Tuesday, November 17, 2009

John Murray on Romans (with a baby picture to boot)



At the Sunday evening services, I've been preaching through the book of Romans. Unlike my preparation for the morning sermon, which is far more comprehensive and thus takes much more time, I'm relying almost entirely on one commentary. And that is John Murray's The Epistle to the Romans.

In my opinion, this is a great commentary for several reasons. First, Murray writes so clearly. He makes it very easy to follow his reasoning, thought for thought, as he considers the meaning of any given verse or phrase. He's also succinct. It seems most newer, scholarly commentaries spend more time commenting on other commentaries than the text itself. To some extent, Murray does so as well, but always in a helpful way. I get the sense that he's writing to the pastor or interested layman, and not to the scholarly guild.

Maybe most importantly of all, he seems to strike the perfect balance between a rigorous exegesis of the text at hand, with a sensitivity to, and respect for, the Bible's teaching as a whole. Again, modern commentaries often fail to do this, even those written by evangelical scholars. They tend to isolate the text under consideration from the rest of Scripture. It's as though it's wrong to bring any other biblical teaching to bear upon a given text or verse in order to help clarify its meaning. But no one who takes the Scripture to be God's Word actually reads the Bible in this fragmented way. No doubt the fact that Murray was both a exegete and a systematic theologian enabled him to strike this right balance.

In any case, it's been a blessing to work through Romans with Murray as my teacher.

Now, here is the picture of Monica. As you can see, it was taken just a few minutes ago right as I was about to start this blog. This is one of the few pictures we have of her smiling!


1 comment:

Anonymous said...

I just listened to a message on the life of JOhn Owen by John Piper. He mentioned that John Myrray's Romans commentary was a go-to book for him as well. I quite enjoy Piper and his messages particularly his biographies.