Better Living Through Right Thinking

Over the years the promise of better living has been suggested through many means. A quick Google search reveals the possibility of better living through chemistry, alchemy, design, birding, dentistry, pharmaceuticals, TV, coffee, technology, bitter melon (?), and the list goes on. The desire to improve ones’ life is probably universal. It is true that one advertisement from a few years back suggested that “It don’t get no better than this,” referring to a life bathed in a particular brand of beer, but I suspect that would only be true for a narrow slice of the population – though probably a larger slice than better living through birding.

There is a promise of better living that applies to all people at all times. The path to a better life is found in the Apostle Paul’s advice to the Philippians: “Finally, brothers, whatever things are true, whatever things are honorable, whatever things are right, whatever things are pure, whatever things are pleasing, whatever things are commendable, if there is any excellence of character and if anything praiseworthy, think about these things.” Here is a universal formula for better living.

I make that claim because of the verb Paul used in his advice: think on (λογίζομαι) these things. The Greek dictionary offers these synonyms for “think on”: calculate, compute, count, and reckon. I reckon that if I think on those things listed by Paul, if I count the ways, compute the results, and calculate how my life might improve, it will lead to better living. A look into each of the suggested things to think on will provide the necessary proof.

First, think on whatever things are true. I have written previously about the proper meaning of truth. I have also suggested that we are in danger of falling into what I called a state of “Truth Dysphoria.” Too many people don’t believe there is such a thing as truth. They would have us believe that truth is a personal possession; whatever they think is true is true – for them. Their idea may not be true for you, but it is true for them, or so they think. That attitude strikes a critical blow to the meaning of the word. Britannica says truth is, “the property of sentences, assertions, beliefs, thoughts, or propositions that are said, in ordinary discourse, to agree with the facts or to state what is the case.” In other words, truth is what is, or said another way truth is that which comports with reality.

The reality is that God’s Word is truth. Jesus proclaimed the He was the Truth. These are not arguable assertions; they are true whether anyone believes them or not. Calculate how much better life would be if everyone spoke and lived according to biblical truth. People who are living in an alternate “truth” should find themselves on the wrong side of the law or on a psychiatrist’s couch. That is not true in our society anymore, sadly. When liars get reelected, when abortions are not murder, when men can be women, when truth is anyone’s opinion civil society becomes a sham. How much better living would be in a society where truth was computed correctly.

Second, think on whatever things are honorable (σεμνός). The word Paul used can mean venerable or reverend. The idea is that these things have been tested by time and are respected for their reliability and truthfulness (there’s the truth again.) There seems to be a trend away from things that are venerable (old) and revered (well-respected) in today’s society. I wonder if our penchant for retro-this and retro-that betrays a deep-seated desire for things that are venerable. In a way these modern remakes do honor something from the past, yet they seldom elicit the reverence that Paul was suggesting. Not all old things deserve honor, but a nod toward tradition (venerable things) in some things would make for better living: respecting the place of law and order, upholding the sanctity of life, maintaining traditional family values, defending the principles enshrined in the Constitution. Most important of all is the reverence and application of biblical truth (again) in all of life. That would make for better living; count on it.

Next is whatever things are right. (δίκαιος.) In English, we would naturally think of this as the opposite of wrong, which is not incorrect. However, in the context of the Bible and Paul’s list of things to think on, the better opposite is sin. This Greek word is often translated righteous. Because God is infinitely righteous, His ways are always right. Anything that does not line up with God’s right ways is sin. James says that the path to sinning begins with a thought – a sinful thought. So, thinking of right things instead of sinful things would naturally lead to better living. You reckon?

