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My apologetics book, Four Letter Words: Conversations on Faith’s Beauty and Logic, is FREE for download today and Friday (Apr 26, 27) on Amazon.com. Please spread the word.

Here’s the link: http://amzn.to/AolTXe

Here’s the books website: http://www.fourletterwords.org

There’s never been a culture more desperate for answers to life’s big questions; and never a culture more convinced no answers exist. As a Christian, I believe answers do exist. God has spoken in his Word. He has lifted the veil, and offered a glimpse into the deepest truths of life, love, and existence. We may not understand completely, but we can understand truly. Here are the chapters:

1 FOUR LETTER WORDS. In today’s global village, isn’t it unreasonable to suggest the Bible has a monopoly on truth? Is the message of Jesus a lunatic’s curse or heaven’s blessing?

2 TRUE. Who says your truth has to be my truth too? Can’t we both be right? What is truth and where can I find it?

3 KNOW. How do we know what we know? Is faith a weak link in the Christian’s chain of knowing? Doesn’t science contradict the Bible?

4 PAIN. Why is there pain and suffering in the world? Why does my life hurt? When will God stop the pain?

5 OUCH. Is suffering real or just an illusion? Does Jesus care? Is he strong enough to heal my wounds?

6 EVIL. Do good and evil really exist? How do I tell the difference? Should Christians be judgmental? Who’s to say what’s right and wrong?

7 WORD. What makes the Bible so special? Isn’t it just one among many valid options? Isn’t all truth God’s truth?

8 DAMN. Is hell real? Will God send people there? Why? How can hell be consistent with God’s love? Doesn’t love win in the end?

9 WAIT. Sexuality is a normal part of life, so, if we love each other, why wait? Wasn’t the Bible written for a different time and place? Why should we enforce its ancient values today?

10 HOPE. No philosophy or religion has ever given the world as much hope as biblical Christianity. A beautiful story of interlocking truths, revealing the heart of a Father who loves you. Why not try Jesus?

Remember the Cross of Christ

There has never been a message so amazing as the gospel. No religion offers anything like it. Its astonishing gift of grace sets the gospel of Jesus Christ in a class by itself. Paul summarized the gospel in one sentence, so simple we easily overlook its riches:

“For I delivered to you as of first importance what I also received, that Christ died for our sins according to the Scriptures, and that He was buried, and that He was raised on the third day according to the Scriptures,” 1 Corinthians 15:3, 4, NAS95.

This gospel ranks highest on our list of biblical truths; it is “of first importance.” There is no truth in Scripture more important for Christians to comprehend, cherish, rest upon, and communicate to a needy world.

The core of the gospel lies in five monosyllables:  Christ died for our sins.

A little bit of history: “Christ died.”

A little bit of theology: “For our sins.”

Our great task is to keep telling that bit of history coupled with that bit of theology for all generations, till the Lord returns.

Let’s chew on this one grammatically…

The Subject:  Christ. The subject of a sentence performs the action of a sentence. Any right understanding of the gospel recognizes Jesus as the central actor in a cosmic drama that spans the ages. Christ goes to war against Sin, Satan, and Death. He does this singlehandedly, without aid from me or you. He is the focal point of the gospel’s attention, and to divert attention to anyone else’s performance shatters the gospel’s integrity.

The full name and title of Christ would be Our Lord Jesus Christ. It’s not a hard and fast rule, but each word emphasizes something different about him.

• When Scripture writers wish to emphasize his human nature, they call him Jesus.
• When they wish to emphasize his divine nature, they call him Lord.
• When they wish to emphasize his unique personhood as the God-man who came forth on a mission from God, they call him Christ, the Greek equivalent of the Hebrew term, Messiah.

Any accurate communication of the gospel will make Christ central. He is the sun, and all other truths orbit him. I get jittery whenever I hear a “gospel presentation” that makes US central, our works, our response, our efforts, our self-reformation, our act of giving something to God. No!  Christ is and must remain the great subject of salvation, and any gospel that doesn’t preach Christ is no gospel at all.

