Category Archives: Apologetics/Philosophy

Battle Plan Strategy 10 –Identity in Christ

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Strategy 10:  I realize that I died with Christ, and I am now a new creation. I am living and ordering my life as a resurrected person, not as the old person I used to be.

This is one of the most important strategies when attempting to win the fight against sin. We can make all sorts of resolutions and put into play all of the self-disciplines that we can muster, but real victory becomes possible when this truth is embraced and put into practice.

In Romans 6:2, Paul asks the question, “How shall we who died to sin, live any longer in it?” He then goes on to explain what he means by this. If you’ve been baptized into Christ – in other words, if you’ve been born again – you were baptized into Christ’s death. What this means is that when God saves us, He so thoroughly unites us with His Son that there is a oneness established that makes Christ’s history our history. For example in Ephesians 2 we read, “But God, who is rich in mercy, because of His great love with which He loved us, even when we were dead in trespasses, made us alive together with Christ (by grace you have been saved), and raised us up together, and made us sit together in the heavenly places in Christ Jesus,” (Ephesians 2:4–6, NKJV).

We see here that God raised us up with Christ and has even seated us with Him in heavenly places in Christ. So Jesus’ death is our death. His resurrection is our resurrection. His ascension is our ascension.

What does that mean, then, when it comes to the battle against sin? It means that just as Jesus, when He died, died to sin, so we also, when we died with Him, died to sin. Jesus didn’t sin before His death, but He was subject to all of the temptations that we go through. His death put an end to that. We are to reckon ourselves dead with Christ to sin and we are to see ourselves on the resurrection side of things. This is the way Paul puts it:

“Likewise you also, reckon yourselves to be dead indeed to sin, but alive to God in Christ Jesus our Lord. Therefore do not let sin reign in your mortal body, that you should obey it in its lusts. And do not present your members as instruments of unrighteousness to sin, but present yourselves to God as being alive from the dead, and your members as instruments of righteousness to God.” (Romans 6:11–13, NKJV)

The key word here is reckon. We are to count it as true because God says it. We died to sin when we died with Christ, and we are to reckon on that being true as we face the many temptations of life. We’ve died and our life is hidden with Christ in God (Colossians 3:3).

He finishes the section in Romans with the words, “For sin shall not have dominion over you, for you are not under law, but under grace.” This is not a command for you not to let sin have dominion. It is a statement of fact. Sin shall not have dominion. Its rule over us has been broken. It has no authority over us even though its power seems awfully strong. We are to believe that and act accordingly.

When temptation comes, even when it is a strong one, you acknowledge the fact that you have died with Christ. You claim the truth that you have been buried and raised with Him, and that this sin has no authority over you. Your heart will tell you that that’s not true, and that you must listen to the temptation and bow to it. But just as our Lord did when He was tempted, you must use scripture to claim your ground on the resurrection side.

Priority Goal 10: Moment by moment I will reckon and consider and claim the fact that I died with Christ, and I am on resurrection ground, and therefore sin does not have any authority or power over me no matter how strong it feels.

Book Highlight

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In my book, I write about those who say that we cannot figure out what the actual intent of a writer is because everyone’s experience is different, and so forth. In response, I write this, “If what they say is true, then it is false. Why? because if we can’t know anything and can’t communicate anything, then they don’t know what they are trying to communicate, and they can’t be sure any of us will hear the message they are sending.”

From the Back Cover

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From the back cover of “What in the World is God Doing” – “The heavens declare the glory of God, and the sky above proclaims his handiwork. Day to day pours out speech, and night to night reveals knowledge.” Psalm 19:1,2 ESV.
Nature declares the fact that God exists. The message pours froth from every direction. Yet, the God who exists is a God of WORD. “Long ago, at many times and in many ways, God spoke to our fathers by the prophets, but in these last days he has spoken to us by his Son.” Hebrews 1:1,2
God has spoken through the Bible and in his Son, Jesus Christ. He has told us about himself, how he made all of creation, and what is overarching purpose for all of it is. The author makes the case that understanding this purpose, and ordering our lives accordingly, will result in a truly meaningful life that will glorify God now and throughout eternity.

