Why Did Jesus Have to Die?

From For Your Joy by John Piper:

God put [Christ] forward as a propitiation by his blood, to be received by faith. This was to show God's righteousness, because in his divine forbearance he had passed over former sins. Romans 3:25

In this is love, not that we have loved God but that he loved us and sent his Son to be the propitiation for our sins. 1 John 4:10

Christ redeemed us from the curse of the law by becoming a curse for us. Galatians 3:13

If God were not just, there would be no demand for his Son to suffer and die. And if God were not loving, there would be no willingness for his Son to suffer and die. But God is just and loving. Therefore his love is willing to meet the demands of his justice.

His law demanded, "You shall love the LORD your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your might" (Deuteronomy 6:5). But we have all loved other things more. This is what sin is--dishonoring God by preferring other things over him, and acting on those preferences. Therefore, the Bible says, "All have sinned and fall short of the glory of God" (Romans 3:23). We glorify what we enjoy most. And it isn't God.

Therefore sin is not small, because it is not against a small Sovereign. The seriousness of an insult rises with the dignity of the one insulted. The Creator of the universe is infinitely worthy of respect and admiration and loyalty. Therefore, failure to love him is not trivial--it is treason. It defames God and destroys human happiness.

Since God is just, he does not sweep these crimes under the rug of the universe. He feels a holy wrath against them. They deserve to be punished, and he has made this clear: "For the wages of sin is death" (Romans 6:23). "The soul who sins shall die" (Ezekiel 18:4).

There is a holy curse hanging over all sin. Not to punish would be unjust. The demeaning of God would be upheld. A lie would reign at the core of reality. Therefore, God says, "Cursed be everyone who does not abide by all things written in the Book of the Law, and do them" (Galatians 3:10; Deuteronomy 27:26).

But the love of God does not rest with the curse that hangs over all sinful humanity. He is not content to show wrath, no matter how holy it is. Therefore he sends his own Son to absorb his wrath and bear the curse for all who trust him. "Christ redeemed us from the curse of the law by becoming a curse for us" (Galatians 3:13).

This is the meaning of the word "propitiation" in the texts quoted above. It refers to the removal of God's wrath by providing a substitute. The substitute is provided by God himself. The substitute, Jesus Christ, does not just cancel the wrath; he absorbs it and diverts it from us to himself. God's wrath is just and it was spent, not withdrawn.

Let us not trifle with God or trivialize his love. We will never stand in awe of being loved by God until we reckon with the seriousness of our sin and the justice of his wrath against us. But when, by grace, we waken to our unworthiness, then we may look at the suffering and death of Christ and say, "In this is love, not that we have loved God but that he loved us and sent his Son to be the [wrath-absorbing] propitiation for our sins" (1 John 4: 10).

Texas Style Christianity

What about us makes us want things bigger and better in everything we do? Pride? Perhaps. It is our nature. We do this with every undertaking, especially in America. Look at food portions in restaurants, the size of our grocery stores, and even at our religious landscape. We want to do things on a grand scale. But does that creep over into our mentality as Christians?

Yes, it does! God has called us to make disciples and to tell the nations about the Gospel of Christ. But even as Christians, we can buy into the mentality of doing it bigger and better than the next guy. We want to see scores saved, churches packed, and widespread repentance. Are these bad things? No. But we often fall into the trap of wanting to see the results instead of a pleased Father.

What makes it difficult is that we see so many "results" around us. Just in our local community, we have huge churches that are getting bigger, and new mega churches that seemed to spring up overnight. It is hard not to think fleshly and just wonder what they are doing right. But the secret behind it is that the gospel to them is nothing more than a product to peddle in order to get someone "in." And pastors and staff are gathering large groups of unregenerate, unconverted people together and calling it church. There may be signs of life and success on the outside, but they are full of deceived people on the inside.

But this certainly explains alot for me. Ever notice how most preachers resemble your idea of a used car salesman? They have the slicked up moussed hair, the fake smile, the please-them-all attitude. Why? Because they were hired to get results. They were hired to make this place grow and convince people they need to be here.

