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.

Water Baptism Can Prevent Salvation

Answering a question on Quora:

Why is water baptism required for salvation from the wages of sin...?

Water baptism is not required for salvation. It is a new believer’s first act of obedience to God after having entered into salvation.

“Baptism” has two meanings. When reading about “baptism” in the Bible, always ask yourself which kind is meant.

The “baptism” that saves is done silently by the Holy Spirit. The water ceremony symbolizes part of it, namely, the death to self called “repentance” and our spiritual regeneration (more on this, below). Baptism by the Spirit also makes believers members of the universal church with unique roles and giftedness to aid in the functioning of the body of believers. See 1 Corinthians 12:4–11 and especially verses 12–13. Also see Romans 12.

The obvious meaning is the ceremony of being dunked in water. By going down into the water, we identify with Christ’s death, and it represents that we died to self during the process of conversion. By coming up out of the water, we identify with Christ’s resurrection, and it represents the new, regenerated life of our spirits in Christ. Read the first paragraph of Romans chapter 6. (You will notice that pouring, sprinkling, and dabbing do not fulfill the symbolism. Even the Roman Catholic Church baptized by immersion for over 1,200 years.)

1 Peter 3:21 is often cited as evidence that water baptism saves. However, the verse says baptism is “an appeal to God for a good conscience.” In other words, it is about obeying God to gain assurance that our faith is sincere.

Many churches claim that baptism places people into God’s New Covenant, so it is analogous to the Old Testament ceremony of circumcision. That ignores that the Old Covenant was between God and a nation (not individuals), whereas the New Covenant is directly between God and individuals. The New Testament not only does not support the claim; it actually contradicts the claim. See Ephesians 2:8–9.

Paul’s epistle to the Galatians dealt with an early church heresy that added ceremonies to faith as requirements for salvation. The specific ceremony was circumcision, but I’m sure you can see the principle without having it spelled out. Paul used terms such as “foolish” and “bewitched” (chapter 3) to describe those who fell for the heresy. In fact, the term “fallen from grace” refers not to losing salvation (the pop definition); rather it refers to those who add ceremonies to simple faith as requirements for salvation (chapter 5).

Peter did advise the Jews who had just murdered Christ to repent and be baptized. However, the salvation of gentiles in Acts 10:44–48 shows that salvation and Spiritual baptism precede water baptism.

Baptism to be saved puts the cart before the horse. It tries to makes the result into a cause. It tries to make our meritorious work of going through a ceremony into a way to earn a gift. Can you see the contradiction in “earning a gift?” And if someone has tried to earn a gift that is acquired through faith alone, have they really received the gift?

I was “baptized” (dabbed) in a mainline church as a child. It did me no good. Many others who were “baptized” became atheists, joined heretical churches, or joined cults. What did me good was hearing a corrected, biblical gospel when I was mature enough to grasp it. Then I got baptized God’s way.

We don’t get baptized to acquire salvation; we get baptized to assure ourselves and tell the world that God has already saved us. 

Copyright 2021 Richard Wheeler. Permission granted for non-remunerated use, provided credit is given where credit is due.

Judge Jesus: "Full of Himself?

Answering a question on Quora:

Why is Jesus so full of himself that he would condemn good loving peaceful people to an eternity in a burning lake of fire that doesn't worship him as a god?

First off, you’re not really “full of yourself” if you really are “all that.” Jesus is “all that.” If you understood the unimaginable precision of the constants of physics required to keep the universe from collapsing or exploding, you’d be just beginning to understand the greatness of God the Son. If you understood the virtual impossibility of the chain of events beginning with the formation of the right types of amino acids all having the same geometries, forming the right proteins, forming the right components that enable self-replication of RNA and DNA, and the half-gigabyte of quaternary-encoded information that enables the duplication of that environment (as well as itself) in even the simplest hypothetical biological organism, you would be just beginning to grasp how great God the Son is. He is “all that.” He is all that by nature, He is all that by virtue of being your Creator, and He is all that by virtue of the price He paid to secure your potential redemption.

Second, if you grasped the utter perfection and holiness of God the Son, you would never pretend that there’s such a thing as “good” people, This error normally results from judging people relative to ourselves or from judging ourselves relative to other imperfect people, rather than judging relative to God’s standard. What, you think your “good” outweighs your bad? Do you really think you can pay off your debts with what you already owe to your Creator? What, you think you’re perfect? You’ve never done anything wrong? Now who’s full of himself?!

Third, the unholiness of man and the holiness of God’s presence cannot coexist. The unholiness of a human would defile and insult an utterly righteous and holy God, and the glory of God would be unbearable to an unholy, unregenerated human. Neither could stand the other! Hell is not a problem, but rather, a solution.

Fourth, saying that not worshiping Christ as God sends people to hell is like saying one link in a chain suspends the load. It’s a flawed focus on a single symptom. God provided a means of redemption and regeneration. He offers it as a gift. Refusing that gift is the ultimate sin; it is a sin against oneself. But nobody goes to hell for that sin alone; it is merely one among many.

Hell was created for Lucifer and the angels who followed him in rebellion against God. We are born as citizens of Lucifer’s kingdom, and we all ratify that with by breaking God’s commandments. God’s gift can regenerate us so we gain citizenship in God’s kingdom. If we are so full of ourselves that we fail to receive that gift, we have only ourselves to blame.

