A Matter of Life & Death

A Matter of Life and Death
How to read the Bible through New Covenant lenses
Author: Wayne Duncan
Publisher: New Nature Publications
No. of Pages: 196

A common criticism hurled at grace believers is that they pick and choose passages to suit their whims and fancies and disregard the passages that talk about God's righteous anger, judgment and discipline.

Personally, I used to find God to be a little of a schizophrenic — on one hand, loving and kind, on the other jealous and vengeful. There's always the "This is true ... but ..." in every "truth" I seemed to discover from the Word. I've learned now the importance of reading the Bible in the context of the right covenant. It's a challenge sometimes, but whenever I look at a familiar passage, there's an exciting discovery to be made.

A Matter of Life & Death is a good introduction for anybody who wants to pick up the Bible and read it with new eyes.

Author Wayne Duncan, who pastors a church in South Africa, affirms the whole Bible as the inspire, infallible Word of God — something that is meant for everyone to read an understand. However, he does call the Bible a "deadly dangerous book", one that contains two ministries — life and death. How you read the Bible and "divide the word of truth" will lead either to life-changing liberation or confusion and death.

The key thing, he says, is to know how read the Bible "Cross-eyed", through the most important filter — Jesus — the Word of No Condemnation.

He gives 3 questions as a guide when it comes to reading Scripture and works through a few passages with these questions:
Q1: Who was it written to? (Context)
Q2: What does it say? (Content)
Q3: How does it apply to me in the New Covenant and through the finished work of the cross through Jesus?

Duncan goes on to explain and cover various topics that one has to understand to correctly filter the Scriptures, such as the Ministry of Death (Old Covenant) and Ministry of Life (New Covenant), justification, righteousness, propitiation, atonement and covenantal inheritance. He also talks about why "grace junkies" sin less and "Have you turned the Grace of God into a license to sin?", with a section of grace-based resources and an appendix on

While it does serve as a handy New Covenant Truths 101, I think the book tried too hard to cover too much. The structure is also hazy: For example, it would have been more helpful to have clear-cut chapters on the five (or is it six) filters that can help someone divide the Word clearly, and to tuck the other explanations in separate sections/appendixes to help the reader along better. Also, I was hoping that Duncan would provide some "answers" to certain tough Bible passages I had in mind ... but I guess that's a journey of discovery I'd have to take myself.

But otherwise, it's a good resource and definitely worth a read for anyone wanting to start studying the Bible the New Covenant way.

Check out another review of this book here.