God’s grace comes from the outside

“The point I am making is quite offensive to us today. It is that God hides himself from us, that he cannot be had on our terms, and that he cannot be accessed from “below” through natural revelation. In the malls, and in much of life, we encounter nothing like this.  We expect access. We expect to be able to get what we want, when we want it, and on our terms.

Here this is not the case. Here we have to be admitted to God’s presence, on his terms, in his way … or not at all.  We cannot simply walk into his presence. Here nature does not itself yield grace.  God’s grace comes from the outside, not the inside, from above and not from within. It is not natural to fallen human life. We enter the presence of God as those who have been estranged, not as those who have been in continuity with the sacred simply because we are human. We are brought into a saving relationship through Christ; we do not put this together from within ourselves.”

—David F. Wells, The Courage to be Protestant (Grand Rapids, Mi.: Eerdmans, 2008), 190

Published in:  on August 21, 2009 at 1:29 am Comments (1)

“The majesty of God’s forgiveness . . .”

“The majesty of God’s forgiveness is lost entirely when we lose what has to be forgiven. What has to be forgiven is not just what we do but who we are, not just our sinning but our sinfulness, not just our choices but what we have chosen in place of God. . . . When we miss the biblical teaching, we also miss the nature of God’s grace in all its height and depth. In biblical faith it is God’s grace through Christ that does for us what we cannot do for ourselves.”

- David F. Wells, The Courage to Be Protestant (Grand Rapids, Mi.: Eerdmans, 2008), 167.

Published in:  on February 3, 2009 at 1:51 am Comments (4)

The Price that Love Pays

“God’s love is his holiness reaching out to sinners; grace is but the price that his love pays to his holiness; the cross is but its victory over sin and death; and faith is but the way in which we bring our worship to him who is holy.”

- David F. Wells, The Courage to be Protestant (Grand Rapids, Mi.: Eerdmans, 2008), 130.

Published in:  on January 18, 2009 at 3:22 am Leave a Comment

The Dawn of the Age to Come

“The present age is in the sunset of dissolution; the age to come is the dawn whose light bathes life, banishes its shadows, and illumines its meaning because this age is moving the people of God to that time when everything has become subject to Christ and he has rendered it all up to the Father (1 Cor. 15:20-28).”

- David F. Wells, The Courage to Be Protestant (Grand Rapids, Mi.: Eerdmans, 2008), 204.

Published in:  on January 14, 2009 at 2:42 am Leave a Comment

Evil & the Purposes of God

“The mystery of iniquity is at work in the world during this interim time, and it is not always clear how its malignant work is being checked, overridden, or woven into the glorious purposes of God. We need to remember, though, that while Judas betrayed Christ, and woe to him for doing so, it was God’s plan that Christ was thus betrayed. Evil by its very nature opposes the purposes of God, but God, in his sovereignty, can make even this evil serve his purposes.”

- David F. Wells, The Courage to Be Protestant (Grand Rapids, Mi.: Eerdmans, 2008), 206.

Published in:  on January 6, 2009 at 11:48 am Comments (3)

The Age to Come vs. The Age that Has Been

“The central and simple message of the New Testament is that the promised age to come has dawned, the promised victory over what has emptied life of meaning and filled it with confusion and dismay has been won. . . . Were it not for the resurrection, Paul suggests, abandoning ourselves to a life of empty party-making and a fatalistic sense of doom would be quite logical.

There is no hope in ‘this age.’ It lies under the judgment of God. It is all, despite its brilliance, now dying. It has no future. It can offer many pleasurable experiences, many momentary distractions, but it is doomed. It has no long-term future and can offer no meaning besides what it manufactures for the moment, which is as fleeting as the morning mist.”

- David F. Wells, The Courage to Be Protestant (Grand Rapids, Mi.: Eerdmans, 2008), 203.

Published in:  on December 29, 2008 at 12:54 am Leave a Comment

Jesus, Judgment & the Age to Come

“Meaning comes from God alone. In the person of Christ, the age to come, which alone will endure for all eternity, has arrived. It arrived in his person and was redemptively present his work on the cross. In that work, not only is the eternal present in time, but so is the judgment of the end of time now exhausted within time. For the people of God the ‘end time’ judgment has already happened.”

- David F. Wells, The Courage to be Protestant (Grand Rapids, Mi.: Eerdmans, 2008), 203.

Published in:  on December 28, 2008 at 1:23 am Leave a Comment
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