Quotes of Note

Each Monday, we share quotes we found encouraging, convicting, thought-provoking, or all of the above.

Persis:

I'm rereading All That's Good by Hannah Anderson with a group of women from church. The whole book is great, but the last chapter sums up the reason for discernment. A reason that is just bigger than my individual Christian life. It's for the healing of the Body of Christ.

Here's the hard truth: If you are entrusted with a certain gift, most of the people around you won't be similarly gifted. They won't be able to see as clearly because God has not equipped them to. But being gifted with discernment does not give you permission to be spiteful, arrogant, or judgmental toward them. It is your responsibility to help the community by raising uncomfortable questions, and then waiting patiently while it struggles with them. And more than likely, you'll have to wait much longer than you want... you will have to remember that you are part of the Body, you are part of something bigger than yourself. You will have to remember that the clarity you enjoy is not for you alone. It is for the healing of the Body of Christ.

Rebecca:

The simplicity of God can be hard to understand. That God is simple means that he is not made up of parts. Or to put is another way, he is not a composite being. Still, we list God's attributes (love, righteousness, and power, for instance), and consider them separately, although we know God is truly one undivided essence.

In None Greater: The  Undomesticated Attributes of God, Matthew Barrett illustrates simplicity this way.

What I love best about traveling is seeing old churches. Churches that are several hundred years old typically have stained glass. Back then, churches would hire a craftsman to fashion biblical scenes using the colorful glass. Stepping back from the glass, one could see the entire story of the Bible pictured. The beauty of stained glass is seen most when one sunbeam hits the glass and several different colors are portrayed on the inside of the glass—yellow, red, blue, and so on. That imagery pictures simplicity in a way. God is one, and his attributes are identical with one another. Yet when God's undivided essence is revealed to humanity, it shines in various ways. Nevertheless, it is the same, single ray of light that radiates. God's attributes, says the Puritan George Swinnock, "are all one and the same; as when the sunbeams shine through a yellow glass they are yellow, a green glass they are green, a red glass they are red, and yet all the while the beams are the same."

As finite creatures, we can't know God in his infinite simplicity, but we can see him as he "shines through glass," so to speak. From our human viewpoint, we see various perfections, and with each perfection, we can understand another aspect of God's one undivided essence.

Kim:

From Grant Osborne's commentary on Matthew:

Jesus is never called "Immanuel" (1:23) as a proper name; rather, the term is a metaphor for the fact that in Jesus God is present "with" his people in a whole new way. There are four stages biblically: (1) God is present via his "Shekniah," or dwelling via the pillar of fire and cloud in the exodus and his throne at the midpoint where the wings of the seraphim meet above the ark, i.e., in the Most Holy Place throughout the OT. (2) God is present via his son, who was in a sense a walking Most Holy Place during his life on this earth. (3) God is present via the holy Spirit during the church age. (4) God is present physically and in full reality throughout eternity (Rev. 21:1-22:5).