Some Christians might not think this is funny, but I do…
Some Christians will not find this funny. But I did.
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2 Keys to Understanding the Heart of God
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There are two ideas I have been mulling over the last couple years which are central to understanding the heart of God, and which most Christians do not seem to understand. These two keys are based on God’s omniscience, that fact the He is all-knowing. While it is amazing to think that God knows everything, I think we have not grasped what this means when it comes to heart of God.
These keys are summarized by some quotes I heard from somewhere … (I cannot recall where or from whom … sorry).
There is no person you would not love if you only knew their story.
I think this quote might be from Darin Hufford, though I am not certain.
It is often easy to judge and condemn other people when all we see is their outward actions or behavior.
We all tend to hate people who treat us with spite or anger.
We even get frustrated at loved ones when they do not do what we think they should in the way we want them to.
But God, who is the only being in the universe who knows everything about everyone, loves each and every person unconditionally.
When a person is rude to you, you get angry in return. But if, like God, we saw the fight they had with their spouse that morning, or the way they had been treated by their boss when they showed up late, or how the person they had encountered right before you had cussed them out, we would be able to love that person in spite of their rudeness, because we would know their story. We would know what led up to them being rude.
You do this with yourself all the time. If you are rude to someone, you might feel bad about it afterwards, and you might even apologize. But you probably also know everything that is going on in your life which caused you to react rudely toward someone else. Since you know your own story, you are often able to keep loving yourself despite the things you do.
Since God knows everything about us, He is able to understand what led up to our bad behavior, and He loves us anyway. He loves us in the midst of our bad behavior, because He knows what led up to it.
This is the first key to knowing the heart of God. The second key is like it:
To know all, is to forgive all.
I think I might have heard this from Greg Boyd, but again, I cannot be certain.
This second idea is almost exactly the same as the first. God is willing and able to forgive us for everything, in part because He knows all the events and circumstances which led up to whatever sin we committed.
It is not that we get to blame others for what we do, or even that God lets us off the hook for our sin, but that God forgives us for what we do, partly because He knows what led up to it.
Since God is omniscient, He alone knows everything that happened to the rapist which caused that man to become a rapist. He is still at fault for what he did, and made some terrible choices en route to such a terrible crime, but God is able to forgive the rapist because He knows what led up to the man committing such a terrible sin.
So How Then Should We Live?
You and I do not know everything about everyone. So does this mean that we do not have to love them or forgive them?
No, it means that we do need to love and forgive them, for we know that God, the one being who does know everything, loves and forgives.
Our job is to unconditionally love and freely forgive others, despite not knowing everything about them.
If we leave omniscience up to God, we can love all and forgive all, just as God loves and forgives us.
A WWJD Parable
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Jose A. Torres Flores posted the following on my Facebook page recently in response to a post that got a lot of … Pharisaical … religious … passionate comments.
I liked it so much, I asked if I could post it on my blog. It turns out, the original post belongs to Mick Mooney. Go check it out here. Below is what he wrote:
Once upon a time, a mother made her son a wristband. On it was written: WWJD. This, of course stood for: What Would Jesus Do?’ She instructed her son to look at the wristband before making decisions on how to live his Christian life.
A week later she was shocked to see that her son had become friends with prostitutes, was hanging out with ‘sinners’ – even buying people who were already drunk yet another round of beers!
Worse still, he had walked into their church the previous Sunday and tore down the book store, overturned the tables and threw the cash register through the window, he then made a whip and chased the pastor out of the building, declaring he was turning God’s house into a den of thieves.
Most shocking was what happened when his mother went to picket the local abortion clinic. To her embarrassment, her son was also there, but he was standing with the women who just had an abortion, and yelled at the protesters: “You who is without sin, throw the first stone!”
The mother was very distressed, but fortunately she found a solution to this terrible problem. She made another wristband, this time it read: WWAPD, this, she explained to her son, stood for: What Would A Pharisee Do? She took the old WWJD wristband and burned it.
Since her son has been wearing the new wristband, looking at it to help him make his decisions, he has become a dedicated tither, a public prayer warrior, an active condemner of ‘sinners’, a passionate defender of the Old Covenant law, and has a great reputation as a godly young man amongst other religious people.
