When I attended seminary, our dean was a big fan of the late Donald McGavran and his sociology-based theories of church growth. During the 1980s and 1990s there was also an avalanche of books, seminars, and live-streamed conferences purporting to grow the church of anyone who used the principles. Because I pastor a small congregation (less than 100), I had to wrestle with these ideas, that worked their way into my mind and caused me all kinds of frustration.
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1. A truly prophetic ministry will not add to the Word of God.
There is an internet stormlet currently happening over a home-schooling lady blogger who wrote that nice men prefer women who can come into the relationship debt-free (this meaning, the girl didn't go to college, which is the real agenda behind the debt thing), and women who don't have tattoos. This is such a peculiar controversy, I can't help but make a few mundane pastoral comments about it before we all move on to something else equally peculiar.
I agree there is no rule that every young Christian woman needs to attend a four-year college. I also agree that most colleges are dominated by liberal/progressive philosophy, which is an evil influence. It isn't always God's guidance that every young person go to college, at least not a liberal arts four-year college. There are other paths in life. However, young Christian women will need ways to support themselves financially, and some of them have exceptional talents in the Arts and Humanities that they should steward for the Lord. Post-high-school training provides this. And if a Christian husband dies, the Christian wife will benefit from having a good way to pay the bills and put food on the table for the children. Impoverishment is a bad thing, even in the absence of college debt, and so is failing to develop God-given talents. Especially if those talents might lead to blessed common-grace breakthroughs in, say, medicine, or in influential works of art, NGO work, architecture, or other areas of skill (just to give a few examples). The blogger also seems to assume that it's God's will for every Christian woman to marry. The blogger, third, seems to assume that young Christian women have no discernment. Maybe many do not, but that would be the failure of their churches. A church youth ministry that is all morality and music has failed its young people, male or female. It's no wonder church young people allegedly "lose" their faith when they go off to college. Many of them never really had faith, so when presented with philosophical alternatives that don't make you feel guilty and let you live as you please, they go for it. Others have never be taught how or why Christianity is rational, so in their first year in college their puny little twig-faith gets blown around badly. But this is not true of every young Christian woman. Also, certain majors involve less direct indoctrination than others, like Physical Therapy. Unless you're going to say that a Christian should never have a non-Christian teacher, ever, on any subject. Paul's injunction to all Christians, including to young women, is to work hard with our hands so as to share with others (Ephesians 4:28). If college is the best way for a young Christian woman to get equipped to work, because getting married and having children are not sure things in God's plan, then go to college. But attend a good church while you're in college, and find a good, solid collegiate fellowship like Campus Outreach. Regarding tattoos, my personal opinion is that they are unwise. The Bible warns against women "adorning" themselves with eye-catching accouterments (1 Peter 3:3-5). Too much jewelry is adorning enough; I'm even less in favor of an adornment you can't take off. If a person gets a racy or profane tattoo then receives Christ at a later time, they're likely to feel ashamed of it, and need to suffer a lot of pain having it removed. Why not stick with modest adornments that you can take off and put in your jewelry box at night? Plus, no one ever got a disfiguring, painful skin infection from a necklace. So, personally speaking, I don't like tattoos. However, any implication that not having a tattoo means you are an innately more godly girl is obviously untrue, and silly, and a teaching like that shows a really poor grasp of Biblical holiness. https://theconservativemillennialblog.com/articles/no-men-want-debt-free-virgins-without-tattoos-isnt-biblical/ The Christian view of sexual ethics is a religious view.
