." (41)

• "Jesus delivers us from the dominion of sin and death (redemption). By his righteousness he also makes it possible for us to be counted righteous by God (justification). At the same time, he establishes us in a distinct and exclusive relationship with the Holy One (sanctification). In the great Christological statement of 1 Corinthians 1:30, redemption, justification and sanctification are overlapping, but distinct theological concepts. This judgment is confirmed by the argument in 1 Corinthians 6:11." (44)

• "The Spirit's work is to empower the preaching of the gospel about Jesus, enabling those who hear to understand and believe (2:4-5; cf. 2:6-16). So the Spirit is the means whereby God in the present age 'effects the work of Christ in the believer's life' (Fee 1994: 219)." (47)

• "Sanctification is about being possessed by God and expressing that distinctive and exclusive relationship by the way we live." (48)

III. Sanctified by word and Spirit

• "Here it is important to note that everything in the Christian life, from beginning to end, is made possible by Jesus' self-giving in death (Eph. 5:25), previously described as 'a fragrant offering and sacrifice to God' (5:2). Only those who are sanctified by Christ now can be presented to him in glory then. Transformation is implied by the notion of glorification (cf. Rom. 8:29-30; 2 Cor. 3:18; 1 Jn. 3:2), the present work of the Spirit anticipating the ultimate transformation associated with the resurrection of our bodies." (54)

• "By faith in the gospel, we continue to be united with Christ, which is the heart of sanctification. By faith, we rely on his promises and grasp the power of his Spirit, so that we can resist sin and live for God. This theme will be particularly developed in chapter five. Faith is 'not only a receptive organ but also an operative power." (56)

• "When God sanctifies us as individuals, he establishes us as members of a holy fellowship, enabling us to play our part in maintaining and expressing the holiness of the church, in doctrine and lifestyle." (67)

IV. Pursuing holiness

• "So the challenge is to pursue practical expressions of the holiness or sanctification that is ours in Christ." (75)

• "Those who are cleansed and consecrated by Christ, and who look forward to sharing the perfection of holiness in his presence for ever, will pursue holiness as a lifestyle." (77)

• "Indeed, the Spirit he gives to Christians is the Spirit of holiness; and nothing unholy can be tolerated in the lives of individuals or communities where the Holy Spirit dwells (gf. 1 Cor. 3:16-17; 6:19-20; 2 Cor. 6:14-7:1)." (84)

• "The promises about God dwelling in the midst of his people, and welcoming as his sons and daughters those who separate themselves from everything unclean (6:16-18), are the motivation for a holy and separated life." (87)

• "From a positive point of view, the secret of a holy life is reflecting the character of God, knowing that his Spirit is at work amongst his people to make that separate and distinct lifestyle possible, and thus walking in the Spirit's ways. When they ignore these imperatives, believers dishonor the one who called them into an exclusive relationship with himself and compromise the holiness of the church as 'the temple of the living God' (6:16; cf. 1 Cor. 3:16-17; Heb. 12:15)." (88)

• "No Christian should doubt the need to give practical, everyday expression to the holiness that is our status and calling in Christ. Only those who trust in his sanctifying work on the cross, and take seriously the warning to 'pursue holiness', will 'see the Lord'." (91)

• "On the other hand, it is possible to be so zealous for 'progress' that one's attention shifts from God's grace to human effort. Moral growth and development will be God's gift to us at different stages of our lives, but spirituality must not be measured in terms of the rate of change. We are to go on exhibiting what we know of God's character and will, motivated by the certainty of his acceptance, cleansing and enabling in Christ, together with the promise of entire sanctification when we meet him, face to face. Progress may be seen as we exercise ourselves in that godly devotion which issues from a true knowledge of God in Jesus Christ." (91)

V. Living between the cross and the resurrection

• "When he moves to consider how justification by faith can lead to holiness of life, Calvin emphasizes the role of repentance. Repentance not only follows faith but is born of faith. Repentance means the true turning of our life to God, a turning that arises from a pure and honest fear of him' (Inst. 3.3.5). It consists in 'mortification of our flesh and of the old man' and in 'vivification of the Spirit'." (93)

• "In this chapter, I want to explore the idea that moral renewal proceeds from our union with Christ in his death and resurrection." (95)

• "Baptism into union with Christ is the way we identify with him in his epoch-changing death and draw on its benefits. Of course, conversion and water baptism are often separated in Christian experience. But Paul's point is that genuine initiation into Christ means trusting in his death as our death and his risen life as our life. In this respect, baptism is presented as our 'funeral rite' and a decisive break with the life and values of this present age." (97)

VI. Transformation, renewal, and growth

• "What makes me a new person in Christ is essentially faith in God and his promises. The Spirit's ongoing task is to renew my "mind' through the gospel and give me a new 'heart' to serve God in faith and obedience. Renewal of mind and heart transforms character and behavior because of the central place that the mind has in the orientation, attitudes and beliefs of the human personality. Renewal is not simply at the rational level, though this is foundational to the whole process of moral renewal and change that is effected by the Spirit. In the final analysis, renewal is the present experience of glorification through the Spirit, anticipating the glorification that will come with the resurrection of our bodies. It is being conformed to the likeness of Christ, who is himself the image of God."(133)

