There are several different categories of "Law" that we could talk about, but I want to talk about the topic at a very high level here. What I am not talking about here would be "The law of the land" kinds of laws that are passed by legislatures or by the edicts of kings, dictators, monarchs, etc. Instead, I'm talking about things that are the rules by which we see the universe operate which we can observe through science (like the Law of Gravity) and laws which we cannot observe but we know to be true like the laws of logic or mathematical laws like 1+1=2. In both cases, the law that I'm talking about is independent of the one observing the law. It is not true because the observer acknowledges that it is true, it simply is true because it is. You don't have to agree with the Law of Gravity for it to have an effect on you if you were to jump off of something.
There are two big categories though that I'd like to make here, and I've already started to sort the laws I'm talking about by them. The first would be laws that came into existence at the time of creation. They are "natural laws" that describe the way that objects within this creation interact with each other without outside interference. It is these laws that are suspended when we see something that is truly miraculous happens. Other laws predate creation and will be around forever because they come from the very mind of God Himself. Thes would be laws like the laws of logic and mathematics that I referred to earlier. In both cases, the source of the law comes from God, the Lawgiver, but the first category are laws that are temporary (as this creation is not eternal) and can be suspended by God to do miracles, which the second category is so intertwined with the nature and character of God that they cannot be violated. (God can't make a round square or a rock too big for Him to pick up because these things violate the laws of logic that are a part of who God is. He must be true to who He is at all times). Because we see miraculous things happen, we know at a minimum that there exists something or many somethings outside of our universe that don't obey the same laws that we do. They may have other laws that they have to obey, but only a creature outside of our system of natural laws could walk through walls, disappear from one place and appear in another place at will, control the weather, turn water into wine, feed more than 5,000 men, women and children with only five loaves and two fish, or raise men from the dead. Of course, I speak of the "signs" that John speaks of in the New Testament that are things that only God could do that tell us that Jesus was no ordinary man. He had to be God in the Flesh because no man could simply calm the storm and sea by saying, "Peace be still." Only God could do that. It is logical that creation must obey its Creator and that if Jesus exercised power and authority over creation that only the Creator should have, that He must be the Creator and the Lord of all Creation. However, there is another category of Law that comes from God that I've intentionally avoided to this point and that is the Moral Law. People like to try to argue that morality comes from the mind and heart of man, but it does not. It comes from the mind and heart of God. When God finished creating, He called everything "very good", and he placed man (Adam) in the Garden of Eden and He gave Adam one particular moral law--"Do not eat of the Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil." There was other law that existed before this, because the LORD had commanded all creation to be fruitful and multiply and to fill the earth. However, this was the first commandment that came with a penalty attached to it, "For in the day you eat of it, you will surely die." The one who makes the Law is the one who must also judge those who are lawbreakers. So, God must not only be the Lawgiver, but the Judge. Only one who sees all and knows all and is Righteous and Just in all His was is qualified to make and enforce such law. The Law (we usually mean the Mosaic Law when we say this, but really it refers more broadly to all the laws given in the first five books of the Old Testament) is a reflection of who God is. I will not try to parse the Law into laws that we need to obey today and laws that have been superseded or abolished. Maybe that is a conversation for another time, but the very existence of such Law-and we know such law does exist, for it is part of our conscience to know not to murder--necessitates the existence of God, the Lawgiver. So, if we study and understand the laws that God made, we might better understand the God who made those laws. It is for that reason that so many people who have studied theology have also studied logic, mathematics and science. They desired to better understand God by understanding the laws of God. Only now that we have discussed this kind of law are we ready to talk about civil laws that are derivative in nature because the authority of the civil governments is delegated to them by God Himself. The civil authorities are to make law that promotes good and punishes evil, and, in all ways possible, make a culture where it is more likely for people to worship the LORD and less likely from them to worship false gods. That gets more into the discipline of Politics though. As I said, that is not the topic of the day. It is usually what people think of with law though as they typically think of legislators, police officers and judges that compel people to obey the law under threat of fine or imprisonment. We wouldn't even have such ideas though were it not for the Lawgiver and Judge of the Law that He made. The Law is not bad--in fact, if you read Psalm 119, you see that it is very good. It teaches us who God is and that we are not Him. It reveals our inadequacies, and it shows a way of salvation--the need for substitutionary atonement. The Law gives blessing to those who are God's people who obey Him and punishes those who break covenant with the LORD and live in rebellion against Him. There is no lawyer that can get you off on a technicality, the only way for the guilty to be forgiven under God's system of law and justice is for someone innocent to be punished in the place of someone guilty. That is "penal substitutionary atonement." Since all of us are guilty under the Law, God Himself had to come down and live as a man without sin so that He alone could be the one to take our place. All men "fell" when Adam sinned, and we were born as sinners who naturally did what was evil and wicked. Through Christ we can be made new so that we might not sin, and one day we will be freed from the very presence of sin. I spent most of my time on the issue of moral law and sin because it is at the center of the gospel. The other kinds of law are important, but it is the moral law that condemns all of us to eternal death and punishment if Jesus did not take our place. This is what it means that Jesus is the propitiation for our sins--He satisfies God's Law and Justice.
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The last of the fundamental questions of a worldview that I want to cover is the question of Destiny. " He has made everything beautiful in its time. Also, he has put eternity into man's heart, yet so that he cannot find out what God has done from the beginning to the end." (Ecclesiastes 3:11). God has made us different than the other creatures in that we have part of us that is eternal. We instinctively know this and have thoughts about what will happen to us after we die--not so much our bodies as that part of us that is really "us." What will happen to that part of us that we know survives after the body dies?