It is built on the claim of Jesus Christ that He was the Son of God. Jesus unconditionally affirmed the divine origin and authority of the Old Testament in its entirety. He said He would not abrogate Moses' Law, but rather every last bit of it would be fulfilled (Matt. 5:17-18). He claimed the Law was prophetic in nature (Matt. 11:13). He built a teaching on the historical existence of Adam and Eve (Matt. 19:1-6). This is why the LBGT claim that Jesus never talked about, or against, homosexuality is false. Jesus affirmed the five books of Moses. Because Jesus affirmed Moses in his entirety, that means Jesus affirmed each individual law contained in Moses. When Jesus endorsed Moses as a whole, He endorsed all the particular laws contained in it. Christ endorsed Moses' teachings against homosexuality. So, whenever you debate anything about sexual morality, you are actually debating whether Jesus was God's Son, and whether He rose from the dead. If Jesus was the Son of God, then His authority is unique and absolute on matters of morality. If He wasn't the Son of God, then His was just one more voice among many. The Christian view of sexuality is actually "worse" than most people know. Right now a battle rages over homosexuality, as if Christians oppose this only. What many people no longer seem to know is that Christianity limits every type of intercourse to heterosexual, monogamous marriage only. Every other form of intercourse is off-limits. Heterosexual, engaged couples. Formerly-married spouses with each other. Elderly couples living together to avoid the loss of Social Security benefits. Contracts freely entered into with prostitutes. Every act of sexual intercourse outside of heterosexual, monogamous marriage is sin. This is the Christian teaching. It is incredibly rigorous, and all Christians fail it, at least in mind and often in body. But it is still the rule. That is what I mean by calling the Christian view of sex "worse" than you might imagine. Christ taught we are not even allowed to imagine lustful thoughts about other people (Matthew 5:27-30). So, when we look at Christianity and homosexuality, we should keep it all in the context of the greater whole. Another key factor in the Christian view of sex, which puts us at extreme odds against U.S. culture, is that none of us are gods. We are not all-knowing, or all-powerful, or authoritative. We did not create ourselves. We have no authority to decide what is right or wrong. However, because we have become philosophically insane, we teach our children that we create our own morality. This is the way of the sociopath. In the real world, most people realize that this idea -- that you can just make up your own morality as it suits you in the moment -- leads to violence, crime, confusion, and hypocrisy. Yet we keep on acting as if we think we are gods. We call ourselves masters of our own fate, then shout in outrage when someone else transgresses against us, or against someone we love. We call for justice for the oppressed, but by so doing we are saying that there even is such a thing as "justice", and it should not be violated. We are hypocrites when it comes to sex. We lament the HIV-caused death of millions of young men, but we won't lament the behavior which caused their deaths. There is justice regarding everything else found in the evening news. We fight against sex trafficking and pedophilia, and we should. We fight against bullying. We oppose the selling of young girls as "brides", which still goes on covertly in some Mormon-dominated areas of the U.S. We oppose the foot-binding of women, and vaginal circumcision. Then we claim, from out of nowhere, based on nothing, that there are no rules for sex other than consent. Where is it written that "consent" makes something right? We are not gods, not even when we consent. If Jesus Christ says something is morally wrong, who cares about our consent? It would mean we're all freely consenting to doing something that's still wrong, and for which we will pay a harsh price. Our consent is the empty howling of wind in the night. Christianity upholds the humanity of gay people because Christianity believes in free-will, where "pop" LGBT theories deny free-will, and dehumanizes gays. If a behavior can't be criticized, taught-against, or legally prevented because the person doing the behavior was "born that way", then that is a denial of free-will. And that is a denial of human dignity. I do not have blue eyes by choice, I was born with them. I have no free-will about the color of my eyes, and so, yes, it would be unjust to punish me for having blue eyes. If a homosexual can't be exhorted to change his or her ways because they were born that way, then that's saying the homosexual has no free-will. But then having no free-will makes them less than human. Christianity, by opposing homosexuality, reflects a high view of the humanness of gay