Faith Has Legs

"For by the grace given to me I say to everyone among you not to think of himself more highly than he ought to think, but to think with sober judgment, each according to the measure of faith God has assigned"  (Romans 12:3, ESV). 
"... [Measuring] yourselves by the faith God has given you..." (Rom. 12:3, NLT, italics mine). 
"And without faith it is impossible to please him, for whoever would draw near to God must believe that he exists and that he rewards those who seek him ... by faith Abraham obeyed..." (Hebrews 11:6, 8, ESV).  
"I have fought the good fight, I have finished the race [course], I have kept the faith" (2 Tim. 4:7, NKJV, italics mine). 
"... I found it necessary to write appealing to you to contend for the faith that was once for all delivered to the saints" (Jude 3, ESV).
"[F]or we walk by faith, and not by sight"  (2 Cor. 5:7, ESV).

You've probably heard of the cliche that you don't have a leg to stand on; faith is like that as a contrast, it has legs to stand on! We have sound reasons to believe and haven't kissed our brains goodbye or committed intellectual suicide to become Christians!   Having legs implies you intend to go somewhere and are equipped for it, and even ready.  You are either going forward, backward or standing still!  In the walk of faith, you are supposed to be going forward, and not standing or going backward.

Faith is an abstract concept and must be seen to be understood.  It's something you do--, not something you have.  By faith the heroes did this and that in the hall of faith chapter of Hebrews.  Faith is not static or inert,  but active, living, growing and involved--bearing fruit.  Everyone has some kind of faith in something because we are hard-wired that way.  Secularists have faith in science or man's ability to solve his dilemmas and issues.  But it's not the amount of faith that's the vital link, but the object. Small but sincere faith in the right thing will bring results, but even much faith misdirected will be vain and fruitless.  The Israelites had a zeal for God, but not according to knowledge (cf. Rom. 10:2).  People in the North know there are two kinds of ice, and you can have a lot of faith crossing thin ice and you'll still fall through, but small faith in thick ice will get you from point A to point B.

The whole point of the Christian life is that you must grow in your relationship and mature in Christ, in other words, that you are going somewhere!  A walk with Christ implies you cannot tread water or stand in one place.  Ever heard of the "Nowhere Man" song of The Beatles?  He doesn't know where he's going to and doesn't have a point of view! We are not to wander aimlessly through the Christian life without purpose and meaning, because Christ gives us a reason to live and for our existence to find fulfillment--a more abundant life--some Christians never achieve this because of the so-called rat-race they get tied up with and are never set free spiritually to live victorious Christian lives in the power of the Spirit, not the energy of the flesh.

Faith must be illustrated to be conceived:  suppose I reach into my pocket and pull out something and ask you to tell me what's in my hand.  If you can't guess, let's say for the sake of argument, that I give you a hint that I had coins in my pocket.  Now you say that you believe I have a coin in my hand--that's faith, if I tell you that you're right, you take my word for it and have greater faith, but it's still faith!  Now, let me destroy your faith!  I'll open my hand and show you the coin.  Now you don't have faith anymore, but knowledge--see the difference--faith isn't absolute but has room for doubt and cannot be perfect, but God requires sincere, unfeigned faith, not perfect faith--it's evidence of the unseen (cf. Heb. 11:1)!

Now another illustration:  we must act on, or out, our faith.  If a tightrope walker tells you he can carry you across the rope and you tell him you believe him, that 's not faith unless you are willing to be carried across--you can say you believe, but your decisions may belie your so-called profession; there's a profession of faith or bogus faith, and a reality of faith or saving faith.

We are not rewarded according to our faith (cf. Rom. 2:6)!  We are rewarded according to our deeds and the good works we accomplished through God's Spirit with the faith given by God (cf. Romans 12:3 above). Note that faith is a gift: "For it has been granted to you that for the sake of Christ you should not only believe in him but also suffer for his sake" (Phil. 1:29, ESV); Peter writes:  "... [To] those who have obtained a faith of equal standing..." (2 Pet. 1:1, ESV).  We cannot boast of what God accomplishes through us (cf. Rom. 15:18; Isaiah 26:12).  God is simply using us as "vessels of honor" to accomplish His divine will and to bring glory to Him (cf. Isaiah 43:7).

Living faith grows and goes somewhere!  If your faith hasn't improved or accomplished something you can doubt it's being genuine and saving faith.  It must be validated by good works. We aren't saved by good works, neither are we saved without them, but saved unto them (cf. Eph. 2:10).   Paul would say, "I'll show you my good deeds by my faith!'  James would counter a complimentary statement:  "I'll show you my faith by my good deeds!"  These two can be distinguished, but not separated.  We are not saved by faith that stands alone.  We are saved by faith alone, but not be a faith that is alone, according to the Reformers' formula!


Antinomians insist that works don't have to accompany saving faith, or they believe we are saved by faith minus works!  No fruit means no faith!  Dead faith doesn't save and the only faith that saves is productive faith doing God's will!  Dead faith isn't profitable for anything and cannot go anywhere.  A person can be sincerely wrong, though sincerity matters, it's not the most vital link to salvation--it's not everything.  We are saved by grace through faith, and our faith is solely a gift of God, not something we conjure up or work up in our own efforts of the flesh. God quickens faith within us!  "So faith comes from hearing, and through hearing, of the word of Christ," (Romans 10:17, ESV), and God opens the heart (cf. Acts 16:14) to respond positively to the gospel, "who through grace had believed" (cf. Acts 18:27, ESV).

Saving faith is obedient and the only authentic test of faith is its obedience and it's always manifest through it, not by experience or emotions, feelings, or ecstasies.  Dietrich Bonhoeffer famously said, "Only he who believes is obedient; only he who is obedient believes."  Jesus also said that if we love Him we will keep and obey His commands (cf. John 14:21). Faith, it is said, is not believing despite the evidence, but obeying in spite of the consequences!   All faith must be tested for obedience, not emotions!  Some people are just hard-wired differently and are stoical and not demonstrative, even at concerts and sports events, not just worship!

Note that faith is not an end in itself; faith doesn't save, the object of the faith is what matters--Christ saves!  We don't have faith in faith!  When you say, "To defend the faith," you must be talking about the orthodox body of dogma of the Christian religion, not just your own personal faith, we are all called to be defenders of the truth and contenders of the faith (cf. Jude 3), and to be able to have an answer for why we believe, not just know what we believe (cf. 1 Pet. 3:15).  In the end result, it matters more how big your God is than how big your faith is!

The same word is used for faith and faithfulness in the Old Testament Hebrew (e.g., Hab. 2:4, "The just shall walk by faith [faithfulness]").  We must not divorce these two but realize they are juxtaposed and together like a coin with a flip side--they are complimentary! Good works is no substitute for faith, but proof it exists!  True faith always expresses itself!  We show our faith by being faithful to whatever gifts, talents, abilities, opportunities, time, resources, money, relationships, and so forth that are bestowed on us by grace!

Remember the words of Heb. 11:6 that faith is what "pleases" God, we can become emotional, wear our religion on our sleeves, or flaunt our religion, but that doesn't please God, if there is no genuine faith and obedience--even if there is no sentiment, for they don't save, but they will come from a life of faith in the order: fact, faith, then feeling--we must not be feeling-driven or emotionally crippled and dependent!  Jesus didn't say that if you love Him, you'll be on Cloud Nine, but that you'd obey Him!  Faith is a door to eternal life, not the destination:  we "believe in order to understand," for "faith precedes reason," according to Saint Augustine.

In the final analysis, the only happy believer is the serving one and a non-serving believer is a contradiction in terms, for we are saved to serve; even Christ came not to be served, but to serve (cf. Mark 10:45).  At the final audit of our life at the Bema or tribunal (called the Judgment Seat of Christ by some), we will have to give an account of what we did with the faith God gave us, and each is given a portion of faith (cf. Rom. 12:3).

To whom much is given, much is required (cf. Luke 12:48)!  With great faith, comes great responsibility and God will say that His grace is sufficient for us as He did to Paul about His thorn in the flesh (cf. 2 Cor. 12:9).  We must sow to reap, and he who sows sparingly will reap likewise!  We must sow and leave the results to God and focus on faithfulness, not success!

 As Mother Teresa of Calcutta, now canonized and recipient of the 1979 Nobel Peace Prize, said that God "calls us to faithfulness, not success!" It is said that if you've never made a mistake [failed], you've never made [tried] anything [challenging!]"  Failure doesn't always mean lack of faith or faithfulness.  We must remain faithful to the calling God gave us.  As Peter said, "... [Make] your calling and election sure..." in 2 Pet. 1:10, ESV.  Soli Deo Gloria!  

Forbidden Fruit

"But sin took advantage of this law and aroused all kinds of forbidden desires within me!  If there were no law, sin would not have that power"  (Rom. 8:8, NLT).

