I am old enough to remember the days when gasoline sold for $.26 a gallon. But, even at today’s high prices, gasoline is a bargain compared to what it could cost if it were not so easily and abundantly accessible. Recent research by geologists and physicists reveals that humans are living at the best possible time in Earth’s history for harvesting petroleum – a resource that helped launch and sustain advanced civilization. Without a series of just-right geophysical events and conditions, there would be no complaining about pump prices, because there would be little or no fossil fuel to complain about. To appreciate this miracle of fuel’s availability to humanity one needs to understand how petroleum forms and is stored in the earth. First, sedimentation and plate tectonics bury organic material. This buried organic matter is transformed by heat, pressure, and time into kerogen (thick tars). With yet more time and heat a significant portion of the kerogen is converted into petroleum. Through still more time, however, microbial activity works to degrade petroleum into methane (natural gas). Certain kinds of organic matter are much more likely upon death and burial to be transformed into kerogen than others. The most efficient kerogen producers were the swarms of small-body-size animals that inhabited large shallow seas soon after the Cambrian explosion (so named because 50-80% of all animal phyla “exploded” onto the scene 543 million years ago). If the Creator God’s goal is to provide humanity with the richest possible reserves of fossil hydrocarbons, a fixed period of time must transpire between the time when efficient kerogen producers were dominant on Earth (about 500 million years ago) and the appearance of human beings (some tens of thousands of years ago). With too little time, not enough petroleum will be produced. With too much time, too much of the petroleum will be degraded into methane. But there is more to the production of fossil hydrocarbon reserves than just the burial of particular organisms and their progressive conversion into kerogens and petroleum. Certain sedimentation processes are needed to lay down the porous rocks that will become reservoirs. Later, these rocks must be overlaid with fine-grained rock with low permeability (sealer rocks). Finally, certain tectonic forces cause appropriate caps under which fossil hydrocarbons can collect. Long years of specific sedimentary and tectonic processes are required to produce appropriate reservoir structures for collecting and storing fossil fuels. And yet too much time will lead to the destruction of the reservoirs. Additional tectonic and erosion processes eventually cause the reservoirs to leak. If too much time had transpired before humans came on the scene the fossil hydrocarbon reservoirs would have emptied, and the resources with which human beings were able to launch an industrial and scientific revolution would have been missing or insufficient. Both methane and kerogen play significant roles in sustaining modern civilization and technology, but their importance pales in comparison to petroleum, particularly in the plastics industries. While human technology is now sufficiently advanced to consider and develop ways to get by without petroleum it seems doubtful that such technology would have arisen without access to large amounts of petroleum to begin with. Human beings indeed arrived at the optimal “fossil-hydrocarbon moment.” Such optimized timing raises reasonable doubt about any naturalistic model for life and humanity, but aligns perfectly with what a biblical creation model would predict.
The Catholic pastor pounded the pulpit: “It’s not a cake walk you know. Some of you think that all you have to do is accept Jesus, attend church when you feel like it, and give a few dollars in the offering basket. But you need to do more than that. Do you think Jesus died on the cross just so you can be a couch potato Christian?” He paused, and surveyed the flock, before continuing, “And I hear that some of you are thinking of leaving our church to go to the big mega-church out in the suburbs. You think that going to church in casual clothing, listening to rock music, and hearing a short message spiced up with footage from Holly-weird movies is better than coming to our church where you receive the sacraments and are guided in well-established doctrines of the faith. You go right ahead and attend that church with its Las Vegas style productions, but let me warn you – that’s nothing more than easy-believism. It isn’t real Christianity. Christianity involves more than just entertainment.” The pastor is frustrated – he has lost many families to the mega-church, and he feels he has to protect his dwindling flock. The pastor isn’t alone. A number of other churches in town are feeling the pinch as members are being gobbled up by the big mega-church with its smiling personable, tanned, joke-telling, casually dressed young pastor. The Catholic pastor and several of the other pastors are convinced that easy-believism is to blame. In part, it is. Some permissive churches entice us with ideas that we can do whatever we want to do whenever we want to do it, and in the American competitive religious market this means giving the people what they want. Authentic Christianity most certainly is not a case of a pastor determining what his people want and then getting out in front of them to lead them to their subjectively determined Promised Land. There is no doubt that permissiveness is a major problem in the North American religious landscape. It is a heresy, a ditch into which many fall, an attractive alternative to real Christianity. It is the ditch of permissiveness and compromise. Permissiveness misuses the grace of God. No question. But there is an equal and opposite ditch, and legalism is its name. And legalism, in actuality, often condemns God’s amazing grace as well. Grace is so often characterized as permissiveness. There are pastors, priests and ministers who object to easy-believism on legalistic grounds – fearing that their big stick of hierarchy will be