Yes and Then No, the Bible with Mark Ward (Part One)
My last post of last week, the shell game with Bible words, if you followed the links, referred to a session Mark Ward did at Bob Jones Seminary, where he did refer to Thomas Ross and myself. Someone sent that to me, and in my path to watching it, I became curious in another of his videos. I’ll deal with both here. One I essentially agreed with, and the other, no.
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Chronologically, Mark Ward first made a podcast from his greenhouse about attending an IFB meeting close to where he lived. An IFB pastor invited him because R. B. Ouellette was going to preach on the King James issue. He didn’t say which church this was. It was surely revivalist in the Hyles/Sword realm. Ward started out ready to deal with KJVOnlyism, but it turned into something else. Here’s the podcast.
Ward traveled to a special meeting at a revivalist IFB church to interact with KJVO. Based upon a heads-up from its pastor, he expected something promoting KJVO. Ward reported much he liked about the service all the way up to the Ouellette sermon. Ouellette opened to Job 31:35-36 to defend KJVO. A plain reading of Job 31 does not appear to do that.
Ward and Ouellette both graduated from Bob Jones University. In his criticism, Ward distinguished between using the Bible for what a man wants to say and preaching what the Bible does say. By his account, Ouellette did the former. He was not a herald, who delivers the Word of the King. Ward titled his podcast, “The Biggest Step the IFB Needs to Take.” He treats IFB with generosity, more than what I would. Instead of the KJVO issue, he found a “preaching” one instead.
YES
Bad Preaching
I wrote, “Yes,” in this title. I agree with the criticism of this typical, popular IFB preaching. If IFB apparently cares for the perfection of its Bible, then preach the Bible. Its leaders very often preach like Ward described. He reported loud “Amens” shouted all around, which supported a message that twisted the Word of God. Ward exposed a reason for someone to separate from IFB churches and men. I say “Yes” to Ward. I agree with him.
What causes a man to preach like Ouellette? It’s not that he is unable to preach the Bible. Why would he settle for something entirely not what the passage says? Underlying doctrinal problems exist especially regarding the Holy Spirit. Keswick theology, second blessing theology, or revivalism, all similar error but with a nuance of difference, affect preaching.
Many IFB believe the preacher becomes a vessel for a message from the Holy Spirit. They believe that through the Holy Spirit God gives the preacher something others can’t even see in a text. This is called “preaching.” God uses “preaching,” but by that they don’t mean the Bible. The Bible is used, but the preaching is something unique. They trust the man of God has been given something they haven’t ever seen and can’t see.
However, I dispute preaching as the biggest step for IFB. It isn’t the “I” (independent) or the “B” (Baptist) in IFB that’s the problem. “F” for Fundamentalism is at the root of the problem. Actual preaching of the Bible isn’t a fundamental of fundamentalism. In general, IFB does not confront bad preaching. It allows it and even encourages it. If someone spiritualizes or allegorizes a passage and reads something into a text, it doesn’t bring condemnation. However, the biggest step for fundamentalism isn’t its preaching.
False Gospel
Fundamentalism is rife with a corrupted gospel. Ward commended the evangelism of IFB. What is the evangelism of IFB? Look all over the internet at the gospel presentations. Most IFB removes biblical repentance and the Lordship of Christ. Let’s say Ouellette rejected KJVO and started using the ESV, or even just the NKJV. Would he become acceptable to Ward, reaching his primary goal? Ouellette argues against repentance as necessary for salvation (I write here, here, and here). When you read doctrinal statements and the plans of salvation of those churches most associated with Ouellette, they’re the same.
A few years ago, James White participated in an interview with Steven Anderson. In White’s many criticisms of Anderson, he never mentions his false gospel. Anderson hosts an anti-repentance website. Anderson is worse than Ouellette, but both fall short of a biblical gospel. As White ignores Anderson’s gospel, Ward does Ouellette’s. This diverges from the often stated emphasis of evangelicals, the gospel of first importance. The version issue stokes greater heat than the gospel does.
Some IFB churches preach a true gospel even as some preach biblical sermons. Yet, a false gospel subverts IFB unrelated to the version of the Bible it uses. Years ago IFB allowed and even promoted the introduction and then acceptance of a false doctrine of salvation. I am happy Ward noticed the bad preaching of Ouellette, but his focus harms his ability to see the biggest IFB problem. Ward doesn’t mention the wrong gospel.
