Tag Archives: sin

Why the Body of Christ Won’t Heal

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Once again I feel the need to speak out against a harmful and naive teaching popular in many churches today. I know I’ve written such things before and likely no one will see this, but at least writing it down helps me to articulate why this teaching is wrong. And as in many times past, the source is from a comment at this blog:

How do we treat lost people? We love them. How do we relate to lost people? As people who are in need of a Savior. To we “shun” lost people? No. Do we exclude lost people from attending our services? No. We look at them with eyes of truth and love.

And, to top it all off, Jesus explains that when we love somebody like this, we are displaying the love and kindness of heaven–and the decision of the church is the decision of heaven (Matthew 18).

I’d like to address the second part first, the “Matthew 18″ part. We need to pay attention to the context, which includes whether it was said pre- or post-Cross. Jesus is speaking here to Jews only, before the Cross, and he had not yet specified The Church as something new rather than as what the Jews would naturally understand it to mean at the time: the Jewish community (one source). In fact, Paul claimed to have been the very first person to reveal The Church as the Body of Christ or “new creation” (Eph. 3:4-6, 2 Cor. 5:17) rather than the usual gathering or community of Israel.

Now Mat. 18′s context also includes the fact that Jesus was answering a question about “the kingdom of heaven”. But while that certainly was both a present and future entity, and the principles are general morality statements that certainly apply in any age, this was in no way a doctrine or instruction for the as-yet unknown entity called The Church. That is, Jesus was not laying down ecclesiastical rules and procedures but principles of fellowship— which poses a problem for the first part of the quote above.

First of all, even in this Mat. 18 context Jesus specified that the one who refused to listen was to be dis-fellowshipped (Mt. 18:17); he did not teach that the unrepentant sinner should be accepted and kept in the group. Was Jesus thereby not “displaying the love and kindness of heaven”? Secondly, why didn’t Paul follow this Mt. 18 protocol in 1 Cor. 5 regarding the man cohabiting with his stepmother? In fact, never in any of his letters does Paul invoke Mt. 18. Even the apostle John would confront and rebuke when necessary (3 John 1:9-10, and note that this was the other extreme: a leader was expelling good people). So there is simply no Biblical precedent for allowing unrepentant sinners to remain in the fellowship, and plenty for expelling them.

But once again we see in this harmful teaching quoted above that there is little or no consideration for the victim. To be forced to sit in the room with her cheating spouse and his girlfriend, who are shown “love and kindness” (!!??!), is no different than forcing a rape victim to marry or fellowship with her rapist. Where is the compassion for her in this? Where is any love or kindness for the woman and her children in this? It is nothing less than punishing her twice, pouring salt into her gaping wound.

And the lesson is not lost on the man, either. He is learning that he can do whatever he wants and still be a member in good standing at that “church”, and that by extension God will never hold him accountable because, after all, “the decision of the church is the decision of heaven”. This is an outrage! I don’t care how far they may try to go in placating the victim, there is no denying that by keeping the unrepentant perp in the fellowship his sin is being “loved and accepted”. Hypothetical or not, those who teach such things are sending out a very bad message to both the victim and the sinner.

By the apostle Paul’s own words, there are times when the BEST thing to do for a loved sinner is to THROW THEM OUT of the fellowship, where they will be vulnerable to the attacks of Satan and perhaps be moved to repentance. By being too timid or politically correct to confront and dis-fellowship an unrepentant sinner, the Body of Christ is left to suffer the spread of this disease, and thus no love is shown to them either. I would not want to be in the shoes of the “pastor” who so loves the wolves that he serves up some of his own sheep to them.

What would Jesus do? We already know.

ADDED:
This quote is disturbing as well:

Then, you request from the church that a judgment be made about the man’s soul condition. What judgment is that? The church judges the man as one without grace, one without a Savior, one without regeneration – a reprobate. You explain to the church that, obviously, we are NOT GOD, so we do not know for sure if our judgement is correct, but “by their fruits” are Christ’s people known. To continue in adultery after repeated, loving attempts by others to provoke the adulterer to repentance, love and good deeds toward his wife and family, is a sign of reprobation – that is, it is a sign that the man is indeed lost.

This commenter has a history of rebuking anyone who would dare “judge” another person lost. And though he tries to dance around it here, there is no escaping that the intent of this quote is precisely a judging of spiritual condition: they would consider the person lost “by their fruit”. (Many others have tried to say this very thing to him: that when it comes to “church discipline”, we have only the “fruit” to go by and must treat people accordingly. But this sort of double standard, where only certain people are allowed to so judge, is quite common.) Yet the focus here is on what to do with someone, lost or not, when they refuse to repent of their sin. What, exactly, is the point of calling someone lost if there are no consequences? Why bother? “Golly gee, fella, we’d prefer that you stop this sin, but hey, whatever, we love you!”  Absolutely nauseating.

When ‘Biblical’ Means ‘Shut Up’

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Time once again to remind ourselves that there are entire organizations dedicated to keeping women in the place designated for them by men. They say “no, by God” (or, “NO, BY GOD!!”), but that has never been successfully established. And by labeling their opinions and interpretations “Biblical” they hope to stifle all opposition as ungodly and rebellious.

I speak primarily of course about council members for the infamous CBMW, on the occasion of the one-year anniversary this past Sunday of the Freedom For Christian Women’s Demand for an Apology (more info here). And one cannot help but notice that every token woman on that council is first or primarily described as a “homemaker” or “pastor’s wife”. Gotta keep those wimmin folk in the kitchen! Of course they do other things like write and teach other wimmin folk, and rake in some significant cash for their “Christs” (Eph. 5:22) in the process, but they’re still “homemakers” above all and never pastors themselves but only auxiliaries of them. A place for every woman, and every woman in her place.

The irony of their organization’s title still escapes them, for the terms “manhood” and “womanhood” are nowhere to be found in the Bible. We see men and women both having courage or timidity, both having harshness or tenderness, both crying and laughing, and other aspects of the human nature men and women share. There is no “men rule, women drool” in the pages of the New Testament— another term poorly grasped by male supremacists. Is it really a New Testament when the only thing changed for women is that they have less freedom to speak in assembly, less opportunity or gifting to have public authority, and less ability to escape an abusive husband than women of the Old Testament? Are these Southern Baptists oblivious to the double standard of finally apologizing to US blacks for condoning slavery in the past, while refusing to apologize to women when the arguments for both sins are identical? Or are they deliberately choosing to keep a tight grip on the last refuge for men who love to be first in line?

They have been confronted about poor teachings on the Greek text on more than one occasion yet forge ahead as if exposure of their linguistic incompetence might mar their careers. But like the current holder of the title of US President who is more concerned with re-election than the good of the country, the CBMW Council seems more concerned with holding power and role-playing than the good of the Body of Christ. Their teachings have often been cited by abusers in the churches as justification, and many pastors have sent women back to their abusers because they either must have caused it by insubordination or should “suffer for Christ” with willing and glad submission (one resource). While there may be a few abusers claiming to be egalitarian, nobody ever cites egal. teachings in defense.

Since the SBC has apologized for the sin of white supremacy, there is no excuse for organizations like CBMW to exist, much less to continue propagating the sin of male supremacy. Calling it Biblical is like putting cream cheese frosting on a brick and calling it a delicacy. This tactic is identical to that of various cults who tack the name of Jesus on teachings that couldn’t be more opposite from those of the real Jesus. There is simply nothing Biblical about “manhood and womanhood” role-playing games.

But can such organizations and their members be changed? Are we to keep trying to reform them? Personally, since I also reject hierarchy between the contrived clergy and laity classes, it’s my conviction to start from scratch and model the Body of Christ apart from them instead of trying to change them from within, because if others are likewise convicted to keep doing so, we also need someplace for people to go if they are convinced that the old, traditional paradigm is wrong.

Either way, and more likely together, we all can make a difference— even if it doesn’t bear fruit for another hundred years. We have to try, even though the first American “feminists” were devout Christian women who campaigned also against slavery on the same grounds. But if not, we take comfort in Jesus’ promise that “last will be first, and the first will be last” in the coming kingdom (Mt. 20:16, 20-28).

No Trespassing

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Back a few years ago I wrote about whether or not all sins are alike to God, and argued that while all sins breach the relationship between us and God, they have different penalties or influences. Just as even we fallible humans know the difference between an accident and a deliberate crime, so also God does not equate lying about one’s age with murdering one’s neighbor. To treat these both the same would be terribly unjust.

But what I didn’t do is to take a look at the various words in the NT typically rendered by the all-encompassing word “sin”. While of course the context of each will carry most of the weight of interpretation, it’s good to know the definitions. Of course there is overlap, and various writers may use terms interchangeably. But let’s let the reader have the tools to decide instead of spoon-feeding someone else’s opinion, scholarly though it may be. Here are the main ones:

  1. παραβασις (parabasis)– to trespass, cross the line, encroach, transgress, unlawfully set foot upon another’s property
  2. παραπτωμα (paraptōma)– to fall beside, stumble, blunder, be at fault
  3. προσκομμα (proskomma)– an obstacle or stumbling block, such as when one trips over a root above ground
  4. σκανδαλον (skandalon)– to trap/ensnare, trip up
  5. ἁμαρτια (hamartia)– to fail, err, fall short
  6. αστοχεω (astocheō)– to miss the mark

The first one indicates a deliberate choice or plan to sin; the second indicates an accidental or careless sin; the third and fourth indicate a plan to cause sin; the fifth and sixth indicate a failure of ability, meaning one did not do what one was capable of doing, whether by refusing to act or not putting forth sufficient effort. We could also list them in English in general categories as follows:

  • deliberate sin
    • one’s own
    • one’s own by causing another’s
  • non-deliberate sin
    • through one’s own negligence or immaturity
    • through someone else’s treachery

Even in the Mosaic law we see different sacrifices for different sins, and recognition that some sins were deliberate while others were in ignorance (Lev. 4-6, Ezekiel 45:20, Heb. 9:7). Before the law, even Job made sacrifices for others’ sins without their even having confessed (Job 1:5). So there is plenty of scripture to back up the claim that God does not see all sin alike.

But the question arises as to whether a Bible translation should always use the word “sin” regardless of what the Greek meaning may be. Some would claim that to use “failure” or “blunder” for example, softens the seriousness of sin and is an attempt to deny it. Every little thing is deemed worthy of eternal punishment in hell in such a view, so it cannot allow the slightest nuance. But again, even the most clueless parent knows that it’s one thing for a child to do wrong, but quite another for the child to try to cover it up. Or if it was an accident, the person causing it still has to pay for damages but is not penalized as when the damage is deliberate or negligent.

So what do you think? Always use “sin” and err on the side of caution, use the distinct words and let the reader figure out whether a given passage is talking about an offense against God, or use entire phrases that explain the full meaning, such as “those who offend God by accident” or “those who offend God purposely”?

