Friday, February 20

Another Big Score at the Salvation Army Thrift Shop Yesterday

A couple more good books for 25 cents each. (The Christian books are all 25 cents. They must not be hot movers!)

The first one is a commentary on Hebrews by Leon Morris (Sorry...no link. Amazon says it is out of print). I was reading his comments on chapter 2 last night, looking for what he had to say about those verses I quoted so often in my "divine blood" posts. He makes this interesting comment, something I hadn't really thought of:

The author pursues his argument [of the excellence of Christ] by enlarging on this thought of the genuine humanity of Jesus. It may be thought that this is a digression, that instead of carrying on with the thought of Jesus' greatness he now turns aside to speak of a different truth. But this would be a superficial understanding. He has spoken of a great Saviour, greater than the angels, who produced a great salvation. Now he proceeds to show that in pursuit of this great aim Jesus stooped so low as to come down to where we are. To secure the salvation that was set before Him He was great enough to take the lowly path. The emphasis on the true humanity is an integral part of the author's argument concerning the excellence of the Christ.


The proponents of Christ's "divine blood" wander into the heresy of the denial Christ's full humanity in an effort to keep Christ exalted. This passage in Hebrews is giving us reasons why Christ is excellent, and it gives Christ's willingness to become fully human as one of the things that makes Him so wonderful and worthy of exaltation. Denying His full humanity is not protecting His worth, but instead is making Him something less than He really was.

The second book is a really nice copy of Pilgrim's Progress. Well, now I have to make an admission: I have never read this book as an adult. I either had it read to me or I tried to read it as a child--I don't remember which--and I was not impressed. So, to this day, when someone mentions Pilgrim's Progress, all I can think of is a boring story about some guy named "Christian" who gets stuck in the mud.... or something. Now the book is on my nightstand and I'm thinking it might be time to move beyond my childish prejudices.
|