Bible Commentary

Jesus We Talk About The Good Life

Dear Thomas,

It is always a delight to hear that someone feels great about his or her life. In your ninth question, you stated, “I have a fantastic and loving wife, great kids, a we11-paying job with excellent benefits, friends, good health, a good retirement plan, a nice home, and other material comforts. How would being a Christian benefit me now in this life? What would I gain that I don’t already have access to?”

It is a delight to know that your life is running so smoothly that your goals are being met, and that you feel blessed with the way things are going. Likewise, I feel blessed in many of these ways. This is what Christians call common grace.

All good things come from God. He designed it that way and in many more ways that were lost as sin entered the world. I don’t think that we should ever underestimate how much a loving God wants to see us prosper in all the ways you mentioned.

But let us not put limitations on life. As good as all those things about your life are, there is much more. The very fact that you are asking these questions suggests to me that you also realize there just might be more. It is this more that is at the crux of our conversations.

It is this more that Jesus came to give as a free gift, for try as we might, even with hard work, good luck, and fortune, we cannot obtain or earn this more through our own efforts. It is not within our capacity.

Something about our natural-born state of being separates us from God and creates this limitation. But because of and through Jesus Christ, this separation and limitation do not have to remain.

This is the good news of the gospel. This is what the Bible is trying to communicate and what the Holy Spirit, working on your heart and mind, is trying to communicate.

There truly is more! This more is not just limited to this life but extends to life forevermore. It goes beyond our being physically, mentally, and emotionally alive. It is about becoming spiritually alive.

I will admit that sometimes life seems very good and can easily lull us into thinking that we have no need for this anymore. It is reflected in those moments when we say to ourselves, “Life is good.

It is very good!” Much like a puppy dog, we feel totally free and full of boundless energy. We have things to do and places to go. Healthy and happy, we trust everyone and everything.

Remember those feelings of being completely alive, aware, and alert, truly enjoying the moment? Your question seems to reflect those moments.

I am sure you can recall times, even if brief, when you knew you were truly cared about and loved by family and friends just because of who you are. You can probably also remember that sense of awe from the sight, sound, feel, or taste of something wonderful.

You most likely have experienced and gazed with wonder and vicarious pleasure at the joy of life as seen in your kids, your wife, and the lives of others. Life is good. It is very good! And you should desire it and enjoy it.

However, it is tempting to let this more, this spiritual dimension of life take a backseat to the temporal, especially when everything is going well, and we assume that all our desires and goals are being met. Yet as good as life can be at a given time, we all understand that life can also be a bit fickle.

It does not behave according to our expectations on any permanent basis. Consider these questions: Has your life always been running so smoothly? Will it continue to run smoothly and according to your plan?

And what happens to your current good life and your aspirations, hopes, and dreams if it does not? Do you find yourself searching for more because in fact there is something more, a spiritual more?

Within the temporal, do you have a sense of peace, of belonging beyond that established by your possessions, performance, and accomplishments? When asked the question, “Who are you?” what would you answer beyond providing name, family, social identification, work, politics, age, rank, and social security number? The final question is this: Who and what were you meant to be?

Can we have an identity that goes beyond the good of life? I suggest that the temporal, when it is good, is only part of the good available.

I suggest that there is a true and living identity beyond our temporal lives and relationships. It is the life of the Spirit, our spiritual connectedness and relationship to the One who created us for love.

Without that connectedness and relationship, there is a void in our lives. The spiritual more is missing. And whether identified or not, we want and need this spiritual more

This more is to know that we are loved by our Creator and that He wants to bring us into a special friendship and fellowship with Him. This is very, very good indeed.

And this is something we neither have to perform for nor work for. It is a free gift. It is an integral part of the really good life now and forever.

Life is also full of contrasts. Can we expect the temporal good life to continually remain so permanently? As I write this letter, I remember a time when I was sitting on our houseboat. The weather was warm and calm.

The blue sky, white cumulous clouds, and magnificent shoreline scenery reflecting on the water were nothing short of spectacular. I remember some music playing in the background.

The family was enjoying a variety of activities, and my own puppy dog was asleep near my feet. How could I not declare, “Life is good. It is very good!”

However, another time at the lake we had a very different experience. As we headed out to find a beach where we could anchor for the weekend, the weather was warm, calm, and partly cloudy.

A few miles out I heard a terrible noise in the engine compartment. I noticed from the tachometer that one engine had stopped running.

I went to see what had happened and noticed that the engine compartment smelled like metal grinding against metal. Knowing that there was nothing I could do at the moment, I proceeded toward a beach under the power of one engine.

Once anchored, I discovered that I could not shut off the remaining engine. The ignition switch had no effect. After a while, I decided to starve the engine of oxygen in order to stop it.

However, when I tried to restart it, I discovered that the ignition switch had no effect on this function either. So there we were, anchored and ready to enjoy the weekend but with no engine power.

Soon I noticed some very stormy clouds rolling in. I turned on the marine radio and heard this message: “Boaters warning! A strong storm front is moving into the area with potentially high winds and rain. Boaters are advised to take shelter in protected areas.” Great! We were somewhat exposed to open water and had no engine power.

The storm hit. At first, the winds were only twenty to thirty miles per hour, but they soon increased to more than forty. I frantically put out more ropes and more anchors.

The waves were getting bigger and bigger as they slammed against the houseboat. The winds picked up to fifty miles per hour with gusts to seventy. The temperature dropped from the high eighties to the low fifties in the span of three hours.

I moved all my ropes and anchors to the starboard side of the houseboat, which was facing the wind and waves, and I was sandblasted in the process.

Despite using everything I had, four ropes and seven anchors, I still wasn’t sure whether the houseboat would hold. Since we had no power, if we broke loose, we would likely drift into the rocks and be pounded by the waves to the point of sinking.

The winds shifted about seventy degrees, and waves began breaking over the swim platform and engine transom, hitting the sliding glass doors and splashing to the roof above.

If the waves broke the sliding glass door, we would take on enough water to sink in place. We put chairs, blankets, pillows, and anything we could find against the glass to help keep it from breaking.

After six hours of battering, listening to call after call of distress on the marine radio from other boaters on the lake, and trying to remain anchored to the beach ourselves, we were exhausted. But we held.

The next day we had to be towed off the beach because the waves and wind had essentially dry-docked our houseboat by driving it onto the beach. What a contrast from the previous idyllic weekend!

As far as the puppy dog at my feet goes, well, we discovered a lump in her throat. We took her to the veterinarian only to discover that she had a cancerous tumor on her thyroid gland that needed to be removed as soon as possible.

The surgery could extend her life a few months or maybe a year or so. Our beautiful and loving sheltie, so full of life, had her days numbered.

So much of our temporal life can be good, very good. But it never seems permanent and secure. Life has a way of turning itself upside down. We don’t plan on it, and we don’t expect it, but it happens.

As we look at the temporal world around us, we observe too much that is the opposite of the carefree, healthy-and-happy, trusting-in-everyone-and-everything, puppy-dog experiences of life.

We can probably recall our own moments of ouch when great distress, anxiety, or pain, whether mental, physical, or financial, invaded our world.

What are we to think of these events that shake our tranquility and affect our thoughts, emotions, and relationships? One day all is well, and the next day we are living with the effects of disaster.

The disaster may have been caused by something external to us or something we caused ourselves. Either way, how can we manage that sense of the loss of the good life?

None of us like the idea that life can be significantly altered by seemingly random happenings from the forces of nature or the ethical, moral, and political decisions and mistakes of others.

Nor do we like to think that our own mistakes can be so disruptive. We usually say to ourselves, “There must be something I can do about life’s disaffections.

How do I relate to them? How can I account for them? How do I avoid them? And when things are going very good, how can I keep them that way?”

Too often the sense of loss evokes feelings of anger and injustice as well as feelings of inadequacy since we were not able to prevent whatever happened.

These feelings of anger or inadequacy can bring further feelings of separation, loneliness, low self-worth, and even a sense of guilt. None of us like these feelings either. Thus, we quickly spiral out of the good life when trouble hits.

Full of frustration and despair, we think, Why don’t I, why shouldn’t continuously experience the joy, peace, fulfillment, and love that life seems to offer? So much of the time, though, life seems so random.

The short answer is that we all have free will for the sake of love. Because we are self-determined agents of that free will, the problems created by the number of people making decisions out of self-interest are immeasurable.

Additionally, we must contend with an outside agent called Satan, who seeks to destroy all the good possible. Thus, I describe this reality as living in a broken world with other broken people.

Many books about this issue have been written. Such books include When Bad Things Happen to Good People by Harold Kushner, Where Is God When It Hurts? by Philip Yancey, When God Doesn’t Make Sense by James Dobson, Searching for a God to Love by Chris Blake, Is God to Blame? by Gregory Boyd, and The Problem of Pain by C. S. Lewis.

We may feel that we are at this moment in our lives experiencing the good life. We may feel we deserve that. We may have exerted a great deal of effort to make it good.

And in some cases, depending on life’s damages perpetrated on us by others, we may feel that we don’t deserve to know and experience such goodness. That is very sad.

Either way, there comes a point of action, an inner drive for survival that says, “1 don’t like the current state of things, and I am going to do something about it.”

We may choose self-protection, denial, or methods of escape, but for survival’s sake, we consciously or subconsciously decide to do something. We carefully build our house of cards in a certain style, hoping it will never fail us.

We take hold of our bootstraps and try as hard as we can to lift ourselves out of life’s chaos, nonsense, and seeming randomness in the quest for love, health, happiness, and security. Some are more successful at it than others. Some give up easily, and some fight very hard.

And just how do we find ourselves and others doing this? In honest reflection, we can see three ways people try, though unsuccessfully, to deal with the issue.

People can attempt to deal with this issue (1) by striving to be better than others through job position, titles, and possessions; (2) by numbing senses through substance abuse or addictive distractions; or (3) by filling life so full that no margins remain that allow them to be concerned with the issue of life’s disaffection. They are just too busy—go, go, go!

Some of us would say, “Aha, I have made it. I have achieved love, health, happiness, and security. I’m self-made, and I can enjoy the fruit of my labor, the joy of my family, the richness of the environment that I have set up around myself.”

But somehow in spite of all our efforts to insulate ourselves from the disaffections of life, the truth about the nature of things invades our created tranquility. The nightly news is a constant reminder of the problems in the world.

The truth is that financial and real estate markets don’t always go up. the truth is that people of the world have power and control agendas. the truth is that locks and security systems are necessary.

Our insurance policies talk of life’s unutterable events, events like our houseboat catching fire and burning to the waterline while no one was there.

The world is full of fire stations, police stations, courts, judges, and jails. doctors, dentists, and holistic healers remind us of our physical fragility.

Ambulances, hospitals, operating rooms, and emergency clinics are necessary. and there are all the graveyards with all those tombstones.

Yes, we all know that we are going to die someday. Hut surely we won’t today or tomorrow or anytime in the near future, wc think. And surely the ones around us whom we love so dearly aren’t about to die.

We still have things to do, places to go, and a lot of life yet to live. The younger we arc, the more remote and unrealistic that graveyard is for us.

Oh, we know it happens, but wc arc in pursuit of life. Life is good. It is very good! And we are on a continual quest to make sure we experience it.

Wouldn’t it be nice if the weather was always to our liking? Couldn’t the earth be a little more stable and predictable? Wouldn’t it be nice if honesty, integrity, promise-keeping, fidelity, fairness, caring for others, respect for others, responsible citizenship, pursuit of excellence, and accountability were the character traits of everyone around us?

Wouldn’t it be wonderful if every relationship had evidence of appropriate touching versus the brokenness of character evidenced by physical or sexual abuse?

How about emotional support, economic cooperation, and respect for others’ property versus emotional abuse, threats, economic abuse, property violence, intimidation, and isolation?

Relationships between people are constantly being put under strain or being broken. Each one of us can get caught in the drive to have our needs met even if it is at the expense of others.

And none of us likes that either. Then there are all those health issues that can strike our bodies or the bodies of our loved ones. Sometimes we overcome them, but at other times they leave their scars or do us in altogether.

So now what? If the environmental world around us is broken and some people around us are broken and we ourselves, no matter how hard it is to admit, are broken, where do we go from here?

Is life just “eat, drink, and be merry, for tomorrow we die?” (see Luke 12:18-21). Is life just survival of the fittest? Is life nothing more than a process where some get lucky and others run out of luck?

Many would answer these questions with, “Yes, you’ve got it! I’m going to build my house of cards, and woe to you if you get in my way and threaten my progress.

I’m going to do it my way. Out of sheer force of will, I am going to prove that I can build a life that is good, very good for me.”

That suggests the man is little more than a seeker of ease and profit who does not want to be molested. But as I pointed out earlier, much of life is beyond our control.

Two opposing forces truly seem to be at work in this life, which brings up all the questions about good and evil, pain and suffering, and all those why questions. Where is God in all of this?

What has He done about it? What will He continue to do about it? How does it affect my life? Do 1 have to go it alone, making my way the best I can, creating my own goodness in life?

I hope partial answers to these questions have already been addressed in my answers to your earlier questions. But I need to say unequivocally that there is indeed good news! No, you don’t have to go it alone.

Here again, I invite you to turn to Jesus Christ. Don’t let the goodness and riches of life you have experienced obscure your need to be in a relationship with the original source of all that richness and goodness.

Only when we are in a proper relationship with our Creator, the Lord, and Savior, Jesus Christ, does an internal state of harmony exist in our broken world.

As Jesus Himself said, “I came that they may have life, and have it to the full” (John 10:10). Living in relationship and harmony with Jesus brings a peace that transcends all efforts to understand the why of things that intrude into our lives.

This peace comes as a result of connectedness to the source of life, Jesus Christ, God with us and in us. The apostle Paul expresses this thought in Philippians 4:7, which says, “And the peace of God, which transcends all understanding, will guard your hearts and your minds in Christ Jesus.”

Because of Jesus Christ and by being in Jesus Christ, we truly live, move, and have our being, as expressed in Acts 17:28. When, at least by our perception, unwarranted things happen unexpectedly and unpredictably, we must remember what Matthew 11:28-30 says.

Take my yoke upon you and learn from me, for I am gentle and humble in heart, and you will find rest for your souls. For my yoke is easy and my burden is light.” And in Romans 8:37-39, the apostle Paul assures us that nothing can separate us from the love of God.

It is God in Jesus Christ who wants to heal us from spiritual and physical brokenness and reconnect us to our life source in Him.

It is this God of love who wishes us freedom from the consequences of this broken world on a permanent basis someday in an earth created anew.

It is this God of justice and mercy who wants to be with us now in each moment within our broken world both in our highs when we say, “Life is good. It is very good,” and in our lows when we doubt it.

With our knowledge of the one we belong to Jesus Christ, Creator, and restorer ofall things— even when we experience life’s pain and suffering, we can say, “Life is good.

It is very good.” It is understanding what the apostle Paul meant when he said. “Be joyful always, pray continually; give thanks in all circumstances, for this is God’s will for you in Christ Jesus” (1 Thess. 5:16-18)

This wore that we’ve been talking about is the understanding as well as the experiencing of this love from the Creator of the universe. This more is experiencing the fruits of the Spirit expressed in.

These are free gifts that come from the spiritual relationship with a God, who truly and continually loves each of us. This is a real and experiential more that reaches the very soul of our being. This is permanent and forever and brings meaning and purpose to life itself.

This more is a gift-God’s gift, Jesus Christ’s gift, and the Holy Spirit’s gift. The gift of this more fully satisfies the deepest yearnings of our hearts.

And until that yearning is fulfilled, there will always be an empty part of our lives. It is this more of a living relationship with Jesus Christ that truly makes life exceptionally good!

Your friend,
Matt

Jesus We Talk About Passive Or Zealous?

Dear Thomas,

I think your observation in question ten is correct. In that question you stated, “In comparing worshippers of a variety of the world’s belief systems, including Christianity, I notice that some are extremely zealous while others are quite laissez-faire. The laissez-faire person does not seem to hurt anyone.

However, more people have been killed by zealots of religion trying to proselytize or maintain religious purity in themselves or others than from any other cause. Why would a reasonable person want to become part of a belief system that has the makings of bigotry and hate? Doesn’t Christianity, like other belief systems, see it as an us versus them’ world?

To address your question, I first would need to know something about the Christians you are classifying as either zealous or laissez-faire. Certainly, there are those who are neither. Though approximately one-third of the world’s population declares itself Christian, a wide range of involvement exists among its adherents, ranging from total zealotry to complete passivity.

We have all seen street-corner preachers with a variety of strong messages. And I can imagine others that say they are Christian just because they were baptized as children. This is true in other belief systems as well. For example, many Buddhists only passively consider the ways of the Buddha as relevant, and many declared Muslims fail to pray five times a day or give alms.

Where any particular people stand in the spectrum of fervor within their religious beliefs depends upon their understanding of the meaning, purpose, and importance of their beliefs to themselves and others. The expressions of those understanding are translated into actions that are visible to others.

Within the human experience, a desire to find truth and transfer that truth to others has always existed. It relates to those age-old questions we all ask. How did we get here?

Is there any purpose in being here? What will be the end of us? There is also an emptiness in the heart of man that searches for meaning and connectedness within the reality of a broken world. Religions give voice to the cause of this emptiness and the imperfections and insecurities within that brokenness.