• "If we are definitively sanctified by the work of Christ and the gift of his Spirit, 'growth' in holiness will mean increasing and abounding in practical expressions of that status calling and commitment which is already ours by God's grace." (136)

Notable Content

• Definitive Sanctification explained. (14)

• "To what extent are we urged by Scripture to progress in holiness and in what manner? How should we pray for one another in this regard? How might we expect God to answer our prayers?" (71)

• Understanding Hebrews chapter 12. (75)

• Four senses in which Christians die to sin. (97)

• Brief comments on the concept of growth in the New Testament. (134)

Notes on *Hearers and Doers*

Hearers and Doers: A Pastor's Guide to Making Disciples Through Scripture and Doctrine, Kevin J. Vanhoozer, (Lexham Press, 2019)

Main Idea/Takeaway

Pastors must be theologically rooted to help church members recover the primacy of Scripture in their discipleship.

• "Hearers & Doers is intended to help pastors fulfill their Great Commission to make disciples, with emphasis on the importance of teaching disciples to read the Scriptures." (Preface xi)

• "My hope is that the present book will help pastors recover Calvin's vision for theology as a help to reading the Bible in ways that enliven and encourage disciples to walk its way of wisdom." (Preface xxii)

• "To make disciples is to teach people how to become biblically literate so they can be effective inhabitants and representatives of the city of God, for the purpose of gospel citizenship." (71)

• "Accordingly, this book is a guide for hearing and reading the Bible rightly, as well as a training manual for doing the Bible rightly. The goal is to train disciples to walk around in the strange new world of the Bible even as they live in the familiar old world of the present. It is a pastor's guide for training hearers and doers, faithful followers of Jesus Christ and faithful interpreters of the Word that directs us in his Way." (71)

• "I want to examine the significance of sola Scriptura in making disciples by stressing its role in fostering the Christocentric social imaginary that makes the church a creature of the word." (99)

• "A pastor does many things, but I have argued that most of these things are forms of ministering God's word: either by speaking (preaching, teaching, counseling, praying) or enacting it (celebrating the Lord's Supper, visitation). The particular focus of the present work has been on the pastor as disciple-maker, or what I have described elsewhere as "public theologian"- one who does theology with and for people." (241)

Interaction

• Social imaginary = deep assumptions. (8)

• The negative task of theology. (9)

• What other words are shaping our people? (50)

• Pastors minister by helping people make connections in three key areas. (117)

• What is a pastor-theologian? (123)

• If we don't mature immature Christians into real disciples, who will? The church is where this must happen. This goes for all 'immature Christians' that make up a congregation. The consumers, the feminists, etc. Where do they go to become disciples? It must be the church. And so the stronger brothers must bear with the failings of the weak. (Romans 15:1)." (125)

• Preach the Bible; baptism and Lord's Supper; and people are not part of the church who shouldn't be. (127)

• This is our consumer culture, which is not 1 Timothy 6:8. (146)

• Credo-Baptism see p.218. (150)

• Lord's Supper see p.221. (151)

• "The church is most itself at Table." (221)

Table of Contents

Introduction

Part One: Warming Up: Why Discipleship Matters

I. The Role of Theology in Making Disciples

II. Whose Fitness? Which Body Image?

III. From Hearing to Doing

IV. Doctrine for Discipleship

Part Two: Working Out: How Discipleship Happens

V. Creatures of the Word

VI. Company of the Gospel

VII. Communion of Saints

VIII. Children of God

Favorite Quotes by Chapter

Introduction:

• "In short: what it means to be biblical is inextricably related to what it means to be Jesus; disciples, and what form this discipleship should take in the twenty-first century." (xviii)

• "Doctrine, like Scripture, teaches disciples who they are "in Christ." Disciples have to understand, and remember, whose Way they belong to." (xviii)

• "Why should pastors study theology? So that they can better know whom they worship, and learn how to form others into true worshipers who know how to worship, and to walk, in spirit and truth (John 4:22-24)." (xxi)

• "Theology is about learning how to live out Christ's life in us (Gal 2:20), a life that includes cruciform wisdom (1 Cor 2:2) and resurrection power (Phil 3:10)." (xxiii)

• "The aim of evangelism is to make converts, people who believe the gospel, repent of their former way of life, a bonfire of the vanities, and face a new direction- Christward." (xxiv)

• "Making disciples involves more (but not less) than informing minds or forming habits. It also involves transforming imaginations, that is, that primary ways they see, think about, and experience life." (xxv)

• "The pastor must be a theologian: someone who can relate life in general, and the lives of his congregation, to what Scripture shows us the Father doing in Christ through the Spirit to renew creation." (xxvii)

Part One

Warming Up: Why Discipleship Matters

I. The Role of Theology in Making Disciples

• "There is probably no more damaging picture distorting our present-day lives, and our understanding of the God of the gospel, than "love." Love is often depicted as a desire to be fulfilled (romanticism) or as accepting people for who they are (inclusivism) or as loyalty to one's own people group (tribalism)." (7)

