Heaven is Not My Eternal Home

In my last post, I made the startling declaration that I don’t believe Christians go to Heaven when they die. I suspect so many do believe this first because it is widely taught by respectable Christians. I think that adherents to this opinion err because it seems to make sense – it seems natural to say that Heaven is our eternal home. That is the second reason this idea has become so popular: it seems right to our natural, soulish mind. To correct that, we must abandon natural thinking and seek spiritual understanding.

A.W. Tozer put it like this: “Surely God has something to say to the pure in heart which He cannot say to the man of sinful life. But what He has to say is not theological, it is spiritual, and spiritual truths cannot be received in the ordinary way of nature…. The necessity for spiritual illumination before we can grasp spiritual truths is taught throughout the entire New Testament and it is altogether in accord with the teachings of the Psalms, the Proverbs and the Prophets. The New Testament draws a sharp line between the natural mind and the mind that has been touched by divine fire…. what I am saying is that there is an illumination, divinely bestowed, without which theological truth is information and nothing more. While this illumination is never given apart from theology, it is entirely possible to have theology without the illumination!”

God regularly condescends to our human level to reveal His truth to us. He must! Because His ways are immeasurably higher than ours, He often brings things down to our level to make His point. You might say that God provides a natural metaphor for a spiritual truth that would otherwise be difficult for us to understand. The most astounding example of this is the incarnation of His Son, Jesus. Paul tells the Philippians that Jesus, “emptied himself, taking the form of a slave, becoming in the likeness of people. And being found in appearance like a man.” Php 2:7 And yet, “in him all the fullness of deity dwells bodily.”

Someone has said that everything we can know about God can be seen in Jesus. This fits what the Scripture says: According to Jesus Himself, “Whoever has seen me has seen the Father" and Paul describes Jesus Christ as "the image of the invisible God" That does not mean that God is limited to what we can see in the physical person Jesus. It means that in Jesus, God provided a sufficient representation of Himself for our natural minds to lead us to the spiritual truth of who God is. There is solid physical evidence that Jesus lived, died, and rose again. That evidence is intended to lead us to the spiritual truth that He became our Savior. There are many people who see the physical evidence of Jesus and either deny it or ignore it and never get to the spiritual truth that He died for them.

I think something similar has happened with regard to our understanding of what the Bible says about Heaven. People use a number of Bible passages to defend the idea of Heaven as our eternal home. I think these interpretations arise from the practice of thinking something is true and then finding Scripture to back it up. This is a type of logical fallacy called assuming the conclusion. If you believe Heaven is where Christians go when they die, you can find passages that seem to lead to that conclusion.

One passage frequently cited is Jesus’ word to the thief on the cross that, “Today you will be with me in paradise.” Those who believe Heaven is where believers go when they die take the word “paradise” to mean heaven. The word appears only two other times in the New Testament, and neither unarguably means a place called heaven. Paul tells the Corinthians that he was taken to paradise to receive special revelation. Two verses earlier he described the place he went to as “the third heaven.” In the cosmology of the first century Jew, the third heaven was God’s dwelling place. As I have said before, the use of heaven as God’s dwelling place is meant to explain God’s spiritual nature. Paul was translated temporarily to a spiritual state so he could have an audience with Jesus who was by then in His spiritual body.

I believe Paul was in the spirit the same way John was for his revelations of the things to come. They were both taken “to heaven” to describe the phenomenon John described as being “in the spirit on the Lord’s Day.” In Revelation 2, Jesus tells the Ephesian church that, “To the one who conquers, I will grant to him to eat from the tree of life which is in the paradise of God.” I believe that is a reference to the Eden-like state of the new Earth rather than a synonym for Heaven. I may be committing the same fallacy as those I am disagreeing with. If so, it only proves that the true meaning of the word paradise is disputable.

Another passage frequently cited as proof that believers go to heaven when they die is Paul’s assertion that to be absent from the body is to be present with the Lord. If you couple this with the statement that Jesus is at the throne of God interceding for the saints, you might conclude that Jesus in is Heaven, therefore, Paul expected to go to Heaven when he died. However, when you understand that “heaven” throughout the New Testament refers to a spiritual state rather than a place, and add to that the fact that God’s throne, the true temple, and the New Jerusalem are all symbolic of spiritual realities, what Paul was actually saying was that he would be in the spiritual presence of Jesus when he died, not that he expected to go to a place called heaven.

Another passage that is misunderstood frequently is found in 1 Thessalonians. Paul says that on the last day, Jesus will descend from Heaven. At that time, believers living and dead will join Him “in the air,” and henceforth be with Him forever. Remembering that heaven is a metaphor for the spiritual state, Paul is saying that Jesus will appear to us in His spiritual body to receive us to Himself. Paul told the Corinthians that at this point, we will receive our spiritual bodies. It is a false assumption that we go to heaven at that point. I contend that we will meet Jesus “in the air” (in the spirit) to follow Him to the renewed Earth to experience His reign there forever.

N.T. Wright casts some light on the curious condition we find on the last day Paul described to the Thessalonians. Wright reveals that in Jesus’ time, conquering leaders would return home and stage a victory parade. People would come out of the city to meet the conqueror and join his “triumphal entry.” I used that phrase on purpose because it sounds just like what the Jews of Jerusalem did for Jesus when He entered the city to the shouts of the people proclaiming Him King. We know now that His entry on that occasion was not a victory procession, but we also know that one is coming on the “last day” because of what He accomplished in Jerusalem on that earlier day.

There will be a wonderful victory parade on the Last Day when Jesus returns to put all things under His feet. Jesus’ victory over sin and death and Satan are earth-centered, spiritual accomplishments. The “city” to which Jesus returns triumphant is the dwelling place of His people, the Church. The Church is an earthly expression of Christ’s body. Once the earth has been restored to its Eden-like perfection, God’s people can live there and do the work God intended Adam to do. And we can do that work forever without interruption. That is why I believe Earth is my eternal home, not heaven.

Related Posts: Living the Examined Life; Heaven Can Wait; Another Jewish Temple; Binding Satan

P.S. If you wish to discuss this idea with me, go to my website clairverway.com and click Contact Clair.

Is Heaven a Wonderful Place?

It is a sad truth that millions of sincere Christians are sincerely wrong about something in their doctrine or practice. Many believe that a human priest is necessary to access the grace of God. Quite a few believe that it is necessary to baptize infants for salvation. Countless numbers of people who claim to believe the Bible think that their good behavior puts them in good standing with God. I am quite certain that these people are wrong because these beliefs do not square with the truth taught in the Scriptures. I believe that they hold these erroneous opinions because they have sought truth through natural means rather than spiritual means.

This condition is inevitable since Christians are human. Truthfully, though, Christians are not supposed to be thinking like other humans. People without God have no choice but to seek truth by natural means; Christians have the option, no the command to live under the control of the Spirit of God. According to Jesus, that Spirit is intended to “lead you into all truth.” A.W. Tozer says, “Were this an unfallen world the path of truth would be a smooth and easy one. Here the natural man receives not the things of the Spirit of God; the flesh lusts against the Spirit and the Spirit against the flesh, and these are contrary one to another. In that contest there can be only one outcome. We must surrender and God must have His way. His glory and our eternal welfare require that it be so!” (A. W. Tozer and Gerald B. Smith, Evenings with Tozer: Daily Devotional Readings,Chicago, IL: Moody Publishers, 2015, 257.)

