Many people think that theology is complicated, confusing and even irrelevant. They wonder why they should bother with it at all. “The Bible isn’t difficult,” they say. “Why should we read books written by theologians who use long sentences and fancy terms?”
It is common to avoid things we don’t understand. But that won’t help us learn anything, and it won’t help us correct any errors in what we think we know. Every field of human knowledge has its own “fancy terms” that new people don’t understand. Auto mechanics have words unique to their field, cooks have a different set of terms, and carpenters yet another.
It is true that some theologians are hard to understand. It is unusual to find a scholar (in any field of study) who can put things in everyday language. University professors often discuss ideas that other people don’t talk about, and professors speak and write mainly with other scholars in mind. They leave it to someone else to bring those ideas down to earth. It’s similar to the difference between the practices of science and technology. The scientist in a laboratory discovers a new process or material, and often leaves it to others to turn the idea into something that ordinary people can use.
Theology has been called “faith seeking understanding.” People who believe in God want to know more about who he is and what he’s doing, just as a someone who “falls in love” wants to learn more about the person who is loved.
Christians trust God – that’s good, but it’s just one part of our relationship with him. We also want to understand, as best we can, the God we trust and the promises he makes to us. God wants us to grow in our knowledge and trust in him, having our minds become more and more like he is. But knowledge about God is not something that we humans can come up with on our own. The only way we can know anything for sure about God is to listen to what he tells us about himself.
God reveals himself to us, and he has caused this revelation to be preserved for us in the Bible, a collection of inspired writings collected over many centuries as guided by the Holy Spirit. A simple reading of the Bible has led many people to believe in a good and powerful God, and to believe that he gives us eternal life through Jesus Christ, his Son.
However, not everyone gets the same faith out of reading the Bible. Some people get odd ideas, and a few people convince others to follow their odd ideas. There are hundreds of strange ideas about God and the Bible and salvation. How can we decide whether we are right?
Even if we study the Bible every day, there is no method that guarantees us a right or complete understanding of who God is. False religions and cults have wrong understandings of who God is, often promoted by one or a few people who come to odd conclusions about how God has revealed himself in Jesus and in the Bible. They don’t pay much attention to the biblically based teaching of the church down through the ages.
What do we need? First, we need the Holy Spirit to help us understand what God reveals, and to make us willing to be taught. The Spirit can use the Bible to bring humble readers to believe that Jesus is Lord and that he alone gives us eternal life. However, all sorts of people claim to be led by God’s Spirit. How can we decide whether those ideas are right?
We have two ways to see whether an idea is true.
- First, is it true to what the Bible says? We need to learn to read, based on the kind of literature the Bible is. As with any other book, we don’t take one sentence by itself and claim that everything else must fit our understanding of that one sentence. We need to know what the whole Bible says, especially what it tells us about Jesus Christ.
- Second, is it supported by tradition? Tradition isn’t always right, and it slowly changes, but we should at least consider why other people have come to the conclusions that they have. We should not reject their ideas without even trying to understand them. We should be humble enough to learn from other people.
Everyone brings some assumptions with them when they begin to read the Bible – ideas based on their culture, their experiences, their expectations about what the Bible will tell them. Their ideas are sometimes wrong, so it is helpful for us to learn what other people have seen in the Bible, and how they have explained what they learn from it.
That is what theology is – it’s an attempt to organize and explain what the Bible says. Even beginning readers try to organize what they are reading. Everyone develops a theology, some idea of who God is and whether this makes any difference in what we think or do. As we study theology, we discuss these ideas and think about whether they are true, and whether we can learn more from the Bible and from each other.
The word theology comes from a combination of two Greek words, theos, meaning God, and logia, meaning knowledge or study — study of God.
The best theologians are believers who are called by God to describe what the Bible says about the nature, character, mind, purposes and will of God. They read to see how other people in history tried to do that. They also think about our own world to see what questions are being asked and how to answer them. They consider the ideas that modern society has, and the way that people prefer to explain things now. They try to find the best words, ideas, stories, or illustrations that describe who God is.
Some theologies are better than others. We should use a theology that helps the church focus on Christ, because Christ shows us what God is like. Second, we should use the Bible to help us focus on Christ, because the Bible tells us what Jesus is like. The Bible tells us how God has been working with humanity from the beginning and where it all ends up in eternity.
