One of the most influential books in my life has been Christ’s Doctrine of the Atonement by George Smeaton (buy at RHB or free ebook at Monergism). I started reading it during the first hour of the first day of my first week of Gospel ministry in 1995 and it continues to influence me to this day. I had no idea how much Christ himself had taught about his own atonement. I had always assumed that he’d left most of the teaching on it to his apostles. Not so. In almost 500 pages, Smeaton proved how Christ not only did the atonement but taught about it continually as well.

Doctrinal Day-Dreaming
George Smeaton has always intrigued me. (If you wish to more about Smeaton, there is a biography written by Free Church of Scotland historian, John Keddie.)  I first came across his name at the daily chapel in the Free Church College in Edinburgh, where I usually sat beside a display cabinet containing many “icons and artifacts” of Scottish Presbyterian history. Among them was a piece of paper which, if I recall, was the founding document of a Saturday morning “Exegetical Society.”

In it, signatories such as George Smeaton, Horatius Bonar, Robert Murray M’Chyene and other Scottish Presbyterian luminaries committed to gather at 6am every Saturday morning to exegete some passage of Scripture in the original languages. During the sometimes dreary chapels, I often day-dreamed my way into that gathering of great minds and holy hearts. What I would have given to have been a fellow-student of theirs in the mid-1800′s!

Given such a background, it’s little wonder that the outstanding strength of Smeaton’s writing on the atonement is his exegetical rigor. His exegesis demonstrated to me how verses I had thoughtlessly passed over were absolutely packed with theology, specifically with the doctrine of the atonement. Many a sermon idea germinated in my mind as I slowly read my way through about ten pages a day over many weeks.

Christ’s Viewpoint on His Work
In his preface to Christ’s Doctrine of the Atonement, Smeaton notes that prior to his volume there had been little or no emphasis on Christ’s own teaching on the atonement. Rather there was an almost exclusive focus upon the Apostolic development of the doctrine. The only exceptions were the heretics who focused on the Lord’s sayings with a view to getting evidence to support their anti-penal-substitution falsehoods!

Smeaton’s work, as is the case with so many classic theological works, arose out of a desire to defeat heresies and rescue what he calls “the central truth of Christianity and the great theme of Scripture.” However, he keeps his focus on the Bible and draws out his doctrine from the Gospels, not in opposition to false teachers. As he put it:

We here inquire simply what Jesus taught. We do not ask what one eminent church teacher or another propounded, but what the great Master said. We turn away our eye from every lower source of knowledge, whether called Christian consciousness, feeling, or reason, to the truth embodied in the consciousness and words of Jesus.

He divided his work into eight main divisions (the bold headings are my 21st-century summaries of 19th-century wordiness):

1. The Sources: The sources of our knowledge in the recorded sayings of Jesus, and the mode of investigation.

2. The Presuppositions: The postulates or presuppositions of the whole doctrine. Under this chapter, we shall notice, in separate sections, the great fact of sin for which a provision is made, the necessity of the atonement, the harmony of love and justice, the unique covenant-position of Jesus, and the influence of His Deity in the matter of the atonement.

3. The Elements. The constituent elements of the atonement, represented under a variety of sections, as consisting of sin-bearing and sinless obedience.

4. The Individual Effects. The effects or consequences of the atonement on the individual Christian, both in an objective and subjective point of view that is, in respect of the acceptance of His person, and the renovation of his nature by the communication of divine life.

5. The Wider Influence. The influence of the atonement on other interests in the universe, in reversing the previous order of things, in the conquest of Satan, in procuring the gift of the Holy Ghost, and the like.

6. The Success. The actual efficacy of the atonement, or the question for whom it was specially offered.

7. The Application. The application of the atonement.

8. The Acceptance or Rejection. The endless happiness or woe of mankind decided by its reception or rejection, and the influence exercised by this great event on morals and religion.

As part of my passion to make profound theology accessible, in the coming months I hope to present Smeaton’s teaching in simplified and summarized form with the hope not only of resuscitating Smeaton for modern readers but also of reviving the still neglected teaching of Christ about his own atoning work.

Trying not to Drown in a Flood of Breaking News
No solutions here but the cartoon sums up what we’re all struggling with:

One of the remedies for burnout that I explore in Reset is friendship. Although, as Kelly Needham admits, True Friendship is Hard to Find, there are many motivations and advantages to pursuing it:

1. True friends heighten our joy in God.
2. True friends expose sin in us that keeps us from God.
3. True friends encourage us to obey God.
4. True friends bring us to God in our weakness.
5. True friends love us for the glory of God.

