The Greatest Love

I had a conversation recently with a couple who were part of the Jehovah Witness faith; the conversation went very quickly to the deity of Christ.  Honestly I wanted to start with this issue, because if Christ is changed, then the whole message of the gospel and the awe of what He has done for us is utterly lost.  Is Jesus God or something less, that was the issue. I wanted to share something with you from Scripture that I think is so wonderful.  In 1 John 4:7-8, we read: “Dear Friends, let us love one another, for love comes from God.  Everyone who loves has been born of god and knows God.  Whoever does not love does not know god, because God is love.”  So how does this verse define God?  By love, it makes it very clear that love, while obviously not god’s only characteristic, is definitely one that can’t be ignored and that defines not only Him but those who follow him.  Keeping this in mind, look at John 15:12-14 “My command is this: love each other as I have loved you.  Greater love has no one than this: to lay down one’s life for one’s friends. You are my friends if you do what I command.”  So Jesus is telling his disciples that for one to show the greatest love, they must lay down their own life for their friends.  If Jesus is not God, then this statement doesn’t make any sense.  Why make a statement as to what the greatest love is, but yet God isn’t following it himself?  If the greatest love is to lay down one’s own life for others, and if God is defined by love, then if Jesus is a prophet, an angel or a good man, then God is not showing the greatest love.  Jesus didn’t say the greatest love is to lay down someone else’s life for your friends.
I think when you consider these two verses together and in this context it causes Romans 5:6-8 make a lot more sense.  “You see, at just the right time, when we were still powerless, Christ died for the ungodly.  Very rarely will anyone die for a righteous person, though for a good person someone might possibly dare to die.  But god demonstrates his own love for us in this: while we were still sinners, Christ died for us.”  God demonstrated his own love by sending someone else to die for us?  No, by himself becoming a man and taking our punishment, while we were still sinners, still utterly in rebellion against Him.  So with these Scriptures we are confronted with something that is, in all our human reasoning or understanding, utterly inconceivable: that the God who created the universe would come down and not only be among us for a time but would suffer and die to take our penalty.  Yet this is what is seen in Scripture.  This takes away any thought that we could expand or add to or help in any way what Christ did for us.  Scripture makes quite clear how hopeless our state is but how miraculous it was what He did on our behalf.  My Jehovah witness friends dodged these verses, not willing to really look at what they were saying.  I pray God will reveal the truth to them, so they will know who Christ truly is and come to understand why his sacrifice was enough and complete.


- Ashley

Experiencing God?

My wife would not let me call this post “Experiential Epistemology.” If you are scratching your head at that title, then you probably understand her reservations, but trust me, its better. At any rate, we spent the last couple of days visiting the LDS (Mormon) Visitor’s Center near our home to share our faith with some of the missionaries working there. As we asked each of them why they believe what they believe, the same basic answer came back from each of them. They had “an experience” that confirmed to them that the Mormon Church was true, and they have “known” it ever since. Each described the experience largely the same, as a “feeling of peace” accompanied with “great joy.” This feeling, they said, was the Holy Spirit of God, and that is how they know their religion is true. We could not help but ask them, “But how do you know the feeling you got is from God?” The conversations that followed were extremely interesting:

Answer 1). One young lady turned to Galatians 5:22-23 “But the fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace, longsuffering, gentleness, goodness, faith, meekness, temperance: against such there is no law.” She proceeded to say, “you see, this is how the holy spirit makes us feel.” But is that what the verse is saying? I read it back to her, but reading much more of the chapter:


“This I say then, Walk in the Spirit, and ye shall not fulfill the lust of the flesh. For the flesh lusteth against the Spirit, and the Spirit against the flesh: and these are contrary the one to the other: so that ye cannot do the things that ye would. But if ye be led of the Spirit, ye are not under the law. Now the works of the flesh are manifest, which are these; Adultery, fornication, uncleanness, lasciviousness, Idolatry, witchcraft, hatred, variance, emulations, wrath, strife, seditions, heresies, envyings, murders, drunkenness, revellings, and such like: of the which I tell you before, as I have also told you in time past, that they which do such things shall not inherit the kingdom of God. But the fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace, longsuffering, gentleness, goodness, faith, meekness, temperance: against such there is no law. And they that are Christ's have crucified the flesh with the affections and lusts. If we live in the Spirit, let us also walk in the Spirit.” (Galatians 5:16-25)


