A WHOLE MAN

Recommended Reading: Chapter 7- Conclusion (32 pages) Key Quotes:   Chapter 7 "[God] possesses an intrinsic moral right to rule, make judgments, exercise power…Human authority, however, is always relative and limited. It's not something we are . It's something we must be given …Our authority is borrowed from God, which means God always sets its limits and purposes." (136) "Good authority binds in order to loose, corrects in order to teach, trims in order to grow, disciplines in order to train, legislates in order to build, judges in order to redeem, studies in order to innovate." (142) "A good leader knows he or she is constrained by God's law, constrained by the rules of his or her office, constrained to the specified objectives of that office, constrained by a profound understanding of people as Gods-imagers." (148) Conclusion "…if you cannot figure out how love and judgment, or love and authority, or love and holiness work tog...

I know that we are going very slowly through this book. I have not had as much time as I would like to read this one (I am reading three books simultaneously), but do not worry we will always have a book guide each week. Recommended Reading: Chapter 6 (20 pages) Key Quotes: Chapter 6 "…it's the daily life of the average Christian that ultimately forms the world's perception of Christ and his gospel." (115) "All of God's judgments are good and right. Our fallen selves don't recognize the good because our fallen loves demand different judgments." (123) "We all make judgments all day. It's called decision making. We tell ourselves we don’t like the idea of judgment, of course, because judgment always involves excluding something, and someday that something just might be us. Therefore…we tear down whatever walls we can…We dispense with moral boundaries, blur gender, topple every authority we can find. What's left? Our tribes, our idols,...

Recommended Reading: Chapter 5 (22 pages) Key Quotes: Chapter 5 "God's saving love for us, then, is an incorporating love, a covenantal love. The Father loves the Son, and we are then incorporated into it by marital covenant. "I will betroth you to me forever." (98) "Biblical love always begins with the love of God, and therefore it will affirm only what is from God…Biblically, godly love takes pleasure in the other person's good, and that good is always God. Biblical love therefore gives itself to seeing God exalted in a person's life." (104) "If God-centered love seeks both to affirm that which is from God and to see God exalted in the lives of others, church members will increasingly view their gathered and scattered lives as opportunities to display God's glory." (109) Engagement Questions: Chapter 5 1. In what ways have we twisted God's love for sinners? 2. In what ways this week can you display God's glory...

Recommended Reading: Chapter 3-4 (26 pages) Key Quotes: Chapter 3 Speaking of the love of a parent towards their child: "These are not Christian instincts; they are human ones. God has programmed them, in varying measure, into all of us. Why? Among other things so that we might know something about him." (60) "For Jesus the Son, love leads to obedience, and obedience is a sing of love. For God the Father, love depends upon obedience, and obedience is a condition of love." (67) "though we don't share one nature with the heavenly Father the way Jesus does…we can follow their example. Two human beings cannot "indwell" one another the way the divine Father indwells the eternal Son, but we can… share the same faith, the same ambitions, the same character, the same love. We can give ourselves to one another so that Christ might be exalted in and through one another." (68) Chapter 4  "This is how culture works. We love something and then...

Recommended Reading: Chapter 2 (17 pages) Key Quotes: Chapter 2 "One group of theologians will talk about God's love as universal, undiscriminating, and unconditional, but at the core we find man-centeredness. Another group will talk about God's love as God centered, and that's where the offense lies." (43) On Defining and Displaying God's Love: "A God-centered view of love combines both desire and gift. We most desire God, and we give God…A God-centered love draws lines between whoever loves God and whoever does not. " (47, 48) On Agape-only love: "Here's the problem: repentance, holiness, and right belief are eventually cast to the side with agape-only love. Such love softens or even dissolves doctrinal, ethical, and church boundaries…Think about it: what can I do if I want to call myself a Christian but also accommodate the culture's moral drift, particularly in matters of sexuality and family? Easy: I define God's love as ...

Recommended Reading:  Introduction-Chapter 1 (26 pages) Key Quotes: Introduction  "When [the Bible] says, 'God is love' (1 John 4:8), it's not saying there is a thing out there called love and that God measures up to it…Rather, God in himself provides the definition, the reality, of what love is." (13- Author's emphasis) "The world presumes to understand love and authority, like it presumes to understand God. Yet it understands these things only in their fallen forms, not in their created or redeemed forms…The local church serves, therefore, as a three-dimensional display of God's love and God's authority." (20-21) Chapter 1  Speaking on how individuals are portrayed in many of the Romantic writings-- "What matters is who they are in themselves- what they want, what they feel. Every relationship is a contract that can be ripped up. What's nonnegotiable is whatever my individual heart tells me is true." (27) Speaking on Con...

"In the final analysis, you cannot separate love and rule. It's only a question of which love will rule: the love of God, or the love of self?" Jonathan Leeman, The Rule of Love , pg 40 As you know, every Wednesday we take some time and meditate on whatever it is that we would be reading that week in our Bible in a Year Plan. More specifically, on Wednesdays we examine a book or passage from our Wisdom reading (Psalms, Proverbs, Job, etc) and seek to understand what the text is saying, what it is demanding of us, and how we can glorify God for the truth we read. However, at times we will take an intermission from our Wisdom Wednesday articles to examine what wisdom can be found from reading good, biblically-sound books. For the next several weeks, I invite you to join us in our digital book club as we read and meditate on Jonathan Leeman's book, The Rule of Love. You can grab your copy from most bookstores, including the Nine Marks Store . I'm looking f...