Thomas S. Kidd on George Whitefield

Following the advice of a wise friend from years back, I always try to have a biography on the go, though they take me the longest to read. The one I’m reading – and enjoying – at the moment is Thomas S. Kidd’s George Whitefield: America’s Spiritual Founding Father (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2014). It reads well to me, and feels even-handed – respectful but by no means the hagiography one finds elsewhere.

Thomas Kidd posts on a blog with Justin Taylor – ‘Evangelical History’ – which is worth checking out.

He recently re-posted there a free George Whitefield curriculum that he put together a couple of years ago for the occasion of Whitefield’s 300th birthday. He envisioned it as a three-week series to be used ‘in adult Sunday School classes, small groups, or perhaps Sunday or Wednesday evening talks’, but it strikes me it’s also useful for individual readers. Information and individual files are available to download from here, with the entire collection available as a handy pdf here.

The Anderson Journal of Christian Studies

Rob Bradshaw has kindly drawn attention to The Anderson Journal of Christian Studies, published by the College of Christian Studies, Anderson University, South Carolina, with three issues already available online here.

According to editorial in the first issue:

‘We envision this journal to be a resource to church leaders and to our colleagues in the evangelical academy by offering this venue for the publication of thoughtful articles on a variety of issues within that broad range of disciplines we call Christian Studies, covering the study of scripture, theology, and ministry issues.’

The Southern Baptist Journal of Theology 20, 1 (2016) on Themes in Biblical Theology

The latest issue of the Southern Baptist Journal of Theology is devoted to ‘Themes in Biblical Theology’.

Stephen Wellum writes in the Editorial:

‘Biblical theology as a hermeneutical discipline attempts to exegete texts in their own context and then, in light of the entire canon, to examine the unfolding nature of God’s plan and carefully think through the relationship between before and after in that plan which culminates in Christ. As such, biblical theology provides the basis for understanding how texts in one part of the Bible relate to all other texts so that they will be read correctly, according to God’s intention, which is discovered through human authors but ultimately at the canonical level.’

Individual essays can be accessed from here, or the whole issue can be downloaded as a pdf here.

Stephen J. Wellum

Editorial: Reflections on the Significance of Biblical Theology

Peter J. Gentry

The Significance of Covenants in Biblical Theology

John D. Meade

The Meaning of Circumcision in Israel: A Proposal for a Transfer of Rite from Egypt to Israel

Ardel B. Caneday

Glory Veiled in the Tabernacle of Flesh: Exodus 33-34 in the Gospel of John

Joshua M. Greever

The Nature of the New Covenant: A Case Study in Ephesians 2:11-22

Brent E. Parker

Paedocommunion, Paedobaptism, and Covenant Theology: A Baptist Assessment and Critique

Tony Costa

The Sabbath and Its Relation to Christ and the Church in the New Covenant

Peter J. Gentry

“The Glory of God” – The Character of God’s Being and Way in the World: Some Reflections on a Key Biblical Theology Theme

Book Reviews

Themelios 41, 2 (August 2016)

The latest Themelios is online here (and available here as a single pdf), containing the below articles.

Editorial

D.A. Carson

The Woman from Kentucky

Off the Record

Michael J. Ovey

The Echo Chamber of Idolatry

Michael Allen

Toward Theological Theology: Tracing the Methodological Principles of John Webster

This essay introduces John Webster’s approach to the work of theology by considering its formal principles and their relation to the material claims of the Christian faith. We pay particular attention to his inaugural lectures given at Wycliffe College in 1995, at Oxford University in 1997, and the University of St. Andrews in 2014, filling out the picture by considering a few other significant essays. In so doing we will sketch three phases of his methodological development, which are meant heuristically to note ways in which his principled approach has been further extended and elaborated over the last twenty years and to note ways in which there have been shifts or developments within his prolegomena (e.g., regarding the nature of Scripture and its properties). Hopefully such a critical introduction then makes possible thoughtful, contextual engagement with and conversation about various elements of his work.

Amos Winarto Oei

The Impassible God Who “Cried”

Modern scholars charge that the traditional view of divine impassibility had been corrupted with Greek philosophy and thus strayed away from Scripture’s testimony of the true God. The attempt to construct a new theology of God has brought many scholars to embrace a vulnerable God. A God who is worth enough is a God who can suffer with human beings. Contrary to the opinion, an overview at the patristic theology of God and at the mediaeval theologian, including the Reformed ones, provides us with a proof that their understanding was not influenced by Greek philosophy per se but mainly based on the doctrine of creation: God is impassible but not unemotional.

