The Rest of the Old, Old Story

How I Finally Reconciled “Faith Alone” and “Works” in the Bible.

Posted on 10/28/2025 by Paul Pavao

I was taught, like most Protestants, “salvation by faith alone.” The problem with this is that I was taught that “salvation” meant “going to heaven.” The two, however, are not equivalent. This is the story of how I found out that “saved” does not always mean “going to heaven,” and that if you don’t understand the difference, you will continually misinterpret the apostle Paul and his letters.

I wrote this in response to someone who argued that we should not launch off on our own, but make sure we have good counsel before we start delving into questionable or controversial ideas.

Like most Protestants I was taught–in my case by the Assemblies of God–that salvation is by faith alone. As I pointed out above, we all thought this meant “going to heaven” by faith alone. So, the first time I ran across Romans 2:6, which says we will be judged by our works, I wrote it on the last blank page of my Bible. It only took a year or two to fill the back page and then the inside of the back cover with Scripture references, dozens of them. At the top of the list was the only occurrence of the words “faith alone” or “faith only” in the Bible, James 2:24, which says “not by faith only.”

Of course I know that “faith apart from works” is the equivalent of “faith only,” but it is nonetheless intriguing that the actual phrase in found in a verso that says “not by faith only.”

Nonetheless, I just could not figure out how to reconcile “not by works so no man can boast” with “know this for sure, that no unclean, immoral, or covetous man has any inheritance in the kingdom of God and Christ,” both written by Paul and both in the same letter, Ephesians (2:8-9 & 5:5).

When I married I was still writing all those references and struggling to reconcile them. After a year or so of controversy with the pastor of the Baptist church we were attending, Lorie asked me, “How can you be the only one who is right?”

As an aside, to help you understand her question, I was beginning to question whether baptism was really a symbolic public testimony in Scripture. The apostles baptized immediately and there is no record in Acts that they ever prayed a sinner’s prayer with anyone. Most pointedly, when Ananias baptized Paul, he told him, “Arise and be baptized, washing away your sins and calling on the name of the Lord” (Acts 22:16). I was teaching Sunday school at the time, but I chose to talk to the pastor rather than teach the things I was seeing. It did not go well. He first said greater minds than ours have discussed these things, then that I needed to go to a different church.

I told her, “I can’t. If I’m the only one seeing these things, then I have to be wrong. But the Baptist church we’re going to can’t be right either because they don’t even care what these verses say.”

Finally, a friend brought me David Bercot’s Will the Real Heretics Please Stand Up right after it was published in 1989. I read it, brought it to my wife, and said, “I’m not wrong; I was just born in the wrong century.”

Still, Bercot’s book did not resolve the conflict between Ephesians 2 & 5 because he just said, “It’s faith and works.” Later, reading the fathers themselves, I found the same contradiction in Polycarp’s letter to the Philippians. Chapter 1 says we’re saved by faith apart from works, quoting Ephesians 2. Chapter 2 says God will only raise us up if we keep his commandments, don’t return evil for evil, etc.

Polycarp didn’t resolve the conflict for me, but he must have known how someone could believe we are saved by faith apart from works but also believe that we can only enter the kingdom of God if we patiently continue to do good (Rom. 2:6-7). I began anxiously expecting to find the secret.

In 1992, reading the Letter to Diognetus (ch. 9), I finally found what should have been obvious to me. The letter points out that what we received by faith is the power to enter the kingdom or, in other words, the power to do good works (cf. Eph. 2:10; Tit. 2:11-14). Entering the kingdom, though, requires us to do the good works we are created in Christ Jesus to do (cf. Gal. 5:19-21 & 6:7-9; Eph. 5:3-7; 1 Cor. 6:9-11).

I felt dumb. How did I not see for SIX YEARS that all the “faith only” verses are in the past tense! All the verses requiring works are in the future tense. During those 6 years, I’m sure I read Romans at least 6 times, but never caught “we were reconciled by his blood” and “we shall be saved from wrath by his life” both in Romans 5:9-10. Saved from wrath is future. Saved from being dead in sin and enslaved to sin is in the past tense. Slaves to sin can’t save themselves by not sinning. Once Jesus saves us, though, reconciles us to God and makes us new creatures, we have to stop sinning because sin has always been what separates us from God (Isa. 59:2). To stop sinning has always been what God wants from us, not sacrifices but obedience (Isa. 1:1-20; 1 Sam. 15:22).

Thus, the central purpose of Jesus’ death was not the forgiveness of sins. God offered forgiveness of sins for repentance in pretty much every book of the Old Testament (e.g., Isaiah 1:1-20; Jer. 7:21-23; Ezek. 18:20-30; Micah 6:6-8; etc.). The primary purpose of Jesus’ death was ransoming us out of slavery to sin just as he ransomed Israel from Egypt.

All of this happened not quite on my own, but it would never have happened if I had listened to the counsel of the Assemblies of God and the Baptists. If you dig deep and find something that absolutely contradicts your teaching then, apparently, you need to go to another church because your church sure isn’t going to change just because of the Bible. At least, that was my experience.

Worse, if you convince some of their sheep of the truth of Scripture and the faith once for all delivered to the saints, you’ll be branded a sheep stealer and a divisive man.

It is, and was for me, a tough row to hoe. God saves people who don’t have their theology right. Those saved people know they have to do good works, but they cannot admit that the Bible says so no matter how many verses are presented to them. I admit they’re really saved, but if I try to teach them the Bible, which tells me to “contend earnestly” for the faith once for all delivered to the saints, they run me off.

I’m older now, so I let God do the teaching bit by bit, except online and in books where people can read and consider without the pressure of toeing the party line. In person I content myself with trying to obey the things I teach by loving and serving, making every effort to live out my own teachings. I’m trying not to be a hypocrite and thus be disqualified even while preaching to others (1 Cor. 9:24-27).

Posted in Bible, Dealing with Scripture Honestly, Early Christianity, Evangelicals, Gospel, Modern Doctrines, Protestants, Verses Evangelicals Ignore | Tagged early Christian view of salvation, Ephesians 2 and 5 explained, faith alone, fath and works, Letter to Diognetus, Polycarp epistle to the Philippians | 2 Comments

Psalm 38: What Is Righteousness and How Merciful Is God?

Posted on 10/25/2025 by Paul Pavao

Caught again, your faithless friend.
Don’t you ever tire of hearing what a fool I’ve been?
(“Stubborn Love” by Kathy Troccoli)

King David wrote Psalm 38. It seems like it has to be about the Bathsheba incident because he is crushed and repenting for some grave sin. It might not be, though, because the story in 2 Samuel 11 & 12 says nothing about David losing his health. Psalm 38, though, has him so sick that his “wounds stink and fester” (v. 5, ESV). This is “because of my foolishness” (also v.5).

It seems odd, then, very odd, that David would close the Psalm with:

They who render evil for good are also adversaries to me,
because I follow what is good.
Don’t forsake me, Yahweh.
My God, don’t be far from me.
Hurry to help me,
Lord, my salvation. (Ps. 38:20-22)

Whaaat?? He follows after good? I don’t think so. He did something so bad that “my iniquities have gone over my head. As a heavy burden, they are too heavy for me” (v. 4). How can he possibly say he follows after good?

I confess to complaining often that we ignore warning verses in the New Testament that are preceded by “don’t you know?” and “don’t be decieved” (1 Cor. 6:9-11), “I forewarn you even as I also forewarned you” (Gal. 5:19-21), and “let no one lead you astray” (1 Jn. 3:7).

I can write about the requirement for righteousness and good works if you want eternal life (Rom. 2:6-7; 6:22; Gal. 6:7-9) because I know what the Scriptures say about righteousness and the mercy of God. Jude, our Lord’s human brother, warns us not to turn the favor (grace) of God into a license for sin (Jude 1:4), but let’s talk about the difference between turning the favor of God into indecency and turning the mercy of God into indecency.

Jude uses “favor” (grace) in his warning, not mercy. Here’s why:

For the grace of God has appeared, bringing salvation to all men, instructing us to the intent that, denying ungodliness and worldly lusts, we would live soberly, righteously, and godly in this present age; looking for the blessed hope and appearing of the glory of our great God and Savior, Jesus Christ, who gave himself for us, that he might redeem us from all iniquity and purify for himself a people for his own possession, zealous for good works. (Tit. 2:11-14)

God’s grace, better translated his favor, is all about releasing us from sin. Romans 6:14 says that sin won’t have dominion over us because we are under favor rather than law. God’s favor triumphantly makes us, who were but are no longer dead in our sins, alive in Christ (Eph. 2:5). It stays with us, empowering us to take our stand as servants of Jesus Christ (Rom. 5:1-2). It teaches us, which means we are continually being taught by his favor, how to live righteously (quote above).

Don’t falsely teach his favor as though it were merely mercy. Don’t tell people, “Oh, don’t worry, God’s favor means he won’t attribute sin to you (Rom. 4:8).” That would be turning favor into a license for sin.

