The Rest of the Old Old Story

We have a lot of work to do.

The following quotes are from Revolution, by George Barna. I did not loosely put these together, however. I picked them from among a much larger list.

Read them one at a time and look at the picture that emerges.

• The biweekly attendance at worship services is, by believers’ own admission, generally the only time they worship God.
• Eight out of every ten believers do not feel they have entered into the presence of God, or experienced a connection with Him, during the worship service.
• Fewer that one out of every six churched believers has a relationship with another believer though which spiritual accountability is provided.
• The most significant influence on the choices of churched believers is neither teachings from the pulpit nor advice gleaned from fellow congregants; it is messages absorbed from the media, the law, and family members.

In light of all this, how shocking is the following additional finding?:

A large majority of churched believers rely upon the church, rather than the family, to train their children to become spiritually mature.

Um, if that isn’t working for the parents, how likely is it to work for the children???

We have to do something different!!!

I’ve heard that the definition of insanity is to do the same things but expect different results.

Can we really just keep preaching expository sermons in church twice a week—or just once a week—while the situation is as described above?

Apparently, people are figuring out that we can’t. Barna believes that 20 million people have left institutional churches to meet in homes, which is the topic of his book.

Given the information above, it seems an obvious recommendation that everyone follow them. Even better, maybe the pastors could figure out the obvious and change what they’re doing!

Think about it. If you lectured week after week for years—or in this case, centuries—and maybe 10% to 20% were listening, would you just keep lecturing? Wouldn’t you stop at some point and have a frank discussion with the listeners and figure out what was wrong? I know I would!

Unfortunately, the simple truth is that the pastor who does that will find out what’s wrong. If he gets Biblical about what to do, then he will lose at least 50% of his congregation and probably more, and he will lose his livelihood because even the unspiritual shell out money to sit in the pew each week.

I hope the reason that this is not happening is because pastors just don’t know any better. In some cases, I’m sure that must be true. In other cases, pastors are just hirelings who care more about money and security than they do about God’s people, God, or his will.

What should we do different?

So what should we do?

Well, the full answer to that is quite long. The short answer to that is be scriptural. Many of the areas we’re not being scriptural are obvious. For example:

• How is it, then, brothers? When you come together every one of you has a psalm, a teaching, a tongue, a revelation, an interpretation. Let everything be done decently and in order.
• Through [Christ] all the body, being rightly formed and united together, by the full working of every part, is increased to the building up of itself in love.

Obviously, every part of the body must be doing its share, and the members must all participate in meetings. As Paul further puts it:

If anything is revealed to another that is sitting down, let the first hold his peace, for you may all prophesy one by one, that all may learn, and that all may be comforted.

Is that how your church service is conducted? Can you find a similar verse in Scripture that talks about singing, an offering, and then a sermon?

Obviously, sermons can be preached, and even long-winded, somewhat boring sermons can be preached and our services still be Scriptural. Paul put one young man to sleep preaching, who then fell out of a window and was thought dead! (Acts 20:9).

But are we doing the other? Are Christians being encouraged to participate in Christian gatherings?

There are many other issues. They are the sorts of things I talk about on this blog. I pull those things from those who have statistics that look nothing like the ones I quoted above. I pull my topics from churches whose members are devoted to Christ almost across the board, who care about how they raise their children, who ask advice, who are held accountable, and who give their lives to Christ day by day, asking how they need to change to conform better to his will.

This isn’t condemnation. This is pleasing God. This is finding God’s will. And if we call ourselves Christians, then nothing else ought to matter to us.

I just wrote a long post on works. It’s long because I took the time to try to answer some concerns that honest, God-fearing modern Christians have about the things I say about works (which I got from the Scriptures and the apostles’ churches).

Another post that aroused concerns was my post on the atonement. In fact, I suspect that what was even harder to swallow was the section on the atonement in The Foundation of God, an ebook I’m almost done writing, but which needs a lot of editing and formatting.

In talking with friends of mine, I was able to put my finger on some reasons some of them couldn’t understand what I was saying.

