Thinking Theo

Tag: christianity

  • John 1:6-13

    V6-9 – A man came, one sent from God, and his name was John. 7 He came as a witness, to testify about the Light, so that all might believe through him. 8 He was not the Light, but he came to testify about the Light.

    Starting in verse 6, we see the first mention of John the Baptist. Verse 7 says he came to testify about Jesus. We cannot underestimate the importance of John the Baptist. Remember that his birth was foretold by the angel Gabriel in Luke 1. Matthew 3:3 says that John the Baptist was the fulfillment of Isaiah 40. Indeed, John had the unique mission of preparing the people of Israel for the arrival of Jesus. Jesus told a group of listeners in Matthew 11 that John was one of the most important prophets to have ever lived! And what is amazing about John is that he never once looked for credit in what he did. His life was completely focused upon the arrival of Jesus. John could’ve received a lot more attention than he did, but in John 3:30 we see his attitude, “He must increase, but I must decrease.” Probably not many people would willingly copy John’s statement. However, his attitude should be ours!

    In verse 7 we see the purpose of John’s work…”so that all might believe through him”. However, the purpose was not to make people believe in himself, but rather to believe in Jesus! How many people make huge efforts to get attention for themselves? How many people spend much of their life trying to make themselves great? But how many people work hard to make someone else look great? We see here that John worked hard to get people’s eyes on Jesus, not on himself. John wanted for everyone to see how great Jesus is.

    Something that comes up as a question in my mind is how to reconcile “so that all might believe through him” with other passages where it is clear that not all will be saved. The Bible also seems to teach that God chooses people to be saved. This is a concept that I’ve fought long and hard with, but I see no way around it and am done fighting it. I’ll just give a few examples to support this. In 1 Thessalonians 1:4, Paul says that we know God chose you Thessalonians because when we preached to you our message came with conviction and the Holy Spirit. In other words, we know God chose you in advance because when we came to you God was at work. In Romans 8:29 God foreknows believers. To “know” someone in the Bible oftentimes has a sense of intimacy. So God “knows” his people before the world began! You and I had nothing to do with him choosing to foreknow us. Ephesians 1:11 says that God works everything in accordance with his will. This applies to everything… even to individual salvation. Ephesians 1:4 says that God chose us (believers) in him (Jesus) before the foundation of the world. He chose us. He chose you if you’re a believer. He chose me. God ensured that there would be a group of believers. Some would like to believe that God chose merely a group of people, and that that does not extend to him choosing individuals. However, I don’t see how that can work. If I choose for the NY Knicks to win the NBA championship this year, doesn’t that imply that I chose current players like Jalen Brunson, Karl-Anthony Towns, Mikal Bridges, etc to win? If God chooses a group to be saved, then this presupposes that that group is composed of individuals who are also chosen! I don’t see how a Christian could say that God chose believers as a group but not me as an individual. The only way this could work is if I by my own will placed myself in this chosen group. However, 1 Corinthians 1:30 says that it is because of God that I am in this group in Christ! 1 Corinthians 2:14 says that a natural (unsaved) person does not and cannot understand the things of God. So how can I put myself in this group of believers if I can’t even accept the things of God? To understand the things of God, I must be changed, regenerated, by God. So again, it is God who places me in this chosen group!

    So how do we reconcile this with John preaching “so that all might believe”? I’m not sure how to best answer it, but one thought that comes to mind is that in one sense God truly does desire that all would be saved, but at the same time he doesn’t. That seems contradictory, but we humans do it all the time. Parents typically don’t enjoy disciplining their kids, but they do so anyway because they have a higher desire to improve their child’s future behavior. So one hand, we parents don’t like disciplining our kids, but one the other hand we do! We have two wills at work at the same time. I see no problem in applying this to God, and this is how the Church has historically understood God’s ways. He does desire in a sense that all to whom John preached would believe, but yet he did not choose all of John’s listeners to be saved. This answer may not be satisfactory for some, but I’m ok with not understanding everything about God.

    V9-13 – 9This was the true Light that, coming into the world, enlightens every person. 10 He was in the world, and the world came into being through Him, and yet the world did not know Him. 11 He came to His own, and His own people did not accept Him. 12 But as many as received Him, to them He gave the right to become children of God, to those who believe in His name, 13 who were born, not of blood, nor of the will of the flesh, nor of the will of a man, but of God.