The Verb: died. The Greek verb is in a tense we don’t have in English: the aorist tense (say AIR-ist).  It’s a simple past tense, with a slight twist. Grammarians might call this a punctiliar aorist, meaning he died once, and he died once for all. HIS WORK IS FINISHED, and it was finished one dark day, two thousand years ago.

The terms of the Crucifixion are brutal, and worth remembering on Good Friday. Here is a medical look at Christ’s scourging:

“The heavy whip is brought down with full force again and again across the  shoulders, back and legs. At first the heavy thongs cut through the skin only. Then, as  the blows continue, they cut deeper into the subcutaneous tissues, producing first an  oozing of blood from the capillaries and veins of the skin, and finally spurting arterial  bleeding from vessels in the underlying muscles. The small balls of lead first produce  large, deep bruises which are broken open by subsequent blows. Finally the skin is hanging  in long ribbons and the entire area is an unrecognizable mass of torn, bleeding tissues.  When it is determined by the centurion in charge that the prisoner is near death, the  beating is finally stopped.” [Truman Davis, "The Crucifixion of Jesus" Arizona Medicine, March, 1965, p. 185]

On this Good Friday, it’s good to remember the death Jesus died. Please don’t turn away from this, today of all days. Here is a doctor’s description of the medical effects the crucifixion:

Most commonly, the feet were fixed to the front of the stipes by means of an iron spike driven through the first or second inter metatarsal space, just distal to the tarsometatarsal joint. It is likely that the deep peroneal nerve and branches of the medial and lateral plantar nerves would have been injured by the nails. Although scourging may have resulted in considerable blood loss, crucifixion per se was a relatively bloodless procedure, since no major arteries, other than perhaps the deep plantar arch, pass through the favored anatomic sites of transfixion.

The major pathophysiologic effect of crucifixion, beyond the excruciating pain, was a marked interference with normal respiration, particularly exhalation. The weight of the body, pulling down on the outstretched arms and shoulders, would tend to fix the intercostal muscles in an inhalation state and thereby hinder passive exhalation. Accordingly, exhalation was primarily diaphragmatic, and breathing was shallow. It is likely that this form of respiration would not suffice and that hypercarbia would soon result. The onset of muscle cramps or tetanic contractions, due to fatigue and hypercarbia, would hinder respiration even further.

Adequate exhalation required lifting the body by pushing up on the feet and by flexing the elbows and adducting the shoulders. However, this maneuver would place the entire weight of the body on the tarsals and would produce searing pain. Furthermore, flexion of the elbows would cause rotation of the wrists about the iron nails and cause fiery pain along the damaged median nerves. Lifting of the body would also painfully scrape the scourged back against the rough wooden stipes.  Muscle cramps and paresthesias of the outstretched and uplifted arms would add to the discomfort.  As a result, each respiratory effort would become agonizing and tiring and lead eventually to asphyxia.

The actual cause of death by crucifixion was multifactorial and varied somewhat with each ease, but the two most prominent causes probably were hypovolemie shock and exhaustion asphyxia. Other possible contributing factors included dehydration, stress-induced arrhythmias, and congestive heart failure with the rapid accumulation of pericardial and perhaps pleural effusions. Crucifracture (breaking the legs below the knees), if performed, led to an asphyxic death within minutes.

Death by crucifixion was, in every sense of the word, excruciating (Latin, excruciatus, or “out of the cross”).

It’s easy to emotionally sanitize the Cross. It’s so easy to read, “Christ died…” and forget the awfulness of it. What Scriptures describe in two little words, all the words ever spoken or written could never do justice to. It was a real death, in a real body, of a real person, in real history. This is the heart of the gospel. Christ died…

Why?

The Prepositional Phrase: for our sins. The first two words of the gospel are history. These next three represent theology.  We state this so casually that we can easily overlook its meaning.

