spurgeon

Whiter Than Snow: Meditations on Sin and Mercy

Tony Reinke BR > Crossway, Cross of Christ, Cross-centered life, Gospel, Paul David Tripp, Sin, spurgeon

9781433502309Surely one of the most valuable gifts God has given the church are surgeons of the soul. Men capable of cutting with the sharp edge of scripture, separating the outward surface of the torso, cutting through the muscle and spreading the chest, looking for the most dangerous problems, those not obvious on the outside, surgeons with determination to find the source of a deep root, a deadly problem found in the now exposed heart, a sin that can be cured only through precise wisdom and the sober application of the gospel of Jesus Christ. And if you can find one of these surgeons—one who knows his way around the deep inner workings of the heart, one who can scale to the very heights of the glorious gospel, and one who is a gifted communicator, able to write his words carefully for the benefit of us all—you have uncovered a gem.

Paul David Tripp is one of these treasures.

In his book Whiter Than Snow: Meditations on Sin and Mercy (Crossway, 2008), Tripp has written for us, partly in prose and partly in poetry, 52 brief devotional pieces that cover the scope of Psalm 51—covering the many contours of David’s sin with Bathsheba, and the experience of God’s grace in light of David’s sin. If you are brave enough to go under the surgeon’s knife, Tripp will guide you to see the darkness of sin at work in your own heart, before skillfully applying the restorative grace of the gospel.

There are a number of excerpts I want to share, but the one that I return to most often is a poem that recounts the ministry of Nathan in confronting David for his sin (see 2 Samuel 12:1-15). In part Tripp writes:

…Just a humble prophet
Telling a simple story
A sinner with a sinner
Not standing above
Alongside, together
Wanting to be an instrument
Hoping to assist a blind man to see
But no trust in self
Speaking calmly
Speaking simply
And letting God
Do through a familiar example
Painted with plain words
What only God can do
Crack the hard-shell heart
Of a wayward man
And make it feel again
See again
Cry again
Pray again
Plead again
Hope again
Love again
Commit again
To a new and better way. (p. 63-64)

Tripp’s poem is a beautiful epigraph upon the granite of Nathan’s legacy. And a video of the author reading from this chapter is available online. Enjoy:

Title: Whiter Than Snow: Meditations on Sin and Mercy
Author: Paul David Tripp
Boards: paper
Pages: 154
Topical index: no
Scriptural index: no
Text: perfect type
Publisher: Crossway
Year: 2008
Price USD: $12.99 / $8.96 at Westminster
ISBNs: 9781433502309, 1433502305

A Big Thank You

Tony Reinke spurgeon

I was moved by each of your kind comments on the last post. I appreciated that each of you invested a moment of your day to provide some feedback to help determine how this little blog can best serve you. And your kind words were a great encouragement (thanks for sharing your story Steven!).

So if I hear you correctly,

(1) you appreciate longer posts over the short (Kevin, I’m printing your comment and posting it over my computer. Thank you!),

(2) you prefer occasional posts with substance (whenever I can get them posted) over the brief daily posts, and

(3) you would like to see a return to full book reviews and more how-to articles (although I’m afraid all my tricks have been exhausted).

These points are useful to help determine the future content I develop on this blog. Thank you for helping me to see the profitability of this blog. I am humbled by your readership and encouraged to press on as we pursue the cross of Jesus Christ together!

Blessings to each of you!

Tony

The Blog…

Tony Reinke spurgeon

…is undergoing change.

As you can see, Miscellanies has gone “short form,” a tiny, Twitter-like format that allows me to update frequently, frees more time to read, provides a flexible means of sharing what I read, and will (hopefully) free more time to write essays. We’ll see how it goes.

What do you think so far?