Repentance, Calvinism and Works

I love Wretched Radio. I never miss an episode. Today, Todd took a stand that requires a response. It is a fundamental issue.

Repentance, Misdefined, Is Works

Todd Friel, Ray Comfort, and John MacArthur conflate repentance and reform. In today's podcast, Todd defended including repentance in the gospel. That is fine until they explain repentance as turning away from or ceasing from sins. Todd's reasoned today that repenting is "not works" because not doing something cannot be works. This is a flawed definition and an illogical excuse.

Before continuing, I want to point out that, in the Witness Wednesday episodes, Todd asserts his definition of repentance only a minority of the time, and when he does, he does not camp on it. 

Repentance versus Reform

John the Baptist clearly distinguished between repentance and the fruits of repentance. He challenged people who claimed to have a change of mind and heart toward sin, yet failed to demonstrate that change in their actions. Our word for fruits of repentance is 'reform'. 

The tight causal relationship between repentance and reform makes it easy to conflate them. However, 'metanoia', the change of mind and heart called repentance, is a cause. Reform is an effect and evidence of repentance's sincerity.

Moreover, the natural man cannot reform without God's enabling work of regeneration. So, while repentance is involved in the process of salvation, and genuine repentance motivates reform, reform cannot be part of that process. 

Restraint, an Element of Works

To justify turning from sin as a requirement of the gospel, Todd quoted Ray's explanation that not doing something cannot be a work. Thus, they admit that they define repentance as including reform.

Just as there are sins of commission and sins of omission, there are works of commission and works of restraint. "Not doing something," therefore, is indeed "works."

Ray and Todd frequently make use of the Ten Commandments. Five, and arguably six, of the ten are Thou-shalt-not's. What is obedience to those commandments if not works of restraint? If obeying the Ten Commandments is "works," then refraining from sins as part of "repentance" is an offering of righteousness to God in exchange for salvation.

Arminians say you must refrain from certain sins to maintain salvation. Calvinists say you must refrain from sins to enter salvation. It's like the extremes of both have wrapped around the back and met each other.

Calvinist Repentance

From a Calvinist's perspective, the natural man's spirit is dead, inanimate, nonfunctional, dead-dead. God must regenerate him, that is, must animate his spirit before he can have faith. Therefore, if God has already saved a man, then all of what God commands of Christians becomes presentable in the gospel. Under Calvinism, faith plus works is a result of salvation, not a cause, so commanding good works or restraint from sin is orthodox... under Calvinism. 

But if commanding works is applicable to the convert, who has already been saved so that he can believe, then why would Todd defend preaching repentance-reform? Why must he deny that his definition of repentance is works? His agreement that it would be heretical to preach works refutes his belief in Calvinism. 

A Moderate Calvinist View

A Moderate Calvinist sees problems with the Calvinist definition of spiritual death. How can a dead spirit be accountable for things it was not even conscious of, aware of, and in power over? How can a dead spirit suffer in Hades? How can a dead spirit go to Hades without regeneration that is reserved for Christians? 

A Moderate Calvinist also sees a contradiction between the Calvinist order of salvation processes and the explicit New Testament teaching that God uses faith as the means through which He works the grace of salvation.  

A Moderate Calvinist would define spiritual death as analogous to physical death, which is separation of the spirit from the body. Spiritual death is separation from God with an accompanying cognitive disability with respect to spiritual things, resulting from bondage to sin. The "dead" spirit, then, has awareness and influence over decisions and can be held accountable for sins. The order of salvation would be a bracing or healing of the cognitive disability and a conviction of sin, followed by receiving the gift of faith, followed by salvation by grace through faith. 

In other words, since spiritually dead means separation from God and not dead-dead, God does not need to regenerate the spirit before granting the gift of faith. Commanding the unsaved to perform works, then, mixes grace with wages and faith with works, leaving the "convert" unconverted. 

Copyright 2021, Richard Wheeler. Permission granted for non-remunerated us, provided credit is properly given. 

Binding Yourself to Salvation with Jello Cords

Imagine a chain binding you to your salvation. 

The Strong Chain

One gospel  has one link in it: God's grace through faith. This link is infinitely stronger than titanium; it will never fail.

The Weakest Possible Chain

Another gospel, commonly found among "Christian" churches, has two links. The first link is, again, God's grace through faith. Some churches in this group primarily preach about the first link, so, whether or not members later become convinced that there's a second link, they are kept secure by that first, titanium link.

The second link, however, is human merit. This link requires completing the earning of salvation by doing good, avoiding certain evils, or perseverance through character and will-power. In other words, the second link is works and wages. 

This other gospel puts the two links together, the titanium link of God's grace with the mercurious link of human merit. If your conversion depended on the first link alone, you are secure. If your "gospel" required both, your religion has already caused you to stumble, for the second link has no power to save nor to keep. It is time to repent of this false gospel of self-righteousness and trust God alone.

Copyright 2021, Richard Wheeler. Permission granted for non-remunerated use, but please don't plagiarize like an SBC president.

Repetitive Sin and Losing Salvation

Answering a question on Quora:

Have I lost my salvation? I keep falling back into the same sin for 6 years deliberately after I repent but after the last time I feel as though I cant be forgiven. and if its not to late how can I get back to the lord and make him happy and proud?

First question: No, you have not lost your salvation. There are two possibilities. Your concern over your sin is good, in either case.

• Jesus spoke about people who received the message of God and fell away because of trouble, persecution, worries, or desires. The message bore no fruit in their lives. He spoke even more about people who heard the message and seemed to understand it intellectually, but never grasped it with humbled, needy hearts. Many of them fooled the world and even did mighty works in Jesus name. The message seemed to bear fruit, in their lives, but it was a false fruit. On Judgment Day, Jesus won’t say, “I knew you and then you fell away so I forgot you.” Jesus will say, “I never knew you.”
  
  In other words, you cannot lose what you never had. But if you decide that this is the case, your concern has placed you on the right path to correcting the situation.
  
  The application for you is to make sure you heard the message not just with your head, not just with your heart, and not a deficient version. Your concern may have brought you to the point where you are ready to correct a bad understanding of the gospel or some deficiency in the way you received it.
  
  
• God’s salvation brings many benefits. If you are saved, “regeneration” means that God has made your dead spirit alive. He has made you one of His sheep and put it in your heart to follow Him and no other. The Father holds you in His hand, the Son also holds you in His hand, and the Spirit indwells you. The Spirit, in fact, closes the lid and seals you with a seal that only Jesus can break. God even predestines you to be transformed into the (figurative) image of Christ, and the judgment of the Second Death, when the lost are cast into the Lake of Fire, has no power over you. He has birthed you into His family and adopted you as an heir with full adult privileges of the family business.
  
  In other words, you cannot “lose” what God has declared done or as good as done.
  