1. You can’t cover the doctrine of the atonement in one blog post.

Was I missing something in what I said about the atonement? Of course!

You can’t cover the atonement in one blog post. In fact, if you study the history of atonement theology, you’ll find it’s about the most complicated subject in all of church history. You begin to wonder if anyone fully understood it.

In fact, I’m not wondering anymore. I’m convinced no one understands it fully. The work of Christ on the cross was so great that it can be spoken of many different ways, all of them accurately, and no one person is going to understand all those different ways.

The cross of Christ was a great work of God, and it’s no surprise that it remains a mystery to man.

However …

There are inaccurate ways to describe the atonement, and one of  them is in the Tangle video I embedded in the post I mentioned above. There they tell us that if we commit even one sin, then God won’t let us into heaven. They then tell us not to worry, Jesus paid the penalty for our sins, so we don’t have to.

That theology makes God a monster who will eternally torture people for one small sin. It’s ludicrous, and it’s slander of God. There’s nothing in the Scripture that describes God in that sort of way. God in the Scripture is a merciful God who does not need sacrifice to forgive sin. He needs a broken and contrite heart (Ps. 51:16-17; Jer. 7:22-23).

When I described the atonement in that post, I was refuting a specific, false gospel presentation as found in that Tangle video. Thus I emphasized one aspect of Christ’s atonement, though I believe it is the most major aspect: Jesus died for us, to obtain the power of the Spirit for us so that we can repent, submit to God, and live life in the Spirit.

2. I have a goal, and it is not to teach you the atonement.

Paul said that the goal of God’s commands is love from a sincere heart, a good conscience, and a faith that is not fake (1 Tim. 1:5).

That is my goal.

The grace of God teaches us to deny ungodliness and worldly lusts and to live soberly, righteous, and godly (Tit. 2:11-12). I teach the same thing, encouraging you to good works by letting you know two things:

1. You can only do the works God has called you to by the Spirit of God
2. Those works are required; you cannot live in the flesh and go to heaven

If you agree with that, then I don’t want to delve into long explanations of  the atonement that both you and I have a limited understanding of. I only explain the atonement enough to overthrow the false teaching that you can live however you want and experience no penalty for your sins because Jesus died for you.

That’s not so:

This you know: no immoral, unclean, or covetous person has any inheritance in the kingdom of Christ and of God. Let no one deceive you with empty words, for it is because of these things that the wrath of God comes upon the sons of disobedience. (Eph. 5:5-6)

God’s wrath comes upon the sons of disobedience because of immorality, uncleanness, covetousness and other like sins. They are not paid for, and if you don’t live in repentance, yours aren’t paid for either.

3. Terminology sometimes matters

In my post, I refuted the idea that Jesus paid the penalty for sins. Then I turned around and said that Jesus died for our sins. A friend told me that it sounded like I was contradicting myself.

I was not. Jesus did not pay the penalty of sin. He died because of our sins. He was a sin offering for us. In some mystical way that is beyond our human minds, he bound us to God and overthrew the power of sin by his offering.

He did not simply pay a penalty.

Let me explain with a commonly used illustration.

Christians like to evangelize by telling a story about two twin brothers. One commits a murder, rushes home in the blood-stained clothes, tears them off and hides them, and then waits in the living room. Soon a policeman knocks on the door, but the innocent twin puts on his brother’s blood-stained clothes and takes the rap for him.

By the time the evil twin realizes what has happened, his brother has been put to death. Stricken with remorse he weeps before the court, confessing his crime. The court, however, refuses to try him because someone has already paid the penalty.

Nice story, but it has nothing to do with why Christ died. Your penalty is not paid. Instead, the court of heaven will simply forgive you if you repent. It has always been that way (Ezek. 18:21-22).

Terminology can be important. In the atonement, Jesus did not pay the penalty even though he did die for our sins and even bring forgiveness.

4. What must you know about the atonement?

Nothing at all.

You reap the benefits of the atonement by confessing and forsaking your sin out of faith in Christ, not by studying and understanding Christ’s death.

