Tripp Do You Believe?

12 Historic Doctrines to Change Your Everyday Life
1. Auflage 2021
ISBN: 978-1-4335-6774-2
Verlag: Crossway
Format: EPUB
Kopierschutz: 0 - No protection

E-Book, Englisch, 480 Seiten

BestSelling Author Paul David Tripp Unpacks 12 Doctrines for Everyday Christian Living Doctrine-what Christians believe-directly influences how they live. The biblical truths about God, humanity, and the world are not merely about knowing more-they are also about loving God and making sense of this life and the life to come. But what happens when there is disparity between what believers confess and how they live? In his latest book, Do You Believe?, pastor and bestselling author Paul David Tripp takes a close look at 12 core doctrines and how they engage and transform the human heart and mind. According to Tripp, 'true belief is always lived.' To demonstrate, he unpacks each doctrine and presents its relevance for the Christian life. As readers explore topics such as the doctrine of God, the holiness of God, and the doctrine of Scripture, they will be fueled to fall deeper in love with and stand in awe of their Creator and Father-putting the truths of God's word on display for all the world to see.

Paul David Tripp (DMin, Westminster Theological Seminary) is a pastor, an award-winning author, and an international conference speaker. He has written numerous books, including Lead; Parenting; and the bestselling devotional New Morning Mercies. His not-for-profit ministry exists to connect the transforming power of Jesus Christ to everyday life. Tripp lives in Philadelphia with his wife, Luella, and they have four grown children.

Autoren/Hrsg.

Tripp, Paul David

Leseproben

1

The Doctrine of Scripture

Although our conscience and God’s creation beautifully display his goodness, wisdom, and power, and therefore leave us without excuse, their message is not enough to give us the knowledge of God and his will, which is necessary for salvation. So God, in his wisdom and grace, at various times and in a variety of ways, revealed himself, declared his will, preserved and proclaimed his truth, and protected the church against corruption and the deceits of Satan and the world by committing his truth to writing. This makes Scripture (the Bible, Old and New Testaments) necessary and essential.

The authority of Scripture, that it is to be believed and obeyed, does not depend on the testimony of any person, but completely on God, the author. It is to be joyfully received because it is the word of God.

The testimony of the church along with Scripture’s doctrine, its majestic style, the agreement of all its parts, the fact that every part gives glory to God and reveals the only way of our salvation, and its overall perfection together argue that it is the very word of God. All things necessary for God’s own glory and for our salvation, faith, and life, have either clearly been set down by God in Scripture or can properly be deduced from Scripture, so nothing needs to be or ever should be added by new revelations or any new human insights or traditions.

One final thing must be said. All Scripture, every book in the Old and New Testaments, penned by some forty authors and encompassing Biblical Literature, Narrative, History, Poetry, Wisdom, Prophecy, Gospels, Epistles, and Apocalypse, was written under and directed by the inspiration of God. See Ps. 19:1–3; Prov. 22:19–21; Isa. 8:20; Luke 16:29, 31; 24:27, 44; John 16:13–14; Acts 15:15; Rom. 1:19–21; 2:14–15; 3:2; 15:4; 1 Cor. 2:10–12; Eph. 2:20; 2 Thess. 2:13; 2 Tim. 3:15–17; Heb. 1:1; 2 Pet. 1:19–20; 1 John 2:20, 27; 1 John 5:9.1

Understanding the Doctrine of Scripture

For the wrath of God is revealed from heaven against all ungodliness and unrighteousness of men, who by their unrighteousness suppress the truth. For what can be known about God is plain to them, because God has shown it to them. For his invisible attributes, namely, his eternal power and divine nature, have been clearly perceived, ever since the creation of the world, in the things that have been made. So they are without excuse. (Rom. 1:18–20)

God created the world not only to bring us pleasure through its beauty and sustain us through its resources but also to serve a significant moral purpose. Everything God made is designed to confront us with God’s existence and nature and, in so doing, confront our delusions of autonomy and self-sufficiency. Every morning when we get up, we bump into God and come face-to-face with his existence. He is revealed in the wind and the rain, in the bird and the flower, in the rock and the tree, in the sun and the moon, in the grass and the clouds, in sights, smells, touches, and tastes. Everything that exists is a finger that points to God’s existence and glory. The cycle of the seasons points to his wisdom and faithfulness. The fact that we all see creation’s beauty and are warmed by its sun and drenched by its rain points us to his love and mercy. The thunderous storms, with crashes of lightning and violent winds, point to the immensity of his power. The created world is a surround-sound, Technicolor display of the existence and attributes of the one who created it all. The message of the created natural, physical world is so all-encompassing and clear to everyone that you have to fight to suppress, deny, and resist its message.