Needless to say, the mother is very happy now. She only wishes Jesus would take notice and follow her son’s good example.
Romans 7: Did Paul Struggle with Sinful Flesh?
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Calvinists sometimes quote from Romans 7 as a text which teaches Total Depravity and total inability, for Paul seems to describe a lack of ability to do anything good (Romans 7:15, 19, 24), and refers to being captive and enslaved to sin (Romans 7:14, 23). Paul says that although he wants to do what is right, he ends up doing what is wrong. Romans 7:19 one such verse which sums up the struggle nicely:
For the good that I will to do, I do not do; but the evil I will not to do, that I practice (Romans 7:19).
Part of the problem with Romans 7, however, is that people from all streams of Christianity are all over the map about whether Romans 7 describes Paul’s experience as a Christian or as a non-Christian. While everybody agrees that Paul is writing about a struggle with sin, there is little agreement about whether Paul is describing how a Christian struggles with sin or a non-Christian.
1. Paul is Describing His Experience as a Christian
There are many who believe that Paul is describing his own experience as a Christian. It is pointed out that Paul uses the personal pronoun “I” and numerous present tense verbs throughout this passage. Furthermore, Paul references the “inward man” (Romans 7:22) and his “mind” which is at war with his “flesh” (Romans 7:23, 25).
Some argue that only a regenerate person has an inner man or a renewed mind which is able to war against the flesh. Finally, nearly all Christians struggle with sin on a daily basis, and many note that the experience Paul describes seems to fit our own experience perfectly. It is comforting to know that even Paul struggled in this battle against sin.
2. Paul is Describing His Experience as a Pharisaical Jew
Others argue, however, that there are good exegetical reasons to think that Paul may be referring to his past struggle against sin as an unregenerate religious Jew.
For example, although Paul does use first-person pronouns and the present tense, he did not use this sort of grammar in Romans 6, the first part of Romans 7, or on into Romans 8 where it is perfectly clear that Paul is talking about regenerate people. It is suggested that Paul switches pronouns and verb tense in Romans 7:14-20 because he does not want to describe the experience of regenerate people, but describe rather his own personal experience as a religious Pharisaical Jew. He had the law of God, and tried his hardest to obey it, but completely failed.
Finally, many believe that a Christian who is truly indwelled with the Spirit of God should have more victory over sin than what Paul describes in Romans 7:15-20.
Calvinists are not United on Romans 7
Like all other brands of Christianity, Calvinists do not speak with a unified voice in this debate.
For example, J. I. Packer says that,
Grammatically, … the natural way to read it would be as a transcript of Paul’s self-knowledge at the time of writing … (Packer, Keep in Step with the Spirit, 264-267).
However, a leading Calvinist professor like Anthony Hoekema declares the opposite:
The mood of frustration and defeat that permeates this section does not comport with the mood of victory in terms of which Paul usually describes the Christian life. The person pictured is still a captive of the law of sin (7:23), whereas the believer described in 6:17-18 is no longer a slave to sin (Hoekema, Five Views of Sanctification, 232).
Yet no matter which view a Calvinist takes, this passage creates problems for their system of theology.
If the Calvinist agrees with J. I. Packer that Romans 7 is a description of the ongoing struggle with sin that every Christian faces (including the Apostle Paul), then this passage creates problems for the Calvinistic doctrine of the Perseverance of the Saints. We will see how in the chapter on that topic.
But if a Calvinist takes the alternate opinion, along with Hoekema, and says that Romans 7 describes the condition and experience of the unbeliever, then this text creates problems for their teachings on total inability.
As seen in earlier posts through numerous quotes from Calvinists, total inability teaches that mankind does not have a will to do anything other than sin. They do not have the will to comprehend, understand, or choose to do the will of God.
Yet Paul writes that he does will to do the good (Romans 7:15, 19, 21). He even delights in the law of God (Romans 7:22) and does not will to do what is evil (Romans 7:19). None of this sounds at all like the total inability described by Calvinists.
Paul’s Point in Romans 7
To understand Paul’s point in Romans 7, it is important to delve briefly into the realm of biblical anthropology, where we learn that man consists of three parts: body, soul, and spirit. (Click the link to read this brief study).
