Posted by
Truth Seeker on Monday, October 20, 2008 3:18:58 AM
This article is for everyone: so called Christians and non-Christians alike. Anyone with a sense of humor should be able to understand this article, but let me play the straight man, the butt of the joke, perhaps even, devils advocate, or instead, you can see me as an alien or sojourner holding a mirror to Evangelical theological errors. If you are an Evangelical, hear me out because you will only be stronger and sharper for it.
The article revolves around the question, ‘what is the truth about salvation’ because truth matters – what you believe about salvation will determine what you do or do not do about salvation. Something Evangelical theologians prize so highly and appeal to so strongly is having objective truth even though they will readily admit that many, if not most, Christians do not know the objective truths of the Faith or why they are objectively true. However, I wonder if the theologians themselves really know what they are talking about.
First of all, despite what the theologians teach, it is important that I warn people that even what they have can be taken away. It is not enough to just have the right words in your mouth and to not do them – that is lip service. I was very tempted to call this article “The Gospel According To Satan” because it is so easy for the devil to take away the seed God plants. As the saying goes, “defeat is snatched from the jaws of victory.” The reason you lose the truth is not simply because you do not correctly understand the truth intellectually – it is because you do not understand that Biblical or Christian truth has to be lived out practically; it can only save you if you put it into action and thereby bear fruit. (Job 28: 28; Ps.111: 10; Prov.9: 6 – 10; Mat.13: 18 – 23; Luke 8: 11 – 21)
Secondly, it is important to remember that objective truth involves several factors: 1) historical continuity as opposed to histrionics, 2) a proper biblical analysis as opposed to picking and choosing or using proof texts, 3) logic as opposed to incoherence, 4) positive results as opposed to lip service and lies, and 5) unity as opposed to division, apostasy, and double-mindedness. It is my intention to show that Evangelicals do not teach the truth about salvation, and, in the process, I hope to point you towards what is the truth.
From the mundane perspective, managers are taught to be “real” with their bosses but not “too real.” I take that to mean, ‘you need to know how to play “the game.”’ I am of the opinion that preaching or teaching the truth about salvation requires one to “tell it like it is.” On the other hand, many Evangelical preachers have said that a Christian needs to keep a good sense of humor. Humor requires certain elements such as contradiction, equivocation, impossible situations, or the juxtaposition of incongruent elements. Generally, we poke fun at the proud, arrogant, self-righteous, and hypocritical views and practices people have using these elements in order to rebuke or to correct in a gentle or loving fashion. Humor can be employed to soften the blows of truth and to help facilitate persuasion of others to the truth, but I shall endeavor to be all too real because I do not believe that God produces illegitimate children; I believe that anyone can be saved, especially Evangelicals.
Despite all the evidence to the contrary, the Evangelical wants to believe that he is saved; he thinks that his faith based clear conscience means that he is forgiven, but God does not acquit people just because they have clear consciences. (I Cor.4: 2 – 7; I John 3: 14 – 24) If faith is not blind, then surely, neither is the assurance of faith blind; it is grounded in objective truth and in deeds, in love and in keeping Christ’s commandments. They may have objective proof that the Bible is true and worthy of having you place your faith in its teachings concerning salvation, but the Bible has objective criterion for whether or not you truly have saving faith. The former is predicated on the latter, and with out the later, the former is irrelevant to your salvation.
With the above in mind, let me tell you about the cosmic game by way of the teachings I have commonly heard or read from Evangelical preachers, theologians, and apologists (defenders).
Perhaps, the funniest teaching I have ever heard is the doctrine of “total depravity.” I am not a theologian, but I think only the devil and those like him would be considered totally depraved; that is, they are beyond redemption and salvation because of their own evil and disobedience to God. Apparently, I am mistaken; instead, this doctrine teaches that we never could have or would have had the ability to keep God’s commandments; therefore, God punishes people for not keeping His commandments simply because He made them in such a way that they cannot keep them. Now, that is funny! It is so funny that I forgot to laugh like Abraham laughed. But it gets better! Not only does God punish His quadriplegic kids for not doing what they are told to do, He says that He punishes their elder Brother because they do not even so much as want to do what they are supposed to do. Incidentally, they never could have wanted to do it because by God’s own design everyone has been consigned to sin so that He could have mercy on everyone. Furthermore, He blesses a few of His kids for the same reason: for not having done what they were told to do, and in blessing them, He still does not give them the power to obey or the power to fully want to obey. Instead, He must perpetually and progressively provide the desire to obey to those whom He intends to save for no reason – the same reason He did not sustain such desire in the devil and the fallen angels in Heaven and in Adam and Eve in the sinless innocence of paradise resulting in the “fall of Man.” Supposedly, in Heaven, where there is no need to overcome sin, that is where men will finally be given the freedom from sin and the power to overcome it themselves. How clever.
Oh, what depths to which the “deeper magic” or, in this case, the deeper comedy goes! If all that wasn’t funny enough, the Evangelical adds the doctrine of “predestination” (as they understand it). This doctrine teaches that God intended to punish His children whether or not they obeyed or disobeyed Him; so, even though He punishes His eldest Son for the disobedience of all His other children, He still intends to punish most of His other children anyway. That would be funny enough, but wait; it gets better. God not only punishes them despite the “sufficiency” of His eldest Son’s sacrifice, He punishes them with an “eternal torment” for their temporal sin. Wait, wait, there is more. Actually, He punishes them for something they did not do because the doctrine of “original sin” makes it clear that He punishes us as a direct consequence of what His first two children did in youthful innocence and ignorance. Don’t you feel like laughing yet?
There is no bottom to this comedy because they go on to say that God is absolutely “sovereign:” nothing happens unless He caused it to happen just as He predestined for it to happen. Therefore, one could easily conclude that God made Adam and Eve sin and fall; indeed, God shuts up everyone under sin so that He can have mercy on everyone, but apparently, mercy is not for everyone; it is only for the elect. Somehow, the Evangelical knows that Jesus’ death only applies to the elect even though He died for the sin of the whole world, not just ours mind you, but of the whole world. (I Tim.4: 10; I John 2: 2)
Indeed, the devil is in the details. The sovereign God caused the devil to fall so that He would have a way to cause Adam to fall, and through him, He causes all the rest of us to fall in like manner. If a human father left his children with a delinquent to tempt them to take some kind of poison, he would be considered something worse than just negligent; he would be evil. At least, a human parent would have the consolation of Heaven, but God’s children die eternal spiritual deaths as a direct result of some strange game He wanted to play on His elect to fool them into thinking that they could be good on their own, and then to teach them that they cannot do anything on their own; everything is by God’s grace; nothing is by man. What a grand mercy, an absolute mercy!
Mercy? How is it mercy? Mercy is for having done or not having done something, but predestination is irrespective of whether anyone does or does not do anything. Augustine, bishop of Hippo and Martin Luther essentially taught that God arbitrarily chose some for damnation and others for salvation from the foundation of the World. If God elected from the beginning some to be saved and others to be lost, in other words, before they were still born, ever knew their right hand from their left or right from wrong, then mercy does not apply. Words mean things, and if mercy is to be mercy, it must be because of something we do or do not do, but predestination is for absolutely nothing we do good or bad. How utterly ironic – we are blamed for our sin, yet our sin has nothing to do with our election. So, in their eye’s, grace is more than just amazing; it’s dazzling, or perhaps, the Evangelicals are just bedazzled by another light.
All that would be funny enough, but it goes still deeper. The Evangelical apologists criticize pagan religions by calling their gods capricious while it never occurs to them that predestination according to an arbitrary and inscrutable choice by God apart from His foreknowledge of the choices we would make and the actions we would take is the exact definition of caprice. Of course, truth and precision are not needed if someone is just telling a joke. One is almost tempted to think that the fall and sin as well as salvation and righteousness are just a game, that the elect never truly died and became lost or totally depraved. One is tempted to think that no one is totally depraved if he never truly became an unclean vessel, a fool, a swine, a child of the unforgivable devil, a sinful enemy of God but only appeared to be separated from the love of God. How some are given faith for salvation when they are apparently no different, are as totally depraved as the others is a question which seems to elude the Evangelicals, but that is not surprising because so much of their teaching is evasive and lacking coherence.
Evangelicals applaud themselves for their objectivity and reason when it comes to the truth; indeed, Luther said that unless he could be persuaded by reason and the Bible alone he would not believe any other doctrine. There is nothing new under the sun; the new joke is the same as the old one: just repackaged for modern consumption. Take Luther’s view of “indulgences.” He remarked that it would be an abomination if hypothetically one could violate the mother of Jesus and simply buy an indulgence to cover such a heinous sin. Indeed, that would be a shocking perversion of the truth, but then again, which indulgence is worse: the old Catholic indulgences for which at least you must admit your sin and pay some price for it or Luther’s indulgence which says no matter what sin you commit you cannot lose your salvation? How is the Evangelical indulgence, the pious pride of “salvation by faith alone” a better one when it simply turns the indulgence into a more comprehensive one by definition? Is it really better to say that if a person could hypothetically violate Jesus’ mother he could not lose his salvation because he was predestined or elected to be saved and therefore could not lose his salvation? God forbid! One joke is as bad as the other. Of course, an Evangelical could say that a truly saved person would never do something so heinous, but then he would seem just a little inconsistent for insisting that no matter how sinful an act may be a person cannot lose his salvation. You cannot logically say both: a) that a person can do awful sins and still not lose his salvation, and b) that no saved person can do awful sins. They are mutually exclusive statements.
It is rather amusing to give things that kind of funny definition. Another example is the criticism conservative Evangelicals make against liberal Protestants for turning the commandments of God into “the suggestions of God.” We are supposed to laugh with the Evangelicals, but I laugh at them because if we are saved by faith alone and do not need to keep the commandments in order to be saved, then by definition, the commandments are merely suggestions or matters of expedience. The Evangelical doctrine of salvation by faith alone apart from works is the black formula box of theology through which Evangelicals pass each and every commandment in order to render them and themselves inert.
