The ministry of preaching and teaching the gospel of Jesus Christ is both endlessly challenging and supremely joyful, yet there are fewer and fewer willing to answer the call to do so, perhaps especially since catechesis and acquaintance with even the most basic rudiments of the Christian faith appear to have given way to the secular age's slander against all manner of "indoctrination." To convey foundational knowledge and pure doctrine, however, remains an essential dimension of the Great Commission and the Christian ...
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The ministry of preaching and teaching the gospel of Jesus Christ is both endlessly challenging and supremely joyful, yet there are fewer and fewer willing to answer the call to do so, perhaps especially since catechesis and acquaintance with even the most basic rudiments of the Christian faith appear to have given way to the secular age's slander against all manner of "indoctrination." To convey foundational knowledge and pure doctrine, however, remains an essential dimension of the Great Commission and the Christian vocation to ministry, regardless of the age, no matter the intensity or nature of the opposition. This brief series of studies on The Lord's Prayer - once closely reserved for the baptized alone, now widely known but roughly used - employs the regulative principle of scripture, that is, interpretation in light of the broader revelation, to survey the depth, breadth, and height of the prayer that Jesus taught, that it may be better understood and spoken by those in need of its promised riches. Acknowledging the best, but bracketing the greater part of the secondary literature on "the Prayer," and concluding with "An Eschatological Postscript" consisting of further petitions about which Jesus left instruction, Our Father Knows is a rare event in a familiar genre: a biblical exploration that both stands in continuity with classical catechetical exposition and produces fresh insights from it. The difficult fourth petition, in particular, here acquires a far richer, more evangelical, eschatological, and missional sense than most interpreters have yet perceived.
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