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Have you ever struggled with the topic of predestination? This study of Ephesians 1:5 will define predestination and will help you find great encouragement in the truth of predestination. We will also look at the current event topic of racism in a Bible College, and answer a question from a reader about the Parable of the Ten Talents.

Current Event: Theology Professor Asks God to Help her Hate White People

Chanequa Walker-Barnes is a theology professor at Mercer University, and she recently published a book titled A Rhythm of Prayer: A Collection of Meditations for Renewal. One chapter includes a prayer in which she says this:

Dear God, Please help me to hate White people. I want to stop caring about them, individually and collectively. I want to stop caring about their misguided, racist souls, to stop believing that they can be better, that they can stop being racist.

Later she writes:

Grant me a Get Out of Judgement Free card if I make White people the exception to your commandment to love our neighbors as we love ourselves.

And she is not alone. I see these sorts of statements and desires all over the internet from Liberals and Democrats who feel that white people and Trump voters are all racists who need to be wiped off the face of the earth. A Stanford university student recently called for the extermination of all white people.

Now, thankfully, Dr. Walker-Barnes recognizes that what she is praying for is sinful and is a complete violation of the instructions of Jesus to love your enemies (see my sermon on Luke 6:27), and so she prays that God will not condemn her to hell for such a desire. And of course, God does forgive her. There’s no question about that.

But what troubles me is that this sort of racist hate-speech is becoming more and more common from liberal leaders, and even from some pastors and Bible college professors. Worse yet, I have not heard a single liberal pastor or Christian denounce such hate speech. They either agree with such racist sentiments or explain them away as “understandable.”

I was recently having a conversation with a friend of mine who is a pastor and democrat, and who is also a strong believer in non-violence. But he shocked me in our conversation by saying that he would like to punch Nazis in the face and beat them until they can’t get up. I asked him who the Nazis were, and he said, “Anyone who voted for Trump.”

This is what many liberals believe, including may liberal Christians. This sort of thinking is not only destructive to our country and the world, but also to the cause of the gospel.

Look, racism is evil. I condemn and denounce all racism, wherever it is found, and from whomever it comes, because God is against racism as well. Those Christians who condemn racism from white people, but excuse racism from others do not understand the gospel and do not understand why Jesus came to this earth. Jesus came to show us how to love, forgive, and accept all people … including our enemies … and if we do not follow Jesus in these ways, then we are not following Jesus at all.

I am currently reading a fantastic book on these issues, and I highly encourage everyone to read it. It’s by Voddie Baucham, Jr. and is titled (#AmazonAdLink) Fault Lines. I love this book so much, I will be talking about it next time in the “Current Events” portion of this podcast.

Q&A: Is Jesus the Master in the Parable of Talents or not?

A super alert reader recently sent me this question:

Thank you so much for sharing your heart and truths you have studied-it has helped me on my journey!

So the other day I was reading your post about the parable of the 10 Talents and how the master was NOT Jesus.

Yet, today I was reading in Luke about Jesus’ triumphal” entry and read your post in which you state that Jesus IS the master going to the far off country.

Which is it? Thanks for clearing this up for me in advance!

GREAT question! (And very impressive that you found this!)

The Triumphal Entry sermon was first taught nearly twenty years ago … and the explanation on the ten talents was within the last year, so the contradiction here just shows a progression in my thinking…

I would argue now that in the Triumphal Entry, Jesus didn’t go to a far country, but just to Jerusalem. And there, we see how the kingdoms of this world treat people who do not play by their rules. So the Triumphal Entry does show an example of the parable of the ten talents, but it is an example of the third servant who is condemned by the earthly master…

(I have updated the older sermon to match this… thanks for pointing it out!)

What is Predestination? (Ephesians 1:5a)

The first time I preached a sermon on Ephesians 1:5 was over 20 years ago. I was a young pastor in my first church. As I began to explain what I am going to share with you in this study, one of the elders in my church stood up and loudly said to his family, “Come on. We’re leaving!” He and his family filed out of their row, out the back of the church, and never returned. I later called him to find out why he left, and he accused me of being a heretic.

The reason he thought I was a heretic was because he was a Calvinist and he disagreed with what I was saying about predestination.

If you don’t know what Calvinism is, that’s okay. But if you do know, then you know that certain views of election and predestination are central to the doctrines of Calvinism. I used to be a 5-point Calvinist, but then I started really studying the issues from a biblical perspective, and ended up rejecting all five points of Calvinism. The sermon I preached on Ephesians 1:5 was near the beginning of that process. The elder in my church did not like what I said, and so he left the church and never came back.

So now you get to hear what I taught, and I encourage you to study the Scripture for yourself to see what they have to say about predestination. Here is the part of Ephesians 1:5 we are looking at in this study:

Epehsians 1:5a. In love He predestined us …

Ephesians 1:4 was a key verse on election. Ephesians 1:5 is a key verse on predestination. They are similar ideas, but with one key difference.

Election has to do with God’s people, predestination deals with God’s purposes. Election is the who; predestination is the what, and specifically, what God is going to do for believers in eternity.

Now, a lot of people get pretty nervous about predestination. They are afraid about it, because they wonder if they are predestined or not. But this fear just shows that they have a misunderstanding about election, for we see right from the start of Ephesians 1:5 that although some people are scared of predestination, they should not be – for whatever predestination is, it begins with the love of God. And since predestination is founded upon the love of God, when it is properly understood, it will not lead anyone to fear.

So what is predestination? Let us begin with defining it. To define it, you can take the word and cut it in two. Pre means “before” or “previously” and destined means “to decide.” So the word predestined means to previously decide, or to decide beforehand.

From the Greek, it literally means “to mark out beforehand.”

All of us predestine things every day. If we are thinking ahead, we are king of deciding beforehand what we will do in a certain situation. Have you ever thought about what you would do if you won a million dollars? If so, you have predestined the million dollars. Have you ever thought about what you might do when you retire? If so, you have predestined your retirement.

As young parents begin to have children, they often predestine certain things about their child. If they learn the sex of the baby, they predestine the child’s name. They might also predestine the room the baby sleeps in, the clothes the baby wears, and what sort of schedule they will try to keep with the new baby.

Of course, with humans, even though we decide things, that does not guarantee that it will happen, because we are not in control of everything. But God is all wise and all powerful. So when God predestines something, it is guaranteed to happen.

So what is it that God has predestined?

I have taught about predestination in numerous locations previously. Here is one example of how I answered a question from a reader about predestination.

What Did God Predestine?

I’ll be as blunt and straightforward as I know how: I do not believe that God predestines some people to go to heaven.

I definitely do not believe in double predestination. If you don’t know what double predestination is, it is the view that God predestines some people to go to heaven and predestines others to go to hell. Although I used to believe this (that’s part of the “hyper” in hyper Calvinism), but no longer.

I believe that predestination does not refer to God’s choice of which people get to go to heaven, but refers instead to God’s determination to bring into glory all those who receive eternal life by faith in Jesus. In other words, predestination teaches us about who gets glorified, not who gets justified.

God’s predetermined (this is a synonym for predestination) plan was that He would bring into glory everyone who believed in Jesus for eternal life, that is, for justification. All who are justified will be glorified. As such, there is absolutely nothing in predestination about God’s choice of which people will get justified and which people will not. Predestination has nothing to do with that, and it is a categorical mistake to think it does.

To put it another way, predestination is about the destiny of believers (all will be glorified), not about the destiny of unbelievers (some will get justified and some will get damned).

Or to put it another way again, discussion about God’s predestination should not fall under the category of justification, but under the categories of sanctification and glorification. Predestination is a discipleship issue; not an evangelism issue.

Romans 8:28-30 and Predestination

Two of the key passages about predestination are Romans 8:29-30 and Ephesians 1:4-11. In both cases, Paul is pretty clear that predestination is about God bringing people to be conformed to the image of His Son (Romans 8:29), and that election and predestination are most properly understood in connection with being made holy and blameless before God (Ephesians 1:4-5).

God does not choose some to be in Christ while passing over the rest. No, God chooses, elects, predestines, predetermines, decides, foreordains, commits Himself to make sure that every person who believes in Jesus for eternal life, will finally and ultimately be glorified into the image and likeness of Jesus Christ.

So predestination of the saints is about God’s commitment to the preservation of the saints.

This is why no one can snatch us out of the Father’s hand (John 10:29), why nothing can separate us from the love of God (Romans 8:38-39), and why God has given us the Holy Spirit as a promise and guarantee of our inheritance (Ephesians 1:13-14).

Predestination is a controversial topic, but it need not be. The Bible teaches that predestination is about our glorification and sanctification; not about justification. Therefore, if we fight about predestination, we are not living according to what we were predestined for, namely, to be conformed to the image of Jesus Christ.

Predestination and Romans 8:28-30

I taught about this previously in a study on Romans 8:28-30 and the Golden Chain of Salvation, which you can go read for yourself. But here are a few key points from what I wrote there:

In Romans 8:28-30, Paul is emphasizing God’s role while ignoring man’s role, but this does not mean that mankind has no role.

Note that key elements of the process of redemption are left out, such as faith and sanctification. Why? Because these are partly the responsibility of humans. Paul does not mention these other elements of redemption, because he is focusing solely on God’s role in redemption.

These verses in Romans 8:28-30 are sort of like the passage in Genesis 15 where God performs a “cutting of the covenant” ceremony with Abraham, but God walks through the severed animals all by Himself. Usually, both parties of the covenant walked through the blood of the divided animals together, essentially saying, “If I break the terms of this covenant, may I become like one of these animals.” But in Genesis 15, God puts Abraham to sleep and walks through the animals alone. He is saying that the terms of the covenant are unconditional. That Abraham and his descendants don’t have to do anything for God to fulfil the terms of the covenant.

This is exactly what Romans 8:28-20 is saying as well. All the terms mentioned in these verses are aspects of redemption that God takes care of all by Himself. They require no human involvement.

In the overall scheme of redemption, God alone is the one who foreknows what He will do, takes steps to make sure it happens, calls believers to a greater purpose in service to Him, justifies those who believe, and glorifies for eternity all whom He justified.

In Romans 8:28-30, Paul is not talking about an eternal decree from eternity past about to whom He would give eternal life, but rather, God’s plan from eternity past to bring those who believe in Jesus into conformity to the image of Jesus Christ, which does not fully occur until glorification (cf. Eph 1:4; 4:1; 5:27; Col 1:22-23).

In Romans 8:28-30, Paul is saying nothing about God’s predestination of some to eternal life.

Instead, Paul is saying that God decided in eternity past to make sure that everyone and anyone who joins His family by faith will finally and ultimately be brought into conformity to Jesus Christ at their glorification.

Foreknowledge is not God’s plan from all eternity about whom to give eternal life. It is simply God’s plan about what to do with those who believed.

In the Context of Romans 8:28-30, Paul is writing to Christians who are facing severe testing and trials as a result of their faith in Jesus (cf. Romans 8:17-18).

But Paul wants to encourage his readers by telling them that the suffering they face will result in glory, and that absolutely nothing can separate them from God’s love or God’s purpose in their lives (Romans 8:31-39).

Many of the people to whom he is writing (just like many people today), were struggling with feelings of inadequacy, guilt, failure, fear, and doubt. Paul wanted them to know that God knew all about these things from eternity past, and it didn’t stop Him from initiating His plan to rescue and redeem the world, and since God predestined such a plan, He will take care of everything necessary to bring it to completion, which will result in our glorification (cf. Romans 8:31-39).

