At some point, I don't remember when, I wrote a post about people ignoring certain books of the Bible. It seems like horny people read Song of Solomon (or Song of Songs, if the translators didn't want us to get the wrong impression of a dude with 700 wives). Sometimes I wonder if the book of Esther was inspired by God just because He knew, in his Omniscience, it would become the perfect topic for women's Bible studies.
And then there's Ecclesiastes. What a bummer, right? Depending on your translation, you may have been shocked to find the Bible calling everything "meaningless".
Whoa, wait. Everything?
Well, Solomon (the Teacher, or Preacher, again depending on your translation), talks about the futility of man's pursuits on earth. We're born, we die. We try to educate ourselves and end up with more questions than answers. We seek pleasure, but keep enduring pain. We work hard, but our work crumbles over time. All we gain we leave behind when we die.
When it comes to God and His purposes, the text takes a very different tone. 3:14 says, "I perceived that whatever God does endures forever; nothing can be added to it, nor anything taken from it. God has done it, so that people fear before Him." In 5:1-6, we learn that God alone should be taken seriously and has the power to destroy the work of our hands.
While it may seem like Solomon's mood would kill a party in this book, he actually encourages the opposite. Verse 5:18 says, "Behold, what I have seen to be good and fitting is to eat and drink and find enjoyment in all the toil with which one toils under the sun the few days of his life that God has given him, for this is his lot."
My feelings toward Ecclesiastes have changed during the last two years. I used to ignore that book because I didn't expect to get much from a guy saying, "Ah, what's the point?" But now I think this is the big statement of the book - People get too caught up in all the wrong stuff. They worry and work themselves to death for meaningless reasons. If God's efforts are all that will endure, then shouldn't our focus turn to what He is doing and then join in His work? If we have the proper perspective by putting our trust in God despite the hardships, frustrations, sin, and death around us, won't we look at the things in our life differently?
I think God wanted this book in the Bible because it teaches an extremely important lesson many Christians need to hear. At the end of the book, in 7:14, we're told, "In the day of prosperity be joyful, and in the day of adversity consider: God has made the one as well as the other, so that man may not find out anything that will be after him."
Did you catch that? God has made good times and hard times. When things are good, people thank Him. When times are hard, people call Him mean. But He has purpose for everything, He is in control, and He wants you to both enjoy and consider your life.
Showing posts with label sovereignty. Show all posts
Showing posts with label sovereignty. Show all posts
Friday, December 16, 2011
Wednesday, June 24, 2009
Miracles - Some questions on differing opinions.
Before I begin, I want to let you know that I’ll do my best to lighten up. The past several posts have dealt with issues that really messed with my faith. After a couple of months wrestling with scripture in prayer and discussion, I realize that I might have laid it on pretty thick. Ever tried to chew a peanut butter sandwich with a solid inch of Jiffy?
So I thought to myself, “I want to write about something fun, light. Enough with this heavy stuff for once.” For some reason, I figured miracles might make for an easier post. A breather. Everyone likes to hear about miracles, right? And as stories, they’re a snap to write. “Someone had cancer, people prayed, God healed the person.” Everyone applaud! “A single mom doesn’t have money to feed her kids and prays for provision, then money or an opportunity seemingly materializes out of thin air.” God be praised!
I’ve personally witnessed dozens of testimonies like the ones above. When someone gives a testimony of God’s power moving, God receives the glory. That’s how it’s supposed to work. But I’m going to tell you about a few instances where testimonies of miracles had a different effect.
Since reading 1 Corinthians 2:4-5, I’ve tried to change how I communicate Jesus with others, “my message and my preaching were not in persuasive words of wisdom, but in demonstration of the Spirit and of power, so that your faith would not rest on the wisdom of men, but on the power of God.” Instead of merely rattling off The Romans Road (which I agree is effective in certain situations), I’ve begun to share my testimony of God’s miracles and then offer to pray for people. If God moves (and He often does), then the person would see the power of Jesus for himself. They would have a harder time claiming that I cast a spell over them with “persuasive words of wisdom”. God be praised.
