God's Battle

“To believe in the possibility of ‘falling from grace’ is to believe in the possible defeat of God by the devil. That is unthinkable and utterly impossible. The final perseverance of the saints is of necessity true in view of the glory and the character and the honour of God Himself.

‘Ah but,’ you say, ‘this leads to danger; for a person will say, ‘I can do what I like.’’ No! the more you realize this great truth the more careful you will be. This is the truth that makes people keep to the narrow path — the realization that the honour of God is involved, and that I am not fighting my own battle, that if I fail the Name of God Himself is involved in it."

— Martyn Lloyd-Jones

The Lost Virtue of Self-Control

There are two different lives I lead. Two different kinds of life. There is the life I love, but that is so difficult to maintain, and there is the life I hate, but am so often tempted toward. The first is a life of discipline and self-control, while the second is a life of disorganization and instability. I love the first life, but am constantly sliding toward the second. 

The Bible commends self-control and discipline. We are told that self-control is fruit of the Spirit, an imprint of God’s presence in our lives. We are told to discipline and train ourselves to godliness (1 Timothy 4:7), to labor for habits and patterns that will drive us toward holy thoughts, holy desires, and holy lives.

I consider self-control a lost virtue, a quality we too easily ignore. I think we can be uncomfortable with the very idea of self-control because we love to emphasize grace. Somehow grace seems to equate with freedom from structure, with freedom from rigidity. We revel in the freedom of the gospel, not realizing that the gospel doesn’t free us from self-control, but to self-control. Because we are no longer counting on our habits and patterns to discipline us toward salvation, we can joyfully mobilize them to discipline us toward sanctification.

Self-control and discipline are gifts we can use to constrain sin and promote holiness. They are gifts we can use to hinder old habits and promote new, better patterns.
I love my life of discipline and self-control. I hate my life of confusion and instability. And yet that life is always beckoning, always calling. The very moment I begin coasting, I coast away from restraint and toward chaos. I coast away from discipline and toward disorganization.

As a Christian I am influenced by an old man and a new man, the man I was and the man I am becoming. The new man loves to see each moment as a gift of God that must be stewarded well; the old man loves to fritter away time and opportunity, one moment at a time. The new man sees the benefit of living a disciplined life; the old man insists it is just not worth the effort. The new man sees that patterns and habits can be renewed and redeemed and used for good; the old man screams that this is weakness, a crutch for the person who lacks better motivation.

As summer gives way to fall — as summer’s chaos gives way to fall’s schedule — this is the time to renew my commitment to a life of self-control, a life that is disciplined toward godliness. It is time to renew my commitment to their sheer goodness, and their plain value. There is no better time than right now.

Experiencing God's Grace

Before we as believers can fully experience the fullness and richness of God’s grace, we must know the limits of our fleshly abilities when it comes our doing to attain God’s attention and blessing. The more we understand our inability to add one ounce of self-effort to gain or maintain relationship with God, the more we will understand, accept and appreciate grace and its power and the dimension of His divine accomplishment minus any assistance from us humans. Grace shines so brightly and is so powerful, it eradicates the need for our weak human attempts to assist God in His work. We  will come to understand that it is Him doing His work through us, not us working for Him and needing His assistance.

Grace does not empower us to live in the flesh with its judging, condemning and fear-mongering hell awaiting eternal damnation; it empowers us to live in the Spirit and the Spirit to live through us with a gracious, loving and forgiving attitude of our loving Father.

Grace stands opposed to works of the flesh (Rom. 4:4-5; 11:6). However, grace is the source of His working through us. This simply means that whereas we are saved by grace and not of works, we are saved by grace unto His good works working through us. Good works are the fruit, not the root, of God’s saving grace (see esp. Eph. 2:8 -10).

For you who believe that you have to work to produce good fruit...KNOW that no fruit works at producing itself...fruit is a product of the root and sap of the tree. That is why believers (the fruit) cannot do anything in and off themselves to produce good fruit...no amount of Sunday meeting going, no amount of giving of your time and money, no amount of bible reading or sermon listening adds one iota of value to your fruit bearing...the source of your fruit bearing is Christ therefore, the need for Christ to live His life through you.

God Does Not Always Get What He Wants

One of the ways the Bible makes it clear that humans have free will and that God doesn’t predetermine human decisions is found in the responses God has toward human choices. Scripture consistently depicts God as being frustrated by the way his people obstinately resist his plans and Scripture often depicts God’s heart as breaking over people’s stubborn refusal to choose the way of life. The pain of God’s heart over human rebellion is clearly revealed in Jesus as he laments over Jerusalem:

Jerusalem, Jerusalem, the city that kills the prophets and stones those who are sent to it! How often have I desired to gather your children together as a hen gathers her brood under her wings, and you were not willing! (emphasis added Matt. 23:37)

Christ, who is our picture of God, earnestly longs for everyone in the city of Jerusalem to come to him and receive the life he has to offer. But, even though he is the Son of God, he could not force the people he loves to turn to him. Whether they did so or not was up to them.
Examples of God’s grief over the free choices of humans abound in Scripture. In the words of the Lord as he speaks about a judgment he is bringing on Israel in Ezekiel 22, it reads, “I soughtfor anyone among them who would repair the wall and stand in the breach before me on behalf of the land, so that I would not destroy it,” the Lord cries. But unfortunately, he concludes, “I found no one. Therefore I have poured out my indignation upon them…” (Ezek. 22:30–31).
This passage is a remarkable testimony to the urgency of prayer, but it also shows the importance of freedom in general. If anyone had chosen to heed the Lord’s earnest attempt to raise up an intercessor, the disaster that befell Israel would have been avoided. To the Lord’s great disappointment, however, no one responded to God’s promptings.

Along the same lines, a number of biblical passages describe God as experiencing sorrow at the way things turned out because of human decisions. For example, in the light of the depravity that characterized humanity prior to the flood, the Bible says “The Lord was sorry that he made humankind on the earth, and it grieved him to his heart” (Gen. 6:6). If everything happens according to God’s plan, then God must have willed humans to sink to the pathetic level of depravity we find them prior to the flood. But if God in any sense willed this depravity, how could God genuinely regret the way his creations turned out? (Other examples can be found in Exod. 34:9; 33:3,5; Deut. 9:6, 13; 10:16; 31:27; Judges 2:19; 2 Kings 17:14; 2 Chron. 30:8; 36:13; Ne 9:16; Isa. 46:12; 48:4; Jer. 7:26; Hos. 4:16).

Nowhere is our ability to freely thwart God’s purpose and grieve God’s heart more evident than in our capacity to bring permanent destruction upon ourselves. The Bible teaches that God desires every person to accept his love and be saved (e.g. 1 Tim 2:4, 4:10; 2 Pet 3:9; cf. Ezek 18:23, 32; 33:11). There is no partiality in God that leads him to love one person more than another, or to arbitrarily select some for salvation rather than others (Deut 10:17; 2 Chron 19:7; Ac 10:34; Rom 2:11; Ja 3:17). God wants all to be saved and he created them with the sincere hope that they would be saved.
Yet, the Bible also makes it clear that many people refuse this. Even though Jesus died “for the sins of the whole world” (I Jn 2:2), and even though God is always working in people’s hearts to influence them to accept him, some people “love darkness rather than light” (Jn 3:19). Because people must be free if love is to be genuine, they have the capacity to thwart God’s will and bring destruction upon themselves.

When people refuse God’s plan for their lives, it is not because their destruction fits into God’s mysterious plan for creation. To the contrary, throughout their lives God tries to save them – which is why he is frustrated with their obstinacy. “All day long,” the Lord says, “I have held out my hands to a disobedient and contrary people” (Rom 10:21). God truly grieves when the people he loves and tries to influence to come into his eternal kingdom choose to resist him.
These and similar passages demonstrate that God does not always get what he wants for he gave people free will. God created us with the capacity to receive and reflect his love back to him and to each other as well as toward the animal kingdom and the earth. But because we’re talking about love, God couldn’t preprogram us to cooperate with God’s plan. We have the capacity to thwart God’s will, within limits. And when we do, it breaks God’s heart.

- Greg Boyd

Grace Power

The nature of God’s Grace is thoroughly misunderstood by the religionists within religion. The religionists presents Jesus as a Savior saving people from “hell fire”...Grace presents Jesus as the Savior saving people from the sin of the sinner and the self-righteous saint so both can live a graceful and loving life in daily living. Millions have been deceived by the hell escaping gospel, because of their desire to escape religion’s hell the religious way, they have been hindered from experiencing the power of Grace to free them from religious carnality and worldliness.

In their ignorance the religionists tells us that Grace is an occasion to sin because they have never experienced Grace’s power to keep them from sin. Grace is no more a license to sin than electricity is a license to electrocute yourself.

There isn’t anything we can do or not do to disqualify ourselves from the Grace of our loving God, but the religionists have managed to forfit the experience of the reality of God’s Grace through their pious unwillingness to accept the finished work of Christ’s cross and resurrection by insisting on maintaining salvation by their own striving to keep the religious rules.

