Hated

TODAY'S SPECIAL: 1 John 3:11-24

TO CHEW ON: "Do not marvel, my brethren, if the world hates you." 1 John 3:13

There is within the DNA of the gospel, something that "the world" finds intrinsically offensive. I'm not sure if I can put my finger on it exactly but it seems to have something to do with:

• Jesus' claims of uniqueness ("'I am the way the truth and the life.'" John 14:6) and Christianity's tone of certainty about Jesus as the only way to God ("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).

• Jesus' certainty about the fate of anyone who doesn't believe in Him (" 'He who believes in the Son has everlasting life; and he who does not believe the Son shall not see life, but the wrath of God abides on him.' ” John 3:36)

• God's authority versus our human dislike of anyone being the boss of us (Satan tapped into that when, in answer to Eve's objection to eating Eden's forbidden fruit, he contradicted God and said " 'You shall not surely die' " - Genesis 3:4,5)

• The way the gospel cancels out our human efforts to save ourselves ("But we are all like an unclean thing, And all our righteousnesses are like filthy rags; We all fade as a leaf, And our iniquities, like the wind, Have taken us away" - Isaiah 64:6).

Though western societies have long tolerated, even upheld Christian beliefs, a new definition of "tolerance" is chilling the atmosphere toward Christians. Increasingly attempts to defend a lifestyle that corresponds with the Bible's standards are even labeled hate speech (in that such defenses are seen as intolerant of alternate lifestyles). (For an exposé of this new intolerant tolerance, read Albert Mohler's interview with theologian D. A. Carson after the release of Carson's new book The Intolerance of Tolerance.)

To those of us who have grown up at a time and in a place where Christian ideas were mainstream, this is a shock. We're not used to being disliked, ridiculed, made fun of, even hated. But in the grand scheme of history, love of Christianity and Christians is the exception rather than the rule.

What do we do about this? Our gut reaction—my gut reaction—is to pray that things will change, that the climate toward Christians will warm. But that's not what the early Christians did. Look at how they prayed after Peter and John were imprisoned, then hauled before the Jewish rulers and told to shut up or else:

"And now, O Lord, hear their threats, and give us, your servants, great boldness in preaching your word. Stretch out your hand with healing power; may miraculous signs and wonders be done through the name of your holy servant Jesus” Acts 4:29-30 NLT

Do we dare pray the same way?

PRAYER: Dear Jesus, I love such boldness in the face of persecution. Help me to have the mindset that isn't cowed by criticism and hatred, but takes courage in who You are and what You can do. Please give me New Testament boldness. Amen.

MORE: D. A. Carson says...

"...I want to argue that people have the right to believe or not to believe, to believe what they want, and yet the secular wants our beliefs to be so privatized that they have nothing to say to the public arena. ...But Christians can’t live that way. ... What Christians cannot allow is to keep their voices silent just because they’re Christians" - D. A. Carson, "Tolerance on Trial: A Conversation with D. A. Carson.

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Unless otherwise noted all Scripture quotations are taken from the New King James Version®. Copyright © 1982 by Thomas Nelson, Inc. Used by permission. All rights reserved.

Is sin just an opinion?

TODAY'S SPECIAL: 1 John 3:1-10

TO CHEW ON: "Whoever commits sin also commits lawlessness, and sin is lawlessness." 1 John 3:4

More and more our society is losing its connection to moral absolutes. Justin P. McBrayer (a Colorado professor of philosophy) writes recently in the Opinionator column of the New York Times: "What would you say if you found out that our public schools were teaching children it is not true to say that it's wrong to kill people for fun or cheat on tests? Would you be surprised?"

He goes on to describe his visit to his son's Grade 2 classroom where two definitions hung over the bulletin board:

"Fact: Something that is true about a subject and can be tested or proven.

Opinion: What someone thinks, feels or believes."

These two definitions, he points out, leave no room for things that are true even if no once can prove them and things that we believe which can also be proven, like historical facts. He found assignments where kids were asked to categorize statements as facts or opinions. When sorting statements such as  "Copying homework assignments is wrong" and "Cursing in school is inappropriate behaviour" the correct answer was that they were opinions. His conclusion:

"In summary, our public schools teach students that all claims are either facts or opinions and that all value and moral claims fall into the latter camp. The punchline: there are no moral facts. And if there are no moral facts, then there are no moral truths" - reported by Dr. Albert Mohler in "The Briefing 03-20-15," original article:  "Why Our Children Don't Think There Are Moral Facts").

This, of course, is a far cry from what the Bible teaches. Today's reading from 1 John 3 repeats the word "sin" in various forms ten times. Sin, by its very definition, assumes that moral facts (truths) exist:

[Sin - hamartia: to miss the mark; to err, be mistaken; to wander from the law of Gd; violate God's law.]

What is sin, according to the Bible?

• The verse we're focusing on defines sin as lawlessness or rebellion against God's law - 1 John 3:4.

• Unrestrained talk and foolishness are both called sin - Proverbs 10:19; 24:9.

• Contempt for others is sin - Proverbs 14:21.

• Whatever is not done from faith is sin - Romans 14:23.

• Failing to do something good when we have the ability/opportunity to do it is sin - James 4:17.

• All unrighteousness is sin - 1 John 5:17.

Though governing our lives by these standards may put us increasingly out of step with a world that insists God's standards are mere opinions, I'd rather find myself in the company that John describes at the beginning of the chapter: "called children of God," "like Him," full of the "hope" of seeing Him. As a result I need to line up my life with His standards of purity (1 John 3:1-3) no matter what others think of them.

PRAYER: Dear God, help me grow in my sensitivity and abhorrence to the things You consider sin and to live for the day I see You. Amen.