On the other hand, mercy is an allowance for sin. The same God our Father, the same Lord Jesus, that teaches you by favor and calls you to deny yourself and take up your cross, knows “we all stumble in many ways” (Jas. 3:2). The same God who said, “your iniquities have separated you and your God and your sins have hidden his face from you” (Isa. 59:2), also said:

Let the wicked forsake his way,
and the unrighteous man his thoughts.
Let him return to Yahweh, and he will have mercy on him,
to our God, for he will freely pardon. (Isa. 55:7)

The apostle John understood these things, saying that those who claim to be without sin are deceiving themselves and are liars (1 Jn. 1:8 & 10). In the next verse, he tells us he is writing his letter so that we don’t sin, but “if we do sin, we have a Helper with the Father, Jesus Christ the righteous.”

Don’t let anyone tell you that the Greek word parakletos means “defense lawyer” in that verse. We don’t need a defense lawyer with God. He is not waiting to kill you for every sin you commit, only prevented from doing so because he sees that he already killed his Son, relieving his blood-wrath against you. That’s an insult to God and a lie from the devil. Here is what God is like when we sin:

Yahweh passed by before [Moses], and proclaimed, “Yahweh! Yahweh, a merciful and gracious God, slow to anger, and abundant in loving kindness and truth, keeping lovingkindness for thousands, forgiving iniquity and disobedience and sin; and who will by no means clear the guilty …” (Ex. 34:6-7)

God our Father and Jesus our Lord have the same will and the same heart. Isn’t that what the doctrine of the Trinity is all about? It’s crazy to think that the Father wants to kill us, but the Son wants to have mercy on us. It’s God the Father who so loved the world that he send his only Son to save us. The Son loves us just like the Father, not differently, laying down his life for us while we were yet sinners (Rom. 5:8). That verse points out, too, that when Jesus laid his life down for us, it was “God commend[ing] his own love toward us.”

In 1 John 2:1, the word I translated “Helper,” and that most Bible translations translate as “Advocate” or “Counselor,” is the same word that Jesus uses to describe the Holy Spirit 4 times in John, chs. 14-16. There translators use “Helper” or “Comforter” almost exclusively.

When we sin and have to go to the Father, here is what the Bible says is happening:

Let’s therefore draw near with boldness to the Throne of Favor, that we may receive mercy AND may find favor for help in time of need. (Heb. 4:16)

Let’s try to “see” the picture of Jesus helping us when we sin. We are running to the Throne “boldly,” because Jesus has cleansed the throne room, the Holy of Holies, with his blood. Hebrews compares this to the priest cleansing the Ark of the Covenant, and especially its cover, where God dwelt between the cherubim, with the blood of animals on the Day of Atonement (Heb. 9:7-12). The high priest had to do that every year under the Old Covenant. Jesus, however, has purified the heavenly Holy of Holies of our sins forever and ever with just one offering that never needs repeating.

Righteousness in the New Testament is not pretend righteousness, where God pretends you are as righteous as Jesus is. The righteousness of Jesus for those who are actually doing righteousness (1 Jn. 3:7 … “let no one lead you astray”). But it is the commonly pushed misunderstanding of doing that I am warring against today.

Note: I don’t want to lose anyone. I am arguing that you are probably already doing righteousness if you are following Jesus. People tell you that you can’t be worthy, can’t do good works–or at least not enough good works, and that you can’t be righteous. Don’t believe them. If you’re trying at all to follow Jesus, then God is creating you in him to do good works. Don’t deny that he is being successful in his work; give thanks for it! David did!

Okay, back to the throne room. According to Ephesians 3:12 as well as Hebrews 4:16 we are coming to the Throne of Favor in confidence. There, we are obtaining mercy from our merciful Father, who sits on a Throne of Favor because favors us! Another acceptable translation would be that he sits on a Throne of Grace because he is gracious to us all the time.

At the Throne of Favor, the Son is sitting at God’s right hand, ready with his Father, to bestow mercy and forgive your sins. The reason he is called parakletos (1 Jn. 2:2) at that Throne is because he is the one who helps us. We are not only receiving mercy, but also favor to help in time of need.

Jesus is our Helper in exactly the same way the Holy Spirit helps us. Normally, we have to go to John 14-16 and explain that Jesus is saying that the Holy Spirit he will send is exactly like him, like Jesus. In this post, though, I have to refute the false idea that Jesus is a defense attorney and tell you that Jesus is just like the Holy Spirit. He is providing favor so that you can be helped through your time of need, a need that probably had a lot to do with the sin you are, hopefully boldly, confessing at the Throne, which you came to on a path made for you by the blood of Jesus.

As a side note, you don’t need to ask for the blood of Jesus at the Throne. It was applied to the Throne itself and made a path for you a long time ago.

Back to righteousness. David’s claim that he follows what is good (Ps. 38:20) was true, despite the fact that he was temporarily under severe physical chastisement for severe sin that he had done against God. The sin was the exception; the fierce loyalty to God that David was famous for was his norm. Thus, he was a righteous before God.

Just keeping us on track, God is looking for a pattern of righteousness, not sinless perfection. It is the sacrifice, the animal, that had to be perfect, not the one offering. Jesus had to perfect and without sin, and so he was, but we who follow Jesus are called to patiently continue to do good (Rom. 2:7) without growing weary of doing so (Gal. 6:9), not to sinless perfection.

We can see this in many of David’s psalms. In Psalm 25, David sings, “Pardon my iniquity, for it is great” (Ps. 25:11), yet he begins Psalm 26 with “Judge me, Yahweh, for I have walked in my integrity. I have trusted also in Yahweh without wavering.”

Both these things are true! The righteous are rewarded for a habit of putting God first; they are not rendered unrighteous because “we all stumble in many ways” (James 3:2). We have been taught that God requires sinless perfection of us, but it is actually only the lamb of the offering that has to be spotless, in our case, the Lamb of God who takes away the sin of the world.

I thought of an objection here. Colossians 1:22 says God will present us “holy and without defect and blameless.” But how do we obtain this blamelessness: simply by continuing in the faith, grounded and settled therein, not moved away from the hope of the Gospel (Col. 1:23). We must remember that although we are not to be deceived about the fact that only those who do righteousness are righteousness as Jesus is righteous, those who faithfully and patiently do good are righteous like Jesus. Imparted righteousness is real for those who continue to do good, which will happen for all who remain grounded and settled in the faith, all who are being created in Christ to do the good deeds our merciful and loving Father has prepared for us to do.

People freak out when I tell them that God rewards those who patiently do good with eternal life, but it is exactly what Paul said in Romans 2:7. People don’t believe Romans 2:6-7 because they don’t understand what it means to be a doer of righteousness and a doer of good works. To be a doer of righteousness and of good works is to be like David, Daniel, Job, and Noah, imperfect but wholly devoted to the Lord.

I have good friend who told me he could not listen to the things I was saying because if going to heaven had anything to do with works, he was doomed. Nonsense! He is one of the most righteous men I know. In fact, he is a lot like Job. He never lets a morning pass that he does not cry out for his children to know the Lord.

He sees his sins. I am sure he cries out with David, “Pardon my iniquities, for they are great.”

God, though, says that if a wicked man will repent and do good, he will forget all the wickedness that man has ever done (Ezek. 18:21-23). He’s not waiting to kill because someone sinned. He’s not looking at the blood of his Son, reminding himself that he slaughtered his Son so he could feel better. No, he’s waiting for you to come boldly to the Throne of Favor. He’s waiting for you to come reason together with him so that your sins of scarlet can become white as snow (Isa. 1:16-20).

Yes, God will by no means clear the guilty (Ex. 34:7), but let’s not be foolish about who the guilty are. The guilty are those who refuse to repent. It’s as simple as that because God says he is delaying Jesus’ return waiting for every last one who will repent to repent because he doesn’t want anyone to perish (2 Pet. 3:9).

God save us from the false Calvinist idea that you are a bloodthirsty God who will not forgive without killing! We repent and humble ourselves for insulting you with such talk when you created us out of your delight in us (Prov. 8:22-31), and loved us so much that you sent your Son to save us from our slavery to temptations of the world, the lusts of our body, and captivity to wicked spirits.

Posted in atonement, Bible, Dealing with Scripture Honestly, Evangelicals, Gospel, Modern Doctrines, Rebuilding the Foundations, Teachings that must not be lost, Verses Evangelicals Ignore | Tagged atonement, blood of jesus, day of atonement, doing righteuosness, heavenly temple, mercy of God, patiently continuing to do good, Throne of Favor, who is the righteous man | Leave a comment

I thought the retired pastors were motormouths, but they are actually gushing wells

Posted on 10/23/2025 by Paul Pavao

I go to a Wednesday morning Bible Study with three long-time pastors even older than I am. If you meet someone who just wrote a book, you will have trouble talking about anything other than the new book. In the same way, any verse we cover might elicit a sermon.