The church as a whole has an ongoing responsibility to examine our beliefs and practices in the light of what God has revealed. We do not assume that we are perfect, and we keep studying to see if we have understood the Bible correctly, and we continue looking for better ways to explain what we see. Theology is part of the Christian community’s attempt to grow closer to God, and closer to what he wants us to be, as we seek his wisdom and follow the Holy Spirit’s lead.
Some members of the Body are specially gifted and called to help the church in this part of its mission. Until Christ returns in glory, the church cannot assume that it has reached its goal of having all truth. Sometimes we make mistakes, and we can find those and correct them only if we continue studying, thinking, and discussing what we read. Theology can serve the church by helping us find the most faithful ways we can speak and live.
Good theology is based in a constant respect for the biblical revelation. We need a good understanding of its original context, why it was written, and its significance for today. This is a vital ingredient for a growing Christian faith. Times change, but “Jesus Christ is the same yesterday and today and forever” (Hebrews 13:8). He remains the answer to humanity’s needs.
At the Last Supper, Jesus told his disciples,
I still have many things to say to you, but you cannot bear them now. When the Spirit of truth comes, he will guide you into all the truth, for he will not speak on his own but will speak whatever he hears, and he will declare to you the things that are to come. He will glorify me because he will take what is mine and declare it to you. All that the Father has is mine. For this reason I said that he will take what is mine and declare it to you. (John 16:12-15)
So let’s value the understanding that comes from good theology, even though it sometimes comes in difficult language. How can we learn, unless we are willing to think about things that aren’t already familiar? We need to do our best to understand what God tells us about himself, and help others understand him, too. Everyone has a theology – some idea of what God is like – and a good theology leads us to want to learn more. We love God with all our mind.
Author: Joseph Tkach, edited by Michael Morrison in 2026
Ideas have results. The way we think about God affects the way we respond to him, and the way we respond to the people who are made in his image. In other words, our theology affects the way we live. Some people think theology is dull and irrelevant – perhaps they think God is dull and irrelevant; they would rather get on with their life without including God in the discussion.
Everyone has a theology, whether they know it or not. They have some concepts of what God is like. They may think he is distant and unconcerned, or harsh and angry, or that he doesn’t exist. All these ideas affect the way we live. If we believe God is distant and unconcerned, we may be angry because we are suffering from the sins of other people, and God doesn’t seem to care. We may need help, but God doesn’t seem to answer our cries for help. Or we may take advantage of other people, thinking God doesn’t care one way or the other.
Living by faith
The Bible repeatedly connects what we believe with what we do.
God cares about us, Jesus said, so we should not worry. God is good, powerful, merciful and will not cease to love us and do what is good and right for us. If we don’t believe that, then we will worry. If we don’t trust God, we may think that he doesn’t care, or that he doesn’t have the power to take care of us, or that he is harsh, unforgiving or unpredictable toward us.
But when we trust in God, we do not worry even when bad things happen to us. We are confident that God is faithful to us, suffering with us, holding us, and that he will use even our pain to make us stronger and bless us. He works all things, even bad things, for good. He brings light out of our darkness. Our belief about God’s power and love affects the way we react to the situations we face.
Paul uses a similar kind of logic in his letters. He explains that we are saved by grace through the work of Jesus our Savior, and he also writes, Therefore we should be living sacrifices, set apart to do God’s will, putting off the old self and putting on the new, acting like the new people that God has declared us to be. If we believe that God saves us, then we should respond in the way he describes. It doesn’t happen automatically or against our will, but it happens as we choose to act on what we believe.
The book of Hebrews uses similar logic at several points. After explaining a concept, the author says, Therefore let us hold fast to our confession, therefore let us approach the throne with confidence, therefore let us encourage one another. He sees a close connection between ideas and consequences, between doctrine and practice. The apostle John similarly says that if we love God, then we will also love his children.
Need for an accurate view
Since the way we think about God affects the way we live, we want to have the best understanding of God we can. If we think of God as a powerful physical being, then we will tend to focus on physical life, on external behavior, and a future based on physical things. We will tend to neglect spiritual qualities such as grace and love, and give little attention to concepts such as the heavenly and the eternal.
On the other hand, when we think of God as a Trinity, as three Persons in one Being who have always lived with and loved each other, then we see a God for whom relationships are essential to who he is. We see a God for whom love is essential, a God who gives himself when he gives his Son, a God who lives within us when his Spirit is in us.
