"Where Did Sin Come From?" - Part one (?) of Questions From the Lifehouse Youth Group

My wife and I help lead the youth group at Lifehouse Church. I've been doing this for about two and half years, Chelsea joining soon after we started dating. For a long time, the group only had five youths, three of them siblings. We played games and went on trips and studied cool books like Crazy Love, but nothing seemed to spark real excitement in the group. Then we began studying Wayne Grudem's Bible Doctrine. By this time, our church moved into two locations and we met a few teenagers from the Spring Hill area. Then our youth group more than doubled.

I mean, twelve teens might not seem like a lot to the seasoned youth group leader, but for us, it was a little dizzying.

I don't know if I can credit this all to the church now having a location in Spring Hill or if it's because we're digging into questions regarding deep truth, but the  conversations during meetings have changed dramatically. We're discussing Common Grace, Sin, Prayer, the Trinity, the Gospel, and the like. And I'm learning something from them about how I lead a discussion. First of all, nothing makes you feel so much like a dope when you ask a question and hear silence from a room full of teens. But instead of accusing them of disinterest, I try to figure out ways to ask questions about the topic so they want to answer.

It's one big reason why I've changed how I do things on this weblog. Not that you're a bunch of teenagers.

The kids also teach me how to ask good questions by, well, asking me good questions. During our discussion on Sin, one of the girls asked, "But where did sin come from?"

How beautifully simple. So I said, "From rules." Only after I said it did I think about it. Paul seems to say as much on his explanation of sin in Romans. Sin didn't exist on earth until God told Adam and Eve "Don't eat that fruit." That's not to say I think God gave men sin by giving them a rule. I mean to say that God created men with a will that would sin. The Fall may have easily happened if God said, "make sure to eat that fruit every day" because the serpent might have countered with, "Aren't you a little full?" and we'd be in the same mess.

I may be wrong. I may be only partially right. But where do you think sin came from? Do you even think sin is real (I'm looking at you, relativist reader)?

Back To Boardgames - Why Christians need the Bible's authority

About a year ago, when I figured out I was probably more of a Calvinist than I ever wanted to admit, I wrote an essay on the Bible's authority. It would probably do for me to include this topic in the Basics Series. Instead of coming up with an entirely new analogy, though, I've decided to revise and repost the original.

My friend Joe has a sick sense of humor. He told me one day to read a particular post and the subsequent comments. This post dealt with a line in 2 Peter 2:7 calling Lot "righteous". Of course, you had the people who talked about justification versus sanctification. Others rejected the passage as "a misunderstanding", because how could God call Lot righteous when he offered his daughters to gang rape, then later got drunk and committed incest with them? Eventually, and Joe intended this, the conversation came to the authority of the Bible, its inerrancy, comparisons of Old to New Testament, and Universalism.

One man created a sub-argument about a supposed misquotation in Mark where the writer "quotes" Isaiah, but actually quotes both Malachi and Isaiah. I wonder if it would do any good to tell him that ancient Greek writing didn't have quotation marks or that they used indirect quotations. For example, if Joe tells me "Dinner is at six tonight. Come over with the guys and join us." I might tell my friends, "Joe wants us to be at his house for dinner at six." Even though I didn't directly quote Joe, I correctly communicated what he said.

For most of my life, people outside of the church have told me the Bible is just a book full of contradictions and inconsistencies. When I was seventeen, I wondered if these people were right. So I read the whole thing, looking for a contradiction or inconsistency. I think my Bible teacher knew what I was doing because he invited me to challenge the Bible's authority and inerrancy openly in class whenever I thought I had found proof. Believe me, I tried. But he always had answers that both cut through my cynicism and satisfied my questions. Soon enough, I began to ask him to explain hard passages because I wanted to know more of how the Bible truly was authoritative and without error. By the end of the school year, I knew without a shred of doubt that the Bible is God's book. To disbelieve or disobey the Bible meant I disbelieved or disobeyed God.

If any of you ever want to take a poke at me the way I did my Bible teacher all of Senior year, please feel free. I'm certain that, given time, I could find a sufficient answer for you. For now, I want to set a foundation for the Bible's authority with a few scriptures. Hebrews 1:1-2 says, "God, after He spoke long ago to the fathers in the prophets in many portions and in many ways, in these last days has spoken to us in His Son, whom He appointed heir of all things, through whom also He made the world." This sums up the Old Testament writings and the words of Jesus. Whatever the prophets said in the Bible, God said through them. That's not to say they themselves were always infallible. Even if Moses thought the world was flat, he never said so in the Bible because God oversaw every word written in scripture and kept it truthful. Going back to 2 Peter, it seems the writer shared Joe's intentions. 2 Peter, 3:1-2 says, "This is now, beloved, the second letter I am writing to you in which I am stirring up your sincere mind by way of reminder, that you should remember the words spoken beforehand by the holy prophets and the commandment of the Lord and Savior spoken by your apostles." This adds the writings of the Apostles into the category of "Authoritative". In the same chapter, Peter equates Paul's writings with scripture and calls those who distort Paul's teachings "untaught and unstable". Paul refers to Luke's and Matthew's gospels as scripture in 1 Timothy 5:18 "The laborer is worthy of his wages."

The whole controversy over Biblical authority and inerrancy reminds me of board game tantrums. You know what I'm talking about. We've all played Monopoly and accused the banker of cheating before flipping the whole board into the air. My favorite checkmate in chess was the one where I swept all the pieces to the floor with my spindly arm. I get the same feeling every time I hear arguments for or against the ultimate authority of anything.

While studying Wayne Grudem's Systematic Theology, I read, "It is one thing to affirm that the Bible claims to be the words of God. It is another thing to be convinced that those claims are true. Our ultimate conviction that the words of the Bible are God's words comes only when the Holy Spirit speaks in and through the words of the Bible to our hearts and gives us an inner assurance that these are the words of our Creator speaking to us." Then he quotes 1 Corinthians 2:14, "The natural man does not receive the things of the Spirit of God, for they are folly to him, and he is not able to understand them because they are spiritually discerned (Grudem's translation)."