Wicked World, Callous Calumny

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My alliteration alludes to the most ancient of blame games, started by Adam himself: “that woman you gave me” (Gen. 3:12). I read frequently from a political site called American Thinker, which normally has good articles. But recently they had a rather misogynistic one called The Descent of Woman, which engaged in the typical scapegoating and stereotyping of women for all that is wrong with the world. In spite of some in the comment stream appealing to reason, history, fact, and much evidence against the article’s premise, others there continue to see women as satanic little Jezebels bent on emasculating men and destroying the world. “Enmity” indeed (Gen. 3:15)!

Like the leftist media’s continual squealing that the evil “vast right-wing conspiracy” is to blame for everything from nuclear war to broken fingernails, male supremacism cannot separate its hatred from reality. And if anyone still wants to claim that our culture is pro-woman, let them explain how so many secular venues still want the Ozzie and Harriet world, where women knew their place and men did whatever they very well wanted, when they wanted (well, as long as other men approved!). But woman’s place, as I’ve written often, is the place of a child who is never allowed to reach full adulthood in all respects as men are allowed.

One would think that with the glaring evil displayed by Islam all over the world, that women would at last be seen as victims instead of instigators. But even when they are bound up like mummies they are still blamed for men’s lack of self-control. In fact, I’ve seen reports that the rampant homosexual pedophilia in some Islamic-controlled areas is admittedly due to women being so removed from public life and seen only as baby-makers. If a woman is raped, she is blamed and often tortured or murdered for it. If she objects to being forced to marry someone 3 or 4 (or more) times her age, she is hunted down and punished. But somehow, western men (and many women too) can look at that and still blame western decadence on women.

When oh when will these misogynists be brought to justice, Lord? How long must women be trampled? Even those who say they honor and value women still treat them like children who must have men’s permission for many things, and like second-class citizens who can never fully use their spiritual gifts. When will the day come that the last are put first, the weak shame the strong, the oppressed are freed, and the burdened are relieved?

Remember, women, you do not need permission to grow up. You do not need permission to be free. You do not need to politely request to preach the gospel, run a business, study theology, support your family, wear whatever you want (both men and women need to dress modestly though!), demand the same purity that men demand from women, teach grown men, council married couples, or change the world for the better as have many brave women in the past. Be strong and brave; don’t buy the lie anymore. Jesus died for you, and in time He will lift you up. “‘Vengeance is mine; I will repay’, says the Lord” (Rom. 12:19). May that day come quickly.

Pretext and Proof-text

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As you may know, I look for logical fallacies in other people’s writings– even writings or writers I generally agree with. So it’s just a statistical inevitability that those writers I read the most are going to be the most frequent targets of my logic probe.* ;-) This is not a personal issue but simply an observation, as well as a plea for Christians to be more careful in what they teach.

Today’s example is found at the blog of the prophecy teacher I respect most, Jack Kelley. In an article entitled Coming Full Circle he endeavors to more completely answer questions about “coming of age” and responsibility for personal sin. But there are several problems with logic and prior assumptions that take him to the right destination (“age of accountability”) but by the wrong route.

Jack begins by citing a Jewish tradition (bat/bar mitzvah), though he admits several paragraphs later that no evidence for this practice exists for the first century. He ignores the fact that the bat mitzvah (for girls) was unknown in any form in Paul’s day, such that his whole argument for all human beings will be based upon a practice that only applied Jews, and only to half of them. That is, if Paul used whatever Jewish rite of passage existed in his time as the theological basis for responsibility for sin, then it necessarily follows that this whole discussion only applies to males.

Now we might then ask why Paul’s frequent mention of circumcision doesn’t suffer from the same flaw, but the primary question is whether Paul is talking about legalism in Rom. 7:9 as he does when he mentions circumcision. While circumcision and rites of passage were exclusively male issues, Paul did not cite them as examples for the same purposes. And we see in this case that the purpose is not why Christians are not under Jewish law, but the effect comprehension has on personal responsibility.

Then Jack says, “Judaism teaches that fathers are responsible for the sins of their children until they come of age”, as if this traditional teaching is to be held up to the level of divine mandate. But not even Judaism would say that a father is literally responsible for his children’s sins against God (see Ezekiel 18), but only for breaking Jewish law. Even today in our culture we recognize that parents must be responsible for their children’s crimes, until such time when the children can comprehend what they’ve done and recognize it as an infraction. Again, the crucial point is comprehension, and no one can ever be held responsible by God for the sins of others unless they deliberately caused the person to sin (Mt. 18:6), and of course this is not limited to fathers (what about mothers?) and their children.

So Jack comes to Rom. 7:9 with the assumption that Paul taught that fathers (not mothers) were literally responsible for sins against God committed by their children, and that sons (not daughters) would take this responsibility upon themselves at a certain age. Without explanation this is then transferred to the belief in universal (male and female) “sin nature” that I have written many articles against. He is arguing that at the moment someone is old enough to comprehend sin, they are immediately condemned by their “sin nature”:

Reaching the age of accountability transformed children into adults but also robbed them of eternal life. Since there was no longer someone else upon whom to place the burden for their sins, they became responsible themselves and an execution order was immediately entered against them from Heaven.

But what about John 3:18? Condemnation is not based upon nature but upon disbelief; we are not condemned just by growing up! I cannot emphasize enough the importance of separating condemnation to hell from losing rewards due to our committed sins. It is never inheritance, the flesh, parents, or the Jewish law that sends a person to hell, but their own conscious rejection of the gospel.

In a case of the tautology fallacy (circular reasoning), Jack goes on to lift verses like Mt. 18:3 from context to turn “have the simple faith of a child” into “become un-responsible for sin by returning to spiritual childhood”. Yet as I’ve said before, the whole purpose of believer’s judgment will not be to see if we’re believers, but to be rewarded or penalized for our actions in this life. Ergo, we are responsible for what we do, good or bad (Rev. 11:18). The same proof-texting is done to John 1:12-13; John isn’t saying that we lose responsibility for our sins but that we are heirs of promise. It appears that any verse mentioning “children” in a figurative way was made to be about responsibility to law.

Another proof-text is Gal. 4:4-7. While Jack admits is about inheritance he nonetheless asserts that salvation means the responsibility for our sins is “transferred” instead of it being the payment for sins. What Jesus’ sacrifice did, among other things, is to make forgiveness possible simply by asking for it with the realization that we have offended the One we claim to have been reconciled with, because we already have a Sacrifice. Just as a sacrifice was needed along with the sinner’s renunciation of their sin, so also we who “have died to sin” need not only to apologize to God but to have brought the only valid Sacrifice. (see my book Reconciled for more detail) As shown in the previous paragraph, we certainly are held responsible for our sins, but reconciliation is only an “I’m sorry” away; the sins we hate are the ones God wipes away.

1 John 2:2 says that Jesus is the “atoning sacrifice” for the whole world, so obviously the sacrifice is not the act of salvation but its enabler; individual faith in that sacrifice is what actually saves. But beyond that is personal accountability for sinning, and the guilt for that cannot be inherited. So rather than “full circle”, the article is “fully circular” and fails to distinguish between condemnation for rejecting Jesus and personal responsibility for gained or lost rewards.

* “Logic probe” has a double-meaning for those with an electonics background. It’s a device for testing a point in a digital circuit for its logic level, i.e. whether the voltage is high or low (on/off). But of course in this context I’m referring to “probing” the logic of a written article.

Theology Against Biology

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In ancient times there were of course many misconceptions (pun intended) about conception, such as Aquinas’ belief that women were misbegotten men. But a related (another pun intended) myth still persist among some Christians, that somehow the virgin birth of Christ must have been necessary from a biological standpoint to ensure His sinlessness. A typical example is found in the articleThe Chemistry of the Blood by M. R. DeHaan:

Since there is no life in the egg until the male sperm unites with it, and the life is in the blood [Leviticus 17:11], it follows that the male sperm is the source of the blood, the seed of life. Think it through.

No, it doesn’t follow at all; this is a non sequitur. One must presume quite a lot about the statement in Leviticus, making it unsuitable as a premise in any argument. And the male sperm is no more the source of the blood than it is the source of anything else, but is merely half the genetic equation. This would in fact be the old belief that the mother contributes no genetics to the baby at all but only incubation, as recently as van Leeuwenhoek (famous for improving the microscope) in the 17th century and well into the 18th. We could just as well claim that only the woman is the source of a baby’s blood because sperm can’t create babies without eggs. Poor logic.

The biological fact is that sperm and egg each contribute half the baby’s genetics, and the blood type that the baby will have comes not from only one gamete or the other but is a matter of the possible combinations of the four blood types; see this article. But when this is not understood or accepted, it leads to faulty conclusions. The motivation for this particular one is seen in the article just before the quote about egg and sperm:

God has made of ONE BLOOD ALL THE NATIONS of the earth. Sinful heredity is transmitted through the blood and not through the flesh. Even though Jesus, therefore, received His flesh, His body from a sinful race, He could still be sinless as long as not a drop blood of this sinful race entered His veins.

Those who are familiar with my view on inheritable spiritual qualities (see Regression, Of Chickens And Eggs, Can Sin Be Inherited?, Original Sin Revisited, Blue Genes) know the problems caused by such an assertion. Here again we have two faulty premises: over-presuming the first and baselessly asserting the second. It seems that this particular view sees the problem of claiming sin is passed “through the flesh” but does not make any practical or logical improvement on it by shifting the transmission medium to blood. Flesh and blood are two different things, but both are mortal/physical/gentic entities and the phrase “one blood” is simply a figure of speech that means we are all human instead of separate created lines.

There is no logical, biological, or theological leg for any of these views to stand on. Instead, as I’ve argued many times before, Jesus’ sinlessness is by simple virtue of His conscious choice not to sin, and the significance of His virgin birth is that is was a “sign” (Matt. 1:23 referring to Isaiah 7:14) that symbolizes the difference in reaction to sin between Adam and Eve.

Walk This Way

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  • 1 John 1:6 – If we claim to have fellowship with him and yet walk in the darkness, we lie and do not live out the truth.
  • 1 John 2:11 – But those who hate a fellow believer are in the darkness and walk around in the darkness; they do not know where they are going, because the darkness has blinded them.
  • Colossians 3:7 – You used to walk in these ways, in the life you once lived.
  • 1 John 1:7 – But if we walk in the light, as he is in the light, we have fellowship with one another, and the blood of Jesus, his Son, purifies us from all sin.
  • Galatians 5:16 – So I say, walk by the Spirit, and you will not gratify the desires of the flesh.
  • Ephesians 5:2 – and walk in the way of love, just as Christ loved us and gave himself up for us as a fragrant offering and sacrifice to God.
  • 2 John 1:4 – It has given me great joy to find some of your children walking in the truth, just as the Father commanded us.
  • 2 John 1:6 – And this is love: that we walk in obedience to his commands. As you have heard from the beginning, his command is that you walk in love.
  • 3 John 1:3 – It gave me great joy to have some believers come and testify to your faithfulness to the truth, telling how you continue to walk in it.
  • 3 John 1:4 – I have no greater joy than to hear that my children are walking in the truth

Too many people think that being saved is the end, as if being born is the end of life instead of its beginning. They forget the part about growth; they don’t walk in the light.