Conspiracy Theory: Biblical Methods of Evaluation, 2 of 7
Part two of this series is now at the link below. This post originally covered from the sentence: “If we have adopted and are going to share a conspiratorial belief with someone else, we need to have answered these questions ourselves and be ready to explain our answers to the person whom we seek to convince” to the sentence: “They are people who are created in God’s image, and we don’t get to slander them, even if their political persuasions, cultural practices, and other ways of living are different—or objectively far more worse and far more sinful—than ours are, thanks to God’s unmerited grace to us.” Feel free to continue to comment below on this post, if you wish, after reading it at the link below.
–TDR
The Shell Game Played With Words About the Bible
You know right now the concern about the gender of pronouns used to address the sexes. The controversy revolves around calling a biological male, “him,” or a biological female, “her.” People change the meaning of the words and expect us to play along. You know it’s a man, but you call him, a her. You call he, a she.
Let’s say we’re talking about the words of scripture. Inspiration applies to words. God inspired words. And then someone says, I believe in the inerrancy of scripture in the context of words. We think he means, no errors in the words. I think he even knows that we think he means words. However, he doesn’t mean words. He’s not saying that there are no errors in the words.
Someone holds up a Bible and calls it the inerrant Word of God. He doesn’t mean words. He means something different. It’s hard to say what he means, but it’s probably the following. Inerrancy means that you can trust that the teachings of the Bible are without error. He doesn’t bring up inerrancy in the context of the teachings of the Bible. He brings it up in the context of words. He’s playing a shell game, moving those shells around very quickly. You thought he meant words, but he didn’t.
You think the bead is under the shell. That’s what someone wants you to think. The bead is words, but you see a shell. Words aren’t under the shell. It’s teachings, and even that is ambiguous, because even with that, he doesn’t mean teachings.
When someone says the teachings of scripture are inerrant, if that’s even what he means, because that can become very ambiguous, he doesn’t mean that you can’t find errors in the Bible. You can. However, all things considered, if you take all the combined passages of the Bible to come up with those teachings, all the right teachings are available in the Bible.
Men don’t even agree on what the Bible teaches, let alone on what’s right that it does teach. Two different men can say they believe in inerrancy and then disagree on ten different doctrines of scripture. It’s a hypothetical inerrancy. Let’s just say it. It isn’t inerrancy. I can agree to an ambiguous, hypothetical inerrancy, and then agree that the Bible is inerrant. I can hold up the Bible and say, this is the inerrant Word of God.
When I say the Bible is without error, I mean that it is without error. Every Word that God inspired has been preserved in the language in which it is written. Since inerrancy relates to what God inspired, if there are missing words, then it isn’t inerrant any more. I believe that and not in a hypothetical way. I’m not going to say that we both agree the Bible is inerrant, fully realizing that when you say “inerrant” you don’t even mean “inerrant.” You mean something that allows you to believe the Bible is inerrant without believing that it is inerrant. This is like calling him, her.
If the Bible is perfect, then it can’t be given extra perfection. There are those who do not believe it is perfect. They also don’t believe that scripture says that scripture is perfect. They believe that it is inerrant, but it isn’t perfect.
I would say, don’t call the Bible perfect if you don’t believe it. Also, don’t call it inerrant, if you don’t believe it is inerrant. Don’t make perfect and inerrant mean something different than what they obviously mean in light of what the Bible says about itself.
I can go through my Bible and show you a doctrine of its inerrancy and perfection. Then I ask, “Does the Bible teach that it is inerrant and perfect?” You say, “Yes.” So then I ask, “Okay, so which Bible is the inerrant and perfect one?” You say, “None are.” So is the teaching of the Bible inerrant and perfect?
I believe the Bible is perfect and inerrant because the Bible says so. Then you start peppering me with individual words, phrases, verses, and even larger passages. I explain every one of those texts based on the presupposition that I have. I can do it. Now let me get into your presuppositions, how you came to having them, or whether they are reverse engineered.
You say, I can see that there isn’t a perfect Bible. So now when you look at the passages that teach the Bible is perfect, they’ve got to mean something else. Where do those presuppositions come from? How did you get those presuppositions? How is that conservative?
I’m not playing a shell game when I say the Bible is inerrant and perfect. Many others are.
The Regular History of Clever New Interpretations, Teachings, or Takes on and from Scripture: Socinianism
One way to get a Nobel prize in something, you’ve got to break some new ground or discover something no one has ever seen. In the world, the making of a printing press or light bulb changes everything. People still try to invent a better mousetrap. It happens. The phone replaced the telegraph and now our mobile devices, the phone.
