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Does Doctrine Matter?
President James Monroe on December 2, 1823 first communicated the “Monroe Doctrine” in his State of the Union address to Congress. The Monroe Doctrine viewed any foreign intervention in the Western Hemisphere, the Americas, as a potentially hostile act against the United States.
One might ask Spain and Japan whether the Monroe Doctrine matters. These nations acted in violation of the aforesaid doctrine, which was met by a strong military response from the United States, leading to the Spanish-American War and U. S. involvement in World War Two.
THE SUPERIORITY OF BIBLICAL DOCTRINE
No doubt biblical doctrine matters more than the Monroe Doctrine, because God articulates that doctrine. 2 Timothy 3:16 reads: “All scripture is given by inspiration of God, and is profitable for doctrine.” When the United States calls something a “doctrine,” this is tantamount to a sacrosanct law. The Bible treats doctrine the same, as seen in Proverbs 4:2: “For I give you good doctrine, forsake ye not my law.”
The Bible constitutes the law of God, God the Lawgiver and also the Judge. When God said to Adam, “But of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, thou shalt not eat of it” (Genesis 2:17), that is doctrine. Furthermore, the doctrine of the Lord said, “for in the day that thou eatest thereof thou shalt surely die” (also 2:17). The consequences for violating that doctrine were far worse for mankind than violating the Monroe Doctrine for the Spanish.
THE AUTHORITY OF BIBLICAL DOCTRINE
Does doctrine matter? It depends whose doctrine. After Jesus ended His Sermon on the Mount in Matthew 5 to 7, Matthew explained in 7:28-29 that “when Jesus had ended these sayings, the people were astonished at his doctrine: “For he taught them as one having authority, and not as the scribes.” Jesus had authority. If He said it, that settled the doctrine.
Jesus later described the doctrine of the Pharisees and scribes in Matthew 15:9: “But in vain they do worship me, teaching for doctrines the commandments of men.” Doctrine didn’t matter if it were only the commandments of men. A mere commandment or a lesser teaching of men has no ultimate authority. Earthly bodies may punish for transgressing their temporal edicts, but they hold no sway over eternal repercussions. God does not accept their vain and profane worship.
On the other hand, Jesus could say in the first verse of the Sermon on the Mount in Matthew 5:3, “Blessed are the poor in spirit: for theirs is the kingdom of heaven.” Understood with this doctrine of Jesus was the converse doctrine: “Cursed are those not poor in spirit: for theirs is not the kingdom of heaven.” Jesus spoke doctrine with like authority in John 3:15, “That whosoever believeth in him should not perish, but have eternal life.” The opposite of believing is not believing and of eternal life is eternal death. Maybe nothing matters more to a human being than the true doctrine of salvation.
THE ABSOLUTE TRUTHFULNESS OF BIBLICAL DOCTRINE
True Doctrine Versus False Doctrine
More than any quality, what distinguishes biblical doctrine as divine doctrine, versus the mere doctrine of men, is its absolute truthfulness. Scripture is truth (John 17:17). You can always believe what God says because it is always true. Always. God cannot lie (Titus 1:2).
As much as the true doctrine of God’s Word matters through all eternity, it also contrasts with false doctrine disseminated by false teachers, who at the same time claim to be true ones. False doctrine matters too, but for the opposite reason. Also, it matters through all eternity, but instead in harmful, destructive ways.
The Bible calls false doctrine, “heresy.” The English word “heresy” transliterates a Greek word, heresis, which means “division” or “faction.” The world started with truth and heresy divides from truth. Every falsehood takes a path away from the way of truth. Jesus said in John 14:6, “I am the way, the truth, and the life: no man cometh unto the Father, but by me.” Jesus says He is the way to the Father, excluding all other ways. Other different ways than Jesus alone are heresies, diverging from the one path that leads to heaven, where are the Father’s house and God the Father.
God’s Truth is Truth
Postmodernism says, “Your truth is your truth.” It is saying, “Your true doctrine is your true doctrine.” God say “no” to that. In Romans 3:4, Paul writes: “God forbid: yea, let God be true, but every man a liar.” God is the final arbiter of truth. If you contradict God, your contradiction is falsehood. I ask you to consider the doctrine of Genesis 1:27: “So God created man in his own image, in the image of God created he him; male and female created he them.” God created two sexes and only two, male and female.
A male might call himself a female, but he isn’t. God also created a woman for man, not a man. He created Eve for Adam. God “brought her unto the man” (Genesis 2:22) and Adam said, “she shall be called Woman” (2:23). She was a “help meet” or fit for man. God created the woman to complement the man, not another man (2:18). A man does not complement a man and God calls this “an abomination” (Leviticus 20:13).
God also created distinct roles for the man and the woman that are required for a successful family and society (Ephesians 5:22-33, Titus 2, 1 Peter 3:1-7). The teaching, belief, and practice of these roles are true doctrine.
THE ETERNAL IMPACT OF DOCTRINE
Destructiveness of False Doctrine
The Apostle Peter says concerning certain heresies in 2 Peter 2:1, “But there were false prophets also among the people, even as there shall be false teachers among you, who privily shall bring in damnable heresies, even denying the Lord that bought them, and bring upon themselves swift destruction.” Heresies are mainly brought by “false prophets” and “false teachers” “among the people” or “among you.”
Certain false doctrines in particular, which deny the Lord that bought” us, bring “swift destruction.” What Peter describes in 2 Peter 2:1 about false salvation doctrine mirrors what Jesus also said in the Sermon on the Mount, when He said in Matthew 7:13-14: “Enter ye in at the strait gate: for wide is the gate, and broad is the way, that leadeth to destruction, and many there be which go in thereat: Because strait is the gate, and narrow is the way, which leadeth unto life, and few there be that find it.”
Jesus speaks of the narrow way, which is the true way, and of the broad way, which is the false one. Few enter the narrow gate, which leads to life, and many the wide gate, which takes the broad way that leads to destruction. The wide gate and the broad way are more popular, even though they are false. The next verse, Matthew 7:15, explains why people take this damning path in addition to its popularity: “Beware of false prophets.” False prophets or teachers point the way through their false doctrine to a future damning destination, surely while still calling their teaching “the truth.”
Blessing of True Doctrine
Paul expresses the eternal and serious ramifications of true doctrine through his pastoral epistles in 1 and 2 Timothy and Titus, especially declared by 1 Timothy 4:16: “Take heed unto thyself, and unto the doctrine; continue in them: for in doing this thou shalt both save thyself, and them that hear thee.” “The doctrine” will “save thyself and them that hear thee,” Paul instructs.
The salvation that comes from true doctrine carries with it ultimate fulfillment. The doctrine Jesus preached in the Sermon on the Mount (Matthew 5:1-12) could and would bring the kingdom of heaven, comfort, satisfaction, inheritance of all things, mercy, joy, gladness, and reward in heaven. Heeding the doctrine of Jesus was like building your house on a rock instead of sand, so that when a storm came, your house would stand and not fall (Matthew 7:24-27).