people, because it doesn't believe they are animals or machines. This denial of free-will, and the personal responsibility that goes with it, opens a door to all sorts of other harm. It would be wrong to criticize rage, because the angry person was born that way. It would be wrong to criticize greed, because the person was born that way. It would be wrong to criticize Obama, or Trump, or any leader, because they were all born in certain ways. The LBGT denial of free-will (which seems to usually be an implicit or even unaware denial) leads to bad social and legal consequences. But Christianity upholds that we are people, not things. Homosexuality is an ethical behavior, and it is not an involuntary behavior. If it is involuntary, then it counts as a slavery, an addiction, and therefore it is also a self-destructive evil from which many people wish to be freed. Jesus Christ can free them. Christians are not surprised when people say they have felt certain desires since childhood, because Christians believe that we are all born sinners. We are not born good. We are not even born as blank slates. We are born sinners, and evil feelings -- selfishness, rage, coveting -- rises up out of us spontaneously from our earliest. Christ taught that evil thoughts, murder, adultery, sexual immorality, theft, false testimony, slander, all come from the heart (Matthew 15:19). Not from the physical part of humanity, but from the non-physical part. Of course, Christians believe we have a non-physical aspect to us, which is called our souls. Molecules don't think, feel, or make choices, yet we do all three of those things. Therefore, our reasoning, emotions, and choices come from something other than our molecules. That is the soul. Christians do not believe human nature is good. The human soul is born fallen, dark, and cut off from God. Evil pumps up through our personalities, like the BP oil pipeline spewing raw crude out into the Gulf of Mexico. Jesus Christ can begin the process of capping it. But only Jesus Christ can cap it. Our faith and our church opposes sexual sin. Our opposition is based on our belief in the divine sonship of Jesus Christ, and the truthfulness of the Bible. Sexual intercourse should be limited to monogamous, heterosexual marriage, which is the only God-approved form of marriage. We are not gods; we do not get to make up our own morality. Unlike race, homosexuality is a behavior and therefore a choice. We teach that human beings are made in God's image and, though born sinners, still have a degree of free-will. People are sick and dying from every kind of sexual sin, and children are suffering from this perverted, pornographic culture we have created, so we cannot stop teaching that Jesus Christ can save us from every sexual sin. Are you a Christian who puzzles over God's sovereignty and how it relates to salvation? It's easy to get lost in this labyrinth, especially as clever writers have been sharpening their pens about it for 500 years. But, even though it's a hard subject, I am convinced there are some Scriptural lines we should never cross. Below are a few of those lines.
Any system of doctrine that implies that God is untruthful, or makes God the ultimate Cause of sin, or gives us cause to doubt the reliability of God's promises in the Bible, or portrays God as play-acting in His interactions with people, is wrong. It doesn't matter if the system affirms election. The buzzer goes off, the red flag flies, and it's time to go back to the drawing-board. Hyper-Calvinism is as bad as semi-Pelagianism. Christ has made it clear that we should not use force to retaliate against our enemies. Christ rebuked His disciples for suggesting they call down fire on a village that said "No" to them (Luke 9:53-56). God tells us not to take revenge, or raise our hands in violence. But that doesn't mean that we can't ask God to take action.
King David wrote a benedictory song for the people of Israel, to be performed by the tabernacle choir. First he calls for the Lord to bless the people: 1 May the Lord answer you in the day of trouble! May the name of the God of Jacob set you securely on high! 2 May He send you help from the sanctuary And support you from Zion! 3 May He remember all your meal offerings And find your burnt offering acceptable! In a land surrounded by enemies, David calls down the Lord's aid. "On high" was the safest place a person could be in that terrain. How well David knew fighting in the wilderness. Gravity was on the fighter's side. He prays for the Lord to place His people into the safest and most secure spot, whenever trouble came. He wanted the Lord to make it hard for their enemies to harm them. Their help would come from the heavenly Zion. Earthly Zion was of no help, but heavenly Zion could cure all ills. As long as the people worshiped the Lord in sincerity and truth, the Lord would not forget them. 4 May He grant you your heart’s desire And fulfill all your counsel! 