Definite Atonement in John: World & All

Of all the Gospels, John’s gospel is the most theological, and presents the doctrines of grace in stark relief. John also poses a challenge to interpreters with his extensive use of the word world (kosmos), which appears in his gospel seventy-eight times, compared to fourteen times in the synoptics combined. John uses world in several different ways, and the student must be careful to understand each use correctly in its context. Steve Lawson lists ten different uses:*

1. Entire Universe (John 1:9, 10; 17:5).
2. Physical Earth (John 13:1; 16:33; 21:25).
3. World System (John 1:10; 12:31; 14:30; 15:18–21; 16:11; 17:14).
4. Humanity Minus Believers (John 7:7; 15:18).
5. Large Group (John 12:19).
6. General Public (John 7:4; 14:22).
7. Jews and Gentiles, all groups of people, as opposed to the Jewish people only (John 1:29; 4:42).
8. Human Realm, contrasted with the realm of heaven and angelic beings (John 1:10; 3:12–16).
9. Non-Elect (John 17:9).
10. Elect Only (John 3:17; 6:33; 12:47).

Lawson summarizes:  Continue at Thirsty Theologian

If I Were the Devil: Paul Harvey (Warning for a Nation)

           

This speech was broadcast by legendary ABC Radio commentator Paul Harvey on  April 3, 1965:

If I were the Devil . . . I mean, if I were the Prince of Darkness, I would of course, want to engulf the whole earth in darkness. 

I would have a third of its real estate and four-fifths of its population, but I would not be happy until I had seized the ripest apple on the tree, so I should set about however necessary to take over the United States. 

I would begin with a campaign of whispers. With the wisdom of a serpent, I would whisper to you as I whispered to Eve: “Do as you please.” “Do as you please.”   

To the young, I would whisper, “The Bible is a myth.” I would convince them that man created God instead of the other way around. 

I would confide that what is bad is good, and what is good is “square”.  In the ears of the young marrieds, I would whisper that work is debasing, that cocktail parties are good for you. 

I would caution them not to be extreme in religion, in patriotism, in moral conduct. And the old, I would teach to pray. I would teach them to say after me: “Our Father, which art in Washington” . . .

If I were the devil, I’d educate authors in how to make lurid literature exciting so that anything else would appear dull an uninteresting. 

I’d threaten T.V. with dirtier movies and vice versa. And then, if I were the devil, I’d get organized. 

I’d infiltrate unions and urge more loafing and less work, because idle hands usually work for me. 

I’d peddle narcotics to whom I could. I’d sell alcohol to ladies and gentlemen of distinction. And I’d tranquilize the rest with pills. 

If I were the devil, I would encourage schools to refine young intellects but neglect to discipline emotions . . . let those run wild. 

I would designate an atheist to front for me before the highest courts in the land and I would get preachers to say “she’s right.” With flattery and promises of power, I could get the courts to rule what I construe as against God and in favor of pornography, and  thus, I would evict God from the courthouse, and then from the school house, and then from the houses of Congress and then, in His own churches I would substitute psychology for religion, and I would deify science because that way men would become smart enough to create super weapons but not wise enough to control them.

If I were Satan, I’d make the symbol of Easter an egg, and the symbol of Christmas, a bottle. 

If  I were the devil, I would take from those who have and I would give to those who wanted, until I had killed the incentive of the ambitious. 

And then, my police state would force everybody back to work. 

Then, I could separate families, putting children in uniform, women in coal mines, and objectors in slave camps. 

In other words, if I were Satan, I’d just keep on doing what he’s doing.

Paul Harvey, Good Day.

HT: Fox Nation

Unconditional Election

MR: Dr. Packer, what exactly do people mean by unconditional election?

Packer: It is a phrase which folk use to express this thought: that because we sinners are helpless, God has to take all the steps that are necessary in order to bring us to faith and fellowship with himself and finally to eternal life. Unconditional election is the name for the choice God makes to do that in any particular case, and it has to be unconditional because if God waited for man to merit it, he would wait forever.

