A Theology that Dies

It has been said that theology always comes out your fingertips. Theology is not just a big word pastors and teachers use. Everyone practices theology. When you speak to your wife, you are practicing theology. When you drive in your car, you are doing theology. When you eat at your dinner table with your family, you are doing theology. When you teach and discipline your children, you are living out a certain theology. All of this is based upon the fact people are created in the image of God. We are all little pictures of God walking around in the world, saying and doing things that are either true and faithful representations of what God is like or false and slanderous pictures of our God. But this is made even more tangible in the Incarnation. As we celebrate the season of Advent, remembering that we serve the God who has come to his people, we are celebrating the God who came and dwelled with us as a human being, a God who took on flesh and blood in order that the image of God might be restored in us. In Jesus Christ we behold the glory of the only-begotten of God, fully of grace in truth. In Jesus we see the perfect image of God, we see and hear and touch the God of the whole universe. Therefore, you are without excuse. When you speak to your wife, as you dwell with your husband, as you teach your children, what kind of theology are you living? Is the gospel you are living cranky? Is the theology you are doing bitter? Does it complain? Is it lazy? Does it demand to be served? You are living out your theology. And God calls us to Christ-like service and sacrifice. God came to us as in weakness, as a baby, only to give his life away for his people, even to the point of death on the cross. You are called to this kind of theology, a theology that gives itself away, a theology that serves, a theology that dies.