Fear of hell is not a wrong reason to receive the gift and then worship God. But there is a better reason. God is good. In fact He is the ultimate standard of goodness. He not only gave us life, but also, at His own expense, created the means for our forgiveness, redemption, and regeneration. He balanced justice and love by paying a price that would have destroyed any mere human. In His kindness, He freely offers that to each of us.

When we rebel against physical laws, we pay a price. The price of rebelling against gravity by walking off a cliff is paid when you hit the bottom. You have only yourself to blame. Likewise, there is a moral law. If we fail to receive the gift of redemption, we will hit the bottom in hell. And how much more accountable will be those who actively reject the gift.

You can reframe the consequences to shift the blame to the One who enforces the law. You may rage against Him for all eternity. But in all honesty, you will have only yourself to blame. 

Copyright 2021 Richard Wheeler. Permission granted for non-remunerated use. Please cite sources when copying.

Benevolent Hell

Answering a question on Quora:

Is there anything benevolent about hell, no, right?

Yes, wrong.

First, consider the question’s two non sequiturs.

A. Taken literally, the question assigns moral significance to hell. However, hell is merely a place. In itself, it is neutral. Saying, “no, right?” is like saying that the law of gravity is evil because a tourist stood too close to the edge of a waterfall. Any moral significance derives not from the existence of hell, but from how it is used. In other words, whether it is benevolent or not depends on whether it is used justly or unjustly.

B. Whether hell is used at all by a human is like the tourist and the waterfall. The tourist can use the trail to walk away, and the human can use the Way God provided to walk away from a sentence of hell. The Way (John 14:6) is available to all. An intellectually honest person will realize that any fault, any lack of benevolence, must be assigned on the basis of the answer to this question: If there is a lack of benevolence, who is responsible, the One who provides the way of escape, or the one who decides to ignore the law of justice? 

Ignoring the non sequiturs, consider the question itself.

Violating God’s laws insults infinite God and disrespects His plans for us to have relationship with Him. Would God be benevolent to Himself if He ignored such insult and allowed unredeemed sinners to defile His presence?

Let’s take an extreme case: When Hitler’s Dr. Joseph Mengele dissected people alive, would it have been benevolent to Mengele’s victims if God ignored justice?

Now let’s take the case of people who use their judgment about hell as a rationalization for refusing God’s gift of redemption. In essence, they refuse to be rescued from a sentence of punishment for their sins. (Rejecting God and His gift is merely one sin out of many.) They refuse the post-mortem transformation that would allow them to enjoy God’s presence. Would it be benevolent to force them to endure the “unapproachable light” in which God dwells (1 Timothy 6:16)?

Hell was created not for us, but for the devil and the demons. By tempting Adam to revoke his citizenship in heaven, the devil trapped all of us in his own kingdom. He triggered all the suffering and death in history, including the suffering of any human cast into hell. If God did not prepare a hell in which to punish the devil, would God be benevolent to the human race?

My conclusion is that hell is, indeed, benevolent. But by itself, it is a half-truth.

God prepared a way to resolve the tension between justice and love. He provided Himself a sacrifice sufficient to redeem us from our sins and rescue us from the consequences of justice. God the Son paid the price at His own expense. This leads to a final question that returns us to the first question: If God debased the price He paid to rescue us from hell and thus demeaned Himself, would He be benevolent to Himself?

Copyright 2021, Richard Wheeler. Permission granted for non-remunerated use. Please give credit where credit is due.

God's Commandments Don't Change; Their Jurisdiction Does

Answering a question on Quora:

Do God’s commandments change?

The quick answer is no. However, you need to define which commandments. If you mean the Ten Commandments and hundreds of other commandments given through Moses (the “Mosaic Law”), then they had limited jurisdiction, and their proper usage is not what most people think.

Which commandments?

God has given more than one set of commandments:

• Commands to Adam and Eve to tend the Garden, name the animals, have children, and abstain from eating of the Tree of Knowledge of Good and Evil.
  
  
• Commands to Noah to build an ark and take shelter in it.
  
  
• Commands to Pharaoh to free Israel.
  
  
• Commands to Moses to follow certain instructions to deliver, feed, and water Israel.
  
  
• Commands to love God, love your neighbor, worship God alone, and abstain from certain generic sins (the “Ten Commandments”).
  
  
• Hundreds of specific civil and personal commands in support of the Ten Commandments, taken together as “the Mosaic Law.”
  
  
• A command to believe in Jesus of Nazareth for redemption instead of trusting self-righteousness.
  
  
• A command for followers of Jesus to love one another.

By “God’s commandments,” most people mean the Ten Commandments and may mean the Mosaic Law.

Different Jurisdictions, Different Commandments

The Mosaic Law (or “The Law”) was given to ancient, pre-Messianic Israel. The Law was not given to gentiles (non-Hebrews), and it does not apply to followers of the Anointed One (Hebrew: Messiah; Greek: Christ), Jesus of Nazareth. 

Not every commandment applies to everybody. For example, a commandment to a priestly descendant of Aaron to sprinkle the blood of a sacrifice on things in the Temple’s Holy of Holies obviously would not apply to a jeweler from the tribe of Benjamin. 

Now we know that whatever the Law says, it speaks to those who are under the Law [Judaism], so that every mouth may be closed and all the world may become accountable to God; because by the works of the Law none of mankind will be justified in His sight; for through the Law comes knowledge of sin.

Jesus used this technique many times. For example, who loves God with all their heart, from birth to death? Who has never broken the commandments against adultery, murder, and coveting in their hearts?