True? False? or Who Cares? Part 5

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I’ve titled this series “True? False? Or Who Cares?” I’m concerned that the “who cares” crowd is winning. Someone asked me the other day what I thought of subjective truth. My problem is that I don’t even understand what this means. In my reply, I used this example: Suppose one of your friends doesn’t believe in absolute truth. All truth is subjective, he thinks. Ask him to do this – when he gets his next pay check, he should cash it at the bank, bring all of the currency home, wad it up, and burn it in the middle of the driveway.

If there is no such thing as truth, then there is no such true statement as, “That $1500 worth of currency can buy me food or pay down my mortgage.” That’s just a matter of personal opinion and therefore burning it is no more significant than leaving it intact. Now, we all know that this whole example is stupid. In the real world, we work with true and false all the time. It’s just when it comes to religion and morals, and maybe politics, that everything is questionable. And we know what the reason is. No one really wants some Being to be able to tell us what to do.

I started this series by referring to Dr. Willard’s discussion of “profession”, “commitment”, “faith”, and “knowledge.” He was primarily discussing religion and the fact that we often emphasize profession and commitment without the foundation of knowledge or truth. This is not only a religious problem, but a problem in most areas of human life and is at the root of the collapse of so much discourse. Let’s take it out of the field of religion and use the words, feelings, opinions, beliefs, and truth. I maintain that our problem is that we argue at the level of our feelings and opinions. People operate on the assumption that if they feel something is true or are of the opinion that it is true, then it must be true.

It used to be that discussions and arguments were carried out at the truth level. People would say, “What you are saying is not true because of these three facts.” Someone else might respond by stating that fact number 2 isn’t true for the following reasons….

That’s not how arguments go today. People say things like, “I just don’t think you’re right because I just feel that….” Or, “You can’t say that because how will people who disagree with you feel about it if they think you are saying they are wrong?”

We need to get back to focusing on what the truth is and how we discover it. We need to base our arguments and discussions at that point.

Back to the religious aspect for a minute. When someone makes a profession of faith, it should be faith in something that is asserted to be true, not just in some mystical feeling. The Christian teaching is that in real time and space, Jesus Christ was literally born from a virgin. At some point he was executed on a Roman cross and he died, i.e., his heart stopped beating and his brain ceased to function. Three days later he came alive, proving that he was God in a human body. We assert these things to be true meaning we believe they actually happened.

When we get careless and begin to think at the level of our feelings, then we are exactly where Dr. Willard describes – profession and commitment become dominant, and the grounding in truth that people need won’t be there to sustain them through all of the challenges of life.

True? False? or Who Cares? Part 4

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In the last article in this series we looked at the concept of “presuppositions.” Presuppositions are ideas we believe or accept without proof. Everyone has them. Even in mathematics we have things called postulates which are statements that are accepted as true without proof. I remember a math class I had once where we assumed that the number 1 existed. We also assumed that the next number in a counting series could be found by adding the number 1 to the previous number. Every other “truth” that we used in the course had to be proved from these two postulates or assumptions or presuppositions.

So what does this have to do with our discussion of truth and how we know it? Let’s take the Creation vs Evolution debate for example. I worked in the public schools for 42 years and have seen the nuances that this debate has taken. When everything is sorted out through the legal system it usually comes down to this: Creation is a religious, faith-based idea and therefore has no place within the science curriculum. Evolution however is a scientific truth and therefore can and should be taught within the science curriculum.

I realize that I am probably not going to change many minds in this short article, but this is how I see it in light of our discussion about truth and how we know it. Scientific knowledge and truth come from proposing an hypothesis and then designing a controlled experiment to test that hypothesis to see if it is true. In the case of the origin of life, it seems obvious to me that there can be no experiment designed that will duplicate the conditions, time span, and forces needed to create and evolve life by random processes. Every attempt so far has involved a high level of human thinking and planning involved to set up conditions favorable for the creation of life. The true condition of randomness and chance events were not duplicated.  Even so, life has not been created by those experiments.

On the creation side, there is no one alive today who saw God create anything. All we have is ancient documents within various religious traditions describing how God did it.

My point is that those who claim evolution is true are actually proposing something just as faith-based as a creationist is.