You see, Galatians 5 is not talking about feelings with which the Spirit speaks, but rather the life He produces in us, as compared to the life we had in the world. The qualities produced in us by the spirit contrast the behaviors of our sinful flesh. It is a contrast of two ways of living: “Walking in the Spirit”, versus “walking in the flesh.” Yet the Spirit does not take control of our actions against our will, but rather it changes us, so that we CAN and will WANT to do right, which is why the fruit of the Spirit is not actions, but qualities that PRODUCE action. This is why Paul urges those “living” in the spirit to therefore “walk” in the spirit. He does not tell those living in the flesh that they could feel these fruit if they prayed, and never says that these fruit “reveal” anything to anyone. Paul is simply not writing about how the Spirit speaks, but rather the changes He makes in the heart of repentant sinners who have come to Christ by faith. When I explained all this to my young Mormon friend, she said that, “Well, I know I am taking the verse out of context, but if you just read verses 22 and 23, except the “against such there is no law” part, then you’ll see what I am talking about.” I am NOT putting words in her mouth. She comfortably admitted to taking the verse out of context, and encouraged me to do the same so that I could read it the way she was and make it justify her position! I am not saying that EVERY Mormon you meet would say this, in fact, as you will see, the others we spoke to at the same visitor’s center did not go this route, but here we see what was being used to interpret what. Scripture did not justify the experience; rather the experience was the lens through which she read the scripture. Far from being a valid answer to how she knew the feeling was from God, it in fact gave a clear picture of what the “fruit” of her experience was when it came to the attitude toward and treatment of God’s word.


Answer 2). One missionary turned the question back on me, “Well, what ELSE could it be? Are you saying I just made it up?” I assured her that I believed that she was sincere and that she really did HAVE the experience, but wondered how she could know the spirit speaking to her was the Holy Spirit of God. After all, the New Testament warns us that there are deceiving spirits (1 Timothy 4:1) and tells us not to believe every spirit (1 John 4:1). Granting her that the emotion she felt WAS from a spirit (which is not NECESSARILY  true since emotions can be evoked in us in many ways), how did she know that the “good feeling” was from the Spirit of God and not from another spirit? She struggled a minute with this, and admitted that no one had ever asked her this before. She sat quiet for a moment, then offered up answer 3.

Answer 3). “Because of how it makes me feel! There is a peace that comes over me, joined with such joy! How could that not be from God?” Of course, if I was a spirit and was going to deceive someone, those are exactly the emotions I would use, but I went a different route in the conversation. I gave her an example of an acquaintance of mine who attends a religious organization very different from theirs. The teachings are quite contrary to Mormonism, but they do also believe in modern day prophets and claim to be the true church and the purest form of “Christianity.” When I asked this man how HE knew that HIS prophets were of God and that HIS religious views were accurate, he explained to me that he had prayed about it, and a powerful peace came over him, coupled with the most overwhelming joy. Sound familiar? Now, if this man had basically the exact same experience that our Mormon missionaries did, and yet the experience led them to two different religions, and those religions make clearly contradictory claims as to what is true, how we are saved, who is a prophet of God, what is the church, etc., how can you know that one of those experiences was from God and the other was not? None of us believe that God is a liar, so they cannot BOTH be the voice of God, since they contradict one another. How do you know YOUR experience is truly from God and the other is not. This question caused this individual to really need to think, and in fact to need to be alone for a while. She asked us to come back and meet her the next morning to discuss it further. We left her with some concluding thoughts on how to seek real objective truth in scripture (which will be discussed later) and we left her to ponder these things. The next day, her schedule had been changed on her, so that she was not there when we arrived. We did get to speak with some other missionaries however. We caught them up on the conversation, and they had some new answers for us.