Ah...the sweet aroma of God’s amazing Grace…the full and free forgiveness of every sin, past, present and future without God demanding or expecting anything from the one who He bestows His forgiveness on.

- Glenn Regular

Where is Human Free Will in the Bible

The Bible is emphatic on its teaching that humans possess free will and are capable of originating evil. Notice, for example, that in the very first chapter of the Bible God commands humans to be fruitful and exercise dominion over the animal kingdom and the earth (Gen. 1:26). The fact that God must command us to carry out his will reveals that we are not forced to carry out his will. We can choose to obey God or not, as the subsequent narrative makes clear.
Human free will is manifested in the fact that, throughout Scripture, God gives us choices and calls on us to choose the way he knows is best. To give just a few illustrations, notice the way God talks to the Israelites when finalizing his covenant with them at the end of Deuteronomy:

See, I set before you today life and prosperity, death and destruction. For I command you today to love the Lord your God, to walk in his ways…then you will live and increase, and the Lord your God will bless you in the land you are entering to possess. But if your heart turns away and you are not obedient, and if you are drawn away to bow down to other gods and worship them, I declare to you this day that you will certainly be destroyed…I have set before you life and death, blessings and curses. Now choose life, so that you and your children may live…(Duet 30:15-19).

God gives the Israelites a choice to either choose life (which means choosing to love and obey him) or to choose death (which means rejecting him). God obviously hopes they’ll choose life, but it is ultimately up to them to decide. In a world that is centered on love, even God can’t be guaranteed to always get what he wants.
Another clear example of the Lord placing choices before people, calling on them to choose to follow him, is found in Ezekial 18.

If a man is righteous and does what is lawful and right….he shall surely live, says the Lord GOD….The person who sins shall die….But if the wicked turn away from all their sins…they shall surely live; they shall not die.

Having laid out the choices before us, God discloses his own feelings about the matter when he asks:

Have I any pleasure in the death of the wicked, says the Lord GOD, and not rather that they should turn from their ways and live?… Cast away from you all the transgressions that you have committed against me, and get yourselves a new heart and a new spirit! Why will you die, O house of Israel? For I have no pleasure in the death of anyone, says the Lord GOD. Turn, then, and live. (Ezek. 18:5,9, 20, 23, 31-32).

The Lord makes it emphatically clear that he doesn’t want anyone to perish. He takes no pleasure in the death of the wicked. He rather wants everyone to embrace the life he offers them.  But because love must be freely chosen, he cannot simply decree that he will get what he wants. He pleads with people to turn to him, but he will not coerce them.
Another way Scripture reveals that humans are free is by depicting them as the originators of their own free actions. For example, Jesus’ taught that, “The good person out of the good treasure of the heart produces good, and the evil person out of evil treasure produces evil; for it is out of the abundance of the heart that the mouth speaks” (Lk 6:45, emphasis added). Similarly, Jesus taught that it was out of the person’s own heart that “evil intentions, murder, adultery, fornication, theft, false witness, [and] slander” arise (Mt 15:19). These are not things that God in any sense desires or intentionally plans. They originate in a persons’ own heart.
Evil originates in us, not God. To give just a few more illustrations, we could cite King Solomon (I Kgs 11:6, 9), King Rehoboam (2 Chron 12:14), and King Zedekiah (2 Chron 36:12-13). Jerusalem degenerated to such a low moral point during the time of Jeremiah, according to the Bible, because God’s people had “a stubborn and rebellious heart” and had “turned aside and gone away” (Jere 5:23, emphasis added). In frustration, the Lord asked them, “How long shall your evil schemes lodge within you? (Jere 4:14, emphasis added).
Because agents are genuinely free, many things God wills don’t get accomplish, and many evils God wishes could be prevented take place. Yet, because God is infinitely wise and retains over-all control of the cosmos, we can rest assured that his promise to eventually overcome all opposition and achieve his purposes will come to pass.

- Greg A. Boyd

Is It Not Because You Are Looking to Yourself

“Is not the forgiveness of all your sins– the full justification of your person– your inalienable adoption into God’s family– the complete payment of all that great debt you owed, and the assured and certain prospect of being where Christ is, and with Christ, beholding His glory forever, a well-grounded source of joy? Most truly!

Why, then, are you not a more joyful believer? Why go you mourning all your days, without one gleam of sunshine, one thrill of joy, one ray of hope, one note of praise? Is it not because you are looking to yourself and within yourself, to the almost entire exclusion of Christ and of the great and complete salvation wrought for you in and by Christ?"

 
— Octavius Winslow

I Am Who I Am...... But Who Am I

A person's identity is is largely determined by someone or something they have a relationship with. To satisfy the need to know who they are some people will latch on to just about anything to discover who they are.

Many people's identity is found in their profession, people they associate with, their abilities and talents, their environment, their appearance, their nationality, their race, the car they drive, the neighborhood they live in, their social class, the denomination they belong to, their religious beliefs, etc....  

The problem with the above identity sources is that they are all as fleeting as the wind. The opinions of other people are a poor way to determine who we are. Religious denominations are a prime example of this. Agree with their constitution, their bylaws, sign the membership form and abide by their rules and regulations and you are considered a "good Christian"...a "good Baptist"...a "good pentecostal"...a "good fundamentalist"...a "good evangelical", etc.... Disagree with them, disobey their bylaws and their creeds and your identity-ship will sink and you would fast lose your identification and association with them.

There is only one sure way to determine your identity that is valid and unshakeable, that is what Christ thinks of you and who you are in Him. No matter what you do or don't do, no matter your failures, no matter how may times you slip and fall, no matter what other people say about you, no matter what religion may think of you...WHO YOU ARE IN CHRIST NEVER CHANGES! Only settled in this knowledge will you begin to discover your true identity

Jesus is the changeless one and what He thinks of you is also changeless, you are the righteousness of God and that is changeless no matter the changing opinions of other people.

Don't let religion, other people, or things steal your identity!

Some Grace Plus Law Upholders.....

Some grace plus law gospel upholders accuse the grace only gospel of leading people to become spiritually lazy and complacent about their relationship with God. This guilt-mongering is partially due to the loss of control over people if they became grace plus nothing living people. The religious domination, manipulation and fear-mongering tactics would cease to produce favorable results for them and the religious empires would crumble in the dust of the deception and confusion it is based on.

Grace is not a license to sin, nor is it a lazy man's gospel. In fact the exact opposite is true. The religious emphasis on the cross as sin forgiving to the exclusion of Christ in you and living through you without any input of human doing is what really leads to spiritual complacency.

The mixed law and grace gospel produces believers who are relieved and thankful that they will not be judged for their sins and have escaped “hell”. But this gospel gives people no motivation to change their way of living. That is why preachers in the mixed law and grace gospel play the shame and blame game with its guilt and condemnation prizes to motivate their adherents to perform religious hoop-jumping to win God's favor and blessing because they have deceived people into believing that their identity is determined by their religious performance and behavior.

However, grace living people are motivated by the Christ life within based on their identity in Christ and in that freedom Christ works through them as the Community of the Redeemed unencumbered by religious rules and rituals. For grace living people the dominate motivation for living godly is the grace and love of God...not the wrath of God rendered to people because they are law and religious rule breakers.

 

- Glenn Regular

The Prodigal Son

The religious gospel with its law keeping, its rule and ritual keeping is man's search for God.

The Grace gospel with its trust in God, with its total dependence on God is God's search for man.

While we were yet in weakness [powerless to help ourselves], at the fitting time Christ died for (in behalf of) the ungodly....But God shows and clearly proves His [own] love for us by the fact that while we were still sinners, Christ (the Messiah, the Anointed One) died for us...For if while we were enemies we were reconciled to God through the death of His Son....(Romans 5:6-10).

In reading the story of the cross, what do you find that Christ didn't do that religion asks of men to do? Maybe you will get it from this statement; “NOBODY asked Jesus to FORGIVE them of their SIN! Instead Jesus said, “Father forgive them, for they know not what they are doing” (Luke 23:34). Jesus did not give an alter call to the men He chose as disciples before He called them to follow Him, He said; “follow me and I will make you fishers of men.” This action by the men who became His disciples is a foreshadow of how all people are to come to Christ because His finished work on the cross is finished. Their repenting is to turn from following the ways of man and turn to following Him...forsaking all other means to get to Him and follow Him only.

It was solely Jesus' action on His own initiative that brought about the forgiveness of man! Man did NOTHING nor can do ANYTHING to bring about his salvation, JESUS did it ALL, and ALL to Him I owe, that fact is the reason I have a relationship with the divine.

What does the story about the “prodigal son” (I think it is a story that reflects the heart of our LOVING FATHER more than about the wayward son) teach us about this fact as recorded by Luke 15:11-32? The account gives a perfect picture of Father God's attitude toward lost people this side of the cross. The youngest son had taken his inheritance and blew it wastefully, bringing shame to His father and family. Without a penny to call his own...he is down and out...In order to stay alive he accepts a job that is on the lowest scale possible for a Jew, feeding the pigs. But what is his father's attitude? Did he write the boy off, did he demand a return of the money, did he demand the young man to repent,? No. The father didin't looking down the road with a big stick in hand to beat upon the lad for choosing the wrong path to make him pay for what he had done. You can tell the father's attitude by his response when he saw his sinner son afar off.

