Jesus is God

January 10, 2010

In the beginning was the Word and the Word was with God and the Word was God. 2He was in the beginning with God.

3All things were made though Him, and without Him nothing was made that was made. 4In Him was life and the life was the light of men. 5And the light shines in the darkness and the darkness did not comprehend it.

Before there was a beginning of anything, there was God who had no beginning. When God chose to create, a beginning began for the first time. When that beginning began, Christ was already there. This is an expression of Christ’s eternality. Only God is eternal and yet John is expressing that when that which can be measured by time was started, Jesus was already there…meaning He cannot be measured by time…meaning He is eternal…meaning He is God.

Jesus was there in the beginning with God. A person can have to possibilities here: One, Jesus was with God as a created being when God created the world. Or two, Jesus was with God as part of God’s being. The problem with the former is that this passage is going to go on to say in verse 3 that “All things were made through Him [the Word, which is Jesus] and without [outside of Him] nothing was made that was made.” Also the very next words after this are, “and the Word was God.” The second explanation is correct. Jesus was with God [the Father] in an eternal co-existence. This begs the question. If there is only one God, how can Jesus be God with the Father? Would that not make two Gods? Add to that, there is a third Person in this equation, the Holy Spirit…does that make three Gods?

No, and no. If this were a contradiction, we should reject it. The amazing thing about God is His existence, His Being. He is utterly other than us. So there are things about Him we can understand but may not fully comprehend. He is not the author of confusion, so He definitely is not asking us in His word to believe a contradiction. So, how are we to understand this? Philosophically speaking, to say that God is three persons in one Person is a contradiction. It is irrational. That is not what we say. To say God is three beings in one being is a contradiction, and that too is not what we say. However, it is not a philosophical contradiction to say that God is three Persons in one Being. There is a definitive difference philosophically between being and person. When I go to a funeral and see a the body of a deceased person, the body has being but the person is gone. The person inhabited that body at one time, but now all personality is gone. But the body still exists, still has being. So the being of God is one thing that is shared by three Persons. That is the teaching of the Bible.

This passage teaches us that Christ existed with God in eternity past. It shows distinction in the Trinity. This is important because not only is there a heresy that says Christ is not God, but there is also a heresy that declares that there is no distinction in the Godhead…this is called Sabellianism, or Modalism. It is the teaching that God simply acts in modes. Sometimes He acts as a Father, sometimes a Son, sometimes the Spirit. Proponents of this view compare it to modes we have. For example, I am a dad, a son, and a husband. But I am one person. I just have different modes. This is true. But what is not true is that I speak to myself in those different modes…Clay the Dad does not have a relationship with Clay the son in which we communicate with each other. I do not have conversations between my two modes…that would be crazy. Neither does God, because God the Father speaks to God the Son because God the Son is a separate Person from God the Father.

If it is not enough that Jesus co-exists with God, then John makes it very clear in his next statement… “and the Word was God.” Even John’s grammatical construction here is brilliant. He used a construction that exclaimed Christ’s deity while at the same time guarded against Modalism. That is for a deeper study but worth looking into.

Jesus was in the beginning with God. This Word was a “He”, a Person. The second Person of the Trinity. He was God, equal with God, and yet John is going to share an amazing truth…He came to earth in the flesh. The eternal Son of God, clothed Himself in humanity in order to do for sinners what sinners could not do for themselves, satisfy the wrath of God. He subordinated Himself to the Father, His equal, in His redemptive role. He would go back to the Father and says that the Father is greater than Himself, which is to say, in that existence, is greater than His existence when on earth. He was going back to His glory. But for a short time, He dwelt here. He came to save His own. And those who believe in Him and evidence it by a joyful submission to His Lordship, receive Him and have their penalty for sin satisfied. What a great gospel.

Shot in the Eye to the Glory of God

January 6, 2010
A couple of weeks ago, on the 27th of December 2009, my son took his new dart gun with rubber bullets, took aim at the bull’s eye, and hit the mark. The bull’s eye was my eye. I was chatting with my sister’s-in-law, oblivious to the little sniper only three feet away. Without warning and no reaction time, my eyeball was blasted. There was no protection, no eyelids closing to protect from a direct hit. It was dead on. My eye was red for over a week. But also with that was a morning eye ache. This has been very bearable…until today.