No one jumps into anything wanting to be a failure. But if your aim is to please your Heavenly Father, you will by no means fail. You may say, "Well, if we do the things God told us, success will naturally come. God told us how to be successful!" Not necessarily. Noah only took his family upon the ark. He had no other converts. Jeremiah spent time in prison for preaching against the sins of his people and telling of forthcoming doom. But they did not listen. Jesus gathered a huge following, but lost them all but eleven by the time of his death.

Let us not be tempted to do big things for God. The biggest thing we can do is become humble, submissive, and simply content to not look within, but look to please Him.

J.T.

Feeling Sin

Have you ever had a dream so wrought with intense emotion that you awoke to feeling that emotion as much as you did when you were asleep? I had such a dream last night. The end of the dream was intense with terror and panic. . . so much so that I woke up suddenly, and it took a good hour before those feelings subsided. But in that hour, I wondered why I did not have such intense feelings toward the enemy of sin. I do hate my sin. I do loathe its awful renderings in my life. But the mere thought of committing sin does not induce within me the feelings of terror that were associated with my dream.

Could it be that I do not see sin as dangerous as it really is? As a Christian, I see sin as something detestable, but do I really feel and know that to my core? Perhaps sin is still to much a part of who I am to be truly alien to me and cause me to revile it so. But does sin have this effect on any man? It has had that effect on at least one man. Before Jesus' arrest and crucifixion, he met with much agony at Gethsemane. In Matthew 26, it says he was sorrowful and deeply distressed and he told his disciples that his "soul was exceedingly sorrowful, even unto death." In Luke 22 it says his sweat became like great drops of blood falling to the ground. And he cried out to the father, "if it is your will, take this cup away from me." The torment was great. The terror was real. But why was Christ, the one who had remained steadfast and bold in the face of opposition, now seemingly to recoil in fear? It was the cup. The cup of God's wrath and righteous judgement. It was a judgement against sin.

Unlike any other man, Christ had not known sin. He did know know what it meant to have sin coursing through the veins from birth. He did not know what separation from the Father meant because of sin. He was not ruled by sin or the flesh but ruled by the will of God. Yet, in a little while, he would become sin and be an enemy of God. It was something he had never known, and the terror struck him with the fierceness of all of hell. Yet he remained faithful.

Oh, may I not become friends with sin. May I not make treaties and become complacent and accustomed to its presence. May even the thought of sin. . . mutiny against a Holy God. . . strike terror within my heart. May it become as loathsome as a festering boil and as terrifying as the flames of hell.

J.T.

The Overwhelming Love of God

Is God's love overwhelming to you? It is not possible until you see your overwhelming burden of sin. And that is not possible until you see the overwhelming holiness of God. Yet his holiness condescended to us to take on the form of flesh. And his flesh condescended to take on our sin. But he did not just bear the burden of sin. He became as sin. 2 Corinthians 5:17 - "For our sake he made him to be sin who knew no sin, so that in him we might become the righteousness of God." He BECAME OUR sin by imputation. And once that transaction occurred, God poured his wrath and his righteous anger against that sin upon him. Can you fathom the wrath of our Holy God against what he hates: sin? And then imagine that cup being poured out upon you. Yet through this act, his righteousness was imputed to us who are born again so we can be found spotless in his sight. Oh what a glorious thought!

At times this love swells the heart to beyond its capacity. The love of God becomes as an encompassing weight that seems poised to crush to us if he did not restrain his hand. How marvelous! How wonderful! And my song shall ever be. How marvelous! How wonderful is my savior's love for me! May we all know the experiencing of his love today.

The Medium is the Message - Part Two

So if the way we communicate messages has a bearing on the meaning of those messages, what does that say about how we communicate the gospel? Many have taken the view that since people in America are entrenched in sports, television, and movies that we must use those languages to communicate the gospel of Christ. But ultimately, what does it do to the message? If McLuhan was right, it changes the gospel into entertainment. . . it changes it into mere fun. . . it distorts the seriousness of it. And, in recent years, the gospel has become an obligatory tack-on to entertainment. And because attention spans are short, people are apologized to when gospel presenters say, "This will only take a few minutes."