God healed my back of severe scoliosis after a church service in 1997. I mean, it was severe, folks. It’s a miracle I don’t have rods in my back. God has miraculously provided for my needs ever since I moved to Nashville. When people ask about my story, I automatically this stuff. Graham Cooke explained, “Your testimony is not what God once did in your life years ago. Your testimony is who God is in your life all the time.”
One night after an IKAIK concert, these girls invited me to hang out with them at another bar. They probably didn’t expect me to talk about God as much as I did, but that’s what happens when you ask about my life. I tell you about my relationship with Him. After about half an hour, a guy came over to our table and asked, “What are you guys talking about?”
The girl who invited me replied, “He’s talking about how lucky he is.”
“Luck,” I laughed. “I wouldn’t call it that.”
She said, “What would you call it?”
“God’s blessing,” I said.
She immediately responded, “Well I wouldn’t call it that.”
As I wrote out the notes for this post, a guy at work asked what I was writing. When I told him I intended to write about miracles, he asked, “which do you think it is, miracles or chance?”
“I think miracles are a part of God’s rational order,” I said.
“It’s all random chance,” he said.
I started laughing. He asked, “How can you believe in an ordered and reasonable God?”
“For one, I’ve seen Him miraculously answer my prayers.” I told him about how God healed my back. He then, whether on purpose or not, shifted the focus of the discussion. To me, the story of my healing is God’s power displayed. My co-worker’s only argument against it was to claim randomness, which no person in their heart can truly have faith to live by. A cook’s job requires a high degree of precision. If he were to apply his belief in Random Chance on cooking, chaos would burn his buns.
These stories might not surprise you. To be honest, they don’t surprise me, either. 1 Corinthians 1:18 says, “For the message of the cross is foolishness to those who are perishing, but to us who are being saved it is the power of God.” Cornelius Van Til wrote extensively on the problems of explaining the Christian faith to those who don’t know Jesus because they have no context with which to give meaning to facts. I understand that without the Holy Spirit’s revelation, people cannot know God. Even so, I’ll continue to share my testimony, pray for people, and yeah, even reason with them.
My main concern here isn’t for people who don’t claim to know Jesus. I want to know how people in the church can claim to know Jesus but deny the miraculous today. In a piece written by First Fruits of Zion called “The Fingerprints of God”, the author writes, “As believers in a Divine Creator, we must learn to sharpen our sense of wonder to detect the inherent godliness that is infused into every particle of creation.” In one sense, a person can look at the world around them, recognize God’s order in creation, and praise Him for that miracle. Beyond that, though, I believe that God has control over every particle of creation. It’s not that miracles work outside the laws of reality, but rather God in His perfect knowledge of creation can work in ways we are sometimes unable to comprehend.
Did God ever give up this control? If God only does things that will bring glory to Himself, would cessation fit in with His plan? In this life we will experience hardships, pain, and suffering. We will pray to God and we won’t always see the result we expected. Does that mean God has somehow given up His sovereign control over creation? Does it mean that He decided to make the universe a dice game after the Apostles died? Replacing the miraculous with coincidence at any level, I think, would call God’s majesty into question. It allows for something to exist outside of His control.
Now, for the Christian, if you accept that miracles do happen today, what’s stopping you from asking for them? If you’re worried about pulling a Simon from Acts 8, then you’ve already got a good start. Your motives should be to glorify God and advance His kingdom. Are you worried that you might have to defend God if He doesn’t move the way you asked Him to? Well, He’s the one in charge. You don’t own the result of your prayers.
