It seems like every theological conversation I have eventually comes around to someone asking the question, "what about our free will?"
Without getting into a conversation about Arminian Vs. Calvinist theology, I just want to discuss the sovereignty of God and how it relates to the topic of "free will."
I will start by saying this: the reason people always fall back on the question of free will is because they are unable to break away from the idea that we are robots in God's little game called "Life." Instead of admitting that God is in total control over all creation, our sinful pride forces us to rationalize that our lives have meaning outside the will of God. So let's first understand exactly what God's Sovereignty is, and then we can come back to this thought.
Above all things, God is Holy. And His holiness is perfect. This means that God is perfect in everything He does. He is perfect in His creation, love, grace, mercy, wrath, justice, sovereignty, and everything else God does. To say that God is perfect in His Sovereignty means that nothing happens outside of God's decrees, and He is providential in everything that comes to pass.
The Bible tells us that God has a plan. He has always had the same plan and He will always have the same plan. Ultimately, the chief end of God's plan is to glorify God. This seems very selfish at face-value, but in reality, God's plan to glorify God is the foundation for our salvation. As John Piper put it, "Therefore, God is the one being in the universe, for whom self-exaltation is the highest virtue AND the most loving act."
God's plan to glorify God is carried out through Jesus, and His saving work on the cross is the most loving act in the history of the world. So as it relates to man-kind, our salvation in Christ is rooted in God's Sovereignty. It is all part of His perfect plan to glorify himself through the Son.
With that said, we must recognize that God has given man life. For natural man, this means the ability to think and reason. No human acts purely out of instinct. We may engage in hasty actions at times, but every action is orginated in a thought, no matter how retarded or advanced that thinking process may be. So we are temporal creatures based in a time sequence, and we can inevitably understand that our actions have an effect on our futures. For example, I know that if I stab myself I will most likely bleed, and I will most likely end up in the hospital, barring some sort of devine intervention. Ultimately, I know that I might die, and it's inevitable that I will consider these consequences as I ponder whether or not to carry out my original idea. BUT we can not say that the consideration given to these consequences is apart from God's Sovereignty.
Here is why: if we say that God is not sovereign over every thought and every action, then we say that he is not God. God can not be omniscient, omnipotent, and ominpresent and not be in total control. It is not logically possible! God can not be limited in any way, otherwise, that which is limiting God would be God. Either God is not God, or He is perfectly sovereign over ALL things. We are forced to pick one! We either believe in God's Sovereignty or we are atheists.
Now that we've hopefully picked perfect sovereignty, we still have to explain: how did we pick that? It is here that we arrive at the only logical conclusion: God's Sovereignty and the ability He gives us to live are parallels headed in the same direction, and they ARE related, but we will never understand how they are related. In His perfect mercy, God has chosen not to reveal some things to us because the weight of their knowledge is too heavy for us to carry. Just as a good father waits to tell his son the birds and the bees because it's too heavy for the boy to shoulder, our Heavenly Father waits to reveal this mystery.
As good Christains we have to accept that this is a mystery we will never understand in this life. That is the essense of faith itself. If God had chosen to reveal everything to us in His Word there would be no such thing as faith. We would have ALL the questions and ALL the answers. But since we realize there are some things we can not explain, we take them on faith, and rejoice in the mercy God has shown us.
Instead of trying to understand this mystery, we ought to spend our time thanking the Lord Jesus, the holy and innoscent Lamb of God, the founder and perfector of our faith!
Wednesday, August 27, 2008
Thursday, August 21, 2008
A follow-up on "I WANT TO BE BLESSED"
If we fail to begin with this idea: that the ultimate blessing in life is to be used by the Lord Jesus for the advancement of His Kingdom, it is inevitable that we will be an anthropocentric society, tragically focused on the individual, whether we are consciously aware of it or not.
In other words, any desire to be blessed that doesn't find it's deepest motive in the joy of corporate worship is at it's deepest root a self-centered desire. The Great Commission is to share the Gospel, not to hoard it! The Great Commandment is to love others. None of this psycho-bable, "I have to learn to love myself before I can love others" garbage! Jesus said you will know who my children are by the way they love others, in total self-sacrifice. This idea of self-sacrifice is not a face value concept, but a matter that reaches to the deepest regions of the heart.
Here's the bad news: this problem is necessarily a chronic condition in all of us, given our sinful natures. The GOOD NEWS is Jesus can fix us! He promises to sanctify us in this Truth, so that we might become trained to squelch our selfishness before it captures our present attitude. When our attitudes are clouded in self-centeredness we render ourselves temporarily useless in the Kingdom of Christ...every honest Christian knows this from experience.
In other words, any desire to be blessed that doesn't find it's deepest motive in the joy of corporate worship is at it's deepest root a self-centered desire. The Great Commission is to share the Gospel, not to hoard it! The Great Commandment is to love others. None of this psycho-bable, "I have to learn to love myself before I can love others" garbage! Jesus said you will know who my children are by the way they love others, in total self-sacrifice. This idea of self-sacrifice is not a face value concept, but a matter that reaches to the deepest regions of the heart.