• " A social imaginary is the picture that frames our everyday beliefs and practices, in particular the "ways people imagine their social existence." The social imaginary is that nest of background assumptions, often implicit, that lead people to feel things as right or wrong, correct or incorrect." (8)

• "The doctrines we hold be they philosophical, political, or theological, feel right or wrong, plausible or implausible, based largely on how well they accord with the prevailing social imaginary or world picture. What I have called above the "negative task" of theology is to critically reflect on the way in which the church embodies the prevailing social imaginaries of the day rather than the biblical imaginary- the true story of the Triune God is doing in the world." (10)

II. Whose Fitness? Which Body Image?

• "Theology helps the church make disciples by exposing the lie- the false social imaginaries that often hold even church members captive (the negative, critical task) - and by redirecting them to the way, truth, and life of Jesus Christ (the positive, indicative task)." (14)

• "Food cults arguably replace what religion once did by prescribing... food rules and rituals. Like religion, they provide meaning in confusing situations, giving us moral guidelines and comfort." (27)

• "Pastors, too, ought to be concerned with the diet of their congregation, particularly if we stretch the term to include what kind of reading and entertainment church members imbibe on a regular basis."(42)

III. From Hearing to Doing

• "Discipleship is about becoming who we are in Christ, and this is entirely a work of God: "Therefore, is anyone is in Christ, he is a new creation" (2 Cor 5:17)." (44)

• "Discipleship is essentially a matter of hearing (authority), believing (trust), and doing the truth (freedom) that is in Jesus Christ." (50)

• "As Dietrich Bonhoeffer put it: in discipleship, "Jesus is the only content." Disciples do the truth, then, by following his way and living out his life: "It is no longer I who live, but Christ lives in me" (Gal 2:20)." (52)

• "To be a disciple is to hear, do, and adore what we see there, in the mirror of Scripture: the lordship of Jesus Christ." (53)

• "True disciples are awake and alert to what is going on in the world, to what is really real, namely, the "real presence" of Jesus Christ. The true story of the world, narrated in Scripture, concerns God's presence and activity." (54)

• "We agree that the imagination is a key factor in making disciples. Yet we become disciples not simply by participating in Christian liturgical practices but by participating in- living into and acting out- Scripture's canonical practices and, yes, Christian doctrine (see 1 Tim 4:16)." (56)

• "To walk in the truth is to live in accordance with the truth of the gospel, that it, the truth of the new reality that has come into being in and through Christ's person and work." (59)

• "Christian discipleship is companionship with Christ. The Christian Way is that of the long-distance walker, a long obedience in the same direction, where day in and day out, with each step we take, we choose to live in a way that follows Jesus and corresponds to the truth- our new life in him. Making disciples is a step-by-step process of helping men and women to walk the Way of Jesus Christ." (60)

IV. Doctrine for Discipleship

• "Discipleship involves waking up to the realization that there is a choice, and we must stay awake to the lordship of Jesus Christ long enough to make the right one: to obey, and thereby to exercise, like Jesus, genuine freedom." (78)

• "Feeding on God's word involves more than tasting or taking a bite; it means making a meal of it, digesting it. Eugene Peterson calls Christians to absorb and imbibe the Bible so that it seeps into all our pores." (79)

• "Reading the Bible theologically, as teaching by God, of God, and leading to God, is our best hope for breaking free of the pictures that hold us captive: consumerism, humanism, transhumanism, nihilism, existentialism, moralism, scientism, and so on- idols all, of heart and mind. Reading Scripture theologically means reading it together, in the church, in ways that lead to its readers' moral and spiritual, and sapiential formation." (85)

Part Two

Working Out: How Discipleship Happens

V. Creatures of the Word

• "Pastors must do everything they can to ensure that Scripture alone, and not some other story, serves as their congregation's essential social imaginary." (94)

• "One such insight is that the church must always be "reforming" its thought and life in accordance with the Scriptures. In particular, the church must always be reforming in order to imagine the world that the Bible imagines." (95)

• "The best way to take captive the imagination of Christians in any age is through the church's proclamation of the gospel in word and deed: in sermon, sacrament and shapes of everyday living." (103)

• "The evangelical imagination alone opens up the real possibility of living along the grain of reality: according to what is really the case "in Christ." (110)

• "As Ephraim Radner says, preaching "is a way of putting us back where we belong: into the text itself...where God's word, in all his creative omnipotence, does its work of self-giving and conformation." (115)

• "Pastors minister this needed understanding by helping people make connections in three areas: between the parts of the Bible and the overarching story; between the Bible and the world in which they live; and between who they are at the moment and who God calls them to be in Christ." (117)

• "The sermon is not a secondhand description of what is happening in a historical galaxy far, far, away. No, gospel preaching proclaims the true story of the world, acknowledging that all things are "from him and through him and to him" (Rom. 11:36). The sermon is the heavy artillery in the pastor-theologian's arsenal, and the best frontal assault on imaginations held captive by other stories promising other ways to the good life." (118)

• "Scripture alone is the ultimate story from which disciples must take their existential bearings." (119)

• "Pastors cannot know everything about everything, but they should be able to know one big thing about everything: whether or not it fosters life in Christ." (121)

