Its hard to describe what the absence of atheism looks like because we
all struggle with unbelief that is brought on by weakness. If we were to
be converted from our blurred vision and our familiarity with darkness
we would experience something that would kill us that is behind Gods
creation and the brightness of His presence.
But at the same time
why is it that men show such disregard in the use of their time to be
illuminated by Gods creative power that comes through His spoken word?
We acknowledge that as we focus on His word it is experienced as the
brightness of His glory that is illuminated through the beauty of His
creation. And if we had a taste of this glory we would experience such
spiritual beauty that it would make our knees weak and cause us to fall
on our faces. This is what it means to experience the unity of Gods
creation. And it shows the utter blindness of men who are darkened in
sin.
Wednesday, November 4, 2015
Gods purpose in election
God has always been God because He determined before the foundation of
the world to create all things according to His attributes. Everything
that we view has the visible stamp of Gods character on it. In other
words when God designed all things He made it perfectly consistent in
His purpose from its beginning to its end. If anything is out of order
or independent of Gods desire then we cannot trust His spoken word. The
unity of creation is the strength of Gods covenant language. Anytime we
introduce and opposition that is independent of Gods creation and
recreation then we embrace doubt in Gods character. This is why we must
embrace total unity because the things the Maker... makes are perfectly
ordered in the strength of His independent decision to bless or curse.
This voice of blessing or cursing is logic that creates a pure design of justice for God to rule over His creation. There is no man who can escape the call of God. There is no man no matter what station that he has in life who can oppose Gods just call. As God stands over His creation as the absolute governor of the earth so His call of blessing and cursing are yea and amen.
The danger for man is to devise his own scheme. Because man does not seek God then he says in his heart "Where is your God?" Man in his natural state is alienated from God and desires to be his own god. Man thinks that he can obtain blessing outside of Gods authority as Governor. The bible says that all of mans work is done in this cursed state. The eternal process of death... that being that all that man plans in this life will come to nothing. A man is not fulfilled by the scope of his work but by the work that God does on mans heart. The reason is that all of mans desires tho they look noble will come to nothing.
Because of Adams sin man was cursed with being in a state of darkness and loneliness. This curse is like a disease. Its as if a person who was born learned that he had an incurable disease and he had only a short time to live. This man no matter what efforts he took to be healed could not change this experience of hopelessness and pain. But in this case of being cursed by sin man never thinks he has an incurable disease. Instead he is a law unto himself.
When a man is a law unto himself , he devises his plans to spread this disease to the whole human race. In other words a man who is alienated from God devises plans that are threatening to Gods law. A man who is cursed has a disease that prevents him from doing good for the rite reasons. It is impossible for him to think a thought that is designed for the glory of God. The view of himself and the creation has been darkened. The curse has limited him to view himself as his own god. Everything he does is motivated to control everyone around him.
You must understand that the bible describes this process of death in the most obnoxious way. It is worse than we could ever imagine because it is from Gods view. But when we understand how helpless the world has become it buttresses our dependence upon God. Gods description of the cursed earth teaches us that we are completely unable. It teaches us that everything that comes into our lives is spoken in existence as we understand Gods justice to be according to His spoken curses or blessings. This is why ive been saying that salvation is so much greater than we could imagine and the process of death that man is under is far worse than we could imagine.
This voice of blessing or cursing is logic that creates a pure design of justice for God to rule over His creation. There is no man who can escape the call of God. There is no man no matter what station that he has in life who can oppose Gods just call. As God stands over His creation as the absolute governor of the earth so His call of blessing and cursing are yea and amen.
The danger for man is to devise his own scheme. Because man does not seek God then he says in his heart "Where is your God?" Man in his natural state is alienated from God and desires to be his own god. Man thinks that he can obtain blessing outside of Gods authority as Governor. The bible says that all of mans work is done in this cursed state. The eternal process of death... that being that all that man plans in this life will come to nothing. A man is not fulfilled by the scope of his work but by the work that God does on mans heart. The reason is that all of mans desires tho they look noble will come to nothing.
Because of Adams sin man was cursed with being in a state of darkness and loneliness. This curse is like a disease. Its as if a person who was born learned that he had an incurable disease and he had only a short time to live. This man no matter what efforts he took to be healed could not change this experience of hopelessness and pain. But in this case of being cursed by sin man never thinks he has an incurable disease. Instead he is a law unto himself.
When a man is a law unto himself , he devises his plans to spread this disease to the whole human race. In other words a man who is alienated from God devises plans that are threatening to Gods law. A man who is cursed has a disease that prevents him from doing good for the rite reasons. It is impossible for him to think a thought that is designed for the glory of God. The view of himself and the creation has been darkened. The curse has limited him to view himself as his own god. Everything he does is motivated to control everyone around him.
