Righteousness Is from the Lord

Posted on 12/13/2020 by Paul Pavao

Hosea 10:12

Orthodox Study Bible (based on Septuagint*):
“Sow to yourselves in righteousness;
Gather in the fruit of life;
Light for yourselves the light of knowledge;
Seek the Lord till the fruits of righteousness come upon you.”

NASB (1995 version):
“Sow with a view to righteousness,
Reap in accordance with kindness;
Break up your fallow ground,
For it is time to seek the Lord
Until he comes to rain righteousness on you.”

Either way you read it, seeking comes from us, and righteousness is poured out from the Lord. It reminds me of Galatians 5:5: “For we through the Spirit, by faith, are waiting for the hope of righteousness.”

*https://www.christian-history.org/septuagint.html

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The Kind and Merciful Judgment of God

Posted on 12/04/2020 by Paul Pavao

Biblical teaching on the judgment is critically important. Many churches insult God by portraying him as merciless, a cruel deity who would torture a human for eternity for one sin because he is “holy” and “just.” (What sort of holiness and justice tortures people for one sin?)

This error arises from the evangelical tendency to interpret the Bible only from their incorrect understanding of “salvation by faith alone.” Thus, evangelicals use verses on faith to create doctrines on baptism, judgment, and other subjects without taking into account the passages that address those subjects. Thus, they have a misunderstanding of judgment that insults God, making him the most unholy and unjust of all deities. Being merciless is neither just nor holy.

The Bible’s actual passages on judgment show us a God of true justice, who punishes only the wicked and sets things right. We don’t have to take our own revenge because he will take vengeance on those who deserve it (Romans 12:19-21). He is merciful, and he only punishes the guilty (Ex. 34:6-7; Gal 6:7-9). He takes no delight in the death of the wicked, but promises that if the wicked will repent and live righteously (“but to do justice, and to love mercy, and to walk humbly with your God”–Micah 6:8), then he will reward life. (Ezek. 18:20-30; 33:10-20). He gives eternal life to those who help the needy and sends to hell only those who turn their hearts and faces away from the hungry, naked, sick, and imprisoned (Matt. 25:31-46).

People who teach the awful, cruel judgment of the evangelical god wind up teaching that Jesus died to change God. God wanted to be merciful, they say, but his justice prevents him from being merciful unless he kills someone. (How awful is this portrayal of God?). Thus, they say, Jesus died so that God would not kill all of us. That may be a wonderful portrayal of Jesus, but it is a terrible portrayal of his Father.

Because of this terrible teaching, the wonderfully kind promise that those who do good will receive eternal life (Romans 2:6-7) cannot be believed. To them such a judgment is not kind because no one can possibly do good. They claim the rest of Romans explains that Jesus’ death delivered us from God’s cruel judgment rather than from our own slavery to sin.

Rightly understood, Romans explains that under the Law, the sin in our flesh causes us to violate the Law; therefore Jesus died to free us from “sin in the flesh” by putting “sin in the flesh” to death (Romans 7:1 – 8:4). We are freed from sin (Rom. 6:7), we receive the Holy Spirit (Rom. 8:9), and then sowing to the Spirit leads to not growing weary in doing good and the reward of eternal life (Gal. 6:7-9). Galatians 6:7 says we are not supposed to be deceived about this.

If we are going to teach the judgment, it is obvious that we ought to use verses on the judgment to teach about it. We should read Ezekiel 18 and 33 and get God’s understanding of the judgment into us. We should pay attention to God’s kind words about Job, David, Daniel, and Noah (e.g., Ezek. 14:14,20; 1 Sam. 13:14). Once we do, verses like John 5:28-29, “Do not marvel at this; for an hour is coming, in which all who are in the tombs will hear His voice, and will come forth; those who did the good deeds to a resurrection of life, those who committed the evil deeds to a resurrection of judgment” (NASB), will be delightful to us. They will motivate us to both the godly fear AND the unspeakable joy of which Peter speaks (1 Pet. 1:8,17).

Posted in Dealing with Scripture Honestly, Evangelicals, Gospel, Modern Doctrines, Rebuilding the Foundations | Tagged , , | 4 Comments

A Good Understand Have All Those Who Do (Psalm 111:10)

Posted on 11/28/2020 by Paul Pavao

This morning I wrote on Facebook:

As I think through my list of Christians I admire, both in the present and over the last 2,000 years—both the ones close to me and the ones I only hear about or hear from—one thing really stands out to me. God can’t possibly care about how we interpret the Bible, just whether or not we do what it says.

I suppose it would only take George Whitfield and John Wesley to prove that premise.

