Book Reviews

The Jesus Gospel, by Liam Goligher reviewed by Terry Virgo

In a book that R T Kendall says ‘every Christian should read’ and
J I Packer describes as ‘gloriously head-clearing and heart-warming’, Liam Goligher brings us back to the great centralities of the gospel and particularly the vital place of Christ’s taking the penalty for our sins as our substitute.

The book includes a response to the recent sad book The Lost Message of Jesus with its dismissal of the Biblical doctrine of penal substitution. Liam Goligher answers the view expressed in that book which argues that Christ’s substitution for us seemed like ‘a form of cosmic child abuse – a vengeful Father punishing His Son for an offence he has not even committed’, which is seen by the authors as ‘morally dubious and a huge barrier to faith’.

Beginning and ending in the magnificent prayer of Jesus recorded in John 17, we are taken superbly through the Scriptures and their unyielding insistence on the need for atonement for human sin. In a fine chapter on Isaiah 53, for instance, Liam Goligher establishes the reality that ‘there can be no avoiding the fact that the Servant acts as a substitute on behalf of others’. He points out that eight of its twelve verses are quoted in the New Testament and demonstrates that no other passage from the Old Testament was as important to the early church.

Those of us who celebrate the incredible kindness of God and the magnificent sacrifice of His Son in taking the blame and bearing the wrath will find this excellent book very accessible in its writing style and very strengthening to our faith.

Books Recommended by Terry

Adopted into God’s Family, by Trevor J. Burke

This is another worthy contribution to this excellent IVP series of New Studies in Biblical Theology.

Trevor Burke vividly demonstrates that although it is wonderful to be justified and declared righteous by God and also to be redeemed from the slavery of sin, more wonderful than all is to be adopted into God’s family and enjoy the full rights of sonship.

Against the backdrop of the Roman practice of adoption with its life-transforming implications, we are taken through the glories of the Father’s loving choice of us, the privileges and responsibilities of being part of His family of adopted sons, and the magnificent model of Christ’s unique sonship.

Apart from firing a few blanks in his chapter on ‘Adoption and the Holy Spirit’, Trevor Burke has provided us with a superb heart-warming book. I found it stirring and inspirational.

As Alastair McGrath says (quoted on page 197), ‘Adoption is about being wanted. It is about belonging.’ There are few themes that can inspire such joy, especially when you realise that we are talking about God and you!

When Heaven Invades Earth, by Bill Johnson

In spite of some very serious theological howlers (e.g. Jesus ‘laid his divinity aside’) and some questionable interpretations of Scripture, this is nevertheless a provocative book that will stir all who want to be constantly provoked to be channels of the Holy Spirit’s miraculous power.

His robust faith and remarkable reports of healings and miracles are inspirational and genuinely motivational.

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