THE EXCLUSIVITY OF TRUE DOCTRINE
Teach Only the True Doctrine
Considering everything you’ve read so far about doctrine, can someone or at least should someone say, “Doctrine doesn’t matter”? Doctrine matters as much as anything that matters. For this reason, the Apostle Paul wrote his protégé Timothy in 1 Timothy 1:3, “As I besought thee to abide still at Ephesus, when I went into Macedonia, that thou mightest charge some that they teach no other doctrine.” Scripture requires church leaders to “teach no other doctrine.”
Because False Doctrine Deceives
God’s Word often explains how false teachers deceive people to believe wrong doctrine. The Apostle Paul again in Romans 16:17-18 writes: “Now I beseech you, brethren, mark them which cause divisions and offences contrary to the doctrine which ye have learned; and avoid them. For they that are such serve not our Lord Jesus Christ, but their own belly; and by good words and fair speeches deceive the hearts of the simple.” God requires separation from false teachers, who cause these divisions from true, scriptural doctrine. They are deceptive and use “good words and fair speeches” to deceive their listeners.
Separate from Those Who Teach Different Doctrine
The Apostle John joins Paul in the seriousness of doctrine, when he writes in 2 John 1:9-10: “Whosoever transgresseth, and abideth not in the doctrine of Christ, hath not God. He that abideth in the doctrine of Christ, he hath both the Father and the Son. If there come any unto you, and bring not this doctrine, receive him not into your house, neither bid him God speed.”
Akin to John’s warning in his epistle and Paul’s teaching in Romans, Paul writes to Timothy in 1 Timothy 6:3-5: “If any man teach otherwise, and consent not to wholesome words, even the words of our Lord Jesus Christ, and to the doctrine which is according to godliness; . . . . from such withdraw thyself.” If a man teaches other than the true doctrine or consents to it, that is, accepts or inculcates it, from such people, Paul commands, “withdraw thyself.” Nothing helps someone more than true doctrine, but also nothing hurts someone worse than false doctrine.
Today false teachers deceive listeners by devaluing true doctrine. They often say only certain essential doctrines matter, but not all doctrine. It is similar to Satan tempting Eve in the Garden of Eden by saying that eating of the tree wouldn’t matter to her. He said, “Ye shall not surely die” (Genesis 3:4). In fact, she did die. These kinds of seductions lure people into a false sense of security. Not only do people stop taking heed to the truth, but they are offended by those who do.
THE REQUIREMENT OF TRUE DOCTRINE
The Bible requires doctrine in the preaching and teaching of churches. They who “rule well” a church “labor in the word and doctrine” (1 Timothy 5:17). Paul commands Timothy in 2 Timothy 4:2, “Preach the word . . . . with all longsuffering and doctrine.” He commands him despite the following warning in verses 3-4: “For the time will come when they will not endure sound doctrine; but after their own lusts shall they heap to themselves teachers, having itching ears; And they shall turn away their ears from the truth, and shall be turned unto fables.”
Have we now reached the time, age, or era when people will no longer endure sound doctrine? Does doctrine not matter to most people any more? They want something else, that Paul characterizes as itching their ears. Instead of preaching sound doctrine, preachers will provide their hearers something they would rather hear. Instead of a place for doctrine, churches become mainly social gatherings to accommodate the carnal allure of this temporal world.
Many today see a drastic decline in the United States. Why is this happening? A growing percentage of people cease church attendance at all. It’s not just that churches stop preaching biblical doctrine. Neither do people want a church that preaches it. Churches adjust to this new reality by reducing their teaching time and minimizing doctrine when they do preach anything. If churches stop caring about doctrine, why would anyone else care?
Doctrine will equip and sustain people for and through tough times. As days become harder and worse, people more than ever need doctrine. It will matter more than ever. Yet, how available will it be to those for whom it doesn’t? Think about it.
Can Restorationist Churches Be or Are They True?
This post provides a good accompaniment to the last three posts I’ve written here (one, two, and three). I’ll return to the first two of those posts, as they are the beginning of a continuing series.
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Successionism or Restorationism
The choices are not apostolic succession or no succession of churches. Apostolic succession is bogus, a lie, and a fraud. Apostles did not continue after John. Succession itself though is a biblical concept. True churches continued. Jesus promised that and enough history exists to validate it. If you don’t believe in succession, then you believe in restorationism, which is a commonality in cults. Look at all the religions of the 19th century that started in the United States, claiming to restore the lost church: Church of Latter Day Saints (Mormon), Churches of Christ (Campbellism, today also the Christian Church), Seventh Day Adventist, and Jehovah’s Witnesses.
The Charismatic Movement is also a restorationist movement. It says that the church lost its true or full relationship with and to the Holy Spirit. Charismatics speak of the “latter rain,” this era with a fresh outpouring of the Holy Spirit.
For someone to start a false religion, he needs a kind of blank canvass. He must take his religious etch-a-sketch, shake it, and start over. He starts from scratch, inventing something that almost always includes extra-scriptural revelation or authority of some kind.
“Total Apostasy”
Grounded in restorationism is “total apostasy.’ Everyone everywhere turned from the truth with perhaps a few exceptions imbedded in something of a false church. Wikipedia uses the terminology, “Great Apostasy.”
Protestants, which include Baptist English Separatists, take up the mantle of restorationism themselves. They at least wobble between a couple of competing ideas. Included in their restorationism is the terminology, “the reformed doctrine of justification,” as if the world lost justification for a period of time, enveloped in darkness and coming out in the light of the Protestant Reformation. Supporters have to say that the true church or the truth itself was in Roman Catholicism or that it was free floating on the planet somewhere maybe or maybe not.
The latter of the two explanations for lost Christianity or non-existent New Testament churches for an undetermined period of time, perhaps over a thousand years mainly turns into mysticism. A mystical church existed somewhere. It’s a tough one to admit, but they would say that mainly mystically within Roman Catholicism some kind of true church existed in a spiritual way. It’s a tough view to support.
What’s Left
Those who won’t believe in successionism are saying that the true church existed in a universal, visible apostate church that preached a false gospel. These apparent believers did not separate from that church. The “true believers” stayed in the church in defiance of the biblical gospel, meanwhile practicing multiple forms of false worship and taking everyone around them with them in this journey. It’s no wonder they get angry and just don’t want to talk about it.
I asked AI about the doctrine of justification and it concluded: “The doctrine of justification was indeed lost or significantly distorted for several centuries prior to the Reformation.” AI also reports: “Protestants generally do not believe in a formal succession of true churches from the first century until now.” Concerning restorationism in Protestantism, AI adds: “During the Reformation in the 16th century, Protestant reformers sought to return to what they viewed as the original teachings of Christianity as found in Scripture.” AI says that Protestants themselves are restorationists.
Support for Perpetuity
Matthew 16:18 and 28:20
One of the primary verses cited in support of the church’s perpetuity is Matthew 16:18, where Jesus states, “And I say also unto thee, That thou art Peter, and upon this rock I will build my church; and the gates of hell shall not prevail against it.” Jesus says that His church will endure against all adversities, implying a continuous existence throughout history.
In Matthew 28:20, Jesus promises His disciples, “And lo, I am with you always, even unto the end of the world.” This assurance indicates that Christ’s presence would accompany His church until the end of time, reinforcing the belief that there would always be a community of believers—His church—on earth. AI says: “Based on biblical texts and theological interpretations, the Bible does teach the perpetuity of true churches through history in every generation, affirming that there will always be a faithful remnant who adhere to Christ’s teachings.”
