Beautiful Orthodoxy

Orthodoxy isn't just true, it is also beautiful.

True doctrine enables us to receive and recognise the Triune God; and what this Father, Son and Spirit have done, are doing, and will do for the Church. To be robbed of the deity of Christ, the deity of the Spirit, the penal substitutionary atonement, justification by faith alone, and the sovereign grace of God is to be stripped of comfort in life and death.

One of the tragedies of a reductionistic approach to doctrine among evangelicals is corrupting of the very things that link us to God's supply of strength, stability and comfort. I have never understood why people who profess to believe in the full authority of the Bible should have a negative attitude to the very riches of doctrinal truth that it contains.

The Heidelberg Catechism

Question 1. What is your only comfort, in life and in death?

That I belong--body and soul, in life and in death--not to myself but to my faithful Saviour, Jesus Christ, who at the cost of his own blood has fully paid for all my sins and has completely freed me from the dominion of the devil; that he protects me so well that without the will of my Father in heaven not a hair can fall from my head; indeed, that everything must fit his purpose for my salvation. Therefore, by his Holy Spirit, he also assures me of eternal life, and makes me wholeheartedly willing and ready from now on to live for him.