God is presented by most modern Christians in one of two ways: weak and needy or unloving and neglectful.
Many believe God cannot save a sinner without his or her consent. Is God wringing His hands awaiting the sinner’s response, passively wishing His creation would come to Him, lest the Almighty be heartbroken and frustrated for all eternity?
No, this doctrine would put the Creator in the position of a weak beggar. He is a powerful Savior!
The other view espoused by mainstream Christianity is that God is hateful and negligent to His own children.
Any loving parent with a sick child would insist that he or she take medicine. Naturally, as a child, I resisted medicine when it was given to me. But my mother loved me, and cared enough about me to make me take medicine; she didn’t want to see me sick, and she knew the medicine would help me.
Sadly, most people don’t ascribe the same love to our Heavenly Father that they do to earthly parents; they view God as a neglectful Father.
Those of us fortunate enough to understand the truth of irresistible grace should rejoice that we know that God is neither weak nor negligent, but that He is powerful to save, and that Christ did indeed save His people.
Friday, July 10, 2009
Monday, July 6, 2009
Q: What is meant by Romans 10:13?
A: Romans 10:13 tells us that “whosoever shall call upon the name of the Lord shall be saved.” Are we to believe that this is an offer of eternal life to all the “whosoevers” of the world?
First, it is important to understand what type of salvation Paul is speaking of. The scripture speaks of many kinds of salvation: salvation from hell, from wicked men, from an untoward generation, from sorrow. What is he referring to in the Roman epistle?
Closer examination reveals that Paul is quoting Joel, the Old Testament prophet.
Joel 2:32 - And it shall come to pass, that whosoever shall call on the name of the Lord shall be delivered: for in mount Zion and in Jerusalem shall be deliverance, as the Lord hath said, and in the remnant whom the Lord shall call.
By looking at the verse Paul was quoting in its original context, we see that this salvation was not eternal; it is salvation “in mount Zion and in Jerusalem…and in the remnant whom the Lord shall call.” Joel is prophesying the deliverance found in the New Testament church for all that confess their Savior. This is a salvation to be enjoyed in this life; a deliverance from worldly lusts and evil.
It is also worth noting that Paul used the words salvation and deliverance interchangeably, and that alone ought to be enough to prove the concept of temporal salvation.
Let’s read further in Romans 10:13 – “How then shall they call on him in whom they have not believed? and how shall they believe in him of whom they have not heard? and how shall they hear without a preacher?”
This verse makes evident the chain of events that must take place before a person can call upon the name of the Lord. First, the subject must believe. We know from many places in the scripture that belief is an evidence that a person is already an heir of heaven (Gal 5:22; Eph. 1:19, 1 John 5:1).
Romans 10:13 is not offering salvation for the world, but from the world.
(
A: Romans 10:13 tells us that “whosoever shall call upon the name of the Lord shall be saved.” Are we to believe that this is an offer of eternal life to all the “whosoevers” of the world?
First, it is important to understand what type of salvation Paul is speaking of. The scripture speaks of many kinds of salvation: salvation from hell, from wicked men, from an untoward generation, from sorrow. What is he referring to in the Roman epistle?
Closer examination reveals that Paul is quoting Joel, the Old Testament prophet.
Joel 2:32 - And it shall come to pass, that whosoever shall call on the name of the Lord shall be delivered: for in mount Zion and in Jerusalem shall be deliverance, as the Lord hath said, and in the remnant whom the Lord shall call.
By looking at the verse Paul was quoting in its original context, we see that this salvation was not eternal; it is salvation “in mount Zion and in Jerusalem…and in the remnant whom the Lord shall call.” Joel is prophesying the deliverance found in the New Testament church for all that confess their Savior. This is a salvation to be enjoyed in this life; a deliverance from worldly lusts and evil.
It is also worth noting that Paul used the words salvation and deliverance interchangeably, and that alone ought to be enough to prove the concept of temporal salvation.
Let’s read further in Romans 10:13 – “How then shall they call on him in whom they have not believed? and how shall they believe in him of whom they have not heard? and how shall they hear without a preacher?”
This verse makes evident the chain of events that must take place before a person can call upon the name of the Lord. First, the subject must believe. We know from many places in the scripture that belief is an evidence that a person is already an heir of heaven (Gal 5:22; Eph. 1:19, 1 John 5:1).
