New Book from A.W. Holt: That Which Our Hands Have Touched

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I am very pleased to announce the publication of my first book, That Which Our Hands Have Touched. Born out of my devotional times in the book of 1 John, this book is a series of theological reflections through every verse of John’s great epistle. It is meant to serve as a supplement to your own reading of 1 John, activating your biblical imagination and helping you to faithfully understand the text. My intention was not to create a series of devotionals, but to dive deeply into John’s cultural and theological context. Only by immersing ourselves in the world of Scripture can we come to grasp its true meaning and power for today.

Writing this book has consumed the majority of my time not dedicated to family and work. It is why this website has remained untouched for the past two years. It was not my intention to forsake Verace Via, but I experienced a deep conviction that publishing this book was an act of obedience, and that whatever else God has for me to do will have to wait until this task is completed. That served as sufficient motivation for me to see this project through to the end. There are a lot of ideas floating in my head, things that I want to do to serve God’s kingdom in these strange times, but I think I needed to learn how to take a project like this from concept to completion. Let’s be honest, concepts are a lot easier than completions. But completions are far more spiritually and mentally rewarding.

But before what comes next comes next, this book is here now, and I’m proud of it. I hope that you’ll get a copy of it, and use it as a reference while you read through 1 John, verse by verse. Where it is helpful, I hope you will engage with it thoughtfully. Where it is not, forget it quickly! Below is an excerpt, the entry from chapter 4, verse 9. If it blesses you, pick up a copy of That Which Our Hands Have Touched. That would bless me.

God’s love is not a theory. It is not hypothetical, nor only an idea or concept of Bible scholars tucked away in some lofty cathedral, insulated from the realities of everyday life. It does not exist merely in the realm of the abstract: untested, untried, unrealized. No, God’s love is real. Tangible. Evident. The love of God has been convincingly demonstrated in history. It has taken on flesh and blood, entered fully into the world and experience of mankind, remembered by all who experienced it firsthand. God, in his love, subjectively knows what it is to be a man. The Creator has walked in the shoes of his creatures. Here is the truth of the matter: Jesus Christ is God’s one and only Son; he was sent into the world by the Father; everyone who believes in him will have eternal life.

The Creator does not wish that any of his creatures should die, whether that death be the temporary death of the body or the eternal death of the soul. He is the author of life, not death, and life – eternal life – is the reason he sent his Son into the world. And why would he do that? Because he loves the world. And this love is not some wispy, paltry thing. God’s love is full-throated, white-knuckled, all-in. He held nothing back. The Son of God entered the world as a man so that sinful men might leave it as sons of God.

Jesus is for all people. Everyone who puts his trust in Jesus, giving him first allegiance, is brought from death to life. The Son of God gave up his divine position and sacrificed his human body so that people of every tribe and time could feast at God’s table. Everyone who believes is brought into God’s family as if he were the firstborn son, the chief heir of the Father’s estate. God has placed his name upon each believer, and given him rights to an inheritance he did not earn. The life that God brings a man into is the life that God has always intended for his children.

So great is the love of God for humanity that he descended to the lowest place in order to elevate men to the highest place. He emptied the storehouse of heaven in order to ransom wayward sinners from their sin, and rescue them from their fate of total and eternal death in hell. All of this he did in the real world, in a specific place and time that has been faithfully recorded for all generations. The love of God is not just a mindset, idea, concept, theory, or attitude; it is the brutal and glorious reality of the historical death and resurrection of Jesus Christ.