Reviewed by Coty Pinckney, Desiring God Community Church, Charlotte NC

“God is most glorified in us when we are most satisfied in Him.” This central truth of Christian Hedonism summarizes John Piper’s life and ministry. When we want to see how this truth is worked out in missions and preaching and marriage we turn to Let the Nations Be Glad! and The Supremacy of God in Preaching and This Momentary Marriage – or to Piper’s thirty years of sermons, all available online.

But John Piper is not alone in highlighting the biblical centrality of spreading a passion for the supremacy of God in all things for the joy of all peoples. In For the Fame of God’s Name: Essays in Honor of John Piper – a book presented to Piper at the 2010 Desiring God National Conference – Justin Taylor and Sam Storms bring together more than two dozen scholars and pastors to write about Piper’s ministry and to extend his thought. The result is a helpful and challenging volume which displays both the great influence Piper has had, and the biblical moorings of Christian Hedonism.

The book has seven sections (after an initial note of apology to Piper for a book in his honor):

1. “John Piper:” An opening personal section written by Bethlehem Baptist Church pastors and elders;
2. “Christian Hedonism”
3. “The Sovereignty of God”
4. “The Gospel, the Cross, and the Resurrection of Christ”
5. “The Supremacy of God in All Things:” A catch-all title to cover a wide array of topics;
6. “Preaching and Pastoral Ministry”
7. “Ministries:” Descriptions of the vision and ministries of Desiring God and what is now Bethlehem College and Seminary.

The result is a volume particularly valuable for both pastors and serious students of the Word. Those who are basically familiar with Piper will value the personal insights of his friends and colleagues, and will profit from the attempts to extend his thought by scholars. This book is not an introduction to Christian Hedonism – Desiring God and, even better, When I Don’t Desire God serve that purpose well – but rather an attempt to examine the implications of Christian Hedonism to theology, to the Christian life, and to pastoral ministry. With that understanding, it succeeds marvelously.

Highlights of the book include:

• David Michael’s 2000+ word prayer in the book’s opening chapter, effectively setting the stage for the remaining chapters.
• Mark Talbot’s chapter “When All Hope Has Died: Meditations on Profound Christian Suffering” exemplifies the best way to honor another student of the Word. Talbot shows how much he has learned from Piper, and then critiques and modifies his thought. The author argues that the pursuit of our own joy cannot be the sole motivation for following God, claiming that profound “sufferers have abandoned pursuing any pleasure because they have lost all hope of feeling any pleasure again” (p. 96). Yet even those in such situations (like Naomi, Job, and Jeremiah) are able to glorify God: “God is also glorified in us when . . . we continue faithfully to acknowledge and proclaim his truth in spite of the fact that we are unable to conceive how any alteration to our future circumstances could make our lives seem good and pleasurable again” (p. 98). While this chapter would have been even better had it interacted with When I Don’t Desire God – particularly Piper’s chapter, “When the Darkness Will Not Lift” – Talbot gives us a profitable and thought-provoking article.
• Don Westblade’s chapter analyzes Jonathan Edwards’ wrestling with issues of divine sovereignty and human moral ability. This is a particularly helpful article, worth reading slowly. Edwards (and Westblade) argue that the doctrine of divine sovereignty is rational, even if, as Edwards says, “there may be some things that are true that . . . [are] much above our understandings” (p. 124).
• Bruce Ware’s chapter on prayer and the sovereignty of God is an excellent analysis of that conundrum. Carefully and engagingly written, this chapter can serve well as the first resource for any serious inquirer about these issues.
• Don Carson’s chapter “What is the Gospel – Revisited” is perhaps the finest of all. Carson painstakingly surveys the uses of the gospel word group in Scripture, and then examines implications for us today. Along the way he evaluates the slogan, “Preach the Gospel – use words if necessary;” distinguishes between outcomes of the Gospel (for individuals and for society) and the Gospel proper; emphasizes that Kingdom ethics and Kingdom fulfillment cannot be divorced from the plotline of the Gospels; shows that the word “evangelist” in the New Testament refers to anyone who proclaims the Gospel; and offers us this superb paragraph:

The heart of the gospel is what God has done in Jesus, supremely in his death and resurrection. Period. It is not personal testimony about our repentance; it is not a few words about our faith response; it is not obedience; it is not the cultural mandate or any other mandate. Repentance, faith, and obedience are of course essential, and must be rightly related in the light of Scripture, but they are not the good news. The gospel is the good news about what God has done (p. 162).