  There are many reasons why God does not give instant victory over sins. For example, He doesn’t want us to grow self-righteous or independent. He wants us to struggle to develop strength or to be able to have the wisdom or empathy to help others. Some other sins are a higher priority as He shapes you for the tasks He has ahead. I cannot read God’s mind, so I cannot tell you which of the hundreds of possibilities apply to you.

Second question: There are two possible reasons you feel as though you cannot be forgiven. You are receiving the Father’s chastisement or you don’t understand forgiveness.

• If you have been saved, then God’s relationship with you changed. Before, He was your Judge, but now, He is your Father. Before, your fate was wrath, but now, you are predestined to reward. In the meantime, we are stuck in these sinful bodies. Our natural hearts are deceitful and incurable until that day. God accepts us as we are, but He loves us too much to leave us that way. He works in us “to will and to do according to His good pleasure.”
  
  God also chastises His children. That feeling of an unforgivable state reflects the interruption in fellowship that happens. This could be a second-level chastisement; you don’t want to find out what the third level is like. There’s even a chastisement to the point of calling us home to heaven for the most severe sins — and yet, the purpose of such extreme measures is preserving the soul.
  
  God presents us with a carrot and a stick. The carrot, the blessings of a restored relationship with God, and the stick, the knowledge that returning to sins will have increasingly severe consequences, should give you something to meditate on and to motivate you.
  
  
• Judicially, Jesus bore the sentence for our sins 1,967 years ago. All of our sins were “future” to Him. God does not forgive our sins just up to that point of our conversion or confession. All the sins of God’s children — past, present, and future — were nailed to the cross.
  
  Jesus Himself commanded the disciples to forgive a repentant brother an unlimited number of times; and Jesus would not issue such a command if the God did not do the same. Whether God already forgave, or God forgives every time does not matter. The result is the same.
  
  Parentally, God does not condemn His children, although He chastises them. Sin does break fellowship with God. It also alienates the Holy Spirit, depriving us of His comfort and power. But what Good Father would not receive a repentant child with open arms?
  
  So the weakness here is failing to trust that God, as Judge, has already forgiven; and as Father has already received you. The problem may be that you are usurping God’s parental privilege and chastising yourself.

Our feelings are not the source of our faith. The scriptures are. It’s tempting to give in to feelings, but we must understand first and then decide to act accordingly. The mind is powerful, and we can control our feelings better than we think.

Third question: You can can “get back to the lord and make him happy and proud” with three steps.

• Make sure you’ve understood the gospel. Technically, this might not be “getting back” to the Lord; it might be getting to Him for the first time.
  
  You feared having lost your salvation. That means that you believed that your salvation was conditional or incomplete. You may have believed that God saves, but salvation ultimately depends on ceremonies (such as baptism) or on your behaviors. The gospel you believe is like a chain with two links. One link represents God’s work, and the other represents your righteousness. Guess which link breaks every time? The biblical gospel has only one link in its chain.
  
  Scroll up to that paragraph that starts out, God’s salvation brings many benefits. Now read each benefit and explain how you can undo that benefit in order to lose your salvation. For example, are you stronger than the Holy Spirit who seals you? Predestination means that God will make something happen. Are you stronger than God? Moreover, if God has forgiven your sins by washing them away and casting them as far away as East is from West, can you filter your sins out of the blood or fetch them back from infinity? If God has erased your sins from the Books of Works, can you write them back in?
  
  Other common misunderstandings regards the meaning of repentance. Many churches ignore it. “Just ask Jesus into your heart,” they say. “Jesus wants to be your friend and make life wonderful for you.” But salvation starts with forgiveness of sins, and conversion starts with an awareness, not that there’s a hole in your life, but that our sins have condemned us.
  
  The other extreme about repentance requires cleaning up our lives in order to be saved. This is tied to the error of thinking you can lose salvation. Trying to earn the gift insults the Giver. Repentance is an attitude, not actions. It means seeing our sins the way God sees them. It does not include reforming yourself; and it cannot, because we cannot achieve the degree of righteousness that God would require. In fact, making reform a requirement for salvation is a form of self-righteousness, one of the sins we must repent from!
  
  Salvation does not result from reform; reform results from salvation. It is not a test for salvation; it tests whether salvation is genuine. Reform gives evidence of salvation; it is a product of salvation; it does not cause it.
  
  
• Assuming you had salvation, then, if you fear having lost it, then you are not trusting in God’s forgiveness. You are fearing that God has changed from Father back into Judge. This is an area where you can please God by expanding your trust in Him.
  
  
• Trust Him to keep you saved.
• Trust that He has already forgiven all your sins.
• Trust that God is now your Father instead of your Judge.
• Trust that your Father will never disown you.
• Thank Jesus, Son of God, for bearing your punishment.
• Thank your Father for His chastisement.
• Thank Him for the promise that one day, He will complete your transformation and free you from sin.
  
  
• Don’t stop repenting. Jesus commanded disciples to forgive every time a brother came in repentance. Trust that what God commands of us, He does.
  
  Bear this in mind: You are focused on one sin. If you think this sin is the only one, you have a problem of self-righteousness. Ironic, isn’t it? We can feel so guilty about one sin that we forget all the other sins we commit. We all commit so many sins, we don’t even recognize all of them. What makes this one sin so special that it costs your salvation while all the others don’t?
  
  Don’t get me wrong. Some sins are more detestable, and different sins cause different levels of damage or chastisement. But sin is sin, and the sacrifice of infinite God the Son was sufficient to cleanse us from any guilt.

I’ll conclude with some practical hints. Make sure you understand the gospel. You can only “get saved” once, but you can make sure of it as many times as you need. Copy Romans 3:28, Ephesians 2:8–9, Titus 3:5, and Romans 8:38–39 onto 3x5 note cards; then read and re-read them until you can recite them from memory. Repent from not trusting God. Increase your trust and make it a habit to thank God for securing you in His love — and even thank Him for His chastisement.

Copyright 2020, Richard Wheeler. Permission granted for non-remunerated use, and please give credit where credit is due.

Born Again, and Proud of It?

From a question on Quora:

Is it a sin to be proud of yourself and others about being "Born Again"?

Yes, it is a sin to be proud of yourself and others for being born again. Pride indicates that you credit yourself with accomplishing something or having some attribute that makes you better than others.

Now, be careful about saying that others are proud of themselves. They could be boasting of what God has done to make conversion more palatable or attractive to those who have not been born again. The apostle Paul boasted about how gentiles had been turning to God in order to make Jews want what God was doing for non-Jews. Or the intent could be to encourage shy people to share the faith. It’s easy to misread others’ motives, and we should always assume the best about people. 