    Again we return to Jesus as the Light. Jesus as the light enlightens every person. Now we need to ask what is meant by “enlighten”. I don’t think we have to make this too complicated. In English, when we say that we “shed light” on something it means we made something better understood. I think it has, more or less, the same meaning here. Jesus gave us greater understanding as to who God is. Hebrews 1:1-3 says this, “God, after He spoke long ago to the fathers in the prophets in many portions and in many ways, 2 [a]in these last days has spoken to us [b]in His Son, whom He appointed heir of all things, through whom He also made the [c]world. 3 [d]And He is the radiance of His glory and the exact representation of His nature, and [e]upholds all things by [f]the word of His power…” Do you see that? God spoke to us through his Son. The Son is also his radiance and the “exact representation” of his nature. When we look upon the Son, we see God. Through Jesus we come to have a clearer understanding of God. In this way, Jesus “enlightened” us.

    Verse 10 is a very sad verse. Jesus came to his own creation. John 1:3 says that Jesus is the creator. Nevertheless, his own creation did not know/understand/recognize him. How dull must we humans be to not even recognize the creator! If any verse points to our natural depravity, this has to be one of the top ones! And yet we see the same concept at work in our day. How many blessings do we receive, and yet many fail to recognize the one who blessed us? How many people look at nature and don’t conclude that someone great and powerful must have designed all of it? We have evidence of God all around us, and yet many people are too dull to acknowledge it or willfully reject such an acknowledgement!

    And verse 11 says that because we didn’t know him, we didn’t accept him. It’s very true that we tend to reject those things that we don’t understand. And by not accepting, John is saying that we killed him in a nice way. It’s not that we ostracized him or mocked him…the Romans and Jews worked together to kill the Son of God.

    Let’s go to verse 12. Verse 12 is better news. Not all rejected Jesus! The same is true in our time…not all reject him. To those who love and follow God, God adopts those persons into his family. Connecting this to verse 13, we learn that those who are adopted by God were born of him. He gave them life. It was God’s decision to give life to those who would believe. This verse highlights that the decision to believe didn’t come from ancestry or our will; rather, those who believe were born of God. In other words, you believe because you were born of God. This verse shows the supremacy of God’s will in the matter.

    And this doctrine of adoption is truly a wonderful teaching. My wife and I adopted 4 kids. When I think back on the process, our kids did absolutely nothing to be adopted. We first had the desire and plan to adopt kids. Out of that desire, we began looking for kids that needed adoption. And we were matched with the kids we would later adopt. We did all the paperwork, we flew out to Texas to meet them… we initiated everything. They did nothing. All they did was receive the benefits of our choosing them. I think this is the same for Christians. You and I did nothing to be saved. God had the desire and plan to have adopted children long before we were born. He knew we would fall into sin, but he planned to save us. Yes, I did have to exercise faith, but many of us believe that even the act of having faith was due to God’s Spirit working in us and regenerating us (see 1 Corinthians 1:30, 2:14). He brought forth in time what he had planned in eternity past! The beauty of this teaching is that God gets all the credit. It also makes me all the more thankful for what he did.

  • A New Direction and John 1:1-2

    I apologize for not writing anything for a while. I was trying to think of things to write about after finishing reasons to believe the Bible! It dawned on me that instead of trying to come up with different topics, I could just go through the Bible slowly (very slowly). To begin with, I’ll go through John. And hopefully, this will help someone out there as they read through the Bible. John is a very deep book, and in it we discover just how high and great Jesus is. John also had a unique way of expressing things. From the very beginning of the book, John presents Jesus as much more than a mere human. Yes, he is human, but he is God at the same time. There are other themes in the book, but these will become clear to you if you read these posts. From here on out, the normal way I’ll write on this blog will sort of be like my own personal commentary. So let’s get started…

    V1 – “In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God.”

    As we begin, let it be known that John 1:1-5 is one of the most eloquent opening passages in the Bible. Each verse is packed with meaning and things to be understood. So it’s fitting to start with verse 1. We first though need to ask a very important question.

