God's Love and Election

Let me try to make two points concerning the way God loves and the way he elects.  It seems most errors come about when we take a biblical teaching and go to one extreme or the other when the doctrine wasn't meant to be taken to either extreme.  The Bible teaches that God loves different things and people in different ways.  In one sense he loves all his creation and all humanity and in another sense he loves his chosen ones in a different way.

The Arminian assumes that if God loves one, he must love all  and love them equally.  Some Calvinists assume that if God loves any he must also choose to save them also.  But both of these assumption assume too much.  We certainly have no problem when men love differently.  I don't expect my neighbor to love his cat like he loves his wife like he loves me!  And yet it seems we want to pigeon hole God's love to be the same for everyone.  The problem is that this isn't supported by the Bible.  Let me prove this by just quoting two verses since it should be rather obvious anyway.


Rom 9:13  As it is written, Jacob have I loved, but Esau have I hated.  

Deu 7:6-8  For thou art an holy people unto the LORD thy God: the LORD thy God hath chosen thee to be a special people unto himself, above all people that are upon the face of the earth.  The LORD did not set his love upon you, nor choose you, because ye were more in number than any people; for ye were the fewest of all people:  But because the LORD loved you.

I use these verses for two different reasons.  First of all they show that God loves people differently.  It is not my intention here to elaborate further but when one can accept this truth he is well on his way to understanding the sovereignty of God.

The other reason was to prove my second point; this is found in vss. 7-8.  One of the standard arguments against election is to say that God looks forward in time and sees who would choose or elect him and he elects them first.  This fails for several reasons but the above verses show one basic reason why such an argument holds no water.

Deu. 7 is one of the classic biblical illustrations of divine, saving election in the Scriptures.  God's very point in vss. 7 and 8 is that his election is not based on anything found in Israel that would cause him to set his love on them to be a special people for him and that calling was unlike his purpose for any other people.  Thus to say that God looked ahead and chose those who were smart enough or spiritual enough to choose him is to teach the exact opposite concept that the Bible teaches.  

He says he loved them because he loved them; end of story, vs. 8.  The biblical doctrine of election is that God chose to save some and not others based solely on his will, John 1:12-13.  This and only this removes all human boasting.  It isn't that we are all equally deserving to be saved but that we are all equally deserving to be damned but the Lord stepped in and saves some to glorify his love and holiness and leaves the rest to their own choice to demonstrate his justice and wrath.

Those that reject election because they don't think it is fair can only make this accusation because they believe all men deserve God's saving love.  But this only exalts man over God.  It is interesting how we can turn truth upside down.

Self Made Theology

Roger Olsen has come out with a book entitled "Against Calvinism".  In it he claims to be saving God's reputation from the New Calvinists who believe that God is sovereign to the point that he has determined even calamity to happen such as 9/11.  Evidently one can be sovereign and yet not control all things.  One of the most disturbing things he states in his book is that a God who would deliberately chose to let some go to Hell and cause calamity in the world would be hard to distinguish from Satan!  One wonders how he can come to such a conclusion but eventually in the book he shows his hand as to why he thinks God's reputation needs to be salvaged.

When asked by one of his students if God should come down to him and tell him that the Calvinist position is correct concerning election and predestination would he be able to worship this kind of God, Olsen says no!  In other words he is saying that it doesn't really matter what the Bible says; I already have my mind made up as to what God should be like and I will not worship any other kind of God even if I am wrong.

Well I know that the few people who read this blog are as appalled at such a stance as I am.  It would be easy for me write about how unbiblical such a presupposition is and I think a case could be made that no actual Christian could say such a thing.  If fact I am somewhat surprised that some Calvinists have called this a scholarly work when he makes no real attempt to support his arguments from the exegesis of Scripture, argues primarily from his own preferences (see above) and refuses to enter into dialogue or debate publicly to defend his positions.  But my concern is not what he believes but what we as Christians believe.

