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Volume 33 Issue 1 - May 2008

An International Journal for Pastors and Students of Theological and Religious Studies



Table of Contents [+] Expand


Book Reviews[+] Expand

Old Testament
Sidnie White Crawford and Leonard J. Greenspoon.
The Book of Esther in Modern Research.
Reviewed by Robin Gallaher Branch
Eryl W. Davies.
The Dissenting Reader: Feminist Approaches to the Hebrew Bible.
Reviewed by Robin Gallaher Branch
John Day, ed.
In Search of Pre-Exilic Israel.
Reviewed by Bálint Károly Zabán
Katharine J. Dell.
The Book of Proverbs in Social and Theological Context.
Reviewed by Jennie Barbour
William G. Dever.
Did God Have a Wife?
Reviewed by William D. Barker
New Testament
Octavian D. Baban.
On the Road Encounters in Luke-Acts.
Reviewed by Jamie Read
Richard Bauckham.
Jesus and the Eyewitnesses.
Reviewed by David Wenham
Andrew E. Bernhard.
Other Early Christian Gospels.
Reviewed by Simon Gathercole
William S. Campbell.
Paul and the Creation of Christian Identity.
Reviewed by James C. Miller
David L. Dungan.
Constantine's Bible: Politics and the Making of the New Testament.
Reviewed by Preston M. Sprinkle
Margaret Hannan.
The Nature and Demands of the Sovereign Rule of God in the Gospel of Matthew.
Reviewed by Phillip J. Long
Carl R. Holladay.
A Critical Introduction to the New Testament.
Reviewed by Lee S. Bond
 
Larry W. Hurtado.
The Earliest Christian Artifacts.
Reviewed by Rohintan Mody
Bruce J. Malina and John J. Pilch.
Social-Science Commentary on the Letters of Paul.
Reviewed by Nijay K. Gupta
Mark Reasoner.
Romans in Full Circle: A History of Interpretation.
Louisville: Reviewed by Michael Bird
Sorin Sabou.
Between Horror and Hope: Paul's Metaphorical Language of "Death" in Romans 6:1-11.
Reviewed by Nijay K. Gupta
Chris VanLandingham.
Judgment and Justification in Early Judaism and the Apostle Paul.
Reviewed by Timothy Gombis
Tommy Wasserman.
The Epistle of Jude: Its Text and Transmission.
Reviewed by P. J. Williams 89

History and Historical Theology
Sheridan Gilley and Brian Stanley, eds.
The Cambridge History of Christianity: World Christianities, c. 1815-c.1914.
Reviewed by John Coffey
Collin Hansen.
Young, Restless, Reformed.
Reviewed by Andrew David Naselli 91
Douglas A. Sweeney and Allen C. Guelzo, eds.
The New England Theology: From Jonathan Edwards to Edwards Amasa Park.
Reviewed by Oliver D. Crisp
Systematic Theology and Bioethics
Petrus J. Gräbe.
New Covenant, New Community.
Reviewed by A. T. B. McGowan
Kelly M. Kapic and Justin Taylor, eds.
Overcoming Sin and Temptation.
Reviewed by Graham Beynon
James K. A. Smith.
Who's Afraid of Postmodernism?
Reviewed by Tim Chester
Kevin J. Vanhoozer.
The Drama of Doctrine.
Reviewed by Robbie Fox Castleman
Ethics and Pastoralia
Gilbert Meilaender and William Werpehowski, eds.
The Oxford Handbook of Theological Ethics.
Reviewed by Brian Brock
H. P. Owen.
The Basis of Christian Prayer.
Reviewed by Stephen Dray
Milton Vincent.
A Gospel Primer for Christians.
Reviewed by Andrew David Naselli


A Gospel Primer for Christians: Learning to See the Glories of God's Love. Bemidji, MN: Focus, 2008. x + 97 pp. $10.95.

Milton Vincent.