Essentially, what Grudem said was this, "If you don't believe the Bible, it's because God hasn't revealed it as truth to you." And think of this, if we claim that the Bible is our absolute standard of truth, then we can't appeal to another kind of standard to validate it. To do so would put the outside standard on par or greater than scripture. So what difference is there between us saying the Bible is true because it claims to be true and the claims of ultimate authority for an Atheist who supremely values science or historical accuracy? They think science is authoritative because it's scientifically proven. They think history is accurate because of the accuracy of historical documents. If you think about it long enough, you want to kick the game table, knock over the pieces, and shout, "No, I'm Sorry!"

The difference I can see comes from what I said long ago about Xerox copies. We are not ultimate beings. We're limited. Blaise Pascal had this realization and said that man was merely a point on a line. We can't comprehend the extremes of anything in nature, and yet those extremes exist beyond our comprehension. From there, he explains that a being must comprehend those extremes and only God is ultimate enough to do so.

So where else but the Bible could I find a standard of truth? I can't base my standard of truth at all on myself. My perception, my logic, my experience, it's all limited. And I can't base my standard on other men because I recognize their limitations as well. The Bible, with the Holy Spirit's instruction, convinces me of its own truth. I believe its truth to such lengths that I allow the words of the Bible to offend my reason and change the way I think.

Some people might think that I worship the Bible rather than God when I say these things. Let me assure you I do not. God reveals Himself to man through the Bible. God also says that He reveals Himself to man through nature. In fact He reveals Himself to us in all things. But God doesn't want us to worship nature or any other means of revelation. There can be no other gods before Him, not even His book. My point is that the Bible is a complete, though not exhaustive, way in which God revealed Himself.

Cornelius Van Til said that in order for us to truly know God, He would have to reveal Himself truly to us. If the Bible were not the absolute, authoritative, perfect standard of truth, then my understanding of God would be incomplete. No one could truly know God. If the Bible contained any falsehood, the pluralist claim of all religions worshiping the same god might have some merit. God would be subjective to our perception. So if you claim to be a Christian, you absolutely must recognize the authority of the Bible.

Have you thrown the game table yet? I know I've seen and thrown enough board game tantrums to wonder if I should even bother playing in the first place. But it wouldn't do any good if I surrendered by saying, "It's a Christian thing, you wouldn't understand," or, "Just take a leap of faith," or, "We don't ask those questions." The Bible I claim to believe makes it clear I should still work to understand my faith and reason with people. But 1 Corinthians 2:14, as well as other verses, tell me I don't need to convince anyone. I can leave that up to the Holy Spirit and find comfort in knowing He'll do a much better job.

Nine of the Twelve - Zephaniah's indictment against complacency.

My girlfriend knows this girl who, in my opinion, is a total brat. God help her. One night during a painfully selfish episode, I asked her, "If you could be your own god, would you?"

She gave me the Stink-eye and said, "I don't know." Like I was dumb for asking. I kept my mouth shut and nodded my head. She might not have thought of it to know but her answer was the same as "Yes". Every idol and false religion is just a variation of the serpent's lie in Genesis 3, "You will be like God." Either you serve God, or you serve whatever vehicle promises to fulfill your selfish desires. These vehicles, like money or romance or achievement, become idols when we do not submit our hope and trust to God alone.

Even thought this girl goes to a church, I don't know if she is a Christian. I've never asked. But I do know a handful of people who say they're believers while acting like every other idol-worshiper. In conversation with them, I hear them speak of God not as Lord but as a means for wealth, success, perfect fitness, etc. Not that I'm saying God doesn't want this for us, but there's so much more to Him. A.W. Tozer once said that idolatry is worshiping anything less than God, including a reduced version of God. I've heard this reduced version referred to as "Easy Gospel". It doesn't cost you anything and gives you everything in this life. We'll talk more about this later, but for now, let's look at Zephaniah.

In the first verse of Zephaniah's book, a genealogy notes the prophet as a cousin of King Josiah, sharing Hezekiah as a great-grandfather. Josiah was distinguished in the Bible as a good king who pleased God. He removed official places of idol worship and restored the Temple. This reform came after two generations of wicked kings who worshiped Molech and belonged to a cult devoted to "The Army of Heaven". In my Bible, Zephaniah starts at the bottom of the right hand page and only shows the first verse. My surprised at verse two when I turned the page was probably a distant echo of the shock Josiah may have felt. "'I will completely sweep away everything off the face of the land,' says the Lord."

It would seem that, despite Josiah's reforms, idolatry continued throughout the country and held to peoples' hearts. Zephaniah 1:4-6 names the different idols. "I will stretch out my hand over Judah and all those living in Jerusalem. I will wipe every remnant of Baal from this place, the idol-serving priests and even their names, those worshiping heaven's army on the roofs, also those who worship and sear by the Lord but swear by Malkam as well, those who turned away from following the Lord, and those who haven't sought the Lord or consulted Him at all."

If Zephaniah knew about this ongoing practices, the king most likely had knowledge of them as well. Josiah might not have personally worshiped idols or promoted their worship but we can guess he at least demonstrated a tolerance toward idol worship in his kingdom. Instead of giving this a governmental application, I'll compare the average Western church with Judah and modern versions of these idols.

Baal/Asherah worship was a fertility cult. It ultimately had to do with agricultural (financial) prosperity and implemented sexual perversion as a part of their ceremonies. If you look at the history of something like televangelism, it doesn't take long to find stories of greed and sexual perversion. This problem is obviously bigger than TV preachers. Beau Black, writing for the Baptist Standard, cited a statistic saying between 40 and 70 percent of evangelical Christian men struggle with pornography. It wouldn't surprise me if the real number were closer to 70 than 40. It also wouldn't surprise me if this number reflected the percentage of pastors who struggle with porn. And this statistic doesn't even consider the women who also deal with this issue. I would look further into these statistics but I hesitate to run a Google search including the word "porn". I guess for now, the Press will have to suffer some limits of research. When a friend of mine came to visit me in Nashville, he noticed the city's high number of adult stores and strip clubs. He wondered aloud why there were so many. I answered his rhetorical question, "probably because there are so many pastors." I didn't mean to be cynical but I had that 40 to 70 percent statistic in mind.