But the evolutionist says, “No, that’s not true. You creationists are bringing God into the mix. We are providing a natural and scientific explanation of how life began and evolved.” The problem here is with the assumptions or presuppositions that underlie what we believe. In order to fit the definition of science, God must be left out of the equation. That is an assumption. All of the study and investigation that takes place looks for explanations that leave God out. It is assumed that God either does not exist or does not play any role in any way in the natural world. But suppose God actually exists. If God actually exists, isn’t it madness to try to get at the explanation for why things are the way they are without including him in the mix?

“But”, they say, “we don’t know if God exists or not and therefore, we choose to leave him out of our assumptions regarding science and simply look for the natural causes of things.”

OK. That’s fine. But don’t call your explanation of origins totally scientific because you are basing your “science” on the belief that certain things are true. There are a set of beliefs or assumptions upon which the entire system is built. That makes it a faith based philosophy.

A scientist who includes the belief in a god or supreme being in his foundational assumptions will also build a faith-based science. But he, when he looks at the order and apparent “design” in the universe, will come to the conclusion that there is a designer behind it.

It’s interesting that in normal life we do this all the time. If you’re walking through the woods and you come upon a group of similar sized stones lying in the dirt forming the shape of a circle, you assume someone of intelligence placed them that way. You don’t assume that they just fell there randomly. And yet when some scientists look at the brain or the eye, they don’t see a designer at all, but millions of years of random circumstances producing it. So we attribute a simple circle of stones to an intelligent designer, i.e., a human being behind it, but something as complex as an eye evolved with no intelligent activity involved in it at all.

When trying to determine the truth, everyone begins their investigative reasoning with presuppositions or assumptions. Mathematicians do it and scientists do it. We all do it. We need to be careful to recognize that we are doing it. When you make statements of truth or believe what someone else says, look for the presuppositions that underlie those statements. Second, make sure that when you are discussing what you believe to be the truth, acknowledge your presuppositions. Don’t hide them. Finally make sure your presuppositions are logical and consistent. Only in so doing will you be able to get at the truth whether it is in the field of science, politics or religion.

True? or False? or Who Cares? Part 3

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(Part 1 is here: https://thetuinstras.net/?p=1387)

In the first article in this series we talked about the fact that in normal daily life we come at truth in very informal ways and yet in ways that work at the practical level. When we build our homes, we conform them to certain truths about how the construction needs to be done so our homes are safe and function well. We learn these truths by applying what we receive on good authority. This approach seems to be thrown out the window when it comes to discerning, believing and proclaiming religious truth.

In the second article we expanded more on the methods we use to discern what truth is. Here again we discussed the fact that most of us haven’t come in contact with the truth first-hand in most cases. In other words, we don’t learn to build a house by trial and error. We usually learn from somebody who already knows. We weren’t there when historical events took place and we aren’t privy to the information that forms the basis for political decisions. Most of us are not involved in the working out of mathematical equations or scientific principles. We learn these things and base our decisions on them based on good authority. But it’s interesting to recognize that different people accept different authorities. Why is this so? Why, when the President, any President, announces a decision, do some people assume it is a wise and truthful decision whereas others claim the decision is faulty and dishonest? Why do we gravitate to one news source over another or one religious leader over another? Most of these propensities to lean in one direction or another are not driven by facts that we know firsthand.

There are usually unproved and sometimes improvable assumptions, called presuppositions, that move us in one direction or another when we search for truth. The point I would like us to think very seriously about is that there is no guarantee that these presuppositions are directing us toward the truth. Our feelings tell us our sources are true, and we believe they are, but there is no guarantee. I may listen to a particular news source because I feel that it is a truthful source of information. But what makes me think that? And just because I think it, does that make it true? I watch with fascination as CNN fans put down Fox News for presenting a slanted view of the facts. At the same time, I hear Fox News followers cut down CNN for painting a false picture of causes and events. Since CNN and Fox present rather different perspectives on events, they can’t both be giving the true and complete picture. One or the other or both are presenting shaded views of the truth. Our presuppositions drive us to listen to and believe one over the other … or neither. Why is that?

