Before you read the rest of this post, take a moment to finish this sentence on paper or in your head:
"The God I believe in would never..."
Think about that for a moment. The omniscient, omnipotent, sovereign God of the universe would never... do what? Our God is in the heavens; He does all that he pleases. What can we say he would never do? Yet many people have an answer to that question, and it often comes in the form of another question:
"How can a loving, merciful God send people to Hell?"
When people ask themselves this question, they are leaving out several important attributes of God and some important background information that answers itself.
The first thing we need to understand is that God is holy, and we are not. Holiness is perfect, spotless righteousness. If God came into contact with sin, He would no longer be holy. Since every single person is a sinner, we must therefore be eternally separated from the holy God. The physical place where God is not found is Hell. People don't choose whether or not they are going to Hell, but rather we all have no choice aside from Hell due to our unholiness.
Okay, so God is holy. But He is still loving, so how can He send people to Hell?
A second important attribute of God is that he is just. People often confuse 'just' with 'fair.' We must realize that they are not the same thing. Fairness means everyone gets the same thing. Justice means everyone gets what they deserve. In this case they would originally result in the same thing: everyone would go to Hell. In fact, everyone is born headed straight there. However, we must remember the attribute we are more comfortable with: God is merciful. While justice means everyone gets what they deserve, mercy means everyone gets more than what they deserve. Therefore God sent His son Jesus, who lived a righteous life and took on all of our sin, and died on the cross as punishment for them. The illustration my youth pastor used today was that we are all in a river to Hell. God is not sending to Hell, but we are making our own way there. This is not merely due to rejecting the gospel. We are making our own way to Hell because of all of our sins, that sin included. But God, being rich in mercy, rescues us by pulling us out of the river of our sins.
If we were comparing this to a court of law, we would see it in this way: God is the judge. He looks at us and says, "You are guilty, and you deserve death, but I forgive you." That explanation makes sense. But that's really not the best explanation of what happens when those in Christ are judged. A better illustration would be God the judge looking at us and saying, "You are NOT guilty." It has to be this way because if we were guilty, it wouldn't matter if we were forgiven. We would still not be holy and therefore would still be unable to stand in the presence of God. The only way to stand in the presence of God is to be holy; to have no guilt. And only through the death and resurrection of Jesus Christ can we say that our sins are dead, and we are hidden in Christ's life, and therefore not guilty.
The best way I have heard it worded is in the song, Before the Throne of God Above:
Before the throne of God above
I have a strong and perfect plea:
A great High Priest, whose name is Love,
Who ever lives and pleads for me.
My name is graven on His hands,
My name is written on His heart;
I know that while in heaven He stands
No tongue can bid me thence depart
No tongue can bid me thence depart.
When Satan tempts me to despair,
And tells me of the guilt within,
Upward I look, and see Him there
Who made an end to all my sin.
Because the sinless Savior died,
My sinful soul is counted free;
For God the just is satisfied
To look on Him and pardon me
To look on Him and pardon me
Behold Him there, the Risen Lamb
My perfect, spotless righteousness,
The great unchangeable I am,
The King of glory and of grace!
One with Himself I cannot die
My soul is purchased by His blood
My life is hid with Christ on high,
With Christ, my Savior and my God
With Christ, my Savior and my God
We will never be able to fathom the depth Christ's love for us. How can we even try to understand God's grace? We could never count the vast amount of sin in our own individual lives. Yet Jesus paid for all of it, and we have been given the gift of salvation. One day we will inhabit the New Heaven and the New Earth and our creator, the one, true, holy God will dwell among us. That is not something that ought to be taken for granted.
The final attribute of God that is important to answering this question is that God is sovereign. He is in complete control, and He does whatever pleases Him. We struggle to understand this sometimes, and I think we probably always will. We simply need to understand that God does whatever he wants to do, and he doesn't have to explain it to us. The illustration in Romans 9:20 puts it into perspective nicely. God is the potter and we are the clay, and we have no right or reason to ask God why He does something. We should always remember Romans 8:28. No matter what the situation is, God is working it together for our good on the eternal scale because we love Him, even if we cannot see it.