If we confess our sin, God is faithful and just to forgive our sin and to cleanse us from all unrighteousness. (1 Jn. 1:9)

If we walk in the light, as he is in the light, then we have fellowship with one another, and the blood of Jesus Christ his Son cleanses us from every sin. (1 Jn. 1:7)

Notice that if you confess your sin and walk in the light, you will experience the benefits of the atonement. You will be forgiven.

There are no promises that if you understand and believe in the atonement, then your sins will be forgiven.

None; nada.

Read through Acts sometime. The apostles never told any lost person why Jesus died. They told them that Jesus died, but they never told any lost person why. It didn’t matter. They wanted people to believe in Jesus Christ and be saved, not understand his sacrifice on their behalf.

Do you want to understand the atonement, or would you rather experience it? If you want to experience it, then obey Christ. He has promised eternal salvation to those who obey him (Heb. 5:9). (Did you know that one was in the Bible?)

Conclusion

Since I’m aware of this, I don’t want to complete your understanding of the atonement. I can’t!

I can, however, overthrow that false and dangerous gospel that says Jesus paid the penalty for your sins, so it doesn’t matter you you live. Hogwash. Sow to the Spirit, and you’ll reap eternal life. Sow to the flesh, and you won’t.

Simple as that.

I just want you to wholeheartedly follow, worship, love, adore, and know the Most High God. If that’s not what you want, or if it’s more important that you keep your own life, then know that God has said you will lose your soul after you die.

Simple as that.

Much grace be with you!

I need to address two issues:

1. I raised a lot of concerns by what I said about works.
2. How do we determine whether what I taught is true?

One of the concerns raised to me was:

It seems to me that an over emphasis on works for assurance can easily lead to fear, bondage, and despair.

Okay, let’s assume that’s possible. The problem is, we don’t get to determine what’s true based on what we think the consequences might be.

The question is not whether a teaching might possibly lead to fear, bondage, and despair. The question is: Is it true?

In the several emails I got in response to my post, no one presented a refutation of what I said. I took that to mean that I what I taught was so clearly Scriptural that it was undeniable.

That’s not surprising to me. It’s not the result of clear thinking on my part. It’s simply the result of believing Paul’s statement that the church is the pillar and support of the truth. The apostles churches had an even greater emphasis on works than I did.

Thus, my concern is not that I have over-emphasized works, but that I am under-emphasizing them out of a lack of understanding of God’s power.

Speaking of God’s power, let me address the concerns I was asked about. Most of  those who asked did so out of a legitimate concern, not out of an argumentative spirit.

Do You Believe There Is Such a Thing as an Assurance of Salvation?

I do … on the basis of 1 John, which was written on that subject.

I have written these things to you who believe in the name of the Son of God so that you may know that you have eternal life. (1 Jn. 5:13)

In evangelism class as a good fundamentalist, I was taught that this means that everyone who believes on the name of the Son of God has eternal life just because they believe.

In a sense, of course, that’s true. Eternal life does come just out of belief. However, the “these things” of 1 John 5:13 is a reference to all the things he wrote in that letter, and those things tell us what real belief produces:

This is the way that we know that we know him: if we keep his commandments. He that says, “I know him,” but does not keep his commandments is a liar, and the truth is not in him. (2:3-4)

A faith that changes your life is a real faith. A faith that doesn’t change your life has something wrong with it. Such a faith cannot save you. John continues:

Little children, let no one deceive you. He that practices righteousness is righteous just as [Christ] is righteous. (3:7)

James says something very similar:

Of what benefit is it, brothers, if a man says he has faith but has no works? Can faith save him? (Jam. 2:14)

The answer to that question, of course, is no. If the rhetorical nature of that question is not clear, James says it directly  for you:

So you see that a person is justified by works and not by faith only. (Jam. 2:24)

That verse, you may be interested to know, is the only occurrence of the phrase “faith alone” or “faith only” in the entire Bible.

These sorts of verses make it clear that “assurance” hinges on works being produced in your life.

