Home » Posts tagged 'Jesus' (Page 6)
Tag Archives: Jesus
The Coddling of the American Mind, Questioning One’s Salvation, and Showing Grace and Mercy
Three veins of thought I recently read and heard come together into one theme for this post. Each of them intersected into a common orbit, like three strangers meeting at an English roundabout and deciding to stay. First I want to credit the three sources.
The first, The Coddling of the American Mind, was mentioned by popular linguist and author, Columbia professor John McWhorter at Substack in a part of his anti-anti-racist series, the article titled, Black Fragility as Black Strength. He borrowed from the recent conservative book, The Coddling of the American Mind, for the outline of his article. The title of that Lukianoff and Haidt book also takes from a now classic published in 1987 by University of Chicago professor, Allan Bloom, titled, The Closing of the American Mind. The coddling of the American mind is a later iteration of closing the American mind, both occurring on university campuses. Truth approaches a coddled mind and it closes like the Mimosa pudica to escape injury, remaining in error.
Questioning salvation is scriptural. At least two books of the New Testament, 1 John and James, have this as their subject matter. Parts of several other New Testament books speak to the unconverted in a mixed multitude, including Hebrews. Jesus Himself addresses this crowd. Paul writes in 2 Corinthians 13:5, “Examine yourselves, whether ye be in the faith; prove your own selves.”
With an attitude of great surprise, Tim McKnight on his post, “Social Media: 7 Tips for Christians,” started with these two sentences:
Last night I experienced a first on social media. A person claiming to follow Jesus Christ questioned my salvation.
McKnight, a person claiming to follow Jesus Christ, questioned someone questioning his salvation. The Apostle Paul said, question people’s salvation, Jesus questioned people’s salvation, and every true evangelist will question someone’s salvation. It shouldn’t have been a first on social media, but this was considered an offense.
The above offense of questioning salvation then also dovetails with number three, a sermon I was listening to on Christian radio in our area, where the speaker was emphasizing “showing grace and mercy” to others. As I listened to his defining the practice, I tried to connect the practice to scripture. I understood from what he said that “showing grace and mercy” was a kind of toleration of unacceptable behavior, putting up with how others behave without saying anything. That might have become the standard understanding of the concept of showing grace and mercy.
Let me put this together. Coddled minds, who don’t want their salvation questioned, need us to show them grace and mercy by leaving them alone. The Apostle Paul didn’t coddle the Corinthians when he called on them to question their own salvation. Would he have done better to coddle them and would this have been to show them grace and mercy?
Often the Apostle Paul starts his three pastoral epistles with these almost identical statements:
Grace, mercy, and peace, from God the Father and the Lord Jesus Christ our Saviour.
Grace be with you, mercy, and peace, from God the Father, and from the Lord Jesus Christ, the Son of the Father, in truth and love.
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: For he that biddeth him God speed is partaker of his evil deeds.
Now we exhort you, brethren, warn them that are unruly, comfort the feebleminded, support the weak, be patient toward all men.
Jesus Made the Cross a Symbol and Paul Took It Further
The word “cross” is found in the New Testament 28 times. The mere expression “cross” doesn’t mean anything without some explanation. Jesus started us off by using it in Matthew 10:28:
And he that taketh not his cross, and followeth after me, is not worthy of me.