In the natural world, we can use the scientific method to ferret out the truth. For the Christian, natural truth can be revealed in a natural way, but spiritual truth must be discovered in a supernatural way: the Holy Spirit makes it known primarily through the Bible. Tozer was quoting Paul when he said that the natural man does not receive the things of the Spirit. The Greek is more emphatic; it says the natural (soulish) man cannot receive spiritual truth. Tozer points out something else Paul wrote: the things we might think are true in our natural selves (souls) are often at odds with the actual truth as revealed by the Spirit.

Some spiritual truths are pretty straightforward. God loved the world so much that He sent His only Son to die for us. The Son, Jesus, came to earth as a baby born of a virgin, and He grew to be the Lamb of God who took away the sin of the world. After His death, burial, and resurrection, Jesus returned to the presence of His Father and sent the Holy Spirit to dwell in and empower believers. That last bit is where many believers begin to struggle with what is truth. Because our human nature is so strong, we go with what seems “natural” rather than seeking the spiritual truth.

I am about to suggest something that will shock most people who believe the Bible. I am not alone in this belief; many trusted Bible scholars teach this. In fact, it was their teaching that led me to the Scriptures and the radical conclusion I have come to. Here it is: I don’t believe Christians go to heaven when they die. I realize this idea has been taught for centuries, and the majority of Christians believe it. I have joined the minority; I don’t believe heaven is our eternal destiny. I will explain why.

First and foremost, there is no Bible verse that says believers go to heaven when they die. The misunderstanding of the word “heaven” has caused most of the problem. Jesus spoke repeatedly about the “Kingdom of Heaven.” We miss the truth if we think of heaven as a place in contrast to the earth as a place. The simple cosmology of the people in Bible times was of a heaven where birds and clouds fly, a second heaven where the moon and stars are, and a third heaven where God “lives.”

We learn an important truth from what Jesus told the Samaritan woman: God is spirit. As a spirit being, God does not occupy a place – take up space – in the same way we do. Saying that God is in heaven is saying that God dwells in the spirit realm. Heaven is not a place; it is a state of being. Jesus’ constant reference to the kingdom of heaven was meant to convey the idea of God’s rule on earth. The Lord’s Prayer asks for the kingdom to come on earth as it is in heaven. The repeated commands to be filled with the Spirit are intended to accomplish the same thing: God’s rule in our lives.

We sometimes say that Jesus left heaven to come to earth. We say His earthly ministry culminated on the Cross of Calvary, and we say that when He concluded His earthly ministry, He went back to heaven. The truth is that Jesus existed as an eternal spirit before His incarnation, and then, at His resurrection, He was given a “spiritual body” to resume His position with His Heavenly Father during the church age. Paul was talking about this spiritual body when he explained that just as Christ was raised, we shall also be resurrected with a different kind of body – a body like the one Christ has now according to John. Paul describes the new body as, “A building from God, a house not made by hands, eternal in the heavens (the spirit realm.)

When we are resurrected, we should not imagine that we will have two choices for our dwelling: on earth or in heaven. When Christ returns, the Kingdom of Heaven He initiated in His earthly ministry will fully come; heaven and earth will be one. The reality of earth and heaven will be fully integrated. In my previous post, I mentioned Philip Yancey’s comment that heaven and earth are not two separate realities but different expressions of the same reality. I believe the present two-part nature of that reality will be one when Jesus returns.

I suspect that the hope of heaven as our eternal home arose alongside the deteriorating hope that the church would bring God’s kingdom to earth after which Christ would return to reign over it. This idea, known as post-millennial eschatology, gradually faded as it became clear that the world was not becoming more and more like the heavenly kingdom, but instead it was sliding further under the control of the “god of this age,” as Paul called Satan.

That sad realization caused many to abandon the idea of a good earth and revert to the dualism of the Greek philosophers which some early church fathers believed. The Greeks taught that the natural world is bad, and the spiritual world is good. Therefore, we must escape this bad place and go to a better one: heaven. That is not biblical truth. God created the earth good. Yes, it was affected by Adam’s fall into sin, but it remains God’s good world. Paul says the earth groans as it waits for the revealing of God’s people. He also says that we groan with longing for our new spiritual bodies which will inhabit the new earth.

When Jesus returns, I believe God will restore the earth to its original Edenic state and end Satan’s usurpation of Adam’s dominion. I believe this is the “new earth” Scripture envisions. You have to ask yourself why God would bother to establish a new earth if it wasn’t for His children to live on. Paul told the Philippians, “For our commonwealth exists in heaven, from which also we eagerly await a savior, the Lord Jesus Christ, who will transform our humble body to be conformed to his glorious body, in accordance with the power that enables him even to subject all things to himself.” (There’s that idea again that we will receive bodies like the one Jesus has.)

The word Paul uses, commonwealth, is unique; it appears only here in Scripture. It means the governing authority or sphere of control. In other words, our proper controlling power is “in heaven,” meaning it is spiritual. Our essential existence is spiritual. When Jesus transforms our bodies at our resurrection, they will be perfectly suited to live on the recreated earth. The kingdom of heaven – God’s perfect rulership – will fully and finally come to earth when Christ subjects all things to Himself. That will be heavenly, you might say, but I don’t believe it will be in Heaven. It will still be a supremely wonderful place. And honestly, that sounds better to me than sitting on a cloud playing a harp for eternity.

In my next post, I will treat individually several of the Bible passages that are used to support the idea that Christians go to heaven when they die. Stay tuned.

Related Posts: Why Heaven Matters; Understanding Salvation

The Swampland of Personalities

In a previous post, I asserted that obedience to God’s Word is essential to being filled with the Spirit. That is something that is easy to say, but it is very difficult to do on a regular basis. The commands of Scripture may sound simple enough at first, but there is often a snag caused by our human nature (the flesh) which multiplies the difficulty of keeping the command. This is precisely why we must be filled with the Spirit to be what God designed us to be.

The “Greatest Commandment” provides a perfect example of what I mean. When the Pharisees were attempting to trap Jesus in a blasphemy, they asked Him which was the greatest commandment. He responded, “You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind. This is the greatest and first commandment. And the second is like it: ‘You shall love your neighbor as yourself.” The Pharisees had no problem with this – at least the first part. Since this is the core of the Shema, their principal tenet, they assumed they were okay on that.

Having failed to get a strike on the first roll, they tossed another question at Him: Who is my neighbor? Jesus answered with one of His most well-known and often repeated parables: the Good Samaritan. A man, presumably a Jew, was on the road to Jericho when he fell among thieves who beat him, robbed him, and left him for dead. The first two to come upon him were Jews of ostensibly good religious standing. Each passed him by. The third passer-by was a despicable Samaritan who helped the man without restraint.

It was Jesus’ turn to trap the Pharisees saying, “Which of these three do you suppose became a neighbor to the one who fell among robbers?” They had no choice but to pick the Samaritan. Ick! they thought, and thus failed the Greatest Commandment test. The Pharisees would have held dogs, pigs, and rats in higher esteem than a Samaritan, yet Jesus made one the hero of the story. If you look at Jesus’ ministry on earth and read His teachings, you could sum it all up by saying that to truly love God you must love His children – all of them, especially the most unlovely. He couldn’t have made it more plain than when He said, “If you love me, keep my commandments.”