So we should not be asking ourselves how a loving, merciful God could send people to Hell. We should be in awestruck wonder that the holy, just, sovereign God rescued us from Hell. And we should more importantly be sharing it with others and glorify God in everything we do because He has rescued us.
"For God has not destined us for wrath, but to obtain salvation through our Lord Jesus Christ." -1 Thessalonians 5:9
Sunday, January 26, 2014
Sunday, January 19, 2014
Sanctity of Human Life Sunday
Today, January 19, 2014, is the day this year that the Southern Baptist Convention recognizes as Sanctity of Human Life Sunday. This day is recognized on the third Sunday in January every year.
So what is the meaning of this day? Why do we need to take a day to recognize the sanctity of human life? The cause is, perhaps, the vast destruction of human life that is taking place today and every day everywhere in the world. What, are we having a purge? A genocide? Well, in a way we are. Twenty-two percent of all pregnancies (excluding miscarriages) end in abortion. Those numbers don't seem so harmful, do they? 22 out of a hundred isn't so bad.
Keep in mind that the most recent data shows that the approximate population of the U.S. is 313.9 million people. If we killed 22 percent of the population of America, around 69,058,000 people would die. That's a pretty large number of people. Of that number, the question becomes, "How many of those people can we afford to lose?" The answer? Zero. Say one of those people was the president of the United States. That would be a huge loss for our country. Odds are that some of them would be celebrities of sorts, musicians, artists, athletes, political leaders. That still leaves a lot of people left that only and handful of people knew. And yet, they were here. They were on this earth. And one cannot say that anyone is ever placed here without a purpose for his or her life.
Genesis 1:27 says that God created man in his own image. That means everyone. Everyone is created in the image of our Creator. We are all given a name, a body, a personality. A soul. And our creator knows us all better than we know ourselves. Have we really become convinced that that doesn't include people who aren't born yet? We hear a heartbeat. We give these people an age, even from one week. Loving parents begin to choose names and clothes. People plan their lives around these new, young people months before they are born. It's a part of life: new life.
The argument has been made that maybe this new life was unintended. Say you had a three year old child, and you were raising him or her on your own, and you just didn't plan on having this child. Does that justify murdering the child? By no means! Why should that change just because that child is only three weeks old? Just because you haven't seen the child, that doesn't make him or her any less a child.
Another argument made is that the mother can't provide for a child properly, or that it impedes the future of one or both of the parents. There are an estimated 3,000 adoption agencies in the United States, where couples who desperately want a child but for various reasons can't have one go to adopt a child. Where do you think these agencies get these children? Young parents with bright futures who have the courage put their children up for adoption, knowing that this is best for the child, the parents, and the couple who are prepared to raise the child, caring for and providing for him or her. The argument that abortion is the best solution is invalid for this very reason. Abortion kills one baby, but that is not the only life affected. There are physical, and always emotional consequences for the mother. Abortion is not the best solution for anyone involved.
Abortion is murder, and murder is a sin. If I am speaking to someone who has experienced this personally, you ought to know that fact. However, there's a whole lot more to it. Much the same way as a newborn baby, ill-equipped to care for ourselves, in Christ we are adopted as sons and daughters of God. Ephesians 1:3-10 tells us this much. Ephesians 1:7-10 tells us that it has been God's will to unite all things in Him in the fullness of time from the beginning. He does this through redemption and through forgiveness. Jesus died for every one of everyone's sins. That includes abortion. In Christ you are forgiven and adopted as a child of God.
If you haven't gone through this, understand the impossibility of understanding. It is not our place to ultimately judge anyone. Are we not all sinners? The importance of this day and all that it encompasses is that abortion is wrong. But the fact that abortion is so widespread doesn't change the fact that all sin is widespread, and it especially does not change the truth or the power of the gospel.
Today, we raise awareness of the consequences of abortion. Every day, we raise awareness of the consequences of sin. As we witness the war that Satan is waging against us, especially in this way, the mass destruction of human life, I pray that we would understand the power of the gospel, of Jesus. I pray that we would understand the infinite love of our Father, and most of all, I pray that we would see the sanctity of human life. Because every person has a purpose here and is created in the image of God. Therefore, every life is valuable beyond measure.
