Recently in Gospel-Centeredness Category

Michael Spencer, aka Internet Monk (iMonk) wrote a Gospel-Centered article called The Man in the Shadow of Adultery.

Joshua Harris also has a few articles relating to love and lust taken from his book Sex is not the Problem (Lust is). Fighting Internet Porn (aka Purity Download - Tip 1). Purity Download - Tip 2. Purity Download - Tip 3. Purity Download - Tip 4.  Too bad Joshua (and SGM) won't provide this great book as a free download.

Why do I believe and promote a Christocentric interpretation of Scripture (both OT & NT) as the primary interpretation?

A Psalm of David, when he was in the wilderness of Judah.

63:1 O God, you are my God; earnestly I seek you;
my soul thirsts for you;
my flesh faints for you,
as in a dry and weary land where there is no water.
2 So I have looked upon you in the sanctuary,
beholding your power and glory.
3 Because your steadfast love is better than life,
my lips will praise you.
4 So I will bless you as long as I live;
in your name I will lift up my hands.

5 My soul will be satisfied as with fat and rich food,
and my mouth will praise you with joyful lips,
6 when I remember you upon my bed,
and meditate on you in the watches of the night;
7 for you have been my help,
and in the shadow of your wings I will sing for joy.
8 My soul clings to you;
your right hand upholds me.

9 But those who seek to destroy my life
shall go down into the depths of the earth;
10 they shall be given over to the power of the sword;
they shall be a portion for jackals.
11 But the king shall rejoice in God;
all who swear by him shall exult,
for the mouths of liars will be stopped.

What ought we say about the love of God? In the cross, God's love for himself, his name and his authority, and his love for his creatures, is taken up and met in one action wherein God exhibits the very nature of his being as unconditional Holy Love. That's why not only is the doctrine of the Trinity necessary to make sense of the atonement, but the atonement is necessary to reveal the Trinitarian fellowship of God. The Holy Love that defines the perichoretic life of the Triune God has, by the grace of the Father in the action of the incarnate Son and by the mission of the Spirit, overflowed freely towards those outside of God's community that creatures may enter into the Holy Love communion that the Triune God has ever known and spoke creation into being for participation in.

In Jesus Christ, God has shown not only that he does not want to be God without us, but that he does not want us to be without him. And in the action of the Holy Spirit, the Triune God is present and active among us to hear and answer our prayers, to sustain us in all the happenings of life, and to continuously bring home to us afresh the good news of the Father's sanctifying action in Jesus Christ, guaranteeing our inheritance, and empowering us to live in the reality of being 'holy and blameless' before God (Ephesians 1:4).

"When I have learnt to love God better than my earthly dearest, I shall love my earthly dearest better than I do now. Insofar as I learn to love my earthly dearest at the expense of God and instead of God, I shall be moving towards the state in which I shall not love my earthly dearest at all. When first things are put first, second things are not suppressed but increased." - Letters of C.S. Lewis (8 November, 1952)

Justin Childers has a helpful article on understanding the book of Revelation called 7 Interpretive Helps to Revelation.  I hope he doesn't mind my reposting the whole thing:

How often are people people of the (God's) Word but are Christless in their thinking!  On the other hand, how many people are people of the Word (John 1:1) yet they know nothing of God's Word?  That is existentialism.

Oh to be people of the Word that we may be people of the Word!  We must be both.

Some people do not know there are more views to Eschatology than the predominant Dispensational Premillennialism which is sad because each view has something good to offer within the discussion.  One view may emphasize one thing while another view emphasizes another- and both are important.

The topic of Eschatology has garnered much debate, and at times, ruthless and love-less arguing since even the first century.  One reason, I believe, Eschatology is dictated by our hermeneutic (the rules and method we use to read and understand Scripture).  If an Eschatological view could be shown to be false, then the hermeneutic upon which the view rests would be faulty.  From what I see, this is why Eschatology can be so contentious.

But showing the plausibility of one view over the others is a supposed insurmountable task and outside the scope of this series.  This series is a survey of the views so that we can understand them and appreciate them for what they each have to offer.

Graeme Goldsworthy wrote in his book The Gospel in Revelation - "What we should not wish to see, in my opinion, is this brilliant portrayal of the end of the conflict between Christ and Satan being made a perpetual battle ground and the cause of conflict between Christians."

Good thoughts to think about before proceeding with this series.