I returned to my newsfeed after posting those words and found Facebook reminding me that exactly six years ago, I quoted John Wesley as saying:

Give me one hundred preachers who fear nothing but sin, and desire nothing but God, and I care not a straw whether they be clergymen or laymen; such alone will shake the gates of hell and set up the kingdom of heaven on earth.*

It seems impossible that this was coincidence. Perhaps when the Psalmist wrote, “A good understanding have all those who do,” he did not mean “Those who obey will gain a good understanding,” but “Those who obey prove by what they do that they already understand well.”

*I got the quote from RevivalList.com’s daily email, which did not give a source. I tried to find out where it is from using internet search, but it is quoted without a source so often I could not find the source.

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The Tabernacle and Solomon’s Temple as Figures of the New Covenant

Posted on 11/20/2020 by Paul Pavao

I know I’m probably late to the party and sharing something most of you know, but I got a great picture this morning of how the tabernacle (and Solomon’s temple) reveal salvation in Christ.

First, all the furniture is in the shape of the cross: first the altar and then the bath outside; in the holy place is the showbread on one side and the lamp on the other, with the altar of incense in front of the veil; finally the ark and the cherubim above it in the most holy.

We enter the holy place first by the altar, then the bath. This represents Jesus’ sacrifice and our baptism. When we come into the holy place there is the table of bread and the lamp that lights, which never goes out. This is obviously the light gives us and the communion table where we both remember Jesus’ death and always share a meal with him and one another. The table of incense represents prayer, and in prayer we can enter the holy of holies, to commune with God between the cherubim, which represents heavenly places. We never come into the most holy without the blood of sprinkling, but it is confident access (Eph. 3:12) that we have to the throne by the blood.

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The Elementary (First) Teachings of Christ: Hebrews 6:1-2

Posted on 11/20/2020 by Paul Pavao

In Hebrews 6:1-2 is a list of the foundational teachings of the Christian faith. These are the “first things” of the teachings of Christ, and from these we “go on to maturity.”

The six foundational teachings listed by the writer of Hebrews are:

  1. repentance from dead works
  2. faith toward God
  3. teaching of baptisms
  4. laying on of hands
  5. resurrection from the dead
  6. eternal judgment

As a young Christian, I was not taught a proper biblical foundation, so this list was confusing to me. Now that I am settled on a proper foundation, I know that these teachings are a simple outline of the Christian faith.

Repentance from Dead Works

We have looked at the judgment, and we know that the promise of God is that those of us who turn from wickedness and give ourselves to righteousness can count on God to forget all our wickedness and give us life (Ezek. 18:21-30). It is natural, therefore, that the first step is that we repent of the sin and wickedness that has been in our life before we encountered Christ.

The reason we repent from dead works is because formerly we were dead in our sins. Even our good works were performed in death and apart from God, so we leave the whole of our previous life behind when we repent and follow God. We turn away from the good, the bad, and the ugly, and we turn to follow King Jesus into a brand new life.

Faith Toward God

This could just as well have been first on the list. Finding out about God, his power, his majesty, and the glory of his Son who was born on earth as Jesus the Messiah … it is these things that generally cause us to want to repent. It is faith—our belief in God and awareness that Jesus is his Son—that causes us to fear and repent.

Our faith in God must be through his Son. No one comes to the Father except through him (Jn. 14:6). There is no other name given under heaven by which we can be saved (Acts 4:12). What we must believe about the Son is that God raised him from the dead, thus proving that he is Lord, Messiah, and Son of God (Rom. 10:9-10; Matt. 16:16-18; Jn. 20:31).

Teaching of Baptisms

When you properly understand “God’s sure foundation” (2 Tim. 2:19), there are very few verses in the Bible that are difficult. This is one of them, though the only difficulty is why “baptisms” is plural. I am going to give what seems the obvious answer to me, but the plural here is legitimately puzzling.

Baptisms, plural, are a reference baptism in water and in the Spirit (John 3:5). In the letter to Titus, Paul refers to these as “the washing of regeneration and the renewing of the Holy Spirit” (3:5). The only confusion on my part is wondering why baptisms need to be plural when the next teaching listed is the laying on of hands, which addresses the baptism in the Holy Spirit.

We need to understand that baptism is not magic, nor does anything happen at baptism unless it is combined with the faith of the one being baptized. Water baptism is, though, the proper response to believing. If you read through Acts, you will see that the apostles did not pray a sinner’s prayer with those who believed the Gospel, they baptized them. They also laid their hands on them to receive the Spirit. The “teaching” of baptism is that we are buried and raised with Christ (Rom. 6:3-5; Col. 2:12), enter Christ (Gal. 3:27), are spiritually circumcised (Col. 2:11-12), and have our sins washed away (Acts 2:38; 22:16; Tit. 3:5) in the water. This is rejected by many evangelical churches, but there are no verses on baptism that contest the ones referenced in this paragraph.