Paul’s point in writing Romans 8:28-30 is to encourage Christians that no matter what happens to them, God is with them, will not abandon them, and just as He has had them in mind since before the foundation of the world, He will not abandon them to the trials and testing they are facing.

If God is the only one who could bring a charge against them, but He will not do so, and instead, delivered His own Son up for us all (Romans 8:31-34), then we can be sure that absolutely nothing will separate us from the love of God (Romans 8:35-39). If God is for us, who can condemn us? Jesus could. But rather than condemn us, Jesus intercedes for us!

This is the beautiful truth of predestination. It is a promise of safety and security in the arms of God. It is a promise of eternal security. It is a promise of final and ultimate glorification with God and the saints in eternity. Predestination is the promise of God to His children that He will bring them through to the end. He promises to make us holy, and He promises to make us heirs. And that which God promises, He is able to keep. We are eternally secure in the hands of God because of his election and predestination.

So what is predestination? It is not God’s choice in eternity past about who would receive eternal life and who would not. Rather, it is God’s plan from eternity past to make sure that everyone who believed in Jesus for eternal life, would keep that eternal life forever and would finally and ultimately be glorified with Him in eternity. Predestination is God’s promise to you that no matter what you have gone through, no matter what you are going through, no matter what you have done or will do, God will always love you, accept you, forgive you, and is always at work to bring you into eternity to be with Him forever.

That’s an encouraging truth, right? And we will see more of this encouraging truth when we look at the rest of Ephesians 1:5 next time, as well as Ephesians 1:6. That study will focus on the word adoption in Ephesians 1:5 as further proof that predestination is not to eternal life, but rather concerns God’s promise that those who are justified will be glorified in Jesus Christ.

Why are some people Elect (Ephesians 1:4)?

By Jeremy Myers

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What is election? Who are the elect? Why are they elect? How can you know if you are one of the elect? These are some of the questions we answer in this podcast study of Ephesians 1:4. We will also look at the Democrat effort to pack the Supreme Court and answer a letter from a listener about televangelists who don’t believe in eternal security.

Democrats Want to Pack the Supreme Court

The podcast begins with a brief discussion about the Democrat efforts to pack the Supreme Court. Listen to the podcast to hear my thoughts on the subject.

Letter from a Listener

Hello again Jeremy… I’m about to begin to read one of your books plus I’m still thinking about joining your discipleship group … I have some questions that I want to run by you… There are a lot of tv evangelists and prophecy teachers that do not believe in the security of the believer… They have all kinds of education yet they distort the message of life… Why is that Jeremy??

Brad

Brad also had a question about an author named Dr. Thomas Horn. I have never heard of him or any of his book, so I can’t say anything about him.

Listen to the podcast to hear my answer to Brad’s question.

Why are some people elect (Ephesians 1:4).

Ephesians 1:4 provides us with the the who, what, and why of election. This podcast is a summary of what I wrote elsewhere on my website about Ephesians 1:3-4, and I have also written a book on election titled (#AmazonAdLink) The Re-Justification of God, and have a entire lesson in my Online Discipleship group about election. Also, here is an article I wrote titled “Election is to Service.” But let us see what we can learn from Ephesians 1:4.

Ephesians 1:4. just as He chose us in Him before the foundation of the world, that we should be holy and without blame before Him in love.

The term election in not even in this verse. In fact, the word election is not found in the entire letter of Ephesians. But since “to elect” simply means “to choose,” I believe we can take this passage as a key text on election and predestination, because the term “he chose us” is found in this verse.

Since being chosen is in view, there are three questions we can ask which will help us understand the text – and all texts similar to it. First, who is chosen, and second when are they chosen, and third, why are they chosen? Let’s answer them one by one.

1. Who is chosen? (And what is election?)

The text says he chose us in Him. The phrase “in Him” tells us that this blessing of being chosen is something that we have in Christ. Jesus Christ is the first chosen person. Christ is the choice servant of God (cf. Luke 9:35; 23:35; 1 Peter 2:4, 6).

The traditional view of election is that election was a choice God made in eternity past about which unregenerate sinners He would regenerate to spend eternity with Himself.

But right away, we see problems with this from Ephesians 1:4, because Paul writes that God chose Jesus. Yet was Jesus an unregenerate sinner? No, of course not. But if election is God’s choice of which sinners He spend eternity with Him, then how can Jesus be an elect person?

In response to this, people say “Well, Jesus was a special case. Jesus is elect, but He was not a sinner. He was chosen by God to perform a special task or purpose.”

Okay. So in the case of Jesus, the definition of election changes? Maybe it would be better to use the same definition of election across the board for everybody, so that if, for Jesus, election means “choose Him to perform a certain task or function,” then election for other people could also mean “choosing people to perform a certain task or function.”

Do you see the logic here? If we are going to say Jesus was elect, and that this means that He was chosen by God to perform a certain task, then the same meaning of election should apply to others also. And indeed, this is exactly what Scripture reveals when we study all the other passages on election in Scripture.

Election has nothing whatsoever to do with God choosing which people get to be regenerated and receive eternal life so that they can spend eternity with Him. Instead, election occurs when God chooses certain people to perform certain tasks in world history.

Election is not God’s choice of who gets eternal life; election is God’s choice of who will serve His purposes and how they will do it.

Election is not to eternal life; election is to service.

Note that if it was true that election refers to God’s choice to give eternal life to just certain people out of all the mass of unregenerate sinners, then Ephesians 1:4 would read “He chose us to be in Him.” But that is not what the verse says. It says, “He chose us in Him” not “He chose us to be in Him.”

This is one of the points I argue in my book (#AmazonAdLink) The Re-Justification of God, and there is another great book on the topic from Shawn Lazar titled (#AmazonAdLink) Chosen to Serve. I also have a previous podcast episode on this topic also. The episode is titled “Election is to Service.”

With this definition in mind, it helps us understand what Paul means in Ephesians 1:4 when it says that God chose us in Jesus Christ. Who is the “us” that Paul is referring to?

From Ephesians 1:1-2, it refers to Paul and the believers to whom he was writing. In verse 3 the word “us” refers to those who are blessed in the heavenly realms. In verses 6, 7 and 8, “us” refers to those who have received the riches of God’s grace. So whom does the “us” refer to? In the context here, it refers to those who are already Christians.

So here we see exactly the same thing we saw with Christ. Christ is the eternally begotten Son of God, and God chose Him for a special task. But in choosing Christ, God also chose those who are in Christ—in other words, Christians. This verse does not teach that God chose unregenerate people to become Christians. This verse teaches that God chose Christians. And just as God chose Jesus to perform a certain task, God also chose Christians to perform a certain task.

Jesus ultimately is the chosen one, and by nature of being in Christ, we were chosen because He is chosen.

God’s choice has nothing do with who will go to heaven and who will be sent to hell, of who has eternal life and who does not. His choice in Ephesians 1:4 and He chooses them to perform tasks while we are here on earth. God chooses Christian men and women to perform a task. A study of God’s choosing and election throughout Scripture will reveal the same truth. God does choose. He does elect. But never to eternal life or eternal death; He chooses groups or individuals for certain tasks.

Now, it needs to be said that even though the in the context here, only Christians are in view, this does not mean that God cannot choose unbelievers to fulfil certain tasks. In fact, other passages show that God can and does sometimes choose unbelievers to perform certain tasks. This means that even unbelievers can be elect. Indeed, Scripture reveals that people like Pharaoh, King Cyrus, and Judas, were all chosen, or elect, even if they never received eternal life. They were chosen by God to fulfil a certain task or function in God’s plan for human history.

So once again, we see that the definition of election holds true when we think of it as being chosen to serve.

Paul goes on in verse 4 to state when Jesus Christ was chosen. This is the next question we want to ask the text to help us understand what election is.

2. When Did the Choice Occur?

The next phrase in Ephesians 1:4 is before the foundation of the world. Since the primary chosen one is Christ, the primary focus of this phrase is also Christ. It is Christ who was chosen before the foundation of the world.

This means that before the world was ever created, Jesus Christ was chosen, and by inference, all who would eventually be placed “in Christ” by faith in Him were therefore also chosen. So this choice took place in eternity past, before the foundation of the world.

This then leads to the third question about election, which is the most important of all.

3. Why Were They Chosen?

This is the missing piece of the puzzle that fits everything together. If you’ve ever been confused about election – here is the key. The question we are asking now is: “Why did God choose all those who have placed faith in Christ?”

He chose them, according to the end of Ephesians 1:4, so that we should be holy and without blame before Him in love. This is a task believers are to strive for and a future that God guarantees.

Notice that there is nothing in this verse about God choosing some to receive eternal life, while leaving all others to be damned—as some teach. Neither is there anything about God looking ahead in time to see who would believe in Him for eternal life and then choosing them—as others teach.

Instead, Paul writes that those who are chosen are those who are in Christ. In other words, believers are not chosen to receive eternal life—they are chosen to fulfill a task or purpose. As Paul describes it here, they are chosen to be holy and blameless!

Here again we see the truth of election.

Election is never to eternal life. God chooses certain individuals for a task, not for eternal life.

The people of Israel are the perfect example. God chose Abraham, and in choosing Abraham, God also chose all the people who could come from Abraham, namely, all the people of Israel.

So let me ask you, were all Israelites the chosen people of God? Yes, they were. But did all Israelites have eternal life? No, they did not. So you see that even with the people of Israel, election does not mean that God decides to give eternal life to some people. All Israel was elect, but not all Israelites had eternal life. What this means is that election has nothing to do with who has eternal life and who does not, and everything to do with God’s choice of certain people and nations to perform certain tasks and purposes in He plan for the world.

Judas is another example. Did you know that Judas was chosen (John 6:70)? But most believe that Judas did not have eternal life. Therefore, how can we say that Judas is chosen? We must say that he was chosen, not to eternal life, but to fulfil a certain purpose or task. And that makes perfect sense with what we see Judas do in the Gospels.
Both Abraham’s election and Christ’s election and all those who were in Abraham and all those who are in Christ are chosen, not to salvation, but to a task.

So when it comes to election, you should not be asking yourself whether or not you are elect. Instead, if you are a believer, you should be asking yourself why you are elect. Because you ARE elect. God has chosen you to complete a certain task and job in this world. You are part of God’s team on planet earth, and He has a role for you to play on the team.

Do you remember in grade school at recess or gym class standing in a line while two team captains picked who they wanted to be on their team? You never wanted to be chosen last. You wanted to be chosen first, right? Well, here in Ephesians 1:4, we see that God has chosen you first. You are on His team.

And in those grade school settings, why were certain kids chosen first? Because they were among the best. They were chosen because they were fastest, tallest, strongest, the most athletic, or whatever. The same is true with God choosing you. You are chosen because God thinks you are the best at doing something. God has something for you to do with His team that only you can do. That’s why He chose you. Because He wants His team to win, and He needs you to help out.

So if you have been chosen by God to be on His team, this means that you need to find out why God has chosen you to be on His team. You need to find out what role He wants you to play. What task He wants you to complete. What function He wants you to fulfil.

And how can you do that?

Well, that is what the rest of Ephesians is all about.