Paul next calls us to think on things that are pure (ἁγνός.) My first thought was Michael W. Smith’s “Agnus Dei” which has a special place in my heart, but for y’all it means “holy God.” Think of the saying that cleanliness is next to godliness. Some good synonyms are sacred, chaste, and modest. If chaste and modest make you think of sexual purity, you are on the right track since the biblical opposite of purity is often presented as sexual perversion of some kind. Just as believers are to remain chaste and modest in human relationships, as the Bride of Christ we must maintain spiritual purity as well. As I wrote at length in “Women’s Attire,” practicing biblical modesty presents an appearance that promotes order as opposed to one that creates chaos. Monetary gain or social advantage are also subject to discernment as to purity. Avoiding lustful thoughts, whether for love or money, and keeping the mind on that which is pure is calculated to lead to better living in every circumstance.

Paul then suggests believers think on things that are pleasing. Now, there are many things that would please me to think about, but I doubt Paul would approve. Pleasing (προσφιλήςhi) does not mean what you or I think it means. “Lovely or acceptable” are synonyms suggested by the Greek dictionary. I am going to defer to one of my favorite Christian philosophers of the twentieth century, Francis Schaeffer. He tells believers that loveliness or beauty is only found in that which aligns with God’s truth (there’s that concept again.) Real beauty, according to Schaeffer is anything that aligns with the truth of God’s revealed character in His Word. Better living is found in the beauty of God’s Word. There is nothing better.

The next recommended thought is more complex. Paul says to think of things that are commendable (εὔφημος.) Synonyms are conducive to success or favorable. A transliteration of this word is euphemism. A euphemism is a way to make something sound better than it does in the original. We speak of “passing away” instead of “dying.” We have dozens of euphemisms for sexual intercourse that shade the truth of what is actually occurring in a biblical sense. I don’t think Paul meant that we should shade the truth of what we are thinking on. He meant we should think on things that will favor our success.  I reckon that would lead to better living.

When Paul next suggests we think on things that are commendable, he uses a word that can be translated virtuous (ἀρετή.) Virtue is not something we spend much time on these days. Perhaps that is because virtue has become a rare commodity. We have been inundated with the idea that we must accept everyone no matter how flawed they may be. Acceptance and inclusivity are the only “virtues” society admires these days. Pointing out what the Bible calls sin in another person is now called hate speech. A person who demonstrates what the Scripture calls virtue is usually mocked as backward or old fashioned. The traditional virtues of chastity, temperance, charity, diligence, kindness, patience, and humility are often met with scorn. Yet if we think on these things and seek out people who embody these virtues, I calculate that our life will be better.

Paul’s final recommendation ties directly into the idea of virtue. Praiseworthy (ἔπαινος) suggests we should think on things to which we would give honor. Who deserves that more than God? If we follow Paul’s advice to the Colossians and “set [our] mind on the things above,” we will have a heavenly perspective on all of life’s issues. I remember being told that if I focus on my problems, they just loom larger; if I focus on God my problems disappear. If I honor God in my thinking, if I make Him my first thought instead of my last hope, I will experience the best living I can ever imagine. That doesn’t mean there will be no rough patches in life; it means that I will sail through the hard times secure in the knowledge that I am always in God’s hands. Through the waters and through the flames He is with me. Compute that: there you will find better living than any alternative I can think of.

Related posts: Where Do You Find Truth; Truth Dysphoria; Debating ‘Christian Cleavage’; Women’s Attire; Think About It

Second Exodus

Don’t grab your Bible and search for Second Exodus. You will not find it any more than you can read from the book of Second Hezekiah regardless of how often people “quote” from it. By pretending Second Exodus exists I am referring to the record in Ezra and Nehemiah that tells of the return of the Israelites to Jerusalem after their captivity. There are some interesting parallels between the first and second exodus of God’s people.

Second Chronicles closes with a list of the people who returned when King Cyrus fulfilled prophecy by releasing them from captivity. Just as God allowed Moses to lead His people from captivity in Egypt, Zerubbabel and Joshua led God’s remnant from captivity in Babylon. The conditions in Judah were not vastly different from what the Israelites faced when Joshua led them into the Promised Land. Just as the Canaanites had opposed Joshua’s incursion, the people who lived around Jerusalem in Zerubbabel’s time vehemently opposed the returnees’ rebuilding of the city and the temple.