In How To Get Away From It All, Michael Hyatt looks back on a surprising vacation and identifies five ways in which it helped him reboot his soul:

• I went someplace beautiful.
• I was fully present.
• I had deep conversations.
• We spent time alone.
• I had an adventure.

Quite a few recent articles on the necessity and advantages of a weekly Sabbath. In Better than Busy: Recovering Rest in a Burnout Culture, Colin Noble says:

Our digital age simply offers new manifestations of the age-old temptation to usurp God’s role for ourselves. But against this age-old temptation, God offers an age-old response: what would happen to our 24/7 switched-on world if the people who came to Jesus for rest (Matthew 11:28) regularly took a day of rest from distraction, work, and busyness? What would this weekly habit have to offer to the world in which we find ourselves — a world that restlessly continues to search for peace amid busyness?

He offers four reasons to observe a weekly Sabbath.

1. Taking a weekly day of rest is a sign that we desire God.
2. Taking a weekly day of rest is a sign that we trust God.
3. Taking a weekly day of rest proclaims Christ’s supremacy.
4. Taking a weekly day of rest declares our freedom.

Here’s Tim Keller on The Power of Deep Rest

Anyone who cannot obey God’s command to observe the Sabbath is a slave, even a self-imposed one. Your own heart, or our materialistic culture, or an exploitative organization, or all of the above, will be abusing you if you don’t have the ability to be disciplined in your practice of Sabbath. Sabbath is therefore a declaration of our freedom. It means you are not a slave—not to your culture’s expectations, your family’s hopes, your medical school’s demands, not even to your own insecurities. It is important that you learn to speak this truth to yourself with a note of triumph—otherwise you will feel guilty for taking time off, or you will be unable to truly unplug.

And Ian Hamilton on the Sabbath as The Foundation of Godliness.

We live in a mad, bad world. Equip yourself to face it and not be overwhelmed by it, by honouring the Sabbath day, and by imitating the example of the Saviour, who ‘often withdrew to lonely places and prayed.’ He needed to, and he did. We need to and we must.

Sleep continues to fill the headlines as more and more are realizing how important it is for human flourishing on every level. Apparently Beauty Sleep is a Real Thing. A couple of bad nights is enough to make a person look “significantly” more ugly. To make maters worse, that puts people off from socializing with you! And if that’s not bad enough, Reducing Sleep also makes you hungry. So what to do if you’re an insomniac? Here’s a excellent article on Sleep Disorders and the Glory of God.

Pastors especially will want to read about The Best Way to Avoid Pastor Burnout.

Mark Elfstrand interviewed me about Living a Grace-Paced Life in a Burnout Culture.

And here are a few reflections on Reset, one by Scott Slayton, one by Josh Reich, and one by Mike Leake.

More Grace-Pace Life Resources here.

One of the ways that children sometimes try to deepen their relationship with their parents is to travel back to where their father or mother grew up. They might visit historical societies, read archives, and gather newspaper stories and artifacts from old friends. Doing so, they build a bigger and better picture of their father or mother and experience a deeper sense of connection with them and love for them.

In a similar way, Christians go back to the Old Testament to build a bigger and better picture of Jesus Christ. By connecting with his past, we connect better with him and deepen our love for him. The Old Testament connects us with Jesus’ past in the following ways:

1. We are reading Jesus’ Bible: The 39 books of the Old Testament are the Scriptures he heard and read. These are the verses he memorized. This was his Sunday school syllabus. He fed his hungry soul on the Law, the Prophets, and the Poets. They nourished and edified him.

2. We are learning Jesus’ language: Jesus was so familiar with the Old Testament that his vocabulary was saturated with Old Testament words and concepts. He spoke the Old Testament, taught the Old Testament, applied the Old Testament, and consciously and deliberately fulfilled the Old Testament. Like Bunyan, if you were to prick him, he would “bleed Bibline.”

3. We are singing Jesus’ songs: The Psalms were Jesus’ hymnbook. They were what He worshipped with in the Temple and Synagogue. He used them to express faith, hope, and trust; but also fear, anxiety, and even abandonment. He sang them on the eve of his death and even many of his last words were Psalm words.