• "We read the Bible in order to discern the Way of truth and life that leads to fellowship with God and human flourishing from ways of falsehood and illusion that lead only to the dead end of idolatry and human frustration." (122)

• "The pastor-theologian is a special kind of generalist a generalist who "specializes" in relating all things to the gospel of Jesus Christ in order to make disciples, especially by disciplining their imaginations to conform to the unified biblical narrative with Christ at its center." (123)

• "It takes an imagination shaped by the Bible to see one's congregation as a living temple, with each member a living stone. (1 Peter 2:5)" (124)

• "It takes a biblically formed eschatological imagination to look at a sinner and see a saint." (124)

VI. Company of the Gospel

• "The church is the biblically mandated place to make disciples." (125)

• "The Reformers also wrestled with the problem of how to recognize the tru church, and developed three criteria: the right preaching of the word, the right administration of the sacraments, and the proper exercise of discipline." (127)

• "What pastors have to say that no one else can say is not simply that there is a God bu that God has acted. The gospel is a report of something that has been done. We have news- breaking news that the kingdom of God has broken into our world in the person and work of Jesus Christ. God has acted (creating news to report) and God has spoken (the news is reliable because those who reported it were inspired by God). (129)

• "Christians today are living between the first and second comings of Jesus, in the closing scenes of Act IV, poised between memory and hope." (130)

• "Doctrine does not add content to Scripture, but it does add understanding. Doctrine develops only because the church's understanding of the biblical story and its implications has developed, just as Jesus promised it would: "When the Spirit of truth comes, he will guide you into all the truth." (John 16:13)" (133)

• "So how do we learn to get real? 'By reading Scripture theologically', that is, with the help of doctrine's ministry of understanding, and with a view to participating in the story of Scripture tells, the ongoing drama of redemption." (144)

• "Each part of the church's worship service- spoken or sung word, bath, table, prayer- focuses on some aspect of Jesus' story. Taken together, then, the liturgy is the church's spoken and enacted interpretation of the reality attested in and by Scripture. The liturgy is therefore theodramatic. It is all about rehearsing what the Triune God has done, is doing, and will do to renew creation and form a holy nation to be his treasured possession. Accordingly, the liturgy is a prime training ground for making disciples fit for theodramatic purpose." (145)

• "Everything in which we habitually participate leaves a little mark on our soul, forms our spirits, and trains our loves." (146)

• "Much of the mainstream culture in the modern and postmodern West contributes to the formation of individualist consumers who believe that certain things or experiences will complete their identity and satisfy their desire for happiness." (146)

• "Everything begins with disciples; ability to inhabit the biblical story and thus let Scripture serve as their primary imaginary." (153)

• "The point of liturgical performance is not to give disciples lines but rather to help shape their understanding of the story of Jesus of which they are a continuing part, and to prepare them to be the kind of people who want and are able to continue acting out new scenes of the same drama." (154)

• "What I am calling liturgical formation is the process of helping disciples enter into the drama to the point of becoming story-dwellers, people whose imagination is fixed on the reality of what God is doing in Christ through the Spirit to renew humanity and all creation." (160)

VII. Communion of Saints

• "sola Scriptura means that Scripture alone, as God's own set-apart discourse, is the only wholly reliable, sufficient, and final authority for the church's life and thought (including imagination). (176)

• "Pastors need to help disciples discern which doctrines are essential, requiring unity, and which are nonessential, requiring liberty (and charity)."(197)

• "Mere Protestant Christianity uses the resources of the solas and the priesthood of all believers to express the unity-in-denominational-diversity that local churches have in Christ." (201)

• "The local church, a people with canon sense and catholic sensibility, is the true end of the Protestant Reformation." (202)

VIII. Children of God

• "Christlikeness is the goal of discipleship. It is not only a way of walking but a state of being. To be more precise, it is the state of being-in, and abiding with, Christ." (204)

• "Christ is the image of God and disciples are to be images of Christ." (204)

• "The sobering truth is that much of what is going through our heads is not the story of Jesus but some other story." (209)

• "Pastors need to wake up congregations to the cultural forces that are forming their spirits, and perhaps clouding their vision." (211)

• "Learning Christ is a matter of following- or we could say practicing- Christ. It is by reading God's word, illuminated by the Spirit, that disciples learn to think rightly, see rightly, judge rightly, and act rightly, that is, in a Christlike manner." (216)

• "Wisdom means knowing what to do in particular situations in order to glorify God and follow Jesus in ways that befit faithful disciples. In a word, theological wisdom means knowing how to improvise the mind of Christ at all times, everywhere, and to everyone." (217)

• "To be in Christ is to be in the process of being restored to true humanity, a process that requires our active involvement. To put on Christ means to act out his life in us." (220)

• "The church is most itself at Table, for it is in partaking Christ's body that the church becomes Christ's body: one. In all its activities, especially the Lord's Supper, a local church in its corporate life "puts on" the spectacle of reconciliation in Christ and not only acts out but also becomes a parable of the kingdom of God." (221)

• "To take, read, and preach the Bible in the church, with an ear for the word of God to the people of God, is to read it as testimony to Christ, his person and work, his suffering and glory." (225)

