We recently had the great privilege of interviewing Dr. Richard Gaffin with regard to his teaching on the theology of Luke & Acts. The content of the interview was essentially a digestion of what is taught in Perspectives on Pentecost. I read this work many years ago, and, sadly, did not benefit from it then as I have now that I am presently preaching through the book of Acts. It is an extremely valuable theological contribution. Gaffin’s thoughts on the apostolic ministry, as part of the historia salutis, helps make sense of the foundational nature of the supernatural in the book of Acts. I think you will find this interview to be extremely beneficial. You can listen here.

Here is the most recent sermon preached at New Covenant Presbyterian Church. The text was Acts 3:1-26 and the title, “The Restoration.”

Charles Spurgeon in his sermon “Apostolic Exhortation,” explained the necessity of preaching Christ. Note especially what he says about the time when Peter preached Christ:

It is noteworthy that Peter, in addressing this crowd, came at once to the very essence and bowels of his message. He did not beat the bush; he did not shoot his arrow far afield, but he hit the very centre of the target. He preached not merely the gospel of good news, but Christ, the person of Christ; Christ crucified—crucified by them, Christ risen, Christ glorified of his Father. Depend upon it, this is the very strength of the Christian ministry, when it is saturated with the name and person and glory of the Lord Jesus Christ. Take Christ away, and you ungospelise the gospel, you do but pour out husks such as swine do eat, while the precious kernel is removed, seeing you have taken away the person of the Lord Jesus Christ. If there was ever an occasion when a preacher of the gospel might have forgotten to speak of Christ, it was surely the occasion on which Peter spake so boldly of him. For, might it not have been said, “Talk not of Jesus; they have just now haled him to the death: the people are mad against him; preach the truth, but do not mention his name; deliver his doctrine, but withhold the mention of his person, for you will excite them to madness; you will put your own life in jeopardy; you will [read more»]

Rudolph Bultmann famously asked, “Is exegesis without presuppositions possible?” Many Biblical scholars since have made clean distinctions between exegesis and eisegesis, sometimes for good reason. Aichele and Phillips (Semenia vols. 69-70) contrast Bultmann’s statement with the discipline of intertextuality: they maintain that the distinction between exegesis/eisegesis is too sharp, incapacitating scholars and ministers who rely on religious texts to express meaning and identify with their authors.

In a sermon on Hebrews 11:5 Thomas Manton (1620-1677) makes a one-to-one correspondence with Enoch’s translation and Christ’s ascension. “In Adam God would give the world a pledge of the fruit of sin, which is death; and in Enoch God would give a pledge of the fruit of holiness; and that is immortality and eternal life.” The proof is Christ’s taking human nature to heaven in the ascension, and leaving us with His Spirit in pledge of the promise (John 8:51). The interpretive question here is: can Manton read  his NT doctrine of the ascension onto the OT texts, Gen. 5:24 and Dan. 7:13?

To prove that heaven will perfect human nature and communion with God Manton cites Dan. 7:13: “One like the Son of man came with the clouds of heaven, and came to the ancient of days and they brought him near before him.” Aben Ezra and many [read more»]

There continues to be confusion about the precise relationship between the Law and the Gospel, the Law and the Covenant people, and the Law and the Mosaic Covenant. This is the case because there is confusion over the different uses of the Law, as taught in Scripture. There have been a plethora of views, even within the writings of Reformed theologians from the Reformation forward, with regard to the various uses of the Law. It is similar to the variety of views that exist  in attempts to define the marks of a true church. There is great overlap between the answers given, but there is certainly not absolute uniformity. I have read a number of views and opinions, over the past decade, and am left wondering why Reformed theologians do not more readily appeal to the Westminster Larger Catechism for a balanced and robust expression of the biblical teaching on the Law and its uses. Questions 91-97 clearly articulate the Puritans’ understanding of the Law:

Question 91: What is the duty which God requires of man?

Answer: The duty which God requires of man, is obedience to his revealed will.

Question 92: What did God at first reveal unto man as the rule of his obedience?