The people who worshiped Malkam, another name for Molech, would sacrifice their children by fire to this false god. I won't go into the common comparison to abortion here. Instead, I'll focus on what Zephaniah said about people swearing by both God and Molech. Overall, the way Zephaniah puts it, the very thought of someone worshiping God and aligning themselves with something as evil and wicked as Molech downright confuses me. There are some who belong to organizations and societies that make oaths to a vague, catch-all, "god-as-you-know-him" name. Of all these organizations and societies I've read into, at some level below the surface, one realizes they do not at all serve the one, true God. I know of people who belong or once belonged to these societies and the more I learn, the more I wonder whether they were duped or if they ever truly accepted Jesus as their Lord.

The Army of Heaven cult was a weird version of modern day astrology mixed with pseudo-biblical mysticism. 2 Kings 23 tells of Josiah tearing down the altars to the Army of Heaven that his grandfather Manasseh had built in the Temple and removing its priests, but Zephaniah's words make me wonder if the king had succeeded in completely eradicating its practice from his kingdom. I don't know many churches that promote astrology or biblical mysticism, but I have heard a decent number of church-goers discuss these studies. Our society tends to have a casual view on this sort of thing.

Most of all, in this first chapter of Zephaniah, I can see how much God hated the attitude of false religion masquerading as what I know call Christianity - those who worshiped the Lord and had hope in Jesus, the coming Messiah. Why is it that so many Unitarian churches appear to promote Christian tendencies on the surface when their very message is "god-as-you-know-him"? I've seen the West support a belief in "God", but discourage belief in Jesus. It's culturally acceptable to use what Francis Shaeffer called "the word 'God'" and go to church. This reminds me of Keith Green's story. He used to believe in something he called "God" and looked to Jesus more like a spiritual teacher or guru. Then he came to saving faith, became a genuine Christian, and went on to say convicting things like, "Going to church doesn't make you a Christian the same way going to McDonald's doesn't make you a hamburger."

This brings me back to the topic of Easy Gospel and Tozer's definition of idolatry. The Bible teaches that God is holy. Wayne Grudem defines holy as something special and set apart form common or ordinary things, clean as opposed to defiled. The beings who surround God and praise Him in Revelation 4 call Him, "Holy, Holy, Holy." Using the word three times was a Hebrew literary device to describe its perfection. God isn't just holy, He's perfectly holy. In the Temple, there was the Holy Place and then the Most Holy Place. God dwelt in the Most Holy Place. The Holy of Holies. What we see in Zephaniah 1 is an attitude that seeks to reduce God and put Him on the same level of importance as the false religions of the surrounding nations. I think they intended to make God more culturally appealing so they wouldn't look like the weird, backwater country with the un-hip religion. In chapter 2 and 3:1-4, it looks like they succeeded when God angrily compares them to other nations.

God also felt grief for His people. I mean, they were pissing Him off, but it still pained Him. When He took Israel out of Egypt in Exodus, He called them "His people". In Leviticus, He gave the blessing for them to be holy as He is holy. They were supposed to be special as a nation, set apart from the others, dedicated to God and God alone. I know that this essay may sound like I'm grinding and axe for the church. Please don't mistake me. I love the church. I don't intend to make blanket statements. But I do live in the West, see what our culture calls Christianity, and I see many who fit the comparison.

Like that girl I mentioned at the beginning, there are people who may say they're Christians while displaying an exhausting kind of selfishness. Like Zephaniah's Jerusalem, they want all the grace but none of the conviction, salvation but not the life of repentance. There are churches that would are willing to accept sin and ignore God's call to holiness and their responsibility to biblical church discipline. Josiah's family had a history of worshiping both Molech and the Army of Heaven. I wonder if he turned a blind eye to their continued existence (at any level) because of something like family feelings. That's speculation, of course, but I do wonder. The people of Judah might have called themselves holy, but God through Zephaniah exposed their hearts.

Thankfully, the third and final chapter of Zephaniah offers hope. The first reference to Jesus occurs in 3:5. "The Lord, who is righteous, is there among them." The idea of God dwelling with His people first appears in Genesis when He walked with man in the Garden of Eden. Despite the separation caused by sin, God again expressed His desire to dwell among His people when He ordered the Tabernacle (an early form of the Temple) built. The name given for Jesus in the Messianic prophecy of Isaiah 7 is "Immanuel", translated "God with us".

In Zephaniah 3:9, God promises, "For then I will change the peoples, so that they will have pure lips, to call on the name of the Lord, all of them, and serve Him with one accord." This is a picture of cleansing, of salvation, of God Himself changing our hearts. The part about pure lips reminds me of Isaiah 6. There, Isaiah sees God and cries out, "Woe to me! I [too] am doomed! Because I, a man with unclean lips, living among a people with unclean lips, have seen with my own eyes the King, the Lord of Hosts!" Then one of the angels takes a glowing coal from the Temple altar and touches it to Isaiah's lips. The angel says, "Here! This has touched your lips. Your iniquity is gone, your sin atoned for."

We can read books like Zephaniah, think about its application to our lives, and wonder like Isaiah if we too are doomed. But God the Son, Jesus, came to live among His people as a man, died to take our punishment, and rose again to offer us new life. Before He returned to Heaven, Jesus told His disciples in Acts 1 to wait in Jerusalem. Again, He promised, God would come among His people in the form of the Holy Spirit. Scripture teaches that the Holy Spirit then indwells those who accept Jesus as God. Our bodies become a temple of the Holy Spirit, something like the Most Holy Place.

This should cause some sort of heart change in a person! Paul explains in Galatians that the Spirit produces love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, gentleness, faithfulness, and self-control as "fruit" in the life of a believer. Of course one quick prayer doesn't make us immediately awesome and none of us ever reach perfection. The process God uses to make us more holy is called "sanctification". Like God says in Zephaniah's prophecy, this change of heart comes by His power alone.

