The Bible Speaks Today Sale

The Bible Speaks Today is on sale right now. I've heard its praises sung as a helpful and inexpensive non-technical commentary. In particular, its "application" of the text has been praised.

I've reached a point of commentary-saturation where I don't buy commentaries just because they're good deals. I need new purchases to contribute something special to my library; and based on user reviews BST seems to have "application" as its hallmark.

Could anyone point me to or post a representative excerpt of the manner in which this series excels at applying timeless truths from a text to a modern audience? Since Stott wrote about half of the volumes it would probably be most helpful to see something from him.

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Comments

MJ. Smith

http://community.logos.com/forums/t/74678.aspx

http://community.logos.com/forums/t/78281.aspx

Dave Moser

https://community.logos.com/discussion/comment/615139#Comment_615139

Thanks MJ, I already read both of those and was underwhelmed - that's why I asked this question. If that's representative of the whole series I'll probably pass.

NB.Mick

https://community.logos.com/discussion/comment/615199#Comment_615199

I posted a sample from Acts here: http://community.logos.com/forums/p/85212/597355.aspx#597355

Ken McGuire

His opening overview for Romans 7 (text only):

10. God’s law and Christian discipleship
7:1–25

Romans 7 is well known to most Christian people because of the debate it has provoked about holiness. Who is the ‘wretched man’ or ‘miserable creature’ (NEB) of verse 24, who gives us a graphic account of his inner moral turmoil (15ff.), cries out for deliverance, and then immediately appears to thank God for it (25)? Is this person regenerate or unregenerate? And if the former, is he or she normal or abnormal, mature, immature or backsliding? The different schools of holiness teaching are obliged to come to terms with this chapter.
But it is never wise to bring to a passage of Scripture our own ready-made agenda, insisting that it answers our questions and addresses our concerns. For that is to dictate to Scripture instead of listening to it. We have to lay aside our presuppositions, so that we can conscientiously think ourselves back into the historical and cultural setting of the text. Then we shall be in a better position to let the author say what he does say and not force him to say what we want him to say. It is of course legitimate to seek secondary applications to contemporary questions, but only after the primary task of ‘grammatico-historical exegesis’ has been diligently done.
If we come to Romans 7 in such a mood of meekness and receptivity, it becomes evident at once that Paul’s preoccupation is more historical than personal. He is not answering questions put to him in a Christian holiness convention, but rather struggling with the place of the law in God’s purpose. For the ‘law’ or the ‘commandment’ or the ‘written code’ is mentioned in every one of the chapter’s first fourteen verses, and some thirty-five times in the whole passage which runs from 7:1 to 8:4. What is the place of the law in Christian discipleship, now that Christ has come and inaugurated the new era?
Before coming to Romans 7, however, we need to ask what Paul has written thus far about God’s purpose in giving the law. Paul’s reply is couched in almost entirely uncomplimentary terms. To be sure, in theory the person ‘who does these things will live by them’. But in practice no human being has ever succeeded in obeying the law. Therefore it can never be the way of salvation.2 Instead, the law reveals sin (3:20), condemns the sinner (3:19), defines sin as transgression (4:15; 5:13; cf. Gal. 3:19), ‘brings wrath’ (4:15), and was even ‘added so that the trespass might increase’ (5:20). In consequence, God’s righteousness has been revealed in the gospel altogether ‘apart from law’ (1:17; 3:21a), although the law helped to bear witness to it (1:2; 3:21b). And sinners are justified by God, not through obeying the law but through faith in Christ (3:27). Such faith upholds the law (3:31) by assigning to it its proper function. Abraham himself illustrated this principle, since the way he received God’s promise was ‘not through law … but through the righteousness that comes by faith’ (4:13f.). This antithesis shows that the whole gospel vocabulary of promise, grace and faith is incompatible with law.
So far, then, almost all Paul’s allusions to the law have been pejorative. The law reveals sin, not salvation; it brings wrath, not grace. And these negative references culminate in what to Jewish ears must have appeared his shocking epigram that Christian believers are ‘not under law, but under grace’ (6:14f.). It is the springboard into Romans 7, which begins with similar statements that we have ‘died to the law’ (4) and so have been ‘released from the law’ (6). How dare the apostle be so dismissive of God’s law? One has only to read Psalms 19 and 119 to sense the enormous pleasure which godly Jews derived from the law. It was to them ‘more precious than gold, than much pure gold’ and ‘sweeter than honey, than honey from the comb’. How then could the apostle denigrate it as promoting sin rather than righteousness, and death rather than life? How could he proclaim freedom from it? What did he mean that we are ‘no longer under law’? Was he declaring it to be abrogated? His words must have sounded like a clarion call to antinomianism.