Are those works produced out of faith? Of course they are. The hope will always be that those who seek to produce works out of their own strength will fail, and in their failure, and in their certain knowledge and expectation of judgment, they will turn to him alone who can save, Jesus, our Savior and Redeemer.

But surely there is no passage clearer on the subject of atonement than 2 Pet. 1:10-11:

Be diligent to make your calling and election sure, for if you do these things, you will never fall. For in this way an entrance will be supplied to you abundantly into the everlasting kingdom of our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ.

Will this produce despair in those who do not have works or who find it difficult to turn away from sin and live in obedience to God?

Hopefully! But whether it does or not, it’s hard to say that assurance depends on doing something any clearer than Peter just said it.

I say “hopefully” because if you find that you cannot turn away from sin and live for God, then you haven’t believed the Gospel. If you are under grace, says the Scriptures, then sin will not have power over you (Rom. 6:14).

Thus, if you do not have this power, you need to find out what the real Gospel is, believe it, and obtain that power.

Paul despaired in exactly that way. He cried out, “Oh, wretched man that I am! Who shall deliver me from this body of death?” (Rom. 7:24).

Paul, however, had an answer. That answer was Jesus Christ. The Law could not deliver Paul from sin, but “what the Law could not do, God did, by sending his Son … ” (Rom. 8:3-4). The result was that “the law of the Spirit of life in Christ Jesus has set me free from the law of sin and death” (Rom. 8:2).

The Necessary Caveats or …

Explaining Things  for Modern Christians

Does this mean we have to be perfect?

No.

John adds:

If we say we have no sin, we deceive ourselves, and the truth is not in us. If we confess our sins, God is faithful and just to forgive our sins, and to cleanse us from all unrighteousness. (1 Jn. 2:1)

James, too, knows that we all sin:

For we all stumble in many things. (Jam. 3:2)

Nonetheless, both these men make it clear that we are expected to obey God, and if we do not, then we will not be saved.

God is a just Judge. The accusation that God must send people to hell if  they sin even once is not true and makes a monster out of God.

How can we know we’re being obedient enough to merit salvation?

Merit is like a cuss word to modern Christians. We can never “merit” salvation. In fact, we shouldn’t “merit” salvation.

At least that’s what people say.

What they say is both true and not true.

It is true in the sense that the reason salvation is by grace (not by faith, but by the grace that faith obtains) is so that we would not be able to boast. We, in ourselves, cannot be worthy. It is by the Spirit that we put to death the deeds of the body, and it is this fact that eliminates boasting. We are his workmanship, created in Christ Jesus to do good works.

But it is not true in the sense that the Scriptures say we must be worthy.

Sorry.

You have a few names, even in Sardis, that have not defiled their garments, and they shall walk with me in white, for they are worthy. (Rev. 3:4)

That’s merit being specifically discussed in so many words.  But it’s said indirectly as well:

I discipline my body and bring it under subjection lest, having preached to others, I myself should be disqualified. (1 Cor. 9:27)

How can we be obedient enough? – Part 2

Actually, yes we can. For two reasons:

One we’ve been talking about. God has the power to keep us from stumbling and to present us faultless before his throne by his grace (1 Cor. 1:7; Jude 24). The other is over emphasized in modern Christianity, but it needs to be addressed in this blog.

We’ve already mentioned that God is merciful, but we need to say it further.

To him that does not work but believes on him that justifies the ungodly, his faith is counted for righteousness. Just as David describes the man to whom God imputes righteousness without works, “Blessed are they whose iniquities are forgiven and whose sins are covered; blessed is the man to whom the Lord will not impute sin.” (Rom. 4:5-8)

The man who is in Christ, who does not walk according to the flesh, can indeed inherit these promises. They are true. There really is no condemnation to those who are in Christ Jesus.

But you have to be in Christ Jesus!

John puts it well:

If we walk in the light, as he is in the light, we have fellowship with one another, and the blood of Jesus Christ his Son cleanses us from all sin. (1 Jn. 1:7)

If we want to receive these promises of mercy; if we want to walk in no condemnation; if we want to experience a continual cleansing from sin by the blood of Jesus, then we must walk in the light; we must walk by the Spirit.

