Hard Thoughts

Tony Reinke C.H. Spurgeon, God, God's love, God's motives

C. H. Spurgeon:

Let us repent heartily of every hard thought we have ever had of our God and Father. I am forced to look back upon some such sins of thought with much distress of mind. They have come from me in serious pain and depression of spirit; and now I pray the Lord of his great mercy to look at them as though I had never thought them, for I do heartily abhor them, and I loathe myself in his sight that I should ever have questioned his tender love and gracious care. If you have similarly transgressed, dear friends, in your dark nights of trouble, come now, and bow your heads, and pray the Lord to forgive his servants concerning this thing; for he is so good, so gracious, that it is a wanton cruelty to think of him as otherwise than overflowing with love.

New Testament Theology

Tony Reinke Biblical Theology, Gordon Fee

In his biblical theology of the New Testament lectures Gordon Fee proposes a unifying principle that must include at least four items:

  1. The church as an eschatological community, who form the new covenant people of God.
  2. The eschatological framework of their existence and thinking.
  3. Their being constituted by God’s eschatological salvation effected through the death and resurrection of Christ.
  4. Their focus on Jesus as Messiah, Lord, Son of God.

Or to put in another way:

  • Foundation: A gracious and merciful God, who is full of love toward all.
  • Framework: Eschatological existence as already/not yet.
  • Focus: Jesus, the Son of God, who as God’s suffering servant Messiah effected eschatological salvation for humanity through his death and resurrection, and is now the exalted Lord and coming King.
  • Fruit: The church as an eschatological community, who, constituted by Christ’s death and the gift of the Spirit, and thus restored into God’s likeness, form His new covenant people.

Fee puts this together in a condensed summary:

Through the death and resurrection of his Son Jesus, our Lord, a gracious and loving God has effected eschatological salvation for his new covenant people, the church, who now, as they await Christ’s coming, live the life of the future by the power of the Spirit.

e-Interlinear

Tony Reinke BR > Logos Bible Software, Logos, Logos 4 Bible software

The features of Logos Bible Software 4 for Mac continue to roll out. With the latest pre-release (Alpha 22.1) the ESV reverse interlinear text is now functional. Users can choose to display the following along with their ESV Bible text and cross-references:

• Manuscript (Hebrew/Greek)
• Manuscript transliteration
• Lemma
• Lemma transliteration
• Morphology
• Strongs number (hyperlinked)
• Louw-Nida number (hyperlinked)

Each feature can be turned on/off to the user’s liking.

The beauty of the electronic version is in its cleanliness. The tradition printed interlinears spread the English text out and make it difficult to read. This problem is handled well in Logos. See for yourself. Here’s John 3:16–17 with all the features engaged (click for larger image):

Beautiful.

The Imitation of Christ

Tony Reinke Christus exemplar, Cross of Christ, Cross-centered life

“Always, when the Scriptures exhort the believer to be as Christ, they point to the act of his love in the atonement for sin. This may seem strange since this act is his alone and we can and may recognize him as Mediator in this act alone, but the fact remains that the entire New Testament is in agreement on this point. This required conformity to an exclusive act of love would be a contradictory demand if it were a conformity to a law illustrated in the life of Christ: but it is possible nonetheless, and makes good sense, when it presupposes and flows from the Atonement. … The imitation of Christ could never be part of the Good News, or the Evangel of Grace, were it a Via Dolorosa whose goal was God’s grace; but because it receives its impetus from the revelation of God’s antecedent grace, a grace unapplied for and unsolicited, therefore it is a wonderfully enriching evangelical truth.”

—G. C. Berkouwer, Faith and Sanctification (Eerdmans, 1952), pages 149–150.