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As we begin preparing to reason about our faith with the people to whom God has sent us, we need to make sure we have confidence in the power of reason to open a way for the Gospel through the “closed ceiling” of an unbelieving world view. One reason we can be confident in the power of reason is that God Himself relies on reason. Indeed, He is a most reasonable Deity.
The reasonableness of God is evident in Scripture in four ways. First, He reveals Himself as a God who carefully considers and takes counsel with Himself with respect to His purposes (cf. Gen. 1:26; Ps. 33:11; Prov. 8:12-22). He makes and executes plans (Is. 55:8, 9; Jer. 29:11; Acts 2:23), and His plans all fit together, work together, and come together in redemptive ways, all the parts and developments in His plan falling neatly into place according to His eternally reasonable design.
God is not a capricious Deity. He does not act in ways that make it difficult to know Him or His will. His purposes are carefully considered and prudentially engaged, and in such a way that human beings are able to understand what He is about.
Second, God shows us that He Himself is reasonable in that He makes known His will to men in a wide range of rational ways – through types and symbols and verbal exchanges of many different sorts. He engages the minds of men in the work of communicating His revelation and will (2 Pet.1:21), using their thoughts and words as vehicles for His own. Granted, the reasons, purposes, and thoughts of God are not entirely accessible to the minds of men (Is. 55:8, 9; Ps.139:17, 17); nevertheless, He is able to make Himself known in such a way that men can, if only analogically, think His thoughts after Him (Rom. 1:18-20).
Third, God makes Himself known, together with His purposes and will, by reasonable means in His Word. The Bible employs a wide range of literary genre, addresses a broad spectrum of subjects, and engages an array of writers from different places and times; yet it tells a single, coherent story in language even a child can understand. Its sentences are readily intelligible and its meanings are clear. While there is much that is very spiritually profound in the Scriptures, requiring much earnest study and contemplation, the essential teachings of the Bible can be easily engaged and understood by even the humblest human mind.
Finally, the reasonableness of God can be observed in the fact that, when He came among us in the form of a human being, He came as the Logos – the “reason” or “explanation” or “declaration” or “rationale” of God. He came in the form of a thinking, logical, teaching Person, our Lord Jesus Christ, Who was hailed by all who heard Him as a wise master Teacher. His teaching left people puzzling at times, but mainly because of the shock of what they understood Him to be saying. Those who admired Him marveled at His words, while those who hated Him despised them. But they all understood His teachings and claims, and, indeed, it was precisely because Jesus was so clear in His preaching that He was ultimately put to death. His enemies and all the people were not unclear in their minds about what Jesus was teaching. They were simply opposed to it, and Him, as not in line with their own worldview and selfish ambitions.
God is a reasonable Being. His reason is always perfect, holy, just, and good. We should expect, therefore, that such a Being would invest His ambassadors with a message and a method for communicating that message to people who, though fallen in sin and trapped in an “under the sun” worldview, will be able to consider and understand His Good News.
Next steps
Make sure you write down the names of all the people in your Personal Mission Field. If you don’t know someone’s name, find it out. Begin praying every day, following the guidelines in your Personal Mission Field brochure. Pray something every day for the people you will meet that day, and ask the Lord each day to give you an opportunity to speak a friendly and encouraging word to each one. Pray for your Personal Mission Field before you go to bed at night.
Begin your own ViewPoint study group. Start with this ViewPoint series, “A Reasonable Faith.” A free PDF version is available, complete with questions for reflection and discussion which you can use to study the seven lessons in this series with others.
Francis Schaeffer was one of the great defenders of the faith of the previous generation. You can order this Trilogy of his most seminal works and discover the power of a reasonable faith all over again. You might also benefit from reading the article “Truth with Love: The Apologetics of Francis Schaeffer” by Bing Davis.
Unless otherwise indicated, all Scripture references are from The Holy Bible, English Standard Version, copyright 2001 by Crossway Bibles, a division of Good News Publishers. Used by permission. All rights reserved.
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