From the New City Catechism:
Q2: What is God?
God is the creator and sustainer of everyone and everything. He is eternal, infinite, and unchangeable in his power and perfection, goodness and glory, wisdom, justice, and truth. Nothing happens except through him and by his will.
You can listen to Kevin Boling’s (Knowing the Truth) interview me about Bound Together online here.
Special thanks to Shaun Tabatt of Cross Focused Reviews for his help. Here is a summary of a number of reviews:
“Those desiring to understand how to love God and love others, two actions which Jesus said is what all of the Torah and the prophets meaning all of Scripture is based on, will find Bound Together to be an enchiridion, an extremely timely, helpful, and holistic guide for understanding what it means to relate to one another in a godly manner as outlined throughout Scripture. Our actions have repercussions and it is high time we all understand what that means!”
“Bound Together explores the Principle of the Rope, the truth that we are bound together in surprising ways. I had never though about this before. Once I read a little of this book I saw that this truth was foundational to the world and my life.”
- Reviewer: Faith Farrell (foundachristianbyhisgrace.blogspot.com)
- Rating: 5 Stars
“Brauns is on the right track and I loved the gospel focus of this book. This could be a good book for personal study or for a small group study”
- Reviewer: James Matichuk (thoughtsprayersandsongs.com)
- Rating: 3 Stars
“Brauns touches on so many appropriate topics throughout this book, and ties everything in so well with our spiritual lives… You won’t be disappointed in this read. It’s easy to read because it’s interesting, and full of information.”
- Reviewer: Amanda Talbert (thetalbertreport.blogspot.com)
- Rating: 4 Stars
“great substance and practical value, giving hope to the hurting and encouragement for all those struggling with sin.”
- Reviewer: Spencer Cummins (spencerdeancummins.blogspot.com)
- Rating: 5 Stars
“Pastors may want to include this book in their counseling tool kit. But anyone who wants to understand original sin and the relationship we have in Christ after our salvation would find this book helpful in unlocking some of the mysteries.”
- Reviewer: Beverly Terry (beverlylynnt.wordpress.com)
- Rating: 4 Stars
“I found “Bound Together” to be a wonderful, eye-opening perspective on life, especially for generations like mine that have been raised in such a self-centered culture. To view our union with Christ and other Christians as a desired treasure should help us overcome disappointment in our relationships and be more intentional about building unity in our local church families.”
- Reviewer: Taryn Raulston (tarynraulston.blogspot.com)
- Rating: 5 Stars
“I encourage you to read this book for a clear understanding of “original sin” and the best understanding of our “union with Christ”. For me, Chapter 7 alone is well worth the price of buying the book because my wife noticed that I had done something I had not done in our 14 ½ years of marriage, which was taking a week off to do Spring Cleaning.”
- Reviewer: Daniel Mac (fiveintelligiblewordsblog.blogspot.com)
- Rating: 5 Stars
“This book is well-written, interesting, and will give the reader a far better understanding of Adam’s sin and how it affects all of us in a bad and good way. By the time you get to the end of the book, you realize the good far outweighs the bad regarding the principle of the rope, and how that applies to your relationship with Jesus Christ.”
- Reviewer: Charolette Ragsdale (charoletteragsdale.wordpress.com)
- Rating: 5 Stars
“It is a book for a time such as this. I highly recommend it.”
- Reviewer: Jeanie Schwagerman (GoodReads.com)
- Rating: 5 Stars
“The book was thought-provoking, and written in a comfortable, readable way. I could tell it was written by someone with a pastor’s heart for people. I highly recommend it, and I would love to see it handed out to both teenagers and young adults.”
- Reviewer: Kim Shay (philippians314.squarespace.com)
- Rating: 5 Stars
“This book will not disappoint you. It is easy to read yet contains powerful principles. May we learn that our actions & choices have lasting affects on ourselves & those we journey with.”
- Reviewer: Joanne Viola (daysnthoughts.wordpress.com)
- Rating: 5 Stars
“Brauns writes with grace to urge readers to help lift up the rope with decisions that will benefit us all as we are tied to the rope for the glory of God and each other’s good. ”
- Reviewer: Louis Zinc (louiszinc.tumblr.com)
- Rating: 5 Stars
“This book has impacted me because I have thought of things this way before in reading the Bible or thinking through my personal choices, however I needed to be reaffirmed that no matter what choices I make God works them all out to fulfill His greater plan… Over all it is an interesting read.”
