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!

This is a question we ask and get asked almost every election season here in the United States.  Many of the candidates from both sides of the aisle would like you to believe that it is God's will for you to vote for them and that somehow their platform is most closely aligned with what they perceive to be the worldview of the religious group they are trying to curry favor with.  For Christians that means seeing politicians visiting churches and other religious gatherings, coming on Christian talk shows, and sprinkling their speeches with Bible verses to try and make it sounds as if the Bible supports their position.  The purpose of this article is not so much to go there and definitely not to support or endorse any candidate, but to talk more generally about the institution of "Government" that the LORD established in the book of Genesis and how we are responsible to establish government and how those in government actually have delegated authority that ultimately belongs to the LORD.  We should therefore, when possible, look for servants of God to be our government officials and leaders who have the qualifications that God gave to His people.  Let's look at those verses now.


Deuteronomy 16:18-20
English Standard Version
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Justice
18 “You shall appoint judges and officers in all your towns that the Lord your God is giving you, according to your tribes, and they shall judge the people with righteous judgment. 19 You shall not pervert justice. You shall not show partiality, and you shall not accept a bribe, for a bribe blinds the eyes of the wise and subverts the cause of the righteous. 20 Justice, and only justice, you shall follow, that you may live and inherit the land that the Lord your God is giving you.

One branch of government that we have is the Judiciary, which will overlap a bit with my discussion on Law when I get there--Law and Politics intersect because the Legislature passes the Laws and we want those Legislators to be godly men (and women) who make laws consistent with the Law of God.  Then there are is an Executive branch in the United States that executes and enforces the law and policy that is passed by the Legislature.  In many countries the power of the Executive rests in a king or a queen, but the people give this power to the President and his Cabinet here so that they can prosecute crimes.  Then the Judiciary hears the case and listens to the facts of the case and determines not only innocence or guilt, but also what punishment is fair in the situation.  We get the idea of all of these duties of government from the Bible.

While Israel was what was called a Theocracy in the Old Testament from the book of Exodus through the book of Judges, but became a Theocratic Monarchy after this, we do not necessarily need to look to that system to say that is the system of politics that we as a country must adopt--however that ultimately will be the political system of the New Heaven and the New Earth.   Jesus, who is God the Son, will reign from the throne of David and of His kingdom there shall be no end (both in terms of time and space).  He will reign in all places for all times.  It will once again be a theocratic system where God is our king.  We see this in the book of Revelation when Jesus is called "King of Kings and Lord of Lords."  Some of us in world don't like the idea of sovereign like a king or an emperor, but there is nothing wrong with having all the power vested in a chief executive if the person is good and righteous.  The problem is that we know from the book of Romans that there is none righteous, no not even one.  Only God is the Righteous One who is able to be both the Just and the Justifier.  He is the one who not only is Righteous, but can make others to be righteous, and He will always do what is right and just.  The Law of the LORD is also perfect--not just good, but perfect.  Just read Psalm 119 (that will probably be an article all unto itself--how Christians should view the Law of the LORD according to Psalm 119.

So now let's return to our question for today.  Since in a Constitutional Republic with democratic features like the United States we vote to choose our own representatives, how then should we vote?  What principles are important to God that should be important to us.  Let's look at things first that God says that He hates and try to avoid those characteristics in people.


Proverbs 6:16-19
English Standard Version16 There are six things that the Lord hates,
    seven that are an abomination to him:
17 haughty eyes, a lying tongue,
    and hands that shed innocent blood,
18 a heart that devises wicked plans,
    feet that make haste to run to evil,
19 a false witness who breathes out lies,
    and one who sows discord among brothers.
This is by no means an all-inclusive list, but it's a good thing to say that any man that Proverbs would describe as a "fool" or that openly displays these characteristics in their life should be disqualified from public service.  On the flip-side, I think we should be looking for representatives that meet the qualifications of Deuteronomy 16:18-20.  Notice that I'm not using the qualifications for a deacon or elder in the New Testament because, although they are great passages that tell us what God looks for in a leader, the Church is not the government and the government is not the Church.  Too many people, in my opinion try to vote for someone that they would like to have serve as pastor of their church who cannot fulfil the basic duties of a "king" in the Bible to enforce the Law and got war to defend the people (it is this second one that is hard for many pastors as they seek to make peace, not war).  That is not to say that the leader of a country is supposed to be quick to shed blood and be what we might call a warmonger.  Proverbs just told us that those who are quick to shed innocent blood are an abomination to the LORD.  But, we cannot be afraid to fight for what is right in the halls of the Legislature and in the Courts and if necessary on the battlefield.