But while he was a long way off, his father saw him and was filled with compassion for him; he ran to his son, threw his arms around him and kissed him (Luke 15:20).

The father then throws a big come home party that had nothing to do with demanding the young man repent of his waywardness.

Now get the picture here. When the boy was squandering away his inheritance, when the boy was in the hog slop of the pig pen, what stood in the way of his returning to his father? Was the father waiting for him to repent before his coming home? No, Was there a barrier to His coming home on the father's part? If repentance was necessary the father would have waited until he repented before standing daily to gaze down the road in hopes of seeing his boy. The only thing that kept the boy from his father was his own decision to stay in the hog slop and not make a decision to go home.

Today God is calling people that He has forgiven to come home, just like the father longed for his prodigal wayward boy to do. This is a result of Of Jesus' finished work on the cross. Jesus did ALL that was necessary to remove the disease of sin, when a sinner turns from his selfish ways and turns to God he falls into the arms of a loving Father he is accepted as he is...not for saying some “sinner's prayer”. He comes home to life and living because hr is restored to life and living.

- Glenn Regular 

Christ, Not Feelings

“Do you want to know supreme joy, do you want to experience a happiness that eludes description? There is only one thing to do, really seek Him, seek Him Himself, turn to the Lord Jesus Christ Himself.

If you find that your feelings are depressed do not sit down and commiserate with yourself, do not try to work something up but go directly to Him and seek His face, as the little child who is miserable and unhappy because somebody else has taken or broken his toy, runs to its father or its mother. So if you and I find ourselves afflicted by this condition, there is only one thing to do, it is to go to Him.

If you seek the Lord Jesus Christ and find him there is no need to worry about your happiness and your joy. He is our joy and our happiness, even as He is our peace. He is life, He is everything. So avoid the incitements and the temptations of Satan to give feelings this great prominence at the centre. Put at the centre the only One who has a right to be there, the Lord of Glory, Who so loved you that He went to the Cross and bore the punishment and the shame of your sins and died for you."

  — Martyn Lloyd-Jones

Did Jesus Finish It or Not

When we clearly understand the purpose of God for mankind is to “draw all men unto Himself”, we will clearly see that the purpose for Jesus going to the cross was to raise the "walking dead" to life. And we will begin to see why the FINISHED work of Christ had to deal with the sin problem once and for all as taught in the Post Cross Testament.

The death He died, he died to sin once and for all; but the life He lives, He lives to God, (Rom. 6:10).

But now He has appeared once and for all, at the end of the ages to do away with sin by the sacrifice of Himself (Heb. 9:26)

For Christ died for sins once and for all, the righteous for the unrighteous, to bring you to God. He was put to death in the body but made alive by the Spirit (1 Pet. 3:18).

The totality of Christ's sacrifice on the cross has been a contention within religion since His resurrection. The religionist has taken the law of Moses, with its sacrificial system that God gave to Israel along with the list of do's and don'ts and mixed it with the Grace gospel that Jesus gave to Paul for all people, and presenting it as the gospel, but it is not the gospel as Paul so plainly tells us in Galatians.

Even though these sacrifices were God-sanctioned, they were not ordained to give people a relationship with Him. Instead the law showed mankind the impossibility of people keeping it and the sacrificial system was merely a picture of Christ and His finished work on behalf of the Human race.

The Law is only a shadow of the good things to come...not the realities themselves. For this reason it can never, by the same sacrifices repeated endlessly year after year, make perfect those who draw near to worship (Heb. 10:1).

God in His graciousness gave the sacrificial system to Israel as a means for them to experience relief from the guilt they experienced by not being able to obey the do's and don'ts of the law in their striving. Those sacrificial offerings did “atone”...”cover” the people's sins but it could not take away their sins, “because it is impossible for the blood of bulls and goats to take away sins” (Hebrews 10:4). Man under the law could experience the blessing of forgiveness by the sacrificial system, but it provided no final solution.

Then in God's timing, Jesus came into the earth realm...the perfect, sinless God-Man...”Look the Lamb of God who TAKES AWAY THE SIN OF THE WORLD!” (Jn. 1:9). Praise God...from that point on, the finished work of Christ in sacrificing Himself is presented as the answer to man's inability to keep the law, and is totally different than the old sacrificial system.

And by [God's] will, we have been made holy through the sacrifice of the body of Jesus Christ once and for all. Day after day every priest stands and performs his religious duties; again and again he offers the same sacrifices, which can never take away sins. But when this priest had offered for all time one sacrifice for sins, He sat down at the right hand of God (Heb. 10:10-12).

In contrast to the former way of doing the do's of the priest...standing and making continual sacrifices...Christ is said to have sat down. Why? Because He FINISHED the sacrifices of the former and by His sacrificing Himself has settled the sin issue...”Jesus did it all , all to Him I owe.”

Notice what it doesn't say here...it doesn't say that we act perfect in our action...we all know we don't; this perfection is referring to our IDENTITY in Christ. The scriptures declare that in spite of our short comings and failures, through Jesus Christ we have been made totally acceptable to our holy God.

People of God, we need to settle the issue of the completeness of the sacrifice of Christ on the cross and His resurrection in our own minds, or we will never enter into the freedom to discover the reality of the resurrection...the raising of the "walking dead" to life in Christ as His Community of the Redeemed bringing His Kingdom to earth.

 

- Glenn Regular

The Sin Issue is No Longer an Issue

Institutional religion, especially the fundamental, evangelical and the charismatic groups, have done a excellent job at keeping its followers preoccupied with the thing that in God's eye's is no longer the thing...God has dealt with the thing...sin...through the cross, once and for all. To remain ignorant of the thing that God wants believers to be occupied with...the life of Christ within and living that life...is paramount to keeping people "sin conscious", "hell conscious" and heaven conscious rather than "God conscious", "Kingdom conscious", "love conscious and "Grace conscious."

Religion has minimized what Jesus accomplished on the cross by  preaching a law-keeping, fear-mongering gospel instead of maximizing what Jesus accomplished on the cross by preaching a love-giving and grace-living gospel.

The Gospel of Jesus Christ is not the bad news of sin, which brought death to all mankind...the Gospel is the good news of the resurrection...the restoration of life to to the "walking spiritually dead" by His dealing with the sin issue (death) once and for all. The Good News Gospel is a celebration of the purpose and meaning of what Jesus accomplished by His death and resurrection.

Prior to the cross man had a sin issue. This sin issue made people impossible to be the dwelling place of God because of sin pollution, therefore God dealt with the sin issue "once and for all" so that Christ could dwell in us, making us the habitation of God. He sterilized us so sin would not pollute us even when we commit sin.

So God cleaned up the sin pollution issue through the cross...sterilized us...filled us through Christ's resurrection...now He has to have  a way of keeping us sterile in a sin polluted environment by sealing us so we would not be contaminated by sin. As the dwelling place of God people need to be sealed to keep the bad things from contaminating us as the container of the divine life of Christ.

How did God accomplish this? "And you also were included in Christ when you heard the      
word of truth,he gospel of your  salvation. Having believed, you were marked in Him with a SEAL, the promised Holy Spirit." (Eph. 1:13)

The wonderment of the Gospel is that Christ did it all without any input by man...He cleansed us through the cross, He filled us through the resurrection and He sealed us by giving us the Holy Spirit.

Wow...what a loving Father that would give us such a loving Savior who sent us such a loving Holy Spirit to ensure we would be the living stones, fitted together by Christ Himself, to make us His dwelling place...His "called out ones"...His Community of the Redeemed, to represent Himself in the Community of Humanity.

Yet we have religion polluting the purity of the Gospel of Grace by mixing it with the Mosaic law, religious tradition and religious rule keeping. Such injustice to the gospel is due to ignorance of the totality and finality of what happened on the cross, and is uncalled for.

- Glenn Regular

The Lord is My Shepherd

This wonderful line from perhaps the most wonderful psalm is deeply meaningful. There are at least three lessons we can draw from it.

In the first place, we must learn that the LORD is our shepherd. Many times we may find ourselves powerless and lost in the face of the ambiguities of the world. It's not clear what's right, what's wrong, who to follow, who to avoid. Or it may be that the looming presence of evil compromises the future, that it saps us of any hope for what may come. In the face of these difficulties, we have to see that the one who leads us is the LORD. He is our leader, he is our king -- he who freed the Hebrews from bondage in Israel, who returned them miraculously through Cyrus from exile in Babylon, and who raised Jesus Christ from the dead. This same one is our leader, not Obama or ISIS or anyone else.

