Righteousness, self control and the judgment to come

Posted on December 31, 2012 Written by Mark McIntyre 2 Comments

Perhaps it is true that the church has been out of balance in the preaching of “hellfire and judgment” to an unhealthy degree. There may still be some churches that struggle with this but I think that more have swung the pendulum the other way and do not talk about Hell at all. They do this because talk of judgment and damnation are not attractive to those who might be visiting or only nominally attend. They prefer to emphasize the love of God.

I have not read the book Love Wins, by Rob Bell. But from the reactions to the book, I gather that Mr. Bell has softened the teaching on Hell to the point where many have accused Mr. Bell of being a universalist, one who believes that all people go to Heaven.

The problem with avoiding or negating teaching about Hell and punishment is that we then become negligent in our duty as Christians to make disciples. Right discipleship is to be based on truth and should include all the truth of Scripture. So while we need to use wisdom in how we present the reality of Hell and judgment, we cannot negate or avoid the clear teaching of Scripture on the subject.

The Apostle Paul does not seem to have been reluctant to mention the idea of judgment. When he was presenting the case for Christ before Felix, Paul spoke about “righteousness, self-control and the judgment to come.” (Acts 24:25) Paul was clear that there is a consequence to not accepting the provision of Jesus Christ to deal with our sin.

The author of Hebrews writes:

“For if we go on sinning willfully after receiving the knowledge of the truth, there no longer remains a sacrifice for sins, but a terrifying expectation of judgment and the fury of a fire which will consume the adversaries. Anyone who has set aside the Law of Moses dies without mercy on the testimony of two or three witnesses. How much severer punishment do you think he will deserve who has trampled under foot the Son of God, and has regarded as unclean the blood of the covenant by which he was sanctified, and has insulted the Spirit of grace? For we know Him who said, “Vengeance is Mine, I will repay.” And again, “The Lord will judge His people.” It is a terrifying thing to fall into the hands of the living God.” (Hebrews 10:26–31, NASB)

The reality of judgment should motivate us to be more open about what we believe. It should be a motivation for the spread of the Gospel. Walk into any public place in America and stop and realize that many (perhaps a majority) of those who are around you are likely to face that judgment if someone does not intervene in their lives. This should be a sobering realization and should spur us to action.

As Paul reminds us in Romans 10:17, “faith comes by hearing.” But for someone to hear, it is necessary for someone like you and I to speak the words of Christ.

May we resolve to be bolder in our witness for Jesus Christ in 2013?

There are consequences if we do not. If what the Bible teaches about our final destiny is true, Jesus Christ is not a nice-to-have, like a bigger television. Jesus Christ is a need-to-have like air, water and food.

Philip Yancey on the problem of pain

Posted on December 26, 2012 Written by Mark McIntyre Leave a Comment

With regard to those who use the problem of pain as a reason to disbelieve in God, Philip Yancey writes this:

“It’s as if we in modern times think we have a corner on the suffering market. Do we forget that Luther and Calvin liven in a world without either and penicillin, when life expectancy averaged thirty years, and that Bunyan and Donne wrote their greatest works, respectively, in a jail and a plague quarantine room? Ironically, the modern authors – who live in princely comfort, toil in climate-controlled offices, and hoard elixirs in their medicine cabinets – are the ones smoldering with rage.”

– From the introduction to Where is God When it Hurts?

It’s not about do’s and don’ts

Posted on December 21, 2012 Written by Mark McIntyre Leave a Comment

“Now flee from youthful lusts and pursue righteousness, faith, love and peace, with those who call on the Lord from a pure heart.” (2 Timothy 2:22, NASB)

The negative command is to flee youthful lusts, but Paul goes on to give a positive one. Youthful lusts are to be replaced by the pursuit of righteousness, faith, love and peace. The negative command cannot be successfully accomplished unless the positive one is employed.

Too often we think of the Christian life in terms of the things we will not do. When this mindset is operational it is easy to become upset at the world all around us who is doing those very things. It is too easy to decry the degradation in the surrounding culture and long for the good old days where such behavior was not tolerated.

Instead of focusing on the negative, Paul gives us something to pursue. Rather than suppressing passions, Paul gives a worthy object for our passions.

Righteousness

When I see the word righteousness, I think of right standing before God. The beginning of this process is when we acknowledge our unrighteousness and accept God’s provision of Jesus as the means of our inheriting righteousness (2 Cor. 5:21). At the moment we accept God’s provision, we are declared righteous.

