Vapour Trails

 The Signs of Christ At Work Amongst Us

Some of our readers will be familiar with Rosaria Butterfield.  In this video she responds to questions put to her by Russell Moore, one of the prominent theologians and teachers in the Southern Baptist Confederation.

To those who have not yet come across Rosaria, her experience of coming out of militant lesbianism to faith in the risen Christ is salutary and of great moment for the modern Church.  There is much to learn.  One of the most salutary and encouraging things is how Butterfield responds to questions about her experiences by placing her life within the context of the fundamentals and depths of the Christian faith.  This is what being saved by Christ “looks” like.  There is also important stuff in this video about what the community of the redeemed must be and become. 

Moderns Versus the Gospel

The War of the World(view)s

The Bible has much to say about God and about how we can come to know him.  What is says is deeply at odds with much of the thinking in the modern world.  And this fundamental difference generates differences in many other areas–differences in people’s whole view of the world.  Modern worldviews are at odds with the worldview put forward in the Bible.  This difference in worldviews creates obstacles when modern people read and study the Bible  People come to the Bible with expectations that do not fit the Bible, and this clash becomes one main reason, though not the only one, why people do not find the Bible’s claims acceptable. [Vern Poythress, Inerrancy and Worldview: Answering Modern Challenges to the Bible (Wheaton, Illinois: Crossway, 2012), p. 14.]

It is incumbent upon Christians to understand what is going on when moderns, often with disdain and ridicule, reject the Bible.  There is not just a clash between the reader and the text.  Now the Bible is worlds apart from the modern view–or more precisely, worldviews apart.  This was not always the case.  Generally, when an Unbeliever approached the Bible during the first Christendom (roughly 800AD to 1700AD) he would come knowing about, if not believing in, a creator.  He would also come to the Bible already believing in heaven and hell, in divine judgment, in moral guilt, sin, and punishment.  Most likely he would also believe in the Christ.  In other words, he would come with the general worldview of the Bible already in situ and largely intact.

No longer.  Modernism and post-modernism have excised such beliefs from the modern Unbelieving mind.
 

The confrontation between Belief and Unbelief during the first Christendom was much more akin to that which occurred during the days of our Lord and the Jewish people.   The issue was more pointedly about obedience to the commands and acceptance of the promises of Holy Scripture.  Consider the case of the Rich Young Ruler.  He believed, but did not have saving faith–that is, his belief had distorted the Bible’s Gospel to self-righteousness as he supposedly kept the commandments.  Yet he was unable to pick up his cross and follow Jesus in humble submission to God.  Or take the parable of the Pharisee and the Tax Collector.  The former believed many things taught in the Bible, but did not have saving faith, whereas the Tax Collector did. 

But today the battlefield is different, requiring an adjustment in tactics and approach.  Moderns today are, in general, profoundly ignorant of the content and teaching of the Bible.  Secondly, even if they have some superficial knowledge of its contents, it resembles a foreign language to them.  So, taking the Gospel to today’s Modern requires Christians to learn what amounts to a foreign language (the prevailing world-view of Unbelief)–which, in turn, needs to be dismantled and the Bible’s worldview contrasted with modernism–even as the contents of Scripture are presented. This involves teaching the Unbeliever in his turn a new language–the language of the worldview of the Bible, so that the Unbeliever can begin to appreciate the sense, meaning, implications and the significance of the Scripture’s propositional teaching. 

Urbane or Prophetic

Paul at Athens

When Christians engage in the public square–that is, in any public debate, whether in the local community or the parliament–some counsel we must become as secular as everyone else.  We must win over the opposition using their frames of  reference.  We must appeal to natural law, reason, and common sense.  We must check in our Christian guns before riding into town to the OK Corral. 

Some claim biblical and apostolic warrant for such an approach.  They argue from Acts 17 where Paul was in Athens, debating with Greeks in the agora, that this is precisely what the Apostle himself did.  Consider the following:

What can we glean from this encounter?  St. Paul, without compromising his message, tailored it to his audience.  He spoke in Hellenistic rather than Judaic terms, as a philosopher more than as a Christian theologian, in a manner that engaged them rather than repelled them.  He relied on common grace rather than on the knowledge and acceptance of Christian doctrine.  “I have become all things to all men,” he says in the book of Corinthians, “So that by all possible means I might save some.”   [Michael Gerson, Peter Wehner, City of Man: Religion and Politics in a New Era (Chicago: Moody Press, 2010) p. 117.]

