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This kind of thinking is no gospel. Where is the good news?
This writer says, "If your love is distracted by someone else then you are not worthy. If your love is not given completely, then you are not worthy."
But isn't that the point? None, may I repeat this, none of us is worthy (Isaiah 64:6).
Scripture tells us we love God because He first loved us. We are not worthy of God's love but that's Who God is (God is love just don't confuse with love is God...). God loves us and demonstrated His love for us by sending Jesus to die for our sins and even our bad motives for good things we do.
Even our very effort to be worthy falls completely short of God's glory (Romans 3:23). Even if I can love God completely, I am still a fallen creature in need of saving.
I can't pick myself up by my own bootstraps and "be worthy". It's impossible.
This is why we need grace. We're not worthy of anything God gives us except His wrath, and Jesus is our propitiation (He satisfied God's wrath for us and in our place). Without Christ, we are children of wrath but with Christ we are children of grace.
I am not worthy of God's love but He certainly is worthy of my love and devotion. Thankfully I rest in Christ's work on my behalf and not on my own effort or merit.
I am not worthy but Christ is worthy for me and in my place. That's good news.
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Think of any religious or secular (non-religious) philosophy out there (even some forms which go under the umbrella of "Christianity" but are not truly Christian). Go ahead, I'll wait. The philosophy of your choice falls under one of the two categories expressed in Luke 15.
In their very essence, all other religious / secular thought is works-based righteousness. In other words, you work to become righteous. "I do, therefore I'm accepted."
But the Gospel changes everything. Christianity is antithetical to all other religious and non-religious systems of thought. In a word: Grace.
True Christianity says, "I'm accepted, therefore I do."
And that's the rub. People want to establish their own righteousness. This idea is the foundation of both sons' actions.
But the Christian Gospel says, "Jesus fulfilled all that God requires of people for us and in our place. Believe in Him, and He will be your righteousness." Everything we strive for is fulfilled in Christ, and what He has done to obtain God the Father's favor becomes fruit in our lives as we believe in Him as Savior.
THIS is good news. THIS is why the Gospel changes everything. Believe the Gospel.
"
>The Antithetical GospelHere's the thing about this question: The questioner assumes the Christian is making the judgement call.
Yes, the Christian is making a judgement call but only based on what and how the Scriptures have laid it out.
In other words, the Scriptures explainwhat is sin, therefore, the Christian compares what Scripture says and what people do which enables the Christian to say, "this is sin".
So who are we, as Christians, to say people are in sin?
It is God in His Word, the Bible, Who tells us we're sinful. It is us Christians who are repeating what God has already said.
If Scripture is anything to us, It is the foundation upon which we rest in our judgments. Scripture tells us, in no uncertain terms, we (humans) are all sinners. By nature. We are not sinners because we sin; we sin because we are sinners. David tells us we are conceived in sin. Isaiah tells us even our best deeds are like polluted garments before God. And Paul explains, "for all have sinned and fallen short of the glory of God".
We are sinful people telling other sinful people that salvation is of the Lord. Martin Luther explains, "We are all mere beggars telling other beggars where to find bread."
Who are we, as Christians, to tell others they're sinful? We're sinners saved by grace wanting other sinners to be saved by grace. There is no other way to be saved. From our sin. From ourselves.
It is Jesus Who lived and died FOR us and in our place because of our sin, and we want others to believe in Him, too.
"
>Who Are YOU, Christians, to Tell Me I'm in "Sin" ?The very real and typical answer is by the Grace of God. Period. See Ephesians 2:8 & 9.
But there are other reasons which are an outflow of God's Grace in our lives.
Christianity's Claim: Research the facts for yourself.
The Bible is a collection of over 60 books of different genres (history, poetry, wisdom, apocalyptic, etc...), spanning over 1,500 years, written by over 40 authors including shepherds and kings, fishermen and doctors, soldiers and lawyers. Compare that with any other religious book.
Further, there are over 5600 Greek manuscripts in existence which far outweigh the number of manuscripts to other ancient writings. Think Plato, Aristotle, Homer (Illiad), and others (See this chart for details).
Skeptics do not see this as definitive enough, however, "if the critics of the Bible dismiss the New Testament as reliable information, then they must also dismiss the reliability of the writings of Plato, Aristotle, Caesar, Homer, and the other authors." It's almost as if skeptics dismiss the Bible without looking into the evidence.
The Bible may look like it has contradictions and other issues on the surface, but the Bible has a self-consistency that surpasses other religious books. The internal consistency of the New Testament documents is about 99.5% textually pure.
If you are skeptical of these claims, go research it out yourself before you deny its viability of truth.
Christianity's Claim: The Eyewitnesses are telling truth
"All Christianity asks of men on this subject, is that they would be consistent with themselves; that they would treat the evidence of other things; and that they would try and judge its actors and witnesses, as they deal with their fellow men, when testifying to human affairs and actions, in human tribunals,” writes Simon Greenleaf, one of the founders of Harvard Law School. “Let the witnesses be compared with themselves, with each other, and with surrounding facts and circumstances; and let their testimony be sifted, as if were given in a court of justice, on the side of the adverse party, the witness being subjected to a rigorous cross-examination.
"The writers of the Biblical accounts invited critical analysis, as revealed in 1 Thessalonians 5:21; 1 John 4:1; and Revelation 2:2. They wanted people to believe their testimony was true. It was imperative they provided accurate, objective and truthful information, because lives were at stake. Not just their lives, but the lives of those who received their message.
When the authors of Scripture describe events, they use specificity. In other words, only when real events are described can the details be verified and consistent. There were eyewitnesses of events such as feeding of the 5,000, 500 eyewitnesses of Jesus appearance after his death, not to mention Paul's first hand experience with Jesus on the road to Damascus, as well as, James, Jude, John, and many many others. The authors mention all of these people as if to say, "Don't believe me? Go talk with these first-hand witnesses yourself." Many eyewitness were still alive when people received the letters and documents of Scripture.
