The Unity of the Bible

Greetings All!

     This week's "thought" will take some thought!  It's not your typical, casual, quickly processed quote.  It will require you to think. Hopefully you are up for the challenge!  It is the response I often give to those who say ask: "What proof we have for the existence of God?   Where did God come from?  And, "Did God create because He needed someone to love, or because He was lonely?
     The following quote seeks to address these three questions and explains why it is that God did not create out of a sense of need within himself.  Part of the answer to question 3 is taken from Daniel Fuller's book, "The Unity of the Bible" -- a must read, in my opinion, for any earnest believer.  Enjoy!

The God Who Has No Needs

     1.) "What Proof Do We Have for the Existence of God?" The best proof for the existence of God goes something like this:  Being cannot come from non-being.  That is, something cannot come from nothing.  Yet, most all scientists agree that at some point in the long-distant past the space now occupied by the physical universe was empty and void and consisted of "nothing."  But its precisely because something cannot come from nothing that helps us see that the creation itself is the greatest proof of the existence of God.  Since being cannot come from non-being, our existence as beings proves His existence.

     2.) "Where Did God Come From?" To answer this, we can take the previous argument a step further.  Because being cannot come from non-being, our existence as beings proves His existence, and His existence proves He always existed.  If God is, He must always have been.  Most all theologians have tended to agree on this, and Malachi 3:6 confirms it where it says, "I am the Lord, I do not change."  Change is part of that which is limited, lacking, or finite. A God who changes would be finite and limited and could not by definition be God. To be infinite is by nature to be changeless, immutable and everlasting -- none of which would be true of God if He had a beginning.  If being is, it must always have been, since being cannot come from non-being.  Even the fact that God is all-knowing demands that He must have existed forever, for if He was not an eternal Being, or came into being at some point in time (which is an impossibility since being cannot come from non-being), then He could not be omniscient, for He would not know what transpired before He came into existence.

     3.) "Did God Create Because He Needed Something to Love, or Because He Was Lonely?  The Christian answer, based on the fact that God is a Trinity, is best given by Daniel Fuller in his book "The Unity of the Bible," in the section entitled, 'Why Did God Wait So Long to Create the World?'  In this section of his book he points out: "The declaration in Psalm 90:2 that, 'Before the mountains were born or you (God) brought forth the earth and the world, from everlasting to everlasting you are God,' indicates that vast eons of time elapsed before God acted to establish the earth so it would reflect His glory.  But Irenaeus, Augustine, and Calvin -- some of the church's greatest leaders -- have sternly warned people not to ask what God was doing before he created, or to wonder why he waited so long to create...  I believe, however, that it is both lawful and expedient to ask why the Triune God waited a long time to create the world.  For from the very fact that God waited, we know that he did not create out of the necessity involved in need-love. [That is, he did not create because he was lonely, or needed someone to love, as many often suggest].

     Since God the Father found infinite happiness in Jesus, the Son, then it becomes clear that from all eternity God has enjoyed his Son's love and companionship, showing the creation of the world was NOT a necessary act that God undertook to overcome loneliness, but an act that flowed from the freedom involved in benevolent love. It would be threatening to our future happiness to know that God created us to meet some need in himself... Yet the moment we understand that all of God's need-love was met in being a Trinity, then we see that he was free to act toward us, his creation, solely in terms of the freedom of a benevolent love.  A striking way to represent the difference is to say that if God were to have created us out of need-love, it would be like inviting us to a banquet, only to inform us that we were one of the courses for the meal!  But when God invites us to a banquet out of benevolent love, he wants us to join with him as guests at his table, to enjoy the feast along with him – as the psalmist put it, to drink from the river of his delights (36:8).  So, God's having delayed creation for a long while makes it unmistakably clear that he created us not out of need, but in the freedom of his benevolent love – out of mercy and grace.”

