I was reading in Zechariah today and it has made me so excited about the day of the Lord, where He will destroy the wicked and all wickedness, and bring perfect restoration and fullness to His people. Man, how I yearn for that day! I started reading from ch. 9 to the end, and it just makes me so hopeful in the perfect promise God has made to bring eternal renewal to those who believe in His Son for salvation, where He cleanse us once and for all from all sin, that will be rid of that which temporarily bears down on us now. We will be free sin! After reading Zechariah, I then flipped over to Revelation 22 where the river of the water of life is coming out of the new Jerusalem and how all things will be perfect! What an amazing hope we have in Christ, that one day He make all things new, where there will be no more destruction, war, death, suffering, famine, chaos, drout, financial woes, pain, strife, tears, persecution, corruption, futility! It just makes me want to push on to know Christ more and make Him known to everyone I know that we might all be saved from His wrath. On that day, all the things wrong with this world will be wiped away and all things will be made new; a place where there will be no more need for the light of the sun and stars, but God Himself will be our light, and so much more infinitely beautiful and glorious! How I love You, great and mighty King, You are faithful through the ages, You never change!
Category: Theology Page 58 of 67
If Christ provides only a part of our salvation, leaving us to provide the rest, then we are still hopeless under the load of sin. For no matter how small the gap which must be bridged before salvation can be attained, the awakened conscience sees clearly that our wretched attempt at goodness is insufficient even to bridge that gap. The guilty soul enters again into the hopeless reckoning with God, to determine whether we have really done our part. And thus we groan again under the old bondage of the law. Such an attempt to piece out the work of Christ by our own merit, Paul saw clearly, is the very essence of unbelief; Christ will do everything or nothing, and the only hope is to throw ourselves unreservedly on His mercy and trust Him for all.
J. Gresham Machen in Christianity and Liberalism, Chapter 2, p.24-25 (1923)
Therefore I intend always to remind you of these qualities, though you know them and are established in the truth that you have. I think it right, as long as I am in this body, to stir you up by way of reminder, since I know that the putting off of my body will be soon, as our Lord Jesus Christ made clear to me. And I will make every effort so that after my departure you may be able at any time to recall these things.
>2 Peter 1:12-15
This is now the second letter that I am writing to you, beloved. In both of them I am stirring up your sincere mind by way of reminder.
> 2 Peter 3:1
Man naturally has no inclination or will to have anything to do with God. Man is a rebel against God by nature. Once a natural, sinful, wicked man is converted by God’s grace through the cross of Christ, there are then within the man two competing wills, one that wills to sin still, and the other which wills to have Christ as his all. Living in a day to day reality where the winds of the world, the grind of our daily lives, or sin, wickedness, and all forms of unrighteousness (some our own, some the sin of others) all comes over us like constant waves in an ocean. Nothing can stop the movement of the water that overwhelms us, almost to the point of drowning. If you do not make an effort to stay above the waves, you will indeed be carried away by them and covered up.
As believers, we have been called out of the domain of darkness and transferred to the kingdom of God’s beloved Son. Because the waves of life come over us constantly, if we neglect time in His word (actually studying them and ever learning them), in prayer, and fellowship with other believers, we will surely forget all of God’s grace’s to us in Christ and inevitably fall back into the sin which so easily entangles us, and we thus become miserable. What I love about the verse above is that it’s such a great illustration of genuine fellowship. “I am stirring up your sincere mind by way of reminder.” Peter’s intent was to not tell them anything they did not already know, but to give them a reiteration of those Gospel-truths that are the source of their life in Christ. Peter knew that the minds of his readers were inclined naturally toward evil, that worldliness and loathsome sin is constantly washing over their souls, like all men. And so, in love, he reminds them of those truths that are so precious to all of God’s people, that Christ, the King, has purchased their souls with His own blood and is now alive in heaven reigning over all things. Peter’s intent was to prod them on in their faith so as to give them encouragement that whatever evil befalls them, they are rich in Christ.