The first three chapters of Ephesians are all about the blessings and privileges we have as members of Team God and then the last three chapters of Ephesians are all about what God wants you to do with those blessings and privileges. How you are supposed to contribute to the team effort of winning the battle on this earth. We will continue to learn more about this next time when we look at Ephesians 1:5.

You are in Heavenly Places RIGHT NOW (Ephesians 1:3)

By Jeremy Myers

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Does God forgive suicide? Spoiler alert: YES! And what is Paul referring to in Ephesians 1:3 when he writes about heavenly places? Is that heaven or something else? These are a few of the questions that get addressed in this episode of the Redeeming God Podcast.

Will God Forgive Suicide?

I received a tragic email from a reader recently. Here is what she wrote:

My brother recently took his own life due to depression. The last sentence of his letter that he left behind, he stated that he hopes to see us in God’s kingdom if it is in God’s will. As I’m reflecting back, my brother believes in God and believes in Heaven. He knows that what he is doing isn’t the right way to escape his emotions, but he’s going to do it anyways. While at the same time, he’s hoping that God will have mercy on his soul.

I’m writing to seek answers to help bring closure. I’ve listened to your podcast on Hades in YouTube. My first question is, will my brother’s soul exist in a conscience state in Hades? When I die, will my brother and I still exist in a conscience state of mind where I can ask him why he did what he did? I know that the Bible teaches that our bodies will be resurrected, but before then, will I see my brother?

Lastly, those who commit suicide, do they get to go to heaven?

I have addressed similar questions about suicide and the unforgivable sin elsewhere, but here is what I wrote in reply to this woman:

I am so sorry this happened. What a terrible tragedy. Depression is such a terrible thing, and it takes so many lives. I am so sorry for your loss.

There is no reason to assume that your brother will not spend eternity with God. If he said that he hopes God has mercy on his soul, this seems to me to be an indication that he looked to God as the only source of hope and eternal life for himself. If that is what he did at any time during his life, even if it was in his last seconds, then he is already with God in eternity.

And yes, suicide is completely forgivable. God always forgives us for all our sins. I have done a lot of study and teaching on forgiveness in Scripture, and the forgiveness of God is complete and universal. So do not worry that your brother’s suicide kept him out of heaven. It didn’t.

I believe that you will see your brother again.

I hope you find comfort and hope in your time of loss.

What does the phrase “In Heavenly Places” mean? (Ephesians 1:3)

Ephesians 1:3. Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, who has blessed us with every spiritual blessing in the heavenly places in Christ,

The following teachings are drawn from my study on Ephesians 1:3-4 and my Gospel Dictionary entry on Heaven.

Ephesians 1:3 is a summary of chapters 1, 2 and 3. It is kind of the thesis sentence. Paul begins with praise to God for these spiritual blessings. And Paul tells us where these blessings are from, heavenly places, and that all such blessings belong to us in Christ.

Every Spiritual Blessings

The first thing to note is that God has given us every spiritual blessing. God has not given you some spiritual blessings, but every spiritual blessing. There is not a blessing which God could give you that He has not given you. If there is a spiritual blessing God can give you, He has already given it to you.

A couple things should be said about this. First, these are spiritual blessings. Paul is not saying here that we have in our possession every possible blessing, but that we have every spiritual blessing. I think that all of us can think of some physical blessings that we do not have. Better health. A better marriage. Or maybe a relationship. More money. A job. Such things are blessings as well, but they might not be ours.

This is one of the great misunderstandings in the health-and-wealth-prosperity-gospel-name-it-and-claim-it teachings that you hear in some churches. They use texts like Ephesians 1:3 to say that God has given you every possible blessing, including all physical blessings, and that if you just have enough faith, if you just claim what is already yours in Jesus Christ, then you will get it. Even if it’s a nice car, or a perfect health, or a great marriage.

But that is not what Ephesians 1:3 teaches. These are spiritual blessings. These include things like grace, mercy, love, and forgiveness from God. They include election, calling, and purpose for this life. They include hope, joy, peace about the future. One great spiritual blessing, of course, is eternal life. All such things have already been given to you. They are yours.

So in the case of spiritual blessings, you don’t need to pray or ask for God to give them to you. You just need to recognize that you already have them, and then live in light of the fact that you have these spiritual blessings.

When you sin, you don’t need to ask God for forgiveness, because He has already forgiven you for all your sins, past, present, and future. Instead, you can simply thank Him for the forgiveness have been given.

When you struggle with a joyful outlook on life, you don’t need to ask God to give you hope and joy. Instead, you can ask God to give you a proper perspective on life so that you can see the truth about what is going on in this world and in your life, and thus, experience the hope and joy God has already given to you.

When it comes to what you are supposed to be doing in this world, what your purpose is, you don’t need to ask God to give you a purpose. Instead, you can thank God for the goals, purpose, and tasks He has already assigned to you, and then ask Him for wisdom and insight to help understand what these tasks and purposes are. It might help to know the spiritual gifts you have already been given as well. I have an online course to help you know your spiritual gifts.

Do you see? So in your life, when it comes to spiritual blessings, you don’t need to feel left out, forgotten, or neglected by God. He has already given you everything you need for life and godliness (2 Peter 1:3). You just need to recognize what these blessings are, and then learn how to benefit from them and use them in your life. Ephesians 1-3 will be explaining a lot more about how to do this.

In Christ

Notice at the end of Ephesians 1:3, it says that these spiritual blessings are “in Christ.” We are blessed because we are in Christ.

Only believers are “in Christ.” If you have believed in Jesus for eternal life, then you are in Christ. This means that only believers have every spiritual blessing. Unbelievers don’t have every spiritual blessing because they are in Christ.

It is important to recognize that our spiritual blessings are not in ourselves. They are not from ourselves. When life gets us down and we become discouraged, this is often because we are looking to ourselves for joy, hope, and fulfillment. But we will always let ourselves down. Jesus, however, will never disappoint us, and when we keep our eyes on Him, when we follow Him, when we look only to Him for joy and satisfaction, it is then that we are able to see and utilize the spiritual blessings that God has given to us in Jesus Christ.

This is also important to remember because we sometimes make the mistake of comparing our spiritual blessings with worldly physical blessings. We see people who are not in Christ, and yet they have riches and fame, and we sometimes get jealous of that. We want a life of luxury and ease as well.

But from an eternal perspective, the blessings we have in Christ far exceed and are of much greater value than any amount of physical blessings that this world can offer. So keep your eyes fixed on Jesus.

In Heavenly Places

The final thing I want to point out from Ephesians 1:3 is this concept of our spiritual blessings being in heavenly places. This is a recurring theme in Ephesians. Along with being here in Ephesians 1:3, it is also found in Ephesians 2:6 and Ephesians 6:12.

Many assume that the phrase “in the heavenly places” refers to “being in heaven with God.” That is, not being on earth, but in some other place. And this does indeed seem to fit with how the term is used in Ephesians 1:3 and Ephesians 2:6. Our spiritual blessings are in heavenly places with Christ, who is in heaven, and we are seated with Christ, who is at the right hand of God in heaven (Acts 7:55-56).

But does this mean we have to wait until heaven to gain these spiritual blessings? In other words, if God has given us every spiritual blessing, but we have to wait until heaven to receive, enjoy, or experience these blessings, then what good are they now?

Well, Ephesians 6:12 helps us understand what Paul means when he refers to heavenly places.

In Ephesians 6:12, the phrase “in heavenly places” is used in reference to spiritual hosts of wickedness that are here on this earth now, and how we are to struggle against them here and now during our earthly lives. Therefore, the phrase “in the heavenlies” does not refer to an otherworldly place in which God dwells, and where evil forces battle against God. Rather, the phrase refers to a spiritual reality that is present here and now on this earth. The phrase does not refer to some future existence after we die, or even to what occurs in some heavenly location far away from earth. The phrase has in mind the words of Jesus from Matthew 6:10, where He prayed that God’s will would be done on earth, as it is done in heaven. So the phrase “in the heavenlies” means “in the spiritual realm here on earth, during our lives now.”

When this usage is understood from Ephesians 6:12, the other references to “in the heavenlies” make sense in similar ways. Our task as followers of Jesus is to help make heaven an earthly reality. We do this by recognizing that we have already been given innumerable spiritual blessings and riches in Jesus Christ (Eph 1:3-14), and that since we are seated with Christ (Eph 2:6), we have the authority on this earth to carry out God’s will.

So while the phrase “in the heavenlies” does refer to a spiritual reality, it refers to the spiritual reality as it is carried out in the physical realm, here on this earth, during our lives now.

Far too often, Christians focus so much on eternity and the afterlife, that they neglect the work that God has called us to do here and now in our lives. As someone once said, “Some Christians are so heavenly minded, they are no earthly good.” When this happens, we allow the spiritual hosts of wickedness to have their way on their earth.

As Christians, we are seated with Christ in heavenly places so that we can rule and reign with Christ here on earth, not only in the future, but also (primarily!) during our lives now. The battle is a spiritual battle, but it has far-reaching ramifications and consequences in the physical world. One of the primary ways we do battle in the spiritual world by seeking to help people in the physical world.

These spiritual hosts of wickedness are seeking to destroy people’s lives, inhibit the truth of the gospel from spreading upon the earth, and hinder the effectiveness of the church. We struggle against these forces with all our might so that lives can be saved, the gospel can spread, and the church can serve others in this world. The struggle is spiritual in nature, but physical in how it manifests in this world.

All of this then means that the spiritual blessings which God has given to us in Jesus Christ are not for some future experience after we die and are resurrected to spend eternity with God and the saints. No, the spiritual blessings God has given to us in Jesus Christ are for this life here and now. You can draw on these blessings and experience these heavenly, spiritual blessings right now.

If this excites you, and you want to know how to start experiencing some of these spiritual blessings right now, well, Paul begins to write about this exact thing in Ephesians 1:4, which we will look at in our next study.

The Origin of the Mosaic Law

By Jeremy Myers

The Two Greatest Blessings (Ephesians 1:2)

By Jeremy Myers

Gun Violence in the USA

A short plea for clear thinking and fact-based conversations about gun violence in the United States. Don’t listen to the lies from the news about this. They have an agenda and will not give you the facts.

Question from a Reader about the Warning Passages of Hebrews

When I was 7 I “accepted Jesus”. I grew up in a pastor’s home but was never discipled. When I hit my college years, I became involved in sexual sin and alcohol. Unfortunately I was unfaithful to my wife and had bad language. I taught Sunday School and was a deacon. 9 years ago I had a severe breakdown. Then I read that people who only profess Christ and then fall away, according to Hebrews, were never really saved and now cannot be. I believed everything I taught, I loved the church and everything involved. It wasn’t until after the breakdown that I found the Hebrews passages and the teaching on the blasphemy of the Holy Spirit. I was mortified. I tried to repent but felt no relief. I believe I am forever lost because, according to Hebrews I spurned God’s grace and trampled. This crushed my heart because, even in sin, I was sharing the Gospel with relatives. I have never wanted others to go to hell, I have kids and grandkids. I want them to know Christ. I am 69 and terrified that I am now forever lost.

Here are few links from my website for further reading:

Grace and Peace from God our Father (Ephesians 1:2)

Grace and peace to you from God our Father and the Lord Jesus Christ (Ephesians 1:2)

This podcast episode is drawn from my notes on Ephesians 1:1-2 here.