4. We are feeling Jesus’ feelings: Paul prayed that he might know the fellowship of Christ’s sufferings (Phil. 3:10). One of the best ways to do this is to read the Psalms that predict Christ’s sufferings, especially the emotional sufferings, the agony of human betrayal and desertion, and ultimately the horror of divine abandonment (e.g. Ps. 22, 69). We feel Christ’s feelings there in an even deeper way than in the Gospels.

5. We are hearing Jesus’ voice: We must banish the false idea that it’s God the Father who speaks in the Old Testament and it’s God the Son who speaks in the New. Even if we say that it’s the voice of the triune God we hear in the Old Testament, the Son’s voice is equally joined to the Father’s and the Spirit’s. However, we can go further and say that it is God the Son who is specially speaking in the Old Testament. He is the Word of God, the usual way God speaks to sinners, the one mediator between God and man. “Thus says the Lord” effectively means “Thus says the Messiah.” (Rev. 19:10).

6. We are seeing Jesus in action: The Son of God visited the earth as the Angel of the Lord at least 20 times (and maybe many more times that are not recorded). We can see what kind of Savior he was in human form long before he came in human flesh as he frequently brought gracious messages and powerful help to his needy people.

7. We are admiring Jesus’ trophies: In some ways, the Old Testament saints are even more amazing than New Testament saints. When you think of how little truth they had, how little of the Holy Spirit they had, how few the believers were, and how rare their encouragements, it’s utterly amazing that they believed in the coming Messiah and kept believing. It can only be explained by the almighty work of Christ in the soul by his Holy Spirit. His Old Testament trophies of grace shine with a special luster in his “showcase.”

Open the Bible at Genesis, travel back in time, connect with Christ in the Old Testament, deepen your relationship with him, and increase the heat of your love for him.

Blogs

Giving and Receiving Commendation
As with every other important part of our lives, Scripture has much to teach us about how to give and receive commendation.

Biblical Womanhood Doesn’t Begin and End in Proverbs 31
“Biblical womanhood does not begin and end in Proverbs 31. It starts in Genesis — it ends in Revelation. It is found in the entire redemptive story.”

Smelling the Gospel Flowers in Proverbs
Erik Raymond slows down enough to find the Gospel in Proverbs.

10 Things Church Members Want from Their Pastor

• A church wants to know that their pastor loves them.
• Effective preaching requires adequate time for preparation.
• Much of a pastor’s ministry is judged as effective or not based upon the preaching ministry.
• Social media background checks are becoming standard when hiring a pastor.
• We are leaving a blueprint of our lives when we interact on social media.
• An organization without a path forward becomes an uneasy organization.
• A lot of people can have great ideas. Not many people can execute them, too.
• There is nothing wrong with having fun as a leader.
• Most leaders are not transparent enough.

The Parable of Anthony Weiner’s iPhone
When it comes to pornography and the hook up culture, digitization is weaponization, and for many of us, winning the war against sexual nihilism in our communities and our own souls might mean refusing to even pick up the weapons.

The Power of Deep Rest
Tim Keller:

Anyone who cannot obey God’s command to observe the Sabbath is a slave, even a self-imposed one. Your own heart, or our materialistic culture, or an exploitative organization, or all of the above, will be abusing you if you don’t have the ability to be disciplined in your practice of Sabbath. Sabbath is therefore a declaration of our freedom. It means you are not a slave—not to your culture’s expectations, your family’s hopes, your medical school’s demands, not even to your own insecurities. It is important that you learn to speak this truth to yourself with a note of triumph—otherwise you will feel guilty for taking time off, or you will be unable to truly unplug.

On the same subject, here’s Ian Hamilton on the sabbath as one of The Foundations of Godliness.

We live in a mad, bad world. Equip yourself to face it and not be overwhelmed by it, by honouring the Sabbath day, and by imitating the example of the Saviour, who ‘often withdrew to lonely places and prayed.’ He needed to, and he did. We need to and we must.

Kindle Books

Edwards on the Christian Life: Alive to the Beauty of God by Dan Ortlund $5.99. I loved this book…and the next one.

Seeing Beauty and Saying Beautifully: The Power of Poetic Effort in the Work of George Herbert, George Whitefield, and C. S. Lewis by John Piper $2.99.