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Unless otherwise noted all Scripture quotations are taken from the New King James Version®. Copyright © 1982 by Thomas Nelson, Inc. Used by permission. All rights reserved.

Spirit of antichrist

TODAY'S SPECIAL: 1 John 4:1-12

TO CHEW ON: "By this you know the Spirit of God: every spirit that confesses that Jesus Christ has come in the flesh is from God, and every spirit that does not confess Jesus is from God is not from God. This is the spirit of antichrist, which you heard was coming, and now is in the world already." 1 John 4:2-3

Professor Albert Mohler writes of a Rev. Klaas Hendrikse and new developments in the PKN, a mainstream Protestant denomination in the Netherlands:

"Pastor Hendrikse doesn’t believe in life after death, nor even in God as a supernatural being. He told the BBC that he has 'no talent' for believing historic and orthodox doctrines. 'God is not a being at all,' he says, 'but just an experience.'

Furthermore, as Pigott (the BBC reporter who broke this story) reports, 'Mr. Hendrikse describes the Bible’s account of Jesus’s life as a mythological story about a man who may never have existed, even if it is a valuable source of wisdom about how to lead a good life.'”

According to 1 John 4:2-3, such views are not new. They were present in the early church, persist to this day, and shouldn't confuse us. John labels the spirit from which they come the "spirit of antichrist."

And how can we inoculate ourselves from becoming infected with this spirit? By becoming familiar with God's word and what it says about Jesus. Because beliefs not founded on God's word become something other than Christianity entirely.

Professor Hijme Stoffels of the Free University of Amsterdam called the new approach to Christianity in the Netherlands “somethingism.” The majority of Dutch citizens, he explains, desire some form of spirituality, but not the God of the Bible: “There must be something between heaven and earth, but to call it ‘God’ and even ‘a personal God,’ for the majority of Dutch is a bridge too far” - Hijme Stoffels,  quoted in "Dutch rethink Christianity for a doubtful world."

Let's get to know what the Bible says and cling to it. Or we are apt to find ourselves taken in by this antichrist spirit, which is alive and well all around us.

PRAYER: Dear God, please help me to learn Your Word so I can detect this antichrist spirit. Help me not to become infected by it. Amen.

MORE: Today is the Feast of St. Simon and Saint Jude

The liturgy for this day begins with the following collect:

"O God, we thank you for the glorious company of the apostles, and especially on this day for Simon and Jude; and we pray that, as they were faithful and zealous in their mission, so we may with ardent devotion make known the love and mercy of our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ; who lives and reigns with you and the Holy Spirit, one God, for ever and ever. Amen."

Read Dr. Albert Mohler's article "A Laboratory for Christianity's Destruction."
Read Robert Pigott's "Dutch rethink Christianity for a doubtful world."

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Unless otherwise noted all Scripture quotations are taken from the New King James Version®. Copyright © 1982 by Thomas Nelson, Inc. Used by permission. All rights reserved.

What authority determines your course?

TODAY'S SPECIAL: 2 Timothy 4:1-18

TO CHEW ON: "For the time will come when they will not endure sound doctrine, but according to their own desires, because they have itching ears, they will heap up for themselves teachers; and they will turn their ears away from the truth and be turned aside to fables." 2 Timothy 4:3,4

Such a time has come for the church, especially over the issue of blessing same sex marriages. Numerous books have lately come out by professing Christians that are pro same-sex unions (see this Publisher's Weekly article).

Writers of these books usually argue that Bible passages that speak clearly against homosexuality* have been misinterpreted and are saying something different than what they seem to say.

Dr. Albert Mohler, president of Southern Baptist Theological Seminary, has put together a book (God and the Gay Christian? A Response to Matthew Vines**)) refuting one of these books (God and the Gay Christian by Matthew Vines). In Mohler's book, Mohler and four other theologians speak to the arguments Vines makes.

In the chapter titled "What Has the Church Believed and Taught?" Denny Burk quotes liberal theologian Luke Timothy Johnson who, to his credit, is one who admits that the Bible doesn't come out favoring same-sex relationships. In fact, he names the authority that proponents of gay marriage are really following. He says:

"I have little patience with efforts to make Scripture say something other than what it says, through appeals to linguistic or cultural subtleties. The exegetical situation is straightforward: we know what the text says. But what are we to do with what the text says? … I think it is important to state clearly that we do, in fact, reject the straightforward commands of Scripture, and appeal instead to another authority when we declare that same-sex unions can be holy and good. And what exactly is that authority? We appeal explicitly to the weight of our own experience and the experience thousands of others have witnessed to, which tells us that to claim our own sexual orientation is in fact to accept the way in which God has created us" (quoted in God and the Gay Christian - A Response to Matthew Vines? p. 54)

More and more churches and individual Christians that hold to the traditional interpretation of the Bible on contentious issues like gay marriage are being pushed into a corner by the powers of political correctness and public opinion. In this context it's really important that we settle for ourselves (corporately and personally) who and what our authority is in these matters.

Do we set our course by the Bible's authority or are we too heaping up for ourselves fables (new authorities like experience)? We need to determine to set our course by the true North Star of God's word, not the flashy satellites of experience and public opinion that orbit the sky of our culture.

PRAYER: Dear God, in these times when the authority of Your word is being questioned, help me to stay true to it and You. Help me to live my life by Your standards, not the standards of the society around me. Amen.


* Bible passages that speak about homosexuality are: Genesis 19:5; Leviticus 18:22; Leviticus 20:13; Romans 1:26-27; 1 Corinthians 6:9; and 1 Timothy 1:10. 

** Download the free pdf of God and the Gay Christian? A Response to Matthew Vines HERE.


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Unless otherwise noted all Scripture quotations are taken from the New King James Version®. Copyright © 1982 by Thomas Nelson, Inc. Used by permission. All rights reserved.