This raises a few questions. Have you seen this sanctifying work in your life, where by the Spirit's enabling you become more like the holy, set-apart person God desires? Do you see more of the fruit He produces in your life now than in the past? If your answer is yes, God be praised. We can high five and continue to encourage each other. If you see your Christian brothers or sisters struggling , then talk with them, pray for them. Don't be like Jerusalem and tolerate them with an attitude of "I'm okay/you're okay". If your answer is no, please take a moment to pray and ask God to reveal idols you may have in your heart. Open yourself to the Holy Spirit's conviction. Be willing to receive His correction and change.

On the Outpouring of the Holy Spirit.

Remember a few months ago when I lamented the end of my Systematic Theology group? Well it's back. Whereas most of these studies would start with things like scriptural authority or the character of God, we decided to start with the Holy Spirit. We have our reasons.

Since summer began, my church has seen the Holy Spirit move in greater power through miracles and spiritual gifts. People have learned how to hear the voice of the Holy Spirit and respond in obedience. Others have been healed of long-term, debilitating pains. Two people had their legs instantaneously grow during prayer, eliminating their back pain. At one Thursday night meeting downtown, the Holy Spirit showed up and kept us in worship and prayer the whole evening.

Naturally, some people have had questions. A woman at work asked me about my church and the Systematic Theology group. I told her that our theology is reformed, but we have charismatic expressions during worship. When she asked me to explain what I meant by "charismatic expression", I talked about the Holy Spirit working through people, speaking to us, healing people, and so on. She asked me if we believed in the Bible. I assured her we do. As I walked away, she spoke to the woman next to her, "I don't know about that sort of thing. I think it's dangerous."

I'd like to take this moment to assure you, the Holy Spirit is not "safe" in the way some Bible teachers might portray Him. He operates outside of our control and it scares many to see Him move beyond comfortable perimeters. Consider this story in Numbers 11:24-29.

"So Moses went out and told the people the words of the Lord. Also, he gathered seventy men of the elders of the people, and stationed them around the tent. Then the Lord came down in the cloud and spoke to him; and He took of the Spirit who was upon him and placed Him upon the seventy elders. And when the Spirit rested upon them, they prophesied. But they did not do it again.

"But two men had remained in the camp; the name of one was Eldad and the name of the other Medad. And the Spirit rested upon them (now they were among those who had been registered, but had not gone out to the tent), and they prophesied in the camp. So a young man ran and told Moses and said, 'Eldad and Medad are prophesying in the camp.' Then Joshua the son of Nun, the attendant of Moses from his youth, said, 'Moses, my lord, restrain them.' But Moses said to him, 'Are you jealous for my sake? Would that all the Lord's people were prophets, that the Lord would put His Spirit upon them!'"

The Spirit of God supposedly only resided in the Tent of Meeting, where Moses and the priests went into His presence. So when the Spirit came upon two people in the camp outside of the church, away from the pastors' conference, it caused a stir. Moses, in humility, recognized that God wanted to put His Spirit on more than the accepted leadership. He wants to move in His people, the church.

Joel prophesied of a time when the Spirit would move as Moses wished. Joel 2:28-29 reads, "It will come about after this that I will pour out My Spirit on all mankind; and your sons and daughters will prophesy, your old men will dream dreams, your young men will see visions. Even on the male and female servants I will pour out My Spirit in those days."

Peter referred to this prophecy saying that God had begun its fulfillment in Acts 2:16-21. But this promise was not for a chosen few. Rather, for all mankind. This goes beyond God only using the Apostles, or the seventy who followed Jesus, or any other kind of restrictive explanation given by spooked theologians. Even as Paul taught the Corinthian church on how to use and recognize spiritual gifts (including the gift of miracles), he said in 1 Corinthians 14 to "desire earnestly spiritual gifts, but especially that you may prophesy." This echoes Moses's hope that all God's people would have His Spirit upon them.

There are many passages where Paul teaches on spiritual gifts (1 Corinthians 12-14 and Ephesians 4:11-12) and acknowledges Holy Spirit activity in other churches (Galatians 3:5). A good portion of the book of Acts details how the church interacted with the Holy Spirit and the miraculous. I think it's important to remember that God inspired the authors to write these things in the Bible. Why would He do this? To convince those already saved in the church or to teach us how to use the gifts to glorify Him?

When the Holy Spirit moves in the church, it won't be for the glory of a man, a particular church, or even an experience. Jesus is alive and at work in the church. The miraculous testifies to those outside of the church and draws them closer to saving faith, so they glorify God. The miraculous also testifies to the church and continues to build our faith, so we also glorify God. And that's the point. We must glorify God in everything.

Be Holy – Some thoughts on punishment vs. correction

Somewhere around nine months ago, and once or twice since then, I’ve offered to answer any reader’s question in the form of a post. So far, Adam has been the only one to ask anything. It turned out to be a pretty good post, although I might explain the point differently now while using the same metaphor. Well, Adam, ol’ buddy, you wanted to know if I thought God still punishes us for our sins. I’m glad you asked…

For anyone who has read my weblog over the past few months, you know how I feel about God’s sovereignty. He’s perfect, self-sufficient, and ultimate. I talked about His glory as the sum total of all His attributes. I’ve written on how these things relate to us. In order to talk about God’s justice, I’ll have to make clear what I believe defines His holiness. Where God’s glory is everything about Him, His holiness is the perfection of His presence.

Throughout the second half of Exodus, God talks of making the Hebrews a holy nation and a people unto Himself. He instructs the people on how to build and use the tabernacle so that His presence might dwell among them. The people could come near God’s presence to worship Him in the Holy Place and God’s presence resided in the inner room called the Holy of Holies. What made these things holy? His presence.

Before God came to dwell among His people, He made a covenant with them, a contract that set up the rules of their relationship. In order for God to give them His presence, they needed to observe His law because sin separates us from Him. This, in itself, shows God’s graciousness. Man had previously proven himself to break covenants when Adam and Eve sinned in Genesis 3. The covenant given to Moses, much like the one given to Adam, essentially says “Obedience to the Law will bring life, disobedience will bring death.”

