A heart for the glory of God and a heart of mercy for the nations make a Christian missionary. These must be kept together. If we have no zeal for the glory of God, our mercy becomes superficial, man-centered human improvement with no eternal significance. And if our zeal for the glory of God is not a reveling in his mercy, then our so-called zeal, in spite of all its protests is out of touch with God and hypocritical.
—John Piper, Let the Nations Be Glad
This post is fantastic, from start to finish. One of my favorite bits:
So long as other local churches aren’t teaching heresy or condoning sin, they’re our allies. That mega-church people have asked me about has made some great strides in the battle against injustice, both in Lexington and around the world. Years ago, one of my closest friends began taking his faith seriously as a result of their ministry. They’re allies, not competition.
And the children’s hospital, the blood center, the homeless prevention center… Competition? Really?!? For Christ’s sake! Literally. Surely we see these as great allies!
“Behold, the days are coming, declares the Lord, when I will raise up for David a righteous Branch, and he shall reign as king and deal wisely, and shall execute justice and righteousness in the land. In his days Judah will be saved, and Israel will dwell securely. And this is the name by which he will be called: ‘The Lord is our righteousness.’”
—Jeremiah 23:5-6
Jesus is not the Son of God by virtue of being the ultimate Israel, nor is he the Son of God by virtue of being the Messiah, the ultimate Davidic king, nor is he the Son of God by virtue of being a perfect human being. Rather, he is the Son of God from eternity, simultaneously distinguishable from his heavenly Father yet one with him, the perfect Revealer of the living God.
—D. A. Carson, Jesus the Son of God:
A Christological Title Often Overlooked, Sometimes Misunderstood, and Currently Disputed
Again, John’s Gospel happily associates Messiah and Son of God, but a passage like John 5:16–30, as we have seen, so deepens what it means to affirm that Jesus is the Son of God that our entire understanding of God and of sonship are enriched and transformed. This is not a mere translational matter. No language, no culture, means by “Son” what Jesus means in John 5—yet “Son” is the category Jesus uses, even though nothing in English, or Urdu, or Arabic, prepares us for a Son of God whose relationship with the Father is anything like what the text describes. All of us—English speakers in London or New York or Baton Rouge, Urdu speakers in Karachi, Arabic speakers in Heliopolis, Kresh speakers in Africa—are necessarily linguistically unprepared for such a vision of God as this.
—D. A. Carson, Jesus the Son of God: A Christological Title Often Overlooked, Sometimes Misunderstood, and Currently Disputed
We increase the intensity, joy, and fidelity of our worship, not by including the verb “to worship” in every second line in our so-called “worship songs,” but by knowing more about God, and bringing our adoration to him, as he is. Insofar as our conceptions of him diverge from what he has disclosed of himself, so far are we worshiping a false god, which is normally called idolatry. To study hard what holy Scripture says about the Son of God, who has most comprehensively revealed his heavenly Father, is to know more about God, and thus to begin to ground our worship in reality rather than slogans.
—D. A. Carson, Jesus the Son of God: A Christological Title Often Overlooked, Sometimes Misunderstood, and Currently Disputed
My latest over at Mere Orthodoxy (and, I think, a good one):
One of the most significant moves Christians can make in the culture wars, then, is to drop the sense of entitlement and the accompanying resentment when things don’t go our way, and to forge in their place a cheerful, Chestertonian (which is to say: friendly and witty and incisive all at once) confidence in the truth of our positions and a deeper trust in the sovereignty of God. When attacked we can respond with good cheer. But how?