Unknowing God: Toward a Post-Abusive Theology

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While creation reveals His invisible attributes, His eternal power, and His divine nature, unbelievers cannot know God through creation because they suppress the truth in unrighteousness (Rom. We display the supernatural love of our heavenly Father when we love those who do not (yet) love us. Paul wrote that Christ crucified was “folly to Gentiles” (1 Corinthians 1:23) and charged his converts to “no longer walk as the Gentiles do, in the futility of their minds” (Ephesians 4:17). This fretwork of 26 succinct reflections will enthuse and encourage those many people similarly ill at ease with much that passes for Christianity today — and will alarm others for whom the whiff of apostasy will be deeply troubling.

But what a blessing to meet a father or mother in Christ, a mature believer who has faithfully walked with God for decades and whose life is characterized by a degree of love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, and self-control that is truly Christlike! Such a petition is founded on Gentile (or natural) assumptions about leadership as personal privilege. And our Lord loves to redeem the ways that we, Jew or Gentile, fail to love, pray, live, and lead as we ought.All three books teach theology, but the kind of theology that is not meant simply to idle in one’s head. The work continues as each generation, standing upon the shoulders of others, comes to drink for themselves at the headwaters of God’s own word. New American Standard Bible Copyright ©1960, 1962, 1963, 1968, 1971, 1972, 1973, 1975, 1977, 1995 by The Lockman Foundation, La Habra, Calif.

I can see how He wants me toreact, I see how He wants to change and transform me and, through trials, lead me to divinenature. So, you need to pray with Paul for yourself and for other believers, that God “may give you a spirit of wisdom and of revelation in the knowledge of Him” (1:17). The Spirit now dwells in us and applies in our lives all the benefits that Christ secured for us on the cross: He assures us of forgiveness and salvation, reveals Christ to us in ever-deeper ways, empowers us for holy living, imparts spiritual gifts for ministry and kingdom mission, and guides and directs us to glorify Christ in everything we do — and much more. For good news came to us just as to them, but the message they heard did not benefit them, because they were not united by faith with those who listened.The English word know in this verse is a translation of the Greek word ginosko, which, in this context, means an experiential knowing, not simply an intellectual understanding of facts about God or Jesus or the Bible. John Calvin argues that Paul would have no reason to thank God for the Ephesians’ faith and love, unless these qualities came from God alone. It can be difficult for people to accept that an all-loving and all-powerful God would allow his creation to suffer. In times of uncertainty, you can remember God’s permanent will that once you become a child of God, nothing can separate you from His love.