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A Simple, Sobering Explanation of Our Sick Society by Bill Elliff

Forgive me for some reminiscent rambling. I don’t do it often, but I digress to highlight a comparison and a tragedy. In my lifetime, I remember when …

  • Most churches were filled on Sunday morning and night.
  • All businesses were closed on Sunday.
  • Every day at public school began with a prayer over the intercom or in the classroom.
  • Children in almost any neighborhood could play or walk to school with no threat of harm.
  • Most children had zero thought or confusion about their gender identity.
  • There was a general understanding of certain undeniable, universally accepted moral values across the nation.
  • Certain sins and behaviors were generally condemned, not accepted and applauded.
  • And on and on …
    What has happened? Don’t think I am naive enough to believe that our society was altogether righteous (and I am not advocating a return to the 50s). We were rampant with our own brand of iniquity. But to compare our nation in the past to the current generation highlights a major moral declension.

IT’S BEGINNINGS
In Isaiah’s day, the prophet speaks for God to His people … people to whom He had shown great mercy, blessing, and favor. Somewhere they had made a turn, best described in a few verses. It didn’t take many words from God and His prophet to identify what had happened.
Woe to those who are wise in their own eyes and clever in their own sight. (Isaiah 5:21)
A fall away from God always begins with pride. We think we know better than God, and this pride leads to a deadly daily decision.
For they have rejected the law of the Lord of hosts and despised the word of the Holy One of Israel. (Isaiah 5:24b)
In our arrogance, we foolishly believe there is no need to look to a higher Source. We have no use for the Word of God; therefore, we “despise” it, i.e., treat it lightly and care nothing for it. The Bible is disregarded, and the Spirit of God ignored.
This pride that leads to a rejection of God and His Word leads to deadly mental confusion and moral decline. The Bible always calls this “darkness.”
Woe to those who call evil good, and good evil; who substitute darkness for light and light for darkness; who substitute bitter for sweet and sweet for bitter! (Isaiah 5:20).

PRIDE = REJECTION = DARKNESS = DEPRAVITY.

This downward spiral has happened throughout human history. Those with eyes to see can identify it easily. Paul speaks of it in his day.
And just as they did not see fit to acknowledge God any longer, God gave them over to a depraved mind, to do those things which are not proper. (Romans 1:28)
A depraved or reprobate mind is a mind that has literally lost the ability to make moral judgments. Wrong seems 100% right to a depraved mind. This is the final stage of God’s judgment upon a proud people who reject him, and it is the explanation for the slide into every kind of degrading sin.
To listen to the chaotic, nonsensical ramblings of many in our society (many of which reside in our “highest” institutions of learning and who are currently rioting in our streets) is a study in Isaiah 5 and Romans 1.
Don’t make this more complicated than it is, nor try to explain it in any other way.
The decline will always be the same for any people or nation—no one is immune. Any man or woman, any family, any nation who, in their pride, reject God’s Word will fall into a dramatically deluded mind and depraved behavior.
The singular remedy for this deadly progression is a brokenhearted humility that bows and returns to the only One from whom all blessings flow. Nothing else will do.

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Was Jesus Really God?

The belief that Jesus was and is God has always been a non-negotiable for Christianity. The Christian tradition claims that God took on flesh, became a man, and walked on earth. The Bible clearly teaches that Jesus (the Word) is God and came to earth.

“In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. He was in the beginning with God. All things came into being through Him, and apart from Him nothing came into being that has come into being. In Him was life, and the life was the Light of men.  And the Word became flesh, and dwelt among us, and we saw His glory, glory as of the only begotten from the Father, full of grace and truth (John 1:1-4, 14, NASB)”

The author of the book of Hebrews says, “He [Jesus] is the radiance of His [God’s] glory and the exact representation of His nature, and upholds all things by the word of His power. When He had made purification of sins, He sat down at the right hand of the Majesty on high (Hebrews 1:3, NASB).”

In his famous book Mere Christianity, C.S. Lewis makes this statement, “A man who was merely a man and said the sort of things Jesus said would not be a great moral teacher. He would either be a lunatic – on the level with a man who says he is a poached egg – or he would be the devil of hell. You must take your choice. Either this was, and is, the Son of God, or else a madman or something worse. You can shut Him up for a fool or you can fall at His feet and call Him Lord and God. But let us not come with any patronizing nonsense about His being a great human teacher. He has not left that open to us.”

The Jews asked Jesus “How long will You keep us in suspense? If You are the Christ (Messiah), tell us plainly (John 10:24).” Jesus went on to tell them that “I and the Father are one (vs. 30).” They then took up stones to stone Him.