And what does it say about the message we have to communicate? By trying to smash it in to a context that would appeal to depraved minds, we are stating that there is a lack of power in what we have to say, and it has to be modified in order to be effective. I recently heard John MacArthur say something profound about our gospel. It is a transcendent message. It is a singular message. The message of the church transcends all languages, all nations, all cultures, all societal norms, all contexts, all levels of education, and all notions about status. The early church had the same message everywhere it went in a day when cultural boundaries were harder and more fixed than we see today. Acts 1:8 - "But you shall receive power when the Holy Spirit has come upon you; and you shall be witnesses to Me in Jerusalem, and in all Judea and Samaria, and to the end of the earth.” Did Christ say witnesses to Me by the power of your cunning in crafting the message? No. It is by the power of the Holy Spirit.

All that is needed for the power of God to be released in a situation, such as in Acts 2 on the day of Pentecost, is that the Truth of God be proclaimed. Three thousand souls were added that day BY GOD, not by the context of the message. Why would you change the message when the Word says that the natural man understands not the things of God? Contextualization of the message is a curse. As MacArthur says, "We have people fussing around trying to figure out if they need holes in their Levis and a skull and crossbones on their t-shirts, as if that is a means for drawing in God's elect. The message never descends to clothing or musical styles. Can your message go to any person? Anyone in your town, state, country, and around the world?"

Let me tell you about the practicality of this. In sharing the gospel with people, I have used the same message with every age group, every race, and each gender. And they all understand! Do they all receive it? No. But the Word says that the message is veiled to those who are perishing. And if it is veiled and cannot be understood by the human mind without the power of God, then how am I going to try and trump that by making it "cool." I recently saw an evangelist present the gospel message to a group of teens. The message was the same as what he would have told a man who was 90 years old. And the message was effective! God brought a certain amount of conviction upon those kids. Why do we feel that we must spend thousands of dollars, generate a great deal of research, and distort the message when all they need is the gospel!

I may sound out of touch with society, but I am in good company. Look at the prophets. Look at John the Baptist (who was probably more out of touch with society than anyone) and the Apostle Paul. For that matter, look at Jesus. He did not fit in with his society, nor did he use their depraved desires to pull them in. We must not use people's desires for the things of the world to draw them to the gospel. These things are innate to their falleness.

The true Gospel is alien to us. Men are naturally prideful. The Gospel smashes that pride. Men proclaim their goodness. The Gospel smashes their idea of what good is. And the Gospel is the power to save. It is not of man, but of God. We therefore, do not need to take what is of God and make if man.

I will end with what is probably the scariest part of all of this. If the medium taints the message, then in all reality, it changes the message. Parts of it may sound the same, but the message is changed. In Galatians 1:9, Paul says, "As we have said before, so now I say again, if anyone preaches any other gospel to you than what you have received, let him be accursed." Let us not be in that position. Preach the Word! Be prepared in season and out of season!

J.T.

The Medium is the Message - Part One

In the early 1960's, Marshall McLuhan postulated his now famous theory of media, that the medium is the message. This means, in its most simplified form, that messages we convey to each other as human beings are tainted and shaped by the medium by which we choose to communicate them. For example, a news event that is reported on television, the newspaper, and an Internet blog will all be somewhat different. Television is a medium where brevity is key, so the message is shaped accordingly. Newspapers have limited space, but they are a little more free to expound on facts than television. An Internet blog is virtually limitless in space and storage, thus much more information can be contained. In this, the medium of communication helps to shape the message delivered. We can perceive some messages as being more important than others, or more facts or less facts give us an impression of what is truly going on. This is where we get terms such as "soundbite culture." Let me give you one visual example. Look at the following ways of conveying a message through different fonts:

As you can see, if I were conveying a message about a person named Jenny, I could give you different ideas about who Jenny is simply by my medium choice. The message is exactly the same (J-E-N-N-Y), but the medium shapes the way you perceive the message.