Following the Ten Commandments is profitable, but not for redemption. Redemption comes only through trusting God’s gift through Christ.

Thus, we have the commandment, This is the work of God, that you believe in Him whom He has sent.

The New Testament is emphatic.

Knowing that a person is not justified by works of the Law but through faith in Christ Jesus, even we have believed in Christ Jesus, so that we may be justified by faith in Christ and not by works of the Law; since by works of the Law no flesh will be justified.

The change in jurisdiction happened because, as others have answered, Christ fulfilled the Law. The Law is also called a Covenant. Today, we would use the word contract. A contract becomes ineffective when either of two conditions happen:

• One party fails to fulfill its obligations. Then the penalties become effective. At a national level, this happened when Israel rejected her Messiah and God destroyed national Israel, including its Temple, in 67–70 AD. At an individual level, it happens to every Hebrew who rejects Messiah Jesus.
  
  
• The obligations of the Law have been fulfilled. Jesus fulfilled God’s side of the Law by fulfilling the prophecies and the symbols (especially the sacrifices).

From a religious angle, the Law itself did not change. However, the applicability of the Law changed. Hebrews 7 explains that when the priesthood changes, a new law replaces the old Law. This is like when the United States of America formed and its Constitution replaced the Articles of Confederation, and the states had to rewrite the laws that they had when they were nations and, before that, colonies.

Under the Mosaic Law, a change in priesthood occurred. The Priesthood was given to Aaron, of the tribe of Levi, and to his descendants. Correspondingly, a change in the law occurred when God gave the Mosaic Law. In the same way, when God made Jesus a priest forever after the order of Melchizedek, God gave a new Law. The new Law was not mere written commandments, but it was the Spirit of the law, written upon the hearts of those who entrust their redemption to Christ.

"But this is the covenant which I will make with the house of Israel after those days," declares the LORD, "I will put My law within them and on their heart I will write it; and I will be their God, and they shall be My people.

Underlying this, the Mosaic Law cannot save, but rather presents a mirror to show us our condemnation. For, Cursed is every man that continues not in all the words of this law to do them…. In contrast, the “Perfect Law of Love and Liberty” written on the hearts of those who bend their knee to Messiah Jesus shows how God has already delivered them from condemnation. God makes believers a kingdom of priests, Jesus being the High Priest; and with that, applies a new, better Law.

The Lawful Use of the Law

Some may object that Mosaic commandments were repeated in the New Testament. This is true, but it does not contradict anything written here. Two jurisdictions can have the same laws. Florida and Arizona both have laws against murder, but a Floridian would not refrain from murder because it's Arizona's law. The fact that Arizona has a law against murder does not mean that the Floridian is under Arizona law. Similarly, the fact that the New Testament condemns murder does not mean that Christians are under the Mosaic Law.

It is a common mistake to apply commandments given to ancient Israel to people living under the New Testament’s Perfect Law of Love and Liberty. For example, many insist on resting on the Sabbath (which is Saturday). Others say that baptism replaces circumcision, and people must be baptized to go to heaven. They focus on human merit instead of on the merit of Christ’s sacrifice.

The Mosaic Law still has applicability. People who think they will be good enough to go to heaven have to face that Law. In evangelism, it may be necessary to review the Law so people test themselves. Jesus did that often. Notice that the closer you look at any commandment, the more detail you see. Here’s a sample, using just four of the Ten Commandments:

• Have you honored your father and mother? Have you always obeyed them? This includes not just doing what you were told. Honoring goes beyond obedience. It includes obeying without delay, eye-rolling, sarcasm, or resentment. It means actually respecting them in your heart.
  
  
• Perhaps you don’t think you’ve committed adultery. But if you have had sex before marriage, you have. In fact, since God is Spirit and we have spirits, what we do in our thoughts are just as real to God as our physical actions are. So if you have looked at someone with sexual desire, you have broken this commandment.
  
  
• You may not think you are a thief. But have you downloaded music or ‘borrowed” a cable TV connection that you should have paid for? Have you taken anything from work without returning it? Have you found something that belonged to someone else and not even tried to find the owner? Or have you even thought about taking something that was not yours?
  
  
• You probably have not killed anyone. But Jesus said that if you even hated somebody without just cause, you committed murder in your heart. And if you have even called someone a fool or empty-headed, you are dangerously close to that line.

If you have kept the Ten Commandments from the heart all your life, congratulations! You are as perfect as God! I’m being sarcastic, of course.

In evangelism, Christians want to share the good news that God offers forgiveness as a gift on the basis that Christ acted as our proxy on the cross. He made Him who knew no sin to be sin on our behalf, so that we might become the righteousness of God in Him.

But people who think they are righteous do not realize that they need that redemption. So the “lawful use of the Law” today is to use it as a mirror so people will turn from (a) justifying their sins or (b) self righteousness, and turn to trust alone in Christ alone.

What remains to believers is to Love God, our neighbors, and our spiritual brothers and sisters. The Perfect Law of Love and Liberty fulfills the spirit of all commandments. For the whole law is fulfilled in one word: “You shall love your neighbor as yourself.” Believers don’t keep this commandment to redeem themselves, but rather, because God has already redeemed them.

Copyright 2021, Richard Wheeler. Permission granted for non-remunerated use if you give credit where credit is due. 

The Fairness of Hearing the Gospel

Answering a question on Quora:

If only [by] believing in Jesus can someone go to heaven, what about people who died before Jesus's birth, who have not heard about Jesus at their time? If they can all go to heaven, is that not fair for us as we have to choose which god is the right one[?]