In the Sermon on the Mount, Jesus’ explanation of love for everyone was most shocking; He said kingdom people would love even their enemies. In the global village we live in today, Americans don’t really have any personal enemies. There are nations who seem to be waging a trade war or committing digital espionage, but few of us feel animosity toward any group of individuals. Do we? What about blacks who hate whites or gays who hate straights or poor who hate rich? If statements on social media are any indication, there are people everywhere who fall short of the command to love their “enemies.” And Christians are not exempt from this charge.

If I didn’t trap you in the list in the last paragraph, what about the guy who cut you off in traffic the other day? What about the self-important politician who thinks the rules don’t apply to her? What about the conniving coworker who takes credit for your work? What about the next-door neighbor who plays his music so loud you can hear it inside with your house closed up? What about all the arrogant, selfish, nasty, inconsiderate, mean people who populate your world? Can you honestly say that you love them?

What about those people in your church? You know the ones I mean. Somebody once said that the church would be a great place if it wasn’t for the people. We not only have to love those people, we have to serve alongside them. In case you are thinking Jesus had it easier, look at the bunch He chose as His closest associates. He had a money hungry tax collector, a couple egotistical fishermen, kleptomaniac treasurer, a major doubter, and in general a ragtag group of seriously dense non-listeners.

When Jesus was told by Pilate, that self-important little politician, that he could have Jesus crucified, Jesus responded, “You would not have any authority over me unless it was given to you from above.” Jesus wasn’t cowed by the power of Rome standing before Him. He referred everything back to the will of God and rose above the “swampland of personalities.” (I stole that phrase from Tozer.) You may try to argue that this was not out of love for Pilate; however, you cannot miss that it was out of love for the world He came to save.

You get to choose the personalities of your friends and your spouse. Beyond them, your children, your coworkers, your fellow pew-sharers, your neighbors are going to be who they are going to be. You have to love them in spite of what you may consider to be character flaws. And you cannot do that in your flesh. The only way you can honestly love the swamp creatures in your life is by the power of the Holy Spirit in you. The kind of love God commands, agape love, is not natural human love; it is “shed abroad in our hearts” by the Spirit.

When you love like you are supposed to, you are acting out another command: be filled with the Spirit. As I wrote previously, that means to put yourself in submission to the Spirit to do what only He can do through you. That also ticks another box: being led by the Spirit. Chuck Swindoll once said that living the Christian life isn’t difficult; it’s impossible – impossible without the help of the Holy Spirit. I believe that as we are conformed to the image of Christ – another desire of God for us – our swampy personalities are cleaned up, straightened out and we will become the best version of us; we become what God created us to be.

I have said before that both natural talents and spiritual gifts must be used to advance God’s kingdom on earth. We are mistaken if we think the natural and the spiritual (supernatural) are separate. In Rumors of Another World, Philip Yancey put it like this: “Nature and supernature are not two separate worlds, but different expressions of the same reality. To encounter the world as a whole, we need a more supernatural awareness of the natural world.” Being filled with the Spirit gives us that awareness. Being led by the Spirit allows us to rise above the swampland of personalities and love like Jesus loved.

Related Posts: Character v. Personality; Character Counts; Stupitegrity

Be Filled with the Spirit

If you are a regular reader, you may be getting tired of the subject of spiritual things. If that is the case, I am going to make a shocking suggestion: perhaps you should find something else to read. Yes, I am actually saying you should stop reading because I am about to continue with the same subject. The spiritual health of every believer, and hence the health of Christ’s church, is directly proportional to their knowledge and practice of spiritual things. There is no such thing as a non-spiritual Christian. That is an oxymoron. Being a Christian means being in Christ and being in Christ means He lives in you alongside your spirit. If you belong to Christ, the most important thing about you is your spiritual life.

It must grieve our Heavenly Father to see how many people claim to follow His Son yet live completely oblivious to the spiritual realities around them. We have two options for how to live our lives: in the flesh or in the spirit. There is no third choice; there is no half-way, in-between possibility. A sincere believer might be in the spirit one minute in the flesh the next. One day he’s good; the next day not so much. But if he is sincere, his conscience (driven by the Holy Spirit) will chide him, goad him to get back on track. No true Christian can be comfortable for long living in the flesh.

There is good reason for this. Paul said it is impossible to please God in the flesh. The deepest desire of the true believer is to please God, to know and do His will. This is where we come to the first step in being filled with the Spirit: obedience. In his book, The Holiness of God, R.C. Sproul said that the most essential aspect of holiness is obedience to God’s Word. In this context, holiness is defined as being separated unto God. Because God is spirit, holiness is a spiritual attribute. We cannot be linked to God in our flesh; it is our spirit that connects with God. (R. C. Sproul, The Holiness of God, Wheaton, IL: Tyndale House Publishers, 1993.)

 James said the man who hears the Word but doesn’t live it (in obedience) is like the man who sees his face in a mirror, then walks away forgetting what he saw. To see oneself mirrored in the Word implies we see our sinfulness, our fleshiness. If we see that we have fallen prey to fleshly desires and pursuits but do nothing to correct our behavior, we are being disobedient.

The title of this piece is a biblical command. Paul admonished the Ephesians not to be drunk with wine but to be filled with the Spirit. The Greek in this passage is interesting. We don’t need much help understanding what being drunk means. After one drink, most people become more relaxed. After two drinks, their inhibitions begin to crumble. Three drinks has most people discarding moral norms quite easily. Four drinks will produce what we correctly call stumbling drunk. After five, most people will need an ambulance. The point is that alcohol takes over control of a person’s faculties and abilities.

The word Paul used as opposed to being drunk with wine was “filled.” The Greek literally says, “be filled in spirit.” “Filled” (πληρόω) has the sense of being made complete, fulfilled. The contrast with drunkenness is obvious. We are not to give control of our lives to fleshly pursuits (drunkenness); rather we are to bring our lives to their fullness, their completeness “in spirit.” The description I gave of being drunk is what happens in our flesh when we drink too much. According to Paul, the result of being filled in spirit is singing praise to God, giving thanks for all things, and making ourselves subject to one another.

In Galatians, Paul lists love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, and self-control as fruit of the Spirit. This list follows one he calls deeds of the flesh which reads like today’s headlines or the script of most popular dramas. This presents us with another of the many paradoxes that are found in biblical teaching. Believers are called to avoid the things of the flesh and be filled with the Spirit. This entails definite action on our part and, at the same time, passive acceptance of God’s work in us. We must take action, but we must also submit to God’s actions.

A.W. Tozer puts it like this: “The work of the Holy Spirit in the human heart is not an unconscious or automatic thing. Human will and intelligence must yield to and cooperate with the benign intentions of God. I think it is here that we go astray. Either we try to make ourselves holy and fail miserably, as we certainly must; or we seek to achieve a state of spiritual passivity and wait for God to perfect our natures in holiness as one might wait for a robin egg to hatch or a rose to burst into bloom. The New Testament knows nothing of the working of the Spirit in us apart from our own moral responses. Watchfulness, prayer, self-discipline and acquiescence in the purposes of God are indispensable to any real progress in holiness!” (A. W. Tozer and Gerald B. Smith, Evenings with Tozer: Daily Devotional Readings, Chicago, IL: Moody Publishers, 2015, 250.)

That is the recipe for being filled with the Spirit. You can tell if a person is being filled with the Spirit by watching them. They love the unlovely. They have joy in the midst of pain and suffering. They exhibit peace even in the storms of life. They have the patience of Job, so to speak. They demonstrate kindness where it’s not expected. They display goodness like a moral compass that always points toward Heaven. Their faithfulness to their spouse, employer, friends, and God is exemplary. They show gentleness where most people would react harshly. They remain in control when all about them people are losing it.