MR: Dr. Packer, why do we need an election?

Packer: Because we will never be saved unless God chooses to save us. Election leads to the saving action of God in his lordship, and if we were left to ourselves we would never respond to God on our own at all. This is what people don't seem to appreciate, that all of us by nature are anti-God in our deepest instincts (see Romans chapter 3). We don't always realize this because many of us think we are seeking God, and frankly, people want a God they can manage and manipulate and have as a safety net. Those are facts about human life, and very familiar facts. But when it is a matter of responding to the real God and responding in a way that he calls for --that is by humbling ourselves before him, learning to trust his word absolutely, turning from sin, taking our hands off of the reins of our own life and letting him be in control --we wake up to the fact that we don't like this at all and we shy back from it. That is our nature. So you see, God has to take action otherwise we shall never come to him at all because that is the state in which fallen humans find themselves.

MR: Doesn't this detract from our responsibility to respond to the gospel? If I'm one of the elect, God will save me, and if I'm not I cannot be saved anyway so why worry about it?

Packer: No, that isn't the way to look at it because God has made us folk who act of their own will and he keeps us that way. And so he takes account of us for the things that we have done because they really were our own actions. The fact that we haven't got it in us to respond to God in a positive way doesn't mean that we don't choose not to respond to God. We do choose not to respond to God, and it's for that choice that we're responsible before him. The truth about us is that we are like drowning folk who can't swim and left to ourselves would just go under and eventually not come up again. God takes action, as it were, to dive in, swim to us, grab hold of us and save us. Election, as we said a moment ago, is his decision to do that, and in his lordship and power he does it, and so our salvation is entirely due to him. But all the time we are responsible for being the people that we are, drowning in our own moral mess.  Continue at Modern Reformation

Hey Teen, get Ready for the Real World

There used to be a time when teenagers didn’t exist.

Children went from boyhood to manhood with no teenhood dividing the two.

If you are over sixty years old, you may remember the days when there were no teenagers.

If you are between forty and sixty perhaps your parents or grandparents told you what life was like when teenagers did not exist.

My grandmother most certainly told me.

She was perplexed and saddened when I became part of this new and growing demographic called teenagers.

She was not sad because she missed out on something special. She was sad because I was missing out on something special. She was gathering the eggs and milking the cows before school and then went into the fields after she came home from school and worked until dark.

She did not know there were teen years until I came along. We were on the cutting edge of this new demographic. We had movies and video games. We also invented rock and roll. Pot, now called weed, was soon to follow and fornication (premarital sex) was the right-of-passage that validated manhood.

Most teenagers are unaware how they became a self-absorbed demographic.^[1] They are not familiar with their short-lived heritage. Most of them believe how they live is how things have always been and should be.

Teen, if this is how you think, then I’ve got some bad news for you. Your life was never meant to be the way I’ve described. If it is, then get ready. You’re in for the challenge of a lifetime. If you haven’t discerned this by now, be prepared. Shortly after your high school graduation, you will be introduced to what you should have been introduced to years earlier.^[2]

Last week I wrote the first part of this series, which I titled What to do after your parents blow it – 1.0. This week I want to finish that article, hopefully giving a biblical perspective on how the new teen demo should see and respond to life.

In both articles I’m interacting with Charles J. Sykes, and his rules for life. Based on how Sykes wrote his rules, it appears he did not have Christ or the Bible in mind. So I’m going to take what he said and tweak it a bit to fit a Biblio-centric framework–though what he said is tweetable.

I hope my interaction will provide a modicum of biblical wisdom and motivation for teenagers. Here are his first five rules, which I covered in the aforementioned article:   Continue at Rick Thomas

Christian Ministry and Conformity to the World

If someone were to ask an Evangelical if there was any particular 19th-century Anglican that he admired, I’d venture to say that the name that would be most readily supplied is J. C. Ryle. And that is not at all without cause. Ryle’s work on discipleship and Christian living has represented a remarkable service to Christ’s Church.