One of the pastors is the founder and leader of the Bible study, and it is right that he is the one talking the most, leading the discussion in the direction he wants it to go. When the other 2 began showing up, though (to my shame) I was a bit frustrated with the sudden small sermons that would burst forth. In the old days–the 1980s–there was a lot of Reformation tradition deeply entrenched in evangelical churches:

“If, in your investigation, you probe into the history and influence of Calvinism, you will discover that its doctrines have been incorporated into the majority of the great creeds of the Protestant churches” (The Five Points of Calvinism, David N. Steele & Curtis C. Thomas, Presbyterian & Reformed Pub. Co., 1963, p. 61).

I have spent a lot of my Christian life trying to refute these Reformation traditions because, supposedly, we want to follow and learn the words of God rather than the traditions of men. Thus, my initial reaction to these mini-sermons was to cringe at some of the old, set-in-stone, unbiblical traditions. It’s not even that I wanted to point them out and argue over them. I don’t enjoy angering a group of godly men even if I can solidly defend my position, and I have never seen good come from it. (I find it much better to teach on social media or with a book, allowing readers to quietly assess my arguments on their own with no pressure.)

After a few of those mini-sermons, and some stories in the midst of those, my perspective began to change. My eyes began to open, and their mini-sermons became windows into the past. I see so many things through those windows! Some take my breath away; some make me laugh.

These guys have fought the good fight for men’s souls and for discipleship. Sure, some false traditions were mixed in with the meat, but these guys are not the Pharisees that Jesus rebuked. These are seasoned warriors who have earned their retirement. Retirement for them means they don’t have to prepare a sermon every week (something I would never want to do), but although they don’t seem to ever quote Paul’s warnings (my frustration), they warn, urge, cajole, strengthen, and ooze from every pore the joy of the Word of the Lord and the effort to get men to share their joy.

My frustration has quickly changed to awe. When I say I “see” the wars they have fought and their new retired and wordy way of fighting the good fight, I mean literally see. It’s like looking down a long hallway and the battles, wounds, weariness, and triumphs are there, acted out and living like portraits in Hogwarts Castle.

Now when a mini-sermon starts, I snap to attention. I sit upright in my seat as the masters teach, mostly by their shining eyes and excited voice, and recount the deeds of the Lord.

They shall bubble over with the memory of Your abundant goodness And will shout joyfully of Your righteousness. (Ps. 145:7, NASB1995, using footnote)

Posted in Miscellaneous, missions, Modern Doctrines, Testimonies | Tagged old pastors | Leave a comment

Responsibility and Authority: What Others Won’t Tell You About Women in Ministry Roles

Posted on 10/21/2025 by Paul Pavao

The point of this post is to argue that the issue of women in ministry roles cannot be reasonably argued nor understood without understanding the connection between responsibility and authority. I apologize for the provocative title, but that is what gets attention in our modern setting.

I sent a text to the lead pastor in our church, supporting his decision about letting women teach from the pulpit. I think it is easier to post that text than try to write something different today:

“When I talk about men-women roles, I have found it helpful to tie authority to responsibility. Responsibility is first, then there is the authority necessary to fulfill the responsibility. What we are not overextending to women is responsibility and the weight of responsibility.

“The head of woman is man because he is to ensure that everyone in the family is fed, clothed, and in good health. Yes, the woman may do most of the work that ensures those needs are fulfilled, but if they are not, it is his responsibility to solve the problem.

“In the church, God has assigned the men, and especially the elders, to insure the church is fed, healthy, and defended. If a woman helps feed the flock, the pastor has done his job by ensuring the flock is fed and making sure the pulpit is not occupied by a wolf or heretic. None of our women should have the responsibility of choosing who is teaching because God will be angry with you (Pastor Matt), the elders, and all the men for dumping such a responsibility on them when, in fact, God has assigned that task to men and the elders, especially you. An elder guides the flock as one who gives account to God. You did not dump that responsibility on [the woman who taught the church yesterday]. You noticed her gift and wisely benefitted the people of God by allowing a gift, given by the Holy Spirit, to function in a way that, as best you could and with counsel, you determined would benefit the flock assigned to you.”

On Facebook this morning, I added:

“Authority is only given to humans because God has given them a responsibility, and they need the authority to fulfill the responsibility. When a man, but much preferably men, take over responsibility for a work, it is to take weight off womens’ shoulders. God’s order, men being the head of women, is so that men get slashed and gutted with swords, while the women are safe until the last man has fallen.

“We need to apply that spiritually as well. Men carry the weight so that women can thrive in what they do. We are not in the first century. Our women and educated in both the Scriptures and in earthly education. That does not mean I am going to dump the weight and responsibility of the church on them. According to Scripture, in my opinion, men are the ones called to bleed in battle. I think the truth about responsibility, authority, and women in the church has little to do with teaching. A woman, an experienced missionary, taught in our church this last Sunday, and the pastor is doing his job, carrying the responsibility and dealing with the arrows being shot at him over it, shielding her from having to face the flak. This allows her to operate in the gifts God has given her while under the supervision of the elders, for her own safety.”

Practical Comments (Stories)

I read last week that some group did a study on business leaders over 2 or 3 decades. The article did not address the whole study, but it did say that the one most effective thing that a leader can do for his company is put his people in the right positions.

Our elders have not turned over leadership of the church to women. I am not talking about lesser positions of authority. I hope we, as the men in the church, never do that. I would not consider that to be freeing or enabling women, but dumping responsibility on them that they are not called to bear, but …

In my 20s I was part of a small home church (regular attendance: 8 adults). One of our members, though, was friends with a woman in the Dominican Republic who had started 7 churches. Her name was Mercedes, and she was married to a German man. Our house church was in Germany. All four men were in the military and assigned there. On a trip home to see the husband’s family, Mercedes was asked to come teach our home church.

I was blessed by the teaching, which was mostly inspired by Watchman Nee (I think), but afterward I just had to ask her about 1 Timothy 2:11-12. I asked privately and with respect, not combatively. She said, and I quote, “Paul was saying,” then she paused for a few seconds. Then, emphatically, “I don’t know what Paul was saying; I wish he had never said that!!”

It was the most delightful answer to a question I have heard in my Christian life. That was just about 40 years ago, and I can feel the joy to this day.

I’m not sure why I was so delighted, but I think it was both her honesty … and God’s delight.

In conversation over the 2 or 3 days she was there, she told me about the problems of establishing a church. She told me that the most important thing to know was that God would send people that I would not like. They would be gifted, obviously Christian, but socially intolerable, exceptionally annoying. Planting a church is pretty much the messiest, most patience-trying thing I would ever do as a Christian.

Now, I have never planted a church. I have learned over 40 years that this is OBVIOUSLY not my calling. I did, however, help someone else start a church, and he completely freaked out because he had not been prepared by Mercedes. He bailed out on what we were trying to do and chose instead to contact an institutional church to ordain him so he could have authority over the problem people.

He also had to run me off because I would not do it with him. His last explanation was telling: “I know you could build a church with me in the pews, but I can’t build one with you in the pew because, even silent, you would influence everyone.”

Wow!

Thank you, Mercedes!

Posted in Dealing with Scripture Honestly, Miscellaneous, Modern Doctrines | Tagged don't lead like the Gentiles, I do not allow a woman to have authority over a man, I do not allow a woman to teach, It shall not be so among you, man is the head of woman, responsibility and authority, women in leadership, women teaching | Leave a comment

Understanding the Trinity: How Proverbs 8:22-31 Harmonizes Scripture and Personalizes Creation

Posted on 10/18/2025 by Paul Pavao

Scripture quotes today are from the ESV, which was an accident. Usually I use the World English Bible because it is not copyrighted. Lately, though I have been reading the ESV, and I forgot to switch my Bible app back to the WEB.

Proverbs 8:22-31 is possibly the best guide to understanding the Trinity that there is, but it is sadly forbidden to us because it was misused by one Bible school that left the church in Antioch around 1,750 years ago. In this post, I hope to give you back the loveliness and the harmonization of Scripture that Proverbs 8:22-31 provides. If you want to read the whole passage first, just hover your mouse over the Scripture reference.

Note: Arius is famously known as the arch-heretic who denied Jesus was God and then was later refuted and condemned at the Council of Nicea. Arius did not come up with his heresy on his own, but was taught at a school that was led by Lucian and left the church in Antioch (or was possibly excommunicated), but returned to the church after 15 or 20 years. Lucian was martyred in AD 312 and has gone down in history as the holy man he probably was, but his role as founder and teacher of possibly the largest and most damaging heresy in history has been virtually forgotten. In my book, Decoding Nicea, I had to piece together the story from many sources, but you can read about him at ChristianHistoryInstitute.org.

After Arius used Proverbs 8:22 to argue that the Son of God was created in the same way as everything and everyone else, and was condemned at the Council of Nicea, the churches slowly stopped applying the whole passage, verses 22-30, to the birth (the begetting, in old English) of the Son of God in eternity past. Forsaking Scripture because a heretic misused it, however, is never a good idea.

