What is the good news?

Walking With Giants Posted on by

Recently, a couple of Christian friends and I agreed to submit to one another a short statement on our respective understandings of ‘the gospel’, the ‘good news’ of Jesus Christ.

It feels as though it should be easy for a person who has been a Bible-believing, gospel-loving follower of Jesus Christ for nearly half a century to give a short, clear, answer to the question, “What is the good news of Jesus?”

But I didn’t find it quite so easy:

For one thing, there is no one place in Scripture where such an answer is given (although 1 Corinthians 15:3-7 perhaps comes closest).…

Jn 16:5-15 – When the Spirit comes (sermon notes)

Walking With Giants Posted on by

“When the Spirit comes” – John 16:5-15

It’s a horrible thought to try to imagine life without someone you dearly love.

The disciples were having to get used to the prospect of life without Jesus.

They are sharing one last meal with him.  He must leave them, they can expect to be treated with terrible hostility after his departure; but they’ve got to carry on without him and witness on his behalf before a hostile world. …

Penal substitution an Anglican doctrine

Walking With Giants Posted on by

As a Licensed Reader within the Church of England, it is of some interest and importance to me to know whether the doctrine of penal substitution is an Anglican doctrine.

Well, the doctrine is not clearly espoused in the Prayer Book of 1662, to which all clergy must assent.  The nearest it comes to it is this:

‘…who made there (by his one oblation of himself once offered) a full, perfect, and sufficient sacrifice, oblation and satisfaction for the sins of the whole world.’…

Demons: what they can, and cannot, do

Walking With Giants Posted on by

In Matthew 8:28-34 Jesus casts demons out of a pair of men and into a herd of pigs.

Verses 29-32 are particularly instructive regarding the character of demons:

‘”What do you want with us, Son of God?” they shouted. “Have you come here to torture us before the appointed time?”  Some distance from them a large herd of pigs was feeding.  The demons begged Jesus, “If you drive us out, send us into the herd of pigs.” …

Penal substitution – the heart of atonement?

Walking With Giants Posted on by

I guess that most people who claim to be evangelicals would affirm the doctrine of penal substitutionary atonement (PSA) – the belief that Christ died in our place, bearing the penalty for our sins.

What is less clear is how many of these would argue that PSA is just one of a number of equally important images of the atonement, and how many think that it is the central, dominant, or controlling image.

Of course, more important than such a head-count would be investigating the reasons why people do, or do not, consider PSA to be central. …

‘You came from heaven to earth’

Walking With Giants Posted on by

‘Lord, I lift your name on high’ is a song by Rick Founds dating back to 1989.

The chorus is particularly striking:-

You came from heaven to earth
To show the way
From the earth to the cross
My debt to pay
From the cross to the grave
From the grave to the sky
Lord I lift Your name on high

I have long thought that I had come across something similar to this in the writings of one of the Puritans.…

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.
…