Featured World 3:16

I do understand why he agrees with their writings. As a Christian I can normally find things in all of those people mentioned to agree with. But I understand that we tend to trust the teachings of those who hold our ideas.

But Christians do not need to read John Murray any more than they need to read John Wesley (Christians can benefit from both).

I disagree with your assessment that he is not elevating the writings of these men to the level of Scripture. But that is based on conversations where he defended following those he likes as God has given them as our teachers. I do not know that I would come to that conclusion based only on this thread, so please take my conclusion with a grain of salt.

 

Perhaps. That is, however, my sense of humor. The reply is directed to what he posted, not to him personally. As far as respecting him or his method of study, I plead ambivalence.

It was tongue in cheek as he just insulted @InTheLight and then calls him "friend" as if that word excuses his behavior.

 

He has called me "friend", yet look at how he has addressed me on this thread. I did not insult him (except if you consider the pic an insult, but I did not mean it that way). I kindly disagree with your discernment about Iconoclast.

There is a fine line between using men who articulate your position well to echo your view and deriving your view from those men. After many conversations I disagree with your assessment.

I have no desire to talk about Iconoclast. You are an intelligent man and can no doubt read through this thread and discern that I have been careful not to engage him in kind. I will leave it at that.

To clarify, my post of The Godfather was meant in jest.

I do not believe we need to read commentaries, although they can be useful (and they can be destructive).

 

Spurgeon once spoke about the benefit of Christian sects in bringing out a better truth to the whole (some focus on the will of men, others on the will of God). I agree with him on that point.

What I disagree with is dividing into camps to fight against other believers. It may be a small difference, but where banding together on common understandings to serve God is good, what I often see is Christians coming together to belittle other Christians. The latter is, I believe, a sin.

 

As do I. I have seen people claim the "five Solas" with their fingers crossed. But I recommend Murray, Spurgeon, N. T. Wright, Moody, Wesley and so many more men God has used for the Kingdom.

As @Dave Gilbert said, eat the meat and spit out the bones. Being that we are all human there will be bones (some more boney than others). If you can find none then proceed with caution.

But there are no bones in Scripture. It is all meat.

There is a proper place for commentary and confessions.

The problem comes in when people use commentary to defend their position. The usefulness of teachers is to teach, not to be memorized and regurgitated. Learn and work out our beliefs - but let them be our beliefs, not borrowed words from other men.

When we argue we have to base our argument on Scripture. If I argue Calvinism is correct based in Spurgeon to someone who is not a Calvinist and rejects Spurgeon then my argument falls on deaf ears.

But I can argue Calvinism based on Scripture, perhaps using things I learned from Spurgeon, because the non-Calvinist and I have Scripture itself in common.

What I am saying is we can reason over Scripture in a way we cannot over John Murray.

And always look to Scripture over commentary.

 

"World" in John 3:16 means mankind as a whole.

The reason is that we cannot divorce the verse from the Gospel (chapter and verse divisions were given later).

The "world" which rejected Christ is the "world" that God in His love sent His Son.

The "whosoever" part of the passage indicates not all of this "world" would believe and have everlasting life.

 

I disagree. I believe were I to provide N. T. Wright or Karl Barth to defend my view rather than reasoning through Scripture many here would not consider the defense relevant because they reject the theology of the commentators. In fact, I know this to be true based on other threads.

When you use commentaries from men to defend your position against others who believe those men have poor theology your "argument" is lost before it is considered - if it is ever considered).

More than that, Scripture tells us we are given teachers BUT we are to defend our faith rather than expecting the writings of men we choose to study to defend our position for us.

 

I disagree. I believe John's use of world is fairly obvious and refers to all of mankind. We're Jesus not to say "whosoever believes in me" then it could be questionable, but that qualification excludes limiting the world to a specific group and John's comments in chapter 1 exclude limiting world to the Jews.

Did you miss the "whosoever" part or are you rejecting this as God's love for mankind (I am not following your thought process here)?

Who do you think the "whosoever" speaks of negatively (those in the world who do not believe)?

 

By that standard I should also be posting pages and pages of competing commentary.

Or do you mean just the commentaries you personally agree with?

 

κόσμος can mean the whole universe, the place where humans live, the world of man compared to heaven, or “all humans without distinction or exception”. In John 3:16 it means “all humans without distinction or exception” because Murray Harris wrote it in a book.


Now that that’s settled, it’s probably time to close this thread and move on to another topic we can look up in a commentary.

 

Friend,

And once again, can you show where I posted in my words that you said not to read Scripture?

Can you show where I posted in my words that Murray said not to read Scripture?

Can you show where I posted in my words that the Puritans taught not to read Scripture?

In fact, can you show me where I posted in my words that ANY Christian teacher taught not to read Scripture?????

When you can, post it...thank you so much