     What a different view of God we have when we consider his eternality in light of his Triune nature.  If God created out of a "need" that was unmet for all those many millions and trillions of eons before He spoke things into existence out of nothing (as the Bible does state), then the only picture one can draw is of a God who was sad, frustrated, or unhappy until He created, due to the long-standing unmet need in himself.  But when we consider God as Trinity, and the love and delight that existed between the Father and the Son from all eternity, we see that the fellowship and love between the Father and the Son resulted in a God who was eternally contented and happy!  A God who created, not out of need, but out of the overflow of delight, love and happiness that existed within Himself.  To put it in human terms, the best of all scenarios is not when a husband and wife seek to have a child to meet a need in either one of them, or out of an attempt to "save the marriage," but when they so love each other that they choose to bring a child into the overflow of love and delight that already exists between them. Not when they create out of need, but out of a desire to share their overflowing love with another.  And not only does it give us a different view of God, but a whole different ground for relationship!  For when we know we were not created to meet a need in God, we are freed to walk and share in the overflow of God's infinite Self-adequacy and Self-completeness!

     At any rate, just something to think about!

Living in the Grace of Jesus, Pastor Jeff

Moralistic Therapeutic Deism

Greetings All,

     This week's 'thought' comes to you from James Emery White, pastor of Mecklenburg Community Church in Charlotte, NC, and former president of Gordon-Conwell Theological Seminary, my Alma Mater.  It is taken from his book, "The Church in an Age of Crisis, 25 New Realities Facing Christianity."
     This entry has to do with the demise of a Christian worldview among Christians. I found it helpful in understanding why it is that many professing Christians (especially the young) do not think Christianly. I trust you will find it helpful as well. Enjoy.

Moralistic Therapeutic Deism

     "The National Study of Youth and Religion, conducted from 2001 to 2005 and perhaps the largest research project on the religious and spiritual lives of American adolescents, cataloged the demise of a Christian worldview among Christians. While the vast majority of American teenagers identified themselves as Christian, the "language, and therefore experience, of the Trinity, holiness, sin, grace, justification, sanctification, Eucharist, and heaven and hell appear, among most Christian teenagers in the United States at the very least, to be supplanted by the language of happiness, niceness, and an earned heavenly reward.

     Principal investigator Christian Smith writes, "It is not so much that U.S. Christianity is being secularized. Rather, more subtly, Christianity is either degenerating into a pathetic version of itself or, more significantly, Christianity is actively being colonized and displaced by a quite different religious faith."

     Smith and his colleagues call this new faith, "Moralistic Therapeutic Deism," a belief system that embraces the existence of a god who demands little more than that we be nice, with the central goal of life to be happy and feel good about oneself.

     God is not particularly needed in daily life except to resolve various problems that may come our way (think Divine Butler or Cosmic Therapist). And regardless of religious convictions, beliefs, or commitments, good people go to heaven when they die... The research of Smith reveals a frightening scenario -- the loss of the most basic of Christian thought and belief itself.

     So what has influenced these young people toward such an emptying of content in regard to their faith? Alarmingly, three out of four students say that their beliefs simply mirror those of their parents.

     This loss of content brings to mind Jean Bethke Elshtain's experience on the first Sunday following the attacks of 9/11. She went to a Methodist church in Nashville. The minister, whom she describes as having a kind of frozen smile on his face, said, "I know it has been a terrible week." Then, after a pause, he continued, "But that's no reason for us to give up on our personal dreams." She thought, "Good grief! Shouldn't you say something about what happened and how Christians are to think about it?" But then she realized that if one has lost the term evil from his or her theological vocabulary, then it is not easy to talk about such a thing.

     But a robust and deeply theological discourse on evil was precisely what the world needed to hear at that moment and would have been uniquely served in hearing. Millions flooded into churches across the nation to hear a word from God, or at least about God, to make sense of the tragedy. Sadly, many were left as empty and lost as before they entered -- which is one reason why the millions who came just as quickly left.

     Little wonder that now even hell itself is on trial, with popular pastors asking such questions as, "Is there a hell?" "Does anyone really go there?" and "Do your decisions in this life make or break you in regard to heaven and hell?"...

     In a day when the world is increasingly secular, and frequently apathetic, the Christian faith is losing its distinctive identity and content. And it is Christians who are emptying their minds. Yet without a clear embrace of the actual matter of the Christian faith, we will have nothing to offer the world that it does not already have."

     In response to all this, the one thing that comes most forcefully to my mind is the verse from Revelation 2:5: "Remember the height from which you have fallen. Repent and do the things you did at first."

