Thinking Theo

Tag: faith

  • 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.

  • 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.