John warns us not to be fooled about this:

My little children, do not be deceived. He who practices righteousness is righteous just as he is righteous. (1 Jn. 3:7)

Do you possess the righteousness of Christ? You can only possess that righteousness if you are practicing righteousness yourself. I’m not speaking of earning that righteousness, but I am saying that the same effort to walk in the light and walk by the Spirit that allows you to experience continual forgiveness and the the righteousness of Christ will also produce practical, visible righteousness in your life.

One early Christian, writing around the year 150, explained it very well:

If they repent, all who wish for it can obtain mercy from God, and the Scripture foretells that they shall be blessed, saying, “Blessed is the man to whom the Lord will not impute sin” [Ps. 32:2]. In other words, repenting of his sins, he may receive remission of them from God. It’s not as you [Jews] deceive yourselves … who say that even though they are sinners, yet know God, the Lord will not impute sin to them.

The proof of this is the fall of David … which was forgiven when he mourned and wept, as it is written. So if even to a man like David no remittance was granted before he repented, and only when this great king, anointed one, and prophet mourned and conducted himself as it is written, then how can the impure and utterly abandoned–if they don’t weep, don’t mourn, and don’t repent–entertain the hope that the Lord will not impute sin to them? (Justin Martyr, Dialogue with Trypho, A Jew, ch. 141)

I apologize that this post is so long, but I’m trying to answer questions. I hope that it’s the heart of a teacher that wants to answer thoroughly.

I’m trying to paint a clear picture that will help you see and understand, but you have to have an open heart yourself. You have to search the Scriptures; you have to want truth.

Be assured, though, that whatever you come to must pass one test. It must be the doctrine according to godliness. Grace is not a license for sin, and it is possible to deny God by your works and thus become abominable.

Let us be able ministers of the New Testament. Let us be students of the Scripture, learning from it, not reading into it.

And let us test ourselves by the churches of the apostles. Let us test ourselves by the results we produce. The true Gospel is the power of God to salvation, and it will produce and reveal the righteousness of God. If your converts are not living fruitful lives, giving up their own souls that they may receive them back from God, safe and secure in his hands, then you are preaching the wrong Gospel, and you need to change.

This morning two things brought up the issue of what the Gospel is.

Note: I reproduced this at Christian History for Everyman, where I could include sidebars with quotes from early Christian writings showing you that this is what the apostles’ churches taught as well.

One, I am a member of Tangle, a Christian version of youtube. Their email for the day concerns a video on the Gospel. It’s this one:

The second were two questions asked in the comment section of my blog post, Obedience and Christian Salvation. I’ll do a second post to cover those.

The Tangle Video on the Gospel

The Gospel does not come presented any worse than this.

This deluded person says, “If we’ve lied once, cheated once, hated once … just once … then our soul becomes imperfect and can’t get into heaven.”

That doesn’t sound so horrific on the surface, but let’s look at what he’s saying. He’s already said that heaven or hell are the only places our immortal soul can go. He believes that hell is a place of torment, full of literal flames. So … So God is a being who will  send the vast majority of souls who have ever lived into eternal torture even if all they’ve done is just hated once.

Forget Guantanamo Bay. That was a place of exceptional righteousness, where people were subjected to light and temporary humiliation and discomfort, the majority of them for being exceptionally evil.

God, according this video, is much worse. He’s going to torture people in flames for all eternity for hating once, or for cheating on a test in elementary school, or for telling a lie at work … just once.

This is a just Judge???

Slandering God

This is not the Gospel. This is slander.

This deceit was planted in Christians by the devil, who is the father of all lies. We need to root out this counterfeit Gospel, driving it out with our whole hearts as the blasphemy that it is.

