What is the Gospel?

"What on Earth?!”
What on earth is the Gospel? If you have spent any time in an evangelical church, the Gospel is something that your pastor tells you to share with others. For others, the Gospel might be a genre of music. A few others might even use the word "Gospel" to mean "undisputed fact" ("Ain't that the Gospel truth!"). Such a variety of usage might leave one confused. So, what exactly then is the Gospel--specifically in its original Scruptural sense? Why is it the most important and soul-lifting news that one could ever hear? This essay is written to answer these questions. In what follows, I hope to give a sufficiently comprehensive definition of what the Gospel is and then describe the response that it demands from us.

Defining the Gospel
Very simply, the Gospel is the good news that God has come to save believers from their sins through Jesus Christ. While keeping this basic message in view, I want to expand it in order to provide the more comprehensive definition which follows:
“The Gospel is the good news promised in the Old Testament Scriptures that the Lord God has come to save those who believe in Jesus Christ from their sins, their punishment, and their enemies, apart from their obedience to God’s law; and to bring them into a covenantal relationship with him through the obedient life, death, resurrection, and heavenly enthronement of Jesus, their priest-king.”
I would like to spend the remainder of this section unpacking this definition for us.
1. “The Gospel is the good news…” The New Testament word for Gospel is euaggelion (pronounced euangelion), meaning “good news.” So, if anything, the Gospel is good and happy news and not bad and depressing news. The Gospel is news that is intended to make us sing; give us reason to lift up our heads with happiness, and shout for joy.
2. “…promised in the Old Testament Scriptures…” Secondly, we note that the Gospel is the fulfillment of the Old Testament Scriptures. This is an assumption that the earliest preachers of the Gospel, who where mostly Jewish, held (Lk.24:45-48; Rom.1:2; 1 Cor.15:3, 4). This in turn implies that the Old Testament Scriptures—their laws, histories, songs, wise sayings, and prophecies—all anticipate the arrival of the Gospel. One can say that the Gospel is the realization of the God-centered and God-ruled society and reality that the Old Testament Scriptures called for. We will soon see why this so.
3. “…that the Lord God…” The third thing about the Gospel is that it involves the Lord God. The Lord is the holy Creator-King of the earth. Though high and exalted, God is not detached from the affairs of humanity. Far from it. His presence and kingship cover every facet of human life. Far from being the tribal deity of the Israelites, the Lord owns the earth and its peoples. He oversees and overrules human decision and destiny. He is the sovereign who knows no rival. His love, wisdom, and power are on a class of their own. It is from within his divine wisdom that the Gospel is born and issues forth. The Lord is the giver of the Gospel.
4. “…has come to save…” Fourthly, we see that God comes in a certain way and with a certain disposition: He does not come to destroy but to save, that is, to bring out of a certain predicament.
5. “…those who believe in Jesus Christ…” Who then has God come to save? Scripture is clear he saves those who believe in the good news. He saves those who receive this good news and trust in it. “Repent and believe in the gospel,” cries John the Baptist (Mk.1:15). To be even more precise, the Lord saves those who believe in Jesus Christ for their salvation (Jn.3:16). This implies, of course, that the salvation of God does not come to all. In the end, there will be some who will be excluded from the sphere of God’s salvation.
6. “…from their sins, their punishment, and their enemies…” Sixthly, God has come to save his people from three most disturbing problems.
The first thing God rescues believers from is their sin. This presupposes that sin is indeed the real issue for the human race. Sin is more than human imperfection. No. Sin is the moral corruption and evil decay within the human heart that overflows and defiles our world. Sin is the root of humanity’s problems. Without sin, there would be no evil desire, conflict, sorrow, and suffering. And so by saving us from sin, God removes from us the cause of all our problems. In light of this, the liberation of the Gospel cannot be understood as freedom to live outside God’s reign. That is an absurdity. The Gospel does not give license to sin. Instead, the Gospel is the means by which God assimilates us into that holy society and reality that the Old Testament Scriptures anticipated. However, if sin is a central problem, then so too is God’s wrath. Sin cannot exist without God’s wrath close behind. If sin is a malignant and dark force that seeks to attack God himself, then God will retaliate in kind. Sin will not be allowed to live and the sinner must be destroyed—that creation might eventually be purged of all evil.
In spite of this, sinners need not despair. Thankfully, anger is not the only sentiment that God has toward them. Out of his own compassion and grace, God does not approach sinners with death as the only option. Instead, he comes with patient love and redeeming grace. He comes to give sinners what they do not deserve, namely, freedom from his judgment.
