“Don’t talk to me about theology. Just teach me the Bible.”

To the average Christian, theology might sound like something hopelessly compli­cated, frustratingly confusing and thoroughly irrelevant. Anybody can read the Bible. So why do we need head-in-the-clouds theologians with their long sentences and fancy terms?

Faith seeking understanding

Theology has been called “faith seeking understanding.” In other words, as Christians we trust God, but God has made us to want to understand who we are trusting and why we trust him. That’s where theology comes in. The word theology comes from a combination of two Greek words, theos, meaning God, and logia, meaning knowledge or study—study of God.

When properly used, theology can serve the church by combating heresies, or false teachings. That is because most heresies come from wrong understandings of who God is, understandings that don’t square with the way God has revealed himself in the Bible. The church’s proclamation of the gospel, of course, needs to rest on the firm foundation of God’s own revelation of himself.

Revelation

Knowledge about God is not something that we humans can just come up with on our own by thinking it out. The only way we can know anything true about God is to listen to what God tells us about himself. The main way God has chosen to reveal himself to us is through the Bible, a collection of inspired writings compiled over many centuries under the supervision of the Holy Spirit. But even diligent study of the Bible cannot convey to us right understanding of who God is.

We need more than mere study—we need the Holy Spirit to enable our minds to understand what God reveals in the Bible about himself. The bottom line is that true knowl­edge of God comes only from God, not merely by human study, reasoning or experience.

The church has an ongoing respon­sibility to critically examine its beliefs and practices in the light of God’s revelation. Theology is the Christian community’s continuous quest for truth as it humbly seeks God’s wisdom and follows the Holy Spirit’s lead into all truth. Until Christ returns in glory, the church cannot assume that it has reached its goal.

That is why theology should never become a mere restatement of the church’s creeds and doctrines, but should rather be a never-ending process of critical self-examination. It is only as we stand in the divine Light of God’s mystery that we find true knowledge of God.

Paul called that divine mystery “Christ in you, the hope of glory” (Colossians 1:27), the mystery that through Christ it pleased God “to reconcile to himself all things, whether things on earth or things in heaven, by making peace through his blood, shed on the cross” (verse 20).

The Christian church’s proclamation and practice are always in need of examination and fine-tuning, sometimes even major reform, as it continues to grow in the grace and knowledge of the Lord Jesus Christ.

Dynamic theology

The word dynamic is a good word to describe this constant effort of the Christian church to look at itself and the world in the light of God’s self-revelation and then to let the Holy Spirit conform it accordingly to be a people who reflect and proclaim God as God truly is. We see this dynamic quality in theology throughout church history. The apostles reinterpreted the Scriptures when they proclaimed Jesus as the Messiah.

God’s new act of self-revelation in Jesus Christ brought new light to the Bible, light that the Holy Spirit opened the eyes of the apostles to see. In the fourth century, Athanasius, bishop of Alexandria, used descriptive words in the creeds that were not in the Bible in order to help Gentiles understand the meaning of the biblical revelation of God. In the 16th century, John Calvin and Martin Luther contended for the renewal of the church in light of the demand of the biblical truth that salvation comes only by grace through faith in Jesus Christ.

In the 1800s, John McLeod Campbell attempted to broaden the Church of Scotland’s narrow view on the nature of Jesus’ atonement for humanity and was thrown out for his efforts.

In modern times, no one has been more effective in calling the church to a dynamic theology rooted in active faith than Karl Barth, who “gave the Bible back to Europe” after liberal Protestant theology had nearly swallowed up the church by embracing Enlightenment humanism and the “natural theology” of the German church.

Listening to God

Whenever the church fails to hear the voice of God and instead gives in to its own assumptions and presuppositions, it becomes weak and ineffective. It loses relevance in the eyes of those it is trying to reach with the gospel message. The same is true of any part of the Body of Christ when it wraps itself up in its own preconceived ideas and traditions. It becomes bogged down, stuck or static, the opposite of dynamic, and loses its effective­ness in spreading the gospel.

When that happens, the church begins to fragment or break up, Christians become alienated from one another, and Jesus’ command that we love one another fades into the background. Then, gospel proclamation becomes merely a set of words, a proposition that people unthinkingly agree with. The power behind it to offer healing to sinful minds loses its force. Relationships become external, only surface contacts that miss the deep union and communion with Jesus and one another where genuine healing, peace and joy become real possibilities. Static religion is a barrier that can prevent believers from becoming the real people God intends them to be in Jesus Christ.

‘Double predestination’

The doctrine of election or double predestination has long been a distinctive, or identifying doctrine, in the Reformed theological tradition (the tradition that stands in the shadow of John Calvin). This doctrine has frequently been misunderstood, distorted and the cause of endless controversy and distress. Calvin himself struggled with this issue, and his teaching on it has been interpreted by many as saying, “From eternity God has decreed some to salvation and others to damnation.”

This latter interpretation of the doctrine of election is usually described as hyper-Calvinistic. It fosters a fatalistic view of God as an arbitrary tyrant and an enemy of human freedom. Such an approach to the doctrine makes it anything but good news as proclaimed in God’s self-revelation in Jesus Christ. The biblical witness describes the electing grace of God as astonishing, but not dreadful! God, who loves in freedom, offers his grace freely to all who will receive it. 

Karl Barth

In correcting this hyper-Calvinism, the preeminent Reformed theologian of the modern church, Karl Barth, recast the Reformed doctrine of election by centering rejection and election in Jesus Christ. He carefully laid out the full biblical doctrine of election in Volume II of his Church Dogmatics in a way that is consistent with the whole of God’s revelation.

Barth forcefully demonstrated that within a Trinitarian context, the doctrine of election has one central purpose: it declares that God’s works in creation, reconciliation and redemption are fully realized in the free grace of God made known in Jesus Christ.

It affirms that the triune God who lives eternally in loving communion graciously wills to include others in that communion. The Creator Redeemer deeply desires a relationship with his creation. And relation­ships by nature are dynamic, not frozen and unchanging.

In the Dogmatics, where Barth rethought the doctrine of election in a Trinitarian, Creator-Redeemer context, he called it “the sum of the gospel.” In Christ God elected all of humanity in covenant partnership to share in his life of communion by freely and graciously choosing to be the God who is for humanity.

Jesus Christ is both the Elected and the Rejected for our sakes, and individual election and rejection can be understood as real only in him. In other words, the Son of God is the Elect on our behalf. As the universal elected human, his vicarious or substitutionary election, in our place and on our behalf, both condemns death (on the cross) and makes eternal life for us possible (by his resurrection). This atoning and reconciling work of Jesus Christ in the incarnation was complete for the redeeming of fallen humanity.

We must therefore say yes to God’s yes for us in Christ Jesus and embrace and begin to live in the joy and light of what he has already secured for us—union, communion and participation with him in a new creation.

New creation

In his important contribution to the doctrine of election, Barth writes:

For in God’s union with this one man, Jesus Christ, he has shown his love to all and his solidarity with all. In this One he has taken upon himself the sin and guilt of all, and therefore rescued them all by higher right from the judgment which they had rightly incurred, so that he is really the true consolation of all.

Everything changed at the cross. The entire creation, whether it knows it or not, has been, is being and will be redeemed, transformed and made new in Jesus Christ. We are becoming a new creation in him.

Thomas F. Torrance, premier student and interpreter of Karl Barth, served as editor when Barth’s Church Dogmatics was translated into English. Torrance believed that Volume II included some of the finest theology ever written. He agreed with Barth that all of humanity has been redeemed and elected in Christ. Professor Torrance, in his book The Mediation of Christ, lays out the biblical revelation that Jesus is not only our atoning reconciler through his vicarious life, death and resurrection, but serves as our perfect response to God’s grace.

Jesus took our fallenness and judgment on himself, assuming sin, death and evil in order to redeem the creation at all levels and transform everything that stood against us into a new creation. We have been freed from our depraved and rebellious natures for an internal relationship with the One who both justifies and sanctifies us.

Torrance goes on to explain that “the unassumed is the unhealed.” What Christ has not taken upon himself has not been saved. Jesus took our alienated mind on himself, becoming what we are in order to reconcile us to God. He thereby cleansed, healed and sanctified sinful humanity in the depths of its being in his vicarious loving act of incarnation for us.

Instead of sinning like all other human beings, he condemned sin in our flesh by living a life of perfect holiness within our flesh, and through his obedient Sonship he transformed our hostile and disobedient humanity into a true, loving relationship with the Father.

In the Son, the triune God took up our human nature into his Being, and he thereby transformed our nature. He redeemed us and reconciled us. By making our sinful nature his own and healing it, Jesus Christ became the Mediator between God and a fallen humanity.

Our election in the one man Jesus Christ fulfills God’s purpose for the creation and defines God as the God who loves in freedom. Torrance explains that “all of grace” does not mean “nothing of humanity,” but all of grace means all of humanity. That is, we cannot hold onto even one percent of ourselves.

By grace through faith, we participate in God’s love for the creation in a relational way that was not possible before. That means that we love others as God loves us because by grace Jesus Christ is in us and we are in him. This can happen only within the miracle of a new creation. God’s revelation to humanity comes from the Father through the Son in the Spirit, and a redeemed humanity now responds by faith in the Spirit through the Son to the Father.

We have been called to holiness in Christ. We enjoy freedom in him from the sin, death, evil, misery and judgment that stood against us. We reciprocate, or return, God’s love for us through thanksgiving, worship and service in the community of faith. In all his healing and saving relations with us, Jesus Christ is engaged in personalizing and humanizing us—that is, in making us real people in him. In all our relations with him, he makes us more truly and fully human in our personal response of faith. This takes place in us through the creative power of the Holy Spirit as he unites us to the perfect humanity of the Lord Jesus Christ.

All of grace really does mean all of humanity. The grace of Jesus Christ who was crucified and resurrected for us does not depreciate the humanity he came to save. God’s unconditional grace brings into the light all that we are and do. Even in our repenting and believing we cannot rely on our own response, but in faith we rely only on the response that Christ has offered to the Father in our place and on our behalf! In his humanity, Jesus, the new Adam, became our vicarious response to God in all things, including faith, conversion, worship, cele­bration of the sacraments and evangelism.

Ignored

Unfortunately, Karl Barth has generally been ignored or misinterpreted by American evangelicalism, and Thomas Torrance is often presented as too hard to understand. But to fail to appreciate the dynamic nature of theology displayed in Barth’s reworking of the doctrine of election causes many evangelicals and Reformed Christians alike to remain caught in the behavioralism trap, struggling to understand where God draws the line between human behavior and salvation.

The great Reformation principle of ongoing reformation should free us from old worldviews and behavior-based theologies that inhibit growth, promote stagnation and prevent ecumenical cooperation within the Body of Christ. Yet today doesn’t the church often find itself robbed of the joy of grace as it shadowboxes with all its various forms of legalism? For this reason the church is not uncommonly characterized as a bastion of judgmentalism and exclusivism rather than as a testament to grace.

We all have a theology—a way that we think about and understand God—whether we know it or not. And our theology affects how we think about and understand God’s grace and salvation.

If our theology is dynamic and relational, we will be open to hear God’s ever-present word of salvation, which he freely gives us by his grace though Jesus Christ alone. On the other hand, if our theology is static, we will shrivel into a religion of legalism, judgmentalism and spiritual stagnation.

Instead of knowing Jesus as he is in a way that seasons all our relation­ships with mercy, patience, kindness and peace, we will know judgment, exclusivity and condemna­tion of those who fail to meet our carefully defined standards of godliness.

New creation in freedom

Theology does make a difference. How we understand God affects the way we understand salvation and how we live the Christian life. God is not the prisoner of some static, humanly reasoned idea about what he must and should be.

Humans are not capable of reasoning out who God is and what he must be like. God tells us who he is and what he is like, and he is free to be exactly how he chooses to be, and he has revealed himself in Jesus Christ as being the God who loves us, is for us and who chooses to make humanity’s cause—in­cluding your cause and my cause—his own.

In Jesus Christ, we are freed from our sinful minds, from our boasting and despair, and graciously renewed to experience God’s shalom peace in his loving faith community.

Terry Akers and Mike Feazell, 2005

Recommended reading:

Michael Jinkins , Invitation to Theology

Thomas Torrance, The Mediation of Christ

Karl Barth, Dogmatics in Outline

James Torrance, Worship, Community and the Triune God of Grace

Thomas Torrance, The Christian Doctrine of God, One Being Three Persons

Thomas Torrance, The Trinitarian Faith

Ray Anderson, Theology, Death and Dying

C. Baxter Kruger, The Great Dance

Robert Farrar Capon, Parables of Judgment

Donald Bloesch, The Christian Foundations series (seven books)

As Christians, our most basic religious belief is that God exists. By the capitalized word “God,” we mean the God described in the Bible: a good and powerful spirit being who created all things, who cares about us, who cares about what we do, who is involved in our lives, and who offers us an eternity with his goodness.

Humans cannot understand God in totality, but we can have a solid beginning point for understanding who God is and what God is doing in our lives. Let’s focus on the qualities of God that a new believer, for example, might find most helpful.

His existence

Many people, even long-time believers, want proof of God’s existence. But there is no way to “prove” God’s existence so that everyone is convinced. It is probably better to talk in terms of evidence, rather than proof. The evidence gives us confidence that God exists and is the sort of being the Bible describes.

God “has not left himself without testi­mony,” Paul told the pagans in Lystra (Acts 14:17). Well then, what is the evidence?

Creation. Psalm 19:1 tells us, “The heavens declare the glory of God.” Romans 1:20 tells us, “Since the creation of the world God’s invisible qualities—his eternal power and divine nature—have been clearly seen, being understood from what has been made.” Creation itself tells us something about God.

It is reasonable for us to believe that something caused the earth, sun and stars to be the way they are. Scientists say the universe began with a big bang, and it is reasonable for us to believe that something caused the bang. That something, we believe, was God.

Design. Creation shows signs of order, of laws of physics. If various properties of matter were different, then earth would not exist, or humans could not exist. If the size or orbit of earth were different, then conditions on this planet would not permit human life. Some people believe that this is a cosmic accident; others believe that the more reasonable explanation is that the solar system was designed by an intelligent Creator.

Life. Life is based on incredibly complex chemicals and reactions. Some people believe that life had an intelligent cause; others believe that it happened by chance. Some have faith that scientists will eventually demonstrate a non-god origin for life. But for many people, the existence of life is evidence of a Creator God.

Humans. Humans are self-conscious creatures who explore the universe, who ponder the meaning of life, who seek significance. Physical hunger suggests the existence of food; thirst suggests that there is something that can quench our thirst. Does our intellectual yearning for purpose suggest that there is in fact a meaning to be found? Many people claim to have found meaning in relationship with God.

Morality. Is right and wrong a matter of opinion, of majority rule, or is there some supra-human authority that defines good and evil? If there is no God, then humans have no basis for proclaiming anything evil, no reason to condemn racism, genocide, torture or any atrocity. The existence of evil is therefore evidence that God exists. If there is no God, then there is no basis for authority except power. It is reasonable to believe in God.

Greatness

What sort of being is God? Bigger than we can imagine! If he created the universe, then he is bigger than the universe—and not limited by time, space or energy, for he existed before time, space, matter and energy did.

2 Timothy 1:9 mentions something God did “before the beginning of time.” Time had a beginning, and God existed before that. He has a timeless existence that cannot be measured by years. He is eternal, of infinite age—and infinity plus several billion is still infinity. Mathematics is too limited to describe God’s existence.

Since God created matter, he existed before matter, and he is not made of matter. He is spirit—but he is not “made of spirit.” God is not made at all; he simply is, and he exists as spirit. He defines existence—he defines spirit and he defines matter.

God existed before matter did, and the dimensions and properties of matter do not apply to him. He cannot be measured in miles or kilowatts. Solomon acknowledged that even the highest heavens could not contain God (1 Kings 8:27). He fills heaven and earth (Jeremiah 23:23); he is everywhere, or omnipresent. There is no place in the universe where he does not exist.

How powerful is God? If God can cause a big bang, design solar systems, create the codes in DNA and manage all these levels of power, then he must be unlimited in power, or omnipotent. “With God all things are possible,” Luke 1:37 tells us. God can do whatever he wants to do.

God’s creativity demonstrates an intelligence greater than we can understand. He controls the universe, constantly causing its continued existence (Hebrews 1:3). That means he must know what is happening throughout the universe; he is unlimited in intelligence—he is omniscient. He knows whatever he wants to know.

God defines right and wrong, and is by definition right, and he has the power to always do right. “God cannot be tempted with evil” (James 1:13). He is consistently and perfectly righteous (Psalm 11:7). His standards are right, his decisions are right, and he judges the world in righteousness, for he is, in his very nature, good and right.

In all these ways, God is so different from us that we have special words that we use only for God. Only God is omniscient, omnipresent, omnipotent, eternal. We are matter; he is spirit. We are mortal; he is eternal. This great difference between us and God, this otherness, is called his transcendence. It means that he transcends us, is beyond us, is not like us.

Other ancient cultures believed in gods and goddesses who fought with one another, who acted selfishly, who could not be trusted. But the Bible reveals a God who is in complete control, who needs nothing from anyone, who therefore acts only to help others. He is perfectly consistent, his be­havior is perfectly righteous and completely trustworthy. This is what the Bible means when it says that God is holy: morally perfect.

This makes life much simpler. People do not have to try to please 10 or 20 different gods; there is only one. The Creator of all is still the Ruler of all, and he will be the Judge of all. Our past, our present and our future are all determined by the one God, the All-knowing, All-powerful, Eternal One.

Goodness

If all we knew about God is that he had incredible power over us, we might obey him out of fear, with bent knee and resentful heart. But God has revealed to us another aspect of his nature: The incredibly great God is also incredibly gentle and good.

One of Jesus’ disciples asked him, “Show us the Father” (John 14:8). He wanted to know what God was like. He knew the stories of the burning bush, the pillar of cloud and fire at Mt. Sinai, the science-fiction throne that Ezekiel saw, and the whisper that Elijah heard (Exodus 3:4; 13:21; 1 Kings 19:12; Ezekiel 1). God can appear in all these ways, but what is he really like? Where should we look?

Jesus said, “Anyone who has seen me has seen the Father” (John 14:9). If we want to know what God is like, we need to look at Jesus. We can learn a bit about God from nature; we can learn more from the way he revealed himself in the Old Testament, but we learn the most from the way that God has revealed himself in Jesus.

Jesus shows us what God is like. Jesus is called Immanuel, which means God with us (Matthew 1:23). He lived without sin, without selfishness. He is a person of compassion. He has feelings of love and joy, disappointment and anger. He cares about individuals. He calls for righteousness, and he forgives sin. He served others, even in his suffering and death.

God is like that. He described himself to Moses in this way: “The Lord, the compassionate and gracious God, slow to anger, abounding in love and faithfulness, maintaining love to thousands, and forgiving wickedness, rebellion and sin. Yet he does not leave the guilty unpunished” (Exodus 34:6-7).

The God who is above all creation is also free to work within creation. This is his immanence, his being with us. Although God is larger than the universe and everywhere within the universe, he is with believers in a way that he is not with unbelievers. The enormous God is always close to us. He is near and far at the same time (Jeremiah 23:23).

In Jesus, he entered human history, space and time. He worked in human flesh, showing us what life ought to be like in the flesh, and showing us that God wants more for our lives than merely flesh. We are offered eternal life, life beyond the physical limits we know now. We are offered spirit life, as the Spirit of God himself comes into us to live in us and make us children of God (Romans 8:11; 1 John 3:2). God continues to be with us, working in space and time to help us.

The great and powerful God is also the gentle and gracious God; the perfectly righteous Judge is also the merciful and patient Savior. The God who is angry at sin also provides salvation from sin. He is mighty in mercy, great in gentleness. This is what we should expect from a Being who can create the codes in DNA, the colors in a rainbow and the delicate wisps on dandelion seeds. We would not exist at all, except for the fact that God is kind and gentle.

God describes his relationship to us in several ways. In one analogy, he is a father and we are his children. In another, he is the husband and all believers together are his wife. Or he is a king and we are his subjects. He is a shepherd and we are the sheep. In all these analogies, God puts himself in a situation of responsibility to protect and provide for the needs of his people.

God knows how tiny we are. He knows he could obliterate us in the snap of a finger, in the slightest miscalculation of cosmic forces. But in Jesus, God shows us how much he loves us, how much he cares for us. Jesus was humble, willing even to suffer, if it would help us. He knows the kind of pain we go through, because he has felt it. He knows the pain that evil causes, and he accepted it, showing us that we can trust God.

God has plans for us, for he has made us to be like himself (Genesis 1:27). He invites us to become more like himself—in goodness, not in power. In Jesus, God gives us an example to follow: an example of humility, selfless service, love and compassion, faith and hope.

“God is love,” John wrote (1 John 4:8). God demonstrated his love by sending Jesus to die for our sins, so barriers between us and God might be removed, so we might live with him in eternal joy. God’s love is not wishful thinking—it is action that helps us in our deepest need.

We learn more about God from the crucifixion of Jesus than from his resurrection. Jesus shows us that God is willing to suffer pain, even pain caused by the people who are being helped. His love invites us, encourages us. He does not force us to do his will.

God’s love for us, shown most clearly in Jesus Christ, is our example: “This is love: not that we loved God, but that he loved us and sent his Son as an atoning sacrifice for our sins. Dear friends, since God so loved us, we also ought to love one another” (1 John 4:10-11). If we live in love, then eternal life will be a joy not only for us but also for those who live with us.

If we follow Jesus in life, we will also follow him in death, and then in resurrection. The same God who raised Jesus from the dead will also raise us and give us life eternal (Romans 8:11). But if we do not learn to love, then we will not enjoy everlasting life. So God is teaching us to love, at a pace we can follow, giving us a perfect example, changing our hearts by the Holy Spirit working in us. The Power who controls the nuclear furnaces of the sun is working gently in our hearts, wooing us, winning our affection, winning our allegiance.

God gives us meaning in life, direction for life, hope for life eternal. We can trust him, even when we suffer for doing good. God’s goodness is backed up by his power; his love is guided by his wisdom. He has all the forces of the universe at his control, and he is using them for our benefit. “In all things God works for the good of those who love him” (Romans 8:28).

Response

How do we respond to a God so great and gentle, so terrible and tender? We respond with worship: awe at his glory, praise for his works, reverence for his holiness, respect for his power, repentance in the presence of his perfection, obedience in the authority found in his truth and wisdom.

To his mercy, we respond with thankfulness; to his grace, with our allegiance; to his goodness, with our love. We admire him, we adore him, we give ourselves to him even as we wish we had more to give. Just as he has shown his love for us, we let him change us so that we love the people around us. We use all that we have, all that we are, all that he gives us, to serve others, just as Jesus did.

This is the God we pray to, knowing that he hears every word, that he knows every thought, that he knows what we need, that he cares about our feelings, that he wants to live with us forever, that he has the power to fulfill every request, and that he has the wisdom not to.

God has proven himself faithful in Jesus Christ. God exists to serve, not to be selfish. His power is always used in love. Our God is supreme in power, and supreme in love. We can trust him in absolutely everything.

Michael Morrison, 2001

See www.wcg.org/lit/God for more articles about God.

We do not endorse every idea in the books below, but you may find these helpful:

• Donald G. Bloesch, God the Almighty. Christian Foundations. InterVarsity, 1995.

• Thomas C. Oden, The Living God. Harper­­SanFrancisco, 1987.

• Ray S. Anderson, ed. Theological Foun­da­tions for Ministry. T&T Clark, 1979.

• T.F. Torrance, The Christian Doctrine of God. T&T Clark, 1996, 2002.

• T.F. Torrance, The Trinitarian Faith. T&T Clark, 1993.

The Trinity
1+1+1
It Just Doesn't Add Up

The Father is God, and the Son is God, and the Holy Spirit is God, but there is only one God. “Wait a minute,” some people say. “One plus one plus one equals one? This can’t be right. It just doesn’t add up.”

True, it doesn’t add up—and it’s not supposed to. God isn’t a thing that can be added. There can be only one all-powerful, all-wise, everywhere-present being, so there can be only one God. In the world of spirit, the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit are God, unified in a way that material objects cannot be. Our math is based on material things; it does not always work in the infinite, spiritual realm.

The Father is God and the Son is God, but there is only one God being. This is not a family or committee of divine beings—a group cannot say, “There is none like me” (Isaiah 43:10; 44:6; 45:5). God is only one divine being—more than one Person, but only one God. The early Christians did not get this idea from paganism or philosophy—they were forced into it by Scripture.

Just as Scripture teaches that Jesus Christ is divine, it also teaches that the Holy Spirit is divine and personal. Whatever the Holy Spirit does, God does. The Holy Spirit, like the Son and the Father, is God—three Persons perfectly united in one God: the Trinity.

Jesus asked his disciples, “Who do people say that I am?” The question confronts us, too: Who is this man? What authority does he have? Why should we trust him?

The Christian faith centers on Jesus Christ. We need to understand what kind of person he is.

Fully human—and then some

Jesus was born in the normal way, grew in the normal way, got hungry and thirsty and tired, ate and drank and slept. He looked normal, talked in ordinary language, and walked in the normal way. He had emotions such as compassion, surprise, sorrow and apprehension (Matthew 9:36; Luke 7:9; John 11:38; Matthew 26:37). He prayed to God, as humans need to. He called himself a man and other people called him a man. He was a human being.

But Jesus was such an extraordinary human that after he ascended to heaven, some people claimed he was not human after all (2 John 7). They thought that Jesus was so holy that surely he would have nothing to do with flesh, with its dirt, sweat, digestive functions and imperfections. Perhaps he merely appeared to be human, in the way that angels sometimes appeared as humans, without actually becoming human.

So the New Testament makes it clear that Jesus was really a human. John tells us, “The Word became flesh” (John 1:14). He didn’t just appear as flesh, or clothe himself in flesh. He became flesh. “Jesus Christ has come in the flesh” (1 John 4:2). We know, says John, because we saw him and touched him (1 John 1:1-2).

Paul said that Jesus was “made in human likeness” (Philippians 2:7), “born under the law” (Galatians 4:4), “in the likeness of sinful man” (Romans 8:3). Since he came to save humans, the author of Hebrews reasons, it was necessary that he “shared in their humanity” (Hebrews 2:14-17).

Our salvation depends on the reality of Jesus’ humanity. His role as our intercessor, our high priest, depends on his experience as a human (Hebrews 4:15). Even after his resurrection, Jesus had flesh and bones (John 20:27; Luke 24:39). Even in heavenly glory, he continues to be a human (1 Timothy 2:5).

Acting like God

“Who is this fellow?” asked the Pharisees when they heard Jesus forgive sins. “Who can forgive sins but God alone?” (Luke 5:21). Sin is an offense against God, so how could a human speak for God and say the offense is removed from the record? It was blasphemy, they said.

Jesus knew what they thought about it, but he forgave sins anyway. He even implied that he had no sins of his own (John 8:46). He made some astonishing claims:

• He said he would sit at God’s right hand in heaven—another claim the Jewish leaders thought blasphemous (Matthew 26:63-65).

• He claimed to be the Son of God—another blasphemy, they said, since in that culture it implied equality with God (John 5:18; 19:7).

• Jesus claimed to be in such perfect communication with God that he did only what God wanted (John 5:19).

• He claimed to be one with the Father (John 10:30), which the Jewish leaders again said was blasphemous (v. 33).

• He claimed to be so much like God that people should look at him to see the Father (John 14:9; 1:18).

• He claimed to be able to send God’s Spirit (John 16:7).

• He claimed that he had angels he could send (Matthew 13:41).

• He knew that God was the judge of the world, but he also claimed to be the judge (John 5:22).

• He said he could raise the dead, even himself (John 5:21; 6:40; 10:18).

• He said that everyone’s eternal life depends on their relationship with him (Matthew 7:23).

• He said that the words of Moses were not enough (Matthew 5:21-48).

• He claimed to be the Lord of the Sabbath—the Lord of a God-given law! (Matthew 12:8).

If he were merely a human, his teaching was arrogant and sinful. But Jesus backed up his words with some amazing actions. “Believe me when I say that I am in the Father and the Father is in me; or at least believe on the evidence of the miracles” (John 14:11). Miracles can’t force anyone to believe, but they can provide powerful supporting evidence.

To show that he had the authority to forgive sins, Jesus healed a paralyzed man (Luke 5:23-25). His miracles give evidence that what he said about himself is true. He has more-than-human power, because he is more than a human. The claims that would have been blasphemous in anyone else were true for Jesus. He could speak like God and act like God because he was God in the flesh.

Who did he think he was?

Jesus had a clear sense of self-identity. Even at age 12, he had a special relationship with his Father in heaven (Luke 2:49). At his baptism, he heard a voice from heaven say that he was God’s Son (Luke 3:22). He knew he had a mission to perform (Luke 4:43; 9:22; 13:33; 22:37).

When Peter said, “You are the Christ, the Son of the living God,” Jesus answered, “Blessed are you, Simon son of Jonah, for this was not revealed to you by man, but by my Father in heaven” (Matthew 16:16-17). Jesus was the Son of God. He was the Christ, the Messiah—the person uniquely anointed by God for a special mission.

