So naturally, when we planted Coram Deo in 2005, we started a new blog as a place to hash out our thinking. If you go back and read the archived posts from 2005 and 2006, you’ll see lots of good healthy dialogue as our launch team wrestled through the dynamics of creating a theologically rich, missionally focused, city-center church. When Walker joined Coram Deo in 2006, we parked Musings and made the Coram Deo Blog our main outlet for writing, creativity, and interactive learning. For the past five years, we’ve enjoyed a rich season of theological reflection, satire, vision, and humor.

And now, in 2011, the time has come to make another shift. With the departure of my co-creators Kendal Haug and Will Walker into the work of church planting, the Coram Deo Blog has lost much of its creative punch. Additionally, in God’s providence, Walker and I – and Coram Deo in general – have established a broader reputation for creating good gospel-driven resources. And as technology has progressed, resources like The City by Zondervan (which both Coram Deo and Providence use) have begun to facilitate the kind of communication and interaction that was previously possible only through the blog format.

So as of this month (April 2011), the Coram Deo blog will not see any new posts. In its place, I will be writing on a new site called bobthune.com. In addition, Walker and Kendal and I are planning a broader gospel resource website that we hope to roll out sometime later this year. And we’ll be utilizing The City more fully for internal communication within our churches.

Perhaps you’re thinking: a website named bobthune.com? That certainly seems assertive. We toyed with all sorts of other names because I hate anything that smacks of self-promotion. But in the end, this domain just made the most sense. Here’s why:

• It’s primarily a personal blog and website. It doesn’t make much sense to retain the title “Coram Deo Blog” when I’m the only person consistently writing on behalf of Coram Deo.
• Not all my writing is “on behalf of Coram Deo.” This was one of our most consistent frustrations with the Coram Deo blog. Both Walker and I are human beings who love to write, and who often form convictions and hash out ideas through our writing. On the Coram Deo blog, discussion was often stifled because people assumed that our opinion was the “official pastoral position” on any given issue. Bobthune.com makes it clear that I am writing on my own behalf and not always on behalf of Coram Deo.
• God has given me a ministry that is broader than Coram Deo. I spend time coaching church planters, teaching on gospel renewal, and training leaders in missional-church dynamics. It’s tough to know how to categorize these resources effectively and make them available to people who want them. When I teach at a church planting conference, do we put that audio up on the Coram Deo podcast? When I write something that’s specifically intended for church planters, should we post it on the Coram Deo resources page, or does that just confuse people? Bobthune.com will be a clearing house for those broader resources, allowing cdomaha.com to remain focused on our particular mission in the city of Omaha.

Logistics: The BLOG link on the main cdomaha.com page will redirect to bobthune.com. The Coram Deo blog will remain accessible at www.cdomaha.com/blog, though it will not receive new posts. If you use an RSS reader, I’d encourage you to point it to bobthune.com. Rest assured that the death of the Coram Deo Blog does not mean the death of any good content… rather, it marks an escalation of good content via bobthune.com, The City, the Coram Deo and Providence Austin websites, and other online resources still in development.

The fruit of our brainstorming session was a nine-week study we titled The Gospel-Centered Life. That fall, God used it to bring about a mini-revival within Coram Deo. Some people were converted. Others began to identify deep patterns of idolatry and unbelief. They began asking if they could send the material to their friends, their parents, their youth pastor. And we began to discern that maybe the Holy Spirit had used our gifts to create something that could be helpful to others. So we sent the study off to World Harvest Mission, an missions agency in Philadelphia from whom we had borrowed some of the concepts. The GCL material sat idly on a desk at WHM for a couple of months until one of my former seminary professors mentioned it to WHM’s director. That conversation put in motion a chain of events that forged a partnership and led to the eventual publication of The Gospel-Centered Life in 2009.

The response to GCL has been an overwhelming sign of God’s grace. It’s sold over 50,000 copies. It’s been used by churches and ministries all over the globe. It’s been translated (officially and unofficially) into a handful of foreign languages. Almost weekly we hear stories that cause us to celebrate; just today I heard from a man who’s using GCL with prison inmates and has seen four men converted to Jesus in the past four weeks. And WHM has been an incredible partner in the whole journey. They have displayed humility and grace even in such mundane matters as working out intellectual property rights. At every turn they have modeled what kingdom-minded, Christ-centered partnership should look like.

Late last year, WHM admitted that handling GCL and other printed materials was starting to tax their resources. They are a missions sending agency, not a publishing house. They started producing gospel resources for much the same reason Coram Deo did – not out of a desire for mass market, but as a way to serve their own people. Filling 50,000 orders was never a part of their business plan.

Enter New Growth Press – a small boutique publisher with a “gospel niche.” NGP’s catalog consists primarily of books and resources put out by the Christian Counseling and Educational Foundation (CCEF), an offshoot of Westminster Seminary focused on biblical counseling. Seeing an opportunity to expand their array of gospel resources, NGP struck a deal with World Harvest to handle all of their print publishing. The material is still marketed through WHM, but NGP handles all the printing and fulfillment. So now World Harvest is free to focus on training and sending foreign missionaries. NGP gets to focus on producing high-quality gospel resources. And as a side benefit of the partnership, The Gospel-Centered Life gets a facelift!

Until now, GCL has only been available as a digital download. But as of this month, in addition to the digital version, New Growth has released a very nicely produced hard copy that’s about the size of a small journal. So if your printer has run out of ink – or if your non-tech-savvy grandma wants a good gospel-centered Bible study resource – you now have a solution. You can buy both the Participant’s Guide and the Leader’s Guide in various quantities at the WHM bookstore.

Thanks to all of you who have helped make The Gospel-Centered Life a success. May the cross loom larger in your life – and in the church at large – as you rediscover the transforming power of the gospel.

Coram Deo Baptisms – Feb 2011 from Coram Deo Church on Vimeo.

When we interview people for baptism, we ask them to write a short account of how they were converted. Here are some of the excerpts from our most recent baptism candidates:

“Jesus died for me and for my salvation. At the cross, he bore my sin upon his shoulders. Why? Because God’s love is so indescribably I can’t even begin to fathom its beauty. For this I say, thank you and I love you.”

“I know that I belong to Jesus because, by grace, I have become a new creation through the faith given to me by God. It is only by God’s grace that, on September 19, 2010, I walked into a worship gathering at Coram Deo as an unbeliever and walked out as a disciple.”

