Church Is For Losers

The recently deceased and much missed Edmund Clowney wrote The Church as part of a recent theological series called Contours of Christian Theology. It pleases me that the series editor gave such an important topic to a reformed Presbyterian. I finished it this week while on a trip to D.C. My favorite line was,

It [the Church] is composed of losers -- those who have lost everything for Christ's sake, but have found everything in him

This book is largely a scholarly and wide-ranging apologetic against an onslaught of attacks brought against the church today. But Clowney handles wolves on all sides with the composed manner of a mature shepherd. As he says, "love cannot ignore the seriousness of error, but neither can it forget the power of the truth."

Clowney honed my understanding of the Gospel and how it informs personal holiness. Instead of thinking of holiness in "try harder" or pietistic terms, he says,

The life of holiness is the life of faith in which the believer, with a deepening knowledge of his own sin and helplessness apart from Christ, increasingly casts himself upon the Lord, and seeks the power of the Spirit and the wisdom and comfort of the Bible to battle against the world, the flesh, and the devil. It is not a lonely struggle, for Christ gives the Spirit to the members of his body to help one another. Growth in true holiness is always growth together; it takes place through the nurture, the work, and worship of the church.

If you'd like to be better armed against false teaching, you need to read this one.