There are great resources out there like ​https://ivoterguide.com/ that can help Christians choose someone based on their public position statements, voting record and monetary contributions.  It's an imperfect system as many people can try to pretend they are something they are not to get elected, but ultimately they are known by what they do and not just what they say they will do.  I personally look at a few issues like if a candidate is pro-life from conception to natural death in his or her statements and policies.  I also look for someone who calls evil what it is--I don't want a leader who calls evil good and good evil.  I look for a leader who support and defends religious liberty (even for people that believe different things from me that I personally disagree with--I don't, at this time, want a state-sponsored Church.  However, I know ultimately that is what Jesus will bring about in the end).  I look for leaders that refuse to show partiality and won't take a bribe and for those who desire for good to be done to the poor and the oppressed--ultimately it is the job of the Church to take care of the widows and orphans, so I'm not talking about social welfare programs, but I want to see someone who has a heart of compassion for those who are hurting in the world and who encourages others to get involved in being part of the solution--especially when we encourage churches to send relief workers and missionaries around the world to help as we cannot separate the physical healing people need from the spiritual healing that they need.  I look at how they view money and if they understand the concept of biblical stewardship (that's probably another article coming soon), and even how they steward the natural resources given to us by God.  I look for someone who will enforce the laws equally but also who will nominate justices who will be just, fair and equitable in their rulings and decisions.  I don't specifically look for the executive or legislature to do the job of the judiciary or for any branch to do the job of another branch for that matter, but I do want to see righteousness rewarded and wickedness punished (even to the point of capital punishment if necessary)--that is one of the primary jobs of the executive branch according to the Bible.

I don't specifically look for any branch of government to have the role of the Old Testament priest to teach the Law and make sure that the people stay holy (it would be great if our government officials wanted to do this, but that is the job of our pastors and elders and my other brothers and sisters in Christ as they are salt and light in their communities).  Therefore there should be a cooperative effort between the government that is working from the top-down and the Church that is working from the bottom-up to accomplish many of the same goals--to protect the life and liberty of the citizens and to encourage good citizenship which we know happens best when the citizens are transformed by the power of the Holy Spirit to be made into the image of Christ.  You will have more righteousness and less wickedness when the society as a whole is made of people who are Spirit-filled and Christ-like, loving God and desiring to do what is pleasing to Him.  For that reason, our faith and our politics are inseparable and what we do as a gospel-centered ministry will be seen as political in nature because changing the hearts of the people will change what kind of government they desire and the hearts of those who will be elected into those offices.  If you don't like your choices for who to vote for, invest time, talent and treasure into evangelism and discipleship and encourage godly men and women to serve in politics.  You just might get better options in the future.

There are whole ministries dedicated to helping Christians invest their treasure in companies and ministries that have biblical principles or at least are not anti-biblical in their business model and business practices.  I'll let you refer to those recourses for investment strategies, but I want to think more broadly here because God's economy is more about people than it is about money.  He owns the cattle on a thousand hills and gold is something that He paves the streets of the New Heaven and the New Earth with because it has no value to Him.  Precious jewels are something to use as construction materials for the foundation of the city and giant flawless pearls are materials from which to make the gates of the city.  It is true we need to be careful about how we invest our treasure, but it is as important that we are careful about how we invest our time and talent.

If you were to make a budget on how you spend your money, it would say much about your worldview and what is important to you, but the same could be said about if you look at your calendar or day-planner--however you schedule your time.  It has been said by some that if they wanted to know what was important to man, they needed only to look at his appointment book and his checkbook (this was back in the day when people wrote checks for everything).  On top of this, Jesus gave us the parable of the talents (where we get the idea of someone being "talented" or "having no talent").  God gives special giftedness and aptitude so everyone has some giftedness, but He does not give everyone the same gift, nor does He apportion everything in what we might consider to be fair or equitable (pay attention to this if you are falling into a worldview driven by covetousness that tries to pit the "haves" against the "have nots.").  God gifts us uniquely for the works of service that He has prepared for us and expects us to invest our time, talent and treasure to edify the Body (the Church), to be laborers in His harvest, and to bring about a return on that investment.  So, what are you doing with your time talent and treasure?  Is your goal to earn a lot of money and give yourself a nice safety net so that you can comfortably retire? Are you using all your time, talent and treasure to feed your appetites and to live for excitement and pleasure?  Are you spending all of your time, talent and treasure on your ministry (be careful with this because this too can be bad if you ignore the things that God called you to like family).

Yes, Economics is much larger in God's economy than what we normally think of because God's resources are not material like when we think about natural resources, production of manufactured goods, and the logistics of getting resources and goods from the supplier to the consumer.  God's resources can't even be counted on a ledger, but He wants us to participate in His economy which is in the business of taking the gospel to the whole world and making disciples of all nations.  The world tells us that our resources should be used to acquire more power and wealth for ourselves, but God tells us that all those who seek to be "first" in this world will be "last" in the kingdom of heaven, but those who humble themselves to serve everyone else (like Jesus did) will be the greatest in the kingdom of heaven.


Philippians 2:5-11
English Standard Version
​5 Have this mind among yourselves, which is yours in Christ Jesus, 6 who, though he was in the form of God, did not count equality with God a thing to be grasped, 7 but emptied himself, by taking the form of a servant, being born in the likeness of men. 8 And being found in human form, he humbled himself by becoming obedient to the point of death, even death on a cross. 9 Therefore God has highly exalted him and bestowed on him the name that is above every name, 10 so that at the name of Jesus every knee should bow, in heaven and on earth and under the earth, 11 and every tongue confess that Jesus Christ is Lord, to the glory of God the Father.