“When I consider what Jesus did on the cross three adjectives ring true for me: precious, costly, and beautiful.”

“I know I belong to Jesus. I previously scoffed that the story of Jesus sounded like a fairytale, but now consider Jesus my only hope.”

“He showed me the self-centeredness of my faith and sinfulness of my heart, how nothing I had done or ever could do made me deserving of Him, and that his death on the cross was not just a nice concept but a real event that changed everything — it reconciled me to my creator God, who was big and holy but who knew me deeply and loved me.”

I’m back in that same space today. But it’s not the same. Local art hangs with purposeful randomness from the repainted walls. Drums, guitars, microphones, and effects pedals sit idly on the handmade stage as if beckoning me to wait around for a jam session. Neat rows of chairs fill the room from front to back – someone clearly expects quite a few people to show up. And a close look at the ceiling trusses suggests hours of thoughtful ingenuity: new electrical conduit, fresh lighting, carefully designed speaker supports, subtle LCD-projector mounts. Someone has made this space their own.

That someone is Two Pillars Church. A year ago Two Pillars consisted of Acts 29 church planter Todd Bumgarner and his wife and kids. Today it boasts almost 50 committed core members and a weekly attendance that’s pushing 100. The first floor of this historic Haymarket building has become “The 815” – the Sunday morning home of Two Pillars and a sometime art-gallery-and-music-venue that has become a contributor to the local culture of downtown Lincoln.

I love church planting because I love Jesus. But I also love church planting because of what it does for cities, communities – and spaces. Eight-fifteen O Street has become a hub of life, activity, cultural contribution. People care about this space. People have owned this space. And they’ve begun to steward it for the good of the city. It has a vibe of life and joy and creativity. When you walk in the door, you think: I want to be here when the band is playing and the candles are lit and people are milling about. There’s a compelling attractiveness to this place.

The 815 is living proof that the gospel renews not just people, but places. Locations. Addresses. When the gospel is at work, people begin to view their life – and their real estate – as a part of something much bigger than themselves. The Christian hope in their souls begins to flow out in their tangible assets. They take care of stuff. They make things better. They use what they have to bless others. And brick by brick, the city becomes a more beautiful place.

God has blessed our community with a healthy pursuit of what Anselm called “faith seeking understanding,” characterized in our core value as learners.  We are an intellectual lot, both on the communal and individual level, seeking to pursue right understanding of and obedience to what God has revealed of Himself in his word.  Perhaps as a result of this we are collectively inclined toward the more readily tangible realities, which our mind is able to grasp.  But one result of this in our church, as well as the evangelical church at large, is that we have developed a rather large blind spot in our intellectual life, and thus worship life.  This blind spot is the substance and the work of the Holy Spirit.  Our predilection for the tangible is further compounded by the fact that many of us become a bit uneasy when it comes to the idea of a spiritual realm intersecting with our material realm.  The following is a bit of a book review of The Holy Spirit by Sinclair B. Ferguson.  My goal is not to convince you to read this particular book but rather, through some of my reflections from study, to encourage our community to pursue understanding of and appropriate emphasis on the Holy Spirit.

A. W. Tozer has some penetrating words about what we do and do not readily believe God is like:

“The most portentous fact about any man is not what he at a given time may say or do, but what he in his heart conceives God to be like… That our idea of God correspond as nearly as possible to the true being of God is of immense importance to us.  Compared with our actual thoughts about Him, our creedal statements are of little consequence.  Our real idea of God may lie buried under the rubbish of conventional religious notions an may require an intelligent and vigorous search before it is finally unearthed and exposed for what it is.”

If we do the work of exposing our actual beliefs about God, many of us would find ourselves with very real conceptions of God as one who is distant.  To be sure, we assent to and truly believe that God has intervened in a hopeless would in sending Jesus, our Immanuel or God with us.  And we hope in the day when sin will be ultimately defeated.  Further, we may be confident that he has called us to Himself and that we live with a new status as sons and daughters.  But when it comes to the time in between, or what has classically been referred to as the age of “already but not yet,” we too often perceive a God that is away for the weekend.  In other words, we live on the hope of a God that has come and will come again, but we neglect the great hope of a God who is currently in us and with us.  A result is that in the process of being conformed to the image of Christ we find ourselves relating to a God who acted at a series of points in time, but we must now do the hard work on our own, albeit with the resources given us in the initial work of Jesus’ death and resurrection.

The implications of this are twofold.  Primarily, the de-emphasis in the modern Church on the Holy Spirit is at its core a worship problem, resulting from the entertainment of thoughts about God that are unworthy of Him.  The work of the Spirit from Genesis 1 and throughout the Bible reveals a God of creativity, presence, power, intimacy, order, purpose, and companionship among other attributes.  This is what God is like, and He is worthy of our full worship for who He is.  The knowledge of the reality of His presence inevitably culminates in Christ-exaltation, as Ferguson says, “Jesus the Messiah becomes the thirsty one under God’s covenant curse, so that to those who are thirsty he may hand over his thirst-quenching Spirit.”  God became flesh and suffered in order that he might fulfill a promise that he so longed to fulfill (Ezek 36:26-27).  We must be a people that is striving to ascribe to God the Glory due His name.

A second implication of our neglect of the Spirit of God is rooted in that previously stated.  What we believe about God and His present relation to us greatly affects our daily activities.  The bible commonly pairs “indicatives,” what God has done for us, and “imperatives,” what we are to then do. Paul provides one of many applications of this as regards the Holy Spirit with a pattern for dealing with sexual immorality.  While offering commands (imperatives) regarding sex, he reminds the Christians of what is already true of them, “Do you not know that your body is a temple of the Holy Spirit within you, whom you have from God?  You are not your own, you were bought with a price (1 Cor 6:19-20).”  The reality of the indwelling of the Holy Spirit has major ramifications in how we approach areas of sin, relationship to our Father, and mission.  We must learn to live with an acute awareness of the inhabitation of a personal God – this is the cure for a mechanical spirituality.  This awareness helps define our proper role and enables us to live within it.  Many of us with utmost sincerity pursue the imperatives of the bible to follow Christ, obeying his commandments, but many of us do this without knowing the raw materials we are working with.  Just as no man would go on building a house without sizing up his inventory, we also ought to begin to uncover the raw materials with which we are working.  The size, approach, and grandeur of the goal rely on this principle.  In this the indwelling of the Holy Spirit is truly revolutionary, because unparalleled with any material project, in our pursuit of holiness we have the executor of holiness in us.  Our expectations for the elimination of sin and the extent of transformation in our lives should be adjusted accordingly.