The same thing occurs in religious discussion. Some people do not believe that the Bible can be historically accurate and truthful in the narratives about Jesus Christ, because it describes events which people have never seen with their own eyes. These miracles are described as though they are facts, but some people dismiss them out of hand because of the presupposition that such things cannot and therefore did not take place. Think of the implications if the resurrection of Jesus actually did take place. In other words, if we take it out of the realm of a religious teaching and put it into the same realm as the assassination of Julius Caesar or any other historical event, what would that mean? Think about it. If this man really died, his heart stopped beating, and his brain stopped functioning, someone put him into a cold cave, and then three days later he was alive again, wouldn’t such an event warrant a place in the history books? But somehow it has been relegated to a religious teaching, and the thought that it actually happened has pretty much disappeared. Has this happened because the history of it has been shown to be faulty or because of presuppositions coming into play?

Our presuppositions tend to move us toward some information sources and away from others. We believe some people who purport to be authorities and we reject others. In most cases we haven’t and usually can’t do the research required to independently verify these authorities. This situation shouldn’t drive us to the conclusion that the truth doesn’t exist or that it can’t be known. We don’t do that in normal daily life and we shouldn’t do it in philosophical, political, or religious areas of life. However, we do need to recognize that our presuppositions may not be pointing us to the truth. If we really want to know what the truth is, we sometimes need to work against our natural presuppositions and give other sources a fair and reasoned hearing because it may be that the truth lies in that direction.

All Things Together in Christ

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All of this is so that in the Fullness of Time He would:

Reconcile and gather all things together in Christ

“For it pleased the Father that in Him all the fullness should dwell, and by Him to reconcile all things to Himself, by Him, whether things on earth or things in heaven, having made peace through the blood of His cross. And you, who once were alienated and enemies in your mind by wicked works, yet now He has reconciled in the body of His flesh through death, to present you holy, and blameless, and above reproach in His sight—” (Colossians 1:19–22, NKJV)

“having made known to us the mystery of His will, according to His good pleasure which He purposed in Himself, that in the dispensation of the fullness of the times He might gather together in one all things in Christ, both which are in heaven and which are on earth—in Him” (Ephesians 1:9–10, NKJV).

“Now all things are of God, who has reconciled us to Himself through Jesus Christ, and has given us the ministry of reconciliation, that is, that God was in Christ reconciling the world to Himself, not imputing their trespasses to them, and has committed to us the word of reconciliation” (2 Corinthians 5:18–19, NKJV).

The goal and purpose as stated in these passages is that God has purposed in eternity past that everything will be reconciled back to the Son of God. We live in a fallen world, and mankind is in rebellion against God. There’s been a separation. But God is going to bring it all back eventually. Every knee will ultimately bow to Christ. Christ is to be all in all.

Put an end to all rule and authority

“Then comes the end, when He delivers the kingdom to God the Father, when He puts an end to all rule and all authority and power” (1 Corinthians 15:24, NKJV).

All other competing powers will be brought under His control.

Destroy death, the last enemy

“The last enemy that will be destroyed is death” (1 Corinthians 15:26, NKJV).

Show the exceeding riches of His grace and display the manifold wisdom of God.

God’s plan from eternity past is that His Son and the people He has redeemed will be a display for all creation to see. It will display how great and inexhaustible the wisdom of God are and how amazing His grace is that He would take rebellious treasonous subjects and transform them by His love and grace into His sons and daughters, adopted into His family and made co-heirs with His Son Jesus Christ.

“That in the ages to come He might show the exceeding riches of His grace in His kindness toward us in Christ Jesus” (Ephesians 2:7, NKJV).

“To the intent that now the manifold wisdom of God might be made known by the church to the principalities and powers in the heavenly places” (Ephesians 3:10, NKJV).

Jesus Christ will reign forever and ever with His bride, the Church

“And they sang a new song, saying: “You are worthy to take the scroll, And to open its seals; For You were slain, And have redeemed us to God by Your blood Out of every tribe and tongue and people and nation, And have made us kings and priests to our God; And we shall reign on the earth”” (Revelation 5:9–10, NKJV).

“Then the seventh angel sounded: And there were loud voices in heaven, saying, “The kingdoms of this world have become the kingdoms of our Lord and of His Christ, and He shall reign forever and ever!”” (Revelation 11:15, NKJV).

“There shall be no night there: They need no lamp nor light of the sun, for the Lord God gives them light. And they shall reign forever and ever” (Revelation 22:5, NKJV).

God will be all in all and will dwell with His people

“Now when all things are made subject to Him, then the Son Himself will also be subject to Him who put all things under Him, that God may be all in all” (1 Corinthians 15:28, NKJV).