There is only one person who ever did this perfectly: Jesus. And it is into His likeness that we are being conformed by obeying the command to deny the flesh and by submitting to the Holy Spirit in our lives. Obedience and submission are not popular concepts in our self-centered, fiercely independent culture. This gives believers another way to judge whether they are being filled with the Spirit: if they look strange and out of touch with the world around them, there’s a good chance they are getting it right.

Related Posts: Necessary Obedience; Scaredy-cat Christians; Strict Obedience 

Natural Talents in Service to God

In the Old Testament period of redemptive history, God gave special gifts to a few chosen ones. For example, each of the prophets had a call and the gifts necessary to deliver Gods’ message. For the construction of the tabernacle and the temple, God gifted craftsmen to complete His plan. These may have been enhancements of natural talents or supernatural gifts; the record doesn’t say. We do know that the worship of God required a human intermediary: the priest to whom granted the right to offer the appropriate sacrifices (the descendants of Aaron). Unless they were specially gifted, the average Israelite had only their natural abilities to work with.

All that changed after the cross. Jesus told the Samaritan woman that a time was coming when God would be seeking those who would worship Him in spirit and in truth. They would no longer need to go to a prescribed location and use the services of a human intermediary. Christ became our high priest, and He intercedes for us continually in the spirit realm of the heavenly temple before God’s throne. We have the privilege to approach that throne in spirit while we remain in our earthly (fleshly, soulish) bodies.

We learn through Paul’s epistles to the church that God gives spiritual gifts to all believers. There is no gift of worship today because all those who have given themselves to Christ have immediate access to God. This is made possible by the Holy Spirit’s presence in us alongside our own spirit. The worship “in truth” Jesus told the Samaritan woman about proceeds from this union of Holy Spirt with our spirit. This is one of the most glorious aspects of our being “in Christ.” The greatest of the Old Testament saints didn’t have this. Jesus may have been thinking of this when He said the least in the Kingdom of God would be greater that the greatest in the Old Testament.

Admittedly worship is more than praising God and extolling Him for all His virtues; it also involves the work we do for Him. The children of Israel had only their natural capabilities to use in worship. This led to the condition described in Sirach 43: “We could say more but could never say enough; let the final word be: ‘He is the all.’ Where can we find the strength to praise him? For he is greater than all his works. Awesome is the Lord and very great, and marvelous is his power. Glorify the Lord and exalt him as much as you can, for he surpasses even that. When you exalt him, summon all your strength, and do not grow weary, for you cannot praise him enough. (Sirach 43:27–30, NRSV) This passage laments the limitations of soul-only worship; these people didn’t have the ability to worship in spirit and truth which Jesus foretold.

People today who use only their natural, soulish abilities to worship God or do His work are in the same boat. Even though they “summon all [their] strength,” they cannot do enough. As I wrote previously, natural talents can be sanctified when they are offered to God in the right spirit. These offerings are gifts of worship given to God (Rom.12:1), whereas spiritual gifts are given by God to His people.

This is not to diminish the value of natural talents. It is necessary for people to bring the kingdom of God to earth by proper use of their natural talents. To use a warfare analogy, they are fighting the battle against evil on one front. But, like many wars, our battle against evil is necessarily fought on a spiritual front as well. Paul told the Ephesians their battle was not primarily against earthly forces, but against spiritual wickedness in the heavenly realm. Trying to fight on that front with natural talents is like bringing a knife to a gunfight; though it may be well-intentioned, it is doomed to fail. Remember what happened to the seven sons of Sceva when they attempted to do battle in the spirit realm without the spiritual weaponry.

It is sad that so many well-meaning Christians shy away from the biblical admonition to wage war on the spiritual front. The excuse I have heard most often is that supernatural gifts, miraculous gifts, ceased to exist at some point in history. This view is taught in many seminaries and delivered from the pulpit by their graduates.  (I shared my disagreement with that position in “Spiritual Gifts.”) It is equally sad that many of the proponents of ongoing supernatural gifts abuse them in the same way that the Corinthians did. My response is that Paul did not say the Corinthians should stop using their gifts; he said they should continue to use them but in a loving and orderly way.

It is also helpful to differentiate between a natural talent and its spiritual counterpart. A Christian who is a talented speaker is not necessarily exercising the gift of prophecy when teaching or preaching. The gift of prophecy has two expressions: foretelling and forthtelling. In many instances, the Old Testament prophets foretold what would happen in the future. Perhaps most often, they simply spoke the message God asked them to deliver. This aspect of speaking God’s Word is the most common use of the gift of prophecy today. The gifted prophet is moved by the Holy Spirit to deliver a specific message. A naturally talented speaker may use the same words, but the words won’t carry the spiritual weight of the prophet.

 The parallel gift of wisdom is similar in nature; it allows the gifted one to apply God’s Word specifically to the circumstances at hand. Any person who knows the Word well by natural means can do this. A healthy intellect and a determination to study God’s Word can produce wisdom by natural means. Every believer should be doing this. By contrast, the gifted person could have the Holy Spirit bring God’s truth to mind directly. The word of wisdom spoken by the gifted individual carries beyond the sound waves or ink on paper into the realm of the spirit. There it will do what Isaiah promised, and it will not return without accomplishing God’s will.

(I must add at this point that God often gives His gifts for a specific occasion. For example, a sincere person preparing to deliver a Bible message may pray for God’s anointing. God may well grant the spirit of wisdom and prophecy for that individual at that time. The person would not necessarily be considered a full-time prophet, but the message would have the spiritual effect required to accomplish God’s will in the spirit realm.)

The common misunderstanding of the use of supernatural languages (tongues) has also led many to abandon them or even disparage them as evil. A careful reading of 1 Corinthians 14 reveals two different uses for tongues. On one hand, they could be used as a sign to unbelievers visiting the assembly of believers. The misuse of this aspect of the gift is what Paul chastised them for. They were not using their gift out of love for the unsaved, but rather for their own aggrandizement. Paul soundly criticized that behavior.

Earlier in the same chapter, Paul encouraged a different aspect of a supernatural language: he recommended tongues as a way to speak directly to God for the purpose of personal edification (vv.2-4). He explains this more fully a few verses later saying, “If I pray in a tongue, my spirit prays but my mind is unproductive. Therefore, what should I do? I will pray with my spirit, but I will also pray with my mind.”

Far from discouraging a special prayer language, Paul recommends it saying, “I want you all to speak in tongues.” He may have been thinking along the lines of what Jude said: “These [the false teachers] are the ones who cause divisions, worldly (Greek: soulish), not having the spirit. But you, dear friends, building yourselves up in your most holy faith, praying in the Holy Spirit, keep yourselves in the love of God.” I do not think Jude meant to diminish the use of natural, soulish abilities to pray. Every believer can and must use intellect, emotion, and volition to pray as directed by the Holy Spirit. At times, the Spirit may even supply the words when we don’t know what to pray. Once again, the difference between the natural and the supernatural is evident.

For me, the end of the matter is this: natural talents are used in the earthly, soulish realm. Spiritual gifts operate in the spirit realm. The Lord’s Prayer encourages us to ask that God’s will be done, “on earth as it is in Heaven.” Using natural talents in service to God accomplishes His will on earth; using a spiritual gift works God’s will in the heavenlies. The advance of God’s Kingdom requires both. We must not let false teaching or human failures to use spiritual gifts appropriately cause us to avoid using them at all.