God had warned Adam of the Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil, as being off-limits, and not to partake of its fruit--i.e., the so-called forbidden fruit.  The very fact of it's being forbidden lured Adam all the more and made it even more desirable to Eve, who was deceived by Satan's deception and lie in the perfect environment of the Garden of Eden. Don't you also wonder why he never ate of the Tree of Life?   Augustine, in his Confessions, tells of eating forbidden (i.e., a stolen pear) fruit as a child and how it became all the more desirable because of that--the Law is likewise something that foments what it forbids.

We are all equally to blame for Adam's sin and cannot pin it on him alone--we would've done the same thing if we had been in his shoes. Adam's sin represented all sin and showed utter contempt for God's wisdom, sovereignty, grace, law, and justice, while Adam sought his own wisdom, goodness, and delight, he spurned God's best for getting his own way.  You cannot say that Adam knew what good and evil were, but they were completely innocent and were not choosing evil, but self over God.  That's the essence of sin--putting yourself in God's place and declaring your independence from Him.

Sin is now a virus that affects us all and is our legacy from Adam, as we are all born with solidarity with Adam, whether we want it or not.  We do have a choice to become free in Christ as we acknowledge the truth and lose sin's grip on our lives.  Sin doesn't demonstrate our freedom but shows our slavery.  And that's what sin is: it both alienates and estranges us from God, offends Him, and enslaves us.  We are not born free, but in bondage to sin, and must be set free by the Son (cf. John 8:36). Eve sought the here and now and to doubt God's Word ("Has God indeed said?" cf. Gen. 3:1), and then she doubted disbelieved it; then Satan told a lie and she believed him!  Finally, in an act of her willpower, she disobeyed God's Word and became a sinner--note that doubt is not sin per se, and may only be an element of faith, for no one's faith is perfect or it wouldn't be faith, but knowledge.

Adam got no second chance and dragged all mankind with him down the never-ending spiral of sin and rebellion.  For sin is ultimately a rebellion against God and His Word.  The biggest temptation Eve faced was that she wanted to be "as God."  She wanted to be a god, so to speak, and not godly--a sin that even Christians are guilty of to this day.  The theological axiom of Mormonism is that we can become gods, and this heresy traces itself to the garden and the original sin of Adam and Eve.

Adam's sin had to be atoned for in a multifaceted way:  He had to be redeemed from the slave market of sin with the penalty paid by the blood of Christ; the wrath of God had to be averted in God's temple by the propitiation of Christ on the cross; the righteousness of Christ had to be exchanged in God's court of justice and justice or giving sin its due had to be rendered; the relationship and fellowship with God had to be restored in Christ's act of reconciliation with His family.  Salvation can be seen as the sum total of all these events taking place in God's throne room and Jesus being the Savior of mankind securing the Father's plan and purpose and being applied by the Holy Spirit on our behalf.

As a consequence of Adam's sin, we are all born in a state of sin and inherit Adam's guilt and have lost all inclination to good, though we remain human with the ability to make choices; however, we make the wrong choices!   Our freedom is a curse since we choose evil and God must work grace in our hearts to bring us to repentance and faith (cf. 2 Tim. 2:25; Acts 18:27).  We don't need free will to be saved, but wills made free!  Adam had the ability not to sin and chose sin.  As humans before salvation, we have the inability not to sin, or all we can do is sin!

Upon salvation, we are being saved from the power of sin and have the ability not to sin and the ability to sin by our own choices.  Salvation is threefold:  we are saved from the penalty of sin by the crucified Christ; from the power of sin by the living Christ; and the presence of sin by the coming Christ.  Our salvation is past, present, and pending!  We are saved, being saved, and to be saved!   Our past is forgiven, our present given meaning and our future secured by salvation began in eternity past, completed in time, and looking forward to eternity.

Some think it's unfair to be charged with Adam's sin (by the disobedience of one person but we are in Adam who gets a bad rap).  We would've done the very same thing if we'd been in the Garden of Eden too! The point of all this is that "we are not ignorant of his [Satan's] devices"(2 Cor. 2:11) and know his trickery and schemes:  mind games; lies; deception; propaganda; sensual pleasure; lust or inordinate desire for anything, including power, riches, or fame; psychological warfare--indeed the devil fights dirty and will resort to any means to get our attention away from God, God's work, and Word, and unto ourselves, and he knows our weaknesses!  His tactics are not original, but he's basically an imitator and can only distort and debase the truth, and mask a little truth with a lot of error--for no heresy or false religion is completely void of truth; they all have an element of truth and just enough to inoculate you to the truth.

Adam turned his back on God's light and sought his own, we second that motion as we seek our own way and refuse to see the light. Erich Fromm, the famed psychologist, wrote a book, You Shall Be As Gods," in which he denied the existence of evil (and that sin is all in your head) and that you can make yourself out to be your own god; however, we either trust in God, or we make ourselves gods--it's that plain.

Adam was tricked into thinking he'd become free by his independent act of defiance, but he became a slave without any control over sin--he lost all inclination towards good and God.  He didn't break God's law, but God's law broke him!  He didn't become more human, but less of a man, for when we lose godliness, we lose true manhood too. The measure of a man is in fulfilling his relationship with God, not in human standards and opinions.  We must be what we are meant to be and not "quarrel with [our] Maker" (cf. Isaiah 45:9).

A lot of people assume that Adam chose to do evil, but he was innocent, not cognizant of evil and his eyes were only opened after his sin when he became self-conscious.  The epitome of sin is selfishness, or putting yourself first and becoming self-centered, believing that it's all about you.  They really made the choice between self and God, and in the process loss consciousness of God and became self-conscious in return and aware of their own shame and guilt.  Guilt is cognizance of wrongdoing and is the sign that we know we've done something evil or sinful.  Only in Christ can we become free from guilt by the atoning work of Christ on the cross, shedding His blood on our behalf. Just like Eve bought into Satan's rationalization, people today buy into today's secular worldview because of their ignorance of the Bible, as Eve doubted and didn't know the Word of God.

As we are born, we are sinners by birth, by nature, and by choice--we confirm ourselves in sin and the theologians say we are not sinners because we sin, but we sin because we are sinners (it's our very nature!).  We duplicate Adam's sin and verify that we would've done the same thing, having been there ourselves--we would've joined hands with Eve in rebellion too.

Adam was given just one simple rule to obey; and if he had been given no rules, it would not be possible to know if he was obedient to God willingly--he would be but a pawn of God.  Given the gift of choice, there had to be a test of his will to see where his loyalties would be.  Adam failed the test and we would've too, even in a perfect environment of the Garden of Eden.  Israel was given the Decalogue and promised to obey it, yet they fell short; however, the Law was not given to obey but to convict and show that they fall short of God's ideal and must be saved by grace, not obedience to the Law.  The Law was merely given to show we can't keep it and need to plead for mercy, not attempt obedience in the efforts of the flesh.

Adam committed every sin in the book by partaking of the proverbial apple in what is known as "Edengate," and it was the prototype sin extraordinaire:  "he rejected God authority; he doubted God's goodness; he disputed God's wisdom; he repudiated God's justice; he contradicted God's trustworthiness; he spurned God's grace" [source unknown, but well-known]. Adam's cover-up was also what we do when we run away from God and can't admit our sin and call a spade a spade in confession.  Our guilt can only be expiated by God's grace and sacrifice on our behalf as God clothed Adam and Eve to cover their shame.

A word to the wise is sufficient:  Eve didn't sin by doubting God's Word, nor by believing Satan, but only in disobeying God--doubt is only an element of faith, and God doesn't expect perfect faith without any doubt whatsoever, but sincere, unfeigned faith--for it isn't the amount of faith that saves or keeps, it's the object of it that saves and keeps! 

In sum, we can rejoice that we are not "under the Law, but under grace [cf. Rom. 6:14]," and that nowhere in the New Testament are believers told to obey the Law--we are under a higher law, the law of love, and we serve out of gratitude, not an obligation, as a "therefore," not an "in order to," that is we want to, we don't have to anymore!   Soli Deo Gloria!

The Religious Creature...

"He [the Antichrist] shall seduce with flattery those who violate the covenant, but the people who know their God shall stand firm and take action ["will firmly resist him," NIV; "shall be strong, and do exploits," KJV]"  (Daniel 11:32, ESV). 

Man is the only religious creature; i.e., monkeys don't build chapels!  He has been called Homo religiosus (man the religious) or Homo divinus (man the divine) by scholars because of this tendency.  Only man has the will to obey God, the heart to love God, and the mind to know God--as creatures in His image.  Dostoevsky said, "Man cannot live without worshiping something."  It's our nature and what makes us uniquely human.  We are hard-wired or designed for God and can only be happy and fulfilled in God.  Bertrand Russell said, "Unless you assume a God, the question of life's purpose is meaningless."  Without God, we have no dignity or purpose and we can only find meaning in Him.  There's a void or "God-shaped vacuum" in man's heart that "only God can fill," according to Blaise Pascal, philosopher-mathematician.  And St. Augustine said, "You have made us for Yourself, and our hearts find no peace until they rest in You."

