The Way of Truth

Posted on by korgrocker

“But there were also false prophets in Israel, just as there will be false teachers among you. They will cleverly teach destructive heresies and even deny the Master who bought them. In this way, they will bring sudden destruction on themselves. Many will follow their evil teaching and shameful immorality. And because of these teachers, the way of truth will be slandered. In their greed they will make up clever lies to get hold of your money. But God condemned them long ago, and their destruction will not be delayed.”
2 Peter 2:1-3 NLT

All of 2 Peter 2 is devoted to “The Danger of False Teachers”. Not a problem we have these days we might think, but to follow that line of thought is dangerous, because “the way of truth” applies across all our lives, not just those parts we spend within our church building. Surely, because we have the Bible, handed down over the centuries, and faithfully translated from early manuscripts, we have the “truth” and error is rare. Or so we might think. But it is easy to extract a part of that same Bible and elevate it to a position in our thinking that isn’t justified by the context. For example, in Romans 5:20-21, Paul wrote, “God’s law was given so that all people could see how sinful they were. But as people sinned more and more, God’s wonderful grace became more abundant. So just as sin ruled over all people and brought them to death, now God’s wonderful grace rules instead, giving us right standing with God and resulting in eternal life through Jesus Christ our Lord“. If we build our lives on these verses, then we might end up in a permanent sinful state, because, we think, God’s grace will cover our excesses. However, we turn the page to Romans 6 and read, “Well then, should we keep on sinning so that God can show us more and more of his wonderful grace? Of course not! Since we have died to sin, how can we continue to live in it? Or have you forgotten that when we were joined with Christ Jesus in baptism, we joined him in his death? (Romans 6:1-3). Living under the shadow of Romans 5 only might lead to a “destructive heresy“.

There are sadly examples today of false teachers in the church. I recently heard about how a minister taking a funeral twisted the John 3:16 Scripture to suit the occasion. The person in the coffin was, from all accounts, an unrepentant sinner. Of course we don’t know what happened just before death, but the minister proceeded to tell the large congregation that because Jesus came to this world, loving everyone, then their dead relative was now in Heaven regardless of the life they had lived. And that same situation would be repeated for everyone present. This is called Universalism, and many people today believe in universal salvation, thinking that a loving and compassionate God will have mercy on them and will never send anyone to the fires of hell. But they neglect the righteousness and justice of God. In Matthew 25:46 Jesus said, “And they will go away into eternal punishment, but the righteous will go into eternal life“. This chapter in Matthew makes clear that some people, perhaps many people, will indeed end up in a place of eternal torment, a place we call hell. Thankfully, a Christian minister present in the funeral service took the celebrant to task after the service, expounding John 3:16 correctly, and adding the next verse into the discussion. Sadly, however, many people might have left the service deluded by false teaching.

The teaching of destructive heresies leads to sects such as the Jehovah’s Witnesses. They started off as a Bible study class in the nineteenth century led by Charles Russell but through a number of volumes containing his theology, the Bible came to be reinterpreted to suit. So the JW’s believe that Jesus is Michael the archangel, contradicting what we pilgrims read in John 1:1,14, “In the beginning the Word already existed. The Word was with God, and the Word was God. … So the Word became human and made his home among us. He was full of unfailing love and faithfulness. And we have seen his glory, the glory of the Father’s one and only Son“. To take another part of their doctrine, the JW’s believe that salvation is obtained by a combination of faith, good works and obedience. But we pilgrim Bible scholars know that salvation is by grace alone. Ephesians 2:8-9, “God saved you by his grace when you believed. And you can’t take credit for this; it is a gift from God. Salvation is not a reward for the good things we have done, so none of us can boast about it“. The JW’s also reject the Trinity, believing that Jesus was a created being and the Holy Spirit to essentially be the inanimate power of God. The JW’s have retranslated the Bible to fit in with their doctrine and theology, and have produced a version they call the New World Translation. If you have such a volume on your bookshelf then bin it because it contains “destructive heresies”. And we pray that God will open the eyes of all those poor deluded people who have been deceived by their evil teaching. 

We pilgrims know the “way of truth” don’t we? John 14:6, “Jesus told him, “I am the way, the truth, and the life. No one can come to the Father except through me”. Jesus told His disciples to follow Him because that was the only way they would get to His Father in Heaven, and the same instruction applies to us as well. The Apostle Peter obviously got the message because he said to the Jewish rulers in the Sanhedrin, “Nor is there salvation in any other, for there is no other name under heaven given among men by which we must be saved” (Acts 4:12). Jesus’ statement “I am the way” is exclusive, so if anyone tries to convince us that all paths, all religions, lead to Heaven then we are in danger of falling into the category of believing “evil teaching”. Best to close the conversation and quote John 14:6 instead.

Father God, we pray Your Son’s prayer today – “And do not lead us into temptation, But deliver us from the evil one. For Yours is the kingdom and the power and the glory forever. Amen.”

Obedient Faith

Posted on by korgrocker

“And they sang a new song with these words: “You are worthy to take the scroll and break its seals and open it. For You were slaughtered, and Your blood has ransomed people for God from every tribe and language and people and nation. And You have caused them to become a Kingdom of priests for our God. And they will reign on the earth.””
‭‭Revelation‬ ‭5:9-10‬ ‭NLT

We continue to spend another day looking at this wonderful new song. The lyrics, directed at Jesus, who was standing in the middle of the twenty four elders and four living beings, before the throne of God, included the line, “Your blood has ransomed people for God from every tribe and language and people and nation”. A few thoughts about this new song. 

