The gospel is unintelligible to most people today, especially in the West, because their own particular stories are remote from the story of creation, fall, redemption, and consummation that is narrated in the Bible. Our focus is introspective and narrow, confided to our own immediate knowledge, experience, and intuition. Trying desperately to get others, including God, to make us happy, we cannot seem to catch a glimpse of the real story that gives us a meaningful role.

The gospel frees us to confess our sins without fear of condemnation.

The power of God unto salvation is not our passion for God, but the passion He has exhibited toward us sinners by sending his own Son to redeem us.

We cannot find God for the same reason that a thief can't find a police officer.

The object is evident in the name of the discipline. Similarly, theology (theologia) is the study of God. The object of theology is not the church's teaching or the experience of pious souls. It is not a subset of ethics, religious studies, cultural anthropology, or psychology. God is the object of this discipline.

People ask me, 'Why pray if God is sovereign?' I respond, 'Why pray if He isn't?

Theology, not morality, is the first business on the church's agenda of reform, and the church, not society, is the first target of divine criticism.