- Reviewer: Angela Parsley (refreshmysoulblog.blogspot.com)
- Rating: 4 Stars
“This is a helpful, thought-provoking, valuable book, particularly the definitely recommended first five chapters.”
- Reviewer: Douglas Wallace (pilgrimsontheway.com)
- Rating: 4 Stars
“If you are looking for a well thought out book about original sin and God’s grace through Jesus to save us from it, Brauns does an excellent job of laying the background and then showing an application of those truths. Although our ties to Adam doomed us, our ties to Jesus saves us.”
- Reviewer: Dana Duggar (ittlelovelybooks.com)
- Rating: 4 Stars
“On balance, this is an excellent book: well organized, theologically Reformed (in Baptist mode), engaging. Since I am a critical, glass-half-empty sort, and since I’m writing this review in the midst of assorted life problems and annoyances, I will attempt to offer some criticisms. Don’t let these criticisms mislead you; this is one of the better books I’ve read recently and I highly recommend it.”
- Reviewer: David Hodges (piouseye.com)
- Rating: 5 Stars
“I give Bound Together 5 stars. Like Unpacking Forgiveness, I’ll refer to it often and highly recommend it to others.”
- Reviewer: Patricia Hunter (pollywogcreek.blogspot.com)
- Rating: 5 Stars
“Brauns takes a user-friendly approach to the doctrines of original sin and union with Christ which I am thankful for. This is a must read for any believe especially those who are not familiar with these two doctrines. This is also a good resource for small group discussions and also a aid in preaching.”
- Reviewer: Chris Land (keepingthemainthing.blogspot.com)
- Rating: 4 Stars
“This book is a must read. If you have a problem understanding how we are accounted sinners because of something Adam did or righteous because of what Christ did, this book has the best explanation I have found. He uses many real life illustrations to prove that we are all connected. I highly recommend it and give it 5 out of 5 stars.”
- Reviewer: Roger Leonhardt (reformedreader.blogspot.com)
- Rating: 5 Stars
“Bound Together is a unique work in that it touches on several critical issues of today. Apart from just sharing the gospel with you it is a guided tour through the follies of contemporary culture and the hope and truth of being bound with others and by others to Jesus Christ”
- Reviewer: Marc Mullins (poreuomai.com)
- Rating: 4 Stars
“I hesitate to tell you that this book tackles with verve the theological ideas of original sin and union with Christ. I can hear the groans–another theology tome. Please reroute your thinking as this volume is so much more than academic exercise… This is a great book.”
- Reviewer: Jimmy Reagan (reaganreview.wordpress.com)
- Rating: 5 Stars
“In a western culture that introduces self dependence to children early on, it is a book that is culturally relevant and fairly courageous in its intent to delve into topics such as these.”
- Reviewer: Krista Rodriguez (gypsygotsoul.tumblr.com)
- Rating: 5 Stars
“This is a book I wish I could hand to every family. As someone who works with children each day, I wish parents could see the effect their decisions have upon their children. Somehow some parents have managed to delude themselves into thinking their divorce will have no effect on their children since both parents plan to remain active. Yet, they fail to recognize their selfishness is not only seen by their children but in many ways is imitated by their children. Likewise, I wish children saw how their actions affect their siblings and even their parents.”
- Reviewer: Kevin Thompson (bringmethebooks.wordpress.com)
- Rating: 5 Stars
“Bound Together is a welcome addition in this renewed understanding of an essential truth: We are one body with many parts and we only work as we should when we’re together. I trust it will be a great encouragement to you as you read and apply it.”
- Reviewer: Aaron Armstrong (bloggingtheologically.com)
- Rating: 4 Stars
“I would recommend this book to everyone who wants to have a better understanding of how original sin, mankind and the cross of Christ bind us together.”
- Reviewer: LaTawnia Kintz (latawniakreviews.blogspot.com)
- Rating: 5 Stars
Watch this and you will not only get to know C.S. Lewis, you will also learn more about why faith is reasonable (and atheism is not!)
