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" human nature of their origins runs counter to the prevailing cultural view of the ancient Near East. In the Genesis narrative, we see man becoming a contributor under God in the ongoing work of creation, through the development of culture. We learn that city life is not to be seen as simply a punishment for humanity after the banishment from the garden. Rather the city has inherent capacities for bringing human beings together in such a way that enhances both security and culture making. However, as can be seen in the line of Cain, these capacities, under the influence of sin and rebellion against God, can be generators of great evil. The song of Lamech, Cain’s descendant, shows the Cainite city dwellers using all their advances to form a culture of death (Gen 4:23 – 24). Here is the first clear indicator of the dual nature of the city. Its capability for enormous good — for the culture-making creation of art, science, and technology — can be used to produce tremendous evil. Henri Blocher does not consider it a coincidence that the first mention of anti-God culture making is tied to the first instance of city building, but he warns against drawing the wrong conclusion: It is no doubt significant that [in Genesis 4] progress in arts and in engineering comes from the “city” of the Cainites. Nevertheless, we are not to conclude from this that civilization as such is… the fruit of sin. Such a conclusion would lead us to Manichaeism or to the views of Jean-Jacques Rousseau… The Bible condemns neither the city (for it concludes with the vision of the City of God) nor art and engineering.14 Blocher may be responding to writers such as Geerhardus Vos, who in his Biblical Theology points to “the problem "
― Timothy J. Keller , Center Church: Doing Balanced, Gospel-Centered Ministry in Your City
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" Everybody worships. The only choice we get is what to worship. And the compelling reason for maybe choosing some sort of god or spiritual-type thing to worship… is that pretty much anything else you worship will eat you alive. If you worship money and things, if they are where you tap real meaning in life, then you will never have enough, never feel you have enough… Worship your body and beauty and sexual allure and you will always feel ugly. And when time and age start showing, you will die a million deaths before they finally grieve you… Worship power, you will end up feeling weak and afraid, and you will need ever more power over others to numb you to your own fear. Worship your intellect, being seen as smart, you will end up feeling stupid, a fraud, always on the verge of being found out. But the insidious thing about these forms of worship is… they’re unconscious. They are default settings.16 The "
― Timothy J. Keller , Center Church: Doing Balanced, Gospel-Centered Ministry in Your City
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" If we just preach general doctrine and ethics from Scripture, we are not preaching the gospel. The gospel is the good news that God has accomplished our salvation for us through Christ in order to bring us into a right relationship with him and eventually to destroy all the results of sin in the world. Still, it can be rightly argued that in order to understand all this — who God is, why we need salvation, what he has done to save us — we must have knowledge of the basic teachings of the entire Bible. J. Gresham Machen, for example, speaks of the biblical doctrines of God and of man to be the “presuppositions of the gospel.”10 This means that an understanding of the Trinity, of Christ’s incarnation, of original sin and sin in general — are all necessary. If we don’t understand, for example, that Jesus was not just a good man but the second person of the Trinity, or if we don’t understand what the “wrath of God” means, it is impossible to understand what Jesus accomplished on the cross. Not only that, but the New Testament constantly explains the work of Christ in Old Testament terms — in the language of priesthood, sacrifice, and covenant. In other words, we must not just preach the Bible in general; we must preach the gospel. Yet unless those listening to the message understand the Bible in general, they won’t grasp the gospel. The more we understand the whole corpus of biblical doctrine, the more we will understand the gospel itself — and the more we understand the gospel, the more we will come to see that this is, in the end, what the Bible is really about. "
― Timothy J. Keller , Center Church: Doing Balanced, Gospel-Centered Ministry in Your City
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" Con todo, puede argumentarse con precisión que para entender todo esto –quién es Dios, por qué necesitamos salvación, qué hizo para salvarnos– debemos conocer las enseñanzas básicas de toda la Biblia. J. Gresham Machen, por ejemplo, se refiere a las doctrinas bíblicas de Dios y el hombre como las «presuposiciones del evangelio».10 Esto quiere decir que es totalmente necesario entender las doctrinas de la Trinidad, la encarnación de Cristo, el pecado original y el pecado en general.. Si no entendemos, por ejemplo, que Jesús fue no solo un hombre bueno, sino la segunda persona de la Trinidad, o si no entendemos lo que significa la «ira de Dios», es imposible comprender lo que Jesús hizo en la cruz. "
― Timothy J. Keller , Center Church: Doing Balanced, Gospel-Centered Ministry in Your City
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" THE INCARNATION AND THE “UPSIDE-DOWN” ASPECT OF THE GOSPEL Because Jesus was the king who became a servant, we see a reversal of values in his kingdom administration (Luke 6:20 – 26). In Jesus’ kingdom, the poor, sorrowful, and persecuted are above the rich, recognized, and satisfied. The first shall be last (Matt 19:30). Why would this be? This reversal is a way of imitating the pattern of Christ’s salvation (Phil 2:1–11). Though Jesus was rich, he became poor. Though he was a king, he served. Though he was the greatest, he made himself the servant of all. He triumphed over sin not by taking up power but by serving sacrificially. He “won” through losing everything. This is a complete reversal of the world’s way of thinking, which values power, recognition, wealth, and status. The gospel, then, creates a new kind of servant community, with people who live out an entirely alternate way of being human. "
― Timothy J. Keller , Center Church: Doing Balanced, Gospel-Centered Ministry in Your City
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" GARDENS OR FIELDS? Craig Blomberg points out that in Matthew’s parable of the mustard seed, the sower sows his seed in a “field” (agros, Matt 13:31), while in Luke the sowing is in a “garden” (kepos, Luke 13:19). Jews never grew mustard plants in gardens, but always out on farms, while Greeks in the Mediterranean basin did the opposite. It appears that each gospel writer was changing the word that Jesus used in Mark—the word for “earth” or “ground” (ge, Mark 4:31) — for the sake of his hearers. There is a technical contradiction between the Matthean and Lukan terms, states Blomberg, “but not a material one. Luke changes the wording precisely so that his audience is not distracted from… the lesson by puzzling over an… improbable practice.” The result is that Luke’s audience “receives his teaching with the same impact as the original audience.”22 "
― Timothy J. Keller , Center Church: Doing Balanced, Gospel-Centered Ministry in Your City
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" Strong community is formed by powerful common experiences, as when people survive a flood or fight together in a battle. When they emerge on the other side, this shared experience becomes the basis for a deep, permanent bond that is stronger than blood. The more intense the experience, the more intense the bond. When we experience Christ’s radical grace through repentance and faith, it becomes the most intense, foundational event of our lives. Now, when we meet someone from a different culture, race, or social class who has received the same grace, we see someone who has been through the same life-and-death experience. In Christ, we have both spiritually died and been raised to new life (Rom 6:4 – 6; Eph 2:1 – 6). And because of this common experience of rescue, we now share an identity marker even more indelible than the ties that bind us to our family, our race, or our culture. "
― Timothy J. Keller , Center Church: Doing Balanced, Gospel-Centered Ministry in Your City