Think about this. Before Jesus sent out His followers in Matthew 10, He said, “As you go, preach, saying, ‘The kingdom of heaven is at hand.’ Heal the sick, raise the dead, cleanse the lepers, cast out demons. Freely you received, freely give.” Hebrews 2:3-4 reiterates Jesus’s pattern with preaching and miracles. The verse I quoted from 1 Corinthians 2 shows Paul and his companions demonstrating God’s miraculous power. In chapter 12, he even promises the gift of performing miracles to those in the Corinthian church.
I know I wanted to keep this light, but the seriousness of Matthew 11:20-22 kept nagging me. “Then He began to denounce the cities in which most of His miracles were done, because they did not repent. ‘Woe to you, Chorazin! Woe to you, Bethsaida! For if the miracles had occurred in Tyre and Sidon which occurred in you, they would have repented long ago in sackcloth and ashes. Nevertheless I say to you, it will be more tolerable for Tyre and Sidon in the day of judgment than for you.’” Why was Jesus so hard on His own people? Because they knew God and should have recognized the power of His Spirit when it manifested in miracles. But they denied it, called Jesus the carpenter’s son, and shrugged off the message of salvation He intended to send with His miracles.
This post doesn’t really have a final point. I never intended to write on why I believe in the existence of miracles. Like I said earlier, they happen around me all the time, so I know they exist. But the reactions I get from both cessationists and unbelievers seemed too similar to ignore. What do you all think about this? Do you have any stories that can only be explained as miraculous? Do you think God lost interest in surprising people? Let me know.
So I thought to myself, “I want to write about something fun, light. Enough with this heavy stuff for once.” For some reason, I figured miracles might make for an easier post. A breather. Everyone likes to hear about miracles, right? And as stories, they’re a snap to write. “Someone had cancer, people prayed, God healed the person.” Everyone applaud! “A single mom doesn’t have money to feed her kids and prays for provision, then money or an opportunity seemingly materializes out of thin air.” God be praised!
I’ve personally witnessed dozens of testimonies like the ones above. When someone gives a testimony of God’s power moving, God receives the glory. That’s how it’s supposed to work. But I’m going to tell you about a few instances where testimonies of miracles had a different effect.
Since reading 1 Corinthians 2:4-5, I’ve tried to change how I communicate Jesus with others, “my message and my preaching were not in persuasive words of wisdom, but in demonstration of the Spirit and of power, so that your faith would not rest on the wisdom of men, but on the power of God.” Instead of merely rattling off The Romans Road (which I agree is effective in certain situations), I’ve begun to share my testimony of God’s miracles and then offer to pray for people. If God moves (and He often does), then the person would see the power of Jesus for himself. They would have a harder time claiming that I cast a spell over them with “persuasive words of wisdom”. God be praised.
God healed my back of severe scoliosis after a church service in 1997. I mean, it was severe, folks. It’s a miracle I don’t have rods in my back. God has miraculously provided for my needs ever since I moved to Nashville. When people ask about my story, I automatically this stuff. Graham Cooke explained, “Your testimony is not what God once did in your life years ago. Your testimony is who God is in your life all the time.”
One night after an IKAIK concert, these girls invited me to hang out with them at another bar. They probably didn’t expect me to talk about God as much as I did, but that’s what happens when you ask about my life. I tell you about my relationship with Him. After about half an hour, a guy came over to our table and asked, “What are you guys talking about?”
The girl who invited me replied, “He’s talking about how lucky he is.”
“Luck,” I laughed. “I wouldn’t call it that.”
She said, “What would you call it?”
“God’s blessing,” I said.
She immediately responded, “Well I wouldn’t call it that.”
As I wrote out the notes for this post, a guy at work asked what I was writing. When I told him I intended to write about miracles, he asked, “which do you think it is, miracles or chance?”
“I think miracles are a part of God’s rational order,” I said.
“It’s all random chance,” he said.
I started laughing. He asked, “How can you believe in an ordered and reasonable God?”