But another 19th-century Anglican who I wish was a household name in Evangelical Christianity is Charles Bridges. My acquaintance with Bridges comes chiefly in the form of his classic work, The Christian Ministry. It is a wonderful manual of pastoral ministry that I would recommend wholeheartedly to anyone interested in shepherding Christ’s flock.

Particularly helpful was a section he wrote on “Conformity to the World,” and its relationship to the Christian ministry. It’s no secret that many celebrity pastors in contemporary evangelicalism—and, sadly, the many non-celebrity pastors they’re influencing—employ conformity to the world as the modus operandi of their ministries. With a shallow, and rather twisted, interpretation of 1 Corinthians 9:19-23, these men embrace—with their actions if not with their confession—the philosophy of ministry that Christians must become like the world to win the world.

And the interesting thing is, that kind of uber-cool, hip, innovative ministry philosophy is hundreds—and even thousands—of years old. Bridges’ commentary on the subject proves that this avant-guard, new-kind-of-ministry of the 21st century was alive and doing damage even in 19th century England. 

I encourage you to read his comments slowly, as the wisdom to be gained from them is extremely profitable for those who have ears to hear.  Continue at Mike Riccardi

I Want to be a Half Christian so I can Enjoy the World Too

When my daughter rides with me she is the passenger.

I’m the driver.

Kinda logical isn’t it?

She goes where I go.

I lead. She follows.

She is at the mercy of me because I’m the one who is in control of the car.

I have total influence over her.

This is an analogy for what Paul was talking about when he said,

Do not be unequally yoked with unbelievers. For what partnership has righteousness with lawlessness? Or what fellowship has light with darkness? – 2 Corinthians 6:14 (ESV)

You know the analogy don’t you? Seemingly every preacher who has ever preached this text mentions something about two animals in a yoke. The reason they say this is because that was exactly what Paul was referring to.

Think of two oxen pulling a wagon while both of them are in a harness or yoke. When in the yoke, they are one. Paul was bringing to his audience what Moses brought to his back in the day when he said,

You shall not plow with an ox and a donkey together. – Deuteronomy 22:10 (ESV)

Do not put up with it readily enough

The unequal yoke in this passage is a picture of someone who has influence over another person. Paul is warning the Corinthian Christians that if they do not stop and turn around from their evil unchristian relationships that they are involved in, then the influence of those ungodly relationships will take them where they do not want to go.

The entire letter to the Corinthians is Paul’s attempt to persuade the Christians to make a break from evil influences. He knows they are susceptible to the power that these influences can have over them. This is where the yoke analogy is very helpful.  Continue at Rick Thomas

Friend of the World; Enemy of God

Lot began his career as a tent-dweller like Abraham. But after he parted from his uncle, Genesis 13:12 says "he pitched his tent toward Sodom." Soon he moved into the city and became comfortable there.

In fact, Lot apparently became a man of some importance in the community, because Genesis 19:1 says "Lot was sitting in the gate of Sodom"—which tells us that he ultimately became a kind of civic official there. To have a claim on that place, you had to be someone of importance, recognized by everyone in the city.

He may have initially sought prominence in Sodom out of a belief that such status would better enable him to "engage the culture." But in the end Lot had absolutely no influence for good there.

As much as Lot may have enjoyed the comforts of city life, he never felt at home in Sodom. Peter tells us Lot's righteous soul was vexed every day by the wickedness of that city's rampant perversions. No matter how settled Lot became in Sodom, his heart was never at home in that city. He never came to love the debauchery and evil indulgences that characterized that place.

