The Gospel Coalition

Today, I am taking the GRE. Here are 1o words that my GRE prep book has added to my vocabulary.

The English language continues to amaze me. The number of words we have (in comparison to many other languages) is astounding. So… in honor of your native tongue, add these 10 words to your vocabulary.

As you look over the list, count how many of these words you already know. I’m curious what percentage of these words are known to the readers of this blog. Leave a comment with your score (# out of 10) below.

1. Alacrity (noun): eager and enthusiastic willingness.
   We accepted the invitation with alacrity.
2. Exigent (adjective): urgent, pressing; requiring immediate action or attention.
   In exigent circumstances, law enforcement can enter a building without a warrant.
3. Fulminate (verb): to loudly attack or denounce.
   She fulminated against the new political policies.
4. Obviate (verb): to anticipate and make unnecessary
   The politician’s bill was intended to obviate the more widespread changes being discussed by the other party.
5. Prevaricate (verb): to deliberately avoid the truth; to mislead.
   He could not backbite, nor envy, nor prevaricate, nor jump at mean motives for generous acts.
6. Truculent (adjective): fierce and cruel; eager to fight.
   The leader delivered a truculent speech against the new government.
7. Penurious (adjective): penny-pinching; excessively thrifty; ungenerous.
   What might be extravagant today, might in half a century become penurious and inadequate.
8. Redoubtable (adjective): awe-inspiring; worthy of honor
   He was a redoubtable fighter.
9. Dissemble (verb): to disguise or conceal; to mislead.
   I will not dissemble what real pleasure his sight afforded me.
10. Obsequious (adjective): exhibiting a fawning attentiveness
    Lady Arabella stood a little on one side, and the African, accepting the movement as an invitation, entered in an obsequious way

Would your kids ever say this?

“And if we get too much money, we can give it to Vietnam.”

I love that. I love that as a six year old she still believes in the concept of “too much” money. Those words are so foreign to me as an adult. There’s no such thing as “too much” money. That’s crazy talk. Have you ever heard someone at work say, “Yeah, my wife and I realized we have too much money so we’re trying to figure out how to do something with it before it does something with us.”

Doubtful, but kids still get that concept, at least until we train it out of them. I don’t know at what age it happens, but at some point we take away their idea of “too much” and instead give them the idea of “not enough.” We switch out those two words and to tell you the truth, I’m to blame to a degree.

Defending the pro-life view just takes a little dancing.

I call it the “pro-life two-step.” It helps me categorize every objection in my mind so I know how to respond appropriately. The vast majority of objections against the pro-life view come in one of two forms. They either assume the unborn is not a human being. Or, they disqualify the unborn from being a valuable human being based on an arbitrary quality or characteristic. When I hear a defense for abortion, I figure out which category it falls in. Then, I can show them the misstep by appealing to one of the two claims I defended in my opening remarks.

Scot McKnight takes a look at Michael Bird’s new commentary on Colossians.

Michael Bird is noteworthy in his grasp of contemporary scholarship and its significance for theologizing, and his new Colossians commentary exhibits that skill of his.

The Internet Monk thinks highly of Matt Chandler. Here’s why.

“Jesus Christ, God’s promised rescuer and ruler lived our life, died our death and rose again in triumphant vindication as the first-fruits of the new creation to bring forgiven sinners together by the Holy Spirit to live under his gracious reign as His Kingdom people.”

O Lord,
Your Word is full of promises,
flowers of sweet fragrance,
fruit of refreshing flavor,
when culled by faith.

May I be made rich in its riches,
be strong in its power,
be happy in its joy,
abide in its sweetness,
feast on its preciousness,
draw vigor from its manna.

Lord, increase my faith.

- The Valley of Vision, adapted

Dr. David Dockery is the president of Union University. Since he has become president, enrollment at Union has 1,975 to 3,800. He is also the author of several books, including Renewing Minds: Serving Church and Society Through Christian Higher Education and Southern Baptist Consensus and Renewal: A Biblical, Historical, and Theological Proposal.

I have been blessed personally by Dr. Dockery’s interest in younger Southern Baptists like myself. He has been a source of encouragement to me, and his works have greatly influenced my thoughts on the future of evangelicalism and the Southern Baptist Convention.

I am grateful for David Dockery and for his kind words about my book:

In Holy Subversion: Allegiance to Christ in an Age of Rivals, Trevin Wax issues a wide-ranging invitation for believers to rethink what it means to be a Christ-follower in a culture that offers rival ways of thinking and living at every turn. Those who wrestle with this timely and biblically-based challenge will be called to nothing less than whole-hearted faithfulness in all areas of life.

