“The church’s engagement with the culture involves a host of issues, controversies, and decisions–but no issue defines our current cultural crisis as clearly as homosexuality. Some churches and denominations have capitulated to the demands of the homosexual rights movement, and now accept homosexuality as a fully valid lifestyle. Other denominations are tottering on the brink, and without a massive conservative resistance, they are almost certain to abandon biblical truth and bless what the Bible condemns.” Al Mohler

Read more. . .

There are three aspects of the salvation of those who have believed in and trusted Christ as Lord and Savior.

• Salvation from the penalty of sin; an eternity of torment in Hell; the just penalty of a righteous God whose wrath is poured out against all unrighteousness.
• Salvation from the power of sin; here and now while we yet live and breathe.
• Salvation from the presence of sin when Christ returns to establish His Kingdom.

“For I am not ashamed of the gospel, for it is the power of God for salvation to everyone who believes, to the Jew first and also to the Greek. For in it the righteousness of God is revealed from faith for faith, as it is written, “The righteous shall live by faith.” (Rom 1:16-17)

The gospel is the power of God for salvation because (‘For in it. . .’) in it (the gospel) the righteousness of God is revealed.

I don’t know about anyone who reads this blog, but it is impossible for this old soldier to honestly consider the righteousness of God without being faced with my own unrighteousness. By that I don’t mean the difference between God’s standard of righteousness and man’s, but my total and utter lack of any righteousness in the face of God’s perfect, holy, and just righteousness.

In order for us to be accepted and welcomed by God into His presence we must possess perfect righteousness. Because of our sin(s) we cannot and will not ever. on our own merit, possess the righteousness that God demands to enter His presence. Therefore, because of His great love and mercy, God gives to those who believe in Christ the very righteousness the He himself demands.

What does that have to with ‘being’ saved?

Well, it occurred to me this morning that the moment I believed in Christ I was saved from the just penalty of sin; experiencing the wrath of God that sin deserves. It also occurred to me that in my humanness I sin every day, and therefore every day deserve the wrath of God against that sin, no matter what it is. The sin I commit ‘today’ deserves God’s wrath ‘today’.

Having said that, is it appropriate to suggest that while I was saved when I first believed, I am also ‘being’ saved on a daily basis, by the same ‘power of the gospel’ and because of the imputed righteousness of Christ?

Can we say that the ‘power of the gospel’ is the bedrock of the assurance of our salvation as believers?

“Praise be to the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ! In his great mercy he has given us a new birth into a living hope through the resurrection of Jesus Christ from the dead, and into an inheritance that can never perish, spoil or fade—kept in heaven for you. Through faith you are shielded by God’s power until the coming of salvation…” (1 Peter 1:3-5)

I invite your comments.

“Adventures in Missing the Point?”

Some time ago there was a Battle Cry post called Satan’s Gambit that suggested that the Enemy’s chief tactic for wreaking havoc and causing dissension in the church is to attack the inspiration and authority of Scripture. To anyone who observes trends in Christianity, as an insider or outsider, it seems that it’s a highly successful strategy. There are however, those who just won’t fall for the gambit and maintain that Scripture is what it says it is – the inspired written word of God, and the final authority for all matters of faith and practice of the Christian faith. For those sorts of folks, the enemy has another tactic.

Where believers simply refuse to put down theirBibles to follow the latest Christian fads engineered by wolfishly clever ‘evangelical’ snake oil salesmen, the enemy has another tactic that works quite well. He merely leads us into what can be called ‘adventures in missing the point”. We get to keep our Bibles and even continue with our ‘sola scriptura’ affirmations. As long as we spend our time discussing anything and everything that misses the main point of explicit themes and  teaching, and would rather spend our time with secondary, tertiary, and issues foreign to the text of scripture, the enemy is satisfied.

Think about it. . .

“Most of those who are disturbed about same-sex marriage are not as exercised about preserving heterosexual marriage. That’s because it doesn’t raise money and won’t get them on TV. Some preachers would rather demonize gays than oppose heterosexuals who violate their vows by divorcing, often causing harm to their children. That’s because so many in their congregations have been divorced and preaching against divorce might cause some to leave and take their contributions with them.”

Read more here. . .

Yesterday I read a blog article that said  Jesus went to the cross for our ‘broken hearts’ as part of the article lead-in (since it was Easter), and then went on to talk about the tragedy of people having broken hearts, and asking why so many miss the point of Jesus’ crucifixion, ‘healing broken hearts’. That, I think, demonstrates an ‘incomplete at best’ understanding/explanation of the life, ministry, death, and resurrection of our Savior – according to scripture at least.

While it is true that when we genuinely believe in and trust in Jesus as the substitute for our sins – as having died in our place – that we can endure the pain and suffering in this life, his death was a substitutionary atonement for sin, not broken hearts, or any other temporal malady. The main, and according to the Apostle Paul, ‘of FIRST importance’ thing, was Christ’s death and resurrection for sin. (1 Cor 15:1-4)

So why the overwhelming emphasis on by-products of the greatest act of love in human history these days, instead of the ‘main thing’? Are we so entrenched in a false humanistic form of Christianity, in which God exists mainly to serve us, that we are blind to the words on the pages of scripture? Or is the opinion that a strictly human decision cast the final vote for a person’s salvation (thus robbing God of His sovereignty over the souls of men) the culprit?