taken away from them, and they will no longer be able to control their congregations. We do have much to fear from permissiveness. We also have much to fear from legalistic, hierarchy religion. We have nothing to fear from God’s grace. You might hear the question, “Okay. All I hear about is grace. So explain this. Since Christ’s work on the cross is sufficient for my salvation, and since God loves me unconditionally, why should I even bother trying to obey Him?” It’s a good question. Why try? Why obey? If it’s all done for you, why be good? Is God’s grace a license to sin? If God saves us by His grace, unmerited favor, then what is for us to do? What is difficult for us to accept is that Christianity is based on a relationship, not on rules. When human beings try to improve on Christianity and make it into a set of rules and regulations, legalism contaminates the authentic and pure gospel of Jesus Christ. Let’s clarify. By definition, Christians want to obey God. We want to make Him happy. We want to do the things with which He will be pleased. The Bible makes it clear that the children of God want to obey Him, but that God’s grace is the reason they want to obey Him. Christians obey because they have been saved. But why do we, and should we, strive to obey God if He has already saved us by grace? Jesus Christ did what He did without any guarantee that we would respond favorably. He loved us first, and we therefore love, honor, and desire to obey Him. Anyone who believes that any part of their salvation is due to the things they do or don’t do in their own strength will inevitably wind up boasting. We will strut and swagger. We will get puffed up if we believe our truth, our doctrines, our dogmas, our ceremonies, and our rituals are better than someone else’s. We will brag that our sacraments, our hymns, and our times or seasons in which we worship God are the best, if not the only way to worship God. If our brand of religion is threatened by the implications of freedom in Christ, we will often attack. Legalism and institutionalism protects itself at all costs. The first priority is to protect the institution and organization, not to feed and nurture and protect the sheep of God’s pasture. So, in conclusion, what am I saying? How is a Christian to choose their church? We don’t want the legalistic – “earn your way to heaven” – church. And we don’t want the permissive – “I’ll do what’s right in my own eyes” – church. The church we should look for is the “saved by unmerited grace” church. Total GRACE! God’s salvation is a three part deal. And it’s all GRACE! When we see out sin for what it is, see our need of a Savior, and commit our life to Christ, we are born again with a new divine nature. No human works involved. This is called justification. All GRACE. Then we have a lifetime of growing in awareness of who we are in Christ, and day by day turning what we do over to Him. Again, no human works involved. This is called sanctification. All GRACE. Then at our death, we receive a total spirit body in the presence of God. Again, we are not judged on our human works, we are rewarded by what Christ did through us. This is called glorification. All GRACE. Look for a GRACE CHURCH!
Human Curiosity As Evidence For God - (by Hugh Ross, Ph.D.)
Why do human beings ask “Why?” Does this driving curiosity simply reflect humans’ intellectual superiority? According to evolutionary theory, the distinctions between humans and other species are matters of degree, not of kind. But what does careful observation reveal? Even the most curious of animals are prone to explore their immediate environments, including nearby objects (or animals) roughly similar to their own body size. Humans, by contrast, explore and analyze the full range of physical reality from the very smallest part (such as subatomic particles) to the very largest (such as clusters of superclusters of galaxies), not to mention every living thing and every part of every living thing they encounter. Other animals’ curiosity extends little, if any, past the immediate moment. Even when creatures “store up” for the season or “prepare” for a coming event, such as a birth, they function in patterned ways according to their survival instinct. Humans, on the other hand, want to know about the earliest moments of life, of cosmic existence, and of the furthest reaches of the future. Particle physicists today spend billions of dollars to learn about cosmic conditions when the universe was only a fraction of a second old; other astronomers spend billions to learn more about what the universe will be like in a trillion trillion trillion years. Human curiosity extends even to a realm beyond time. While animals attempt to explore and understand things and creatures in their habitat that can keep them and their offspring alive, human beings seek out the most desolate and even dangerour places on and in Earth – or beyond Earth – for the sheer adventure and pleasure of exploration, or as part of their undying quest to unlock the mysteries of their existence. While cats may be content to play with string and stones and bouncing crickets, humans want to understand everything there is to know about the string, stones, and crickets. Birds look to the star patterns in the night sky to guide them in their life-essential migrations, but humans seek to make sense of the patterns and understand starlight itself. If the difference between human and other animals’ curiosity were simply a matter of higher intelligence (a presumed survival benefit), one would expect to see this higher curiosity emerging gradually in the most intelligent and communicative animal species. Instead we observe only modest increases in the degree of curiosity among such animals. Dolphins learn tricks and solve puzzles. Chimps take simple things apart and put them back together. Humans ask, “What is the nature of the universe? What is our place in it? Where did the universe and its life forms come from? Why is everything the way it is?” Humans are the only creatures to ask such questions, and some individuals invest (or risk) their lives to gain answers. The evolutionist must explain what feature in any other animal gave rise to such curiosity. The willingness to risk all for the sake of curiosity would seem to contradict the evolutionary principle of survival of the fittest. From a biblical (creation model) perspective, however, human curiosity makes sense. God made people so intensely curious that in their drive to study all aspects of the cosmos, including their own minds and hearts, they would discover clues pointing unmistakably to Him. [Back to Home]
