The Transforming Power of Christ’s Glory
00:00:00.000 | [Music]
00:00:05.000 | This week we welcome Michael Reeves to the podcast, filling in for John Piper.
00:00:09.000 | Michael is the author of several books, including "The Unquenchable Flame,"
00:00:13.000 | "Discovering the Heart of the Reformation," along with "The Lighting in the Trinity,"
00:00:17.000 | one of my favorite books of 2012. He just finished work on a beautiful book
00:00:21.000 | titled "Christ Our Life," which is scheduled to release on September 1st in the UK.
00:00:26.000 | It will be titled "Rejoicing in Christ" and released in the US early next year, early in 2015.
00:00:33.000 | Anyone who has read his books know Michael as a gifted church historian, a theologian,
00:00:38.000 | and a keen and incisive writer. He lives in the UK and currently serves as the director
00:00:43.000 | of an online theology website, UnionTheology.org,
00:00:47.000 | and senior lecturer at Wales Evangelical School of Theology.
00:00:51.000 | We are grateful for your time, Michael. You write so much about the glory of Christ.
00:00:55.000 | How does being Christ-centered, focusing ministry on the glory of Christ,
00:01:00.000 | how does this change someone's life?
00:01:03.000 | Well, let me tell you a story of Thomas Goodwin's conversion.
00:01:07.000 | Thomas Goodwin, he was a great Puritan theologian and preacher. He was born in 1600.
00:01:14.000 | Now, he's born of Puritan parents, Puritan stock, and he grew up quite religious.
00:01:21.000 | And he even decided at quite a young age that he wanted to be a preacher.
00:01:27.000 | But without being a Christ-centered preacher who'd experienced the sovereign grace of God in his life,
00:01:36.000 | he had a ministry in those early days of battering consciences,
00:01:42.000 | that is, of seeking to get people to improve.
00:01:47.000 | He then had a religious crisis, a meltdown, in which he listened to a sermon.
00:01:54.000 | He was about 20 years old. He heard a sermon that made him deeply concerned for his own spiritual state.
00:02:00.000 | And he had seven years of gloomy introspection.
00:02:04.000 | He was grubbing around inside himself to see if he had enough faith to merit salvation,
00:02:10.000 | to see if he was being meritorious enough.
00:02:14.000 | And then an old pastor told him, at the end of those seven years, told him,
00:02:21.000 | "Don't trust to anything in yourself, whether performance or feelings. Look out and rest on Christ alone."
00:02:30.000 | And with that, he said he was freed.
00:02:33.000 | But what's so striking, I think, is not only was Goodwin's own life freed,
00:02:41.000 | his ministry profoundly changed because he now became a Christ-centered preacher.
00:02:49.000 | And having seen through those seven years of introspection, having God's grace having shone into his heart,
00:02:57.000 | he began to have a very deep, a radically deep understanding of sin.
00:03:02.000 | So he couldn't simply tell people to try to improve because he saw now they can't do it.
00:03:09.000 | And instead, he began to have not a big view of our own ability to be able to sort ourselves out,
00:03:15.000 | but a big view of God's grace in Christ that can rescue those who are dead and enslaved in sin.
00:03:24.000 | And so he became a Christ-centered preacher who would preach that gospel with compassion for those who are addicted to sin and entirely enslaved to it.
00:03:37.000 | He had a mentor, a great Richard Sibbes, who, when he was a young man, told Goodwin,
00:03:43.000 | "Young man, if ever you would do good, you must preach the gospel and the free grace of God in Christ Jesus."
00:03:53.000 | And I think an example of this would be in one of his most popular works called Christ Set Forth.
00:04:02.000 | And in that work, he makes it very clear he's aiming simply to hold Christ before the eyes of his readership.
00:04:11.000 | And he makes it very clear why he wants to do it, because even in those days, which we often look back on the 17th century as a golden age of preaching,
00:04:21.000 | he believed that Christ simply wasn't well-known enough by people. People were ignorant of him, or as he put it, barren in their knowledge of Christ.
00:04:34.000 | And therefore, they wouldn't look out of themselves to him, but they would trust in themselves.
00:04:40.000 | They'd either be imprisoned in their own guilt or dependent on their own performance, not looking out to Christ.
00:04:46.000 | And so Goodwin, having seen the solution in the Saviour, wanted now for the rest of his ministry to set forth Christ with great clarity.
00:04:57.000 | Now, I'm someone who's had a similar experience to Goodwin of a crisis of depending on myself, not knowing where to go to,
00:05:06.000 | and then seeing the beautiful answer in Christ. And still today, Goodwin, he was a man who helped me through his writings.
00:05:14.000 | He's a man who sets forth Christ in a way that changes the reader because you're liberated by God's grace and not your own potential.
00:05:24.000 | I think of maybe one other indication of how the man himself was changed.
00:05:30.000 | Goodwin's dying words, he was 80 years old, were something like this.
00:05:36.000 | He said on his deathbed, "My bow abides in strength now. Is Christ divided? No, I have the whole of his righteousness.
00:05:47.000 | I'm found in Christ, not having my own righteousness, but his. The righteousness of Christ who loved me, gave himself for me."
00:05:59.000 | And then at the end, he said, "Christ cannot love me better than he does. I think I cannot love Christ better than I do now."
00:06:10.000 | That is a beautiful testimony. Unfortunately, Thomas Goodwin is not very well known in the States.
00:06:15.000 | Many readers probably are hearing the name for the first time.
00:06:19.000 | Is there a better book for someone to start with if they haven't read Thomas Goodwin than his book, The Heart of Christ?
00:06:26.000 | Yes. Next to Christ Set Forth, the writing I mentioned, there was a book he put alongside it that he called The Heart of Christ in Heaven Towards Sinners on Earth,
00:06:39.000 | where he's looking at how the ascended, glorified Jesus considers his beloved people today.
00:06:48.000 | It's one of the most striking reads.
00:06:51.000 | It was always Goodwin's most popular book in his own lifetime. And you can see why today.
00:06:56.000 | It is extraordinary thing that Goodwin's being forgotten today.
00:06:59.000 | He's being called the greatest pulpit exegete of Paul that has ever lived.
00:07:05.000 | One of the reasons I think he is rather forgotten is he's slightly tough meat, rather like John Owen to read, and therefore people have left him.
00:07:14.000 | But I think that's a mistake. Meat is worth eating because it helps you grow strong.
00:07:20.000 | And Goodwin is worth reading because he will present Christ to you with an extraordinary clarity.
00:07:28.000 | Wonderful. Yes, Goodwin was a master of presenting Christ with clarity.
00:07:31.000 | His book, The Heart of Christ, has been edited and made more readable by the Banner of Truth. Thank you, Banner of Truth.
00:07:37.000 | And the book is available as a Puritan paperback as we're checking out this edition.
00:07:41.000 | If you love Christ, but you wonder if Christ loves you, this book will rock your soul. Kid you not.
00:07:48.000 | Again, it's titled The Heart of Christ by Thomas Goodwin.
00:07:51.000 | So how does theology fuel ambitious evangelism and world missions?
00:07:55.000 | There's a story from church history to be told, and Dr. Reeves will share it tomorrow.
00:07:59.000 | I'm your host, Tony Ranke. Thanks for listening to the Ask Pastor John Podcast.
00:08:03.000 | [Pastor John's Podcast - Ask Pastor John]