What He Must Be
Voddie Baucham has written a book that griped my attention right off, the book is titled What He Must Be… If He wants to Marry my Daughter and since I have a daughter, and two sons for that matter, I indeed wanted to know what to look for in a husband for her while at the same time raising my sons to be Godly husbands.
I want to thank Crossway books for allowing me to be involved in this blog tour. Over the next couple of days I will be posting excerpts along with discussion questions to see what others think. It is also my pleasure to announce that I am able to give away two copies of this book if you would like receive one of these copies email me at reformedfirehouse@gmail.com with your name and mailing address be the first two to respond and I will send you a copy.
Here is today excerpt:
Imagine a family who did not prepare their children for college. This would be unthinkable in today’s world. Everyone prepares their child for an academic future. Day-care programs boast about the head start they will give children in their “academic careers.” We buy houses in neighborhoods with “the best schools.” Beyond that, many families place their children in expensive preparatory schools, enduring tremendous financial burdens, incurring debt, and commuting hours each day in an effort to give their children an edge in that all-important race for the apex of academia.
However, little thought is given to preparing our sons to be husbands. Thus, they meander through life without the skills or mind-set necessary to play this most important role until one day, having met “the one,” they pop the question, set a date, and-in the rarest of cases-go to the pastor to learn everything they need to know about being the priest, prophet, provider, and protector of a household in four one-hour sessions. In the words of that great theologian Dr. Phil, “How’s that workin’ for ya?”
As a result, we have families led by men who haven’t the foggiest idea what their role is or how to carry it out. We have wives who were created with a God-given need to be led by godly men, a curse from the days in the garden that puts them at odds with this arrangement, and a cultural mandate to fight against male headship. Top this off with children who long for the security that can only be found in clear roles and boundaries in the home, and the result is a frustrated family mired in dysfunction. Sound familiar?
If we have any desire to change this, we must begin to prepare young men to be husbands and fathers. We must stop preparing them for lives of selfishness, immediate gratification, and perpetual adolescence if we ever expect to turn the tide. The skills required of a husband and father take a lifetime to acquire. Our sons must begin to acquire them sooner rather than later. If we prepare our children to be husbands and wives, and God calls and equips them to be single, we have lost nothing. On the other hand, if we do not prepare our children to be husbands and wives, and they (like the overwhelming majority of people) end up married someday, we have lost a great deal. Prudence would point toward the necessity to prepare our children for marriage, and to do so with all diligence.
From What He Must Be: If He Wants to Marry My Daughter by Voddie Baucham ©2009, 42-44. Used by permission of Crossway Books, a publishing ministry of Good News Publishers, Wheaton, Il 60187, www.crossway.org.
And today’s questions:
What He Must Be is built on the premise that fathers have a God-given responsibility to see to it that their daughters marry well and that their sons become worthy husbands. What does it mean to prepare a son or a daughter for marriage? Is this really a fundamental duty of parents?
(Legh Richmond, “Domestic Portraiture” January 6, 1825)
For the most part, we are a nation of Christians by profession–and a nation of heathens in practice. There is to be found in the religious world–what may be termed–a pretty, cultured sort of evangelism, which too well combines luxurious ease, and serving of the world, and the flesh–not to say of the devil also. But such kind of religion will not prepare the soul for sickness, death, and eternity. At best, it will leave the soul a prey to the most fearful delusions of false peace. The way that leads to eternal life is much more narrow than many of our modern professors are aware of–the gate is too straight to allow all their trifling, and self-will, and worldliness, and carnal-mindedness, to press through it.
“Enter through the narrow gate. For wide is the gate and broad is the road that leads to destruction, and many enter through it. But small is the gate and narrow the road that leads to life, and only a few find it.” Matthew 7:13-14
HT: Grace Gems
If you don’t think how you speak about God then listen to how this young man thought he was saved at the age of 6.
(Arthur Pink, “The Call of Christ”)
“Come unto Me, all you who are weary and heavy laden–and I will give you rest.” Matthew 11:28
What did our Lord here signify, when He bade all the weary and heavy laden to come unto Him?