The Greek construction here consists of the preposition huper (“for”, say HU-pair) plus the plural noun (sins) spelled  a certain way. This spelling makes it a grammatical form called the genitive case. Huperplus the genitive indicates SUBSTITUTION. We could translate this: Christ died AS A SUBSTITUTE FOR our sins.

This is the biblical emphasis of the message of the Cross. Christ did not die simply as our moral example. He did not die simply to prove his love. He did not die simply to topple Satan. He did not die simply to advance God’s kingdom and cause in the world.

He died SUPREMELY, and above all other reasons, as a substitutionary sacrifice for our sins. God punished him for our sins instead of punishing us. God laid our sins on him. God executed him.  Whatever condemnation, wrath, punishment, hell, and agony our sins deserved, Christ endured in full measure.

What great love! Who can comprehend such a sacrifice? Who could fathom the agony of the Cross and the love that motivated it?

This is the gospel; it is the only gospel worth the name. It is the only gospel the Bible knows. It is the only gospel that makes the Christian’s heart skip a beat.  It is the only gospel that saves a soul.

Do you believe?

Bible scholars call this the vicarious atonement, or the substitutionary atonement for sin.  Christ died for our sins, as our subsitute, in our place.

He left his Father’s throne above
(so free, so infinite his grace!),
emptied himself of all but love,
and bled for Adam’s helpless race.
‘Tis mercy all, immense and free,
for O my God, it found out me!

No condemnation now I dread;
Jesus, and all in him, is mine;alive in him, my living Head,
and clothed in righteousness divine,
bold I approach th’ eternal throne,and claim the crown, through Christ my own.
Bold I approach th’ eternal throne,
and claim the crown, through Christ my own.

Amazing love, how can it be,
That Thou, My God, shouldst die for me. (Charles Wesley)

Thank God for Good Friday. Thank God for the Cross.  Thank God for Jesus. Thank God for a gospel so rich we can never fathom it, but so simple we can say it in five monosyllables: Christ died for our sins.

For comments today, please only brief expressions of gratitude to God, or favorite brief Scripture verses.

Happy St Patrick’s Day

In the year AD 389, a boy was born in Britain; they named him Patick. His father and grandfather were both active in the Celtic church… It might surprise you to know that St Patrick was not Irish and he was not Catholic.

When he was a teenager, a band of pirates plundered his village and took Patrick and many other young men captives. They traveled to Ireland and were sold into slavery.

For the next six years, Patrick herded swine as a slave. Although he was reared in a Christian home, he had never embraced Jesus for himself. But during those years of captivity, he realized that he was a sinner and Jesus was the Savior. Patrick put his faith in Christ and was born again. Shortly after that, Patrick escaped from slavery and traveled back to his hometown. His relatives were happy to have him back, but Patrick himself was not happy.

He had a burden he couldn’t shake for the people of Ireland who had no clue about the gospel of Jesus.

Patrick entered seminary to prepare to be a missionary. His family fought him. They were wealthy. Patrick should stay at home.

He turned his back on his money.

In the year 432, Patrick returned to Ireland, the land that held him as a slave. The people there worshipped the sun, moon, wind, water, fire, and rocks. They believed in spirits that inhabited the trees and hills. They practiced magic and sacrifice – including human sacrifice – to placate the angry gods. They did the rites and rituals of the druids and shamans and pagan priests.

Patrick preached the gospel, organized churches, and moved on to places that had never before heard of Jesus. He single-handedly brought the message of Christ to the whole nation. When people came to Christ, they were given intensive training in the Scriptures and encouraged to become involved in the ministry themselves.

Twelve times he barely escaped murder. One time, he narrowly escaped being kidnapped.

Yet, for 30 years, Patrick of Ireland gladly spent and was spent for the gospel. He planted over 200 churches, and baptized over 100,000 converts from dead paganisim into the family of the living God – faith alone in Christ alone.

