The Focus of Christianity

For the last few months in our Tuesday Night Bible Study group we have been studying the foundations of Christianity. Our purpose is to seek out the truth of what it means to be a Christian and to see if we can discover how the church has come so far afield from where God intended it to be.

We understand that the focus of Christianity is neither the church nor any creed. It is neither man nor his sin. It is not about what we believe or how we behave. All of these things are important elements in the understanding of Christianity, but none of these things are the focus of Christianity.

The primary focus of Christianity is not... 

• Being or becoming a better person or citizen

• Becoming all you can be in life
• Improving your marriage
• Raising the best children you can raise
• Never being homeless or jobless or free of persecution or discrimination
• Receiving the fruit of the Spirit
• Getting out of hell and into heaven

Surely all of these things are benefits and blessings of Christianity, but none of these things – which are the gifts of Christianity – are the focus of Christianity.

The focus of Christianity is found in the first syllable – the first six letters of the word – that is, Christ.

For too long the world has made Christianity out to be just another religious choice in a potpourri of religious choices. Indeed, many people today will admit that the reason they claim to be Christians is because they studied the major religions of the world and found Christianity to be the one that most satisfied their needs and expectations.

Others claim to be Christians because they were born into a family where Christianity was the religion of their tradition. The children continued in the footsteps of their parents, assuming that, because their parents were Christians and because they belonged to the church, they were also Christians.

Let us be reminded that God does not have any grandchildren – only children. Every child born in this world is born into sin and has inherited the sinful nature of Adam and requires a Savior – Jesus Christ – to be reconciled to God the Father.

That is why it is so imperative that Christian men understand what Paul wrote in…

Eph. 6:4 Fathers (notice that it does not say mothers, grandparents, aunts, uncles or cousins, but Fathers) do not provoke your children to anger, but (Fathers) bring them up in the discipline and instruction of the Lord.

Some claim to be Christians because they fear hell and believe that becoming a Christian will deliver them from the penalty of sin. They do not necessarily make a commitment to Christ, but they join, attend, and support the church and believe the things of the Bible. In fact, many of them can argue things of the Bible with great passion, yet make little to no application of those same biblical principles in their everyday, walking around life.

There may be other reasons that people call themselves Christians, but the Bible makes it clear that the only people who are truly Christians are those…

• Who have been called by God the Father to salvation (John 6.44, 65)

• Who have been born again by the word of God and the will of the Holy Spirit (1 Pet. 1.23; John 3.5)

• Who have repented from sin (Acts 3.19)

• Who have the Holy Spirit dwelling in their hearts (Rom. 8.9)

• Who have confessed Christ as Lord (Rom. 10.9)

When our focus is on any other person or place or doctrine or blessing above the person of Christ, then our belief system is only a good religion and ceases to be worthy of being called Christianity.

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What God Intends for Us to Know

As is often the case, a recent conversation with one of my best friends, Steve, turned into a discussion about the nature of God. This has been an ongoing discussion for several years and grows more interesting as time goes by.

Today, Steve asked, “You know that I am reading through the Bible…”

Actually, both of us are reading through the Bible, though we are using different plans. It is the beginning of the year, so we are both in Genesis. My wife and I are in the midst of the story of the life of Joseph. You will see why this is important as the story progresses.

Now right about here, imagine that my brain has amped up, reviewing what we are both reading, and beginning to formulate my thoughts to stay up with, or maybe even stay ahead of where Steve is going with his point. Since no one’s brain works like Steve’s and since his comments seldom give clear clues to where he is going, I’ve never been successful at this. But that doesn’t mean I’m going to stop trying.

OK. So, now I am thinking. Steve continues... 

“As I have been reading lately, I’ve begun to ask the same question more and more, ‘What is it that God wanted Israel to know about Him?’ God delivered Israel after they had been slaves in Egypt for 400 years…”

Right about here in his comments, my mind takes in this new data and, at synaptic speed, continues to process: Almost everyone knows about the years of Israel’s captivity in Egypt. In addition, I had just read about how Joseph was sold into slavery in Egypt and unjustly imprisoned there by his master. In both cases, God intervened in the lives of both Israel and Joseph to free them from bondage and captivity.

So, without giving my words due consideration, I cut in...

