Doctrine

Children and young people need adults who can model a deep love and joy in God, who can ooze a life full of Jesus, and who can show them what it means to keep in step with the Spirit.

You see, our understanding of God doesn’t begin with his identity as “Creator” or “Ruler” or even “Redeemer” because these things require creation. Our God is above creation. He’s infinite—beyond all spatial and temporal limitations. Therefore, our understanding of God must move beyond creation to his chief identity. Which is what? He’s Father. This is who he is eternally.

From eternity past, through each eon of human history, and throughout the infinite and endless eternity that awaits, the Triune God has, is, and will exist in infinite, immeasurable, and eternal love.

The humility we learn at the foot of the gospel, glorying in Christ and not ourselves, therefore turns out to be the wellspring of all evangelical health. When our eyes are opened to the love of God for us sinners, we let slip our masks. Condemned as sinners yet justified, we can begin to be honest about ourselves. Loved despite our unloveliness, we begin to love. Given peace with God, we begin to know an inner peace and joy. Shown the magnificence of God above all things, we become more resilient, trembling in wonder at God, and not man.

Jesus really came to give us what Adam did not receive in the garden. Not just “no more death,” but constant fellowship with the source of all life. No unclean place outside the camp, because the whole earth will be the camp of Heaven, where God the giver of life dwells with us. There will not merely be no deaths; the very notion of death will be nonsense. The obituary columns will not be blank; they will be inconceivable.

Crowds lined the streets, hoping to catch a glimpse of the olivewood casket as it made its way through the streets of south London. On top was a large pulpit Bible opened at Isaiah 45:22: “Look unto Me, and be ye saved, all the ends of the earth.” It was Thursday, February 11, 1892, and the body of Charles Haddon Spurgeon was being taken for burial.

Believers have failed to remember that the tie that binds them together is the same cord that was used to pull them up out of the horrible pit: the gospel.

“While the law reveals the righteousness of God, the gospel brightens the revelation of his righteousness and adds the revelation of his grace. While the law imprisons the sinner, the gospel liberates him, yet liberates him according to law. While the law shows the malignity of sin and dooms the sinner to death, the gospel assents to both, but conquers the one and counteracts the other.” Christmas Evans

Armed with his irresistible kindnesses, the Gentle and Humble One has been leading me toward establishing and growing pastoral relationships with like-hearted men in my area. Why? Because I need it.

The past twelve months, in a lot of ways, have been most discouraging. Perhaps you feel it too. Name-calling. Factions. Slander. The binding of consciences. Grumbling. Disunity. All of this may have you tempted to think that the church is just plain ugly. Providentially, Dustin Benge has penned his new work, The Loveliest Place: The Beauty and Glory of the Church, at this precise moment.