But the promised salvation from sin is not confined to the individual’s personal sin. We should also note that God’s promised salvation is also meant for the sinned-against, those who are victims of the sins of others. Put differently, the Gospel overcomes the enemies of those who believe. While this is not meant to encourage passivity and personal irresponsibility in those who are hurt by the sins of others, this is surely intended to comfort them. The Gospel is at the same time God’s word for the wounded and God’s judgment against the enemies of his people. I have in mind here primarily Satan and his demonic agents (Eph.6:12). However, since Satan himself is the one who works in the human “sons of obedience” (Eph.2:2), defeating him also means defeating the human enemies of the Lord’s people. The coming of God to save spells the end of Satan’s power (Lk.10:18; 11:20) and the destruction of his agents, whether spiritual or human (Rev.19:20, 21).
7. “…apart from their obedience to God’s law;…” The salvation comes “apart from their obedience to God’s law.” This is the conviction of the Apostle Paul as evident in Romans 3:20-25. “Apart from their obedience to God’s law” means that salvation is entirely unearned. It comes outside the sphere of our observance of the moral requirements of God. While we deserve to be condemned and released to our enemies, God shows us grace: He saves us even though we do not deserve it. We bring him our failures and immorality and he gives us glory and a seat in his holy palace.
8. “…and to bring them into a covenantal relationship with him…” What then is the goal of saving believers from their sins and his punishment? What does the Lord hope to achieve? As hinted under the previous point, God seeks to bring believers into a covenantal relationship with him. By this is meant that God brings his saved people into a relationship with him that is protected by promises. One such promise is in John 10:28: “I give them eternal life, and they will never perish, and no one will snatch them out of my hand” (cf. Jn.5:39). Yet another promise is located in Jeremiah 31:33-34: “But this is the covenant that I will make with the house of Israel after those days, declares the LORD: I will put my law within them, and I will write it on their hearts. And I will be their God, and they shall be my people. And no longer shall each one teach his neighbor and each his brother, saying, ‘Know the LORD,’ for they shall all know me, from the least of them to the greatest, declares the LORD. For I will forgive their iniquity, and I will remember their sin no more.”
From these passages, we see that the promises of God toward his people include (1) the writing of his holy law in the core of their beings (so protecting them from sin); (2) the adoption of them as his people; (3) the revealing of himself to them in great clarity and comprehensiveness; (4) the forgiveness of their sins, and (5) the preservation of his people under his ownership. What then is the nature of this covenantal relationship? More specifically, what is the relationship of God’s people to God? Scripture uses many pictures to describe it. The relationship is that of a subject to a king; a servant to a master; a friend to a friend; a son to a father, and a bride to a husband. While each of these pictures is true, each by itself cannot exhaust the entire truth. What sits at the heart of all these pictures is that the relationship is mutual and beneficial: We offer ourselves to the Lord entirely for his glory and the Lord offers himself to us completely for our good.
9. “…through the obedient life, death, resurrection, ascension, and heavenly enthronement of Jesus, their priest-king.” Granted that the Lord has come to save sinners, we are still left with one question: How will he accomplish this salvation? The answer is quite simple: By means of the life, death, resurrection, ascension, and heavenly enthronement of Jesus Christ. Apart from and outside of Jesus, God is a foreboding threat to sinners; he is a consuming fire; the master of heaven’s armies. But through Jesus, sinners see the smile of God and are swept up into the embrace of God. Who then is Jesus? He is God’s Man; the Lord’s Servant; the new representative of the human race who represents God’s people before God and whose actions will count before God as the acts of his people. In sum, Jesus is the Lord’s Man-In-Our-Place. Another way to understand this is to say that Jesus is the priest-king of his people. In the old Israelite theocracy of the Old Testament, the priest and king are both representatives of the people before God. Jesus assumes both of these offices into himself. Conceived by the Spirit of God in the womb of a virgin, and perfectly obedient and unblemished by sin through his life on earth, Jesus was the only true covenant-keeping human and the ultimate priest-king. As such, Jesus is the only one qualified to save his people. He does this in several ways which we have seen see delineated in the definition above. One thing to note before proceeding is that these ways form an entire unified, inseparable complex of events. Our salvation will not be complete if but one part was left out.
Firstly, Jesus saves us by means of his obedient life. Romans 5:19 has this to say: “For as by the one man’s disobedience the many were made sinners, so by the one man’s obedience the many will be made righteous.” Standing behind these words is clearly the figure of Adam, the first man whose sin made all of humanity sinners. Jesus however is the one man whose obedience will make us all righteous. We do not become righteous on our own power—Jesus makes us righteous by his obedience. Jesus is the Second Adam, the New Man who will bring forth a new humanity.