Conventional wisdom would tell you that the more gods you have the better off you are, and this was the assumption of ancient man, who worshiped a pantheon of gods and goddesses. The Israelites had resorted to henotheism, or that there are many so-called gods, but the LORD is the Most High.  They believed, for instance, that Baal was the fertility God, (flocks, field, and family) but the LORD was the God of their army and of victory in war (the Lord of Hosts).   But the Bible tells us that if we have God we have all we need and are complete in Him.

Man is empty without God and cannot live abundantly apart from His plan for our lives.  Jesus came to give us this complete and abundant life of fulfillment.  Man has always believed in a higher power and archeology proves this as fact, the belief in God is not mere superstition but universal--even to the point of having some sort of Creator-God or unknown God--and that man's concept of God has devolved, not evolved through the ages.  But we are to have no other gods before Him and acknowledge no other Savior (cf. Hos. 13:4).

Psychologists have tried to rationalize our faith in God as fear of the unknown, a throwback to our need for a father-figure, a method of evolutionary advantage, a mental virus, or as a system of contentment in hard times.  They think we invented God, as Voltaire said, "Man created God in his own image."  God is, by definition, the highest Being that can be (imagined or real). There can be no other so-called "necessary being," uncaused cause, or unmoved mover--someone began the chain link of cause and effect ad infinitum, since eternal regression is mathematically and philosophically inconceivable and impossible.  It has been proved now that man's earliest worship of God was of a monotheistic tradition, and not polytheistic, as first thought.  Man originally entertained the idea of the one true God, as Scripture unequivocally posits and depicts.

It should be noted that man is the only creature capable of being bored with himself and unable to entertain himself when he is down in spirits.  Boredom is meant for a reason, to show us we need God and to find purpose in life-- with purpose you seldom get bored!  This is only to show us that we need God in our lives for completion.

It is a fact that you can be religious without subscribing to a religion; Secular Humanism is a kind of religion without God, trying to be good without God's help or for the glory of God.  It is a proven fact psychologically that religious people tend to be happier than those who are not, and when we're not grounded in the truth we become highly superstitious and make up our own religion!  We all need to be set free by the truth and only the Son can do this (cf. John 8:32, 36).

It is a proven fact that society needs religion to maintain law and order and a precept of morality:  George Bernard Shaw said that no nation has survived the loss of its gods. Cicero saw religion's value in keeping public morals.  John Adams said, "... Our constitution was made only for a moral and religious people...."  G. K Chesterton said our nation has the "soul of a church!"  Eisenhower recognized the need of religion to maintain our way of life, and any religion would do--the point is that man needs religious and moral guidance to keep evil at bay.  The Pax Romana (200-year peace of Rome) worked for this purpose until Christianity changed its moral roots.

Real worship is the offering of ourselves to God; however, when we surrender our resources and ourselves to anything or anyone else in devotion, it's a form of idolatry, taking from God what is His due, for He alone is worthy.  True worship of our Lord is defined as being Christ-centered, God-focused, Spirit-controlled-and-led when we get our eyes off ourselves and onto Jesus who alone is the worthy Lamb of God, our Savior--we must draw the line at homage like Daniel!

In the final analysis, the only cure for the sin of idolatry is to have an adequate concept of God, not putting Him in a box or making Him one-dimensional, and knowing your God personally and not just second-hand.  Soli Deo Gloria!

Finishing Well

"Therefore, since we are surrounded by so great a cloud of witnesses, let us also lay aside every weight, and sin which clings so closely, and let us run with endurance the race that is set before us, looking to Jesus..." (Heb. 12:1-2, ESV). 

As Paul's swan song (2 Timothy) expressed: to get back his manuscripts while he was under house arrest;  his cry of exultation was, "I have fought the good fight, I have finished the race [course], I have kept the faith," (2 Tim. 4:7, ESV). We are all to run so as to win (following the rules) and not be encumbered with the worries of the mundane in our race, just like a soldier is unconcerned of civilian affairs.  Jesus' kingdom is not of this world, and our citizenship is in heaven (cf. John 18:36; Phil. 3:20, ESV).  Don't get too comfortable in this world, for we are mere pilgrims passing through to the heavenly city.

It doesn't matter how well you start if you don't finish well.  Our reward is not according to our faith, but our works, what we did with it (cf. Rom. 2:6; Psa. 62:12; Prov. 24:12); how we apply it.  The race set before us is not a sprint but a marathon, and endurance matters; however, there is the danger of spiritual burnout if we don't know how to balance our life and keep the main thing the main thing, keeping our eyes on Jesus (cf. Heb. 3:1: 12:2). Walking with Christ gives us the power to do anything in the will of God (cf. Phil. 4:13).

Col. 2:6 tells us that just as we "have received Christ as Lord, so walk in Him" as Lord.  Lordship decisions are not a one-time matter at salvation, but progressive as we are being constantly filled with the Spirit (cf, Eph. 5;18) and keeping on the straight and narrow.  Mother Teresa, now canonized, who also received the Nobel Peace Prize in 1979, said that God doesn't "call us to success, but to faithfulness!"  The key is that we are faithful in the little God gives us, not to compare our ministry or mission to others. We all are unique in our calling and gifts.

Jesus did say that he who is faithful in little shall be faithful in much!  And to whom much is given, much is required.  An example is the widow who gave two lepta (copper coins) and Jesus commended her as having given more than anyone in the worship meeting.  Saint Theresa announced she was building a convent and was asked how much she had; when she told them only twelve pence, they said, "Not even Saint Theresa can do much with twelve pence!"  The reply:  "But Theresa and God can do anything with twelve pence!"

The important idea to bear in mind, is not to be conformed to the image of the world (i.e., the rat race, the law of the jungle, survival of the fittest, etc.) and not to be achievement-oriented, for God doesn't want our achievements, but our obedience, and us!  What matters is not how much of the Spirit we seem to have but our obedience--how much the Spirit has of us!  Bear in mind:  Dietrich Bonhoeffer said that "only he who believes is obedient; only he who is obedient believes."  Christianity is not about man's achievements then, but God's accomplishment on our behalf--we are to let God work through us (Hos. 14:8; Isaiah 26:12; Rom. 15:18) as "vessels of honor."

Jesus warned of the builder who didn't count the cost and had to abandon his building, and so earnest believers must be aware of what they are getting into--a life of self-denial, devotion, a discipline.  Jesus never encouraged lackadaisical, lukewarm, halfhearted, or insincere followers.  The reason other religions are so popular, namely Buddhism, is that you don't die to yourself.   In our race we are not in competition with each other, in the sense so as to compare ourselves with one another: who is the best Bible pastor/teacher in town are (or best exegete, biblicist, even Bible expositor, etc.)  God will level the playing field--who is faithful matters--results are up to God!

We all have our own calling and gift to present unto the Lord in a life of obedience, following Him wherever He may lead.  Maturity is never measured by emotion or feeling, though they are present even if one is stoical, not demonstrative, nor is it measured by ecstasies or experiences (according to Oswald Chambers), including dreams, visions, including audible or visual encounters, but solely by a life of obedience and faithfulness, which will be tested by fire to see if we grow bitter or better.  It is vital to know that the Christian life is not a contest to see who dies with the most toys, publishes the most books, preaches the most sermons, gives the most to missions or charity, and so forth, but "obedience to the heavenly vision," doing God's work and will, as it were, like Paul delineated our walk.

The song by ABBA, "Winner Takes It All," is a fallacious worldview since Jesus owns it all and shares the victory with us, we shall all have the opportunity to win an imperishable wreath that won't fade away, and a crown, if you will, for rewards of faithfulness. Remember one's last words are very telling of one's life work!   Famous last words:  Good intentions; poor follow-through!  Corrie ten Boom said, "Jesus is victor!" for us!  The Preacher of Ecclesiastes renders some timely, germane words of divine wisdom to conclude with:  "Finishing is better than starting..." (7:8, NLT);  "Again I saw that under the sun the race is not to the swift, nor the battle to the strong, nor bread to the wise, nor riches to the intelligent, nor favor to those with knowledge, but time and chance happen to them all"  (9:11, ESV).  Soli Deo Gloria!

The Universal Fatherhood Of God

German Lutheran theologian, and skeptic of the supernatural, Karl Gustav Adolf von Harnack, "reduced Christianity to two essential affirmations, the universal fatherhood of God and the universal brotherhood of man..." (according to R. C. Sproul).  Using the German term Wesen  (essence) to depict the sum total of  Christianity and epitome of the gospel message.  Catholics also generally believe in the basic, inherent goodness of man, denying total depravity and assuming a so-called semi-Pelagian view of man being only half sick and able to earn merit towards salvation.

