Cross-centered life

A battle-axe for the New Year’s Resolutions

Tony Reinke C.J. Mahaney, Cross of Christ, Cross-centered life, Mortification, Sin

It’s an American tradition to make promises for the New Year and Christians sanctify the tradition by using this opportunity to commit themselves to bible reading, prayer and killing sin. This year I, like many of my friends, have resolved to kill (or ‘mortify’) personal sin. Spurgeon gives us a fitting reminder to focus on the mortifying power of the Cross.

“Some, I fear, use the precious blood of Christ only as a quietus to their consciences. They say to themselves, ‘He made atonement for sin, therefore let me take my rest.’ This is doing a grievous wrong to the great sacrifice. … A man who wants the bloodaxe.jpg of Jesus for nothing but the mean and selfish reason, that after having been forgiven through it he may say, ‘Soul, take thine ease, eat, drink, and be merry: hear sermons, enjoy the hope of eternal felicity, and do nothing’ — such a man blasphemes the precious blood, and makes it an unholy thing. We are to use the glorious mystery of atoning blood as our chief means of overcoming sin and Satan: its power is for holiness. See how the text puts it: “They overcame him by the blood of the Lamb” (Rev. 12:11): these saints used the doctrine of atonement not as a pillow to rest their weariness, but as a weapon to subdue their sin. O my brothers, to some of us atonement by blood is our battle-axe and weapon of war, by which we conquer in our struggle for purity and godliness — a struggle in which we have continued now these many years. By the atoning blood we withstand corruption within and temptation without. This is that weapon which nothing can resist.”

– C.H. Spurgeon sermon The Blood of the Lamb the Conquering Weapon (#2,043, Sept. 9, 1888)

Free Book: Come Unto Me by Tony Reinke

Tony Reinke Critical thinking, Cross of Christ, Cross-centered life, God, Gospel, Puritans, spurgeon

Free book
Come Unto Me: God’s Invitation to the World
by Tony Reinke

This time last year I was staying up late and getting out of bed very early to put the final touches on my undergraduate thesis. I convinced my secular academic adviser that it would be good to clarify the contours of the biblical gospel. I’m sure he wasn’t too thrilled.

03spurgeoncumcover.jpgFor me, the opportunity to concentrate my attention on the character of our priceless gospel was incredible. The product was the book titled Come Unto Me: God’s Invitation to the World. My primarily goal was to take advantage of an opportunity to articulate the biblical gospel — both the work of Christ and the act of faith — with my academic adviser and fellow classmates.

Secondly, my non-Christian audience pushed me to think hard at how to best articulate the biblical worldview, something I had not consciously worked through in the past.

Finally, the book helps me retain an important balance in my personal ministry. There are several contours of the gospel and each are easy to forget or minimize.

The invitation to God, from God, is a biblical message filled with rich diversity. For those who accept it, this message requires sorrow and promises inexpressible joy. The invitation comes without price and costs everything. The invitation includes an offer of a relationship to God that is both forensic (or legal) and yet conjugal (or marital). The invitation to God is a call to leave past burdens and take up new burdens.

Frequently I need to be reminded of these important contours.

And so now I offer this book for your reading. It’s free for you to download and read. Thanks to the help of gracious friends, it now comes in three mouth-watering flavors:

1. Come Unto Me in HTML format. This is the basic text format but ideal if you are interested in browsing or reading the content online. Click here for HTML.

2. Come Unto Me in PDF format. Ideal if you are interested in downloading and printing the book. This file preserves the original pagination and formatting. Click here to download the PDF file.

3. Come Unto Me in LOGOS format. Ideal if you want to incorporate my research of the biblical gospel into your own research. Thanks to my friends at StillTruth, you can download and install my book into your Logos software. Click here to access the StillTruth Webpage and download.

Blessings!

“Overlaying the Gospel”: Bonar on the temptation to be ashamed of the Gospel

Tony Reinke Cross of Christ, Cross-centered life, Culture, Gospel, Horatius Bonar

“Overlaying the Gospel”: Bonar on the temptation to be ashamed of the Gospel

“The apostle so knew it, as to be able to say, ‘I am not ashamed of it,’ [Romans 1:16] — just as elsewhere, speaking of the cross, he says, ‘God forbid that I should glory, save in the cross of the Lord Jesus Christ’ [Galatians 6:14]. He was not ashamed of it at Jerusalem, or Athens, or Rome. Many things were there to make him ashamed of it — Jewish prejudice and Gentile pride. But these prevailed not. In spite of contempt and hatred, he held it fast.