We will discuss the baptism of the Holy Spirit in the next section.

The Laying on of Hands

Though the laying on of hands was used by the apostles and their churches to ordain men to authoritative positions in the churches and to impart spiritual gifts (1 Tim. 4:14), the primary meaning of this foundational teaching has to be the laying on of hands to receive the Holy Spirit simply because it is called a foundational teaching.

The testimony of history is that after the time the apostles, the baptism of the Holy Spirit was not always accompanied by the same miraculous signs that we read about in Acts (8:18; 10:44-46; 19:6). This does not mean, however, that the churches had stopped laying hands on the newly baptized so that they would receive the Holy Spirit. The churches continued to do so, often including an anointing with oil.

The Resurrection of the Dead

A lot of time has passed, and we often take this teaching for granted. We make a bold claim when we say that Jesus will raise us from the grave and clothe us with new bodies. Paul tells us that we are wasting our time as Christians if we do not believe this (1 Cor. 15). It is truly a foundation doctrine.

Not only we, but all of creation, lives in hope of this resurrection (Rom. 8:19-23). A teaching does not get any more central than this!

Eternal Judgment

The final foundational teaching is eternal judgment, for there our eternal destiny will be determined (Matt. 25:31-46; John 5:28-29; Rom. 2:6-8; Rev. 3:4-5; 20:10-15). This judgment will be according to works (2 Cor. 5:10; 1 Pet. 1:17).

This, too, is often rejected by evangelical churches. Evangelicals would not reject these verses if they could get over the teaching that God will send a person to hell for even one sin. This is horribly insulting to God, who has always been a merciful God (e.g., see Ex. 34:6-7 and Ps. 136). God rewards life to those who patiently continue to do good, not just to the perfectly sinless (Ezek. 18:20-30; Rom. 2:6-7). The idea that God punishes for one sin comes from James 2:10, a verse that tells us not to judge one another. God’s judgment is not mentioned there, but is instead described in the passages I have given you here.

If you accept the foundational traditions of evangelicalism, you are not going to understand Hebrews 6:1-2. You have to hold to biblical foundations, where “the sure foundation of God” has “let those who name the name of Christ depart from unrighteousness” written on it (2 Tim. 2:19). Jesus died so that we would be redeemed from iniquity and become zealous for good works (Tit. 2:13-14), so that he would be our Lord (Rom. 14:9), and so that we would no longer live for ourselves, but for him (2 Cor. 5:15). (My blog post on aphesis gives a great picture of what Jesus’ death accomplished for us.) By the Spirit, we no longer live according to the flesh, and thus we do good and are rewarded with eternal life at the judgment (Gal. 6:7-9).

Going on to Maturity

What does the writer of Hebrews mean by going on to maturity? He explains this in the verses right before Hebrews 6:1-2. We have a chapter break there, but was no chapter break when Hebrews was written. “Solid food belongs to those who are mature,” the writer says in the last verse of chapter 5, “those because of practice have their senses trained to discern good and evil” (NASB).

In other words, to go on to maturity is simply to being turning away from evil and doing good. We “practice” this.

2 Peter 1:5-7 also gives an excellent description of going on to maturity:

Now for this very reason also, applying all diligence, in your faith supply moral excellence, and in your moral excellence, knowledge, and in your knowledge, self-control, and in your self-control, perseverance, and in your perseverance, godliness, and in your godliness, brotherly kindness, and in your brotherly kindness, love. (NASB)

“For if these qualities are yours and are increasing, they render you neither useless nor unfruitful in the true knowledge of our Lord Jesus Christ” (v. 8).

At Rebuilding the Foundations.org, you can download my Rebuilding the Foundations PDF for a fuller explanation of all these points.

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“Diligently Preserve” the Unity of the Spirit

Posted on 11/17/2020 by Paul Pavao

Our unity is not doctrinal. Our unity is spiritual (Eph. 4:3). We are not commanded to diligently preserve the unity of the faith, but to “diligently preserve” the unity of the Spirit. Do you have a doctrinal controversy with someone with whom you are united in Spirit? If God accepts both of you, which is the only way you can be united in Spirit, but you are doctrinally divided, then at least one of you is sinning. Maybe you are even intellectually correct on your doctrine, but you are sinning because division is a bad enough sin to eject you from the body of Christ (Tit. 3:10).