HT: Z
See also: C.S. Lewis and His Last Hurdle to Faith
Earlier this year, a grieving mother, who recently had given birth to a stillborn son, wrote to me asking for counsel and comfort. The team at Desiring God thought this letter might be helpful to some others, whether other mothers who have lost infants, parents who have lost young children, or perhaps even more broadly.
Dear _____,
This loss and sorrow is all so fresh. I hesitate to tread into the tender place and speak. But since you ask, I pray that God would help me say something helpful.
First, please know that I know I don’t know what it is like to give birth to a lifeless body. Only a small, sad band of mothers know that. I say “lifeless body” because, as you made clear, your son is not lifeless. He simply skipped earth. For now. But in the new heavens and the new earth, he will know the best of earth and all the joys earth can give without any of its sorrows.
I do not know what age — what level of maturity and development — he will have in that day. I don’t know what level of maturity and development I will have. Will the 25-year-old or the 35- or the 45- or the 55-year-old John Piper be the risen one? God knows what is optimal for the spiritual, glorified body. And so it will be for your son. But you will know him. God will see to that. And he you. And he will thank you for giving him life. He will thank you for enduring the loss that he might have the reward sooner.
God’s crucial word on grieving well is 1 Thessalonians 4:13: “We do not want you to be uninformed, brothers, about those who are asleep, that you may not grieve as others do who have no hope.” Yours is a grieving with hope. Theirs is a grieving without hope. That is the key difference. There is no talk of not grieving. That would be like suggesting to a woman who just lost her arm that she not cry, because it would be put back on in the resurrection. It hurts! That’s why we cry. It hurts.
And amputation is a good analogy. Because unlike a bullet wound, when the amputation heals, the arm is still gone. So the hurt of grief is different from the hurt of other wounds. There is the pain of the severing, and then the relentless pain of the gone-ness. The countless might-have-beens. Those too hurt. Each new remembered one is a new blow on the tender place where the arm was. So grieving is like and unlike other pain.
There is a paradox in the way God is honored through hope-filled grief. One might think that the only way he could be honored would be to cry less or get over the ache more quickly. That might show that your confidence is in the good that God is and the good that he does. Yes. It might. And some people are wired emotionally to experience God that way. I would not join those who say, “O they are just in denial.”
But there is another way God is honored in our grieving. When we taste the loss so deeply because we loved so deeply and treasured God’s gift — and God in his gift — so passionately that the loss cuts the deeper and the longer, and yet in and through the depths and the lengths of sorrow we never let go of God, and feel him never letting go of us — in that longer sorrow he is also greatly honored, because the length of it reveals the magnitude of our sense of loss for which we do not forsake God. At every moment of the lengthening grief, we turn to him not away from him. And therefore the length of it is a way of showing him to be ever-present, enduringly sufficient.
So trust him deeply and let your heart be your guide whether you honor him one way or the other. Everyone is different. Beware of blaming your husband, or he you, for moving into or out of grief at different paces. It is so personal. And what you may find is that the one who seemed to recover more quickly will weep the more deeply in ten years. You just don’t know now, and it is good not to judge.
May God make your grieving a bittersweet experience of communion with Jesus. Matthew tells us that when Jesus heard that John the Baptist had been beheaded, “he withdrew from there in a boat to a desolate place by himself” (Matthew 14:13). So he knows what it is to go with you there.
We do not have a High Priest who is unable to sympathize. He was tested in every way as we are — including loss.
Grace to you and peace.
Affectionately,
Pastor John
Can anything be more beautiful than leading the flock of God’s people towards the Heavenly City (Rev 22:1-6)? Won’t it be incredible to meet together before the throne of Christ? The central thought of our sermon on Sunday at The Red Brick Church per 1 Timothy 3:1 was that God’s plan for leadership in the local church is a noble or beautiful thing (listen here to the 4/21/13 sermon).
My vision is a pastor is to see our flock meet together on the other side! There can be no greater vision that to say, “Let’s meet in the presence of Christ, and let’s invite as many people as possible to come with us.” Those who have been around our church know that we talk about meeting at the 5th tree on the right side of the river.
Throughout the sermon we saw that the repeated New Testament emphasis on biblical elders cannot be missed (See Acts 14:23, Acts 20:17, Acts 20:28-31; Philippians 1:1; 1 Thess 5:12-13; 1 Timothy 3:1-7, 1 Timothy 4:3-14, 1 Timothy 5:17-25; Titus 1:5-9; Hebrews 13:7, 17; James 5:13-15; 1 Peter 5:1-5).