Some might object to the logic of this covenant because our relativistic society finds offense with anything so rigid. But for those who accept God’s perfection and self-sufficiency, its necessity becomes clear. Since He is perfect, His ways are perfect. Anyone who denies God’s law and goes his own way has challenged God and denied His sovereignty. They have given themselves over to idolatry not realizing how their idols will fail.

So, after God comes to dwell among the Hebrews, they continue to sin and break the covenant. God sometimes held back His anger in mercy, other times He punished their disobedience. But the people seemed to sin persistently. Even as God gave Moses the law (everyone clearly agreed to follow and obey God in Exodus 19), the people made an idol to worship. Moses told the people in Deuteronomy 9:8, “Even at Horeb you provoked the LORD to wrath, and the LORD was so angry with you that He would have destroyed you.” God loves His people and they continued to treat Him with contempt. According to the covenant, this brought death. Ezra 5:12 says about the sins of Israel, “But because our fathers had provoked the God of heaven to wrath, He gave them into the hand of Nebuchadnezzar king of Babylon, the Chaldean, who destroyed this temple and deported the people to Babylon.” Why would God send an invading army to kill and destroy His own people? Because for Him to overlook sin would be the same as an earthly judge releasing a known rapist without penalty. It would be injustice for Him not to punish a lawbreaker. Paul writes in Romans 4:15, “for the Law brings about wrath, but where there is no law, there also is no violation.” It seems no one escapes this responsibility. Romans 1:18-19 says, “For the wrath of God is revealed from heaven against all ungodliness and unrighteousness of men who suppress the truth in unrighteousness, because that which is known about God is evident within them; for God made it evident to them.”

History shows how man, on his own, will sin. We are incapable of true righteousness apart from God. And God knew this. In Genesis 15, God makes a covenant with Abraham symbolically promising to take responsibility for the sin of him and his descendants. This covenant was fulfilled in Jesus, who never sinned and lived in perfect obedience to God. Yet He died in our place, sparing us the punishment demanded for sin (Romans 6:23).

Now the rules have changed. A person can be justified through faith in Jesus’s death and resurrection. Romans 3 explains this. The gift of salvation is given, not earned, through our faith in Jesus. But, as Wayne Grudem says in Systematic Theology, it isn’t enough for us to have the slate wiped clean in a legal sense. Adam had that advantage and blew it. Eventually, we would most certainly blow it. Nobody’s perfect, right? Then God did something so beautiful. He placed us “in Christ”, or as Colossians 3:3 says, “For you have died and your life is hidden with Christ in God.” Paul made this statement to support what he told the Colossians in chapter 1 verses 21-22. “And although you were formerly alienated and hostile in mind, engaged in evil deeds, yet He has now reconciled you in His fleshly body through death, in order to present you before Him holy and blameless and beyond reproach.”

The question was, “does God still punish us for sin?” In the case of those who have accepted Jesus, I ask, “how can God make us pay a penalty for sin when Jesus took our punishment on the cross?” The answer is, “He can’t, but better yet, He won’t. We’re hidden in Jesus and God sees us as perfect, blameless, and beyond reproach.”

However, this doesn’t mean life’s a gas from here on. Hebrews 12 describes God disciplining us as sons. Think about it, a good father doesn’t punish for the sake of rules. He disciplines in order to train his son to do good and avoid evil. The father does this out of love for his son. Again, in Revelation 3:19, God says, “Those whom I love, I reprove and discipline; therefore be zealous and repent.” Another word for “discipline” is “correct”. Correction means taking something wrong and make it right. Proverbs 22:15 says that foolishness is bound up in the heart of a child, and the theme of proverbs revolves around a loving parent talking to a son. God has used hard situations to reveal areas of anger, unbelief, etc in my life. As one of His foolish children, I need this correction.

Now, hardship isn’t limited to either punishment or correction. Sometimes it’s accusation or condemnation from the enemy. Revelation 12 says that Satan accuses us day and night. Certainly he wants us to believe that God’s correction is punishment. To agree with such a thought would deny the completion of Christ’s work on the cross.

More importantly, I think we need to see that Jesus never eliminated the law of sowing and reaping found in Galatians 6:7-8. There were a lot of mornings that I reaped hangovers after a night of heavy drinking. Would you call that punishment or the fruit of a seed? God set this in place to help us recognize the consequence of sin and encourage us to reap the benefits of righteous living.

There are Christians who think God changes how He feels based on their behavior. Consider this: if your behavior didn’t save you, does behavior un-save you? According to Scripture, we’re kept by God’s power, hidden in Jesus, where nothing can separate us from the Father’s love (Romans 8:39). Romans 8:1 is very clear that God does not condemn us, and we even have His promise of renewal in 2 Corinthians 5:17. Going back to the old covenant, God gave a command in Leviticus 19:2, “You shall be holy, for I the LORD your God am holy.” Think about that in terms of God’s presence and, as Graham Cooke says, it begins to sound more like a blessing than a stern rule. Through Jesus, God gave us the presence of His Holy Spirit, thus making us holy.

Fruit is important. What fruit comes out of the trials you face? If you are a believer who struggles with addiction, depression, impure thoughts, and so on, seek God’s correction knowing His love for you. Learn the difference between the accusing voice of Satan and the (mostly) gentle conviction of the Holy Spirit. One produces despair and a feeling of hopelessness, but godly sorrow is always meant to lead us to repentance and life.

We Are Mirrors - Thoughts on our relationship to God's glory.

School’s out, friends. While that might mean water parks and popsicles and bike rides for some people, for me it means the end of my systematic theology group. September seems so far away it almost hurts. Who will talk with me about God’s providence or His incommunicable attributes? Ontology? Eschatology? I’ll probably spend my Monday nights this summer sitting on the couch missing my friends, thanks.