But why? Why is this failure to walk in the light an epidemic among professing believers today? Isn’t it at least partly because the leaders have been tyrants and Pharisees instead of examples? In the previous post we looked at some teachings with dire consequences— dire, because people actually “walk the walk” and live out the logical conclusions of those teachings. Intended or not, the reality is that people live the way they actually believe.

And this goes both ways. In many cases, the teachers of unbiblical theology do not practice what they preach, even as their followers practice it. So by their actions the teachers demonstrate that they really don’t believe what they’re teaching— or they think themselves above their own laws. And that is the essence of the Pharisee:

They tie up heavy, cumbersome loads and put them on other people’s shoulders, but they themselves are not willing to lift a finger to move them. Everything they do is done for people to see…
Mt. 23:4-5a

But between these two extremes are many, many people who were saved at a young age, whose adult lives seem to mostly ignore God. Where is the “walk”? What real difference does their faith make in their lives, outside the walls of a church building? Where’s the saltiness (Mt. 5:13)? Where’s the light (Mt. 5:14-16)? What kind of ambassadors never mention the One they represent (2 Cor. 5:20)?

We walk amilessly and wonder why we never get anywhere. We walk in the dark and wonder why we keep crashing into things. We can’t walk in the truth because we either don’t know it or have come to believe there is no such thing. We are thrown out as useless because we have lost our saltiness; we do not “flavor” the world around us.

That’s what is wrong with Christianity today. How to make it right?

Walk this way.

Dirty Laundry

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A few months ago I was looking at Bible software and got on the email list of one of the more popular (and pricey) brands. The emails usually announce various add-ons and modules, but the latest one really irritated me.

It featured “the Mark Driscoll Sermon Archive”… without any “rating”, warning, or fine print.

This is the man whose rise to fame was not on the orthodoxy of his teachings but on his filthy mouth and filthier mind. His sex-saturated, expletive-laced talks are what bring in the crowds and keep them coming back, even attracting the attention of the media. Oh sure, he does teach some things accurately and Biblically (but also staunchly Calvinistically). But as I’ve written before, that isn’t enough. The Christian teacher must be above reproach in everything, an example and model of both truth and purity, exhibiting the highest standards of speech and conduct.

Why is this man, and so many others for various reasons, being put on an ever-rising pedestal? The “alpha male” needs more accolades and prestige like dandelions need to be fed and watered. By accepting and promoting Driscoll, this Bible software company is showing either the poorest discernment or the most brazen rejection of all that scripture teaches. It makes me wonder what else is lurking in their modules. Are we really this hard up for teachers now? Are we willing also to accept teachings from others who have been caught doing the vile things they keep preaching against? That is, this isn’t just about Driscoll but also about the many credentialed and elite who live on a very lopsided double standard. Are these companies going to whitewash them all, just to make a buck?

That’s what I mean by dirty laundry. The Bible never whitewashes it; not even King David could escape having his great sins listed along side his great achievements. But unlike Driscoll and the rest, David repented in bitter tears when he was confronted. He did not wallow in his sin but renounced it. Yet the majority of respected Christian teachers today won’t even confront Driscoll over his ribald “teachings”; it seems that he, and they, think this is good, solid, Christ-honoring material. They see nothing to whitewash!

Needless to say, I won’t be shelling out the cash for this particular software. But I’d love to know what, if anything, will be censored out of those “sermons”. Will they present him in all his burlesque glory, mocking those who do believe that Christians, even Christian men, are to be gentle, kind, and pure? Or will they whitewash him and carefully edit out the “unpresentable parts”? Either choice is a slap in the face of the Holy Spirit. I guess we can add Bible software companies to the lament over Christian book sellers.

Wakeup Call

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In recent months I’ve seen more and more instances in the news where the founders of this country are increasingly portrayed as villains. The statements they made and the revolution they brought about would, in today’s anti-western worldview, get them arrested, villified, and possibly murdered by the very country they founded.

But the same thing is happening in “Christianity”, and few talk about it. It’s as if we have our own counterpart to the “drive-by media” who cover up ugly truths and are mere propaganda machines for the current Marxist government. What popular “Christian” magazines, blogs, or newsletters ever talk about the scandals ripping through the churches and denominations? What mega-preachers or sought-after authors are exposing the rampant evil being perpetrated by the very leaders who are supposed to be protecting or “covering” people? Instead, they mock and condemn, and sometimes threaten, those poor saps who still believe that salvation is only through faith in the crucified and risen Jesus and have come to Him to be reconciled to God.

In both the political and religious spheres, those who once were honored as people of the highest morals and deepest commitment are now written off as rednecks or fundies, terrorists or “tares”, regressives or relics. Just as in the book/movie I Am Legend, monsters and normal people have traded places. But scripture warns, “Woe to those who call evil good and good evil, who put darkness for light and light for darkness, who put bitter for sweet and sweet for bitter.” (Isaiah 5:20)

Hardly a day goes by without another “pastor” getting caught in a scandal of sexual immorality, lying, slandering, aiding and abeting pedophiles and abusers, demanding blind obedience, forbidding to be questioned, living in luxury from the “tithes and offerings” of the people they fleece, tax evasion, swindling, blackmailing, and every other sin the world is known for— and often to a greater extreme.

But why do we put up with this? As someone asked in a trailer to the documentary Cartel, why aren’t we rioting in the streets (:53–:59)? Why aren’t we Christians “shutting the temple doors” (Malachi 1:10, Amos 5:21)? Why do we think that a pedophile can be “forgiven” if he’s a “pastor”, but woe to the “little people” who so much as ask questions? How can we make excuses for proud and entitled professionals who blame everything on those they’re supposed to nurture, and treat those Jesus freed as their own personal slaves? And how can some “Christian” husbands demand their wives’ blind subservience while utterly disregarding the command to love them as Christ loves the church? And why do the wives think this is Christianity?

I think one of the most insidious tactics of Satan has been to bring us to this point by telling us it is unloving to “judge”, especially to judge someone’s salvation. And that is a bald-faced lie. Think about it: if you aren’t allowed to judge, you won’t complain; you won’t question; you won’t discern; you won’t stand up; you won’t oppose. It’s like writing evil a blank check, or disarming the country’s citizens so you can do whatever you please.

And this wasn’t begun yesterday. The study of church history is a study of institutionalized subversion, regardless of which side of the Reformation one is on (and many had the sense to stay away from BOTH sides, but paid with their lives). We have been suckered into giving up the leading of the Holy Spirit for that of sinful human beings. We have been sold the lie that we cannot understand the scriptures. We have been fooled into believing that all of us, like children or morons, need a professional to “cover” us and “oversee” us as euphemisms for micromanaging us. We have been persuaded to give up freedom for security, only to find out too late that security was never part of the deal.

How bad does it have to get before we rebel against all this, whether we’re talking about politics or the Christian faith? How long will we continue to pay our taxes/”tithes”? How long will we read the news/listen to “sermons” that we know are filled with lies? How long will we “not get involved” when someone is assaulted, whether physically or spiritually? How long will we worship our captors? How long will we bow low before them and stoke their over-inflated egos? What will it take until we care enough to act?

Soon this country will treat “Christians” the way China treats them, and then we’ll find out who goes to the State Church and who goes underground. We’ll see what becomes of those who worship “Christian” leaders when said leaders swear allegience to the State. We’ll find out whether the “faith” of many who claim Christ can stand without the bells and whistles of religiousity and ritual.

But we still have a final moment in which to take that stand. I’d like to see people turn the tables on those who refuse to be questioned. We have to start demanding answers from the entitled and stop letting them hide behind their entourages, “manors”, book deals, endorsements, “anointings”, cherry-paneled offices, and call the emporer’s new clothes exactly what they are. We MUST “judge their salvation”! Actions speak louder than words, and the actions of so-called Christian leadership today are vile and filthy and self-absorbed. Call them out! But above all, stop giving them money and praise.

Regression

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This post is an examination and analysis of an article found Here, which raises once again the issue of why the world is so messed up, why we needed a Savior, and whether part of that ruination involves God putting half the human race over the other. The questions the article intends to answer are these:

  1. After all we need to know why it is that only Adam would bring sin into the world
  2. and if all of us have something “hanging” onto us from just on man
  3. , why is that?
  4. We need to know why sin didn’t come into the world through the woman.

First of all it should be noted that the term “sin nature” is not found in the Scriptures. The Biblical terms are “old man”, “old self”, “body of flesh”, “in the flesh”, “uncircumcised in heart” along with the symbol of the old nature – the foreskin of the heart.

These statements and the passages cited in support are all figures of speech, not doctrinal statements or indisputable references to the very point which is intended to be proved (which would make the argument circular from the start) . Note that in each case the context is referring to nothing more than what today we might call “our old self”, even among the lost. Likewise, the phrase “I’m a new man” is not a statement of a change of nature (which I think all would agree is being used in this article to denote an intrinsic aspect of being, e.g. human nature as opposed to fish nature or cat nature) but a change of attitude or focus. Note also the Greek words are “body” and “flesh”, and these identical words are used by Paul to describe the way Jesus rose from the dead, and no one would claim this resurrection was spiritual, because it would mean Jesus had died spiritually. The phrase “uncircumcised heart” is a Hebrew idiom, and we need to remember that the “heart” was not considered the spirit but the mind. When James tells people to “purify their hearts” (James 4:8), is he telling them to change their natures? Not at all.

God did not create mankind to be this way with sin controlling our lives. Mankind was created perfect and without sin, but a change happened when Adam chose to act in rebellion without any deception on his part that would have caused him to fall into sin and when Adam had the full knowledge of the truth… Adam and Eve were sinless during that entire time until the fall. This is in stark contrast to mankind after Adam, as all of us can hardly live one day without sin.

All agree that God created both people and angels as “good” and not sinful, or God would therefore be the author of sin, but lets start with angels. Regarding Lucifer, scripture states that at a point in time he was “the model of perfection” until “sin was found in you” (Ezekiel 28:11-15). No cause is given here for this change, but in Isaiah 14:12-14 (which we cannot say for sure was about Satan since the phrase “morning star” is not used exclusively of him), we could speculate that he became proud and wanted to be God. But again, no cause is given for the change. But did Lucifer become a different class of being as a result? Not at all; he is still of the class “angel” or “messenger”, specifically “cherub” (unless that’s a title and not a type of angel).

