Thoughts on Christ and His Word

Why would the wrath of God be upon unbelievers especially in sending them to hell?   When we put our faith in Christ we immediately become identified with him. The blood of Christ is applied to us and cleanses us from all sin. We immediately become children of God just as Jesus is the Son of God. We get baptised into the body of Christ and therefore we are of Christ. We are identified with Christ and our identity is in Christ.  When a person rejects Christ they are identified with Adam in his sin who rejected God when it came to the forbidden fruit. But they also identify with all those who called for Jesus' crucifixion as he was being crucified. They are identified with the Roman soldiers who physically crucified Christ. But they are also identify with the religious Jews who called demanded the crucifixion of Christ. And so just as those who called for and crucified Christ will receive the wrath of God, so too all who have rejected Christ will receive the wrath of God at...

The key to a healthy spiritual and emotional life is healthy, wholesome thinking. Peter wrote: "Dear friends, this is now my second letter to you. I have written both of them as reminders to stimulate you to wholesome thinking."  2 Peter 3:1 So we are encouraged to engage in "wholesome thinking".  But what is the basis of wholesome thinking?  Peter tells us: "I want you to recall the words spoken in the past by the holy prophets and the command given by our Lord and Savior through your apostles." 2 Peter 3:2 So the foundation of healthy and wholesome thinking is meditating on the words of the O.T. prophets, the words of Jesus,  and the words of the apostles. In other words think Biblically.  When the foundation of our thoughts and belief systems are rooted in the Word of God, we will think more clearly and feel a whole lot better about the future. God's thoughts are the basis for Truth and Hope. 

"Today, if you hear his voice, do not harden your heart." Hebrews 3:8  This verse from psalms 95 is repeated 3 times in Hebrews, twice in chapter 3 and once in chapter 4. Throughout chapter 3 and 4 God puts the responsibility of faith and and a soft receptive heart on man.  Obviously the Holy Spirit convicts of sin and the Father draws our hearts to him. But at the end of the day man must choose to have a soft heart and believe the gospel.  

The Spirit clearly says that in later times some will abandon the faith and follow deceiving spirits and things taught by demons. 1 Timothy 4:1  20 years ago someone would jokingly say "I feel like a woman trapped in a man's body" and everyone would laugh.  Now they aren't kidding.  Not only do they feel like a woman, they can feel like whatever they want and expect everyone else to accept their "feelings" or "gender identity". This ideology has its roots in radical feminism and its end-goal is to eradicate the traditional concepts of male and female.  To make genitals irrelevant since one can decide one's own identity apart from biology.  Therefore, at its core it is a person recreating or re-imagining themselves - thus they put themselves in the position of God. That is why gender ideology is evil.  It replaces God with self, it replaces facts (male and female) with fiction, and allows people to live in a make-believe world.  And on top of th...

Election by Association.   Israel is God's chosen people because they came from Abraham.  God chose Abraham as His vehicle to bring forth the Messiah.  He chose Israel as His people because of their association with Abraham, though many of them were evil. The Church (believers) are God's Elect, His chosen people because of our association with Christ.  God knew from the foundation of the world who would respond to Christ in faith and chose all those in Christ by faith to be his chosen people.

 God does not change. Now to some people that sounds like God is inflexible and unwilling to bend in light of our weaknesses and hurts. Malachi 3:6  says "I the LORD do not change. So you, O descendants of Jacob, are not destroyed. Notice why rebellious Israel is not completely destroyed. It is because the Lord does not change. In his essence "God is love" 1 John 4:8. If God changed into some other kind of god, he would have completely destroyed Israel, since he would have been a god of lesser love than He is. "God is love" which means He is faithful to his promises. He promised the Jews that he would send the Messiah who would save Israel and the world from their sins. Thank God that He does not change.

Is hate simply the opposite of love or is it the consequence of love?  In God his wrath only flares up in the light of violations of love towards himself as Creator, towards his Son the Lord Jesus Christ, or his prized creation - human beings. When a father sees his daughter mistreated his anger flares up. Therefore his hate, anger, and wrath are a consequence of seeing unloving acts towards someone he loves dearly. These unloving acts are called evil and wickedness. Big words for "sin". Paul wrote in Romans 12:9 "Love must be sincere. Hate what is evil; cling to what is good." We love people sincerely from the heart. We hate the evil acts of other people that sin against those we love. In his book Gentle and Lowly by Dane Ortlund he wrote "Jesus pronounced searing denunciations on those who cause children to sin saying it would be a better fate if they were drowned (Matthew 18:6), not because he gleefully enjoys torturing the wicked but most deeply because he ...