# articles

title: Trespassing in the Womb
topic: Bioethics
author: Greg Koukl
date: 03/30/2013
source: https://www.str.org/w/trespassing-in-the-womb
content:
            <div> 
		<p><em>If this argument works, then we should release Susan Smith.</em></p>

<p>I want to talk about a recent book that’s created a flurry on the talk radio circuits. It’s entitled Breaking the Abortion Deadlock: From Choice to Consent, by Eileen McDonagh. It hit with a splash about three weeks ago. A piece in the <em>LA Times</em> on February 3 entitled, “The Tiny, Voiceless Enemy Within”&nbsp;(referring to the unborn child) dealt with the McDonagh’s thesis.</p>

<p>I’m actually a bit mystified why people are so taken with this book, because the argument it offers is not new. It’s very similar to the famous violinist illustration that goes back to 1971 and philosopher Judith Jarvis Thompson. McDonagh picks up the same line of reasoning as Thompson, arguing that a woman is justified in taking the life of her unborn child because she has the liberty to use lethal force against any dangerous intruder in her life.</p>

<p>If a woman is being attacked, raped, kidnapped—if her life is being threatened in some fashion, such that she faces a significant loss of liberty—then the law gives her the latitude to use force to repel her attacker, even to use lethal force in some circumstances. Pregnancy, McDonagh argues, is this kind of situation. A woman is being attacked by another human being, and therefore she has the moral liberty to repel her attacker with force, even lethal force.</p>

<p>This argument is very similar to Judith Jarvis Thompson’s argument in which she imagines a woman who is kidnapped and wakes up to find herself surgically attached to a world-famous violinist who, for nine months, needs her body to survive. After this, the violinist will do fine on his own, but he must have this particular woman in order to survive for those nine months.</p>

<p>Thompson asks if this woman is morally obliged to stay connected to the violinist who is living off her body. It might be a virtuous thing if she did, Thompson agrees, but is she morally obliged to do so?</p>

<p>In both of these illustrations, a self-defense argument is offered in which a mother is being “attacked”&nbsp;by her unborn child. In both cases the proponents of this view suggest it’s morally acceptable for such a woman to “defend herself.”</p>

<p>One danger of both versions of this argument—Thompson’s version and McDonagh’s version—is that both concede full humanity and full personhood of the unborn. This undercuts the pro-lifer’s main tactic: Prove that the unborn is a human person, then it will be clear that we certainly ought not abort this child who is defenseless, but rather we should protect him.</p>

<p>Having conceded what we’re trying to prove, they then argue it’s still morally legitimate to take the life of the child, in the same way that it would be morally legitimate for you to protect yourself from an attacker or to disconnect yourself from another human being who has, against your will, attached himself to your body to draw sustenance and life from you for a season.</p>

<p>This argument is not just dangerous because it concedes what pro-lifers try to prove. It’s frightening because of what it asserts regarding the moral obligations of a mother to her child.</p>

<p>These kinds of arguments have force because they are arguments using a parallel. What they’re trying to do is to construct for you a circumstance where the moral conclusion seems to be obvious. Yes, it seems obvious that the woman is not obliged to stay connected to the violinist. Yes, it seems obvious that a woman ought to be allowed to protect herself from an invader or an attacker or a kidnapper, and protect herself using lethal force. If we concede those two things, the argument goes, then we must concede the legitimacy of abortion, because there’s a relevant parallel between the illustrations and abortion.</p>

<p>The first time I heard the violinist argument, I was getting on the on-ramp of the 405 freeway in Southern California. I remember it so well because I was stunned by the argument. It seemed to make so much sense. I thought to myself, How do I answer this argument? Now I know the answer to my own question.</p>

<p>These arguments are dangerous because some think the illustrations offered are actually good parallels to pregnancy, that being hooked up to a violinist who is a stranger, or fighting off the aggressive blows of an attacker or kidnapper or rapist, are all parallel to pregnancy. Some people buy that.</p>

<p>There are so many things wrong with this argument, I’m not sure where to begin. But here’s a good place: Why should we admit that a woman has no more obligation to her own child than she has to a violinist that she doesn’t even know, or to someone who’s trying to attack and do malicious harm to her?</p>

<p>Do you see what this argument does? It claims there’s a parallel between these circumstances and pregnancy, which means a mother has no more moral obligation to her unborn child than she has to strangers. People think this is compelling, persuasive, truthful. Doesn’t that frighten you? Shouldn’t we be frightened because somebody thinks an argument is persuasive that holds that mothers have no more moral obligation to their own children than they do to strangers?</p>

<p>Do you remember the couple in New York State that took a trip down to Florida and left their kids alone in the apartment to fend for themselves? Remember the uproar because of the flagrant irresponsibility these parents showed? Well, if McDonagh’s and Thompson’s arguments work, then those parents should be released from jail. Why? Because they are no more responsible for their own children than the are to strangers across town.</p>

<p>Why couldn’t they argue that their children were actually invading the privacy of their home? They were trespassing and therefore should be ousted for stealing, eating the food in the cupboards. They can’t because we understand there’s a moral obligation parents have toward children that they do not have toward strangers.</p>

<p>But Eileen McDonagh wants to argue that the child growing inside of the woman is a trespasser. Where does she expect the baby to go? One trespasses when he’s not in his rightful place. Ladies and gentlemen, a baby who is developing in the womb belongs there.</p>

<p>Not only does he belong there, but it’s an odd argument for the woman to say that this baby is attacking her body when it was this woman’s body that produced the baby to begin with. It’s this woman’s body that’s cooperating with and nurturing the child, helping it to grow, protecting it and moving it along.</p>

<p>Mom’s beef shouldn’t be with the baby. Her complaint ought to be with herself. Rather she should say, “I am initiating, aiding and abetting this attack upon myself. My own actions are hurting me.”&nbsp;That’s what’s really going on.</p>

<p>Now, it’s not Mom hurting herself in the sense that the baby inside of her is the same as her own body. The baby is a separate body. But it was created by her body, and is being nurtured and cared for by her body, and her body is aiding and abetting the process. So how is it that the unborn is now the one to blame for attacking this woman?</p>

<p>What McDonagh wants to argue is that a woman has no moral obligation toward her own children, that children can be eliminated when they become burdensome and difficult and in the way, when they take away her personal freedom. Well, every child does that, whether it’s in the womb or outside of the womb. If she wants to argue that a child’s life can be taken when it takes away the freedom of its mother, then every child is at risk, ladies and gentlemen.</p>

<p>This is Susan Smith ethics. Remember Susan Smith? She was jilted by her lover, who didn’t care for her kids. She thought she could get him back if she got rid of the kids. So she belted them into the car and drove the car into the lake.</p>

<p>The nation was horrified. But didn’t Susan Smith simply exercise the very right that Eileen McDonagh is arguing for? These children were a weight, a problem, a demand, a difficulty, an assault, a violation, trespassing on her life, making it difficult, depriving her from opportunities. Why not drive them into the lake? They were “attacking”&nbsp;her. It was self-defense.</p>

<p>No, Susan Smith had a moral obligation to her children, and it doesn’t really matter whether they were inside of her or outside of her. Their mere location is irrelevant to the question of moral responsibility.</p>

<p>Keep in mind, by the way, that the argument being offered already concedes the full personhood and humanity of the unborn. So when I use the parallel with Susan Smith’s children, it’s an accurate parallel, given the conditions set forth by the author herself in this illustration. It’s a very accurate parallel. There’s no difference. All the relevant pieces are in place.</p>

<p>If McDonagh’s argument works, release Susan Smith. If her argument works, release those people who left their children alone while they took their bodies—which they have a right to do anything they want with, allegedly—down to Florida and enjoyed a vacation.</p>

<p>And if this argument works, no child in any sense of dependency on his or her parents is safe from Eileen McDonagh and her ilk.</p>
</div>

            <br>
            <!-- Share links -->
            <a id="facebook-share" href="https://www.facebook.com/sharer.php?u=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.str.org%2Fw%2Ftrespassing-in-the-womb" aria-label="Share this page on Facebook" title="Share on Facebook">
            	<i class="fab fa-facebook-f fa-lg" aria-hidden="true"></i>
            </a>
            <a id="twitter-share" href="https://twitter.com/intent/tweet?url=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.str.org%2Fw%2Ftrespassing-in-the-womb" aria-label="Share this page on Twitter" title="Share on Twitter">
            	<i class="fab fa-twitter fa-lg" aria-hidden="true"></i>
            </a>
            <a id="email-share" href="mailto:?body=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.str.org%2Fw%2Ftrespassing-in-the-womb" aria-label="Email this page to a friend" title="Email">
            	<i class="far fa-envelope fa-lg" aria-hidden="true"></i>
            </a>
            <a href="https://www.printfriendly.com" class="printfriendly" onclick="window.print();return false;" title="Printer Friendly and PDF"><i class="fa fa-print fa-lg" aria-hidden="true"></i>
            </a>
            
          


title: Flooded with Floods
topic: History
author: Greg Koukl
date: 03/22/2013
source: https://www.str.org/w/flooded-with-floods
content:
            <div> 
		<p><em>Do other ancient flood stories undermine the historicity of the Biblical flood account?</em></p>

<p>In a recent debate on the existence of God, well known skeptic Michael Shermer attempted to discredit the biblical account of the flood by citing a similar Sumerian account written much earlier than Moses’&nbsp;record. Many other cultures have flood stories in their mythologies, Shermer pointed out. Therefore, he reasoned, all were myths.</p>

<p>It made me think of winter in Chicago where I grew up. When the snow begins to fall, kids might hear their grandfathers talk about the great blizzard of ’67. Some will hear about four days of storm with drifts five feet high. Others will hear of a snowstorm that lasted a week and buried whole houses.</p>

<p>When boys compare their fathers’&nbsp;tales, do you think they’ll conclude that dads just have a habit of making up yarns about blizzards? No, I suspect they’ll figure all their fathers ramble on about the blizzard of ’67 because it actually snowed pretty hard that winter. It did. I was there.</p>

<p>It’s true that virtually every major culture has a flood story in its folklore. It’s curious, isn’t it, that there aren’t any worldwide fire myths or global hailstone tales mixed in. Everybody talks about the flood, though. Maybe the best explanation is that there really was a flood of such magnitude it kept people talking for thousands of years, even though some of the details got mixed up in the retelling.</p>

<p>I think we owe thanks to Michael Shermer for pointing out all the collaborating evidence for a world-wide flood.</p>
</div>

            <br>
            <!-- Share links -->
            <a id="facebook-share" href="https://www.facebook.com/sharer.php?u=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.str.org%2Fw%2Fflooded-with-floods" aria-label="Share this page on Facebook" title="Share on Facebook">
            	<i class="fab fa-facebook-f fa-lg" aria-hidden="true"></i>
            </a>
            <a id="twitter-share" href="https://twitter.com/intent/tweet?url=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.str.org%2Fw%2Fflooded-with-floods" aria-label="Share this page on Twitter" title="Share on Twitter">
            	<i class="fab fa-twitter fa-lg" aria-hidden="true"></i>
            </a>
            <a id="email-share" href="mailto:?body=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.str.org%2Fw%2Fflooded-with-floods" aria-label="Email this page to a friend" title="Email">
            	<i class="far fa-envelope fa-lg" aria-hidden="true"></i>
            </a>
            <a href="https://www.printfriendly.com" class="printfriendly" onclick="window.print();return false;" title="Printer Friendly and PDF"><i class="fa fa-print fa-lg" aria-hidden="true"></i>
            </a>
            
          


title: Does God Have to Obey the Ten Commandments?
topic: Philosophy
author: Greg Koukl
date: 03/22/2013
source: https://www.str.org/w/does-god-have-to-obey-the-ten-commandments-
content:
            <div> 
		<p><em>If you want to call moral rules absolutes in the sense that they can never be trumped, then that is probably too strong a definition and not a Biblical definition. And if you are not careful, it makes God subject to His own rules in a way that puts the rules above God instead of God above the rules.</em></p>

<p>If it is immoral for us to kill people, why is it okay for God to kill people? Doesn’t God keep His own commandments? And if He doesn’t keep His own commandments, then what does it mean to call such commandments an absolute when God Himself doesn’t have to keep them? And, if they are not absolutes, then why do we have to keep them? Then one begins to wonder, maybe God’s rules are not necessary, they are just things He cooks up for us that apply to us and mess up our fun. This is a tact that people take in raising this particular issue. So, how are we to take the commandments seriously?</p>

<p>The first thing in answering the objection is to make sure we understand exactly what the commandment says. “Thou shalt not kill”&nbsp;is actually a misquote. The commandment isn’t against killing; it’s against murder. Just as in English, the Hebrew language has two different words; and the word murder is what is described in the commandment, not killing. It should be fairly evident to people that God is not proscribing all killing because part of the very Mosaic law that God gave capital punishment as an appropriate punishment for quite a number of crimes. You can’t say, I forbid you to kill, and by the way, kill. That would be an obvious contradiction, and that is obviously not what God has in mind. No, the prohibition is against murder, which is an inappropriate kind of killing. And then God talks about certain circumstances when killing is legitimate and other circumstances when it is not legitimate. Taking a human life without proper justification is murder and is wrong. But if the circumstance changes and there is appropriate justification, then arguably this is a morally relevant factor that changes the moral nature of the act of taking a life. Therefore, you would be justified in taking his life in self-defense. When the circumstance changes in a morally relevant way, the application of the moral rule changes.</p>

<p>The question is, does the circumstance change in a morally relevant way when God is the subject in view? To kind of clarify that, I could ask a question: What is your most prized possession? Say it’s a mountain bike. Okay, if you owned your mountain bike is it okay if you disassemble it and spread it around? If it’s yours it would be okay. I can do what I want with my own things. But what if someone else did that to your bike? Well, that would be wrong because someone else doesn’t have the liberty to do that with something that is not their own. Yet, you being the owner of that thing do have the liberty to do whatever you want with what is yours.</p>

<p>I think that is the same principle that informs this question about God. God tells us that we should not kill other human beings. Why shouldn’t we? You see a clear picture of the rationale against murder in Genesis 9 right after the flood. We see God prohibiting the shedding of man’s blood. There is the metaphor for murder. The way God puts it is this: ��When man sheds man’s blood, by man his blood shall be shed for [here is the rationale] in the image of God, God created man.”&nbsp;God is saying, You kill another human being and other human beings can kill you because when you kill another human being you are killing someone who is made in my image. There is a factor that is morally relevant to the circumstance: the factor of ownership. This factor is a morally relevant distinction that makes a different moral rule applies there.</p>

<p>Why is murder wrong? According to Genesis 9 the reason that murder is wrong is you are destroying something of God’s, something that bears His nameplate - His image. You destroy another human being and you will be punished for destroying God’s property.</p>

<p>Can God destroy God’s property? The answer seems to be yes. You see, God is the King of the universe. He is King of the universe not because He is the most powerful, and not by some arbitrary rule, but because He created it and it belongs to Him from the beginning. God can do what He wants with His universe. If He chooses to give life, He can give it. If He chooses to take life, He can take it. It’s not immoral for God to take the life of His own property.</p>

<p>While I was reading the Scriptures this morning, in the Gospels Jesus is giving the parable of the landowner who had hired different people at different times of the day, but paid them all the same thing. The landowner paid the guy who came in last at 4 o’clock the same as the guy who came in early in the morning. The guy who came in first was upset. Here is what Jesus said, speaking as the landowner, Can’t I do what I want with that which is mine? We had an agreement and I paid you what we agreed. Now, if I want to give my money away to somebody else for less work, it’s my money. Can’t I do what I want with my own money?</p>

<p>I think the principle applies here, too. The universe is God’s, and if He wants to take life, He can do so. I’m not saying He doesn’t have reasons, but I’m saying He doesn’t have to give reasons because it is fully within His purview to do as He wishes.</p>

<p>By the way, we have an intuition that informs us. I have been drawing on this intuition by giving parallels. There is an argument that people have offered against capital punishment that I actually don’t think works, but it turns out to draw on the same intuition. The part that draws on this intuition I think is accurate. One thing critics say about capital punishment is that we shouldn’t kill other human beings through capital punishment because “we shouldn’t play God.”&nbsp;That is, we ought not be doing the kind of thing that is God’s prerogative but not ours. I certainly agree with the principle that we ought not to do things that are only God’s prerogative, but not ours. I don’t think that principle applies in the circumstance of capital punishment because, as far as I can tell, God Himself is the one that gave the application for governments to use capital punishment to punish people under certain circumstances. So, there is a delegated authority there. But notice the intuition. It is appropriate for God to do what He wants with is His own. We shouldn’t play God, but is it appropriate for God to play God because He is God. That is, He can do the things that only God should be doing. And in this line of thinking, only God should be taking life. That implies that God has the legitimacy to take life when He wants. As I said, if He takes the life of one individual or millions of individuals through some large-scale judgment, that certainly is His prerogative.</p>

<p>The simple answer is, no, God does not have to keep all the Ten Commandments. In fact, it is hard to imagine how many of them even apply to Him. Does God have to keep the Sabbath? Does God have to dedicate a portion of His week to the Lord? No, that’s for His subjects, not for the King. Should God not have any other Gods before Him? That’s kind of ludicrous. It doesn’t apply. He doesn’t have to honor His parents. He doesn’t have parents. What about coveting? Thou shall not covet. What is coveting? Isn’t it desiring something that is not your own? Is it possible for God to covet? What is there that is not properly His? Nothing, therefore God can’t covet. The Ten Commandments are an expression of God’s desire and in many ways an expression of His character, but they are expressions of His character that have a certain application to human beings who are His subjects and the rules do not apply to Him in the same way.</p>

<p>The question that is raised here is the question of absolutes. Then those rules aren’t absolutes. If what you mean by the word absolute is that there is a rule that is somehow fixed in heaven and applies to everything under heaven by its own force and there are no exemptions or exceptions to the rule, and everything and everyone and everybody must bow to the rule, including God for it to be an absolute, well, then there aren’t any absolutes like that. I think that is an abuse of the word. No, I think an absolute isn’t the kind of thing that never is exempted, but is an objective moral rule that has to do with a circumstance and is always applicable in those circumstances applied in the same way. But when the morally relevant circumstance is changed, like you go from man to God as the players, then it may not be that that objective principle applies in these other circumstances.</p>

<p>That is why I avoid the word absolute in my discussion of these issues. An absolute is seen by many in an extreme way when, in fact, what we have in the Scripture are objective moral principles that are staggered in their significance, but some are more important that others. This is clear from things that Jesus said and from other teachings in the Scripture. There are greater goods and lesser goods. Sometimes you are stuck in what is called a moral dilemma and you have to do one thing or another, both of which are wrong. You must either protect human life and lie or hand over the innocent life to be killed. It happened to Corrie ten Boom and she chose to lie to protect Jews from the Nazis. In so doing, she did not do something wrong. She didn’t do the lesser of two evils in my view. She did the greater of two goods. Therefore, lying in that circumstance was even morally obligatory. There are two instances in the Bible where we see exactly the same thing, the Egyptian mid-wives protecting the Hebrew newborns and Rahab protecting the Jewish spies. These people are even praised for what they did.</p>

<p>If you want to call moral rules absolutes in the sense that they can never be trumped, then that is probably too strong a definition and not a Biblical definition. And if you are not careful, it makes God subject to His own rules in a way that puts the rules above God instead of God above the rules.</p>
</div>

            <br>
            <!-- Share links -->
            <a id="facebook-share" href="https://www.facebook.com/sharer.php?u=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.str.org%2Fw%2Fdoes-god-have-to-obey-the-ten-commandments-" aria-label="Share this page on Facebook" title="Share on Facebook">
            	<i class="fab fa-facebook-f fa-lg" aria-hidden="true"></i>
            </a>
            <a id="twitter-share" href="https://twitter.com/intent/tweet?url=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.str.org%2Fw%2Fdoes-god-have-to-obey-the-ten-commandments-" aria-label="Share this page on Twitter" title="Share on Twitter">
            	<i class="fab fa-twitter fa-lg" aria-hidden="true"></i>
            </a>
            <a id="email-share" href="mailto:?body=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.str.org%2Fw%2Fdoes-god-have-to-obey-the-ten-commandments-" aria-label="Email this page to a friend" title="Email">
            	<i class="far fa-envelope fa-lg" aria-hidden="true"></i>
            </a>
            <a href="https://www.printfriendly.com" class="printfriendly" onclick="window.print();return false;" title="Printer Friendly and PDF"><i class="fa fa-print fa-lg" aria-hidden="true"></i>
            </a>
            
          


title: Prayer and Free Will
topic: Theology
author: Greg Koukl
date: 03/22/2013
source: https://www.str.org/w/prayer-and-free-will
content:
            <div> 
		<p><em>The phrase, “God won’t tamper with our free will”&nbsp;makes all answers to prayer impossible, except answers of direct intervention.</em></p>

<p>I will say at the outset that I’m still working through this issue but some of my ruminations may help you work through it too. There are some serious problems if a person has too robust a view of free will. What do I mean by that? I acknowledge that men have free will, but this freedom is within certain limits. There are some things that men can’t do. We are restricted by things beyond our control. We were born at a certain time of history, in a certain economic strata, of a certain race, of a certain gender, etc. Those things are necessarily going to influence the choices that we can make. There are obviously some things that we don’t choose so whenever we talk of free will we must understand that our free will is not entirely autonomous, but it is somewhat restricted by circumstances that are beyond our control. The limits may be broad or narrow depending upon your theological position.</p>

<p>Part of my own thinking here is trying to figure out how broad or narrow those limits are. In other words, how much latitude does man have in terms of his free will, especially as it may or may not be restricted by the actions of God? This conversation of free will and the sovereignty of God usually comes up in discussions about the security of believers or, from a Reformed perspective, the perseverance of the saints. If you come to a point in your life that you commit your life to Jesus Christ and accept the forgiveness that He offers, in Christian terminology you get saved or born again, is that act of being born again, rescued, forgiven of all your sins and having a secure position in heaven irreversible or is it possible by losing your faith or sinning too much that that can be reversed and then you can be damned sometime afterwards? Generally when you talk about free will and God’s sovereignty it relates to this issue of eternal security.</p>

<p>Now I have always held that genuine regeneration is irreversible. But what’s curious about this whole discussion is that I’ve always held that security really has nothing to do with free will at all; it has to do with decisions God Himself makes about what is owed Him. What is the problem really? Man has sinned against God. God is owed moral perfection and when we sin we break His law and we become beholden to God in some fashion. That has serious ramifications for us. Now the question of security really has nothing to do with what we freely choose to do with our eternal existence because the issue has to be with God’s attitude toward a debt owed Him.</p>

<p>Now one might argue that we are not predestined, we in fact choose God. I’ll even grant that for the sake of argument right now. But even if we do choose God and God takes the action that brings regeneration, that action being that He forgives us of our sins, it strikes me that it has nothing to do with our free will if God continues to maintain that attitude of forgiveness. He’s the one who is owed the debt. If I can use an illustration here, it’s like if you owed me a million dollars and you came and asked, “Please forgive me the debt.”&nbsp;I said, “I forgive you. You owe me this debt no more.”&nbsp;Now it strikes me that my continuing attitude of forgiveness of the debt toward you really has no relationship to your free will. You could go on and do whatever you want, but the status of the debt is for me to decide because the debt is owed me. If I decide to continue to keep the slate clean, even against the desire of the one who has been forgiven the debt, that’s my business entirely. It has to do with my will and doesn’t have anything to do with the will of anyone else.</p>

<p>What I’m saying is that if you reject the notion of assurance, and some do, I believe that you’re not out of the woods on the issue of free will. Let me explain. Part of the argument that people raise about God’s sovereignty and free will goes something like this: God is a gentleman who does not tamper with our free will. This is why He can’t elect us because that would be tampering with our free will and He doesn’t do that. Two observations. First, the Scripture doesn’t say that in so many words. And it doesn’t even seem to imply that God is a gentleman that doesn’t tamper with our free will. In fact, there are a number of examples that refute that notion. God does tamper.</p>

<p>Look at Paul on the road to Damascus, for example. He was a total, active rebel against the church of God, dragging off men, women and children and throwing them in prison, presiding over the execution of some Christians, an enemy to the cross of Christ. God knocks him off his horse on the road to Damascus. There’s a loud noise and God speaks to him. He goes blind. All of this happens in a split second. It seems to me under those circumstances that discussions about Paul’s free will are a little bit academic. Is God tampering? Looks like it.</p>

<p>Look at poor Nebechadnezzar. God had him chewing grass out in the fields for three years because he had refused to give glory to God. Then the text says, “He came to his senses, looked heavenward and gave God the glory.”&nbsp;And of course his sanity was restored to him. Was God tampering with Nebie’s free will? Seems like it to me.</p>

<p>Even apart from that, the notion that God doesn’t tamper with our free will presents some other problems. For example, what about praying for someone’s salvation? What is it that you’re praying for? It seems to me that you’re asking God to intervene in that person’s will in a way that will cause them to put their faith in Him, and had He not done that they would not have chosen to put their faith in Him. Ergo the prayer. Isn’t that prayer a request for God to interfere with the will of men? It seems to me patently obvious that that’s the case. It seems difficult for someone to argue that God does not tamper with free will and then pray that God would save somebody and bring them into the Kingdom. I think that if most people are honest with themselves, and there may be exceptions to this, that they are asking God to interfere to the degree that a person’s mind will be changed from what it would have been. This problem doesn’t just present itself when praying for someone’s salvation. It goes quite a bit further.</p>

<p>It seems to me that it would be a problem if you pray for anything that involves human agency. The phrase, “God won’t tamper with our free will”&nbsp;makes all answers to prayer impossible, except answers of direct intervention. Like when Peter was in jail and an angel released him. There was no other human being involved there. Jesus multiplied the loaves and fishes. He raises Lazarus in John 11. These are things that involve the direct intervention in a circumstance by God that doesn’t involved any other human will so obviously nobody���s will is violated. But let’s face it, is that the kind of prayer we usually pray? Are we rescued by angels? Do we multiply bread? Do we see people raised from the dead in direct response to our prayer? While on occasion those things happen, the garden variety of prayer is a request where other human wills are involved. In fact, it’s other men’s wills that are the problem that we’re seeking God to deal with.</p>

<p>I’ll give you some illustrations that I think will resonate with you. Think of something that you’ve prayed for recently. Maybe you’ve prayed for a new job. Maybe you prayed at a rescue where babies were going to be aborted. Maybe you prayed for Bill Clinton. Aren’t all of those prayers a request for God to intervene in the free will decision making of other people? Aren’t we asking that some employer who wouldn’t normally have done so would now hire you for a job? Or that some person who was going to get an abortion would now choose not to. Or that Bill Clinton or whoever is in authority who would have passed a law to upset our peaceful and tranquil life of godliness and dignity would now change his mind so he would not act in that way?</p>

<p>I have a friend who is in India right now with Youth With a Mission, but on her way there she was diverted to Thailand. There was an air traffic controllers strike so they had to lay over in Thailand. What’s interesting is that the YWAM team in Thailand had been praying for more helpers. They had a particular need and, low and behold, there was this team that was delayed in Thailand for two weeks who could help them out. They saw this, and I think rightly so, as a wonderful answer to prayer.</p>

<p>But look what’s going on here. What ended up causing this answer to prayer was a traffic controllers strike. Setting aside for a moment all of the people that were inconvenienced by the air traffic controllers strike in order to get this team into Thailand, consider what a strike is. A strike is when individual people face specific grievances and make a free will choice not to work. How is it that this was an answer to prayer if these people involved in the strike chose of their own free will to go on strike without any intervention of God. It makes the notion of answered prayer precipitous, accidental, capricious. In fact, it strikes me that without the direct agency of God on the wills of men that answered prayer in these situations becomes simply an accident. It’s hard to argue that there is any answered prayer when other human wills are involved. Any prayer need that involves other human beings is a request that something different happens than what they would do by their own choice. We’re asking, “God, use Your will and Your power to overcome the power and will of others.”</p>

<p>It seems to me that we can’t escape the fact that God does tamper with our wills, and sometimes violently and in ways that seriously inconvenience other people.</p>

<p>What degree of freedom do we have at any point? I don’t know. The issue of election is really a secondary issue to this question which I’m not going to argue at this point. But it strikes me that a couple of things are self-evident however you resolved this problem of God interfering with the wills of men, whether it’s the sovereignty free will issue in general or the predestination issue in particular.</p>

<p>We cannot say that God doesn’t interfere in the wills of men. It seems to me that that is an untenable statement. In fact, our prayer <em>belies</em> our belief that God does intervene. We ask him to intervene not only in circumstances, but with the wills of men. Part of our confidence is that God governs history. What is history if it is not the events that result from men’s free will decisions? Yet at the same time it seems that men make significant choices that mean something. Those two things strike me as inescapable, and however you resolve these issues you must resolve them with a commitment to both the meaningful and significant choices that men make, and at the same time to the undeniable reality that God does tamper, sometimes excessively, with the wills of men. And I would argue that it’s a good thing that He does or else not only would we be victimized by men’s choices, God Himself would be victimized and history would not be directed. History would simply be chaotic.</p>

<p>At least that’s the way I see it.</p>
</div>

            <br>
            <!-- Share links -->
            <a id="facebook-share" href="https://www.facebook.com/sharer.php?u=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.str.org%2Fw%2Fprayer-and-free-will" aria-label="Share this page on Facebook" title="Share on Facebook">
            	<i class="fab fa-facebook-f fa-lg" aria-hidden="true"></i>
            </a>
            <a id="twitter-share" href="https://twitter.com/intent/tweet?url=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.str.org%2Fw%2Fprayer-and-free-will" aria-label="Share this page on Twitter" title="Share on Twitter">
            	<i class="fab fa-twitter fa-lg" aria-hidden="true"></i>
            </a>
            <a id="email-share" href="mailto:?body=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.str.org%2Fw%2Fprayer-and-free-will" aria-label="Email this page to a friend" title="Email">
            	<i class="far fa-envelope fa-lg" aria-hidden="true"></i>
            </a>
            <a href="https://www.printfriendly.com" class="printfriendly" onclick="window.print();return false;" title="Printer Friendly and PDF"><i class="fa fa-print fa-lg" aria-hidden="true"></i>
            </a>
            
          


title: Preaching God’s Love in Acts?
topic: Theology
author: Greg Koukl
date: 03/22/2013
source: https://www.str.org/w/preaching-god-s-love-in-acts-
content:
            <div> 
		<p>What was the emphasis in the evangelistic preaching of the Apostles as recorded in the book of Acts? Does the record of Acts support the notion that the central focus of Christianity is one’s love relationship with God and personal life enhancement? Or did these disciples of Christ focus on something else?</p>

<p>The list below includes every instance of evangelistic preaching in the book of Acts, a summary of content, and an analysis of emphasis.</p>

<h2>1. Pentecost, Acts 2:14-39</h2>

<p>Peter notes the manifestations of the Holy Spirit that all had been witnessing, then ties them to the fulfillment of prophecy of Joel about the last days. He then preaches Jesus as the Messiah - attested to by miracles and by the resurrection which was prophesied by David - and the guilt of the crowd for the crucifixion.</p>

<p>The emphasis is on forgiveness of sin by Jesus the Messiah. There is no mention of God’s love or a relationship with Him.</p>

<h2>2. Peter at the Gate Beautiful, Acts 3:12-26</h2>

<p>After Peter and John healed a man lame from birth, Peter placed the blame for Jesus’&nbsp;death on the shoulders of the listeners. He then appealed to fulfilled prophecy and told them either to believe and return and thus receive forgiveness and times of refreshing, or be destroyed.</p>

<p>The emphasis is on forgiveness of sin by Jesus the Messiah. There is no mention of God’s love or a relationship with Him.</p>

<h2>3. Peter before the High Priest, Acts 4:8-12</h2>

<p>Peter attributes the healing of the man lame from birth to Jesus the Messiah, whom the Jews had crucified, but whom God had raised from the dead. He quotes prophecy and says there is no other means of salvation but through Jesus. Peter then refuses to be silent about the Gospel.</p>

<p>The emphasis is on forgiveness of sin by Jesus the Messiah. There is no mention of God’s love or a relationship with him.</p>

<h2>4. Peter’s Defense a Second Time before the Council, Acts 5:29-32</h2>

<p>Peter proclaims the resurrected Christ as Prince and Savior who brings forgiveness of sin and gives the gift of the Holy Spirit. He accuses the Council of putting Jesus to death. They are so infuriated they want to kill the Apostles. Instead, on the advice of Gamaliel, the believers are flogged and released.</p>

<p>There is no mention of God’s love or any kind of tender relationship with Him.</p>

<h2>5. Stephen’s Defense before the Council, Acts 7:1-60</h2>

<p>Stephen recounts the history of the Jews in which they constantly rebel, rejecting God’s deliverer. He accuses the Jews of being stiff-necked, resisting the Holy Spirit just as their forefathers had. He accuses them also of betraying and murdering the Righteous One, the Messiah. They are so filled with rage they murder him.</p>

<p>Emphasis is on the guilt of the Jews. There is no mention of God’s love.</p>

<p>[Note: When God speaks to Saul about his future during the events surrounding Saul’s conversion (Acts 9), there is no mention of an intimate relationship, only that Paul would suffer much for the sake of Christ.]</p>

<h2>6. Peter’s Message to the Household of Cornelius, Acts 10:34-43</h2>

<p>Peter talks of the ministry of Jesus, His miracles, death on the cross, and resurrection. Peter tells the Gentiles it is his job to solemnly testify that Jesus is the One appointed by God to judge the world, that Jesus’&nbsp;coming was prophesied, and that belief in Him brings forgiveness of sin.</p>

<p>The emphasis is on Jesus, the prophesied Messiah who either brings judgment or forgives of sin. There is no mention of God’s love.</p>

<h2>7. Paul’s Message to the Jews in the Synagogue at Pisidian Antioch, Acts 13:16-41</h2>

<p>Paul preaches Jesus as the anticipated Savior, affirmed by John the Baptist, crucified by the Jews, who rose from the dead in fulfillment of prophesy. Paul then proclaims forgiveness of sin and freedom from the Law for all who believe.</p>

<p>Paul proclaims Jesus the prophesied Messiah crucified and resurrected. His emphasis is on forgiveness amidst warning.</p>

<h2>8. Paul at the Areopagus in Athens, Acts 17:22-31</h2>

<p>Paul discloses the nature of the “unknown God,”&nbsp;One who is responsible for all creation, and in whom we all depend for our very existence. He calls all men to repent, because God has appointed a judge, a man who has risen from the dead.</p>

<p>Emphasis is on the nature of God, and the reality of judgment. There is no mention of relationship or God’s love.</p>

<h2>9. Paul’s Defense before the Jews in Jerusalem, Acts 22:1-21</h2>

<p>Paul gives his testimony, detailing his persecution of Christians motivated by his zeal toward God, his conversion on the road to Damascus, and how his sins were washed away in Jesus’&nbsp;name. When he mentions his mission to the Gentiles, however, the Jews protested violently.</p>

<p>Emphasis is on Paul’s personal encounter with Christ, his own forgiveness from sin, and his subsequent mission. There is no offer of personal relationship with God or mention of God’s love.</p>

<h2>10. Paul’s Defense before the Sanhedrin, Acts 23:1-6</h2>

<p>Paul says he is on trial for the hope and resurrection of the dead. There is no mention of the love of God.</p>

<h2>11. Paul’s Defense before the governor, Felix, Acts 24:10-21</h2>

<p>Paul establishes his innocence regarding the Jews’ charges, then affirms the Law and the Prophets and the general resurrection of both righteous and wicked, a belief for which he says he is on trial.</p>

<p>There is no mention of God’s love or even of forgiveness.</p>

<h2>12. Paul before Felix and Drusilla, Acts 24:24-25</h2>

<p>Paul speaks of righteousness, self-control, and the judgment to come which frightens Felix who then sends Paul away. There is no mention of God’s love or of a personal relationship with Him.</p>

<h2>13. Paul’s Defense before the Agrippa, Acts 26:1-29</h2>

<p>Paul gives his testimony, noting the importance of the resurrection. He tells of the commission Jesus had given him, proclaiming the Gospel with a goal of deliverance from Satanic darkness to receiving forgiveness and an inheritance from God. Paul claims his message is the same as the prophets regarding the Messiah’s suffering and resurrection.</p>

<p>Emphasis is on the resurrection of Christ, prophetic fulfillment and forgiveness, and Paul’s responsibility to preach the Gospel. There is no mention of love or a relationship with God.</p>

<p>The love of God is never mentioned a single time in the entire book of Acts.</p>
</div>

            <br>
            <!-- Share links -->
            <a id="facebook-share" href="https://www.facebook.com/sharer.php?u=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.str.org%2Fw%2Fpreaching-god-s-love-in-acts-" aria-label="Share this page on Facebook" title="Share on Facebook">
            	<i class="fab fa-facebook-f fa-lg" aria-hidden="true"></i>
            </a>
            <a id="twitter-share" href="https://twitter.com/intent/tweet?url=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.str.org%2Fw%2Fpreaching-god-s-love-in-acts-" aria-label="Share this page on Twitter" title="Share on Twitter">
            	<i class="fab fa-twitter fa-lg" aria-hidden="true"></i>
            </a>
            <a id="email-share" href="mailto:?body=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.str.org%2Fw%2Fpreaching-god-s-love-in-acts-" aria-label="Email this page to a friend" title="Email">
            	<i class="far fa-envelope fa-lg" aria-hidden="true"></i>
            </a>
            <a href="https://www.printfriendly.com" class="printfriendly" onclick="window.print();return false;" title="Printer Friendly and PDF"><i class="fa fa-print fa-lg" aria-hidden="true"></i>
            </a>
            
          


title: Raise Children in the Lord
topic: Christian Living
author: Greg Koukl
date: 03/22/2013
source: https://www.str.org/w/raise-children-in-the-lord
content:
            <div> 
		<p><em>We have a responsibility to do this. We cannot just pawn it off on teachers, or Sunday school teachers, or our pastor, or a Christian school, if we have one. They can help, but it is our primary job to raise our children in the Lord.</em></p>

<p>Happy Father’s Day to all of you dads out there. This is my sixth Father’s Day being a father from the beginning. I was a step dad before that, but it’s not quite the same as when you start from the beginning. In my case, both of our girls were adopted from crisis pregnancies and were brought home when they were two days old. That’s pretty much starting from the beginning, and I realize the grave responsibility it is to be entrusted with their physical, emotional, and spiritual care.</p>

<p>Last weekend I was in Ottawa, Canada, speaking at the Metropolitan Bible Church. While I was there I met a number of fellows who were dads, and we spent an afternoon at a barbecue, talking about raising our children in the Lord. We have a responsibility to do this. We cannot just pawn it off on teachers, or Sunday school teachers, or our pastor, or a Christian school, if we have one. They can help, but it is our primary job to raise our children in the Lord. This morning our church played a video where a nine-year old narrator said, “We’re Watching You, Dad.”&nbsp;They’re watching how we live our lives, as well as what we teach them about the Lord, and there needs to be consistency in our lives.</p>

<p>I think part of our frustration as parents is figuring out how to make the contribution of theological content into the lives of our children. At the barbeque, I discussed a couple of different things that my wife and I are doing with our kids to accomplish that goal. Nothing particularly fancy, but we’re making an effort in addition to going to church, saying grace, and giving thanks. We are trying to invest theological content in very specific ways.</p>

<p>We speak and pray in an extemporaneous way. We don’t recite the same prayer every day, because we want to have genuine, from-the-heart communication to God that the kids can see and understand.</p>

<p>We also have Annabeth, who is five, memorizing. She loves to do this. Kids like memorizing. It’s a game to them. They have fun doing it, and they do it very well. So we began on occasion, not every night, having some kind of recitation at the end of the meal. It might be the Lord’s Prayer, Psalm 1, or the the 23rd Psalm. We have the text printed out so that there’s a consistency in the wording.</p>

<p>If you simply recite the passage with your kids, they will learn it before long. In fact, Annabeth often wants to do the recitation herself, and so she will try. If she’s missing a word, I have the cheat sheet in front of me and I can help her...I don’t think she has a lot of theological insight but she’s doing something that is spiritual in nature, though she doesn’t realize it yet. She’s just participating. That’s the way kids learn anything, even language. It’s nonsense to them. It’s sounds. And they go along and practice, and they begin to associate and understand as time goes on.</p>

<p>So now Annabeth has got most of Psalm 1 memorized. She knows the 23rd Psalm pretty well. We have to review it, and that’s an important part. She can recite the Lord’s Prayer. We even sing the Lord’s Prayer on occasion. It’s two or three minutes after dinner. It’s closing the family time together around the meal with some spiritual reflection. We don’t do it every single night. This is a way we’re investing ourselves in the lives of our children. And as Annabeth memorizes these things, they become part of her, and later on, as she is developmentally capable of understanding, she will apply the deeper spiritual understanding to that which she already has memorized.</p>

<p>There’s another thing that I’m doing to teach my kids theological content that is more of a guideline than a program. I think a lot of times people like me, and maybe you, want to have a program. Sometimes we think if we don’t have a program we’re not being good parents. But even if you don’t have a program, it’s good to have a plan. One thing I’ve been using is a concept that I’ve been developing the last few years. I call it Credo, “I believe.”&nbsp;Credo consists of five words that capture the entire Christian worldview, and I think when I give you the words, you’ll see the relationship between them. Here they are: <em>God, Man, Jesus, Cross, Resurrection</em>. And here, by “resurrection”&nbsp;I mean the final resurrection to reward or judgment, the eschatological last things. I don’t mean any particular understanding of Jesus’&nbsp;second coming; I mean that there will be a final day of reckoning. History is moving towards that point.</p>

<p>These five words capture the essence of the story of Christianity, starting with God, then man, then the fall. Then God invading the world-the physical world-by becoming a man Himself as part of a plan to die on a cross to rescue man, so that at the final resurrection they will be numbered among the sheep and not among the goats. This is the Christian story in five words.</p>

<p>I find that these five words are very helpful for capturing the big picture, of the structure of reality. Each one of these points has just two sub-points under it, which are easy to keep track of, and which represent the plan that I have for investing spiritual truth in the lives of my children.</p>

<p>Let’s start with “<em>God</em>.”&nbsp;Why start with God? Because He is the beginning of the Christian story. Our story begins with these words: “In the beginning, God created the heavens and the earth.”&nbsp;“In the beginning, God.”&nbsp;He is what grounds reality. God exists, and He is in charge. Since He created the heavens and the earth, He owns them. He is sovereign over them. He is the King, and that is His domain. And in virtue of having created it, He has ownership, and He’s in charge. A lot more could be said about this, but these are the two big points that I want my girls to get: There is a God, and He is in charge.</p>

<p>I look for opportunities to reinforce those two ideas in age-appropriate ways throughout the day. I mention, for example, to my daughter, that even Papa is under God’s authority. I’m the captain of our ship. My wife is the co-captain. The girls know they are the crew members. They are participants in our family, but Papa has a captain, too. Mama and Papa answer to a different captain, and that is God. Everyone answers to God because He’s in charge.</p>

<p>When it comes to <em>man</em>, the second point, we also have two sub-points. When I talk about man I want my girls to understand that, as Francis Schaeffer put it, man is both noble, and he is cruel. Now, I don’t use those words, necessarily, but I try to communicate the substance of that idea.</p>