Furthermore, we must learn that the LORD is our shepherd. At least in my own case, the experience of sin and resultant guilt may bring along with it questions about God's love. Does God love me? Can God forgive a person who has done the things I have, a person as broken and sick as I find myself to be? The psalmist uses the indicative mood here: it's not that the LORD could be my shepherd, if only I could stop sinning; it's not that he might be my shepherd, but I'll have to wait and see. No, he is describing an actual state of affairs: the LORD is my shepherd, now and forever. I have no need to doubt it, nor do I need to do anything to try to win his favor. He is my shepherd already! He already cares for me!

Finally, we must learn that the LORD is our shepherd. If he is the shepherd, then we must be the sheep. Some persons have the conviction that they are capable of leading their own lives, of trekking their own paths, of blazing their own trails. They affirm their individual autonomy and their capacity to rule over their future. The image of a shepherd cannot but be unsettling for them. Sheep are animals which need a shepherd -- they can't lead themselves well, and they are vulnerable to attack. When David says that the LORD is his shepherd, he is acknowledging that he needs to be led, and that he cannot do things on his own.

Also important: the LORD is our shepherd and not some other thing. To speak of a shepherd is to assume the necessity of leadership. But it is also at the same time to ascribe that leadership a certain quality, a certain goal. Shepherds are benevolent leaders -- they take care of the sheep, they keep them from falling down the sides of cliffs or walking off in the wrong direction, they fight off bears and wolves and other hostile forces of the environment. It is so important to think of God as our shepherd because of the sin within us, sin which inclines us to ascribe malevolence and evil to God at every turn. I've written on this before. It is a tendency that requires treatment through the transformation of our mind. This transformation can be accomplished when we begin to understand ourselves as God's sheep, and God as our shepherd. The LORD is our shepherd!

Living by Faith

Living by faith cannot be done in the past...the past is over.

Living by faith cannot be done in the future...the future is not here yet.

Living by faith can only be done in the present.

Therefore you cannot have faith for the past, nor can you have faith for the future.

You can only have faith for the present.

The faith you had when the past was the present and the faith you can have when the future is present and the faith you have in the present is based of your trust in God!

Understanding of the completeness of what Christ accomplished on the cross and by His resurrection, in that the sin issue has forever been dealt with, only then can we have total trust in God regarding the future. We must come to the realization that our future standing spiritually is not due to some "heavenly bookkeeping" recording our right and wrongs, to be used as a measuring stick to determine if we make it into heaven or not.

Live by the faith of God...not the faith of religion, its rules or its rituals!

- Glenn Regular

Are You Hearing the Partial Gospel?

Some people within the "Christian Religion" going to their Sunday-event-driven meetings, hear all about Christ's death on the cross for them for the forgiveness of their sin, but they are totally unaware about Christ's life in them and His living His life through them while they live life on earth. Oh...they may know it with their intellect, but it is unknown in their heart or spirit, therefore not experienced.

Therefore they strive to live out the believer's life by keeping Old Testament laws and observing religious rules and rituals in their own strength and ability, resulting in failure. They experience no spiritual reality in their relationship with Christ or with people.

The gospel is more than about where you go when you die. That "more" of the gospel, is about the reality of Christ living in you and through you, while you live your life on earth.

- Glenn Regular

Believers Valuable to Christ

“He parted with the greatest glory, he underwent the greatest misery, he doth the greatest works that ever were, because he loves his spouse, — because he values believers.

What can more, what can farther be spoken? How little is the depth of that which is spoken fathomed! How unable are we to look into the mysterious recesses of it! He so loves, so values his saints, as that, having from eternity undertaken to bring them to God, he rejoices his soul in the thoughts of it; and pursues his design through heaven and hell, life and death, by suffering and doing, in mercy and with power; and ceaseth not until he bring it to perfection."

— John Owen

Why Did Jesus Come to Earth?

For 50 of my 65 years of living on this earth I have been attending religious meetings and listening to the Gospel...or so I thought. And it went something like this, “man is a sinner destined to suffer in the pangs of hell for eternity. Jesus came to die on the cross so that man could be rescued from hell and fitted for heaven. Somehow this religious mentality was based on John 3:16; “For God so loved the world that He gave His only Son that whosoever believes in Him should not perish but have ever lasting life.”

The Gospel was presented by fear-mongering mongrels threatening people to an eternity in hell if they did not repent by saying the “sinner's prayer”, then attending some denominational religious building on Sundays and abiding by the religious rules and rituals.

Religion still functions today by espousing a partial gospel in that man is in need of forgiveness through the cross which eradicates our sin and guilt. But it does not give us power to live above sin and live the Christ life in the here and now.

Man's problem runs much deeper than needing a Savior to save him from hell so he can go to heaven. The root of man's problem is he is dead! God sees mankind as dead and in need of life. The death of Christ on the cross did not raise man from the dead. If Jesus died on the cross and remained in the grave there would be no remission of sin and the world would be full of the “living dead.”

The ultimate word that describes “resurrection” is “restoration”...the resurrection restores life to the “living dead” and makes them alive unto God! That is how we are to live in this world, “alive unto God through Christ living in us and through us by His Spirit. “but God. Being rich in mercy, because of His great love with which He loved us, even when we were dead in our transgressions, made us alive together with Christ (by grace you have been saves) (Eph. 2:4-5).

As a side note...for you who have responded to one of my posts regarding God loves the sinner by saying, “I used to believe that God loved the sinner but hated the sin, but I no longer believe such nonsenses, God hates sinners.” Maybe you should take the above verse to heart and apply it to your thinking.

The religious gospel heralders have associates the Holy spirit with the giving of power to preach, to understand the bible, power to teach, power to serve, while neglecting the single most important aspect of having the Holy Spirit... THROUGH HIM WE HAVE RECEIVED THE VERY LIFE OF CHRIST, THUS THE VERY LIFE OF GOD HIMSELF!

By only associating the Spirit's ministry with power, the emphasis is “meism”... “God give me”, God help me”, God empower me”. And we take comfort in the fact that the Spirit helps us but, it is still “us” doing the doings and “us”doing the doings is not God way! Christ did not come to “help” me to do doings for God; He came to live in me, live His life through me and do His work through me! Christ is our enabler because He lives in us to do His work through us. See Gal. 2:20.

If the religionists would get a hold of this truth, instead of doubling their man-made efforts to maintain the status quo they would regain their lost sight of God's purpose for the Community of the Redeemed and the Community of Humanity. Their rededicating, rededicating, rededicating, recommitting, recommitting, recommitting, repenting, repenting and repenting with nothing ever changing is an expression of saying, God this time “I” will do it even if it kills me!

And the thing is...it will kill them...because for a person to live the life of a believer is impossible...ONLY CHRIST CAN LIVE IT!

He came not to get the atmosphere of earth to heaven by getting people out of hell to heaven...No...He came to get the atmosphere of heaven to earth by getting the atmosphere of heaven into people in the person of Himself.

And that my friend is why Christ came!

THAT IS THE GOOD NEWS GOSPEL OF GRACE!

Christ in Context

“He who with his whole heart believes in Jesus as the Son of God is thereby committed to much else besides. He is committed to a view of God, to a view of man, to a view of sin, to a view of redemption, to a view of the purpose of God in creation and history, to a view of human destiny, found only in Christianity."— James Orr

Reformed Theology Rocks

Reformed theology rocks, for a variety of reasons. I am currently reading Jan Rohls book Reformed Confessions: Theology from Zurich to Barmen. Columbia Series In Reformed Theology, which is a resource I briefly referenced in a chapter I wrote for our edited book Evangelical Calvinism: Essays Resourcing the Continuing Reformation of the Church. As I have been reading this book I have been getting encouraged again about why Reformed theology is such a boon for the weary theological soul.


Primarily the thing that has attracted me most to Reformed theology over the years is of a dogmatic interest; i.e. the Sovereign reality of who the Triune God is, and the primacy of grace serve to shape the Reformed theological trajectory in ways that other theological approaches do not, in my view. Truly, there are different ways to emphasize this reality within the Reformed approach[es], and we as evangelical Calvinists have our own unique way of emphasizing who God is for us in Christ, but in the main there is a common thread that unites all instances of Reformed theology; that common theme, again, is an emphasis upon who God is, and the primacy of grace in a God-world/Creator-creature relation.
For example there is something very comforting that arises from the words found in the Heidelberg Catechism, in regard to who God is, and what our relation to him is. When you are reading the Heidelberg Catechism you will immediately be confronted with question 1 that says this:

Question 1.
What is thy only comfort in life and death?

Answer.
That I with body and soul, both in life and death, (a) am not my own, (b) but belong unto my faithful Saviour Jesus Christ; (c) who, with his precious blood, has fully satisfied for all my sins, (d) and delivered me from all the power of the devil; (e) and so preserves me (f) that without the will of my heavenly Father, not a hair can fall from my head; (g) yea, that all things must be subservient to my salvation, (h) and therefore, by his Holy Spirit, He also assures me of eternal life, (i) and makes me sincerely willing and ready, henceforth, to live unto him. (j) (a) Rom.14:7,8. (b) 1 Cor.6:19. (c) 1 Cor.3:23; Tit.2:14. (d) 1Pet.1:18,19; 1 John 1:7; 1 John 2:2,12. (e) Heb.2:14; 1 John 3:8; John 8:34-36. (f) John 6:39; John 10:28; 2 Thess.3:3; 1 Pet.1:5. (g) Matt.10:29-31; Luke 21:18. (h) Rom.8:28. (i) 2 Cor.1:20-22; 2 Cor.5:5; Eph.1:13,14; Rom.8:16. (j) Rom.8:14; 1 John 3:3.