• Wayne Grudem’s chapter elaborates on Piper’s The Pleasures of God, which includes a chapter on “The Pleasure of God in Personal Obedience and Public Justice.” Piper based his work primarily on 1 Samuel 15:22, “Has the LORD as great delight in burnt offerings and sacrifices, as in obeying the voice of the LORD?” Grudem looks instead at a number of New Testament passages that emphasize God’s joy in our obedience, as we actively depend on Him to work in us. Grudem’s chapter would have been even more helpful had he interacted with the well-known first chapters of Jerry Bridge’s The Discipline of Grace, which argue that we wrongly think we are acceptable to God on our good days.
• C.J. Mahaney’s chapter begins with Paul’s benediction in 2 Corinthians 13:14, and shows how this summarizes the pastoral ministry: “Through our prayers, our preaching, our counseling, and all facets of our leadership, we must position those we serve to experience the grace of the Son, the love of the Father, and the fellowship of the Holy Spirit” (p. 389). Easily accessible yet profoundly challenging, this chapter is a gem. Every pastor would do well to think hard about the eleven “I must . . .” statements on p. 391.
• David Powlison’s contribution concerns, not surprisingly, the pastor as counselor. He shows the centrality of counseling –broadly defined – to pastoral ministry, and lays out distinctives between the pastoral task and what the world defines as counseling. A quote from Bonhoeffer serves to summarize the chapter:

Worldly wisdom knows what distress and weakness and failure are, but it does not know the godlessness of man. And so it does not know that man is destroyed only by his sin and can be healed only by forgiveness. Only the Christian knows this. In the presence of a psychiatrist I can only be a sick man; in the presence of a Christian brother I can dare to be a sinner. . . . The psychiatrist views me as if there were no God. The brother views me as I am before the judging and merciful God in the Cross of Jesus Christ (p. 429, quoted from Life Together.)

• John MacArthur’s chapter considers the maternal and paternal images of the pastor’s role found in 1 Thessalonians 2:7-12. Elaborating on each, MacArthur argues persuasively that every spiritual leader must be both: tender yet uncompromising, compassionate yet firm, affectionate yet in authority.

How could this excellent volume have been even better? Here are four considerations:

First, we honor those whose ideas we take seriously – seriously enough to cause us to think deeply about the subject. That thinking may lead to areas of disagreement, yet that very disagreement honors the author. Other than Mark Talbot’s chapter, the book contains little of this type of analysis. More could have been included. For example, Justin Taylor and Thabiti Anyabwile, in their chapters on Piper’s preaching on the sanctity of life and racial harmony, could profitably have asked: If this type of preaching is exemplary, why do none of the other pastors who contributed to this volume follow Piper’s pattern of preaching one sermon on each of these topics annually? As editor, Taylor could have pursued this line of questioning – and the answers would have been informative.

Second, Scott Hafemann’s contribution is, in many ways, exceptionally helpful and deserving of inclusion in the list of highlights. He walks the reader through Scripture, looking at the concept of the Kingdom of God as manifested from creation to universal worship in the new heavens and new earth. But his definition of Kingdom is problematic – and this problem is especially curious in a volume that honors John Piper. Hafemann defines the central theme of Scripture as “The historical revelation of God’s glory as King through the obedience of his people” (p. 237, his emphasis). “Obedience” must be replaced with “joyful obedience.” Add that word, and this sentence is consistent with Piper and Scripture; leave it out, and the sentence is terribly misleading. Hafemann’s original sentence sounds as if God commands duty rather than delight. Indeed, many today understand obedience to God to be a teeth-clenched, nose-holding, checking-off-a-list rule-keeping that they must do, contrary to their own joy. Piper has shown that obedience of this sort – obedience a la the elder son – is not glorifying to God. Obedience a la the Pharisees is not a picture of the Kingdom. Hafemann could well argue that teeth-clenching obedience is not biblical, and thus not what he intends by the term. Fair enough. But his terminology too easily lends itself to this misinterpretation. Whether we like it or not, in our society the word “obedience” has these connotations of perfunctory rule-keeping. And that has never been God’s object.

Third, the book would have benefited from some interactions among the various authors. For example, Beale and Grudem both interact with texts on justification by faith and their relationship to the way God looks upon the obedience of His people. Hafemann also highlights the centrality of our (joyful!) obedience. Seeing how they would respond to each other would have been valuable. While the challenges of enabling such interaction are large in a book of this type (as opposed to a conference volume), the benefits also might have been high.

Finally, the lack of a chapter on missions to unreached peoples for the glory of God is glaring. Perhaps the editors asked Ralph Winter to write such a chapter, and that remained unfinished at his death. But Let the Nations Be Glad is one of Piper’s most powerful books; indeed, the increasingly influential course “Perspectives on the World Christian Movement” was turned upside down by the ideas of chapter 1 of that volume. Furthermore, one of the key distinctives of Bethlehem as a church is having missions at its core. This emphasis appears too rarely in a book devoted to honoring Piper’s influence. Should the Lord tarry for 100 years, I suspect Piper’s impact on the goal of missions and on reaching the unreached will be his greatest legacy. Furthermore, such a legacy would give him personally the greatest of all joys.

