Posts by Joe Holland
Claiming that the Christian God is the only true God is the most loving thing a Christian can do...I believe, “There is but One only, the living and true God.”
There on the page was a question, “What is God?” The question was so simple that Christopher briefly had flashbacks to felt-boards and Sunday school songs about God having the “whole world in his hands.” But he kept reading. “God is a Spirit, in and of himself infinite in being, glory, blessedness, and perfection: all-sufficient, eternal, unchangeable, incomprehensible, every where present, almighty, knowing all things, most wise, most holy, most just, most merciful and gracious, long-suffering, and abundant in goodness and truth.”
We keep lists of the sins of others to remind ourselves that we’re not that bad and to enforce our own justice counter-attacks whenever someone sins against us. But we rarely turn our self-righteous gaze inward. When we do we find skeletons in the closet. We know our sinful actions, some of which are known by other while possibly some of our sins are only know to ourselves. Going deeper, we know our own internal thoughts, motives, and desires. When we looked nice on the outside but inside were fomenting cores of deceit and rage, we still knew the truth of our sin even if nobody else did. If we have to operate from evidence, we are each the biggest sinner that we know.
For most of us, talking for two minutes in an informed manner about any subject can be difficult. What helps is having already walked over topics in your mind and committing some sort of summary to memory. The Bible does this at several points and allows itself to be so summarized at even more points.
The Westminster Assembly crafted its confession and catechisms around a summary of the what the Bible taught. They summarized that teaching under two heads: what man is to believe concerning God and what duty God requires of man (Westminster Shorter Catechism Q. 3). Belief and duty are concordant and symphonic in God’s economy. Neither is a tack-on. We must guard against a strictly data mining the text. But we must also guard against closing our ears to a text unless we feel like it pertains to us. God exists, is near, and has spoken.
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