The opposition was successful at first: the king of Persia being convinced that the Jews were rebellious; the returning Jews stopped building for sixteen years. Two kings came and went in Persia (formerly Babylon) before the Jews asked king Darius for permission finish the temple. Once Darius made a search of the records, he gave them permission to build. He also told the local residents to leave the Jews alone. They were able to complete the temple.

Almost one hundred years later, under king Artaxerxes, Ezra gathered several thousand Jews and led a second group to Jerusalem to teach the law. It was during this time that Nehemiah was inspired by God to go to Jerusalem to complete the wall which remained a pile of rubble around the city. With the king’s blessing and provision, Nehemiah and a large number of former captives made the trek across the desert to Jerusalem. The locals rose up against Nehemiah’s building project just as they had before, but things were different this time. The locals tried petitioning the king, but this time the king told them to stop hindering the work. They tried physical attacks, but Nehemiah convinced the Jews to stand strong against them. They succeeded: the walls and the temple were eventually completed.

Here the history lesson ends and the application for us begins. I suppose the main thing we might draw from this historical account is that God is without doubt a god of second chances. In reality, letting the Jews return from their seventy-year sentence in Babylon was not their second chance; it was more like their two hundredth chance – or two thousandth chance to prove faithful. God’s second chance nature was first revealed in the Garden of Eden when He did not execute Adam and Eve for their disobedience. He instead gave them the chance to live a few hundred years with the results of their rebellion. Their relationships with God, each other, themselves, and nature were all damaged by the fall from grace.

But God’s grace remained. As He promised Adam, He worked a plan to bring His wayward people back to Himself. Throughout the historical record, from Noah to Abraham to Moses to Joshua to David and finally to His One-and-only Son, God gave His people whatever chances they needed to accomplish His will. Then through Paul He exposed the mystery of His plan: all people, not just the Jews, would be offered grace unto salvation. “Not of works lest any man should boast,” Paul counsels. By grace through faith in the risen Savior, every living person has the chance to embrace God’s plan and gain adoption into His family.

The New Testament clearly teaches that God’s grace unto salvation is a one-time decision to get on board; however, the effort to stay on board is a daily struggle. That is not to say that a believer’s failures cause the loss of grace; that is assured by the sincere acceptance of the grace displayed on the cross of Calvary. However, believers can and will slip into times of trial and discipline when they feel far from grace. Stubborn disobedience cannot erase the promise of a sincere profession of faith, but it can and will hinder the close fellowship with God and fellow believers.

That is when we experience another “second chance.” My wife and I spent several years working with recovering addicts and returning felons; they knew the meaning of a second chance, and they lived daily in the wonder and glory of that knowledge. Sometimes they slipped, as we will also, but the beauty of God’s grace is that the opportunity of a “second exodus” from sin’s captivity into God’s grace and forgiveness always exists.

We must continually examine our lives as Paul says to be sure, “That [we] are in the faith.” The forgiveness bought on Christ’s cross is always available if we follow John’s advice and confess our sin. The people in the first Exodus proved so faithless that they died in the desert. The people in the second exodus from Babylon were not much better. But God soldiered on to fulfill His plan even though His people did not deserve it. And isn’t that the definition of grace: undeserved favor. We will never deserve grace, but let us at least try to live worthy of it. If we don’t let sin take us captive, we won’t need a second exodus.

Related posts: God of Demonstrations; For God’s Sake; The Knowledge of Good and Evil

God’s Little Coincidences

Warning: this is a long story.