Related Posts: Spiritual Gifts; Living in Zerubbabel’s Day; It’s Not All About You; War is Hell; Why Witness?; Excusing the Pharisees

Spiritual Gifts

In my last post, I attempted to make the case that spiritual gifts are different from natural talents. There are two underlying assumptions that are usually the cause of failing to emphasize the differences. First, there is the cesssationist view that all legitimate supernatural gifting ceased at some point in church history. Second is the failure to see a clear distinction between the biblical use of soul and spirit.

In this article, I want to expand my reasons for insisting that spiritual gifts differ from natural talents. First, I want to go a little deeper in my rebuttal of the cesssationist view. The point of contention here is the interpretation of Paul’s prediction in 1 Cor. 13 concerning the cessation of spiritual gifts. The time frame he was using is found in verse 10: “when comes the perfect.” The word Paul uses for the perfect, the teleion, is Greek for the conclusion, the end result. The cesssationist view holds that this refers to the completion of the canon of Scripture.

I believe Paul meant the conclusion of ALL things, not just the completion of the canon. Notice he says that when the perfect comes, we will know things in a complete way (teleion.) I am convinced that even with a complete Bible at hand, no one knows all things perfectly, completely. The Apostle Paul, the writer of most of the New Testament said even he knew only “in part.” He expected to know “all things” at some future date. While I agree that no new revelation is expected, like Paul, we still need the supernatural help from the Holy Spirit which Jesus promised would “lead [us] into all truth.”

Paul uses two other analogies which I believe argue against the cesssationist view. He says, “When I was a child… I reasoned like a child. When I became a man, I set aside the things of a child.” This suggests that immature, flawed human reasoning will be “set aside” in the future. Paul ties childish reasoning with knowing “in part.” Paul continues the analogy to say, “Now [Paul’s present day] we see through a mirror indirectly but then face to face.” The “then” is a time when the partial knowledge will be “set aside,” or “pass away.” Paul uses a different word for knowing “then”, epignosko, which implies complete knowledge – knowledge like God knows about us. We don’t have that yet. The completed Bible doesn’t give us that. That state of knowing will not be ours until we are glorified in God’s presence.

That is the telion, the perfect knowledge that Paul meant was to come. Cesssationist’s believe we have that knowledge now with the complete canon of Scripture. That does not seem like a reasonable conclusion to me given everything Paul says about the time when the gifts he references will cease. I can see why those gifts will be unnecessary when we are in God’s presence in glory. But while still here on earth, they are necessary to accomplish the mission of the church.

The other assumption many cesssationists make is that spirit and soul are the same. I have written about this previously, but I will summarize by saying that the New Testament is clear in its differentiation between the two. Paul says spirit and flesh (soul) are “opposed;” James says soulish wisdom is demonic in contrast to wisdom that is “from above,” or spiritual. In 1 Cor. 3, Paul says that works done in the flesh (the soul) will be burned up while spiritual works will earn eternal rewards. Natural talents reside in the soul; spiritual gifts work through our spirit often in concert with our sanctified soul.

For me, the difference between natural talents and spiritual gifts comes down to purpose. God gives everyone natural talents at birth. However, God only gives believers spiritual gifts, which are given at conversion. Those gifts may overlap with natural talents, but their purpose is to build up the church, not to bolster the receiver’s status, career, or reputation.  We must do the good works God prepared in advance for us to do (Ephesians 2:10). These may be empowered by our spiritual gifting or accomplished with our natural talents as we offer them in service to God.

The critical difference is that spiritual gifts are supernatural abilities given to counter the supernatural efforts of our true enemy: Satan and his army of demons dedicated to our failure. Paul made it abundantly clear in Ephesians 6 that, “Our battle is not against blood and flesh, but against… the spiritual sources of wickedness in heavenlies.” If we ignore the importance of doing spiritual battle against a spiritual enemy, we will be left operating in the flesh, which Paul told the Corinthians would result in no eternal value.

I believe the cesssationist view hobbles the church, keeping it from doing the ministry it is called to. Those opposed to supernatural gifts often assert that charismatics go too far. This is true. That is what Paul chided the Corinthians for, but he didn’t say they should stop; he told them to continue to use their gifts but to maintain order. 1 Corinthians 14 is Paul’s defense for the continued use of spiritual gifts in the church.

If you study the present-day use of supernatural gifts such as prophecy, wisdom, knowledge, or discerning spirits, you will see that they sound like the proper ministry of the church. As I understand them, they are given by the Holy Spirit to empower God’s people to do battle in the spiritual arena in which we live. These gifts do not add new revelation to the canon of Scripture; they engage the Holy Spirit through the believer’s spirit to wage war against the demon spirits of the god of this age. Without those gifts, we are living in the 1 Corinthians 3 world of carnal (fleshly, soulish) Christianity which Paul said had no eternal results.

John MacArthur reminds us that, “We have a risen Savior who conquered sin and Satan for us and has all the resources necessary to resist the devil and his assaults on us. (John MacArthur, First Love, MacArthur Study Series, Wheaton, IL: Victor Books, 1996, 113) Primary among those resources must be our spiritual gifts. Every believer should be using his or her natural talents for the building of God’s kingdom. That is offering a true spiritual service. (Rom. 12: 1-2) But talents are not spiritual gifts. Spiritual gifts operate in the spirit realm where our true enemy works. And that enemy is not going to be defeated finally until the completion of all things when Jesus’ victory is fully realized. Jude 24 says Jesus is, “Able to keep you from stumbling, and to make you stand in the presence of His glory blameless with great joy.” I believe that if we fail to use all the gifts God has given us, we will not be blameless, and our joy will be tinged with regret.

Related Posts: Are They Gifts or Talents; The Christian Parody, Part One; Despising the Downpayment; The Big Question

Are They Gifts or Talents

I have mentioned the importance of spiritual gifts to the health of the church on several occasions. (See Related Posts) The most critical passage may be in Paul’s letter to the Corinthians where he asserts that every believer is given a gift by the Holy Spirit. I have lamented the fact that many believers haven’t a clue what their gift is. This unfortunate situation may well explain why the church is in such a sorry state. The Scripture is clear that spiritual gifts are given for the building and maturing the Body of Christ. Human effort will not accomplish what only God can do through His empowerment of believers.

Beginning with the assumption that spiritual gifts are necessary for the health of Christ’s body, it follows that a clear understanding of those gifts is essential. First, we have to see that the gifts come from God. In Ephesians, Paul says that Christ gave gifts to the church; in Corinthians it is the Holy Spirit who distributes the gifts. This is not a contradiction because we understand that although we speak of God being three in one, He is one in purpose. Spiritual gifts clearly come from God.

Second, we learn that it is God who determines what gifts each believer is granted. In Romans, Paul says some have one gift and some another; the passage in Ephesians is worded similarly. It is most clearly stated in the Corinthian passage: “But in all these things one and the same Spirit is at work, distributing to each one individually just as he wishes.” God knows best what each local assembly needs to fulfill its purpose, so He provides the spiritual power to accomplish His will.

Third, and perhaps most importantly, we see that spiritual gifts are not given for the benefit of the receiver; they are meant to benefit the whole body. To the Ephesians Paul says gifts are: “for the equipping of the saints, for the work of the ministry, for building up the body of Christ, until we all reach the unity of the faith and the knowledge of the Son of God, to a mature man, to a measure of the maturity of the fullness of Christ.” Paul told the Corinthians that each individual member should be concerned with the health of the whole body. He also chided the Corinthians for making the gifts a matter of personal pride.

