Your God is Too Small - JB Phillips
Published by The Epworth Press: London, 1954 (1952).
As the title accurately implies, the theme of this book is the bigness of God. Phillips points out how easy it is to "downsize" or "downplay" God, seeing Him in simplistic 'Sunday School' terms even after we grow to maturity. God is bigger than this.
He also talks about the 'bigness' of God being bound up and yet expressed in the person of Jesus, and challenges some things he sees as misconceptions we have of God by comparing them to the ministry of Jesus. For example: "Christ very rarely called men 'sinners' and as far as we know never attempted deliberately to make them feel sinners, except in the case of the entrenched self-righteous, where He used the assault and battery of scathing denunciation...Some evangelists, whose chief weapon is the production of a sense of sin, would find themselves extraordinarily short of ammunition if they were obliged to use nothing but the recorded words of Christ." (pages 97-78).
Phillips seeks to put our faith back into perspective, reminding us that a big God is worthy of a big commitment. We should not be half-hearted with a God who would give so much for us.
A good challenge.
He also talks about the 'bigness' of God being bound up and yet expressed in the person of Jesus, and challenges some things he sees as misconceptions we have of God by comparing them to the ministry of Jesus. For example: "Christ very rarely called men 'sinners' and as far as we know never attempted deliberately to make them feel sinners, except in the case of the entrenched self-righteous, where He used the assault and battery of scathing denunciation...Some evangelists, whose chief weapon is the production of a sense of sin, would find themselves extraordinarily short of ammunition if they were obliged to use nothing but the recorded words of Christ." (pages 97-78).
Phillips seeks to put our faith back into perspective, reminding us that a big God is worthy of a big commitment. We should not be half-hearted with a God who would give so much for us.
A good challenge.
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