The Things of Earth: Treasuring God by Enjoying His Gifts by Joe Rigney $3.99.

“God wishes us to take true pleasure with him in our salvation, and in this he wishes us to be greatly comforted and strengthened, and so he wants our souls to be happily filled with this, through his grace; for we are his delight; he takes pleasure in us eternally, and so shall we in him, through his grace.” Julian of Norwich.

A “vicious circle” is a chain of events which each make a situation worse than before. A “virtuous” circle does the opposite; it creates an upward spiral of increasingly favorable results. It’s the latter that Julian describes here:

1. We take pleasure in our salvation by God
2. God takes pleasure in our pleasure in our salvation.
3. We take pleasure in His pleasure.
4. God takes pleasure in our pleasure.

And on and on it goes, ever upwards, ever increasing joy and delight in one another. A mutual pleasure that doesn’t end in this world and goes on forever in the world to come.

Just as a Father takes pleasure in the happiness of his children, so God takes pleasure in our happiness. Just as children love to make their father happy, so we love to make God happy. Yes, you can make God happy by enjoying yourself in the pleasures He has provided for you in grace and in providence.

The more you receive and celebrate God’s pleasure, the more pleasure you give to Him.

“The Lord takes pleasure in those who fear Him,
In those who hope in His mercy.” (Psalm 147:11)

Blogs

Women Use Porn Too
“We must stop assuming pornography is a men’s problem, because it’s not. It’s a human problem.”

Q&A: How Do We Ask for Help When Living with Mental Illness?
Amy Simpson answers the following question:

Our daughter has a mental illness, and our whole family has had to make adjustments to help her. There are times when she does really well, especially when she does what her doctor recommends: gets enough rest, eats well, and works with her therapist. But sometimes things are really hard, and this has a big impact on all of us. We haven’t told many people about our daughter’s illness, but it would be nice if we could have some help and support from our church and from other people we know. But how do we help our church and community understand what we need? We aren’t sure ourselves!

Set the Soundtrack of Your Mind
Leave your mind on autopilot, and distractions will dictate your life. Set your mind above, and God will.

5 Principles for Disciplining Your Children
“Through my years of working with kids, five guiding principles helped me as a counselor, teacher, and especially as a mom. While not all methods work for all children, I’ve found these principles work for a variety of children, regardless of their age, sex, or disposition.”

Denzel: Your Phone Is Changing You
“Study after study has shown that too much time on our phones has profound effects on our physical health, including (but not limited to) inactivity and obesity, stress and anxiety, sleeplessness and restlessness, bad posture and sore necks, eye strain and headaches, hypertension and stress-induced shallow breathing patterns. The physical consequences of our unwise smartphone habits often go unnoticed, because in the matrix of the digital world, we simply lose a sense of our bodies, our posture, our breathing, and our heart rates. Our overwhelming focus on projected images causes negligence with regard to our bodies.”

U Can’t Talk to Ur Professor Like This
“Sociologists who surveyed undergraduate syllabuses from 2004 and 2010 found that in 2004, 14 percent addressed issues related to classroom etiquette; six years later, that number had more than doubled, to 33 percent. This phenomenon crosses socio-economic lines. My colleagues at Stanford gripe as much as the ones who teach at state schools, and students from more privileged backgrounds are often the worst offenders.”

A Story of Slavery in Modern America
“She lived with us for 56 years. She raised me and my siblings without pay. I was 11, a typical American kid, before I realized who she was.”

How God Uses Questions in the Bible
“God uses questions to force us to confront our own hearts. He questions us not because He needs to know or understand something about what’s going on, but because He wants us to know and understand the truth of what’s going on. Through questions, God forces us to turn our gaze on ourselves, our hearts, and our motivations. He makes us look deeply into ourselves, knowing that He already knows, and then own up to that which we have either been unable or unwilling to see previously.”

Beauty sleep is a real thing
A couple of bad nights is enough to make a person look “significantly” more ugly, sleep experiments suggest.

Kindle Books

Glorifying God in Your Body by Al Martin $5.99. See my foreword here.

The Soul of Shame: Retelling the Stories We Believe About Ourselves by Curt Thompson $5.99.

Reading the Sermon on the Mount with John Stott $3.99.

Also, Ligonier’s Reformation Study Bible, which is available in NKJV, is available for 50% of this week.

Video

Why the Book of Psalms is Like no Other Biblical Book