“Sound doctrine” has to do with obeying God, not figuring out theological ideas (Titus 2). In 1 Timothy 1:5 we read that the purpose of the commandment is love from a pure heart, a sincere faith, and a good conscience. Then Paul says that some, who have departed from that focus, have gone off into all sorts of wrong things. That is one of the greatest afflictions of the churches today.

If we could stay focused on laying aside sin and the weights that encumber us (Heb. 12), we would not have time for some of the doctrinal controversies we have.

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How the Church Was One: The Only True Source of Unity

Posted on 11/11/2020 by Paul Pavao

The early churches were united as God’s family. Jesus was Lord and the Father was, well, the Father of the family. The one thing to do in that family was to love and obey the Father through the Lordship of Jesus. If you read through the early Church fathers, you cannot miss the focus on the creation of the church through the death and resurrection of Jesus, the love of the saints for one another, and the emphasis on Christians doing their best to be just like Jesus.

When Justin Martyr wanted to explain Christianity to the emperor around the year 155, he wrote about Jesus’ commands, the love of the saints for one another, and the amazing ability of Christians to be joyful when wronged. When the Romans wrote to the Corinthians towards the end of the first century to rebuke them for division, the whole letter was about envy, jealousy, pride, the importance of humility, and the example of the apostles’ humility.

When the churches finally began dividing after 300 years, it was because they had lost their focus on those basics. The first giant divisions were at the 5th-century councils (Ephesus, Chalcedon) over the relation between Jesus’ human and divine natures, things none of us can possibly understand and which are not addressed in Scripture nor the oral tradition from the apostles. Oddly, those wickedly divisive councils are now known as “ecumenical” councils, and the subject of those councils are given the important-sounding name “Christological controversies.” My, how we can dress up the devil’s work in sacred clothing!

Those 5th-century splits were caused by the loss of holiness in the fourth-century churches, which was caused by bringing most of the Roman Empire’s inhabitants into the church. This happened by imperial influence rather than divine. The children of the devil are by nature schismatic. Those who do not have the Holy Spirit cannot maintain the unity of the Spirit (Eph. 4:3; 2 Cor. 6:14-18).

We must not accept the fleshly standard of unity that replaced the spiritual unity of the family of God. We cannot be united by the Bible interpretations of man. I don’t have to argue for that; it is proven to us every day. We must only look around us.

We must return to the only standard that has ever united churches: love of God, love for one another, a life guided by Jesus’s teachings, and mercy for the weak and poor. (Notice that these are also the things we will be judged for on the last day.)

In the video I will tell the story of Cyprian, bishop of Carthage, and Stephen, bishop of Rome. Cyprian cared about unity, and Stephen cared about being right. To this day, those who read of their battle think Cyprian cared about a doctrine, like Stephen did. No, Cyprian’s concern was only unity, and to him the problem was not Stephen’s doctrine, but his willingness to divide over that doctrine. For heresy–the willingness to divide the churches over one’s opinion–to arise in the greatest church in the empire* was the beginning of the end in Cyprian’s eyes. In tears he wrote a letter to Spanish churches expressing his despair; surely the Antichrist was at hand.

Maybe it would have been better if the Antichrist had arisen and brought about the end because we have inherited the heretical attitude of Stephen as something normal. We divide over our opinions, not just at the church level, but even at the family and individual level. Sadly, we do not mourn over this dissection of the body of Christ, the very opposite of what Jesus commanded (Jn. 13:34-35) and prayed for (Jn. 17:20-23).

May God forgive us. Even more so, may he deliver us!

*In the second and third centuries, Rome was known as the greatest church in the Empire for very good reasons, which include both Peter and Paul being martyred there. In letters to Cyprian before Stephen was bishop, the elders in Rome spoke of the “great crime” of falling from their greatness. It was not Stephen who destroyed Rome’s greatness, though. He was martyred, and Dionysius of Alexandria played a large role in cleaning up the mess. Rome’s fall from greatness would happen later. The story of the rise and fall of the Roman church is told in my book, Rome’s Audacious Claim, available wherever books are sold.

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The Judgment by Works: The Most Important Doctrine to Learn from the Early Church Fathers

Posted on 11/02/2020 by Paul Pavao

I wrote the following in a comment on Patristics for Protestants about what is the most important thing to learn from the early church fathers. There are several quotes from the earliest fathers in my comment, but I give you Tit. 2:11-15; Rom. 2:6-7; and Gal. 6:7-9, which says not to be deceived about this, as backing from the Scripture:

We will be judged by our works, and Jesus came so that we would be ready to face that judgment. To me this gets right down to the brass tacks of what will matter on the last day.

