Justin Taylor's Blog, page 76

How Christ Is Present with Us Now in a Threefold Way

John Jefferson Davis:

Christ is in fact present to the believer and to the church in a threefold way, despite the fact that Christ’s glorified, molecular body is not present on earth but is now invisible in heaven.

Christ is really within the believer by the Holy Spirit, who extends Christ’s self and presence into the believer’s heart (“Christ in you, the hope of glory” [Col 1:27]);

Christ is really among the believing assembly gathered as a church in worship, by virtue of his name and Spirit (1 Cor 5:4; the name and Spirit as extensions of Christ’s self);

and the believer is really present to the heavenly, ascended Christ, being seated with Christ in heavenly realms (Eph 2:6)—the Spirit connecting the believer with Christ and extending the believer’s spirit and self to Christ’s self (1 Cor 6:17).

The Holy Spirit connects us with Christ and lifts us into the presence of the ascended Lord, with whom we are in union from the time of our conversion, being incorporated into the body of Christ by the Holy Spirit (1 Cor 12:13), who continues to abide in us as an ontological reality.

Davis adds in a footnote:

Christ as to his molecular body is located in heaven, but Christ’s extended self, as extended by means of his name (1 Cor 5:4; his Skype icon) and Spirit, is also simultaneously and really located in the midst of the worshiping assembly, and also within the heart of the believer:

Christ above us, in heaven;

Christ among us, in worship;

Christ within us in the heart, by his Spirit and promise.

—John Jefferson Davis, Meditation and Communion with God: Contemplating Scripture in an Age of Distraction (IVP, 2012), 114.

17 Ways to Meditate on Scripture

From Donald S. Whitney’s excellent book, Spiritual Disciplines for the Christian Life (NavPress, 2014), 56-68.

Meditation is not folding your arms, leaning back in your chair, and staring at the ceiling. That’s daydreaming, not meditation. Daydreaming isn’t always a waste of time; it can be a much-needed, well-deserved respite for the mind as important as relaxation often is for the body. Our gracious Father is not always goading us to “produce,” and, as I’ve written elsewhere, it is possible to daydream, to “Do Nothing—and Do It to the Glory of God.”

As opposed to daydreaming wherein you let your mind wander, with meditation you focus your thoughts. You give your attention to the verse, phrase, word, or teaching of Scripture you have chosen. Instead of mental aimlessness, in meditation your mind is on a track—it’s going somewhere; it has direction. The direction your mind takes is determined by the method of meditation you choose.

Here are seventeen methods of meditating on Scripture. I use all of them some of the time and none of them all the time. Why do I present so many? Because you’ll likely resonate with some of these methods more than others, while the inclinations of someone else might be just the opposite of yours. And like me, you’ll probably want some variety.

Here are the methods he presents. See the book for an explanation of each.

Emphasize Different Words in the Text
Rewrite the Text in Your Own Words
Formulate a Principle from the Text—What Does It Teach?
Think of an Illustration of the Text—What Picture Explains It?
Look for Applications of the Text
Ask How the Text Points 
to the Law or the Gospel
Ask How the Text Points to Something About Jesus
Ask What Question Is Answered
 or What Problem Is Solved by the Text
Pray Through the Text
Memorize the Text
Create an Artistic Expression of the Text
Ask the Philippians 4:8 Questions of the Text


What is true about this, or what truth does it exemplify?
What is honorable about this?
What is just or right about this?
What is pure about this, or how does it exemplify purity?
What is lovely about this?
What is commendable about this?
What is excellent about this (that is, excels others of this kind)?
What is praiseworthy about this?


Ask the Joseph Hall Questions of the Text


What is it (define and/or describe what it is) you are meditating upon?
What are its divisions or parts?
What causes it?
What does it cause; that is, what are its fruits and effects?
What is its place, location, or use?
What are its qualities and attachments?
What is contrary, contradictory, or different to it?
What compares to it?
What are its titles or names?
What are the testimonies or examples of Scripture about it?


