Book Recommendation Of The Year

There are a few ways in which I build up my library. One is through the author himself. The other is through footnotes and bibliographies of other good books. Still one more is from the recommendation of other godly people. Perhaps one of the most interesting ways I purchase a theological books is from seeing it quoted (see Facebook and Twitter are indeed a good place for this). Sometimes thee quotes are so profound in the biblical truths they convey surely the rest of the book mus be that much better. Though I have been fooled by this method for the most part it has been of great help (of course it will be helpful if the people quoting them are reliable and godly).

My book recommendation for the year (so far) is by Dr. Alan Cairns and titled Chariots of God:God's Law in relation to the Cross & the Christian. You can find it at Amazon (temporarily out of sock as of today), or if your prefer you can get it from Logos. For the record, we get no compensation for this. Our only only consolation is that any person that buys the books we recommend, cite or quote will be rooted, built up and grounded further in the faith. They will draw closer to Christ. That they will worship Him, live for Him and proclaim His glorious Gospel to a sinful people that stand in danger of His wrath.

To pique you interest allow me to give a lengthy quote from the book:

First of all, one truth must be emphasized: No one can be saved by keeping the law of God. God offered life on the basis of keeping the law once and only once, and that was in the Garden of Eden. When Adam fell, such was the devastating result of the entrance of sin into humanity that from that point onwards it was totally impossible for men to fulfil God’s law. By any attempt at personal obedience, it was impossible for them to remove the guilt and stain of the sin of which they were already guilty. It was impossible for them to establish a perfect righteousness before God.

When the rich young ruler came to the Lord Jesus Christ, he asked Him what good thing he might do to inherit eternal life. The Lord Jesus answered him, “If thou wilt enter into life, keep the commandments” (Matthew 19:17). Some imagine that the Saviour was offering the young man eternal life on the basis of law-keeping. The Lord Jesus would not have been so cruel. We are told that He looked on this young man and loved him. Thus we are certain that He was not dealing with him in irony or in judgment, but in kindness. But there would have been no kindness in saying to a man who was a sinner by nature and practice, “If you provide yourself a perfect obedience to the law you will have eternal life.” That would have been a cruel mockery. To see what the Lord meant, consider the story of the rich young ruler. Here was a very upright young man who could not imagine that he was a sinner. As he came before the Saviour he said, “I have kept the entire law.” Anyone who thinks or speaks like this has no conception of sin or of the absolute holiness of God. So the Lord Jesus met the young man on his own ground. In effect He said to him, “You wish to gain eternal life by your obedience to the law. But the standard of the law is one of perfect righteousness. If you cannot meet that standard you can never enter into life.” The Saviour’s treatment of the young ruler left him in no doubt (a) that he loved his wealth more than he loved God; and (b) that he was unwilling to become a disciple of Christ. If the young man had little doubt about his goodness when he approached the Lord Jesus, he could have had no doubt about his sinfulness as he went away—a sorrowful, money-worshipping Christ rejector.

It is always difficult to get men to see their sin. All too often preachers compound the difficulty. In their desire to be “relevant” to people today they adopt the slang of the streets. One preacher recently thought he had a better way of showing men their sin than by quoting or expounding any statement of Scripture. He told his audience that God had said, “You really goofed up.” Not only did that preacher have no right to attribute such language to the Lord, but his definition of sin was extremely deficient. That became alarmingly clear as he went on to speak of sin as a lack in man that hindered his living up to his potential and as something that hurt his neighbours. In his entire treatment of sin, the preacher made no reference to the absolute holiness of God or to the absolute righteous standard of His law.

Nowadays, it is common for men to claim that they are “not too bad.” The absence of any real consciousness of deep and terrible guilt is attributable, at least in part, to the fact that the Christian pulpit has been largely silent on the holiness of God, holiness so awesome that the very angels of heaven cover their faces in God’s presence and cry, “Holy! Holy! Holy!” Let a sinner get just a glimpse of the holiness of God and he will never again claim that he is not too bad or that he is doing his best to work his way to heaven.

In His treatment of the rich young ruler, the Lord Jesus clearly teaches us to see the sinfulness of the best of men and to recognize their inability to do anything to merit eternal life. Unless a man has a holiness as perfect as that of the purest archangel from the moment of his conception until the moment of his death, he can never gain salvation by keeping the law.*

*Cairns, A. (2000). Chariots of God: God’s Law in Relation to the Cross and the Christian (71–72). Greenville, SC; Belfast, Northern Ireland: Ambassador-Emerald International.