The Bible is clear that there are only two choices for our destiny, and Jesus wraps up The Sermon on the Mount by putting everyone into one of these two categories. Those who are truly His disciples and are citizens of the kingdom of God will have a certain kind of faith, will live in a particular way, and they will be given eternal life and live forever in the presence of God. Those who not His disciples and are kingdoms of this world will be judged for their wickedness and rebellion. That judgment is described as both darkness and fire and those in judgment there have a thirst that can never be satisfied. It is described as torture and all who live there will experience all the just consequences of the choices they made. The only other option is to trust that Jesus took all the punishment that you deserved upon Himself when He died on the cross and was buried for three days. Jesus is the Firstfruits of what we can expect if we are in Him. This is, we can expect that we will be resurrected to eternal life with a body that will be incorruptible without hint or stain of sin, and it will be a body made for the New Heaven and the New Earth that is described in the book of Revelation and by the Old Testament prophets. The LORD will fulfill all his covenants that He has made to His people and He will make all things new--including heaven and earth. "Then I saw a new heaven and a new earth, for the first heaven and the first earth had passed away, and the sea was no more. 2 And I saw the holy city, new Jerusalem, coming down out of heaven from God, prepared as a bride adorned for her husband. 3 And I heard a loud voice from the throne saying, “Behold, the dwelling place of God is with man. He will dwell with them, and they will be his people, and God himself will be with them as their God. 4 He will wipe away every tear from their eyes, and death shall be no more, neither shall there be mourning, nor crying, nor pain anymore, for the former things have passed away.” (Revelation 21:1-4) 11 Then I saw a great white throne and him who was seated on it. From his presence earth and sky fled away, and no place was found for them. 12 And I saw the dead, great and small, standing before the throne, and books were opened. Then another book was opened, which is the book of life. And the dead were judged by what was written in the books, according to what they had done. 13 And the sea gave up the dead who were in it, Death and Hades gave up the dead who were in them, and they were judged, each one of them, according to what they had done. 14 Then Death and Hades were thrown into the lake of fire. This is the second death, the lake of fire. 15 And if anyone's name was not found written in the book of life, he was thrown into the lake of fire. (Revelation 20:11-15) There are more passages, but these are the two choices. lie before us. "It is appointed man once to die, and after that the judgment." There is no purgatory, no reincarnation, and no annihilation. We cannot go somewhere for a while and be purified from our sins until we are pure enough to enter heaven--we either are dressed in the righteousness of Christ, or we are dressed in the filthiness of our sins. There are no do-overs in life. We should not put off the call that the Spirit makes for us to be saved today, because we are not promised tomorrow (or even the rest of today) and we are stuck with whatever decision we made when our body dies. There will be no telling God that you meant to make a decision later--that won't cut it, nor will you be able to say that you would have made a different choice if given another chance. We all must be told that we too, like Nicodemus, must be born again and unless we are born again, we can never enter the kingdom of heaven. We also can't do anything to change the decision that someone else has already made, nor can we make the decision for anyone else, nor can anyone else "inherit" the decision that we have made (you can't be saved from birth because of a decision that your parents made). Each person must individually trust in the Lord Jesus Christ for salvation and receive the eternal life that only He can offer to those who belong to Him. He has gone to prepare a place for us that belong to Him so that where He is, there we can be with him also forever and ever. Being in the presence of God is the most important thing about heaven--more important than the walls of precious stones or the gates made of solid pearls, or the streets of gold or the crystal see, or the River of Life and Tree of Life. All those things would be meaningless if God were not there. Without Him, it wouldn't be heaven, for heaven is His throne room. Those in what we call Hell (The Lake of Fire) cannot escape His presence, though many think that hell is a place where the presence of God is absent. He is present everywhere at all times, and He is actively punishing those in rebellion for their sins. Whether or not you choose to believe in hell or a god that would send you to hell is irrelevant. Hell is the destination for all those who are not in Christ. It is the destiny for the devil, the demons, the Antichrist, the False Prophet, and all those who are part of the kingdom of this world--the kingdom of darkness--who follow and devil in rebellion and are known by the works of their flesh (their sinful passions and desires). It's pretty much that simple. Even if you think that you will spend eternity without God because you hate Him and think by going to hell that you'll somehow be somewhere where He is not, you are wrong. You can never go anywhere to get away from God. I'm sure that's part of what makes hell what it is--people there hate God and want to escape His presence, but they never can because He is omnipresent. Read Matthew 7 if you have any question about the fact that there are only two paths--two roads--one that leads to life and the other to destruction. There is no third option. We either call on the name of the Lord Jesus Christ for salvation or we die in our sins. We either are transformed into the image of Christ, or we live like the devil--the one who is the father of lies and a murderer from the beginning. We are either in Adam or in Christ (see Romans 5). We are all called to choose today which destiny we want, but we can't have Jesus as Savior without also making Him Lord. If we are saved, then we will be transformed--we talked about how we should live in a previous post. Let those of us who are in Christ live as citizens of the kingdom that yet to be revealed to us and not as citizens of this world, for the end of this world is destruction as the elements will melt with fervent heat. 2 Peter 3:10-18 English Standard Version 10 But the day of the Lord will come like a thief, and then the heavens will pass away with a roar, and the heavenly bodies will be burned up and dissolved, and the earth and the works that are done on it will be exposed. 11 Since all these things are thus to be dissolved, what sort of people ought you to be in lives of holiness and godliness, 12 waiting for and hastening the coming of the day of God, because of which the heavens will be set on fire and dissolved, and the heavenly bodies will melt as they burn! 13 But according to his promise we are waiting for new heavens and a new earth in which righteousness dwells. 14 Therefore, beloved, since you are waiting for these, be diligent to be found by him without spot or blemish, and at peace. 15 And count the patience of our Lord as salvation, just as our beloved brother Paul also wrote to you according to the wisdom given him, 16 as he does in all his letters when he speaks in them of these matters. There are some things in them that are hard to understand, which the ignorant and unstable twist to their own destruction, as they do the other Scriptures. 17 You therefore, beloved, knowing this beforehand, take care that you are not carried away with the error of lawless people and lose your own stability. 18 But grow in the grace and knowledge of our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ. To him be the glory both now and to the day of eternity. Amen. Let's be honest. A lot of people's objection to God and the Bible is a moral objection. Satan's first temptation to Adam and Eve was to attack God's moral law and at the same time attack the character and nature of God, since His Law is a reflection of His nature and character. We want to be like God knowing (and choosing) good and evil for ourselves (see Genesis 3:5). If God really is the Creator of all things (the question of Origins), then He is Sovreign and has the authority to tell His creatures (all of us, even those who don't want to be a part of His Kingdom) how we are to live, and He has the authority to enforce those laws and execute justice. Yet, we don't want to be held accountable--though we want others to be held accountable for the wrong we perceive that they've done to us. Yet, we don't even have an objective standard for "right" or "wrong," "good" or "bad," "righteous" or "wicked" unless we use the standard that God has given us in the Bible. Why is it wrong to lie? Because God is Truth and it a violation of His nature. Why is it wrong to murder? Because God is the giver of life and the only one with the authority to end it. Why is it wrong to worship idols? Because the LORD our God, the maker of heaven and earth is the only God--He is a Jealous God and He will not allow the worship that only deserves to go to Him to be given to any of His creatures (including angels, demons, or humans). He will not share His glory with anyone.