Mrs. Lot was different. She was attached to Sodom. If that city was not her home when Lot married her, it became her home in every sense. She grew to love to the place. No matter how evil it was, she did not want to leave. She probably loved being the wife of a prominent person in such a sophisticated, morally liberated city. There is no suggestion that her soul was vexed by the wickedness there.   Keep Reading >>>

The Final Word on Contextualization

Several weeks ago Grace to You launched a blog series examining the subject of contextualization, the pragmatic approach to evangelism that says the gospel can be made more powerful by adapting it to cultural contexts. John MacArthur opened that series by asking an important question: Where did Christians ever get the idea they could win the world to Christ by imitating it?

Believe it or not, church marketing specialists answer that question by claiming the apostle Paul as their inspiration. They say he modeled contextualization when he addressed the Athenian philosophers on Mars Hill (Acts 17:22-34). But their favorite passage to cite to justify contextualizing the gospel is 1 Corinthians 9:22-23, where Paul wrote, “I have become all things to all men, that I may by all means save some. And I do all things for the sake of the gospel, that I may become a fellow partaker of it.”

John MacArthur confronted and corrected that false way of thinking about Paul’s statement with a careful, reasoned explanation of the text. Far from mandating pragmatism in ministry, the apostle Paul was calling for personal sacrifice on the part of the evangelist.He was describing not his willingness to sacrifice the message, but his willingness to sacrifice himself to preach the message. He would give up everything to promote the spread of the gospel—his rights, privileges, and ultimately his own life.

That’s precisely how Paul lived and ministered. The history of his ministry in the New Testament bears proof after proof of that claim.   Keep Reading...

Enough About Us Already: Our American Protestant Obsession with Being Loved by the World

“They like you,” according to Christianity Today‘s latest cover story (August 2011), by Bradley R. E. Wright, a University of Connecticut sociologist. Wright challenges the alarmist rhetoric of some in recent years who have created the impression that our fellow Americans hate us and we need a public relations makeover. Taking issue with George Barna among others, he argues that we have a persecution complex-or at least an almost pathological need to be loved. Actually, when asked to register their feeling in terms of warm or cold, the weather report for evangelicals is “generally sunny and mild”-somewhere between Jews, Catholics and mainline Protestants at one end and Muslims, Buddhist, and Mormons at the other. 

Admittedly, this could be the worst news of all. It’s like the anxious teenager who asks a group of peers, “What do you think of me?”, only to hear a nearly unanimous reply, “We don’t, actually.” As they say, no publicity is worse than bad publicity.

Introducing this issue, CT managing editor Mark Galli said he hoped that Wright’s article might help us to move on from self-obsession (“Inside CT,” page 7): “A movement that casts anxious glances to see how it’s doing in the eyes of others is in either childhood or adolesence…It’s time for evangelicals to put away childish things….The fact is that in the end, people don’t care if we are cool. They don’t think it an improvement to call ourselves ‘Jesus followers’ instead of ‘Christians,’ let alone ‘evangelicals.’”   Keep Reading...

Christianity – The Greatest Force of Good in the World!

Have you ever heard people say that Christianity is evil? I have. People who say that have to have a very poor sense of history and all the amazing advances the world now enjoys because of the spread of Christianity.


It is safe to say that the vast majority of the great scientists in history were Bible believing Christians. They believed that to study nature and science was merely to “think God’s thoughts after Him.” Whether they looked through the microscope or the telescope; whether the field was human biology, astronomy, physics, oceanography or zoology, these men believed they were merely discovering more about the world and universe God had made.

The first hospitals were built by Christians because they believed that each individual mattered (each person is made in the image of God) and because Jesus taught us to love our neighbor and He defined our neighbor as the one we find in need (remember the story of the Good Samaritan?). There’s actually a hospital here in Phoenix called “Good Samaritan Hospital.”

The first schools were built by Christians because they believed God had given us His word in the Bible and every child should have an education in order to read it and understand it. In society today the question is asked, “should the Bible be taught in schools?” Yet when school education was first introduced, the Bible was the only reason for the school’s existence. On and on we could go…Continue Reading>>>

“WORLD” – John’s Ten Uses of the Word

"WORLD" - John's Ten Uses of the Word by Pastor John Samson

Richard Baxter - Praying For The World