"In him we have redemption through his blood, the forgiveness of our trespasses, according to the riches of his grace, which he lavished upon us, in all wisdom and insight making known to us the mystery of his will, according to his purpose, which he set forth in Christ as a plan for the fullness of time, to unite all things in him, things in heaven and things on earth." -Ephesians 1:7-10
So what is the meaning of this day? Why do we need to take a day to recognize the sanctity of human life? The cause is, perhaps, the vast destruction of human life that is taking place today and every day everywhere in the world. What, are we having a purge? A genocide? Well, in a way we are. Twenty-two percent of all pregnancies (excluding miscarriages) end in abortion. Those numbers don't seem so harmful, do they? 22 out of a hundred isn't so bad.
Keep in mind that the most recent data shows that the approximate population of the U.S. is 313.9 million people. If we killed 22 percent of the population of America, around 69,058,000 people would die. That's a pretty large number of people. Of that number, the question becomes, "How many of those people can we afford to lose?" The answer? Zero. Say one of those people was the president of the United States. That would be a huge loss for our country. Odds are that some of them would be celebrities of sorts, musicians, artists, athletes, political leaders. That still leaves a lot of people left that only and handful of people knew. And yet, they were here. They were on this earth. And one cannot say that anyone is ever placed here without a purpose for his or her life.
Genesis 1:27 says that God created man in his own image. That means everyone. Everyone is created in the image of our Creator. We are all given a name, a body, a personality. A soul. And our creator knows us all better than we know ourselves. Have we really become convinced that that doesn't include people who aren't born yet? We hear a heartbeat. We give these people an age, even from one week. Loving parents begin to choose names and clothes. People plan their lives around these new, young people months before they are born. It's a part of life: new life.
The argument has been made that maybe this new life was unintended. Say you had a three year old child, and you were raising him or her on your own, and you just didn't plan on having this child. Does that justify murdering the child? By no means! Why should that change just because that child is only three weeks old? Just because you haven't seen the child, that doesn't make him or her any less a child.
Another argument made is that the mother can't provide for a child properly, or that it impedes the future of one or both of the parents. There are an estimated 3,000 adoption agencies in the United States, where couples who desperately want a child but for various reasons can't have one go to adopt a child. Where do you think these agencies get these children? Young parents with bright futures who have the courage put their children up for adoption, knowing that this is best for the child, the parents, and the couple who are prepared to raise the child, caring for and providing for him or her. The argument that abortion is the best solution is invalid for this very reason. Abortion kills one baby, but that is not the only life affected. There are physical, and always emotional consequences for the mother. Abortion is not the best solution for anyone involved.
Abortion is murder, and murder is a sin. If I am speaking to someone who has experienced this personally, you ought to know that fact. However, there's a whole lot more to it. Much the same way as a newborn baby, ill-equipped to care for ourselves, in Christ we are adopted as sons and daughters of God. Ephesians 1:3-10 tells us this much. Ephesians 1:7-10 tells us that it has been God's will to unite all things in Him in the fullness of time from the beginning. He does this through redemption and through forgiveness. Jesus died for every one of everyone's sins. That includes abortion. In Christ you are forgiven and adopted as a child of God.
If you haven't gone through this, understand the impossibility of understanding. It is not our place to ultimately judge anyone. Are we not all sinners? The importance of this day and all that it encompasses is that abortion is wrong. But the fact that abortion is so widespread doesn't change the fact that all sin is widespread, and it especially does not change the truth or the power of the gospel.
Today, we raise awareness of the consequences of abortion. Every day, we raise awareness of the consequences of sin. As we witness the war that Satan is waging against us, especially in this way, the mass destruction of human life, I pray that we would understand the power of the gospel, of Jesus. I pray that we would understand the infinite love of our Father, and most of all, I pray that we would see the sanctity of human life. Because every person has a purpose here and is created in the image of God. Therefore, every life is valuable beyond measure.
