Don't Play The Goat

    As some of you know, we have a few goats on our farm. Some month ago we bought a sheep. We hoped that the sheep and the goats would get along together. But the sheep was not accepted by the goats. The sheep has been here for a number of months, and she is still isolated from the goats. A couple of weeks ago we bought a male goat for breeding purposes. Right away, the goat was accepted into the small goat herd. Meanwhile the sheep is still ostracized. There is a good lesson here about spiritual things.

  Jesus told His disciples "If the world hates you, understand that it hated me before it hated you. If you were of the world, the world would love you as its own. However, because you are not of the world, but I have chosen you out it, the world hates you." John 15:18-19.  Jesus  compared believers to sheep and unbelievers to goats. Matthew 25:31-33. So hopefully you can see where this is going.

  Goats and sheep don't mix. Neither do Christians and the world. We are different by nature. The Christian is born of God with the Spirit living within him. They are a new creation in Christ and so they love different things. Christians have different goals, ambitions, and purposes. We belong to a different family, kingdom and country.

   The world loves darkness and sin. They belong to the kingdom of darkness. Since they love darkness, they hate the light. They have no love for the true God. Men and women of all religions and beliefs can find some common ground. They all belong to the same family and kingdom. But there can't be fellowship between the sons of darkness and the children of light.

     A Christian must expect to be excluded from the world, like my sheep was excluded by the goats. We may be friendly with them and even enjoy their friendliness. But there is a world of difference between us.We don't mix well like oil and water or sheep and goats. If you can have deep friendships with unbelievers, if you can have no problems being partners together in some enterprise, if you are comfortable at the parties of the world, if you don't feel out of place in worldly discussions, then you have a problem.

    Christians that can feel at home among the people of this world have a problem. They may be weak spiritually and have an unhealthy appetite for the things of this world. These sheep act too much like goats to be an offence. But they are in great danger. For in this case the Christian is like a sheep among wolves who will tear them to pieces. These kind of sheep may not even be sheep. They may be goats that only pretend to be sheep at times.

   A Christian who lives a godly life, will be despised by the world. A healthy sheep is one who evangelizes the lost, who stands fast on truth in life and doctrine, and who lives for a heavenly purpose and kingdom. If you do this, you will shine in the darkness, and the darkness will run from you or try to snuff you out. When this happens, it is a good sign. Rejoice and be glad for great is your reward. So don't act like a goat, be a good sheep.

And by the way, we sold our sheep recently. Since it would not eat with the goats and it had to dig through the snow to find grass, we felt that it was time for it to go. Thankfully we found a good home for the sheep, with some other sheep friends. But I don't think there is any spiritual lesson to this part of the story.

Brad

The Christian Test: Part 2

 In the last post I looked at 3 evidences of a Christian. Repentance, faith and obedience will be seen in every true Christian. In this post I will look at a number of other evidences of a Christian so that we may obtain assurance of faith or be shown to not be Christians and so turn from our sin to Christ.

  1) Do you see the work of the Spirit in your life?

 When a person is saved the Holy Spirit indwells them. "Having believed, you were sealed in Him with the Holy Spirit of promise, who is given as a pledge of our inheritance," Eph 1:13-14.  The Holy Spirit's primary task is to sanctify us. Thus if we are Christians we will see the results of the ministry of the Spirit in holy lives. "By this we know that we abide in Him and He in us, because He has given us of His Spirit." 1 John 4:13.

 The Holy Spirit will produce holiness in the life of the believer. This is not just outward action, but an inward transformation. The famous passage is Galatians 5: 22-23. There it lists the fruit of the Spirit. "But the fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, self control; against such things there is no law." An apple tree will produce apples. An orange tree will produce oranges and a person that has the Spirit living inside them will produce the fruit of the Spirit. Are these seen in your life?