Everyone can learn something new from scripture. You might even change or tweak a doctrine you’ve always believed. On the whole, you don’t want to teach from the Bible what no one has ever heard before. The goal is the original intent and understanding of the Author.
From the left comes progressivism. The U. S. Constitution, just over two hundred years old, means something different than when it was written. Loosely constructed, it has a flexible interpretation into which new meanings arise. Hegelian dialectics say a new thesis comes from synthesis of antithesis and a former thesis. Everything can be improved.
Early after the inspiration and then propagation of the Bible, men found new things no one ever saw in scripture. Many of these “finds” started a new movement. People have their fathers, the father of this or that teaching, contradictory to the other, causing division and new factions and denominations. Some of these changes become quite significant, a majority supplanting the constituents of the original teaching.
At the time of the Reformation, it was as if the world first found sole fide and sole scriptura. Men often call justification the Reformation doctrine of justification. This opened a large, proverbial can of worms. Many could read their own Bible in their own language. Others now dug into their own copy of the original languages of scripture. Skepticism grew. “If we didn’t know this before, what else did they not tell us?” It became a time ripe for religious shysters and this practice hasn’t stopped since then.
Socinus
The Italian, Laelius Socinus, was born in 1525 into a distinguished family of lawyers. Early his attention turned from law to scripture research. He doubted the teachings of Roman Catholicism. Socinus moved in 1548 to Zurich to study Greek and Hebrew. He still questioned established doctrine and challenged the Reformers. Laelius wrote his own confession of faith, which introduced different, conflicting beliefs. They took hold of his nephew, Faustus Socinus, born in 1539.
Faustus rejected orthodox Roman Catholic doctrines. The Inquisition denounced him in 1559, so he fled to Zurich in 1562. There he acquired his uncle’s writings. His doubt of Catholicism turned anti-Trinitarian. The Reformation did not go far enough for Socinus. His first published work in 1562 on the prologue of John rejected the essential deity of Jesus Christ.
Socinus’s journeys ended in Poland, where he became leader of the Minor Reformed Church, the Polish Brethren. His writings in the form of the Racovian Catechism survived through the press of the Racovian Academy of Rakow, Poland. His beliefs took the name, Socinianism, now also a catch-all for any type of dissenting doctrine.
Socinianism held that Jesus did not exist until his physical conception. God adopted Him as Son at His conception and became Son of God when the Holy Spirit conceived Him in Mary, a Gnostic view called “adoptionism.” It rejected the doctrine of original sin.
Socianism denied the omniscience of God. It introduced the first well developed concept of “open theism,” which said that man couldn’t have free will under a traditional (and scriptural) understanding of omniscience.
Socinianism also taught the moral example theory of atonement, teaching that Jesus sacrificed himself to motivate people to repent and believe. His death gave men the ability to be saved by their own works, who weren’t sinners by nature anyway.
Unitarians
The work of Socinus lived on in the belief of early English Unitarians, Henry Hedworth and John Biddle. Socinian belief was helped along also by its position of conscientious objection, a practice of refusing to perform military service. This principle was very popular with many and made Socinianism much more attractive to potential adherents. The First Unitarian Church, which followed Socianism as passed down through its leaders in England, was started in 1774 on Essex Street in London, where British Unitarian headquarters are still today.
As the Puritans of colonial America apostatized through various means, Unitarianism, a modern iteration of Socinianism took hold in the Congregational Church in America. After 1820, Congregationalists took Unitarianism as their established doctrine. The doctrine of Christ diminished to Jesus a good man and perhaps a prophet of God and in a sense the Son of God, but not God Himself.
Spirit of Skepticism
I write as an example of the diversity in the history of Christian doctrine and why it takes place. When you read the beliefs of Socinians, you easily see them in modern liberal Christianity. They influence on religious cults that deny the deity of Jesus Christ.
A limited amount of skepticism wards away the acceptance of false doctrine. Better is a Berean attitude (Acts 17:11), searching the scripture to see if these things are so, and what Paul wrote in 1 Thessalonians 5:21, proving all things, holding fast to that which is good.
As I grew up among fundamentalists and independent Baptists, I witnessed regular desire to find something new in the Bible. Many sermons espoused interpretations I had never heard and didn’t see in the text. A preacher often said, “God gave it to me.” You should know God used the man because no one had seen such insights into scripture.
The same spirit of doctrinal novelty continues today in many evangelical churches. The same practice led Joseph Smith in his founding of Mormonism. Many cults arose in 19th century America under the same spirit of skepticism of established historical doctrines.