The traditional question regarding whether Paul is talking about his experience as a Christian or a non-Christian can be answered by remember what we learned about the three parts of a person.
Is Paul talking about his experience as a non-Christian or a Christian? Paul is talking about both!
People who became Christians as adults know from experience that prior to believing in Jesus, they often struggled with sin and fought against the desires of their flesh, usually to no avail. Success in one area often came at the expense of greater failure in another.
Yet although Christians gain the illuminating and empowering influence of the Holy Spirit when we first believe in Jesus for eternal life, we all know that the struggle with sin did not cease. It continues daily. Yes, victory is now possible, for greater is He that is in us than He that is in the world, but this does not mean that the struggle against the flesh is gone. We too, along with Paul, often cry “Who will deliver me from this body of death?”
Sin is Always a Struggle, but the Spirit Helps Us
This understanding of Romans 7 once again undermines the Calvinistic doctrine of total inability.
Though it is true that the soul of an unregenerate man cannot do anything good through his dead spirit or dying and corrupted body, the ability to believe in Jesus for eternal life does not depend upon the spirit or the body, but is a function of the soul alone.
Faith, remember, is being convinced or persuaded that something is true. Though the soul often receives bad data from the body and the spirit, and poorly reasons as a result, the soul is still able to believe in Jesus when the offer of eternal life is presented to it.
Romans 7, then, does not teach Total Depravity or total inability, but is rather a description of the constant struggle with sin that all people face, whether regenerate or unregenerate. The Spirit, given to us by God at the moment we believe, helps us gain deliverance from the power of sin in our lives.
If you want to read more about Calvinism, check out other posts in this blog series: Words of Calvinism and the Word of God.Paul Does Not Teach Total Depravity in Romans 3
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Yesterday we look at the context of Romans 3 to see that Paul is not teaching Total Depravity or total inability in Romans 3:9-20. Today we want to take a closer look at Romans 3:10-12 to see what Paul is really teaching in these verses. We argued briefly that Romans 3 is part of an “epistolary diatribe” against an imaginary objector.
Of course, even if one does not accept the idea that Romans is an “epistolary diatribe,” the point of Romans 3:9-20 is still the same.
In either case, Paul is saying that Jewish people have traditionally thought that as God’s elect, they existed in a privileged position before God. In a sense, Jewish people believed God needed them to carry out His plan and purposes for the world, and so even if they sinned and fell away from Him, He would eventually rescue and redeem them so that His promises to them could be fulfilled. One of Paul’s points in Romans 1–3 and 9–11 is that this is not necessarily so.
Paul Quotes from the Hebrew Bible to Prove His Point
Paul’s collection of quotations from the Hebrew Scriptures in Romans 3:10-18 is intended to show his readers that despite being the chosen people of God and having the Law and the Prophets, the Jewish people are just as guilty as the Gentiles.
Paul’s point in Romans 3:9-20 is that if the Jewish people did have a privileged position by virtue of having the “oracles of God” (Romans 3:2), then these oracles of God condemn them all as sinners, which puts them right back on equal footing with the Gentiles. Paul defends this point by quoting numerous texts from the Hebrew Scriptures which condemns them all as sinners.
Of course, Paul is not at all denying that Gentiles are sinners. To the contrary, he states in Romans 3:9 that “all” Jews and Greeks are under the power of sin. But Paul is not intending to make a statement about the universal Total Depravity of mankind. Instead, his point is that when it comes to being in right standing before God, Jews are on the same footing as Gentiles. Whatever Jews want to say of Gentiles is also true of Jews. To prove his point, Paul quotes numerous texts from the Hebrew Scriptures (Rom 3:10-18). Laurence Vance is absolutely right when he says this about Paul’s point in Romans 3:
Paul, in establishing the universal guilt of both Jews and Gentiles (Romans 3:1, 9), quotes from the Old Testament to give weight to his arguments, not to charge each individual of the human race in particular with every indictment, nor to teach the inability of the unregenerate man to believe on Jesus Christ. There is a difference between establishing the universal depravity of man and charging individual men with sins (Vance, Other Side of Calvinism, 229).