Today, the Trinity is a horribly confusing doctrine, and there are even Scriptures that seem to deny it, saying that only the Father is God (e.g., Jn. 17:3; 1 Cor. 8:6; 1 Tim. 2:5).

Today, we (you and I) are going to use Proverbs 8:22-31 to defend the Trinity as it was taught by the apostles, and I am going to do my best to express the thrill and loveliness I feel when I read it.

As I proceeded, I realized I need to defend the truth that Proverbs 8:22-31 is describing our Lord Jesus. If you don’t need that defense, jump down to The Majesty and Beauty of Proverbs 8:22-31.

Proverbs 8:22-31 Is Spoken by the Son of God

Let’s first dispense with the most obvious objection to Proverbs 8:22-31 having anything to do with the Trinity: the passage is talking about Wisdom, and Wisdom is a “she” in Proverbs.

English is one of the only Western languages that does not use gender in referring to objects. For example, in both German and Spanish, coffee is masculine, and a coffee cup is feminine. In both languages, you are pouring him into her. Even more objectionable to English-speakers, a wife is feminine in German, but a maiden is neuter. She is an “it.”

That is not a result of misogyny (being against women), but of grammar. All nouns have gender in most languages. It has nothing to do with whether the items seem more feminine or masculine or neuter. It is ancient grammar structure beyond my knowledge of history and is true of both Greek and Hebrew (but see here and here).

That said, Wisdom is not a woman in Hebrew, it is simply a feminine-gender noun in exactly the same way that Mädchen and Fräulein are neuter in German or a cup is feminine in Spanish.

I am about to explain the Trinity using Proverbs 8:22. The people who first learned and knew about the Trinity were the apostles. The apostles went into the Roman Empire teaching the Scriptures in Greek because that was the lingua franca of the Roman Empire, the language learned by all societies so they could communicate with one another. Therefore, we are going to look at Proverbs 8:22 in Greek, from the Septuagint.

The Lord created me the beginning of his ways for his works.

That’s scary, isn’t it? It’s no wonder that Arius used this verse because his argument was that the Son of God was created.

It’s not scary, and it wasn’t scary in the fourth-century, either. Arius’ heresy was not the product of misreading Scripture, but the product of obstinance and arrogance. He knew the answers to his own argument as well as anyone, but he loved feeling important. That is the way of most heretics (cf. Rom. 16:17-18).

Here is the refutation of Arius’ position from Eusebius the historian (in the AD 320s):

Although it is once said in Scripture, “The Lord created me the beginning of his ways on account of his works” [Prov. 8:22] yet it would do us well to consider the meaning of the phrase and not … jeopardize the most important doctrine of the church from a single passage! … For although [the Scripture] says that he was created, it is not as if he were saying that he had arrived at existence from what did not exist, nor that he was made of nothing like the rest of the creatures. (cited from Eusebius’s Against Marcellus by The Ecclesiastical History of Socrates Scholasticus, c. 440)

I think it is probable that only scholars understand the meaning of “the substance of God,” a phrase found in the Nicene Creed. The Creed is saying that the Son of God is made of whatever “stuff” God is made of, not “matter,” the stuff that we, spiritual beings, ants, and dirt are made of:

The multitude, who cannot distinguish between matter and God, or see how great is the interval which lies between them, pray to idols made of matter. … we … distinguish and separate the uncreated and the created, that which is and that which is not, that which is apprehended by the understanding and that which is perceived by the senses, and [we] give the fitting name to each of them … they are at the greatest possible remove from one another, as far asunder as the artist and the materials of his art. (Athenagoras, c. AD 170-180, “A Plea for the Christians,” ch. 15)

In other words, the problem was not that Arius said the Son of God was created, but that he claimed the Son of God was created like the rest of us. There is a great divide between the potter and his pot, and so there is a great divide between God and his handiwork. In God’s case, the Artist is uncreated and eternal, while his art, us, is created and corruptible.

The early churches normally used begotten, generated, or emitted in describing how God could possibly have a Son, a concept far beyond anything we can comprehend.

Don’t let anyone think it ridiculous that God should have a Son. … The Son of God is the Logos [Greek for “Word,” as in Jn. 1:1] of the Father … He is the first product of the Father, not as though he was being brought into existence, for from the beginning God, who is the eternal Mind, had the Logos in himself. (A Plea for the Christians 10)

The churches did understand one thing, no matter what word you used, even “created,” from Proverbs 8:22, the Son came from God, not matter. The Son was “made of” the uncreated substance of God. What is uncreated is eternal by definition. The Son is of the substance of God, not matter, and therefore his very being is uncreated and eternal. The substance of God is not divisible into two entities, so although God has chosen to communicate with us through his Word, the Son, there is but one indivisible substance, one uncreated divinity, which joins them both as one.

I have a lot more early quotes like the ones above on my website and in Decoding Nicea.

The Majesty and Beauty of Proverbs 8:22-31

The passage begins with Wisdom, that is, God’s Son speaking as the Wisdom of God sent to earth, letting us know that

Yahweh created me the beginning of his ways for his works. (Prov. 8:22)

It is impossible that the Hebrews did not know that there was a Messenger from God who was not human, not merely angelic, but somehow God himself. Samson’s parents received a message that they would have a son from someone they both called “a man of God,” but as soon as that man ascended into heaven in a flame, they knew whom they’d seen and they fell to the ground.

Then Manoah knew that he was the angel of the Lord. And Manoah said to his wife, “We shall surely die, for we have seen God.” (Judges 13:21-22)

Notice that Manoah not only knew that the man was not a man, but the Messenger of the Lord (“Messenger” is the correct translation of the Hebrew and Greek words normally transliterated as “angel.”). He also knew that the Messenger of the Lord was divine, was God. In the same way, in Genesis, chapters 18 & 19, Abraham had no problem with the idea that 1 of the 3 men/messengers that visited him was Yahweh, the God of Israel. Moses had no problem describing that incident as Yahweh, the One who had just talked to Abraham and was still on earth, raining fire down on Sodom from Yahweh in heaven (Genesis 19:24).

That is the same Yahweh that spoke Proverbs 8:22 and is introducing himself to the human race, letting us know just who he is!

Note: If you really want to bust the chops of the next Jehovah’s Witness that knocks on your door, show them Zechariah 2:8-11. Everyone shows them John 1:1 and Genesis 19:24, but they almost never see Zechariah 2:8-11 where, in their New World Translation, Jehovah of Hosts says he was sent by Jehovah of Hosts several times.

In early Christian terminology, the Word of God was telling all of us that the very first thing God ever did, before all creation, was birth/beget/emit/make him–not anew as though he had never existed, but out of his own bosom, not from outside of God, but from inside of God–as “the beginning of his ways,” to be beside him in his works.

Before all things God was alone … He was alone because there was nothing external to him except himself. Yet even then he was not alone,for he had with him that which he possessed in himself, that is to say, his own Reason [Tertullian, writing in Latin, translated the Greek “Logos” as “Reason” rather than “Word.” (Tertullian, c. AD 200-210, Against Praxeas 5)

You’ll love the Greek translation of Psalm 45:1 that the apostles used: “My heart has emitted a good Word.” They understood that to mean that the only-begotten Son was begotten by being emitted from God’s heart.

So, our passage begins with the Word, the Messenger and Wisdom of God, saying, “I was brought forth by God for his works.” I’ll put Proverbs 8:23-31 here so you can bask in the picture of what he meant by “for his works.”

He established me before time in the beginning, before he made the earth: even before he made the depths; before the fountains of water came forth: before the mountains were settled, and before all hills, he begets me. The Lord made countries and uninhabited spaces and the habitable heights of the world. When he prepared the heaven, I was present with him; and when he prepared his throne upon the winds: and when he strengthened the clouds above; and when he secured the fountains of the earth: decree. and when he strengthened the foundations of the earth: I was by him, suiting , I was that wherein he took delight; and daily I rejoiced in his presence continually. For he rejoiced when he had completed the world, and rejoiced among the children of men. (Brenton’s 1851 Septuagint translation, highlight mine)

Notice that Wisdom does not just say God made him, but in verse 25, he equates that with “begets me.” Eusebius was right in condemning Arius for using one word in one verse to jeopardize the most important doctrine in the Church. Whatever the word we use, “The Word” is divine, uncreated, eternal, and without beginning since he was always in the bosom of the Father.

But let me not wander too long into the intellectual things I live in so much. We may love the description of God’s great acts of creation in Genesis 1-3, but we should also love the very personal perception of creation in Proverbs 8:22-31.

I picture, symbolically and not literally, God squatting to form mountains and rivers with his hands, pouring sand around the edges of the soon-to-be inhabited earth to stop the oceans from wearing down the coast. He is looking at the earth with his Son at hand, working together, carving out our living space, but much more, he rejoiced among the children of men.

You can’t get everything out of Proverbs 8:22-31 just with that sentence, that God and Jesus rejoiced among the sons and daughters of Adam., but you can use it as the background for God making the depths, bringing forth the waters, and settling the mountains. He was doing it for us.