The Temptation of Novel Teaching
The temptation of novel teaching preys on anyone. Faustus Socinus accepted many orthodox doctrines of his day. He rejected Christ as fully God and fully human because it was contrary to sound reason (ratio sana). This steered Socinians toward Enlightenment thinking, where human reason took the highest role as arbiter of truth.
Warren Wiersbe wrote that H.A. Ironside, longtime pastor of Chicago’s Moody Church, said, “If it’s new, it’s not true, and if it’s true, it’s not new.” Elsewhere I read that Spurgeon first said that. I don’t know. Clever new interpretations, teachings, and takes on and from scripture corrupt and overturn scriptural, saving doctrines in the hearts of men. They condemn them through all eternity.
Conspiracy Theory: Biblical Methods of Evaluation, 1 of 7
Part one of this series is now at the link below. This post originally covered from the beginning of the article to the sentence: “If we have adopted and are going to share a conspiratorial belief with someone else, we need to have answered these questions ourselves and be ready to explain our answers to the person whom we seek to convince.”
–TDR
Book Offer: “Disciplines for Disciples of the Lord Jesus Christ”
After starting a church in the San Francisco Bay Area, in 1991 I wrote a thirty week discipleship manual, titled, “Disciplines for Disciples of the Lord Jesus Christ.” This proceeded from two scriptural imperatives. First, the Great Commission is to make disciples, fulfilling the word “teach,” the only imperative in Matthew 28:19-20. Second, if making disciples is the work of the ministry, a pastor should equip the saints for making disciples in fulfillment of Ephesians 4:11-12.
When I grew up in an independent Baptist church and in fundamentalism, I never heard of discipleship. I did not remember hearing of it in a fundamental Baptist college. In learning biblical exegesis, I understood Matthew 28:19-20. Because of Ephesians 4:11-12, I read some books on discipleship. The Lord gave the whole church the responsibility, but I believed the best means is one-on-one.
I first took everyone in the church through the thirty weeks. The goal was for each to reproduce themselves in another spiritual generation. Over the years, hundreds finished the discipleship. Almost all who completed it stuck in our church. People took it elsewhere and made disciples at other churches. When my wife and I went to Oregon, we started every new believer on the discipleship. The church continues with them there.
In the last three months, among other things I edited Disciplines for Disciples for printing and publication. I will send it in for printing in a week and a half. We are offering it at a pre-publication price of $8 apiece until I send it in. It is 162 pages, 8 1/2 x 11, two sided, black and white text, colored front and back cover, and spiral bound. A teacher’s edition, the answer key, will be separate for $25. The publication price later will be $11-12 each.
If you want it pre-publication in the next week and a half, let me know at this email: betbapt and then a very common ending @gmail.com. Get it as a good tool for fulfilling Matthew 28:18-20 and Ephesians 4:11-12.
Choosing Faith or Religion Like Choosing A Wallpaper Pattern
During graduate school, for a short while I worked at a paint and wall covering store. Of varied responsibilities, I performed the job of organizing the wallpaper books. They filled the tops of two large tables and I kept them in some kind of order based on style. I could at least direct someone according to the taste of a customer.
Philosopher Ernest Gellner wrote that under relativism choosing a religion is akin to choosing a wallpaper pattern. In other words, considering faith or religion you can act on personal taste or feelings, like someone picking out a style of wallcovering. In general, truth then doesn’t apply to faith or religion, not like the physics of airplane travel or the engineering of a bridge.
You can live in a house without wallpaper on the walls. Wallpaper itself is a total convenience. Are faith or religion or moral laws such a convenience?
Men have become convinced by many various ungodly means that religious knowledge, the truth as a basis for faith, is of a different, lesser quality. First, you choose what you want to believe. What you’ve chosen might be something different than mine. I like something different, and it doesn’t matter that they disagree or even contradict. People might treat scripture like it is just a vessel to conform to whatever they want, but it isn’t. However, they are doing this now.
Second, many varied religions compare in what’s important. It’s better just to look for common ground. Everyone has free will and you won’t convince anyone by trying to force them. These similarities, kindness, treating other people like they want to be treated, the golden rule, are what’s important. Those are the common ground, hence the truth. The Bible says nothing like this either.
Third, the truth is really just what you feel in your heart. Follow your heart. That feeling that you feel is something God wants you to know. Are you going to deny that God doesn’t want you to know what you need to know? God’s Word says to try these feelings, this intuition, using God’s Word.