*1 Corinthians 1:17-18: 17 For Christ sent me not to baptize, but to preach the gospel:: not with wisdom of words, lest the cross of Christ should be made of none effect. 18 For the preaching of the cross is to them that perish foolishness; but unto us which are saved it is the power of God.*Galatians 5:11: And I, brethren, if I yet preach circumcision, why do I yet suffer persecution? then is the offence of the cross ceased.*Galatians 6:12-14: 12 As many as desire to make a fair shew in the flesh, they constrain you to be circumcised; only lest they should suffer persecution for the cross of Christ. 13 For neither they themselves who are circumcised keep the law; but desire to have you circumcised, that they may glory in your flesh. 14 But God forbid that I should glory, save in the cross of our Lord Jesus Christ, by whom the world is crucified unto me, and I unto the world.*Ephesians 2:16: And that he might reconcile both unto God in one body by the cross, having slain the enmity thereby:*Philippians 3:18: (For many walk, of whom I have told you often, and now tell you even weeping, that they are the enemies of the cross of Christ:Colossians 1:20: And, having made peace through the blood of his cross, by him to reconcile all things unto himself; by him, I say, whether they be things in earth, or things in heaven.Colossians 2:14: Blotting out the handwriting of ordinances that was against us, which was contrary to us, and took it out of the way, nailing it to his cross;
Romans 6:6: Knowing this, that our old man is crucified with him, that the body of sin might be destroyed, that henceforth we should not serve sin.1 Corinthians 1:23: But we preach Christ crucified, unto the Jews a stumblingblock, and unto the Greeks foolishness;1 Corinthians 2:2: For I determined not to know any thing among you, save Jesus Christ, and him crucified.Galatians 2:20: I am crucified with Christ: nevertheless I live; yet not I, but Christ liveth in me: and the life which I now live in the flesh I live by the faith of the Son of God, who loved me, and gave himself for me.Galatians 3:1: O foolish Galatians, who hath bewitched you, that ye should not obey the truth, before whose eyes Jesus Christ hath been evidently set forth, crucified among you?Galatians 5:24: And they that are Christ’s have crucified the flesh with the affections and lusts.Galatians 6:14: But God forbid that I should glory, save in the cross of our Lord Jesus Christ, by whom the world is crucified unto me, and I unto the world.
The Feeding of the Five Thousand: How Old Were the Bread and the Fish the People Ate, That Jesus Gave Them?
When I go to the grocery store and I select my items, I don’t very often think of the process. I just push the cart and put into it what’s on my list. My wife was gone for quite awhile recently, so I grocery shopped. A few times I picked up one or two of those tubes of hamburger you’ve maybe seen. It didn’t occur to me when I did that a calf was born, it grazed in a field, grew to full grown size, was herded into a truck, shipped to a meat plant, driven into a building and was butchered, then parts of that full grown cow were ground into beef, which was squeezed into a tube and through various machinations of the supply chain, arrived in my store in Southern Oregon.
I didn’t look at that tube of hamburger and assume that it just sprung up there in the meat department of Walmart with the appearance of age. I know it didn’t. However, something different happened when the Lord Jesus Christ served the five thousand bread and fish in Matthew 14:13-21. I now know that just one cell of a fish exists according to a very complicated code of DNA, information from powerful and intelligent design antecedent to its emergence, let alone the origin of the matter from which it formed. Further along, there’s the fish eye, it’s gills, brain, internal organs, scales, and fins. Its musculature, that allowed for its under water propulsion, becomes the fleshly substance of a meal, also the subject of future digestion and incorporation into a human body.
Everything everyone ate at the feeding of the five thousand had the appearance of age. That was the miracle of it. Sure, it would have been a great miracle if everyone was able to stand or sit there that day and wait for a seed of wheat or corn to grow into the grain necessary to mill to flour, work into dough, and baked to yummy goodness. How long would that take? Perhaps the moment of the feeding was actually an age, once we’ve decided that we’re permitted to conform measurements of time to our preferred version of a scriptural narrative. We all know that a loaf of bread couldn’t have appeared in a moment according to known dating systems, so to help with the believability of Matthew 14:13-21, we allow for our own adaptation and maneuverability of the story.
No. Jesus created bread and fish, skipping the time and the process. He went straight from point A to B or A to Z, depending on how many steps you want to imagine were skipped. That’s the wonder of His power, wisdom, and love. God by nature is supernatural and He divinely intervenes in His creation however He wants. He is not bound by the very natural laws He originated. He’s more than the state highway police traveling as fast as He wants to enforce His own laws.
What’s harder? An instantaneous universe with an apparent appearance of fourteen billion years or thousands of separate bread loaves and fully grown fish? Think of even the milling process for flour. Where was the mill stone? There was none. Flour itself was skipped. What’s harder, the instantaneous creation of matter or the instantaneous formation of that matter to a mature appearing universe? Both are impossible, except with God. If you can believe the first, you can also believe the second.
Without faith, it is impossible to please God.
The Elimination of Practices and Activities Deemed Dispensable By the Truth About Real Gain
You can do certain things. They’re permissible, sure. They’re not wrong per se. Paul argue that’s not how we should choose to do things. We might like them. They might be fun.
Paul could have made money off of his preaching. According to him in 1 Corinthians 9, he even deserved it. Those who preach of the gospel, he said, should live of the gospel. However, he willingly gave up that support for the sake of the gospel. As an evangelist or missionary, taking monetary support for preaching the gospel could diminish the effects of his preaching.
