Know What You Believe

5 min read

Book Review

Paul E. Little did a great job covering many of the foundational beliefs of the Christian faith. The book is well organized, and each chapter is substantial but also short enough to be read in about 20 minutes. It is written for new believers but would also be a great resource for anyone who is curious about what the Bible teaches concerning: the Bible, God, Jesus Christ, His death, man and sin, the Holy Spirit, salvation, angels, Satan and demons, the church, and the end times.

It handled common questions that new believers will have to face: How do we know that the Bible is reliable? How do faith and works relate to our salvation? How should we respond to the Calvinism vs. Arminianism debate? What about man’s responsibility and God’s sovereignty? How can Jesus have a dual nature, being both fully God and fully man? And what about questions concerning the end times? Most of these questions, I know, are on the minds of many new believers, and I believe they are very important for them to understand.

I would recommend it to anyone who wants a crash course in Christian beliefs.

Book Notes

Bible

God

God’s soveriengty and man’s free will seems to be an antimony (coined by J.I. Packer). Much light how light can behave both as a particle and wave in physic. With evidence to back up both cases, they both are held as true. God’s sovereignty and man’s free will is both biblical and thus held as true even though they seems to be contradictory.

Jesus Christ

  • Fully God and Fully man
  • Heresies concerning Jesus’ humanity and deity
    • Ebionites
  • pg 44
    • How Jesus’ both divine and human is hard to understand

People will die for what they mistakenly think is true, but they won’t die for what they know is false.

Jesus Christ’s Death

  • The death of Christ is central to both the OT and the NT
    • Genesis 3:15, forshadows Christ’s death and victory over sin and Satan
    • The sarificial system is fulfilled in Christ’s death
  • Atonement means “to cover”.
    • reconciliation
      • relation between men and God is made right
    • propitiation, appeasement
      • To appease the wrath of God so that sinner may go unpunished
    • and ransom
      • Paying the price of sin
    • Substitute

There are some that have a low view of what Christ’s death means for us. 1) sees that we can me made right through our own strength, and the death of Christ is only there to show as a moral example. 2) Some sees that the death of Christ is only there to show how destructive sin is. 3) Some view the death of Christ as an accident, and unplanned for. 4) Some thought that the Christ was just a martyr.

God can not simply forgive sin without the death of Christ because for God to be just sin has to be punished. For God to forgive “freely” would mean that God forgoes His justice and He would cease to be God. On the Cross, the love and justice of God harmonizes.

Christ’s death can atone for many and for eternal suffering because of the worth of the One who died. Christ’s death has infinite worth because He is both God and man.

When Christ died, God did not die because when a man dies only the body is dead. Their spirit and soul lives on.

The death of Christ also shows the reality of eternal life and death.

The death of Christ also shows us that God is concerned about human suffering, sin and pain. That He is not a God that is aloof, but a God that loves us enough to restore us to Him.

Man and Sin

Variation in men’s morals are insignificant to God’s holiness. We are all sinners in God’s eyes.

Sin of commission and sin of ommision: We have done things which we outhgt have to not done and we have left undone those which we ought to have done.

Holy Spirit

Being filled with the Spirit means to be continually filled with the Holy Spirit. Being more open to Him and building a stronger relationship with Him.

Ephesians 5:18-20

Salvation

  • repentance involves the intellect, emotion and will
  • Handle saved by faith and not by work well
    • Even explain what James meant by work and faith
      • Faith: mere belief vs genuine trust
      • Work: obeying the jar to gain salvation
  • Handled the Calvinism and Armanianism debate well
  • Salvation
    • Past: justification
    • Present: sanctification
    • Future: glorified

Angels Satan and Demon

  • Angels are messengers, created being.
  • Satan exists, but as believers we don’t need to be overly obsessed about them.

The Church

  • The church is the people of God.
    • Can refer to the worldwide church, or the local church
  • Three types of church governance
    • Episcopalianism
      • Biships as the top authority in the church
    • Presbyterianism
      • Elders, electec by
    • Congregationalism
      • Baptists, etc..

Things to Come