Have you ever noticed how we like to shrink things down to manageable sizes? We take big, complicated ideas and turn them into simple formulas. We take mysteries and package them up with a nice little bow on top. Then we act as if once we have it all organized and outlined, we are done. We have figured it out; we have arrived. And guess what? We do this with God. We put him in a box, a nice, neat, comfortable box. Then we get upset when he does not stay there. If that sounds crazy or harsh, well, stay with me, because this is one of the biggest problems we face as believers. And I include myself in that we.

Welcome to the Pristine Grace Podcast. I am your host. My name is Brandon Kraft, and I am glad you are joining me today. This is a show where I talk about the gospel, Christian living, theology, Bible subjects, and whatever strikes my fancy at the time. If this is your first time here, I would encourage you to go ahead and subscribe and visit my website at pristinegrace.org.

A little bit about myself. I am a Christian writer and speaker. And I have been running the pristinegrace.org website; can you believe it, for nearly 30 years. We are talking back during the 90s. So today we are going to talk about something that I think a lot of us need to hear. We are going to talk about how we put God into a box, how we shrink him down, and how we package him up and truth into neat little formulas and act as if we have it all figured out. And we are going to discuss why that is a problem.

Now, as always, I am not going to rush through this, so get comfortable, grab something to drink, because we are going to take our time, because this matters. And before we go any further, let me just say I am talking about myself here as well. This is not me pointing fingers at other people while I stand above it all. I have done this, and I still catch myself doing this. And we all do it. So let us walk through this together if you do not mind.

And now you might be wondering, what do I mean by putting God into a box? Well, let me tell you. We can take the truth of Scripture, which is vast and deep and rich and absolutely mysterious too, and we try to compress it into simple categories. We create systems and we make acronyms. Have you ever heard of TULIP? That's a popular acronym among Christians. And we also build formulas, okay? And none of that is bad, and you'll have to excuse any noise you hear going on. I've got a cat here at my feet. But anyway, none of this is bad. Systematic theology, I love it, okay? I love it. When I was younger, I certainly craved studying it, and systematic theology has its place. Confessions, creeds, you hear me talk badly about the creeds and the confessions, but, you know, it's not all bad. I think they can be helpful. Outlines, frameworks, these things can all aid our understanding of the Scriptures, and there's nothing wrong with them on their own.

But here's where I think a lot of this goes wrong. We start treating those systems like they're the whole thing. Do you understand? Like, once we've got our five points, or our three points, or our ten points all lined up, we've captured all of God's truth, that we've mastered it and we are done. And that's what I mean by putting God in a box.

Let me give you an example. There are men who think that, if you've never heard of this, the five points of Calvinism. John Calvin was a theologian, a great one, and his five points of doctrine can be summed up in an acronym called TULIP, T-U-L-I-P, okay, and each letter stands for one of the doctrines. And a lot of these men believe that's all there is to the gospel. They've got their acronym. They've got their little flower, okay? And that's it. And that's the entire gospel wrapped up in their flower petals.

And do not misunderstand me. I love Tulip. I love the doctrines of grace. I believe in election and total depravity and particular redemption, irresistible grace, and perseverance of the saints. These are all glorious truths. They are biblical truths. And if you have never studied them or even heard of them, I am sorry if I am talking about things you have never heard of. They are a good read, but they are not the whole thing.

There is more to Scripture than just a neatly arranged flower, if you will. There is more to Scripture than just the Tulip acronym or the five points. And some men fixate on one particular truth, like election, and they make that their entire focus. You will see another person who will focus on the end times. And I can remember when I was a younger man, I did that. I loved the Left Behind books, and we will not get into that on this call, but I loved Revelation, and I made that my doctrine, and I filtered everything through that doctrine, even the wrong doctrine.

And every conversation I had, and every conversation that people who do this have, it comes back to that one topic. And if you are not focused on this as well as they are, or as intensely as they are, well, guess what? You are now a suspect. Okay, but Scripture is bigger than any one doctrine. It is richer than any truth, deeper than any system we can possibly construct. And God himself is infinitely bigger than any box we try to put him in.

