A Savior, Christ the Lord

"For unto you is born this day in the city of David a Saviour, which is Christ the Lord"

- Luke 2:11

    There are several things about the birth of Christ that strike the modern reader as peculiar. One is the fact that He was born in extremely humble circumstances, to a poor family, in a stable, and laid in a manger. And this for the Son of God, the Savior of the world! And then there was the announcement to the shepherds. One would have thought that for an event of this magnitude that a press conference in Jerusalem, or even in Rome, would have been in order. But instead the announcement was made to a humble band of shepherds out grazing their flocks in the open field.
    What the angel told the shepherds was this: "For unto you is born this day in the city of David a Saviour, which is Christ the Lord" (Luke 2:11). What did the shepherds understand by this? Undoubtedly they would have understood it in a Jewish context. Unfortunately our translation here is a little misleading. The King James Version translates the last clause of verse 10 as "which shall be to all people," universalizing the message, making it applicable to the entire human race. The Greek, however, has a definite article, and so it should be translated "that will be for all the people" (cf. NASV, ESV, NIV), i.e., referring evidently to one specific nation or people, viz., the nation of Israel. Moreover, when we see the word "Christ," we are likely to think that it is a last name, like "Jones" or "Smith," when in reality it is a title. It is the Greek form for "Messiah" or "anointed One." Moreover, the angel mentioned "the city of David" as the place of birth. The Old Testament prophet Micah had predicted that the Messiah would come from Bethlehem, David's home town (Mic. 5:2). David, in turn, was the ancestor of Judah's royal line. Thus the angel was announcing the birth of Israel's long-awaited Messiah, Who would deliver the nation from oppression and usher in an age of peace.
    But for those of us who are not Jewish by birth or ancestry there is a broader significance here as well. The reign of the Messiah will affect the entire world. It will be a time of perfect peace and righteousness. But how will that come about? What we have today is a world full of exploitation and violence, and all of this can be traced back to a fundamental defect of human nature. Obviously something is going to have to change.
    There are two aspects to this problem. First there is the problem of our guilt before God. If God is just and holy, He must punish sin. But we are all sinners, and have already committed numerous sins in the past. If we are made to pay for those sins we are doomed. But in order for God to forgive those sins some sort of atonement must be made, and this is what Christ accomplished on the cross.
    The second aspect of the problem is primarily psychological. We sin because we are born with a human nature that is predisposed to sin. One older woman of our acquaintance put it this way: "I have been a mother and now I am a grandmother, and I have never yet had to teach a child how to steal cookies!" Stealing comes naturally, and parents have to teach their children not to steal. Unfortunately lots of other things come naturally, too – lying, cheating, fighting, gossiping, and all the rest. But somehow that must all change if we are ever to enter the Messianic kingdom.
    Salvation, then, also involves an inward change, and this is largely accomplished through the work of the third Person of the Trinity, the Holy Spirit. This work begins with the new birth, and continues through the life-long process of sanctification.
    As human beings we lead a profoundly dysfunctional existence. The birth of the Savior in Bethlehem 2,000 years ago promises to change all that. It was the first ray of hope in the dark night of sin and misery. The long war is by no means over, but the decisive victory has already been won.

Unsaved Christians

  

Parmigianino:The Conversion of Paul

There is no question but that the church today is but a pale shadow of its former self. Long gone are the days of revival, when preaching was powerful, when worship was lively and heartfelt, and multitudes pressed into the kingdom of heaven with tears of repentance. Today the sermons are dull and flat, the congregations half-asleep. We are smug, complacent, and spiritually sound asleep. And worst of all, we are so used to this dull routine that we can scarcely imagine that there was ever anything else. In the words of the apostle, we have a "form of godliness" but deny "its power" (II Tim. 3:5). What has gone wrong?
    There are several causes of our predicament. First of all we have a professional clergy that tends to look at ministry as a career. Pastors tend to measure their success in terms of attendance and budgets. Their aim tends to be making the organization as a whole appear successful, and they focus on numerical growth instead of spiritual growth.
    Compounding the problem is the fact that many churches are working with a type of theology (certain forms of Dispensationalism) that downplays the moral law and holds that it is possible to accept Jesus as Savior and not as Lord. This, coupled with the natural reluctance of most pastors to cause offence, means that we rarely hear sermons about the law of God, about sin and repentance, or about heaven and hell.
    What typically passes for "evangelism," then, is this: the evangelist is anxious to press people to make "decisions" on the spot. Seekers are asked to repeat a "sinner's prayer," and then they are declared to be "saved." Theoretically, if the prayer is said sincerely the person really would be saved. But what happens all too often in this scenario is that there is very little real conviction of sin. The person merely gives mental assent to the idea that "I am a sinner," but often there is a kind of mental reservation. In reality the person being "saved" is comparing himself to everyone else he knows, and really does not think that he is such a bad person. Thus when he says "I acknowledge that I am a sinner" what he is acknowledging is that as a human being he has his share of faults, but to his way of thinking this is more or less normal, and the offenses are fairly trivial. He really does not see himself as a guilty sinner under the wrath of God. He says the prayer, then, as a kind of ritualistic formula to take care of a technical difficulty. There is no real conviction of sin and hence little real repentance.
    Our new "convert" is then baptized and joins the church. But he tends to think of the church primarily as a social organization with its own standards and entrance requirements. The chief function of the church is to put on a program on Sunday morning. The pastor carefully organizes the whole thing; the members contribute financially, and hopefully everything is pulled off without a hitch. The members sits quietly in the pews, listening passively to the "special music" and the "message," which is usually a comforting homily that is neither especially profound nor inspiring. At the end of the "service" the congregation leaves the building self-satisfied. They return to their houses and live out their lives during the rest of the week engaged in a variety secular pursuits. They go through life making pragmatic decisions based on their own sense of self-interest.
    What is missing in this whole exercise is any real sense of the divine or eternal. The whole thing consists in externals. During the week the "Christian" is likely to give scarcely any thought at all to God, to prayer, or to holiness.
    If the church is fairly conservative and tries to maintain some standards of conduct, the "Christian" will likely begin to chafe under the restrictions. Deep inside he wants to be free to just be himself; he wants to be free from external constraint. He begins to resent the idea of having to meet someone else's expectations. He begins complaining about "legalism" and "judgmental church members" – "Fundies" who take the Bible literally. He may eventually become weary of the whole thing and just walk away, never to return.
    In most cases the underlying cause of all of this is that the person was never really converted in the first place. If we may use a paradoxical form of expression, he is an "unsaved Christian," which is to say that he is not a real Christian at all. He never really repented, and he was never really born again. Inwardly he is still very much the same as people outside of the church, and he has the psychology of an unconverted person. His affections are on the things of this world. He mostly pursues his own self-interest. There is no interest in spiritual matters, no real desire to please God. If he has any inkling of what the Bible actually says he will try to find a way either to discredit it or at least a reason not to take it seriously. Church, to him, was never anything more than a sociological phenomenon, but it is a phenomenon that is increasingly making him feel uncomfortable.
    What is easy for us to forget in our spiritual stupor is what is at stake in all of this, viz., eternity itself. We were created by God – we would not even exist at all if it were not for Him. Thus every day we refuse to acknowledge Him and refuse to submit to His will is a day lived in open defiance of His authority. Someday we will have to stand before Him and receive His just sentence on our lives. Our church membership will do us no good if in fact we are not really saved. God looks at our hearts, not the church membership rolls.
    It is incumbent upon each and every one of us to examine himself. "Examine yourselves as to whether you are in the faith. Test yourselves. Do you not know yourselves, that Jesus Christ is in you? – unless indeed you are disqualified" (II Cor. 13:5; NKJV). We cannot afford to deceive ourselves on this point. God will be the final Judge. Be sure that you are right with Him!