The triune God has fellowship with us directly, not through messengers or persons in between us. In contrast, if God is only one Person, then relationship is not central to who he is. Relationships are only an add-on to the things he does, and he could equally decide not to do them. In such a case, we’d be more likely to see him as distant, legalistic, stressing law rather than mercy. That is how many people view God.
If such a God sent his Son to die on the cross, he would be sending someone else to appease his anger, rather than (as actually happened) God himself becoming a human to die for us. He joined himself to what we are, making humanity a part of what he is, and redeeming humanity through union with his Son, with whom he is eternally united with the Spirit. We’ll have more to say about that in a later lesson.
Trust
God always uses his enormous power in love, to strengthen his relationship with his people, to carry out his commitment to love us and give us grace. He is gentle, loving, slow to anger and full of mercy.
Let’s briefly focus on the “so what” question. What does this have to do with us? What difference does it make in our lives? How do we respond to a God who is powerful and gentle at the same time? When we realize that God has all power to do anything he wants, and that he always uses it for the good of humanity, then we can have complete confidence that we are in good hands.
God can do anything he wants, and he has promised that he will work all things toward our good (Romans 8:28). Even if humanity has rebelled against God (which it has), he can use that for our good. Even if we hate God right now, he can use that for our good, too. He can redeem all things, reconcile all things, for his purpose – which includes his love for us. He wants us more than we want him! Our love for him is sometimes weak, but his love for us never fails, never falters, never gives up. (See the parables of the lost son and the lost sheep in Luke 15.)
God uses all our experiences, even our bad attitudes, to work for our salvation, to make us better in the long run. Our sins are not a good thing, but he can use them for our good. Things would have been better for us if we hadn’t sinned, but God knew even before he made us that we would sin, and he already had a plan of how to use that to help bring about his purpose in our lives.
When we are in the midst of trials, sickness, suffering and even dying, we can be confident that God is still with us, that he cares for us, that he has everything under control. It may not look like it, and we may feel that everything is out of our control, but we can be confident that God isn’t caught off guard. He can and does redeem any situation, any misfortune, for our good.
We do not ever need to doubt God’s love for us. “God proves his love for us in that while we still were sinners Christ died for us” (Romans 5:8). “We know love by this, that he laid down his life for us” (1 John 3:16). God gave us the most precious thing he had – his Son. We can be sure that he will give us everything we need for eternal happiness (Romans 8:32).
God did not send somebody else: The Son of God, essential to the Godhead, became human so, as a human, he could represent all humanity, die for us and rise again for us (Hebrews 2:14). We were saved not by the blood of animals, not by the death of a very good man, but by the death of the God who became human – Jesus Christ, who was (as the ancient church said) fully God and fully human.
We can be confident that he loves us. Every time we take communion, we are reminded of the extent of his love for us — both of his death wherein we are forgiven, and his resurrection wherein we are given union with him and presented holy and blameless to God. He has earned our trust.
“God is faithful,” Paul tells us. “He will not let you be tested beyond your strength” (1 Corinthians 10:13). “The Lord is faithful; he will strengthen you and guard you from the evil one” (2 Thessalonians 3:3). Even “if we are faithless, he remains faithful” (2 Timothy 2:13). He is not going to change his mind about wanting us, about calling us, about being merciful to us. “Let us hold fast to the confession of our hope without wavering, for he who has promised is faithful” (Hebrews 10:23).
He made a commitment to us, a covenant with us, to save us, to give us eternal life, to love us forever. He does not want to be without us. He is trustworthy, but how do we respond to him? Do we worry? Do we struggle to be worthy of his love? Or do we trust him?
We do not need to doubt God’s power, either. This is shown in the resurrection of Jesus from death. God has power over death itself, power over everything he created, power over all other powers (Colossians 2:15). He was victorious over all things through the cross, and this is demonstrated through his resurrection. Death could not hold him, for he is the author of life (Acts 3:15).
The same power that raised Jesus from death will also give is immortal life (Romans 8:11). We can trust that God has the power, and the desire, to carry out all his promises toward us. We can trust him with everything — and that’s good news, because nothing else is completely trustworthy.
Of ourselves, we will fail. Governments will fail. Money will fail. Left to itself, life will eventually come to an end. Even the sun will fail. Our only hope is in a God who has power greater than the sun, greater than the universe, more faithful than time and space, full of love and faithfulness toward us. We have that sure hope in Jesus our Savior.
Author: Joseph Tkach, edited by Michael Morrison in 2026