In My Place Condemned He Stood

This book was really a love/hate relationship. I also knew that this would probably be the case heading into me reading it though as well. It is really 4 essays about the atonement of Christ. I found 3 of 4 to be very good and the one I figured I would find lacking is exactly the one that was lacking.

Here are the four different essays:

The Heart of the Gospel (J.I. Packer; taken from chapter 18 of Knowing God; 1973)

This is really a longer intro to the book as a whole. It speaks of the different aspects of the cross, such as propitiation, God's love, expiation, substitution and God's glory.

What Did the Cross Achieve? The Logic of Penal Substitution (J.I. Packer; first appeared in Tyndale Bulletin; 1974)

This is really a defense of understanding both words used here, penal and substitution. Packer does a very good job in rendering that logic can only take someone so far before they have to bow the knee to the omnipotent and omniscient God. He does a good job in the defense of the use of the term, "Penal Substitution." I very much liked this chapter even though it was a very tough read to get through.

Nothing But the Blood (Mark Dever; Reprint from Christianity Today; 2006)

This was very short and really marked a way for the modern reader to try and understand why we still need to make sure we speak of the bloody atonement. Why it was necessary and why it still is necessary as far as our focus within God's love. I liked this short article, although I found some of it to be repetitive to Packer's What did the Cross Achieve.

Saved by His Precious Blood: An Introduction to John Owen's The Death of Death in the Death of Christ. (J.I. Packer; 1958)

This chapter I really didn't like. I found that the work of Owen was really put up on a pedestal and said many times that there was no way for it to be refuted. This seems like words that should only be held up to the light of Scripture, not to a man's work with no inspiration of the Holy Spirit. J.I. Packer defends the understanding of a strict view of limited atonement in this article and says that those who don't believe in this view are not preaching the gospel. He says that preaching limited atonement is the biblical gospel, that if you preach otherwise you are preaching self esteem, that those who don't preach a strict view of the atonement are just trying to helpful to man and not concerned with the glory of God.

I still can't believe that he says some of this stuff. So, if I don't hold to a strict view of the atonement I don't preach the biblical gospel, I preach self esteem and are little concerned with the glory of God?

What I find interesting is that this comes after a quote in this very book by Martin Luther where Luther preaches an atonement that is more than limited, or particular. This is found on page 85 in the footnotes:

All the prophets did foresee in spirit, that Christ should become the greatest transgressor, murderer, adulterer, thief, rebel, blasphemer, etc. that ever was....for he being made a sacrifice, for the sins of the whole world, is not now an innocent person and without sins....Our most merciful Father...sent his only Son into the world and laid upon him the sins of all men, saying: Be thou Peter that denier; Paul that persecutor, blashphemer and cruel oppressor; David that adulterer; that sinner which did eat the apple in Paradise; that thief which hanged on the cross; and, briefly, be thou person which hath committed the sins of all men; see therefore that thou pay and satisfy for them. Here now cometh the law and saith: I find him a sinner...therefore let him die upon the cross.

Martin Luther(found at Galatians, ed. Philip S. Watson (London: James Clarke, 1953), 269-271; on Gal 3:13)

Notice there is not the particular in view here. But the understanding of the sins being laid on the Messiah and not of just some, but of the whole world. And Luther continues and says that Christ be thou person which hath committed the sins of all men.

I just really found this work to be lacking and very over the top with such arrogance in the understanding of the atonement. Although, I do believe that Christ did die for the whole world, he also died specifically, or especially, for the elect. So, it is a both/and statement in regard to the atonement, not an either/or.

I just find it funny that Packer has his arrogant statements in this book right after he quotes Luther saying just the opposite of what Packer would like him to say.

So, this book is a quandary for me. The first three-fourths of the book was very well done, but the last chapter on the Death of Death by Owen was just terrible. So, I am not sure what I would do with this book besides tell others to read it with caution, but shouldn't we do that with every book we read? Recommended (with caution)

Link to Buy

Simple Church

When I started to read this book, I had absolutely no grounds for either thinking I would love the book or hate the book. I just wanted to read it. I actually had never heard of it as I am not a Senior Pastor, but what caught my attention is the desire to see our church focus on what God has the church here for. Not our programs, events, etc. but just literally..."Why did God leave the church here on this earth?" I thought this book would aid in this understanding.