Related articles:
What Must I Do to Be Saved? 
What is Saving Faith? 
Born Again! 
Misunderstanding the New Birth 
What Is "A Personal Relationship with Jesus"? 

Rob Bell’s Problem with John 3:16

Review:
Love Wins: A Book About Heaven, Hell,
    and the Fate of Every Person Who Ever Lived
Rob Bell
HarperOne, 2011
198 pp; pb.

 
    Rob Bell has always been an innovator. He began questioning the traditional way of doing church during his seminary days at Fuller Theological Seminary, and in preaching class he was always looking for new and different ways of communicating the message. He eventually became the founding pastor of Mars Hill Bible Church in Grandville, MI. By 2011 the church was getting between 8,000 and 10,000 in attendance on Sundays, and Time Magazine named him as one of the 100 most influential people in the world. Love Wins is his fifth book.

Rob Bell at the Time 100 gala

    And what a controversial book it is! Mr. Bell pretty much rejects the orthodox understanding of the gospel, arguing that both hell and the atonement are metaphors.
    Mr. Bell begins his book by quoting John 3:16:
            "That's the story,
             'For God so loved the world . . .'
             That's why Jesus came.
             That's his message.
             That's where the life is found." (p. vii).
He then goes on to say that the orthodox view that some go to heaven and others go to hell is "misguided and toxic and ultimately subverts the contagious spread of Jesus' message of love, peace, forgiveness, and joy that our world desperately needs to hear" (p. viii). He emphatically denies the idea of eternal punishment. He says that God loves us unconditionally, and says that
            "Our trusting,
             our change of heart,
             our believing God's version of our story
             doesn't bring it into existence,
             make it happen, or create it." (p. 188).
But what really was Jesus' message? Significantly Mr. Bell did not quote the second half of that most famous verse: "For God so loved the world that He gave His only begotten Son, that whoever believes in Him should not perish but have everlasting life" (NKJV). The verse, in fact, says something quite different from what Mr. Bell would have us to believe.
    The verse does, of course, state that God loves the world. But how does God express that love? By giving His only begotten Son. And why did He do that? So that we "should not perish but have everlasting life," a reference back to Daniel 12:2. And what must we do in order to receive "everlasting life"? We must "believe in Him."
    The context of the verse makes its meaning clear. The world is under "condemnation" because "the light has come into the world, and men loved darkness, and men loved darkness rather than light, because their deeds were evil. For everyone practicing evil hates the light and does not come to the light, lest their deeds should be exposed" (vv. 19,20). As a result, "he who does not believe the Son shall not see life, but the wrath of God abides on him" (v. 36). In other words, God is most definitely angry with us because of our sin and rebellion, and that is why we need an atonement, which God Himself provided in His Son, Who was "lifted up" (v. 14) – and allusion to the crucifixion. And thus the necessary precondition for salvation is clear: Christ is the Savior; we must believe on Him.
    Mr. Bell, in developing his theory of universal love and salvation, passes over in silence a great deal of what he Bible says on the subject. He chose not to discuss the holiness of God, the justice of God, or the wrath of God. He does not mention the last judgment. Hell and the atonement, as we have seen, he treats as metaphors. And he nowhere does he answer the question of what happens to people when they die.
    For all practical purposes Mr. Bell is a theological liberal with a repackaged version of "the Fatherhood of God and the brotherhood of man." And his theology contains the fatal weakness of all liberal theology. By cherry picking texts of scripture and treating others as metaphor, he is, in effect, superimposing on the Bible his own perceived notions about God. But in the end all he has to show for his efforts is a theology he made up himself. In the final analysis it is nothing but an exercise in self-delusion.
    When it comes to the questions of life after death, of heaven and hell and the way of salvation, we are completely dependent upon what God has told us in His Word. We have no other avenue of knowledge about these things. The warnings of Scripture need to be taken seriously, for they come from God Himself. We ignore them at our own peril. We need to look at all that the Bible says on the subject, and not just cherry-pick the ones that suit our fancies. Mr. Bell can do better than that!

Related articles:
The Problem with Liberal Theology 
Letter to a Unitarian Minster 

The Real Issue in the Calvinist Debate

It is easy, in the midst of a theological debate, to lose sight of the real issue at stake. We state our position, we attack our opponent's position, we marshal the proof texts pro- and con. Yet in the end the issue is not which set of theologians from the past was right and which was wrong. Nor is the issue which abstract intellectual system is correct and which is incorrect. The real issue is our relationship with God.
    

John Calvin

John Calvin devoted his life and his considerable skill to the study of Scripture, and he probably understood it just about as well as any man in history. On the whole he was a far better theologian than most of his critics. Yet in the end he was a fallible human being much like the rest of us.
    Ultimately it is all about God Himself. God wants us to love Him with all of our hearts, to fear Him, to trust in Him, and to obey Him. He warns us repeatedly against trusting in our own devices, and wants us instead to rely firmly on Him. He calls us to a life of prayer and holiness. Yes, God created us to be morally responsible human beings and He holds us accountable for our actions. Yet this in no way changes the fundamental relationship between us: He is God, and we are not. He is the Creator; we are the creatures. He is infinite, eternal, and self-existent; we are mere creatures of the dust. He is absolutely holy; we are stained and polluted with sin. To Him we owe everything; in ourselves we are nothing. And everything we do, we do in the strength which He supplies, and we do this to His honor and glory, not our own. "For of Him and through Him and to Him are all things, to Whom be the glory forever. Amen" (Rom. 11:36: NKJV).
    Salvation is a matter of God saving us. We do not pull ourselves up by our own bootstraps. Rather, God's work of salvation should lead us to bow before Him in wonder and adoration. God wants our hearts and our minds, and will satisfied with nothing less.
    In short, it is the honor and glory of God which is at issue here. Does our theology lead us to Him?

Is It Worth It?

