Machen Journal #3

Chapter 3

In this week’s reading of Machen, chapter 3 I learned that The Bible really has two different accounts of which it’s from and that is from God and man. in the Bible it talks about how God saved man and all the things that God did in order to save us from our sins and ultimately pay the price for us and the love that he gives to us. “The Christian gospel consistent account of how God saved man, and before the gospel could be understood something must be known about God and about man. the doctrine of God and the doctrine of man are the great two presuppositions of the gospel.” (Machen). The second thing that I learned this week was that “At the very root of Christianity is the belief in the real existence of a personal God.”(Machen) God is a personal God who has and wants to have that personal and special relationship with us all. The fact that such a gracious and loving God wants to have a personal and important relationship with each one of us is so wonderful. Our God loves us for who we are and who he made us to be. He is an all-knowing God, who knows we fall into sin and still loves us. This sin that we have is something that used to separate man from God, but God died for all of our sins so that one day we can be with him. “One attribute of God is absolutely fundamental in the Bible in order to render intelligible olives that attribute is the awful transcendence of God from beginning to end the Bible is concerned deceptive forth the awful Gulf That separates the creature from the creator.”(Machen) In this chapter Machen describes that without Christ dying for us we should be separated form our creator. Something that the author also brings up is the important roles of The Holy Spirt as well as the Father and the Son.

Another point that stood out to me was the fact that modern liberalism doesn’t believe in sin or that humans commit sinful acts. This is something that came as a surprise to me because as a Christian I believe that all man is broken and are sinners because of the fall, and that only God can save us from that. “According to the Bible, Man is a Sinner under the just condemnation of God: and according to the modern liberalism there is really no such thing as sin. The very root of the modern liberal movement is the loss of the consciousness of sin.”(Machen) This quote really shows me that many different people can have so many different perspectives but this is a good thing to keep in mind when it comes to understanding other beliefs. This point also shows me how wonderful and powerful our God is to take that burden and shame away from us and to die on the cross for us. It always amazes me how wonderful God really is.