To be born again, you must understand that you are no better than anybody else. In fact, you are under the same judgment as everybody else because “all have sinned and come short of the glory of God.” There is nothing in your nature that makes you superior to others in God’s eyes. 

No good action you have done can make up for the bad things you have done because we already owe those good actions to our Creator. “My good outweighs my bad” is like saying “I’ll pay June’s rent with what I failed to pay in May;” you still owe May’s rent. 

Being born again is a gift from God. All we can contribute is getting our pride and self-righteous attempts at self-justification out of the way, and in despair, submitting to His offer of redemption and mercy, trusting God 100% and ourselves 0%. 

Did you give spiritual birth to yourself? There is no pride in being born again. God the Son experienced the darkness of separation from the Father and experienced torture and death on the Cross. God gave you conviction of sins, enlightenment of the understanding of the gospel, and faith to trust in Him. God regenerates the soul, endows and seals with the Holy Spirit. God forgives, credits you with Christ’s payment, and credits you with Christ’s righteousness. God adds you to the universal church and predestines you to the resurrection, the transformation of your body, and everlasting life in His glorious presence. Just what do you think you contributed to all of that? 

There is relief over having escaped judgment. There is rejoicing over receiving God’s undeserved favor and the blessings that come with redemption. There is gratitude and a determination to demonstrate that gratitude by reforming, that is, turning away from former sins and learning to do those things that are loving and right. There is a desire to develop knowledge of God, relationship with God, and relationship with His other children. There is concern about those who have not experienced redemption. 

But there is no pride in yourself. Pride in yourself could be just a sign of immaturity. But it could also be a sign that you don’t understand the gospel. Study the scriptures, especially the epistles. Learn. Examine your life. Be certain.

If you are proud, be proud of God. Rejoice in the dignity of being His child and all that being born again entails, but give the glory to the God who did it all.

Copyright 2020, Richard Wheeler. Posting this on Quora probably put it in the public domain, and I don't mind its use by individuals or for non-monetary purposes. However, please respect intellectual property and give credit where credit is due.

Hebrews 6:6 -- Not About OSAS

Does Hebrews 6:4-8 mean that a person cannot come back to God and be saved if they once were with God and then fell away from God?

The simple answer is that the passage is not about salvation. Verses 4–8 describe the first century Jewish nation, not individual Christians.

(For simplicity of language, I’m going to use the Jewish author’s term “Jews” to refer to the first-century establishment Hebrews in Judea. It’s a lot easier to type, I do not intend any insult to “Jews” of today, and I assume the reader is intelligent and flexible enough to accept that.)

Two camps within Christianity have argued for centuries over the meaning of then have fallen away. One side (called Arminians, after Jacob Arminius) say that it means Christians can fall away and lose their salvation. The other side (Calvinists, after John Calvin) claim that the Arminian interpretation would contradict other less ambiguous statements in the Bible.

The New American Standard Bible translation is the most consistently accurate word-for-word translation, so I use that here. Here is the passage:

• For in the case of those who have once been enlightened and have tasted of the heavenly gift and have been made partakers of the Holy Spirit, and have tasted the good word of God and the powers of the age to come, and then have fallen away, it is impossible to renew them again to repentance, since they again crucify to themselves the Son of God and put Him to open shame.

In the Greek, the structure of verses 4–6 is:

• For it is impossible, those who (identifying phrases), to renew them again to repentance, since they again crucify, etc.

The meaning is ambiguous because the identifying phases can be interpreted to mean either Christians or the Jews. The following is a literal translation of the Greek identifying phrases without the adjustments needed to make the sentence fit together in English.

• those who, having once been enlightened
• having tasted of the heavenly gift
• having been made partakers of the Holy Spirit
• having tasted the good word of God
• having tasted... the powers of the age to come
• and having fallen away

Arminians interpret having fallen away to mean that a Christian can fall away. This is based on the King James Version’s mistaken translation, if they shall fall away. If and shall fall makes the phrase conditional and future.

But that interpretation is incorrect because it derives from an incorrect translation. If does not exist in the Greek text, and the verb to fall has the same past tense (called aorist) that all the other verbs have. Having fallen is not about a potential action that might happen in the future. It is about an actual action that had already happened at the time the author was writing.

The phrase does not describe hypothetical Christian individuals in the future. It describes an action that the Jewish establishment had already performed.

If you remove the identifying phrases, the sentence reads thus:

• For it is impossible to renew them again to repentance, seeing that they crucify to themselves the Son of God and put Him to open shame

If you apply these phrases to Christians, it does not make much sense. Why can’t a straying Christian be restored? How would restoring a repentant Christian crucify Christ afresh and put Him to shame? If restoring a “fallen” Christian re-crucifies Christ, then isn’t Christ re-crucified every time a sinner repents?

In contrast, it becomes quite simple if applied to the Jewish establishment. If you outline Hebews, you will notice that it's all about contrasting the Jewish temple system against the superior system of Christ's gospel and church. Before Christ’s sacrifice, the temple system’s daily sacrifices pointed forward to redemption through His sacrifice. Afterwards, continuing the sacrifices implied that Christ’s sacrifice had not happened, or if it had happened, it was insufficient. (Roman Catholicism’s mass has similar problems.) This was analogous to hanging somebody in effigy. It was an insult.

Also note that the sentence does not say, if one renews them again to repentance, they will crucify to themselves the Son of God…. The meaning is, it is impossible because they crucify…. The temple sacrifices rejected Christ’s coming and sacrifice. The leaders had already been called to repentance and had rebuffed that call.

Hebrews 6:4-6 is ambiguous enough for a careless reading to lead to several possible interpretation. However, it is far more likely that the fallen refers to the Jewish system that rejected Christ, and the evidence that it is impossible to renew the Jews to repentance was that they insulted the person and work of Christ. If you continue on to verse 8, you will see a veiled threat to the Jews that their system was about to undergo God’s judgment.

This dovetails with what we know from history, namely, that God allowed waves of Roman armies to destroy Jerusalem and Judea starting in 67 AD. This was prophesied hundreds of years before (for instance, by Joel) and later by Jesus. So Hebrews 6:6–8 fits into a much larger picture.

Let's not stop at verse 8. Verses 9–12 contrast with the preceding verses. Whereas verses 4–8 describe people who were never saved, verses 9–12 describe people who have been saved.

There are “things” that accompany salvation such as love and ministry (verses 9–10). It does not say that love and ministry produce salvation, but rather, they are found in the person who already possesses salvation. Diligence in producing evidence of salvation produces not salvation, but assurance (verse 11).

Also note a contrast between verses 9 and 12. The beginning of the paragraph treats salvation as a present condition of the Christian whereas the ending of the paragraph treats inheritance, that is, reward, as something that comes at the end of a faithful, persevering life.