So, much of our morality has to do with who we believe God to be, or better yet, do we believe we are to be made in God's image, or do we try to make gods for ourselves in our own image or make ourselves to be gods. If we believe we are truly made in God's image and are to be His image-bearers, and the Law is also an image of His character and nature, then it follows that Law is way that an image-bearer of God should "naturally" behave if it weren't for our sin nature getting in the way. Since we all fell and were broken and became sinners when Adam sinned, we do not desire the things of God or to be like God or do what pleases God. We desire to obey and serve our own "fleshly" desires (our lusts and passions) and whatever we believe will make us happy in the moment or what we believe will help to acquire the power, glory, praise, and wealth that we may desire in the moment--none of these things will truly satisfy us, which is the key theme to the book of Ecclesiastes and I think we talked about this already in the article on Meaning and Purpose. If we love God, we will obey Him. That is made clear throughout Scripture and is stated quite clearly by Jesus in John 14:15, "If you love me, you will keep my commandments." Which commandments are His though? People try to play lots of games with this, but really there's no reason to believe that Jesus isn't talking about all of them. There's some additional teaching later by the Apostles to the Church as to if a Gentile needs to become Jewish in order to be a Christian, and the answer to that was "No." With that in mind there are some commandments to the Jewish people on what it means to be a Jew--a special, peculiar, covenant people living a special, peculiar, covenant Land, for a special, peculiar, covenant purpose. Not all of us are called to be citizens of that physical kingdom in the physical Land, and those of us who live other places are called to obey the laws of our land that we live in as long as those laws do not ask us to violate the laws of God. For instance--please don't hate me for saying this one--but we are to obey the speed limit signs and other traffic laws because we recognize that God has given authority to the government to be his representatives to make good laws for the people they govern and the government is within its right to impose fines, seize assets, imprison people and in the worst cases, put people to death for violations of the law. The government leaders will need to answer to God for what they did with the authority that He gave to them, and it is up to God to place government leaders into power and to take their power away from them--He doesn't need the help of us rising up in revolution every time we disagree with the government on issues of things like taxation (in fact, the Bible clearly teaches us to pay our taxes and to pay them honestly, so that too is a moral issue). I've been hitting on an issue that I want to deal with more directly now. The other world religions often express themselves in the form of "Do good works, and you will be saved." The problem then is defining what exactly is "good" and how much "good" is "good enough." Jesus tells us quite plainly in the Gospels that only God is truly good and that unless our righteousness was to exceed that of the scribes and the Pharisees, we have no chance of entering God's kingdom on our own merit (He was the only one whose righteousness exceeded that of the scribes and Pharisees because He was absolutely perfect, because He was God and was truly "good"). Christianity is structured altogether differently because it is not like the Tower of Babel where men are trying to by their own means build something that gets them back to heaven. No, instead it is like Jacob's Ladder where God has made the way of salvation for us by building the Way to heaven for us--Jesus is that Way--the only Way. Jesus said in John 14:6, "I am the Way, the Truth, and the Life. No man comes to the Father except through Me." So, it is not about what we can do to make God love us or get enough points in the "plus" column to get in on our own merit--we have much of the Bible that teaches us that we are spiritually bankrupt and could never pay off our sin debt on our own because even one sin condemns us of being as guilty as the worst sinner--we are Law-breakers at that point and guilty of eternal, spiritual death and damnation. Separation from God and an eternity in the Lake of Fire that was created for the devil and his angels--since we choose to rebel against God just like they did. Instead, we must depend on the finished work of Jesus and His righteousness to be sufficient for us when it is imputed (given to us without merit) by faith. "He who knew no sin became sin for us so that we might become the righteousness of God." (2 Corinthians 5:21). So, our morality cannot be in hopes to be saved or stay saved. That is not why we keep His commandments. We keep His commandments because we love Him for what He has done for us and because He has made us new--given us a new nature that is consistent with being the image-bearers that He originally created us to be. As His ambassadors and representatives of His kingdom here on Earth, we are expected to conduct ourselves in a certain way. We are to live in a way that identifies us as citizens of another kingdom. It should be obvious to others that we are "in the world, but not of the world." Pilate was not surprised when Jesus told him, "My kingdom is not of this world." (Jesus was not a political threat to Pilate like the Jews wanted Pilate to think--the gospel is not about political revolution). The gospel is about transformation and making us citizens and ambassadors of a new kingdom, and we therefore walk in a way where we understand the rules our King makes are the best way for us to live--for our King wants the best for us, and we live in obedience to the King not only because we are his subjects and servants, but because this is the way in which we do homage to Him and bring Him much honor and glory. Our obedience is one of our greatest acts of worship. We cannot say that we love God and live in rebellion to His Law and it is disingenuous to go to "church" on Sunday and say we are worshiping the Lord there while we are living our lives in such a way that it is clear that He is not our Lord--for if He was our Lord, we would obey Him--that is a huge definition of what the Lord/Master-subject/servant relationship is. We are but slaves to righteousness (the Bible is clear about this) and we love to do the will of our Master expecting no praise or honor of our own, but simply recognizing that we love to do it because we love Him and we want to please Him (and it is our duty to do so--we cannot call ourselves His servants if we are not willing to serve Him). I hope I've addressed some of the main issues of how obedience is tied to life and blessing and disobedience is tied to death and cursing, that we are to be good citizens of the earthly kingdoms we belong to all while being citizens and ambassadors of a heavenly kingdom, and that our obedience is not in order to try to save ourselves by our own merit, but it is because of our love for the one who loved us supremely. "Love so amazing, so divine--Demands my soul, my life, my all." Galatians 5:13-26 English Standard Version 13 For you were called to freedom, brothers. Only do not use your freedom as an opportunity for the flesh, but through love serve one another. 14 For the whole law is fulfilled in one word: “You shall love your neighbor as yourself.” 15 But if you bite and devour one another, watch out that you are not consumed by one another. 16 But I say, walk by the Spirit, and you will not gratify the desires of the flesh. 17 For the desires of the flesh are against the Spirit, and the desires of the Spirit are against the flesh, for these are opposed to each other, to keep you from doing the things you want to do. 18 But if you are led by the Spirit, you are not under the law. 19 Now the works of the flesh are evident: sexual immorality, impurity, sensuality, 20 idolatry, sorcery, enmity, strife, jealousy, fits of anger, rivalries, dissensions, divisions, 21 envy, drunkenness, orgies, and things like these. I warn you, as I warned you before, that those who do such things will not inherit the kingdom of God. 22 But the fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, 23 gentleness, self-control; against such things there is no law. 24 And those who belong to Christ Jesus have crucified the flesh with its passions and desires. 25 If we live by the Spirit, let us also keep in step with the Spirit. 26 Let us not become conceited, provoking one another, envying one another. 1 Peter 1:13-25 English Standard Version 13 Therefore, preparing your minds for action, and being sober-minded, set your hope fully on the grace that will be brought to you at the revelation of Jesus Christ. 14 As obedient children, do not be conformed to the passions of your former ignorance, 15 but as he who called you is holy, you also be holy in all your conduct, 16 since it is written, “You shall be holy, for I am holy.” 17 And if you call on him as Father who judges impartially according to each one's deeds, conduct yourselves with fear throughout the time of your exile, 18 knowing that you were ransomed from the futile ways inherited from your forefathers, not with perishable things such as silver or gold, 19 but with the precious blood of Christ, like that of a lamb without blemish or spot. 20 He was foreknown before the foundation of the world but was made manifest in the last times for the sake of you 21 who through him are believers in God, who raised him from the dead and gave him glory, so that your faith and hope are in God. 22 Having purified your souls by your obedience to the truth for a sincere brotherly love, love one another earnestly from a pure heart, 23 since you have been born again, not of perishable seed but of imperishable, through the living and abiding word of God; 24 for “All flesh is like grass and all its glory like the flower of grass. The grass withers, and the flower falls, 25 but the word of the Lord remains forever.” And this word is the good news that was preached to you. Romans 6:15-23 English Standard Version 15 What then? Are we to sin because we are not under law but under grace? By no means! 