Tag Archives: salvation

January 19, 2024 · 7:27 am

Jesus came for the desperate

If you declare with your mouth, “Jesus is Lord,” and believe in your heart that God raised him from the dead, you will be saved. (Romans 10:9)

This is a familiar verse. But there tends to be some misunderstandings here that I would like to clarify.

Much of the modern teaching goes something like “You must accept Jesus as your savior, but you also must accept him as Lord…”

The idea is that it isn’t enough to “simply believe”, you also have to do what he says and acknowledge him as your Lord.

Although it is certainly true that if we love Jesus we will seek to do those things which please him, and it is certainly true that he, as our creator and redeemer, is our sovereign king and lord, I don’t believe that is what Paul is getting at in this passage.

Here is the whole thing in context:

Moses writes this about the righteousness that is by the law: “The person who does these things will live by them.” But the righteousness that is by faith says: “Do not say in your heart, ‘Who will ascend into heaven?’ ” (that is, to bring Christ down) “or ‘Who will descend into the deep?’ ” (that is, to bring Christ up from the dead). But what does it say? “The word is near you; it is in your mouth and in your heart,” that is, the message concerning faith that we proclaim: If you declare with your mouth, “Jesus is Lord,” and believe in your heart that God raised him from the dead, you will be saved. For it is with your heart that you believe and are justified, and it is with your mouth that you profess your faith and are saved. As Scripture says, “Anyone who believes in him will never be put to shame.” For there is no difference between Jew and Gentile—the same Lord is Lord of all and richly blesses all who call on him, for, “Everyone who calls on the name of the Lord will be saved.”

Paul compares the message of righteousness by faith to the righteousness which comes by the law. The law is anything that teaches “If you do these things, you will live.”

The law teaches that if you do good things, you will be blessed. If you do bad things, you will be cursed. The law is woven in our being, created in our psyche, unavoidable.

It also leaves us all under the curse, for who can say that they have done enough to earn the blessing of God?

The fact is that if we are aware of our condition, we know we are in trouble. We know that God is just and that we are sinners. Our consciences plague us on our beds late at night. This is the doing of the law, whichever law you believe will give you life.

If you believe that life comes from doing the right thing, you will never rest, never be at peace, and live in fear – either of the judge coming for you, or fear that the others are going to mess up God’s blessing for your community.

So you either live in terror and despair, or you live judging others and calling down fire and brimstone on the sinners.

Paul is not contrasting the “law” with the “law”. The problem is NOT that the Jewish people of Paul’s day got the law wrong. They didn’t just need to substitute the law of Moses for the law of Jesus. Paul’s point is different.

Let’s look at the word “lord”. In the Hebrew Scriptures, we read that God gave his personal name to his people (Exodus 3). That name is unique to the one true God, the God of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob. It didn’t belong to any other gods, it was the true God’s personal name. It was spelled YHWH. But we forgot how it was pronounced, because centuries before Jesus came into the world, God’s people considered the name too holy to be pronounced.

So whenever they came across that name in their readings, they substituted the Hebrew word “my lord” – adonai. Adonai means my lord, my master, my husband, my sir.

A few centuries before Jesus, scholars in Alexandria translated the Hebrew bible into Greek. It was called the Septuagint (abbreviated LXX). They followed the custom of the Jews, and every time they came across the word “YHWH” they translated it “kyrios”, which is Greek for Lord, mister, sir, owner, or master, just like adonai.

But whenever they came across adonai, they also translated it “Lord”.

When the Bible was translated into English, the translators followed the same pattern, but they used small caps for YHWH and lower case for adonai.

Look, for example, at Psalm 110:

The LORD says to my lord: “Sit at my right hand until I make your enemies a footstool for your feet.”

The first word is the personal name of the One True God, creator and redeemer, maker of all things visible and invisible, who redeemed Israel from Egypt.

The second word is a common title for royalty, husbands, owners, slave-masters, bosses.

Remember here that we are speaking only of the OT scriptures. You can easily tell the difference between YHWH and adonai by the way the translators have spelled it.

But when we come to the New Testament, it is a little different. The inspired writers used “kyrios” for both concepts and the only way to tell which was meant was through the context.