God saves through faith alone, but faith plus salvation results in fruits of the Spirit such as love, good works such as ministering to the needs of the church, and perseverance through doubts, temptations, and trials. Those results of salvation produce assurance and result in rewards. Be careful when people try to turn the results or evidences of salvation into causes of salvation.

Regeneration or Faith First?

Addressing one aspect of God's sovereignty, Hyper Calvinists claim that God regenerates a person's spirit. As an extreme application, you don't have to repent from dead works and put faith in Christ's gift of redemption to be saved; if you believe, it's because you've already been saved.

The reasoning goes that a man does not give birth to himself (John 3:3-8) and that people dead in trespasses and sins (Ephesians 2:1) cannot choose to believe the gospel (1 Corinthians 2:14).

God's act of regenerating is part of the process of salvation. God must regenerate

1. before faith OR
2. simultaneously with faith OR
3. subsequent to faith

If either (1) or (2) is true, then God cannot save through faith. This contradicts Ephesians 2:8.

For by grace you have been saved through faith....

Therefore, (3) must be true. Regeneration must follow faith.

The argument that dead men cannot have faith depends on "dead" meaning "devoid of animation." If that definition were true, then the "dead" in hell could not perceive torment. "Dead" must have a different meaning.

Namely, as physical death is separation from the body, spiritual death is a separation from God that includes disability with respect to righteousness. This definition of "death" allows that God can partially heal spiritual disability and give faith to the "dead" before regeneration.

Thus, God can give faith, then save (regenerate) through faith; and Ephesians 2:8-9 is not violated. 

Calvinism Exaggerates Meaning of Spiritual Death

Defining spiritual death

Just as the Arminian idea of Free Will is an exaggeration, the Calvinist definition of spiritual death is, too. Here’s what I derive about it from Scripture: 

• The lost are dead to God, as when the prodigal’s father declared his wandering son dead [to himself]. (Luke 15:24) Technically, “dead” is a metaphor. It uses a physical condition to describe a relationship.  
• The lost are incapable of receiving spiritual truth (1 Corinthians 2:14) because Satan has blinded them. (2 Corinthians 4:4). This speaks to loss of ability, not cessation of function.
• We might say that dead men do not see, but we do not say that they are blind. Only the living can be blind. (ibid.) Again, “blindness” describes disability without cessation of animation.
• If a person’s spirit is enslaved by sin, it cannot be non-functional. (ibid.) A spirit must be functional in order to lust and then obey that lust. 
• The spirits of the dead are conscious in hell, so “the spiritually dead” must not mean “non-functioning spirits.” Non-functioning spirits could not attempt to justify themselves, weep, gnash teeth in rage, or be tormented. (Luke 16:23, and any passage that describes the judgment where the “[spiritually] dead” stand before God) 
• The Second Death does not mean a cessation of function. (Revelation 14:11)

This leads one to conclude that “spiritual death” describes the condition of an animated spirit that is addicted to sin, disabled with respect to spiritual truth and righteousness, estranged from God, and under sentence to the Second Death. This places me between Arminian unqualified free will and the Calvinist idea that regeneration precedes faith, because it implies that the Spirit can temporarily or partially reverse bondage and blindness without having regenerated the person. 

Defeating spiritual death

The Spirit uses three ingredients to bring about the action of placing faith:

• convicting of sin
• enlightening the understanding
• bestowing faith

These are initial gifts that free a person from spiritual blindness sufficiently to consent to what the Spirit is doing. This is not regeneration, but it leads to it. Regeneration is the bestowal of permanent gifts including a new heart, freedom from sin’s enslavement, reconciliation with God, and many polysyllabic blessings. 

This is not God “forcing” conversion. The Spirit convicts the conscience of sin through enlightening the mind so that the preaching of the Law brings guilt and fear of condemnation. This frees one to turn away from various forms of false belief — false religion, self-righteousness, rationalization of sins — which we call repentance. (Note: “Fruits worthy of repentance” are distinct from repentance itself.) The Spirit also bestows understanding of and belief in the gospel. This frees one to trust Christ. 

Rather than God “forcing” us to convert, the Spirit, in three areas, frees us to respond to the irresistible beauty of God’s offer. Being freed (*), we respond in repentance and faith, like a moth drawn to a flame or a baby drawn to the mother’s breast. And when we consent, God regenerates us, completing the process. 

Consenting (which might take the form of asking through prayer) is not a work. Rather, it is a cessation from work. Many people fold the putting away of sin into repentance, that that turns repentance into working for the gift of salvation -- which is a contradiction in terms! Repentance is a change of mind that, together with regeneration, results in putting away sin. 

Part of the idea here is that a dead man cannot put away sin. He is, after all, enslaved by it. Earning salvation through either good works or through giving up sinful actions might be the very things he needs to repent from! The actions that give proof of the change of mind can only come after regeneration. 

(* Perhaps the Arminian would be more comfortable if I said, “having had our free will further freed.”) 

Copyright 2019, Richard Wheeler: Permission granted for personal use, but please give credit where credit is due.

Christ's Ransom, Bribe, Substitution, or (Irrelevant)?

For over a thousand years, Christians believed that Christ’s sacrifice was a ransom paid to the devil. Much of Christian doctrine has been developed in response to new ideas. This idea did not become an issue, so nobody studied it in depth for a long time.

The word ransom does appear once in the New Testament (Mark 10:45), and Satan is said to be the god of this world (2 Corinthians 4:4), but that’s not enough to support the theory. The theory was discredited by Anselm of Canterbury in the twelfth century. Anselm argued that instead, the sacrifice was a gift from God the Son to God the Father that restored God’s honor, which had been insulted by the Fall. In turn, God would simply forgive the sins of Jesus’ followers.

Anselm’s explanation fit the scriptural evidence better than the ransom-to-the-devil theory, but the Protestant Reformers, having been freed from Roman Catholic group-think, modeled scriptural evidence even better. They pointed out that Anselm’s theory created a violation of God’s Justice.

The current theory, held by most Christians, is that God could not simply forgive sins without violating one of His major attributes, Justice. Justice, not God’s ego, had to be satisfied. Therefore, God the Son, like a big brother, stepped in to bear our punishment (2 Corinthians 5:21). The gift of justification is sufficient for all and available to all, but only those who fully recognize their need for the gift and submit to God's free bestowal of His grace receive it. 

• (Tangents: 
• (Submit to God's free bestowal means accepting the gift as a free gift. This excludes thinking that we deserve the gift due to parentage, due to our own efforts such as good deeds (that are already owed to God) or participation in ceremonies, by the efforts of others (such as parents and priests baptizing us or saying prayers for us), or by our own perseverance.
• (Hyper Calvinism disagrees about the order of events in conversion. It claims that the gift is sufficient only for those God chose, and that people do not need to actively receive redemption because God takes the initiative in applying it to His chosen. Afterward, they submit because they have received redemption and enlightenment, not in order to receive it.)