You must understand that the bible describes this process of death in the most obnoxious way. It is worse than we could ever imagine because it is from Gods view. But when we understand how helpless the world has become it buttresses our dependence upon God. Gods description of the cursed earth teaches us that we are completely unable. It teaches us that everything that comes into our lives is spoken in existence as we understand Gods justice to be according to His spoken curses or blessings. This is why ive been saying that salvation is so much greater than we could imagine and the process of death that man is under is far worse than we could imagine.
Lordship Salvation
The Lordship salvation in this context you have presented seems to be
man centered. The Lord is only the Lord when we are obedient. But the
term Lord is raised up to be a much broader term than how He is related
to us.
We need to see how the concept of Lord is used in the context of the whole of scripture. Anytime we divide our theology into two equal concepts we really are dividing the two natures of Christ. The teaching of the two natures is that He is totally Human and totally God in one Person. As Ive been arguing in my teaching on unity it is from the perspective of bringing all things to be brought together. My purpose is not to argue toward two separate equal images. To argue against unity is to say that Christ is two separate persons.
This is why I stress that Christ has always been present on this earth. He was present as the ruler of Israel. I do not believe we can say that He ruled the OT church any different than He rules the NT church. How can we show that He has always been God unless He is consistent in upholding His law an establishing His law in full in both the ot church and nt church?
If we divide the two natures of Christ then we will be guilty of putting Him in a box. But even if His presence was different in the ot in light of Him taking on flesh in the nt ..He still ruled from the heavens as God over the whole earth as absolute sovereign in complete unity throughout all time. When we divide Him we lower Him to the constants the power of human morality. But He is beyond the constants of just being head over His church, our personal Lord and Someone who must be the perfect Ruler of the corrupted earth. He is always been the Lord of heaven and earth. He has unified heaven and earth and will make it a full reality in the next event.
Dont think about heaven being a distant place. But heaven is as close ...in comparison to unzipping this finite realm and stepping into the eternal. Dont separate heaven as if it was subjected to time and space.
We need to see how the concept of Lord is used in the context of the whole of scripture. Anytime we divide our theology into two equal concepts we really are dividing the two natures of Christ. The teaching of the two natures is that He is totally Human and totally God in one Person. As Ive been arguing in my teaching on unity it is from the perspective of bringing all things to be brought together. My purpose is not to argue toward two separate equal images. To argue against unity is to say that Christ is two separate persons.
This is why I stress that Christ has always been present on this earth. He was present as the ruler of Israel. I do not believe we can say that He ruled the OT church any different than He rules the NT church. How can we show that He has always been God unless He is consistent in upholding His law an establishing His law in full in both the ot church and nt church?
If we divide the two natures of Christ then we will be guilty of putting Him in a box. But even if His presence was different in the ot in light of Him taking on flesh in the nt ..He still ruled from the heavens as God over the whole earth as absolute sovereign in complete unity throughout all time. When we divide Him we lower Him to the constants the power of human morality. But He is beyond the constants of just being head over His church, our personal Lord and Someone who must be the perfect Ruler of the corrupted earth. He is always been the Lord of heaven and earth. He has unified heaven and earth and will make it a full reality in the next event.
Dont think about heaven being a distant place. But heaven is as close ...in comparison to unzipping this finite realm and stepping into the eternal. Dont separate heaven as if it was subjected to time and space.
Brutially honest
The goal of the christian life is to be delivered from all powers. Our
God is a God who saves. From the sovereign Lord comes escape from
death.. or destructive experiences. God is concerned about our well
being because He made a covenant with us to gift us with all things and
He reveals his faithfulness to the world by upholding His covenant.
God is looking on the heart because in all hidden experiences there is a language. God communicates on the level of the invisible. This means that all communication whether it is evil or peaceful is ordained by God to bring Himself glory.
The world lives in a communication of hostility. And evil man man opposes God, not because he understands all of the communication...both good and evil...but because he is evil and he is able to oppose God.
We must understand that we have the complete order of everything in a complete communication that is contained in us. We know how to rule all things. There is nothing in the world that rises to the level of our inward experiences.The reactions in the world are childs play to us. We have Gods completed word in us so that we know all things. We are not only watching His creation but we are part of His creating.
God is looking on the heart because in all hidden experiences there is a language. God communicates on the level of the invisible. This means that all communication whether it is evil or peaceful is ordained by God to bring Himself glory.
The world lives in a communication of hostility. And evil man man opposes God, not because he understands all of the communication...both good and evil...but because he is evil and he is able to oppose God.
