¹²Therefore, brothers, we have an obligation—but it is not to the sinful nature, to live according to it. ¹³For if you live according to the sinful nature, you will die; but if by the Spirit you put to death the misdeeds of the body, you will live, ¹⁴because those who are led by the Spirit of God are sons of God. ¹⁵For you did not receive a spirit that makes you a slave again to fear, but you received the Spirit of sonship. And by him we cry, “Abba, Father.” ¹⁶The Spirit himself testifies with our spirit that we are God’s children. ¹⁷Now if we are children, then we are heirs—heirs of God and co-heirs with Christ, if indeed we share in his sufferings in order that we may also share in his glory.”

I think the end of this section is so beautiful.  It brings the same feelings up as Romans 5:8 “But God demonstrates his own love for us in this: While we were still sinners, Christ died for us.”  To thank that we, Christians, were once completely stuck in sin and with no way or desire to be able to submit and choose to follow God and now we are called sons of God.  The fact that Jesus came and saved us out of our hopeless situation goes beyond amazing.  I think this really shows the love the Father has for us.  He wasn’t willing to wait for us to come to Him, because we never would, but He actually came and reached into our souls and saved us.  He saved us!!!!  I don’t know of any greater feeling knowing for no reason of my own He saved me.  I think back to a clip from Paul Washer about his personal salvation (click here and here).

Think of your own story.  How rotten you were, how rotten I was.  How we hated everything about God.  We loved ourselves, thought of only ourselves, and didn’t desire God.  We were stuck in sin and were completely hopeless.  Think back to the moment God saved you.  The moment he conquered your will and you submitted to God.  Think back to what you once were and what you are now, a child of God.   The moment God saved you!  We have done so many evil things and don’t deserve  God’s love, but He has poured His love on us so lavishly.  He simply didn’t forgive us, He has made us His children.  Where we once were children of devil, we are now children of God.  We no longer have anything to fear for we have received His Spirit and as the verse says we can cry out to God “Father”.  And because we are children of God we are heirs to eternal life.  Yes, God truly has saved His children and we are forever led by the Spirit and will one day be with Him in heaven.

No, I can’t think of anything more loving than a God who pulled us out of the very grave we dug for ourselves and saved us.  While we still hated God He decided to love us.  What an amazing God we serve and one who deserves all praise.  He deserves and demands us to tell others of this love.  I pray if you have forgotten your first love to come back to Him and to tell other of Him.

If you haven’t had that moment where God saved you, I plead with you to pray to God and ask Him to save you.  You are just as in need of His love and as I still am.  Our salvation comes from the Lord, not because of our own will, because of the grace of God.  I ask you to repent our you sin today and give control of your life to God.

Really, this comes out of a misunderstanding of the state of human spirit.  Many people believe everyone has the chance to be saved and that we are morally neutral, in other words we all have the ABILITY to chose to be saved or not to be saved.  Another way to look at it is that people believe we can chose between sin and not sinning.  This view was definitely true before Adam sinned, but after that point everything changed.   Now, all humans are sinners from birth and we have a sin nature because of Adam from birth.  What I have just said, in regards to the effect of sin, is agreed upon be most evangelicals, Reformed or not.  What is debated is how this actually plays out in our lives.  So, lets look at great proof text of how this plays out.

Romans 8:5-17 “Those who live according to the sinful nature have their minds set on what that nature desires; but those who live in accordance with the Spirit have their minds set on what the Spirit desires. ⁶The mind of sinful man is death, but the mind controlled by the Spirit is life and peace; ⁷the sinful mind is hostile to God. It does not submit to God’s law, nor can it do so. ⁸Those controlled by the sinful nature cannot please God.

⁹You, however, are controlled not by the sinful nature but by the Spirit, if the Spirit of God lives in you. And if anyone does not have the Spirit of Christ, he does not belong to Christ. ¹⁰But if Christ is in you, your body is dead because of sin, yet your spirit is alive because of righteousness. ¹¹And if the Spirit of him who raised Jesus from the dead is living in you, he who raised Christ from the dead will also give life to your mortal bodies through his Spirit, who lives in you.