Gary E. Yates

The Problem of Repentance and Relapse as a Unifying Theme in the Book of the Twelve

This article builds on earlier studies highlighting repentance and return as unifying themes in the Book of the Twelve by developing a pattern of repentance and relapse that emerges from a reading of the Twelve. The recurring pattern of failed repentance explains why exile was necessary and why even the postexilic return to the land did not bring about Israel’s restoration. The hope that emerges in the Twelve is that Yahweh would act at a more distant time in the future to produce the repentance and spiritual transformation in his people that would bring about the blessings of repentance and full restoration.

W. Edward Glenny

The Septuagint and Biblical Theology

This article addresses the question: How does the LXX relate to the Christian Old Testament, and more specifically, what role does the LXX play in Christian biblical theology? The first part of the article is a brief overview of five different approaches to the role of the LXX in a whole-Bible biblical theology. The five approaches are: (1) LXX Priority and Canon, (2) LXX Priority, Hebrew Canon, (3) Hebrew Priority and Canon, LXX Bridge, (4) Hebrew and Greek Are Sanctified by the Spirit, and finally (5) Hebrew Priority and Canon, LXX Commentary. Building on the different perspectives surveyed in this study, it is suggested that that the importance and function of the LXX in Christian biblical theology is at least fourfold: (1) The LXX can function as the source of Christian biblical theology; (2) The LXX is valuable for biblical theology in its role as a commentary on the biblical text; (3) The LXX is a bridge or link between the Christian OT and NT; and (4) The LXX complements the Hebrew Scriptures.

Douglas J. Moo

John Barclay’s Paul and the Gift and the New Perspective on Paul

John Barclay’s Paul and the Gift is one of the most important books on Paul’s theology in years. By setting Paul’s teaching on grace in the context of ancient conceptions of “gift,” Barclay is able to highlight the distinctiveness of Paul’s teaching while at the same time setting that teaching in the context of his Jewish environment. As Barclay himself claims, then, the book opens the way for a way of thinking about Paul that does not obviously fit in either the “old” or the “new” perspective. 

Pastoral Pensées

Mike Bullmore

Numbering and Being Glad in Our Days: A Meditation on Psalm 90

Psalm 90 tells us that our lives are ever so brief and it also tells us why. It is the result of God’s just judgment on us. In light of these realities we are instructed, somewhat paradoxically, both to “number our days” and “be glad all our days.” How is this possible? Ultimately Psalm 90 points us to the God who out of his “steadfast love” has done something for his people that reverses the judgment and enables us to live with an abiding, in fact an eternal, joy.

Book Reviews

What Love Looks Like

I contributed today’s ‘Word for the Week’, a weekly email service provided by the London Institute for Contemporary Christianity.

Love must be sincere. Hate what is evil; cling to what is good. Be devoted to one another in love. Honour one another above yourselves. Never be lacking in zeal, but keep your spiritual fervour, serving the Lord. Be joyful in hope, patient in affliction, faithful in prayer. Share with the Lord’s people who are in need. Practise hospitality.

Romans 12:9-13

Paul will come on to how we live with outsiders to the Christian faith – and those of us who are mission-minded might be eager for him to do so – but he doesn’t rush there. He insists we hear first that central to our life in Christ is how we love one another in the body of Christ.

That’s where he begins this section – ‘love must be sincere’. What that love looks like is then unpacked in one long sentence.

Grammar aficionados might be interested to know that Paul uses participles where most English versions translate with commands. Here’s an approximation: ‘Love is genuine, hating the evil, clinging to the good, devoted to one another in love, outdoing one another in showing honour, not lacking in zeal, being fervent in spirit, serving the Lord, rejoicing in hope, being patient in affliction, persevering in prayer, contributing to the needs of the saints, practising hospitality.’ To be sure, Paul wants Christians to do those things, but they’re expressed in a way which describes a character to be cultivated not merely commands to be carried out.

As elsewhere in Romans 12, hearing what Paul says through the ears of those in first-century Rome brings home the radical implications of belonging to the new humanity God has brought together in Christ. To take just one example, in a culture where giving and receiving honour was a central driver, a master honouring a slave above himself would be a strong signal that a completely different set of values was at work in this community. The principle remains just as potent today. In a world where race, gender, age, wealth, and status often either bring privilege or deny access, Christians model a different way of living.