Answer: The rule of obedience revealed to Adam in the estate of innocence, and to all mankind in him, besides a special command not to eat of the fruit of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, was the moral [read more»]

There is a striking progression in the life and ministry of our Lord Jesus, in which He is shown to be the One who alone can bear the wrath of God on behalf of His people. At the beginning of the Gospels He has multitudes surrounding Him. Then He narrows it down to the seventy. From that group He chooses twelve. Then He takes eleven into the Garden and pulls three aside with Him. Finally He is left alone to look into the cup that the Father has prepared for Him to drink to the full by Himself. Eric Alexander notes:

Isaiah foresaw this when he prophesied that Jesus would be “cut off from the land of the living” (Isa. 53:8). He was cut off in a two-fold sense. First, He was cut off from men by physical distance. This was a progressive attribute of the life of Jesus. He had the multitudes at the beginning. Out of the multitudes, he had the seventy, to whom He committed special tasks as He sent them out to by two. Within the group of seventy there was the Twelve, and then the three who went with Him into peculiarly important and sacred places. But in the supreme hour, when He faced the deepest of agonies, He was alone, cut off from man by His holiness. But He also was cut off by the sins that He was bearing—not His own, but ours. “He looked, and there was no man, neither any to regard him” (Isaiah 59). It was a cup of loneliness.1

1. Taken from “The Cup of Bitterness, the Cup of Blessing,” delivered by Rev. Eric Alexander at Keswick Convention.

There is an interesting development in the account of the lost and found parables of Luke 15. There are 1 out of 100 sheep, 1 out of 10 coins, and 1 out of two sons. Sinclair Ferguson notes:

Luke 15 contains three parables. In some ways, they are three parts of one larger parable–a single message about lost things being found, each episode told in a context of increased complexity and heightened tension.

Scene one describes a Shepherd who has lost one of his sheep. Sheep were, and are, valuable. But he has lost only one out of one hundred–one percent.

Scene two describes a woman who has lost a silver coin. The coin is valuable to her; perhaps it was saved for a rainy day. She has lost one coin out of ten–ten percent, a much higher percentage loss.

The third scene, however, is much more poignant. The father of two sons looses one of them. He has lost fifty percent of his sons, not a sheep or a coin–an unbearable loss.

Jesus was clearly building up to the main point. The scenes in the third parable are described in much greater legnth, with much greater complexity and depth of emotion. In addition, there are more characters in the third story–two sons and their father–each of whom express his thoughts and feelings about the situation.1

1. Sinclair Ferguson By Grace Alone (Lake Mary, FL: Reformation Trust Publishing, 2010) p. 15

In the midst of current debates over the precise relationship between the pre-lapsarian Covenant of Works and the Mosaic Covenant, it would do us good to remember that many of the Reformed theologians of the 17th, 18th, and 19th Centuries understood that the Law given at Sinai, with its promise of blessing and cursing in accord with its subsequent demand for perfect obedience, was  the reflection of the Covenant of Works. Because of developments in Covenant theology in the 20th Century in the writings of  Meredith Kline and John Murray, many have neglected to see the categorical relationship between the two. Geerhardus Vos, who some appeal to as rejecting such a relationship, made the following observation:

We can also explain why the older theologians did not always clearly distinguish between the covenant of works and the Sinaitic covenant.  At Sinai it was not the ‘bare’ law that was given, but a reflection of the covenant of works revived, as it were, in the interests of the covenant of grace continued at Sinai.1

The inability to know God’s essence is not a puzzle to be solved. It is instead the motive of worship and adoration. Bavinck saw the best minds of his generation destroyed by madness attempting to find God without the aid of sense-mediated signs and signifiers. For them the result was agnosticism steeped in a rejection of all metaphysical inquiry. So how does a dogmatician outfox the philosopher? Remain objectively certain, or as Bavinck says: stick to your guns.

Karl Barth said that “back to,” is not a good slogan for dogmatics. All science must move forward. Problem is how to do it in a positive climate that rejects all metaphysical investigation. The rationalism in favor of innate ideas confuses the light of reason with revelation. We have potential to grow in knowledge (all of which is mediate) but the concepts themselves are not innate. Granted, argues Bavinck, things are grasped because they are apprehended only in God (Malebranche) and in the soul by recollection (Plato). Natural theology cannot equal ‘revealed’ religion (illumination/inspiration) because it’s a reflection of the work of God in creation: if it’s natural it cannot be the product of human reason. In that limited sense the world does not take us away from God but leads us to him.

Bavinck’s analysis is dense but his ability to navigate wildly competitive views of is profound. If [read more»]