We are apt to be ashamed of it. It looks weak, foolish, unintellectual, unphilosophical. It lags behind the age. It has become obsolete; or rather, it refuses to become obsolete. It is beginning to be supplanted by learning and eloquence. Men are apt to shun the gospel as a feeble, childish thing, that has done its work in time past, but is giving place to something higher, and more in accordance with the ‘deep instincts of humanity.’

There were some places in which the apostle might have been specially tempted to be ashamed of the gospel, or afraid of preaching it: at Jerusalem, for there the whole strength of Jewish ritualism rose against it; at Athens, for there it was confronted by the power of Grecian wisdom; at Ephesus, for there the dazzling subtleties of heathen magic rose against it; at Corinth, for there the torrent of human lust and pleasure rushed against it; at Rome, for there was the concentrated energy of earthly idolatry. Yet none of these things moved him. He was not ashamed of the gospel of Christ, though all that was intellectual, and eloquent, and sensual, and refined, and powerful in humanity protested against it, or mocked it as folly.

We are tempted in our day to be ashamed of the gospel. It is thought to be bare, unintellectual, almost childish, by many. Hence they would overlay it with argument and eloquence, to make it more respectable and more attractive. Every such attempt to add to it is being ashamed of it.”

–Horatius Bonar, The Christian Treasury in The Life and Works of Horatius Bonar (CD-Rom, Lux Publications) pp. 828. (Posted with permission from publisher.)

Tony’s Book Club pick #2: The Precious Things of God by Octavius Winslow (1877611611, book review)

Tony Reinke Book reviews, Books, BR > Soli Deo Gloria Pub., Cross-centered life, Great Quotes, Octavius Winslow, spurgeon

Naturally, the most precious things to our hearts are not the most precious things to God. This distinction is what we commonly label ‘sin.’ Our hearts treasure the temporary, the cheap and the sinful. God treasures the eternal, the priceless and the holy. The Christian life is a path of aligning our affections with the precious things God treasures.

This brings me to both my favorite book and favorite author (apart from the bible): Octavius Winslow. I have yet to read a book by Winslow that has not pushed me closer to the heart of God. As for devotion and edification, no author rivals Winslow.

Octavius Winslow was a good friend of Spurgeon and it’s no secret why. Winslow is devotional, passionate and concrete. The Precious Things of God covers such a wide panorama of the Christian life that every Christian reader will be ministered to and the preacher will find in this one book a quote to fit almost any sermon on any topic.

Winslow writes with power because, like the Puritan legacy he follows, a simple understanding of the truths of God’s Word is insufficient. Like the hammer on the head of a nail, the experience of the truth drives itself into a permanent place in our lives.

In the preface Winslow writes, “We really know as much of the gospel of Christ, and of the Christ of the gospel, as by the power of the Holy Ghost we have the experience of it in our souls. All other acquaintance with Divine truth must be regarded as merely intellectual, theoretical, speculative, and of little worth” (p. iv).

Winslow’s goal (by God’s grace) is to give the readers an experience of God’s Word, and that is the motive behind this and his other works.

I have noticed that many well-meaning devotional works tend towards the abstract and vague. Winslow’s language remains concrete throughout. For example, take this excerpt about the crucifixion event:

“In that vital stream He [the Father] saw the life, the spiritual and eternal life, of His people. His everlasting love had found a fit and appropriate channel through which it could flow to the vilest sinner. Divine mercy, in her mission to our fallen planet, approached the Cross of Calvary, paused – gazed – and adored. Then dipping her wings in the crimson stream, pursued her flight through the world, proclaiming, in music such as angels had never heard, ‘Glory to God in the highest, and on earth peace and good will to men!’” (p. 169).

And the following quote recently came alive to me personally. Just two weeks ago, my 51-year-old neighbor Greg was driving home from work on his motorcycle when he did not see a drunk man pulling out onto a busy street. Greg slammed into the back of the vehicle and died from his injuries shortly thereafter. My heart broke when I heard that in the hour following the accident, his family was frantically trying to find a priest to come and give the last rites. Greg was dead before a priest arrived.

I’ve since been haunted by the scene of my neighbor on the pavement as his life was leaving his body. What was he thinking of? What was he hoping in?

A Winslow’s quote continues to come to mind when I consider this dreadful scene:

“All of earth’s attraction ceases, all of our creature-succor fails. Everything is failing – heart and strength failing – mental power failing – medical skill failing – human affection and sympathy failing; the film of death is on the eye, and the invisible realities of the spirit-world are unveiling to the mental view. Bending over you, the loved one who has accompanied you to the margin of the cold river, asks for a sign. You are too weak to conceive a thought, too low to breathe a word, too absorbed to bestow a responsive glance. You cannot now aver [verify] your faith in an elaborate creed, and you have no profound experience, or ecstatic emotions, or heavenly visions to describe. One brief, but all-emphatic, all-expressive sentence embodies the amount of all that you know, and believe, and feel; it is the profession of your faith, the sum of your experience, the ground of your hope – ‘Christ is precious to my soul!’ Enough! The dying Christian can give, and the inquiring friend can wish no more” (pp. 31-32).