16 Do you not know that if you present yourselves to anyone as obedient slaves, you are slaves of the one whom you obey, either of sin, which leads to death, or of obedience, which leads to righteousness? 17 But thanks be to God, that you who were once slaves of sin have become obedient from the heart to the standard of teaching to which you were committed, 18 and, having been set free from sin, have become slaves of righteousness. 19 I am speaking in human terms, because of your natural limitations. For just as you once presented your members as slaves to impurity and to lawlessness leading to more lawlessness, so now present your members as slaves to righteousness leading to sanctification. 20 For when you were slaves of sin, you were free in regard to righteousness. 21 But what fruit were you getting at that time from the things of which you are now ashamed? For the end of those things is death. 22 But now that you have been set free from sin and have become slaves of God, the fruit you get leads to sanctification and its end, eternal life. 23 For the wages of sin is death, but the free gift of God is eternal life in Christ Jesus our Lord. This is one of the five fundamental questions, and it is probably one of the most attacked by today's culture. We are told that "identity" is something completely opposite of what it has always been known to be, so let's start there. If I had to give you the key components of identity it would be that your identity is immutable (unchanging)--more on this later, is descriptive of your core essence and is of the same substance and nature as you, has the idea of an equivalence or equality that everyone knows who you are talking about because of the name or characteristics that you are using to describe that person. Now, I said first that things that have to do with identity are immutable characteristics, though it's probably a bit more accurate to say that there are some things that will happen in life that will become a part of your identity and you will never get rid of them being a part of who you are and what people think about when they think about you. Some examples of this would be adoption into a new family, getting married, and having children. You can probably think of some other life-altering events that change the way a person thinks about himself or herself and everyone else around them thinks of them, however there is only one event that I know of that is able to change someone's identity (speaking from the authority of God's Word here) and that is the event that we generally call "salvation" but more specifically the part of that called "regeneration." Paul does a good job in Romans 5 laying out the two different kinds of identities that we can have--and there are really only two camps we can fall into. We can identify with our human, sinful side and be "in Adam," or we can be "born again" as Jesus described in John 3 and be transformed into the character, nature and image of God the Father and God the Son through the work of God the Holy Spirit. Other passages that are helpful in seeing this "new creation," "transformation" are Romans 5, 2 Corinthians 5:17, Galatians 5:16-26, Ephesians 2:1-10ff, Ephesians 4:17-31. Notice that a lot of these passages on our new identity also have to do with a new way that we should conduct ourselves--a new morality that tells us how we should live (that will be the next topic I take up here). See how all the answers to all these questions are all interconnected? So, my identity is in Christ and is secure in heavenly places. No one can change the fact that God has adopted me into His family and prepared an inheritance for me--note that an inheritance is not earned, and that in the time this was written, adopted children could not be disinherited. The fact that the father loved them enough to adopt them was assurance enough that they would receive an equal share of the inheritance with any of the biological children from the family. "And I am sure of this, that he who began a good work in you will bring it to completion at the day of Jesus Christ." (Philippians 1:6). This is just one of many verses that speaks to our certainty of receiving everything that the Lord has promised for us and is preparing for us. Now, there's something special about our identity as Christians. It's really less about who we are, and more about who God the Father and God the Son, and God the Holy Spirit are, and it's not so much about what we do as what They have done, are doing, continue to do, and will do in the future. Everything I am is tied up in the story and plan that God had for me from before the foundations of the world--to be conformed into the likeness of His Son. " For those whom he foreknew he also predestined to be conformed to the image of his Son, in order that he might be the firstborn among many brothers." (Romans 8:29). There's a lot of theology in that verse that I can't totally unpack right now, but you can read my Journal Article on that passage for a bit more about it. It essentially says that God knew me and chose me before He ever created anything with the express purpose (that was our last article) to look like and act like His Son, Jesus, and to be a member of His family (that's our identity--we are children of God, and therefore, we should act like it--our next article). An important part of our identity is that we are eternal beings--because of the death, burial, and resurrection of Jesus, we have eternal life and are citizens of the kingdom many of us call "heaven" (it is called the kingdom of God, the kingdom of heaven, the New Jerusalem, the New Heaven and the New Earth, the kingdom of his marvelous light, and the kingdom of His Son, and a few other phrases) and we are no longer citizens to the kingdom of darkness. Notice the change in citizenship that is part of our change in identity. We once were under the authority of a certain ruler (sin) and now we are under the authority of a different ruler (God). So, if it seems like Christians are as different to you as meeting someone from another country with a different language, culture, politic, and all-around different identity, you'd be quite correct. The Bible tells us that we as Christians are "in the world, but not of the world." We live among people who are, for the most part, not like us. Not only are we citizens of the kingdom of God, but we are told that we are ambassadors of that kingdom--we are to represent the King and His Kingdom, and we are to help others who want to change their citizenship. This is one of the key "identities" of a Christian. We are also called to be "witnesses" (see Mattew 28--the Great Commission) to everything we have seen, heard and experienced about how Jesus has saved us and can save others. We identify with this new identity at the time of baptism (much like how a wedding ring doesn't make you married, but identifies you as being married). At the time of salvation, the Holy Spirit comes upon us and indwells us, and we become the very dwelling place of God--He is literally God with Us (not that we are God, but He is with us everywhere we go, and nothing can separate us from Him or His love for us). We have a new family (not just God the Father and Jesus the Son) made of all our other adopted brothers and sisters that we call "The Church." We are a family that in many ways are closer to each other than those who are related by flesh and blood. We have a unity in that we all have a common faith, and the same Spirit of God indwells all of us, and we have a common inheritance, a common mission here on earth and all the other things that I've already mentioned. Perhaps now you see why the issue of identity is under attack and why the world wants to tell you that you should choose for yourself who you are--even in opposition to natural law and biology sometimes. You see, if God is the one who not only made us, but He is the one who gives us purpose and identity, and He gives us a moral code to live by, and we look forward to being with Him and being one with Him as our destiny--well, that is far different than the kind of life that comes from a worldview where one is on the throne of their heart and tries to answer these questions for themselves (and almost certainly fails in finding adequate answers as we know God has created us to be something more and better than anything we can be apart from Him). This article can only scratch the surface of what it means to have our identity "in Christ." Much of the Bible explains how the people of God are to have a different nature, identity, and behavior than the people of this world who are still in darkness and sin and controlled by "their flesh." That is to say that evil people do evil things because they are evil, but if we have the Spirit of God who is good within us, then we should be the good things that God is and do the good things God does as we let Him work in and through us. This is probably the hardest one to explain to others. It's hard to tell someone what it's like to be married, but they understand what you meant after they get married themselves. It's hard to explain to someone what it's like to be a parent, but there is understanding after the person becomes a parent themselves. Likewise, it is hard for someone outside the family of God to understand how life is better under God's authority than under our own authority (at least, that's who we assume is in control if we don't submit our lives to God--though that's only partly true and mostly false). Which kingdom are you a citizen of? Are you in Adam, or in Christ? When someone looks at you and talks about you, is their first thought that you are a Christian and that it is obvious in everything you say and do and are? (It should be!) Have you experienced regeneration and been "born again"? If all this sounds like something that you want to know more about, please ask me. I rarely include songs with these Faith and Culture blogs, but I love this one and think it cover some of the things that we've talked about in our change in identity (and origins, meaning, morality, and destiny). This is one of the "Big Five" that every worldview needs to answer. The question may be posed as in the title, "Why am I here?" or it may be posed more as in "What is my purpose?" and "How can I find that purpose and meaning?" I'll try to address these questions biblically in this article.
