There are practical lessons for us here. When we first struggle with the doctrine of election, for example, we begin by judging the matter, using our own, inadequate and all-too-human temperaments. The doctrine does not sound fair. But as soon as we learn to view the matter from God’s point of view, everything appears in a different light. We must begin with God, and remind ourselves that God is altogether holy and just, full of love and compassion. It would be impossible for our God to do anything unfair, even in the smallest degree. We must never seize fragments of the Bible’s teaching and rush into the laboratory of the fallen human mind to analyse them by our own inadequate methods. We must listen to the Divine explanation, remembering the just, loving, infallible character of the One who speaks. Begin with the Lord – as Genesis does, for it is a principle which should influence all our reasoning. Even our witness should begin with the Lord. When trying to help someone see the way of salvation, we must not start with that person’s idea of what he wants or needs. Or, if he is an argumentative person, we must not let him write the agenda for every discussion and so argue for hours about irrelevant niceties. As soon as we can, we aim to tell every unconverted friend the things they know nothing about. We are anxious to start with God, and therefore we want to get across his holiness and love, and then to move to the great problem of sin and God’s remedy of amazing grace.