Since then all things are seen and heard [by God], let us fear Him, and forsake those wicked works which proceed from evil desires; so that, through His mercy, we may be protected from the judgments to come. For whither can any of us flee from His mighty hand? Or what world will receive any of those who run away from Him? (1 Clement 28)

The Lord will judge the world without partiality. Each will receive as he has done. If he is righteous, his righteousness will precede him; if he is wicked, the reward of wickedness is before him. Take heed, lest resting in our ease, as those who are called, we should fall asleep in our sins, and the wicked prince should acquire power over us and thrust us away from the kingdom of the Lord. (Letter of Barnabas 4)

I exhort you, therefore, that you abstain from covetousness, and that you be chaste and truthful. “Abstain from every form of evil” [1 Thess. 5:22]. For if a man cannot govern himself in such matters, how shall he enjoin them on others? If a man does not keep himself from covetousness, he shall be defiled by idolatry, and shall be judged as one of the heathen. But who of us are ignorant of the judgment of the Lord? (Polycarp to the Philippians 11)

For more such quotes, see Quotes about the Judgment from the Early Church Fathers.

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God’s Plan of Salvation Is Not What You Think It Is

Posted on 10/07/2020 by Paul Pavao

This is the way things are:

Romans 2:6-7: “God will render to everyone according to their deeds. To those who, by patiently continuing to do good seek for glory, honor, and immortality, he will repay eternal life.”

This is the problem with the reality of Romans 2:6-7:

Romans 3:23: “For all have sinned and fallen short of the glory of God.”

Romans 7:18: “For I know that in me, that is, in my flesh, no good thing dwells, for to desire is present with me, but how to perform what is good I do not find.”

This is the solution God came up with:

Romans 8:3-4: “For what the Law could not do because it was weak through the flesh, God did. By sending his own Son in the likeness of sinful flesh, as an offering for sin, he condemned sin in the flesh, so that the righteous requirement of the Law might be fulfilled in those of us who do not walk after the flesh, but after the Spirit.”

Titus 2:11-14: “The grace of God that brings salvation has appeared to all men, teaching us that denying ungodliness and worldly lusts, we should live soberly, righteously, and godly in this present age, looking for the blessed hope and glorious appearance of our great God and Savior Jesus Christ, who gave himself for us to redeem us from all iniquity and to purchase for himself his own special people, zealous for good works.”

Folks, the solution was not to change the judgment, but to change us into those who could pursue glory, honor, and immortality by patiently continuing to do good. The reward for doing so is eternal life. Galatians 6:7-9 states that clearly. By sowing to the Spirit rather than sowing to the flesh, and not growing weary in doing so, we will reap eternal life. This is God’s solution, to deliver us from sin, not merely to overlook our sin. Only those who practice righteousness will experience the righteousness of Christ (1 Jn. 3:7). Both Galatians 6:7-9 and 1 John 3:7 warn us not to be deceived about what they say.

This is God’s plan of salvation. It is to make righteous people out of people who were formerly sinners. Do not receive the grace of God in vain. The grace of God is supposed to re-create you to do good works (Eph. 2:8-10). Yes, you can, and must, receive that grace by faith apart from works, but once you receive it, you must not receive it in vain (2 Cor. 6:1).

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Ravi Zacharias, the Judgment, and the Weakness of Man: A WARNING!

Posted on 10/06/2020 by Paul Pavao

A FB friend commented on new allegations against Ravi Zacharias. I can hardly take it. My stomach is roiling. I knew nothing about this. I can’t even get myself to post the link to the report.

Folks, we are going to be judged by our works. That judgment is IMPARTIAL (1 Pet. 1:17). The righteous are scarcely saved (1 Pet. 4:18). We need to do warfare with our lusts. You cannot serve the flesh and the Spirit at the same time. One will slay you; the other will bring you eternal life (Gal. 5:16). Get help. There is a reason the Bible says that if you are not exhorted daily, you are in danger of being hardened by the *deceitfulness* of sin (Heb. 3:13).

How alarming that last day will be for the lazy!!

My heart is also broken that I have not trumpeted this louder, nor emphasized it to those around me. It is through many tribulations we must enter the kingdom of God, Paul said (Acts 14), but I would add that it is through many temptations as well. God will always make a way of escape (1 Cor. 10:13), but we have to be brave enough to take it!! Unfortunately, sometimes the only way of escape is to humble yourself not just to God but to men, and indeed to your wife! You can hide your shame now, but on the last day all our secrets will be revealed! (1 Cor. 4:5)

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