The first answer that I can give you to the reason we are here is that God made man special, "In His image" to be able to be His viceroys here on earth. That is that all power and authority still resides with the LORD, but He made Adam and Eve stewards and caretakers of everything He had created and gave Adam (and Eve) dominion over the plants and animals. But that's not all we learn from the Creation account. We also learn that we are different because God put His breath or His Spirit within in so that we would be eternal creatures who would understand spiritual and moral truths and so that we could have an eternal relationship with him. He gave us a unique ability to speak with Him, to learn about Him, and to obey Him (or disobey Him as we see in Genesis 3). The choice to love and obey Him is key to our relationship with Him and it is that relationship that is such a huge part to our meaning in this world. The Westminster Shorter Catechism puts it this way, "The chief end [purpose] of man to worship God and enjoy Him forever." (References given for this statement are I Corinthians 10: 31, Romans 11:36, and Psalm 73: 25-28). So, God has given men and women a special role in creation to be stewards of all that He made, to have dominion over His creation (to rule over it) and has made us unique in all of creation so that we can love Him, obey Him, and have a relationship with Him. He has created us with inherent value because we are made "In His image" and we are made with a desire to know Him, worship Him, and obey Him--at least, that was the original design. So, what went wrong? Why is it that we feel more like the lyrics of the song (quoting from several passages of Scripture), "I am a flower quickly fading--here today and gone tomorrow. A wave tossed in the ocean. A vapor in the wind." All these things are but momentary in the grand scheme of things. Like the Psalmist David we look at the universe and wonder, "When I look at your heavens, the work of your fingers, the moon and the stars, which you have set in place, what is man that you are mindful of him, and the son of man that you care for him?" (Psalm 8:3-4). David's son Solomon would say that without a relationship with the LORD, the answer to the question of Meaning is "Vanity of vanities, all is vanity!" (There is no purpose--everything is vain and empty without God to give it meaning). "13 The end of the matter; all has been heard. Fear God and keep his commandments, for this is the whole duty of man. 14 For God will bring every deed into judgment, with every secret thing, whether good or evil." (Ecclesiastes 12:13-14). See, the LORD has put it in our hearts that this world is not all that there is--that there is something more than this. He has, "put eternity in our hearts." (Ecclesiastes 3:11). We know that we are to fear the LORD and to obey Him. My answer is bigger than that though. My value and worth are found in my new identity--what God has made me (a new creation). So, perhaps that will be the next major questions that I will tackle. "Who am I?" It is our job to be discerning and to be able to divide truth and error. We know as Christians that we hold truth claims up to the Word of God, but are there other ways that God has given us to discern truth and error since you will not be able to evaluate all truth claims this way?
There are a couple of other ways in which we can evaluate a worldview. The first method is to see if the worldview is internally consistent or inconsistent. That is, does it make truth claims that contradict each other which the worldview claims are both true? This presumes the Laws of Logic that we have already discussed are in place as we are asking if the worldview passes the test of the Law of Non-Contradiction. If it cannot pass this test, then the one holding the worldview must explain how the apparent contradiction is not a contradiction before we proceed. I give a little grace here instead of saying you must outright reject the worldview immediately because there are many that believe that the Bible has these kinds of contradictions in them, and I would prefer they ask about them and give me the chance to explain how the Bible is coherent and does not contradict itself. If I want that from others, then I should be willing to give them the same opportunities. We also want to be careful about any claims that are made which by nature are not falsifiable as truth claims should be able to be held up to scrutiny and tested to be proven true or false for the purposes of the evaluations we are talking about (not everything a person believes will be able to be tested as there are axioms that are at a low level of what people believe that they believe without any proof or evidence because they are necessary for building the foundation of their worldview. We have talked about the issue of axioms in other articles, and they can be held up to the next test). We then need to ask if the truth claims of the worldview comport with reality as we know it. Things that are true should comport with other things that we know to be true. That is that if we know something is straight and level if we measure it against something else that is known to be straight and level. This is especially helpful with axioms and other things that we can't falsify with the first test, but which we know do not comport with reality. For instance, the statement "Man is inherently good" (born good) is not something we can put in a test tube to try to falsify it, but we can nevertheless see that it does not comport with reality as we don't have to teach children to be bad--we have to use discipline to teach them to not be bad and to be good. There is a difference between their innocence and their goodness when they are born. The last test that we can look at is similar to the second but different in that it holds the life of the person making the claims up against the claims they are making. If a person truly believes something, they should live according to that truth. If their lifestyle denies that truth, then perhaps we should believe the way they live and not the words that write or speak. This is the biggest argument against Christians as we say many things on Sunday morning that we don't live in the workplace and marketplace and at home. Many of us live lives that are walking, talking contradictions to the statements of faith that we ascribe to, but that really doesn't invalidate the statement of faith as much as it invalidates us calling ourselves disciples of Christ. I'd be careful about changing my life to comport to a worldview that someone who claims to be a "true believer" was not willing to change their lives to comport with. I encourage you all to test yourselves using these tests. Hold yourself first up to the Word of God (and use it to ask these questions of yourself). Do you say you believe things that are in direct contradiction with the Word of God? Can you truly say that the Bible best explains what you see going on in the world around you? Can you say that you obey the Bible in a way that shows that believe it to be true and others should take what it says seriously? This last one is hard because we are called to live a life of suffering and persecution. How we deal with that will tell everyone much about what we really believe. Jesus said those that would recant and deny Him before people on Earth do not belong to Him and He will deny them before His Father in heaven when the final judgment comes. Let us evaluate ourselves and wisely evaluate the truth claims that others make remembering at all times that Jesus is the Way, the Truth and the Life. All truth must comport with His nature and character because He is Truth personified. This is how the Pledge of Allegiance to the flag of the United States of America ends. But where did that idea come from? It is biblical, but it can only take place through the blood of Jesus. There all men are freed from slavery to sin and all men live free to serve God. We are free to be slaves to Christ.
There is equity and justice for all because all men are equal at the cross. We all stand condemned, and we are all under the death penalty, but it is by the blood of Jesus that our debt can be paid in full, and justice can be served as the wrath that was due to us was poured out on Jesus. We go forth then and declare that we believe that all men are created equal, that Christ died for all mankind, and that God wants everyone to come to salvation--to be set free from the curse of sin and death and experience the peace and blessings that come as a result of knowing Christ and His suffering. For He who knew no sin became sin for us so that we might become the righteousness of Christ. Everyone living in the United States have a safe and happy Independence Day, and even if you live somewhere else in the world, I pray that you know the freedom that comes only by knowing Christ and Him crucified and through the power of His resurrection. I have to admit this was something that I struggled with for a long time, I get questions about it quite a bit, and I will do my best to give a complete answer here to the best of my ability, but I cannot guarantee that my answer will satisfy you. I can only tell you what I know the Bible has to say on this matter.