Is “religion” good or bad? Is true Christianity a “religion”? Both the Reader’s Digest Great Encyclopedic Dictionary and Webster’s New World Dictionary Third College Edition give as the etymology of the word religion: re=back plus ligare=bind, hence to bind back or re-connect. You might ask, “Isn’t humankind suffering the consequences of not being bound (connected) to our creator? Isn’t the break (breach) produced by sin in the Garden of Eden precisely what the work of Christianity is intended to repair? (Isaiah. 58:12). The word ligament has the same root source and no part of the body which moves to accomplish work can do so without being connected (bound) to the source of power, the muscle. Humankind has no greater need than to be re-connected to spiritual muscle. For this reason you might say, “The church does not need to be without religion. The church needs the religion of Christ, pure and undefiled (James 1:27). By this definition we don’t need Christianity without religion. We need Christianity that accomplishes religion.” But Jesus did not save and rescue us by refining and modifying religion. Jesus did not die on the cross for a religious cause. It was religion that put Him on the cross – Jesus died to save us from religion. Religion, from the day of Jesus’ birth to the day of His resurrection, was hostile to Jesus. Religion killed Jesus then, and it continues to war against Christianity today (John 15:18-19; 16:2). From the birth of the body of Christ, religion has attempted to eliminate Christianity by either killing believers or by misrepresenting and counterfeiting the teachings of Jesus Christ. All religion, in any form, including religion that clothes itself with God’s name, asserts the fundamental importance of human deeds, works and performance. Religion is any system of belief and practice that assures us that our performance can gain us a higher standing with God than we would have otherwise enjoyed. That hypothesis is the polar opposite of the gospel and the enemy of the cross of Christ. Religion is a pre-Christian innovation, a system of behaviors and practices that promises divine blessing in return for human obedience and fidelity. Religion existed long before the birth of our Lord and was in large part the reason He came. He came to signal the end of religion and the beginning of a new life, a life He brings to all of us, without cost. Christianity is thus not a religion at all, but a way of life that is opposed to religion and all of its potions and prescriptions. The history of religion is filled with egocentric appeals persuading us that we are the center of reality. Religion, at its core, is humanistic. Religion is attractive because it places humans in the driver’s seat, seemingly able to control their destiny, able to determine what God will think of them. Religion, under any label or banner, enslaves its followers, addicting them to the idea that what they do can please and appease God. Religion, in the name of Jesus Christ, offers to improve upon what Jesus has done, to modify and even counterfeit Him and thereby offering a false gospel and a bogus salvation. An improved and modified Jesus is no Jesus at all. As C.S. Lewis once said, “No clever arrangement of bad eggs will make a good omelet.” True Christianity comes from Jesus’ victory by the cross and His resurrection – and it is given to us. Religion that exists and even thrives within Christianity diminishes the importance of the life, death and resurrection of Christ, as opposed to authentic Christianity which insists that Jesus Christ is the ground zero of our lives. Religion serves an intoxicating and heady brew that bewitches humans (Galatians 3:1) into believing that human effort, performance and works are in the spotlight, at center stage of our relationship with God. True Christianity points to the work of Jesus Christ alone as the only source of our salvation. Jesus alone, the Light of the world, is worthy to occupy the spotlight. Faith alone, grace alone, Christ alone. It’s all about Him, not about us! Jesus rescues us from a world that is groaning under the heavy burden of oppressive religion. Jesus’ glorious resurrection from the dead is also our glory, by God’s grace. Jesus’ victory is our own, by God’s grace. By grace, Jesus’ life is the life we now live (Galatians 2:20). He is the center of our lives. We belong to Him by God’s grace, not on the basis of our goodness, but on the basis of God’s goodness. So as you look around you at Christianity, you will see many forms of working to please God to obtain salvation. When you see a church that says: a) Christianity is simple b) You can’t earn your salvation by working to please God c) Salvation is totally a one time gift which you just have to accept d) When salvation is accepted, you have a change of nature right within your human spirit to the nature of Jesus Christ who comes to dwell within you in a living union e) The life of a Christian after salvation becomes a life of growing in understanding of who you are in Christ, developing a personal relationship with Him, learning to trust Him for guidance and leadership, and demonstrating Him to others around you f) As this growth occurs, you receive correction when you slip backwards and sin in different areas. But you learn from your mistakes and gradually eliminate human self-centeredness and daily become more Christ-centered. When you find such a church without all the imposed ritualism and imposed human works, grab on to that church because THAT IS TRUE CHRISTIANITY AND IS NOT “RELIGION”!