Firstly, do these words indicate that Jesus died for everyone, implying that there will be no exclusions and everyone will get to Heaven? Of course not, but many would like to think so. Jesus paid the ultimate penalty when He died that day at Calvary, spilling His blood so that His sacrifice would redeem everyone who believes in Him from the consequences of their sins. By doing so He paid the ransom for our sin. But to be a “ransomed people“, we have to respond personally, accepting that His sacrifice was for each one of us individually. Universalism, a belief that everyone will be saved and end up in Heaven regardless, cannot be found in the Bible. We have to make a choice – we can either choose to accept God’s saving grace through His Son, Jesus, and in the process assure our future with God in Heaven, or we can choose to reject Him and instead be assured of a life in Hell. Jesus said in John 14:6, ” … I am the way, the truth, and the life. No one can come to the Father except through me”. There is no other way.

Secondly, all human beings, regardless of their race, ethnicity, sex, hair colour and everything else, is eligible to be ransomed by Jesus’ sacrifice. If they want to be. The only exclusions are for people who make the wrong choice, or don’t make a choice at all.

Thirdly, once we have accepted in obedient faith, that Jesus died in exchange for our sins, we adopt a new role. We become fully paid up members of God’s Kingdom of priests. We read in 1 Peter 2:9, “… you are a chosen people. You are royal priests, a holy nation, God’s very own possession. As a result, you can show others the goodness of God, for he called you out of the darkness into his wonderful light.” When we adopt our new priestly roles, we can show others the way to become priests too. Being a priest conjures up images of old men dressed in a funny gown, perhaps wearing an odd-looking hat, officiating at church services. But to us pilgrim priests, our priestly duties are to show others the way to God, by sharing the Gospel with them. By being “salt and light” in our families and communities.

The verse today ends with the line, “And they will reign on the earth“. According to John’s vision recorded in the Book of Revelation, there will come a time when the Kingdom priests will reign on earth. Of course, this isn’t happening in 21st Century society. Western or otherwise. And as fas as I am aware, it hasn’t happened in history either. So there must be coming a time when we pilgrim priests will reign on earth. I’m sure we will find out more as we dig deeper into this fascinating and amazing Book.

Dear Father God. Once again we thank You for the nuggets of revelation contained in these Scriptures. Please help us to understand what You want to reveal to us. In Jesus’ name. Amen.

The Least Deserving

Posted on by korgrocker

Though I am the least deserving of all God’s people, he graciously gave me the privilege of telling the Gentiles about the endless treasures available to them in Christ. I was chosen to explain to everyone this mysterious plan that God, the Creator of all things, had kept secret from the beginning.”
Ephesians 3:8-9 NLT

““Who are you, Lord?” Saul asked. And the voice replied, “I am Jesus, the One you are persecuting!”
Acts 9:5 NLT

Paul described himself as being the least deserving of all God’s people. A bit harsh, don’t you think? A false humility? A personal put-down? No, I think I can see where Paul was coming from. When faced with this new counter-cultural but, in the traditional Jews’ opinion, blasphemous cult of “The Way”, Paul suddenly found his life-mission. The most important thing he could do. Perhaps he thought he was the only solution to the problem of this cult. Everyone else was just complaining, tutting, plotting, in the end not doing very much. But he was going to sort it. He was single-handedly going to wipe all these “blasphemers” from the face of the earth. At best he was going to imprison them. At worst, stone them. Speaking of which, that is where Paul, then called Saul, first cropped up in Scripture. At the stoning of Stephen. He held the stoners’ clothes. He looked on in approval. And in him birthed the burning desire to complete the work. We read in Acts 9:1, “Meanwhile, Saul was still breathing out murderous threats against the Lord’s disciples….”. His intention was to go to Damascus where he had heard there was a fellowship there, some disciples of “The Way”. With letters of authority he was going to drag them as prisoners to Jerusalem, where they would stand trial for “blasphemy”.

But as we know, something dramatic happened on the Damascus road. A dramatic U-turn so incredible and life-changing that it puts into insignificance the U-turns of our elected politicians. Saul, soon to be Paul, met the risen Jesus. A meeting so amazing that Paul, literally in a flash, changed from being a persecutor of the early Christians to being one of their greatest evangelists. We read that he was blind for three days. Can you imagine the agony of what he was going through? The enormity of what he had been doing must have been driving his thoughts, and we read that “he was praying“. The regrets, the guilt, the hurt. Enough to drive him to insanity? (Incidentally, he was accused of being mad in Acts 26:24 but that’s another story). 

So it is not surprising that Paul thought himself “the least deserving of all God’s people“. I can imagine the poor man must have regularly held his head in his hands, distraught over what he had done. But the mind-boggling truth is that God’s grace was sufficient even for sins of the magnitude of Paul’s. There was no limit to God’s grace in Paul’s day. And there still isn’t today. God will never reject a repentant sinner, even one who is “least-deserving” like Paul. We must never think that we are too bad for God to forgive. Too sinful even for His grace to save us. As Christians, we all experienced a U-turn in our lives. That day when we said “Yes” to the Holy Spirit’s promptings. That day may not have been so dramatic as Paul’s was. But the outcome is the same. We are forgiven by grace. God’s unlimited and wonderful grace. And like Paul, what else can we do than share the wonder of God with those around us. As I have said before, we are “beggars, showing other beggars where to find bread”. Let’s always keep a few crumbs in our pockets for the needy who come our way.