    Who or what is “the Word”?

    If you’ve been in any church for any amount of time, you will most likely know that “the Word” is commonly understood to refer to Jesus. But how do we know this? John uses “the word” (logos in Greek) to appeal to Jewish understanding and Greek philosophical thoughts of his time. For Greek philosophers, logos referred to a principle of reason or order in the universe. Put another way, Greeks thought of logos as a type of force through which the universe runs. It’s sort of like how people talk about “mother nature” when referring to the way in which nature works. Mother nature is seen as an impersonal force that seems to make things in nature run smoothly. For the Greeks, logos was an impersonal concept. John, however, will make it very obvious that God’s concept of logos is a person…not a force or principle!

    If John’s reader was Jewish, then he/she would understand logos in a different way. Remember that Jews at this time period read the Greek translation of the Old Testament called the Septuagint. For Jews, the word of God was the way in which God communicates himself to us. It is also by his word that God created everything and put into place everything that is (see Genesis 1). John is giving life and personhood to the “word” of God!

    Now we can say several things about the Word…

    1.The Word was there in the beginning

    The first part of this verse should remind us of Genesis 1:1 (In the beginning God…). Instead of saying God was in the beginning, he replaces God with “the Word”. When nothing of our world yet existed, the Word was there. God was there and the Word was there. Without even considering the last phrase of verse 1, it should be understood that the Word and God are interchangeable. And if we understand the Word to be Jesus (which John will explain later in the chapter), then the correlation is made that Jesus was around before we began. This alone sets him apart from us. He is like us, but he’s also not like us.

    2. The Word was God

    I’m skipping the middle part of the verse for now. I already said that the Word and God are interchangeable. The last phrase of the verse delineates this. The Word IS God! Jesus IS God! This is what makes Christianity unique. To us, Jesus is not a mere person. He IS God! I hope you understand the immensity of that statement. For Muslims, Jesus is a prophet. For Mormons, Jesus was exalted to godhood but is completely different from the Father. For Jehovah’s Witnesses, Jesus is not God but is yet God’s son. For true believers, though, Jesus IS God! So all the attributes that one ascribes to God can be ascribed to Jesus.

    3. The Word was with God

    I skipped this because this can seem to contradict the last part of the verse at first glance. I just wrote that Jesus was there in the beginning. I also said that God and the Word are interchangeable. Jesus is God. Yet, John 1:1 says that Jesus was WITH God. So somehow Jesus IS God but was also WITH God? How is that possible? With humans, you cannot say, “John is John and John is with John.” This is why the early Church came to understand that God exists as a Trinity. I will not list verses here, but there are many places where Jesus is clearly equated with God, the Father of the Old Testament is equated with God, and the Holy Spirit is equated with God. There can be no other explanation of God’s nature besides the Trinity. Somehow Jesus is God and yet was with God. This verse alone destroys all the trinitarian heresies (a heresy is a belief that excludes you from salvation) that have been invented through the ages. Let’s consider just two of them…

    1. Arianism

    Arianism was popularized by a man named Arius back in the 200’s-300’s AD. He essentially taught that Jesus was created. If Jesus was created, then we can’t say that Jesus IS God. When God creates something, there is always a distinction made between the creator and creation. Jesus would have to be something other than God. However, the verse clearly says that Jesus is God. There’s no way around this.

    1. Sabellianism

    Sabellianism is a lesser known heresy that was invented by a man named Sabellius in the 200’s AD. Sabellianism is also sometimes called modalism. This view states that God acts in 3 ways or modes. He acted as Father in the past, he then acted as Jesus for a time, and now acts as the Holy Spirit. The best illustration of this that has been given is comparing God to an actor who plays 3 different parts in a play. You can see this in movies like The Parent Trap or The Nutty Professor. In the Nutty Professor, Eddie Murphy plays several characters. He dresses up as the professor, his mother, grandfather and grandmother. Eddie Murphy is the actor, and he’s merely acting in different ways. Sabellianism denies the coexistence of three persons in the Trinity. However, John 1:1 says that Jesus was WITH God. There is a distinction of persons within God! God can’t be one person if Jesus is God and yet was with God!

