faith for faith

Whether you knew it or not, the greatest truth in the world lies in Romans 10:4, namely “Christ is the end of the law for righteousness to everyone who believes.” This statement is the very core of the Gospel, and it is a condensed version of the already condensed declaration of the Gospel by the apostle in 2 Corinthians 5:21: “For our sake he made him to be sin who knew no sin, so that in him we might become the righteousness of God.” Though these two verses arrive to these declarations from different paths in different contexts, their conclusion is singular: To the one who believes, Christ is his righteousness. There is no greater truth than this, and to miss this truth is to miss the Gospel.

I emphasize these points that this truth is the greatest of all truths and it is the very core of the Gospel because I wonder how many in our churches who claim to have submitted to the Gospel can articulate this truth. This truth is not something that is merely nice to know about or is some meat that one learns later in one’s life as a Christian, but it is essential to one’s salvation. For in the verses preceding this declaration, the apostle writes, “I bear them [the Israelites] witness that they have a zeal for God but not according to knowledge. For, being ignorant of the righteousness of God, and seeking to establish their own, they did not submit to God’s righteousness” (vv. 2, 3). In the case of the Israelites (consequently, as it is with all people) their ignorance of the righteousness of God manifested in the work of Christ imputed to those who believe in him led them to establish their own righteousness. In other words, their disregard for the gift of Christ’s righteousness led them to a salvation by deeds, which is no salvation at all.

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Why am I a Baptist? It is a question that I have addressed several times since I was brought to life by the Spirit of God, and it is one that has been brought up to me on several occasions by esteemed friends who were very much not Baptist in their denominational persuasion. One such friend, after having not spoken with him in several months, said in seeming amazement to me, “You are still Baptist? I had money on your being Presbyterian by now.” After extending to him my regrets for having lost for him a sum of money, I assured him that those same convictions that made me a Baptist before were the same convictions that kept me a Baptist at that time. And to this day, it is those very convictions that I held then that prohibit me from being anything but a Baptist.

You may ask of me the same questions that my Presbyterian, Dutch Reformed, etc. friends asked of me several years ago: What business does an amillennialist have in the Southern Baptist Convention? Why would someone who is so unshakably Reformed stay in a denomination that is so doctrinally diverse? Why would someone who is not diehard about baptism by immersion be in a denomination whose very name is derived from that doctrine? These are all questions that I have periodically posed to myself throughout the years whilst reevaluating my denominational affiliation and my supposed position as a doctrinal oddity in the Baptist denomination. Yet in spite of all these differences that I have with many Baptists, there are key doctrines that keep me in the denomination.

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In the fifth grade, I loved to read fiction. I remember going to the bookshelf at school and checking out books and taking them home and finishing them in one sitting. In that time, there was one book that I pulled off the shelf and checked out over and over again—Where the Red Fern Grows by Wilson Rawlings. I loved that book. Yet, even after having had read it several times, I do not remember much about the story, but I do remember one statement quite vividly: “Well, it’s been my experience God helps those who help themselves … And if you want God’s help bad enough, you’ll meet him half way.”¹ Though this statement is made in the context of a boy getting some hunting dogs, it accurately paints the common religious mentality of all men, whether one’s a devout Jew in Palestine or a redneck in Oklahoma wanting a pair of hunting dogs.

The problem with humanity’s natural view of religion is that it always has a “meet God half way” mentality apart from the Truth. The natural ignorant man who is zealous for God will always try to find a stepladder to him. The Buddhist will use intense meditation, the Muslim ritual prayers and fasting, the Jew strict and hedged obedience of the Torah, the Baptist will not “smoke, drink, or chew, or go with girls that do,” and the “contemporary” Christian will sing nothing but praise choruses and read the Left Behind series until Jesus comes back. Regardless of the religious guise in which it manifests itself, the “meeting God half way” is the greatest and most successful lie that the devil has ever told.

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There is a great lie that has been perpetuated in America’s religious culture that says that if one has a great passion for God or if one is sincere in his own particular religion that when that person at the end of his life encounters the true God that that God would be obligated to accept him for his sincerity of heart. This false teaching has knocked down the doors of the American Church and has many in the Church contemplating the heresy of inclusivism—that God rewards those who seek any god religiously and with great zeal. This salvation by zealotry applies to the mystic Christian who lives down the street as well to the Pygmy in North Bora Bora who has never heard the name of Jesus Christ, for both seek after God in a their own self-prescribed fashion and both do it with great fervency.

In our study of the Epistle to the Romans, we encounter the apostle Paul contemplating the state of his countrymen, the Israelites, who themselves had great zeal for God. The apostle writes, “My heart’s desire and prayer for them is that they may be saved. For I bear them witness that they have a zeal for God, but not according to knowledge” (Rom. 10:1, 2). Before can we begin to unpack this text, there are two important things that we must acknowledge: First is the Israelites’ great zeal for God as testified to by the apostle, and second is their unsaved and reprobate state despite their zeal for God.

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Upon even the most casual of readings of the New Testament, it is impossible to miss the clear reality that those who follow Christ are promised that they will suffer and be despised for following him. These things simply come with the territory. Jesus declares that we who follow him should not to be alarmed at this, for he says, “A servant is not greater than his master; if they persecuted me, they will also persecute you” (Jn. 15:20a). Paul also declares that our suffering is of Providential and salvific necessity, writing, “The Spirit bears witness with our spirit that we are children of God, and if we are children, we are heirs—heirs of God and fellow heirs with Christ, provided that we suffer with him so that we might also be glorified with him” (Rom. 8:17, variation mine). Our suffering and revilement is made to be necessary by our association with Christ and is ordained to be necessary by the nature of the Gospel.