Not that it’s easy to do so! But Paul is gratifyingly realistic in his assumptions about what the Christian community will look like. Yes, we will find it difficult to outdo one another in showing honour; yes, suffering will come; yes, there will be needs to be met. But it will still be possible to serve the Lord, to rejoice, to be patient, and to persevere in prayer.

In doing so, we will display to each other – and perhaps to a watching world – that what God has begun to do in the church stands at the heart of his reconciling work which will one day be extended to all things.

Crucible 7, 1 (May 2016)

The latest issue of Crucible, published by the Australian Evangelical Alliance and largely produced by the faculty of the Australian College of Ministries, is now available online here, with the below articles (abstracts included, where available). This one is billed as a ‘Malyon College Special Edition’.

The Cauldron: peer reviewed articles

Donald L. Morcom

Was Peter Capable of Writing the Greek of 2 Peter? An Exploration

Among the many arguments advanced against the notion that the Apostle Peter was the author of the New Testament letters bearing his name, it is alleged that as an uneducated Galilean fisherman Peter was not capable of writing the kind of Greek found in these letters. This paper challenges that particular allegation. Utilising evidence from elsewhere in the New Testament, exploring the history of investigation into the language/s spoken by Jesus and his disciples, and harnessing some recent advances in our understanding of the extent of the Hellenisation of Peter’s Galilee, this paper explores the plausibility of Peter possessing the necessary Greek linguistic skills to be the genuine author of 2 Peter.

Peter Sondergeld

Peter: A Biblical Basis for Self-Worth

Self-esteem has been, and continues to be, a critical concern for those in the helping professions, both in an academic context and also in a popular cultural context. There have been many proponents, and many critics of the concept of self-esteem and its remedy, self-love, for many years. The continued existence of the concepts of self-esteem and self-love, in both academic and popular thought, suggests that these concepts accurately describe a particular aspect of the human experience – that a common existential struggle for humanity is a low sense of personal value.

Within Christian thought and practice there are many different approaches to self-esteem, self-love and personal value. These approaches range from those who see no value in the self-esteem construct, and are opposed to any kind of self-love, to those who think self-esteem and self-love are essential and have made them central to an understanding of the core human condition. This article will challenge the adoption of the self-esteem construct as an explanation of the core human condition, and will argue that human value will not be derived from self-love, but from a return to our original created anthropology as worshippers and imagers of God.

We will begin with a short discussion of the problem of personal value and its remedy, and then move on to an analysis of humanity’s original biblical anthropology (that humans were created in the image of God and are unceasing worshippers), and the effect that the corruption of this anthropology (idolatry of the heart) has had on personal value. We will conclude with a further discussion of self-love as a remedy for low personal value and see that it is not virtuous; in reality it is idolatry of the heart, leading to further idolatry, as created things are enlisted to shore up a lack of personal worth. The only remedy for the restoration of personal value is for humanity to return to imaging and worshipping God.

Anne Klose

Church and Mission in Redemption: Exploring Church and Mission through the Communal and Missional Priesthood of All Believers

This article proposes that any perceived contest for priority between church and mission is based on a failure to understand both as penultimate phenomena which are only comprehensible in light of God’s redemptive plan. Such redemption as it is revealed across the narrative scope of Scripture is trinitarian and, therefore, communal in nature, and in consonance with this, both church and mission must be viewed in such terms. Whilst this may already be the case within academic circles, a broader more thorough-going shift in paradigm will require richly drawn canonical narratives with the power to strengthen the imaginative and practical grasp of church communities on their being and function. One such narrative is that of communal and missional priesthood expressed through representation of both God to his world and the world to God. 

The Test-tube: ministry resources

John Sweetman

Maintaining Personal Health in Pastoral Ministry

Peter Francis

The Challenge of Contextualisation, Presence and Proclamation in Short-term Cross-cultural Mission

The Filter: book reviews

Every Square Inch, Every Waking Hour, Every Good Thing

I wrote the following mini reviews for EG, the quarterly magazine produced by the London Institute for Contemporary Christianity.

Bruce Riley Ashford, Every Square Inch: An Introduction to Cultural Engagement for Christians (Bellingham: Lexham Press, 2015), Benjamin T. Quinn & Walter R. Strickland II, Every Waking Hour: An Introduction to Work and Vocation for Christians (Bellingham: Lexham Press, 2016), and David W. Jones, Every Good Thing: An Introduction to the Material World and the Common Good for Christians (Bellingham: Lexham Press, 2016).