But has the bent of his existence changed? Certainly. But does that mean his nature, his intrinsic being, was literally altered? Not at all. We may know someone who “lives to swim” and just “belongs in the water”, but is that an aspect of being? Hardly; it’s simply the attitude and focus of their life, and such things, good or bad, can consume people. But being consumed with an activity or idea is not causing us to become different beings, yet it can so permeate our thinking that we forget there was ever anything else. So it is with Satan. But the objection will come, “Jesus said he was a liar from the beginning” (John 8:44), to which I respond, “Was he a liar when he was still the perfect anointed cherub then?” Obviously, from scripture, “the beginning” cannot refer to the entirety of Satan’s existence, for he changed at a point in time. So we are forced to the conclusion that the “beginning” Jesus speaks of is the time “sin was found” in Lucifer.

Now note in the quoted paragraph that “Adam chose to act”; nobody disagrees with that, and there was nothing in his nature as a human that caused him to act. But did he become a different being simply by his own choice? Not at all, but like Satan, the choice to defy God can consume people— if they keep choosing it. And we can’t uncritically compare angels and people in all respects either. Angels were never told not to touch something (as far as we know), nor were they offered redemption. And they require no faith since they know full well that God exists. But to rebel against God when they had been, for who knows how long, in His direct presence, would give them no excuses at all, and thus no hope. The fallen angels chose their fate with open eyes.

But what about Adam and Eve? The paragraph admits that the duration of the sinless state could have been anywhere from a day to hundreds of years, yet infers that there just had to be a long time via the phrase “entire time”. This is begging the question though; we cannot arbitrarily presume that the time was long and therefore proof that people had to have a different “nature” to explain their lack of sin. The reader is being steered toward the desired conclusion. In addition, the statement “live a day without sin” presumes that all violations of God’s standards, even by babies, are “sin”; it is undefined at this point. So the reader is led to affirm something by anecdotal evidence without even knowing precisely what they’re affirming. Such leading questions are common.

The difference between the ability to live a sinless life for perhaps as long as a hundred years or more and not being able to live sinless for a day is the result of the significant effect of what we call the sin nature or the old man who is now a part of the core of our being because we were all “in” Adam when he fell.  There is something in us that has been tainted by the fall.

1 Corinthians 15:22 (NASB) For as in Adam all die, so also in Christ all will be made alive.

Note that once again a long period of time is presumed (baseless assertion), and then our personal experiences are presented in contrast (anecdotal evidence). But the paragraph goes on to draw a conclusion which doesn’t even follow (non sequitur) from such flawed premises: it must be due to “sin nature” or the “old man”, the latter of which we already examined and found to be a figure of speech. Here is the flawed argument in the form of a syllogism:

P1 – Adam and Eve could refrain from sinning for “hundreds of years” before the first sin
P2 – We can’t live a single day without “sinning”
C – There must be an acquired “sin nature” that explains the difference

From this phantom “fact” it is then decided that this sin nature is “now a part of the core of our being”, but not one scripture can be cited that even implies this, and no effort is made here to give any supporting evidence; it is simply asserted as fact. Again, this is a case of presuming the conclusion one is supposed to be proving (begging the question).

Then it is asserted that we were “in Adam when he fell”, citing 1 Cor. 15:22. But is that what the verse says? Not at all; it says that in Adam we all die. What kind of death was this? Look at the context there: v. 21 says that this death was the same as the death and resurrection of Jesus, but who ever says this was spiritual? No, that would be a blasphemous lie. Jesus died physically and rose in a new physical and immortal body. This is supported in the verses following, where the question about the type of body (not spirit!) we’ll have is answered. I cannot fathom how anyone could read the remainder of that passage and understand that Paul is talking about anything but the body.

The article then turns to Romans 5:14-19 to support the claim of spiritual death, but what does it actually say? I’ve covered this passage before (here, here, etc.) so I’ll just briefly summarize here. The legal terms of “justification”, “condemnation”, and “righteous” cannot be interchanged with “death” and “life” unless the context clearly indicates metaphorical usage. But this context is not clear; the meaning of the terms is the point under debate. And as I stated in the links, contradictions arise if we refuse to acknowledge that Paul is talking about two different angles and drawing both likenesses and contrasts.

Many are rightly criticized for using disputed passages as proof-texts, and this case is a good example of one. It only “clearly” says what one presumes beforehand that it must mean. And while no one denies that a separation between people and God was erected by the first sin, this cannot be stretched into something more than a change of relationship, let alone a change of being which is conspicuous by its absence in the very spot in scripture it allegedly happened. Not one word in the cited passage in Romans says that ALL were condemned or that ANY died spiritually, and one’s inferences cannot be deemed “what the Bible says”, especially when the inferences are disputed.

There are several common errors that come from the teaching about the effect of Adam’s sin on the world.  The first common error has caused many to reject the teaching of Adam’s sin having any effect on us.  That error that has been taught by many is the doctrine that Adam’s offspring are charged by God with Adam’s sin. The Bible lays this error to rest by stating that the son will not bear the punishment for the father’s sin.

No one disputes that Adam’s sin had an effect on all his offspring; we have already seen that all of us are mortal because Adam and Eve became mortal. We also know from Gen. 3 that because of Adam alone, the earth itself was cursed, though obviously the earth cannot be charged with sin. We also should note that since Satan would later offer the cities of the world to Jesus (Mt. 4:9), they had to have been his to give, and in 2 Cor. 4:4 and 1 Peter 5:8 we see that Satan actively works to incite us to sin, just as he did to Eve in the garden of Eden. So put free will agents with dying bodies into a cursed world with an unseen but relentless adversary, and you get universally-evident sin. This isn’t about a spiritual mutation but sentient beings in a very bad environment. And when we remember that Adam sinned in a perfect environment, our own sin is practically guaranteed.

Yet while this paragraph argues that we did not inherit Adam’s sin, note that it contradicts the earlier paragraph citing Rom. 5 as Adam being the cause of our collective guilt. If we did not inherit Adam’s sin, how did we inherit his guilt? If, as the referenced passage in Ezekiel states, we do not share in the punishment of someone else, then how can we be held guilty? Is it possible for anyone to be charged with guilt over an intrinsic quality without bearing the punishment for that guilt? And if we all agree that we suffer the results of Adam’s sin, then we are indeed suffering the punishment. Such arguments are both illogical and contradictory.

The other error is the thinking that God made Adam just like us as far as our ability to sin.  Mankind is not just able to sin, but we have been made slaves to sin with the propensity to sin as if it is just a part of our created nature. Watch a young child and see how naturally they learn how to lie without anyone ever teaching them this sin. But Adam was not this way. He was created able to sin when tempted but he was also created able not to sin.  He was created with sin having no hold on him. He could turn his back on sin as easily as shooing a fly off of his shoulder because that was his nature as a perfect sinless man. The only way that Adam or Eve could sin would be through deception or through willful rebellion. There was no other way possible as sin did not live in Adam or Eve.

Adam and Eve were created in the image of God, but what exactly that means is highly debatable. In this particular case it is agreed that this entails at the very least the ability to choose freely, as the article admits that Adam had no nature or environmental explanation for his sin. But to assign all subsequent sins to a “sin nature” that gives us a “propensity to sin” is special pleading. We have already seen that if people can sin in a perfect environment, a corrupt environment surely and exponentially increases the odds of sinning.

The appeal to anectodal evidence for the “sinful” acts of young children again presumes that “sin” is merely and universally breaking God’s commands regardless of the capacity of the person to comprehend them. Yet in Isaiah 7:16 we are told by God that a child takes time to develop the ability to know good from evil. Gen. 8:21, Ps. 51, etc. speak of people being evil from childhood, but poetic hyperbole is not doctrine or fact. Children are not raised by parents merely to provide for physical needs, but also to take responsibilty for any laws they may break in ignorance. This is hardly an evil, mystical propensity at work, but once again just a sentient being, and a developing one, in a mortal body and a corrupt world. Babies don’t throw tantrums because they are rebelling against God! Yet it is rebellion that Adam alone is charged with, and Paul speaks of those who “did not sin as did Adam” (Rom. 5:14). Certainly, as already discussed, someone who knowingly sins and keeps at it will find sinning easier and easier, but stopping harder and harder. Yet this is not the work of a mystical force at all.

Adam was in this same place. When Adam chose to rebel against God’s one law in an act of rebellion, he fell from his place of perfection into the life of a habitual sinner. And it is Adam’s rebellion that we inherit. Adam’s rebellion tainted his very being at the moment that he reached out and touched the fruit and ate…

Scripture never says or implies that we “inherit Adam’s rebellion”, and again this contradicts the earlier claim that we do not inherit Adam’s “sin”. In other words:

P1 – We inherit Adam’s rebellion
P2 – Adam’s rebellion is sin
C – We inherit Adam’s sin

is in direct opposition and contradiction to the earlier statement citing Ezekiel 18. So to avoid this the paragraph goes on to redefine rebellion from “sin” to a “tainted being”, and this tainting is defined as an irresistible propensity to sin instead of actual sin. Yet again, no scripture even hints at such a monumental event, and no amount of inference can put such words in God’s mouth.

Eve was not charged with bringing sin into the world because she did not sin in rebellion against God. Eve was deceived into disobeying God’s command and so although she sinned, she did not sin in the way of satan the first rebellious one. It is impossible for Eve to bring the nature of rebellion to her seed because she never sinned in rebellion.

Never? How does anyone know, because it just had to be so? Again, there is agreement that Eve did not rebel in the garden; she was deceived. But remember what God said would happen when they ate the fruit? They would die. We have seen that this means they became mortal, and no one claims Eve escaped this consequence. So in fact both of them sinned equally in eating the fruit, and thus both became mortal. Proof of this is their reaction: “their eyes were opened” and they hid from God (Gen. 3:7-8). The relationship between them and God was marred immediately, and they were now mortal; scriptural backing for that is in Rom. 5:12. The Greek grammar tells us that the sin we commit is proof that we all die (see this article). And when did God ever say that if Adam or Eve ate the fruit there would be additional penalties?

Clearly, what happened after their eyes were opened was in addition to the sin of eating the fruit. THIS is where we see a difference between Adam and Eve regarding their respective legacies. As the article goes on to state, Eve was shown mercy because she was deceived, and she was not told (as Adam and the serpent would be), “Because you have done this…”. She certainly sinned willfully by eating the fruit, since the serpent did not force it into her hand or mouth, but when confronted by God she did not rebel against Him by blaming either Him or Adam for her sin. She did “pass blame” to the serpent, but the serpent was guilty as charged. THAT is the key difference. In contrast, Adam blamed God and Eve while completely ignoring the serpent, and it is for this defiance of God that Adam was punished beyond mortality for eating the fruit.

If we remove the effect of the first Adam, what will we miss from God’s typology that has been provided by the last Adam? The universality of the last Adam is connected to the first Adam and even more since Christ is able to remove not just the sin of one man, but the transgressions of the many (Romans 5:16).  The passage is an extremely important apologetic passage for the universality of Christ’s sacrifice, but if we remove the connection between the sin of the one man having an effect on all to bring them to be sinners, how will we use Paul’s connection to Christ having universal importance and effect?