¹²Therefore, brothers, we have an obligation—but it is not to the sinful nature, to live according to it. ¹³For if you live according to the sinful nature, you will die; but if by the Spirit you put to death the misdeeds of the body, you will live, ¹⁴because those who are led by the Spirit of God are sons of God. ¹⁵For you did not receive a spirit that makes you a slave again to fear, but you received the Spirit of sonship. And by him we cry, “Abba, Father.” ¹⁶The Spirit himself testifies with our spirit that we are God’s children. ¹⁷Now if we are children, then we are heirs—heirs of God and co-heirs with Christ, if indeed we share in his sufferings in order that we may also share in his glory.”

The biggest thing which needs to be pointed out is that there are only two options given in this section.  You are either controlled by the sinful nature or the Spirit.  A big problem with Arminianism is that it requires a third area where you are neither controlled by the sinful nature or the Spirit.  I say this because it is clear in this section all the following are true about the person controlled by the sinful nature:

1. Their mind is set on sin, in other words it is all it thinks about.
2. Their mind set leads to death
3. They are hostile to God
4. They won’t submit themselves to God’s law
5. They can’t submit themselves to God’s law
6. They can’t please God

Now, how in the world can somebody who won’t submit and can’t submit themselves to God, submit themselves to God?  Because that is exactly what people are saying when they say “people chose to be saved”.  Isn’t the very act of submitting to God pleasing to him?  In others words, isn’t choosing to accept Christ pleasing to God?  If this is the case that a person set on their sinful desires can’t chose to submit to God’s love, which His law tells us to love Him before anything else and submit to Him, then in order to be able to chose Christ for ourselves there must be time where are not in the sinful nature, but not yet controlled by the Spirit.  My question is, where does the Bible talk about that third area?

Now, you might be asking yourselves what this has to do with God’s love.  Well, if you really want to understand God’s love you first need understand how desperate of a situation us humans are in.  It isn’t until you truly understand our deprave nature you can fully experience the depth of God’s love and what He saved us out of.  So, in my next blog I will talk about the God who loved us so much He actually saved us and His work on the cross actually accomplished something.

I believe if people can begin to understand God’s wrath and sovereignty they will begin to open themselves up to a much greater part of the Bible and understand what it really means to “fear the Lord”.   Anyways, I hope you enjoy the article.

Romans 4:1-5 “What then shall we say that Abraham, our forefather, discovered in this matter? ²If, in fact, Abraham was justified by works, he had something to boast about—but not before God. ³What does the Scripture say? “Abraham believed God, and it was credited to him as righteousness.” ⁴Now when a man works, his wages are not credited to him as a gift, but as an obligation. ⁵However, to the man who does not work but trusts God who justifies the wicked, his faith is credited as righteousness.”

Paul had just got done in the previous chapter showing how nobody is righteous and our only righteousness comes apart from law through Jesus Christ.  Thus, when you read Romans 4 it continues to flow as Paul makes the argument our righteousness comes from nothing we do, for if it was then it would be a “wage” as Paul put it.  There is nothing here in the context which would make one believe we are saved to our righteous acts.  Paul makes sure his readers knew justification came from God and nothing of our own.  This is so very fundamental and yet many people rarely realizes how big of a difference this creates between Protestant and Catholics.  If a person is a devout Catholic they will believe they are justified by works, this is a really big problem, because then we no longer need Jesus, but only our good deeds.  I know some might try to argue we are initially justified by faith, but it is our works that keep us saved.  My question is where in Bible do you find the idea we are first saved by God and then our works are what continue to justify us.  This would be a great eisigesis of any text.

So, what are the practical implications we can come away with from this verse.

First, we can find comfort in the fact our righteousness comes through Christ and not ourselves.  There is not enough good works we could to obtain salvation for all of our works are not even close to good.  Every “good” thing we is stained with our sin nature.  As Isaiah 64:6 says, “All of us have become like one who is unclean, and all our righteous acts are like filthy rags; we all shrivel up like a leaf, and like the wind our sins sweep us away.”  There is no reason to make our justification more complex than what it is.