Nevertheless, this is an exceptionally valuable book. Many thanks to the editors and authors for their labors to produce this volume and to keep it secret from Piper until the presentation. Surely this too will serve to spread a passion for the supremacy of God in all things for the joy of all peoples through Jesus Christ. Let the nations be glad!

You are concerned about a poor area of an American city. Should your first step be to assess the needs of the people?

Brian Fikkert and Steve Corbett say the answer to both of those questions is no. In their new book, When Helping Hurts: How to Alleviate Poverty Without Hurting the Poor and Yourself, the authors argue that most attempts to deal with poverty end up exacerbating underlying problems in both the rich giver and the poor receiver. They lay out a biblical understanding of poverty, identify principles for helping the poor, and then apply those principles to domestic and international settings. Along the way, they illustrate both effective and ineffective interventions – including their own errors and mistakes.

In Part I, “Foundational Concepts for Helping Without Hurting,” the authors emphasize the holistic nature of Jesus’ work. As we will sing tomorrow,

He comes to break oppression, to set the captive free;
To take away transgression and rule in equity.
While on earth He preached the Gospel through His words and through His actions. We, His church, are to do the same, until He comes and ends all wrongs. Christ is Lord of all of life – so the Gospel has implications for how we live every moment of every day.

How does this change our understanding of poverty? Poverty, argue the authors, is about much more than a lack of resources. It is about feelings of “shame, inferiority, powerlessness, humiliation, fear, hopelessness, depression, social isolation, and voicelessness” (p. 53). God created us to be in healthy relationship with Himself first of all, giving glory to Him, and then with others, the rest of creation, and ourselves. And these relationships are embedded in an interweaving web of economic, social, political, and religious systems. The Fall has broken all of these relationships, and led to systems that exacerbate this brokenness.

What we normally think of as poverty – the lack of material resources – is only one aspect of the breakdown of our relationship to the rest of creation. Apart from God’s redemption, we all experience breakdowns in all four of those key relationships, and each of those is a type of poverty. Even the rich are poor in some of these senses. Furthermore, those who are materially poor often are suffering from all types of poverty, not just materially.

In particular, one type of poverty we American rich people normally experience is thinking that we are great, we are the helpers, we are the givers, we are the problem-solvers – that we are, in a sense, God. When we then try to help those who are materially poor and suffering from the opposite sense of themselves – shame – we often, even while providing material goods, make our own god-complexes worse while increasing the shame and poor-self-image of those we are helping. In such cases, helping hurts – it hurts both the giver and the receiver.

Fikkert and Corbett’s approach to the issue is masterful. They manage to discuss poverty in a way that is informed by economic research but not limited by it, in a way that acknowledges the impact of economic and political systems on poverty, while also acknowledging individual responsibility. Thus they avoid sounding like Republicans or Democrats, conservative or liberal – they instead sound biblical.

Along the way, the authors discuss the importance of the material and social assets of the poor, microenterprise development, and savings and credit schemes. The last three chapters draw out lessons in three key areas: Short term missions trips – a devastating critique of most, even while laying out principles for healthy trips – domestic poverty alleviation, and international development work.

The book is structured particularly well for small groups to read together. Each chapter begins with questions to ponder and discuss, and then concludes with follow-up, questions for reflection that help the reader apply the chapter’s lessons both to the specific issues brought up in the chapter’s opening questions and more broadly. The website www.whenhelpinghurts.com provides a large number of additional helpful resources.

Should you read this book? If you’ve ever been on a short term mission trip, or think you might – Yes. If you’ve ever wondered whether or not to give to a beggar – Yes. If you’ve ever wondered how to live out James 1:27 – Yes.

In other words: Read this book. There is no better book on the subject.

Also, I encourage you to read or listen to an excellent sermon on the cross or the resurrection. I’ve compiled a list from various preachers at this link.

Lincoln: “You say A. is white, and B. is black. It is color, then; the lighter, having the right to enslave the darker? Take care. By this rule, you are to be slave to the first man you meet, with a fairer skin than your own.”

Piper: “There are no morally relevant differences between white and black or between child-in-the-womb and child-outside-the-womb that would give a right either to enslave or kill the other.”

Do you listen? How is your hearing?

Jesus thinks listening is vital: He says, “Whoever has ears to hear had better listen!” (Mark 4:9 NET).

Most of us have the physical equipment to hear. And yet so often we fail to listen.