I recently wrote an article called, “What is a Miracle,” to distinguish between the everyday wonders of God’s creation and a true miracle. I said that something like a blossoming flower or a beautiful sunset are not miracles; rather, they are evidence of God’s continuing power and order in His creation. A true miracle, I believe, suspends, or overrules natural things and is by definition beyond nature – supernatural. As I said before, I believe God does still performs miracles, because I have been the witness of at least one and the subject of at least two in my own experience. I sometimes question the veracity of the TV miracle workers who prance on today’s stages, but I don’t doubt that God can do miracles today.

I firmly believe that God works in human lives (even unbelievers’) to work His will. I may never know if God caused a delay in my schedule that caused me to arrive late at an intersection where someone had just run a red light and would have smashed into my car. I won’t necessarily know if God ordered my steps so that I narrowly avoided a contact that would have exposed me to a deadly virus. I strongly suspect that God arranged my career moves so that I was in the right place to do His will even though I did not know what that specific task might be. That line written by William Cowper is true that, “God works in mysterious ways His wonders to perform.”

My opinion was strengthened by John MacArthur’s devotional thought today. He wrote, “Providence is how He orchestrates, through natural means and processes, all things necessary to accomplish His purposes in the world. It is the most frequent way He works and controls the daily course of human events. The only other means the Lord uses to intervene in the flow of history is miracles. But He does not perform miracles in the same way now as He did during the days of Christ, the apostles, and the prophets. However, God has continuously used providence from eternity past to coordinate the infinite variety of factors necessary to accomplish His perfect purpose.”^[1]

I am not a hardcore cesssationist like MacArthur, but I do agree with his assessment of how God works today. A story from my past will illustrate. I had finished a graduate degree in Michigan in school administration and was looking for a position in a Christian school. My father knew a guy who knew a guy who had a school in California. (1) To my surprise, I received a call one evening from said gentleman in California asking if I would be interested in checking out their school. After a brief interview, he offered to fly my wife, Karen, and I out. They put us up in a board member’s home and treated us more like royalty than candidates, and after much prayer, we accepted their offer.

They also wanted to obtain a used school bus which was prohibitively expensive in California, and since I was then transportation liaison at the school where I taught, I had access to economically priced busses. They offered to buy a bus and pay the expenses to get it to the coast. (2) We found a bus, removed the seats, and put them in a 15-passenger van I owned and planned to tow behind the bus. Then we loaded all our worldly possessions in the bus. We had a friend who had been a stevedore who helped us pack so that there was not an inch that was not filled. (3) We left Michigan – me, Karen (seven months pregnant), and our two children – thinking God had set us on His path for us.

The first hint that all was not going well was the tow bar pulling out of the mounts on the van bumper within a hundred miles of home. After two failed repair attempts, and the towbar coming apart again, we landed in a small town in Iowa where a welder in a farm implement repair shop did what I had asked the two previous mechanics to do: weld a carrier to the frame of the van. He also reinforced the towbar itself as he determined it was underrated for the weight we were pulling. (4) We thanked him, paid his reasonable bill, and headed west again.

Unfortunately, we didn’t even get out of Iowa before the next problem struck: the bus began to spit and sputter and smoke. We pulled into a rest area, and I called an International dealer a few miles down the road. I asked if they could send a mechanic with an ignition condenser because I believed that was the source of the misfiring. He said he would send a driver in a tow truck in case it was needed. The driver arrived shortly but without the condenser. He listened to the rough running engine and declared that it couldn’t be the condenser. His only option was to tow us in. We unhooked the van and piled the family into the tow truck.

After twelve hours of shop time and a night in a motel, they still had not discovered the problem. They drained and refilled the gas, replaced the fuel pump, installed a new carburetor, but it still ran like #%@*. I asked if they had replaced the condenser, and they said no. I insisted they do so immediately. You guessed it: it ran like a charm. (5) I demanded that they remove the $300 carburetor and labor, but I agreed to pay $60 for the fuel pump but not the labor to install it. The bill was still over $300, but we were back on the road again, although we were now off our schedule by days and over budget by hundreds. We went back to reattach the van and continued.