In more recent times, television and the Internet are shaping our way of thinking simply because they are the predominant media of our day. One result of television viewing is shortened attention spans. For example, a typical television show will change the image you see every three seconds, on average. You are moved from one shot to the next in rapid succession in order to keep your attention. Watch a television show from the medium's early days. Better yet, place a child in front of an old TV show, and watch the temptation of boredom set in. You will notice things move at a much slower pace, and the shots and images are not changed as often.

So, in the end, messages can be enhanced, obscured, or obsolesced simply by the form of communication we use to transmit that message.

So, what does this mean on a Christian blog? You will have to tune in to part two to find out! But until then, think about how the Christian community transmits the Gospel of Christ. We hold good news! And that good news must be communicated with others. How do we do that? How is that done in America now?

. . . to be continued.

J.T.

Upcoming article about the RTM conference

Paducah Parenting Magazine will graciously run an article regarding the conference in their September issue. Below is the article as it has been submitted to them:

Mark Twain wrote in his autobiography, “In religion and politics people's beliefs and convictions are in almost every case gotten at second-hand, and without examination, from authorities who have not themselves examined the questions at issue but have taken them at second-hand from other non-examiners, whose opinions about them were not worth a brass farthing.” His words could not be more apropos than now.

In a time when many are embracing post-modernist philosophies (what is true for you and what is true for me may be complete opposites, yet they are both valid), the questioning of beliefs passed down from generation to generation are coming under close scrutiny. And perhaps none is more closely eyed than those pertaining to religion. Yet if what Mark Twain writes is true, should we not question the ideals and beliefs passed on to us? Are the beliefs and traditions we grew up with accurate? Such is the subject of the Real Truth Matters conference coming to Paducah on October 11th at the Robert Cherry Civic Center.

The Real Truth Matters conference will take an in depth look at the crux of Christian belief. . . the Gospel. Without it, there would be no Christianity. But the question has arrived: Is what we are doing today in Churches across the United States in line with the Bible, or are we just passing on traditions that in the end, mean nothing? “The question has been raised quite well by those in the emergent church,” says conference speaker Michael Durham. “But in the end, their post-modern ideas do not lead them to a logical solution. On the other end, we have Christians who claim to stand on Biblical truth in their doctrine, but they will do anything and everything to get someone into Christianity, even if it means compromising the Gospel. Others agree that many of the traditions of our forefathers are not good, but they set out to create new, equally dangerous traditions. One of the purposes of this conference is to start a dialog among Christians in our area. In an age where Christians are increasingly under attack for the faith, and persecution is on the rise, we have to make sure we get the Gospel right. It is the bedrock of our faith, and we have to keep it true.”

And the fight is not a new one. Even before the last word was penned on the book of Revelation, deceivers had already crept into the early church. “False prophets existed in the Old Testament,” says Michael. “There always seems to be a work of deception working along side any work of God. That is exactly the problem we find in the Garden of Eden. Jesus warned about them from the sermon on the mount to his discourse just before his death. Paul encountered false teachings as well as Peter and John. The book of Jude is a direct warning against such. Jude encourages believers “to contend earnestly for the faith which was once for all delivered to the saints” because deceivers had crept in unnoticed. The key word is 'unnoticed.' We often think that deception will be easy to spot. But that is the very essence of deception. It is, by nature, not always easy to spot. It will often take on many forms of truth. . . dress itself up in God's word and be nearly accurate. But any errancy in the gospel renders it useless. It's like putting a drop of extremely toxic poison in a gallon of water. Not many would take the chance on drinking that water once they know what is in there.”

And even though deception is often masked under the cloak of truth, the results of it are unmistakable. In 1991, the first year of the decade of harvest, a major denomination in the U.S. was able to obtain 294,000 decisions for Christ. That is, in one year, this major denomination of 11,500 churches was able to obtain 294,000 decisions for Christ. Unfortunately, they could only find 14,000 in fellowship, which means they couldn’t account for 280,000 of their decisions. This is normal, modern evangelical results. And one of the greatest complaints against the Christian community is the fact that many who claim to be Christian are no different than those who do not claim any faith. Yet the scriptures describe a believer as “a new creation.” There is an obvious disconnect between our reality and that described in scripture.