How far does the lordship of Christ extend? Answer: to every square inch. How much of our day can be spent glorifying God in our everyday callings, including work? Answer: every waking hour. How much of the material world are we to take care of as those entrusted by God to be his stewards? Answer: every good thing.

These three small-format books, individually and together, offer short primers on what it means to be a whole-life disciple of Jesus in God’s world. Every Square Inch briefly outlines a theology of culture and calling before exploring how we can engage with the arts, the sciences, politics and the public square, economics and wealth, scholarship and education. Every Waking Hour offers a concise perspective on work and vocation, looking at what the Bible says and in the light of the wisdom Christ brings and the kingdom he proclaims. Every Good Thing reminds us of the goodness of the material world and the significance of economics and stewardship, work and rest, and wealth and poverty in God’s design for human beings.

All three books tackle truncated views of Christianity which have been hindered by an adherence to a sacred-secular divide. All three understand that believing the gospel brings with it a comprehensive worldview which carries implications for every area of existence. All three root this perspective in the story told in the Bible, from creation to new creation. With action points and recommended reading at the end of each chapter, the format would work well for discussion in a small group, with the books being beneficial for those just starting out on the journey of discipleship as well as those further down the road.

Radical Belonging

I contributed today’s ‘Word for the Week’, a weekly email service provided by the London Institute for Contemporary Christianity.

For just as each of us has one body with many members, and these members do not all have the same function, so in Christ we, though many, form one body, and each member belongs to all the others. We have different gifts, according to the grace given to each of us. If your gift is prophesying, then prophesy in accordance with your faith; if it is serving, then serve; if it is teaching, then teach; if it is to encourage, then give encouragement; if it is giving, then give generously; if it is to lead, do it diligently; if it is to show mercy, do it cheerfully.

Romans 12:4-8

By the oversight of the Holy Spirit, while Romans was written for us, it wasn’t written to us. As Peter Oakes invites us to imagine in Reading Romans in Pompeii: Paul’s Letter at Ground Level, it was written to Holconius the craftworker and the Christians who gathered in his workshop every Sunday. How would it have been heard by them?

Almost certainly, as residents of the Greco-Roman world of the first century, they would be familiar with the use of ‘body’ as a metaphor for harmony and cooperation. Except that where the analogy was used to call the commoners to work for the good of the senators or the state, here those who are gifted work for the good of the whole body – and all are gifted.

A body where ‘each member belongs to all the others’, where a householder and a slave are equally interdependent, would undermine the status system of first-century Rome. Centuries later, whenever we’re tempted to feel superior to fellow members in the body of Christ, it still does. How could it be otherwise when the different gifts flow from God’s grace to each of us and are given for the good of the whole body?

The similarities and differences with other lists of gifts in Paul’s letters suggests it’s not intended to be a complete catalogue. Of the ones mentioned here, several of them have to do with the practical assistance of those in need. While some would be exercised during the time of meeting, others would be more applicable outside that context. All of them are concerned with our responsibility to one another, and are to be exercised with diligence and passion. None of them require calling to a special office.

The overall picture is of a community marked by the inspired disclosure of God’s word, a wellbeing that comes from service, teaching that builds people up, encouragement which helps fellow believers live out their obedience to Jesus, sharing generously with those in need, which is led diligently and well, characterised by a cheerful mercy that imitates God himself.

Who wouldn’t want to be a part of that?

It would be all too easy to bemoan how we fail to live up to that picture rather than ask instead how we might contribute to it, how we too might belong to the body of Christ.

Reformed Faith and Practice 1, 1 (2016)

Reformed Faith and Practice is a newish online journal, published by the Reformed Theological Seminary. According to the website, it ‘will publish three times a year, and each issue will contain several sections: articles and book reviews, a few discoveries from our Reformed past, and occasional tastes of campus community life’.

The entire first issue, whose contents are below, is available to download as a pdf here.

Introducing Reformed Faith & Practice

Michael Allen

Divine Fullness: A Dogmatic Sketch 

Richard B. Gaffin Jr.