  The Holy Spirit is the teacher of truth. He reveals the glorious truths of God's word. "As for you, the anointing which you have received  from Him abides in you, and you have no need for anyone to teach you; but as His anointing teaches you about all things, and is true and is not a lie, and just as it has taught you, abide in Him." 1 John 2:27. "But when He , the Spirit of truth, comes, He will guide you into all the truth;" John 16:13. We need the Holy Spirit to teach us the truth of God's word. For when we are dead in our sins we can't understand or appreciate the glory of the truth. "But a natural man does not accept the things of the Spirit of God, for they are foolishness to him; and he cannot understand them , because they are spiritually appraised." 1 Cor 2:14.  An evidence the Spirit is working in our lives is when we begin to see the truth, wisdom and greatness of the gospel and the glory of Christ. We love God's word. Our eyes are opened and it becomes clear to us. We have a hunger for the Bible which results in the daily reading and study of God's word. All this is evidence that the Spirit is at work within us.

 The Spirit also gives true believers spiritual discernment so that they hold fast to essential doctrine. Consider 2 John 9, "Anyone who goes too far and does not abide in the teaching of Christ, does not have God; the one who abides in the teaching, he has both the Father and the Son." Or 1 John 4:6, "We are from God; he who know God listens to us; he who is not from God does not listen to us. By this we know the spirit of truth and the spirit of error." Or "Whoever confesses that Jesus is the Son of God, God abides in him." 1 John 4:15. Consider also 1 John 2:20-24 and 1 John 5:1.  This doesn't mean Christians are never in doctrinal error. But the Spirit works in us so that we hold fast to those essential and major doctrines, like the divinity and humanity of Christ, the Trinity, the substitutionary atonement. Cults like the Mormons, JW's and others deny these and other essential doctrines. Thus they show by what they believe that they are not Christians. Christians will be able to discern false teachers and teaching.

  The Holy Spirit will also testify to our adoption as God's children. "The Spirit Himself testifies with our spirit that we are children of God," Rom 8:16.  In salvation we are adopted as God's children. He is now our Father. The Holman study note on this verse says this "By the Spirit we have a consciousnesses that God is our Father. It is the mark of a Christian to cry out to his Father in prayer." John Macarthur in his study Bible says this, ""God's Holy Spirit confirms the validity of our adoption, not by some inner, mystical voice, but by the fruit He produces in us and the power He provides for spiritual service."  Thus we come to God as children come to their father knowing that He will hear us through Christ.

2) Does God answer your prayers?

  "This is the confidence which we have before Him, that if we ask anything according to His will, He hears us." 1 John 5:14 and 1 John 3:22, "And whatever we ask we receive from Him, because we keep His commandments and do the things that are pleasing in His sight." This doesn't mean God will answer our prayers in the exact manner that we think He should. But when we pray according to His will, laid out for us in scripture, then we can be sure that God will answer those prayers. If we are Christians, we should see some of God's answers to our prayers and that will give us greater assurance of faith.

 For the last blog post in this series I will look at a few more signs to see if  we are indeed Christians.

Brad

The Christian Test: Part 1

This post continues on from the last one in which I showed from the scripture that we are to examine ourselves to see if we are in the faith. Assurance of salvation is important and God has shown us how to obtain it in His word. The letter of First John gives us a test by which we can see if we are indeed saved. Much of the texts used here will be taken from this book.

  This is a test that you must get 100% on. All the traits will be present in a Christian. But there will be varying degrees in the life of a believer. For example, all Christians have saving faith, but some will have strong faith while others weak faith. The greater these characteristics of a believer are seen in a their life, the greater will be their assurance. The less we see these qualities, the weaker will be our assurance.

1) Do I repent of my sins and trust in the finished work of Christ?

 How a person deals with sin, reveals his true colors. We are born loving sin. We don't need to learn to sin since it comes naturally. Left to himself, man would hold on to his sin rather than let it go and gain eternal life. The natural man pursues sins and continues to live in sin. He doesn't hate it and see it for what it is; the most hateful and vile evil in all the universe. 1 John 3:8, "The one who practices sin is of the devil; for the devil has sinned from the beginning."