We must understand that we have the complete order of everything in a complete communication that is contained in us. We know how to rule all things. There is nothing in the world that rises to the level of our inward experiences.The reactions in the world are childs play to us. We have Gods completed word in us so that we know all things. We are not only watching His creation but we are part of His creating.
Self denial
When we are saved we get a few kinds of funny bones. The first one is
that we get a new will. Our old self will is destroyed and we get Gods
will. So we first of all naturally know we are sinners. A believer wants
to be like Christ. Christ has conquered and has taken the spoils. He
owns everything. So the believer wants to rise up to be blessed in the
heavenlies.
But we know that we can face trials in this world. We get weakened by our trials. To be like Christ is to experience the effects of the gospel. We experience the life of Christ like feasting at a table. We rise up as if we were ascending to the rock stretches out over the mountain and we have the vision of our lives as Christ conquers. But in trials we grow weak.
When we experience weakness it is necessary for Christ to come to our aid. We naturally draw near to Christ because we know that He is our greatest friend when we are the weakest. But we must also face the dread of the trials because the devil will attack us at our most vulnerable part of the trial. We rise up to curse the evil. When we experience the line between blessing and cursing then we rest in our weakness. Repentance for the christian is a sweet dependence.
This means that because we are given a new will that we no longer are at odds with Christ to give up control. He already provided us with everything. We naturally want to lean on Christ in our trials. This is biblical self denial.
cont
Im wondering when we talk about this anger that we hold onto whether its something we describe that we can control. Because the next part of the reasoning is that God is on the other guys side saying to you...give it up bro. lol I mean when Christ was encouraging us to forgive others, to seek forgiveness , He had already given us all the things we need in blessing us. Im not describing something that we hold onto that becomes an issue. This is what ive been talking about when I distinguish the fundamental truths with those things that are secondary.
In this day and age I find the most things that we talk about that is forbidden is our control. I mean it gets to the point where we obsess about whether we have overstepped the forbidden territory. I become suspicious when I hear the sermon taught as a method to be obedient to Christ. In other words the warnings are like ultimatums that if not heeded will destroy our christian lives. It seems to me that we are making the sermon sound like we can earn salvation. If we build it up and make it sound like we could screw it up then are not we saying that we can control God?
But we know that we can face trials in this world. We get weakened by our trials. To be like Christ is to experience the effects of the gospel. We experience the life of Christ like feasting at a table. We rise up as if we were ascending to the rock stretches out over the mountain and we have the vision of our lives as Christ conquers. But in trials we grow weak.
When we experience weakness it is necessary for Christ to come to our aid. We naturally draw near to Christ because we know that He is our greatest friend when we are the weakest. But we must also face the dread of the trials because the devil will attack us at our most vulnerable part of the trial. We rise up to curse the evil. When we experience the line between blessing and cursing then we rest in our weakness. Repentance for the christian is a sweet dependence.
This means that because we are given a new will that we no longer are at odds with Christ to give up control. He already provided us with everything. We naturally want to lean on Christ in our trials. This is biblical self denial.
cont
Im wondering when we talk about this anger that we hold onto whether its something we describe that we can control. Because the next part of the reasoning is that God is on the other guys side saying to you...give it up bro. lol I mean when Christ was encouraging us to forgive others, to seek forgiveness , He had already given us all the things we need in blessing us. Im not describing something that we hold onto that becomes an issue. This is what ive been talking about when I distinguish the fundamental truths with those things that are secondary.
In this day and age I find the most things that we talk about that is forbidden is our control. I mean it gets to the point where we obsess about whether we have overstepped the forbidden territory. I become suspicious when I hear the sermon taught as a method to be obedient to Christ. In other words the warnings are like ultimatums that if not heeded will destroy our christian lives. It seems to me that we are making the sermon sound like we can earn salvation. If we build it up and make it sound like we could screw it up then are not we saying that we can control God?
The sin problem
Well obviously if you give people more freedom to sin they are gonna sin
more. This is what happened when Luther challenged the doctrinal
position of the church at that time. And I guess you could use this
situation as an argument that if grace is really freedom then you need
to balance it out with teaching responsibility. But the apostle doesnt
address the sin problem this way. When the apostle taught that God as a
sovereign Lord choose to allow sin by choosing in a passive way that men
are gonna sin ...he was accused of teaching that God encouraged sin.
But what was the apostles response? Was it a plea to balance that
message out? No...He said let God be true and every man a liar. Romans 3
7 Someone might argue, “If my falsehood enhances God’s truthfulness and
so increases his glory, why am I still condemned as a sinner?” 8 Why
not say—as some slanderously claim that we say—“Let us do evil that good
may result”? Their condemnation is just!