5 We will sing for joy over your victory, And in the name of our God we will set up our banners. May the Lord fulfill all your petitions. Next, David calls on the Lord to fulfill their plans and wishes. Faith doesn't mean we don't plan. But we know that the wisdom to make a good plan comes from the Lord, and the power for that plan to succeed also comes from the Lord. Constant failure should not be the experience of God's people in the earth. When one tribe in Israel was victorious, all the tribes were better off. When one part of the Christian Church succeeds, all parts of the Church benefit, and should rejoice. When the Supreme Court rules to protect Christian liberty, it benefits Christians in other places. When Christians succeed doing God's will on any continent, Christians on every continent should rejoice. None of us is an island. Our earthly fortunes are all tied together to one another. 6 Now I know that the Lord saves His anointed; He will answer him from His holy heaven With the saving strength of His right hand. 7 Some boast in chariots and some in horses, But we will boast in the name of the Lord, our God. 8 They have bowed down and fallen, But we have risen and stood upright. 9 Save, O Lord; May the King answer us in the day we call. Although David in history spoke of the anointed king of Israel, such as himself, we know Jesus Christ is God's true anointed king. The Lord saved Christ from the grave. The Lord saves Christ's plan from failure. God has ordained that, though Christ suffered and was briefly crushed, His plan will ultimately prosper (Isaiah 53:10). As Christ prays for His people, God the Father answers. David says that we will not place our ultimate faith in human weapons. Today, we might say that some boast in IT and ICBMs. But that is foolish. We should boast in the Lord. David is comparing God to war-weapons. He is more powerful than the most sophisticated war-tech of that generation. God makes war (Exodus 15:3). God is peace-loving but He is not a pacifist. He made war on a world that hated it, and drowned everyone but eight. God blew up the cities of Sodom and Gomorrah, killing every sexual rebel within it. God once killed 185,000 soldiers in a single night, by sweeping over them with just one terrible angel (2 Kings 19:35). David had seen even mighty horses collapse and die from the battle. But God infused power into His own people, and, even though knocked down, they stood up again, bloody but unbowed and victorious. Pray for God to destroy His enemies, and give His people the victory. Whether it's the murderous gangs of Los Angeles, homosexcual persecutors in Oregon, Russian assassins in Europe, or drug cartels in Mexico, pray for God to make His enemies fall. Stop talking about the end-times, and pray for victory now instead. In this age, He has forbidden Christians the sword, except in self-defense. But He Himself still carries a mighty sword of His own. God is merciful to the ignorant, but He curses those who hate Him (1 Corinthians 16:22). Pray for God to give the victory to His people! In Judges 6, God calls young Gideon to rise as a deliverer of Israel. The angel of the Lord appears to Gideon (6:11-12), and commissions him to fight and win (6:14-16). Gideon asks for a miraculous sign, as evidence that it truly is the Lord who speaks to him. God grants it (6:17-24).
That same night Gideon destroys his father's pagan altars, and offers two bulls unto the Lord. Surprisingly, his father Joash stands up for Gideon, and threatens anyone who would defend Baal, on the logical ground that Baal, if he's real, ought to be able to take care of himself (6:31). Then a massive army of foreigners invade the land (6:33). God's Spirit comes upon Gideon, and he summons volunteers from the Abiezrite clan and three of the tribes of Israel. Then Gideon asks God for a second sign: he will put a wool fleece on the barn floor. If the fleece gets wet from the dew, but the ground all around is dry, then that will confirm the Lord's word. The Lord does it (6:38). Then, just to be extra-sure, Gideon asks the Lord to do the reverse. The Lord does that also (6:39-40). Christians have sometimes sued this story as a reason for setting "fleeces" before the Lord. In other words, they propose that God do some distinct action that will confirm direction and future blessing from God. However, close consideration of the story tells us that what Christians present to God are seldom real fleeces; and nowhere in Scripture does the Lord tell us to do this. First we see that the angel of the Lord had already appeared and audibly spoke to Gideon (6:11). This was not a case of inward impressions. Gideon saw a man-like figure. The man spoke words to him. The man touched the offering (meat, bread, and broth) with the tip of his staff, and a heavenly fire consumed it (6:20-21). One moment the broth, meat, and