Jesus was uniquely qualified to die on behalf of others.

• Being fully human, He could represent man.
• Being fully God, He could live a sinless life and had no sins of His own for which to be punished.
• Being infinite God, the value of His death was sufficient to pay for the sins of all humans.
• Being fully God, He could survive the punishment.

Unfortunately, we see a massive departure from basing theology on biblical evidence. Theologians who are more Marxist than Christian introduced the idea that Christ’s sacrifice was an example of love and not an act of redemption. Ideas like sin, guilt, sacrifice, and repentance offend their advanced, civilized sensibilities — not to mention their egos. 

That idea shows up in the teaching of many “New Evangelical” and mainline churches. They want to be "current" and "relevant," so they avoid offending people with messages about sin and Jesus's blood. The message focuses instead on how a relationship with God makes life better, safer, healthier, and especially, more prosperous. In this gospel, you don’t need God because your guilt would defile heaven and you could not bear to be in God's fiery presence; you need God because He wants to be your friend and provider.

Some call this recent message “sloppy agape,” wherein agape (ah-GAH-pee) is the Greek word for the highest level of love. In stead of obeying scripture's command to balance truth and judgment against love, they focus on love alone. Whereas the message of redemption portrays Christ's sacrifice as the elixir that cures sin's deadly disease, sloppy agape delivers a mere energy drink.

So we’ve gone from redemption being a ransom to the devil, to the sacrifice being a bribe to God, to a substitution for us in our punishment... and if we don’t correct the trend, to irrelevance.

Copyright 2019, Richard Wheeler. Permission granted for personal and non-compensated use, but please give credit where credit is due.

The Heresy of Including Reform in Repentance

The Heresy of Including Reform in Repentance

Like John MacArthur, despite clearly defining grace as the means of salvation and faith as the channel of grace, Todd Friel occasionally crosses the line into salvation by works.

I highly recommend listening to Wretched Radio. God does call on His children to reform their lives. Too many churches fail to call for reform, and communicating the gospel should describe the cost of obeying the gospel. Becoming a Christian does not mean God will heal all your relationships or make your life easy; and Eternal Security does not mean you can ignore your new life in Christ and do whatever you want without chastisement.

Apostate Christian churches have mis-defined repentance in both directions. Historically, churches, dominated by Roman Catholicism, have over-defined repentance by adding reform to it. In our times, New Evangelical churches tend to under-define it or omit it altogether. Many "Reformed" Christians over-emphasize repentance as an over-reaction to the New Evangelical watering down of the gospel. The mis-definitions of repentance makes it difficult to accurately differentiate between the call for non-Christians to repent and the call for God's children to reform.

While we should, therefore, practice grace when an earnest brother occasionally blurs the line, we should also stand for a correct definition of the gospel and point out failures to do so.

Friel crossed the line on Wretched Radio's "Witness Wednesday" episode for 19 June 2019. The conversation begins at 14:50. https://www.wretched.org/06-19-2019/

Friel crossed the line into a gospel of works while explaining the gospel to a young Roman Catholic woman, saying in his conclusion:

Friel: [W]hat do you need do to go to heaven? What would your answer be? 

Woman: Live for Jesus and for God.  

Friel: Yeah, that's right, to repent, and put your trust in Him. To repent, to ask for forgiveness, forsake your sins and put your trust in Jesus Christ. And then you inherit eternal life.

(Note that the woman's answer was about works, and while supplying missing elements, Friel reinforced her error.)

"Forsake your sins" is ambiguous by itself, but a minute before, Friel had described repentance and faith thus:

[Y]ou repent, you recognize that you've sinned against God, you confess your sins to him, then you forsake them instead of living for yourself, you start living for Him, and you put your trust in Jesus Christ as if your life depended on it because frankly it does.

Just as there are sins of omission and sins of commission, there are good works of restraint and good works of commission. Forsaking sins is obeying the Don'ts of the commandments. Living for God is the Do's of the commandments.

What Friel and people like John MacArthur are saying is, "Do good works and then put trust in Christ." They do not say it all the time, but they say it often enough that they need to be called out on it. Making good works a requirement for salvation prevents salvation.

Whether one reforms by obeying God's covenant with Israel or by obeying the Law of Love is irrelevant. In the context of entering into salvation, "works" includes any attempt to be righteous enough to please God. 

The rest of what Friel says is, more or less, consistent with the gospel. It is consistent because we must recognize our sin and deserved condemnation in order to approach God. It is inconsistent because the emphasis is entirely on moral sin; it ignores that "sin" includes holding wrong beliefs.

There are sins we must forsake. For example:

• Worship of false gods
• Rejecting God's standards of sin and righteousness
• Rationalizing our sins 
• Believing we can be righteous enough to be accepted by God
• Believing God will forgive us without a price being paid
• Adding anything to grace and faith -- including reform

These are all matters of heart and mind, not of moral actions. For example, it does no good to give up adultery if you continue to worship the Unitarian god of Oneness Pentecostals or to serve statues and pray to Mary. With time, the fruits of repentance and of God reforming you from within follow. But actions are not included as requirements for salvation.

God sees the sincerity of the heart and the mind. He does not have to wait to see your actions. When you repent (mind and heart) and put faith in God for redemption, God saves you in that instant.

• Repentances does not include its result, reform. 
• Reforming yourself does not cause salvation. 
• Salvation enables repentance to cause reform.

In fact, reforming yourself to achieve salvation blocks salvation because you are attempting to make yourself presentable to God instead of relying on Christ to do that for you.

Preachers like Friel and MacArthur confuse many believers. When they preach salvation through faith alone, and then require works before faith, they contradict themselves and bring heresy into their gospel.


Copyright 2019, Richard Wheeler. Permission granted for personal or non-profit use. Please give credit where credit is due.

God's Omniscience and Our Free Will

I want to hike a 28-mile route from my home to a nearby mountain and back in one day, but I’m out of shape and lack the inclination to faithfully train for it. Although my will is free to choose the attempt, I lack the ability. If I cannot do what I choose, do I really have free will?

My neighbor became psychologically and physically addicted to pain medication. Without intervention and medical treatment, he was unable to overcome his addiction. With respect to turning his back on opioids, my neighbor had no free will. His will was limited by his addiction.

Free Will = Ability to Choose + Ability to Perform

People who ask about free will usually envision only the extremes: Either we have completely free will, or we have predestination instead of free will. That is a false choice. A middle ground exists in which our abilities, inclinations, environments, and third parties limit “free will.” The philosophers probably have a name for it, but I’m going to call it bounded will.

Free Will Has Limits

Freedom is never absolute.