Listening is never easy, is it? All of us are so easily distracted – even in church. For example, when someone gets up during a service, perhaps to go to the bathroom, at least one-third of the eyes in the sanctuary follow the person out the door – making sure, I suppose, that the person doesn’t fall down.

Sometimes we listen, but don’t really hear. This was the case with Ezekiel. God tells His prophet that to the people of Israel:

you are nothing more than one who sings love songs with a beautiful voice and plays an instrument well, for they hear your words but do not put them into practice. (Ezekiel 33:32 NIV)

Ezekiel had become an attraction, an amusement. And note that the people responded to his preaching! They expressed devotion, but their actions belied their words. So Ezekiel was to them a performer, a maestro, fun to listen to but having no impact on their lives. They responded aesthetically – but they did not really hear him.

In Mark 4, Jesus emphasizes again and again the importance of truly hearing Him.

• Verse 3: His first word to the crowds is, “Listen!”
• Verse 9: “He who has ears to hear, let him hear!”
• Verse 23: “If anyone has ears to hear, let him hear!”
• Verse 24: “Consider carefully what you hear!”
• Verse 33: “Jesus spoke the word to them, [literally] as much as they could hear.”

In this chapter, He relates the parable of the farmer who sows seed on the path, on rocky ground, among thorns, and on good soil. The seed on the path is eaten by birds; the seed on the rocky soil and among the thorns initially springs up, but dies; the seed on good soil bears a hundredfold more seed.

We frequently understand this parable as referring to evangelism: the evangelist spreads the word; some people never respond; some people appear to respond, yet fall away eventually; others respond and bear fruit. That interpretation states an important truth.

But in context in Mark, I believe it preferable to think of the different grounds as yourself at different times. Ask yourself: How am I responding to the word I hear right now? What barriers prevent me from hearing the word and putting it into practice?

We all want to be like that good soil, multiplying the seed of the word, bearing fruit, giving to others God’s love and life. What does this parable teach us about overcoming barriers to hearing – so that we might be that good soil?

Let’s consider the three bad types of ground in turn:

The Road

Jesus explains that Satan is like the birds eating the seed; he takes away the word before it has a chance to germinate.

For us, this corresponds to having the word go in one ear and out the other. It never even registers in our brain. We are distracted while we are listening, or have preconceived ideas that do not allow us to hear the truths being stated.

This happens to all of us to some extent. We might be in church, supposedly listening to a sermon, perhaps even looking at the preacher – but suddenly notice that for the last five minutes we’ve been thinking about our plans for the afternoon and haven’t heard a word he has said.

What are your barriers? Are you rejecting the word outright? Or are you feeding on it, allowing it to permeate you and change you?

The Rocky Soil

Many of us have heard sermons or read the Bible and responded in our hearts: “Yes, yes, that is true. I agree with that. I will change my life to reflect that.” Unlike the soil beside the road, in this case we do hear the word, and we mentally assent to its truth. But then we fail to act on it consistently and persistently, so that there is no fruit. In those cases, we are that rocky soil.

The Thorns

When we are like the thorny ground, we hear initially, and agree. Our understanding of the truth deepens. So far, so good.

But then we are confronted with a decision. Obedience to the Word will cost us something: Respect. Success. Health. Financial Security. And so we reject the truth. We acknowledge it. We may even proclaim it. But we don’t live it. We instead love the world.

Once again, I propose that all of us act this way at times. We may have a good, solid grasp of biblical truth – but then say:

• “Let’s be practical. Surely God doesn’t mean for me to do that! I might lose my job!”
• “Yes, I can obey God in that area – after I make enough money and attain financial security.”
• “Wow, that’s such a noble sentiment – but it’s simply not practical. Maybe people 2000 years ago could act that way, but it doesn’t work at the dawn of the 21st century.”

Have you responded to God’s truth in this way at times? I certainly have. We can all come up with a zillion reasons why living according to God’s word is not practical. But “the righteous one shall live by faith.” (Habakkuk 2:4). Living by faith means we obey God whether or not that obedience makes sense from a human point of view. Living by faith means we find our security, our satisfaction, our accomplishment, and our self-worth in God alone.

So how can we avoid being bad listeners? How can we instead become like that good soil?

First, we surely must depend on the Holy Spirit, confessing our inadequacies, our sinful hearts, and our desperate need for His help.

Second, we must spend time and energy trying to understand. This is what Jesus tells the disciples in Mark 4:24-25. We can paraphrase these verses:

You have ears; you have used them to hear; now see what you hear! Perceive it, contemplate it, mull it over, understand it thoroughly! How deeply are you digging into the bag of the word of God? Pick a big scoop! Gather as much seed as you possibly can, and then even more will be given to you! He who grabs hold, who really latches onto what is there, will receive even more. If you don’t take hold, you’ll find you don’t have even what you think you have.