Al Mohler, president of the Southern Baptist seminary is an example of an Evangelical suffering from the same truth decay. He often laments the decline of morality on his radio program. Recently, he was discussing the decline of marriage among Christians, especially, those who call themselves Evangelicals. He does not seem to realize that Liberal Protestantism and/or Evangelical Protestantism are merely living out the implications of the very doctrine to which he himself holds: salvation by faith alone. When temptation comes, if someone is struggling with sin and knows that he cannot lose his salvation, then sure enough, he will sin. At that point, it does not seem to be such a stretch to say, ‘if we do not need to keep the commandments for the purpose of receiving and keeping salvation, then surely it would be a boon to evangelism to teach people that there is nothing they have to do in order to be saved; “just come as you are,”’ and then it should be no surprise to find people continuing to live on in that viewpoint. The fact is that Evangelicalism is just a lesser degree of liberalization or adulteration of true Christianity.
Mr. Mohler is quite the comedian. It isn’t enough for him to be a hypocrite with regard to those with whom he disagrees; he is compelled to be blind to his own inner confusion. He would be the first person to say, ‘divorce is wrong; it is sin.’ He would be the first person to say that ‘Jesus is the same yesterday, today, and forever’ and that it is wrong to say that Jesus’ teachings on divorce and marriage are out dated, but in practice and word, he would say just the opposite when it comes to selling all you have and giving it to the poor. (Luke 12: 33, 45, 46; 14: 27 – 35) Every Evangelical I have heard preach on ‘selling all you have’ says in effect the same thing, “that was for then, not for now.” And, of course, Al does not think that ignoring these commands prevents someone from being saved or causes him to lose his salvation. It does not even seem to be a concern that no one so much as tries or wants to live by the command to give up all your possessions. According to how they live, where is there treasure; towards whom are they rich? In what do they really find security? Do they trust God enough to risk everything they have for the sake of the Kingdom and the Gospel? It would be funny, if it were not so sad, how few there are who have truly made up their mind which side they are on.
How many of Christ’s commandments does he gut or redefine with his superstitious theology? God only knows. Forgive him for he knows not what he says. How long does it take so called Christians to become repenting yoyos after shepherds like him keep teaching that you will be alright even if you keep sinning against God, that repentance is not turning from sin and ceasing to sin, but rather, it is merely the upfront compromised view which says, ‘it is just a desire to stop sinning, a change of attitude or heart’ as if that was not the case to begin with or leading up to repentance. Actually, these yoyos do not repent; like Jesus said, they add some good works to their iniquity and still expect to be received with open arms. They think truth consists of saying the right words; therefore, they neither seek the truth nor live it; in fact, they cannot even hear it because they hear it amiss. Their faith consists of an endless series of compromises with the truth so that they can continue returning to their mire; their lives are the perfect reflection of their watered down theology. Their way of escape is not to immediately flee unto Jesus Who gives strength to do all things, even to move mountain-sized sins, but instead, they have an escape clause that says, ‘I can always repent and be forgiven latter.’
I doubt that Evangelicals like Al truly believe in Jesus the man. Certainly, they do not believe in the Jesus Who never did anything in the world to become a success. Jesus never had a home of His own; never got married or had a family of His own. He never got involved in politics; never ran a successful business; never was a soldier or hero in the usual sense. He never earned a doctorate, wrote a book, or had an established ministry. He never did any of the things that Evangelicals look for in a teacher or preacher to give him credibility. He never tried to earn peoples love and respect before teaching them the truth, and He never told His disciples to do so. He spoke in parables so that He could weed out unworthy fools and swine. Evangelicals tend to fawn over great sinners as if they accomplished something by getting saved. In cult like fashion, they get stuck on personalities. They hang on to sinking ships and their captains. They are shipwrecked souls: ever learning about the call to faith but never walking worthy of it. Jesus, the sinless man is neither their pattern nor their ideal; He is the enabler of their ideal: the redeemed sinner who is still capable of sin and still does sin. Their ideal is an “antihero,” someone like Paul, a flawed human being with thorns in his flesh. Paul is their example, sort of, but not Jesus: certainly not the Jesus Who never laid with a woman, Who never struck back, Who allowed: His beard to be pulled, His face to be smacked and spit upon, and His body to be scourged and crucified when He could have with a word destroyed all His enemies, Who said to, “put away your sword,” “turn the other cheek,” and ‘vengeance is God’s, but you love your enemies,’ “do good to those who persecute you.” No; instead, they believe in the muscular, manly Jesus Who turned over tables and is coming back as a lion. They think men who are successful in the world: the wealthy, scientists, businessmen, scholars, athletes, politicians, musicians, and especially trained theologians are the people who have the answers and the truth, not fishermen and simple folks. No, they believe in the Augustinian, Lutheran, Maccabean, and U.S. revolutionary view that says, in effect, ‘if I am in the right and have the might, then I must fight.’ They really do not believe in a Kingdom made without hands, which comes without observation; that is, it is spiritual and not fought with the carnal weapons of war but with the spiritual weapons of righteousness, love, and truth. They agree with Luther and Augustine that it is okay to persecute, torture, and to kill those with whom they disagree or call heretics, or they agree that those people whom the earlier Evangelicals killed deserved what they got. Like the Pharisees, you contemporary Evangelicals, you neo-Pharisees “are the sons of those who murdered the prophets.” (Mat.23: 26 – 36) Who is your true spiritual father; is it the One Who says, “love your enemies,” or is it the one who says, ‘destroy them?’
I read an apologetic work written by an Evangelical against Marxism that argued, ‘even if you grant that Marxism’s intentions were good, you have to look at the consequences of it.’ I say the same thing about Evangelicalism. Look at the history of Evangelicalism, and you will find violence, corruption, immorality, apostasy on a vast scale, division, and hatred. It almost seems to escape their notice that the German reformation sunk the German people and many other peoples into war, depravity, and produced most of modern liberal theology.
Is hindsight 20/20, or is it just the view from some hind end? I guess it depends on your view, but you can be sure of this: people are watching you, and if you are going to claim to be something, but you do not live up to it, expect to be despised for your hypocrisy. It is never appropriate to teach in word without teaching by example. Consider the words of Lactantius: “ ‘you forbid me to be angry, you forbid me to covet, you forbid me to be excited by desire, you forbid me to fear pain or death; but this is contrary to nature…if you are so entirely of the opinion that it is possible to resist nature, do you yourself practice the things which you enjoin, that I may know that they are possible? But since you yourself do not practice them, what arrogance is it, to wish to impose upon a free man laws which you yourself do not obey! You who teach, first learn; and before you correct the character of others, correct your own.’ Who would deny the justice of the answer? Nay! A teacher of this kind will fall into contempt, and will in his turn be mocked, because he will appear to mock others.” (The Divine Institutes, book 4, ch.23)
Everything they say and do suggests to me that none of these Evangelicals hear themselves speak or understand their own words. From what I have seen, it seems as if all Evangelicals play fast and loose with the truth, especially the truth of Jesus’ commandments. Typically, His commands are more personal or subjective in nature: love, forgive, have mercy, be righteous, do not judge, give, be humble, deny yourself, pray, etc., all the kinds of things which suggest a spiritual law of liberty and against which there is no human law. In actuality, the Evangelicals turn the Gospel and salvation on its head teaching instead the traditions of men who came on the world scene hundreds and even thousands of years after Christ and the Apostles departed the temporal world.
The Early Church was in opposition to the Pagan religions and philosophies of the world that taught determinism and pantheism in one form or another, but the Evangelical returns to his vomit. He teaches that God made everything, God sustains everything, God is omnipresent or in everything, and that God is absolutely sovereign over all things: nothing happens unless God first willed for it to happen, nothing happens by chance or accident. So, what do we have here except a distinction without a difference; how is that description of God not a clear definition of determinism and pantheism? If Christianity is no different from determinism and pantheism in form, even if different in content, then how can Evangelical doctrine not place the problem of evil and sin squarely at the feet of God? How can a good God actively or positively will evil into existence? If sin is basically rebellion, did God will that His will would be rebelled against? No; instead, He passively or negatively willed to permit one of His free creatures, the devil to choose rebellion, and it was the devil who actively brought evil into existence by turning away from God and turning himself contrary to God’s goodness. The mystery centers on the question, ‘how can God make creatures that are truly free, and how can a good creature made by a good God choose that which is not good?’ The devil did not make anything new; he did not change what was given; instead, he did something new; he changed how the given was used and left God’s proper boundaries.
There is no glory, no respect, no honor, and no love where there is no volunteerism, and God freely loves us so that we can freely love in return, but freedom does not mean without judgment or accountability. We still have to deal with a legal compulsion; we still have a debt of sin that needs to be paid. The devil did not have any outside influences which lead to his sin; so, he is not going to change for the better, but we were effected by him, sold into slavery; so, we still have the chance to recover – we are not stain covered dung – we are stain covered sons. Though it was the Father’s initiative, Jesus lovingly volunteered to die in our place so that we could be His brothers; we are brought back under His influence. God’s will was effectuated by the death of our Heavenly Testator, but Christianity is paradoxically an exchanging of lives; therefore, it requires also the voluntary death of the inheritors. As any good soldier will tell you, “the only thing a man has to do is die.”
The doctrine of absolute sovereignty is absolute backhanded blasphemy. It is not a paradox to say that God both made us in His image, with freewill and yet is sovereign even over our choices – it is an absurdity. Freewill means sovereign will: that a person is a distinct individual with sovereignty over his own will. Even if I were to grant for the sake of argument that we lost that sovereignty because of the fall of man, God does not restore us in such a way that we do not regain freewill or Christ likeness; we do not go from a bad puppet master to a good one. Ironically, even the Evangelicals say, ‘God is a gentlemen; He will not force anyone to go to Heaven.’ God does not want spiritual conscripts or slaves; He wants friends who are obedient to His Spirit, but more than that, He wants spiritually obedient sons. He wants a bride for His Son, and He wants to grow His family.
The underlying question is: ‘does God love unconditionally?’ If He does, then He also hates unconditionally, and that means God is not all loving without being simultaneously all hating. How can he hate the sinner or love the sinner before they did anything, before they were born if it was not because of something He foreknew that they would do? The real mystery centers on God’s ability to create free beings without inclining them towards either arrogant sin or humble service and how He can know what they will choose but still interact with them impartially and without inclining them towards one or the other. God does not have to put sin into the mind of a creature nor tempt anyone because the temptation arises simply as a consequence of having freedom of thought and action. It is perfectly natural that a free being would eventually ask himself or think to himself, ‘can I do otherwise than what I am told to do, and why must I do it?’ It becomes even more likely where the creature is of a weaker or lesser quality than the Creator in substance, power, and knowledge of the reason things must be one way and not another. Some things can be done in different ways, but some cannot. There is also an inherent danger in the fact that creatures and sons desire to be as their maker or father. The devil took this to the extreme and tried to be equal to or greater than God in ways other than in character or nature. When God gave freewill, He also gave an example of service and love, and the plan of salvation also involves giving the example of Christ so that His sons might seek to be as He himself is. The goal is to be like Him but not to become Him or to supplant Him – as our Master but not above our Master.