The Bible teaches throughout that we deviate from God’s standard. It documents sins of even the greatest characters. As a young man, Moses murdered a slave driver and had to flee Egypt. Later, he disobeyed God's instructions on how to strike a rock, and lost his privilege of entering the Promised Land. As Romans 3:10 says, There is none righteous, no, not one.

Our universal addiction to deviating from God's standard of perfection limits our freedom. As Jesus said, Truly, truly, I say to you, everyone who practices sin is a slave to sin (John 3:34). The Old Testament "Law" starts with the Ten Commandments and expands into hundreds of subpoints. As with fractals, the closer you look, the more details you see.

For example, when you view a person’s life as a whole, the law against adultery becomes a law against sex before marriage. When you extend the law beyond the physical dimensions, the law prohibits lust. Jesus said that if you so much as look at someone lustfully, you have already committed adultery in your heart (Matthew 5:28). And as people like to point out, God looks on the heart (Proverbs 21:2).

When you examine the Thou shalts and Thou shalt nots, in the larger context, you discover that they’re not about helping us establish our own righteousness, but about teaching a humility that turns us toward receiving redemption.

The apostle Paul wrote that God gave the Law to prevent self-righteous attitudes. The Law does not tell us how to earn heaven. Rather, it tells us that we have fallen short of that goal.

Now we know that whatever the law says, it says to those who are under the law, that every mouth may be stopped, and all the world may become guilty before God. Therefore by the deeds of the law no flesh will be justified in His sight, for by the law is the knowledge of sin. (Romans 3:19-20)

Some might answer, "If God judges my heart, and I sincerely want to do what's right, then it does not matter that in I don't have the ability." That sounds nice, but it has flaws.

1. If only intention matters, then God cannot address evil done for the "right" reasons.
2. We all think our reasons are "right."
3. Who does everything for the right reason? 

Even good, loving deeds can have impure motives. For example, we might perform an act of love not because we love the other person, but to enjoy the sensation of "loving" or to enjoy feeling like good people. As the prophet Jeremiah wrote, The heart is deceitful above all things, and desperately sick; who can understand it? (Jeremiah 17:9, ESV) 

My intent is not to throw thunderbolts at anybody, but merely to explain that the material person’s will is not free. It is limited not only physically, but also morally. Even when we intend to do the right thing, we still mess it up. 

We do not have unlimited free will.

Poetically, the cost of our errors is going to “that other place.” The question of free will usually focuses on the ability to accept or reject the Gospel, but it misses the larger picture. Without Divine interference, our end is are already predestined.

Jesus came to establish a way to free the will from its enslavement to immorality. Only by recognizing that enslavement and then relinquishing self righteousness can one begin to grasp that path to freedom.

Destination versus Predestination

When my action makes a result inevitable, it destines me to the result. When an event (such as God's choice) made a result inevitable, it predestined me to the result. The only difference is when the event occurred.

Within the bounds of our free will, then, our nature destines us to commit sin, and sin destines us to condemnation. From the perspective of Judgment day, our sin predestined us to condemnation. So the only difference between destined and predestined is the time at which you view the event.

• At some point in time, sin destined me for condemnation.
• At some point in time, God destined me for heaven. 
• If you are mature enough to read this, your sin predestined you for condemnation (although God may have planned and performed otherwise).

As an adult believer, I can say that through sin, I predestined myself for hell, but God predestined me for heaven. That is, God predestined His own actions, namely, arranging for me to hear the gospel, giving me understanding, and giving me a gift of faith (Ephesians 2:8–9).

So, lay this out on a timeline: For the saved, God planned (predestined) to give some people great gifts. Later, their actions predestined them to condemnation. Then God carried out his plan and changed their destinies.

Would it really be that horrible if God predestined the changing of our destinations?

God's Choice and Free Will

The claim of omnipresence implies the ability to observe what happens throughout space, to know all information such as our thoughts, and and to know what happens throughout time.

In the Bible, God claims omnipresence.

Can a man hide himself in secret places so that I cannot see him? declares the Lord. Do I not fill heaven and earth? declares the Lord. (Jeremiah 23:24)

This verse claims ability to observe every physical condition and event everywhere. In addition, many timess, God claims and demonstrates an ability to observe thought. For example,

I the Lord search the heart and test the mind, to give every man according to his ways, according to the fruit of his deeds. (Jeremiah 17:10)

On a tangent: Knowing men’s thoughts is one of the proofs of Jesus’ divinity. Jesus is the only person described in the Bible to know men’s thoughts. For example, Matthew 12:25, Luke 5:22, and Luke 6:8.

Just as no condition, event, or thought is hidden from God, neither is anything that will happen.

I am God, and there is no other; I am God, and there is none like me, declaring the end from the beginning and from ancient times things not yet done…. (Isaiah 46:9–10)

Others have indicated that God foreknows because He can figure out what will happen. Although God has that magnitude of intelligence, that is not the only possible basis of foreknowledge.

If God created the material universe, then according to our understanding of physics and cosmology, He also has creative power over time and space. That implies that He exists outside of time and space, although the doctrine of the Triune God shows that He can enter into creation from any or every perspective. That is, God’s creative power makes it possible to exist as a Unity outside of time while existing as a Trinity inside of time. And existing outside of time, He can observe all that happens within time.

I find it likely, therefore, that God’s omniscience is based not on logic, but on observation.

Some things are planned and brought to pass by God. Isaiah 46:10 continues, My counsel shall stand, and I will accomplish all my purpose…. For example, Jeremiah 1:5 demonstrates both foreknowledge and predestination:

Before I formed you in the womb I knew you, and before you were born I consecrated you; I appointed you a prophet to the nations.

And of God’s chosen, Romans 8:28 says, And we know that for those who love God, all things work together for good, for those who are called according to his purpose.

Although God observes all things at all times, the Bible does not say that he predestines all things. It clear states, however, that He does predestine some things and then interferes in history and our lives to bring them to pass.

God’s interference means that, without His action, His will will not happen. If some things will or will not happen without interference, then those things could not be predestined (that is, by God). The Bible gives many example of God permitting events in order to achieve a greater good.

Therefore, God's foreknowledge is based on observation, modified by execution of His plan, and confirmed by observation.

So there is no such thing as unconditionally free will. Our wills our bounded by our nature, and our actions predestine us to condemnation. Through the Cross, God creates a path to eventual freedom from our nature. Then He intervenes in the lives of some to change their predestination from a negative outcome to a positive one.

Copyright 2017 Richard Wheeler

Did Christ Die "for" Only the Elect?

Reformed / Calvinist / Particular versus Arminian / General

The Reform movement began a Century before Calvin's time, but one of the debates that divide Protestants from Catholics and Reformed Protestants from other Protestants came into clear focus as a result of conflict between John Calvin and Jacob Arminius.  For this reason, the Reformed school is often called Calvinist and the non-Reformed school is called Arminian.  Within Baptist history, the Reformed position is held by Particular Baptists and the Arminian position is held by General baptists.