 One of the first signs of new life in the soul is repentance. Repentance is a change in our attitude toward sin. It is much more than just saying sorry to God for your sins. It is more than just asking for forgiveness. With repentance there is a sorrow because we know that sins are an offence toward God. Sin doesn't seem lovely any more; it is seen as a disease, a poison, a pollutant, a rotting corpse. Then there will be confession of sin before God. "If we confess our sins, He is faithful and righteous to forgive us our sins and to cleanse us from all unrighteousness." 1 John 1:9. We cry out to God as the tax collector did, "God, be merciful to me, the sinner." Luke 18:13. Real repentance also involves a breaking away or turning from sin. We don't wallow in our sins like a pig in the mud. We make an effort to leave the mire. Christians may fall into the mud, but they won't stay there. "No one who is born of God practices sin, because His seed abides in him; and he cannot sin, because he is born of God" 1 John 3:9
   
   Repentance starts at the beginning of the Christian's life and continues throughout his life. We never stop confessing our sins and repenting. When we come in repentance for the first time, we come before God as judge begging Him to forgive us and give us salvation. When we come in repentance during the rest of our life, we come to God as our Father whom we have wronged so there can be reconciliation and enjoyment of that relationship.

  Faith always goes with repentance. Faith and repentance are as two wings which are both needed for the bird to fly. Both faith and repentance are needed for salvation. A Christian trusts or rests on the finished work of Christ. He knows he is bankrupt of righteousness. He knows he can do nothing to save himself. He believes that only Christ can save him. A Christian is convinced that the gospel of Jesus Christ is true and that he can only be saved by coming to Christ in faith. 

"Whoever believes that Jesus is the Christ is born of God," 1 John 5:1.

"The one who believes in the Son of God has the testimony  in himself; the one who does not believe God has made Him a liar, because he has not believed in the testimony that God has given concerning His Son." 1 John 5:10.

"That if you confess with your mouth Jesus as Lord and believe in your heart that God raised Him from the dead, you will be saved." Rom 10:9.

 As with repentance, living by faith continues our whole lives. The just are saved by faith and the just continue by faith. A true Christian continues his whole life trusting Christ. Consider the lives of the saints in Hebrew 11. They did great deeds by faith. They courageously suffered and died by faith. They sailed through trouble and trials trusting in the unseen God who loved them. "For whatever is born of God overcomes the world; and this is the victory that has overcome the world-our faith." 1 John 5:4.

2) Is there a general pattern of obedience to God in my life?

 In many of these characteristics of a Christian there is some overlap. Obedience is the result of repentance and faith.

Jesus said in John 14:15 "If you love Me, you will keep my commandments."

and then later in verses 23-24 "If anyone loves Me, he will keep my word; and My Father will love him, and we will come to him and make our abode with him. He who does not love me , does not keep my words;"

 1 John 3:10 states it very plainly, "By this the children of God and the children of the devil are obvious: anyone who does not practice righteousness is not of God,"

or consider 1 John 2:29 , "If you know that He is righteous, you know that everyone also who practices righteousness is born of Him."

I could go on; there are many similar verses in the Bible. A Christian will be obedient to God's commands. This doesn't mean Christians have to be perfect. No Christian will be perfect in this life. But when you look at your life, ask yourselves, "Is there a general pattern of obedience in my life?" "Do I delight to do God's will?"  "Is there growth of obedience in my life?" The more obedient we are the greater our assurance of our salvation will be.

   These first two characteristics of a Christian are foundational. You simply can't be a Christian if you never have repented of your sins and trusted Christ alone for salvation. There must be obedience to God's law in a Christian's life and that obedience must be increasing. A true Christian will find joy and will delight in God's commands. There will be a desire to repent. There will be joy in resting in Jesus alone. All these traits are products of a new heart that is given at salvation.

The next post will continue this test of a genuine Christian.

Brad

The Great Demise Of The Monster Death

There is no event more solemn and weighty than a death. Yet it is a wonder that people regard death without much thought, even joking about it. Some people kill without much of a thought to what they are doing. Murder is just a statistic for some. But when you really know what comes after death, it becomes a very serious event.