Other Reasons
On the other hand, scripture teaches against a total apostasy during the church age. 1 Timothy 4:1 says, “Some shall depart from the faith.” Some. Not all. All depart from the faith would contradict the promises of Christ. Like He preserves His Words, the Lord preserves His churches. Restorationism is a clear signal or cue of a false religion, denomination, or church.
Other arguments and reasons for a visible succession of true New Testament churches exist. Scripture does teach authority. Christ gives all authority to His church to baptize (Matthew 28:20). Jesus himself affirmed John’s authority when he asked the religious leaders about it, stating, “The baptism of John, was it from heaven, or of men? answer me.” (Mark 11:30). The implication here is that John’s baptism had divine backing, which was essential for its validity. Those who accepted John’s baptism were seen as accepting God’s purpose for their lives (Luke 7:29-30) and recognizing his role in God’s plan.
Jesus Himself traveled 70-90 miles for baptism by John. Surely He could have had someone dunk Him under water or baptize himself. Jesus recognized the importance of authority in baptism. Baptism requires legitimate authority to be legitimate in practice.
I’m not advocating chain link authority, but the principle of authority as a matter of faith. This is how churches understood the authority for baptism. Roman Catholicism does not have this legitimate authority. Neither did Protestants receive legitimate authority from Roman Catholicism. Where did authority lie? It comes through churches independent of the state church with a true gospel and Christ as their Head. Scripture says they would continue and they did. Attacks on perpetuity and succession are tantamount to an embrace of restorationism, admitting that Jesus did not fulfill His promises.
English Reformation?
The English Reformation, a famous religious and political movement in England, almost anyone here reading knows started with King Henry VIII separating from Roman Catholicism because he wanted an annulment from his wife, Catherine of Aragon. The English Reformation itself for whatever its benefits begets religions or denominations clearly with no authority. It essentially impersonates Roman Catholicism with some slight tweaks. Then other groups spin off of it equally with no authority. This is painfully obvious and something rather to block out of the imagination.
Despite the truth about the English Reformation, many Baptists today embrace English separatism themselves like restorationists. It would have to go like this. Roman Catholicism was apostate so Church of England started something over anew, and then the Church of England wasn’t legitimate, so English Baptists dissented and began themselves something novel, fresh, and disconnected. They were against trying to restore something lost. They embrace that concept by saying nothing of perpetuity or succession exists, except, probably said in a whispery tone, within Roman Catholicism.
Bogus Attack on Successionism
I understand the attack on successionism. It’s akin to throwing the game board. If you can’t win, then nobody wins. The harsh and vitriolic attack on the Trail of Blood idea found in the pamphlet, The Trail of Blood, irks those with no perpetuity, no succession, and no authority. They don’t want anyone embracing it, so they deny it all and then leave scorched earth behind it. And what do these men leave everyone with? It’s not pretty.
Our church will not fellowship with restorationists. We cannot legitimize that view of the world or reality. Based on presuppositions and suitable enough history, restorationism can’t be true. I believe it is a different Jesus, not in a salvific way, but because the actual true Jesus of the Bible does keep the church intact and fulfill His promises.
How does restorationism or the like fulfill a biblical view of God’s sovereignty? With His love, wisdom, and power, He just allowed true churches to die everywhere. How did they come back? In most instances, they would say from infant sprinklers who embraced a state church and much other doctrine and practical error. None of this is biblical or true.
People Saying They Love Who Don’t Love
Good to Say, I Love You
It’s good to say, “I love you.” Maybe we can practice it together. “I love you guys.” “Love you.”
Apostle Paul
Scripture does this. Usually the Apostle Paul will include a clear expression of love among the words of the text of one of his epistles. In Romans 12:19, he begins an address to the church at Rome with the words, “Dearly beloved.” He directs words toward individuals, such as little known “Amplias,” saying in Romans 16:8, “Greet Amplias my beloved in the Lord.” In 1 Corinthians 4:14, he writes:
I write not these things to shame you, but as my beloved sons I warn you.
“My beloved sons.” Then he calls Timothy his “beloved son” in 4:17. In 1 Corinthians 10:14, he writes: “Wherefore, my dearly beloved, flee from idolatry.” He calls the same people of the church at Corinth, “my beloved brethren,” in 15:58.
John
In 2 John 1:1, John writes:
The elder unto the elect lady and her children,, whom I love in the truth; and not I only, but also all they that have known the truth.
He loves this elect lady and her children in the truth. Jesus said to His disciples the amazing statement of John 16:27 at the end of the Upper Room Discourse:
For the Father himself loveth you, because ye have loved me, and have believed that I came out from God.
The Lord Jesus Christ Himself looked for Peter to tell Him his love for Him in that classic passage in John 21: “Lovest thou me?” The Bible records expressions of love and it is good to say it. Leadership of churches and the people of true churches should communicate their love for each other.
A few times a year, I walk through the card section of a store, looking for a card. Many will say something about love in them toward the recipient. You know what I’m telling you is true. Love is all over greeting cards, a communication of the word “love” at least. Scripture encourages to say these things, but in the nature of what? It’s definitely more than just saying something.
Strong Statements That Are Love
When Paul called people “beloved son” or “dearly beloved,” it usually comes with some strong statement of rebuke or a harsh command. He was saying something like, “Don’t think this means I don’t love you, because I do.” He said the thing he did, that was hard, because he loved. The plain implication is that people think you do not love them when you say something true and tough to them, let alone just true.
Jesus said in John 14:23-24:
23 Jesus answered and said unto him, If a man love me, he will keep my words: and my Father will love him, and we will come unto him, and make our abode with him. 24 He that loveth me not keepeth not my sayings: and the word which ye hear is not mine, but the Father’s which sent me.
Why would Jesus even need to say this? Well, because a lot of people say they love Jesus, but they really don’t. It’s those who keep His Words. It’s the same in 1 John 4:10: “If a man say, I love God, and hateth his brother, he is a liar.” That’s pretty strong too. You say you love God, but you’re a liar.
This is where Jesus was at the end of the Sermon on the Mount (Matthew 7:20-23) and He said that man would say, Lord, Lord, and He will say, Depart from me, I never knew you. I never knew you. Just saying, Lord, Lord, isn’t good enough.
Included Commitment
Some people just won’t say, “I love you.” I don’t like that. It’s not something to which I commit. To me, you let people know you love them. It’s a commitment. But scripture itself is not big on just saying it.
I know and you know that people will say they love you, because very often, words are cheap. We can say, like Peter, Lord, you know that i love you, but Peter wasn’t committed. People will say, I love you, but they don’t forgive. They won’t express it and won’t do it.
They also want people to know how much they love, but while saying they love, they betray. They don’t give or even offer what’s right. Saying, I love you, is sometimes just a way to get things that you want. “I said, I love you, where are my goodies?”
Not Sentimentalism or Empathy
Several books are written on a similar theme to what I’m writing here. Love isn’t sentimentalism (part one, part two). “I love you” are not magic words to ward away the evil spirits, like they are magical words. These books are about what Joe Rigney calls, the sin of empathy.