In our familiar passage, is Paul’s point that Jesus is our lord and master to be obeyed (as true as that is), or is his point something else?

If he means what is commonly called “lordship salvation”, then one is hard pressed to find a difference between that and the law of “do this and live”.

But look a bit further down, when Paul quotes the Hebrew scriptures. He quotes Isaiah 28 from the Septuagint, about believing in the heart, and then he quotes Joel 2.

“Whoever will call upon the name of YHWH will be saved”. The difference in the Greek text is hard to spot, but if you look up the quote in Joel it is clear. If you call on the name of YHWH you will be saved (Notice the all-caps of LORD). Paul’s point is that confessing with your mouth is the SAME concept as “Calling upon the name of the YHWH.”

The contrast is between those who seek their salvation through “doing” – “do this and live”, and those who understand their desperate need, and call out in the middle of the storm “Save me, Jesus, YHWH God, creator and sustainer of the universe who conquered death and the power of sin.”

Of course, that cry is when we are lucid. In the middle of the locust storm destroying everything (which is the context of Joel), all we can manage is “hosanna” – “Save us, we beg you”.

And now, here is the point of all of this.

If you, like me, have tried over and over again to live a better life, to love more, to cast off your fears and doubts, to flee the lusts of the flesh, and to do better – you know the agony of the spirit. The person that you long to be and the person that you are seem to be forever separated.

The body of death seems to be winning.

The “lordship salvation” purveyors want you to work harder, feel more guilty, exert more will-power, give more money, get up earlier…

But the Good News is this – Call on the name of Jesus, for he is the creator and sustainer of all, he is the giver of life, eternal and true God, who became flesh and took our grief upon himself, so he knows our pain and struggles. Call upon him. No conditions. Just call.

Jew or Greek, bond or free, male or female…just call. And you will be saved, for his name means “YHWH saves.”

(as a side note, this doctrine is continually under attack, for if Jesus is somehow lesser than YHWH, or a different God, then we are back to attempting to earn salvation by submission, which means that we are back in bondage to fear and misery. It is no coincidence that modern patriarchy and their attempt to keep women in bondage is built on “Eternal subordination.” If even the second person of the eternal trinity is subordinate to YHWH, then he is NOT YHWH (their duplicitous protestations notwithstanding), and salvation is again “do this and live”.  Many of my sisters are living this reality every day. ESS is a monstrous evil, and leads only to bondage).

YHWH is not divided. And Jesus is the One True eternal God, who with the Father and the Spirit is to be worshiped. Call upon him, and be delivered. This is the good news. He delights to hear and delights to save, if only we will call.

 

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November 1, 2022 · 10:00 am

Nationalism: Who makes the bricks?

Moses wrote the book of Genesis to the nation of Israel who had just been delivered from the oppression of Egypt. In Egypt, they were slaves who made bricks and built buildings for their oppressors. They made bricks day and night to build cities for Pharaoh.
Moses wrote about this when he wrote about the tower of Babel:

Then they said to one another, “Come, let us make bricks and bake them thoroughly.” They had brick for stone, and they had asphalt for mortar. 4 And they said, “Come, let us build ourselves a city, and a tower whose top is in the heavens; let us make a name for ourselves, lest we be scattered abroad over the face of the whole earth (Gen. 11:3–4).

They were building a kingdom to regain what they had lost in Eden. After mankind was exiled from the presence of God, they were scattered. After Noah departed from the Ark, they began to scatter. It didn’t take long for them to organize and seek to build what they had lost.

We will fight the grave. We will make a name for ourselves. We will establish ourselves.

Isaiah later takes this idea and adds to it. Lucifer, by the way, refers to Babylon, not Satan.

Isaiah 14:12–15 (NKJV)
12“How you are fallen from heaven, O Lucifer, son of the morning! How you are cut down to the ground, You who weakened the nations!
13For you have said in your heart: ‘I will ascend into heaven, I will exalt my throne above the stars of God; I will also sit on the mount of the congregation On the farthest sides of the north;
14I will ascend above the heights of the clouds, I will be like the Most High.’
15Yet you shall be brought down to Sheol, To the lowest depths of the Pit.

Notice the echoes of the same themes – the tower reaching to heaven. We will be like the most high. We will exalt our throne. We will sit on the mount of the congregation of the Lord. Read the whole chapter. Isaiah is speaking about the spirit that drives Babylon, and every kingdom of this earth.

