Understanding Romans 10:17

“So faith comes from hearing, and hearing through the word of Christ.” Romans 10:17

 

As most of my readers know, I did not always embrace the Reformed faith. For the first 20 years of my Christian walk I was fairly convinced of synergistic theology, though I would recoil at the idea of labeling it as such. In my mind, I just believed the Bible, or so I thought.

I was recently having a discussion with a gentleman through e-mail and he was lamenting the fact that I no longer believed as he does (he is a synergist). He said my problem was that I gave false teaching a chance to wreak havoc in my soul by exposing myself to it – by listening to it. He then wrote “Faith comes by hearing” If you keep hearing something you start to believe it.” He thinks of Reformed theology as falsehood, and so using this verse (Romans 10:17), was seeking to show the source of my error, namely that I should never have listened to reformed theology.

Leaving the discussion about Reformed theology aside, is what he wrote correct? Does hearing something mean that you will believe it. I would suggest not, and go further to say that his view of Scripture is incredibly low to say such a thing. The obvious implication of his words is the concept that we believe anything we hear. But is that true? I have heard many things in life that I do not believe. Some people in England believe Manchester United are the greatest soccer team in the land, when it is clear that this title belongs to Liverpool alone. I could hear someone talk of the Manchester team in such glowing terms all day and all night for a week, and never believe the bald faced satanic lie. I jest, of course (slightly anyway – after all the Manchester team are called “The Red Devils”) – but the point is still a valid one. We do not believe everything we hear – even something we hear repeatedly. It is God Himself who gives the gift of saving faith (Ephesians 2:8,9) – it is not the product of our natural humanity, however many times a person hears the Gospel preached.  Continue at John Samson

Worship: It’s Not About the Music!

Dan Lucarini, who used to be a ‘worship leader’ of a ‘contemporary praise team’ wrote of his journey out of the CCM circle in his book Why I Left the Contemporary Christian Music Movement.  I have that one coming in the mail; more on that later.

For now I want to point out his follow-up book, It’s Not About the Music (Darlington: EP Books, 2010).  In this book, Lucarini debunks the modern notion that the heart of worship is music.  He quotes a CCM musician to prove his point, who said CCM artists gravitate “toward a U2-esque sound built around a true worship song, giving the listener a deeper worship experience.”  I know quite a few Christians who would agree: the heart of worship is our singing to God, and the better we feel about it, the better the ‘experience.’  Lucarini disagrees (as do I!). Continue Reading>>>

Falling on Deaf Ears? — Why So Many Churches Hear So Little of the Bible

It has been said to the point of boredom that we live in a narcissistic age, where we are wont to fixate on our needs, our wants, our wishes, and our hopes—at the expense of others and certainly at the expense of God. We do not like it when a teacher uses up the whole class time presenting her material, even if it is material from the Word of God. We want to be able to ask our questions about our concerns, otherwise we feel talked down to, or we feel the class is not relevant to our lives.

It is well and good for the preacher to base his sermon on the Bible, but he better get to something relevant pretty quickly, or we start mentally to check out. Don't spend a lot of time in the Bible, we tell our preachers, but be sure to get to personal illustrations, examples from daily life, and most importantly, an application that we can use. Read the rest HERE

Words From the Fire -- Just Released From Moody Publishers

The great philosophical crisis of our day is an epistemological crisis – a crisis of knowing and a crisis of knowledge. It is a challenge for the Christian thinker, the Christian theologian, the Christian minister, the Christian preacher, and the Christian institution – the whole of Christianity. The crisis can be summed up in one question: How do we know and teach what we claim to know and teach?

Francis Schaeffer well understood the epistemological crisis and accordingly titled his most significant contribution, He Is There and He Is Not Silent. I first read this classic as a sixteen-year-old. To be honest, I think the greatest assurance I got from the book at that age was that some really smart person believed in God. But even at that age, lacking the vocabulary to understand what I was experiencing, I understood the epistemological crisis. How do we know anything? How would we speak of anything? Furthermore, how do we jump from the empirical knowledge of what we can observe to speaking of God whom we cannot see? Read the rest HERE

Understanding Romans 10:17 by Pastor John Samson