The money Paul could have made was a type of gain. It’s still a well-known type of gain. Gain is an economics term, like “capital gains.” Adam Smith in his classic, Wealth of Nations, begins chapter ten by saying:
The five following are the principal circumstances which, so far as I have been able to observe, make up for a small pecuniary gain in some employments, and counterbalance a great one in others.
Then he names those five principles circumstances and elaborates on them. You see his use of the word “gain.” He uses it 17 times in that chapter. In the next paragraph, he writes:
Honour makes a great part of the reward of all honourable professions. In point of pecuniary gain, all things considered, they are generally under-recompensed, as I shall endeavour to show by and by. Disgrace has the contrary effect. The trade of a butcher is a brutal and an odious business; but it is in most places more profitable than the greater part of common trades. The most detestable of all employments, that of public executioner, is, in proportion to the quantity of work done, better paid than any common trade whatever.
He says that honor is the reward of certain honorouble professions, rather than “pecuniary gain.” “Pecuniary” is “related to or consisting of money.” He implies there are other types of gain, like honor. Honor is a kind of gain, not pecuniary, but one to be chosen over money apparently. The profession brings honor, if it doesn’t bring money.
The Apostle Paul refers to gain again and again in scripture, and this is seen in 1 Corinthians 9 in a section that most label as a section on Christian liberty. I respect that idea that 1 Corinthians 6-10 is about Christian liberty. I don’t mind it, but it is worth looking at it from the perspective of the definition of real gain.
God created man for a relationship with Him. The Lord Jesus said in Matthew 16:26,
For what is a man profited, if he shall gain the whole world, and lose his own soul? or what shall a man give in exchange for his soul?
There’s that word “gain.” The implication here is that someone profits nothing, even if he gains the whole world and loses his own soul. Luke 9:25 says,
For what is a man advantaged, if he gain the whole world, and lose himself, or be cast away?
In the King James Version, Paul uses the word “gain” five times. He writes first in 1 Corinthians 9:19,
For though I be free from all men, yet have I made myself servant unto all, that I might gain the more.
To the weak became I as weak, that I might gain the weak: I am made all things to all men, that I might by all means save some.
But what things were gain to me, those I counted loss for Christ.
If any man love not the Lord Jesus Christ, let him be Anathema Maranatha.
Defining Pharisaism By Fleshing Out Its Confrontation by the Lord Jesus in His Sermon on the Mount
Terms like Pharisaism and legalism are often blunt instruments used today against churches and individual believers. They can be much like the word, racism. People weaponize terms to protect a belief or lifestyle through castigation. At the worst, they want to eliminate the objects of their scorn. Maybe they’re right about the ones they want to cancel and what they believe and practice. Is it true though? Are their targets really Pharisees and legalists?The Lord Jesus confronted Pharisaism and legalism with His Sermon on the on Mount in Matthew 5-7. The sermon explains salvation, but in a unique way to cast down the corrupt view of the Pharisees, the religion of the day. Their teaching was so prevalent everywhere, what Jesus then preached was also dealing with the thinking of everyone in His audience. Even if He wasn’t preaching to Pharisees, He was preaching to Pharisaism and legalism.
Worth Your Salt
When taking the opportunity to portray true Christian identity, Jesus used salt and light in Matthew 5:13-16. Through these two metaphors, He painted a picture of the expected nature of a genuine believer. In so doing, Jesus adhered to His original representation of salvation in the beatitudes (verses 3-12) and invoked the association with the Word of God (verses 17-20).
Salt can and will retard corruption and enhance taste if it retains its fundamental characteristic of saltiness. Salt without saltiness is worthless. Jesus said, “Ye are salt.” Specific people are salt, those who have saltiness. Very often scripture portrays unbelievers as worthless. They aren’t functioning according to the image of God in which He created man. They are like the branches of John 15, bearing no fruit and so thrown into the fire. They are worthless branches.
At the time Jesus spoke, salt was of great value. Roman soldiers were paid in salt, which pay meant they operated in a competent way. They were worth their salt.
The blessed man, one with the ultimate fulfillment of true salvation and receives the kingdom of heaven, is persecuted for righteousness’ sake. The righteousness stands up to and contrasts and conflicts with evil. This is being salt. A true believer’s righteousness will clash with false doctrine and practice. He’s not salt if he doesn’t.