The text contains two blessings and two sources for these blessings.

A. Two Blessings in Ephesians 1:2

First, he gives two blessings for believers. Grace and peace. This is the typical way that Paul starts almost all of his letters, but should not be ignored. Paul understood grace (Acts 9:1-18; 1 Tim 1:15-16). Paul, the chief of sinners, was chosen by God to share God’s grace to the Gentiles. Paul was the apostle of grace. He was the most qualified person to speak on grace.

So what is grace? What made Paul so excited to share about grace? Grace is God’s unmerited favor. It is the blessings of God poured out upon those who do not deserve it. To better help you remember what grace means, you can use the acrostic: G-R-A-C-E – God’s Riches At Christ’s Expense. Grace does not cost us anything. Grace is another favorite theme of Paul’s, and so he starts with grace.

Grace is the beginning and end of our life with Jesus Christ. Without grace we have nothing, and it is only by grace that we continue to live and walk with Jesus. This means that if you don’t understand grace, or have a weak view of grace (as most Christians do), you will never truly advance in your life as a disciple of Jesus. A proper understanding of grace is step one in the life of a disciple.

In my Gospel Dictionary entry on Grace, I taught this:

Grace is the key to every aspect of the gospel. Not the week-kneed, limp, powerless, feeble grace that you find in most Christian theology today, but the shocking, outrageous, scandalous, indiscriminate, senseless, irrational, unfair, irreligious, ridiculous, absurd, offensive, infinite grace which Jesus exhibited during His life and which is found everywhere in God’s activity toward humans. Biblical grace is so shocking, the only people who ever object to it are religious people who think that their behavior merits them some sort of special privilege or position with God. Such people are offended that the so-called “sinners” are put on equal footing. But this is exactly what God’s grace does, which is why the good news of grace is central to the gospel.

By grace, God loves all, forgives all, and accepts all, with no strings attached, no fine print, no qualifications, no limits, and no ongoing requirements. There is no amount of sin that can restrict the flow or find the limit of God’s grace.

The grace of God is so outlandish and foreign to every human way of thinking and living, it is absolutely impossible for any human being to place too much emphasis on grace. If I was required to preach and teach about only once concept for the rest of my life, I would choose the topic of grace. Of all the words in this Gospel Dictionary, grace is the most important, for without grace, there is no gospel. And while the same thing could be said about Jesus, grace existed before Jesus ever lived and died. Jesus came to reveal God’s grace to us, which means that when it comes to the gospel, grace preceded, spans, and follows the life of Jesus. The message of grace is the overarching theme of the gospel. It underscores every truth and ties every element together.

As I look at Christianity and see some of the problems that many people have with understanding Scripture, understanding God, understanding current events, or even in understanding and interacting with other humans beings, the one consistent truth I have found is that where there are the greatest problems with such things in Christianity, there is also the greatest failure to understand grace.

Once you understand grace, everything else falls into place.

That’s why it’s the first blessing Paul mentions, and why he always focuses so much on grace in his letters. Grace will be discussed in greater detail as we work our way through Ephesians.

The second blessing is peace. It is only because of God’s grace that we can have peace. Peace with God and peace with ourselves, and peace with others. Grace is the fountain from which the river of peace flows. In a world like ours, peace is a wonderful blessing for the saint of God.

Now peace is the great longing of this world. Everybody longs for peace, but nobody seems to know how to achieve peace. Most countries of the world think that peace comes through war. Isn’t that odd? It’s called the myth of redemptive violence. We think that if we can just kill enough of the bad people, then the good people will be able to live in peace with each other. So governments spend exorbitant amounts of time and money killing others in the name of peace. Of course, our enemies do the same toward us, and so the cycle of violence never ends.

But Jesus showed us a different way to achieve peace. And His way actually works. Paul will explain more of this as well in this letter to the Ephesians, especially in Ephesians 2. Just recognize for now that peace is also a rich blessing from God, and it is available to you and to the world through Jesus Christ.

This brings us to the two sources for these blessings. Grace and peace come to us from God our Father and the Lord Jesus Christ. It is interesting to note that these two sources of Christian blessing are also the two sources for Paul’s authority: he is an apostle of Christ Jesus, by the will of God, and our blessing comes from God and Jesus Christ (Ephesians 1:1).

Let’s talk about God the Father first. We take it for granted that we can talk to God as our Father. We take it for granted that we can pray directly to God without the help of a sacrifice of or a human, priestly mediator. When Jesus taught His disciples to pray, He invited them to pray to God as Father, and at that time, this was a shocking and revolutionary idea. Most people believed that in order to talk to God, you had to go to the temple, offer a sacrifice, and then communicate to God through a priest.

But Jesus showed us that we can pray directly to God, and we can talk to Him as our Father. Paul is hinting at the same thing here. God is our Father, and as our Father, He loves us and cares for us, and only gives good gifts to us.

This tell us, by the way, that if something bad happens in your life, it did not come from God. God only gives good gifts to His children. Bad things happen to us because we live in a sinful world. God our Father helps us get through these difficult and painful experiences, but He does not send these experiences upon us to punish us or hurt us. Get that idea out of your mind.

Here God our Father has given us grace and peace. There are many other blessings God has given to us, and some of these will be explained in more detail in the rest of Ephesians.

The second source of blessings, then, is our Lord Jesus Christ.

Sometimes people are confused when our Savior is addressed this way. Why are three names used? What do they mean? Briefly, the term Lord is a title—like King or President. The term Jesus is His actual name, and the term Christ is why He came—it reveals His mission to be the Messiah—the Savior of the world. Technically, Christ (or Messiah) is also a title, but it is used in a way to describe the mission of Jesus. I do have a lesson on the word “Christ” in my Gospel Dictionary as well.

While all of God’s blessings come from Him, they come through Jesus Christ. We are blessed with every spiritual blessings because Jesus brought them to us from God. Again, all of this will be explained in more detail through the rest of Ephesians, so we will leave further discussion for other texts.

We pick up next time with Ephesians 1:3 where Paul begins to explain further blessings and riches that are ours in Jesus Christ.

Who is a saint? YOU are! (Ephesians 1:1)

By Jeremy Myers

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I am returning to verse-by-verse studies through books of the Bible. We begin in this podcast episode with Ephesians 1:1. The episode also contains a brief discussion of the humanitarian crisis at our southern border, and also a question from a reader about how to understand the violence of God in various biblical passages. Listen to the podcast for these two sections.

Here are some brief notes on what I explain from Ephesians 1:1

The text says this:

Paul, an apostle of Christ Jesus by the will of God, to the saints in Ephesus, the faithful in Christ Jesus. (Ephesians 1:1)

The author of the letter, of course, is Paul.

First, he is an apostle of Christ Jesus. An apostle is one who is sent by God with a message to those who have not yet heard the good news. It should be noted that there are no more apostles today. We have all probably heard of apostolic churches, and men or women claiming to be apostles of Christ. The Catholic Church claims that the authority of the Pope is based on apostolic succession.

But all of these teaching are wrong. Let me show you why. One of the requirements to be an apostle is to have personally seen and heard Christ (1 John 1:1-3), and to have witnessed His resurrection (Matt 28; Luke 24; Acts 1:22; 10:41; 1 Cor 9:1; 15:4) and ascension (Acts 1:9-13). An apostle was one who was hand-picked by Jesus for this office. Paul was an apostle, but as one abnormally born (1 Cor 15:8-9). He was the last apostle chosen by Jesus for this office.

Since all of these events are not repeatable—someone alive today was not present when Jesus was alive, or saw Jesus after He rose from the dead, or watched Him rise into heaven—then there are no apostles today. They are irreplaceable by any subsequent generation.

Scripture bears this out as well. There are almost eighty references to apostles in Scripture, and nearly all of them refer to either the Twelve Apostles, or to Paul. All of the other leaders in Scripture are known as ministers and fellow laborers, but not apostles.

We’re going to see later in the book that there might still be the spiritual gift of apostleship, but this gift is not to be confused with the office of apostle. Those with the gift of apostleship today we most often know as missionaries to unreached people groups. To clear up confusion, we don’t call them apostles. Instead, we call them missionaries. But more on that later.

So Paul’s first source of authority is that he was an apostle of Jesus Christ. He was set apart, chosen by God, to be sent with the message of the gospel to the Gentiles. This is what God called him to do. Secondly, he was an apostle by the will of God. This is not something he took upon himself. This is not something Paul earned. It is something God called him to be and do.

Paul is writing to the church in Ephesus. And here we have two characteristics for the believers in Ephesus.

He first calls them saints. The word “saints” in the Greek is hagios. It literally means “holy ones.” Saints, or holy ones, are those who are set apart for God’s use. When we think of saints, we often picture statues in cathedrals, stained glass, miraculous appearances, and mystical encounters.

We get most of these ideas from the Catholic Church. The Catholic Church has a practice of “sainting” dead people who obtained a certain level of holiness during their life and who have at least two verifiable miracles to their credit. So in the Catholic Church, very few become saints.

A while back as they were considering sainting Mother Theresa, I read this about her:

All of India, and much of the Catholic world, has been buzzing about the presentation to the Vatican this week of the case of an Indian woman said to be the recipient of Mother Theresa’s first miracle—a significant step toward Theresa’s canonization. Monica Besra, a mother of five, tells TIME that on September 5, 1998—a year to the day after Theresa died—she was writhing in pain from an abdominal tumor at a home, run by the Missionaries of Charity. ‘There was no way any doctor would have operated on me at that hour,’ she says. ‘So the nuns just started praying and kept a Mother Theresa medallion on my stomach. The pain subsided, and the tumor vanished.’ Episcopal Bishop Salvatore Lobo, head of the team that will deliver 35,000 pages of Theresa’s good deeds to the Vatican, says, ‘This miracle meets the requirements. It is organic, permanent, immediate and intercessory in nature.’ A second miracle is still required for sainthood.

Is this the way it works? To become a saint, do you not only have to have an impressive list of good deeds—35,000 pages worth in this case—but also at least two miracles to your name? No, Scripture everywhere tells us differently. And right here in verse one is one of these places. These saints in Ephesus were alive, not dead, and it is clear that they had never performed any miracles.

Paul shows us here and elsewhere (Col 1:2; Php 4:21; 1 Cor 1:2) that all believers are saints. He is not writing to a few of the spiritual elite within the congregation. To Paul, a saint was anyone who had believed in Jesus.

So he is writing to all Christians—and here he calls them saints. In fact, this will be a favorite theme of his in Ephesians. He refers to “saints” nine times in this letter (NASB: 1:1, 15, 18; 2:19; 3:8, 18; 4:12; 5:3; 6:18). All Christians are saints—even if we don’t act like saints, even if we don’t perform miracles.

So when Paul shows that he writing to the saints in Ephesus, he is right away showing them one of the blessings they have in Jesus. Paul is writing to the saints of God in Ephesus. And I, in turn, am sharing this letter with all the saints that are here today. If you have believed in Jesus Christ alone for eternal life, you are saints!

How do you think of yourself? We should see ourselves as sinners and in need of constant grace and mercy of God, but over and above this, we need to see ourselves as saints. When we all begin to see that in Jesus Christ, we are saints, I believe we will begin to act like it.

