Journey Outside the Camp

The Gospel precludes arrogance

Sometimes you hear the charge that Christians are arrogant. We have been accused as people who think they alone hold absolute truth and that their God is the only one and that their way is the only way. What arrogance! Christians! Bah!

The fact could not be further from the truth. The very nature of the gospel makes it impossible for us to be arrogant. This is because we understand that we are truly wretched people with nothing in us that makes us worthy to be saved from eternal damnation. We recognise that we have no merit that we can hold up to claim we deserve God's love. Rather, we deserve his righteous judgment.

But God decided on his own, to save us. We are stunned that God has shown us mercy. Such amazement causes us to look away from ourselves and to the one who has shown as such grace. Those who understand this, cannot be arrogant. Instead, we are deeply humbled. And we are excited to take what we've received and tell others about it, so that they too will be saved just as we have been.

The Bible says in Ephesians 2:8,9—"For by grace you have been saved through faith. And this is not your own doing; it is the gift of God, not a result of works, so that no one may boast."

And again in Titus 3:5,6—"...he saved us, not because of works done by us in righteousness, but according to his own mercy, by the washing of regeneration and renewal of the Holy Spirit, whom he poured out on us richly through Jesus Christ our Saviour..."

There is no arrogance in the gospel. Only a humble, face-to-the-ground gratefulness toward our Saviour.

Before the foundation of the world

When did God plan for Jesus to be the Saviour of the world? Did he watch Adam sin and then decide to come up with a plan to rescue him? And for everyone who came after Adam (including us), did God simply leave them to their own devices to accept or reject the saving work of Jesus Christ?

For both questions, the answer is a loud and emphatic "No!" What kind of a God would we have if he were merely a being who reacts (rather than being an initiator). What kind of a God would we have if we could take the credit for our own salvation? He would not seem in control, or in other words, sovereign. How glorious can such a God be?

"He [Christ] was foreknown before the foundation of the world but was made manifest in the last times for the sake of you who through him are believers in God, who raised him from the dead and gave him glory, so that your faith and hope are in God." (1 Peter 1:20)

"...Even as he [God] chose us in him [Christ] before the foundation of the world, that we should be holy and blameless before him." (Ephesians 1:4)

"...Everyone whose name has not been written before the foundation of the world in the book of life of the Lamb who was slain." (Revelation 13:8)

The phrase "before the foundation of the world" appears in all three of the above verses. In 1 Peter 1:20, the Bible tells us that even before God created the world and people, he had already planned to send his son Jesus Christ to die for our sins and pay our sin-debt. Imagine that! Before Adam was created, before the first man even thought of disbelieving God and rebel against him, God the Father had planned for Jesus to pay for Adam's and all our sin-debt. He decided this before the foundation of the world.

Ephesians 1:4 reveals more. God had planned for Jesus to be Saviour. And before the world was formed, he had already chosen those who would be saved by Jesus. Salvation is God's work alone. When we believe, it's because in eternity past, God had already decided we would believe. We take none of the credit for being saved. It is completely the work of God. He decided before the foundation of the world.

And Revelation 13:8 shows that those whom God chooses to save, he puts their name in the book of life. The names in the book were written before the foundation of the world.

For me, that is simply amazing. God is sovereign over all history. He orchestrated his whole salvation plan even before he created anything. He chose the people who would believe and put their names down in the book of life. No one can thwart God's plan. Jesus said in John 10:28, 29, "I give them eternal life, and they will never perish, and no one will snatch them out of my hand. My Father, who has given them to me, is greater than all, and no one is able to snatch them out of the Father's hand."

Absolutely no one can snatch away those whom God wants to save. When we stand before him at the end of our lives, he will ask, "And how is it you came to believe in Christ's act of salvation?" And our response will be, "You did it, Lord. You choose me, you paid for my sin-debt, and you gave me the faith to believe. I could do nothing to save myself." By saving us in the way that he did, God gets the glory, and we get the salvation.

This Good Friday, that's something I want to reflect on. Dying on the cross for us was something God had planned for in eternity past. And having Jesus die for us was the only way to destroy sin and its consequences. Jesus asked three times for God the Father to use some other way but God did not change plans (Matthew 26). If there had been another way that did not involve killing his own son, surely God would have taken that path. But he did not, and this to me, shows the enormity of sin's devastation, that to destroy it, God the Son had to die in order to overcome it.

