Why I Love Scripture

I've fallen in love with Scripture. I can't really explain it, but it's awesome. The words that God has spoken to us to give us life, teaching, correction, and everything we need are truly some of the most precious treasures man can have, along with the salvation that comes through God-given faith and the fact that we're adopted into the family of God.

In fact, one of my favorite passages in Scripture is precisely because it's about Scripture. That passage is 2 Timothy 3:14-17:

But as for you, continue in what you have learned and have firmly believed, knowing from whom you learned it and how from childhood you have been acquainted with the sacred writings, which are able to make you wise for salvation through faith in Christ Jesus. All Scripture is breathed out by God and profitable for teaching, for reproof, for correction, and for training in righteousness, that the man of God may be competent, equipped for every good work. (ESV)

Pastor and theologian Dr. R.C. Sproul wrote a book titled Knowing Scripture, which exegetes this passage. I won't go into all the detail, but it basically says this passage describes how the Scripture is all-sufficient for us to be equipped and wise in accordance to Biblical wisdom, which begins with "the fear of the Lord" (Prov. 1:7). It is how we learn of and teach salvation. It has the standards of Christian living. It has the commands of God, breathed-out by his very mouth. It trains us to be righteous. And every time we open it up, the Holy Spirit is there to help us understand it. What's not to love?

"And they will all be taught by God" (John 6:45).

New Blog Name?

So you're probably wondering why I changed my blog's name. Or not. Either way I'm gonna tell you.

I realized that this blog really isn't so much of a "story" per se. It's more a place where I post my thoughts and hope and try really hard to not be the 1 Timothy 1:6-7 guy.

Thus, a new blog name! I think it's appropriate too, because worshiping our Sovereign Lord is something I want to do every day, something I have to remind myself of every day, and absolutely essential for any Christian.

I also want to say that by "worship," I don't just mean music. Sure, music is one form of worship. But by worship, I mean our entire lives must be devoted to God! This is something I struggle with every day, so don't think I'm saying I've accomplished that. I don't think anyone in history except Jesus ever fully accomplished that. But yeah.

Also, for those of you who have this blog bookmarked (all 0 of you), you'll need to fix that. I changed the URL to reflect the new name and the old one doesn't work anymore.

http://worshippingasovereignlord.blogspot.com

A Brief Theology Lesson

I was talking about theology to Sarrah earlier tonight. Well, sort of. We both realized that we are different kinds of leaders in a church setting. Sarrah is more of an administrative, organized person who really cares about individual people and issues. While I think those are very important, I naturally tend to gravitate toward the theology side of things, the Bible study and interconnecting of Scripture.

What I realized at the end of that conversation was that a lot of Christians have a very incorrect view of what theology really is. Most people tend to think theology is all that weird stuff with the big words like "ecclesiology," "eschatology" and "penal substitutionary atonement." And, while it can include those things, it's a lot simpler than people make it out to be. And by people, I mean those who delve really deeply into those things and know all those weird words as well as those who don't care to know what "soteriology" means. Heck, I don't even know what that means; I just pulled that word off of Wikipedia.

"Theo" means "god." "-logy" basically means "study of." The study of God. What does that come down to? Bible study. Going to church and listening to the pastor preach. Reading the Bible. All of that is what theology really is. It's the study of God.

"-logy" also descends from the Greek "-logue," which has to do with discourses. Communication, whether it is spoken or written. Something written about God...sound familiar? In other words, your Bible is a big book of theology.

In fact, all those weird words and terms that people use for whatever reason all boil down to the Bible. Theology, as most people understand it, gets muddied up by all these big words and terms. All they are are words that define specific fields of study in the Bible, like who the Church is and what its relationship is to Christ (ecclesiology) or the study of the person and work of Christ (Christology). There's no actual need for these words though. One could simply say he's studying the church as it's presented in the Bible. Or, and this is what I like to do, one could just read the Bible and see all these fancy-shmancy topics in the context God put them in.

I think I tend to fall into the trap of thinking theology involves all these complex words and topics. It really doesn't have to. It certainly can, and maybe for some people it's extremely important that it does. But reading about Jesus riding into Jerusalem on a colt and seeing in the same passage that it fulfilled a prophecy in Isaiah is as much theology as learning what penal substitutionary atonement actually means and finding out whether or not Jesus went to Heaven or Hell for the three days he was dead.