This is a perfect example of the kind of riches available for the Christian person who takes advantage of the heritage provided for in the Reformed Christian faith. There is a hope and a warmth in knowing God as Father, and that we are related to him as a result of his love for us in the dearly beloved Son Jesus Christ, and that our relationship to this Father-Son God is assured and guaranteed to us by the person and work of the Holy Spirit in our lives. It is this Triune reality that Reformed theology, from a Protestant vantage point, does such a good job of emphasizing.

On a personal note: One reason I find this so encouraging is that this heritage is such a harbinger to my weary soul as I engage with the world who rejects, by and large, thoughtfulness about life, and greater reality such as God represents. It is encouraging to know that I have somewhere to go to quench my thirst, theologically, and in a way that there is a depth dimension provided for in an through the people that God was ministering to centuries ago in his church in the Reformation period.
These are some reasons why I think Reformed theology rocks (there are many other reasons), and why I would like to commend it to you for your consideration, if you have never taken advantage of the deeper theological realities provided for in the Reformed angle of the Christian faith. soli Deo Gloria!

The Judgment Seat of Christ

Believers have been chosen by God to fulfill the same eternal destiny, though He gives each of us different gifts wherewith He carries out His work through us. One day we will give an account to God regarding our faithfulness in allowing Him to do His work through us, or if we tried to do His work in our own strength through religious activity within religion.

Was our activity motivated by love and grace or by the fear of breaking the Mosaic law or religious laws? If we try to build our relationship with God on the foundation of trying to keep the law or religious rules, rather than the foundation of grace living, the works we accomplish will be burnt up as wood, hay and stubble and of no eternal benefit. "But Lord we healed the sick in your name, but Lord we cast out devils in your name, but Lord we went to church on Sundays and paid our tithes, but...but...but...", all of our butting will be of no avail.

To build our relationship with God on the foundation of good works rather than on complete trust in His finished work of grace, renders the good work to be an evil work. "Wow" you may say, "Regular, you have lost your marbles and are screwed up in the head for saying that good works are evil works."

Well, let me ask this question of you...What renders a work an evil work?

When the ten spies came back from spying out the promise land, two came back with a "good report", ten came back with a "evil report." The ten came back with a true report, there were giants in the land, compared to the spies they were as grass hoppers in the sight of the giants. what was evil about that? It was evil because it went against what God's perspective was of the situation. They were not agreeing with or fitting God into the picture at all...they were totally dependent on themselves and their own self-righteousness. That is what made it an "evil report." That is exactly what makes religion and religious works evil, works that are independent of God.

The bema seat judgement is for the purpose of checking the quality of  and the source of the works we have been involved in. Were we doing works for God by striving to keep the law and religious rules in our own strength? Or, were we working with God as He did His works through us? The former is evil and the latter is good.

If our working is not according to God's grace, we are involved in the works of the flesh, therefore it is evil even though the works may be what we consider good works. 

“According to the grace of God which was given to me, like a wise master builder I laid a foundation, and another is building on it.” (1 Cor. 3:10)

“According to the grace of God that was given to me” is a phrase designed by Paul to take the reader back into the stewardship opportunity that God had given to him, and to us (Eph. 4:11-16, Rom. 12:6).  He said that as a wise master builder he is laying a foundation and others are building upon it. He then reminded the believers at Corinth to take care as to how they built upon the foundation. 

“But each man must be careful how he builds on it.” (1 Cor. 3:10)

“For no man can lay a foundation other than the one which is laid, which is Jesus Christ.  Now if any man builds on the foundation with gold, silver, precious stones, wood, hay, straw.” (1 Cor. 3:11-12)

Each believer has been given grace to build upon the foundation of grace. The gold, silver ans precious stone building is "Grace building." The wood hay and straw building is the mixture of "Law and Grace building", polluting the purity of Grace.

“Each man’s work will become evident; for the day will show it because it is to be revealed with fire, and the fire itself will test the quality of each man’s work. If any man’s work which he has built on it remains, he will receive a reward. If any man’s work is burned up, he will suffer loss; but he himself will be saved, yet so as through fire.” (1 Cor. 3:11-15)

If you are legalistic, a guilt placer, judgement thrower, condemnation spreader, flesh driven, self-seeking, manipulative, controlling, position seeker, and a spiritual elitist, your works are rotten with evil and a stench in the nostrils of God and an hindrance to the work of the Community of the Redeemed in the Community of Humanity.

- Glenn Regular

Restoration of the Entire Cosmos

“The object of the work of redemption is not limited to the salvation of individual sinners, but extends itself to the redemption of the world, and to the organic reunion of all things in heaven and on earth under Christ as their original head.
The final outcome of the future, foreshadowed in the Holy Scriptures, is not the merely spiritual existence of saved souls, but the restoration of the entire cosmos, when God will be all in all under the renewed heaven on the renewed earth.”

— Abraham Kuyper

Not Knowing Whither:

"God is a perplexing being to man because He is never in the wrong, and through the process of allowing every bit of man's wrongdoing to appear right at the time, He proves Himself right ultimately.  God never has to use His wits to keep Himself from being outwitted by man and the Devil.  Individually we may thwart God's purpose in our lives for a time, but ultimately God's purpose will be fulfilled, wherever we end.

"Human free will is God's sovereign work.  We have power not to do God's will, and we have that power by the sovereign will of God; but we can never thwart God's will.  God allows ample room for man and the Devil to do their worst.  He allows the combination of other wills to work out to the last lap of exhaustion so that that way need never be tried again, and men will have to confess, reluctantly or willingly, that God's purpose was right after all.  And this holds true in the individual lives of God's children.  We are at liberty to try every independent plan of our own, but we shall find in the end--whether too late or not is another matter--that what God said we had better do at the beginning was the right thing, if only we had listened to Him.

"In the life of Abraham, we see clearly the consequences of doing wrong, for every blunder Abraham made was repeated by his descendants.  But the abiding truth remains, whether for Abraham or for us:  this is not the result of cause and effect, but because God is God.

". . . When God gives a vision and darkness follows, wait; God will bring you into accordance with the vision He has given if you will await His timing.  Otherwise, you try to do away with the supernatural in God's undertakings.  Never try to help God fulfill His word.  There are some things we cannot do, and that is one of them.

"We must never try to anticipate the actual fulfillment of a vision.  Often we transact some business spiritually with God on our mount of transfiguration and by faith see clearly a vision of His purpose; then immediately afterward there is nothing but blank darkness.  We trust in the Lord, but we walk in darkness.  At that point we are tempted to work up enthusiasm; instead, we are to wait on God.  If darkness turns to spiritual doldrums, we are to blame.  When God puts the dark of 'nothing' into our experience, it is the most positive something He can give us.  If we do anything at that point it is sure to be wrong.  We have to remain in the center of nothing and say 'Thank You' for it.  When God gives us nothing it is because we put ourselves outside Him.  This is a great lesson that few of us seem to learn.

". . . As soon as we realize that the thing is impossible, then God will do it.  To be brought to the verge of the impossible is to be brought to the margin of the reservations of God.  The Everlasting Yea is reached when we perceive that God is El Shaddai, the All-Sufficient God.  So far as God is concerned, there is no need for the years of silence and discipline if we will only hear the everlasting No and not try to make it Yea.  God does not discard the old and create something entirely new; He creates something in the old until the old and the new are made one. 

"Because a man who has lived in sin stops sinning, it is no sign that he is born from above.  Jesus did not talk about new birth to a sinner, but to a religious man, a godly man full of rectitude.  Nicodemus worshipped God as a reminiscence; he had not the creation of El Shaddai in him.  The creation of El Shaddai is what is made possible by the Lord Jesus (see Galatians 4:19). 

". . . We won't walk before God because we are not confident in Him, and the proof that we are not confident in God is that occasionally we get into the sulks.  If we are walking with God, it is impossible to be in the sulks, for we are walking in the permanent light of faith.

"Suppose Job had said, 'If I were trusting in God I should not be treated like this.'  He was trusting in God, and he was treated like that.  Faith is not that we see God, but that we know God sees us.  That is good enough for us, and we will run out and play--a life of absolute freedom.

"The spiritual sulks arise because we want something other than God; we want God to give us something, to make us feel better, to give us a wonderful insight into the Bible.  That is not the attitude of a saint, but of a sinner who is trying to be a saint and who is coming to God to get things from Him.  Unless we give to God the things we get from Him, they will prove our perdition.