Romans 10:13 is not offering salvation for the world, but from the world.
(
Thoughts on John, chapter Three.
A person will not get very far in the Bible Belt without encountering John 3:16. For most people, this is the first verse they commit to memory. Many Christians count it among their favorite scriptures. Max Lucado calls 3:16 the “numbers of hope.” He’s absolutely right in that, but you won’t get very far into Mr. Lucado’s book before you find he’s absolutely wrong about a lot of aspects of the verse. Unfortunately this is the case for many of God’s children who have only heard this verse out of context and wrongly divided. Hopefull, this weak effort will help shed light on the third chapter of John.
This chapter begins with Nicodemus approaching Jesus. He came into the night because of the persecution he would have suffered. Nonetheless, the Pharisee’s first words to Christ were, “thou art a teacher come from God: for no man can do these miracles that you doest, except God be with him.” Nicodemus recognized that Christ was unlike any other man, anointed and sent by God. Jesus’ first words to Nicodemus were, “Verily, verily, I say unto thee, except a man be born again, he cannot see the kingdom of God.”
Was our Lord instructing him to be born again, or was this simply a statement of fact? Much is to be learned from the timing and placement of this statement within the conversation. These were the first words out of the Savior’s mouth. Would he be telling Nicodemus what to do to gain eternal life without so much as a howdy or hello?
No, Christ was giving a statement of fact in response to the Pharisee’s revelation that Christ was sent from God. From the man’s first statement, Jesus knew that Nicodemus was already born again, for he saw the kingdom of God.
For someone under the presumption that the kingdom of God is eternal life, this verse can be troublesome. However, clues given in the next few verses will help the rational mind discern the true meaning of the kingdom of God. In verse 5, Jesus gives us more information: “Verily, verily, I say unto thee, Except a man be born of water and of the Spirit, he cannot enter into the kingdom of God.” In verse 3, the Lord tells us what is required to see the kingdom of God. In verse 5, He explains what is required to enter the kingdom of God: man must be born of water and of the Spirit. Are we to believe that the unbaptized do not go to heaven? If that is the case, Jesus lied to the thief on the cross.
When this verse is examined, we see that the kingdom of God that is referred to here is the church that out Lord. That is the kingdom He established while on this earth.
In verse 7, Jesus continues, “Marvel not that I say unto thee, ye must be born again.”
We come again to the question, is Christ giving a command, or is He giving a statement of fact about Nicodemus’s own experience? Verse 8 clarifies: “The wind bloweth where it listeth, and thou hearest the sound thereof, but canst not tell whence it cometh, and whither it goeth: so is every one that is born of the Spirit.”
It would be absurd to image a dead branch demanding the wind to blow on it. Just as the lifeless tree branch has no control over the wind, the spiritually dead have no control over the Holy Spirit and our only spiritual movement and signs of life occur once the Holy Spirit “blows on us” and quickens us from our state of death in trespasses and sins to life in Christ (Ephesians 2:1)
The spiritually dead cannot act in the spiritual realm and can show no signs of spiritual life until the Holy Spirit, independently and undirected, moves upon them.
The new birth, then, occurs independently of human will, and is as free as the wind.
Verse 14 tells us something very important: “as Moses lifted up the serpent in the wilderness, even so must the Son of man be lifted up.” The golden serpent that Moses lifted up didn’t look all that outwardly different from the ordinary, natural serpents that were plaguing Israelites, but it had a special property: that any who cast their eyes upon it would be delivered from the danger of the serpents. In a fulfillment of this shadow, Jesus explained to Nicodemus that he must be literally lifted up onto the cross between to other sons of men. Outwardly, the Savior didn’t look very different from the thieves to his left and right, but only He had the special saving power.
Now, those “numbers of hope.”
John 3:16 – “For God so loved the world that he gave his only begotten Son, that whosoever believeth in him should not perish, but have everlasting life.”
This verse is a wellspring of comfort and joy for God’s children! A lifetime of sermons could be preached on this sentence alone!
Let’s examine this sentence piece-by-piece.