How good God is to build into creation reminders of himself, so that we, image bearers created for relationship with him, would be reminded of him again and again simply by looking at the world he created, which surrounds us everywhere we look.

But God in his infinite wisdom knew that the general revelation of creation, which confronts us with his existence and glory, could not impart to us the kind of knowledge of him, the necessary knowledge of ourselves, an understanding of the meaning and purpose of life, and an awareness of the disaster of sin and of the fallenness of the surrounding world that could rescue us from us, propel us to him for his saving grace, and provide us a plan for how we should then live as children of that same grace. And so he gave us the wonderful and amazing gift of his word.

It is important to never stop giving thanks that God guided and directed the writing of every portion of his word and carefully ruled the process by which the various books of the Bible were protected, collected together, and preserved, so that we could hold the very words of God himself in our hands and be assured that what we are reading is, in fact, all that God knew would be essential for us to know and understand.

As we think about the doctrine of Scripture, it is impossible to overstate the importance of what we are now considering. The existence, inspiration, authority, and trustworthiness of Scripture is the doctrinal foundation upon which every other doctrine stands. If there is no such thing as a God-breathed Scripture, if it does not reveal to me the truths that are essential for a knowledge of God, knowledge of self, and the way of salvation, then I have no right or authority to say what is true to myself or anyone else. If there is no inspired, authoritative, and trustworthy word of God, then I am left to myself to decide, by my own experience, personal insight, or collective research with others, what is true.

This would mean, then, that there is no unified, God-given standard to which we all can appeal. Every person must discover what he or she thinks is true, and then we all must do what we think is right in our own eyes. There can be no way of being sure that what you think and believe is right, so you have no right to argue for what you believe to another; no authoritative system of truth exists that can provide a unified standard of belief and moral behavior. We are left in a world (with its fingers pointing to God) without any way of knowing for certain what the word, passed down from the Creator himself, would provide for us. No one has any basis for delineating doctrines, declaring that they are true, and teaching that they should provide the framework to guide our thinking, desires, decisions, words, and actions.

As we consider Scripture as a gift of God’s grace, we must think about one other thing. One of the devastating results of sin is that it reduces all of us to fools. A fool looks at truth and sees falsehood. A fool looks at bad and sees good. A fool ignores God and inserts himself into God’s position. A fool rebels against God’s wise and loving law and writes his own moral code. A fool thinks he can live independently of help. A fool will not think as he was designed to think, desire what he was created to desire, or do what he has been called to do. But here is what is deadly about all of this: a fool doesn’t know he is a fool. If a fool isn’t given eyes to see his foolishness, then he will continue to think he is wise. So God, in the beauty of his grace, did not turn his back on our foolishness and walk away. God looked on foolish humanity with a heart of compassion and not only sent his Son to recue fools from themselves, but also gave us the wonderful gift of his word so that fools would not only recognize their foolishness, but would also have a tool by which they could progressively become wise.

I have thought many times that I would not know how to live without the wisdom of God’s word. I would not know how to be a responsible man without the wisdom of God’s word. I would not know how to be a husband, a father, a neighbor, a friend, a member of the body of Christ, a citizen, or a worker without the Bible. Without Scripture, I would not know right from wrong. Without the truths of the word, I would not to know how to understand and respond to suffering. Without Scripture, I would be confused about who I am and what the purpose of my life is. Without my Bible, I would not know about sin or understand true righteousness. Without God’s word, I would not know how to handle sex, money, success, power, or acclaim. Without Scripture, I would have no understanding of origins and no concept of eternity. Without the word, I would ask people and material things to do for me what they have no power to do. Without God’s word, I would have no idea of my need for rescue, reconciliation, and restoration. Without my Bible, I would have no understanding of what it means to love or what it is that I should hate. Apart from God’s word, I would have no wise and holy law to follow and no amazing grace to give me hope.

The way I understand everything in my life has been shaped by the body of wisdom that is found only between the first chapter of Genesis and the last chapter of Revelation.

True confession: I have written more than twenty books on a variety of topics, but none would have been written apart from the gift of God’s word to me. If it were not for Scripture, I would have no wisdom of any worth to share. And if I were so bold as to attempt to write something, I would have no confidence in the truthfulness and helpfulness of what I wrote, if it were not for God’s word. My Bible is...