- David S. Dockery
President, Union University

1. Ray Ortlund, Jr’s Gospel Manifesto

O desolate evangelicalism, what do you mean by your stylish fads and restless search for ever new “relevance”? Why are you so insecure that you long for the world’s approving recognition? They despise everything you hold dear! “All things to all men” is no license to cater to the whims of the consumer. Christ alone is Lord. Or have you yourself forgotten his majesty? And why are you so boastful of your numbers and dollars? How poor you really are! Come back to the gospel. Come back to the wellspring of true joy and life and power. Sanctify Christ again as Lord in your hearts.

2. Ed Stetzer’s research on cohabitation

Among young adults who had attended a Protestant church regularly in high school, cohabitation is almost twice as likely among those who stop attending church regularly between ages 18 and 22 compared to those who stay in church.

3. Doug Baker on the ominous future of the SBC

“Were the moderates right?” The sheer posing of such a question sent a collective gasp across Alumni Chapel. During a recent panel discussion when Southern Seminary President R. Albert Mohler, Jr., uttered these words in a place where moderates once dominated one of the world’s largest seminaries, it was not as though such a theory was not without a plausible grounding. Some 20 years earlier Bill Leonard, a notable moderate who once served on the faculty of Southern Seminary, predicted that once the conservatives took control of the SBC’s massive infrastructure, they would soon turn on one another.

4. Al Mohler lists reasons he is optimistic regarding the younger generation of pastors.

The younger you go in the Southern Baptist Convention, the more conviction you discover. There is reason for great hope.

5. Christianity Today looks at the new Christmas CDs coming out this year.

6. Russ Moore on what the church can learn from Sesame Street

7. Abby Johnson, former Planned Parenthood leader, goes on The O’Reilly Factor

Here are some brief comments on three books that I have read recently.

Bright-sided: How the Relentless Promotion of Positive Thinking Has Undermined America
Barbara Ehrenreich
Metropolitan Books, 2009
My Rating: *** 1/2

Americans need to recover from the mass delusion that is positive thinking. So says Barbara Ehrenreich in an interesting little book that shows how positive thinking has caused us harm in many respects.

The best chapter in this book is “Smile or Die: The Bright Side of Cancer,” in which Ehrenreich exposes the “scientific argument” that claims positive thinking helps heal cancer. She quotes one lady who says, “I am angry. All the money that is raised, all the smiling faces of survivors make it sound like it is okay to have breast cancer. IT IS NOT OKAY!” In the world of positive thinking, those who succumb to the disease can only blame themselves.

Ehrenreich also exposes the harmfulness of perpetual positivity in the workplace, the marketplace, and yes, even the church. Despite her flawed caricatures of Calvinism (she sees the extreme side of Calvinist introspection as leading to the rise of positive thinking), Ehrenreich offers a number of good insights into how “positive” does not necessarily mean “good.”

Leading With Confidence
Bobb Biehl
Broadman & Holman, 2005
My Rating: ***

I don’t read or recommend many leadership books. This one is easy to read, and it contains helpful advice (though not necessarily Christian). Business people and church leaders alike can benefit from the insights found here. Biehl writes about service to others, communicating well, dealing with failure, depression, fatigue, etc.

The chapters are brief. The sentences are short. The style of writing includes quotes and graphs. There are summaries at the end of each chapter, making the book easy to dip into.

Fool Moon Rising
Kristi Fluharty
Crossway, 2009
My rating: ****

My wife and I are always happy to find good bedtime stories for our kids. Good night-time books must have good artwork, crisp writing, and tell a memorable story. Fool Moon Rising has all three.

The book is about the moon. The moon thinks he is terrific because of the light he gives. Eventually, the moon discovers that he is merely a reflection of the sun. In the end, he discovers that the greatest joy comes from reflecting light back to the sun.

The moral of the story is that the greatest joy for human beings comes not from receiving glory for ourselves but in reflecting praise back to the God who has made us.

Our kids enjoyed the book. We’ve read it multiple times already. I think your kids will like it too.

I’m looking forward to listening to this mp3 of Kevin Vanhoozer at Southeastern Seminary: Gospel Theater – Rehearsing, Improvising, Performing

The last words of over 400 executed criminals from Texas

I want to ask if it is in your heart to forgive me. You don’t have to.

I wish I could die more than once to tell you how sorry I am.

Could you please tell that lady right there — can I see her? She is not looking at me — I want you to understand something, hold no animosity toward me. I want you to understand. Please forgive me.

Tell everyone I got full on chicken and pork chops.

A life for a life.

Tony Reinke’s writes a poem about humanity: “Dust”

John Piper recommends a new book about the Pentateuch.