“These are the topics we are going to tackle at the Real Truth Matters conference,” adds Michael. “We are going to look at where we have gotten it wrong, the essential elements of the gospel, and what true conversion really is. It will be a time for Christians to come together and learn the power of the gospel of Jesus Christ. Once that power is realized, we have no more need of man-made traditions to entice or lure people into the kingdom of God.”

The Real Truth Matters conference will be held at the Robert Cherry Civic Center on Saturday, October 11 at 10am. More information and registration can be found at realtruthmatters.com.

From the Cradle to the Grave

There's a group out there that wants to control you. They want to control your mind. . . your habits and your daily decisions from the time you are born until the time you die. Do I sound a little too "conspiracy theory" for you? No, "they" aren't hovering in UFOs far above the earth beaming mind control rays into our heads. "They" are the world as spoke of in scriptures. How does it work? Let me give you one example.

Are you familiar with Viacom? Viacom is one of the most prolific corporations the US has ever seen. Viacom manages to touch nearly every US citizen in one way or another multiple times throughout one's life. How? Through their ownership of media such as Nickelodeon, CMT, BET, MTV, VH1, SpikeTV, TVLand, Paramount, Dreamworks, and Atom Entertainment, just to name a few. Much of what you see in theaters and on your home television screen is produced by a Viacom subsidiary. And if you like entertainment, you can literally be theirs from the cradle to the grave.

As a toddler, you can soak in all the "educational" programs on Nick Jr., Nickelodeon's daytime programming. But in the afternoon, when the older kids are home from school, the programming changes. In later years, Nickelodeon has opted for more of an MTV format in the afternoons, offering older kids musical interludes by today's nearly-non-threatening pop acts and breaks by live announcers much akin to MTV VJs. You, as a young child or young adult are being groomed for the next step up in the Viacom world, MTV, BET or CMT. And the messages from the film division are backed up and promoted heavily on Viacom network stations. And each network grooms you for the next until all you can do is watch TVLand and remember the good old days.

So what's the problem? We are being lulled to sleep our whole lives. Your patterns of thinking, behavior, and purchasing are being influenced from multiple directions with a single source behind many of the messages. In an entertainment culture, it is easy to sit back, relax, and enjoy the ride. But before we know it, we realize we have been sedated. Our minds have been numbed until we reach the end of our lives, which have been shaped by what is temporary and fleeting.

But is Viacom some huge monster in a vast conspiracy to turn you into a drooling clone that answers to their beck and call? Perhaps. They are certainly looking for you to willfully surrender your pocketbook. But ultimately they are merely pawns picked from the toolbox of the world. Romans 12:2 says "And do not be conformed to this world, but be transformed by the renewing of your mind, that you may prove what is that good and acceptable and perfect will of God." Conformity to this world is the opposite of what God wants. I also think of Matthew 16:26 where Jesus says "For what profit is it to a man if he gains the whole world, and loses his own soul? Or what will a man give in exchange for his soul?" To gain a lifetime of fleeting entertainment to only find out that you've lost it all is tragic. But perhaps the most tragic example is in Jesus' parable of the four soils. In the parable, Christ uses the story of a seed sower to illustrate someone preaching the truth of the Gospel. . . God's word. And as the sower scatters his seed, some falls into thorny ground. Oh, the seed grows, but so do thorny vines. And the thorny vines eventually choke the life out of the tender plant from the seed. Christ explains the meaning this way: "Now these are the ones sown among thorns; they are the ones who hear the word, and the cares of this world, the deceitfulness of riches, and the desires for other things entering in choke the word, and it becomes unfruitful."

I pray that is not you, my friend. It is easy to fill our lives with "stuff," only to wake up at the end of our life's journey and wonder where it all went. Our lives are but vapors. . . here today and gone tomorrow. Paul says in Colossians 3 that if "you were raised with Christ, seek those things which are above, where Christ is, sitting at the right hand of God. Set your mind on things above, not on things on the earth." There we will find treasure that moth and rust cannot destroy. And the thief of time cannot take it away. There, we will find the treasure of Christ.