When Jesus called 12 disciples, one for each tribe of Israel, he did not count himself among the 12. He was above them, for he was above all Israel. He was the maker and builder of the new Israel. At the last Supper, he proclaimed himself to be the basis of the new covenant, a new relationship with God. He saw himself as the focal point of what God was doing in the world.

Jesus spoke boldly against traditions, against laws, against the temple, against religious leaders. He demanded that his followers abandon everything to follow him, to put him first in their lives, to give him complete allegiance. He spoke with the authority of God—but he spoke on his own authority. He had authority equal to God.

Jesus believed that he was the fulfillment of Old Testament prophecies. He was the suffering servant who would die to ransom the people from their sins (Isaiah 53:4-5, 12; Matthew 26:24; Mark 9:12; Luke 22:37; 24:46). He was the king of peace who would ride into Jerusalem on a donkey (Zechariah 9:9-10; Matthew 21:1-9). He was the son of man who would be given all power and authority (Daniel 7:13-14; Matthew 26:64).

Previous life

Jesus claimed to be alive before Abra­ham was born: “I tell you the truth,” he said, “before Abraham was born, I am!” (John 8:58). The Jewish leaders thought that Jesus was claiming something divine, and they wanted to kill him (v. 59). The phrase “I AM” is an echo of Exodus 3:14, where God revealed his name to Moses: “This is what you are to say to the Israelites: ‘I AM has sent me to you.’” Jesus used this name for himself.

Jesus said he shared glory with God before the world began (John 17:5). John tells us that he existed even in the beginning of time, as the Word (John 1:1). John tells us that the universe was made through the Word (John 1:3). The Father was the Designer, and the Word was the Creator who carried out the design. “All things were created by him and for him” (Colossians 1:16; 1 Corinthians 8:6). Hebrews 1:2 says that God made the universe through the Son.

Both Hebrews and Colossians tell us that the Son sustains the universe (Hebrews 1:3; Colossians 1:17). Both tell us that he is “the image of the invisible God” (Colossians 1:15), “the exact representation of his being” (Hebrews 1:3).

Who is Jesus? He is a divine being who became flesh. He was in the beginning with God; he was the Creator of all, the Author of life (Acts 3:15). He is exactly like God, has glory like God, and has powers that only God has. Little wonder that the disciples concluded that he was God, even in the flesh.

Worthy of worship

Jesus was conceived in a supernatural way (Matthew 1:20; Luke 1:35). He lived without ever sinning (Hebrews 4:15). He was blameless, without impurity (Hebrews 7:26; 9:14). He committed no sin (1 Peter 2:22); in him there was no sin (1 John 3:5); he knew no sin (2 Corinthians 5:21). No matter how tempting the sin was, Jesus always had a greater desire to obey God. His mission was to do God’s will (Hebrews 10:7).

On several occasions, people worshiped Jesus (Matthew 14:33; 28:9, 17; John 9:38). Angels refuse worship (Revelation 19:10), but Jesus did not. Indeed, the angels worship Jesus, the Son of God (Hebrews 1:6). Some prayers are addressed to Jesus (Acts 7:59-60; 2 Corinthians 12:8; Revelation 22:20). He is worthy of worship.

The New Testament gives elaborate praises to Jesus Christ, with doxologies that are normally reserved for God: “To him be glory for ever and ever. Amen” (2 Timothy 4:18; 2 Pet 3:18; Revelation 1:6). He has the highest title that can ever be given (Ephesians 1:20-21). Even if we call him God, that title is not too high.

In Revelation, equal praise is given to God and to the Lamb, implying equality: “To him who sits on the throne and to the Lamb be praise and honor and glory and power, for ever and ever!” (Revelation 5:13). The Son must be given equal honor with the Father (John 5:23). Both God and Jesus are called the Alpha and the Omega, the beginning and end of everything (Revelation 1:8, 17; 21:6; 22:13).

The New Testament often uses Old Testament passages about God and applies them to Jesus Christ. One of the most striking is this passage about worship: “God exalted him to the highest place and gave him the name that is above every name, that at the name of Jesus every knee should bow, in heaven and on earth and under the earth, and every tongue confess that Jesus Christ is Lord, to the glory of God the Father” (Philippians 2:9-11, quoting Isaiah 45:23). Jesus will get the honor and respect that Isaiah said would be given to God.

Isaiah says there is only one Savior—God (Isaiah 43:11; 45:21). Paul just as clearly says that God is Savior and Jesus is Savior (Titus 1:3-4; 2:10, 13). So, is there one Savior, or two? Early Christians concluded that the Father is God and Jesus is God, even though there is only one God, only one Savior. The Father and Son are the same in essence (God), but different in person.

Several other New Testament verses also call Jesus God. John 1:1 says, “the Word was God.” Verse 18 says, “No one has ever seen God, but God the One and Only, who is at the Father’s side, has made him known.” Jesus is the God who made the Father known. After the resurrection, Thomas recognized Jesus as God: “Thomas said to him, ‘My Lord and my God!’” (John 20:28).

Paul says that the patriarchs are great because “from them is traced the human ancestry of Christ, who is God over all, forever praised! Amen” (Romans 9:5). In Hebrews, God himself is said to call Jesus God: “About the Son he says, ‘Your throne, O God, will last for ever and ever’” (Hebrews 1:8).

“In Christ,” Paul said, “all the fullness of the Deity lives in bodily form” (Colossians 2:9). Jesus Christ is fully divine, and even now has bodily form. He is the exact representation of God—God made flesh. If Jesus were only a human, it would be wrong to put our trust in him. But because he is divine, we are commanded to trust in him. He is utterly trustworthy, because he is God.

The divinity of Jesus is crucial for us, for he could reveal God to us accurately only if he is divine (John 1:18; 14:9). Only a divine person could forgive our sins, redeem us, and reconcile us to God. Only a divine person could be the object of our faith, the Lord to whom we give complete allegiance, the Savior we worship in song and prayer.

Truly human, truly God

As you can see from the scripture references above, the biblical information about Jesus is scattered throughout the New Testament. The picture is consistent, but it is not all drawn together in one place. The early church had to put the facts together. They drew these conclusions from the biblical revelation:

• Jesus, the Son of God, is divine.

• The Son of God became genuinely human, but the Father did not.

• The Son of God and the Father are distinct, not the same.

• There is only one God.

• The Son and the Father are persons in that one God.

The council of Nicea (a.d. 325) declared that Jesus, the Son of God, was divine, of the same essence as the Father. The council of Chalcedon (a.d. 451) explained that he was also human:

Our Lord Jesus Christ is one and the same Son; the same perfect in Godhead and the same perfect in manhood, truly God and truly man... begotten of the Father before all ages as regards his Godhead and... begotten of the Virgin Mary the Theotokos [the “God-Bearer”] as regards his manhood; one and the same Christ, Son, Lord, only-begotten, made known in two natures... the difference of the natures being by no means removed because of the union but the property of each nature being pre­served and coalescing in one person.

The last part was included because some people said that the divine nature so overpowered Jesus’ human nature that he wasn’t really human. Others said that the two natures combined to form a third nature, so that Jesus was neither human nor divine. No, the biblical data says that he was truly human, and truly divine, and this is what the church must say, too.

How can this be?

Our salvation depends on Jesus being both human and divine. But how can this be? How can someone infinite become finite? How can the holy Son of God become a human, in the likeness of sinful flesh?

Our question comes mainly because the only humanity that we can see now is woefully corrupt. But this is not the way God made it. Jesus shows us what true humanity is. For one thing, he shows us a person who is completely dependent on the Father. This is the way humanity ought to be.

Jesus also shows us what God is capable of doing. He is able to become part of his creation. He can bridge the gap between the uncreated and the created, between the holy and the sinful. What we might think is impossible, is possible with God. Jesus also shows us what humanity will be in the new creation. When he returns and we are resurrected, we will look like him (1 John 3:2). We will have bodies like his glorious body (1 Corinthians 15:42-49).

Jesus is our trailblazer, showing us that the way to God is through Jesus. Because he is human, he sympathizes with our weaknesses, and because he is divine, he effectively intercedes for us at God’s right hand (Hebrews 4:15). With Jesus as our Savior, we can be confident that our salvation is secure.

Michael Morrison, 2001

There are many more articles at www.wcg.org/lit/jesus

Numerous theology books give orthodox views on Jesus. You may find the following helpful:

• Donald G. Bloesch, Jesus Christ: Savior & Lord. InterVarsity, 1997.

• Thomas C. Oden, The Word of Life. Harper­SanFrancisco, 1992.

• Millard J. Erickson, Introducing Chris­tian Doctrine. Baker, 1992.

The Holy Spirit is God at work—creating, speaking, transforming us, living within us, working in us. Although the Holy Spirit can do this work without our knowledge, it is helpful for us to know more.

The Holy Spirit is God

The Holy Spirit has the attributes of God, is equated with God and does work that only God does. Like God, the Spirit is holy—so holy that insulting the Spirit is just as sinful as trampling the Son of God under foot (Hebrews 10:29). Blasphemy against the Holy Spirit is an unforgivable sin (Matthew 12:32). This indicates that the Spirit is holy by nature rather than having an assigned holiness such as the temple had.

Like God, the Holy Spirit is eternal (Heb­­rews 9:14). Like God, the Holy Spirit is everywhere present (Psalm 139:7-9). Like God, the Holy Spirit knows everything (1 Cor­inthians 2:10-11; John 14:26). The Holy Spirit creates (Job 33:4; Psalm 104:30) and em­powers miracles (Matthew 12:28; Romans 15:18-19), doing the work or ministry of God.

Several passages discuss the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit as equally divine. In a dis­cussion of spiritual gifts, Paul puts the Spirit, the Lord, and God in parallel constructions (1 Corinthians 12:4-6). He closes a letter with a three-part prayer (2 Corinthians 13:14). Peter begins a letter with a different three-part formula (1 Peter 1:2). These are not proof of unity, but they support it.

The baptismal formula has a stronger indication of unity—“in the name [singular] of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit” (Matthew 28:19). The three have one name, indicating one essence and being.

When the Holy Spirit does something, God is doing it. When the Holy Spirit speaks, God is speaking. When Ananias lied to the Holy Spirit, he lied to God (Acts 5:3-4). As Peter said, Ananias did not lie to God’s representative, but to God himself. People do not “lie” to an impersonal power.

In one passage, Paul says that Christians are a temple of the Holy Spirit (1 Corinthians 6:19); in another he says that we are God’s temple (1 Corinthians 3:16). A temple is for the worship of a divine being, not an impersonal power. When Paul writes “temple of the Holy Spirit,” he implies that the Holy Spirit is God.

The Holy Spirit and God are also equated in Acts 13:2: “The Holy Spirit said, ‘Set apart for me Barnabas and Saul for the work to which I have called them.’” In this verse, the Holy Spirit speaks with personal pronouns, speaking as God. Similarly, the Holy Spirit says that the Israelites “tested and tried me”; the Holy Spirit says that “I was angry…. They shall never enter my rest” (Hebrews 3:7-11).

But the Holy Spirit is not just another name for God. The Holy Spirit is distinct from the Father and the Son, as shown in Jesus’ baptism (Matthew 3:16-17). The three are distinct, but one.

The Holy Spirit does the work of God in our lives. We are born of God (John 1:12), which is the same as being born of the Spirit (John 3:5). The Holy Spirit is the means by which God lives in us (Ephesians 2:22; 1 John 3:24; 4:13). The Holy Spirit lives in us (Romans 8:11; 1 Corinthians 3:16)—and because the Spirit lives in us, we can say that God lives in us.

The Spirit is personal

Scripture describes the Holy Spirit as having personal characteristics. 

• The Spirit lives (Romans 8:11; 1 Cor­inthians 3:16).

• The Spirit speaks (Acts 8:29; 10:19; 11:12; 21:11; 1 Timothy 4:1; Hebrews 3:7; etc.).

• The Spirit sometimes uses the personal pronoun “I” (Acts 10:20; 13:2).

• The Spirit may be spoken to, tested, grieved, insulted or blasphemed (Acts 5:3, 9; Ephesians 4:30; Hebrews 10:29; Matthew 12:31).

• The Spirit guides, intercedes, calls and commissions (Romans 8:14, 26; Acts 13:2; 20:28).

Romans 8:27 refers to the “mind” of the Spirit. He makes judgments—a decision “seemed good” to the Holy Spirit (Acts 15:28). The Spirit “knows” and “determines” (1 Corinthians 2:11; 12:11). This is not an impersonal power.

Jesus called the Holy Spirit the parakletos—translated as the Comforter, the Advocate or the Counselor. “I will ask the Father, and he will give you another Counselor to be with you forever—the Spirit of truth” (John 14:16-17). Like Jesus, the disciples’ first Counselor, the Holy Spirit teaches, testifies, convicts, guides and reveals truth (John 14:26; 15:26; 16:8, 13-14). These are personal roles.

John uses the masculine form of the Greek word parakletos; it was not necessary to use a neuter word. In John 16:14, mas­culine pronouns (he) are used even after the neuter word “Spirit” is mentioned. It would have been easy to switch to neuter pronouns (it), but John does not. The Spirit may be called he. However, grammar is relatively unimportant; what is important is that the Holy Spirit has personal characteristics. He is not an impersonal power, but the intelligent and divine Helper who lives within us.

The Spirit in the Old Testament

The Bible does not have a section titled “The Holy Spirit.” We learn about the Spirit a little here and a little there, as Scripture happens to mention what the Spirit does. The Old Testament gives us only a few glimpses.

The Spirit was involved in creating and sustaining all life (Genesis 1:2; Job 33:4; 34:14). The Spirit of God filled Bezelel with skill to build the tabernacle (Exodus 31:3-5). He filled Moses and came upon the 70 elders (Numbers 11:25). He filled Joshua with wisdom and filled leaders such as Samson with strength or ability to fight (Deut­eronomy 34:9; Judges 6:34; 14:6).

God’s Spirit was given to Saul and later taken away (1 Samuel 10:6; 16:14). The Spirit gave David plans for the temple (1 Chronicles 28:12). The Spirit inspired prophets to speak (Numbers 24:2; 2 Samuel 23:2; 1 Chronicles 12:18; 2 Chronicles 15:1; 20:14; Ezekiel 11:9; Zechariah 7:12; 2 Peter 1:21).

In the New Testament, too, the Spirit caused people to speak, including Elizabeth, Zechariah and Simeon (Luke 1:41, 67; 2:25-32). John the Baptist was filled with the Spirit even from birth (Luke 1:15). His most important work was announcing the arrival of Jesus, who would baptize people not only with water, but with “the Holy Spirit and with fire” (Luke 3:16).

The Spirit and Jesus

The Holy Spirit was involved throughout Jesus’ life. The Spirit caused his conception (Matthew 1:20), descended on him at his baptism (Matthew 3:16), led him into the desert (Luke 4:1) and anointed him to preach the gospel (Luke 4:18). Jesus drove out demons by the Spirit of God (Matthew 12:28). It was through the Spirit that he offered himself as a sacrifice for sin (Hebrews 9:14) and by that same Spirit was raised from the dead (Romans 8:11).

Jesus taught that the Spirit would speak through his disciples in times of persecution (Matthew 10:19-20). He told them to baptize followers in the name of the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit (Matthew 28:19). He said that God was certain to give the Holy Spirit to those who ask (Luke 11:13).

Jesus’ most important teachings about the Holy Spirit come in the Gospel of John. First, people must be “born of water and the Spirit” (John 3:5). People need a spiritual renewal, and this does not come from inside themselves: it is a gift of God. Although spirit can’t be seen, the Holy Spirit does make a difference in our lives (verse 8).

Jesus also taught, “If anyone is thirsty, let him come to me and drink. Whoever believes in me, as the Scripture has said, streams of living water will flow from within him” (John 7:37-38). John adds this ex­plan­ation: “By this he meant the Spirit, whom those who believed in him were later to receive” (verse 39). The Holy Spirit satisfies an internal thirst. He gives us the relationship with God that we were created for. We receive the Spirit by coming to Jesus, and the Spirit can fill our lives.

John also tells us, “Up to that time the Spirit had not been given, since Jesus had not yet been glorified” (verse 39). The Spirit had already filled various men and women before Jesus, but the Spirit would soon come in a new and more powerful way—on Pentecost. The Spirit is now given on a far larger scale: to all who call on the name of the Lord (Acts 2:38-39).

Jesus promised that his disciples would be given the Spirit of truth, who would live in them (John 14:16-18). This is equivalent to Jesus himself coming to his disciples (verse 18), because he is the Spirit of Christ as well as the Spirit of the Father—sent by Jesus as well as the Father (John 15:26). The Spirit makes Jesus available to everyone and continues his work.

Jesus promised that the Spirit would teach the disciples and remind them of what Jesus had taught (John 14:26). The Spirit taught them things that they could not understand before Jesus’ resurrection (John 16:12-13).

The Spirit testifies about Jesus (John 15:26; 16:14). He does not promote himself, but leads people to Jesus Christ and the Father. He does not speak on his own, but only as the Father wants (John 16:13). And because the Spirit can live in millions of people, it is for our good that Jesus left and sent the Spirit to us (John 16:7).

The Spirit works in evangelism, convicting the world of their sin, their guilt, their need for righteousness, and the certainty of judgment (verses 8-10). The Holy Spirit points people to Jesus as the solution to guilt and the source of righteousness.

The Spirit and the church

John the Baptist said that Jesus would baptize people in the Holy Spirit (Mark 1:8). This happened on the day of Pentecost after his resurrection, when the Spirit dramatically gave new power to the disciples (Acts 2). This included speaking that was understood by people from other nations (verse 6). Similar miracles happened on a few other occasions as the church grew (Acts 10:44-46; 19:1-6). As a historian, Luke reports the unusual as well as the more typical events. There is no indication that these miracles happened to all new believers.

Paul says that all believers are baptized in the Holy Spirit into one body—the church (1 Corinthians 12:13). Everyone who has faith is given the Holy Spirit (Romans 10:13; Galatians 3:14). Whether miracles happen to them or not, all believers have been baptized with the Holy Spirit. It is not necessary to seek any particular miracle as proof of this.

The Bible does not command any believer to seek the baptism of the Holy Spirit. Instead, every believer is encouraged to be continually filled with the Holy Spirit (Ephesians 5:18)—to be fully responsive to the Spirit’s lead. This is a continuing duty, not a one-time event.

Rather than seeking a miracle, we are to seek God, and leave it to God’s decision as to whether miracles happen. Paul often describes the power of God not in terms of miracles, but in inner strength—hope, love, patience, serving, understanding, suffering and preaching boldly (Romans 15:13; 2 Cor­inthians 12:9; Ephesians 3:7, 16-18; Col­ossians 1:11, 28-29; 2 Timothy 1:7-8). That is the power of God at work in human lives.

The book of Acts shows that the Spirit is the power behind the church’s growth. The Spirit gave the disciples power to testify about Jesus (verse 8). He gave the disciples great boldness in preaching Christ (Acts 4:8, 31; 6:10). He gave instructions to Philip and later transported him (Acts 8:29, 39).

The Spirit encouraged the church and set leaders in it (Acts 9:31; 20:28). He spoke to Peter and to the church at Antioch (10:19; 11:12; 13:2). He inspired Agabus to predict a famine and Paul to pronounce a curse (11:28; 13:9). He led Paul and Barnabas on their journeys (13:4; 16:6-7) and helped the Jerusalem council come to a decision (15:28). He sent Paul to Jerusalem and warned him what would happen (20:22-23; 21:11). The church existed and grew only through the Spirit working in the believers.

The Spirit and believers today

God the Holy Spirit is intimately involved in the life of believers today. 

• He leads us to repentance and gives us new life (John 16:8; 3:5-6).

• He lives in us, teaches us and leads us (1 Corinthians 2:10-13; John 14:16-17, 26; Romans 8:14). He leads us through Scripture, prayer and other Christians.

• He is the Spirit of wisdom, helping us look at choices with confidence, love and self-control (Ephesians 1:17; 2 Timothy 1:7).

• The Spirit circumcises our hearts, seals us and sanctifies us, setting us apart for God’s purpose (Romans 2:29; Ephesians 1:14).

• He produces in us love and the fruit of righteousness (Romans 5:5; Ephesians 5:9; Galatians 5:22-23).

• He puts us into the church and helps us know that we are God’s children (1 Corinthians 12:13; Romans 8:14-16).

We are to worship God “by the Spirit,” with our minds set on what the Spirit wants (Philippians 3:3; 2 Corinthians 3:6; Romans 7:6; 8:4-5). We strive to please him (Galatians 6:8). If we are controlled by the Spirit, he gives us life and peace (Romans 8:6). He gives us access to the Father (Ephesians 2:18). He helps us in our weakness, interceding for us (Romans 8:26-27).

The Holy Spirit also gives spiritual gifts, including leaders for the church (Ephesians 4:11), basic functions within the church (Romans 12:6-8), and some abilities for extraordinary purposes (1 Corinthians 12:4-11). No one has every gift, nor is any gift given to everyone (verses 28-30). All gifts, whether spiritual or “natural,” are to be used for the common good, to help the entire church (1 Corinthians 12:7; 14:12). Every gift is important (12:22-26).

Now, we have only the firstfruits of the Spirit, only a deposit that guarantees much more in our future (Romans 8:23; 2 Corinthians 1:22; 5:5; Ephesians 1:13-14).

In summary, the Holy Spirit is God at work in our lives. Everything God does is done through his Spirit. Paul therefore encourages us: “Let us keep in step with the Spirit.... Do not grieve the Holy Spirit of God.... Do not put out the Spirit’s fire” (Gal­atians 5:25; Ephesians 4:30; 1 Thessalonians 5:19). Be attentive to what the Spirit says. When he speaks, God is speaking.

Michael Morrison, 2001

See www.wcg.org/lit/God for more articles about the Trinity.

You may also find these books helpful:

• Thomas C. Oden, Life in the Spirit, HarperSanFrancisco, 1992.

• Donald G. Bloesch, The Holy Spirit: Works and Gifts. InterVarsity, 2000.

• Millard Erickson, God in Three Persons. Baker, 1995.

“Repent, for the kingdom of God is at hand.” John the Baptist and Jesus proclaimed the nearness of God’s kingdom (Matthew 3:2; 4:17; Mark 1:15). A literal translation is “has come near.” The long-awaited rule of God was near. This message was called the gospel, the good news. Thousands were eager to hear and respond to this message of John and Jesus.

But consider for a moment what the response would have been like if they had preached, “The kingdom of God is 2,000 years away.” The message would have been disappointing, and public response would also have been disappointing. Jesus may not have been popular, Jewish religious leaders might not have been jealous, and Jesus might not have been crucified. “The kingdom of God is far away” would have been neither news nor good.

John and Jesus preached a soon-coming kingdom, something that was near in time to their audiences. The message said something about what people should do now; it had immediate relevance and urgency. It aroused interest—and jealousy. By proclaiming that changes were needed in government and in religious teachings, the message challenged the status quo.

First-century Jewish expectations

Many first-century Jews knew the phrase “kingdom of God.” They eagerly wanted God to send them a leader who would throw off Roman rule and make Judea an independent nation again—a nation of righteousness, glory and blessings, a nation everyone would be attracted to.

Into this climate—eager but vague expectations of God-ordained intervention—John and Jesus preached the nearness of God’s kingdom. “The kingdom of God has come near you,” Jesus told his disciples to say after they healed the sick (Matthew 10:7; cf. Luke 10:9, 11).

But the hoped-for kingdom did not happen. The Jewish nation was not restored. Even worse, the temple was destroyed and the Jews were scattered. The Jewish hopes are still unfulfilled. Was Jesus wrong in his prediction, or was he not predicting a national kingdom?

Jesus’ kingdom was not like the popular expectation—as we might guess from the fact that many Jews wanted him dead. His kingdom was not of this world (John 18:36). When he talked about the “kingdom of God,” he used a phrase the people knew well, but he gave it new meaning. He told Nicodemus that God’s kingdom was invisible to most people (John 3:3)—to understand it or experience it, a person must be renewed by God’s Spirit (verse 6). The kingdom of God was a spiritual kingdom, not a physical organization.

Present condition of the kingdom

In the Olivet prophecy, Jesus announced that the kingdom would come after certain signs and apocalyptic events. But some of Jesus’ teachings and parables explain that the kingdom does not come in a dramatic way. The seed grows quietly (Mark 4:26-29); the kingdom starts as small as a mustard seed (verses 30-32) and is hidden like yeast (Matthew 13:33). These parables suggest that the kingdom is a reality before it comes in a powerful and dramatic way. In addition to being a future reality, it has reality right now.

Let’s look at some verses that indicate the kingdom is already functioning. In Mark 1:15, John announced, “The time has come…. The kingdom of God is near.” Both these verbs are in the past perfect tense, which indicates that something has happened and its results continue. The time had come not just for the announcement but also for the kingdom.

Jesus said, after casting out demons, “If I drive out demons by the Spirit of God, then the kingdom of God has come upon you” (Matthew 12:28, Luke 11:20). The kingdom is here, he said, and the proof is in the exorcisms. This proof continues in the church today, because the church is doing even greater works than Jesus did (John 14:12). We can also say, “If we cast out demons by the Spirit of God, then the kingdom of God is working here.” The kingdom of God, by the power of the Holy Spirit, is continuing to demonstrate its authoritative power over the kingdom of Satan.

Satan still exerts some influence, but he has been defeated and condemned (John 16:11). He has been partially restrained (Mark 3:27). Jesus overcame Satan’s world (John 16:33), and with God’s help we are overcoming it, too (1 John 5:4). But not everyone does. In this age, the kingdom contains both good and bad (Matthew 13:24-30, 36-43, 47-50; 24:45-51; 25:1-12, 14-30). Satan is still influential; we still look forward to the glorious future of the kingdom.

The kingdom active in the teachings

“The kingdom of heaven has been forcefully advancing,” Jesus said in Matthew 11:12. And forceful people are laying hold of it. These verbs are in the present tense—the kingdom existed in Jesus’ day. A parallel verse, Luke 16:16, also uses present-tense verbs: “everyone is forcing his way into it.” We don’t need to decide who the forceful people are or why they use force—what is important here is that these verses talk about the kingdom as a present reality.

Luke 16:16 replaces the first part of the verse with “the good news of the kingdom of God is being preached.” This variation suggests that the kingdom’s advance in this age is, for practical purposes, roughly equivalent to its proclamation. The kingdom is—it already exists—and it is advancing by being preached.

In Mark 10:15, Jesus indicates that the kingdom is something we must receive in some way, apparently in this life. How is the kingdom present? The details are not yet clear, but the verses we have looked at say it is present.

The kingdom is among us

Some Pharisees asked Jesus when the kingdom would come (Luke 17:20). You can’t see it, replied Jesus. But Jesus also said, “The kingdom of God is within [NIV footnote: among] you” (verse 21). Jesus was the King, and because he was teaching and performing miracles among them, the kingdom was among the Pharisees. Jesus Christ is in us today, too, and just as the kingdom was present in the ministry of Jesus, it is present in the ministry of his church. The King is among us; his spiritual power is in us, even though the kingdom is not yet operating in its full power.

We have already been brought into God’s kingdom (Colossians 1:13). We are already receiving a kingdom, and our proper response is reverence and awe (Hebrews 12:28). Christ “has made us [past tense] to be a kingdom” (Revelation 1:6). We are a holy nation (1 Peter 2:9)—already and currently a holy kingdom—but it does not yet appear what we shall be. God has rescued us from the dominion of sin and transferred us into his kingdom, under his ruling authority.

The kingdom of God is here, Jesus said. His audience did not need to wait for a conquering Messiah—God is already ruling, and we should be living his way now. We don’t yet possess a territory, but we do come under the reign of God.

The kingdom of God is yet future

Understanding that the kingdom already exists helps us give greater attention to serving others around us. But we do not forget that the completion of the kingdom is still future. If our only hope is in this age, we don’t have much hope (1 Corinthians 15:19). We do not harbor illusions about bringing the kingdom with human efforts. When we suffer setbacks and persecutions, when we see that most people reject the gospel, we gain strength from the knowledge that the fullness of the kingdom is in a future age.

No matter how much we try to live in a way that reflects God and his kingdom, we cannot transform this world into God’s kingdom. It must come through dramatic intervention. Apocalyptic events are needed to usher in the new age. Satan must be completely restrained.

Numerous verses tell us that the kingdom of God will be a glorious future reality. We know that Christ is a King, and we yearn for the day he will exercise his power in a great and dramatic way to stop human suffering. The book of Daniel predicts a kingdom of God that will rule the earth (Daniel 2:44, 7:13-14, 22); the New Testament Apocalypse describes its arrival (Revelation 11:15, 19:11-16).

We pray for the kingdom to come (Luke 11:2). The poor in spirit and the persecuted await their future “reward in heaven” (Matthew 5:3, 10, 12). People “enter the kingdom” on a future “day” of judgment (Matthew 7:21-23, Luke 13:22-30). Jesus gave one parable because some people thought the kingdom would become powerful right away (Luke 19:11).

In the Olivet prophecy, Jesus described dramatic events that would come before his return in power. Shortly before his crucifixion, Jesus looked forward to a kingdom in the future (Matthew 26:29). 