Here we see the corner into which insistence upon a “sin nature” has painted it. It has been presumed that the typology Paul is using must be a comparison of “natures”, when as we’ve already seen, the comparisons are primarily of contrasts, of how unlike the two “types” are: “But the gift is NOT like the trespass…”. The only similarity is the “one to many/many to one”, and even that is an opposite. And we’ve also seen that the passage is about both literal, physical death and legal relationships, meaning that just as Adam brought mortality, a cursed earth, and our being held for ransom (Mt. 20:28, Mk. 10:45, 1 Tim. 2:6, Heb. 9:15), Jesus cleared us of all charges and offers us, by faith, a new and immortal body as well as a restored relationship with God as His adopted children. So “sin nature” is not at all required to keep Paul’s typology.

The next paragraph further illustrates the untenable position the “sin nature” view is pushed into.

It is important that Eve did not take on a sin nature of rebellion for it was her seed alone that would be without inherited sin in order for the Messiah to be born sinless and without the natural inclination to sin as a slave to sin.  Eve was not taken from Adam after he sinned and thus Eve was the only woman who did not have Adam’s old man nature. She was the only one that the Messiah could come through her own lineage. If Eve sinned in rebellion there would be no one left for the Messiah to come through.

Because of the “sin nature” theory, it must follow that Jesus escape this “tainting” somehow. One view is that His mother was made sinless, but this merely moves the line in the sand. Another is that at the moment of conception Mary’s “seed” was mystically cleansed of “tainting”, but this also begs the question since scripture never even hints at such a thing. But both views, as well as this third one, arise from the presumption that a human father is the cause of “sin nature” being passed to all people.

In this particular view the problem is allegedly solved by inventing a sinless line from Eve through every woman, somehow independent of Adam. How was this accomplished? The following paragraphs first argue that only Adam was driven out, and I concur. But other details therein are derived from the flawed argument of “sin nature” and failure to grasp where the differences lie between the aftermath of Adam and Eve’s sins. But after that I expected to see an explanation of the mechanism by which this “pure seed” would be passed down through the generations to Mary, yet the case abruptly ends without it. How exactly was this pure seed transmitted though every woman had a human father, including Mary? Nothing is offered to explain; it simply is left to the reader’s imagination.

I have seen elsewhere that the only way around this “little” oversight is that a woman’s eggs are sinless. But here again we have a “fact” pulled from thin air, and this one doesn’t even have tradition on its side. In addition, all these arguments imply that all men must be hopelessly forced to want to sin, while women (I must presume) only have half that bent. ;-) But such a theory is just like the popular one that says all women inherit Eve’s deceivability, as well as Adam’s rebellion. It all winds up in a tangled mess of contradictions, presumptions, and fanciful illusions, not scriptural teachings.

Do you see the regressive “nature” of the whole argument? This is how great error is started and perpetuated. People begin with the goal they wish to prove, jump to wild conclusions from very dubious interpretations, and then declare their arguments airtight. They run in circles in an effor to tie up all the loose ends that just don’t fit, and the result is something like a contraption right out of Rube Goldberg. As Christians we need to go back to sound reasoning and the basics of reading comprehension before presuming to establish teachings that can impact the soul.

Ingrained

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I feel the need to repeat some statements about sin. Even among believers, a common claim is that if something is ingrained or natural, it can’t be sin. But we live in corrupt flesh, in a corrupt world, being hounded by forces of evil. Put a free will into a package like that, and you have a veritable soup stock for sin. It’s our default condition.

But as believers we are not doomed to sin, but dead to sin (Rom. 6:11). We have reconciled with God (2 Cor. 5:18-21), meaning we try to please Him and stop doing whatever grieves him (Eph. 4:30). And we must not forget the power of the indwelling Holy Spirit (2 Cor. 5:5, 17), who gradually transforms us into the image of Jesus (Rom. 8:29) and washes us from former sinful ways (1 Cor. 6:11). Note in the verses preceding that last reference some of the sins people have been cleansed of, meaning they WERE this but are NOW that:

Do you not understand that the unjust will not inherit the kingdom of God? Do not be fooled! The promiscuous, the idolaters, the adulterers, the homosexuals and homosexual prostitutes, the thieves, the greedy, the drunkards, the trash talkers, the extortioners— these will not inherit the kingdom of God.

NOTE: the TNIV says “practicing homosexuals” without grammatical warrant, as if to try and imply that it’s only sin if you practice it. But Jesus said in Mark 7:21 that from within come evil thoughts, and in Rom. 7:23 Paul said that sin is a law at work within us (see also James 4:1); sin begins in the mind (James 1:13-15). And for those who still insist that God is okay with homosexuality, or that He only meant it was sin if not practiced faithfully and lovingly, please see Responding to Pro-Gay Theology and Rom. 1:26-27, where same-sex intimacy is called “unnatural”. And if we won’t excuse things like gluttony or alcoholism, genetic though they may be for some, then we have no right to excuse sexual perversion.

This is the Bible, the Word of God, not of me. Sin is whatever God decides it is, and if we can’t trust Him to be just and fair and compassionate, such things do not exist. It is God who judges us, not our own hearts (1 Cor. 4:3-5). And notice there that He will judge our motives; how then can anyone say that God only calls something sin if we actually practice it? Motives are to be judged, which means thoughts are to be judged.

And remember the indwelling Holy Spirit? Are there “rooms in the attic” you don’t want Him to enter? Do you keep a stash of mental porn in a cardboard box up there, or maybe dreams of power and riches? Wherever the Christian mind goes, so also goes the Spirit of God. If you think you can hide your thoughts from Him, you are only fooling yourself. We are to take our very thoughts captive (2 Cor. 10:5), not let them run free.

These things have to be repeated and emphasized because there is an absolute drought in the Christian community today— a drought of the knowledge of God and hatred of sin. We don’t even know what sin is anymore, and refuse to say so even if we are personally convicted about a sin, for fear of offending someone. Our teachers, instead of instructing and guiding, merely facilitate a dialectic process which never thinks in terms of right and wrong but only concensus. They are the blind guides Jesus talked about, and are like the clouds without rain that Jude mentioned.

The backslidden or spiritually immature don’t need to feel good about sin, but to learn to hate it as God does. They don’t need to be told that their personal acceptance of a sin is okay for now, but that they are in rebellion against God and are hurting Him. Too many believers, when making up their own definition of sin, only think in terms of what may hurt other people, but what about God? What about the indwelling Holy Spirit? These people need teachers who know the Bible (2 Tim. 2:15) and aren’t ashamed of it or afraid of being disliked. They need shepherds who can tell sheep from wolves, and beat off the wolves while nurturing the sheep. The good shepherd must do both.

And I’m not just talking about teachers in a more formal setting, but experienced believers in all walks of life who are in a position to help other less spiritually mature believers along. We’re all teachers to some extent; we’re all ambassadors for Christ (2 Cor. 5:20) and witnesses to the risen Lord (Acts 1:8, 1 Cor. 15:15). Therefore we all have a responsibility to study the Word and find out what God has defined as sin, so we don’t lead others astray. No, we can’t all be experts and we’re not all on the same page. But when you don’t know something, don’t just leave it there; go and find the answer.

This is not a game or a vacation, it’s an epic battle for souls. We have an active Adversary who is looking for victims (1 Peter 5:8), and one of his most successful tactics is what we might call “the love bomb”. People, especially Christians, don’t want to be called “unloving”, and every little disagreement is seen as unloving. This makes it all but impossible to proselytise or even to offer an opinion that might possibly offend. We are gagged and tied by this tactic! But love is not genuine if it never applies to God; we cannot say we love Him if we do what He says is wrong, or fail to do what He says is right. Love for God must trump all other loves (Mt. 10:37).

Don’t let the devil define sin, or love, or gentleness; he has no clue what any of those things mean (John 8:44). Get your definitions from God.

Atonement

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There’s a phrase I heard thirty years ago that I like to use: Those who know all the answers haven’t heard all the questions. It’s a good one to remember when it comes to things we take for granted, sometimes for our entire lives, until someone else brings it up.

And there isn’t anything about Christian theology that is more pivotal— or controversial— than the Atonement.

According to most dictionaries, to atone is to make amends or restitution in order to restore a relationship. In regards to our faith, that’s pretty simple and straightforward: Jesus paid the price to reconcile us to God. But the problem comes in explaining to the lost why it is that only spilled blood can atone for sin. After all, we don’t demand the death penalty for even some pretty serious crimes, and all Adam did was eat some fruit.

This can take us on wide-ranging and deeply philosophical journies into the very nature of God and the question of free will in mankind, but for the purpose of this writing, it’s only necessary to acknowledge that God is infinite and perfect. Everything hinges upon these attributes of God, but rather than try to explain why God is the way He is, we will just take these basic attributes as a given.

Why does God require sacrifice for sin? Because He is both holy and infinite, and thus cannot be in close communion with the impure. That which is impure has nowhere to go (in eternity) to get away from the omnipresent God, but go it must. So the body returns to dust, but what about the spirit? Hence the need for hell (or ultimately, the Lake of Fire), a place of “not God”. Death is necessary because separation is necessary. God is also Love, and a love that is forced in return is unworthy of the One who is Love. So God allows us the freedom to either obey or rebel, to reconcile or remain separated.

This is brought out in Rom. 6:1-5, which explains that in Christ we participated in Jesus’ death and resurrection. We died to sin, we died to the world, we died to the deception of the Adversary, and now we live to God. The Spirit is the “deposit guaranteeing our inheritance” (Eph. 1:14), the promise of an immortal body and direct fellowship with God for eternity. But it could not be forced upon all, though the needed death was suffered for all.

So sin requires separation, and separation from God must be eternal. While the body can literally die, the spirit cannot, so “the second death” is spiritual separation. And since “people are destined to die once, and after that to face judgment” (Heb. 9:27), this life is the only chance to be reconciled. But questions will arise as we examine specific scriptures. Let’s list the scriptures and then address the other big question: substitution.

  • 1 Cor. 15:3b, Gal. 1:4a “Christ died on account of our sins …” These passages do not say that Christ died to take sins away, but that sins were the reason for the sacrifice.
  • 1 Peter 2:24a “who carried up our sins in his body on the wood …” Christ’s body was the sacrifice on the altar, and like the lamb under Mosaic law, carried our sins away.
  • 1 John 2:2a “and he is the atonement concerning our sins …” Jesus is the sacrifice that removes the barrier between God and mankind.
  • Mark 10:45 “… to give his life as a ransom for many …” A ransom is money paid to release someone from the captivity of another.
  • 1 Tim. 2:5-6, Heb. 9:15 “… mediator of a new covenant… ransom for all people… from sins under the old covenant” Jesus is both Mediator of a contract between God and mankind, and the ransom payment for “all”.
  • 2 Tim. 2:26 “… the Adversary, who has laid a trap for them and taken them captive …” The questions “To whom was the ransom paid? Who held us captive?” are answered here.