“For one, I’ve seen Him miraculously answer my prayers.” I told him about how God healed my back. He then, whether on purpose or not, shifted the focus of the discussion. To me, the story of my healing is God’s power displayed. My co-worker’s only argument against it was to claim randomness, which no person in their heart can truly have faith to live by. A cook’s job requires a high degree of precision. If he were to apply his belief in Random Chance on cooking, chaos would burn his buns.
These stories might not surprise you. To be honest, they don’t surprise me, either. 1 Corinthians 1:18 says, “For the message of the cross is foolishness to those who are perishing, but to us who are being saved it is the power of God.” Cornelius Van Til wrote extensively on the problems of explaining the Christian faith to those who don’t know Jesus because they have no context with which to give meaning to facts. I understand that without the Holy Spirit’s revelation, people cannot know God. Even so, I’ll continue to share my testimony, pray for people, and yeah, even reason with them.
My main concern here isn’t for people who don’t claim to know Jesus. I want to know how people in the church can claim to know Jesus but deny the miraculous today. In a piece written by First Fruits of Zion called “The Fingerprints of God”, the author writes, “As believers in a Divine Creator, we must learn to sharpen our sense of wonder to detect the inherent godliness that is infused into every particle of creation.” In one sense, a person can look at the world around them, recognize God’s order in creation, and praise Him for that miracle. Beyond that, though, I believe that God has control over every particle of creation. It’s not that miracles work outside the laws of reality, but rather God in His perfect knowledge of creation can work in ways we are sometimes unable to comprehend.
Did God ever give up this control? If God only does things that will bring glory to Himself, would cessation fit in with His plan? In this life we will experience hardships, pain, and suffering. We will pray to God and we won’t always see the result we expected. Does that mean God has somehow given up His sovereign control over creation? Does it mean that He decided to make the universe a dice game after the Apostles died? Replacing the miraculous with coincidence at any level, I think, would call God’s majesty into question. It allows for something to exist outside of His control.
Now, for the Christian, if you accept that miracles do happen today, what’s stopping you from asking for them? If you’re worried about pulling a Simon from Acts 8, then you’ve already got a good start. Your motives should be to glorify God and advance His kingdom. Are you worried that you might have to defend God if He doesn’t move the way you asked Him to? Well, He’s the one in charge. You don’t own the result of your prayers.
Think about this. Before Jesus sent out His followers in Matthew 10, He said, “As you go, preach, saying, ‘The kingdom of heaven is at hand.’ Heal the sick, raise the dead, cleanse the lepers, cast out demons. Freely you received, freely give.” Hebrews 2:3-4 reiterates Jesus’s pattern with preaching and miracles. The verse I quoted from 1 Corinthians 2 shows Paul and his companions demonstrating God’s miraculous power. In chapter 12, he even promises the gift of performing miracles to those in the Corinthian church.
I know I wanted to keep this light, but the seriousness of Matthew 11:20-22 kept nagging me. “Then He began to denounce the cities in which most of His miracles were done, because they did not repent. ‘Woe to you, Chorazin! Woe to you, Bethsaida! For if the miracles had occurred in Tyre and Sidon which occurred in you, they would have repented long ago in sackcloth and ashes. Nevertheless I say to you, it will be more tolerable for Tyre and Sidon in the day of judgment than for you.’” Why was Jesus so hard on His own people? Because they knew God and should have recognized the power of His Spirit when it manifested in miracles. But they denied it, called Jesus the carpenter’s son, and shrugged off the message of salvation He intended to send with His miracles.
This post doesn’t really have a final point. I never intended to write on why I believe in the existence of miracles. Like I said earlier, they happen around me all the time, so I know they exist. But the reactions I get from both cessationists and unbelievers seemed too similar to ignore. What do you all think about this? Do you have any stories that can only be explained as miraculous? Do you think God lost interest in surprising people? Let me know.
Thursday, May 28, 2009
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.
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.
Friday, May 15, 2009
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.
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.
Saturday, March 7, 2009
Xerox Copies – Considering the Ultimate vs. the Derived.
