AUGUSTINE: CONFESSIONS & ENCHIRIDION

How do you recognize abusive leadership? Abusive churches and Christian leaders characteristically: Make dogmatic prescriptions in places where Scripture is silent. Rely on intelligence, humor, charm, guilt, emotions, or threats rather than on God’s Word and prayer (see Acts 6:4). Play favorites. Punish those who disagree. Employ extreme forms of communication (tempers, silent treatment). Recommend courses of action which always, somehow, improves the leader’s own situation, even at the expense of others. Seldom do good deeds in secret. Seldom encourage. Seldom give the benefit of the doubt. Emphasize outward conformity, rather than repentance of heart. Preach, counsel, disciple, and oversee the church with lips that fail to ground everything in what Christ has done in the gospel and to give glory to God.

Jonathan Leeman

enchir29

Post published:April 6, 1994

enchir29 CHAPTER XXIX "THE LAST THINGS" 109. Now, for the time that intervenes between man's death and the final resurrection, there is a secret shelter for his soul, as each…

Post published:April 6, 1994

enchir30 CHAPTER XXX THE PRINCIPLES OF CHRISTIAN LIVING: FAITH AND HOPE 114. Thus, from our confession of faith, briefly summarized in the Creed (which is milk for babes when pondered…

Post published:April 6, 1994

enchir31 CHAPTER XXXI LOVE 117. And now regarding love, which the apostle says is greater than the other two--that is, faith and hope--for the more richly it dwells in a…

Post published:April 6, 1994

enchir32 CHAPTER XXXII THE END OF ALL THE LAW 121. All the divine precepts are, therefore, referred back to love, of which the apostle says, "Now the end of the…

Post published:April 6, 1994

enchir33 CHAPTER XXXIII CONCLUSION 122. But somewhere this book must have an end. You can see for yourself whether you should call it an Enchiridion, or use it as one.…

In Christ is the yes, the grand consummating affirmative, to all God's promises. He is the horn of salvation raised up for us by God, 'as He spake by the mouth of His holy prophets which have been since the world began' (Luke 24:44). The covenant promises addressed to Abraham and his seed are realized in His single person (Gal. 3:16). To the believer, therefore, Christ is all, not merely as fulfilling a word of the past, but as Himself being the very living Word of God, faithful and eternal. In Him all fullness dwells (Col. 1:19): wisdom, righteousness, sanctification, redemption are to be found in Him alone (1 Cor. 1:30). There is nothing which is not in Him, who is the First and the Last, the Beginning and End (Rev. 22:13).

Philip Hughes