The opposite was taught by Augustine of Hippo, who said that man is incapable of anything but sinning (non posse non peccare, or unable not to sin).  Man's goodness is as "filthy rags" according to Isaiah in Isaiah 64:6 and Hosea says our fruit comes from God (cf. Hos. 14:8).  Indeed, all we have done in the Spirit that can please God is enabled by the Holy Spirit and God gets the credit and glory:  Paul wouldn't "venture but to speak of anything except what Christ had accomplished through him]" (cf. Rom. 15:8).  Isaiah confesses:  "...you have done for us all our works" (Is. 26:12, ESV).  Man cannot boast in God's presence--even our faith is a gift and we believe only through grace, the unmerited favor of God (cf. Acts 18:27).  God as Father is the covenant name of God for Christians, as their prerogative.

Jesus made it clear to the Pharisees that they were of the devil and not children of God!  Only when we believe in Christ do we have the right to become the children of God (cf. John 1:12), implying that we weren't before.  John says in 1 John 3:1 what manner of love this is, to be called the children of God. 1 John 5:19, NLT, says:  "We know that we are children of God and that the world around us is under the control of the evil one."  The highest privilege we have as believers is to be adopted into the royal family of God as heirs of the Father and joint-heirs of Christ.  Only as believers in Christ do we earn this privilege and "are family!" as "members one of another."

Even today some generally believe man is basically good and we are all to believe in the goodness of man; Scripture teaches the opposite: man is inherently wicked through and through and there is no vestige or island or righteousness or goodness left in him--he's totally corrupted or radically sick, though not utterly depraved or as depraved as possible, he's totally depraved in the sense that every part of his being is corrupt and incapable of good. And  Jesus sees through our veneer and knows the real us, that we all have a dark side like the moon doesn't expose that no one sees.  This is God's estimation of man, not man's!  God doesn't grade on a curve!

The fact is that we all have feet of clay and "we sin because we are sinners, we are not sinners because we sin," the theological axiom goes.  "The LORD saw that the wickedness of man was great in the earth, and that every intention of the thoughts of his heart was only evil continually"  (Gen. 6:5, ESV).  Man doesn't know his own condition and Carl Gustav Jung, a one-time student of Freud who broke away, and a Christian psychologist who worked with AA, said that "man is an enigma to himself," and "the central neurosis of man is emptiness."   As Scripture paints him:  "The heart is deceitful above all things, and desperately sick; who can understand it?"  (Jer. 17:9, ESV); "For the mind that is set on the flesh is hostile to God, for it does not submit to God's law; indeed, it cannot"  (Rom. 8:7, ESV).  The Law shows our crookedness (cf. Rom. 3:20, Phillips).  The purpose of the Law is to show we cannot keep it! 

We cannot just turn over a new leaf and reform ourselves:  "Can the Ethiopian change his skin or the leopard his spots?  Then also you can do good who are accustomed to do evil"  (Jer. 13:23, ESV).  The point is that we all share solidarity with Adam in his sin, and we cannot clean up our act, but need the grace to change us from the inside out as God grants us repentance and faith by grace working in us.  We are very bad, but not too bad to be saved, we are as bad off as we can be, but not as bad as we can be--God restrains evil to a certain degree.

Our radical degradation is in toto and permeates to our core being--our complete heart, which includes our intellect, volition, and emotion.  We are more than flawed beings, we are incapable of pleasing God in anything we do and cannot merit or even prepare ourselves for salvation.  We all like to say we have our shortcomings and like to compare ourselves with paradigms of evil like Adolf Hitler and say that we are saints if you look at them, but we are all in the same boat--God levels the playing field! We may see ourselves as run-of-the-mill sinners, but in God's eyes, we are totally depraved in our sin state.  The adages "to err is human" and "nobody's perfect" take on a new dimension in light of the Bible and man's consensus.

The reason most Christians believe in the basic goodness of man is the philosophy and worldview of Secular Humanism, which promotes the goodness of man, dethroning God and deifying man in the process, trying to make a name for mankind while believing God is irrelevant and that we don't need Him anymore, even if He does exist.  Why am I painting such a pessimistic picture of mankind?  C. S. Lewis said in a famous catch-22 that we must "see how bad we are to be good, and we don't know how bad we are till we've tried to be good."

We do a man no favor by being optimistic about his fate, nature, and ultimate Judgment Day and reckoning, and we must make him realize like Jonathan Edwards preached in 1741 the sermon "Sinners in the Hands of an Angry God," from Deut. 32:35 (KJV) to inaugurate the Great Awakening:  "... [Their] foot shall slip in due time; the day of their calamity is at hand...."   Soli Deo Gloria!

The Uniqueness Of Our Faith

NB:  Every faith or religion is unique but Christianity stands out as one of a kind that contrasts with all others and really isn't even religion by some definitions.  Read and just check out all the differences. 

Some venture to compare Christianity with other world religions and put them in the same category of being merely a faith.  Christianity may rightly be called a faith because that virtue is so vital to its doctrine of salvation by grace.  Christianity is vastly superior and different to the other major faiths if one looks beyond the ethics--for they all teach doing good deeds.  Even George Lucas has concluded that all religions are true--this couldn't possibly be right since they are often mutually exclusive or contradictory and deny what the other proclaims (e.g., Islam denies that God is love or that you can know God!).

People wrongly believe that the Golden Rule or some ethical code is the essence of Christianity--some say their religion is the Sermon on the Mount!  This is a superficial observation that just looks at ethics or morals and not the faith or dogma that demands it.  It is true that faith without works is dead and cannot save, and true faith generates good deeds; we are not saved by good works, though; however, we are not saved without them either, and we are saved unto good works!   But Christianity is not against good works, just those done in the energy of the flesh, e.g., for the applause of man, and for the wrong motive--to gain the approbation of God.

I intend to show that Christianity is a one-of-a-kind faith, and cannot even properly be called "religion."  For religion seeks to reach up to and please God, while Christianity's God reaches down to man and initiates the relationship.  He makes the atonement and reconciles us, we don't offer Him our sacrifices to appease His wrath, mollify, or humor Him.  Religion simply says "Do!" Christianity replies simply "Done!" Salvation is a fait accompli or a done-deal!  The transaction is complete and paid for by God Himself!  We accept Christ's work on our behalf, to do what we couldn't accomplish, to pay a debt we couldn't pay when He didn't owe it.  God is not obliged to save anyone, or it would be justice, but He chooses to save by grace through the non-meritorious virtue of faith, which is a gift to be used to take that step of faith into the light, out of the darkness of sin, alienation, and bondage.

In religion, one seeks salvation by good behavior or good deeds, and one only hopes his good deeds outweigh his bad ones on Judgment Day.  In a works religion, you can never know if you have worked enough or achieved enough--Christianity is not about man's achievement, but God's accomplishment.  You can never be assured of salvation in religion, while Christianity alone offers assurance.  They both believe in good works, but in religion, they are an "in-order-to" behavior, in Christianity works are a "therefore."  We don't do them because we are obligated, but want to.

Actually, this all adds up to religion being a "do-it-yourself" proposition, or a lifting up of yourself by your own bootstraps, like saying, "God helps those who help themselves!"  This is a lie, and the qualification for salvation is to admit you're lost and helpless at God's mercy and you come to Him in faith and repentance.  The condition for salvation is to realize you're not qualified and can do nothing to ingratiate yourself with God--not good works, philosophy, religion, ritual, or morality!

Religion is, therefore, the best man can come up with, but God gave us Christianity by revelation and intervention into history.  People have tried religion and have found it falls short (religion may even work for some, but that's isn't the test of truth).  But Christianity isn't true because it works, it works because it's true!  Christianity is a revealed religion--the myth come true, as someone said, and no one would've thought this up. One spiritual seeker said to a preacher that he had tried religion for five years and it didn't work--the preacher replied he had tried religion for 15 years and it didn't work, then he tried Christianity!  It's an insult to tell the believer that he "found religion," for what he really found is a Savior to meet all his spiritual needs and to fulfill his life and make it more abundant.

Christianity is the religion of miracles and without them, it would fade into oblivion.  Take the miracles out and Christ would be but a footnote in history!   You can remove miracles from other faiths and their religion stays intact--not so with ours.  The problem with miracles is that they only bring about the desire for more miracles!  Miracles don't produce faith, but faith miracles!    Israel was shown many miracles and still rebelled (cf. Psalm 78:32), and Jesus did many signs and they "would not believe," despite them (cf. John 12:37).

Christianity is a faith of history and over 25,000 archaeological digs have verified its references.  Not once has an artifact controverted a biblical reference.  What's so sad though, is that if there's ever a difference in opinion between secular and religious scholars, the world buys into what the secular one says, because they believe religious scholars are biased.  If the Bible has never been proven wrong and has time and again proven reliable, why start doubting it?  The burden of proof is on the person objecting to the validity of a document, and legally they would have to disprove and discredit the Bible's authority and not automatically assume it's dubious. Christianity is a religion of facts, and the Christian with faith need not fear the facts--the skeptic should.  The Bible isn't a "once-upon-a-time" tale but based in history, like no other faith.  Jesus is a historical, not mythical or legendary figure!  Our God is not only the God of history but the very one who orchestrates it all to His will (cf. Eph. 1:11).  History is indeed headed toward culmination at the Second Advent of Christ to conclude time as we know it.  Either the resurrection was the "biggest hoax," according to Josh McDowell, or the most wonderful event known to man--there's no room for any middle ground!