The blood of Jesus Christ his Son cleanseth us from all sin

Charles Spurgeon-

1 John 1:7 - but if we walk in the light, as he is in the light, we have fellowship one with another, and the blood of Jesus his Son cleanseth us from all sin.

“Cleanseth,” says the text—not “shall cleanse.” There are multitudes who think that as a dying hope they may look forward to pardon. Oh! how infinitely better to have cleansing now than to depend on the bare possibility of forgiveness when I come to die. Some imagine that a sense of pardon is an attainment only obtainable after many years of Christian experience. But forgiveness of sin is a present thing—a privilege for this day, a joy for this very hour. The moment a sinner trusts Jesus he is fully forgiven. The text, being written in the present tense, also indicates continuance; it was “cleanseth” yesterday, it is “cleanseth” today, it will be “cleanseth” tomorrow: it will be always so with you, Christian, until you cross the river; every hour you may come to this fountain, for it cleanseth still. Notice, likewise, the completeness of the cleansing, “The blood of Jesus Christ his Son cleanseth us from all sin”—not only from sin, but “from all sin.” Reader, I cannot tell you the exceeding sweetness of this word, but I pray God the Holy Ghost to give you a taste of it. Manifold are our sins against God. Whether the bill be little or great, the same receipt can discharge one as the other. The blood of Jesus Christ is as blessed and divine a payment for the transgressions of blaspheming Peter as for the shortcomings of loving John; our iniquity is gone, all gone at once, and all gone forever. Blessed completeness! What a sweet theme to dwell upon as one gives himself to sleep.

“Sins against a holy God;
Sins against his righteous laws;
Sins against his love, his blood;
Sins against his name and cause;
Sins immense as is the sea-
From them all he cleanseth me.”

Depravity of Man - Up Close and Personal

If you do not believe in the total depravity of man - that man is inherently evil and born that way - I invite you to slow down and take a look around.

As evangelists who hit the streets and talk to people one on one, we are forced to slow down, take a thoughtful look at what is going on around us, and engage people in the truth of the Gospel. One of our favorite places to go is Paducah's Downtown After Dinner. If you want examples of depravity, you can find them here. Outside of the entertainment areas on Broadway, you can find large group of roaming kids, many dropped off and left unsupervised by their parents. Some are as young as twelve. In passing them by while walking around downtown, one can hear and see some pretty shocking things. We have seen many fights start, heard language that would make a hardened criminal blush, and seen clothing that was inappropriate both in it's content and lack of content. It boils down to depravity.

Just this past weekend two women around the age of twenty were brutally fighting on the sidewalk in front of the Quilt Museum. One had the other on the sidewalk and appeared to be trying to bash the girl's head into the concrete. The other had her teeth clenched down on the other girl. A group of people stood around just watching. Several people approached trying to break up the fight, but the crowd around them prevented them from doing so. Who was in the crowd? Both girls' parents. One woman said, "I ain't going to break it up, and you ain't either. The girl on the bottom is my daughter, and if she can't take it, she ain't worth it!" Depravity.

But even on Broadway, in the middle of the entertainment, is there depravity? Absolutely! Just ask yourself if all that takes place there is pleasing to God? Depravity is best understood when you see things from His perspective. Not that there is anything inherently wrong with entertainment, but you see people who live their lives without regard to God. They shun Him and go their own way. They care not for the one who gave them life and breath and sustains their very being every single day. They do not acknowledge Him. They are depraved.

If you are not yet convinced, I will give you one more example. Take a look at Myspace. Look at the profiles of people who live in your hometown. The Internet lets people feel more comfortable in expressing themselves in ways that they may not be able to in other public realms. And most of the time, it is not good. The language is fueled by cursings, sexuality, and everything a person puts out in the public eye that they use to communicate "this is who I am!" And, once again, take a look at it from God's perspective. Look at these things and ask, "Is this pleasing to God?"