This question requires some untangling because it makes several assumptions and implies several questions. 

The question assumes that people have been accountable for fulfilling the same requirements at all times. That is, people living before Jesus’s birth could only go to heaven if they believed in Jesus.

Actually, accountability has always been proportional. That means that a child who has no ability to grasp the requirements has no accountability. It also means that people living in ancient times were not required to know something that had not happened yet.

The question asks, If [Since] only [by] believing in Jesus can someone go to heaven…. That is terribly over-simplified. “Believing in Jesus” is a mere title or summary. When you add the details, you find that five out of six (83%) of the requirements now and in ancient times overlap.

In ancient times, the required knowledge and belief were:

• God exists; and He is just and holy.
• My thoughts and actions have made me unholy, so I cannot defile the presence of a holy God.
• My actions require a just God to punish my unholy thoughts and actions.
• God is also merciful, gracious, and loving, so He will provide a way for me to enter His presence.
• I, therefore, trust God rather than myself.

In 33 AD, God added one more detail:

• The way is Jesus’s death and resurrection. (This is enough detail for this context, although another layer of details appears when you ask questions such as, Whom and What was Jesus? and What do you mean by resurrection?)

People living before 33 AD could not know how God would create the way to enter God’s presence, so they were not accountable for knowing the how. They knew — or at least they could know — through the Old Testament commands, that they were guilty before God. Then knew through the prescribed Old Testament sacrifices that it would require lifeblood and a substitution, and that it would be a price they could not pay without themselves being destroyed. So, instead of trusting themselves, they had to trust God.

Jesus lived, died, and rose again to create the way to enter God’s presence. The exact how was not something ancient people could know, but it is something we know. Since we know the how, we are accountable for following it.

Imagine being on a sinking ship in the middle of the ocean. Someone tells you that a helicopter is hovering overhead, rescuing passengers.

• If you do not believe the ship is sinking, you will drown.
• If you decide to swim 2,000 miles to the nearest shore, you will drown.
• If you look at the helicopter and then return to your room, you will drown.
• If you believe them intellectually but do not let them hoist you up into the helicopter, you will drown.
• If you believe in the helicopter but insist on getting to it your own way, you will drown.

The question focuses on the way of escape, which is trusting that God paid our penalty. In a sense, failing to use that way of escape can be blamed for going to hell. But that is simplistic. The sinking ship represents our unholy thoughts and actions. Drowning represents going to hell. Failing to put faith in Christ’s actions is just one more unholy failure. A sinner does not go to hell for any single moral crime (although one is enough), but for a lifetime of moral crimes.

God sends people to hell for their sins. People send themselves to hell by failing to follow the way of escape that God created.

As for having to choose the right God, all men, always,  have "had to choose the right God." Only one God deals honestly with the problem of sin and justice. For example, when Islam's god forgives, he does so at the expense of satisfying justice. Only the Judeo-Christian God satisfies both justice and love.

The question ends by asking about fairness. Fairness is a relative concept. It is a question that children ask when they don’t get what they greedily desire. “Johnny got a gift he didn’t earn, so it’s unfair if I don’t get a gift.” If there is unfairness, it is created by us. We are the ones making the choice to repent and trust Christ or to reject God’s way.

From God’s perspective, “fairness” would have been making Jesus the political ruler over all earth 2,000 years ago instead of letting the Innocent One take the wrath the guilty deserve. Fairness would be letting all humans go to hell.

Since Jesus created a way to be saved from hell, fairness is allowing us to choose our own fates. Fairness to ourselves would be responding according to our knowledge of the way, living accordingly, and passing that knowledge along.

Copyright 2020, Richard Wheeler. Assuming credit is given where credit is due, permission granted for non-remunerated use.

Procrastinated Salvation Due to a Fallen Gospel

Answering a post on Reddit

Prayer for an end to procrastination

Hi all, lately I've been learning about what it means to actually be a Christian. It's not just a feeling, but rather a love relationship with God. Recently I've been struggling with 3 major things and I was wondering if you would be willing to pray that God helps me overcome them (preferably quickly too):

1. Procrastination (this is probably my biggest one, because I fear that I take steps back when trying to take steps towards God because I end up feeling like I'm willing to do what God wants, but after I do this, this, and this. The thing I assume that God wants me to do is call upon His name to be saved, but I sometimes can tell that I hold out on calling His name due to the procrastination and the genuineness of my heart [4]).
2. Lust (I'm having trouble realizing that my lust has had destructive effects on me and need help realizing this in a way that will result in my salvation).
3. Going "in and out of reality" (basically zoning out or going into a sort of autopilot mode. It's like listening and watching a conversation and enjoying watching more than being a part of it).
4. The genuineness of my heart (I struggle with genuinely praying, wanting God's help, and wanting Him at times, and how this relates to the procrastination of potentially holding out on Him when it comes to calling upon His name. Sometimes I think that I hear about a problem and then assume I have it or let myself slip into that problem, so that's another thing I would appreciate prayers for: running from problems that God doesnt want me in, not to them. Thank you all so much, happy new year and merry late Christmas :). God bless you ❤

Answer

I struggle with many of the same things and do not count myself worthy to preach. And yet, we are responsible to share what we have been blessed with, so I'll offer what I have learned. It will revolutionize the way you look at the problems for which you've requested prayer.