As his dying words, Patrick wrote these words:

Patrick, the sinner… an unlearned man to be sure, that none should ever say that it was my ignorance that accomplished any small thing which I did or showed in accordance with God’s will; but judge thus, and let it be most truly believed, that it was the gift of God. And this is my confession before I die.

Have you ever found a cause worth giving yourself to, body, soul, and spirit? Have you ever found a mission worth living for, and mission worth dying for? See, we are all spending and being spent for something. What is your something? What do you have to show for all the work of your hands? Where is the fruit of your labors? Are you proud of it? Will it stand the test of time and eternity?

Eternal Security #2

A continuation…

Objections

Not all Christians agree on the doctrine of Eternal Security. This is one of those areas where reasonable Christians disagree. A good number of godly, scholarly, biblical evangelical, born-again Christians would deny Eternal Security. They offer two main objections: 1) that the Bible doesn’t teach it; 2) that it leads to spiritual laziness.

1) The Bible doesn’t teach it.

Opponents to the doctrine say the Bible teaches just the opposite, that you can, in fact lose your salvation. They have a whole list of verses that they claim teach this. However, if you analyze these verses one by one you will discover that they really do not teach against Eternal Security at all. Rather these verses either talk about people who weren’t saved in the first place, or about people who lose the joy of their salvation without losing their salvation. There are about six
main Bible verses routinely brought up. We could spend hours here, but I’m only going to offer one or two sentences on each verse. OPEN YOUR BIBLE… and make some notes!!

1. Matt. 10:22. This verse is about deliverance from physical destruction at
the end of the Great Tribulation, not about enduring spiritually
to the end of your life in order to obtain eternal salvation.
2. Hebr. 3:14. The issue here is the word “end.” Until the end. End here
refers to the end of the process of salvation, not to the end of
your life. In the context we learn that getting saved is a
process. You are saved if you start the process of salvation,
and then bring it through to completion by faith in Christ. That
is the goal or end in view in this verse.
3. Hebr. 6:4-6. One of the “mother-ships” of conditional security. This passage is about people who dipped their toes in the
water of salvation, but were never saved.
4. 2 Pet. 2:20-22. Again, this verse refers to people who were really never saved.
5. James 2:17; 2:20; 2:26. An act of mind only (faith) without a choice in the will (works) is useless (dead). Still, though, we believe that life true faith does result in a life of good works (Eph 2:10).
6. Col. 1:23. The word “if” here in the KJV should be translated since.

These are some of the scriptural objections to Eternal Security. We have only mentioned six verses, and there are others. But if you really study them in context, you will see that all of the objection verses would be correctly interpreted in two categories: either the people weren’t saved in the first place; or they were and are saved, but have lost the joy of their salvation.

Tomorrow, the objection that eternal security produces spiritual laziness, then on to the mountain of positive affirmations of once saved alway saved.

One parting shot… is conditional security really security at all? Is a conditional forgiveness really forgiveness at all?

Yet in all these things we are more than conquerors through Him who loved us. For I am persuaded that neither death nor life, nor angels nor principalities nor powers, nor things present nor things to come, nor height nor depth, nor any other created thing, shall be able to separate us from the love of God which is in Christ Jesus our Lord. (Romans 8:37-39, NKJV).

Secure Forever, part 1

Can a Christian lost his/her salvation? I’ve had a lot of questions about this topic lately, so here goes. I’m reposting these on my Facebook Author page too, and I’d love for you to go there and click the like button. Thanks.

Sooner or later, every believer in Jesus Christ must come to grips with one all important question: Who will bear the burden of my eternal life? Or we might ask, On whose shoulders will rest the weight of bringing me to God and ultimately getting me into heaven?

Scripture supplies a most magnificent answer: Cast your burden on the LORD, And He shall sustain you; He shall never permit the righteous to be moved. (Psalms 55:22, NKJV).