Another freeing aspect of the indwelling of the Holy Spirit is that he is another counselor (allos parakletos in Greek).  This is an old forensic term, which describes one who is a legal advocate or character witness.  He would not be a hired professional but a friend who vindicates you by telling the truth.  Now, another counselor implies a first counselor, who is Jesus.  As Hebrews depicts, Jesus dwells in the heavens pleading our case and demanding acquittal before a just God based on the facts of what He has done.  He is the star witness in our case.  But God has bestowed on us a further blessing, in that He gives us another advocate here on earth.  In this, the Holy Spirit pleads with us when our hearts condemn us.  Just as Satan is described as our adversary or plaintiff, the Spirit defends and comforts us in our hearts when we feel condemned.  He confirms in us that we are God’s beloved (Rom 5:5) and are his sons and daughters (Rom 8:16), continually appealing to the facts of the case.  That is, when our world and our hearts try to convince us that we need to build our own reputation or that we are not good enough for relationship with God, what we desperately need is to hear the voice of our advocate, our allos parakletos, who whispers a comforting truth in the midst of a cacophony of lies.

If we would follow Christ through His Spirit in a world filled with half-truths, we must seek and train ourselves to discern the “Wisdom of God,” which is “spiritually discerned” (1 Cor 2:6-16).

As Dallas Willard eloquently points out, “Understanding is the basis of care.  What you would take care of you must first understand, whether it be a petunia or a nation.  If you would care for your spiritual core – your heart or will – you must understand it.”  Let us pursue a knowledge of the Holy Spirit with at least as much intention as gardening.  My further hope is that we would pursue this in community, and it must, indeed, be in community to stave off the quackery of which we are so reticent.

One resource that I would recommend as a starting place is the work by Ferguson previously noted.  It is not bedtime reading, as it is densely packed, but in it you will find a solid foundation for this pursuit, rooted in historic biblical Christianity.

Last Saturday we hosted a unique event for men called Sexual Detox Day. Many have asked for access to some of the notes and statistics we referenced… so here they are.

Why did we call it Sexual Detox Day? From Tim Challies: “Detoxification takes place when something has gotten inside you that doesn’t belong there and needs to be removed. If it stays or builds up, you will only get sicker… Detox therefore is a reset to normal, a return to health. It’s the reversal of a corrupting, polluting process. It gets you back to where you ought to be” (Challies, Sexual Detox, Cruciform Press 2010).

We need a “reset to normal” in our understanding of sexuality. Why? Because we live in a porn-saturated culture.

• Dr. Jason Carroll and his colleagues published a widely cited paper in the Journal of Adolescent Research revealing that 87 percent of college males and 31 percent of college females view pornography.
• Porn is a 60 billion dollar a year industry. $3000 a second.
• More money is spent on porn than on pro baseball, basketball, football combined.
• In the last 10 years, Americans have spent more money each year on pornography than on foreign aid.
• A new porn film is made in the US every hour.
• The average child sees porn for the first time at age 11.
• Porn accounts for 25% of the search requests on Google.
• (Stats compiled from various sources including Mars Hill Church, Salvo Magazine, and personal research)
  

Colossians 3:5 instructs us to “put to death what is earthly in you: sexual immorality, impurity, passion, evil desires, and covetousness, which is idolatry.” Our sin is not to be managed, hidden, or tolerated; it is to be killed.

HOW DO YOU PUT SIN TO DEATH? (A basic paradigm of gospel change)

• You are enslaved (Jn 8:34: whoever commits sin is a slave of sin)
• You need to be set free; Jesus is the one who can do that
• The way he sets you free is by demanding your worship
• Sin is ultimately a worship problem. Underneath your external sin (porn/lust) is a false God that you are worshipping.
• That false God maintains power in your life through a set of lies (Satan is a liar, the Father of lies, a counterfeiter)
• In light of this, the process of biblical change is really pretty simple:
  • replacing lies with truth
  • so that the power of idols is broken
  • and you can repent and worship Jesus freely “in Spirit and in truth” (instead of worshipping your idols)
• You put sin to death by replacing lies with truth and worshiping Jesus instead of idols.

Our goal at Sexual Detox Day was to apply this change model to porn. As a means of disempowering our idols, we tackled four common lies men believe that keep them enslaved to pornography. Guys have specifically asked for my notes pertaining to the first lie; so they are posted below.

Lie #1: It’s Not That Big a Deal

• In other words: “This is something all guys struggle with… It’s bad, it’s not preferable… but it’s not the end of the world.”
• Question: If a guy in here were addicted to heroin, would that be a big deal?
• Keep that connection in mind, and let me talk for a few minutes about neuroscience.
• You’ve probably heard the analogy that your brain is like a computer. A standard computer has hardware and software. But your brain doesn’t have that distinction. Neurosurgeons use the word “plasticity” to describe the brain – the hardware of your brain actually changes in response to input.
• The highest level of your brain is the neocortex. That’s also the most plastic part of your brain. It’s a densely connected network of neurons that grows and changes over time in response to stimuli.
• When you master a difficult sport or learn to play the piano, you form neural connections that actually increase the amount of tissue in your brain. In other words: The physical makeup of your brain changes.
• Dr. Jeffrey Satinover is a Harvard-educated psychiatrist who studies sexual behavior. He makes the following observations:
  • “Complex patterns of behavior become progressively more ‘embedded’ in actual physical changes in the brain itself… Behaviors become increasingly strengthened through repetition. This strengthening physically alters the brain in a way that cannot be entirely undone… our responses, in other words, become ‘second nature.’”
  • [In other words: if you are habitually looking at pornography, you are literally changing the structure of your brain.]
  • “The pleasure areas of the brain are most intensely activated at the moment of sexual orgasm. The mechanism whereby this occurs is chemical… the chemical released from the nerve endings is a special type called an ‘opioid,’ meaning ‘opium-like…’ Apart from the repetitive ingestion of such external opiates as heroin, no experience is more intensely pleasurable.”
  • “When biological impulses – especially the sexual ones – are not at least partially resisted, trained, and brought under the civilizing influence of culture and will, the pressure to seek their immediate fulfillment becomes deeply embedded in the neural network of the brain… in short order, unregulated sexual tendencies become habits, then compulsions, and finally something barely distinguishable from addictions.”
  • [So habitually acting on your sexual impulses creates a chemical dependency in your brain that’s exactly the same as heroin addiction.]
  • [All quotes from Jeffrey Satinover, M.D., Homosexuality and the Politics of Truth, Baker Books 1996]
• This is a huge deal. Pornography and lust are changing the physical makeup of your brain. This isn’t some ethereal, “spiritual” struggle; it’s a biological, neurological one.

