David Wells on “The Life of Convertedness”

Kirk E. Miller

David Wells wrote a book on conversion called Turning to God: Reclaiming Christian Conversion as Unique, Necessary, and Supernatural.

He describes conversion with this statement:

Christianity without conversion is no loner Christian, because conversion means turning to God. It involves forsaking sin, with its self-deifying attitudes and self-serving conduct, and turning to Christ, whose death on the cross is the basis for God’s offer of mercy and forgiveness. Jesus was judged in our place so that God could extend his righteousness to us. Conversion occurs when we turn from our waywardness and accept Christ’s death on our behalf.[1]

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Christ in the Old Testament: Christocentric or Christotelic Hermeneutic?

Kirk E. Miller 2 Comments

The following is an excerpt from a Gospel Coalition blog post by Matt Smethurst in which he interviews Dr. Daniel Block on using responsible hermeneutics (method of interpretation) regarding Christ in the Old Testament. Daniel Block contrasts a Christocentric hermeneutic from a Christotelic hermeneutic. The latter he argues is a more responsible and accurate way to handle the Old Testament, read scripture canonically, and treat all scripture as Christian-scripture.

Perhaps we need to distinguish between “Christological preaching” and a “Christological hermeneutic,” as if under the latter we expect to find Christ in every verse of the Bible. While it’s not difficult to identify overtly Messianic texts (Psalm 2; 110; Isaiah 53; Micah 5:1-5; etc.), technically the OT rarely speaks of ho Christos, the anointed Messiah. Unless we overload that expression beyond what it actually bears in the OT, I don’t find “the Messiah” on every page. Still, YHWH is everywhere, and when I preach YHWH, I’m preaching Jesus, Immanuel, the Redeemer of Israel incarnate in human flesh. When I read Exodus 34:6-7, I see a description of the One whom John characterizes as glorious, full of grace and truth (John 1:14).

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The Self-Worship of Emotionalism

Kirk E. Miller 8 Comments

Introduction

It’s been about 2 years since I read Mark Dever‘s Deliberate Church: Buidling Your Ministry on the Gospel. (The book is great; I highly recommend it.) His chapter on “Music,” in reference to music used in corporate worship, still sticks out in my mind. In this post I’d like to share with you a quote from the chapter as well as some of the reflections I had (including some of the notes I took in the margins) when I first read this chapter.

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The Radical Difference Between “Do” and “Don’t”

Kirk E. Miller 1 Comment

“…Whatever you do, do all to the glory of God” (1 Cor 10:31). We often like to change this positive “do” into a negative “do not”–“do not do anything which is ‘de-glorifying’ to God; don’t do anything sinful.” How often have you heard things like, “don’t do this or that because it’s not glorifying to God”? The danger here is succumbing to the mindset that a lack of error and refrain from sin is all that Paul intended by these words (→ 1 Cor 10:31). But to leave the positive assertion untouched (as a positive assertion) is far more challenging–everything we do is to be for the purpose of or aim of glorifying God. As Paul said earlier in verse 23, not everything that is permissible is beneficial. How often do we think in terms of “permissible” rather than “beneficial,” allowing ourselves to think in terms of what’s allowable v. what isn’t, and thereby making 1 Cor 10:31 into a negative command to refrain from certain activities rather than a positive command to “do”–do what brings glory to God, or more so, do what brings the most glory to God? We are drawn towards thinking in terms of “permissible” (in either form: a legalistic moralism or a carnal antinomianism) because it’s much easier. But this doesn’t necessarily entail the radical discipleship of “do” which scripture commands and is therefore terribly insufficient.

Belief–The Only Valid Frame of Reference for the Resurrection of Christ

Kirk E. Miller 1 Comment

“The risen Jesus Christ cannot be discerned within the frame of the old conditions of life which by his resurrection he has transcended, and cannot be understood except within the context of the transformation which it has brought about. . . . The evidence for the resurrection can be handled and tested, appropriately, only within the orbit of its impact.”[1]

“We are not concerned here simply with what is often called ‘the hermeneutical circle’, but with the kind of circle which is posited by an ultimate fact which in the nature of the case cannot be brought within the same circle as other facts, but which stakes out the very grounds upon which experience and knowledge of it are possible.”[2]

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