<p>First, that there is something special about man, he is not just an animal. He is different from all the animals. Yesterday, Annabeth was repeating back to me what I had said to her in the past. She said, “We’re humans, and humans are special. We’re not like all the rest of the animals.”&nbsp;That was great as far as it went. Then she said, “We walk on two feet.”&nbsp;I said, “Well, honey, that isn’t exactly what makes us special.���&nbsp;She said, “Yeah, that’s right, because kangaroos are on two feet. That’s how they hop around.”&nbsp;I replied, “Bears can stand on two feet, and orangutans, and gorillas, and chimpanzees run on two feet, so that isn’t entirely unique. What makes us unique,”&nbsp;I said, “is not our physical body, but our souls. They’re made in the image of God.”&nbsp;Now, Annabeth doesn’t completely conceptualize what an invisible soul is, but we’re working on it. We’re laying the foundation.</p>

<p>So man is noble. He is very special. But there’s also something wrong with him. He is broken. He is bad. Some people don’t like to tell their kids they’re bad, but if they don’t, they’re not telling them the truth, because your kids are bad. Somebody said to me, “Oh, your little girls are like angels.”&nbsp;I said, “You’re right: fallen angels.”&nbsp;They are angelic after a fashion. They’re noble, made in God’s image. They are wonderful in many ways, but they’re fallen.</p>

<p>We must not lose sight of this. It goes to the self-image question. I do not want my children to have a good self-image. I want my children to have an <em>accurate</em> self-image. I don’t want them feeling good about being bad. I want them feeling good about the good things, and feeling bad about the bad things. I want them to feel good about being made in the image of God. I want them to feel bad about being fallen, because it’s only when they feel bad about that, when they realize the gravity of their own sin, that they will turn to the only One that can rescue them: God in the person of Jesus.</p>

<p>The third thing I teach them about the Christian reality is <em>Jesus</em>, who is the God-man. I explain who Jesus was and what He came to do. Those are the two sub-points for this third point. I want our girls to understand that Jesus is God and He’s a man. Annabeth does. She hasn’t figured out the conceptual philosophic challenges of that concept, but that’s all right. Even the first-century Christians didn’t work that through. They just knew that Jesus was the God-man. He was a real human being, but He was God. And they treated Him as such, and referred to Him as such. When she understands that foundational piece, and that’s built in well, then we can discuss the philosophical nuances. I explain that what He came to do was to seek and to save that which was lost. And, why did He need to save us? Because man is cruel and fallen. See how it all ties in?</p>

<p>Whenever I have an opportunity, I reinforce the features of Jesus, who He was and what He came to do. First and foremost, He came to give his life as a ransom for many. Annabeth asked me one day whether Mommy believed in God, or whether Eva believed in God. I said Mommy did and Eva didn’t, because Eva doesn’t know that well enough. She’s only two and a half. But I underscored the fact that believing in God is important because God exists and He’s in charge. We must also trust in what God has done for us.</p>

<p>This leads us to the next point: God, Man, Jesus, <em>the Cross</em>. It segues nicely from what Jesus came to do. If He came to seek and to save that which was lost, how did He do it? The two sub-points to remember under <em>the Cross</em>are: Jesus died for us, that is, He died in our place, and we have to trust Him. Some of you might recognize that idea as substitutionary atonement. Kids don’t understand that, but they will understand eventually that Jesus took the punishment for us. I want to build that foundation. But it’s not enough to know that He took the punishment. It’s not enough to believe in God. We also have to trust in Him. When we trust Him, then the forgiveness that Jesus offers us becomes ours.</p>

<p>The final point is <em>the resurrection</em>. I want my kids to know that there is going to be a final day of reckoning. There are two sub-points to the idea of the final resurrection as well. They’re called Heaven and Hell. I want the girls to know that those who trust Jesus will meet again in Heaven. We’ve had some conversations about this because my father-in-law and my father are both in Heaven. I explain to both of the girls that their grandfathers are with Jesus, and they’ll be able to meet them again. But not everyone will go there. There are no dogs in heaven, for example. There are no animals, as far as I know, because heaven is made for human beings, because human beings are special. Then we’re back to the second point again and we reinforce that. But there’s also a place of judgment and punishment, and this is where people go who have not been forgiven.</p>

<p>So there’s my plan to teach my kids the truths of God’s Kingdom. It’s not a program. We don’t sit down once a week for an hour and go through a little bit of the curriculum, but I have this plan in my mind: <em>God, Man, Jesus, the Cross,</em>and <em>the Resurrection</em>. <em>God</em> exists and He’s in charge<em>. Man</em> is noble and cruel. What’s important about <em>Jesus</em> is who He was-God-man-and that He came to save. He did that by dying on a <em>cross</em> for us, and we have to put our trust in Him. And that will make a difference in the final <em>resurrection</em>—whether we go to Heaven and live with God in friendship forever, or we are banished from His presence forever.</p>

<p>That’s my plan. I’ve made my plan, and I’m working my plan. And it has been helping my family a lot. I think you may find it helpful, as well, as you work to invest your spiritual convictions in the lives of your children.</p>
</div>

            <br>
            <!-- Share links -->
            <a id="facebook-share" href="https://www.facebook.com/sharer.php?u=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.str.org%2Fw%2Fraise-children-in-the-lord" aria-label="Share this page on Facebook" title="Share on Facebook">
            	<i class="fab fa-facebook-f fa-lg" aria-hidden="true"></i>
            </a>
            <a id="twitter-share" href="https://twitter.com/intent/tweet?url=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.str.org%2Fw%2Fraise-children-in-the-lord" aria-label="Share this page on Twitter" title="Share on Twitter">
            	<i class="fab fa-twitter fa-lg" aria-hidden="true"></i>
            </a>
            <a id="email-share" href="mailto:?body=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.str.org%2Fw%2Fraise-children-in-the-lord" aria-label="Email this page to a friend" title="Email">
            	<i class="far fa-envelope fa-lg" aria-hidden="true"></i>
            </a>
            <a href="https://www.printfriendly.com" class="printfriendly" onclick="window.print();return false;" title="Printer Friendly and PDF"><i class="fa fa-print fa-lg" aria-hidden="true"></i>
            </a>
            
          


title: Clarification on Confession
topic: Theology
author: Greg Koukl
date: 03/22/2013
source: https://www.str.org/w/clarification-on-confession
content:
            <div> 
		<p><em>To put it simply, the one who says, “I don’t need forgiveness,”&nbsp;is at odds with God and doesn’t get it.</em></p>

<p><strong>What is the place of confession of sin in the New Testament?</strong></p>

<p><strong>1 John 1:9 “If we confess our sins, He is faithful and righteous to forgive us our sins and to cleanse us from all unrighteousness.”</strong></p>

<p>I realize from the comments that I get that there are a lot of people who are confused about my position on confession of sin. They think that I don’t believe in confession at all or that I don’t think it’s appropriate to deal with sin—it doesn’t matter if we sin, we’re forgiven, so we don’t have to worry about it. I want to take a few minutes to express my understanding from the Bible on this particular issue.</p>

<p>There is a lot of confusion, I think, on the issue of confession. So I’d like to take a few minutes and address this issue. What is confession? What does the Greek word mean and how is it used in the New Testament? What does the concept of confession have to do with confession our sins? What results from confession of our sins to God and what role does confession play in the Christian life in resolving issues between God and man relevant to their sin, the times that they’ve broken God’s law?</p>

<p>Let me tell you how I resolved these questions. I went back to the Bible and found every single place where the word “confession”&nbsp;is used and I did an inductive study on what the Bible teaches on the concept of confession. In the New Testament there are 34 different usages of this word “<em>homologeo</em>,”&nbsp;which means literally “to speak the same thing.”</p>

<p>We have a problem in our culture and it has to do with words that have scriptural, spiritual meaning. The problem is that we have contemporary usages of words and we have biblical usages of words. Sometimes the definition in a contemporary sense is not the same as the definition in the scriptural sense. For example, we say “Repent.”&nbsp;What does “repent”&nbsp;mean? We say that repent means to turn from your sin. Well, that is the common evangelical definition of the word repent. But that is not what the word repent means in the New Testament. It simply means “to have a change of mind.”&nbsp;“Repent”&nbsp;needs an object. So the text may say, “Repent of sin,”&nbsp;or it may say, “Repent towards God.”&nbsp;One commands to change your mind or have a change of life or action about sin, which would be turning from sin. The other commands change your mind about God, and particular sin is not in view.</p>

<p>The point I’m making is that we have to be careful about importing our popularized definition of words. We have to be careful about taking out twentieth century definitions of words and exporting that 2000 years back into the text when the words in the text don’t necessarily mean what we mean now when we use them.</p>

<p>So, what does “confess”&nbsp;mean? We think confess means that we’re sorry for our sins, that we tell our sins to God and ask Him for forgiveness. However, the word is used 34 times in the New Testament and only four of the 34 times is sin in view. Fourteen times the word confess is used to refer to Jesus or the Gospel. We confess Jesus before men or we confess the Gospel. Two times it’s used to acknowledge God. Seven times it’s used simply to state something (Jesus said, “Then I will declare to them ’I never knew you. Depart from me you who practice lawlessness.’”) The word declare is “<em>homologeo</em>.”&nbsp;It means “to confess, to speak the same thing.”</p>

<p>There are actually two different forms of the word. One is “<em>homologeo”&nbsp;and</em> one is “<em>exhomologeo</em>.”&nbsp;<em>Homologeo&nbsp;</em>means “to speak the same thing.”&nbsp;<em>Exhomologeo</em> has the prefix “ex-”&nbsp;which mean “out”&nbsp;and it means “to speak out the same things.”&nbsp;“Homologeo”&nbsp;is confession and the only place in the New Testament where “<em>homologeo”</em>&nbsp;is used related to sin is 1 John 1:9. “If we confess our sins, He is faithful and righteous to forgive us our sins and to cleanse us from all unrighteousness.”&nbsp;The word <em>exhomologeo,</em>&nbsp;“to speak out the same thing,”&nbsp;is used three times regarding sin in the New Testament. So we only have four references of confessing sin in the New Testament. Three of them relate to speaking out the same thing, speaking out a confession, in other words a public confession of sin.</p>

<p>We see in Matthew 3:6 that when John was baptizing, the people were confessing their sins. They were speaking out the same things, “<em>exhomologeo</em>.”&nbsp;In Mark 1:5 we see a parallel passage with the same event. In James 5:16 it says, “Therefore, confess your sins to one another,”&nbsp;speak out the same thing regarding your sins, “and pray for one another so that you may be healed.”&nbsp;The point being, three references to confession of sin: one is private confession in 1 John 1:9; one is public confession of sins with John the Baptist recorded in Matthew 3:6 and Mark 1:5; and finally, the public confession of sins that we see in James 5:16.</p>

<p>Now the question that I have to ask is: do these verses support the popular notion about confession that when we sin we must confess sin to God in order to be forgiven and must we confess our sins before God in order to have prayer with God? In other words, if we’re Christians and we come to prayer, do we, to use a popular term, exhale our sins through confession to clear the board and then inhale the Holy Spirit so then we can talk to God? That is a popular teaching and a lot of people go through that. They use the acronym ACTS-adoration, confession, thanksgiving, supplication-for their prayer time.</p>

<p>My question is simply: is it a biblically enjoined practice to list your sins and reflect on your sins before you go to prayer before God?</p>

<p>My conviction is this. There is a place for confession of sin—the Scripture talks about it clearly in three different places—but ongoing confession does not keep Christians forgiven because forgiveness is a past event not an ongoing process. Secondly, there is no scriptural injunction that we list our sins before we pray and offer our requests to God. In fact, I think it’s counterproductive to a healthy Christian life.</p>

<p>I’ll tell you why, from the text, step by step. Keep in mind that in order to answer the question biblically we must answer it from the Bible. So we go back to the New Testament references to confessing sin and simply look at those passages and we draw our conclusions from those passages.</p>

<p><strong>1 John 1:9 “If we confess our sins, He is faithful and righteous to forgive us our sins and to cleanse us from all unrighteousness.”</strong></p>

<p>This verse is the most obvious one and therefore the best place to start.</p>

<p>Now I admit that if we take this verse in isolation, we could conclude that when Christians confess sin, that is, when they list their offenses against God, itemizing the ways they’ve disobeyed Him, then they are cleansed and forgiven before Him. That seems to be the most straightforward reading of the text. Most Christians accept this, even teaching it is necessary (or at least desirable) to confess regularly to God before they pray in order to open the channels, so to speak, between them and the Lord.</p>

<p>If that is the accurate view—and that is the view of those who object to my position on this—then this view creates two conflicts for me. First. if this verse teaches that we are supposed to confess our sins on an ongoing basis as Christians, then it also teaches that it is necessary to confess in order to be forgiven. If we don’t confess, then we aren’t forgiven. Those are the words of the text.</p>

<p>Most hold that Christians are supposed to confess their sins before they come into God’s presence in prayer, but then they’ll admit that Christians are already forgiven even if they don’t confess. However, the verse as it stands doesn’t allow that flexibility. If we’re obliged to confess, as this verse commands, then confession is necessarily linked to forgiveness. You can’t have it both ways. You can’t split it in half and say the first part applies but the second part doesn’t. Those who view the text this way are caught in a “textual two-step,”&nbsp;talking out of both sides of their mouths. The second concern I have is similar. What’s the point of 1 John 2:1? This verse immediately follows 1 John 1:9; if you remove the chapter break it reads continuously. It says, “My little children, I am writing these things to you that you may not sin. And if anyone sins, we have an Advocate with the Father, Jesus Christ the righteous; and He Himself is the propitiation for our sins; and not for ours only, but also for those of the whole world.”</p>

<p>It seems to imply that for Christians—and I think Christians are clearly in view here because he used the endearment “little children”—the secure antidote for sin is the advocacy of Jesus acting as a defense counselor for us.</p>

<p>I now have to ask this question: Is Jesus’&nbsp;advocacy dependent upon our day-to-day confession of sin, or is it independent of it? If it’s dependent on our confession of sin, we have a problem. Sin is only forgiven as we confess; Jesus is our advocate only as we list our transgressions and take them before Him. But the New Testament teaches that He has already forgiven us all our transgressions (Col 2:13), that God will never remember our sins or lawless deeds again (Hebrews 10:17).</p>

<p>These two issues caused me to take a closer look at the passage as a whole. It’s fine to take the verse at face value if it doesn’t conflict with other verses. But once we see a conflict with other verses then we have to step back and ask if maybe what seems obvious at first glance might not be mistaken after deeper scrutiny.</p>

<p>This is an example of interpreting the unclear in light of the clear. We have clear teaching in a number of places in the New Testament that our forgiveness is a one time event, that it’s done when we confess that Jesus is our Lord, when Jesus comes into our life we enter into eternal life, that our sins and transgressions God remembers no more, then how is that we can interpret 1 John 1:9 that we must confess in order to be forgiven if, in fact, we are forgiven already?</p>

<p>I took a closer look at the passage in context and when I did, I began to see the first chapter of 1 John in a different light. I noticed that in the first four verses, John is making an appeal for people to have fellowship with him and with God through Jesus Christ. Keep in mind that fellowship in this passage means regeneration, salvation. It does not mean the kind of thing that we mean when we say we’re in fellowship with God and we’re out of fellowship with God. According to John, a person in fellowship with God has the blood of Christ cleansing him from all of his sins. The word fellowship when applied between God and man in the New Testament is synonymous with salvation. John invites us to saving fellowship with Jesus Christ and he says that his appeal is valid, he points out, because he was an eyewitness to Jesus’&nbsp;earthly ministry and teaching. In other words, he knows that what he’s saying is true.</p>

<p>Basically, John is beginning his letter with a simple defense for the faith: “I’ve been with Jesus. I’ve seen Him. I’ve put my faith in Him and know Him. You can do that too.”&nbsp;This first section is strongly evangelistic, it is addressing the non-Christian contingent of his readers: “What we have seen and heard we proclaim to you also, that you also may have fellowship with us, and indeed our fellowship is with the Father, and with His Son Jesus the Messiah.”&nbsp;Now that’s an evangelistic thrust.</p>

<p>But why be evangelistic to Christians? Isn’t he speaking to believers here? Well, the answer is yes and no. He is writing to Christians but like any good preacher he knows that his audience is mixed. Every preacher on Sunday has a mixed audience. He addresses some of his comments to Christians and he addresses some of his comments to non-Christians and basically says, “If the shoe fits wear it.”&nbsp;John, I think, is doing that here. I can say that because his first statements seem to make a very straight forward evangelistic appeal.</p>

<p>In verse 5 John announces the message he has received from Jesus (v3). John tells us about the character of God, that God is without sin. Those who know Him must not habitually live in sin either. He promises, however, in verse 7 that if we do walk with Him “in the light”&nbsp;then we will be cleansed of all sin through the blood of Christ.<sup id="fnref:1"><a href="#fn:1">1</a></sup></p>

<p>There is a catch, however. In order to be cleansed of your sin through Christ Jesus, you must first admit your need before you can be helped. To say that you have no sin is untruthful and self-deceptive (v8). The alternative to saying you have no sin is to confess your sins, resulting in cleansing (v9). That’s where I think verse 9 fits in.</p>

<p>I think that in verses 5-9 John continues his evangelistic appeal. He’s already invited people to have fellowship with God and walk in the light so their sins might be cleansed (i.e., salvation), and explains that walking in the light entails not living in sin.</p>

<p>The first step in that process is acknowledging our sin (<em>homologeo</em>: to confess, agree, lit. “to speak the same thing”). If we come into relationship with God we will be cleansed, but that requires that we acknowledge our need for cleansing. If we don’t acknowledge that we need cleansing, that we have sinned, then the truth is not in us. But if we do agree that we have sinned (and here is where verse 9 comes in), then God will forgive us and cleanse us from all our unrighteousness.</p>

<p>This chapter is not speaking, in my view, of a Christian’s ongoing relationship with God but of a person who is being asked to enter into a relationship with God based first of all on John’s eyewitness testimony of Jesus, secondly on the reality that God is without sin, thirdly on the reality that we all have sinned, and fourth, on the final promise that if we acknowledge our sinfulness and confess our sin, we can enter into that relationship, that fellowship with God based on the shed blood of Jesus Christ.</p>

<p>To put it simply, friends, as I look through chapter 1, I realize verse 9 creates a problem if I understand that it applies to Christians as it stands because it violates other Scriptures. So I look closely at the chapter and I see a very strong evangelistic thrust in John’s first chapter and I draw the conclusion from the words that John uses that he is not addressing Christians in particular here. He is addressing people who need Jesus. He’s saying that Jesus will forgive your sins and you can have fellowship with Him, but you must acknowledge that you are a sinner. If you don’t, the truth is not in you and you call God a liar. And now my paraphrase of verse 9: If you confess or say the same thing with God, that you are a sinner, then He will forgive your sins and cleanse you of all unrighteousness.</p>

<p>Then he goes on in chapter 2 with what the Christian antidote to sin is, that is Jesus Christ. In chapter 2, John specifically addresses Christians (“My little children”). He writes what follows in order that Christians not fall into sin, but then assures them that if they do sin they have forgiveness, not as a result of ongoing sin-listing and continued requests for forgiveness, but simply by the fact that they have an advocate with the Father in Jesus. Jesus is the full satisfaction (propitiation) for all their sins, and He is an advocate that is so adequate He is capable of making complete defense for sins for every single person in the world (v2).</p>

<p>Another way of putting it is that Christians are ones who are acknowledging sinfulness before God. We are the kind of people who say, “Yes, we are sinners and we need Him.”&nbsp;And because of their admission they are experiencing cleansing. Non-Christians are those that don’t acknowledge their need and therefore aren’t cleansed.</p>

<p>However, admitting our sinfulness doesn’t imply that we are verbalizing a tally of our current transgressions. This passage deals with the issue of cleansing and what is necessary for cleansing. John is simply saying, in my view, that some say they have no sin and make God a liar, whereas the Christian continually acknowledges his sinfulness, is continually aware of his need for God’s forgiveness and, as such, is a person God has forgiven and is continually cleansing.</p>

<p>To put it simply, the one who says, “I don’t need forgiveness,”&nbsp;is at odds with God and doesn’t get it. Alternatively, the Christian is forgiven because he says, “I continually need forgiveness because I’m continually sinning, but I have confidence of continual cleansing because I continually have an advocate in Jesus.”</p>

<p>Now that’s 1 John 1:9. There is no hint there that confession helps improve out existential relationship with God, our daily “walk”&nbsp;with Him. It doesn’t even talk about that. I think that explanation is offered as sort of “textual two-step”&nbsp;to get around the clear wording of the passage that implies that if you don’t confess then you’re not forgiven. Christians can’t have it both ways. I think that this is a better way of looking at it.</p>

<p><strong>James 5:16</strong></p>

<p><strong>“Therefore, confess your sins to one another and pray for one another, so that you may be healed.”</strong></p>

<p>James 5:16 has to do with speaking out our sins. This is an important passage in the area of confessed sin. It relates to a public confession of sin (<em>exhomologeo</em>, to speak out the same things), as do Mark 1:5 and Matthew 3:6 (incidentally, I want to re-emphasize that these four verses are the only New Testament references to confessing sin).</p>

<p>The question really has to do with what James means by “healed”&nbsp;here? There are four possibilities: physical healing, emotional healing, healing of relationship or, in the case of one just coming to Christ, spiritual healing, that is, forgiveness of sin (mentioned in the previous verse). Any of those things could be in view, theoretically.</p>

<p>There are places in the Scripture where it appears that sin actually produces illness (e.g., 1 Cor 11:30). Confession in this case would lead to health. Problems in relationships are healed when one party confesses to the person that he has wronged. There is also a powerful emotional impact when we take a private sin and make it public, even if only one other person learns about it. It seems to relieve a tremendous emotional burden from our hearts and gives us an increased ability to repent. It seems to take the teeth out of the temptation.</p>

<h2>Hebrews 10</h2>

<p>Another passage that’s really important is Hebrews 10. This passage doesn’t deal directly with confession, but it does say something very important about the New Covenant and the issue of drawing near to God in prayer.</p>

<p>The writer of this book points out that one of the functions of the Law was to constantly remind us of our sins. You should read Hebrews 10, it’s a wonderful, wonderful chapter. He notes that this reminder was <em>prima facie</em> evidence—evidence on the face of it—that forgiveness and cleansing were not complete. In other words, continual sacrifices reminded us that forgiveness and cleansing weren’t complete. Then he says, “Otherwise, would [sacrifices] not have ceased to be offered, because the worshipers, having once been cleansed, would no longer have had consciousness of sins?”&nbsp;(v2)</p>

<p>Earlier in chapter 9:13ff, the writer argues that the blood of goats and bulls cleansed the flesh, but the blood of Christ cleanses the conscience. That same word again. That’s important.</p>

<p>The conclusion I draw is that because the sacrifice of Christ was complete, we no longer need a reminder of sins, instead, our consciences can be clean before God. That seems to be God’s conclusion, too. Later in the chapter it says, “And their sins and their lawless deeds I will remember no more”&nbsp;(v17), and “Let us draw near with a sincere heart in full assurance of faith, having our hearts sprinkled clean from an evil conscience”&nbsp;(v22).</p>

<p>If those things are true, why is it desirable to remind ourselves of our sins and burden our consciences with our error when God has gone to a great deal of trouble to do exactly the opposite? Why do we keep making ourselves feel miserable by reminding ourselves how awful we are? That was a function of the Law that is now done away with. God says in Hebrews 10 that we are cleansed even of an evil conscience, so we don’t need that continual reminder of sins. In fact, God Himself has judicially forgotten all of our sins.</p>

<h2>Putting it all together</h2>

<p>Let’s put this all together, now. How does all of this “theology”&nbsp;work itself out in practice?</p>

<p>First, God wants us to come into relationship with Him, and this is the application for those of you who don’t consider yourselves Christians, or maybe you’re on the cusp and you’re thinking about Christianity. Let me tell you what the Bible says about your condition. God wants us to come into relationship with Him and to live a life that is characterized by godliness. Those that are in fellowship with Him, that is, those who are rescued from their sin and forgiven are continually cleansed by the blood of Christ. It’s an ongoing process. 1 John 1:7 makes that clear.</p>

<p>In order to join with God we must not deny that we have sinned. We can’t just keep going around saying we don’t have anything to be sorry for. “I’ve never done anything wrong.”&nbsp;“I’m basically a good person.”&nbsp;Friend, if you’re in that position the Apostle John says that you are calling God a liar because God says you have sinned. And it’s pretty hard to be reconciled with God by calling Him a liar. So the first thing you must not do is deny your need of forgiveness.</p>

<p>Instead you must confess your sin, you must acknowledge that you are a sinner, that you’ve broken God’s Law. The acknowledgment can be a general one or you can talk about specifics. That’s fine too. You can get down on your face and say, “God, I have done this and this,”&nbsp;and spend as much time as you need there to get that all out. That confession may be private (1 John 1:9) or public (Mk 1:5, James 5:16). You can make a public confession of your sins.</p>

<p>As Christians we are people who characteristically walk in holiness. You seek to live righteously. That’s what John says in 1 John 1:6. Even so we are continually acknowledging that we are sinners in need of God’s continual cleansing (1 John 1:9). If anyone comes to me at any particular time, I can’t look down my self-righteous nose at them and say I’ve got it together and they don’t because I am a person who continually sins everyday. I’m getting better. I’m not sinning as much as I used to and that’s to God’s credit as He has changed my life. But the fact is, I still need forgiveness. Christians are people who acknowledge that. They are people who sin as well. So we’re in the same boat as anybody else.</p>

<p>I also have the same confidence that when we sin as Christians, God is faithful to bring that sin to our awareness through conviction in our hearts by the Holy Spirit (John 16:8). The Holy Spirit convicts of sin and righteousness and judgment. Also the conviction comes through the Word (Hebrews 4:12). “The Word of God is living and active and sharper than any two-edged sword.”&nbsp;Or through other Christians as in Gal 6:1. God will bring sin to our awareness by the conviction of the Holy Spirit, by other Christians, and through the Word. And when He does, we agree with God that this is sin and also agree with Him that He has cleansed us from it through the blood of Jesus.</p>

<p>When the Holy Spirit makes us aware of failure then we deal with it. “God, I realize that I shouldn’t have said what I said or did what I did.”&nbsp;We immediately take steps to turn from that sin. That’s why I hold that repentance, not sin listing, is the appropriate biblical response to sin. God makes us aware of it, we agree with God—call it your confession if you want—we acknowledge with God that He has forgiven us of our wrong doing and we take immediate steps to turn from that. That’s the Christian antidote for the practice of sin.</p>

<p>The conviction of sin may be accompanied by feelings of remorse over what we’ve done. This remorse is a work of the Holy Spirit. The flesh can’t produce it. Sometimes we feel very sorry. But other times we may feel almost nothing. However, we turn from sin not because we feel it’s wrong, but because it is wrong, not because we feel guilty, but because we are guilty. There is no need, I believe, to take our “guilt temperature”&nbsp;before we act in obedience, repenting from something we know is wrong. If God says it’s wrong, even if we feel good about it, it’s still right to turn from it. Some would suggest that you’re not truly confessing and repenting unless you feel absolutely miserable. The Scripture doesn’t indicate that’s a requirement. It just says we should repent. That’s an act of our will, not of our emotion.</p>

<p>As we come to God in prayer, we don’t focus introspectively to increase our conscious awareness of our sins as the Law used to do. Part of the work of the cross is actually to remove our conscious awareness of sin and replace it with confidence of acceptance. That’s the point of the Hebrews 10 passage. We focus, rather, on God’s forgiveness, coming before the throne with the full confidence and assurance of faith knowing that God has faithfully cleansed us even of an evil conscience. That’s what Hebrews 10:19-22 says. We have full assurance of faith and we can come before Him because we know that He has cleansed us.</p>

<p>In all circumstances we know and are assured of God’s continued faithful forgiveness of us in any circumstance because Jesus is always there as our defense council (1 John 2:1-2).</p>

<p>In this viewpoint there is no hint of license to sin here because the reality is that those who are walking with God in new birth are characteristically growing in holiness and are not seeking to walk in darkness and in sin. They have died to sin and have been raised up in a new life, as Paul says in Rom 6:1-11.</p>

<p>The practice of listing and reviewing our sins before we have conversation with God is not, as far as I can determine, a New Testament teaching nor is it promoted in the text as a Christian discipline. In fact, I would argue that Hebrews 10 seems to indicate this was a negative function of the Law that can actually work against our sense of closeness with God and our boldness in coming before the throne.</p>

<p>I also don’t see any indication of a scouring self examination to find all the places that we’ve fallen short of God’s expectations. As far as I can tell, it’s the Holy Spirit’s job to examine us. When we go before the Lord and He makes us aware of something then we deal with it, we don’t ignore it. But we don’t have to go looking for things to feel bad about in God’s presence.</p>

<p>That’s my view. If you disagree with this, you’re certainly at liberty to do so. But please, scour the text yourself and find out in what ways my analysis is not biblical. I realize that what I’ve said is not in step with the belief of the current rank and file evangelical on this issue. But my request is that you examine my analysis biblically and examine the evangelical frame of mind biblically because I don’t think that frame of mind holds up under rigorous examination.</p>

<aside class="footnotes">
<hr>
<ol>
	<li id="fn:1">Note that the terms “in fellowship”&nbsp;with God and “walking in the light”&nbsp;have a different definition in modern evangelicalism than John is using here. We use the term to mean living a spiritual life, not a fleshly one, being experientially tight with God as opposed to backsliding. That is not what John has in mind. In this passage, having fellowship with God and walking in the light are both synonymous with salvation. All people who are born again are in fellowship with God, regardless of the current existential state of their growth. Technically, a Christian is never “in the flesh”&nbsp;either. All people who have the Spirit of God living in them are not in the flesh but in the Spirit by definition (see Romans 8:9). <a class="reversefootnote" href="#fnref:1">&nbsp;↩</a></li>
</ol>
</aside>

<h2>Appendix</h2>

<p>There are two Greek words for confession, homologeo and exhomologeo. Both mean “to speak the same thing.”</p>

<p>Confess/Confession; homologeo—to speak the same thing</p>

<p>Usage: Confessing sin</p>

<table class="table" style="width: 100%; margin-bottom: 1rem;">
	<tbody>
		<tr>
			<td>1&nbsp;John&nbsp;1:9</td>
			<td>If we <strong>confess</strong> our sins, He is faithful and righteous to forgive us our sins and to cleanse us from all unrighteousness.</td>
		</tr>
	</tbody>
</table>

<p>Usage: Referring to Jesus or the gospel</p>

<table class="table" style="width: 100%; margin-bottom: 1rem;">
	<tbody>
		<tr>
			<td>Matt.&nbsp;10:32</td>
			<td>Everyone therefore who shall <strong>confess</strong> Me before men, I will also <strong>confess</strong> him before My Father who is in heaven.</td>
		</tr>
		<tr>
			<td>Luke&nbsp;12:8</td>
			<td>And I say to you, everyone who <strong>confesses</strong> Me before men, the Son of Man shall <strong>confess</strong> him also before the angels of God.</td>
		</tr>
		<tr>
			<td>John&nbsp;9:22</td>
			<td>His parents said this because they were afraid of the Jews; for the Jews had already agreed, that if anyone should <strong>confess</strong> Him to be Christ, he should be put out of the synagogue.</td>
		</tr>
		<tr>
			<td>John&nbsp;12:42</td>
			<td>Nevertheless many even of the rulers believed in Him, but because of the Pharisees they were not&nbsp;<strong>confessing</strong> Him, lest they should be put out of the synagogue;</td>
		</tr>
		<tr>
			<td>Rom.&nbsp;10:9-10</td>
			<td>that if you <strong>confess</strong> with your mouth Jesus as Lord, and believe in your heart that God raised Him from the dead, you shall be saved; for with the heart man believes, resulting in righteousness, and with the mouth he&nbsp;<strong>confesses</strong>, resulting in salvation.</td>
		</tr>
		<tr>
			<td>2&nbsp;Co.&nbsp;9:13</td>
			<td>Because of the proof given by this ministry they will glorify God by your obedience to your <strong>confession</strong> of the gospel of Christ, and for the liberality of your contribution to them and to all,</td>
		</tr>
		<tr>
			<td>1&nbsp;Tim.&nbsp;6:12-13</td>
			<td>Fight the good fight of faith; take hold of the eternal life to which you were called, and you made the good&nbsp;<strong>confession</strong> in the presence of many witnesses. I charge you in the presence of God, who gives life to all things, and of Christ Jesus, who testified the good <strong>confession</strong> before Pontius Pilate,</td>
		</tr>
		<tr>
			<td>Heb.&nbsp;3:1</td>
			<td>Therefore, holy brethren, partakers of a heavenly calling, consider Jesus, the Apostle and High Priest of our&nbsp;<strong>confession</strong>.</td>
		</tr>
		<tr>
			<td>Heb.&nbsp;4:14</td>
			<td>Since then we have a great high priest who has passed through the heavens, Jesus the Son of God, let us hold fast our <strong>confession</strong>.</td>
		</tr>
		<tr>
			<td>Heb.&nbsp;10:23</td>
			<td>Let us hold fast the <strong>confession</strong> of our hope without wavering, for He who promised is faithful;</td>
		</tr>
		<tr>
			<td>1&nbsp;John&nbsp;4:2</td>
			<td>By this you know the Spirit of God: every spirit that <strong>confesses</strong> that Jesus has come in the flesh is from God;</td>
		</tr>
		<tr>
			<td>1&nbsp;John&nbsp;4:3</td>
			<td>and every spirit that does not <strong>confess</strong> Jesus is not from God; and this is the spirit of the antichrist, of which you have heard that it is coming, and now it is already in the world.</td>
		</tr>
		<tr>
			<td>1&nbsp;John&nbsp;4:15</td>
			<td>Whoever <strong>confesses</strong> that Jesus is the Son of God, God abides in him and he in God.</td>
		</tr>
		<tr>
			<td>2&nbsp;John&nbsp;7</td>
			<td>For many deceivers have gone out into the world, those who do not <strong>acknowledge</strong> Jesus Christ as coming in the flesh. This is the deceiver and the antichrist.</td>
		</tr>
	</tbody>
</table>

<p>Usage: Acknowledging to God</p>

<table class="table" style="width: 100%; margin-bottom: 1rem;">
	<tbody>
		<tr>
			<td>Matt.&nbsp;10:32</td>
			<td>Everyone therefore who shall <strong>confess</strong> Me before men, I will also <strong>confess</strong> him before My Father who is in heaven.</td>
		</tr>
		<tr>
			<td>Luke&nbsp;12:8</td>
			<td>And I say to you, everyone who <strong>confesses</strong> Me before men, the Son of Man shall <strong>confess</strong> him also before the angels of God.</td>
		</tr>
	</tbody>
</table>

<p>Usage: To state something</p>

<table class="table" style="width: 100%; margin-bottom: 1rem;">
	<tbody>
		<tr>
			<td>Matt.&nbsp;7:23</td>
			<td>And then I [Jesus] will <strong>declare</strong> to them, "I never knew you; DEPART FROM ME YOU WHO PRACTICE LAWLESSNESS.</td>
		</tr>
		<tr>
			<td>Matt.&nbsp;14:7</td>
			<td>Thereupon he [Herod] <strong>promised</strong> with an oath to give whatever she [Herodias] asked.</td>
		</tr>
		<tr>
			<td>John&nbsp;1:20</td>
			<td>And he <strong>confessed</strong>, and did not deny, and he <strong>confessed</strong>, "I am not the Christ." [John the Baptist]</td>
		</tr>
		<tr>
			<td>Acts&nbsp;23:8</td>
			<td>For the Sadducees say that there is no resurrection, nor an angel, nor a spirit; but the Pharisees&nbsp;<strong>acknowledge</strong> them all.</td>
		</tr>
		<tr>
			<td>Acts&nbsp;24:14</td>
			<td>But this I <strong>admit</strong> to you, that according to the Way which they call a sect I do serve the God of our fathers, believing everything that is in accordance with the Law, and that is written in the Prophets.</td>
		</tr>
		<tr>
			<td>Titus&nbsp;1:16</td>
			<td>They <strong>profess</strong> to know God, but by their deeds they deny Him, being detestable and disobedient, and worthless for any good deed.</td>
		</tr>
		<tr>
			<td>Heb&nbsp;11:13</td>
			<td>All these died in faith, without receiving the promises, but having seen them and having <strong>confessed</strong> that they were strangers and exiles on the earth.</td>
		</tr>
	</tbody>
</table>

<p>Usage: To give thanks</p>

<table class="table" style="width: 100%; margin-bottom: 1rem;">
	<tbody>
		<tr>
			<td>Heb.&nbsp;13:15</td>
			<td>Through Him then, let us continually offer up a sacrifice of praise to God, that is, the fruit of lips that <strong>give thanks</strong> to His name.</td>
		</tr>
	</tbody>
</table>

<p>Confess/Confession; exhomologeo—to speak out the same things</p>

<p>Usage: Confessing sin</p>

<table class="table" style="width: 100%; margin-bottom: 1rem;">
	<tbody>
		<tr>
			<td>Matt.&nbsp;3:6</td>
			<td>And they were being baptized by him [John the Baptist] in the Jordan River, as they <strong>confessed</strong> their sins.</td>
		</tr>
		<tr>
			<td>Mark&nbsp;1:5</td>
			<td>And all the country of Judea was going out to him [John the Baptist], and all the people of Jerusalem; and they were being baptized by him in the Jordan River, <strong>confessing</strong> their sins.</td>
		</tr>
		<tr>
			<td>James&nbsp;5:16</td>
			<td>Therefore, <strong>confess</strong> your sins to one another, and pray for one another, so that you may be healed. The effective prayer of a righteous man can accomplish much.</td>
		</tr>
	</tbody>
</table>

<p>Usage: Referring to Jesus</p>

<table class="table" style="width: 100%; margin-bottom: 1rem;">
	<tbody>
		<tr>
			<td>Phil.&nbsp;2:11</td>
			<td>And that every tongue should <strong>confess</strong> that Jesus Christ is Lord, to the glory of God the Father.</td>
		</tr>
	</tbody>
</table>

<p>Usage: Acknowledging to God</p>

<table class="table" style="width: 100%; margin-bottom: 1rem;">
	<tbody>
		<tr>
			<td>Rev.&nbsp;3:5</td>
			<td>He who overcomes shall thus be clothed in white garments; and I [Jesus] will not erase his name from the book of life, and I will <strong>confess</strong> his name before My Father, and before His angels.</td>
		</tr>
	</tbody>
</table>

<p>Usage: To agree to do something</p>

<table class="table" style="width: 100%; margin-bottom: 1rem;">
	<tbody>
		<tr>
			<td>Luke&nbsp;22:6</td>
			<td>And he <strong>consented</strong>, and began seeking a good opportunity to betray Him to them apart from the multitude.</td>
		</tr>
	</tbody>
</table>

<p>Usage: To speak out</p>

<table class="table" style="width: 100%; margin-bottom: 1rem;">
	<tbody>
		<tr>
			<td>Acts&nbsp;19:8</td>
			<td>And he [Paul] entered the synagogue and continued <strong>speaking out</strong> boldly for three months, reasoning and persuading them about the kingdom of God.</td>
		</tr>
	</tbody>
</table>

<p>Usage: Praising God</p>

<table class="table" style="width: 100%; margin-bottom: 1rem;">
	<tbody>
		<tr>
			<td>Matt.&nbsp;11:25</td>
			<td>At that time Jesus answered and said, "I <strong>praise</strong> Thee, O Father, Lord of heaven and earth, that Thou didst hide these things from the wise and intelligent and didst reveal them to babes."</td>
		</tr>
		<tr>
			<td>Luke&nbsp;10:21</td>
			<td>At that very time He [Jesus] rejoiced greatly in the Holy Spirit, and said, "I <strong>praise</strong> Thee, O Father, Lord of heaven and earth, that Thou didst hide these things from the wise and intelligent and didst reveal them to babes. Yes, Father, for thus it was well-pleasing in Thy sight."</td>
		</tr>
		<tr>
			<td>Rom.&nbsp;14:11</td>
			<td>For it is written, "AS I LIVE, SAYS THE LORD, EVERY KNEE SHALL BOW TO ME, AND EVERY TONGUE SHALL <strong>GIVE PRAISE</strong> TO GOD."</td>
		</tr>
		<tr>
			<td>Rom.&nbsp;15:9</td>
			<td>and for the Gentiles to glorify God for His mercy; as it is written, "THEREFORE I WILL <strong>GIVE PRAISE</strong> TO THEE AMONG THE GENTILES, AND I WILL SING TO THY NAME."</td>
		</tr>
	</tbody>
</table>
</div>

            <br>
            <!-- Share links -->
            <a id="facebook-share" href="https://www.facebook.com/sharer.php?u=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.str.org%2Fw%2Fclarification-on-confession" aria-label="Share this page on Facebook" title="Share on Facebook">
            	<i class="fab fa-facebook-f fa-lg" aria-hidden="true"></i>
            </a>
            <a id="twitter-share" href="https://twitter.com/intent/tweet?url=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.str.org%2Fw%2Fclarification-on-confession" aria-label="Share this page on Twitter" title="Share on Twitter">
            	<i class="fab fa-twitter fa-lg" aria-hidden="true"></i>
            </a>
            <a id="email-share" href="mailto:?body=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.str.org%2Fw%2Fclarification-on-confession" aria-label="Email this page to a friend" title="Email">
            	<i class="far fa-envelope fa-lg" aria-hidden="true"></i>
            </a>
            <a href="https://www.printfriendly.com" class="printfriendly" onclick="window.print();return false;" title="Printer Friendly and PDF"><i class="fa fa-print fa-lg" aria-hidden="true"></i>
            </a>
            
          


title: Sovereign Grace & Free Choice
topic: Theology
author: Greg Koukl
date: 03/22/2013
source: https://www.str.org/w/sovereign-grace-free-choice
content:
            <div> 
		<p>Last week I was asked a question by a friend whether I was really a Calvinist or not and, if so, if I was a five-point Calvinist. I usually avoid the term Calvinist for a different term that is almost synonymous with it and that is Reformed faith or Reformed theology. The reason is because people have a kind of knee-jerk reaction to the term Calvinism because they’ve encountered some extreme forms, and I think this is part of what was motivating her question. So I tried to clarify for her what I actually meant by the fact that I was a Calvinist.</p>

<p>When someone asks, “Are you a five-point Calvinist?”, my response is that there is no other kind. If you understand accurately the convictions of those who are reformed in their thinking about salvation, which these so-called five-points actually refer to, you realize that they are all held together by a common concept that J. I. Packer has put like this: God saves sinners. That’s the single point of Calvinism.</p>

<p>A couple of points before I get into the substance. First, I’m not here to persuade you about Calvinism, but to answer a question about freedom and sovereign grace. And I want to remove an objection to those who hold theological views like I do. I want to clarify a point and try to remove an objection to Calvinism, again not to persuade you to become a Calvinist.</p>

<p>Second, though I am a Calvinist, I am speaking only for myself here and not for Stand to Reason because as an organization we don’t take a position on this issue. It’s not in our Statement of Faith or a requirement for employment. There have been a range of views in the people who work for us.</p>

<p>The real question behind my friend’s question is about the nature of choice. Usually people who stumble over Calvinism or Reformed theology presume that in Calvinism there is no meaningful choice. If you’re a Calvinist then you’re a determinist. Your actions are determined by the sovereign choice of God. Everything is determined. Some who I would consider more extreme or mistaken in their application of the principles of sovereignty often sound that way and that puts the scare into some people. I think my friend was concerned because if a decision is not free, then it’s determined, and if you’re a Calvinist then you don’t believe in freedom. This is what it amounts to.</p>

<p>How can an act of faith be free and still be caused by, in some sense, and fully secured by God Himself? Supposedly at opposite poles of conflict are freedom of choice, and the view that, in some sense, God causes and secures salvation for an individual by the provisions of His grace, and not the individual. So this supposedly creates a kind of conundrum.</p>

