Not all doctrines are equally important. They are equally true, but not all truth is equally important. It isn't a matter of some doctrines being "more true" than others, as if some doctrines are partially false. It is rather that some doctrines bear less impact than others on our capacity to know, love, and obey God.
Topics: Doctrine Source: Authority and Method in Theology, November 8, 2006
The ordinances do not impart eternal life to the believer, but they do confirm, strengthen, and heighten our awareness and enjoyment of that life. The bread and wine are means or instruments by which God quickens us to apprehend, understand, visualize, and experience the sanctifying influence of the Holy Spirit and his unique ministry of shining the light of illumination and glory on Jesus.
Although God always thinks and acts in perfect harmony with His nature, His nature is infinitely complex. His personality is deep and rich and diverse and ultimately inexhaustible. Just when you've got Him figured out, He'll surprise you (but always in a good way).
God has a holy temper, but He has a very long fuse! Even those who deny and blaspheme His name are recipients of His patience and long-suffering. He permits His enemies to live, to spew forth their horrid blasphemies, all the while blessing them with food and air and earthly pleasures (see Romans 2:4-5).
God's name is qualified by the adjective "holy" in the Old Testament more often than all other qualities or attributes combined.
Topics: God, Holiness Source: Pleasures Evermore, p. 136
His being does not consist of material substance, which is created. As uncreated, He is pure spirit. No human eye can hope to "see" Him except to the degree that He chooses to reveal Himself in some mediated form compatible with the finitude of man or in the incarnation of His Son. The glorious good news is that the invisible God became visible in the person of Jesus (John 1:18).
I'm a hedonist because I believe it is impossible to desire pleasure too much. But I'm a Christian hedonist because I believe the pleasure we cannot desire too much is pleasure in God and all that He is for us in Jesus.
If we don't know who God is and how He thinks and what He feels and why He does what He does, we have no grounds for joy, no reason to celebrate, no basis for finding satisfaction in Him.
In God alone are perfect proportion, harmony, unity, and diversity in delicate balance, stunning brilliance, and integrity. God is beautiful! If we were able to think of God as a painting, we would say that there are no random brush strokes, no clashes of colors. God is aesthetically exquisite. In God there is absolute resolution, integration, the utter absence of even one discordant element.
Revelation is the activity of God by which He unveils or discloses or makes known what is, to humanity, otherwise unknowable. It is God making Himself known to those shaped in His image. Revelation is what God does, not what mankind achieves. It is a divinely initiated disclosure, not an effort or endeavor or achievement on the part of mankind.
Topics: God Source: Special Revelation I, November 8, 2006
Self-image, the concept we have of ourselves, must begin not by looking in the mirror but by looking into the face of God.
Not all doctrines are equally important. They are equally true, but not all truth is equally important. It isn't a matter of some doctrines being "more true" than others, as if some doctrines are partially false. It is rather that some doctrines bear less impact than others on our capacity to know, love, and obey God.