    The correct way to understand the Trinity is that God is one being, or one essence, that exists in three persons. Each person of the Trinity is God. The Father is God, Jesus is God, and the Holy Spirit is God. However, Jesus is not the Father, Jesus is not the Holy Spirit, and the Holy Spirit is not the Father.  This took quite a long time in church history to express clearly. It is not easy to understand, but then again, it’s God we’re talking about.

    V2 – “He was in the beginning with God.”

    Verse 2 is a repeat of the middle phrase verse 1 (the Word was with God). However, “the Word” is replaced with “he” (houtos). Houtos in Greek can sometimes be translated as “this one”, but the context of the following verses makes “he” a better translation. So if a Greek reader was thinking of “the Word” as an impersonal force, John makes the Word personal. The Word is a person. The Word is the person John is writing about. The Word is Jesus.

    So why does this matter?

    I’ll stop with only 2 verses, but if you believe that Jesus is God then that changes everything. It means he was more than a smart man, or a prophet, or a nice guy who lived a long time ago. Jesus was the next step in God revealing his nature, his triune nature. It is in Jesus that we receive forgiveness of sins. It is in him that we are given life. It is because of God’s triune nature that God the Father was able to transfer our sins upon God the Son. Sabellianism threatens this transfer of sin for our freedom. Arianism (also Jehovah’s Witnesses and Mormons) threatens the atonement in that Jesus just becomes a regular guy who dies on a cross and couldn’t really accomplish anything. Jesus had to be God to never sin. If Jesus were anything less than God, then the cross doesn’t mean a thing. Maybe in another post I’ll go deep into the Trinity, but let it be enough for now with John 1:1-2 that Jesus is God, and that changes everything!

  • Why to Believe the Bible – The Bible is a compilation of documents written over 1500 years and yet all point to the same basic message

    The first point as to why to believe that the Bible is divine is because it’s message is unique. I spent 3 posts on that because I believe that the uniqueness of the Bible is its most noteworthy feature. I’m convinced that no other religious text comes close to the Bible. The second point as to why we ought to believe the Bible as divine is a long statement! As you can see above, though, it should seem incredible to us that 66 documents, written by about 40 different authors, in 3 different languages, written over a time span of about 1500 years should all contain the same basic message! It would be understandable if the same basic message were maintained over a period of five, ten or fifteen years, for example, and all in the same language. However, the composition of the Bible took a long time by many different people in different languages. If we take the traditional view, then Genesis was written in about 1400 BC and most of the New Testament writings in 40-90 AD. I do not believe that the description of the same God, the same message, the same principles, etc is mere coincidence – I believe it was a result of divine inspiration. Imagine talking to someone today from 1500 years ago in 500 AD. Even if you both spoke English, you would most likely have very little in common and have difficulty understanding each other’s worldview or perspectives on life. Imagine, then, writing something that would need to align with something they wrote. A real example would be like writing something to complement Beowulf (written somewhere in the time frame of 700-1000 AD). No doubt that would be quite a challenge to undertake. It would have been the same for the Jews who wrote the Bible. Moses would most likely not have shared much in common with Peter or Thomas, for example. Yes, they worshiped the same God, but the culture had changed dramatically due to outside influences. What most prominently connected 1400 BC Israel to 50 AD Israel was the overarching message of the Bible. Times, cultures, and languages changed, but God did not! And because God does not change, the overall message of the Bible does not either.

    All 66 books point to the same essentials of God’s character and plan for history in differing ways. All the books describe a God who is in absolute control, kind, just, wise, all-powerful, etc. All the books describe a creation turned upside-down by humans’ sinful choices. All the books describe the journey God led his people through towards the central act in history – Jesus’ death and resurrection. I do not see how these writings could share common themes, given the circumstances, unless the writing process were superintended by God himself!