The differences break down into many points.  In general, the Reformed beliefs are far more biblical than the Arminian beliefs.  Here, I'm going to focus on just one point: For whom did Christ die?  The Reformed belief holds that Christ died for the elect; that is, for, and only for, those whom God saves from damnation. The Arminian belief holds that Christ died for the world.

Both sides oversimplify by failing to separate the value of Christ's sacrifice and its application into two issues.

Reformed interprets "Christ died for the elect" too restrictively

The Reformed side errs by interpreting "Christ died for the elect" as meaning that the Sacrifice of Infinite God has finite potential value.  First, this mathematical absurdity is reverse-engineered from the Catholic assumption that God's grace and sacrifice are quantifiable.  Some argue that if all the value of Christ's sacrifice is not applied, then all is somehow wasted.  However, dead is dead, and eternal God is infinite. It is absurd to quantify and limit the infinite.

Second, it is a logical absurdity to assume that having one purpose, dying for the elect, excludes having other purposes. For example, Christ's sacrifice glorifies the Father and Himself, so it would be correct to say that Christ died "for" glorifying God.  By Reformed logic, Christ could not die for the glory of God or for vindication of the Father's plan to allow the Fall because He died (only) for the elect.

Third, Christ's sacrifice not only redeems the elect, but also, after the removal of the lost in the Day of Judgment, redeems the whole of creation.  Yes, Christ died "for" the elect, but His sacrifice has far more value.

Arminian interprets "Christ did for the elect" too loosely

The other side understands that the Sacrifice of the Infinite has unlimited potential value but errs by confusing unlimited value with universal application.  Arminianism holds that God applies the value to all men by freeing them to choose to receive or not receive Christ and His gift of salvation.  This flies in the face of New Testament teachings about how the lost are enslaved by sin and how the carnal mind is at enmity with God.  Paul makes it clear that even faith is a gift from God, and without that gift comes no conversion.  

Many denominations, the Roman Catholic Church among them, carry the error further by falling into forms of Universalism, the belief that all men will be redeemed (or at least purged) and enter heaven.  Pentecostals and Charismatics carry unlimited value to an absurd extreme by applying it to carnal desires for wealth ("it's in the atonement"), health ("by His stripes you were (physically) healed"), and personal pride ("he who speaks in tongues builds up himself").

On this point, both sides err by dragging along Catholic baggage.  The error on the Reformed side does not affect any critical points of the gospel that I know of, but the errors on the Arminian side can be damning.  

That is not to say that all Arminians are unsaved.  One can believe the gospel before being taught Arminian errors, and not everybody who belongs to a given church believes all that their church teaches.  However, I have only discussed one of many points.  Those who have accept Arminian errors before conversion fall short of the grace of God.  Their conversions are false, and those who mislead by preaching false gospels shall have much to answer for.

Hyper Grace, Hyper Repentance, and the Middle Ground

Response to

Rooting Out Fuzzy Theology Behind the Hyper-Grace Message

DAVID & NANCY RAVENHILL
Charisma Magazine online 9:21AM EDT 4/2/2013
http://www.charismamag.com/blogs/prophetic-insight/17255-rooting-out-fuzzy-theology-behind-the-hyper-grace-message

Two Types of Repentance

Most Charismatics Christians (they mistakenly call themselves Pentecostals) fail to distinguish between two types of repentance. Peter explicitly names the first type, and only regarding changing minds FROM rejection of Messiah TO receiving Him. The New Testament only describes the second type without naming it "repentance." We label the second type "repentance," but the label is not Biblical, although it works as long as one does not confuse the two.

Unfortunately, many people DO confuse the two.

The first repentance exchanges a broken-down death trap of a clunker for a brand new car. The dealer has stamped "IT IS FINISHED" on the papers, sent the clunker to the recyclers, and placed the new owner's name in the Lamb's Book of Car Registrations. That new car irrevocably belongs to the new owner.

The second repentance leads to cleaning up the car, driving on better roads in accordance with the Car Ownership Bible, repairing any damage and wear, and learning to use it for profitable purposes. The owner may dent the car, soil it, and fail to maintain it until it's no earthly good. A judge may tell the owner to take it off the road. But the car will always belong to the owner.

Confusing Grace and Repentance

Many people confuse the two. When the car gets dirty, they foolishly keep returning to the dealership to ask for the car again. As the author implies, however, they would be wise to return to the Dealer as many times as needed to maintain and learn more about their car.

Just as one extreme insults the blood of Christ by excusing sin that has been washed away, the other insults the blood by ignoring its sufficiency and attempting to re-apply it, even though "there remains no more offering for sin."

Contrasting the Dangers of the Two Hypers

If we wish to compare the dangers of the two, hyper repentance poses the greater danger. Lost people who have learned hyper repentance add self-reliance on repentance to reliance on Christ. Paul explicitly explains that grace and works mutually exclude each other. The Giver does not give gifts to those who ask for wages.

Therefore, both hypers present practical dangers to the saved, but hyper repentance adds an everlasting danger to the lost.

The irony lies not in the Ravenhill's attempt to correct hyper grace (for which I am grateful), but in that he does so from within the territory of hyper repentance.

The Problem of Emotional Conversions

Biblical Salvation
Evangelist John Nordstrom
AAA Ministries:  Gospel Sowing to Anyone, Anywhere, Anytime

Biblical salvation becomes a reality when three components of the human body become interactively engaged: The mind, the heart, and the will (Romans 6:17). The gospel sower initiates the process of regeneration by delivering the doctrine of salvation into the prospect's intellect. The sower who dares pass beyond his jurisdiction and tries to also manipulate the heart, goes too far. The heart’s inner sanctum, is reserved for God alone. Truth delivered by the sower becomes a hammer in the hand of God, breaking down the fortified walls of the heart (Jeremiah 23:29). The final outcome is man’s will yielding to God’s will. True salvation takes place in the heart, not the intellect. It takes place after God has done his convicting work and not without it. God is the soul winner, not man (1 Corinthians 3:7).

There is nothing a gospel sower can do to cause the prospect to mean business with God.  The sower must focus on giving a correct gospel in an understandable way. The rest is up to God and the individual. When they die, their sincerity is between them and God.

I agree with much in the letter, but not with all. It draws a picture of intellect, heart, and will, to the exclusion of the spirit. This picture shows God pounding on the heart and the will, but ignores God giving life to the spirit and understanding to the intellect. Any Calvinist would offer tons of Scripture references that tear the letter to shreds.  (By the way, in interest of full disclosure, I triangulate somewhere above and between Arminians on my far left and Calvinists on my not-so-far right.)