When Paul talked about salvation by faith alone, and when James said that we are justified by faith plus works, do they contradict? There seems to be a contradiction, and we know that there is no contradiction in the scriptures. I don't hear many sermons on this subject. I know that there is no way that we can earn salvation, or deserve it, or work hard enough for it, only by what Jesus has already done on the cross. It seems that Catholics believe that James is teaching salvation by faith and works, and Protestants teach salvation by Christ alone. There is no contradiction. Paul says that grace is the manner in which, the currency by which, the energy and means, the vehicle of our salvation. We are saved by God's grace because that's the only way we can be. We are justified by the cross of Christ, because of God's grace, for only such a power and sacrifice can deliver and save us. When James said that we are justified by our works, he meant that if we are saved by grace then works will follow. We are saved, as Paul says in Ephesians 2:10, in order to become God's workmanship, so that he can make of us what he desires, so that he can work in us, to produce the fruit of the Spirit (Galatians 5). We do not produce God's fruit in our lives by our efforts - only God can produce his fruit in us - so only by being saved first may Jesus, who lives in us once we are saved (Gal. 2:20), produce his work in us, and so we become his workmanship. This is what James was saying. He was saying that if we are truly saved, if we have been saved, then there will be evidence, and that evidence will be "works" - but here's where people often misunderstand. The works that James is talking about are not the works that humans do, but rather the works that God does in and through humans who are already saved. No works of God are produced in someone who has not accepted Jesus Christ. No human effort can produce the fruit of God's Spirit. People may be loving, joyful, peaceful, etc - as humans go, as humans can be those things - but the love, joy and peace of God will not ever be produced on human merit and character alone. Only God can make a tree, and only God can produce a Christian. The "acid proof" that James was not speaking of some kind of justification by works, is found in Romans 4 - where Paul explains that even Abraham, long before the cross, was justified by faith - Abraham was justified, not because he was good but because God was good. The entire chapter - Romans 4, might be a good study for you in this regard - and if you are going to read Romans 4, then take some extra time and do it right, start in Romans 1, and once you finish chapter four, keep going for at least a few more chapters. That should clear this issue up. Paul spends the first half of the Roman epistle stressing that God’s grace alone saves. The James epistle was the first epistle written probably before 50AD. It was sent to the scattered Jewish brethren who, though Christian, were enmeshed in the legalism of the Mosaic law. Paul’s gospel, as put forth so distinctly in Romans, had not been widely disseminated. James knew that the works of a Christian were important and he stressed Christian works as proof of salvation. But James just did not fully understand Paul’s revealed concept that people are saved once and forever in their human spirit by faith alone – but that the salvation growth of the soul is an ongoing, day by day, sanctification process by which we allow the works OF GOD to be expressed through us more and more. No contradiction! Just a difference in emphasis!
Have you ever noticed how often the things of God seem to work by THREES? Examples:
The Godhead – Father, Son and Holy Spirit.
Man, as the highest expression of God’s creation, reflects his Creator’s trinity nature. Man is created to know three worlds – the spiritual world, the psychological world, and the material world.
These three worlds are related to the three parts of our human person – spirit, soul and body.
When a man is properly related to the spiritual world with his spirit, he is HOLY. When a man is properly related to the psychological world with his soul, he is HAPPY. When a man is properly related to the material world with his body, he is HEALTHY.
As Christians, our salvation itself is a three part process – We have a past, one time forever, salvation of the spirit by which we are JUSTIFIED and made right with God. We have a present, ongoing every day, salvation of the soul by which we are being SANCTIFIED and brought into the lifestyle of God. We have a future, at death, salvation of the body by which we are to be GLORIFIED and given new spiritual bodies in heaven.
A Christian contains three functions of the Godhead – He has the Father as his NATURE. He has the Son as his LIFE. He has the Holy Spirit as his TEACHER. The Father’s NATURAL intention for man is that he be joined to Christ in man’s human spirit as his LIFE. Then the Holy Spirit joins to man’s soul as his TEACHER. The Holy Spirit directs us to the Life of Christ and communicates God’s divine will to our soul (mind, emotion and will), and the soul is to motivate the body to navigate out into the world. These three then, working together, serve to make you what we can rightly call a man or woman of God.
