The person who prays more in public than in private reveals that he is less interested in God’s approval than in human praise. Not piety but a reputation for piety is his concern.
God has disclosed of himself in human words with such magnificent self accommodation to our limitations. Precisely so that we may be his holy people and reverence everything that he says, cherish it, value it, and thus live it out.
What binds us together is not common education, common race, common income levels, common politics, common nationality, common accents, common jobs, or anything else of that sort.
The kingdom of heaven is worth infinitely more than the cost of discipleship, and those who know where the treasure lies joyfully abandon everything else to secure it.
Make a mistake in the interpretation of one of Shakespeare’s plays, falsely scan a piece of Spenserian verse, and there is unlikely to be an entailment of eternal consequence; but we cannot lightly accept a similar laxity in the interpretation of Scripture.
They revere Scripture, not because Scripture becomes an idol, but because it discloses God who is especially come after us in salvation and redemption through the person of his son, his cross, his resurrection, the full sweep of the gospel.
God in his infinite wisdom chose to give us his Word in the 66 canonical books, with all of their variations in theme, emphasis, vocabulary, literary form, and distinctive contributions across time.