Try reading Proverbs 8:22-31 in your favorite translation. You don’t need the Septuagint. Read it, though, as the Son rejoicing over and delighting in us as he works with his Father to form every beauty, every useful thing, and everything that inspires awe … all for us.

As an interesting addition, Charles Darwin pointed out that the function of the beauty of plants and trees is not to please us, but to attract insects for pollination. Without insects, he wrote, the beauty of flowers would not exist. Later, Darwin would turn away from God, probably more because of the death of his 9-year-old daughter than his theory of natural selection, but I hope that we know that the function of one aspect of creation may or may not have to with the purpose of God’s creation. The fact that the flower exists to allure insects does not mean that God was not using both the bees and the trees to show us beauty. In fact, Jesus later used flowers for a lesson far something greater than beauty. If God took the time to create the flowers we so admire, but which perish quickly, how much more is his attention focused on the children of Adam in whom he was delighting even as he was forming the earth (Matt. 6:28-30).

Oh, I promised to say something about the harmonization of Scripture!

How Proverbs 8:22-31 Helps Harmonize Scriptures About the Trinity

We like to describe the Trinity as “God the Father, God the Son, and God the Holy Spirit,” but such terminology is never found in Scripture. Instead, the Trinity in Scripture is defined as God, Lord, and Spirit (e.g. Eph. 4:4-6; 2 Cor. 13:14) or Father, Son, and Spirit (e.g., Matt. 28:19).

In John 17:3, Jesus calls the Father the one true God. That is at least partly because he was living on earth in the flesh at the time, but 1 Corinthians 8:6, after Jesus ascended to the right hand of the Father, says there is but one God, the Father, and there is one Lord, Jesus Christ.

That sort of terminology is consistent in Scripture. Passages referring to Jesus as God are the exception, though we must not forget that the plainest reading of Revelation 1:8, in context, is that Jesus is calling himself almighty God. Nonetheless, how do we explain the passages saying that the Son is sitting at the right hand of God the Father, while we never find a verse saying that the Father is sitting at the left hand of God the Son.

More that 1800 years ago a lawyer from Carthage, a Christian, explained:

I shall follow the apostle [Paul], so that if the Father and the Son are alike to be invoked, I shall call the Father “God” and invoke Jesus Christ as “Lord.” But when Christ alone [is invoked], I shall be able to call him “God.” As the same apostle says, “Of whom is Christ, who is over all, God blessed forever” [Rom. 9:5]. For I should give the name of “sun” even to a sunbeam, considered by itself. But if I were mentioning the sun from which the ray emanates, I would certainly withdraw the name of sun from the mere beam. For although I do not make two suns, still I shall reckon both the sun and its ray to be as much two things—and two forms of one undivided substance—as God and his Word, as the Father and the Son. (Tertullian, c. AD 200 -210, Against Praxeas 13)

A similar analogy is used by many early Christian authors. God is like a spring, and both the Spirit and the Son are like streams that flows from the spring. The spring and the stream are two things, but there in only one undivided substance in both, water. The spring and the stream are two, but the water is one. God and his Son are two, but the undivided substance–eternal, uncreated divinity–is one.

To this day, the Orthodox Church explains that the Father is called the one God in Scripture because he is the source of the Trinity, the Son begotten of him, the Spirit proceeding from him (thus their furious reaction, and subsequent division from the Roman Catholics, to the pope adding “… who proceeds from the Father and the Son” to the Apostles Creed).

This was difficult to write. I pray it benefits you.

Posted in Dealing with Scripture Honestly, Early Christianity, History, Modern Doctrines, Teachings that must not be lost | Tagged begotten before the beginning, Colossians 1:15, eternally begotten, firstborn over all creation, God and matter, John 1:1-3, monogenes, only-begotten, Proverbs 8:22-31, Trinity, undivided substance of God | 2 Comments

Prophecy Watchers Conference: The Rapture, the First Resurrection, and the Problem with the Pre-Trib View

Posted on 10/12/2025 by Paul Pavao

I am at a “Prophecy Watchers” conference in Norman, OK. I am going to make a strong effort not to personally insult or slander any of the people at this conference. Both speakers and attendees appear to be among the most zealous Christians I have ever met.

As for the saints who are in the earth,
they are the excellent ones in whom is all my delight. (Ps. 16:3)

I detest Calvinism and find it both unbiblical and insulting to God. Nonetheless, Calvinists like Georg Whitfield, Charles Spurgeon, John Piper, Paul Washer, and others are or were more devoted and holy before the Lord than I have been. With John Wesley, I have to say that I won’t see those guys in heaven because they will be far closer to the throne than I will be in the great multitude of those ransomed by the blood of the Lamb.

The last couple days I have been indulging some excellent ones in whom is all my delight as they pass on ignorance and foolishness to hundreds.

First, their absolute certainty about a 7-year tribulation coming is astonishing by itself, but they are just as certain that the rapture, the “catching away” described at the end of 1 Thessalonians 4, will happen before that tribulation. This is a rousing “we pre-tribbers are right and no one can possibly doubt it” conference.

Second, the conference began with an important speech in which the speaker warned everyone at the conference that the date-setters have a historical accuracy rate of 0.0000% exactly. Nonetheless, at one session, the speaker began by asking who believes that this is the last generation. Every hand went up except one (guess who?).

The speaker wasn’t even going to ask who didn’t believe that, but he caught himself, chuckled, and asked, “Who doesn’t believe that.” I shot my hand up, but he wasn’t even looking. He was already back to staring at his notes, knowing no one was foolish enough to think there was any possibility that society as we know it would be around in 2065 (a generation from now in biblical terms).

I have only two things I want to share about this conference, then an interesting 3rd point not necessarily on the subject of this conference:

The Rapture Is a Resurrection

Most Christians, in my experience, don’t think about the rapture as a resurrection. “The dead in Christ will rise first,” however, is a resurrection by definition.

This is a problem for the end-time understanding of everyone, or almost everyone, at this conference. They all believe there will be a 7-year tribulation in which the mark of the Beast will be forced upon everyone who wants to be able to buy or sell. In Revelation 20, however, we read that those who rejected the Beast and didn’t receive his mark lived and reigned with Christ for a thousand years (“the millennium”). This, says John the Revelator, was the first resurrection.

The first resurrection is of saints who reject the Beast and his mark, and their resurrection marks the start of the millennium. If it is the first, there can be no resurrection before. The rapture is a resurrection and, thus, cannot happen until after the first resurrection.

This destroys their whole timeline.

There may be a lot of evidence for a pre-tribulation rapture, but you can’t ignore a plain teaching in Scripture even if you have lots brilliant but not certain verses backing up your theological position.

Excursus on Ignoring Bible Verses

This sort of abuse of the Bible bothers me to no end, which is why a lot of mainline denominations and their members are bothered by my teaching. Salvation has nothing to do with works, they say over and over and over and over again, at this conference, at every other conference, from pulpits, and at coffee shop Bible studies.

I repeatedly respond with Romans 2:6-7; Galatians 6:7-9; and Ephesians 5:5-7. They repeatedly tell me that Romans 2:6-7 doesn’t mean what it says. This tells me they are misinterpreting the rest of Romans 2, which is confirmed by the fact that everyone knows what Romans 6:23 says, but no one knows what Romans 6:22 says. Both talk about eternal life, but we don’t like what Romans 6:22 says about it.

Not only that, but Romans 2:6-7 and Romans 6:22 are wickedly confusing. They contradict most of what the apostle John says (but none of what the other NT writers say). We have to ask why John says we have eternal life now and by faith only because he seems to contradict every other NT writer by saying it.

No one is doing that, however, because they’re happy to ignore verses and never look at how Paul uses eternal life and how it is different from John. Instead, Paul doesn’t mean what he says in a plain, simple-to-understand way in Romans 2:6-7. That is perfectly acceptable, while explaining where John and Paul intersect and agree (at John 5:28-29), then giving a perfectly reasonable explanation of their differing uses of eternal life will get you cold-shouldered out of churches and Bible studies.

Rant over. Back to the 70th week of Daniel.

Daniel’s 70th Week

The argument that Daniel’s 70th week (Dan. 9:24-27) is in the future seems reasonable to me. It is this conference, where everyone believes that Daniel’s 70th week is future, that suggested to me that the 70th week is not future.

One of the speakers claimed that the early church fathers wrote about a pre-tribulation rapture. This is not true. Recently I edited a book for a friend that argues for a pre-tribulation rapture. He had quotes from early Christians about 1 Thessalonians 4:16-17 indicating they believed in the rapture just as explained in those two verses.

I didn’t remember where those passages were, though I must have read them because I read all the church fathers through and including Cyprian of Carthage in the AD 250s, twice. I looked them up and found out the reason those mentions of the rapture didn’t stand out. As pointed out earlier, they knew the rapture was a resurrection, and for them the rapture was simply the prelude to the final judgment.