<p>I think a vital question at this point is what does it mean for a decision to be free? This is a question that many people have never really thought about carefully because they think they understand that there are only simple and obvious alternatives: We are either determined, puppets on a string making mechanical decisions completely dictated from the outside like one domino falling against the other, or we’re not determined and we’re completely free with all choices available to us. If the choice for salvation is ours, as the Bible seems to indicate in many places, then we must be free and not determined. But Calvinism teaches, and it’s because the Bible also seems to indicate in many places, that the choice is God’s and He decides who is going to be saved and, therefore, it seems that Calvinists do not believe in freedom. Instead, they believe in determinism.</p>

<p>My friend, I think, was surprised to find out that I am a real Calvinist—a five-pointer—because, though she didn’t express it, my sense was that she thought that I was then a determinist. From her perspective, that seemed odd for me to be as she is aware of my thinking on other issues.</p>

<p>Here’s how I make sense of this. I am a Calvinist because of what the Bible teaches. I am convinced that grace is sovereign, a free gift of God, and it is distributed sovereignly by God. But I am also aware that the Bible acknowledges a choice that we make and I believe in that, too. That seems to be a conundrum until you realize that the options are not simply between freedom and determinism. This line of thinking leaves out an important detail and the detail is that there are two different ways to understand freedom. There are two different species, if you will, of genuine freedom and, in fact, both kinds of freedom seem to be part of our daily experience. These two distinctions are very important for understanding Calvinism.</p>

<p>Let me stimulate your thinking by asking you a couple of questions. First, do you choose to sin? Now I know you sin because we all do. It’s the human condition. My question is, when you sin, do you choose to do so? Is it because of a choice you are making to do wrong?</p>

<p>The second question is, can you, as a human being, choose never to sin in your life? In the natural condition, are you capable of sinlessness?</p>

<p>My suspicion is that when you ponder those two questions you will answer yes to the first one. Yes, you do choose to sin. And you’ll answer no to the second one—no, you are not capable, as a fallen human being, of sinless perfection. Not only are those answers consistent with our personal experience, but those answers are consistent with Scripture. We are in a state of fallenness in which we sin in virtue of the fact that we are sinners. There is no option for us not to sin, even though we are aware that we choose to sin. In light of our choice to sin, we are held responsible for those sins that we choose.</p>

<p>Now let me ask you another question. Did you choose what you ate for breakfast this morning, and if you did, could you have chosen to eat something else if you had willed it so? I think your answer to both of those questions is yes. I chose to eat peanut butter on whole wheat toast with jam. I chose that. I don’t always choose that. I sometimes choose oatmeal or bacon and eggs. So I could have chosen otherwise in the decision I made about my breakfast this morning and I suspect so could you. When it comes to a lot of things, breakfast for example, we can make choices in a way that it seems we could have made other choices. We could have done otherwise.</p>

<p>But it also seems that there are some other choices, a much smaller group, that we don’t have that kind of freedom. I would put in this category rebellion against God that results in acts of sin against Him. This small group of choices are examples of a second kind of freedom, i.e., things that you choose that you could not have done otherwise. And here I don’t mean that you could not have done otherwise maybe in this particular act of sin. In this category, individual choices could have been otherwise, but in the course of making moral choices it is inevitable that someday, sometime or many times actually, we will choose to sin. Even though the choice is inevitable, it’s still our choice isn’t it? They are choices that we make and, therefore, we are responsible for them.</p>

<p>This suggests that there are two different ways for an act to be free. One, an act is free if we choose it ourselves. In other words, it’s our choice. The only condition for this kind of freedom is that we make the decision. Nobody is forcing us. There isn’t some force on the outside that requires us to act this way. We are free on the single condition that we choose the thing we choose of our own will and volition. That’s one sense of freedom.</p>

<p>The other sense of freedom has that condition to it, but adds another condition. In the second sense of freedom, an act is free if we choose it and, the second condition, we could have done otherwise. Philosophers call that libertarian freedom, although there is some debate about the nature of that term. Generally, an act isn’t free unless we choose it and we could have done otherwise.</p>

<p>So the options regarding freedom and determinism are a bit complicated so thinking through this question about Calvinism requires some clear thinking on freedom and choice first. It isn’t just determinism on the one hand, and freedom on the other. It is determinism on the one hand—puppets on a string, dominoes falling—or freedom in one of two or both senses. Either a choice that we make ourselves and couldn’t have done otherwise but it’s still our choice because we wanted to do it, or a choice that we make ourselves and, though we wanted to do it and chose it, theoretically we could have done otherwise.</p>

<p>Now what does the Bible teach about sin and salvation that would help us understand our choices and freedom. The Calvinist reads the Bible and sees that human beings are in a state of rebellion against God and fallenness in the natural condition. Our hearts are set against God. Our wills are inclined against Him. It’s not that we cannot choose God, that some external thing is preventing us from exercising our choice we would otherwise. It’s that we will not choose God because our own desires incline us against that choice. We are steadfastly and immovably in defiance of God. Read Romans 1 if you’re uncertain about that Biblical teaching. Every time we exercise our free choice against God we do so in a way that is consistent with our own anger and hostility and rebellion against Him. In other words, when we, as fallen human beings, exercise our freedom to do what we want to do we always choose against God. Our freedom then is the problem, not the solution.</p>

<p>So with all men bent against God, what is God’s response? Their natural inclination is rebellion. They are not inclined, in any sense, toward God and because of that will not, in any sense, choose to follow God left to themselves. Now what? God rescues us from our rebellion by sovereignly changing our nature and re-inclining our wills and hearts. He changes the direction of our hearts so that instead of choosing from a rebellious inclination we choose from an inclination that seeks God and His forgiveness. And this act of God is an act of mercy and grace from Him that we do not deserve on any basis.</p>

<p>Now here is the part that’s hard for some to accept. He does not do this for every person. Why He doesn’t, I don’t know because the Bible doesn’t tell us, but the difference between those He does it for and those He does not do it for is the difference between the elect and the non-elect. If men were left to their own devices they would continue in their rebellion because now, since the Fall, that is our nature. We would continue to freely choose, in the first sense of freedom that we discussed, according to the inclination that is hostile towards God, and no one would be in Heaven and Christ would have no bride.</p>

<p>So God chooses from among the rebellious who are under condemnation justly because of the free choice to rebel and sin against God. God punishes the sinful. It’s not God’s fault because He doesn’t elect all men. It’s sinner’s fault because they chose rebellion and sin. So when God works through grace that isn’t owed to anyone He is rescuing them from themselves. God chooses from the rebellious who are under condemnation and elects from those who are hopelessly lost a company of human beings who would be a bride for His Son. And He transforms their nature and heals them so that now they choose the right option, forgiveness that God offers, instead of the wrong option, rebellion.</p>

<p>Through His undeserved grace God is able to guarantee the result, a bride for His Son. It is an act of mercy towards those who don’t deserve it. He guarantees our choice in a way that allows men to freely choose restoration with God in the same way that we freely chose rebellion against God. We freely chose rebellion because it is consistent with our nature. And when God changes that nature, by an act of grace, those whom He chose, act consistently with the transformed nature and freely choose Him now. And that is how an act of faith can be free and still be caused and fully secured by God.</p>

<h2>Limited Atonement</h2>

<p>My friend asked if I was a five-point Calvinist and I am. Some people say they’re a four-point Calvinist because they’re uncomfortable with limited atonement. That’s a stumbling block for some people. But if we understand freedom and choice and God’s unilateral grace to save us, then I think the objection to limited atonement is removed, and, in fact, every Christian believes in limited atonement.</p>

<p>First let me tell you what I mean by “atonement.”&nbsp;There are a number of theological theories of atonement, but what I have in mind here when talking about “limited”&nbsp;or “particular”&nbsp;atonement is the payment for sin to absolve God’s anger toward the sinner.</p>

<p>Let’s work through a series of questions.</p>

<p>When you pay a bill, is the bill still owed? No. In other words, when the payment is made for a bill, the debt is canceled, right? In the same way, when a sin is actually paid for, atoned for, then the sin bill is no longer owed, is it? There is forgiveness of the debt, and with forgiveness, salvation.</p>

<p>Therefore, everyone whose sins have been atoned for, their sins have been paid for. And everyone whose sins have been paid for is forgiven. And everyone who is forgiven is going to Heaven.</p>

<p>Therefore, everyone whose sin has been atoned for is going to Heaven.</p>

<p>So if only the atoned for go to Heaven then atonement must be limited in some sense or else universalism is true, every human being goes to Heaven. So every Christian but universalists believe atonement is limited.</p>

<p>But how is the atonement limited?</p>

<p>The atonement is not limited in its potential because Jesus was not just man, but also God, and the sacrifice of the God/man was adequate to pay for all sin for all time.</p>

<p>The atonement is limited in its application. The atonement is applied only to those who God intends it to be applied to, those who have satisfied the right condition: faith in Christ.</p>

<p>Sinners’&nbsp;condemnation is secured, determined beforehand because the nature of our will is bent toward sin. God does not intend the payment (atonement) to be made for everybody (in which case everybody would be saved—universalism). Instead, God intends that the payment (atonement) to be limited to those who fulfill the conditions for receiving it—faith in Christ?</p>

<p>Therefore, the atonement is limited.</p>

<p>Notice that I have not said anything about election in this reasoning. It seems to me that there is nothing in this characterization of limited, or particular, atonement that should in any way be offensive or disagreeable to someone who does not believe in election in the Reformed or Calvinistic sense. Jesus’&nbsp;atonement is limited in application to those who fulfill the conditions for receiving it: faith.</p>

<p>“Sufficient for all; efficient only for the elect.”&nbsp;And at this point you can cash out election in the Arminian sense (because even Arminians believe in the elect) or in the Calvinistic sense. It makes no difference in understanding limited atonement. Regardless of whether or not election is conditional (Arminianism) or unconditional (Calvinism), the atonement must be limited in its application or else universalism is true.</p>

<p>So limited atonement shouldn’t be a stumbling block theologically for any Christian other than universalists. It fits within both Arminianism and Calvinism. And that’s why I can say I’m a five-point Calvinist and I believe in personal freedom.</p>
</div>

            <br>
            <!-- Share links -->
            <a id="facebook-share" href="https://www.facebook.com/sharer.php?u=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.str.org%2Fw%2Fsovereign-grace-free-choice" aria-label="Share this page on Facebook" title="Share on Facebook">
            	<i class="fab fa-facebook-f fa-lg" aria-hidden="true"></i>
            </a>
            <a id="twitter-share" href="https://twitter.com/intent/tweet?url=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.str.org%2Fw%2Fsovereign-grace-free-choice" aria-label="Share this page on Twitter" title="Share on Twitter">
            	<i class="fab fa-twitter fa-lg" aria-hidden="true"></i>
            </a>
            <a id="email-share" href="mailto:?body=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.str.org%2Fw%2Fsovereign-grace-free-choice" aria-label="Email this page to a friend" title="Email">
            	<i class="far fa-envelope fa-lg" aria-hidden="true"></i>
            </a>
            <a href="https://www.printfriendly.com" class="printfriendly" onclick="window.print();return false;" title="Printer Friendly and PDF"><i class="fa fa-print fa-lg" aria-hidden="true"></i>
            </a>
            
          


title: Must We Believe Jesus Is God?
topic: Theology
author: Greg Koukl
date: 03/22/2013
source: https://www.str.org/w/must-we-believe-jesus-is-god-
content:
            <div> 
		<p><em>If you believe in Christ but reject His unique deity, you might have a very nice religion, but can you call it Christianity?</em></p>

<p>Must a person believe that Christ is God in order to be saved? I don’t think it is necessary for you to be aware of that doctrine and hold to it before you can become a Christian and receive forgiveness. But I think that you have to know some doctrine in order to be a Christian, in order to receive God’s gift of salvation. I think it is a very fundamental and basic doctrine that you need to know. Basically, you need to know your need and God’s provision in Jesus, and then respond to that by trusting Jesus for your salvation. In other words, you trust in the person of Jesus Christ. It may be after that that you find out that Jesus is also God. You don’t need to know that Jesus is God before the fact.</p>

<p>In fact, I don’t think that the early church had a precise view of that like we do now. I think some of the details of this were worked out in the history of the church during the first couple of centuries. I think it’s all there inherent in the Scriptures. I think the early church believed in the divinity of Christ but wasn’t sure what to make of that. They weren’t sure exactly how all that worked out, and they didn’t bother themselves with it because their job at that point wasn’t to refine their theology; it was first of all, to get the basic Gospel out and, secondly, to stay alive. So it wasn’t till later that they refined these things.</p>

<p>I don’t think that a person can repudiate the deity of Christ and call themselves a Christian because I think that the notion of the deity of Christ—God becoming man, God in three persons, one essence—is an essential defining doctrine of the faith. In other words, if you reject an essential or defining doctrine then you cannot call yourself by the title that is defined by these doctrines.</p>

<p>Every word has a definition and usually the definition entails a couple of different things that make the full definition, and if the details are not there, you can’t apply the word. The same is true of “Christian.”&nbsp;The word Christian and being a Christian entails a couple of particular things historically. One of those particular things is that you believe in the unique deity of Jesus Christ—the Trinity, God become man, Jesus Christ being fully God and fully man, two natures, one person. If you reject that, you might have a very nice religion, but you just don’t have Christianity. So in that sense you can’t be a Christian and reject the deity of Christ.</p>

<p>Part of the reason I would say that is that we are to believe in God and in Jesus Christ as He is in Himself. In other words, it doesn’t seem to me that you can deny the nature of God, the nature of the God of the Scripture, and still call yourself a Christian. John says in John 4:24, “God is spirit, and those who worship Him must worship in spirit and in truth.”&nbsp;In other words, there are some fundamental things you have got to have right about God or at least not be willing to repudiate. You can learn them, but once you repudiate them you are repudiating the very God you are saying you are seeking to worship. This is a God who is one God in essence and in substance, but has three persons, Father, Son and the Spirit; and the second person, called the Logos in John 1, takes on humanity, becomes a real man such that Jesus Christ is one person with two natures—the full nature of divinity and the full nature of humanity. And if you reject such a thing, I don’t see how you can then say I have put my faith in Jesus because the Jesus that you put your faith in is not the Jesus of the Scriptures, and it is only the Jesus of the Scriptures who really saves you.</p>

<p>So I think that it’s actually very critical and I think it’s important to point out that Paul himself talked about another Jesus that was preached that some unfortunately accept, but a Jesus that is contrary to the Jesus of Scriptures. In fact, Jesus warned in Matthew 24 that one characteristic of the end times is the fact that false messiahs would come and claim to be someone special and mislead many. And I think that false messiahs are individuals who claim to be messiah or else substitute definitions for the Jesus of Scripture. I think the denial of the deity of Christ is such a substitution.</p>

<p>The Scripture teaches clearly not only that any old god won’t do—and we see that in statements like Exodus 20:2-3, “I am the Lord your God who brought you out of the land of Egypt, out of the house of slavery. You shall have no other gods before me.”&nbsp;The first commandment in fact. We must have the correct God before us. By the same token, any old Jesus won’t do either. Jesus says in John 8:24, “Unless you believe that I Am, you shall die in your sins.”&nbsp;According to Jesus it was very critical that we have a particular belief about him, and if we don’t then we are lost in our sins.</p>

<p>It isn’t enough to simply believe in Him. And by the way, that text in John 8 is when Jesus was addressing particular people who had believed in Him in some fashion. But one needs to have an accurate belief in Jesus, not just any belief in Jesus in order for the true Christ to be their savior. I think that those are very critical distinctions and we have to hold to those if the word Christian is going to continue to mean something in particular and not just any religious thought that has to do with some man or any man named Jesus.</p>
</div>

            <br>
            <!-- Share links -->
            <a id="facebook-share" href="https://www.facebook.com/sharer.php?u=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.str.org%2Fw%2Fmust-we-believe-jesus-is-god-" aria-label="Share this page on Facebook" title="Share on Facebook">
            	<i class="fab fa-facebook-f fa-lg" aria-hidden="true"></i>
            </a>
            <a id="twitter-share" href="https://twitter.com/intent/tweet?url=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.str.org%2Fw%2Fmust-we-believe-jesus-is-god-" aria-label="Share this page on Twitter" title="Share on Twitter">
            	<i class="fab fa-twitter fa-lg" aria-hidden="true"></i>
            </a>
            <a id="email-share" href="mailto:?body=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.str.org%2Fw%2Fmust-we-believe-jesus-is-god-" aria-label="Email this page to a friend" title="Email">
            	<i class="far fa-envelope fa-lg" aria-hidden="true"></i>
            </a>
            <a href="https://www.printfriendly.com" class="printfriendly" onclick="window.print();return false;" title="Printer Friendly and PDF"><i class="fa fa-print fa-lg" aria-hidden="true"></i>
            </a>
            
          


title: My Greatest Fear
topic: Theology
author: Greg Koukl
date: 03/22/2013
source: https://www.str.org/w/my-greatest-fear
content:
            <div> 
		<p><em>There is discomfort that grabs us because we simply don’t understand the gravity of our sin in the presence of a perfectly holy God.</em></p>

<p>I promised you about what really and genuinely amounts to my greatest fear. The occasion for this reflection was a movie I saw, or a series I should say, made for TV and considered by some to be the best western ever made. It’s called <em>Lonesome Dove</em> with Robert Duvall, Tommy Lee Jones, Robert Urich, Danny Glover, Rick Schroeder, Anjelica Huston. I should offer this caveat for those who might think about renting the film. There is some language, violence, “adult”&nbsp;themes, so I’m not recommending it without reservation—you make your own decisions. But it happened to be the thing that triggered the thoughts that I’ll share with you. Maybe an apology up front. These thoughts are a little abstract, I admit, and some of you will probably be saying, “Why can’t Koukl just be normal and watch the movie?”&nbsp;I don’t have an answer for that. This is just the way I am and this is what comes out sometimes when I watch movies.</p>

<p>There is really so much that can be said about my responses to <em>Lonesome Dove</em>, but I’m only going to develop two points.</p>

<p>First, there was a particular message that seemed to keep coming through in a subtle way for me. The message seemed much more applicable in the harsh environment of frontier life, but it’s no less true now. The message is this: death is sudden, it’s intrusive—it’s an uninvited player—and it’s final. And it’s finality is very disruptive because all of that particular person’s unfinished business will remain forever unfinished. Characters would be introduced in this story, plot lines would seem to develop, you’d get attached to them, you’d think “I wonder where the writer’s going with this...”, and then they get killed. There’s no warning, and there’s no resolution of all of their issues. You find yourself trying to anticipate the turns of the plot. “Oh, here’s a clean way for this to work out.”&nbsp;But the intrusion of sudden death here has no respect for the details of plot development, for the flow of the script or of conflict resolution. It simply assaults life. It was very unsettling when you watch it.</p>

<p>You say, “Lousy film-making. Too many loose ends.”&nbsp;But that, I suspect, may be precisely the point. Even the ending was discordant. It wasn’t finished. All of the questions hadn’t been answered. All of the threads of the plot had not been neatly tied off. It just ended, with unanswered questions, unfinished stories and unresolved relationships. You want to say, “Hey, wait a minute.”&nbsp;But death doesn’t wait a minute. It has a timing all its own and it doesn’t wait, and it doesn’t take your council, it doesn’t ask your permission, and it often doesn’t even warn you. And when death knocks, it’s over. Completely.</p>

<p>So as I watched the themes unfold over the six hours of the four videos that comprise this film, I found myself thinking about the intrusion of death and of death’s ultimate consequence: the end of any chance to change your eternal destiny. As the ad says, “You only go around once in life.”&nbsp;They’re right. And once it’s over, it’s over. Forever.</p>

<p>The ad goes on to say “Grab all the gusto you can.”&nbsp;And frankly, if there <em>is</em> no God, if there <em>are</em> no consequences to the choices we make in this life, then this is <em>good</em> council. “Eat drink and be merry for tomorrow we die...”&nbsp;And I understand entirely any non-Christian who would live this way. I’d live that way too. Why not? If there’s no God, no transcendent values, why live as if there were? Why should I? Party hearty.</p>

<p>Of course the bad news is that people who live this way <em>hope</em> this is true, they don’t <em>know</em> this is true. And it’s <em>not</em> true. These are people who think they’re safe, who think there are no eternal consequences to their decisions—and even if there were they <em>think</em> they’ll end up on God’s good side. You know people like this who don’t give much thought to it, who think that it’s all just a big party anyway, there’s nothing beyond the grave. They hope that this is the case and, even if there is a God out there kind of making a list and checking it twice, well, we’re basically good people, aren’t we? We’ll end up on God’s good side because, in fact, some are people who, in Paul’s words, have “a zeal for God, but not in accordance with knowledge”&nbsp;(Rom 10:2).</p>

<p>All of these people, rudely interrupted by death, will find themselves caught by surprise, consciously aware after death that their fate is forever cast in iron. They were wrong and now they’re lost.</p>

<p>This thought crosses my mind almost every time someone well-known dies. I think, it’s all over. There’s no more chances. There’s no going back. There’s no tying up loose ends. There’s no resolving relationships. Worse than that, there’s no making new decisions that will change the course of their eternal destiny. This is it.</p>

<p>And more than that they know that this is it. They know that all of the times that they had scoffed at people who told them that there are consequences to their actions. That there was a God who would hold them responsible. Who scoffed at the Bible and made fun of Christians. These people will know without a doubt that they were wrong.</p>

<p>That’s the first point, this sense as I watched these films that death is an intruder, an interrupter and a final determiner of eternity.</p>

<p>The second point builds on the first and has to do with my personal identification with a character in <em>Lonesome Dove&nbsp;</em>that I knew was ultimately destined for hell, and how that thought got me in touch with my greatest fear.</p>

<p>Any good book or film, if it’s well done, somehow draws you into its story so you become almost a participant. You identify, you connect. You feel feelings about these people. You hate the bad ones, you may even despise them. You&nbsp;<em>feel</em> this. And you love the good ones, after a fashion. Some may say, “Oh, that’s not <em>real</em> love.”&nbsp;Well, it <em>is</em>. It’s not enduring, but it’s a real, genuine feeling. You genuinely feel these emotions for these people. Now, the feelings are shallow, because the people are fictions; they don’t really exist. But the feelings are real for the short time they last. And if the piece is well done, then the feelings last a bit longer; they <em>linger</em>—and that’s what makes great fiction.</p>

<p>That’s what happened to me with Frodo, and Aragon, and Pippin and Merry from Tolkein’s <em>Rings</em> trilogy. Did you read that? You can’t help but get attached to these characters through the 1500 or 2000 pages that chronicle their exploits. I followed them all—each one—right to their graves. When the book was over I read the epilogue, then the epilogue to the epilogue, then the appendices from A through F. I couldn’t let go of these characters until they were dead and no more.</p>

<p>This is what happened to me, in a way, with <em>Lonesome Dove</em>. As a viewer I developed an attachment to a character called Captain Augustus MacRae—“Gus”—an aging but legendary Texas Ranger, a self-described philosopher, who lived day to day and took life—and death—as it comes.</p>

<p>I developed an emotional attachment for this man—and so did all the characters in the story, by the way, which is part of what this film is all about. I’m not going to articulate why this happened; suffice it to say that it just did. He’s likable, and in spite of some vulgar aspects of his life there’s a nobility about Gus. There <em>is</em> a philosopher quality, a depth, a dimension you have to admire, and you get endeared to him.</p>

<p>Then all of a sudden, out of nowhere, surprisingly, Gus dies. And it’s not even the end of the movie. The event is somewhat protracted; it takes almost nine months before he’s even buried. And when his closest friend—Captain Woodrow F. Cull, simply called “The Captain,”&nbsp;another aging Ranger—finally puts him in the ground it’s 2,500 weary miles from where Gus died in Montana—which is why it took him so long to get buried. Woodrow was fulfilling the dying wish of his friend, and hauled his corpse all the way down to south Texas and buried him in a pecan grove.</p>

<p>But there’s a richness to the grieving over Gus, not only with the characters but with what went on inside of me as well. A grieving for Gus. It has an appeal to it. You want to feel it. You want the knot to grow in your throat. You want the tears to flow. You want to feel that. And I did. I connected with the quiet anguish of Gus’s friends because I “loved”&nbsp;Gus too.</p>

<p>As my “viewing��&nbsp;self—as it were—connected with this character, my other self—the self not taken up with this fantasy world of fiction—reminded me of a very simple truth: Gus is going to hell. But he really doesn’t think he is, that’s why he goes to death so easily. His parting words to Woodrow were, “We’ve had a hell of a ride. Haven’t we?”&nbsp;He grabbed for all the gusto, and he got it. He dies peaceably because he has no idea of the reality waiting for him beyond the grave. But Gus <em>will</em> be caught by surprise.</p>

<p>Now, consider for a moment the thought that someone you’re endeared to, someone who has admirable qualities and in the great scheme of things seems rather harmless, consider the thought that they <em>are</em> going to hell. You’re forced to say that for what are theologically sound reasons, that this unbeliever who you’ve become attached to, who you “love”&nbsp;will undergo the greatest torment conceivable for a duration of time that is not conceivable: eternity. Let’s be honest. That bothers you somehow. It bothers me.</p>

<p>Frankly, it was hard to imagine how God could send this man Gus to hell. And there’s a <em>sense</em> of injustice there that creates a struggle. Now I say “sense of injustice”&nbsp;because I don’t believe there’s any real injustice here. It’s a discomfort that grabs us because we simply don’t understand the gravity of our sin in the presence of a perfectly holy God.</p>

<p>I think this discomfort animates the belief that some people have in annihilationism, the view that instead of eternal punishment God simply destroys you. That’s it. This is what the Jehovah Witnesses believe. Those who hold this position have some arguments, they make some points, and frankly I hope they’re right. But I don’t think they are.</p>

<p>And if they’re not, this leaves us with a terrifying thought: there are millions and millions of people who will find themselves, <em>by surprise</em>, crossing the river Styx—as it were—like in Michaelangelo’s painting on the Sistine Chapel—take a good look at the expression on their faces next time you see a rendering or it—crossing with the <em>certain&nbsp;</em>knowledge that they have been banished to a world of darkness, agony and desperate aloneness that follows one moment upon another <em>without end</em>. And there’s no escape. There’s no way out. There’s no hope. Forever. And they will live with this torment consciously and constantly.</p>

<p>Which brings us to my greatest fear. My greatest fear is that I will be among that number. Just as millions of others who thought they were safe will be caught by surprise, just as Captain Augustus MacRae would be caught by surprise, so might I.</p>

<p>“But you’re a Christian!”&nbsp;Sure, but that doesn’t always rescue me from the terrible thought that I could be right about God’s judgment, but wrong about His mercy.</p>

<p>This is why I’m so adamant about the notion that there is no neutral ground. There is no fence for you to sit on. There is no “undecided”&nbsp;or “none of the above”&nbsp;categories. You’ve <em>got</em> to place your bet. <em>Everyone</em> antes up. Everyone’s in the game. And at any given time your money is either on red or on black. And that, by the way, is what faith is: it’s placing your bet; it’s putting it <em>all</em> on the line for what you believe is true—not what I <em>wish</em> is true, not what I’d <em>like</em> to be true, not what I’m trying to conjure up or squeeze out a lot of religious feeling to support, but what I believe to be what the preponderance of evidence points to. That’s faith. Placing my bet.</p>

<p>That’s why, though this is my greatest fear, I have convictions that are greater than my greatest fear, based on evidence that is greater that my bets are well placed and my faith is well spent. This is why apologetics is so vitally important, because it allows us to place our bets, as it were, with confidence and conviction.</p>

<p>Now the problem with my gambling metaphor is that it may give the mistaken idea that faith is just a roll of the dice. I don’t believe that. It’s not pure chance and it’s not a leap of faith, but it <em>is</em> a risk—I can’t pretend otherwise—you could lose everything. It’s the most terrible thing anyone could ever fear, to fall into the hands of an angry God.</p>

<p>But, what if I <em>am</em> mistaken about God’s mercy? Well, I really don’t know what other view would work, frankly. Or maybe I should say, I really don’t know what other view <em>wouldn’t</em> work. It seems that with just about any other alternative view at death I’m either wiped from existence—annihilated—or whisked into heaven. If the atheists or the Arians—like Jehovah’s Witnesses—are right, I just get blasted into nothingness—no pain, no problem. It’s over. If human assessment of righteousness is what matters, well, I’ve led a pretty righteous life. If it was a matter of relative goodness, and that’s the perspective of most other religions in the world, or the Arains on the other side, it seems like I’m covered. That was Paschal’s point in his famous wager—if you’re a good Christian and you’re wrong, you’ve really lost nothing; if you’re right you’ve gained everything. If you’re an atheist, however, and you’re right, you’ve gained nothing, but if you’re wrong you’ve lost everything. The Christian, it seems to me, has everything to gain and nothing to lose.</p>

<p>Let me leave you with two short thoughts from other people. The first is from one of the sons of Korah, someone given to deep reflections on these same issues, in Psalms 49. As I read of this, think of Gus for a moment.</p>

<p>Psalm 49:10 “Even wise men die; the stupid and the senseless alike perish, and leave their wealth to others. Their inner thought is that their houses are forever, and their dwelling places to all generations; they have called their lands after their own names. But man in his pomp will not endure; he is like the beasts that perish.”</p>

<p>Psalm 49:16 “Do not be afraid when a man becomes rich, when the glory of his house is increased; for when he dies he will carry nothing away; his glory will not descend after him. Though while he lives he congratulates himself—and though men praise you when you do well for yourself—he shall go to the generation of his fathers; they shall never see the light. Man in his pomp, yet without understanding, is like the beasts that perish.”</p>

<p>That’s a serious thought.</p>

<p>The second thought is from Johann Sebastian Bach, a man deeply committed to Christ and to honoring Him with his skill in music. You’ll notice that on his compositions he wrote in one corner <em>solo deo gloria</em> (��to God only be the glory”) and the initials J.J., <em>Jesu juva</em>, “Jesus helps.”</p>

<p>Reflecting on death and going to be with the Lord, Bach writes this beautiful piece about the joy—remarkably—of dying. It’s entitled “Art Thou with Me?”&nbsp;I’d like to play it for you. If you listen carefully you can hear these lines, among others:</p>

<blockquote>Art Thou with me?</blockquote>

<blockquote>I go with joy to my death, to my rest, to my death, to my rest.</blockquote>

<blockquote>
<p>So full of joy, will my departing be...</p>
</blockquote>

<p>At least that’s the way I see it.</p>
</div>

            <br>
            <!-- Share links -->
            <a id="facebook-share" href="https://www.facebook.com/sharer.php?u=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.str.org%2Fw%2Fmy-greatest-fear" aria-label="Share this page on Facebook" title="Share on Facebook">
            	<i class="fab fa-facebook-f fa-lg" aria-hidden="true"></i>
            </a>
            <a id="twitter-share" href="https://twitter.com/intent/tweet?url=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.str.org%2Fw%2Fmy-greatest-fear" aria-label="Share this page on Twitter" title="Share on Twitter">
            	<i class="fab fa-twitter fa-lg" aria-hidden="true"></i>
            </a>
            <a id="email-share" href="mailto:?body=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.str.org%2Fw%2Fmy-greatest-fear" aria-label="Email this page to a friend" title="Email">
            	<i class="far fa-envelope fa-lg" aria-hidden="true"></i>
            </a>
            <a href="https://www.printfriendly.com" class="printfriendly" onclick="window.print();return false;" title="Printer Friendly and PDF"><i class="fa fa-print fa-lg" aria-hidden="true"></i>
            </a>
            
          


title: Faith & Wishing
topic: Theology
author: Greg Koukl
date: 03/22/2013
source: https://www.str.org/w/faith-wishing
content:
            <div> 
		<p><em>What makes the Christian’s faith any different from the Mormon’s wishing, or the Hindu’s wishing, or even the wishing of an atheist?</em></p>

<p>Some Christians think that having some level of objective certainty about the truth of Christianity somehow makes faith unnecessary. It makes it irrelevant. After all, how can you have faith in something you know is true? That’s the way the argument goes. If you know it, there’s no faith involved.</p>

<p>I think this is what people mean by the phrase “leap of faith.”&nbsp;We all supposedly have to take this leap of faith. That is what Christianity or any religion is all about, right?</p>

<p>When someone like myself gives evidence for Christianity as if it can be proved in some sense, I understand how some could think I am undermining the Christian faith. After all, if God wants faith above all and I give facts and arguments that get in the way of that kind of faith, then I may actually be opposing what God wants.</p>

<p>I actually think this take on Christianity (and it is a view that is held by many well-meaning Christians, godly people) is actually mistaken. I also think that those good Christians that hold this view ultimately undermine the Gospel. Let me tell you why.</p>

<p>This view of faith reduces Christian conviction to wishful thinking. That is, what one is convinced of is the opposite of what one only hopes for. It’s almost as if on this view if you want to have faith this is something you squeeze out like a spiritual hope by acts of sheer will. Don’t ask questions, just have faith. Just make it happen inside, just believe.</p>

<p>My question is this: How is that notion different from wishing? Maybe more critically, what makes the Christian’s wishing any different from the Mormon’s wishing, or the Hindu’s wishing, or even the wishing of an atheist, if it’s all not based on facts and evidence?</p>

<p>I’d like to give you four quick Biblical examples to make my point. Here’s my scriptural support for the point that I just made that faith is not wishing, it’s knowing and that there is no inconsistency between evidence, knowing something is true, and having faith in it.</p>

<p>A couple of months ago, my wife and I went to this movie that some of you might have seen, <em>The Prince of Egypt</em>. It’s the Moses cartoon. When you see the beginning of this movie there is this word at the front that this is a rendering of a story, an account of the book of Exodus, that you can read for yourself.</p>

<p>I thought that was a good idea so we went home and read the account. Though I’d read this passage a number of times, going back over it after having seen the cartoon allowed some aspects of it to jump out to me like it had never done before. There was a phrase that kept repeating itself.</p>

<p>Moses went out into the wilderness and he had that first encounter with the burning bush, and God gave him the directive to go back to Egypt and let his people go. Moses said, Yeah, right. What’s going to happen when they say, why should we believe you, Moses?</p>

<p>God said, See that staff? Throw it down.</p>

<p>Moses threw it down and it turned into a serpent.</p>

<p>God said, See that serpent? Pick it up.</p>

<p>And he picked it up and it turned back into a staff.</p>

<p>God said, Now you take that and do that before the Jewish people and you do that before Pharaoh. And you do this number with the hail, and the frogs, and turning the Nile River into blood. You put the sun out. You do a bunch of other tricks to get their attention.</p>

<p>And then comes this phrase: “So that they might know that there is a God in Israel.”</p>

<p>Where did that come from? “That they might know.”</p>

<p>It’s not in just that one passage. You go back and forth through that entire sequence of events and you see the phrase repeated over and over again. God did these visible acts of power, not so that Moses could guess, not so that the people of Israel could hope or wish, but so that they could know. Moses wasn’t told to go to Pharaoh, and when Pharaoh said, Why should I let the people go? Why should I believe God sent you? Moses isn’t told to tell him just to take it on faith. He is to give evidence. Powerful evidence that God is in fact working so “that they shall know.”</p>

<p>If you fast forward to the New Testament in Mark 2 you see Jesus preaching in a house, and you know the story where they take the roof off and let the paralytic down through the roof. Jesus said, “Your sins are forgiven.”&nbsp;And people get bugged because how can anyone forgive sins but God alone?</p>

<p>Jesus understood what they were thinking and He said this: What’s harder to say, your sins are forgiven, or to rise, take up your pallet and go home?</p>

<p>Now, I’ll tell you what would be harder for me to say: Arise, take up your pallet and go home. I can walk into any Bible study and say your sins are forgiven and nobody is going to know if I know what I am talking about or not. But if I lay hands on somebody in a wheelchair and I say, Take up your wheelchair and go home, and they sit there, I look pretty dumb because everyone knows nothing happened.</p>

<p>But Jesus adds this. He says, “In order that you may know that the Son of Man has the power and authority to forgive sins, I say to you, arise, take up your pallet and go home.”&nbsp;And he got up and he got out. Notice the phrase&nbsp;“In order that you may know.” Same message, right?</p>

<p>Move over to the Book of Acts. First sermon after Pentecost. Peter was up in front of this massive crowd. He was talking about the resurrection to which he was an eyewitness. He talked about fulfilled prophecy. He talked about the miraculous tongues and the miraculous manifestation of being able to speak in a language you don’t know. Do you think this is physical evidence to those people? I think so. Pretty powerful.</p>

<p>Peter tells them, These men are not drunk as it seems, but rather this is a fulfillment of prophecy. David spoke of this. Jesus got out of the grave, and we saw him, and we proclaim this to you.</p>

<p>Do you know how he ends his sermon? It’s really great. Acts 2:36. I’ve been a Christian 20 years and I didn���t see this until about a year ago. This is for all of those who think that if you can know it for sure, you can’t exercise faith in it. Here is what Peter said. Acts 2:36, “Therefore let all the house of Israel know for certain that God has made him both Lord and Christ, Messiah, this Jesus whom you crucified.”&nbsp;There it is again. “Know for certain.”</p>

<p>This is throughout the entire Scriptures. Exodus, Acts, Romans 1:4. Paul talked about Jesus who is the Son of God, who is declared the Son of God with power by the resurrection from the dead. How do we know Jesus is the Son of God? Is that just a faith statement? Is it something we just wish were the case? Is that something we hope for in a leap of faith? Paul says he was declared the Son of God with power by the resurrection. We know he was the Son of God because He raised Himself from the dead. Now, that is evidence.</p>

<p>In order to tell you if I have good reasons to believe that God parted the Red Sea, and created all of that havoc upon the Egyptians to free the people of Israel, and then also Jesus healed the paralytic and raised Himself from the dead, I think that is pretty good reason for me to know for certain that the claims that the Bible makes in general and that Jesus made specifically are actually ones that we can trust in an active way. In other words, we can have convictions about them. We can be convinced. Not just have “faith.”</p>

<p>In the book of 1 John we see this all brought together. 1 John 5:13, “These things,”&nbsp;John says, “I&nbsp;have written to you who believe in the name of the Son of God, in order that you may know that you have eternal life.”</p>

<p>You can know it, ladies and gentlemen. Remember how John started out his book? He started out by saying those things which we have seen, those things that we know personally. “What was from the beginning, what we have heard, what we have seen with our eyes, what we have beheld and our hands handled concerning the Word of Life, and the life was manifested, and we have seen and bear witness and proclaim to you the eternal life.”</p>

<p>Do you think he is trying to get a point across there? He is saying, we’ve got the goods. We’ve got the evidence. Therefore our faith is not vain hope. It is not simply wishing. We’ve got convictions. We have put our trust in God based on the evidence, and that’s what Biblical faith entails.</p>

<p>That’s why at Stand to Reason we take the life of the mind seriously, friends. Because God does. And according to the Bible, faith is not wishing. Rather, it is an act of trust based on being convinced of the truth because of evidence. That’s why Peter says, “Know for certain.”</p>

<p>Our goal at Stand to Reason is to help build a new generation of ambassadors for Jesus Christ. People who are confident, and as a result are courageous, yet they are winsome and attractive as they make their case for the Gospel. Those are important, by the way. It is not just confident and courageous. We want people who are also attractive in the way they do that. They aren’t just climbing up people’s backs and down their throats, but are respectful of others while they make an incisive defense for Christianity.</p>

<p>I have a deep-seated conviction that Christianity can compete in the marketplace of ideas if it is properly understood and properly articulated. Big ifs in both cases. My commitment to you with Stand to Reason is to help you understand Christianity and help you to articulate it more effectively. That’s why I’m dedicated to be here to help you to that end. To give you answers as best as I can. But more that telling you what to think, I’d like to help teach you how to think and to give you the tools to demonstrate to others that Christianity is worth thinking about.</p>
</div>

            <br>
            <!-- Share links -->
            <a id="facebook-share" href="https://www.facebook.com/sharer.php?u=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.str.org%2Fw%2Ffaith-wishing" aria-label="Share this page on Facebook" title="Share on Facebook">
            	<i class="fab fa-facebook-f fa-lg" aria-hidden="true"></i>
            </a>
            <a id="twitter-share" href="https://twitter.com/intent/tweet?url=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.str.org%2Fw%2Ffaith-wishing" aria-label="Share this page on Twitter" title="Share on Twitter">
            	<i class="fab fa-twitter fa-lg" aria-hidden="true"></i>
            </a>
            <a id="email-share" href="mailto:?body=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.str.org%2Fw%2Ffaith-wishing" aria-label="Email this page to a friend" title="Email">
            	<i class="far fa-envelope fa-lg" aria-hidden="true"></i>
            </a>
            <a href="https://www.printfriendly.com" class="printfriendly" onclick="window.print();return false;" title="Printer Friendly and PDF"><i class="fa fa-print fa-lg" aria-hidden="true"></i>
            </a>
            
          


title: Love of God, Judgment of God
topic: Theology
author: Greg Koukl
date: 03/22/2013
source: https://www.str.org/w/love-of-god-judgment-of-god
content:
            <div> 
		<p><em>When the armies of Israel conquered the Promised Land, God commanded them to kill every living thing, including women and children. Could there be any possible justification for barbarism?</em></p>

<p>One of the hardest questions confronting Christians defending the biblical record is, “How could a good God commission Israel to destroy women and children when they’re fighting their battles?”</p>

<p>This has happened more than once in the Bible. It’s difficult to explain the answer to this, though I think there are a couple of reflections on the issue that offer food for thought. You can approach this from a couple of different directions.</p>

<p>First one caveat. I fully acknowledge that not all good answers are going to be emotionally satisfying to a lot of people. That’s why this is a hard issue, because people let their emotional sensibilities rule instead of trying to see the bigger picture.</p>

<p>One way to approach the problem is to show that it’s a much bigger problem than first imagined. Curiously, I think this helps make the solution simpler. God’s command that Israel destroy women and children in battle is really just the tip of the iceberg.</p>

<p>What about when God slew the firstborn of Egypt? Many of these were women and children, some infants. Every plague on Egypt—the hail, the gnats, the frogs, the locust, the boils—fell on all Egyptians equally, not just upon the soldiers.</p>

<p>What about Sodom and Gomorrah in which, with the exception of Lot and his family, every man woman and child was turned to cinder? Everyone was indiscriminately destroyed. The same thing happened in the Genesis flood. Only eight in the entire world survived. It’s interesting that I have never heard anyone raise the complaint “What about the women and children?”&nbsp;in these instances.</p>

<p>When you read the book of Revelation you’ll find this practice of God’s is not limited to the Old Testament. In the future, God will once again visit judgment upon the world and destroy not just the soldiers, but the women and children as well. I’ve never heard anyone raise an objection about that, but isn’t it the same problem, essentially?</p>

<p>The underlying question, “Is it right for Jews to kill women and children at God’s command?”&nbsp;can only be answered by answering another question: Can God legitimately judge and destroy the world or any portion of it or its inhabitants that He sees fit to destroy? Is this inside of God’s prerogatives or outside of it?</p>

<p>My answer is unequivocal: It is not evil for God to take life, because God is the Author of life. He can give it and He can take it away. That’s part of the prerogative of being God. All that He creates belongs to Him. This is His world. He needs no further justification, because He is not compelled by any law higher than Himself.</p>

<p>Second, our notion of the sovereignty of God entails that every detail of the world is under direct control of God. Nothing happens that He doesn’t either actively cause or passively allow. God did not create the universe, wind it up, then let it spin out its course without His involvement. Instead, regarding every nation of mankind on the face of the earth He has “determined their appointed times, and the boundaries of their habitation”&nbsp;(Acts 17:26).</p>