"There were plenty of people around when the New Testament documents were penned who could have contested the writings. In other words, those who wrote the documents knew that if they were inaccurate, plenty of people would have pointed it out. But, we have absolutely no ancient documents contemporary with the First Century that contest the New Testament texts."
For further reading and research, check out: http://www.tektonics.org/guest/truthfulness.htm
I also recommend CARM: http://carm.org/
"
>Three Reasons Why I Am A ChristianPeople love, love, love their religion. Religion makes us feel good. When we participate in religion, we gain a sense of accomplishment. A sense that we are actually doing something good for God. We think we are accepted by God based on our doing.
Surrender to God? Check. Loving others? Check. Seeking peace? Check. Acceptable to God? Not so much (See Isaiah 64:6).
These things are fruit. Fruit of the Spirit--the Spirit of Christ that dwells within us.
There is a difference between focusing on the Gospel and focusing on the fruit of the Gospel.
Focusing on "surrender" inherently draws our attention and action inwardly. "Can I muster enough effort to surrender enough?" But focusing on the Gospel automatically motivates me to surrender.
Do you see the difference? This is subtle but so freeing. One is looking at the fruit, but the other looks to the Tree of Life (Jesus and His Gospel) and the fruit of looking at the Gospel is produced in our lives.
Galatians 5:22 But the fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness,23 gentleness, self-control; against such things there is no law.24 And those who belong to Christ Jesus have crucified the flesh with its passions and desires.
The fruit of the Spirit mentioned in Galatians 5 is not an exhaustive list. We could add surrender to Jesus, humility, wisdom, godliness, growing in faith for faith, eating and drinking to the glory of God, abhorring and running from sin, orphan care, and the list could go on and on.
The bottom line: Pursuing the fruit establishes religion. Looking to Jesus and His Good News (the Gospel) produces fruit.
Pursuing the fruit is religion. Pursuing the Gospel is Christianity.
"
>Pursuing the Gospel or Its Fruit?Let me explain.
"But if Jesus is who he said he is, and if his promises are as rewarding as the Bible claims they are, then we may discover that satisfaction in our lives and success in the church are not found in what our culture deems most important but in radical abandonment to Jesus." ~Platt p3
"'Anyone who does not carry his cross and follow me cannot be my disciple.' Now this is taking it to another level. Pick up an instrument of torture and follow me. This is getting plain weird...and kind of creepy. Imagine a leader coming on the scene today and inviting all who would come after him to pick up an electric chair and become his disciple. Any takers?
"As if this were not enough, Jesus finished his seeker-sensitive plea with a pull-at-your-heartstrings conclusion. 'Any of you who does not give up everything he has cannot be my disciple.' Give up evertying you have, carry a cross, and hate your family. This sounds a lot different than 'Admit, believe, confess, and pray a prayer after me.'" ~Platt pp10-11
Throughout the book, there is a plea to surrender to Jesus, which is good, but the pleas are expressed either by making a person feel guilty or via a command to surrender.
There is no connection with the Gospel itself. How does my surrender flow from and out of the Gospel? How does my surrender to Jesus get motivated by Jesus' birth, life, death, and resurrection? This is the Gospel, and my surrender MUST, it MUST, flow out and from the Gospel.
The Gospel is mentioned but the "surrender to Jesus" is not connected WITH the Gospel.
Yes, we can "surrender to Jesus" but how do you know your surrender is sincere enough? How do you know your surrender to Jesus is surrender enough? Can you surrender EVERYTHING for Jesus?
Sure. We WANT to surrender everything, but the reality is, our sin touches every part of our being, sin corrupts our every molecule to such a degree that even our best surrender and abandonment to Jesus is as filthy or polluted rags before God. See Isaiah 64:6.
Ask yourself this: Can I absolutely, 100% abandon EVERYTHING in my life for Jesus? This means there is NO turning back; this means you cannot, even for a split second, think "wow, it'd be nice to have X for a moment" or "I miss X...."
I cannot do that. I want to. But I cannot DO it. It is a law I cannot fulfill.
But Jesus DID do it. For me. In my place. And it is HIS work of surrender and abandonment to God that I rest in.
Speaking of Jesus parable of the treasure in a field in Matthew 13:
"This is the picture of Jesus in the gospel. He is something--someone--worth losing everything for. And if we walk away from the Jesus of the gospel, we walk away from eternal riches. The cost of non-discipleship is profoundly greater for us than the cost of discipleship. For when we abandon the trinkets of this world and respond to the radical invitation of Jesus, we discover the infinite treasure of knowing and experiencing him."
This is very true, but this statement does not go far enough.
How does the Gospel motivate me to "abandon the trinkets of this world and respond to the radical invitation of Jesus?"
Platt explains the Gospel very well, but there is a disconnect between the Gospel and its motivation of our doing.
Without this connection of our motivation with the Gospel, the command to surrender all is just a command, a heavy weight placed upon us we can never fulfill.
Show me the beauty of the Gospel, don't just tell me it's beautiful.
Let me quote large portions of Radical and let Platt speak for himself:
"Biblical proclamation of the gospel beckons us to a much different response and leads us down a much different road. Here the gospel demands and enables us to turn from our sin, to take up our cross, to die to ourselves, and to follow Jesus. These are the terms and phrases we see in the Bible. And salvation now consists of a deep wrestling in our souls with the sinfulness of our hearts, the depth of our depravity, and the desperation of our need for his grace. Jesus is no longer one to be accepted or invited in but one who is infinitely worthy of our immediate and total surrender.
'You might think this sounds as though we have to earn our way to Jesus through radical obedience, but that is not the case at all. Indeed, 'it is by grace you [are] saved, through faith--and this not from yourselves, it is the gift of God--not by works, so that no one can boast.' We are saved from our sins by a free gift of grace, something that only God can do in us and that we cannot manufacture ourselves.
