Author Archives: admin

Praying for unbelievers

Walking With Giants Posted on by

Tim Challies has helpfully drawn together some ways in which the Bible can guide our prayers for unbelievers.

Here’s a summary:-

1. Praying for them

We begin with prayers for salvation. Each of these prayers seeks the same thing, but in a different way or from a different angle or using different language. Each of them is grounded in a specific text of Scripture.

‘Pray that God would circumcise their hearts,‘ Deut 30:6.

‘Pray that God would give them a heart of flesh,‘ Ezekiel 11:19.…

Criticisms of penal substitution

Walking With Giants Posted on by

One of the frustrations of reading Recovering the Scandal of the Cross, by Joel Green and Mark Baker, is that although they claim to be criticising the doctrine of penal substitution in some of its more popular (and cruder) expressions, they actually tend to train their artillery on other targets.

So I appreciated the opportunity to read this post by Morgan Guyton, who discusses ‘four cringeworthy claims of popular penal substitutionary theology’.  (Guyton says that he was motivate by listening to a sermon by Steven Furtick, but I have been unable to track down that particular sermon).…

Joel Green on penal substitution

Walking With Giants Posted on by

‘Must we imagine the atonement in penal substitutionary terms?’

This is the question addressed by Joel Green in his contribution to The Atonement Debate.  I summarise some of the main points before adding a few comments of my own at the end.

Green begins by quoting the Apostles’ Creed, noting that in it the early church testifies to both the historicity and the centrality of the crucifixion of Jesus, but does not address the question of how Christ’s death is salvific. …

Penal substitution: reshaping the debate

Walking With Giants Posted on by

I have been revisiting the debates about the theology of atonement that surfaced in the early 2000s.

Steve Jeffrey (one of the authors of Pierced for our Transgressions), notes some of the ways in which defenders of the doctrine of penal substitution needed to raise their game:-

  • ‘It was not enough to point to the atoning sacrifices in Leviticus, for some are arguing today that the very vocabulary of atonement does not mean what it has been assumed to mean.
…

Preachers and their preaching – Phillips Brooks

Walking With Giants Posted on by

Phillips Brooks (1835-1893) famously defined preaching as ‘the bringing of truth through personality’.

I have long considered this definition to be pregnant with meaning, for it seems to suggest a number of important corollaries.  It suggests that in addition to the non-negotiable truth content that is fundamental to the preacher’s message:-

  • the preacher is not ‘anonymous’, but is a real person, speaking to real persons
  • each preacher should have something distinctive (unique, perhaps) to offer by way of style and emphasis that arises from the distinctive (unique, perhaps) aspects of his own personality
  • it is proper (desirable, perhaps) for the preacher to draw on his personal characteristics and life experiences while shaping his message
  • Christian truth which has not been, and cannot be, ‘lived’, is mere theorising
  • this seems to confirm John Owen’s dictum that, ‘no man preaches that sermon well to others that doth not first preach it to his own heart.’
…

16 bad atheist arguments

Walking With Giants Posted on by

I rather like how Jeremy Linn has captured some of the most popular atheist arguments against Christianity, and hinted at where some of its weaknesses might lie.

Moreover, says Linn, ‘for each of the arguments, we give an example question you can ask to better understand where the person who gave the argument is coming from. The goal is to listen and understand, rather than to dominate and tear down.’

1: Who created God?

This question is asked under the assumption that God needs a creator.…

The value of the Psalms

Walking With Giants Posted on by

Fee and Stuart (How To Read The Bible For All Its Worth) outline three benefits of the Psalms for both their ancient and modern readers:-

1. ‘The psalms can serve as a guide to worship. By this we mean that the worshiper who seeks to praise God or to appeal to God or to remember God’s benefits can use the psalms as a formal means of expression of his or her thoughts and feelings.…

Mt 5:1-10 – The Beatitudes (sermon notes, v2)

Walking With Giants Posted on by

Text: Matthew 5:1-10

Picture a sumo wrestler…an aging rock star…a mad professor…a spiritual person.  What did you see?  Mother Teresa?  A Buddhist monk?  The Archbishop of Canterbury?  Yourself?

Here is a description of a Christian disciple.

It all begins, not with a set of instructions, but with a pronouncement of blessing.  There are people who might be considered unfortunate, pitiable even.  But they live under God’s favour.  They are the luckiest people in the world.

Does this describe me?…

The Great Commandment and the Great Commission

Walking With Giants Posted on by

Is it possible so to emphasise Jesus’ Great Commission that we neglect his stress on the Great Commandment to love our neighbours (second only to loving God with our entire beings)?

John Stott thought so.  Here’s what he wrote about it:-

‘I venture to say that sometime, perhaps because it was the last instruction Jesus gave us before returning to the Father, we give the Great Commission too prominent a place in our Christian thinking.  Please do not misunderstand me.  …