Answer 4). “All religions have SOME truth, so the Holy Spirit could, in a sense, testify to the truth of any religion” Of course, the problems with this answer are many, but we chose to address a couple specific ones. First, are you saying that the spirit would actually endorse a false religion to someone on whole simply because it had some true statement in it like “there is a God” or “don’t steal”? Secondly, if the Spirit DOES do this, how do you know that YOUR religion is the truest one, and not one that just got a couple things right so the Spirit affirmed it for those couple things? To their credit, they realized quickly that does not make sense, and retracted their statement. God would not give wholesale endorsement of a religion just because it happened to get some details right. So we were back to the question, people of contradictory religions have the same emotional experience “confirming” their belief. How do you determine that YOUR emotional experience is the Holy Spirit of God, and their identical experience is not?


Answer 5). There are several Book of Mormon passages which claim that the truth will be confirmed by such an experience. One of these (Alma 32) was brought up next. This also raises two issues. One is that, if that is true, then those of other religions should trust their experience and stick with the religion THEY are in, as long as the experience is enduring. The second issue is that it creates a circular argument. “How do you know the Book of Mormon is true?” I prayed about it and got a feeling. “How do you know the feeling is of God?” The Book of Mormon says so. “But how do you know the Book of Mormon is right?” I prayed about it got a feeling. “But how do you know that feeling is from God?” The book of Mormon says so. And on and on the circle goes.



Now, having looked at these five examples, let’s get down to the big picture here. Mormon missionaries are not the only people who decide their path in life, their morality, and even their doctrine and theology by feelings and experiences. I have had Christians tell me things like “God speaks primarily through feelings,” and have known others that decide which church is teaching accurately by the “power of the experiences” they see or have within. This should not be! Subjective feeling is no foundation for truth. Spiritual experiences are real, and can be powerful, but must be treated wisely, lest we be led astray. As I mentioned above, the Bible warns us not to believe every spirit, but to test spirits to see if they are of God. We are warned of deceptive spirits that lead to false teachings. Some have replied to me that a deceptive spirit would produce negative emotions, or would otherwise feel wrong, but let’s be honest, that wouldn’t be very deceptive would it? There is no reason to expect that deceptive spirits would not “feel right” and in fact, every reason to believe they WOULD, which is why the scripture urges us to be on guard, and to test all spirits with scripture and the sound and unchanging doctrine found within. We are also told to test prophets, and even angels that claim to speak for God. We are not to take even the most powerful experience or testimony for granted, but to put it the test by the truth of God’s word. The Bible provides a marvelous foundation through which we can understand spiritual experiences and by which we can test contradictory messages and know what is true. 2 Timothy 3:13-17 states:


“But evil men and impostors will grow worse and worse, deceiving and being deceived. ¹⁴ But you must continue in the things which you have learned and been assured of, knowing from whom you have learned them, ¹⁵ and that from childhood you have known the Holy Scriptures, which are able to make you wise for salvation through faith which is in Christ Jesus. ¹⁶ All Scripture is given by inspiration of God, and is profitable for doctrine, for reproof, for correction, for instruction in righteousness,¹⁷ that the man of God may be complete, thoroughly equipped for every good work.”


So, deception is all around us, but we must stay true to the faith, knowing from whom our faith has come. How do we know? From a feeling? From an experience? No, we know from the scriptures, which are given by inspiration of God, or literally translated “God breathed”. These are God’s very words! And these words are all useful to us in the many ways listed. But what’s more? Verse 17 says that they are sufficient to make the man of God complete! The scriptures are the sole foundation for Christian truth. We challenged our LDS friends to heed what the scriptures said, and showed them the true gospel found within. Some listened, some argued, others dodged. None of them, however, asked the honest and sincere question that should follow the presentation we made. “How, then, do you know that the BIBLE is true?”… and THAT will be the topic of another post coming soon!

