New ESV bible seeks to reach the lost

Tony Reinke ESV, Funny business

Our friends at Crossway and Good News have been pumping out a ton of different editions of the ESV (literally). So many, in fact, that I no longer notice when another new edition is released. That was until today. I just can’t seem to figure out this latest version. It features the complete New Testament and Psalm 23. It comes prepackaged in a large crate to protect it in cargo parachute drops. And what an odd logo on the front?!? Even the ISBN appears strange (4815162342). But maybe the strangest of all is that I found it in my backyard with a small parachute resting gently on top of it and a strobe light pulsing away. Anyway, I suppose this new edition serves some purpose in spreading the gospel to a lost people group.

HT: Mr. Eko

esvlost.jpg

Review: Breathing Grace by Harry Kraus, M.D.

Tony Reinke BR > Crossway, C.J. Mahaney, Cross of Christ, Cross-centered life, Gospel, Grace, spurgeon

tsscertified.jpgBook review
Breathing Grace by Harry Kraus, M.D.

It’s a nice surprise to find contemporary books that clearly define the true gospel and insist I look again at the cross for spiritual refreshment. None have done it better than C.J. Mahaney’s Living the Cross Centered Life (my review was posted at takeupandread.com today). This weekend I discovered a new release from Crossway with a similar purpose.

Harry Kraus is a surgeon (currently a missionary surgeon in Africa) who has authored eight novels. His latest is a non-fiction book titled Breathing Grace. Kraus uses the metaphors from his medical background to illustrate the centrality of the cross and our need for daily grace. “Just as every cell (one hundred trillion in one human body!) requires a constant supply of oxygen, so every spiritual, emotional, and social aspect of our lives need a constant saturation with the gospel of grace” (22). Hence the title Breathing Grace.

Kraus presents the gospel clearly and accurately, using medical terms and exciting surgical situations. The medical stories are intense and, at points, a bit technical (“An arterial blush clouded the area lateral to the internal carotid artery, an indication of bleeding, a serious injury that was partially contained, a situation that needed stat attention before the artery free-ruptured, ensuring exsanguination and death”).

He argues that after conversion, believers continue discovering deeper levels of God’s holiness and their own sinfulness but often without a similar growth in the gospel. “When our understanding of the adequacy of the gospel doesn’t keep pace with our appreciation for God’s holiness or our own need, gospel debt results” (38). This “gospel debt” is then filled in with “false gospels” like trying to downplay our own sinfulness or making ourselves look better than we are. In other words, when we take our eyes off the gracious gospel in the Christian life we open ourselves to pride, man-pleasing and a host of other spiritually deadening diseases. The solution to these “false gospels” is a fresh return to the gospel. This excellent book points our focus back towards the love of God, to daily feed upon His life-giving grace.

Early on Kraus provides this concise purpose:

“This book is all about moving our concept of the gospel from grace notes to the major chord of our lives, something that undergirds the melody every day, every hour. This book is about moving our understanding of grace from one of God’s minor attributes to the central feature of his posture toward his children, the quality that governs his every action towards us on the road of redemption” (15).

This book contains references to the teaching of John Piper, many biblical references from the ESV and a study guide for personal reflection or group discussion. If you are looking for an excellent (and at times exciting) tour through God’s graciousness I would recommend Breathing Grace. Your spiritual life will be resuscitated by a renewed sense of God’s unconditional favor and — at the very least — you’ll more fully appreciate the dangers of acute arterial occlusions.

Title: Breathing Grace
Author: Harry Kraus, M.D.
Reading level: 2.0/5.0 > easy
Boards: hardcover (baby blue with silver embossing)
Pages: 170
Volumes: 1
Dust jacket: yes
Binding: glue
Paper: normal
Topical index: no
Scriptural index: yes
Text: perfect type
Publisher: Crossway
Year: 2007
Price USD: $19.99 from Crossway (available as an audiobook)
ISBN: 9781581348583, 1581348584

Communion with God by Kelly Kapic

Tony Reinke Communion with God, J.I. Packer, John Owen, Puritans

Book announcement:
Communion with God: The Divine and the Human in the Theology of John Owen
Kelly Kapic

“I remember a time when a stereotype of the English Puritans as crude religious bigots held sway, and academic analysis and appreciation of their thought was virtually nonexistent. Accurate understanding of the magisterial Reformers was similarly at a discount, and the English translation of Calvin’s Institutes was out of print. But pendulums swing, and today the study of Reformation theology and of Lutheran and Calvinist scholasticism and of early European pietism and of the many-sided Puritan legacy has become a sizable cottage industry in academia’s larger world. Lecture courses, doctoral theses, journal articles, and printed books on the Puritans now abound, and the flow increases. Reissues of Puritan material constantly appear, and it is clear that more and more
Christians are coming to value this heritage. Some of us find that a very hopeful sign.

A cultural development in the West that has triggered some of this renewed interest in Puritan Christianity is our latter-day focus on experience, our longing for good experiences, and our awareness that experiences spawned by our sophisticated hedonism are mostly unsatisfying, not to say bad. Out of this has blossomed a fixation on personal spirituality, meaning a quest for self-discovery and self-transcendence, and this has led some to a fresh exploration of Christian spirituality―the theological, pastoral, communal, ethical, ascetic, doxological reality of communion with God in and through Jesus Christ in faith and hope and love. As a result, there is dawning a new appreciation of the supreme excellence in this field of Puritans such as John Bunyan, Richard Baxter, Jonathan Edwards, and John Owen.