In its short form, Eternal Security means “once saved, always saved.” It means that you cannot lose your salvation; even if you tried. What a wonderful confidence we can have! The biggest question of life — Where will I spend eternity? — has been answered once for all.

Definition: Eternal Security means that if you are truly saved, you can never be unsaved, not even for a moment. God will not permit it. He has set your foundation upon the Lord Jesus Christ, and since God will not permit Christ to be shaken, he will not permit you to be shaken either.

Many believers, even godly Christians and scholarly Christians, do not believe in eternal security. They admit into their concept of salvation certain conditions under which you might lose it. I would ask, What good is a salvation that is not really a salvation? But we won’t get into all the problems with the other position… (maybe later? depends)

Here are some definitions of eternal security from some Bible teachers.

• Charles C. Ryrie. Eternal Security: The work of God which guarantees that the gift of God (salvation), once received, is possessed forever and cannot be lost.
• Harry Ironside [for many years pastor at Moody Church]. When we speak of the eternal security of the believer, what do we mean? We mean that once a poor sinner has been regenerated by the Word and the Spirit of God, once he has received a new life and a new nature and has been made partaker of the divine nature, once he has been justified from every charge before the throne of God, it is absolutely impossible that that man should ever again be a lost soul.
• Augustus Hodge. They whom God hath accepted in his Beloved, effectively called and sanctified by his Spirit, can neither totally nor finally fall away from the state of grace; but shall certainly persevere therein to the end, and be eternally saved. [a definition of perserverance]
• R.T. Kendall [who succeeded Martyn Lloyd-Jones at Westminster Chapel, London]. We are not saying once saved, always obedient. We are not saying once saved, always perfect. We are not saying once saved always godly. It is once saved, always saved.

These are excellent definitions for Eternal Security. I am convinced that Eternal Security is best understood from the divine perspective. In other words, this is far more something about God and what he does than it is about us and what we have. Therefore based on Psalm 55:2 and many other Scriptures, here is my simple definition of Eternal Security.

ETERNAL SECURITY MEANS that God himself bears all the burden for me to be secure forever. 

Why Grace-Oriented People Still Need God’s Law or Bring Back the Ten Commandments!

If you know me, you know me as a champion of the grace of God. I have dedicated my ministry to preaching and teaching the truths of God’s amazing grace. Along with that, I’ve dedicated my life to destroying legalism. I hate it, in Christian love.

You also know I haven’t blogged for a while, so this is something important to me. Thanks for reading.

Today’s post is prompted by a conversation with my wife. In her business ethics class at a Christian university, she asked her students how many of them would hire someone they knew was cheating on their spouse. Most students said they would. Then she asked how many would go into a business partnership with someone cheating on their spouse. Most opted out, but still quite a few said they would. When Margi pointed out that a man who would cheat on his most important relationship would find it easier to cheat on you, few were swayed. The class discussion moved on to plagiarism. Most were in favor of forgiving the plagiarist and letting him/her write a substitute paper. When it came to Bible majors or seminary students, most were still tolerant, though a reluctant few brought down the hammer of justice.

Bottom line: grace has been morphed into an ultra-tolerant, indiscriminate leniency. I have written on that before (Why Grace Isn’t Leniency) so I won’t cover that old ground again.

What I want to say today is simple: our culture is dissolving before our very eyes because we have removed GOD’S LAW FROM THE CHURCH. Yep, this is me, a Champion of Grace, pleading for grace-oriented Christians to restore the law of God to its rightful place in the grace-oriented church of Jesus Christ today. Yes, it’s the age of grace. Yes, Christ brings grace. Yes, we are saved by grace and live by grace.

But does that mean we throw out the Law? Does that mean the Ten Commandments no longer have a place in our lives?