THAT NEW KIND OF MARRIAGE - An Allegory of Salvation
My name is “Child”. My full name is “Child Sinner”. My parents are “Adam and Eve Sinner”. I lived a pretty natural and ordinary life until I met “Christopher”. I had always been looking for the man of my dreams. The he came along. With Christopher and me, right from the start it was one of those stormy romances, on again, off again, on again, off again. So when I first began hearing about this new scientific marriage technique that’s been discovered for merging two people into one, we just made up our minds one night, he and I, to throw caution to the winds and give it a try. I guess it just seemed high time for us to take some kind of permanent, irreversible step, and we thought – well, why not? Why not go all the way? After all, people around us are always hopping into bed together these days, and it’s nothing today for couples to shack up. So when this new science of total fusion of two people became available and we began seeing it advertised all over the place, it just seemed like the natural thing for Christopher and me to do. Of course, I realize that it must strike many people as shockingly grotesque, the very idea of two separate people being literally melted down into one. But if you stop and think about it, it’s really no more peculiar a thing than shaking hands, say, or kissing – to say nothing of making love! I mean, who thinks up such things? No matter how common they may become, there remains a perpetual kind of strangeness to the most ordinary gestures of intimacy. And ultimately don’t they all point in the same direction, towards a deeper and deeper union? Naturally Christopher and I had a big church ceremony, and I won’t go into all the details of that. But the moment itself, that moment when the two of us were standing there hand-in-hand before the altar and were suddenly, physically, melded together – how can I describe that? Well, one thing I can say is that instead of being inside myself and looking out at Christopher, suddenly I felt that I was inside Christopher, looking out at myself! One moment I was minding my own business, more or less, and the next moment I was minding business for Christopher Saint – that was his full name. Looking back on it I can see that before then, in spite of having a lover and all, really I was still behaving pretty much like my own person: single, autonomous, marching to a private drum – and expecting Christopher just to tag along! It was almost as though I was the only person on earth lost in my own little dream world. But ever since that mysterious transaction at the altar, like it or not, I’ve found myself living not my own life but Christopher’s. Now I’m doing Christopher’s work, thinking Christopher’s thoughts, getting used to Christopher’s body as being my own body, and trying however clumsily to do all things just the way Christopher wants them done. And since there is legally only one living person now in place of the two, I even took his full name, first and last, as my own: Christopher Saint. My parents, predictably, were outraged. They’d been dead against the thing all along, refusing even to come to the ceremony. And you should have seen them the day Christopher and I walked into their home as one person! I mean, on top of everything else, Christopher has this thick foreign accent, which to my ears sounds adorable, but which I know turns a lot of people off. So even before we got in the door my parents heard my familiar voice all mixed up with that strange voice. And as soon as they laid eyes on the face of their dear daughter pressed shamelessly into the face of this foreigner, and saw my lips moving with his in a kind of perpetual osculation – well, they freaked right out. They had no idea who I was anymore, they said, and merely to look at me, all wrapped up in that man, sent shivers up and down their spines. From the way they carried on, you’d have thought I’d been lost to them forever! You’d have thought that getting joined and fused together with a strange man was something unutterably disgusting, even perverted, for a decent woman to do. Well, if it had been anyone else besides Christopher Saint, I’m sure I’d agree with them. But Christopher just happens to be the soul of decency, the ultimate paragon of purity and goodness. How can you argue with true love? And besides, being called “Child Saint” sounds pretty good. I don’t mean to imply that it’s all been smooth sailing for Christopher and me. We’ve had our ups and downs, believe me, and I can’t honestly say I don’t ever miss myself the way I used to be. The fact is, I do get frustrated not being able to run my own show. I know it’s silly, since there’s no going back now. But it’s one thing to BE one with another person, and it’s another thing altogether to FUNCTION as one. In the beginning, especially, the two of us weren’t coordinated at all, and I’m sure that’s partly what put my family off. It was as though I and a perfect stranger had thrown a horse blanket over us, with him wearing the horse’s head and me being the horse’s you know what. And we were pretending to be a dancing horse. We kept tripping over each other’s legs, stepping on toes, getting in each other’s way. What a sight! And so we were constantly having these long discussions about how to work things out. My feeling was that the only sane way to operate was on a fifty-fifty basis: half of the time we’d be me, and the other half we’d be him. What could be fairer than that? But Christopher, being from the Old Country, wouldn’t hear of it, and seemed determined not just to share my life but to take it over completely! Even now, there’s hardly a day goes by when we don’t have to talk this issue through, and sort out what it all means. And again and again Christopher has to explain patiently to me that what actually happened, that moment before the altar when I got joined to him, was that I DIED to my old existence, and a brand-new person was formed. Can’t I see how preposterous it is, he’ll argue, for me to keep on trying to revert to my old independent self, when that self is now nothing but a dead shell? When I don’t even have a living body to call my own anymore? “So what about you?” I’ll pout. “It’s a two-way street, you know. How come you get off scot-free?” “Oh, but I don’t, “he answers simply. Don’t you remember that I died too?” And at that, the very shadow that crosses his face will steal across mine, and I’ll feel my lips begin to tremble just as his do. And in my eyes, - which are really our eyes – the tears will spring. And then in our heart I’ll know that he is right. Then I’ll know that fifty-fifty is impossible, and that nothing makes any sense anymore but for the two of us to become totally and unconditionally identified, immolated and fused into one another. So it hasn’t always been easy, living in Christopher Saint, or having him living in me. He can be so difficult to figure out sometimes, so full of inconsistencies. I mean, first he’ll say one thing, and then he’ll say something else that sounds to me exactly the opposite. Like we’ll be on our way to the supper table, for example – and I’ll be starving – and suddenly he’ll remember that he has to make this important phone call, and the next minute we’ll be throwing on our coat and heading out the door to some dire emergency. And right in the middle of that he’s liable to stop and spend some time playing around with the neighborhood kids! That’s just the kind of a man he is. You never quite know what he’s going to do next. And yet somehow he expects me to be able to keep up with all of this, and even to read his mind. Because he’s doing it all, remember – inside of me – right inside my mind and body, - even though meanwhile what I want sometimes is to get on with a few harmless and quite legitimate plans of my own. Like fooling around with some of my old friends, or maybe sleeping in on Sunday morning, and so on. I tell you, it can be mighty painful, always being yanked in two directions at once. But then, I guess the truth of it is that I felt much more like a schizophrenic BEFORE meeting Christopher than after. For somehow, in spite of everything, I’m more myself now than I’ve ever been. And the better I get to know Christopher on the inside, the more his odd behavior on the outside seems not so crazy or inconsistent anymore, but makes perfect sense to me. You really have to walk around in a person’s shoes before you start seeing things their way. So that’s why I can so heartily recommend this new scientific technique of fusing people together, whatever little problems it might create. Mind you, I’d never dream of doing it with anyone except Christopher Saint! I mean, getting hooked up like this with the wrong person would be sheer hell!