Notice first of all that Jesus did more than sacrifice; He also mediated a contract and paid a ransom.

Heb. 9:16 tells us that in order for a will to be executed, the testator’s death must be proved. Our inheritance could therefore not be received until the testator, God in human flesh, died. But in what way did we require being ransomed from the devil? I think it is in our being deceived and captive in a world of corruption, such that Jesus “payment” allows us to be freed from those things. When Satan tempted Jesus in the wilderness he offered Him the cities of the world, which had to be his to offer. And 2 Cor. 4:4 tells us that he is “the god of this age”.

But what about the matter of Substitution? How can anyone pay for the crime of another? When the criminal is incapable of paying it.

What if someone under Mosaic law was sorry for a sin but had no sacrifice? They would have to rely on the mercy of someone else to provide it. This is exactly what Jesus did for us. As the sinless human he provided himself as the sacrifice we could not obtain. It is our sin that must die, because it is our sin that is impure. By placing our trust in Jesus, we have His perfection as our sacrifice.

But just as the one with a sacrifice would not be forgiven if they still clung to their sin, so also the one who wants Jesus’ sacrifice but refuses to repent of their sin remains unforgiven. As I’ve said many times, it takes both faith in the risen Jesus and willingness to be reconciled to God in order for anyone to be saved. Being reconciled means being willing to give up anything and everything that displeases God. So we cannot come to God with the intent of demanding we can keep certain sins, nor can we come to Him without the right Sacrifice.

One definition of forgiveness is to suffer an injustice without demanding restitution. And as I’ve said before, only the one who is wronged can forgive. But some object that God did demand restitution, and therefore He could not have forgiven us. But they don’t realize that since God paid His own penalty, then He did in fact suffer without being compensated. That is what made it possible for Him to forgive us. And it had to be this way in order to satisfy His eternal holy nature.

Now we come to the question that naturally follows: what is judgment for? If we have been redeemed and reconciled, and the contract fulfilled, why are we still responsible for our actions, and how could there really be any justice if we weren’t? The lost struggle especially with that one, because they think God gives Christians a license to sin, while well-behaved people who don’t accept Jesus burn in hell.

As Paul so forcefully argued in Romans 6, we died to sin; our relationship with this evil, corrupt world is broken. But for believers, this is a question of lost rewards, not unpaid sins. Since salvation is a gift received by faith alone, and since a gift cannot be an earned wage, then anything scripture says about earned wages cannot be related to salvation, but only rewards (Rom. 11:6). And clearly, from 1 Cor. 3:12-15, we can lose everything yet still be in heaven. There will be justice!

And the inverse is true for the lost. God would not force them to reconcile, because true reconciliation is impossible unless both parties agree to it freely. But though their fate in the Lake of Fire was sealed by refusing to reconcile with God on His terms, Rev. 20:13 tells us that they too will be held accountable for their actions. We can infer that there will be levels of suffering on the basis of how they lived, because otherwise there’d be no need for judging them at all.

I realize this is complicated, but it took the genius of God to accomplish our redemption without violating His nature or our free will. The sacrifice Jesus made, and of course His resurrection from the dead, was an amazing feat that in one stroke fulfilled a Promise, redeemed a people, and defeated an enemy.

Truth Tellers

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I saw a link today to this article and just had to comment. Here’s an excerpt:

Without Nathan, one is left to wonder if David would have ever repented and asked God for the restoration of the joy of his salvation.

The kind of truth Nathan supplied David is in short supply for far too many ministers. Many ministers live in the midst of people who either are fearful of speaking the truth to them or are so abrasive with the truth that clergy easily ignore or minimize them.

I agree we need more Nathans, and all of us need them, not just “ministers”. But who will tolerate them? My experience, and those of many of my friends, is that such Nathans are the most hated people in all Christianity. They are called negative, hateful, divisive, disrespectful, fearmongers, and a hundred other things. They are accused of ruining other people’s witness, or hurting the wounded, or giving a bad example of Christian love. Plainly telling the truth is about the only thing many Christians will actually call a ‘sin’ anymore.

Even this article refers to some who are too “abrasive”, but who decides what that is? To many believers, the slightest disagreement is “too abrasive”. Is the “Nathan” supposed to interview everyone before speaking, to find out each person’s personal tolerance level for being disagreed with? It is impossible not to offend people these days, and they demand not to be offended. (But of course, they are free to offend the offenders!)

Nathan got in David’s face, king though he was. Nathan was blunt and harsh and abrasive. And quite negative too. ;-) But David didn’t react as Christians do today; he didn’t whine about how Nathan hurt his feelings, or have Nathan executed for his impertinence, or stomp off and pout like Ahab (1 Kings 21:4), or tell him how unloving he was. Instead, David repented in bitter tears and begged God’s forgiveness (Psalm 51), admitting his guilt before God and making whatever restitution he could.

God could send a whole legion of Nathans to the churches, but where are the Davids?

Excuses, Excuses

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I was reading today some comments about Tiger Woods’ recent “apology” and just had to share one. Please note that while the language used is not technically vulgar, the topic requires terminology that some might find offensive or impolite.

Women get all wound around the axle of male infidelity, but that’s because they see it only from a woman’s point of view. Very, very few women view sex the way men do. A roll in the hay to a man is just that; his goal is to get his rocks off. A woman, on the other hand, invests her entire being into sex. When a man plays around, it’s just playing around and seldom means he wants to divorce. When a woman plays around, she’s ready to change her life drastically by cutting her husband out of it altogether.

Men and women are wired differently. It’s biological. For this reason women whose husbands have strayed ought only push the point if they wanted a divorce anyway, in which case his infidelity would be only one of several factors affecting her decision. Tiger Woods is putting on an act because his kids, and prolly his wife, matter to him; but it IS an act, not something he feels deep in his vitals.

Nor, IMO, is this “sexual addiction” silliness to be taken seriously. Men like to hump and that’s all there is to it. It has nothing to do with addiction. There aren’t many men who can’t get it off during sex, while there are plenty of women who have a great deal of trouble ever achieving orgasm. This is another reason, IMO, that many women simply cannot understand what it is about sex that men like so much. They literally don’t understand and can NOT understand it.

Sex for most isn’t complex. Men like it because it feels so wonderful. In my guesstimate about a third of all women like it the same way men do. About a third never do get it and the remaining third may or may never get to where it’s as fun for them as for their male partner. This is so for at least a couple of reasons: First, a woman’s major function is to have kids. For that to happen it isn’t necessary that she enjoy sex; it only matters that she have sex. Second, a man wouldn’t put up with the hassles of marriage were it not for the gigantic pleasure that sex provides. Hence it’s vital that HE enjoy sex even if SHE does not.

This is just wrong on so many levels. This guy seems to be actually saying that a woman shouldn’t get upset about her husband’s cheating! I don’t know whether the guy claims to be a Christian or not, but I do know that a growing number of men claiming Christ would agree with him.

Infidelity is not something only women have a problem with, but God. The very word means UNfaithful, and it is not a good thing but a sin. It matters not why someone sins, but whether. People always enjoy their sin, but God has never said anything close to “Well, that’s the way I made you guys, so since you don’t think of it as anything more than scratching an itch, it’s okay. You’re just having fun.”

I seriously doubt that this guy or any other would tolerate the same attitude in that alleged minority of women who feel the same way about sex as the alleged majority of men. Would he really think nothing of a woman being promiscuous? Somehow I think instead guys like this one would call such a woman a whore. Why don’t men get the same treatment, the same condemnation? Because men should be allowed to sin?

This is the standard attitude through history and across cultural lines: men are allowed to fornicate, but not women. Men prove their masculinity via sexual prowess and power, but women prove their femininity via restriction and submission. And most do not see the inherent double standard in that. Even among professing believers, there is a growing belief that men should not be sexually restricted but women who have more than one man are to be shunned and discarded. And where do these “good” guys get these “bad” girls, if they expect their wives to remain faithful? Is it okay for single women to have many men?

This guy also seems to think that it isn’t wrong if there’s no emotional attachment involved. But think of serial killers who have no attachment to their victims; does that make it okay? Of course not, and some would try to claim that this example is “extreme”. But the analogy fits, if it’s really about emotional attachment and not a divine moral standard. And what about homosexuality? Is it okay if the people have no emotional attachment? Why not?

As for “a woman’s major function is to have kids”, some in the “Christian” Patriarchy movement have told me that it’s insulting to say it teaches that women are merely incubators, yet here’s a guy considering it the view of most men. Of course only women can have kids, but this has exactly nothing to do with the sin of adultery or fornication. Nothing. Again, as long as she enjoys it, would this or any other guy approve if Mrs. Tiger had a gazillion boyfriends?

But this guy saved the worst for last: “a man wouldn’t put up with the hassles of marriage were it not for the gigantic pleasure that sex provides”. Wow. Marriage for men is only something they tolerate in order to get free sex, and women are the cause of all marital “hassles”. And since men can have all the “gigantic pleasure” they want through hookers, they must only get married so they can get it for free, and to have children bearing their name.

THIS, not “feminism”, is the culture, and many men professing Christ are bowing to it in spades. Lip service to the contrary notwithstanding, they act and believe as if women exist only for their pleasure and progeny, and that the “hassles” of marriage are the price they pay for continuing the species.

And in spite of all this, many men express shock and indignation at the very idea of “uppity women” who don’t buy it. The nerve of these women, not liking being seen as incubators and sex objects! How dare they object to “the natural order”! Why can’t they just keep their place and let the boys do what they want, when they want? It’s all women’s fault! And any woman who doesn’t play along is a Jezebel or a whore or a witch.

If Christian men today truly want to “step up to the plate”, they need to stand against these sinful excuses and bogus biological pop psychology. They need to see women as independent adults and souls for whom Christ died, and give them the honor they’d give to any man. “Be holy, because I am holy” is a command from God, and men are not exempt.

Sin

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Many in the churches today seem to look at this title and say “What’s that?” And then they consult every authority but the Bible for an answer, especially the New Testament.

But it isn’t complicated or hidden. If you know the NT at all, you could define sin as whatever gets between you and God. We do live in “the age of grace” (and “grace” in the NT means favor given from the greater to the lesser), but as the apostle Paul strongly argued in Rom. 6:2, 7, this is no license to sin but freedom from sin. To slip and fall and get back up is typical, and God does understand and forgive (see my earlier article for detail on “kinds” of sin). But when we either refuse to give something up that God forbids, or to even call it sin, we have erected a barrier between ourselves and God.

So what does the NT call sin? Most people, even unbelievers, would agree that theft, murder, false witness, kidnapping, etc. are bad things, and that anyone who commits such acts must be punished. Yet some things, even some on that list, seem to be explained away when it suits people. For example, many “Christian” business owners have believed they could embezzle, defraud, cheat on taxes etc., because that’s “just business” and didn’t have anything to do with their faith. I personally witnessed both men and women in church engaging freely in gossip and slander while claiming what they were doing wasn’t it.