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Well, after a failed attempt to upgrade WordPress to the latest version that basically obliterated my blog, the blog is back up with the exception of some minor fixes here and there. If you are having any problems reading the blog, whether it’s the rendering on a particular page or if it’s an RSS issue or anything at all, please let me know so that I can fix it.

Also, on the right hand side of the page is a new weekly recommendation that was recommended to me by a friend: Paul Washer Preaches to Reformed Rappers. It is excellent and well worth your time. It may very well change how you look at everything.

There are some things that just make your jaw drop with disgust. Take for example the case of Dr. Pierre Jean-Jacque Renelique who was recently found guilty of medical malpractice after giving “medical” responsibility to unlicensed personnel and after “failing to keep an accurate medical record.” “Failing to keep a medical record of what?” you ask. A cut-out ingrown toe nail? A mole removed from a patient’s back? A drained cyst? No, he failed to accurately document that he had his associate throw away a living baby as though it were a piece of rubbish. Upon further reading of the Associated Press article, it becomes quite clear that a living infant being tossed into a trash can is not what caused the uproar, but it was the improper disposal of the child. The medical board revoked the license of Dr. Renelique, essentially saying to him, “We do not know how you do murder children in Haiti, Doctor, but in Florida we murder our children humanely and without harming to the environment.”

In spite of this and in spite of the millions upon millions of “humane” abortions, we find that God is still true to his Word and he is still just and merciful. God’s Truth is in this way validated in his proclamations concerning the wickedness of men. For Paul writes in his letter to the Romans:

None is righteous, no, not one; no one understands; no one seeks God. All have turned aside; together they have become worthless; no one does good, not even one. Their throat is an open grave; they use their tongues to deceive. The venom of asps is under their lips. Their mouth is full of curses and bitterness. Their feet are swift to shed blood; in their paths are ruin and misery, and the way of peace they have not known. There is no fear of God before their eyes.¹

We find today that the state of men, despite public education, social programs, etc. is the same as it has ever been, it is simply more technologically sophisticated. We shed blood, but we do it “sterilely” and “humanely”, and in such a way that does not taint our beloved environment. We do it and explain it away with our naturalistic philosophies, suppressing the fact that the wrath of God is being stored up against such ungodliness and unrighteousness of men.

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Mark Driscoll was at Southeastern Seminary yesterday and delivered an excellent, excellent message entitled, “9 Distinctions Between the Gospel and Religion.” Though it does not directly address it, it does highlight the problems with Christianity in the South and demonstrates that it is the religiosity of the Bible Belt that tarnishes Christianity not the religion itself. I highly recommend this to everyone whether you claim Christianity or not, especially if you grew up in the South.

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Feel free to share thoughts on this message or on the topic in general in the comments section on this post. Soli Deo Gloria.

We as Christians rightly recognize that the Trinity—God being three Persons—Father, Son, and Holy Spirit and yet One, is a great mystery, but is the notion of multiplicity and oneness a concept that is foreign from our experience? Take for example human beings who are made in the image of God. All will concede that man is at least a dichotomy, i.e. consisting of two parts—soul and body and yet is one. Some, like myself, believe that man is a trichotomy. Take for instance the Shema that is recorded in Deuteronomy 6:4, 5: “Hear, O Israel: Yahweh our God, Yahweh is one. You shall love Yahweh your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your might.” It is almost as if Moses is writing, “Just as Yahweh is three and yet one, you who are also three must be one by loving God with all your being.” Also consider the Creation account in Genesis 1. Each act of Creation by Yahweh begins with “And God said,” and it happened. The only deviance from this pattern is when God creates man. There he says, “Let us make man in our image, after our likeness” (Gen. 1:26). Thus, it is quite clear that man is created in the image of the Triune God. Just some quick thoughts.

Being that our natural state is such that we are blind to the declarations and beauty of the Gospel and that we in our sin are as walking dead, if salvation is to come to us, its revelation must come to us as light burst through the darkness at the Creation, and we must be summoned forth by the Spirit of Christ as Lazarus was summoned from the tomb.¹ Faith in Jesus Christ unto salvation is therefore by necessity a supernatural work of the Spirit of God by the will of the Father.² It is, as the prophet painted it, the greatest, supernatural surgery: “And I will give you a new heart, and a new spirit I will put within you; and I will remove the heart of stone from your flesh and give you a heart of flesh.”³ It is with this fleshly heart that we gaze upon Jesus Christ with adoration and praise—a heart of flesh that is granted to us so that we might not boast in anything save the Divine Surgeon and his handiwork.⁴

It is in this context that we examine the use of philosophy in the preaching of the Gospel. While it is quite clear that Paul, when appealing to the Areopagus (i.e. the Academia of his day), did in fact know of their philosophers and did quote one of their poets, his use of philosophy was not the means to salvation but it was the means to the preaching of the Gospel.⁵ In other words, Paul used philosophy, not to demonstrate the validity and reason of the Gospel, but as a springboard into the Gospel. For the apostle’s appeal to their unknown god is followed directly by his proclamation of the one true God⁶ and his appeal to their poet is followed directly by his condemnation of their idolatry and by his “foolish” declaration of Christ rising from the dead.⁷ Therefore, Paul’s appeal to the Areopagus was not an intellectual debate, but it was an avenue for what he had been doing all along—preaching the Gospel.

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