Saturday is the long day of the conference with 2 sessions with our main speaker Baxter Kruger and two sessions with the PIU Bible faculty. In the morning session Baxter spoke on the theme of “God in the Hands of Angry Sinners: The Redemptive Genius of the Triune God.” In this play off of the famous Jonathan Edwards sermon, Baxter showed that the idea that the Father was angry at us and 
Jesus absorbed this anger as the Father turned away at the cross is not biblical. The death of Jesus was a murder committed by all mankind in which the whole Trinity enters into the deepest and darkest part of our sin and redeems it. In the afternoon session the theme was “The Light of the World: The Presence of Jesus in all Creation.” I liked this session because Baxter showed that we have an ally in our witness. The Spirit of Jesus is already in the unbeliever convicting and drawing their heart to relationship with the Trinity that Jesus has already provided. Our job is just to proclaim Jesus and His promises.
The other two sessions consisted of the exegesis exercise and panel discussion. This year’s passage was John 1.1-18. Mike Owen handled the cultural/historical background; 
Peter Knapp discussed the lexical/grammatical context; I showed the structures and literary context (chiasm!) and Jim Sawyer finished with the theological implications. The panel discussion closed the conference and allowed conference attendees to ask any question they wanted of the speakers. It was a lively discussion. Baxter certainly challenged us to think outside our theological paradigms. The questions were excellent and I look forward to continuing the discussions.
I received several comments that this was the best conference we have ever had. As Baxter advised let’s continue to “ask Jesus,” stay in the Word and keep the discussion going.
2 comments:
You say: the spirit of Jesus is already in the unbeliever.
While I can see that God is drawing the unbeliever, creating a (sometimes unidentifiable) desire to meet him, I think saying that the spirit of Jesus is in the unbeliever is taking it too far.
The New Testament points in this direction: if you are with Christ, you are a believer, if you are believer you have the Spirit of God; ff you are not with Christ you are not a believer and you don't have the Holy Spirit.
I suppose it depends on what one means by "in" or "having the Spirit of God." If by that you mean in a saving relationship and experiencing salvation blessings I agree with you. But how can the inner voice of the Spirit not, at least in some sense, be in the unbeliever? The other issue would be that if Christ accomplished salvation in the eyes of the Father before the foundation of the world (Ephesians 1) would he not be in the pre-believer already since God exists both in and out of time?
Post a Comment