-Luke

Why We Are Writing

My name is Ashley and my husband Luke and I both work at a Christian homeless shelter.  We have the chance, in fact it is part of our actual job description, to share the gospel with everyone who comes in seeking shelter.  I am telling you this because this has been instrumental in causing us to start this blog.  At the shelter, we meet a lot of people who have a vague “belief in God” or who define their faith by what they “grew up as,” even if they don’t really know what that means (“I was raised Catholic”, “My dad was a Baptist preacher” etc).  We’ve found a lack of understanding about what the gospel is and about the bible in general. Many people strongly believe they are Christians, but when questioned with any depth on what that means, they realize that they don’t know, that it has never really been explained to them, or they just find themselves talking in circles. Being able to share everyday about who Jesus is and what he has done for us has impressed upon us the urgency for the truth about Christ to be told, and opened our eyes to what many of you may already know. Underneath a sea of religious labels, we live in a culture that not only does not believe in, but often has literally no idea what the true gospel of Jesus Christ is. Of course it’s not just at the shelters, nor is it only in certain social classes. We started to notice and pay more attention to where we lived: there are so many groups around us who need to know the real Jesus Christ of the bible.  We live in an area with a strong Mormon and Jehovah Witness presence, not to mention Buddhist, Muslim, and many others. We had, on and off, been trying to meet with and discuss the scripture with members of these other faiths, but it wasn’t a specific part of our life, really only when we had the time.  We have felt called to make this a regular, consistent, ministry for us, to intentionally and diligently work to make this part of each week.  We want this to become part of our regular routine. But it goes deeper than that. Not every false gospel and twisting of God’s word comes with an easy label, and not every false teacher wears a name tag like the Mormon missionaries to help you pick them out of a crowd or know it when you are talking to them. Too many of us for too long have let our Bibles grow dusty and our churches trendy, and have somewhere along the way lost the passion to make knowing God the all consuming passion of our lives, and to do so on HIS terms! Through the diligent study of his word and a commitment to living out what it says in detail, which includes calling out those who would lead others to do the opposite!

So why Jude 3?  Well honestly I think this verse sums up our goal perfectly: “dear friends, although I was very eager to write to you about the salvation we share, I felt compelled to write and urge you to contend for the faith that was once for all entrusted to God’s holy people.”  Contend means to debate, dispute, or to strive in opposition or against difficulty.  This definition makes sense, since if you read past verse 3 Jude begins to discuss those who have crept into the church unnoticed and describes their ungodly actions.  Jude then calls the believers to persevere, to hold fast to what they know and learned from the apostles.  It seems to me that Jude chose to use the word contend to make the point that the believers should not just keep silent, but seek to engage with those teaching and believing falsely, not simply for the sake of contention, but in love for the sake of God’s Holy truth! Note what he says in verse 22: “Be merciful to those who doubt; save others by snatching them from the fire; to others show mercy mixed with fear- hating even the clothing stained by corrupted flesh.”  We see over and over examples of being called to defend the faith.  We are again told in 1 Peter 3:15 “… Always be prepared to give an answer to everyone who asks you to give the reason for the hope that you have.”  We both feel that we can not and should not keep silent about our hope in Christ, and neither should we keep silent about misrepresentations of that hope, that though seeming like truth, will leave a man condemned before God. As you read through the New Testament, there are so many examples of “giving an answer” and “contending for the faith.”  When Peter was addressing the crowd in Acts 2, how did he do it?  He reasoned and demonstrated the truth and accuracy of the gospel message through Scripture that they might really understand what God had revealed in Jesus and the events the crowd was seeing at Pentecost.  The defense of the faith by the early believers is again shown by Stephen in Acts 7 and vividly demonstrated by Paul in Acts 17.  Paul sought daily to reason with those in the synagogues and in the marketplaces.  I think what strikes me about this is that Paul didn’t simply wait for opportunities to share Christ, he actively sought them out.  He went outside of his comfort zone and made a deliberate effort to reach people.  Jesus is the way, the truth and the life, and Luke and I desire nothing less than to share that truth and life with everyone that we can and to show Him through the testimony and authority of the word of God, the Bible. Not only that, but if you are in Christ, we want to urge you to do the same! That is why we’ve started this blog, as a way of documenting some of our thoughts, experiences, conversations, and even failures along the way, hoping it will encourage sincere discussion leading to earnest seeking of the truth in the Bible. We hope to encourage other Christians to be an active witness for Christ, to avoid attractive false teachings that may seek to lure you astray, and to maybe help equip you to engage those who hold to such teachings with clarity and accuracy as well as compassion and love.

- Ashley