“That God is redeemer….”

“Whoa,” Steve interjects before I could utter another word. “Wait just a minute. Let’s stop right here...”

This is not an unusual occurrence in our conversations. Once Steve is on a roll to his objective, he doesn’t want to be interrupted, especially when it is obvious that I have taken the path most traveled by and he is off on a safari to seldom trodden places. More often than not, about the time he is really into his processing and explaining, someone or something will interrupt, like the telephone will ring. This is pestilence. It seems to happen every time. Wait for it…

Steve continues...

“The nation of Israel is in slavery in Egypt, yet God was the one who put them there. He must have had a purpose in doing so, but why? And when He delivered them from slavery, it began with the Red Sea. You know that there was the I-75 route – the shortest route – right up to the Promised Land, but no, He had them turn right and travel through a wilderness. So what is it that He is trying to teach them? What is it that God wants us to learn about Him?”

So here is a clue. My mind should pick up on something here, but I am still processing along my earlier track: Not only did God deliver the Hebrews from slavery in Egypt, much later in their history they were carried off into captivity by Babylon. And, once again, God delivered them and restored them to their homeland and to Jerusalem.

All of these events – Egyptian slavery, Joseph’s imprisonment, and the Babylonian captivity – ended the same way. God delivered His people. They were all redeemed.

The same thing is true of those who know Christ as Lord. We were in bondage to sin and death until God, in His providence, redeemed us and granted us salvation and freedom in and through Christ.

So I chimed in once again...

“He is the God of redemption. God wanted the world to understand Him in terms of redemption.”

Right about here, you guessed it, “R-i-i-ing.”

Steve answers, and the conversation is ended.

I told you that Steve is my best friend, but he is also my employer. As he continued his phone conversation, I returned to the warehouse that I oversee a couple of miles away. Shortly after arriving, I am on a ladder retrieving a file when my cell phone rings.

It’s Steve.

“Remember what you said about God wanting men to understand Him in terms of redemption? You were right about that…”

At this point, I could begin to feel a bit of pride, but from experience, I know that another shoe is about to drop.

“…but...”

See? This is the way it always is. But never fear, because the outcome is always enlightening and on target. Steve has a real gift of discernment and an ability to see a picture from such a different perspective that I am seldom if ever disappointed. This case is no exception.

“…God is the one who put them there. God did not just know that Israel would be slaves; He caused it all to happen. This was His plan. But what is it that He wanted them to learn – that He wanted us to learn from all this? OK, He wanted men to learn about redemption, but I believe that there is much more to this than just redemption. ”

Everything I have shared with you so far is a summary of the events. The conversation was much longer and the dialogue much more involved. I have only used quotation marks for effect. 

Now, if you will permit, I want to drop the conversation and summarize where the dialogue lead us.

God is Redeemer and Savior (Is. 43:1-3). When we come to recognize Him as our Lord and our redeemer we are thankful and our love for Him increases and motivates us to worship Him.

Yet, while it is true that God is the God of redemption, there is so much more to be understood about who He is from what He has revealed of himself in the Bible. To see Him primarily as the God of redemption is sufficient to elicit praise and worship from His people, but it is a limited concept of God.

Before there was creation – before there was redemption – there was God. He is the same yesterday, today, and forever. And everything He does is for His own glory. (Isaiah 43:6-7) Stated from another perspective, God desires worship.

Angels – including Lucifer, aka Satan in later reference – were also created by God (Col. 1.16; Ez. 28:13-15). Angels were created with personal will or else Lucifer and his followers could not have rebelled against God.

As far as we know based on God’s revelation, angels cannot be redeemed. Thus Satan’s destiny has been the same since the moment he first determined to rebel against God.

So we know that angels recognize God as Lord and worship Him and apparently do so in response to some motivation – maybe even love, but that motivation is not rooted in redemption.

Steve proposed that, for a moment, we forget about redemption. Take it out of the equation. Then ask the same question, “What is it that God wants us to know about Him?”