   

Paul departs for Jerusalem

 As we have seen, a personal relationship with Jesus comes with certain costs attached to it. "If anyone desires to come after Me, let him deny himself, and take up his cross and follow Me" (Matt. 16:24; NKJV). All of which raises the question, is it worth it? What is the point of self-denial?
    Few Christians have suffered more for their faith than did the apostle Paul. In one place he described his experience this way: ". . . in labors more abundant, in stripes above measure, in prisons more frequently, in deaths often. From the Jews three times I received forty stripes minus one. Three times I was beaten with rods; once I was stoned; three times I was shipwrecked; a night and a day I have been in the deep; in journeys often, in perils of waters, in perils of robbers, in perils of my own countrymen, in perils of Gentiles, in perils of the city, in perils in the wilderness, in perils of the sea, in perils among false brethren; in weakness and toil, in sleeplessness often, in hunger and thirst, in fastings often, in cold and nakedness – besides the other things, what comes upon me daily: my deep concern for all the churches" (II Cor. 11:23-28).
    Why did he do it? What drove the man to such lengths? He tells us: "For I consider that the sufferings of this present time are not worthy to be compared with the glory which shall be revealed in us" (Rom. 8:18). He had his eyes on eternity, and he knew that what he had to endure in this present life was but a small price to pay for eternal glory.
    This is not to say that there are no benefits in this present life. For ". . . the love of God has been poured out in our hearts by the Holy Spirit who was given to us" (Rom. 5:5). This, in turn, can give rise to intense joy. The apostle Peter could say ". . . whom having not seen you love. Though now you do not see Him, yet believing, you rejoice with joy inexpressible and full of glory" (I Pet. 1:8). And Paul could talk about "the peace of God, which surpasses all understanding" (Phil. 4:7).
    In one sense these reactions are irrational – they seem detached from surrounding reality. How can one experience "joy" or "peace" when your outward circumstances are filled with conflict and misery? The answer is partly that we have the hope of a brighter future, and partly that God grants us peace in answer to prayer: "Be anxious for nothing, but in everything by prayer and supplication let your requests be made known to God; and the peace of God, which surpasses all understanding, will guard your hearts and minds through Christ Jesus" (Phil. 4:6,7). But partially it is because of the direct action of the Holy Spirit on our hearts: love, joy and peace are the "fruit of the Spirit" (Gal. 5:22, and Paul could say that the love of God "has been poured out in our hearts by the Holy Spirit" (Rom. 5:5).
    That being said, it nevertheless remains true that the Christian lives for the future, not for the present. "For our light affliction, which is but for a moment, is working for us a far more exceeding and eternal weight of glory, while we do not look at the things which are seen, but at the things which are not seen. For the things which are seen are temporary, but the things which are not seen are eternal" (II Cor. 4:17,18). It is expected that there will be trials and difficulties in this life. We live in a world cursed by sin. We look forward, however, to the return of Christ when He will appear in the sky to redeem creation, and then all things will at last be set right. The trials of this life last only for a relatively brief moment. The joys of heaven are forever.
    Sad to say, most modern Americans are so caught up with the cares and pleasures of this life that they never really think about what will happen to them when they die. They just sort of assume that somehow, someone, somewhere up there in the sky will take care of them. But they never give any serious thought as to who that Someone might be, or what He actually requires of us. But death is inevitable and inescapable, and sooner or later we will have to face eternity. What then?
    

What is “a Personal Relationship with Jesus”?

    It is very common in evangelical circles to talk about having "a personal relationship with Jesus." This is often meant to counter such notions that religion is largely a matter of dry dogma and empty ritual. True Christianity brings you into a real relationship with a living Person, the risen Christ.
    But Jesus lived here 2,000 years ago and is no longer here on earth. How, then, is it possible to have a "personal relationship" with Him? Interestingly Jesus Himself had a long discussion on this very topic. In chapters 13 through 16 of his gospel the apostle John recounts a long discussion Jesus had with His disciples shortly before His death. John introduces the "Upper Room Discourse," as it has come to be known, by saying that Jesus, "having loved His own who were in the world, He loved them to the end" (John 13:1; NKJV). Jesus was keenly aware that His departure was at hand, and that He would leave His disciples in a radically altered set of circumstances. How would they manage in His absence? In short, how is it possible to have a personal relationship with Someone Who is no longer physically present?
    A major part of the answer is that after His ascension into heaven Jesus would send the Holy Spirit to take His place, as it were, on earth. "And I will pray the Father, and He will give you another Helper, that He may abide with you forever . . ." The Greek word translated "Helper" ("parakletos," or "Paraclete") carries the basic meaning of someone who is called to someone else's aid. By extension it has a variety of meanings including "advocate," "helper," and "comforter." In this passage Jesus refers to the Holy Spirit as "another Helper," suggesting that the Holy Spirit would fill the same role that Jesus Himself had filled while He was here on earth.
    

Van Gogh: Man Reading the Bible

What exactly then does the Holy Spirit do? First of all, He fills Jesus' role as a teacher. "The Spirit will teach you all things, and bring to your remembrance all things that I said to you" (14:26). He "will guide you into all truth" and "will tell you things to come" (16:13). Some of this may have been directed to Jesus' immediate disciples. We cannot claim special revelation today. But we have the New Testament, the written testimony of Jesus' life and ministry, and the Holy Spirit helps us today to understand and internalize the message. In this sense Jesus still communicates with us through His Spirit.
    The Holy Spirit will also assist in the church's work of spreading the gospel. He is said to convict the world of sin, of righteousness and of judgment (16:8-11). Without this vital work of the Spirit the mission of the church cannot succeed.
    Prayer obviously plays an important an important role in a personal relationship with Jesus. "And whatever you ask in My name, that I will do, that the Father may be glorified in the Son. If you ask anything in My name, I will do it" (14:13,14). Thus Jesus communicates to us through His Word, and we communicate to Him in prayer.
    It is important to emphasize, however, that a "personal" relationship, a relationship between two personal beings, is not static by dynamic. It fluctuates in intensity over time. This means that it must be nurtured. Our relationship with Jesus is no different. And so He tells us "Abide in Me, and I in you. As the branch cannot bear fruit of itself, unless it abides in the vine, neither can you, unless you abide in Me" (15:4). But how do we "abide in Christ"? "If you keep My commandments, you will abide in My love . . ." (15:10). "He who has My commandments and keeps them, it is he who loves Me. And he who loves Me will be loved by My Father, and I will love him and manifest Myself to him" (14:21). The question is this: do we truly love Christ? Are we obeying Him?
    There is a sobering aspect to all of this, however. A personal relationship with Jesus will cost us something. It will cost us the friendship of the world. It must be remembered that this whole discussion in the Upper Room took place just as Jesus was about to be arrested, condemned and crucified. It is the supreme irony of human history that God would send His own Son into the world, and the world would reject Him. One might well ask how such a thing could possibly happen. On an earlier occasion Jesus had explained why: "The world . . . hates Me because I testify of it that its works are evil" (John 7:7). It was His message that the world found so offensive – the implication that its deeds were evil. And so now Jesus tells His disciples that "If the world hates you, you know that it hated Me before it hated you" (John 15:18). He then went on to state a basic fact about the church and its relationship with the world: "If you were of the world, the world would love its own. Yet because you are not of the world, but I chose you out of the world, therefore the world hates you" (v. 19). Before we were saved we were very much a part of the world – we readily absorbed its values, its mores, its lifestyle. But now that God has saved us things are different. We cannot simply go back and live the way we used to. And to the extent that this implies a rejection of the world's values, the world is bound to resent us. Our way of life is a tacit rebuke to theirs, and for this reason they cannot tolerate us. If anyone would be a follower of Jesus, he must first deny himself, take up his cross, and follow Him (Matt. 16:24).
    How many people today are really willing to pursue a personal relationship with Jesus?