Moreover, Paul’s teaching is by no means of purely antiquarian interest today. For the advocates of the so-called ‘new morality’, which was first proclaimed in the 1960s but is still popular today, appear to be twentieth-century antinomians. They maintain that the category of ‘law’ has been abolished for Christians and that the only absolute left is the commandment of love. There are also contemporary holiness teachers who declare similarly that the law has no place in the Christian life. In support of their position they quote both ‘Christ is the end of the law’ (10:4) and ‘you are not under law’ (6:14f.), as if these statements meant that the moral law has been annulled. What Paul writes in Romans has direct relevance to this debate.
Whenever we come across a negative statement, however, we cannot interpret it until we discern with what it is being contrasted. For example, if you were to say to me, ‘You’re not a man’ without adding any positive counterpart, you could be insulting me (meaning ‘but you’re a baby or a pig or a demon’), or you could be flattering me (meaning ‘but you’re an angel’). Similarly, on my return from a recent visit to the United States, I remarked to a friend, ‘I haven’t had a bath for a month.’ Before he had time to express disgust at my lack of personal hygiene, however, I added, ‘But I’ve had a shower every day.’
What, then, did Paul intend when he described Christians as being ‘not under law’? He used this expression in two different letters and contexts, and so in two different senses. He also clarified the meaning of each by the contrasting phrases he added. In Romans 6:14f. he wrote that ‘you are not under law, but under grace’. Here the antithesis between law and grace indicates that he is referring to the way of justification, which is not by our obedience to the law, but by God’s sheer mercy alone. In Galatians 5:18, however, he wrote that ‘if you are led by the Spirit, you are not under law’. Here the antithesis between law and Spirit indicates that he is referring to the way of sanctification, which is not by our struggling to keep the law, but by the power of the indwelling Spirit. So for justification we are not under law but under grace; for sanctification we are not under law but led by the Spirit.
It is in these two senses that we have been ‘freed’ or ‘released’ from the law. But this does not mean that we have been divorced from it altogether, in the sense that it has no more claims on us of any kind, or that we have no more obligations to it. On the contrary, the moral law remains a revelation of God’s will which he still expects his people to ‘fulfil’ by living lives of righteousness and love (8:4; 13:8, 10). This is what the Reformers called ‘the third use of the law’.
We are now ready to summarize three possible attitudes to the law, the first two of which Paul rejects, and the third of which he commends. We might call them ‘legalism’, ‘antinomianism’ and ‘law-fulfilling freedom’. Legalists are ‘under the law’ and in bondage to it. They imagine that their relationship to God depends on their obedience to the law, and they are seeking to be both justified and sanctified by it. But they are crushed by the law’s inability to save them. Antinomians (or libertines) go to the opposite extreme. Blaming the law for their problems, they reject it altogether, and claim to be rid of all obligation to its demands. They have turned liberty into licence. Law-fulfilling free people preserve the balance. They rejoice both in their freedom from the law for justification and sanctification, and in their freedom to fulfil it. They delight in the law as the revelation of God’s will (7:22), but recognize that the power to fulfil it is not in the law but in the Spirit. Thus legalists fear the law and are in bondage to it. Antinomians hate the law and repudiate it. Law-abiding free people love the law and fulfil it.
Directly or indirectly Paul alludes to these three types in Romans 7. He does not portray or address them directly one by one, but their shadowy forms are discernible throughout. In verses 1–6 he asserts that the law no longer has ‘authority’ over us. By dying to it with Christ we have been released from it, and we now belong to Christ instead. This is his message for legalists. In verses 7–13 he defends the law against the unjust criticism that it causes both sin and death. He attributes these instead to our fallen nature. The law itself is good (12–13). This is his message to antinomians. In verses 7:14–25 Paul describes the inner conflict of those who are still living under the regime of the law. If left to ourselves in our fallenness we cannot keep God’s law, even though we delight in it. Nor can the law rescue us. But God has done what the law could not do, by giving us his Spirit (8:3–4). This is the experience of those who find their freedom in fulfilling the law.
These three paragraphs of Romans 7 may appropriately be entitled ‘Release from the Law’ (1–6), in order to serve God in the Spirit, ‘A Defence of the Law’ (7–13), against the calumny that it causes sin and death, and ‘The Weakness of the Law’ (14–25), because it can neither justify nor sanctify sinners.

Stott, J. R. W. (2001). The message of Romans: God’s good news for the world (pp. 189–192). Leicester, England; Downers Grove, IL: InterVarsity Press.