We sailed out of Iowa and enjoyed the flat country of Nebraska, though it was somewhat boring. At that point, boring but moving was a delight. Somewhere in western Nebraska, the temperature had risen to over 100, and there was a thirty-mile-per-hour crosswind to fight. Worse, I couldn’t get the bus any higher than 3^rd gear which meant we were travelling at about 19 mph. Then the engine began to overheat. I pulled to the shoulder to let it cool and discovered a stream running beside the road. (6) After the engine cooled, the kids and I carried water from the stream in soda bottles to refill the radiator. We got back on the road, staying in 2^nd or 3^rd gear (11 to 19 mph) to keep the engine from overheating again.

When we arrived at our intended stop for the night, Cheyenne, Wyoming, we discovered it was Frontier Days which meant there was not a motel room for fifty miles. When we shared our awful day with the waitress, she said we should be glad we had reached the top of the continental divide. We had been climbing all day without knowing it! It was good news, but we still had over a thousand miles to go, and our supply of travelers’ checks was nearly exhausted. We went on to Rawlins where we could get a motel for the night. Since this was before the days when everyone relied on plastic to survive, we had nothing but a checkbook from a Michigan bank. Fortunately, we had a long-time friend who lived in Salt Lake City which was on our intended route. She agreed to cash a personal check for us to complete our journey. (7)

We arrived in SLC after the banks had closed for the weekend. Our friend, Nancy, who was a doctor, went to a grocery store she frequented, and the manager agreed to cash a local check for $300 which she planned to cover with our check to be deposited in her account on Monday. (8) We left the next day and drove to Las Vegas where we were undoubtedly the most unique vehicle the strip had ever seen. We were in a 66-passenger school bus with luggage strapped on top pulling a 15-passenger van with our son’s hobby horse on top. We left at 2am so we could cross the desert into California before it heated up. I’m sure the people on the strip that night thought they had seen a live replay of the Clampetts on parade.

I have told this story many times in the four decades since it happened. The disaster, disappointment, and depression it caused have paled over time, but one thing has stayed clear. God was with us in at least the eight ways I have numbered, and I will never know what else He may have orchestrated to get us to California safely. I will quote MacArthur again: “Think about it. The vast scope and endless outworking of divine providence, in which God draws together millions of details and circumstances to achieve His will each day, is a far greater miracle than the relatively uncomplicated, one–time supernatural occurrences that we usually term miracles. Belief in God’s providence is, therefore, one of the greatest exercises of faith we can have and a major contributor to our general preparedness and peace of mind as we encounter trials and hardships.”^[2]

We have come to call the apparently ill-fated journey to California “The Ordeal.” The truth is, we don’t know why God called us to California or why He allowed us to be tried in so many ways; perhaps Satan was trying to thwart God’s plan for us. But we believe beyond the shadow of a doubt that God was in it all the way. I am reminded of the verse I have referenced before: “When you pass through the waters, I will be with you, and through the rivers, they shall not flow over you. When you walk through fire, you shall not be burned.” We are not promised deliverance from trials but divine providence in the midst of them.

In the years since the trip, whenever trouble comes to call on the road or at home, we can say with certainty that God will get us through, not with miracles necessarily, but with His gracious providence. When we recognize the kind of things that represent that providence, we smile at one another and say it’s one of God’s little “coincidences.” I pray you may have the same faith in the trials you face.

Related posts: Working All Things for Good; Speaking of Illness; OMG It’s Me!

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^[1] John MacArthur, Strength for Today (Wheaton, IL: Crossway Books, 1997).

^[2] John MacArthur, Strength for Today (Wheaton, IL: Crossway Books, 1997).             

God’s Grandchildren

If you are wondering who my title might be referring to, the answer is no one. Of course. My reading through the history books in the Old Testament has driven that reality home for me. The potential grandparents of the Bible greats – Adam, Noah, Abraham, Samuel, David, Solomon (though he followed in his father’s footsteps for a while) – all had to watch their children stray. I am thankful for godly parents who raised me in a Christian home, but until I made the decision to follow Christ on my own, I was headed for the same Hell as everyone else.