Set and Discover a Minimum Number of Insights from the Text
Find a Link or Common Thread Between All the Paragraphs or Chapters You Read
Ask How the Text Speaks 
to Your Current Issue or Question
Use Meditation Mapping [i.e., mind-mapping]

Is Bible-Belt Near-Christianity Teetering?

Russell Moore, citing the Pew Center’s report on America’s Changing Religious Landscape, observes that “the number of Americans who identify as Christians has reached an all-time low, and is falling. I think this is perhaps bad news for America, but it is good news for the church.”

He explains:

Bible Belt near-Christianity is teetering. I say let it fall. For much of the twentieth century, especially in the South and parts of the Midwest, one had to at least claim to be a Christian to be “normal.” During the Cold War, that meant distinguishing oneself from atheistic Communism. At other times, it has meant seeing churchgoing as a way to be seen as a good parent, a good neighbor, and a regular person. It took courage to be an atheist, because explicit unbelief meant social marginalization. Rising rates of secularization, along with individualism, means that those days are over—and good riddance to them.

Again, this means some bad things for the American social compact. In the Bible Belt of, say, the 1940s, there were people who didn’t, for example, divorce, even though they wanted out of their marriages. In many of these cases, the motive wasn’t obedience to Jesus’ command on marriage but instead because they knew that a divorce would marginalize them from their communities. In that sense, their “traditional family values” were motivated by the same thing that motivated the religious leaders who rejected Jesus—fear of being “put out of the synagogue.” Now, to be sure, that kept some children in intact families. But that’s hardly revival.

Secularization in America means that we have fewer incognito atheists. Those who don’t believe can say so—and still find spouses, get jobs, volunteer with the PTA, and even run for office. This is good news because the kind of “Christianity” that is a means to an end—even if that end is “traditional family values”—is what J. Gresham Machen rightly called “liberalism,” and it is an entirely different religion from the apostolic faith handed down by Jesus Christ.

Read the whole thing here.

Nancy Leigh DeMoss Announces Her Engagement

Nancy Leigh DeMoss:

My dear friends,

By now, you’ve heard that I am engaged to be married. I understand that you may be in a state of shock at this news. Based on the response of some who have learned about this development in recent weeks, they may sooner have expected the earth and the sun to collide!

Well, no one could have been more caught off guard by this turn of events than I. In recent years, I have found myself in the most settled, contented, healthy, fruitful place of life and ministry ever. I did not have the slightest inkling that He was about to call me to step out into a whole new realm of faith and service.

Enter the God of love, mystery, and surprises!

In the days ahead, I am eager to share that story with you, my beloved friends and partners in ministry. Here’s a bit of background and update for starters . . .

You can read the whole thing here, including a video message from Nancy.

Amen to John Piper’s words:

The news of Nancy DeMoss and Robert Wolgemuth’s engagement is like hearing that a veteran, highly skilled mountain climbing guide (Nancy) is about to switch to tandem hang gliding over the Rockies. Nancy has given thousands the best glimpses from the highest peaks of singleness. Now she will see it all from a different angle. I am eager to hear the reports (so are thousands).

Bill Watterson of Calvin & Hobbes: To Be Creative, Stop “Relaxing” and Let Your Mind Play

From Bill Watterson’s commencement address—“Some Thoughts on the Real World by One Who Glimpsed It and Fled“—delivered at Kenyon College, Gambier Ohio, on May 20, 1990.

If you ever want to find out just how uninteresting you really are, get a job where the quality and frequency of your thoughts determine your livelihood. I’ve found that the only way I can keep writing every day, year after year, is to let my mind wander into new territories. To do that, I’ve had to cultivate a kind of mental playfulness.

We’re not really taught how to recreate constructively. We need to do more than find diversions; we need to restore and expand ourselves. Our idea of relaxing is all too often to plop down in front of the television set and let its pandering idiocy liquefy our brains. Shutting off the thought process is not rejuvenating; the mind is like a car battery-it recharges by running.