When God repeated and reaffirmed His promise to Abraham concerning the nation that would come from his (Abraham’s) seed, He also informed Abraham that that same nation would first go through a baptism of adversity as slaves in Egypt for 400 years (Gen. 15:13). He also promised that He would judge Egypt and deliver the nation of Israel, bringing them out of Egypt “with great substance.” (Gen. 15:13-14)

Not only did God know that Israel would spend time as slaves in Egypt and ultimately be delivered from bondage. God was the instrument by which the entire process was set in motion.

The story of Joseph is one of the most interesting stories in the Bible, telling how a set of jealous brothers sold their youngest brother (Joseph) into slavery, how Joseph thrived there and later became the second most powerful man in the nation of Egypt. God instructed Jacob to take his family down into Egypt in response to Pharaoh’s invitation. Jacob was not to fear the outcome of this migration, because God would accompany the people there and would make of them a great nation (Gen. 46:2-4).

Then, at the very end of the story (Gen. 50:20), Joseph convinced his brothers that they had nothing to fear from him because, even though their original intent to harm him was evil, God intended it for good.

God is so much more than a savior. He does not exist simply to deliver us from evil. Instead, He himself orchestrates the evil itself so that it cannot help but accomplish His purpose and His will, which are always good (Rom. 8:28).

The holiness of God is not just a reference to some degree or magnitude goodness, but a statement of God’s relationship to sin and evil. When man considers sin, he is threatened by its ability to demean and destroy, and when he succumbs to temptation and embraces sin, the result is death.

However, the same cannot be said for God for He is holy, meaning that He is impervious and immune to the effects or penalty of sin and evil. In fact, sin and evil are subject to His will. Thus He may handle it, mold it, or use it in any way He chooses to accomplish His will and purpose. God’s plan in redemption is to render the redeemed holy, even as He is holy, so that we, too, are not affected by the effects of sin.

God created man to worship God, not simply for the things that God does – create, sustain, redeem – but for who God is. God is much, much more than the sum of all of His actions.

That is why He identified himself to Moses as “I AM.” God is, and therefore, we are to worship Him simply because He is.

Not only is there no other greater than God – there simply is no “other.” (Ex. 8:10, Deut. 4:35, 39; Is. 46:9) Therefore, none can hold Him accountable or overcome Him or prevent His will or teach Him anything.

He cannot even be disappointed in us, because He has no expectations of us. Based on the dictionary definition of the word, an expectation is a feeling or belief about how successful or good (or bad) something or someone will be at some future time. But God’s awareness of our future actions is not based on a feeling or faith, but on facts. He is omniscient. He has perfect knowledge of who we are and what we do or will do because He is our Creator.

When we look beyond God as simply the source of redemption and blessing and see Him in His sovereign role as Lord of eternity and of the Universe, then we cannot help but to fall on our faces and worship Him in awe and wonder, and we cannot fail to rise and apply our worship in service.

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Where Was God

This week, Mike Huckabee gave a great answer to the "Where was God" question concerning the awful tragedy in Newtown, CT. Watch the video below to hear his answer, then click here to read his further response to the criticism that followed.

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Tragedy in Newtown

There is hardly any way that we can understand such a horrible tragedy as that which occurred in Newtown, Connecticut this week where a 20-year-old young man killed 20 children and 6 adults. The magnitude of the event overwhelms our minds and causes us to struggle with absorbing such an act of evil.
 

Nothing we say can lessen the pain and the horror that these families are going through as they attempt to cope with the loss of their children, some as young as five years old, some not able even to tie their own shoes. There is no use in trying to overcome such extreme guilt with religious or even Christian platitudes about the love of God. The minds and hearts of the people who are so impacted by this tragedy must have time to go through the grieving process before they can deal with such questions as the reason why.

There will of course be those who immediately attempt to place blame: poor security at the school, missed signs in the shooter’s previous behavior, the failure to legislate stronger gun-control laws, etc. As with all tragedies, some will ultimately put the blame on God, asking, “Where was God while these innocent children were being murdered?”

In my last blog entry, I began dealing with the question of God and evil. The belief of many, if not most, people is that, if He could have, then a good and loving God should prevent such evil as this massacre from ever happening. If God is unable to prevent it, then He is not all-powerful and not worthy of our worship. We should expect such reasoning from a world which has, for all intents and purposes, turned its heart away from God already.