I think sometimes we do something akin to what Olsen does when it comes to believing the Bible.  In our hearts we know that if the Bible says something it is true and wouldn't dare say that we believe something so strongly that even if God himself said we were wrong we wouldn't give it up.  He tells us that we can give ourselves totally to his care, take up our cross and follow him, forsake family and security for something far better and we can do so because he is sovereign over all things not just over what we let him rule over.  We say we believe this but when push comes to shove and we have to stand for Christ or bow to this world or say no to a loved one we balk.  Our sin is the same, if not worse than Olsen's.  We refuse to worship the God we believe in.  He at least refuses to worship the God he doesn't believe in.  He might be wrong but he is at least consistent.

At the end of the day we either believe what we read in the Bible or we decide that the presuppositions that we have come to through the experiences of our lives and the influence of others will rule what we believe and more importantly will rule how we live out our lives.  What I find disturbing when I saw what Olsen was saying is not that someone can say that and still claim to be a Christian but how close we can come sometimes in doing the same thing and perhaps not even realizing it.  May the Lord grant us power and wisdom to live in light of his divine sovereignty and wisdom, not to deny it by either our words or our lives.

How Great is Your God?

In Mark 4 we read of Jesus calming the storm: Mar 4:38  "But he was in the stern, asleep on the cushion. And they woke him and said to him, "Teacher, do you not care that we are perishing?" Mar 4:39  And he awoke and rebuked the wind and said to the sea, "Peace! Be still!" And the wind ceased, and there was a great calm. Mar 4:40  He said to them, "Why are you so afraid? Have you still no faith?" Mar 4:41  And they were filled with great fear and said to one another, "Who then is this, that even the wind and the sea obey him?"  

After rebuking the wind Jesus rebukes his disciples for a defective faith.  One might wonder why Jesus is so rough on them.  After all their lives seemed to be in grave danger and all Jesus was doing was sleeping.  It seems the perfect time to pray. I don't think that they were rebuked for coming to Jesus and if we dig a little deeper we can see why they are rebuked.

What we actually see is that their prayer is an attack on the character of Christ.  "Lord, you don't seem to care about us".  They had assumed smooth sailing since Christ was with them but such was not the case.  Their next mistake is to assume that difficulty and tribulation meant that Jesus didn't love them as they thought he should.  So as they (and we) complain of God's providence in their lives, what they are actually doing is questioning the wisdom and love of God.  And equally as sinful they are saying that they have the right to question him as if they are wise enough to see a mistake he has made.  It would do us well to remember this when we are tempted to complain about things.  We aren't just murmuring but we are questioning the very character of God and in so doing exalting ourselves.  Small wonder that all the murmurers in the wilderness died without reaching the Promised Land.

In verse 40 we see that Jesus doesn't chide them for waking him up and coming to him but for fearing the storm more than they feared him.  When he says, "Why are you so afraid?" in the original he is saying why do you have this kind of fear.  The kind of fear that they had was one that feared danger more than the Lord and caused them to question him.  I don't think it is sinful to fear things that are legitimate dangers.  If you don't try to get out of the way of an approaching tornado you aren't spiritual, you are a fool!  The disciple's God was just a little too small in their eyes to do them much good.  They needed to see what sort of God they had and so vs. 27, "Who then is this, that ever the wind and the sea obey him?"   This was why the Lord calmed the storm so that they would quit looking at it and stand amazed at him.  

They still had fear but now it was the wonder and awe of the Sovereign God that filled their eyes, not the storm.  By having a good understanding of God we can put everything else into its proper perspective, but a weak God will produce a weak faith and a life full of fear and defeat.  It is hard to give up much and persevere to the end when the prize, God, isn't all that appealing.  A fear that drives you to rest in Christ is a good fear but one that causes you to question him is an ungodly fear.