I would love to believe that I am unconditionally saved, but I have the suspicion that this idea was the motivating factor behind the devil thinking he could get away with his rebellion and that he used it to fool Eve into thinking she would not die. If you make a comparison between pride and humility in the Bible, you will find that humility obeys Gods word, but pride presumes that it is okay to disobey His word. (I Sam.15: 22 – 28; Ps.19: 13) From where does pride originate if not from presumption? First you presume that you did something yourself, then you presume that you are something special, then you presume you merit something extra, then you think you are above the rules, then you demand your own way, and finally, you attack whatever gets in your way. On the other hand, humility attacks itself; it does not seek it own way, but rather it seeks God’s way; it does not exalt itself or claim merit, but rather it says that it merely does it’s duty, and finally, it thanks the Lord for what He has done for it.
The Evangelical does not want you to say, “the devil made me do it,” but his theology clearly implies one should say, ‘God made me do it.’ God does not so much as tempt people with evil; His kingdom is not divided. If you say God made me do good, then you are not doing it out of goodness but out of deterministic compulsion. If your motive or intent has to be good for an act to be good, then any act born of irresistible compulsion is ruled out as being good. For a deed to be good it must be ostensibly a good act, which is done for the right reasons and in the right way: from the heart. (Mat.18: 35) Sincere love from the heart means more than just a positive feeling or empty intentionality towards others; it means that you love in deed and in truth; it is real, actual loving and giving of yourself and your material goods when it is in your power to do so. God may give you a new spirit or put a new heart in you, but the underlying point is that it is “given” and it is given “to you” – you have a choice, and you can lose it. (I Sam.10: 9; 13: 13, 14; 15: 28 [See also Mat.21: 43]; 16: 14; Acts 5: 1 – 11) A robot cannot do good acts or bad acts; certainly, it cannot do anything from its heart; it simply acts according to its initial programming or reprogramming. Like a tool, a vessel is neither good nor bad; it simply does what the user does with it, and if God is simply a glorified user, then He is responsible for what we do. In the world, people are even held accountable for neglecting to properly store or maintain their tools so that, if someone gets hurt as the result of someone leaving a dangerous tool out or lets someone who is not qualified use it, such as the devil, then at a minimum, the owner shares in the responsibility for any damages that may result. The Evangelical leaves us no other option: either God is negligent with regard to how His clean and unclean vessels are used or He deliberately uses them in a harmful manner. Only a tool of the devil would call people mindless instruments, mere empty vessels.
Poetically, Paul speaks of people yielding their members as instruments of righteousness, and even when he speaks as if a man was molded by God into a certain kind of vessel, he clearly is not saying to the hypothetic man “who answers back to God,” ‘too bad; I guess your just stuck that way.’ (Rom.9: 20) No, he is saying for him to “repent!” (Rom.2: 4; Jer.18: 6 – 15) Paul goes on to use the expression “whoever” will call upon the name of the LORD will be saved, and he warn us not to be conceited because we too could be cut off, and furthermore, those Jews who were cut off can be grafted in again. (Rom.10: 13; 11: 20 – 23) Therefore, God has not fated every individual to go to Hell or Heaven; rather, He has fated in a sense everyone to go to either Heaven or Hell. Those are the choices we have. Just as he says of Sarah and Hagar being two covenants, God has fated certain allegorical categories of people: repentant Jacob and negligent Esau. (Rom.9: 6 – 11; Gal.4: 21 – 31) Paul goes on in Galatians to warn us not to fall from grace; he would not warn of something that cannot happen. The thing to notice is that the vessels come out of the same lump; they are both children of the flesh, born of the flesh and are children of wrath by nature, but one group is marked by fear, by humility, by faith in the promise, and by obedience to the Gospel. I do not know about your gospel, but my Gospel is made up of four books that teach a lot more than just believing in the atonement of Christ.
No individual is predetermined by God to be cursed because of his father’s sin, Adams sin, or anyone else’s sin. Every man will be judged for his own sin. (Ez.18) Likewise, everyone will be judged by his own faith not the faith of Abraham, Jacob, or even of Jesus. Whatever mysterious criterion is used, it will be based on the individual alone before God – God does not grade on a curve. Those who question God will not be able to claim, ‘God made me this way’ because God makes everyone the same way – sinners; that is, He makes everyone able to sin, gives them the opportunity to sin, and does not stop them from sinning. The terror and fear of the LORD comes from two simple facts: a) we are free to disobey God and b) God punishes disobedience. Even sending people to Hell does not stop a man from sinning; it simply puts him in the only appropriate place for sin. God does not annihilate souls; He destroys them by sending them to eternal Hell. Don’t tell me that true freedom consists of not being able to sin; that ignores the problem of sin coming into existence in the first place.
God does not predetermine that the lives of His children will end in failure anymore than you would plan on your kids growing up to be bums, crooks, or unbelievers. Just as you hope your children will grow up to be happy, successful, law-abiding believers, God has a plan for all His children to be conformed to the image of Christ – nothing more and nothing less will do. Predestination is not predetermination. If the Evangelicals are correct, then “there is not one stray molecule,” and all our actions are determined for us just as some pagans and philosophers believe. If there is not one stray molecule, there had better be at least one stray soul; otherwise, one is lead to three unlikely alternatives: 1) that evil mysteriously or miraculously came into existence by itself apart from God or by pure chance, 2) that God is a split-brain Who plays some kind of game in which He thwarts His evil will by His good will or 3) God actively caused evil and sinned against Himself.
In section 11 of The Bondage Of The Will, Luther equates Fate with predestination and supports his argument by appealing to pagan poets and the natural inclination of men until darkened by those who would deny the supposed necessity of Fate. He speaks of Fate the way atheists speak of chance: as if it were something real and as if God were accountable for making men sin by some kind of mysterious power of compulsion that is deeper, more subtle than possession or zombification, but consider what Justin martyr, an Early Church apologist said, “We have learned from the prophets, and we hold it to be true, that punishments, and chastisements, and good rewards are rendered according to the merit of each man’s actions. Since if it be not so, but all things happen by fate, neither is anything at all in our own power. For if it be fated that this man, e.g., be good, and this other evil, neither is the former meritorious nor the latter to be blamed. And again, unless the human race have the power of avoiding evil and choosing good by free choice, they are not accountable for their actions of whatever kind they be. But this we assert is inevitable fate, that they who choose the good have worthy rewards, and they who choose the opposite have their merited awards. For not like other things, as trees and quadrupeds, which cannot act by choice, did God make man: for neither would he be worthy of reward or praise did he not of himself choose the good, but were created for this end; nor if he were evil, would he be worthy of punishment, not being evil of himself, but being able to be nothing else than what he was made.” (The First Apology Of Justin, ch.43) Apparently, Justin could see a kind of compulsion that is not mechanistic and deterministic but rather lawful and conditional. In contrast, Evangelicals only want to hear the comforting lie that you are saved no matter what you do. Like every other non-evangelical church, what they really live by is the motto, “if I am basically a good person and believe Jesus died for my sins, then I am saved.” Well, choosing to believe in Jesus means choosing to keep all His commandments and to live by all His teachings; anything less is an out-and-out lie.
I cannot tell you how many times I have heard Evangelicals say that the difference between Christianity and every other religion is that Christianity teaches that God came down to save us as opposed to man having to do or to think something in order to be saved. It is almost as if a man stranded on a deserted island saves himself simply because he calls for help and takes it when it comes. Have they really studied all religions, or have they simply taken a representative sampling, the kind of sampling they detest when it comes to taking the national census? Regardless, they stress just as forcefully that, if a person does not believe their doctrine, then he cannot be saved. Which is it: do I have to believe and think certain things or do I simply ignore them and let God save me without my having to do anything at all? The very fact that they try so hard to persuade me of the truth seems to indicate that I must do something, that I have a choice in the matter, and the fact that they try so hard seems to suggest their efforts make a difference in another person’s salvation. The Bible does indicate that we are blessed for the sake of the Patriarchs and that we are built up on the foundation of other faithful believers who came before us, but such an idea would seem to indicate that what we do or fail to do effects not only our own salvation but the salvation of others. (I Tim.4: 1, 12 – 16)
It always rings just a little bit hallow when I hear Evangelical preachers wonder aloud about how many people may have turned away from Christ because of someone’s sin. Why are they feigning to be so sad; have they lost sight of their own belief that the elect cannot be lost? Oh yes, lets all boohoo for the lost; won’t that be an interesting contradiction. Lets all shed crocodile tears with Jesus for the loss of those who not only deserve to go to Hell, according to the Evangelicals, but whom the Father has predestined to go there. I am curious – do our tears for the lost indicate that we agree with His choice or does it imply a subtle doubt and disagreement with God? Does God really weep for the lost while He has His enemies slain before Him or takes His vengeance? (Luke 19: 27) Does He weep because of how slow we are to believe Him when it is up to Him to give us faith and apparently at His pace?
Of course, they will argue that everything we do is just the result of God working in us, and the things we do and think are just the way in which He accomplishes His will. However, they do not pray, ‘save this person if he is one of Your elect,’ nor do they pray, ‘God make Your elect believe.’ You certainly will not hear any of them saying, ‘Lord, if you are impartial and call me to live impartially, then save everyone. If you can save the worse of sinners, then You can save anyone. You saved me even though I did not deserve it; so, why can’t You save everyone else who does not deserve it? Isn’t being depraved, lost, separated, and unelected all the same thing? You are love; so, how can You have pleasure in the death of anyone? How is there Glory in the loss of even one stray sheep? You, oh Lord, are powerful enough to not only shut up everyone under sin so that you can show mercy to all, but You are faithful enough to open up everyone through the overcoming power of Christ! Thank You for dying not only for us but for the whole world for I know You are the savior of all men, especially believers!’ It seems rather odd that God would ask us to do something He would not do Himself in order to become His sons, namely, to treat others impartially, but partiality is the heart of the doctrine of election. (Mat.5: 43 – 48) It seems even more absurd when Jesus says, ‘He can do nothing unless He first sees the Father do it.’ (John 5: 19)
Why they think that it is love for God to arbitrarily choose to save some and to damn others but that it is not love for God to choose based on what we do is never explained but always assumed and angrily asserted by these Evangelical preachers and scholars, but it is clearly contrary to Scripture and to sound doctrine to believe that what we do plays no active and positive roll in our salvation. (Is.3: 8 – 12; Prov.11: 17 – 23; 12: 2, 3, 7, 28; 14: 2, 16; Mat.6: 14, 15; 7: 2, 21; 10: 22, 32 – 42; 12: 37; 13: 41, 49; 16: 24 – 27; 21: 43; 24: 13) If God did not voluntarily lay down His divine prerogatives when He graciously gave us freewill, as Jesus laid down His divine prerogatives when He became flesh, then all His commands and all the choices He gives us are just a cosmic game in which God loves Himself through us as if we are just spiritually inflated dolls as opposed to Spirit inspired souls.