No and no. Here’s why:

1. Under grace, the goal of the Christian life is conformity to Jesus Christ.

God is committed to reproducing the integrity and love of Christ in his people. This happens by God’s power; it is not something we work up for ourselves. Only Jesus can live the WJJD lifestyle and he will do it again through his people. If you have been born again, Christ lives in you. He constantly exerts an inward force to make you more and more like himself. And he doesn’t come with an off-switch. Grace is the power of God, by the agency of the Holy Spirit, reproducing the character and love of Christ inside of Christians.

You can’t read the epistles of Paul without bumping into this truth (I use Paul because few would argue against the assertion that he is the apostle of grace). For example:

• “I have been crucified with Christ; it is no longer I who live, but Christ lives in me; and the life which I now live in the flesh I live by faith in the Son of God, who loved me and gave Himself for me. (Galatians 2:20, NKJV).
• But God forbid that I should boast except in the cross of our Lord Jesus Christ, by whom the world has been crucified to me, and I to the world. (Galatians 6:14, NKJV).
• For whom He foreknew, He also predestined to be conformed to the image of His Son, that He might be the firstborn among many brethren. (Romans 8:29, NKJV).

2. Under grace, Jesus Christ was a Ten Commandments kind of person.

He did not come to destroy the Law and Prophets, but to fulfill them (Matt 5:17). You can’t understand the life of Christ without accepting his dedication to fulfill every “jot and tittle” of God’s law. His character reflected the character of God’s law, his knowledge reflected the wisdom of God’s law, his actions reflected obedience to God’s law, his preaching reflected the supremacy of God’s law. Nothing Jesus said or did contradicted even a syllable of God’s law. There are two important reasons for this…

3. The Laws of God reflect the heart of God. 

God’s laws are God’s laws because God’s heart is God’s heart. The commandments of Scripture are not random, disconnected requirements — they are expressions of the deepest truths woven into the universe and our psyches by the God who made us. Because God’s laws reflect God’s heart, they share a quality that is absolutely essential for our happiness and joy…

4. The Laws of God describe a life of LOVE.

Don’t forget how Jesus summarized God’s laws: “Teacher, which is the great commandment in the law?” Jesus said to him,” ‘You shall love the LORD your God with all your heart, with all your soul, and with all your mind.’ “This is the first and great commandment. “And the second is like it: ‘You shall love your neighbor as yourself.’ “On these two commandments hang all the Law and the Prophets.” (Matthew 22:36-40, NKJV).

Translation: TO CAST ASIDE GOD’S LAW IS TO CAST ASIDE THE ONLY SURE GUIDE TO LOVE WE HAVE. We are fallen, depraved people. We have no clue about what true love is. Until God explains that love means honest scales at the butcher shop (Lev 19:26), not sleeping with another man’s wife  or another woman’s husband (Ex 20:14), and not committing incest (Lev 18:6). Love means kindness to widows and orphans and maintaining your own integrity. Love means true worship, true speaking, true care for others. All of these things and more are in GOD’S LAW — covering every aspect of life. God’s law is a book of love, the New Testament even says so:

• Bear one another’s burdens, and so fulfill the law of Christ. (Galatians 6:2, NKJV).
• Owe no one anything except to love one another, for he who loves another has fulfilled the law. For the commandments, “You shall not commit adultery,” “You shall not murder,” “You shall not steal,” “You shall not bear false witness,” “You shall not covet,” and if there is any other commandment, are all summed up in this saying, namely, “You shall love your neighbor as yourself.” (Romans 13:8, 9, NKJV).
• So speak and so do as those who will be judged by the law of liberty. (James 2:12, NKJV).

5. Jesus lived a life of love because he obeyed God’s laws. 

He was a Ten Commandments kind of person. The Ten Commandments, along with all of God’s laws, are like an FBI profile of Jesus. That’s how he lived. That’s what he was like.

If you want an emotionally healthy life, if you want great relationships, if you want good boundaries in your life, you will keep the Ten Commandments. God’s laws describe the LIFE OF YOUR DREAMS. God is not interested in constricting your life; he wants to set you in a realm of true freedom and perfect liberty. His laws describe the heart of Christ… which leads us back to #1…

6. Under grace, God is reproducing the life of Christ inside you — and he lived a life in perfect harmony with God’s laws.