That may seem strange, but they understood that the rapture and the final resurrection were the same thing. The saints will meet Jesus in the air so they can be part of his triumphal final return as described by Enoch and quoted in Jude 1:14-15:

Behold, the Lord came with ten thousands of his holy ones, to execute judgment on all, and to convict all the ungodly of all their works of ungodliness which they have done in an ungodly way, and of all the hard things which ungodly sinners have spoken against him.

Another speaker said that Daniel’s 70 weeks are obviously not fulfilled yet because Daniel 9:23-25 has not happened yet. The things in those verses are:

“finish the transgression” and put an end to sin.
atone for iniquity
bring in everlasting righteousness
seal both vision and prophet
anoint a most holy place

He was reading from the KJV, not the ESV I just quoted, but I checked and they’re not different on this. Either way, Jesus did do all these things, in the past:

Hebrews 9:26 says Jesus appeared (past tense) once at the end of time to cancel sin.
Everyone agrees Jesus already atoned for iniquity, but see Titus 2:13-14 for passage saying so.
Jesus established righteousness by his life, his death, and his resurrection. Romans 5:19 says Jesus, by his obedience, has made (past tense) many righteous. Surely we all know that we have entered into an everlasting righteousness that will continue into the next age, except that in the next age, there will be no temptation from our bodies nor from spiritual wickedness in heavenly places.
2 Peter 1:19 says we have the word of prophecy made sure, i.e. sealed. What the prophets foresaw, the apostles saw and experienced, which is why prophecy was “made sure.”
All of Hebrews 9 and 10 are about anointing the Holy Place. The high priests brought blood into the the temple that was a replica of the temple in the heavens. Jesus brought his own blood, once for all anointing and cleansing the heavenly temple so that we can come boldly into it to obtain mercy and favor to help in time of need (Heb. 4:16; notice the difference between mercy and favor [grace] in that verse.)

The early Christians had a much different view of what the faith is. For them the faith already meant tribulation and martyrdom. Revelation 3:10, where Jesus promises to protect the Philadelphians from the trial coming on the whole earth, was almost surely about the Domitian prosecution that happened in 95-96, or an even previous one in AD 81.

They also fully understood that Jesus did all of the things mentioned in Daniel 9. They believed they were already living in a kingdom that will never end. One day, we will be resurrected into the same kingdom, but without the natural body and its desires, without the devil and his temptations, and with unhindered, face-to-face access to God and the Lamb.

Addendum: The Nephilim and the Rebellion of 1/3 of the Angels

A speaker mentioned in passing what all Christians seem to believe nowadays, that there was a rebellion in heaven before the creation of humans, Lucifer leading 1/3 of the angels. This, we say, is where the demons came from.

I am not sure where this ridiculous legend came from, but the only passage to support it is in Revelation 12, where the dragon throws down 1/3 of the stars. I have never understood why anyone would think this happened before the creation of man because the context gives no indication of that event being in the past.

That’s not the point of this addendum, though. Instead, I thought that most people familiar with the teachings of the late Dr. Michael Heiser would know that the demons came from the spirits of the nephilim, the half-angel (more accurately, half-messenger or half-watcher) children of the “Watchers” (Book of Enoch) that had children with human woman as mentioned in Genesis 6.

I originally found out about this origin of the demons from Justin Martyr’s Apology (c. AD 150). I was stunned when I was first reading through the early Christian writings to read, “The demons are the spirits of dead men.” Whaaat!!!

I found out from others about the Book of Enoch (or 1 Enoch), which I absolutely do not believe was written by Enoch, but the early Christians did. It says that God destroyed the nephilim, the children of the “sons of God” in Genesis 6, and did not allow their spirits to have rest. He consigned them to roam the earth forever. This would explain why the legion of demons in the demoniac in Mark 5 did not want to leave the region. They probably had lived their while still alive.

That’s a lot to take in, but it is the most reasonable reading of the passages about giants in the Bible. My point, though, is that people consumed with the Nephilim, like most of these conference teachers are, would know that the story of Lucifer throwing down 1/3 of the angels in the past is non-biblical.

Apparently not. The last speaker last night mentioned the demons being from the angels that fell with Satan in the beginning, just in passing, as though everyone agreed with that idea.

I hope you got something out of this!

Posted in Dealing with Scripture Honestly, Early Christianity, Far-fetched, Miscellaneous | Tagged Daniel's 70th week, end times, nephilim, pre-tribulation rapture, the rapture is a resurrection | Leave a comment

Not a few good men, but a righteous people, zealous for good works

Posted on 10/05/2025 by Paul Pavao

“Save, O Lord, for the godly one is gone; for the faithful have vanished from among the children of man. Everyone utters lies to his neighbor …” (Ps. 12:1-2)

Just like when we speak, “everyone” rarely means everyone in the Bible. Two psalms later, David says there is none who does good (14:1). Part of what they do wrong, though, is eat up God’s people (v. 4). In verse 5 David announces that God is with the generation of the righteous, and you can see from many of his Psalms that he regards himself as among the righteous, not among the “none who does good.”

In Romans 3, Paul is not trying to say that no one has ever done any good; he is telling the Jews that they are as bad as the Gentiles in disobeying God, often being so bad that they run to shed blood. You can see this in verse 19, which says, “We know that whatever the law says it speaks to those who are under the law.” In other words, this passage I just quoted from Psalm 14 is about you Jews, not the Gentiles. The law is not making you any more righteous than other nations because righteousness doesn’t come from the law but from faith in God.

Ezekiel 14 tells us twice that Daniel, Noah, and Job were righteous. They were not among the none who do good, nor were Joseph, nor the Rechabites (Jer. 35).
We teach some nonsense as Biblical truth, and even as foundational biblical truth. Jesus’ came because God was not looking for “a few good men,” but for a righteous people, zealous for good works (Tit. 2:11-15).

Posted in Dealing with Scripture Honestly, Evangelicals, Modern Doctrines, Uncategorized | Tagged and Job, Daniel, Everyone has sinned, Noah, Rechabites, righteous men, Romans 3, there is none righteous | 7 Comments

The Making of a Maverick: My Militant Quest for Theological Honesty

Posted on 09/27/2025 by Paul Pavao

This is an answer to an email that was sent to me by a lady that found Christian-history.org and sent me some brilliant questions before beginning to read my articles.

Those are interesting questions. My general intent is to simply report, but I allow myself to express my opinion, especially if I consider the subject important. A few articles are written polemically. For example, https://www.christian-history.org/orthodox-church-icons.html argues against the practice of venerating icons. As an interesting aside, my article addresses the primary argument from the Second Council of Nicea in 787, and I only found out afterward that even some Orthodox apologists don’t know that the council focused on the difference between the Greek words proskuneo and lutreia.

I have to address the term “without bias” as well. When I was first a Christian, I was in a city that was very active religiously. When I was on the streets witnessing I met Jehovah’s Witnesses and members of the Way International. At Bible studies and Christian music night at the skating rink, I met people from other denominations. I was only 2 months old in the Lord when my favorite person at the Assembly of God church, a deacon and Sunday school teacher, was converted to Independent Baptist and disappeared from the church without telling anyone. The issues were eternal security and speaking in tongues.

Nine months into my Christian life, the military sent me to a remote station in Alaska. I found 5 or 6 guys there who were excited about Jesus, but they were all from different denominational backgrounds. It was only about 6 weeks before our tiny Bible study split apart over doctrinal arguments.

At that point I determined to start over in my studies. I struggled to read the Bible “without bias,” and not choose Assembly of God doctrines over others. It was a difficult thing to do, but I was reading the Bible voraciously. Slowly, one idea became clear, then another, and finally I realized just how much modern Christians pit one verse against another. One would pitch their lose-your-salvation verses, and the other would pitch their eternal-security verses. It were as though they believed the Bible contradicted itself and whoever found the most or clearest verses could safely ignore the contradicting ones.

I found a different way. If there was even one verse that contradicted a doctrine, and I could not include it in a reasonable way, I took an “I don’t know” position on the doctrine. For example, I rejected eternal security because there are a lot of verses directly warning Christians that the doctrine is not true and even telling us not to be deceived by the idea (e.g., Eph. 5:5-7; Gal..6:7-9). However, any time I discussed this with people, I would point out that I had no good explanation for 1 John 2:19. It sounds like eternal security. Nonetheless, it was one verse, and questionable enough in context and interpretation, that I felt comfortable passing on the warnings of Scripture and heeding the warnings not to be deceived into thinking I would “go to heaven” (not a biblical term; the apostles use “inherit the kingdom”) apart from living righteously.

So here’s my question, if I write against eternal security, am I writing with a bias? I don’t think so. I think that if I teach that the sky is blue under most circumstances (unless you live in London or Seattle), I am writing without bias, and if anyone denies that the sky is generally blue, they are irrational; it is not bias to report the truth even if the ignorant deny it.