I am at a loss to explain it, but these days I hear every reason except OUR SIN being the reason Christ went to the Cross and was raised up – and I don’t go ‘heresy hunting’. there are a few stalwarts who keep the ‘main thing’ the main thing, but just a few.

Why? Have I missed the point?

According to the Apostle Paul, two facts of the Gospel of Jesus Christ are 1) His death for our sins and 2) His bodily resurrection from the dead.

“For what I received I passed on to you as of first importance: that Christ died for our sins according to the Scriptures, that he was buried, that he was raised on the third day according to the Scriptures, and that he appeared to Peter,b and then to the Twelve. 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. Then he appeared to James, then to all the apostles, and last of all he appeared to me also, as to one abnormally born.” (1 Cor 15:3-8)

If we claim to be Christians and have ‘accepted’ Jesus Christ for some other reason than His death for our sins, and in our place, we have reason to question our very salvation. This is the first point of the precious Gospel of Jesus Christ.

Paul further asserts in the same chapter in 1 Corinthians that if Christ’s bodily resurrection from the dead is not true, our very faith, individually and corporately, is a sham.

“If there is no resurrection of the dead, then not even Christ has been raised. 14 And if Christ has not been raised, our preaching is useless and so is your faith. More than that, we are then found to be false witnesses about God, for we have testified about God that he raised Christ from the dead. But he did not raise him if in fact the dead are not raised. For if the dead are not raised, then Christ has not been raised either. And if Christ has not been raised, your faith is futile; you are still in your sins. Then those also who have fallen asleep in Christ are lost. If only for this life we have hope in Christ, we are to be pitied more than all men.(1 Cor 15:13-19).

Some would tell you, that by all the tests of the actual historicity of any event in human history, the bodily resurrection of Jesus Christ stands far above anything else accepted both popularly and scientifically, as historical fact.

Food for thought….. 

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From Pulpit Magazine, 7 April 2009

As Christians we must understand that whatever opposes God’s Word or departs from it in any way is a danger to the very cause of truth. Passivity toward known error is not an option for the Christian. Staunch intolerance of error is built into the very fabric of Scripture. And tolerance of known error is anything but a virtue.

Jesus clearly and unashamedly affirmed the utter exclusivity of Christianity. He said, “I am the way, the truth, and the life. No one comes to the Father except through Me” (John 14:6). “Nor is there salvation in any other, for there is no other name under heaven given among men by which we must be saved” (Acts 4:12). Obviously, that sort of exclusivity is fundamentally incompatible with post-modern tolerance.

Truth and error cannot be combined to yield something beneficial. Truth and error are as incompatible as light and darkness. “What fellowship has righteousness with lawlessness? And what communion has light with darkness? And what accord has Christ with Belial? Or what part has a believer with an unbeliever? And what agreement has the temple of God with idols?” (2 Corinthians 6:14-16).

We can’t tell the world, “This is truth, but whatever you want to believe is fine, too. It’s not fine. Scripture commands us to be intolerant of any idea that denies the truth.

Lest anyone misunderstand, I’m not defending dogmatism on any and every theological issue. Some things in Scripture are not perfectly clear. But the central teachings of Scripture (in particular, those things related to the way of salvation) are so simple and so clear that even a child can understand.

Those things which are necessary to be known, believed, and observed, for salvation, are so clearly propounded and opened in some place of scripture or other, that not only the learned, but the unlearned, in a due use of ordinary means, may attain unto a sufficient understanding of them. (Westminster Confession, 1:7).

All the truth that is necessary for our salvation can be easily understood in a true way by anyone who applies common sense and due diligence in seeking to understand what the Bible teaches. And that truth — the core message of Scripture — is incompatible with every other system of belief. We ought to be dogmatic about it.

No wonder post-modernism, which prides itself on being tolerant of every competing world-view, is nonetheless hostile to biblical Christianity. Even the most determined post-modernist recognizes that biblical Christianity by its very nature is totally incompatible with a position of uncritical broad-mindedness. If we accept the fact that Scripture is the objective, authoritative truth of God, we are bound to see that every other view is not equally or potentially valid.

There is no need to seek middle ground through dialogue with proponents of anti-Christian world-views, as if the truth could be refined by the dialectical method. It is folly to think truth given by divine revelation needs any refining or updating. Nor should we imagine that we can meet opposing world-views on some philosophically neutral ground. The ground between us is not neutral. If we really believe the Word of God is true, we know that everything opposing it is error. And we are to yield no ground whatsoever to error.

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Here is the question: WHAT was finished? WHY did Christ die? Understand that rightly, and you understand Christianity. Discuss.