I want to take a rabbit trail and explain that last sentence. Because Adam’s rebellion brought death into the perfect creation of God – physical and spiritual death – everyone of his progeny (that’s every human) is destined for an eternity apart from God. The name for that eternal separation is Hell. This is why we must accept God’s gracious offer of adoption into the family headed by Christ. The family headed by Adam is going to Hell. Paul makes this abundantly clear in Romans where he calls Jesus Christ the second Adam. God’s first family (Adam’s family) failed the test of obedience, so God sent His unique Son to start a second family that would be assured of an eternity in the Father’s presence based on the perfect obedience of His Son.

A generation or two after the Apostles died, theologians began interpreting the Bible, and they realized the awkwardness of no grandchildren. They instituted infant baptism as a way to bring a second generation into the church: grandchildren. Defenders of infant baptism have long said that it is a continuation of God’s covenant with Abraham which was signified with circumcision. Baptism is their Christian equivalent to circumcision as a rite of entrance into the covenant. Except it’s not. The record of the Old Testament plainly shows that not all who were circumcised were God’s children; Paul points that out saying, “Not all Israel is Israel.”

Even before the Cross of Calvary, it was not the sign of the covenant that made one God’s child, it was always faith. This is Paul’s argument throughout all his epistles, particularly in Romans. Believing and trusting in God has always been the golden ticket to the Heavenly train. A parent may feel better having baptized a baby, but until that child makes a profession of faith in Christ, the ceremony of baptism is just a ritual bath. Absent the profession, that child is on the same road as every other descendant of Adam: the highway to Hell.

I know that sounds mean, uncaring, judgmental. But it is biblical. It also raises a thorny problem for some people. If one believes in necessary prerequisites for salvation, whether baptism or profession of faith, how do you handle the “innocents” who die without either? First, there are no innocents. As I have pointed out already, one is either in Adam or in Christ and eternal conditions are predicated on the family tree. However, something in us wants to believe that God won’t condemn people to Hell who had no other choice. I’m one of those people. I hate to think that the millions of lives that have been sacrificed on the abortion altar of convenience are not taken to be with God. I don’t like to think that people with limited mental capacity can’t find some loophole in the law of faith. I’d also like to think that people who never hear the gospel message can somehow receive God’s grace.

I dealt with this feeling of unfairness more fully in another article. (see “What Happens to People Who Never Hear the Name of Jesus?”) I will summarize my position here. I believe God can do whatever He wants. I also believe that though the Bible is sufficient for salvation, it may not be exhaustive. There may be other ways God applies the blood of His Son to those whom He chooses. As I said in the previous article, there are many things that are true that are not specifically stated in the Scripture. It is the height of arrogance to say that God cannot do something that is not specifically excluded by Scripture. Having said all that, nothing else I said precludes the necessity of gospel proclamation. As I wrote in “Why Witness,” we have all the reason we need to continue evangelistic efforts in this one thing: Jesus commands it.

Something else you should not take from this article is that it is not important to impress upon children that need for profession of faith. “Bring them up in the discipline and instruction of the Lord,” says Paul. He is echoing the Old Testament Shema in Deuteronomy 6: teach them, train them day in and day out. I am blessed to have three children who made a profession of faith in Christ Jesus. (Sometimes I think it was in spite of my parenting.)  I also have grandchildren who are following the Lord. This is a legacy I cherish, but I know that each one had to make a decision; there’s no sliding into Heaven on Mom and Dad’s coattails. If you have children, they are your number one evangelistic priority. After them, you have all the rest of Adam’s family to reach. How? I like what Francis of Assisi suggested: “Preach the gospel at all times, and if necessary, use words.”

