‘Throughout history,’ writes Donald MacLeod, ‘discussion of the Lord’s Supper has been complicated, if not indeed be-devilled, by the question of the presence of Christ in the sacrament.’
When people speak of ‘the real presence’ they are not using the word ‘real’ merely to mean ‘genuine’, but rather to mean ‘the thing itself’. ‘The real presence’ then refers to the idea that the body of Jesus is literally present in the bread and wine at Holy Communion.…
Towards the end of his comprehensive survey of the biblical teaching, I.H. Marshall draws the following conclusions about the the significance of the Lord’s Supper:-
1. The Old Testament Background
The language and concepts of the Lord’s Supper are to be understood in terms of the Old Testament – especially Exodus 24, Isa 53 and Jeremiah 31. There is a relationship between the acts of God as recorded in the Old Testament and those that are recorded in the New Testament, and this relationship is essentially one of promise and fulfilment.…
“Everyone loves a conspiracy theory” was one of the more sensible statements in The Dan Vinci Code. And I suppose the love of conspiracy theories is a key reason for the popularity of that book, and also that of the popular works of Bart Ehrman.
Ehrman, it will be recalled, has travelled a road from fundamentalism to scepticism, and so has become something of a patron saint of ex-Christians. He is a recognised authority on the textual criticism of the New Testament, and his scholarly credentials are not in doubt. …
I’ve been listening to the latest podcast from Premier Radio’s ‘Unbelievable’ show.
Last Saturday (7th August) saw Adrian Warnock and Rev Jonathan Clatworthy debate the resurrection of Jesus.
Adrian represented an evangelical perspective, Jonathan a liberal approach. At one level, Jonathan tried to present the differences as, ‘Well, we both believe in the resurrection; it’s just that you believe in a physical resurrection, whereas I don’t.’ But the more they spoke, the more you could sense the yawning gulf between them. …
It strikes me that the relationship between the Old Testament and the New Testament is one of the most important challenges in our understanding of the Bible.
I would like to jot down a few thoughts on ways in which it is possible to misunderstand the relationship between the two testaments.
Marcion was a 2nd-century teacher who completely rejected the Old Testament, and regarded its god as a tyrant. …
In the previous chapter, God’s people enjoyed a huge celebration.
They had every reason to celebrate. They had been returning from exile in drips and drabs over the previous 100 years or so. But they had been a demoralised people, lacking in leadership and with their holy city, Jerusalem, pretty much in ruins.
Nehemiah was himself a Jew and a senior official in the court of the Persian emperor. He gained permission from his boss to go back to Jerusalem to help sort things out.…
It has been a long, long wait. 1500 years before, the Lord God had promised to Abraham that he would make his descendants into a great nation, and that through him all the peoples of the earth would be blessed.
Over the years, the fulfilment of this promise had sometimes seemed very near. Think of the Exodus, and the conquest of the promised land and the golden age when David was king. At other times, it seemed very remote indeed.…
In my study of the book of Nehemiah, I came across the following thought, which I thought was worth passing on:-
Nehemiah…is a man to admire and to imitate—but be careful! The theme of imitating Bible characters is often mishandled. Bryan Chapell has written of the “deadly Be’s” (“killer Be’s” would have been more vivid), of which the first is sermons that require us to “be like” some figure in the Scripture story. Such sermons summon us to a treadmill life of perpetual role-play that is bound in the end to prove self-defeating, for, as Chapell rightly comments: “Simply telling people to imitate godliness in another without reminding them that anything more than outward conformity must come from God forces them either to despair of spiritual transformation or to deny its need.”…
In A Quest for Godliness (p35), J.I. Packer identifies a breed of evangelical Christians as ‘restless experientialists’.
Their outlook is one of casual haphazardness and fretful impatience, of grasping after novelties, entertainments, and ‘highs’, and of valuing strong feelings above deep thoughts. They have little taste for solid study, humble self-examination, disciplined meditation, and unspectacular hard work in their callings and their prayers. They conceive the Christian life as one of exciting extraordinary experiences rather than of resolute rational righteousness.…
The teaching of the great Puritan writer John Owen on this subject is summarised by J.I. Packer:-
Preaching the gospel, [Owen] tells us, is not a matter of telling the congregation that God has set his love on each of them and Christ has died to save each of them, for these assertions, biblically understood, would imply that they will all infallibly be saved, and this cannot be known to be true. The knowledge of being the object of God’s eternal love and Christ’s redeeming death belongs to the individual’s assurance, which in the nature of the case cannot precede faith’s saving exercise; it is to be inferred from the fact that one has believed, not proposed as a reason why one should believe.…