    Something else to point out regarding the Bible is that its composition employed a high degree of accountability. What do I mean? The Bible, as stated above, had about 40 different authors and involved many, many people in the preservation of the writings. The Bible was not written in a dark back room somewhere by a single person! The Bible is not like the book of Mormon, for example, where Joseph Smith claimed that he alone could translate golden plates given to him by an angel. The Bible is not like the Quran where Muhammad alone got a message from Gabriel. The composing of the Bible involved hundreds, if not thousands, of people. I will write about Jewish scribes and their role in the Bible in the following post. Moreover, many, many people were involved and had a part in recognizing which ancient writings came from God…and which did not. Many people ask why the Book of Enoch, the Gospel of Thomas, the Shepherd of Hermas, etc were not included. If books were excluded from the Bible, it was because those involved in its formation had reason to doubt authorship or its message. The point is that those who participated in the formation of the “canon” were intensely concerned about which books to include or not. The process was not an overnight one, nor should it have been. If we’re going to base our lives off of certain writings and recognizing which books have their source in God, we ought to be extremely careful in the process!

    With all that being said, it seems to me that the the fact that there is the same basic message that is shared by all the writings of the Bible points to a divine origin!

  • Why to Believe the Bible – The Bible Has a Unique Message (pt 3)

    3. No other major religion has a central figure that is resurrected

    We’re still on this series of blog posts concerning why to believe the Bible, and on the particular point that the Bible’s message is unique. The third and final point demonstrating the uniqueness of the Bible’s message is that no other major religion has a central figure that is resurrected. There are two things to address inunderstandingwhy this is so important.

    1)How can we know if Jesus of Nazareth was really resurrected?

    2)What does it matter if he was resurrected?

    For the first point, the claim for a resurrection would be crazy if there were no eyewitnesses. However, the apostle Paul in 1 Corinthians 15:3-6 states that Jesus appeared to over 500 people after his resurrection. He stated that fact in the context of a false teaching that was being spread at the church in Corinth – that there will be no resurrection. To counter this, he pulls out this fact that many people saw Jesus after coming back to life. That is the most compelling argument for knowing if Jesus was truly resurrected. In any argument, eyewitnesses always help the credibility of an argument.

     Secondly, the fact that at least some of the original twelve disciples died for their claims concerning Jesus also gives credibility to his resurrection. Traditionally, it is believed that eleven of the original twelve disciples died for this belief. However, others doubt that as many as eleven died. One author, Sean McDowell, believes that five of them were likely to have been killed, with the rest not so likely1. Another one, Edward Gibbon, claims that only three of them were killed2. As far as I’m concerned, even if only one of them died for the faith, it still shows that even that singular person was willing to risk their life on a claim of the resurrection. You would have to be not quite right in the head to die for something you know to be a lie! Along these same lines, consider the apostle Paul. He states in his own words that he persecuted Christians. What else would change him so radically except for the resurrected Jesus?!

    Thirdly, most of the disciples doubted at first that Jesus had risen from the dead. If someone is looking to start a movement, then it doesn’t seem like a good idea to include that the central figure’s own followers doubted his resurrection!

    There are other reasons for believing that the resurrection occurred, but those three seem to me the most noteworthy reasons. Of course, one can always doubt the resurrection no matter what reasons one gives. One can always adopt the attitude, “I wasn’t there, so I won’t believe.”, or “There isn’t absolute proof for this supposed resurrection.” This would be the same as doubting, for example, that the Civil War took place in the 1860’s or that Alexander the Great was the ruler of an empire simply because “I wasn’t there” or “there aren’t any videos to prove the occurrence of these events”. People generally don’t doubt that those events took place (even without videos or personal conversations with eyewitnesses), yet we doubt and demand more proof for Jesus’ resurrection. Who knows…maybe the documents from the Civil War are fakes? Maybe ancient historians made up everything we know about Alexander the Great. With that in mind, Jesus was correct in saying, “Blessed are those who believe without seeing.”

    For the next point (why does a resurrection matter), the resurrection is what validates the Christian faith! As was explained in previous posts, sin (and its result – death) is our biggest problem. It pits us against one another and God. Without Jesus’ resurrection, our sin problem remains (1 Corinthians 15:17). As such, Christianity is the only religion that actually provides a valid solution for the problems of sin and death! Again referring to past posts, we see an ignoring of transgressions in other religions. In Islam, Allah merely forgives sins without demanding justice. In Hinduism and Buddhism, one gets many chances to try and make up for one’s wrongdoings. In Christianity, we recognize that the God of the Bible is much too “other” and perfect for us to attempt to please him with our own efforts. In other words, God is too perfect for us, but he’s also just. He has a lot of patience, but he eventually demands justice for all wrongdoings. He cannot simply let sins slip by unnoticed. At the same time, though, God is described as loving and merciful. In his immense love for us, he sent Jesus his son to take our punishment for us. In Jesus, therefore, we see the meeting of justice and mercy. No other religion provides such a solution for our problem of sin and death!