". . . In our own lives we try to scrape off our defects and say, 'There, I think I am all right now.'  That is not walking blamelessly before God, but walking in determined opposition to faith in God.  If we walk in faith in God there will be no specks to rub off; but if we don't walk in faith in God, everything is a defect and a stain, however good we are.  Imagine anyone who has seen himself in the light of Jesus Christ thinking in terms of his defects!  Why, we are too filthy for words!  Defects don't begin to describe it.  We have the sentence of death in ourselves that we should not trust in ourselves but in God, and there are no specks on God. 

"I have determined to take no one seriously but God, and the first person I have to leave severely alone as being the greatest fraud I have ever known is myself.  'Oh, I am sick of myself,' you say.  If you really were sick of yourself you would go to your own funeral and for ever after let God be all in all.  Until you get to that point you will never have faith in God.

"'I don't know what to do,' you say?  Then don't do anything.  'I don't see anything.'  Well, don't look for anything.  Be foolish enough to trust in God.  According to common sense it is the height of madness to have faith in God.  Faith is not a bargain:  'I will trust You if You give me something, but not if You don't.'  Faith is trusting God whether He sends us money or not, whether He gives us health or not.  Faith is trusting in God, not in His gifts.

"Let us walk before God and be perfect, you in your circumstances and I in mine.  Then we will prove ourselves true children of Abraham." 

He Has Permanently Identified With Us

“Since His resurrection, Jesus has kept His physical body, in a glorified form. Jesus did not have a body before He came to earth; He took on a physical body for one purpose only — so that He could die. He became a man to live the perfect life for us and then to die in our place. But even when all that was over, He kept a physical body for eternity in heaven, with the scars on His hands and feet and side now part of His glory. He has permanently identified with us. This is amazing love.”

— Susan Lutz

The Unique Pain of Artists, Poets and CREATIVE Types

"Where other people feel kicked by an unkind word, the poet feels disemboweled."

Empathetic and strongly-sensitive people are a unique breed, often dismissed as "too sensitive," "emotional," or "irrational."  Others wonder why we can't just "lighten-up."

In describing the emotional makeup of Rich Mullins, the late Christian songwriter who penned, "Our God Is An Awesome God," Brennan Manning described Rich's sometimes tumultuous interior world this way:

Much of his pain...came from the fact that he saw too much and felt too much.  His mother, Neva, said, 'He could see the pain in another person even before they could see it themselves.'  Poets are a unique breed of human beings.  They ricochet between agony and ecstasy because they take everything so personally.  Where other people feel kicked by an unkind word, the poet feels disemboweled.  The slightest provocation can induce a fit of weeping or a fit of ecstasy.  Others cannot understand why he does what he does, and the poet is often downright clueless himself.

Rich Mullins often endured loneliness, as many people do, but he suffered in a way unknown to most of us.  Such extraordinary sensitivity is a blessing and a heartache. 

- Brennan Manning, Foreward to An Arrow Pointing to Heaven

Perhaps, for us creative types and sensitive souls, our scale does tip towards emotional succeptibility:  Or perhaps we just live more unmasked than others.  There are indeed vulnerable chinks in our armour - scales and plates have fallen off - and because of that, our armour can weigh less than the self-protective shell of others.

I would rather be swayed by pain and passion than subjugated under a calloused stoicism or insensitive denialism.  Don't forget:  Your empathy and vulnerability means your heart is alive.  Your glory and your anguish come from the same spark.

Tenacity of Sin

In the midst of a long discussion of the idolatry and wickedness of an Israel in exile, the Isaian prophet utters one line which is particularly impressive and inspired:

You grew weary from your many wanderings,
but you did not say, "It is useless."
You found your desire rekindled, 
and so you did not weaken (Isa 57.10).

This text contains some very profound truths which are worth considering.

In the first place, the prophet affirms that a life led in sin is unsatisfying. He tells the Israelite s that they grew weary from their wanderings. They went back and forth, here and there, into the woods, into the cities, into back alleys, but all this accomplished was to tire them. They engaged in orgies in the woods and in child sacrifice (57.5) and worship of false gods (v. 6). All this merely wore them out.

In spite of the fact that the pleasures they pursued did not satisfy them, however, they did not change their thinking or adjust their priorities. They did not say, "It is useless to pursue pleasure. It doesn't satisfy me, anyway, since one the pleasure is gone I need it again, and I find myself enslaved to its pursuit. All this does is tire me; I'd better find something else." Why don't they say this? Because they find the desire awakens again, and again, and again. They've accustomed themselves to obeying the desire for pleasure; they've trained themselves to live in the pursuit of every object they desire. At this point they can't say No any longer to the desire they feel. When the desire is rekindled, they go back at it.

When we find that the pursuit of the satisfaction of sinful desires does not have a lasting effect, when we observe that persisting in sin leaves us unsatisfied and empty, we should learn the lesson that we are meant for something else. We're not made to live in sin; the evidence of this is that our lives are empty and miserable when we do. But the trap of sin is that our foolish persistence, our dogged tenacity, our conviction that "next time around it will be better" hardens within us vices of which we cannot easily rid ourselves. We become trained to pursue desire, even though every time we'd done so until now had left us unhappy.

What do we do? What can we do? The LORD says: I have seen their ways, but I will heal them (v. 18). We must go to God and learn from him what will satisfy us, how to live our lives, what things to pursue and what to flee. We have to retrain ourselves in the pursuit of God's plan for humanity and no longer blindly to chase after every fleeting desire and every pleasure. 

Isaac the Syrian on Divine Immutability

That God is eternally the same in everything that pertains to His Nature, that He doesn't change as a result of what happens within the creation, are things that I imagine no rational creature will contradict (Ascetical Homilies II/40, 1).

So opens a discussion on the immutability of the divine nature for Isaac the Syrian. A classical theist right up there with the best of them, Isaac insists on the unchanging and impassible constancy of the divine nature. Nothing that happens within the creation can have any effect on God's divine nature whatsoever. Importantly, these are points that Isaac considers so obvious that no rational creature can deny them; he says that this doctrine of divine immutability is something obvious for all who have a rational intelligence (II/40, 1).

Now when Isaac speaks of the immutability of the divine nature, he is also clearly speaking about the immutability of the divine mental state, if we may put it that way. He makes this evident in the following paragraph, where he speaks of God's attitude towards the demons and sinners:

Neither can we say that the love of the Creator is lesser with respect to those rational creatures which are demons, because they have become demons; that it is less than the fullness of love which He has for those which remain in an angelic state; or that His love for sinners is less than for those appropriately called righteous. Because the divine Nature is not affected by the things which happen, nor by what resists It, and within It nothing happens which finds its origin in creation and which was not in Him from eternity; just as in It there is no love which has its origin in the events which take place in time (II/40, 2).

For Isaac, therefore, the immutability of the divine nature means that there is no change in God's love for his creatures, regardless of what they do. The divine love is not affected by what happens in the created order; it doesn't diminish or increase as a result of human action.

Someone might worry that the divine immutability is compromised by the doctrine of divine judgment. After all, how does God repay sins, if he is not affected by what happens in the world, if his perception of us does not change? Isaac's response is to deny that God repays sins and to insist on the immutability and impassibility of the divine love.

For Isaac, this truth is important for understanding the nature of Gehenna. If the divine love is immutable and impassible, then it would be ridiculous to suppose that the sufferings of those in Gehenna are imposed upon sinners as a payment for their sins, and that God intends that they remain there forever. Isaac denies numerous times that God is involved in any kind of payback for sins; such a thing is foreign to the divine nature. He says in the previous homily (II/39, 2) that to think that God is patient with sinners here because he plans on punishing them harshly for their abuse of his patience on the other side is childish, unspeakable blasphemy, and in the end calumny against God. He will have nothing to do with it.

No, the immutability of God's love means that his act towards the creation, regardless of its recipient, is always motivated by love and is not a calculated response to a person's right or wrong actions. Such are all things which come from [God], even if they may seem otherwise: with God they have nothing to do with payback [or vengeance], because He always looks to the advantage of those with whom he behaves himself thus [that is, in ostensible wrath or punishment] (II/39, 5).

An important evidence for Isaac that God is not concerned with payback or balancing the moral scales is found in the revelation of Christ:

So then, everything which comes from Him and resembles a punishment or condemnation doesn't come so as to make us pay for some past evil deeds, but for our own advantage which we may gain from them, because they make us conscious of the things that are past, only to plant in us a hatred towards sin. . . . If things were not so, what then does the coming of Christ have to do with the actions of the generations prior to it? Might this immense mercy be a repayment for those evil deeds? Tell me, then, if God is the One Who repays [our deeds] and if everything which He does is a repayment, what sort of fitting repayment do you see here, o man? Show me! (II/39, 15-16).

The mercy shown in Christ is anything but a fitting repayment for previous deeds. If God is concerned with justice and if a concern for fairness and attention to merit is what motivates his actions, then Christ could never have come. But if Christ has come, then this tells us that actually God is not concerned to repay according to merit at all. These are mere appearances; the reality is that God is always and ever concerned to do us good, and to have us enjoy life in fellowship with him in holiness. Nothing I can do can change God's intentions for me; nothing you can do will ever change the fact that God wants fellowship with you in eternity. 