First, God acts in accordance with His nature and character, and we know His attributes through His actions. So, we know He is God the Creator because He is the Creator of all things. That may sound like circular reasoning to you, but it's not. We don't know that God has particular attributes until He acts on those attributes and then those attributes are memorialized in a name. The same goes for names like Redeemer and Savior that we most closely connect with Jesus in the New Testament, but they belonged to the LORD long before Jesus' birth in the Old Testament. As best as I can tell, God desired to create angels and people that could see His attributes and worship Him for who He is and what He does because that is what pleased Him and glorified Him. He came up with a plan before the creation of the world to redeem a people to Himself (because it is part of His nature and character to be our Redeemer) which assumes that He knew before He created us that we would fall and be in need of redemption. So, why create us, why create us with the ability to choose to sin, and why create the Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil and give us the opportunity to sin? All of these questions are based off of our opinion that it would have been better for us and God if Adam and Eve had never sinned and Jesus never had to die on the cross. But then, how would God display His divine love to us in that while we were still sinners, Christ died for us? How would we know Him as Savior and Redeemer? Remember that God wants us to understand who He is by His actions and worship Him for who He is and what He does. Adam and Eve worshiped the LORD with the limited knowledge they had of Him as Creator, but if they had never sinned and the LORD would never have to save them from anything, how would they ever know Him as the one who saves His people? Hopefully that makes sense. Also, there's the idea that God always had something better than the first creation in mind and while the first creation was always good, the second creation was always going to be better. It's going to be all those things that everyone is asking for--there will be no ability to sin and no opportunity to sin and no memory of sin. We will live in perfect communion with the Father and the Son forever and ever, but it will be better because the Father will be able to give the Kingdom to His Son and there will be more people that God has loved there to enjoy it with Him. Sharing Himself and everything He created with Adam and Eve was wonderful, but the book of Revelation tells us there will be an uncountable multitude of people from every tribe, tongue and nation that will worship Him for all eternity. He will remember what He has done to redeem them, but they will only remember the New Creation. In many ways our question we have asked above is "Why could we have the New Creation" as the "Old Creation" and just skip all the hard and messy stuff in the middle with blood sacrifices and atonement and crucifixion and resurrection? Because it is by all those things that are offensive to use that God chose to be the means for which people to be born again and sanctified and made ready for the New Creation. That's how He wants it to work. I can't tell you why other than it is what pleases Him and brings Him the most glory. That's what I was referring to when I was saying that I don't pretend to see every facet of this, but what I can see is lovely and beautiful. One day, maybe we will know and understand more, but for now, I am content with knowing what I can know and seeing what I can see. This was God's plan from the very beginning, and yet, that didn't make it any easier for God the Father or God the Son to go through any of it. Another question that's often built into this question is one that's a little more personal. If God is Sovreign and elects those that He is going to redeem, then why would He not choose everyone and why would He choose people that would continue to sin against Him and continue to hurt Him and His reputation? That's a question that's just as hard, if not harder than the first, but they are connected thoughts. After Adam and Eve fell, there were no perfect people to save--everyone that was left was one of the "sick" people that need the Great Physician. I can't explain how it is that God goes about making the decision to elect us, but I know that His election is not some illusion like that of a mentalist where we think we are making a choice, but that choice has been made for us. It's also not a trick where we already made the choice, and God in His omniscience looks through history and sees the choice that we were going to make and then writes our names down before we make the choice. Instead, Jesus says that it is like God the Father is throwing a wedding banquet for His Son. Many invitations are sent out, but there is the choice for people to respond to that invitation. Some understand that you don't refuse an invitation to the wedding of the crown prince, but yet that's exactly what some of us do! All the excuses that people made were lame in the parable--as are the lame excuses some of us make. That is not to say though that everyone invited refused, just in the parable we see three people who were invited who made three lame excuses, because that is what was going on in front of Jesus at that moment and He wanted the religious people to be able to find themselves in the parable. There were people however that the Pharisees had imagined would never be invited to such an event--they were "beyond grace" in the eyes of the Pharisees. however, those are exactly the people that end up taking the place of the people that refused the invitation. The Father says that the banquet table will be filled, and He orders His servants to go out into the highways and byways (where the disreputable people would be) and that He compelled them to come in. So, we see there's a mixture of people who responded to an invitation and others who were compelled to come. In both cases, the choice to invite them to compel them was the choice of the banquet host--the Father--and they are all given the same wedding clothes to wear to show that they were invited. We see in the parable that someone shows up without the wedding clothes that act as proof of invitation, and he is challenged on how he got in and is thrown out to the place where there is weeping and gnashing of teeth. So it is that there is only One Way to get into heaven and that is by Jesus. So back to the question at hand, why choose us? Because God wants His banquet table to be filled with people who didn't deserve to be chosen when His Son comes into His Kingdom. It is for His good pleasure and to the praise of His glory to do this thing this way. I can't explain it, but I am glad that it is all about His Son and not about me. If it were about me, I never would have been chosen. So then, why not save everyone? I think that goes back to the idea of the invitations to the wedding that love requires a choice. God loved us enough to invite us and we should love Him enough to immediately RSVP, "Yes!" as if there is no other option. It's not really an invitation if there is no choice to say, "No," however anyone who says "No" to the king in such a situation knows they will incur his wrath--you don't dishonor the king by dishonoring his son by saying you have something more important than the son's wedding. In this situation where the Father and the Son are both Persons of the Godhead, the offense is infinitely more and it would be absolutely right for the Father and the Son to say that anyone who refused the invitation expressed that they did not want to be a part of the Son's Kingdom and they will be put out of the Kingdom of God and their end will be the same as the devil and his rebellious angels. So, the sum of all this is that we may not fully understand the mind of God in all this, but we don't need to understand it to love the result of it--"We love Him because He first loved us." It brings Him pleasure and more glory and there are more people to worship Him for who He is and what He has done. I can see nothing wrong with that. The very fact that we are not worthy speaks to the goodness and greatness of God. When the world sees people like us invited or chosen, they know that they too can be included in God's plan to redeem a people to Himself. Will they accept the invitation, or will they be part of the group of alternates that God compels to come to the wedding banquet? We don't know--the choice is not ours. That's what the Doctrine of Election is all about, and I am thankful that the choice of who is saved is not up to me (though there are times I want to choose some of my friends and family members, but all I can do is pray for them and share the gospel with them). I'll primarily be talking about "sin" in this blog though from a different angle than my other blogs involving that. There are two primary viewpoints out there in other worldviews to try to explain where evil comes from. One is fairly deterministic in origin and uses the field of psychology to say that issues of evil are mostly issues of emotional and mental health disorders caused by bad genes that were passed down from generation to generation. There would be some argument from this camp that we need less prisons and more mental hospitals where the mentally ill can be institutionalized and eventually this worldview offers the opinion that these mentally ill people should be chemically or physically castrated so as to not be able to reproduce and pass on their "bad genes" or they should be euthanized to be removed from the gene pool. There is the idea that some sort of "Superman" can be made by keeping only the "good people" with good genes and eliminating all the "bad people" with "bad genes." In practice though, this doesn't work because all of us sin and do evil things. Even with the Flood that killed all but eight people who seemed to be the only "good" people left on the earth, that didn't solve the problem of evil because each of those eight survivors of the Flood still had a sin nature, so this argument doesn't seem valid and must be rejected.