So will you commit yourself to using those ears of yours? Will you commit yourself to seeing what you hear?

Our small groups are beginning a season of discussing and applying the previous Sunday’s sermon. Here are some guidelines for sermon listening that will help us to see what we hear – and thus will help us to become good soil, making those discussions profitable:

• Take the teaching of God’s word seriously. God’s word is more important than anything you learn in school; it is more important than anything you read in newspapers; it is more important than anything your boss tells you in a staff meeting. Give at least as much effort to understanding the sermon as you would to what you hear in these other contexts. This includes preparing yourself for worship: Going to bed early enough on Saturday night that you are alert in church, and preparing your heart Sunday morning.
• Pay attention. Taking notes is often helpful here. Note taking forces you to focus on the speaker, and keeps some of the seed from falling beside the road where the birds eat it. It also requires you to do some thinking and reflecting even while the pastor speaks.
• Realize you won’t catch everything, but be sure to pick one or two thoughts from the sermon, reflect on them, and apply them! When we lose focus, Satan is apt to accuse us: “You lost focus and missed the last few minutes; you might as well stop listening now.” Don’t yield to that temptation. No one will catch everything. Simply resume listening, and ask God to open up the rest to you. Then focus on the specific message that you need to apply in your life.
• Ask good questions about the sermon and its text. What is the intended message of the writer? Does the sermon capture the main point of the text? What doctrinal truth is emphasized here? How is that truth consistent with the rest of Scripture? What promise is given? Have I been leaning on that promise? What errors or sins does this passage warn against, which I easily fall prey to? How can I use this passage to fight against such sins? Are there duties and responsibilities in this passage that I am neglecting? How does this passage feed my joy in Christ? How can I use this sermon to increase my joy this week?
• Resist the urge to be like the music critic at the concert. Don’t evaluate the sermon, trying to give it a grade of A, B, C (or worse!). Instead, listen for what God is saying through His Word. The sermon may be poorly organized and poorly delivered – but, if the word is preached truly, there will still be a message for you. And when you speak to any preacher after the sermon, try to avoid a blanket statement about the quality of the sermon. Fred and I would much prefer to hear you say, “What you said about X really hit me. I’ll meditate on that this week, and try to put it into practice. Pray for me.” Or, “I didn’t understand what you said about Y. Can we talk about that later?” Or, “I hear what you were saying, but doesn’t this other Scripture contradict that point?”

So engage the word! Listen to it! Work hard at hearing it!

All of you have ears. May you hear, and may the word of God dwell in you richly.

[Parts of this devotion are excerpted from my sermon on Mark 4. You can read that in its entirety here. - Coty]

John Calvin was born July 10, 1509. This year is thus the 500th anniversary of his birth. His Institutes of the Christian Religion is of great importance historically, being one of the most influential books ever written. It is also one of the most original books ever written, becoming the pattern for all subsequent systematic theologies.

But I encourage you to join me in reading The Institutes in 2009 not for those reasons. Instead, read The Institutes because there is little else you could do with that amount of time that will deepen your love for God more.

I have never read The Institutes cover to cover; I’ve only used it as a reference. So this will be new to me also. I look forward to following the five-day a week. 5-8 pages a day reading schedule put out by the Alliance of Confessing Evangelicals; on their blog, scholars and pastors such as Sinclair Ferguson, Ligon Duncan, and Carl Trueman will post short comments on each day’s reading. See this post by Ligon Duncan for ten reasons to read The Institutes.

Numerous new and used copies of The Institutes are available; the book is also available online. If purchasing a copy, make sure you buy the 1559 edition, unabridged. Most unabridged editions consist of two volumes – make sure if buying used that you get both!

Join me in this commitment. And fulfill Philippians 4:4 more fully in 2009.

If we love God’s Word, we will read it; if we are to meditate on it all the day, we must memorize it. Note: reading the Bible is not the goal, but a means to achieve the goal. Memorizing Scripture, likewise, is not the goal, but an intermediate step that enables us to meditate on it.

Even loving God’s law is not the goal. The psalmist loves God’s law because it is God’s; that is, because it is God’s precious and unique revelation to us about Himself, His creation, and ourselves. We love God’s law because we love God; and we love God more when we come to know Him more and more deeply through daily reading of His revelation of Himself.

In 2008, I fell somewhat behind in my daily Bible reading; four daily readings remained the morning of December 31. I read two upon waking, and then, about 9 in the evening, left our evening festivities and read of the excellent wife in Proverbs 31, of God’s delight in those who fear Him and hope in Him (Psalm 147:10-11), and Jesus’ promise to wipe every tear from our eyes when He comes soon (Rev 21:4-8, Rev 22:20).