Paul speaks several times of “inheriting the kingdom of God” as a future experience (1 Corinthians 6:9, 10; 15:50; Galatians 5:21; cf. Ephe­sians 5:5), and otherwise indicates by his language that he thinks of it as realized only at the end of the age (1 Thessalonians 2:12; 2 Thessalonians 1:5; Colossians 4:11; cf. 2 Timothy 4:1, 18). When Paul wants to focus on the present manifestation of the kingdom, he tends either to introduce the term “justice” or “righteousness” along with “kingdom” (Romans 14:17) or in place of it (Romans 1:17; for the close association of the kingdom and the justice of God, see Matthew 6:33), or (alternatively) to connect the kingdom with Jesus Christ rather than God the Father (Colossians 1:13). (J. Ramsey Michaels, “The Kingdom of God and the Historical Jesus,” chapter 8 of The Kingdom of God in 20th-Century Interpretation, edited by Wendell Willis [Hendrickson, 1987], page 112)

Many “kingdom” scriptures could apply equally to the present kingdom or to the future fulfillment. Lawbreakers will be called least in the kingdom (Matthew 5:19-20). We leave families for the sake of the kingdom (Luke 18:29). We enter the kingdom through tribulations (Acts 14:22). The important thing for this article is that some verses are clearly present tense, and some are clearly future tense.

After Jesus’ resurrection, the disciples asked him, “Lord, are you at this time going to restore the kingdom to Israel?” (Acts 1:6). How was Jesus to answer such a question? What the disciples meant by kingdom was not what Jesus had been teaching. The disciples were still thinking in terms of a nationalistic kingdom rather than a slowly growing nation of all ethnic groups. It would take them years to realize that Gentiles were welcome in the new kingdom. Christ’s kingdom was still not of this world, but it was to be active in this age. So Christ did not say yes or no—he simply told them there was work to do and power to do it (verses 7-8).

The kingdom of God in the past

Matthew 25:34 tells us that the kingdom has been in preparation since the foundation of the world. It has been in existence all along, albeit in different forms. God was a King to Adam and Eve; he gave them dominion or authority to rule; they were his vice-regents in the Garden of Eden. Although the word “kingdom” is not used, Adam and Eve were in a kingdom of God, under his rule and ownership.

When God promised Abraham that his descendants would become great nations and that kings would come from him (Genesis 17:5-6), he was promising a kingdom of God. But it started small, like yeast hidden in a batch of dough, and it took hundreds of years to be seen for what it was.

When God brought the Israelites out of Egypt and made a covenant with them, they became a kingdom of priests (Exodus 19:6), a kingdom that belonged to God and could be called a kingdom of God. The covenant he made with them was similar to treaties powerful kings made with smaller nations. He had saved them, and the Israelites responded—they agreed to be his people. God was their king (1 Samuel 12:12; 8:7). David and Solomon sat on the throne of God, ruling on his behalf (1 Chronicles 29:23). Israel was a kingdom of God.

But the people wouldn’t obey their King. God sent them away, but he promised to restore the nation with a new heart (Jeremiah 31:31-33), a prophecy that has been fulfilled in the church today, which participates in the new covenant. We who have been given the Holy Spirit are the royal priesthood and holy nation that ancient Israel was unable to be (1 Peter 2:9, Exodus 19:6). We are in the kingdom, but there are now weeds growing among the grain. At the end of the age, the Messiah will return in power and glory, and the kingdom of God will again be trans­formed in appearance. The post­millennial kingdom, in which everyone is perfect and spiritual, will be dramatically different from the millennial one.

Since the kingdom has historical continuity, it is proper to speak of it in past, present and future tenses. In its historical development, it has had and will continue to have major milestones as new phases are established. The kingdom was established at Mt. Sinai; it was established in Jesus’ ministry; it will be established at his return, after the judgment. In each phase, God’s people rejoice in what they have and look forward to more yet to come. As we now experience some limited aspects of the kingdom, we gain confidence that the future kingdom will also be a reality. The Holy Spirit is our guarantee of greater blessings (2 Corinthians 5:5, Ephesians 1:14).

The kingdom and the gospel

When we hear the word kingdom, we are reminded of the kingdoms of this world. Kingdom in this world is associated with authority and power, but not harmony and love. Kingdom can describe the authority God has in his family, but it does not describe all the blessings God has in store for us. That’s why other metaphors are used, too, such as the family term children, which emphasizes God’s love and authority.

Each term is accurate, but incomplete. If any one term could describe salvation perfectly, the Bible would use that term consistently. But all are metaphors, each describing some aspect of salvation—but none of the terms describes the complete picture. When God commissioned the church to preach the gospel, he did not restrict us to using only the term “kingdom of God.” The apostles translated Jesus’ sayings from Aramaic to Greek, and they translated them into other metaphors, especially metaphors that were more meaningful to a non-Jewish audience. Matthew, Mark and Luke use “the kingdom” often. John and the epistles also describe our future, but they prefer other metaphors to do it.

Salvation is a more general term. Paul said we have been saved (Ephesians 2:8), are being saved (2 Corinthians 2:15) and shall be saved (Romans 5:9). God has given us salvation, and he expects us to respond to him with faith. John wrote of salvation and eternal life as a present reality and possession (1 John 5:11-12) and a future blessing.

Metaphors such as salvation and family of God—just as much as kingdom—are legitimate although partial descriptions of God’s plan for us. Christ’s gospel can be called the gospel of the kingdom, gospel of salvation, gospel of grace, gospel of God, gospel of eternal life, etc. The gospel is an announcement that we can live with God forever, and it includes information about this is possible—through Jesus Christ our Savior.

When Jesus talked about the kingdom, he didn’t emphasize its physical blessings or clarify its chronology. He focused instead on what people should do to be part of it. Tax collectors and prostitutes enter the kingdom of God, Jesus said (Matthew 21:31), and they do it by believing the gospel (verse 32) and by doing what the Father wants (verses 28-31). We enter the kingdom functionally when we respond to God with faith and allegiance. 

In Mark 10, a man wanted to inherit eternal life, and Jesus said he should keep the commandments (Mark 10:17-19). Jesus added another command: He told him to give up all his possessions for the heavenly treasure (verse 21). Jesus commented to the disciples, “How hard it is for the rich to enter the kingdom of God!” (verse 23). The disciples asked, “Who then can be saved?” (verse 26). In this passage, and in its parallel in Luke 18:18-30, we see several phrases used to indicate the same thing: receive the kingdom, inherit eternal life, have treasure in heaven, enter the kingdom, be saved. When Jesus said, “follow me” (verse 21), he was using another phrase to indicate the same thing: We enter the kingdom by orienting our life to Jesus.

In Luke 12:31-34, Jesus indicates that several phrases are similar: seeking the kingdom, being given the kingdom, having a heavenly treasure, giving up trust in physical possessions. We seek God’s kingdom by responding to what Jesus taught. In Luke 21:28, 30, the kingdom is parallel to redemption. In Acts 20:21, 24-25, 32, we learn that Paul preached the gospel of the kingdom, and he preached the gospel of God’s grace, repentance and faith. The kingdom is closely connected with salvation—the kingdom would not be worth preaching if we couldn’t be part of it, and we can enter it only through faith, repentance and grace, so those are part of any message about God’s kingdom. Salvation is a present-tense reality as well as a promise of future blessings.

In Corinth, Paul preached nothing but Christ and his crucifixion (1 Corinthians 2:2). In Acts 28:23, 29, 31, Luke tells us that Paul in Rome preached both the kingdom and about Jesus and salvation. These are different aspects of the same Christian message.

The kingdom is relevant not merely because it is our future reward, but also because it affects how we live and think in this age. We prepare for the future kingdom by living in it now, in accordance with our King’s teachings. As we live in faith, we recognize God’s rule as a present reality in our own experience, and we continue to hope in faith for a future time when the kingdom will be filled to the full, when the earth will be full of the knowledge of the Lord.

Michael Morrison, 1993

When we look at the heavens, when we consider the moon and stars, when we consider the enormity of the universe and the stupendous powers involved in each star, we might well wonder why God bothers with us at all. We are so small, so limited—like ants scurrying to and fro inside a terrarium. Why should we think that he even looks at this anthill called earth, and why would he even care about each individual ant?

Modern science is expanding our awareness of just how large the universe is, and how powerful each star is. In astronomical terms, humans are no more significant than a few randomly moving molecules—but yet it is humans who are asking the questions of significance. It is humans who develop the science of astronomy, who explore the universe without ever leaving home. It is humans who turn the universe into a springboard for spiritual questions. It hearkens back to Psalm 8:

When I look at your heavens, the work of your fingers, the moon and the stars that you have established; what are human beings that you are mindful of them, mortals that you care for them? Yet you have made them a little lower than God, and crowned them with glory and honor. You have given them dominion over the works of your hands;
you have put all things under their feet (Psalm 8:3-6, NRSV in this article).

Like animals

So, what are human beings? Why does God care about them? They are in some ways like God himself, yet inferior, yet crowned by God himself with honor and glory. Humans are a paradox, a mystery—tainted with evil, and yet believing that they should behave morally. So corrupt in power, but yet having power over other living things. So far below God, and yet called honorable by God himself.

What are human beings? Scientists call us Homo sapiens, a member of the animal kingdom. Scripture calls us nephesh, a word that is also used for animals. We have spirit in us, just as animals have spirit in them. We are dust, and when we die, we return to the dust, just as animals do. Our anatomy and our physiology is like that of an animal.

But Scripture says that we are much more than animals. There is a spiritual aspect to human beings—and science cannot tell us about this spiritual part of life. Nor can philosophy; we cannot come up with reliable answers just by thinking about it. No, this part of our existence must be explained by revelation. Our Creator needs to tell us who we are, what we are supposed to do, and why he cares. We find answers in Scripture.

Genesis 1 tells us that God created all things: light and darkness, land and sea, sun and moon and stars. Pagans worshipped these things as gods, but the true God is so powerful that he can call them into existence just by speaking a word. They are totally under his control. Whether he did it in one day, six days, or six billion years is not nearly as important as the fact that he did it. He said it, it was done, and it was good.

As part of all creation, God also created humans, and Genesis tells us that we were created on the same day as the animals. The symbolism of this seems to say that we are in some respects like the animals. That much we can see for ourselves.

The image of God

But the creation of humans is not described in the same way as everything else. There is no, “And God said...and it was so.” Instead, we read, “Then God said, ‘Let us make humankind in our image, according to our likeness; and let them have dominion’” (Genesis 1:26). Who is this “us”? The text does not explain, but it is clear that humans are a special creation, made in the “image of God.” What is this “image”? Again, the text does not explain, but it is clear that humans are special.

Many theories have been suggested for what “the image of God” is. Some say it is intelligence, the power of rational thought or speech. Some say it is our social nature, our ability to have a relationship with God, and male and female reflecting relationships within the Godhead. Others suggest it is morality, the ability to make decisions that are good or evil. Some say the image is our dominion over the earth and its creatures, that we are like God’s agents to them. But dominion itself is godly only if done in a moral way.

Exactly what the first readers understood from this phrase is open to question, but it seems to say that humans are in some way like God himself. There is a supernatural significance to who we are, and our importance lies not in being like animals, but in being like God. Genesis does not tell us much more. We learn in Genesis 9:6 that each human is in God’s image even after humanity sinned, and for that reason murder must not be tolerated.

The Old Testament does not mention “the image of God” again, but the New Testament gives more meaning to the phrase. There we learn that Jesus Christ, the perfect image of God, reveals God to us in terms of his self-sacrificial love. We are to conform to the image of Christ, and by doing so we achieve the full potential that God intended for us when he made us in his image. The more we let Jesus Christ live in us, the closer we are to God’s purpose for our lives.

Let’s go back to Genesis, for it tells us more about why God cares so much about people. After saying, “Let’s do it,” he did it: “So God created humankind in his image, in the image of God he created them; male and female he created them” (Genesis 1:27).

Note here that women and men are both made in the image of God; they have equal spiritual potential. Similarly, social roles do not change a person’s spiritual value—a person of high intelligence does not have more value than one with a low intelligence, nor does a ruler have more value than a servant. We are all made in the image and likeness of God, and all humans deserve love, honor and respect.

Genesis then tells us that God blessed the humans, telling them, “Be fruitful and multiply, and fill the earth and subdue it; and have dominion over the birds of the air and over every living thing that moves upon the earth” (v. 28). God’s command is a blessing, which is what we would expect from a gracious God. In love, he gave humans the responsibility to rule the earth and its living things. The humans were his stewards, taking care of his property.

Modern environmentalists sometimes accuse Christianity of being anti-environmental. Does this mandate to “subdue” the earth and to “rule” the animals give humans permission to destroy the ecosystem? Of course not. Humans are to use their God-given power to serve, not to destroy. They are to exercise dominion in the way that God does.

The fact that some humans misuse this power, and misuse this scripture, does not change the fact that God wants us to use it well. If we skip ahead in the story, we will learn that God told Adam to till and keep the garden. He could eat the plants, but he was not to use up or destroy the garden.

Life in the garden

Genesis 1 concludes by noting that everything was “very good.” Humanity was the crown, the capstone of creation. This was just the way God wanted it to be—but anyone who lives in the real world realizes that something is now terribly wrong with humanity. What went wrong? Genesis 2 and 3 explain how an originally perfect creation became marred. Some Christians take the account pretty much at face value; others view it more as a parable. Either way, the theological message is the same.

Genesis tells us that the first humans were named Adam (Genesis 5:2), the com­mon Hebrew word for “human.” The name Eve is similar to the Hebrew word for living—“The man named his wife Eve, because she was the mother of all living” (3:20). The names Adam and Eve, to use modern terms, mean Human and Everyone’s Mother. What they did in Genesis 3—sin—is what humanity as a whole has done; the story illustrates why humanity is in a less-than-perfect situation. Humanity is typified by Adam and Eve—humanity lives in rebellion against its Creator, and that is why sin and death characterize all human societies.

Note the way that Genesis 2 sets the scene: an ideal garden, somewhere that no longer exists, watered by a stream. The picture of God shifts from a cosmic commander, to a nearly physical being who walks in a garden, who plants trees, who shapes a person out of the ground, who breathes into his nostrils to give him life. Adam was given something more than animals had, and he became a living soul, a nephesh. Yahweh, the personal God, “took the man and put him in the garden of Eden to till it and keep it” (v. 15). He gave Adam instructions about the garden, asked him to name all the animals, and then created a woman to be a human companion for Adam. Again, God became personally involved, physically active in creating the woman.

Eve was a “helper” for Adam, but that word does not imply inferiority. The Hebrew word is most often used for God himself, who is a helper to humans in our needs. Eve was not invented to do the work Adam didn’t want to do—Eve was created to do something that Adam was unable to do on his own. And when Adam saw her, he recognized that she was basically the same as he was, a God-given companion (v. 23).

The narrator concludes chapter 2 on a note of equality: “A man leaves his father and his mother and clings to his wife, and they become one flesh. And the man and his wife were both naked, and were not ashamed” (vv. 24-25). This is the way that God meant it to be, the way it was before sin entered the picture. Sex was a divine gift, nothing to be ashamed of.

Something went wrong

But now the serpent enters the story. Eve was tempted to do something that God had forbidden. She was invited to follow her emotions, to please herself, instead of trusting the instruction of God. “When the woman saw that the tree was good for food, and that it was a delight to the eyes, and that the tree was to be desired to make one wise, she took of its fruit and ate; and she also gave some to her husband, who was with her, and he ate” (3:6).

What went through the mind of Adam? Genesis does not say. The point of the story in Genesis is that all humans do what Adam and Eve did—we ignore the word of God and do what we please, making up excuses as we go. We can blame it on the devil if we want to, but the sin is still within us. We want to be wise, but we are foolish. We want to be like God, but we are not willing to be the way he tells us to be.

What did the tree stand for? The text does not tell us anything more than “the knowledge of good and evil.” Is it exper­ience? Is it wisdom? It is moral authority? Whatever it represents, the main point seems to be that it was forbidden, and that it was nevertheless eaten. The people had sinned, had rebelled against their Creator, had chosen to go their own way. They were no longer fit for the garden, no longer fit for “the tree of life.”

The first result of their sin was a changed way of viewing themselves—they saw something wrong with their nakedness (v. 7). Even after making loincloths, they were afraid of being seen by God (v. 10). And they made their lame excuses.

And God explained the consequences: Eve would bear children, which was part of the original plan, but now it would be with great pain. Adam would till the ground, which was part of the original plan, but now it would be with great toil. And they would die. In fact, they were already dead. “In the day that you eat of it you shall die” (2:17). Their true life in union with God was over. All that was left was mere physical existence, far less than the true life God intended. And yet there was potential, for God still had his plans.

There would be struggle between the woman and the man: “Your desire shall be for your husband, and he shall rule over you” (3:16). People who take matters into their own hands (like Adam and Eve did) instead of following instructions are likely to have conflict, and brute strength usually prevails. This is the way society is, once sin has entered the picture.

So the scene has been set: The problem that humans find themselves in is their own fault, not God’s. He gave them a perfect start, but they blew it, and everyone ever since has been infected with sin. But despite human sinfulness, humanity continues to be in God’s image—tarnished and dented, we might say, but still the same basic image.

This divine potentiality still defines who human beings are, and this brings us to the words of Psalm 8. The cosmic commander still cares about human beings because he made them a little bit like himself, and he gave them authority over his creation—an authority they still have. There is still honor there, there is still glory, even though we are temporarily lower than we were designed to be. If our vision is good enough to see this picture, it should lead us to praise: “O Lord, our Sovereign, how majestic is your name in all the earth!” (Psalm 8:1, 9). God is to be praised because he has a plan for us.

Christ, the perfect image

Jesus Christ, God made flesh, is the perfect image of God (Colossians 1:15). He was fully human, showing us exactly what a human being ought to be: perfectly obedient, perfectly trusting. Adam was a type of Jesus Christ (Romans 5:14), and Jesus is called “the last Adam” (1 Corinthians 15:45). “In him was life, and the life was the light of all people” (John 1:4). Jesus restored the life that was lost through sin. He is the resurrection and the life (John 11:25).

What Adam did for physical humanity, Jesus Christ does for the spiritual revision. He is the starting point of the new humanity, the new creation (2 Corinthians 5:17). In him, everyone will be made alive again (1 Corinthians 15:22). We are born again. We are starting over, this time on the right foot. Through Jesus Christ, God is creating the new humanity, and sin and death have no power over this re-creation (Romans 8:2; 1 Corinthians 15:24-26). The victory has been won; the temptation has been rejected.

Jesus is the one we are to trust and the model we are to follow (Romans 8:29-35); we are being transformed into his image (2 Corinthians 3:18), the image of God. Through faith in Christ, through his work in our lives, our imperfections are being stripped away, and we are being brought closer to what God wants us to be (Ephesians 4:13, 24). We are going from one degree of glory to another—to a much higher glory!

Of course, we do not yet see the image in all its glory, but we are assured that we will. “Just as we have borne the image of the man of dust [Adam], we will also bear the image of the man of heaven [Christ]” (1 Corinthians 15:49). Our resurrected bodies will be like Jesus Christ’s: glorious, power­ful, spiritual, heavenly, imperishable, im­mortal (vv. 42-44).

John put it this way: “Beloved, we are God’s children now; what we will be has not yet been revealed. What we do know is this: when he is revealed, we will be like him, for we will see him as he is” (1 John 3:2-3). We don’t yet see it, but we know it will happen, for we are God’s children, and he will make it happen. We will see Christ in his glory, and that means that we will also have a similar glory, able to see spiritual glory.

And then John adds this pastoral comment: “And all who have this hope in him purify themselves, just as he is pure” (v. 3). Since we will be like him then, we try to be like him now.

So humanity is a multilevel being: physical and spiritual. Even the natural human is made in God’s image. No matter how much a person sins, the image is still there and the person is of tremendous value. God has a purpose and plan that includes every sinner.

Through faith in Christ, a sinner becomes a new creation, modeled after the second Adam, Jesus Christ. In this age, we are just as physical as Jesus was during his earthly ministry, but we are being re­fashioned into the spiritual image of God. This spiritual change means a change of attitude and behavior, brought about because Christ lives in us and we live by faith in him (Galatians 2:20).

If we are in Christ, we will bear the image of God perfectly in the resurrection. Our minds cannot now fully grasp what that will be like, and we do not know exactly what the “spiritual body” will be, but we know that it will be wonderful. Our gracious and loving God will bless us with as much as we can enjoy, and we will praise him forever!

When you look at others, what do you see? Do you see the image of God, the potential for greatness, the image of Christ being formed? Do you see the beauty of God’s plan at work in giving grace to sinners? Do you rejoice that he redeems a humanity who went astray? Do you rejoice at the majesty of the wonderful plan of God? Do you have the eyes to see?

This is far more wonderful than the stars. It is a far more glorious creation. He has given his word, and it is so, and it is very good.

Joseph Tkach, 2000

How do we know who Jesus is, or what he taught? How do we know when a gospel is false? Where is the authority for sound teaching and right living? The Bible is the inspired and infallible record of what God wants us to know and do.

A witness to Jesus

Perhaps you’ve seen newspaper reports about the “Jesus Seminar,” a group of scholars who claim that Jesus didn’t say most of the things the Bible says he did. Or perhaps you’ve heard of other scholars who say that the Bible is a collection of contradictions and myths.

Many well-educated people dismiss the Bible. Many other equally educated people believe it is a trustworthy record of what God has done and said. If we cannot trust what the Bible says about Jesus, for example, then we will know almost nothing about him.

The Jesus Seminar began with a preconceived idea of what Jesus would have taught. They accepted the sayings that fit this idea, and rejected the sayings that didn’t, thereby, in effect, creating a Jesus in their own image. This is not good scholarship, and even many liberal scholars disagree with the Seminar.

Do we have good reason to trust the biblical reports about Jesus? Certainly—they were written within a few decades of Jesus’ death, when eyewitnesses were still alive. Jewish disciples often memorized the words of their teachers, so it is quite possible that Jesus’ disciples preserved his teachings accurately. We have no evidence that they invented sayings to deal with early church concerns, such as circumcision. This suggests that they are reliable reports of what Jesus taught.

We can also be confident that the manuscripts were well preserved. We have some copies from the fourth century, and smaller sections from the second. This is better than all other historical books. (The oldest copy of Virgil was copied 350 years after Virgil died; of Plato, 1,300 years.) The manuscripts show that the Bible was copied carefully, and we have a highly reliable text.

Jesus’ witness to Scripture

Jesus was willing to argue with the Pharisees on many issues, but he did not seem to argue with their view of the Scriptures. Although Jesus disagreed on interpretations and traditions, he apparently agreed with other Jewish leaders that the Scriptures were authoritative for faith and practice.

Jesus expected every word in Scripture to be fulfilled (Matthew 5:17-18; Mark 14:49). He quoted Scripture to prove his points (Matthew 9:13; 22:31; 26:24; 26:31; John 10:34); he rebuked people for not reading Scripture carefully enough (Matthew 22:29; Luke 24:25; John 5:39). He referred to Old Testament people and events without any hint that they were not real.

Scripture had the authority of God behind it. When Jesus answered Satan’s temptations, he said, “It is written” (Matthew 4:4-10). The fact that something was written in Scripture meant, for Jesus, that it was an indisputable authority. The words of David were inspired by the Holy Spirit (Mark 12:36); a prophecy was given “through” Daniel (Matthew 24:15) because its real origin was God.

Jesus said in Matthew 19:4-5 that the Creator said in Genesis 2:24: “A man will leave his father and mother and be united to his wife.” However, Genesis does not describe this verse as the words of God. Jesus could say that God said it simply because it was in Scripture. The assumption is that God is the ultimate author of all of Scripture.

The evidence throughout the Gospels is that Jesus viewed Scripture as reliable and trustworthy. As he reminded the Jewish leaders, “the Scripture cannot be broken” (John 10:35). Jesus expected it to be valid; he even upheld the validity of old covenant commands while the old covenant was still in force (Matthew 8:4; 23:23).

Witness of the apostles

The apostles, like their teacher, con­sidered Scripture authoritative. They quoted it repeatedly, often as proof of an argument. The sayings of Scripture are treated as words of God. Scripture is even personalized as the God who spoke to Abraham and Pharaoh (Romans 9:17; Galatians 3:8). What David or Isaiah or Jeremiah wrote was actually spoken by God, and therefore certain (Acts 1:16; 4:25; 13:35; 28:25; Hebrews 1:6-10; 10:15). The law of Moses is assumed to reflect the mind of God (1 Corinthians 9:9). The real author of Scripture is God (1 Corinthians 6:16; Romans 9:25).

Paul called the Scriptures “the very words of God” (Romans 3:2). Peter says that the prophets “spoke from God as they were carried along by the Holy Spirit” (2 Peter 1:20). The prophets didn’t make it up—God inspired them, and he is the real origin of their words. They often wrote, “the word of the Lord came...” or “Thus says the Lord...”

Paul also told Timothy that “all Scripture is God-breathed and is useful for teaching, rebuking, correcting and training in righ­teous­ness” (2 Timothy 3:16). It is as if God breathed his message through the biblical writers.

However, we must not read into this our modern ideas of what “God-breathed” has to mean. We must remember that Paul said this about the Greek Septuagint translation (the Scriptures that Timothy had known since childhood—v. 15), and this translation is in some places considerably different than the Hebrew original. Paul used this translation as the word of God without meaning that it was a perfect text.

Despite its translation discrepancies, it is God-breathed and able to make people “wise for salvation through faith in Christ Jesus” and it is still able to equip believers “for every good work” (v. 17).

Imperfect communication

The original word of God is perfect, and God is certainly able to cause people to state it accurately, to preserve it accurately and (to complete the communication) make us understand it accurately. But God has not done all this. Our copies have grammatical errors, copyist errors, and (far more significantly) humans always make errors in receiving the message. There is “noise” that prevents us from hearing perfectly the word God inspired to be written in Scripture. Nevertheless, God uses Scripture to speak to us today.

Despite the “noise” that puts human mistakes between God and us, the purpose of Scripture is accomplished: to tell us about salvation and about right behavior. God accomplishes his purpose in Scripture: he communicates his word to us with enough clarity that we can be saved and we can learn what he wants us to do.

Scripture, even in a translation, is accurate for its purpose. But we would be wrong to expect more from it than God intended. He is not teaching us astronomy or science. The numbers in Scripture are not always mathematically precise by today’s standards. We must look at Scripture for its purpose, not for minor details.

For example, in Acts 21:11, Agabus was inspired to say that the Jews would bind Paul and hand him over to the Gentiles. Some people might assume that Agabus was specifying who would tie Paul up, and what they would do with him. But as it turns out, Paul was actually rescued by the Gentiles and bound by the Gentiles (21:30-33).

Is this a contradiction? Technically, yes. The prediction was true in principle, but not in the details. Of course, when Luke wrote this, he could have easily doctored the prediction to fit the result, but he was willing to let the differences be seen. He did not expect people to expect precision in such details. This should warn us about expecting precision in all the details of Scripture.

We need to focus on the main point of the message. Similarly, Paul made a mistake when he wrote 1 Corinthians 1:14 — a mistake he corrected in verse 16. The inspired Scriptures contain both the mistake and the correction.

Some people compare Scripture to Jesus. One is the word of God in human language; the other is the Word made human. Jesus was perfect in the sense that he was sinless, but that does not mean that he never made any mistakes. As a child or even as an adult, he could have made mistakes in grammar and mistakes in carpentry, but such mistakes were not sins. They did not prevent Jesus from his purpose—being the sinless sacrifice for our sins. In the same way, mistakes in grammar and trivial details cannot prevent the Bible from accomplishing its purpose: to teach us about salvation through Christ.

Proof of the Bible

No one can prove that all of the Bible is true. They may show that a particular prophecy came true, but they cannot show that the entire Bible has the same validity. This is based more on faith. We see the historical evidence that Jesus and the apostles accepted the Old Testament as the word of God. The biblical Jesus is the only one we have; other ideas are based on guesswork, not new evidence. We accept the teaching of Jesus that the Holy Spirit would guide the disciples into more truth. We accept the claim of Paul that he wrote with divine authority. We accept that the Bible reveals to us who God is and how we may have fellowship with him.

We accept the testimony of church history, that Christians through the centuries have found the Bible useful for faith and practice. This book tells us who God is, what he did for us, and how we should respond. Tradition also tells us which books are in the biblical canon. We trust that God guided the process so that the end result accomplishes his purpose.

Our experience also testifies to the accuracy of Scripture. This is the book that has the honesty to tell us about our own sinfulness, and the grace to offer us a cleansed conscience. It gives us moral strength not through rules and commands, but in an unexpected way—through grace and the ignominious death of our Lord.

The Bible testifies to the love, joy and peace we may have through faith—feelings that are, just as the Bible describes, beyond our ability to put into words. This book gives us meaning and purpose in life by telling us of divine creation and redemption. These aspects of biblical authority cannot be proven to skeptics, but they help verify the Scriptures that tell us these things that we experience.

The Bible does not sugar-coat its heroes, and this also helps us accept it as honest. It tells us about the failings of Abraham, Moses, David, the nation of Israel, and the disciples. The Bible is a word that bears witness to a more authoritative Word, the Word made flesh, and the good news of God’s grace.