This coming Sunday we will consider the biblical qualifications for eldership. The below table compares qualifications from key New Testament passages.
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Comparison of Elder Qualifications Per Strauch, Biblical Leadership: An Urgent Call to Restore Biblical Church Leadership, pages 73-74
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1 Timothy 3:2-7 |
Titus 1:6-9 |
1 Peter 5:1-3 |
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*Pugnacious: “Eager or quick to argue, quarrel, or fight.”
If your goal is to destroy your children’s imaginations, the below list is a good place to begin. I would probably put television and video games higher on the list. Christian parents are especially tempted to use quality programs as baby-sitters. But even if the content of certain programs is moral or Christian, it still does the child’s thinking for him or her. So I would add to the list of ways to destroy your child’s imagination:
Per Justin Taylor, here is Trevor Cairney’s summary of Anthony Esolen’s Ten Ways to Destroy the Imagination of Your Child:
1. Begin by rearing children almost exclusively indoors – give in to the threats of the outdoors, don’t risk allowing them to have unbridled experiences out of our observable space. Lock them up in classes and organized instruction and avoid giving them opportunities to run free.
2. Never allow children to organize their own worlds of exploration of that which is interesting or challenging—replace the spontaneous and child initiated and replace it with 7 days of structured activities controlled by others and a timetable that leaves no scope for exploration, time wasting, and contemplation.
3. Don’t risk allowing children to explore machines or encounter those who know and use them—privilege safety above all things, cut craftsmen from the child’s world, despise practical and craft knowledge, forget about the challenge and fascination of maps, diagrams and the like.
4. Replace fairy tales with cliches and fads—water down stories to remove the evil and violent, look for tales that ‘flatten’ and homogenize, replace fundamental truths with cliches and ideological manifestos.
5. Denigrate or discard the heroic and patriotic—remove fathers who are heroes, men who are warriors, lose sight of the ‘piety’ of a place like the Welsh uplands and coal mines of Richard Llewellyn’s ‘How Green was My Valley.’ Ignore the dignity of simple people and their ways.
6. Cut down all heroes to size—don’t allow a sentimental admiration of a hero, dismiss courage, beat from our boys any hint of hero worship. Instead grow men ‘without chests’ who spend hours on violent video games but never rumble in the back yard.
7. Reduce all talk of love to narcissism and sex – replace the music and tenderness of love in the Odyssey, or the poetry of Stephen Foster for a lost love, with a reduction of love to the mechanics of sex, “reduce eros to the itch of lust or vanity.” Replace the first pangs of curiosity of a boy for a girl, or a girl for a boy, with a bombardment of images of what love isn’t.
8. Level all distinctions between man and woman—just as individual personalities are washed from our classrooms, so too, reduce all differences of gender, and convince children that boys and girls are just the same.
9. Distract the child with the shallow or unreal—fail to encourage the child to hear and sharpen the senses before creating, abolish solitude and silence, fill the child’s life with the ‘noise’ of television, video games and other forms of banality. Don’t just give decibels of noise but rather, more importantly, mental and spiritual interference. Separate the child from the relationship of family, neighbours and friends and place them in after school care, preschools etc.
10. Deny the transcendent—deny the idea of God, ignore the mystery of faith and religion, ensure that unlike the ancients in the caves of Lascaux there is little opportunity to contemplate and create a veritable cathedral born of their imaginings. Do everything possible to erase any opportunity for your child to search out the inscriptions of praise on each human heart.
One of the final steps in C.S. Lewis’s conversion was for him to accept the truth that Christians can truly be united or “Bound Together” with Christ.
In his excellent new biography of C.S. Lewis, Alister McGrath does more than any other author to help us understand how C.S. Lewis came to faith in Christ. McGrath takes us a step forward in scholarship about Lewis by more accurately dating key events in Lewis’s life. McGrath goes so far as to point out where Lewis himself was wrong about some of the dates. You will have to read the book yourself to see if McGrath persuades you of his chronology. He convinced me.