This morning I began once again the Bible Unity Reading Plan – reading of creation and fall (Gen 1:26-27, Gen 3:1-19) and the Word made flesh to redeem mankind and all creation from that fall (John 1:10-18).  I also rememorized this week’s Fighter Verse – first memorized in 2000 when I was resident in Minneapolis and Bethlehem Baptist began this same set of Fighter verses:

Deuteronomy 7:9:  Know therefore that the LORD your God is God; he is the faithful God, keeping his covenant of love to a thousand generations of those who love him and keep his commands.

So I encourage you to begin the year by joining me in committing yourself to read the entire Bible and to memorize this entire set of Fighter Verses in 2009. Make this commitment in order that you might meditate on His Word day and night, and so know God better and love Him more. May the Word dwell in us richly, so that we rejoice in Him fully, and do all to His glory (Colossians 3:16-17).

Here is the list of Fighter Verses for this year. And below find links to some Bible reading plans that I have used (Justin Taylor has a helpful post pointing to numerous other reading plan options):

• The Bible Unity Reading Plan: an Old and New Testament reading each day, with the longer reading following a chronological track, covering the entire Bible. I put this plan together eight years ago after being blessed mightily by reading the Bible chronologically, but not wanting to have my devotional reading only in the Old Testament for three-quarters of the year.

• The Bible Unity Reading Plan, Original Languages: The Bible Unity Plan is set up for those reading in English. For those who want to read the entire New Testament in Greek, the selections in that plan in October and November from Luke and Acts are too long. So a few years ago I modified that plan, taking account of the relative difficulty of the Greek in different New Testament books. This is the plan I’ve used the last several years (though last year, after getting behind, I switched to English. In 2009 I plan to read the entire New Testament in Greek. Please spur me on by asking how it is going.)

• The Shorter Bible Unity Reading Plan: the same structure, covering the entire New Testament and about half the Old Testament in a year.

• The Discipleship Journal Bible Reading Plan, covering the entire Bible with four readings each day: Gospels, other New Testament, wisdom literature, other Old Testament. (Edit 19 Jan: If you use this plan, check out this blog which posts the readings daily and adds excerpts from sermons or devotional material on the topics.)

Pick a plan. Ask others to hold you accountable. Find someone else using the same plan and regularly discuss what you are reading. Know God better. Love Him more. Live for Him more fully. And delight in Him above all else.

(For a version of this devotion that is easier to print, follow this link.)

What is the heart of the Gospel? What does the Gospel teach at its core?

In our adult Core Seminar this week, we consider this issue by means of J.I. Packer’s “The Heart of the Gospel,” chapter 18 from Knowing God (republished by Crossway this year in In My Place Condemned He Stood: Celebrating the Glory of the Atonement). In this chapter Packer explains the central importance of propitiation – that is, of averting God’s anger over sin by an offering. He explains the reason why so many take offense at the idea, the biblical support for the idea, and the importance of the idea in our Christian walk.

Here is a brief outline of the chapter to whet your appetite. Please read it if at all possible, and join us this Sunday as we glory in Christ’s work on our behalf.

Section I: Propitiation is Biblical

Paganism centers on propitiation: Offering a sacrifice to appease capricious, potentially angry gods.

We might expect the Bible, which repudiates paganism, to repudiate the idea of propitiation also. But it doesn’t. Instead “the ‘propitiation’ word-group appears in four passages of . . . transcendent importance:”

• Romans 3:21-26, the rationale of God’s justification of sinners
• Hebrews 2:17, the rationale for the incarnation
• 1 John 2:1-2, the continuing, present ministry of the risen Christ
• 1 John 4:8-10, the definition of the love of God

Many today are offended by this doctrine, thinking of it as vestigial paganism. But “a gospel without propitiation at its heart is another gospel than that which Paul preached.”

Section II: Expiation vs Propitiation

Some translations substitute the word (or the idea) of expiation for propitiation. Expiation is “the covering, putting away or rubbing out of sin so that it no longer constitutes a barrier to friendly fellowship between man and God.”

Propitiation includes that biblical idea, but goes further; it also denotes the pacifying of the wrath of God.

In Romans 3:25, the context – building from the statement in 1:18 that “the wrath of God is revealed from heaven against all ungodliness and unrighteousness of men” – demands the idea of the pacification of God’s wrath.

Section III: The Nature of God’s Wrath

God’s wrath is not capricious, bad-tempered, or malicious.

It is instead the logical result of His perfect holiness. It is the “right reaction of the moral perfection in the Creator towards moral perversity in the creature.”

He is the moral authority in the universe, and He must inflict on sin the penalty it deserves.

Section IV: Three Facts about Propitiation

1) Propitiation is the Work of God Himself

In paganism, humans work to avert God’s anger. In the Bible, God Himself provides the propitiation in His Son.