Christianity is the religion of salvation since it alone offers the world a Savior that we must be saved through and He did it all for us, with the gift of salvation ready to be received.  There is only one Savior (cf. Hos. 13:4) and one way of salvation (cf. Acts 4:12).  Man is in a state of rebellion against God:  The Bible properly diagnoses man's problem and dilemma as the sin question and settles it by the death, burial, and resurrection of Jesus Christ.  "[H]ow shall we escape if we neglect such a great salvation?" (Heb. 2:3, ESV); there are severe consequences, and man is responsible to God for rejecting what he does know (cf. Rom. 1:28).  Remember, in a works religion, you are just never sure of your salvation, but Christianity teaches assurance is possible.

Christianity is the faith of prophecy and no other religion's god can tell you the future, while the Bible has over 2,000 predictive prophecies that were fulfilled (333 in Christ's first advent alone), and this is not just a few lucky guesses!  Muhammad tells no prophecy in the Koran, except the self-fulfilling one where he promises to return to Mecca.  The one and only true God knows and tells us the future before it happens.  Not one prophecy has been proven wrong!

Christianity is a faith of grace, a foreign concept to other faiths.  In other religions, one earns his salvation by merit or good deeds.  Faith is unmerited favor; we don't earn it, can't pay it back, and don't deserve it in the first place!  This concept is unique to Christianity and denied dogmatically by other faiths who believe in legalism and salvation by works alone.  With grace, one can be assured of his salvation and isn't dependent on the value and merit of his works for assurance.

The biggest contribution to religion though is probably that Christians address God as Father, and are considered the children of God.  We are adopted into God's royal family and have the honor and privilege of being "family."  We have the right to become the children of God by virtue of faith in Christ as we receive Him as Lord and Savior, even believing in His name (cf. John 1:12).

Lastly, of the contrasts, the Christian life is not just a list of dos and don'ts, but a vital and growing relationship with the Father and the Son by the power of the Spirit.  We grow in faith and our "chief aim is to glorify [God] and enjoy Him forever" (cf. The Westminster Shorter Catechism).  Christians share in the very nature of God and reflect His glory (cf. 2 Pet. 1:4; 2 Cor. 3:18).  The goal and mission is to know God and to make Him known respectively!  Our biblical mandate:  "Let us know; let us press on to know the LORD;.." (Hos. 6:3, ESV).

In the final analysis, we are not saved by service, but unto service (cf. Eph. 2:10, saying, "For we are His workmanship, created in Christ Jesus unto good works.").   The conclusion of the matter is that there may be an element of truth in every religion (enough error to be dangerous and inoculate one to the real thing), but the one in which is the personification of the absolute Truth with a capital T, and not a fraud or imitation, is Christianity alone!   Soli Deo Gloria!

In Beginning, God

"Unless you assume a God, the question of life's purpose is useless."--Bertrand Russell, atheist mathematician and philosopher 
"Do you think we are mere animals?  Do you think we are stupid?  (Job 18:3, NLT).

Or, "IN THE BEGINNING GOD...."   It all began with God.   Athanasius said that the only system of faith that Christ will fit into is the one where He is the starting point!  We must not start with man and explain God, or even attempt to explain away God.  There are only two possible explanations for reality and the world as we know it:  God created it; it evolved and just happened.  Secularist scientists believe that given enough time and chance, anything can happen with matter and energy as the input.

But some things will never happen no matter how much opportunity: could a tornado fly through a junkyard (even if the whole universe were filled with them) and assemble a Boeing 747?  This is called by some (namely, Sir Fred Hoyle) "junkyard mentality."  Monkeys pounding on typewriters forever could never compose a Shakespearean sonnet, even if given eternity to do it.  The chances of life arising by chance are like drawing a six on a die 5 million times consecutively, or like a blind man solving Rubik's cube--absolutely impossible.

What evolution did (and it is the most successful theory every postulated because of its impact on society and scientific thought), was give secularists a way to explain the universe without God in the picture.  Now they can be intellectually fulfilled without believing in God, which used to be the unquestioned default position.  We must begin with God and explain the universe, not begin with man and explain Him away!  Contrary to humanist thought, man is not the measure of all things.

Let me cite a famous philosophical maxim from Rene Descartes, the father of modern rationalism:  "I think, therefore I am."  This is erroneous for several reasons:  Only God can rightly say, "I am!" We can believe we exist, but knowing by virtue of self-consciousness is circular reasoning, and begs the question of how you can know anything for sure--all knowledge is contingent!  Augustine posited that all knowledge begins in faith; he said, "I believe in order to understand."  Just like a child learns things initially by faith. You must assume something you cannot prove to know anything!  We all have some presupposition we are willing to accept without proof.  However, we are always in a state of flux and are becoming something, while God is self-existent and needs no change, for He is already perfect, and cannot change for the worst because He is perfect.

Descartes was right in saying that thinking is the origin, but he was mistaken, to begin with, man or himself; he should begin with God.  Thinking does prove a thinker, though; a thinker precedes thought and thought requires a thinker.  But we were thoughts in God's mind before we were even born.  How does he know that God isn't thinking through him and using him, and how can Descartes conclude he has an independent thought separate from God and isn't merely a machine taking dictation.  God is the origin of all thought!


To Descartes, the father of modern philosophy, to think requires a thinker and that means he exists, but even to doubt he is thinking is a thought and requires a thinker; he concludes one cannot think and not think in the same relationship or manner at the same time so as not to violate the law of noncontradiction, the first law of being.  Without Him, there would be no thought (Logos means "expressed thought" or revelation), because God is the sole primary cause of the cosmos (causa prima).  We are all in the process of becoming, and all becoming requires causation; God is not becoming but merely is in the absolute sense of being that cannot change.  God is the uncaused cause, which by definition is also self-existent; there cannot be an uncaused effect!

Everything has its genesis in Him.  Scientists are always trying to come up with a "theory of everything," a "God-particle" that solves the universe's complexity, reconciling the known forces of nature.  Parmenides, the Greek philosopher of antiquity and forerunner of Socrates, said, "Whatever is, is!"  This is not nonsensical but the origins of contemplating God's nature, which is immutable and cannot change for the better or the worse, since He's is a being (by definition perfect).  Something cannot be and become at the same time; if it is in the absolute sense of God is, it cannot change or not be.  This was his understanding of the first law of being:  the law of noncontradiction.

We say that God is and was and ever will be--He cannot change.  God is self-existent, which violates no laws of science, logic, nor of reason, while we depend on someone or something and had an origin.  The law of causality or cause and effect says that everything that begins to exist has a cause, and something cannot be its own cause.  God is no effect and didn't begin to exist, being eternal without beginning, and therefore has no cause.  God just is and is the only Being who can say, "I am."

There is no such thing in reality as a God-hypothesis, but God is the necessary Being for anything else to exist--everything else is contingent on something, being in time, having a beginning, and to simply say that there is an endless series of finite efficacious causes is nonsense as well as silly, because logically, infinite regress is impossible--there had to be a beginning!  The Bible speaks of our beginning since we are captive to the time/space continuum, but God has no beginning, being the creator of time/space/matter.  There would be no time without space and matter, which He created, and time is merely the corollary of matter and space.  In theological circles they say God is "above and beyond," or transcendent, but they are merely quibbling about His address; however, He has no physical address in space that we can access but lives in another dimension or in other dimensions.  Even if we searched the universe we wouldn't find Him, for He created the universe and is transcendent or above and separate from it.

The first words of Scripture reveal that God has a plan, is in control, and that everything is going according to plan; God cannot fail and has all power over His creation.  We owe everything to God and everything had its origin in God.  Don't jump to the conclusion that everything had a beginning!  If you do, there would've been a time when nothing existed, and there's the self-evident adage that out of nothing, nothing comes (in Latin ex nihilo, nihil fit).  There must be something or someone who had no beginning and didn't begin to exist or there would be nothing now; because there is something now, there must be something eternal!  God is therefore called this so-called "necessary being."

The universe had a beginning, scientists now are nearly all in agreement about the Big Bang (even professor Steven Hawking of Oxford University is aboard).  If there was a beginning, there had to be a Beginner, by logical conclusion.  According to the laws of cosmology, things with a beginning don't just happen by themselves, but are caused--something caused the Big Bang, by deduction. Who pulled the trigger? And more vital: who programmed or dialed all the universal constants of the universe into it, so that it was fine-tuned for life support somewhere?  Explosions by themselves are pure energy and random energy, not usable or kinetic energy, which requires intelligence as input.  Photosynthesis is an example of a plant turning the suns random energy into stored, usable energy.