With first-chapter allusions to martial arts, "flow," "mind like water," and other concepts borrowed from the East (and usually mangled), you'd almost think this self-helper from David Allen should have been called Zen and the Art of Schedule Maintenance.

Not quite. Yes, Getting Things Done offers a complete system for downloading all those free-floating gotta-do's clogging your brain into a sophisticated framework of files and action lists--all purportedly to free your mind to focus on whatever you're working on. However, it still operates from the decidedly Western notion that if we could just get really, really organized, we could turn ourselves into 24/7 productivity machines. (To wit, Allen, whom the New Economy bible Fast Company has dubbed "the personal productivity guru," suggests that instead of meditating on crouching tigers and hidden dragons while you wait for a plane, you should unsheathe that high-tech saber known as the cell phone and attack that list of calls you need to return.)

As whole-life-organizing systems go, Allen's is pretty good, even fun and therapeutic. It starts with the exhortation to take every unaccounted-for scrap of paper in your workstation that you can't junk, The next step is to write down every unaccounted-for gotta-do cramming your head onto its own scrap of paper. Finally, throw the whole stew into a giant "in-basket"

That's where the processing and prioritizing begin; in Allen's system, it get a little convoluted at times, rife as it is with fancy terms, subterms, and sub-subterms for even the simplest concepts. Thank goodness the spine of his system is captured on a straightforward, one-page flowchart that you can pin over your desk and repeatedly consult without having to refer back to the book. That alone is worth the purchase price. Also of value is Allen's ingenious Two-Minute Rule: if there's anything you absolutely must do that you can do right now in two minutes or less, then do it now, thus freeing up your time and mind tenfold over the long term. It's commonsense advice so obvious that most of us completely overlook it, much to our detriment; Allen excels at dispensing such wisdom in this useful, if somewhat belabored, self-improver aimed at everyone from CEOs to soccer moms (who we all know are more organized than most CEOs to start with).

"Mercy ministry is not the Gospel." ~Rick Philips
Download or listen online:  Christ the Center episode 30

La Shawn Barber has a good article discussing the issue of Race (or, as I like to express it, Ethnicity since we are all Sons of Adam and Daughters of Eve) called, "Why Did God Make Different Races?"

This, I think, is what makes the Gospel so applicable- even to the issue of ethnic identity.

As I was reading La Shawn's article, my mind was drawn to Psalm 16:

1 Preserve me, O God, for in you I take refuge.
2 I say to the Lord, “You are my Lord; I have no good apart from you.”

3 As for the saints in the land, they are the excellent ones, in whom is all my delight.

This seems to be an apparent contradiction at first look.  How can David say he has "no good apart from" God, yet he says all his delight is in the saints?

We must understand God's glory is multifaceted, in that, He can not be completely understood from one perspective.  To bring home my point, let me use the Inklings as an example.

This is a paraphrase, but it's verifiable nonetheless.  When Charles Williams died, CS Lewis thought and wrote, "Good!  Now I can get MORE of Tolkien," but in reality, Lewis received LESS of Tolkien.  Why?  Because Williams was able to pull aspects of Tolkien's personality out that Lewis could never get.

This, I believe, is very applicable.  What does Paul say in 1 Corinthians 15:3?  "For I delivered to you as of first importance what I also received: that Christ died for our sins in accordance with the Scriptures,"

The Gospel is of First Importance which means It is the focal point of our (Christian) reality.  This means there is nothing that is as important (i.e. ethnicity, skin color, hair texture/color, geographic location, etc...) as the Gospel itself.

This is why Christians from any and every ethnicity, family, etc... can come together and fellowship; not like people discussing sports or the weather, but as A people who have been saved to the uttermost! (Hebrews 7:25) because "There is neither Jew nor Greek, there is neither slave nor free, there is no male and female, for you are all one in Christ Jesus" (Galatians 3:28).

So when people in churches begin to dispute about these other trivial things (tension over length of service, style of preaching and music, and even how to address the preacher) have become of first importance and have made the Gospel trivial.

This does not mean that the issues relating to ethnicity are unimportant.  The Gospel puts them in their proper perspective and gives light to the answer.  As a white guy, I can humble myself because of Jesus and ask sincerely, "What is really bothering my black friends, and how can I help?" "How can I understand the fundamental issues that effect both of us?" "How can I understand our great God from a different perspective?"

I, as a white man, will not understand Who God is without my black brothers and sisters to show me their perspective of Who God is- and vice versa.  Because not one group of people has all the answers.

It may not be easy, but it sets us in the right direction.