Tuesday, January 08, 2008

Two From Piper Today

If You Can't Defeat 'em, Distort 'em
Sometimes scholarship rivals politics for warped renderings of the opponent. Consider this from Etienne Gilson, a Roman Catholic historian of philosophy:

For the first time, with the Reformation, there appeared this conception of a grace that saved a man without changing him, of a justice that redeems corrupted nature without restoring it, of a Christ who pardons the sinner for self-inflicted wounds but does not heal them. (The Spirit of Medieval Philosophy, 421)

How desperately some want to believe that justification by faith is cut off from holiness and is powerless to produce love. Michael Horton counters, “In actual fact, there are no Protestant accounts of this kind, at least of which I am aware” (Covenant and Salvation, 243).

ht: Andy Naselli
A Birthday Gift to My Father on His 89th Birthday
Today is my father’s 89th birthday. He’s been in heaven for ten months. But I can’t shake the thought that I should keep giving him gifts. Perhaps it would be an honor to him to let him speak as his birthday passes by.

Here is what I think he would like to say about two things we stand for at Bethlehem: 1) God’s command that we hallow (sanctify) God, which we talked about in the message on December 30; and 2) God’s command that we be happy in him.
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