Luke 22 will come up. Supposedly, this passage supports the view that Jesus wants his followers to pack some heat while they go about preaching the kingdom of God. Jerry Fallwell Jr. recently used this passage to show that Christians should arm themselves so that "we could end those Muslims before they walked in..." Better think twice before bringing your muslim friends to hear the gospel at a Liberty chapel.

As you may gather from my blog, I have an eclectic cloud of influences in my thought and writing.

We wrapped up the previous post with a question: “What role do works play in our future justification?” We’ll get to that question below, but first, let’s throw the whole Piper/Wright debate on the table.

The last two posts have summed up some key New Testament passages that are foundational for the New Perspective on Paul (Rom 3:28-30; 4:12-14; Gal 2:11-16). James Dunn and others have argued from these passages that since first century Judaism was not legalistic (as shown by Sanders),

John Piper and N. T. Wright have been two of the most influential voices in my life, and I love the confused reaction I get when I tell people this. 

Andrian Warnock and I both responded to John Piper’s interpretation of Romans 7, to which Piper has recently posted a response on the Desiring God blog. I’d like offer a counter response to Piper’s strongest arguments for his view. Again, Piper believes that Paul is describing a believer in Romans 7:14-25, whereas Andrian and I do not. 

John Piper just gave a presentation at the Desiring God conference, where he argued (in part of his talk) that Romans 7 (specifically vv. 14-25) describes a believer rather than an unbeliever. And as much as I love John Piper and side with him on most theological points, I think his interpretation here is wrong.