The Bible is not simplistic; it does not take the easy way out. The New Testament claims both continuity and discontinuity with the old covenant. It would be simpler to eliminate one or the other, but it is more challenging to have both. Likewise, Jesus is presented as both human and divine, a combination that does not fit well into Hebrew, Greek or modern thought. This complexity was not created through ignorance of the philosophical problems, but in spite of them.

The Bible is a challenging book, not likely to be the result of fishermen attempting a fraud or trying to make sense of hallucinations. Jesus’ resurrection gives additional weight to the book that announces such an phenomenal event. It gives additional weight to the testimony of the disciples as to who Jesus was and to the unexpected logic of conquering death through the death of the Son of God.

Repeatedly, the Bible challenges our thinking about God, ourselves, life, right and wrong. It commands respect by conveying truths to us we do not obtain elsewhere. Just as the proof of the pudding is in the eating, the proof of the Bible is in its application to our lives.

The testimony of Scripture, of tradition, of personal experience and reason all support the authority of the Bible. The fact that it is able to speak across cultures, to address situations that never existed when it was written, is also a testimony to its abiding authority. The proof of the Bible is conveyed to believers as the Holy Spirit uses it to change their hearts and lives.

Michael Morrison, 2001

The WCG website has numerous articles about the Bible and more than a hundred articles about specific passages of Scripture. See www.wcg.org/lit/bible

You may also find the following helpful:

• Donald G. Bloesch, Holy Scripture. Inter­Varsity, 1994.

• Paul Achtemeier, Inspiration and Authority. Hendrickson, 1999.

• I. Howard Marshall, Biblical Inspiration. Eerdmans, 1982.

• Robertson McQuilken, Understanding and Applying the Bible. Moody, 1992.

• A.B. and A.M. Mickelsen, Under­standing Scripture. Hendrickson, 1992.

• Stott, John. Understanding the Bible. Zondervan, 1999.

• Thompson, Alden. Inspiration. Review & Herald, 1991.

• Thompson, David. Bible Study That Works. Evangel, 1994.

The Bible says that people who have faith in Christ become part of the “church.” What is the church? How is it organized? What is its purpose?

Jesus is building his church

Jesus said, “I will build my church” (Matthew 16:18). The church is important to him—he loved it so much that he gave his life for it (Ephesians 5:25). If we have the mind of Christ, we will love the church, too, and give ourselves to it.

The Greek word for “church” is ekklesia, which means an assembly. In Acts 19:39, 41, it is used for a large group of townspeople. But among Christians, the word ekklesia came to have a special meaning: all who believe in Jesus Christ.

For example, the first time that Luke uses the word, he writes, “great fear seized the whole church” (Acts 5:11). He does not have to explain what the word meant, for his readers were already familiar with it. It meant all Christians, not just those who happened to be there on that particular occasion. “The church” means all disciples of Christ. It refers to people, not to a building.

Each local group of believers is a church. Paul wrote to “the church of God in Corinth” (1 Corinthians 1:2); he referred to “all the churches of Christ” (Romans 16:16) and the “church of the Laodiceans” (Col­ossians 4:16). But he could also use the word church to refer to all believers everywhere: “Christ loved the church and gave himself up for her” (Ephesians 5:25).

The church exists in several levels. At one level is the universal church, which includes everyone worldwide who accepts Jesus Christ as Lord and Savior. Local churches are a different level, including people who regularly meet together. Denom­inations are an intermediate level, containing groups of congregations hat work more closely together because of shared history and beliefs.

Local congregations sometimes include unbelievers—family members who have not accepted Jesus as Savior, yet nevertheless meet regularly with believers. Local con­gregations may also include people who consider themselves to be Christians, but may not be. Experience shows that some of these will later admit that they were not really Christians.

Why we need the church

Many people claim to believe in Jesus Christ but do not want to attend any of his churches. The New Testament shows that the normal pattern is for believers to meet together (Hebrews 10:25).

Paul repeatedly exhorts Christians to do different things to “one another” (Romans 12:10; 15:7; 1 Corinthians 12:25; Galatians 5:13; Ephesians 4:32; Philippians 2:3; Colossians 3:13; 1 Thessalonians 5:13). It is difficult for people to obey these commands if they do not meet with other believers.

A local congregation can give us a sense of belonging, of being involved with other believers. It can give us some spiritual safety, so that we are not blown around by strange ideas. A congregation can give us friendship, fellowship and encouragement. It can teach us things we would never learn on our own. A congregation can help train our children, help us work together for more effective ministry and give us opportunities to serve that help us grow in ways we did not expect. In general, the value that we get out of a local congregation is in proportion to the amount of involvement we give to it.

But perhaps the most important reason for each believer to participate in a local congregation is that members need each other. God has given different abilities to different believers, and he wants us to work together “for the common good” (1 Corinthians 12:4-7). If only part of the work force shows up, it is no surprise that the congregation is not able to do as much as we would like, or to be as healthy as we would like. Unfortunately, some people find it easier to criticize than to help.

Our time, our abilities, our resources are needed to fulfill the work and mission of the church. The commitment of mission-focused people is essential in order for the church to effectively reflect Jesus and his love to the world. Jesus said to pray for laborers (Matthew 9:38). He wants each of us to be working, not sitting on the sidelines.

Individuals who try to be Christian without the church fail to use their strengths to help the people the Bible says we should be helping. The church is a mutual-aid society, and we help each other, knowing that the day may come (and in fact is already here) that we will need to be helped.

Descriptions of the church

The church is described in several ways: the people of God, the family of God, the bride of Christ. We are a building, a temple and a body. Jesus described us as sheep, a field of grain and a vineyard. Each analogy describes a different aspect of the church.

Many of Jesus’ parables of the kingdom describe the church, too. Like a mustard seed, the church started small and yet has grown quite large (Matthew 13:31-32). The church is like a field in which weeds are scattered among the wheat (vv. 24-30). It is like a fishnet that catches bad fish as well as good (vv. 47-50). The church is like a vineyard in which some people work a long time and others only a short time (Matthew 20:1-16). The church is like servants who were given money to invest for the master, and some produce more fruit than others (Matthew 25:14-30).

Jesus described himself as a shepherd, and his disciples as sheep (Matthew 26:31); his mission was to seek lost sheep (Matthew 18:11-14). He described his people as sheep that must be fed and cared for (John 21:15-17). Paul and Peter used the same analogy, saying that church leaders should be shep­herds of the flock (Acts 20:28; 1 Peter 5:2).

“You are…God’s building,” Paul says (1 Corinthians 3:9). The foundation is Jesus Christ (v. 11), and people are the building built on it. Peter said that we are all “living stones...being built into a spiritual house” (1 Peter 2:5). As we are built together, we “become a dwelling in which God lives by his Spirit” (Ephesians 2:22). We are the temple of God, the temple of the Holy Spirit (1 Corinthians 3:17; 6:19). Although God may be worshiped in any place, the church has worship as one of its purposes.

We are “the people of God,” 1 Peter 2:10 tells us. We are what the people of Israel were supposed to be: “a chosen people, a royal priesthood, a holy nation, a people belonging to God” (v. 9; see Exodus 19:6). We belong to God, because Christ purchased us with his blood (Revelation 5:9). We are his children, and his family (Ephesians 3:15). As his people, we are given a great inheri­tance, and in response we are to try to please him and bring praise to his name.

Scripture also calls us the bride of Christ—a phrase that suggests his love for us, and a tremendous change within ourselves, that we might have such a close relationship with the Son of God. In some of his parables, people are invited to attend the wedding banquet, but in this analogy, we are invited to be the bride.

“Let us rejoice and be glad and give him glory! For the wedding of the Lamb has come, and his bride has made herself ready” (Revelation 19:7). How do we become ready for this? It is a gift: “Fine linen, bright and clean, was given her to wear” (v. 8). Christ cleanses us “by the washing with water through the word” (Ephesians 5:26). He presents the church to himself, having made her radiant, spotless, holy and righteous (v. 27). He is working in us.

Working together

The picture of the church that best illustrates the way that members relate to one another is that of the body. “You are the body of Christ,” Paul says, “and each one of you is a part of it” (1 Corinthians 12:27). Jesus Christ “is the head of the body, the church” (Colossians 1:18), and we are all members of the body. If we are united to Christ, we are united to one another, too, and we have responsibilities to one another.

No one can say, “I don’t need you” (1 Corinthians 12:21), and no one can say, “I don’t belong in the church” (v. 18). God distributes our abilities so that we work together for the common good, helping one another and being helped by working together. “There should be no division in the body” (v. 25). Paul frequently warned against the sin of divisiveness, even saying that a person who causes division should be put out of the church (Romans 16:17; Titus 3:10). Christ causes the church to grow “as each part does its work”—as the various members cooperate (Ephesians 4:16).

Unfortunately, the Christian world is divided into denominations that sometimes squabble with one another. The church is not yet perfect, since none of its members is perfect. Nevertheless, Christ wants the church to be united (John 17:21). This does not require a merger of organizations, but it does suggest a common purpose.

True unity can be found only as we draw closer to Christ, preach his gospel, and live as he would. The goal is to promote him, not our­selves. The existence of different denomina­tions has a side benefit, however: Through diverse approaches, more people are reached with the message of Christ in a way they understand.

Organization

The Christian world has three basic approaches to church organization and leader­ship: hierarchy, democracy and repre­sentative. These are called episcopal, congre­gational and presbyterian.

Variations exist within each type, but in general, the episcopal model means that a denominational officer has the power to set policy and ordain pastors. In the congre­gational model, church members choose their policies and their pastors. In a presbyterian system, power is divided between the denomination and the congregations. Elders are elected and given power to govern.

The New Testament does not require any particular church structure. It talks about overseers (bishops), elders and shepherds (pastors) as if these were different words for the same type of church leader. Peter told the elders to be shepherds and overseers (1 Peter 5:1-2). Similarly, Paul told a group of elders that they were overseers and shepherds (Acts 20:17, 28).

The Jerusalem church was led by a group of elders; the church in Philippi was led by several overseers (Acts 15:2-6; Phil­ippians 1:1). Paul told Titus to ordain elders, wrote one verse about elders and then several about overseers, as if these were synonymous terms for church leaders (Titus 1:5-9). In the book of Hebrews, the leaders are simply called “leaders” (Hebrews 13:7).

Some church leaders were also called “teachers” (1 Corinthians 12:29; James 3:1). The grammar of Ephesians 4:11 implies that pastors and teachers were in the same category. One of the primary functions of a church leader is teaching—one of the qualifications for leadership is that the person must be “able to teach” (1 Timothy 3:2).

One thing is consistent in this: Certain people were designated as leaders. The local churches had some organization, though the exact title didn’t seem to matter much.

Members were exhorted to respect and obey these leaders (1 Thessalonians 5:12; 1 Tim­othy 5:17; Hebrews 13:17). If the leader commands something wrong, members should not obey, but for the most part, members are to support their leaders.

What do leaders do? They “direct the affairs of the church” (1 Timothy 5:17). They shepherd the flock, leading by example and by teaching. They watch over the church (Acts 20:28). They should not lord it over others, but serve them (1 Peter 5:2-3). They are to “prepare God’s people for works of service, so that the body of Christ may be built up” (Ephesians 4:12).

How are leaders chosen? We are told in only a few cases: Paul appointed elders (Acts 14:23), implied that Timothy would choose overseers (1 Timothy 3:1-7), and authorized Titus to appoint elders (Titus 1:5). At least in these cases, there was a hierarchy. We do not find any examples of church members choosing their own elders.

Deacons

However, in Acts 6:1-6 we see members choosing some leaders to help distribute food to the needy, and the apostles then appointed them for this work. In that way the apostles could con­centrate on spiritual matters, and the physical needs could also be taken care of (v. 2). This distinction between spiritual leader­ship and physical leadership is also seen in 1 Peter 4:11-12.

Leaders who serve in manual work are often called deacons, from the Greek word diakoneo, which means to serve. Although all members and leaders are to serve, some are specifically appointed for service roles. At least one woman is called a deacon (Romans 16:1). Paul gave Timothy a list of traits needed in a deacon (1 Timothy 3:8-12), but he did not specify what they did. Consequently different denominations assign them different roles, ranging from custodial work to financial management.

The important thing in leadership is not what people are called, how they are structured or how they are appointed. The important thing is the purpose of leadership: to help God’s people grow in maturity we become more like Christ (Ephesians 4:13).

Purposes of the church

Christ has built his church, given his people gifts and leadership, and he has given us work to do. What are the purposes of the church?

A major purpose of the church is worship. God has called us that we “may declare the praises of him” who called us “out of darkness into his wonderful light” (1 Peter 2:9). God seeks people who will worship him (John 4:23), who will love him above everything else (Matthew 4:10). Every­thing we do, whether as individuals or as a congregation, should be for his glory (1 Corinthians 10:31). We are called to “continually offer to God a sacrifice of praise” (Hebrews 13:15).

We are commanded, “Speak to one another with psalms, hymns and spiritual songs” (Ephesians 5:19). When we gather, we sing praises to God, we pray to him and we listen to his word. These are forms of worship. So is the Lord’s Supper, so is baptism and so is obedience.

Teaching is another purpose of the church. It is at the heart of the Great Com­mission: “teaching them to obey everything I have commanded you” (Matthew 28:20). Church leaders should teach, and members should teach one another (Colossians 3:16). We should encourage one another (1 Corinthians 14:31; 1 Thessalonians 5:11; Hebrews 10:25). Small groups provide an excellent setting for this mutual ministry.

If we want to be spiritual, Paul says, we should want to “build up the church” (1 Corinthians 14:12). The goal is to edify, strengthen, encourage and comfort (v. 3). The entire meeting should “be done for the strengthening of the church” (v. 26). We are to be disciples, people who learn and apply the word of God. The early church was praised because they “devoted themselves to the apostles’ teaching and to the fellowship, to the breaking of bread and to prayer” (Acts 2:42).

Ministry is a third major purpose of the church. Paul writes, “As we have oppor­tunity, let us do good to all people, especially to those who belong to the family of believers” (Galatians 6:10). Our first duty is to our family, and then to the church and then to the world around us. The second-greatest commandment is to love our neighbors (Matthew 22:39).

This world has many physical needs, and we should not ignore them. But the greatest need is the gospel, and we should not ignore that, either. As part of our ministry to the world, the church is to preach the good news of salvation through Jesus Christ. No other organization will do this work—it is the mission of the church. Every worker is needed—some on the front lines, and some in support. Some will plant, some will nurture and some will harvest, and as we work together, Christ will cause the church to grow (Ephesians 4:16).

Michael Morrison, 2001

There are numerous articles about the church and its ministries at www.wcg.org/lit/ church

You may also find helpful:

• Donald Bloesch, The Church. Inter­Var­sity, 2002.

• Stanley Grenz, Theology for the Com­munity of God. Eerdmans, 2000.

Jesus’ disciples sometimes had delusions of self-importance. They once asked Jesus, “Who is the greatest in the kingdom of heaven?” (Matthew 18:1). In other words, what personal characteristics are the best examples of what God wants in his people?

It is a good question, and Jesus used it to make an important point: “Unless you change and become like little children, you will never enter the kingdom of heaven” (verse 3).

The disciples must have been surprised, even puzzled. Perhaps they had been thinking of people such as Elijah, who called down fire from heaven to consume some enemies, or a zealous person like Phinehas, who killed compromisers (Numbers 25:7-8). Were they the greatest in the history of God’s people?

But their idea of greatness was mis­guided. Jesus said that what God wants most in his people is not bravado, not spectacular works, but childlikeness. In fact, if we do not become like little children, we will not be in the kingdom at all!

In what way are we to be like children? Are we to be immature, childish, un­informed? No. We are to put childish ways behind us (1 Corinthians 13:11). We are to discard some characteristics of children, while keeping others.

One characteristic we need is humility, as Jesus says in verse 4: “Whoever humbles himself like this child is the greatest in the kingdom of heaven.” The humble person is, in God’s way of thinking, the greatest—the best example of what God wants in his people.

This is because humility is characteristic of God himself. God is willing to give up his privileges for our salvation. What Jesus did in becoming flesh was not some strange aberration in God’s nature—it was a revelation of what God is like all the time. God wants us to be like Christ, willing to give up privileges to serve others.

Some children are humble, but others are not. Jesus used one particular child to make a point: We are to see ourselves in certain respects as like children—particularly in our relationship to God.

Jesus also pointed out that as children, we ought to welcome children (verse 5), and he probably meant this both literally and figuratively. Adults should be attentive to and respectful of young people. We should also welcome and respect people who are young in the faith, immature in their rela­tionship to God and in their understanding. Humility involves not only our relationship with God, but also with other people. 

Abba, Father

Jesus knew that he had a unique rela­tionship with God. Only he knew the Father well enough to reveal him to others (Matthew 11:27). Jesus called God by the Aramaic word Abba, an affectionate word that children and adults used for their fathers. Perhaps the best modern equivalent is “Dad.”

In prayer, Jesus talked to his Dad, asking him for help and giving him thanks for whatever he had. Jesus says that we do not have to flatter our way into an audience with the King. He’s our Dad, and we can talk to him because he is our Dad. He has given us that right, so we can be confident that he hears us.

Although we are not children of God in exactly the same way that Jesus is the Son, Jesus taught his disciples to pray to God as their Abba. Many years later, Paul could assume that the Roman church, more than a thousand miles from Aramaic-speaking lands, called God by the Aramaic word Abba (Romans 8:15).

Using the word Abba isn’t required in prayers today, but the widespread use of the word in the early church shows that it made an impression on the disciples. They had been given an especially close relationship with God, a relationship that gave them guaranteed access to God through Jesus Christ.

The word Abba was distinctive. Other Jews didn’t pray like that, but the disciples of Jesus did. They knew that God was their Dad. They were children of the King, not just members of a chosen nation. 

Rebirth and adoption

The apostles used several metaphors to help communicate the new fellowship that believers have with God. A term like redemption conveyed the idea that we belong to God. We were redeemed from the slave-market of sin through an enormous price—the death of Jesus Christ. The “price” wasn’t paid to anyone in particular, but it did convey the idea that there was a cost involved in our salvation.

A term such as reconciliation empha­sized the fact that we were once enemies of God, and are now restored to friendship through Jesus Christ. His death allowed our sins, which separated us from God, to be wiped off the record. God did this for us, because we were completely unable to do it ourselves.

The analogies that Scripture gives us are analogies, and the fact that several are used indicates that none of them gives us the complete picture. This is especially true when it comes to two analogies that would otherwise be mutually contradictory: first, that we are born from above as children of God, and then, that we are adopted.

Both these analogies tell us something important about our salvation. Being born again tells us that there is a radical change in who we are as human beings, a change that begins small and grows in our lives. We are new creations, new people, living in a new age.

Adoption tells us that we were once strangers to the kingdom, but now, by God’s decision, attested by the Holy Spirit, we are declared God’s children, with full rights of inheritance and identity. We who were once far off have been brought near through the saving work of Jesus Christ. In him we die, yet because of him we do not have to die. In him we live, yet it is not we who live, but we are new people, being created by the Spirit of God.

Each metaphor has its value, and each has its weakness. Nothing in the physical or social world can fully convey what God is doing in our lives. But these are the analogies he has given us, and one of the most consistent images that Scripture uses is that we are children of God. 

Become as children

God is Creator, Sustainer and King, but far more importantly for us, he is Dad. It’s an intimate bond, expressed in the most im­portant relationship of first-century culture.

In that society, you were known by your dad. Your name was, for example, Joseph son of Eli. Your place in society was determined by your dad. Your economic status, your occupation, your future spouse, were determined by your dad. If you inherited anything, it was from your dad.

In modern society, mothers play a more prominent role, and many people today have a better relationship with mom than with dad. If the Bible were being written today, maternal metaphors might be more common. But in Bible times, father metaphors were more important.

God sometimes reveals himself with maternal characteristics, but he always calls himself a Father. If our relationship with our dad is good, then the analogy works well. But if our relationship with our dad is bad, then we will have to think harder to see what God is trying to communicate to us.

We are not to judge God as no better than the father we know, but to think more creatively, to the idealized parental relation­ship that no human being ever matches up to. God is better than the best.

As children of God, in what way do we look to God as our Dad?

• God loves us deeply, and sacrifices to prepare us for success. He made us to be like himself, and he wants us to succeed. Often, it is only when we are parents ourselves that we can appreciate how much our own parents did for us. In our relationship with God, we can only dimly perceive all that he goes through for our good.

• We look to God in faith, as totally dependent on him. We are not self-sufficient. We trust him to provide our needs and guide us in life.

• We have day-to-day security, know­ing that an all-powerful God is looking out for us. He knows our needs, whether for daily bread or for emergency assistance. We do not need to worry, because Dad will take care of us.

• As children we are guaranteed a future in God’s kingdom. To use another analogy, we’ll be fabulously wealthy—living in a city in which gold is as plentiful as dirt, where we will have spiritual wealth of far greater value than anything we know now.

• We have confidence and courage. We can preach with boldness, without fear of persecution. Even though we may be killed, we do not fear, for we have a Dad no one can take away from us.

• We can face our trials with optimism. We know that our Dad allows difficulties to discipline us so we will be better in the long run (Hebrews 12:5-11). We are confident that he is working in our lives, that he will not disown us.

These are enormous benefits. Perhaps you can think of more. But I am sure that there is nothing better in all the universe than being a child of God. That is the greatest blessing of the kingdom of God. When we become like little children, we become heirs to all the joy and blessings of the eternal king­dom that cannot be shaken.

Joseph Tkach, 2001

Angels are spirit beings, messengers and servants of God. They have a special role in four major events of Jesus’ life, and Jesus referred to them on occasion as he taught about other subjects.

The Gospels are not designed to answer all our questions about angels. They give us only incidental information as angels enter the story.

Angels appear before Jesus does. Gabriel appeared to Zechariah to announce that he would have a son, John the Baptist (Luke 1:11-19). Gabriel also told Mary that she would have a son, Jesus (vv. 26-38). Joseph was told about it by an angel in a dream (Matthew 1:20-24).

An angel announced the birth of Jesus to shepherds, and a host of angels sang praises (Luke 2:9-15). An angel again appeared to Joseph in a dream to tell him to flee to Egypt, and when it was safe to return (Matthew 2:13, 19).

Angels are mentioned again in Jesus’ temptation. Satan quoted a verse about angelic protection, and angels ministered to Jesus after the temptation (Matthew 4:6, 11). An angel helped Jesus in Gethsemane during a later temptation (Luke 22:43).

Angels had an important role in the resurrection, too, as mentioned in all four Gospels. An angel rolled back the stone and told the women that Jesus was risen (Matthew 28:2-5). The women saw one or two angels inside the tomb (Mark 16:5; Luke 24:4, 23; John 20:11). Divine messengers showed the importance of the resurrection.

Jesus said that angels will again play a major role when he returns. Angels will come with him and will gather the elect for salvation and evildoers for destruction (Matthew 13:39-49; 24:31).

Jesus could have had legions of angels, but he did not ask for them (Matthew 26:53). He will have them when he returns. Angels will be involved in the judgment (Luke 12:8-9). Perhaps this is when people will see angels “ascending and descending upon the Son of Man” (John 1:51).

Angels may appear as a person, or with unusual glory (Luke 2:9; 24:4). They do not die and do not marry, which apparently means that they have no sexuality and do not reproduce (Luke 20:35-36).

Jesus said that “little ones who believe in me” have angels in heaven who care for them (Matthew 18:6, 10). Angels rejoice when people turn to God, and they bring the righteous to paradise (Luke 15:10; 16:22).

Michael Morrison, 1999

There are two unfortunate trends in the Western world today regarding Satan the devil, who is mentioned in the New Testament as an unrelenting adversary and enemy of God and humanity. Most people are unaware or discount the devil’s role in creating chaos, suffering and evil. For many people, the idea of a real devil is just a remnant of ancient superstition or, at best, a metaphor representing evil in the world.

On the other hand, some Christians have accepted superstitious beliefs about the devil under the guise of what is called “spiritual warfare.” They are giving the devil undue recognition and are “warring” against him in ways not appropriate to the advice given in Scripture. In this article, we see what infor­mation the Bible gives us about Satan. Armed with this understanding, we can avoid the pitfalls of the extremes mentioned above.

Old Testament references

Isaiah 14:3-23 and Ezekiel 28:1-19 are sometimes said to contain descriptions of the devil’s origin as a angel who sinned. Some of the details can be read as applying to the devil. However, the context of these passages indicates that much of the material is referring to the vanity and pride of human kings—the kings of Babylon and Tyre. Perhaps the point in both passages is that the human kings are being manipulated by the devil, and they are mirror images of his evil intents and his hatred of God. To speak of the spiritual leader, Satan, is to speak of his human agents, the kings, all in one breath. It would be a way of saying that the devil rules the world.

In the book of Job, a reference to angels says they were present at the creation of the world and were filled with wonder and joy (Job 38:7). On the other hand, the Satan of Job 1-2 also appears as an angelic being, since he is said to be with the angelic “sons of God.” But he is an adversary of God and his righteousness.

There are a few references to “fallen angels” in the Bible (2 Peter 2:4, Jude 6; Job 4:18), but nothing significant is mentioned as to how and why Satan became the enemy of God. Scripture doesn’t give us any details about angel life, either about “good” angels or fallen angels (also called demons). The Bible, particularly the New Testament, is much more interested in showing Satan as someone who attempts to overthrow God’s purpose. He is pictured as the supreme enemy of God’s people, the church of Jesus Christ. 

Satan or the devil is not prominently mentioned by name in the Old Testament. However, the conviction that cosmic forces were at war with God is clearly seen in the motifs found in its pages. Two Old Testament motifs depicting Satan or the devil are cosmic waters and monsters. They are metaphors representing the satanic evil that holds sway over the earth and does battle against God. In Job 26:12-13, we see Job explaining that God has “churned up the sea” and “cut Rahab to pieces.” Rahab is said to be “the gliding serpent” (verse 13).

In the few places that Satan as a personal being is mentioned in the Old Testament, Satan is shown to be an accuser who seeks to sow discord and condemn (Zechariah 3:1-2), incites people to sin against God (1 Chronicles 21:1), and uses human beings and the elements to cause great pain and suffering (Job 1:6-19; 2:1-8).

In Job, Satan is seen coming together with other angels to present himself to God, as though he had been called to a great heavenly council. There are a few other biblical references to a heavenly gathering of angelic beings that affect the affairs of humans. In one of these, a lying spirit entices a king to go to war (1 Kings 22:19-22).

God is pictured as one who “crushed the heads of Leviathan and gave him as food to the creatures of the desert” (Psalm 74:14). Who is Leviathan? He is the “monster of the sea”—the “gliding serpent” and “coiling serpent” whom the Lord will punish “in that day” when God banishes evil from the earth and brings in his kingdom (Isaiah 27:1).

The motif of Leviathan as a serpent harkens back to the Garden of Eden. Here the serpent—“more crafty than any of the wild animals”—deceives humans into sinning against God, which results in their fall (Genesis 3:1-7). This leads God to utter a prophecy of a future war between himself and the serpent, in which the devil appears to win a crucial battle (a strike at God’s feet) only to lose the war (having his head crushed). In this prophecy, God says to the serpent, “I will put enmity between you and the woman, and between your offspring and hers; he will crush your head, and you will strike his feet” (Genesis 3:16).

New Testament references

The cosmic significance of this state­ment is understood in the light of the Incarnation of the Son of God as Jesus of Nazareth (John 1:1, 14). We see in the Gospels that Satan attempts to destroy Jesus in one way or another from the day of his birth until his death by crucifixion. While Satan succeeds in having his human proxies kill Jesus, the devil loses the war when Jesus destroys Satan’s work through his death and resurrection.

After Jesus’ Ascension, the cosmic battle continues between the bride of Christ—the people of God—and the devil and his minions. But God’s purposes always prevail and stand. In the end, Jesus will return and crush the spiritual opposition against him (1 Corinthians 15:24-28).

The book of Revelation most notably depicts this war between the forces of evil in the world driven by Satan and the forces of good in the church led by God. In this highly symbolic book written in the genre of apocalypse, two bigger-than-life cities, Babylon the Great and the New Jerusalem, represent the two earthly groups at war.

When the war is over, the devil or Satan is chained in the Abyss, and is thus prevent-ed from “leading the whole world astray” as he had previously (Revelation 12:9).

In the end, we are shown the kingdom of God victorious over all evil. It is depicted by an ideal city—the Holy City, the Jerusalem of God—where God and the Lamb dwell together with their people in eternal peace and joy, made possible by the reciprocal love they share (21:15-27). Satan and all the forces of evil are destroyed (20:10).

Jesus and Satan

In the New Testament, Satan is clearly identified as the adversary of God and humanity. In one way or another, the devil is responsible for suffering and evil in our world. In his healing ministry, Jesus pointed to fallen spirits and Satan as a cause even of disease and infirmity. Of course, we should be careful to not label every problem or illness as a direct hit from the devil. Nevertheless, it is instructive to note that the New Testament doesn’t shy away from naming the devil and his evil cohorts as being responsible for many calamities, including illnesses. Sickness is an evil, rather than being ordained by God.