This topic is one that many churches avoid, but it needs to be had as God is the one who ordained civil government, and the purpose of government can be seen in many places in Scripture.  First the "king" was to be a representative of God to the people in that the king is to know and love the Law of the LORD and obey it.  He was to read the Law and keep it close to him so that at any point in time that he needed to make an important decision, he could reference the Law of the LORD.  He was to seek the advice of the LORD's prophets and to seek mediation from the high priest as needed.  He was to hear the civil disagreements of the people and act as a judge to decide rightly so that righteousness would increase, and wickedness would decrease.  By promoting obedience, he would ensure the LORD's blessings on His people so that they would not battle with disease, famine, or pestilence.  The king also would represent the whole nation before God.  If the king sinned, the whole nation would suffer the consequences.  The king was to make sure that the people obeyed the Law, especially in keeping the Sabbaths and would help lead the people in worship and would lead by example.  He would lead the people into war when the LORD called His people to battle, and he was to destroy every idol and high place where the people would be tempted to worship another god and he was to put to death all those who would practice idolatry, sorcery, witchcraft, divination, homosexuality, bestiality, murder, adultery, fornication, rape or those who would engage in human trafficking (I may have missed some of the crimes punishable by death, but you can read about them in the book of Deuteronomy).

Some things have changed, and some things have not changed.  The "king" is still a representative of the people before a God and a representative of God before the people (even if he doesn't think he is).  God will still hold such a person to account for how they lead the nation, and God will just those who lead people into sin and wickedness.  However, He will bless those who lead those they govern into His paths of righteousness.  So, then we should be looking for leaders who meet the biblical qualifications that God gave His people.  Though there is no nation that can say "The LORD is our King" like Israel did during their time of wandering in the wilderness and during the time of judges (their lives said something different many times), we still can learn much from what God said to His people about choosing a king for themselves (and how the people and the LORD were involved in the process), and what God had to say to the kings and the people through the prophets before sending them to Exile and after they returned.  God even used His prophets to condemn that kings and the nations that were Gentiles, and we can look there for what God expects from every country and "king," because those nations like Assyria, Babylon, and Edom did not have the Law like the kings of Israel did.  We can look to the books of Kings and Chronicles to see which kings of Israel and Judah that the LORD was pleased with and which He was not pleased with.  All of this can help us to make good choices when choosing leaders in our communities, since I think all of you reading this live in a nation where you have the right to vote and participate in elections for your local, state, and national leaders.  It is true that there are other unelected leaders that we don't get to choose, but they are appointed and confirmed by leaders that we do elect, so our vote still influences those choices.

Note that I'm not telling you to vote for anyone in particular or even to vote for a particular party.  If you look for candidates that follow the biblical prescriptions for civil government then you will know who to vote for and who not to vote for.  Let's take a moment to look at some of those requirements now.


Exodus 18:21-22
New International Version
21 But select capable men from all the people—men who fear God, trustworthy men who hate dishonest gain—and appoint them as officials over thousands, hundreds, fifties and tens. 22 Have them serve as judges for the people at all times, but have them bring every difficult case to you; the simple cases they can decide themselves. That will make your load lighter, because they will share it with you.




Deuteronomy 17:8-20
New International Version
Law Courts
8 If cases come before your courts that are too difficult for you to judge—whether bloodshed, lawsuits or assaults—take them to the place the Lord your God will choose. 9 Go to the Levitical priests and to the judge who is in office at that time. Inquire of them and they will give you the verdict. 10 You must act according to the decisions they give you at the place the Lord will choose. Be careful to do everything they instruct you to do. 11 Act according to whatever they teach you and the decisions they give you. Do not turn aside from what they tell you, to the right or to the left. 12 Anyone who shows contempt for the judge or for the priest who stands ministering there to the Lord your God is to be put to death. You must purge the evil from Israel. 13 All the people will hear and be afraid, and will not be contemptuous again.

The King
14 When you enter the land the Lord your God is giving you and have taken possession of it and settled in it, and you say, “Let us set a king over us like all the nations around us,” 15 be sure to appoint over you a king the Lord your God chooses. He must be from among your fellow Israelites. Do not place a foreigner over you, one who is not an Israelite. 16 The king, moreover, must not acquire great numbers of horses for himself or make the people return to Egypt to get more of them, for the Lord has told you, “You are not to go back that way again.” 17 He must not take many wives, or his heart will be led astray. He must not accumulate large amounts of silver and gold.
18 When he takes the throne of his kingdom, he is to write for himself on a scroll a copy of this law, taken from that of the Levitical priests. 19 It is to be with him, and he is to read it all the days of his life so that he may learn to revere the Lord his God and follow carefully all the words of this law and these decrees 20 and not consider himself better than his fellow Israelites and turn from the law to the right or to the left. Then he and his descendants will reign a long time over his kingdom in Israel.