But we have to define sin by God’s standards, not our own. If God were to have said that it is a sin to stand on your head while chewing bubblegum and wearing orange shoes, it would be sin. If God were to have said that eating popcorn is a sin, it would be sin. The point is that it is God who makes the rules, not us, and not our personal views on what should or shouldn’t be wrong— or what does or doesn’t “cause harm” to another.

Has anyone stopped to ask what “harms” God? Doesn’t He matter? Isn’t Eph. 4:30 still in our Bibles?

The things I mentioned— murder, theft, etc.— also harm other people. But adding other “gods” to our faith doesn’t, yet it’s clearly a sin against God, even in the NT (Acts 4:12, John 3:14-21). And we also have scriptures such as Mark 7:21, Rom. 1:24-30, 1 Tim. 1:9-10, and Rev. 21:8 to give us more detail. The promiscuous cannot look down on the homosexual, the homosexual cannot look down on the embezzler, the embezzler cannot look down on the liar, etc. Yet none of them can excuse their own sin or call it acceptable in the sight of God.

Look at 1 Cor. 5, the whole chapter. A man is to be expelled from fellowship for living with his father’s wife— a sin the Christians there were proud of! Yet Paul tells THEM, these people who were approving and who had many sins of their own, to throw the man out. So much for the excuse that churches cannot judge anyone’s sin since we’re all sinners.

But how can we understand the precedent Paul is setting in this passage, since sinners were to disfellowship sinners? I think a clue is found in 1 Cor. 6:13, 18-20. Paul makes a distinction between sexual sin and all others. And yes, we’re talking ALL sexual sin, not just homosexuality. The man Paul had just wrote about before this was in a heterosexual relationship. So how likely would it be for Paul to condone a same-sex union? Didn’t the man and his step-mother love each other? Who were they hurting? Yet this was SIN, and it was not to be “tolerated”. Now of course Paul was not teaching that all the other sins were not to be “judged”; check 1 Cor. 5:12-13. But he was teaching that certain sins had to be dealt with more harshly than others.

Yes, it would be hypocritical for a church to exclude someone for unrepentant homosexuality but not for unrepentant heterosexual promiscuity. But this hardly means that neither should be excluded. Nor does it mean that all others have a license to sin.

We as Christians need to seriously examine our standing with God if we celebrate those things that God has told us grieve Him, directly or indirectly. It isn’t all about us and our “harmless” personal preferences, but God, holiness, and purity. We must put an end to the kind of hypocrisy that says it’s wrong to oppress women but not wrong to accept sexual sins, or that it’s wrong to “touch God’s anointed” but not wrong for “God’s anointed” to smash all dissent. Sin is sin is sin!

Deal with it.

Lukewarm

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I’ve written much about the great aversion to doctrine prevalent among professing Christians today, but I think the heart of this problem is that, as a group, we have forgotten who God is. God, even among those who allegedly know better, has been reduced to the white light at the end of a tunnel, a force to be manipulated, a tyrant to be appeased, a nice feeling, or an ultimate fighter, depending on one’s personal taste (or lack thereof).

And it follows that such a God doesn’t really care what we do for the most part. If you’re okay with yourself then God must be okay with you too. Gone are the lines over which most Christians used to never dare crossing; they’ve been replaced with a kind of “bell curve” that is mostly drawn in comparison with other people instead of God. As long as you’re not as bad as someone else, or as bad as you could be, then anybody who tries to ruin your fun is a legalist.

Now you know I think many Christians don’t allow enough room for personal convictions and wish to dictate every detail of our lives. But one extreme is no better than another; it is no more spiritual to throw holiness to the wind than it is to micromanage people. But between the two extremes is an alarming number of professing believers who simply don’t give a rip about much of anything, just happy to drift along and take samples from every belief system out there.

I see it all the time, especially online. People that I know are believers think nothing of dabbling in occult practices. Many seem to be enthralled with images of darkness and violence. Most can cuss like a drunken sailor and hardly notice when their “entertainment” is more like psychological conditioning to desensitize people to sadism and porn. They have forgotten how high Jesus set the bar, to the point where the “Christian” life is more like doing the limbo: “how low can you go?”

How can we have the Holy Spirit in us while we laugh about ghosts and witches, watch slasher movies or immoral sitcoms, and basically wallow in the sewer spiritually? Are there “rooms in our house” (places in our mind) that we’d rather keep locked and hope God doesn’t have a key? How can we say we love God while we harbor such evil? Is it because we have lost our senses and can no longer detect it?

This is no new problem, but that condemns us all the more:

I know your deeds, that you are neither cold nor hot. I wish you were either one or the other! So, because you are lukewarm— neither hot nor cold— I am about to spit you out of my mouth. You say, ‘I am rich; I have acquired wealth and do not need a thing.’ But you do not realize that you are wretched, pitiful, poor, blind and naked. —Rev. 3:15-17

Does Jesus really matter to you? Can anyone tell?

Of Chickens and Eggs

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An age-old question is, “Which came first, the chicken or the egg?” It gets used for a wide variety of situations, but today I’d like to apply it to a particular verse mentioned in the last post: Rom. 5:12—

through this even-as through one human the sin into the world entered and through the sin the death and thus into all humans the death passed-through on which all sinned

The phrase “on which” means “because of that…” or “due to that…”, but it was erroneously rendered “in whom” by Jerome in his Vulgate translation, which had a huge influence on the idea that we all sin “in Adam”. I’ve written before about the fact that being “in” someone in scripture cannot be literal, but will briefly summarize. If Heb. 7:10 means that Levi was literally, physically in the body of Abraham, two major problems arise: (1) so were ALL of Abraham’s descendants, such that none of them would need to tithe, and (2) nobody exists as a whole person until sperm meets egg, or we’d have to declare all the sperm of all time to be fully human— which also means that all the eggs of all women for all time are irrelevant (which people used to believe before anyone even suspected that women make a genetic contribution to their own babies)! So scripturally, logically, and biologically, we cannot have sinned “in Adam”.

But “because” is hardly an improvement by itself, as it gives the meaning that sin causes death (which I have argued in the past, until studying this carefully). The meaning is not merely “because” but “because of which”, and the distinction is critical; the former means sin causes death, while the latter means death causes sin. (Some use the meaning “seeing that”, which fits better with the beginning of the sentence: We observe that death entered through sin, and the sin we observe in all of us proves that death passed to us too. In other words, sin is the evidence that death passed to everyone, making death the cause of sin.)

Now before some may jump to the conclusion that this somehow proves a “sin nature”*, remember that “death” is never, anywhere in scripture, called “spiritual death”. Moreover, in the next sentence (Rom. 5:13-14) Paul contrasts sin and death (see also Rom. 8:2,10,13) rather than equating them, and states clearly that some die without having sinned “as did Adam” (and there is no fine print saying “this means the type of sin Adam committed”). And in the very next chapter Paul says that our own death is “like His” (Rom. 6:5), which no one would dare to say was spiritual (1 Peter 3:18).

Now in Rom. 5:19 we need to examine another component of the passage: what “made” means. In English we can say “I will make you some breakfast” (meaning “make [for] you”, not literally to turn you into breakfast!), such that context and figure of speech determine whether the making is literal or not. The Strong’s note on “made” (#G2525) (see also LSJ) is “to place down permanently (i.e. figuratively), to designate, constitute, appoint, be, conduct, make, ordain, set”. So “make” is in the sense of naming to a position, not literally turning people into something different. This would match not only Paul’s use of legal terminology in Rom. 5:16-18 but also Jesus’ statement in John 3:18 about being condemned for lack of faith in Him. So if we apply this understanding to the verse, we get something like this: “Through the disobedience of the one person, many were designated “sinners”, and through the obedience of the one, many will be designated “just”. Note also the change of tense: many WERE called sinners, but many WILL BE called righteous.

It follows, then, that if we are not literally turned into righteous beings (Rom. 4:24, 1 Cor. 1:30, 2 Cor. 5:21, Phil. 3:9) by Christ, then we were not literally turned into sinners “by nature” because of Adam. When I consider all the scriptures, I have the understanding that this is all about a change of position or relationship, not nature. If this were not true (ref. Eph. 2:3), what would we do with verses such as Rom. 2:14? It is death that influences us to sin. But how does it do this? As I’ve said before, scripture says a lot about “this body of death” and battling the “flesh”, which has cravings of its own, along with the environment into which we’re all born: a world of other sentient beings, all in corrupt flesh, a corrupt earth, and the devil “who prowls around like a roaring lion, looking for someone to devour” (1 Peter 5:8).

And again, we have only to look for the cause of Adam’s sin to see that “nature” is not it, because then we’d have to say God created Adam with a “sin nature”. He was in an un-corrupted environment, yet chose to sin willingly, without even being directly tempted (Eve did NOT tempt him!). The only cause for his sin was his will or choice, which was not coerced to go one way or the other by God or “nature” or anything else. To make only Adam a free-will agent is the fallacy of special pleading, and still doesn’t answer the question of how anyone could sin without a “sin nature”. And if he could sin under such ideal conditions, what can we expect in this corrupt world?

This brings the number of articles I’ve written on this issue to at least four, but when I studied the Greek here I was compelled to do some “detailing”, and I don’t expect to need to write more on this point. Yet we have to remember that though we make all sorts of appeals and explanations for why people should want to accept Jesus as Savior, the gospel itself is still restricted to the fact of His resurrection from the dead and our faith in Him alone for our salvation. We may have strong personal convictions about how to explain the “why” of this, but we must not confuse “why” with “what”.

Jesus saves— not us— and it’s STILL all about faith alone.

* In case anyone is wondering, I’m not the only one who does not believe in “original sin” or a “sin nature“.

Is Immaturity A Sin?

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Sounds like a ridiculous question, doesn’t it? But to read many conversations in online Christian boards and blogs, one would think it’s a serious fact.

The best way to neutralize a Christian’s witness is to play the “nice” card and ask loaded questions. That is, you hit them with things like these:

    “Nobody is saved by doctrine”
    “You don’t have to have a theology degree to be saved”
    “Some of the nicest people I know are ______ (fill in the blank with the name of a religion)”
    “The followers of _______ show more Christian love than most Christians”

Think about those for a minute. In the first two, the statements are true on their face. But they err in their implications: that although technically you aren’t saved by doctrine, your faith must be doctrinally accurate or it is what the Bible calls “vain” (1 Cor. 15:2) We are saved by faith because of the grace of God (Eph. 2:8-9), but that faith must be in the Jesus who is God, who died for our sins, who rose again, and who will return for us. And nothing can be added or subtracted from that faith. That, whether anyone wants to call it this or not, is doctrine, and a necessary one in order to be saved.

