Book Review: In My Place Condemned He Stood

Celebrating the Glory of the Atonement by J. I. Packer and Mark Dever.

The publication of this book resulted from the collective reasoning of Ligon Duncan, Al Mohler, Mark Dever and C.J. Mahaney,  who all agreed that it would be useful to have three classic essays on the atonement by J.I. Packer included in one book. These three pieces—The Heart of the Gospel, a chapter from the classic book Knowing God; What Did the Cross Achieve?: The Logic of Penal Substitution, originally a Tyndale Biblical Theology Lecture; and Saved by His Precious Blood,  the well-known introduction to John Owen’s The Death of Death in the Death of Christ—along with Mark Dever’s article, Nothing but the Blood, first published in Christianity Today, make up the heart of In My Place Condemned He Stood.

Since this book is a collection of essays, I’ve decided to go through it chapter by chapter, giving a short summary of each and, when I think it’d be useful, my evaluation of it.

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Book Review: His Loving Law, Our Lasting Legacy

Living the Ten Commandments and Giving Them To Our Children by Jani Ortlund.

Jani Ortlund has written this book with mothers who are raising children in mind. Her purpose is to help women learn to delight in God through his law and to help them pass on that love for God  to their children.

What do you think about the Ten Commandments? Many of us, I’d say, tend to think of them in either of two ways, both of them wrong. We think of them as a list of very demanding rules that we need to keep in order to become righteous, or we think of them as a list of very demanding rules that no longer, since we are new covenant people, have any relevance for us.

Jani Ortlund argues that God’s law has three purposes for us today. First, it leads us to the Saviour because it shows us our sin. Second, the law helps us understand who God is. And third, the law is a guide to those who are being saved through Christ, because it shows what living the like-Christ life looks like.

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Book Review: Memoirs of an Ordinary Pastor

The Life and Reflections of Tom Carson by D. A. Carson.

I’ve listened to quite a few of D. A. Carson’s sermons and lectures (Okay, I’ll be honest. I’ve heard every single one I can download for free.), so I already knew some of his stories about his family and upbringing. I already knew that there were at least a few parallels between my own upbringing and his. My dad, for instance, was a small church pastor and missionary like Carson’s father, Tom Carson, and some of what I’d heard Don Carson say about his father made me think that he might have been a bit like my dad. My own mother used old adult-sized clothing to create cute clothing pieces for my sister and me, while Margaret Carson, Tom Carson’s wife, remade hand-me-down suits for her husband. And like D. A. Carson, I grew up poor, but unaware how much less we had than most people around us until later.

This is the reason I was hoping I’d be able to read and review Memoirs of an Ordinary Pastor, Carson’s new book on the life of his father, who was a missionary pastor in Quebec. I can’t pass up a good biography, anyway, and if there are similarities between the people portrayed and the people I know and love, so much the better.  And this was a good biography. I received my review copy in the mail on Thursday and finished it a couple of nights later because I stayed up reading until 2:30AM on Easter morning.

As it turns out, Tom Carson was different than my own father in many ways. Still, the parallels are notable, making the book all the more engrossing for me. Like my dad, Tom Carson was a faithful, ordinary pastor. His congregations were small; he wrote no books. His circumstances were often difficult, but he kept on serving and loving God, serving and loving his family, and serving and loving God’s people. He was disciplined in his use of time, one thing I’ve decided I need to work at more consistently.

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