This is a simplistic, unsatisfactory reading of the text.  It is not an uncommon one, however.   A careful reading will quickly show the error of Gerson’s and Wehner’s view.
 

Firstly, when Paul went to Athens we are told that he was provoked within himself–he was greatly disturbed–when he saw the city was full of idols. (Acts 17:16).  Clearly, Paul was not checking his biblical guns in to the officials whilst strolling around the public square of Athens.  Paul did not adopt the persona of the urbane Greek or Roman: idols and deities are little more than childish superstitions to us more educated folk.  Let’s disregard them for what they are, and discuss the deeper philosophical questions of the day.  No, he immediately began to engage with both Jews and Greeks in the city, preaching Jesus and the resurrection.  The idolatry upset him. 

The Epicureans and the Stoics thought he was so barmy they called him a “babbler”.  Not much common ground there.  When he did get to speak in the Areopagus, he began his remarks by confronting them head on.  He could not have commenced with a more objectionable opening (to the ears of his audience).  He mocks them for their stupidity.  “Men of Athens, I perceive that in every way you are very religious.  For as I passed along and observed the objects of your worship. I found also an altar with this inscription, ‘To the unknown god’.  What therefore you worship as unknown, this I proclaim to you.” (Acts 17:23)  You Athenians are so superstitious, you worship what you don’t know.  And I am going to tell you that which you, in your ignorance, don’t know.  So much for doffing the hat to unbelieving worldly philosophies. 

Paul goes on to proclaim to them the God who created all things, and Who requires that all men should seek Him, has now declared that He will no longer tolerate or overlook the times of ignorance in which the Athenians are walking (Acts 17: 30).  He has appointed a Judge of all other men.  The day of judgment has also been fixed.  God is commanding that all men, including you Athenians, repent of your ignorance and your superstition, and He is commanding you to worship Him.  The proof that the Day of Judgment has been set and that the Judge of all has been appointed is the resurrection of that man from the dead.  (Acts 17:31). 

Some mocked.  Others said they wanted to hear more.  Now compare this actual Scriptural account of Paul at Athens with the gleanings of Gerson and Wehner.  They are reading into the text what they want to find.  They are not being its faithful servants.  Paul did precisely the opposite of what these two authors allege he did.  He confronted the Athenians in their unbelief, warned them of the coming judgment, and urged them to repent.  Whilst reasoning, his argument was thoroughly biblical leaping right out of the pages and scrolls of divine revelation.

It is a great, abiding shame that if ever there was an age in which Christian reasoning in the public square can and must be tied to God and His Christ and His holy Word, it is ours.  Maybe it would be possible for Christians to appeal to common sense, or shared commitments, or natural theology and to make headway were society predominantly Christian.  In such times, even Unbelievers think and act as if they were men of the Christian faith.  But no longer.  We live in an age far more like that which confronted the Apostle in Athens. 

But by God’s good hand, our age is not just an age of Unbelief, it has become an age when all truth is regarded as unknown in an absolute sense.  It is all relative.  It is all ultimately a personal perspective.  Mere perspectivalism, not mere Christianity, rules.  That’s precisely what confronted Paul in Athens: a town replete with idols of every type, shape, and dogma.  Such a society cannot ban–at least initially–the Christian and his faith from the public square.  To the modern Unbeliever, it is just one more perspective, one more view. 

The Christian thus has immediate authenticity when he declares, “I am a Christian, and from my perspective of belief, the following is true . . . ”  Then can come a declaration of absolute and final truth to which all men will be accountable.  In other words, it can come as a rejection of all relativism–even as Paul’s oration rejected all idolatry and the Pantheon. 

When we engage in the public square in such a fashion, there will be two responses: some will say, “Let’s hear more about this.”  Others will mock.  When that happens we know that we have been faithful Christians in an age of Unbelief. 

Neglecting Duties

Subtle Disobedience

An abiding temptation to Christians and the Church is to distort the truth by emphasis.  It is a subtle form of disobedience.  If the landowner gave his stewards a list of ten responsibilities and they focused on one only, neglecting the other nine. the unfaithfulness and disobedience of the stewards would be apparent to all. But not to the stewards, we suspect.  Their uber-faithfulness to one duty would be used to justify the neglect of their other duties. 

