Sinclair B. Ferguson

It goes through the rest of our lives.

And that's why we need the Word of God to continue to reprove us, because the Christian life is an ongoing cycle of discovering our sinfulness in order that we may seek Christ, in order that we may experience God's grace,

in order that we may turn away from sin, and then as we grow and God's Word does its work in us, we realize our sin goes down even deeper than we ever imagined, and it is exposed to us, we confess it, we receive forgiveness, and on and on we live the Christian life, convicted of our sin, confessing our sin, repenting of our sin, and enjoying forgiveness.

That's why when you're reading the Bible, you should always hold it up as a mirror of your own soul and ask yourself, is there something amiss?

Lord, are you pointing out my sin here?

And even saying, Lord, it hurts to see how much I have failed you.

Help me to turn to you again for your forgiveness and turn away from my sin.

From time to time in these podcasts, we try and think a little together about specific Christian doctrines.

Sometimes the word doctrine is heard as though it were a slightly nasty word, but it's far too important in the Bible for that to be true.

Knowing biblical doctrine, I think, is rather like having the architect's drawings for a building.

Of course the building is put up in a building site.

But if you don't have the architect's drawings, you don't know what you're building and you're not going to be very successful in building it.

And if you've got bad drawings, the building is going to be faulty.

And the same is true in the Christian life.

There's a very close relationship between our understanding of Christian doctrine and the way we live the Christian life.

I know people often say doctrine divides, experience unites.

But actually, if you think about it, that's not only far from the truth, it's almost the reverse of the truth.

The reality is that true doctrine unites, and the New Testament itself teaches us that.

And actually, when you think about it, in order to describe your experience, your spiritual experience, you need to use words.

You're describing your spiritual experience in doctrinal terms.