Secondly, Jesus saves us by means of his death. Since God could not simply ignore and “forgive” sin, sin had somehow to be punished. As priest-king, Jesus became the sin-bearer and the supreme scapegoat for humanity. There is of course, an entire conceptual background to this act of substitutionary death. Under the Old Testament, God instituted the sacrificial system as a means to deal with the sins of his people. Back then, unblemished animals such as goats and lambs were allowed to take the punishment that would otherwise have to be carried by the sinner. Jesus essentially absorbs this system into himself. He becomes the final One who will carry away the sins of God’s people once and for all (Heb.9:26-28; 10:10, 12; cf. 1 Jn.4:10). We may not too often think of it this way but the sin-bearer, Jesus became unrighteous, he became sin (2 Cor.5:21; Gal.3:13): He became the liar, the thief, the drunkard, the terrorist, the rapist, the adulterer, the murderer, the blasphemer. He clothed himself with our sins. So it was that on the cross, the holy and innocent Jesus, God’s unblemished Servant, carried the sin, shame, disgrace, and guilt of God’s people, and above all, the punishment that we deserved. At the cross, the Lord, the all-consuming fire, waged holy war on his own Son, consumed him, and destroyed the sin that he carried. “Yet it was the will of the LORD to crush him; he has put him to grief,” says the prophet Isaiah (Isa.53:10).
Thirdly, Jesus saves us by means of his resurrection. In 1 Corinthians 15:17, Paul makes a startling statement: “And if Christ has not been raised, your faith is futile and you are still in your sins.” In Paul’s mind, the resurrection of Christ is the evidence that we are free from our sins. But how does Christ save us by means of his resurrection? In order to answer this, we need to keep in mind the representational office that Christ holds. By rising from the grave not only for himself but for us as well, Christ became the first of many to taste the new creation and pass into the new age of God’s kingdom. As our representative, Christ rose as the firstfruits of many more to come. Paul says in 1 Corinthians 15:20, “But in fact Christ has been raised from the dead, the firstfruits of those who fallen asleep.” Christ’s resurrection is the guarantee of the future resurrection. So in the end, both the death and resurrection of Christ together are the heart of the Gospel. They are the cardinal points of the euangelion. While all the elements of the one complex of saving work are essential, the death and resurrection of Jesus are the heart of the entire complex. They are the decisive elements “of first importance” (cf. 1 Cor.15:3); they are the goal and accomplishment of Christ’s mission. Fourthly, Jesus saves us by means of his ascension. Glorious as it may be, the resurrection is not the end but the beginning. It is the beginning of a new heavens and a new earth; it is the genesis of a new order. Following the resurrection, Christ—still acting as our representative—passes into a new mode of existence, a Spirit-energized life. He rises from the grave and then from the earth, retracing the steps of his descent (Acts 1:9). Yet, he does not reverse his incarnation. He does not reject his human nature. Rather, he takes it up with him. He was born as a human and now ascends as a human. In his ascension, Christ removes us from the gravitational pull of the world and its petty concerns and he pulls us upward and onward until we reach the place of his original dwelling—and our new home.
Fifthly, Jesus saves us by means of his heavenly enthronement in heaven as divine king and the anticipated successor to King David’s throne (Lk.1:32). Upon entering the sphere of glory, Jesus takes his place at the right hand of God. This was what the earliest Christians preached. Take Peter for example: “Let all the house of Israel therefore know for certain that God has made him both Lord and Christ, this Jesus whom you crucified!” (Acts 2:36). And again, “God exalted him at his right hand as Leader and Savior, to give repentance to Israel and forgiveness of sins” (Acts 5:31; cf. Acts 7:55, 56). It is interesting however that Paul says that we have been raised “with Christ” (Col.3:1). And even if we might still be physically on earth, we are “hidden with Christ in God” (Col.3:3). In God’s eyes, our pre-Christian identities are gone, destroyed at the cross with Jesus Christ. In God’s eyes, we are dead and risen in Jesus Christ (Rom.6:10-11). The enthroned Christ is not enthroned alone—his enthronement anchors us to heaven with him. Ephesians 2:6 declares that God has “raised us up with him and seated us with him in the heavenly places in Christ Jesus.” If Jesus is secure in heaven, so are we.
Still, one thing remains to be said concerning the identity of Jesus Christ. While we have focused mainly on Jesus’ role as God’s Man, this role does not exhaust his identity. And herein lies the greatest surprise: Jesus is also God. He is the Word of God the Father (Jn.1:1); the Son of God (Jn.1:34), and the only-begotten God who came from the Father’s side (Jn.1:18). Hebrews 1:3 states that “He is the radiance of the glory of God and the exact imprint of his nature, and he upholds the universe by the word of his power” (Heb.1:3). As such, Jesus is nothing less than the everlasting projection of God himself. He is the Father’s duplication. Though subordinate in role, Jesus is eternal God with the Father. Thus, Jesus did not simply represent God on earth or function as God on earth. The reason he could do all this was precisely because he was himself God on earth. In Jesus, God has given us more than a mediator. He has given himself to us for our deepest needs.

