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My family is spending the first half of 2018 at Tyndale House in Cambridge, England, while I spend a research sabbatical drafting a commentary on 1 Corinthians for Crossway’s new ESV Bible Expository Commentary series.
The theological journal Presbyterion just published a 17-page article I wrote that is a more detailed version of part of my commentary’s introduction:
Andrew David Naselli. “The Structure and Theological Message of 1 Corinthians.” Presbyterion 44.1 (2018): 98–114.
My conclusion:
Alluring as it may be, eclecticism is a serious threat. It is a decided hindrance to achieving excellence in biblical counseling. The eclectic way offers encouragement from professionals and highly recognized degrees leading to plush positions and money. It requires little original thought and demands virtually nothing in the way of character growth.
There has always been a sinful tendency among God’s people to abandon God and His Word for something else. The entire Old Testament is replete with incidents of the sort. Speaking for God, Jeremiah puts it this way:
My people have committed two evils: they have forsaken Me, the Fountain of living waters, and they have hewn out for themselves cisterns, broken cisterns, that cannot hold water. (Jeremiah 2:13)
This is a serious problem that has plagued the church of Christ ever since counseling began. The problem with eclecticism is that it is based on the idea that the wisdom of man may be blended with the wisdom of God to produce a third and better thing than either provides alone.
In Acts 17:18 the philosophers in Athens used a derogatory word to describe the apostle Paul. They called him a ...
Counseling, like homiletics and most other aspects of ministry, is both an art and a science. There are specific skills to master—the Biblical disciplines of exegesis, hermeneutics, and theology, plus the counseling skills of listening, data gathering, note taking, and assigning good homework. It is an art in that each counselor brings his own personality and judgment to bear as he builds an agenda, decides when to press the indecisive, comfort the afflicted, confront the disobedient, encourage the fainthearted, or instruct the untaught.
As teen growing up in Waterloo, Iowa my pastor was David Moore. He was a kind and gentle man with a personality that embraced everyone in the room. He was not a pulpiteer but even as a young teenager I enjoyed his preaching because I knew and loved Pastor Moore and I knew my pastor loved me. I never remember a time when I met Pastor Moore that he did not give me a huge bear hug. When I left for college Paul Tassell became my pastor. Dr. Tassell was a short dynamo of a man, a powerful preacher, and a no nonsense kind of guy. He was full of joy and energy but he did not suffer a fool gladly. I never doubted his love for his people but he...
God’s providence is a wonderful thing; by it we know that all things work together for the good of His children. In counseling, or preaching, a man of God is able assure others of this fact. He should often revert to that comforting doctrine.
But some are not satisfied with that assurance. They want more. They insist on finding out how God is working out good in any given situation. Sometimes it is apparent how God is providentially at work (or at least partially so), but more often than not we are unable to do more than conjecture about it, Paul—an inspired prophet and apostle—at times found that he could not say for sure what God was doing providentially. In the situation in which Onesimus, a runaway slave came to know Christ through that experience, he writes “perhaps” that is why the event occurred (v.15), but (having no revelation of such facts) will go no further. It would do well for us most of the time to do the same. What we have in this little book of Philemon, interestingly, is an inspired “perhaps.”
The words following are almost always misunderstood.
Father, forgive them because they do not know what they are doing (Luke 23: 34, CSB).
What do they call to mind for you?
That Jesus was kind and forgave those who were crucifying Him. And, therefore, forgiveness is not conditioned upon repentance or faith—He offered it unconditionally!
Wrong! Wrong! Wrong! In those words, Jesus was forgiving no one.
Really?
Really! Read again, more carefully. To whom was He speaking?
Uh . . . to God, I guess.
Right, He was not granting forgiveness to those who were putting Him to death. He wasn’t even speaking to them.
Note, also, that His words were a prayer. Do you think it was answered?
Don’t know—it doesn’t say.
On the day of Pentecost, Peter preached to these same people as well as others. Five thousand Jews believed and were saved. That’s how the prayer was answered. Not apart from a condition—namely repentance and faith in Christ’s death for their sins.
Hmmmm.
Do you see? No one is forgiven unconditionally by God. The condition is always faith as...
This is what the LORD of Hosts says: Ask the priests for a ruling. “If a man is carrying consecrated meat in the fold of his garment, and it touches bread, stew, wine, oil, or any other food, does it become holy?”
The priests answered, “No.”
Then Haggai asked, “If someone defiled by contact with a corpse touches any of these, does it become defiled?”
The priests answered, “It becomes defiled.”
Then Haggai replied, “So is this people, and so is this nation before Me”—this is the LORD’s declaration. “And so is every work of their hands; even what they offer there is defiled.
Haggai 2:11ff is interesting because it gives us important information about sin and righteousness. Here is what it says in interpretation of the Old Testament laws:
What should that mean to you?