Second, is a warning to us all.  If our lives have no fruit in them then there is a good chance we are not even a Christian.  1 Corinthians 6:9-11 says, “Do you not know that the wicked will not inherit the kingdom of God? Do not be deceived: Neither the sexually immoral nor idolaters nor adulterers nor male prostitutes nor homosexual offenders ¹⁰nor thieves nor the greedy nor drunkards nor slanderers nor swindlers will inherit the kingdom of God. ¹¹And that is what some of you were. But you were washed, you were sanctified, you were justified in the name of the Lord Jesus Christ and by the Spirit of our God”.  So, we should be looking into our own lives and seeing where we can become like our creator and bare more fruit.

Overall, verse like James remind us of the need for works in our lives, but those like Romans teach us we must not rely on these works to save us for that comes through Jesus Christ alone, by faith alone.

James is not a book about how to obtain salvation, but a book on how to know you are saved.  It is a book that gives us signs which will show we have been justified by God.  In other words it is a book, which describes a believer.  At the end of chapter one James is talking about simply knowing what it means to be saved is not enough, but we need to do the actions of a believer.  Vs. 22 “Do not merely listen to the word, and so deceive yourselves. Do what it says”.  It is this same context which is being transferred over to chapter 2; we have to remember this was not broken into chapter when James wrote it, but was meant to be read at one sitting.

James begins chapter 2 about loving fellow brothers.  Again, James is warning his readers that unless you love your brothers you have not been born of God.  This is describing what a true believer looks like.  This would have been timely message for the Jew as they began to see more Gentiles converts.  Now, we dive into the section which is often misunderstood.  I want to repeat here we must remember James is not writing to his readers to prescribe to them what it takes to be saved.  James is writing to show what a Christian looks like or how a Christian will act.

Look how James starts this section, “What good is it, my brothers, if a man claims to have faith but has no deeds? Can such faith save him? Suppose a brother or sister is without clothes and daily food. If one of you says to him, “Go, I wish you well; keep warm and well fed,” but does nothing about his physical needs, what good is it? In the same way, faith by itself, if it is not accompanied by action, is dead” (vs. 14-17).  James starts out by referring back to the last section of being loving.  This is important because it shows the argument James is about to make comes back to point love for our brothers and sisters in Christ one of the greatest signs of salvation.

Vs. 18 is another important verse here as it shows the relationship of faith and deeds.  “But someone will say, ‘You have faith; I have deeds.’   Show me your faith without deeds, and I will show you my faith by what I do” (vs. 18).   First, we note James shows how one might argue one can have faith without having deeds.  But James combats this when he says; “I will show you my faith by what I do” thus demonstrating faith is shown to be true by the deeds one commits.  James is demonstrating the difference between saving faith and simple belief in God, which get reiterated in the next verse.

This idea of faith and deeds working together, but still being separate, continues on through the rest of the chapter.  Next, James gives us the example of Abraham.  It seems at a quick glance James is arguing Abraham was not justified until he did certain works.  Yet, when we look closer and understand the timeline of the story of Abraham, I believe we can glean a deeper meaning.  I believe the best way to understand this passage is to go back to Genesis.  In Genesis 15 God makes a covenant with Abraham, Abram at that time, to give him an heir.  Vs. 6 says, “Abram believed the LORD, and he credited it to him as righteousness”.  The word credit here does not mean anything like wage, for a wage is not a gift, but something earned.  No, this word reflects the meaning of a gift or something not earned but still given.  So, here in chapter 15 Abraham is Justified, considered righteous” by God, but this all takes place before Isaac is even born.

I don’t want to make any conclusion yet, as I want to the rest of James to speak first.  James 2:22 is really the key to understanding the argument he is making “You see that his faith and his actions were working together, and his faith was made complete by what he did”.  James first makes a distinction between faith and actions.  He then adds that it was Abraham’s actions which displayed his faith.   James then concludes Genesis 15:6 was fulfilled through this action of Abraham.