How do we address the group that uses freedom to sin? We know that when we received grace our relationship to the law changed also. We went from being slaves to sin and the law to being freed from the law. The freedom we experience is that we are no longer condemned by the law. Why are we no longer condemned? Because Christ took our condemnation upon Himself. So now that we are in Christ the law is no longer our school master. We no longer follow God by rules. This is the basis of the Psalmist teaching that God no longer marks or counts our sin. As far as the east is from the west...so far has He removed our sins fromus. In other words we enjoy a freedom from guilt because we are loved eternally.
But those who do not have this freedom are slaves to the law and to sin. They are under the condemnation of the law. They live in a legal relationship to the law. Every time they violate the law its a mark against them. And so their lives are marked by their sins piling up to condemn them when they face the judgement. My question is ...where is this middle group...forgiven but counting their sins, free but responsible to obey?
Anyone who has common sense knows that if God acts as an accuser to get them to obey they would never be motivated to love God. If God was threatening them they would be motivated to hide from God. And this is the temptation for us because we face a holy God who wants us to do good. But how can we be good if we are not loved by God? The point is that God changes us by being attractive enough for us to want to come to Him. The only way we are gonna be motivated to be completely open before God is to be consistently loved by God. This is why we say that to cheapen grace is the same thing as being motivated by the law to obey. To be motivated by guilt ,shame and fear.
The Psalmist never attempted to get favor with God through guilt , shame or fear. And in fact the Psalmist treated the presence of these cursed attitudes as neutral arguments to move God to greater blessing. In other words the Psalmist turned these feelings for his own good, to argue for his weakness and a need for God to be strong. I know the Psalmist took a hard stance on grace. I know the positive message of grace that he preached to himself. And i have been converted by this very detailed gospel application. ie God grants us everything , makes us completely holy, forgives all of our sins, does not mark our sins, turns everything that is bad in our lives to good, etc... But at the same time we are also taught that we are not to think lower of ourselves than we ought. We have a single purpose in this life.
So God gave us everything that Christ has obtained so that we could be successful. So our struggle with sin is not the focus. I mean God treats us as sons. God has become our Father...the ruler and soverign is motivated by familial desires for us. He actually draws near to us ...a special care...watching over us in a defensive way. I think it is very burdensome to use sin as a stick to correct this interaction we have with our Father. Rather our weaknesses are our advantage to move God to act on our behalf." Come let us reason together says the Lord."
How do we address the group that uses freedom to sin? We know that when we received grace our relationship to the law changed also. We went from being slaves to sin and the law to being freed from the law. The freedom we experience is that we are no longer condemned by the law. Why are we no longer condemned? Because Christ took our condemnation upon Himself. So now that we are in Christ the law is no longer our school master. We no longer follow God by rules. This is the basis of the Psalmist teaching that God no longer marks or counts our sin. As far as the east is from the west...so far has He removed our sins fromus. In other words we enjoy a freedom from guilt because we are loved eternally.
But those who do not have this freedom are slaves to the law and to sin. They are under the condemnation of the law. They live in a legal relationship to the law. Every time they violate the law its a mark against them. And so their lives are marked by their sins piling up to condemn them when they face the judgement. My question is ...where is this middle group...forgiven but counting their sins, free but responsible to obey?
Anyone who has common sense knows that if God acts as an accuser to get them to obey they would never be motivated to love God. If God was threatening them they would be motivated to hide from God. And this is the temptation for us because we face a holy God who wants us to do good. But how can we be good if we are not loved by God? The point is that God changes us by being attractive enough for us to want to come to Him. The only way we are gonna be motivated to be completely open before God is to be consistently loved by God. This is why we say that to cheapen grace is the same thing as being motivated by the law to obey. To be motivated by guilt ,shame and fear.
The Psalmist never attempted to get favor with God through guilt , shame or fear. And in fact the Psalmist treated the presence of these cursed attitudes as neutral arguments to move God to greater blessing. In other words the Psalmist turned these feelings for his own good, to argue for his weakness and a need for God to be strong. I know the Psalmist took a hard stance on grace. I know the positive message of grace that he preached to himself. And i have been converted by this very detailed gospel application. ie God grants us everything , makes us completely holy, forgives all of our sins, does not mark our sins, turns everything that is bad in our lives to good, etc... But at the same time we are also taught that we are not to think lower of ourselves than we ought. We have a single purpose in this life.