Jesus spoke of Satan and the fallen spirits as “the devil and his angels,” who are bound for “the eternal fire” (Matthew 25:41). In the Gospels, demons are said to be the cause of a wide variety of physical illnesses and infirmities. In some cases, demons possessed people’s minds and/or bodies, resulting in such infirmities as convulsion, muteness, blindness, partial paralysis and forms of insanity.

Luke speaks of a woman Jesus encountered in a synagogue “who had been crippled by a spirit for eighteen years” (Luke 13:10). Jesus set her free from her infirmity and was criticized because he had healed on the Sabbath. In response, Jesus said, “Should not this woman, a daughter of Abraham, whom Satan has kept bound for eighteen long years, be set free on the Sabbath day from what bound her?” (verse 16).

In other cases, Jesus exposed demons as the cause of infirmity, as in the case of a boy who had suffered terrible convulsions from childhood (Matthew 17:14-19; Mark 9:14-29; Luke 9:37-45). Jesus could simply command demons to leave, and they did. In this, Jesus showed that he had complete authority over the world of Satan and the demons. Jesus gave the same authority over demons to his disciples (Matthew 10:1).

The apostle Peter spoke of Jesus’ healing ministry as one that delivered people from illnesses and infirmities in which Satan and his evil spirits were either the direct or indirect cause. “You know what has happened throughout Judea…how God anointed Jesus of Nazareth with the Holy Spirit and power, and how he went around doing good and healing all who were under the power of the devil” (Acts 10:37-38). This view of Jesus’ healing reflects the belief that Satan is the adversary of God and his creation, most especially the human race.

It places the ultimate blame for suffering and sin on the devil and characterizes him as the “first sinner.” “The devil has been sinning from the beginning” (1 John 3:8). Jesus calls Satan “the prince of demons”—the ruler of fallen angels (Matthew 25:41). But Jesus has broken the devil’s hold on the world through his redemptive work. Satan is the “strong man” whose house (the world) Jesus has entered (Mark 3:27). Jesus has “tied up” the strong man and has “carried off his possessions” (his kingdom).

This is why Jesus came in the flesh. John tells us, “The reason the Son of God appeared was to destroy the devil’s work” (1 John 3:8). Colossians speaks of this destroyed work in cosmic terms: “And having disarmed the powers and authorities, he [Jesus] made a public spectacle of them, triumphing over them by the cross” (Colossians 2:15).

Hebrews is more explicit as to how Jesus accomplished this: “Since the children have flesh and blood, he too shared in their humanity so that by his death he might destroy him who holds the power of death—that is, the devil—and free those who all their lives were held in slavery by their fear of death” (Hebrews 2:14-15).

It’s not surprising, then, that Satan would seek to defeat God’s purpose in his Son, Jesus Christ. Satan’s goal was to kill the Incarnate Word, Jesus, when he was a baby (Revelation 12:13 with Matthew 2:1-18), tempt him to sin during his life (Luke 4:1-13) and have him arrested and killed (verse 13 with 22:3-6).

Satan “succeeded” in the final plot on Jesus’ life, but Jesus’ death and subsequent resurrection exposed and condemned the devil. Jesus had made a “public spectacle” of the world’s way and the evil propounded and practiced by the devil and his followers. It became plain to all who were willing to hear that only God’s way of love is right.

Through Jesus’ Person and his redemptive work, the devil’s plans were turned back, and he was vanquished. Thus, Christ has already defeated Satan through his life, death and resurrection, exposing the shame of evil. Jesus told his disciples on the night of his betrayal, “Because I am going to the Father...the prince of this world now stands condemned” (John 16:11).

After Christ’s return, the devil’s influence in the world will cease, and his com­plete defeat will be obvious. This victory will occur in a final and lasting change at the end of the age (Matthew 13:37-42).

Prince of power

During his earthly ministry, Jesus explained that “the prince of this world will be driven out” (John 12:31) and said that this prince has “no hold” on him (John 14:30). Jesus has defeated Satan in that the devil could not bring him under his control. No temptation that was hurled at Jesus by Satan was powerful enough to entice him away from his love for and faith in God (Matthew 4:1-11). He has vanquished the devil and taken “the strong man’s” possessions (Matthew 12:24-29), which was the world he held captive. As Christians, we can rest in faith in Jesus’ victory over all the enemies of God (and our enemies), including the devil.

However, the church exists in the tension of the “already-not yet” time, in which God continues to allow Satan to deceive the world and spread destruction and death. Christians live between the “It is finished” of Jesus’ death (John 19:30) and the “It is done” of the ultimate destruction of evil and the coming of God’s kingdom to earth in the future (Revelation 21:6). Satan is still allowed to strive against the power of the gospel. The devil is still the unseen Prince of Darkness, and he is allowed to have power by God to fulfill God’s purposes.

The New Testament tells us that Satan is the controlling power of the present evil world, and that people unknowingly follow him in his opposition to God. (In Greek, the word “prince” or “ruler” [as in John 12:31] is a translation of the Greek archon, which referred to the highest ranking official of a political area or city.)

The apostle Paul explains that Satan or the devil is “the god of this age” who has “blinded the minds of unbelievers” (2 Corinthians 4:4). Paul understood that Satan can even hinder the work of the church (1 Thessalonians 2:17-19).

Today, much of the Western world pays scant attention to a reality that fundamentally affects their lives and future—the fact that the devil is a real spiritual being who attempts at every turn to harm them and thwart the loving purpose of God. Christians are admonished to be aware of Satan’s schemes so they can refute them through the guidance and power of the indwelling Holy Spirit. (Unfortunately, a few Christians have gone to a misguided extreme in a “hunt” for Satan, and they have unwittingly created additional fodder for those who ridicule the idea that the devil is a real and evil being.)

The church is warned to be vigilant of Satan’s devices. Christian leaders, says Paul, must lead lives worthy of God’s calling so that they “will not fall into disgrace and into the devil’s trap” (1 Timothy 3:7). Christians must be aware of the devil’s schemes and must put on the armor of God “against the spiritual forces of evil in the heavenly realms” (Ephesians 6:10-12). They are to do this “in order that Satan might not outwit us” (2 Corinthians 2:11).

The evil work of the devil

The devil creates spiritual blindness to the truth of God in Christ in various ways. False doctrines and ideas of various kinds “taught by demons” cause people to “follow deceiving spirits,” though they may be unaware of the ultimate source of the deception (1 Timothy 4:1-5). When blinded, people are unable to understand the light of the gospel, which is the good news that Christ saves us from sin and death (1 John 4:1-2; 2 John 7). Satan is the chief enemy of the gospel, “the evil one” who attempts to deceive people into rejecting its message (Matthew 13:18-23).

Satan need not personally attempt to deceive. He can work through humans who spread false philosophical and theological ideas. Humans can also be enslaved by structural evil and deception embedded in human society. The devil can also use our own fallen nature against us, making people think that they have “the truth,” when they have really given up that which is of God for that which is of the world and the devil. Such people believe that their misguided belief system will save them (2 Thessalonians 2:9-10), but what they have really done is “exchanged the truth of God for a lie” (Romans 1:25). “The lie” appears to be good and true because Satan presents himself and his belief system in such a way so as to make it appear that his teaching is truth from an “angel of light” (2 Corinthians 11:14).

In an overall sense, Satan is behind the temptation and desire of our fallen natures to sin, and for this reason he is called “the tempter” (1 Thessalonians 3:5; 1 Corinthians 6:5; Acts 5:3). Paul takes the Corinthian church back to Genesis 3 and the Garden of Eden story to admonish them to not be led away from Christ, something the devil seeks to do. “I am afraid that just as Eve was deceived by the serpent’s cunning,” says Paul, “your minds may somehow be led astray from your sincere and pure devotion to Christ” (2 Corinthians 11:3).

This is not to say that Paul believed that Satan personally tempted and deceived every person directly. People who think “the devil made me do it” every time they sin do not realize that he uses the Satan-created system of evil in the world and our fallen nature against us. In the case of the Thessalonian Christians mentioned above, this deception could have been accomplished by teachers sowing seeds of hate against Paul, causing people to think he was trying to trick them or cover up greed or another impure motive (1 Thessalonians 2:3-12). Nevertheless, since the devil encourages discord and manipulates the world, ultimately behind any humans sowing discord and hate would be the Tempter himself.

According to Paul, Christians who are separated from the fellowship of the church because of sinfulness are, in effect, “handed over to Satan” (1 Corinthians 5:5; 1 Timothy 1:20) or have “turned away to follow Satan” (1 Timothy 5:15). Peter admonishes his flock, “Be self-controlled and alert. Your enemy the devil prowls around like a roaring lion looking for someone to devour” (1 Peter 5:8). The way to defeat the devil, says Peter, is to “resist him” (verse 9).

How do people resist? James explains: “Submit yourselves, then, to God. Resist the devil, and he will flee from you. Come near to God and he will come near to you” (4:7-8). We are near to God when our hearts have a prayerful attitude of joy, peace and gratitude toward him, which is nurtured by his indwelling Spirit of love and faith.

People who do not know Christ and are not led by his Spirit (Romans 8:5-17) “live according to the sinful nature” (verse 5). They are in tune with and follow “the ways of this world and of the ruler of the kingdom of the air, the spirit who is now at work in those who are disobedient” (Ephesians 2:2). This spirit, elsewhere identified as the devil or Satan, manipulates human beings so that they find themselves intent on “gratifying the cravings of our sinful nature” (verse 3). But through God’s grace we can see the light of the truth that is in Christ, and follow him by the Spirit of God rather than unwittingly coming under the influence of the devil, the fallen world and our spiritually weak and sinful human nature.

Satan’s warfare and ultimate defeat

“The whole world is under the control of the evil one,” the apostle John writes (1 John 5:19). But those who are the children of God and followers of Christ have been given understanding “so that we may know him who is true” (5:20).

On this point, Revelation 12:7-9 is most dramatic. In the warfare motif of Revelation, the book pictures a cosmic battle between Michael and his angels and the dragon (Satan) and his fallen angels. The devil and his minions were defeated and “lost their place in heaven” (verse 8). The result? “The great dragon was hurled down—that ancient serpent called the devil, or Satan, who leads the whole world astray” (verse 9). The idea is that Satan continues his warfare against God by going after God’s people on earth.

The battleground between evil (man­ipulated by Satan) and good (led by God) results in warfare between Babylon the Great (the world under the control of the devil) and the New Jerusalem (the people of God who follow God and the Lamb, Jesus Christ). It is a war that is destined to be won by God, because nothing can defeat his purposes.

In the end, all the enemies of God, Satan included, are defeated. The kingdom of God—a new world order—comes to earth, pictured by the New Jerusalem in the book of Revelation. The devil is destroyed from the presence of God, and his kingdom is obliterated with him (Revelation 20:10), replaced by God’s eternal reign of love.

We read these encouraging words about “the end” of all things: “And I heard a loud voice from the throne saying, ‘Now the dwelling of God is with men, and he will live with them. They will be his people, and God himself will be with them and be their God. He will wipe every tear from their eyes. There will be no more death or mourning or crying or pain, for the old order of things has passed away. He who was seated on the throne said, ‘I am making everything new!’” (Revelation 21:3-5).

Paul Kroll, 2004

See also our booklet on the spirit world, at www.wcg.org/lit/booklets/spirit.

You were born for a purpose! God created each of us for a reason—and we are happiest when we are living in harmony with the purpose he has given us. You need to know what it is.

Many people have no idea what life is all about. They live, and they die, searching for some kind of meaning, wondering whether their lives have purpose—where they fit, whether they really matter in the grand scheme of things. They may have put together the finest bottle collection in Ohio, or they may have been voted “most popular” in high school, but all too soon, youthful plans and dreams evaporate into anxiety and frustration over missed opportunities, failed relationships or countless other “if-onlys” and “might-have-beens.”

Many people lead empty, unfulfilled lives, lacking in solid purpose and meaning beyond the short-lived gratification of money, sex, power, respect or popularity, none of which means anything, especially when the darkness of death approaches. But life could be much more than this, because God offers each of us much more. He offers us true significance and purpose—the joy of being what he created us to be.

Part 1: Made in God’s image

The first chapter of the Bible tells us that God created humans “in his own image” (Genesis 1:27). Men and women are created “in the image of God” (same verse).

Obviously, we are not in God’s image in terms of height or weight or skin color. God is spirit, uncreated, and we are created of matter. Still, God has made humanity in his own image, which means that there are essential ways in which he has made us to be like him. We are self-aware, we can communicate, plan, think creatively, design and build, solve problems, and be a force for good in our world. And we can love.

We are to be “created like God in true righteousness and holiness” (Ephesians 4:24). Yet, often in those very ways, people are not much like God at all. In fact, people can often be rather ungodly. In spite of our ungodliness, however, there are certain things we can be sure of. For one thing, God will always be faithful in his love toward us.

A perfect example

The New Testament helps us understand what it means to be made in the image of God. The apostle Paul tells us that God is remaking us into something that is perfect and good—the likeness of Jesus Christ. “He also predestined [us] to be conformed to the likeness of his Son, that he might be the firstborn among many brothers” (Romans 8:29). In other words, God intended from the beginning for us to be like Jesus, the Son of God in the flesh.

Paul says that Jesus himself “is the image of God” (2 Corinthians 4:4). “He is the image of the invisible God” (Colossians 1:15). He is the perfect example of what we were created to be. We are God’s children, in his family, and we look to Jesus, God’s Son, to see what that means.

One of Jesus’ disciples asked him, “Show us the Father” (John 14:8). And Jesus answered, “Anyone who has seen me has seen the Father” (verse 9). In other words, Jesus says, What you really need to know about God, you can see in me.

He is not talking about skin color, clothing styles, or carpentry skills—he is talking about spirit, attitude and actions. God is love, John wrote (1 John 4:8), and Jesus shows us what love is, and how we are to love as people being conformed to his image.

Since humans were made in the image of God, and Jesus is the image of God, it is no wonder that God is conforming us to the image of Jesus. He is to be “formed” in us (Galatians 4:19). Our goal is “attaining the whole measure of the fullness of Christ” (Ephesians 4:13). As we are changed into Jesus’ image, the image of God is restored in us, and we become what we were made to be.

Maybe you aren’t very Jesus-like right now. That’s OK. God already knows about it, and that is why he is working with you. If you let him, he will change you—transform you—to be more and more like Christ (2 Corinthians 3:18). It takes patience—but the process fills life with meaning and purpose.

Why doesn’t God do it all in the blink of an eye? Because that wouldn’t take into account the real, thinking and loving person he made you to be. A change of mind and heart, the decision to turn to God and trust Christ, may take only a moment, like deciding to go down a certain road. But the actual journey down the road takes time and may be filled with obstacles and troubles. In the same way, it takes time to change habits, behaviors and ingrained attitudes.

Besides, God loves you and wants you to love him. But love is love only when it is freely given, not when it is demanded. Forced love is not love at all.

It gets better and better

God’s purpose for you is not only to be like Jesus was 2,000 years ago—but also to be like Jesus is now—resurrected, immortal, filled with glory and power! He “will trans­form our lowly bodies so that they will be like his glorious body” (Philippians 3:21). If we have been united with Christ in this life, “we will certainly also be united with him in his resurrection” (Romans 6:5). “We shall be like him,” John assures us (1 John 3:2).

If we are God’s children, Paul writes, then we can be sure that “we may also share in his glory” (Romans 8:17). We will be given a glory like Jesus Christ has—bodies that are immortal, bodies that never deteriorate, bodies that are spiritual. We will be raised in glory, and raised in power (1 Corinthians 15:42-44). “Just as we have borne the likeness of the earthly man, so shall we bear the likeness of the man from heaven”—we will be like Christ! (verse 49).

Would you like to have glory and immortality? God has made you for this very reason! It is a wonderful gift that he wants you to have. It is an exciting and wonderful future—and it gives life meaning and purpose.

When we see the end result, the process we are in now makes more sense. The troubles, trials and pains of life, as well as the joys, make more sense when we know what life is all about. When we know the glory that will be given to us, the sufferings of this life are easier to endure (Romans 8:18). God has given us exceedingly great and precious promises.

Is there a problem here?

But wait a minute, you might think. I’ll never be good enough for that kind of glory and power. I’m just an ordinary person. If heaven is a perfect place, then I don’t belong there. I make mistakes; my life is messed up.

That’s OK—God already knows that, but he isn’t going to let it stop him. He has plans for you, and he has already planned for problems like that to be overcome. That’s because everybody has blown it; everybody’s life is messed up, and nobody deserves to be given glory and power.

But God knows how to save people who are sinners—and no matter how many times they mess up, he knows how to rescue them.

God’s plan centers on Jesus Christ—who was sinless in our place and who suf­fered for our sins in our place. He represents us before God and offers us the gift of eternal life, if we will accept it from him.

Part 2: The gift of God

We all fall short, Paul says, but we have been justified, or set right, through the grace of God. It’s a gift! We can’t earn it or deserve it—God just gives it to us out of his mercy and righteousness.

People who are doing fine on their own don’t need to be saved—it is people who are in trouble who need to be saved. Lifeguards don’t “save” people who are swimming on their own—they save people who are drowning. And spiritually speaking, we are all drowning. None of us measures up to the perfection of Christ, and without that, we’re as good as dead.

Many people seem to think that we have to be “good enough” for God. Suppose we ask them, What makes you think that you’ll go to heaven, or that you’ll have eternal life in the kingdom of God? Many people will respond, Because I’ve been good. I’ve done this, or I’ve done that.

The truth is, that no matter how much good we have done, we are never “good enough” to earn a place in a perfect world, because we are not perfect. We have fallen short, but we are set right by God’s gift, because of what Jesus Christ has done for us.

Not by good works

God has saved us, the Bible says, “not because of anything we have done but because of his own purpose and grace” (2 Timothy 1:9). “He saved us, not because of righteous things we had done, but because of his mercy” (Titus 3:5).

Even if our works are very good, they are not the reason God saves us. We need to be rescued because our good works are not enough to save us. We need mercy and grace, and God gives us exactly that in Jesus Christ.

If it were possible for us to earn eternal life through good behavior, then God would have told us how. If rule-keeping could give us eternal life, Paul says, then God would have done it that way.

“If a law had been given that could impart life, then righteousness would certainly have come by the law” (Galatians 3:21). But the law cannot give us life—even if we could keep it.

“If righteousness could be gained through the law, Christ died for nothing!” (Galatians 2:21). If people could earn their way into salvation, then we wouldn’t need a Savior to rescue us. There would be no need for Jesus to come to earth, or to die and be raised again.

But Jesus came to earth for this very reason—to die for us. Jesus said that he came “to give his life as a ransom for many” (Matthew 20:28). His life was like a ransom payment, given to rescue us, or redeem us. The Bible repeatedly says that “Christ died for us” and that he died “for our sins” (Romans 5:6-8; 2 Corinthians 5:14; 15:3; Galatians 1:4; 1 Thessalonians 5:10).

“The wages of sin is death,” Paul says in Romans 6:23, “but the gift of God is eternal life in Christ Jesus our Lord.” We deserve to die, but we are saved by grace through Jesus Christ. We don’t deserve to live with God, since we aren’t perfect, but God saves us through his Son, Jesus Christ.

Descriptions of salvation

The Bible explains our salvation in several ways—sometimes using financial terms, sometimes sacrificial words, some­times family or friendship words.

In financial terms, he has paid the price to free us. He took the penalty (death) that we deserved, paying the debt that we owed. He takes our sin and death, and in return, he gives us his righteousness and life.

God accepts Jesus’ sacrifice on our behalf (after all, he is the one who sent Jesus to give it), and he accepts Jesus’ righ­teousness on our behalf. Therefore, though once we were opposed to God, now we are friends (Romans 5:10).

“Once you were alienated from God and were enemies in your minds because of your evil behavior. But now he has reconciled you by Christ’s physical body through death to present you holy in his sight” (Colossians 1:21-22).

Because of Christ’s death, we are holy in God’s sight. In God’s book, we have gone from a huge debt to a huge balance—not because of what we have done, but because of what Jesus did for us.

God now calls us his children—he has adopted us (Ephesians 1:5). “We are God’s children” (Romans 8:16). And then Paul describes the wonderful results of our adoption: “If we are children, then we are heirs—heirs of God and co-heirs with Christ” (verse 17). Salvation is described as an inheritance. “He has qualified you to share in the inheritance of the saints in the kingdom of light” (Colossians 1:12).

Because of God’s generosity, because of his grace, we will inherit a fortune—we will share the universe with Jesus Christ. Or rather, he will share it with us, not because of anything we have done, but because he loves us and wants to give it to us.

Received through faith

Jesus has qualified us; he has paid the penalty not only for our sins, but for the sins of all human beings (1 John 2:2). But many people do not yet understand this. Perhaps they have not yet heard the message of salvation, or they heard a garbled version that didn’t make sense to them. For some reason, they have not believed the message.

It’s like Jesus has paid their debts for them, and given them a huge bank account, but they haven’t yet heard about it, or don’t quite believe it, or don’t think they had any debts in the first place. Or it’s like Jesus is throwing a party, and he gives them a ticket to get in, and yet some people decide not to come.

Or they are slaves working in the mud, and Jesus comes along and says, “I have purchased your freedom.” Some people don’t hear the message, some don’t believe it, and some would rather stay in the mud than find out what freedom is. But others hear the message, believe it, and step out of the mud to see what a new life with Christ might be.

The message of salvation is received by faith—by trusting Jesus, by taking him at his word, by believing the good news. “Believe in the Lord Jesus, and you will be saved” (Acts 16:31). The gospel is effective for “the salvation of everyone who believes” (Romans 1:16). If we don’t believe the message, it won’t do us much good.

Of course, there is more to “faith” than just believing certain facts about Jesus. The facts have some dramatic implications for us—we have to turn away from the life we’ve created in our own image and turn instead to God who made us in his.

We should admit that we are sinners, that we haven’t earned the right to eternal life, and that we don’t deserve to share in an inheritance with Jesus Christ. We have to admit that we’ll never be “good enough” for heaven—and we have to trust that the ticket Jesus gives us is indeed good enough to get us into the party. We have to trust that he did enough, in his death and resurrection, to pay our spiritual debts. We have to trust in his mercy and grace, admitting that there is no other way to get in.

A free offer

Let’s bring the discussion back to our purpose in life. God says that he made us for a purpose, and that purpose is that we become like him. We are to be united with God’s family, brothers and sisters of Jesus, sharing in the family fortune! It’s a wonderful purpose and wonderful promise.

But we haven’t done our part. We haven’t been as good as Jesus—that is, we haven’t been perfect. Then what makes us think we’ll get the other end of the deal—the eternal glory? The answer is that we have to trust God to be as merciful and full of grace as he says he is. He has made us for this purpose, and he is going to see it through! We can be confident, Paul says, that “he who began a good work in you will carry it on to completion” (Philippians 1:6).

Jesus has paid the price and done the work, and his message—the message of the Bible—is that our salvation comes by what he has done for us. Experience (as well as Scripture) says that we can’t trust in ourselves. Our only hope of salvation, of life, of becoming who God made us to be, is to trust in Christ. We can become like Christ because he, knowing all about our failings and shortcomings, says that he will bring it about!

Without Christ, life is pointless—we are stuck in the mud. But Jesus tells us that he has purchased our freedom, he can make us clean, he offers us a free ticket to the party and full rights in the family fortune. We can accept his offer, or we can dismiss it and stay in the mud.

Part 3: You’re invited to a banquet!

Jesus looked like an insignificant carpenter in an insignificant village in an insignificant part of the Roman Empire. But now he is widely regarded as the most significant person who ever lived. Even nonbelievers recognize that he gave up his life to serve others, and this ideal of self-sacrificial love reaches into the depths of the human soul and touches the image of God within us.

He taught that people could find true and abundant life if they are willing to give up their own faltering hold on existence and follow him into the life of the kingdom of God. “Whoever loses his life for my sake will find it” (Matthew 10:39).

We have nothing to lose but a pointless life, a frustrating life, and Jesus offers us a fulfilling, joyful, exciting and abounding life—for eternity. He invites us to give up pride and worry, and we gain peace of mind and joy of heart.

The path of Jesus

Jesus invites us to join him in his glory—but the journey to glory requires humility, through putting other people before ourselves. We have to loosen our grip on the things of this life, and fasten our hold on Jesus. If we want a new life, we have to be willing to let go of the old one.

We were made to be like Jesus. But we are not just copying a respected hero. Christianity is not about religious rituals or even religious ideals. It is about God’s love for humanity, his faithfulness to humanity, and his love and faithfulness made visible in human form in Jesus Christ.

In Jesus, God demonstrates his grace; he knows that no matter how hard we try, we will never be good enough on our own. In Jesus, God gives us help; he sends the Holy Spirit in Jesus’ name to live within us, to change us from the inside out. God is making us to be like himself; we are not trying to be Godlike on our own.

Jesus has for us an eternity of joy. Each individual, as a child in the family of God, has purpose and significance—an eternity of life. We were made for eternal glory, and the path to glory is Jesus, who himself is the Way, the Truth and the Life (John 14:6).

For Jesus, it meant a cross. He calls us to join him on that part of the journey, too. “If anyone would come after me, he must deny himself and take up his cross daily and follow me” (Luke 9:23). But the cross was followed by the resurrection to glory.

A celebration banquet

In some of his teaching stories, Jesus compared salvation to a banquet. In the parable of the prodigal son, the father threw a party for the rebellious son who finally came home. “Bring the fattened calf and kill it. Let’s have a feast and celebrate. For this son of mine was dead and is alive again; he was lost and is found” (Luke 15:23-24). Jesus told the story to illustrate the point that all of heaven rejoices whenever anyone turns toward God (verse 7).

Jesus told another story about a man (illustrating God) who “was preparing a great banquet and invited many guests” (Luke 14:16). But surprisingly, many people ignored the invitation. “They all alike began to make excuses” (verse 18). Some were worried about their money, or their work; others were distracted by family matters (verses 18-20). So the master invited poor people instead (verse 21).

So it is with salvation. Jesus invites everyone, but some people are too busy with the cares of this world to respond. But those who are “poor,” who realize there are more important things than money, sex, power and respect, are eager to come celebrate true life at Jesus’ banquet.

Jesus told another story comparing salvation to a man (illustrating Jesus) who went on a journey. He “called his servants and entrusted his property to them. To one he gave five talents of money, to another two talents, and to another one talent, each according to his ability” (Matthew 25:14-15). The money could represent various things that Christ gives us; let’s look at it here as representing the message of salvation.

After a long time, the master came back and asked for an accounting. Two of the servants showed that they had accomplished something with the master’s money, and they were rewarded: “Well done, good and faithful servant! You have been faithful with a few things; I will put you in charge of many things. Come and share your master’s happiness!” (verses 21, 23).

You are invited!

Yes, Jesus is inviting us to share in his happiness, to share in the eternal joys God has for us (Psalm 16:11). He is calling us to be like him, to be immortal, incorruptible, glorious and sinless. We will have supernatural power. We will have a vitality, intelligence, creativity, power and love far beyond what we know now.

We can’t do this on our own—we have to let God do it in us. We have to accept his invitation to get out of the mud, and come to his celebration banquet.

Have you thought about accepting his invitation? If you do, you may not see amazing results right away, but your life will

definitely take on new significance and meaning. You’ll gain purpose, you’ll under­stand where you’re going and why, and you’ll be given new strength, new courage and great peace.

Jesus is inviting you to a party that lasts forever. Will you accept the invitation?

Michael Morrison, 2003

Our website contains many articles on this topic—see www.wcg.org/lit/gospel for articles about the gospel and www.wcg.org/ lit/gospel/evang for about evangelism.

Christians are not under the Law of Moses, and we cannot be saved by any law, even the commandments of the New Testament. But Christianity does have behavioral standards. It does involve changes in the way we live. It does make demands on our lives. We are to live for Christ, not for ourselves (2 Corinthians 5:15). God is our God, our priority in everything, and he has something to say about the way we live.

One of the last things that Jesus told his disciples to do was to teach people “to obey everything I have commanded you” (Mat­thew 28:20). Jesus gave commands, and as his disciples we must also preach commands and teach people to obey them. These commands are not as a means of salvation, nor a standard of condemnation—they are instructions from the Son of God. People are to obey him not out of fear of punishment, but simply because he is their Savior, and he wants them to.

Perfect obedience is not the goal of the Christian life; the goal of the Christian life is to belong to God. We belong to God when Christ lives in us, and Christ lives in us when we put our faith in him. Christ in us leads us by the Holy Spirit toward obedience.

God is transforming us into the image of Christ. By God’s grace and power, we are becoming more like Christ. His commands involve not just outward behavior, but also the thoughts and motives of our hearts. These thoughts and motives of our hearts need the transforming power of the Holy Spirit; we cannot just change them ourselves by willpower. Part of faith, then, is trusting God to do his transforming work in us.

The greatest command—love for God—is also the greatest motive for obedience. We obey him because we love him, and we love him because he has graciously drawn us into his own household. It is God who works in us, both to will and to behave according to his good purpose (Philippians 2:13).