The standard for the genuine believer’s conflict to retard corruption is scripture. The true believer lives according to and propagates the Word of God. Scripture manifests the nature of God. To take on the nature of God, the true believer retards decay by detecting and correcting false doctrine and practice according to the Word of God.
The nature of the world conflicts with the nature of God. This results in persecution. Rather than succumb to the pressure of that persecution, the true believer will continue as salt, retarding the corruption. This doesn’t occur by destroying the law, but by fulfilling it, every jot and tittle (verses 17-18). The genuine believe retains saltiness in the face of persecution. It’s his nature and that won’t change with opposition, a characteristic Jesus front loads in His description of salvation.
The opposition to darkness isn’t selective. It’s every jot and tittle. As Jesus continues, it is teaching not just the “essentials,” but even the least of God’s commandments. The righteousness of true Christianity supercedes the righteousness of the Pharisees. It doesn’t dumb down righteousness to a standard that can be kept by men. This is the salt losing its saltiness and becoming worthless.
Churches today are becoming worthless at retarding the unrighteousness of the world, because they are not standing up for righteousness. They stand up for selective or relative righteousness, not every jot or tittle. They are ashamed of many points of scripture and refuse to be salt where Christianity most clashes with the world. They are not worth their salt.
My Conversations with Numerous Exvangelicals
PATAS, Philippine Atheism, Agnosticism, and Secularism (Society) Debate live: Does History Validate the Accuracy of the New Testament Gospels? Ross / Maisonet
I am pleased to inform What is Truth? readers that the Thomas Ross – Benjamin Maisonet debate, “Does History Validate the Accuracy of the New Testament Gospels?” is now live and can be watched on YouTube.
Click here to watch the Ross-Maisonet debate, “Does History Validate the Accuracy of the New Testament Gospels?”
The debate took place in Manila, Philippines, in 2019, where I was teaching a class on the preservation of Scripture and preaching for Bro Billy Hardecker of Mt. Zion Baptist Mission in Manila, but issues with the audio and video lining up kept the debate from going live until now. The quality is still not absolutely amazing, but considering the non-first-world setting and the equipment used, I am thankful for the quality that is present. Mr. Maisonet was (and I assume still is) the president of the Philippine Atheism, Agnosticism, and Secularism (Society), or PATAS. He told me that he replaced the previous president because that person had been stealing money from the organization. Atheism and agnosticism are much less common in the Philippines than they are in the United States, which may be one reason that the president of PATAS was born in the United States and moved to the Philippines. In any case, Mr. Maisonet, as the president of PATAS, was a good representative of atheism in the Philippines. He made the sort of popular-level arguments that one will run across in personal evangelism, rather than the more scholarly type of arguments against the accuracy of the New Testament made by Islamic apologists such as Shabir Ally. I confess that I did not find his argumentation particularly convincing, but he seems to have thought he made a good case, and I will allow those who watch the debate to evaluate what was said based on facts and logic in God’s world.
The PATAS debate was set up at short notice, so I employed a lot of the material from my debate with Dr. Ally on “The New Testament Picture of Jesus: Is It Accurate?” which is also in my study on evidence for the New Testament from archaeology, prophecy, and history. In my view, which is admittedly biased in favor of God and His Word, the arguments made for the historicity of the New Testament have now stood up well against both Muslim and atheist apologists.
Feel free to subscribe to my KJB1611 YouTube channel,”like” and comment on the debate, and share it with others, if you believe it deserves it. Also, if you would be interested in sponsoring a debate with a non-Christian philosophy or a pseudo-Christian cult, please contact my church.
–TDR
How Jesus Relates Persecution to the Gospel in the Sermon on the Mount and His Example to Us In Doing So
In what is called “the Sermon on the Mount” in Matthew 5-7, Jesus preaches salvation to a Jewish crowd of people and pulls down with supernatural wisdom and authority their unique strongholds. For instance, in the very first statement, one of the Beatitudes, He says, “Blessed are the poor in spirit: for theirs is the kingdom of heaven.” The Jews didn’t see themselves as spiritually poor, but spiritually wealthy. They were by rights, God’s chosen people. Of course, they were already “blessed” through the Abrahamic covenant, and even in their own eyes, the Mosaic covenant, according to the Deuteronomic code. None of their thinking was true on this, so Jesus eviscerated it in the Sermon.