On that day you will realize that I am in My Father, and you are in Me, and I am in you. John 14:20
The American constitution defines certain “inalienable rights”, while our government sets out to deliver them. We live in an age of entitlement. We demand and expect a certain standard of living: a good house, a decent education, an above-inflation salary, streets free of crime and grime, must have appliances, designer décor, fashionable clothes, great vacations … and why not? We're American! We deserve it! Psychologists and sociologists are linking this sense of entitlement to the rise in violent crime and inappropriate social behavior. If we don't get what we think we deserve – materially and emotionally – we are easily overcome by a sense of injustice. And this can bubble over into rage: date rage, road rage, sports rage, shopping rage, parking rage … spiritual rage? Is it possible that this spirit of entitlement, and I use the word “spirit” intentionally, has spilled over into the Church? I certainly think it has. And why not? We're Christians! We deserve it! It's not just the prosperity gospel we're talking about here, nor just the upwardly mobile who measure spiritual growth by material success. Fortunately the deception of this kind of Christianity has been unmasked, and most of us, in theory at least, don't subscribe to it. But the spirit of entitlement is subtler than that – and more resilient. We try our best to sweep it out of our homes and churches, but fail to remove it from our hearts. And it's in our hearts that it's most dangerous. The apostle Paul asks, “Who has ever given to God that God should repay him?” (Rom. 11:35). It's a rhetorical question. None of us have a right to expect anything from God. And yet, by his grace, he chooses to lavish blessings upon us. But surely we must have some rights? Something God tells us we're entitled to? Yes, we do – the Bible tells us that “To him who overcomes I will give the right to eat from the tree of life” (Rev. 2:7) and we are reminded that “How great is the love the Father has lavished on us, that we should be called children of God!” (1 John 3:1). These are the only two “rights” the Bible alludes to, but it is much more forthcoming in telling us what we “deserve”! For example: “What has happened to us is a result of our evil deeds and our great guilt, and yet, our God, you have punished us less than our sins have deserved” (Ezra 9:13). So if we've already been granted our rights, and, by his grace, not got what we deserve, surely we should be satisfied. After all, godliness with contentment is great gain (1 Tim. 6:6). And yet, how many of us are truly content? Through our saving relationship with Jesus Christ we gain the status of a beloved child. What it means to be that child is open to interpretation, skewed as it is through our earthly experience of parenting, but one thing we can be sure of: however the Father chooses to raise us will be in our own best interest. Unlike some legislation that protects the rights of children, God's expression of discipline and love is not reduced to a set of rules. If you're anything like me, this leaves us a little insecure. How do we know how God will treat us? What can we expect of him? God promises to act consistently with his character: “I am the Lord who exercises kindness, justice and righteousness on earth, for in these I delight, declares the Lord” (Jer. 9:24). God is kind. God is just. God is righteous. But what form will his righteousness take? Will he forgive us lavishly like he so often did with David, or will he choose to treat us more like Ananias and Sapphira who were struck down for a “mere” lie? Who can know the mind of God? Who can know how it applies to us? That's why we want to know our rights, what we're entitled to, so we can “hold God to it”. We would like to believe that God only has good things in store for us, but we may not like the way he wants to deliver them. The root of all this is fear – not Godly fear, but fear born out of separation from the Father. No matter what assurances the Holy Spirit whispers to us, when things aren't going to plan – our plan – we fear that we may be separated again. We need God to prove himself to us and we secretly begin to doubt him, his love for us and our merit in being loved. We set check-lists in our heart: “If God heals me from this illness, answers my prayer, gives me the breakthrough I've desired for so long, then I'll know he loves me.” We rejoice, only in part, when our brothers and sisters testify to answered prayer. We're encouraged, yes, but secretly jealous that God hasn't done the same thing for us: “Why did God answer her prayer and not mine? What makes her more entitled than me?” But God does not work to specifications. He is not tied to our agenda. He is not constrained by our limited understanding. God's way of salvation was so unexpected that many Jews refused to accept it. That was not who the Messiah was supposed to be: a suffering servant, beaten and hung on a cross. Where is the glory in that? And where is the glory in our sufferings? When the prayers we have poured out are not answered in the way we expect when the blessings which we believe are our “rights” as children of God do not arrive, are we going to doubt the existence of the Father? Possibly not, but like American citizens who expect a certain standard of living, we are going to grow ever more resentful when we don't get it. If you look into your heart, you may be shocked to see anger at God. It may take a long time to recognize it, but it's there. You may be angry that God has not answered certain prayers. It might have started out as disappointment, but now it's turned into anger. Ah, but what freedom this brings! Like Job you can tell God exactly how you feel, and he