    The resurrection, then, validates Jesus’ claims to divinity. He predicted his death and resurrection in Matthew 17:22-23, among other passages. In John 11:25 Jesus states that he IS the resurrection and the life, meaning he is the source of both. To be able to rise again points to the fact that Jesus is indeed divine. He is God himself (John 8:58, Titus 3:4, etc), and that changes everything! Only God can overcome the curse of death he placed on humanity in Genesis 3:19. As such, this means that all of Jesus’ teachings and other claims must be true if he is God himself. This means that our sin is forgiven in him. This means that we have peace with the Father through him. This means that he is the way, the truth and the life. The death and resurrection of Jesus are the central acts of all history because they opened a door for us to be able to commune with the Father.

    No other religion has a central figure that is resurrected. Muhammad, Buddha, Guru Nanak (founder of Sikhism), Joseph Smith, etc all died and their bones remain there. Jesus is the only religious leader who died and then came back to life. As such, the claims of Christianity are unique in this aspect. These claims are all found in the Bible, which again, means that the Bible is unique and should be considered as divine in its origin.

    In conclusion to this first overarching point concerning the fact that the Bible’s message is unique and this therefore supports its divine origin, I truly believe that the Bible describes our condition and the nature of God most accurately out of any religious textbook. It’s pages are filled with human failings (sin), but it’s also filled with God’s mercy and grace extended to us time and time again. On the cross, we see this unique meeting of justice, mercy, grace, and love, which is then validated in the resurrection. The perfect one takes the place of the imperfect multitude, and yet through God’s power he overcomes the original curse placed on Adam. This truly is good news, and no other religious book has a message that quite compares!

    1 McDowell, Sean. n.d. The Fate of the Apostles: Examining the Martyrdom Accounts of the Closest Followers of Jesus. 2nd ed. London and New York: Taylor and Francis Group.

    2 Gibbon, Edward. n.d. The History of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire. Vol. 2. New York: J&J Harper.

  • Why to Believe the Bible – The Bible Has a Unique Message (pt 2)

    2. No other major religion has a similar view of their god’s relationship to humans

    So we’re continuing on the first point of why we should believe the Bible has a divine origin. The first major point is that the message of the Bible is unique. The last post discusses how Christianity’s view of salvation is different from every other religion. Now, I will argue that the Bible’s view of humans in relation to God is unlike that of any other religion.

    I will start out by saying other religions flatten out the differences between their deity/ies and humans. We see this primarily in how other religions view the path to a paradise or positive afterlife. In any religion based on good and bad works, the contrast in status between god(s) and humans is diminished. In Christianity, one single sin committed by Adam condemned the entire human race and subjects us to a deserved, everlasting punishment (Romans 5:12-19)!

    • As a side note, some have questioned why we deserve everlasting punishment for finite, temporal sins? The answer lies in the magnitude of God. I have given to people an example from real life to illustrate this. Someone who commits a crime against an ordinary person will receive some sort of punishment. If someone commits the same crime against a mayor, governor, or president, the sentence for the crime is usually heavier. Why? Because the victim of the crime has an elevated status or authority. Therefore, the victim of the crime partly determines the severity of the judgment. If we could receive the death penalty for crimes committed against a human authority, how much worse is it, then, if we commit a crime against the Creator?! I would argue that all sins are essentially infinitely evil because they are committed against an infinite being.

    Back to the main point, though…I was explaining that other major religions flatten out the contrast between their deity/ies and humans. In Christianity, sins are understood as serious offenses and justly deserve punishment because God himself is just. Other religions will also say that their deity is just, but I do not agree. Why? Take Islam for example. As I understand it, Allah weighs out one’s good works against one’s bad works. If you did more good in life than bad, then Allah decides to mercifully forgive one’s sins. However, where is the justice in that? Where is the justice that should be required for wrongdoing? If a human judge were to simply pardon a heinous crime without any regard to justice, there would (and should) be outrage. In essence, what we see here is a diminishing of a deity’s characteristics and the seriousness of sin, and therefore an exaltation of the status of humans in that they can please Allah on their own.