When Christians overemphasise a responsibility clearly taught in Scripture to the neglect of other commandments their defalcation is usually not immediately apparent to them.
  Their zeal for the one commandments often justifies their neglect of the others.  At least we are getting the “main things” right, they tell themselves.  Our Lord knew all about this deceit of heart.  At one point He condemned the Pharisees who focused on less important duties (tithing the produce of the herb garden) whilst they neglected the more weighty matters of the law (justice and mercy and faithfulness,  Matthew 23:23).  Our Lord said they should have done both: faithfully tithed their herb gardens and faithfully practised justice, mercy, and faithfulness. 

In some Christian circles evangelism has become the Most Important Duty–to the eclipsing and neglect of other commandments.  One place this shows up is in our worship services.  The worship of God has now morphed into an activity with the prime focus being to reach the Unbeliever with the Gospel.  Worship has become a means to a “higher” end: gaining converts.  Disobedience is the inevitable outcome of such a distortion. 

T. David Gordon deliberately understates the outcome to drive the point home:

. . . we can probably agree that a meeting between God and his people becomes very different when those who are self-consciously not his people are invited not only to observe, but to participate and feel comfortable.  As a meeting between God and his people, the meeting is compromised.  [Why Johnny Can’t Sing Hymns (Phillipsburg: P & R Publishing, 2010), p. 152f.]

 Arguably, worship–public worship–must be considered one of the weighty matters of the law.   The first four commandments all address different aspects of worship.  How should the Unbeliever “feel” when attending a Christian worship service?  Should he or she be invited to observe or participate?  The Gentiles during the Jewish disapora in the inter-testamental period attended synagogues as observers; the court of the Gentiles in the temple was likewise to encourage Gentiles to attend and observe, not participate.  This is where the God-fearers mentioned in the book of Acts came from: attending, watching, observing and respecting the synagogue services. They were welcomed as observers, not participants.

When the duty to evangelise becomes elevated into the status of an uber-responsibility, worship morphs into an activity centred upon non-Christians, rather than on God meeting with His people.  The service of worship must be “seeker friendly” whatever that may mean.  Usually it means conducting the service so that non-Christians can participate in the activities of worship.  The prayers, songs, music, preaching are all made relevant to non-Christians so they can take part.  This is a grave mistake. 

Inevitably it means that worship becomes a meeting between God and those not His people, which means in turn that the actual duties and obligations of worship by God’s people are neglected. 

This always happens when one duty is elevated into an uber-duty–a duty above all duties.   

Can We Prepare Our Culture to Receive the Gospel?

[A powerfully prophetic call from J. Gresham Machen (1881-1937) for intellectual engagement in the culture as a means of pre-evangelism–Ed. Hat Tip: Justin Taylor]

We are all agreed that at least one great function of the Church is the conversion of individual men. The missionary movement is the great religious movement of our day. Now it is perfectly true that men must be brought to Christ one by one. There are no labor-saving devices in evangelism. It is all hard-work.

And yet it would be a great mistake to suppose that all men are equally well prepared to receive the gospel.
It is true that the decisive thing is the regenerative power of God. That can overcome all lack of preparation, and the absence of that makes even the best preparation useless. But as a matter of fact God usually exerts that power in connection with certain prior conditions of the human mind, and it should be ours to create, so far as we can, with the help of God, those favorable conditions for the reception of the gospel.

False ideas are the greatest obstacles to the reception of the gospel. We may preach with all the fervor of a reformer and yet succeed only in winning a straggler here and there, if we permit the whole collective thought of the nation or of the world to be controlled by ideas which, by the resistless force of logic, prevent Christianity from being regarded as anything more than a harmless delusion.

Under such circumstances, what God desires us to do is to destroy the obstacle at its root. . . .
What is today a matter of academic speculation begins tomorrow to move armies and pull down empires. In that second stage, it has gone too far to be combated; the time to stop it was when it was still a matter of impassioned debate.

So as Christians we should try to mold the thought of the world in such a way as to make the acceptance of Christianity something more than a logical absurdity. . . . What more pressing duty than for those who have received the mighty experience of regeneration, who, therefore, do not, like the world, neglect that whole series of vitally relevant facts which is embraced in Christian experience—what more pressing duty than for these men to make themselves masters of the thought of the world in order to make it an instrument of truth instead of error?

—J. Gresham Machen, “Christianity and Culture,” in What Is Christianity? And Other Addresses, ed. Ned Stonehouse (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1951), pp. 162-163; emphasis added.