1. “God so loved the world”
It is often said of Primitive Baptists that we don’t believe God loves the world. That’s not true; the key to understanding scripture is knowing which world is being spoken of here. The writers of the Bible use different words to mean different things at different times. The world that God loved in John 3:16 did not include Esau; the scripture is very clear that God hated Esau (Rom 9:13).
In John 17, the night before His death, Christ said, “I pray not for the world, but for those that thou hast given me out of the world.” Is this the same world of John 3:16? If Christ loved all of humanity, wouldn’t praying for them be the least he could do? John used the same Greek word, kosmos, or “created order” for both contexts. In Luke 2:1, we find that Caesar Augustus decreed that “all the world should be taxed.” Obviously, the Roman emperor didn’t tax the Americas. “World” in this sense (oikoumene) referred only to the Roman empire.
The world of John 3:16 is the world of his elect children, the ones to whom his blood is applied. Let’s compare this verse with other passages of scripture that speak about those whom God loves. In Romans 8:29-30, we see a chain of events that begins with God foreknowing a people. As we study the word “foreknow” (Greek, proginosko), we see that it is an active verb. It does not simply mean that He knew about these people, but that He chose to enter into a relationship with them in love. That phrase literally means, “whom he did love beforehand.”
“For whom he did foreknow [love beforehand], he also did predestinate to be conformed to the image of his Son, that he might be the firstborn among many brethren. Moreover whom he did predestinate, them he also called: and whom he called, them he justified: and whom he justified, them he also glorified.”
From those two verses, we know that every single person whom God loved before the foundation of the world has been predestined to heaven, called, justified, and will be eternally and irrevocably glorified. If God loved everyone, then everyone would be in heaven.
2. “that he gave his only begotten Son.”
This is the extent to which God loves His children! Love above all love! It is important to understand how and to whom the Son was given. In Matthew 5:17, Jesus says that He came to fulfill the law. Part of fulfilling the law was fulfilling the sacrifice. Under the Mosaic law, animals were sacrificed and offered to God the Father. Likewise, Christ offered Himself to the Father as a holy, spotless, acceptable sacrifice on behalf of sinners. Had He offered Himself to sinners, it would not have been a fulfillment of the law.
3. “whosoever believeth in him should not perish, but have everlasting life.”
The denominational world sees whosoever as a general group, as a word indicative of an invitation, inclusive of all. But who is the who in the whosoever? One vital rule of reading scripture: you must know what a verse says before you can know what it means. So many people have trouble with John 3:16 because they try to decide what it means before they actually see what it says. A closer look at the Greek will reveal that "whosoever believeth" is translated from "pas pisteuo." That literally means "every one believing." --That is a definite number of people, not a general group.
As a side note, let's also look at what John 3:16 doesn't say.
It does not tell you who has the capacity to believe. For that, we will have to look at other passages of the Bible, but I've already rambled enough in this article. We'll save that for later.
Let’s consider it this way: suppose we go into Wal-Mart and I tell you that everyone in a blue vest works for the store.
Does that mean that anyone can put on a blue vest and automatically be added to the Wal-Mart payroll? No, the vest is a signifying mark that a person is already a Wal-Mart employee. Hopefully, that example shed some light on the subject. Looking at the scripture in a similar perspective, we see that nothing about John 3:16 indicates that belief is a cause of eternal life, but we have every reason to believe that those who believe are already possessors of eternal life.
Verse 16 uses the term “everlasting life,” synonymous with the “eternal life” of verse 15. “Eternal” defined is “having no beginning or end.” Thus, we know that eternal life does not begin when a person begins to believe, nor does it end when a person transgresses God’s law.
John 3:17 – “God sent not his Son into the world to condemn the world; but that the world through him might be saved.” The world spoken of here is still the world that God loved, not the whole Adamic race. The word “might” in this sense is not the same “might” we use today to say there’s a chance we’ll do something, but instead that the world of God’s beloved children would be saved.
Verse 18 – “He that believeth on Him is not condemned: but he that believeth not is condemned already, because he hath not believed in the name of the only begotten Son of God.”
Note that “is not condemned” is in present tense.
Also notice that the Greek word that is translated into “because” is not the same Greek word he uses for “because” in most other cases: the cause and effect sense. Instead, hoti is closer to “that”
[This article isn't done yet - After verse 18, Jesus speaks about light and darkness, which I need more enlightenment on before I can really expound with liberty. As Elder Gary Hall says, “you can no more preach something you don’t know that to come from someplace you ain’t never been.”