The only reason I bring this up is because there are many times I have personally had this thought in dealing with a fellow brother in Christ (attempting to stir them up “by way of reminder”), and when I attempt to remind them of core truths they may be forgetting in the midst of their despairing, they are offended and think I think they don’t know those things at all. That’s not the point. I need reminders of these truths on a constant basis, and the only reason I reiterate them to them is for encouragement. We all need to remind ourselves and our brothers and sisters in Christ of Gospel-truths over and over again, on a moment by moment basis because we are all so prone to falling into sin and forgetting the grace given us in Christ. I believe Peter has left a great example for us here, in that his main goal was to prod his fellow brothers on to Christ, that they may be full in Him, treasuring Him, and that they may not fall by the way side in sin.
As believers in the Son of God, who purchased us with His own precious blood on the cross, who are we to become proud or boastful in anything we ever do? “All things are from Him and to Him and for Him,” to His glory. “What have you that you did not receive?” The point of the Christian life is not so much that we merely get blessed by God and then move on with our lives, that we just store up and receive blessings. No, the point of the Christian life is that we are so caught up in God, who He is, what He’s done in Christ, and giving glory to Him for all of it, that our lives are radically changed to love Him more, in word and deed, to the point of selflessly pouring ourselves out for others to bring them into the kingdom of God.
The Christian life is forgetting about yourself, being so caught up in and awestruck by the power, might, love, justice, and mercy of God toward you and I, wicked sinners, and by the power of the Spirit in the regeneration of our souls, living a life that reflects the work He’s done in us to give us the knowledge of Himself and His worth. The Christian life is about finding your ultimate joy, ultimate satisfaction, finding your reason for being, in the person and work of Jesus Christ, every single day. And in finding all of these things in Christ, we can’t help but want others to know of His value, telling them about what we’ve “seen and heard,” so much to the point that we should be willing to give our lives to that end!
“He must increase, but I must decrease.” This is the Christian life. It is by God’s power through the cross that we come to Him, are changed by Him; then we see that we are nothing, that even the best of us (like Isaiah 6) are morally bankrupt compared to Him; and that He is everything, gave up everything on our behalf in order that He should be our portion forever. It is about getting out of the way of God’s glory, participating in giving it to Him, and spreading the knowledge of His glory to all people, by preaching the Gospel loud and clear, without fear. The Christian life is about loving God, not just in theory, but in reality, because we’ve been so radically changed by the work of Christ.
How can we not love Him with our lives, self-sacrificially, and fall on our faces with tears of joy at the work Christ did on our behalf on the cross? What kind of mercy is this, that God Himself would take upon flesh and purchase people for Himself from every tribe, tongue, and nation? It’s simply astonishing. The Christians’ delight is not in the blessings He gives to His people, or merely the fact that He’s rescued from His fury against sinners, but our delight is in God Himself, the ultimate blessing. There is no joy or blessing greater, because He’s the highest of all, the one from which all joys and satisfactions were thought up!
It’s purely the grace of God that we have sustained the freedom we have for 230 years. Praise God for His grace that moved the founders of this nation to formulate the doctrines they did, that have proved to be a great blessing to all of us. And praise God for giving soldiers the will to fight to the death for that freedom. And praise God for the fact that at the moment we aren’t persecuted and can preach the Gospel without fear of being beaten or tortured. Praise God for His grace in Christ that He purchased the freedom of souls from the reign and bondage of sin. Praise God for His grace through the blood of Christ!
“For the time is coming when people will not endure sound teaching, but having itching ears they will accumulate for themselves teachers to suit their own passions, and will turn away from listening to the truth and wander off into myths.”
– 2 Timothy 4:3-4
Man has that time come. It’s been around for quite a while (mainly since the birth of the church), but it seems to be getting worse and worse in the world, and particularly in Western Christianity. “Now the Spirit expressly says that in later times some will depart from the faith by devoting themselves to deceitful spirits and teachings of demons” (1 Timothy 4:1). What are these teachings of demons? They are teachings that take the truth and distort it just enough to appear as the truth to unsuspecting people, but really they are lies spawned by Satan to blind people from the truth of the Gospel and rather lead people straight to hell with him. Just as Satan lied to Eve in the garden, so also he lies to people by taking that which is true in Scripture and distoring it to lead them astray.