Winslow’s book will help our lives end with those simple and profoundly supernatural words – Christ is precious to my soul!

—————–

The Precious Things of God is available on-line from a number of sources but I recommend the Soli Deo Gloria printed volume. It’s dark blue cloth binding is wonderful and fitting such a precious volume. (Update: the book is now officially out-of-print. I cannot tell you how affirming it is when you tell people it’s the best book you have read and the publisher stops printing it at the very same time =) Second-guessing my sanity, anyone?).

—————–

– Read The Precious Things of God online for free here.

– My friend Joe at StillTruth recently converted several Winslow books into Libronix format for Logos Bible software. A great free resource!

—————–

The Precious Things of God, Octavius Winslow, Soli Deo Gloria Publications, 1860/1994, 424 pages, 1877611611. (Out of print).

Tony’s Book Club pick #3: The Everlasting Righteousness by Horatius Bonar (0851516556, book review)

Tony Reinke Banner of Truth, Book reviews, Books, BR > Banner of Truth, Cross of Christ, Cross-centered life, Horatius Bonar, John Bunyan

Martin Luther once said, “This article of justification by grace alone, through faith alone, is the head and cornerstone of the church, which alone begets, nourishes, builds, preserves and protects the church. Without it, the church of God cannot subsist but one hour.” He was not overstating this fact. At the heart of biblical Christianity stands the doctrine of justification by faith alone in Christ alone. And no Top Ten list of books is complete without volume on this great doctrine.

Today, God’s grace has provided Christians with growing depository of excellent books on this issue. The God Who Justifies by James R. White comes to mind, and R.C. Sproul, John Piper and C.J. Mahaney have also contributed excellent contemporary works. But I am frequently drawn back to Horatius Bonar’s brief and devotional work.

Written in 1874 and republished by The Banner of Truth in 1993, The Everlasting Righteousness stands (in my opinion) as the greatest book on the importance of the Cross and our imputed righteousness. It is clear, concise, devotional and beautifully written.

So what does Bonar mean by the phrase, The Everlasting Righteousness?

“We are hidden in Christ. God seeks for us; and when at last He discovers us in our hiding-place, it is not we that He finds, but Christ; so complete is the exchange of persons, so perfect and so glorious the disguise. Yet is is not a disguise which shall ever be taken off, nor of which shall have cause to be ashamed. It remains ours for ever. It is an everlasting righteousness” (pp. 79-80).

For Bonar, however, the importance of the Cross extends beyond the Christian’s conversion. Justification ushers in a Cross-centered life for today and an eternal Cross-centered life to come. This emphasis on the Cross-centered life is where Bonar really shines:

“… never shall the redeemed be independent of the cross, or cease to draw from its fulness” (p. 64).

“The broken body and shed blood of the Son of God form the viands on which we feast; and it is under the shadow of the cross that we sit down to partake of these, and find refreshment for our daily journey, strength for our hourly warfare. His flesh is meat indeed, His blood is drink indeed” (p. 125).

And my favorite quote: “Christ crucified is to be the burden of our preaching, and the substance of our belief, from first to last. At no time in the saint’s life does he cease to need the Cross” (p. 117). The Christian faith and life centers around the Cross. There are no comparable substitutes. We NEED the Cross at every point. (And wouldn’t our lives and sermons be improved if we frequently used the phrase, “need the Cross”?)

Dwelling upon justification as crucial for the Christian life, John Bunyan once wrote, “Think not that to live always on Christ for justification is a low and beggarly thing, – a staying at the foundation. For, let me tell you, depart from a sense of the meritorious means of your justification before God, and you will quickly grow light, and frothy, and vain.”

Because Bonar is clear on the doctrine of justification, he is also clear on related issues like the ugliness and reality of sin, the illustrations of biblical imputation, the necessity of a blood sacrifice and the dangers of wrong views of justification.

If you are looking for a readable book that exalts the Cross-centered life, relishes in the righteousness found only in the substitution of the Lamb, and magnifies the worth and beauty of Christ, turn to a talented hymn writer. Horatius Bonar has given us a clear book of great value on the central doctrine of the church. His poetic style will warm the heart after multiple readings and his clarity will equip the preacher with a lifetime of precious quotes.

The beauty of The Everlasting Righteousness is that it will hold us to our foundation and keep our hearts from growing frothy and vain.
——————————————–

The Everlasting Righteousness, Horatius Bonar, Banner of Truth, 1874/1993, 0851516556, paperback, 212 pages