Exceedingly Abundant
“And the grace of our Lord was exceedingly abundant…”
I Timothy 1:14a
Eta Linneman had lived a religious life, but in her heart she knew she was barren. Born in Germany in 1926 she excelled in Biblical studies and was taught under intellectual giants in Germany such as Rudolph Bultmann and Ernst Fuchs.
She embraced the theories of higher critical thinking and liberal theology. She became a teacher of theology in West Germany.
One day she met a genuine Christian with a simple and yet profound trust in Jesus Christ. In November 1977 she was born again. In 1978 she renounced her liberal theology publicly, asked that all her former writings be destroyed and went to Indonesia as a gospel missionary. In one way she had lost everything- in another she had gained the world!
In her own experience she wrote:
“Bitter personal experience finally convinced me of the truth of the Bible’s assertion: ‘whoever finds his life shall lose it’. At that point God led me to vibrant Christians who knew Jesus personally as their Lord and Savior…God took my life into His saving grasp and began to transform it radically.
My destructive addictions were replaced by a hunger for His Word and for fellowship with other Christians… Suddenly it was clear to me that my teaching was a case of the blind leading the blind. I repented of the way I had led my students.
About a month after this, alone in my room and quite apart from any input from others around me, I found myself faced with a momentous decision. Would I continue to control my Bible by my intellect, or would I allow my thinking to be transformed by the Holy spirit?
John 3:16 shed light on this decision, for I had experienced the truth of this verse. My life now consisted of what God had done for me.” (Linneman, Historical criticism of the Bible, p. 149)
How about you? Can you point to a time in your life where a crisis of faith and a recognition of your own ability to save yourself coupled with a realization of your sin drove you to Jesus?
There is no other name, my friend, by which you can be saved.
Because of grace,
Tim