• "This is our ultimate calling, our highest privilege and responsibility: to live into our adoption as sons and daughters of the Father. This is our destiny (and our predestination, Eph 1:5), to be adopted as sons and daughters through Jesus Christ." (234)

Notable Content

• "If you want to know what fuels the present-day social imaginary, follow the money: the GWI estimates that global wellness fuels $3.7 trillion economy, more than three times larger than the global pharmaceutical industry (beauty and anti-aging programs and products alone amounted to almost $1 trillion)." (18)

• See Atul Gawande's, Being Mortal: Medicine and What Matters in the End , for a well articulated critique of the effects of secularization and medicalization on our concept of what it is to be well. (23)

• See Food Cults: How Fads, Dogma, and Doctrine Influence Diet (27)

• See (72-75) for seven initial theses on reading the Bible theologically.

• The Four Principles of the Protestant Reformation:(96-97)

  1. The material principle: justification by faith (sola gratia, sola fide, solus Christus)

  2. The formal principle: "according to the Scriptures" (sola Scriptura)

  3. The dynamic principle: the Spirit who ministers, illumines, enlivens, and unites.

  4. The final principle: a citizenship of the gospel.

• "Scripture alone ought to rule our thinking about what a pastor is and does." See (114-116) for three metaphors that pastors would do well to allow to reshape their vocational imaginations.

• Five-Act Play: World History as a Drama of Redemption

Act I: creation and its subsequent corruption

Act II: beginning from Genesis 12 and running through the rest of the OT

Act III: Jesus: God's definitive saving Word

Act IV: begins with the risen Christ sending his Spirit to create the church

Act V: last judgment and the consummation of all things

• cf. John 13. Case for Community Groups. (139)

• Lesslie Newbigin, The Gospel in a Pluralist Society. Case for Community Groups. (140)

• Five Premises of sola Scriptura: (172-173)

  1. The Bible is the word of God written in human words inspired by the Holy Spirit.

  2. God both authors and authorizes the Bible.

  3. God's word is God's discourse: something God says about something to someone in some way.

  4. Different types of discourse exercise authority in different ways over different domains.

  5. All divinely authored discourse serves the same ultimate end.

• Prioritizing public Bible reading. (198)

Notes on *Words of Life*

Words of Life: Scripture as the Living and Active Word of God, Timothy Ward (IVP, 2009)

Main Idea/Takeaway

When we read the words of Scripture we encounter God in action to reveal himself and redeem sinners through Jesus Christ.

• "The kind of doctrine of Scripture this book will outline is one that aims to demonstrate that its every aspect is shaped from the bottom up by the character and actions of God, and is integrally related to God's being and action, yet without the inert book coming to eclipse the living Savior." (17)

• "To encounter the words of Scripture is to encounter God in action." (48)

• "Scripture is God in communicative action. Therefore to encounter the words of Scripture is to encounter God in action." (177)

Interaction 

• To obey/disobey God's words is to obey/disobey God himself. (27)

• Central to how we live like Jesus is real is our attentiveness to his word. Our everyday embrace of Jesus's realness is seen in how we relate to His word. (28)

• God's actions as an extension of himself. (31)

• Trusting God's words is trusting God. (32)

• Human language. (34)

• See Packer's "Fundamentalism and the Word of God." (41)

• The organizing principle. (48)

• How to think of 'doctrine' of Scripture. (51)

• The covenantal nature of our relationship with God. (52)

• Bible as a covenant book. (55)

• When we hear the apostolic word. (60)

• God is the source of all reliable meaning. (64)

• This is not a "canon within a canon," but rather is to say that, because of redemption history, some books are more relevant to the church's life, and the content of the gospel." (85)

• What is verbal God-breathedness? Prepositions are breathed out by God in light of the speech act. (86)

• Amazing implication for translatability. (90)

• Defense of the NIV. (91)

• The inner testimony of the Holy Spirit.(93)

• While we never shrink back from rational proofs, we are supernaturalists and should never pretend otherwise.(94)

• cf. Vanhoozer 'First Theology.' (95)

• When we read the words of Scripture, we encounter God in action. (95)

• We deny the sufficiency of Scripture when we suppose the Spirit to work apart from the Word. (112)

• Primary matters: salvation, life, holiness. Secondary: worship, government, etc. (112)

• Word & Spirit. Nothing more is needed, and nothing less. (113)

• Foundational to preaching. (121)

• On "Preaching in worship and as worship"- This is connected to the bigger question of Who is God?! And his revelation. And what is Scripture? (122)

• Sufficiency means that nothing more or less than Word & Spirit is needed to receive God's revelation (& its purpose to save). Clarity means nothing more or less than Word & Spirit is needed to understand God's revelation ( & its purpose to save). (129)

Table of Contents

I. Introduction

II. God and Scripture: a biblical outline

III. The Trinity and Scripture: a theological outline

IV. The Attributes of Scripture: a doctrinal outline

V. The Bible and Christian life: the doctrine of Scripture applied

VI. Summary

Favorite Quotes by Chapter

I. Introduction

• "Throughout Christian history, the overwhelmingly predominant view of the Bible has been that it is itself the living and active Word of God. To say that the Bible is the Word of God is to say, putting it another way, that 'what the Bible says, God says'." (9)