Saying, I love you, is both hard and easy. It is hard because it means commitment. But it is easy, because those words don’t require any commitment. The commitment is the actual love. The words don’t mean anything and even mean less than anything when the commitment doesn’t come with them.
Love is of God. For something to be love, it must include God. God must be God, not an imaginary deity without the same attributes as the one and only true God.
The Nature of the Church
As I’ve reminded you in the past, I’ve got several series going, which include the following:
The Moral Nature of God (part one, part two, part three, part four)
Crucial to a Gospel Presentation: Explain Belief (part one, part two, part three, part four, part five, part six)
Biblical Equality and the Societally Destructive Lie of Egalitarianism (part one, part two)
Answering the “Cultish” Wes Huff Podcast on King James Only (part one, part two)
Profaning the Name of the Lord: How Can or Do People Do It? (part one)
I also have some other things in the works, mostly in the idea stage. Maybe I’ll get to them soon. Here are two of those:
A List of Five Great Scriptural Arguments for Premillennialism (Maybe the Best)
The Greatest Causes Undermining the Faith of the Church
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The church is local only. It is not universal or mystical. I could end right there.
Childhood Understanding of Church
I don’t remember hearing about the nature of the church as I grew up in, well, church. It was not a controversy, what the church was. My dad was a factory worker and my parents started into church a couple of years before I was born. I was very into church. If you asked me what a church was, I could have given an easy, basic answer, I believe. I was a blank slate in my own desert island and completely sincere.
As a child, I knew the church was not a building. Not. The little, inside the church are all of the people, I knew was wrong. No, the people were the church. But were they? Nothing was so complicated to say that those people were a visible manifestation of the truth church, universal and invisible. That never occurred to me. If you read your Bible, or read it and just hear it taught week after week, you wouldn’t get a universal church. Somebody had to tell you that. You wouldn’t get it from just reading your Bible. It’s not in there.
Not Universal and Invisible
As few people as really understand the concept of a universal and invisible church, it has an amazing number of adverse effects on many. People barely to never question those effects. If you believe the church is only local, those effects shouldn’t exist. This is how that even people, who grew up never grasping a universal, invisible church concept, will accept things that proceeded from that thing they rarely to never consider.
Christ started only one church. It was not a dual natured church. It never reads even close to that complicated. From a plain reading, no one would get something other than local. Of the twenty-plus times Jesus uses the term “church,” all but one are plainly local. One could not get a universal church out of that one example. The twenty plain usages by Jesus should influence the interpretation of the one less plain. Some usages don’t clearly show the meaning of a word. It does with the word church in about a hundred of its one hundred eighteen uses.
Ekklesia
“Church” is an English word, which comes from a Greek one — ekklesia. Ekklesia means “assembly.” If someone would just consider the actual meaning of the word in the original languages, the few ambiguous usages in the English New Testament would become crystal clear.
An assembly is by nature local and visible. If you can’t see the assembly, then it isn’t assembled. An assembly also by nature must occur in one place, that is at least local.
Once someone knows what a church is, he can then get the right interpretation and application of the passages in the New Testament that use the word. In the utmost way, he will know the meaning of unity in a church. So many do not understand church unity, because a teacher messed up their understanding of the nature of the church. Also, an actual church can obey the passages on separation. For a church to practice true unity, it must also practice true separation.
Effects
Many bad effects come from perverting the nature of the church. The gospel is important. I would contend that the corruption or destruction of the gospel arose mainly from misconstruing the nature of the church.
People will find out in the end the highly detrimental effects on their lives and even their eternities, because they reject the true nature of church. We need a return of true teaching on and practice of the church.
How Does Someone Receive the Gift of Faith That Saves? (part two)
Rejection of the Gift of Faith or Suppressing the Truth
The rejection of God’s gift of faith, ‘biting the hand that feeds you,’ comes from ignoring or refusing general revelation from God. Even if someone does not recognize it or acknowledge it, it is rebellion against God. Romans 1:25 says that this lack of someone’s recognition and acknowledgement is turning the truth of God into a lie and worshiping and serving the creature rather than the Creator.
Romans 1:18-32 answer the question about what everyone knows. They know enough to deserve the wrath of God for rejecting Him. How do we know what we know? God tells us. One of the weaknesses of science is that it cannot prove a universal negative. People cannot be everywhere at once and see everything that can be seen to negate that something did or did not happen. Only God knows what people know and do not know. If God Almighty says people know it, then they know it. Science or man’s observation cannot prove this wrong.
It’s worse than not knowing. People “hold” or suppress the truth in their unrighteousness (1:18). When they knew God, they glorified Him not as God (1:21). And everyone starts by knowing God through general revelation.
Moving from General Revelation to More Revelation
General revelation is not enough revelation to give saving faith. Scripture says faith, which is saving faith, comes by hearing the Word of God (Romans 10:17). Very commonly people will question the love, grace, and mercy of God because people somewhere in the Congo or Ecuadorian jungle could not hear, see, or know enough for salvation. If none of these people did ever hear enough to receive saving faith, the implication or assumption of scripture is that they had the opportunity or they could have heard and known it.
When someone receives general revelation, he can and will receive more revelation. Everyone will receive enough revelation to receive more revelation. The Bible confirms this with various examples. The Lord Jesus talks about this when He mentions how much the people of Sodom (Matthew 10:15), Tyre and Sidon (11:21), and the queen of the South knew (12:42) versus Capernaum, Bethsaida, and Chorazin. When you look at that list, God judged Sodom and Tyre and Sidon and saved the queen of the South, and these are similar examples. What is the distinguishing or differentiating factor is what they did with the revelation they received.
Examples of Reception
Various people do have available to them in their lifetimes different amounts of revelation. The latter areas above received more to different degrees of revelation than the former. These examples give evidence of that. Furthermore, scripture communicates this same truth through narrative portions that are also authoritative for doctrine. One good example, given a lot of space in Acts 10-11, is Cornelius, the centurion. The Bible provides a paradigm for this point with the salvation of Cornelius, the centurion. One can also point to all those saved through mission endeavors and efforts throughout Acts.
Cornelius shows what happens when someone receives the revelation he has. God will give more. History also gives many other examples of this. Other examples in the Bible show in a negative sense what happens with certain ones who reject the revelation they do have, such as Pharoah in Egypt. Certain foreigners, like Nebuchadnezzar and those in the city of Nineveh show God’s mission and mercy mindset.
The Impediments to Reception
I want to go back to the 50 dollar example of sufficient revelation for saving faith. You won’t get to 50 until you receive 10. 10 is not enough. People will not get to 50 without receiving less than that, leading up to 50.
Someone who keeps receiving revelation of God will arrive at scripture to receive. Then someone must keep receiving scripture until finally he receives the gift of faith. That’s how it happens according to scripture. Jesus talks about the impediments to reception in Matthew 13. That is the best answer as to why someone does and someone else doesn’t receive saving faith.
Jesus presents four categories in Matthew 13 and each of them have to do with a receptive heart or not. He presents the saving revelation as seed. Three categories reject the revelation and one receives. One heart is a hard heart, another a worldly heart, and then one hard to categorize, what I would classify as a superficial heart, something either solely emotional or merely intellectual.
