This morning’s Bible reading put me over the edge. It said,

His sons come to honor, and he does not know it;
they are brought low,and he perceives it not.
He feels only the pain of his own body,
and he mourns only for himself.
(Job 14:21-22)

In other words the day may come when I will feel so much pain that the honors and sorrows of my sons will mean nothing to me. So I think I better act now.

With overflowing admiration for all four of my sons, I want to celebrate the poetry of my eldest, Karsten Luke Piper, who teaches English at Minnesota West Community and Technical College . He will be doing a reading this Sunday evening (November 18, 5 PM) …

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Not everyone should read John Piper’s new book on justification. Some readers—perhaps those already aware of N. T. Wright and the New Perspective on Paul (NPP)—will want to read The Future of Justification from cover to cover. But not everyone.

In his most recent book, Piper engages Wright on academic turf. Are you familiar with 4QMMT? Or Ed Sanders and Jimmy Dunn? Most Christians don’t need to be. If you haven’t heard of the NPP, that’s fine. It’s a discussion that started among those with a very different view of the Bible than most evangelicals. Your good doctrine may have kept you out of this fray. And much of this book may be unhelpful to you in your context.

But if you’re in t…

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Wayne Grudem’s Systematic Theology defines the Trinity as follows: “God eternally exists as three persons, Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, and each person is fully God, and there is one God” (p. 226).

Broken down, this amounts to three propositions:

• God is three persons.
• Each person is fully God.
• There is one God.

In addition, it’s helpful to elaborate on the fact that when we say “God is three persons,” we mean that he is not just one person, and that the persons of the Trinity are not to be confused. So we can also say:

• The Father is God.
• The Son is God.
• The Holy Spirit is God.
• The Father is not the Holy Spirit, and the Holy Spirit is not the Fathe…

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Jesus’ person and his gospel-work for sinners have been joined together by God himself. And what God has joined together, let no man separate.

Assault on Christ’s person is an assault on the gospel. A compromised Christology inevitably will wreck the salvation of sinners.

Stephen Nichols gets this connection with crystal clarity. His just-published For Us and For Our Salvation: The Doctrine of Christ in the Early Church (Crossway, 2007) points time and again to the vital union between Christ’s person and the gospel. Jesus is one person with two natures. And the reason he took on the second nature was “for us and for our salvation” (in the words of Athanisus).¹

Not only doe…

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This week I’ve been indexing the forthcoming book, The Supremacy of Christ in a Postmodern World, and have been significantly blessed. What an especially excellent book! Piper on joy. Carson on love. Driscoll on the church. Now I’m to Keller on the gospel, and I found his section on “gospel humiliation” so helpful and so complementary to John Piper's messages at Wheaton and his recent sermon on Joseph, I asked Crossway for permission to give our Desiring God blogees a foretaste of the book to come. (It's due out November 12.) Thanks to Crossway for giving this the go-ahead.

[The following is from Tim Keller's chapter, “The Gospel and the Supremacy of Christ in a Postmodern World.”]

…

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Andy Jackson is beginning a study of Christian Hedonism. He offers a reminder that all of us who have been around this theology awhile need to hear:

The purpose ... is not to simply swallow or memorize what Edwards, Piper, and Storms publicly declare, but to renew my strength, focus my teaching, and formulate my own convicitions and communication....

Pursue seriously your happiness in God! Remember, a static belief in Christian Hedonism can easily become dead orthodoxy, it must be sought after, renewed, and experienced again and again.

My wife and I just finished reading through The Big Picture Story Bible with our 2-year-old for his bedtime devotions. We went from Creation to Revelation in 26 simply-told and colorfully-drawn stories. Obviously, a lot has to be skipped over in order to sum up the Bible in 26 segments. But that's this book's whole point: to sum it all up; to give kids the gist of God's word. The whole point of the story of redemption is Jesus, “the forever king.”

Nothing I say could emphasize the value of books like this more than just quoting my son. For the last several minutes he has been reading this book to himself and making up songs about the pictures that he recognizes.

At the beginning of …

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Eric Johnson’s magnum opus has just been published by IVP Academic. It is titled Foundations for Soul Care: A Christian Psychology Proposal. Knowing Eric and his love for God, and his allegiance to Scripture, and his deep appreciation for the worldview of Jonathan Edwards, and his own walk with Christ through dark valleys, I am encouraged by the conclusion of this book. Don’t stumble over the academic terms (modalities, analogical, theocentric). Penetrate to the amazing claims made here. Then consider pondering the 600 pages that go before.

In concluding the chapter (and the book), it would be good to summarize its major underlying assumption: the different modalities of Christian soul

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Douglas Wilson offers some wisdom on the effect of resentment: If you are bitter, you are siding against yourself with the person you're offended at. Wilson writes:

What this means is that someone came into your home and smashed your precious things. And let us say that you are not imagining it—he really did this. And so what does bitterness do? Bitterness goes to the workroom in the basement, finds a hammer, and goes through the house, smashing any of the remaining precious things that the other may have missed. At the basic heart level, this means that bitterness agrees with the vandal. For all the appearance of conflict, it is a false conflict.

Aggressive belli…

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Noel Piper tells the story of one of her sons really enjoying the books The Cross and the Switchblade and Run, Baby, Run. This son did not generally like reading, so it was especially exciting that he had gotten into these stories. When he finished both books, he went to the library and asked if the librarian could direct him to more stories that he might enjoy. She asked him what he liked and he replied, “Christian books about gang warfare.”

Encouraging your children in their own peculiar interests and making sure they know the neighborhood librarian are two ways to help them enjoy reading. Kathy Zahler compiles a list of other strategies in her book 50 Simple Things You Can Do to Rais…

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