<p>This means that since humans are mortal, there comes a time when every life God created “shuffles off its mortal coil”&nbsp;and returns to Him, either for ultimate judgment or for ultimate reward. God, the Giver and Taker of life, calls every life back to Him at some point and in some manner. The timing and the method of each person’s demise is somewhat incidental, from a moral perspective. It’s up to Him.</p>

<p>So I’m arguing first that it’s God’s prerogative to take life when He so chooses, and second that the means He uses to take that life is a matter of His prerogative as well. Whether it’s by disease, or mishap, or hailstones, or the angel of life, or the sword of a Jewish soldier, the means is up to Him. It’s His prerogative.</p>

<p>My third thought has to do with the question, “What did those women and children do? They were innocent.”&nbsp;I certainly understand the response and there is a sense in which <em>on an emotional level</em> I am troubled when I consider this. But there’s another aspect to keep in mind.</p>

<p>God deals with people not just as individuals, but as groups. When the nation of Israel is doing well as a nation, doesn’t He prosper the <em>whole</em> nation, even though there are individuals in the nation that are scoundrels? When the nation is doing well, generally speaking, God blesses the nation and everybody prospers.</p>

<p>However, the flip side is that when the nation is corrupt, then God judges the nation as a whole and everyone gets judged, even those remaining few that might be innocent. God is dealing with the nation as a group, for good and for ill. It works both ways.</p>

<p>This should not be a foreign concept to us, though we probably haven’t considered the connection between this biblical reality and modern day practices. When the President and Congress agree to go to war against another country, they act as federal heads of state and commit each and every American citizen to war against a foreign power. The <em>nation</em> is at war, not just our lawmakers.</p>

<p>And we all suffer alike in the process. We surrender our effort and our taxes and even our life blood, if necessary. We all participate, even though war wasn’t our idea. We acting as a unit, as a family, as a nation. And those we war against retaliate against us as a unit.</p>

<p>In the same way, when I nation rebels against God, it is not uncommon for God to go to war against that nation itself and not just against a few rebellious individuals. God takes up arms against the land and against every man, woman, and child.</p>

<p>Let’s keep this in perspective, though. In the case of the nations in question that were utterly destroyed by God, it isn’t a few citizens that imperiled the many. We know from Abraham’s appeal on behalf of Sodom and Gomorrah that God will spare a whole city of sinners for the sake of a handful of righteous people. Instead, there was a pattern of ongoing, thorough-going, and persistent moral rebellion against God that went on for years—in many cases, for generations—in spite of repeated warnings by God.</p>

<p>There’s a third thing. It pertains to the challenge, “If God were really good, how could He do such a thing? How could He destroy these innocent people? This is barbaric.”&nbsp;They take this record of God’s judgment as evidence that the God of the Bible isn’t really good at all, and therefore should not be believed in.</p>

<p>I approach it from a different direction. I think the preponderance of evidence from the same historical record—the Old Testament��is that God is good. He continually demonstrates not just his holiness, but also His patience and forbearance for those that consistently rebel against Him, though He has graciously cared for them.</p>

<p>This gives us good reason to trust Him. And if we have good reason to trust Him, then when we see things that seem to go against our sense of goodness and justice, it seems only fair to give the benefit of the doubt to God, who just might know something more than we know.</p>

<p>When we were children, our own parents acted in ways we didn’t understand. We didn’t think their decisions were fair. Later we learned that, for the most part, they had insight and information unavailable to us that influenced their decisions. Many times we learned that they were acting in our best interests after all, though we didn’t see it at the time.</p>

<p>These are the kind of things we discover as we grow up. We learn that our parents were right most of the times we thought they were off base. The same kind of hindsight is true with God. God may know a few things we don’t know.</p>

<p>By the way, the question has also been raised, “Why destroy the cattle, too?”&nbsp;My understanding is that in many of those cultures the people were so decadent they were having intercourse with animals. This caused rampant venereal disease in animals and humans that even infected children as well. So this may be—I’m not sure, but it may be—another reason God wanted these entire cultures wiped out. Because of their moral corruption, they were physically corrupt, and this represented a health threat to the new inhabitants of the land, the children of Israel.</p>

<p>Even if that wasn’t the case, as the Author of life God still has the right to take life according to His own judgment. I’ve given you three good reasons to help make sense of that. Whether it’s emotionally satisfying for you or not is another issue altogether.</p>
</div>

            <br>
            <!-- Share links -->
            <a id="facebook-share" href="https://www.facebook.com/sharer.php?u=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.str.org%2Fw%2Flove-of-god-judgment-of-god" aria-label="Share this page on Facebook" title="Share on Facebook">
            	<i class="fab fa-facebook-f fa-lg" aria-hidden="true"></i>
            </a>
            <a id="twitter-share" href="https://twitter.com/intent/tweet?url=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.str.org%2Fw%2Flove-of-god-judgment-of-god" aria-label="Share this page on Twitter" title="Share on Twitter">
            	<i class="fab fa-twitter fa-lg" aria-hidden="true"></i>
            </a>
            <a id="email-share" href="mailto:?body=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.str.org%2Fw%2Flove-of-god-judgment-of-god" aria-label="Email this page to a friend" title="Email">
            	<i class="far fa-envelope fa-lg" aria-hidden="true"></i>
            </a>
            <a href="https://www.printfriendly.com" class="printfriendly" onclick="window.print();return false;" title="Printer Friendly and PDF"><i class="fa fa-print fa-lg" aria-hidden="true"></i>
            </a>
            
          


title: Jesus' Passion Week
topic: Theology
author: Greg Koukl
date: 03/22/2013
source: https://www.str.org/w/jesus-passion-week
content:
            <div> 
		<p><em>Jesus’&nbsp;long journey is almost over. In a matter of hours the Messiah will be dead, but those hours will tick by slowly. Some of the time is spent with those Jesus loves the most and who He has spent almost every waking moment with for the last three years. The rest of His time will be spent in agony, humiliation and suffering. Throughout His betrayal, desertion, mockery and brutal torture, however, Jesus does not flinch from His resolve. Instead, He faithfully fulfills His mission until He can say, with His dying breath, “it is finished!”</em></p>

<h2>The Final Conflict with the Pharisees</h2>

<p>A. Jesus gives three parables, all of them an indictment of the ruling religious order. It’s interesting that Jesus refuses to answer the Jewish leaders directly when they ask Him to defend His authority (Matt 21:27), but then immediately answers their question by way of parable (Matt 21:28-22:14) that He clearly spoke against them (see Mk 12:12).</p>

<p>1. The parable of the disobedient sons (Matt. 21:28-32)</p>

<p>a. The first son says he will obey, but doesn’t; the second says he won’t obey, but does.</p>

<p>b. The point: obedience is better than assurances (or “Talk is cheap”).</p>

<p>2. The parable of the landowner and his tenants (Matt 21:33-46; Mk 12:1-11; Lk 20:9-18)</p>

<p>a. The landowner’s representatives are mistreated by the tenants, who later kill his son.</p>

<p>b. The point: identifies Israel’s guilt in their rejection of God’s chosen ones.</p>

<p>3. The parable of the wedding feast (Matt. 22:1-14)</p>

<p>a. The invited guests don’t come, so the door is open to others.</p>

<p>b. This demonstrates:</p>

<p>1) The long-suffering and goodness of God</p>

<p>2) The rejection of those despising the invitation</p>

<p>3) The necessity for purity</p>

<p>B. Jesus recites the Seven Woes (Matt 23:1-36).</p>

<p>1. He publicly condemns the religious leaders of the time for the motives of their religion (v5-7).</p>

<p>“But they do all their deeds to be noticed by men...”&nbsp;(v5)</p>

<p>2. Jesus stands for truth even when it is unpopular, when it goes against the prevailing teaching of the time.</p>

<p>a. “Do not participate in the unfruitful deeds of darkness, but instead even expose them”&nbsp;(Eph 5:11).</p>

<p>b. “But sanctify Christ as Lord in your hearts, always being ready to make a defense to everyone who asks you to give an account for the hope that is in you, yet with gentleness and reverence”&nbsp;(1 Pet 3:15).</p>

<p>c. To speak out in a loving way does not mean you don’t confront or that you back down when someone disagrees with you. Jesus never backed down.</p>

<h2>The Olivet Discourse</h2>

<p>(Matt 24; Mk 13; Lk 21:5-36)</p>

<p>Given on the Mount of Olives, this discourse gives signs of the end of the age emphasizing that the disciples are to maintain an attitude of alertness and readiness for Jesus’&nbsp;certain return.</p>

<p>A. Jesus predicts the destruction of the temple.</p>

<p>“Do you not see these all these things? Truly I say to you, not one stone here shall be left upon another, which will not be torn down”&nbsp;(Matt 24:2).</p>

<p>B. The Apostles ask two questions (Matt 24:3):</p>

<p>1. “When will these things be [the destruction of the temple, et all]?”&nbsp;(This question is answered in Luke’s account).</p>

<p>2. “What will be the sign of Your coming, and of the end of the age?”</p>

<p>C. The signs of the end of the age (Matt 24)</p>

<p>1. Great spiritual deception and false Messiahs, accompanied by displays of supernatural power (v5, 24).</p>

<p>2. Great political, natural, and social upheaval.</p>

<p>a. Nation against nation (v7)</p>

<p>b. Famines and earthquakes (v7)</p>

<p>c. Lawlessness increases and love grows cold (v12).</p>

<p>d. Like birth pangs: increasing frequency and increasing intensity.</p>

<p>3. The expansive proclamation of the Gospel (vs. 14)</p>

<p>D. The “sign”&nbsp;of His coming (v23-31)</p>

<p>1. Jesus’&nbsp;return will not be in secret.</p>

<p>2. Jesus return will be visible, powerful and conclusive.</p>

<p>E. The parable of the fig tree (v32-33)</p>

<p>1. Take courage during this great tribulation (see also v6).</p>

<p>2. Be morally ready and not caught by surprise. (In 1 Thess. 5:1-11, Paul develops this theme further.)</p>

<p>F. When will He come?</p>

<p>1. Jesus gives the general timing—“This generation will not pass away until all these things take place”&nbsp;(v34). Here I think Jesus is not referring to the generation He was speaking to, but rather to the generation He was just describing, that is, the one who sees all of these things take place.</p>

<p>2. Jesus didn’t currently know the exact timing as He spoke to His disciples, but He doesn’t say no one cannot know.</p>

<p>“But of that day and hour no one knows, not even the angels of heaven, nor the Son, but the Father alone”&nbsp;(v36).</p>

<p>3. However, Jesus does know now, at this present moment, because He’s with the Father and no longer in His humility.</p>

<p>Jesus’&nbsp;statement was not meant to be restrictive for all time, I believe. He simply answered the question of “When?”&nbsp;by saying, “I don’t know.”&nbsp;We are not perpetually in a state of ignorance about this event, however. The NT emphasis is that the person in darkness—the unbeliever—will be caught by surprise. The Christian, however, shouldn’t be caught because he’s a child of light, constantly in spiritual and moral readiness, alerted to the signs of Jesus’&nbsp;coming (see 1 Thess 5).</p>

<p>The die is cast; the final act of the drama is about to be played out. Jesus’&nbsp;life is in the hands of those who hate Him. In His final hours, with “the marks of the tears He had wept over Jerusalem still on His cheek,”&nbsp;(Edersheim LTJM, Vol. 2, p. 373). Jesus gathers those closest to Him to offer encouragement, to prepare them for the dark days ahead, and to demonstrate to them “the full extent of His love”&nbsp;(Jn 13:1, NIV).</p>

<h2>Upper Room Discourse—Jesus’&nbsp;farewell discourse</h2>

<p>(Matt 26:20-35; Mk 14:17-31; Lk 22:14-38; Jn 13:1-17:26)</p>

<p>A. The preparation for the Passover meal:</p>

<p>1. Jesus was well aware that the religious leaders wanted to execute Him.</p>

<p>a. Judas had already made provisions with the Jewish authorities to betray Jesus (Lk 22:1-6) for the sum of thirty pieces of silver (Matt 26:14-15).</p>

<p>[The prophet Zechariah was given this amount by the people (Zech 11:12-13), a payoff at his dismissal. God interprets this as the worth that He had in their eyes: “’Throw it to the potter, that magnificent price at which I was valued by them.’&nbsp;So I took the thirty shekels of silver and threw them to the potter in the house of the Lord.”&nbsp;This prophecy was fulfilled by Judas, who valued his own master at thirty pieces of silver, then cast them down in the sanctuary. It was later used to buy a potter’s field (Matt 27:5-8).]</p>

<p>b. Jesus’&nbsp;enemies continued to look for “a good opportunity to betray Him”&nbsp;(Matt 26:16).</p>

<p>2. Dinner arrangements were made in secret, without Judas’&nbsp;knowledge.</p>

<p>a. The secret sign: a man carrying a jug of water on his head (Mk 14:13-16).</p>

<p>b. The sign was a good one because men didn’t ordinarily assume such a chore (Harrison, p. 177).</p>

<p>B. The setting:</p>

<p>1. The upper room was probably a vacant room above the living quarters which was used for guests (Harrison, p. 177).</p>

<p>2. The disciples ��reclined”&nbsp;at a low table without chairs.</p>

<p>The men reclined, usually leaning on their left elbow with their feet pointing away from the table. John, next to Jesus, was able to lean back on Jesus’&nbsp;breast and have an intimate conversation with Him (Jn 13:23-26).</p>

<p>C. Jesus washes the disciple’s feet (Jn 13:1-20).</p>

<p>1. The disciples had been arguing over who was greatest (Lk 22:24).</p>

<p>2. Jesus took the opportunity to show them that greatness is determined by humility and servanthood.</p>

<p>a. The owner of the house, probably out of respect for Jesus’&nbsp;privacy, was absent and had left no servant, but had provided a basin and towel.</p>

<p>b. The disciples, too concerned with their high position and sense of superiority, neglected this task, customarily done by an underling.</p>

<p>3. To Jesus, humility and servanthood were not threats, but privileged expressions of love (v1-3).</p>

<p>a. He loved them: “Having loved His own who were in the world, He loved them to the end.”</p>

<p>b. He knew who He was: “...knowing that the Father had given all things into His hands...”</p>

<p>c. He knew where He came from: “...and that He had come forth from God...”</p>

<p>d. He knew where He was going to: “...and was going back to God.”</p>

<p>4. There is no profound love without humility, service and sacrifice.</p>

<p>D. Judas leaves.</p>

<p>1. Jesus acknowledges an enemy in their midst.</p>

<p>a. “You are clean, but not all of you”&nbsp;(13:10).</p>

<p>b. “Truly, truly, I say to you, that one of you will betray me.”</p>

<p>2. John, at Peter’s behest, privately learns the identity from Jesus (13:23-26).</p>

<p>3. Jesus dismisses Judas (13:27-30).</p>

<p>a. Satan entered into Judas.</p>

<p>b. “What you do, do quickly.”</p>

<p>c. “...and it was night.”</p>

<p>E. The Lord’s Supper and the initiation of the New Covenant (Matt 26:26-29; Mk 14:22-25; Lk 22:17-20)</p>

<p>1. New Covenant summary (Jer 31:31-37; Ezek 36:24-36, Joel 2:28-29)</p>

<p>The New Covenant is contrasted to the Old in that it cannot be broken and is for all nations, not just Israel.</p>

<p>a. For all nations</p>

<p>1) New relationship with a new heart based on...</p>

<p>2) Complete and permanent personal forgiveness resulting in the...</p>

<p>3) Giving of the Spirit</p>

<p>b. For Israel: national revival.</p>

<p>2. Jesus’&nbsp;blood simultaneously fulfilled the Old Covenant and initiated the New Covenant.</p>

<p>a. Fulfilled the Old</p>

<p>1) “Behold, the Lamb of God”&nbsp;(Jn 1:35).</p>

<p>2) “He made Him who knew no sin to become sin on our behalf that we might become the righteousness of God in Him”&nbsp;(2 Cor 5:21).</p>

<p>b. Initiated the New:</p>

<p>1) Check signed at the last supper.</p>

<p>2) Check covered at the cross.</p>

<p>3) Check cashed at Pentecost.</p>

<p>c. It necessarily implies the end of the Old Testament sacrificial system (see Heb 8-10).</p>

<p>F. The new commandment (J 13:34. 15:17)</p>

<p>1. Jesus gives a new commandment: love one another.</p>

<p>2. He has been showing them this all along in His own life.</p>

<p>3. He is speaking of a love that is greater than any other love, one in which one man lays down his life for another.</p>

<p>G. New provisions, because Jesus was going to the Father.</p>

<p>1. A place in the Father’s house (14:2) (Imprecisely translated “mansions”&nbsp;in the King James Version. Lit. mone, or abode (Young, p. 644), as in Jn 14:23. It’s not meant to indicate separate compartments (Vine, p. 392) as “mansion”&nbsp;might imply, but rather a place for believers to dwell securely with God.)</p>

<p>2. The only true way to get to the Father: Jesus Himself (14:6).</p>

<p>3. Jesus’&nbsp;return to escort them back (14:3).</p>

<p>4. Authority to pray in His name to bring glory to the Son (14:13-14).</p>

<p>a. We pray to the Father in the authority of Jesus.</p>

<p>b. Jesus alone has the ear of the Father by virtue of His role as priest (Heb 7:25; Rom 8:34).</p>

<p>5. The permanent presence of the Holy Spirit (J 14:16,16:7)</p>

<p>a. Another Helper, lit. allos parakletos, “another of the same sort,”&nbsp;“called to one’s side to give aid.”&nbsp;(Vine, p. 111)</p>

<p>1) An advocate, one who pleads another’s cause</p>

<p>aa. Jesus, an advocate on our behalf before the Father (cf. 1 Jn 2:1).</p>

<p>bb. The Holy Spirit, an advocate on our behalf in witnessing (15:26-27).</p>

<p>2) A comforter, one who gives succor</p>

<p>b. The Spirit of truth</p>

<p>1) The world doesn’t know Him, and can’t receive Him (14:17).</p>

<p>2) He will teach all things and bring to remembrance all that Jesus spoke (14:26).</p>

<p>3) He will bear witness of Jesus, so that we might bear witness of Jesus (15:26).</p>

<p>aa. He’ll convict the world of sin, righteousness and judgment (16:8).</p>

<p>bb. He’ll glorify Jesus (16:14).</p>

<p>H. The promise of fruitfulness for those who abide (J 15:1-8).</p>

<p>1. Fruitfulness is a result of the union between Jesus and us.</p>

<p>2. Fruitfulness is increased by pruning (ouch!).</p>

<p>I. High Priestly Prayer (truly “the Lord’s Prayer”) (J17)</p>

<p>1. Jesus prays for Himself—the Son’s glory is the Father’s glory (v1-5).</p>

<p>2. Jesus prays for His disciples (v6-19).</p>

<p>a. That they would be preserved in the world.</p>

<p>b. That they would be one, in unity.</p>

<p>c. That they would be with Jesus to behold His glory.</p>

<p>3. Jesus prays for all believers (v20-26). He even prayed for us!</p>
</div>

            <br>
            <!-- Share links -->
            <a id="facebook-share" href="https://www.facebook.com/sharer.php?u=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.str.org%2Fw%2Fjesus-passion-week" aria-label="Share this page on Facebook" title="Share on Facebook">
            	<i class="fab fa-facebook-f fa-lg" aria-hidden="true"></i>
            </a>
            <a id="twitter-share" href="https://twitter.com/intent/tweet?url=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.str.org%2Fw%2Fjesus-passion-week" aria-label="Share this page on Twitter" title="Share on Twitter">
            	<i class="fab fa-twitter fa-lg" aria-hidden="true"></i>
            </a>
            <a id="email-share" href="mailto:?body=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.str.org%2Fw%2Fjesus-passion-week" aria-label="Email this page to a friend" title="Email">
            	<i class="far fa-envelope fa-lg" aria-hidden="true"></i>
            </a>
            <a href="https://www.printfriendly.com" class="printfriendly" onclick="window.print();return false;" title="Printer Friendly and PDF"><i class="fa fa-print fa-lg" aria-hidden="true"></i>
            </a>
            
          


title: Christian “Intolerance” of Homosexuals
topic: Sexuality and Gender
author: Greg Koukl
date: 03/22/2013
source: https://www.str.org/w/christian-intolerance-of-homosexuals
content:
            <div> 
		<p><em>Does a biblical view of homosexuality equate to hate?</em></p>

<p>“I was a little shocked by the sheer intolerance of fellow Christians who define being Gay as a sin. Now, I can’t say that I have accomplished the task of reading the entire Bible, but I can say I have read enough of the Bible to see that it is a book about love, not about hate.</p>

<p>“Nowhere in the Bible does it give anyone the right to judge other people. Judgment is left for God and God alone to decide.</p>

<p>“I do believe it says on quite a few occasions, ’Thou shalt love thy neighbor as thyself.’&nbsp;If everyone would stop for a moment and think about what Christianity, Buddhism, Islam, Yoruba, and Hinduism are all about, people would realize it isn’t about denouncing one another and seeking out people to despise. It’s about love and compassion, which in this day and age we need a little bit more of.</p>

<p>Bryan</p>

<p>Sophomore, Biochemistry”</p>

<p>Bryan,</p>

<p>Your mistake here is equating moral judgment with hate. They’re not the same. If they were, your own letter would be filled with hate because it clearly judges as wrong the Christians you’re criticizing. You are clearly “denouncing one another,”&nbsp;conduct that could easily be interpreted as “seeking out people to despise”&nbsp;if someone were to give your statements an uncharitable reading.</p>

<p>Since you admit you haven’t read the entire Bible, it’s a little bit bold to claim that “Nowhere in the Bible does it give anyone the right to judge other people.”&nbsp;If fact, there are a number of references that teach the propriety of identifying sin for what it is (e.g., Ephesians 5:11). Note that the word “sin”&nbsp;alone is mentioned 380 times not counting the thousands of references to its various synonyms. Using the Bible, then, to identify a sinful conduct (e.g., homosexuality, arguably, or as you did, being judgmental), is itself and attempt to let God decide what sin is, as you recommend.</p>

<p>As for your understanding of comparative religion (“Christianity, Buddhism, Islam, Yoruba, and Hinduism”), it’s clear that you have not given this careful consideration. These are different religions precisely because they are profoundly different religions. The fact that they may, in some cases, share an ethical principle (“Love your neighbor”) in no way suggests that this is what they “are all about.”&nbsp;This is like saying that aspirin and arsenic are basically the same because they both come in tablet form. It’s the differences that matter.</p>

<p>Cordially,</p>

<p>Gregory Koukl</p>
</div>

            <br>
            <!-- Share links -->
            <a id="facebook-share" href="https://www.facebook.com/sharer.php?u=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.str.org%2Fw%2Fchristian-intolerance-of-homosexuals" aria-label="Share this page on Facebook" title="Share on Facebook">
            	<i class="fab fa-facebook-f fa-lg" aria-hidden="true"></i>
            </a>
            <a id="twitter-share" href="https://twitter.com/intent/tweet?url=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.str.org%2Fw%2Fchristian-intolerance-of-homosexuals" aria-label="Share this page on Twitter" title="Share on Twitter">
            	<i class="fab fa-twitter fa-lg" aria-hidden="true"></i>
            </a>
            <a id="email-share" href="mailto:?body=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.str.org%2Fw%2Fchristian-intolerance-of-homosexuals" aria-label="Email this page to a friend" title="Email">
            	<i class="far fa-envelope fa-lg" aria-hidden="true"></i>
            </a>
            <a href="https://www.printfriendly.com" class="printfriendly" onclick="window.print();return false;" title="Printer Friendly and PDF"><i class="fa fa-print fa-lg" aria-hidden="true"></i>
            </a>
            
          


title: Eternal Security, Cheap Grace and Free Will
topic: Theology
author: Greg Koukl
date: 03/22/2013
source: https://www.str.org/w/eternal-security-cheap-grace-and-free-will
content:
            <div> 
		<p><em>To some, the concept of eternal security cheapens grace and implies that Christians no longer have any choice. Does the “once saved always saved”&nbsp;view make us into libertines, or puppets dangling from God’s string?</em></p>

<p>The concept of eternal security—“once saved always saved”—is deeply offensive to some Christians. It implies to some that we no longer have freedom of choice. Even if we go back into the world and fall into sin, we’ll still go to heaven when we die. We can no longer choose to leave God. Instead, we’ve become captives once we’re saved, mere puppets on a string.</p>

<p>A second issue also comes up. It would cheapen grace if God still forgave Christians who continued to sin. Those who disagree with eternal security generally don’t consider themselves sinless. Their faults are capable of being forgiven. Their place in the Kingdom is safe. Backsliders, though, have crossed the line. Ongoing sin is not covered by grace. For them there is no hope.</p>

<p>This question triggers three different but related thoughts which may help you to understand what I believe the Bible teaches on this issue.</p>

<h2>Free Will</h2>

<p>First is the issue of free will. This is a slippery concept because many of us can only see the extremes. We’re either complete masters of our fate or total robots. The truth is, though, we all live somewhere in between.</p>

<p>In one sense, the only totally “free”&nbsp;man who ever lived was Adam. Everyone since Eden has been enslaved. Jesus clearly stated that whoever commits sin is a slave to sin. In other words, we’re controlled by an internal, deceptive force, “sin in me.”&nbsp;We don’t actually have the freedom we often think we do. We are not truly, completely free. Something else masters us.</p>

<p>Sin is a disease, infecting us in the deepest part of our being. Like a patient dying of cancer, we don’t have the “free will”&nbsp;to be healthy. We’re powerless to change our condition except to exercise limited choice. Even our ability to ask God for help comes from Him.</p>

<h2>God’s Choice, Not Mine</h2>

<p>Regarding free will, then, we’re much more constrained than we think we are. Even with that constraint, though, the fundamental issue of security is based not on what we choose to do, but on what God chooses to do.</p>

<p>That brings me to my next thought. What is the essence of salvation? Isn’t God’s own personal choice to forgive us the very heart of the issue? Salvation is something God does, not something we do. We receive from God, but it’s God’s choice that starts and completes the process. Paul wrote, “For I am confident of this very thing, that He who began a good work in you will perfect it until the day of Christ Jesus.”</p>

<p>If we offend a brother in Christ, ask for forgiveness, and then go on being offensive, is he violating our free will by continuing to forgive us? I don’t think so. He may be influencing us by his love, but he certainly can’t be charged with manipulating us like a puppet on a string.</p>

<p>Even so, we do not lose our capacity to choose if God decides not to hold our sins against us. What does our free will have to do with what God chooses to do on His side of the relationship? He’s chosen to forgive and He has the right to do so because He’s the one that’s been offended.</p>

<h2>How Low Can You Go?</h2>

<p>Third, the question is not whether Christians are capable of rebellion. Clearly each one of us, Christian or non-Christian, can do unspeakable things. The issue isn’t whether we’re capable of backsliding, but rather what God does with our sin when it happens. What does the Bible teach about forgiveness?</p>

<p>Much discussion about eternal security comes from the book of Romans. This epistle is Paul’s definitive statement of forgiveness and salvation. We may point to isolated passages in other parts of the Bible that raise questions, but we can’t ignore the great emphasis taught progressively throughout this book. That emphasis, in my opinion, is the assurance of forgiveness based on God’s grace.</p>

<p>Paul made it abundantly clear that a person cannot be saved by any system of works. This is his consistent teaching. He says to the Christians in Rome, “Now we know that whatever the Law says, it speaks to those who are under the Law, that every mouth may be closed, and all the world may become accountable to God.”&nbsp;To the Galatians he writes, “The Scripture has shut up all men under sin.”</p>

<p>Paul worked hard to prove the point that our forgiveness comes by an act of God’s grace based on our trust in Him. God saved us; we don’t save ourselves. The question I ask, then, is this: If keeping the law does not make me Christian, how can breaking the law make me a non-Christian?</p>

<p>In one sense, everyone’s a backslider, because everyone sins, some for five minutes, others for five years. If we come to God on the basis of our own merit, we’re all sunk. Any system of works condemns every one of us. We’re either held by God’s grace or we’re not held at all.</p>

<h2>How Much Sin Can God Forgive?</h2>

<p>A couple of years ago the death of Jeffrey Dahmer created a stir on radio talk shows. Dahmer had been convicted of brutal homosexual murders and cannibalism, crimes so ugly it made civilized people shudder. Dahmer learned that prison life sometimes metes out its own brand of justice. While in jail, he was beaten to death by inmates.</p>

<p>What made Jeffrey Dahmer’s case so notable for talk radio was that while in prison he apparently committed his life to Jesus Christ and was baptized. Jeffrey Dahmer—homosexual, murderer, cannibal—died a Christian.</p>

<p>Non-Christians were deeply unsettled that a brutal criminal at the end of a life of debauchery could find forgiveness in Christ. What kind of God could forgive the likes of a Jeffrey Dahmer? The answer is: Only a God whose mercy is powerful enough to wash clean the blackest of sin.</p>

<p>Any God capable of forgiving the worst of sinners can forgive “ordinary”&nbsp;moral criminals like you or I. Jeffrey Dahmer’s forgiveness is a vivid demonstration of Paul’s teaching in 1 Timothy 1:15-16. “It is a trustworthy statement,”&nbsp;he wrote, “deserving full acceptance, that Christ Jesus came into the world to save sinners, among whom I am foremost of all. And yet for this reason I found mercy, in order than in me as the foremost, Jesus Christ might demonstrate his perfect patience as an example for those who would believe in him for eternal life.”</p>

<p>For those tempted to say, “Listen, I’m no Jeffrey Dahmer,”&nbsp;my response is simply this: “Maybe not, but you’re no Jesus Christ either, and you’re more like Dahmer than you are like Christ.”&nbsp;That’s the comparison that ultimately matters. That’s the bad news.</p>

<p>Here’s the good news. If God can forgive a Jeffrey Dahmer or a Saul of Tarsus—if the blood of Christ is powerful enough to cleanse the sins of a murderous cannibal or potent enough to pay for the crimes of a vicious persecutor of the church—He can forgive you and me.</p>

<p>Forgiveness is God’s choice, His decision. If anyone’s “free will”&nbsp;is being crimped, it’s His. Having once promised to forgive, God does not have the freedom to go back on His word. We can still choose to sin, but God cannot choose not to forgive. We have His word on it.</p>

<p>Forgiveness happens when God reaches down to us in our spiritual darkness, in the depths of our sin, and enables us to make a feeble, but genuine, choice for Him regardless of our depravity. That sets into motion the irrevocable promise and provision of God.</p>

<p>We are God’s captives. We’re captives of grace. We have security based not on our tenuous obedience, but on His utter reliability.</p>
</div>

            <br>
            <!-- Share links -->
            <a id="facebook-share" href="https://www.facebook.com/sharer.php?u=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.str.org%2Fw%2Feternal-security-cheap-grace-and-free-will" aria-label="Share this page on Facebook" title="Share on Facebook">
            	<i class="fab fa-facebook-f fa-lg" aria-hidden="true"></i>
            </a>
            <a id="twitter-share" href="https://twitter.com/intent/tweet?url=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.str.org%2Fw%2Feternal-security-cheap-grace-and-free-will" aria-label="Share this page on Twitter" title="Share on Twitter">
            	<i class="fab fa-twitter fa-lg" aria-hidden="true"></i>
            </a>
            <a id="email-share" href="mailto:?body=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.str.org%2Fw%2Feternal-security-cheap-grace-and-free-will" aria-label="Email this page to a friend" title="Email">
            	<i class="far fa-envelope fa-lg" aria-hidden="true"></i>
            </a>
            <a href="https://www.printfriendly.com" class="printfriendly" onclick="window.print();return false;" title="Printer Friendly and PDF"><i class="fa fa-print fa-lg" aria-hidden="true"></i>
            </a>
            
          


title: A Review of The Shack by William P. Young
topic: Arts and Culture
author: Melinda Penner
date: 03/22/2013
source: https://www.str.org/w/a-review-of-the-shack-by-william-p-young
content:
            <div> 
		<p>You’re going to be surprised. I was. I liked it. It does reveal some things about God well and things I’ve never really seen attempted in literature before.</p>

<p>You’re not going to be surprised. I wasn’t. I didn’t like it. I have some serious concerns about it.</p>

<p>I can’t recommend it. I can’t condemn it.</p>

<p>The Trinity is a core doctrine of Christianity because it tells us about the very nature of God as revealed in Scripture. The Trinity isn’t hard to define, but it is hard to understand because it is so wholly other than anything in the created world. We can never fully comprehend it, though it’s worth studying the Trinity because there is much we can understand and it leaves you in awe of how unique beautiful our God is.</p>

<p>But there’s no way to illustrate the Trinity without leaning toward one misunderstanding or another, if not falling into outright heresy, because there is nothing else like the Trinity. Literature, or any other form of expression, that compares the Trinity to or represents the Trinity as something we’re familiar will necessarily not fully and accurately accomplish that since there is nothing else comparable. Any depiction of the Trinity in isolation will be a distortion, problematic if it shapes a misunderstanding of God. So granted at the outset there’s no way to represent the Trinity without representing a misunderstanding of the Trinity. That may be a serious enough liability that nothing warrants doing that. I’m open to that argument.</p>

<p>The reason I’m open to that argument, though, isn’t really because of the inherent limitations of our ability to represent the Trinity accurately in any medium; it’s because most Christians don’t really have a basic operating understanding of the Trinity to have the discernment to recognize the limitation. My main concern about The Shack is that I fear that the average Christian with no basic knowledge of the Trinity will form their idea of the Trinity from the book, which will be a serious misunderstanding of this very basic and important doctrine of Christianity. That’s why I can’t recommend the book. But I’m not sure that’s really a fault of the book, but a fault of the church in educating Christians about Christianity.</p>

<p>I am disturbed that most of the time I hear Christians say, “I love the book.”&nbsp;Period. Nothing more. Nothing troubled them about the book because some things should. And there are things to appreciate about the book. It needs to be read with discernment as do all books, and I’m afraid theological discernment is not a virtue and skill developed by the average church experience. Every Christian who reads The Shack should be troubled; but I think every Christian can also appreciate aspects of the book while recognizing it’s weaknesses.</p>

<p>The polls of what Christians believe are troubling. They show that many Christians, especially young ones, are moral relativists. Recent polls indicate that a majority of evangelicals believe that many paths lead to salvation. Christians don’t know Christianity. Christians put a lot of emphasis on experiences with God to the detriment, I think, of knowing God. Consequently, The Shack will mislead them.</p>

<p>The Trinity is three persons in one divine substance. Any accurate understanding of the Trinity cannot overemphasize the plurality or the unity of God. Those result in heresies. The book represents the persons of God to the detriment of the unity of the substance of God. There is no way to represent that accurately in literature. But I think it’s possible to read The Shack and gain the good it has to offer and recognize the inherent liability of the medium. But the prerequisite is a decent understanding of the Trinity.</p>

<p>For the discerning reader, which it’s possible every Christian could and should be, I think there are some very sweet and beautiful aspects of The Shack. God’s love is communicated in a very palpable way, for us and for the persons of the Trinity toward each other. The Father is depicted as a black woman and simultaneously called Papa, which I guess is an attempt to avoid assigning God a sex one way or the other, but successfully conveys an enveloping love and tenderness. Now, I’m concerned about even representing the Father as a woman because I take very seriously the way God has revealed Himself to us in Scripture and the words matter verbal inspiration. And God chose male pronouns. However, we do know that God is not male or female, and the Psalm depict God as a hen gathering her chicks. And Papa’s love is palpable in The Shack, which is one of the book’s virtues. The comfort of the Holy Spirit is also very emotional the way it’s depicted in the book.</p>

<p>Mack, the main character, weeds out the garden with Sarayu, the Holy Spirit. The overgrown garden turns out to be his soul and character that Sarayu is tending. That’s a graphic picture of the Holy Spirit’s work with each of us.</p>

<p>A scene that really affected me was the Trinity having devotion after dinner. It was an image of the persons of the Trinity adoring each other, which is a true fact about God that I’ve never read depicted. That was something accurate about God that I’ve never apprehended in the way I did reading it in The Shack.</p>

<p>Since these truths about God are so uniquely well done in the book, those alone for me were worth reading it.</p>

<p>The book tries to work out some other doctrinal issues about God with varying success. There are some details about the social Trinity, the hierarchy of the Trinity within the substance, that I don’t agree with, but it was an intelligent attempt.</p>

<p>There are some troubling doctrinal issues. Papa has the marks of the crucifixion as a way of depicting the unity of purpose and perhaps substance with Jesus at His death. But that, I thought, was mixing the persons of the Trinity in a troubling way. Jesus is the one who died, not the Father, and it comes pretty close to a heresy about the crucifixion. Jesus is also said, in The Shack, to still be in the kenosis, His limited human capabilities. That troubled me.</p>

<p>Some common religious preconceptions are skewered and that’s good. But some of these I disagree with. Papa says in the book that it’s not His purpose to punish sin, but the Bible actually does tell us that God judges sin, hates sinners (Ps. 5), and will judge us all at The Great White Throne of Judgment. I also think the book seems to convey universalism and no Hell, but that isn’t explicit so I’m not sure.</p>

<p>The quality of the literature as fiction was average. The story had some cheesy parts. I got the feeling sometimes that the author enjoys being iconoclastic, but I admit that I am on the alert for that and may see that when it’s not intended. And let’s face it, some stereotypes should be shattered. But what is attempted to be communicated about God through the story is pretty unique and monumental, and more successful than I expected. However, as I said, I can’t recommend the book outright. I’d have to know the individual and their knowledge of basic Christianity before I felt comfortable doing that. And for Christians who don’t have the basics about the Trinity, I might suggest the book if I also could discuss with them what the Bible teaches about the Trinity. I would never recommend the book to someone whose idea of the Trinity is going to be shaped by this fictional depiction.</p>

<p>Fred Sanders, a theologian who specializes in the doctrine of the Trinity, has studied the history of artistic depictions of the Trinity. He’s lectured for STR on this topic. What he illustrates in the art are the truths communicated about God, and he also points out the inaccuracies. Sanders’&nbsp;idea is that there is inherent merit in art about God despite the intrinsic limitations of depicting God accurately. But that requires an understanding to glean the good from the way that art can convey truths in a way that definitions and dogma do not and recognize what it cannot and does not depict well. I think The Shack falls within that realm.</p>

<p>If you’re going to read The Shack, I think you should also be willing to spend more time than you spend on the book studying the Trinity so you have the discernment necessary to appreciate the book for what it is. Here are some resources I suggest that are suitable for any Christianity from college-age up.</p>
</div>

            <br>
            <!-- Share links -->
            <a id="facebook-share" href="https://www.facebook.com/sharer.php?u=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.str.org%2Fw%2Fa-review-of-the-shack-by-william-p-young" aria-label="Share this page on Facebook" title="Share on Facebook">
            	<i class="fab fa-facebook-f fa-lg" aria-hidden="true"></i>
            </a>
            <a id="twitter-share" href="https://twitter.com/intent/tweet?url=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.str.org%2Fw%2Fa-review-of-the-shack-by-william-p-young" aria-label="Share this page on Twitter" title="Share on Twitter">
            	<i class="fab fa-twitter fa-lg" aria-hidden="true"></i>
            </a>
            <a id="email-share" href="mailto:?body=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.str.org%2Fw%2Fa-review-of-the-shack-by-william-p-young" aria-label="Email this page to a friend" title="Email">
            	<i class="far fa-envelope fa-lg" aria-hidden="true"></i>
            </a>
            <a href="https://www.printfriendly.com" class="printfriendly" onclick="window.print();return false;" title="Printer Friendly and PDF"><i class="fa fa-print fa-lg" aria-hidden="true"></i>
            </a>
            
          


title: Promises We Can’t Claim. Promises We Can.
topic: Theology
author: Greg Koukl
date: 03/22/2013
source: https://www.str.org/w/promises-we-can-t-claim-promises-we-can-
content:
            <div> 
		<p><em>Many promises in the Bible were made to other people and we cannot legitimately claims those. We can learn from them. They’re profitable for us. All Scripture is.</em></p>

<p>I recently wrote a mentoring letter about the bad habit Christians have of isolating Bible verses from their appropriate context, and then claiming the verse as a promise God has given to them personally. In many cases, the promise gives tremendous comfort to us in the moment, but it’s been taken out of context so it’s a misuse of the Bible and the promise.</p>

<p>This idea is part of Stand to Reason’s concept of “never read a Bible verse.”&nbsp;You don’t read <em>a</em> Bible verse if you want to know what <em>a</em> Bible verse means. You need to read a paragraph or more to make sure you’re not misunderstanding the point. In the same way, if you’re claiming a promise, you want to be careful that you don’t take someone else’s promise and bank your hopes on something that doesn’t belong to you.</p>

<p>When I teach on this I often experience push-back when it comes to specifics. I get nods of agreement when I explain the principle because it’s hard to argue with the point when clearly put, yet when it gets down to specifics, people get defensive if they have come to depend on a particular purloined passage for comfort and assurance.</p>

<p>Last evening, my wife and I were speaking about a specific purloined promise: Jeremiah 29:11. It’s probably one of the most abused passages used to give comfort to a Christian in a difficult situation. Most of you know this passage because it’s been one that you have held onto in the midst of a difficult and trying circumstance. Or maybe you have passed it on to someone else, or someone else has offered it to you. Maybe the person who shared this verse with you even said, ��The Holy Spirit gave me this for you.”&nbsp;If taken at face value, the verse is richly encouraging. That’s not surprising given the words of the verse: “’For I know the plans that I have for you,’&nbsp;declares the Lord, ’plans for welfare and not for calamity, to give you a future and a hope.’”</p>

<p>Those are wonderful words when you’re in the midst of a difficult time. When we are beset with trials and difficulties, and we’re wondering where God is. We’re wondering why our prayers are not being answered, and what the future holds. Then someone says to us personally, “Listen, God is telling me for you, ’I know the plans I have for <em>you</em>, plans for welfare and not for the calamity’&nbsp;that you’re experiencing right now, to ’give you a future and a hope.’”&nbsp;It’s clear to see why one’s hopes might be lifted.</p>

<p>The difficulty with this particular passage, and many others that Christian claim, is that it is addressed to a specific group of people. If you follow the principle “never read a bible verse”&nbsp;then you realize that this passage, when read in the larger context, is actually part of a letter written to a particular group of people. Indeed, at the top of the chapter (Jeremiah 29) we read these words: “Now, these are the words of the letter which Jeremiah the prophet sent from Jerusalem to the rest of the elders of the exile: the priests, the prophets and all the people whom Nebuchadnezzar had taken into exile from Jerusalem to Babylon.”</p>

<p>The content begins with verse 4: “Thus says the Lord of hosts, the God of Israel, to all the exiles whom I have sent into exile from Jerusalem to Babylon.”&nbsp;Then He gives them certain instructions. And in the midst of those instructions on how to comport themselves in the state of captivity in Babylon under a foreign ruler, God says, By the way, you’re only going to be there for 70 years.&nbsp;<em>Only</em>. That’s a long time in terms of an individual life, though not in the life of a nation. “And when 70 years have been completed for Babylon, I will visit you and fulfill my good word to you to bring you back to this place.”</p>

<p>For those bibliophiles who are really interested in the details of the text, you might look in Daniel 9, because it’s 70 years later and Daniel, who was one of the Israelites in captivity in Babylon and a recipient of the letter from Jeremiah, is now an old man. The 70 years have been completed, and he is reflecting on this promise of Jeremiah, and he says, Well, the time is up. It’s time for us to go back. So he prays a prayer in the beginning of Daniel 9, claiming the promise of Jeremiah 29 because the promise was made to the people of Israel going into captivity for 70 years.</p>

