And God Forsakes His Son: Jesus Is Cursed

[HT:Kevin DeYoung]

C. J. Mahaney: "But don't I need more than the cross?"

Thanks to Tim Brister for this C. J. Mahaney quote...

Do we ever move beyond the cross, beyond the gospel? Is there any sense in which we "graduate" from the gospel? The question Mahaney is addressing is, "But don't I need more than the cross?"

“In one sense, the answer is no. Nothing else is of equal importance. The message of Christ and Him crucified is the Christian hope, confidence, and assurance. Heaven will be spent marveling at the work of Christ, the God-Man who suffered in the place of us sinners.

In another sense, the answer’s yes. You do need more. You’ve been saved to grow, to serve in a local church, to do good works, and to glorify God. But the ‘more’ you need as a follower of Christ won’t be found apart from the cross. The gospel isn’t one class among many that you’ll attend during your life as a Christian–the gospel is the whole building where all the classes take place! Rightly approached, all the topics you’ll study and focus on as a believer will be offered to you ‘within the walls’ of the glorious gospel.

Name any area of the Christian life that you want to learn about or that you want to grow in. The Old Testament? The end times? Do you want to grow in holiness or the practice of prayer? To become a better husband, wife, or parent? None of these can be rightly understood apart from God’s grace through Jesus’ death. They, and indeed all topics, should be studied through the lens of the gospel.”

- C.J. Mahaney, Living the Cross-Centered Life: Keeping the Gospel the Main Thing (Sisters, OR: Multnomah, 2006), 149-150.

When a burden allows the burdened to fly...

"Christ's cross is such a burden as sails are to a ship or wings to a bird."

- Samuel Rutherford, The Loveliness of Christ, pg. 21

In less than one paragraph, D.A. Carson demolishes the church growth movement...

I certainly wish that I would have read this when it was published...back in 1993:

Ever so subtly, we start to think that success more critically depends on thoughtful sociological analysis than on the gospel; Barna becomes more important than the Bible. We depend on plans, programs, vision statements - but somewhere along the way we have succumbed to the temptation to displace the foolishness of the cross with the wisdom of strategic planning. Again, I insist, my position is not a thinly veiled plea for obscurantism, for seat-of-the-pants ministry that plans for nothing. Rather, I fear that the cross, without ever being disowned, is constantly in danger of being dismissed from the central place it must enjoy, by relatively peripheral insights that take on far too much weight. Whenever the periphery is in danger of displacing the center, we are not far removed from idolatry.

- From D.A. Carson, The Cross and Christian Ministry: Leadership Lessons From 1 Corinthians (1993), p. 26.