I had fun studying this year and I learned so much about God through biblical teaching. You’d think with prickly topics like atonement and the gifts of the Spirit that our discussions would have easily gone the way of arguments and board game tantrums. (Actually, the only tantrums seemed to happen during game night). Most of us worried about one topic, though. What would happen to our happy little group when we talked about predestination? The “P” word. For some people, the mere mention of the word recalls embarrassing holy wars. Monday night came around and we all put off the opening prayer with small talk. After a few minutes, we knew we had to start or admit that we feared the discussion. One of us prayed and asked, “So what did you all think of the chapter?”

Then Dale walked in late. “What did I miss?”
“Nothing,” the discussion leader answered. “We just asked the ‘what did you all think’ question. Since you’re standing there, why don’t you start?”
“Well,” Dale said, “I appreciated how the focus of the chapter stayed on God’s glory. Like, God’s purpose is to glorify God. So when I read the verses and Grudem’s explanation, I could ask myself if this gave glory to God. It took away any fight I may have had in me on the subject.”

Dale probably didn’t know it at the time, but his reminder of God’s glory set the tone for the whole night. When it was all over, nobody raised their voice or interrupted or even shot cold looks to the other camp because, hey, we all found ourselves in the same camp. It took the focus off of us and put it on God, where it belongs.

God’s glory is His own, and why not? He’s ultimate. He’s totally sovereign. In case you’re wondering what “Glory” means, it means the fullness and significance of God. Glory is everything in and about God. There’s nothing in existence that could ever compare to Him. Satan tried. He got screwed. Then Satan convinced Adam and Eve to try comparing themselves to God, screwing mankind. God is above any comparison. Anything else is idolatry. Isaiah 42:8 says, “I am the LORD, that is My name; I will not give My glory to another, Nor My praise to graven images.”

His very presence is His glory. Moses asked to see it in Exodus 33:18. God said, “Tell you what, how about I show you my goodness? The fullness of just one attribute. I’m telling you, if you saw my face it would kill you.” Imagine seeing God and His awesomeness making your brain blow up like a firecracker.

So if God’s attributes add up to make His glory, then I want to talk a little about some of them. In John Piper’s landmark book, Desiring God, he often mentions Psalm 115:3. “But our God is in the heavens; He does whatever He pleases.” Nothing surprises or frustrates God because everything works for His glory. He has dominion over everything. Psalm 24:1 says, “The earth is the LORD'S, and all it contains, the world, and those who dwell in it.” But what about sin? Didn’t sin surprise God? Then why in Ephesians 3:11 does Paul say, “This was in accordance with the eternal purpose which He carried out in Christ Jesus our Lord”?

And remember that eternity is more than an unending continuation of time. God, who is eternal, exists outside of time. Scholars have said God’s eternity enables Him to see all of time, from beginning to end, at once. This news brings comfort because we can know that God sees Jesus on the cross at the same moment that He sees our sin. That means that from the very beginning, God intended to reveal himself through the work of Jesus, His death and resurrection. God revealed Himself in this way and made it possible for us to have a relationship with Him. But God doesn’t answer to time. Orbits and seasons don’t bind him. Cornelius Van Til said for God to depend on a temporal series of events would mean He denied His eternity. Nowhere does scripture make any such claim of this denial.

Okay, retraction time. For the first time in the brief history of the Press, I’m going to say that I was wrong in a previous post. That’s what happens when a person continues to learn about a God too big to comprehend. A while ago, I wrote a post about free will. In it I said that God, out of love, willfully set aside the fullness of His omniscience regarding our salvation. But where did I get that idea? Its absence from scripture should have been a big red flag. No, I think I had come to a place where I assumed I understood God enough to make unscriptural claims on His behalf. As I write this, I can hardly believe I’d do such a thing, but that’s the result of a person trying to base their understanding of God on themselves. Yep, Xerox copies.

God is not beholden to any law of creation. To place God within the bounds of creation would be to diminish Himself; to place mathematics, science, or time as a standard of authority higher than God. This would eliminate His sovereignty. Why would He do such a thing? To say “because He loves us” would imply that we are equals worthy of God’s service, but this sounds much like the sin of Adam and Eve. I wonder if God would tell us what He said in Isaiah 46:5. “To whom would you liken Me and make Me equal and compare Me, that we would be alike?”

This sort of stuff could depress you. “What about my dignity? What about my individuality?” What about it? Listen, apart from God, we’re undignified sinners like everyone else. But in relation to God, we have dignity as people who bear His image and He loved us enough to send Jesus. He’s the one who knew you before you were born, who knows your name and the number of hairs on your head. Is it really so bad that we can only reflect God’s glory?

Think of it this way. We are mirrors. Any good in us comes from God, whether by common or particular grace. The book of James says that every good and perfect gift comes from the Father. When people see good in us, or we see it in ourselves, it would do us well to recognize God as the only source of that good. Like Jesus said in Mark 10:18, no one is good except God alone. It couldn’t have come from us. The book of Romans states pretty clearly that before we came to know Jesus, we were dead to sin. I mean, totally enslaved to sin, completely unable to do good. Only the power of the Holy Spirit enables us to do anything righteous because of what Paul says in Galatians 2:20, “I have been crucified with Christ; and it is no longer I who live, but Christ lives in me; and the life which I now live in the flesh I live by faith in the Son of God, who loved me and gave Himself up for me.”

As believers, we need to recognize that any autonomy we may have claimed should have died with Jesus when we accepted Him as our Lord and Savior. What of ourselves do we now have to show? We are only mirrors. Where we were once made ugly by sin, now we reflect a God so wonderful that David proclaimed in Psalm 40:5, “Many, O LORD my God, are the wonders which You have done, and Your thoughts toward us; there is none to compare with You. If I would declare and speak of them, they would be too numerous to count.”

I like the idea of recognizing my relationship to God’s glory. For one, it can make sharing the Gospel so easy. Everything can be brought around to glorify the Father, to tell of Jesus who best revealed and glorified the Father. For another, understanding the dynamic of my relationship to God’s glory helps me to understand my purpose. I am here to bear witness.

