Registrations for our upcoming leadership conference on Thursday, September 16th are awesome…honestly, we are a little ahead of where I thought we would be at this point. It’s going to be a great day as we get to hear from six great leaders…
Steven Furtick
Mark Driscoll
Francis Chan
Judah Smith
Jud Wilhite
Me (I just threw me in there…I’m more [...]
My friend, Ben Arment, has created another STORY Conference here in Chicago. The STORY website is the dreamiest ever. How can you see this and not want to go? STORY purposefully has limited seating for maximized experience, so you want…
OK…so here’s the deal…Catalyst is AWESOME and you should be there this year.
There will over 13,000 leaders there and we will get to hear speakers such as Andy Stanley, TD Jakes, Craig Groeschel, Francis Chan, Beth Moore and Seth Godin. (And…for some reason they’re letting me speak…still scratching my head on that one…I think they [...]
I’ve started working on a paper titled “Discerning Christ in Contemporary Thought: The Christological Basis of Christian Scholarship”, for a conference in Melbourne next month. I’m trying to develop a christological understanding of the nature of Chris…
John Piper’s T4G2010 message “Did Jesus Preach Paul’s Gospel?” defended the unity of Paul and Jesus in their understanding of justification and imputation. After his message John joined a panel discussion with Ligon Duncan, Mark Dever, Al Mohler, John MacArthur, and me. The following is an excerpt from that panel discussion.
Ligon Duncan: John, let’s suppose that there is someone here tonight that was wrestling with precisely the issue that you have been thinking about and wrestling with for many years in terms of how to articulate this [imputation/justification] and how to ground it not only in Paul’s teaching, but in Jesus’ revelation of himself and the gospel writers’ revelation of the way of salvation in Jesus. … Where would be some other places that you would point him to read and study and reflect, either in the Scriptures themselves or in the material that you found most helpful, so that he can keep on going?
John Piper: The cluster of texts that I think are most helpful about imputation would be Philippians 3:7–9, 2 Corinthians 5:21, 1 Corinthians 1:30, the flow of thought from Romans 3:20–4:6, especially 4:4–6. Galatians 2:16 and all of chapter 3. As far as biblical texts, that is where I would go.
John Owen is exhaustive on everything and so is his book on justification. If you can handle the kind of density that Owen writes with, I would go there before I would go to Edwards. Edwards becomes so philosophical at a few points that he ties himself in knots I am afraid. So I think Owen is probably a better guide. …
So many of the books on justification are so doctrinally-oriented rather than exegetically-oriented that a person might do better to take the key texts and then read really faithful Don Carson-like commentaries on them. What happens when you read a big book like Owen or [James] Buchanan is that you just take several steps back from the text and things start to get hazy. Not many people are wired to handle the complexities that these guys go into. And the texts—when you read them all by themselves, with just a little help—they don’t feel that complex. For the average person—this includes me—I need to be right there. I need the text staring me in the face because I get less confident as I move steps away.
Those texts have had a lot of eye-to-eye time with John as evidenced in the two important books he has written on the topic. In 2002 John published Counted Righteous: Should We Abandon the Imputation of Christ’s Righteousness? In an interview from that year he provided an extensive overview of other foundational texts on justification and imputation. You can read the interview here. He also discussed many of these same texts in his 2007 book The Future of Justification: A Response to N.T. Wright. Both books are available online as free PDF downloads and printed books. See the links here:
• Counted Righteous: Should We Abandon the Imputation of Christ’s Righteousness? (Crossway, 2002) [PDF download | Amazon]
• The Future of Justification: A Response to N.T. Wright (Crossway, 2007) [PDF download | Amazon]
Posted by C.J. Mahaney
One of my favorite conference experiences EVER was at Ridgecrest, NC for a missions conference with John Piper. BOOM! Awesome. There’s another conference coming up at Ridgecrest this July with a stunning list of speakers called missionSHIFT. Check this out:…
One of my greatest privileges in ministry is working with churches in the United Kingdom. Seeing more and more churches planted there is an absolute thrill. That’s one reason I’m stoked about a conference my buddy Pete Greasley (and his mates at Christchurch) are hosting in Wales this coming July. In moments of unbridled condescension predictably inspired by a pub night, Pete will invite an American to share a conference. I guess that’s how I found myself purchasing tickets to be there and help with the teaching responsibilities. I hope he wasn’t joking, 'cause I'm booked and pretty excited. Here's why.
