There are many great books for pastors, and I benefit from the work of numerous contemporary authors and thinkers. But there is also much gold to be mined from works that have stood the test of time and helped Christians for centuries. For that reason, I would urge pastors to read Communion with God.

Some years ago, I was preparing a reading list for an upcoming sabbatical. I didn’t have any pressing projects that required study, so I was at liberty to choose whatever books seemed like they would be most helpful and enjoyable. As I scanned the volumes in my office, my eyes fell upon an as-yet unread copy of John Owen’s Communion with God on a shelf. Contemplating the title, I thought that this book probably had something I needed. After all, being a pastor meant spending a lot of time in God’s Word and talking to people about the Lord, but it wasn’t always conducive to communion with God. And when it boiled down to it, I wasn’t 100 percent sure that I actually knew what “communion with God” meant.
So I read Owen’s book that summer, or more accurately—I devoured it. Owen can be a tough read; he never says something in ten words that can be explained in a hundred. And he definitely could have benefitted from an editor wrangling some order into the chaos of his syntax and outline (though the 2007 edition edited by Justin Taylor and Kelly Kapic has gone a long way towards giving the reader a fighting chance). But the juice was more than worth the squeeze. I don’t know of any book (except the Bible, obviously) that has impacted my daily life and thinking about God more. As a result, I’ve probably re-read Communion with God three or four times in the past few years. I’ve even written a book trying to make Owen’s insights accessible and available to the wider Christian community.
While I think that Communion with God is a book that will benefit any believer that reads it, it strikes me that there are a few ways it can particularly benefit pastors. Let me suggest four:
1. Communion with God  clarifies what it means to have a relationship with God.
Some evangelicals are fond of framing Christianity as “having a relationship with God,” and that is true (as far as it goes). But while we may have some idea how to carry on a relationship with a friend, a spouse, or a neighbor, it’s not always clear how we are supposed to relate to God. Owen’s book is a trusty field guide to the Bible’s practical teachings about having a relationship with God.
2. Communion with God  reminds us that our relationship with God is carried out with all three persons of the Trinity.
One of the distinctive features of Owen’s book is that it encourages believers to carry on distinct communion with the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. There is a fine line to be walked here, and Owen does it masterfully. He shows how we carry on a relationship with the Father in his love, the Son in his grace, and the Spirit in his comfort, while also insisting that to have a relationship with any one person is to have a relationship with the one God. As a preacher, I regularly find Owen’s thinking and vocabulary creeping into my sermon manuscripts.
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“Son of Man” is just as much about Jesus’s divinity as it is his humanity. This title proves to be perhaps the most effective way Jesus reveals and conceals who he really is. By using “Son of Man,” he is able to minister undercover, so to speak, on earth. 

The hit CBS show Undercover Boss has enjoyed a decade-long run based on a simple premise. Conceal the identity of a high-ranking leader of a company as he or she works among ordinary employees—and make the big reveal of the boss’s true identity at the end of each episode. Part of the fun is how some folks begin to piece it together along the way.
Of all designations used for Jesus Christ, the most undercover one is “Son of Man.” It shows up seemingly everywhere in the Gospels (over eighty times across all four), as a distinct way Jesus refers to himself in the third person. Jesus is not shy, in other words, about calling himself “Son of Man.” But what does it actually mean? It is surprisingly rare elsewhere in the New Testament, and unlike “Son of David” or other designations, it is not common in the Old Testament or Jewish tradition either.
As we reflect on Jesus this Advent season, it is right to ask the very question he asked his disciples: “Who do people say that the Son of Man is?” (Matthew 16:13). “Son of Man” may sound simple on the surface, but this phrase masks the astounding depths of the person and work of Jesus.
Revealing: Man Among Us
Let’s begin with what seems quite obvious about the phrase: “Son of Man” reveals someone is truly human. On the surface, the title seems to work just like, say, Aslan’s affectionate way of calling the four Pevensies “Sons of Adam” and “Daughters of Eve” to distinguish them from Narnian creatures. The offspring of a human shares the same nature.
Early church writers generally understood “Son of Man” along these lines. They treated it as a beautifully succinct reminder that Jesus is fully human, often as the opposite pole of “Son of God.” Here are a few examples that capture the Christmas spirit of the phrase (italics mine):

Ignatius (d. 140s): “Jesus Christ—who according to the flesh is of the lineage of David, the Son of Man” (Letter to the Ephesians, 20.2).
Justin Martyr (d. 165): “He spoke of himself as ‘Son of Man,’ either because of his birth through a virgin…or because Adam was his father” (Dialogue with Trypho, 100.3).
Irenaeus (d. 202): “Our Lord is…Son of Man, because from Mary he has his generation according to humanity, being made Son of Man” (Against Heresies, 3.19.3).
Tertullian (d. 220): “Christ is neither able to lie, that he would pronounce himself ‘Son of Man’ if it were not truly so, nor could he be regarded as son of man if he were not born of a human” (Against Marcion, 4.10.6).
Origen (d. 253): “The Son of God is said to have died, namely, with regard to that nature that was able to accept death—and he is designated ‘Son of Man’” (On First Principles, 2.6.3).

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To the world beyond America’s gangs and liberal newsrooms, the New York Times is blatantly racist. And its woke racism is just as cruel as the racism it was designed to replace.

The New York Times has dropped the ball again, in their incomplete reporting on the murder of an Italian in New York. Unbridled political correctness has resulted in censorship of the facts surrounding the crime. This is neither justice nor journalism.
Why is it so difficult for American journalists to simply tell the truth?
Earlier this month, a 30-year-old Italian researcher studying at New York’s Columbia University was brutally murdered by a member of a notorious African-American gang.
Vicious Attacks
Davide Giri, a visiting scholar, was stabbed to death in an Upper Manhattan park by Vincent Pinkney, a reputed gang member of the group “Everybody Killa” who had a decade-long rap sheet including at least 11 arrests.
Records show that Pinkney has enjoyed light sentences despite his involvement in multiple violent crimes stretching back to 2012. At the time of his arrest, he was already a wanted suspect in a previous assault.
Giri’s stabbing murder in New York was chillingly captured on surveillance video. It was the first part of a 20-minute rampage in which Pinkney wounded another Italian man and then attempted to attack a couple in nearby Central Park.
Complete Censorship
In a long-repeating pattern that was most notoriously displayed after the recent Waukesha massacre, Pinkney’s ethnicity, gang connections and criminal history were buried by corporate outlets.
The New York Times dedicated some 900 words to the story, but chose to run it on page 16 and provided only Pinkney’s name and age, despite the public availability of all other relevant information about him.
Italy’s leading newspaper, the centrist Corriere della Sera, was seething in its criticism of the New York Times last week.
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