Romans 13:1-7
New International Version
Submission to Governing Authorities
13 Let everyone be subject to the governing authorities, for there is no authority except that which God has established. The authorities that exist have been established by God. 2 Consequently, whoever rebels against the authority is rebelling against what God has instituted, and those who do so will bring judgment on themselves. 3 For rulers hold no terror for those who do right, but for those who do wrong. Do you want to be free from fear of the one in authority? Then do what is right and you will be commended. 4 For the one in authority is God’s servant for your good. But if you do wrong, be afraid, for rulers do not bear the sword for no reason. They are God’s servants, agents of wrath to bring punishment on the wrongdoer. 5 Therefore, it is necessary to submit to the authorities, not only because of possible punishment but also as a matter of conscience.
6 This is also why you pay taxes, for the authorities are God’s servants, who give their full time to governing. 7 Give to everyone what you owe them: If you owe taxes, pay taxes; if revenue, then revenue; if respect, then respect; if honor, then honor.





1 Peter 2:11-17
New International Version
Living Godly Lives in a Pagan Society
11 Dear friends, I urge you, as foreigners and exiles, to abstain from sinful desires, which wage war against your soul. 12 Live such good lives among the pagans that, though they accuse you of doing wrong, they may see your good deeds and glorify God on the day he visits us.
13 Submit yourselves for the Lord’s sake to every human authority: whether to the emperor, as the supreme authority, 14 or to governors, who are sent by him to punish those who do wrong and to commend those who do right. 15 For it is God’s will that by doing good you should silence the ignorant talk of foolish people. 16 Live as free people, but do not use your freedom as a cover-up for evil; live as God’s slaves. 17 Show proper respect to everyone, love the family of believers, fear God, honor the emperor.

There are many other passages that tell us specifically how to choose leaders in the church and qualifications for those who want to be a deacon or elder.  I'll save that for another time.  Today, I simply want to encourage you to seek the counsel of God's word when deciding where you stand on "political" issues (especially when those issues are actually "moral" issues) and what your priorities are when casting your vote for anything from school board members, mayors, county commissioners, governors, congressmen, senators, and even President.  God has called those who would serve in these roles to a special task and with this authority comes responsibility and accountability to the Lord for how they lead.  It's not a job that anyone should enter into for selfish means, nor should anyone take on this role without great thought and care.

God uses all kinds of governments to accomplish His good purposes, and while we know He is sovreign, He has given us the ability to work alongside Him in choosing our leaders so that nations who love the LORD and His Law will choose good leaders that will lead to blessing and those who hate the LORD and His Law will choose wicked leaders that will lead to judgment.  Changing the course of a nation starts within the individual and the home and changing the hearts of the individuals (especially the children we are responsible to raise in the nurture and admonition of the LORD) and only then will we choose leaders who are "a man after God's own heart" like King David was.

I wrote on this same topic a few years ago in this blog the-importance-of-creeds-catechism-and-liturgy-in-the-church.html.  I'd like to focus in on three creeds today (one I already spoke about) that most apologists would look to as creeds that all orthodox Christians (with a small 'o') should hold to.

First, The Apostle's Creed.  My only commentary on this one is that the word "catholic" which a lower-case 'c' here means "one body" as described in the book of 1 Corinthians.  We who are in Christ are all members of one body with one Head who is Christ.  (See Colossians 1:18, Ephesians 5:23, Romans 12:5 and 1 Corinthians 12:12-27).:

I believe in God the Father Almighty, Maker of heaven and earth. And in Jesus Christ his only Son our Lord; who was conceived by the Holy Ghost, born of the Virgin Mary, suffered under Pontius Pilate, was crucified, dead, and buried; he descended into hell; the third day he rose again from the dead; he ascended into heaven, and sitteth on the right hand of God the Father Almighty; from thence he shall come to judge the quick and the dead.
I believe in the Holy Ghost; the holy catholic Church; the communion of saints; the forgiveness of sins; the resurrection of the body; and the life everlasting. Amen.
Second will be the Nicene Creed::

 I believe in one God, the Father Almighty, maker of heaven and earth, and of all things visible and invisible; And in one Lord Jesus Christ, the only begotten Son of God, begotten of his Father before all worlds, God of God, Light of Light, very God of very God, begotten, not made, being of one substance with the Father; by whom all things were made; who for us men and for our salvation came down from heaven, and was incarnate by the Holy Ghost of the Virgin Mary, and was made man; and was crucified also for us under Pontius Pilate; he suffered and was buried; and the third day he rose again according to the Scriptures, and ascended into heaven, and sitteth on the right hand of the Father; and he shall come again, with glory, to judge both the quick and the dead; whose kingdom shall have no end. And I believe in the Holy Ghost the Lord, and Giver of Life, who proceedeth from the Father [and the Son]; who with the Father and the Son together is worshipped and glorified; who spake by the Prophets. And I believe one holy Catholic and Apostolic Church; I acknowledge one baptism for the remission of sins; and I look for the resurrection of the dead, and the life of the world to come. Amen.