There is nothing like it. It will rock your world. You will never read the “Pentateuch” the same again. It is totally readable. You can skip all the footnotes and not miss a beat.

Christless Christianity: The Alternative Gospel of the American Church by Michael Horton is a book that slipped by me. I read several good reviews. I saw it in the bookstore.

But because I am an avid listener of Horton’s radio show, The White Horse Inn, I thought I would be already (overly, perhaps) familiar with the gist of the book. So my attention was diverted elsewhere.

Then, several weeks ago, John Frame, professor at Reformed Theological Seminary, wrote a scathing review of the book. Frame devoted so many pages to debunking Horton’s thesis that I became very intrigued. What is up with this book that it would cause such consternation from someone who agrees with Horton in so many areas?

So I decided to pick up the book for myself. It is always a dangerous thing to read a book after you’ve read an extensive review. There is always the possibility you will see the book through the eyes of the reviewer and not be fair to the author. But in this case, I think Frame’s review (though helpful in some respects) is unfairly tilted against Horton. After having read it for myself, I believe Horton’s book deserves careful consideration by all who are concerned about the current direction of evangelicalism.

Christless Christianity can best be described as “prophetic.” It is a wake-up call to the American church to shake off the slumber of consumerist complacency. It is a rallying cry to put Jesus back in the center of our preaching, worship, and devotion.

Because Horton’s work is prophetic, he occasionally makes judgments that may be too sweeping (as he himself admits [27]). But criticizing him for occasional generalizations is like taking Isaiah to task for condemning Israel’s false worship. Come on, Isaiah! Surely you don’t mean that all our offerings are in vain? The nature of a prophetic book is to passionately call people to renewed faith, and Horton fulfills this role admirably.

Horton does not accuse all Americans of denying the faith. Instead, he warns against being so distracted that we miss the essence of the gospel. We are inclined to turn in on ourselves and tell our stories rather than Christ’s. We make worship about our needs rather than his glory. We make salvation about self-fulfillment rather than rescue from sin and its punishment.

Those who are familiar with Horton’s work will not find any surprises in Christless Christianity. But nowhere else will you find such a well-written critique of the American evangelical church.

The chapter on Joel Osteen – “Smooth Talking and Christless Christianity” – is the single best treatment of Osteen’s theological outlook that has been written. Horton’s chapter on Osteen is so devastating that it’s like bringing out a bulldozer to displace a stone, or a high-powered fan to move a feather.

Frame was right to point out that there are places where Horton might swing the pendulum too far. Horton’s assertion that “Christianity is not a worldview, a way of life, or a program for personal and societal change; it is a gospel” (105) is too restrictive. It is true that the gospel is not a worldview or way of life, but Christianity is indeed a way of seeing the world. The gospel message itself makes little sense unless placed within the broader, biblical framework (“worldview”) in which it is announced.

In another section, Horton declares that “the worst thing that can happen to the church is confuse law and gospel” (122). While confusing the theological categories of law and gospel can indeed by dangerous, is this the worst thing that can happen? If so, why did Paul not specifically warn against this confusion of categories in Scripture?

Horton’s separation of law and gospel leads him to say that “any form of doing the gospel is a confusion of categories.” And yet, Paul himself speaks of “obeying the gospel” (Rom. 10:16; 2 Thess. 1:8). So does Peter (1 Pet. 4:17). Horton’s exhortation to carefully distinguish between law and gospel is good. But sometimes he creates such a dichotomy between the indicative and imperative that the complexity of the New Testament texts are flattened.

These quibbles aside, Christless Christianity is well worth your time. Horton is at his best when he is not only demonstrating where we are wrong, but where we should be right. One reason I have always admired Horton is that he recognizes temptations within his own theological tradition.

“Our temptation as Reformed Christians is to pride ourselves on bearing the marks of a true church regardless of whether people actually being added to the church,” he writes. (197)

He is absolutely right to insist that “without the marks, the mission is blind; without the mission, the marks are dead” (205).

In the end, Frame’s review strikes me as too sweeping (and surprisingly personal). Horton’s book, on the other hand, is strong medicine for a sick church. We need to heed many of his warnings if we are to be faithful to the gospel.

I hope you never have to use this knowledge, but if you ever need to escape from a sinking car…

Zach Nielsen adds some comments to my post from yesterday about increasing the expectations for your church.

You want to know why young people flock to John Piper’s church? There are numerous reasons, but I can promise you it’s not because they put on a great “show” on Sunday morning. Part of the reason is that Pastor John unapologetically calls his people to lay down their lives for the Gospel and honestly expects them to do it.

10 things good pastors say

Newly available sermons from D.A. Carson from a preacher’s conference