<p>Of course, that’s not what happens when <em>we</em> claim that promise because we are not in that historical setting. We are simply claiming verse 11, for ourselves, as if it were given to us. My point is that regardless of how much better you feel from this verse, given the circumstances you find yourself in, this verse is <em>not your promise</em> because when God says, “I know the plans that I have for <em>you,”</em>&nbsp;He is talking about the exiles in Babylon. He is not talking about you personally reading it 2700 years later.</p>

<p>Is there something we can and should learn from this passage? Absolutely. The lesson for us comes from seeing how God dealt with Israel and learning what that says about God that we should know. It doesn’t come from purloining the promise God made to Israel.</p>

<p>My wife made a suggestion in our discussion last evening. “Maybe it would be helpful if you substitute for this inappropriate use of text, a promise that people can claim appropriately.”&nbsp;That is, what promises are there in the New Testament, specifically, that are clearly given to Christians in time of difficulty and consternation?</p>

<p>I began thinking about what passages have been meaningful to me in times of difficulty and stress, and frankly, there are many examples in the New Testament and some in the Old Testament as well. For example, “God is an ever-present help in the time of trouble.”&nbsp;That’s a broad promise for all who trust in Him.</p>

<p>At the end of the Gospels, Jesus said, “And lo, I am with you always, even to the end of the age.”&nbsp;In the Sermon on the Mount (Matthew 7), He said, “Look at the lilies of the field. They don’t toil. The birds of the air, they don’t worry. Aren’t you more valuable than they are?”&nbsp;The Father will take care of you. That’s encouraging.</p>

<p>1 Peter 5:5-7 is a passage that I have reflected on a lot of late: “God is opposed to the proud, but gives grace to the humble. Humble yourselves, therefore, under the mighty hand of God, casting all your anxieties upon Him, because He cares for you.”</p>

<p>Philippians 4:6-7, “Be anxious for nothing, but in everything, through prayer and supplication with thanksgiving, let your requests be made known to God. And the peace of God which surpasses all comprehension shall guard your hearts and your minds in Christ Jesus.”</p>

<p>Hebrews 4:15 &amp; 2:18, speaking of Jesus, “He was tempted in all ways such as we are, but without sin, so He is able to, ’Come to the aid of those who are tempted.’”</p>

<p>“All disciplines for the moment seem not to be joyful but sorrowful, but afterwards, once we have been trained by it, it yields the peaceful fruit of righteousness”&nbsp;(Hebrews 12:11).</p>

<p>These are all passages that we can lay hold of and claim when we’re in a position of difficulty. Paul frequently found himself in difficult circumstances. In 2 Corinthians 4, he spoke of troubles, trials, and tribulations. He listed them one after another. And then he says, These are small things. “Momentary light affliction”&nbsp;is the way he characterizes his own hardships, which were significant, “is creating for us an eternal weight of glory beyond all comparison.”&nbsp;Paul meant to encourage us during difficult times because something significant is going to come out of it.</p>

<p>Peter writes in 1 Peter 4, “Why should you be surprised at this fiery ordeal that’s come upon you as if something strange were happening to you? But insofar as you suffer for Christ, the spirit of grace and glory rests upon you.”</p>

<p>There are many, many verses that we can draw from legitimately. But, of course, there’s a problem. Frequently, the person looking for a promise in the Bible does not want those verses that talk about going through difficulties. They want the verse that says, “I know the plans that I have for you, for welfare and not calamity.”&nbsp;They want the promise that says God’s going to get me out of this trouble and make things nice and good. They want the promise of future prosperity because that is the promise that God made to the covenant people Israel. We want that for ourselves.</p>

<p>The problem is that there is no such universal promise. There is no such promise for the Christian in the New Testament that the plans God has for you are for welfare and not calamity, and those plans will give you a future and a hope. Yes, we have a future and a hope, but not a hope according to the path of welfare and not calamity. That was a promise for Israel, the nation at a specific time in history. That was not a promise for individual Christians. In fact, the promise for Christians is just the opposite. Indeed, I cited an example just a moment ago: 1 Peter 4. “Why are you surprised at the fiery ordeal among you, as if something strange were happening to you?”&nbsp;Those are Peter’s words. Hard times aren’t strange. They’re normal.</p>

<p>In the next chapter Peter says, “The same sufferings that you are experiencing are being experienced by your brethren who are in the world”&nbsp;(1 Peter 5:9). Jesus promised, “In this world, you will have tribulation, but be of good cheer, I have overcome the world”&nbsp;(John 16:33).</p>

<p>Paul says all who desire to live godly in Christ Jesus will suffer persecution. And I already cited the reference in 2 Corinthians 4, when Paul says he sees suffering as “momentary light affliction”&nbsp;in light of what will come.</p>

<p>The point that I’m making is, first of all, don’t steal somebody else’s promise, particularly Jeremiah 29:11, even it makes you feel really great. Secondly, if we’re looking for the New Testament promise that says God is going to get us out of difficulty, we’re not going to find it because that is not His promise to us. His promise for Christians is rather to be with us in the midst of difficulty, and make the transformation that He intends in our lives through the difficulty.</p>

<p>What about Romans 8:28? ��For we know that God causes all things to work for good for those who love Him and are called according to His purpose.”&nbsp;The problem is our understanding of that verse. We often interpret “good”&nbsp;in our own way, according to our own self-interest, in light of what we think is the cessation of calamity.</p>

<p>But Paul doesn’t stop at verse 28, does he? Remember the rule: “never read a Bible verse.”&nbsp;Read the whole paragraph at least. “We know that God causes all things to work together for good for those who love Him and are called according to His purpose. For those whom He foreknew, He predestined to become conformed to the image of His Son.”&nbsp;In other words, the way that God is going to use all things for good is to use them to conform you to the image of His Son. His Son who was made perfect by the things which He suffered. The good God will work isn’t good times, it’s the good purpose He has for us to make us like Jesus.</p>

<p>Many promises in the Bible were made to other people and we cannot legitimately claim those. We can learn from them. They’re profitable for us. All Scripture is. There are promises made to us that we can claim. And what we learn from all of these promises is that we can trust God because He is working on behalf of His people for His purposes. The circumstances aren’t always easy, but He will strengthen us through the hard times and comfort us.</p>

<p>So don’t steal somebody else’s promise. Come to terms with the truth in the New Testament that, for the Christian, life will be beset with various trials and turmoil that God has never promised to spare us from. He <em>has</em> promised His presence and His power in the midst of those difficulties to transform us into the image of Christ. And that’s a promise worth claiming.</p>
</div>

            <br>
            <!-- Share links -->
            <a id="facebook-share" href="https://www.facebook.com/sharer.php?u=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.str.org%2Fw%2Fpromises-we-can-t-claim-promises-we-can-" aria-label="Share this page on Facebook" title="Share on Facebook">
            	<i class="fab fa-facebook-f fa-lg" aria-hidden="true"></i>
            </a>
            <a id="twitter-share" href="https://twitter.com/intent/tweet?url=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.str.org%2Fw%2Fpromises-we-can-t-claim-promises-we-can-" aria-label="Share this page on Twitter" title="Share on Twitter">
            	<i class="fab fa-twitter fa-lg" aria-hidden="true"></i>
            </a>
            <a id="email-share" href="mailto:?body=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.str.org%2Fw%2Fpromises-we-can-t-claim-promises-we-can-" aria-label="Email this page to a friend" title="Email">
            	<i class="far fa-envelope fa-lg" aria-hidden="true"></i>
            </a>
            <a href="https://www.printfriendly.com" class="printfriendly" onclick="window.print();return false;" title="Printer Friendly and PDF"><i class="fa fa-print fa-lg" aria-hidden="true"></i>
            </a>
            
          


title: Jesus’ Unique Claims About Himself
topic: Theology
author: Greg Koukl
date: 03/22/2013
source: https://www.str.org/w/jesus-unique-claims-about-himself
content:
            <div> 
		<p>A. Jesus either directly or indirectly made many profound claims for Himself:</p>

<p>1. The Son of God (Matt 26:63-63)</p>

<p>2. The Son of Man (Matt 16:13; Mk 14:62)<sup id="fnref:1"><a href="#fn:1">1</a></sup></p>

<p>3. Giver of eternal life (Jn 10:28)</p>

<p>4. One with the Father (Jn 10:30)</p>

<p>5. One who forgives sin (Mk 2:10)</p>

<p>6. The bread of life (Jn 6:35)</p>

<p>7. The good shepherd (Jn 10:11)</p>

<p>8. The true vine (Jn 15:1)</p>

<p>9. The great “I Am”&nbsp;(Jn 8:58)</p>

<p>10. The giver of living water (Jn 4:10)</p>

<p>11. The light of the World (Jn 8:12)</p>

<p>12. The future Judge (Jn 5:22-23)</p>

<p>13. The lamb of God (Jn 1:36)</p>

<p>14. The baptizer in the Holy Spirit (Lk 3:16)</p>

<p>15. The door of salvation (Jn 10:9)</p>

<p>16. The Savior (Jn 3:14-16)</p>

<p>17. The Messiah (Jn 4:26)</p>

<p>18. The healer (Lk 18:42)</p>

<p>B. The greatest claim: “I am the Way, and the Truth, and the Life; no one comes to the Father, but through Me”&nbsp;(Jn 14:6).</p>

<p>This is the cornerstone claim of Jesus because it subsumes all other claims under one of these three categories.</p>

<p>1. The Way</p>

<p>a. Lit. <em>hodos</em>, “a natural path, road, way”&nbsp;(Vines, p. 668).</p>

<p>b. Used to refer to Christians because they represented “the way”&nbsp;to salvation (Acts 19:23).</p>

<p>c. Jesus is the exclusive source of salvation. He’s not <em>a</em> way but <em>the</em> Way.</p>

<p>1) This is the most offensive claim of Jesus, it seems.</p>

<p>2) It is the first claim that is jettisoned when Christian groups begin to get “tolerant.”</p>

<p>3) Yet there are at least nine separate lines of reasoning that the Scripture gives demonstrating why Jesus is the only true “way.”</p>

<p>1. Jesus is the source of salvation for the world (Acts 4:11-12).</p>

<p>2. Jesus is the Father’s choice (Jn 6:28-29).</p>

<p>3. Rejection of Jesus is rejection of the Father (Jn 5:23b).</p>

<p>4. Rejection of Jesus results in God’s wrath; belief in Jesus rescues from wrath (Jn 3:36).</p>

<p>5. Jesus is the one who provides forgiveness from sin (J 8:24).</p>

<p>6. Jesus will be man’s final judge (Jn 5:26-27).</p>

<p>7. Many impostors will claim to provide salvation (Matt 24:4-5).</p>

<p>8. But there are no other alternatives for salvation (Gal 2:21).</p>

<p>9. Therefore, all nations are to be given this Gospel (Lk 24:47).</p>

<p>2. The Truth</p>

<p>a. Lit. <em>aletheia</em>, “The reality lying at the basis of an appearance; the manifested, veritable essence of a matter...Not merely ethical ’truth,’&nbsp;but ’truth’&nbsp;in all its fullness and scope”&nbsp;(Vines, p. 645).</p>

<p>b. Jesus is the substantial foundation of all reality.</p>

<p>3. The Life</p>

<p>a. Lit. <em>zoe</em>, “Used in the NT of life as a principle, life in the absolute sense, the life as God has it, that which the Father has in Himself”&nbsp;(Vines, p. 367).</p>

<p>1) Life which He gave to the Incarnate Son to have in Himself (Jn 5:26).</p>

<p>2) Life from which man has become alienated as a result of the fall, “...excluded from the life of God”&nbsp;(Eph 4:18).<sup id="fnref:2"><a href="#fn:2">2</a></sup></p>

<p>b. This “life”&nbsp;is a reference to Jesus deity. Jesus <em>is</em> the life; He doesn’t merely <em>have</em> the life. He is the source of it.</p>

<p>4. Conclusion: Jesus is God in the flesh, representing to man all that God is and His plan for mankind (Col 1:15-22).</p>

<aside class="footnotes">
<hr>
<ol>
	<li id="fn:1">The phrase “Son of Man”&nbsp;is actually a messianic title from Daniel 7:13. <a class="reversefootnote" href="#fnref:1">&nbsp;↩</a></li>
	<li id="fn:2">Zoe is also used of that life which is the common possession of all animals and men by nature (e.g. Acts 17:25), but this clearly isn’t the sense of Jesus’&nbsp;claim here, from the evidence of these verses. <a class="reversefootnote" href="#fnref:2">&nbsp;↩</a></li>
</ol>
</aside>
</div>

            <br>
            <!-- Share links -->
            <a id="facebook-share" href="https://www.facebook.com/sharer.php?u=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.str.org%2Fw%2Fjesus-unique-claims-about-himself" aria-label="Share this page on Facebook" title="Share on Facebook">
            	<i class="fab fa-facebook-f fa-lg" aria-hidden="true"></i>
            </a>
            <a id="twitter-share" href="https://twitter.com/intent/tweet?url=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.str.org%2Fw%2Fjesus-unique-claims-about-himself" aria-label="Share this page on Twitter" title="Share on Twitter">
            	<i class="fab fa-twitter fa-lg" aria-hidden="true"></i>
            </a>
            <a id="email-share" href="mailto:?body=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.str.org%2Fw%2Fjesus-unique-claims-about-himself" aria-label="Email this page to a friend" title="Email">
            	<i class="far fa-envelope fa-lg" aria-hidden="true"></i>
            </a>
            <a href="https://www.printfriendly.com" class="printfriendly" onclick="window.print();return false;" title="Printer Friendly and PDF"><i class="fa fa-print fa-lg" aria-hidden="true"></i>
            </a>
            
          


title: A Great Debt. Who Can Pay?
topic: Philosophy
author: Greg Koukl
date: 03/22/2013
source: https://www.str.org/w/a-great-debt-who-can-pay-
content:
            <div> 
		<p><em>An illustration showing the great gift we have in the death and resurrection of Jesus. He came to pay a debt that we could not pay.</em></p>

<p>Harry Ironside used to tell about a young Russian soldier. Because his father was a friend of Czar Nicholas I, the young man had been made paymaster in one of the barracks.</p>

<p>The young man meant well, but his character was not up to his responsibility. He took to gambling and eventually gambled away a great deal of the government's money as well as all of his own.</p>

<p>In due course the young man received notice that a representative of the czar was coming to check accounts, and he knew he was in trouble.</p>

<p>That evening he got out the books and totaled up the funds he owed. Then he went to the safe and got out his own pitifully small amount of money. As he sat and looked at the two he was overwhelmed at the astronomical debt versus his own small change. He was ruined! He knew he would be disgraced.</p>

<p>At last the young soldier determined to take his life. He pulled out his revolver, placed it on the table before him, and wrote a summation of his misdeeds. At the bottom of the ledger where he had totaled up his illegal borrowings, he wrote: “A great debt! Who can pay?”&nbsp;He decided that at the stroke of midnight he would die.</p>

<p>As the evening wore on the young soldier grew drowsy and eventually fell asleep. That night Czar Nicholas I, as was sometimes his custom, made the rounds of the barracks. Seeing a light, he stopped, looked in, and saw the young man asleep. He recognized him immediately and, looking over his shoulder, saw the ledger and realized all that had taken place.</p>

<p>He was about to awaken him and put him under arrest when his eye fastened on the young man’s message: “A great debt! Who can pay?”</p>

<p>Suddenly, with a surge of magnanimity, he reached over, wrote one word at the bottom of the ledger, and slipped out.</p>

<p>When the young man awoke, he glanced at the clock and saw that it was long after midnight. He reached for his revolver to shoot himself. But his eye fell upon the ledger and he saw something that he had not seen before. There beneath his writing: “A great debt! Who can pay?”&nbsp;was written, “Nicholas.”</p>

<p>He was dumbfounded. It was the Czar’s signature. He said to himself, “The czar must have come by when I was asleep. He has seen the book. He knows all. Still he is willing to forgive me.”</p>

<p>The young soldier then rested on the word of the czar, and the next morning a messenger came from the palace with exactly the amount needed to meet the deficit. Only the czar could pay, and the czar did pay.</p>

<p>We compare [God’s righteousness] with our own tawdry performance, and we ask the question: “A great debt to God! Who can pay?”&nbsp;But then the Lord Jesus Christ steps forward and signs His name to our ledger: “Jesus Christ.”&nbsp;Only Jesus can pay, and He did.</p>
</div>

            <br>
            <!-- Share links -->
            <a id="facebook-share" href="https://www.facebook.com/sharer.php?u=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.str.org%2Fw%2Fa-great-debt-who-can-pay-" aria-label="Share this page on Facebook" title="Share on Facebook">
            	<i class="fab fa-facebook-f fa-lg" aria-hidden="true"></i>
            </a>
            <a id="twitter-share" href="https://twitter.com/intent/tweet?url=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.str.org%2Fw%2Fa-great-debt-who-can-pay-" aria-label="Share this page on Twitter" title="Share on Twitter">
            	<i class="fab fa-twitter fa-lg" aria-hidden="true"></i>
            </a>
            <a id="email-share" href="mailto:?body=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.str.org%2Fw%2Fa-great-debt-who-can-pay-" aria-label="Email this page to a friend" title="Email">
            	<i class="far fa-envelope fa-lg" aria-hidden="true"></i>
            </a>
            <a href="https://www.printfriendly.com" class="printfriendly" onclick="window.print();return false;" title="Printer Friendly and PDF"><i class="fa fa-print fa-lg" aria-hidden="true"></i>
            </a>
            
          


title: The Brighter Side of Being Judgmental
topic: Philosophy
author: Greg Koukl
date: 03/22/2013
source: https://www.str.org/w/the-brighter-side-of-being-judgmental
content:
            <div> 
		<p><em>Greg uses the different fates of men and fallen angels to emphasize God’s Sovereignty.</em></p>

<p>I want to follow up on a call from yesterday that started out being productive, but we got off on another track about the Urantia Book, which is alright. The question was—why didn’t God save angels since angels fell first? Why didn’t Jesus die for angels and then angels could be forgiven? When we started talking about the issue of guilt we got side-tracked on what the Urantia Book teaches about spiritual perfection and growth. I wanted to make another point so I’ll make it now.</p>

<p>To some degree this is speculative about the issue of angels because we’re not given information about this. But I mentioned yesterday that there is a whole host of angelic realm watching a drama unfold on earth with regards to men, such that man’s plight and what happens with the issue of salvation and redemption is not an end in itself, though it may be valuable in itself. Instead, it points to a greater end, a different issue. Broadly speaking, the end of salvation is not for men, but the end of salvation is for God’s glory. He’s the center of this whole affair. Man is an important player in the drama, but the goal of salvation isn’t simply to bring people to salvation. Man is not the central focus. The Father and His glory is the central focus.</p>

<p>With that as an understanding (and they seem like fairly reasonable fixed points in this discussion) one could ask the question, what is it that God is demonstrating about His character to the rest of the angelic realm? The issue that has been suggested is that God is concerned with demonstrating to the angelic realm—especially to those who have fallen and undergone His judgment, those being locked up and waiting judgment for a future day, those allowed to roam on this earth, the Devil himself, until a future judgment that has already been proclaimed—that such a judgment that He has proclaimed is just, fair and righteous. One of the foundational issues is an understanding of the nature of justice.</p>

<p>Justice has two different aspects. There is retributive justice and there is distributive justice. Retributive justice simply says that when somebody does something wrong you should get just retribution for it and people ought not be punished for things they don’t do. Punishment is for crimes and nothing that is not a crime gets punished.</p>

<p>The other kind of justice, distributive justice, relates to the issue of fairness. Goods ought to be distributed in a fair fashion. People get treated equally. But the important thing about distributive justice is that it only applies when there is an obligation to distribute at all. If the government has an obligation to distribute driver’s licenses to everyone who qualifies, then it must distribute them fairly to all who qualify. It can’t show favoritism. But if the government doesn’t have an obligation to give driver’s licenses, then it can give whatever it wants at any time.</p>

<p>To give you an example, if somebody owed me a thousand dollars and I forgave their debt, released them from the debt, it doesn’t then obligate me to release all other debts that are owed me because I have no obligation to treat people equally in this case. This is an act of my grace. In the same fashion, the issue of justice applies to God. God is not obliged by some kind of distributive justice to give everyone an opportunity for a pardon. He does not owe a pardon. The only thing owed to lawbreakers is judgment, retributive justice.</p>

<p>As a result, when the angels fell He was under no obligation whatsoever to forgive them, to find some means of rescue. He chose to do so with regards to man for another reason, I think. But He had no such obligation. I think probably one of the charges against God was that it wasn’t fair or just of Him to judge the angels under these circumstances. So another order of personal being was allowed to rebel against Him. Then God in the process extends mercy to man based on His good intention, not on any demand that He has to provide forgiveness. So He is not obliged to save angels and He chose not to. The same thing applies to man, but in this case He chose to do so. He has chosen to give His grace to whom He will. He doesn’t owe it to everyone.</p>

<p>Now, this isn’t a complete answer to the problem of the heathen. But before you can answer the problem of the heathen, you must answer the question of God’s responsibility to forgive. My answer is that God has no responsibility to forgive. He owes forgiveness to no one in the same way that the state owes pardon or clemency to no one who commits a crime against it. It is entirely appropriate and just if God wants to destroy every human being that ever broke His law. If He chooses to rescue some, that’s His business and He’s not under obligation to give everyone the same shot. He’s not even under obligation to forgive everybody. Listen, if He just chose to reveal His plan of salvation to Robert and me alone, He would be completely in His rights just the same way that I would be in my rights if I chose out of a thousand people who owed me money to forgive two people their debt. It’s my business because the money is owed to me.</p>

<p>Now, I’m not suggesting that God has in fact done this. But I’m trying to set the record straight on the issue of justice. It is entirely up to God whether He’s going to forgive man or not. It is entirely up to God to decide who it is that He will forgive. Guilty men deserve no pardon.</p>

<p>That puts every man with his mouth closed at the foot of the cross necessarily relying on the mercy of Jesus Christ. That changes the whole nature of the heathen debate. I think that it is true that God has provided a message for everyone. I think the problem isn’t in the message, but in the man. Men don’t want the message regardless of what form it happens to come in. They flee from God, they don’t run toward God. I don’t accept this spiritual notion of Rousseau’s noble savage, that there’s this noble savage in the darkest of Africa or the jungles of Thailand that is just waiting to find out about God, but he’s surrounded by all of these false religions. He really wants to know the truth but it’s not there. I don’t believe such a man exists. Men everywhere are fleeing from God, and the heathen in Africa or Thailand has no more interest in the true God than the average heathen that walks the streets of Los Angeles.</p>

<p>I just want to make the point that God is not under obligation to save angels or men. He chose to save men in this case because of his mercy. But in the process I think He is going to demonstrate to angels that He is entirely just in the judgment that He has rendered to them.</p>
</div>

            <br>
            <!-- Share links -->
            <a id="facebook-share" href="https://www.facebook.com/sharer.php?u=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.str.org%2Fw%2Fthe-brighter-side-of-being-judgmental" aria-label="Share this page on Facebook" title="Share on Facebook">
            	<i class="fab fa-facebook-f fa-lg" aria-hidden="true"></i>
            </a>
            <a id="twitter-share" href="https://twitter.com/intent/tweet?url=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.str.org%2Fw%2Fthe-brighter-side-of-being-judgmental" aria-label="Share this page on Twitter" title="Share on Twitter">
            	<i class="fab fa-twitter fa-lg" aria-hidden="true"></i>
            </a>
            <a id="email-share" href="mailto:?body=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.str.org%2Fw%2Fthe-brighter-side-of-being-judgmental" aria-label="Email this page to a friend" title="Email">
            	<i class="far fa-envelope fa-lg" aria-hidden="true"></i>
            </a>
            <a href="https://www.printfriendly.com" class="printfriendly" onclick="window.print();return false;" title="Printer Friendly and PDF"><i class="fa fa-print fa-lg" aria-hidden="true"></i>
            </a>
            
          


title: Death Penalty for Women Who Abort?
topic: Bioethics
author: Greg Koukl
date: 03/22/2013
source: https://www.str.org/w/death-penalty-for-women-who-abort-
content:
            <div> 
		<p>“Since you believe the fertilized egg is fully human, should women who are raped and subsequently abort face the death penalty in those states that have it?”</p>

<p>I don’t have an opinion on the degree of punishment, because that’s a separate legislative issue I’m not qualified to answer. When in a fit of rage one man fires a gun and kills another, it’s a homicide and it’s criminal. Which punishment is appropriate under the circumstances is a much more complicated matter. This is why the law treats homicide by degrees (first degree, second degree, etc.).</p>

<p>My view is that the law should be consistent across the board. Consistency requires that if abortion actually kills an innocent human being, it should be treated as a homicide. In fact, fetal death is already listed under the homicide statutes in 28 states. Even California lists fetal death as homicide and provides appropriate penalties for it, excepting, of course, when the death is at the hands of a doctor with the mother’s consent (abortion). Other states treat drug use by pregnant women as actionable child endangerment. Abortion is the odd exception.</p>

<p>Very few actual homicides rise to the level of capital crimes. It should be up to lawmakers to decide the appropriate punishment in the case of abortion. I’m not skilled in those legal particulars.</p>

<p>I do have adequate skill, though, to know when an innocent human being is killed without justification, and that’s what this debate is all about. It is not about the admittedly more complicated matter of how to prosecute such cases. The questions are separate and you must answer the first before you can begin to address the second. As such, your challenge is unrelated to the real issue: Does abortion kill an innocent human being?</p>

<p>I’m not surprised you raised the question, though, because it is a standard way to try to make the pro-life view look extreme while sidestepping the real issue. My view that abortion is homicide is not extreme, but consistent with the way the law routinely reads regarding fetal deaths by other means.</p>

<p>Regards,</p>

<p>Greg Koukl</p>
</div>

            <br>
            <!-- Share links -->
            <a id="facebook-share" href="https://www.facebook.com/sharer.php?u=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.str.org%2Fw%2Fdeath-penalty-for-women-who-abort-" aria-label="Share this page on Facebook" title="Share on Facebook">
            	<i class="fab fa-facebook-f fa-lg" aria-hidden="true"></i>
            </a>
            <a id="twitter-share" href="https://twitter.com/intent/tweet?url=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.str.org%2Fw%2Fdeath-penalty-for-women-who-abort-" aria-label="Share this page on Twitter" title="Share on Twitter">
            	<i class="fab fa-twitter fa-lg" aria-hidden="true"></i>
            </a>
            <a id="email-share" href="mailto:?body=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.str.org%2Fw%2Fdeath-penalty-for-women-who-abort-" aria-label="Email this page to a friend" title="Email">
            	<i class="far fa-envelope fa-lg" aria-hidden="true"></i>
            </a>
            <a href="https://www.printfriendly.com" class="printfriendly" onclick="window.print();return false;" title="Printer Friendly and PDF"><i class="fa fa-print fa-lg" aria-hidden="true"></i>
            </a>
            
          


title: The Magic Prayer
topic: Theology
author: Greg Koukl
date: 03/22/2013
source: https://www.str.org/w/-the-magic-prayer
content:
            <div> 
		<p><em>For some Christians, the “sinner’s prayer”&nbsp;has taken on an almost superstitious quality. If we can just get our friends or loved ones to repeat the words, they’re in. Merely reciting the prayer, however, is no guarantee without these three assurances of salvation.</em></p>

<p>Over the years I’ve become increasingly disenchanted with the so-called “sinner’s prayer.”&nbsp;Found at the end of gospel tracts, it’s also frequently used by pastors and evangelists as part of an altar call to usher the penitent into the Kingdom.</p>

<p>It goes something like this: “Lord Jesus, I am a sinner. I believe that you died for my sins so I could be forgiven. I receive you as my Lord and savior. Thank you for coming into my life. Amen.”</p>

<p>The prayer itself is fine. I prayed a version of it in 1973, initiating my own walk with Christ. I’ve used it often since to assist others in expressing their faith for the first time.</p>

<h2>Subtle Superstition</h2>

<p>On occasion, though, I’ve noticed an almost superstitious disposition towards the sinners prayer. Frequently when I ask if a particular person is a Christian, the response I hear is, “Well, they prayed the prayer.”&nbsp;It’s as if the words were magic, and if we can just get someone to recite them we’ve accomplished our goal.</p>

<p>I fear we’ve inoculated a whole generation of people who got a partial injection of Christianity and are now resistant to the real thing. They prayed the sinner’s prayer, got their “fire insurance,”&nbsp;and then disappeared, never to be seen again. When confronted with the Gospel anew they shrug, “Been there, done that. Now leave me alone. I have a life to live.”</p>

<p>The focus of evangelism should never be praying the prayer, but following Jesus. When we emphasize deciding for Christ instead of living for Him, we often get spiritual miscarriages instead of spiritual births. Our sense of safety can’t come from simply saying a magic prayer. How, then, do we know if we belong to Christ?</p>

<h2>Three Levels of Confidence</h2>

<p>Our confidence in the security we have as Christians comes from three sources. First, we have the objective promises of Scripture. The apostle John’s guarantee is characteristic, “These things I have written to you who believe in the name of the Son of God, in order that you may know that you have eternal life.”<sup id="fnref:1"><a href="#fn:1">1</a></sup></p>

<p>This concept is so foundational its repeated many times in the New Testament:</p>

<p>John 3:16 “For God so loved the world, that He gave His only begotten Son, that whoever believes in Him should not perish, but have eternal life.”</p>

<p>John 3:36 “He who believes in the Son has eternal life; but he who does not obey the Son shall not see life, but the wrath of God abides on him.”</p>

<p>John 5:24 “Truly, truly, I say to you, he who hears My word, and believes Him who sent Me, has eternal life, and does not come into judgment, but has passed out of death into life.”</p>

<p>John 6:40 “For this is the will of My Father, that everyone who beholds the Son and believes in Him, may have eternal life; and I Myself will raise him up on the last day.”</p>

<p>Rom. 10:9 “If you confess with your mouth Jesus as Lord, and believe in your heart that God raised Him from the dead, you shall be saved.”</p>

<p>Our second source of confidence in our salvation is entirely subjective. Christians have an ineffable awareness that they belong to God. This comes from the witness of the Holy Spirit to our inner man.</p>

<p>Paul’s teaching on this is well known: “For you have not received a spirit of slavery leading to fear again, but you have received a spirit of adoption as sons by which we cry out, ’Abba! Father!’&nbsp;The Spirit Himself bears witness with our spirit that we are children of God.”<sup id="fnref:2"><a href="#fn:2">2</a></sup></p>

<p>John echoes the same thought when he writes, “By this we know that we abide in Him and He in us, because He has given us of His Spirit.”<sup id="fnref:3"><a href="#fn:3">3</a></sup></p>

<p>Some people put the greatest emphasis on this subjective element, but the Scripture emphasizes it the least. The reason is, I think, because it’s the most unreliable. It’s possible to have tremendous inner tranquility even when in extreme danger. Conversely, even the sturdiest spiritual warrior experiences periods of dryness, emptiness, and doubt.<sup id="fnref:4"><a href="#fn:4">4</a></sup></p>

<p>The third and most telling evidence of salvation is a holy life of persevering faith. John says bluntly, “The one who says, ’I have come to know Him,’&nbsp;and does not keep His commandments, is a liar.”<sup id="fnref:5"><a href="#fn:5">5</a></sup></p>

<p>Paul tells Timothy, “Pay close attention to yourself and to your teaching; persevere in these things; for as you do this you will insure salvation both for yourself and for those who hear you.”<sup id="fnref:6"><a href="#fn:6">6</a></sup> He later warns, “If we endure, we shall also reign with Him. If we deny Him, He also will deny us.”<sup id="fnref:7"><a href="#fn:7">7</a></sup></p>

<p>Peter tells us to “be all the more diligent to make certain about His calling and choosing you; for as long as you practice these things, you will never stumble.”<sup id="fnref:8"><a href="#fn:8">8</a></sup></p>

<p>The book of Hebrews is filled with warnings. “We have become partakers of Christ, if we hold fast the beginning of our assurance firm until the end”&nbsp;(3:14), and, “You have need of endurance, so that when you have done the will of God, you may receive what was promised”&nbsp;(10:36).</p>

<p>This is why the teaching of James is so important. Paul’s instruction on justification by faith alone is so radical it can be mistaken for license, a charge he defends against in Romans 6:1-2. There’s no such confusion with James, though. To paraphrase James 2:26, “The human body without the breath of life is nothing but a corpse. The same is true for anyone who says he has faith, but doesn’t back it up with a changed life.”</p>

<h2>The Beginning, Not the End</h2>

<p>What makes a person sure his fire insurance is in force? If all he can say is “I prayed the prayer,”&nbsp;he’s in trouble. If he’s not actively following Jesus, I can give little assurance. People grow at different speeds, but there must be evidence of a life being transformed at some level.</p>

<p>If you want to lead someone to Christ, forget the magic prayer. There’s no precedence for it in the Bible, anyway. In the New Testament, baptism served the function of marking the entry of a person into the Body of Christ.</p>

<p>Rather, enjoin the one who is spiritually hungry to satisfy his appetite day by day by following the Savior. Give him some guidelines on how to do that. Tell him about prayer, fellowship, and Bible study. Instruct him in forgiveness, regeneration, and justification.</p>

<p>Don’t let him forget, though, being born again is the beginning, not the end.</p>

<aside class="footnotes">
<hr>
<ol>
	<li id="fn:1">1 John 5:13. <a class="reversefootnote" href="#fnref:1">&nbsp;↩</a></li>
	<li id="fn:2">Romans 8:15-16. <a class="reversefootnote" href="#fnref:2">&nbsp;↩</a></li>
	<li id="fn:3">1 John 4:13. <a class="reversefootnote" href="#fnref:3">&nbsp;↩</a></li>
	<li id="fn:4">Note, for example, John the Baptist’s concern in Matthew 11:2-3. <a class="reversefootnote" href="#fnref:4">&nbsp;↩</a></li>
	<li id="fn:5">1 John 2:4. <a class="reversefootnote" href="#fnref:5">&nbsp;↩</a></li>
	<li id="fn:6">1 Timothy 4:16. <a class="reversefootnote" href="#fnref:6">&nbsp;↩</a></li>
	<li id="fn:7">2 Timothy 2:12. <a class="reversefootnote" href="#fnref:7">&nbsp;↩</a></li>
	<li id="fn:8">2 Peter 1:10. <a class="reversefootnote" href="#fnref:8">&nbsp;↩</a></li>
</ol>
</aside>
</div>

            <br>
            <!-- Share links -->
            <a id="facebook-share" href="https://www.facebook.com/sharer.php?u=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.str.org%2Fw%2F-the-magic-prayer" aria-label="Share this page on Facebook" title="Share on Facebook">
            	<i class="fab fa-facebook-f fa-lg" aria-hidden="true"></i>
            </a>
            <a id="twitter-share" href="https://twitter.com/intent/tweet?url=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.str.org%2Fw%2F-the-magic-prayer" aria-label="Share this page on Twitter" title="Share on Twitter">
            	<i class="fab fa-twitter fa-lg" aria-hidden="true"></i>
            </a>
            <a id="email-share" href="mailto:?body=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.str.org%2Fw%2F-the-magic-prayer" aria-label="Email this page to a friend" title="Email">
            	<i class="far fa-envelope fa-lg" aria-hidden="true"></i>
            </a>
            <a href="https://www.printfriendly.com" class="printfriendly" onclick="window.print();return false;" title="Printer Friendly and PDF"><i class="fa fa-print fa-lg" aria-hidden="true"></i>
            </a>
            
          


title: Is the Leviticus Prohibition of Homosexuality Irrelevant?
topic: Philosophy
author: Alan Shlemon
date: 03/20/2013
source: https://www.str.org/w/is-the-leviticus-prohibition-of-homosexuality-irrelevant-
content:
            <div> 
		<p><em>Alan’s monthly letter for February 2013</em></p>

<p>Dear Friend,</p>

<p>Skeptics of all stripes believe the book of Leviticus is irrelevant. Just cite the prohibition of homosexual behavior in Chapter 18 and brace for the impending attack. They’ll say something akin to, “Leviticus 19:19 says you can’t wear clothes made from two different linens or plant two different seeds in the same field. You don’t follow those rules, so why follow the homosexual ones?”&nbsp;They’re claiming you’re inconsistent.</p>

<p>And they may have a point. Christians don’t follow every Levitical law. But some, like Leviticus 19:18 that commands one to “Love your neighbor as yourself”&nbsp;are upheld. How do we make sense of this?</p>

<p>Leviticus is part of the Mosaic Law or Old Covenant. God established this covenant as a contract between Himself and the Jewish nation during Moses’&nbsp;leadership. It contained 613 commands pertaining to marriage, ritual purity, sacrifice, justice, and other guidelines for the fledgling theocracy. But these laws were never intended to be a legal code for all cultures and at all times. They were unique to the nation of Israel.</p>

<p>When Jesus came, He fulfilled the requirements of the Mosaic Law by satisfying the terms of the old contract. Matthew 5:17 quotes Jesus as saying, “I have not come to abolish [the Law,] but to fulfill [it.]”</p>

<p>Then, Jesus established a new covenant (in His blood). It entails a new contract with new terms that govern God’s relationship with His people (both Jew <em>and</em> Gentile). Hebrews 8:13 says of Jesus: “When He said, ’A new covenant,’&nbsp;He has made the first obsolete.”&nbsp;That means Christ’s new covenant supersedes the old covenant of the Mosaic Law. We are no longer legally bound to observe Mosaic commands. It also means pulled-pork sandwiches are now on the menu.</p>

<p>Am I then saying that the Leviticus prohibition of homosexual behavior is irrelevant? Not at all. Although its specific expression in the Mosaic Law is not binding under the New Covenant of Christ, it reflects a long-term universal moral value. That is, the ethical rule transcends the particular application in Leviticus.</p>

<p>There are at least two ways to recognize this. First, the way some Mosaic laws are written suggest an appeal to the natural order of the world. For example, Leviticus 18:22 (the verse that prohibits homosexual behavior) implies that sexual activity is designed to occur a certain way. The one-flesh union can only be achieved through heterosexual intercourse. Homosexual behavior violates the God-intended design of human sexuality.</p>

<p>The other indication is that the same prohibition is re-expressed in the New Testament.</p>

<p>Romans 1, 1 Corinthians 6, and 1 Timothy 1 all identify homosexual behavior as sin, suggesting that this prohibition is not culture-bound to Israel under the Mosaic Law.</p>

<p>So although Leviticus and the rest of the Mosaic Law is still valuable to know and study, I don’t think citing Leviticus is the best idea. It requires a nuanced explanation of theology and how covenants work. This is confusing to nonbelievers and will likely be rejected by skeptics.</p>

<p>Instead, use Romans 1:26-27. It’s the most powerful, straightforward, and defensible text on homosexuality for several reasons. First, it’s perfectly consistent with the moral value expressed in Leviticus. It re-affirms what appears to be a universal moral value about human sexual activity. Second, it’s the only one to address both male and female homosexuality in a single passage. Third, it clearly describes the behavior in question and explains why it’s wrong: men abandoned the natural sexual function of women. But fourth, and most importantly for this discussion, it’s a New Testament text, written under the New Covenant of Christ. That’s the contract that primarily governs behavior today.</p>

<p>I’ve written this to help explain the confusion surrounding the Bible and homosexuality. Sadly, Christians who are responsible for clarifying these matters are often the ones who struggle with making sense of it. That’s why I’m excited about my upcoming <em>Ambassador’s Guide</em> on homosexuality that will be published this year. It will clarify what both Scripture and science say about homosexual behavior and equip believers to respond in a thoughtful and compassionate manner.</p>

<p>I’m able to write this book thanks to you. I am grateful for your faithful support of my work. Please know that you are making a huge impact for the kingdom of God.</p>

<p>In Christ,</p>

<p>Alan Shlemon</p>
</div>

            <br>
            <!-- Share links -->
            <a id="facebook-share" href="https://www.facebook.com/sharer.php?u=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.str.org%2Fw%2Fis-the-leviticus-prohibition-of-homosexuality-irrelevant-" aria-label="Share this page on Facebook" title="Share on Facebook">
            	<i class="fab fa-facebook-f fa-lg" aria-hidden="true"></i>
            </a>
            <a id="twitter-share" href="https://twitter.com/intent/tweet?url=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.str.org%2Fw%2Fis-the-leviticus-prohibition-of-homosexuality-irrelevant-" aria-label="Share this page on Twitter" title="Share on Twitter">
            	<i class="fab fa-twitter fa-lg" aria-hidden="true"></i>
            </a>
            <a id="email-share" href="mailto:?body=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.str.org%2Fw%2Fis-the-leviticus-prohibition-of-homosexuality-irrelevant-" aria-label="Email this page to a friend" title="Email">
            	<i class="far fa-envelope fa-lg" aria-hidden="true"></i>
            </a>
            <a href="https://www.printfriendly.com" class="printfriendly" onclick="window.print();return false;" title="Printer Friendly and PDF"><i class="fa fa-print fa-lg" aria-hidden="true"></i>
            </a>
            
          


title: Is a Human Being Valuable?
topic: Bioethics
author: Greg Koukl
date: 03/17/2013
source: https://www.str.org/w/is-a-human-being-valuable-
content:
            <div> 
		<p><em>If alleviating suffering is the goal that has intrinsic value, and not the person itself, why could we not experiment on it so we can increase our scientific knowledge in a way that might alleviate further suffering?</em></p>

<p>It used to be that the medical profession sought not only to cure but also to care. Caring for people had an intrinsic value all its own, whether people could be cured or not. That was when there was an idea that people themselves, people as people, had intrinsic worth.</p>

<p>But the emphasis has changed dramatically from the position that people have worth to the belief that only states of being have intrinsic worth, ergo the quality of life argument.</p>

<p>If only states of being have intrinsic worth, then are those who do not have a worthwhile state of being without value? If a person’s life, an infant’s for example, can be forfeit because it has Down’s syndrome—and therefore we would be inclined to let the congenitally defective newborn die (and this happens all the time)—could we then just keep it alive for the purpose of doing experiments on it?</p>

<p>If a defective child has forfeit its right to live because it does not possess some state of being that gives it intrinsic value, if it is so value-less that it can simply be starved to death, by what rational do we forbid using for him or her—maybe I should say “it”—for anything that does have intrinsic worth?</p>

<p>If alleviating suffering is the goal that has intrinsic value, and not the person itself, why could we not experiment on it so we can increase our scientific knowledge in a way that might alleviate further suffering? Or if pleasure or a pleasurable life is the state of being that has intrinsic value, why can’t we keep this retarded or handicapped child alive and raise it to improve the quality of life for others? Maybe use it like a droid for simple labor or a surrogate for sexual pleasure? If human beings don’t have intrinsic worth, then it seems legitimate to use them for any utility what so ever as long as the utility itself has some intrinsic value or worth to us.</p>

<p>This is a very critical and dramatic shift, my friends, and deeply influences how we view humanity and human problems. I’ll have to admit that the temptation is very strong even in myself to buy this “quality of life”&nbsp;argument—although I suspect the quality of life in view is more often not the injured person’s quality of life but the quality of life of those who are put out by the obligation to give care to the injured person.</p>

<p>The thought has often occurred to me how nice and neat it would be to take all the damaged people—physically damaged, emotionally damaged, psychologically damaged—and sweep them, like unwanted litter, under the rug. They’re just so much trouble, and sometimes they’re so expensive. This is a frightening testimony to how much this new utilitarian morality has influenced even me.</p>

<p>You must come to some conclusion about what it is about human beings, if anything at all, that is valuable.</p>
</div>