Liberal theology is taking hold in the church in places where the solid truth of the Word of God was once proclaimed loud and clear (PCUSA churches, many Methodist churches – though not all, Discpiles of Christ, some Episcopalian/Anglican churches, and others). Liberal theology essentially denies the inerrant authority of Scripture (believing them to be helpful but not authoritative), denies the resurrection, denies his justice against sin, as well as the omniscience of God, amongst many other things. It’s essentially an abandonment of the objective truths about God revealed in Scripture that is replaced by experiential feelings. Many people have set aside the inerrancy of the Scriptures to do this very thing: “accumulate for themselves teachers to suit their own passions, and [they have turned] away from listening to the truth and [have wandered] off into myths.”
If we do not use the inerrantly authoritative Scriptures as our rule of life and faith, then we will inevitably wander off into myths, man-made intellectual thoughts, and the doctrines of demons. But we must preach the whole truth from Scripture, not just parts of it that sit well with our sinful souls. God’s truth is a hard reality, not because there is anything wrong with Him, but because everything is wrong with us. We have twisted, denied, stomped on, rejected the truth about God, and exchanged it for a lie. Yes God is love. But He is also just and righteous. We are sinners. Sin, when preached using Biblical terminology, is a hard reality. Predestination, damnation, wrath, justice; these are hard truths that don’t sit well with us sinners! But it’s truth from His Word. We must return to the Scriptures though and know them through and through, with all of their hard edges in order that we will live in the reality of who God actually is.
Many within the visible church have set aside the Scriptures as being the written revelation of God altogether, or they have twisted the Scriptures to fit what they want to believe concerning God and their human nature, living out existentialism (that what they individually perceive as reality is what is true). What we now have in many churches are unbelieving pastors teaching unbelieving people. One such church nearby is University Christian Church. Many pastors will just preach on Scriptures (or not preach from Scripture at all) that make people feel good about themselves and ignore the other half of the Scriptures chock full of harsh, hard warnings (such as in James and Hebrews and pretty much all of Jesus’ difficult statements). These same pastors are simply gutting the contents of Scripture (such as James, Romans, Hebrews) to fit a light-hearted, feel-good message that doesn’t preach the word of God in its entirety and challenge people to turn from sin and believe in Christ. They will take scripture out of context in order to fit their own agenda and it’s disgusting.
It is a lie of the world that says you find significance and worth in making much of yourself. And yet this is what many churches are resorting to, and it couldn’t be further from the truth of the Scriptures. There is no truth in us. There is no reality that we can define for ourselves. If that were so, we would be God. But God defines reality, not us. Below I’ve compiled a list of some of these modern day teachings that all of us would do well to be on our guard against. We must return to sound teaching or else forfeit the glory of God in the proclaimation of the Gospel to all people from Scripture.
Open Theism
Liberal Theology
Legalism and Antinomianism
Post-Modernism
Oneness Pentecostal
Universalism
“…the first effect of the power of God in the heart in regeneration is to give the heart a Divine taste or sense; to cause it to have a relish of the loveliness and sweetness of the supreme excellency of the Divine nature.”
– Jonathan Edwards
“Can we possibly, without utter absurdity, maintain that there first existed in anyone the good virtue of a good will, to entitle him to the removal of his heart of stone? How can we say this, when all the time this heart of stone itself signifies precisely a will of the hardest kind, a will that is absolutely inflexible against God? For if a good will comes first, there is obviously no longer a heart of stone.”