That is not God. Listen for a moment to who the Judge of all the earth, the one who does right, really is:

If the wicked will turn from all the sins that he has committed, keep all my statutes, do that which is lawful and right,  he shall surely live. He shall not die. All his transgressions that he committed, they shall not be mentioned to him. In his righteousness that he has done, he shall live. (Ezek. 18:21-22)

Yahweh passed by before [Moses] and proclaimed, “Yahweh God, merciful and gracious, patient, and abundant in goodness and truth, keeping mercy for thousands, forgiving iniquity, transgression, and sin, and who will by no means clear the guilty, visiting the iniquity of the fathers upon the children.” (Ex. 34:6-7)

Okay, granted, God will not clear the guilty. He’ll even punish the children for sins of the fathers. Don’t freak out about that. We all know that children are prone to inheriting the faults of their parents. Punishment is not evil. Punishment is a wonderful thing that produces repentance, and as you can see from the Scriptures above, repentance produces life and drives punishment far away.

However, read those verses. Is this a God that sends people to hell for one lie???

And how does he forgive the mass of sins that the wicked have committed. Does he require sacrifices and oblations? Does he have to kill a human? Does he have to send his own Son to earth and kill him so that he can forgive sin?

That’s not what the Bible says. After King David had committed adultery with Bathsheba, then killed her husband Uriah to hide it, God punished him in body and by killing his love-child. David repented, crying out for forgiveness.

 You do not  want sacrifice, or else I would give it. You do not delight in burnt offerings. The sacrifices of God are a broken spirit. A broken and contrite heart, O God, you will not despise. (Ps. 51:16-17)

This is a God that can’t forgive sin unless he kills his Son???

Why Jesus Really Died

Jesus did not die because God was a monster that could not forgive sin. God did not need to be saved. He has always been wonderful. Everything he has done has always been redemptive and has always been good. God did not change when Jesus died.

Jesus died because we are monsters. Look at Paul’s description of us:

There is none righteous, no, not one. …
Their throat is an open grave; with their tongues they have deceived;
The poison of asps is under their lips; their mouth is full of cursing and bitterness.
Their feet are swift to shed blood.

Et cetera, et cetera, et cetera.

When Paul wrote, “All have sinned and fallen short of the glory of God,” he was not talking about cheating on a 6th grade math test. He was talking about those things I just quoted from Romans 3,  which Paul quoted from the Old Testament.

Worse, according to the Bible, at least for the majority of us, there’s not much we can do about it. “How to perform what’s good I cannot find” (Rom. 7:18).

Now that’s a problem worth dying for!

And that’s the problem Jesus did die for …

For what the Law could not do, because it was weak through the flesh, God did. By sending his own Son in the likeness of  sinful flesh, as an offering for sin, he condemned sin in the flesh, so that the righteous requirement of the Law might be fulfilled in us who do not walk after the flesh but after the Spirit. (Rom. 8:3-4)

Awesome! So now we wicked people with the poison of asps under our lips and whose feet are swift to shed blood can “put to death the deeds of the body by the Spirit” and live (Rom. 8:13).

That was worthy dying for.

And it doesn’t make a monster out of a loving, kind, and merciful God.

One More Verse to Mull Over

When Peter told the Jews in Jerusalem–including the other apostles–about the conversion of Cornelius, the Gentile, they were horrified. Forget the fact that Cornelius had received the Spirit of God, having had his soul cleansed by the blood of Jesus. They were horrified that he’d, gasp, eaten with gentiles!

After Peter explained what happened, however, they were silent and accepting. This was the work of God.

Their comment, however, should be mulled over by all  modern Christians who have been deceived by that blasphemy from the devil that says that God forgives sin by killing and sacrifice rather than on the basis of repentance:

So, then, God has given the repentance that leads to life to the gentiles as well. (Acts 11:18)

Hmm.

Do you want one even more difficult for modern, deceived Christians to swallow? This is Paul speaking:

 I was not disobedient to the heavenly vision, but have announced first to those in Damascus and Jerusalem, then to all the regions of Judea, then to the nations, that they should repent and turn to God, doing works worthy of repentance. (Acts 26:20)

Paul said that??? Paul did that???

Yes!

Of course, he also told them that the power for this repentance is found in the grace bestowed upon us by the Lord Jesus Christ in his death …

Sin will not have power over you because you are not under Law but under grace. (Rom. 6:14)