A Brief Book Summary from Books At a Glance
by Kirsten Birkett
Contents
- Taking faith seriously
- Taking doctrine seriously
- Taking Christian unity seriously
- Taking repentance seriously
- Taking the church seriously
- Taking the Holy Spirit seriously
- Taking baptism seriously
- Taking the Lord’s Supper seriously
General Summary
A work of catechesis to explain the essentials of Christian faith.
1. Taking faith seriously
Faith means different things to different people, and so we get major disagreements. Calling all religions “faiths” compounds the problem. But in the NT faith is a technical term with specific meaning: “a belief-and-behavior commitment to Jesus Christ, the divine-human Lord,” who lived, died for sins, rose, ascended, reigns, and will judge, taking his people to joy forever. This is “the faith” of Christianity. Faith is a response to Christ which is both intellectual and relational, and requires both the revealed truth, and commitment.
The Bible is considered the word of God because:
- Jesus and the apostles treated Scripture as the utterance of God
- The Bible has a “divine ministry of revealing God’s mind to us.”
The Bible is inspired, and instrumental: God-given and God-giving, and so the “standard of Christian faith.” The process for deciding on the canon was reliable. The Bible has God’s authority, and so the right to rule us. God puts our minds straight and captures our hearts for discipleship. Scripture deepens our fellowship with the God who seeks us out and saves us. Modern culture has lost this sense of Scripture to its hurt. . . .
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