Basic Christianity (by J.R. Stott)

• Recommended by author of The Hole in the Gospel.
• Basic Christianity

• Similarly, Paul wrote to the Corinthian church, “since, in the wisdom of God, the world did not know God through wisdom, it pleased God through the folly of what we preach to save those who believe.” Man comes to know God not through his own wisdom but through God’s Word (“what we preach”), not through human reason but through divine revelation. It is because God has made himself known in Christ that the Christian can boldly go to the agnostic and the superstitious and say to them, as Paul did to the Athenians on the Areopagus, “What therefore you worship as unknown, this I proclaim to you.”
  • Don't agree with the last statement yet, but eh, I'll get there.
• We know that to find God and to accept Jesus Christ would be a very inconvenient experience. It would involve the rethinking of our whole outlook on life and the readjustment of our whole manner of life. And it is a combination of intellectual and moral cowardice which makes us hesitate. We do not find because we do not seek. We do not seek because we do not want to find, and we know that the way to be certain of not finding is not to seek.
• He rewards all honest seekers. Christ’s promise is plain: “Seek and you will find.”

• Second, if Jesus Christ can be shown to have been a uniquely divine person, many other problems begin naturally to be solved. The existence of God is proved and the character of God revealed if Jesus was divine. Again, questions about man’s duty and destiny, life after death, the purpose and authority of the Old Testament and the meaning of the cross begin to be answered because Jesus taught about these things, and his teaching must be true if his person is divine.
  • I'm not so sure about that. Strictly speaking, just because someone is other-worldly doesn't mean what they say is true or is best for society!
    • That's thinking a little too strictly. What makes a person trustworthy anyways?

Our purpose is to marshal the evidence to prove that Jesus was the Son of God. We shall not be satisfied with a verdict declaring his vague divinity; it is his deity which we mean to establish. We believe him to possess an eternal and essential relation to God possessed by no other person. We regard him neither as God in human disguise, nor as a man with divine qualities, but as the God-man. We are persuaded that Jesus was a historic person possessing two distinct and perfect natures, Godhead and manhood, and in this to be absolutely and forever unique. Only so could he be worthy not just of our admiration but of our worship.

Jesus equates himself with the God of the Jews a lot!

He warned his hearers that their destiny depended on their response to his teaching, as the destiny of Israel had depended on their response to Jehovah’s word.

The Christian knows that the nearer he approaches God, the more he becomes aware of his own sin. In this the saint somewhat resembles the scientist. The more the scientist discovers, the more he appreciates the mysteries which await his discovery.