Weekly Roundup: Unsettled by the Bible, Simul Justus et Peccator, etc.
Unsettled by the Bible, justified and a sinner, how to be a family, putting the pretty lyrics of 1 Corinthians 13 back into the church.
Resources
Expect the Bible to Unsettle You | Scott Hubbard | Desiring God
What a refreshing read! The Scriptures should shock us, surprise us, challenge us, rebuke us. Don’t expect the sword of the Living God to always come gently!
As you come to your Bible, then, expect God to do just what he says he will: teach you, reprove you, correct you, train you (2 Timothy 3:16). Might we even be so bold as to pray for him to do so? “Whatever idols need to be shattered, shatter them. Whatever lies need to be broken, break them. Discomfort me, rework me, unsettle me — whatever it takes to bring me to you.”
What Does “Simul Justus et Peccator” Mean? | R. C. Sproul | Ligonier Ministries
It’s good to hear Sproul again. Yet gone, he still speaks.
Show Us How to Be a Family | Adriel Sanchez | TableTalk Magazine
This is another article from the October 2019 issue of TableTalk, in which seasoned saints write letters to younger ones, and vice versa.
Now, we’re trying to lead our own homes, but it isn’t easy. It’s like entering a dark, furnished room for the first time. You inch about, but you can’t help but run into the couch or the coffee table. The ultimate hope is that we’ll learn the landscape of marriage and family before—to continue the metaphor—knocking over an expensive vase and doing serious damage. Your guidance is critical, and I’d like to share just a few ways I think you can provide it.
Putting the pretty lyrics of 1 Corinthians 13 back into the Church | Jonathan Leeman
The consumer mind-set and the mind-set of submission to the whole body are diametrically opposed to one another. One employs the church and all its resources for its own pleasure. The other gives itself and all its resources over to the church for God’s pleasure. …It’s in this context that Paul grabs back to pretty lyrics of 1 Corinthians 13 from the wedding party and reads it to the local church. Do you want to exercise, practice, enact, embody, and define the glorious love of heaven, he asks us? Then do it in a local church, a church where factions are pitted against one another (1 Cor 1:12–13), where people have big heads (4:8), where members are sleeping with their fathers’ wives (5:2), where members are suing and defrauding one another (6:1–8), where members are getting drunk on communion wine and not leaving enough for others (11:21–22), where spiritual gift one-upmanship is rife (chaps. 12, 14), where the meetings are threatened by disorder (14:40), and where some are saying there is no resurrection of the dead (15:12). Bind and submit yourself and your gifts to these kinds of people. Love them with patience and kindness, without envy or boasting, without arrogance or rudeness, not insisting on our own way, not irritably or resentfully, not rejoicing at wrongdoing but rejoicing at the truth.
People often complain about the sinners they find in the local church, and with good reason. It’s filled with sinners, which is why Paul calls Christians to love one another by bearing all things, believing all things, hoping all things, enduring all things. If you won’t love such backstabbers and defrauders like this, don’t talk about your spiritual gifts, your vast biblical knowledge, or all the things you do for the poor. You are just a noisy gong. Don’t talk about your love for all Christians everywhere; you are just a clanging cymbal. But if you do practice loving a specific, concrete people, all of whose names you don’t get to choose, then you will participate in defining love for the world, the love which will characterize the church on the last day perfectly because it images the self-sacrificing and merciful love of Christ perfectly. 1
Leeman, Jonathan. The Church and the Surprising Offense of God’s Love: Reintroducing the Doctrines of Church Membership and Discipline. Crossway, 2010, p. 210-211. ↩︎
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