All religions except one have, as their ultimate goal for individuals, achievement through personal merit of some form of "salvation." Many mistaken variants of Christianity, veering onto that same path, have become counterfeit "Christian" churches, denominations, or movements.

To debunk that concept, the Law given to ancient Israel through Moses proved that nobody could achieve that level of righteousness. The Mosaic Law was one Law with many points. It had several layers.

The Law is like fractals. Every time you look closer, you see more details. Each layer adds details about how to fulfill the previous layer:

1. Love God
2. Love God's creation; specifically, fellow humans
3. The Ten Commandments
4. Another 600 commandments; some being ceremonial or civil and only for ancient Israel, but many being moral.

Here's one example:

1. Love God.
2. Love God by loving your fellow humans.
3. Do not commit adultery or covet (desiring what's not yours).
4. Do not lust after someone other than your spouse because lust is adultery of the mind and covetousness. God is Spirit, so what we "do" in our spirits is just as real to Him as what we do in the material world.

Although the Law served to maintain peace between neighbors and between us and God, it served two main purpose:

• Many ceremonial elements conveyed spiritual or prophetic truths. For example, the sacrifices symbolized how Christ would bear our sins on the cross.
  
  
• The strictness of the Law showed us that we could not self-righteously justify ourselves. "Now we know that whatever the Law says, it speaks to those who are under the Law [specifically, ancient Israel; generally, self-righteous people], so that every mouth may be closed and all the world may become accountable to God; because by the works of the Law no flesh will be justified in His sight; for through the Law comes the knowledge of sin." (Romans 3:19-20).

Both purposes drove a third: Instead of relying on self-righteousness, we must trust entirely the undeserved favor of God. "Now to the one who works [people who try to achieve salvation through self-righteousness], his wage [salvation] is not credited as a favor, but as what is due. But to the one who does not work, but believes in Him who justifies the ungodly, his faith is credited as righteousness" (Romans 4:4-5). So if you think you will get salvation by controlling your lust, you will never achieve it. But when you grasp how futile your efforts are and instead trust God 100%, He gives you the gift!

In other words, if you insult the Giver by trying to deserve the gift, you get neither the Giver nor the gift. But if you receive the gift as a free gift, you receive both. "For by grace you [people who have already found salvation] have been saved through faith; and that not of yourselves, it is the gift of God; not as a result of works, so that no one may boast" (Ephesians 2:8-9).

This does not mean you can maintain sinful habits. The next verse says, "we are His workmanship, created in Christ Jesus for good works, which God prepared beforehand so that we would walk in them" (Ephesians 2:10). It makes no sense that a person would repent from sins and then embrace them.

As part of salvation, God becomes no longer your Judge, but rather, becomes a Father who cares about your maturity. Therefore, like any good human father, He chastises His children. In some cases, He even will call His children home to heaven prematurely, if they are stubborn enough about destructive sins. (See the first twelve verses of Hebrews 12. https://biblehub.com/nasb/hebrews/12.htm)

(Hint: Don't listen to people who promise prosperity or "your best life now." Once God starts training you, life can seem a lot harder; and if you don't receive such correction, you need to re-examine whether your faith was genuine.)

Receiving the gift is like changing directions. It means turning away from sins and from self-righteousness and turning to faith in God. You already feel the weight of your sins, so I don't need to tell you to repent. When you receive the gift as a free gift, God gives you a spiritual rebirth and sends His Holy Spirit to help you get the victory over your sins that you could not achieve on your own.

Victory over sins is a result of salvation, not a cause of it. If you wait to make yourself worthy, you will wait forever. The world's religions say you must achieve that victory in order to receive salvation. They make the result into a cause. This is one of the heresies that the Bible talks about in the letter to the Galatians. 

Pop culture has misdefined the term "fallen from grace." The term does not mean losing God's favor. It means that a false gospel is followed that teaches people to do things to earn salvation (Galatians 5:4 https://biblehub.com/nasb_/galatians/5.htm). 

2,000 years ago, new Christians from the Jewish culture said you had to be circumcised or eat only kosher foods. Today, people say you have to avoid certain sins or persevere by your own strength, or else you lose salvation. Their message is "fallen from grace" into self-righteousness.

When you understand that salvation is a gift, you will no longer have any reason to procrastinate about receiving it. 

Copyright 2020, Richard Wheeler. Permission granted for non-remunerated use, providing that credit is given where credit is due.

The Righteous Will Be Judged

Answering a question on Quora:

Why will the righteous be judged?

The short answer is that, whereas the unrighteous are judged for punishment, the righteous are judged for reward.

The long answer requires starting by defining “the righteous.” The righteous are not people who never sin.

Now we know that whatever the Law [the Ten Commandments and associated commands] says, it speaks to those who are under the Law [ancient Israelites], so that every mouth may be closed and call the world may become accountable to God; because by the works of the Law no flesh [no human] will be justified in His [God’s] sight; for through the Law comes the knowledge of sin. For all have sinned, and come short of the glory of God… — Romans 3:19–20, 23

The purpose of passages such as the Ten Commandments is not to show us how we can earn heaven. It is to show us that we cannot earn heaven. It drives us to seek a different way to have positive relationship with God.

Rather, the righteous are people who let go of self-righteousness and instead trust that God paid their penalty through Jesus’s sacrifice and then proved it by raising Jesus from the dead. Scriptures use accounting language to say that God credits their penalty to Jesus and imputes their faith to their account for righteousness. They become, not perfect or sinless, but declared righteous.