I wonder if Evangelicals really think whenever they are doing or thinking something that ‘it is just God doing it through me?’ They certainly would not think that when they are doing or thinking evil, but why would they do anything at all if ‘Christ already did it all?’ Are they trying to establish their own righteousness apart from Christ’s? I wonder if they ever really think at all because they do not even follow the teachings of Paul, their idol. I call him their idol because they elevate his teachings above every other part of the Bible or read every other part through their interpretation of Paul’s writings. In fact, their hermeneutical system creates a trumped-up hierarchy of Scripture in similar fashion to what Luther did. Oh, they love to preface each book and part of the Bible, ostensibly, to help people better understand it, but I think it is to make others misunderstand it or to understand it their way. Oh sure, they love to say, ‘do not take my word for it; read it for yourselves’ or ‘you need to be Bereans and figure the truth out for yourselves,’ but then they always say in effect ‘let me tell you what it means anyway.’ How honest is that? They say anyone can understand the truths of the Bible by himself, but then they say you need to understand it through their teaching and interpretation; in fact, to them, there is no other interpretation – they are infallible and feign to preach with the same authority as Jesus or His Apostles; certainly, they think that they understand better and know more about the Bible than the Early Church which wrote out, compiled, passed on, quoted from, and did not change it – facts which they themselves claim to believe.
Paul, the Apostle to the Gentiles taught us to treat weaker brothers who are still bound by the Mosaic Law with love, but Evangelicals treat the weak with contempt by calling them legalists, or worse, heretics. (Rom.ch14; 15: 1 – 9) They do not even know what “legalism” means. How odd it is that the Scriptures speak of the Isles awaiting the Messiah’s Laws and how He will magnify the Law, and Jesus giving us commandments, but the Evangelicals think that it is legalism to be under any law. (Is.33: 22; 42: 4; 20, 21; 51: 4 – 8) When they teach that no one will be saved by works, they seem almost blind to the prepositional phrase, “of the Law,” which clearly refers to the Mosaic Law, and they seem to ignore the difference between works of the Law and works of love or good deeds. If God predestined us, He did it in this sense: for the purpose of doing good works, which He prepared beforehand; that is, He delivers His people so that they can serve Him. (Eph.2: 10; Ex.4: 23) Certainly, Evangelicals do not include the laws of: physics, grammar, math, logic, or even the Law of Christ in their antinomianism because nothing can stand or exist without some form of law. Can you be a believer in the King and be in the Kingdom without following the laws, the commandments, and the teachings of the King? Can you be a believer without reading the Bible, praying to God, worshiping Him, and testifying of your faith in Him? Can you be a believer without being a disciple or follower: one who leaves all behind and carries his own cross without saying that ‘Jesus does all the carrying by Himself?’ Can you be a believer without being a disciple seeking to be ‘as your Master,’ perhaps even, to do ‘greater works’ than Jesus because He went away and asks the Father to send His Holy Spirit to further empower us? No, just as Jesus had a helper to carry His cross, He helps us to carry our own crosses. Jesus does not believe for us, pray for us, abide for us, or obey and follow Himself for us; we have to do it; it has not been done already. It is not without good reason that Paul says as a member of the Body he does his share in filling up what is “lacking in Christ’s afflictions.” (Col.1: 21 – 24)
The mystery of lawlessness is a wonder to behold. It is as if a man could actually believe in the forgiveness of God Whom he has never seen, but still deny forgiving his brother whom he has seen because we are saved by faith alone and cannot lose our salvation. It is as if the Evangelical theologian asks so called believers the same question about Jesus’ commandments and teachings as the devil asked Eve about God’s commandment – ‘Indeed, has Jesus said, “But if you do not forgive men, then your Father will not forgive your transgressions?”’ If somehow the first commandment had been ‘do not deny Me before men’ instead of ‘do not touch or eat of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil,’ the devil would have asked if Jesus really meant it, and then he would have denied it or redefined it by saying that Jesus would never deny you before the Father because that would be to deny Himself. So, in their way of thinking, it is not denying Himself for Jesus to go back on His own word: that He will deny you before the Father if you deny Him before men; instead, it would be a denial of Himself to fulfill His promise. I guess, for them, Jesus did not deny Himself enough on the cross.
Part of the reason they are so confused about the Law is that they believe the Old Testament standard demanded perfection of practice as opposed to perfection of the sacrifice, but if that was the case, there would not have been: cities of refuge, divorce granted for hardness of heart, or even a sacrificial system in the first place. Actually, the historic panoply of God’s dealings with His people bears out a God Who forgives men and does not instantaneously destroy everyone who sins. The New Testament differs from the Old in that everything is put on a voluntary basis; no one is going to stone you to death if you do not keep God’s word – He will be your judge, not other sinful men. God only destroyed the antediluvian world after sending the world a preacher of righteousness, Noah who is one of at least three archetypal men from each Biblical era about which it is said, “‘by their own righteousness they could only deliver themselves.’” – so says the LORD our Deliverer! (Ezek.14: 12 – 23; 33: 30 – 33) God had only judged the world after it had waxed completely corrupt and was left without any excuse by rejecting His truth; He was in fact very patient just as He is patient with us today. (I Pet.4: 17 – 19; II Pet.3: 9 – 15; Rom.2: 4 – 13 [Jam.1: 21, 22] )
The point is that you must truly repent here and now in this age, not there and then in Heaven; you must truly turn from sin and die to self and for Christ sometime in this life, or you will die spiritually forever. Sacrifice was never supposed to be a substitute for obedience. (Prov.21: 2, 3; Mic.6: 7, 8; Hos.6: 6, 7; 14: 9; Is.1: 11, 16 – 20) It will never be a substitute for obedience; it is a temporary bridge or aid on the path of obedience. Furthermore, Jesus’ sacrifice is not a substitute for obedience; rather, it is the means or the way back to obedience, and it is the example of obedience for us to follow! The Evangelical would like for you to think that Christ’s sacrifice makes it okay for you to substitute His sacrifice and perhaps the sacrifice of your lips for obedience, but that is a lie. They learned the wrong lesson. The Bread which comes down out of Heaven is given to see if we will keep God’s commandments. (Ex.16: 4; John 6: 32 – 40; 8: 51 – 55; 9: 31; 12: 24 – 26; 14: 15 – 21; 15: 10, 17) Paradoxically, the only thing that can substitute for obedience is love, but love keeps God’s commandments without finding them burdensome. What beautiful symmetry! Jesus keeps the Mosaic Law out of love for us, and we keep the moral law out of love for Him. He died for us, and we die for Him. Can I get an “amen?”
In the beginning, there was one commandment given to test whether or not we trusted in and would obey God. In the new beginning, there is essentially one commandment given to see if we will obey and prove that we trust in God. The breaking of the first command encompassed all of life and determined whether we loved God or not, whether we love God more than ourselves. The first command embodied all of the Law, the very principle of living under God’s command. The keeping of the New Command encompasses all of the Law; it signifies the willingness to do God’s will. Love of God and love of man is of one accord. Love is the one Law without which no other Law can be kept. But, but, but the Law must be kept not as an intellectual knowledge of the words and their meaning; it must be followed, obeyed, practiced, and thereby proven. The only proof that counts for faith and salvation is what one does with the words, with the commands of Jesus. You do not know, trust in, believe, or understand a command – you do it!
One does not work out of or from salvation; you work for it; you strive for it; you labor for it! The narrow way of Jesus, the Door does not permit the taking of anything with you – it is a kind of dying, and you cannot take anything with you when you die! The way you come to Jesus is the same as the way you follow Him; faith moves from faith to faith. You can talk as if you are obeying God by believing in Jesus; you can believe that what you are doing really is the true way of salvation; you can think or know whatever it is you desire to think and know, but you will not see God if you do not obey His will, keep His commandments, and follow Jesus and His teachings. Faith without works is lip service, and God does not need any of your lip. Anyone who thinks he can be saved by faith alone is a phony, self-righteous, self-justifying fool. True believers do not simply believe in the righteousness of God – they become the righteousness of God “in order that the requirement of the Law might be fulfilled in us.” (Rom.1: 5, 9, 17; 6: 15 – 23; 8: 4, 12 – 17; 15: 18; II Cor.5: 21 – 6: 10; 9: 6 – 11; Gal.6: 17; Phil.3: 9 – 20; 4: 9; See also Luke 6, 17, 74, 75; 2: 14, 34, 35; 3: 3 – 14, 22) At no time does faith exist apart from good works; the implication of having to do good works or the need for a real intension to obey is always present and is inherent to the concept of true faith. Righteousness is like the soul; it requires spirit and body, faith and works, justification and sanctification.
Of course, you cannot do anything on your own; you cannot even take your next breath apart from God. He made you with certain powers and abilities; He sustains you; He guides you, but you decide what you will do with your next breath: whether you will curse God or bless His holy name, and you will decide what actions you will take and for what reasons. There are certain acts that are inherently good or bad; so, dedicating what you are doing to or doing something bad with good intentions does not make it good; it is impossible for bad things to be made good. For example, it is never good to curse. (Jam.3: 8 – 12) Greed, the love of money, or idolatry is never good. You cannot knowingly do evil even if it is for a supposed good purpose. It is never right to kill in order not to be killed. If you try to use violence and threaten death in order to make someone do what you think is right, then you are asking God to use the same measure of violence against you until you obey and to kill you with death if you will not. We are to fight evil with good. (Rom.12: 14 – 21) Only God is good and has the right to kill; He alone knows the sum cause of all effects and the motives of each person; He alone is fit to condemn another, and He will judge at the end, not at the beginning.