The missing ingredient to the Big Bang is intelligence or God's mind!  The universe, according to Einstein, seems like one vast mathematical equation of a "Pure Mathematical Mind."  Scientists believe that someday they will be able to explain everything in the cosmos, but this is not the same as sustaining it.  We will not become gods by understanding, but only prove that it contains an intelligent input by God no less.  The universe is one vast thought of God, for John 1:1 says that "in the beginning was the Word," or the expressed thought of God!

There aren't many possibilities for explaining the universe:  In the beginning God; in the beginning matter/energy; in the beginning no God; in the beginning nothing!  We will never know anything for sure unless we begin with God and don't leave Him out of the equation (cf. Prov. 1:7).  The only one that makes any sense if the first premise!  Pure energy has no intelligence and no plan or design, as we see evident in creation.  A design entails a Designer!  If there was a time with nothing, we couldn't have anything now!

If there was no God then, there would be none now either (unless you want to believe God evolved), but this is not in the domain of science to speculate about, just like ethics isn't (you cannot repeat, measure, control, observe, or test God), because God is not visible, audible, nor tangible, cannot be put into a test tube and there can be no laboratory conditions to experiment.  Let's say that with infinite time anything could happen as a given; then if the universe is infinitely old, wouldn't everything be perfect by now as a foregone conclusion?

The more they learn about the origin of the universe the more astronomers believe in God and find that He is the only explanation without committing intellectual suicide--keeping their intellectual integrity intact.  It's time we stop asking questions and start to look for answers, and the Bible is the only reliable source of revealed information.  There is a reason the Bible is self-attesting; if it appealed to some source for authentication, it wouldn't the final arbiter of all truth!  Our religion is a revealed one, not one thought of by man and there were no eyewitnesses to creation, so we need revelation from God!

The Bible doesn't begin, "Once upon a time!" God didn't create the universe for something to do--He wanted to express Himself.  As an example, God takes the initiative and cannot be anticipated.  We begin with God because, where you start virtually always determines where you'll end up.  For instance, secularists assume design is impossible, and conclude there's no design.  They won't let a divine foot in the door.  Purpose is a dirty word to them and the cosmos shows design and purpose at all levels, molecular to a galaxy.  Science assumes there's order in the universe and it's predictable with laws of nature.  The Big Bang was a one-time event and there were no eyewitnesses, we can only know by revelation, and, of course, this theory only begs the question of who pulled the trigger and got the ball rolling.  The theory of an eternal universe is untenable and scientists generally accept this theory of the Big Bang now.

We must be careful, though, to come to the conclusion that we will only believe what science can prove; not all knowledge is in the realm of science (ethics, for one example--you cannot measure 2 lbs. of justice or 3 ft. of love!).  Evolution was the alternative explanation of reality to creation, which was originally a working hypothesis, then championed as theory, then touted as unquestioned scientific fact by academics and scientists alike.  However, we know as a fact that pure energy explodes and doesn't have a plan, beauty, or design--we need the missing ingredient of intelligence to harness energy for productive use.

And so we see that the opening words of Genesis are the basis and foundation of all Christian worldview and dogma, since nothing can create itself, but something can rationally, scientifically, and reasonably be self-existent, therefore God becomes this "necessary being," for if everything had a beginning, there would be a time with nothing existing, and that is illogical (ex nihilo, nihil fit, or, out of nothing, nothing comes).  The only two possibilities are mind over matter or matter over mind--which created which?  This is not just spiritual or religious dogma, but philosophical and scientific reality.  You must start with God in the reckoning, for He is the moral center of the universe; worldviews go awry deifying man and dethroning God with no anchor or standard to live by.

In summation, we realize that there's a reason that the Bible is self-attesting and appeals to no authority, and makes no apology for God or attempts to prove Him, but unapologetically assumes Him and calls those that don't fools--if the Bible appealed to science, for instance, science would be the ultimate authority!  The whole purpose and point of there being a beginning is that there was a Beginner--that's why the secularist has a hard time admitting the truth of the beginning.     Soli Deo Gloria!

Are Ethics Universal?

OLD TESTAMENT ETHICS:  "And don't say, 'Now I can pay them back for what they've done to me!  I'll get even with them!'" (Prov. 24:29, NLT).
"Do not hold good from those who deserve it when it's in our power to help them" (Prov. 3:27, NLT).  "... As you have done to Israel, so it will be done to you.   All our evil deeds will fall back on your own heads"  (Obadiah 15, NLT).
JESUS' SUMMATION:  "... 'You must love the LORD your God with all your heart, all your soul, and all your mind.' This is the first and greatest commandment.  A second is equally important:   'Love your neighbor as yourself''" (Matt. 22:37-39, NLT).  "So whatever you wish that others would do to you, do also to them, for this is the Law and the Prophets"  (Matt. 7:12, ESV). 
PAUL:  "For the whole law can be summed up in this one command: 'Love your neighbor as yourself'" (Gal. 5:14, NLT).   "Love does no wrong to others, so love fulfills the requirements of God's law" (Rom. 13:10, NLT).  "Let love be genuine.  abhor what is evil; hold fast to what is good" (Rom. 12:9, ESV).  "Don't be defeated by evil, but defeat evil with good" (Rom. 12:21, CEV).  "Avoid every kind of evil" (1 Thess. 5:22, CEV). 
Scriptural Caveat:  "What sorrow for those who say that evil is good and good is evil, that dark is light and light is dark, that bitter is sweet and sweet bitter" (Isa. 5:20, NLT).

"If I am interested in reality, I must know what God is really like."--Plato
"No society has been able to maintain a "moral life without the aid of religion."--Will Durant
Morality is merely the expression of self-interest.--Karl Marx (paraphrased) 
"Our constitution was made only for a moral and religious people. It is wholly inadequate for the government of any other."--John Adams

Postmodernism wants to eradicate all traces of universal ethics or morals and make them personal, variable, subjective, and dependent.  This goes counter to what Immanuel Kant postulated that an act is ethical if the results were favorable by everyone doing it.  Just ask yourself the one question:  What if everyone did it?  One can point to the absurd example of the case of why we might know homosexuality is evil because if everyone was homosexual, society would fail to propagate and thrive after one generation!

Ethics with a capital E can be found if one has the presupposition that Christ is the Great Exemplar and showed us the way:  To follow Christ or do what He would do is the highest ethic attainable.  No one has ever surpassed his ethics or moral principles or fully lived up to them:  Muhammad, for instance, was a flawed man; Muslims give him superlative status as their example in ethics.

The Sermon on the Mount, or Jesus at His best, is the summation of our ethic, the gist of which is the Golden Rule:  Do unto others, as you would have them do unto you!  This principle raised the bar to make ethics a positive thing, not merely avoiding bad things, like the so-called Brazen Rule, saying that you should do unto others as they do unto you--tit for tat!  Americans believe firmly in this so-called principle.   Rabbi Hillel was asked to sum up ethics and he said it was merely not doing to others what you don't want to be done to you!  Confucius called this "reciprocity" and urged us to live by its principle.  Many today who live by the law of the jungle in this dog-eat-dog world where the survival of the fittest rules, engage in the so-called Iron Rule of doing unto others before they do unto you:  This actually can be interpreted as "might is right," the rule of authority setting standards.

If ethics are only relative, and Dostoevsky said that if there is no God all things are permissible, there is no reason to pursue absolute, universal standards of conduct, but they vary by culture and are relative to time, situation, and people concerned--make up your own system!  Immanuel Kant said that without God ethics are meaningless and cannot be predicated.  This is why denying God brings the ultimate conclusion that there is no universal standard or code of honor to live by.  But we all know that there is a sense of fair play and justice inherent to man that he is cognizant of.  We don't make up rules as we go along, and morality and ethics are not thought of, but are discovered, rather than invented by man; e.g., the rules of a game are not arising out of nowhere, but fairness was always there to be discovered.  We all appeal to some higher standard of right and wrong as the final arbiter.

Christianity is not a system of ethics, a list of dos and don'ts, but knowing God and applying that knowledge to the mundane life of the real world.  Ethics is what is required of all, whether Christian or not, and is necessary for all law and order and decent society.  Christians have raised the bar and made Christ the standard.  Even pagan scholars admire His moral principles and ascribe flawlessness to His character; even the crassest heretics have not accused him of being a sinner!  Of the known 52 virtues, all of them are mentioned in the Bible, while no other faith even comes close to this standard!  This high ethical standard of the Bible is one proof of its inspiration.

Right practice or orthopraxy is the logical conclusion of our right belief or orthodoxy, and we must apply what we learn to the real world.  The Greek philosophers said that ethics and truth are correlated and interdependent.  We believe in being truthful because we have faith in a God of truth; the Decalogue merely shows our duty to God and what is man's dilemma in this pursuit.   The whole question of "How should we then live" can only be adequately answered with God in the picture.

