My brother-in-law (Logan Hoffman) is an assistant pastor in New Zealand. In September of 2012, he and my sister relocated to Christ Church to help with a church plant. This upcoming Sunday (2/10/13) the church plant launches weekly services. Praise God! Please pray for launch week at The Well.

Following excerpt from the Preface of Christian Dogmatics (eds. Carl E. Braaten and Robert W. Jenson, Fortress Press, xix).

As will become clear at several points in the body of this work, the Reformation doctrine of justification is fundamentally a critical principle. It is the demand continuously to submit all preaching, liturgy, pastoral care, church administration, and so forth to this question: Does this particular act of ministry lead people to find their life’s justification, their reason to be, in the fact that the crucified Jesus lives, or are people left on their own, to depend on themselves for the ultimate meaning of life? If a churchly word or practice in any way suggests the latter, it must, according to the doctrine of justification by faith, be reformed. We tried to make this critical principle effect throughout this work for the ongoing reform of the church.

Indeed. The Reformation/Protestant doctrine of justification is “fundamentally a critical principle” — the doctrine of justification by faith should be a Protestant pastor’s philosophy (theology) of Christian ministry.

1 John 4:20-21 — If a man say, I love God, and hateth his brother, he is a liar: for he that loveth not his brother whom he hath seen, how can he love God whom he hath not seen? And this commandment have we from him, That he who loveth God love his brother also.

John Calvin commenting on these verses said that true love for God cannot exists unless it generates brotherly love.

In 1 John, the author is instructing the readers that love (righteousness) proceedeth from the Beloved (the righteous). However, wickedness proceedeth from the wicked (1 Samuel 24:13a). Love and desire will always manifest itself in concrete realities, generating either love/righteousness or wickedness. Our works/the concrete realities generated by our desires, therefore, are testaments of whether we love the works of Satan or love the works of a righteous God.