As seen through recorded history, varieties of religious belief systems have searched for meaning and spiritual connectedness that give a voice to the why of our imperfections and insecurities.

Christianity identifies the cause and the effect of our imperfections and insecurities as stemming from an outside force called Satan, who is responsible for the disconnect between mankind and his Creator.

It also identifies a Creator God who wants to reconnect with His creation as I have expressed in my response to some of your other questions.

Generally speaking, man inherently desires a connection with something separate from, greater than, and beyond himself. We see people the world over espousing belief systems that honor a transcendent, be that God, gods, or non-god life forces, and cycles.

Biblical history through the generations has concluded that there is indeed a transcendent, personally involved Creator God that gives life its physical and cognitive existence and affords it meaning.

Without this transcendent God, Solomon looked at the fleeting abundance of temporal life and concluded in Ecclesiastes 12:8, “Meaningless! Meaningless! Everything is meaningless!”

Religion does not make any sense if our current physical reality is all there is if there is nothing more than matter and space, which in turn boils down to nothing more than mathematics.

If that is true, then we humans, as atheists assert, are merely like all other living organisms that just eat, secrete, reproduce, and finally die. Religion, however, postulates a reality beyond biology and physical reality.

Religion is a bridge from pure physical reality to an ultimate reality, a reality that includes and validates a connection to a transcendent God or gods, thus giving meaning and purpose to life beyond our present physical reality.

The presence of a deity in the world’s variety of theological belief systems presents many paths in searching for meaning and understanding.

And when a person thinks they have found a path to the transcendent, he or she often joins others. Religions, whether oral traditions, Hinduism, Buddhism, philosophical Taoism, Confucianism, Judaism, Islam, or Christianity, all try to bridge the gap they sense between the temporal and the transcendent.

It is most often a one-way bridge of man to God. In its view of the transcendent or ultimate reality, each belief system offers a way to explain the way things are and gives believers a form of belief to resolve the issues of man’s inner sense of brokenness, meaninglessness, and disconnectedness. Many also promise a better or different life after death.

Zealotry, in the way that we are using the word, as opposed to being passionately committed usually stems from the coercive promotion or the destructive protection of a belief system.

History has seen and continues to show the consequences of such behavior. On the other end of the spectrum, passivity comes from those who see their belief system as not much more than a way to live in the context of the social, political, economic, and physical environment around them.

Many academics have concluded that all these paths are not much more than mythological beliefs that provide a framework for meaning.

According to those who hold this view, if you stir the pot of all religious belief systems, you will come out with the understanding that religion is little more than cultural institutions that pattern society in their interactions with one another and supposed superhuman beings or gods.

Such beliefs have cultural value, it is thought, in that they hold a society together. However, in this scientific age we live in, others feel we should be smarter and not use the crutch of believing in superhuman beings or gods.

Yes, you do see both extremes, passivity and zealotry, and everything in between. Christianity itself has never been immune to those extremes. The question is why.

The answer lies, I think, in a misunderstanding of the nature of the relationship between God and man. At the heart of the issue is a misunderstanding that redemption is all about our performance.

It is the mistaken belief that the whole process of redemption is about man—what he thinks, what he does, how he relates, and how he performs It is the concept that we can gain salvation through good deeds and righteous living as it may be defined.

It is the mistaken understanding that redemption is about the sins we have avoided and all the good deeds we have accomplished.

It is the mistaken understanding that if we live life rightly, the transcendent will reward us. Thus, we remain at the center of our universe. Our behavior determines our destiny.

Therefore, if I am at the center of my universe, then it is up to me to find meaning, connectedness, and healing. It is up to me to identify what are bad deeds or good deeds.

Thus, I launch my search, and in the process of my search, I look for a religious group that helps me determine the difference and one that helps heal my apparent brokenness.

Some conclude that all belief systems, including Christianity, accomplish this, creating the potential for passivity. Others conclude that there is only one way, only their belief system, creating the potential for zealotry.

And if there is only one way, how close to the center line of perfect belief and performance within the belief system does a person have to live?

If the redemptive quality can be lost when the center point of perfect belief and performance is not adhered to, how important is it that we enlighten, encourage, or even force others to a correct understanding and practice, lest they be lost? What must I do? can easily move to zealotry.

Let’s imagine a diagram that visually expresses this wide range of belief systems. It could be shown as an arched line at the top of the page with God written above it. Below the arch, we could draw a big Vÿ-like funnel.

Then imagine a line right down the middle of the V Call this line the center line of the belief system, as established by creeds, statements of beliefs, and practices that reveal the clearest understanding about the nature and character of God within the belief system.

Too far outside that center line would be those who worship a false god and adopt false concepts concerning the methods of obtaining the belief system’s redemptive qualities.

In other words, if a person doesn’t believe right or act on those beliefs correctly, his or her redemption is at risk. Outside the Would be no real belief in or authentic worship of God, meaning no basis for legitimate internal guidance for ethical and moral living, as understood by the belief system.

Once we have decided to follow a certain belief system for its redemptive qualities, we must decide how liberally or conservatively we must adhere to the proclamations of the belief.

If we were to draw a horizontal line representing the minimum standards of belief and character necessary to maintain those redemptive qualities within the belief system, where should that line be?

If we put the horizontal line too high, if we are too liberal, we run the risk of diluting the beliefs to the point of laissez-faire and thus lose the redemptive qualities of the belief system.

If we put the horizontal line too low, near the bottom of the V, becoming too restrictive and conservative, we run the risk of becoming legalistic, exclusionary, rigid, and judgmental, leading to zealotry and again missing the redemptive qualities of the belief system. Thus, there are risks at putting the horizontal line too high or too low.

If performance determines destiny, then this also begs the question as to where this horizontal line should be placed. Are the performance requirements so great that passion wanes to passivity or by self-will moves toward zealotry?

Each person in the context of his particular belief system, even in Christianity or within a Christian church, must discover what that belief system says about God within the context of his or her own redemption.

Within Christianity as well as in other belief systems, much debate has always raged over the topic of works versus grace. Is the focus on what man does?

Is there a conceptual trap where the whole issue of redemption is more about the beliefs and activity of man than about the activity of God? It is as if the how of our belief system is more important than the who.

I am absolutely convinced that it is only in the discovery of the who that the show has any relevance at all. God does not look and judge as humans do at the how of external behavior or performance.

He looks at the response, our willingness to open our lives to God as revealed in Jesus Christ, the who through which God does His good and perfect work in us.

Romans 12:2 says, “Do not conform any longer to the pattern of this world but be transformed by the renewing of your mind. Then you will be able to test and approve what God’s will is his good, pleasing, and perfect will.”

God is the author of our salvation and redemption; it is He who makes men holy (Heb. 2:10-11). Through the Holy Spirit, God is the doer. He is always active in our rescue. As He has said in His Word.

In John 15:5-6, Jesus promotes the same thought, saying, “I am the vine; you are the branches. If a man remains in me and I in him, he will bear much fruit; apart from me, you can do nothing.

If anyone does not remain in me, he is like a branch that is thrown away and withers.” John 14:6 clearly declares of Jesus, “I am the way and the truth and the life.

No one comes to the Father except through me.” And also in John, the Bible says, “No one can come to me [Jesus] unless the Father [through the working of the Holy Spirit] draws him” (John 6:43).

It is easy to see that it is God who comes and continues to come to man. It is not a one-way bridge to enable man to search for God. God always takes the initiative: “Here I am! I stand at the door and knock.

If anyone hears my voice and opens the door, I will come in” (Rev. 3:20). All of Scripture reveals a God who is in pursuit of man, not man finding God through his searching (see Job 11:7; Gen. 3:9).

It is God who reveals Himself to man. It is God, through Jesus Christ, who draws all men to Himself (John 12:32). It is the Holy Spirit who prays for us (Rom. 8:26), and it is Christ who intercedes for us (Rom. 8:34).

Our faith does not rest on man’s wisdom but on God’s power (1 Cor. 2:5). As a result, through the work of the Holy Spirit in us, “and we, who with unveiled faces all reflect the Lord’s glory, are being transformed into his likeness with ever-increasing glory, which comes from the Lord, who is the Spirit.” (2 Cor. 3:18).

Man’s broken relationship with his Creator and his longing for purpose, meaning, and connectedness can drive the choice toward performance-based religiosity.

With Christianity, however, the Holy Spirit prompts us to balance zealotry and passivity. The basic goal of salvation is a restored relationship that brings about a recreation, of a new person in Christ. It is like the potter and clay analogy found in Jeremiah 18:16.

This is the word that came to Jeremiah from the Lord: “Go down to the potter’s house, and there I will give you my message.” So I went down to the potter’s house, and I saw him working at the wheel.

But the pot he was shaping from the clay was marred in his hands; so the potter formed it into another pot, shaping it as seemed best to him. Then the word of the Lord came to me: “O house of Israel, can I not do with you as this potter does?” declares the Lord. “Like clay in the hand of the potter, so are you in my hand, O house of Israel.”

To find purpose, meaning, and connectedness in your life, you must diminish your sense of self. Having Jesus Christ “in you” and being “in Christ” requires a daily dying of self and submission to that enlivened Spirit of God within (John 12:25).

It is that life-changing experience that the apostle Paul expressed when he was describing his response to Jesus on the Damascus road, “What shall I do, Lord?” (Acts 22:10).

Let God, the potter, do His perfect work in you. Open the door of your heart and invite the presence of God into your life. Then as you continually respond to His calling and allow the Holy Spirit to work in and through you, you will be changed and find the redemption, healing, and connectedness that all human hearts desire. Viewed from this interaction of a personal relationship, religion hardly seems like an appropriate word to describe it.

There is nothing that we can do to add to what God, through Jesus Christ and the activity of the Holy Spirit, hasn’t already done and will continue to do for us. That is why Jesus said in the Beatitudes of Matthew 5, “Blessed are the poor in spirit,” referring to those who recognize that no amount of performance can correct their condition of brokenness.

“Blessed are those who mourn.” These are the ones who give a heartfelt admission and confession of their condition. He also said, “Blessed are the meek,” which encompasses those who acknowledge God’s sovereign authority expressed in graciousness and love, the very nature of His being.

“Blessed are those who hunger and thirst for righteousness” refers to those who willingly, anxiously, and openly allow the Spirit of God to change and heal them from the inside out.

“Blessed are the merciful,” Jesus said when He was talking about those who, through the progressive process developed in the first four beatitudes, reflect God’s graciousness through love-based care and concern for others.

The Beatitudes continue with their astounding insights. “Blessed are the peacemakers” talks about those who continue the process of healing through a spirit of reconciliation.

“Blessed are those who are persecuted because of righteousness” describes those who come into conflict with a world that resents all aspects of an upright, godly life rooted in Jesus Christ.

This is the juxtaposition of “my performance determines my destiny” and “God, through Jesus Christ and by the working of the Holy Spirit, determines my destiny.”

And finally, we come to the last beatitude, “Blessed are you when people insult you, persecute you, and falsely say all kinds of evil against you because of me.”

These are the ones who have willingly and consciously allowed God to come into their lives by way of the Holy Spirit, who remain steadfast to that coming and experience that Sabbath rest (see Heb. 4:9). They also experience the peace that passes all understanding (see Phil. 4:7) and the fruits of the Spirit expressed in Galatians 5:22-23.

The good news of the gospel is that salvation is all His doing—not our doing—and is offered as a gift to us. That is why the Christian does not live in a manner just to qualify for salvation and participate in God’s rescue plan.

There is no salvation through good works. However, the Christian certainly does have the opportunity to understand, open up to, and live in a way that shows gratitude and appreciation for our salvation, which is a gift freely granted to us by and through Jesus’ doing and dying.

This is the ultimate good, neither zealous nor laissez-faire. I don’t think I could describe this ultimate good any better than the apostle Paul did in 1 Corinthians 12:31-13:13. And now I will show you the most excellent way.

If I speak in the tongues of men and of angels but have no love, I am only a resounding gong or a clanging cymbal. If I have the gift of prophecy and can fathom all mysteries and all knowledge, and if I have a faith that can move mountains, but have not love, I am nothing.

If I give all I possess to the poor and surrender my body to the flames, but have not love, I gain nothing. Love is patient, love is kind. It does not envy, it does not boast, it is not proud.

It is not rude, it is not self-seeking, it is not easily angered, and it keeps no record of wrongs. Love does not delight in evil but rejoices with the truth. It always protects, always trusts, always hopes, always perseveres.

Love never fails. But where there are prophecies, they will cease; where there are tongues, they will be stilled; where there is knowledge, it will pass away.

For we know in part and we prophesy in part, but when perfection comes, the imperfect disappears. When I was a child, I talked like a child, I thought like a child, I reasoned like a child.

When I became a man, I put childish ways behind me. Now we see but a poor reflection as in a mirror; then we shall see face to face.

Now I know in part; then I shall know fully, even as I am fully known. And now these three remain faith, hope, and love. But the greatest of these is love.

It is my prayer that you always see God wooing, encouraging, coaching, guiding, loving, and lighting the pathway to neither passivity nor zealotry.

But rather to see God working out an inner transformation of righteousness in your life by the “in Christ” Spirit that He graciously wants to give you.

Your friend,
Matt

Jesus We Talk About A Good “Something Else”

Dear Thomas,

Your eleventh question asks, “Is the Christian any better than a good ‘something else’ like a good Hindu, a good Muslim, a good Buddhist, a good Jew, or a good New Age? It seems that every Christian I have ever talked to thinks their belief system is the correct one about life and God. Why are there so many different Christian beliefs, and who is to know which is right?”

You are certainly correct in recognizing the variety of belief systems out there. As we travel the world or even our own country, the variety of beliefs we see and the variations within each belief make each of us reflect on your question.

How do we relate to all the different belief systems outside the Christian faith as well as within it? Within our country’s diverse society, religious pluralism seems to be the norm, so how do we choose one expression of faith over another? The differences between them can sometimes seem vast.

In speaking of the Christian community, I find that the different brands deal primarily with two things. One is the emphasis a particular church places on a specific scriptural or theological understanding.

The other is the type of liturgy or form of worship expressed when meeting for worship and fellowship. These differences are expressed in their outreaches as well as in their architecture and music.

The old idea that form follows function certainly holds true for the various expressions of Christian beliefs reflected in their architecture.

Which one is right or more right than another is difficult to answer. Certain basic tenets of faith are common to most Christian denominations.

The very fact that a group calls itself Christian means their faith is centered on the birth, life, death, and resurrection of Jesus Christ.

I think it is important that regardless of the way a particular Christian denomination expresses itself, theologically and liturgically it must at least portray a God who loves. It must portray a God (in Jesus Christ) who comes to redeem.

It must portray a God who desires a relationship with each of us now and forever, who desires a response from man that confirms these truths in every particular.

It must portray a God who communicates that man’s greatest end is to return that love to Him and to love others as he loves himself.

These are the basic foundations of the Christian belief system, but as I said, they are expressed in different ways in different churches.

Man wants to be happy, to enter and maintain a state of bliss, to be free from pain and want, and to be a seeker of personal gain—all without being molested by the natural world or others.

Mans striving for meaning, a sense of belonging, physical ease and comfort, as well as life beyond the grave is universal. As we have discussed in the previous questions, he has adopted a vast array of religious and philosophical thoughts to advance him toward those ends.

I also must say that through timeless ages past as well as in the present, many have found spiritual connectedness and community in which Christlike love is expressed within or in spite of the person’s belief system.

This is done by the work of the Holy Spirit acting upon the heart of every individual, irrespective of the particular religious or philosophical belief and worldview practiced within any culture at any time in history.

That being said, I must also say that my understanding and worldview on a variety of the world’s belief systems are just that—mine. Certainly, others within their cultures, periods of history, and worldviews might think differently.

A belief system might give the basic message to “get over it.” Happiness comes only when people lose their desires through understanding the nature of the temporal life.

Another might conclude that the goal of life is to live in balance and at oneness with nature, physical health, and spiritual awareness by a variety of means.

And when suffering comes, another belief system might pursue freedom of spirit by self-deprivation and austerity. Still, another might work at focusing on aesthetics, balance, and harmony of nature and how one can input that into their life.

If one asserts that man is neither good nor bad but neutral and needs to be trained in the virtues of life, that belief system might establish ethical and moral rules to follow. All these ideas for belief systems are nontheistic and require personal performance.

If a belief system sees all living things as having a divine life force that is eternal, then it follows that one should pay attention to how one lives so that when that life force returns after death, it has the potential to achieve its divine essence.

This is done by one’s current life of devotion, meditation, good works, and self-control. This can be theistic but with impersonal transcendents.

A belief system might be monotheistic, but where the transcendent is only conditionally gracious, personal, and loving. The condition upon which we can experience God’s favor is based on one’s choices and actions.

Keeping the law as given directly by God or indirectly through prophets is the precondition for a relationship. Suffering and disease are consequences of breaking the law or not submitting to God’s requirements.

Some belief systems might use many of the same terms and share some of the same elements of Christianity, but they can have different meanings. Their Christology, the who of Jesus Christ, is understood in different terms.

Within these groups most of life’s rewards and any rewards of a life hereafter are based on a person’s performance in the current life.

It’s sad to say that even in Christianity there has been the tendency to take the route of self-help redemption. Some Christian practices spring from the desire to meet the perceived requirements of God in order to obtain His blessings either here in this life or in life after death.