We said some other things in pursuit of holy, Christlike masculine sexuality… but some of them aren’t suitable for all audiences.

The famous American Bible teacher Donald Grey Barnhouse often used an illustration to help people make sense of election. He asked them to imagine a cross like the one on which Jesus died, only so large that it had a door in it. Over the door were these words from Revelation: ‘Whosoever will may come.’ These words represent the free and universal offer of the gospel. By God’s grace, the message of salvation is for everyone. Every man, woman and child who will come to the cross is invited to believe in Jesus Christ and enter eternal life. One the other side of the door a happy surprise awaits the one who believes and enters. For from the inside, anyone glancing back can see these words from Ephesians written above the door: ‘Chosen in Christ before the foundation of the world.’ Election is best understood in hindsight, for it is only after coming to Christ that one can know whether one has been chosen in Christ. Those who make a decision for Christ find that God made a decision for them in eternity past.

Without realizing it, we have during the past century bartered [the] gospel for a substitute product which, though it looks similar enough in points of detail, is as a whole a decidedly different thing… This new gospel conspicuously fails to produce deep reverence, deep repentance, deep humility, a spirit of worship, a concern for the church… It fails to make men God-centred in their thoughts and God-fearing in their hearts, because this is not primarily what it is trying to do. One way of stating the difference between it and the old gospel is to say that it is too exclusively concerned to be “helpful” to man—to bring peace, comfort, happiness, satisfaction—and too little concerned to glorify God. The old gospel’s centre of reference was unambiguously God. But in the new gospel the centre of reference is man. This is just to say that the old gospel was religious in a way that the new gospel is not. Whereas the chief aim of the old was to teach men to worship God, the concern of the new seems limited to making them feel better. The subject of the old gospel was God and His ways with men; the subject of the new is man and the help God gives him. There is a world of difference. The whole perspective and emphasis of gospel preaching has changed.

The old gospel tells men that they need God, but not that God needs them (a modern falsehood); it does not exhort them to pity Christ, but announces that Christ has pitied them, though pity was the last thing they deserved… Thus it labours to overthrow self-confidence, to convince sinners that their salvation is altogether out of their hands, and to shut them up to a self-despairing dependence on the glorious grace of a sovereign Saviour, not only for their righteousness but for their faith too.

It is not likely, therefore, that a preacher of the old gospel will be happy to express the application of it in the form of a demand to “decide for Christ,” as the current phrase is. For, on the one hand, this phrase carries the wrong associations. It suggests voting a person into office—an act in which the candidate plays no part beyond offering himself for election, and everything then being settled by the voter’s independent choice. But we do not vote God’s Son into office as our Saviour, nor does He remain passive while preachers campaign on His behalf, whipping up support for His cause. We ought not to think of evangelism as a kind of electioneering. And then, on the other hand, this phrase obscures the very thing that is essential in repentance and faith—the denying of self in a personal approach to Christ. It is not at all obvious that deciding for Christ is the same as coming to Him and resting on Him and turning from sin and self-effort; it sounds like something much less, and is accordingly calculated to instil defective notions of what the gospel really requires of sinners. It is not a very apt phrase from any point of view.

- from Packer’s Intro to John Owen’s The Death of Death in the Death of Christ

Q6. Did God, then, create man so wicked and perverse?

A. No, on the contrary, God created man good and in His image, that is, in true righteousness and holiness, so that he might rightly know God His Creator, heartily love Him, and live with Him in eternal blessedness to praise and glorify Him.

Q7. From where, then, did man’s depraved nature come?

A. From the fall and disobedience of our first parents, Adam and Eve, in Paradise, for there our nature became so corrupt that we are all conceived and born in sin.

Q8. But are we so corrupt that we are totally unable to do any good and inclined to all evil?

A. Yes, unless we are regenerated by the Spirit of God.

Heidelberg Catechism, Lord’s Day 4 (to be recited at Coram Deo’s Sunday gathering on 1/22/11)

Q9. Is God, then, not unjust by requiring in His law what man cannot do?

A. No, for God so created man that he was able to do it. But man, at the instigation of the devil, in deliberate disobedience robbed himself and all his descendants of these gifts.

Q10. Will God allow such disobedience and apostasy to go unpunished?

A. Certainly not. He is terribly displeased with our original sin as well as our actual sins. Therefore He will punish them by a just judgment both now and eternally, as He has declared: Cursed be every one who does not abide by all things written in the book of the law, and do them (Galatians 3:10).

11. Q. But is God not also merciful?

A. God is indeed merciful, but He is also just. His justice requires that sin committed against the most high majesty of God also be punished with the most severe, that is, with everlasting, punishment of body and soul.

I particularly love this crisis because I’ve experienced it myself. The basic storyline goes like this: good Bible-believing Christian student goes to college. College Religion department employs professor who takes arrogant pleasure in deconstructing the Christian faith. Professor appeals to “higher criticism” while stroking beard convincingly in order to discount, discredit, and discourage Christian theism. Student feels stupid in front of classmates, has crisis of faith, and begins to doubt prior convictions.

I resolved this crisis for myself by spending countless hours in libraries combing the primary sources – Albert Schweizer and David Strauss and Rudolf Bultmann and Friedrich Schliermacher and a few dozen other guys with German names. Present-day college students can save themselves some time by consulting a single chapter in Alvin Plantinga’s Warranted Christian Belief.

Plantinga makes his money in the field of epistemology (the study of how we know what we know). His concern is to show that Christian belief is epistemically warranted – that is, that Christians are not morons, dolts, or fools for believing the great things of the gospel. In chapter 12 of his magnum opus, Plantinga contrasts two types of Scripture scholarship.

The first kind of scholarship is the kind that actually believes the Bible to be the Word of God. Plantinga labels this traditional biblical commentary and observes that it has three features: it sees Scripture as authoritative and trustworthy, it assumes that God himself is the principal author of the Bible, and it assumes a divine meaning that may transcend the human author’s immediate purpose (think, for example, of fulfilled prophecy).