So God gave us everything that Christ has obtained so that we could be successful. So our struggle with sin is not the focus. I mean God treats us as sons. God has become our Father...the ruler and soverign is motivated by familial desires for us. He actually draws near to us ...a special care...watching over us in a defensive way. I think it is very burdensome to use sin as a stick to correct this interaction we have with our Father. Rather our weaknesses are our advantage to move God to act on our behalf." Come let us reason together says the Lord."
Does God answer prayer
God doesnt need our prayers...so I do not believe that prayer
constitutes a work ie payment for the time. God has already ordered
everything thing to turn out for His glory and for our good. If God
could be frustrated in creating His world and sustaining His world then
there would be another will that was equal or stronger than His. If this
were true then He would cease to be God.
Why is it so important for God to be set apart from us and our circumstances? Because if we could control God then there would be something that we could do to appease Him. We would be limited in our faith because it would require that we uphold our end of the bargain. This is why Ive always said that as God is free to do as He pleases so we are free to be who He made us to be...as we really are before Him, as we are always becoming what we are meant to be and as we have faith in the future that we are gonna be complete by experience. If God creates whatever He pleases then there is nothing that is out of order or done for another purpose. So as God is absolutely soverign so is the universe in absolute unity. We are confident that we can experience this unity because God is God.
The truth is that when God gives us a gift it is not in steps. It is done all at one time. I know there are teachings that divide these doctrines, atonement, sanctification, etc but all of these doctrines are described in scripture as God saving us. So salvation is a gift in which we receive all that Christ has earned and it is all at one time. So in this sense there is no longer steps for us to do in order to get more from God.
This is why everything that we have from God is a gift. Not only is grace a gift but the bible, prayer,living the christian life is all a gift to us and it is for us. Because it is a gift God puts Himself to the test to prove that He loves us eternally. God gifts us with salvation that makes us complete in Him so that He looks on us as complete in Christ so that we will use the free things for our benefit.
These gifts are Gods way of communicating with us. Its kind of like this. We come to God with a very narrow view of ourselves. God looks on us as we are. But God has already taken care of the terrible miss judgements we have about ourselves and others. So He accepts us as we think we are. Why does He do this? Because He has made our salvation focus on Himself. On His faithfulness, kindness, goodness, and love. He has made it so that we come to Him without being trustworthy. We never come to Him as we really are. So we come to Him in a very complicated way. God is very simple...what He says He is ...He really is.. what He says He does... He really does. But we are never what Gods view of us. So we are reactive, fearful, under confident etc. How can someone know who we are if we are not consistent with how we are made? He must offer Himself as meeting us in many multiple ways at the time me have a need in order to love us. Not only must He do this with us but with everyone in the world. lol This is why prayer is for those who are perfected in Christ to hold God to His word that He will be as good as He promised.
Why is it so important for God to be set apart from us and our circumstances? Because if we could control God then there would be something that we could do to appease Him. We would be limited in our faith because it would require that we uphold our end of the bargain. This is why Ive always said that as God is free to do as He pleases so we are free to be who He made us to be...as we really are before Him, as we are always becoming what we are meant to be and as we have faith in the future that we are gonna be complete by experience. If God creates whatever He pleases then there is nothing that is out of order or done for another purpose. So as God is absolutely soverign so is the universe in absolute unity. We are confident that we can experience this unity because God is God.
The truth is that when God gives us a gift it is not in steps. It is done all at one time. I know there are teachings that divide these doctrines, atonement, sanctification, etc but all of these doctrines are described in scripture as God saving us. So salvation is a gift in which we receive all that Christ has earned and it is all at one time. So in this sense there is no longer steps for us to do in order to get more from God.
This is why everything that we have from God is a gift. Not only is grace a gift but the bible, prayer,living the christian life is all a gift to us and it is for us. Because it is a gift God puts Himself to the test to prove that He loves us eternally. God gifts us with salvation that makes us complete in Him so that He looks on us as complete in Christ so that we will use the free things for our benefit.
These gifts are Gods way of communicating with us. Its kind of like this. We come to God with a very narrow view of ourselves. God looks on us as we are. But God has already taken care of the terrible miss judgements we have about ourselves and others. So He accepts us as we think we are. Why does He do this? Because He has made our salvation focus on Himself. On His faithfulness, kindness, goodness, and love. He has made it so that we come to Him without being trustworthy. We never come to Him as we really are. So we come to Him in a very complicated way. God is very simple...what He says He is ...He really is.. what He says He does... He really does. But we are never what Gods view of us. So we are reactive, fearful, under confident etc. How can someone know who we are if we are not consistent with how we are made? He must offer Himself as meeting us in many multiple ways at the time me have a need in order to love us. Not only must He do this with us but with everyone in the world. lol This is why prayer is for those who are perfected in Christ to hold God to His word that He will be as good as He promised.
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