The last one for today is The Athanasian Creed:

Whosoever will be saved, before all things it is necessary that he hold the catholic faith. Which faith except every one do keep whole and undefiled; without doubt he shall perish everlastingly. And the catholic faith is this: That we worship one God in Trinity, and Trinity in Unity; Neither confounding the Persons; nor dividing the Essence. For there is one Person of the Father; another of the Son; and another of the Holy Ghost. But the Godhead of the Father, of the Son, and of the Holy Ghost, is all one; the Glory equal, the Majesty coeternal. Such as the Father is; such is the Son; and such is the Holy Ghost. The Father uncreated; the Son uncreated; and the Holy Ghost uncreated. The Father unlimited; the Son unlimited; and the Holy Ghost unlimited. The Father eternal; the Son eternal; and the Holy Ghost eternal. And yet they are not three eternals; but one eternal. As also there are not three uncreated; nor three infinites, but one uncreated; and one infinite. So likewise the Father is Almighty; the Son Almighty; and the Holy Ghost Almighty. And yet they are not three Almighties; but one Almighty. So the Father is God; the Son is God; and the Holy Ghost is God. And yet they are not three Gods; but one God. So likewise the Father is Lord; the Son Lord; and the Holy Ghost Lord. And yet not three Lords; but one Lord. For like as we are compelled by the Christian verity; to acknowledge every Person by himself to be God and Lord; So are we forbidden by the catholic religion; to say, There are three Gods, or three Lords. The Father is made of none; neither created, nor begotten. The Son is of the Father alone; not made, nor created; but begotten. The Holy Ghost is of the Father and of the Son; neither made, nor created, nor begotten; but proceeding. So there is one Father, not three Fathers; one Son, not three Sons; one Holy Ghost, not three Holy Ghosts. And in this Trinity none is before, or after another; none is greater, or less than another. But the whole three Persons are coeternal, and coequal. So that in all things, as aforesaid; the Unity in Trinity, and the Trinity in Unity, is to be worshipped. He therefore that will be saved, let him thus think of the Trinity.   
  
Furthermore, it is necessary to everlasting salvation; that he also believe faithfully the Incarnation of our Lord Jesus Christ. For the right Faith is, that we believe and confess; that our Lord Jesus Christ, the Son of God, is God and Man; God, of the Substance [Essence] of the Father; begotten before the worlds; and Man, of the Substance [Essence] of his Mother, born in the world. Perfect God; and perfect Man, of a reasonable soul and human flesh subsisting. Equal to the Father, as touching his Godhead; and inferior to the Father as touching his Manhood. Who although he is God and Man; yet he is not two, but one Christ. One; not by conversion of the Godhead into flesh; but by assumption of the Manhood into God. One altogether; not by confusion of Substance [Essence]; but by unity of Person. For as the reasonable soul and flesh is one man; so God and Man is one Christ; Who suffered for our salvation; descended into hell; rose again the third day from the dead. He ascended into heaven, he sitteth on the right hand of God the Father Almighty, from whence he will come to judge the living and the dead. At whose coming all men will rise again with their bodies; And shall give account for their own works. And they that have done good shall go into life everlasting; and they that have done evil, into everlasting fire. This is the catholic faith; which except a man believe truly and firmly, he cannot be saved. 

Anyone claiming to be a Christian should at least be willing to affirm the things these creeds affirm and deny the things these creeds deny (for their affirmations and denials are rooted in the Word of God).  It used to be regular practice to recite these creeds on a regular basis, but as part of the seeker-friendly movement, many churches moved away from this as it told people that there was only one way to be saved and there were essential elements to the gospel that could not be left out.  I'm not telling everyone that they need to carry these around in their pockets or memorize them so they can quote them to someone (though neither is a bad idea), but I'd encourage all the readers of this article to personally study them and dig deep into what they affirm and deny.  I'd also encourage you to push for your local congregations to have a statement of faith that affirms what these creeds affirm and deny what these creeds deny.  Don't assume anything in today's culture--put it in writing and put it wherever the public goes to see the position statements that your congregation holds to.  You'll see the "What We Believe" area of this website that links to some position statements of the church I attend, the catechism that we teach to our children, and what we believe a healthy gospel community (a local church) looks like.  None of these creeds and catechisms are as important as the Word of God, and should any creed, confession or catechism be found to be in conflict with what the Word of God clearly affirms or denies, the Word of God is supreme in teaching us all that we need for life and godliness and is our "canon" (our measuring rod) by which we measure everything else.

As always, if you have questions about any if these items, please feel free to contact me using the Contact Us form.

This question used to mostly a debate about origins as I've noted in my other articles before this.  Namely, do we believe in literal, six-day creation of Genesis 1 and 2 and referenced in other places in the Bible like Exodus 20:11, or do we believe in the "molecules to man" and "goo to you" origins narrative.  I've talked about that questions in this blog post:  www.danielwestfall.com/faith-and-culture-biblical-apologetics/the-question-of-origins.

Today, I would like to approach the other aspects of the biblical worldview of Biology--Meaning, Morality, Destiny, and Identity and I want to specifically focus in on the issue of identity.  We are now halfway through a worldwide celebration of "Pride Month" where the question of SOGI (sexual orientation and gender identity) is at the forefront.  The devil is great at trying to redefine terms, so lets' be clear about some things up front.  Words have gender in many languages so that masculine nouns have masculine adjectives that modify them and feminine nouns have feminine adjectives that modify them.  Anyone who has taken any Romance language (languages based off of Latin) knows about this.  I'll leave it to the reader to investigate this more, but this is the concept of gender--masculine and feminine (typically used to classify words and adjectives).