Paul was an apostle, set apart, chosen by God for a task. Saints are also set apart, chosen by God for a task. What task? As we study through Ephesians, we will find out. So Paul is first of all writing to the saints in Ephesus.

But also, Paul is writing to the faithful in Christ Jesus. This is the second characteristic of the believers in Ephesus. The church in Ephesus, as we have seen, was one of the strongest and most mature churches that existed at that time. So Paul is praising them here for that. He is saying, not only are you saints because you have believed in Jesus Christ, but even better, you are faithful saints. You have placed faith in Jesus, and you are standing firm in the faith.

So, let me ask a question. Does this mean that there can be unfaithful saints? Can there be saints who do not act like saints? Can there be “sinning saints”? Saints who fail to live in obedience to God—but who are nevertheless still saints?

Of course! The church is full of them, and so is Scripture. To find examples of unfaithful saints in Scripture, one just has to read some of Paul’s other letters. Almost all the believers in Corinth were not living faithfully. In 1 Timothy, Paul mentions two unfaithful saints by name: Hymenaeus and Alexander (1:20). And in 2 Timothy 2:13, Paul tells us to be careful lest we become faithless.

But the saints in Ephesus were not like this. There were faithful saints in Christ Jesus. How did they become this way? Not by accident. Becoming a faithful saint is not something that just happens to you. You will not become a faithful saint simply by attending church on Sunday. No, faithful saints are made by discipline and hard work. Discipline in knowing who you are in Christ and what you are to do. Discipline in reading, studying and applying God’s Word to your live. Through discipline of prayer, of witnessing to others, and in living a holy life.

Becoming a saint is easy—all you have to do is believe in Jesus for eternal life. Becoming a faithful saint, however, is the most challenging but also the most rewarding, enjoyable and exciting thing you will ever do in life. There’s never a dull moment for the man or woman who is trying to become a faithful saint.

Notice also that Paul says they were faithful in Christ Jesus. This is a favorite term of Paul’s. Paul uses this term or one similar (in Christ; in Him) 164 times in the New Testament—and 36 of those (22%) are found in Ephesians. The term is rich with meaning and significance, and is a main theme in this letter.

As we continue to study Paul’s letter to the Ephesians we will continue to learn what blessings and riches you have been given as a saint in Jesus Christ so that you can learn to live as faithful follower of Jesus in this world. You will learn of your riches in Christ so that you can better fulfil your responsibilities in Christ.

Join us as we continue!

See a more detailed explanation of this text in the sermon on Ephesians 1:1-2 here.

Will Licentiousness and Lewdness send you to hell? (Jude 4, Jude 7)

By Jeremy Myers

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In this podcast episode, I discuss how to avoid hypocritical thinking in politics, answer a listener question about Jude 4, and discuss what the eternal fire in Jude 7 refers to.

How to Avoid Hypocrisy in Politics

Listen to the podcast for the full discussion, but the bottom line truth is that whenever you think about criticizing a political opponent or person for their actions, first consider whether you would say the same thing if someone from your own political party had done the same thing. (Chances are, someone from your own political viewpoint HAS done the same thing… when that happened, what did you say or do?) If you would be silent, then remain silent now. If you spoke out, then feel free to speak out now.

Question from a Listener on Jude 4

How do you harmonize eternal security with the book of Jude? Especially the statement in Jude 4 about licentious men who deny God and Jesus Christ. It says they abuse the grace of God and turn it into licentiousness or lewdness If a person, pastor, teacher, etc promotes eternal security, aren’t they teaching and promoting licentious, saying we can sin/abuse God’s grace and still be saved? I read Zane Hodge’s Power to Stand, an exposition on Jude and it brought some confusion/questions, one of the many questions I had long ago. I was wondering if you might answer it. I am grateful for your website and ministry! Thank you! I appreciate it!

I do believe in eternal security and grace is one of the primary reasons I hold to eternal security. In my Gospel Dictionary course I have a lesson on grace, and in it, I said this:

It is extravagant, outrageous grace which shocks all sense of propriety. God is shameless in His love for us, so that even when we say and do things that would chase off any human being, God sticks with us and by us. As soon as we seek to limit God’s grace or restrict it to a holy few, we have stopped believing in grace and have plunged headlong into the hell of religion. Grace is free! Absolutely free. It has no limits, borders, restrictions, or conditions. It is freely given and freely received, and as such, can never be rescinded or revoked. There is nothing that can be done (or not done) to earn, merit, or deserve grace. Grace cannot be increased or decreased, merited or demerited. Grace is infinite, universal, and free.

I can hear the objection already: But if grace is how I have been describing it above, won’t people take advantage of this kind of grace? The answer to that is “Of course they will!” But grace that comes with restrictions to avoid being abused is no longer grace. In fact, true grace, by definition, opens itself up to being abused. It is not true grace if it cannot be abused.

So yes, by definition, grace can be abused. It opens itself up for abuse. If God limited grace so that it could not be abused, then it would no longer be free. It would instead be earned or deserved because we gained it or kept it through certain God-approved behavior.

So what about these licentious teachers that Jude is writing about in Jude 4? Some translations say “lewdness.” Lewd behavior is that which is lustful, vulgar, lascivious. I like “licentious” though, because it gives the impression of “license.” A license allows you to do something. A driver’s license allows you to drive. A fishing license allows you to fish. So these teachers that Jude is warning about were saying that grace gives us a license to sin. You can sin all you want and it doesn’t matter.

Now, I have written and taught in the past that grace does indeed allow you to sin all you want. So does the Jude 4 warning apply to me? Am I one of the teachers Jude 4 warns you against? No.

And here’s why. From the context in Jude 4, it appears that these teachers were saying that Christians could go sin all they want, and such behavior doesn’t matter. There are no serious consequences to such behavior. In this form of teaching, grace is a license to sin.

I teach no such thing. I teach that while grace does allow you to go sin all you want, when you really understand grace, it actually teaches you not to sin. Grace teaches us to deny ungodliness and worldly lust, as we read in Titus 2:11-12.

Let me put it this way. The teachers Jude was writing against were saying that grace allows people to sin all they want and there are not serious consequences for their sin. I (and other eternal security teachers) say that grace allows people to sin all they want, but grace also teaches us that there are very serious consequences for such behavior. Like what? While you will not lose your eternal life, you will likely suffer serious devastation and destruction to your health, your marriage, your finances, you job, your psychological and emotional well-being, and even to your eternal reward in eternity.

Do you see the difference? In the teaching of eternal security, free grace is not a license to sin but is rather a warning against sin. We say “Yes, grace allows you to sin all you want, but when you really understand grace and sin, why would you want to?” Grace allows you to sin all you want just like owning a knife allows you to stab it into your leg. Yes, you can do this if you want to, but why would you want to?

So the teaching on eternal security is not a license to sin. It is not licentiousness. It is the opposite. We uphold the grace of God in all its glory, and also know that grace, when it is properly taught and understood, teaches us to live righteously and godly in this present world. Grace, when truly grasped, is not the freedom to sin, it is the freedom to truly start living.

That is a brief explanation of Jude 4 in relation to the question of eternal security.

As long as we’re here in Jude, let’s look ahead a couple verses and also consider Jude 7 for our Scripture text of this podcast episode.

The Eternal Fire in Jude 7

The warnings of Jude 7 relate to what we just discussed from Jude 4. I have written and taught about this text previously in the lesson on “Fire” in the Gospel Dictionary Online course, and also in my book on Hell, titled (#AmazonAdLink) What is Hell?

Here is what we read in Jude 7

… as Sodom and Gomorrah, and the cities around them in a similar manner to these, having given themselves over to sexual immorality and gone after strange flesh, are set forth as an example, suffering the vengeance of eternal fire (Jude 7)

As frequently seen in this study, the image of fire in Scripture refers to the temporal destruction of cities. This is also what is described in Jude 7, where the author points to the destruction of Sodom and Gomorrah as examples of what happens to those who stray from the will of God. However, some point to the phrase at the end of the verse that the cities are “suffering the vengeance of eternal fire” as evidence that Jude is talking about eternal suffering in the flames of hell. However, several contextual insights reveal that this is not what Jude had in mind.

First, this reference to the destruction of Sodom and Gomorrah is parallel to the preceding two examples. Jude loves to give examples in triplicate, and so prior to writing about Sodom and Gomorrah, he writes about the death of some of the Israelites in the wilderness because they did not believe (Jude 5), and the imprisonment of some angels in everlasting chains while they await judgment (Jude 6).

The first example of the Israelites in the wilderness clearly refers to physical death, rather than to eternal torment in hell. The example of the angels is more difficult, since we are not quite sure what event Jude has in mind. But many believe he is referring to the “sons of God” who had sexual relations with the daughters of men in Genesis 6, and were imprisoned as a result. Yet notice that while these angels are imprisoned in chains and darkness, they are not being tortured with fire. In fact, darkness and fire are mutually exclusive. And since angels are immortal, they cannot be killed. Therefore, they were imprisoned and are awaiting judgment.

This third example of Sodom and Gomorrah is a combination of the first two. Like the angels, the inhabitants of these cities committed sexual immorality and went after strange flesh. This is referring to the fact that the cities were inhospitable and attempted to rape the angels who visited them (Gen 19:4-7; Ezek 16:49-50). The result of this behavior was that the cities of Sodom and Gomorrah were destroyed with fire.

Yet how do we know that Jude is not referring to eternal torment in the flames of hell? We know this because Jude says that Sodom and Gomorrah were “set forth as an example,” which means that this example could be seen by humans. If Jude were referring to the eternal fires of hell, then Sodom and Gomorrah could not be set forth as an example to be seen and witnessed by humans. Jude cannot be referring to some sort of future punishment in hellfire, because then it would not in any way be set forth as an historical example to mankind.

But we also know that Jude was not referring to the eternal flames of hell because of what he writes in Jude 23. Jude writes that it is possible to pull people out of the fire. This is, of course, exactly what happened with Lot and his family. They were rescued, pulled, or delivered from the flames that destroyed Sodom and Gomorrah, and Jude indicates that similar deliverance can happen today.

If Jude was referring to the flames of hell in this text, then he would be teaching that it is possible to rescue and deliver people from hell after they are already there. But few who believe that hell is a place of everlasting torment in fire are willing to say that it is possible to rescue the people who are there. It is better to recognize from the context that Jude is not thinking about eternal torment in the flames of hell, but rather the everlasting destruction of cities due to temporal flames.

Indeed, this is exactly how to understand the phrase “suffering the vengeance of eternal fire.” To begin with, “suffering the vengeance” is probably not the best way of translating the Greek (Gk., dikēn hupechousai). In 2 Thessalonians 1:8-9, the Greek word dikē means “penalty” or “justice” (Dikē was the Greek god of justice). The second word, hupechō, appears only here in the New Testament, and literally means “to undergo” or “hold under,” and carries the idea of experiencing something.

So the phrase itself means “to undergo justice” or to “experience justice.” And as frequently mentioned elsewhere, this experience of justice, or this penalty, is not sent by God but is brought upon someone through their own actions. Sin carries its own penalty with it. This is exactly what Jude says in verse 10 when he writes that the false teachers “corrupt themselves.” The corruption and punishment that come upon people is not sent from God but is brought by a person upon their own heads.