There is a plethora of should/ought-to within the variety of belief systems found the world over. If you do not like it, deny it. If you cannot deny it, join it. Where it seems to work, follow it.

And if it does not work, hope for another life where it might. In other words, overcome the insecurities, brokenness, meaninglessness, and pain of this misbehaving world by doing what you must in order to mitigate life’s uncomfortable situations in the here and now.

And do it all in the context of your performance and your understanding of where man came from, why we are here, and where we are going. Yet with all the differences between the various systems, one thing seems consistent.

How a person thinks and acts is the determining factor for the redemptive qualities of the belief system. Performance gets judged as either good or bad.

If performance, however, is not the answer, what is the one thing that quiets man’s self-help pursuit toward being acceptable and worthy of a relationship with one’s self, others, and God? It is the discovery of who Jesus Christ is—that He does not act as judge, jury, and executioner. Remember, Jesus said.

God in Jesus Christ is our Creator, our rescuer, who loves us and deeply cares for us. He is not a stern judge keeping records for our condemnation.

He loathes the idea that He may have to give us up and let us go. Yes, He is a loving Father who wants desperately for us to come home.

But how can we go home to a holy God? In an attempt to answer that question, many belief systems encourage their adherents to work themselves out of being flawed and broken and to remove the inclination toward sin that causes pain, sorrow, and disharmony.

However, that is the thing that cannot be done. We cannot make a bunch of promises and set a course in righteous living in an effort to prove to God our acceptability. In the flesh of this life, perfect performance is not possible, and our past performance is full of failures.

Until we are recreated immortal after the second coming of Jesus Christ, our current mortal life cannot be reconditioned into a perfection of good works that make us acceptable to God. Our acceptability is on an entirely different basis.

So how can God accept us? What is this other basis? It is through God’s rescue plan, that God sacrificed Himself through Jesus Christ.

In exchange for that sacrifice given on our behalf, we receive life, but it is not a life that we merit by our good performances or good works.

Rather, by His grace and our accepting and believing in the sacrifice and person of Jesus Christ, we receive this new life, an exchanged life.

His life was given for us so that we might enjoy life in Him or move into a relationship with Him. As Galatians 2:20 says, “I have been crucified with Christ and I no longer live, but Christ lives in me.”

This exchanged life is at the heart and essence of Christianity. It is the “in Christ” motif that takes center stage as the apostle Paul stated so extensively in his letters to the young churches of the first century. “For in him [Jesus Christ] we live, move, and have our being” (Acts 17:28).

It is not the changed life that proves us worthy, though change does occur through the recognition of all that went into the exchange. It is the exchanged life and our response that makes us worthy and affects the change. Man needs only to choose Jesus’ free gift of reconciliation and live in thankful recognition of it.

Furthermore, the next verse says, “For God did not send his Son into the world to condemn the world, but to save the world through him” (John 3:17).

Yes, Christianity is different from other great world religions. The only way to discover that is through personal investigation and deciding that Jesus was who He said He was, that He did what He said He would do, and that He will continue to do within us and for us what He promised.

Christianity is accepting Jesus Christ’s being and doing, not just as history, not just as another way of finding meaning, and not just as another way of gaining a sense of belonging or obtaining a blissful life after death.

No, Christianity is accepting that a new life, a born-anew life, a redeemed life, an exchanged life, and an “in Christ” life can begin now and extend forever. In summary, it is believing in, getting to know, and becoming a friend of Jesus.

In the exchanged life through Jesus Christ, Jesus is the Redeemer, not man. There is no salvation by good works. We do not redeem ourselves. As Ephesians 2:8 says.

However, as long as Christianity remains mere history or as long as believers seek to meet the demands of the law, which was given to show us the extent of our lawlessness, or as long as believers work at proving themselves worthy of God’s love or for some reward after death, they will miss the discovery of what it means to be in relationship with our gracious and loving God.

But the question still remains. What flavor of Christian community should we take part in? Should the emphasis or uniqueness brought to the message of the good news be the most important factor?

Should it be determined by the leadership of an inspiring pastor who possesses the gift of teaching spiritual truths? Should it be about the body of the church as a community and how that community relates to one another?

Is it about location, architecture, or some other external factor? May I suggest that if a church gives primary expression of the gospel as the free gift of salvation from God in Jesus Christ, who is creative, gracious, personal, and loving, then all the other elements are more a matter of personal preference and aids for the exercise of faith?

If the Christology is correct, then the means of expression can vary. If the primary message is there and a person happens to like good architecture and organ music and feels like worship should include an aesthetic component, then he or she will gravitate to a church that contains those elements.

If the person has a personality that wants to feel and not just hear the music and or desires a strong element of emotional involvement, then the church that offers an emotional and celebratory flavor might be more attractive.

If a person needs quiet reflection and a limited number of Christian mentors for instruction, encouragement, and accountability, he or she might not be a part of any organized church at all.

So whether it is high church, middle church, low church, a church with multiple services, or no denominational church at all, we all need to find a community, a fellowship that resonates with our personalities and the Spirit that dwells within.

Your friend,
Matt

Jesus We Talk About Creation By Evolution

Dear Thomas,

You ask in question number twelve, “Does it really make any difference if a person believes in evolution, either pure or God-directed, or the seven-day Genesis Bible story?” The short answer is yes! It makes all the difference in the world. The viewpoint a person holds leads to different conclusions on the meaning of life and the meaning and purpose of Scripture.

One’s viewpoint will affect belief or unbelief in Adam and Eve as first parents, assign significance or insignificance to Jesus’ life, death, and resurrection, and color the understanding of the full history of God’s redemptive or rescue plan.

I think a person’s viewpoint will also affect one’s understanding of the purpose of mankind as a species as well as one’s explanation for the brokenness found in mankind and the world at large.

Certain aspects of the book of Genesis have always posed a struggle for those who try to make the Genesis account into a literal description of the beginning of the earth in its physical form as well as its varied life forms.

Certainly, the Genesis creation account doesn’t illuminate our modern understanding of science in the areas of astrophysics, geophysics, geology, paleontology, plate tectonics, radiocarbon, and so forth.

Scripture deals with a Creator God, the first causation in the realm of first causes and sustainer of all that is. It deals with the spiritual nature of mankind.

It deals with the problems of a broken world and broken humanity. In short, it deals with evil, the sin problem, and a just and effective remedy for that problem.

It seems to me that the importance of Genesis is to provide us with a sense of our human origin as persons who think, will, ask, feel, and relate to a God who is all-powerful yet intensely personal and loving. It also reveals the beginning point of God’s rescue plan and why the need for it.

Though the Genesis account with all its particulars could be understood in allegorical form, it nevertheless expresses truths that are essential to the unfolding of the redemptive history of mankind. It also gives essential truths about the nature and character of the God behind that history.

Genesis begins with the who of the creative events, “In the beginning God—” (Gen. 1:1) rather than addressing the origin of the universe or our planetary system. Biblical cosmology in Genesis doesn t reveal the creative and natural processes within creation but reveals the person behind it.

Did it start with the Big Bang and slowly develop from that point to the Eden of Creation week? Was the creation week vast periods of time, or was it an actual six-day process with a seventh day of rest? What does the Bible mean in Genesis 1:2 when it says, “Now the earth was formless and empty”?

Keep in mind that the creation story was not written in our language within our culture or from our perspective and knowledge of world history and scientific discoveries.

Today we can view the Earth from outer space and have instant knowledge of events happening anywhere around the globe. The writers of scripture lacked those advantages.

In fact, their world was restricted mostly to the lands around the Mediterranean Sea, the Black Sea, and the Red Sea. Even so, Scripture was written for us and all others down through history. As the Bible says in 2 Timothy 3:16.

I would put forth that the Bible is a revelation of a creative and personal God who, upon the loss of a relationship with mankind at his very beginning, revealed and recorded His rescue plan and man’s reactions to it.

Christians run into problems correlating Scripture with science when they try to take our current or modern worldview and inject it into the Genesis account.

I think there is another element at play in the subject of creation and its correlation with science, and that is the element of faith. “Faith makes us certain of realities we do not see,” says Hebrews 11:1, and verse 6 in the same chapter says, “Anyone who comes to God must believe that he exists and that he rewards those who search for him.”

If God were to reveal Himself and the nature ofall things so absolute and plain, so beyond any ability to question or doubt, the whole purpose and process of freedom within the redemption plan would be jeopardized.

God does not overwhelm us to the extent that we lose our power to choose. As we discussed before, free will is at the very core of redemption and exists for the sake of freely given love.

The evidence revealed in Scripture about God and His love for us and involvement with human history is more than adequate for a love relationship with Him, but it is not so overwhelming that we are forced to acknowledge Him and believe.

God has always given adequate evidence, but it is still by faith coupled with our reason that we establish that balance between biblical revelation, inspiration, and scientific observation.

Obviously, pure evolution theory contradicts the concepts of creation. Charles Darwin, the father of the evolution theory, published his famous work The Origin of Species in 1859.

This noncreation theory of adaptation by environmental necessity or natural selection eliminates any need for God or at least a personal one. It throws all the concepts about God back into what might be called the power of myth in the human experience.

In my opinion, pure evolution theory is one of Satan’s greatest deceptions to destroy the truth of the gospel in exchange for a worldview that eliminates God or any necessity for Him.

As we know, pure evolution is taught as a fact in the majority of educational institutions around the world. It is the foundation of Marxism (the collective) and secular humanism (individual progression).

I don’t think a person can believe in both the theory of pure evolution and the gospel of Jesus Christ without distorting or perverting that gospel.

The concepts of first cause, a God who is creative and personal, humanity’s first parents, the origin of evil, the sin problem, the redemption of man through the second Adam (Jesus Christ), and the resurrection of the dead all conflict with pure evolutionary theories.

Evolution denies a supreme being who created and is continuously involved with His creation (see Gen. 1:1; John 1:1-5; Col. 1:15-19; Rev. 21:1-2).

Nonetheless, there is still evidence of the geological column to consider. Earth’s history, including its extinct life forms and its geological forms, tells of a very long history.

How do we square the scientific evidence with the story of Genesis 1, beginning with verse 3 and onward? Modern thinkers have struggled with this in a number of ways

One explanation is that of theistic evolution, where all evidence of living things either in the fossil record or living today was created by God through the evolutionary process. Theistic evolution says that the Genesis record is not a literal period of seven twenty-four-hour days, but rather each day represents vast periods of time.

God indeed may have had His hand in the earth’s beginning and let it evolve to the point of recorded history. Within this understanding, the Genesis account of creation is a mere stage of evolution, and seven twenty-four-hour days are only allegory.

Within this understanding, no real first humans (Adam and Eve) existed. Acceptance of this concept, therefore, changes our origins and negates the belief of a common family line in Adam.

With Adam and Eve as our first parents, however, we all belong to one another, and thus, all the nations of the earth extend from these original parents (Gen. 2:7, 22-23; 22:15-18; 26:4; Rom. 5:12-14, 18-19).

Another thought is God-directed evolution. This is evolution through guided natural selection. It comes from an alternate interpretation of Genesis 2:7, which says.

When proponents of God-directed evolution are asked, “What about man? Is he made in the image of King Kong or King God? Was Adam the son of an ape or the son of God’s creation?” they might answer, “Both.”

In their view, a human body evolved from lower life forms, and at this point, God made man into His image by breathing a spirit soul into his body. Since the soul of man is what sets him apart from the other animals and gives him stewardship over God’s evolved creation, they see no essential conflict with the creation of man in the Genesis account.

However, this begs the question of what would happen to other humans in the evolutionary process if God breathed a spirit soul into only two initial human beings. Keep in mind that the Bible does not mention Adam and Eve’s parents or any other humanlike beings before them or around them.

Then there is the gap theory. This understanding asserts that a stop notice should be interjected after Genesis 1:1: “In the beginning, God created the heavens and the earth.” They propose that the time frame of this phase could represent billions of years, during which time the “original” earth came into being.

Then, Genesis 1:2, which says, “Now the earth was formless and empty, darkness was over the surface of the deep, and the Spirit of God was hovering over the waters,” could be speaking of another great span of time. This would be the “chaotic” earth, which included the now-extinct life forms shown in the fossil record.

Then, Genesis 1:3, which says, “And God said” could mark the beginning of the six twenty-four-hour days of the creation story. This would be the earth that Adam and Eve and their heirs experienced prior to the flood story of Genesis 6-9 and would include all its current life forms.

Could we postulate that God has done a number of do-overs with the earth over billions of years, just like He did a do-over in the Noah flood story? The reasons for the do-overs through eons past are not suggested.

What could be suggested from this perspective, however, is that the doover in Genesis 1 was the reshaping of the earth for human habitation. It is also speculated that there may well have already been extinct life forms in the fossil record as the earth was reshaped for human habitation.

Then there is the often left-out element in the creation story of the cosmic conflict between God and Satan. What might have taken place in Earth’s history prior to the creation week, during the time when the Earth was chaotic and without form? Could Satan have been given some DNA, seeing he wanted to be a creator like the Most High?

Could there have been an age of the earth that existed with life forms that were later destroyed by an asteroid? Might there have been another age that supported a series of life forms that were destroyed by vast volcanic activity?

Might the geological record show gaps between ranges of life forms when the earth was Satan’s playground, and he unsuccessfully tried to be like God? Might his playground have been self-destructive rather than God-directed evolution, God’s direct creative activity, or even pure evolutionary work?

Might Satan’s earthly playground have been so self-destructive that eventually, the earth was without form and void? Could it be that, at a certain point in time, God decided to show the onlooking universe His creative work and thus adjusted, reshaped, and prepared the earth for the habitation of man and pronounced it good?

It seems to some that this cosmic conflict could very well have played a role in the geological record, but this is pure speculation on their part.

Could certain rocks be millions of years old as to their age, but the fossils embedded in the rocks a much younger age? I suppose that God could have created an aged earth.

But why? What would be the point of tricking mankind with this vast geological record of fossils buried in very old matter? Some people take the view that all things within our solar system were created in a literal six-twenty-four-hour-day period.

Some believe that geological layering and the extinction of prehistoric dinosaurs and other creatures were all due to the universal flood of Genesis 6-9. And some feel that fast-moving tectonic plates at the time of the flood literally turned the world upside down. From the biblical description of the “fountains of the deep” (Gen. 7:11), they conclude that the earth’s surface was ripped open like a zipper, and the waters poured forth.

This caused the earth’s mantle to break and slip with great speed and energy, thus creating the earth’s land masses as we know them today. The residual of this mantle movement is seen in the earthquakes and volcanoes still featured in our earth’s topography.

Others within the literal seven-day-creation concept interpret the “heavens” and “firmament” in Genesis 1 as the understanding of those living in the Egyptian culture of Moses’ time. This would include the belief in a flat earth and a domed sky.

The domed sky was the space in which birds flew and clouds floated. The sun, moon, and stars appeared suspended in this clear atmosphere, which, prior to the creation week, was obscured from view.

The difference between the gap theory (God’s breathing of the soul into an evolution-developed man) and the literal seven-day creation understanding is insignificant to the meaning of our salvation in Jesus Christ.

Both espouse a literal man who is spiritually alive and created in the image of God prior to the entry of sin. Both assert that God created Adam and Eve as our first parents and that they were spiritually alive.

However, the gap theory does great harm to the nature and character of a God who stands behind the evolutionary process of Adam and Eve and a carnivorous, chaotic prehistoric earth.

Evolutionary man in the context of a carnivorous, chaotic prehistoric earth makes irrelevant and nonexistent the concept that God is love and created the world for love.

Furthermore, the life cycles of procreation and death change the message of Genesis that man was to live continuously in a loving relationship with God. However, the Eden story suggests that man was not created to live and die in normal life cycles as we know them today.

If we understand the Genesis account to affirm that God created all life forms in a seven-day creation week on earth that was already in existence, then Adam and Eve are certainly our first parents. This also affirms the beginning point of all life on earth.

However, as mentioned earlier, the fossil records would then show life forms only fifteen thousand to forty thousand years old buried in matter that could be billions of years old.

Nonetheless, regardless of how we come to terms with the Genesis account of creation and all the scientific information of a very aged earth, if biblical redemptive history is to have meaning, it must affirm that Adam and Eve are mankind’s first parents.

And this is not just first parents in the form of allegory expressing theological and philosophical truths but real, flesh-and-blood parents who lived and walked upon this earth.

The Genesis creation account certainly gives strong expression to the existence of a Creator God. It also shows His relationship and His relevance to us, the humans who were created in His image.

It puts our lives in a contextual whole and provides answers to the haunting questions of where we came from, why we are here, and where we are going. However, it reveals all this without explaining the methods or processes of how everything came into being.

Could it be that the Genesis account is outside any purpose of providing an explanation of scientific cosmology other than to say that God is the first cause of all that is?

Again, there is a problem if our first parents, Adam and Eve, are only allegories. But being real people in real-time and through their disobedience to God, sin entered the world but found its redemptive solution in Jesus Christ.

Whether we accept a historic beginning point for man within the concept of the gap theory or within a literal theory of seven twenty-four-hour days, the truth of God’s redemptive plan revealed in Jesus Christ can remain (through some of the gap-theory hazards mentioned earlier).

All other theories ignore the love and justice of God as revealed in Jesus’ incarnation, life, death, and resurrection. In other words, if God in Jesus Christ is the Redeemer, He must also be the Creator.