"But that gift of grace involves the gift of a new heart. New desires. New longings. For the first time, we want God. We see our need for him, and we love him. We seek after him, and we find him, and we discover that he is indeed the great reward of our salvation. We realize that we are saved not just to be forgiven of our sins or to be assured of our eternity in heaven, but we are saved to know God. So we yearn for him. We want him so much that we abandon everything else to experience him. This is the only proper response to the revelation of God in the gospel.
"This is why men and women around the world risk their lives to know more about him. This is why we must avoid cheap caricatures of Christianity that fail to exalt the revelation of God in his Word. This is why you and I cannot settle for anything less than a God-centered, Christ-exalting, self-denying gospel.
"I pray continually for this kind of hunger in the church God has given me to lead and in churches spread across our country's landscape. I pray that we will be a people who refuse to gorge our spiritual stomachs on the entertaining pleasures of this world, because we have chosen to find our satisfaction in the eternal treasure of his Word. I pray that God will awaken in your heart and mind a deep and abiding passion for the gospel as the grand revelation of God." ~Platt pp38-40
"The dangerous assumption we unknowingly accept in the American dream is that our greatest asset is our own ability. The American dream prizes what people can accomplish when they believe in themselves and trust in themselves, and we are drawn toward such thinking. But the gospel has different priorities. The gospel beckons us to die to ourselves and to believe in God and to trust in his power. In the gospel, God confronts us with our utter inability to accomplish anything of value apart from him. This is what Jesus meant when he said, 'I am the vine; you are the branches. If a man remains in me and I in him, he will bear much fruit; apart from me you can do nothing.'" ~Platt p46
"It is the way of Christ. Instead of asserting ourselves, we crucify ourselves. Instead of imagining all the things we can accomplish, we ask God to do what only he can accomplish. Yes, we work, we plan, we organize, and we create, but we do it all while we fast, while we pray, and while we constantly confess our need for the provision of God. Instead of dependence on ourselves, we express radical desperation for the power of his Spirit, and we trust that Jesus stands ready to give us everything we ask for so that we might make much of our Father in the world.
Think about it. Would you say that your life is marked right now by desperation for the Spirit of God? Would you say that the church you are a part of is characterized by this sense of desperation?
Why would we ever want to settle for Christianity according to our ability or settle for church according to our resources? The power of the one who raised Jesus from the dead is living in us, and as a result we have no need to muster up our own might. Our great need is to fall before an almighty Father day and night and to plead for him to show his radical power in and through us, enabling us to accomplish for his glory what we could never imagine in our own strength. And when we do this, we will discover that we were created for a purpose much greater than ourselves, the kind of purpose that can only be accomplished in the power of his Spirit. ~Platt p60
Do you have this desperation for the Spirit of God? How do I know my desperation for the Spirit of God is enough?
I can tell you, my desperation will NEVER be desperate enough. My abandonment will NEVER be abandoning enough. To command me to do these things even in the context of the Gospel is still placing a law upon me I can never fulfill. Connect me to the Gospel. Connect my doing to the Gospel and that fruit will grow in my life because only my conforming into Christ's image will be done.
"'Abandon all, take up your cross and follow me.' If in responding to this command our stress is primarily upon our own responsibility, we will first look within, at the quality and sincerity of our own faith and repentance, rather than without, at the vicarious life and death of Christ. 'Gospel proclamation' that leads Christians to think mainly about what they must do, rather than mainly about what Jesus has done as our substitute inclines the hearers to stray from gospel-centered missional living.
"The good news of the gospel is that Jesus has done it all--for us and in our place. Only as we believe and live in the reality of what he has done are we progressively freed to live truly missional and radically obedient lives in a broken world.
"As we grow in understanding the reality of who Jesus is for us, we are progressively freed from our personal and missional paralysis and empowered to turn outward for the gospel-good of others. The good news of who Jesus was and is for us as the God-man turns dread into joy and frees us from self-preoccupation to move outward in mission."
All this to say, say these things; just say them in a different way--in a way in which the Gospel is my motivation not a command.
" >[Review] Radical - Taking Back Your Faith from the American Dream
Genesis 1:26 tells us, "Then God said, 'Let us make man in our image, after our likeness. And let them have dominion over the fish of the sea and over the birds of the heavens and over the livestock and overall the earth and over every creeping thing that creeps on the earth."
We, that is you and I, are made in the image of God. This means we are the crown jewel of ALL of creation. We are special, because we are made in God's image. But then something horrible happened.
Romans 5:19a "For as by the one man's (Adam's) disobedience the many were made sinners..."
Due to the fall (this is when Adam and Even took of the fruit they were commanded not to eat and ate it), we all fell into sin, because we were all in Adam, so to speak. So we became sinners in Adam which is why we sin.
Sin, simplistically speaking, is any deviation from performing God's law perfectly in attitude and action. Another way to put it, we do not love God and love others with ALL of our being (our body, soul, spirit, and emotions).
The prophet, Isaiah, tells us, "We have all become like one who is unclean, and all our righteous deeds are like a polluted garment." This means, even our best GOOD (deed or thought) is like a polluted garment. And the polluted garment? Well, let's just say it's a feminine product and leave it at that.
In other words, We are miserable failures even at our BEST of times!
Have you ever thought, "wow, I did a good job, but THIS could have been improved," or have you found yourself NOT doing what you've told other people to do? The apostle Paul tells us in Romans that even WE do not live up to OUR OWN standards and expectations, little alone God's standard of righteousness. So this leaves us in a VERY precarious spot.
The apostle Paul further explains that our sin DESERVES to be punished. And not just with any punishment but by the punishment of DEATH (Romans 6:23).This is why there is death in the world. This is why, one day, you will die.
BUT there is GOOD NEWS!