  Death is not a native to this world. When Adam and Eve lived in Eden, there was no death. But after they sinned, death come into the world. People die because they are sinful. "Therefore, just as sin came into the world through one man, and death through sin, and so death spread to all men because all sinned." Rom 5:12. Now in this sinful world, death has become normal. We can't imagine a world without dying. While it is normal, it is still a shadow that haunts the lives of every person, even when they make jokes about it. In Hebrew 2:15, it says that Jesus died to destroy death and Satan "and to deliver all those who through fear of death were subject to lifelong slavery." People live all their lives in fear of death. Why? Well, God has put eternity in the hearts of all men. Eccles 3:11. That means that God has put into all people the sense that life doesn't end with death. We know that there is an afterlife. This is seen in all the different ideas of heaven or hell among all nations. Combine this with the God-given conscience which warns people that they are guilty, and you will understand why people are afraid of death. With death we seem to plunge into the unknown. Is there judgement to come for us?  We can try avoid death, but it will come to us. We can delay death but we can't escape it. It will hunt us down and we will all be caught in its net. But is there no hope? Is there real hope and not just fairy tales make up by people? In Isaiah 25:8, God gives us hope that death will die and with that all sorrow.

In the chapter that comes before Isaiah 25, we read of a worldwide judgement. There will come a day when God will pour out His wrath on a sin-defiled world. The earth will be almost emptied of people and shaken and broken. The evil spirits and unrepentant sinners will be cast into prison for a long time until judgement. The Lord will reign over all the world from Mount Zion. In chapter 25, Isaiah sings a song of praise on behalf of those who will be saved from that judgement. In verse 6 he describes the glorious feast that God will prepare for those whom He saved. Then we come to verses 7 and 8 which speak of the death of death. Consider verse 8, "He will swallow up death forever;" Death will one day disappear. How can this happen?

We learn the answer to this question in 1 Corinthians 15:4. Paul quotes this text in Isaiah there. "When the perishable puts on the imperishable, and mortal puts on immortality, then shall come to the pass the saying that is written: 'Death is swallowed up in victory.' 'O death where is your victory? O death, where is your sting?' The sting of death is sin, and the power of sin is the law. But thanks be to God, who gives us the victory through our Lord Jesus Christ." 1 Cor 15:54-57.  Jesus won the victory over death by his sacrifice on the cross and his resurrection. He is the great Champion, the Conqueror. Not even death can stand before Him.  Now He can give eternal life to all those that come to Him for grace and mercy. Jesus died their death and has wiped away all their sins. Death has no power over them. The sting of death has been thrust onto Christ, so now for the redeemed, there is no sting in death.  For those who are forgiven, death is now a door into a new world of perfect joy. In the new heavens and the new earth, there will no more death at all. For after the thousand year reign of Jesus Christ upon this earth, all the dead will be judged. Along with the unredeemed, death and Hades will be thrown into the lake of fire; the second death. Rev 20:14-15 So the victory that was begun with the death and resurrection of Christ, will be completed.

With death, sin, evil and the devil will all be removed from earth and so there will no more tears. We cry at the death of those we love. We weep over our sins or over the sins of others. We may cry in our pain and trials. But here in this new world, there are none of the things that cause us to cry. The Lord will wipe away all our tears. He will as it were comfort us, like a father who holds his crying child and wipes away his tears with his hand and softly says  "All is well now. There is nothing to be afraid of." Likewise, " the Lord God will wipe away tears from all faces," Isaiah 25:8. This expression is used of those believers who have suffered on earth but are now in heaven in Rev 7:17. It is also used of the new heavens and the new earth in Revelation 21:4. "He will wipe away every tear from their eyes and death shall be no more, neither shall there be mourning, nor crying, nor pain anymore, for the former things have passed away."