Yet these thoughts should never trouble the hearts and minds of those who are believers. God is sovereign in the Universe and in control of all things. That means that nothing is “out of control” in the Universe, not even Satan and evil. All of these things must be under God’s control or He is not sovereign. God does not cause someone like this shooter to intentionally go to a school and murder little children and their teachers, but God does know about it – in fact, knew about it before it happened and could have prevented it had He so desired, but He was willing to allow it to happen anyway.

Now the question that we immediately shout is “Why?!”

But the question of why goes to motive. It is the same question that we ask about why this young man committed this crime. In our hearts we struggle to understand something like this and feel that if we just knew why he did it, we could more easily cope with the outcome of his decision and actions. Yet the reality is that, even if we understood perfectly why he committed this crime, the tragedy would be no less horrible and the same number of children and adults would be dead, and our hearts would be just as torn apart as they are when we do not understand his motives.

The fact that we do not understand why God created man in the first place or why God works the way He does or why He allows evil to exist in the world has no bearing on the fact that He does. This is simply the way things are, and our understanding of God’s motives would not change the way things are. We would still cry at weddings and funerals and laugh at comics and love our families and hate our enemies. God’s motives and the question of “Why?” have no real bearing on the outcome.

During the Christmas season, our attention is focused on the birth of Jesus and the events which surrounded it. You may recall that the gospel of Matthew tells of the response of Herod when he learned that a child had been born who would one day become King of the Jews, threatening Herod’s claim to that title.

To protect his own interests, Herod sent his forces to kill all the male children in Bethlehem and in all that region who were two years old or under. Here was mass murder of innocent children on a scale that we cannot conceive – a savage slaughter at the hands of their own ruler.

We have no record of how many children died during that slaughter, but Matthew used a prophecy from the prophet Jeremiah to give us an idea of the extent as well as the effects of the tragedy: “A voice was heard in Ramah, weeping and loud lamentation, Rachel weeping for her children; she refused to be comforted, because they are no more” (Matt. 2:18).

Yet we also need to be reminded that as this slaughter took place, there was one child who was rescued and carried to safety far from the point of danger. This child not only survived the killings, but grew into the man Jesus who epitomizes love and mercy and brought the grace of God into the world of men in the form of flesh. By His life and ministry, His death and resurrection, we have hope.

Those of us who know Him as Savior are keenly aware of the fact that the only answer to such tragedies as we witnessed this week in Connecticut is Christ. By His sacrifice the sins of man are forgiven and we are reconciled to God. His is our hope and salvation and there is salvation in no other name given under Heaven but that of Jesus Christ.

It is the black background of such horrors as the evil that occurred in Newtown, Connecticut that bring into sharp relief the light and life of the newborn Child of Bethlehem, born to Mary and laid in a manger over two thousand years ago. He is our only hope for peace.

Isaiah 9:6 For to us a child is born, to us a son is given; and the government shall be upon his shoulder, and his name shall be called Wonderful Counselor, Mighty God, Everlasting Father, Prince of Peace.

God and Evil

One of the most difficult questions for a theist to answer concerns the relationship between the sovereignty and the goodness of God and the existence of evil in the world. Those who cannot reconcile the co-existence of a good and sovereign God with the existence of evil will usually respond by either denying or modifying the meaning of God’s sovereignty and/or God’s goodness, or by denying the existence of evil. He will argue that, if God does not have the ability to prevent evil, then he is not omnipotent or sovereign. If God does have the ability to prevent evil and simply allows it to exist anyway, then he cannot be good.

The skeptic or the inquisitor typically asks probing questions such as “If God is sovereign and good, then why does he allow evil to exist in the world?” Or in a more aggressive mode, the skeptic or inquisitor may ask, “How does one explain the goodness and sovereign control of God over the creation to a child who has been brutally abused by an adult?” Or “How does one explain such evil as we recently witnessed in the subway of New York where a homeless man pushed another man chosen at random onto the tracks in front of an oncoming train?” He may even go so far as to declare that God’s allowance of such evil as the abuse of a child and the random act of violence against a stranger demonstrate that God is, in fact, evil himself.

Generations of theologians have wrestled with these questions, so there is not much chance that they will be answered within the context of this short essay. Hopefully, we will revisit this subject in days to come. For this essay, let’s begin with the question concerning the young girl who was so tragically abused. How do we answer questions concerning the greatness and the goodness of God in light of such a horrendous event?