• "We do not have to choose between 'believing in the Bible' and 'believing in Christ.' As Christians we are called on to do both. In fact one crucial means by which we demonstrate our faith in Christ is by also believing what the Bible says. Perhaps the most straightforward argument for this begins by observing the fact that Jesus himself treated the Jewish Scriptures, our Old Testament, as themselves words from God, and so if we are going to be devoted to him then we must make sure our view of the Scriptures is the same as his." (11)

II. God and Scripture: a biblical outline

• "Thus an action of God can be appropriately described both y saying that God's Word has performed an action for which he sent it, and by saying that God himself has performed an action." (25)

• "Thus, when Adam and Eve disobey God's spoken command , they fracture their relationship with God himself. From God's side, when the words of his command are set aside by his creatures in favor of their own desires and their own claims of wisdom, then God himself has been set aside." (27)

• "Abraham's response to God's words simply is also a response to God himself. His obedience to and trust in God's words are also, at one and the same time, an obedience to and trust in God himself." (28)

• "To trust God's covenant promise is not to enter into an agreement with an absentee God; it is to trust the God who has come to you. There is, then, a complex but real relationship between God and his actions, expressed and performed, as they are, through God's words. In philosophical terms, there is an ontological relationship between God and his words. It seems that God's actions, including his verbal actions, are a kind of extension of him." (31)

• "Communication from God is therefore communion with God, when met with a response of trust from us." (32)

• "God speaks to us human words of promise, such that for us to trust those words is in itself an act of trusting God himself." (32)

• "Whatever else may be true of human language, it is quite reasonable to suppose that it has the ability to speak truly of God, both because it was given to us by a God who speaks within himself as eternally three speaking persons, and also because our possession of language, as made in God's image, is analogous to God's communicative capacity. Our language can be made by God to speak truthfully of him because our language has its origin in him and in some way is like his own." (34-35)

• "This philosophical assertion continues, sometimes unconsciously and therefore unquestioned, to shape much contemporary rejection of the orthodox doctrine of Scripture. At root, the rejection of Scripture as divine special revelation is often a side effect of the greater rejection of the particularity of Christ as God's ultimate self-revelation in the world. Here should be noted a feature that underlies many discussions about Scripture: people's view of Scripture is often largely determined by their view of Jesus Christ. That is one practical reason why the doctrine of Scripture must be articulated in a way that makes explicit its dependance on the doctrine of Christ." (41)

• "Therefore everyone who never met the Word incarnate directly, bit who hears the words of Christ from the disciples, nevertheless encounters the words of the Father and of Christ, who in those words present themselves to us as a covenant-making God." (42)

• "Thus to reject the disciples' words, which come from Christ and are about Christ, is to reject God, and so to be liable for condemnation." (42)

• "God has identified himself both with Jesus Christ in person and with the passing on by his disciples of the words Jesus brought from the Father, with the result that to reject those human words spoken by the disciples is to reject God." (42)

III. The Trinity and Scripture: a theological outline

• "Perfection, necessity, sufficiency, clarity, inspiration and authority. Analysis of the Bible under these headings, as the primary way in which Scripture is described theologically, does indeed sometimes pass too quickly over the complexity of scriptural testimony and teaching on the nature and function of the Bible in relation to God and his purposes." (50)

• "Here we are still very much engaged in the vital task of describing Scripture explicitly at every point in the light of the character and actions of God, as revealed and witnessed to in Scripture." (51)

• "In the overarching narrative of Scripture the two great actions of the Father, following the glory of his creative act and the tragedy of the fall of humankind, are to redeem and to reveal." (52)

• "Commandments declare the stipulations of the covenant. Prophecy and epistles, in particular, expound and apply those stipulations in specific contexts; they are, in effect, the covenant preached in different situations. Narrative relates the unfolding events in which God's people have successfully trusted and rejected him, and through which God has faithfully enacted the consequences of his promises , whether in blessing or judgment." (55)

• "Psalms give exemplary forms in which a believer can address God in many situations in life while remaining faithfully within the covenant, whether one is full of praise for experience of blessing, or confused and despairing over God's apparent failure to keep his promises. And apocalyptic writing demonstrates graphically the full reality of the present and ultimate consequences of either blessing or cursing that follows from obedience or disobedience to the covenant." (55)

• "Yet to see the Bible as 'the book of the covenant' is not simplistic or reductionist. It is rather to recognize Scripture's profound role in the relationship between humanity and God that God wants to establish." (56)

• "A very high claim for Scripture is of course being made here: Scripture is an aspect of the action of the sovereign, faithful, self-revealing God in the world, and specifically it is the action by which this God declares his ongoing covenant with his people, climaxed in Christ." (56)

• "The strong bonds between ourselves, our actions and the words by which we perform many of our actions is evident in the normal course of life. This is particularly so when we think about the responses that can be made to a promise. For you to say 'I trust you to keep your promise' or 'I trust your promise' or 'I trust your words' is in effect to say the same thing in regard to me. For you to distrust the words of my promise is simply to distrust me. Persons and actions are so intimately identified in interpersonal relationships that actions begin to look like an extension of our personhood in our relationships with others." (59)