Today, the eye ache made its appearance but seemed to invite some friends over for the torture. A sinus headache accompanied along with my teeth hurting as well from my braces and sinuses. It was a triple whammy. I prayed this morning through it and asked God to take the pain away. I prayed also that I would be able to glorify Him through it. I asked myself, “How do you glorify God with a headache/eye ache/mouth ache?” There are ways of thought of and certainly ways I did not think of. But here were a few:

One, maintain a positive attitude toward Him. Don’t get negative because of how you feel. The greatest moments in life to prove God’s worth is in the painful times of life.

Two, hold fast to all my Christian values, even through the pain. This is no excuse to lose my temper, be grumpy, be irritable, be unfriendly, etc… I know the kind of man God desires me to be is a consistently godly man. No matter what my troubles are, I want to be consistent. If I am angry, I want to have self-control. If I am sad, I want to have self-control. I want people to see a different attitude in me than they see in a person who does not know Jesus Christ or who claims to know Christ but acts just like the world.

Third, share this with others. This says nothing about me in the end. I am not writing this to glorify Clay. It is more of an objective little dissertation about God. I could not accomplish any of that! I did not feel (subjective) like doing any of that. But that is what God’s character is like (Objectively). So what I mean when I say “share this with others” is not to share this with the intention of trying to impress people with what a swell guy I am. On the contrary, what happened today was totally God’s grace in me. Somehow, some way, I maintained a positive attitude, remained personable to others, shared with others with a good attitude and felt compelled to just thank God profusely for not taking it away, but rather, orchestrating my day to be bearable through it. God is an amazing God.

To add just a bit more to this…you can also just think about the complexity and abilities of the eye. We actually take in vision through those little holes in our head. It speaks volumes of the wisdom of the Creator. You can teach your sniper son valuable lessons about using all things to edify others and not to harm others because God teaches us to love all people, which includes helping them in need and not shooting their eye out! You can also think about passages in the Bible about the eye, plucking it out when it causes you to stumble (the idea of going to the most violently extreme spiritual measures to overcome sin), the eye is the lamp of the body, we are the apple of God’s eye (meaning He will protect us). It is amazing what an eye ache and its mean friends can teach me about an amazing God.

Practical Atheism

I was reading Stephen Charnock's the Existence and Attributes of God today. I have read most of it, but started from the beginning today. Right off I was reminded of practical atheism. Basically it is that atheistic principle in all of us naturally. Naturally everyone knows there is a Creator, no matter how much they hate it and deny it. But there is also a natural inclination to a type of atheism that is not ultimate atheism. It is practical atheism...and Psalm 14 describes it. "The fool has said in his heart there is no God." The term for God refers to God's government, or to put it in practical terms, God's awareness, care, and governing of our lives. We do many things we would not do if we really believed God was truly there seeing it combined with truly believing He is all the Bible says He is. Anytime we sin, we are acting out this practical atheistic principle. The fool says in his heart, "God is not really concerned about my actions here." The fool says in his heart, "God does not see what I am doing." The fool says in his heart, "God will not hold me accountable for this sin." The fool says in his heart, "God does not care if I sin." To strip God of this attribute is to ungod God and consequently deny His true existence. We, in those moments, replace Him with a false god, we exchange the truth of God for a lie. God help us in 2010 and beyond to say in our hearts, "There is a God who sees all I do, cares about it, holds me accountable for it and will deal with it." And thank God for His mercy on us who have put our faith in Christ for the forgiveness of this weakness in our souls.