In other words, “We will establish the kingdom of God on this earth. We will build cities. We will pass laws. We will deal with evil-doers. We will create a society, a City on the Hill. And there will be no more curse.”

View it from the backdrop of the description of Babel. This is a major theme throughout the Bible, but I only want to focus on one aspect of it.

The Tower was built with bricks and mortar. And the original readers of Genesis would have known exactly what that meant. Someone had to make the bricks and build the buildings.

That would not have been Pharaoh, the one with the grand plan. It would have been the slaves.

And so comes the downfall of every single scheme to build the kingdom of God on this earth. Someone has to make the bricks.

Even the founding of our own country, which many claim is the “City on the Hill”, using the phrase of the puritans. Who did the work?

Dabney complained after the slaves were set free that he hardly had time to write anymore because of all the menial labor that wasn’t getting done.

In our own state, the California Indians were enslaved to harvest the crops and build the cities. The adobe houses weren’t going to build themselves.

The “City on the Hill” is a grand idea, until you think about who is making the bricks. One thing is for sure. The one who says, “Come let us make bricks” is NOT the one who is actually making the bricks. The one who holds the whip is the one giving the commands. The one at the other end of the whip is making the bricks.

At the end of Genesis 11, there is a contrast. We are introduced to a new character. Abraham. God gives Abraham a promise, and Abraham believes it. And he learns to wait for it.

Hebrews 11 tells us this:

Hebrews 11:9–10 (NKJV)
9 By faith he dwelt in the land of promise as in a foreign country, dwelling in tents with Isaac and Jacob, the heirs with him of the same promise;
10 for he waited for the city which has foundations, whose builder and maker is God.

Abraham lived in tents his whole life, because he waited for another kind of city. A city where God makes the bricks and builds the city.

Dwell on that for a moment.

There is no oppression, no vanity under the sun, no pain and toil.

And truly no more curse. No curse for anyone, for God will take it on himself.

HE makes the bricks and prepares a place for you. And you can dwell in a tent while you wait, if that is what it takes.

THIS is the kingdom of God.

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October 28, 2021 · 1:03 pm

Image-bearers

27 So God created man in his own image, in the image of God created he him; male and female created he them. (Gen. 1:27)

Sometimes I use this blog as an opportunity to jot down an idea while it is mulling. It is sort of an invitation to mull right along with me.

I have over the past few months been meditating on the doctrine of eternal generation. This is the doctrine that God the Father is begetting the Son in an unfathomable, eternal act. This act of begetting does not have a before, after, or future, but takes place in eternity without any change in the nature of God.

Simply, this means that it is of God’s essence to fellowship, to love, and to overflow with goodness. This goodness flows into creation and God created man to share in the love and fellowship of the Trinity. It was fitting, then, that men and women be created in the image of God, to share in that fellowship as much as creatures are able to.

So…mull on that a bit…

Of course, man fell. And that corrupted everything. Jesus came into the world to restore what was destroyed in the fall.

In other words, he came to bring us back into the fellowship of love that we were created to take a part in.

25 O righteous Father, the world hath not known thee: but I have known thee, and these have known that thou hast sent me.
26 And I have declared unto them thy name, and will declare it: that the love wherewith thou hast loved me may be in them, and I in them. (Jn. 17:25-26)

OK. Moving on.

Let’s take this to the next step. If the essence of God is eternal communion and love (which the doctrine of eternal generation teaches), then sin is far greater than we can imagine, for it breaks the fellowship with God. We are born alienated and strangers to that fellowship.

This is what the church meant when it taught the “T” in “TULIP” – total depravity. Man cannot climb back into God’s graces because man is fallen in the totality of his being.

But according to scripture, even though it teaches that “all have sinned and have come short of the glory of God”, sin is not the essence of who men and women are. Essentially, they are image-bearers of God. Therefore, they are redeemable, for when sin is taken away, the image of God remains and is restored.

So here is what I am mulling – what if we viewed human beings as essentially image-bearers of God rather than essentially as sinners?

Think about that. How much would change in your thinking?