None of the four types of heart look like predetermination. God is sovereign. God chooses who He will save, but figured into that choice is how someone responds to revelation. He is sovereign over how He saves and does not save. All the way through and in the end, God is the determiner. Salvation is of the Lord. When He saves a person, that means He keeps saving someone.
When does someone get the sufficient scriptural knowledge for saving faith? Less knowledge from revelation is not helpful. Deep knowledge is better. in 1 Timothy 3:15, Paul tells Timothy that knowledge of the holy scriptures make someone wise unto salvation.
More to Come
Crucial to a Gospel Presentation: Explain Belief (part three)
Jesus is the Christ
John wrote his gospel, he says, so people would believe Jesus is the Christ and believing they would have life through His name (John 20:31). The object of belief is crucial to saving faith. I like to say that you might believe in Jesus, but if Jesus is a jar of peanut butter, he won’t save you. He isn’t, but who is He? Believing isn’t arbitrary. It doesn’t disappear into the ether. Saving belief lands somewhere and that is on the Lord Jesus Christ.
Jesus does all the saving. He is Savior. However, He does not save the person that does not believe that He is the Christ. True, genuine belief couples together with Jesus as the Christ. This truth about Jesus and His identity also relates to the kingdom.
When one reads through the gospels and Acts to see what Jesus and the Apostles preached, you see the two truths woven together as one message. In Matthew 4:23 Jesus went through Galilee “preaching the gospel of the kingdom” (same in Matthew 9:35). Matthew 8 and 9 are a continuation of Matthew 4 with the Sermon on the Mount sandwiched in between (Matthew 5-7). In Matthew 24:14 again Jesus repeats, “the gospel of the kingdom” that he preaches. Jesus says in Mark 1:15: “The time is fulfilled, and the kingdom of God is at hand: repent ye, and believe the gospel.”
Christ in Acts
Philip
Concerning the ministry of preaching of Philip, Acts 8:12 says:
But when they believed Philip preaching the things concerning the kingdom of God, and the name of Jesus Christ, they were baptized, both men and women.
In the same context, Acts 8:5 says that Philip preached “Christ,” which would be shorthand for the same thing. The kingdom of God dovetails with the name of Jesus Christ, inextricably connected. One sees the same with the Apostle Paul in Acts 28:31:
Preaching the kingdom of God, and teaching those things which concern the Lord Jesus Christ, with all confidence, no man forbidding him.
Paul
Right when Paul started to preach in Damascus after his conversion, Acts 9:20 says “he preached Christ in the synagogues.” Two verses later, Acts 9:22 says:
But Saul increased the more in strength, and confounded the Jews which dwelt at Damascus, proving that this is very Christ.
Acts 17:3 describes Paul’s gospel preaching:
Opening and alleging, that Christ must needs have suffered, and risen again from the dead; and that this Jesus, whom I preach unto you, is Christ.
One chapter later, Acts 18:5 says:
And when Silas and Timotheus were come from Macedonia, Paul was pressed in the spirit, and testified to the Jews that Jesus was Christ.
Furthermore, verse 28 of the same chapter says:
For he mightily convinced the Jews, and that publickly, shewing by the scriptures that Jesus was Christ.
Preach Christ
Many times the New Testament represents preaching the gospel as “preach Christ.” In 2 Corinthians 4:5, Paul writes:
For we preach not ourselves, but Christ Jesus the Lord; and ourselves your servants for Jesus’ sake.
“Christ” (Christos) means “anointed one.” The verb chrio in the Greek is “to anoint.” The Greek chrisma means anointing, as does chrisis. “Christ” is the New Testament word or translation of “Messiah.” Everyone needs to understand that Christ fulfills the Messianic prophesies, which ties in the kingdom of Jesus Christ. He is that King.
Christ and the Kingdom of God
The church today is about the kingdom of God, given the keys to the kingdom. Entering the kingdom spiritually or in one’s heart is a reception of that kingdom now, as if one is entering now into it. In Luke 17:21, Jesus said:
Neither shall they say, Lo here! or, lo there! for, behold, the kingdom of God is within you.
Someone needs to know that. He must acquiesce to the kingdom of God now and what it represents, including persuasion that Jesus is the King over it and that having Him as King requires subservience. When Jesus preached, “Repent: for the kingdom of heaven is at hand” (Matthew 4:17), He was saying, “The King is here.” He preached repentance accompanied by the kingdom and He the King. A person must want the Christ and what that represents. The alternative is the prince of this world, Satan, and what he offers now and his kingdom.
When someone preaches the gospel, he explains it, and he persuades someone from the scripture that Jesus is the Christ. Someone needs to know that for salvation. John wrote His book, the Gospel of John, to do that so that the audience would believe Jesus is the Christ. That is still an integral part of the gospel, if not the gospel. Someone does not believe in Jesus Christ, when he does not believe that Jesus is the Christ.
More to Come
Crucial to a Gospel Presentation: Explain Belief (part two)
Rampant Corruption of Belief
Belief is a very malleable concept. It’s easy to manipulate by people. Churches and their leaders can offer the results of belief for something less and far less than belief. They evoke the promises of God for those who believe, yet without the actual believing. Nothing could be of greater or worse consequence.
The Bible gives no varieties of Christians. Nevertheless, varieties of professing Christians take belief into their own hands and turn it into whatever they want. The different versions of belief have divided into several categories, even though there is still only one true belief and only one that saves. What is the belief that saves?
True faith in Christ is not complicated except that men have corrupted and perverted it. It’s not normal or easy any more to help a person understand belief in Christ. People have heard the wrong thing again and again. All the false teaching about belief also now must be undone. The preacher must untangle all those tangled wires and make them straight again.
It is a very low percentage, less than ten percent to whom I talk, that knows the gospel. When it comes to explaining belief, that percentage shrinks exponentially. We arrive at a tiny percentage of people in the United States that understand the gospel. Above all, they don’t understand belief. You’ve got to explain it if they’re going to get it. This is part of what preaching the gospel is.
Not By Works
If he knew those verses from the Bible, someone could go thirty minutes quoting verses that say that salvation comes by believing in Jesus Christ. Salvation comes by believing in Jesus Christ. First, one should establish that salvation comes by believing in Jesus Christ. It is not by works. Someone could also go thirty minutes quoting verses that say salvation is not by works.
Part of understanding belief in Jesus Christ is that it is not by works. Works and faith are mutually exclusive. Verses say this. If you believe in Jesus Christ, it is not by works. Belief itself is not a work, or else belief in Jesus Christ would be a way of saying that salvation is by works. It isn’t. Salvation comes by belief alone.
Jesus Is Savior
If someone believes in Jesus Christ, believing in Him is believing He is Savior. You don’t believe in Jesus Christ if He is not Savior. He is Savior. A so-called Jesus who is not Savior is not Jesus. Churches, denominations, and Christian religions may say that Jesus is Savior, but most of them don’t believe that. He is not Savior as seen in their adding works to belief in Jesus Christ, what I call either frontloading or backloading works.
Frontloading
When a so-called preacher adds a particular work on the front end like baptism or another sacrament, making that necessary in addition to belief, that is not believing in Jesus Christ. This is frontloading works. If this other work is necessary in addition to believing, then it is actually not believing any more and Jesus is not Savior.