Other blog posts you may find interesting:
Religion or Christ?
What is the Church Supposed to be Like? 
The Promise of Prayer 

Born Again!

Parmigianino, The Conversion of Paul

    The phrase "born again" is standard jargon in the evangelical lexicon, yet few understand what it really means. What exactly is "the new birth"? What is the difference between someone who has been "born again" and someone who has not?
    The phrase itself goes back to a conversation that Jesus once had with a Jewish religious leader named Nicodemus, recorded for us in John chapter 3. Nicodemus was interested in learning more about this famous miracle worker, and was astonished when Jesus told him right at the outset of the conversation, "Most assuredly, I say to you, unless one is born again, he cannot see the kingdom of God" (John 3:3; NKJV). Nicodemus was befuddled by this cryptic remark, and asked how it would be possible to reenter one's mother's womb and come back out again. Jesus went on to explain that what He was talking about was a spiritual birth, and that the agent of this birth was the Holy Spirit: "That which is born of the flesh is flesh, and that which is born of the Spirit is spirit" (v. 6).
    So what exactly is the new birth? The apostle Paul gives us a description in Eph. 4:17-24. He begins by describing what the Ephesian Christians were like before they became believers. The Gentiles, he says, "walk in the futility of their mind" (v. 17). The word "futility" suggests that their reasoning processes routinely arrive at the wrong conclusions. Why is this?
    Paul points to a variety of psychological factors. He says that their understanding was darkened, they were "alienated from the life of God," their hearts were blind, and they were "past feeling" (vv. 18,19). In other words, their hearts were unreceptive to the truth of God. This, in turn, ultimately led them to a lifestyle of licentiousness and greed. Once the external restraints were removed, their self-centeredness knows no bounds.
    The genuine Christian, however, has experienced something different. "But you have not so learned Christ, if indeed you have heard Him and have been taught by Him, as the truth is in Jesus" (vv. 20,21). When the gospel is being preached a variety of people may hear the audible words being spoken, but they do not all respond alike. For some, the message makes no sense. It is out of synch with their own perception of reality. But for others the message rings true in an uncanny sort of way. It unnerves them. They are undone. The have caught the awful sight of their own depravity, and finally understand why Christ had to die on the cross. The light breaks through, the way of salvation becomes clear, and they tearfully embrace it. "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," as Paul says elsewhere (I Cor. 1:18). The difference is that in the case of the believer, Christ Himself has spoken to the heart with indelible force and conviction. He has been taught by Christ Himself.
    So what, then, is the end result? First of all there is a clean break with the past: "that you put off, concerning your former conduct, the old man" (Eph. 4:22). But more than that, we are to "be renewed in the spirit of your mind" (v. 23). We acquire a new way of thinking: new motives and a new outlook on life. As Paul puts it in Rom. 12:2, we are not to "be conformed to this world, but be transformed by the renewing of your mind, that you may prove what is that good and acceptable and perfect will of God." The Christian life begins with an inward transformation. This, in turn, results in "the new man which was created according to God, in true righteousness and holiness" (Eph. 4:24).
    How can one tell whether or not he has been genuinely born again? For someone converted as an adult it can be fairly easy. He knows what he was like before. He knows how he came to understand the truth. He is conscious of the decision he made. He is now experiencing a different life and a meaningful relationship with God. He has passed from death into life, from night into day.
    But for a young person raised in a Christian home it can be a much more difficult question to answer. He has always been told what to believe. He has always been told how to behave. He is actively involved in a whole range of church programs. But is he saved?
    Only he and God know what is really in his heart. But there are several things to look for. Since salvation involves a conscious choice to trust in Christ as your Savior from guilt and sin, there must be a cognitive understanding of the basic facts of the gospel, a consciousness of one's own sin and guilt, and a conscious decision to trust in Christ. There should presently be signs of spiritual life – a desire to know God, a prayer life, serious Bible study, and a willingness to serve others. In the final analysis you are spiritually what you are in your prayer closet. Where there is no regular, consistent prayer there is no relationship with Christ.
    The question is an all-important one. Let each be honest with himself. "Examine yourselves as to whether your are in the faith. Test yourselves. Do you not know yourselves, that Jesus Christ is in you? – unless indeed you are disqualified." (II Cor. 13:5).

The Meaning of Baptism

 