In the past year, I’ve heard a few pastors and teachers use the phrase “every analogy breaks down”. As a writer and storyteller, I love analogies. It excites me to create a story that holds meaning. Analogies have helped me understand truths about science and mathematics and even theology. But those pastors and teachers were right to say that an analogy only represents the truth so far. In the end, it can only represent a facet.
Many of my essays use analogy to explain the point I hope to make. Some of my friends (Abe, Joe, you know) are really good at taking other points of the analogy and pointing out where any further discussion of the connection between example and truth could result in confusion or incorrect teaching. Thankfully, they can also find other ways in which the analogy truthfully applies. But my point is it would be silly to say that analogies stand on their own as equal to truth.
God is ultimate. He is self-sufficient and depends on nothing outside of Himself. There is nothing in Creation that He did not create. There is nothing outside of His control. Psalm 24:1 says, “The earth is the LORD’S, and all it contains, the world, and those who dwell in it.” Even though He has delegated authority within creation to people (for example Genesis 2:15, Luke 9:1, and the frustrating Romans 13:1), He has in no way given over any control of His creation. In a song ridiculing idols, created things that would try to compete with God for our affections, Psalm 115:3 says, “Our God is in the heavens, He does whatever He pleases.” He has all control to do what He wants. And in the first verse, the psalmist recognizes God’s ultimacy. “Not to us, O LORD, not to us, but to Your name give glory, because of Your lovingkindness, because of Your truth. (Emphasis mine)”
God, in His creativity, thought of everything. This statement shouldn’t be groundbreaking theology. But think about it, if God is the source of all creation, then He is also the source of everything present in creation. I don’t just mean physical matter put together like the best kind of Lego-land. I mean things like creativity itself, or knowledge, or love. His creativity is perfect creativity, His knowledge perfect, His love perfect. Even though we are made in God’s image, our creativity, knowledge, and love are not equal to His. They’re analogous. They’re only pictures.
And so, I’ll use a picture as an analogy. Imagine a breathtaking landscape. Now imagine a vivid photograph of that landscape. Not just a 4x6 point-and-click digital camera kind of photo printed at Walgreen’s. I mean something so well captured and developed that people could easily believe they were looking through a window instead of a framed photo on the wall. Although it is a masterpiece of an analogy, the landscape is real and the photo analogous.
Now if a person were to try understanding the fullness of the landscape, would it be best to go to that location or to look at the greatest photo ever taken of it? Can the photo translate itself back into the landscape? No, because it’s derivative. It truly describes the landscape, but cannot fully define it. If the person looking for understanding were to start with the picture and put the basis of his knowledge on that, it would be only partial knowledge. If he were to try explaining his partial understanding to others, I imagine that would be like him making Xerox copies of the picture to hand out as evidence. But then it’s black and white, dulled by the copy paper. Should people continue trying to make copies to understand the reality of the landscape, taking their Xerox copies and making still more copies, the image would break down. It would deteriorate in quality until only a bleak ghost remained of that glorious picture.
Instead, the man should explore the landscape and encourage others to do so using the picture as a point of reference.
I’ve been thinking about this concept specifically in terms of God’s knowledge and my knowledge because of the post The Importance of Being Right. Recently, I’ve been reading Cornelius Van Til’s The Defense of the Faith. In the beginning of the book, he talks about God as ultimate and creation as derived. When it comes to the knowledge of men, I began to understand that it is only an analogy of God’s perfect and ultimate knowledge. He says, “We are therefore like God so that our knowledge is true and we are unlike God and therefore our knowledge cannot be comprehensive.” And later, “It is true that there must be comprehensive knowledge somewhere if there is to be any true knowledge anywhere but this comprehensive knowledge need not and cannot be in us; it must be in God.”
