Daniel

“Missing local church membership is like missing the fact that Christians are called to pursue good works, or love their neighbors, or care for the poor, or pray to God, or follow in the way of Christ.”
― Jonathan Leeman, The Church and the Surprising Offense of God's Love: Reintroducing the Doctrines of Church Membership and Discipline

“Insofar as the gospel presents the world with the most vivid picture of God’s love, and insofar as church membership and discipline are an implication of the gospel, local church membership and discipline in fact define God’s love for the world.”
― Jonathan Leeman, The Church and the Surprising Offense of God's Love: Reintroducing the Doctrines of Church Membership and Discipline

“The argument of this book, quite simply, is that God calls the church to draw boundaries, boundaries which mark off these people from those people, boundaries which prevent some individuals from joining while excluding other individuals after they have joined. Not only that, God intends that the church use these boundary markers in order to help define for the world what exactly love is.”
― Jonathan Leeman, The Church and the Surprising Offense of God's Love: Reintroducing the Doctrines of Church Membership and Discipline

“The universe looks far more orderly to us now than it did to the ancients who appealed to that order as proof of God’s existence.”
― Stephen M. Barr, Modern Physics and Ancient Faith