Whatever you do, whether you eat or drink, do all for the glory of God

I have been thinking a lot lately about the call of doing everything for the glory of God. That is an amazing goal. Over the past couple of months I have been praying more with God-centered requests. It has been something different, but peaceful. This thought process has carried over into my daily behavior and goals and actions. I find that I do very little with a God-centered consciousness. This has at least three-fold effect on me. One it humbles me. All I do without His glory as my goal is sin. So if I ever thought, “I am a pretty good person”, this pretty much devastates my case. I fall far short of doing the only true good there is…glorifying God. Second, it drives me back to the cross of my redemption. If not for Jesus laying down His life for me, I would suffer the wrath of God myself. But as it is, He took my punishment on Himself. Third, it pushes me to press harder for this goal…to think more…to be more thoughtful about all I do. In too many ways, we “retire” from thinking. We learned so many ideas when we were young that we accepted without consideration and we refuse not only to bend in those views, but also to even think them through. No thinking! We believe what society teaches us without thinking it through. We even accept what any preacher says, whether or not it is what Scripture means or not. We have lost our minds…or the proper use of them anyway.

So, I am driven to think more. Why am I against abusing drugs? Is it because I was taught to be or because it is objectively wrong? How should I glorify God with the issue? Is abortion wrong? How can I glorify God in defending the unborn and fighting the evil of murder? How can I fail to glorify Him in doing it? Sports. How can supporting a sports team glorify God? How can it fail to glorify God? Why am I a Republican about to be an independent? Should I separate politics from God? No. That would glorify politics. I am here to glorify God. I cannot support things God condemns and I cannot condemn what God condones. I need to make my decisions based on Scripture. Why does Socialism threaten me? Why do I believe in a Republic and Capitalism? How can I glorify God in fighting things that are not good and standing for things that are? Is my fight worth anything if it is not for God’s glory? Even if I stand for all the right things, and fight against all the wrong things…if I do not do it for Him and His greatness and value to be put on display, I have done nothing better than my enemies and opposers. So please pray this prayer for me: That I would be Biblically thoughtful in all I do this coming year.

Marriage

This is a short message I gave at a couple of friends wedding.

I’ve had the privilege of knowing both Billy and Kate for several years now. I had the joy of being Kate’s youth minister and although I never got to be Billy’s youth minister I have spent a lot of time with him and have gotten to know him well over the last 5 or 6 years and my wife Bobbi and I consider both he and Kate to be family.

These two desire to be, and are, defined by their relationship with Jesus Christ. If you know them you know they are both very intelligent, you know they’ll both be very successful in whatever they do and they are very talented. If you haven’t heard these two sing you need to. They make great music together. But as intelligent as we know they are and as successful as we know they will be and as talented as they are, those things are not what gives them their identity. Their identity is in Christ. They want to be known for loving Christ and they want to make Him known.

So even on their wedding day they want to deflect all the praise and attention away from themselves and to their Lord and Savior, Jesus Christ.

Billy and Kate have a great love for Christ and for His church. They understand that their relationship with Christ includes having a love for His church as well. They’ve asked me to share their hearts on this and give a brief explanation of how marriage is to be a reflection of love for Christ and love for the church.

God had a purpose for designing marriage and in Ephesians chapter 5 when Paul is laying out God’s pattern for marriage, as he is wrapping things up he writes, “For this reason a man shall leave His father and mother and be joined to his wife and the two shall become one flesh. This is a great mystery , but I speak concerning Christ and the church.”

God designed marriage long before Christ actually came. But in a mystery that is really prophetic, it has always been a picture of Christ obtaining for Himself a bride. The mystery of marriage is that it points to the work of Christ and His relationship with His church.

“A man shall leave his father and mother and cleave to his wife…” Christ fulfilled this in two ways. First left His Father in heaven for a time and came and dwelt on the earth. He came with a mission: to pursue His bride. He would live for His bride for 33 years in sinless perfection, qualifying Himself to purchase her by standing in her place and receiving upon Himself the punishment for her sins. He died for her on the cross. He literally suffered the wrath of God. His Father poured out His divine fury upon Him and treated Him as if He had committed every sin of every person who would ever believe.

He exchanged His righteousness for His bride’s sins. And His bride received the reward that His life earned. In other words God treats the believer as if he/she had lived the 33 years that Christ lived. Christ’s sinless life is credited to the believer as if they had lived it.

So Christ left His heavenly Father to pursue His bride. Secondly, Christ left the natural relationship with His earthly parents to pursue His bride. His obedience to His heavenly Father and the plan of redeeming a people for Himself was His complete focus. This is what is pictured in a man leaving his mother and father and cleaving to his wife. Christ was pursuing His bride; He sacrificed His life to obtain her.