First, that you won’t become a Christian by growing up in a Christian home. It will require personal faith on your part as an individual. As a Christian, being among Christians isn’t enough for your growth in righteousness.
Secondly, that if your associations are evil, you can...
In Philippians 4:2, Paul begins the final section of his book to the church at Philippi. He states, “I entreat [urge, plead with] Euodia and Syntyche to agree in the Lord. Yes, I ask you also, true companion, help these women, who have labored side by side with me in the gospel together…” The Bible does not share a great deal of information about these two women. Obviously, they had labored together with Paul and now they were having relational issues. Paul makes some interesting statements here in the passage regarding relational health within the body.
1. Relationships are healthy when Christ is the focus.A.W. Tozer stated, “one hundred pianos all tuned to the same fork are automatically tuned to one another.” What is Paul’s urging here? It is not that Syntyche be in agreement to what Euodia wanted or vice versa. His pleading was that they agree in the Lord. What does Christ want? What is Christ’s objective? Far too often, in a church setting or in our own relationships as believers, we want people to see things from our perspective and, quite honestly, we want people to do things our way. In order to have a healthy...
...to the beloved Gaius, whom I love in truth. Beloved, I pray that in all respects you may prosper and be in good health... I was very glad when brethren came and testified to… how you are walking in truth... you are acting faithfully in whatever you accomplish for the brethren, and especially when they are strangers; and they have testified to your love before the church.
...but Diotrephes, who loves to be first among them, does not accept what we say. For this reason, if I come, I will call attention to his deeds which he does, unjustly accusing us with wicked words... he himself does not receive the brethren... and he forbids those who desire to do so and puts them out of the church.
In the short yet powerful epistle of 3 John, the reader is presented with a comparison. On the one hand there is the Godly leader Gaius who apparently was impacted personally by John’s leadership and ministry. If you look closely at the first several verses, you will notice that John was committed to truth, hospitality and sharing the Lord’s work with other leaders. John was a collaborative leader and Gaius...
Some men feel inadequate in their role as a father, so they withdraw and leave it to their wife to carry the load. Some men feel totally adequate in and of themselves to handle the upbringing of their children.“I got this,” they say to themselves before prayerlessly entering a room to shepherd their teen in […]
The post A Father’s Adequacy appeared first on Church Works Media.
By God’s grace, we’ve printed 135,000 copies of the various Gospel Meditations devotionals. That’s a staggering number. How did it happen? What’s the backstory of the books? Well, it all began with Mother’s Day. It all began with Mother’s Day Churches often struggle to find “just the right gift” to give out to mothers each […]
The post The Gospel Meditations Backstory appeared first on Church Works Media.
Dear Friends, the accuser of the brethren has his name for a reason. He has great contempt for the Cross and the freedom it has provided for us. Even if we’ve come for forgiveness, the adversary wants to convince us to doubt the truth, to question its thoroughness, to live in such a way that we keep the memory of forgiven faults fresh.
God cannot lie. He tells us that the believer who has sought forgiveness from God for his or her sin has been freed. God chooses not to remember those past deeds… puts them behind His back where they cannot be seen and will not be rehearsed again…buries them in the deepest parts of the sea where no man has ever ventured… separates them from us as far as east is from west (for they never meet).
Be blessed today in the assurance that His forgiveness is complete and final. Jesus said “It is finished”…His work as our perfect sacrifice is done. Our God is...
We dropped in at Walmart real quick last night for a few things. I was astounded at the crowd lined up at the pharmacy counter. It’s flu season. We’ve seen it in our home. But please, please be educated.
People, children, have been woefully misdiagnosed with flu when in actuality it was Type 1 Diabetes…and it was too late. So grievous. Kisses for Kycie educates about this very thing. The photo on the right is Katie on Easter, prior to her diagnosis on May 17 of that same year. I thought, “How slim and mature she’s becoming”, and then a few weeks later began the incessant water drinking, the lethargy, the blurred vision… Please look at this graphic and be familiar with it. No one ever thinks it could actually happen to them. But we are here to tell you…yes, it can. I post this each flu season. I’ll continue to do so. Educate...
Dear Mom Friend,
I wonder if this has ever sounded like you:
I’m just mom.
I’m…
I’m…
I’m just mom.
Recently in a school Bible lesson we were listening to, the children in the listening audience were asked to choose the person most inspirational...
This post is a bit of “extra scripture stuff” from my FB Live Becoming MomStrong study. I simply ran out of time to develop this point, so I decided to put it here for whoever wanted to read it, and then post it in the FB group as well.
This point is toward the very end of Chapter 1, on page 14:
MomStrong moms know the Word, and they respond to today’s challenges with God-centered wisdom.
We need to be familiar with the Word so that (as I said in our first session), it becomes woven into the fabric of our speech. We are prone to lean upon our own understanding, but God makes no promises to endorse our “good spiritual ideas”. He does promise to bless His Word.