Long regarded as Puritanism’s theological Everest, Owen was forgotten in the twentieth century until about twenty years ago. As Dr. Kapic’s bibliography shows, there have been some voyages around him, and some soundings of his thought on specifics, in recent years. None of these, however, come as close to Owen’s heart as Dr. Kapic himself does. For understanding, enjoying, and communicating communion with God was what Owen understood his life and ministry to be all about. His writings reveal him as not only an evangelical confessor and controversialist in the Reformed mainstream, but also as a Calvinist catechist, weaving in applicatory pastoral rhetoric at every point. Dr. Kapic coins the word anthroposensitive to characterize this aspect of his expository
method. It fits.

This is a landmark book in modern Puritan study, and it is a joy to commend it.”

– J.I. Packer, Forward to Kelly M. Kapic, Communion with God: The Divine and the Human in the Theology of John Owen (©2007 Baker Academic, a division of Baker Publishing Group).

Cross-Centered Puritans: Stephen Charnock

Tony Reinke Cross of Christ, Cross-centered life, Stephen Charnock

The Cross as the ‘spring of our happiness’
by Stephen Charnock (1628-1680)

Let us delight in the knowledge of Christ crucified, and be often in the thoughts and study of him. Study Christ, not only as living but dying, not as breathing in our air, butcrosscenteredpuritans.jpg suffering in our stead; know him as a victim, which is the way to know him as a Conqueror. Christ as crucified is the great object of faith. All the passages of his life, from his nativity to his death, are passed over in the creed without reciting, because, though they are things to be believed, yet the belief of them is not sufficient without the belief of the Cross; in that alone was our redemption wrought. Had he only lived, he would have not been a Savior. If our faith stops in his life, and does not fasten upon his blood, it will not be a justifying faith. His miracles, which prepared the world for his doctrine, and his holiness, which fitted himself for his suffering, would have been insufficient for us without the addition of the Cross. Without this, we had been under the demerit of our crimes, the venom of our natures, the slavery of our sins, and the tyranny of the devil; without this, we should forever have had God for our enemy, and Satan for our executioner; without this, we had lain groaning under the punishment of our transgressions, and despaired of any smile from heaven. It was this death as a sacrifice that appeased God and as a price redeemed us. Nothing is so strong to encourage us; nothing so powerful to purify us; how can we be without thinking of it? …

This will be the foundation of all our comforts. What comfort can be wanting, when we can look upon Christ crucified as our surety, and look upon ourselves as crucified in him, when we can consider our sins as punished in him, and ourselves accepted by virtue of his Cross? It was not an angel which was crucified for us, but the Son of God; one of an equal dignity with the Father; one that shed blood enough to blot out the demerit of our crimes, were they more than could be numbered by all the angels of heaven, if all were made known to them. He was not crucified for a few, but for all sorts of offenses. When we shall see judgment in the world, what comfort can we take without a knowledge and sense of a crucified Christ? What a horror is it for a condemned man to see the preparation of the gibbets, halters and executioners? But when he shall see a propitiation made for him, the anger of the Prince atoned, the Law some other way satisfied, and his condemnation changed into remission; all his former terrors vanish, and a sweet and pleasing calm possesses him… When we tremble under a sense of our sins, the terrors of the Judge and the curses of the Law, let us look upon a crucified Christ, the remedy to all our miseries. His Cross has procured a crown. His passion [death] has expiated our transgressions. His death has disarmed the Law. His blood has washed a believers soul. This death is the destruction of our enemies, the spring of our happiness, the eternal testimony of divine love. We have good reason, as well as the apostle Paul, to determine with ourselves to know nothing but Jesus Christ, and especially him crucified.

-Transcribed from “A Discourse of the Knowledge of Christ Crucified,” taken from the 2 volume Works of Stephen Charnock (London: 1684) pp. 844-845

God, all-sufficient

Tony Reinke Thomas Brooks

God, all-sufficient
by Thomas Brooks (1608-1680)

O Christians! God is an all-sufficient portion!
His power is all-sufficient to protect you;
His wisdom is all-sufficient to direct you;
His mercy is all-sufficient to pardon you;
His goodness is all-sufficient to provide for you;
His word is all-sufficient to support you and strengthen you;
His grace is all-sufficient to adorn you and enrich you;
His Spirit is all-sufficient to lead you and comfort you!
What more can you desire?

O sirs! God is one infinite perfection in Himself!
God has within Himself …
all good,
all glory,
all dignity,
all riches,
all treasures,
all pleasures,
all delights,
all comforts,
all contentments,
all joys,
all beatitudes!

All are eminently, transcendently, and perfectly in Him!

God is a sufficient portion . . .
to secure your souls,
to supply all your needs,
to satisfy all your desires,
to answer all your expectations,
to suppress all your enemies,
to bring you to glory!

What more can you desire?

– from the Works of Thomas Brooks