So what about your own heart? Are you depraved in God's eyes? How do you match up to God's standard of what is acceptable or unacceptable to Him? You see, God demands perfection! You can ask yourself a few questions to see how you stack up. How many lies have you told in your life? Have you ever stolen anything? Have you ever looked at someone with lustful thoughts? Jesus said if you even look with lust, you have committed adultery already in your heart. Have you ever hated anyone? Hate in the heart is the same as murder to God. As you can see by facing just a few of the Ten Commandments, we fall woefully short. And these things are only a reflection of God's righteousness! Paul told us in Romans that we are ALL wicked in God's eyes. Read this passage from Romans and apply it to yourself. I have put it in first person to help: “ There is none righteous, no, not one; There is none who understands; There is none who seeks after God. I have turned aside; I have become unprofitable; I do no good. My throat is an open tomb; With my tongue I have practiced deceit. The poison of asps is under my lips. My mouth is full of cursing and bitterness. My feet are swift to shed blood; Destruction and misery are in my ways; And the way of peace they I have not known. There is no fear of God before my eyes.” Now you may say, no, I have done some good! But remember, we have to see things from God's point of view. What may seem good to us is as nothing compared to the righteousness of God. Our best works are no better than excrement.

Paul says that all have sinned and fallen short of the glory of God. So what are we to do? Without perfection, we do not enter in to the presence of God, and are destined to eternal destruction where there will be weeping and gnashing of teeth. Yet in this, there is good news. Because while we were still sinners, Christ came to die for us. Christ is the expression of one who did not fall short of the glory of God. He is the glory of God! Christ lived a perfect life. Christ had not the depraved nature of you and I. And, when he hung on the cross, he took the wrath of God that you and I deserved. God poured out his anger against sin onto His only begotten son so that you and I could walk free. Our sin incurred a debt against God that we could never repay. That is why hell is eternal. But Christ stepped in and paid that debt once and for all. And he calls us to repent (turn away from our sin) and put our trust, our lives, and our all in His hands. Then, He says he takes out the heart of stone and gives us a heart of flesh. We begin to hate the sin we once loved and love the God we once hated. Without pure righteousness, we cannot enter into the presence of God and will enter into eternal punishment. But when we cry out to Him, he stoops down, picks us up, and gives us His righteousness.

Romans 3: 21 But now the righteousness of God apart from the law is revealed, being witnessed by the Law and the Prophets, 22 even the righteousness of God, through faith in Jesus Christ, to all and on all who believe. For there is no difference; 23 for all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God, 24 being justified freely by His grace through the redemption that is in Christ Jesus, 25 whom God set forth as a propitiation by His blood, through faith, to demonstrate His righteousness, because in His forbearance God had passed over the sins that were previously committed, 26 to demonstrate at the present time His righteousness, that He might be just and the justifier of the one who has faith in Jesus.

Working FOR the glory of God?

I have heard it said that we are created to bring God glory. While it may be rightly so, we spend our Christian lives working for the glory of God. We do what we can for His glory. We pray for God to bless our toil to his honor. Yet if we are stillborn sinners, lifeless and dead in trespasses, taken from the womb of sin, what can our work accomplish for God’s benefit? If our existence is an affront to God’s holiness, how can the labor of our minds and hands bless Him? Yet even while we are dead and stinking in the grave, the life of Christ beats within the convert’s heart. God takes what is death and, through the propitiatory sacrifice of His only Son, Jesus Christ, He lives His life through us. Our work is not just a means to the ends of glorifying God. Our death to sin, our death to self, our death to pride. . . allows Christ to work in and through us for his own glory. It is not simply doing what we can to repay Christ for His mercy. It is an utterly, and wholly death to self that allows Christ to take up our flesh for the working of His hands.

Are you an Apatheist?

While you read this, keep in mind it was written by a professed homosexual, atheistic, Jew:


Let It Be: Three Cheers for Apatheism
The Atlantic May 2003

IT came to me recently in a blinding vision that I am an apatheist. Well, "blinding vision" may be an overstatement. "Wine-induced haze" might be more strictly accurate. This was after a couple of glasses of merlot, when someone asked me about my religion. "Atheist," I was about to say, but I stopped myself. "I used to call myself an atheist," I said, "and I still don't believe in God, but the larger truth is that it has been years since I really cared one way or another. I'm" -- that was when it hit me -- "an ... apatheist!"

