Reflections on the Baptist Confession of Faith of 1689
23 Aug 14 began a perhaps unbroken, orderly, and personal journey through my favorite written confession of faith. This will be my personal reflections on this beloved written codification of the Christian Faith which is according to a Baptist flavor.
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Section 16, “Of Good Works.” 16.2b: “whose workmanship they are, created in Christ Jesus thereunto, that having their fruit unto holiness they may have the end eternal life.”
God does not save us for our sakes. He saves us for his own honor. Such is, of course, as with nearly everything self-abasing, an often repugnant idea to men, but to the one who’s at all been allowed within the veil, it can be imagined to be no other way. God is so infinitely and unfathomably glorious that to introduce a pretend glory of creatures alongside his becomes an almost hilarious evil.
Yet we are not saved to sit. God saves his people to make his people into instruments. We become happy instruments of God both to love and deliver his judgments. Metaphorically, Christians are like instrumentalists in a grand symphony. We are created, shaped, tuned, escorted to our seats in our assigned row, trained and conducted by God toward an unseen crescendo prepared before all men both good and evil. David had 4,000 musical instruments made to praise God before Solomon was able to build the temple. 1 Chronicles 23:5. Imagine God’s choir of billions! We are redeemed to do stuff. Ministry. Perhaps as church leaders, but surely all as people, as husbands and wives, as sons and daughters, as parents, as strangers. We’re called to give of our money, our time, our prayers. We’re called to study, to fast and sing. We are to be displaying God’s glory over evil like so many Jobs. We’re to live by every word that proceeds from God in contentment and humble witness. To rejoice with the rejoicing, to weep with the weeping, and to weep that we can’t weep more with the ignorant. We’re blessed to eat food and enjoy the beaches God made. We should marvel with God at the ways we can use technology to heal the body and connect people on the planet. We are redeemed to grow in our esteem to God. This will make us ready to dine with him in the way he intends. All such things are the fruits of genuine repentance in a redeemed life.
We are saved to make ourselves and others ready for heaven.
Paragraph writing is also a fun, if you know afterward you can write or else it iscomplex to write.