Chip Winter 9/7/22 Chip Winter 9/7/22

One of the ways God has worked through history

God loves a good mess if it helps us get the message. And he’s OK with things breaking sometimes, especially when it allows him to break through to us. Matthew Warner Messy & Foolish

Chip Winter 8/24/22 Chip Winter 8/24/22

From a favorite magazine, Touchstone, in its most recent edition.

The Acts of Jesus

by Donald T. Williams

If the Gospel According to Luke (the “former treatise, O Theophilus”) is about what Jesus “began to do and to teach,” then Acts is about what Jesus continued to do and to teach, through the Holy Spirit and the apostles, after his ascension. Compare that beginning to the way Acts ends, with Paul under house arrest but nothing resolved. The narrative doesn’t really end. It just stops. And that is the point.

We live in Acts chapter 29. We tend to think of the gospel as what Jesus did (rightly), and of church history as what we have done (rightly, up to a point). But Jesus is still doing things. Every time the Holy Spirit calls a person to faith and regenerates him and makes him a new creature, Jesus is still acting through his personal Agent and Emissary. And whenever we proclaim the gospel faithfully and back it up with sound apologetics, Jesus is still teaching.

If we think of church history as what Jesus is still doing through us, and of ourselves as living in Acts chapter 29, we will be thinking of things the way Luke did.

Donald T. Williams Ph.D., is Professor Emeritus of Toccoa Falls College and the author of Deeper Magic: The Theology Behind the Writings of C. S. Lewis (Square Halo Books, 2016) and Ninety-Five Theses for a New Reformation: A Road Map for Post-Evangelical Christianity (Semper Reformanda Publications, 2021).

Chip Winter 8/18/22 Chip Winter 8/18/22

Words...

Ecclesiastes 1:9b “…there is nothing new under the sun.”

“As modern words are actually used, there is hardly a shade of difference left between meaning well and meaning nothing.” G. K. Chesterton, G. K.’s Weekly, October 25, 1934.

What prescient words by Chesterton! H. G. Wells also acknowledged the power of words, or rather changing the meaning of words, in his 1984. In changing words and their definitions one can deny the past, obfuscate the present, and reformat the future.

Thankfully, our God does not mince words with us. God’s Law calls a sin a sin and it always accuses us (lex semper accusat). But that is for our good! Sin was sin before the giving of the law (Romans 5:13; 7:7). But having it named, having it brought to our attention, provides the opportunity to repent. That repentance then drives us the cross on which the Prince of Glory died for us. It drives us to see the cost that God was willing to pay for our forgiveness.

The Law is truly an expression of God’s love for us (Hebrews 12:5-6)). With that in mind, let us always strive to speak truly and clearly in these times when words and their meanings are deliberately muddled. But let us always do so in the love which God provides (Ephesians 4:15) so that it leads to sharing Christ Jesus’ passion, death, and resurrection for the sins of the world.