understands. Like Job, we need to be freed from the spirit of entitlement. Job expected, quite understandably, that it was his right to be protected from too much suffering. If you can stomach it, read through the Book of Job, and the disasters God deliberately – yes, deliberately – allowed to take place. First his business was devastated: his livestock was stolen and his employees were killed. Then his ten children died in a freak storm. His health took a turn for the worse after this, and he broke out in sores from head to toe. His friends stuck around for a while, but eventually they, and his wife, got sick of waiting for things to get better and left. Surely a child of God should not have to go through what he went through? Surely he was entitled to more? After all, God himself declared Job to be the most blameless and upright man on earth (Job 1:8). But no, God had other plans – plans to purify him, then to bless him abundantly (Job 42:12-16). Now I'm not saying we should resign ourselves to the sufferings of Job. Thank God, by his mercy, most of us will not have to go through that. But we only have to look at the plight of persecuted Christians around the world to know that our comfort is a blessing and not a right. And until we realize that we will never truly be free. Godliness with contentment is indeed great gain.
There has for centuries been a debate about God. Does God “predestinate” certain ones to be saved OR does man choose his salvation? Does God determine all events in advance OR does man have free will to determine events? Calvinism OR Armenianism? The opposing views seem to be absolutely contradictory. But are they? I have just read a newly published book by Gene Edwards entitled “Christ Before Creation”. Get ready to expand your thinking into eternity as I give you excerpts from Edwards’ book:
Before creation, nothing existed except the Godhead. The only thing there was the Father, the Son, and the Spirit. The Godhead colluded together and decided to do something that one might say was a terrible gamble. Having made this awesome decision (which included the gamble), they worked out a plan, a purpose, which guaranteed that the gamble would be no gamble at all. The Godhead decided that there would be portions of the Son that would be chosen for some marvelous destiny. These portions of Christ were predestined, predetermined to a glorious destiny. Those portions of Christ awaited their purpose somewhere out there in the future appearance of the space-time continuum. But these glorious portions could only have their destiny fulfilled if a creation appeared. Then the great drama of those marked-off portions would begin. After the destined ones were chosen, and just before creation, there appeared a book. This book listed the names of all the “marked-off” ones and was called The Book of Life. These are the very ones who would receive God’s own Life, eternal life. It was a record of those who would have Christ IN them. Out there in the distant future, it was also ordained that one day all those portions would come together. Or should we say come together again? They would once more be utterly one, just as they were all originally one – part of Christ and one with Christ. Having written all those names in the Book of Life, the Son closed the book and sealed it. He sealed the book with the understanding that nothing could change God’s selection of those chosen ones. All would be there, as part of Him, at the very end and into the forevermore. So now would this be the moment when there would be other than God? No, there was till more for Him to do before the actual act of creating. Remember that terrible gamble (which will turn out to be no gamble at all)? Once creation came into existence, God would allow all things to take their course, so things might not work out as God planned; hence, the gamble. But God did awesome things before creation to guarantee that all would work out as He planned, even though creation’s inhabitants were free to plot their own destiny. Just before the act of creation, the Father slew His only Son. He slew the Lamb. The Father did this before creation. Christ truly died before creation, before space-time. And at the moment of the slaying of the Lamb, all those portions of Christ also died. What happened to Christ happened to them. His death was their death. Those marked off portions of Christ were of Him, from Him, through Him, but most of all…IN Him, when He died. And also when He rose! This dying and rising happened before time, before dimension, before creation. Certainly, you and I, as fellow Christians, must say that we were in that creation and we are part of that creation…or so we think. But this is not entirely correct. No, you cannot be of this creation because part of you precedes creation! After all, you were in Christ…before. (Part of you may be a great deal older than you realize. A part of you has been around a very long time – even before time!) That is not all…there was the choosing of portions, the slaying of the Lamb, the creation of man, the fall of man, the cross in Jerusalem, Christ’s death, His resurrection, your redemption, and the close of creation. All this happened before He created anything. The answer has to do with Christ dwelling outside the passing of time. Creating creation, giving man free will, and risking the Fall really did appear to be a staggering gamble on God’s part, but it was not so. Christ meant to accomplish everything first before creation, to see that His will was carried out in creation. Redemption was there before the Fall, before creation. There were things done before creation that took care of crises that would happen after creation. This is all inexplicable, of course. Things occurred in dimensions beyond our understanding. We really need