Two examples in Scripture show this.  In Isaiah 6 we read that Isaiah saw the Lord high and lifted up in the temple and the effect unmistakable.  God asks who is willing to take a message to the Jews that they did not want to hear, that they would not listen to and would not produce any converts.  Without hesitation Isaiah volunteers because once you see your sinfulness and the glory of your Savior nothing else matters.  Whatever he says we gladly do even giving our lives because our God controls the universe and has promised to work everything out for our good.  There is no safer place to be if we are in Christ doing what he asks of us.

Peter supplies a slightly different fear.  He asks to walk on the water to Jesus during another storm and the Lord grants his request.  All is well as long as Peter keeps the eyes full of Christ.  But as soon as he fills his mind with the waves he is overcome with fear.  At the end of the day, in the darkest day, when your trial and pain seems insurmountable you will trust and flee to whoever or whatever is the greatest help in our mind.  This is why the Lord squeezes us with trials, so that what is in us will come out and we can prove what kind of faith we have.  In other words we can prove how great God is to us. 

Slaying the Enemy

In Deut. 13:6-11 we read, "If your brother, the son of your mother, or your son or your daughter or the wife you embrace or your friend who is as your own soul entices you secretly, saying, 'Let us go and serve other gods,' which neither you nor your fathers have known, some of the gods of the peoples who are around you, whether near you or far off from you, from the one end of the earth to the other, you shall not yield to him or listen to him, nor shall your eye pity him, nor shall you spare him, nor shall you conceal him. Deu 13:9  But you shall kill him. Your hand shall be first against him to put him to death, and afterward the hand of all the people.  You shall stone him to death with stones, because he sought to draw you away from the LORD your God, who brought you out of the land of Egypt, out of the house of slavery.  And all Israel shall hear and fear and never again do any such wickedness as this among you."  

This is an astounding passage in that it reveals how God expected them to treat even their closest family members and closest friends who would try to entice them to serve anything else other than the true God.  They weren't to ignore them but turn them in to the elders of the city and be the first one to cast a stone at them in judgement!  This is a far cry from what we sometimes hear today, "He who is without sin let him cast the first stone".  

Under the Old Covenant such things are dealt with rather harshly and with the Lord's blessings.  In 2 Kings 11 we read of all of the Baal priests and anyone who followed them were to be cut down with the sword under Joash's reign, 2Ki 11:18  "Then all the people of the land went to the house of Baal and tore it down; his altars and his images they broke in pieces, and they killed Mattan the priest of Baal before the altars. And the priest posted watchmen over the house of the LORD."  Just a few years before this Jehu was told to slay Ahab's descendants because of his sins.  

Can we find any application to this today?  Many have tried throughout church history to apply it and with disastrous results.  When we confuse the covenants we run into all sorts of problems and using the sword against the enemies of the gospel is clearly not how we are to deal with our enemies today.  But I would like to point out that in a very real sense Jesus has brought this concept over into the New Covenant.  I think Luke 12:26-27 says pretty much the same thing with a rather large exception.  "If anyone comes to me and does not hate his own father and mother and wife and children and brothers and sisters, yes, and even his own life, he cannot be my disciple. Whoever does not bear his own cross and come after me cannot be my disciple."

The difference, of course, is found in that we don't kill our enemies but the similarity is that we just as aggressively battle the influence of sin both in ourselves and in those around us.  We know that Jesus isn't telling us to hate our families but that anything or anyone who would come between us and the Lord is not to be allowed any room to work.  A similar passage is found in Matthew 5 where we are to be willing to cut off body parts for the sake of Christ.  Paul later on uses language that speaks of death when he commands us to put to death the deeds of the body in Romans 8:13 and put to death what is earthly in us in Colossians 3:5.

As I was thinking about all this the thought hit me that there are still people dying in the New Testament times but instead of saints killing their enemies, we do the dying; we kill ourselves in a spiritual sense.  Instead of us removing other people, we remove ourselves from their influence.  We discipline ourselves to say no to their temptations and speak the truth to them in love.  Many times when we will not allow them to sway us to sin and instead speak of Christ to them, they will separate themselves from us.  The love of Christ constrains us bring all things into obedience unto the Lord.