On Monday we looked at a few verses in Proverbs with regard to what we are building as women in our homes…what kind of foundation are...
I was asked by Dr. Mike Harding to deliver an address titled “The Legitimate Concerns of the Next Generation (An Objective Analysis”) at the Foundations Baptist Fellowship International (FBFI) annual meeting in Troy, Michigan, June 12–13, 2018.
A few prefatory comments: this is inside baseball that readers who do not share my background will not understand; the FBFI is my “denomination.” It is one of the institutions that is trying to preserve the heritage I was handed. And I’ve had legitimate concerns about it for a long time—along with genuine appreciation for what it has given me. Every time I have expected that my legitimate concerns about it would boil over in frustration or get me run out on a rail, another door has opened in front of me to speak to those concerns, to build a bridge between groups within the group, especially between generations. I’m certain not everyone who heard me at the annual fellowship agreed with me on all my points, but all responses were gracious, and some were enthusiastic (particularly but not only from those in my generation). Dr. Bob Jones...
Someone recently asked me for an abstract of my dissertation, Paul’s Positive Religious Affections, and I realized I’d never written one up. Here goes.
Six times in the NT the Spirit of the Lord led Paul to tell his readers to imitate him (2 Thess 3:7; 1 Cor 4:16; 11:1; Phil 3:17; 4:9; 2 Tim 1:13), and two times to praise his readers for doing so (1 Thess 1:6; 2 Tim 3:10; cf. 1 Thess 2:14). His emotional life, insofar as the NT reveals it, is a significant but overlooked portion of his divinely inspired example. Paul’s “religious affections,” revealed through narratives and epistles, are needful for Christian obedience today.
In order to properly understand Paul’s emotional life, readers must understand the Bible’s theological anthropology. This dissertation canvasses major Western views of the will, with special attention to intellectualism and voluntarism, landing on an Augustinian voluntarism—one refracted through the views of John Frame and, especially, Jonathan Edwards.
In order to properly understand Paul’s emotional...
I’m the music director at my church, my wife is one of our pianists. We and another pianist, a very dedicated and skillful lady, recently attended a Majesty Music Conference in order to gain instruction and, frankly, inspiration for a church music program (our own!) we felt was flagging. It’s my fault entirely, of course, that this was the case. But we all needed help. We were not disappointed.
I came away proud of my alma mater, because almost every person teaching sessions was a graduate of BJU. I have heard Warren Cook and his wife Jean perform and conduct music on countless occasions, but I’d never heard them speak or teach. They were nothing short of stupendous. I was in awe, learned 4.3 tons, and could not stop laughing. I’m so grateful for their gifts and training and experience—and their willingness to share it with a small group whose (very reasonable) registration fees must hardly have covered the workshop leaders’ expenses. Somehow I doubt they were in it for the money. The others who presented did very well, too. The Majesty staff served my church faithfully with the gifts the Lord has given them. Five weeks on, after our church’s first ever choir “...
I have been asked to address the Annual Fellowship of the Foundations Baptist Fellowship International in June, 2018, in Troy, Michigan, on this topic: “The Legitimate Concerns of the Next Generation (An Objective Analysis).”
Now, every Christian worships within some tradition or other, even if some don’t like to admit it because it threatens their claim to be the only true tradition! The tradition I was handed in God’s providence has often been one such tradition, but I don’t think it has to be: independent Baptist fundamentalism. To be clear, because that tradition has split over the KJV, I’m in the 25% (?) of that tradition that values education* and is decidedly not KJV-Only.
No one wants to take the title “fundamentalist” in public (good thing this blog is so obscure), and I’m not unaware that the title is both fraught and fought over—and despised by almost everybody. I’m all too aware that the label lumps me in with sectarians and other people I’m not proud of, and puts an artificial gap between me and other believers whose books and blogs I...
This was utterly, absolutely fascinating. I laughed out loud with joy to hear these residents of Mumbai defend their English and criticize ours (see especially starting around 1:10). Why did I find this so funny/interesting?
Because it overturns American expectations in an extremely healthy way, linguistically speaking. The truth is, even though Americans now know we’re not supposed to say it out loud, we tend to regard Indian English (and Kenyan English and Singaporean English, if we ever encounter them) as “sounding funny.” Whereas Brits and Aussies (and Canadians and Scots and the Welsh and Irish) use English accents that sound familiar through our exposure to British TV, and whereas they use accents to which we feel they have a right; Indians are (we tend to suppose) all speaking English “wrong” because (we tend to suppose) they speak it as a second language. Indeed, the way the real-life young Indians in this video talk is just a beat off from what we would say. (I still found it all perfectly intelligible, but I noticed that the captioner silently “corrected” it to fit American norms.)
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