It was unrighteous Jews, especially the Pharisees, who turned away from obedience to God and towards a legalistic manmade system of substituting ritualistic sacrifices and rules for sound doctrine (teaching of a way of life or behavior and practice which is according to true godliness and righteousness). Before the Law, there was the call to live blameless lives in the Old Testament, and the call in the New is to be perfect sons of God and to walk worthy of your calling. There is a real difference, an irreducible leap that must take place in the life of a believer in which there is good objective reason for God calling such a person His child and not one of the world’s wicked – it cannot be merely a ‘positive confession of faith.’ True faith requires that repentance be accompanied with works worthy of or consistent with repentance. (Luke 3: 8; Acts 26: 20)
Repentance is not as the Evangelicals would have you believe: a mere willingness to change or desire to do what is right. If you do not do what Christ taught, what the Spirit and Scripture remind you of today, then you are not willing at all – you are an illegitimate liar. (Heb.12: 8 – 17; 13: 1 – 8; I John 2: 1 – 6, 15 – 17) “Works” mean nothing less than doing God’s will, and God’s will is more than just believing in Jesus; unless, believing in Jesus means doing God’s will. (Mat.7: 13 – 27) Believing and obedience are so closely linked that they are, for all intents and purposes, synonyms. The simple fact of the matter is that you do not obey because you do not truly believe that you must obey – all you want to do is believe. Actually, you want to believe in Jesus and gain all the benefits of faith without “all” the work, without obeying Jesus, and that is a recipe for wrath. (John 3: 36; I Cor.10: 1 – 12; II Pet.2: 4 – 9, 20 – 22; I Tim.6: 3 – 14; Tit.1: 1; Heb.3: 12 – 19)
Act on Jesus’ words; do what He taught because His words are spirit and life. (John 6: 63) His words will set you free if you act on them – faith is an action word; it only applies to action; one walks, talks, lives by faith because the Faith is a way of life as it was laid out and modeled by Jesus. We are to be imitators of Christ, and Christ did not just believe; He was not merely willing to obey; thank God, He obeyed the Father’s “initiative.” Do not say, ‘if I have to, I will lay down my life’ – being a Christian is lying down your life; you have to lay down your life and no longer live to please yourself but to please God. (Rom.6: 4 – 7; I Pet.2: 21 – 24; II Tim.2: 3 – 5; see also 3: 1 – 5, 10 – 13) Willingness is not a state of mind. For you to say that you are willing, when right now you have the opportunity to lay down your life, but you do not do it right now, then you are a liar and the truth is not in you. There are no saved wannabe Christians.
Paul said, “I was shown mercy, because I acted ignorantly in unbelief…Christ Jesus came to save sinners, among whom I am foremost of all.” (I Tim.1: 12 – 15; see also Lev.5: 5 – 19) You cannot honestly believe that Paul would have been “cleared” if he had persecuted the Church while knowing it was wrong and believing in Christ, but some Evangelicals do. Similarly, the last Church I attended had a woman in ministry who claims to have been a Christian at the time of her abortion. Either she and the Church are confused as to what a Christian is and what the Spirit is, namely, holy, or they have a collective share in a millstone factory that would even shock Esau. Then again, Evangelicals are consistently inconsistent. They say that they are for the death penalty or capitol punishment and that they believe abortion is murder, but when you ask them what should be done to the mother who kills her baby or to the doctor who performs, what is euphemistically called, a medical procedure, they become strangely silent or tongue tied. I can put two and two together; why can’t they? If they really believed in their conservative politics and the same Evangelical faith of their founders both religious and national, they never would have allowed so many awful things to happen in this country in the first place and to continue happening in the second. Clearly, if the founding fathers had the same passionless apathetic attitude Evangelicals manifest today, there never would have been an American revolution or a church reformation. The Constitution calls for revolution should this country become corrupted. How many have to die and how corrupt does this nation have to become before real action is taken? I’ll tell you – it will become like Sodom and Gomorrah, but then the action will have been God’s – He will have given us over to a depraved mind and prepared us for the wrath we so richly deserve. Though He warns and disciplines, though He stretches out His arms all day long to a disobedient people, He gives sinners the slack to hang themselves, and “like a lion,” He will tear open their chests and expose their hearts. (Hos.13: 7 – 9)
Paul said, “I would not have come to know sin except through the Law,” but he said also that he was with respect “to the righteousness which is in the Law, found blameless.” (Rom.7: 7; Phil.3: 6) It is just a little bit confusing to think that a man can be simultaneously blameless with respect to the Law which defines sin and the chief of sinners, but then again, it is difficult to understand how God held people accountable for sin before the Law existed in the first place if sin and judgment are just matters for law. Do Evangelicals really think the dead letter of the Law can fully explain the spiritual intent behind it or that the Kingdom of God consists in mere words and not “in power?” (I Cor.4: 20) Of course, the ungodly, the hypocritical legalists always want to twist the written truth in order to subvert the original intent; so, God gives them over to lies and gives them statutes and ordinances which are not good and by which they cannot live because, even though they systematically pile precept upon precept, they go backwards. (Ezek.20: 24, 25; Is.28: 13)
Paul tells believers to examine themselves to see if they are in the Faith, which is to say in Christ Jesus, but Evangelicals never ask this question, ‘if Paul says that “those who belong to Christ Jesus have crucified the flesh with its passions and desires,” then can I safely assume I am in Christ if I have not mortified my own flesh with its passions and desires?’ (II Cor.13: 5; Gal.5: 24; Rom.8: 13, 14) I would be surprised if two in two million did ask such a question.
You can almost cut the irony with a knife. According to their teaching, it is as if the devil was right all along, and God never really wanted us to keep His commandments, but is the devil’s antinomianism, even in form, the truth? God forbid! But the Evangelicals teach that very thing; they teach that a person could serve God with his heart and mind while still serving sin and satan with his body. Like the Gnostics, if not in content but in form, they believe that a person can hold the truth in unrighteousness or that the new wine of the Spirit can go into old selves. They confuse the flesh of the body with carnal mindedness. They do not realize that, just as the branches can do nothing apart from the vine, neither can the members of the body do anything apart from the mind. The battle for the truth begins in the mind because it controls the body; it can be subject to the mind of Christ and walk in the Spirit; it can mortify the evil deeds of the body and obey the will of God.
Do not be confused if Evangelicals say, ‘see: without the vine you can do nothing!’ Even they will tell you that God was working in you before you came to Jesus; they will call it “regeneration” or “prevenient grace;” so, the question really is whether God only works in the elect before coming to faith in Christ or in all people. It is still grace to work in all people, but it is freewill that makes the difference between those who come to faith or not, who will love Jesus or not. A person must have root or salt in himself! The Evangelical theologian will assert that that means salvation turns on what we choose or do and not on God’s grace; to which I say, “so what!” What it means is that God is not responsible for sending people to Hell – they choose it for themselves – just as the Evangelicals hypocritically say also. God does not make some do good and neglect making others do good; God does good to all; He makes His rain and sun pour down on everyone; it is not His fault if some choose to reject His goodness.
Truly, the wages of sin is death, and the wages of righteousness is life. (Rom.6: 23; Prov.10: 16; Is.3: 8 – 12) However, the Evangelical does not see it that way, but it should be of no surprise because, if he does not believe Paul, why should he believe Jesus. Jesus said, ‘those who do good deeds come to the light.’ (John 3: 19 – 21) The light is none other than Christ Himself. (John 1: 6 –12) And, Jesus said that the dead “who did the good deeds” would be resurrected to eternal “life,” while “those who committed the evil deeds to a resurrection of judgment.” (John 5: 28, 29) The ultimate insult is that they turn Jesus’ words into heresy. Paul said exactly the same thing; only, he warns us ‘not to be deceived for what a man sows he will reap: if he sows to the flesh he will reap corruption, but if he sows to the Spirit by doing good deeds, then he will reap eternal life or salvation because what matters is a new creature who is crucified to the world.’ (Gal.6: 7 – 9, 14, 15)
Ironically, they say that they believe in salvation by faith alone, but they also say that a person must repent, confess Jesus, ask Jesus into his heart, and have a personal relationship with Jesus. What a strange use of the word “alone.” Only having to do one thing would be enough to render their doctrine moot, but having to do so many things and even more than I have listed here is rather hypocritical. Also, it is hypocritical to say that if someone’s life doesn’t show any real change then maybe he is not saved. It is almost as if in “bass-ak-ward” fashion, they are admitting that salvation does involve works and that Christ did not do it all for us. Besides, what is the practical difference between loosing your salvation or never having been saved in the first place? The clear difference is that without works there is no assurance; so, it is much better to be up front about it.
R.C. Sproul, a Reformed Evangelical theologian and apologist wrote, on page 26 of his book, Faith Alone: The Evangelical Doctrine Of Justification, that “true faith necessarily, inevitably, and immediately yields the fruit of works…justification is by faith alone, it is not by a faith that is alone.” On page 149, R.C. appealed to logic when he wrote, “ “gracious merit” sounds like an oxymoron,” but I would say, ‘just sinner’ also sounds like an oxymoron. To say, ‘we are saved by faith alone, but that faith is not alone’ is not a paradox; it is an absurdity; at best, it is a Bill Clinton way of defining “alone.” I do not have a problem saying that ‘we are saved by faith or justified by faith alone,’ but I will be damned if I say, “we are saved by faith alone!”
Little pat sayings like that Hank Hanegraaff, the Bible Answer Man uses on his radio program can have a very humorous effect as well. He says we, the truly saved, or the elect can “fall on board but not overboard” with respect to sin and salvation; therefore, it seems, not only did the elect never really fall in the first place, they cannot fall in the second place; it is as if “apostasy” is impossible. Instead, among the elect, there are only those who know that they are truly saved and those who are not yet aware that they are truly saved. I would not want to question his brilliant logic. To him, it makes perfect sense to tell his radio audience to tune into his program to find out “what you believe and why you believe it.” Irrespective of whether or not a person knows why he knows something, how can he actually believe in something he does not know yet? It is a mystery of biblical proportions. Of course, the pat expression is referring to the doctrine of “once saved always saved” or “eternal security.”