Romans 1:16-17 "For I am not ashamed of the Gospel, for it is the power of God for salvation to everyone who believes, ... For in it the righteousness of God is revealed from faith for faith, as it is written, the righteous shall live by faith."
So, what is this Gospel? This Good News?
The Gospel is: Jesus and His life, death, burial, and resurrection.
But what does the Gospel mean?
The Gospel means that Jesus fulfilled EVERYTHING God requires of YOU and ME. You know those Ten Commandments? Jesus fulfilled them. Perfectly. In word, deed, action, thought, emotion - He loved God and loved others as Himself for us and in our place! There is nothing left for us to do!
Romans 5:19b "..."so by the one man's (Jesus Christ) obedience the many will be made righteous."
Jesus is Who saves you, and He saves you through faith in Him. It's as simple as that.
It is the same for those of us who have already believed in Jesus as Savior. We continue to believe in Him. And it is through our faith that He continues to save and sanctify us.
Sanctify is a word that means, we grow in grace and continue to be conformed into the image or likeness of Jesus.
Philippians tells us, "He who began a good work in you will bring it to completion at the day of Jesus Christ". This is a guarantee! It's a done deal. It's as good as done!
This is why Christmas is so important to Christians. IT commemorates the birth of Jesus, God the Father's Son. His birth brought him under the curse of the law even unto death, even the death of the cross FOR US and in OUR place. This is why Easter is so vital. Easter is the culmination what Christmas began.
Be blessed as you celebrate Christmas, but more importantly, believe in Jesus for He will save His people from their sins. He is the inexpressable gift!
This, I think, is what makes the Gospel so applicable- even to the issue of ethnic identity.
As I was reading La Shawn's article, my mind was drawn to Psalm 16:
1 Preserve me, O God, for in you I take refuge.
2 I say to the Lord, “You are my Lord; I have no good apart from you.”
3 As for the saints in the land, they are the excellent ones, in whom is all my delight.
This seems to be an apparent contradiction at first look. How can David say he has "no good apart from" God, yet he says all his delight is in the saints?
We must understand God's glory is multifaceted, in that, He can not be completely understood from one perspective. To bring home my point, let me use the Inklings as an example.
This is a paraphrase, but it's verifiable nonetheless. When Charles Williams died, CS Lewis thought and wrote, "Good! Now I can get MORE of Tolkien," but in reality, Lewis received LESS of Tolkien. Why? Because Williams was able to pull aspects of Tolkien's personality out that Lewis could never get.
This, I believe, is very applicable. What does Paul say in 1 Corinthians 15:3? "For I delivered to you as of first importance what I also received: that Christ died for our sins in accordance with the Scriptures,"
The Gospel is of First Importance which means It is the focal point of our (Christian) reality. This means there is nothing that is as important (i.e. ethnicity, skin color, hair texture/color, geographic location, etc...) as the Gospel itself.
This is why Christians from any and every ethnicity, family, etc... can come together and fellowship; not like people discussing sports or the weather, but as A people who have been saved to the uttermost! (Hebrews 7:25) because "There is neither Jew nor Greek, there is neither slave nor free, there is no male and female, for you are all one in Christ Jesus" (Galatians 3:28).
So when people in churches begin to dispute about these other trivial things (tension over length of service, style of preaching and music, and even how to address the preacher) have become of first importance and have made the Gospel trivial.
This does not mean that the issues relating to ethnicity are unimportant. The Gospel puts them in their proper perspective and gives light to the answer. As a white guy, I can humble myself because of Jesus and ask sincerely, "What is really bothering my black friends, and how can I help?" "How can I understand the fundamental issues that effect both of us?" "How can I understand our great God from a different perspective?"
I, as a white man, will not understand Who God is without my black brothers and sisters to show me their perspective of Who God is- and vice versa. Because not one group of people has all the answers.
It may not be easy, but it sets us in the right direction. " >Why Did God Make Different Races? A Continuation of Thought and Incomplete Response
To be honest, I attend a church which identifies itself as within the Fundamentalist movement. But I would not count myself loyal to Fundamentalism (or even the larger Evangelical arena), per se, only faithful and loyal in so far as the Gospel Itself is concerned, as far as It is preached and applied. And I am thankful for my Pastor's proclamation of the Gospel- in season and out of season.
My goal, as is many Fundamentalists I know, is to be faithful to Scripture, its commands, demands, and statutes in general and the Gospel specifically. This means searching the Scriptures, asking questions, and taking God at "face value" based on what we see in Scripture. This means, on a basic level at least, being looked down upon because we do not agree on various levels of doctrine.
That's fine by me.
This, I believe, is one of the reasons YF consider leaving Fundamentalism. They do not see, for instance, the doctrine of separation in its typical Fundamentalist application as the right way to apply it. This, then, can get (and does get) misconstrued by other Fundamentalists who think YF do not believe in separation at all.
YF want to be faithful to the Gospel; not Fundamentalism. Jesus died for us. Fundamentalism did not die for us. The problem, as I see it, is there is an assumed equality between Fundamentalism and the Gospel. The Gospel does not equal Fundamentalism. But if Fundamentalism equals the Gospel- no less, no more- then I will be faithful to it. And as long as that's the case, I'll just use the biblical term- Gospel.
Another reason I see YF consider leaving Fundamentalism is the seeming lack of scholarly and loving discourse. How many times have I stepped into a Fundamentalist church and heard phrases like, "Be Fundamental!!" ~ whatever that really means. Or the fact that the various Fundamentalist preachers I have sat under in years gone by were striving to be so faithful to the Written Word (which I agree!) that they leave the point of ALL of Scripture out of their messages- namely Jesus.
This is a functional denial of the Gospel, a functional denial of Jesus being our Mediator between God and man.
You will hear things like, "Be holy," "walk humbly with your God," and "take out the beam from your eye before you address the speck in another person's eye" which are all biblical things to proclaim. But when Jesus is not proclaimed in mediation of these commands, all we hear are self-help messages in Christian-ese.