So marriage is a metaphor. It images forth the relationship of Christ and His church. In God’s design marriage is to be between one man and one woman.

The man is to take his cue from Christ’s relationship to the church. Christ lived for the church and He died for the church and he leads the church. In the same way the man should lead in the marriage with a leadership that is willing to live to give his wife life and to die to give his wife life. Leadership is not dictatorship, it is a submissive leadership. Jesus taught by word and example that a leader is one who serves. So the man is to be the one who humbly leads the family in a life of prayer, a life of Bible study and a life of worship.

The woman is to take her cue from the church in relationship to Christ. She is to follow her husband’s lead. Jesus Christ is equal to the Father but in His redemptive role, He chose to submit Himself to the Father because He loved His Father. In the same way the wife is equal with her husband yet she is to live with her husband with a submissive spirit because she loves him and more than that she loves God’s design and does not despise it.

Billy and Kate want their marriage to image forth the relationship God has created between them and Christ. They want their marriage to be a living metaphor. What they desire in their marriage is that when you see the love Billy has for Kate it will remind you of the sacrifice and love Christ has for His church. And when you see the love and admiration Kate has for Billy and her willingness to let Billy lead, they want that to remind you of their commitment to Christ and their willingness to submit to His Lordship.

These two here today, Billy and Kate, want God’s definition for a successful marriage. I believe they will have that. I believe that they will do great things. Billy will probably be teaching in a seminary someday and Kate will probably be great Physicians Assistant. They will sing great songs. They will probably have a CD someday that sells millions. But the best success they will have and the best music they will make will be with their lives together centered on Christ. And I’m sure it will be beautiful music that will edify us all and points us heavenward. We pray that is what will always define them.

Hebrews 1:1-2

"God who at various times and in various ways spoke in time past to the fathers by the prophets, has in these last days spoken to us by His Son."

God spoke through out the Old Testament times. Much of that was recorded for us. He spoke in different ways. All of this can be documented in the Old Testament. I am short on time here so I wanted to focus on the last part of this passage. In these last days [He has] spoken to us by His Son...

"These last days" speaks of the days after the coming of the Messiah. It was written to first generation Christians and subsequently would be passed on to the next generation which would pass it on to the next and so on and so on...to today. Each generation continues in "These last days". This being so, there is no day to come in which God will speak in any other way than through His son as far as revelation is concerned. All God has to say, He has said in Christ. If that is not enough for a person then there will never be anything else that will be authentic for that person to know God by. If you want to know God, get to know the Jesus of the Bible. He is the superior message to all other means of communicating to man. He is superior to angels, He is superior to Moses. He is superior to the law. He is superior to every element of the law.

Hebrews will establish this. But for today, I am grateful to know Christ through the Bible which is living and active...I am grateful and content. I do not need further revelation and do not want to go beyond what is written. This is one reason among many that I reject any so-called modern day "prophet" who claims God speaks to them directly. We have one High Priest, one mediator between us and God, that is Jesus Christ. I do not need another mediator who has a more direct line to God. Jesus is my mediator. All God has to say to me He has said to me in Christ. The entire Bible is Christocentric. God communicates to me by it and all of its connection to my Savior Jesus Christ.

My Journey To Calvinism

I cannot really remember the actual first time I encountered the idea of "Calvinism". My earliest recollection is a college history course, but I am sure I had come across the word before. But as far as learning anything at all about it in a focused form, it was that history class. I am not really sure what was actually taught about it because at the time I thought it was nutty and primitive. For some reason (and I am not sure if it was taught this way by the professor) I came away with the idea that a Calvinist was one whom God chose for salvation and He would evidence it by making that one rich. I am not sure exactly why I came out of that lecture with that idea, but I remember doing so.

Sometime soon after, I encountered my first Calvinist preaching individual. I learned that there were more too. I had no idea. It forced me to think and I did not like to think. I was raised in public schools you know, and critical thinking and the idea of an actual right and wrong are just not virtues taught in such a secular setting. And of course my nice Southern Baptist Church in Lawton Oklahoma never mentioned to me that there was a systematic thought out reasoning for our beliefs and also the beliefs of those "Calvinists".