Philip and the Ethiopian Eunuch, whom he baptized

   As we have seen, what Peter told the Jerusalem multitudes on the Day of Pentecost was, "Repent, and let every one of you be baptized in the name of Jesus Christ for the remission of sins, and you shall receive the gift of the Holy Spirit" (Acts 2:38; NKJV). The verse seems to suggest that we receive the remission of sins through baptism, yet as we have seen elsewhere, we are "justified" by faith. What exactly, then, did Peter mean? What does baptism accomplish?
    The first thing that should be noted is that what is in view here is believer's baptism. There is no direct command in the New Testament to baptize infants, and there is no clear example of it either. Rather, the Bible virtually equates baptism with believing: "For you are all sons of God through faith in Christ Jesus. For as many of you as were baptized into Christ have put on Christ" (Gal. 3:26,27).
    But if we are "saved by grace through faith" (cf. Eph. 2:8), what is the point of baptism? Why be baptized at all? The apostle Peter explains it this way: " . . . baptism now saves you – not the removal of dirt from the flesh, but an appeal to God for a good conscience – through the resurrection of Jesus Christ" (I Pet. 3:21; NASV). We are not saved by the external action of the water on the body working automatically. Rather, it is what happens internally that is important – "the appeal to God for a good conscience."
    In other words, baptism is a public way of expressing our faith in Christ. In baptism we formally declare ourselves to be Christians. And this public declaration of faith is important. Jesus said, "Therefore whoever confesses Me before men, him I will also confess before My
Father who is in heaven. But whoever denies Me before men, him will I also deny before My Father who is in heaven" (Matt. 10:32,33). There can be no such thing as a "closet" or "secret" Christian: either you are a Christian openly, or you are not one at all. Baptism is the primary means of making that public confession of faith.
    What is required is that we make a formal commitment to Christ. We may say that we believe; we may desire to have a relationship with Christ. But this is all hypothetical until we make a formal commitment, and a formal commitment requires a public action of some sort. Baptism fulfills that requirement. It is only then that our salvation is a "done deal." Baptism serves as both a "sign" (a symbolic representation) and a "seal" of our faith, in much the same way that circumcision did for Abraham's faith (cf. Rom 4:11).
    The preferred mode of baptism is immersion. This is partly because that is what the Greek word signifies ("to dip repeatedly"; "to dip under"), and partly because there was a Jewish precedent for it. But more importantly, only immersion brings out the full symbolism of the rite.
    First of all, baptism by immersion symbolizes our union with Christ in His death, burial and resurrection. By faith we become one with Christ. He is our head and we are His mystical body, and as such we vicariously participate in His death and resurrection. As we have seen, this is how we receive justification – the forgiveness of our sins. We are reckoned to have died and risen with Christ, and are forgiven accordingly.
    But baptism by immersion also symbolizes what happens to us personally. Part of us, "the old man" as it is called in several passages of Scripture, has died – our past identity, or former way of life. It is symbolically buried in the water. What emerges from the water is essentially a new person, a changed man, different from the old. He no longer thinks or acts the way he did before. Significantly Paul concludes his discussion of baptism in Romans 6 by saying, "Likewise you also, reckon yourselves to be dead indeed to sin, but alive to God in Christ Jesus our Lord" (v. 11).
    Baptism is the public, outward, formal means by which we renounce our past and publicly identify ourselves as followers of Jesus Christ. It signifies that we have entered into salvation – a new status, a new relationship, a new vital principle within, a new sense of direction, a new set of values, and a new lifestyle. It signifies the passage from death unto life.

What Is Saving Faith?

    One of the saddest facts about contemporary Christianity is the large number of people who were raised in conservative, evangelical homes and have since left the faith. They can often point to an event in their childhood in which they "accepted Jesus as their Savior," and for a while, at least, appeared to be honest, sincere believers. Today they are not in the church. What happened?
    Is it possible for a genuine believer to lose his salvation? Or were they not really saved to begin with? Or were they not really saved in the first place? Whatever the individual case may happen to be, we suspect that there are, in fact, many professing Christians, many of them still active members of evangelical churches, who are not genuine believers. Jesus Himself said, "Many will say to Me in that day, 'Lord, Lord, have we not prophesied in Your name, cast out demons in Your name, and done many wonders in Your name?' And then I will declare to them, 'I never knew you; depart from Me, you who practice lawlessness!" (Matt. 7:22,23; NKJV).
    There are a number of reasons for this state of affairs. First of all, many churches do not do a very good job of explaining the gospel clearly. Anxious to attract new members in an increasingly secularized and materialistic society, many pastors are reluctant to talk about sin, and thus leave the central issue in salvation unclear. In many cases young children, ages four and five, are pressed to "invite Jesus into their hearts" when they are probably too young to understand what the issues are. Our general observation is that people who make professions of faith at age four are generally not Christians at age twenty four. To further confuse matters, if a young person was raised in a strong Christian home, he may not have had a very strong consciousness of sin and guilt – as far as he can remember he always tried to do what was right. Sometimes young people raised in Christian homes get the impression that "being saved" or "having a personal relationship with Jesus" basically means being active in church and trying to do the right thing.
    Very often young people who grow up in this environment have what amount to a second-hand faith. They know how they are supposed to think and act, and may genuinely want to please their elders. But it isn't until they have left home and are exposed to the broader world, and are forced to start thinking for themselves that their true spiritual state becomes apparent. And in all too many cases they wind up falling by the wayside.
    All of which raises the question, what is true, saving faith? What makes a person a genuine Christian?
    First of all, true saving faith is not a mere mental assent to a set of doctrinal propositions. "Even the demons believe – and tremble!" (James 2:19). In that sense Satan is a far better theologian than any mortal human being. He knows the truth, and yet it does him no good.
    Nor is faith a blind leap into the dark – belief in something for which there is no evidence, as our atheist friends like to say. The Bible does, in fact, present rational arguments for belief in God.
    Nor is faith a matter of self-effort or self-improvement. On the contrary, faith is the very opposite of works. "But to him who does not work but believes on Him who justifies the ungodly, his faith is accounted for righteousness" (Rom. 4:5).
    What, then, is faith? The verse just quoted gives us the answer: "believes on Him who justifies the ungodly." Faith looks away from oneself to another – to Someone who is able to save. It is a trust and confidence in God's willingness and ability to do something to help us. Specifically, in this case, it is faith in Christ, a firm trust and reliance on Him and the merits of His shed blood to secure for us the forgiveness of our sins and make us right with God.
    Paul goes on to explain, citing the example of Abraham. Abraham had been given a promise by God that he would become "a father of many nations." Humanly speaking, it did not seem possible – his wife was well past her child bearing years. But Abraham reasoned that God is omnipotent – He "gives life to the dead and calls those things which do not exist as though they did" (v. 17). He then deduce from this that "what He had promised He was able to perform" (v. 21).

Abraham receives God's promise of a son.

    Thus true, saving faith is based on prior knowledge – what Abraham understood God to be and what God had promised; and it resulted in concrete action – Abraham demonstrated his faith by acting on God's promise. But it was fundamentally confidence in what God would do, not an exercise of Abrahams own ability or effort.
    The Westminster Shorter Catechism sums it up well when it says: "Faith in Jesus Christ is a saving grace, whereby we receive and rest upon him alone for salvation, as he is offered to us in the gospel" (Q. 86).

What Must I Do to be Saved?