– Augustine
“For we are now speaking of the desire for goodness. If they want to say that this begins from ourselves and is then perfected by God, let them see how they can answer the apostle when he says, ‘Not that we are sufficient of ourselves to claim anything as coming from us, but our sufficiency is from God’ (2 Cor. 3:5)”
– Augustine
“Indeed the Word of God is like the sun, shining upon all those to whom it is proclaimed, but with no effect among the blind. Now, all of us are blind by nature in this respect… Accordingly, it cannot penetrate into our minds unless the Spirit, as the inner teacher, through his illumination makes entry for it.”
– Calvin’s Institutes 3.2.34
“Faith in the living God and his Son Jesus Christ is always the result of the new birth, and can never exist except in the regenerate. Whoever has faith is a saved man.”
– C.H. Spurgeon
“We are dependent on God, not only for redemption itself but for our faith in the Redeemer; not only for the gift of His Son but for the Holy Ghost for our conversion.”
– Jonathan Edwards
“For many deceivers have gone out into the world, those who do not confess the coming of Jesus Christ in the flesh. Such a one is the deceiver and the antichrist.” – 2 John 7
It’s interesting today how so many unbelievers will cite gnostic gospels to try and make their case against Christianity, and yet within the scriptures themselves, and more specifically coming from the letter of 2 John to “the elect lady and her children” (2 John 1), this idea of gnosticism was fought against from the very foundation of Christianity, just a few years after Christ had ascended back into heaven. Quoting from gnostic gospels is just futile because the problem was already addressed before the gnostic gospels were even written, specifically in the verse I quoted above (amongst other places in John’s letters). If people are going to attempt to thwart Christianity, they are going to have to find something significant within the scriptures themselves that can prove their case. And yet men have tried for centuries to find something that can turn Christianity on its head, and yet nothing has been found. They will need to find something significant with the Apostle’s themselves or Jesus, and it simply cannot be found. People will always try and twist scriptures, or make weak cases based on either false or shady evidence that can easily be disproved. People have thought to have made breakthroughs in their attempts disprove Christianity, and the will either get frustrated and quit, make false claims against it that are later disproven, or they will believe in Christ. Christianity gives you no room to sit on the fence concerning it. Either the claims Christ made are absolutely true, or they are totally false and our whole confession is a fraud. But if you’re going to try and bring Christianity down, please use something other than the gnostic gospels, because they have already been defended against in the scriptures themselves.
“Do you not know that you are God’s temple and that God’s Spirit dwells in you?”
> 1 Corinthians 3:16
Though Paul was rebuking the Corinthians for succumbing to fleshly, worldly, sinful desires, I just love the point he makes because I believe we can all forget this truth during the course of each day: The Spirit of God now dwells in those who have believed in Christ for salvation. In the Old Testament, God’s Spirit dwelled within the temple made by hands, and no one could go into the Holy Place without the shedding of blood; and even then, the High Priest could only go in once a year into the Most Holy Place to make atonement for the sins of the people. But now, how wondrous it is indeed that when Christ offered Himself up in obedience to the Father by submitting Himself to the cross, He opened the way for the Spirit of God to indwell the hearts of those who believe in Him! We are temples of the living God! When Christ was crucified for sinners, the vail of the temple separating the Holy Place from the Most Holy Place was torn in two, displaying that the Holy Spirit no longer resided there, but would reside in the hearts of His people. And how wonderful it is, that the same Spirit that dwelled within the temple, where everything had to be ceremonially done in a certain way or else the priests would die, is the same Spirit that now dwells within His people, those who have believed in Christ for salvation! It took an act of God alone, exhibited through the cross of Christ by the shedding of His blood, to make this possible, that the Spirit of God Himself would indwell sinners. The Spirit within us, residing there as a result of Christ’s work, is our strength and supplies all that we need. How awesome and powerful is God!? If He can do this and He resides in us, why should we fear, why do we despair? Christ has conquered that which had a hold on us, sin, death, hell and Satan! It is finished. May we all rest in the knowledge of this truth from scripture, and receive the deep soul rest we all need so desperately. He is the great Satisfier and Comforter. There are none like Him. If God is for us, who can be against us?