Jude says that this self-inflicted punishment upon Sodom and Gomorrah was “eternal fire.” This does not mean that the cities are still burning, for they are not. It means that the fire that fell upon these cities destroyed them completely, and they have not been rebuilt (cf. Rev 18:9, 18). This is true, for the cities of Sodom and Gomorrah were in the location of what is now the Dead Sea.

According to historical accounts from the New Testament era, the Dead Sea was also known as the Lake of Fire, where there were frequent bouts of flame and smoke, burning sulphur, and where everything that went through it collected a tarnish of oily soot and grime (cf. Gen 19:24-28; Deut 29:23; Isa 34:9; Jer 49:17-18; Rev 20:10). In the days of Jesus, the valley was still smoking and smoldering, and they assumed it would go on that way forever. This is what Jude has in mind when he speaks of the cities suffering the vengeance of eternal fire. It is not hell, but is the ongoing, physical destruction and devastation that came upon those cities.

And this is the overall truth that Jude is presenting in Jude 4 and Jude 7. Abandoning grace, or turning grace into a license to sin without consequences, is a recipe for disaster. Though grace does allow itself to be abused, the abuse of grace leads to devastation and destruction in the person’s life who does it. It invites fire into a person’s life, which sweeps through their life, leaving behind only dust and ashes.

So don’t abuse grace. Grace is given to us so that we might live free. Therefore, live in the freedom for which you have been set free.

To learn more about these sorts of truths, join my online discipleship group and take the Gospel Dictionary Online Course.

Harlots in the Kingdom of God (Matthew 21:31)

By Jeremy Myers

Election Fraud Cases Before the Supreme Court

Joe Biden is in the Whitehouse, but tomorrow, February 19, 2021, the Supreme Court of the United States is scheduled to consider five pending election fraud cases. This doesn’t mean they are going to hear the cases. It means they are going to decide tomorrow whether or not to hear the cases.

My hunch is that they will decline to hear the cases based on some technicality as they have done before, such as a lack of standing or the fact that the election is already over.

However, this would be a mistake. Even though the results of the election probably cannot be overturned at this point, the 2020 election was not the last election this country will ever have. There were significant and widespread problems with the 2020 election, and we can only exist as a country if there we have safe and secure elections. So regardless of what whether or not the 2020 election can be overturned, the Supreme Court has the obligation to make sure that future elections follow the constitution.

I hope they take up all the cases. But we’ll see…

Here, by the way, is a chart showing just some of the potentially fraudulent votes that were cast in the 2020 Presidential Election:

Whether you voted for Trump or Biden, I think we can all agree that fraudulent votes should not be allowed in any election, ever.

Question: Have I believed if I Agree to the Facts of the Gospel?

Hi. I am 33 years old. I grew up in a Christian home. My dad was a pastor. I am not a Christian. I have had a handful of false conversions in my life. Ever since the coronavirus I have been on this journey of trying to figure out how to get saved. It is all I think about. I have not been eating as much as I should be and have lost a lot of weight. I am barely making it through each day right now. I believe there is a really good chance things are setting up for the end times. I am so scared of going to hell!! I have had so much confusion about repentance and faith.

Since the beginning of this journey I have been praying to God to help me understand repentance and faith. I believe He is helping me understand repentance!! My dad found a book called, (#AmazonAdLink) Turn and Live: The Power of Repentance by Robert N. Wilkin. I now understand that repenting of sins has nothing to do with how we get saved!!

I am still confused about faith though. My dad has told me that it is not just believing the facts. That is part of it but it is hearing the gospel, being fully persuaded the facts of the gospel are true, and making a decision to put your trust in Jesus Christ as your payment for your sins. That is the decision I want to make.

I have extreme OCD. It effects every area of my life. I am not even able to work because of it. I am not sure how to make the decision to put my trust in Jesus Christ as the payment for my sins. I am so scared of thinking I am making the decision and really just be agreeing the facts are true. I am not sure what to do or how to work through this. Also, if you could be praying for me I would really appreciate it!!

I will definitely be praying for you. I have never been fond of the “make a decision for Christ” terminology, mostly for the very reasons you are having problems with it. How can any one know if they have made the decision? It is confusing.

I hate to disagree with your dad on this, but in my book on faith ((#AmazonAdLink) What is Faith?) I argue that faith is simply agreeing to the facts. It truly is mental assent. So if you agree that there is no way to receive eternal life than through Jesus, this is the same thing as believing in Jesus. You have agreed (or believed) that Jesus gives you eternal life because there is no other way to receive it.

Anyway, don’t get in an argument about this with your dad. I understand where he is coming from, in that he doesn’t want Christians to just have mental assent, but we should also live our lives for Jesus. I agree with this desire, but the way to accomplish this is not to say that people who have mental assent haven’t actually believed. Instead, the best way to proceed is to say that people who have mental assent have indeed believed, and that discipleship is accomplished separately through following Jesus.

By the way, based on what you have written to me … I think you are a Christian. I’m not sure why you think you have had false conversions, but don’t allow moral failure to make you think you are not actually a Christian. Eternal life is not based on our own good works, but is based entirely on the promises of Jesus. And He promises that if you have believed in Him, then you have eternal life.

Why Tax Collectors and Prostitutes Enter the Kingdom of God Before Religious Leaders (Matthew 21:31)

In my Gospel Dictionary Online course, I have a lesson on the Kingdom of God. In this lesson, one of the passages I discuss is Matthew 21:31. Here is what this verse says:

… Jesus said to them, “Assuredly, I say to you that tax collectors and harlots enter the kingdom of God before you.”

In some ways, it is better to be a thief or a prostitute than it is to be a spiritual leader or Bible teacher. At least, that is what Jesus says in Matthew 21:31. In the context, Jesus is speaking to the chief priests and elders in Jerusalem (Matthew 21:23), and after they question Him about His authority, He tells them the Parable of the Two Sons (Matthew 21:28-30). In this story, a father asks his two sons to work in his vineyard. The first son says he will not obey, but then he does. The second son says he will obey, but he doesn’t. Jesus asks the religious leaders which of the two sons actually did what the father asked, to which they correct answered “the first son.”

As stated in the discussion of Matthew 13:24-30, when it comes to following Jesus and living as a disciple within the kingdom of God, what a person actually does is more important than what they say. Jesus then draws a conclusion from this point that when it comes to living within the kingdom of God, the tax collectors and prostitutes are better off than the priests and religious leaders of the community.

Several elements of this passage help draw out the significance of Jesus’ words. We must consider the initial question from the religious leaders, the nature of the kingdom of God, and why tax collectors and harlots are entering the kingdom ahead of the spiritual leaders.

What was wrong with the Spiritual Leaders?

First, let us go back and briefly address the question from the spiritual leaders that led Jesus to tell this parable.

Back in Matthew 21:23, the religious teachers ask Jesus where His authority comes from for His teachings and His actions. They say, “By what authority are You doing these things? Who gave you this authority?” In the days of Jesus, Rabbis, priests, and elders based their authority on which Rabbis they had studied under, or which Rabbinical school they belonged to.

If a particular teacher had not learned from any reputable or famous Rabbis, or if they were not in good standing with either of the top two Rabbinical schools of thought, then it was assumed that such a teacher had nothing good to say and should not be listened to.

This is very much like Christianity today. It is not uncommon at Pastor Conferences for pastors to ask each other similar questions: “What school did you attend? How many advanced degrees do you have? How many followers do you have on social media? How big is your church? How many books have you sold?”

In other words, “By what authority are you teaching these things?” If you refuse to listen to certain teachers because they do not have a Ph.D. from your favorite seminary, or because they are not on staff with a mega-church, or have not sold a millions books, then you have fallen into the same trap that Jesus is speaking about here. Be careful about that mindset, for it can cause you to miss out on entering into or experiencing the kingdom of God.

The Nature of the Kingdom of God

This brings up the second issue, namely, the nature of the kingdom of God. Once again, if someone confuses “entering the kingdom” with “receiving eternal life” or “going to heaven,” then this text will create all sorts of problems. When misread this way, Jesus seems to be saying that tax-collectors and prostitutes have a better chance of receiving eternal life than spiritual leaders do. If that’s the case, then everyone should become a tax cheat and a prostitute! But of course, that is not what Jesus is saying.

The kingdom of God is the rule and reign of God in our lives on this earth. When we enter into the kingdom of God, we enter into an experience of the life God wants for us here and now, during our lives, on this earth. Yes, our experience of the kingdom of God will continue on through eternity, but it can begin now, and it is based almost entirely on how we follow the teachings and example of Jesus in our daily lives. So entering the kingdom of heaven is not the same thing as going to heaven when we die.

Therefore, in this text, Jesus is not saying anything one way or another about how tax collectors and prostitutes are more likely than religious leaders to receive eternal life. All people, regardless of birth, background, or behavior, have the same guarantee from God about how to receive eternal life. God gives eternal life to anyone who simply believes in Jesus Christ for it. The offer is the same to all people, whether they are pastors or prostitutes, drug dealers or divinity students.

So why are Tax Collectors and Prostitutes Closer to the Kingdom of God?

So why then are tax collectors and harlots closer to entering the kingdom of God than religious leaders? The answer lies in what tax collectors and prostitutes value versus what religious leaders value, and how both sets of values line up in comparison to the values of the kingdom.

In general, religious leaders and spiritual teachers tend to live hypocritical lives, saying one thing while doing the opposite. They teach generosity, but then hoard up money and possessions for themselves. They call for grace, mercy, and forgiveness, but extend little of such things to other people. They often see themselves as more superior in intellect and righteousness than the uneducated sinners of society, and only listen to or have time for the people of their own religious clubs.

This is demonstrated by the fact that the religious leaders in Matthew 21:23-27 had no interest in listening to Jesus unless He could prove that He was part of their group.

Tax collectors and prostitutes, on the other hand, while they are blatant sinners, do not suffer from the deep sin of spiritual pride and self-righteousness, and therefore, tend to be more humble, welcoming, joyful, and relational than the spiritual elites. They know they are sinners, and so are more ready to admit their sin to God, and to accept others as friends, regardless of how sinful those others might be.

Tax collectors and prostitutes might be “big time” sinners, but they are not hypocritical about it. They know who they are, and they do not try to hide it. While tax collectors may abuse the law to steal and rob from others, even from their own countrymen, they do not try to justify such behavior by saying they do such things in God’s name. Religious leaders, however, often steal from widows and the poor, all while claiming that such activity is God’s will. If two people are engaging in the exact same behavior, but one is blaming their behavior on God, that second person’s behavior is far more evil.

Similarly, prostitutes often value freedom, liberty, honor, loyalty, and friendship above almost everything else. In the days of Jesus (as now), they often do what they do in order to provide for themselves and for their children because they live in a world where men have abused and neglected them. It is for these sorts of reasons that Jesus says the tax collectors and prostitutes are closer to entering the kingdom of God than are hypocritical religious leaders.

The comparison between these two groups of people and the two sons in the parable is now obvious. The tax collectors and harlots are equivalent to the first son. Though they claim to not follow God, the truth is that many of their values and behaviors do in fact line up with the values of the kingdom of God. So although they (and many others) think that they are far from the experience of God in their lives, they are actually much closer than anyone imagines.

The opposite is true for spiritual leaders. Though religious teachers claim that they do God’s will, and even teach others to do the same, their pride and self-righteousness keeps them from experiencing the true rule and reign of God in their lives.