Now to the word "identity."  This is a concept in logic and mathematics.  An identity is an equation where the left hand side of the equation restates the right hand side of the equation in a way that is always true in all circumstances.  It is not a conditional equation, but a tautology and usually they are rules that help us express something complex in a simpler way.  The idea of an identity breaks down if for instance we start trying to redefine the terms and operations within the identity.  The whole concept of an identity is that the rule is unchangeable.  In fact, the Law of Identity is the first Law of Logic (See this article for more information on that topic:  www.danielwestfall.com/faith-and-culture-biblical-apologetics/the-connection-between-math-science-logic-philosophy-and-theology).  We have a real issue then with SOGI if someone's "gender identity" it described as being "gender fluid" meaning it is not grounded in anything other than how they feel at the moment and may be anywhere on a scale from 100% feminine to 100% masculine.  We've gone beyond that though and we now are talking about "identification" (how you choose to identify yourself with pronouns and other qualifiers) to say that a person need not even describe themselves as feeling like a human--they may feel like they are an animal or a tree or any other number of things.  It has gotten to the point where it is almost impossible to have a conversation on the issue because no one can use words that have concrete meaning, and that was part of the objective all along.

I will not be using the word "gender" much in this article because that's not how the Bible talks about this issue.  It instead talks about the concept of sex--male and female.  Not sexual preference or sexual orientation (who you are attracted to and want to couple with--there are specific words for those actions that I'll use when I talk about those actions later).  No, Jesus quoted Genesis 1:27 as authoritative and assumed His audience read and understood it, and I have the same assumption today.


Genesis 1:27
English Standard Version
27 So God created man in his own image,
    in the image of God he created him;
    male and female he created them.

Matthew 19:3-5
English Standard Version
​3 And Pharisees came up to him and tested him by asking, “Is it lawful to divorce one's wife for any cause?” 4 He answered, “Have you not read that he who created them from the beginning made them male and female, 5 and said, ‘Therefore a man shall leave his father and his mother and hold fast to his wife, and the two shall become one flesh’?

The passage in Matthew deals directly with the question of marriage and divorce (another topic that comes up a lot during the month of June), and it gets to the questions of both Meaning and Morality.  Why did God created two and only two sexes?  The idea of biblical complementarianism probably deserves its own article at some point, but let me address the issue by saying that God designed a family unit and the purpose of the family (husband and wife) was to cleave to each other and have such a strong love that it would be as if the two had become one.  This gives us a little picture of how it is possible for there to be one God in three persons.  The only thing on earth that comes close to the love that exists within the Trinity for the other members of the Trinity is the love of a husband and wife for one another, especially when they also both love God.  The marriage is a reflection of the gospel message (more on that later as well, though I've talked about it some before throughout various articles) and the result of this love is something reproductive.  There is the command to Adam and Eve after they are "married" to be fruitful and multiply, to fill the earth and have dominion over it.  The command is given to both of them together as a team--not just to men alone, and not just to women alone, but to men and women working together in the cooperative union of marriage so that they complement each other.  In being obedient to this design we glorify God with our bodies as we are told to do in the book of Romans.

So, what then should we make of SOGI?  We should reject it completely and call it what it is--rebellion against nature and nature's God.  There is Natural Law that is so absolute that it's a category outside of morality.  Natural Law is something that doesn't allow for the concept of "your truth" and "my truth" there is just the truth that an object in freefall must obey the law of gravity--no matter how much you want to claim gravity doesn't exist, you will be subject to its effects.  So it is with biology that any human with a Y chromosome is male and any human without a Y chromosome is female (usually in the combinations of XY and XX, but sometimes genetic anomalies happen that produce an XXY--by definition these are still men because they have a Y chromosome).  It is God's design for men to act like God in the marriage and to model His love for us.  It is the job of the woman in the marriage to model our love for God and we show Him how much we love Him by submitting to His authority.  That is the way it works in the home and that is the way it works in the Church--woman can be deacons, but not elders/pastors because the responsibility of leadership is given to the men.  That is not to say that God doesn't gift women with talents that help them be good leaders in their families, churches, and communities (see the Proverbs 31 woman for instance).  I've met many women blessed with the gift of administration.  However, they use these gifts to complement their husbands at home or their elders at church and not to usurp power from them.

I'll have to leave it here for now and probably come back to this topic later (I'd assume that I'll be prone to write something about what the Bible has to say about our sex and what we should and what our sexual relationships should and shouldn't look like at some point every June as I'm faced with a world that wants to celebrate its rebellion against God in this area).  If you have questions about anything I've written today or anything else on this topic, please use the Contact Us form and I'll try to answer your question from a biblical position.