How the Kingdom Comes

Transformation Through Conversion

“I will drive them out before you little by little, until you become fruitful and possess the land.” (Exodus 23: 30)

God told the Israelites that their Biblical culture would come “little by little”.  It did not come suddenly, or overnight.  It came gradually.  The covenantal society . . . can only come about the same way.  That is, if it is to survive, it must come about from the bottom up. . . . It can only successfully come about (and stick) if it takes holy at a grass roots level through evangelism. 

The expansion of the Gospel from Jerusalem to Rome serves as an example.
  Jesus says at the beginning of Acts, “You shall receive My power when the Holy Spirit has come upon you; and you shall be My witnesses both in Jerusalem, and in all Judea and Samaria, and even to the remotest part of the earth.”  (Acts 1:8)  This verse summarises the spread of the Gospel from one part of the world to the rest.  It began in Jerusalem, and ended up in Rome.  The method was little-by-little evangelism, just like the land of Canaan.

Yes, Acts parallels the Book of Joshua.  Joshua is the account of the conquest of the land; Acts is the story of the conquest of the world.  But there is one striking contrast.  Joshua took the land by use of the sword, even though it played a secondary role.  None of the Apostles used the sword to spread the Gospel.  Why the difference?  Joshua, although a type of Jesus Christ, was under the Old Covenant.  The Old Covenant was a covenant of the flesh, graphically portrayed in the sacrament of circumcision.  And, if anything, the Old Testament teaches that the kingdom of God could not be established by the flesh, meaning the sword.  The garden of Eden was sealed off by a “flaming sword” (Genesis 3: 24), prohibiting re-entrance.  Man could not return to that particular garden by a carnal weapon because his sword could not stand against God’s.

Even David, a great man of God, was unsuccessful in creating God’s Kingdom.  He was a man of war, so was not allowed to build the Temple (I Kings 5:3).  . . .

The New Covenant Kingdom is created by the Spirit.  God has conquered Jericho by His might, to be sure.  But the Holy Spirit had not come in all of His historical fulness.  Christ had not yet come in history.  Israel needed to use the sword, but Israel ultimately failed.  The Church succeeded.  In Acts, the Spirit of God went forth and created the beginnings of a Christian world from the bottom up. 

The instrument the Spirit used was evangelism, witnessing.

Ray Sutton, That You May Prosper: Dominion by Covenant (Tyler, Tx: Institute for Christian Economics, 1978), p.202f.

>Fathers Are Critical

>Great Hope, Huge Responsibilities

The Covenant of Grace is the engine block of redemption: it is the spiritual structure which effects redemption and the salvation of the world.  God deals with us and relates to us within the terms and structures of the covenants He made with Noah, Abraham, Moses and Israel, David and so on–all of which were precursors of, or preludes to, the one Covenant–the Covenant made in the Blood and Body of Christ.

Central to that Covenant is the dynamic of children inheriting the promises and faith of their believing, covenant-keeping fathers.  The Covenant is thus a covenant with us and with our descendants.  This, in turn, is founded upon the promise of God: “I will be a God to you, and to your children after you.”  (Genesis 17:7)  For our part, our duty is to respond in faith to these promises, and act in accordance with them.  Thus, we raise our children not to be “little deciders for Jesus” but we command them to believe, obey, and walk in the commandments of their God.  Thus, God says of Abraham, our father:  “For I have chosen him, in order that he may command his children and his household after him to keep the way of the Lord by doing righteousness and justice; in order that the Lord may bring upon Abraham what He has spoken about him.” (Genesis 17: 19)  Faithful, covenant keeping fathers no more allow their children a choice as to whether they would believe and follow the Lord than they would allow their children to choose whether they would cross a busy street with their eyes shut.  Both lead to death. 

Commanding one’s children and household to keep the ways of the Lord is a duty placed upon every husband and father–the God appointed head of the household.  As that duty towards children is carried out, and as indeed, children are taught and trained to walk after the Lord and keep His Covenant, so the Lord brings about His promises.  And the promise is that Abraham (and his descendants) will become great and that all the nations of the earth will be blessed in him (Genesis 17:18).