Finally, comes the big phrase, “You see that a person is justified by what he does and not by faith alone” (vs. 24).  Now, let’s remember so far James has not made any mention to salvation or how one is to obtain salvation.  This is the first time this topic is even remotely mentioned.  Now, we can read this verse in two lights.  The first, we would have to drop the context of the rest of the chapter, and book, and make this verse a prescription of how to be saved.  Or, and in my opinion the correct option, we can see in the context of James describing what a Christian should look like.

With the first we would get the Catholic belief we gain our salvation through our own acts of righteousness.  Yet, this is why context is so important.  If this versed is allowed to be stripped of its immediate context of describing true saving faith, then yes, it would be easy to conclude we are justified by our acts.  But, if we allow the context of James to stand we understand James is not presenting a message of salvation, but a message of how to know you are saved.  So, with the second option we understand he is using this sentence to drive the point home that mere belief and talk do not show you are saved.  True saving faith is one that not only believes, but does what the word of God says to do (James 1:22-27).

Finally, we must also understand James use of Abraham in order to understand James argument as a whole.  For it is another piece of evidence which leads to the understanding James is talking in a descriptive sense.  Notice James never states Abraham received his justification because of his acts, but it was shown complete by his actions.  Also, it is important to realize Genesis 15 takes place around 20 years before the instance with Isaac, Genesis 22.  Abraham was justified by God well before he did anything.  I believe this is the reason James chose this story.  It shows to his audience while God justifies us before we do any good, we also have a responsibility to live out our salvation.  This message would have hit hard to his Jewish readers because of the tensions between Jewish Christians and Gentile Christians.  So, when we look at this verse in light of the whole it becomes clearer James is warning his readers that faith without action in not real faith at all, but saving faith loves and is displayed by actions.

I hope you are blessed by this post, whether you agree with or not.

2 Peter 3:8-9-  8. “But do not let this one fact escape your notice, beloved, that with the Lord one day is like a thousand years, and a thousand years like one day.  9. The Lord is not slow about His promise, as some count slowness, but is patient toward you, not wishing for any to perish but for all to come to repentance”

9 “some” in Greek means
Strong’s Greek #5100

5100 τὶς [tis /tis/] pron. An enclitic indefinite pronoun; GK 5516; 450 occurrences; AV translates as “certain” 104 times, “some” 73 times, “any man” 55 times, “any” 38 times, “one” 34 times, “man” 34 times, “anything” 24 times, “a” nine times, “certain man” seven times, “something” six times, “somewhat” six times, “ought” five times, “some man” four times, “certain thing” twice, “nothing + 3756” twice, “divers” twice, “he” twice, “thing” twice, “another” twice, not translated 17 times, and translated miscellaneously 22 times. 1 a certain, a certain one. 2 some, some time, a while.

It is to be noted here in verse 9 the word “some” and “any” are the same Greek word.

vs 9 “all”

So, it is possible this verse doesn’t mean “any” in the sense of “all men”, but could mean certain men or any type of man.  But it could also mean “any” or “any man”.  So lets look at the context to find out what is talking about.

vs 9 “The Lord is not slow about His promise, as some count slowness, but is patient toward you, not wishing for any to perish but for all to come to repentance”

vs 8 “But do not let this one fact escape your notice, beloved, that with the Lord one day is like a thousand years, and thousand years like one day”

3:1 “ This is now, beloved, the second letter I am writing to you in which I am stirring up your sincere mind by way of reminder”

1 Peter 1:1 ” Peter, an apostle of Jesus Christ, To God’s elect, strangers in the world, scattered throughout Pontus, Galatia, Cappadocia, Asia and Bithynia.”