This is the companion to the other blog I wrote today called "Why We Can Trust the Bible-The Old Testament."  I'll point you back there if you have questions about what is the Old Testament and how we can know that it is reliable.  Here's a link:  http://www.danielwestfall.com/blog/why-we-can-trust-the-bible-the-old-testament?fbclid=IwAR35nI6e3amUT4xy_JN2tU79RBYF1uSVb5ZOwe2DveI91pIfXY7E99CHlxc

With that said, the attacks against the New Testament are usually different than those against the Old Testament and therefore the arguments presented here are also a little different.  There is no doubt historically from contemporary secular sources to the time of Jesus' birth, His miraculous deeds, teaching, His identity as "the Christ," and his trial death and resurrection according to the Scriptures.

"About this time there lived Jesus, a wise man, if indeed one ought to call him a man. For he was one who performed surprising deeds and was a teacher of such people as accept the truth gladly. He won over many Jews and many of the Greeks. He was the Christ. And when, upon the accusation of the principal men among us, Pilate had condemned him to a cross, those who had first come to love him did not cease. He appeared to them spending a third day restored to life, for the prophets of God had foretold these things and a thousand other marvels about him. And the tribe of the Christians, so called after him, has still to this day not disappeared."
Flavius Josephus: Antiquities of the Jews, Book 18, Chapter 3, 3[

So, right out of the gate, I'm going to tell everyone that I'm not going to argue with skeptics that deny history.  Even a Jewish historian said that Jesus was the Christ and while I believe his Jewish faith kept him from coming right out and saying that Jesus was God in the flesh, he came as close as he dared to saying this (which could have been considered blasphemy--a crime punishable by death by the Jewish law).  Notice how he said, "if indeed one ought to call him a man." What else is there other than a man but to assume that Josephus knew that Jesus claimed to be the Son of God (God in the flesh)?

My argument doesn't solely hang on this testimony.  the New Testament also meets the criteria used by most scholars for textual criticism when it comes to reliability of the text and that is numerous copies in close proximity to the date of the original publication.  The closest partial manuscripts of the New Testament are approximately 50 years past when they were supposedly written.  The earliest complete copy of the New Testament is about 225 years old and there are 24, 633 partial or complete manuscripts (hand-written copies) of the New Testament according this video posted by Josh McDowell on July 2, 2012.

So, we have testimony to the historical accuracy of the events told in the gospels and we have more manuscripts than we can shake a stick at to show us that indeed the words we have in front of us today are reliable both in terms of authorship and the words that be believe were originally penned by the author.

I encourage you again at this point to go watch the videos that I posted in the last blog (I'll repost them here) for additional evidences and to do your own research.  If you seriously want to know that God exists, that His Word is true, and that He and His Word can be trusted, simply ask Him and seek him out with sincerity.  He promises that He will answer you--just maybe not in the way that you expect (see the book of Job as an example of this).

Proverbs 8:17 New International Version (NIV)
17 I love those who love me,
    and those who seek me find me.

Jeremiah 29:13 New International Version (NIV)
13 You will seek me and find me when you seek me with all your heart.

Matthew 7:7-8/Luke 11:9-10 New International Version (NIV)
7 “Ask and it will be given to you; seek and you will find; knock and the door will be opened to you. 8 For everyone who asks receives; the one who seeks finds; and to the one who knocks, the door will be opened.

James 1:5-8 New International Version (NIV)
5 If any of you lacks wisdom, you should ask God, who gives generously to all without finding fault, and it will be given to you. 6 But when you ask, you must believe and not doubt, because the one who doubts is like a wave of the sea, blown and tossed by the wind. 7 That person should not expect to receive anything from the Lord. 8 Such a person is double-minded and unstable in all they do.

Take God at His word and ask and seek Him and see if He doesn't follow through.  It is His character and name that are on the line, and He will deliver what He has promised.

​The Bible:  Fact, Fiction or Falacy (playlist):  https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PL16ABDCF6DB496225
Is the Bible Reliable (playlist):  https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLB9B212FAE4985850
Is the Bible True (playlist):  https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PL90208F780F552C51
Is the Bible Accurate (playlist):  https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PL5A9CF63233837F0B
(some videos may appear in more than one playlist)

Let me first say that in this post when I refer to the "Old Testament" I'm referring to the books of Genesis through Malachi in Bible (39 books) or the 24 books of the TNK in the Hebrew Bible, but I'm not referring to any interdepartmental books, nor am I referring to the other books of the apocrypha that claim to be missing pieces of the story.  If I mention the New Testament I'm talking about the books of Matthew through Revelation in the Bible and again am not referring to any of the the other books that may sometimes be argued to be part of the Bible.  The Bible as I'm going to talk about it is 66 books in total, 39 in the Old Testament and 27 in the New Testament.  I thought it important to define these terms before I get started on these blogs.

Many today take the "Old Testament" as being unreliable because it is "old" or some take this to simply mean that it is "outdated" and no longer has anything to teach us.  Neither could be farther from the truth, nor can we we say that we have something to learn from it but it's simply a lot of "Bible stories" that have moral principles to teach us, but have not basis in history or fact, as we know that Jesus himself quoted from the several passages as historical fact on many occasions.

With those precepts in mind, let's talk about the "textual criticism" that so many in higher education fall victim too today.  It sounds like a great idea, but it just doesn't hold water.  First, let's talk about why the intellectuals want to believe in textual criticism.  It denies the work of the Holy Spirit in inspiring men to write and speak on the behalf of God throughout the ages to communicate His message to His people and the surrounding nations while validating their message through miracles and other signs such as prophecy that was fulfilled in their time and prophecy that was yet to be fulfilled.