bread was there. the next moment, it was incinerated. So Gideon was not acting on inner impressions, or pious guesswork. Second, Gideon was acting on the written word of God. This was early in God's plan, and Gideon would have only had the five books of Moses, and probably Joshua also. But they by themselves were sufficient to justify his actions that night. Naturally, the Scriptures he had wouldn't have said anything specific about him becoming a mighty deliverer of Israel. The Angel communicated that. But Gideon's forward actions were guided by the written word of God, not his own imagination. Third, the fleece test was completely unnatural. It wasn't like some silly thing that young Christians, do, such as, "Lord, if you want me to marry that girl, have a robin fly past me today!" No, according to normal scientific laws, dew doesn't differentiate where it settles. Dew isn't going to soak the surrounding ground but leave a rug bone-dry. It won't soak the rug, but then leave the surrounding ground bone-dry. What Gideon asked for was impossible apart from divine manipulation. Fourth, Gideon's request was spiritually suspect. His first request for a sign was reasonable. He wanted to make sure he wasn't being deceived (perhaps by an evil spirit), as he says in 6:17. He was testing the prophecy, as Moses taught (Deut. 18:20-22). But that first sign should have been enough. The second request came from fear. Even Gideon knew he might anger the Lord by asking (6:39). But God was gracious and patient. There is a timeless principle in the fleece story, which is that the Lord verified His messengers with signs and wonders. The prophets could work wonders. Christ came with healing power. The apostles healed and worked wonders. Miraculous signs witness to the word of His grace (Acts 14:4). But Gideon's story doesn't authorize us to invent tests for God, especially lame, non-miraculous tests that could happen by coincidence. Open doors are not a sure guide to God's will, either. Just because a door opens, doesn't mean God wants you to walk through it. Paul once had an open door to preach in Troas, but he traveled on to Macedonia to find his friend Titus, and there was nothing wrong with him doing that (2 Cor. 2:12-13). The New Testament tells us to test prophets, but it never tells us to set fleeces. The fleece story shows us how patient the Lord is., especially with the faint-hearted. Gideon wanted to do the Lord's will, and in fact did do the Lord's will that first night. He wasn't a hypocrite or a coward. But his doubt of his own fitness (6:15, 36) led him to ask God for something very unusual. Eternal security, the teaching that once a person puts his faith in Christ he cannot be lost (which is considered a "Calvinist" view), has long been a part of the EFCA fellowship. But conditional security (which is considered an "Arminian" view), the teaching that a believer is secure from condemnation as long as he keeps on believing in Christ, has just as long a history.
These two teachings go all the way back to the founding days of the fellowship, so much so that former president A.T. Olson refers to them in his book The Significance of Silence. The EFCA decided at that time not to draw a line on that doctrine, and that's still the policy today. Though local pastors and congregations usually do have an opinion on the subject, and an individual church's pulpit will reflect that opinion, the EFCA association on the national scale doesn't take a stand. A man can become ordained to the preaching ministry in the EFCA and hold either view. A church can lean to either doctrine, and still be EFCA member churches in good standing. This policy sounds a bit loose, until you realize we have a clear statement of faith, which speaks to the essential truths of salvation as well as the other foundational truths of Christianity. We also have a book available, Evangelical Convictions, that elaborates on the statement of faith. But there are limits. Where do the limits lie? In a personal conversation I had several years back with an assistant district superintendent, he told me there were extremes at either end of the Calvinist-Arminian spectrum which would fall off the edge of acceptability, as far as what we could or would tolerate. Here are some examples: On a hyper-Calvinist extreme, we stop any teaching that treats the spiritual life as operating on passive auto-pilot, as if the exhortations and warnings of the New Testament don't matter and are just for show. We would stop any teaching that excused, condoned, or made light of sin in any way. Our statement of faith also explicitly forbids any teaching that breaks the connection between positional justification in Christ and practical holiness (Statement of Faith 8, .https://www.efca.org/resources/document/efca-statement-faith). The severe error that sometimes happens on the Calvinist side is called antinomianism. Here