Here's the bad news: this problem is necessarily a chronic condition in all of us, given our sinful natures. The GOOD NEWS is Jesus can fix us! He promises to sanctify us in this Truth, so that we might become trained to squelch our selfishness before it captures our present attitude. When our attitudes are clouded in self-centeredness we render ourselves temporarily useless in the Kingdom of Christ...every honest Christian knows this from experience.
Monday, August 18, 2008
Evangelism
I was recently pondering in my head, "What is the most important aspect of Evangelism?" Three majors came to mind: 1) Praying for the unredeemed 2) Sharing the Gospel 3) Living a Christ-Centered Life. At first, my initial response was Prayer because it seems like the most Sovereign choice. Then I thought, no, the Great Commission is to go and make disciples of all nations, so it must be Sharing the Gospel. Then I thought, what better way is there to Share the Gospel than to model a Christ-Centered life? Ugh, back to the drawing board...
Just off the cuff, and in the context of Evangelism, it seems there is more Biblical merit for Sharing the Gospel because there would be no faith in Christ if no one had ever shared the Gospel. Nonetheless, I have come to the conclusion that not doing all three of these things will cause us to be less effective in our evangelism than we could be otherwise. Therefore, no matter which aspect we think is the most important, let's try to remember not to put all our eggs in one basket at the expense of the other two and call it "good ministry". It is important to devote significant time to all three of these things!
Just off the cuff, and in the context of Evangelism, it seems there is more Biblical merit for Sharing the Gospel because there would be no faith in Christ if no one had ever shared the Gospel. Nonetheless, I have come to the conclusion that not doing all three of these things will cause us to be less effective in our evangelism than we could be otherwise. Therefore, no matter which aspect we think is the most important, let's try to remember not to put all our eggs in one basket at the expense of the other two and call it "good ministry". It is important to devote significant time to all three of these things!
Friday, August 15, 2008
Please Say This With Me...
I WANT TO BE BLESSED! Now say it again. I WANT TO BE BLESSED!
This is a concept that is often forgotten in Christianity, but is absolutely central in understanding our purpose on Earth, and what it is that God wants from us. I have heard many people say over the years, "I am going to obey God's commands, but only because the Bible says so." There are two major things wrong with that statement. The first is more obvious, the second is less obvious, but more important to undertand.
On the surface, the problem that jumps out at us is that God commands us to obey His Word with a serving attitude. A serving attitude is one that obeys out of honor and love, not obligation. But the sub-surface problem that we see here is one of misunderstanding and it is very important.
Many Christians today and throughout history are under the assumption that God commands us to obey Him outside of our desire to be blessed. That is absolutely wrong! God would have us say, "I am going to obey God's commands because I want to be blessed." Why would God want us to say this?
Consider the life of someone who obeys God's Word and seeks His blessing. That is a life that shines bright for all to see. In the metaphor of salt and light, Jesus says in Matthew 5, "14 You are the light of the world. A city set on a hill cannot be hidden. 15 Nor do people light a lamp and put it under a basket, but on a stand, and it gives light to all in the house. 16 In the same way, let your light shine before others, so that they may see your good works and give glory to your Father who is in heaven."
Now, what is the reasoning that Jesus provides for us in this text? He says, "...so that they may see your good works and give glory to your Father who is in heaven." Here is the point: if we do not seek to be blessed in our good works, our joy will be small, if none, and Jesus will not be glorified as he continues to light our lamps and we continue to put them under a basket.
God wants Christians to be the most joyful people on Earth. That does not mean that he calls us to eat the most, drink the most, and be merry the most! It means that people should see the joy and peace we have in our hearts amidst the innevitable trials that life throws at us each and every day.
In the parable of the Great Banquet in Luke 14 Jesus says, "12...'When you give a dinner or a banquet, do not invite your friends or your brothers or your relatives or rich neighbors, lest they also invite you in return and you be repaid. 13 But when you give a feast, invite the poor, the crippled, the lame, the blind, 14 and you will be blessed, because they cannot repay you. For you will be repaid at the resurrection of the just."
Now check me if I'm wrong, but I don't believe Jesus is in the business of giving defective motivations! Jesus doesn't dangle the carrot in front of us and then say, "ah, ah, ah...you shouldn't want the carrot." When God says, do abc, and you will be blessed with xyz, He means it! And we should seek to be fulfilled by the promise of His blessing!
One major roadblock on the way to understanding this is that many Christians do not feel they deserve to be blessed. This is a matter of guilt and forgiveness. Guilt does not come from God. Burden comes from God, and guilt comes from Satan. Sometimes burden can turn into guilt as a result of Christians who know they are forgiven but do not accept it. The word realize means, know that you know that you know. As a believers in Jesus we have to realize that WE ARE FORGIVEN! And that we not only deserve to be blessed, but we also fail to glorify Jesus if we do not seek his blessing.