“For at least the last couple of hundred years, there has also been a quite different kind of Scripture scholarship: historical biblical criticism (HBC). There is much to be grateful for with respect to HBC; it has enabled us to learn a great deal about the Bible we otherwise might not have known… However, HBC is fundamentally an Enlightenment project… [It] eschews the authority and guidance of tradition, magisterium, creed, or any kind of ecclesial or ‘external’ epistemic authority. The idea is to see what can be established using only the light of what we would call ‘natural, empirical reason’… [It] is often thought of as part and parcel of the development of modern empirical science, and indeed practitioners of HBC like to drape about their shoulders the mantle of modern science. The attraction is not just that HBC can perhaps share in the prestige of modern science, but also that it can share in the obvious epistemic power and excellence of the latter.”

College philosophy professors usually appeal to historical biblical criticism with an air of smug confidence in its “obvious epistemic excellence.” As Plantinga chides: “Many academic theologians and scripture scholars appear to believe that HBC is… the only intellectually respectable variety of scripture scholarship… Everyone who is properly educated and has read his Kant and Hume (and Troeltsch) and reflected on the meaning of the wireless and the electric light knows these things; as for the rest of humanity, their problem is simple ignorance.”

But some pesky Christians aren’t swayed by such erudite snobbery. They actually demand cogent arguments. Problem: there aren’t any. “There is no compelling or even reasonably decent argument for supposing that the procedures and assumptions of HBC are to be preferred to those of traditional biblical commentary.” At bottom, the blustering Religion prof at Creighton is starting from a presupposition – a more modern and fashionable one than historic Christian orthodoxy, perhaps, but a bare presupposition nonetheless. “[The critic] offers no argument for this assumption, merely announcing it as what those ‘in the know’ believe.” Plantinga can’t resist a little epistemological humor: “The argument ‘If X were true, it would be inconvenient for science; therefore, X is false’ is at best moderately compelling.”

For the benefit of college freshmen everywhere whose professors are not telling them the whole story, Plantinga outlines the considerable lack of consensus within HBC. “According to Barbara Thiering… Jesus was buried in a cave; he didn’t actually die and was revived by the magician Simon Magus, whereupon he married Mary Magdalene, settled down, fathered three children, was divorced, and finally died in Rome. According to Morton Smith, Jesus was a practicing homosexual and conjurer… G. A. Wells goes so far as to claim that our name ‘Jesus,’ as it turns up in the Bible, is empty; like ‘Santa Claus,’ it doesn’t trace back to or denote anyone at all. John Allegro apparently thinks there was no such person as Jesus of Nazareth; Christianity began as a hoax designed to fool the Romans and preserve the cult of a certain hallucinogenic mushroom.” And Thomas Sheehan claims that Jesus was actually an atheist. So much for the triumph of “natural, empirical reason.”

At the end of the day, the emperor has no clothes. Historical biblical criticism has produced little more than “wide-ranging disagreement… We don’t have anything like assured results (or even well-attested results) that conflict with traditional Christian belief in such a way that belief of that sort can continue to be accepted only at considerable cost.”

In other words: rest easy, dear college student. The historical biblical critics are little more than a minuscule sect worshipping at the altar of their own academic self-importance. They have nothing on “the faith once for all handed down to the saints” (Jude 1:3).

The question for Germans in the 1930s is the same question we face today. When do state concerns begin encroaching on the authority of the church to a point where the church needs to shout “halt”? If the church is healthy and is playing its role correctly, it will check the unbridled growth of the state and will protect its own members–and others, too–from illegitimate state power. Bonhoeffer wrote about this in his famous essay “The Church and the Jewish Question.” He said there were three ways that the church must behave with regard to the state. First, it must question the state. In a sense it must call the government to account, and be a voice that speaks out if and when the state is not behaving legitimately. Second, if the state is harming anyone, it’s the role of the church to help those whom the state is harming. And thirdly and most radically, if the state is behaving wrongly, it is the role of the church to directly oppose the state. That’s where he lost a lot of people. They couldn’t believe a good Lutheran German would say such a thing. But Bonhoeffer was a Christian first and a German second.

Such state encroachment usually concerns the fundamentals, such as the definition of a human being. The Nazis did not believe that human life was sacred, because they didn’t believe that human beings are created in the image of God. They were essentially pagans with a social Darwinist worldview and they began to “legally” define humanity according to this bleak, utilitarian worldview. So a German Jew was no longer a human being in the way a Gentile German was a human being. And a mentally or physically handicapped person was no longer equal to others and was therefore “disposable.” Jewish babies could be legally aborted, but German babies could not. The Nazis began to define such things in a way that aggressively challenged the beliefs of all serious Christians, so the church had to make a choice: be the church and fight the state on these issues, or accede to the state’s definitions of humanity and effectively cease to be the church. Most in the church simply acceded to the Nazi’s definitions. Those who didn’t give in formed what came to be known as the Confessing Church. Bonheoffer was one of its leaders, of course.

A related parallel has to do with Christianity itself. What is it and who gets to decide? The Nazis didn’t like certain things about the Christian faith, so they simply decided to redefine Christianity. This is always the great danger and it’s happening in our time as well. When we decide that we want to dispense with two-thousand-year-old teachings because they don’t suit us, because they strike us as old-fashioned or culturally uncomfortable, we had better be careful. One opens the door to things one hadn’t anticipated. God’s truths are eternal, or they aren’t God’s truths.

Another parallel concerns the properly Christian response to aggression and evil. Many Christians feel uncomfortable with pointing the finger at something and calling it evil, even if they feel threatened by it, but this may render them unable to confront it. Others on the opposite end of the spectrum don’t give a fig for God’s perspective and will do whatever it takes to defeat what they think of as evil. But Bonhoeffer does the hard work of asking, “What is the Christian perspective?” He saw the Nazis as evil. There’s little question of that. And he was frustrated with his fellow Christians who were uncomfortable with that idea, who were all too willing to cut the Nazis slack and continue “dialogue” with them. Bonhoeffer knew that he must confront the evil of the Nazis. The only question was how to do it. What was God saying to do?

Militant and radical Islamofascism forces us to ask these same questions. To minimize its threat is to effectively appease it, but to confront it in a way that denies the humanity of its adherents is not a Christian approach. So what is the Christian approach? Bonhoeffer trod a very lonely road in figuring this out in his day, but I think he points the way for us today. We need Bonhoeffer to help us figure this out. His warning to the church in the 1930s essentially went unheeded, but it’s my hope that today we might hear what he has to say and let it guide us toward the proper approach on this crucial issue.

