Category: Blog Posts

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Saved From What? #6 Union and Glorification!

Romans 5:1-11; Romans 8:18-32

This is the last in a series called “Saved From What?” We’ve been looking at what it means to be saved, and what Jesus saved us from: the guilt of sin, and thus, the fear of wrath and judgment, the condemnation and hell we deserve, the destiny of the wicked and unsaved. Related to this is the fact that we’re saved from the law and the curse of it, so that now, we’re not condemned because of missing the mark, but we’re made righteous by faith in what Christ has done for us. We have been saved from spiritual death as well. God has raised us from the dead! We’ve experienced a spiritual resurrection, and that is just a foretaste of the coming physical resurrection when Jesus returns. We’ve been delivered from the power of the devil, our archenemy, the tyrant who had such power over us. Now we no longer have to serve him. We’re in God’s Kingdom now, not Satan’s. Last week, we saw how we’ve also been saved from the power of sin, we’ve been healed of the sickness and given a solution for the weakness of it. So these are all things we have been saved from. Now let’s look at  what we’ve been saved for, i.e., why God saved us, and what it’ll lead to. Continue reading “Saved From What? #6 Union and Glorification!”

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Saved From What? #5 The Weakness of Sin

Beyond a crime or a disease, sin is also a weakness. Anselm of Canterbury, in the 12th century, had an interesting illustration he used to explain the effects of sin. He said imagine if a landowner told one of his laborers to go to a certain area of his farm or ranch, and do some work there, build fences, dig trenches, or whatever, and in sending him, he also warned him of a pit in that area to beware of. If the worker didn’t pay attention, he could easily fall into that pit, and then he wouldn’t be able to get out of it and do the work his boss wanted him to do. The worker goes his way, doesn’t heed the warning, and falls into that pit. So now he has failed his boss in two ways. He can’t do the work his boss wanted him to do, and, even though he was forewarned, he’s carelessly fallen into a trap from which he cannot escape! He’s doubly useless!   Continue reading “Saved From What? #5 The Weakness of Sin”

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Saved From What? #4 The Sickness of Sin

1 Pet. 2:24; 1 Cor. 11:30

Various parts of the Christian Church have focused on various aspects of salvation over the centuries. Various metaphors have been used to describe sin and its effects, and what God has done to save us from it. Last time, we looked at the most typical Western view, that sin is a crime against God, and we are all like criminals facing judgment. What we need desperately is to be saved in a forensic sense, to be freed from our guilt, forgiven of a crime we’ve committed. That’s important, but it’s not enough. Because if we just look at salvation as a forensic thing, then once our record is expunged, we think that’s all there is to it. But being a forgiven criminal doesn’t tend to make us feel we’re in a personal relationship with the Judge, does it? And it doesn’t do much in terms of changing our behavior, our attitudes, feelings, our relationships with others. No, forensic salvation is good, but it’s only one aspect, one phase of what God has for us. There’s more to it, more that we need to understand.  Continue reading “Saved From What? #4 The Sickness of Sin”

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Saved From What? #3 The Domination of the Devil

We’ve been looking at salvation, different aspects of it, different metaphors that express what it is, different ways parts of the church have looked at it over the centuries. We started off looking at the predominant Western view, that sin is a crime against God, and what we need is to be forgiven of our guilt before Him, we need to have our records expunged. This is the forensic view of sin, and it’s completely right and legitimate. But there’s another aspect of sin and salvation we need to explore and know about. I’m talking about the fact that we need to not only be saved from our sins, our guilt, our separation from God, but we also need to be freed from the domination, the bullying, the oppression of our archenemy, Satan!  Continue reading “Saved From What? #3 The Domination of the Devil”

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Saved From What? #1 The Guilt of Sin

My study of Medieval Church History a couple of sessions ago really brought out some truths I hadn’t thought of before and stimulated my thinking. One thing I learned was that Western Christianity took a different direction or a different view regarding salvation than Eastern Christianity. I’ll be taking a course, Lord willing, on Eastern Christianity in the near future and I’m really looking forward to that, because I believe there’s a lot we can learn from that “branch” of the body of Christ. But one of the most important differences has to do with what salvation really consists of, or we could say, what it is that we’re really saved “from” or saved “for,” or, we might say, we’re saved “to be.”

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God’s Mistakes?

A man in a line at one of apologist Frank Turek’s events asked a leading question. He took some time to list what he considered mistakes God made. He created the world and humans, then decided it was all a mistake that had to be wiped out by the Flood. He was sorry He’d even made man. Then He chose Abraham and in this guy’s estimation, “started over again” to produce a better group of people. But the Israelites failed God, so that was a mistake. Then He sent “another dude,” Jesus, to start yet again, but that hasn’t turned out that well. The Church has had all sorts of infighting, heresies, has gotten too involved with politics, etc. So these were all God’s mistakes. The guy concluded by asking, “So when is God going to finally get things right?”

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Don’t blame God!

In my last blog, I talked about the NYC Muslim terrorist attack with a pickup truck. Since then we've had yet another act of madness and evil, the church shooting in Texas. This is horror with an added twist - it was perpetrated against a church, against God's people. Even the poor pastor has lost his 14 year old daughter. I can just hear people asking, "Why did God allow this?" Skeptics or atheists might even say, "This proves there's no all-powerful and all-good God. If such a God existed, He would never allow this to happen to His people, would He?" Well-meaning Christians may even be trying to come up with explanations as to why God would have allowed this hateful act. Maybe there's some secret divine plan that we'll all understand someday in heaven? To that sort of thinking, I say one word - baloney! Don't blame God for this - He had nothing to do with it!

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Answered prayer

I really have to share a testimony. My refrigerator went out on Oct. 26th. My wife is in Germany, and food's already a big deal for me without her, but then the fridge went out too?! It felt like I was living in the third world, or camping out! Long story short, the fridge was supposed to be under a warranty (we didn't buy it; it came with our house), but getting it fixed was taking days and days. Then I was told it wouldn't be covered at all! A really nice fridge, but what good is that if the compressor's out?

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