If Jesus lived a Ten Commandments lifestyle, and if God is reproducing the life of Christ in us by his Spirit, then God is reproducing a Ten Commandments (Law Affirming) life in all his children today.

We desperately need to know the whole Bible, including the Old Testament, including the LAW, if we are to ever have a clue what Christ is trying to reproduce in us. We need the Law as our map, our guide, the lamp to our feet. We need to know where God is taking us so we don’t fight him. We need to know what God has said so we exercise faith in accordance with his Words. To throw away the Law is to throw away THE ENDGAME AND OBJECTIVE OF GOD’S GRACE AS IT FUNCTIONS IN OUR LIVES. Says who? Says Paul himself:

• that the righteous requirement of the law might be fulfilled in us who do not walk according to the flesh but according to the Spirit. (Romans 8:4, NKJV).

He is saying that what God has been trying to create in your life since the beginning is what the Law has always taught.

What does this mean? It does NOT mean that we live UNDER the law. We don’t. “UNDER” is the wrong preposition. It does mean that the law is fulfilled IN US through Christ. As we abide in Christ, as we turn to him in dependency and faith, we will put into practice the laws of God day by day… which will produce a life of love… which will produce the life of our dreams… which is what the age of grace is all about.

It is not legalism, because it is not our power. It is not legalism because it is not external, it is Christ, by his Spirit, from the inside out. It is not legalism because it is not UNTO justification, but FROM justification, unto sanctification. It is not legalism, because it is not a demand on us, it is a demand on God. It is not legalism because it is a gift put into us through Christ himself at salvation and every day thereafter.

Jesus, Paul, James, Moses, and all the writers of Scripture were ANTI-LEGALISM but PRO-LAW. LEGALISM is humans by human effort seeking to merit the approval of God. But GRACE is God, by God’s effort, doing in and through us what we could never do for ourselves: making us like Christ.

We Christians made a big fuss about how the government has censored the Ten Commandments from our classrooms and the public arena. But haven’t we beaten them to the punch? Haven’t we so misconstrued Scripture that we’ve censored the Ten Commandments FROM THE CHURCH? We need — our young people especially — a return to the Law of God as a guide into a life of grace.

Have we as Christians become so tolerant in our attempts to be PC that we are hard to recognize as Christians?  Do we live as if there are no rules, no laws, no absolutes?  Have we morphed grace into bland leniency? Have we adopted antinomianism? The general rudeness in society, the lack of moral values, the embrace of any prodigal while still in the far country, the mushiness of our faith, and the miniscule difference between our lives and the lives of unbelievers, can all be traced to a departure from the whole counsel of God, including the Law of the Lord, which is perfect.

God bless Tim Tebow, Kirk Cameron, and those in the public eye willing to stand up for Jesus, for the Bible, for truth . . . For the law of the universe which happens to be the law of God recorded in Scripture.

Bring back the Ten Commandments, not as a way of salvation, but as a way of self-respecting love for God and others.

How do we reconcile grace and works? Simple: being confident of this very thing, that He who has begun a good work in you will complete it until the day of Jesus Christ; (Philippians 1:6, NKJV). God’s work — not ours alone– will create a life of love, a reproduction of the life of Christ in our lives. A life of God’s good, holy, and pure law which is, by definition, a life of love, which is by definition, the life you’ve always dreamed of.

Grace and law have kissed each other in Jesus Christ. May they kiss each other in your life too.

Let’s preach GRACE as the only means of fulfilling the law through the power of Christ in us.

Let’s preach LAW as guardian and guide of a life dedicated to God and his heart of love.

WORD

[Four Letter Words is available at a special price, one day only: $5.99 (list $13.99). Here's an excerpt from the chapter, WORD, click here to purchase specially inscribed/autographed copies of Four Letter Words] Please spread the word. Thanks.