Responding to the Gospel
Having seen what the Gospel is and bearing in mind that the Gospel will benefit those who believe in it, we need to look now at what this belief comprises. In sum, belief is expressed by the twin actions of repentance and faith. The two actions are distinct but are held together in one unified response.
Repentance refers to turning away from sin. In Acts 2:38, the Apostle Peter says, “Repent and be baptized every one of you in the name of Jesus Christ for the forgiveness of your sins, and you will receive the gift of the Holy Spirit.” Also in Acts 3:19, “Repent therefore, and turn again, that your sins may be blotted out.” Given the necessity of repentance, one thing still needs to be made clear: While true repentance means that our break with sin should be decisive, it is not expected that the Christian will not have momentary relapses into sin. If this were not so, all the exhortations to godly living that we find in the epistles will not make sense. Yet, even when Christians do sin, the Gospel still applies: “If we confess our sins, he is faithful and just to forgive us our sins and to cleanse us from all unrighteousness” (1 Jn.1:9).
This leads us to consider the role of faith. By itself, repentance is nothing. Turning from sin must result in turning toward something else—the Lord Jesus Christ. Thus, we can say that repentance must lead to faith or belief in Jesus Christ alone for salvation. Peter says, “To him all the prophets bear witness that everyone who believes in him receives forgiveness of sins through his name” (Acts 10:43). And also, “‘Believe in the Lord Jesus, and you will be saved, you and your household’” (Acts 16:31). At this point, it is important to remind ourselves of the Apostle Paul’s differentiation between faith and works. Faith, though arising out of obedience to God’s commands (Rom.16:26), is not the same as works. Consider Romans 3:20-25: “For by works of the law no human being will be justified in his sight, since through the law comes knowledge of sin. But now the righteousness of God has been manifested apart from the law, although the Law and the Prophets bear witness to it—the righteousness of God through faith in Jesus Christ for all who believe. For there is no distinction: for all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God, and are justified by his grace as a gift, through the redemption that is in Christ Jesus, whom God put forward as a propitiation by his blood, to be received by faith.”
Consider also his words in Galatians 2:16: “We know that a person is not justified by works of the law but through faith in Jesus Christ.”
We are justified by faith in Jesus Christ. We are declared innocent by faith in Jesus Christ. Faith in Jesus Christ is the act that makes us God’s people. And as such, it is the gateway into all the other benefits that come with our salvation—including even our personal sanctity. Without the Gospel, there will be no hope for personal holiness. This implies that the Gospel, though received freely apart from any merit of our own, will not result in ungodliness. The work of God possesses all the transformative power to turn wicked and disgraced sinners into the holy ones who will ever live in the dazzling brilliance of God’s presence.

