Liberating you from bad ideas about God
I love it when I am teaching about grace, and someone in the class objects by saying, “But if what you are saying is true, then why can’t I just go sin all I want?” When I hear this question, I know I have been properly teaching grace. If you do not hear this question when you teach about grace, you are probably not teaching grace.
Grace is outrageous and scandalous. God extends it out of his love, simply because He is gracious. He would have extended it even if Jesus had not died. The death of Jesus on the cross was because of God’s grace; not the grounds for it.
Kregel sent me a review copy of What the New Testament Authors Really Cared About. I read and reviewed the companion volume on the Old Testament last year.
I know that many of you have already purchased The Re-Justification of God from Amazon, but if you don’t have Kindle (or the Kindle app for a different device), I am happy to announce that The Re-Justification of God is now available for other platforms as well!
The image of the potter and the clay is found in Romans 9, Jeremiah 18, and Isaiah 54.
Neither Isaiah, nor Jeremiah, nor Paul had in mind a potter who purposefully created pots just so that He could smash them. No potter would do that, then or now.
Instead, God is the wise potter who works with the clay to form useful tools.
In this excerpt from my book, The Re-Justification of God, I show that it does not matter who hardened Pharaoh’s heart first, because the hardening of Pharaoh’s heart has nothing whatsoever to do with his eternal destiny.
Since many people think Paul is talking about who goes to heaven in Romans 9, they think it is unfair for God to force Pharaoh to go to hell against his will. This is not what Paul is teaching at all!
In my recently published book, The Re-Justification of God, I look at the difficult portion of Romans 9 where Paul says that God loved Jacob but hated Esau. How can we understand these words? Does God really love Jacob and hate Esau?
I look at the two main views of this question, and then propose a mediating third view. This post is simply a summary of the longer explanation in my book.
Since I am neither a Calvinist nor an Arminian, I want to offer my perspective on Romans 9 over the course of the next few posts so that people who are trying to understand what Paul is saying in Romans 9 about election, Esau, Pharaoh, and the potter and the clay.
Note that all of these posts are drawn from the longer explanation in my book The Re-Justification of God.
The Re-Justification of God is my new book. In it, I look at Romans 9:10-24 from a non-Calvinistic perspective.
This book is not really done, but is more of a summary or introduction to much longer and more exegetically-based book that I want to write in the future. Nevertheless, the main ideas are still here, and I invite and encourage your feedback and insight to help me expand upon this book in a future edition.
Get your copy today from Amazon for less than $3, and then let me know what you think!
Have you heard of the “Golden Chain of Salvation”? It is found in Romans 8:28-30, and indicates God’s plan from all eternity to bring those whom He has foreknown into the state of glorification with Him.
I like what the Golden Chain of Salvation teaches, but we must be careful to understand what it teaches and what it does not.
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