It is quite evident that coming to Christ is something more than a physical act. Coming to Christ in the sense He here invited, is a going out of the soul after Him, a desire for Him, a seeking after Him, a personal embracing of and trusting in Him. It is the heart turning from the love of sin–to the love of holiness; from SELF–to the Savior!
A saving coming to Christ denotes a turning our backs upon the world–and turning our hearts unto Him as our only Hope and Portion. It is the abandoning of every idol–and the surrendering of ourselves to His Lordship. It is the repudiation of our own righteousness and every dependency, and the heart going out to Him in loving submission and trustful confidence. It is the entire going out of SELF with all its resolutions and performances, to cast ourselves upon His grace and mercy. It is the will yielding itself up to His authority to be molded by Him, and to follow Him wherever He may lead.
In short, coming to Christ is the whole soul of a guilty and self-condemned sinner–turning unto a whole Christ, in the exercise of all our facilities, responding to His claims upon us, prepared to unreservedly trust, sincerely love, and devotedly serve Him.
quote suppleid by Grace Gems
Is this emergent gobblty goop the true life saving Gospel?
Now compare the above to this:
HT: A Litte Leaven
There is nothing that I enjoy more than studying good, sound Biblical theology, however what good is the soundest theology if we don’t apply it to our life and be transformed by it with the help of the Holy Spirit. This is what Mark Driscoll attempts to do with his book Death by Love, more specifically applying the theology of the Cross. He generally states this in the first paragraph of the preface by telling us:
Because no one is born into this world with a theology, each generation must rediscover the truths of Scripture for itself. In doing so it must labor to connect the unchanging answers of God’s word with the ever-changing questions of its culture. Sometimes this project is successfully undertaken, and the result is a glorious resurgence of a faithful and fruitful Christian church. Sometimes this project is unsuccessfully undertaken, and the tragic result is false teaching that renders the church impotent to see the power of the gospel unleashed because she either has a false Jesus or is embarrassed by the real one. (9)
And later he narrows down his methodology when he tells us that:
This book is an attempt at faithfulness to the timeless truths of Scripture that have served the church well since the first promise of Jesus’ suffering was pronounced by God to our first parents in the garden. We hope to present the timeless truths of the cross in a timely manner that is biblically faithful, culturally, relevant, and personally helpful. Our objective is to think God’s thoughts after him as revealed in Scripture, and if at any point we fall in this, we ask God’s forgiveness and your kindness. (12, 13)
Mr. Driscoll does indeed stay faithful with God’s Holy Word, yet this book is written in a way that enabled him take “the many sides of the great jewel of the cross” and show us how to apply it to our dark and desperate world. He begins with an introduction entitled “We Killed God: Jesus is Our Substitutionary Atonement.” In each of the following chapters Pastor Driscoll describes a situation with a real person that he has talked with in his role as a pastor in one of the most unchurched cities in America, Seattle, WA. At times these peoples stories will break your heart, other times they will stir up a part of you that cries out for justice, however at all times we see people that Christ has died for. After he gives us this understanding of the people he pastors, Mark Driscoll then writes a letter to them explaining how the Cross of Christ can be applied to them and how this finished work can heal them.
This book does a wonderful job taking the totality of Christ’s work on the Cross and applying it to peoples’ lives. The following are the theological aspects of the Cross that Mark Driscoll tackles in this book: substitutionary atonement, Christus Victor, redemption, new covenant sacrifice, the gift of righteousness, justification, propitiation, expiation, unlimited limited atonement, ransom, Christus Exemplar, reconciliation, and the revelation of God in Christ Jesus. After each chapter there are further questions asked and answered, presumably by co-author Gerry Breshears. Combine all of this with an appendix with a thorough reading list of books that delve even deeper into the Cross and you get a wonderful book that glorifies the beauty of the Cross.