It is not that the Son decided to avert His Father’s anger. The Father Himself sent His Son to be the propitiation for our sins (1 John 4:9-10).

2) Propitiation was Made by the Death of Jesus Christ

The sacrificial system teaches the necessity of death, the spilling of blood, to make atonement (Leviticus 17:11). Thus Paul says propitiation is “by His blood” (Romans 3:25). It is Jesus’ death rather than His perfect life or His moral example that averts God’s wrath. He died as our representative substitute (Galatians 3:13, 2 Corinthians 5:14, 18-21). This fulfills the idea acted out in both the regular sacrificial system and on the Day of Atonement (Leviticus 4 and 16).

3) Propitiation Manifests God’s Righteousness

In Romans 3:25-26, Paul says that propitiation is necessary to show that God is just. He had passed over former sins by guilty people, not since the flood condemning all mankind as they deserved. Jesus’ death on the cross was the payment, the punishment required, for all the sins of all those who trust in Him, before and after the cross.

Section V: The Heart of the Gospel

The Gospel fundamentally is the solution of man’s problem with God’s wrath. The Gospel is not fundamentally the solution of man’s problem with man, or man’s problem with his environment (though the Gospel has implications for these areas of concern). Any biblical presentation of the Gospel must make this distinction clear.

The idea of the need for and God’s provision of propitiation pervades the New Testament, often using different vocabulary, such as reconciliation, redemption, sacrifice, self-giving, sin-bearing, and blood-shedding. All these words portray different facets of the work of propitiation.

Understanding propitiation is necessary for understanding other central biblical issues; the remainder of the chapter looks at five of these.

Section VI: The Driving Force in the Life of Jesus

Read the Gospel of Mark straight through and your impression of Jesus will include at least four features: He is a man of action, He knew He was divine, He knew He came to die, and His experience of death was a fearful ordeal.

Note in particular the last. Socrates and others faced death fearlessly. Why Gethsemane? Why the forsaken cry from the cross?

The doctrine of propitiation makes all this clear. On the cross Jesus was made to be sin; He had to take on Himself the eternal punishment deserved by millions of sinners. “The Lord has laid on Him the iniquity of us all” (Isaiah 53:6).

Section VII: The Destiny of Those Who Reject God

We get a notion of the destiny of those who remain under God’s wrath by looking at the cross. There we see “withdrawal and the deprivation of good.” Jesus lost His sense of the Father’s presence, all enjoyment of the Father, and experienced instead loneliness, pain, and human malice. While there was terrible physical pain, the spiritual and mental suffering was far greater.

Similarly, those who remain under God’s wrath will lose all good. In ordinary life, we enjoy a great deal of good that we rarely notice: health, friendship, respect. Ultimately all that we value will be lost if we remain under God’s wrath.

Section VIII: God’s Gift of Peace

God’s peace does not mean being shielded “from life’s hardest knocks.” Instead it is peace with God, as our status changes from His being against us to His being for us (Colossians 1:20). We cannot understand this concept unless we see our original state, and the propitiatory sacrifice of Christ that was required to change our state.

Section IX: The Dimensions of the Love of God

In Ephesians 3:18-20, Paul prays that his readers might be able to comprehend God’s love that surpasses knowledge. The context shows us what Paul means by God’s love: The redemption that is ours through Christ’s blood (1:7, 2:13). Paul also emphasizes the free nature of that love, shown to those under His wrath (2:1-8), the eternal nature of that love, decided upon by God toward sinners before the foundation of the world (1:4); and the assured nature of that love, guaranteed, despite our sinfulness (1:14).

Section X: The Meaning of God’s Glory

After Judas leaves the Last Supper, Jesus says, “Now is the Son of Man glorified, and God is glorified in him” (John 13:31). Jesus sees the cross as a display of God’s glory: His “wisdom, power, righteousness, truth, and love . . . in the making of propitiation for our sins.”

Packer closes the chapter with these words: “The joyful news of redeeming love and propitiating mercy, which is the heart of the gospel, spurs [the heirs of heaven] to never-ending praise. Are you among their number?”

Will my children remember their mother reading the Bible consistently? Will they picture in their minds a straw basket with Bible, Valley of Vision prayer book, journal, and prayer notebook? Will they picture their mother swinging gently on the porch swing, Bible in hand or curled up in the wing chair in the music room, head bowed. Will it be a consistent memory?

It is certainly not just for the memory in my children’s minds that this consistency is important. Oh no. It is vitally important for now, for every day, for wisdom and discernment, for knowledge and understanding, for contentment and spurring on. It is as vital to my life as an Olympic athlete’s consistent training is. No, it is more vital. Because, unlike the Olympic athlete who may only take his gold medal as far as the grave, the benefits of consistency in walking with God are eternal.

