Christ Our Mediator, by C.J. Mahaney

C.J. Mahaney, pastor of Covenant Life Church in suburban Washington, D.C., packs a great deal of truth and conviction in his little book Christ Our Mediator: Finding Passion at the Cross.  This is my first exposure to Mahaney.  If the pastoral tone, theological depth, and clarity in communication in this book are reflective of his overall ministry, I certainly wouldn't mind hearing more from him.

In Christ Our Mediator, Mahaney challenges the reader to focus on the cross, and Jesus mediating purpose.  Too often, we focus on subjective feelings, rather than the object teaching of the gospel.  "Our feelings are an essential part of our right response to reality, but they should never in themselves be the determiner of reality."  We should not "invest our feelings with final authority."  Looking to Paul, Mahaney reminds us of the substance of the gospel: "The main theme and essence of the entirety of holy Scripture" is that "there's a unique intermediary between God and humanity: the man Christ Jesus, who gave Himself as the ransom for all."

Jesus suffering on the cross, unimaginable to us, had a focus.  In spite of the overwhelming weight of the sin of the world, Jesus' focus was on me.  In his darkest our, he still loved me and was thinking of me.  "There's no greater encouragement, and no greater motivation for everything God has called you to do in life, than to recognize His love for you in His darkest hour, and to receive his care for you in your darkest hour."  That's amazing.  And it should never be far from our minds as we grow as Christians.  We need to preach the gospel to ourselves, again and again, above all else.  "Growth in godliness must be pursued, but never apart from joyful gratitude for the cross."

Christ Our Mediator is a challenging read, not in terms of vocabulary or academic language, but in terms of demanding a response.  Don't let its short 96-page length fool you.

Thanks to Waterbrook Multnomah and Edelweis for my complimentary review copy.

Dug Down Deep, by Joshua Harris

For my 100th Reading Glutton blog entry (yippee! 100!), I decided I should actually review a book, unlike my last 2 entries.  For the 100th entry, I will be reviewing Dug Down Deep: Building Your Life on Truths That Last, by Joshua Harris, which I received free from the publisher for the Blogging for Books program.  (Click the icon to the right to go to the Blogging for Books web site, and give all my reviews 5 stars!)  I have the paperback.  For some reason, the hardcover title is Dug Down Deep: Unearthing What I Believe and Why It Matters.  Maybe it's common to change subtitles like this, but it seems odd.

This video introduces the book better than I can:

Joshua Harris, pastor of Covenant Life Church in Gaithersburg, Maryland, first gained publishing notoriety with his best-selling I Kissed Dating Goodbye. At that time, tackling the biggest questions in the minds of teens and 20-somethings, he was 21, but now, as a pastor, he tackles nothing less than systematic theology.  Harris writes with a personal, conversational style, whittling down theological conundrums into bite-size morsels.  With a pastor's heart and preacher's gift for communication, he brings the reader to a deeper understanding of many areas of theology.  Eschatology was noticeably absent, but he covers a wide swath of Christian teaching.

For the most part, any evangelical will be comfortable with his exposition.  His perspectives are representative of his denomination, Sovereign Grace Ministries.  (I know they don't call themselves a denomination; they are a "family of churches."  But from an outsider's perspective, they seem to operate much like a denomination.)  Harris draws from his church's Reformed, charismatic theology.  He is comfortable with and relies on the writings of John Piper, Wayne Grudem, John Stott, and others.  If you know who they are, you have an idea of where Harris is coming from.

As a Baptist-turned-charismatic (I identify with the Vineyard tradition), I found Harris's strongest chapter to be the one on the Holy Spirit.  He calls on us to embrace the gifts of the Spirit while being careful to avoid the excesses that sometimes creep up in the church.  "You can limit him by thinking he can never work in specific ways.  But you can also limit him by thinking that only the spectacular is meaningful."  Most importantly, the Spirit gives us the power of a changed heart and life.  Like a spotlight focusing on a stage, the Spirit spotlights Jesus.  "You know the Spirit is working if you're more amazed by Jesus, more desirous to serve and obey him, more ready to tell other people about him, more ready to serve the church he loves."

I was less impressed with his chapters on salvation and sanctification.  I felt like he was really trying to convey the reformed position, but he had a hard time fleshing out that difficult balance between salvation that comes as a work of God's grace alone, and that comes by our faith in Jesus, and between the holiness that comes from God and the obedience that comes from our effort.  I'm sure I couldn't do a better job with these questions, but I finished those chapters torn.  Did he make sense or didn't he?

Overall, this is a helpful, thoughtful book for the new Christian and the mature believer alike.  Whether or not he has all the answers, he provides fodder for discussion (discussion questions included at the end) and points us to resources for further study.  Dug Down Deep reminds us that if we want to know God, we ought to make an effort to know about him as best we can.