What is interesting is a lot more study and data went into this book than I had really thought. From the sounds of it they had over 400 churches do surveys, they went and spoke to different church leaders in both person and over the phone (from what I can gather). This truly was a big deal. The whole basis of this book is to see what "kind" of churches are surviving our post Christian era. The reason this thought came to mind is that Eric Geiger had started to take a simpler model for his own church that he is the Executive Pastor at and see if they had "caught on to something."

This book is very well written on how to get your church from a busy program oriented church to a more simple focused church on what the church feels as though Christ has called them to be. Here is what I mean. It is a top down approach instead of a bottom up approach. You are to start with the process that new converts/new members are to start at in the church and bring them through to maturing believers in Christ. Whatever you believe this looks like in steps you need to start there first. So, an example might be that you believe everyone should "Know Jesus, then start maturing in their faith, serving God and then seeking the lost" then you should design everything you do to correspond with each one of those steps. If one of your programs doesn't fit, then throw it out. It might be hard at first, but this is to really keep the church on mission. Also, if you have too many programs for one of the steps, it needs to be thrown out as well. This is meant to stop churches from doing a lot of things mediocre to doing a smaller amount of things very well. This is the very basic idea of this book. But I just hit on the tip of the ice berg.

While I believe the book is well written and well documented I believe that they would like their stats to be better than they actually are. When they sent out the surveys they had statements and had the church leader respond with, "Strongly Disagree, Disagree, Mildly Disagree, Mildly Agree, Agree, Strongly Agree." They then took the stats and wrote a book based on each finding.

Here is my issue with some of the stats. They aren't constant and not very overwhelming at places. They aren't constant because when the leaders responded weakly to a question they might include, "We found that vibrant churches agreed to some degree to the following 'X' amount of the time." When the leaders responded strongly then they would say something like, "We found that vibrant churches agreed or strongly agreed to following 'X' amount of time." So, the findings were all over the board in some instances. This didn't happen much, but enough to catch my attention.

The other thing that I found odd, was that they were overly impressed with a statement even if only a minority of the vibrant church leaders agreed with a statement. Let me give you an example:

We asked church leaders if they have a system in place to evaluate if people are progressing through their process. Of the vibrant churches 27% strongly agreed or agreed with this compared to 9% of the comparison churches. Vibrant church leaders agreed or strongly agreed three times that of comparison church leaders that they measure the effectiveness of their process.

This means that 73% of the vibrant churches weren't "sold" that this was important but this is supposed to wow me because it is three times that of comparison churches? Not really. This was discouraging that this was thought to be overwhelming evidence on some of these questions.

With all that said. This book is still very very good. I really enjoyed the practicality of the book and the effort that Eric and Thom put into to find what is being put into place in churches across America. I actually fully believe in what they are talking about, I just don't believe what they have to say about every single question asked is as overwhelming as they would like us to believe. This happened a lot in the book, but it wasn't the focus of the book, so I can look past it.

I would really recommend this to any church that feels as though they are doing a lot, but accomplishing nothing. Lots of programs, but few converts and few people being changed for the glory of God. Very easy read, very practical and something that you won't look to and say, "impossible." Highly Recommended

Link to Buy

Jesus: Made In America

I have become a huge fan of Stephen Nichols. He is very good at writing about history without making it terribly boring. I have read three of his books so far and every one of them was very well done. This is one that I didn’t really know what to expect but was excited to read it.

What Nichols does is spends the first half or so of the book walking the reader through how particular cultures and people in the past have really shaped our thinking and their thinking of Christ. He starts with the Puritans, then to our founding fathers, the Victorians and the modernists of the early 20th century.

After Nichols goes through these with precision he then gives the reader insight on how we have specifically been affected, or infected, depends on how you see it, through Contemporary Christian Music, Hollywood, Consumerism and Politics.

