Elijah Abanto > Recent Status Updates

Chapter 15 | “Good authority in the workplace begins with the fear of the Lord. You’re accountable to God for how you treat those under you. And remember, God is not partial to you just because you’re the boss. Your authority is a stewardship, and you will be judged for how you use that stewardship. You might be over, but you are also under.”

Chapter 14 | “Good governments don’t try to usher in Christ’s kingdom by enforcing the worship of God. Instead, they should aspire to clear the ground and make the road easy for pilgrims on their way. Their work is prerequisite and preparatory work. … We ask them… to establish the necessary conditions for salvation. That way the church can get on with its work of making disciples.

Chapter 6 is a compelling and concise chapter on the hermeneutics and trustworthiness of the Scriptures, especially the New Testament.

On Chapter 14 | “No government should regard itself as God. When the individual officers comprising the government don’t acknowledge God, they will either worship another god or regard themselves as God.”

Chapter 13 | “Good parental authority is the very thing God uses to raise up a flourishing, dominion-taking, life-creating human beings who display his own image. And it points to the heavenly Father above.”

Chapter 5 | “Does religion cause violence? It certainly can. But millions of people are driven by their faith to love and serve others. And Christianity, in particular, has served as a fertilizer for democracy, a motivation for justice, and a mandate for healing. If we think the world would be less violent without it, we may need to check our facts.”

Chapter 4 | “Values that many of us in the West today consider to be universal and independent of religious thought turn out not to have sprung from the ground during the Enlightenment, but to have grown from the gradual spread and influence of Christian beliefs.”

Chapter Eleven | “[Being a husband is] to cultivate oneness by leading and loving your wife in the shared work of earthly dominion, relying on her help, competence and wisdom.”

Chapter 3 | “Jesus claims rule over all of heaven and earth. He presents himself not as one possible path to God, but as God himself. We may choose to disbelieve him. But he cannot be one truth among many. He has not left us that option.”

Chapter 11 | There are essentially two kinds of authority based on how it’s implemented: authority of command, and authority of counsel.

Chapter Two | “Christianity is the most diverse, multiethnic and multicultural movement in history.”

Chapter 10 | “Good authority is not self-protective, but bears the costs of leadership.”

Chapter Nine | “Without the power of discipline, authority is toothless, even substance-less. Take away someone’s power of discipline and you effectively take away their authority.”

Chapter 8 | "Bad authority despises instruction. Good authority seeks it. It's teachable and therefore wise. Even the young, incarnate Jesus sought wisdom and grew in it (Luke 2:52)."

Chapter 1: “Aren’t We Better Off without Religion?” | “While it is impossible to explore all the relevant data, there is compelling evidence that many individual and social goods arise from religious participation, and that Christianity in particular is well aligned with the findings of modern psychology.”

Chapter 7 | Good authority doesn’t steal life, but creates it.

Religion in the world is not declining, as Western secularists thought, but increasing.

Chapter 6 | “Loyalty to a good leader is indeed a good thing, but good loyalty is loyalty to his leadership under God and anyone else under whom God has placed him, like fellow elder or a congregation.”

Chapter Five | “Submission to the people whom God has placed over us is the ordinary pathway to life, growth, authority, and even likeness to the God-man, Jesus Christ. Yet our submission is never finally owed to other people. It’s exclusively and uniquely owed to God. We owe it to others only when God says we do. This means our submission should never be absolute.”

Chapter Four | “By submitting to God and to those he has placed over us, we become most like the God-man.”

Chapter 3 | “Authority-in-redemption rides into the crooked and broken downtown east of Eden. Its sights are set on rescuing the weak, its heart filled with compassion for the condemned. Yet it knows it will have to sacrifice itself in the effort.”

Chapter 2 | “Human authority that moves out from under God is always stolen.”

Read Chapter 1 | “Good authority grows and empowers those who are under it.”

Introduction | “If you are over others,” says God, “you had better be under me, because then you realize you’re no better than anyone else, and that you’re only a steward, a landlord, a guardian of what’s mine!”

Chapter 15 | "If we understand that Christ commands the church to baptize only those who believe, then it seems clear that a biblically faithful church is a Baptist church."

Chapter 13. A biblically faithful church is a gathered church.

Chapter 12.

Chapter 11 where I learned the history of church membership, government, and discipline.

Chapter 10 discussed the history and different positions of churches about the ordinances, baptism and Lord’s supper.

Chapter 9.