Being declared righteous does not automatically make their thoughts and actions righteous; that takes growth over the rest of their lives. Becoming a Christian doesn’t make you perfect, it makes you a student.

Here’s an important distinction: Being declared righteous does not mean you can do whatever you want. There are many reasons for this. First, believers do what they believe, so if they really believe God, then they’ll start learning to do God’s will.

Second, God takes steps to help them grow more holy in what they do. So their belief will produce evidence, that is, good behaviors. Good behavior is not a cause of God’s gift of forgiveness, it is a result. Every false system will reverse that by making good works into requirements for receiving the gift. But when you try to earn a gift, you insult the Giver and miss out on getting the gift.

Third, God tests and chastises His children to instill good behaviors. In extreme cases, chastisement can even lead to taking a severely disobedient believer home to heaven. So it’s laughable to say that being secure in God’s love and not having to persevere in good works means you can get away with anything. A “believer” who does whatever he wants and gets away with it demonstrates that he is a counterfeit Christian.

The judgment of the righteous is different from the judgment of those who reject or fail to accept God’s gift (let’s call them “the lost”). When the lost are judged, their moral crimes determine their degree of punishment. Since we sin against infinite God, even a “small” sin earns a very serious punishment.

The righteous, on the other hand, are not judged for punishment because their sins were already punished. (Remember, they were transferred to Christ.) Instead, their works are judged for reward. Many of their “good” works will be disqualified because they were mixed with error, bad methods, or wrong motives. Those works that survive the test will be rewarded. 1 Corinthians 3:12-13

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

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.

Will God Forgive Bitterness?

From a question on Quora:

Will God still forgive those who hold bitterness in their hearts towards others?

Bitterness is wrong. It hurts others and it hurts you. It means that you have not seen yourself through God’s eyes because you see yourself as superior to the other person. You must know this, so I’ll keep the focus on God’s forgiveness.

There are two routes to heaven. If you depend on the first route, then, along with obeying numerous other commandments, you must forgive everyone who offends you in order to earn God’s forgiveness. If you have depended on the second route, God has already forgiven you as Judge, although He may chastise you as a loving Father.

The Jews of Jesus’s day, most people around the world, and many “Christian” denominations and offshoots pursue the first route. This route depends on human merit.

• The Jewish leaders, being descendants of Abraham, believed their heritage earned heaven for them. You will hear similar claims today, such as “My mother was a saint!” or “Grandpa was a Baptist preacher.”
• Many believed that the sacrifices made by their parents or ceremonies such as circumcision that their parents put them through brought them into a special relationship with God. When I was 18, I thought that because I was born an American and my parents had me “baptized” when I was little, I would see heaven.
• Others believed that if they kept the Ten Commandments, related commandments, traditions, and ceremonies; did acts of love and generosity; and kept themselves separate from things that would defile them (such as eating pork of shrimp), God would forgive them. Much of that continues today. The standard may be as simple as “Love one another” or may include performing sacraments, works of charity, refraining from offenses, or forgiving others.

Jesus often preached against depending on the first, heritage. He also preached that the second, what others do for you, was worthless unless you embrace the third in your heart. He did often preach the third, personal righteousness. But there’s a catch.

If you depend on personal righteousness, then the standard is perfection. The test is Pass/Fail, and any score less than 100% is Fail. But if you do not forgive men their trespasses, neither will your Father forgive yours (Matthew 6:15). Jesus implied that the personal righteousness standard was so high that, instead of saving people, it condemned them. All (except Jesus) have fallen short of God’s standard. Because of this, God cannot allow us to defile His presence. Even if we could, we could not bear to be in His presence.

Not everybody reaches sufficient humiliation to admit in frustration and self-condemnation, “I can’t.” For those who do give up on the futile self-merit route, God has created the second route.

The word grace means gift or unmerited favor. If something is a gift, you don’t insult the Giver by trying to earn it either before or after the fact. You don’t mix faith and works or mix grace and merit the way many churches do.

God’s grace is an attitude, not a money-like stuff that comes bit-by-bit. Someone made up an acronym to explain g-r-a-c-e: God Redeems At Christ’s Expense. Jesus, Son of God, like a Big Brother taking his little brother’s punishment, took God’s punishment for our sins. Jesus’s sacrifice was sufficient for all sins of all people; and God demonstrated His satisfaction by physically raising Jesus from the dead.

God applies that payment to those who trust God instead of themselves. That includes several points of faith such as our guilt and its consequences, Christ being God, Christ dying on a cross and rising from the dead, and God’s promise to save trusting people from being judged for their offenses.

When you have that kind of repentance and faith, God grants total forgiveness. That means you will never face God as Judge because He has changed your relationship. He births you into His family and adopts you as His heir. So now He’s your Father who will never leave or abandon you, even if you have not yet overcome bitterness in your heart.

Does that mean you can do anything you want — such as failing to forgive — without consequences? Absolutely not! God chastises His children when they will not turn from offensive ways. Sometimes, chastisement can be as severe as sickness or death. But your sin cannot change what you are.

So if you want to earn your way to heaven, go ahead: Hold yourself to an impossibly high standard. And when you fall flat on your face, go to God in humility. As Judge, God will forgive all your sins — and by all I mean all, including bitterness. And as Father, he will train you, using internal influence over your spirit, positive reinforcement, and chastisement. 

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

How to Defeat Any Curse

From a question on Quora:

Do you believe curses or hexes exist?

A hex is just a curse made by a witch, so I’m going to just call them curses.

Curses can come from two sources: humans and God.