     The Lord has been impressing that verse upon my heart a lot lately. Remember your younger days in the Lord. Remember your hearts desire at that time. Remember the passion and commitment and willingness to go almost anywhere and do almost anything for Jesus.  Remember the lengthy times spent in prayer, and reading the Bible, and sharing the gospel, and that burning desire to see family and friends and loved ones come to Christ. I do remember. Do you?

     Every so often (for the good of our own spiritual health) the Lord asks us to remember the height from which we have fallen, repent for having allowed it to happen, and then set our hearts once again doing the things we did at first. For only then -- through remembering, repenting, and doing what we once did -- will we begin to experience that first love again, and hopefully, start turning the tide of apathy in the American church -- one soul at a time.

     "Lord Jesus, I commit myself to you, your church, and the purposes of Your kingdom all over again..."

For the Honor of His Name, Pastor Jeff

First-born of all Creation

Greetings All,

This weeks 'thought' comes to you from William Barclay (formerly Professor of New Testament and Hellenistic Greek at the University of Glasgow, in Scotland). It comes to you from his book "The All-Sufficient Christ."

I thought it would be an appropriate quote to meditate upon during Holy Week, since the events of this week make little sense, and have even less significance, unless we recall who it is that is being betrayed, put on trial by men, mocked, spit on, beaten, flogged and crucified.
It explains Paul's words in Colossians 1:15-16 where he says of Jesus:

"He is the image of the invisible God, the firstborn over all creation. For by Him were all things created: things in heaven and on earth, visible and invisible..." Enjoy!

"In its English dress the phrase "the first-born of all creation" is misleading. The word for 'first-born' is prototokos, and it has two connected but quite distinct meanings.

First, it has what may be called a time meaning, and does mean quite simply born first in point of time. If that meaning is taken here, it will simply mean that Christ was the first of created persons to be born. It would make him a part of creation rather than make him separate from creation. But the whole tenor of Paul's thought forbids us to take that meaning, for Paul is concerned to show, not that Jesus is simply a part of creation, but that he is above and beyond creation; and in any event Paul goes on to say that all things were created by him and that he was before all things. This means we must seek the meaning of prototokos along its other line.

Second... the word prototokos came to have the meaning of primacy in honor rather than mere priority in time. 'Israel,' says God, 'is my first-born son' (Exodus 4:22). Israel was certainly not the first-born nation in the point of time, but Israel was certainly the first-born nation in the plan and design and the heart of God.

God says of the Davidic king: 'And I will make him the first-born, the highest of the kings of the earth' (Psalm 89:27). There, quite clearly, the word 'first-born' has to do with place and prestige and honor and not with time at all... In the rabbinic writings God himself is called the first-born of creation, which can only mean that God is the sovereign of all creation.

So when Jesus Christ is called the first-born of all creation, it does not mean that he was the first created person to be born. What it does mean is that to him God has assigned the first place, the lordship, the sovereignty of all creation. Here, therefore, the translation of the New English Bible is much to be preferred: 'His is the primacy over all created things.' (By this term first-born) Paul lays down the sovereignty of Jesus Christ over the whole creation of God.

Jesus is also called, 'the image of the invisible God.' The word is eikon. This word is a regular word for that which is a precise copy, reproduction, or replica. An eikon is an accurate picture or description... So, then, to call Jesus the eikon of God is to say that Jesus is the perfect portrait of God. If you wish to see what God is like, look at Jesus. In Jesus the invisible God becomes visible to men. So, then, as Lightfoot puts it, Jesus is the perfect representation of God (See Hebrews 1:3).

Yet ordinarily we can go and look at the person of whom the portrait or description is a representation. We cannot do that in the case of the infinite and invisible God. So not only is Jesus the representation of God; he is also the perfect manifestation and revelation of God. In one sentence, in Jesus we see God. When we look at Jesus, we can say, 'This is what God is like.' And what a blinding revelation it is to see God in the one who healed the sick, and fed the hungry, and comforted the sorrowing, and chose ordinary men to be his right-hand men, and was the friend of those whom the conventional and the orthodox and the pious regarded with contempt and supercilious disgust. Here indeed is a revelation that changes a man's whole relationship to God."