• "Those who rejected the apostolic proclamation of the gospel of Christ thereby made themselves liable to God's condemnation, because in rejecting those words they had rejected God. Similarly, to hear the words of Christ was directly to hear the speech of God. It follows that to speak of Scripture as the book of the covenant, the ongoing form in which God repeats his covenant promise in the world, ought to lead us to speak of Scripture as in some sense a mode of God's presence in the world." (60)

• "As we have seen, we as persons who act in relation to one another are so invested in our words that, by speaking, we act upon both ourselves and one another (e.g. in making you a promise I acquire for myself the responsibility to keep my promise and ascribe to you the obligation to take me at my word, other things being equal). It follows that what you do to my words (to my actions as performed by my words) you do to me." (63)

• "A speech act can be as short as a single word ('Go!'), or as long as a unified collection of books (the Bible as God's covenant promise in writing). Therefore when we speak of Scripture as a mode of God's presence, we are asserting that it is in the speech acts of Scripture that God reveals himself by being semantically present to us, as he promises, warns, rebukes, reassures and so on. And this revelation is happening when the words of Scripture are read: when God is performing again, through the reading of Scripture, the same action he performed through those words when they were first written." (66)

• "Turretin's response was that 'Christ is our only teacher, in such a sense as that the ministry of the word is not thereby excluded, but necessarily included because now in it only he addresses us ad by it he instructs us." (71)

• "Scripture's words are 'Word' not just because he sent them and speaks through them, but also because its words are his actions, the present word-actions of the Word." (71)

• "We should read, listen to and hear it preached, in order to find ourselves presented again with Christ and addressed by him. As we encounter the words of Scripture, we are encountering the Son in action, presenting himself to us in his call on us to take up our cross and follow him." (72)

• "God's aim in Scripture is to lead us to true devotion to Christ, and obedience to him and love for him, impinging on every area of life and thought." (73)

• "To speak of Scripture as in itself divine is therefore to speak of the divine origin of the speech acts of Scripture, a characteristic that follows from their identity as God's speech acts." (78)

• "Because of the unity of the Father and the Son in revelation and redemption, Scripture is at the same time the word by which the incarnate and ascended Word, the one in whom all God's covenant promises are fulfilled, continues to act and to present himself semantically so that he may be known in the world over which he has all authority." (78)

• "Because the whole of Scripture is breathed-out by God, every part needs to be interpreted in the light of its place in the history of salvation that Scripture unfolds, and in its literary context." (85)

• "Verbal inspiration claims that the Bible says exactly what God wants to say because the Holy Spirit was responsible for every word written in Scripture. He is the divine Author behind the human authors." (86)

• "It is the speech acts of Scripture (its units of meaning: sentences, paragraphs and books) that have their origin in divine authorship, because authors primarily author speech acts. The individual words are inspired (spoken out by God) to the extent that they come together to express these speech acts." (86)

• "Crucial to the Reformers' view of this action of the Spirit is that his illuminating work took place not through the church but through Scripture." (93)

• "Whenever we encounter the speech acts of Scripture, we encounter God himself in action. The Father presents himself to us as a God who makes and keeps his Covenant promises. The Son comes to us as the Word of God, knowable to us through his words. The Spirit ministers these words to us, illuminating our minds and hearts, so that in receiving, understanding and trusting them, we receive, know and trust God himself." (95)

IV. The Attributes of Scripture: a doctrinal outline

• "Thus a verbal revelation is absolutely necessary if humanity is to know God as he truly is, and to be able to enter into a saving knowledge of God." (101)

• "If Scripture alone is claimed to be the supreme authority in Christian thinking and living, that is because both its content (the verbal revelation) and its form (the written Scriptures) are indispensable." (102)

• "The whole pattern of God's self-revelation is that he establishes a covenant relationship between himself and his people, and this is a relationship in which he makes himself known. He does not reveal himself exhaustively, but the God he shows himself to be in his covenant relationship is the God he really is." (104)

• "The reality of the Trinity, and the purpose of the incarnation, crucifixion, resurrection and ascension are sufficiently complex that they cannot be mimed or communicated through a religious impulse or sensation; they need to be spoken." (104)

• "In the light of this, I would define the sufficiency of Scripture in this way: because of the ways in which God has chosen to relate himself to Scripture, Scripture is sufficient as the means by which God continues to present himself to us such that we can know him, repeating through Scripture the covenant promise he has brought to fulfillment in Jesus Christ." (113)

• "Human finitude, and particularly sin, are the reasons for our lack of understanding of Scripture, rather than the cause being in some lack of clarity attributable to Scripture itself." (116)

• "Expository biblical preaching in fact assumes rather than denies the clarity of Scripture. An expository preacher takes it that his sermon can be judged as either a faithful or an unfaithful exposition of Scripture by his hearers, as they discern for themselves whether his teaching is or is not warranted by his biblical text. His appeal is not 'My teaching is true because I'm an officially appointed preacher' nor is it as heart 'My teaching is true because I am a Spirit-filled and Spirit-anointed preacher.' Those two factors may give added weight to his teaching, but at heart the implied claim of the expository preacher is instead 'My teaching is true because it can be openly seen that what I am saying is in line with the meaning of Scripture'." (121)

• "The preacher is not doing something with Scripture that the hearer by definition cannot do, which would be the case if the preacher were appealing primarily to special spiritual anointing or to his holding of an office in the church." (122)

• "The authority of Scripture is dependent entirely on the authority of God, and comes about only because of what God has chosen to do in the way he authored Scripture, and because of what he continues to do in presenting himself to us through Scripture as a God we can know and trust."