A curse from a human has no power of its own. It’s just words. Words can influence persons, but they have no force of their own. However, a curse can incite a listener to act. Curses can have a nocebo effect, which is the opposite of a placebo's positive effect. That is, the fear of a curse produces its own negative results or perception of negative results. Curses can also invite demonic forces into people's lives.

Note that agents of darkness may not be welcome in the life of the person who is cursed. For example, they might have the protection of the Holy Spirit of God. However, by invoking agents of darkness, people pronouncing curses invite demons’ influence into their own lives. So cursing can be more dangerous for the person cursing than for the person cursed.

The ways demons might influence or control people are a separate subject.

A curse from God is a pronouncement of judgment. The pronouncement may merely predict the consequences of evil action, such as when God cursed cities to be destroyed and never rebuilt. Two, three, of four thousand years after the destruction of such cities, their ruins are found by satellite photos, buried in the sands. Such pronouncements may also reflect God’s influence over humans to prevent anybody from ever re-established such cities.

God’s curse is far worse than curses coming from witches, shamans, demons, or anything else. Because we fall short of the moral standard based on God’s perfect holiness, God’s verdict of guilty and sentence of everlasting separation from God falls on all of us. If you don’t see yourself that way, just read the Ten Commandments and keep in mind that the violation need not be physical. God is Spirit, and the thoughts of our spirits are just as real to Him as physical actions are to each of us.

God offers to lift that curse. As Creator of the universe — time, space, energy, and matter — God used His creative power to enter, experience, and act in time and space as three Persons. The three Persons, while have identical natures, voluntarily assumed three distinct roles: Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. The Son voluntarily took on a human body called Jesus of Nazareth. He preached and performed miracles that validated His identity, and then He took our curse upon Himself.

God offers freedom from the curse as a gift, but the gift comes with three costs. The first cost is abandoning the pride and self-righteousness that leads us to either deny that we are under the curse or to think we can do enough good to justify ourselves. We can’t do good to make up for wrong thoughts and actions because we already owe it to our Creator to do good. We cannot pay with what we already owe.

The second cost is the flip side of the first. We need to depend completely on God’s gift. We cannot insult the Giver by depending on our own merit or by mixing our merit with His gracious generosity. The gift must be received as a gift.

Underlying this dependence is an acknowledgment that God (specifically the Son), adding to His own nature the nature of a man, Jesus of Nazareth, bore our curse by dying on a cross; but being God, could not be held by death; and so He restored life to that body and physically rose from the dead on the third day. That resurrection sealed the validation of His identity as the Creator of life. It proved the sufficiency of His death as payment for our moral crimes. And it served as a down payment for the continuation of our lives in heaven and the eventual resurrection and transformation of our physical bodies.

The third cost is the practical side of abandoning self-righteousness and receiving the gift of redemption from the curse. People who do that are called believers or Christians. They are also called disciples because, if they are sincere, they begin learning about and loving the things that God loves and hating things that God hates. They start abandoning old practices and start doing things, not to justify themselves, but to demonstrate their sincerity, out of gratitude to God, and out of love for others. When their lives and choices change, some people will be happy for them, but others will think them strange or even hate them.

Most people will not pay the cost. Accepting guilt and its deserved consequences and then depending entirely on God for freedom from the curse offends our pride. Not all have the courage to enduring what family, friends, or enemies of God will say and do. Those who accept freedom from the curse, however, will receive rewards in heaven that far outweigh any cost.

When people accept the cost, repent over their moral crimes or bad beliefs, and put their trust entirely in the Gift of Gifts, the Holy Spirit enters their lives and intercedes with the Father for them. Where the Holy Spirit dwells, dark forces lose all their power. The Son also welcomes them as beloved siblings and intercedes for them. And the Father welcomes them as beloved children.

Over such, no curse has power.

Copyright 2020, Richard Wheeler. Feel free to use for non-remunerated purposes, but if you fail to give credit where credit is due, a pox be upon you!

Kingdom of God Within? Luke 17:21

From answering a question on Quora:

What did Jesus mean when He said “the kingdom of God is within you”? Does the Kingdom of God only exist in our hearts and minds?

Now having been questioned by the Pharisees as to when the kingdom of God was coming, He answered them and said, "The kingdom of God is not coming with signs to be observed; nor will they say, 'Look, here it is!' or, 'There it is!' For behold, the kingdom of God is in your midst." (Luke 17:20-21, NASB; Feel free to read the whole chapter in a chapter of your choice.)

“Within you” loses a bit in the translation due to our changing language. In current English, a better preposition would be among. Let’s get a bit of context.

Over what is God the King? Although God does not assert His sovereignty yet, He is King over all. And here, all means all. There is no jurisdiction outside of His sovereignty. All realms are subject to Him, even if He does not micromanage His kingdom. So, whether we bow to Him as citizens of His kingdom, ignore Him, or rebel against Him, we are in His kingdom.

We might call God’s kingdom “the universe” when talking about the kingdom itself. When talking about it in its relationship to God, we can call it the kingdom of God or the kingdom of heaven. Those two terms are used interchangeably in Matthew.

The preposition translated within can also mean inside, among, or in the midst of. Since Jesus was addressing unbelieving Pharisees, we can test the interpretation, within each of you now, by considering what Jesus said about non-believers.

