FRIDAY REVIEW

Contending for our all

February 29, A.D. 2008

Everyone who goes on ahead and does not abide in the teaching of Christ does not have God. Whoever abides in the teaching has both the Father and the Son (2 John 9).

I’ve just begun a new book that I believe will speak directly to our times. It’s called Contending for Our All by John Piper.

Our inclination is to hold back from conflict and controversy, and yet the truth of the Gospel of Jesus Christ is worth contending for because “Our All” is at stake.

Piper examines this premise by exploring the lives of three Christians from across the centuries: Athanasius (298-373), John Owen (1616-1683), and J. Gresham Machen (1881-1937).

This week I invite you to hear and ponder these three brief quotations from Piper:

            In Athanasius’s lifelong battle for the deity of Christ against the Arians… Athanasius said, “Considering that this struggle is for our all… let us also make it our earnest care and aim to guard what we have received.” When all is at stake, it is worth contending. This is what love does.

            Machen… put it like this: “Controversy of the right sort is good; for out of such controversy, as Church history and Scripture alike teach, there comes the salvation of souls.” When you believe that soul-saving truth (our all) is at stake in a controversy, running away is not only cowardly but cruel.

            As with Athanasius, Owen said that “our all” is at stake in contending for the truth of Christ…. Even in the battle, not just after it, we must commune with God. “When we have communion with God in the doctrine we contend for – then shall we be garrisoned by the grace of God against all the assaults of men.”

Your brother in Jesus the Christ,

Jim McCaslin+