• "It commits us to giving the Bible the sovereign place in our lives that must follow from its central place in relation to God and in his actions." (129)

• "The idea that the Bible is 'infallible' means that it does not deceive. To say that the Bible is 'inerrant' is to make the additional claim that it does not assert any errors of fact: whether the Bible refers to events in the life of Christ, or to other details of history and geography, what it asserts is true."

V. The Bible and Christian life: the doctrine of Scripture applied

• "Preaching goes as tragically astray when it muses and reflects on those matters it should be proclaiming, as it does when it confidently proclaims what the preacher cannot know, because Scripture is silent." (158)

• "For example, if as a preacher I am hesitant that the Spirit will come and act supremely through my preaching of the speech acts of Scripture because he once authored them and is alive to speak to them again, then my preaching, if it is to be proclamatory, will probably take one of two forms. I might end up recommending my own spiritual experience as normative, perhaps using some biblical texts to illustrate my experience, by way of historical precedent. Or I might focus on rehearsing the beliefs and practices of my Christian subculture or denomination, which distinguish us from other groups, with the Bible again reduced to serving as a doctrinal sourcebook, or as a handbook of practical illustrations." (158)

• "To claim that one's own human speech about Christ crucified really is God speaking, and that the Holy Spirit comes in power through one's apparently weak speech, seems to run dangerously close to blasphemy. Yet that is clearly the pattern for the extension of the gospel after Pentecost that Christ and the apostles established."(159)

• "The New Testament precedent is simply that the preacher can preach and must preach, fearful and trembling because he is given the privilege of speaking God's words and has no power to determine the result of his preaching, but not so fearful that he loses his resolves to know and proclaim Christ and him crucified." (159)

• "The Spirit's activity through the speech acts of the Bible now is consistent with his activity in their composition at the level of grammar and meanings back then. The Spirit, as the Spirit of Christ, navigates the church into the future by calling it back to the written Word he authored." (161)

• "In the light of this, what the faithful biblical preacher does, and what the Holy Spirit does with Scripture through him, is best described as a contemporary re-enactment of the speech act that the Spirit performed in the original authoring of the text. This notion, that the sermon is itself a redemptive act of God in the present, is common in literature on preaching." (162)

• "A biblical text written, for example, to instil in its first readers and hearers a confident hope that at the future coming of Christ their perseverance in the faith will be vindicated performs that same action again in the lives of contemporary believers. It does so in a sermon if the preacher is faithful to the purpose of the original text, and fashions his sermon not just as a speech about hope, but as itself a hope-inspiring action." (163)

• "The Spirit is again graciously present in the preached message, if what is preached now is faithful in purpose and content to what he once inspired." (163)

• "Properly faithful biblical preaching involves the preacher deliberately seeking to fashion every verbal (and indeed physical) aspect of his preaching in such a way that the Spirit may act through his words in the lives of his hearers, ministering the content of Scripture in accordance with the purpose of Scripture." (163)

• "The preacher with a Christian congregation is therefore not bringing something fundamentally new in his sermon. Of course he should be teaching aspects of the biblical faith they are still unaware of, but he is only bringing to light for them from Scripture what is already true of them, explaining more of the truth that is already theirs. At heart he is reminding them of the one thing that has been undeniably true of them ever since they first devoted themselves to the apostolic gospel: that by the work of the Spirit of God they are not what they once were." (169)

• "Good preaching exercises something of a 'credal' function in the local church, giving people an interpretative structure in which to make sense of individual parts of Scripture when they encounter them for themselves." (172)

• "What we expect from Scripture must be determined entirely by what Scripture is, and the purpose for which God has caused it to be written."(174)

• "The norms of grammatical and historical interpretation are not avoided. But interpretation is not an end in itself; reading the Bible is not fundamentally a comprehension exercise. Interpretation should serve only to lead us to an encounter with God as he actually presents himself to us in Scripture." (175)

VI. Summary

• "He gives us Scripture as our word of life: the trustworthy, clear and sufficient means of knowing him and remaining in covenant relationship with him, in the power of the Holy Spirit, right up until the day we shall no longer need it, because then we shall see face to face." (179)

Notable Content

• The Reformers view of the work of the Word and Spirit together was an argument directed in three directions at once: (93)

  1. Against Roman Catholicism, it asserted that the Spirit required the church only as an instrument, not as the actual dynamic, by which people came to faith.

  2. Negatively against the sixteenth-century Radical Reformation, it asserted that the Spirit regularly illuminated minds through the content of the written Word.

  3. Positively, it served to demonstrate the faithfulness and consistency of God in revelation.