The conference is called [CO]MISSION UK, and we’re holding it because we want to equip church planters as well as other men that feel called to ministry, and stir ambition for how God could be glorified through their lives. If you’re a church planter in the UK, or if you hope to plant a church there someday, I hope you’ll come. You don’t need to be part of Sovereign Grace Ministries—the conference is for anyone who wants to see gospel-centered (sorry, Brits, I meant “centred”) churches started in the UK. We haven’t locked in all the details yet, but here’s a look at some of what we hope to talk about:
The conference will be July 8–10 at Christchurch in Newport, Wales. Registration is only £25 if you register by May 31. Plus, students come for free—a pretty sweet deal. You can find more info at comissionuk.org. I hope you’ll join us.
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Dave Harvey
leads international expansion and church planting for Sovereign Grace
Ministries and is based in Glen Mills, Pennsylvania. For more
information about the Sovereign Grace church-planting process, click here.
Posted by Dave Harvey
Make plans now to attend the Catalyst Conference this fall in Atlanta. Visit the website right now and register to win a FREE iPAD (which is REALLY cool!) Winners chosen WEEKLY up until the first week of October!!
For 10 years, Catalyst has created moments that have left a mark on each of us, a collective [...]
For this year’s Karl Barth blog conference (coming up in July) I’ll be doing a piece on Barth and Jacob Taubes – I’m also writing up a full version for publication. Here’s the extended abstract:Karl Barth and Jacob Taubes: apocalyptic theology and po…
One of the many highlights from this year’s T4G conference was John Piper’s general-session message, “Did Jesus Preach Paul’s Gospel?” After his message John joined Mark Dever, Ligon Duncan, Al Mohler, John MacArthur, and myself for a panel discussion. At one point in the conversation the discussion focused in on the doctrine of justification by faith and the Christ who justifies, the importance of doctrine, and the value of music. Although the exchange happened in a few brief minutes, it is an exchange worthy of a second look.
At one point Al said the following:
We are very concerned about doctrine, and self-consciously so. We recognize there is no such thing as a doctrine-less Christianity. We cherish these doctrines because we believe they are the very truths that are taught in Scripture, they are the substance and architecture and superstructure of the Christian faith and without which there is no Christianity. So we believe that.
But I think sometimes we can at least talk as if—to put it bluntly—we are justified by the doctrine of justification by faith. And that is not what we are saying. We’re justified by faith.
And I dare say that most of the believers that I have known in the local church, as I’ve had the opportunity to come to know them, could not pass a systematic theology exam. They trust Christ. And their justification is on the basis of faith alone. They believed and they trusted Christ. I want them to know more, I want them to desire to know more, I want them to be able to know the dots and connect the dots. But I think what you [Piper] did tonight was to display, by your exposition of the text and of the doctrine and of its application, what it means actually to trust Christ and what our justification really means.
It’s good for us to recognize the fact that we do need to talk doctrine and, without any apology, to be the defenders of the absolute necessity of doctrinal fidelity, doctrinal substance, doctrinal knowledge. But at the end of the day the ground of our justification is not a doctrine, it is Christ alone.
So how does a pastor help ensure that doctrinal knowledge does not become an end in itself? To this point Piper added the following comment:
A very practical thing for pastors: I asked that we sing when I was done because I really wanted you to be able to say with the heart “all I have is Christ.” I wanted you to say it and sing it. My suggestion for pastors is that you study the music here, the lyrics, and you do the research and get the gospel songs. Sovereign Grace is serving the evangelical movement incredibly, I think. I’m going to qualify my enthusiasm here. I'm totally there, these are my favorite contemporary songs. And it is a narrow slice of culture, it’s a narrow slice of musicality. Know that, and be okay with that, and maybe not limit yourself to that.…It’s amazing how many churches don’t—from their hearts—sing the gospel, sing the glories of justification, sing the glories of substitutionary atonement, sing the glories of the resurrection.
John’s words show us the important relationship between knowing right doctrine and putting that doctrine into lyrics and songs that free our hearts to express our affections to the Savior. And I cannot think about this topic without voicing my appreciation for my friend and my favorite worship leader, Bob Kauflin.
This entire panel discussion is worth a listen and it’s available online here. Audio from all four of the panels is now available online here.
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Photo source: Southern Seminary Communications
Posted by C.J. Mahaney