    To anyone who has given serious thought to the question, "What will happen to me when I die?," and has thought about the moral dimension to the problem, the obvious follow-up question is, "What must I do to be saved"? To the one who come to understand what the stakes are, there can be no more important question.
    As we have seen, Christ offered Himself up as an atonement for sin, but that does not mean that everyone is automatically saved. In order to receive the forgiveness of sins we must be personally joined to Christ in a kind of legal and mystical union, and that requires action on our part.
    But exactly what action? At first the answers found in the Bible seem confusing and even contradictory. When the Jews at Pentecost asked the apostle Peter, he said "Repent, and let every one of you be baptized in the name of Jesus Christ for the remission of sins. . ." (Acts 2:38; NKJV). But when the Philippian jailer asked Paul and Silas the same question, they said, "Believe on the Lord Jesus Christ, and you will be saved, you and your household" (Acts 16:31).
    There is no real contradiction here. The fact of the matter is that repentance, faith and baptism are three different aspects of the same thing. The essential thing is faith – we are "justified by faith." But in order for faith to be genuine it must be accompanied by repentance, and then it must be expressed in a formal commitment to Christ in baptism.
    It is the repentance part with which most modern Americans have difficulty. Americans are possessed with a consumer mentality (see our book America's Deadliest Enemy), and the church has sometimes made the mistake of trying to market Christianity as a consumer product. Evangelists are eager to tout all the advantages of Christianity without mentioning any of the demands of discipleship. It all sounds so easy! "God loves you and has a wonderful plan for your life"!
    The Bible makes it clear, however, that if we would receive the forgiveness of our sins we must first repent of them. "Repent therefore and be converted, that your sins bay be blotted out . . . " (Acts 3:19). The whole problem is our sin and our guilt, and we are hardly sincere in asking for forgiveness is we don't repudiate the lifestyle that created the problem in the first place.
    The point was beautifully illustrated in a story told by Jesus. In Luke 18:9 we are told that He confronted "some who trusted in themselves that they were righteous, and despised others." Jesus proceeded to tell them one of His famous parables, or stories. Two men went up to the Temple in Jerusalem to pray. One was a Pharisee, a member of a very strict sect of observant Jews who were scrupulous about keeping the Jewish law. The other man was a "publican" or tax collector. The publicans, however, were not tax collectors in the modern sense of the word. They were generally private contractors who were hired to collect taxes for the Roman government. They were notoriously dishonest and corrupt, little better than extortioners in some cases. To make matters worse, because they worked with the Roman authorities who, of course, were Gentiles and did not keep the Jewish law, the publicans were regarded by their fellow Jews as ceremonially unclean. They were, in effect, unholy renegades. In other words, in this story the tax collector represented the opposite end of the social spectrum from the Pharisee. The Pharisee represented the elite of Jewish society; the tax collector the filthy scum.

    Jesus goes on to describe the prayers of these two men. The Pharisee's prayer went like this: God, I thank You that I am not like other men – extortioners, unjust, adulterers, or even as this tax collector" (v. 11). He then proceeds to list his own accomplishments: "I fast twice a week, I give tithes of all that I possess" (v. 12).
    Far different was the tax collector's prayer. "Standing afar off," he "would not so much as raise his eyes to heaven, but beat his breast" (v. 13). His request was simple, frank, and to the point: "God, be merciful to me a sinner!" (The text literally reads, "the sinner," as if in his own eyes he was the only sinner in the world, so mortified was he with his own guilt – cf. NASV; Amp.) He did not pretend to be a righteous man. He knew all too well that he was not. He frankly admitted the case and begged for mercy. He realized that that was all that he could do under the circumstances.
    Jesus then drew the moral of the story: "I tell you, this man [i.e., the tax collector – RWW] went down to his house justified rather than the other; for everyone who exalts himself will be humbled, and he who humbles himself will be exalted" (v. 14).
    For many it is this element of repentance that prevents them from coming to Christ in a genuine way. It is our pride that stands between us and Christ. We don't like to admit that we are lost sinners, and we don't like to be in the position of humble suppliants. We would rather pretend that we are basically alright and would like to think that we are doing God a favor by lending our good name to the membership rolls of His churches. But there is no true Christianity where there has not first been sorrow and contrition for sin. Salvation begins with heartfelt repentance.

Right with God

Francisco de Zurbaran: St. Francis Kneeling

    We have seen that the problem of evil is pervasive, and that all of the world's great monotheistic religions agree that God is just. But for each one of us as individuals these basic facts create an acute problem. If God is just and we are sinners, how can we escape divine judgment? Our doom is sure.
    How can we possibly be made righteous in the sight of a holy God? There is hardly a question more important, for on its answer hangs all eternity.
    The Bible does offer an answer, however. It says that were are "justified freely by His grace" (Rom. 3:24; NKJV). The Greek word translated "justified" basically means "to declare righteous" or "pronounce righteous." It is the jury acquitting the defendant. The question then is, how can God declare us righteous when He knows perfectly well that we are not; that we are, in fact, sinners? The answer is, by means of imputation.
    To "impute" something means to credit it or charge it to someone's account. The apostle Paul explains it like this: "For He [i.e., God] made Him [Christ] who knew no sin to be sin for us, that we might become the righteousness of God in Him" (I Cor. 5:21). Notice that there is a double imputation here. First of all, Christ was "made . . . to be sin for us." What does this mean? It obviously does not mean that Christ became an actual sinner. He was perfectly blameless. What it means is that our sin was charged to His account. He took the blame for us. "But He was wounded for our transgressions, / He was bruised for our iniquities; / The chastisement for our peace was upon Him, / And by His stripes we are healed" (Isa. 53:5).
    But then, secondly, the righteousness of Christ is imputed to those who believe on Him. As our text puts it, "that we might become the righteousness of God in Him." The phrase "in Him" is critical. We receive the benefits of salvation by virtue of being "in Him." When we put our trust in Christ we are united to Him both legally and mystically – legally we are counted as one with Him, so that the rights that He secured are transferred to us. If He died, we are considered to have died with Him; and if He rose from the dead, we are considered to have risen with Him. If He is righteous, we are also considered righteous (Rom. 6:1-11). In this way His righteousness is said to have been "imputed" to us. Thus our standing with God is not based on our own actual righteousness, the works that we have done, but on the righteous, but on the righteousness of Christ imputed to us.
    The nature of justification became a huge issue during the Protestant Reformation. The position of the Catholic Church is that we are justified by an infused righteousness – that God makes us righteous by producing actual righteousness in us. The Catechism of the Catholic Church puts it this way: "The grace of the Holy Spirit has the power to justify us, that is, to cleanse us from our sins and to communicate to us 'the righteousness of God through faith in Jesus Christ" and through Baptism" (§1987). We receive God's grace through the sacrament of baptism, and then we are required to cooperate with grace to produce actual good works. This, in turn, if accomplished successfully, results in our of achieving merit with God "Moved by the Holy Spirit and by charity, we can merit for ourselves and for others the grace needed for our sanctification, for the increase of grace and charity, and for the attainment of eternal life" (§2010). But even those "who die in God's grace and friendship" may have to undergo further purification in purgatory before they finally enter heaven (§1030). In other words, in the Roman Catholic view, we are judged on the basis of what we have actually done, as imperfect as that is.    But the Protestant (and we believe biblical) view is this: "Justification is an act of God's free grace, wherein he pardoneth all our sins, and accepteth us as righteous in his sight, only for the righteousness of Christ imputed to us, and received by faith alone" (Westminster Shorter Catechism, Question 33). In other words, we are justified by an imputed righteousness, Christ's own righteousness credited to our account.
The difference is crucial. It is the difference between whether we are finally judged on the basis of what we ourselves have done, or what Christ has done for us. If we have to stand before Almighty God on the basis of our own works, we are doomed. But if, on the other hand, we are credited with Jesus' own spotless perfection, our salvation is secure. It is literally the difference between death and life.