is a good, short article about that: https://www.gotquestions.org/antinomianism.html On the hyper-Arminian side, we stop teaching that insinuates good works into why and how someone is justified of their sins. This severe error is usually done by blurring initial saving faith in Christ with all the other ways a growing faith is expressed throughout life, like full dedication, cross-bearing, or Jesus' other teachings about discipleship. Here is a good quote from an historic catechism called the Larger Catechism that illustrates how not to blur faith with its fruits: Question 73: How does faith justify a sinner in the sight of God? Answer: Faith justifies a sinner in the sight of God, not because of those other graces which do always accompany it, or of good works that are the fruits of it, nor as if the grace of faith, or any act thereof, were imputed to him for his justification; but only as it is an instrument by which he receives and applies Christ and his righteousness. This catechism names three ways faith does not justify us of our sins: (1) not by all the other gracious operations of the Holy Spirit which he does to draw a sinner to Christ; (2) not by the good works that result from faith; and (3) not as if faith itself is the righteousness that saves. The hyper-Arminian error is called legalism. Here is a good, short article about it: https://www.gotquestions.org/Bible-Christian-legalism.html Antinomianism is the ditch on the left-hand side of the road. It's a poison that destroys a church by attacking holiness. The idea that a person could have exercised saving faith in Christ but remain as sinful as they ever were is a devilish doctrine. The idea that grace means it's OK to sin is abominable. God's curse is upon such teaching. Christ called it "Nicolaitanism", in the letters of Revelation, and said He hated it. But the ditch on the right-hand side of the road is legalism. Introducing any good works -- the Ten Commandments, Christ's demands of discipleship, Romans 12:1 -- into justifying faith as a co-condition for justification is Phariseeism. Good works are a fruit and proof of faith (James 2), not co-conditions for justification. Paul absolutely condemns legalism in Galatians 1:6-8. God's curse is upon it as well. Antinomianism and legalism are equally bad, and I fight both equally. However, I have met Arminians who confine the possibility of falling-away to a conscious abandonment of Christ -- not just any sin a Christian might commit, but specifically that sin. My former church history professor was of this opinion (he was ordained a Free Will Baptist preacher). Even though I didn't agree with his view on security, I could see it hypothetically -- saved by full conscious faith in Christ, lost by full conscious denouncing of Christ. That was very different from a Methodist woman I knew who claimed her uncle became eternally lost because he cheated on his wife. As bad as it is to cheat on your wife, her thinking about salvation was completely works-centered. We will seek to walk in harmony with Scripture, follow our EFCA statement of faith, and take care not drop into either of the two heretical ditches. If we have unknowingly drifted into either of the two ditches, we must get ourselves up and out of them! You can probably guess the title of this post is meant in a tongue-in-cheek way. John Calvin lived 1,500 years after the earthly ministry of Christ! Besides, Calvin's responsibility was to fall in line with Christ's teachings, not vice-versa! So no, Jesus wasn't a Calvinist. But Christ's teachings in John chapter 6 shed light on the issues of sinful inability, election, faith as a gift, and the eternal security of the believer.
Christ criticized the crowd for chasing after Him for wonder-bread (6:26), showing their reasoning was off. He exhorts them not to work for perishable food, but to work for the food that endures to eternal life, which He will give them (27). Christ's word shoots down an ancient hyper-Calvinist error, that only the elect should be evangelistically exhorted. Christ exhorted that whole crowd without any exceptions. He tells all of them to believe in Him. "What works are those?", asks the crowd (28). "The work God wants is for you to believe in Me, whom God has sent," Christ replies (29). The crowd asks about works, plural. Jesus replies with one work, singular: believe. We are saved by one work, faith in the Gospel, not by the many and varied fruits of that faith in the life. The crowd, in what has to be seen as a defiant, unbelieving response (considering they already saw a mighty miracle), demand more bread miracles from Jesus. (30-31). Jesus brushes aside their demand, and changes the subject. For one thing, Moses didn't work the manna miracle. For another thing, God was offering them the heavenly bread right there at that moment (6:32). That "bread" was Jesus Himself, who came down from heaven