So why do we do this? Why do we try to shrink God down to a manageable size? Well, I think it is because we like to feel like we have things under control. It also makes it easier for us to teach others, I suppose. And we also like to feel like we understand things. We like the security of having everything neatly organized and categorized. Okay? And I think it is a little uncomfortable to live with mystery. It is unsettling to acknowledge there are things that we do not fully grasp. And it is humbling to admit that God is bigger than our ability to comprehend him.

So what do we do? We build boxes. We build our own boxes. We create our systems. We make our formulas and then we live inside them. We crawl into our box and close the lid and lock it shut. Then we feel comfortable and secure. But here is the problem. God does not fit in our boxes. He never has, and He never will. Every time we try to pin Him down, He breaks loose. Every time we think we have Him figured out, He does something that completely shatters our categories. Because He is God, and we are not.

We are going to look at the scriptures now. We will go straight to Job chapter 11, verses 7 and 8, where it says, "Canst thou by searching find out God? Canst thou find out the Almighty unto perfection? It is as high as heaven; what canst thou do? It is deeper than hell; what canst thou know?"

Let me ask you this: Can you find God by searching? Can you understand Him completely? No. He is higher than heaven. He is deeper than hell. This is beyond my ability to fully grasp. If you can understand that and fully grasp that, then give me a call and let me know, because I would like to know. Now let us go to Romans chapter 11, verse 33, where Paul writes, "O the depth of the riches both of the wisdom and knowledge of God! how unsearchable are his judgments and his ways past finding out!" His wisdom and knowledge are so deep, so rich, and so vast that we cannot search them out completely. I do not think we ever will.

But that does not mean we should not try to understand. It does not mean we should not study. It does not mean doctrine does not matter. It means we need to approach it all with humility, knowing that no matter how much we learn, there is always more. No matter how deep we go, there is always deeper to go. And no matter how much we understand, God is still infinitely beyond us. And we need to stop acting as if our little boxes contain Him.

Now, here's where this gets really practical, because we don't just put God in a box. We put other people in boxes too. And we judge whether someone is one of us, one of us, based on whether they fit in our box. And we sort people into categories, and we decide who's in and who's out based on our own little system. And we say to ourselves, well, this person over there, they don't use our language. They're not really sound. Oh, and that person over there, he doesn't emphasize the same doctrines we do, so they're suspect. Or this group or this church down the street over there, they don't organize things the way we do, so they can't be trusted at all.

We start judging people not only by what they believe or what their doctrinal statement is for any organization they are involved in. We start judging them by whom they associate with. Do not listen to him because he listens to someone who is not in our group. Do not trust her because she quoted someone we have decided is not in our group.

Okay, and you know, I am not saying we should not discern, and I am not saying we should not be careful about our associations at all. But sometimes we can take things a little too far. And I have seen that happen in churches, churches I am involved in. And you know, before you know it, and this is a sad thing to see, and I have seen churches do this, they are in a little box that they are in, it gets smaller and smaller and smaller so that the circle is so tight, and it gets so tight that maybe the only people in the world who could possibly be saved are just you and one other person.

Okay? And I have seen this time and time again. I know it has happened throughout history, but it seems to have been amplified with the rise of the Internet, especially from the late 1990s onward. All right, but that is not how God works. And that is not how Scripture, that is not what Scripture teaches. Okay, Jesus, he ate with tax collectors and sinners, and he talked with the Samaritans, and he touched lepers, and he welcomed outcasts, okay? And you know, we touched on this in the last episode, the people who were most upset with him, okay, these were the people who had everything in neat little boxes. All right, the Pharisees, the religious leaders, the ones who knew exactly who was in and who was out, who was clean and who was unclean, and who was acceptable and who was not. And you know what Jesus did? He shattered their boxes over and over again. He healed on the Sabbath. He forgave without requiring the proper sacrifices, and he declared people clean without following the prescribed rituals of the Talmud or the Pharisaic law. And then, even worse, he welcomed Gentiles. He ate with the wrong people. He had the audacity and nerve, and he refused to stay in their boxes, because God does not fit in their boxes. Okay, He is the lawgiver, not them. And so many of their rules were not even His law. They were man's law.

