deTheos

Damian and Norman over at Christians in Context posted a guest post by me (Jeff) after I won a great new book in a recent drawing they held. I won The Expository Genius of John Calvin by Steven J. Lawson. Looks to be a great book and from what I’m told highly accessible and full of practical helps.

Here’s what they let me say as a promo for their blog/site (read it here or there ):

Last week, after arriving home from a discouraging day attempting to tutor disinterested public high school students, I received an email from Damian saying I had won a book from Christians in Context. I won something? Me? I haven’t won anything since … a GameBoy in middle school. Wow, that was almost two decades ago. Where is that gadget anyway?…

Back to the story … there I was in the middle of my context, thinking about how I’d won a book that links me, a Christian, to the text of God’s Word. Thank you guys for the great gift, and reminding me again of the value of good theology to fuel daily life. (And at that moment it suddenly dawned on me that while tutoring that day, in response to one of the girl’s questions she has provided an open door for explaining the Gospel of God’s grace in Christ. Christ was there in that context.)

About a month ago I stumbled across Christians in Context via a link from the Parchment and Pen blog and theological word of the day . The first post had me hooked, and I’ve had Norman and Damian fired up in my RSS feed reader ever since. A recent post by Damian on John Owen and mortification of sin not only resonated with me personally (read: convicted me), but also helped me to see the great need to be reading good theology and applying it to my life.

The whole idea of being a Christian in one’s context seems to be gaining traction these days. It is almost funny to think of how "contextualization" is a buzz word in the church today, while the Bible [and Jesus] simply calls it "obedience" (Matt. 28:18-20). Some Christians may not like the former word (and I think that is probably just as well, as it’s a bit technical even for leaders), but I think we can all relate to the latter.

Obedience, like love, and motivated by it, involves values and evaluation. We each live in a unique context, a culture that demands our time and resources and often allegiance. And rather than think we can (or even should) escape our culture, we are called to evaluate all things, bringing every thought captive to the mind of Christ (2 Cor. 10:5) and live as sojourners in the tension between two worlds (Phil. 3:17-21). Loving God and loving people as Christ brings His redemption is our happy tension. While we dare not change the unchanging Gospel of Christ, we can seek to change ourselves (1 Cor. 9:22-23), and doing so involves agonizing strain and labor and discipline (vv. 24-27). As the Church, being Christians in Context is not easy, but in a two-second-vapor-of-a-life (James 4:14) we live in that happy tension.

Thanks again guys for reminding us why and how to live in this happy tension — as sojourners in our context, reflecting Christ.

Because of Jesus who is The Image of God,

Jeff

This entry was posted on Wednesday, May 7th, 2008 at 9:41 pm and is filed under Blog, Books, Reading, missional. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.