In any case, McGrath shows that by 1931 C.S. Lewis was close to becoming a believer. Lewis had determined he was no longer an atheist. But he still had not given his life to Christ. Through interaction with Lewis’s letters, McGrath summarizes why Lewis still had reservations about becoming a Christian.
Lewis explained that his difficulty had been that he could not see “how the life and death of Someone Else (whoever he was) 2000 years ago could help us here and now.” An inability to make sense of this had been holding Lewis back “for the last year or so.” He could admit that Christ might provide us with a good example, but that was about as far as it went. Lewis realised that the New Testament took a very different view, using terms such as propitiation or sacrifice to refer to the true meaning of this event. But these expressions, Lewis declared, seemed to him to be “either silly or shocking.”
In the end, it was an evening with J.R.R. Tolkien that God used to tip the balance and for Lewis to finally put his trust in Christ. Lewis soon confessed faith in Christ and was united together with Him.
But how was it that Lewis accepted that Christ can help us here and now? Lewis gives his answer in The Problem of Pain published 9 years after Lewis’s conversion in 1940. Lewis explained how Scripture helped him come to understand that we are not so individual as we think.
Everyone will have noticed how the Old Testament seems at times to ignore our conception of the individual. When God promises Jacob that ‘He will go down with him into Egypt and will also surely bring him up again’, this is fulfilled either by the burial of Jacob’s body in Palestine or by the exodus of Jacob’s descendants from Egypt. It is quite right to connect this notion with the social structure of early communities in which the individual is constantly overlooked in favour of the tribe or family: but we ought to express this connection by two propositions of equal importance – - firstly that their social experience blinded the ancients to some truths we perceive, and secondly that it made them sensible of some truths to which we are blind. Legal fiction, adoption, and transference or imputation of merit and guilt, could never have played the part they did in theology if they had always be felt to be so artificial as we now feel them to be.
. . . the separateness – - which we discern between individuals, is balanced, in absolute reality, by some kind of ‘interanimation’ of which we have no conception at all. It may be that the acts and sufferings of great archetypal individuals such as Adam and Christ are ours, not by legal fiction, metaphor, or casuality, but in some much deeper fashion. There is no question, of course, of individuals melting down into a kind of spiritual continuum such as Pantheistic systems believe in; that is excluded by the whole tenor of our faith. But there may be a tension between individuality and some other principle. C.S. Lewis, emphasis added (page 83).
Lewis accepted that we are not isolated individuals. Rather, we are “bound together.” In my book, Bound Together, I call this, “the principle of the rope“: that is, we are not islands unto ourselves. The ultimate negative example of the principle of the rope is the doctrine of original sin. When Adam and Eve rebelled against God, their sin was imputed to all their descendents. And all inherited a corrupt nature from them. But the ultimate positive example of the principle of the rope is union in Christ. Those who believe in Christ are united together with Him as branches to a vine or bricks to a building.
As for McGrath’s biography of Lewis, in my mind it is now the best single resource on the life of C.S. Lewis. McGrath’s book and Alan Jacob’s wonderful book, The Narnian, are now the first two books to read on C.S. Lewis.
But first read C.S. Lewis himself!
Thom Rainer’s book, Breakout Churches, is recommended reading!
Almost a decade ago, I led a major study on churches that had reversed negative trends and become positive breakout churches. I established the criterion that the breakout had to take place without changing pastors. I knew from previous research that most breakout churches had new pastors. I wanted to see if it was likely for a church to turnaround without getting a new pastor.
My beginning database was 52,333 churches in the United States. Without boring you with all the details of my data screening and research (You can read about it in Appendix B of my book, Breakout Churches.), I was only able to identify 13 true breakout churches. For the interested statistical nerds like me, that’s only two 100ths of one percent (.0002).
That extremely low number has bothered me for years. As a result, I have attempted to discern what the primary hindrances are. Why is it so unlikely for a declining church to become a growing church? Surprisingly, demographics have little to do with the turnaround. So far, I’ve been able to identify four simple reasons breakout is hindered in most churches.
- Lack of leadership development. Most pastors have little training or background in leadership. But they are expected to lead a church. Some may have extensive theological and biblical training, but they are weak in leadership. Aaron had to tell Moses that his leadership approach was all wrong. Moses was headed for a leadership disaster. Many of our churches have leaders who have few leadership skills.