And I am not saying that doctrine does not matter. I have said this many times before. I am not saying that we should not care about the truth. I am not saying that anything goes as long as you are sincere or anything like that. Truth matters. Doctrine matters. Proper understanding matters. But truth is found in Scripture, and it is not in our systems. It is not in our confessions. It is not in our creeds. It is not in our formulas. It is not in what our pastor says either, or our favorite preacher. It is found in the Scriptures. Do you understand? We need to go to the Scripture. We need to go to those Scriptures, and we need to study them. We need to, as I like to say, wrestle with the Scriptures. We need to let the whole of Scripture be our judge, not just the parts that fit neatly into our little system. And Scripture tells us that we should do that.

Let us go to 2 Timothy 2, verse 15. Paul writes, "Study to show thyself approved unto God, a workman that needeth not to be ashamed, rightly dividing the word of truth." Study. Be a workman. Rightly divide the word of truth. That is our responsibility. But notice what Paul does not say. Paul does not say, "Build a system and live inside it." He does not say, "Create a box and then put God in it." He says, "Study the word of truth." All of it. Not just the verses that support your position. Not just the doctrines you are comfortable with. But all of it.

And here is something else I have learned. We can never master all of it. Do you understand? At least not while we are still on this side of heaven. And I suspect that even when we make it to the other side, it will take us an eternity to learn it all. And as we grow older, we keep learning. And as we mature, we keep discovering. And there is always more to see. There is always deeper to go, always new aspects of truth to understand. And I think this is true of me. And for some of our older believers who have believed a long time, I am sure you can relate to that.

We do not merely fill our minds with propositions and accumulate more knowledge. We become more joyful. We become more patient, and we become more kind. The goal is not merely processing more information. The goal is transformation. The goal is becoming more and more like Christ. As we grow, we also see ourselves more clearly. We begin to see how wretched we truly are, how desperately we need grace, and how completely we depend on God's mercy. This humbles us as well. It softens us. It makes us less likely to judge others, less likely to categorize people, and less likely to act as if we have everything figured out. We start to realize that we do not have everything figured out. We are still learning, still growing, and still being taught.

I do not care how old you are. If you are 95 years old, you are still learning, still growing, and still being taught if you are in Christ. Sometimes we learn through experience. These experiences occur in God's time, not in our time. They come through trials we did not expect, through failures we did not plan for, and through circumstances that shatter our neat little categories. This is acceptable. This is how God teaches us. He breaks our categories, not to hurt us, but to free us. He helps us see that He is bigger than we thought, that His grace is wider than we could possibly imagine, and that His ways are higher than ours.

Now, let me bring this back to the gospel, because this all matters in terms of how we understand God's salvation. Some people not only put God in a category and other people in a category, but they also put the gospel in a category. They reduce the gospel to a formula, a transaction, or a set of steps that one must take. However, the gospel is not a formula. The gospel is a person. The gospel is Christ.

And yes, there are truths we need to understand about the gospel, and they are glorious, essential truths. We need to understand that we are sinners and that we have fallen short of God's glory and that we deserve His wrath and we cannot save ourselves. Romans chapter 3, verse 23 clearly says, "For all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God." All have sinned. Every single one of us. We have all rebelled. We have fought against God and we have all gone our own way and we have all fallen short. And the wages of our sin is death. Romans chapter 6, verse 23 says, "For the wages of sin is death." So yes, death, separation from God, eternal judgment. That is what we deserve. That is what our sin has earned.

But here is where the gospel comes in, and here is the good news. God sent His Son, Jesus Christ, who was perfect, sinless, holy, and He took our place. Isaiah 53, verses 5 and 6 say,

But he was wounded for our transgressions,
he was bruised for our iniquities,
the chastisement of our peace was upon him,
and with his stripes we are healed.

All we like sheep have gone astray,
and we have turned every one to his own way,
and the Lord hath laid on him the iniquity of us all.