and whose mission was to offer life to the world (32b-33). "Give" here means "offer", which shows that God can offer a gift but still have it rejected. The crowd asks for this heavenly bread (34). Christ says, "I am the heavenly bread. If you believe in Me, you will never hunger or thirst spiritually again!" (35). But the crowd had seen Him, teaching and working miracles, and they still hadn't put their faith in Him (36). Miracles in themselves do not convert. There is something in the proud, stubborn souls of men that defy even the most obvious evidences of Christ. The entire crowd had seen Him, and the entire crowd had not believed. But Christ said there was another, smaller group who do come to Him and believe: people God had given (37). In fact, Christ said that everyone in that group, without exception, comes to him. So here we see two kinds of giving:. God at that moment was giving (offering) Christ to the crowd. But God at some time in the past had given some people to Christ. Christ will for noever reject those people, because His mission was to do the Father's will (37-38). It was the Father's will that Christ accept them. God's will is also that none of the given should ever be lost, and all of them shall be raised up at the last day (39). This verse tells us that it is impossible for them to ever lose their faith; and it is impossible for any of them to ever go to hell. This group sees (understands) Christ and trusts in Him, and receive assurance of everlasting life (40). The Jewish leaders get riled at Christ over Christ's claim of pre-existence (41-42), but Christ rebukes them (43). He's the Messiah, so of course He was pre-existent. Christ then says that only the people God draws can believe in Him ; no one else has that ability (6:44). If God leaves someone alone in the tar-pit of their own ignorance, they can't pull themselves up out of it in their own strength. Christ also says that anyone the Father draws will be raised, which appears to say they all come to faith (He did say that earlier in v.37). This is consistent with Isaiah 54:13, in which all of God's true disciples are taught by the Lord. If God spiritually speaks-to and teaches someone, that person comes to Christ (45). Apparently God can be mighty persuasive. Christ hastened to add He didn't mean that people have a direct vision of God (46). The sole condition for eternal life is belief in Christ (47). Christ himself is the bread of life (48). The manna didn't give everlasting life, but Christ does (50-51). His "bread" is His body, which he would sacrifice on the cross on behalf of the world (51). Notice that the historical cross is the place of His one-time giving of His body, not at communion. The Jewish leaders griped even louder at this (52). Jesus doubles down on the symbolism: you need to eat His flesh and drink His blood, otherwise you remain spiritually dead (53). His body and blood are the real food of God (55). Anyone who eats His flesh and drinks His blood lives in Christ, and He lives in them (56-58). Now, many of His disciples recoil (60). Christ asks if this teaching offended them (61). How would they react if they saw Him go back to heaven? Would that upset them, too? (62) Christ makes it clear that His physical flesh would profit them nothing. He isn't talking about literal bread, any more than He was a literal sheep-door or a literal vine. Eternal life comes from the Holy Spirit, working through Christ's words (63). Christ interprets their revulsion at His teaching as an evidence of their true unbelief (64). Just because someone called himself a disciple of Christ didn't make it so. Christ hits them with a hammer blow: None of them can savingly trust in Christ unless God grants that they shall (65). Christ said this earlier to the crowd, but now He says it to His own disciples. A man could follow Christ around, sit in His Bible classes, even be baptized, but that doesn't mean he has spiritual power to believe in Christ. The spiritual power to believe in Christ comes from God alone. As a result of Him saying this, many of His disciples abandoned Him (66), proving that they were secretly unbelievers the whole time. Christ asks the twelve disciples, "Do you want to leave, too?" (67) Peter professes that Jesus is the Christ, the Son of the living God, and that He alone has the words of everlasting life (68-69). However, Christ reminds them that one of them was a child of the devil (70-71). So, was Christ a "Calvinist"? Or, to put it more seriously:
Sickness entered the world when Adam sinned. His act cut him and his descendants off from God, and brought a curse down onto the physical world. This is why human beings age, sicken, and die -- it's the fall-out from the atom-bomb-blast of Adam's sin. You might call it an Adam bomb. However, God had an eternal plan to eradicate all sickness, while at the same time using sickness for positive purposes.