Before I go on, I should point out that, while God ultimately wins souls, God delegates the privilege and duty of engaging in soul winning to believers. Somewhere, the Old Testament says, "he that wins souls is wise." Soul winning is a partnership between God and his ambassadors -- us. True soul winners give the glory to God and will one day cast their bejeweled crowns before His feet; yet it is God who places those jewels in their crowns and calls them soul winners. Therefore, I'm not following the false modesty of abandoning the term.

People sometimes claim to have had a head conversion without a heart conversion. The letter says that True salvation takes place in the heart, not the intellect.  This is false.  Both the intellect and the heart must be involved -- and the spirit, too. More often, I think, people have heart conversions without head conversions (especially in Charismatic circles). Perhaps legalistic sects such as Catholicism have will conversions without either head or heart conversions. (I'm not sure we should isolate "the will" as a separate function like intellect and heart. I think of it more as a verb -- to will -- resulting from the majority vote of the intellect, the heart, and the spirit.) The letter implies that people can even have head, heart, and will conversions based on the gospel and the emotional appeal of the soul winner, but accomplished without the work of the Spirit. Examples might include Judas in the gospels and Simon the Sorcerer in Acts.

The letter does not imply that an emotional appeal excludes the work of the Spirit. It is possible for God to quicken the sinner's spirit even if the gospel presenter includes an emotional appeal.

What a frustrating idea, that a fraction of those converted through emotional appeals are saved, and the rest are not. Between the intrusion of the world into the church and its saturation with unconverted souls, it becomes no wonder that "Christians" stand so undifferentiated from their neighbors. I must think, however, that all those false conversions represent a great lessening of coals upon those souls' heads and a great preservation of the societies in which they live.

On the other hand, might there be people who whose decision or act of will as a result of emotional appeal lead to greater things? Could the gospel with a God-prepared spirit result in an authentic conversion that lacks devotional energy because the soul winner left the person to cross the threshold alone? If we all did all things because we had the right information and the work of the Spirit upon our spirits, when would we need exhortation, encouragement, and provocation? Why would Paul and John have included such emotional appeals in their epistles? I conclude that the soul winner needs wisdom, caution, and balance (as do we all), since scriptures do not preclude the use of emotional appeal along with the preaching of the gospel.

What disadvantages do we find in false conversions? One is that false converts besmear the name of Christ when they stumble or fall away. The banner held high by remaining true converts ought to restore Christ's honor, but that brings us to the real danger. When false converts wander off, they discourage us. We feel betrayed because we put more trust in each other than we do in God. Sometimes, after times of failure, we question our own conversions because we know that things like what we did have also led to the revelation of others' false conversions. It hurts, especially when you were the person who "led them to the Lord." You wonder what you did wrong when, in truth, false conversions happen regardless of the soul winners' methods.

So we look for reasons why. In some churches that use strong emotional appeals, it's easy to blame the emotional appeal. We might conclude that all emotional appeals are wrong because the work on the heart and the will belong to God. That's an unreasonable extreme. Banning the emotional appeals makes about as much sense as banning the teaching of the gospel. After all, head-without-heart conversions are just as doomed as are heart-without-head conversions; and when false converts fall away, it hurts us just as much either way. What comes next, ban both the attempt to make the gospel plain and the attempt to appeal to the heart?

The first half of the answer lies in the wisdom to find appropriate proportions of intellectual and emotional appeals. At the same time, I'd like to acknowledge that God makes us with unique capacities. Some personalities have no capacity for emotional appeal, and it would be a mistake to force them to conduct altar calls with two dozens verses of Just as I Am at every service. Other personalities have little capacity for intellectual appeal. Let each man serve according to his gifts without rejecting others' gifts.

The second half lies in a wise response when false converts fall away. Some "false" converts are weak or misled believers who will later return, or they are believers whom God will call home prematurely for the preservation of their souls. A soul winner who judges such converts "false" takes on needless disappointment. Our disappointment indicates trust due God but misplaced in man and, even worse, in ourselves. Aside from sanctions prescribed by the Bible, we should leave judgment to God who alone sees our hearts.

Pharisaical Christians vs. Anti-Pharisees

Pharisaical Christians vs. Anti-Pharisees

By Xion
01.10.09 AT 12:45 PM
http://online.worldmag.com/2009/01/09/the-church-of-you/#comment-386607

The Church of You can refer to two forms of popular Christianity. One sees God as a celestial daddy whose role is to solve YOUR problems and make YOU feel better. The other sees God as a task master and holiness as something to be achieved by following a long list of dos and don'ts.

It is possible to stray to the left and do whatever you want ignoring God. But what few people understand is that it is also possible to stray to the right, as the Pharisees did, exalting their own righteousness over that of Christ. They celebrate their own works and traditions and operate on a system of merit, not knowing that their own righteousness is as filthy rags.

Pharisaical Christians ignore the grace of Jesus Christ. They don't know that we are accepted by God not because of anything we do, but by what Christ has done. God favors us because of the work of his Son. We are no better than anyone else.

And so, Pharisaical Christians thinking they are holier than everyone else look down on sinners and other Christians who don't measure up to their own standards. These hypocrites don't even meet their own standards, but point the bony finger of accusation against others.

These people also worship at the Church of You, sanctification being all about them and their own holiness, not the holiness of Christ.

My Reply

01.10.09 AT 9:12 PM

Most of the contributors to the referenced thread would do well to ask themselves, What is the opposite of the thing I criticize, and am I doing it? The opposite of Calvinism, for example, says, I decide to be saved and I keep myself saved when I avoid unpardonable sin. The opposite of intellectualism says, I obey the experts in my denomination like a good soldier, or I ignore doctrine, just gimme that emotional high.

By asking myself such a question, I learned something important from Xion. Yes, I easily slip into wrong attitudes about my long list of dos and don'ts. (Note to self: Add "Reject long lists of dos and don'ts" to my long list of dos and don'ts.)

Yet, it remains that those lists stem from what God reveals about human un-holiness. For example, if fornication destroys holiness, then doesn't public attire that provokes sexual desire also erode holiness? In place of God's Word or centuries of application of God's commandments, I arbitrate right and wrong. So, if I burn my list of such dos and don'ts, how shall I emulate my holy Father?

You say you are saved by grace; but how will you prove it to me? How will you prove it to the lost person who just waits to spring the label of hypocrite upon you? How will you reassure yourself that it was a heart decision and not just an intellectual exercise?

The opposite of Pharisaism, toward which Xion leans in his criticism, easily leads to the fall of many. Xion should make the point, then, not that lists of dos and don'ts are "wrong;" but rather that the dos and don'ts form the vocabulary of love notes to God, written not in lip service, but in deeds.

Even people in the Church of Others can unwittingly attend the Church of You when service becomes a foundation for self-righteousness. Any strength and any pet peeve can tempt us to join the Church of You.