This is the very foundation of the Christian faith. The book of John and the book of Hebrews both begin with that affirmation, that truth. And that affirmation and truth lie at the very heart of a person’s Christology of the who of Jesus Christ.

In conclusion, the Genesis creation story is foremost about the nature and character of a God who wants to give expression to His communal character of love. Coupled with this is the sad history of mankind’s fall, his choice to separate from God, and the broken world that resulted.

It addresses in theological terms and within our physical reality the nature of our human existence. Behind that human existence is a personal, relational, all-powerful, all-knowing, ever-present Creator God, the giver and sustainer of all that is.

Yet this is a God who allows us our freedom and free will for the sake of His love for us and our love for Him in return. Our ultimate understanding, it seems to me, must be consistent with this truth.

When I get to heaven, I personally want to see a fast-forward DVD showing how it all happened. I’m sure that many of our understandings are likely to be wrong. With all the different ideas and theories on how things came to be, how might we pray for an understanding of how things began?

God, creator, and sustainer of all that is, how can I best see You through the ages of history? What should I think about the vast spans of time that are so apparent?

Was history included and part of the world’s creation? Were Adam and Eve created as full adults, complete with mature language, reasoning skills, and even knowledge of what death means?

Lord, though I may not have a correct understanding of the facts on how everything came into being, I ask You to help me to accept the loving and gracious who behind any of the understanding that I do have. Amen.

Your friend,
Matt

Jesus We Talk About Prayer Chain

Dear Thomas,

In your thirteenth question, your perception was stated as follows: “Christians seem to believe in prayer for all kinds of things—getting a job, healing, staying safe on a trip, and so forth. Yet they seem to experience about the same percentage of car accidents, cancers, divorces, and other tragedies as non-Christians do.

What does prayer really accomplish?” Then in the second part of your question, you state, “A person I work with is on what she calls a ‘prayer chain.’ If one person has a problem, then all the people on this prayer chain pray about the problem. Isn’t one person’s prayer as good as a whole group of people’s prayers? Is the Christian’s God so political that He listens to a group more than to one?”

Another way you could phrase your question is this: Does prayer affect us only in the way we perceive and interpret the events surrounding our lives, or does it actually affect God’s actions and wield a real impact on our lives and the world around us? If it is the latter, is there a way to make such prayers more effective, and if it is the former, is prayer merely self-talk and psychobabble that helps steer us toward a goal?

Because of sin’s entry into the world, a separation exists between man and God that must be bridged. This reuniting with God does not come from self-effort, self-help, or self-will.

Jesus We Talk About Prayer Chain

Without that reuniting, man remains empty, and only the indwelling presence of God can fill it. That is how we were created. That is what we lost. And prayer is an integral part of that reunion.

Prayer is not just a petition. It is our connection and communication with God, the healer and restorer of our minds, emotions, and wills, which compose our very souls, as well as our physical bodies. Prayer is the realization of being alive in spirit. Prayer is the acknowledgment of our being creatures and an expression of our praise and worship of the Creator.

Prayer is talking to a friend, a trusted friend who has given us our very lives through Him giving His very life. Prayer is telling that friend of our thankfulness and adoration. Prayer is expressing our needs and offering apologies.

Prayer is asking for forgiveness and granting it to others. Prayer is seeking help from others. Prayer is a vertical relationship with the Creator of the universe just as surely as our horizontal communication is with others. It is listening to Jesus, the friend who sticks closer than a brother (Prov. 18:24).

“But,” you may ask, “what does that friend do exactly? What can we expect from God when the problems of broken people and a broken world affect everybody, Christian and non-Christian alike? What does God do about it, and how does He do it?”

Let me say first what He doesn’t do. He doesn’t let us use Him like a magic black box where we put in our requests. Then if we stroke the black box correctly, sure enough, whatever we want comes about. Some have suggested such a thing.

They insist that if we have enough faith, if we live exactly right, if we ask long enough, o rif we get enough people to ask, then presto, the magic box responds, and we get what we want. Sorry, but God is not our or mankind’s personal genie who does our bidding.

Prayer Chain Ministry Explained

God is also not a formula. Christianity is not a formula. If God’s actions could be reduced to a formula, what would that say about belief in a personal, loving God who has our eternal destiny in mind? Most often we have a short view of life and look for ease and comfort in our days on earth here and now.

God, however, looks at the long view. He looks at eternity and how we can enjoy it with Him. This life, which has been scarred and broken, is secondary to eternal life yet primary in the beginning of it. The apostle Paul said in 2 Corinthians 12:7-9.

God sometimes says no to our requests or just seems to allow this broken world or our broken bodies to take their course. Does that mean He is absent in and through that brokenness?

Absolutely not! The only time God has ever been absent was in the brokenness of the body and spirit of Jesus Christ on the cross of Calvary, where His sacrificial death afforded us our rescue, our life everlasting.

To answer your questions about prayer, we have to go back and ask another question. How does love work? God is agape love personified— unmotivated, spontaneous, self-emptying, creative love. God is personal, and He is creative. As Scripture shows, He is a God who acts in history and relates to individual people.

Mans’s comings and goings, happenings, callings, pain, suffering, struggles, responses, and redemption are not predestined. Man has free will in a world gone awry. I don’t think it is proper to suggest that we don’t change God’s mind through prayer.

Prayer is not about changing God’s mind, for God’s mind is always directed toward us in love. It would be better to say that we can never change God’s love, but we can change His actions toward us through prayer.

How To Start A Prayer Chain

We see this in Jesus’ responses to those around Him and in the many miracles He performed. And it was Jesus Himself who said, “Anyone who has seen me, has seen the Father” (John 14:9).

The purpose of prayer is to “be anxious for nothing, but in everything by prayer and supplication, with thanksgiving, let your requests be made known to God; and the peace of God, which surpasses all understanding, will guard your hearts and minds through Christ Jesus” (Phil. 4:6-7).

Jesus told us, “Ask and it will be given to you; seek and you will find; knock and the door will be opened to you. For everyone who asks receives; he who seeks finds; and to him who knocks, the door will be opened” (Matt. 7:7-8). The apostle James said.

It should be noted that what is absolutely promised in each of these verses is that we will always be heard. God will never ignore our prayers.

Secondly, the answers usually come in some form of assistance in dealing with a particular desire, problem, or need. As the Sermon on the Mount indicates, God bestows good gifts (Matt. 7:11) of righteousness, sincerity, humility, purity, and love.

He lavishes upon us the fruits of the Spirit—love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, and self-control, as stated in Galatians 5:22-23. He imparts wisdom, understanding, and perseverance. He lends assistance and aid to our faith as we need it.

God is also faithful in arranging and rearranging circumstances to answer our prayers as long as it does not violate free will. He helps us answer the prayers of others by responding to Him through the prompting of the Spirit within us. And yes, at times and in accordance with His sovereign will, He enters the human experience through miracles.

God answers prayer through Scripture, through the writings of other authors, through pastors and other people, through common daily experiences, and through the still, small voice of His Spirit as we listen for His counsel and guidance. As anyone who has kept a prayer journal knows, God continually answers prayer.

Prayer is not just psychobabble where we use our mind to picture desires and wants, sending messages to our subconscious and letting the mind work like a computer search engine where it automatically steers the way to a goal, target, or solution.

However, God does use the way He created us—body, soul (mind, emotions, and will), and spirit—as a means to answer prayer. Prayer is communication with God outside of ourselves, not a way of steering our thoughts so that we are gods unto ourselves.

In all my highs and lows in life—and there have been plenty of both I have discovered the truth of what God said, “And surely I am with you always, to the very end of the age” (Matt. 28:20). Indeed, what a friend we have in Jesus!

I think the best way to explain my understanding of prayer is to share a few personal testimonies. Answers to prayer can have a profound effect on a person’s life. It certainly has on mine.

In chapter 2, 1 gave the account of one such prayer, the “prayer and fox” story that exerted an enormous and obvious effect on my life. But there have been many, many other prayers that have also deeply affected me. Let me relate just a few of them.

I recall an answer to a prayer during an extremely difficult time for my wife and me. People very close to us had broken off our relationship for a variety ofreasons.

Even though we were on our knees praying to God daily, nothing we did seemed to repair the breach. From those prayers the only answer the Lord had ever given me, though I tried all kinds of things, were His instructions.

In that still, small voice during one of these prayers, He said, “Love them.”I immediately asked in return, “How, Lord, when we don’t even see them or talk to them?” The answer quickly came back, “Love them. Be there when they need you.”I took the instruction to heart but found little opportunity to exercise it.

Time went by, and when all my efforts seemed to be in vain, I prayed to God, “Lord, I have done all I know to do. I have done the best I know how. I give up. I release them into Your hands. Please take care of them.

I don’t know how to explain it, but joy and peace came into my life. By faith, I knew that whatever path they took, God would be faithful to my prayer. I also knew that He would do it in a way that would not violate their free will.

But that was my prayer and not my wife’s. She and they had always had a very close friendship. My wife continued to feel torn by the emotional loss of the relationship.

Again after a time, I went to God in prayer. I asked, “How long, oh Lord, how long will they stay away?”I think I was asking the Lord in almost a rhetorical way, not really expecting an answer. Then just as clear as anything, just like His answer to that earlier prayer, “Love them.

Be there when they need you,” came the thought, the answer, “Eight months.” Eight months.”Eight months! What kind of number was that? Not a perfect seven, not two or six, numbers that for me seem easier for the mind to come up with. No, I had heard that still, small voice before. “Eight months.”

As the months rolled by, we didn’t hear much from them. They would leave messages from time to time on our answering machine. We would do likewise on theirs.

An Easter gathering was taking place, and we left a message that they were invited and welcome to come. To our surprise, they left a message saying that they would be there.

At that gathering, they confessed that they missed our former relationship and wanted to be in the relationship again. And yes, it had been eight months!

Another way God answers our prayers is through the actions of other people as they are open to His promptings. For example, my wife and I led a small evening Bible study in our home for a number of years.

Because of numerous circumstances, however, it eventually disbanded, and we were no longer involved in any small groups. Knowing the spiritual value of a small group, we prayed that God would show us where to get involved or how to start a new group.

Only a couple of weeks later some friends asked if we could get together and study the Bible.I mentioned this to others and shared our topic of study. Some remarked that they were looking for something like that. So another group formed, and our prayers were answered.

Biblical Basis For Prayer Chains

I remember another time when God answered a prayer that involved my business. My company was doing well, and we had an opportunity to make some investments that would create the potential for future financial rewards as well as mitigate current annual income taxes.

After a few years, however, the government ruled that the tax savings from our investments were not applicable unless we were truly at risk. Thus, they determined that I owed a significant amount in back taxes plus penalties and interest.

About that time the savings and loan crisis was in full swing, and my business was not doing well. Lenders were in no mood to lend significant amounts of money to my type of business.

The amount I owed in taxes far exceeded my ability to pay at that time. Like most people, whenever financial disasters, emergencies, predicaments, entanglements, crises, or needs arise, I am quick to go to the Lord in prayer, and this time was no exception.

After time and expense, I managed to achieve a dated settlement with the government, but it was still in excess of my current ability to pay. I did have a piece of real estate that I had subdivided into residential lots a few years earlier, and I put them up for sale; however, it was a bad time for sales of any kind. Even when I marketed the lots below their current appraised value, I still received no interest in them. There just seemed nowhere to turn.

As the time for the payment drew ever closer, the consequences of not meeting the obligation loomed large. Failure to make payment would mean losing my home, the attachment of bank accounts, and the ruin of the excellent credit it had taken years to build.

With much prayer and faith that God would give us the means or strength to see this thing through, my wife and I waited with anticipation and, I have to admit, some trepidation.

So many times in life I have been like the father who asked Jesus to heal his son as told in Mark 9:17-24, “I do believe; help me overcome my unbelief.” This was one of those times.

About a month before the payment was due, we had a cash offer on all the lots in my little subdivision. The offer was nearly equal to what we owed, but it was significantly lower than what the individual lots were worth.

Needless to say, we took the offer, closed on the property, made the agreed payment to the IRS and state, and continually gave thanks and praises to the Lord.

In the not-too-distant past, I had an unexpected answer to prayer. I was praying as I usually do on my morning walk with our dog. Im ashamed to say that too many of my prayers have been dominated by fret, stress, and worry over business conditions, and that day the issue was a debt I had created.

I had purchased parcels of land through bank financing prior to the height of the housing bubble. I purchased the land for less than the market value, but of course, I had no idea what was coming a couple of years down the road.

When the real estate market crashed, the value of the land dropped nearly 70 percent. I was now terribly upside down on the debt, and the loans on the land were coming due.

As I said, too many of my prayers became dominated by this debt issue. As I was praying on my walk, fussing and murmuring about not knowing how to extract myself from this situation, the Lord, as He had done so many times before, spoke.

But this time He spoke not just in a whisper, not just in a still, small voice, but rather loudly. He said, “Matt, Matt, I’m working on it!” Just like in my “prayer and fox” experience, I knew God had spoken to me.

When I have had such experiences in my life, I have always found it very important to have them verified by other means. I want to make sure that any perceived answer to prayer is not the enemy’s voice or the product of my own wishful thinking.

I have discovered that God always gives us an objective validation of what could be considered a subjective experience. That objective validation can come from an event like my “prayer and fox” story or through Scripture, a pastor, a Christian friend, or some other source.

A couple of weeks later I attended a prayer conference. During one of the talks, the presenter used an illustration from Scripture that immediately confirmed my experience. The speaker referenced four times from Scripture when God had used the name of the person He was addressing twice in order to capture the individual’s immediate attention.

For example, when He spoke to Saul on the Damascus road, He said, “Saul, Saul” (Acts 9:4). At the burning bush He said, “Moses, Moses” (Lx. 3:4), and just as Abraham was about to slay Isaac, God said, “Abraham, Abraham” (Gen:11). He said, “Martha, Martha” (Luke 10:41) when she thought herself overburdened with work.

I had never heard anyone make this point from Scripture, and since God had addressed me, “Matt, Matt,” this was my objective validation that God had indeed told me to stop murmuring and to have trust and faith in Him.

So many times when God answers prayer, He doesn’t let us in on the future. He simply asks us to have faith and trust in His work. Concerning financial matters, I have learned that I need to maintain the posture that I do not own anything, regardless of my name on a title deed.

I am only a steward of what God has blessed me with. I need to have a heart that is willing to surrender all to God and then let Him work on it however He sees fit. In the end, it comes back to the old but important saying of trust and obeys.

To make a long story short and without going into all the particulars, let me say that I no longer have any land debt. It was truly an answer to prayer.

Still, another way God answers prayer is through the books and writings of other people. During another time of great stress, I prayed daily for courage, strength, and wisdom. Someone at church knew the pressure I was under and gave me a little devotional book titled God Calling by A. J. Russell.

I could never communicate just how meaningful this little book was to me and continues to be. It features daily messages that always seem to fit the issues of the day, and as I read this gem, it was as if God was speaking directly to me on those pages.

I have had many other books that have similarly guided, counseled, and helped me in my own temporal struggles and spiritual growth. Within their pages, I have found expressions of praise, experiences of worship, and profound truths of man’s relationship with his Creator that often became answers to my prayers.

Scripture is another way that God answers prayer. Through the characters of the Bible, I have many times discovered directly and vicariously how God wants me to relate to Him, others, and myself.

I have discovered the kind of attitude He wants me to have concerning issues and circumstances and the kind of character He wants to develop in me. I think of James 1:2-8, which has continually been instructive in confused or hard times in my life.

Consider it pure joy, my brothers, whenever you face trials of many kinds, because you know that the testing of your faith develops perseverance. Perseverance must finish its work so that you may be mature and complete, not lacking anything.

If any of you lacks wisdom, he should ask God, who gives generously to all without finding fault, and it will be given to him. But when he asks, he must believe and not doubt, because he who doubts is like a wave of the sea, blown and tossed by the wind. That man should not think he will receive anything from the Lord; he is a double-minded man, unstable in all he does.

The truth about God and Jesus Christ is primarily revealed through Scripture. Countless times when I have made a request in prayer, a Bible text will come to my mind that answers me or leads me to an answer.

When I have failed God and myself, texts like these come to mind: “If we confess our sins, he is faithful and just and will forgive us our sins and purify us from all unrighteousness” (1 John 1:9).

How To Start A Prayer Chain

“Now there is no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus” (Rom. 8:1). “Take every thought captive” (2 Cor. 10:5). “Think on these things” (Phil. 4:8). “Create in me a clean heart and renew a right spirit in me” (Ps. 51:10).

Prayer is not just about praying for ourselves. Talking to God about our concerns for others is another important aspect of prayer, and God is as active in answering our prayers for others as He is in answering our personal prayers.

One way He answered those prayers became very apparent to me during that summer camp experience where the “prayer and fox” story took place.

At the close of the campfire meeting one evening, I took all my boys back to the cabin. We discussed the evening’s campfire talk a bit, and then I got everybody settled in their bunks.

I said that if any of them wanted to pray, they should go ahead and do so, after which I would close. A few boys prayed, but most did not. I began my closing prayer.

As much as I knew about each boy, I prayed for each individually by name. All were still awake while I prayed, all except for one boy, whom I will call Johnny.