Fourth, the very existence of so many religions says that it’s near to impossible to be certain on the truth. So many people couldn’t all be wrong. It’s proud to think you do know.
Fifth, two plus two equals four. That’s knowledge. Faith is categorically different, not knowing in the same way as math. Math is real. Twelve divided by three equals four. If religion was the same as math, then you could say that you know it. Religion, faith, has much more variation, because it isn’t so sure. Whatever someone happens to feel or think about religious matters is as good as what anyone else says. It’s very personal, unlike math. Two plus two means the same thing to everyone. Religion and faith are different, more like choosing a wallpaper pattern.
None of the reasons or explanations I’ve given here are true. Man walks according to his own lust and his view of faith, religion, knowledge, and the truth conforms to that. What’s real is what’s out in the world, the people he knows, his dreams, what he wants to do. Faith and religion can be modified to fit that. In the end though, God will still judge them to fall short of a biblical plan of salvation.
Burk Parsons tweeted yesterday (Sunday): “Saying you’re a new kind of Christian with a new kind of Christianity is basically saying you’re an old kind of heretic.” You can want people to include you in Christianity, but your new kind of Christianity isn’t really or truly Christian.
Not just the world, but churches today in rapidly growing fashion coddle relativism.
Baptism & Salvation Debate Page, Douglas Jacoby
I have created a page for resources on the Douglas Jacoby-Thomas Ross debate on baptism. Both parts of the debate video, as well as links to the places where the debate is live on Rumble and on YouTube, the blog posts where the speakers answered questions from the audience that were not discussed in the debate proper, and further resources, are all on this page. I would, therefore, recommend that you visit this page in the future and make it your point of reference if you share the debate with others.
Click Here For the Page on the Douglas Jacoby / Thomas Ross Debate, “We Are Born Again Before Baptism” (part 1) and “We Are Born Again In Baptism” (part 2)
–TDR
WORD OF TRUTH CONFERENCE 2021
In 1987 my wife and I, having been married for two weeks, took a U-Haul truck to the San Francisco Bay Area, and we started a church in the San Francisco Bay Area. I pastored it thirty-three plus years. In 2009, I started the Word of Truth (WOT) Conference.
Besides helpful edification of our church, Bethel Baptist, a plan for the conference from the morning sessions was the writing and publication of books. A Pure Church came from the first three years of the conference. A short book on apostasy, Lying Vanities, is coming soon from the next three years. From the following four years will come a book, The One True Gospel, not yet published. We covered the doctrine of sanctification the last three years, and a book, Lord-willing, is also forthcoming, which will be titled, Salvation That Keeps On Saving.
Past conference audio is still available at the Word of Truth Conference website. You can also watch video. The church is the pillar and ground of the truth, and the church is local only. It was our goal with the conference to propagate and preserve the truth. God has given churches this responsibility.
This year will be the first every WOT conference I will miss. It’s occurring this year again and you can watch it on livestream through the links below. I’m sure it will be very helpful. I believe the sessions could be watched later as well upon its completion. The theme of this years conference is Why Is The Bible True? Here is the schedule. You can also click on each one of the links to get to the location of the livestream at youtube.
Wednesday Evening Service, November 10, 7:00pm—Preaching (One Sermon)
Thursday Morning, November 11, 9:30am-12:00pm—Two Sessions
First Session: “The Testimony of the Spirit through the Scriptures and through the Saints”—There is the witness and self- attestation of the Bible being the truth, by the witness of the Spirit in the words of Scripture and in the heart of believers. This session will also address the notion of circular reasoning and of its failed application to the Bible.
Second Session: “The Attack from Satan and Sinners”—Satan seeks to discredit the authority of God’s words; and sinners, in boldness against God’s rule, receive Satan’s lies and play along his cryptic plan.
Thursday Evening, November 11, 7:00pm—Preaching (Two Sermons)
Friday Morning, November 12, 9:30am-12:00pm—Two Sessions
First Session: “The Issue of Biblical Manuscripts”—This will address the argument of manuscript apparent disparities, not only behind the entirety of the text issue, but also behind the manuscripts of the Textus Receptus.
Second Session: “Archaeology of the Old Testament”—This will cover the general proof of archaeology, as well as hone in on a particular, factual, archaeological proof regarding the Old Testament Scriptures.
Friday Evening, November 12, 7:00pm—Preaching (Two Sermons)
Saturday Morning, November 13, 9:30am-12:00pm—Two Sessions
First Session: “Archaeology of the New Testament”—This will cover the general proof of archaeology, as well as hone in on a particular, factual, archaeological proof regarding the New Testament Scriptures.