Jesus answered them, “I showed you many good works from the Father; for which of them are you stoning Me?”

The Jews answered Him, “For a good work we do not stone You, but for blasphemy; and because You, being a man, make yourself out to be God.”

“If I do not do the works of My Father, do not believe Me; but if I do them, though you do not believe Me, believe the works, so that you may know and understand that the Father is in Me, and I in the Father (John 10: 32-33, 37-38 NASB).”

We know Jesus is God because:

1) He Possesses Attributes that Only God Has

a. Eternality (John 8:58; 17:5)

b. Omnipresence (Matt. 18:22; 28:20)

c. Omniscience (Matt. 16:21; Luke 6:8; 11:17)

d. Omnipotence (Matt. 28:18; Mark 5:11-15)

2) He Performs Works that Only God Can Do

a. Forgiveness (Mark 2:1-12)

b. Life (John 5:21)

c. Resurrection (John 11:43)

d. Judgment (John 5:22, 27)

3) He Was Given the Names and Titles of Deity

a. Son of God (John 10:36)

b. Lord & God (Luke 1:76; John 1:1; 20:28; Romans 10:13)

4) He Claimed to Be God (John 10:30, 33)

Outside of the inspiration of the Bible, there may be no other Christian doctrine more vehemently attacked than the deity of Christ. Our very salvation is inseparably linked to faith in Jesus Christ. So it becomes an issue of great importance to determine biblically who Jesus Christ is.

Who is Jesus of Nazareth to you? Your life on this earth and for all of eternity is affected by your answer to this question.

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No Wiggle Room

 

If you were to look up the definition of “No wiggle room,” you would find it means “no flexibility of interpretation or of options,” in other words, not negotiable. There may be few non-negotiables in life. Some would suggest there are no absolutes. I would argue that there are absolutes and they are found in the Word of God.

What are the non-negotiables in your life? What will you not budge on (no wiggle room), no matter what?

In this and the next number of blogs I will look at some non-negotiables found in Scripture.

The Inerrancy of Scripture

The first place we must start is the Scriptures themselves. All Scripture is inspired by God, that is, “God breathed”(2 Timothy 3:16). What process did God use to reveal Himself in Scripture?

“But know this first of all, that no prophecy of Scripture is a matter of one’s own interpretation, for no prophecy was ever made by an act of human will, but men moved by the Holy Spirit spoke from God” (2 Peter 1:20-21, NASB).

Scripture is not the product of men. It is not the product of the will of men. “But men moved by the Holy Spirit spoke from God.” The Holy Spirit filled them. The idea is like putting your sails to the wind on a ship and being borne along by the breeze.

When speaking of the Bible being “God breathed,” it means the Bible is inerrant and infallible in the original manuscripts. Inerrant means “totally free from error,” and infallible means “incapable of error.” Inerrancy applies equally to all parts of the Bible as originally written. You can’t pick and choose what you like and what you want to believe.

Why is the inerrancy of Scripture so important? In his book, Ryrie’s Basic Theology, Charles Ryrie writes,

“If the Bible contains some errors, however few or many, how can one be sure that his understanding of Christ is correct? Perhaps one of those errors concerns something about the life of Christ. It would not be impossible that there might be an error about the crucial matter of His death and resurrection. What then would happen to one’s Christology? It would be changed, perhaps even so drastically that there would be no Christian faith to embrace.”

“Or suppose the biblical teaching on the Holy Spirit were inaccurate. This could affect the cardinal doctrine of the Trinity, which in turn could also seriously affect Christology, soteriology, and sanctification. Even if the errors are supposedly in ‘minor’ matters, any error opens the Bible to suspicion on other points that may not be so ‘minor.’ If inerrancy falls, other doctrines will fall too” (Ryrie, 87).

It is crucial that we believe in the inerrancy of Scripture. The Bible is our only rule for faith and practice. If it is not reliable, then on what do we base our beliefs?

It is not a mixture of doctrine that we are free to believe or not believe. Many people like the verses that say God loves them, but they dislike the verses that say God will judge sinners. We simply cannot pick and choose what we like about the Bible and throw the rest away.

God has said what He has said, and the Bible presents us a full picture of who God is. “Your word, O Lord, is eternal; it stands firm in the heavens” (Psalm 119:89).

