Sublime

The riches of God’s Word are no one’s private treasure, and when we share its wealth, we participate in its highest purposes.

God isn’t with us, we are nothing at all, no matter how great our gifts may be. If he removes his hand from us, our wisdom and our knowledge are nothing. If he doesn’t constantly uphold us, the greatest amount of knowledge will be useless, even if we are experts in theology.

ultimate aim of all ministry is not to do the work of the ministry, but rather to equip God’s people to do the work of the ministry.

(John 3:27).

If I desire to know what in this respect must follow from the specific principles of Calvinism, then the question must be put quite differently. Then we must see and acknowledge that this system of bringing differences in religious matters under the criminal jurisdiction of the government resulted directly from the convictionthat the Church of Chri

When every congregant can act as an arbiter of a church’s mission and priorities, consensus and mobilization become harder to achieve. More important, an exaggerated and unaccountable individualism is at deep odds with the lordship of Jesus Christ, the one who claimed, “I am the way” (John 14:6) and who calls his disciples to “Come, follow me” (Mat

the state had only a derivative authority as a minister of justice under Christ and His word. The political source of law, then, traced back, not to Caesar, but ultimately to Christ and God’s law.1

You cannot serve both God and money

state government was a vicegerent of God and His absolute law—rather than God and morality being the arbitrary tools of an absolute state (as in Machiavelli’s The Prince,7 first written in 1513).