In a day and age in which the Cross has been down played entirely or simply used as a band aid to patch every want and need imaginable, R. C. Sproul has written a timely and concise book dealing with the subject of the Atonement. This book is rich in theology while at the same time it remains easy to understand. Dr. Sproul tells us why he chose this time period to write this book when he says “I doubt there has been a period in the two thousand years of Christian history when the significance, the centrality, and even the necessity of the cross have been more controversial than now.” This is no small concern considering he has been in the ministry for well over thirty years. If this is indeed true-and I believe it is-than this book is right in time and it will go a long way in helping to regain what has so tragically been lost in American Christianity, the Cross of Christ. Dr. Sproul goes on to tell us that there are basically three types of view on the atonement: those that believe it is absolutely unnecessary, those that believe it to be only hypothetically necessary, and the classical, orthodox view that it is absolutely necessary; he states that “If we are defective in understanding the character of God or understanding the nature of sin, it is inevitable that we will come to the conclusion that an atonement was not necessary.” (p 15) This statement is made in the first chapter after R.C. has made a very solid case for the necessity of the Atonement.
Dr. Sproul continues by moving to the next chapter entitled The Just God. Here R.C. clarifies one the most overlooked aspects of God’s character, that being that God is just , saying “God is loving, but a major part of what He loves is His own perfect character, with a major aspect being the importance of maintaining justice and righteousness. Though God pardons sinners and makes great provision for expressing His mercy, He will never negotiate His justice. If we fail to understand that, the cross of Christ will be utterly meaningless to us.”(p 19) It is here that this book begins to go from good to great, because Pastor Sproul doesn’t just give us his opinion, he opens up the Bible and begins to teach from it, beginning in Gen 18 and expositing all throughout Scripture Dr. Sproul leaves no stone unturned in helping us understand the truth of the Cross and all its beauty. This book is truly written in a way that will benefit Christians of every maturity level.
There are only two other issues that I have with this book the part I liked most and the part I feel could have been left out. Beginning with the part that could have been left out and that is the chapter on limited atonement. While I fully believe and am growing in my understanding of the Doctrines of Grace, the L is the one petal on the TUILP flower that I truly have more to learn about. The only reason I feel this chapter could have been left out is the fact that it does tend to divide the body bitterly, however the more I thought about it the more I realized that if he had removed this chapter then he would not have given us the complete truth of Cross but only a shorten version of it. Even in this chapter we are shown how great of a Bible teacher he is and how he can take such a complex issues as this and explain them in laymen’s terms. For example he states “The real heart of the controversy over limited atonement is this question: what was God’s intent or His design in sending Christ to the cross? Was it the purpose of the Father and the Son to make an atonement that would be made available to all who would put their trust in it, with the possibility that none might avail themselves of its benefits? In other words, was God’s purpose in sending Christ to the cross simply to make salvation possible? Or did God from all eternity plan to send Christ to die a substitutionary death in order to effect an actual atonement that would be applied to certain elect individuals?” and then explains it like this ” People have trouble with that, particularly if I use those words to describe the doctrine. What if I say Jesus went to the cross to make an atonement for believers, and only for believers? In that statement, I declare that it was God’s design that Jesus should die not for everybody indiscriminately, but only for those who would believe. If you accept that, you see that only the elect are believers and that only believers are the elect. I’m not saying anything different when I say that Christ died only for the elect. Can you conceive of people who are believers who are not elect, or of people who are elect who are not believers?” He continues to explain this out of the text of Scripture and at the very least gives the reader a basic understanding of their Calvinist brothers.
My favorite chapter in this book is easily the last one here Dr. Sproul answers nine questions about the atonement that went a long way in answering some of nuances of the Cross for me. For instance the first question is what is the significance of the shedding of blood on the Cross? Well you’ll have to buy the book to get the answer to this and the other questions in this chapter. I strongly recommend this book to anyone that would like to understand the Cross better.
Read what others are saying about it Tony Reinke and Tim Challies. Also if you would like to a small and free insight to what this book is about than listen to this sermon by Dr. Sproul.