This part of the book was very informative as Nichols shows how the history of each one of these has led us to where we are currently with Jesus and culture and he doesn’t leave any stone unturned. He questions things such as Thomas Kinkade, Precious Moments, The Passion of the Christ, CCM Music Festivals, WWJD bracelets, Christian T-Shirts, Dobson and the extreme politics pulling on Jesus from both sides.

I believe that Nichols unpacks some things that are very worrisome in our day in age where Madonna actually has become a prophetess, even though she falls into the same trap:

Christianity is becoming more of a currency than a belief

Sadly, I think she is right.

This book is extremely well done and I would recommend this to any reader to show what is happening in front of our own eyes and the danger of falling into consumerism Christianity.

This might have been Nichols best book to date. Highly Recommended. Link to Buy

A Tale of Two Sons

John MacArthur’s book/sermon series on the Prodigal Son called, “A Tale of Two Sons” was very well done. MacArthur, from what I know, does not actually write any of his books for the purpose of being a book, but they are all taken from his sermons and study notes on the subject. Which most pastors do these days as they really don’t have time to actually write books since they are studying all week for their sermons and doing other pastoral duties. Not a bad thing, just some insight.

I wasn’t sure how I would like this book as I figured that I knew “what there was to know” about this parable found in the book of Luke. Let’s just say that I was overwhelmingly humbled in my knowledge.

MacArthur masterfully goes through the parable to give you insights to the culture, history and textual criticism to give the reader the understanding of exactly what was going on throughout this parable.

He breaks down the parable in three parts because that is how the parable is focused in on as Christ told it. The three parts are: The prodigal son, the father and the eldest son.

At points throughout this book I believe that MacArthur does look to much into things and takes them as fact, when in actuality the text is silent on the issue so there is no way of knowing. But, this is overshadowed of his brilliant look to the Scripture and the culture to give you a taste of what it must have been like to be standing there as a hearer of Christ.

He teaches you as though you were standing there as either a mere onlooker or a Pharisee and gives you the responses that must have been going through each one's head. I actually think this is the main reason that this makes this book truly well worth the read.

Overall, MacArthur does a great job handling the text and culture to make sure that you really glean as much as you can with this parable, with the focus being on the joy in heaven when even one man repents.

The shocker comes in the end, when MacArthur gives you the last part of the parable that was left out of the Bible for “us to decide.” MacArthur gives it straight on how the parable actually ended and it is an ending that truly made this book stand alone as a great understanding of the parable and what it meant for prophecy and the Pharisees. But, I will let you read that for yourself. Recommended. Link to Buy

What is a Healthy Church Member?

This book put out by Thabiti Anyabwile called, "What is a Healthy Church Member?" is a very short book and not terribly "deep" in theology. Neither one of these is a hindrance to this book, but actually very accomadoting. The reason I say this is because you can literally give this to anyone in your congregation and they will have no reason to say no. It isn't gonig to be over their head, as it is very practical and straight forward, and it won't take up much of their time, as it is only 114 pages and the pages are only 5" x 4".

The book is part of 9 Marks Ministries and is an extension of Dever's "9 Marks of a Healthy Church."

The topics in this book are as follows (every chapter starts with, "A Healthy Church Member is...):

An Expositional Listener

A Biblical Theologian

Gospel Saturated

Genuinely Converted

A Biblical Evangelist

A Committed Member

Seeks Discipline
A Growing Disciple

A Humble Follower

A Prayer Warrior

If you are good at math or you can count like a horse, you will notice that there are ten marks and not nine. Anyabwile says that he gives the last as an "extra" for us readers, and I was thankful.

This book is very practical and the chapter titles might look overwhelming at first, but they really are put forth in a very well balanced manner and are very challenging for everyone from the Pastor, layman or congregant.

Anyabwile states the following:

This little book is written in the hope that you might discover or rediscover what it means to be a healthy church member of a local church, and what it means to contribute to the overall health of the church

I think that Anyabwile did just that as it really is a challenge to all who set foot in church each Lord's Day.

I would highly recommend this to read and then to hand out afterwards to any member in your church. Link to Buy