After all, the mediating command which MUST be obeyed, before any other command can be fulfilled in us, is, "Believe in the Lord Jesus Christ!!" For when we obey this command, we automatically receive the righteousness of the law as if we have fulfilled every jot and tittle because Jesus fulfilled it! Conversely our sin AND our good works (which are filthy rags in reality) are placed upon Jesus Who became sin for us!
How can I be holy if Jesus is not my holiness? How can I be humble if Jesus is not my humility- after all, isn't humility slippery in that once we think we have it, we've lost it? And how can I take the beams of my sin out of my eye if I am not looking to my Standard of Righteousness Who is Jesus? Otherwise, I've exchanged my current sin-beam for a less noticeable sin- sin of and in the heart- namely pride?
Further, how can we be justified in urging people to Jesus when all we've preached is works righteousness while speaking of Jesus as a passing comment? Even in a Gospel-Saturated context, if Jesus is not preached even one time, the hearers will begin to think that they need to do whatever the exhortation is without faith in Christ. Think, "Lord, I believe! Help my unbelief!"
This, certainly, is not an issue only with Fundamentalism but with any Bible preaching church- Fundamentalist or Evangelical.
How often do Fundamentalists speak against the heretical teachings of the Osteens of the world (which is needed!) but yet, they allow near heretical/heretical men who base their whole ministries on a lie and use Scripture totally out of context and misapplications! It wasn't until the one I'm thinking of was "caught" that they "separated" from him (I am still reeling after that one- to be flatly honest- and I constantly preach the Gospel to myself to combat the effects of that situation every time I think of it). The issue is that these people preach Scriptural things but from the wrong passages AND they do not preach Christ. If we're faithful to Scripture, that means we should be faithful to the context from which a sermon is brought.
Fundamentalists have their own accepted associations which, from where I sit, are equal to if not worse than John Piper in the Baptist General Conference or Mark Dever in SBC.
And lastly, I believe some YF consider leaving Fundamentalism because they see that Fundamentalism is not perfect. Granted, no church in Evangelicalism or Fundamentalism is perfect. After all, every church is filled with sinners. Fundamentalism, as a whole, may be categorized by legalism but many Evangelical churches can be characterized by license- Both need the Gospel AND law- for you can not have one without the other. If you emphasize the one without the other, you fall into error.
However, many Fundamentalists seem to give the impression that Fundamentalism is the primary group / movement in which God works.
What utter foolishness and pride.
God is faithful only unto Himself which means He is faithful to the Gospel (after all, God is the Gospel- Jesus). And God's faithfulness to us is a result of His being faithful unto Himself. It is the Gospel that is the power unto salvation- not Evangelicalism or Fundamentalism. God will bless each in so far as the Gospel is rightly proclaimed and applied.
If I may be so blunt, who cares if YF consider "leaving" Fundamentalism? IF they're pursuing faithfulness to the Gospel, then separation from the separatists may be necessary. Ironic? Maybe, but sometimes faithfulness to the Gospel demands ironic actions.
But then again, sometimes faithfulness to the Gospel demands you stay where it's not perfect to proclaim and practice the Gospel to all those who need It. Because everyone needs the Gospel- not just the people you like. " >Why YF's Consider Leaving Fundamentalism (My View)
Apologetics
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This kind of thinking is no gospel. Where is the good news?This writer says, "If your love is distracted by someone else then you are not worthy. If your love is not given completely, then you are not worthy."But isn't that the point? None, may I repeat this, none of us is worthy (Isaiah 64:6).Scripture tells us we love God because He first loved us. We are not worthy of God's love but that's Who God is (God is love just don't confuse with love is God...). God loves us and demonstrated His love for us by sending Jesus to die for our sins and even our bad motives for good things we do.Even our very effort to be worthy falls completely short of God's glory (Romans 3:23). Even if I can love God completely, I am still a fallen creature in need of saving.I can't pick myself up by my own bootstraps and "be worthy". It's impossible.This is why we need grace. We're not worthy of anything God gives us except His wrath, and Jesus is our propitiation (He satisfied God's wrath for us and in our place). Without Christ, we are children of wrath but with Christ we are children of grace.I am not worthy of God's love but He certainly is worthy of my love and devotion. Thankfully I rest in Christ's work on my behalf and not on my own effort or merit.I am not worthy but Christ is worthy for me and in my place. That's good news." >We Are Not Worthy - That's Why There is Grace
- see here pdf). What this means, at least in part, is we will either show all of the Fruits of the Spirit in a strong way or all in a weak way. This also means if I am demonstrating a couple of the "fruits" I am most likely picking myself up by my bootstraps and trying to demonstrate them in my own strength; hence, I'm not demonstrating all of them.
This is why the Gospel is so vital. We need to reflect on Jesus, His birth, life, death, and resurrection, by all of which He fulfilled everything God required of us but couldn't or didn't want to fulfill. Jesus was patient, kind, full of peace, love, joy, and the rest.
Jesus was patient even until the cross. He was patient towards everyone. He was patient for us and in our place.
What Jesus did frees us to be patient. We can't do it, but Jesus did and His finished work becomes the Fruit of the Spirit in our lives as we continually trust Him and the Good News that He is and has done.
Don't fret. Trust Jesus. He's done it all. You reap the fruit.
"
>The Gospel Produces PatienceThink of any religious or secular (non-religious) philosophy out there (even some forms which go under the umbrella of "Christianity" but are not truly Christian). Go ahead, I'll wait. The philosophy of your choice falls under one of the two categories expressed in Luke 15.
In their very essence, all other religious / secular thought is works-based righteousness. In other words, you work to become righteous. "I do, therefore I'm accepted."
But the Gospel changes everything. Christianity is antithetical to all other religious and non-religious systems of thought. In a word: Grace.
True Christianity says, "I'm accepted, therefore I do."