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The Sufficiency of Christ

In his classic book, The Screwtape Letters, C.S. Lewis wrote about this mythical letter from the demon Screwtape to his apprentice, Wormwood, who was attempting to keep a Christian believer from practicing biblical Christianity. In one of his letters he wrote:

My Dear Wormwood,

The trouble about the set (beginning) your patient is living in is that it is merely Christianity. They all have individual interests, of course, but the bond remains mere Christianity. What we want, if men become Christians at all, is to keep them in the state of “Christianity And,” . . . . If they must be Christians let them at least be Christians with a difference. Substitute for the faith itself some fashion with a Christian colouring. . . .

Your affectionate uncle,

Screwtape

C.S. Lewis exposed in his allegory one of Satan’s clever strategies against the Church . . . that Christ alone is not adequate for His people. The devil started in the Garden of Eden convincing Eve that what God said was not the truth, and then substituted God’s truth with a lie. The Satan has continued this strategy by convincing many believers that what they really need is “Christ and.” His scheme of Christ plus something has been pervasive in the contemporary church and has opened the door to a flood of man-centered philosophies that include Christ plus psychology, Christ plus spiritual mysticism, Christ plus emotional healing, Christ plus self-esteem, Christ plus knowledge, Christ plus church growth strategies, etc. There is no such thing as “Christ and.”

We frequently talk about Christ being all-sufficient, but I fear that it has become little more than a theological cliche. We live in a world that constantly bombards us with alternative belief systems that preach that something or someone other than Jesus Christ can quench the thirst of our souls.

The cover article in the December 22, 2003 issue of TIME magazine, “The Lost Gospels,” describes the popular rise in early non-canonical books such as the Gospel of Thomas, Gospel of Truth, Gospel of Peter, and the Gospel of Mary. Marcus Borg, author of The Heart of Christianity says, “There’s a lot of interest in early Christian diversity because many people who have left the church, and some who are still in it, are looking for another way of being Christian.” The TIME article states that Princeton professor, Elaine Pagel, claims to have found a Christianity less keyed to make-or-break beliefs like the virgin birth or even Christ’s divinity and more accepting of salvation through ongoing spiritual experiences.

We are told in Colossians 2:8, “See to it that no one takes you captive through philosophy and empty deception, according to the tradition of men, according to the elementary principles of the world, rather than according to Christ.”

We need to realize that all we need is Christ. Paul said, “I have learned to be content whatever the circumstances . . . I can do all things through Christ who strengthens me” (Philippians 4:11-13).

Something in Paul enabled him to experience spiritual contentment and strength in the midst of indescribable tragic circumstances. In 2 Corinthians 11:23-27 he described what his ministry for the sake of the gospel had entailed: imprisonment, floggings, beatings, a stoning, shipwrecks; danger from rivers, bandits, his own countrymen, Gentiles and false brothers; hunger and thirst, days and nights without sleep. Yet, he was able to say, “I count all things to be loss in view of the surpassing value of knowing Christ Jesus my Lord, for whom I have suffered the loss of all things, and count them but rubbish so that I may gain Christ” (Philippians 3:8).

To keep Paul from exalting himself, God gave Paul a “thorn in the flesh, a messenger of Satan to buffet him.” Paul entreated God three times to take it from him. God’s answer was not what Paul had asked for, but was what Paul needed. God said, “My grace is sufficient for you, for power is perfected in weakness” (2 Corinthians 12:9). Paul’s response was that he would rather boast about his weaknesses, that the power of Christ may dwell in him. Is that the response we have when faced with uncertain circumstances? Is the primary focus in our life to be empowered by Christ?

This ability was not something Paul was born with, it had to be learned as he grew in grace and knowledge of his Lord. It was the result of a long and painful process during which Paul somehow weaned himself from reliance on anything or anyone else. He learned the lesson that, Jesus is enough! Either you believe in the adequacy of Jesus Christ or you don’t. Paul did, and it made all the difference in the world in how he dealt with defeat and rejection and how he coped with what the world threw his way.

Spiritual leaders must once again embrace the sufficiency of Christ and call their people back to it. Christians must covenant with God to be men and women of the Word, finding their resources there and applying them to every aspect of their lives. You’ll never know what the Word can do if you don’t study and apply it. It isn’t simply enough to say you believe it. It must occupy an exalted place in your life. Since God Himself exalts it and magnifies it (Ps. 138:2).

We must hold fast to Christ’s sufficiency. Never adding to it or taking from it. In Him are all the treasures of wisdom and knowledge (Colossians 2:3). In Him dwells all the fullness of deity in bodily form (Colossians 2:9). We have been made complete in Him (Colossians 2:10). And nothing can ever separate us from Him (Romans 8:35-39). Christ is all Sufficient!