Conclusion
Why then is the Gospel the most important news that we can ever hear? It is so because it promises an end to sin and judgment for those who believe. Hopefully, we have by now caught a glimpse of the unparalleled wonder of the Gospel. It is the work of God himself for our salvation, accomplished by Jesus Christ, and received by us in faith apart from our (imperfect) obedience to divine law. The Gospel is certainly underserved. It issues from God’s own grace and from the abundance of his own resources. We do nothing to receive it except turn from sin and rely entirely on Jesus Christ to save us. In believing the Gospel, we leave our pasts behind and enter a future of glory—a future that is protected by God himself and secured in the exalted Jesus Christ. Such a future is now available to us. Let us hasten to claim it.

Jehovah's Witness (John 5:31-40)

I am preaching this Sunday on Jesus' testimony before his critics in John 5:31-40. Here, Our Lord is in a kind of court-like situation. Having been accused of blasphemy and Sabbath-breaking (5:18), Jesus responds to this accusation. He responds that he is doing only what the Father has shown him (5:17, 19) and moves from here to describe the glorious things that the Father will indeed show him in time to come. In the end, Jesus reveals that the Father has shown him that he will indeed be the glorious Lord who will call the dead from the grave.

The question that presents itself (implicitly) is whether or not Jesus can prove it. In answer to this, Jesus brings in his witnesses: John the Baptist, his messianic works, but above all, the Father himself (along with Scripture and Moses). In the end, it is this last witness that counts the most. Our Lord claims that the Father is the one who endorses him--and in so doing, has tied the Father's honor to himself. If Jesus is lying, then the Father is lying. But since God cannot lie, then Jesus is telling the truth.

While we can be skeptical of this seemingly circular sort of reasoning on the part of our Lord, I think it is telling that he uses such reasoning to begin with. For him, the Father's witness is enough. It is sufficient. And it should be sufficient for us as well. Yes, we can appeal to all the evidences for Christianity that we want; we can use all the testimonials that we can gather, and there is much merit in those things. They are aids to our faith. But in the end, the Father is evidence enough. The Father is the ground for the Son's identity. He is the supreme witness. And if the Father proves the Son, then we shoud agree with the Father's testimony. Not to do so would be to call God a liar. And no man who defames YHWH's name will be guiltless. May the Lord cause us to agree with his evaluation of the Son. May the Lord give us the ability to agree with everything in us that Jesus Christ is the Son of God, the Lord of the Day of Judgment--and to love that truth above all else.