He was wounded for our transgressions. He was bruised for our iniquities. And the punishment that brought us peace, well, that fell on Him. And that is substitution. Christ took our place, He bore our sins, and He suffered our punishment, and He died our death. And all of us, we are like sheep that have gone astray. We have all turned to our own way, but the Lord laid on Him, on Christ, the iniquity of us all. All of us who believe, He has covered every sin, every rebellion, every failure, and all of it was placed on Christ. And He bore it, and He carried it to the cross, and He paid for it with His blood.

And not only that, but his righteousness, his perfect obedience, his perfect life, that is given to us. Second Corinthians chapter 5 verse 21 says, "For he hath made him to be sin for us, who knew no sin; that we might be made the righteousness of God in him: Christ, who knew no sin, was made sin for us, that our sin might be put on him, and his righteousness might be put on us." That is the great exchange, that is imputed righteousness, and we stand before God clothed not in our own goodness--you know, we do not have any--but we do stand in Christ's perfect righteousness, even now. And that is the gospel. That is the glorious gospel. It is the magnificent gospel, and it is the greatest news in the entire world.

So, what I am saying is that we cannot even put all of that into a neat little box and say, "Okay, I have got it. I understand it completely." There is nothing more to learn because the more you understand the gospel, the deeper it gets. And the more you grasp of God's holiness, the more you begin to marvel at his grace. And the more you see your own sin, the more you are amazed that Christ would die for you. The gospel is infinitely deep, inexhaustibly rich. We could spend eternity exploring its depths, and I do not think we could ever get to its bottom. The Bible says that even the angels look on us in amazement.

So, we cannot shrink it down, we cannot package it up, and we cannot act as if our five-point outline captures all of the gospel. We need to keep going back to the Scriptures, keep studying, keep learning, keep marveling, and keep growing in our understanding and appreciation of what God has done for us. We also need to stop judging other people based on whether they fit into our box. Here is the thing: the box that you are living in right now is not as big as you think it is. The system that you have built does not capture everything. I can tell you that. The formula that you rely on is incomplete. I am not saying this because Scripture is incomplete. Scripture is complete. However, your understanding is incomplete. So is mine. We are all still learning. We are all still growing. We are all still being taught by the Spirit. The moment we begin to think we have arrived, the moment we think we have it all figured out, we stop growing, we stop learning, and we put ourselves in a box.

And I have done that. I have done that. I remember twenty years ago, I thought I had it all figured out. I thought I had arrived. And I thought, there is nothing more I need to learn. And I actually really thought that to myself. I said, I have got it all figured out. What arrogance and pride we as people can have. And yet here I am, numbered among them. And I thought I had it all figured out. And when I reached that point, I stopped growing, and I stayed in the rut for a very long time. And things got worse for me. Things got worse for me. And God had to correct the situation. He had to turn me around and put me back on course. And the last five years, I do not know if you have noticed, but I kind of stopped podcasting around 2020 and I took a big break from it all. Things were going on in my life that I needed to deal with, and in those five years I have been taught so much, and now I feel like I am ready to go, ready to start podcasting again, so that is why I am here. But yes, that is where I am personally. And I can tell you, you do not want to get to the point where you think you have got it all figured out. You want to be in the position where you are humble, where you have been humbled, not humiliated, but humbled, relying fully on God for everything, and that is where you need to get to. And sometimes our theological systems prevent us from going there.

So let us get back on topic here and let us go to 1 Corinthians 8, verse 2. Paul writes, "And if any man thinketh that he knoweth anything, he knoweth nothing yet as he ought to know." If you think you know something, you do not know it yet as you ought to know it. There is always more. And it is always deeper. And there is always a fuller understanding of the game. So, stay humble. Like I said, stay teachable. That is important. Stay open to the Spirit's work. And the Holy Spirit does work in His people. And He is your only teacher. And stop putting God in a box.

All right. Now let me address one specific box that I see a lot. And this box, I have already mentioned it earlier, but it is creeds and confessions. And those of the Reformed persuasion might get upset with me because of this. But let me be clear; I am not against creeds and confessions. As I said, they can be helpful. They are good for summarizing some things, summarizing truth, and they can provide frameworks for understanding.