Andrew David Naselli
Trinity Evangelical Divinity School
Deerfield, Illinois, USA

Vincent has pastored Cornerstone Fellowship Bible Church in Riverside, California since 1992, and he formerly taught Hebrew at John MacArthur's Th e Master's Seminary. His Gospel Primer is a concise, inviting, accessible, devotional, penetrating gospel-centered resource for Christians. It is theologically akin to C. J. Mahaney's Living the Cross-Centered Life: Keeping the Gospel the Main Thing (2006) and Jerry Bridges's The Discipline of Grace: God's Role and Our Role in the Pursuit of Holiness (1994), The Gospel for Real Life: Turning to the Liberating Power of the Cross . . . Every Day (2002), and "Gospel-Driven Sanctification"(Modern Reformation 12.3 [May/ June 2003]).

I first heard about this book when my pastor, Mike Bullmore, enthusiastically recommended that the church carefully read it. Bullmore humbly recounts in the foreword how much he has benefitted from Vincent's Gospel Primer, and he offers wise advice to readers:

This book was written slowly. It savors of a slow cooking. I believe it will be best read slowly. Take your time with it. Let its truths drip down deep. And return to it often. Let it regularly help you preach the life-giving, soul-reviving, heart-rejoicing gospel to yourself. Keep it close by your bed or the place of your time alone with God. It is, quite simply, one of the most spiritually useful books I've read (4).

I followed Bullmore's advice, thoughtfully reading just a couple pages each morning, and I heartily concur with his seasoned perspective. I also profited by reading this book out loud (as Vincent recommends on page 7).

Vincent testifies in the introduction, After years of frustration, fits and starts, and exhausted collapses in my Christian walk, I have come back to a focus on the gospel and have found its sufficiency for daily living to be truly overwhelming. After years of church attendance, university and seminary training, and countless hours of Bible study in preparation for preaching many hundreds of sermons, I have found nothing more powerful and life-transforming than the gospel truths affirmed on the following pages. Rehearsing these truths each day has become a pleasurable discipline by which I enjoy God's love and maintain fresh contact with His provision and power for daily living (5-6).

The slim book has four parts, and everything in parts 1-3 is written in the first person singular; 290 footnotes fill about the bottom third of each page in parts 1-3 with nothing but Scripture quotations, mostly from the New American Standard Bible.

Part one presents thirty-one (one on which to meditate each day) biblically informed reasons that Christians should regularly rehearse the gospel to themselves. Reasons include the following: The gospel contains the power and glory of God in their highest density. It "nullifies sin's power over me"by removing its guilt (19). It "reminds me that my righteous standing with God always holds firm regardless of my performance"(20). It stimulates love, forgiveness, evangelism, humility, and obedience. It offers the right perspective of trials, increases my yearning to be with Christ in heaven, satisfies me and inversely mortifies my flesh, enriches my thankfulness by relief, supplies boldness, and glorifies God.

Parts 2 and 3 are stirring prose and poetic versions of a gospel narrative. They start by exulting in God's glory and then meditate on my sin against God and God's work on my behalf. "I don't deserve any of this, even on my best day"(65). "Yet I could not fail God much worse than I've done. / Ignoring His glory, for mine I have run"(72). "My foolish rebellion gives God ev'ry right / To damn me with haste to the mis'rable plight / Of terrible judgments in His Lake of Fire, / Where wrath is most fierce and will never expire"(73). "But wonder of wonders, so great to behold, / My God chose to save me with method so bold. / What I could not render, God fully has done, / And doing, He rendered it all through His Son. / He sent Christ to die on the cross for my sin / To suffer my anguish, my pardon to win"(76). "He shattered sin's chains which had held me before, / And thus made me free not to sin any more"(81).

Part 4 tells "the story behind the primer."Vincent confesses, "I labored for most of my life to maintain my justified status before God, and I was always left frustrated in my attempts to do so"(91). "I guess I treated my justification as some sort of legal fiction that had little direct bearing on the mechanics of how God related to me and how I related to Him. I suppose I would have imagined God saying, 'Yeah, technically you're justified, but I'm angry with you anyway for what you did today!'"(94-95). The gospel liberated Vincent from his "performance-based relationship,"and by God's grace Vincent's Gospel Primer will help others do the same.