Even in the law, a criminal was not to be tortured and beaten to a pulp because of the image-bearing that was essentially there. He was not to be despised (Deut. 25:3)

When we view people as primarily sinners, we cannot see anything worth redeeming in them.

We must then shun music and art and fashion and poetry for fear that we will somehow be tainted by “sinners”.

And, worse, we cannot see beyond our senses, to the inherent dignity and worth of every man, woman and child as reflecting their heavenly Father, whether they remain in their sins or are redeemed by Christ.

And so we must ask ourselves, “How much is a little girl worth?”

“How much is a little boy worth?”

And if we view children as “vipers in diapers”, and as essentially sinners, we have to answer, “Not much…” and our actions reflect that answer.

But as Christians we believe the bible. We believe that men and women are not essentially sinners. Sin came later, a corruption of what was essentially there, which is what makes it so heinous. But it also makes men and women redeemable, which is what Christ’s mission was. To redeem his people from their sins and misery.

If we truly believe that, then the question “How much is a child worth?” has a clear answer.

Worth fighting for. Worth protecting. Worth all of your treasures and gifts to love and protect. Worth your love and your joy and your cherishing.

If we truly believed that, would churches continue to condone and overlook violence against women?

If we truly believed that, would slavery and racism have ever been a thing?

If we believed that, would there have been a genocide of California Indians?

The history of the United States, for all of the good that was there, forgot quite frequently that men and women are essentially image-bearers of God, and God takes how we treat them quite seriously, whether they are still in their sins or not.

“For God so loved the world that he gave his only begotten son.”

You were all created in honor. Fallen in sin, yes. Unable to free yourselves. Yes.

Sinking in the mud of death and misery? Yes.

But because essentially you are an image-bearer of God, you are worth redemption.

12 But as many as received Him, to them He gave the right to become children of God, even to those who believe in His name, (Jn. 1:12)

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May 11, 2019 · 10:54 am

Cain and Abel

In my sermon The Dark Places, I wrote the following:

If Abel can be saved, there is no point in striving to be Cain, and that is unacceptable to Pharisees of every age.

A kind reader suggested that I turned the names around. It happens. Sometimes I turn the names around, especially if I am going too fast.

But in this case I have the names correct. When Cain was born, Eve called him Cain – saying, I have gotten a man from the Lord.

Cain was something. The heir apparent, the seed of the woman who would crush the head of the serpent – in Eve’s mind.

Our natural religion is that God is bound to be impressed with our religious services. Cain was the first Pharisee – no faith in the promise, because he didn’t need it. He was something. He was the man from the Lord.

When Abel was born, Eve called his name Abel – which means vapor, wind, vanity – nothing. He was a nobody. He wasn’t a somebody like Cain. He was the other, he was “whatev’s”

The only thing he had was the he believed the promise – that God would provide a sacrifice for sins.

So when Abel was accepted and Cain was rejected, natural order was overturned, Cain’s religion was proven faulty.

God put Abel over Cain because Abel had something that Cain would never have. The righteousness of Christ imputed to him.

This is why Cain killed him. This is why the cross is an offense. This is why Jesus was crucified.

Cain is the Jew of Romans 10 seeking to establish their own righteousness and not accepting the righteousness which is by faith.

Cain is the Pharisee of Luke 18:

I thank thee, that I am not as other men are, extortioners, unjust, adulterers, or even as this publican.
  12 I fast twice in the week, I give tithes of all that I possess.
  (Lk. 18:11-12)

I can see Cain saying the same thing, over his offering of the fruit of the ground:

I thank thee, Lord, that I am not like this nobody over here. I thank thee that I can bring this great offering, this astounding offering, this offering that is the greatest, most wonderful, most supreme offering of all. And that I am not like the loser that is my brother “Nobody”

But God rejected Cain and his offering.

Cain was something, but salvation is only for the nobodies. Christ came only for those who take up their crosses – reckon themselves dead, nobody, poor.

Jesus died for the nobodies.

They that are whole have no need of the physician, but they that are sick: I came not to call the righteous, but sinners to repentance. (Mk. 2:17)

Yet lackest thou one thing: sell all that thou hast, and distribute unto the poor, and thou shalt have treasure in heaven: and come, follow me. (Lk. 18:22)

So I had the names right. I should have explained it better, I guess.

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