No, I don’t always keep my eyes closed when I talk to my friend Jesus. With a cabin full of eight energetic boys, however, I had learned that I sometimes needed to use looks and hand gestures to keep order even while I was praying.

As 1 prayed that night, 1 noticed that Johnny, his head back and mouth slightly open, was in a deep sleep and did not hear his name or a word of the prayer that I had prayed for him.

After I finished praying for each boy, it was time to be quiet and go to sleep. A few boys said that they wanted to go to the bathroom first. With the commotion of boys jumping out of bunks and talking, Johnny woke up. He said to me, “Did we finish praying?”

I answered, “Yes, some of the guys just wanted to go to the bathroom.” Johnny then said to me, “I wanted to pray, but I fell asleep.” I told everyone in the cabin to hold up a moment before they left. I said, “Johnny wants to pray, so let’s be quiet for a moment.”

Johnny began his prayer, and to my astonishment, his prayer was almost exactly the same as the one I had prayed for him—word for word! The Holy Spirit working through me had ministered to him even while he was asleep.

Our prayers for others are heard, and God is just as faithful in answering them as in answering our prayers for ourselves. Through the Holy Spirit, we are connected to one another in ways few of us realize.

There are all types of prayers and different manifestations of praying. Speaking in tongues is one of those manifestations that can be very uncomfortable to someone who does not have that gift or is not used to being around those who do.

In 1 Corinthians 12, the apostle Paul gives some specific instructions to those who experience this manifestation of the Holy Spirit praying in and through them.

So what is speaking in tongues? Romans 8:26 explains it this way: “In the same way, the Spirit helps us in our weakness. We do not know what we ought to pray for, but the Spirit himself intercedes for us with groans that words cannot express.”

The Holy Spirit allowed me to experience this gift once. After I read about being baptized in the Holy Spirit, I retreated to a quiet place of prayer and asked God about this manifestation.

I had many times enjoyed His still, small voice and other means of answers to prayer, and I truly didn’t know if He wanted me to experience this manifestation and validation of His indwelling Spirit. I was willing for Him To Say Either yes or no. I had no particular expectations.

I lifted my head while I was kneeling and waited a moment. Then I began to sing in melodious tones with words that I did not understand. I felt a warmth, a peace, and a sense of His presence.

It was for me a personal validation of the “Christ in me,” an affirmation that Jesus Christ through the Holy Spirit dwelt within my being. “If you love me, you will obey what 1 command.

And I will ask the Father, and he will give you another Counselor to be with you forever—the Spirit of truth. The world cannot accept him, because it neither sees him nor knows him. But you know him, for he lives with you and will be in you” (John 14:15-17).

The interesting thing about my experience of singing in the Spirit is that anyone who knows me knows that I do not sing. I can’t carry a tune. I really don’t even like to sing. I listen to and love music, but I don’t make music. I don’t even make a good or joyful noise.

When songs are sung at church, I usually just look at the words. I don’t mind listening to others sing though. It is so much like God to give people an experience that they would never come up with of their own making, and that is exactly what He did for me. This was no psychobabble, no subconscious experience.

If you still need to ask about the purpose and value of prayer, I can only say that it opens the door of communication with God through Jesus Christ through the activity of the Holy Spirit.

In Jesus’ name, because of His birth, life, death, and resurrection, we have direct access to God. We are invited to address Him as “Abba, Father,” a personal, intimate address.

And is His communication back to us real? Absolutely! He is a God who loves us and acts upon our requests. Does He always give us the answer we want? Of course not, no more than we would give our children everything they perceived they wanted.

He also doesn’t give us a fish when He can teach us how to fish. It is in the how that God does most of the answering. He usually wants us to learn something, and in that process He wants us to acquire character traits, things like love, patience, purity, fidelity, sincerity, humility, gentleness, kindness, goodness, self-control, and forgiveness.

It is never God’s desire that we live in pain and suffering. Yet this side of heaven, because we live with broken people in a broken world, pain and suffering persist. Even the Son of God, Jesus Christ, suffered unto death on the cross at the hands of an unjust world.

But God, through all our highs and lows, pain and suffering, instructs us to “rejoice always, pray constantly, give thanks in [not for] all circumstances; for this is the will of God in Christ Jesus for you” (1 Thess. 5:16).

Is God political in that He listens to a group of prayers more than He listens to one? Absolutely not! However, I do think it is important to understand God’s original plan for mankind as it relates to this issue.

When God created Adam and Eve, He gave them and their descendants dominion over the entire earth and all creation. As Genesis 1:26-28 says,

Then God said, “Let us make man in our image, in our likeness, and let them rule over the fish of the sea and the birds of the air, over the livestock, over all the earth, and over all the creatures that move along the ground.”

So God created man in his own image, in the image of God he created him; male and female he created them. God blessed them and said to them, “Be fruitful and increase in number; fill the earth and subdue it. Rule over the fish of the sea and the birds of the air and over every living creature that moves on the ground.”

When God created the earth, He didn’t surrender its ultimate destiny. However, He did give man free will and stewardship over it. In the beginning, mankind could keep the earth as an Eden paradise or choose to mess it up. How mankind managed this stewardship was up to him. History shows we haven’t done all that well.

But thank God for His rescue plan through Jesus Christ, who became part of our humanity and did for us what we could not do for ourselves. Jesus provided an open door so that we could find our heavenly Father seeking us.

What a fantastic commitment God has made to leave so much to us humans! He works through human beings in helping all to find their way into a relationship with Him. Even though the earth will in the end become new again, until that time God continues to work through human beings.

Having the resources of many focused on a particular issue or problem opens up many possibilities for God’s work. But the impact of the many does not diminish the authority and power of the one.

Biblical Basis For Prayer Chains

Think of the possibilities when five, ten, fifty, or a hundred people are praying over an issue or concern that is rooted in love. As God works through human beings, He arranges and rearranges circumstances through the pathways that the many in a prayer chain offer, which may not be present with the prayer of just one.

In an earlier question, I talked about the consequences of violating gravity. God has governing principles in place, and when we violate them, we reap certain consequences. We live in a world that continually violates them, and Christians and non-Christians alike see and feel the results.

Why God sometimes overrides the consequences of those broken principles and other times lets the consequences exact their toll, I do not know. Prayers for safety are sometimes followed by accidents and prayers for health by illness and death.

Prayers to ward off hunger or financial ruin are sometimes followed by starvation and economic disaster. Then there are the prayers for a healed relationship or another’s salvation that are followed by no response.

We want answers immediately; however, sometimes answers seem very slow in coming, and sometimes there is no answer at all. Most often we are not very patient. God’s timing, however, doesn’t necessarily match our timing. Our motives and purposes don’t necessarily match His.

As your question suggests, one of the biggest stumbling blocks for Christians and non-Christians alike is the fact that they see Christians experiencing about the same number of divorces, serious illnesses, accidents, and other ills of this broken world as non-Christians.

Shouldn’t the Christian’s faith in the God he or she prays to in Jesus’ name make a difference? So many Christians petition God, “Please fix the problem of ” Just fill in the blank with a pressing need.

Prayer Chain Ministry Explained

They may pray for healing within a relationship or for physical healing, yet the fracture in the relationship or the illness continues. It is certainly an issue that I have struggled with at times. Unfortunately, it is also one over which many have lost their faith.

Why is God so active in the lives of some and so silent in the lives of others? Or to bring it closer, why does God actively answer our prayers sometimes and remain so silent at other times? We can look in the Bible and see that this was Job’s problem as well.

Job didn’t understand it either. And just as Job discovered when God answered him (see Job 38:1-40:2), we, too, discover that it isn’t all that satisfying when God does answer us by putting us in our place.

We discover the truth of Isaiah 55:8, which says, “‘For my thoughts are not your thoughts, neither are your ways my ways,’ declares the Lord.”

God’s thoughts and ways are unfathomable to us because of the very nature of how He created us. We were created with the ability to love. Love, if it is such, must be freely given; it cannot be programmed into us or come by way of coercion.

Thus, we have an immeasurable number of people all exercising their free will as they interact with one another. The complexities of all these free-will decisions are beyond our comprehension. We remain ignorant of their effects on the course of history on a grand scale and on our individual lives at any given time.

Scripture tells us of God’s ultimate desire, activity, and purpose. That purpose is to complete His rescue of mankind, to bring this broken world to a conclusion, and to create all things new.

In that process is the irrevocable freedom to love or not to love. That irrevocability has the potential of creating unloving people with all its destructive effects.

God’s power lies within His ability to work in and through an incalculable number of variables. Yet even God can be temporarily thwarted by the freedom He has given us.

Certainly, God has the power to break through all the variables and act in ways we identify as miracles. When, why, and why not are beyond our capacity to know.

Much must be left to the statement in Isaiah 55:8 just mentioned a few paragraphs ago. Remember, “‘For my thoughts are not your thoughts, neither are your ways my ways,’ declares the Lord.”

So what is the answer? What would account for God’s action or inaction when it comes to our prayers? For me, I think the answer lies in understanding what God really wants for us. Note that I said “for us” and not “from us.”

God wants us to mature in our trust in His love and sovereignty over the eternal destiny of our lives. He wants to save us and heal us from the sin problem that surrounds us and has made its home within us.

I am reminded of the truth of Romans 8:28-29, which says, “And we know that in all things God works for the good of those who love him, who have been called according to his purpose.

For those God foreknew (would accept His rescue gift) He also predestined (or predetermined) to be conformed to the likeness of His son.”

Please remember that God’s highest purpose is bringing us to the kingdom of God, the eternal salvation for each one of us, not that we enjoy the ease and comfort within this broken world. However, to the extent possible, He wants many aspects of the kingdom of God to be experienced even now.

I remember an illustrated joke I read in the Sunday newspaper as a teenager. It showed a boy kneeling by his bed, saying his prayers, and asking God for a list of things he wanted God to do for him.

Down through the ceiling came the booming response from God, “Get up, you clod, and do it yourself.” That joke has always bothered me.

When should I buck up and manage my own affairs, and when should I give up and hand issues over to God? Can I say, “God, help me to lose weight,” and then eat poorly and refuse to exercise? Can I say, “God, help me overcome this health problem,” and then ignore the remedies available?

Can I ask God to save the value of my home when the real estate market collapses? Can I ask God to save the value of my retirement account as the markets crash? In many of the issues of life we have choices to make, and I find that God doesn’t usually override our choices even when we ask Him.

But how should we respond to God when circumstances and solutions are beyond any choice we can make? I think we have to go back to Job. God allowed Job’s possessions to be eliminated, a true financial disaster.

But Job managed to make it through, still maintaining his trust in God. Then Job was touched and it physically hurt in his body. But even there Job maintained his trust in God, saying.

Then Job was bombarded with suggested reasons for guilt, his friends imploring him to confess his wrongs, for those kinds of calamities only befall the guilty, they thought.

In the end, Job knew that he stood justified before his Lord and maintained his hold on God as wants even now. as trustworthy and loving.

Could this be what answered and unanswered prayers are about, that a trustworthy and loving God wants us to mature in our relationship with Him just like Jesus Christ did?

Jesus said in Matthew 26:39, “My Father if it is possible, may this cup be taken from me. Yet not as I will, but as you will.” Romans 8:29 says we are “to be conformed to the likeness of his Son.” Jesus’ life was not one filled with ease and comfort as the world measures ease and comfort.

But it was filled with inner peace and joy, a sense of purpose and mission, and yes, disappointment in others. It wasn’t until He took on our guilt and exchanged His life for ours as He approached the cross and His untimely death that He experienced separation from His Father.

I don’t think we can blame God for what goes wrong in this world. Think of what He has already done to redeem this “gone wrong” world. We gain little and lose much if we try to blame God. Rather, through all the wrongs and all the pain, we need to remember what Jesus said in Matthew 28:20.

In other words, we are never alone in our pain and suffering, and we can assist others in that understanding. God’s promise is that we don’t have to go it alone, regardless of the problems or tragedies that invade our lives.

Jesus We Talk About Prayer Chain

Someday when the earth is created anew, we will understand the why of God’s action or seeming inaction. And maybe it is not the why at all. Perhaps we should ask, “ To what end?” When we sum it all up, what God wants is for us to be with Him now and throughout eternity.

What God wants for us in this life is to learn to trust him and love Him as well as love others as we love ourselves (which is impossible except for His working in and through us). He is the Creator, potter, Master, and friend.

In prayer we enjoy Him. He is unseen but heard in all kinds of ways. To commune with Him in prayer is indeed, as speaking with a friend, a rewarding privilege that has no end.

Your friend,
Matt

Jesus We Talk About Hubble’s View

Dear Thomas,

In your fourteenth question you state, “The Christian talks a lot about having a personal relationship with God. A lot of children have imaginary friends, and a lot of crazies think they have relationships with all kinds of people.

How is the Christian’s relationship with an unseen, inaudible God any different? The Hubble space telescope has never seen God, has never viewed heaven, and has never photographed anything that would indicate the existence of something more than the natural world and universe. If God is there, why is He so invisible?”

What would happen if the Hubble space telescope did see God? What would He look like? If we were to seek God’s dwelling place, where would we look in this endless, immeasurable universe?

If we did find it, what would His dwelling place be like? And what would happen to us if the ultimate reality of God were fully disclosed to all our senses?

It can be difficult to commit your life to an inaudible and invisible God. Yet the truth is that God doesn’t often reveal Himself to our physical senses. He does, however, reveal Himself to our soul—that is, to our mind, emotions, and will.

What we do observe is a creator designer ofall that is, creating with such magnificence and complexity that it boggles the mind. The beauty of all that exists in the earthly environment to the total beauty of the heavens and our earth as viewed from outer space must also include the absolute marvel of how conscious life works as well as all the intricate functions of human life and all other living things.

When God decided to populate the earth, He created two people to procreate after their own kind. It seems that when God decided to populate the heavens with new stars, He likewise set chemical, electrical, and physical cosmic forces at work to give birth to new heavenly bodies.

However, because we can t connect with God with our physical senses, many people have concluded there is nothing out there except what is observable by the naked eye or aided by a telescope.

Scientists have no explanation for why anything exists yet reason there must have been a time when nothing, not even time, existed.

Everything needs space to exist, but there is no explanation to tell us where space came from. Science can’t explain it because, from nothing, nothing comes.

But it is obvious to all of us that there is something. There is a whole lot of physical and living something. Telescopes search for and science works on the how or the process of being.

Science discovers how galaxies move and how suns come into being and go out of being, almost like the seasons of a plant. Science studies the formation of suns that populate the universe, just as it studies the procreation of all forms of life that have populated our earth.

In all this study of process, science leaves the why alone. But it is the way that takes us to the who of matter, space, time, and being.

If there is a who, why is He invisible? Again it goes back to our brokenness in a broken world the sin problem. An infinitely powerful and holy God who sustains all heavenly and earthly life systems knows He cannot expose Himself to humankind without that very exposure being destructive and thus unloving, much like a consuming fire (Deut. 4:24).

He is invisible and inaudible because He loves us and does not want to destroy our free relationship with Him by overwhelming us with the glory of His being.

God does not want any person to run and hide from Him because of His holy brilliance; therefore, He remains invisible except to man’s spirit, in his heart, in his mind’s eye.

He stays invisible except for the historical Jesus Christ, God incarnate, the true revelation of God (see John 14:9). He stays invisible except for the “Christ in us” through the indwelling holy Spirit (1 Cor. 3:16; Col. 1:27).

However, He does become visible through Scripture as we see His actions through the movement of history and in the lives of people in history.

He also becomes personally audible to us through that still, small voice or gentle whisper (1 Kings 19:12) as well as through the actions and writings of others, all letting us know of His presence.

After he witnessed Jesus’ death on the cross and heard of his reported resurrection, the disciple Thomas had trouble believing that Jesus Christ was actually alive.

Thomas’s personal witness and the evidence of Christ’s death were just too great for him. In order for Thomas to believe, Jesus had to allow him to touch His wounds.

Jesus lovingly remarked, “Stop doubting and believe” (John 20:27). That visual and physical encounter with the risen Jesus made Thomas declare, “My Lord and my God!” (John 20:28).

To that Jesus responded, “Because you have seen me, you have believed; blessed are those who have not seen and yet have believed” (John 20:29). Hebrews 11:3 says.

There are a lot of things that we believe exist though we have never seen them. We do that because of the evidence, both physical and experiential. We see dinosaur tracks in sandstone and believe these creatures existed long ago. We see a shadow and describe its reality.

We know we had a great-great-great-grandfather, though we never met him. We get letters from loved ones, and although we only see words on paper, we experience their love and care. We hear the voices of friends on the telephone and know that these friends are alive and well or hurting and in need.

We know the sun will come up tomorrow because it always has. We smell smoke in the air and know a fire is burning somewhere. We recognize by smell the presence of a skunk in the woods without ever seeing it.

We also know of the reality of Jesus Christ in the lives of people everywhere because of their testimonies and the experiential evidence of changed lives. Things do not have to be seen in order to be known.

God the Father, Jesus Christ, and the indwelling Holy Spirit desire to be known. Yet as mentioned previously, they do not want to destroy us in our current state of sin in the process of becoming known to us.

Since He remains invisible, what does God look like? “God is love,” says 1 John 4:8, and that love is expressed in the glory of the heavens above and in the earth below.

