Quotes About God

We shall see later34 that while God's Fatherhood is one of the most important characteristics of Jesus' view about God, he never speaks of God as Father of any but his disciples. Fatherhood is the gift of the Kingdom of God.

It is a work … outside of us in which God so deals in Christ with the sin of the world, that it shall no longer be a barrier between himself and men … reconciliation, in the New Testament sense, is not something which is being done; it is something which is done.35

The Kingdom is God's reign and the realm in which the blessings of his reign are experienced; the church is the fellowship of those who have experienced God's reign and entered into the enjoyment of its blessings. The Kingdom creates the church, works through the church, and is proclaimed in the world by the church.

Furthermore, the idea that ordinary Christians have obtained a faith of equal standing with that of the apostles "in the righteousness of our God and Savior Jesus Christ" (1:1) suits the idea of saving faith in Christ better than a correct theology. Such faith is not a human attainment but is the gift of God.

Conversion" expresses the idea better than repentance. "Repentance" suggests primarily sorrow for sin; metanoia suggests a change of mind; the Hebrew idea involves the turning around of the whole person toward God.

Jesus is the messianic son, but not in the same way that his disciples are children of God. (2) Jesus never called anyone but his disciples children of God. People became children of God by recognizing his messianic sonship.16

The Logos was with (pros) God, and the Word was God (theos Ä"n ho logos). The Greek words express two ideas: the Word was deity, but the Word was not fully identical with deity. The definite article is used only with logos. If John had used the definite article also with theos, he would have said that all that God is, the Logos is: an exclusive identity. As it is, he says that all the Word is, God is; but he implies that God is more than the Word.

read a passage from the Mishnah is a different experience from reading the Sermon on the Mount. The unique element in Jesus' teaching is that in his person the Kingdom of God has invaded human history, and people are not only placed under the ethical demand of the reign of God, but by virtue of this very experience of God's reign are also enabled to realize a new measure of righteousness.

John wishes to emphasize that it was God himself in the Word who entered human history, not as a phantom, but as a real man of flesh. The word translated "to dwell" (esk?n?sen), or "to tabernacle," is a biblical metaphor for God's presence. This statement "implies that God himself was present in the flesh, in abasement."11

Biblical theology must be done from a starting point that is biblical-historical in orientation. Only this approach can deal adequately with the reality of God and his inbreaking into history. This is the methodology employed by the present writer in the study of New Testament theology.

Jesus' rebuff of Satan meant in effect that he would not forsake the role of the Servant of God. "Jesus is the Son of God not as a miracle-worker, but in the obedient fulfillment of his task — precisely his task of suffering."19

Wrath is the divine reaction to sin. Atonement is necessary because human beings stand under the wrath and judgment of God. "Unless we give real content to the wrath of God, unless we hold that men really deserve to have God visit upon them the painful consequences of their wrongdoing, we empty God's forgiveness of its meaning.

A second guideline may be found from the implicit comparison between Christ and Adam.48 The heart of the Adamic temptation was to grasp for equality with God (Gen. 3:5: "You will be like God"). Adam attempted to seize equality with God; Christ did not. By contrast, Christ chose the way of self-emptying rather than self-aggrandizement. For these two reasons the second rendition is to be preferred.49

In Hebrews faith is the faculty to perceive the reality of the unseen world of God and to make it the primary object of one's life, in contrast to the transitory and often evil character of present human existence.

While Vincent Taylor has not adequately recognized all that is involved in the death of Christ, he has expressed himself effectively when he says, "The idea that no act of requital is due to a holy God, or is needed by men, is a modern notion which it would be a libel to attribute to the ancient world; and to say that Jesus cannot have spoken of his death in this way is to modernize his figure and his thought."33

Therefore when Christ said, "I am the truth" (14:6), he means that he is the full revelation and embodiment of the redemptive purpose of God. The coming of Christ is the disclosure of the faithfulness of God to his own character, of his continuing purpose to make his saving will known.

Zechariah 8:3 is very interesting. When God returns to Zion to dwell in the midst of his people, Jerusalem shall be called polls h? al?thin? ("the true city"). Such a saying would be difficult for a Greek unfamiliar with Semitic idiom, and the Greek hardly conveys the meaning of the Hebrew text, that Jerusalem will be a city where people have responded to God's revelation of himself and loyally walk in his precepts.

We can only conclude that the expression "in the flesh" means to live as an unregenerate person, to be a person who is not indwelt by the Spirit of God.

Biblical theology is theology: it is primarily a story about God and his concern for human beings. It exists only because of the divine initiative realizing itself in a series of divine acts whose objective is human redemption. Biblical theology therefore is not exclusively, or even primarily, a system of abstract theological truths. It is basically the description and interpretation of the divine activity within the scene of human history that seeks humanity's redemption.

The "things that are above" represent the realm of God that has already invaded human history in the person and mission of Jesus and brought to human beings43 the new realm of life.

New Testament theology therefore does not consist merely of the teachings of the several strata of the New Testament. It consists primarily of the recital of what God has done in Jesus of Nazareth.

The church is in fact the true Israel of God.

This is his commandment, that we should believe in the name of his Son Jesus Christ, and love one another, just as he has commanded us" (1 Jn. 4:7). "If we love one another, God abides in us and his love is perfected in us" (1 Jn. 4:12). This verse suggests that the "Johannine mysticism" is a mysticism of love.

Our central thesis is that the Kingdom of God is the redemptive reign of God dynamically active to establish his rule among human beings, and that this Kingdom, which will appear as an apocalyptic act at the end of the age, has already come into human history in the person and mission of Jesus to overcome evil, to deliver people from its power, and to bring them into the blessings of God's reign.