to know only one thing: in realms of timelessness, your Lord resolved all the crises that would later occur in creation. We now come to that moment when the triumphant resurrected Lord created. But if in that primordial age God was all, then where did Christ place creation? There was no “out there” because God was all. Creation had to be created in Christ! If you can see that creation in Christ, you can also see the resolution of much of the paradoxes, mysteries, and enigmas of our faith. After all, words like predestined, chosen, preordained, and foreknown could very easily raise a number of questions, especially when you add the words free will. If we see the greatness of Christ before creation, through the creation and after the creation, the paradoxes vanish. The dawn of creation starts at the beginning. On and on the story unfolds. He who is Alpha and Omega (both the beginning and the end of creation are in Christ) watches the drama. The drama reveals to us Adam, Noah, Abraham, Moses and David. Then the Cross and the tomb appear. Then there is Peter and there is Paul. And as the drama continues to move forward, someone who looks a lot like you appears. All this drama is in Him. Do you get this? Right now Christ is at the beginning and at the end of time, at the beginning and end of this creation. Both, right now. There is where He IS. THERE IS WHERE HE ALWAYS IS! Can we understand this? Of course not! We are shackled to three dimensions of space plus time. Christ at the beginning and the end simultaneously, was not something that John Calvin understood. He was caught in space-time too. Calvin had a God who was trapped in the present. Armenius who preached free will had the same problem. One of those men said “eternal security”; that is, once saved always saved! The other man said, “free will”; that is, you can lose your salvation. Armenius said your name could be taken out of the Book of Life; Calvin said, “No it cannot.” Neither man grasped a revelation of Christ before creation, nor did they understand that creation is in Christ. Christ is also at the end, and at the end there is the great throng of the redeemed, the gathering of all the redeemed in one place. They are all saved. On this point Calvin and Armenius agree! But Calvin would explain: “These were chosen before creation; none fell away. They are all here at the end, but were chosen at the beginning; and nothing can change that.” Armenius, looking at the same throng, would declare: “Oh, no, God chose many more than these; but they exercised their free will, rejected the Lord, and/or some fell into grievous sin. Those who did not make it had their names taken out of the Book of Life.” Neither man fully grasped “in”. But we need not look down on these two men; we do not understand “in” either. The paradox: man does exercise free will. Total free will. God does not interfere. However, a sovereign Christ preordained us and knows the name of everyone in that great throng of the redeemed. Predestination AND free will? How so? Is that not impossible? Not if you see that creation is IN Christ and that Christ is at the beginning…WHERE HE ALWAYS IS, and Christ is at the end…WHERE HE ALWAYS IS. May I now present to you the free will of man and the security of the believer, reconciled: The redeemed were chosen at the beginning, based on the fact that they had already been seen at the end! In that glorious moment at the end – WHERE CHRIST ALWAYS IS – your Lord sees the redeemed ones and He moves backwards through time until He comes to the beginning…WHERE HE ALWAYS IS. Then He writes the redeemed in the Book of Life based on those who made it to the end, based on the names of those who are in the great throng of the redeemed. Can He do that? Yes, because He is at the beginning and at the end…WHERE HE ALWAYS IS. This should make both Calvinists and Armenians happy! Are you wondering how it will all turn out at the end? Who will be saved to the very end? Will YOU make it there to the very end? Let us do what Christ did. While Christ was moving from the beginning to the end, He passed all places and all times, where He is, WHERE HE ALWAYS IS, Christ also came to you in your time…WHERE HE ALWAYS IS. He said, “Look! One of the ones who is in Me, who was in Me at the beginning and was in Me before the beginning…where I am, WHERE I ALWAYS AM.” So Christ went back to the beginning, where He is, WHERE HE ALWAYS IS, and He opened the Book of Life to see if your name was written there. Lo and behold, there was your name written there. Your name was in the Book of Life because you were at the end…where you are, WHERE YOU ALWAYS ARE. Then Christ did a double check on you. He came at last to the very end, where He is, WHERE HE ALWAYS IS, and lo and behold, He saw you again. He saw you there in the great throng of the redeemed, singing and rejoicing. Having seen you in the great gathering of the redeemed, was He surprised? Did He call out, “Oh, you made it! You made it to the end. Oh that is wonderful!” Not likely. Perhaps He said, “I am now going to choose, select, and predestine you. I will return to that time before time, before creation, before all things, WHERE I ALWAYS AM, and there I will decide that you will be saved.” Then He went to the place where you were calling out to Him to be saved. And he answered your call. Why not? After all, He found you at the end, and He saw your name in the Book of Life before the beginning. At that “non-time” He elected you chose you, justified you, sanctified you and glorified you. You definitely are one of those who “made it” to the end. But can we be certain of that? Yes, because you KNOW you have chosen Christ, you KNOW you are in Christ, and you KNOW you have the mind of Christ. AND YOU KNOW THAT WHERE HE ALWAYS IS, YOU ALWAYS ARE.