The result of this approach to the Bible was that for 6 years I told people I could not explain the seeming contradiction between Ephesians 2:8-9 and Ephesians 5:3-7. What happened, though, is that when I found out about the early church fathers and began reading them, I realized that I had drawn many of the same conclusions, just from the Bible, that they taught. Moreover, while they argued from the Scriptures for their doctrines, they did not claim to have learned them from the Scriptures, but to have received them and passed them down from the apostles.

I feel, then, that when I take a stand on something, I am not being biased, but instead reporting on something that has much support from Scripture, no reasonable contradiction in Scripture, and is supported by those who claimed to have learned it from the apostles (and lived before the Council of Nicea in 325, when the government got involved in Christian doctrine. If anything I write does not have that kind of support, I let it be known in the article.

That all may be more than what you wanted to know, but it is what I offer as a writer. In my experience, there are only a few willing to be that radical–that honest?–with their own beliefs. Saying that, though, I should add that the scholarly practice of writing in scholarly journals to be reviewed and accepted or rejected by other scholars … that practices forces the same kind of honesty, so a lot can be learned from the highest echelons of scholarship. The reverse of that is that I fear for the average person who attends seminary or Bible college. These often teach the kind of bias that allows a Christian to ignore contradicting verses or explain them away with unlikely, or even foolish, explanations. Not only that, but they reinforce the bias with a feeling of scholarship because they have a degree and their implausible explanations sound more plausible because they are trained in defending them.

Sorry this is so long, but here are two final example of scholarly but outrageous explaining away of verses: Acts 2:38 and 22:16. Greek scholars who hold to the unscriptural and non-historic teaching that baptism is a symbolic public expression of faith argue that Acts 2:38 can be translated as “be baptized because of the remission of sins.” What is true is that in rare circumstances, the Greek eis can be translated “because of,” but it is obviously not so in Acts 2:38, which is the reason no Bible version translates it that way. Then there is Acts 22:16 where some argue that when Paul arose and was baptized, washing away his sins, and calling on the name of the Lord, that he arose and was baptized, which had nothing to do with washing away his sins, but calling on the Lord did. Pastors aren’t embarrassed to say something that ludicrous because they have seminary support in saying it. Search the Scriptures, and see if there is even one verse that supports their teaching that baptism is purely symbolic. 1 Corinthians 1:18 is the only verse in the Bible that can be twisted into supporting that idea, yet it is the primary teaching in evangelical circles. So sad.

Finally (again, sorry) is the troublesome but true idea that God doesn’t seem to care much about doctrinal accuracy, but supports anyone who will love him with all their heart, mind, soul, and strength and love like Jesus loved. It is only troublesome because I think God gave me the gift of seeing these things and loving truth and accuracy, but part of the gift of honesty is to be honest about fruit, which Jesus said to judge by, as well as be honest with Scripture. I have to honor whom God honors but also stand for the truth of Scripture even with those who seem to be honored by God, people who are strong in love and good works yet maintain humility. That’s a delicate and difficult balance.

I pray all that was interesting and, even better, edifying.

Posted in Bible, Dealing with Scripture Honestly, Early Christianity, Evangelicals, Far-fetched, Modern Doctrines, Rebuilding the Foundations, Roman Catholic & Orthodox, Unity, Verses Evangelicals Ignore | Tagged accurate doctrine, early church fathers, honest bible interpretation, sound doctrine, theological maverick, true doctrines, water baptism | Leave a comment

Deuteronomy 15, John Chrysostom, and Why the Rich Need the Poor!

Posted on 09/16/2025 by Paul Pavao

This morning I read in Deuteronomy 15:4 that God promised that there would be no poor among the Israelites when God gave them the promised land. Moses then spends two paragraph-long verses just how prosperous Israel would be if they obey God.

Then, in verse 7, he tells them what to do if one of their brothers is a poor man! In verse 10, he tells them, “You shall surely give,” and in verse 11 the reason they shall surely give is because “the poor will never cease out of the land”!!

I doubt seriously that Moses had already forgotten verse 4 by the time he wrote verse 11. I understand that most scholars believe the books of Moses were edited during the captivity in Babylon. Surely and editor would never miss an author contradicting himself on a short essay.

The answer to this seeming contradiction is that Israel was meant to be a family under God. Deuteronomy 15:7 specifies that a brother is the poor man.

No one would be poor in Israel because the rich would take care of the poor! Even if there were no fabulously wealthy Israelites to personally help the poor, whole cities are commanded to tithe to the benefit of the widows, poor, and Levites in Deuteronomy 14, just one chapter earlier. For two year, once per year, families would bring their tithes to Jerusalem for a week-long feast, and they were instructed to bring the poor and the Levites with them. The third year, they didn’t go anywhere; they just gave the tithe to the poor and Levites.

Interestingly enough, 2 Corinthians 9 describes the churches actually doing this. Rather than a tithe, each person gave as they felt they should give, without compulsion, though Paul strongly urged them to be generous. In that chapter, Paul was collecting money from Grecians (Philippi, Corinth, etc.) and Galatians to help the Jerusalem church because of a famine.

That continued for much longer than you might think. Around AD 150, a Christian wrote:

We who valued above all things the acquisition of wealth and possessions now bring what we have into a common stock and share with every one in need. We who hated and destroyed one another and would not live with men of a different tribe because of their different customs now, since the coming of Christ, share the same fire with them. (Justin Martyr, First Apology 14)

Around AD 200:

Or maybe it is that the family possessions, which generally destroy brotherhood among you, create fraternal bonds among us. One in mind and soul, we do not hesitate to share our earthly goods with one another. All things are common among us but our wives. (Tertullian, Apology 39)

Around AD 400:

God hath made thee rich, why makest thou thyself poor? He hath made thee rich that thou mayest assist the needy; that thou mayest have release of thine own sins, by liberality to others. He hath given thee money, not that thou mayest shut it up for thy destruction, but that thou mayest pour it forth for thy salvation. (John Chrysostom) *see not at bottom

This post is not a complaint. I live in Northwest Arkansas, near Bentonville, Walmart’s central location. So many people work there that if you ask a person where he or she works, and they work at Walmart, you will very likely hear, “I work at a local retail store.” There are a lot of wealthy people around here, and I would guess that the free meals offered to the poor are the best you will find anywhere in the United States.

Not everyone can be helped, but for those seeking help, churches (and WalMart, which pays employees $10/hour for volunteering for charities in their off-time) pour money into the various charities around here. Both those who give and those less financially fortunate pour time into both helping people with addictions and even finding people with addiction to see if they are willing to be helped. It is truly awesome.

This is a simple teaching. God’s plan for Israel was that he would prosper them as a whole so that if they took care of their brothers, and their brothers’ families, there would not be a poor person among them.

I encourage all churches to teach their people how to make sure that there is no poor among you.

Don’t forget that riches are dangerous. Jesus calls them deceitful, and says they can choke out the word of God in your life (Matt. 13:22). Paul says that those determined to be rich “fall into a temptation, a snare, and many foolish and harmful lusts, such as drown men in ruin and destruction” (1 Tim. 6:9). Yikes!

It is so hard for a rich person to enter God’s kingdom that Jesus compared it to trying to put a rope through a needle! (Matt. 19:24; ancient Syriac manuscripts have “rope” rather than “camel”; the two words are very similar in Aramaic and ancient Syrian).

So let’s follow Chrysostom’s advice, and the example of so many here in NW Arkansas and pour out our money on the poor for our salvation!

Lots of prosperity preachers say you’ll be blessed with money if you give them money, but it is much better to give your money to the poor than the rich. Giving for the support and mission of your local church is great because many do good, but giving to people who are persuading you to be determined to be rich will drown you in ruin and destruction!

Yeah. God promises to pay back the ones who have pity on the poor (Prov. 19:17), not the charlatans that trick you into thinking Jesus wants you rich in earthly treasures that will actually steal your heart away from him (Matt. 6:19-21).

*I had a whale of a time finding a link to John Chrysostom’s original quote. My link is to a chapter in The Nicene and Post Nicene Father, second series, volume 9, and Homily 2. However, that Homily 2 is a subset of sermons in Antioch on statues. There are other Homily 2’s in that volume, and Chrysostom’s writings consume 6 volumes all by themselves. Yikes!

Posted in Early Christianity, Gospel, missions | Tagged community, deceitfulness of riches, giving, John Chrysostom, justin martyr, living in common, made rich to assist the needy, missions, pour money forth for your salvation, rope through a needle, sharing possessions, tertullian | Leave a comment

The Word, the Word, and the Word; Multiple Meanings of “the Word of God”

Posted on 08/05/2025 by Paul Pavao

The word of God increased and the number of the disciples greatly multiplied in Jerusalem. A great company of the priests were obedient to the faith. (Acts 6:7)

The word of God grew and multiplied. (Acts 12:24)

So the word of the Lord was growing and becoming mighty. (Acts 19:20)

I’m sure I had read Acts at least 20 times before I noticed these verses. A friend came to visit us who held some peculiar doctrines, but he was aging and getting forgetful. Over and over, he would say, “I used to know the word of God for this.” Throughout his visit, he used “the word of God” so often, and usually in regard to scriptures that he had forgotten, that it got annoying.