This act of Jesus on Good Friday reminds me how deadly sin is and how much God loves us. He had no need to save us. As objects of wrath, he could destroy us with full justification, but he did not. He chose to show us grace and mercy and die for us instead. And Jesus had been waiting since eternity past to do this for us. He had prepared himself to do this before the foundation of the world. That reveals just how much he loves us.

Free will vs God's sovereignty

Here's an interesting perspective on the conundrum of the free will of man vs God's sovereignty. Let's look at how the Bible was written. The Bible contains the very words of God. 2 Timothy 3:16 says, "All scripture is breathed out by God..." (ESV). Paul is saying that God breathed out his words and the Biblical authors wrote them down. In other words, God is the author of every word of the Bible. Every sentence construction, every phrase, every metaphor; all of them are God's words. He chose to put them down this way.

On the other hand, we recognise that human agents did the actual writing. And we recognise that the 40 Biblical authors were not robots when they penned the words. There are of course, numerous times that God told them to write down specific messages ("Thus says the Lord...") but by and large, we can see the character of the author shine through in his words. John for example, in writing the Gospel of John, used much simpler Greek than Paul did in his letters. And Paul, out of his own volition, sat down to pen a letter to Philemon, asking him to reconcile with his slave Onesimus. In fact, many times Paul writes in his letters, "I, Paul, write this with my own hand..." just to prove that he is the author of the letter.

So which is it? Did men write the Bible with their own wills and personalities, or did God write the Bible? The answer of course is both. Yes, men did write the Bible. Often they chose to write out of their own will. They wrote in their own style, with their favourite vocabulary, using imagery and metaphor that they were familiar with. We can clearly see this as we read the Scripture. Yet, God is the ultimate author of the Bible. Every word comes from him. So even though Paul is writing to Philemon, the words that come out are God's words. This is a profound mystery. The Bible is written by God and also written by men. It is a perfect example of men exercising free will and God have complete sovereignty over his Word. To put it another way, the Bible (God's written Word) is 100% human and 100% divine (Isn't it amazing that Jesus, whom we call the living Word, is also 100% human and 100% divine?)

Now, there are those (like the Arminianists) who say that man has complete free will, which therefore means that God doesn't know ahead of time what we will choose but instead reacts to our choices. What are they to say about the human and divine nature of the Bible? If men had complete freedom to express themselves, does it mean that the Bible is not 100% breathed out by God? Or if they accept that the Bible is 100% breathed out by God, then why are there such varied tones and styles in the Bible? We can clearly see how each Biblical author writes differently from another.

A metaphor for this is like having two camps of people arguing about two different photos of the same object. The first camp argues that with the photo they have, the object is clearly a circle. The second camp argues that with the photo they have, the object is without a doubt a rectangle. And the two camps can't never get to a consensus as to whether the object is a circle or a reatangle. They finally turn to the creator of the object and ask him what shape it really is. And the creator says, "Yup." He pulls out the object. In three dimensions, it turns out to be a soda can. When view from its end, it does indeed look like a circle. And when viewed on its side, it is a rectangle. The object is both shapes at the same time; in fact it is more than both shapes combined. The two camps could not see this with their two-dimensional photos.

Such is free will and God's sovereignty. Is God sovereign? Yes, he is. Do men have free will? Yes, they do. Is this a profound truth and mystery. Yes and yes. One only needs to look at the Bible to see this interplay of man's free will and God's sovereignty living together in harmony. The truth is larger than what we understand, we two-dimensional creatures who have trouble comprehending a 3D God.

What's the difference between the soul and the spirit?

While teaching a roomful of Sunday School teachers this evening about man being a spirit inhabiting a body, one of the teachers, a friend of mine, asked why I didn't mention the soul. From what she understands, man has a soul and that's why he is a living person. Without the soul, the man is dead. When God illuminates the man with his truth by his Holy Spirit, the man then has a spirit in addition to his soul. So there is body, soul and spirit. So why don't we teach the children in our classes this, she wanted to know.

First of all, I acknowledge that she isn't wrong. says:

For the word of God is living and active, sharper than any two-edged sword, piercing to the division of soul and of spirit, of joints and of marrow, and discerning the thoughts and intentions of the heart.