Now I come to a question for which I may not have an answer. Is there something unique about a spiritual gift, or is it the same thing as a natural talent? I have taught for many years that there is a stark difference between spiritual gifts and talents. Spiritual gifts are supernatural; talents are natural. Spiritual gifts come from the Holy Spirit by His choice at His time; talents come from genetics and experience. Spiritual gifts are empowered from within our spirit; talents are soulish, earthly-powered.

This distinction may not make sense to someone who doesn’t understand the difference between soul and spirit. The New Testament makes it abundantly clear to me that spirit and soul are not just different entities; they are opposed to one another. At one point, Paul says they are opposed to one another. He told the Corinthians that only spiritual works would stand the test of eternity; fleshly, soulish works would be burned up. James called earthly, soulish wisdom demonic while praising the wisdom from above (spiritual) as, “first pure, then peaceful, gentle, obedient, full of mercy and good fruits, nonjudgmental, without hypocrisy.” The contrast couldn’t be more plain.

If this difference between soul and spirit carries through to our giftedness, spiritual gifts and natural talents cannot be the same thing. This difference is easy to see with the so-called miraculous gifts. Paul’s list of gifts in 1 Corinthians lists several: a word of wisdom, a word of knowledge, gifts of healing, miraculous powers, prophecy, distinguishing of spirits, tongues, and interpretation of tongues. His list in Romans may seem more like natural talents: service, teaching, exhortation, giving, leading, and showing mercy. However, these gifts are also, “apportioned by God.”

I admit, there are those who believe that miraculous gifts have ceased to exist. They draw this conclusion from one passage in First Corinthians which they believe predicts the cessation of miracles at the conclusion of the canon of Scripture. There are others who believe that even with the complete revelation of the written Word, there are still occasions for the proper use of supernatural gifts in the church. These people are generally called charismatics, which is curious since that term is a direct transliteration of the word Paul used to describe the gifts of the Holy Spirit which introduces his three-chapter treatise on spiritual things.

It is also curious that churches with a “charismatic” leaning are among the few bodies that are growing these days. This is especially true in Central and South America. I believe that may have something to do with the fact that those opposing Christianity there are steeped in spiritist type religions. It may take a strong spiritual footing to defend the faith and defeat the enemy in those regions. Those of us north of the border may have grown complacent, forgetting that our battle is also spiritual in nature, if not as obviously so. Remember Paul’s claim: “Our struggle is not against blood and flesh, but against… the spiritual forces of wickedness in the heavenly places.”

Recently I heard a sermon extolling the gifted work of church members who were swinging hammers or creating spreadsheets. I tried to imagine spiritual nail pounding or number crunching. I have to admit that any natural talent applied to Christian ministry with proper intent may have spiritual consequences. I struggle to see the use of hammers or pencils as supernatural though. I will have to lean on the idea that we are commanded to do all things to the glory of God, and that if one is led by the Spirit to pound that nail or crunch that number, their gifting might be considered “spiritual” in that context.

My primary spiritual gift is teaching, and when I am doing it at the Spirit’s prompting, I feel a  unique stirring deep within me. I may have to allow that God could give a carpenter or accountant that same experience and qualify their gift as spiritual. The bottom line remains: each believer has a gift from God, and they are commanded to discover it and put it to its proper use. If you are not doing that, you had better have a good excuse ready when you meet the Giver of good and perfect gifts one day.

Related Posts: Music for the Soul; The Christian Parody Part One; Part Two; Part Three; How can we Bless God; Despising the Downpayment

God Made Small

In the past, I have made reference to J.B. Phillips’ book, Your God is Too Small. Phillips’ argument is that many people don’t think God is big enough to handle their problems. That is still true of many people today. I don’t mean to contradict Phillips, but I am going to suggest that there is a sense in which God had to become small for us poor mortals to begin to understand Him. In reality, the God who created the universe and revealed Himself through the Bible is so big we can only get the slightest glimpse of who He really is and what He is doing.

For the finite human mind to even begin to accommodate the concept of an infinite God, an adjustment must be made somewhere. God chose to adjust His revelation to us by condescending to our human limitations. This is one of the reasons we cannot take everything in the written Word literally. I have written elsewhere (see Related Posts) that historical context and the genre of a particular passage of Scripture must be taken into consideration when determining whether a word or concept is meant literally. We also need to consider the broader context of all Scripture if we are to begin to understand who God is.

A glaring example of this can be seen in God’s use of the ancient Jewish concept of the universe in spite of the fact that He knew it to be a poor representation of reality. The ancients pictured the earth as a table with legs or foundations firmly set in some unknown solid base. They imagined that the sun, moon, and stars popped up on one side of the table and proceeded to sail overhead through the “heavens.” The heavens were triple layered: first the sky where birds and clouds flew; then there was a second heaven where the sun, moon and stars hung; finally, the third heaven which was God’s domain. The denial of this “biblical” cosmology caused the church of the Middle Ages to martyr proponents of the correct understanding. Much harm has been done throughout church history by those who insist on taking all Scripture literally.

By using the limited understanding of the ancients, God became small enough to teach a critical aspect of His relationship to humans: He was the Creator of them and everything they could see. His supreme role in creation gives Him the absolute right to do whatever He wills and ask whatever He wants of His people. We err if we try to make too much of the details of creation. The record of God’s creative work is a theological text, not a scientific one. Our increased understanding of cosmology may have uncovered misunderstandings in the ancient science, but the affirmation of God as creator and all that implies is not diminished by our newfound knowledge.

Another way we enlarge the smallness of God as He is revealed the Old Testament text is to use the New Testament to bring clarity to the Old. The tenth chapter of the book of Hebrews is a good example. The writer of Hebrews explains the purpose of the sacrificial system God required of Israel. The apparently excessive sacrifice of animals throughout Israel’s history is defended as necessary to teach God’s people the costly nature of sin and man’s need to atone. The Hebrew writer also explains that the concept of a sacrifice without flaw was meant to prepare them for the ultimate sacrifice of the flawless Son of God Himself.

In his letter to the Corinthians, Paul says that the experiences of the Israelites were intended by God to be examples for His New Testament church. The very human foibles of the children of Israel were recorded, says Paul, to warn the church not to fall into the same traps. By testing them with hunger and thirst and military challenges, God used everyday realities to teach His overriding principles. He brought Himself down to their level of understanding so that He could lift them to His higher purposes.

Jesus did the same thing when used parables to relate everyday things to spiritual realities. He often used very small things – mustard seeds or tiny coins – to reveal the true nature of His Father. He chided Nicodemus for his dullness saying, “If I tell you earthly things and you do not believe, how will you believe if I tell you heavenly things?” The heavenly things Jesus referred to would be the big things God wants us to understand. When Jesus announced to His disciples that He was going to leave them and go to His Father, Philip said, “Show us the Father.” The Lord’s response was, “If you have seen me, you have seen the Father.” Jesus is God made small enough for us to see who He is.

The revelation of the Father through the life of Jesus is the most striking example of God becoming small to teach big things. The second chapter of Philippians explains just how much the Son had to shrink to become the Savior of the world. He began as all humans do: in the womb of His mother. He emptied Himself of much of what it meant to be the eternal Son of God so He could truly become the Son of Man. As the entire Christian faith rests on the life, death, and resurrection of this one Man, we can begin to see how God made Himself small to accomplish the biggest task imaginable.