            <br>
            <!-- Share links -->
            <a id="facebook-share" href="https://www.facebook.com/sharer.php?u=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.str.org%2Fw%2Fis-a-human-being-valuable-" aria-label="Share this page on Facebook" title="Share on Facebook">
            	<i class="fab fa-facebook-f fa-lg" aria-hidden="true"></i>
            </a>
            <a id="twitter-share" href="https://twitter.com/intent/tweet?url=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.str.org%2Fw%2Fis-a-human-being-valuable-" aria-label="Share this page on Twitter" title="Share on Twitter">
            	<i class="fab fa-twitter fa-lg" aria-hidden="true"></i>
            </a>
            <a id="email-share" href="mailto:?body=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.str.org%2Fw%2Fis-a-human-being-valuable-" aria-label="Email this page to a friend" title="Email">
            	<i class="far fa-envelope fa-lg" aria-hidden="true"></i>
            </a>
            <a href="https://www.printfriendly.com" class="printfriendly" onclick="window.print();return false;" title="Printer Friendly and PDF"><i class="fa fa-print fa-lg" aria-hidden="true"></i>
            </a>
            
          


title: Monkey Morality
topic: Philosophy
author: Greg Koukl
date: 03/17/2013
source: https://www.str.org/w/monkey-morality
content:
            <div> 
		<p><em>Bongo is a chimp. He’s being punished by other members of the chimpanzee band for not sharing his bananas. Bongo is selfish. Bad Bongo. Moral rule: Chimps shouldn’t be selfish.</em></p>

<p>One of the strongest evidences for the existence of God is man’s unique moral nature. C.S. Lewis argues in <em>Mere Christianity</em> that there is a persistent moral law that represents the ethical foundation of all human cultures. This, he says, is evidence for the God who is the author of the moral law.</p>

<p>Not everyone agrees. Scenarios like the one above have been offered as evidence for rudimentary forms of morality among animals, especially the “higher”&nbsp;primates like chimpanzees. This suggests that morality in humans is not unique and can be explained by the natural process of evolution without appeal to a divine Lawgiver.</p>

<p>This view of morality is one of the conclusions of the new science of evolutionary psychology. Its adherents advance a simple premise: The mind, just like every part of the physical body, is a product of evolution. Everything about human personality—marital relationships, parental love, friendships, dynamics among siblings, social climbing, even office politics—can be explained by the forces of neo-Darwinian evolution.</p>

<p>Even the moral threads that make up the fabric of society are the product of natural selection. Morality can be reduced to chemical relationships in the genes chosen by different evolutionary needs in the physical environment. Love and hate; feelings of guilt and remorse; gratitude and envy; even the virtues of kindness, faithfulness, or self-control can all be explained mechanistically through the cause and effect of chance genetic mutations and natural selection.</p>

<p>One notable example of this challenge to the transcendent nature of morality comes from the book The Moral Animal—Why We Are the Way We Are: The New Science of Evolutionary Psychology, by Robert Wright.</p>

<h2>How Morals Evolve</h2>

<p><strong>The Blind Moral-Maker</strong></p>

<p>In his popular defense of evolution, <em>The Blind Watchmaker</em>, Richard Dawkins acknowledges that the biological world looks designed, but that this appearance is deceiving. The appearance of intelligent order is really the result of the workings of natural selection.</p>

<p>Robert Wright holds the same view regarding man’s psychological features, including morality. The strongest evidence for this analysis seems to be the explanatory power of the evolutionary paradigm when dealing with moral conduct. The argument rests on the nature of natural selection itself:</p>

<p>If within a species there is variation among individuals in their hereditary traits, and some traits are more conducive to survival and reproduction than others, then those traits will (obviously) become more widespread within the population. The result (obviously) is that the species’&nbsp;aggregate pool of hereditary traits changes. [1 Robert Wright, <em>The Moral Animal—Why We Are the Way We Are: The New Science of Evolutionary Psychology</em> (New York: Pantheon Books, 1994), p. 23.]</p>

<p>Wright argues from effect back to cause, asking what is the simplest, most elegant solution adequate to explain the effects we see. To Wright, the evolutionary explanation is “obvious.”&nbsp;In order to survive, animals must adapt to changing conditions. Through the process of natural selection, naturalistic forces “choose”&nbsp;certain behavior patterns that allow the species to continue to exist. We call those patterns “morality.”</p>

<p><strong>Wired for Morality</strong></p>

<p>The thesis that evolution explains all moral conduct requires that such conduct be genetically determined. Morality rides on the genes, as it were, and one generation passes on favorable morality to the next. Wright sees a genetic connection with a whole range of emotional capabilities. He talks about “genes inclining a male to love his offspring,” [2 Robert Wright, <em>The Moral Animal—Why We Are the Way We Are: The New Science of Evolutionary Psychology</em> (New York: Pantheon Books, 1994), p. 58]. and romantic love that was not only invented by evolution, but corrupted by it. [3 Robert Wright, <em>The Moral Animal—Why We Are the Way We Are: The New Science of Evolutionary Psychology</em> (New York: Pantheon Books, 1994), p. 59].Consider these comments:</p>

<p>If a woman’s “fidelity gene”&nbsp;(or her “infidelity gene”) shapes her behavior in a way that helps get copies of itself, into future generations in large numbers, then that gene will by definition flourish.[4 Robert Wright, <em>The Moral Animal—Why We Are the Way We Are: The New Science of Evolutionary Psychology</em> (New York: Pantheon Books, 1994), p. 56.] [emphasis in the original]</p>

<p>Beneath all the thoughts and feelings and temperamental differences that marriage counselors spend their time sensitively assessing are the stratagems of the genes—cold, hard equations composed of simple variables.[5 Robert Wright, <em>The Moral Animal—Why We Are the Way We Are: The New Science of Evolutionary Psychology</em> (New York: Pantheon Books, 1994), p. 88.]</p>

<p>Some mothers have a genetic predisposition to love their children, so the story goes, and this genetic predisposition to be loving is favored by natural selection. Consequently, there are more women who are “good”&nbsp;mothers.</p>

<p>What is the evidence, though, that moral virtues are genetic, a random combination of molecules? Is the fundamental difference between a Mother Teresa and a Hitler their chromosomal makeup? If so, then how could we ever praise Mother Teresa? How could a man like Adolph Hitler be truly guilty?</p>

<p>Wright offers no such empirical evidence. He seems to assume that moral qualities are in the genes because he must; his paradigm will not work otherwise.</p>

<h2>Wright’s Double-Standard</h2>

<p><strong>Morality Above Morality</strong></p>

<p>In a public relations piece promoting his book, Robert Wright says, “My hope is that people will use the knowledge [in this book] not only to improve their lives—as a source of ’self-help’—but as cause to treat other people more decently.”&nbsp;[emphasis mine]</p>

<p>This statement captures a major flaw in Wright’s analysis. His entire thesis is that chance evolution exhausts what it means to be moral. Morality is descriptive, a mere function of the environment selecting patterns of behavior that assist and benefit the growth and survival of the species. Yet he frequently lapses, unconsciously making reference to a morality that seems to transcend nature.</p>

<p>Take this comment as an example: “Human beings are a species splendid in their array of moral equipment, tragic in their propensity to misuse it, and pathetic in their constitutional ignorance of the misuse.” [6 Robert Wright, <em>The Moral Animal—Why We Are the Way We Are: The New Science of Evolutionary Psychology</em> (New York: Pantheon Books, 1994), p. 13.] [emphasis mine] Wright reflects on the moral equipment randomly given to us by nature, and then bemoans our immoral use of it with words like “tragic,”&nbsp;“pathetic,”&nbsp;and “misuse.”</p>

<p>He writes, “Go above and beyond the call of a smoothly functioning conscience; help those who aren’t likely to help you in return, and do so when nobody’s watching. This is one way to be a truly moral animal.” [7 Robert Wright, <em>The Moral Animal—Why We Are the Way We Are: The New Science of Evolutionary Psychology</em> (New York: Pantheon Books, 1994), p. 377.]</p>

<p>It’s almost as if there are two categories of morality, nature’s morality and a transcendent standard used to judge nature’s morality. But where did this transcendent standard come from? It’s precisely this higher moral law that needs explaining. If transcendent morality judges the “morality”&nbsp;that evolution is responsible for, then it can’t itself be accounted for by evolution.</p>

<p><strong>Social Darwinism</strong></p>

<p>Like many evolutionists, Wright recoils from social Darwinism. “To say that something is ’natural’&nbsp;is not to say that it is good. There is no reason to adopt natural selection’s ’values’&nbsp;as our own.” [8 Robert Wright, <em>The Moral Animal—Why We Are the Way We Are: The New Science of Evolutionary Psychology</em> (New York: Pantheon Books, 1994), p. 31.] Just because nature exploits the weak, he argues, doesn’t mean we are morally obliged to do so.</p>

<p>Natural selection’s indifference to the suffering of the weak is not something we need to emulate. Nor should we care whether murder, robbery, and rape are in some sense “natural.”&nbsp;It is for us to decide how abhorrent we find such things and how hard we want to fight them. [9 Robert Wright, <em>The Moral Animal—Why We Are the Way We Are: The New Science of Evolutionary Psychology</em> (New York: Pantheon Books, 1994), p. 102.]</p>

<p>Wright argues that the reductio ad absurdum argument from social Darwinism is flawed. Though life is an unregulated state of nature is, as 17th century English philosophy Thomas Hobbes described it, “solitary, poor, nasty, brutish, and short,” [10 Thomas Hobbes, <em>Leviathan</em>, 1651.] We’re not required to take the “survival of the fittest”&nbsp;as a moral guideline.</p>

<p>Evolutionists may be right when they argue that we’re not compelled to adopt the morality of evolution. The danger of social Darwinism, though, is not that society is required to adopt the law of the jungle, but that it is allowed to. The exploitation of the weak by the strong is morally benign according to this view.</p>

<p>What Darwinists cannot do is give us a reason why we ought not simply copy nature and destroy those who are weak, unpleasant, costly, or just plain boring. If all moral options are legitimate, then it’s legitimate for the strong to rule the weak. No moral restraints protect the weak, because moral restraints simply wouldn’t exist.</p>

<h2>Monkey Morality</h2>

<p>Recent studies have attempted to show that animals exhibit rudimentary moral behavior. In one case, a group of chimpanzees “punished”&nbsp;one “selfish”&nbsp;member of their band by withholding food from it. Apparently, the moral rule was this: Chimps shouldn’t be selfish.</p>

<p><strong>Conduct, Motive, and Intent</strong></p>

<p>There are some problems with this assessment. First of all, drawing conclusions about animal morality simply from external behavior reduces morality to conduct. Why should we accept that morality is exhaustively described by behavior? True morality entails non-behavioral elements, too, like intent and motive.</p>

<p>One can’t infer actual moral obligations from the mere fact of a chimp’s conduct. One might talk descriptively about a chimp’s behavior, but no conclusion about morality follows from this. One can observe that chimps in community share food, and when they do they survive better. But you can’t conclude from this that Bongo, the chimp, ought to share his bananas, and if he doesn’t, then he’s immoral because he hasn’t contributed to the survival of his community.</p>

<p>Further, in fixing blame, we distinguish between an act done by accident and the very same act done on purpose. The behavior is the same, but the intent is different. We don’t usually blame people for accidents: The boy didn’t intend to trip the old lady.</p>

<p>We also give attention to the issue of motive. We withhold blame even if the youngster tripped the old lady on purpose if the motive is acceptable: He tripped her to keep her from running in front of a train.</p>

<p>Motive and intent cannot be determined simply by looking at behavior. In fact, some “good”&nbsp;behavior—giving to the poor, for example—might turn out to be tainted if the motive and intent are wrong: being thought well of with no concern for the recipient. Indeed, it seems one can be immoral without any behavior at all, e.g. plotting an evil deed that one never has the opportunity to carry out.</p>

<p>Morality informs behavior, judging it either good or bad, but it’s not identical to behavior. Morality is something deeper than habitual patterns of physical interaction. Therefore, one can’t draw conclusions about animal morality simply based on what he observes in their conduct.</p>

<p><strong>Morality: Explained or Denied?</strong></p>

<p>This leads us to the second problem, which runs much deeper. When morality is reduced to patterns of behavior chosen by natural selection for its survival value, then morality is not explained; it’s denied. Wright admits as much. Regarding the conscience he says:</p>

<p>The conscience doesn’t make us feel bad the way hunger feels bad, or good the way sex feels good. It makes us feel as if we have done something that’s wrong or something that’s right. Guilty or not guilty. It is amazing that a process as amoral and crassly pragmatic as natural selection could design a mental organ that makes us feel as if we’re in touch with higher truth. Truly a shameless ploy. [11 Robert Wright, <em>The Moral Animal—Why We Are the Way We Are: The New Science of Evolutionary Psychology</em> (New York: Pantheon Books, 1994), p. 212.] [emphasis mine]</p>

<p>Evolutionists like Wright are ultimately forced to admit that what we think is a “higher truth”&nbsp;of morality turns out to be a “shameless ploy”&nbsp;of nature, a description of animal behavior conditioned by the environment for survival. We’ve given that conduct a label, they argue. We call it morality. But there is no real right and wrong.</p>

<p>Does Bongo, the chimp, actually exhibit genuine moral behavior? Does he understand the difference between right and wrong? Does he make principled choices to do what’s right? Is he worthy of blame and punishment for doing wrong? Of course not, Wright says. Bongo merely does in a primitive way what humans do in a more sophisticated way. We respond according to our genetic conditioning, a program “designed”&nbsp;by millions of years of evolution.</p>

<p>The evolutionary approach is not an explanation of morality; it’s a denial of morality. It explains why we think moral truths exist when, in fact, they don’t.</p>

<p><strong>Why Be a Good Boy Tomorrow?</strong></p>

<p>This observation uncovers the most serious objection to the idea that evolution is adequate to explain morality. There is one question that can never be answered by any evolutionary assessment of ethics. The question is this: Why ought I be moral tomorrow?</p>

<p>One of the distinctives of morality is its “oughtness,”&nbsp;its moral incumbency. Assessments of mere behavior, however, are descriptive only. Since morality is essentially prescriptive—telling what should be the case, as opposed to what is the case—and since all evolutionary assessments of moral behavior are descriptive, then evolution cannot account for the most important thing that needs to be explained: morality’s “oughtness.”</p>

<p>The question that really needs to be answered is: “Why shouldn’t the chimp (or a human, for that matter) be selfish?”&nbsp;The evolutionary answer might be that when we’re selfish, we hurt the group. That answer, though, presumes another moral value: We ought to be concerned about the welfare of the group. Why should that concern us? Answer: If the group doesn’t survive, then the species doesn’t survive. But why should I care about the survival of the species?</p>

<p>Here’s the problem. All of these responses meant to explain morality ultimately depend on some prior moral notion to hold them together. It’s going to be hard to explain, on an evolutionary view of things why I should not be selfish, or steal, or rape, or even kill tomorrow without smuggling morality into the answer.</p>

<p>The evolutionary explanation disembowels morality, reducing it to mere descriptions of conduct. The best the Darwinist explanation can do—if it succeeds at all—is explain <em>past</em> behavior. It cannot inform future behavior. The essence of morality, though, is not description, but prescription.</p>

<p>Evolution may be an explanation for the existence of conduct we choose to call moral, but it gives no explanation why I should obey any moral rules in the future. If one countered that we have a moral obligation to evolve, then the game would be up, because if we have moral obligations prior to evolution, then evolution itself can’t be their source.</p>

<p><strong>Evolutionists Are Wrong about Ethics</strong></p>

<p>Darwinists opt for an evolutionary explanation for morality without sufficient justification. In order to make their naturalistic explanation work, “morality”&nbsp;must reside in the genes. “Good,”&nbsp;beneficial tendencies can then be chosen by natural selection. Nature, through the mechanics of genetic chemistry, cultivates behaviors we call morality.</p>

<p>This creates two problems. First, evolution doesn’t explain what it’s meant to explain. It can only account for pre-programmed behavior, which doesn’t qualify as morality. Moral choices, by their nature, are made by free agents, not dictated by internal mechanics.</p>

<p>Secondly, the Darwinist explanation reduces morality to mere descriptions of behavior. The morality that evolution needs to account for, however, entails much more than conduct. Minimally, it involves motive and intent as well. Both are non-physical elements which can’t, even in principle, evolve in a Darwinian sense.</p>

<p>Further, this assessment of morality, being descriptive only, ignores the most fundamental moral question of all: Why should I be moral tomorrow? Evolution cannot answer that question. It can only attempt to describe why humans acted in a certain way in the past. Morality dictates what future behavior ought to be.</p>

<p>Evolution does not explain morality. Bongo is not a bad chimp, he’s just a chimp. No moral rules apply to him. Eat the banana, Bongo.</p>
</div>

            <br>
            <!-- Share links -->
            <a id="facebook-share" href="https://www.facebook.com/sharer.php?u=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.str.org%2Fw%2Fmonkey-morality" aria-label="Share this page on Facebook" title="Share on Facebook">
            	<i class="fab fa-facebook-f fa-lg" aria-hidden="true"></i>
            </a>
            <a id="twitter-share" href="https://twitter.com/intent/tweet?url=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.str.org%2Fw%2Fmonkey-morality" aria-label="Share this page on Twitter" title="Share on Twitter">
            	<i class="fab fa-twitter fa-lg" aria-hidden="true"></i>
            </a>
            <a id="email-share" href="mailto:?body=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.str.org%2Fw%2Fmonkey-morality" aria-label="Email this page to a friend" title="Email">
            	<i class="far fa-envelope fa-lg" aria-hidden="true"></i>
            </a>
            <a href="https://www.printfriendly.com" class="printfriendly" onclick="window.print();return false;" title="Printer Friendly and PDF"><i class="fa fa-print fa-lg" aria-hidden="true"></i>
            </a>
            
          


title: The Raising of Lazarus John 11:1-46
topic: Theology
author: Greg Koukl
date: 03/22/2013
source: https://www.str.org/w/the-raising-of-lazarus-john-11-1-46
content:
            <div> 
		<p>A. This critical event happened very close to Passion Week and highlighted His power over death and the source of Life that Jesus own death and resurrection would ensure.</p>

<p>B. Jesus delayed his trip purposely, even though He knew Lazarus was sick.</p>

<p>1. The Jew’s concept of death was that after three days the spirit leaves the body.</p>

<p>2. The body would already be decomposing (v39).</p>

<p>3. By everyone’s definition, Lazarus was beyond hope.</p>

<p>C. Jesus is deeply grieved by the death of His friend. The language used conveys the depth of His feelings.</p>

<p>1. He weeps (v35).</p>

<p>2. He’s not just sorrowful but angry, possibly at the tragedy of death itself (v38).</p>

<p>a. “...deeply moved in spirit, and was troubled”&nbsp;(v33).</p>

<p>b. “...deeply moved within”&nbsp;(v38).</p>

<p>c. lit. <em>embrimaomai</em>, “to snort with anger, as of horses”&nbsp;(Vines, p. 96).</p>

<p>D. It was a public display of Jesus’&nbsp;Messianic power, but it only turned the leaders more against Him</p>

<p>1. He would work this wonder not only for the multitudes (v42) but also for the sake of His disciples. Raising Lazarus was meant to be a sign to help them believe what He’d taught them.</p>

<p>a. It was almost like a down payment on the promise of His own resurrection to come just weeks later. He demonstrated His power over death in raising Lazarus, and therefore could make good His claims to rise from the dead.</p>

<p>b. Against the backdrop of the hopelessness and sadness of Lazarus' death, Jesus declares the hope that He alone embodies: “I am the resurrection and the Life; he who believes in Me shall live even if he dies”&nbsp;(v25).</p>

<p>2. The Pharisees and Sadducees, characteristically political and theological rivals, unite to put Jesus to death. This event stimulated their resolve to kill Jesus. Rather than believe in the man who’d raised Lazarus from the dead, their hard hearts were strengthened against Him.</p>

<p>E. Jesus retreats to northern Judea to avoid the plot made by the Pharisees and Sadducees, and then comes back for the Passover Feast (v54).</p>
</div>

            <br>
            <!-- Share links -->
            <a id="facebook-share" href="https://www.facebook.com/sharer.php?u=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.str.org%2Fw%2Fthe-raising-of-lazarus-john-11-1-46" aria-label="Share this page on Facebook" title="Share on Facebook">
            	<i class="fab fa-facebook-f fa-lg" aria-hidden="true"></i>
            </a>
            <a id="twitter-share" href="https://twitter.com/intent/tweet?url=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.str.org%2Fw%2Fthe-raising-of-lazarus-john-11-1-46" aria-label="Share this page on Twitter" title="Share on Twitter">
            	<i class="fab fa-twitter fa-lg" aria-hidden="true"></i>
            </a>
            <a id="email-share" href="mailto:?body=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.str.org%2Fw%2Fthe-raising-of-lazarus-john-11-1-46" aria-label="Email this page to a friend" title="Email">
            	<i class="far fa-envelope fa-lg" aria-hidden="true"></i>
            </a>
            <a href="https://www.printfriendly.com" class="printfriendly" onclick="window.print();return false;" title="Printer Friendly and PDF"><i class="fa fa-print fa-lg" aria-hidden="true"></i>
            </a>
            
          


title: Wisdom Model Summary
topic: Christian Living
author: Greg Koukl
date: 03/22/2013
source: https://www.str.org/w/wisdom-model-summary
content:
            <div> 
		<p><em>Taken from <a href="http://store.str.org/ProductDetails.asp?ProductCode=CD105" target="_blank">“Decision Making &amp; the Will of God”</a></em></p>

<p>The basic premise of the “Wisdom Model”&nbsp;is that we have freedom to choose anything we want within the dual parameters of God’s moral will (revealed in the Bible) and wisdom, with God’s full blessing. The Scriptures make no other restrictions than those unless there is an individualized command by supernatural special revelation (e.g. Acts 9:6, 9:11-15, 13:2, 10:1-6 etc.)</p>

<p>I. God doesn’t decide for us. Instead, like a good Father, He teaches us how to decide...</p>

<p>A. In submission to God’s moral will</p>

<p>1. We are not allowed to choose any alternative that will violate Scripture.</p>

<p>2. God’s moral will governs not just the ends we pursue, but also the means to the ends, our attitudes and our motives in the process.</p>

<p>3. We learn God’s moral will from the Scripture through reading (1 Tim 4:13), search and inquiry (1 Peter 1:10-11), diligent study (2 Tim 2:15), careful consideration (2 Tim 2:7), meditation (Ps 1:2), memorization (Ps 119:11), and gifted teachers (Eph 4:11).</p>

<p>4. Problem: Sometimes we fancy we’ve received special guidance from the Lord and then violate some clear directive of Scripture in order to pursue it.</p>

<p>B. With wisdom, that which is sensible, morally sound, and expedient</p>

<p>1. God commands us to pray for wisdom (James 1:5).</p>

<p>2. Proverbs teaches that wisdom helps us make good choices (Prov 1:1-6, 2:9, 8:35-36).</p>

<p>3. Wisdom come from many sources: the Bible, counsel, research, instruction, and experience.</p>

<p>C. Being sensitive to the personal element</p>

<p>Issues of personal desire and personal conscience are important, valid considerations.</p>

<p>D. In humble submission to God’s sovereign intervention</p>

<p>1. God has the privilege, though not the obligation, of intervening in any of our plans.</p>

<p>2. God uses obstacles, roadblocks, problems, and circumstances to redirect our paths.</p>

<p>3. We respond by making wise choices as new factors become evident, with an attitude of dependence and trust in God (James 4:13-18, Prov 3:4-6, Ps 138:8).</p>

<p>4. In the process of our free will decision making, God fulfills His sovereign purposes.</p>

<p>II. Conclusion: The Wisdom Model in action</p>

<p>1st. Determine which options, if any, are excluded in a biblical examination of goals, means, and motives.</p>

<p>2nd. Apply wisdom and personal desires to the remaining choices. Examine circumstances, research facts, weigh alternatives, gather information, seek counsel.</p>

<p>3rd. Make your decision with an attitude of humble trust in the Lord: “If God wills...”</p>

<p>4th. Adjust to new circumstances as they arise using the same method.</p>

<p>Role Models in Scripture: Paul’s decision to go to Rome (Rom 1:8-15), Jerusalem Council (Acts 15), Paul’s advice on marriage (1 Cor 7), Paul’s second and third missionary journeys (Acts 15:36, 18:23), etc.</p>
</div>

            <br>
            <!-- Share links -->
            <a id="facebook-share" href="https://www.facebook.com/sharer.php?u=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.str.org%2Fw%2Fwisdom-model-summary" aria-label="Share this page on Facebook" title="Share on Facebook">
            	<i class="fab fa-facebook-f fa-lg" aria-hidden="true"></i>
            </a>
            <a id="twitter-share" href="https://twitter.com/intent/tweet?url=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.str.org%2Fw%2Fwisdom-model-summary" aria-label="Share this page on Twitter" title="Share on Twitter">
            	<i class="fab fa-twitter fa-lg" aria-hidden="true"></i>
            </a>
            <a id="email-share" href="mailto:?body=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.str.org%2Fw%2Fwisdom-model-summary" aria-label="Email this page to a friend" title="Email">
            	<i class="far fa-envelope fa-lg" aria-hidden="true"></i>
            </a>
            <a href="https://www.printfriendly.com" class="printfriendly" onclick="window.print();return false;" title="Printer Friendly and PDF"><i class="fa fa-print fa-lg" aria-hidden="true"></i>
            </a>
            
          


title: Truth Drives Us to Compassion
topic: Sexuality and Gender
author: Alan Shlemon
date: 03/20/2013
source: https://www.str.org/w/truth-drives-us-to-compassion
content:
            <div> 
		<p><em>Alan’s monthly letter for March 2013</em></p>

<p>Dear Friend,</p>

<p>Today, more than ever, it is difficult to maintain a Christian view of sexuality, let alone homosexuality. For young people, it’s harder given the constant bombardment of pro-homosexual propaganda. It’s pushed in schools, promoted in television, and protected in law. If a student has any friends at all, there’s a good chance that one of them claims to be gay or has same-sex attractions. That might sound like an opportunity, but there’s a problem.</p>

<p>It seems like churches aren’t training their young people about homosexuality. Instead, the secular culture is educating them. Since they’re talking about it first, they’re framing the conversation and inoculating young believers from trusting church leadership.</p>

<p>As a result, students are buying into the lies. They’re believing the Bible is outdated on matters of sex. They’re accepting radical revisions of the passages that condemn homosexual behavior. They’re thinking they have to choose between their faith and their gay friends. At the end of the day, they’re abandoning the authority of Scripture in their lives.</p>

<p>A few weeks ago, I had the opportunity to teach on homosexuality at a Christian high school in Bakersfield. Not only did I speak during every class period (seven total), but I addressed the entire school (students, parents, and faculty) in an hour-long forum on the same topic.</p>

<p>This was an especially important event for these students. I had the chance to provide them with a rigorous explanation and defense of the Biblical worldview.</p>

<p>That’s not to suggest I only taught what the Bible says. On the contrary, only about a third of my teaching was strictly from Scripture. The majority of my content was secular based. To clarify, “secular-based”&nbsp;teaching isn’t anti-God or anti-Biblical. In fact, I’d say my entire lecture was consistent with Scripture.</p>

<p>For example, if an atheist was first to discover that water is made up of one oxygen and two hydrogen atoms, this wouldn’t mean that knowledge of H2O is unbiblical. All the atheist has done is increased mankind’s knowledge of the world that God created.</p>

<p>In the same way, secular research has discovered a lot about the causes of same-sex attraction, the health risks of homosexual sex, and the treatment options for those with unwanted same-sex attractions. There’s no reason the savvy Christian ambassador can’t use this knowledge at an opportune time.</p>

<p>So my goal at the high school was to teach the students to follow an important principle: Know the truth and speak it with compassion. The truth they need to know is what both Scripture and science say about homosexuality, as I just mentioned above.</p>

<p>Speaking it with compassion entails two things. First, it means skillfully deploying the knowledge they possess in a kind and compassionate manner. Second, it requires learning the truth about homosexuality—the risks involved, the emptiness of their lifestyle, the emotional wounds that can lead to same-sex attraction, etc.—which will drive them to have compassion for these men and women.</p>

<p>It reminds me of Jesus. His knowledge of our brokenness, rebellion, and fate is exhaustive. It was probably the knowledge of that truth that prompted Him to have such great compassion towards us.</p>

<p>That was the feeling I was hoping would well up inside the students of this high school—that their knowledge of the truth about homosexuality will arouse a tenacious compassion for gay men and women.</p>

<p>I’m thankful for the chance to train these young minds. There’s no question they’re the future church. It’s our responsibility to equip them so they stand firm in the faith.</p>

<p>Thanks to you, this is possible. Your gift trains and nurtures believers. It’s a crucial investment that sees to it that someone is preparing the workers for the harvest.</p>

<p>For truth and compassion,</p>

<p>Alan Shlemon</p>
</div>

            <br>
            <!-- Share links -->
            <a id="facebook-share" href="https://www.facebook.com/sharer.php?u=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.str.org%2Fw%2Ftruth-drives-us-to-compassion" aria-label="Share this page on Facebook" title="Share on Facebook">
            	<i class="fab fa-facebook-f fa-lg" aria-hidden="true"></i>
            </a>
            <a id="twitter-share" href="https://twitter.com/intent/tweet?url=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.str.org%2Fw%2Ftruth-drives-us-to-compassion" aria-label="Share this page on Twitter" title="Share on Twitter">
            	<i class="fab fa-twitter fa-lg" aria-hidden="true"></i>
            </a>
            <a id="email-share" href="mailto:?body=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.str.org%2Fw%2Ftruth-drives-us-to-compassion" aria-label="Email this page to a friend" title="Email">
            	<i class="far fa-envelope fa-lg" aria-hidden="true"></i>
            </a>
            <a href="https://www.printfriendly.com" class="printfriendly" onclick="window.print();return false;" title="Printer Friendly and PDF"><i class="fa fa-print fa-lg" aria-hidden="true"></i>
            </a>
            
          


title: Following the Evidence
topic: Science
author: Greg Koukl
date: 03/21/2013
source: https://www.str.org/w/following-the-evidence
content:
            <div> 
		<p><em>Can the argument really be made that the Christian view is less biased than your average scientist’s or historian’s?</em></p>

<p>How open are you or what is it that compels you to make particular decisions about your beliefs? Two or three weeks ago I talked about a book I was reading called <em>The Moral Animal</em> by Robert Wright, and he made the case that morality is a result of the process of evolution. I think he’s wrong.</p>

<p>The author makes the point that the world does seem designed. This is why he feels comfortable using design and function language to describe the process of naturalistic evolution. If a thing has a function, it was meant to accomplish a particular end; and if it’s meant for or designed for something, there is an intent of how it is to be used, or an intent involved in what it is to accomplish. Intent is a function of mind. You can’t have design without intent, and you can’t have intent without mind. That seems to suggest that every time you use design language to describe the universe, you’re really talking about a mind behind the universe. Many people call that Mother Nature, which is no mind at all, but just accident and natural selection.</p>

<p>This is what Robert Wright believes. My question is, if the universe looks designed, why do we opt for a naturalistic, non- intentional explanation for the so-called design features, rather than saying that somebody, someone, designed it? He essentially admits that a design explanation is as adequate in itself to explain the features we find in the natural universe, as is natural selection. I don’t think it’s a toss-up, though. I don’t think natural selection is really capable of explaining the universe as we find it. But even if I were to grant that, or say, “Yes, natural selection can explain this, and supernatural design can explain it.” We have two empirically equivalent explanations for the same effect—when I say “empirically equivalent,”&nbsp;I mean the evidence equally justifies either one.</p>

<p>The question is, why must we opt for natural selection? The answer is that in the minds of Robert Wright and many others who hold this view, design is simply not an option. He makes this point in his book, “What other options are there?”&nbsp;He argues like so many others, Here we are, so we must have evolved, which shows that they don’t even consider the option that God might have created as a viable one. The question is why? Is it the case that there is no evidence whatsoever for the existence of God, and it’s just a ridiculous presumption, a function of wishful thinking of religious people? That it’s just a mere invention, and since it’s only an invention and we have no reason to believe it at all, we are stuck with the natural order of things? No, that isn’t the case at all.</p>

<p>What’s being done here is philosophy first, and science second. This is very important because wasn’t this what we were just talking about with the Jesus Seminar? You read in the papers, “The Historical Evidence for the Resurrection of Jesus Christ,”&nbsp;or the miracles in the Bible, or the sayings of Jesus, and there is no evidence. It’s just not there. Or conversely, they will say, “New Evidence Proves the Stories are Fiction.”&nbsp;Of course, they’re not talking about real evidence at all, and what they offer is not new at all; it’s the same old thing. When we look at the details of why the scholars would believe this, not just what one believes, then we see a different situation. We see philosophy done first before history is even attempted.</p>

<p>A lot of these discussions—the scientific discussion I just mentioned, the historical discussion we talked about last hour—are preceded by a prior discussion that is not scientific or historical at all, it’s philosophical. The difference between a J.P. Moreland, or a Greg Koukl, or any other informed Christian arguing the case is not that we are biased so we must conclude what we do, but it’s that our philosophy broadens the possibilities of things we might consider, depending on where the evidence leads us.</p>

<p>I’m a Christian, I am open to either a naturalistic explanation or a supernatural explanation. Both are possible in my world view. I can follow the evidence where it leads me. That’s the case whether we’re talking about cosmology or the historicity of the Gospels. I can follow where the evidence leads me. Someone who has removed the possibility of God acting in a certain way prior to examining the physical evidence has started out with the idea that God is not involved and there are no miracles, whether applying to science and cosmology or to the historicity of the Gospels.</p>

<p>If you start out there, guess what you’ll never be able to find, even if the evidence shows it? You will never be able to find a miracle. Why? Because before you’ve started you have arbitrarily excluded that from the possibilities and, I might say, without proper justification. You see, bias on a Christian side (meaning that he has a point of view) doesn’t inform the conclusions in the same way that these biases inform the conclusion in the case of a Marcus Borg on the Bible or Robert Wright on the issue of evolution. They must come up with a conclusion that leaves God out of the picture because their philosophy demands such a thing. I don’t have to come up with that conclusion. I can follow the evidence where it leads me, and that’s the most critical distinction.</p>
</div>

            <br>
            <!-- Share links -->
            <a id="facebook-share" href="https://www.facebook.com/sharer.php?u=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.str.org%2Fw%2Ffollowing-the-evidence" aria-label="Share this page on Facebook" title="Share on Facebook">
            	<i class="fab fa-facebook-f fa-lg" aria-hidden="true"></i>
            </a>
            <a id="twitter-share" href="https://twitter.com/intent/tweet?url=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.str.org%2Fw%2Ffollowing-the-evidence" aria-label="Share this page on Twitter" title="Share on Twitter">
            	<i class="fab fa-twitter fa-lg" aria-hidden="true"></i>
            </a>
            <a id="email-share" href="mailto:?body=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.str.org%2Fw%2Ffollowing-the-evidence" aria-label="Email this page to a friend" title="Email">
            	<i class="far fa-envelope fa-lg" aria-hidden="true"></i>
            </a>
            <a href="https://www.printfriendly.com" class="printfriendly" onclick="window.print();return false;" title="Printer Friendly and PDF"><i class="fa fa-print fa-lg" aria-hidden="true"></i>
            </a>
            
          


title: “Pearls before Swine”
topic: Tactics and Tools
author: Greg Koukl
date: 03/22/2013
source: https://www.str.org/w/-pearls-before-swine-
content:
            <div> 
		<p>How do you know when to “fold your hand”&nbsp;and drop out of an unproductive discussion?</p>

<p>Jesus warns, “Do not give what is holy to dogs, and do not throw your pearls before swine.”&nbsp;(Matt. 7:6) How do we know when we’ve crossed the line when we share our faith? When do we have an obligation to speak, and when should we keep our pearls to ourselves?</p>

<p>The answer is easy when we consider the rest of the verse: “Do not throw your pearls before swine, lest they trample them under their feet, and turn and tear you to pieces.”&nbsp;We should be generous with the truth unless we encounter someone who shows utter contempt for the precious gift he is being offered. He will simply trample it in the mud and then viciously turn on you. When you sense this happening, walk away. Don’t waste your time with people like this. There’s plenty of ripe fruit waiting to be harvested.</p>
</div>

            <br>
            <!-- Share links -->
            <a id="facebook-share" href="https://www.facebook.com/sharer.php?u=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.str.org%2Fw%2F-pearls-before-swine-" aria-label="Share this page on Facebook" title="Share on Facebook">
            	<i class="fab fa-facebook-f fa-lg" aria-hidden="true"></i>
            </a>
            <a id="twitter-share" href="https://twitter.com/intent/tweet?url=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.str.org%2Fw%2F-pearls-before-swine-" aria-label="Share this page on Twitter" title="Share on Twitter">
            	<i class="fab fa-twitter fa-lg" aria-hidden="true"></i>
            </a>
            <a id="email-share" href="mailto:?body=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.str.org%2Fw%2F-pearls-before-swine-" aria-label="Email this page to a friend" title="Email">
            	<i class="far fa-envelope fa-lg" aria-hidden="true"></i>
            </a>
            <a href="https://www.printfriendly.com" class="printfriendly" onclick="window.print();return false;" title="Printer Friendly and PDF"><i class="fa fa-print fa-lg" aria-hidden="true"></i>
            </a>
            
          


title: Morally Velocitized
topic: Bioethics
author: Greg Koukl
date: 03/17/2013
source: https://www.str.org/w/-morally-velocitized
content:
            <div> 
		<p><em>What happens when a culture's decline in values begins to pick up speed? It becomes velocitized. What was unthinkable yesterday is thinkable today, and ordinary and commonplace tomorrow, like partial-birth abortion.</em></p>

<p>I've chosen to devote an entire issue of Clear Thinking to one topic: partial-birth abortion. Here's why.</p>

<p>Two years ago I wrote that our culture was becoming morally "velocitized." The term describes something I learned in driver's training in high school. Once a driver accelerates from, say, 30 to 60 miles per hour and settles in, he gets acclimated to his new speed and loses his true sense of velocity. It doesn't feel as if he's moving any faster than he was at first.</p>

<p>This is dangerous on the highway, but it's deadly when it happens to the moral consciousness of a society. Years ago, Dr. Francis Schaeffer noted that what was unthinkable yesterday is thinkable today, and ordinary and commonplace tomorrow. We saw it happen once in this century. We're seeing it happen again.</p>

<h2>Two Signs of Our Moral Velocity</h2>

<p>On June 10, 1993, President Clinton signed into law "The Institute of Health Revitalization Act of 1993." It authorized, for the first time in U.S. history, government-funded research using tissue from aborted children.</p>

<p>As I write, a different bill, one our President has pledged to veto, is on its way to his desk. The Partial-Birth Abortion Ban Act (HR 1833) was first introduced in Congress on June 15, 1995. On November 1, it passed the House 288 to 139. On December 7, the Senate passed an amended form of the legislation 54 to 44, then sent it back to the House for final approval.</p>

<p>This measure has mobilized forces and stimulated vigorous responses from both sides of the abortion question. But this is no ordinary abortion debate, because this is no ordinary abortion.</p>

<p>Partial-birth abortion is actually a variation of "internal podalic version," a technique used by obstetricians to deliver a living child. Dr. James McMahon, for years the director of abortion instruction at the Cedar Sinai Medical Center in Los Angeles, claims to have adapted the procedure for abortion.</p>

<p>Dr. McMahon refers to the method as "intact dilation and evacuation" and "intrauterine cranial decompression." The other specialist in the method, Dr. Martin Haskell of Dayton, Ohio, coined the term "dilation and extraction," or simply D&amp;X.</p>

<p>These two doctors have personally performed over 3,000 such abortions, and have circulated detailed training papers on the subject. Characteristically, it's a second trimester abortion technique, but Dr. McMahon often used it much later, even into the ninth month.[1 Dr. Martin Haskell, "Second Trimester Abortion: From Every Angle," National Abortion Federation manual, p. 33.]</p>

<p>The National Abortion Federation literature blandly describes partial-birth abortion as "a surgical technique performed in some later abortions in which the fetus is removed intact."[2 National Abortion Federation, "Later Abortions: Questions and Answers," The Abortion Rights Activist, p. 2.] As you will see, there is nothing bland about it. Congressman Charles Canady (R-Fl.), who authored the bill, puts it bluntly: "The difference between the partial-birth abortion procedure and homicide is a mere three inches."[3 Douglas Johnson, "Pro-Aborts Fight Bill to Ban Partial-Birth Abortion," National Right to Life Committee, p. 1.]</p>

<p>President Clinton added a new twist when he approved government-funded research using brain tissue from aborted children. Abortion is no longer just a cash industry; it also produces a cash crop: fetal brain tissue. Thus, there's an economic incentive to opposing any ban on partial-birth abortion.</p>

<p>"A baby who is born dead," Dr. James Dobson notes, "is of less value to researchers because brain tissue and other organs quickly deteriorate when deprived of oxygen. Thus, the abortionist must employ a means of extracting the body parts and brain matter from a <em>living</em> baby who is not yet expelled from the birth canal. The method is called dilation and extraction, or D and X"[4 James Dobson, Focus on the Family Newsletter, July, 1993.] [emphasis mine].</p>

<h2>Why the Moral Confusion on D&amp;X?</h2>

<p>It has been disheartening, even painful, to listen to the justifications people are using for this procedure. One paper's editorial called it "a strategy of misinformation, distortion, and outright falsehood."[5 The Tidings, Dec. 8, 1995, p. 10.]</p>

<p>There are two reasons people are muddled about D&amp;X abortions.</p>

<p>First, many people who think they're informed still don't know what a partial-birth abortion really entails.</p>

<p>A pro-life friend of mine had been gathering newspaper clippings to help me in my research. She made mention of the baby's head "crowning" during this procedure. Her comment stunned me because in a D&amp;X abortion the baby's head doesn't crown; the child is purposely delivered breech.</p>

<p>She was against D&amp;X abortion, yet didn't realize that the doctor uses a forceps to reverse the baby so its feet come out first. With its head still in the birth canal and its legs, arms and the rest of its body dangling on the outside of the mother, the brain tissue is extracted, usually while the baby is still alive.</p>

<p>In December, David Brinkley discussed the Partial-Birth Abortion Ban Act on his show. Even Brinkley did not appear to grasp what a partial-birth abortion entailed until well into the discussion. When he did, he visibly blanched.</p>

<p>The second reason people are confused about partial-birth abortion is because it's called abortion. But calling a procedure an abortion doesn't make it one. Partial-birth abortion is not about abortion. It's about something much more insidious, something that clearly marks the velocity of our moral descent.</p>

<p>In the material that follows, you will learn exactly what partial-birth abortion is. You will read from the writings of abortion proponents themselves the truth of this barbarous procedure. Finally, you'll learn why it shouldn't be called an abortion; this debate is about something else entirely.</p>

<p>Three years ago I stated that revolutions do not start with rifle shot and cannon fire. Instead, they start with an idea. We are now in the throes of one of those quiet but desperate revolutions in thought. It's taking place right in front of us, if only we would open our eyes.</p>
</div>