But guess what, people? And this is going to come as a shock to a lot of people out there. But creeds and confessions are not the same thing as Scripture. They are not inspired. They are not infallible. And I do not care if your church acts like they are. They are not. So we need to stop using them as our final authority. We need to stop defining truth by whether someone agrees with their favorite confession or creed and always go to Scripture. Let the Bible be our judge. Let God's word have the final say.

Because here is what happens when we elevate creeds and confessions to the level of Scripture. We stop thinking. We stop thinking. And we also, sometimes we stop studying. Why study when you can just go to the creed and look it up? It is the same way with systematic theology books. And we just check whether someone affirms the confession. And if they do, they are in our box with us. If they do not, they are out. It is an awful way to judge. But that is not how we should approach truth. We search the Scriptures. We should study. We should wrestle with a text. And we should let God's word shape our understanding, not just check whether someone agrees with a document written by men.

Acts chapter 17, verse 11 talks about this. Can you believe that? Yes, it is in the Bible. The passage refers to the Bereans. It says there that Luke, the author of Acts, writes, "These were more noble than those in Thessalonica, in that they received the word with all readiness of mind and searched the Scriptures daily, whether those things were so." They searched the Scriptures daily to see if what they were being taught was true. They did not just accept what Paul said because he said it. They went to the Word. And that is what we need to do. We need to search the Scriptures. We need to study them and let them be our judge. Not our system. Not our confession. Not our favorite preacher. Not our favorite theologian. Not our favorite systematic theology book. Scripture. Scripture. And when we do that, we let Scripture have the final word. We might find that our boxes need to be broken. And our categories may need to be adjusted, and our systems will need to be revised. And guess what? That is acceptable. That is growth. And that is maturity, and that is being taught by God.

And here is something else I have noticed. I have noticed that sometimes our biggest hindrance to learning is what we already know or what we think we know. An old friend of mine told me this and gave me that quote, and it stuck with me. So, we have our system, we have our understanding, we have our box, and anything that does not fit gets rejected. This is not because it is unbiblical, but because it does not fit our preconceived categories. We filter everything through our system instead of going back to Scripture with fresh eyes. This keeps us from growing. It keeps us from seeing truth we have missed. You know you have missed truth when you read the Bible. I can remember as a young boy reading the words of Paul and seeing the words predestination, elect, chosen, God's sovereignty, and salvation all over the Scriptures, but it did not register with me. I just did not understand it, and I just kind of skipped over it when I was 12 years old, trying to understand the Bible. I remember skipping over it all the way up until I was in my early 20s. Finally, after enough study, the Lord finally opened my eyes to what was in front of me in black and white the whole time.

And that is why we need to keep studying, because we have missed things. And when we miss things, we stay stuck in our little boxes. But God is bigger than our boxes, and truth is richer than our systems. Scripture has depths that we have not explored yet. And so we need to be willing to let go of our boxes, to break down our walls, to tear up our neat little categories when Scripture demands it. And that can be scary, and it is uncomfortable, and it feels like losing control. But it is how we grow, and it is how we learn, and it is how the Spirit teaches us. And it leads to freedom. Because when we stop living inside our boxes, when we stop trying to control everything, when we stop putting God in a neat little package that we can manage, we discover that God is so much bigger, so much greater, and so much more glorious than we could ever imagine. And that is when worship really begins--not when we have got it all figured out, but when we realize we never will. And then we fall on our faces in awe of the God who is infinitely beyond us.

Okay, so how does this look in day-to-day life? How does this work practically? Well, it means being humble. It means being willing to admit that you might be wrong about something, that you are also open to correction and that you are also teachable. And we are Americans, and that can be difficult for some of us. I know it is difficult for me. But it also means, practically, it means approaching other believers with grace. It means not judging them because they do not use your language or emphasize your doctrines, your pet doctrines. And maybe recognizing that they might see something that you have missed, that they might be right where you are wrong.