This is better sanctification than those under the Old Covenant enjoyed for a number of reasons and maybe the best one is that it allows us to love and minister to the lost rather than killing them!  Let us learn to die daily that we might bring life to those who are dead.

The Sabbath Revisited

Well, we aren't going to settle the issue of the Sabbath here but some thoughts have been going through my mind for a while now so I thought I would write them down.  First of all let me start with what seems obvious to me, while in some measure nine of the Commandments can be said to be written on the conscience of all men, I can't see how the same can be said of the Sabbath.  I am not aware of any person or culture that instinctively knows they need to take off one day out of seven to rest or to worship God.  It is not a moral issue like murder and theft.  It is one that needs divine revelation because it is not know to us instinctively.

Secondly can we argue that it is to be seen as the eternal law of God?  It didn't exist before creation and it certainly won't exist in eternity where there is only the glory of God and no need for a sun and no concept of days.  In fact, we know that eternity will be one long Sabbath but it will have nothing in common with the one found in Exodus 20.

Perhaps part of confusion lies in looking at the Fourth Commandment as looking backward to a supposed creation ordinance instead of future to a greater fulfillment.  After the six days of creation God ceased from his labors.  Adam and Eve were created to enjoy this rest by enjoying all that he had made for them and to be provided for by trusting in his providence.  They fell by saying that they would instead do things their way and not trust in the Lord.  They were saying that they no longer would be willing to rest in God but would do their own work.

It is interesting that the primary curse put on Adam besides his fallen nature is that all of the sudden he had to labor in a way that was mostly futile, Gen 3:19 "By the sweat of your face you shall eat bread, till you return to the ground, for out of it you were taken; for you are dust, and to dust you shall return."   In other words, man in his fallen state has no rest and his labor has no better end than death; it is futile.  Unfallen man had to labor but it would always result in fruit unto the Lord; it was joyful, fulfilling and satisfying.  All that changed at the fall.

And so immediately God starts to make promises that he is going to restore the rest that Adam rejected.  If this is in some way summarizes what happened in Genesis then it seems that the Sabbath laws could be given to look forward instead of backwards.  After all Jesus says more than once that the law and everything in the OT taught of him and can only be fulfilled in him, Mat 5:17-18  "Do not think that I have come to abolish the Law or the Prophets; I have not come to abolish them but to fulfill them.  For truly, I say to you, until heaven and earth pass away, not an iota, not a dot, will pass from the Law until all is accomplished."  

The theme of a coming rest is seen throughout the Bible.  In Matthew 11 he alludes to it pretty clearly, Mat 11:28  "Come to me, all who labor and are heavy laden, and I will give you rest. Mat 11:29  Take my yoke upon you, and learn from me, for I am gentle and lowly in heart, and you will find rest for your souls. Mat 11:30  For my yoke is easy, and my burden is light."  Notice that this rest doesn't mean that there won't be plenty to do.  We still are under a yoke and have a burden but his service is joyful and fulfilling and accomplished God's glory and our good.  

If we read through Hebrews 4 the writer makes is quite clear that there is a rest waiting for all who come by faith to the cross of Christ.  He compares it to the rest of God at creation.  So in the first creation God did a "good" work that provided a good rest for man but he sinned it away and has been feverishly working ever since to correct but to no avail because sinful man can't fix the problem by his own works.  In Christ, God has done another work, a perfect and final work and all who enter into this rest will have rest for their souls and can never be cast out as our first parents were.  

The Sabbath that the Bible always looked forward to and the only one we need to be concerned about is the rest through faith in the finished work of Christ.  The Sabbath as found in Exodus 20 was never meant to be some eternal binding principle but looked forward to the cross and it is in obedience to the gospel that we keep "Sabbath" as NT Christians.

