A Statement of
Theology

Everything I believe begins in one place. Not a doctrine — a disposition. The love of God. He did not love us because we had first become lovely; He made us to be loved, and then loved what He had made. So I begin here, and I keep returning here, because grace is not a cold transaction. Grace is favor: the glad delight in the eyes of a God who likes what He sees. Favor is merited, yet not earned — merited by what He created us to be, not by anything we have done.

I read the whole of Scripture as a Jewish book, and I read it as a Messianic Jew. Messiah means the Anointed One of Israel; the title roots Jesus in a people and a promise, not apart from them. The church has not replaced Israel. We are one body of two heritages, Jew and Gentile together, and God’s love for the Jewish people is everlasting. Much that grieves me in history I have learned to carry not as accusation but as intercession.

I hold a high view of the Son, and I never loosen Him from His humanity. Jesus is the faithful witness, the firstborn from the dead, and the ruler of the kings of the earth. He is the Righteous One, whose righteousness was not only reckoned to us but genuinely merited in a life of perfect trust and obedience. The Son beheld in glory is the same Son who looked up to His Father in Nazareth. And He is coming back to reign.

I believe the Holy Spirit is given to the body of the Messiah as He first rested upon the Messiah Himself — the sevenfold Spirit of Isaiah 11. The gifts of the Spirit are real, and they are for now. But they are not trophies. They are given to serve love and to build up the community, stewarded for the sake of others and never hoarded.

Concerning the last things I gently hold what is sometimes called an inaugurated eschatology. Through Jesus the age-to-come has already broken in, and we truly taste the powers of the age to come. Yet its fullness is still before us, in a real reign upon a real earth which will also bear some of the marks of this age until the time when all of the Messiah’s enemies are under His feet and God becomes all and in all. I am not a setter of dates, and I am not a preterist who files it all into the past. History is bending toward a promised end:

When all things are subjected to Him, then the Son Himself also will be subjected to the One who subjected all things to Him, so that God may be all in all. (1 Corinthians 15:28 NASB)

At the heart of that end stands the restoration of Israel. When Israel is received, it will be, in Paul’s words, life from the dead for the world (Romans 11:15). The Lord will return; and they will look on the One they pierced, and mourn, and turn to Him. This is not a footnote to the story. It is near the center of it.

I believe the church is defined by its destiny — to finish the Commission, to be conformed to the Son, and to be made ready as the bride — and no less by its love. A true community of disciples admonishes and encourages, helps the weak, bears patiently with one another, and does not quench the Spirit. It is a kingdom of priests, drawing near to God through the blood of Jesus, and its distinguishing mark is love for one another.

I believe in the hidden hand of God. He works all things together for good — but He does not cause all things. He is not the author of the evil He abhors. Over the real rebellion and the real chaos of this age there is a governing hand that does not manufacture every event, yet bends even the coincidences of a life toward the good He has promised. Faith is what learns to see it.

And faith, in the end, is the ground beneath all of it:

And without faith it is impossible to please Him, for he who comes to God must believe that He is and that He is a rewarder of those who seek Him. (Hebrews 11:6 NASB)

Faith perceives God. Faith pleases God. Faith produces faithfulness, and kindles love, and expresses itself first in gratitude — thanks in all things, though never for the evil He hates. And here is the mercy of it: the faith God requires, God also gives.

So this is where I stand. I hold these convictions with an open hand where Scripture is quiet, and a closed hand where it is plain. I would far rather move a reader to admiration of Jesus than to mere agreement with me. So examine the Scriptures for yourself. Weigh everything I have spoken or written against the whole counsel of God. And above all else, come to know — and to love — the God who first loved you.

The theology and convictions expressed here are David Harwood’s, developed and taught by him over years of ministry; the prose was drafted with AI assistance from his teaching and writings, and edited by him.