God uses sickness as a deterrent to sin. Illness can cripple or cut short the careers of evil people, like the self-glorifying Herod whom God struck dead with intestinal parasites (Acts 12:20-23). The sickness-curses of God's law were meant to deter rebellion against the Lord. God threatened the children of Israel with consumption, fever, inflammation, boils, tumors, scab and itch, madness, and blindness, if they rebelled (Deut. 28:22, 27-29, 35). Paul said that many in the Corinthians church were sick, and some had died, because they were spiritually violating the symbolism of the table of the Lord with their sins against the church (1 Corinthians 11:27-30). Paul told them this in order to bring about a change of behavior. God uses sickness, and other afflictions, as a test of faith. Job did not bring his troubles upon himself, contrary to some foolish "name-it-and-claim-it" teachings I've read in the past. Job was a righteous man, and God praised him without reservation (Job 1:1, 8). Satan was filled with malice, and tried to prove Job was a hypocrite, just a worshiper-for-hire (1:9-11). God permitted Satan to afflict Job terribly (1:12, 2:6). God said this was His decision; Satan had no power to act contrary to God's ordinance (2:3). Job became a timeless example of enduring suffering, and received God's blessing at the end of it (James 5:10-11). God uses sickness to bring lost people to Himself. Naaman was a Syrian army commander, afflicted with some sort of dreadful skin disease (2 Kings 5:1). He heard about the prophet Elisha through a servant girl, and sought Elisha's help. Elisha commanded him to dip himself in the Jordan River seven times. Naaman swallowed his pride, and did as he was told. God instantly healed Naaman of his terrible skin disease (2 Kings 5:13-14). In response, Naaman put his faith in the Lord God of Israel (5:15). God uses sickness as a way to display His glory. Christ's disciples asked Him, "Who sinned, that this man was born blind? Him, or his parents?" Christ replied, "Neither sinned. This man was born blind so that the works of God may be revealed in him", and then He healed the blind man (John 9:1-7). This story is important because it reveals two important truths: first, that sickness is not always a punishment for personal sin; and second, that sickness is part of the ultimate plan of God, and under His control. As the Lord said to Moses: "Who gave human beings their mouths? Who makes them deaf or mute? Who gives them sight or makes them blind? Is it not I, the LORD?" (Exodus 4:11). Satan might be a secondary cause behind an illness, but he is not God's equal. God uses sickness to create opportunities for witness. The apostle Paul said the reason he originally got to know the Galatians at all was because of some painful affliction that kept him there (likely an agonizing eye ailment, based on context -- see Galatians 4:13-15). There was nothing wrong with Paul's faith for healing, and Paul wasn't sinning. But God used him in this weakness to share the Gospel and so save the eternal souls of these dear people. God uses sickness as a deterrent to pride (2 Corinthians 12:7-9). God gave Paul many astounding visions and revelations, but, to guard him against pride, God also gave him a "thorn in the flesh", a messenger from Satan to beat on him (v.7). This must have been a specific affliction, not just life's general troubles. It was a thorn in Paul's flesh (not in his mind/spirit), and whatever it was, it made Paul weak. It was not a result of sin in Paul's life. Rather, God used it as a preventative against pride. The Lord might have kept the specific nature of this thorn unclear, because its purpose and function are more important to know than its identity. God accomplished complete healing for His people in His redeeming work, but has not applied it yet. If all the physical benefits of Christ's work were already operative, then none of us Christians would age or die. We are not Jews, and no longer living under the Old Covenant, so we have no right to claim the material benefits of Moses' Law. Christ has overcome all the side-effects of Adam's sin, but full manifestation of His victory sin won't take form until Christ returns. The whole material world groans now, including our bodies, and we are all longing for the day when Christ returns and the children of God enter into Christ's full inheritance (Romans 8:18-23). God still heals in the meantime, but healing is not on an even par with forgiveness of sin. You never need to pray, "If it is your will", for the Lord's forgiveness and everlasting life. That's the chief blessing God offers in full right now. But Christ received an "If it be Thy will" prayer without rebuke,0 as true faith (Matthew 8:1-3). Satan works through the false teaching that Christ wants to heal every Christian at all times of every disease, by bringing a spirit of condemnation -- whether of one's self ("I must have a secret sin somewhere! I don't have enough faith!"), or of the brother or sister in the Lord ("If you had prayed in faith, I would have been healed! It's your fault I'm still sick!"). |
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