Another Jewish thought is “the kingdom.” They would have considered themselves already the beneficiaries of the kingdom through the Davidic covenant. “Heaven” is the abode of God and they saw themselves as the children of God, so wherever God was, they would be, even as God resided in the tabernacle through the wilderness. Jesus confronts their wrong thinking when he shows the rich man is in Hell, not in heaven in Luke 16. None of this, the kingdom or heaven, was theirs, however, unless they were poor in spirit, which meant that they acquiesced to their own spiritual poverty, that they really were lacking and in dire need. They needed to do what the Apostle Paul did and count their own spirituality as loss and as dung for them to win Christ or find themselves under the reign of the Messiah in His kingdom with all its promised blessings.
The Jews already saw themselves as sadly and badly not receiving their just desserts, their appropriate reward. According to their own assessment, they were persecuted by the Romans as they had been by many other various empires previously. This would fly in the face of being a blessed people and a kingdom people. It was an unacceptable circumstance that should be turned around and would be reversed by a true Messiah. That’s not what Jesus said though.
Just like the people in the kingdom of heaven would be first poor in spirit, they would also be persecuted for righteousness sake (Matthew 5:10). Persecution is the guaranteed cost of a truly saved person and Jesus frontloads this in His gospel presentation in Matthew 5:10-12. As people enter into true salvation through Jesus Christ, they need to expect persecution. They need to count the cost. Jesus said in Luke 9:23, that if any man will come after him, let him take up his cross daily. Jesus issues that understanding right up front to those who might receive the kingdom. It’s a narrow road with few on it.
Churches today do not give their targets for attendance or membership the impression that they will suffer or be persecuted by joining up. That’s a way to shrink the numbers. However, it is the method of Jesus. He included that in His gospel presentation and more than once. Do not expect to have it easy if you’re a Christian, and that’s not why you’re receiving Christ, for what you’ll receive in time, because that’s going to be persecution. Very likely why less are truly converted today is because they do not see the Christian life as worth suffering for. They would choose a Christianity full of pleasure, but not the one with guaranteed pain, so they reject genuine Christianity for the placebo. Churches offer the placebo, because that’s what people want. Then the entire program of the church revolves around various pleasures, especially for the young people.
The Jews thought they were persecuted already, but they were were persecuted for unrighteousness. Daniel prophecies why Israel would be dominated by the Romans. He was downhearted by the lack of enthusiasm for God among the captives in Babylon, comfortable to just stay and not return to the land for true worship of God. They would keep being chastised because of their faithlessness and then they took that as persecution. Actual persecution is for righteousness and not unrighteousness. Just because the Jews of Jesus’ day were suffering didn’t mean they were persecuted and neither did it mean they had a future kingdom for them. No, that kingdom was only for those persecuted for righteousness.
People in the future kingdom do not fit into the present one, the kingdom of this world. The people under the future reign of Jesus are those who want a present reign of Jesus. People who want Him to be king in the future have got to want Him to be king in the present. Those over whom Jesus reigns will be persecuted. They will not fit in. They will be despised, reviled, and accused falsely by men. That will be the norm for those following Jesus Christ into the kingdom and He wants them to know that right up front.
Jesus isn’t going to take away persecution in the short term. He offers the future kingdom as a motivation for present rejoicing. The basis for being exceeding glad now is the reward in heaven for all eternity. There is a lack of joy in churches and in professing Christian families because of something far less than persecution. The church and family members are not getting their way and they don’t like the discomfort now. They expect to be treated better and have their rights protected. When they get hard preaching from scripture they become easily offended. When they are required to live like a Christian, they are put off and threaten to quit, if not just to find another church where they’ll be treated like they want.
Professing Christians aren’t looking for a church where they will suffer. They are looking for a place of creature comforts with lots of friends. This is not what Jesus told true believers to expect. He told them just the opposite and He included it in His gospel presentation.
The Misuse of James 1:20 and the Wrath of Man
Does the wrath of man work not the righteousness of God? It would seem that this was true because of James 1:20 and it’s saying that explicitly: “For the wrath of man worketh not the righteousness of God.” How could anyone question that? It’s the entire verse.