Read the whole interview at Harper’s Magazine

In his magnum opus on the subject of epistemology entitled Warranted Christian Belief, Alvin Plantinga quotes directly from the Heidelberg to propose a philosophically rigorous definition of faith:

According to Mark Twain, faith is ‘believing what you know ain’t true;’ this only slightly exaggerates a common use of the term to denote a belief that lacks warrant and, indeed, is unlikely with respect to what does have warrant for the believer… A second way the term is used is to denote a vague and generalized trust that has no specific object, a confidence that things will go right, a sort of Bultmannian sitting loose with respect to the future, trusting that one can deal with whatever happens.

However, I am using the term in a different sense from any of those. My sense will be much closer to that which the Heidelberg Catechism (following John Calvin) ascribes to ‘true faith’:

True faith is not only a knowledge and conviction that everything God reveals in his word is true; it is also a deep-rooted assurance, created in me by the Holy Spirit through the gospel, that, out of sheer grace earned for us by Christ, not only others, but I too, have had my sins forgiven, have been made forever right with God, and have been granted salvation. (Q. 21)

Plantinga goes on to leverage this Heidelberg understanding of faith against skeptics who claim that Christian belief lacks epistemological warrant.

Historic, orthodox liturgy ain’t just beautiful, folks… it’s useful. Meditate on its formulations of Christian theology and you’ll become a wiser, more articulate spokesperson for the faith once for all handed down to the saints.

Q1. What is your only comfort in life and death?

A. That I am not my own, but belong with body and soul, both in life and in death, to my faithful Saviour Jesus Christ. He has fully paid for all my sins with His precious blood, and has set me free from all the power of the devil. He also preserves me in such a way that without the will of my heavenly Father not a hair can fall from my head; indeed, all things must work together for my salvation. Therefore, by His Holy Spirit He also assures me of eternal life and makes me heartily willing and ready from now on to live for Him.

Q2. What do you need to know in order to live and die in the joy of this comfort?

A. First, how great my sins and misery are; second, how I am delivered from all my sins and misery; third, how I am to be thankful to God for such deliverance.

Heidelberg Catechism, Lord’s Day 2 (to be recited at Coram Deo Sunday gathering, 1/9/11)

Q3. From where do you know your sins and misery?

A. From the law of God.

Q4. What does God’s law require of us?

A. Christ teaches us this in a summary in Matthew 22: You shall love the LORD your God with all your heart, and with all your soul, and with all your mind. This is the great and first commandment. And a second is like it, You shall love your neighbour as yourself. On these two commandments depend all the law and the prophets.

Q5. Can you keep all this perfectly?

A. No, I am inclined by nature to hate God and my neighbour.

• $35,000 for Coram Deo December budget
• $30,000 to give to inCommon Community Development to fund their 2011 operating budget
• $30,000 to put in the bank for the Coram Deo building fund

The year ended last week… then we got some additional gifts in the mail that had been delayed… total giving = $93,934 for December!!

Thanks to all of you who were so generous in helping us reach this goal. On Sunday 1/9 we will present a check for $30,000 to Christian and Sonya Gray and their team at inCommon. And when combined with a similar effort in 2008, we now have over $55,000 in the bank in a reserve account for a future building… which isn’t much when you’re talking about commercial real estate, but at least it’s something.

If Coram Deo is your church, please continue to be generous with what God has given you. We need to see a consistent increase in monthly giving during 2011 in order to be faithful to the opportunities God has given us.

May God be glorified and his mission furthered as a result of our stewardship.

In general, there are three reasons we profess our faith together every week:

The first reason we profess our faith together is to consecrate ourselves to the Lord.  Even in the Old Testament, part of the regular rhythm of worshipping God involved consecrating or “setting yourself apart” to God.  For the Israelites, this meant offering sacrifices or participating in ritualistic cleansing.  But for us, it means being set apart through our union with Christ and our obedience to his word.  Professing together the truths we believe about Jesus is one way of marking ourselves as God’s people and setting ourselves apart for his purposes.

The second reason we profess our faith together is to root ourselves in historic Christian faith.  You may have heard us say before that we are always trying to think old thoughts about God.   Because we believe the Bible when it says that God handed down the faith to the saints once and for all a long time ago – we believe that trying to think new or novel thoughts about God will only lead us to error and sin.  Using historic professions of faith is one way that we can protect against this error and to align ourselves with what our Christian brothers and sisters have believed for centuries.

The third reason we profess our faith together is that it is just a good way to learn theology.  Our professions usually state the fundamentals of Christian belief in very frank, straight-forward way that is easy to understand and easy to learn.  This is beneficial training for everyone in the room on Sundays, whether you are a non-Christian trying to learn more about the faith or whether you are believing and following Jesus.  We all need to be shaped in our theology, and professing our faith together is one means of accomplishing that goal.

In 2011, we are going to spend the whole year professing our way through the Heidelberg Catechism, one week at a time. Why the Heidelberg Catechism? Well, for starters, it is broken out into fifty two sections – there are fifty two weeks in the year, which is convenient. Second, it is widely regarded as one of the most beautiful and gospel-centered of the historic statements of the faith.

Some historical context: The Catechism was written in the Palatinate (a region in Germany) in 1563, just as the Reformation was coming to a close.  At the time, Calvinists and Lutherans, even though united in their love for Jesus and their high view of scripture, were having some bitter disputes about some secondary issues of the faith.  A few of the disputes were even becoming violent. Elector Frederick the Third, who was essentially the governor of the region, decided that this couldn’t go on.  So he commissioned two theologians to get together and write a catechism that could bring both sides together and unite them in their common belief in Jesus and their high view of Scripture. As a result, we get a very warm, very personal statement of the faith that is very focused on the good news of Jesus and is also very well supported by Scripture. We  think it will be an excellent resource to us in consecrating ourselves to God during our worship, rooting us in the historic Christian faith and teaching us some good theology along the way.

• Gospel growth throughout Coram Deo due to the Gospel-Centered Life series (fall 2010)
• Providence Austin Church Plant (summer 2010)
• Numerical growth
• Worship team depth
• Release of Coram Deo’s first worship album – Doxology (April 2010)
• Rollout of The City to improve community and communication (October 2010)
• Summer Eldership Study
• Continued development of liturgy for Sunday AM gathering
• Commissioning of new deacons and elders (May 2010)
• Development of new Coram Deo Premarital content
• Our 5-Year birthday party @ the Doubletree (Nov 2010)
• The launch of Porterbrook Omaha (Sep 2010)
• Moving to a new, more flexible office space (July 2010)
• Growing regional influence for church planting
• Seeing people become worshipers of Jesus

Thanks, Coram Deo, for your faithfulness to God and to his mission. May we experience His grace even more deeply in 2011.