There is also an ongoing component to righteousness. Paul tells us in Romans 12:1-2 that we have to be transformed by the renewing of our mind. Elsewhere, Paul uses the analogy of clothing when he tells us to “put off” the old self (Eph. 4:22, Col. 2:11, Col 3:9). The follow-up is to put on the new man and live in obedience to God.

It took a long time for me to understand that this is more than adherence to a list of do’s and don’ts. To really pursue righteousness is to cultivate a deeper relationship with God through the reading of Scripture, prayer and fellowship with other believers. As I deepen in my relationship with God, it becomes less and less about external behavior and more and more about what motivates me and where my desires will lead. Righteousness is all about letting God be in control.

Faith

Ephesians 2:8-9 tells us that we enter into a relationship with God through faith. Yet that faith can and should grow. On multiple occasions, Jesus challenged his followers because of their “little faith.” The implication is that Jesus’ follower should move beyond the little faith stage to a robust, mature faith.

I am challenged by those who seem to be gifted with great faith. Seeing those, I realize that I have so much room to grow in my own faith.

Love

Jesus told us that the two great commands are to love God and to love our neighbor. I cannot claim to be proficient at either of these and have much room for growth. I suspect that none of us can claim to have fulfilled either command to perfection. To pursue love, selfless love, is a worthy occupation.

Peace

In human terms we think of peace as the absence of conflict. Yet this is not true peace. As Jesus points out in the Sermon on the Mount, hate is the root of murder and to hate is to commit murder without actually killing my adversary.

True peace is not only what happens on the outside. True peace must take place in our thoughts and emotions. Paul gives us indication of how true peace starts in Romans 5:1, it starts with “having been justified by faith.” This faith brings peace with God which can then begin to produce peace with ourselves and with others.

Conclusion

The Christian life should be so much more than following a list of do’s and don’ts. It should be so much more than a set of passionless rituals. A real walk with God should engage our mind and emotions in a pursuit of the things of God.

There is a gene for that

Posted on December 19, 2012 Written by Mark McIntyre Leave a Comment

It’s all in our genes

I was listening to a local sports talk radio show on my way to an appointment. The host of the show was doing an interview with a sports writer who wrote a book on cats. The author of the book (who’s name I do not remember) was questioned as to why he liked animals and would write such a book.

The author attributed his like of animals to genetics. He grew up in a family that had pets. What caught my attention was his next statement. He said, “just as there is a gene that makes some people bad and a gene that makes some people good, there is a gene that makes some people like pets.”

Genetic research is not something that I spend a lot of time following, so I may have missed the announcement of this discovery. It seems to me that the author’s statement is hyperbole at best and a patent falsehood at worst.

The sad part is that such a statement would go unchallenged and would be so blindly accepted. From my perspective it takes a large degree of faith to bridge the gap between current knowledge and such a confident assertion. Yet dogma such as the book author proclaimed is widely accepted in America without critical thought.

Thoughts have consequences

Perhaps some thought should go into the repercussions of such a belief. If genetics determine who is bad, then why do we have rehabilitation programs in prisons? If genetics determines who is bad, then why not isolate the gene and kill all the babies that carry that gene? You might think that this is an absurd extreme yet the 20th Century has plenty of examples of mass killing of those with undesirable traits.

If there is no objective moral standard, who determines what it bad? We have seen the devastation when a totalitarian state defines who should live and who should die. The use of genetics could be a “scientific” means to the same end. In the totalitarian state, the state is the final arbiter of who is good and who is bad. Do you want to live in a world where decisions about you are made based on a genetic test?

You can’t believe in nothing

“When a Man stops believing in God he doesn’t then believe in nothing, he believes anything” is a phrase (perhaps wrongly) attributed to G. K. Chesterton, but is none the less true. Because we do not want God to have any input into our existence, we need to find some other means of explaining why people go wrong.

It must be pointed out that there have been cases of convicts who have turned their lives around. I recently found the story of Mary Kay Beard, the founder of Angel Tree. She went from being on the FBI’s most wanted list to being an advocate for the children of prison inmates. This turnaround in her life can be directly attributed to her faith in Jesus Christ.

So even if it were proved that there is a genetic predisposition to crime, there is something or someone stronger than genetics.