Perhaps that is the kind of event that is necessary for me, or maybe for all of us, to notice things that are right under our nose.

During his visit, I started wondering if “the word of God” was really a metonym (an alternate term) for “the Bible” in the Bible itself.

One evening after his visit, and long into the night, I got on the computer and searched every occurrence of the word “word” in the New Testament. I was most surprised by the 3 verses that began this post. The Bible was certainly not “growing and becoming mighty” (Acts 19:20) just because the Ephesians burned their magic books. The Bible does not increase when the number of disciples as increasing (Acts 6:7).

Obviously, “the word of God” can be a metonym–what a great word!–for the Son of God, both before, during, and after his time on earth (Jn. 1:1; 1:14; Rev. 19:13), but what does “word of God” mean when it is increasing and becoming mighty?

The Word of God and the Number of Disciples

In Acts 6:7, it is easy to see that the increase in the word of God is associated with an increase in disciples. In Acts 12:24 and 19:20, the context suggests that the word of God is increasing, and even “prevailing mightily” (NASB), because of an increase in disciples.

When you search every occurrence of “word” in the New Testament, you get a whole new perspective of the “word” of God. God gave birth to us by the “word of truth” (Jas. 1:18), and we are to receive “the implanted word” with humility (Jas. 1:21). Peter thinks similarly, telling us that we have been born again of the imperishable seed of the word of God (1 Pet. 1:23). Peter also tells us this seed is “the word of the Gospel” that was preached to us (1 Pet. 1:25).

It seemed clear enough that those 3 verses in Acts were referring to the seed of the Gospel being planted in us. Jesus himself gives us a picture of how this works in the parable of the sower (explained in Matt. 13:18-23). The seed of the Gospel is sown in human hearts (Matt. 13:19). Jesus lists 4 things that can happen:

Sometimes Satan snatches it right out because the heart is hard.
Sometimes the seed sprouts rapidly in shallow hearts, but dies out at the first experience of trouble.
Sometimes the seed lands in good hearts but the fruit is eventually choked out by “the cares of this age” and “the deceitfulness of riches” (Matt. 13:22).
Finally, sometimes the seed lands in good hearts and produces fruit 30 or 60 or 100 times over.

In the fourth case, the seed, the word of the Gospel, increases because full-grown grain, which is the sort of plant Jesus was almost certainly referring to, produces the next generation of seeds.

Note: As an aside, “Gospel” should bring the idea of announcing Jesus as King, Messiah (Christ), or Lord to mind. The Greek word for “Gospel,” euangelizo, was primarily used of the announcement of a new ruler. We rarely remember that Jesus builds his church on the confession that he is Christ and Son of God (Matt. 16:16-18), but we should. That fact explains why the apostles, as they spread the Gospel in the Book of Acts, did not focus on Jesus’ death for sinners, but instead focused on Jesus’ resurrection as proof that he is Lord (see my booklet: The Apostles Gospel, and https://www.christian-history.org/the-gospel.html).

Thus, the word of God increases because it is planted as a seed in human hearts, the very source of the new birth (Jas. 1:18; 1 Pet. 1:23), and as it grows up, bearing fruit in us, we bring others to Christ through the light of our good behavior (Matt. 5:13-16; 1 Thess. 4:11-12; Tit. 2:6-8; 1 Pet. 3:13-16; see also Justin Martyr, First Apology, ch. 16) or through preaching (Matt. 28:18-20; 1 Thess. 1:5-9).

Note: You may have noticed the number of references I gave to the idea that the light of our good deeds, love, and holy life leads people to Jesus. I do believe that this is the primary way churches are supposed to evangelize.

James gives a command to receive the implanted word with humility (Jas. 1:21). John tells us that those who receive the word of God will be given authority to be children of God (Jn. 1:12). So how do we “receive” the word?

Note: In John 1:12, the word of God is not the implanted seed James speaks of in James 1:21; instead, it is Jesus as Creator. He came to his own [creation], and his own did not receive him (John 1:10-11), so John 1:12 is Jesus himself, but James 1:18 is speaking of the word of God being planted in us because of preaching. Either way, the following still applies.

Receiving the Word of God

I don’t have room in a blog post to tell you my whole path of thinking that led me to conclude that to “receive” the word of God is to do it. I have two stories that illustrate receiving the word of God, though.

In Luke 5, Simon (later Peter) has been fishing all night with no success. In the morning, he finds Jesus preaching on the shore, and Jesus asks if he can preach from Simon’s boat. When he is done, he asks Simon to go back out to try again. Simon’s response is interesting, “Master, we worked all night and caught nothing; but at your word I will let down the net” (Luke 5:5).

Simon, of course, catches “a great multitude” of fish. He comes back to shore, falls on his knees, declares himself a sinner, and then leaves everything and follows Jesus (Luke 5:8-11).

Simon was transformed by letting down his net “at [Jesus] word” (v. 5). The “word” was not the preaching of the Gospel, but Jesus’ command to “Put out into the deep and let down your nets for a catch” (v. 4). The word was implanted in Simon’s heart by his obedience to it.

The second story is even more carefully worded. In Luke 19, Jesus is passing through Jericho, and he sees Zacchaeus in a tree. He tells him, “Zacchaeus, hurry and come down, for today I must stay at your house” (Luke 19:5). Verse 6 says, “He hurried, came down, and received him joyfully.”

Note the exact obedience to Jesus’ words that Luke purposely (I think) notes. Jesus said to hurry, and Zacchaeus hurried. Jesus said to come down, and Zacchaeus came down. Jesus said he had to stay at Zacchaeus’ house, and Zacchaeus received him joyfully.

The next thing we know, apparently without any further teaching from Jesus, Zacchaeus is announcing that he will give half his goods to the poor and refund anyone he has cheated 4 times the amount he cheated them (Luke 19:8). In the next verse, Jesus tells everyone that salvation has come to Zacchaeus’ house.

Little humor: I am sure getting tired of typing the unusually spelled name, Zacchaeus. I can’t type that subconsciously, the way I type all other words (except subconsciously, which I also had to pause to spell).

These stories drive home the point that we receive the word of God by obeying it. Though it is sadly controversial to bring up obedience in relation to receiving the word of God nowadays, the apostle Paul looked for “the obedience of faith” in those he preached to (Rom. 1:5).

These stories also show us that the word of God, received by obeying it and implanted in us by God, is immediately fruitful. Peter responded immediately with shame for his sinfulness and awe for Jesus when he received the word. Zacchaeus responded with abundant generosity when he received the word.

In the same way, when the word was expanding in Acts 12:24, it also “prevailed mightily.” The truth of this makes Isaiah 55:10-13 sound like a prophecy of the Word of God, who became flesh, bringing the word of God in its transforming power to the apostles who multiplied the word through their disciples.

For as the rain comes down and the snow from the sky,
and doesn’t return there, but waters the earth,
and makes it grow and bud,
and gives seed to the sower and bread to the eater;
so is my word that goes out of my mouth:
it will not return to me void,
but it will accomplish that which I please,
and it will prosper in the thing I sent it to do.
For you shall go out with joy,
and be led out with peace.
The mountains and the hills will break out before you into singing;
and all the trees of the fields will clap their hands.
Instead of the thorn the cypress tree will come up;
and instead of the brier the myrtle tree will come up.
It will make a name for Yahweh,
for an everlasting sign that will not be cut off.”

The Word, the Word, and the Word

While I have never found a place in Scripture where “the word of God” is a metonym for “the Bible,” various passages and messages quoted in Scripture are called the word of God. And, of course, we know that the Scriptures are God-breathed (2 Tim. 3:16-17). When God breathes into someone or something, they or it come to life (Gen. 2:7). As a result, Moses is said to have received “living oracles” (KJV) or “living words” (NASB) or “living revelations” (WEB). If the law, even though it kills (2 Cor. 3:6) and is a “service of death” (2 Cor. 3:7) is living, how much more the rest of the revelation of God that is the Scriptures.

Yes, the Scriptures are the word and words of God. Yet we have seen in the Scriptures that they are not all of the word of God. Jesus is the Word of God, and the seed planted and growing in the heart of disciples is also the word of God, which can multiply, grow, and prevail mightily as the number of disciples multiplies.

As a takeaway, let us remember that the word of God that saves is not always just a repetition of words we have been taught in an evangelism class. The Word of God is first and foremost Jesus himself, who was with God in the beginning when everything was created. His word is power. Sometimes, to bring people to Christ, we must utter the words the Holy Spirit puts in our heart, let them sink into the hearts of others, and let them grow up into the fruit of salvation.

Posted in Bible, Dealing with Scripture Honestly, Modern Doctrines | Tagged Acts 12:24, Acts 19:20, Acts 6:7, Evangelism, Isaiah 55, salvation, the word of god grows, word of god | Leave a comment