The lesson of Jesus from this account is simple. Regardless of your station, position, training, education, background, or occupation in life, if you want to experience the rule and reign of God in your life, do not depend on your own righteousness or abilities, but instead live as Jesus lived, with generosity, kindness, patience, grace, mercy, love, and liberty extended to all people, whether or not they are part of your group, club, organization, or church.

The kingdom of God is experienced by those who open their arms wide to embrace all others. It is based on relationships of love rather than the regulations of law.

The Rich Young Ruler and You (Matthew 19:16-24)

By Jeremy Myers

2 Comments

Money! Money! Money! It’s the money episode! In this podcast study, I talk about cryptocurrency, a reader email about tithing, and the story of the Rich Young Ruler in Matthew 19:16-24. We see that Jesus was NOT telling the young man that he had to give up all his money in order to go to heaven. The story is about something else entirely.

Cryptocurrency like Bitcoin and Dogecoin are in the News!

Have you heard of cryptocurrency? They’re in the news a lot this week, so I decided to talk a a bit about them. I explain what they are, why they’re important and gainin widespread acceptance, and how to get some if you want. Ten years ago, Bitcoin was $1. It hit $48,000 today. Dogecoin is the most entertaining cryptocurrency, which causes many to believe it will be the most successful. It currently sits at $.07, and many believe it will hit $1 this year. Where will it be in ten years?

I personally bought a tiny fraction of one Bitcoin and several hundred Dogecoins this past week.

Best and easiest is Coinbase. Use my link to get $10 of free Bitcoin if you buy at least $100. That’s 10% instant profit though, so you might as well take it.

But Coinbase doesn’t sell Dogecoin. So if you want Dogecoin, use Robinhood. Use that Robinhood link to get a free stock when you sign up.

Reader Email about Tithing

A reader sent me a question about tithing this week. He wanted to know if he is really supposed to tithe 10% to his church or not.

I have written a lot about this before. There’s a whole section on tithing in my book (#AmazonAdLink) Church is More than Bodies, Bucks, & Bricks. Here are some links on my site you can read as well:

The bottom line truth about tithing is that most of what we have been taught in our churches about tithing is flat-out wrong. In the Bible, tithing is closer to what you and I would think of as income tax. But even then, the tithe went to help local people, rather than to nameless and faceless governmental programs. Most surprisingly of all, that 10% tithe we so often hear about from our pulpits was primarily for the purpose of hosting a large community party for everyone who came. It was to help pay for everybody to come together once a year for a giant music, arts, and food festival.

There’s a lot more to it than that, but there is nothing in Scripture to support the practice we have today of paying 10% of your annual income to cover the costs of an expensive church building and staff salaries. This doesn’t mean you can’t have buildings and church staff. You can. But what you cannot do is defend the practice from the Bible.

Anyway, the bottom line answer to the question is this: “No, the Bible does not command us to give 10% of our income to the local church.” It is smart to use some of your money to support people, ministries, and causes that you believe in, and to help the poor and needy in your community, but also make sure you are using some of your money to make memories with your spouse and children, and to also enjoy life a bit.

Read some of the articles linked to above (or just get the book) to learn more about what the Bible teaches about tithing.

The Rich Young Ruler in Matthew 19:16-24

I have previously taught about the Rich Young Ruler here and here.

The passages of Matthew 19:16-24, Mark 10:17-31, and Luke 18:18-30 all tell the account of a rich, young ruler coming to Jesus to ask how he can have eternal life. Jesus tells him to give all his wealth away, and then come follow Jesus. The young man went away sorrowful, because he was very rich. After his departure, Jesus and His disciples have a discussion about wealth and the kingdom of heaven.

This is a confusing text for many Christians because many people think that the term “kingdom of heaven” refers to heaven itself. And so many believe that when Jesus taught about how difficult it is for a rich man to enter the kingdom of heaven, He was saying that it is difficult for the rich to receive eternal life and go to heaven when they die.

Thus, it is taught, the rich must give away their wealth in order to have a chance at eternal life.

But this is a works-based message of eternal life and is completely contrary to the free offer of eternal life found everywhere in Scripture.

If eternal life is freely given to anyone and everyone who simply and only believes in Jesus for it, it would be a biblical contradiction for Jesus to also say that the rich must give away their wealth to receive eternal life.

Thankfully, a proper understanding of the concept of the kingdom of heaven helps explain this apparent contradiction. When Jesus teaches about the dangers of wealth, He is not referring to the difficulty the rich will have in receiving eternal life, but to the difficulty they will have in experiencing the rule and reign of God in their life here and now on this earth.

The Kingdom of God is about the Rule and Reign of God in our life NOW

The context of these passages provides numerous lines of evidence to show that Jesus is talking about experiencing eternal life in our present life through the rule and reign of God, rather than about how to receive eternal life and go to heaven when we die.

For example, other than the initial question by the rich, young ruler in Matthew 19:16, the rest of the passage is about inheriting eternal life, following Jesus on the path of discipleship, and entering the kingdom of heaven. So despite how the rich, young ruler phrased his initial question, Jesus answer a more important question for this particular person.

The Gospel authors understood this, and so the parallel versions in Mark 10:17-31 and Luke 18:18-30 have the rich young ruler have the rich, young ruler asking how to “inherit” eternal life. Furthermore, Jesus later clarifies in Matthew 19:29 that He is only talking about inheriting eternal life (which refers to the present age experience of eternal life), Mark and Luke use the word inherit for consistency’s sake when they record the question from the rich young ruler (Mark 10:17; Luke 18:18).

Now which question did the rich, young ruler originally ask? It is difficult to say. Probably he spoke in Hebrew or Aramaic, and so Matthew translated the man’s word one way while Mark and Luke translated it another. But regardless of what was in the mind of the rich, young ruler, however, Jesus answered his question in a way that reached to the heart of the issue, and the heart of the young man.

Wealth in Jewish society

In Jewish society, wealth was a sign of God’s divine blessing. Due to various promises in the Hebrew Scriptures, it was assumed that if a person was observing the law and was wealthy, God had blessed them with their wealth because of how successful they were in observing the law. This belief would obviously not apply to someone like Zacchaeus, who was clearly making no effort to observe the law, but would absolutely apply to someone like this young ruler.

He believed that he had observed the entire law since his youth (Matt 19:20), and everyone else believed it also (cf. Matthew 19:25).

When Jesus instructed the rich, young ruler to give away all his wealth and then come follow Him, Jesus was challenging this entire way of thinking about the connection between God’s law and human wealth. Jesus was showing that there is no true connection between the two. Wealth is not an outward sign of inner righteousness.

Jesus wanted to show this young man, as well as the disciples, how to truly live in righteousness, which comes through following Jesus in discipleship and living in light of the kingdom of God. But Jesus cannot do this as long as a person is looking to their own ability to be righteous, or to their own wealth as a sign of personal righteousness. So he tells the young man to discard all evidence or thought of personal righteousness and then come follow Him to see what righteous living truly looked like. But the young man went away because he was unwilling to do this.

The Kingdom of God is Entered Through Discipleship

So the answer from Jesus is not about how to receive, gain, or have eternal life, but how to inherit or experience God’s will, purpose, and blessings for our life here and now on this earth. As we follow Jesus on the path of discipleship in this life we will experience the life God wants for us now and also gain treasure for our future life in eternity (Mark 10:21: Luke 18:22).

All of this is about entering into the kingdom of God (Mark 10:23-25; Luke 18:24-25), which is shorthand for entering into the experience of the rule and reign of God in our lives here and now on this earth.

But what about the word “saved”?

Note that the disciples use the word “saved” (Mark 10:26; Luke 18:26), which also causes confusion in the minds of some. But when we recognize that the word “saved” also does not refer to receiving eternal life or going to heaven when we die, then the passage retains its message. Jesus is talking about being delivered and rescued from the problems that wealth brings, so that His followers can experience the rule and reign of God in their life now.

The surrounding context makes it clear that Jesus and the disciples are talking about discipleship and eternal reward rather than justification and receiving eternal life (Mark 10:28-30; Luke 18:28-29).

What Jesus Might Say to Us Today

In modern, Western culture, while some people see wealth as a sign of God’s blessing on a person who is fully obedient to Him, this is not a widely held view. If Jesus were physically walking the earth today, I can imagine a scenario in which a well-known, young pastor comes to Jesus and says, “Good teacher, what must I do to experience God’s life?” The young pastor only asks this because he thinks he is already experiencing God’s life, and believes Jesus will praise Him for his great success at such a young age.

Instead, Jesus says, “Well, what is it that you teach from your pulpit and write about in your books?”

The young pastor would respond, “People must attend church regularly, tithe 10% of their income, read the Bible and pray every day, and not be given to alcohol or drugs. They should also be a good witness at their job by wearing Christian t-shirts, a cross-shaped necklace, and never laugh at crude jokes. Instead, they must hand out Gospel tracts and invite people to church.”

Jesus would respond, “Okay. Go do all of that then.”

To which the young man would proudly boast, “I’ve done all this since I was a kid.”

“Well done!” Jesus would say. “Only one thing is left. Resign as pastor. Stop selling books. Quit preaching. Throw out all your gospel tracts and Christian clothes. Stop tithing to the church. Put your Bible on a shelf for a while, and go have a beer at the local pub. Then come follow Me and we’ll see what’s next.” But the young pastor would go away, thinking that Jesus was a false teacher, for the young man had it all figured out.

In this text, Jesus is showing that there is no such thing as an outward manifestation of inward righteousness. However, if we want to truly experience the life of God in us, and all the riches and blessings that entails, we can stop following religion and instead follow Jesus into a life of discipleship. While Jesus always leads in surprising directions, but also leads us toward a true life with God.

Matthew 19:16-24 therefore, is not about how to receive eternal life, but about how to get rid of the things in our life that we rely on as evidence that we are “good” Christians, and instead just follow Jesus wherever He leads. What things do you look to for proof that God loves and accepts you? That you are doing a “good job” for Jesus? Get rid of such things, and then come to Jesus empty-handed, saying, “Wherever You lead, I’ll follow.”

When you do this, Jesus will lead you into a full experience of the kingdom of God.

What did Peter do with the Keys of the Kingdom (Matthew 16:19)?

By Jeremy Myers

1 Comment

In this Redeeming God Podcast episode, we discuss the Second Impeachment of President Trump, a question from a reader about the warning passage of Hebrews 6:1-8, and then look at Matthew 16:19 and what Peter did with the keys of the kingdom that he received from Jesus.

Trump Impeachment 2.0

Impeachment 2.0 begins next week. The Democrats are seeking to impeach President Trump for causing insurrection on January 6 at the Capital building in Washington D.C.

Pretty much like everything the Democrats do, this impeachment trial is completely unconstitutional and a waste of time and money. Trump did nothing wrong, and certainly did not incite an insurrection. The Democrats should focus on something that actually helps this country and the people in it.

1. Completely unconstitutional

Only sitting elected officials can be impeached. President Trump is no longer in office, and so cannot be impeached.

Impeachment trials must be presided over by the Chief Justice of the Supreme Court. Chief Justice Roberts knows that this trial is unconstitutional, and so has declined to preside over the trial, which makes it makes it even more unconstitutional.