If you believe anything goes, because the ends justify the means or whatever is expedient or pragmatic is justified, or even pursuing the greatest good for the greatest number, you will be able to justify just about any evil in the world.  Hitler was very good at just pursuing what worked and what was practical without regard to a universal norm.  Natural law convicted the Nazis at Nuremberg, which relied on the fact that we should just know better and have a built-in conscience to be sensitive to universal norms or transcendent law, making us all responsible for our choices and conduct.

Morals are as sure as the law of gravity and must be obeyed or we suffer the consequences.  If you believe we are to be held accountable for our actions and that there are absolute right and wrong, this faith comes from God and entails His existence.  Your ethics cannot rise above your own ideals or standards: Muslims see Muhammad as superlative, yet he had many personal flaws, like being a thief and warrior out to steal, kill, and pillage for the purpose of gaining converts by force and for their wealth.  Islam is called the religion of the sword, and for good reason--they force people to convert and kill you for not believing, the very opposite of martyrdom, where one is killed for believing in a religion.  Politicians often listen to the voice of the people and think that the voice of the people is the voice of God; on the other hand, it's often the voice of the devil!  We don't vote on moral principles and they don't change or evolve with time; what was immoral in the day of Moses is still a crime and wrong today--we aren't just more enlightened and see things in a modern light.

"The character of Jesus has not only been the highest pattern of virtue but the strongest incentive to its practice," according to Irish historian and political philosopher W. E. H. Lecky, no Christian himself.  There could be no universal law without a universal Lawgiver!  Ethics "defines moral obligation as man's moral duty to God," according to Carl F. H. Henry. Ethics is no preference, but duty as creatures of God!  Living the good life is what ethics is about, and living up to our potential is our duty to God and man.  God is our guide and standard, and the present principle of pragmatism is evil, saying that the test of an idea is not its truthfulness, but its practicality and usefulness.  Scripture says that man knows right and wrong in his conscience and will be judged by that standard (cf. Rom. 2:15).  The one who knows the right thing to do, and fails to do it, sins (cf. James 4:17).

Unfortunately, moral relativism is prevalent today and people think we can all make up our own standards as we go along and they are justified as long as we make responsible choices and have good reasons to justify them.  We all have a sense of "ought" and even bemoan the fact there ought to be a law sometimes.  New Morality has infiltrated and many see ethics as the result of good motives:  if you mean well or have the motive of love--that's all that matters!  However, true morality is only when the motive, as well as the end, are justified.

Man can never live up to God's standards, given in the Decalogue or Ten Commandments, but this was never meant to be the solution, but only given to convince us we cannot keep it; the Christian life is impossible (without Christ!).  It is merely the whip driving us to the cross, and the mirror showing us what we are really made of, and a hammer (according to Martin Luther), smashing at our self-righteousness. No one has ever kept the Law of Moses except Christ, and he fulfilled it on our behalf to become our righteousness.  God demands perfection, and this is the standard, however, the direction is the test (cf. Matt. 5:48).

What is evident today is that man doesn't see himself in the image of God with the inherent duty to obey as Creator but as an animal.  Teach men they are animals; is it any wonder they act like them?  New Age goes to the extreme of creating your own system as you go along, and whatever feels right to you is your duty to God, others, and yourself. They proudly proclaimed in the Hippie counterculture: If it feels good, do it!  Today they proudly affirm that it works for them; that is what matters most.  But what is right for one person is right for all, and isn't individualized, but universal and applicable to all.   If there is not an objective basis for right and wrong, you would have to absolve Hitler of his crimes against humanity.  It's because we are in the image of God that so much is expected and we are not animals in heat-seeking pleasure and avoiding pain, but have a divine purpose for our existence: "to glorify God and enjoy Him forever,"--The Westminster Shorter Catechism.

We begin with God and explain our duties, we don't begin with man and come up with independent ethics on our own--by voting on them or being forced into it--man is not the measure of all things, as Secular Humanists posit.  Christian standards have been found worth believing in and in living out, and real faith is expressed in right conduct as its fruit.  Could it be that man has a universal sense of morals because there is a universal Lawgiver who gave them?  God forbid that we begin with the premise that whatever is legal is ethical because the laws of land can be wrong and are fallible. Being legal doesn't make it right!

There's a higher law to answer to.  "The fear of the LORD is the beginning of knowledge" (cf. Prov. 1:7). Is it any wonder that today's ethics is merely about not getting caught and coming up with a justification for behavior, or just responsible decision making? This is why Johnny can't tell right and wrong and character doesn't count anymore!

Western Civilization or Christendom depends upon the Bible as the foundation for all Common Law and we must never lose sight of this heritage and duty to God, our fellow man, our nation, and ourselves. The logical conclusion of moral relativism, on the other hand, is that in the final result, the stronger force will win and might be right, as it was in Nazi Germany.

In such times we only pray for some God of justice to end the evil.  Their justification was in the belief that we are only animals, not children of God and in His image, and whatever was sanctioned in nature was equally moral for us, since we are not responsible to a higher ethic or calling than mere animals, who are not morally responsible or capable.   "They are people who lack all sense of right and wrong, and who have turned themselves over to doing whatever feels good..." (Eph. 4:19, CEV).  Soli Deo Gloria!

The God Of Truth...

"When the foundations are destroyed, what can the righteous do?"  (Psalm 11:3, HCSB).  
"The entirety [sum] of Your word is truth..." (Psalm 119:160, HCSB),
"The revelation of Your words brings light and gives understanding to the inexperienced"  (Psalm 119:130, HCSB).
"God is spirit, and those who worship Him must worship Him in spirit and truth"  (John 4:24, HCSB).
"Refusing to acknowledge and defend the revealed truth of God is a particularly stubborn and pernicious kind of unbelief.  Advocating ambiguity, exalting uncertainty, or otherwise deliberately clouding the truth is a sinful way of nurturing unbelief."--John MacArthur 


Jesus said that there is "one true God" (cf. John 17:3),  and He is the personification of that truth, or that it's incarnate in Him (cf. John 14:6).  When Pilate asked Jesus what truth was (cf. John 18:38), he didn't wait around for an answer, the skeptic and cynic he was, thinking "might made right."  A sign that one is born again is the newly formed love of the truth--the unbeliever rejects the truth (cf. Rom. 2:8.)   (Just cf. 2 Thess. 2:10, ESV, saying, "... so they refused to love the truth and so be saved.")  All knowledge begins in faith, as Saint Augustine said, "I believe in order to understand."

Today the very notion and possibility of truth is brought into dispute and doubt ("Has God said?" was Satan's query), as we see a paradigmatic shift into a Postmodern era of skepticism, with a "hermeneutic [and epistemology, I might add] of suspicion" on all so-called facts. To them, truth is a "short-term contract" and cannot be known definitively, directly, universally, nor positively!"  They want us to believe truth is only relative to the person, situation, or time and is not absolute applying at all times to all peoples.  "O, that's your truth!"  They have declared war on truth itself!  But there is a war, the war for truth!  People are asking, "Is God for real?" "Is God relevant?"  Belief in God used to be the default position and proposition of Western Civilization, also known as Christendom, but now mysticism, skepticism, cynicism, scientific empiricism, and many other "isms" have become resurgent as a new type of atheist has become anti-God, not just unbelievers in Him. They want to erase all mention of God from the foundations of our way of life and society.

Christians are only those who know the truth and have been set free by it (cf. John 8:32).  One must recognize that truth and God are inseparable and that attacking truth is an affront and offense on God too.  Disavowing truth is tantamount to denying there is a God because they are correlated.  You cannot define absolute truth without putting God into the calculus and metric, or equation. Demetrius had a good report from the truth in 3 John 12, and this is a compliment for one engaged in the church contending for the faith (cf. Jude 3).

We are sanctified by the truth (cf. John 17:17), and are in the quest to know more truth as believers-- truth edifies, or builds us up spiritually.   But the Bible teaches that truth is more than propositional (stating of facts which are true), but personal and incarnate in Jesus, so we can know it personally and grow in our knowledge of the truth by knowing Him.  Statements can be true but only Scripture can rightly be called truth!  We say that truth is whatever God decrees, agrees with God, and is the expression of God (logos in English can mean "revelation" or "expression of an idea or thought").  God expressed Himself through Jesus in His final revelation to us.

A Christian who is blase, apathetic, or nonchalant about the truth or thinks it's irrelevant, is stunted, handicapped, paralyzed, and crippled in spiritual growth, and is also disobedient to the Word, for this is our means of sanctification through its truth (cf. John 17:17 again). We are all on the quest to know the truth, and when we find out we are wrong, it should be of concern, not ambivalence, without any cognizance, but a chance to get to know God better; for "all truth is God's truth" and "meets at the top" (cf. Saint Augustine; Saint Thomas Aquinas).  He, who rejects truth with a capital T, rejects the God of all truth!  