For "Why the Reformation Was Necessary," click here, here, and here

Christianity and Islam

   

The Sacrifice of Isaac. (According to Islamic tradition, it was Ishmael who was nearly sacrificed)

   In our last blog post we discussed the difference in attitude between Christianity and Islam toward violence. But there is a more profound difference the two religions, one that strikes right at the very essence of religion itself, and that is in the nature of our relationship with God.
    There are similarities between the two religions, of course. Both are monotheistic: they both believe that there is only one God Who is the Maker of heaven and earth. But what makes Christianity unique and distinctive is its belief in a Savior – a divine-human being who came into the world and died on a cross to save us from our sins. This notion Islam utterly rejects.
    "O People of the Book! / Commit no excesses / In your religion: nor say / Of Allah aught but the truth. / The Messiah Jesus son of Mary, / And a Spirit proceeding / From Him: so believe / In Allah and His Messengers. / Say not 'Trinity': desist" (Quran 4:171). To a devout Muslim to say that God is three-in-one is thinly disguised polytheism, and is blasphemy.
    Does it make a difference? Yes! For a Christian the idea of a Savior is crucial.
    Both Christianity and Islam believe that God is the sovereign Ruler of the universe and is just. Both religions teach that there will be a Last Judgment in which God will reward good and punish evil. But what Islam fails to reckon with is the extent and depth of human depravity. It is, of course, obvious that the world is full of evil – everything from marital spats to world wars. We are confronted with dishonesty and discord on a daily basis. But what is the cause of all this dysfunction? The Bible offers a striking diagnosis: the root problem is human nature. "The heart is deceitful above all things, / And desperately wicked; / Who can know it?" (Jer. 17:9; NKJV). And then the prophet adds this terrifying prospect: "I, the Lord, search the heart, / I test the mind, / Even to give every man according to his ways, / According to the fruit of his doings" (v. 10). What makes the judgment of God different from that of a human court is that God is able to examine our inward motives. And no matter what pretense we can maintain before our fellow human beings, God knows the real truth about who we are, and how we think and feel.
    That being the case, how will any of us escape divine scrutiny? How will any withstand God's judgment? For the plain fact of the matter is that we are all guilty in His sight. "The Lord looks down from heaven upon the children of men, / To see if there are any who understand, who seek God. / They have all turned aside, / They have together become corrupt; / There is none who does good, / No, not one" (Ps. 14:2,3).
    It is at this point that the Bible proposes a unique solution to the problem. "For God so loved the world that He gave His only begotten Son, that whoever believes in Him should not perish but have everlasting life" (John 3:16). Jesus claimed to be more than just a prophet; He is the Son of God and Savior of mankind. Coexisting eternally with the Father, He came into the world by being born of a virgin, died upon the cross as an atonement for our sin, and then rose from the dead and ascended back into heaven, where He sits at the right hand of God the Father making intercession for us. Because Christ alone is qualified to be the Savior, there is no salvation apart from Him.
    Islam, then, leaves us in a hopeless position. It acknowledges the fact that God is just and will judge the world, but leaves us with no means of atoning for our sins and reconciling us to God. It's only answer to our innate lack of righteousness is "try harder." But if we are at all honest with ourselves, and measure ourselves by God's standards, we are left with the certain prospect of damnation. This is why Christianity, and only Christianity, can meet the need of mankind. Islam is a non-solution to the problem.

Atonement

    So far we have discussed the problem of evil and the nature of divine justice. But whether we realize it or not, we face a terrifying dilemma. For if God is just and we are sinners, it therefore follows that in the Day of Judgment we will inevitably be pronounced guilty and be doomed to eternal punishment. Is there any possible way out?
    The answer is "yes," and that is, in fact, what the gospel is all about. The apostle Paul in his Epistle to the Romans that there is a way to be considered righteous in God's sight that is not based on our own ability to keep the law. "But now the righteousness of God apart from the law is revealed. . ." (Rom. 3:21; NKJV), ". . . even the righteousness of God, through faith in Jesus Christ, to all and on all who believe" (v. 22). How can this be? How can there be a righteousness "apart from the law"? Paul goes on to explain: we are "justified freely by His grace through the redemption that is in Christ Jesus, whom God set forth as a propitiation by His blood . . ." (vv. 24,25).
    It is significant that Paul uses two words here to describe the death of Christ: "redemption" and "propitiation." "Redemption" involves the payment of a price to secure the freedom of a slave, captive or prisoner. Here we are seen as captives or slaves, and Christ has secured our freedom by paying a ransom, in this case His own blood. The price having been paid, we are set free.
    "Propitiation" is an atoning sacrifice that turns away the wrath of an offended Deity Some theologians have questioned the appropriateness of this idea, and have suggested instead that the underlying Greek word be translated "expiation." (RSV; the NRSV renders it "a sacrifice of atonement." God, they say, should not be thought of as an angry Deity who needs placating. But the fact of the matter is that Paul began his discussion of salvation by referring specifically to God's wrath: "For the wrath of God is revealed from heaven against all ungodliness and unrighteousness of men . . ." (1:18), and then went on to describe the Last Judgment as the "day of wrath" in which "indignation and wrath, tribulation and anguish" will be meted out to sinners (2:5,8,9). God is not a disinterested bystander in the ongoing catastrophe of human life. The context of atonement is definitely His anger at sin. Thus the most natural way to interpret the word used in 3:25 is "propitiation."

The Expulsion from Eden

    But people still ask the question, "Why is it necessary for God to sacrifice His own Son in order to forgive our sins"? To answer that question we must go back to the very beginning, to the time of creation. Genesis 2 tells how God created Adam and Eve, and place them in the Garden of Eden. He then told them, "of every tree of the garden you may freely eat; but of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil you shall not eat, for in the day that you eat of it you shall surely die" (Gen. 2:16,17). Our first parents disobeyed, and as a result a curse was placed upon them. God told Adam, "In the sweat of your face you shall eat bread / Till you return to the ground, ? for out of it you were taken; / For dust you are, / And to dust you shall return" (Gen. 3:19). As Paul summed it up, "Therefore, just as through one man sin entered the world, and death through sin, and then spread to all men, because all sinned – " (Rom. 5:12). Thus death is part of the curse which God pronounced on us because of our sin.
    Thus either we have to pay for our own sins, or someone else will have to do it for us, taking our penalty as our substitute and dying in our place. This was vividly brought out in the Old Testament, when sacrifices were offered in the temple in Jerusalem. The climax of the sacrificial system was the Day of Atonement (Yom Kippur) when one goat was killed as a sin offering and its blood sprinkled on the Ark of the Covenant kept in the Temple's innermost chamber ("The Holy of Holies"), and hands were placed on the head of another goat (the "scapegoat"), the sins of the people were confessed, and the goat was sent away. The point of it all was this: "For the life of the flesh is in the blood, and I have given it to you upon the altar to make atonement for your souls; for it is the blood that makes atonement for the soul" (Lev. 17:11). In other words, someone must die in order to fulfill the curse. And in order for one person to go free someone else must act as his substitute. The question is, who?