For example, Jesus told some Jewish leaders that they were of their father, the devil (John 8:44). The Old Testament speaks of our hearts being, by default, lifeless, such that God needs to (figuratively) replace our hearts of stone with hearts of flesh (Ezekiel 36:26). And the New Testament epistles explicitly teach that the Spirit of God indwells believers (Romans 8) but not unbelievers (1 Corinthians 2:14); and some unbelievers are even controlled by demons.

So saying that the kingdom of God is already within everybody is not a possible interpretation. That leads us to test the other interpretation: The kingdom of God was among them and is among us.

The men questioning Jesus were looking for a political kingdom. Look at the preceding verse: 20 Now having been questioned by the Pharisees as to when the kingdom of God was coming, He answered them and said, "The kingdom of God is not coming with signs to be observed 21 nor will they say, 'Look, here it is!' or, 'There it is…!' (Luke 17:20,21, NASB).

That does not mean that God will not one day assert His sovereignty in a military, civil, or political sense; it just means that we don’t have to wait. For the people who heard Jesus, it was present in a new way anticipated for centuries: The King of Kings had taken on a human body. God was giving face-to-face access to God to those who followed Him.

And an even more wonderful phase was to soon follow. Whereas the Holy Spirit of God had come upon a select few people to accomplish specific tasks such as governing or preaching verbal revelation, the Holy Spirit would permanently indwell, empower, preserve, reform, and intercede for all believers, joining believing Jews together with believers from among all races, cultures, and levels of society.

That is why both John the Baptist (Matthew 3:2) and Jesus (Matthew 4:17) preached, “Repent, for the kingdom of God is near.”

The Jewish leaders of the day wanted a political kingdom that gave them power or an ecclesiastical kingdom that rewarded their self-righteousness. They failed to enter into participation in God’s kingdom.

Instead, God’s kingdom is among us, welcoming the entry of all who relinquish self-righteousness, cease attempting to escape accountability for offending God, and trust instead in God’s sacrifice as our substitute.

Moral Monsters: Deviants from Objective Morality

From a question on Quora:

If God the Father of life is All-Holy and objectively moral, then wouldn’t the definition of a true monster be anything that is subjectively moral and anti-life or anti-God?

I would start with a dictionary definition of monster. Most definitions are subjective. I like the definition from biology given on Dictionary.com because it implies a standard:

an animal or plant of abnormal form or structure, as from marked malformation or the absence of certain parts or organs; a grossly anomalous fetus or infant, especially one that is not viable.

We can apply this definition to morality. Monster: a personal being having a set of principles, thoughts, or behaviors, from lacking or deviating from objectively moral principles.

I wanted to say that a hypothetical person’s subjective morality could coincide with the objective morality that is based on God’s character. Such a person would not be a monster. However, basing morality on the wrong foundation, personal opinion, would make one a monster because ignoring objective morality requires rejecting God’s sovereignty; and rejecting God’s sovereignty is immoral. So it would be impossible to be subjectively moral without deviating from objective morality.

Is every person that is not objectively moral subjectively moral? One could say that because, if morals are not based on an objective standard, then they are based on a subjective one. Ah, but there are monsters who have no morals at all. They may have a personal code based on what is convenient, profitable, or pleasurable. That is emotional or pragmatic, not principled, so it would be incorrect to call it “morality.”

The grammar describes a true monster as subjectively moral and anti-life or as subjectively moral and anti-God. In this context, and requires that both be true. The construction implies that people who are pro-life but subjectively moral and people who are pro-God but subjectively moral are not monsters.

Furthermore, the anti-life and anti-God positions are subjective morals, so they are redundant. The phrase is like saying a motorcycle is not a car and tires or a car and bumpers when the tires and bumpers are part of the car.

Does it flow from If God the Father of life is All-Holy and objectively moral that subjective morality is monstrous? If objective morality is based on God’s character, specifically, His holiness, then the link that contrasts God’s holiness against subjective morality is indirect. That means that God’s holiness is background information rather than part of the premise.

It is necessary for objective morality to exist in order for subjective morality to be anomalous. There’s no such thing as an anomaly without such a thing as normal. It is also necessary that normality is desired or intended, which requires an agent who desires or assigns a goal or purpose. However, desire or intent, like God’s holiness, is not directly related to whether one meets the objective requirements.

So refining the original statement should include:

• Account for the worst monster, the amoral person.
• Restate anti-life or anti-God as examples of subjective morals (and perhaps be a bit more specific).
• Treat as background or trim information about God being holy (and imposing a requirement that His creatures be objectively moral.
• Use attitudes about God and the sacredness of life as examples rather than as requirements.

A better phrasing would be: God the Father of life requires of moral beings an objective morality based on His holy character. Since objective morality exists and is part of our original, intended design, a moral monster is any person who is amoral or subjectively moral. Examples of subjectively moral principles might include promoting atheism or non-medically-necessary abortion.

The elephant in the room includes a practical application of the definition.

Although some of us aspire to match our morality to God’s objective standard, we all retain subjective morals and fall short even of those. We are all moral monsters. None of us is born with the moral perfection intended in God's children. We are all spiritually deformed and spiritually non-viable. For all have sinned and come short of the glory of God. 

God took responsibility for allowing us to bring moral monstrosity into the world by providing for redemption at His own expense. If we recognize our monstrosity, agree that we have earned the consequences, and entrust ourselves solely to the One who redeems us from our moral debt, then God will begin the process of transforming us from monsters back into the works of art that He originally designed us to be. 

Copyright 2020, Richard Wheeler. Feel free to use for non-remunerated purposes, but please remember to give credit where credit is due.