Conclusion:
2 Peter 3:8-9 is talking to Christians or the “elect” and not any man who was to read this verse.  So, when you look at verse 9 and it says “[God] is patient toward you, not wishing for any to perish but for all to come to repentance” Peter is talking to “you” (the elect).  Since Peter is talking to the elect in v. 9 we must stay consistent with the passage and translate the word “any” as “certain men” and not “all men” for Peter isn’t talking to all men, but “you” (the elect).  This would then give the word “all” at the end of v. 9 a consistent meaning of all types of men and not every type of man.  This verse is ultimately saying God is patient toward His elect because He doesn’t desire any of His elect to perish, but for all those He has chosen to come to repentance.

Some might wonder why it is the “you” must define the “any” and “all”.  This goes back to basic biblical interpretation.  If a scripture gives you a defining context, “you” in this verse, we must keep that context until the author changes the context.  There is no reason to believe Peter would jump from talking to the elect to all of humanity within four words.  Peter defines his terms for us with the usage of “you” and it because of this we must see past our traditions and not read into the verse theology, but pull from the verse theology.

“For, to begin with, the pious mind does not dream up for itself any god it please, but contemplates the one and only true God.  And it does not attach to him whatever it pleases, but is content to hold him to be as he manifests himself; furthermore, the mind always exercises the utmost diligence and care not to wander astray or rashly and boldly to go beyond his will.   It thus recognizes God because it knows that he governs all things;  and trusts that he is its guide and protector, therefore giving itself over completely to trust in him.  Because it understands him to be the Author of ever good, if anything oppresses, if anything is lacking, immediately it betakes itself to his protection, waiting for help from him.  Because it is persuaded that he is good and merciful, it reposes in him with perfect trust, and doubts not that in his loving-kindness a remedy will be provided for all its ills.  Because it acknowledges him as Lord and Father, the pious mind also deems it meet and right to observe his authority in all things, reverence his majesty, take care to advance his glory, and obey his commandments.  Because it sees him to a righteous judge, armed with severity to punish wickedness, it ever holds his judgment seat before its gaze, and through fear of him restrains itself from provoking his anger.  And yet it is not so terrified by the awareness of his judgment as to wish to withdraw, even if some way of escape were open.  But it embraces him no less as punisher of the wicked than as benefactor of the pious.  For the pious mind realizes that the punishment  of the impious and wicked and the reward of life eternal for the righteous equally pertain to God’s glory.  Besides, this mind restrains itself from sinning, not out of dread of punishment alone; but because it loves and reveres God as Father, it worships and adores him as Lord.  Even if there were no hell, it would still shudder at offending him alone.

Here indeed is pure and real religion: faith so joined with an earnest fear of God that this fear also embraces willing reverence, and carries with it such legitimate worship as is prescribed in the law.  And we ought to not this fact even more diligently: all men have a vague general veneration for God, but very few really reverence him; and wherever there is great ostentation ceremonies, sincerity of heart is rare indeed.” –Calvin, Institutes of the Christian Religion, Book 1 Chapter II

I have recently been reading posts about the lack of theological knowledge by Christians today and it is truly sad.  It is when there is a lack of knowledge of who God is, heresy easily creeps into our churches.  People no longer base their ideas of who God is by how He describes himself to be in the Bible, but simply on their personal opinions and experiences.  This quickly leads to the realization that, under this method, knowing god and his truth becomes up for debate.  It is no longer one truth, but the Jehovah Witnesses have some good truth, the Mormons have some good truth, Catholics have some good truth, and we lose all ground to point out the fatal flaws in their man-made religions.  People simply want to be all-inclusive.  It isn’t nice to point out Mormonism or Catholicism are completely unbiblical.

If we want truth we must first turn to the One who is truth.  This is why I like this excerpt so much…it is all about looking to God before deciding who God is.  We have to accept all of who God is and not just parts.  We all love the God of love, but rarely talk about the God of justice.  We can’t simply be New Testament Christian, but entire Bible Christians.  Once we accept God for who He claims to be we can then begin to appreciate Him and more importantly fear Him.  I believe this quote from the excerpt above sums it all up, “all men have a vague general veneration for God, but very few really reverence him.”