Some older Trinity posts

March is Trinity month!  So I thought for Thawed-out Thursday I’d link to some older Trinity posts… . God is not revealed in His Twin The Father is perfectly revealed, not by His Twin, not by a Clone, but by Someone who is His Complement.  The Father is revealed in His Son, the Firstborn, His [...]

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Being in Very Nature God – He Humbled Himself

A Repost 6 Christ Jesus, being in very nature God, did not consider equality with God something to be grasped, 7 but made Himself nothing, taking the very nature of a servant, being made in human likeness. 8 And being found in appearance as a man, He humbled Himself and became obedient to death–even death [...]

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Not a scuttling underbelly

Unlike the scuttling basements of many a blog page, the comments section of Christ the Truth is its most redeeming feature.  For those who only get the RSS feed you are missing out. I thought I’d give you excerpts from some of Paul Blackham’s comments which would otherwise languish in the blog’s underbelly. Jesus – [...]

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Christ Alone – sermon

On Sunday I began our Gospel Alone series with this sermon on Christ Alone. Audio here.  Excerpt beneath.  Full sermon at the end. We do not know God except in Christ alone.  We are not saved by God except in Christ alone. Does that sound narrow? It’s only as narrow as Christ is.  So how [...]

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Christology and Hermeneutics [Thawed out Thursday]

It’s common to see a link between christology and our approach to the bible.  There are limits to this but also benefits.  Our approach to both Christ and the bible requires us to encounter something fully human which nonetheless is the Word of God.  Christology can therefore teach us a great deal about how the [...]

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Jesus is Saviour to all

I just heard again that song: ‘Shout to the North’ (lyrics here).  Great tune huh?  What do we think about the lyrics? Years ago I led the music in a church (a very small church you understand, but my knowledge of four guitar chords made me a relative virtuoso). Well happily enough, Shout to the [...]

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Let Jesus be Jesus [A re-post slightly revised]

I’m always banging on about the trinity here. One thing I particularly emphasize is the fact that the distinct Persons maintain their distinct-ness in the unity of the Godhead because this unity is the perichoresis (mutual indwelling) of the Persons.  In fact the distinct-ness is upheld in these relations.  The Father is truly Father because [...]

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If you could choose your family, would you choose yours?

From this sermon on Matthew 1:1-17 preached yesterday. Jesus was the One Person who could choose both His friends and His family. And He chose a family full of liars, prostitutes, murderers, adulterers and idolaters.   All of us would want to cover up the skeleton’s in this genealogical closet.  But on the contrary the bible [...]

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Jesus is God-sized – God is Jesus-shaped

Preached on John 1:1-2 this morning (audio here). My last two points were this: Jesus is God-sized and God is Jesus-shaped   I wonder whether much of our evangelism is aimed at persuading people of point number one.  And I wonder whether that emphasis, if divorced from the second point, is quite dangerous. Here’s what [...]

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Christ our Fountain of Blessing

“We see that our whole salvation and all its parts are comprehended in Christ (Acts 4:12). We should therefore take care not to derive the least portion of it from anywhere else. If we seek salvation, we are taught by the very name of Jesus that it is of him (1 Corinthians 1:30). If we [...]

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Becoming flesh to rise as Spirit

From Peter Leithart The Word became flesh.  He assumed everything that flesh is heir to – all our weakness, all our sorrow, all our sickness and shatteredness, all our godforsakenness, He took to Himself. But not merely to identify or sympathize.  He took it to Himself to overcome it.  He goes to the cross as [...]

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Schori: Not too hung up on the mechanism

From Stand Firm in Faith Any number of things madden me about this: 1. If Jesus is a ‘mechanism’ for Schori – she ain’t a sister.  She’s just not.  If Jesus is incidental to the identity of ‘God’ she’s got the wrong god. 2. Apparently Schori looks to fruits of the Spirit in religious teachers [...]

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Macho Jesus is a false Jesus

I think this is the most blasphemous image of Christ I’ve seen. Brings to mind that pithy saying often heard on the lips of an influential pastor: ‘I refuse to worship a Jesus I could beat up.’  If that logic were followed – would this be the Jesus who is worthy of worship?  Perish the [...]

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Thawed out Thursdays

The dumb thing about blogging is that you’re always burying your old stuff with whatever nonsense occured to you in the shower that morning.  Almost 500 posts on it occurs to me that newer is not necessarily better and, apart from Bobby, I’m not sure how many of you were following the blog from the [...]

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John Owen – Communion with God

John Owen’s masterpiece On Communion with God the Father, Son and Holy Ghost was written at a time when Socinianism (a form of Unitarianism) was infiltrating England.   Their belief (as expressed in the Racovian Catechism) was that Jesus was essential for salvation.  He was manifestly predicted and prophesied in the OT.  The Hebrew Scriptures were indeed a word [...]

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The literal IS the christocentric

I recently re-read Nathan Pitchford’s excellent short article on the reformers’ hermeneutic. His basic point is that Sola Scriptura always leads to Solus Christus.  The literal reading simply is the christocentric reading. For Luther, the grammatical-historical hermeneutic was simply the interpretation of scripture that “drives home Christ.” As he once expressed it, “He who would [...]

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Calvin on Christ in OT

The excellent Marc Lloyd has posted the juciest quotation on Christ the Mediator of all revelation.  It’s from Ronald Wallace’s book Calvin’s Doctrine of Word and Sacrament.  Here he is summarizing Calvin’s view especially of christocentric revelation in the OT. The Mediator of all revelation between God and man in the Old Testament is the Word of God, the [...]

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The Question is God: The Answer is Jesus

Michael Spencer absolutely nails this one.  Go and read the whole thing here.  Here are some highlights: “Anything that one imagines of God apart from Christ is only useless thinking and vain idolatry.”- Martin Luther … …It truly breaks my heart to hear, see or read anyone who is a Christian approaching the subject of [...]

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