But in your hearts set Christ apart as holy and acknowledge Him as Lord.

Always be ready to give a logical defense to anyone who asks you to account

for the hope that is in you, but do it courteously and respectfully.

(I.Peter 3.15).

POINTS FOR PRAISE AND MEDITATION

1) The clear and logical explanation of our faith is a definite imperative.

The darkness of this current age MUST be dispelled by the marvellous

LIGHT of THE TRUTH.

2) Here is a good example by Karl Barth from his Church Dogmatics:

” The knowledge of God in the Christian sense is the result of an event

which took place once and once for all. ” The Word was made flesh”.

God  as Creator confronts the creature as an object (His primary objectivity)

and He declares Himself as such by means of certain earthly realities, the

reality of Jesus Christ and the witness to Him effected through Him and

made efficacious by the power of His Spirit (His secondary objectivity).

On the human side the corresponding factor is faith,i.e., an indirect

knowledge of God which begins with the grateful recognition of this divine

mode of revelation and keeps to the realities chosen by God.”

” What God is as God,the divine individuality and characteristics, the

essence of God, is something we shall encounter either at the place

where He deals with us as Lord and Savior, or not at all.

The act of revelation as such carries with it the fact that God has not

withheld Himself from men as true being, but that He has given no less

than Himself to men  as the overcoming of their need and light in their

darkness- Himself as the Father in His own Son by the Holy Spirit.

The act of God’s revelation also carries with it the fact that man, as a sinner

who of himself can only take wrong roads, is called back from all his own

attempts to answer the question of true being, and is bound to the answer to

the question given  by God Himself.

And finally the act of God’s revelation carries with it the fact that by the

Word of God in the Holy Spirit, with no other confidence but this

unconquerable confidence, man allows being to the One in Whom true

being itself seeks and finds, and Who meets him here as the Source of his

life, as Comfort and Command, as the Power over him and over all things.”

3) THE TRUTH WHO SETS MEN FREE

JESUS IS THE TRUTH AND HE SETS US FREE

Here again is Karl Barth:

” ..the Word does not appear in His eternal objectivity as the Son Who

alone dwells in the bosom of the Father. No; the Word became flesh. God

gives Himself to be known, and is known, in the substance of secondary

objectivity, in the sign of all signs, in the Work of God which all the other

works of God serve to prepare, accompany and continue in taking on

humanity to Himself , to which He humbles Himself and which he elevates

through Himself. ” We say His glory” now means: we say this One in His

humanity, the humanity of the Son of God, on His way to death, which was

the way to His resurrection. Hence, it is again an indirect encounter with

God in which the apostles, as the witnesses of the New Testament, find

themselves. They, too, stand before a veil, a sign, a work of God. In the

crib of Bethlehem and the cross of Golgotha the event takes place in which

God gives Himself to them to be known and in which they know God.

The fact that they see this in the light of the resurrection, and that in the

forty days they see it as what it really is, God’s own presence and action,

does not alter the fact that in the forty days they do see this unambiguously

secondary objectivity, and in it as such, and attested by it, they know the

primary objectivity and hence God Himself.

The fact that the God-manhood of the Mediator Jesus Christ is the fulfilment

of the revelation and reconciliation proclaimed in the New Testament is

equivalent to the fact that the knowledge of faith in the New Testament is

indirect (and for that very reason real!) knowledge of God.

And it is precisely this knowledge of faith, attested on the Old and New

Testaments as the knowledge of God from His works, which is now the

content of knowledge in the Church of Jesus Christ.

Since this message is the Gospel of its Lord and therefore of the God-man,

the Mediator, it stands in explicit contrast to any message having the

pure and naked objectivity of God Himself as its object. It is the Gospel of

faith and the summons to faith in that it proclaims God-really God Himself-

in His mediability, in the sign of His Work, in His clothed objectivity. And it

is this just because it does not leave the realm of indirect knowledge of God,

but keeps to the fact that in this very realm of God Himself- and therefore

all things- is to be sought and found, and that this indirect knowledge is’the

right and true knowledge of God because it is chosen and ordained by God

Himself.

Letting this be enough for oneself is not resignation but the humility and

boldness of the man who really stands before God in faith, and in faith alone.”

Here is what St. Paul says:

” Whatever former things I had that might have been gains to me, I have come

to consider as loss for Christ’s sake.

Yes, furthermore, I count everything as loss compared to the possession of

the priceless privilege (the overwhelming preciousness, the surpassing

worth and supreme advantage) of knowing Christ Jesus my Lord and of

progressively becoming more deeply acquainted with Him (of perceiving

and recognizing and understanding Him more fully and clearly). For His

sake I have lost everything and consider it all mere rubbish, in order that

I may win Christ,

And that I may be found and known as in Him, not having any self-achieved

righteousness that can be called my own, based on my obedience to the

Law’s demands, but possessing that genuine righteousness which comes

through faith in Christ, the right standing with God, which comes from God

by faith.”

(Philippians 3.7-9).

HALLELUJAH! PRAISE THE NAME OF JESUS FOREVERMORE!