Right at this point you have a distinction in the Church of our Lord.  There are many, many fellow believers who have not yet heard, nor reckoned with this reality.  For one reason or another they have not heard of the Covenant of Grace as the engine block of their salvation, nor reckoned with the fact that they have inherited the promises made to Abraham and are, in fact, children of Abraham (Galatians 3:29).  Sadly, they have not yet understood that God has made promises to them and their children; consequently they do not understand that they must command their children to walk in all the ways of the Lord.  To these brethren, the Great Commission begins afresh and again with each generation.  There can be no progress of redemption upon the earth. Everything goes back to “Go” with each new generation.  They sadly believe that each child born to Christian parents is not in any way differently related to God than an infant born in an unbelieving house of idolatry that has never heard the Gospel.  Both alike are children captive to the Devil. 

The Covenant of Grace, together with its intergenerational promise from God, to both fathers and their children, makes the task of discipling all the nations of the earth not only possible, but inevitable.  Thus, it is vitally important that every Christian household comes to understand the promises that God has made to us about our children, and the consequent required obedience that rests upon us, the parents, to command our children to walk in the ways of the Lord.

In this regard, fathers are critical. It is fathers, as heads of households, who must lead, not only by example, but by command.  When fathers fail to obey and fulfil their duties to their children, more often than not children grow up disbelieving and rebelling against the God of their father and their mother.

To illustrate, consider the following post by Justin Taylor:  

A Father’s Role in His Children Going to Church When They Are Adults

Robbie Low, writing in Touchstone (June 2003), points to an interesting 1994 study in Switzerland about the connection between the churchgoing habits of fathers and mothers and the effect on their children when they are grown.
Here’s a summary:

In short, if a father does not go to church, no matter how faithful his wife’s devotions, only one child in 50 will become a regular worshipper. If a father does go regularly, regardless of the practice of the mother, between two-thirds and three-quarters of their children will become churchgoers (regular and irregular). If a father goes but irregularly to church, regardless of his wife’s devotion, between a half and two-thirds of their offspring will find themselves coming to church regularly or occasionally.

A non-practicing mother with a regular father will see a minimum of two-thirds of her children ending up at church. In contrast, a non-practicing father with a regular mother will see two-thirds of his children never darken the church door. If his wife is similarly negligent that figure rises to 80 percent!

The results are shocking, but they should not be surprising. They are about as politically incorrect as it is possible to be; but they simply confirm what psychologists, criminologists, educationalists, and traditional Christians know. You cannot buck the biology of the created order. Father’s influence, from the determination of a child’s sex by the implantation of his seed to the funerary rites surrounding his passing, is out of all proportion to his allotted, and severely diminished role, in Western liberal society.

A mother’s role will always remain primary in terms of intimacy, care, and nurture. (The toughest man may well sport a tattoo dedicated to the love of his mother, without the slightest embarrassment or sentimentality). No father can replace that relationship. But it is equally true that when a child begins to move into that period of differentiation from home and engagement with the world “out there,” he (and she) looks increasingly to the father for his role model. Where the father is indifferent, inadequate, or just plain absent, that task of differentiation and engagement is much harder. When children see that church is a “women and children” thing, they will respond accordingly—by not going to church, or going much less.

Curiously, both adult women as well as men will conclude subconsciously that Dad’s absence indicates that going to church is not really a “grown-up” activity. In terms of commitment, a mother’s role may be to encourage and confirm, but it is not primary to her adult offspring’s decision. Mothers’ choices have dramatically less effect upon children than their fathers’, and without him she has little effect on the primary lifestyle choices her offspring make in their religious observances.
Her major influence is not on regular attendance at all but on keeping her irregular children from lapsing altogether. This is, needless to say, a vital work, but even then, without the input of the father (regular or irregular), the proportion of regulars to lapsed goes from 60/40 to 40/60.

You can read the whole essay here.

>A Saved World

>For God So Loved The World . . .

You must not fancy, then, that God sits helplessly by while the world, which He has created for Himself, hurtles hopelessly to destruction, and He is able only to snatch with difficulty here and there a brand from the universal burning.  The world does not govern Him in a single one of its acts: He governs it and leads it steadily onward to the end which, from the beginning, or ever a beam of it had been laid, He had determined for it. . . . Through all the years one increasing purpose runs, one increasing purpose: the kingdoms of the earth become every more and more the Kingdom of our God and His Christ.  The process may be slow; the progress may appear to our impatient eyes to lag.  But it is God who is building: and under His hands the structure rises as steadily as it does slowly, and in due time the capstone will be set into its place, and to our astonished eyes shall be revealed nothing less than a saved world.  