Another view is that all children are born good, but they are corrupted by bad influences in society (no one usually explains where these bad influences come from, but they might be willing to agree with the first group of people that there are some cases in which certain people are broken from birth--they just wouldn't call that the norm). This second group would like to imagine that therapy and counseling are the answer to everything and that if a person would realize how much their actions are hurting themselves and other people that they would have to stop doing that because they this view says that no one intentionally hurst themselves or others. There are a few problems with this view. First, we don't have to teach newborn children how to do things that are evil. They come out of the womb with a selfish ethic that the ends justify the means. Young children will take what they want and fight others who try to take something they want. If they cannot employ physical tactics yet, they instead resort to screaming and crying and throwing some kind of tantrum until someone gives into them. We don't like to think of this as a sign of the evil nature that lives within them, but it really is. Next the second viewpoint has an issue that if they are correct counseling should work more than it does in cutting down on what we call recidivism for those who commit criminal acts, get institutionalized (usually in jail where there is mandatory counseling) and then after they are "rehabilitated" go back out into the world only to, many times, commit exactly the same crimes again, or maybe even commit worse crimes that they learned about from others while they were in prison. The situation I just described is more the norm than we want to admit, and it is why there are "three strikes" laws in many areas that after committing three felonies, there is a mandatory 25-life sentence for the third "strike." We don't usually see criminals becoming better people after being in prison, we usually see them become better criminals after being in prison. So, this issue too seems to not answer the question of the nature of evil or give an adequate answer to how to deal with it. The Bible tells us both of the nature of evil and the answer to it. In the beginning, God created everything good and perfect, but angels and humans that He created, He created with the freewill to obey Him or rebel against Him. Once an angel rebelled, their destiny was set--there was no plan of salvation for them and the third of the angels that rebelled with Lucifer against the LORD became what we know today as demons. Lucifer is known by several other names like Satan (The Tempter) and the devil. He is pictured in the Bible as both a snake and a dragon, but he is also described as an angel of light and his name literally means "light bringer" or "son of the dawn" (it would seem like his glory was compared to that of the Sun). Once Satan "fell" (was kicked out of heaven because of his sin), he was sent to earth (along with the demons that followed him) and Satan made it his mission to get God's crowning achievement in creation, mankind, to fall with him. If Satan couldn't hurt God directly, he was going to attack him indirectly by hurting the ones God loved. How would Satan do this? Simple, he was going to convince Adam and Eve that God didn't really love them and hadn't been completely honest with them and that His rules were meant to keep them from experiencing something good that He was withholding from them. God had only given Adam and Eve a couple of rules to start off with. They could eat of any seed-bearing plant in the Garden of Eden, but they were not to eat of The Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil that was in the center of the Garden. They day they ate of it they would surely die (literally they would die die or they would doubly-die). They didn't understand the concept of death yet because all they knew was the life that God had given them. Nothing yet had died, but death was not something that God ever wanted them to have to experience--not physical death, and certainly not the spiritual death that is separation from God. However, when Adam and Eve gave into the lust of their eyes, the lust of their flesh, and the boastful pride of life with which they were tempted in the Garden, humanity fell and was separated from God. They became a part of the kingdom of this world that Satan had been given dominion over, and all those who were born to them were born as citizens of the kingdom of this world with a nature that was bent towards rebellion against God. That's something I talked about in are-we-being-judged-for-adams-sin-or-our-own.html, but evil people do evil things because they have evil hearts. That's the short answer to the nature of evil. Each of us naturally has an evil heart and without a miracle we will be inclined towards the "darkness" and not the "light." Jesus even says this in His parable about the tree and its fruit where the "tree" has to do with the nature of the tree and the fruit has to do with the thoughts, words and actions that come as a byproduct of the "nature" of the tree. An apple tree produces apples because it is an apple tree. It does what is natural to it and it produces that fruit. So it is that the works of the flesh are evident for those that are controlled by their "sin nature," Galatians 5:16-23 English Standard Version Keep in Step with the Spirit 16 But I say, walk by the Spirit, and you will not gratify the desires of the flesh. 17 For the desires of the flesh are against the Spirit, and the desires of the Spirit are against the flesh, for these are opposed to each other, to keep you from doing the things you want to do. 18 But if you are led by the Spirit, you are not under the law. 19 Now the works of the flesh are evident: sexual immorality, impurity, sensuality, 20 idolatry, sorcery, enmity, strife, jealousy, fits of anger, rivalries, dissensions, divisions, 21 envy, drunkenness, orgies, and things like these. I warn you, as I warned you before, that those who do such things will not inherit the kingdom of God. 22 But the fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, 23 gentleness, self-control; against such things there is no law. We see here that there are works of the flesh and they are contrasted with the Fruit of the Spirit. This blog is not going to deal with the Spirit-filled and Spirit-controlled life so much other than to say that each man can only have one master and will be mastered by sin or by the Spirit. We can only have one of these natures. Jesus said it this way. Matthew 7:15-20 English Standard Version A Tree and Its Fruit 15 “Beware of false prophets, who come to you in sheep's clothing but inwardly are ravenous wolves. 16 You will recognize them by their fruits. Are grapes gathered from thornbushes, or figs from thistles? 17 So, every healthy tree bears good fruit, but the diseased tree bears bad fruit. 18 A healthy tree cannot bear bad fruit, nor can a diseased tree bear good fruit. 19 Every tree that does not bear good fruit is cut down and thrown into the fire. 20 Thus you will recognize them by their fruits. Matthew 12:33-36 English Standard Version A Tree Is Known by Its Fruit 33 “Either make the tree good and its fruit good, or make the tree bad and its fruit bad, for the tree is known by its fruit. 34 You brood of vipers! How can you speak good, when you are evil? For out of the abundance of the heart the mouth speaks. 35 The good person out of his good treasure brings forth good, and the evil person out of his evil treasure brings forth evil. 36 I tell you, on the day of judgment people will give account for every careless word they speak, Matthew 15:10-20 English Standard Version What Defiles a Person 10 And he called the people to him and said to them, “Hear and understand: 11 it is not what goes into the mouth that defiles a person, but what comes out of the mouth; this defiles a person.” 12 Then the disciples came and said to him, “Do you know that the Pharisees were offended when they heard this saying?” 13 He answered, “Every plant that my heavenly Father has not planted will be rooted up. 14 Let them alone; they are blind guides. And if the blind lead the blind, both will fall into a pit.” 15 But Peter said to him, “Explain the parable to us.” 16 And he said, “Are you also still without understanding? 17 Do you not see that whatever goes into the mouth passes into the stomach and is expelled? 18 But what comes out of the mouth proceeds from the heart, and this defiles a person. 19 For out of the heart come evil thoughts, murder, adultery, sexual immorality, theft, false witness, slander. 20 These are what defile a person. But to eat with unwashed hands does not defile anyone.” Isn't it strange that the very things that Jesus says defile a person and make them unfit for the kingdom of heaven are the very things we are told that we need to accept, tolerate, and now may even be told that we have to celebrate when evil people want to do the things that are consistent with the evil in their hearts? Let's take a look at another passage from 1 Corinthians that says this as well. 1 Corinthians 6:9-11 English Standard Version 9 Or do you not know that the unrighteous will not inherit the kingdom of God? Do not be deceived: neither the sexually immoral, nor idolaters, nor adulterers, nor men who practice homosexuality, 10 nor thieves, nor the greedy, nor drunkards, nor revilers, nor swindlers will inherit the kingdom of God. 11 And such were some of you. But you were washed, you were sanctified, you were justified in the name of the Lord Jesus Christ and by the Spirit of our God. There it is again! There's something about having a new nature that will change us on the inside and the outside (the inside appears to be changed first, which then causes a change in behavior). 