SUBSCRIBER LOGIN






Search First Things

Advanced Search

RSS

Masthead

Recent Comments

  • Blake: People who have serious cognitive deficiencies often have serious problems seeing their own intrinsic worth....
  • Truth Unites... and Divides: “For those of us who are devotees of both history and literature, we recognize,...
  • Raymond Takashi Swenson: One of the most quoted verses in the NT us John 3:16, but it is part of an argument Jesus...
  • Hodge: Volk, I wanted to point out that I ignored your arguments because they weren’t arguments. They were...
  • Constantine: This was hardly an innovation of Augustine. After all, the resurrected Christ made this plain on the...
  • jason taylor: The Federal government is not a village. Nor is pointing that out merely being pedantic. A real village...
  • Archives

    Categories

    Monthly


    « Previous  |Home|  Next »         

    Thursday, October 22, 2009, 8:47 PM

    “It is the unhurried meditation on gospel truths and the exposing of our minds to these truths that yields the fruit of sanctified character.”
    – Maurice Roberts, The Thought of God

    Or as my friend Ray Ortlund says, “Stare at the glory of God until you see it.”

    Very few Christians get gospel wakefulness because it sounds so ethereal, intangible. And aside from the facts that Jesus Christ is material and tangible and that what he did was physical and historical, the process of gospel wakefulness is kinda ethereal and intangible. It’s supernatural. It happens in the regenerate heart and overflows into the sanctified life.

    But it results from gospel proclamation and transformation (Rom. 1:16; 10:14).
    And this is why all the practical tips in the world won’t save a dang soul.

    Lazarus didn’t need 7 steps. He needed Jesus’ resurrecting word.

    2 Comments

      rhoober
      October 23rd, 2009 | 1:33 am | #1

      Thank you for this reminder. I’m really thankful for this post.

      Frank Turk
      October 23rd, 2009 | 5:59 am | #2

      You know what Jared? We need to do lunch. This post was a good post until the last line, and then it becomes a great Christ-exalting post post with the one-sentence sermon.

      Don’t you have a book out that needs reviewing?