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God Is…

The Apostle John detonated a religious explosion when he wrote, “God is love” (1 John 4:8). He actually wrote it twice (v. 16). No other religion ever made love the heartbeat of God.

Christians own “God is love.”

We might not have always radiated his ideal standards, but we’ve never budged from this mother of all religious premises. We don’t simply say God has love, or that God shows love, or that God—after he’s been fed enough sacrifices—is loving. No. We say, God is love. Followers of Jesus brought that message to the world. Like the original, original, Original Pancake House, there are many copies, but only one original.

That original, found in John’s first Epistle, only echoes a thousand whispers of biblical teaching. John didn’t invent this truth; he only summarized it from all that Scripture already said.

He supremely learned it from Jesus. Jesus taught, “Greater love has no one than this, than to lay down one’s life for his friends” (John 15:13) and, “For God so loved the world that He gave His only begotten Son, that whoever believes in Him should not perish but have everlasting life” (John 3:16).

Does love prove the superiority of the Bible? Only if a loving God is important to you. Otherwise, it makes no difference.

The Main Thing

The love of God is the main theme of the whole Bible. The different authors of the Bible’s sixty-six books, hold up God’s love like a diamond, and make it sparkle from a million angles.

Moses highlighted this love as part of God’s abiding marriage covenant with his people. If God was jealous, it was only because the people he loved went after other lovers.

David composed songs about God’s love—friend to friend, and man to God. For David, God wasn’t just “the Big Guy up there,” he was closer than a brother, and more gentle than a shepherd.

The Prophets painted God’s love as a portrait of a mother nursing her child, or a lover wooing his beloved. “The LORD has appeared of old to me, saying: ‘Yes, I have loved you with an everlasting love; Therefore with lovingkindness I have drawn you’” (Jeremiah 31:3).

The Gospels depict God’s love as a fire burning in Jesus’ heart. Sometimes it was warm and tender: when Jesus ate fish with his disciples, when he turned water to wine, and when he healed lepers and embraced society’s outcasts. Other times, his love burned red hot: when he drove the crooks out of the temple with a homemade whip, when he shredded the Pharisees for loading impossible burdens on people who sought God, and when he died for our sins—the Lamb of God who took away the sin of the world.

The Epistles (most of the rest of the New Testament) analyze God’s love. They tell us it flows from the heart of God in infinite measure, and that it’s grounded in the death of Christ. These books humble us by comparing our puny love to God’s massive love: “This is real love. It is not that we loved God, but that he loved us and sent his Son as a sacrifice to take away our sins” (1 John 4:10, NLT).

Every major part of the Bible teaches the love of God. In symbols, in ceremonies, in parables, in healings, in miracles, and in plain teaching, the love of God pulses from the Bible’s beginning to its end.

Search the religious literature of the world. Dig through the annals of history. Explore religious books from any culture, anywhere in the world. You’ll never find a match to the Bible’s beautiful claim that God is love.

Yes, God is more than love. But that he is love, and that his love is such a big part of him, makes me feel secure. In the Bible, I read a grand narrative of a God who made me, lost me, and loved me enough to buy me back at immeasurable cost. I feel safe with this God, and safe in his universe, now and forever. God’s love is a crazy big love, and I’m glad to rest in it.

Because of Love

Even so, we who follow Jesus still get in trouble for believing the Bible. How can we be so narrow to say that the Bible is God’s only book? Hasn’t God revealed himself in all the religions of humankind?

I know I’m only digging my hole deeper with some friends in this conversation, but I will say that if there is any truth or goodness in any other religious book or teacher, it is only a distorted memory from a race created by the Bible’s God, but now wandering in darkness away from him. The Bible’s teaching is original. Everything else is a copy of a copy of a copy.

I’ll hold up my shields till the spitballs subside.

If a God of love has inspired any book, the only real contender is the Bible…

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