Radically Whole: Gospel Healing for the Divided Heart (Gibson)
Description:
An Expository Journey through the Book of James Helps Christians Move from Double-Mindedness to Wholeness
Everyone longs for wholeness and honesty in their lives. In reality, people are often double-minded—pulled between good and evil—in their speech, actions, and character. These rifts can be spiritually and relationally devastating. So how does God heal a fractured heart?
This exploration of the New Testament book of James helps readers identify double-mindedness in their own lives and understand God’s grace as he “pulls apart the divided heart to make it whole.” Explaining James’s challenging epistle chapter by chapter, David Gibson helps readers embrace the painful yet profound process of redemption, defeat double-mindedness, and experience wholeness in every area of their lives.
Contents:
Preface
Acknowledgments
Introduction: Getting Your Bearings
Chapter 1: Perfection
Chapter 2: Doing
Chapter 3: Love
Chapter 4: Seeing
Chapter 5: Words
Chapter 6: Wisdom
Chapter 7: Presumption
Chapter 8: Wealth
Chapter 9: Suffering
Postscript
Notes
General Index
Scripture Index
About the Author:
David Gibson (PhD, University of Aberdeen) is minister of Trinity Church in Aberdeen, Scotland. He is a coeditor of From Heaven He Came and Sought Her and the author of Living Life Backward: How Ecclesiastes Teaches Us to Live in Light of the End. He is married to Angela, and they have four children.
Endorsements:
“David Gibson has given the church a guide to the book of James and the issues it raises that is biblical, pastoral, accessible, reliable, wise, and patient. While focusing on James, Gibson helpfully explores its great topics by drawing on all of Scripture, wise reading, and pastoral experience to lead the reader into the gospel-based wholeness that the Lord desires to form in his people.”
Dan Doriani, Professor of Biblical and Systematic Theology, Covenant Theological Seminary; Founder, Center for Faith and Work St. Louis
“No one ever says, ‘When I grow up I want to be a hypocrite.’ Yet most of us would have to admit that there are areas in our lives that simply don’t line up with what we say we believe. In Radically Whole, David Gibson ably applies the straight-talk wisdom of the book of James to the areas of our lives that need to become conformed to the gospel we believe and the Savior we love.”
Nancy Guthrie, Bible teacher; author
“If Martin Luther had been granted a future look at the pages of David Gibson’s Radically Whole so that he could glimpse the overarching theme of the book of James and its symmetries (its ‘melodic line’), he would not have voiced his infamous conclusion that it was ‘a right strawy epistle’ but would have recognized James as a profoundly substantial letter consonant with the gospel of grace. Gibson’s penetrating exposition reveals that the grand unifying theme and purpose of James’s letter is the perfection—the singular wholeness—of God’s people. The book’s nine chapters are laced with gripping theological insights and life-giving applications that lead toward biblical wholeness. Gibson is a devoted, hands-on pastor, so Radically Whole sparkles with memorable analogies and aphorisms that help the reader understand and put to work its truths. And, in doing this, it focuses us on Jesus, the only man in history who not only knew God’s word but did it. This is a marvelous book, one that will be read, reread, underlined, and taken to heart—with enduring benefits.”
R. Kent Hughes, Senior Pastor Emeritus, College Church, Wheaton, Illinois
“The purpose of your consultation at the James clinic is to help you toward full spiritual health. You already know that you will first meet a different physician, a Dr. Gibson, who has studied under Dr. James for many years. He is a somewhat younger man, but his familiarity with Dr. James’s inspired insights is impressive, as is the way he seems able to express the spirit and atmosphere of his teaching, as well as the central truth that Jesus Christ makes you whole. It is an idea that will recur in different ways as Dr. Gibson leads you, gently but firmly, through a comprehensive assessment process. And it begins with the first pages of Radically Whole. In its series of enriching consultations, David Gibson surefootedly provides the diagnosis, prescriptions, and prognosis we all need if we are to be made whole in Jesus Christ.”
Sinclair B. Ferguson, Chancellor’s Professor of Systematic Theology, Reformed Theological Seminary; Teaching Fellow, Ligonier Ministries