And that's the rub. People want to establish their own righteousness. This idea is the foundation of both sons' actions.
But the Christian Gospel says, "Jesus fulfilled all that God requires of people for us and in our place. Believe in Him, and He will be your righteousness." Everything we strive for is fulfilled in Christ, and what He has done to obtain God the Father's favor becomes fruit in our lives as we believe in Him as Savior.
THIS is good news. THIS is why the Gospel changes everything. Believe the Gospel.
"
>The Antithetical GospelHere's the thing about this question: The questioner assumes the Christian is making the judgement call.
Yes, the Christian is making a judgement call but only based on what and how the Scriptures have laid it out.
In other words, the Scriptures explainwhat is sin, therefore, the Christian compares what Scripture says and what people do which enables the Christian to say, "this is sin".
So who are we, as Christians, to say people are in sin?
It is God in His Word, the Bible, Who tells us we're sinful. It is us Christians who are repeating what God has already said.
If Scripture is anything to us, It is the foundation upon which we rest in our judgments. Scripture tells us, in no uncertain terms, we (humans) are all sinners. By nature. We are not sinners because we sin; we sin because we are sinners. David tells us we are conceived in sin. Isaiah tells us even our best deeds are like polluted garments before God. And Paul explains, "for all have sinned and fallen short of the glory of God".
We are sinful people telling other sinful people that salvation is of the Lord. Martin Luther explains, "We are all mere beggars telling other beggars where to find bread."
Who are we, as Christians, to tell others they're sinful? We're sinners saved by grace wanting other sinners to be saved by grace. There is no other way to be saved. From our sin. From ourselves.
It is Jesus Who lived and died FOR us and in our place because of our sin, and we want others to believe in Him, too.
"
>Who Are YOU, Christians, to Tell Me I'm in "Sin" ?The very real and typical answer is by the Grace of God. Period. See Ephesians 2:8 & 9.
But there are other reasons which are an outflow of God's Grace in our lives.
Christianity's Claim: Research the facts for yourself.
The Bible is a collection of over 60 books of different genres (history, poetry, wisdom, apocalyptic, etc...), spanning over 1,500 years, written by over 40 authors including shepherds and kings, fishermen and doctors, soldiers and lawyers. Compare that with any other religious book.
Further, there are over 5600 Greek manuscripts in existence which far outweigh the number of manuscripts to other ancient writings. Think Plato, Aristotle, Homer (Illiad), and others (See this chart for details).
Skeptics do not see this as definitive enough, however, "if the critics of the Bible dismiss the New Testament as reliable information, then they must also dismiss the reliability of the writings of Plato, Aristotle, Caesar, Homer, and the other authors." It's almost as if skeptics dismiss the Bible without looking into the evidence.
The Bible may look like it has contradictions and other issues on the surface, but the Bible has a self-consistency that surpasses other religious books. The internal consistency of the New Testament documents is about 99.5% textually pure.
If you are skeptical of these claims, go research it out yourself before you deny its viability of truth.
Christianity's Claim: The Eyewitnesses are telling truth
"All Christianity asks of men on this subject, is that they would be consistent with themselves; that they would treat the evidence of other things; and that they would try and judge its actors and witnesses, as they deal with their fellow men, when testifying to human affairs and actions, in human tribunals,” writes Simon Greenleaf, one of the founders of Harvard Law School. “Let the witnesses be compared with themselves, with each other, and with surrounding facts and circumstances; and let their testimony be sifted, as if were given in a court of justice, on the side of the adverse party, the witness being subjected to a rigorous cross-examination.
"The writers of the Biblical accounts invited critical analysis, as revealed in 1 Thessalonians 5:21; 1 John 4:1; and Revelation 2:2. They wanted people to believe their testimony was true. It was imperative they provided accurate, objective and truthful information, because lives were at stake. Not just their lives, but the lives of those who received their message.
When the authors of Scripture describe events, they use specificity. In other words, only when real events are described can the details be verified and consistent. There were eyewitnesses of events such as feeding of the 5,000, 500 eyewitnesses of Jesus appearance after his death, not to mention Paul's first hand experience with Jesus on the road to Damascus, as well as, James, Jude, John, and many many others. The authors mention all of these people as if to say, "Don't believe me? Go talk with these first-hand witnesses yourself." Many eyewitness were still alive when people received the letters and documents of Scripture.
"There were plenty of people around when the New Testament documents were penned who could have contested the writings. In other words, those who wrote the documents knew that if they were inaccurate, plenty of people would have pointed it out. But, we have absolutely no ancient documents contemporary with the First Century that contest the New Testament texts."
For further reading and research, check out: http://www.tektonics.org/guest/truthfulness.htm
I also recommend CARM: http://carm.org/
"
>Three Reasons Why I Am A ChristianPeople love, love, love their religion. Religion makes us feel good. When we participate in religion, we gain a sense of accomplishment. A sense that we are actually doing something good for God. We think we are accepted by God based on our doing.
Surrender to God? Check. Loving others? Check. Seeking peace? Check. Acceptable to God? Not so much (See Isaiah 64:6).
These things are fruit. Fruit of the Spirit--the Spirit of Christ that dwells within us.
There is a difference between focusing on the Gospel and focusing on the fruit of the Gospel.
Focusing on "surrender" inherently draws our attention and action inwardly. "Can I muster enough effort to surrender enough?" But focusing on the Gospel automatically motivates me to surrender.
Do you see the difference? This is subtle but so freeing. One is looking at the fruit, but the other looks to the Tree of Life (Jesus and His Gospel) and the fruit of looking at the Gospel is produced in our lives.
Galatians 5:22 But the fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness,23 gentleness, self-control; against such things there is no law.24 And those who belong to Christ Jesus have crucified the flesh with its passions and desires.
The fruit of the Spirit mentioned in Galatians 5 is not an exhaustive list. We could add surrender to Jesus, humility, wisdom, godliness, growing in faith for faith, eating and drinking to the glory of God, abhorring and running from sin, orphan care, and the list could go on and on.