I find it a little odd that Mr. Hanegraaff claims to believe in objective truth when he does not teach: 1) the historic apostolic Faith of the Early Church, 2) what the Bible teaches in full about salvation, or 3) what counts as sound doctrine according to godliness. He knows that the Early Church: compiled the Scriptures we use, heard and learned directly from the Apostles and first disciples, and like the disciples, they died for what they knew was the truth, but he chooses to accept Augustinian and Lutheran theology over theirs. Why? Because, he agrees with the latter, and their theology fits his experience.
It is typical for Evangelicals to claim to interpret experience by Scripture instead of Scripture by experience but in actual practice they do just the opposite. One merely has to read a biography of Luther and Augustine to find two examples of men who supposedly believed in God but who found God’s commandments grievous to keep. According to I John 5: 3, those who love God do not find His commandments burdensome, but the whole history and the very doctrine of the Evangelicals are testaments to the fact that they neither believe in God’s word nor love Him in the way He says they must love Him.
Is it any wonder that so much liberal theology has come out of German universities and seminaries when Luther himself disparaged the parts of Scripture with which he disagreed? Is it any wonder that a man like him who picked and chose what he considered true Gospel is said by Evangelicals to have taught the doctrine of “Scripture alone” (sola Scriptura)? That is funny. Not only was he blind to his own hypocrisy, everyone seems to follow in his footsteps because they all selectively avoid bringing together Scriptures that would clear up their confusion so that they can rightly divide or analyze Scripture and throw off this pagan perversion of Christianity. Their man made traditions and philosophical preconceptions prevent them from bringing the right Scriptures together or seeing the actual context.
It almost seems as though we are not to workout our own salvation with “fear and trembling” because Luther has vicariously trembled for us, and we do not have to understand the truth since it is so complicated. (Phil.2: 12 – 18) It seems that so long as we know that somewhere there are theologians that understand the truth or hopefully have completed their systematic theology books, we can be assured of the correct knowledge of salvation through them. It is a wonder that babes, fools, and fishermen could have been saved without the theologians who came along to straighten us all out. It is almost as if the wisdom of men could have figured out the truth or that the truth does not require obedience to God’s will, faith, and revelation; instead, if we were only honest enough to follow the objective evidence were it leads, we could be saved by our own intellectual ability. It is as if the truth were merely intellectual (in the Greek sense of knowing and seeing with reason the truth) and not experiential (in the Hebrew sense of knowing by living and doing the truth). I just do not know why, but I still believe that the test we are taking is not a legalistic written catechism but rather a road test; I guess it is because I am just a simple minded truck driver, and so, I am partial to road tests; obviously, I earn my living that way. If just anyone could understand the truth, then we would not need all these theologians to drive the truth into our hearts and minds for us.
I wonder if Mr. Hanegraaff has ever turned the same critical eye on his own Evangelical Faith that he has on every other religion, philosophy, cult, or prophetic teaching with which he has dealt? I highly doubt it. He does not seem to be aware that no one in the Early Church taught the doctrine of eternal security or the “perseverance of the saints.” It wasn’t until Augustine that this idea gained any following. Naturally, if you believe in predestination, then you must believe in eternal security; the former implies the latter.
Mr. H. is certainly not alone in his view. I recently read Norman Geisler’s book Chosen But Free: A Balanced View Of Divine Election. He is another popular Evangelical theologian and apologist. His book is marked by four notable things: 1) he argues that faith is not a gift only for the elect, but is given to all, 2) he argues that faith alone is necessary for salvation, but then he undermines his own argument by claiming it is not necessary since we are predestined or elected to salvation apart from any faith we may have, 3) he undermines R.C. Sproul’s view of salvation by decimating 4 of the 5 points of Calvinism, and 4) he supports his arguments using the teachings of the Early Church for those four points but ignores their view of the last one because he believes in eternal security. His book demonstrates how little agreement there is amongst Evangelical teachers and within their own minds: they are double-minded.
My last pastor was double-minded too. Apparently, he believes there is a monster living inside every believer. Like H.H., R.C., and N.G. he believes sanctification is a long process. Apparently, being buried and crucified with Christ and rising in newness of life is a slow and difficult process indeed. I can see how a pregnancy can be gradual, but I cannot see birth as a gradual process. To my way of thinking, you are either born or not. I do not see putting off the old nature as a kind of moral striptease in which the so-called believer slowly removes the old self while simultaneously putting on the New. How does that teach a person to come immediately without looking back? How does that teach, “sin no more,” “cease to do evil, and learn to do good?” How does that teach ‘you were washed, you were sanctified?’ How does that teach ‘a good tree only produces good fruit, and an evil tree only bad fruit?’ What kind of fruity doctrine are they trying to pull over our eyes? Apparently, they think of Jesus’ imputed righteousness as a kind of spiritual whitewash over our putrefying sinful selves that gives the appearance of righteousness to God the Father because God passes over the sins of the sinner who is covered by the blood of Jesus, but the Scriptures teach that ‘God will in no wise clear the guilty!’ (Ex.23: 1 – 9; 32: 33 – 35; Rev.3: 3 – 6) The blood and body of Jesus must cleanse, heal, and transform a man all the way down to his core, his heart; otherwise, he has false or bad faith. Greater is God in you than the devil outside; God does not share His abode with sin and satan!
The first point in N.G.’s book manifests another inconsistency in all Evangelical theology on salvation. It is not clear to whom God gives saving faith. Presumably, it is to the elect, but R.C. says that in order to receive faith one has to be regenerated first. (Page 139) So then, according to R.C., God only gives faith to the elect who are first given regeneration. His whole argument rests on the idea that we are made righteous by the imputed righteousness of Jesus Christ alone and not by any infusion of righteousness or cooperation by the believer. (Page 108) Therefore, he only pushes the argument back to the question of what faith is. If he can show me how regeneration can be a mere imputation, how faith can be a mere imputation, and how a new heart and spirit are mere imputations, then I might be able to understand how justification is a mere imputation and not a real and intrinsic change or an infusion of actual righteousness in the believer himself. Furthermore, I would like to know how the imputed righteousness of Jesus Christ has anything to do with denying yourself, picking up your cross, and following Jesus; that is, how can losing your life for Jesus be a mere imputation? If a person has to lose his life in order to save it, then it is impossible for the imputed righteousness of Jesus through faith alone to be the sole basis of salvation. (Mat.10: 38, 39; 16; 24 – 25; Mark 8: 34 – 38; Luke 9: 23 – 26; 14: 26 – 35; 17: 33; John 12: 25, 26; 15: 12 – 14)
Salvation has always been on the basis of two or three witnesses, and a person must have a witness just as all the faithful believers have had throughout history. (II Cor.13: 1; Heb.12: 1, 2; 13: 7) The three areas or aspects of witnessing have always been: 1) justice (which is love), 2) mercy (which is love), and 3) faith (which is the love of God in the first instance and of Jesus in particular in the second instance). We know that faith is nothing without love. (I Cor.13; Gal.5: 6, 13 – 24) Indeed, in Luke’s restating of the weighty matters of the Law, Jesus does not even mention faith. (Mat.23: 23; Luke 11: 42) Faith is only one of three things and is the last and least of the three. We know that justice or righteousness is love because love fulfills the Law. We know that mercy is love because in the parable of the Good Samaritan, which dealt with loving one’s neighbor, Jesus asked who showed mercy, and He said, “Do this and you will live…Go and do the same.”(Luke 10: 25 – 37) Indeed, Jesus tells everyone to do to others just as He did to us and to obey Him just as He obeyed the Father. However, according to Matthew 25: 31 – 46, Jesus will judge us by how we love others irrespective of whether we understood it as loving Him or not; that is, almost as if, we could keep the law of love by nature and not necessarily by conscious faith or with complete knowledge. In fact, God will not asking us why He should let us into Heaven; He will tell us either: 1) ‘well done, thou good and faithful servant’ or 2) ‘depart from Me, you workers of iniquity; I never knew you.’ But all these Evangelicals seem to want to hear is ‘well believed, thou just and faith filled subjects.’ I think the laugh is going to be on them.
Salvation has to overcome or master sin, and it must reverse the three movements and three aspect of the fall. Salvation must overcome doubt with faith; it must overcome denial with confession, and it must overcome disobedience with obedience. Salvation must conquer the world, the flesh, and the devil. It must conquer the lust of the eye, the lust of the flesh, and the pride of life. It must conquer lust, hate, and fear. It must fear God, hate sin, and thirst after righteousness, actual, personal righteousness of one’s own as well as the imputed righteousness of Christ because all of us are already sinners no matter what we may do from now on. If we are drawn and regenerated, if we believe and are justified, and if we walk in the Spirit and are sanctified, then we will be saved. A person must be justified and sanctified, born of water and born of Spirit, believe in Jesus and obey Jesus; otherwise, the wrath of God still abides on him! (John 3: 36)
If Hank cares to answer the aforementioned questions, maybe he could add to the list these questions: ‘if Jesus is the author and finisher of our faith and God will finish what He started, then why would God: send His Son to die for everyone, say that He wants all to repent, reaches out to a disobedient people all day long, calls many but chooses few, evangelizes the whole world, teaches multitudes, plants seeds of faith in, grows those seeds of faith, and has some believe for a season before allowing some to fall away or the devil to snatch the word of faith away? Is the blood of Jesus insufficient to save everyone? Does God love everyone; is God love itself? Are we all God’s children? Are any of God’s creations made evil or born illegitimate?’
I think the second point concerning N.G.’s book has in large part already been dealt with, but it illuminates the inconsistency Evangelicals have in their view of “justification by faith alone.” In fact, they really do not mean “justification;” they mean “salvation by grace alone through faith alone” without regard to any works that we do ourselves. It is as if one were given a job as a servant or steward but did not have to do the work that that job entailed from the beginning or given a scholarship and need not study. It is as if anything good did not take work, risk, and sacrifice. However, Paul taught that we are saved: by mortifying the body, by confessing Christ, by doing good deeds, and by being sanctified, not only by being justified or being made righteous by believing. (Rom.2: 5 – 11; 8: 13; 10: 10; Gal.6: 7 – 9; II Thes.2: 13; I Tim.2: 15; 4: 7 – 16) Grace teaches us what God’s gift of salvation means, and it is brought “to all men, instructing us to deny ungodliness and worldly desires and to live sensibly, righteously and godly in the present age, looking for the blessed hope and appearing of the glory of our great God and Savior, Christ Jesus; Who gave Himself for us, that He might redeem us from every lawless deed and purify for Himself a people for His own possession, zealous for good deeds.” (Tit.2: 11 – 15)
As for the third point concerning N.G.’s book, I cannot understand why anyone would want to continue calling himself a moderate Calvinist when he disagrees with 4 out of the 5 points of Calvinism. But, it seems to be par for the course with these guys. They are inconsistent through and through. Can you imagine a preacher telling King George of England that it is right and good for him to slaughter the colonists without mercy because they are in rebellion to God and Caesar? What would you think of such a preacher? Yet, that is exactly what Luther told the nobles to do to the peasants when they revolted against them. With regard to U.S. Law, they do not believe the constitution is a “living document,” but apparently the commands of God are “living” commandments. In politics, they are against welfare with out work; they believe that if a man does not work he should not eat, but I have never heard a single Evangelical say that if a person does not ‘labor for the food which endures to everlasting life’ he should not eat of it. (John 6: 27) The American work ethic seems to fly in the face of predestination, and it seems as if we must forget about predestination when we think that hard work and clean living will get you ahead in life.