One other issue we must address here is that Luke 6 commands us, "forgive, and you will be forgiven." If we are holding back forgiveness towards someone, and the anger is building and building up inside of us, so much that it prevents us from seeking God's blessing, then WE MUST FORGIVE! A lack of forgiveness in our hearts will always take a big basket and place it over our lamp, no matter how bright we want it to shine. By God's grace we must pray for the strength to forgive!
God wants your life and mine to be blessed, but not with big houses and cars and money. That is the prosperity gospel, and it is trash! God wants our lives to be blessed by the ultimate joy of corporate worship, which is the collective glorification of our Savior who promises to repay us at the resurrection of the just! It is by His blood alone that any of us are worthy to enter the Kingdom of Heaven!
If we want our lives to be truly blessed in peace and joy then we must live a Christ-centered life and give thanks to God as He uses us to bring others to Jesus and glorify Himself. That is the ultimate blessing and joy!
This is a concept that is often forgotten in Christianity, but is absolutely central in understanding our purpose on Earth, and what it is that God wants from us. I have heard many people say over the years, "I am going to obey God's commands, but only because the Bible says so." There are two major things wrong with that statement. The first is more obvious, the second is less obvious, but more important to undertand.
On the surface, the problem that jumps out at us is that God commands us to obey His Word with a serving attitude. A serving attitude is one that obeys out of honor and love, not obligation. But the sub-surface problem that we see here is one of misunderstanding and it is very important.
Many Christians today and throughout history are under the assumption that God commands us to obey Him outside of our desire to be blessed. That is absolutely wrong! God would have us say, "I am going to obey God's commands because I want to be blessed." Why would God want us to say this?
Consider the life of someone who obeys God's Word and seeks His blessing. That is a life that shines bright for all to see. In the metaphor of salt and light, Jesus says in Matthew 5, "14 You are the light of the world. A city set on a hill cannot be hidden. 15 Nor do people light a lamp and put it under a basket, but on a stand, and it gives light to all in the house. 16 In the same way, let your light shine before others, so that they may see your good works and give glory to your Father who is in heaven."
Now, what is the reasoning that Jesus provides for us in this text? He says, "...so that they may see your good works and give glory to your Father who is in heaven." Here is the point: if we do not seek to be blessed in our good works, our joy will be small, if none, and Jesus will not be glorified as he continues to light our lamps and we continue to put them under a basket.
God wants Christians to be the most joyful people on Earth. That does not mean that he calls us to eat the most, drink the most, and be merry the most! It means that people should see the joy and peace we have in our hearts amidst the innevitable trials that life throws at us each and every day.
In the parable of the Great Banquet in Luke 14 Jesus says, "12...'When you give a dinner or a banquet, do not invite your friends or your brothers or your relatives or rich neighbors, lest they also invite you in return and you be repaid. 13 But when you give a feast, invite the poor, the crippled, the lame, the blind, 14 and you will be blessed, because they cannot repay you. For you will be repaid at the resurrection of the just."
Now check me if I'm wrong, but I don't believe Jesus is in the business of giving defective motivations! Jesus doesn't dangle the carrot in front of us and then say, "ah, ah, ah...you shouldn't want the carrot." When God says, do abc, and you will be blessed with xyz, He means it! And we should seek to be fulfilled by the promise of His blessing!
One major roadblock on the way to understanding this is that many Christians do not feel they deserve to be blessed. This is a matter of guilt and forgiveness. Guilt does not come from God. Burden comes from God, and guilt comes from Satan. Sometimes burden can turn into guilt as a result of Christians who know they are forgiven but do not accept it. The word realize means, know that you know that you know. As a believers in Jesus we have to realize that WE ARE FORGIVEN! And that we not only deserve to be blessed, but we also fail to glorify Jesus if we do not seek his blessing.
One other issue we must address here is that Luke 6 commands us, "forgive, and you will be forgiven." If we are holding back forgiveness towards someone, and the anger is building and building up inside of us, so much that it prevents us from seeking God's blessing, then WE MUST FORGIVE! A lack of forgiveness in our hearts will always take a big basket and place it over our lamp, no matter how bright we want it to shine. By God's grace we must pray for the strength to forgive!
God wants your life and mine to be blessed, but not with big houses and cars and money. That is the prosperity gospel, and it is trash! God wants our lives to be blessed by the ultimate joy of corporate worship, which is the collective glorification of our Savior who promises to repay us at the resurrection of the just! It is by His blood alone that any of us are worthy to enter the Kingdom of Heaven!
If we want our lives to be truly blessed in peace and joy then we must live a Christ-centered life and give thanks to God as He uses us to bring others to Jesus and glorify Himself. That is the ultimate blessing and joy!
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