The bottom line: Pursuing the fruit establishes religion. Looking to Jesus and His Good News (the Gospel) produces fruit.
Pursuing the fruit is religion. Pursuing the Gospel is Christianity.
"
>Pursuing the Gospel or Its Fruit?Let me explain.
"But if Jesus is who he said he is, and if his promises are as rewarding as the Bible claims they are, then we may discover that satisfaction in our lives and success in the church are not found in what our culture deems most important but in radical abandonment to Jesus." ~Platt p3
"'Anyone who does not carry his cross and follow me cannot be my disciple.' Now this is taking it to another level. Pick up an instrument of torture and follow me. This is getting plain weird...and kind of creepy. Imagine a leader coming on the scene today and inviting all who would come after him to pick up an electric chair and become his disciple. Any takers?
"As if this were not enough, Jesus finished his seeker-sensitive plea with a pull-at-your-heartstrings conclusion. 'Any of you who does not give up everything he has cannot be my disciple.' Give up evertying you have, carry a cross, and hate your family. This sounds a lot different than 'Admit, believe, confess, and pray a prayer after me.'" ~Platt pp10-11
Throughout the book, there is a plea to surrender to Jesus, which is good, but the pleas are expressed either by making a person feel guilty or via a command to surrender.
There is no connection with the Gospel itself. How does my surrender flow from and out of the Gospel? How does my surrender to Jesus get motivated by Jesus' birth, life, death, and resurrection? This is the Gospel, and my surrender MUST, it MUST, flow out and from the Gospel.
The Gospel is mentioned but the "surrender to Jesus" is not connected WITH the Gospel.
Yes, we can "surrender to Jesus" but how do you know your surrender is sincere enough? How do you know your surrender to Jesus is surrender enough? Can you surrender EVERYTHING for Jesus?
Sure. We WANT to surrender everything, but the reality is, our sin touches every part of our being, sin corrupts our every molecule to such a degree that even our best surrender and abandonment to Jesus is as filthy or polluted rags before God. See Isaiah 64:6.
Ask yourself this: Can I absolutely, 100% abandon EVERYTHING in my life for Jesus? This means there is NO turning back; this means you cannot, even for a split second, think "wow, it'd be nice to have X for a moment" or "I miss X...."
I cannot do that. I want to. But I cannot DO it. It is a law I cannot fulfill.
But Jesus DID do it. For me. In my place. And it is HIS work of surrender and abandonment to God that I rest in.
Speaking of Jesus parable of the treasure in a field in Matthew 13:
"This is the picture of Jesus in the gospel. He is something--someone--worth losing everything for. And if we walk away from the Jesus of the gospel, we walk away from eternal riches. The cost of non-discipleship is profoundly greater for us than the cost of discipleship. For when we abandon the trinkets of this world and respond to the radical invitation of Jesus, we discover the infinite treasure of knowing and experiencing him."
This is very true, but this statement does not go far enough.
How does the Gospel motivate me to "abandon the trinkets of this world and respond to the radical invitation of Jesus?"
Platt explains the Gospel very well, but there is a disconnect between the Gospel and its motivation of our doing.
Without this connection of our motivation with the Gospel, the command to surrender all is just a command, a heavy weight placed upon us we can never fulfill.
Show me the beauty of the Gospel, don't just tell me it's beautiful.
Let me quote large portions of Radical and let Platt speak for himself:
"Biblical proclamation of the gospel beckons us to a much different response and leads us down a much different road. Here the gospel demands and enables us to turn from our sin, to take up our cross, to die to ourselves, and to follow Jesus. These are the terms and phrases we see in the Bible. And salvation now consists of a deep wrestling in our souls with the sinfulness of our hearts, the depth of our depravity, and the desperation of our need for his grace. Jesus is no longer one to be accepted or invited in but one who is infinitely worthy of our immediate and total surrender.
'You might think this sounds as though we have to earn our way to Jesus through radical obedience, but that is not the case at all. Indeed, 'it is by grace you [are] saved, through faith--and this not from yourselves, it is the gift of God--not by works, so that no one can boast.' We are saved from our sins by a free gift of grace, something that only God can do in us and that we cannot manufacture ourselves.
"But that gift of grace involves the gift of a new heart. New desires. New longings. For the first time, we want God. We see our need for him, and we love him. We seek after him, and we find him, and we discover that he is indeed the great reward of our salvation. We realize that we are saved not just to be forgiven of our sins or to be assured of our eternity in heaven, but we are saved to know God. So we yearn for him. We want him so much that we abandon everything else to experience him. This is the only proper response to the revelation of God in the gospel.
"This is why men and women around the world risk their lives to know more about him. This is why we must avoid cheap caricatures of Christianity that fail to exalt the revelation of God in his Word. This is why you and I cannot settle for anything less than a God-centered, Christ-exalting, self-denying gospel.
"I pray continually for this kind of hunger in the church God has given me to lead and in churches spread across our country's landscape. I pray that we will be a people who refuse to gorge our spiritual stomachs on the entertaining pleasures of this world, because we have chosen to find our satisfaction in the eternal treasure of his Word. I pray that God will awaken in your heart and mind a deep and abiding passion for the gospel as the grand revelation of God." ~Platt pp38-40
"The dangerous assumption we unknowingly accept in the American dream is that our greatest asset is our own ability. The American dream prizes what people can accomplish when they believe in themselves and trust in themselves, and we are drawn toward such thinking. But the gospel has different priorities. The gospel beckons us to die to ourselves and to believe in God and to trust in his power. In the gospel, God confronts us with our utter inability to accomplish anything of value apart from him. This is what Jesus meant when he said, 'I am the vine; you are the branches. If a man remains in me and I in him, he will bear much fruit; apart from me you can do nothing.'" ~Platt p46
"It is the way of Christ. Instead of asserting ourselves, we crucify ourselves. Instead of imagining all the things we can accomplish, we ask God to do what only he can accomplish. Yes, we work, we plan, we organize, and we create, but we do it all while we fast, while we pray, and while we constantly confess our need for the provision of God. Instead of dependence on ourselves, we express radical desperation for the power of his Spirit, and we trust that Jesus stands ready to give us everything we ask for so that we might make much of our Father in the world.
