Any Christian who has read 1 Corinthians knows that the Corinthian church had problems. There were divisions, quarrels, strife and jealousy among them as they fought over their favorite teachers (1 Cor. 1:10-12; 3:1-4; 11:17-19). There was sexual immorality in the church, and tragic toleration of it (1 Cor. 5:1-2; 6:15-20). There was also toleration of professing Christians who were greedy, idolaters, swindlers (1 Cor. 5:11) and drunkards (even during the Lord’s Supper; 1 Cor. 11:21).
The popular doctrine of “once-saved-always-saved” or “unconditional eternal security,” advocates that those who genuinely believe in Jesus at any point in their life are guaranteed to live forever in God’s eternal kingdom. There is no possibility, advocates claim, of anyone forfeiting salvation once it is gained.
Last week I published a short teaching about “Bible Babies”—Christians who, just like actual babies, become mono-focused. They have no awareness of anything outside of what they are currently fixated on. Give a baby a rattle, and his entire world becomes that rattle.
Bible Babies similarly become fixated on single Bible verses and ignore the immediate and wider contexts of those verses, so Bible Babies often misinterpret those single verses. That is to be expected of baby Christians, but they ought to grow up after a few years. Tragically, some Bible Babies have been believers for decades. (Some are pastors.)
My wife and I have been blessed with three children and fourteen grandchildren. So we have some experience with babies. All babies are the same in at least one respect—they very easily become mono-focused. If you give a baby a rattle, it becomes the entire world for that baby. They become consumed with it, losing any awareness of anything else.
Over the past 20 years, most Christian folks who know me as “David Servant” suspect that is not my actual name. (Although some have remarked, “Wow, what a great name to have and be called to ministry!”) When I selected “David Servant” as my pseudonym, I hoped that most Christians would realize it was an obvious pseudonym, and that they would also assume there is some good reason for it. And there is, of course.
“You shall not bear false witness against your neighbor” (Ex. 20:16; Deut. 5:20).
I once read an otherwise intelligent unbeliever state that the reason he didn’t believe in the God of the Bible is because, according to the 9th Commandment, God only condemned misrepresenting the truth when one is under oath as a “witness” in a court case. So, the God of the Bible, he oddly concluded, is OK when people lie outside of court, and that was a standard that was inferior to his own!
Most every true Christian understands that Christianity has its roots in Judaism. Jesus is the Jewish Messiah, and He kept the Mosaic Law all of His life. All of His apostles witnessed Him perfectly keep the Mosaic Law. He obviously, for example, kept the annual Feast of Passover (which, incidentally, foreshadowed His saving work in numerous ways.)
The early church was 100% Jewish. All of those early Jewish Christians, who lived among non-believing Jews, followed the Mosaic Law that they had been keeping all of their lives. It is clear that Peter, for example, kept the Mosaic dietary laws at least until Acts 10, which would have been seven to ten years after the Day of Pentecost.
I suspect you’ve heard the oft-repeated and solemn warning: “We better not think that we must add our works to what Jesus did on the cross.” Doing so is portrayed as the most tragic error anyone could make, a sure indication that one is not a true Christian. In reality, however, that warning is a sloppy and confusing caution that can either be true or heretical, depending on what it is actually meant to convey.
If what is meant is, “We better not think that our works atone for our sins, as that would demean the sufficiency of Jesus’ atoning sacrifice on the cross,” it is true.
A man was walking down the road from Jerusalem to Jericho, and he fell among robbers, and they stripped him and beat him, and went away leaving him half dead.
And by chance, a Christian was driving down that road while listening to worship music. When he noticed the unconscious and bloody man lying on the roadside, he bound the evil spirits in Jesus’ name that were responsible for the brutal assault, and then he “decreed and declared” that the man would live and not die. Finally, he prayed that God would send someone to help the unfortunate man. It felt so good to be a Christian who understands spiritual authority and is full of compassion.
As I am sitting here on a March morning looking out the picture window of my office, I’m watching the snow slowly fall and settle on the branches of budding trees. Winter is saying farewell reluctantly.
Most everyone knows that snow forms from freezing water vapor in the atmosphere, but who can explain why water freezes at a certain temperature? Or why it first contracts, then expands during the freezing process, which is the reason ice floats on the top of lakes rather than sinks to the bottom (which would eventually end all life on earth via a terminal ice age)?