Only in this context could I understand one of Van Til’s greatest arguments. Man can know true facts about himself and nature, but he cannot truly understand the meaning of those facts unless they have an absolute standard of truth by which to apply them. Because man’s knowledge is only an analogy, and since all analogies break down, it can’t stand alone. It only has meaning when applied to the original. So when two people, one a Christian and the other a non-believer, recognize beauty in nature, they both have recognized something true. Because the Christian has an absolute standard of truth in the Bible where God reveals himself as the ultimate source of beauty and creativity, he is capable of explaining why the flower is beautiful. At best, the non-believer can only say, “Well, it’s beautiful just because.” Or maybe, “Because I think it’s beautiful,” which places the standard of truth inside of himself without explanation or relatable context.
I believe it is important for Christians to realize God’s sovereignty so that we have proper understanding of anything in creation including ourselves. When we look at any facet of creation or any event that occurs within it, we should go back to this foundational understanding: God is ultimately in control.
I also believe it’s important for Christians to recognize that the Bible, while not exhaustive (John 21:25), is completely true. By what would we otherwise give context to our existence? How could we ever know anything truly unless a perfectly true God gave us a perfectly true revelation of Himself? Until Jesus returns, what other standard could we hold fast to? If I didn’t believe that the Bible was God’s perfect word given to us, why would I base my life on it? If it were not so, I may as well say it’s a nice, moral story and continue to base my understanding on myself.
In many ways, understanding God’s ultimacy brings me great joy. Nothing on this earth surprises or frustrates Him. When I don’t understand something that happens in the world, I can know that He is still in control. I can’t be angry or frustrated with him as if I knew better. I can be content to know that God is in heaven, doing what He pleases. He’s full of delight. He is glorious. He is wise. He is loving. And I am a picture of all these things.
Still, to be honest, there are days where I find myself staring at the bleak Xerox wondering if God is good. I’m really only looking at circumstances in a broken world, though. I forget that He is perfect in every way, that He made me in His image (Genesis 1:27) and continues to make me more like Him (2 Corinthians 3:18). That’s like Sistine Chapel restoration or the Replacements records finally getting remastered. God daily shows me more of His awesomeness and beauty and how it translates into every part of creation.
The world looks a lot better from that view.
Many of my essays use analogy to explain the point I hope to make. Some of my friends (Abe, Joe, you know) are really good at taking other points of the analogy and pointing out where any further discussion of the connection between example and truth could result in confusion or incorrect teaching. Thankfully, they can also find other ways in which the analogy truthfully applies. But my point is it would be silly to say that analogies stand on their own as equal to truth.
God is ultimate. He is self-sufficient and depends on nothing outside of Himself. There is nothing in Creation that He did not create. There is nothing outside of His control. Psalm 24:1 says, “The earth is the LORD’S, and all it contains, the world, and those who dwell in it.” Even though He has delegated authority within creation to people (for example Genesis 2:15, Luke 9:1, and the frustrating Romans 13:1), He has in no way given over any control of His creation. In a song ridiculing idols, created things that would try to compete with God for our affections, Psalm 115:3 says, “Our God is in the heavens, He does whatever He pleases.” He has all control to do what He wants. And in the first verse, the psalmist recognizes God’s ultimacy. “Not to us, O LORD, not to us, but to Your name give glory, because of Your lovingkindness, because of Your truth. (Emphasis mine)”
God, in His creativity, thought of everything. This statement shouldn’t be groundbreaking theology. But think about it, if God is the source of all creation, then He is also the source of everything present in creation. I don’t just mean physical matter put together like the best kind of Lego-land. I mean things like creativity itself, or knowledge, or love. His creativity is perfect creativity, His knowledge perfect, His love perfect. Even though we are made in God’s image, our creativity, knowledge, and love are not equal to His. They’re analogous. They’re only pictures.
