If man is to make God the foundation of his religion, recognizing his obligations towards Him, then he must know God. This makes it necessary first to demonstrate from which source the right knowledge of God must be derived (Wilhelmus à Brakel, The Christian’s Reasonable Service, I:4-5).

All that God wills, the servant of God also wills, because the will of God is the object of his desire and delight. He rejoices that God desires something from him and that God reveals to him what He wishes to have done. This motivates him to perform it whole-heartedly as the Lord’s will. “Doing the will of God from the heart” (Eph. 6:6) (Wilhelmus à Brakel, The Christian’s Reasonable Service, I:4).

First, the foundation of religion is the character of God. The works of His omnipotence and benevolence are indeed reasons to stimulate man to serve God; however, they are not the basis for such service. This foundation is the very character of God (Wilhelmus à Brakel, The Christian’s Reasonable Service, I:3).

An unqualified minister is the most despicable and harmful creature to be found in the world. He is a disgrace to the church, a stumbling block whereby many fall into eternal perdition, and the cause of the damnation of many souls (Wilhelmus à Brakel, The Christian’s Reasonable Service, I:cxiii).

The special knowledge of true faith (by which believers please God and have access to him, of which Paul speaks) does not exclude, but supposes the general knowledge from nature (Francis Turretin, Institutes of Elenctic Theology, I:8).

Theology: “a system or body of doctrine concerning God and divine things revealed by him for his own glory and the salvation of men” (Francis Turretin, Institutes of Elenctic Theology, I:2).

The word “theology” (of Greek origin) was transferred from the schools of the Gentiles to sacred uses, just as the vessels of the Egyptians were appropriated to sacred purposes by the Israelites (Francis Turretin, Institutes of Elenctic Theology, I:1).

Although it is not lawful to form any doctrines not in Scripture, yet it is lawful sometimes to use words which are not found there if they are such as will enable us either to explain divine things or to avoid errors. For this purpose, the words “triad,” homoousiou, “original sin” and the like have been used by theologians (Francis Turretin, Institutes of Elenctic Theology, I:1).

When I say that God Is the Gospel I mean that the highest, best, final, decisive good of the gospel, without which no other gifts would be good, is the glory of God in the face of Christ revealed for our everlasting enjoyment. The saving love of God is God’s commitment to do everything necessary to enthrall us with what is most deeply and durably satisfying, namely himself (John Piper, God is the Gospel: Meditations on God’s Love as the Gift of Himself, 14).

Matthew 1:21 likely shows knowledge of the meaning of the Hebrew form of Jesus’ name (יְהוֹשֻׁעַ, “Joshua,” “he [Yahweh] saves”), and perhaps the author reflects a reverence for Jesus’ name as theophoric. In Justin Martyr we even have the direct claim that “the name of God Himself, which, He says, was not revealed to Abraham or to Jacob, was Jesus” (Dial. 75). I am strongly inclined to think that Justin here echoes a Christian exegetical tradition that goes back much earlier.

Jesus’ name clearly functioned with such divine significance, for example, in the early Christian ritual/devotional practice of appealing to/invoking him. Indeed, the biblical (OT) formula for worship given to God (to “call upon the name of the Lord”) was appropriated to refer to this practice of invoking Jesus’ name (e.g., Acts 2:21; Rom. 10:9-13). To cite important settings for this practice, we have reference indicating that Jesus’ name was invoked in the initiation ritual of baptism (e.g., Acts 2:38) and in exorcism (Larry W. Hurtado, The Earliest Christian Artifacts: Manuscripts and Christian Origins, 117-118).