I had encountered the problem of God's election and predestination in my own reading of the Bible. But when I asked my church leaders about it, they basically patted me on my head and told me not to worry about it..."It's not what it sounds like Clay. Trust us." But never was there any explanation of the text. The texts that bothered me were never explained, only ignored. Simply avoid the passage and move to a text that seems to teach the opposite. That is what I got. I wanted answers and I wanted them to be good explanations of why those election and predestination passages were not what they sounded like. I did not want them to be teaching what I thought they were teaching. I did not want to believe in a God who had decided the fate of every individual. But I wanted to know the truth. I would say out loud, "I would not serve a God like that!" but I would go home and pray and tell God if indeed it were true I would serve Him. I was not sure at all. I thought I was on the right side of things. That is why I verbally denounced such a God as would be in total control of our lives. I was standing for what I believed. But I could not shake off those passages when I read them.

I hated those passages now that I think about it. I knew they were straightforward and I knew they taught what they taught. I just hoped there was some secret I was missing. Some sort of explanatory loop hole. I had resolved to just let it go. Until Calvinism came knocking.

I had no idea this formulation had a name. I had no idea what I "wanted" to believe had a name. But they did. What i wanted to believe was true was Arminianism, or better, semi-pelagianism. What I did not want to believe in was called Calvinism.

Like a snowball, calvinists started popping up and I hated everything they had to say. I was abecedarian in theological discussions so my arguments were totally based on feelings and straw men arguments. I would blurt out things like..."Why did Christ have to die then if God was just going to save anyway?" That made total sense to me then but now I look at it and shake my head in humility at how little I understood the atonement. But I was not really interested in learning as much as arguing my way out of having to believe in such a strict God.

I attended the Baptist Student Union on my college campus and the debate found its way there. A few of my friends started a mockery club called the NAACP, i.e. the National Association Against Calvinistic Progression. It was a joke but it made a statement. These friends and I began finding flaws in the system. But somehow, we were all studying more and more in other theological areas and unknown to one another, we were finding that the most consistent form of Christian scholarship we would come across was coming from men who we would discover were...yes...Calvinists.

I will nver forget the day my roommate and i were talking and subtely talking about issues about depravity and the sovereignty of God and God's election and predestination of sinners and how I cautiously said, "You know, I don't have a problem with that anymore...I think it is up to God." To my surprise my roommate looked at me and said, "Me either!" And we laughed. We talked about how God had been teaching us through all of this battling that He indeed is sovereign even over the salvation of His people and it is not an ugly thing but a beautiful thing. then we discovered that every single person associated with that NAACP group had come to the exact same conclusions! We were now convinced Calvinists! And none of us had persuaded the other. We were all scared to admit it to one another.

We began to see lives changed and a revival in our hearts and souls. Suddenly God was not this "old man" whom we could mold into a cool giddy God. He was God. And we loved Him. I never thought I could come to that place but He broke me. I began to understand the atonement and the necessity of it. I began to understand the gospel and imputation and I was truly saved. That started a revival in our town and God sent us to 30 miles a way to a neighboring city to go to church because there were no reforemed churches in our town. God continued that revival through that church and especially the youth group we were granted to lead. What we saw God do in those years was unparallelled for me.

With the Calvinistic system, the Biblical system of theology, comes certain ideas and values. One is preaching the Bible and not mixing it with man-centered methodology and philosophy. It is hard to shake that off. But God did a lot of shaking and we saw what serious Bible study could do to teenagers. We eliminated the pragmatism and made real relationships with our kids. Fun to them became learning more about the Bible. It was amazing. It still is. I will never go back to the god who is too much like us. The Arminian god is a small god. The Calvinistic God is infinitely in control and unlimited by man and man's will.

That is my journey. To my brothers and sisters I hope it encouraged you. To those who read this and hate me and hate Calvinism, I understand. I once did too. I know your arguments. I know your feelings. I hope you will continue to study with a heart that will accept God as God presents Himself to us in Scripture.

So why do we call it Calvinism anyway? That will be a topic I will comver soon.