I’m currently reading an excellent book by Matthew Aaron Perman entitled What’s Best Next: How the Gospel Transforms the Way You Get Things Done. I highly recommend you get a copy. So, today I want to share a couple of paragraphs from the book.
“Teaching morals alone will not result in morality. You cannot get moral and ethical behavior by urging people to try harder, for it is the affections that lead to transformed lives, and these affections are driven by the doctrines of Christianity. If you take the doctrine away, you destroy the foundation.
Thus, when doctrine goes, the ethical teachings of Christianity eventually go as well, because the ethical teachings grow out of Christian doctrine. Doctrine is the soil in which the ethical teaching of Christianity grows, and which gives it life and nourishment and energy. Thus, when emphasis on doctrine declines, emphasis on the practical eventually declines as well.“
Perman goes on…
“One implication of these things is that the way to change society – to change the nation and the world – is, interestingly, not primarily to preach on politics or ethics or ten steps to a healthy marriage, but to preach on doctrine.”
What you do flows out of who you are. If you are united to Christ then Christian love and good deeds and true morality will flow out of you. And then God will be glorified.
All for Jesus,
Fletch
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