Paul Quotes from Psalm 14 (cf. Psalm 53)
It is important to note that Romans 3:10-12 are quotations from Psalm 14:1-3 (cf. also 53:1-3). Many modern people like to say that Psalm 14 and 53 are condemning atheists when the Psalmist says, “The fool has said in his heart, ‘There is no God.’”
But in the Psalmist’s day, there was no such thing as atheism. Everybody believed in a God or gods. There were, however, many people who chose to live “godless” lives, that is, to live for themselves and not serve God. They believed that God existed, but they chose to not obey Him or follow His commands. It is this sort of person that the Psalmist has in mind in Psalm 14:1 (cf. 53:1).
Therefore, the rest of the statements in Psalm 14 describe this sort of person. Psalm 14 then, is not a chapter describing the Total Depravity of all people everywhere throughout time, but rather, the specific behavior of the people who choose to live with no regard for God in their lives.
Some argue from Psalm 14:7 that this Psalm was written during Israel’s captivity, and so those who live without regard for God are the foreign captors who worship their own god but do not accept or believe in the God of Israel.
However, if this were the case, Paul would not be able to quote from Psalm 14 as a way to show that the Jews were just as guilty as the Gentiles. It seems better to understand Psalm 14 as a Psalm which calls to account those Jewish people who turned away from worshipping the God of Israel after being taken into captivity. Maybe they started worshipping foreign gods, or maybe they just decided to live without any god whatsoever.
Either way, note what the Psalmist says about these people. He does not say that they were born this way, or that they have always been this way. No, the Psalmist specifically says that they have become this way. He writes that they have “turned aside … become corrupt” (Psalm 14:3). These Jewish people have chosen to abandon the worship of the God of Israel, and have turned aside into corruption and sin.
Poetic Hyperbole in Psalm 14
Furthermore, when the entirety of Psalm 14 is read, it becomes obvious that the Psalmist is using poetic hyperbole to describe the sin into which God’s people have fallen. Just like most poets, those who wrote the Psalms often used exaggerated imagery to make their point. This is true of the author of Psalm 14 as well.
For example, Psalm 14:4 says that the workers of iniquity “eat up my people as they eat bread.” They are not literally eating God’s people; they are not cannibals. No, this is an exaggerated and poetic way of saying that these people who live without regard for God are misusing, abusing, and destroying God’s people. So also with the rest of the Psalm.
The Psalmist is not saying that these people can never do any good whatsoever at all. No, he is using poetic hyperbole to point out the error of their ways. It is likely that Paul understands this, and has the same point in mind. His quotation from Psalm 14 is not a statement about the total depravity of mankind, but a statement about how Jews too have fallen into sin, just like the Gentiles.
Ultimately, as Paul states, “all have sinned and fallen short of the glory of God” (Romans 3:23). While Romans 3 does not teach Total Depravity, it does teach universal sinfulness.
People Can (and do) Seek God
Romans 3:11, often thought to be a statement about the total inability of mankind, is also balanced by the fact that it comes from the exaggerated statements of Psalm 14, and is further balanced by the numerous statements in the Bible which says that humans can and do seek God (1 Chr 16:11; 2 Chr 11:16; Lam 3:25; Isa 55:6-7; Jer 29:13; Amos 5:4).
Furthermore, it is critical to remember that one does not gain eternal life by seeking God, but by believing in Jesus Christ (John 3:16; 5:24; 6:47), which all people can do, for along with humanity’s ability to seek God, Jesus seeks after people (Matthew 18:11; Luke 19:10), and in doing so, calls on all to believe in Him for eternal life. Many do not seek God, not because they cannot, but because they are proud and refuse to seek him (Psalm 10:4).
So by way of summary, Romans 3:9-20 does not teach Total Depravity or total inability.
While the chapter can be used to teach the universal sinfulness of humanity, the real point of this section of Paul’s letter is to show that the Jewish people are on equal footing before God with the Gentiles.
There is no privileged position before God, not special status as God’s chosen people. Jewish people are sinful just like Gentile people. Both are equally in need of God’s righteous deliverance, which He offers freely to all through Jesus Christ.
If you want to read more about Calvinism, check out other posts in this blog series: Words of Calvinism and the Word of God.- « Previous Page
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