“And I heard a loud voice from heaven saying, “Behold, the tabernacle of God is with men, and He will dwell with them, and they shall be His people. God Himself will be with them and be their God” (Revelation 21:3, NKJV).

The mission will have been accomplished. God will have demonstrated His glory and the centrality and supremacy of His Son by creating and sustaining all things through Him, showing His grace by reconciling sinful people to Himself, by demonstrating His justice by not overlooking sin but punishing it in Christ, and ultimately reconciling everything together to Himself so that God Himself will dwell forever with His people.

Link to video on youtube: https://youtu.be/7979yF2hm6s

Jesus’ Successful Mission

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Because of Christ’s Successful Mission, God has

Highly exalted Him.  We read in Philippians that because of Jesus’ obedience “Therefore God also has highly exalted Him and given Him the name which is above every name” (Philippians 2:9, NKJV). In his letter to the Ephesians Paul explains it this way: “He raised Him from the dead and seated Him at His right hand in the heavenly places, far above all principality and power and might and dominion, and every name that is named, not only in this age but also in that which is to come” (Ephesians 1:20–21, NKJV).

Jesus Christs has been placed in a position of great glory at God’s right hand, and this is far above all other authorities that exist in the universe. The author of the book of Hebrews explains it this way:

“You have made him a little lower than the angels; You have crowned him with glory and honor, and set him over the works of Your hands. You have put all things in subjection under his feet.” For in that He put all in subjection under him, He left nothing that is not put under him. But now we do not yet see all things put under him. But we see Jesus, who was made a little lower than the angels, for the suffering of death crowned with glory and honor, that He, by the grace of God, might taste death for everyone” (Hebrews 2:7–9, NKJV).

Jesus Christ is the God-man. But never forget that He is a man with a human glorified body. He is the first person to receive his glorified body and He has His place in heaven as our forerunner. He is the guarantee that all of those that belong to Him through faith will also have their place in heaven with Him. He is our anchor behind the veil.

“This hope we have as an anchor of the soul, both sure and steadfast, and which enters the Presence behind the veil, where the forerunner has entered for us, even Jesus, having become High Priest forever according to the order of Melchizedek” (Hebrews 6:19–20, NKJV).

In the Old Testament the temple has a veil separating the two parts. The part behind the veil where God was could not be entered by anyone except the High Priest and then only once a year. That veil ripped in two from top to bottom on the day Christ was crucified. The earthly temple was a model of what is in heaven. This passage in Hebrews tells us that the way is now open. Jesus Christ is already there as our forerunner and our anchor behind the veil. All who belong to Him will have their place with Him in a glorified body some day.

Christ is central and supreme because He is the One who obtained eternal redemption for us through His sacrifice on the cross and is now seated as sovereign in heaven, and every knee will bow before Him (Philippians 2:10).

Link to video on youtube: https://youtu.be/7979yF2hm6s

God Has Made Christ Supreme

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God Has…

Made Him heir of all things. “[God] has in these last days spoken to us by His Son, whom He has appointed heir of all things, through whom also He made the worlds” (Hebrews 1:2, NKJV).

God has made Jesus Christ the inheritor of all things. Take a moment and consider what is included in the “all things.” All nature?  Yes. Every planet? Yes. Every galaxy? Yes. Every person? Yes.

In Ephesians 1:18, Paul prays that as believers our eyes would be opened to “the riches of the glory of His inheritance in the saints,” (Ephesians 1:18, NKJV). This is not Christ as our inheritance. This is Christians as His inheritance. Christians are part of the all things that Jesus has inherited from God the Father. And as long as we are stretching our faith, let’s consider the fact that God has announced that His people are joint-heirs with Christ (Romans 8:17).

God has given Him Authority. “As You have given Him authority over all flesh, that He should give eternal life to as many as You have given Him” (John 17:2, NKJV).

“And Jesus came and spoke to them, saying, “All authority has been given to Me in heaven and on earth” (Matthew 28:18, NKJV).

God has made Him head of the Church “And He is the head of the body, the church” (Colossians 1:18, NKJV).

Jesus Christ has been given all authority over everything in the universe, and in a special sense, He is head of the Church, because the Church is His body. He is present in the Church everywhere the true church is found, and He is its head. No pastor, bishop, or pope can claim that position.