Gospel-Centered Quote (October 2005)

"Repentance pays for sin, not because of its innate qualities, but because it unites us to Christ and to the efficacy of his death and resurrection. Sin must always be punished. Repentance does not diminish the punishment, but by uniting us to Christ transfers the punishment from ourselves to Christ the substitute."

Vern Poythress, The Shadow of Christ in the Law of Moses (Phillipsburg, New Jersey: Presbyterian and Reformed Publishing, 1991), p.170.

On the Use of Specialized Language in Theology

I know of a dear brother in Christ who has difficulty with the whole idea of doing theology. Apparently, his struggle was the result of his interactions with some theologians in a class room setting. Their use of “big words” had left him hateful of theology. I, being someone who stresses the importance of theology, obviously found this somewhat jarring. I want to set out a short response to this brother—but not so much to him as it is to his idea which I am sure a good many people would feel.
I will begin by affirming his concern. And I feel that his concern is that by using big words, theology is kept away from the lay man. Furthermore, he is concerned that the use of such big words is a mark of arrogance. These are all valid. Furthermore, he also points out that the Bible is enough and we need not add to these words. While I do not agree with this latter issue, I do see his point.
Yet, I want to point out several things in response to him.
(1) The fact that Jesus spoke in simple language may mean that we must strive to make the message intelligible to hearers in the preaching of the Gospel. However, this does not mean that scholars cannot use higher levels of language for communication amongst themselves. It does mean that scholars must simplify when they ought to. (Let us also not forget the highly stylized language used by authors in the Bible such as Isaiah and Hebrews!)
(2) It is dangerous to jump to the conclusion that people are arrogant because they use specialized language. To put things in perspective, we ought to remember that, as Donald Macleod points out, “all human activities require their own precise terminology” (A Faith to Live By, p.55). We certainly do not deny medical doctors, soldiers, artists, and football players the right to use their specialized language do we?
(3) Use of other words to interpret the Bible is not the same as adding to the Bible in the sense condemned in Deuteronomy 4:2 or 12:32. Otherwise, why even teach or preach? Don’t these God-ordained activities all require the use of our own language to explain the Scriptures? Why not just have long Bible-reading sessions only? Adding to the Bible in the sense condemned by Scripture means adding new teachings, new laws, new customs and taboos—not using our own language to simplify its message or highly-technical language to compound its varied themes.
(4) My brother’s concern, though valid, can itself be a reversed version of arrogance in that it denies the specialist his own area of growth. As far as I know, the Bible can be studied at many levels. To say that it must only be studied at a “lay” level is itself arrogant. Further, this will lead to many problems: Who defines what the “lay” level is? How “lay” is “lay”? How much should the “lay” factor determine what is taught—and learnt? How do we guard against the worship of simplicity?
(5) My brother should also take note of the context he is in: It is an academic setting, not a church. I do wonder if those same people who would use the specialized language would do so from the pulpit in the context of public worship.
(6) Finally, my brother’s concern may even be evidence of a deeper sentiment: Anti-intellectualism—the distaste of anything that reeks of intellectual complexity and the exercise of the intellect for more intellectual ends (such as new ideas and theoretical constructs). Anti-intellectualism may be a response against the knowledgeable puffed-up. But it is not the right response. The opposite of intellectualism gone arrogant is not anti-intellectualism but covenanted intellectualism—reason accountable to God.
All this is to say that specialized language—“big words”—have their place in the study of the Scriptures. They must be used in its proper place and never in arrogance but nonetheless, they can be used.

Event Planning and more event planning

Today is planning day! There is much to plan about: The upcoming international dinner, hawk-mountain trip, retreat. I need to make a template so that people who do this job will not need to spend too much time on this.

Gospel-Centered Quote (September 2005)

"Our sins have been punished; the wheel of retribution has turned; judgment has been inflicted for our ungodliness--but on Jesus, the lamb of God, standing in our place."

J.I. Packer, Knowing God (Downers Grove, Illinois: InterVarsity Press, 1993), 188.