Drinking coffee cuts alcohol’s harmful effects – MSNBC.com
Apparently drinking coffee prevents cirrhosis of the liver. I found a quote interesting in this article though that a doctor said concerning those who drink heavily and are in danger of cirrhosis. “The way to avoid getting ill is not to drink a lot of coffee, but to cut down on the drinking” of alcohol, he said. That’s very good logic, is it not? Makes sense. Why is it when the topic of sex is brought up though, this same logic doesn’t apply any longer? Logic is simply thrown out of the window!
Aside from the Biblical moral argument for sex staying only within the confines of marriage, the best way to keep from getting some sexually-transmitted disease(s), becoming pregnant (possibly ruining your prospects for a future), or for that matter, inevitably bringing levels of emotions into a relationship you are not ready to be committed to, is to just not have sex until you are married, right? Well, for some reason, the corrupt, sinful human mind begs to differ. It says, “Well, you just can’t apply the same logic here, because, well, it’s just a totally different thing.” But is it really? Drinking is not necessarily a bad thing, when handled correctly, when it’s not in excess, when you have one or two glasses with dinner. But when it’s taken to an extreme, into alcoholism, it causes cirrhosis of the liver. Too much of anything is bad for a person. Too much food results in obesity, too much water thins out your blood, too much medicine will … you get the idea, fill in the blank.
God Himself created, designed sex and it is indeed a great thing. I’m in no way saying that sex is bad and should be limited. Non-Christians seem to think that’s what Christian’s think. This is just not true. Sex an incredibly wonderful gift from God to man! But God designed it in such a way so that it is only a great thing in the confines of where it was meant to take place: within marriage alone. Just as food and water and alcohol have limitations on them that if carried over past their respective boundaries result in undesired effects, so also, sex, when taken outside of the context of marriage and it’s boundary, will inevitably result in self-destruction of the soul. God doesn’t give us rules, laws, and regulations to make us miserable. He gives us these things for our own good. I mean He’s God! Don’t you think He knows what’s best for His creation?
Only man can take a blessing from God, turn it into an idol (setting it up as God) and distort it to bring about self-destruction and condemnation upon himself. However, it’s inevitable that with the human condition as deteriorated as it is because of sin, man will never see it as God sees it, unless He changes hearts and gives them divine understanding. The world simply says, “Do what feels good to you, that’s all that matters. Sex doesn’t hurt anyone else, it’s your own business.” Man shakes his fist at abstinence, because that is constraining his ability to do whatever he wants. Man wants the freedom God has and will fight to the death to make this freedom his own. This is why abstinence is just not an answer to the world, because man wants to be God. He wants to do “what feels right” in his own eyes. But just because man thinks it’s okay in his mind, doesn’t mean that the consequences won’t be devastating to his soul.
If I have an equation (just for arguments sake, 2 + x = 4) that determines the correct course of a rocket blasting off into space, and I know it equals 4, but have one unknown variable I need to figure out; but I want x to be whatever I want it to be because I don’t want to be limited to the equation; someone tells me (because apparently I’m too dumb to know) I need to make x = 2 for the equation to work; and let’s say I make x = 3; what does that actually do to the end result? It would actually force the answer to be 5 instead of 4, and will cause the rocket to go off course. God is absolute reality, He is absolute truth. He defines what’s right and wrong. He’s revealed these things to us in scripture. Yet man turns from these divine definitions and pursues what he wants. And the end result is devastating, and ultimately it leads man straight to hell.
And so it would seem logical for man to just do what God says, submit to His sovereign rule and authority; but man is illogical and sins, turns away from God. Man takes the things God says to do and doesn’t do them, but then takes the things God says not to do and does them instead! And this is every single person on the earth. But Christ came in order to bring us back into the reality of the defined reality God has created. He came and took the punishment that was ours for our wrong-doing and offered Himself up on the cross, that if you believe in Him you will be saved from the depths of God’s just wrath for your illogical wrong-doing.