            <br>
            <!-- Share links -->
            <a id="facebook-share" href="https://www.facebook.com/sharer.php?u=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.str.org%2Fw%2F-morally-velocitized" aria-label="Share this page on Facebook" title="Share on Facebook">
            	<i class="fab fa-facebook-f fa-lg" aria-hidden="true"></i>
            </a>
            <a id="twitter-share" href="https://twitter.com/intent/tweet?url=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.str.org%2Fw%2F-morally-velocitized" aria-label="Share this page on Twitter" title="Share on Twitter">
            	<i class="fab fa-twitter fa-lg" aria-hidden="true"></i>
            </a>
            <a id="email-share" href="mailto:?body=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.str.org%2Fw%2F-morally-velocitized" aria-label="Email this page to a friend" title="Email">
            	<i class="far fa-envelope fa-lg" aria-hidden="true"></i>
            </a>
            <a href="https://www.printfriendly.com" class="printfriendly" onclick="window.print();return false;" title="Printer Friendly and PDF"><i class="fa fa-print fa-lg" aria-hidden="true"></i>
            </a>
            
          


title: The Scoop on Judging
topic: Christian Living
author: Greg Koukl
date: 03/22/2013
source: https://www.str.org/w/the-scoop-on-judging
content:
            <div> 
		<p>If you’ve been to Starbucks lately, you might have noticed a new campaign to lift the consciousness of caffeinated patrons. Quotes from intellectual and spiritual virtuosi now grace their talls, ventis, and grandes “to get people talking,”&nbsp;their web site says.</p>

<p>Starbucks’&nbsp;moments of truth might become one of yours, a pretext for friendly, thoughtful conversation that might turn into a divine appointment of sorts.</p>

<p>Consider this contribution by popular author Deepak Chopra : “Attractive people judge neither themselves nor others.”&nbsp;In this Dr. Chopra seems to reflect the sentiments of Jesus (whom he admires) when He warned, “Do not judge, lest you be judged”&nbsp;(Matthew 7:1).</p>

<p>Jesus’&nbsp;comment, though, is almost universally misunderstood because of an inherent conflict in the condemnation of judging that goes unnoticed to almost everyone but Him.</p>

<p>Here’s the problem. Judgment always entails assessment. Is Chopra’s analysis an assessment? It seems to be. So is Jesus’. This raises a difficulty. Taken without qualification, the statement “You shouldn’t judge”&nbsp;is self-refuting, being itself an example of judgment.</p>

<p>Jesus qualified His comment, however, in a way that Chopra did not.</p>

<p>And why do you look at the speck that is in your brother’s eye, but do not notice the log that is in your own eye?...You hypocrite, first take the log out of your own eye, and then you will see clearly to take the speck out of your brother’s eye&nbsp;(Matthew 7:3, 5).</p>

<p>Jesus did not condemn all judgments, only hypocritical ones—arrogant condemnations characterized by disdain and condescension. Not all judgments are of this sort. In fact, even in this passage Jesus actually enjoins a different kind of judgment once the hypocrisy has been dealt with (“first take the log out of your own eye, then”).</p>

<p>There are two other kinds of judging in Scripture that are not condemned, but commanded. Some judgments are judicial, proper when done by proper authorities. Judges judge. They pass sentence. That’s their job. Church discipline is of this sort (Matthew 18:15-20, 1 Corinthians 5:12-13, Galatians 6:1).</p>

<p>Jesus did not come initially for this kind of judgment—He offered mercy, not sentencing (John 3:17, 12:47)—but He will certainly return with this kind. Appointed by the Father as final judge (John 5:22, 27; Acts 10:42, 17:31), He will spare no one.</p>

<p>Other judgments are assessments—appraisals of right or wrong, wise or foolish, accurate or inaccurate, rational or irrational. This kind of judgment is not forbidden; it is commanded. Jesus’&nbsp;instructions “Do not give what is holy to dogs”&nbsp;(Matthew 7:6) require this kind of judgment (What is “holy”&nbsp;Who are the “dogs”). Peter reminds us to ���be of sound judgment”&nbsp;since “the end of all things is at hand,”&nbsp;(1 Peter 4:7).</p>

<p>Some assessments are moral. Paul commands this kind of judgment: “Do not participate in the unfruitful deeds of darkness, but instead even expose them”&nbsp;(Ephesians 5:11). This is to be done not “according to appearance,”&nbsp;but by “righteous”&nbsp;standards (John 7:24) according to Jesus, who chastised the Jews for their failures here: “And why do you not judge even on your own initiative what is right?”&nbsp;(Luke 12:57).</p>

<p>A judicial action, a factual assessment, a hypocritical arrogance—all are judgments. Only the third is disqualified by Jesus. The first two are actually virtues in their proper settings, and therefore commanded by Scripture.</p>

<p>Let me be clear on why all of this matters. The Christian message at its core entails a message of judgment. The “good news”&nbsp;of the Gospel is only good against the bad news of judgment. As ambassadors for Christ, we cannot avoid this.</p>

<p>Shallow aphorisms like Chopra’s “Attractive people judge neither themselves nor others”&nbsp;are wildly popular because they pander to a rebellious heart by promoting an indiscriminate tolerance. But they strike a blow at the very heart of the Gospel.</p>

<p>I have said many times, “The Gospel is offensive enough, don’t add any more offense to it; but we dare not remove the offense that is inherent to the Gospel.”</p>

<p>The Christian message starts with a judgment and it will end with a judgment for those who do not heed it. Jesus was hated, in part, because he testified of the world’s evil deeds (John 7:7). But it is never in bad taste to tell people the truth when the truth really matters. That’s what faithful ambassadors do, even over coffee at Starbucks.</p>
</div>

            <br>
            <!-- Share links -->
            <a id="facebook-share" href="https://www.facebook.com/sharer.php?u=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.str.org%2Fw%2Fthe-scoop-on-judging" aria-label="Share this page on Facebook" title="Share on Facebook">
            	<i class="fab fa-facebook-f fa-lg" aria-hidden="true"></i>
            </a>
            <a id="twitter-share" href="https://twitter.com/intent/tweet?url=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.str.org%2Fw%2Fthe-scoop-on-judging" aria-label="Share this page on Twitter" title="Share on Twitter">
            	<i class="fab fa-twitter fa-lg" aria-hidden="true"></i>
            </a>
            <a id="email-share" href="mailto:?body=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.str.org%2Fw%2Fthe-scoop-on-judging" aria-label="Email this page to a friend" title="Email">
            	<i class="far fa-envelope fa-lg" aria-hidden="true"></i>
            </a>
            <a href="https://www.printfriendly.com" class="printfriendly" onclick="window.print();return false;" title="Printer Friendly and PDF"><i class="fa fa-print fa-lg" aria-hidden="true"></i>
            </a>
            
          


title: What Determines the Future?
topic: Theology
author: Greg Koukl
date: 03/22/2013
source: https://www.str.org/w/what-determines-the-future-
content:
            <div> 
		<p><em>If God is omniscient, He knows the future—so the future is fixed. Therefore we have no free will. True or False? Read further to find out.</em></p>

<p>I just came down from the mountains. I was in Idyllwild—what a beautiful little community up there. It’s like one mountain sticking up out of Southern California. It’s the mountain that backs up to Palm Springs and it just jumps into the sky off the desert floor. However, if you come in off the backside, you can meander up the hills through Hemet and come into this little village that is cradled in the crown of this mountain. Think of it like a tooth and the jagged edges of the tooth are the mountain and down in between, in the crevices, is the beautiful little town of Idyllwild. I like this town. There is a beautiful climbing area there. The first time I ever went rock climbing was many years ago at that location.</p>

<p>I went there last night after the show and met with some Christians on retreat this weekend. This morning I did some teaching and had Q &amp; A afterwards. A question came up that I frequently encounter and I think it needs to be addressed because it relates to some confusion.</p>

<p>A woman asked a question that had to do with the notion of God’s foreknowledge. She was referring to God knowing things beforehand, which would technically be His omniscience. The term foreknowledge relates to something different. But her question was asking about God’s omniscience, the fact that He knows every act in the future and everything about the future. Doesn’t this, in a sense, set the future in concrete and make the future determined? If the future is determined, how is it that we can have a genuine give-and-take relationship with God in which we are freely responding to Him in relationship?</p>

<p>I think the confusion that prompted the question is one that a lot of people have. It is based on the understanding that God is omniscient. In other words, He knows everything that is going to happen, which includes everything that is going to happen in the future. The best way to state or define the nature of God’s omniscience is that God knows and believes every true proposition. In other words, God already knows all true propositions about the future. So He knows every single thing that will happen in the future. But if He knows every single thing that will happen in the future, that means the future is already set. It is already determined. If it is set in concrete, then we don’t make any choices that could alter the future and we are fatally predestined to fulfill the future that God already knows.</p>

<p>To people who raise this question, it seems like God has predestined every act in the future and there is no freedom. The heart of the question here is, if there is no freedom, then there can be no relationship because it seems that the notion of relationship is predicated on two people freely interacting and giving and receiving love. If there is no freedom in the future, there is no relationship. Therefore we have no relationship with God. We are merely acting out those things that God already knows are going to take place. Do you see the problem?</p>

<p>I’m going to answer it this way: There is a difference between God knowing the future and God decreeing every future event by fiat such that it will then take place. I will clarify that distinction in just a moment. Let me say this: I believe that the future is set. I believe there will be a particular future. Particular things are going to happen, and I will give you an illustration on how I know that to be the case. But I don’t think that has anything whatsoever to do with free will. Or a better way of saying it, I don’t think that obviates free will. It doesn’t remove the necessity of free will. It is precisely because of human free will that the future is set the way it is. The real question isn’t <em>whether</em> the future is set or not, but <em>what it is that sets the events</em> of the future.</p>

<p>My argument is this: The future is set. It is going to be something in particular. How do I know that? Because God, being omniscient, knows and believes all true propositions. Some of those propositions are tensed. In other words, God knows not only the present facts, but the future facts as well. If God knows future facts, then that means the future facts are particular things. They aren’t things in flux. He knows what the future will be. So, one could say the future is fixed, then conclude from that fact that the future is determined and there is no free will. The second does not follow from the first. Or I should say, to be more accurate, the third doesn’t follow from the second. The first being the future is fixed, the second that it is determined, and the third that free will choices makes no difference.</p>

<p>The fact that the future is determined does not remove the significance of free will choices. I can prove it to you by simply asking you to reflect on the past. The past is a particular thing. There are not all kinds of pasts that are possible. The past is a past fact. However, the past facts have been established by free choices. Even though the details of the past are fixed without any possibility of them being moved, they are fixed because people chose particular things and those particular things expressed themselves in time and are now past history.</p>

<p>You see, the critical question about determinism with regards to free will is not whether the future is set, but what sets the future. If the future is set by God’s fiat sovereign decree—and when I say the future I am talking about every single detail of the future—then I think it is true that there is no genuine free will. If that is the case, it seems to me that you can’t avoid the charge that God is now responsible for evil.</p>

<p>But I don’t think that is what sets the future entirely. I think there are things that are certain in the future and we know those things are certain because God told us about them. We know the ultimate fate of the wicked. We know the ultimate fate of the righteous. We know particular details, at least some broad outlines, about the second coming of Christ. God will accomplish those things because He decides to do it. Therefore, some facts of the future are going to occur in time simply because God has decided it to be so.</p>

<p>However, I don’t think most of the facts about the future are going to be set in that way. I think most of the facts of the future are set, not because God decides, but because you and I decide sometime in the future that certain things will be such. If you and I are making decisions that set the future into a particular mold, then we have free will, don’t we? One could ask, “Well, could I change the future?”&nbsp;All it takes to change the future is for you to make different decisions in the future. Those different decisions are the decisions that set the future as it will be.</p>

<p>In other words, “Yeah, the future is set, but what sets it?”&nbsp;You set it. Your decisions determine what the future will be to a great degree. What that means is that your individual choices, by and large, make the difference in the future. I am speaking in general terms here about God’s knowing the future as a function of His omniscience. However, knowing the future does not remove the possibility of your freedom in some measure in the future, because what He knows in the future are your free choices. This is a very important point.</p>

<p>I think people sometimes confuse this issue with the salvation issue, and I think that is a different category. This issue is talking about all acts in the future. The salvation issue has to do with acts that lead to salvation in the future, which is a smaller category. What role does God play in that? Are those decisions of God determinative? At this particular point, I think they are. In other words, as I mentioned earlier, there are certain things that God fixes about the future, though He doesn’t fix everything. That means we operate with a certain significant freedom in the events of the future. But there are some things that God has a say-so in and He has His way. I think one of those is in whether you will be allowed to continue in rebellion or whether you will turn to Him for salvation. I realize this raises a lot of questions and I’m not really interested at this point in pursuing that line of thinking or questions. That is a hybrid issue of this broader question of God’s omniscience.</p>

<p>I am simply making the point that because God knows the future entirely that isn’t the factor that sets the future and therefore robs you of any semblance of personal freedom. No, your freedom is what sets the future to a great degree; therefore, your free will actions are meaningful and your willful interaction with God in relationship is meaningful as well. In the broadest sense, God controls the future and nothing happens that He doesn’t see, doesn’t allow, and doesn’t somehow work in with His larger plan. This is why we can fall back on the significant promise in the book of Romans that God will “cause all things to work together for good for those who love him and for those who are called according to his purpose.”&nbsp;God can use everything, even man’s free choices.</p>

<p>Once again, let me clarify here. My comments are not about the issue of salvation, per se. That is a separate issue. What is the role of man’s will and God’s actions? Separate issue.</p>

<p>What I’m saying with regards to the future in general is that the future is fixed only in this regard: We are going to make particular decisions in the future that are acts of our own personal will, and that is what secures the future such that God can know particular things or facts about the future. Therefore we can call God omniscient because He knows all things.</p>
</div>

            <br>
            <!-- Share links -->
            <a id="facebook-share" href="https://www.facebook.com/sharer.php?u=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.str.org%2Fw%2Fwhat-determines-the-future-" aria-label="Share this page on Facebook" title="Share on Facebook">
            	<i class="fab fa-facebook-f fa-lg" aria-hidden="true"></i>
            </a>
            <a id="twitter-share" href="https://twitter.com/intent/tweet?url=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.str.org%2Fw%2Fwhat-determines-the-future-" aria-label="Share this page on Twitter" title="Share on Twitter">
            	<i class="fab fa-twitter fa-lg" aria-hidden="true"></i>
            </a>
            <a id="email-share" href="mailto:?body=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.str.org%2Fw%2Fwhat-determines-the-future-" aria-label="Email this page to a friend" title="Email">
            	<i class="far fa-envelope fa-lg" aria-hidden="true"></i>
            </a>
            <a href="https://www.printfriendly.com" class="printfriendly" onclick="window.print();return false;" title="Printer Friendly and PDF"><i class="fa fa-print fa-lg" aria-hidden="true"></i>
            </a>
            
          


title: Ancient Myths vs. the Bible
topic: Other Worldviews
author: Amy K. Hall
date: 03/21/2013
source: https://www.str.org/w/ancient-myths-vs.-the-bible
content:
            <div> 
		<p>In Tom Gilson’s <a href="http://www.thinkingchristian.net/posts/2013/03/the-bible-among-the-myths/" target="_blank">review</a> of John N. Oswalt’s <em><a href="http://www.amazon.com/The-Bible-among-Myths-Revelation/dp/0310285097/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&amp;qid=1363816306&amp;sr=8-1&amp;keywords=the+bible+among+the+myths" target="_blank">The Bible Among the Myths: Unique Revelation or Just Ancient Literature?</a>, </em>he lists some of the key differences between the God of the Bible and the gods of the myths:</p>

<blockquote>
<p>I <a href="http://www.thinkingchristian.net/posts/2010/05/the-two-most-overlooked-apologetics-verses-in-the-bible/" target="_blank">have asked in the past</a> how the ancient Hebrews could have been so far ahead of their time. <em>The Bible Among the Myths</em> extends the question: how could they have been so utterly different from every other culture in history? For the contrasts are great. Oswalt identifies these common (if not universal) features of myth, contrasted with the Genesis view:</p>

<ul>
	<li>Cyclical time: there is a lack of definite beginning and no clear direction to reality (with no one to give it direction). The Bible speaks of history with a beginning, with progress, and with a destination.</li>
	<li>Nature symbolizing the divine. The Bible specifically rejects this.</li>
	<li>The significance of magic, specifically the use of ritual and/or manipulations of matter to cause predictable results in the realm of deity. This, too, is nowhere to be found in biblical religion.</li>
	<li>Obsession with fertility and potency, often expressed in religious (temple-based, even) prostitution of every base description. God is not sexual, nor is the religion he revealed.</li>
	<li>Polytheism: obviously not the case for biblical theism.</li>
	<li>The use of images in worship: expressly forbidden in the Ten Commandments.</li>
	<li>Eternity of chaotic matter: see above; not so in the Bible.</li>
	<li>Low view of the gods, who are more powerful than humans but no better ethically; the Bible depicts God as perfectly holy, just, loving, and righteous.</li>
</ul>

<p>There is considerably more….</p>
</blockquote>

<p>The God of the Bible is “serenely supreme,” unable to be manipulated, and perfectly moral. It’s not hard to see why cultures wouldn’t make up a God like this. A being who is before all and knows all, and who can’t be swayed from His righteousness and justice, is a frightening one. Frightening, that is, without grace.</p>

<p>I think the most amazingly unique thing about the true God is the way He solved the <a href="/w/god-solved-the-justice/grace-problem" target="_blank">justice/grace problem</a>—that is, without compromising His perfect justice, without lowering His standards, without denying one ounce of the evil of our sin, “because of His great love with which He loved us,” He executed His perfect justice <em>and</em> secured for us the benefits of His self-giving grace in one action on the cross.</p>

<p>On his own, no man ever came up with the brilliant, game-changing truth that God is both <a href="http://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?search=rom+3%3A21-26&amp;version=NASB" target="_blank">just and the justifier</a>.</p>
</div>

            <br>
            <!-- Share links -->
            <a id="facebook-share" href="https://www.facebook.com/sharer.php?u=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.str.org%2Fw%2Fancient-myths-vs.-the-bible" aria-label="Share this page on Facebook" title="Share on Facebook">
            	<i class="fab fa-facebook-f fa-lg" aria-hidden="true"></i>
            </a>
            <a id="twitter-share" href="https://twitter.com/intent/tweet?url=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.str.org%2Fw%2Fancient-myths-vs.-the-bible" aria-label="Share this page on Twitter" title="Share on Twitter">
            	<i class="fab fa-twitter fa-lg" aria-hidden="true"></i>
            </a>
            <a id="email-share" href="mailto:?body=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.str.org%2Fw%2Fancient-myths-vs.-the-bible" aria-label="Email this page to a friend" title="Email">
            	<i class="far fa-envelope fa-lg" aria-hidden="true"></i>
            </a>
            <a href="https://www.printfriendly.com" class="printfriendly" onclick="window.print();return false;" title="Printer Friendly and PDF"><i class="fa fa-print fa-lg" aria-hidden="true"></i>
            </a>
            
          


title: Materialism Can’t Explain Our World
topic: Philosophy
author: Amy K. Hall
date: 03/20/2013
source: https://www.str.org/w/materialism-can-t-explain-our-world
content:
            <div> 
		<p>In an article titled “<a href="https://www.washingtonexaminer.com/weekly-standard/the-heretic" target="_blank">The Heretic</a>,” Andrew Ferguson tells the story of how and why atheist Thomas Nagel’s book <em>Mind and Cosmos: Why the Materialist Neo-Darwinian Conception of Nature Is Almost Certainly False</em> upset materialists who believe that most of what we experience in life is an illusion. Colors, sounds, our sense of self, free will, morals—all illusions. We’re just “molecules in motion,” “nothing but a pack of neurons.”</p>

<p>While there is currently some dissent amongst materialist philosophers and scientists over whether or not the masses ought to be told this truth about reality (Daniel Dennett is concerned that popular knowledge of this would destroy civil order), one thing they can all agree on is that Nagel’s view is outside the bounds of acceptability.</p>

<p>What is Nagel’s heretical view? He says materialism fails to explain the world we actually find ourselves in. From Ferguson’s article:</p>

<blockquote>
<p>The neo-Darwinian materialist account offers a picture of the world that is unrecognizable to us—a world without color or sound, and also a world without free will or consciousness or good and evil or selves or, when it comes to that, selflessness. “It flies in the face of common sense,” [Nagel] says. Materialism is an explanation for a world we don’t live in….</p>

<p>If the materialist, neo-Darwinian orthodoxy contradicts common sense, then this is a mark against the orthodoxy, not against common sense. When a chain of reasoning leads us to deny the obvious, we should double-check the chain of reasoning before we give up on the obvious….</p>

<p>[Materialism] doesn’t plausibly explain the fundamental beliefs we rely on as we go about our everyday business: the truth of our subjective experience, our ability to reason, our capacity to recognize that some acts are virtuous and others aren’t. These failures, Nagel says, aren’t just temporary gaps in our knowledge, waiting to be filled in by new discoveries in science. On its own terms, materialism <em>cannot</em> account for brute facts. Brute facts are irreducible, and materialism, which operates by breaking things down to their physical components, stands useless before them. “There is little or no possibility,” he writes, “that these facts depend on nothing but the laws of physics.”</p>
</blockquote>

<p>While it’s true that using the scientific method leads to useful discoveries about physical causes and effects, it doesn't follow from this that only physical objects subject to this kind of study are real. Ferguson explains the folly of making this leap in reasoning:</p>

<blockquote>
<p>In a dazzling six-part tour de force rebutting Nagel’s critics, the philosopher Edward Feser provided a good analogy to describe the basic materialist error—the attempt to stretch materialism from a working assumption [methodological naturalism] into a comprehensive explanation of the world [ontological naturalism]. Feser suggests a parody of materialist reasoning: “1. Metal detectors have had far greater success in finding coins and other metallic objects in more places than any other method has. 2. Therefore we have good reason to think that metal detectors can reveal to us everything that can be revealed” about metallic objects.</p>

<p>But of course a metal detector only detects the metallic content of an object; it tells us nothing about its color, size, weight, or shape. In the same way, Feser writes, the methods of “mechanistic science are as successful as they are in predicting and controlling natural phenomena <em>precisely because</em> they focus on only those aspects of nature <em>susceptible</em> to prediction and control.”</p>

<p>Meanwhile, they ignore everything else. But this is a fatal weakness for a theory that aspires to be a comprehensive picture of the world. With magnetic resonance imaging, science can tell us which parts of my brain light up when, for example, I glimpse my daughter’s face in a crowd; the bouncing neurons can be observed and measured. Science cannot quantify or describe the feelings I experience when I see my daughter. Yet the feelings are no less real than the neurons.</p>

<p>The point sounds more sentimental than it is. My bouncing neurons and my feelings of love and obligation are unquestionably bound together. But the difference between the neurons and the feelings, the material and the mental, is a qualitative difference, a difference in kind. And of the two, reductive materialism can capture only one.</p>
</blockquote>

<p>Read the <a href="https://www.washingtonexaminer.com/weekly-standard/the-heretic" target="_blank">full article</a>. Alvin Plantinga’s <a href="/w/plantinga-reviews-mind-and-cosmos" target="_blank">review</a> of Nagel’s book is worth a read, as well.</p>
</div>

            <br>
            <!-- Share links -->
            <a id="facebook-share" href="https://www.facebook.com/sharer.php?u=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.str.org%2Fw%2Fmaterialism-can-t-explain-our-world" aria-label="Share this page on Facebook" title="Share on Facebook">
            	<i class="fab fa-facebook-f fa-lg" aria-hidden="true"></i>
            </a>
            <a id="twitter-share" href="https://twitter.com/intent/tweet?url=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.str.org%2Fw%2Fmaterialism-can-t-explain-our-world" aria-label="Share this page on Twitter" title="Share on Twitter">
            	<i class="fab fa-twitter fa-lg" aria-hidden="true"></i>
            </a>
            <a id="email-share" href="mailto:?body=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.str.org%2Fw%2Fmaterialism-can-t-explain-our-world" aria-label="Email this page to a friend" title="Email">
            	<i class="far fa-envelope fa-lg" aria-hidden="true"></i>
            </a>
            <a href="https://www.printfriendly.com" class="printfriendly" onclick="window.print();return false;" title="Printer Friendly and PDF"><i class="fa fa-print fa-lg" aria-hidden="true"></i>
            </a>
            
          


title: Homosexuality, Heredity & Biological Determinism
topic: Sexuality and Gender
author: Greg Koukl
date: 03/17/2013
source: https://www.str.org/w/homosexuality-heredity-biological-determinism
content:
            <div> 
		<p>I want to reflect on this new research that has been in all of the newspapers the last couple of days and has dominated the air waves on talk shows all over this fair city. I responded a little bit to the issue yesterday when Craig and I were together at Anchor Bible Bookstore. I want to be sensitive not to be redundant and not to pound this whole issue to death, but I want to make a couple of remarks on this issue, not so much to give you a concerted opinion on the research because part of my concern is that the whole issue of research is in a stage of flux. We don’t have all of the details. We have some suggestions coming from different sources.</p>

<p>Even the researchers themselves have encouraged us to be careful of drawing quick conclusions on this issue because in the past researchers have reported genetic links to such mental disorders as schizophrenia and manic depression, only to have that link disappear when more data was compiled or the original data was re-analyzed. They give this warning in the <em>LA Times</em> in the article “Studies Strongly Link Genetics and Homosexuality.”&nbsp;So I would extend that caution as well and listen more carefully to the cautionary statements, the guarded statements that relate to conclusions that come from the scientists involved, as opposed to the less guarded and more aggressive political conclusions that those who are involved in political groups are stating.</p>

<p>In the articles that I’ve read we see both the scientists’&nbsp;assertions and the political, sociological applications that some groups are making. Don’t pay attention to the political statements because the significant statements are those made by the scientists who are not politically involved. They are drawing some guarded conclusions but they are also warning us not to go too quickly, wait for corroborating evidence, wait for the research to be reproduced and wait for the scientific community at large to produce a body of evidence looking at this from a number of different angles that will allow them to draw the kinds of conclusions that some are drawing very rapidly based on little evidence because these conclusions play into sociological and political issues that important and dear to them.</p>

<p>One of the things that I want to underscore is the difficulty in drawing causal connections. My understanding is that in this particular situation they were looking at forty pairs of identical twins that were homosexual. Of the forty, thirty-three seem to have this marker at one particular part of the X chromosome that is contributed by the mother. Now that raises the obvious possibility and allows someone to legitimately make the inference that there is something in that X chromosome at this particular location that may relate to the development of homosexual desires. One of the reasons that we should move cautiously here is that we see this marker on thirty-three of forty pairs. One could well ask why in roughly 25% of the cases the marker is absent from those who are practicing homosexuals. It’s hard to establish a one-to- one correspondence such that incident A causes behavior B if in a significant number of cases we have behavior B and we don’t have incident A.</p>

<p>Here is another thing to keep in mind. All of the studies here are done on twins that are homosexuals. I would be interested to see how many non-homosexual people have this same flag on the X chromosome in the same place. I’m speculating but I’m using it to make the point. It’s difficult to immediately draw causal conclusions about this and additional evidence can actually controvert what seems to be very solid evidence in favor of a constitutional or a genetic link to homosexuality. In these twins, thirty-three of forty had this flag on the X chromosome and it seems to imply a relationship. But what happens if we test identical twins across the board? What if we take a hundred identical twins and out of that hundred who are heterosexual we find the same relationship, some 75% of these heterosexual twins have the exact same marker on their X chromosome. What that would indicate is that this is a natural variation among identical twins and it has nothing to do whatsoever with genetic development. From what I’ve read I’ve seen no reference to the same kinds of studies being done on non-homosexual identical twins so that we can see that this is a flag characteristic only of homosexual identical twins and not of heterosexual identical twins. I don’t know one way or another. I’m simply raising the question because here is an example of how a non-scientific person can raise a potential problem with this study that would need to be explored before anyone could trust the conclusions that has identified a causal genetic connection to homosexuality.</p>

<p>Do you understand what I’m saying here? This may mean absolutely nothing whatsoever, but I just identified a condition that could obtain that would render this latest study absolutely meaningless in its conclusion of the relationship of heredity to homosexuality. The court is still out on that issue.</p>

<p>My second point principally has to do with the moral point and I’ve made this point frequently. I don’t need to spend much time on it again. This moral point simply is that just because one has a natural inclination, an impulse, a tendency towards a certain behavior doesn’t mean that that behavior is morally benign.</p>

<p>One could argue that all moral restrictions are specific restrictions in place in our society to prevent people from doing what comes naturally. When a man gets angry at his wife and he has the impulse to strike her we hope and trust that his impulse is checked by a moral rule operating in society and embedded in his conscience that men ought not strike women. So here we have a moral rule that limits behavior that comes naturally. In fact, all moral rules seem to function on that level.</p>

<p>That’s why it becomes a non-issue that the homosexual impulse is a natural impulse. It still remains to be seen whether it is morally appropriate for us to pursue that behavior. Again, the moral discussion is a separate discussion. We need not pursue it at this time, but there are different ways to argue for a moral principle or a moral rule.</p>

<p>The point I’m making is simply this: why the big fuss about the constitutional connection? The fuss is going on because many people think that if we can demonstrate a connection between homosexuality and heredity then we can remove the moral restrictions from it that some have placed on it. My response is that one has nothing whatsoever to do with the other. It is a non-issue.</p>

<p>My third observation, there is something about this whole discussion that I’m a bit uncomfortable about and it’s something that is actually related to not just homosexuality but with human sexuality in general. If you’ve looked at a copy of this week’s <em>US News and World Report</em> (July 19, 1993) the cover story is on sexual chemistry. It says “Science Takes a New Look at the Ancient Game of Love.”&nbsp;It’s subtitled when you turn to the text itself on page 57 “The sophisticated sexual strategies of modern men and women are shaped by a powerful Stone Age psychology.”&nbsp;What this article seems to be exploring is the idea that our sexual desires and preferences are formed by the process of evolution, and then they identify some of those things that were characteristic of our existence maybe a couple of million years ago as primitive human beings and describe how those circumstances have developed our sexual desires.</p>

<p>The way this connects with the hereditary link to homosexuality is that both of these things are subtly arguing for a mechanistic kind of relationship of man (generic, men and women) to sexuality. It is a type of biological determinism suggesting we are programmed to behave in a certain way.</p>

<p>This way of thinking finds very fertile ground in a very materialistic way of thinking about the world. If there is nothing in the world but flesh and bones, molecules crashing in the universe, energy, forces like that, and there is no unseen, unquantifiable human forces like the soul, human will, morality, transcendent ideas, an after life, if physicalism is true and only physical things exist then one can argue based on biology that we are determined to behave in a certain fashion. Homosexuals are determined by their biology to behave homosexually. Heterosexuals are determined by chemistry that has evolved for millions of years to react in a certain way. If we are biologically programmed and there are no willful actions involved, and these are things that are suggested in both of these articles, then there is no moral content to our behavior because we are in fact determined.</p>

<p>So what’s really to some degree at the heart of this discussion is not simply a discussion and a question about sexuality but a question and discussion about what is man and what is the nature of the universe. Is man soulish? Does he have a will that he can exercise in spite of his sexual chemistry or is he determined to do what he does by his chemistry?</p>

<p>If man is determined then the moral question is decided because there can���t be any moral conversations unless there is a willing individual inside a body to choose one thing over another. If there is a willing individual then there can be a moral discussion. If man is determined then not only is the discussion about morality pertaining to sexuality meaningless, which I think is part of the point about these kinds of articles—to persuade us that our moralizing is nonsensical, but it strikes a death blow not just to sexual moralizing but all moral conversations entirely. So this kind of argument, if it’s true, actually proves too much. It proves that there is nothing called morality and there is no human being that can choose moral things.</p>

<p>Some of the other thoughts I have are a little bit more esoteric. Craig mentioned that he doesn’t like doing philosophical work just for the mental gymnastics, it’s really just to get down to the truth of God, and that may be true for Craig. But I kind of like the mental gymnastics sometimes, and you never know what you’re going to discover just by doing the work. Something might occur that is really helpful.</p>

<p>A couple of things occurred to me as I’ve been thinking about this topic. It has to do with a problem that results if it’s true that homosexuality is natural and therefore all the moral restrictions about it ought to be removed. Any moral statement must be founded on a moral law or moral principle, and is a kind of moral statement. When we examine this statement we find underneath it the moral principle that which is natural is what is right and that which is unnatural is wrong. That’s why there’s been so much discussion that is in favor of the notion that homosexuality is natural and therefore it’s right. If one tries to dissuade a person from being homosexual then he is asking them to do something unnatural and therefore that is wrong.</p>

<p>Well, if we accept that unspoken, underlying rule to this moral argument that it seems we’re being asked to accept, if we did accept this we’re faced with another problem and I don’t know if homosexuals are willing to accept it. The problem is that it is natural for homosexuals to be childless. In other words, if they pursued their natural inclination to homosexuality obviously they’d produce no children. That would be the natural state of affairs and therefore the right state of affairs. To go against nature would be to do something unnatural and therefore wrong. So one would have to argue then that homosexuals who sought to have children would be doing something that is against their nature and therefore it would be wrong. If we were to argue based on nature the appropriateness of homosexuality we���d also have to argue in the next breath that it would be unnatural, immoral, inappropriate, wrong for homosexuals to raise children. Artificial insemination of lesbians, adoptions by homosexual males, all of that would be wrong, against nature. Nature has dictated childlessness for them. It seems to me that the two ideas go together.</p>

<p>At least that’s the way I see it.</p>
</div>

            <br>
            <!-- Share links -->
            <a id="facebook-share" href="https://www.facebook.com/sharer.php?u=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.str.org%2Fw%2Fhomosexuality-heredity-biological-determinism" aria-label="Share this page on Facebook" title="Share on Facebook">
            	<i class="fab fa-facebook-f fa-lg" aria-hidden="true"></i>
            </a>
            <a id="twitter-share" href="https://twitter.com/intent/tweet?url=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.str.org%2Fw%2Fhomosexuality-heredity-biological-determinism" aria-label="Share this page on Twitter" title="Share on Twitter">
            	<i class="fab fa-twitter fa-lg" aria-hidden="true"></i>
            </a>
            <a id="email-share" href="mailto:?body=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.str.org%2Fw%2Fhomosexuality-heredity-biological-determinism" aria-label="Email this page to a friend" title="Email">
            	<i class="far fa-envelope fa-lg" aria-hidden="true"></i>
            </a>
            <a href="https://www.printfriendly.com" class="printfriendly" onclick="window.print();return false;" title="Printer Friendly and PDF"><i class="fa fa-print fa-lg" aria-hidden="true"></i>
            </a>
            
          


title: Unbelievable Unbelief
topic: Christian Living
author: Greg Koukl
date: 03/21/2013
source: https://www.str.org/w/unbelievable-unbelief-1
content:
            <div> 
		<p>The skeptic says, “If Jesus would only show Himself to me—if God would just work one dramatic miracle—then I’d believe in Him.”&nbsp;This kind of person overestimates himself. Even miracles can be denied or dismissed.</p>

<p>During Jesus’&nbsp;passion week in Jerusalem, he was called to nearby Bethany because his friend Lazarus was dying. By the time Jesus arrived, Lazarus was gone. In a dramatic scene Jesus called him forth from the tomb alive, still wrapped in burial cloths.</p>

<p>This was a spectacular miracle performed in public for all to see. What was the response of the Jewish leaders? They plotted Jesus’&nbsp;death. “This man is performing many signs. If we let Him go on like this, all men will believe in Him, and the Romans will come and take away both our place and our nation”&nbsp;(John 11:47-48).</p>

<p>But Jesus wasn’t the only one they wanted to eliminate. They also had to get rid of another piece of evidence: “But the chief priests took council that they might put to death Lazarus also; because on account of him many of the Jews were going away, and were believing in Jesus”&nbsp;(John 12:10-11).</p>

<p>Incredible! Instead of falling to their knees in response to this obvious display of Messianic power, they conspire to kill the very man whose public resurrection was proof positive of their error.</p>

<p>This is unbelievable unbelief.</p>

<p>You think if God just did a miracle it would change your rebellious heart? Don’t count on it. Jesus said, “If they do not listen to Moses and the Prophets, neither will they be persuaded if someone rises from the dead”&nbsp;(Luke 16:31).</p>

<p>As one wag put it, a skeptic with such an experience would not seek God, he’d seek a psychiatrist.</p>

<p>Oh so true. The sun melts butter...but it hardens clay.</p>
</div>

            <br>
            <!-- Share links -->
            <a id="facebook-share" href="https://www.facebook.com/sharer.php?u=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.str.org%2Fw%2Funbelievable-unbelief-1" aria-label="Share this page on Facebook" title="Share on Facebook">
            	<i class="fab fa-facebook-f fa-lg" aria-hidden="true"></i>
            </a>
            <a id="twitter-share" href="https://twitter.com/intent/tweet?url=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.str.org%2Fw%2Funbelievable-unbelief-1" aria-label="Share this page on Twitter" title="Share on Twitter">
            	<i class="fab fa-twitter fa-lg" aria-hidden="true"></i>
            </a>
            <a id="email-share" href="mailto:?body=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.str.org%2Fw%2Funbelievable-unbelief-1" aria-label="Email this page to a friend" title="Email">
            	<i class="far fa-envelope fa-lg" aria-hidden="true"></i>
            </a>
            <a href="https://www.printfriendly.com" class="printfriendly" onclick="window.print();return false;" title="Printer Friendly and PDF"><i class="fa fa-print fa-lg" aria-hidden="true"></i>
            </a>
            
          


title: The Resurrection
topic: Theology
author: Greg Koukl
date: 03/22/2013
source: https://www.str.org/w/the-resurrection
content:
            <div> 
		<div class="Section1">
<p><em>Jesus is dead, embalmed and buried in a guarded, sealed tomb. The disciples, fearful for their lives, are in hiding. Having given up hope, they weep, lament, lick their wounds and ponder their future. Resigned to their fate, they prepare to return to their old way of life.</em></p>

<p>I. The Burial of Jesus (Matt 27:57-66; Mk 15:42-47; Lk 23:50-56; Jn19:38-42)</p>

<p>A. The grave is chosen.</p>

<p>1. Joseph of Arimathea</p>

<p>a. “A disciple of Jesus”&nbsp;(Matt 27:57), “a secret one, for fear of the Jews”&nbsp;(Jn 19:38).</p>

<p>b. “A prominent member of the Council”&nbsp;(Mk 15:43).</p>

<p>c. “Waiting for the kingdom of God”&nbsp;(Mk 15:43).</p>

<p>d. “A good and righteous man (he had not consented to their plan and action)”&nbsp;(Lk 23:50-51).</p>

<p>e. “He gathered up courage and went in before Pilate”&nbsp;(Mk 15:43).</p>

<p>f. “And Nicodemus came also”&nbsp;(Jn 19:39).</p>

<p>2. “His grave was assigned with wicked men, yet he was with a rich man in his death”&nbsp;(Is 53:9).</p>

<p>B. Jesus is embalmed.</p>

<p>1. Nicodemus and Joseph of Arimathea (Jn 19:38-40)</p>

<p>2. “A mixture of myrrh and aloes, about a hundred pounds weight”&nbsp;(v39).</p>

<p>3. “They took the body of Jesus, and bound it in linen wrappings with the spices, as is the burial custom of the Jews”&nbsp;(v40).</p>

<p>C. The tomb is guarded on Saturday (Matt 27:62-66).</p>

<p>1. Roman guard, numbering from 10-30 soldiers (McDowell, p. 219).</p>

<p>2. Roman seal (v66), the personal stamp of Pilate himself, the symbol of Roman power and authority. It was a high crime even to deface it (McDowell, p. 217).</p>

<p>II. The Resurrection (Matt 28:1-10; Mk 16:1-8; Lk 24:1-12; Jn 20:1-18). Did it really happen? Was it a vision?</p>

<p>A. The Body was missing.</p>

<p>1. This fact was not contested by Jesus’&nbsp;enemies.</p>

<p>2. No body was ever produced.</p>

<p>3. The disciples couldn’t each have had a vision of an empty tomb.</p>

<p>B. There’s no evidence supporting a natural explanation.</p>

<p>1. The Swoon Theory</p>

<p>a. Jesus was dead, attested to by a Roman centurion (Mk 15:44-45) and other witnesses.</p>

<p>b. Cool tombs don’t revive critically wounded people.</p>

<p>c. Jesus was already embalmed.</p>

<p>2. The disciples stole the body.</p>

<p>a. The plot of the Jewish leadership: “You are to say, ’His disciples came by night and stole Him away while we were asleep’...And this story was widely spread among the Jews, and is to this day”&nbsp;(Matt 28:13, 15).</p>

<p>b. The disciples had no motive.</p>

<p>1) They had scattered because of fear of capture, Peter even denying Christ. Why would they take on a Roman guard?</p>

<p>2) They were all convinced Jesus was gone.</p>

<p>c. The disciples couldn’t have overcome or outwitted the Roman guard.</p>

<p>C. Significant evidence supports a resurrection.</p>

<p>1. The evidence of the grave clothes.</p>

<p>a. “He [Peter] beheld the linen wrappings lying there”&nbsp;(v6). Lit. blepo, to perceive and understand.</p>

<p>1) Possibly, a “cocoon”&nbsp;out of which the body had vanished.</p>

<p>2) It convinces them of the resurrection: “He saw and believed”&nbsp;(Jn 20:8).</p>

<p>b. If the body was stolen the wrappings wouldn’t be there or neatly in a pile.</p>

<p>c. Notice the detail John gives. He even notes who got to the tomb first.</p>

<p>2. The evidence of the transformed disciples.</p>

<p>a. Originally they disbelieved.</p>

<p>b. They were skeptical and had to be convinced.</p>

<p>c. “And these words appeared to them as nonsense, and they would not believe them”&nbsp;(Lk 24:11).</p>

<p>3. The evidence of the physical appearances of Jesus (about 10 references).</p>

<p>III. Post-Resurrection Appearances (Jesus’&nbsp;appearance is somehow changed).</p>

<p>A. Mary Magdalene (Jn 20:11-18)</p>

<p>1. Seven demons cast out.</p>

<p>2. Deep emotional attachment</p>

<p>3. Extremely devoted and faithful</p>

<p>4. This is not invented, but a mark of genuineness.</p>

<p>a. Woman’s testimony was not trusted.</p>

<p>b. You can’t cling to a vision.</p>

<p>B. Disciples (Jn 20:19-25)</p>

<p>C. Road to Emmaus (Lk 24:13-35)</p>

<p>D. Thomas (Jn 20:26-29)</p>

<p>Note: those who don’t believe, Jesus invites to touch Him.</p>

<p>E. James: “...then He appeared to James...”&nbsp;(1 Cor 15:7).</p>

<p>F. Sea of Galilee (Jn 21:1-11)</p>

<p>1. Greek present tense, possibly a return to fishing as a way of life.</p>

<p>2. Once again, John remembers the details (153 fish).</p>

<p>3. Peter is restored.</p>

<p>G. “After that He appeared to more than 500 brethren at one time, most of whom remain until now, but some have fallen asleep”&nbsp;(1 Cor 15:6).</p>

<p>1. Is this the product of a midnight dream?</p>

<p>2. Bill Counts: “Do we think that these people just imagined all of this? Can we honestly look at all of these accounts in the Gospels and say that these things—where they’re talking with Him, where He’s feeding them, where they’re feeding Him, where they touch Him, where they cling to Him, where they listen to sermons that He preaches, where it happens not to one person but to many people over a period of 40 days—can we honestly imagine that this is simply the product of some mystical imagination? There is no way that such a thing could be. It is very obvious that the writers of the Gospels believed that [Jesus] rose from the dead. They believed nothing else and all of the way through the NT there is no other message that is presented.”</p>

<p>IV. The Great Commission</p>

<p>A. The command:</p>

<p>1. “And Jesus came up and spoke to them, saying, ’All authority has been given to Me in heaven and on earth. Go therefore and make disciples of all the nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit, teaching them to observe all that I commanded you; and lo, I am with you always, even to the end of the age’”&nbsp;(Matt 28:18-20).</p>