Little Communities of the Living Word

I look forward to the start of the Bible studies with the Temple students. Tenth International Fellowship will be working with Tenth College Union on this effort. I am very excited as to the possibilities of such cooperation. The goal is to have multiple small group communities formed by college students that are centered on the written and living Word of God, empowered and guided by the Holy Spirit sprouting out across the student body. These groups are called "communities" because they are not going to be just study groups (though the study of the Word is central and essential). Here are some ideas about what these groups will seek to be. (1) They will be places where students will learn how to read the Scriptures. Through the process of study, students will learn how to observe, interpret and then apply God's Word with increasing skill to themselves and one another. (2) These groups will also be places where leadership and teaching gifts are put to the test. (3) These groups will be places of evangelization. Those who have yet to embrace Christ but are curious about his way can come into these groups and see for themselves brothers and sisters in Christ struggling to understand and bring their lives under the authority of the Word. There will be little place for superficiality. Tangible truth and aggressive love will be practiced. These groups may be the first places where non-believers will witness and experience a sliver of the larger church in action. (4) Above all, these groups will be places where the Holy Spirit will make his presence felt by the Word that he brings. The Word will take root and exert authority over thought and emotion and action; they will be places where the Word of God is lived out and not just taken in. What a joy it will be to have pockets of time and space in the context of the campus where the Lord is present by his Spirit, nurturing, instructing, and revealing himself to those who love him and to those who have yet to know him.

The Difference Between a Struggling Sinner and a Hypocrite in Worship

Some Christians worry that if they do not feel like worshipping on Sunday yet go to church then, they are being hypocritical. This leads me to ask the question: What is the difference between the worship of a struggling but redeemed sinner and the worship of a hypocrite? This is an important question because we have people who do not feel like worshipping but feel that they must feel like doing so in order to worship well. In my view, the difference is this: The struggling sinner may not feel like worshipping but he forces and disciplines himself to worship in order to please, obey and glorify the Lord; the hypocrite, however, may not feel like worshipping but does so to get it over with or look good. In the case of the former, his acts of worship, though strained and imperfect, is still considered worship. But in the latter's case, his acts of worship are not really worship at all.

Just a thought--not the final word.

Why Blog?

Why do I want to have my own blog site? There are several reasons that immediately come to mind. (1) The thrill of the novelty. Blogging is new. And with everything new (and morally okay), there is a some simple pleasure in trying it. Furthermore, it is somewhat cool to see your words on the internet. (2) Techno sloth. Blogging is webpage-making made easy for people like me who are too lazy to want to go the whole way and create their own webpage. (3) For the love of writing. (4) To be visible to friends and family. Here is a place where my loved ones can find me and receive updates on our (Robin and I) lives. (5) To think out loud about the covenanted life. By the covenanted life I mean life that is self-consciously lived in accountability to the triune God who is the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit. In this regard, this blog is a bit like a journal. It will contain some of my own thoughts about how theology relates to and shapes the life that I live 24-7, a life that includes studying, praying, hanging out with friends, cooking, traveling to and from work, watching movies, arguments, and more. (6) Finally, as always, as with all things in life, to give glory to the triune God. Blogs can be extremely self-centered exercises. I am aware of that. You want people to know you, read you, so on and so forth. Worse, you do this from a safe distance, protected by a veil of electronic bleeps and what-not. But blogging can also be covenanted as the rest of life is. It can be another exercise of covenanted living, another part of the life-long, life-wide Gospel work. So this blog will be dedicated to the glory of God, the one who made us beings with an insatiable appetite for communications, the one who is himself the communicator of truth, the one who communicates the truth that is himself. This blog is but a small reflection--amidst many other small reflections--of such a one.

So if you are visiting, thank you for taking the time to hang out here and listening to me (if you did). Feel free to drop a comment or write me an email. Feel free to agree or disagree and/or shed more light. We are all on the same journey, pressing toward the throne that sits at the end of the ages.