Here, then, is a dose of refreshment from Alvin Plantinga, a now-retired Notre Dame philosophy professor whose day job is to match wits on the field of ideas with prominent atheists like Daniel Dennett, Richard Dawkins, and Christopher Hitchens. Such a cogent, concise, accessible summary of the gospel is rare in most churches, let alone in a volume of graduate-level academic philosophy!

We human beings were created in the image of God: we were created both with appropriate affections and with knowledge of God and his greatness and glory. Because of the greatest calamity to befall the human race, however, we fell into sin, a ruinous condition from which we require rescue and redemption. God proposed and instituted a plan of salvation: the life, atoning suffering and death, and resurrection of Jesus Christ, the incarnate second person of the trinity. The result for us is the possibility of salvation from sin and renewed relationship with God. Now God needed a way to inform us – us human beings of many different times and places – of the scheme of salvation he has graciously made available. No doubt he could have done this in many different ways; in fact he chose to do so by a three-tiered cognitive process.

First, he arranged for the production of Scripture, the Bible, a library of books or writings each of which has a human author, but each of which is also specially inspired by God in such a way that he himself is its principal author. Thus, the whole library has a single principal author: God himself. In this library, he proposes much for our belief and action, but there is a central theme and focus (and for this reason this collection of books is itself a book): the gospel, the stunning good news of the way of salvation God has graciously offered.

Correlative with Scripture and necessary to its properly serving its purpose is the second element of this three-tiered cognitive process: the presence and action of the Holy Spirit promised by Christ himself before his death and resurrection, and invoked and celebrated in the epistles of the Apostle Paul. By virtue of the work of the Holy Spirit in the hearts of those to whom faith is given, the ravages of sin (including the cognitive damage) are repaired, gradually or suddenly, to a greater or lesser extent. Furthermore, it is by virtue of the activity of the Holy Spirit that Christians come to grasp, believe, accept, endorse, and rejoice in the truth of the great things of the gospel. It is thus by virtue of this activity that the Christian believes that “in Christ, God was reconciling the world to himself, not counting men’s sins against them” (2 Corinthians 5:19).

According to John Calvin, the principal work of the Holy Spirit is the production (in the hearts of Christina believers) of the third element of the process, faith. Like the regeneration of which it is a part, faith is a gift; it is given to anyone who is willing to accept it. Faith, says Calvin, is “a firm and certain knowledge of God’s benevolence toward us, founded upon the truth of the freely given promise in Christ, both revealed to our minds and sealed upon our hearts through the Holy Spirit” (Institutes, III, ii, 7). Faith therefore involves an explicitly cognitive element; it is, says Calvin, knowledge – knowledge of the availability of redemption and salvation through the person and work of Jesus Christ – and it is revealed to our minds. To have faith, therefore, is to know and hence believe something or other. But faith also involves the will: it is “sealed upon our hearts.” By virtue of this sealing, the believer not only knows about the scheme of salvation God has prepared, but is also heartily grateful to the Lord for it, and loves him on this account. Sealing, furthermore, also involves the executive function of the will: believers accept the proffered gift and commit themselves to the Lord, to conforming their lives to his will, to living lives of gratitude.

- from Alvin Plantinga, Warranted Christian Belief (New York: Oxford University Press, 2000), 243-244.

My favorite online research tool, Bible Gateway, now gives the option of displaying “New International Version 1984” (NIV1984 for short) or “New International Version 2010” (which inherits the plain old “NIV” designation). In other words: last month, “NIV” meant the 1984 version, but this month, “NIV” means the 2010 version. Not sure what marketing genius was behind this nomenclature, but it’s sure to complicate things for everyone. (“I’m reading from the NIV.” “Which NIV?”).

There’s an intriguing back story to this development. In 1997 Zondervan announced it was going to revise the New International Version – at that time the world’s best-selling Bible – to make it gender-neutral. Christians balked at the publisher’s capitulation to feminist ideology. Because the decision was made in a back room with little public interaction, WORLD magazine dubbed the project “The Stealth Bible.” Facing a tremendous backlash from its core market, Zondervan scrapped the plan and left the NIV unchanged.

A few years later, the publisher quietly released a gender-neutral version called the TNIV (for Today’s New International Version). But in the meantime, Crossway had published the English Standard Version, a warm and readable translation which retained the masculine pronouns of the Greek and Hebrew text. The ESV rapidly gained market share; TNIV sales fell flat. Apparently, the NIV 2010 (or just plain NIV?) is Zondervan’s attempt to breathe new life into the NIV.

A few editorial observations:

• If it ain’t broke, don’t fix it. When you have a strong product that enjoys over 50% of the market share (which the NIV had prior to 1997), why would you tinker with it? Execs at Zondervan are undoubtedly asking that question as they watch their market share decline.
• As a general rule, for-profit publishers holding copyrights for Bible translations is a bad idea. It leads to a proliferation of “new translations” which are really just profit engines for publishers. We don’t need any new English Bible translations; the ones we have are more than adequate. But don’t expect the flood of new versions to stop. The publishers are making good money. (This is one reason I prefer the New American Standard Bible, whose copyright is held by a nonprofit foundation.)
• Clamoring to adapt to the latest cultural fashion isn’t always a great idea… because fashions change. Even the conventions for gender-inclusive writing have changed. In the 90’s, the standard was to use “he/she,” “him/her,” etc. But writers and editors soon left the clunkiness of that format behind, choosing instead to alternate back and forth between male and female pronouns. Likewise, “humankind” was all the rage for awhile, but “mankind” is back – because it’s intuitively obvious that mankind includes everyone.

Zondervan’s attempt to be more sensitive to gender-conscious readers is in many ways commendable. On the downside, it makes for less fluid reading. As an example:

• Romans 8:29 (NIV1984): ²⁹ For those God foreknew he also predestined to be conformed to the likeness of his Son, that he might be the firstborn among many brothers.
• Romans 8:29 (NIV2010): ²⁹ For those God foreknew he also predestined to be conformed to the image of his Son, that he might be the firstborn among many brothers and sisters.