Yes, truth matters and some churches are bailing out theologically thinking that only application, such as loving and doing good deeds are all that matters to God--au contraire, God is concerned that we have the mind of Christ (cf. 1 Cor. 2:16), and think in a godly manner, expressing and bearing witness to the truth in a world, as lights in a dark place, not to be hidden, muffled, or destroyed.  The church is to be the "pillar and ground of truth"  (cf. 1 Tim. 3:15).

We don't need to revamp, retool, or update the church to relate to or fit into modern thinking or philosophy such as Postmodernism, which denies the reality of knowable, absolute truth, which is shrink-wrapped, freeze-dried, and even nailed down as the final orthodoxy, not to be questioned. Some may refer to a "church of what's happening now."   Equally paramount is the issue of teaching sound doctrine (cf. Titus 2:1), and not losing track of orthodoxy and what is heresy through polemics, because an equal threat to our church's health is the ignorance of the sheep of sound doctrine and the truth and even knowing what they believe theologically (this is a pernicious sort of unbelief and disbelief!).   If the devil cannot make a church bad, void of good works, he makes them mere do-gooders, and he will corrupt its doctrine and lead it into heresy and error, forsaking the pursuit of truth and love of the truth.  Look at the ambitious humanitarian efforts of Roman Catholics compared to their erroneous teachings!

Everyone will be judged and/or condemned by the truth available to them and what they did and accomplished with it.  There is no excuse for ignorance (which is not bliss, either!), if one engages in the willful neglect of it, having had ample opportunity and didn't take advantage of that light God gave the person.

Christians must maintain that objective, absolute truth does exist that we can know with certainty by revelation from God ("The fear of the LORD is the beginning of knowledge," cf. Prov. 1:7). This type of truth is always true, regardless of who denies or affirms it, and is true whether believed or not, and it always applies.  We believe in the one God of truth, who cannot lie (cf. Titus 1:2), and "no lie is of the truth" (cf. 1 John 2:21).  "So I am writing to you not because you don't know the truth but because you know the difference between truth and lies"  (1 John 2:21, NLT).

We are all entitled to our own opinions, but not our own truths! For instance, Postmodern thought says, "All truth is relative [i.e., to you]."  This truth claim is invalid and cannot possibly be true, containing a self-contradiction, forcing you to believe in the absolute truth that all truth is relative, and this statement must also be relative.  What they should say is that one's truths may be a private matter to know, and one's opinions need not affect yours.  But they say, "Your truth has no power over me, and that's your truth!"

Christians must affirm that truth is revealed, and immutable, always applicable and knowable all through and incarnate in Jesus, who said, "I am the truth"  (cf. John 14:6).  The only way to find truth is to commence with God, the origin of truth, since denying Him leaves no possibility of truth's existence, but only facts and knowledge being in a state of flux and unknowable.  Where you begin has a lot to do with where you'll end up!  The Postmodern teacher would introduce his lesson with the disclaimer saying, "You can know nothing for certain!"  And he is sure of that!  If you take God out of the equation of truth, there is no justification for it and no reason to believe you've arrived at orthodoxy or absolute truth.

Note that all knowledge is contingent and, when you begin, some propositions must be accepted by faith, it only matters what set of presuppositions you are willing to assume--and accept--not whether you are being rational or logical. If you presume there's no possibility of a God, you will come to the conclusion there is no supernatural at all and evolution is the logical conclusion of reality and way to explain everything without God in the picture.  The Bible makes it clear that the truth is not in the infidel (cf. 1 John 1:8) and establishes the Bible as the final arbiter of truth ("Your Word is truth," cf. Psalm 119:160).

In sum, the church body needs real warriors who will enlist in the battle for truth and engage in the ongoing warfare in this angelic conflict, contending for the faith delivered unto us in the Word of God, not too timid to fly their Christian colors and daring to be "Daniels,"(daring to stand alone) and firmly resisting the evil being perpetrated, and also creeping in to the church ("...some ungodly people have wormed their way into the church ["crept in unawares" in another version]..."--cf. Jude 4, NLT).    Soli Deo Gloria! 

Are You Sure You're Saved?

We are commanded to make our election and calling sure (cf. 2 Pet. 1:10) and this is done by searching our own hearts, examining our fruit, claiming Scripture promises to lean on and sensing the ministry of the Spirit "bearing witness to our spirit" (cf. Rom. 8:16).  Christianity is about walking in the Spirit, and increasing in faith--genuine faith is penitent and not inert or static (it grows!).  We walk by faith (cf. 2 Cor. 5:7), and progress from faith to faith (cf. Rom. 1:17).  Being sure of one's position in Christ is only the door, not the journey or destination.

Knowing we are saved is not an automatic fruit, and it's not presumption nor arrogance to know for sure (as is promised that we can know in 1 John 5:13). Believing and assurance don't mean we know all the answers and have no doubts--we just believed in spite of them.  It's not the preacher's job description to certify our salvation, but he can offer reassurance.   Even though Catholics call assurance a "sin of presumption," it's obedience and a boon to our walk to know for sure without a doubt.

Some people have this assurance because they claim Bible verses, and are not ignorant of the Word, but take it at face value: one such Scriptural "birth certificate" might be the verse in John 1:12, which says that anyone who receives Christ has the right to become a child of God.  This assurance goes hand in hand with security--they can be distinguished, but not separated--the flip side of assurance is security that you cannot forfeit your salvation, even if you fall into sin, for we have an "Advocate with the Father" when we do sin (cf. 1 John 2:1).  He always intercedes on our behalf (cf. Heb. 7:25).

Knowing we are saved is only the beginning and first step of our walk with Jesus, the "Author and Finisher of our faith" (cf. Heb. 12:2).   A Christian is no spiritual giant just because he is 100 percent sure of his salvation, if his life isn't consistent with the Spirit, and he isn't producing good fruit.  You can have many unanswered questions and still grow in Christ!  Only in glory will all our questions be answered (cf. John 16:23).  Faith isn't believing in spite of the evidence; it's obeying despite the consequences.  "By faith Abraham obeyed," (cf. Heb. 11:8) despite the fact that he doubted God's promise, he went ahead and obeyed anyway!  Notice that in the hall of faith chapter 11 of Hebrews it portrays all the saints as obeying in faith!  Faith is abstract and you see it in action, you don't describe it.  You don't need all the answers to believe, but can go right ahead and choose to believe anyway!  God can increase our faith, but that means more responsibility!

We are not to take advantage of grace, to insult the Spirit of grace and misuse it.  Knowing we are saved should be all the more motivation to live for Christ--for the more, we are given, the more God expects from us in return.  God is only pleased with faithfulness and faith, and we must not divorce or separate the two, though they can be distinguished.  Faith is only measured in obedience ("Only he who believes is obedient; only he who is obedient believes," --Dietrich Bonhoeffer), and not experiences, mystical or real life, nor by emotions or feelings, which may be sentiment and signs we have never grown up in the faith so as not to depend on feelings.  Faith, not feelings, please God (cf. Heb. 11:6).  Our ecstasies, visions, dreams, and mystic or surreal experiences are not the measure faith; God is looking for obedience, not success or achievements.  Blessed are those who have not seen!  (Cf. John 20:29).

The best way to be sure is to have the witness of a fruitful life that supports your faith--showing that it's genuine, saving faith--not bogus.  God isn't going to ask us at our final audit at the Bema, or Judgment Seat of Christ, how sure we were of our salvation, or how big our faith was, but what we did with it and whether we grew to know, love, and obey Jesus.   It's not how big your faith is, but how big your God, and it's not the amount of faith, but the object that matters.  We must learn to trust and obey Christ in the mundane activities of life and to grow in our fellowship and relationship with Him.

If we are honest, all of us have been at the point of the man who cried, "I believe, help thou mine unbelief!"  Don't confuse works and grace, or fact and feeling (the divine order is fact-faith-feeling).  Doubt is not the opposite of faith, but one of its elements and is healthy.  Faith is not to be perfect or it wouldn't be faith, but knowledge, and what God wants is sincere, unfeigned, faith without any hypocrisy.  We are not to be pretenders who have a veneer to hide behind. We all have feet of clay and must progress in our walk as we get to know the Lord, the ultimate goal.

I propose two illustrations to exhibit faith:  a boy flying a kite on a cloudy day was asked how he knew the kite was still up there, when unseen, he said he felt a tug every now and then to reassure him;  another one is why you believe in the sun being up there when you don't see it:  "Because I see everything else!"  God opens the eyes or our hearts to see spiritually so we can say with the blind man:  "... But I know this:  I was blind, but now I see"  (John 9:25, NLT).

Who can refute such personal reality?  Not knowing for sure makes you a handicapped Christian in your walk, who cannot grow and mature in the faith as a seasoned believer! A word to the wise is sufficient:  False assurance, overconfidence, spurious faith, and reckless living are more of a problem than the weaker brother who stumbles and has doubts--lacking full assurance.  In sum, you must morph beyond mere assurance and fulfill your destiny and calling.   Soli Deo Gloria!