  If you won't repent of your sins and beg forgiveness of Jesus Christ, all you have to look forward to is a never ending horror of death and pain. But if you have been given salvation by the great mercies of Jesus Christ, you have an eternity of joy and peace with God. No more tears will fall from your face. And the only reason you will be there, is the infinite grace of God in Christ. There is absolutely no difference between you and those who will suffer in hell forever. We deserve to be in the lake of fire. It is only because of the electing love of God that we are not there. What grace and love is this! No words can express it. Such divine love is "so amazing, so divine, demands my soul, my life, my all." (from Isaac Watts' song, "When I Survey The Wondrous Cross")

 "For the wages of sin is death, but the free gift of God is eternal life in Christ Jesus our Lord." Romans 6:23 

-Brad

What About The Children?!

When we left infant baptism for believer's baptism, there were not many discussions about the theology behind baptism. No, the biggest question we faced was a very emotional "Now what comfort do you have when your baby dies?" or "What about the salvation of babies when they die?" Infant baptism is supposed to provide the assurance that the babies and the mentally handicapped children of believers are given salvation by virtue of the the covenant of grace. (Although there have been some believers who practice infant baptism and who believe that all infants who die in infancy are saved.) For some this is the main or only reason they hold on to the baptism of infants. At times careful examination of the scriptures is overshadowed by emotions. I have written 4 posts showing from scripture why infant baptism is not right and why this covenant of grace with believers and their children is based on a misunderstanding of the Abrahamic covenant.* Now I would like to examine scripture to see what we can learn about the salvation of infants and the mentally handicapped. This is no academic exercise for me. We have 5 children and have had 4 babies die in miscarriages. I also don't want false comfort or speculations. I want sola scriptura.

First, just because a doctrine brings you comfort or the warm fuzzies, doesn't mean it is true. I could reason that denying the existence of hell brings me comfort. How horrible it is to think of all those people forever in hell suffering for their sins. How cruel of you to say that God won't save everyone. The doctrine of hell is not pleasant, but it is still true. And we need to know the cold hard truth if we ever want to find real comfort in Christ. The same is true for other truths as well. So using feelings as an argument for a doctrine is not valid. There must be real truth to back up the comfort. The covenant of grace argument lacks any scriptural support and so it can give only false comfort.

Even if in spite of evidence that the covenant of grace is not true, you still believe it and embrace the comfort that your children are saved for a time, then you are still left with a hard question. What about the children of unbelievers when they die in infancy? Does God send them to hell? Does God send mentally handicapped children to hell who can't understand the gospel or any truth about God? What about some who had babies die before they were saved, are those children in hell? So I ask you, how would you explain that?

There are two ways in which infants are unique from the rest of mankind. One, they cannot exercise faith. Faith requires the ability to understand the truth, to accept the truth, and act upon the truth. Since infants and the mentally handicapped are mentally unable to do this, they cannot believe the gospel. Faith comes from hearing--this is hearing and understanding. If they cannot have faith they cannot believe the gospel that gives eternal life. Two, they cannot comprehend the evidence for God in his creation. In Romans 1:19-20 we learn that God has clearly revealed Himself to this world in the creation. verse 20 says, 'For His invisible attributes, namely his eternal power and divine nature, have been clearly perceived, ever since the creation of the world, in the things that have been made. So they are without excuse." But it seems plain that infants and the mentally handicapped cannot see God's attributes because they do not have the mental capabilities. It seems logical then that they would have an excuse before God. They cannot see and understand the evidence that God has left to leave everyone without excuse in the day of judgement. They cannot reject something they don't understand,

 God knows everything. He knows from the beginning of the world all the people who will exist in the history of the world. He knows exactly how many days each person will live. He knows how and when they will die. "Your eyes saw my unformed substance; in your book were written, every one of them, the days that were formed for me, when as yet there was none." Psalm 139:16. So before the world began, God knew exactly how many children would die in infancy and how many mentally handicapped people would be born before He made the world. God doesn't give salvation to all or some children only to take it away when they reach some level of accountability. If God were to save infants and the mentally handicapped, then He would have to elect them before the foundation of the world.