You may be surprised to find how quickly daily routine and the demands of “just getting by”: absorb your waking hours. You may be surprised matters of habit rather than thought and inquiry. You may be surprised to find how quickly you start to see your life in terms of other people’s expectations rather than issues. You may be surprised to find out how quickly reading a good book sounds like a luxury.

At school, new ideas are thrust at you every day. Out in the world, you’ll have to find the inner motivation to search for new ideas on your own. With any luck at all, you’ll never need to take an idea and squeeze a punchline out of it, but as bright, creative people, you’ll be called upon to generate ideas and solutions all your lives. Letting your mind play is the best way to solve problems.

For me, it’s been liberating to put myself in the mind of a fictitious six year-old each day, and rediscover my own curiosity. I’ve been amazed at how one ideas leads to others if I allow my mind to play and wander. I know a lot about dinosaurs now, and the information has helped me out of quite a few deadlines.

A playful mind is inquisitive, and learning is fun. If you indulge your natural curiosity and retain a sense of fun in new experience, I think you’ll find it functions as a sort of shock absorber for the bumpy road ahead.

A Concise Summary of Reformed-Evangelical Spirituality

Peter Adam, seeking to show that the shape of Evangelical and Reformed spirituality corresponds to revelation, both in content and in form:

Christ is the mediator of the revelation of God, so this spirituality is Christ-centred, responding with faith in Jesus Christ, and especially to his saving death and resurrection.
Christ has revealed the Father, so this spirituality is that of trust in God our Father, his love and kindness in Christ, and his sovereign and providential rule over everything.
Christ has sent the Spirit, so believers are sealed or anointed with the Spirit, the Spirit witnesses within them that they are the children of God, and they use the gifts of God in the service of God.
The response of trusting Christ and obeying him, of loving God with heart, mind, soul and strength is common to all believers, so spirituality is not just an option for the advanced but is required of all the saints. It is a spirituality common to all the people of God. It is a spirituality of normal humanity, of daily life and duties, or work and play, of family and society.
God’s grace and acceptance of us in Christ means that we do not have to search for God, find him, ascend to him or journey towards him. God has come to us in his Son Jesus, spoken to us in the gospel, and welcomed us into his presence through Christ our High Priest. We stand now in God’s grace, we are now at peace with God, we can now have assurance of final salvation, through trust in his promises.
The great barrier to true spirituality is not the lack of technique in spiritual aptitude, but sin. Sin is the state of humanity in every aspect of life and personality, and the wages of sin is death. But God has dealt with our sin by the sacrifice of Christ, and has accepted us as his children. His holiness and righteousness are demonstrated in the death of Christ, our sin is atoned for and we are forgiven. We stand in his grace, and he works in us by the death and resurrection of Christ and by his Spirit, to change us into the likeness of Christ. God gives us faith and obedience, God trans- forms us, and God does his good works through us.
God has provided ‘means’ by which he works in us for his glory. We must make good use of the means provided by God, and not replace or supplement them with means that we devise. The means provided by God are explained in the Bible, namely the Bible itself, the fellowship of the people of God, prayer, baptism and the Lord’s Supper, and a right use of the creation. We should not neglect these means, nor use other means, such as statues, pictures, icons, silence or impressions of God’s will. We should not over-value the sacraments, those visible words of God. While we will hear echoes of the Bible in our inner selves, the God-given and certain place to hear God speaking is in the Bible.
The great means is the Bible, in which we find Christ clothed in all his promises. To love God is to love his words, and to be alert to the Spirit is to receive the words of the Spirit in the Bible. In the Bible we find God’s self-revelation, God’s character, God’s will and God’s plan. In the Bible God’s mystery, Christ, is now revealed. A corporate and personal spirituality of the Word is at the heart of biblical faith and life. We do not know everything about God and his plan, but what we do know is found in the Bible.
Prayer is an expression of our trust in God, and our dependence on him. It is gospel-shaped: we come to pray to God our Father through the power and goodness of Jesus’ death on the cross. This is the means of our access to God. We pray in response to God’s words in the Bible, so that we know the God to whom we pray, and what he has promised. As we read his Spirit-inspired words, the Spirit also works within us, prompting us to know that God is our Father, and that we may approach him with boldness because of Christ’s death for us on the cross. We pray to God alone, and not to saints, because we pray as instructed by God in the Bible.