Leprosy and Sin

Leprosy seems to be used in the Bible in a unique sense as an illustration of sin.  For one thing it is not said to be "healed" by Jesus but "cleansed".  I think the reason is because, like sin, the effect of leprosy seems to always be that it separated one from the covenant blessings and in particular it kept them from the temple and God's people so that they were ceremonially unclean and so unable to serve and worship God.  Whether it was Hansen's Disease or not and therefore deadly or some kind of contagious rash has been debated.  One reason is because we don't read of people dying from it and needing healing but declared unclean and needing cleansing.  In this sense it depicts one aspect of sin.  It contaminates everything it touches and ruins one's ability to serve the Lord.

It is interesting to compare some parallels between sin and Hansen's Disease which is what we usually think of when we think of leprosy.  Scientists have come to realize that the disease doesn't harm by causing the extremities to rot but that it causes numbness in the extremities and this in turn causes the real harm of leprosy.

In one case the man who is credited with understanding how leprosy works relates an instance which helped him understand leprosy.  He was trying to turn a key in an old rusty lock and was unable to do so.  Along came a boy of about ten he knew who was afflicted with leprosy and he asked if he could try.  To his surprise the boy instantly turned the key and opened the lock.  Upon further examination he realized that in the process of turning the key he had ripped open his finger all the way down to the bone but was unaware of it because his leprosy had destroyed his ability to feel any sensation.  Another account tells of a man who had gone blind due to leprosy.  For years he would wash his face with a washcloth dipped in water but didn't realize that the water was scalding hot.  So eventually it destroyed his eyesight.  One might step on a nail but because he feels no pain doesn't treat the wound and so it becomes infected and instead of healing it just gets worse and worse, the whole foot starts to rot and death can only be the eventual result.

It isn't hard to connect the dots from how leprosy works to one way that sin can destroy us.  Sin's primary side effect is for us to love self above all else including God.  Even the most mature saint battles constantly to put the honor of Christ first in everything he does and decision he makes.  Like leprosy, sin or pride gets in the way of properly evaluating things we come into contact with.  Much like the drug addict or alcoholic who is so infatuated with the physical pleasure of the drug or drink that he becomes insensitive to what it is slowly doing to his body and his life.

I think this can be applied to countless ways sin eats away at our lives.  Here is a spouse who because of sin becomes insensitive to the needs of his or her spouse.  In his daily interaction with his wife he fails to speak to her and treat her with the love God demands.  Such things cause the relationship to weaken until one day he realizes that his marriage is ruined.  How many then use the excuse of a bad marriage to justify adultery which just makes the whole problem worse.  It has always amazed me how people will allow problems between each other to go on for years causing all kinds of unnecessary friction instead of dealing with them early on before things get intolerable.  But it is pride and laziness and a general lack of any real concern for the Lord and each other that allows us to be numb to what is going on around us.  And then one day we wake up and wonder why our families and friends and the church isn't what it ought to be or at least why we don't seem to be able to get along with people as we ought.

The Bible says that we are to glorify the Lord in everything we do.  In other words, everything we come into contact with is to be used for one purpose, the Lord's service.  Sin's tendency is to cause us to see things as how they immediately benefit me!  And we can rest assured that this will cause us to use things wrongly and be harmed by them instead of using them properly and benefiting from them.

Perhaps how we deal with trials is a good example.  When we understand that they are from the Lord to shape us into useful servants and produce godliness in our lives we can endure them in light of this and by the power of God conquer them.  They become tools for our good.  But when our sinfulness has us consumed with our immediate comfort then we are easily reduced to complaining and bitterness and they render us incapable of victory.  Too much of this kind of spiritual apathy and pretty soon our lives can become open sores where everyone can see the results of sin instead of the image of Christ.

2011 Conference Messages

Reid Ferguson

Unto Us A Child Is Born

What Jesus is Doing In Us Now

The Kindness of God

Gary Scott

What Is The Heart

The Pure In Heart

How Do We See God