With prayers that this week will bring for you a renewed sense of devotion, reverence and joy in Christ,

Pastor Jeff

The Atonement and the Trinity

Greetings All,

    Due to a construction project here at the church I didn't get the "thought" out for last week.  Only so much time in a week!  That's why I tried to get this one out before the week gets going!

    It comes to you from J. S. Whale, from lectures delivered at the University of Cambridge, Cambridge, England back in 1941.  I ran across his book "Christian Doctrine" for 25 cents at a used bookstore and have thoroughly enjoyed it (even though it is currently out of print). 

     The following excerpt is one of my favorites.  I have tried to shorten it and used parenthetical insertions [  ] in the process to keep the flow of thought going while still trying to remain true to the content. Condensing it from 5 pages down to a few paragraphs for your reading pleasure was not an easy task! 

    A common response I hear after my sermons is "You make us think."  I pray that you will take a few moments to do just that in relation to this quote by Dr. Whale.  It's not your typical modern day "dumbed down fluff."  It requires mental concentration. (Have I lost  anyone yet?)  I trust you'll find the insights gained thereby to far outweigh any mental effort exerted!  Enjoy!

 

The Atonement and the Trinity 

 

    "The New Testament undoubtedly uses the ancient language of blood-sacrifice to proclaim the saving work of Christ. This language is baptized into Christ, of course, but is unintelligible apart from the sacrificial system of the Old Testament....

    Yet this language about the victim who is sacrificed perplexes and often alienates modern people, not so much because the language of blood-sacrifice is necessarily archaic, and inevitably repulsive to the modern imagination, but because all 'objective' theories of Atonement seem to use it in support of a doctrine of penal substitution which, on the face of it, is immoral and therefore insupportable....

     The cross is no more and no less than history's supreme demonstation of the depth and splendor of the love of God.  [Yet] because the 'objective' theories represent Christ's death as necessary, not only to man but to God; and because the legal word 'Satisfaction' (the need to appease the wrath of God against our sin) is used to affirm the holiness of God's love and the eternal moral realities which are implicit in his forgiveness, modern people protest that such a word makes God out to be a capricious Oriental Sultan; a cruel tyrant who arbitrarily demands the suffering and death of an innocent victim that the guilty may be spared His avenging anger....

    [Yet] much modern criticism is irrelevant because it rests on a serious misconception... [Duns Scotus, Occam, Luther, Zwingli, Calvin and the like] never allow you to think of God as a cruel tyrant exacting his due from an innocent person on our behalf.  In all the classic soteriologies (plans of salvation) of the Church he who is sacrificed is not a human being chosen out from humanity to serve as a scapegoat. That would be the Nestorian heresy.  On the contrary it is the Offended One himself, the Holy God who is of purer eyes than to behold iniquity, who as the second person of the Trinity assumes a human nature in order to be able to suffer for offending sinners, and in their stead. 

     According to Christian theology, the Being who goes deliberately and freely to his death is not a human personality but the second 'person' of the Trinity, God Incarnate in the clothing of human nature... You cannot escape some such trinitarian formulation if you take the witness of the New Testament seriously. 

      If Jesus is an unambiguously human martyr and no more, the gospels are a monument to a vast illusion, the Gospel is a mistake, and the extinction of the Church is only a question of time.  But if Jesus really is the Word of God Incarnate... you would have to recognize with Duns Scotus (who was not a fool)... that on the cross the Absolute Ruler of this universe was being 'cruel' towards himself alone....

     Do not say that Christian soteriology makes God the Father an Oriental Tyrant, unless you wish to expose yourself to the charge of theological illiteracy.  Such a contention is a pathetic caricature of the very truth which the doctrine of the Trinity is meant to conserve... Though no one understands the vast mystery of the triune God, the doctrine of the Trinity is not unintelligible.  It is fundamental to Christian [thought]... The doctrine of the Trinity is easily caricatured; but the truths it presupposes being inescapable, the doctrine itself is in some form inescapable, and anyone who dismisses it with impatience or contempt will be displaying intellectual sloth rather than intellectual acumen."     

 

   Insights worthy of our serious contemplation.  In the service of Jesus, Pastor Jeff

 

Dr. Jeffrey F. Evans

www.christcommunitybiblechurch.org