First of all, let’s establish some fundamental truths about God. God is sovereign in the Universe – in fact, in all of eternity. His sovereignty is not an element of time, space, and matter, but of infinite proportions. He is omniscient, so there is nothing that has ever occurred that He did not know about. God never learns anything because he already knows all that can be known. He is the source of all knowledge and wisdom.

Furthermore, God is eternal. He has always been and always will be; therefore, he has always known all that he knows. That means that before he ever created anything, God knew about the person who would commit the crime against this young girl. But he also knew everything else that would ever happen and everybody else that would ever be born. Yet he created them anyway.

Since all that God does is righteous and holy without any degree of error, we can be assured that this way of creating is the only way that a creation could take place. God may have had options related to the method of creation depending on his purpose for creating. However, when he determined to create for the purpose of applying his plan of redemption, God did not choose from among a series of options. A world where evil is an integral part of the system is the only way his purpose for redemption could be accomplished.

God’s ultimate goal and desire is to be worshiped with the same degree of adoration as that which exists within the Trinity. The purpose of creation was to produce sons that would worship him and give him glory for all of eternity as does the Son and whom he could love in return with the same passion that he loves the Son. The method by which God produces those sons is called redemption, a plan which was instituted before the creation of the world. In order for there to be redemption, there had to be a reason to redeem – a condition or a place from which man needed to be redeemed.

Therefore, God created the universe as we know it – a universe that, though created perfectly, was allowed by God to become imperfect and corrupted by sin. For those of us who are created – finite beings deficient of the attributes of omniscience and omnipresence – such a method seems fraught with risk. C. S. Lewis addressed this idea in Mere Christianity:

The happiness which God designs for His higher creatures is the happiness of being freely, voluntarily united to Him and to each other in an ecstasy of love and delight compared with which the most rapturous love between a man and a woman on this earth is mere milk and water. And for that they must be free.

Of course God knew what would happen if they used their freedom the wrong way: apparently He thought it worth the risk.

I see one weakness in C.S. Lewis’ argument: For God, there was no risk. He knew the outcome before he ever began the process of creation. Sin and evil did not catch him by surprise, but are an integral part of what he determined to accomplish through the creation. He knew that the conflict between good and evil would produce the fertile soil needed for the generation of righteousness in the creation and the regeneration of a corrupted creation and fallen man.

As with all of the creation, man, too, was created perfectly. However, God could not declare the creation of man as “good” until he had created complementary aspects of the human being in the form of a man and a woman. The created being of man was only finished after God created a woman. The intimacy that would develop between the complementary elements of the human being, both recreational and procreational, was intended to create a unity in their existence that to some degree simulated the intimacy between the elements of the godhead and gave a forecast of the passion that awaits the completion of God’s purpose in the creation.

Nevertheless, like all other elements of the creation, this relationship, too, was corrupted by the introduction of sin into the environment of man’s perfect world. What God had designed for the purpose of unity became a tool of cruelty in the hands of man who forfeited his God-like image in exchange for the uncertain knowledge of good and evil. That decision by man separated him forever from the wisdom of God apart from the gracious act of God’s redemptive plan.

Once separated from the source of knowledge and wisdom by his sin, man found himself destitute of righteousness and of the ability to recover what was lost by his rebellion. He became a creature that was totally depraved – not devoid of some degree of goodness and even altruism, but incapable of maintaining a righteous stature – both within himself and in his culture – in which that goodness would be the norm apart from the necessary element of force.

All men are descended from that first man and thus every man is, by genetic makeup, corrupted, incapable of achieving righteousness in his own power, and destined for an eternity separated from God. The man who perpetrated the cruel abuse in the original scenario above is a product of the totally depraved nature of man after the fall. He may be acting within the parameters to which he has been limited by God, but he is not acting by the direction of God.

He is exercising his will with malice toward another human being, but he is exercising that will within the limited realm of total depravity, apart from God’s direct involvement. He commits such a crime because he has no power of constraint within himself and despises the constraints that God and society attempt to place on him. He has chosen, and for his choices he will face the ultimate judgment of God. Thus the goodness of God has no direct bearing on the abuse.