Tag: Athanasius Press

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God’s obligation comes from within himself

As the Ruth project continues, here is another quotation from the section on the righteousness of God:

God’s justice or God’s righteousness obligates him to redeem his people and reward their labors on behalf of his kingdom.  It’s because God is righteous that he must keep his covenant and, of course, that covenant is a covenant of grace with us.

So this obligation, then, does not come from outside, as if we had some intrinsic claim on God’s salvation or as if our works could somehow put God in debt to us.  Rather, God’s obligation comes from within himself, from his own determination to be trustworthy and to make good on his covenant pledge, no matter what.

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This world is not my home…or is it?

Those who follow me on twitter may see several tweets with the hash-tag #Ruthproject. The Ruth project is a new work I am working with a fellow pastor from Birmingham. We are working on a commentary on Ruth. But this will not be just a normal, exegetical work, it is actually a pastoral and theological labor focusing on the nature and goal of redemptive history. We will focus on the content of Ruth’s majestic love story, but also detailing why Ruth serves as a miniature picture for all of God’s history.

We will offer a theological framework for how we are to look at redemptive history and how God is working in it. The commentary hopes to be practical, pastoral, and layman-friendly.

Here is a quote from the introduction:

What you believe about the future shapes how you live in the present.  If your final expectation is just to go and dwell forever in ethereal heaven, compare what your world view and your practice would be to someone whose final hope is of dwelling in a renovated and perfected physical creation in a resurrection body.

Lord-willing we will be able to provide a manuscript draft to our publisher by the end of the summer. Our goal is to have it published by the Family Advance Conference in November.