B. B. Warfield, from a sermon on John 3:16 entitled “God’s Immeasurable Love,” in Biblical and Theological Studies (Philadelphia: Presbyterian and Reformed Publishing Co., 1968), pp.518f. Cited in David Chilton, The Days of Vengeance: An Exposition of the Book of Revelation (Fort Worth, Texas: Dominion Press, 1987), p. 215.  http://rcm.amazon.com/e/cm?t=jtertullian&o=1&p=8&l=bpl&asins=0930462092&fc1=000000&IS2=1&lt1=_blank&m=amazon&lc1=0000FF&bc1=000000&bg1=FFFFFF&f=ifr

>Thy Kingdom Come

>Charles Haddon Spurgeon
 Evangelism; Great Commission;

I myself believe that King Jesus will reign, and the idols will be utterly abolished; but I expect the same power which turned the world upside down once will still continue to do it.  The Holy Ghost would never suffer the imputation to rest upon His holy name that He was not able to convert the world. 

Quoted in Iain Murray, The Puritan Hope: Revival and the Interpretation of Prophecy (London: The Banner of Truth Trust, 1971), p. 258. http://rcm.amazon.com/e/cm?t=jtertullian&o=1&p=8&l=bpl&asins=085151247X&fc1=000000&IS2=1&lt1=_blank&m=amazon&lc1=0000FF&bc1=000000&bg1=FFFFFF&f=ifr

>Ministering in a Post-Christian World

>Setting Good Foundations

D A Carson has been one of the more prolific scholar-authors of the past twenty years. He has recently published a work designed to present the Gospel to people raised in ignorance of the Christian faith. It does not fall into the trap of presuming that people have even a modicum of understanding of God, the creation, redemptive history, of Messiah, and His great redemptive works. We believe that increasingly this approach to evangelism and discipling the nations will need to be applied in the biblically-ignorant post-Christian West.

The book is entitled, The God Who is There: Finding Your Place in God’s Story. http://rcm.amazon.com/e/cm?t=jtertullian&o=1&p=8&l=bpl&asins=0801013720&fc1=000000&IS2=1&lt1=_blank&m=amazon&lc1=0000FF&bc1=000000&bg1=FFFFFF&f=ifr Here is the publisher’s description:

It can no longer be assumed that most people—or even most Christians—have a basic understanding of the Bible. Many don’t know the difference between the Old and New Testament, and even the more well-known biblical figures are often misunderstood. It is getting harder to talk about Jesus accurately and compellingly because listeners have no proper context with which to understand God’s story of redemption.

In this basic introduction to faith, D. A. Carson takes seekers, new Christians, and small groups through the big story of Scripture. He helps readers to know what they believe and why they believe it.

Here are a couple of blurbs:

Don Carson’s The God Who Is There is a unique and important volume in many ways. It is neither a traditional systematic theology nor a Bible survey. It unpacks the whole Biblical storyline through the lens of God’s character and actions. As a ministry tool, it can be used for evangelism, since it so thoroughly lays out the doctrine of God, as Paul does on Mars Hill in Acts 17. And yet it also does what the catechisms of the Reformation churches did: give Christians a grounding in basic biblical beliefs and behavior. By all means, get this book!
—Tim Keller

This is a much-needed book. D. A. Carson is one of the few biblical scholars who are gifted to write simply and in a way that captivates. We live in a time when people quickly reject or accept the Bible without even knowing its contents. Carson does a masterful job of explaining the Scriptures so that a person who has never even opened the Bible can understand it. At the same time, those who grew up under its teaching will find valuable and obvious truths that will lead them to greater worship and appreciation of the God we serve.
—Francis Chan

Here is the Table of Contents:

1. The God Who Made Everything
2. The God Who Does Not Wipe Out Rebels
3. The God Who Writes His Own Agreements
4. The God Who Legislates
5. The God Who Reigns
6. The God Who Is Unfathomably Wise
7. The God Who Becomes a Human Being
8. The God Who Grants New Birth
9. The God Who Loves
10. The God Who Dies—and Lives Again
11. The God Who Declares the Guilty Just
12. The God Who Gathers and Transforms His People
13. The God Who Is Very Angry
14. The God Who Triumphs

You can read the Preface and Chapter One online, here

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Hat Tip: Justin Taylor.