I was once asked, by Jude St. John from The Oak Log, which living theologians I liked since it was obvious enough that I liked the dead guys. Even the adults in my Sunday School class hear me quote more of the puritans than anyone else. The answer to the question is partly because they are dead. That may seem a little harsh, but it is in fact a compliment. The man who would be an example of godliness would be one who suffers and dies in faithfulness to Christ. Many would be teachers, but few will be pastors, examples, laborers over what God has given them. God did not simply tell us who he is, he showed us who he is. He did not simply tell us how to live, he gave us an example of how to live in the person of his Son Jesus Christ. The Pharisees would be the teachers and receive praise from men, but Christ came to reveal to us the honor of dying and suffering daily for the glory of God. What good is it if a man, who is a theologian of theologians, turns from the faith at the end of his life and recants on his profession of Christ, or even begins to live as if he had never known Christ? That man may have understood the mathematics of the faith, but never knew or beheld the glory of the Divine Mathematician. I look to the men whose dying words were of such sweet utterances of the beauty of God in Christ and met their deaths as final veil before entering the Holy of Holies. I want that kind of hero…
For we have come to share in Christ, if indeed we hold our original confidence firm to the end. (Heb 3:14 ESV)
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