Backloading
Other false preachers say that someone must do good works to stay saved. If he stops doing certain works, he could lose salvation. I can never find how many works it is that someone must do who must also rely on works for salvation. You can’t know how many works because scripture says it isn’t by works. It is by believing in Jesus Christ alone. This is backloading works, to say that works are necessary to stay saved. If you have to do good works to stay saved, then who is doing the saving? You are. Then Jesus is not Savior and you do not believe in Jesus Christ.
In explaining belief in Jesus Christ, the true preacher of the gospel must explain this works issue. So many have corrupted the gospel in this manner. Among all religions, doing good works or trying to be good for salvation is the biggest perversion of the gospel. It’s an old corruption that continues to fool and deceive people.
Passages
There are some great passages to use against works for salvation. I will explain Romans 3:20-28, 4:1-6, Galatians 2:16, 5:1-6, Ephesians 2:8-9, Titus 3:5, Romans 11:6, and others. Sometimes you will need to pinpoint a particular work, like baptism, and know verses that debunk that particular work. This is important to know and explain.
Jesus saves, which contradicts salvation by works. If someone believes in Jesus Christ, then He is Savior. Adding anything to belief will nullify salvation for a person. A true preacher will explain this as thoroughly as necessary to convince of this point from scripture.
More to Come
Zeitgeist: The Divine Requirement to Discern the Spirit of the Age
Zeitgeist
Zeitgeist is a German or Germanic term found in books going back to the 18th century. Within a translation of the German Philosophisches Journal in 1794, the English translation reads on page 302, “Zeitgeist also works on the national spirit. Every age has its own imagination.” Zeit is the German word for “time” and geist is the German word for “spirit.” Combined it means, “spirit of the time or age.” The Oxford Learner Dictionary defines zeitgeist:
the general mood or quality of a particular period of history, as shown by the ideas, beliefs, etc. common at the time
The term was popularized in philosophical usage by the German philosopher, Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel. On August 27, 2020, Antje Allroggen writes in DW (Deutsche Welle), which is a German public, state-owned international broadcaster:
[I]t is generally agreed that Hegel was the first philosopher to recognize and address the dimension of change, which he termed “becoming” (“Werden“), in all its fullness. He believed everything in the world was in constant motion: every individual life, nature, history, society. This results in each epoch having its own particular zeitgeist, or general spirit. One historic epoch is not randomly followed by another; instead, there is a principle of logical evolution.
The concept of zeitgeist is a scriptural concept that is in fitting with the terminology, “this world” (touto aion) or “this present world.” Aion (“world”) is “age” or “epoch,” speaking of a characteristic period or time. That’s how zeitgeist fits into the “spirit of the time.” “This world” is found 38 times in the New Testament. “Present world” is found twice, but very representative of zeitgeist in those two instances. I would contend that the philosophical thinking that arose defining zeitgeist, started with the concept which was in scripture.
God’s Requirements
God requires man, and especially genuine believers, to understand or discern the spirit of the times or age, the zeitgeist. In order to obey God, follow Him, and represent Him according to His will, one must discern the zeitgeist. This is an implication or assumption of scripture. People can and should know this. I would contend that many do, but they embrace the spirit of the age. They lap it up and luxuriate in it rather than obey the God ordained relationship to it.
Jesus first uses “this world” in scripture in Matthew 13:22, when He says:
He also that received seed among the thorns is he that heareth the word; and the care of this world, and the deceitfulness of riches, choke the word, and he becometh unfruitful.
The thorny ground is an unbeliever in this context of the parable of the soils. “The care of this world” chokes the word with this person. Instead of embracing God’s Word, he embraces the spirit of the age, the zeitgeist. Unsaved people choose the zeitgeist over God’s Word, will, and way.
The Opposite Happening
Many churches today offer the spirit of the age to their church goers or attenders. They lure people with the zeitgeist. They fill up a trough of the cares of this world for their church people to lap up. In church growth seminars, the leaders promote or offer to their audience this as a means of church growth. They give away thorn seed for thorny ground to ruin the soil and damn souls, all the while saying that this is God at work, deceiving these people. These church leaders promote this kingdom instead of the next and then call it the work of God.
In another parable in Luke 16:8, Jesus says:
And the lord commended the unjust steward, because he had done wisely: for the children of this world are in their generation wiser than the children of light.
Children and God of This World
The Lord Jesus distinguishes the children of light from “the children of this world.” These are the children characterized by the spirit of this age, something unfortunately and diabolically that churches promote today and yet call it “light.” Jesus says in John 8:23:
And he said unto them, Ye are from beneath; I am from above: ye are of this world; I am not of this world.
True believers, like Jesus, are not of this world. Those “of this world” are not believers. Instead of following Jesus, they follow the “god of this world,” who is not Jesus. In 2 Corinthians 4:4, Paul says:
In whom the god of this world hath blinded the minds of them which believe not, lest the light of the glorious gospel of Christ, who is the image of God, should shine unto them.
Be Not Conformed to this World
A classic passage in a pivotal context in Romans, the Apostle Paul commands in Romans 12:2:
And be not conformed to this world.
This is crucial. Someone conformed to the spirit of this age is not presenting himself a living sacrifice unto God. His sacrifice is at least rejected by God. He will not receive just any offering, just like He disrespected Cain’s offering in Genesis 4:5. God will not accept something that smacks of the spirit of this age.
To not conform to the spirit of the age requires knowing what is the spirit of the age, that is, what conforms to “this world.” Genuine believers should and will know the zeitgeist and reject it. Scripture assumes we can know this.
As the Gentiles Which Know Not God
Other phrases, texts, and contexts communicate the required discernment. Paul, writing to the church at Thessalonica in his first epistle, says (1 Thessalonians 4:5):
Not in the lust of concupiscence, even as the Gentiles which know not God
The Thessalonians and every other church are not to obtain their life’s partners “as the Gentiles which know not God.” There is a way that the world thinks and does things that is different than what the church or godly people do. It isn’t just doing something or having “the lust of concupiscence,” which is intense fleshly lust, but a way that corresponds to that. Believers acquire their spouses in sanctification and honor. That way is vastly different than “the Gentiles which know not God.” Those two ways cannot be the same, or even close. So what’s different?
Strange or Foreign
Scripture doesn’t say what is different, but the two ways have a nature, characteristics, or attributes that believers can and should discern. True believers through history have been doing this, discerning these differences. A word that characterizes “this world” in the Old Testament is “strange.” That is a King James Version word that means “foreign.” Sometimes something on your plate doesn’t look like part of the food served. It is foreign or strange, so you don’t eat it.
Whatever is “strange” in the Old Testament doesn’t fit with God’s people. Zephaniah 1:8 says:
And it shall come to pass in the day of the LORD’S sacrifice, that I will punish the princes, and the king’s children, and all such as are clothed with strange apparel.
What are these princes or king’s children doing in this verse that God will punish? They wear strange apparel or clothing. The passage doesn’t say what it is. It assumes that someone can and should know. God requires application of such principles. This assumes that God’s people can and should know.
The Application Required
“Strange apparel” is clothing that embraces or smacks of “the spirit of the age” or “this world.” Do believers know what this is? People who profess to believe have known this through the centuries. Professing believers seem to have become unable or ignorant for discernment of these differences or issues. God will still judge and punish. This principle is throughout scripture. It has not been renounced or rescinded like some of the dietary restrictions in the Old Testament.