And this is, I think, this is doubly or triply true--triply is a word--where this is doubly true for preachers and pastors because teachers and preachers are seen as leaders, and they are expected to have everything figured out. And it can be easy to start believing that you have it all figured out because everybody looks to you. Okay, and that is a dangerous place to be. And, you know, we have to stay on guard just because we have experience and wisdom and people look to us for help and understanding. We need to understand that we do not have it all figured out either. And just because we have a position of authority or a position of respect in the church, it does not mean that we do not need to learn. And even preachers and teachers, we need to keep studying the Scriptures for ourselves and not just accepting what our favorite theology book says or what our favorite preacher of the past has to say, and not just adopting the system that we were taught. But wrestling--all right, we need to wrestle, people, we need to wrestle. And we need to wrestle with the text, you know, by ourselves, and then ask questions and think deeply. And it means being patient, not just with others, but also with yourself, and recognizing that we are all still learning, that we are all still growing, and none of us have arrived fully.

And it also means focusing on Christ. Okay, this is so important. This is why I like Henry Mahan's teaching so much. It means focusing on Christ, not on your system, not on your confession, not on your box, okay? It means focusing on Christ himself, on the gospel, on the finished work that saves sinners. Because at the end of the day, that is what matters, okay? Not whether you have the perfect systematic theology, not whether you can defend every point of your confession, and not whether everyone agrees with you.

Focus on the primary issues of Scripture, not on the secondary ones as well. The primary issue, the absolute most primary issue of Scripture, is Christ, and what He did, and how He saved, and the gospel. The gospel is this: Christ died for sinners, and He bore their sins in His body on the tree, and He satisfied God's justice, and He paid the penalty, and He rose from the dead, and everyone who looks to Him for rest is saved. They are saved not by their works, not by their understanding, not by their system, but by Christ alone, through faith alone, by grace alone. That is the gospel, and it cannot be put in a box, because Christ cannot be put in a box.

Ephesians chapter 3, verses 17 through 19, say, "that Christ may dwell in your hearts by faith, that ye, being rooted and grounded in love, may be able to comprehend with all saints what is the breadth and the length and the depth and the height, and to know the love of Christ which passeth knowledge, that ye might be filled with all the fullness of God."

The love of Christ passes knowledge. It is beyond what we can fully comprehend. We are called to know it, to experience it, to rest in it, even though it surpasses our ability to fully grasp it. Does that make sense to you? It sounds like a paradox to me. We know it, yet it passes knowledge. We understand it, yet it is beyond understanding. We grasp it, yet it is too vast to contain. We are to be filled with all the fullness of God, not the fullness of our systems, and not the fullness of our box, but the fullness of God. This means there is always more. There is always deeper. There is always fuller and always richer. We can never exhaust it. We can never master it. We can never put it in a box and say, "That is it. I have got it all right here. I have got all of God right here." We cannot do that.

So let's stop trying to do that. Let's stop shrinking God down to manageable sizes. Let's stop packaging up truth into neat little formulas. Let's approach God with awe, with humility, and with wonder, recognizing that He is infinitely beyond us and His ways are higher than ours and that His thoughts are not our thoughts. Let's approach Scripture with fresh eyes, ready to learn, ready to grow, ready to have our boxes broken. Okay? Let's approach other believers with grace, not judging them for not fitting into our box, but recognizing that we are all on a journey. That is one of my wife's favorite sayings, by the way. She says, "We are all on a journey, Brandon. We are all on a journey." I said, "You stole that from John Bunyan." But anyway, we are all being taught and we are all growing. So let's keep our eyes fixed on Christ, not on our system and not on our formulas and not on our boxes, but on Christ, who is the author and finisher of our faith. He is the one who died for us and the one who saved us completely and keeps us eternally.

He is bigger than any box and greater than any system. He is more glorious than any formula, and guess what? He is ours by grace through faith forever.

Well, that is all I really wanted to share with you today. I kind of lost track of time here. I do not know how long I have spent, but I hope my message has given you something to think about, maybe challenged you a little bit, maybe freed you up a little bit. I do not know. But I do hope it has reminded you that God is bigger than you thought. I hope it has encouraged you to stop living inside your boxes and start living in the fullness of who God really is.

So if you have any questions or just want to talk with me, there is a contact form in the description, and I would love to hear from you. Y'all have a great day. Grace and peace to you. Goodbye.