Infants, even newborn babies are not free from sin and the guilt that comes from Adam's sin. David knew this, for in Psalm 51:5 he said, "Behold, I was brought forth in iniquity, and in sin did my mother conceive me." David knew that the moment he was conceived he had a sinful nature. He came out of the womb with a heart that was rotten to the core. Also Romans 5:12 teaches us that we all died spiritually in Adam. "Therefore, just as sin came into the world through one man, and death through sin, and so death spread to all men because all sinned." Adam was our representative and when he fell into sin, so did we. His spiritual death spread to all people and so all people have become guilty. All this teaches us that even babies and the mentally handicapped are sinners and are guilty before God. If God were to save those that die in infancy, He would have to apply the forgiveness and righteousness of Christ to them.

God understands there is a difference between those who are infants and those who are not. Deuteronomy 1:39 describes infants as those who "have no knowledge of good or evil." Or consider Isaiah 7:16, "For before the boy knows how to refuse the evil and choose the good...."  In both these passages God describes very young children as those who don't choose to sin with a full understanding of what they are doing. They sin because they are sinners and have a sin nature. Later as they grow older they will deliberately and willfully choose sin rather than good. Children are probably more quickly accountable before God than we think. And only God knows when a child can choose good or evil. So we must from an early age teach them the gospel.

God is silent about the salvation of infants and the mentally handicapped. There are no clear texts which we can go to. There is one that is often referred to which could help but I think it is still unclear. In 2 Samuel 12:23, David says after the death of his son, "I shall go to him, but he will not return to me."  There are two other phrases like this. One in 1 Samuel 28:19 where Samuel says to Saul that he and his "sons will be with me." This doesn't refer to Saul and sons joining Samuel in heaven since Saul was no believer, rather it says that Saul and his sons will join Samuel in the grave or Sheol. In Genesis 37:35, Jacob says, "No I shall go down to Sheol to my son, mourning." when he learns that Joseph has "died". While David's statement may refer to his hope of a reunion in heaven with his dead son, there is also good reason to believe David simply means that he will join his son in Sheol or the grave. We must trust that God has a good reason for this silence on the salvation of infants.

The best hope and comfort we have is found in the character of God. God gives us all the comfort we need in Himself. When Job could not  understand why all these troubles were coming into his life, he found his comfort in the Lord who is wise, powerful, sovereign, and loving. In Psalm 119:68 we read, "you are good and do good." God is good and everything He does is good.  There is nothing mean, cruel, or bad in God. God is perfect in justice. Abraham said, "Shall not the Judge of all the earth do what is just?" Genesis 18:25 And so He is; God is always right. He never errs. He always brings perfect justice. We need to trust Him, especially in the things He has not revealed to us.

When I consider all that scripture teaches on this subject. I believe it is reasonable to be assured that God will elect and save all those who are mentally unable to believe the gospel when they die. It would seem consistent with scripture and God's nature. But in the end, we need to trust that God will do what is good and right in this matter. Trust Him, when we get to heaven this will all make sense and we will rejoice to see that yes, indeed, God did what was best and right.

* The verse commonly used to teach that God gives salvation to the children of believers by virtue of the covenant of grace is found in Genesis 17:7. "And I will establish my covenant between me and you and your offspring after you throughout their generations for an everlasting covenant." There are two good reasons this verse has nothing to do with the salvation of  the children of believers. 

1) "Your offspring" or descendants refers to the physical offspring of Abraham. From one generation of Jews to another, God will keep His covenant with them. This is also shown in the very next verse where God says that He will give to Abraham's offspring the land of Canaan, the very land that Abraham sojourned through his life. 

2) "to be God to you and to your offspring after you" and "I will be their God." means God will be Israel's God in a national sense. This use of this phrase has little to do with salvation. God often said that He was Israel's God and she was His people, even when most of the people were corrupt and godless. To read in this expression a salvific sense is to put a New Testament understanding into an Old Testament expression while at the same time ignoring the context.

-Brad