Tim Keller - Who is the Bible About?

Thanks to Zach Hubbs for passing this along.

Who is the Bible about?
- Watch more Videos at Vodpod.

A Nugget from Nouwen (1)

Most of my reading recently has been in John Piper's works, and so I believe my blog - my writing - reflects that. I obviously quote from him a lot, especially in the entries that are directly about "Think", his book. More than quoting from him, I can feel myself picking up his manner of speech and thought. He is a very intense writer, much like one of his spiritual heroes, Jonathan Edwards. I definitely feel - and this is not a bad thing necessarily - that many of my most recent entries have been very intense.

I say that as a preface to this: it is good to read from different styles of writers. I picked up "Here and Now" by Henri Nouwen from my shelf, put it in my bag, and read the first twenty pages or so this afternoon when I had some unexpected free time. He strikes me, through his writing, as a gentle friend bidding me to come with him into God's good presence. I am convinced he loves Jesus no less than Piper and Edwards, but his vocabulary and voice are different. I was struck afresh today by how good it is simply to be still, resting in the loving presence of God. I am going to reproduce here a very short chapter from Nouwen's book, and I hope it has the same effect on you as it did on me...

Picking Piper's Brain: Think (5b)

The god of this world has blinded the minds of the unbelievers, to keep them from seeing the light of the gospel of the glory of Christ, who is the image of God. For what we proclaim is not ourselves, but Jesus Christ as Lord, with ourselves as your servants for Jesus' sake. For God, who said, "Let light shine out of darkness," has shone in our hearts to give the light of the knowledge of the glory of God in the face of Jesus Christ. (2 Corinthians 4:4-6)

Piper unpacks six observations coming from this text in order to make clearer how human thinking and divine revelation work together in the rise of saving faith.

Picking Piper's Brain: Think (5a)

In a previous entry, on the fourth chapter of John Piper's book "Think", we examined the question of how thinking relates to the rise of faith. This question has not yet been laid to rest by the time we get to Chapter 5. We showed in the previous chapter how our adulterous hearts poison our reasoning abilities, how understanding or not understanding is a significant factor in whether or not the Word takes fruit-bearing root in our hearts, and how understanding is itself a gift of God, but a gift that comes by thinking over what He has said (and not by magic). Whereas Chapter 4 focused more on the nature of thinking (and how it is affected by our hearts), Chapter 5 focuses more on the nature of faith itself for clues as to how thinking is involved.

The kind of faith we will be discussing is not a vague faith, but it is the distinctly Christian kind of faith in God. It is the faith that believes that Jesus, God's own Son, was sent to be crucified for the sins of the world and was resurrected in power. It is the kind of faith that sees us justified; it is the kind of faith that sanctifies; it is the kind of faith that sees us through to glory.