Catching Up

Been a while hasn’t it?

Worked straight through Easter so this is the week to make the new wardrobes, do the garden and catch up on stuff that hasn’t got done. And of course still scouring the net for good stuff.

Let’s start with the wonderful Adrian Warnock. He’s currently doing a series on the atonement (can’t think why he’s addressing that subject) and in a recent post he put the nail on the head of the problem with Jeffrey John’s perspective:

I firmly believe that a system of theology that makes God a passive observer of the cross fails to take sin seriously and doesn’t answer the key question — What happened to the wrath of God and how was it satisfied?

If the wrath of God wasn’t poured out on Jesus, then it still exists towards me, I remain guilty of sin, and I fully deserve whatever punishment He sees fit to send my way.

That’s the problem with the Dean of St Albans perspective – he doesn’t deal with God’s wrath. In fact he just throws it out the window. Go and read Adrian, listen to the audio sermon in the post and check the other posts on the subject.

Sam Storms is blogging!!! Yah!!! Not content to just be one of the leading Charismatic Calvinists in print, he now takes to the inter-ether. Sam will going on my link list.

Dr Tom Smail has a great opening to a piece on healing on the Fulcrum website. He makes a fantastic point about healing and discipleship when he writes:

In my Fountain Trust days I was once phoned up by a URC minister who wanted me to rebuke some charismatics in his congregation who were objecting to his commendation of and dependence upon a psychic and mediumistic healer who made no profession of faith in Christ. When I demurred and said that far from rebuking them, I was inclined to agree with them, he told me that he himself had been healed psychically and delivered from the Christian narrowness and exclusiveness that I and the charismatics were objecting to and had come to see that God all religions were the same.

That to me was proof that you come into the power of whatever name you are healed in, so to be healed outside Christ puts you in danger of being more and more divorced from your commitment to Christ. The interview ended when I brought the underlying issues into focus by saying, ‘As far as I am concerned better to lie sick in the arms of Jesus than to be healed in any other name’ – whereupon he hung up on me and went his way.

Most certainly that christocentric focus is at the heart of what I want to put before you in these articles. The healing that I am interested in is that brought to us by the incarnate Son in the name of the heavenly Father and in the power of the Holy Spirit in the context of the gospel of the new covenant in which God restores wholeness to us by being our God all the way to the cradle and the cross, and shaping us into his people in the image of his Son and by the power of his Spirit. That is where the mystery of healing can be coped with because that is where it belongs.

Absolutely. Christ heals because Christ redeems, but he is sovereign in that activity. His goodness is not defined by his fulfilling our desires but rather by his sovereignty. When we place ourselves in his hands we are in a “good place” whatever the result.

Finally, Rod Bennett asks some interesting questions for those of us Evangelicals who more than dabble with sign and symbol. Is there a new Evangelical Oxford Movement underway? Will part of our rescue of the Church from the forces of liberalism necessitate a deeper understanding of our catholic and patristic heritage? Has the time for smoked out churches across the land returned?

Finally, finally (and prompted by Finker’s post explaining how Holy Trinity Cheltenham has moved to having the TNIV in the pews) a fantastic (and long) piece on the reliability of the TNIV by Mark Roberts.