Do you reader understand what I’m talking about in this post? Many churches don’t get it anymore. Why? Leaders don’t teach it. They act like the spirit of the age can’t be discerned. If it isn’t spelled out in exact language, then it is ‘beyond what it is written’ (cf. 1 Cor 4:6), which it isn’t. Scripture teaches this. Someone might “play dumb,” but that game isn’t true and it won’t work in the end. God requires the discernment of the spirit of the age and to act appropriately.
More to Come
God’s Perfect Preservation of the Old Testament Hebrew Text and the King James Version (Part Two)
Most talk about the text of the Bible focuses on the New Testament. The Old Testament is much larger and yet there is less variation in extant copies of the Old Testament than the New. As well, more Christian scholars know the Greek than the Hebrew, and when they know the Hebrew, they also know the Greek better.
Scripture teaches the preservation of all of scripture in the original languages, the languages in which scripture was written. Even if the conversation mainly centers on the New Testament, God preserved the Old Testament perfectly too. In recent days, some are talking more about the Old Testament again. Our book, Thou Shalt Keep Them, addressed the preservation of the Old Testament and the variation of a Hebrew critical text.
No Translation Above Preserved Hebrew Text
I think you would be right to detect hypocrisy in many of those who wish to alter the preserved Hebrew text of the Old Testament with a Greek, Latin, or Syriac translation. Not necessarily in this order, but, first, it flies in the face of “manuscript evidence.” It’s not because there isn’t evidence — around three hundred extant ancient handwritten copies of the Hebrew Masoretic text exist. Second, critical text advocates savagely attack those who identify preservation in a translation. I don’t believe God preserved His words in a translation, but they actually do in their underlying Old Testament text for the modern versions.
In a related issue, the same critical text supporters most often say that Jesus quoted from a Greek translation of the Old Testament, “the Septuagint.” As someone reads the references or mentions of the Old Testament by Jesus in the Gospels, he will notice that there are not exact quotations of the Hebrew Masoretic text. Even when you compare the English translation of the Hebrew in the Old Testament passage and compare it with the English translation of the Greek in the New Testament, they won’t match exactly most of the time. What was happening in these passages? Is this evidence that we don’t have an identical text to them?
View of the Septuagint
It is a popular and false notion that Christians in the first century used a Greek translation of the Hebrew Bible, called the Septuagint, as their scriptures, so they quoted from it. All the New Testament “quotations” of the Old Testament have at least minor variants from the various editions of the Septuagint in all but one place: a quote in Matthew 21:16 is identical to a part of Psalm 8:3 in Ralf’s edition of the Septuagint.
When you read the New Testament and find the 320 or so usages or allusions to the Old Testament in it, you will see that they are not identical. Some might explain that as a translation of a translation, that is, the Old Testament, Hebrew to English, and the New Testament, Hebrew to Greek to English, differences will occur by a sheer dissipation of a third language. Online and in other locations you can compare an English translation of the New Testament quotations of the Old Testament with an English translation of one edition of the Septuagint and one of the Hebrew Masoretic to compare the latter two with the first.
I see value in the Septuagint, whichever edition, since there are several. Those various editions give larger sample sizes of Greek usage for meaning and syntax for understanding the Greek biblical language of the New Testament. They can help with the study of both the Old and New Testaments. As an example, Jewish translators translated the Old Testament Hebrew word almah in Isaiah 7:14 parthenos, which is the specific Greek word for “virgin,” not “young woman.” All of this answers the question, “How would people have understood the word, phrase, or sentence who heard it in that day?”
What Did New Testament Authors Do?
The mentions of the Old Testament in the New are most often not verbatim quotations of the Hebrew. That’s not what the New Testament authors were doing. They were serious about the preservation of the Old Testament as seen in the regular use of the words, “it is written.” This is a perfect passive verb that says passage continues written. The writing of the passage was complete with the results of that writing ongoing. This communicates the preservation of scripture.
The New Testament authors knew the Old Testament well, so they didn’t need a Greek translation of it. The New Testament writers could do their own translation of a Hebrew text. They most often, however, did a “targum,” some quoting and some paraphrasing from memory and also deliberately using the words of the text to make their theological or practical point from the Bible. Preachers continue to do this today, sometimes quoting directly from a translation and other times making an allusion or reference to the passage.
Reliance on the Septuagint?
What I’m explaining about “targumming” is the explanation of John Owen and others through history as to the variation between the Old Testament Hebrew and the Greek or English translation. Some references to the Old Testament are closer to an edition of the Septuagint than the Hebrew Masoretic text, sometimes almost identical. Were the scriptural authors relying on a Septuagint, which predated the New Testament?
If New Testament authors relied on what we know of the Greek Septuagint today, then they depended on a corrupt edition or version of scripture. Some give this as an argument for the validation of a corrupt text. They say that God doesn’t care about the very words of the Bible, just its message. Instead, God kept the message very intact, but not the exact words. In addition, they often say that the Septuagint is evidence for the acceptance of something short of a perfect text. These approaches to the Septuagint are mere theories founded on faulty presuppositions.
John Owen also referred to this similarity between the usages of the New Testament authors with a translation of the Greek Old Testament, such as the Septuagint. He said that the likely explanation was that Christians adapted the text of the Septuagint to the New Testament quotations out of respect of Jesus and the New Testament authors. Others have echoed that down through history. Owen wasn’t alone. It is a possibility.
John Owen
In Owen’s first volume in his three thousand page Hebrews commentary, he spends a few pages speaking on the Septuagint and the concept of quotations from it. Owen writes (pp. 67-68):
Concerning these, and some other places, many confidently affirm, that the apostle waved the original, and reported the words from the translation of the LXX. . . . [T]his boldness in correcting the text, and fancying without proof, testimony, or probability, of other ancient copies of the Scripture of the Old Testament, differing in many things from them which alone remain, and which indeed were ever in the world, may quickly prove pernicious to the church of God. . . .
[I]t is highly probable, that the apostle, according to his wonted manner, which appears in almost all the citations used by him in this epistle, reporting the sense and import of the places, in words of his own, the Christian transcribers of the Greek Bible inserted his expressions into the text, either as judging them a more proper version of the original, (whereof they were ignorant) than that of the LXX., or out of a preposterous zeal to take away the appearance of a diversity between the text and the apostle’s citation of it.
And thus in those testimonies where there is a real variation from the Hebrew original, the apostle took not his words from the translation of the LXX. but his words were afterwards inserted into that translation.
Theories of Men Versus the Promises of God
Theories of men should not upend or variate the promises of God. God’s promises stand. He promised to preserve the original language text. We should believe it. No one should believe that Jesus or one of the apostles quoted from a corrupted Greek translation. That contradicts the biblical doctrine of the preservation of scripture. Other answers exist.
Whatever position someone takes on the Septuagint, it should not contradict what God already said He would do. There is no authority to historical theories based on no or tenuous evidence at best. The best explanation is one that continues a high view of scripture. One should not rely on one of the editions of the Greek Septuagint for deciding what scripture is. It should not correct the received Hebrew text of the Old Testament. Instead, everyone should believe what God said He would do and acknowledge its fulfillment in history.