And so, I’ll use a picture as an analogy. Imagine a breathtaking landscape. Now imagine a vivid photograph of that landscape. Not just a 4x6 point-and-click digital camera kind of photo printed at Walgreen’s. I mean something so well captured and developed that people could easily believe they were looking through a window instead of a framed photo on the wall. Although it is a masterpiece of an analogy, the landscape is real and the photo analogous.
Now if a person were to try understanding the fullness of the landscape, would it be best to go to that location or to look at the greatest photo ever taken of it? Can the photo translate itself back into the landscape? No, because it’s derivative. It truly describes the landscape, but cannot fully define it. If the person looking for understanding were to start with the picture and put the basis of his knowledge on that, it would be only partial knowledge. If he were to try explaining his partial understanding to others, I imagine that would be like him making Xerox copies of the picture to hand out as evidence. But then it’s black and white, dulled by the copy paper. Should people continue trying to make copies to understand the reality of the landscape, taking their Xerox copies and making still more copies, the image would break down. It would deteriorate in quality until only a bleak ghost remained of that glorious picture.
Instead, the man should explore the landscape and encourage others to do so using the picture as a point of reference.
I’ve been thinking about this concept specifically in terms of God’s knowledge and my knowledge because of the post The Importance of Being Right. Recently, I’ve been reading Cornelius Van Til’s The Defense of the Faith. In the beginning of the book, he talks about God as ultimate and creation as derived. When it comes to the knowledge of men, I began to understand that it is only an analogy of God’s perfect and ultimate knowledge. He says, “We are therefore like God so that our knowledge is true and we are unlike God and therefore our knowledge cannot be comprehensive.” And later, “It is true that there must be comprehensive knowledge somewhere if there is to be any true knowledge anywhere but this comprehensive knowledge need not and cannot be in us; it must be in God.”
Only in this context could I understand one of Van Til’s greatest arguments. Man can know true facts about himself and nature, but he cannot truly understand the meaning of those facts unless they have an absolute standard of truth by which to apply them. Because man’s knowledge is only an analogy, and since all analogies break down, it can’t stand alone. It only has meaning when applied to the original. So when two people, one a Christian and the other a non-believer, recognize beauty in nature, they both have recognized something true. Because the Christian has an absolute standard of truth in the Bible where God reveals himself as the ultimate source of beauty and creativity, he is capable of explaining why the flower is beautiful. At best, the non-believer can only say, “Well, it’s beautiful just because.” Or maybe, “Because I think it’s beautiful,” which places the standard of truth inside of himself without explanation or relatable context.
I believe it is important for Christians to realize God’s sovereignty so that we have proper understanding of anything in creation including ourselves. When we look at any facet of creation or any event that occurs within it, we should go back to this foundational understanding: God is ultimately in control.
I also believe it’s important for Christians to recognize that the Bible, while not exhaustive (John 21:25), is completely true. By what would we otherwise give context to our existence? How could we ever know anything truly unless a perfectly true God gave us a perfectly true revelation of Himself? Until Jesus returns, what other standard could we hold fast to? If I didn’t believe that the Bible was God’s perfect word given to us, why would I base my life on it? If it were not so, I may as well say it’s a nice, moral story and continue to base my understanding on myself.
In many ways, understanding God’s ultimacy brings me great joy. Nothing on this earth surprises or frustrates Him. When I don’t understand something that happens in the world, I can know that He is still in control. I can’t be angry or frustrated with him as if I knew better. I can be content to know that God is in heaven, doing what He pleases. He’s full of delight. He is glorious. He is wise. He is loving. And I am a picture of all these things.
Still, to be honest, there are days where I find myself staring at the bleak Xerox wondering if God is good. I’m really only looking at circumstances in a broken world, though. I forget that He is perfect in every way, that He made me in His image (Genesis 1:27) and continues to make me more like Him (2 Corinthians 3:18). That’s like Sistine Chapel restoration or the Replacements records finally getting remastered. God daily shows me more of His awesomeness and beauty and how it translates into every part of creation.
The world looks a lot better from that view.
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