To them, work will earn you rewards, but rewards are just a drop in the bucket compared to salvation, which, according to them, has nothing to do with the seeking of rewards. (Heb.11: 6, 25 – 27; I Cor.9: 23 – 27; Gen15: 1; Num.18: 20; Deut.18: 2; Phil.3: 12 – 14; Col.3: 23, 24; II John 5 – 11) However, if we have to believe not only that God exists but also that “He is a rewarder of those who seek Him,” just what reward do we seek? If we seek God, what reward do we seek? There is only one reward, one prize of any consequence – the promise of eternal life with God, our blessed hope. (Tit.2: 13; Rom.8: 12 – 17, 23, 24; Gal.5: 5, 6) If salvation is all by grace, then there is no need to strive to be good and to keep His commandments – all efforts to live godly lives is just an attempt at perfecting ourselves in the flesh or through the flesh, just trying to become self-righteous in addition to righteous through faith. (Gal.3: 1 – 5) Do you really think that is what Paul means by not trying to perfect yourself in the flesh? Never! Read Galatians 5: 13 through 6: 17; there is no doubt that works “of love,” good deeds and not living any longer by the flesh or doing the sins of the flesh will be the difference between the true believers and the self-deceived mockers. The difference is how you look at your efforts and whether you are trying to reach salvation by yourself though the Mosaic Law. If you consider your works according to the Law retroactively meritorious or somehow making up for your past sins, then you are a fool, but you are even more foolish if you think that you can simply believe and be saved apart from works. Faith and disobedience are mutually exclusive concepts. (I John ch.4)
The last point about N.G.’s book makes it obvious that he is not being balanced at all. It is typical for Evangelicals to make claims about what they do, but in actuality they often do just the opposite. For example, they teach methods of interpretation, but they do not follow those methods. They say when the Bible provides an interpretation you should use that interpretation, but when I point out the bottom line of Acts 10: 1 – 35, which is the last two verses they say that it is not the point of the passage, but it is the point. Cornelius was a righteous man before he came to faith in Jesus, not as a result of coming to faith in Jesus, not as a result of salvation but before salvation. This is the first and precedent setting example of a Gentile coming to faith in Christ given in Acts. Paul said the same thing in Romans 2: 4 – 11, God is not partial; He will bless whoever does good deeds with eternal life. What does John say? (I John 1: 5 – 7) Are we cleansed, forgiven, and saved before we walk in the light or after we walk in the light?
In the Old Testament, the book of Ruth gives a similar account of a person who is redeemed. Like our redeemer Who knew of Cornelius’ good works, the kinsman redeemer of Ruth was aware beforehand of all she had done, and so, she likewise found favor in his eyes. (Ruth 2: 10 – 12) A gift is still a gift even if it is conditioned upon grades, attendance, work, or “good behavior.”
It never ceases to amaze me how blind these teachers and preaches are. Take Skip Heitzig as an example. He teaches that a person needs to have a personal relationship with Jesus; that is fine and good, but he fails to include what Jesus teaches concerning that relationship. Every relationship requires love and friendship, and Jesus said, “if you love Me, you will keep My commandments,” and “you are My friends, if you do what I command you.” (John 14: 15; 15: 14) Jesus makes it absolutely clear that He will not come into a person or even ask the Father to send the Holy Spirit to a person unless that person first keeps His commandments. (John 14: 15 – 23)
Just like the other teachers and preachers, Skip loves to point out that Jesus said that while He was with those whom the Father gave Him, He did not lose any of them. (John 17: 12) Ignoring the phrase, “while I was with them,” the Evangelical preacher naturally thinks that is a reference to election and eternal security, but he ignores also the fact that it is the Father Who gives just as it is the Father Who is the vine-dresser that cuts off those branches that do not produce fruit. Jesus is the vine; He does not prune Himself. (John 15: 1 – 14)
Like the rest of them, he teaches that a person needs to be born again in order to be saved, and according to them all, a person has no choice in being born. The expression “born again” is obviously poetic: it is an analogy, not a wooden literal equivalence. Even if I were to grant for the sake of argument that you do not choose to be born again, one has to wonder why they tell people to ask Jesus to come into their hearts: if people have no choice, then they should simply tell them that they are born again or tell Jesus to do as He has already decided against their will. Furthermore, new birth is predicated on being crucified and buried with Jesus before you can be raised in newness of life; therefore, I have to question just how literally they interpret spiritual death. How dead is dead? How crucified is crucified? How much does one have to repent and turn from their sin? How much do they have to deny themselves? How much of their lives do they have to lose before they can honestly say they have lost their lives for Jesus’ sake? In addition, death is a kind of undoing of birth; so, even though they say you cannot be unborn, you certainly can die. More importantly, with what kind of nature are you reborn? If you are born with a corrupt nature, what kind of nature are you reborn with? Is it a double-minded dual nature, or is it a divine and loving nature? Remember the sheep love by nature.
If they really let Scripture interpret Scripture as they say they do, then they would know that John clarifies what it means to be born again in His first letter. Those who are born again: 1) practice righteousness (according to the Greek word used here, it is to be taken in the same sense in which God and Christ “practiced” righteousness), 2) love, especially the brethren, and 3) confess Jesus came in the flesh and believe that Jesus is the Christ. (I John 2: 29; 3: 9; 4: 2, 7, 16, 20; 5: 1 – 5) Sounds familiar doesn’t it? These three aspects of the new birth are consistent with the rest of Scripture and the foundation of God. (I Tim.2: 14, 15; II Tim.2: 19 – 22) Jesus said the foundational Rock upon which our lives stand or depend is not only to hear but also to do what He taught, and to confess Him as “Christ, the Son of the living God.” (Mat.7: 12 – 27; 16: 15 – 19) It is not a mere philosophical question to ask, ‘how can you have a foundation if you are not building something on that foundation, but more importantly, how can you have the foundation Jesus laid if you do not use the foundation He gave us which is to do what He taught? (Luke 6: 46 – 49)
We know that faith comes by hearing, but faith alone will not save; in fact, how you define faith also makes a big difference. Faith does not grow by merely increasing your knowledge or by straining to believe what seems unbelievable, and the faithful do not promote themselves by appealing to merit, but faith definitely involves obeying and following fully first. (Luke 17: 5 – 10) Faith does not grow by merely exercising faith in a vacuum; it grows by doing things that require faith even if it means merely standing firm in the face of the attacks of men. Faith grows by sacrificing your life and taking risks with your physical life because you are assured of an eternal one and because God is faithful to His promises; He is the only sure thing if and only if you abide in Him! Abiding in or trusting in anything else, living for anything else is idolatry. Following, trusting, treasuring anything but Jesus will lead to despair when circumstances change in this life for the worse, and they will turn for the worse – there will be a fiery trial even if that trial is only having to endure departing from iniquity, your own self-pleasing self-interests through self-denial and obedience to the crucified Christ. There is not a single thing that He did that we do not have to do in some fashion like unto Him. The walk of faith is to do those things He did from being baptized to laying down our lives for the brethren.
You know Hank will not denounce his fellow Evangelical and friend Skip for teaching that Christ is coming back twice, and he will not accuse him of blasphemy against God for teaching that a loving God would never put His elect people through the so called “great tribulation” in spite of the fact that he also teaches that God smote the flock, the Early Church in order to spread the Gospel. It is as if all the suffering God puts people through in order to turn them from sin and idolatry is not the loving act of a merciful God Who wants all to come to repentance. So, exactly, why is it unloving to put them through the tribulation? Is it because it is of greater extent? Nonsense! To anyone who has experienced it, tribulation is as hard as it gets, and I tell you that God has put some people through greater tribulation than Jesus experienced. Just think of all the Jews and Christian’s who suffered such horrendous persecution through the ages. To think that God did not love all his persecuted saints in the same impartial way is abominable. I am sure that when the Children of Israel were made to eat the flesh of their children and sent into bondage in Babylon that God had a loving purpose in letting all of it happen just as He has a loving purpose in the whole story of the redemption of man. (Jer.19: 4 – 15; 22: 3 – 5, 13 – 16, 21, 22; 23: 16 – 22; 26: 3 – 6, 13; 36: 3; 44: 10 – 14) As Peter said, “Therefore, since Christ has suffered in the flesh, arm yourselves also with the same purpose, because he who has suffered in the flesh has ceased from sin, so as to live the rest of the time in the flesh no longer for the lusts of men, but for the will of God.” (I Pet.4: 1, 2; see also II Pet.3: 8, 9, 11 – 14) Jesus said, “not everyone who says to Me, ‘Lord, Lord,’ will enter into the Kingdom of Heaven; but he who does the will of My Father Who is in Heaven.” (Mat.7: 21) Paul said, “See that no one repays another with evil for evil, but always seek after that which is good for one another and for all men. Abstain from every evil. Now may the God of peace Himself sanctify you entirely; and may your spirit and soul and body be preserved complete, without blame at the coming of our Lord Jesus Christ. Finally then, brethren, we request and exhort you in the Lord Jesus, that, as you received from us instruction as to how you ought to walk and please God (just as you actually do walk), that you may excel still more. For this is the will of God, your sanctification…That each of you know how to possess his own vessel in sanctification and honor, not in lustful passion, like the gentiles who do not know God...For God has not called us for the purpose of impurity, but in sanctification. Consequently, he who rejects this is not rejecting man but the God Who gives His Holy Spirit to you…for you yourselves are taught by God to love one another; for indeed you do practice it…But we urge you, brethren, to excel still more.” (I Thes.4: 1 – 10; 5: 15, 22, 23; see also I Pet.2: 11 – 24; 3: 8 – 12; 4: 17 – 19)
According to the Evangelicals, our redemption involves lessons we must learn in this life that will last for eternity, but any lessons we may learn are superfluous because, ultimately, we only do what God makes us do or can only do something good if God gives us the desire and ability to do it. Even if we learn something, it is God who makes us do it, and God did not make Adam an infantile fool: He made him with the ability to reason just as he gave wisdom to Solomon and to the builders of the Tabernacle before him. God could have given us the understanding and the desire to do what is right from the beginning if He chose to, but He did not – why? He could have barred the way to the tree of the Knowledge of good and evil instead of to the tree of life. Apparently, we could have eaten from the tree of life, but we ate from the other – we chose death and not life. Are we to learn that everything is done by God and for God’s glory? If so, then the lesson is superfluous, and what glory is there in that except a glorified narcissism? I believe: that God wants us to choose life, that the lesson is to choose to believe and obey God, and that Jesus leads us in the way of righteous living which in turn leads to eternal life. The fall was the result of wanting to live life one’s own way apart from God, but Jesus showed us the way to true life through self-denial and obedience to God, by hearkening to God’s voice not the voices of the world (trial), the flesh (his wife), and the devil (temptation). God is glorified like any parent is glorified: by seeing the success of His children. You may do an awful lot to help your kids, but ultimately, your victory comes when you let them go and they come back on their own and when they learn to stand on their own and overcome the evil one.