- Unbiblical understanding of church membership. I have written quite a bit on this topic lately, including my new book I Am a Church Member. . . .
Which is worse: “cheap forgiveness” or “holding a grudge”? Is there healing power in holding a grudge?
Simon Doonan of Slate has written an article defending the healing power of holding a grudge. The article is well worth reading. Doonan’s critique of the cheap forgiveness so prevalent in our culture makes a valid point. Cheap and automatic forgiveness is no way to process grave injustice. It is unbiblical and it doesn’t work (See “A Soft View of Hell Makes Hard People.”). However, Doonan’s alternative to cheap forgiveness is to hold a grudge. Holding on to anger and resentment will not work either. The only way to truly process the evil of this world is to look to our Creator. We can be confident that vengeance belongs to Him and that he will rule justly.
In his article, Doonan surveys what he calls the “now ubiquitous forgiveness movement:
In recent years there has been no shortage of high-profile forgiveness fests. Mary Jo Buttafuoco forgave Amy Fisher, the Long Island Lolita, for shooting her in the head at point-blank range. At one of his many parole hearings, Mark David Chapman, John Lennon’s killer, perturbed his interlocutors by suggesting that his victim would have forgiven him by now. (Impressively, Yoko Ono, a promoter of forgiveness in general, has repeatedly said she’s not ready to forgive Chapman.)
In 2010 a lad in Tallahassee, Fla., named Conor McBride shot his girlfriend in the head. As she was clinging to life-support, her father says he somehow sensed her pleading with him to forgive Conor. He forgave the young man.*
On March 7, just over a month after Oscar Pistorius was arrested on suspicion of murdering girlfriend Reeva Steenkamp, the uncle of the deceased beauty told CNN, “I would like to be face to face with him [Pistorius] and forgive him, forgive him [for] what he’s done and that way I can find most probably more peace with the situation but tell him face to face.”
Most recently, we have the Steubenville, Ohio, rape case. Last month, the mother of the victim shocked the courtroom when she told one of the rapists that she forgave him. Though I disagree wildly with her position, I can understand how she ended up there. Immersed in our culture of healing and kumbaya, and confronted with the sobbing, apologetic 16-year-old perp, she probably felt obliged to say something. But instead of offering to forgive him, how about a little helpful advice, for example: “Young man, terrible acts have terrible consequences. You must take your punishment like a man, and then, when you have paid your debt to society, you will be given a chance to rebuild your life.
Reflecting on the death of a friend, Doonan concludes that the alternative to automatic forgiveness is to hold a grudge.
When I run out of grudges I often go back to remembering my old pal. At first I think about how insanely fun and life-enhancing he was. Inevitably, after musing for a while, I start to get irate at the injustice of his death, and I can feel my body fill with anger. But I wear that clenched jaw and tension headache—sorry, Joan Lunden—as a badge of honor. Out of respect for the memory of my pal, I will carry that rage and indignation to my grave. No forgiveness necessary.
It is a good thing to be loyal to our friends. But it is not a good thing to go through life with a clenched jaw and tension headache. Bitterness is poisonous. Instead, as I pointed out in my book Unpacking Forgiveness one of the central ways that Scripture teaches us to avoid bitterness is to rest in the truth that God will see that justice is done. Hence, Romans 12:17-21
says that we ought not to repay evil for evil, but rather we can rest in the truth that vengeance belongs to God and that he will repay.
For more, read the below posts.
Forgiveness and Virginia Tech is an article about I would say to a parent who lost a child at Virginia Tech.
A Soft View of Hell Makes Hard People explains why a neglect of biblical teaching on the doctrine of eternal punishment makes for hard and bitter people.
Al Mohler: A Dark Night in Denver: Groping for Answers is by the president of Southern Seminary and was written after the Aurora, CO murders.
5 Problems with Unconditional Forgiveness explains why a belief in automatic forgiveness has a negative theological trajectory.
Unpacking the Casey Anthony Case was written after the trial of Casey Anthony.
The Forgiveness Quiz tests your knowledge of what the Bible teaches about forgiveness and outlines the discussion in Unpacking Forgiveness.
An article about the murder of Kelsey Grammer’s sister was written regarding the parole hearings for someone convicted of the murder of the television star’s sister.
Exercises to stop thinking about how you have been wounded reflects on Psalm 73.