Second Session: “The Proof of Prophecy”—An unfailing proof to the truth of the Bible being of the mouth of God is the voice of biblical prophecy and its harmony with the real past and the real present. This session will show biblical prophecy to be of God alone.
Sunday School, November 14, 9:45am
“The Realness about the Bible”—This session will walk through the stories and facts of the Bible and expose the simple fact of its realness to our world, rejecting and abandoning the notion that the Bible is mere myth, legend, fable, fantasy, or a compilation of moral stories. It will also include final exhortations to believers and unbelievers, considering the instruction and impact of all the previous sessions.
Sunday Morning Service, November 14, 11:00am—Preaching
Sunday Evening Service, November 14, 6:00pm—Preaching
Postmodern “Grace”
The author of Hebrews in 12:15-17 warns:
Looking diligently lest any man fail of the grace of God; lest any root of bitterness springing up trouble you, and thereby many be defiled; Lest there be any fornicator, or profane person, as Esau, who for one morsel of meat sold his birthright. For ye know how that afterward, when he would have inherited the blessing, he was rejected: for he found no place of repentance, though he sought it carefully with tears.
C. H. Spurgeon wrote concerning the failing of the grace of God:
Under the means of grace, there are many who do “fall short of the grace of God.” They get something that they think is like grace, but it is not the true grace of God, and they ultimately fall from it, and perish. . . . [I]n church fellowship we ought to be very watchful lest the church as a whole should fail through lack of the true grace of God, and especially lest any root of bitterness springing up among us should trouble us, and thereby many be defiled. We must remember that though we are saved by grace, yet grace does not stupefy us, but rather quickens us into action. Though salvation depends upon the merits of Christ, yet those who receive those merits receive with them a faith that produces holiness.
Spurgeon explains that this “failing” is “falling short,” and then “falling short” is not getting “the true grace of God” but “something that they think is like grace.” He says the true grace of God “does not stupefy us, but rather quickens us into action.” The placebo for the true grace of God does not produce holiness.
The true grace of God saves us. Most people want salvation, but they also don’t want the holiness true grace produces. Hebrews uses Esau as an example. He allowed his fleshly desire to keep him from true grace, replacing it with something short of it. God’s grace produces holiness.
Root of Bitterness
Through the years, I’ve read many different opinions about the “root of bitterness.” In the context, it causes a failing of the grace of God. Some say that the root of bitterness is an apostate in the church, like Esau, who then brings about further apostasy from others. Others say that it is sin, which is bitter and defiling. Rick Renner writes:
“It” pictures a person who is continually troubled, harassed, and annoyed by thoughts of how someone else wronged him. The offended person is now so troubled that he is almost emotionally immobilized. Instead of moving on in life, he gets stuck in the muck of that experience, where he wallows day after day in the memories of what happened to him. If that person doesn’t quickly get a grip on himself, he will eventually fulfill the next part of the verse.
Tozer explained it the same way:
The sad and depressing bitter soul will compile a list of slights at which it takes offense and will watch over itself like a mother bear over her cubs. And the figure is apt, for the resentful heart is always surly and suspicious like a she-bear!
Perhaps the preceding verse, verse 14, gives a clue:
Follow peace with all men, and holiness, without which no man shall see the Lord.
Esau lacked peace between he and his father, Isaac, and his brother, Jacob. So many especially today allow the slights, real and otherwise, and even actual sins against them to keep them from the grace of God. They also often use these temporal affronts to justify their lusts, incongruous with the true grace of God. It ultimately reflects on their view of God and His goodness to them.
Postmodern Grace
Spurgeon assessed failing of true grace comes by replacing it with something short of the grace of God. I’m titling what I believe is the most common contemporary replacement for true grace, “postmodern grace” (Jesus Loves Me with postmodern lyrics). It isn’t the grace of God, because it is short of the grace of God.
Postmodern truth is your truth. Postmodern grace is your grace. It doesn’t follow peace, because it allows a grudge and resentment to keep it from that. It doesn’t follow holiness, because it sells holiness for temporal, carnal appetites, like the morsel of Esau. Adherents though count this as the grace of God. They remain bitter with those who reject their failing of the grace of God. The bitterness fuels further rejection of true grace, accompanied, like Esau, by tears of grudge-filled resentment.
Postmodern grace isn’t about pleasing God, but about pleasing self. Postmodern grace self-identifies as grace, which is in fact moral relativism. It doesn’t follow after holiness, but after its own lust.
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