Book Review: In Christ Alone

Click in image to purchase from Monergism BooksLiving the Gospel Centered Life by Sinclair Ferguson.

Since you’re reading this review here on my blog, there’s a good chance you like reading blog posts. As I read In Christ Alone by Sinclair Ferguson, I kept thinking that the feel of the book was a bit bloggish, but in the best way—like a blog set up to focus on the blessings of life in Christ.

This book is a collection of short essays which started as articles written for Eternity Magazine and Tabletalk over the course of twenty years. There are fifty short chapters, none longer than four pages, grouped in six sections. The topics of the sections are

• the incarnation
• the different aspects of Christ’s work on our behalf
• the ministry of the Spirit
• the privileges of grace
• the expression of the gospel in our lives
• the faithful life.

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Book Review: Stand

A Call for the Endurance of the Saints, John Piper and Justin Taylor, General Editors

As I read this book, I remembered listening to the lectures (messages?) from which the essays came, lectures given at the 2007 Desiring God conference by the same name. The purpose of this collection of essays is, like the conference that went before it, to encourage by example and exhortation the kind of faith that perseveres through the difficulties of life.

The first chapter is a piece by Jerry Bridges which lays out four things that will enable the Christian to finish well. These four essentials are

• a daily time of focused communion with God,
• a daily appropriation of the gospel,
• a daily presenting yourself as a living sacrifice, and
• a continual firm belief in the sovereignty and the goodness of God.

Bridges discusses each action, giving us the scriptural basis for it and explaining how practicing it has been helpful in his own Christian walk. He reminds the reader that it is by God’s grace that we are faithful in these things, for

standing over all of them is the grace of God. The same apostle who said, “I have fought the good fight, I have finished the race, I have kept the faith” also said in another context, “But by the grace of God I am what I am” (1 Cor. 15:10). Paul attributed all of his endurance, all of his faithfulness, to the grace of God. And so as we look at our responsibility, keep in mind that we are enabled to fulfill that responsibility only by the grace of God.

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Book Review: Come Thou Long-Expected Jesus

Clicking on this image will take you to this product at Monergism BooksExperiencing the Peace and Promise of Christmas, edited by Nancy Guthrie.

Come Thou Long-Expected Jesus, is a collection of short essays on Christmas topics from writers that Nancy Guthrie respects—

essays that reflect a high view of Scripture; and that put the incarnation in the context of God’s unfolding plan of redemption.

Included are pieces from the sermons, essays or books of both historical and contemporary Christians. I’ve decided that listing the contributors would be more useful than anything else in helping you decided whether these are essays you would enjoy reading, so here you are, from first to last.

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