So it’ll be a while before I actually publish this, so hopefully I’ll have time to tidy it up and write a snappy closing paragraph. Thanks, dear reader, for being patient with my ramblings.]
This chapter begins with Nicodemus approaching Jesus. He came into the night because of the persecution he would have suffered. Nonetheless, the Pharisee’s first words to Christ were, “thou art a teacher come from God: for no man can do these miracles that you doest, except God be with him.” Nicodemus recognized that Christ was unlike any other man, anointed and sent by God. Jesus’ first words to Nicodemus were, “Verily, verily, I say unto thee, except a man be born again, he cannot see the kingdom of God.”
Was our Lord instructing him to be born again, or was this simply a statement of fact? Much is to be learned from the timing and placement of this statement within the conversation. These were the first words out of the Savior’s mouth. Would he be telling Nicodemus what to do to gain eternal life without so much as a howdy or hello?
No, Christ was giving a statement of fact in response to the Pharisee’s revelation that Christ was sent from God. From the man’s first statement, Jesus knew that Nicodemus was already born again, for he saw the kingdom of God.
For someone under the presumption that the kingdom of God is eternal life, this verse can be troublesome. However, clues given in the next few verses will help the rational mind discern the true meaning of the kingdom of God. In verse 5, Jesus gives us more information: “Verily, verily, I say unto thee, Except a man be born of water and of the Spirit, he cannot enter into the kingdom of God.” In verse 3, the Lord tells us what is required to see the kingdom of God. In verse 5, He explains what is required to enter the kingdom of God: man must be born of water and of the Spirit. Are we to believe that the unbaptized do not go to heaven? If that is the case, Jesus lied to the thief on the cross.
When this verse is examined, we see that the kingdom of God that is referred to here is the church that out Lord. That is the kingdom He established while on this earth.
In verse 7, Jesus continues, “Marvel not that I say unto thee, ye must be born again.”
We come again to the question, is Christ giving a command, or is He giving a statement of fact about Nicodemus’s own experience? Verse 8 clarifies: “The wind bloweth where it listeth, and thou hearest the sound thereof, but canst not tell whence it cometh, and whither it goeth: so is every one that is born of the Spirit.”
It would be absurd to image a dead branch demanding the wind to blow on it. Just as the lifeless tree branch has no control over the wind, the spiritually dead have no control over the Holy Spirit and our only spiritual movement and signs of life occur once the Holy Spirit “blows on us” and quickens us from our state of death in trespasses and sins to life in Christ (Ephesians 2:1)
The spiritually dead cannot act in the spiritual realm and can show no signs of spiritual life until the Holy Spirit, independently and undirected, moves upon them.
The new birth, then, occurs independently of human will, and is as free as the wind.
Verse 14 tells us something very important: “as Moses lifted up the serpent in the wilderness, even so must the Son of man be lifted up.” The golden serpent that Moses lifted up didn’t look all that outwardly different from the ordinary, natural serpents that were plaguing Israelites, but it had a special property: that any who cast their eyes upon it would be delivered from the danger of the serpents. In a fulfillment of this shadow, Jesus explained to Nicodemus that he must be literally lifted up onto the cross between to other sons of men. Outwardly, the Savior didn’t look very different from the thieves to his left and right, but only He had the special saving power.
Now, those “numbers of hope.”
John 3:16 – “For God so loved the world that he gave his only begotten Son, that whosoever believeth in him should not perish, but have everlasting life.”
This verse is a wellspring of comfort and joy for God’s children! A lifetime of sermons could be preached on this sentence alone!
Let’s examine this sentence piece-by-piece.
1. “God so loved the world”
It is often said of Primitive Baptists that we don’t believe God loves the world. That’s not true; the key to understanding scripture is knowing which world is being spoken of here. The writers of the Bible use different words to mean different things at different times. The world that God loved in John 3:16 did not include Esau; the scripture is very clear that God hated Esau (Rom 9:13).
