DA Carson talks - about his father and being a father

Don Carson is one of my favourite writers, and one who is worth hearing when you get the chance.

His writing is balanced, nuanced and thorough. His intellect seems vast.

He spoke recently at a Desiring God Pastors' Conference on the theme of "The Pastor as Father and Son". The talks are superb, and reveal Carson warmth and his love for his father. Great insights on scripture and on being a pastor, and on being a Dad.

You can find them here.

Dodgy Leviticus commentary??

I'm starting to preach on Zechariah at the moment and am enjoying a commentary in the NIV Application Commentary series by Mark Boda.

I was surprised at the series because I had always assumed that it was a light weight series for young people. This one isnt. Its fairly in-depth, and enjoyable. So I was thinking about looking out some others in the series.

Then today through my email letterbox came a missive from Matthias Media. After their usual blurb about The Briefing, there were links to a couple of other articles. One with the following title caught my eye:

Review: Leviticus, Numbers NIV Application Commentary — Leigh Trevaskis points out a major problem with a so-called ‘evangelical’ commentary.

Since the series was in my mind I thought I'd check it out.

Turns out that the guy who wrote the commentary on Leviticus is a Seventh Day Adventist - which doesn't mean he isn't a Christian, but it does raise some questions about how he regards the sacrifices and the effectiveness of Christ's work on the cross.

Here's a section of the article:

Gane unpacks the significance his interpretation has for atonement in the New Testament. Christians receive forgiveness by trusting in the sacrificial death of Christ (i.e. phase 1), but unless they live godly lives, this forgiveness will be revoked on the Day of Judgement.

You may wonder if the inclusion of SDA atonement theology warrants this book's public bagging. It does because the proposed second phase of atonement eviscerates grace from the gospel. And if busy preachers were to accept uncritically Gane's interpretation, they may follow unwittingly his conclusion that Christians who fail to live a sufficiently moral life will lose their forgiveness on Judgement Day.

A heavy reliance on this commentary will erode a Christian's assurance of salvation and confuse one's understanding of the complete sufficiency of Christ's atoning sacrifice.

Now I don't know very about Seventh Day Adventism, but I appreciated the warning that all might not be well in this commentary.

You can read the article here for yourselves.