Sublime

We need the gospel that is in our brothers, and they need the gospel that is in us. So accountability must ask the hard questions, but it must do so as if Jesus were real. Because he is. And since Jesus is real, his personality and his judgments should shape the personality and judgments of accountability groups. Our hearts should not be shrunken a

B. B. Warfield’s

The Christian faith is kaleidoscopic, and most of us are color-blind. It is multidimensional, and most of us manage to hold at most two dimensions in our heads at any one time. It is symphonic, and we can just about whistle one of the tunes.

agape. This is much more than stating that God acts lovingly. Rather, God’s essence is the totality of all agape can claim to be. See ROH, chapter 10. Further, Willard pursues these questions with secular representations of God, as well. For instance, in commenting on books and movies

Without a doubt, those sermon (from 1 Corinthians) series would have messages chockfull of moral exhortations and practical applications. Yet notice how Paul summarized his preaching ministry amongst the Corinthians in 1 Cor. 2:1-2, And I, when I came to you, brothers, did not come proclaiming to you the testimony of God with lofty speech or wisdom

When fruitfulness is our criterion for evaluation, we are held accountable but not crushed by the expectation that a certain number of lives will be changed dramatically under our ministry.

But the point is that you can do all of that without any reference whatever to “the gospels,” to the four books that, along with Acts, precede Paul in the New Testament as we have it. Thus in many classic Christian circles, including the plethora of movements that go broadly under the label “evangelical” (and we should remember that in German the w