Of course, “brothers and sisters” draws out the full intent of the text. But I contend that it’s intuitively obvious – even to the newest Bible reader – that “brothers” means “brothers and sisters.” Does translating it that way explicitly, every time, really make for a more readable translation? Or does it merely insult the reader’s intelligence?

Regardless of your answer to that question, be advised: if you read the NIV, the NIV you get for Christmas won’t be the same as the NIV on your shelf. Now you won’t be confused.

So we have much to learn from Christians who are ‘public intellectuals’ – especially those who work in the field of philosophy. Christian philosophers like Peter Kreeft and Alvin Plantinga make their living in the world of peer-review journals and interdisciplinary dialogue. They have learned the art of thoughtful debate. They listen well to opponents. And they make the case for Christianity thoughtfully, intelligently, and patiently.

Plantinga has spent over five decades working to defend Christianity as a plausible system of belief. In his master work Warranted Christian Belief (Oxford University Press, 2000), he isolates objections against Christianity into two categories:

• De facto objections state that Christianity simply isn’t true.
• De jure objections state that Christianity, whether true or not, is rationally unacceptable and/or unjustified.

In Plantinga’s own words:

De facto objections are relatively straightforward and initially uncomplicated: the claim is that Christian belief must be false (or at any rate improbable), given something or other we are all alleged to know. De jure objections, by contrast… are much less straightforward. The conclusion of a [de jure] objection will be that there is something wrong with Christian belief – something other than falsehood – or else something wrong with the Christian believer: it or she is unjustified, or irrational, or rationally unacceptable, in some way.

De facto objections are the ones students historically study in college intro-to-philosophy classes. They present challenges that the classical theistic arguments for the existence of God seek to answer (“If evil exists, then God doesn’t”). But in our day and age, thoughtful Christians are more likely to encounter de jure objections: Christians are fools, simpletons, or intellectually inferior for believing what they do. As Richard Dawkins told the New York Times: “If you meet someone who claims not to believe in evolution, that person is ignorant, stupid, or insane.”

Christians should consider how to respond not just to those who say, “Christianity is incorrect,” but also to those who say, “Christians are stupid.” These are different objections. They require different answers. Which one do you encounter more frequently?

Our normal monthly budget is $35,000. That’s what we need to give in December to keep things going. But in addition to that, we’re seeking to raise an additional $30,000 to fund the operating budget of inCommon Community Development, an agency we’ve partnered with for years in seeking to help homeless, at-risk, and disadvantaged people in our city.  On top of that, we’d like to put another $30,000 in the bank to save for a building (whenever and however God might provide that). Add it all up: we’re seeking $95,000 in December.

We’ve done something like this every year, and every year God has provided. Even friends from outside Coram Deo traditionally get involved. If you’d like to help, you can mail a check to the Coram Deo offices (address on the ‘Leaders’ page of our website) or give in the offering box on Sunday morning.

Thanks for helping us build not just a great church, but a great city for all people.

CD Five-Year Anniversary: Mark Driscoll from Coram Deo Church on Vimeo.

Nothing we can do but chalk it up to “stuff happens” and move on. Someday we will live in a new heavens and a new earth in which there will be no more brokenness!

(Needless to say we are looking for a new hosting solution for our content.)

That’s a thoughtful question. There are essentially three ways to approach it:

• The Postmodern Answer: “There IS no difference. Both religion and psychotherapy/self-help are attempts to construct meaning in a world that has none.”
• The Fundamentalist Answer: “They are completely different. All ‘worldly’ systems (like psychotherapy/self-help) are of the devil and have no truth in them. Only the Bible is true.”
• The Biblical-Theological Answer: “Since the biblical storyline is true, we should expect that the effects of the Fall are known and felt by everyone. Psychotherapy/self-help may not diagnose the problem correctly (sin), but these disciplines do acknowledge that there is a problem (something is wrong with the world/myself). And for that reason we should expect some similarities in various approaches to ‘helping.’”

David Powlison makes this same point in his excellent book Seeing With New Eyes. He writes: “All counseling models – whether secular or religious – are essentially differing systems of ‘pastoral care and cure.’” And, observes Powlison, each system is made up of four components.

1. Concepts are the first and defining ingredient in any system of counseling. Every theory defines its version of human nature and the dynamics of human motivation. Every theory defines or assumes an ideal of human functioning by which problems are named and solutions prescribed… The various personality theories and psychotherapies differ from each other – and from the Bible – in the ways they explain people and in the solutions they offer. The Bible’s truth competes head-to-head with other models… Instead of ‘psychopathology’ and ‘syndromes,’ we see ‘sins’ against [God], and we see sufferings that are ‘trials’ revealing our need for a true Deliverer and refuge.
2. A counseling model also involves methods designed to facilitate a change process… Ephesians 4:15 crystallizes two central actions [in biblical counseling]: truth-speaking and loving. Of course, every other counseling methodology contains some analogy to or counterfeit of these. But Paul infuses loving conversation with its true contents and intentions: God-centered, Christ-centered, redemptive, and pastoral.
3. Third, every counseling model entails a “delivery system,” a social structure. Ideas and practices inhabit institutions. In modern America, the “mental health system” is a vast complex of higher education, hospitals, publishers, third-party insurers, drug companies, licensing boards, and private practice psychotherapists. But the loving truth and truthful love of Ephesians 4:15 come embedded in a different social system: the church community. God’s new society in Christ, come into its own and coming into its own, is the institution for counseling ministry…
4. The fourth element in every counseling model is apologetics… We make the case for what we believe is true and good. We subject competing models to systematic questioning. We defend our own model against critics. We develop our model under the stimulus of criticisms by others. We seek to win others. Each of the modern psychologies ministers its own distinctive “word;” each disciples its hearers into its particular ideal “image;” each criticizes other psychologies (and Christianity) for misconstruing the human condition. We also critique them from our standpoint.

[from David Powlison, Seeing With New Eyes: Counseling and the Human Condition through the Lens of Scripture (Phillipsburg, NJ: P&R, 2003).]

We don’t believe the gospel because it’s totally different from any other approach to change. We believe it because it’s true. It correctly diagnoses the problem with us and with the world (sin). It offers a true and compelling answer (repentance and faith in Jesus’ sacrifice for sin, which brings about a new orientation – living for God and His kingdom instead of myself). And it brings true and lasting change by freeing us from self-worship/idol-worship, which are the source of all sin.

We worshipped our way into this mess, and we’re going to have to worship our way out.