<p>2. “It is not for you to know times or epochs which the Father has fixed by His own authority, but you shall receive power when the Holy Spirit shall come upon you; and you shall be My witnesses both in Jerusalem, and in all Judea and Samaria, and even to the remotest part of the earth”&nbsp;(Acts 1:7-8).</p>

<p>B. The ability: Jesus</p>

<p>1. “All authority has been given to Me in heaven and on earth. Go therefore...”&nbsp;(in Jesus’&nbsp;authority).</p>

<p>2. “You shall receive power when the Holy Spirit shall come upon you...”&nbsp;(with the power of the Holy Spirit).</p>

<p>3. “I am with you always, even to the end of the age”&nbsp;(with a conscious awareness of His presence).</p>

<p>C. The goal: “make disciples”</p>

<p>1. “Baptizing them in the name of the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit...”&nbsp;(salvation).</p>

<p>2. “Teaching them to observe all that I commanded you...”&nbsp;(growth).</p>

<p>D. The extent: “all the nations”</p>

<p>1. Jerusalem (their own kind)</p>

<p>2. Judea and Samaria (culturally near)</p>

<p>3. The remotest part of the earth (culturally distant)</p>

<p>E. How long: until Jesus returns.</p>

<p>1. “Men of Galilee, why do you stand looking into the sky? This Jesus, who has been taken up from you into heaven, will come in just the same way as you have watched Him go into heaven”&nbsp;(Acts 1:11) (get to work!).</p>

<p>2. “...to the end of the age”&nbsp;(don’t stop until Jesus returns).</p>
</div>
</div>

            <br>
            <!-- Share links -->
            <a id="facebook-share" href="https://www.facebook.com/sharer.php?u=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.str.org%2Fw%2Fthe-resurrection" aria-label="Share this page on Facebook" title="Share on Facebook">
            	<i class="fab fa-facebook-f fa-lg" aria-hidden="true"></i>
            </a>
            <a id="twitter-share" href="https://twitter.com/intent/tweet?url=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.str.org%2Fw%2Fthe-resurrection" aria-label="Share this page on Twitter" title="Share on Twitter">
            	<i class="fab fa-twitter fa-lg" aria-hidden="true"></i>
            </a>
            <a id="email-share" href="mailto:?body=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.str.org%2Fw%2Fthe-resurrection" aria-label="Email this page to a friend" title="Email">
            	<i class="far fa-envelope fa-lg" aria-hidden="true"></i>
            </a>
            <a href="https://www.printfriendly.com" class="printfriendly" onclick="window.print();return false;" title="Printer Friendly and PDF"><i class="fa fa-print fa-lg" aria-hidden="true"></i>
            </a>
            
          


title: Science as God
topic: Science
author: Alan Shlemon
date: 03/20/2013
source: https://www.str.org/w/science-as-god
content:
            <div> 
		<p><em>Alan’s monthly letter for November 2012</em></p>

<p>Dear Friend,</p>

<p>Secular culture has given God the boot. Science has emerged as the new religion and scientists are its priests. When truth is sought, science is consulted. When knowledge is needed, science delivers. When reason is employed, science is its master. People think scientific inquiry is the paradigm of truth and reason, but its importance has been exaggerated and misunderstood.</p>

<p>The problem stems from a mistaken assumption: Knowledge can only be discovered if it’s scientifically testable. Everything else, especially religion, is mere belief and opinion.</p>

<p>But when you think about it, science can’t answer many basic and important questions about life. Do I feel joyful or sad? What were my parents’&nbsp;values? What’s the difference between a virtue and a vice? Am I a valuable person or is my value merely a placebo? Was the Third Reich immoral or just? How should I raise my children? What is love? How do I resolve a moral dilemma? Science is impotent to answer any of these questions.</p>

<p>I don’t say this because I’m anti-science. On the contrary. I understand its role and limits. Science is a tool that helps us discover knowledge. But it’s only capable of telling us about some things in the <em>physical</em> world. Other things need a different tool.</p>

<p>Some of these other methods of knowing have advantages. They can discover knowledge in areas that are, in principle, inaccessible by science. And in some cases, they are more accurate than scientific inquiry.</p>

<p>Reason is one way we come to know things. It can give us knowledge about conceptual truths that aren’t learned by experience (also called <em>a priori</em>). I know that 1+1=2. I also know that all bachelors are unmarried. We can know these things are true just by logical reflection.</p>

<p>We can also gain knowledge by testimony. When I ask my wife what time it is, she responds with the answer. A news report can tell us when a sports event will begin. An eyewitness to a murder can give us knowledge about the identity of the killer. Though testimony depends on the reliability of the source, it still gives us facts.</p>

<p>Introspection can give us knowledge about our “internal”&nbsp;states. If we want to know whether we are sad, experiencing emotional pain, or daydreaming about a vacation, all we have to do is introspect. This gives us direct awareness of our soul. It is immediate and accurate knowledge about ourselves that no scientist or experiment can discover.</p>

<p>Notice that knowledge gained through reason, testimony, and introspection can be more immediate and accurate than science. Scientific experiments can take weeks or years to complete and might lead to erroneous results. But knowledge by testimony or reason can be acquired almost instantaneously. And knowledge through reason and introspection can be more accurate. It’s hard to imagine being mistaken about experiencing joy when your child is born.</p>

<p>That doesn’t mean that science is bad. It’s not even anti-God. In fact, when science is untainted by politics or ideology, it discovers knowledge that is consistent with God’s truth. Scientific experiments in the 18th century, for example, discovered that water was a molecule made up of one oxygen and two hydrogen atoms. This knowledge is consistent with God’s knowledge.</p>

<p>Christians can embrace science. It covers a large domain of knowledge. But it’s not the only one. Unfortunately, it’s common in our culture for people to put science on a pedestal - to think it’s the only reliable source of knowledge when it’s not.</p>

<p>When people put science in its proper place, knowledge about religion is possible. Christianity, in particular, is a knowledge tradition that’s grounded in historical facts. Many facets of our faith are discoverable using the knowledge tools we’ve talked about. For example, reason helps us assemble logical arguments for God’s existence or evidence for the resurrection. Science can tell us about an expanding universe or help us understand the information code in DNA (both of which have theistic implications). Testimony tells us about the 1st century, which can help us investigate historical facts about Jesus and the early church.</p>

<p>That means we can <em>know</em> Christianity is true. It’s not mere belief and opinion. It’s knowledge. And that knowledge is what gives me the confidence to “contend earnestly for the faith which was once for all handed down to the saints”&nbsp;(Jude 1:3). It’s also the knowledge that you stand behind me that makes it possible for me to fulfill the command in that verse. I can’t thank you enough.</p>

<p>With great appreciation,</p>

<p>Alan Shlemon</p>
</div>

            <br>
            <!-- Share links -->
            <a id="facebook-share" href="https://www.facebook.com/sharer.php?u=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.str.org%2Fw%2Fscience-as-god" aria-label="Share this page on Facebook" title="Share on Facebook">
            	<i class="fab fa-facebook-f fa-lg" aria-hidden="true"></i>
            </a>
            <a id="twitter-share" href="https://twitter.com/intent/tweet?url=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.str.org%2Fw%2Fscience-as-god" aria-label="Share this page on Twitter" title="Share on Twitter">
            	<i class="fab fa-twitter fa-lg" aria-hidden="true"></i>
            </a>
            <a id="email-share" href="mailto:?body=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.str.org%2Fw%2Fscience-as-god" aria-label="Email this page to a friend" title="Email">
            	<i class="far fa-envelope fa-lg" aria-hidden="true"></i>
            </a>
            <a href="https://www.printfriendly.com" class="printfriendly" onclick="window.print();return false;" title="Printer Friendly and PDF"><i class="fa fa-print fa-lg" aria-hidden="true"></i>
            </a>
            
          


title: Winking, Wiggling, and the Power of Words
topic: Theology
author: Greg Koukl
date: 03/22/2013
source: https://www.str.org/w/winking-wiggling-and-the-power-of-words
content:
            <div> 
		<p><em>What do “Bewitched,” “I Dream of Jeannie”&nbsp;and Genesis 1:1 have in common? Quite a lot!</em></p>

<p>I got this crazy picture in my mind the other day. I don’t even know what causes these thoughts to come to mind when they do. I imagine there are times the Lord does that. But other times, who knows what causes those things to come to mind? This picture in my mind’s eye was off Jeannie, from “I Dream of Jeannie”&nbsp;fame. Remember her? Remember how she used to blink her eyes and make her magic happen? About that same time I was thinking about Samantha on “Bewitched.”&nbsp;What would she do? She’d wiggle her nose. (I wonder how many of you just did that.) She would wiggle her nose and then she’d make her little magic happen.</p>

<p>I got to reflecting about whether in their minds—of course they are fictitious characters—but if in their minds they were really doing something magical with their noses or eyes when they did that. In other words, if Samantha had not wiggled her nose do you think she could have still accomplished her magical feats? I imagine so. Or if Jeannie didn’t blink her eyes do you think she could still have accomplished what she meant to accomplish? After all, she was a genie, wasn’t she? She could do that kind of thing.</p>

<p>In other words, it doesn’t seem like there was anything magical in their actions. If there were then all of you out there who just wiggled your nose would have had something magical happen. But nothing did, so it’s not in the wiggling of the nose.</p>

<p>Why did Jeannie blink her eyes and Samantha wiggle her nose? Well, I’ll tell you. It was a sign to the viewers who were watching that Samantha and Jeannie were causing something to happen right then at that moment. You know that they’re determining to do something and then she blinks her eyes, wiggles her nose and then it happens. In other words, it’s an external manifestation which connects their act of will with what occurs. You can’t see their act of will can you? You can’t see something happening inside them willing something to happen. But you can see the eye blinking and the nose wiggling, so then you see the result of this thing appearing or disappearing—their magic occurring. We know that the person that blinked or wiggled caused this other event to happen. It’s a sign. In fact, if she didn’t blink her eyes or wiggle her nose how would we know that they had acted in their wills, which is the thing that we can’t see at all. Or when something appeared how would we be able to credit that to their actions? Maybe it just popped into existence. The wiggling of the nose signified that she was the source of the action that resulted in this thing happening.</p>

<p>One could ask, “Why didn’t they just speak something?”&nbsp;They could have. They could have said something like abracadabra or some magic word. But it fulfills the same function. The speaking in this case is no different than the wiggling of the nose or the blinking of the eyes. The speaking would merely signify an act of the will and no one else blinking their eyes or wiggling their nose or speaking by itself could make magic happen. In other words here, the power was not in the winking, blinking or speaking. The power was in the person who did those things. Those things merely signified and act of the will.</p>

<p>Now what does that have to do with anything? Well, there is actually a spiritual application in this—as is often the case, though not always on this show. All of this relates to the concept of the power of words—identified in the church as the positive confession movement, and identified in the world at large as positive thinking. Now I’m not against those things <em>per se</em>, and I’ll clarify what I mean by that because in fact it does depend what you mean by that—positive confession or positive thinking—whether that thing is bad, or damaging or not, or invalid. I think there is value if we understand them correctly.</p>

<p>Here is what we must understand. The first thing is that words do not have power. There is no power in words. There is no more power in the words themselves than in the wiggling of the nose or the blinking of the eyes as in Samantha and Jeannie. There is no power there. There is nothing about the sound of a word <em>per se</em> that carries with it any force. Even when you read in the Scriptures, “Life and death are in the power of the tongue,”&nbsp;it doesn’t mean that the sound of the word creates the power. The tongue is an agent of the person. It’s not talking about the word spoken in itself, it’s talking about the tongue representing the agent—the person—that’s involved. Words that injure don’t do harm because of any quality of the word itself. Some in both the positive confession movement and in the positive thinking movement in some form or another hold to that belief. That words themselves have power.</p>

<p>Simply put, I’m making an observation here, not a judgment. This is a occultic view of words. The word “occult”&nbsp;means hidden, and when we hold that words have hidden powers in themselves we are saying they have occultic powers. This is contrary to the Christian understanding because, according to the Bible and Christianity, things like words don’t have powers; only acting, willing agents have powers in that sense. It’s not the word or the sound of the word which carries the hidden force. When you believe that, well, that’s occultic.</p>

<p>This is why, by the way, when the word carries the force, it doesn’t matter who uses it. Anyone can use the word has the force because it is the word that has the power. Someone says, “It’s the name of Jesus that has power.” What they mean is that the word or phrase “The name of Jesus”&nbsp;has power. If that were the case then anyone could recite that sound, just like anyone could stand in front of the cavern and say “Open sesame”&nbsp;and the cavern would open. Or anyone could say abracadabra, and since the magic is in the word then the event would happen because of the force of the word itself. There is no magic in the phrase “In the name of Jesus.” There is only power in the person of Jesus.</p>

<p>Words are very important. They do a couple of things. This is why I am willing to give some ground to the idea of positive confession or positive thinking, whether you are thinking of this issue in secular or religious terms. I will give ground as long as you understand, as I mentioned, that first of all, the words themselves have no power. Power is in persons. Second, what words do is signify acts of the will.</p>

<p>I was very bothered when a fairly well known person suggested that even God had to speak in order to create. It really sounded like he was saying that the words had the power that even God was subject to, and God couldn’t create&nbsp;unless He spoke.</p>

<p>Now listen, I want to ask you a very important question. Does God have a mouth? No. Neither does He have lungs or vocal chords. Therefore He cannot speak in that sense. When the Scriptures say that God spoke and the worlds were created, I don’t think that He said a magic word. I suspect that the notion of God speaking in that sense is the same as Jeannie and her blinking and Samantha and her wiggling. In other words, it was an event that signifies for us an act of will. God didn’t have to speak to create. He merely willed it to happen and it was so. Now, how do we know of that act of will? We know of it because it is referred to in terms of speaking, but it was the personal act of will that made the difference. When God said, “Let there be light,”&nbsp;He willed that. “Be still.”&nbsp;“Come out of him.”&nbsp;It isn’t the words themselves, it is the willing of the person with the power that makes the difference, not the words. As I mentioned, even the phrase “In the name of Jesus”&nbsp;is not magical. What “In the name of Jesus”&nbsp;means is that someone is acting according to the power and the authority of Jesus Christ. Words signify acts of the will.</p>

<p>Words can also be used to focus the will, and this is where we move more into the area of positive thinking that I think can be very helpful. If a person is going to think positively and repeat these words of success because in speaking the words themselves they will magically bring about the desired end, then they are wrong. Words don’t have that power. But if they are setting a goal and repeating their goals to themselves on a regular basis—getting up every morning and saying this is my goal—I think that is good if we understand that the words are being used to focus the will which makes the difference. In fact, if you make goals in January for the rest of the year and you never look at them for the next twelve months, chances are pretty good that you aren’t going to accomplish your goals because you don’t remember them and your will is not focused on them to accomplish. However, if you write out your goals, get up every single day, repeat them out loud and then you imagine in your mind the steps you have to go through to accomplish that goal, the word is not functioning there as magic. What you are doing is disciplining your mind and using words to focus your will so that your will then can accomplish these goals.</p>

<p>There’s no magic in words, just power in the will that acts. Words can signify acts of the will. Words can also be used to focus the will. And finally, words can be used to convey personal attitudes.</p>

<p>I think this is the sense in which the biblical authors often speak of the power of the tongue. “Death and life in the power of the tongue.” Why? Because of magical words that fall off your lips? No. But because your words convey your attitudes, and when people learn through your words that your attitudes are either good or ill that could be destructive or supportive depending on the case. So if your words are “I hate you”&nbsp;to your wife or your child, you destroy those people. Not because of the words, but because of the attitude in your heart that is communicated with the action of using the words. If you say, “Well done good and faithful servant. I love you.”&nbsp;When you put your arms around your child and say good things to them, the power is not in the words <em>per se</em> but in that the words convey to that person your feeling.</p>

<p>Words have power, after a fashion. We speak words to identify acts of the will. We use words to help focus our will. And we use words in either a constructive or a destructive way to convey personal attitudes. But there is no power in the words themselves. For those who are involved in the positive confession movement, if you think the power is in the words and that you must get that word spoken into daylight, as it were, then you are practicing the occult. You are not practicing Christianity.</p>

<p>If you are being helped by positive thinking material I think that can be helpful if you understand that the only thing that changes things for you personally apart from the direct help of God is your will. No magic words. You use words to help focus your will to accomplish important things. Then you are training your mind in a good way. But if you are using words because you think there is something magic about getting the word out into the air like “success”&nbsp;or “$1 million a year”&nbsp;or “Cadillac, Mercedes”&nbsp;or something like that then you are practicing the occult, and that’s not going to get you anywhere.</p>
</div>

            <br>
            <!-- Share links -->
            <a id="facebook-share" href="https://www.facebook.com/sharer.php?u=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.str.org%2Fw%2Fwinking-wiggling-and-the-power-of-words" aria-label="Share this page on Facebook" title="Share on Facebook">
            	<i class="fab fa-facebook-f fa-lg" aria-hidden="true"></i>
            </a>
            <a id="twitter-share" href="https://twitter.com/intent/tweet?url=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.str.org%2Fw%2Fwinking-wiggling-and-the-power-of-words" aria-label="Share this page on Twitter" title="Share on Twitter">
            	<i class="fab fa-twitter fa-lg" aria-hidden="true"></i>
            </a>
            <a id="email-share" href="mailto:?body=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.str.org%2Fw%2Fwinking-wiggling-and-the-power-of-words" aria-label="Email this page to a friend" title="Email">
            	<i class="far fa-envelope fa-lg" aria-hidden="true"></i>
            </a>
            <a href="https://www.printfriendly.com" class="printfriendly" onclick="window.print();return false;" title="Printer Friendly and PDF"><i class="fa fa-print fa-lg" aria-hidden="true"></i>
            </a>
            
          


title: Homosexuality: Giving Your Point of View
topic: Sexuality and Gender
author: Greg Koukl
date: 03/17/2013
source: https://www.str.org/w/homosexuality-giving-your-point-of-view
content:
            <div> 
		<p>I want to make a distinction between two ways of addressing the issue of homosexuality. I think Christians have made some mistakes here focusing on an internal approach—quoting the Bible—rather than using an external approach—finding some means other than Scripture to persuade. Quoting Bible verses is great when dealing with Christians who are inclined to obey God. It’s different, though, when dealing in the secular public square.</p>

<p>We have a very specific goal when addressing the issue of homosexuality in the public square—specifically the area of policy-making: What do we teach in schools about homosexuality? What do our laws reflect about it? What about our social institutions like marriage?</p>

<p>The Christian goal in this situation is not to win people to Christ. This is not an evangelistic endeavor. The goal here as the church is to be a salt and light, to minimize the amount of unrighteousness in our culture and increase its moral health and stability because that is an intrinsic good in itself. Our goal here is to discourage an unrighteous behavior, and sometimes it’s easier to discourage harmful, unrighteous, culturally-damaging behavior by appealing to something other than Scripture.</p>

<p>When people have called this show and asked questions like this, my point of view has almost always been that if we’re going to make an appeal in the public square regarding public policy, our appeal should not be from the Bible, but on the basis of the common good: What is good for our culture? What is good for our community? What kind of community do we want to be?</p>

<p>Last year, for example, a gentleman called in and said that off the cliffs in Palos Verdes here in California are some secluded beaches on public land, accessible to anyone who wants to get down to them. He said there was a lot of male nudity on those beaches and, as a result, a lot of overt homosexual behavior. This was illegal, but the law had not been enforced, essentially because of the political ramifications of taking on homosexuality.</p>

<p>The caller wanted to know how to deal with it. I encouraged him to go back to the city council, but not to go with Bible in hand, self-righteously calling down fire from heaven. Instead, simply ask the council this question: What kind of community do you want to have in Palos Verdes? Do you want to be a community known for its homosexual beaches, where people engage in public sex on the beach in plain view of everyone—including children?</p>

<p>Notice I am not posing a moral question about homosexuality or about what consenting adults have the liberty to do in the privacy of their own homes. I’m simply raising the question of the public good.</p>

<p>When this caller went to the city council with that kind of appeal, he prevailed. The city began enforcing the law. As a consequence, a moral eyesore was removed from the community without inappropriately—in the minds of others at least—restricting someone’s personal liberties and without making any moral judgment on the behavior itself.</p>

<p>I’m not reluctant to make a moral judgment. My question is: What am I trying to accomplish? If I’m trying to make a moral statement, then I’m going to have to make a moral judgment and give my justification. But if my goal is simply to minimize a particular behavior in the community, I’m going to find the best means to do that. I’ve found that the best way to do this is to focus on the public good.</p>

<p>In this regard, the public health argument is a very powerful argument. You might offer the question, “Isn’t it appropriate for us to guard our community from health dangers?”&nbsp;If that’s a good goal, then two points could be made here.</p>

<p>First, homosexuality is an activity that is inherently dangerous and <em>cannot be made healthy</em>. It carries with it health risks that, though they may be reduced in some cases, can’t be avoided entirely. Second, homosexual conduct also puts people at risk who are not engaged in the activity. Since this activity can’t be made healthful, and puts people at risk who do not choose to be involved in the activity, it seems to make sense that, as a community, we ought not do anything to encourage it.</p>

<p>At this point I’m not even suggesting we actively discourage homosexuality—though I think, on public health grounds alone, we would be justified in doing so. Minimally, it seems wise not to go out of our way to encourage the behavior, though, as some programs seem to do.</p>

<p>So, there are two very good external approaches (i.e., non-biblical approaches) to dealing with this issue in the public square.</p>

<p>Here is another angle on dealing with the issue. I have a friend who is a deeply committed Christian woman and whose boss is a lesbian. That in itself wasn’t a problem. My friend has the maturity to know that you can’t expect non-Christians to live like Christians. But her boss posed a difficult question to her. The boss wanted to know what my friend’s attitude was toward homosexuality.</p>

<p>Now that’s a tough one, isn’t it, because she’s a Christian and has strong views about homosexuality. At the same time, she was concerned that expressing her own personal views to her employer (for whom the question was not merely academic) might compromise her situation.</p>

<p>My friend’s response was, “Please tell me what my feelings about homosexuality have to do with our professional relationship?”&nbsp;In sword fighting that’s called a parry. She deflected the question, pushing it aside by asking about its relevance. Because she was quick, my friend avoided what might have been an unpleasant confrontation.</p>

<p>It was a fair response. Sometimes you’re asked a personal question when it’s not the best time to express your opinion. When we make our case about the Lord or our religious or ethical views, we want to choose the time and place so we can be the most sensitive to the person we’re talking to. We don’t want our views misunderstood or twisted.</p>

<p>In less-than-ideal circumstances it’s entirely fair to say, “You know, I’m not really comfortable offering my point of view at this time,”&nbsp;or something akin to that. Or saying, as my friend did, “I’m not sure what this has to do with our relationship. Could you clarify that for me?”</p>

<p>My friend successfully parried the issue for a time, but she suspects it will come up again. She might not be able to sidestep again. What should she do?</p>

<p>Here’s what I suggested. Her answer would depend on precisely how the question was put to her. “How do you <em>feel</em> about homosexuality?”&nbsp;is different from, “What do you <em>think</em> about homosexuality?”</p>

<p>If someone asked me what I <em>felt</em> about homosexuality, I’d answer honestly: I don’t <em>feel</em> uncomfortable simply because someone is a homosexual. Some homosexuals are likable, some are not. I treat persons as individuals.</p>

<p>If I were asked what I <em>think</em> about homosexuality, however, my answer would be different. I <em>think</em> that homosexuals are human beings that should be treated with respect, should not be bashed or called names, and should be given the same rights that any other citizen has. That’s what I actually think.</p>

<p>I also think, though, that homosexuality is unnatural and immoral. I say this not as a personal preference, but as a personal conviction—I think that statement is actually true. I’m also glad to give you reasons why I think so. This is my moral, cognitive conclusion about homosexuality, as opposed to what I feel.</p>

<p>What this has done is made a distinction between my attitude about homosexual people and my point of view regarding homosexuality. When dealing with people in the public square, it’s very important to make this distinction because it isn’t unusual for people to mistakenly infer your feelings from your thoughts. So if you start off by saying, “I think homosexuality is immoral,”&nbsp;or “I think it’s a sin,”&nbsp;people will infer from your ethical conclusions about homosexuality that you actually hate homosexuals, that you are condescending towards them, etc. And, of course, they’ll take offense.</p>

<p>You want to cut them off at the pass. You don’t want to hide your moral point of view, but you also don’t want them to draw wrong conclusions about your feelings—and how you might be inclined to mistreat homosexuals—from your moral assessment of homosexuality. By offering how you feel about homosexuality up front, you minimize that risk.</p>

<p>There’s another thought I offered as a postscript to my friend with the lesbian boss. There’s a really clever way to answer her question directly, but eliminate almost all the risk.</p>

<p>If you’re placed in a situation where you suspect your convictions will be labeled intolerant, bigoted, narrow-minded, and judgmental, turn the tables. When someone asks for your personal views about a moral issue, preface your remarks with a question.</p>

<p>You say: “You know, this is actually a very personal question you’re asking, and I’d be glad to answer. But before I do, I want to know if you consider yourself a tolerant or an intolerant person. Is it safe to give my opinion, or are you going to judge me for my point of view? Do you respect diverse points of view, or do you condemn others for convictions that differ from yours?”&nbsp;Then when you give your point of view, it’s going to be very difficult for them to call you intolerant or judgmental without looking guilty, too.</p>

<p>This response capitalizes on the fact that there’s no morally neutral ground. Everybody has a point of view they think is right and everybody judges at some point or another. The Christian gets pigeon-holed as the judgmental one, but everyone else is judging, too. It’s an inescapable consequence of believing in morality.</p>
</div>

            <br>
            <!-- Share links -->
            <a id="facebook-share" href="https://www.facebook.com/sharer.php?u=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.str.org%2Fw%2Fhomosexuality-giving-your-point-of-view" aria-label="Share this page on Facebook" title="Share on Facebook">
            	<i class="fab fa-facebook-f fa-lg" aria-hidden="true"></i>
            </a>
            <a id="twitter-share" href="https://twitter.com/intent/tweet?url=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.str.org%2Fw%2Fhomosexuality-giving-your-point-of-view" aria-label="Share this page on Twitter" title="Share on Twitter">
            	<i class="fab fa-twitter fa-lg" aria-hidden="true"></i>
            </a>
            <a id="email-share" href="mailto:?body=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.str.org%2Fw%2Fhomosexuality-giving-your-point-of-view" aria-label="Email this page to a friend" title="Email">
            	<i class="far fa-envelope fa-lg" aria-hidden="true"></i>
            </a>
            <a href="https://www.printfriendly.com" class="printfriendly" onclick="window.print();return false;" title="Printer Friendly and PDF"><i class="fa fa-print fa-lg" aria-hidden="true"></i>
            </a>
            
          


title: When Absolutism Is Relative
topic: Philosophy
author: Greg Koukl
date: 03/17/2013
source: https://www.str.org/w/when-absolutism-is-relative
content:
            <div> 
		<p>I had a conversation with Greg Cynaumon on Friday when I was a guest on his show Southern California Live. One of the things that came up was the killing of the abortionist, and I had made the comment that I have been making the last couple days, trying to clarify our moral position. Someone called in and was very, very frustrated with me because they felt that I had been giving some justification to the taking of a human life, though I certainly wasn’t justifying the killing. I was trying to be clear about what my reasons were. I was asking people what their reasons were to make sure they were thinking consistently about their position. In any event, he misunderstood me and so he quoted to me the Sixth Commandment, “Thou shalt not kill,” as if this ends all moral discussions on the issue. There were two things that came up that I want to relate to you because they have to do with the way we do Bible study and the way we do moral reasoning, as well.</p>

<p>The first one is this. He read out of his Bible (I believe it was the King James Version), “Thou shalt not kill.”&nbsp;And I said, “Well, that doesn’t mean kill, it means thou shalt not murder.”&nbsp;Here is a problem that we have sometimes when we do Bible study. We think that it’s our English translation that is the inspired version, not only the English but <em>our</em> particular translation. There are a number of translations that properly translate that as murder, not merely kill, as if any killing is what God is against. That isn’t what the Hebrew indicates and even if it said, “Thou shalt not kill,” one has only to flip a few pages to see other commands that God gives right in that same passage that demand that the state, in this case the nation of Israel, take the life of criminals for certain crimes. God advocates capitol punishment, or at least did then. This is not a discussion about capitol punishment. It is an observation that if we have a belief that a verse means a particular thing and then flip a few pages and find something that is a glaring contradiction to our interpretation of the earlier verse, we have to change our interpretation of the earlier verse. If God says, “Thou shalt not kill”&nbsp;and we think it means you shouldn’t kill under any circumstances whatsoever, and then He says, “Kill, kill and kill some more,”&nbsp;in another circumstance in the same Bible, then we have to review what we thought we understood God to mean in the Sixth Commandment. That’s why we look more closely at the context and the Hebrew word and we realize that we should not wantonly take the life of an innocent person. But there are times when killing is justified and in fact commanded, at least in the theocracy, and we see capitol punishment there and we also see God sending the nation of Israel out to do battle.</p>

<p>Well, I tried to explain that to the gentleman, but he was still quite frustrated and I guess I wasn’t changing his mind on that because he thought I was doing the two-step when it should have been clear to him that he was facing a serious contradiction if he continued to hold to his view.</p>

<p>There was another factor here that came out, though, that showed me that he had a significant misunderstanding about the nature of moral discussion; in particular, the relationship of moral relativism to moral absolutism. The conversation went something like this: I said, “No, God is not arguing against all killing. He is saying that we ought not take an innocent human life. There are times when we should take human life and He outlines them in the Scriptures, and there are other times when it does seem self-evident that we are obliged morally to act and to take a life. The circumstances dictate that.”&nbsp;This set him off in another fashion. He seemed to be thinking, “Well, if you are saying that the circumstances dictate the applicability of a moral rule, in other words, the moral rule is relative to the circumstances, well, then you are a relativist. God is not a relativist, therefore if you are doing that then you are mistaken.”</p>

<p>I didn’t have time to explain it then, but I want to clarify it for you that he was misunderstanding what moral relativism is. Moral relativism doesn’t have to do with relative circumstances, it has to do with relative people. In other words, it has to do with the subject that holds the moral view, not the circumstances themselves. Let me broaden this a little bit so it’s clearer. Relativism holds that moral truth is subjective to the person who holds the truth. In other words, I have a belief about what is true for me and you have a belief about what is true for you. I may think premarital sex is fine, you may think it’s wrong. You have your morality, I have my morality. That’s what relativism is. Moral viewpoints are relative to the person who holds them, or relative to the subject who holds them. That’s why it’s called, also, moral subjectivism. Everybody has their own subjective belief. In that sense, a relativist kind of invents their morality.</p>

<p>That is contrasted to absolutism. Absolutism holds that moral rules are not something that everyone invents for themselves and are different between people in the same circumstance. But it holds that moral rules are things that stand outside of people; they are discovered rather than invented much like you might discover a math principle. They are often self-evident. And they apply to everyone equally in the same situation. Now this is what’s very important. It is absolute in that in any given situation it applies equally to everyone in that situation.</p>

<p>So I can ask the question, Well, should you obey the government? Well, my answer as a Christian is, it depends. We have a moral rule that we ought to obey the authorities over us, but we also have another moral rule that we ought to preach the Gospel. When the apostles were in conflict with those two moral rules, they chose not to obey the government, in fact, they disobeyed it and obeyed the higher rule which is to preach the Gospel. The point being, the circumstances determined what decision they would make in this situation but they were not being relativists. Why not? Because their point of view was that everybody faced with this same dilemma in the same circumstances are obliged to respond the same way. That’s what makes the rule an absolute. They weren’t saying, Well, for us, we’re going to break the law and preach the Gospel, but for you in the same situation you have a different morality. You do whatever you want. You might cease preaching the Gospel and obey the law. Whatever you want to do. That’s relativism.</p>

<p>Biblical morality holds that absolutes pertain to certain circumstances, but you must weigh the circumstances to determine whether the absolute applies to it or not. If it does apply to the given circumstance, it applies equally to everyone who is in exactly the same circumstance. That’s what makes it an absolute. Is it wrong to lie or should you always tell the truth? Well, it depends. It is wrong to lie as a general moral rule, but there are times, even in the Bible, when choosing to lie was better than choosing to see the sacrifice of innocent human life. So in that case, protecting human life by lying (and it happened at least twice in the Scriptures that I know of) was actually commended as a proper moral act because people made a moral decision by applying an absolute rule relative to the circumstances, and in so doing they made the proper moral choice. Not relativism, absolutism.</p>

<p>See the difference? I hope so, because it’s going to be important for you to make careful distinctions as you make moral decisions yourself.</p>
</div>

            <br>
            <!-- Share links -->
            <a id="facebook-share" href="https://www.facebook.com/sharer.php?u=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.str.org%2Fw%2Fwhen-absolutism-is-relative" aria-label="Share this page on Facebook" title="Share on Facebook">
            	<i class="fab fa-facebook-f fa-lg" aria-hidden="true"></i>
            </a>
            <a id="twitter-share" href="https://twitter.com/intent/tweet?url=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.str.org%2Fw%2Fwhen-absolutism-is-relative" aria-label="Share this page on Twitter" title="Share on Twitter">
            	<i class="fab fa-twitter fa-lg" aria-hidden="true"></i>
            </a>
            <a id="email-share" href="mailto:?body=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.str.org%2Fw%2Fwhen-absolutism-is-relative" aria-label="Email this page to a friend" title="Email">
            	<i class="far fa-envelope fa-lg" aria-hidden="true"></i>
            </a>
            <a href="https://www.printfriendly.com" class="printfriendly" onclick="window.print();return false;" title="Printer Friendly and PDF"><i class="fa fa-print fa-lg" aria-hidden="true"></i>
            </a>
            
          


title: Discernment: Head or Heart?
topic: Theology
author: Greg Koukl
date: 03/12/2013
source: https://www.str.org/w/discernment-head-or-heart-
content:
            <div> 
		<p><em>Is “spiritual”&nbsp;discernment an objective judgment of the mind, or a subjective intuition of the spirit?</em></p>

<p>I had a challenge from a friend a couple days ago that I’ve heard many times. Maybe it’s been leveled at you, too. It has to do with spiritual discernment. Am I in my “head”&nbsp;too much when I do spiritual discernment, and not enough “in the Spirit”? Am I discerning with my mind—with reason and rationality—and not discerning with my heart ? That was her question.</p>

<p>It got me thinking. Since I’m involved in offering a reasonable defense for the faith and advocating clear thinking on critical issues, since I’m skeptical of those whose religion is almost entirely emotional/intuitive, people have challenged me that I’m only “half there”&nbsp;not using all my spiritual faculties and therefore am at risk of running into error.</p>

<p>“Koukl, you’re just in your head too much,”&nbsp;they suggest. “You’re too left-brained when it comes to spiritual things. You’re too logical, too reasonable. You don’t depend enough on your heart to discern the spiritual realm. Yes you’re using your mind, but what about your spirit? Why do you always trust in your own thinking instead of what the Spirit is saying about something?”</p>

<p>These statements imply that somehow I’m not doing a full-blooded assessment of things because I’m only using half of my machinery. My analysis should include the subjective, not just the objective.</p>

<p>This kind of critique assumes a couple of things. First, it assumes that there are two types of spiritual assessment. One is a rational assessment, a kind of theological head-trip. The other is a subjective, intuitive skill that some call discernment, in which we sense deep within us that something is on target or that something is amiss.</p>

<p>Second, it implies that the subjective, intuitive analysis is more advanced and more accurate. It is a “higher method,”&nbsp;a more tuned-in capability. It’s a spiritual assessment and not just a mental, rational assessment. It’s an ability to “hear what the Spirit has to say.”</p>

<p>People who make these kinds of comments generally are skeptical of the rational to begin with. It strikes them as being fleshly. It’s what Koukl “brings to the table,”&nbsp;so to speak, his mind, his thinking, his own rationality, his own ideas. And all of these smack of “the ways of the world,”&nbsp;as opposed to going to God and letting God do the analysis for us.</p>

<p>This distinction is incredibly pervasive in Evangelical circles, so much so that some groups have even given a name to it. Some of the so-called Word-Faith teachers distinguish between what they call <em>sensate knowledge</em>—that which you learn with your mind as a result of study and analysis—and <em>revelational knowledge</em>—that which is mediated directly to you in the spiritual realm. You have this learned stuff you get with your head, and you have this spiritual stuff you get from somewhere “out there,”&nbsp;from the spiritual realm.</p>

<p>The second type is definitely better, the argument goes. You need to develop the capability to learn things spiritually so you can really get the deep truth, because the sensate stuff is distorted by the flesh. At least this is implied when you hear these kinds of assessments. And isn’t it really true that Evangelicals trust more in their “spirits”&nbsp;than in their minds when it comes to spiritual things?</p>

<p>When I was less than a year old in Christ, I went to a coffeehouse in the basement of a church in Pacific Palisades in California. It was so long ago that Keith Green was not even a Christian yet (for those of you who remember that fine Christian musician who died in 1982 in a plane crash). Keith was there that night playing with Randy Stonehill, who eventually was to lead Keith to Christ. But Keith wasn’t a believer that night.</p>

<p>As I entered the door that evening, my friend Joyce paused and put her hand to her chest as if she felt something. “Gosh, I sense that something is wrong. I feel this check in my spirit,”&nbsp;she said. And I thought, <em>I can’t wait till I get to the point in my spiritual growth where I can know things directly in the spiritual realm, and have this sixth sense and discern things like Joyce just did.</em></p>

<p>It’s 23 years later and I still haven’t gotten that sixth sense. Instead, I use my mind. I don’t say that as a concession, like I got the booby prize. I think it’s biblical. The only way to know if I’m correct, though, is to ask the questions, “Which way is really right? Which is best? Do we discern with our minds, or do we need a sixth sense for optimum spiritual discernment?”</p>

<p>When I was challenged this week, my first response was, “I bet if you do a scriptural analysis, you’ll find there are more verses that have to do with an <strong>objective</strong> assessment than those for a <strong>subjective</strong> one.”&nbsp;I figured that if there really are two different ways of discernment, no one could fault me for being rational if I had scriptural support, especially if more verses supported a objective method than a subjective one.</p>

<p>As I did a mental inventory of the New Testament, though, it suddenly occurred to me that I couldn’t think of any verses <strong>at all</strong> that supported the notion of discernment as subjective and intuitive. None came to mind, so I had to do a little searching.</p>

<p>I went to my NASB Bible Master program and started looking up words, starting with the word “discern.”&nbsp;There are only two verses in the New Testament that even use the word. In Matthew 16:3 Jesus says that in the morning, “...[you say] ’There will be a storm today, for the sky is red and threatening.’&nbsp;Do you know how to discern the appearance of the sky, but cannot discern the signs of the times?”</p>

<p>Jesus was talking about looking at particular signs—the appearance of the sky—and drawing conclusions about what the weather will be like. That’s an objective, not a subjective, assessment.</p>

<p>Hebrews 5:14 chastised those who ought to have been teachers of the Word, eating meat instead of drinking milk. Then it says, “...but solid food is for the mature, who because of practice have their senses trained to discern good and evil.”&nbsp;So the discernment here is not subjective; it’s objective. It’s using the knowledge and practice of the truth of the Scriptures to develop an ability to objectively discern right from wrong.</p>

<p>Then I looked up the word “discernment.”&nbsp;There’s only one use of it, Philippians 1:9-10. It says, “...this I pray, that your love may abound still more and more in real knowledge and all discernment, so that you may approve the things that are excellent, in order to be sincere and blameless until the day of Christ.”</p>

<p>Here, discernment is coupled with knowledge resulting in a morally excellent life. Discernment is knowing what’s right and what’s wrong. We get that from the Scriptures, as Hebrews 5:14 points out. Sounds like an objective assessment to me.</p>

<p>Then I looked up the word “test.”&nbsp;There are fifteen verses that use this word, but only one that applies to our issue. In I John 5:1-3 it says: “Beloved, do not believe every spirit, but test the spirits to see whether they are from God, because there are many false prophets gone out into the world.”&nbsp;Now we’re getting warmer, I thought, testing the spirits. Surely now we’re moving into subjective.</p>

<p>Not so. Read again. The next verse says, “By this you know the spirit of God. Every spirit that confesses that Jesus Christ has come in the flesh is from God.”&nbsp;Hmm...not a subjective test here, but an objective one, once again.</p>

<p>First Corinthians 12:10 talks about spiritual gifts. Here we might be on to something, because distinguishing of spirits is a spiritual gift. There is no hint of objective standards here; there’s also no hint of subjective standards. In fact, what’s curious about this verse is that it doesn’t say anything else in this passage, nor anywhere else, about what it means to distinguish spirits.</p>

<p>I’m inclined to believe that since it’s a spiritual gift, it leans more toward a subjective ability, because if this were referring to an objective way to distinguish spirits, we all could do it, and we wouldn’t need the gift. So here seems to be one verse that lends itself to a subjective sense of discernment, but it’s not something that everybody has, only those who are gifted. If I’m not gifted in this way, then there’s no point in me trying to distinguish spirits subjectively, because I have different gifts.</p>

<p>Next I looked up the word “correct,”&nbsp;but there were no entries. I looked up the word “correcting”&nbsp;and found II Timothy 2:25, “...with gentleness, correcting those who are in opposition, if perhaps God may grant them repentance leading to the knowledge of the truth.”&nbsp;Here the correcting has to do with having a conflict with people who disagree with you. The verse above it says, “...not being argumentative, but gracious when wronged, with gentleness correcting...”&nbsp;Once again we have an objective test. We see that somebody is doing something wrong and we offer correction. No intuitive pondering here or getting into a spiritual twilight zone. Rather a correction “leading to the knowledge of the truth.”&nbsp;The truth is objective.</p>

<p>Here’s my point. Is it true that Koukl is too much into his head, using his reason to assess spiritual things, and is not into the Spirit enough? Only if the Bible teaches that we must balance the two. But when I asked the question, “Where does the Bible teach such a thing?”&nbsp;I found no such teaching. I was unable to produce any scriptural support except for I Corinthians 12:10 about the distinguishing of spirits, which is a spiritual gift I have not been given, apparently, and which only a few have.</p>

<p>The point is, when the Bible talks about discernment—when it talks about assessing spiritual things—it’s talking about a rational assessment based on objective criterion. You can’t be “too much in your head”&nbsp;when it comes to spiritual discernment. Using your head <strong>is</strong> spiritual discernment, if you’re using the truth properly.</p>
</div>

            <br>
            <!-- Share links -->
            <a id="facebook-share" href="https://www.facebook.com/sharer.php?u=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.str.org%2Fw%2Fdiscernment-head-or-heart-" aria-label="Share this page on Facebook" title="Share on Facebook">
            	<i class="fab fa-facebook-f fa-lg" aria-hidden="true"></i>
            </a>
            <a id="twitter-share" href="https://twitter.com/intent/tweet?url=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.str.org%2Fw%2Fdiscernment-head-or-heart-" aria-label="Share this page on Twitter" title="Share on Twitter">
            	<i class="fab fa-twitter fa-lg" aria-hidden="true"></i>
            </a>
            <a id="email-share" href="mailto:?body=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.str.org%2Fw%2Fdiscernment-head-or-heart-" aria-label="Email this page to a friend" title="Email">
            	<i class="far fa-envelope fa-lg" aria-hidden="true"></i>
            </a>
            <a href="https://www.printfriendly.com" class="printfriendly" onclick="window.print();return false;" title="Printer Friendly and PDF"><i class="fa fa-print fa-lg" aria-hidden="true"></i>
            </a>
            
          