Coty said in the sermon, “consistency makes a statement to yourself, ‘I am a child of God‘.” That’s who I am. Spending time in the word is simply what a child of God does, like running is what a runner does. I can’t live without it.

In Sunday’s sermon, we looked at Hebrews 13:17, which reads in the NIV:

Obey your leaders and submit to their authority. They keep watch over you as men who must give an account. Obey them so that their work will be a joy, not a burden, for that would be of no advantage to you.

In discussing this verse, I said, “Submission only comes into play when there is a disagreement.”

Several of you have asked (respectfully and submissively!) if this is correct, particularly considering that God the Son submits to God the Father. Surely there is no disagreement between them!

This is an excellent point, and many thanks for the input. I’ll correct my statement briefly next Sunday; here let me elaborate on the idea more fully than will be possible in the sermon. Consider first the nature of God the Son’s submission to God the Father:

The Son is indeed in submission to the Father, from all eternity, to all eternity. 1 Corinthians 11:3 tells us that “the head of Christ is God,” and that this headship/submission relationship is similar in some ways to the relationship of husband to wife. Note that this statement is not limited to a particular point in time, such as during the period of Jesus’ life on earth. Paul makes a general, timeless statement.

We see this underlined later in the same letter. In 1 Corinthians 15:28, Paul says that at the last day, when all things are subjected to the Son, “then the Son himself will also be subjected to him who put all things in subjection under him, that God may be all in all.” (Note that the verb translated “be subject to” is the same word translated “submit” elsewhere.)

What does this submission mean, if the Father and Son don’t disagree about how to proceed?

Two Old Testament Scriptures are especially helpful here. First, Psalm 40:8 (which the author of the book of Hebrews applies to Jesus in Hebrews 10:5-10):“I delight to do your will.” Second, Deuteronomy 8:3, which Jesus quotes to counter Satan’s temptation: “Man does not live by bread alone, but man lives by every word that comes from the mouth of the LORD.” God the Son exists continually in an attitude of joyful submission to God the Father. Equal in essence, equal in power, equal in might, He takes great delight in doing whatever God the Father wills. He has a role as God the Son which differs from the role of God the Father (and from the role of God the Holy Spirit); this role, this ordering, requires that He follow the Father’s lead; and this following is His great joy. It can even be called His sustenance.

So God the Son submits to God the Father in that He continually has an attitude of joyful submission to the leadership of God the Father.

What then are the implications for submission among us?

Just as in the Godhead, in human relationships we can and should have an attitude of joyful submission to those in authority over us – children to parents, wives to husbands, employees to employers, those in the church to elders, all of us to the government. We should delight to do their will – as long as that will does not involve sin.

How, then, should my statement about submission and disagreements be revised? In this way: “You are not submissive unless you obey joyfully and willingly when you disagree with an instruction from your head.” In this life, then, disagreements provide the critical test of submission.

In that light, let me rework the illustration I used in the sermon:

Suppose I tell my thirteen-year-old son Joel, “You must drink this Sonic strawberry limeade I bought for you!” Is that a test of his submission? No. He will indeed drink it joyfully and willingly – and such an attitude is consistent with his submission to me – but he would have drunk the limeade that way regardless of my command.

But suppose I say, “Joel, would you please clean out the kitty litter?” Joel does not have a particular fondness for cleaning the kitty litter. He does not naturally choose to take on that task himself. His preference would be for someone else to do it. But if he picks up the trash bag and the scoop and joyfully and willingly cleans out the litter, that proves that he is submissive to me.

Furthermore, when he does that, he is imitating the relationship of God the Son to God the Father. And that brings glory to God.

James 4:6-7 says, “God opposes the proud, but gives grace to the humble.” Submit yourselves therefore to God.” We naturally want to exalt our power, our opinions, our status, our positions. God instead tells us in His Word and shows us in the very nature of the Trinity that we are to submit joyfully to those who rightly are heads over us. Yes, each of us is important, each of us has a valuable role, each of us is loved before the foundation of the world, each of us will be perfected, each of us will be the object of God’s great delight; and, each of us humbly accepts the role God gives us, now and in eternity, as we, like our Savior, delight to do His will.

So do you have that attitude of submission, accepting and delighting in your God-given role? Do you recognize God’s pattern of order, of headship and submission? That is, do you live on every word that proceeds from the mouth of God?

[For an excellent discussion of the submission of God the Son to God the Father, and the implications for human relationships, see Bruce Ware, Father, Son, and Holy Spirit: Relationships, Roles, and Relevance (Crossway, 2005), p. 72-85 and 137-151. For a wonderful example of joyful submission, see this post by Pam Bloom on today's Desiring God blog.]