Theology Refresh – Page 3

Why Children Also Suffer

Biblegateway’s Tough Questions with RC Sproul Newsletter sent this question to my mail today: “Why would a loving and holy God allow a child to suffer through a serious illness such as cancer?”

Sproul answers:

We usually associate the love of God with the benefits we receive from him and the blessings that come from his kind and merciful hand. Because his love usually manifests itself in good things that happen to us, we sometimes fall back in shock and consternation when we see a child struck by disease or some other trauma.

Continue reading Why Children Also Suffer

Reading the Old Testament

An interview with Old Testament scholar Alec Motyer:

What are Christians missing by not reading the Old Testament?

Motyer – The death of the Lord Jesus as understood in Old Testament categories. We don’t understand the cross unless we understand the Old Testament category of sacrifice and the shedding of blood. Likewise, the New Testament doesn’t have as strong a stated doctrine of creation. It leans on the Old Testament to reveal the nature of man and the nature of God as creator.

Read the rest of the interview here.

Intellectual Pursuits

John Piper on pursuing intellectual understanding of God:

We all have different gifts, and not everyone is called to this kind of intellectual climb. I don’t mean that the non-climbers will see less glory or worship with less passion. There are glories in the valleys. And there are paths into beauties of God that are less intellectual. I would not dare to claim that those who do this sort of climbing always see or savor more glory than those with wider eyes for the glory that is right there in the meadow.

Nevertheless, some of us are wired to make this climb. There is not much choice in it. We should no more boast about doing it than one should boast about being a morning person.

I just had a random conversation with one of our pastors this morning when he jokingly commented that I spent too much time on systematic theology. He reasoned that the original apostles were unschooled and they didn’t have complicated theology in their ministries. Our conversation was more of a light banter but the idea got me really thinking afterwards.

If God used unschooled apostles to turn this world upside down with a simple gospel message, can’t we just imitate them and keep things as simple as they are? Why learn too much technical stuff when many people think it’s not that necessary? Continue reading Too Much Systematic Theology

All Grace

It is grace at the beginning, and grace at the end. So that when you and I come to lie upon our death beds, the one thing that should comfort and help and strengthen us there is the thing that helped us in the beginning. Not what we have been, not what we have done, but the Grace of God in Jesus Christ our Lord. The Christian life starts with grace, it must continue with grace, it ends with grace. Grace wondrous grace. By the grace of God I am what I am. Yet not I, but the Grace of God which was with me. …The ultimate test of our spirituality is the measure of our amazement at the grace of God.

–D. Martyn Lloyrd Jones

Dumbed Down Gospel

Many Christians try very hard to be relevant to the culture around them that they avoid using Bible words for fear of being considered out of step with the latest trends. Their vocabulary is very limited to phrases like “blessings of God, unconditional love, inner peace, enjoying God’s best, happiness, getting over with something, and moving on.” They systematically reject heavy (read: religious) words like providence, atonement, substitutionary death, repentance, forgiveness, and justification. The mere mention of the word theology makes their ears bleed.

As far as I know, their reasons are simple: keep the gospel easy to understand for new believers; don’t burden them with theology; talk to them at their level and keep to the cool stuff so you won’t scare them away with too much religion. Continue reading Dumbed Down Gospel