God is....

God is a God of  Amazing Grace, all his Loving Kindness is in Jesus, who is Grace!

Grace is the worthiness of God...religion  the worthiness of man.

Grace is God-conscious...religion is sin-conscious.

Grace is pure...religion has tainted grace by mixing the law with it.

Grace is sincerely right...religion is sincerely wrong.

Grace is truth...religion is tainted within untruth.

Grace is humble...religion is prideful.

Grace is consistent...religion is fickle.

Grace is a spiritual oasis...religion is a spiritual wasteland.

Grace is faithfulness...religon is treacherous.

Grace is obedience to God...religion is obedience to man.

Grace is love-based...religion is fear-baced.

Grace is heaven sent...religion is hell bent.

Grace is devotion to God...religion is waywardness form God.

Grace is the righteousness of God...religion is the self-righteousness of man.

Grace is spiritual life...religion is spiritual death.

Grace is the result of Christ's finished work on the cross...religion is the result of Satan's work to discredit the finished work of Christ on the cross.

Grace is freedom...religion is bondage.

Why not choose God's Amazing Grace.

- Glenn Regular

Robin Williams - Part 2

One word: Wow.

Perhaps, this is one of the reasons why his apparent suicide is so shocking and sobering.  If anyone should have been laughing through life…surely, it must have been Robin. He was a genius. He was genuinely funny. A comedic genius. He was a brilliant actor. He was respected by his peers.

But…
We don’t really know.
We all carry hurts, pains, burdens, and fears.
We’re all facing hurdles, struggles, and obstacles.
And some – if not many – struggle through the anguish of depression.

Perhaps, this is another wake up call for all of us.

If I may, I’d like to humbly and gently encourage you:

Please  … go … and call or hug your loved ones. Tell them you love them. Don’t just think it in your mind but actually do it. Tell them you love them. Remind them how you much appreciate them. Share with them how much they have impacted, encouraged, and blessed you. Tell them that they matter. Tell them that they matter to God.

In many ways, many of us need to (re)learn how to be more human. Does this make sense?

Don’t avoid eye contact.
Don’t hide behind our gadgets.
Let’s smile often – both to neighbors and strangers alike.
Let’s ask about peoples’ stories.
And listen. Genuinely listen.
Let’s be generous with our stories.
Live with vulnerability rather than suspicion and cynicism.
Share more meals. Laugh more.

Yes. We need to (re)learn to be more human.

Robin Williams - Part 1

In the immediate aftermath of the death of Robin Williams yesterday, Eugene Cho wrote a tender piece entitled Remember that our lives matter. Remember to be more human – to loved ones, neighbors, and strangers alike. There is so much in our world that dehumanizes us. It’s no wonder there is so much despair. But listen: your life matters. It’s true.

Here’s a portion of Cho’s blog post. We hope it blesses you and empowers you to spread God’s love to those who need it most.

And most importantly, remind yourself that YOU are loved. Not just merely by your loved ones but also by the ONE who created all that is good and beautiful. 
Take a moment. Breathe in and out this truth:Our lives matter.
Our lives matter to God.
God loves you.
We need reminders.
We need self-reminders.
We need others to regularly remind us.
And when we need help, we need others to remind us – again.
And there’s no shame in asking for help.
No shame in asking for reminders.
Our lives matter.
Our lives matter to God.
God loves you.
This is another wake up call but we don’t have to wait for the next wake up call.
Remember that we matter.
Remember that we matter to God.
Remember that God loves us.
Remember to be more human – to loved ones, co-workers, neighbors, and strangers alike.

God Loves You

LOVE does not keep a record of the wrongs done.

LOVE is not love if it does not forgive. God is LOVE, He does not keep a record of your wrongs, He forgives your wrongs.

We are taught that God keeps a list of the wrongs people have done, and in the end, if the wrongs you have done outweigh the rights you have done, then your goose is cooked and you will receive punishment form God. This religious up-side-down thinking has caused people to become sin-focused, believing that God associates our past with our future by punishing us in the future for sins in the past, rather than forgiven-focused where the wrongs in our past are cast into the sea of His forgetfulness not to be remembered against us anymore.

Take heart...God has no sea of remembrance when it comes to your sin of the past.

Chosen Before We Believe

            “We get right with God when we receive Jesus,” Paula said. “We are taken out of Adam and placed into Christ when we believe.”

            “But what do you do with the apostle Paul’s description of our origination in Him?” I asked her. “He says that we were chosen in Christ long before we believed in Him. In fact, Paul says we were chosen in Him before we were even born.”

            Here is the verse I read to Paula to make my point. Take special note of when this verse says that we were placed into Christ. “He chose us in Him before the foundation of the world, that we would be holy and blameless before Him” (Ephesians 1:4). The New Living Translation renders this verse, “Even before he made the world, God loved us and chose us in Christ to be holy and without fault in his eyes.”

            It wasn’t our choice of Him that put us into Christ. It was His choosing us! We were chosen in Christ before anything was even created. When, then, do you find your origin in Christ? Was it when you prayed a prayer? Was it when you believed? No, your origin in Him precedes time and space, reaching all the way into eternity. Before one member of Adam’s race showed up on this planet, even before the first taint of sin entered the world, our God had already chosen us in Christ and dealt with the problem of sin.

            “So you’re saying everybody is in Christ?” Paula asked incredulously.

            “I’m not just saying everybody is in Christ. I’m saying everybody and everything is in Him,” I replied.

            Young’s Literal Translation of Colossians 1:16-17 makes this clear.

            Because in him were the all things created, those in the heavens, and those upon the earth, those visible, and those invisible, whether thrones, whether lordships, whether principalities, whether authorities; all things through him, and for him, have been created, and himself is before all, and the all things in him have consisted.

            The sentence structure is awkward in places, but the literal translation of the New Testament says that everything in existence was created in Him. Jesus Christ is the Creator and Sustainer of everything in existence. Look at the last phrase of verse 17: “the all things in him have consisted.” Everything that exists is held together in Him. You can relax because you are at home in Him, and nothing exists or happens outside Him.

           

Living a Lie

            I’m not suggesting that everybody has a conscious relationship to Christ, because they don’t. But this verse clearly shows that everybody and everything is related to Him through a union about which they may or may not possess knowledge. He is “before all”—that doesn’t refer to priority, but to placement. It refers to His immediate presence in the whole cosmos. There is no distance between God and man. Any perception of distance is an illusion caused by the whispering lies of ghosts from Adam’s shadowy past, ghosts still haunting those who haven’t seen the light of the gospel.

            What happens when people don’t know the truth of the gospel? They base their lives on this lie of separation. Paul described it, saying, “And you were dead in your trespasses and sins, in which you formerly walked according to the course of this world, according to the prince of the power of the air, of the spirit that is now working in the sons of disobedience” (Ephesians 2:2).

            Without knowing the truth, humanity’s default setting is to live the lie. Unbelievers are living out of a lie and not walking in the truth. The truth is that what Jesus did, He did for everybody, and its success doesn’t depend on our agreement. It didn’t happen when we believed but when we were still dead and incapable of believing. Ephesians 2:5-6 says, “Even when we were dead in our transgressions, [God] made us alive together with Christ (by grace you have been saved), and raised us up with Him, and seated us with Him in the heavenly places in Christ Jesus.”

           

God’s Work Came First

            So which is it? Is it the work of Jesus Christ or the response of man that brings the benefits of the cross into existence? Grace would insist that His work and not our response to it gave birth to these things. Faith in Christ certainly links us to its reality, but there would be nothing to link us to if it weren’t already real beforehand. We are reconciled, and that is why we can be reconciled (see 2 Corinthians 5:19-20). Theologian William Barclay helps us understand this.

            First and foremost, Paul sees the work of Jesus Christ as above and beyond all else a work of reconciliation. Through that which he did, the lost relationship between man and God is restored. Man was made for friendship and fellowship with God. By his disobedience and rebellion he ended up at enmity with God. That which Jesus did took that enmity away, and restored the relationship of friendship which should always have existed, but which was broken by man’s sin.

            It is to be carefully noted that Paul never speaks of God being reconciled to men, but always of men being reconciled to God. The most significant of all the passages, 2 Corinthians 5:18-20, three times speaks of God reconciling man to himself. It was man, not God, who needed to be reconciled. Nothing had lessened the love of God; nothing had turned that love to hate; nothing had ever banished that yearning from the heart of God. Man might sin, but God still loved. It was not God who needed to be pacified, but man who needed to be moved to surrender and to penitence and to love.