A Question Of the Bible's Authority - Or, board game tantrums

My friend Joe has a sick sense of humor sometimes. He told me one day to read a particular post and the subsequent comments. This post dealt with a line in 2 Peter 2:7 calling Lot “righteous”. Of course, you had the people who talked about Justification versus Sanctification. Others rejected this passage as “a misunderstanding”, because how could God call Lot righteous when he offered his daughters to gang rape, and so on? Eventually, and Joe intended this, the conversation came to the authority of the Bible, its inerrancy, Old Testament versus New Testament, and Universalism.

One argument was about a supposed misquotation in Mark where the writer “quotes” Isaiah, but actually quotes both Malachi and Isaiah. I wonder if it would do any good to tell him that ancient Greek writing didn’t have quotation marks or that they used indirect quotations (for example, If Joe tells me “Dinner is at six tonight. Come over and join us”, I might tell my roommates, “Joe told me to be at his house for dinner at six”. Even though I didn’t directly quote Joe, I correctly communicated what he said).

I don’t plan on writing my whole argument for why the Bible is completely accurate and true right now. I will, however, point out a few scriptures for you to think about in the meantime. Hebrews 1:1-2 says, “God, after He spoke long ago to the fathers in the prophets in many portions and in many ways, in these last days has spoken to us in His Son, whom He appointed heir of all things, through whom also He made the world.” This sums up the Old Testament writings and the words of Jesus. Going back to 2 Peter, it seems the writer shared Joe’s intentions. 2 Peter 3:1-2 says, “This is now, beloved, the second letter I am writing to you in which I am stirring up your sincere mind by way of reminder, that you should remember the words spoken beforehand by the holy prophets and the commandment of the Lord and Savior spoken by your apostles.” This adds in the other writings of the Apostles. In the same chapter, Peter equates Paul’s writings with scripture. And he calls those who distort Paul’s teachings “untaught and unstable”.

But like I said, I don’t want to get into all that stuff right now. I want to talk about board game tantrums. You know what I’m talking about. We’ve all played Monopoly and accused the banker of cheating before flipping the whole board into the air. My favorite checkmate in chess was the one where I swept all the pieces to the floor with my spindly forearm. I get the same feeling every time I hear arguments for or against the ultimate authority of anything. Like the Nada Surf song says, “I talk to missionaries when they’re standing at my door. They tell me what I should be reading. I still can’t see what for. We both stand there politely trying to change each other’s core.” Only it’s not always polite.

While studying Wayne Grudem’s Systematic Theology, I read, “It is one thing to affirm that the Bible claims to be the words of God. It is another thing to be convinced that those claims are true. Our ultimate conviction that the words of the Bible are God’s words comes only when the Holy Spirit speaks in and through the words of the Bible to our hearts and gives us an inner assurance that these are the words of our Creator speaking to us.” Then he quotes 1 Corinthians 2:14. “The natural man does not receive the things of the Spirit of God, for they are folly to him, and he is not able to understand them because they are spiritually discerned (Grudem’s translation).”

Essentially, what Grudem said was this, “If you don’t believe the Bible, it’s because God hasn’t revealed it as truth to you.” And think of this, if we claim that the Bible is our absolute standard of truth, then we can’t appeal to another kind of standard to validate it. To do so would put the outside standard on par or greater than scripture. So what difference is there between us saying the Bible is true because it claims to be true and the claims of ultimate authority for an atheist or universalist? If you think about it long enough, you want to kick the game table, knock over the pieces, and shout, “no, I’m sorry!”

The difference I can see comes from what I said about Xerox copies. We are not ultimate beings. We’re limited. Blaise Pascal had this realization and said that man was merely a point on a line. We can’t comprehend the extremes of anything in nature, and yet those extremes exist beyond our comprehension. From there, he explains that a being must comprehend those extremes, and only God is ultimate enough to do so.

I can’t base my standard on truth at all on myself. My perception, my logic, my experience, it’s all limited. And I can’t base my standard on other men because I recognize their limitations as well. I must have an absolute standard of truth outside of myself. The Bible, with the Holy Spirit’s instruction, convinces me of its own truth. I recognize its truth to such lengths that I allow the words of the Bible to offend my reason and change the way I think.

Some people might think that I worship the Bible rather than God when I say these things. Let me assure you that I do not. God reveals Himself to man through the Bible. God also says that He reveals Himself to man through nature. In fact, He reveals Himself to us in all things. But God doesn’t want us to worship nature or any other means of revelation. There can be no other gods before Him, not even His book. My point is that the Bible is a complete, but not exhaustive, way in which God revealed Himself.

Cornelius Van Til said that in order for us to truly know God, He would have to reveal Himself truly to us. If the Bible were not the authoritative, perfect, ultimate standard of truth, then my understanding of God would be incomplete. No one could truly know God. If the Bible weren’t perfectly true, the universalist claim of all religions worshipping the same god might have some merit. God would be subjective to our perception. So if you claim to be a Christian, you absolutely must recognize the authority of the Bible.

Have you thrown the game table yet? I know I’ve seen and thrown enough board game tantrums to wonder if I should even bother playing in the first place. But it wouldn’t do any good if I surrendered by saying, “It’s a Christian thing, you wouldn’t understand.” The Bible I claim to absolutely believe makes it clear that I should still try to reason with people. And 1 Corinthians 2:14, as well as other verses, tell me I don’t need to convince anyone. I can leave that up to the Holy Spirit and find comfort in knowing He’ll do a much better job.

The Importance of Being Right – Or, a possible path toward unbelief.

Recently, I considered the topic of predestination. Unless we’re talking about the movie 12 Monkeys, I don’t typically like discussing the hopelessness of man’s decisions. The topic surfaced again when my roommates and I read about the atonement in Wayne Grudem’s Systematic Theology. One roommate took the side of particular redemption. I told him that I could only, at this point, agree with particular redemption after the fact. That is, I will only tell a person that Jesus came to specifically save them, that God chose them from before their birth for salvation, after they have already accepted Christ. And consequently, I will regard every unbeliever as one who may potentially accept Christ. My roommates and I talked for about an hour and a half on the subject. I finished my argument later by saying, “Even if I’m wrong, I can’t be mad. Nobody deserves to be saved. One person receiving salvation is more than the whole of mankind deserves from God.”

