Merry Christmas!

Time to sign off for a few days as festive fun and football promise to consume most of the next few days. Me and my little sister are about to make some stuffing (i'll be chopping chesnuts) and put presents under the tree. I'll be back at the end of the month with some reviews of what's been a fairly momentous year.

So merry Christmas, and remember...'Anyone who claims that the virgin birth can be discarded even as the deity of Christ is affirmed is either intellectually dishonest or theological incompetent.'

What does your Christmas look like

John Piper shares with humour and passion what his Christmas looks like. 

As me and my little sister have got older (she's 21 now...21!) Christmas in the Goode household has evolved from the normal 'kids going crazy and tearing open presents' to something thats more about family. And i like that.

I'll go to church in the morning, and then come home. My mum, sister, aunt and grandmother will be in the kitchen peeling and cooking, my dad and grandfather will be reading and sleeping (Germaine Greer didn't sell many books in our family). We'll have lunch sometime between two and three, and then over tea and Christmas cake/yule log open our presents, watch the Queen's speech and slowly fall asleep as the daylight ebbs away. It'll be lovely.

Prolonged exposure to a different family, with different traditions and expectations makes me realise how peculiar all familes are, and how important Christmas traditions are. Rachel opens her presents right after church at about 9am...they have huge light displays, go carol singing, and (get this) don't have a Queen's speech to listen to! We get married twenty five weeks ago yesterday, and so next Christmas will be a transatlantic collision of tradition. This will be a fun problem to deal with!

The Virgin Birth

Two or three times in the last couple of days i've heard or read the virgin birth mentioned or written about in the same breath as the three wise men, or the bleak mid winter...that is to say something about the nativity that isn't important, and probably isn't true. Now, lets face it, it doesn't really matter how many wise man there were, whether they were wise or men, but it matters very very much whether Jesus was born of a virgin. Lose the virgin birth, lose Jesus. And we like Jesus, i'm glad i'm on His team.

Dave Mathis writes this:

Yes, the virgin birth is well worth contending for. And everything worth contending for is worth rejoicing in. No human person existed prior to conception like the preexistent Jesus. And no human being was virgin born except this man. This is a unique glory of the God-man. What a magnificent Lord, Savior, and Treasure!

just a few things

This is post 501! Thats halfway to one thousand, which seems remarkable. There have been times this year when i've thought about letting this blog quietly dies, mostly due to time constaints (having a girlfriend in America means that blog-time quickly turns into skype-time) but i still really enjoy blogging, it still helps me to think and i manage to upset some liberals now and again, and those are reasons enough for me. So on we go.

Yesterday i dived into the Christmas carol concert season at the Madjeski Academy for the south Reading churches carol service. I don't know if i'll manage to stop last years record of five (RUCU, USCU, Reading Family Church, The Community Church Bourne End and Chichester College CU) but i've got my eyes on at least a couple more. Last night Christmas made me cry and singing carols made me want to be a frontier missionary. I'm not sure thats normal. It also gave me the chance to reflect that some, if not most popular carols we really should sing all year round. Take 'joy to the world' for example. It's amazing. There's no reason in my mind why we can't sing that in May or August. I'd definately take it over the majority of the slightly wet, pop-rock contemporary worship songs.

I guess i've known for a while that my views on how the Christian relates to the law are somewhere between controversial and not exactly mainstream. (viz. that since Christ is the fulfillment of the law we who are found in Him no longer need to try to obey it. Grace motivated obedience replaces rule keeping) Studying Galatians 3 in the last few weeks has helped me think about this again, and clarify it somewhat. But something which i'd never noticed before that Lawrence helped me to see on friday was a role of the Holy Spirit in the new covenant i'd never really noticed before. Basically that, we no longer need to look at the law to find our perfect standard, because with Spirit opened eyes we can see the Lord and be changed, and we no longer need to have the law testify against us when we sin, because the Holy Spirit will testify to us and make us hate our sin. Is that right? It sounds pretty cool.