Related posts: What Happens to People Who Never Hear the Name of Jesus; Understanding Salvation; Why Heaven Matters; Lies We Have Been Told

What is a Miracle?

The message I heard in church this week caused me some cognitive dissonance. That’s another way of saying it made me think I was thinking something different from our pastor. That’s not unusual, but when it happens, I feel the need to discern whether my disagreement puts me in the right or the wrong. It also forces me to decide whether I need to discuss the differences with my pastor. There are many things of a non-essential nature that honest Christians can disagree about; few of them rise to the level of necessary confrontation. If you have not noticed it yet, my wife will confirm for you that I am way too concerned about semantic details. Words mean things, and I want to use and hear them used the with right meanings.

This week’s message was from the book of Acts where a lame man was healed and a woman, Dorcas/Tabitha, was raised from the dead. The point our pastor drove home was that many people believed in Jesus because of the miracles they witnessed. He asked us if more people would believe today if they saw miracles. Then he stepped of the cliff, semantically speaking, to suggest that we do see miracles every day. He suggested that our advanced scientific knowledge has revealed “miracles” at many levels. A tree is a miracle. The structure of an atom is a miracle. The wonder of the stars is a miracle. Hmmm.

At that point I was wriggling in my seat and biting my tongue. My wife gets righteously upset when I allow my semantic proclivities to rise while we are still in the pew, so to speak. But I haven’t stopped thinking about it, so here I write. Strictly speaking, a miracle is a departure from what is natural. The Oxford Dictionary says a miracle is, “a surprising and welcome event that is not explicable by natural or scientific laws and is therefore considered to be the work of a divine agency.” Lame men walking and dead women rising is not natural – it’s supernatural or miraculous. To say that God’s creation is miraculous does not fit the strict definition.

However, the next entry in the dictionary says, “an amazing product or achievement, or an outstanding example of something” might be called a miracle. My semantic accuracy meter begins to rise. My pastor may have been correct that an atom or a star is “amazing.” God’s creation is certainly amazing, but if we use the word “miracle” this loosely, I fear we devalue the true worth of the miracles performed by Peter or anyone else reported in the Bible record. When God intervenes to suspend or reverse the course of nature, He shows His sovereign power over that which He has made. He can break the rules, if you will, and do truly amazing things, things that are not part of the course of nature.

The paradigm shift away from a position of faith to one of reason that began with the so-called Enlightenment was based on the belief that science, aka nature, would reveal her secrets in such a way that faith in a divine Creator would no longer be necessary. And here we are. We can explain all sorts of things that were considered “miraculous” in the pre-scientific world. However, there are a few things that still have the scientists baffled, chief among them are where the universe came from, and what the essence of life is. Darwin and the Big Bang are proving to be a bust where origins are concerned. And no one anywhere has ever created life from scratch. We don’t even know what life is, really. We talk about organic and inorganic as categories, but we have no idea what makes a thing organic – alive.

The Bible teaches that God created our known universe out of nothing. He spoke; it became. The Bible also teaches that life comes from God. In Genesis God breathed life into Adam and presumably did something similar for all the living creatures He made. From that point on, the creation of life became procreation or continuation of what God had started. Because of Adam’s rebellion, the life he received from God was limited by the introduction of death and decay. Sin’s death sentence puts an end to the miracle of life for all creatures. But there is another miracle waiting.

Paul makes an interesting statement in 1 Corinthians 15 about life. He states that each form of living thing – humans, animals, birds, fish – have a distinct flesh. The word “flesh” is a biblical synonym for life. He goes a step further to say that when a believer dies, his earthly body is “sown in corruption… dishonor… and weakness” meaning that it decays. He says it is sown a “natural body,” but it is raised a “spiritual body.” In the coming resurrection, the restoration of all things perfect, Paul says we will have a different kind of life. That will be a true miracle because it will not be natural, but supernatural. That’s the miracle I’m waiting for.

Related posts: Think Supernaturally; What’s Glorious