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August 10 - November 10, 2021
Yet Christianity is not primarily about lifestyle change; it is about knowing God. To know and grow to enjoy him is what
excited to read this book over break!
Knowing the love of God is the very thing that makes us loving.
Deuteronomy 6, that would be a bit out of the blue to say the least. Instead, Deuteronomy 6 is about God’s people having the Lord as the one object of their affections: he is the only one worthy of them, and they are to love him alone with all their heart, soul and strength (Deut 6:5).
not believe in this God, then, quite simply,
Father (“he begets not”), and in no sense does he have a Son (“nor is he begotten”). He is one person, and
Neither a problem nor a technicality, the triune being of God is the vital oxygen of Christian life and joy. And so it is my hope and prayer that as you read this book,
14:6). That is who God has revealed himself to be: not first and foremost Creator or Ruler, but Father.
Before he ever created, before he ever ruled the world, before anything else, this God was a Father loving his Son.
Our definition of God must be built on the Son who reveals him. And when we do that, starting with the Son, we find that the first thing to say about God is, as it says in the creed, “We believe in one God, the Father.”
The most foundational thing in God is not some abstract quality, but the fact that he is Father.
If he created us in order to be who he is, we would be giving him life.
Father is the lover and the Son the beloved,
The Father loves (and empowers) the Son by giving him his Spirit;
Single-person gods, having spent eternity alone, are inevitably self-centered beings, and so it becomes hard to see why they would ever cause anything else to exist.
The Son is the image of God, perfectly showing us what his Father is like.
he is not a God who hoards his life, but one who gives it away, as he would show in that supreme moment of his self-revelation on the cross.
Grace, then, is not merely his kindness to those who have sinned; the very creation is a work of grace, flowing from God’s love.
Check out this quote.
Yet it was not simply that Sibbes was born with a sunny disposition; he himself was adamant that it is our view of God that shapes us most deeply. We become like what we worship.a And Sibbes clearly saw the triune God
Allowing them that, though, means allowing them to turn away from himself—and that is the origin of evil. By graciously giving his creatures the room to exist, the triune God allows them the freedom to turn away without himself being the author of evil.
the radiant love, the overflowing goodness of this God, there is a beauty entirely at odds with the self-serving monotony of single-person gods such as Screwtape described.
Made in the image of the God of love, Augustine argued that we are always motivated by love—and that is why Adam and Eve disobeyed God. They sinned because they loved something else more than him.
Ultimately, the Father sent the Son because the Father so loved the Son—and wanted to share that love and fellowship. His love for the world is the overflow of his almighty love for his Son.
It means that this God makes no third party suffer to achieve atonement. The one who dies is the lamb of God, the Son. And it means that nobody but God contributes to the work of salvation: the Father, Son and Spirit accomplish it
short, if God had no word to say to us, we simply would not know him or dream of his deep benevolence.
For if the Spirit’s first work in salvation is to loose our hearts that we might have a lust or desire for the Lord, then the Christian life is about so much more than “getting heaven.”
it was about freely receiving the Spirit, and so the Father and the Son.
him; the Spirit’s personal presence in us means we are brought to enjoy the Spirit’s own intimate communion with the Father and the Son.
seeing the holiness of God in it, it will transform us to be holy. When we see the love of God in the gospel, and the love of Christ giving himself for us, this will transform us to love God.[6]
Knowing him is life, and looking to him is what enlivens. Realizing this, said Charles Spurgeon, is the secret to Christian happiness:
Oneness for the triune God means unity. As the Father is absolutely one
The truth is that God is already on mission: in love, the Father has sent his Son and his Spirit. It is the outworking of his very nature.
The mission comes from the overflow of love, from the uncontainable enjoyment of the fellowship.
“Yes, God is loving, but he is also holy”—as if holiness is an unloving thing, the cold side of God that stops God from being too loving.
if love and relationship were not central to God’s being? Then they wouldn’t feature for me either as I sought to grow in God-likeness.
the glory of God is like radiant light, shining out, enlightening and giving life.
Now when we see that Jesus is the radiance of God’s glory, it becomes impossible to think that God’s glory is something that is not about love.
He has life in himself—and so much so that he is brimming over. His glory is inestimably good, overflowing, self-giving.