In the second two, an appeal is made to external behavior. Now to be sure, any Christian who still wallows in sin and shows little love is either lost or immature, but this issue is irrelevant for judging salvation. What does the gospel itself say about behavior? If it’s truly salvation by faith alone it cannot depend upon even the willingness or determination to turn from sin (making it a “work” of us instead of God), but only on faith in Jesus. We turn from sin after salvation because the Spirit within us convicts us; this is not true of unbelievers who of course do not have the Spirit. They can feel remorse, they can have a conscience, but such “turning” will not save them, and it is not a prerequisite for saving faith. (You disagree? Show me the scriptures that tie remorse for sins with saving faith. The word “repent” only means “turn the opposite way” but doesn’t include what is being turned from; that comes from context, and all instances of charges to repent related to the topic of salvation are about changing one’s belief concerning Jesus.)

So this all amounts to using the immaturity or inconsistency of the believer as a way to keep them from pointing out the lack of saving faith in others. They do in fact call such immaturity a sin, and substitute right behavior for saving faith. They claim to be more Christ-like, flaunting their “humility” and completely missing the irony therein. Does the Bible not still consider our best efforts at righteousness to be like disgusting rags (Isaiah 64:6)? Is salvation not still by faith alone? Of course there is a great lack of love today among believers, especially “clergy” who should know better, but this does not change the fact that salvation is by faith, and if your “doctrine” of the gospel is in error, you are lost. And don’t get me started again on what it means to be “loving”, as if love never confronts evil or shows any concern about the lost.

Given a choice between the immature believer who shows little outward kindness yet spreads the true gospel, and the “holier than thou” who refuses to discuss the necessary facts of salvation but only ever talks about community service and acts of kindness, I’ll respond with the same loaded question “they” always use on us: “Which do you think God values more?” (see Phil. 1:18). And we should not fall for their false dilemma between outward niceness and doctrine; the two are not in conflict. The kind person needs correct basic doctrine, and the doctrinal person needs kindness. But note that the second at least knows the gospel, while the first may not.

No, immaturity is not a sin, and outward kindness is not proof of salvation. The “nice” person with no concern for the facts of the gospel is just as lost as the “mean” person who knows the facts of the gospel but has never grasped the concept of the restored relationship which is the goal and purpose of that gospel. But none of this would be an issue if those of us who do know the gospel would practice it in all its implications (Gal. 5:21-23). Let’s stop giving fodder to those who would gag us.

Good God, Bad God?

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Many people in and outside of Christianity have issues with the stark contrast between the alleged warlike, hateful God of the Old Testament (OT) and the alleged never-violent, forgive-the-unrepentant Jesus of the New Testament (NT). If you haven’t yet read my documents on salvation (Go To Heaven! and Salvation Under the Microscope), please do before reading this. You might also want to read Twisted Sister and Critique of When Bad Things Happen to Good People.

Solving this seeming dilemma begins with understanding what happened in Eden. God did not create a world of death and suffering. But neither did He create people as robots for His entertainment. And such sentient beings, in order to have the capacity to genuinely love and relate to God, would have to have the free choice of rejecting Him. He had put Adam and Eve into a perfect environment but told Adam to guard it (Gen. 2:15) before Eve was made. Adam failed in this charge and God said, “It is not good for the man to be alone. I will make a strong one facing him.” (Gen. 2:18) The serpent had entered the garden, and knowing Adam would not intervene, picked on the less experienced Eve.

God had told them (Gen. 2:17, 3:3) they would die if they ate the fruit of the Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil (ref. as TKGE), but did not specify exactly what kind of death this was. Nevertheless, He did not add any other punishments to this disobedience (the curse on the ground was only added after Adam blamed God and Eve, and only Adam was from the ground). And that’s what “sin” is, defying the will of God. But why would God issue a punishment that seems so harsh to us for something like eating fruit? We can speculate about the fact that God is perfect and holy, and that the issue is Who had been offended, not exactly what the offense was. Yet at the same time, what had God asked of them that was so hard, especially in a perfect environment? Anyone so weak would surely not be able to stand against far greater pressure, so it might be that God had to introduce death in order to limit the consequences of sin (see Gen. 3:22).

But consider this: why didn’t Jesus ever condemn that OT God? Why did he tell people in His day they would suffer judgment (Mt. 11:20 for example)– and then praise God for it? Why did the OT God write, “Kiss his son, or he will be angry and you and your ways will be destroyed, for his wrath can flare up in a moment. Blessed are all who take refuge in him” in Psalm 2:12? Note in that Psalm that people are rising up not only against the Lord but also against “his anointed”, and that the Son would “break them with a rod of iron”.

And most important of all: Is Jesus not God? Are not all the persons of the Trinity one in essence? Can the character or essence of God then be divided into “harsh” and “kind”? Clearly the Son is seen prophetically in the OT (Ps. 2:7 says, “today I have become your father”) and recognized as the OT God in the NT (John 1:1, Phil. 2:5-11). Unless one wants to argue that the Trinity has a split personality, Jesus cannot be separated from the Father (John 8:54, 10:30) in being or essence; they have one divine will. The three persons are each unique yet share one will, making a “compound one”. But Jesus alone shares our humanity, so only Jesus could reconcile the divine and the human, and his human will alone was subservient to the Father.

But the point I want to emphasize here is that you can’t divide the OT God from the NT God, nor the Creator from the Savior (Col. 1:15-20). So whatever divine character flaws are charged to God (as if His creatures have the right to put Him on the witness stand!) must also be charged to Jesus.

What Jesus showed us in His humanity is that God is both just and merciful, holy and forgiving, harsh and gentle. The differences are not with some kind of divine psychotic delusions but with treating people as individuals instead of merely parts of a whole. To never judge the motives of individual sin is to ignore individual responsibility and deny justice to victims. If someone repents of wrongdoing, God is merciful, but if they refuse, He is just. Do we, even as flawed humans, sometimes show mercy? Do we not know when to show it and when not to show it?

God– which He is and we’re not– isn’t obligated to report to us every reason for everything He does. The nations of the OT that were to be completely destroyed, children and animals included, likely had been corrupted to the point where their continued existence would spread their infections (physical and spiritual) to more people. Did He not agree to relent on the impending judgment of Sodom and Gomorrah if Abraham could find even ten good people there (Gen. 18:32)? Can we presume God never gave those other destroyed nations a chance? But regardless, the question is whether we trust God’s judgment or instead think ourselves worthy of condemning Him. Truly, even many Christians do believe that the clay can tell the potter what to do (Rom. 9:20-21).

This “bad God / good God” belief only sees on the surface and makes God into a mere super-human with the same flaws we have, much like the mythological gods of ancient Greece and Rome. It presumes that God has no other reasons for what He does than what we can imagine. Yet even in this God is merciful (see Ezekiel 18:25), saying “Come, let us reason together” (Isaiah 1:18). Jesus did not come to undo the will of the Father (John 5:30), nor was He forced to save us (Phil. 2:5-11). It is humanity that needed cleansing, not the Father!

We think much too highly of ourselves. We forget that our very sense of justice and fairness and mercy comes from God and is a lesser, flawed version of it. We cannot see all God sees nor comprehend all God comprehends (Isaiah 55:9). Yet even within our limited capacity, we should be able to grasp the fact that God is One and that He cannot be charged with evil, since He alone is the definition of good. To accept Jesus is to accept the Father (1 John 2:23); it’s a package deal. Jesus Himself said He is the way to the Father (John 14:6), a very strange statement if the Father were “bad”.

Who would want to paint such a picture of God, except Satan? Who else wants to be God and paint his adversary as evil (which Satanists believe is the truth) in order to pull people away from Him? Who would take advantage of our short-sightedness and simplistic rationalizations so we would turn against our Creator? Who is it that wishes to sit in judgment over God? (And I should add, who but a fool actually swallows the lie that Satan would treat us better?)

Whose side are they on, who say the OT God is “bad”?

It’s All The Same To Me

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It is commonly taught, and not just by Calvinism, that sin is some kind of spiritual disease or infection. And as I’ve shown many times before, it’s really more a case of a clash of wills between us and God, due to our having a free will, which is a prerequisite for having the capacity to truly love. But today I want to focus on another erroneous concept about sin: that one sin is exactly the same as another in God’s sight.

In James 2:10 we read, “For whoever keeps the whole law and yet stumbles at just one point is guilty of breaking all of it.” But does that really say all sins are identical? No. It says that all sins “break the law”. The important distinction here is that it isn’t equating the sins themselves but their legal consequences. Otherwise we could not make sense of 1 Cor. 6:18, “Flee from sexual immorality. All other sins people commit are outside their bodies, but those who sin sexually sin against their own bodies.” This verse makes a distinction between certain types of sins.

For example, suppose kids are playing baseball in an alley and someone accidentally breaks a window. While everyone would agree that it wasn’t intentional, the legal penalty– restitution– still falls on the one who broke it, accident or not. After all, it would be most unfair for the owner of the window to pay for damage they didn’t cause. Accidents happen, and those who cause them have to pay. But if someone aims at the window and breaks it deliberately, we all recognize that this person should not only pay for the window but also be penalized in some way for vandalism. And if we can clearly see the difference between these two cases, then should we expect God to be either unwilling or unable to see it?

Sin against God is not a disease but causes a broken relationship with him. When we break his laws, we either anger him (intentional sins– see Heb. 4:3) or grieve him (unintentional sins– see Eph. 4:30). These are two different motivations with different results, but either way the relationship is affected. Please keep this important distinction in mind, because it affects many theories on the nature of sin and what Jesus came to do.

When the Bible tells us Jesus paid for all sin (1 John 2:2), it means he restored the relationship– that’s what Rom. 5:10 is talking about. Jesus made it possible for anyone who wants to to be reconciled to God (John 3:16), but it takes two parties to reconcile. That’s where we come in, what salvation is all about. We are being offered reconciliation with God through the blood of Jesus, and accept this offer by holding as a personal conviction that God raised him from the dead.

So while all sin breaks the relationship, not all sin is identical. If it were, we’d have the absurd situation of a shoplifter and a serial killer getting identical punishments! And if even our flawed human laws see the great injustice in that, can we think God is blind to it?

Now someone may ask, “What about saved people who sin? Is the relationship with God broken again?” Strained, yes… broken, no. We have the Holy Spirit as a guarantee, a down payment, and the One who makes that payment can never take it back. Specifically, we will lose rewards for sins committed after salvation (1 Cor. 3:10-15), but we are forever the very children of God and guaranteed heirs of eternal life with him in heaven. Once we are reconciled to God we are his forever.

Of course, anyone who gets the idea that this guarantee is a license to sin needs to ask themselves whether they are even saved (Rom. 6:2). How can you claim to have a relationship with someone you continually anger, grieve, mock, or ignore– especially if you do so deliberately? No, God guards and keeps us who are truly his, such that the relationship can never be broken.