            Here then we are face to face with an inescapable truth. The effect of the cross—at least in this sphere of the thought of Paul—was on man, and not on God. The effect of the cross changed, not the heart of God, but the heart of man. It was man who needed to be reconciled, not God. It is entirely against all Pauline thought to think of Jesus Christ pacifying an angry God, or to think that in some way God’s wrath was turned to love, and God’s judgment was turned to mercy, because of something which Jesus did. When we look at it in Paul’s way, it was man’s sin which was turned to penitence, man’s rebellion which was turned to surrender, man’s enmity which was turned to love, by the sacrificial love of Jesus Christ upon the Cross. It cost that cross to make that change in the hearts of men.⁸

            In Christ our God has reconciled the world to Himself. It isn’t something we accomplish by our faith. It is simply a matter of receiving something that has already been done. Karl Barth elaborated on this point in his book Christ and Adam.

            In His own death He makes their peace with God—before they themselves have decided for this peace and quite apart from that decision. In believing, they are only conforming to the decision about them that has already been made in Him.⁹

            This reconciliation He accomplished is the exchanged life. The biblical use of the word reconciled denotes the idea of exchanging coins for other coins of equivalent value. The full message of the exchanged life is that Jesus has exchanged the life of all of humanity with His own. In Romans 5:10 Paul affirms, “we were reconciled to God through the death of His Son.” The word reconciled is used in a way that suggests this reconciliation happened to us because of God and is a reality that exists independent of anything we ever do or don’t do. In fact, the word means it happened to us because of an outside force without us having done a thing. We are the objects of reconciliation, not the subjects.¹⁰ This is true of every person for whom Christ died, which is every one of us, without exception. Regardless of whether we know it, believe it, or even like it, we are all included.

            Our God isn’t angry with us, because His acceptance of us isn’t contingent on a proper response on our part. An improper response or no response to His love will undoubtedly impact our lives in negative ways that are too many to number, but that problem is on our end, not His. When we turn our attention to Jesus hanging on the cross for all humanity, we hear the passionate shout of Eternal Agape crying out in divine love for every one of us. We see the tangible evidence in space and time of the Trinity’s resolve to reconcile every wandering soul into the warm embrace of a love that will never die.

Deeper into the Gospel

“Our great need is to be led further in to what we already have. The gospel is so deep that it not only meets our deepest needs but comes from God’s deepest self.

The salvation proclaimed in the gospel is not some mechanical operation that God took on as a side project. It is a ‘mystery that was kept secret for long ages’ (Rom. 16:25), a mystery of salvation that goes back into the heart of God, decreed ‘before the foundation of the world’ (Eph. 1:4; 1 Pet. 1:20).

When God undertook our salvation, he did it in a way that put divine resources into play, resources which involve him personally in the task.… The deeper we dig into the gospel, the deeper we go into the mystery of the Trinity.”

— Fred Sanders

Whose Faith? Part Three

Chosen Before We Believed

            “We get right with God when we receive Jesus,” Paula said. “We are taken out of Adam and placed into Christ when we believe.”

            “But what do you do with the apostle Paul’s description of our origination in Him?” I asked her. “He says that we were chosen in Christ long before we believed in Him. In fact, Paul says we were chosen in Him before we were even born.”

            Here is the verse I read to Paula to make my point. Take special note of when this verse says that we were placed into Christ. “He chose us in Him before the foundation of the world, that we would be holy and blameless before Him” (Ephesians 1:4). The New Living Translation renders this verse, “Even before he made the world, God loved us and chose us in Christ to be holy and without fault in his eyes.”

            It wasn’t our choice of Him that put us into Christ. It was His choosing us! We were chosen in Christ before anything was even created. When, then, do you find your origin in Christ? Was it when you prayed a prayer? Was it when you believed? No, your origin in Him precedes time and space, reaching all the way into eternity. Before one member of Adam’s race showed up on this planet, even before the first taint of sin entered the world, our God had already chosen us in Christ and dealt with the problem of sin.

            “So you’re saying everybody is in Christ?” Paula asked incredulously.

            “I’m not just saying everybody is in Christ. I’m saying everybody and everything is in Him,” I replied.

            Young’s Literal Translation of Colossians 1:16-17 makes this clear.

            Because in him were the all things created, those in the heavens, and those upon the earth, those visible, and those invisible, whether thrones, whether lordships, whether principalities, whether authorities; all things through him, and for him, have been created, and himself is before all, and the all things in him have consisted.

            The sentence structure is awkward in places, but the literal translation of the New Testament says that everything in existence was created in Him. Jesus Christ is the Creator and Sustainer of everything in existence. Look at the last phrase of verse 17: “the all things in him have consisted.” Everything that exists is held together in Him. You can relax because you are at home in Him, and nothing exists or happens outside Him.

           

Living a Lie

            I’m not suggesting that everybody has a conscious relationship to Christ, because they don’t. But this verse clearly shows that everybody and everything is related to Him through a union about which they may or may not possess knowledge. He is “before all”—that doesn’t refer to priority, but to placement. It refers to His immediate presence in the whole cosmos. There is no distance between God and man. Any perception of distance is an illusion caused by the whispering lies of ghosts from Adam’s shadowy past, ghosts still haunting those who haven’t seen the light of the gospel.

            What happens when people don’t know the truth of the gospel? They base their lives on this lie of separation. Paul described it, saying, “And you were dead in your trespasses and sins, in which you formerly walked according to the course of this world, according to the prince of the power of the air, of the spirit that is now working in the sons of disobedience” (Ephesians 2:2).

            Without knowing the truth, humanity’s default setting is to live the lie. Unbelievers are living out of a lie and not walking in the truth. The truth is that what Jesus did, He did for everybody, and its success doesn’t depend on our agreement. It didn’t happen when we believed but when we were still dead and incapable of believing. Ephesians 2:5-6 says, “Even when we were dead in our transgressions, [God] made us alive together with Christ (by grace you have been saved), and raised us up with Him, and seated us with Him in the heavenly places in Christ Jesus.”

           

God’s Work Came First

            So which is it? Is it the work of Jesus Christ or the response of man that brings the benefits of the cross into existence? Grace would insist that His work and not our response to it gave birth to these things. Faith in Christ certainly links us to its reality, but there would be nothing to link us to if it weren’t already real beforehand. We are reconciled, and that is why we can be reconciled (see 2 Corinthians 5:19-20). Theologian William Barclay helps us understand this.

            First and foremost, Paul sees the work of Jesus Christ as above and beyond all else a work of reconciliation. Through that which he did, the lost relationship between man and God is restored. Man was made for friendship and fellowship with God. By his disobedience and rebellion he ended up at enmity with God. That which Jesus did took that enmity away, and restored the relationship of friendship which should always have existed, but which was broken by man’s sin.

            It is to be carefully noted that Paul never speaks of God being reconciled to men, but always of men being reconciled to God. The most significant of all the passages, 2 Corinthians 5:18-20, three times speaks of God reconciling man to himself. It was man, not God, who needed to be reconciled. Nothing had lessened the love of God; nothing had turned that love to hate; nothing had ever banished that yearning from the heart of God. Man might sin, but God still loved. It was not God who needed to be pacified, but man who needed to be moved to surrender and to penitence and to love.

            Here then we are face to face with an inescapable truth. The effect of the cross—at least in this sphere of the thought of Paul—was on man, and not on God. The effect of the cross changed, not the heart of God, but the heart of man. It was man who needed to be reconciled, not God. It is entirely against all Pauline thought to think of Jesus Christ pacifying an angry God, or to think that in some way God’s wrath was turned to love, and God’s judgment was turned to mercy, because of something which Jesus did. When we look at it in Paul’s way, it was man’s sin which was turned to penitence, man’s rebellion which was turned to surrender, man’s enmity which was turned to love, by the sacrificial love of Jesus Christ upon the Cross. It cost that cross to make that change in the hearts of men.⁸

            In Christ our God has reconciled the world to Himself. It isn’t something we accomplish by our faith. It is simply a matter of receiving something that has already been done. Karl Barth elaborated on this point in his book Christ and Adam.

            In His own death He makes their peace with God—before they themselves have decided for this peace and quite apart from that decision. In believing, they are only conforming to the decision about them that has already been made in Him.⁹

            This reconciliation He accomplished is the exchanged life. The biblical use of the word reconciled denotes the idea of exchanging coins for other coins of equivalent value. The full message of the exchanged life is that Jesus has exchanged the life of all of humanity with His own. In Romans 5:10 Paul affirms, “we were reconciled to God through the death of His Son.” The word reconciled is used in a way that suggests this reconciliation happened to us because of God and is a reality that exists independent of anything we ever do or don’t do. In fact, the word means it happened to us because of an outside force without us having done a thing. We are the objects of reconciliation, not the subjects.¹⁰ This is true of every person for whom Christ died, which is every one of us, without exception. Regardless of whether we know it, believe it, or even like it, we are all included.

            Our God isn’t angry with us, because His acceptance of us isn’t contingent on a proper response on our part. An improper response or no response to His love will undoubtedly impact our lives in negative ways that are too many to number, but that problem is on our end, not His. When we turn our attention to Jesus hanging on the cross for all humanity, we hear the passionate shout of Eternal Agape crying out in divine love for every one of us. We see the tangible evidence in space and time of the Trinity’s resolve to reconcile every wandering soul into the warm embrace of a love that will never die.