Zero Social Gospel in the Parable of the Sheep and the Goats (Part Three)
The application of coupling the important New Testament word “gospel” with “social” makes it an issue of eternal destiny. Gospel relates to salvation, so somehow “social gospel” relates to the word “salvation” at least. Does a social gospel really save though? It doesn’t.
The gospel saves, but not something called “social gospel.” Social gospel advocates make the social gospel a determiner of eternal destiny by buttressing it with the parable of the sheep and the goats from Jesus’ Olivet Discourse. At the end of this parable, Jesus says to His disciples (Matthew 12:45-46):
45 Then shall he answer them, saying, Verily I say unto you, Inasmuch as ye did it not to one of the least of these, ye did it not to me.
46 And these shall go away into everlasting punishment: but the righteous into life eternal.
Whatever position someone might take about this passage, it sounds very serious. Someone is going to everlasting punishment and another is going to life eternal. Everyone will want to get into the latter category, of course.
The Gospel
Social gospel proponents hint that God requires taking care of the poor to avoid going away into everlasting punishment. Almost all of them would not go that far, because the same ones who interpret this passage as social work also are tentative or weak on eternal punishment for anyone. However, they still want to frontload these works into the definition of the gospel.
In Jesus’ presentation of the gospel, He deals with two aspects: one, the entrance requirements, and two, the confirmation of conversion. Someone can say he acceded to the entrance requirements, but Jesus says to judge that by a confirming transformation. The sheep, who are separated from the goats in Christ’s judgment of nations at the end of the tribulation period, confirm their identity as true sheep and not goats by authenticating behavior.
The Audience of Jesus’s Teaching
Jesus speaks to saved Jews and tells them that at this time of trial and trouble before the beginning of His reign on earth, they will not abandon their fellow believers. That would be the same or akin to abandoning him. At that time of testing, you can identify the true sheep by their embrace of other suffering sheep. Jesus is not saying the following in this prophetic address:
People in general receive life eternal and avoid everlasting punishment by feeding and housing poor people in general, saved and unsaved — in essence, God saves people for their good works in contradiction to the gospel.
The Lord in His Olivet Discourse does not address society in general. He answers His Jewish disciples about the future coming of His kingdom, something they expected as premillennialists. Jesus isn’t spiritualizing or allegorizing. He uses figurative language of sheep and goats, which are metaphors, easily identifiable. Goats are not leadable. They don’t follow. Jesus can and will lead sheep and His sheep will follow Him.
Answering the Disciples about a Literal Kingdom
All of the parables Jesus tells in His Olivet Discourse answer the questions of the disciples at the beginning of it:
Tell us, when shall these things be? and what shall be the sign of thy coming, and of the end of the world?
The word “coming” occurs seven times in Jesus’ teaching in Matthew 24-25 and especially “the coming of the Son of Man” in 24:27, 30, 37, and 39. God reveals to Daniel and Daniel 7:13-14:
13 I saw in the night visions, and, behold,, one like the Son of man came with the clouds of heaven, and came to the Ancient of days, and they brought him near before him.
14 And there was given him dominion, and glory, and a kingdom, that all people, nations, and languages, should serve him: his dominion is an everlasting dominion, which shall not pass away, and his kingdom that which shall not be destroyed.
The disciples and Jesus refer to this prophecy and this time. This isn’t speaking of any old time. It’s answering a question specifying a particular future actual event.
The Application of the Parable of the Sheep and the Goats
How much of the parable of the sheep and the goats and the Olivet Discourse in general apply to now? The Olivet Discourse mainly does not apply to anything happening right now. It’s about something yet to come. That doesn’t mean there is zero application. It does apply in certain general ways.
One, it provides hope for the future. Jesus is coming and He will set up a kingdom on the earth. Two, Jews will believe in Jesus Christ in fulfillment of those prophecies in Isaiah 52-53 and Zechariah 12, so we can trust God’s promises. They will take care of fellow believers and then enter into the kingdom. Above all things, three, the message to believers today is to be ready for these events. Believers ought to always ready themselves for the future. They should and will take care of their own as if they are Jesus Christ Himself.
The philosophy or message of the social gospel clashes with scripture, some of which I addressed earlier regarding salvation by grace through faith. Social work won’t save you. It doesn’t even confirm your conversion according to this proof text. True believers will band together to survive persecution, which validates their true salvation profession. This is equal to not defecting from the faith and instead overcoming by faith.
God’s Purpose
Feeding and Housing?
The Bible smacks up against feeding and housing the general poor or homeless population. As I say that, scripture categorizes people in a different way than the modern social movements. Like He does in the Olivet Discourse, consistent with all the Bible, there the saved and the lost. David writes in Psalm 37:25:
I have been young, and now am old; yet have I not seen the righteous forsaken, nor his seed begging bread.
Preaching the gospel to everyone can move some into the category of the righteous. That will also solve people’s physical condition. It is not God’s will to relieve everyone indiscriminately from their hunger. God uses drought and famine to get people’s attention. He also uses poor physical conditions to prepare hearts and open eyes to the need of and for God.
Using Drought, Disease, and Famine
Feeding and housing takes away the pain of sin-engendered suffering that might help these people listen to the actual gospel message. As an example Amos 4:6-9 says God sends droughts, disease, and famine to warn and cause to listen to Him:
6 And I also have given you cleanness of teeth in all your cities, and want of bread in all your places: yet have ye not returned unto me, saith the LORD.
7 And also I have withholden the rain from you, when there were yet three months to the harvest: and I caused it to rain upon one city, and caused it not to rain upon another city: one piece was rained upon, and the piece whereupon it rained not withered.
8 So two or three cities wandered unto one city, to drink water; but they were not satisfied: yet have ye not returned unto me, saith the LORD.
9 I have smitten you with blasting and mildew: when your gardens and your vineyards and your fig trees and your olive trees increased, the palmerworm devoured them: yet have ye not returned unto me, saith the LORD.
Many of drought, disease, and famine bring about the will of God. God doesn’t want people to rescue the ones suffering without repentance. This postpones something even worse for them. God uses these physical troubles to motivate a return to Him. These passages occur all over scripture.
Social Gospel Clashes with Jesus and the True and Only Gospel
The social gospel elevates the temporal, like Esau relinquishing his birthright for a mess of pottage (Gen 25:31-34). This confuses people. It sends a wrong, false message that this is your best life now. No. Faith trades the temporal for the eternal. This is the simplicity of losing your temporal life for eternal life. The social elevates the former as the priority. Jesus doesn’t do this. He says give up the world and take Him, which is to obtain eternal life.
The social gospel doesn’t take scripture seriously. It primarily uses the Bible. The goal is not understanding what Jesus said in Matthew 25, but using what he said for an agenda, one that isn’t true.
Should social gospel supporters scare people by telling them that they won’t have eternal life if they don’t volunteer to feed and house the general population? Do they even believe this? It’s either true or it isn’t. It isn’t true, and since it isn’t true, this kind of threat is wicked.
Jesus will turn people into the lake of fire. Who He does and who He doesn’t are as important as anything. It’s a terrible thing to confuse the gospel. People are saved, not by doing good works, but by faith alone in Jesus Christ.
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