So, let's first start with something important to me.  The Bible is historically accurate.  I can't expound any one of these points too much, but I encourage you to see how archeologists have used the Bible as a map to where civilizations should be and found them exactly as described where described and it even lead to discoveries such as finding oil in the Middle East (because where there is tar and pitch, there is oil-see Genesis 14:10 and Exodus 2:3 for example).  also more recent things such as the description of how the nation of Babylon fell in a single night and was taken over by the Medes and Persians.  There is so much that was once doubted and we were told that we couldn't believe the Bible because it talked about a people group that no one could prove existed...but that's not how it works.  You believe someone is telling the truth until you can prove that someone is lying to you.  I'm not aware of a single archaeological discovery that contradicts anything about the historical record given in the Old Testament.  Because of it being historically accurate in the parts we can confirm, then that only solidifies that the other historical narrative in the Bible is probably also accurate.  I can't imagine that such care would have been taken to get the facts so right hundreds of years after the supposed events happened or that someone just making up "moral stories" would care so much about getting the names and locations of civilizations so right.  If you were making something up and you knew it, you'd want it to not be falsifiable--you wouldn't add details like the 63 or so Old Testament passages that say "to this day".....and tell people to go look for the altar or monument that was built, or to look for the ruins of a destroyed city, or explain why the name of a city was changed due to a great event that happened there.  Don't all those things sound extremely verifiable?

Let's continue that theme now, but let's move away from the historicity aspect but build upon it.  Now we have to approach topics like prophecy--especially that which has already been fulfilled.  Are we willing to treat it in the same way?  Namely, are willing to put forward the assumption that the telling of the story about when and how these messages were conveyed is also just as accurate as the other historically verifiable items in the text around them?  There would be little reason for me to doubt the veracity of the authors that have already been proven right on so many other issues, also let's be clear about what the punishment was for someone who was a false prophet according to the Old Testament--the punishment was the death penalty as prescribed in Deuteronomy 13.  Certainly there was no reason for them to lie about things that would happen near-term and be found out, nor does it make sense that any such prophet would continue to be included in the Jewish Scriptures if that prophet was proven to be a false prophet who said they heard a message from the LORD and it did not come to pass (see Deuteronomy 18).  We again though can look at the number of things that have already been fulfilled and make a logical leap of faith that the other things that have not happened yet are still going to come to pass because these prophets so far have never lied to us.  We then have many passages in the New Testament that go back and point to the prophecies in the Old Testament to tell us what was fulfilled and how it was fulfilled and even why it was fulfilled in the way that it was.  It would be nearly impossible for any person or group to intentionally try to manipulate the events of history at a certain point to make sure that prophecies were fulfilled to point to a false Christ/Messiah.  Many people try to take the other track to say that means that the prophecies must have been written after their supposed fulfillment, but I'll cover that in the next section.

For years we've been told that there is no way that the Old Testament could have been written concurrently with the events of the time.  We know from certain passages already mentioned that there was a writer that either wrote the oral stories down later or annotated some of the writing later with statements such as "and to this day...."  With that said, there isn't evidence that the scribes manufactured new Scriptures during or after the time of the Exile (the period when the northern 10 tribes were captive to Assyria and all traces of them have been lost historically and when the southern two tribes were sent into captivity to Babylon, which was later taken over by the Medo-Persian empire).  In fact, quite to the contrary, every scrap of Scripture and every scroll that we find that is older than the list known copy has been as close to an exact copy as anyone could expect.  It was the job of the scribes to copy the Word of God word for word.  This was their entire life's duty.  When a scroll was getting to the point where it could no longer be read and could be misread and therefore misinterpreted, a new word-for-word copy was made and the old copy (the original) was burned as were any copies where mistakes were made in the process.  To avoid mistakes the scribes came up with a system of numbering the words and letters to make sure they didn't miss any.  This has given rise to some of the ideas of numerology where there is somehow a "hidden code" and that these numbers themselves hid a deeper meaning, but it seems that they were simply a way to check and make sure that they didn't add anything or leave anything out and got the Word of God exactly right, because they didn't want anyone to have an inferior copy of the Word of God.

Those are the best arguments that I can make for now for the historicity, the fulfilled prophecy, and the word-for-word accuracy of the Old Testament which makes up about 2/3 of the Bible.  The arguments for trusting the Old Testament are somewhat different (though sometimes similar) and will be covered separately.  For anyone who is genuinely interested in the  evidence for some of the statements that I've put forward or simply has more questions about the Bible, let me refer you to a couple of video series from a Christian apologist that I think will give you more than enough evidence.

The Bible:  Fact, Fiction or Falacy (playlist):  https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PL16ABDCF6DB496225
Is the Bible Reliable (playlist):  https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLB9B212FAE4985850
Is the Bible True (playlist):  https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PL90208F780F552C51
Is the Bible Accurate (playlist):  https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PL5A9CF63233837F0B
(some videos may appear in more than one playlist)

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