In John 17, the night before His death, Christ said, “I pray not for the world, but for those that thou hast given me out of the world.” Is this the same world of John 3:16? If Christ loved all of humanity, wouldn’t praying for them be the least he could do? John used the same Greek word, kosmos, or “created order” for both contexts. In Luke 2:1, we find that Caesar Augustus decreed that “all the world should be taxed.” Obviously, the Roman emperor didn’t tax the Americas. “World” in this sense (oikoumene) referred only to the Roman empire.
The world of John 3:16 is the world of his elect children, the ones to whom his blood is applied. Let’s compare this verse with other passages of scripture that speak about those whom God loves. In Romans 8:29-30, we see a chain of events that begins with God foreknowing a people. As we study the word “foreknow” (Greek, proginosko), we see that it is an active verb. It does not simply mean that He knew about these people, but that He chose to enter into a relationship with them in love. That phrase literally means, “whom he did love beforehand.”
“For whom he did foreknow [love beforehand], he also did predestinate to be conformed to the image of his Son, that he might be the firstborn among many brethren. Moreover whom he did predestinate, them he also called: and whom he called, them he justified: and whom he justified, them he also glorified.”
From those two verses, we know that every single person whom God loved before the foundation of the world has been predestined to heaven, called, justified, and will be eternally and irrevocably glorified. If God loved everyone, then everyone would be in heaven.
2. “that he gave his only begotten Son.”
This is the extent to which God loves His children! Love above all love! It is important to understand how and to whom the Son was given. In Matthew 5:17, Jesus says that He came to fulfill the law. Part of fulfilling the law was fulfilling the sacrifice. Under the Mosaic law, animals were sacrificed and offered to God the Father. Likewise, Christ offered Himself to the Father as a holy, spotless, acceptable sacrifice on behalf of sinners. Had He offered Himself to sinners, it would not have been a fulfillment of the law.
3. “whosoever believeth in him should not perish, but have everlasting life.”
The denominational world sees whosoever as a general group, as a word indicative of an invitation, inclusive of all. But who is the who in the whosoever? One vital rule of reading scripture: you must know what a verse says before you can know what it means. So many people have trouble with John 3:16 because they try to decide what it means before they actually see what it says. A closer look at the Greek will reveal that "whosoever believeth" is translated from "pas pisteuo." That literally means "every one believing." --That is a definite number of people, not a general group.
As a side note, let's also look at what John 3:16 doesn't say.
It does not tell you who has the capacity to believe. For that, we will have to look at other passages of the Bible, but I've already rambled enough in this article. We'll save that for later.
Let’s consider it this way: suppose we go into Wal-Mart and I tell you that everyone in a blue vest works for the store.
Does that mean that anyone can put on a blue vest and automatically be added to the Wal-Mart payroll? No, the vest is a signifying mark that a person is already a Wal-Mart employee. Hopefully, that example shed some light on the subject. Looking at the scripture in a similar perspective, we see that nothing about John 3:16 indicates that belief is a cause of eternal life, but we have every reason to believe that those who believe are already possessors of eternal life.
Verse 16 uses the term “everlasting life,” synonymous with the “eternal life” of verse 15. “Eternal” defined is “having no beginning or end.” Thus, we know that eternal life does not begin when a person begins to believe, nor does it end when a person transgresses God’s law.
John 3:17 – “God sent not his Son into the world to condemn the world; but that the world through him might be saved.” The world spoken of here is still the world that God loved, not the whole Adamic race. The word “might” in this sense is not the same “might” we use today to say there’s a chance we’ll do something, but instead that the world of God’s beloved children would be saved.
Verse 18 – “He that believeth on Him is not condemned: but he that believeth not is condemned already, because he hath not believed in the name of the only begotten Son of God.”
Note that “is not condemned” is in present tense.
Also notice that the Greek word that is translated into “because” is not the same Greek word he uses for “because” in most other cases: the cause and effect sense. Instead, hoti is closer to “that”
[This article isn't done yet - After verse 18, Jesus speaks about light and darkness, which I need more enlightenment on before I can really expound with liberty. As Elder Gary Hall says, “you can no more preach something you don’t know that to come from someplace you ain’t never been.”
So it’ll be a while before I actually publish this, so hopefully I’ll have time to tidy it up and write a snappy closing paragraph. Thanks, dear reader, for being patient with my ramblings.]
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