That got a chuckle, but the point was serious. Apatheism -- a disinclination to care all that much about one's own religion, and an even stronger disinclination to care about other people's -- may or may not be something new in the world, but its modern flowering, particularly in ostensibly pious America, is worth getting excited about.

Apatheism concerns not what you believe but how. In that respect it differs from the standard concepts used to describe religious views and people. Atheism, for instance, is not at all like apatheism; the hot-blooded atheist cares as much about religion as does the evangelical Christian, but in the opposite direction. "Secularism" can refer to a simple absence of devoutness, but it more accurately refers to an ACLU-style disapproval of any profession of religion in public life -- a disapproval that seems puritanical and quaint to apatheists. Tolerance is a magnificent concept, John Locke's inestimable gift to all mankind; but it assumes, as Locke did, that everyone brims with religious passions that everyone else must work hard to put up with.

And agnostics? True, most of them are apatheists, but most apatheists are not agnostics. Because -- and this is an essential point -- many apatheists are believers.

In America, as Thomas Byrne Edsall reported in these pages recently, the proportion of people who say they never go to church or synagogue has tripled since 1972, to 33 percent in 2000. Most of these people believe in God (professed atheists are very rare in the United States); they just don't care much about him. They do care a bit; but apatheism is an attitude, not a belief system, and the over-riding fact is that these people are relaxed about religion.

Even regular churchgoers can, and often do, rank quite high on the apatheism scale. There are a lot of reasons to attend religious services: to connect with a culture or a community, to socialize, to expose children to religion, to find the warming comfort of familiar ritual. The softer denominations in America are packed with apatheists. The apatheism of Reform Jews is so well known as to be a staple of synagogue humor. (Orthodox rabbi to Reform rabbi: "One of my congregants says his son wants a Harley for his bar mitzvah. What's a Harley?" Reform rabbi to Orthodox rabbi: "A Harley is a motorcycle. What's a bar mitzvah?")

Finally, and this may seem strangest of all, even true-believing godliness today often has an apatheistic flavor. I have Christian friends who organize their lives around an intense and personal relationship with God, but who betray no sign of caring that I am an unrepentantly atheistic Jewish homosexual. They are exponents, at least, of the second, more important part of apatheism: the part that doesn't mind what other people think about God.

I BELIEVE that the rise of apatheism is to be celebrated as nothing less than a major civilizational advance. Religion, as the events of September 11 and after have so brutally underscored, remains the most divisive and volatile of social forces. To be in the grip of religious zeal is the natural state of human beings, or at least of a great many human beings; that is how much of the species seems to be wired. Apatheism, therefore, should not be assumed to represent a lazy recumbency, like my collapse into a soft chair after a long day. Just the opposite: it is the product of a determined cultural effort to discipline the religious mindset, and often of an equally determined personal effort to master the spiritual passions. It is not a lapse. It is an achievement.

"A world of pragmatic atheists," the philosopher Richard Rorty once wrote, "would be a better, happier world than our present one." Perhaps. But best of all would be a world generously leavened with apatheists: people who feel at ease with religion even if they are irreligious; people who may themselves be members of religious communities, but who are neither controlled by godly passions nor concerned about the (nonviolent, noncoercive) religious beliefs of others. In my lifetime America has taken great strides in this direction, and its example will be a source of strength, not weakness, in a world still beset by fanatical religiosity (al Qaeda) and tyrannical secularism (China).

Ronald Reagan used to insist that he was religious even though, as President, he hardly ever entered a church. It turns out he was in good company. Those Americans who tell pollsters they worship faithfully? Many of them are lying. John G. Stackhouse Jr., a professor of theology and culture, wrote recently in American Outlook magazine, "Beginning in the 1990s, a series of sociological studies has shown that many more Americans tell pollsters that they attend church regularly than can be found in church when teams actually count." In fact, he says, actual churchgoing may be at little more than half the professed rate. A great many Americans, like their fortieth President, apparently care about religion enough to say they are religious, but not enough to go to church.

You can snicker at Reagan and the millions of others like him; you can call them hypocrites if you like. I say, God bless them, every one.