Bible and Mission

  An insanity has fallen upon the West, like a witch’s spell.   We have lived with it long enough to know it, understand it, but not long enough to resist it, to undo it.   The very stewards of the truth that would remove it have left their posts.   They have succumbed to its whispers, become its servants.   It has infected the very air and crept along the ground like a mist until it is within us and all about us.   We utter its precepts like schoolchildren taught their lines. Its power lies in its claims of virtuosity, distorted goodness.   If presented as the vices that they are, they would be rejected.   These virtues are proclaimed from the pulpits and painted on banners or made into flags.   They are established in our schools, colleges, universities, and seminaries.   They are the hallucinogen making our own cultural suicide bearable, even desirable.   They are virtues, but disordered, or they are the excess or deficiency of...

Introduction   In Scripture, we read several prayers of confession.  Two famous ones are prayers of confession for the sins of the nation, Israel.  Both take place after the exile.  The prayer of Daniel (ch. 9) is his prayer for the nation and takes place while the Jews are still in exile.  This is, therefore, the prayer of a righteous person on behalf of the whole nation for their sins.  The prayer of Nehemiah takes place after the return from exile to Jerusalem and is a national repentance led by Nehemiah and representative elders, with the people gathered (ch. 9).  The prayer of confession in Psalm 51, on the other hand, is a personal prayer for personal sin.  The prayer of Jonah from the belly of the fish in chapter 2 is of the same sort.   Let’s look at Jonah’s prayer.  I remember my Hebrew professor in seminary telling us that he would read this prayer exactly as it sounded.  We expected to hear what Hebrew sounded like so...

  One of my favourite hymns is, ‘Rejoice! The Lord is King!’ by Charles Wesley.   It is a powerful hymn, rejoicing that Christ Jesus reigns from heaven, that His kingdom cannot fail, that He is victor over all His foes and over all our sins, and that He has victory over death.   The hymn celebrates Jesus’ reign as Lord and what that means.   It celebrates Jesus’ victory over what is wrong in our lives—our sins—and in our world.   The hymn is triumphant, and our response to Jesus’ triumph is to rejoice.   It commands us to rejoice, and we are eager to do so: we sing, ‘Jesus, the Saviour reigns, The God of truth and love.’   The hymn rightly puts Christ Jesus at the centre of it all: we rejoice not because of our emotions, our situations, our own happiness for any reason; we rejoice because of Him.   The theme of joy rings throughout the seasons of Advent, Christmas, and Epiphany.   John the Baptist leaped for joy in Elizabeth’s womb when he ...

[An Advent Homily] The second Sunday in Advent carries the theme, ‘preparation for the peace of God’.   That peace comes with the birth of Christ our Saviour, and it is always and only through Christ that God’s peace comes. Of course, we associate Christmas with an exciting and happy time—family, gifts, celebration, and services commemorating the birth of Jesus.   The image of Christmas is warmed with pictures of cosy fires in the fireplace, children playing on the floor with trainsets and dolls around a lighted and decorated conifer, and a gentle snow falling outside—even if you do not live in the northern states of America or England and are sitting in the summer heat in South Africa!—so powerful is the marketed version of Christmas. The coming season of Christmas is intended to be joyful and peaceful, but it can also be stressful, hectic, and even hurtful.   Rushing around to complete Christmas shopping, the financial stress this entails, travelling somewhere in a ...

Introduction   In this article, I intend to explore how God’s grace is not simply ‘mercy’ for sinners but also ‘healing’ for the morally infirm who are dying and need new life in our Saviour and Lord.   The imagery of healing grace is primarily post-New Testament, and later Christian authors like Augustine or John Colet, who will be discussed, depend for it more on Greek and Roman philosophy than on the New Testament.   That said, links can be made to the Old and New Testaments, and the theological value of ‘healing grace’ captures the Bible’s theology of salvation.   While the Reformation’s focus on justification by grace through faith can, in some expressions, be faulted for underemphasizing the very Biblical (Old Testament and New Testament) teaching on God’s empowering work of righteousness through Christ and the Spirit in our lives, we might note that John Calvin did place his discussion of justification within the larger section of ‘Regeneration’ in his Insti...