riddlemethis

Kath Arnold often says wise things in a very off the cuff manner. The sort of thing that i would have to rehearse for a couple of days at least before throwing out there. One thing that got me thinking recently was 'i don't care what label she uses, i just want her to know Jesus is the way yhe truth and the life'.

And here's the thing, it's Jesus and dust. Doctrine is more or less justification by grace alone through faith alone in Christ alone and dust. Jesus and stamp collecting. Thats not always true all the time. I'm prepared to spend my life defending propitiation because i am convinced the Bible teaches it and that it is deeply unloving to deny it. But Gospel unity is the best thing ever, and it's great to unite around the things that are really important. I guess perhaps thats my point, that we need to find unity over the essentials and divisity and room and love over the non essentials. We can't afford to fall out over areas where the Bible isn't clear. We just can't. There aren't enough of us!

It measns that Bible believing Christians can find unity with each other be they Charismatic or cessationalist, or whatever other secondary divisions you care to think of. This doesn't mean that we suddenly form alliances with prosperity gospel people, or emergent village people...but then they are excluded by the fact they don't particularly like the Bible. And if you hate the Bible, you hate God.

I'm not really arguing against labels per se. I quite like knowing that i'm an (deep breath) a mill post trib Reformed charismatic calvinist and goodness me i love talking about that stuff. We just need to keep the first things first, and the second things very much second...