2. Complete waste of time and money

Senator Rand Paul recently forced a vote in the Senate to condemn this trial as unconstitutional. 45 senators agreed, meaning 55 voted to proceed with the trial.

For impeachment to occur, the Senate needs 67 votes. If only 55 senators voted to hold the impeachment trial, it is extremely unlikely that 67 will vote to impeach.

This impeachment sham is dead on arrival, making it a complete waste of time and money. There are certainly bigger issues in our country right now that deserve the attention of our elected officials in Washington DC. But their hatred for Trump blinds them to the desperate needs of the people they are supposed to represent.

3. Trump did nothing wrong. He certainly did not incite an insurrection

It is completely moronic for anyone to claim that Trump incited an insurrection.

First, there was no violent rhetoric that incited an insurrection. If there was, fake news channels like CNN would be playing it nonstop. But there aren’t any statements from Trump that incited any sort of violence. I have been engaged in numerous email and social media exchanges in the last month were people accused Trump of “violent rhetoric.” In every case, I ask for actual Tweets or statements from Trump that called for violence, and so far, nobody has produced a single one. However, there are numerous statement from democrats over the past four years, including Biden and Obama, that actually do call for violence against others. If we are impeaching former (or current) political office holders for statements that incite violence, then quite a number of democrats should be immediately impeached.

When people say that Trump engaged in hate speech, what they actually mean is that Trump said things that they hate. But there is a vast difference between hate speech and someone saying things you hate. Trump often said things that his detractors didn’t like, but, unlike many democrats, he never called for violence or an insurrection. Similarly, there are many, many things that other people say that I hate. But as a believer in the first amendment, I will always defend their right to say them.

Second, there was no insurrection. Instead, there were a couple hundred thousand people who gathered at the capitol building to practice their right to assemble and their right to free speech.

Third, those who did made it into the Capital Building were escorted in by Capital Police, and did not engage in any violence. Despite AOC’s irrational fears, she was not in danger of being murdered. She wasn’t even in the building! But even if she was in the building, nobody was going to cause her any harm. (And by the way, did you know that Susan Rosenberg, a board member of a BLM organization actually did detonate a bomb in the capital building on Nov 7, 1983? She was pardoned for her actual insurrection by Bill Clinton.) Watch the dozens and dozens of videos all over the internet about how the people at the capital were escorted in by the police and how they walked orderly and calmly between the velvet ropes into the capitol building. There was no violent insurrection. There was no insurrection, period.

Fourth, even if it could be proven that there was a violent insurrection did occur, it cannot be proven that Trump caused it. Reports and studies have shown that the plans to enter into the capital building were made days before Trump ever spoke on January 6. If there had been an actual insurrection, it is impossible for Trump to incite it if the plans for it had already been made days earlier.

All in all, impeachment 2.0 is a sham, just like it was the first time. All it reveals is that the Democrats don’t care about the constitution, don’t care about due process, don’t care about free speech, and most of all, don’t care about you and me, the people of the United States. Rather than do something helpful for the great needs of the citizens they serve, they are instead wasting time, money, and energy on a pointless impeachment. They are consumed by hatred for Trump and a lust for power. These things will become more and more obvious in the weeks and months ahead.

Letter from a Reader

I read a book that was talking about Hebrews 6 & that some “mature Christians” could possibly choose to turn away from God and renounce their salvation. And if they did, God would give them over to a reprobate mind and there would be no hope of returning to Him. Fear entered in and I literally started having mega blasphemous thoughts & felt like I was possessed, it was so bad. I thought I had committed the unpardonable sin & that’s why it was happening. But, I read your book on the unpardonable sin & realized that I had not committed it & I can’t commit it, as I was born again as a child.

There are lots of terrible books and teachings out there about Hebrews 6, mostly due to the fact that people misunderstand several key terms in the book… I cover all these key terms in my online course “The Gospel Dictionary.”

I also wrote about this passage in book (#AmazonAdLink) What is Hell? and taught about it in a previous podcast episode. There are also several lessons in my online courses that deal with this text. Here are few links from my website for further reading:

Hebrews 6:1-8 and the Warning About Falling Away

Do the warning passages of Hebrews 6:7-8 and Hebrews 10:27 refer to Christians going to hell?

Hodges on Hebrews (Part 6)

The Keys of the Kingdom in Matthew 16:19

Here is what Jesus says to Peter in Matthew 16:19:

And I will give you the keys of the kingdom of heaven, and whatever you bind on earth will be bound in heaven, and whatever you loose on earth will be loosed in heaven.”

There are two main ways this verse has been misunderstood. The first is in Pentecostal theology where people use this for name-it-and-claim-it theology where if you just “bind” something on earth God in heaven is required to give to you what you claim. Other Pentecostals use this verse to teach about binding Satan and demonic spirits with the power of heaven.

But these words from Jesus were spoken directly to Peter in response to his statement that Jesus was the Christ, the son of the living God (Matt 16:16). Due to Peter’s confession, Jesus gave the keys of the kingdom to Peter. Since all the personal pronouns in Matthew 16:19 are second person singular (“you” rather than “you all”), Jesus is not making a blanket statement to all the disciples that we all have the keys of the kingdom. No, these spiritual and symbolic keys of the kingdom were given to Peter alone.

Secondly, we also must also avoid the Catholic mistake of thinking that this verse teaches the Catholic doctrine of apostolic succession. This doctrine teaches that in Matthew 16:19 Jesus gave special authority to Peter to make pronouncements about church doctrine and policy, and this doctrine was passed down from Peter to the various Popes in church history. This is an improper way of reading the text as well, for while the spiritual keys of the kingdom were “given” to Peter directly, he used them during his life to unlock the doors of the kingdom to the various people groups of the world, and once the doors were unlocked and opened, the keys of the kingdom served their purpose and we no longer needed.

It is also important to note that the construction of the Greek terms in this verse (future perfect passive periphrastic participle, if you really want to know … and it’s just fun to say) indicate that what is bound and loosed on earth were already bound and loosed in heaven. Peter is to carry out on earth the decisions that were already made in heaven. The keys of the kingdom do not give Peter the ability to do whatever he wants with them, thereby forcing heaven to bind or loose whatever Peter chooses. No, Peter is to bind and loose that which has already been bound or loosed in heaven.

So what are the keys of the kingdom and how were they used?

What is it that Peter is binding and loosing?

It helps to remember that the kingdom of heaven is the rule and reign of God on earth. So the keys of the kingdom are not a blank check which draws on the riches and power of heaven or a special authority to make rulings on all church-related matters. No, Jesus is telling Peter that it is his responsibility to take the message of the kingdom of heaven to the rest of the world and unlock the benefits and blessings of the kingdom for them. There are three times in the book of Acts where we see Peter use the keys of the kingdom for this purpose.

These three times are foreshadowed in Acts 1:8.

Scholars have often noted that Acts 1:8 contains the outline of the book. The good news of the kingdom started with Jesus in Jerusalem, but it spread from there to the rest of Judea, and then to Samaria, and ultimately to the end of the known world. But what is less often noted is the role Peter played in this spread of the message of the kingdom, and especially how Peter opens the doors of the kingdom to the Jews, Samaritans, and Gentiles.

In Acts 1:7-8, Jesus said the sign of the coming of the kingdom will be the arrival of the Holy Spirit. As the truths of the kingdom come upon various people groups in Acts, Peter also gives them the blessing of the Holy Spirit, which is the evidence that they have been invited to participate in the kingdom of heaven.

Peter opens the Doors of the Kingdom to the Jews in Acts 2

In Acts 2, Peter explains to the Jews that their King Jesus is on the throne, and that in Him and in all who believe in Him, the kingdom of heaven has arrived (cf. Acts 2:30-36). Peter explains in his sermon that the coming of the Holy Spirit indicates that the rule of God on earth had arrived (Acts 2:17-21). Peter indicates later that he knows this message will be spread further, to those who are afar off, to whomever God may call (Acts 2:39). In the next several chapters, the message continues to spread among the Jewish people.

Peter opens the Doors of the Kingdom to the Samaritans in Acts 8

In Acts 8, Philip, one of the early church leaders, preaches the gospel to the Samaritans. As he does so, unclean spirits are cast out of people and the lame are healed (Acts 8:7), showing that the newly born church is beginning to storm the gates of hell, just as Jesus promised (Matt 16:18). However, none of the new believers in Samaria had received the Holy Spirit. Why not? Because Peter had not yet opened the gates of the kingdom to them. Yet in Acts 8:17, Peter travels to Samaria to do this very thing, and when he lays his hands upon them, they receive the gift of the Holy Spirit, proving that God has invited the Samaritans into the kingdom of heaven as well.

Peter opens the Doors of the Kingdom to the Gentiles in Acts 10

Finally, Peter opens the door to the Gentiles in Acts 10:24-48. A Gentile named Cornelius summons Peter, and after Peter explains the gospel to him and his family, they believe the message and the Holy Spirit comes upon them all. This is the third use of the keys of the kingdom, and the doors of the kingdom have now been opened to the Jews, the Samaritans, and the Gentiles. After this, Peter fades away in the book of Acts, to the point where he is not even mentioned again after Acts 15. He fulfilled his task of opening the doors the kingdom so that the gospel could be preached to all people.

The message of the Kingdom spreads to the Rest of the World in Acts 19

The gospel going to the rest of the world is found in Acts 19:1-10. A Jewish man named Apollos had been teaching and preaching about Jesus even though he only knew about the baptism of John (cf. Acts 18:24-25). So Priscilla and Aquila took him aside and taught him more fully about Jesus (Acts 18:26). When Paul arrived, he taught Apollos and the believers there about the baptism of the Holy Spirit and laid hands on them so that they might receive the Spirit (Acts 19:6). When some spoke in tongues and prophecy, this was the sign that the Spirit had moved beyond just the borders of Israel and was now spreading to the rest of the world.

It was not necessary for Peter to unlock the doors of the kingdom in Ephesus, however, for the doors had already been unlocked to every people group. The signs and wonders of the Spirit simply indicated that the gospel of the kingdom of heaven was now spreading over the face of the earth.

What the Keys of the Kingdom in the Book of Acts teaches us about miraculous signs, wonders, and tongues

This brings up the important point about the miraculous signs and wonders that accompanied the initial giving the Holy Spirit to the various people groups. These miraculous signs were needed to prove that the gates of the kingdom had been opened to these new groups of people. We must not assume, as some do, that miraculous signs and events will always accompany the giving of the Holy Spirit. They don’t.

After the initial arrival of the Spirit in Acts to the various groups of people, the Spirit thereafter comes immediately and silently to all who believe in Jesus for eternal life. No special anointing is needed, and no miraculous wonders are required as evidence for the regeneration, indwelling, baptism, or sealing work of the Holy Spirit in our lives. Peter used the keys of the kingdom to unlock the gates of the kingdom to all people on earth, so that now all are welcome to enter into the gates with thanksgiving and experience the rule and reign of God in their lives with great joy. The gates have been opened and will never be shut again (cf. Rev 21:25).

Matthew 16:19 and the Keys of the Kingdom

Matthew 16:19 shows that God has always accepted and invited everyone and anyone into His kingdom, that is, into His ways of doing things. Through the actions of Peter “unlocking” the doors of the kingdom on earth, what has always been true in heaven is also shown to be true on earth. Everyone is welcome to participate in the rule and reign of God, and all the blessings this rule entails.

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