    Another example can be seen in typical American views, at least in my experience. A typical American will say that most everyone goes to heaven to be with god (I put a lower-case “g” because I do not believe that this is the same God as that shown in the Bible). This also is a works-based righteousness in that the person who believes this thinks that they are “good enough” to go to heaven. However, as was the case for Islam, where is the justice for wrongdoings? This type of view diminishes the severity of our offenses. In this typical American view, there is no payment for wrongs done…this god simply forgives out of kindness or our sins weren’t that bad to begin with in this god’s eyes. This type of god is not just, though.

    I can give other examples, but I believe those two examples above make the point that all religions that base salvation on works flatten out the differences between their god(s) and humans. In Christianity, there is no working up to salvation. There is no concept of doing enough good works to gain access to God’s presence. This means that the Bible magnifies the gap between the sinful human and God. Ephesians 2:1-3 says that humans in their natural state are spiritually dead in sins. To make it worse, it says that we naturally follow the devil and deserve God’s anger! Romans 5:10 says that all who live in sin are God’s enemies. Putting these two passages together, on our own we are God’s enemies and entirely without him! How could it get any worse for us??? Given the hopelessness of such a situation, how could anyone possibly please God if their whole life was spent as an enemy of him?

    So on the one hand, the Bible describes a vast gap between God and humans. This gap is not seen to the same extent in other religions. On the other hand, the same Bible goes on to describe that God sent a mediator to resolve our distance from him by taking the punishment we deserve. This mediator is Jesus of Nazareth. I will write more on Jesus in the next post. As a result of this mediator’s work, God’s justice is satisfied since there is a payment for wrongdoing. Also, though, the new believer is put into a completely different type of relationship with God. The exalted state of a believer cannot be ignored and provides the counterpoint to our condition under sin. We see in God a terrible severity towards those who hate him (everyone who rejects him), but a wonderful and pleasant goodness towards those who accept his demand for justice and trust in Jesus’ work as necessary to salvation (Romans 11:22).

    The person who once was an enemy of God, but now believes, is now so close to God that they are called God’s child (Romans 8:15). They also learn that God had planned way back in eternity good things for them (Ephesians 1:4-11). In the next life, the Bible tells us that we will be with God with unlimited access (Revelation 21:3). We are beloved by God. There is a closeness to God, yet still a Creator-creature distinction, described in the Bible that is not found in other religions. Consider Islam again. Some teach that faithful Muslims will be able to see Allah once a week in Jannah (paradise). “Elite” believers will be able to see Allah twice a day1. So even in the next life, there is still distance between the Muslim and Allah. Consider Hinduism, Jainism and Buddhism. All three share the idea of nirvana or moksha, whereby an individual eventually unites with the supreme god Brahman. Some within these three religions blur the line between Creator and creature by affirming that the soul and Brahman are basically the same2. In Christianity, we maintain that there will always be a difference between the believer and God, but the relationship between the two will be incredibly close.

    No other religion emphasizes such a stark contrast between the state of an individual before and after belief like Christianity. By extension, the relationship between God and humans is much different than perspectives from other religion. The reason for this contrast is rooted in one’s relationship to God. To summarize what has been said, no one naturally wants God. As such, we incur God’s wrath for our disobedience to him. However, God in his kindness works in us and because of his grace we come to him through a mediator named Jesus. God converts his enemy into his child and friend completely by grace. So yes, once again the Bible communicates something unique. This gives me reason to see the Bible as having divine origins.

    Sources:

    1 Seeing Allah by the People of Paradise. 2024. Darulfatwa. June 28, 2024. https://www.darulfatwa.org.au/en/seeing-of-allah-by-the-people-of-paradise/.

    2 Woodburne, AS. 1925. Review of The Idea of God in Hinduism. The Journal of Religion 5, no. 1 (January): 52–66. https://www.jstor.org/stable/1195422?seq=15.