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Since our problem is with our hearts, the Spirit gives us new birth into a new life precisely by giving us new hearts (Ezek 36:26; Jn 3:3-8). The tool he uses is Scripture (1 Pet 1:23; Jas 1:18), but through Scripture he opens our blinded eyes to see who the Lord truly and beautifully is and so he wins our hearts back to him. And that is life—to know him (Jn 17:3).
Far, far from theological clutter, God’s being Father, Son and Spirit is just what makes the Christian life beautiful.
And it was the century that opened with its perhaps most eminent theologian, Friedrich Schleiermacher, making the Trinity a mere appendix to the Christian faith; it was the century that closed with his greatest successor, Adolf von Harnack, dismissing the Trinity altogether as a bundle of philosophical rot. Of course, the theologians weren’t feeding the atheists, but they were disarming the church so that the atheists could storm on without meeting much serious opposition.
For what we think God is like must shape our godliness, and what we think godliness is reveals what we think of God.
Love cares, and that means it cannot be indifferent to evil.
He is all light—but that is terrible for those who love the darkness.
The Reformer John Calvin wrote that “in the cross of Christ, as in a magnificent theatre, the inestimable goodness of God is displayed before the whole world. In all the creatures, indeed, both high and low, the glory of God shines, but nowhere has it shone more brightly than in the cross.”