Here, it is clear that there is a distinction between soul and spirit. The writer of Hebrews compares the soul and spirit to joints and marrow. Joints are the tough part of the bone while the marrow is the soft living tissue within. The word of God is described as a two-edged sword that is able to pierce the bone and split it from its marrow, or in other words, to separate the soul from the spirit.

So what is the soul? The soul is the invisible dimension of our life. Like my friend said, it is what makes us alive. When we die, our physical bodies return to dust but our soul lives on. Now spirit is what we are by supernatural rebirth (John 3:5,6). We need the Holy Spirit to transform us and give us a spirit. The soul is the natural man. The spirit is spiritual man, one who has been transformed by the Holy Spirit. The spirit is the invisible dimension of our life that is the regenerating work of the Holy Spirit.

Therefore, what the writer of Hebrews is talking about when he says the word of God is able to divide between soul and spirit is that God's word has the power to reveal if we are natural man (soul) or spiritual man (spirit). Are we born of God and spiritually alive or are we dead to God? The word of God is powerful enough to cut into us to show us the truth of our thoughts and our motives.

In other words, there is a difference between the soul and the spirit. The soul is what lives in all men; the spirit is the person who has been transformed by the Holy Spirit. That's the fine definition.

But for the purposes of teaching young children, we don't want to complicate the message. At least not in the beginning. It is okay to talk about man having a spirit and not go into the fine distinction between soul and spirit. Whenever the word spirit is used, it often refers to the invisible dimension of man, including his soul. So it is not in error to simply state that man is a spirit inhabiting a physical body.

See also:

• John Piper's short article: Pierced by the Word of God
• GotQuestions.org's "What's the Difference between the soul and the spirit of man?"
  

What exactly is sin?

In our pluralistic world, the definition of right and wrong has become so blurred that many people don't even have a good grasp of what is evil. The mantra of "if it feels right, it must be right" is so pervasive, many don't stop to think through the sheer foolishness of such a statement. For such people, if you bop them hard on the nose because you feel it's right, they will no doubt start to question that mantra.

Other people feel that evil, or sin, is when you hurt other people. On the flip side, if you're hurting no one, then there's nothing wrong with what you are doing. That is too narrow a view on sin. People getting hurt certainly is evil but there is more to it.

Sin, ultimately, has to do with God's glory. The Bible simply says that anything that takes away from giving God the glory that he deserves is sin. Wait a minute, you may be saying, that just sounds too broad, doesn't it? But unfortunately, that's the truth. That's why the Bible also says that people are storing up God's righteous wrath against themselves for the the way they live their lives.

Is that just a tad unfair? No, it isn't. Because life, the universe and everything in it isn't about us at all. It's about God. He is the one who made and owns the universe. And he created everything to glorfiy himself. He is infinitely valuable and is the greatest treasure in the universe. We, his creations, were made to declare his worth, to treasure him above all else, to enjoy him more than anything else in our lives. When we fail to do that, and exchange him for something of lesser value, that's sin.

Just take a glimpse at three verses, all numbered 23, in the book of Romans.

says, "[They] exchanged the glory of the immortal God for images resembling mortal man and birds and animals and creeping things."

All people have traded the glory of God for something of lesser value.

says, "You who boast in the law dishonour God by breaking the law."

Again, people who claim to obey God dishonour him, or do not give him glory, by breaking his law.

And finally, says, "for all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God."

That last verse, particularly, tells us that sin is a falling short of the glory of God. It's not about hurting others, or doing evil (which it is but it's the narrow view) but about dishonouring God.

I read a good definition of sin from Brian Tome's book, Welcome to the Revolution: A Field Guide For New Believers. He states that sin is:

the use of our freedom to have any attitude, thought or action that dishonours God. Also, the use of our freedom not to choose an attitude, thought, or action that would honor God. Until we have a relationship with Jesus, we are in a state of sin.

That is an accurate and scary definition of sin. John Piper has a very similar definition of sin. He says:

Evil is the feeling and thinking and acting that treats God as less than infinitely valuable and satisfying.

It is clear to me, therefore, that everyone, Christians included, do not value nor honour God in the way that we should. We are all sinners and God's wrath is heaped on us. We need a saviour to take away our sins and cover us with a righteousness equal to God's righteousness. And we need that saviour to change our hearts so that we become a people who delights in God and treasures him above everything else in our lives. That saviour is of course, Jesus Christ.