God has made Him the judge. “For the Father judges no one, but has committed all judgment to the Son” (John 5:22, NKJV).

“And has given Him authority to execute judgment also, because He is the Son of Man” (John 5:27, NKJV).

It’s interesting to note that the Father judges no one. The authority to judge every one of us has been given to the Son. Every one of us will stand before Him one day and be judged. We will be judged by a peer, if you will, another human. The Man Christ Jesus. Paul told the Athenians, “But [God] now commands all men everywhere to repent, because He has appointed a day on which He will judge the world in righteousness by the Man whom He has ordained. He has given assurance of this to all by raising Him from the dead”” (Acts 17:30–31, NKJV).

When will this judgment take place? The book of Hebrews tells us: “And as it is appointed unto men once to die, but after this the judgment” (Hebrews 9:27, AV).

God has sent Him on a mission. The Word, the Son of God, the Second Person of the Trinity was sent on a mission arranged in eternity past. This mission basically was to come to this earth as a human being, live among us, be tempted in every way like we are without sinning, be illegally convicted and executed as punishment for our sins and then to be resurrected to return to His position in glory from where He had come. This time He returns as a conquering King who has “abolished death and brought life and immortality to light through the gospel” (2 Timothy 1:10, NKJV).

He testified that He had come to give life abundantly (John 10:10) and to seek and to save the lost (Luke 19:10).

Summarizing then what we have covered under this heading, we have learned that God has made Christ the heir of all things, given Him authority over everything which includes His responsibility to judge, and God has sent Him on a mission to rescue people from their sins and the penalty that comes from sin.

We can see therefore how central and supreme Jesus Christ is to everything God has done and is doing in the world.

Link to video on youtube: https://youtu.be/7979yF2hm6s

God With Us

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The Word Became Flesh and Dwelt Among Us

The argument I am trying to make in this series of articles is that Jesus Christ, the God-man, is the core of all knowledge, all science, our very being, and He is the Supreme ruler of all things. As we read in the gospel of John chapter one verse 14, John tells us that the Word became flesh and lived among us. The Word is the second person of the Trinity. Earlier in the first chapter of John he wrote that in the beginning the Word was with God, and the Word was God. So now we see that the Word becomes flesh; this thing called the Word becomes human, takes on a body and comes here! We know this person as Jesus Christ. There are several passages of scripture that I would like us to look at, and I’m going to quote them verbatim so that you can see what the scripture is claiming.

“He [speaking of Christ] is the image of the invisible God, the firstborn over all creation.” (Colossians 1:15, NKJV)

“For it pleased the Father that in Him all the fullness should dwell,” (Colossians 1:19, NKJV)

“in whom are hidden all the treasures of wisdom and knowledge.” (Colossians 2:3, NKJV)

“For in Him dwells all the fullness of the Godhead bodily;” (Colossians 2:9, NKJV)

“[God] has in these last days spoken to us by His Son, whom He has appointed heir of all things, through whom also He made the worlds; who being the brightness of His glory and the express image of His person, and upholding all things by the word of His power, when He had by Himself purged our sins, sat down at the right hand of the Majesty on high,” (Hebrews 1:2–3, NKJV)

According to Colossians and Hebrews, Jesus Christ is the image of the invisible God. The writer to the Hebrews says He is the express image of God. In other words, He is the exact impression of God. Just like we might make a stamp and impress an image onto a block of clay, Jesus Christ is the impress stamp, the image of God the Father. These verses further tell us that all the fullness of the godhead dwelt in Jesus Christ bodily. That means that when Jesus was walking around on this earth getting his feet dusty, He was the embodiment of the entirety of the godhead. In addition to that, Paul wrote to the Colossians that all of the treasures of wisdom and knowledge are to be found in Jesus Christ himself. The word all leaves nothing out. Every bit of wisdom that exists in the universe has its origin in Jesus Christ. All the knowledge of science, chemistry , astronomy, psychology, sociology, and so forth, are rooted in Christ. Any wisdom that there is in the universe has its source in Jesus Christ. This is why His being is central and supreme.

There can be nothing said of someone that is more profound and an acknowledgment of the supremacy of that one and the centrality of that one than to say that He is the creator of all things, the entirety of God almighty is contained in Him, and that  all the treasures of wisdom and knowledge dwell in Him.