It is also profoundly expressed in the incarnation of Jesus Christ and His life of relationships. His ultimate expression of love began in the garden of Gethsemane when He said,

That love is profoundly on exhibit in the resurrection of Jesus, where in His glorified state He allowed us to glimpse our own future glorified state. That divine love can also be seen in the love expressed between husband and wife or mother and child in acts of self-sacrifice, in kind deeds done without ulterior motives, in acts of reconciliation, and in offering and receiving forgiveness.

To see and know God doesn’t require eyes. Nor does it require a sense of hearing, taste, touch, or smell. Rather, to see God requires seeing Him through love beyond external sensual means or beyond the purely intellectual level.

God can and must be seen at the level of a person’s inner spirituality, that enlivened spirit within, which affects the mind, the emotions, and the will the very soul of a man.

Knowing and experiencing God at this intellectual, emotional, and experiential level is the seeing that brings meaning, purpose, healing, belonging, and the means to loving.

To experience and know God is to see and know love as revealed in the person of Jesus Christ. To experience and know God is to recognize His Spirit within and to listen not with our ears but with our hearts and souls (mind, emotions, and will).

To experience and know God is to respond to His promptings and follow His leading along the path of love, irrespective of the behavior of the broken world around us.

To experience and know God is to recognize that He loves both you and me as individuals, each of us unique in our creation. To experience and know God allows us the freedom to love Him back. This experiencing and knowing is the seeing of the invisible.

There is a very real danger in not seeing. The quality of life here and now, as well as our eternal destiny, depends on it. Staying blind to the experiential knowledge of God can spell disaster at the final judgment, to say nothing about our sense of being, wholeness, and feeling of oneness with God in this life.

Only at the second coming of Jesus Christ will God be fully revealed to our physical senses (1 Thess. 4:16—17). Only at the final judgment will God fully reveal Himself to those who rejected Him in spirit and truth, those who became God-rejecters and God-haters and with their self-sufficient arrogance felt no need for God (Rom. 1:28-32; Rev. 21:8).

The love expressed in the moral laws of God is what supports life everlasting. The principle of life rooted in love gives sustaining energy to everlasting life. As. I have said and quoted so many times, “God is love” (1 John 4:8). He governs His universe on the principles of love. How else could it be? And who would want to live forever under any other form of governance?

God is indeed invisible to the Hubble telescope, but He is not invisible to those who have found Him in their relationship with Jesus Christ through the activity of the Holy Spirit. This is not an external, visual seeing but an internal seeing.

It is a seeing that transcends the eyes, a seeing that seems like foolishness to those who refuse to open themselves to the working of the Holy Spirit (1 Cor. 2:14). In Jesus Christ and through the Holy Spirit, God opens the eyes of the heart and mind in all those who believe by faith. These are those who have seen and understood the evidence, hear His voice, and follow.

They are the ones who feel the touch of His presence and constant care throughout all the events of life. They are those who get a foretaste of the things that will be as they experience His love and walk in His presence. And they are the ones who smell the sweet fragrance of a life of loving through the power of His Spirit that dwells within them.

If God’s invisibility seems difficult to surmount, all we need to do is to ask God to reveal Himself. As Scripture so clearly says, “Ask and it shall be given to you; seek and you will find; knock and the door will be opened to you.

For everyone who asks receives; he who seeks finds; and to him who knocks, the door will be opened” (Matt. 7:7-8). Jesus Himself made this promise, and that is what He so desperately wants to do to reveal Himself to all of us. Jesus Christ, the Son of the living God, lived and died for that very cause. He did it for you!

Your friend,
Matt

Jesus We Talk About Three In One

Dear Thomas,

You ask in your fifteenth question, “Christians talk about a three-person God spoken of as Father, Son, and Holy Spirit.I don’t understand how you can have three different identities and three separate persons all in one being. How can that be?”

The easiest way for me to explain the triune nature of God is by relating some of the ways it was explained to me years ago. A three-person God is like three aspects of the same entity. We could compare it to an apple.

An apple is composed of its skin, its pulp, and its core, three distinct parts that make up the whole apple. The apple isn’t any one of the three parts but all of them. The three-person God could also be compared to water.

Water has formed as a liquid, a gas, or a solid. All three are water but in different forms. Yet another analogy could be our sun. The sun’s mass gives off energy (the Father). That energy gives us flight (the Son), and that light renders its effect on us (the Holy Spirit).

Many things are composed of multiple parts that make up the whole. In speaking of the Trinity, we can identify each person’s descriptive separateness or distinctiveness within the triune God—Father, Son, and Holy Spirit—yet they are one in essence and communion.

Is the Trinity provable? No more than God is provable. Believing in and understanding God in Trinitarian form comes through faith as revealed in Scripture and validated by our relational experience with God.

Many references to the Trinitarian nature of God can be found directly in Scripture. Jesus made many references to God the Father. “In the beginning God” (Gen. 1:1) refers to Jesus Christ in the context of John 1:1- 5, Col. 1:15-17, Heb. 1:1-3.

Then in verse 2 of Genesis 1, the Bible says, “The Spirit of God was hovering over the waters.” Many other references to God and the Holy Spirit or the Spirit of God can be found throughout the Old Testament. The Old Testament also has many prophetic references to the Messiah, the Son.

In the New Testament, the angel Gabriel mentioned aspects of the three when he was talking to Mary about the birth of Jesus. Luke 1:35 says,

When Jesus was baptized in the Jordan River, the Holy Spirit descended upon Him, and God declared Jesus as His Son, “And a voice came from heaven: ‘You are my Son, whom 1 love; with you, I am well pleased’” (Mark 1:11). Jesus told His disciples to baptize others in the name of the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit (Matt. 28:19).

At Pentecost, Peter spoke of the Trinity, “Exalted to the right hand of God, he [Jesus] has received from the Father the promised Holy Spirit and has poured out what you now see and hear [the Holy Spirit]” (Acts 2:33).

At the end of his second letter to the Corinthians, the apostle Paul said, “May the grace of the Lord Jesus Christ, and the love of God, and the fellowship of the Holy Spirit be with you all” (2 Cor. 13:14).

And the Trinity is described in Revelation 5 and 6. From Genesis to Revelation, these scriptural verses are only a few that express God in Trinitarian form.

Christianity is the only religious belief system that understands God in monotheistic terms yet in Trinitarian form. All other systems view God as a solitary entity or a plurality of gods.

It is very important that this triune oneness of God is understood by all, Christians and non-Christians alike because it reveals something about God and about us in relation to Him. It also says something about our human nature, as we were created in the image of God (Gen. 1:26).

Within His own being, God is fellowship and community. His very nature is one of love interrelated and outwardly expressed. Within His own being, He experiences a love relationship that affirms the commonality of purpose, cooperation, and mutual agape love.

Flowing from this agape love is His desire to give it expression through His creative activity. It is not just expressed through the physical nature of the world and the heavens as Creator but through creating us in His image for the sake of giving love to us and enjoying that love in return.

The plurality of persons found in God—Father, Son, and Holy Spirit was intended to be mirrored in man. God created mankind in His image, male and female with the ability to procreate after their own kind.

I don’t think God intended for man to think of himself as a duality of man and woman but rather as a single unit where the two become one. As Genesis 2:24 says, “The two shall become one flesh.”

A close, loving, intimate, nurturing, supportive marriage relationship was to be a reflection of what each person of the Trinity experiences within that divine relationship.

However, I have described only two parts of the human experience that reflect the image of God. The third part is the Holy Spirit. It was God’s intention that males and females be united with the Holy Spirit as the third part of their connection to and reflection of a Trinitarian God, at least as much as is possible for a created being.

When God breathed life into man, He breathed His Spirit into him. Thus, Adam and Eve were created spiritually alive (see Genesis 2). With this three-part union of man, woman, and the Holy Spirit active in both, mankind could reproduce others who would join the family of loving relationships.

The man was created as, within, and for the community, male and female enlivened by the Holy Spirit, altogether reflecting the image of God.

How could God as a solitary being love within Himself in the agape sense of unmotivated, spontaneous, altruistic, and other-centered love? The Trinitarian nature of God expresses this as the very essence of His being.

We humans can become the outward expression of God’s love with the ability to reflect back that love. However, as we know, much of that reflection was lost when Adam and Eve sinned. As a result of that sin, they became spiritually dead.

Genesis 2:17 warned, “But you must not eat from the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, for when you eat of it you will surely die.” When they ate from the tree, they died immediately in the sense of losing the image of God, for there can be no cohabitation of sin and God.

Read Genesis 3 and see how profoundly the oneness of Adam and Eve with God was broken and how that separation caused them to hide from God. The apostle Paul says in Romans 5:18-19,

Consequently, just as the result of one trespass was condemnation for all men, so also the result of one act of righteousness was justification that brings life to all men.

For just as through the disobedience of the one man [Adam] the many were made sinners, so also through the obedience of the one man [Jesus Christ] the many will be made righteous.

As fragmented and individualistic as we have become, no wonder the idea of oneness—either within God or in union with our spouse and God-is difficult for us to grasp. It isn’t our current and natural state of being. That was lost in Eden.

The Trinitarian nature of God makes the good news of the gospel possible. God the Father sent His Son, Jesus Christ, to do what Adam didn’t do so that we could be brought back to life—spiritual life enlivened by the Holy Spirit.

“I tell you the truth, no one can see the kingdom of God unless he is born again,” says John 3:3. “Flesh gives birth to flesh, but the Spirit gives birth to spirit,” verse 6 goes on to explain.

Through Jesus Christ, we thus can become spiritually alive again, born anew, or born again. The Holy Spirit can again live within us.

We humans have the opportunity to become partially whole, even though we still live with individualistic, self-centered inclinations rising from our fallen nature.

We can get glimpses of and move toward God’s original intention for us. As stated earlier, that intention was for a spiritually alive husband and wife, even though marred and impaired by the inherent sinful nature, to form a three-part union with the Holy Spirit.

This was the desire of God in the beginning when He created man in His own image, and it is His desire now. It can be a progressive reality through the “Christ in you” and “you in Christ” promised to all those who accept and follow Jesus Christ as Lord and Savior.

One thing that has been a stumbling block to some is the description of Jesus as the Son of God. When we use the term son in the vernacular, we understand that the son is begotten of the father—that is, the son comes from the father and is created by the action of the father.

A son does not come into existence at the same time the father comes into existence. Thus, when the term son is used for Jesus, many find it difficult to take that leap and say the Son is not begotten, not created, but eternally existing with, coequal, one and the same in essence with the Father and Holy Spirit.

The Son is not less than the Father; no inequality exists in their relationship. In speaking of Jesus Christ, John 1:1-3 explains, “In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God.

He was with God in the beginning. Through him all things were made; without him, nothing was made that has been made.” As expressed in

We might wish that another term had been used to describe the second person of the Trinity. But if we are going to use human metaphors to describe God, what other terms might we select? We must remember that the use of this term reflects the reality of Jewish culture.

Women were regarded as chattel and did not have the social status that would allow any type of feminine description. Certainly, nothing in all creation that man was given dominion over in the Garden of Eden would work.

Finally, the idea of two fathers would not work, for there is no relationship in the sense of oneness between two fathers.

In the Jewish culture and as expressed in Scripture over and over again, a father holds within his loins the likeness of his being in his seed. We were in Adam, and therefore, the consequence of his sin passed on to us.

We were in Abraham’s seed as heirs to the promise (of the coming Messiah, Jesus Christ), and we were in our father’s seed. In the Jewish culture, this likeness was truest of the firstborn son. Thus, in Scripture the closest term that could be used to describe Jesus’ relationship with the Father was Son.

Another problem some people have with Jesus as the Son of God arises because they see Him in human form, walking, talking, eating, sleeping, and doing all the things we mortal men and women do.

Some surmise that God should be different. To them, Jesus seems too much like us to be God, for we know what we are like, and it is anything but Godlike.

Yes, Jesus was very much like us in one sense, but He was very much unlike us in another. He was born of a virgin and directed by God the Father through the work of the Holy Spirit. Divinity was joined with humanity in one person Jesus Christ.

Though God, Jesus set His divine prerogatives aside (see Mark 14:36; John 5:19-20; 6:38 and Phil. 2:5-7). He lived as the God-man, the second Adam, living in Adam’s fallen state but without Adam’s inherited sin.

Though He was tempted in every point as we are (Heb. 4:15), He remained without sin, living His life in perfect connection with the Father and Holy Spirit, doing what Adam did not do.

Jesus followed the perfect will of the Father, even unto death on the cross. Jesus denied the use of His divinity to save Himself from the experience of the cross and allowed His humanity to be crucified in order to be the Savior of the world.

In Trinitarian form and described in symbolic language as Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, God so loved His creation that He came in human form in the name of the Son to redeem the world unto Himself (Heb. 2:9).

Yes, Jesus was fully God, as expressed by the apostle Paul in Romans 9:5, where he says, “Christ, who is God over all, forever praised! Amen.”

The good news of the gospel has its foundation in the divinity of Jesus Christ joined with humanity and the Trinitarian nature of God. Jesus was God reconciling the world to Himself. From Genesis to Revelation, God, in Jesus Christ, has been actively coming to man in spirit and in truth.

God, in Jesus Christ, came and revealed His love by His birth, life, death, and resurrection. He graciously continues to come by sending the Holy Spirit to all those who believe by faith alone.

By such faith, we become the recipients of His free gift of peace with God now, and we receive salvation from the consequences of sin, leading to life in all its fullness forever and ever—amen! Finally, as God’s rescue plan comes to maturity, God in Jesus Christ will one day break into our physical world again by coming to this earth in power and glory.

At this second coming we will see Him in the clouds of heaven as He returns to earth to receive His own (Mark 13:26; 1 Thess. 4:16-17; Rev. 22:12).

It is my prayer that you gain the full understanding that God is one in essence and one in the community as Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. Revealed in the Son, Jesus Christ, the three in one came specifically to express and provide a permanent means for us to have a personal relationship with Him.

Jesus wants us to be part of His community both within and without—within by the indwelling Holy Spirit and without by ultimately giving us glorified bodies like His. The Trinity looks forward to the day when we will live forever in the earth made new, where our individualistic fragmentation because of sin and its consequences will be no more.

The Trinity looks forward to an open communion with us involving all our senses, a communion even greater than what Adam enjoyed prior to the fall when he communed with God in the cool of the day (Gen. 3:8).

Your friend,
Matt

Jesus We Talk About Soul With Wings

Dear Thomas,

In your sixteenth question, you ask about the soul. You state, “Where did the idea of each man having an immortal soul that has a life all its own come from?

There is nothing in the physical body that science can identify as the soul. Is the soul supposed to be a living thing within us or just a metaphor describing the essence or summation of a person?”

There is a variety of thought on this subject. Part of that variety may stem from man’s natural effort to describe the functions of his being. We each have unique physical features.

Traits such as eye color, skin pigment, size, weight, and age are visually recognizable features that are different for each person. But physical features don’t describe character, attitudes, memory, or all the other intrinsic elements that make up the total characteristics of each human being.

The human brain collects information and generates the activity of our thinking and movement. The functions of our mind include housing language, data, thoughts, feelings, and emotions; controlling our reactions and responses; and facilitating our power to choose or will.

It is our total consciousness, all made alive by breath within the physical body. The mind is the very essence of a person’s individuality and uniqueness.

May I repeat a few thoughts from previous discussions? All through my letters, I have described the soul as a person’s mind, emotions, and will. As stated in your question, I think you could call the soul a metaphor for the essence or summation of a person.

Our physical body gives movement and life to our thinking. The brain, the nervous system, and the body work together to allow movement and expression, turning thoughts into action.

At this level of description, man could be described as a two-part being, a physical being, and a mental being—that is, a body and a soul.

Yet there remains one more element that is unique to man, namely the ability to be connected to a divine Spirit. I think we could realistically describe man as body, soul, and spirit. In reality, I don t think man is divisible at all, except for the purpose of describing the functions of his being.

But our understanding of the physical nature of man, the role of the soul, and one’s spirit connectedness will ultimately influence and reflect on the understanding of the nature and character of God and even to the end of sin and sinners.

Therefore, the way we describe the nature of the soul as it is ascribed to man becomes very important. Does our use of the word soul refer to the whole person or to the activity of his or her mind, emotions, and will?

Do we refer to the soul as separate from the body and having an existence of its own? Might some call this separateness our spiritual essence in our former or future spirit life? In a word, the soul has taken on quite different meanings within different religious constructs.

Genesis 2:7 says, “And the Lord God formed man of the dust of the ground, and breathed into his nostrils the breath of life, and man became a living being”—that is, a conscious, physical human being.

Older translations like the King James Version use the term living soul. In the traditional Hebrew concept of man, he was viewed as a conscious, living, physical person. Man did not exist in any form without a body, a brain, and breath.

Genesis 2 is clear about the creatureliness of man and states that man was created out of the dust of the earth or from elements that are all found on earth. Genesis 3:19 clearly states that man returns to the dust of the earth upon dying.

This is why Scripture speaks so emphatically about a bodily resurrection. Though we were made in God’s image, we were also created as physical creatures for this earthly environment.

At the resurrection, we will be remade as physical creatures. As far as Scripture is concerned, the word soul is used primarily in a metaphorical sense to represent the whole person.

