Christopher Chelpka

Charels Spurgeon once lamented how many Christians, especially ministers, don’t get the relationship between the law and gospel right.

“O, when will all professors, and especially all professed ministers of Christ, learn the difference between the law and the gospel? Most of them make a mingle-mangle, and serve out deadly potions to the people…”

But how do you avoid this? That’s a big question, but John Calvin offers some good advice in his comments on 1 John 2:12.

“Holiness of life ought indeed to be urged, the fear of God ought to be carefully enjoined, men ought to be sharply goaded to repentance, newness of life together with its fruits, ought to be commended; but still we ought ever to take heed, lest the doctrine of faith be smothered,— that doctrine which teaches that Christ is the only offer of salvation and all of blessings; on the contrary, such moderation ought to be presented, that faith may ever retain its own primacy. This is the rule prescribed to us by John: having faithfully spoken of good works, lest he should seem to give them more importance than he ought to have done, he careful he calls us back to contemplate the grace of Christ.”

According to Calvin, it’s not enough to preach both the law and the gospel. They must also be proclaimed in right relation to one another.

Understanding what the law and gospel are and how they are related is essential for Christian preaching. Ministers should be expert in them. Here are some things you can read to avoid the mingle-mangle:

• Edward Fisher, The Marrow of Modern Divinity
• Sinclair Ferguson, The Whole Christ
• John Colquhoun, A Treatise on the Law and the Gospel

Ti Adelaide Martin specializes in hospitality. She recently opened New Orleans Culinary and Hospitality Institute and was featured in the Wall Street Journal. See: “How to Host a Dinner Like a Pro”

In that feature, she offers some advice. Hospitality requires, she says, “systems, not just smiles.”

“Having that system in place makes it easier for us to be warm and gracious and hospitable, and to connect.”

The Bible tells us to be proactive about hospitality. We need to think about it in advance and be prepared for it. For example, wealthy Christians are commanded in 1 Timothy 6:18 “to be rich in good works, to be generous and ready [or, willing] to share.” And while hospitality is a particular blessing and calling for the wealthy, God says in Romans 12:13 that all Christians must “seek to show hospitality”. We must not neglect it, according to Hebrews 13:2. Seeking is the opposite of neglecting. Seeking is proactive. And interestingly, in Romans, Paul may intend an even stronger verb than seek.

The word that “seek” translates in Romans 12:13 is διώκειν, which usually means to pursue, chase, or drive after something. In some contexts it can mean to prosecute or persecute. This is probably the case when Paul uses διώκειν in the following verse: “Bless those who persecute [διώκοντας] you, bless and do not curse them”. If verse 14 refers to persecuting—and all English versions translate it this way, probably because of Matthew 5—it is a quite a thing to pair this kind of pursuit with the verse before about pursuing hospitality. In that case, Paul would be saying something like, “pursue the goal of showing hospitality, and when others pursue you with the intent to harm you, bless them.” If it doesn’t mean that and instead means, “Bless those who pursue you in showing you hospitality. Don’t curse them!”, then this also strengthens God’s call to be hospitable.

Either way, God tells us to be hospitable and that it’s not good enough to just let hospitality happen. This is because hospitality falls into the broader category of love, as it does in Romans 12. Διώκετε τὴν ἀγάπην—Pursue love—says 1 Corinthians 14:1. Christ’s love for us was proactive, purposeful, and planned. Those who have been born of God will love others in a similar way.

This is why systems are important. Systems for being hospitable make the occasional regular; they ensure that what might be overlooked will be attended to instead. Systems make hospitality easier for the host and a greater blessing for the guest. Of course, each organization, restaurant, church, family, etc., will need to find systems that fit their particular needs and goals, but having those systems they must.

In my church and in my family, we have some good systems in place. But there is room for growth. What about you? What systems do you have in place that make a big difference for you and for those whom you seek to serve?

New writing apps are multiplying like rabbits, and the old standbys keep improving. Frankly, it’s hard to pick a bad app for your writing. That said, I want to throw some flowers on the stage for the iOS version of Notebooks App by Alfons Schmid. Only because I’m thankful for it and find it so useful. Thank you, Herr Schmid!

Here are ten reasons why I’ve been doing all my long- form writing, note-taking, and even some PDF management in Notebooks.

First, like 1Writer, iA Writer, Ulysses, and others, Notebooks allows me to write in Markdown. You don’t have to write in Markdown but it works great if you want to.

Second, Notebooks works well for any kind of writing: long essays, grocery lists, meeting notes, whatever. I’ve never liked having two or more apps for my writing because I just want to write without thinking where it goes. But you need to with most apps. Writing an essay in Apple Notes feels wrong, so does putting a grocery list in Scrivener. But either one feels fine in Notebooks.

Third, Notebooks offers flexible organization. You can dump everything in one place, or separate your writing into a million notebooks and sub-notebooks (notebook=folder). And because Notebooks will use the first words you type for a title, if you don’t choose a custom title, you can get writing right away without having to decide what to name your work.

Fourth, Notebooks’ search features are also strong, and you can use hashtags and other features to find things.

Fifth, the iPad version of Notebooks allows me to zoom the text with a finger gesture. This is really important for me because I often want to type in a certain size and then quickly increase the size of everything proportionally, for preaching or teaching, without fiddling with formatting.

Sixth, Notebooks lets me download style sheets, edit them, or write my own. I love this. I spent a little time getting things looking like I want and then never mess with it again. I just start typing and the formatting takes care of itself. This is a time multiplier.

Seventh, Notebooks offers a variety of syncing options. This is useful for all the obvious reasons. One option for syncing is through Dropbox. Using Dropbox allows me to share these files with others from the cloud. And there are many other ways to share directly from the app.

Eighth, with Notebooks I can also work with PDFs. I can download a PDF directly into the app, mark it with my Apple Pencil, and then email it out again without leaving the app. This feature is a few extra bucks add-on but totally worth it, especially since it also allows you to search the texts of PDFs as well. This makes Notebooks great for more than writing.

Ninth, Notebooks has a dual-pane mode on the iPad. This may not seem like a big deal, but I use it all the time. Within the same app, I can open a PDF I’ve marked and take notes about it in another window. Or I can brainstorm a quick list, then write from that list in another pane.

Tenth, Notebooks App features a lot more. It is also really fast. It has customizable timestamps, a web browser, fancy todo list capabilities, integrations with other popular apps, and more. To learn what else is possible, the app’s website has tons of information. And Jai Bentley-Payne of @appademic has written some long posts about Noteboooks.

• DEVONThink and Notebooks: Alternatives to Evernote
• Note Taking, Research and Organisation with Notebooks iOS
• Note Taking Automation with Notebooks, Workflow etc
• Creating Smart Reading Lists on iOS with Notebooks

Every now and then, I need to do some special formatting with a document and I’ll use Pages or Mellel. I also haven’t done any collaborative editing in a while, so I’m not tied to programs that have rich collaboration features.

But at the moment, my needs are pretty simple: I need a place to quickly write anything I want without fussing about formatting and still get good looking documents at the end. Notebooks is meeting those needs very well.