—Peter Adam, Hearing God’s Words: Exploring Biblical Spirituality, New Studies in Biblical Theology, ed. D. A. Carson (Apollos/IVP, 2004), 39-40.

What Are the Roots of Law?

My FAQ summary of J. Budziszewski, “The Roots of Law,” Religion and Liberty 11 (September-October 2001): 8-10.

What is the root of the enacted law?

The moral law.

What is the root of the moral law?

The design of the created order.

What is the root of the created order?

The Creator.

What is the enacted law severed from the moral law?

Tyranny.

What is ethics severed from the moral law?

Chaos.

What is the creation severed from the Creator?

An idol.

John Updike’s 6 (or So) Rules of Reviewing Books

John Updike, who reviewed “nearly every major writer of the 20th century and some 19th-century authors,” once offered some guidance on book reviews in the foreword to his 1975 collection of essays, Picked-Up Pieces:

1. Try to understand what the author wished to do, and do not blame him for not achieving what he did not attempt.

2. Give him enough direct quotation—at least one extended passage—of the book’s prose so the review’s reader can form his own impression, can get his own taste.

3. Confirm your description of the book with quotation from the book, if only phrase-long, rather than proceeding by fuzzy precis.

4. Go easy on plot summary, and do not give away the ending. (How astounded and indignant was I, when innocent, to find reviewers blabbing, and with the sublime inaccuracy of drunken lords reporting on a peasants’ revolt, all the turns of my suspenseful and surpriseful narrative! Most ironically, the only readers who approach a book as the author intends, unpolluted by pre-knowledge of the plot, are the detested reviewers themselves. And then, years later, the blessed fool who picks the volume at random from a library shelf.)

5. If the book is judged deficient, cite a successful example along the same lines, from the author’s ouevre or elsewhere. Try to understand the failure. Sure it’s his and not yours?

To these concrete five might be added a vaguer sixth, having to do with maintaining a chemical purity in the reaction between product and appraiser.

Do not accept for review a book you are predisposed to dislike, or committed by friendship to like.

Do not imagine yourself a caretaker of any tradition, an enforcer of any party standards, a warrior in an idealogical battle, a corrections officer of any kind.

Never, never (John Aldridge, Norman Podhoretz) try to put the author “in his place,” making him a pawn in a contest with other reviewers.

Review the book, not the reputation.

Submit to whatever spell, weak or strong, is being cast.

Better to praise and share than blame and ban.

The communion between reviewer and his public is based upon the presumption of certain possible joys in reading, and all our discriminations should curve toward that end.

An Interview with Collin Hansen about Blind Spots

A conversation with Collin Hansen about his provocative and practical new book, Blind Spots: Becoming a Courageous, Compassionate, and Commissioned Church (foreword by Tim Keller):

You can find out more about the book here—including some sample material . . . and a quiz to see where you land on Hansen’s taxonomy!

A Simple Thought Experiment on Abortion

Photograph of Dr. Joseph Bruner, surgeon at Vanderbilt University, who was fixing the spina bifida lesion of 21-week-old Samuel Armas.

Suppose, in the encounter between doctor and child [in an abortion], the child won half of the time, and killed the doctor in self-defense—something he would have every right to do.

Very few doctors would perform abortions.

They perform them now only because of their absolute power over a small, fragile, helpless victim.

—Stephen D. Schwarz, The Moral Question of Abortion (Chicago: Loyola University Press, 1990), 143.