What do we do when we fall short? We repent and look to God’s grace for forgiveness, in full confidence that it is available for us. We do not want to take it lightly, but we should always take it.

What do we do when others fall short? Condemn them, and insist that they do good works to prove their sincerity? That’s the human tendency, it seems, and yet this is precisely what Christ said we should not do (Luke 17:3).

New Testament commands

What does the Christian life look like? There are hundreds of commands in the New Testament. We are not lacking in guidance for how a faith-based life works itself out in the real world. There are commands for how the rich should treat the poor, commands for how husbands should treat their wives, commands for how we should work together as a church. 1 Thessalonians 5:12-22 con­tains a simple list:

Live in peace with each other....
Warn those who are idle,
encourage the timid,
help the weak,
be patient with everyone.
Make sure that nobody pays back wrong for wrong...
always try to be kind....
Be joyful always;
pray continually;
give thanks in all circumstances...
Do not put out the Spirit’s fire;
do not treat prophecies with contempt.
Test everything.
Hold on to the good.
Avoid every kind of evil.

Paul knew that his readers had the Holy Spirit, who could guide and teach them. He also knew that they needed some basic exhortations or reminders about the Christian life. The Spirit chose to teach and guide them through Paul himself. Paul did not threaten to kick them out of the church if they failed to measure up—he simply gave commands that instructed them in the paths of faithfulness.

Warnings about disobedience

Although for­give­ness is available, sin has penalties in this life, and this sometimes includes social penalties. Paul writes, “You must not associate with any­one who calls himself a brother but is sex­ually immoral or greedy, an idolater or a slan­derer, a drunkard or a swindler. With such a man do not even eat” (1 Corinthians 5:11).

Paul did not want the church to become a haven for blatant, defiant sinners. The church is a hospital for reform, not a “safe zone” for social parasites to practice. Paul told the Corinthian Christians to discipline an incestuous man (1 Corinthians 5:1-5), and he also encouraged them to forgive someone after he had repented (2 Corinthians 2:5-8).

The New Testament has a lot to say about sin, and it gives us plenty of commands. Let’s look at the book of Galatians. In this manifesto of Christian freedom from the law, Paul also has some bold commands. Christians are not under the law, but neither are they lawless. He warns, “Don’t let yourself be circumcised, or else you will fall out of grace!” That is a pretty serious command (5:2-4). Do not let yourself be enslaved by an obsolete law!

Paul warns the Galatians about people who would try to prevent them “from obeying the truth” (v. 7). Paul is turning the tables on the Judaizers. They claimed to be obeying God, but Paul is saying they were not. We disobey God if we try to command something that is now obsolete.

Paul takes another twist in verse 9: “A little yeast works through the whole batch of dough.” The sinful leaven in this case is a law-based approach to religion. This error can spread if the truth of grace is not preached. There are always people who are willing to look to laws as the measurement of how religious they are. Restrictive rules appeal to many well-meaning people (Colossians 2:23).

Christians are called to be free, but Paul cautions: “Do not use your freedom to indulge the sinful nature; rather, serve one another in love” (Galatians 5:13). With freedom comes obligations, or else one person’s “freedom” would infringe on another’s. No one should have the freedom to preach other people into bondage, or to gain a following for themselves, or to make merchandise of God’s people. Such divisive and anti-Christian behaviors are not allowed.

Our responsibility

“The entire law is summed up in a single command,” Paul says in verse 14: “Love your neighbor as yourself.” This summarizes our responsibility toward one another. The opposite approach, fighting for self-advantage, is self-destructive (v. 15).

“Live by the Spirit, and you will not grat­ify the desires of the sinful nature” (v. 16). The Spirit leads us to love, not to self-centeredness. Selfish thoughts come from the flesh, but God’s Spirit produces better thoughts. “The sinful nature desires what is contrary to the Spirit, and the Spirit what is contrary to the sinful nature” (v. 17). Because of this conflict between Spirit and flesh, we sometimes sin, even though we don’t want to.

So what is the solution to the sins that so easily beset us? Bring back the law? No! “If you are led by the Spirit, you are not under law” (v. 18). Our approach to life is different. We look to the Spirit, and the Spirit will develop in us the desire and the power to walk according to the commands of Christ. We keep the horse before the cart.

We look to Jesus first, and we see his commands in the context of personal loyalty to him, not as rules “that have to be kept or else we’ll be punished.”

In Galatians 5, Paul lists a variety of sins: “sexual immorality, impurity and debauchery; idolatry and witchcraft; hatred, discord, jealousy, fits of rage, selfish ambition, dissensions, factions and envy; drunkenness, orgies, and the like” (v. 19-21). Some of these are behavioral, some are attitudinal, but all of them are self-centered and stem from the sinful heart.

Paul warns us sternly: “Those who live like this will not inherit the kingdom of God” (v. 21). This is not God’s way of life; this is not the way we want to be; this is not the way we want the church to be.

Forgiveness is available for each of these (1 Corinthians 6:9-11). Does that mean the church should close its eyes to sin? No, the church is not a cover, or safe sanctuary for such sins. The church is to be a place where grace and forgiveness is expressed and extended, not a place where sin is given permission to abound unchecked.

“But the fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faith­ful­ness, gentleness and self-control” (Galatians 5:22-23). This is the product of a heart devoted to God. “Those who belong to Christ Jesus have crucified the sinful nature with its passions and desires” (v. 24). With the indwelling Spirit at work in us, we grow in our desire to reject the works of the flesh. We bear the fruit of God’s work in us.

Paul’s message is clear: We are not under the law—but we are not lawless. We are under the authority of Christ, under his law, under the guidance of the Holy Spirit. Our lives are based on faith, motivated by love, characterized by joy and peace and growth. “Since we live by the Spirit, let us keep in step with the Spirit” (v. 25).

Joseph Tkach, 1999

See www.wcg.org/lit/law for articles about the relationship of Chris­tians to the law, and to obedience.

You may also find a book about Chris­tian ethics to be helpful:

• Richard B. Hays, The Moral Vision of the New Testament. HarperCollins, 1996.

• John Stott, Issues Facing Christians Today. 4th ed. Zondervan, 2006.

• D.J. Atkinson, ed. New Dictionary of Christian Ethics and Pastoral Theology. InterVarsity, 1995.

“If righteousness could be gained through the law,” Paul wrote, “Christ died for nothing!” (Galatians 2:21). The only alternative, as he says in this same verse, is “the grace of God.” We are saved by grace, not by keeping the law.

These are alternatives that cannot be combined. We are not saved by grace plus works, but by grace alone. Paul makes it clear that we must choose either one or another. “Both” is not an option (Romans 11:6). “If the inheritance depends on the law, then it no longer depends on a promise; but God in his grace gave it to Abraham through a promise” (Galatians 3:18). Salvation does not depend on the law, but on God’s grace.

“If a law had been given that could impart life, then righteousness would certainly have come by the law” (verse 21). If there were any way that rule-keeping could lead to eternal life, then God would have saved us with the law. But it wasn’t possible. The law cannot save anyone.

God wants us to have good behavior. He wants us to love others and thereby fulfill the law. But he does not want us to think that our works are ever a reason for our salvation. His provision of grace implies that he has always known that we would never be “good enough” despite our best efforts. If our works contributed to our salvation, then we would have something to boast about. But God designed his plan of salvation in such a way that we cannot take any credit for saving ourselves (Ephesians 2:8-9). We can never claim to deserve anything; we can never claim that God owes us anything.

This goes to the heart of the Christian faith, and it makes Christianity unique. Other religions say that people can be good enough if they try hard enough. Christianity says that we simply cannot be good enough; we need grace.

On our own, we will never be good enough, and because of that, other religions will never be good enough. The only way we can be saved is through the grace of God. We can never deserve to live forever, so the only way we can be given eternal life is for God to give us something that we don’t deserve. This is what Paul is driving at when he uses the word grace. Salvation is a gift of God, something that we could never earn with even a thousand years of the law.

Jesus and grace

“The law was given through Moses,” John writes. “Grace and truth came through Jesus Christ” (John 1:17). John saw a contrast between the law and grace, between what we do and what we are given.

Nevertheless, Jesus didn’t use the word grace. But his entire life was an example of grace, and his parables illustrated grace. He sometimes used the word mercy to describe what God gives us. “Blessed are the merciful,” he said, “for they will be shown mercy” (Matthew 5:7). In this, he implied that we all need mercy. And he noted here that we should be like God in this respect. If we value grace, we will give grace to others.

Later, when Jesus was asked why he associated with notorious sinners, he told people, “Go and learn what this means: ‘I desire mercy, not sacrifice’” (Matthew 9:13, quoting Hosea 6:6). In other words, God wants us to show mercy more than he wants us to be perfectionists in law-keeping.

We do not want people to sin. But since transgressions are inevitable, mercy is essen­tial. That is true of our relationships with one another, and true of our relationships with God, too. God wants us to know our need for mercy, and for us to have mercy toward others. Jesus was exemplifying this when he ate with tax collectors and talked with sinners—he was showing by his behavior that God wants fellowship with us all, and he has taken all our sins upon himself and forgiven us in order to have that fellowship.

Jesus told a parable of two debtors, one who owed an enormous sum, and the other who owed a much smaller amount. The master forgave the servant who owed much, but that servant failed to forgive the servant who owed less. The master was angry and said, “Shouldn’t you have had mercy on your fellow servant just as I had on you?” (Matthew 18:33).

The point of the parable is that each of us should see ourselves as the first servant, who was forgiven an enormous debt. We have all fallen far short of what the law requires, so God shows us mercy—and he wants us to show mercy as well. Of course, in mercy as well as in law, we fall short of what we should do, so we must continue to rely on God’s mercy.

The parable of the good Samaritan concludes with a command for mercy (Luke 10:37). The tax collector who pleaded for mercy was the one who was set right with God (Luke 18:13-14). The wasteful son who came home was accepted without having to do anything to “deserve” it (Luke 15:20). Neither the widow of Nain nor her son did anything to deserve a resurrection; Jesus did it simply out of compassion (Luke 7:11-15).

The grace of our Lord Jesus Christ

The miracles of Jesus served temporary needs. The people who ate loaves and fishes became hungry again. The son who was raised eventually died again. But the grace of Jesus Christ continues to be extended to all of us through the supreme act of grace: his sacrificial death on the cross. This is how Jesus gave himself up for us, with eternal consequences rather than temporary ones.

As Peter said, “We believe it is through the grace of our Lord Jesus that we are saved” (Acts 15:11). The gospel was a message about God’s grace (Acts 14:3; 20:24, 32). We are justified by grace “through the redemption that came by Christ Jesus” (Romans 3:24). God’s grace is linked with the sacrifice of Jesus on the cross (verse 25). Jesus died for us, for our sins, and we are saved because of what he did on the cross. We have redemption through his blood (Ephesians 1:7).

But God’s grace goes further than forgiveness. Luke tells us that God’s grace was on the disciples as they preached the gospel (Acts 4:33). God showed them favor, giving them help they did not deserve. But don’t human fathers do the same? We not only give our children life when they had done nothing to earn it, we also give them gifts that they could not earn. That’s part of love, and that is the way that God is. Grace is generosity.

When church members in Antioch sent Paul and Barnabas out on missionary trips, they commended them to the grace of God (Acts 14:26; 15:40). In other words, they put them into God’s care, trusting God to take care of the travelers, trusting him to give them what they might need. That is included in his grace.

Spiritual gifts are a work of grace, too. “We have different gifts,” Paul says, “according to the grace given us” (Romans 12:6). “To each one of us grace has been given as Christ apportioned it” (Ephesians 4:7). “Each one should use whatever gift he has received to serve others, faithfully administering God’s grace in its various forms” (1 Peter 4:10).

Paul thanked God for the spiritual gifts God had graced the believers with (1 Corinthians 1:4-5). He was confident that God’s grace would abound toward them as he enabled them to do even more work (2 Corinthians 9:8).

Every good thing is a gift of God, a result of grace rather than something we have earned. That is why we are to be thankful even for the simplest of blessings, for the singing of birds and the smells of flowers and the laughter of little children. Even life itself is a luxury, not a necessity.

Paul’s own ministry was given to him through grace (Romans 1:5; 15:15; 1 Cor­inthians 3:10; Galatians 2:9; Ephesians 3:7). Everything he did, he wanted to be according to God’s grace (2 Corinthians 1:12). His strength and skills were a gift of grace (2 Corinthians 12:9). If God can save and use the biggest sinner of all (which is the way Paul described himself), he can certainly forgive and use any of us. Nothing can separate us from his love, from his desire to give to us.

Response of grace

How should we respond to the grace of God? With grace, of course. We are to be merciful, even as God is full of mercy (Luke 6:36). We are to forgive others, just as we have been forgiven. We are to serve others, just as we have been served. We are to be gracious toward others, giving them favor and kindness.

Our words are to be full of grace (Colossians 4:6). We are to be gracious (forgiving and giving) in marriage, in business, in church, with friends and family and strangers. It’s supposed to make a difference in our lives and in our priorities.

Paul spoke of financial generosity as a work of grace, too: “We want you to know about the grace that God has given the Macedonian churches. Out of the most severe trial, their overflowing joy and their extreme poverty welled up in rich generosity. For I testify that they gave as much as they were able, and even beyond their ability” (2 Cor­inthians 8:1-3). They had been given much, and they in turn were willing to give much.

Giving is an act of grace (verse 6), and generosity—whether in finances, in time, in respect, or in other ways—is an appropriate way for us to respond to the grace of Jesus Christ, who gave himself for us so that we might be richly blessed (verse 9).

Joseph Tkach, 2002

See www.wcg.org/lit/gospel for more articles about grace.

Also helpful are the popular books about grace by Philip Yancey, Max Lucado, and Charles Swindoll.

“OK, I understand that the blood of Christ covers all sin. And I understand that there is nothing I can add to the equation. But here’s my question: If God, for Christ’s sake, has completely forgiven me for all my sins, past, present and future, then what is to stop me from just going out and sinning all I want? I mean, is the law meaningless for Christians? Does God now condone sin? Doesn’t he want me to stop sinning?”

That’s already four questions. And they are important. Let’s go through them one at a time, and see if any more crop up along the way.

All sin forgiven

First, you said that you understand that the blood of Christ covers all sin. That’s a great beginning. A lot of Christians don’t understand that. They believe that the forgiveness of sins is a transaction, kind of a business deal, between a person and God. The idea is that you do the right thing for God, and God will give you forgiveness and salvation.

For example, you put your faith in Jesus, and God rewards you by applying Jesus’ blood to your sins. Tit for tat. That would be good deal, to be sure, but still a deal, a transaction, and certainly not the pure grace proclaimed by the gospel. In this way of thinking, most people are damned because they didn’t ante up in time, and God divvies out the blood of Jesus to only a few; it never actually redeemed the whole world.

But many churches don’t even leave it there. Potential believers are lured in with the promise of being saved by grace alone, but once the believer enters the church, the list of rules comes out. If you don’t toe the line, you might well get kicked out, and under certain circumstances, not only out of the church, but out of the kingdom of God as well. So much for “saved by grace.”

There is definitely, according to the Bible, a place for removing a person from the fellowship of the church (which does not remove a person from the kingdom, of course), but that’s another subject. For now, suffice it to say that organized religion tends to have a love affair with keeping sinners out of the church, whereas the gospel trumpets them an invitation to enter.

According to the gospel, Jesus Christ is the atoning sacrifice not only for our sins, but also for the sins of the whole world (1 John 2:2). That, contrary to what many Christians have been told by their preachers, means absolutely everybody.

Jesus said, “I, when I am lifted up from the earth, will draw all people to myself” (John 12:32). Jesus is God the Son, by whom and through whom all things exist (Hebrews 1:2-3), and his blood redeems no less than everything he made (Colossians 1:20).

By grace alone

You also said that you understand that there is nothing you can bring to the table to sweeten the deal God has drawn up for you in Christ. There again, you are way ahead of the game. The world is full of sin-battling preachers who lay weekly guilt trips on their cowering flocks with a long list of specially selected commissions and omissions that reputedly ignite God’s ever-shortening fuse and threaten to land the whole pathetic lot of spiritual low achievers in the fiery torments of hell.

The gospel, on the other hand, declares that God loves people. He is not out to get them. He is not against them. He is not waiting for them to trip up so he can squash them. Quite the contrary, he is on their side. He loves them so much that he has set free from sin and death all people everywhere by the atoning sacrifice of his Son (John 3:16).

In Christ, the door is open to the kingdom of God. People can believe God’s word (faith), turn to him (repent) and claim their freely given inheritance—or they can continue to deny God as their Father and reject their part in the family of God. God honors our choice. If we disown him, he lets our decision stand. That is not the choice he wants us to make, but he does allow us the freedom to make it.

Response

God has done all that needed to be done for us. In Christ, he has said “Yes” to us. It is up to us to say “Yes” to his “Yes.” But the Bible indicates that there are, amazingly, those who say “No.” They are the wicked, the haters, the ones who oppose God and themselves.

When all is said and done, they have committed themselves to the proposition that they have a better way; they have no need of God. They regard not God or man. To them, God’s offer of complete amnesty and eternal blessing is a meaningless and worthless insult. God, who gave his Son for them, ratifies their appalling decision to remain the children of the devil they have chosen over him.

God is the Redeemer, not the destroyer. And he has done all this for no other reason than that he wants to, and he is free to do what he wants. He is bound by no outside rules, but he has freely chosen to be utterly faithful to his covenant love and promise. He is who he is, which is exactly who he wants to be, and he is our God, full of grace and truth and faithfulness. He forgives our sins because he loves us. That is how he wants it, so that is how it is.

No law could save

There is no law that could bring eternal life (Galatians 3:21). We humans simply don’t keep laws. We can argue all day over whether it is theoretically possible for humans to keep the law, but when all is said and done, the fact is, we don’t keep it, never did and never will, and nobody ever has but Jesus.

There is only one way salvation comes, and that is through God’s free gift apart from anything we do or don’t do (Ephesians 2:8-10). Like any gift, we can take it or leave it. Either way, it is ours already by God’s grace, but we can use it and enjoy it only if we actually take it. That is a simple matter of trust. We believe God and turn to him.

If, on the other hand, we are foolish enough to reject it, we will, tragically, continue to live in our self-imposed darkness and death as though we never had light and life handed to us in a golden goblet.

Hell a choice

Such a choice, such contempt for God’s free gift—a gift paid for by the blood of his Son through whom all things exist and consist—is nothing less than hell. But it is a choice made by people whose invitation to pre-paid life is just as real and valid as the invitation of those who accept theirs. Jesus’ blood covers all sin, remember, not just some sin (Colossians 1:20). His atonement is for all the creation, not just part of it.

Those who scorn such a gift are kicked out of the kingdom only because that is their own preference. They want no part of it, and God, though he never stops loving them, won’t allow them to stick around and ruin the joy of the eternal celebration by stinking up the place with the pride and hate and unbelief they have made their gods.

So they go where they like it best—straight to hell where there is nobody having fun to spoil their miserable self-absorption.

Free grace is good news! Even though we didn’t earn it or deserve it, God decided to give us eternal life in his Son. Believe or scoff, it’s our choice. Whatever we decide to do about it, this much is forever true: Through the death and resurrection of Jesus Christ, God has concretely demonstrated how much he loves us, and how far he has gone to forgive our sins and restore us to himself.

He has freely poured out his mercy everywhere in abounding love on absolutely everybody. It is pure grace—God’s free gift of salvation, and it is enjoyed by everybody who believes his word and accepts him on his terms.

What stops me?

That brings us to your questions. If God has already forgiven my sins even before I commit them, what is to stop me from just going out and sinning my brains out?

First, let’s clear some ground. Sin is primarily a condition of the heart, not merely individual acts of wrongdoing. The acts of wrongdoing don’t come from nowhere; they spring naturally from our corrupt hearts. The solution to our sin problem, consequently, requires a fixed heart, getting at the source of sin, rather than merely treating its effects.

God is not interested in finely behaved robots. He wants a love relationship with us. He loves us. That is why Christ came to save us. And relationships are built on forgiveness and mercy, not on forced compliance.

If I want my wife to love me, for example, do I force her to act as though she does? If I did, I might get compliance, but I certainly wouldn’t get her to actually love me. You cannot force anybody to love. You can only force people to act.

Through self-sacrifice, God has shown us how much he loves us. Through forgive­ness and mercy, he has proven his great love. By suffering for our sins in our place, he has demonstrated that there is nothing that can come between us and his love (Romans 8:38).

God wants children, not slaves. He wants a love relationship with us, not a world of cowering whipped dogs. He made us free beings, with real choices to make that matter to him very much. And the choice he wants us to make is him.

Real freedom

God gives us freedom to behave as we wish, and he forgives our failures. He does it because he wants to. He set things up that way, and he makes no apologies for it. If we have any sense, we will see his love for what it is and latch onto him like there’s no tomorrow.

So what is there to stop us from sinning all we want? Nothing. Absolutely nothing. And there never has been. The law certainly didn’t stop anybody from sinning all they wanted (Galatians 3:21-22). We have always sinned all we want, and God has always permitted it. He’s never stopped us. He doesn’t like it. He doesn’t condone it. He doesn’t endorse it. In fact, it grieves him. But he has always permitted it. That’s called freedom, and he gives us that freedom.

In Christ

When the Bible says that we are righteous in Christ, that is what it means (1 Corinthians 1:30; Philippians 3:9).

We are not righteous in ourselves; we are righteous in Christ. In ourselves, because of sin, we are dead, but we are also, at the same time, alive in Christ—our lives are hid in Christ (Colossians 3:3).

Without Christ, we are in hopeless shape, sold under sin, with no future. But Christ saved us. That is the gospel—good news! His salvation, if we receive it, puts us on a new footing with God.

Because of what God has done in Christ for us, including his prompting, even urging, us to trust him, Christ is now in us. And for Christ’s sake (he intercedes for us), we are, in spite of our sin, acceptable—righteous—before God. And the whole business, from start to finish, is done, not by us, but by God, who wins us not by force, but by the power of his self-sacrificial love.

The law meaningless?

Paul was very plain about the purpose of the law. It shows us that we are sinners (Romans 7:7). It declares the fact of our slavery to sin so that we might be justified by faith when Christ came (Galatians 3:19-27).

Now, suppose for a moment that you enter the judgment actually believing you are righteous because you always tried really hard to obey God. And so, instead of taking the wedding garment provided at the door (the free, clean one that goes only to dirty people who know they need it), you go in by a side door wearing your striving-real-hard garment, reeking all the way, and sit down at your place at the table.

The lord of the house will say to you, “Hey buddy, where did you get the brass to come in here and insult me in front of all my guests with your sewage-soaked rags?” And then he will say to the staff, “Handcuff this filthy imposter and dump him in the swamp.”

We simply cannot clean our own dirty faces ourselves with our own dirty water, our own dirty soap and our own dirty washcloths, and go happily on our way thinking our hopelessly filthy faces are clean. There is only one way to remedy sin, and it does not lie with us.

Remember, we are dead in sin (Romans 8:10), and dead people, by definition, can’t remedy their deadness. Rather, the acute knowledge of our sinfulness should lead us to trust Jesus to clean us (1 Peter 5:10-11).

God wants you sin-free

God has given us such indescribably great mercy and salvation not so that we feel a license to sin, but to free us from sin. That freedom not only removes our guilt from sin, but it also empowers us to see sin stripped naked for what it really is instead of dressed up in the pretty costume it wears to fool us, and to reject its fraudulent and pretentious power over us. Even so, when we still sin, which we certainly do, Jesus remains no less our atoning sacrifice (1 John 2:1-2).

God not only does not condone sin, he condemns sin. He does not like or endorse our glazed-eyed rationalizations, our coma­tose suspension of good sense or our hair-trigger, dive-in responses to temptations of every sort, from anger to lust to scorn to pride. And he rarely bails us out of the natural consequences of the things we choose to do.

However, because our faith and trust are in him (which means we are wearing the clean wedding clothes he provides), neither does he kick us out (as some preachers seem to think) of his wedding feast because of the poor choices we make.

Confession

Have you ever noticed that when you become aware of sinfulness in your life, your conscience plagues you until you confess your sins to God? (And chances are, there are some forms of sinfulness that you find yourself confessing rather frequently.)

Why do you do that? Because you have committed yourself to “go out and sin all you can”? Is it not, rather, because your heart rests in Christ, and you, in tune with the Spirit who dwells in you, are grieved until you re-establish a sense of right relationship with him?

The Spirit in us testifies with our spirit, we are told, to the truth that we are the children of God (Romans 8:15-17). Two things to remain keenly aware of here: 1) You, by the testimony of the Spirit of God himself, are, in Christ and with all the saints, a child of God, and 2) The Spirit, as the inner witness to your real identity, does not neglect to rumble your landscape when you choose to live as though you are still nothing but the dead meat you used to be before Jesus redeemed you.

Make no mistake. Sin is God’s enemy and your enemy. We need to fight it tooth and nail. But we must never think that our salvation depends on the level of our success in overcoming sin. Salvation depends on Christ’s success in overcoming sin, and that’s already been done. Sin and the death that shadows it have already been defeated in Jesus’ death and resurrection, and the power of that victory resounds through all the creation from the beginning of time and forever. The only overcomers in the world are those who trust in Christ to be their resurrection and life.

Good works

God takes joy in the good works of his children (Psalm 147:11; Revelation 8:4). He delights in our acts of kindness, our sacrifices of love, our devotion to justice, honesty and peace (Hebrews 6:10).

These and every good work are the natural outgrowth of the Spirit’s work in us, leading us to trust, love and honor God. They are part and parcel with the love relationship that he has built with us through the sacrificial death and resurrection of the Lord of life, Jesus Christ. Such deeds and such work are God’s own work in us, his beloved children, and as such, they are never useless (1 Corinthians 15:53).

God’s work in us

Our faithful devotion to do what pleases God reflects our Savior’s love, but again, our works of righteousness in his name are not what saves us. The righteousness that finds expression in our words and deeds of obedi­ence to God’s commands is righteousness that God himself is behind, joyfully working in us to his glory to bring forth good fruit.

For us to try to take credit for what he does in us would be silly. It would also be silly to think that the blood of Jesus, which covers all sin, leaves any of our sinfulness uncovered. Because if we think that, then we still don’t have a clue as to who this eternal and omnipotent triune God is—this Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, who created all things, redeems us freely and magnificently with the Son’s own blood, dwells in us through the Holy Spirit, and renews the whole creation, indeed, makes us into a new creation (2 Corinthians 5:17) along with the whole universe (Isaiah 65:17), because of his indescribable love.

True life

Though God commands us to do what is right and good, he simply does not determine salvation by record books. That is good for us, because if he did, we would all turn up in the reject pile.

God saves us by his grace, and we can walk in the joy of that salvation if we give up all our claims on life and turn to him and trust him and him alone to raise us from the dead (Ephesians 2:4-10; James 4:10).

Salvation is determined by the One who writes names in the book of life, and he has already written absolutely everyone’s name in that book with the Lamb’s blood (1 John 2:2). It is a colossal tragedy that some refuse to believe it, because if they would trust the Lord of life they would find that the life they have been scratching to save is not really life at all, but death, and that their true life, waiting to be revealed, is hidden with Christ in God (Colossians 3:3). God loves even his enemies and wants them, along with all people, to turn to him and enter the joy of his kingdom (1 Timothy 2:4, 6).

Summing up

So let’s summarize. You asked: “If God, for Christ’s sake, has completely forgiven all my sins, past, present and future, then what is to stop me from just going out and sinning all I want? I mean, is the law meaningless for Christians? Does God now condone sin? Doesn’t he want me to stop sinning?”

There is nothing to stop us from sinning all we want. There never has been. God has given us free will, and he values it. He loves us and desires a love relationship with us, and such a relationship comes only through free choice, rooted in trust and forgiveness, not through threats or forced compliance.

We are not robots or videotaped characters in a predetermined play. We are created as real, free beings, made so by God in his own creative freedom, and the personal relationship God has with us is real.

The law is far from meaningless; it serves to make it abundantly plain that we are sinners, falling far short of God’s perfect will for us. God permits us to sin, but he definitely does not condone it. That is why he has gone to such astounding self-sacrificial lengths to save us from it.

Sin hurts and destroys us and everyone around us. It springs from a corrupt heart of unbelief and selfish rebellion against the very source of our life and being. It saps us of true life and true being and imprisons us in the darkness of death and nothingness.

Sin hurts

In case you haven’t noticed, sin hurts like hell—literally, since that is in essence what it is. It makes as much sense to “go out and sin all I want to” as it does to stick my hand into the lawnmower. “Well, then,” I heard one man say, “If we’re already forgiven, we might as well just go out and commit adultery.”

Sure, if you want to live in constant fear of being caught while you risk unwanted pregnancy and some nasty diseases, breaking your family’s hearts, discrediting yourself, losing your friends and paying alimony out the nose, not to mention a plagued conscience and the likelihood of having to deal with very angry husbands, boyfriends, brothers or fathers.

Sin has consequences, bad ones, which is precisely why God is at work in you to conform you to the image of Christ. You can work on listening and cooperating, or you can keep feeding appendages to the garbage disposal.