The big picture is even more amazing when you consider what Jesus told His Father in the prayer recorded in John 17: “I have revealed your name to the men whom you gave me out of the world. They were yours, and you have given them to me, and they have kept your word.” Martin Lloyd-Jones explains this: “These people belonged to God before they became the Son’s people…. and then [the Father] gave these people whom He had chosen to the Son, in order that the Son might redeem them and do everything that was necessary for their reconciliation with Himself.” (A. W. Tozer and Gerald B. Smith, Evenings with Tozer: Daily Devotional Readings, Chicago, IL: Moody Publishers, 2015)

God chose us as His own before the foundation of the world to be given to His Son as His bride on the one hand or as His brothers and sisters on the other – those who will become joint heirs with Him. Choose your favorite human-sized metaphor. In the heaven-sized picture, we believers are the Father’s gift to His Son. That is an idea small enough to grasp, but so big in its ramifications that I can hardly believe it. But I do believe it. Can you?

Related Posts: Take the Bible Literally? Part One; Part Two; Part Three; Understanding the Bible as Literature; The Bride of Christ

Conditional Grace

Is God’s grace conditional? The first response that comes to mind may be that grace cannot be conditional because grace is unmerited favor – no conditions. However, that answer may be too quick and too simple. The explanation of why that is so, is found in an understanding of God’s character. The Creator of the universe is a personal being; as a person He has character traits – a personality.

One important trait of His personality is morality. In the Old Testament, God is often portrayed as the Lawgiver. This is another way of saying that He establishes moral principles which one must follow if they wish to please Him. Another trait of God’s personality is justice; He always does what is right. Put morality and justice side-by-side and you can see the necessity of judgment; To be moral and just, God must exact a payment from those who spurn His moral code.

Another trait of God’s personality is mercy – He is merciful toward His children. His mercy is revealed to us through His grace. His mercy allows Him to suspend judgment when He wishes; His grace allows Him to grant favor to His undeserving children. The most obvious demonstration of this is found in the plan of redemption. When Adam disobeyed God, his punishment was much more expansive than the expulsion of him and his wife from the Garden of Eden. With his sin, Adam placed a burden on all humanity: God’s justice demanded a payment from all Adam’s descendants for his moral failure. God accomplished this by graciously providing the payment – a redemption.

The Greek word often translated “redemption” is used outside of Scripture to refer to paying a ransom to release someone from bondage, especially those under the yoke of slavery. Leon Morris explains: “Redemption is substitutionary, for it means that Christ paid the price that we could not pay, paid it in our stead, and we go free.” (John MacArthur, First Love, MacArthur Study Series (Wheaton, IL: Victor Books, 1996), 74.)

Free, yes, but because our freedom was paid for by the sacrifice of our dear Savior, our human moral conscience demands a grateful response. Certainly, our first response is love; how could we not love the One who gave us such an incredible gift. It follows naturally, then, as Jesus said, “If you love me, keep my commandments.” Just as our faith in Jesus is demonstrated by our works, our love for Him calls us to do what He has asked us to do: love God and love our neighbors.

 This is not to say that God’s love for us is conditional. John 3:16 says God loved the world so much that He offered redemption through His Son so that believers could have eternal life with Him. Here is the primary condition placed on redemption: belief. God loves the world unconditionally (while we were still sinners), but only those who believe on the Son have life. The debate over how this works has gone on for centuries: does one choose to believe of human free will, or does God usher one into faith through His sovereign call? Whichever is true, the fact remains: salvation is conditioned upon belief.

We can see this same conditionality played out in the Old Testament. God promised Abraham’s descendants a land to call their own forever. However, the “forever” in that promise was predicated on the children of Abraham remaining faithful to God. They failed in that respect, and God took them from their land, first with the Assyrians, and then with the Babylonians. Although they returned from the Babylonian captivity, they were never again fully sovereign in their land. This same concept explains how God could say he would dwell in Solomon’s temple “forever,” yet allow the Babylonians to destroy it in 586 B.C. and then the Romans to demolish the rebuilt temple in 70 A.D. At that point in their history, Israel had committed the ultimate atrocity of unbelief by crucifying their Messiah.

Back to the current state of affairs. A.W. Tozer says it like this: “The present state of the human race before God is probationary. The world is on trial. The voice of God sounds over the earth, ‘Behold I set before you the way of life and the way of death. Choose you this day!’” The word “choose” points to the optional nature of God’s call. Those who choose to heed the voice of God (option A) find His favor. Those who choose Option B bear the consequences of spurning God’s grace.

Of those who choose Option A, Tozer says, “Toward those who embrace the provisions of mercy that center around the death and resurrection of Christ one phase of judgment is no longer operative.” (A. W. Tozer and Gerald B. Smith, Evenings with Tozer: Daily Devotional Readings, Chicago, IL: Moody Publishers, 2015, 213.) As Paul said, “There is now no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus.” For those who choose Option B, the writer of Hebrews warns there is only, “a fearful expectation of judgment and a fury of fire.” I believe it is my choice to avoid that fiery judgment, but I also believe God sovereignly chooses those whom He will call. I have no clue how that works; I just know that is what the Bible teaches.

In the book of Revelation there is a wonderful scene in Heaven where the Spirit of God says, “The one who wants, let him take the water of life freely.” They have to want it, and they have to take it; those are both choices. Another way to say that would be to say anyone who desires eternal life with God can come and get it free of charge. Eternal life is a free gift from God, but it was not free for God. We must never forget that as we ponder the wonder of God’s so-called unconditional grace.

Related Posts: Necessary Obedience; Choose Life; Election: God’s Choice

The Burning Bush Today

To the church at Laodicea the risen Christ said, “Behold, I stand at the door, and knock: if any man hears my voice and opens the door, I will come in to him, and will sup with him, and he with me.” (Rev. 3:20). This verse is often preached as an invitation for unbelievers to answer Christ’s knocking. While there may be a sense in which Christ knocks at the unbeliever’s door, the context of this verse has Jesus at the church door. I want to explain why I think that distinction is important.

Jesus had chided the Laodiceans for being lukewarm; they had lost their fiery passion for the Lord. His offer to come in and “sup with him” was the first-century equivalent to our saying, “Let’s get reacquainted.” A.W. Tozer explains why the acquaintance with Jesus is so important. “At the far-in hidden center of man’s being is a bush fitted to be the dwelling place of the Triune God. There God planned to rest and glow with moral and spiritual fire. Man by his sin forfeited this indescribably wonderful privilege and must now dwell there alone.” (A. W. Tozer and Gerald B. Smith, Evenings with Tozer: Daily Devotional Readings, Chicago, IL: Moody Publishers, 2015, 201.)

The truly sad thing about the Laodiceans was that they should not have been alone. The burning bush Tozer imagines was available to all believers in Laodicea. The moral and spiritual fire of that bush is what the Laodiceans were lacking; so are many churches today, sadly. Polls consistently report that Christian moral behavior is little different from that of unbelievers. Christians have become lax in many areas of morality. One of the most obvious is sexual morals. Christian teens are sexually active at virtually the same rate as non-Christians. Believers often excuse adultery as proved by the percentage of Christians committing it being equal that of unbelievers. Cohabitation before marriage is ignored by many in the church who should be speaking out against it.