Even today whenever a natural disaster strikes, we often speak of the number of souls that were lost, meaning physical, thinking, feeling human beings. Pastors often talk of mission trips that saw X number of souls saved, meaning physical, thinking, and feeling human beings who accepted the good news found in Jesus Christ.

Christianity is concerned with the whole man, his physical well-being, his mental state, and his spiritual condition. Christian thought gets into trouble when it divides man into separate parts that exist independently of the others.

Difficulties arise when man is viewed as three parts—one part being his physical body, another being his brain or mind, and another being his soul or his eternal, living essence that exists outside of his physical and mental properties.

History has shown the consequence when Christianity views the soul as a separate entity that goes to heaven and is thus concerned only with what happens to the soul.

In that mindset, it is acceptable to kill or torture the body and mind if it leads to saving the soul. Aspects of the Crusades come to mind here. Jesus, however, spent a lot of his time healing physical bodies.

How can we describe the uniqueness of an individual person? It is here that I think the meaning of the word soul shifts within the context of the way the word is used.

In order to describe the conscious uniqueness and essence of individual persons, their personalities, talents, and abilities, we use the word soul.

We sometimes use the term soul to denote something separate from a person’s physical being. Sometimes soul is used to describe a person’s relationship with God.

For example, Matthew 16:26 says, “What good will it be for a man if he gains the whole world, yet forfeits his soul? Or what can a man give in exchange for his soul? For the Son of Man is going to come in his Father’s glory with his angels, and then he will reward each person according to what he has done.”

I prefer to describe God’s relationship with us and our relationship with Him in the realm of the spiritual aspect of our being. A person may be either alive or dead in spirit, yet that does not necessarily describe a soul that is separable from the body.

Being alive in spirit or dead in spirit, however, will certainly affect the mind, emotions, and will as well as the way we treat our physical bodies.

Just as we do with many other things, we can describe our humanness in parts—arms and legs, flesh and blood, mind and body, and spirit as “Christ in you” and “you in Christ.” Each describes a function or aspect of the person, but it is not the whole person.

A person is not parts but the sun of the parts. The understanding of this singular whole in describing the nature of a person will certainly affect the belief of what happens to man in life as well as at death. My use of the word soul describes the mind, emotions, and will.

The words heart and soul can also be used as metaphors. Thus, my belief concerning what happens to a person at death is different from those who view the soul as an immortal element of a person’s being that leaves the body and thus has to go somewhere upon death.

A Christian person’s death can be thought of as falling into a temporary sleep in Christ. That is why 1 Corinthians 15:8, speaking of a time between Jesus’ resurrection and His ascension, says, “After that, he appeared to more than Five hundred of the brothers at the same time, most of whom are still living, though some have fallen asleep.”

Luke 8:52-53, where Jesus was speaking of a girl who had died, makes a similar observation. “She is not dead but asleep. They laughed at him, knowing that she was dead.”

On another occasion Jesus, knowing that Lazarus was dead, said to His disciples, “Our friend Lazarus has fallen asleep, but I am going there to wake him up” (John 11:11; see also verses 12-14).

The apostle Paul also spoke of death as a form of sleep. In 1 Corinthians 11:30, he said, “And a number of you have fallen asleep.” In speaking of the bodily resurrection at the second coming of Christ, he said, “We will not all sleep” (1 Cor.15:51).

And in the Old Testament, Daniel 12:2 says, “Multitudes who sleep in the dust of the earth will awake.” Ecclesiastes 9:5 says, “For the living know that they will die, but the dead [those in a temporary state of sleep until the resurrection] know nothing.”

Christians who follow this thought of the nature of man also understand that when a person dies, he returns to the dust of the earth but in every facet remains in the memory of God, the Creator, and Sustainer ofall things, the “you in Christ.” As Colossians 3:3-4 says,

When Scripture speaks of the soul, it is talking about the essence of the person as a whole; acting, thinking, and relating through its physical form.

At the second coming of Christ and the resurrection, God will, as the apostle Paul states in 1 Corinthians 15:50-57, recreate us from perishable to imperishable, mortal to immortal.

Furthermore, Scripture describes Jesus as “the King of kings and Lord of lords, who alone is immortal” (1 Tim. 6:15-16). The apostle Paul described the time of this transition event in 1 Thessalonians 4:13-15.

Brothers, we do not want you to be ignorant about those who fall asleep, or to grieve like the rest of the men, who have no hope. We believe that Jesus died and rose again and so we believe that God will bring [to heaven at the time of the resurrection at Jesus’ second coming] with Jesus those who have fallen asleep in him.

According to the Lord’s own word, we tell you that we who are still alive, who are left till the coming of the Lord, will certainly not precede those who have fallen asleep.

We do not have life in any form by right. Life is a gift, not an eternal birthright once we come into being. We look forward to the body, soul (mind, emotions, and will), and spirit resurrection much like Jesus’ resurrection with His glorified body.

We don’t come into being with a soul described as a disembodied spirit that by its very nature is immortal. There is no immortality to the body, the soul (mind, emotions, and will), or any other part of created man’s physical and mental properties.

Any life is only by and through the grace of God in Jesus Christ. “Jesus was firstborn from death among many brothers and sisters and the first fruits of those who sleep in death” (1 Cor. 15:20).

Christ is coming back to earth for the whole person—body, soul, and spirit. It will be the resurrection of the whole person in Christ Jesus.

I think it is an error to describe man as body, mind, and soul. That is describing a man in the Platonic sense, where the soul has life in and of itself but is confined to the body during its physical life.

An extension of this thought is that the soul is a part of man implanted in him by the Creator at the time of his physical conception.

Thus, man is a special creature made in the image and likeness of God, a creature who possesses an immortal soul though he has fallen into sin. At death, this soul is released from the body to ascend to God for judgment.

Most current Christian thinking goes something like this: If God is eternal and immortal and if we are created in the image of God, then there must be a part of us that is like God—that is, immortal.

Thus, the soul (in the platonic sense) would have to live beyond and separate from the body. It doesn’t require a body in order to have life, but it begins within a human body at the start of life.

At death, the souls (in the platonic sense) of the righteous are saved and go immediately to heaven to be with God, and the souls of the lost pass immediately and irreversibly to the confinements of eternal torment in hell.

This would be the immortality of the soul. Another explanation is the unconditional immortality of the soul (in the platonic sense), which says that lost souls wait in the torment of hell until the last judgment and destruction in the lake of fire. This view assumes that if the soul is the creation of God, then God can undo this creation as part of the end of sin and sinners.

Holding to the view of immortality versus conditional immortality of the soul creates many dilemmas for Christians. If the soul is immortal as mentioned, it has to go somewhere forever, for it can never be extinguished.

And if hell is eternal torment, then how do we square this understanding with a God who sustains all things and is absolute agape love personified?

Either the soul (in the platonic sense) as a separate entity within a person is mortal, or it is immortal. It either has an end or goes to eternal punishment.

Going back to the soul in the platonic sense, the Greek philosophers Socrates, Plato, Aristotle, and others believed in an element within man that was immortal.

This element was trapped within our physicality. At death, this soul was released and no longer suffered the confines and sufferings experienced within the earthbound mortal body.

This Hellenization of thought within the early Church gave rise to much of Christianity’s thoughts on the immortality of the soul that exists even to this day.

I can understand how the idea of the soul as a disembodied spirit has persisted. There have been many reports of out-of-body experiences down through the ages from near-death events or from drugs.

They often leave a lasting and vivid memory to those who experience them. From these experiences, it is assumed that conscious thought doesn’t need any physicality. Further, those thoughts seem to come with seeing, hearing, and even touching.

The brain is a marvelous and even mysterious aspect of our being. How and why dreams, hallucinations, and out-of-body experiences come about probably has more to do with brain chemistry than a person’s disembodied spirit. The capacity of the brain can do many things, which people have reported.

Some have the gift of clairvoyance or knowing of things not in sight. Others have experienced the gift of telepathy or communicating thoughts outside of sensory means.

Prior to the entrance of sin, humans probably had many abilities that were lost. Yet all these experiences come with the presence of one’s physical properties, which include one’s physical brain functions and body.

One’s out-of-body or near-death experience, just like dreams, may be complicated and involved yet may only take a few seconds of brain activity. Certainly, we have all had dreams where we see ourselves in an out-of-body fashion.

Out-of-body and near-death experiences may only take a second or so of brain function. It may be a little like one’s experience ofan alive and conscious impending potentially fatal accident where one’s sense of time gets elongated.

It makes more sense to me to attribute these experiences to a change in brain chemistry than any experience of actual thought consciousness beyond and outside our physicality.

There may be one other aspect to explain out-of-body or near-death experiences. Certainly, Scripture records times when God has given individuals visions of the future.

Might God give individuals a glimpse of future heaven as an aid to faith and hope for the promised reality after Jesus’ second coming and the resurrection?

There is one thing that seems to be clear in nearly all out-of-body or near-death experiences. Those receiving the vision see others either here on earth in their present mortal state or those departed and now in heaven as physical, breathing, thinking, relating, beautiful, youthful human beings in their glorified state.

I don’t think I have ever heard of anyone describing beings in heaven as disembodied spirits. Why God would use the timing of a person’s near¬ death experience to give such visions would be speculation on my part.

It may be as simple as the receptivity of society to give credence to the vision because of the number of reports of such near-death experiences and God’s way of adding aid to our faith and hope in the promise of all things someday created new.

As stated earlier, at the core of Christian understanding is the hope of resurrection and recreation with a new body, soul (mind, emotions, and will), and spirit, wherein we receive a glorified body that is immortal. This happens at Christ’s second coming, not at death in the form of a disembodied spirit. Let me echo the apostle Paul describing the event in 1 Thessalonians 4: 16-17.

Thus, the description of the nature of man and the soul really does have a bearing on our understanding of God’s rescue, Christ’s second coming, and the end of us or the eternal and immortal beginning of us.

It also is quite relevant to our understanding of what happens at death—or sleep, as it were—as we rest in Christ Jesus and await His second coming and the resurrection. Do we wake at the second coming of Jesus and receive new glorified bodies, or do our souls (in the platonic sense) come back with Christ to receive our glorified bodies at Jesus’ second coming? Scripture seems to validate the former.

Concerning His soon departure from earth, Jesus said to His disciples, “In my Father’s house there are many rooms [permanent dwelling places]; if it were not so, I would have told you.

I am going there to prepare a place for you. And if I go and prepare a place for you, I will come back [His second coming] and take you to be with me that you also may be where I am” (John 14:2—3). Note that Jesus did not say we, meaning “your souls and I,” are going to come back.

The apostle John said in 1 John 5:11-12, “God has given us eternal life, and this life is in his Son. He who has the Son has life; he who does not have the Son of God does not have life.” Furthermore, Jesus said,

In other words, believing in Jesus Christ and having an ongoing relationship with Him allows us to experience eternal life beginning even now in this life.

At the time of death, it will seem but a nanosecond before we are awakened and alive, seeing Jesus coming again as He said He would do.

There is no consciousness of time during this sleep death. Thus, there is effectively no death for those who are in Christ Jesus. We may sleep, but we won’t die.

It seems that Jesus’ ascension and His return to earth will be in a physical form just as the disciples saw Him go. It seems that we die in our physical forms and will be raised in physical forms as well.

The time from our dying to the time of our resurrection is like an unconscious sleep or rest in Jesus, who is eager to wake us up when He returns. It would be nice if we could ask Lazarus about his experience of coming back from the grave after he had been dead for four days (see John 11).

Did Lazarus as a spirit soul go directly to the bliss of heaven only to be called back to the pain and struggles of his earthly life? Or was Lazarus asleep in Christ and thus spent only a moment from unconsciousness to consciousness?

Many derive great comfort from believing that their loved ones are with Jesus the moment after they die rather than languishing in a long sleep death until Christ’s second coming and the resurrection.

I personally never understood how heaven would be a joyful place for our deceased loved ones if they were conscious of the continuing sorrow, pain, and suffering of those they left behind.

Personally would rather think of a departed loved one as sleeping in Christ for a split second before they are awakened to meet Jesus Christ at His second coming.

Understanding the soul as that part of my physical being that thinks (mind), emotes (emotion), and decides (will) gives me comfort when I ponder my own demise. I see no delight in being a disembodied spirit that continues to see the consequence of the pain and suffering of those I left behind.

At the end of mortal life, I look forward to an unconscious sleep death where I am hidden in Christ, waiting to be called back to an immortal, glorified life by the Jesus we talk about at His second coming. It makes me smile just to think about it.

Your friend,
Matt

Jesus We Talk About Dos And Don’ts

Dear Thomas,

In your seventeenth question you state, “I’m not saying that I want to, but if I were to become a Christian, wouldn’t I lose a lot of my freedom? Why do Christians say they are free when there are so many dos and don’ts in their lives? What kind of freedom are they talking about?”

It would be nice if when Christians talked about freedom, they were talking about the free ability to love and to be at peace with God, one’s self, and others. But that is not always the case. There are two definitions of freedom. One definition is the ability to choose or determine our own thoughts and actions without any hindrance or restraint.

However, we find ourselves living within the constraints of self-centeredness, self-serving interests, personality flaws, and emotional and psychological damage from the effects of a sinful and broken world. Thus, our ability to love seems thwarted by our very nature, and the dos and don’ts just accent the problem.

No matter what the dos and don’ts are, conformance to them does not necessarily make us love and experience that inner peace. By definition, love cannot be forced, coerced, or demanded.

Jesus’ Teachings On Dos And Don’ts

Love, if it is genuine, has to be a gift freely given by the one who chooses to love. If love is not freely given, then we have to call it something else because it isn’t love.

But there is another definition of freedom, and that is the liberation from the control of some other person, an arbitrary power, or the mandates of a human institution.

When we measure freedom against the dos and don’ts expressed within many Christian communities, we view them within this second definition and see it as anything but free.

Within both of these definitions, the word commandment can be perplexing. Commandments are often thought of in terms of dos and don’ts, thou shalt or thou shalt not.

When commandments are thought of in this way, there seems to be no freedom from arbitrary power, no exemption or immunity from specific obligations. How then do we reconcile freedom with commandments?

Jesus said in John 15:14, “You are my friends if you do what I command. I no longer call you servants, because a servant does not know his master’s business. Instead, I have called you friends.” What does that really mean, “If you do what I command”? What does the word command mean in this context?

We most often think of command in the sense of giving a directive or an order. It sometimes comes with the attachment of a consequence if we disobey the command or an award if we obey the command.

This definition is the one most troubling to nonbelievers and believers alike. Where is the sense of freedom if couched in command and if the consequence in effect says, “Do what I say, or I’ll punish you or even kill you?”

Christian Living: Jesus’ Commandments

Is it any wonder that some shy away from an environment that expresses dos and don’ts in those terms? I think this very common definition of the word command is the wrong definition within most biblical language.

However, command, as in “giving an order,” is not the only definition or the only way we use the word. Several other definitions apply. One of these is a command in the sense of having something ready for our use.

For example, we might say that we have a command of a large vocabulary or the English language; a command of a subject, such as chemistry; or command of an item, as in the use of a tool or musical instrument. In this sense, command refers to a personal working knowledge, ability, and understanding that is ready for use.

Another definition of command is in the form of active instruction, such as a computer command key that initiates a particular function or action. Or we might say that the skipper of a yacht has command of his boat. He has discovered, learned, and developed the skills needed to command or instruct the boat to do what he desires it to do.

One other definition for command is in the sense of a precept, the way things are, or the way things work as a rule of action or conduct.

For example, we could say that if a person throws a rock off a cliff, natural law commands that it go down rather than up or sideways. In this same sense when we express anger and hatred for another person, the natural consequence commands hurt to us physically and emotionally.

Likewise, when we share laughter, joy, and goodwill with another, physical and emotional rewards are commanded to us. The biblical Ten Commandments are examples of precepts given in instructive form on how we were created to function.

Could God and Jesus be saying, when the word command is used, “This is the precept, the instruction on how you were meant to function? And I desire, even require that you have these precepts ready for use”?

With this understanding, I encourage you to read anew those sections of Scripture that use the word command or commandments and regard them in the context of a statement, a precept, or a means of an appropriate function, understood and internalized, ready for and put into use.

I am not advocating antinomianism (being free from God’s established moral law) but rather describing how one comes into conformity with that law.

The apostle Paul said in Romans 3:31, “Do we, then, nullify the law by this faith? Not at all! Rather, we uphold the law.” Jesus said in John 14:21, “Whoever has my commands and obeys them, he is the one who loves me.”

What Jesus Said About Right And Wrong

When one has understood and developed skills that are ready for use, it follows that it is acted upon by choice. If one has developed the skill of hitting a golf ball or playing the piano or if one understands the need and importance of following the instructions of a recipe or formula, it is usually put into use.

One doesn’t normally putt a golf ball to purposely miss the hole or strike the wrong piano key to purposely make a sour note. One doesn’t normally bake a dish prior to putting all the ingredients together and in order.

There are established ways to solve a mathematical problem, and ignoring them would bring a wrong answer or no answer at all. Thus, to ignore a precept, refusing to internalize them to the extent they are not ready to use or put into practice is indeed foolish. Matthew 22:36—40 says,

To paraphrase we could say, “To love God with all your being is the first and greatest precept, the way you were meant to function. Internalize this precept in your very nature so that you will have it ready to use.”