And we must not forget that the usual sins we think about when we say things like “go out and sin all I want” are only the tip of the iceberg. What about just being greedy, or selfish or rude? What about being unthankful, or saying mean things, or not helping out when you ought? What about holding a grudge, envying someone’s job, clothes, car or house, or harboring angry thoughts about someone? What about taking home your employer’s office supplies, sharing in gossip, or belittling your spouse and children? On and on we could go.

These are sins too, some big, some little, and guess what? We “go out” and do them all we want to. It’s a good thing God saves us by grace and not by works, isn’t it? Sin is not OK, but that does not stop us from sinning. God does not want us to sin, yet he knows better than we do that we are dead in sin, and that we will continue to be dogged by sin until our true life, redeemed and sinless, which is hidden in Christ, is revealed at his appearing (Colossians 3:4).

Sinners alive in Christ

Purely by the freely given grace and limitless power of our ever-living and ever-loving God, believers paradoxically have died to sin, yet are alive in Jesus Christ (Romans 5:12, 6:4-11). Despite our sins, we no longer walk in death because we have believed and accepted our resurrection in Christ (Romans 8:10-11; Ephesians 2:3-6), a resurrection that will find its consummation at the appearing of Christ when even our mortal bodies put on immortality (1 Corinthians 15:52-53).

Nonbelievers continue to walk in death, unable to enjoy their life that is hid in Christ (Colossians 3:3) until they come to faith, not because the blood of Christ does not cover their sin, but because they cannot trust Christ to raise them from the dead until they believe the good news that he is their Savior and turn to him.

Nonbelievers are as redeemed as believers—Christ died for everybody (1 John 2:2)—only they don’t know it yet, and because they don’t believe what they don’t know, they continue to live in the fear of death (Hebrews 2:14-15) and the futile pursuit of life in all the wrong places (Ephesians 2:3).

The Holy Spirit transforms believers into the image of Christ (Romans 8:29). In Christ, the power of sin is broken, and we are no longer its prisoners. Even so, we are still weak and give place to sin (Romans 7:14-29; Hebrews 12:1).

Because he loves us, God cares very much about our sinful condition. He loves the world so much that he sent his eternal Son that whoever believes in him would not remain in the darkness of death that is the fruit of sin, but would have eternal life in him. There is nothing that can separate you from his love, not even your sins. Trust him. He helps you walk in obedience, and he forgives your every sin. He is your Savior because he wants to be, and he is very good at what he does.

J. Michael Feazell, 2000

God is great and good. God always uses his enormous power to further his promise of love and grace toward his people. He is gentle, loving, slow to anger and full of mercy.

That’s nice, but how is this relevant to us? What difference does it make in our lives? How do we respond to a God who is simultaneously powerful and gentle? We respond in at least two ways.

Trust

When we realize that God has all power to do anything he wants, and that he always uses it for the good of humanity, then we can have absolute confidence that we are in good hands. He has both the ability and the stated purpose of working all things, including even our rebellion, hatred and betrayal against him and one another, toward our salvation. He is completely trustworthy—worthy of our trust.

When we are in the midst of trials, sickness, suffering and even dying, we can be confident that God is still with us, that he cares for us, that he has everything under control. It may not look like it, and we certainly do not feel in control, but we can be confident that God isn’t caught off guard. He can and does redeem any situation, any misfortune, for our good.

We need never doubt God’s love for us. “God demonstrates his own love for us in this: While we were still sinners, Christ died for us” (Romans 5:8). “This is how we know what love is: Jesus Christ laid down his life for us” (1 John 3:16). The God who did not spare his own Son can be counted on to give us through his Son everything we need for eternal happiness.

God did not send somebody else: The Son of God, essential to the Godhead, became human so that he could die for us and rise again for us (Hebrews 2:14). We were redeemed not by the blood of animals, not by the blood of a very good man, but by the blood of the God who became human. Every time we take communion, we are reminded of the extent of his love for us. We can be confident that he loves us. He has earned our trust.

“God is faithful,” Paul tells us. “He will not let you be tempted beyond what you can bear” (1 Corinthians 10:13). “The Lord is faithful, and he will strengthen and protect you from the evil one” (2 Thessalonians 3:3). Even “if we are faithless, he will remain faithful” (2 Timothy 2:13).

He is not going to change his mind about wanting us, about calling us, about being merciful to us. “Let us hold unswervingly to the hope we profess, for he who promised is faithful” (Hebrews 10:23).

He has made a commitment to us, a covenant with us, to redeem us, to give us eternal life, to love us forever. He will not be without us. He is trustworthy, but how do we respond to him? Do we worry? Do we struggle to be worthy of his love? Or do we trust him?

We need never doubt God’s power. This is shown in the resurrection of Jesus from death. This is the God who has power over death itself, power over all the beings he created, power over all other powers (Colossians 2:15). He triumphed over all things through the cross, and this is demonstrated through his resurrection. Death could not hold him, for he is the author of life (Acts 3:15).

The same power that raised Jesus from death will also give immortal life to us (Romans 8:11). We can trust that he has the power, and the desire, to fulfill all his promises toward us. We can trust him with everything—and that’s a good thing, since it is foolish to trust in anything else.

Of ourselves, we will fail. Left to itself, even the sun will fail. Our only hope is in a God who has power greater than the sun, greater than the universe, more faithful than time and space, full of love and faithfulness toward us. We have that sure hope in Jesus our Savior.

Belief and trust

All who believe in Jesus Christ will be saved (Acts 16:31). But what does it mean to believe in Jesus Christ? Even the devil believes that Jesus is the Christ, the Son of God. He doesn’t like it, but he knows it’s true. Moreover, the devil knows that God exists and that he rewards those who seek him (Hebrews 11:6).

So what is the difference between our belief and the devil’s belief? James gives us an answer: True faith is shown by action (James 2:18-19). What we do shows what we really believe. Behavior can be evidence of faith, even though some people obey for wrong reasons. Even the devil operates within constraints imposed by God.

So what is faith, and how does it differ from belief?

The simplest explanation is that saving faith is trust. We trust God to take care of us, to do good for us rather than evil, to give us eternal life. Trust means knowing that God exists, knowing that he is good, knowing that he has the power to do what he wants, and trusting that he will use it to do whatever is best for us. Trust means a willingness to put ourselves under him, to be willing to obey not out of fear but out of love. When we trust God, we love him.

Trust is shown by what we do. But the action is not the trust, and it does not create the trust—it is only the result of trust. True faith is, at its core, trust in Jesus Christ.

A gift of God

Where does this kind of trust come from? It is not something we can work up for ourselves. We cannot talk ourselves into it or use human logic to build an airtight case. We will never have the time to cover all the philosophical arguments about God. But we are forced to make a choice each day: Will we trust God, or not? Trying to delay the decision is a decision in itself: We do not yet trust him.

Each Christian has at some point or another made a decision to trust in Christ. For some, it was a well-thought-out decision. For others, it was an illogical decision, made for wrong reasons—but the right decision anyway. We could trust no one else, not even ourselves. On our own, we would mess our lives up. Nor could we trust other human authorities. For some of us, faith was a choice of desperation—we had nowhere else to go but to Christ (John 6:68).

It is normal that our first faith is an immature faith—a good start, but not a good place to stay. We need to grow in our faith. As one man said to Jesus, “I do believe; help me overcome my unbelief!” (Mark 9:24). The disciples themselves, even after worshiping the resurrected Jesus, had some doubts (Matthew 28:17).

So where does faith come from? It is a gift of God. Ephesians 2:8 tells us that salvation is a gift of God, which means that the faith that leads to salvation must also be his gift.

In Acts 15:9 we are told that God purified the believers’ hearts by faith. God was working in their hearts. He is the one who “opened the door of faith” (Acts 14:27). God did it, because he is the one who enables whatever faith we have.

We would not trust God unless God himself gave us the ability to trust him. Humans have been too corrupted by sin to believe or trust in God on our own strength or wisdom. That is why faith is not a “work” that qualifies us for salvation. We get no credit for meeting the qualification—faith is merely receiving the gift, being thankful for the gift. God gives us the ability to receive his gift, to enjoy his gift.

Trustworthy

God has good reason to give us faith, for there is someone completely trustworthy for us to believe in and be saved by. The faith he gives us is rooted in his Son, who became flesh for our salvation. We have good reason to have faith, for we have a Savior who has purchased our salvation for us. He has done all that it takes, once for all, signed, sealed and being delivered. Our faith has a firm foundation: Jesus Christ.

Jesus is the author and perfecter of our faith (Hebrews 12:2)—but he does not work alone. Jesus does only what the Father wants, and he works by the Holy Spirit in our hearts. The Holy Spirit teaches us, convicts us, and gives us faith (John 14:26; 15:26; 16:10).

Through the word

How does God (the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit) give us faith? It is usually through the preached word. “Faith comes from hearing the message, and the message is heard through the word of Christ” (Romans 10:17). The message is in the written word, the Bible, and it is in the spoken word, whether a sermon at church or a simple testimony of one person to another.

The word of the gospel tells us about Jesus, the Word of God, and the Holy Spirit uses this word to enlighten us, and somehow allows us to trust ourselves to this word. This is sometimes called “the witness of the Holy Spirit,” but it is not like a courtroom witness we can ask questions of.

It is more like an internal switch inside us that is flipped, allowing us to accept the good news that is preached. It feels right. Though we may still have questions, we believe that we can live in this message. We can base our lives on it, we can make decisions based on it. It makes sense. It is the best possible choice.

God gives us the ability to trust him. He also gives us the ability to grow in faith. The down payment of faith is a seed that grows. It prepares and enables our minds and our emotions to understand more and more of the gospel. It helps us understand more about God as he reveals himself to us in Jesus Christ. To use an Old Testament metaphor, we begin to walk with God. We live in him, think in him, and believe in him.

Doubts

But most Christians struggle with faith at some time or another. Our growth is not always smooth and steady—it comes through trials and questions. For some, doubts come because of a tragedy or severe suffering. For others, it is prosperity or good times that subtly tempt us to rely on material things instead of God. Many of us will face both sorts of challenges to our faith.

Poor people often have stronger faith than rich people do. People beset by constant trials often know they have no hope except God, no choice but to trust him. Statistics show that poor people give a higher percentage of their income to the church than rich people do. It appears that their faith (even though not perfect) is more consistent.

The greatest enemy of faith, it seems, is when all goes well. People are tempted to think that it was by their strength or their intelligence that they achieved as much as they have. They lose their sense of child-like dependence on God. They rely on what they have, rather than on God.

Poor people are in a better position to learn that life on this planet is full of questions, and God is the least questionable thing they have. They trust in him because all else has proven itself to be untrustworthy. Money, health, and friends are all fickle. We cannot depend on them.

Only God is dependable, but even so, we don’t always have the evidence we would like. So we have to trust him. As Job said, even though he kills me, I will trust him (Job 13:15). Only he offers the hope of eternal life. Only he offers a hope that life makes any sense or has any purpose.

Part of growth

But still, we sometimes wrestle with doubts. That is simply part of the process of growing in faith, of learning to trust God with yet more of life. We face the choices set before us and once again choose God as the best choice.

As Blaise Pascal said centuries ago, if we believe for no other reason, then at least we ought to believe because God is the best bet. If we follow him and he does not exist, then we have lost nothing. But if we do not follow him and he does exist, we have lost everything. So we have nothing to lose and everything to gain by believing in God, by living and thinking that he is the surest reality in the universe.

This does not mean that we will understand everything. No, we will never understand everything. Faith means trusting in God even though we do not always understand. We can worship him even when we have doubts (Matthew 28:17). Salvation is not an intelligence contest. The faith that saves does not come from philosophical arguments that answer every doubt. Faith comes from God. If we rely on having answers to every question, we are not relying on God.

The only reason we can be in God’s kingdom is by grace, through faith in our Savior, Jesus Christ. If we rely on our obedience, or anything else that we do, then we are relying on the wrong thing, an unreliable thing. We need to re-form our faith (allowing God to re-form our faith) into Christ, and him alone. Works, even good works, cannot be the basis of our salvation. Obedience, even to the commands of Jesus, cannot be our source of assurance. Only Christ is trustworthy.

As we grow in spiritual maturity, we often become more aware of our own sins, and our own sinfulness. We realize how far we are from Christ, and this can lead us to doubts, too, that God would really send his Son to die for people as perverse as we are.

The doubt, no matter how real, should lead us back to greater faith in Christ, for only in him do we have any chance at all. There is no other place to go. In his words and his actions, we see that he knew quite well how perverse we were before he came to die for us. The better we see ourselves, the more we see the need to cast ourselves into the mercy of God. Only he is good enough to save us from ourselves, and only he will save us from our doubts.

Fellowship

It is by faith that we have a fruitful relationship with God. It is by faith that we pray, by faith that we worship, by faith that we hear his words in sermons and fellowship. Faith enables us to have fellowship with the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. It is by faith that we are enabled to give our allegiance to God, through our Savior Jesus Christ, by means of the Holy Spirit working in our hearts.

It is by faith that we can love other people. Faith frees us from the fear of ridicule and rejection. We can love others without worrying about what they will do to us, because we trust in Christ to reward us generously. Through faith in God, we can be generous with others.

Through faith in God, we can put him first in our lives. When we believe God is as good as he says he is, then we will treasure him above all else, and be willing to make the sacrifices that he asks of us. We will trust him, and it is by that trust that we will experience the joys of salvation. Christian life is, from first to last, a matter of trusting God.

Joseph Tkach, 2001

Articles about faith can be found at www.wcg.org/lit/gospel

Faith is also discussed in numerous books about evangelism and apologetics, including:

• Peter Kreeft and Ronald Tacelli, Handbook of Christian Apologetics. InterVarsity, 1994.

• William Lane Craig, Reasonable Faith. Crossway, 1994.

• C. Stephen Evans, Why Believe? Inter­Varsity, 1996.

• Alister McGrath, Intellectuals Don’t Need God and Other Modern Myths. Zondervan, 1993.

• Alister McGrath, Doubting: Growing Through the Uncertainties of Faith. Inter­Varsity, 2007.

Salvation is a rescue operation. To understand salvation, we need to know what the problem was, what God did about it, and how we respond to it.

What humans are

When God made humans, he made them “in his own image,” and he pronounced his creation “very good” (Genesis 1:26-27, 31). Humans were a wonderful creation: made from dust, but energized by the breath of God (Genesis 2:7).

“The image of God” probably includes intelligence, creativity and power over creation. It also includes the ability to have relationships and to make moral choices. We are in some way like God himself. That’s because God has something special in mind for us, his children.

Genesis tells us that the first humans did something God had warned them not to do (Genesis 3:1-13). Their disobedience showed that they did not trust God, and it was a violation of his trust in them. By being faithless, they had broken the relationship and fallen short of what God wanted for them. They were becoming less like God. The result, said God, was struggle, pain and death (vv. 16-19). If they were not going to follow the Maker’s instructions, they were going to end up doing things the hard way.

Humans are noble and crude at the same time. We can have high ideals, and yet be barbaric. We are like God, and yet ungodly. We are not the way we are supposed to be. Even though we have messed ourselves up, God still considers us to be made in his image (Genesis 9:6). The potential is still there for us to be like God. This is why he wants to rescue us, to save us, to restore the relationship he had with us.

God wants to give us eternal life, free from pain, on good terms with God and with each other. He wants our intelligence, creativity and power to be used for good. He wants us to be like he is, to be even better than the first humans were. This is salvation.

The center of the plan

We need to be rescued. And God has done this—but he did it in a way that no human would have expected. The Son of God became a human, lived a perfect life, and we killed him. And that, says God, is the salvation we need. What irony! We are saved by a victim! Our Creator became flesh so he could absorb the penalty of sin for us. But God raised him back to life, and through Jesus, he promises to resurrect us, too.

In the death and resurrection of Jesus, the death and salvation of humanity is represented and made possible. His death is what our failures deserve, and as our Creator, he paid for all our failures. Though he did not deserve death, he willingly died for our sins, on our behalf.

Jesus Christ died for us, and was raised for us (Romans 4:25). Our old self died with him, and a new person is brought back to life with him (Romans 6:3-4). In one sacrifice, Jesus paid the penalty “for the sins of the whole world” (1 John 2:2). The payment has already been made; the question now is how we are to receive the benefits. We participate in the plan through repentance and faith.

Repentance

Jesus came to call people to repentance (Luke 5:32). Peter told people to repent and turn to God for forgiveness (Acts 2:38; 3:19). Paul said people “must turn to God in repentance” (Acts 20:21). Repentance means to turn away from sin and toward God. Paul told the Athenians that God overlooked idolatry done in ignorance, but “now commands all people everywhere to repent” (Acts 17:30). They should stop their idolatry.

Paul was concerned that some of the Corinthian Christians might not repent of their sexual sins (2 Corinthians 12:21). For these people, repentance would mean a willingness to stop their immorality. Paul preached that people should “prove their repentance by their deeds” (Acts 26:20). We change our attitude and our behavior.

Part of our doctrinal foundation is “repentance from acts that lead to death” (Hebrews 6:1). But this does not mean perfect behavior—Christians are not perfect (1 John 1:8). Repentance means not that we arrive at our goal, but that we begin traveling in the right direction.

No longer do we please ourselves, but we live to please Christ (2 Corinthians 5:15; 1 Corinthians 6:20). Paul tells us, “Just as you used to offer the parts of your body in slavery to impurity and to ever-increasing wickedness, so now offer them in slavery to righteousness” (Romans 6:19).

Faith

However, simply telling people to repent is not going to rescue them from their failures. Humans have been told to obey for thousands of years, but they still need to be rescued. Something more is needed, and that is Christ. But we do not experience the blessing of forgiveness if we don’t believe that Christ has done this for us. We need faith, or belief. The New Testament says much more about faith than it does repentance—the words for faith occur more than eight times as often.

Everyone who believes in Jesus is forgiven (Acts 10:43). “Believe in the Lord Jesus, and you will be saved” (Acts 16:31). The gospel “is the power of God for the salvation of everyone who believes” (Romans 1:16). Christians are known as believers, not as repenters. Belief is the defining characteristic.

Does this mean that we are to accept certain facts? The Greek word can mean that kind of belief, but more often it conveys the sense of trust. When Paul encourages us to believe in Jesus Christ, he is not emphasizing facts. (The devil knows the facts about Jesus, but he isn’t saved.)

When we believe in Jesus Christ, we trust him. We know he is faithful and trustworthy. We can count on him to take care of us, to give us what he promises. We can trust him to rescue us from humanity’s worst problems. When we turn to him for salvation, we admit that we need help, and that he can provide it. 

Our faith does not save us—our faith must be in him, not something else. We commit ourselves to him, and he saves us. When we trust in Christ, we quit trying to save ourselves. Although we try to have good behavior, we do not think our efforts are saving us (diligent effort never made anyone perfect). Nor do we despair when our efforts fail. That’s because we are trusting in Christ, not in ourselves, for our salvation. Our confidence is in him, not in our success or failure.

Faith is what motivates repentance. When we trust Jesus as our Savior, when we realize that God loves us so much that he sent his Son to die for us, when we know that he wants the best for us, then we become willing to live for him and please him. We make a choice—we give up the pointless and frustrating life we used to have, and accept his purpose and direction for what life is supposed to be.

Faith is the internal change that makes all the difference. Our faith doesn’t earn anything or add anything to what Jesus has earned for us. Faith is simply the willingness to respond to what he has done. We are like slaves working in the clay pits, and Christ announces, “I have purchased your freedom.” We are free to stay in the pits, or we can trust him and leave. The redemption has been done; our part is to accept it and act on it.

Grace

Salvation is God’s gift to us, given by his grace, his generosity. We can’t earn it, no matter what we do. “It is by grace you have been saved, through faith—and this is not from yourselves, it is the gift of God—not by works, so that no one can boast” (Ephesians 2:8-9). Even our faith is a gift of God. Even if we obey perfectly from now on, we do not deserve a reward (Luke 17:10).

We were created for good works (Eph­esians 2:10), but good works cannot save us. They follow salvation, but they cannot earn it. As Paul says, if salvation could be achieved by law-keeping, then Christ died for nothing (Galatians 2:21). Grace does not give us permission to sin, but grace is given to us when we sin (Romans 6:15; 1 John 1:9). Whatever good works we do, we thank God for doing them in us (Galatians 2:20; Philippians 2:13).

God “has saved us and called us to a holy life—not because of anything we have done but because of his own purpose and grace” (2 Timothy 1:9). “He saved us, not because of righteous things we had done, but because of his mercy” (Titus 3:5).

Grace is the heart of the gospel: We are saved by God’s gift, not by our works. The gospel is “the message of his grace” (Acts 14:3; 20:24). “It is through the grace of our Lord Jesus that we are saved” (Acts 15:11). “We are justified freely by his grace through the redemption that came by Christ Jesus” (Romans 3:24). We would be hopelessly in sin and condemnation, except for grace.

Our salvation depends on what Christ has done. He is the Savior, the one who rescues us. We cannot brag about our obedi­ence, or our faith, because they are always defective. The only thing we can be proud of is what Christ has done (2 Corinthians 10:17-18)—and he did it for everyone, not just us.

Justification

The Bible explains salvation in many ways: ransom, redemption, forgiveness, reconciliation, adoption, justification, etc. That is because people understand their problem in different ways. For those who feel dirty, Christ offers cleansing. For those who feel enslaved, he offers redemption, or purchase. For those who feel guilt, he gives forgiveness.

For people who feel alienated and put at a distance, he offers reconciliation and friendship. For those who feel worthless, he gives an assurance of value. For people who don’t feel like they belong, he describes salvation as adoption and inheritance. For those who are aimless, he gives purpose and direction. For those who are tired, he offers rest. For the fearful, he gives hope. For the anxious, he offers peace. Salvation is all this, and more.

Let’s look at justification. The Greek word is a courtroom term. People who are justified are declared “not guilty.” They are exonerated, cleared, acquitted, declared OK. When God justifies us, he says that our sins will not be counted against us. They are removed from the record.

When we accept that Jesus died for us, when we acknowledge that we need a Savior, when we acknowledge that our sin deserves punishment and that Jesus bore the punishment of our sins for us, then we have faith, and God assures us that we are forgiven.

No one can be justified, or declared righteous, by observing the law (Romans 3:20), because the law does not save. It is only a standard that we fail to meet, and by that measurement, all of us fall short (v. 23). God “justifies those who have faith in Jesus” (v. 26). We are “justified by faith apart from observing the law” (v. 28).

To illustrate justification by faith, Paul uses the example of Abraham, who “believed God, and it was credited to him as righteousness” (Romans 4:3, quoting Genesis 15:6). Because Abraham trusted God, God counted him as righteous. This was long before the law was given, showing that justification is a gift of God, received by faith, not earned by law-keeping.

Justification is more than forgiveness, more than removing our debts. Justification means counting us as righteous, as having done something right. Our righteousness is not from our own works, but from Christ (1 Corinthians 1:30). It is through the obedience of Christ, Paul says, that believers are made righteous (Romans 5:19).

Paul even says that God “justifies the wicked” (Romans 4:5). God will consider a sinner righteous (and therefore accepted on the day of judgment) if the sinner trusts God. A person who trusts God will no longer want to be wicked, but this is a result and not a cause of salvation. People are “not justified by observing the law, but by faith in Jesus Christ” (Galatians 2:16).

A new start

Some people come to faith suddenly. Something clicks in their brain, a light goes on, and they accept Jesus as their Savior. Other people come to faith in a more gradual way, slowly realizing that they do trust in Christ and not in themselves for their salvation.

Either way, the Bible describes this as a new birth. When we have faith in Christ, we are born anew as children of God (John 1:12-13; Galatians 3:26; 1 John 5:1). The Holy Spirit begins to live within us (John 14:17), and God begins a new creation in us (2 Corinthians 5:17; Galatians 6:15). The old self dies, and a new person is being created (Ephesians 4:22-24)—God is changing us.

In Jesus Christ, and as we have faith in him, God is undoing the results of humanity’s sin. As the Holy Spirit works within us, a new humanity is being formed. The Bible doesn’t say exactly how this happens; it just says that it is being done. The process begins in this life and is finished in the next.

The goal is to make us more like Jesus Christ. He is the image of God in perfection (2 Corinthians 4:4; Colossians 1:15; Hebrews 1:3), and we must be transformed into his likeness (2 Corinthians 3:18; Galatians 4:19; Ephesians 4:13; Colossians 3:10). We are to be like him in spirit—in love, joy, peace, humility and other godly qualities. That’s what the Holy Spirit does in us. He is restoring the image of God.

Salvation is also described as re­conciliation—the repair of our relationship with God (Romans 5:10-11; 2 Corinthians 5:18-21; Ephesians 2:16; Colossians 1:20-22). No longer do we resist or ignore God—we love him. We are changed from enemies to friends. And even more than friends—God says that he adopts us as his own children (Romans 8:15; Ephesians 1:5). We are in his family, with rights, responsibilities and a glorious inheritance (Romans 8:16-17; Gal­a­tians 3:29; Ephesians 1:18; Colossians 1:12).

Eventually there will be no more pain and sorrow (Revelation 21:4), which means that no one will be making mistakes. Sin will be no more, and death will be no more (1 Corinthians 15:26). That goal may seem a long way off when we look at ourselves now, but the journey (just like any other journey) begins with a single step—the step of accepting Christ as Savior. Christ will com­plete the work he begins in us (Phil­ippians 1:6).

And in the future, we will be even more like Christ (1 Corinthians 15:49; 1 John 3:2). We will be immortal, incorruptible, glorious and sinless. Our spiritual bodies will have supernatural powers. We will have a vitality, intelligence, creativity, power and love far beyond what we know now. The image of God, once tarnished by sin, will be restored even better than it was before.

Michael Morrison, 2001

See www.wcg.org/lit/gospel for more articles about salvation.

The doctrine of eternal security in theological language is referred to as the “perseverance of the saints.” In common expression it is referred to as “once saved, always saved” or “once a Christian, always a Christian.”

Many Scriptures give us an assurance that we have salvation now, even though we must await the resurrection to inherit, in finality, eternal life and the kingdom of God. Here are some of the phrases the New Testament uses:

He who believes has eternal life (John 6:47).... Every one who looks to the Son and believes in him shall have eternal life and I will raise him up at the last day (John 6:40).... I give them eternal life, and they shall never perish: no one can snatch them out of my hand (John 10:28)…. There is now no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus (Romans 8:1).... Those God foreknew he also predestined to be conformed to the likeness of his Son (Romans 8:29).... [Nothing] will be able to separate us from the love of God that is in Christ Jesus our Lord (Romans 8:39).... [Christ] will keep you strong to the end (1 Corinthians 1:8).... God is faithful; he will not let you be tempted beyond what you can bear (1 Corinthian 10:13).... He who began a good work in you will carry it on to completion (Philippians 1:6).... We have passed from death to life (1 John 3:14).

It is upon such assurances that the doctrine of eternal security is built. However, there is another side to the coin of salvation. There also appear to be warnings that Christians can fall from the grace of God.

Christians are warned, “If you think you are standing firm, be careful that you don’t fall” (1 Corinthians 10:12). Jesus said, “Watch and pray so that you will not fall into temptation” (Mark 14:38) and “the love of most will grow cold” (Matthew 24:12) The apostle Paul said some in the church had “shipwrecked their faith” (1 Timothy 1:19). The church at Ephesus was warned that Christ might remove its lampstand and he would vomit the lukewarm Laodiceans from his mouth. Most fearful is the admonition in Hebrews 10, verses 26-31:

If we deliberately keep on sinning after we have received the knowledge of the truth, no sacrifice for sins is left, but only a fearful expectation of judgment and of raging fire that will consume the enemies of God.

Anyone who rejected the law of Moses died without mercy on the testimony of two or three witnesses. How much more severely do you think a man deserves to be punished who has trampled the Son of God under foot, who has treated as an unholy thing the blood of the covenant that sanctified him, and who has insulted the Spirit of grace? For we know him who said, “It is mine to avenge; I will repay.”

There is also Hebrews 6:4-6 to think about:

It is impossible for those who have once been enlightened, who have tasted the heavenly gift, who have shared in the Holy Spirit, who have tasted the goodness of the word of God and the powers of the coming age, if they fall away, to be brought back to repentance, because to their loss they are crucifying the Son of God all over again and subjecting him to public disgrace.

There is a duality, then, in the New Testament. Many verses are positive about the eternal salvation that we have in Christ. This salvation seems secure. But such verses are tempered by some warnings that appear to say Christians can lose their salvation through persistent unbelief.

Since the question of eternal security or whether Christians are safe—that is, when once saved, whether they are always saved—usually comes up because of such scriptures as Hebrews 10:26-31, let’s look at this passage in more detail. The question is how to interpret these verses. To whom is the writer talking, and what is the nature of the people’s “belief” and what have they accepted?

Let’s first look at what Hebrews as a whole tells us. The point of this book is the need for belief in Christ as the totally sufficient sacrifice for sins. There are no competitors. Faith must rest in him alone. The solution to the question of the possible loss of salvation generated by verse 26 lies in the last verse of the chapter: “We are not of those who shrink back and are destroyed [or, lost], but of those who believe [or, have faith] and are saved.” Some shrink back and are lost, but those who remain in Christ cannot be lost.