I have written several times on the subject of modesty of apparel. With few exceptions, believers have fallen prey to the gradual slide of modern culture into styles of dress that would never pass the modesty test of the New Testament. I wrote in “Debating Christian Cleavage” several years ago: “It is not good enough to be just a little less wrong than the culture; it is necessary to be at least a little more right than the culture.” What that means is our moral standards regarding apparel must be based on Scriptural standards rather than measured against worldly practices.

I have written extensively in recent posts about the moral depravity that is implicit in homosexual behavior. The moral fire that should be burning in believers regarding this issue has been quenched in some cases by a misunderstanding of how we are supposed to love the sinner but hate the sin. I think believers should feel pity for those who have been taught that their sexual perversion is natural and inevitable. But that must not keep us from insisting that their behavior is immoral in God’s eyes and must be resisted just like any other sinful behavior. Even if we allow that some immoral urges exist through either nature or nurture, biblical moral purity demands that those urges be resisted. It is no different for the thief, the murderer, the philanderer, or the homosexual.

I don’t want to promote the common misunderstanding that sexual sin is worse before God than any other. It matters greatly, but so does gluttony made obvious by obesity, gossip excused as prayer requests, covetousness revealed in crass materialism, or financial accountability especially as it relates to tithing. Any form of moral indifference would have Jesus knocking at the door of a church that overlooks it. Many of today’s churches are Laodicean in this respect.

I could list more areas of moral decline among today’s Christians, but Tozer points out that the Laodiceans were lacking in another, more serious way: they lacked spiritual fire. When Tozer suggested the metaphor of a burning bush at the center of our being, he was echoing the well-known line of St. Augustine: “Our hearts are restless until they find their rest in [God].” God wishes – no, demands – to be at the center of His children’s hearts. God establishes His residence in us through the agency of the Holy Spirit. This makes perfect sense because God is spirit, so His presence must be spiritual.

In a series of articles called “The Christian Parody” I lamented the fact that many people who call themselves Christian are a mere parody of true Christianity. Paul refers to people who have a form of godliness but lack the power that rightly belongs to it. That is a good description of a parody; it looks something like Christianity, but it lacks the spiritual component; it is empty – powerless. A church body made up of people who mouth religious words on Sunday but live just like their worldly neighbors the rest of the week is imitating the Laodicean church. Remember, Jesus threatened to vomit them out of His mouth.

The church that lacks the spiritual fire – the Laodicean church – lacks the presence of God; it lacks the glory of God. Pity the church that finds “Icabod” written on her walls. Without the Spirit, there can be no true worship. Without the Spirit, there can be no works of eternal significance. Without the Spirit, there is no guide to the truth. Without the Spirit there is nothing pleasing to God. Pray that the burning bush Tozer mentions would be a raging inferno in your heart because you are the church. Pray that you may find others with the same zeal to join you in your church.

Related Posts: People of the Flame; Paging Phinehas Eliazar; Despising the Down Payment; The Christian Parody Part One; Part Two; Part Three

How Can We Bless God?

The concept of blessing is not a common one among modern people. Some phrases are used without a true understanding of what they should mean. “Bless my soul” as an expression of surprise. “Bless this food…” is a trite ritual at the dinner table. “Bless your heart” in the South is often meant sarcastically with the real meaning anything but blessing. Posters in curio shops often say, “Bless this house.” Christians ought to be very familiar with the concept of blessing since it is scattered throughout the Scripture, but I don’t think they are.

We sing, “Bless the Lord, oh my soul, and all that is within me bless His holy name.” I wonder how many who sing that understand what it means. We understand the flip side of the coin: our being blessed by God. “Blessed is the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, who has blessed us with every spiritual blessing in the heavenly places in Christ.” We may not fully understand the “heavenly places” reference (more on that later), but everyone knows what it means to say God blesses us. God gives His children good things from the simplest blue sky and sunshine to the greatest gift of all: our eternal salvation.

With our eternal destiny secure, the physical blessings God showers on us are the frosting on the cake. John MacArthur points out, “[God] has blessed us already with every spiritual blessing. Our resources in Christ are not simply promised to us; they are actually in our possession…. The believer’s need, therefore, is not to receive something more but to do something more with what he has.”  (John MacArthur, First Love, MacArthur Study Series, Wheaton, IL: Victor Books, 1996, 33–34.) I believe a large part of that “something more” we need to do is to bless God.

The idea of the children blessing the Father God is foreign to many, so we need to discover what it means to bless. The Greek word for “bless” literally means to speak well of someone which develops into doing well for someone – blessing them. Paul told the Ephesians that God blessed us with spiritual blessings, “to the praise of the glory of His grace.” The word “praise” means fame or worthiness; “glory” means esteem or reputation. So, follow me: God blessed us to make the reputation of His grace famous. Ultimately, the blessing of God is intended to lead and empower us to return blessing to Him.

So, we are back to the question of how we can bless or glorify God. MacArthur says, “Because God has given us all spiritual blessings in the heavenlies, we have an unlimited supply of divine resources. Be sure to use them to make your life fulfilling, to minister with the greatest amount of power, and fulfill the purpose of the church that Jesus purchased with His precious blood.” (John MacArthur, First Love, MacArthur Study Series, Wheaton, IL: Victor Books, 1996, 40.) Speaking of spiritual gifts, Paul told both the Ephesians and the Corinthians that their gifts were intended to benefit the Body of Christ. This explains in part why our blessing is “in the heavenlies,” as Paul said. In the New Testament, the heavenlies or heavenly places refers to the spirit realm. Christ’s body, the church, is a spiritual reality with an earthly manifestation. Our spiritual gifts benefit the spiritual Body of Christ, and naturally that has physical ramifications.

In my life, for example, God called and gifted me as a teacher. I spent many years teaching in Christian schools as an expression of my blessing the Body of Christ. After I retired from teaching, I dove deeper into my writing ministry to continue the use of my teaching gift. This blog is one way I do that. One of my early writing projects was the novel, Wings of Mentridar. In it I imagined the difficulties Noah faced while building the ark, and I added my own fantasies of how God’s holy angels might have helped him. My goal was to “bless God” by helping people realize that the characters in the Old Testament were real people with real problems whom God cared for. I also wanted to suggest a way the angels might have helped Noah as the Scripture says they do for us.

Each believer has a unique set of gifts from God, and how they use them is a matter of personal prayer and determination. Sadly, there are many people who call themselves Christians who haven’t discovered their spiritual gift. What a shame it is to think that God has blessed people, yet they have done nothing to use that blessing for its intended purpose.

In “Many Called; Few Chosen” I used the analogy of a mailed invitation to the wedding feast God has planned for Jesus and His Bride, the church. The analogy fits here too. Imagine God mailed every believer a gift. “The person who doesn’t care what God wants might visit the mailbox, but he won’t open the envelope; he will toss it in the trash unopened like so many credit card offers and sale fliers. Some people will open and [see the gift], but decide they are too busy with their own lives to bother with a [gift they don’t need]. But some sensitive souls will feel a tug on their heart when they see the [gift]; they think [using it for God’s purpose] sounds like a great idea.”

Paul challenged the Corinthians to do everything to the glory of God. Certainly, making proper use of God’s gifts to us will bring God glory.  Again, glory refers to declaring the esteem or reputation of someone. So, our every action should elevate the reputation of God before all people – we should make God look good to the world. And by blessing the church, we do that as well, because the church is Christ’s body made visible to the world. That is how we bless God.

Related Posts: What’s Your Ministry