1 Corinthians uses words like "washed" and "sanctified" (made holy) and "justified" (declared righteous) to describe what happened and says that it happened in the name of the Lord Jesus Christ and by the Spirit of our God. So it seems that there is some need for a new nature that we as Christians would call the need to be "born again." We see Jesus tell Nicodemus of this need in John 3. John 3:1-15 English Standard Version You Must Be Born Again 3 Now there was a man of the Pharisees named Nicodemus, a ruler of the Jews. 2 This man came to Jesus by night and said to him, “Rabbi, we know that you are a teacher come from God, for no one can do these signs that you do unless God is with him.” 3 Jesus answered him, “Truly, truly, I say to you, unless one is born again he cannot see the kingdom of God.” 4 Nicodemus said to him, “How can a man be born when he is old? Can he enter a second time into his mother's womb and be born?” 5 Jesus answered, “Truly, truly, I say to you, unless one is born of water and the Spirit, he cannot enter the kingdom of God. 6 That which is born of the flesh is flesh, and that which is born of the Spirit is spirit. 7 Do not marvel that I said to you, ‘You must be born again.’ 8 The wind blows where it wishes, and you hear its sound, but you do not know where it comes from or where it goes. So it is with everyone who is born of the Spirit.” 9 Nicodemus said to him, “How can these things be?” 10 Jesus answered him, “Are you the teacher of Israel and yet you do not understand these things? 11 Truly, truly, I say to you, we speak of what we know, and bear witness to what we have seen, but you do not receive our testimony. 12 If I have told you earthly things and you do not believe, how can you believe if I tell you heavenly things? 13 No one has ascended into heaven except he who descended from heaven, the Son of Man. 14 And as Moses lifted up the serpent in the wilderness, so must the Son of Man be lifted up, 15 that whoever believes in him may have eternal life. We see here that even the wise people like Nicodemus were confounded by man's greatest need. How could a man be "born again" and receive a new nature? Surely it was not meant that they were to be physically born again because physical birth is what got them into this broken state in the first place. No, Jesus is talking about needing to be born of the Spirit. Jesus says unless a man is born of water and the Spirit that man cannot enter the kingdom of God (let's save that discussion for another blog as it probably deserves its own), but we see a theme here of "washing" (by water) and "by the Spirit" that we've seen in several verses so far. Then Jesus makes the point that we know someone is born of the Spirit not because we see the Spirit but because we see what the Spirit does (the Fruit of the Spirit that was talked about in Galatians 5) much like we don't see the wind, but we see what the wind does so we know the wind is there. So, it seems that it is possible for men to be born again and their nature to be changed so that they are controlled by the Spirit of God and that the Spirit acts through them and does what is pleasing to God, but that the natural man who is controlled by his flesh will not naturally do the things that the Spriit wants him to do because the flesh and the Spirit are opposed to each other. So, it would seem that "regeneration" or being "born again" is the answer to the nature of evil or in short, the gospel that changes people from the inside out is the answer to the problem of evil in the world today. We can look more into what this means as we study more in these "Faith and Culture" blogs, but I hope you walk away from this one realizing that no one but God alone is good, and only the Spirit of God working through those that have been born again can produce what God would truly call "good works." Also, I would hope that you would see that there are only two possible "kinds" of people. Romans 5 calls them those who are "in Adam" and are controlled by their flesh. Their end is the death that was promised when Adam and Eve sinned, and they are in rebellion against the LORD and will be separated from Him for all eternity. The other kind of person are those who are "in Christ" and have been made "new creations" or "new creatures" in accordance with not only Romans 5, but in this verse from 2 Corinthians. 2 Corinthians 5:17 English Standard Version 17 Therefore, if anyone is in Christ, he is a new creation. The old has passed away; behold, the new has come. I had a conversation with a student this week that I feel was worthy to turn into a Faith and Culture blog about the issue of sin...specifically about why it is fair that the world is being judged today for Adam's sin. I had to explain first that each of us as humans that have free will have now sinned freely and we cannot blame that on Adam. However, what Adam's sin did was that it changed our nature. Where Adam and Eve were made to be in perfect communion with God and loved being in His presence, when sin entered the world, they desired instead to rebel against God and do what they felt was right--trying to decide good and evil for themselves.
Every generation since them has now been born with that same tendency to rebel against God and do what is contrary to His Law and divine nature. They neither desire to know Him nor worship Him, and they definitely don't desire to obey Him. I asked the student if a child had to be taught to lie or taught to tell the truth? The student said that lying comes naturally. I then asked if lying was rebellion against God's Law (sin)? The student agreed it was. We talked about several other examples, but I then made the point that the very first time that any of us (even a child) willfully sinned in any way that they knew was wrong, they now have their own sin that needs to be atoned for and we cannot blame that sin on Adam--it was our own choice at that point and it is our own sins which each of us will be judged by when the books are opened one day (unless Jesus has taken our sin debt upon Himself and paid our debt in full). There is something to be said for God visiting the sins of the fathers on the third and fourth generation because the consequences of sin are long-lasting and multi-generational. There is no such thing as a "personal choice" to sin that doesn't affect everyone else around you in some way. That's why I personally can't buy into the Libertarian philosophy that liberty should mean anarchy where there are no rules and everyone does whatever they want. God's rules are what is best for us personally, for our families and for our society and culture. It is because He loves us that He gives us good rules to follow. It is because we do not love Him that we break His rules and act as if we want to be our gods with a little 'g.' So then what about the fact that Nature and all Creation was corrupted by sin? How is it fair that things that had no capacity to sin before are now broken and not like they were to start off? Are the plants and animals and ground all being judged because of Adam's original sin or our own? The answer is "Yes" to both. Everything in creation "fell" when Adam did because Adam was the federal head of creation. Romans 5 talks about this but everything that was "in Adam" (all of mankind and all of creation) fell when Adam sinned, but "in Christ" all of us can be made new. One day there will be a New Heaven and a New Earth that is no longer corrupted by sin. We will be restored to what it was like in the Garden of Eden only better. This time there will be not just one man and one woman, but men and women from every tribe, tongue, and nation of the earth. All people groups will be represented. We will no longer need to be sexual creatures because the need for reproduction won't exist--there will be no more death and no more aging. In fact, there won't even be any more time. We will no longer even have the sun or the moon to tell us whether it is day or night. We will just always be in the light of His presence forever and ever and it will always be eternal day. There will be no more need to sleep, but we will have good work to do just like Adam and Eve did when the LORD told them they were cultivate and protect the Garden that He entrusted to them. So then the question the student asked about do we strive so much because of sin and one day all that will be erased and we will have strived and fought for nothing, the answer is "No." Those of us who are in Christ will be rewarded for how we live our lives in this life. Whenever we live in a way that brings glory to God and we don't take the glory for ourselves, we will have another reward ("crown") that we can lay at the feet of Jesus. When Christ is presented with His Bride, the Church, He will cause all of them to remember this old life no more--there will be no more crying for the decisions that we should have made or the decisions that others made that we are sad they are not with us. All of that will be wiped away and we will simply be with the Lord forever. At that point, we will be fully known by Him and fully know Him and everything we need to know, we will know. We will almost certainly recognize each other as the disciples were able to recognize Moses and Elijah on the Mount of Transfiguration, but we will also be made to look like Jesus. Our struggles in this life are not for naught because it brings great glory to Jesus that we love Him and those who love Him will suffer as He has suffered. We cannot say we love Him if we are not willing to suffer like Him. We then will have many rewards with which to give him when we get to "heaven," and whether or not we understand the meaning of the rewards at that point we will definitely understand that all the rewards we have received need to be cast down at the feet of Jesus for He is the one worthy of all glory and honor and praise. Then all heaven and earth will join together in worship of Him, just like they were meant to do from the beginning--but sin ruined that. I look forward to that day! |
ABout This SectionThese articles will cover topics about the Christian worldview. They will largely address the questions of Origins, Meaning, Morality, Destiny and Identity, but they may also have more practical applications to our orthodoxy (what we should believe) and our orthopraxy (how we should live out our faith). Nothing is off the table here as if we are Christians we should be Christians in everything we say, do and think. Archives
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