This same assurance to the faithful is also found in the verses prior to Hebrews 10:26. Christians have confidence to be in God’s presence by the blood of Jesus (verse 19). We can draw near to God with full assurance of faith (verse 22). The writer exhorts Christians with these words: “Let us hold unswervingly to the hope we profess, for he who promised is faithful” (verse 23).

One way to understand the verses in Hebrews 6 and 10 about “falling away” is to see the writer as giving his readers hypothetical scenarios to encourage them to remain steadfast in the faith. Let’s look at Hebrews 10:19-39, for example. The people to whom he is talking “have confidence to enter the Most Holy Place” through Christ (verse 19). They are able to “draw near to God” (verse 22). The writer sees these people as holding “unswervingly to the hope we profess” (23). He wants to spur them on to even greater love and faith (verse 24).

As part of his encouragement, he paints a picture of what could happen—hypothetically according to the above theory—to those who “deliberately keep on sinning” (verse 26). Nonetheless, the people he is addressing are people who “had received the light” and “stood their ground” during days of persecution (verses 32-33). They have their “confidence” in Christ, and the writer encourages them to persevere in the faith (verses 35-36). Finally, he says of the people to whom he is writing that “we are not of those who shrink back and are destroyed, but of those who believe and are saved” (verse 39).

Notice, also, how the writer closes his warning about “falling away” in Hebrews 6:1-8. He says: “Even though we speak like this, dear friends, we are confident of better things in your case—things that accompany salvation. God is not unjust; he will not forget your work and the love you have shown him as you have helped his people and continue to help them” (verses 9-10). The writer then goes on to tell them he has said these things so that they will show the “same diligence to the very end.”

Hypothetically, then, it is possible to speak of a situation in which a person who truly had faith in Christ could lose it. But if it were not possible, would the warning be appropriate or effective?

In the real world, can Christians lose their faith? Christians can “fall” in the sense of committing sins (1 John 1:8-2:2). They can become spiritually lazy in certain situations. But does this sometimes result in a final “falling away” for those who are truly in Christ? This is not wholly clear from Scripture. In fact, we might ask how one can “truly” be in Christ and yet be capable of simultaneously “falling away”?

The church’s position, as expressed in its Statement of Beliefs, is that no one can snatch people of continuing faith whom God gives to Christ out of his hand. In other words, if a person’s faith is in Christ, he or she cannot be lost. As long as Christians hold fast to this confession of their hope, their salvation is safe.

The question about the “once saved, always saved” doctrine has to do with whether we can lose our faith in Christ. As mentioned earlier, the book of Hebrews seems to describe people who have at least an initial “faith” but who can be in danger of losing it. Yet, that proves the point made in the previous paragraph. The only way to lose salvation is to discard the only Way to salvation: faith in Jesus Christ.

The book of Hebrews is primarily about the sin of unbelief in God’s saving work, which he accomplished in Jesus Christ. (See, for example, Hebrews 1:2; 2:1-4; 3:12, 14, 3:19-4:3; 4:14.) Hebrews chapter 10 gets into the question dramatically with verse 19, stating that we have confidence and full assurance through Jesus Christ.

Verse 23 exhorts us to hold fast to our confession. We know this for certain: As long as we hold fast the confession of our hope, we are fully secure and cannot lose our salvation. This confession includes our faith in Christ’s atonement for our sins, our hope of new life in him and our continuing allegiance to him in this life.

Often, those who use the slogan “once saved always saved” are not clear about what they mean. The phrase does not mean that a person has been saved merely because he or she said few words about Christ. Human beings are saved when they have the Holy Spirit, having been born again to a new life in Christ. Real faith is evidenced by allegiance to Christ, and that means we no longer live for self, but for the Savior.

The bottom line is, we are safe in Christ as long as we continue to live in Jesus (Hebrews 10:19-23). We have full assurance of faith in him, because it is he who saves us. We don’t have to worry, “Am I going to make it?” In Christ we have assurance—we are his and are saved, and nothing can snatch us out of his hand.

The only way we could be lost is to spurn his blood, deciding we really don’t need him after all and that we are sufficient to ourselves. If we did that, we wouldn’t really care about being saved anyway. As long as we remain faithful in Christ, we have assurance that he will complete the work he has begun in us.

The comforting thing is: We do not have to worry about our salvation, saying, “What if I fail? What if I fail?” We have already failed. Jesus is the one who saves us, and he doesn’t fail. Can we fail to accept him? Yes, but if we are Spirit-led Christians we haven’t failed to accept him. Once we accept Jesus, the Holy Spirit lives in us, conforming us to his image. We have joy, not fear. We have peace, not anxiety.

When we believe in Jesus Christ, we stop worrying about whether we’ll “make it.” He “made it” for us. We rest in him. We quit worrying. We have faith and trust in him, not in ourselves. So the question of whether we can lose our salvation no longer bothers us. Why? Because we believe Jesus’ work on the cross and his resurrection is all we need.

God doesn’t need our perfection. We need his, and he has given it to us as his free gift through faith in Christ. We won’t fail, because our salvation doesn’t depend on us.

To summarize, the church believes that those who remain in Christ cannot be lost. They are “eternally secure.” But this depends on what people mean when they say “once saved, always saved.”

As far as the related doctrine of pre­destination is concerned, we can summarize the church’s position in a few words. We do not believe that God has decreed before all time who will and will not be lost. It is the church’s belief that God will make fair and just provision for people who did not receive the gospel in this life. Such people will be judged on the same basis as we are, that is, on whether they give their allegiance and faith to Jesus Christ.

Paul Kroll, 2000

You may find one of following books helpful:

• J. Matthew Pinson, ed., Four Views on Eternal Security. Zondervan, 2002.

• Chad Brand, Perspectives on Elec­tion: Five Views. Broadman & Holman, 2006.

• James K. Beilby, ed. Divine Foreknowl­edge: Four Views. InterVarsity, 2001.

Worship is our response to the gracious acts of God on our behalf. For ancient Israel, worship was centered in the Exodus experience—what God had done for them. For Christians, worship is centered in the gospel, what God has done for all believers. Christian worship celebrates and participates in the life, death and resurrection of Jesus Christ for the salvation and redemption of all people.

The worship pattern given to Israel was designed especially for them. God gave the Israelites, through Moses, a worship pattern designed to enable them to respond in celebration to what God had done for them in delivering them from Egypt and bringing them into the Promised Land.

Christian worship does not require observances based on ancient Israel’s experience with God, but responds instead to the gospel. We might say by analogy that the “new wine” of the gospel is to be poured into “new wineskins” (Matthew 9:17). The “old wineskin” of the old covenant was not made to hold the new wine of the gospel (Hebrews 12:18-24).

New forms

Israelite worship was for Israel. It lasted until Christ came. Now God’s people wor­ship in new forms that reflect their response to new content—the transcendent new thing God has done in Jesus Christ. Christian worship is geared around the rehearsal of and participation in the body and blood of Jesus Christ. Its key components include:

1. The Lord’s Supper, also called Eucharist (or thanksgiving) and Communion, which was commanded by Christ.

2. Reading of Scripture, through which we rehearse and review the record of God’s love and promises, especially his promise of the Savior, Jesus Christ, and through which we are nourished with the Word of God.

3. Prayer and song, through which we make our petitions to God in faith, repent of our sins in humility, and honor, praise and give him thanks in joyful and grateful adoration.

Focused on content

Christian worship is focused primarily on content and meaning, rather than primarily on form or time. Therefore, Christian worship is not limited to any day of the week or to any particular season of the year. Nor is any day or season commanded or required of Christians. However, Christians are free to, and normally do, set aside special seasons to celebrate major aspects of the life and work of Jesus.

Christians also set aside one day a week for corporate worship, that is, for gathering together as the Body of Christ to worship God. Most Christians set aside Sunday for such worship. Some Christians set aside Saturday. A few choose to meet at other times, such as Wednesday evening.

Typical of seventh-day sabbatarian teaching is the belief that it is a sin for Christians to use Sunday as their regular day of gathering for worship. However, there is no biblical support for this idea.

Major events on Sunday

Surprising to many seventh-day sabba­tarians, the Gospel accounts specifically pinpoint events of major importance as having taken place on Sunday. As we shall see, even though there is no command that Christians worship on Sunday, there is certainly no reason for Christians to feel uncomfortable with worshiping on Sunday.

John’s Gospel tells us that disciples of Jesus came together on the first Sunday after Jesus was crucified, and that Jesus appeared among them (John 20:1). All four Gospels tell us that Jesus was first discovered to have been raised from the dead on early Sunday morning (Matthew 28:1; Mark 16:2; Luke 24:1; John 20:1).

All four Gospel writers considered it significant enough to mention that these events occurred at a particular time—Sunday. They could have left that detail out, but they did not. The Gospels declare that Jesus chose to reveal himself as the resurrected Messiah on Sunday, first in the morning, then in the afternoon, and finally in the evening. Not only did these Sunday appearances of the risen Jesus cause the Gospel writers no concern or alarm, they chose to make it plain that these things took place on that particular day of the week.

Road to Emmaus

If there is any question about which day the resurrection occurred on, consider the plain testimony of Luke’s account of the two men on the road to Emmaus. Jesus had prophesied that he would be raised from the dead on “the third day” (Luke 9:22; 18:33; 24:7).

Luke records plainly that Sunday, the day on which the women discovered that Jesus’ tomb was empty, was in fact “the third day.” He makes the point that the women discovered that Jesus was raised on Sunday morning (Luke 24:1), then makes the point that “the same day” (24:13), Sunday, was “the third day” (24:21), the day Jesus had said he would be raised (24:7).

Let’s review certain key facts that the Gospel writers were inspired to record about the first Sunday after the crucifixion of Jesus:

1. Jesus was raised from the dead (Luke 24:1-8, 13, 21).

2. Jesus was recognized in the “breaking of the bread” (Luke 24:30-31, 34-35).

3. The disciples were meeting together, and Jesus came to be with them (Luke 24:15, 36; John 20:1, 19). John also records that on the second Sunday after the crucifixion, the disciples were again meeting, and that Jesus again came to be with them (John 20:26).

In the early church

Luke recorded in Acts 20:7 that Paul spoke to the church in Troas when it assembled on Sunday to “break bread.” In 1 Corinthians 16:2, Paul told the church in Corinth, as he had told the churches in Galatia (v. 1), to use every Sunday for setting aside an offering for the famine-stricken Jerusalem church.

Paul does not say that the church must meet on Sunday. His statement here does, however, seem to indicate that Sunday meetings were not extraordinary. The reason he gives for the weekly offering was so that “when I come no collections will have to be made” (v. 2). If the members had been setting aside the money each Sunday at home, rather than giving it each week at a meeting, then a collection would still need to have been taken when Paul came.

The natural reading of these passages shows us that it was not unusual for Christians to meet on Sunday, nor was it unusual for them to “break bread” together (a term Paul associates with the Lord’s Supper; see 1 Corinthians 10:16-17) during their Sunday meetings.

As we can see, the inspired writers of the New Testament deliberately inform us that Jesus was raised on Sunday. They also had no qualms about the fact that at least some believers gathered on Sunday to break bread. While Christians are not commanded to gather for worship on Sunday, these examples show that there is no reason to have any qualms about doing so.

Potential pitfalls

As we have seen, there are sound reasons for the Christian practice of gathering on Sunday as the body of Christ to commune with God. So then, must Christians meet on Sunday? No. Christian faith is not based on days, but on faith in God and his Son, Jesus Christ.

It would be a mistake to merely exchange one set of “commanded” days for another. Christian faith and worship is not about commanded days, but about knowing and loving God our Father and Jesus Christ our Lord and Savior.

When we decide which day we will gather with fellow believers for worship, we should make our decision for right reasons. Jesus’ command, “take, eat, this is my body” and “drink of this, all of you,” is not bound to any particular day. Yet, it has been a tradition of Gentile Christians to gather in communion with Christ on Sunday since the earliest years of the church, primarily because Sunday is the day on which Jesus revealed himself as raised from the dead.

The Sabbath commandment, along with all of the Mosaic law, ended with Jesus’ crucifixion and resurrection. To embrace it, or to try to reapply it in the form of a Sunday Sabbath, is to diminish God’s revelation of Jesus Christ as the fulfillment of his promises.

To believe that God commands Sabbath-keeping for Christians is to deprive ourselves of the full joy God wants us to have in Christ. God wants us to trust in him alone for salvation, and he wants us to find our rest and consolation in him alone. We are saved by grace, and we live by grace.

Confusion

We occasionally receive a letter in which the writer expresses his or her dissatisfaction that we would challenge the view that the weekly Sabbath is God’s holy day for Christians. They declare that they will “obey God rather than men,” regardless of what anyone tells them.

Certainly, such commitment to do what one believes God requires is good; the misunderstanding is in what it is that God requires. The strong sabbatarian conviction that we are obeying God by keeping the weekly Sabbath illustrates the confusion and error that sabbatarian teaching has given unwary Christians.

First, sabbatarian teaching sets up an unbiblical understanding of what it means to obey God, then it sets up that version of obedience as the defining content of Christian faithfulness. The result is an “us vs. them” way of thinking, an approach to God that creates divisions in the body of Christ based on adherence to a command that the New Testament teaches is not in force.

Faithfulness to the weekly Sabbath is not a matter of obeying God, because God does not command the weekly Sabbath for Chris­tians. God commands us to love him, and loving God is not defined by keeping the weekly Sabbath. It is defined by believing in Jesus Christ and by loving our neighbor (1 John 3:21-24; 4:19-21). There is, the Bible says, a new covenant and a new law (He­brews 7:12; 8:13; 9:15).

It is a mistake for Christian teachers to set up the weekly Sabbath as a measuring rod for Christian faithfulness. The teaching that the Sabbath commandment is in force for Christians introduces destructive legalism into the Christian conscience, clouds the truth and power of the gospel and creates division in the body of Christ

Divine rest

The Bible says that God’s will for humans is that they believe the gospel and love him (John 6:40; 1 John 3:21-24; 4:21; 5:2). The greatest joy humans can have is knowing and loving their Lord (John 17:3), and such love is not defined by or enhanced by observance of a particular day of the week.

The Christian life is one of resting joyfully in the Savior, of entering the divine rest. It is a life in which every part of life is dedicated to God, and every activity is a sacrament of devotion. To set up Sabbath-keeping as a defining element of “true” Christianity causes a person to miss much of the joy and power of the truth that Christ has come, and that in him God has established a new covenant (Matthew 26:28; Hebrews 9:15) with all who believe the good news (Romans 1:16; 1 John 5:1).

The weekly Sabbath was a shadow, a hint, of the reality that was yet to come (Colossians 2:16-17). To hold up the hint as forever essential is to ignore the truth that the reality is indeed present and available. It robs one of being able to take full joy in what is really important.

It might be something like continuing to dwell on, treasure and meditate on one’s engagement announcement long after the wedding has taken place. It is high time to put one’s first attention on the spouse, and let the engagement announcement recede to its proper status as a pleasant memory, a step toward its own true goal.

Places and times are no longer central to the content of worship for the people of God. True worship, Jesus said, involves spirit and truth (John 4:21-26). The spirit involves the heart. Jesus is the truth.

When Jesus was asked, “What must we do to do the works God requires?” he answered, “The work of God is this: to believe in the one he has sent” (John 6:28-29). That is why Christian worship should revolve around Jesus Christ, around his identity as the eternal Son of God and his work as Lord, Savior and Teacher.

More pleasing?

To believe that obedience to the Sabbath command is the criterion by which we will be saved or damned in the final Judgment, as many sabbatarians have taught, is to mis­understand both sin and the grace of God. If Sabbath-keepers are the only ones who will be saved, then the Sabbath is the standard of judgment, not the Son of God who died and rose from the dead for our salvation.

Sabbath-keepers believe that it is more pleasing to God to keep the Sabbath than it is to ignore the Sabbath. But this reasoning does not come from the Bible. The Bible teaches that the Sabbath command, along with the entire law of Moses, has been superseded and transcended in Jesus Christ.

Therefore, it is not “more pleasing” to God for us to keep the Sabbath than it is for us not to keep the Sabbath; the Sabbath was not given to Christians. The destructive ele­ment in sabbatarian theology is its insistence that Sabbath-keepers are the only true and faithful Christians, which means that the blood of Jesus is not enough to save you without your also keeping the Sabbath.

The Bible opposes such doctrinal con­fusion with powerful assertions that we are saved by the grace of God through faith in Christ without works of any kind (Ephesians 2:8-10; Romans 3:21-22; 4:4-8; 2 Timothy 1:9; Titus 3:4-8). Such unvarnished declar­ations of the sufficiency of Christ alone to save us apart from the law plainly contradict the sabbatarian doctrine that salvation will not come to people who do not keep the Sabbath.

More godly?

The average Sabbath-keeper feels he or she is doing something more godly than non-Sabbath-keepers. Consider these statements from former WCG literature:

But only those who continue to obey God’s command to keep the Sabbath will finally enter the glorious “rest” of God’s Kingdom and receive the gift of eternal, spiritual life. (Ambassador College Bible Corre­spondence Course, Lesson 27 of 58 [Ambassador College, 1964, 1967], 5)

Those not keeping the Sabbath will not be bearing God’s Sabbath “sign” which ident­i­fies His people, and therefore will not be born of God at Christ’s coming! (ibid., 12).

Not only was Sabbath-keeping con­sid­ered more godly, it was believed that no one would be saved without it. Consider this state­ment from a Seventh-day Adventist book:

Sunday observance, in the context of this eschatological struggle, will constitute in the end a distinguishing mark, here spoken of as the mark of the beast. Satan has exalted Sunday as the sign of his authority, while the Sabbath will be the great test of loyalty to God. This issue will divide Christendom into two classes, and will characterize the final time of trouble for the people of God. (Don Neufeld, ed., Seventh Day Adventist Encyclopedia, 2nd. rev. ed., vol. 3 [Review & Herald Publishing Association, 1966], 492)

This statement displays the concept that Sabbath-keeping is the deciding criterion of who is faithful to God and who is not, a concept that emerges from a fundamental misunderstanding of the teaching of Jesus and the apostles, a concept that promotes an attitude of spiritual superiority.

Summary

Sabbatarian theology works against the grace of God in Jesus Christ and the plain teaching of the Bible. The law of Moses, including the Sabbath commandment, was given to Israel and not to the church. Although Christians should feel free to gather for worship on any day of the week, we must not make the mistake of thinking there is any biblical reason for choosing Saturday above any other day.

We can summarize it this way:

• It is contrary to biblical teaching to say that the seventh-day Sabbath is binding on Christians.

• It is contrary to biblical teaching to say that God is more pleased by Sabbath-keepers than by non-Sabbath-keepers, whether they are seventh-day sabbatarians or Sunday sabbatarians.

• It is contrary to biblical teaching to say that one day is more holy or godly than another for the church to gather for worship.

• A central gospel event occurred on Sunday, and that is the basis for the Christian tradition of gathering on that day to worship.

• The resurrection of Jesus Christ, the Son of God who came as one of us to save us, forms the foundation of our faith. Therefore, gathering for worship on Sunday is a reflection of our belief in the gospel. Yet, gathering on Sunday is not commanded, nor does worship on Sunday make Christians more holy or loved by God than gathering on another day of the week.

• It is spiritually harmful to believe and teach that the Sabbath command is binding on Christians, because that teaching is contrary to Scripture and works against unity and love in the body of Christ.

• It is spiritually harmful to believe and teach that Christians are required to worship on either Saturday or Sunday, because such a teaching sets up the day of worship as a legalistic hoop that one must jump through to be saved.

A final thought

As followers of Jesus, we must learn not to condemn one another in the decisions we make in accord with our consciences before God. And we must be honest with ourselves about the reasons that lie behind our decisions. The Lord Jesus Christ has brought believers into his divine rest, into peace with him in full favor with God. May we, who love God, grow in love for one another as Jesus commanded.

J.M. Feazell, 2000, 2003

See www.wcg.org/lit/law/sabbath for more articles and a booklet about the Sabbath.

You may also find helpful:

• Michael Morrison, Sabbath, Circum­cision and Tithing. Writers Club, 2002.

• Dale Ratzlaff, Sabbath in Christ. Life Assur­ance Ministries, 2003.

• D.A. Carson, From Sabbath to Lord’s Day. Wipf & Stock, 2000.

“A horrible dread.” That was how the young man described his deep fear that God had rejected him because of his repeated sins.

“I thought I had repented, but I did it again,” he explained. “I don’t even know if I really have faith, because I’m afraid God might not forgive me again. No matter how sincere I think my repentance is, it never seems to be enough.”

Let’s talk about what the gospel means by repentance toward God.

The first mistake in trying to understand what it means is to go to an English dictionary for a definition of the word repent. Contemporary dictionaries tell us how words have come to be understood at the time the dictionary was compiled. But a modern English dictionary does not tell us what was in the mind of a person who was writing 2,000 years ago in Greek about things that were first spoken in Aramaic, for example.

Webster’s Ninth New Collegiate Dictionary says this of the word repent: 1) to turn from sin and dedicate oneself to the amendment of one’s life; 2a) to feel regret or contrition; 2b) to change one’s mind.

Webster’s first definition is exactly what most religious people believe Jesus was talking about when he said, “Repent and believe.” They believe that Jesus means that only people who repent, that is, stop sinning and change their ways, will be in the kingdom of God. But the fact is, that is precisely what Jesus was not saying.

Common mistake

It is a common mistake for Christians to think of repentance as ceasing to sin. “If you had really repented, you wouldn’t have done it again” is a refrain many tormented souls have heard from well-meaning, law-uphold­ing spiritual counselors. We are told that repentance is to “turn around and go the other way,” and it is explained in the context of turning away from sin and turning toward a life of obedience to God’s law.

With that idea firmly in mind, Christians set out with the best of intentions to change their ways. But along the way, some ways change, and some ways seem to stick like super-glue. And even the ways that change have a nasty way of cropping up again.

Is God satisfied with such mediocrity, such hit-and-miss obedience? “No, he is not!” the preacher exhorts, and the vicious, gospel-crippling cycle of commitment, fail­ure and despair takes another spin around the going-nowhere rat-racetrack of futility.

And just when we are feeling frustrated and depressed about our failure to measure up to the high standards of God, we hear another sermon or read another article about “real repentance” and “deep repentance” and how such repentance results in a complete turning away from sin.

So, we crank up the commitment jalopy and go at it again, with the same, miserable, predictable results. And our frustration and despair deepens, because we realize that our turning away from sin is anything but “complete.”

We can only assume we have not “really repented.” Our repentance was not “deep” enough, or “heartfelt” enough or “true” enough. And if we have not really repented, then we must not really have faith. Which means we must not really have the Holy Spirit. Which means we must not really be saved.

Finally, we either get used to living like that, or, as many have done, we finally throw in the towel and walk away from the whole medicine show people call Christianity.

We won’t even talk about the disaster of people who actually believe they have cleaned up their lives and made themselves acceptable to God. Their state is far worse.

Repentance toward God is simply not about a new and improved you.

Repent and believe

“Repent and believe the gospel,” Jesus declares in Mark 1:15. Repentance and faith mark the beginning of our new life in the kingdom of God. They don’t mark it because we did the right thing. They mark it because that is when the scales fall off our darkened eyes and we at last see in Jesus Christ the glorious light of the liberty of the sons of God.

Everything that ever needed to be done for human forgiveness and salvation has already been done through the death and resurrection of the Son of God. There was a time when we were in the dark about that. We couldn’t enjoy it or rest in it because we were blind to it.

We thought we had to make our own way in this world, and we spent all our effort and time plowing as straight a furrow in our little corner of life as we could manage.

We devoted all our attention to keeping our life and our future safe and secure. We worked hard to be respected and appreciated. We stood up for our rights and tried not to let anybody or anything take unfair advantage of us. We fought to protect and preserve our reputation, our family, our belongings. We did everything in our power to make something worthwhile of our lives, to be winners and not losers.

But like everybody who ever lived, it was a losing battle. Despite all our best efforts and plans and hard work, we simply cannot control our lives. We cannot keep disasters and tragedies and failures and pains from coming out of nowhere and shattering what little scraps of hope and joy we have managed to piece together.

Then one day, for no other reason than that he wanted to, God let us in on the way things actually are. The world is his, and we are his.

We are dead in sin, and there is no way out. We are lost blind losers in a world of lost blind losers, because we don’t have the sense to hold the hand of the only One who knows his way around. But that’s OK, because he became a loser for us through crucifixion and death, and we can be winners with him by joining him in his death so that we can also join him in his resurrection.

In other words, God gave us good news! The good news is that he has personally paid the heavy price for all our selfish, rebellious, destructive, evil lunacy. He has freely saved us, washed us, purified us, dressed us in righteousness and set a place for us at his eternal banquet table. And through the gospel, he invites us to trust him that it is so.

When, by the grace of God, you come to see that and believe it, you have repented. To repent, you see, is to say: “Yes! Yes! Yes! I believe it! I trust your word! I’m leaving behind this rat-race life of mine, this point­less struggle to hold together with chewing gum and baling wire this death I thought was life. I’m ready for your rest. Help my unbelief!”

Repentance is a change of how you think. It is a change of perspective, from seeing yourself as the center of the universe to seeing God as the center of the universe, and trusting your life to his mercy. It is to sur­render. It is to throw down your crown at the feet of the rightful ruler of the cosmos. It is the most important change you will ever make.

Not about morals

Repentance is not about morals. It is not about good behavior. It is not about “doing better.”

Repentance is putting your trust in God instead of in yourself, your wits, your friends, your country, your government, your guns, your money, your authority, your pres­tige, your reputation, your car, your house, your job, your family heritage, your color, your sex, your success, your looks, your clothes, your titles, your degrees, your church, your spouse, your muscles, your leaders, your IQ, your accent, your ac­com­plishments, your charity work, your dona­tions, your kindness, your compassion, your self-control, your chastity, your honesty, your obedience, your devotion, your spiritual disciplines or anything else you can come up with of yours or associated with you that I left out of this long sentence.

Repentance is putting all your eggs in one basket—his basket. It’s getting on his side, believing what he says, throwing in your lot with him, giving him your allegiance.

Repentance is not about promises to be good. It is not about teeth-clenched straining to “put sin out of your life.” It is trusting God to have mercy on you. It is trusting God to fix your evil heart. It is trusting God to be who he says he is—Creator, Savior, Redeemer, Teacher, Lord and Sanctifier. And it is dying, dying to your need to be thought of as right and good.

We are talking about a love relationship—not that you loved God, but that he loved you (1 John 4:10). This Person is the very fountainhead of all that is, including you, and it has dawned on you that this Person loves you for who you are—his beloved child in Christ—certainly not for what you have, or what you have done, or what your reputation is, or how you look, or any other characteristic you have, but purely and simply for you in Christ.

Suddenly nothing is the same. The whole world has suddenly become bright. All your failures no longer matter. They are all redeemed and made right in Christ’s death and resurrection. Your eternal future is assured, and nothing in heaven or earth can take your joy away from you, because you belong to God for Christ’s sake (Romans 8:1, 38). You believe him, you trust him, you put your life in his hands, come what may, whatever anyone says or does.

You can be lavish in forgiveness, in patience, in kindness, even in losses and defeats—you have nothing to lose, because you have gained absolutely everything in Christ (Ephesians 4:32-5:1). The only thing that matters to you is his new creation (Galatians 6:15).

Repentance is not just another worn out, hollow, moth-eaten commitment to be a good boy or girl. It is dying to all your big images of yourself and putting your weak, loser hand in the hand of the Man who calmed the sea (Galatians 6:3). It is coming to Christ for rest (Matthew 11:28-30). It is trusting his word of grace.

God’s initiative, not ours

Repentance is about trusting God to be who he is and to do what he does, not about your good deeds versus your bad deeds. God, in his perfect freedom to be exactly who he wants to be in his love for us, decided to forgive our sins.

Let’s be very clear about this: God forgives our sins—all of them—past, present and future; he does not tally them (John 3:17). Jesus died for us while we were still sinners (Romans 5:8). He is the slain Lamb, and he was slain for us, for every one of us (1 John 2:2).

Repentance, you see, is not a way of getting God to do what he has already done. Rather, it is believing he has done it—saved your life forever and given you a priceless eternal inheritance—and such believing blossoms into loving him for it.

“Forgive us our sins, as we forgive those who sin against us,” Jesus told us to pray. When it dawns on us that God has, for reasons entirely internal to himself, simply decided to write off our lifetime of selfish arrogance, all our lies, all our cruelty, all our pride, lust, betrayals and meanness—all of our evil thoughts, deeds and plans, we have a choice to make. We can praise him and thank him forever for his indescribable sacrifice of love, or we can go right on living the “I’m-a-good-person-don’t-think-I’m-not” rat-race life we love so much.

We can believe God, we can ignore him, or we can run scared of him. If we believe him, we can walk in joyous friendship with him (and since he is a friend of sinners, all sinners, that makes everybody, even bad people, our friends too). If we don’t trust him, if we think he won’t or can’t forgive us, we can’t walk joyously with him (or with anybody else, for that matter, except for people who behave like we want them to). Instead we will be afraid of him and eventually despise him (and everybody else who doesn’t stay out of our way).

Two sides of the same coin