We Have Met the Enemy and He Is Us

Francisco de Zurbaran, St. Francis Kneeling

  
   That notorious scoffer, the late Christopher Hitchens, complained that the Tenth Commandment ("Thou shalt not covet") was humanly impossible to keep. "One may be forcibly restrained from wicked actions, or barred from committing them, but to forbid people from contemplating them is too much." He then added, "In particular, it is absurd to hope to banish envy of other's people's possessions or fortunes if only because the spirit of envy can lead to emulation and ambition and have positive consequences" (god is not Great, p. 100). It appears that the spirit of American capitalism, for Mr. Hitchens at least, trumped the Ten Commandments.
    Mr. Hitchens, as was usual, managed to miss the whole point entirely. The ultimate purpose of the Ten Commandments was to demonstrate the universal guilt of humankind. The apostle Paul put it like this: "Now we know that whatever the law says, it says to those who are under the law, that every mouth may be stopped, and all the world may become guilty before God. Therefore by the deeds of the law no flesh will be justified in His sight, for by the law is the knowledge of sin" (Rom. 3:19,20; NKJV). Paul goes on to elaborate in chapter 7: "What shall we say then? Is the law sin? Certainly not! On the contrary, I would not have known sin except through the law. For I would not have known covetousness unless the law had said, 'You shall not covet'" (Rom. 7:7). The law represents God's perfect standard of righteousness. As such it is 'holy and just and good" (v. 12). But on one level Hitchens was quite right: humanly speaking it is an unattainable goal. But the problem is not with the law; the problem is with us. We are hopelessly corrupt and depraved. "For we know that the law is spiritual, but I am carnal, sold under sin" (v. 14).
    "But wait a minute," you say. "I'm not 'hopelessly corrupt and depraved.' I have a job and a family. I even do volunteer work in the community." And sure enough, if you look at most people they outwardly seem respectable enough. They have jobs; they have families; they obey the law. They mind their manners (mostly). They may even be charming and well educated. How could someone like that be "bad"?
    But that is the whole point to the Tenth Commandment, as Mr. Hitchens properly sensed. If you were to ask the spouses of these charming and well-educated people (or even better yet, their ex-spouses), you might get a different picture. In the privacy of their own homes, where people feel free to relax and be themselves, we begin to see problems. There may be a certain amount of tension and conflict in the home – grumbling and complaining, even outbursts of anger. We may see carelessness and indifference to the feelings of others. Possibly a certain amount of petty lying. What we are likely to see, in fact, is a lot of self-centered behavior.
    And if we look further, into the dark corners of the mind, we are likely to see a boiling cauldron of human passions – anger, lust, pride, envy, jealousy and greed. There are likely to be attitudes that have the potential of leading to behavior that is compulsive, anti-social, and self-destructive – and addiction to cigarettes, overeating – possibly addictions to alcohol, gambling or pornography. There may be what are now delicately called "anger management issues." It is not a pretty picture.
    All of this puts us at variance with God's will. God did not create us this way. The utter lawlessness of the human heart drives a wedge between us and our Creator. Our reckless and immoral impulses and desires are a direct affront to His holiness. He created us and gave us everything that we have. He is holy and wise and just. His bounty overflows. And yet in spite of all that we have willfully turned away from Him and committed acts that we ourselves know are wrong and are ashamed to reveal to others. Is it any wonder that "the wrath of God is revealed from heaven against all ungodliness and unrighteousness of men" (Rom. 1:18)?
    The problem, then, is not that God's standard is too high; the problem is that our level of performance is abysmally low. God's standards are determined by what He is, not by what we are. And if we fail to meet His righteous standard, it is a reflection on us, not on Him. He is just and holy; we are fallen sinners. The voice of justice is clear and resounding: "for all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God" (Rom. 3:23).

The Problem of Evil

Goya: The Third of May, 1808

  
  In our last blogpost we asked the question "What is 'salvation'?," and noted that the word refers to deliverance from the wrath of God. But why is God angry? To answer that question we must consider the problem of evil.
    What we see in life are people pushing and shoving and hurting each other in various ways. Businessmen are greedy. Politicians are self-serving and deceitful. Marriages end in divorce. The world is in constant turmoil with tyranny, war and oppression everywhere.
    But there is something inside of us that tells us that this cannot be right. We cannot accept the idea that we should simply accept things the way they are. We long for some sense of justice.
    But what makes one action "right" and another "wrong"? On what basis can we judge another? Who can say, objectively, who is right and who is wrong? Secular thinkers, from Socrates on down to the present, have struggled to answer the question, and have not found a satisfactory answer. The best that most modern (or perhaps we should say "post-modern") philosophers can say is that morality is a human invention. Either we so evolved that we developed a moral sense, so that we think that there is a difference between right and wrong, or else that morality is the result of some sort of social contract. We must somehow get along with each other, and so we enter into a tacit agreement with each other as to what we will tolerate and what we will not.

    But our conscience tells us that there has to be something more to morality than ingrained behavior or social pressure. We somehow sense that certain actions are intrinsically wrong, and that in an ideal world wrong would be punished and good rewarded. But how? Too often evil seems to have the upper hand.
    Thus we are faced with a conflict between the "real" and the "ideal." It has been said that most people are followers either of Plato or of Aristotle. Plato was the quintessential "idealist." Truth is a matter of abstract ideals, and the physical world is merely an imperfect copy of the ideal world. Aristotle, on the other hand, was the archetypical "realist": he was concerned with the physical world as it actually exists. But there are not many true idealists around today. In our modern, science-based culture we are too preoccupied with the here-and-now to worry much about abstract principles or ideals. In its more extreme form this way of thinking is frankly atheistic But the implications of this outlook are stark. It means that there is no real meaning or purpose in life, no real difference between right and wrong, no final justice, no life beyond the grave. Unfortunately for us the party will eventually end and the lights will go out.
    The biblical answer to all of this is that our intuitions are largely correct. There is a real design in nature, there is meaning and purpose to life, and there is a real difference between right and wrong. The reason is that the universe was created by an Intelligent Being. Everything, when created, was originally "good." We revolted, however, against our Creator, and everything was corrupted as a result. This is why the present reality does not conform to God's ideal standard. This is the reason for God's wrath, and thus the need for salvation.

Related posts:
The Case for Moral Absolutes 
Alasdair MacIntyre: A Study in Moral Theory 
What Makes Christianity Different? 
What God Thinks of Us