You see someone get angry, this verse comes to mind, and you quote it to the angry person. Yet, what if I saw that you weren’t angry, and I quoted instead, Ephesians 4:26, “Be ye angry, and sin not”? This verse seems to require anger not to sin. James 1:20 seems to require no anger not to sin. Are they contradicting one another?
2 Corinthians 7:11, a classic passage on repentance, includes as part of repentance over sin, “indignation.” It’s obvious that the indignation is over someone’s personal sin, which is also what Ephesians 4:26 is about. Anger at one’s own sin is useful for not sinning.
John 2 doesn’t say that Jesus was angry when He cleansed the temple, but of his disciples, who were present and witnessing this occurrence, John 2:17 says, “And his disciples remembered that it was written, The zeal of thine house hath eaten me up.” Jesus reached down, picked up strands of leather to form into a make-shift whip, and started whipping people, animals, and overturning tables. It looked like He was angry. The Greek word translated, “zeal,” which is a quotation of Psalm 69:9, BDAG calls “an intense negative feeling.” There was sin all over that temple, and Jesus was angry over it. He had an intense negative feeling about it.
Let’s return to James 1:20 and look more at the context, seeing verses 18-22:
18 Of his own will begat he us with the word of truth, that we should be a kind of firstfruits of his creatures. 19 Wherefore, my beloved brethren, let every man be swift to hear, slow to speak, slow to wrath: 20 For the wrath of man worketh not the righteousness of God. 21 Wherefore lay apart all filthiness and superfluity of naughtiness, and receive with meekness the engrafted word, which is able to save your souls. 22 But be ye doers of the word, and not hearers only, deceiving your own selves.
James lays out tests of faith so that someone can know that he’s been converted, that he has saving faith. Saving faith proceeds from the “word of truth.” See that in verse 18? God begat us “with the word of truth.” A test of faith is what someone does with the word of truth. The context is about hearing scripture and doing it. It is obvious that the hearing of scripture is the preaching of the Word of God.
In the context, when the Word of God is preached, since it is the agent of our regeneration, our conversion, turning us into a ‘firstfruits of God’s creatures,’ every man should “be swift to hear, slow to speak, slow to wrath” (v. 19). There is one positive and there are two negatives. If someone is receptive to the Word of God being preached in a positive way, he is “swift to hear,” and then in a negative way, he is “slow to speak” and “slow to wrath.” He is listening and not debating or getting angry with what he is hearing.
James directs his writing to “beloved brethren.” Are these saved people? I believe they are unsaved and saved Jews, a mixed multitude attending a church. “Brethren” in this case refers to Jewish brethren, people in the nation Israel. Some of them are saved and some of them are unsaved. If they are unsaved, listening to the preaching of God’s Word could result in their being saved, or in other words, ‘work the righteousness of God.” On the other hand, if they were to debate and get angry with the preaching of scripture, that would not work the saving righteousness of God.
If these are saved Jews hearing James’s epistle, they could acknowledge that they have a saving response to preaching. They are swift to hear, slow to speak, slow to wrath. Their response to scripture is a test of their faith, and they pass that test.
The “wrath” of verse 20, that “worketh not the righteousness of God,” is the wrath of verse 19, “slow to wrath.” It’s not just any wrath. It is anger at the preaching of scripture. That anger, that wrath, worketh not the righteousness of God. It results in a person not receiving imputed righteousness by faith. If this is a saved person, it results in his not receiving sanctifying righteousness.
A man, who is angry with the preaching of scripture, will not “lay apart all filthiness and superfluity of naughtiness” (v. 21). As a result, he will not receive the saving of his soul. He’s not listening to scripture. He’s arguing with it and angry with it. As a result, he is not begotten by the Word of Truth.
James continues in verse 22 on the same theme. A true believer will not just hear but also do what the Bible says. He will hear it and practice it. This all connects to his relationship to God. God is the source of every good and perfect gift (v. 17a). He spoke the world into existence by His Word and He doesn’t change (v. 17b), so He is still giving good things through His Word, including His righteousness.
When someone uses James 1:20 in a general way to say that no wrath works the righteousness of God, that is false. We know that some wrath, righteous indignation, does work the righteousness of God. This is the wrath of man against the Word of God when it is preached. That is the wrath of James 1:20 and that is how James 1:20 should be used or applied. When it is isn’t used that way, it is being twisted or perverted. You could even say it isn’t working the righteousness of God.
Recent Comments