The Life-Giving Spirit

Sean Michael Lucas

Owning our Past: The Spirituality of the Church in History, Failure, and Hope

Gregory R. Lanier

“It Was Made to Appear Like That to Them:” Islam’s Denial of the Crucifixion

Timothy J. Keller

Redeemer City Ministry as a Model of Ministry Preparation for the City

Roger Nicole

From the Archives: The Five Points of Calvinism

Conversation: Q & A with J. Todd Billings

Book Reviews

How to Think of Yourself

I contributed today’s ‘Word for the Week’, a weekly email service provided by the London Institute for Contemporary Christianity.

For by the grace given me I say to every one of you: do not think of yourself more highly than you ought, but rather think of yourself with sober judgment, in accordance with the faith God has distributed to each of you.

Romans 12:3

How would Holconius the cabinet-maker hear this? What would Sabina the stoneworker make of it? Or Iris the barmaid, or Primus the slave, or any of the others who belonged to the small Christian community in Rome?

Those are the questions Peter Oakes encourages us to consider in his fascinating book, Reading Romans in Pompeii: Paul’s Letter at Ground Level. From a guided tour through the remains of houses in Pompeii and a reconstruction of their possible occupants, making due allowance for differences in Rome, he invites us to imagine the social makeup of a house church in Rome. There are about thirty people: several householders with their spouses, children, and slaves; some, including slaves, from other households where they are the only Christian, and a few homeless people. When they meet, they squeeze into the largest room they have access to – a workshop rented by the wealthiest person among their number.

Just in case they were in any doubt, Paul’s message is for all of them: ‘I say to every one of you’, he writes. In God’s design, each of them has the amazing privilege of living out the renewed mind in how they think about themselves: ‘do not think of yourself more highly than you ought’.

We can so easily dismiss a call to humility as a truism. Doesn’t everyone believe it to be a good thing? But that simply wasn’t the case in first-century Rome. As Peter Oakes points out, in a society which was fiercely competitive for honour and status, Paul makes it clear that ‘there is no basis for seeing oneself as superior when the only measure is faith, a gift from God’.

Away from first-century Rome, there is something here for those of us whose egos are just about held in check by a sense of decorum (because it would reflect badly on me) rather than any exercise of spiritual discipline. There is something here, too, for those of us who are self-deprecating in the hope that someone else will feel obliged to praise us. Where is my source of self-worth? In what others think of me? In my latest achievements? In the need for constant acclaim?

For us, as for Holconius and Sabina, we are no more than what we are before the cross of Jesus. The measure for how we think of ourselves flows out of the gospel, and it’s the same fixed standard for all of us.

Mark Meynell on a Wilderness of Mirrors

I wrote the following mini review for EG, the quarterly magazine produced by the London Institute for Contemporary Christianity. Mark is a friend, but that has in no way biased my reading of his superb book!

Mark Meynell, A Wilderness of Mirrors: Trusting Again in a Cynical World (Grand Rapids: Zondervan, 2015).

One of the significant currents swirling around society today is the breakdown of trust – in politicians, businesses, authorities and institutions, including the church. Hand in hand with that goes cynicism and a sense of betrayal. How are we to live in such a world?

Addressing these issues, Mark Meynell serves up a well-researched, well-written book, with much to delight pundits of politics, history, philosophy, and popular culture. Here Thomas Hardy rubs shoulders with Monty Python, U2 with John Le Carré. But it’s deeply sensitive as well as informative. And ultimately hopeful too, because of what Mark believes about the way God works in the world, because of the self-giving love of Jesus in serving the powerless, and because of the community that gathers around him and his word.

A Wilderness of Mirrors calls us to rediscover the radical implications of the gospel for a disillusioned world, a world more than ever in need of Christ’s trustworthy goodness.

Journal for the Evangelical Study of the Old Testament 5, 1 (2016)

The latest issue of the Journal for the Evangelical Study of the Old Testament is now available online. The main articles (listed below with their abstracts) are available from here, with a pdf of the entire issue available here. As always, it’s worth checking out its book reviews as much as anything else.

Scott M. Callaham

Must Biblical and Systematic Theology Remain  Apart? Reflection on Paul van Imschoot

Biblical and systematic theology stand in tension as fields of study that are constructively related in theory but strictly segregated in practice. In the first place, the nature of biblical theology seems to mandate that the concerns of systematic theology exert no conscious influence upon the work of biblical theologians. Furthermore, as a rule, biblical theologies – especially those firmly grounded in the OT – only tangentially influence the work of systematicians. Thus endures a stubborn, seemingly intractable impasse in academic theology. Those who nonetheless seek a voice for biblical theology in the broader world of Christian theological reflection have an unlikely ally in Paul van Imschoot, a nearly forgotten pre-Vatican II Catholic biblical theologian. Van Imschoot’s productive labors transgress received assumptions on the relationship between biblical and systematic theology and beckon present theologians to return to the grounding of Scripture for the formation of doctrine.