Some say humor is medicine, I say truth is funnier than humor; so, I hope that this article can act as a kind of antidote combating the inoculation that all Christian theologians, apologists, teachers, preachers, pastors, priests, and evangelists have given to so called believers to keep them from catching the true faith and dying. It should not come as a surprise that only two of the people God delivered from Egypt fully obeyed Him and actually made it into the promise land even though they were all baptized with the same Spirit or that Israel could not keep it after they received it. (I Cor.10: 1 – 14) It should not be a surprise to know that Jesus asked if there would be faith when He returns. It should not be a surprise that it was predicted that great deception and a great falling away would occur and is already underway. It is my hope and prayer that so called Christians would repent and catch the true disease of faith so that they will truly die, but as long as they have the dead modern manmade forms of the Faith, then God help us. Faith is as faith does; true faith is not to dedicate one’s own agendas to God; it is to lay down one’s life, one’s own interests and to live to please God according to His will and the teachings of Jesus – the only true Christian is a dead one.
Be careful how you hear: listen with the intent to obey because true understanding is to depart from evil and to keep His commandments. (Job 28: 28; Ps.111: 10; Eccl.12: 13) The truth of a commandment is not intellectual: it is not to merely know what the words mean in the Greek, who the audience is, the proof of its historicity, or three good reasons why it should be kept – the truth is doing what is directed for you to do by the commandment – truth is what you do; it is a way of life, not a way of thinking, believing, or knowing. You do or live the truth by faith; faith in and of itself is not the truth, nor is it life. Faith is not having received the promise in this temporal life but living or acting with the assurance that if you obey Jesus and do God’s will, then you will receive the promise of eternal life.
The funniest thing of all is that so many people reject Christianity having never heard the truth about it; therefore, they haven’t really rejected Christianity but what some so called Christian has told them about it. In fact, most believers are more like “wannabe Christians” even with respect to their own beliefs about it. For example, I asked an elder in an Evangelical church – mind you, who believes that we are no longer under any law – “what gives you or anyone else still sinning the right to correct or to question anyone else about his sin?” Apparently, he did not understand the significance of the question because he said, “well, you just have to do it in love.” I suppose, it would be loving to sacrifice yourself and to first take out the speck from your neighbor’s eye before taking the speck out of your own, but how effective would that be? The New Covenant that Jeremiah wrote about suggests that God will write His Law on the very hearts of His people so that they will not have to so much as teach their neighbors and brothers how to know the LORD because they will all know Him, but instead, this Evangelical elder seems to think that you do have to correct people who still sin. (Jer.31: 30 – 34) Ironically, while he claims to be without the Law, he makes himself out to be a judge of the Law. (Rom.14: 4 – 12; Jam.2: 1 – 13; 4: 11, 12)
It would be prudent to ask if Paul was tacitly claiming to be without sin when he judged a sinner and told the Corinthians to kick a sinner out of the church. (I Cor.ch.5) If Paul still had sin, especially the deep foundational sin of pride in his heart, then he should have kicked himself out of the church, but Paul says, “Do not be deceived: ‘Bad company corrupts good morals. Become sober minded as you ought, and stop sinning; for some have no knowledge of God. I speak this to your shame. …we are ready to punish all disobedience, whenever your obedience is complete. We are Jews by nature, and not sinners from among the Gentiles…But if, while seeking to be justified in Christ, we ourselves have also been found sinners, is Christ then a minister of sin? May it never be! For if I rebuild what I have once destroyed, I prove myself to be a transgressor. …for if righteousness comes through the Law, then Christ died needlessly. Are you so foolish? Having begun by the Spirit, are you now being perfected by the flesh?” (I Cor.15: 33, 34; II Cor.10: 6; Gal.2: 15 – 21; 3: 3) It is with good reason that he warns everyone not to be conceited and to continue in God’s kindness. (Rom.11: 20 – 32; Gal.3:21 – 28; 5: 3 – 6)
It should be obvious that there is a vast difference between seeking to be justified by the Law and saying that what avails or validates your faith is works of love. There is no false dichotomy being set up in which one is saved by works alone or by faith alone; faith has always involved works. First, you come to Christ with faith doing works met for repentance, doing good deeds, and you stay in the newness of faith by obediently abiding in Christ’s commandments and bringing forth the fruits of the Spirit. Faith moves from faith to faith. Only those who hear and learn of the Father and believe in Moses and the Prophets will also hear and learn and thereby believe in Jesus. (Luke 16: 29 – 31; John 5: 46, 47; 6: 43 – 45; Acts 15: 19 – 21) You must believe in and behold the Son just as you must first behold and know the Spirit. (John 6: 40; 12: 25, 26, 45; 14: 17) And, I guarantee that no one will behold the Son if they do not keep His commandments. (John 14: 19 – 24)
The Law was given for transgression, which means that what preceded Law was not faith per se but disobedience based on a loss or lack of faith. Faith before the Law was characterized by action and obedience – faithfulness. Saving faith must restore that primal state of obedience not simply an attitude of trust. Theologians love to tell you their abstract, technical, legalistic noise about how it is the deep underlying trust or faith that saves, but do not buy into it. The only deep underlying faith is doing what Jesus taught and obeying His will, and that leads to salvation.
In Romans Chapter 7, Paul describes a person who acknowledges his sinful condition; he is in agreement as to what is right and what is wrong, but he does not have the power to do what is right and to not do what is wrong. Now, the Evangelical thinks that the only difference between the person before coming to faith in Jesus and after is that the person is freed from the penalty of his sin; so, even after coming to faith in Jesus, the believer is in no better shape than before with respect to the power to overcome sin; that is, he is still a slave to sin despite what Paul said, in chapter 6: that we are no longer slaves to sin but rather slaves to God and righteousness as a result, and it is the righteousness that has the outcome of eternal life! The believer is supposed to come into agreement with the truth after he is regenerated and given faith, but here is a man already in agreement with the truth of the Law and desires to live by it; so, what has actually changed? Evangelicals say that Paul is referring to his own state of inability to keep the Law even though he clearly agrees with the Law and even though he is already saved. Nonsense! Do not forget that Paul said he was “found blameless” with respect “to the righteousness which is in the Law.” (Phil.3: 6)
The Law has brought him as a tutor to Christ because it is only in Christ that he has any hope of fully living by the truth. As he says in chapter 8: “the mind set on the flesh is hostile toward God; for it does not subject itself to the Law of God, for it is not even able to do so; and those who are in the flesh cannot please God. However, you are not in the flesh but in the Spirit, if indeed the Spirit of God dwells in you. But if anyone does not have the Spirit of Christ, he does not belong to Him…for if you are living according to the flesh, you must die; but if by the Spirit you are [continually {daily}] putting to death the deeds of the body, you will live. For all who are being lead by the Spirit of God, these are the sons of God. …heirs of God and fellow heirs of Christ, if indeed we suffer with Him in order that we may also be glorified with Him.” To think that Paul actually believed that, even after coming to faith in Christ, he remained unchanged accept for his position before God is ludicrous. It makes so much of what he says meaningless. If that is really what he taught, then it must really have been frightening to hear the various warnings given throughout the New Testament – oh, the frightful possibility that one will still end up in Heaven! Oh, the guilt trip one might take by beating his body into submission for no reason. (I Cor.16, 24 – 27; 11: 1) Yes, lets all be imitators of Paul the sinner – what nonsense!
I pray that everyone comes to a deeper and deader understanding of the truth. May you lay your life down as Jesus did and be a living sacrifice offering good deeds made acceptable through Christ Jesus. It really is not funny to be sent out as lambs to the slaughter and as harmless doves, but wisdom is to obey the word; it is your life. I do not think God is still playing the winking Game. (Acts 17: 24 – 30) Christians should be mature and obedient children. God knows who are His, and Jesus knows His Churches by their works. The righteousness of God is not merely a cosmic guilt trip, and it is not a mere inward transformation. Those who are dressed in the white robes of purity and good deeds are His. Pure religion is to keep yourself unspotted by the world, to cleanse yourself from all the defilements of the flesh and to care for the needy, to love the brethren with fervent love. God is love, and all who love know God and are loved by God. Love is both the end and the means; love is God’s perfect way and will. Jesus is the love of God poured out in the flesh on all flesh. His love is tangible. What about yours? How do you love God? Do you love God by faith alone or in word alone? Do you want to love God by faith alone, or do you want to love Him just as He loves you? God will not reprogram or control you, but He persuades, reasons with, and loves you. Therefore, repent of your sin, and believe it is your sin not God’s will working evil in you. Stop sinning and start doing good, and know that it is God working in you to do good by speaking through His word of truth, teaching and guiding by His Spirit of truth, revealing truth by dreams and visions, and setting the example for you to follow in truth and in deed.
Truth is stranger than fiction, and the truth about Evangelicals is that they do not know the truth about salvation. Truth is funnier than fiction, and the Evangelical view of salvation is one of the strangest fictions I have ever heard.