Daily Word of Grace: October 9, 2020
Arguably the greatest and most prolific theologian of the twentieth century was Karl Barth (1886 – 1968). The Swiss theologian worked on his magnum opus, Church Dogmatics, over the course of thirty-five years (1932 – 1967) and it totals over six million words. And yet on April 23, 1962 at Rockefeller Chapel at the University of Chicago, he was asked by a student if he could summarize his theology, summarize the massive Church Dogmatics, in one sentence. Karl Barth replied, “In the words of a song I learned at my mother’s knee, ‘Jesus loves me, this I know, for the Bible tells me so.'” There it is, the heart of the gospel. Specifically the Bible tells us so in many places, including “For God so loved the world that he gave his only Son, so that everyone who believes in him may not perish but may have eternal life” (John 3:16), “God proves his love for us in that while we still were sinners Christ died for us” (Romans 5:8), “We know love by this, that (Jesus) laid down his life for us” (1 John 3:16), and many others. Yes, Christian theology is a so vast that even the over six million words of Karl Barth’s Church Dogmatics cannot exhaust it, and yet the heart of the gospel still remains the love of God in Jesus Christ for all of us, including you.
Love and Prayers,
Dave