Gregory Cook

Power, Mercy, and Vengeance: The Thirteen Attributes in Nahum

Nahum scholars typically interpret the reference to YHWH’s Thirteen Attributes of Mercy in Nah 1:3a as a re-reading meant to minimize YHWH’s mercy and emphasize his wrath. This article shows that the quote originates from Num 14:17–18 while maintaining an allusion to Exod 34:6–7. In this light, Nah 1:3a does not explain YHWH’s wrath against Assyria; rather, it explains how YHWH could pardon Judah’s apostasy and deliver his people 

Sunny Wang

The Visual and Auditory Presentation of God on Mount Sinai

In the OT there are two accounts of theophany recorded in Exod 19–20 and Deut 4–5. Some scholars thus argue that Deut 4 is constructed in such a way as to show that hearing is superior to sight. This paper argues that the senses of sight and hearing are used together to attain knowledge of God and that this interrelation between seeing and hearing is intended. The account of theophany on Mount Sinai is used as an example to show that seeing and hearing are often mingled to complement each other. The presence of God is experienced through hearing the voice of God and seeing God speaking out of fire, cloud, and smoke on the mountain. There is no sign to prove that one sense is superior to the other in the account of theophany. They are both means by which to experience God.

Book Reviews

The Bible Project

Since I last posted on the Bible Project, many more video overviews of Bible books have been added, including on Zechariah, Haggai, Daniel, Ezra-Nehemiah, Ezekiel (in two parts), Lamentations, Esther, Jeremiah, Ecclesiastes, Proverbs, Zephaniah, Habakkuk, Nahum, Micah, Joel, Obadiah, Amos, Hosea, Isaiah (in two parts), Jonah, Kings, Samuel (in two parts), and Judges.

Check out all the videos from here (click on ‘Videos’ or scroll down to the ‘Videos/Study Guides/Posters’ section) or see them all via YouTube here.

An Amazing Possibility

I contributed today’s ‘Word for the Week’, a weekly email service provided by the London Institute for Contemporary Christianity.

Therefore, I urge you, brothers and sisters, in view of God’s mercy, to offer your bodies as a living sacrifice, holy and pleasing to God – this is your true and proper worship. Do not conform to the pattern of this world, but be transformed by the renewing of your mind. Then you will be able to test and approve what God’s will is – his good, pleasing and perfect will.

Romans 12:1-2

It’s a gloomy picture, and it doesn’t make for pleasant reading, but Paul won’t have it any other way. Back in the early part of his letter to the Christians in Rome, Paul writes about bodies being degraded, minds being darkened, and men and women suppressing the will of God. All this, he makes clear, amounts to a refusal on the part of humanity to glorify and serve God, to worship God acceptably.

But what we have here at the start of Romans 12 is a reversal of that story. With the gospel comes the remaking of human beings – bodies and minds and wills – into God’s new people. And when God puts us back together, he does so in order that we might worship him, might give him his proper due.

The prophet Jeremiah looked forward to the day when God would make a new covenant with his people by putting his laws into their minds and writing them on their hearts, when all would know him (Jeremiah 31:31-34). Ezekiel too spoke of God putting his Spirit in his restored people and moving them to follow his decrees and keep his laws (Ezekiel 36:27). Paul’s language here echoes these promises and invites us to see that what the prophets looked forward to has now come to pass in the creation of a new people – Jew and Gentile – in Christ.

As we might expect, there is continuity as well as discontinuity with what went before. Christian life and worship is no longer focused on the sacrifices in the temple, and no longer determined by the law. There is still sacrifice, and there remains a desire to know and do the will of God; but these now come through the ongoing sacrifice of our whole selves, through the constant renewal of our minds, and through the alignment of our wills with God’s will – ‘his good, pleasing and perfect will’.

The vision offered here for working out the will of God is not following a list of dos and don’ts, but of God’s people – individually and together – walking in God’s ways.

As John Stott wrote, ‘if God has a purpose for the lives of his people, and if his purpose is discoverable, then nothing could be more important than for us to discern and do it’.

The apostle Paul holds out that amazing possibility.