"In him we have redemption through his blood, the forgiveness of our trespasses, according to the riches of his grace, which he lavished upon us, in all wisdom and insight making known to us the mystery of his will, according to his purpose, which he set forth in Christ as a plan for the fullness of time, to unite all things in him, things in heaven and things on earth." -Ephesians 1:7-10
Tuesday, January 14, 2014
The Other Emancipation Proclamation: The Gospel
"It's a free country."
That's what people often say when told to do or not to do
something. It is a way of saying that one refuses to comply with rules or
expectations. America is a free country, so people don't tell other people how
to live their lives and everyone is okay. But is that what freedom really is?
Many people would define freedom as living under absolutely no authority. People believe freedom is the right to do whatever we want with no consequences and no dissent. If one is truly free than there are no rules and expectations that have to be met; we can run wild and do as we please whenever and wherever we feel like we want to.
In 1863 with the establishment of the Emancipation Proclamation, slaves in the south were declared free. By no means did that mean they had the right to do whatever they wanted to do without justification or consequence. The opposite was true in reality. For a century after that, people of African-American descent were considered less than what they were- people, that is to say.
This is, in many ways, an accurate analogy to freedom as it stands today. To
me, freedom is exactly the opposite of having no authority. Freedom is the act
of submitting to God’s authority. Much like the slaves in the 1860s, freedom is
being released from slavery. In Christ we are free from sin, death, and hell.
We are free from God’s wrath, which is what we deserve. We are free to live in
such a way that glorifies the only one who truly deserves the glory: our one,
true, living God. Before we have Christ in our lives, sin owns us. We are under
the control of sin, and that is how we live. We don’t know any better because
we are in darkness, and we do not know light. Through God’s grace Jesus came
into the world and not only gave us light, but taught us how to be lights and
to walk in the light.
In the Civil War era, slaves very rarely knew how to read. If you put a sign in front of them that said, "You are free," they wouldn't know what to do or how to respond. Sometimes Christianity works the same way. We know we are free from sin, but we don't know what the next step is. One solution I can think of is to thank the one who freed us. Our job when we are freed is to glorify God in everything we do. If the only thing we ever received from God was salvation, we have to understand that what we have been given is more than we deserve.That alone should always be enough to tell us what the freedom we have been given should be used for.
In the Civil War era, slaves very rarely knew how to read. If you put a sign in front of them that said, "You are free," they wouldn't know what to do or how to respond. Sometimes Christianity works the same way. We know we are free from sin, but we don't know what the next step is. One solution I can think of is to thank the one who freed us. Our job when we are freed is to glorify God in everything we do. If the only thing we ever received from God was salvation, we have to understand that what we have been given is more than we deserve.That alone should always be enough to tell us what the freedom we have been given should be used for.
The answer is not in being free to do whatever suits us in the flesh. When one understands the depth of the love of the Father, what they want most is to please Him. Because sin is still a part of the world we live in, sometimes our "want to" seems broken. It is hard to admit the fact that we don't always do the best job of honoring God, but we need to understand that we have been forgiven and we are free. Though on this earth we will never be perfect, we become more like Christ as our faith in him grows, and we are always free from the power of sin even though we aren't always free from the presence of sin. Through this process we become more and more free from the presence of sin until the day of glorification when we will stand before God in Christ's righteousness alone. That is true freedom, and it comes not when we rebel against authority, but when we submit to the authority of God.
"Live as people who are free, not using your freedom as a cover-up for evil, but living as servants of God." -1 Peter 2:16
Thursday, January 2, 2014
Everyday Resolutions
Happy New Year! Did you make any New Year's resolutions?
The question people frequently find themselves being asked has a wide range of answers. For some, the answer is, "No, I didn't want to disappoint myself." More often, however, most everyone has at least one thing every January 1st that they would like to change about themselves. One might hope to lose a certain amount of weight or earn a certain amount of money, or acquire some other item of monetary or sentimental value. Perhaps one would like to make a certain amount of friends or go to a certain event, or do something that they could only do once in a lifetime.
Whoever you are, you more than likely have something you don't like about yourself, and you want to fix it. So you write it down on January 1st, and depending on how much you really want it, work at it until you cross it off your list. Or perhaps you made a list, but you just never got around to actually doing it. That is often the case. So why do we do this? Well, most people explain it by saying that it's a new year, and thus it is a new start: a clean slate, if you will. "We've revolved around the sun one more time than we had 365 days ago. Time to start over!"