The conversation ended well even though we didn’t come to an agreement. As I washed the dishes afterwards, I smiled at the thought that a room full of opinionated men could still be humble in their beliefs. There were no assaults made against a person who didn’t agree with one side or another. We tried to come to an understanding based upon what we know of scripture and cared only that we lived our lives in a way that honored God. I haven’t fully adopted Reformed theology, but I am still thinking about the points made in its defense. I want to know more about God. In order to make sure that I don’t become stubbornly proud in my faith, I have to remind myself, “I don’t know everything.”

At the end of Stark Raving Obedience, I spent a little time writing about Blaise Pascal. In the book Pensees, he said that man is a point on a line and limited in his ability to comprehend either end of the line. Man cannot comprehend the extremes of anything in nature. There are numbers so big and small that we have yet to count them. The Universe continues to expand, and we have only begun to chart the vastness of it. On the other hand, scientists keep finding smaller and smaller subatomic particles. Some light and sound waves are too high or low for our senses, and maybe our machines, to register. Yet these extremes exist regardless of our ability to know them. Pascal’s argument was that some Being must fully comprehend these extremes. This was one argument he made for the existence of God. He said that it was man’s great joy to discover more of what God had put in place, but man must humbly recognize that he will never arrive at full and complete comprehension. This belongs to God alone.

Toward the end of George MacDonald’s Lilith, the narrator struggles to understand a truth Mr. Raven tells him. Apparently, the narrator is in a dream, but everything seems quite real. He doubts that his senses deceive him. Everything feels real, so how could it not be real? If his current surroundings were a dream, how would he know if he ever truly entered the waking world? Mr. Raven explains, “Thou doubest because thou lovest the truth. Some would willingly believe life but a phantasm, if only it might for ever afford them a world of pleasant dreams: thou are not of such! Be content for a while not to know surely. The hour will come, and that ere long, when, being true, thou shalt behold the very truth, and doubt will be forever dead.”

I often think about Pascal’s picture of humble learning and taking joy in discovery. But does this mean that any skepticism of new understanding puts me in the wrong? According to MacDonald, it shows that I have a love for the truth, a truth I can never fully understand apart from God’s illumination. I want my knowledge to form a complete whole instead of a pile of facts with which I can agree. I want to learn, but I’m trying to reconcile what I have already learned with any new information. If I’m going to learn anything, I sometimes have to allow for the possibility that I’ve previously accepted something untrue. This is the hard part. So hard, in fact, that I need the Holy Spirit to help me change my thinking.

I take this very seriously because of how easy it is to resort to an “I’m right, you’re wrong” mentality. The danger in this attitude comes from a resistance to truth not previously understood. If it doesn’t make sense, it’s a breeze to disregard it as nonsense, right? Priests and bible teachers of Jesus’s day were arrogant in their knowledge of scripture, but they didn't see Jesus as the fulfillment of all those prophecies they had memorized. In John 8, they couldn’t recognize Him when He stood right in front of them. Jesus had come to the temple to teach and said in John 8:12-14, “Then Jesus again spoke to them, saying, ‘I am the Light of the world; he who follows Me will not walk in the darkness, but will have the Light of life.’ So the Pharisees said to Him, ‘You are testifying about Yourself; Your testimony is not true.’ Jesus answered and said to them, ‘Even if I testify about Myself, My testimony is true, for I know where I came from and where I am going; but you do not know where I come from or where I am going.’”

Did you ever wonder why the Pharisees said, “You are testifying about Yourself; Your testimony is not true”? I think they were trying to trap Jesus with His own words. Three chapters earlier, Jesus said in John 5:31, “If I alone testify about Myself, My testimony is not true.” But then he says in verse 32, “There is another who testifies of Me, and I know that the testimony which He gives about Me is true.” This is why Jesus answered the Pharisees accusation by saying, “Even if I testify about Myself, My testimony is true, for I know where I came from and where I am going; but you do not know where I come from or where I am going.” He knew that He was the Son of God, one in and with the Father, but these religious leaders had no understanding of the Trinity to know the truth when they heard it. It didn’t make sense, so they disregarded it.

My pastor pointed out that John 8 takes place in the temple court. The priests kept huge oil lanterns burning day and night to signify God’s presence in the temple. Here they stood, focused on the representation of God’s presence and unable to see God Himself standing before them saying, “I am the light of the world.” It probably would have been okay if they had responded by saying, “Huh? We don’t understand what you’re saying, Jesus. Why don’t you explain it to us?” The disciples said that all the time. But the Pharisees didn’t want Jesus to explain. They wanted to trap Him and prove Him a liar. They wanted to be right.

What did that leave them with? Unbelief, I think. Graham Cooke once said, “The Bible talks about ‘an evil heart of unbelief”. And it’s not that if you have unbelief, your heart is evil. What it’s saying is that the impact of unbelief on your heart is really evil. You commit yourself to a life of toil, struggle, and pain. It damages everything.”

What’s the opposite of unbelief? Faith. Then that probably means the impact of faith on your heart is lovely. I’m not going to say that thinking you’re right equals unbelief, and thinking you’re wrong equals faith. Put it in terms of the attitude you have towards knowledge. Is it arrogant and prideful? Then you’re in danger of unbelief just like the Pharisees in John 8. Is it humble, allowing for new understanding? I’d say that’s a good step toward faith.

Having said all that, I encourage you to both seek as well as stand firmly upon truth. People used to tell me that I had to be open minded. At the heart of their argument, they wanted me to admit that their version of truth was just as valid as mine. Which is funny because this meant they didn't think my explanation of truth was valid. I didn’t budge from my position that there is one eternal God. That not all gods were God. That truth was not relative. Absolutely nothing will change my mind about these statements.

So whether God knew (and therefore picked) who would be saved, or if He made a genuine offer of salvation to all, Jesus is the only way to salvation. I can stand on the truth of Christ and yet continue to learn more about this truth. At least on this, the roommates and I can agree.