We could paraphrase John 15:14, “You are my friends if you do what I command,” to say, “We will be intimate friends if you will understand my precepts and instructions and have them internalized and ready to put them into use.”

Jesus says in Matthew 5:44 and Luke 6:27, “Love your enemies.” To command love as in giving an order is impossible. Love involves the whole being, including emotions and feelings.

True love requires freedom and is given one to another by choice. Love as a precept can be commanded as an expression of how we were meant to function and an exhortation to have it ready to put that love into use. I think this reflects what Jesus was talking about when He said in John 15:9-14,

As the Father has loved me, so have I loved you. Now remain in my love. If you obey my commands [precepts, internalized, ready for use], you will remain in my love, just as I have obeyed my Father’s commands [precepts, internalized, put into use] and remain in his love.

Jesus’ Moral Teachings And Guidelines

I have told you this so that my joy may be in you and that your joy may be complete. My command [precept, internalized, ready for use] is this: Love each other as I have loved you. Greater love has no one than this, that he lay down his life for his friends. You are my friends if you do what I command [understand love’s precepts, internalize them, and have them ready for use].

Much of the time, the dos and don’ts expressed within a Christian community are all about culture and not at all about freedom to love. The way we dress or comb our hair when we are going to church, the issue concerning whether Christians should drink alcohol, or personal theological beliefs that differ from the belief of a particular Christian community around us can all stop the expression of Christian love. When this happens, we witness a subtle shift from unity in purpose to unity for the sake of conformity in belief and action.

I know a woman who is an admitted atheist because of a particular Christian community’s cultural don’ts. As a high school student, she attended a church school that expelled students if they were caught smoking.

One day she was at a public park with a few friends, one of whom was smoking. He asked her to hold his cigarette while he casually played on the swing set.

A teacher at the school happened to drive by and saw her with a smoldering cigarette. She reported it to the school principal, who summarily expelled the student without consideration of the circumstances.

The young girl found it so unfair, so humiliating, and so judgmental that she left the church and God as well. To this day, she is not interested in any discussion about a relationship with God.

Her motto is “eat, drink, and be merry, for tomorrow we die.” She has concluded that this earthly life is all there is, so we might as well get over it and enjoy life.

At a very sensitive and impressionable time in her life, she was snared in the dos and don’ts of a church community and has paid dearly for it.

I remember getting into trouble at the Christian college attended. This campus was strictly vegetarian, so there was no going to the cafeteria to get a hamburger. However, I had not been raised vegetarian.

Biblical Dos And Don’ts From Jesus

Against the rules, I kept an old-fashioned deep-pan popcorn popper in my dorm room. Once in a while, I would leave campus to purchase some frozen peas and hot dogs to boil in my popcorn popper.

My roommate and I would enjoy a fine meal, but of course, the smell of my hot dogs drifted all through the third-floor hall. Somehow we always seemed to attract others to our private banquet.

One day the dean happened to come along and get a whiff of my delicious meal. He took great offense at my infraction of cooking in my room—and cooking hot dogs no less! It was as if I had contaminated the dorm to an almost uninhabitable status.

If I wanted to keep living in the dorm, I would have to get rid of my popcorn popper, I was told. I could understand the fire hazard created by my cooking in my room, but I didn’t think hot dogs were such a big deal that they should disqualify me from being a member of the campus community. This, however, was a cultural don’t based on that community’s understanding of what constituted good, healthy living.

Another illustration of religious dos and don’ts involves beliefs. A church community may hold certain ideas or interpretations of Scripture. To question those interpretations is oftentimes a don’t, while unquestioned adherence to those ideas or interpretations is an expected do.

For example, one church community that I attended had a number of members who would not tolerate questions on long-held church beliefs. However, I have always enjoyed the freedom of exploring beliefs and the reasons behind them.

I was always curious about the ideas and understandings that led to certain church creeds and particular interpretations of Scripture. However, when I asked questions during times of open discourse, I soon discovered that my questions were not welcomed.

Eventually, members of the church board informed me that I was not welcome to attend anymore unless I would keep quiet. No questions here, please. Just believe and keep quiet.

I could not do that and remained honest with myself. Thus, I graciously left that community and found another that welcomed the exploration of ideas that make up the varied understandings within the Christian faith.

So just what are all the dos and don’ts about? When do they enhance faith and provide aid to promote growth in their relationship with Jesus, and when do they destroy faith and foster walking away from Christian fellowship? Let me say that many things applied externally to improve performance at living the Christian life are wrongly intended.

We don’t work out our salvation by how well we perform or how correctly we believe to prove our acceptability. Christianity is not about performance in that sense but about relationships. It is about transformation from the inside out.

That gives rise to the following question: How do we do that? How can we be redirected or reoriented in a way that promotes love for God and love for others? One thing is very clear.

It cannot be achieved through external self-will and self-effort. It takes a new birth. It takes a new creation springing to life within the core of our being to change this orientation.

Again this is what the good news of the gospel is about. It is about being enlivened by the Spirit of God and allowing Him to change us from the inside out. The apostle Paul expresses this clearly in Romans 12:1-2,

In other words, it is God, in Jesus Christ, through the work of the Holy Spirit dwells within us, makes us spiritually alive, and brings change. This spiritually alive nature does the transforming.

Through the process of renewing our minds from within, we become truly free. No longer are external dos and don’ts the means of becoming what God wants us to be, but it stems from a desire within to become what God intended and desires us to be.

When we struggle to conform to external dos and don’ts, we find no freedom. That’s because the only real means of change is to surrender our lives to God and enjoy the transformation He brings.

As Jesus said, “Come to me, all you who are weary and burdened, and I will give you rest. Take my yoke upon you and learn from me, for I am gentle and humble in heart, and you will find rest for your souls [mind, emotions, and will]. For my yoke is easy and my burden is light” (Matt. 11:28-30).

Does that mean that external information on causes and effects, such as the effect of diet and exercise on health or the effect of thought on belief, are of no use or value? Not at all.

That is still important, but the orientation and method of application of that information are different. The orientation from within, given power by the Spirit, who dwells within, will take external information and use it to free us and enable us to follow God’s commands (precepts, internalized, ready for use).

God perfectly loves us, and that perfect love casts out trepidation, timidity, and fear (2 Tim. 1:7; 1 John 4:18) as to whether we are doing or believing rightly.

Change in the doing and the believing will come as God’s Spirit continues to guide us to mature Christian thinking, believing, and living.

Quite often the dos and don’ts spoken of by Christians are only a descriptive way to help us find the path to freedom in loving. The Ten Commandments, for example, are just that. They are an expression of the way love acts and the exposure of our shortcomings in living up to that ideal.

If we lie, cheat, steal, covet, dishonor, gossip, threaten, demand, moralize, preach, lecture, judge, ridicule, abuse, or shame in our relationships with others; harbor hurt; express anger and resentment; participate in malice, envy, murder, strife, or deceit; or are immoral, stingy, insolent, arrogant,

senseless, faithless, heartless, or ruthless, how can we claim to love? (sec Rom. 1:26-31). It is our choice to say with David, as recorded in Psalm 51:1-2, 10, “Have mercy on me, O God, according to your unfailing love; according to your great compassion blot out my transgressions.

Wash away all my iniquity and cleanse me from my sin Create in me a pure heart, O God, and renew a steadfast spirit within me.” David’s prayer was about understanding a precept, internalizing it, and having it ready for use. It can be our prayer as well.

We are truly free only when we function in a free environment of love. When we find ourselves confronted with, participating in, or getting caught up in the actions or the effects of those things listed previously, we are not free.

The dos and don’ts can be instructive in helping us to recognize and avoid bondage-producing, unloving attitudes and actions toward God, others, and ourselves. They can act as reminders and teaching aids that assist us in understanding how love acts and how it does not.

But remember, the doing of the acts of love isn’t the being of love. The ability to genuinely love is not within our natural human nature and comes only when our mind, emotions, and will have been enlivened by God’s indwelling Spirit.

Even here we start out as children needing to mature. We also need to be very careful not to make the dos and don’ts a performance substitute for true loving. External loving behaviors for selfish and self-serving motives yield nothing toward experiencing true freedom.

“God is for us,” Romans 8:31 triumphantly declares. God’s will is that sinners should live in freedom and not perish from lack of freedom. That freedom should enable us to process and understand the precepts of the dos and don’ts, and by God’s grace and the work of the Holy Spirit, it will enable us to find freedom in the law’s demands (commandments) by understanding their precepts, internalizing them, and having them ready and then putting them into use. I know of no other religion that offers this kind of freedom and love (see Deut. 6:4-9; Micah 6:8).

Your friend,
Matt

Jesus We Talk About Faith Stuff

Dear Thomas,

You state in question number eighteen, “Sometimes I think that Christians just fake their beliefs or maybe just inherit them and never examine them. Some act like it is just an insurance policy for the great hereafter.

They all say we must have faith to believe in the unseen. But what is this faith, and how does it work in relation to fact and reality? Does faith mean that God is unbelievable, a deity who reportedly did something that cannot be proven? Are we just expected to believe in Him anyway?”

Your question is quite appropriate when we look at the definition of faith in Webster’s New World Dictionary. The first definition given is “unquestioning belief that does not require proof or evidence,” and the second definition is “unquestioning belief in God, religious tenets, etc.”

But using the word faith in the context of believing in God or in Jesus Christ as the Creator and Redeemer of the world, we see that it needs to have a different definition.

It needs some evidence to back it up, as it is not just the demand for unquestioning belief. Faith without adequate evidence to back it up is nothing more than empty hope or speculation.

That being said, I don’t think I base my faith in Jesus Christ or the working of the Holy Spirit in my life on empty hope or speculation.I have experienced firsthand too many of their truth claims (see Chapter 2).

Additionally, Scripture has been formed and preserved as an evidentiary body of man’s relationship with God and God’s dealing with the condition of man.

I think it would be quite unfair of God to say to us humans, “Believe because I said so.” God can say that He is love, for example, but that does not make it so.

God can say that He has our best interests at heart and that we can trust Him when He gives us instructions, but that does not make it so. Things are true because they are true as the evidence shows.

We cannot make claims and then do nothing to substantiate them. That’s what Satan did when he made his claims against God in the Garden of Eden, and we are still involved in the controversy concerning those claims today.

The controversy about the love of God for humanity and His plan of redemption for all mankind was settled and fully accomplished at the cross some two thousand years ago.

The full completion of that controversy as far as mankind is concerned is yet to come, but as we continue living on this earth, we still have decisions to make about God.

So where is the evidence on which to base our faith in God’s claims? God says that all men have sinned and fall short of what He intended for them. I think we have plenty of evidence of that truth.

God says that He so loved the world that He gave His one and only Son to live and die for us. The evidence of that claim is Jesus’ death on the cross, exchanging His life for ours so that we might live.

God says that He (Jesus) is going to come back to claim His own. The evidence of scriptural history shows that He always does what He says He will do.

Is God the kind of God who continually comes to man? Is God faithful? Is God trustworthy? Can we surrender our lives to Him and find that we are in good keeping? Yes, yes, yes, and yes—and these answers are not just speculation.

A great deal of historical, personal, and vicarious evidence exists to support positive and affirmative answers to all these questions.

As principals in a designing and building company, my associates and I are often interviewed by prospective clients. If all we did was give them a brochure that described our skill in designing beautiful and functional homes and described the attention we give to quality, service, and budgets, I doubt that we would get much work.

We could also show the clients a lot of pretty pictures of the work we have done in the past, but would that verify the authenticity of the pictures as our work? We could tell them that it is our job to serve them and that our reward is turning over the keys to their beautiful new home on time and on budget.

We could tell them we are very competitive in our pricing. In other words, we could say whatever we wanted to say in order to sell our services for designing and building homes.

It may sound good, but would it be true? Is it prudent for prospective clients to believe whatever we say? Should they put faith in us just because we say they should? No, of course not.

Clients have the right to know the evidence that hacks up our claims. If we are to gain their trust and their business, there must be outside evidence of the claims we make about ourselves and the way we design and build new homes.

This is why we have found it so important to have testimonials from previous clients. What our clients think of us is much more important and much better evidence than anything we could say about ourselves.

When it comes to the truth claims about God, the same is true. We must see evidence from the experience and the changed lives of others who validate those claims. Here in lies the problem.

All adherents of the Christian faith don’t necessarily give supportive evidence or validate those faith claims that your question suggests. However, there are many who do.

It is probably true that some Christians “go along to get along.” Being a church member can be like belonging to a service club. It is good for family and business, so why not attend? But that is not faith that leads to a relationship with this Jesus we have been talking about.

Other people have been taught that living a good Christian life means being caring, ethical, and moral; keeping promises; doing an honest day’s work for a day’s pay; contributing to the community; and so forth. Part of good citizenship, they believe, is going to church.

In church, they learn the importance of being moral and ethical people, and it seems natural to conclude that only good people are going to go to a good heaven. Anyway, being good seems to yield more rewards than being bad, so again why not be involved in the Christian faith and a Christian community where the encouragement and rewards of being good far exceed the influences and punishments of being bad, immoral, or unethical?

Your question becomes valid if a person’s faith deals primarily with performance as the premium paid on an insurance policy for the great hereafter.

However, faith in performance presupposes the existence of an inherently good and inherently bad and a consciousness of discernment in the nature of man that can distinguish the difference.

But that raises the following question: Where did the sense of goodness and badness come from in the first place? Who created us with the free will to choose one moral path or another, to exercise our ability to reason, to believe, or not to believe? What are such capabilities for? They certainly go beyond animalistic instincts.

I have to say it again. The evidence shows that the free ability to discern, choose, relate, and love must have a source. That source is Jesus, our Creator, Sustainer, Savior, and Redeemer. Furthermore, God wants to be known and experienced.

He wants us to have personal, experiential evidence. He wants us to freely open up to Him so that He can graciously and generously provide the evidence we need to affirm His real and alive relationship with us. Then within this experiential evidence, faith takes on a new and different quality.

It is also true, as you suggested, that some Christians merely inherit their beliefs and understandings about God and Jesus Christ. Their beliefs have little to do with a relational faith based on experiential evidence.

They go to church and maybe read the Bible a bit, but they never give much thought to the questions you have been asking. If pressed to explain why they believe what they believe, they can’t give an answer.

They might say that it is just the way they were taught or just what the church says. They might say that their beliefs are based on their understanding of the Bible.

If the Bible says it, they choose to believe it, and that’s all there is to it. They may even shrug off any questions about their Christian beliefs as irrelevant to their lives. They are comfortable believing what they believe. Please do not disturb me!

This brings to mind the reality of Christian apathy. If that is behind part of the thought in your question, it is probably what you have seen and experienced.

For me, I would much rather see an agnostic asking tough questions about the Christian faith than a professed Christian with no desire or interest in pursuing a greater understanding of his or her professed beliefs or the nature and character of God within those beliefs.

What you are talking about in your question is expressed in the message John the Revelator received from God in a vision about the church in Laodicea. It is recorded for us in Revelation 3:14-20.

I know your deeds, that you are neither cold nor hot. I wish you were either one or the other! So, because you are lukewarm—neither hot nor cold—I am about to spit [or vomit] you out of my mouth. You say, “I am rich; I have acquired wealth and do not need a thing.” [“I have enough truth to get by.”] But you do not realize that you are wretched, pitiful, poor, blind, and naked.

I counsel you to buy from me gold refined in the fire, so you can become rich; and white clothes to wear, so you can cover your shameful nakedness; and salve to put on your eyes, so you can see.

Those whom I love rebuke and discipline. [In adversity you will do a reality check.] So be earnest, and repent. Here I am! I stand at the door and knock. If anyone hears my voice and opens the door, I will come in and eat with him, and he with me.

That is the crux of the issues raised in your question. Faith must be based on evidence—the evidence of history; the evidence of others’ experiences; the evidence of broken lives put back together through grace and faith in the one who saves, Jesus Christ; the evidence of the Holy Spirit working on the human heart, desiring an open-door invitation for relationship.

Just ascribing to church beliefs—doing the do—isn’t real Christianity. Though some practice it as such, it is not. True Christianity is about having a personal relationship with the living Jesus Christ, God the Father, through the indwelling Holy Spirit. It is a real faith relationship described as “you in Christ” and “Christ in you.”

Faith —Christian faith—means having trust, confidence, and reliance on Jesus Christ as a personal Savior, Redeemer, and friend. In all my answers to your questions, I have been trying to convey evidence to substantiate your faith.

Though a case could be made for many different kinds of evidence on which to base faith in God, the most compelling evidence to me is the fact that in this broken world full of broken people, love exists.

We all need it, want it, desire it, and can experience it. That love is a created potential within each of us. As I expressed in prior letters, we were originally created in the image of God, and at the center of that image is our capacity to love.

The evidence for trust and faith in God is abundant. True faith is never blind. True faith is never a leap in the dark. True faith is a reasoned response to a truth revealed by the Spirit of God Himself.

Accepting and acknowledging are our activities. The continual coming and revealing are His activity. Jesus Christ has revealed and will continue to reveal Himself to those who accept and acknowledge Him.

“Now faith is being sure [the external evidence] of what we hope for and certain [the experiential evidence] of what we do not see” (Heb. 11:1). Thus, it is by faith based on evidence that the Christian holds firm to his or her relationship with God. “Faith stuff” evidence is made sure by the love of God found and experienced in a relationship with Jesus.

Your friend,
Matt