What's the point? If you have to reset yourself every 365 days, it seems to me that all the days before that didn't count for anything. If you changed for the better in 2013, why would you want to regress so you could 'start over' in 2014. Why not just work with what you have? And if that's the case, why do you have to wait 365 days between?
For those of us who are believers, we have to understand that salvation isn't a one-and-done thing. When we're born again, it's just like that. We're like infants and we need to grow. That's what sanctification is. It's the constant process of becoming more like Christ. One keyword there is 'constant.' You don't wake up one day sanctified. You don't die sanctified. It's a process that you go through every moment from the instant you receive the Holy Spirit. That's the way our 'resolutions' should be. You should wake up every day and ask God to change you today, and to make you more like Jesus.
It's great to write your goals down. I have my own New Year's resolutions, and I would encourage you to have at least one, because no one here is perfect. For that very reason, we should not be content to stay the way we are. God is I Am. He never changes; He is eternal and constant. We are not I Am. We are constantly changing in our lives, and we should make it our goal to strive for sanctification. Don't settle for complacency at any point in your life.
You should also keep in mind that you're not ever going to be able to 'fix' yourself. But the Holy Spirit is constantly at work in your life, and as you grow in your faith you should, and will see change in your life. So every day should be a resolution. Remember to do everything you do for the glory of God, and every day you should keep pressing on toward the goal.
Once more, happy New Year!
"Brothers, I do not consider that I have made it my own. But one thing I do: forgetting what lies behind and straining forward to what lies ahead, I press on toward the goal for the prize of the upward call of God in Christ Jesus." -Philippians 3:7-14
The question people frequently find themselves being asked has a wide range of answers. For some, the answer is, "No, I didn't want to disappoint myself." More often, however, most everyone has at least one thing every January 1st that they would like to change about themselves. One might hope to lose a certain amount of weight or earn a certain amount of money, or acquire some other item of monetary or sentimental value. Perhaps one would like to make a certain amount of friends or go to a certain event, or do something that they could only do once in a lifetime.
Whoever you are, you more than likely have something you don't like about yourself, and you want to fix it. So you write it down on January 1st, and depending on how much you really want it, work at it until you cross it off your list. Or perhaps you made a list, but you just never got around to actually doing it. That is often the case. So why do we do this? Well, most people explain it by saying that it's a new year, and thus it is a new start: a clean slate, if you will. "We've revolved around the sun one more time than we had 365 days ago. Time to start over!"
What's the point? If you have to reset yourself every 365 days, it seems to me that all the days before that didn't count for anything. If you changed for the better in 2013, why would you want to regress so you could 'start over' in 2014. Why not just work with what you have? And if that's the case, why do you have to wait 365 days between?
For those of us who are believers, we have to understand that salvation isn't a one-and-done thing. When we're born again, it's just like that. We're like infants and we need to grow. That's what sanctification is. It's the constant process of becoming more like Christ. One keyword there is 'constant.' You don't wake up one day sanctified. You don't die sanctified. It's a process that you go through every moment from the instant you receive the Holy Spirit. That's the way our 'resolutions' should be. You should wake up every day and ask God to change you today, and to make you more like Jesus.
It's great to write your goals down. I have my own New Year's resolutions, and I would encourage you to have at least one, because no one here is perfect. For that very reason, we should not be content to stay the way we are. God is I Am. He never changes; He is eternal and constant. We are not I Am. We are constantly changing in our lives, and we should make it our goal to strive for sanctification. Don't settle for complacency at any point in your life.
You should also keep in mind that you're not ever going to be able to 'fix' yourself. But the Holy Spirit is constantly at work in your life, and as you grow in your faith you should, and will see change in your life. So every day should be a resolution. Remember to do everything you do for the glory of God, and every day you should keep pressing on toward the goal.
Once more, happy New Year!
"Brothers, I do not consider that I have made it my own. But one thing I do: forgetting what lies behind and straining forward to what lies ahead, I press on toward the goal for the prize of the upward call of God in Christ Jesus." -Philippians 3:7-14
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