Think about it. Would you say that your life is marked right now by desperation for the Spirit of God? Would you say that the church you are a part of is characterized by this sense of desperation?
Why would we ever want to settle for Christianity according to our ability or settle for church according to our resources? The power of the one who raised Jesus from the dead is living in us, and as a result we have no need to muster up our own might. Our great need is to fall before an almighty Father day and night and to plead for him to show his radical power in and through us, enabling us to accomplish for his glory what we could never imagine in our own strength. And when we do this, we will discover that we were created for a purpose much greater than ourselves, the kind of purpose that can only be accomplished in the power of his Spirit. ~Platt p60
Do you have this desperation for the Spirit of God? How do I know my desperation for the Spirit of God is enough?
I can tell you, my desperation will NEVER be desperate enough. My abandonment will NEVER be abandoning enough. To command me to do these things even in the context of the Gospel is still placing a law upon me I can never fulfill. Connect me to the Gospel. Connect my doing to the Gospel and that fruit will grow in my life because only my conforming into Christ's image will be done.
"'Abandon all, take up your cross and follow me.' If in responding to this command our stress is primarily upon our own responsibility, we will first look within, at the quality and sincerity of our own faith and repentance, rather than without, at the vicarious life and death of Christ. 'Gospel proclamation' that leads Christians to think mainly about what they must do, rather than mainly about what Jesus has done as our substitute inclines the hearers to stray from gospel-centered missional living.
"The good news of the gospel is that Jesus has done it all--for us and in our place. Only as we believe and live in the reality of what he has done are we progressively freed to live truly missional and radically obedient lives in a broken world.
"As we grow in understanding the reality of who Jesus is for us, we are progressively freed from our personal and missional paralysis and empowered to turn outward for the gospel-good of others. The good news of who Jesus was and is for us as the God-man turns dread into joy and frees us from self-preoccupation to move outward in mission."
All this to say, say these things; just say them in a different way--in a way in which the Gospel is my motivation not a command.
" >[Review] Radical - Taking Back Your Faith from the American Dream
Genesis 1:26 tells us, "Then God said, 'Let us make man in our image, after our likeness. And let them have dominion over the fish of the sea and over the birds of the heavens and over the livestock and overall the earth and over every creeping thing that creeps on the earth."
We, that is you and I, are made in the image of God. This means we are the crown jewel of ALL of creation. We are special, because we are made in God's image. But then something horrible happened.
Romans 5:19a "For as by the one man's (Adam's) disobedience the many were made sinners..."
Due to the fall (this is when Adam and Even took of the fruit they were commanded not to eat and ate it), we all fell into sin, because we were all in Adam, so to speak. So we became sinners in Adam which is why we sin.
Sin, simplistically speaking, is any deviation from performing God's law perfectly in attitude and action. Another way to put it, we do not love God and love others with ALL of our being (our body, soul, spirit, and emotions).
The prophet, Isaiah, tells us, "We have all become like one who is unclean, and all our righteous deeds are like a polluted garment." This means, even our best GOOD (deed or thought) is like a polluted garment. And the polluted garment? Well, let's just say it's a feminine product and leave it at that.
In other words, We are miserable failures even at our BEST of times!
Have you ever thought, "wow, I did a good job, but THIS could have been improved," or have you found yourself NOT doing what you've told other people to do? The apostle Paul tells us in Romans that even WE do not live up to OUR OWN standards and expectations, little alone God's standard of righteousness. So this leaves us in a VERY precarious spot.
The apostle Paul further explains that our sin DESERVES to be punished. And not just with any punishment but by the punishment of DEATH (Romans 6:23).This is why there is death in the world. This is why, one day, you will die.
BUT there is GOOD NEWS!
Romans 1:16-17 "For I am not ashamed of the Gospel, for it is the power of God for salvation to everyone who believes, ... For in it the righteousness of God is revealed from faith for faith, as it is written, the righteous shall live by faith."
So, what is this Gospel? This Good News?
The Gospel is: Jesus and His life, death, burial, and resurrection.
But what does the Gospel mean?
The Gospel means that Jesus fulfilled EVERYTHING God requires of YOU and ME. You know those Ten Commandments? Jesus fulfilled them. Perfectly. In word, deed, action, thought, emotion - He loved God and loved others as Himself for us and in our place! There is nothing left for us to do!
Romans 5:19b "..."so by the one man's (Jesus Christ) obedience the many will be made righteous."
Jesus is Who saves you, and He saves you through faith in Him. It's as simple as that.
It is the same for those of us who have already believed in Jesus as Savior. We continue to believe in Him. And it is through our faith that He continues to save and sanctify us.
Sanctify is a word that means, we grow in grace and continue to be conformed into the image or likeness of Jesus.
Philippians tells us, "He who began a good work in you will bring it to completion at the day of Jesus Christ". This is a guarantee! It's a done deal. It's as good as done!
This is why Christmas is so important to Christians. IT commemorates the birth of Jesus, God the Father's Son. His birth brought him under the curse of the law even unto death, even the death of the cross FOR US and in OUR place. This is why Easter is so vital. Easter is the culmination what Christmas began.
Be blessed as you celebrate Christmas, but more importantly, believe in Jesus for He will save His people from their sins. He is the inexpressable gift!
This, I think, is what makes the Gospel so applicable- even to the issue of ethnic identity.
As I was reading La Shawn's article, my mind was drawn to Psalm 16:
1 Preserve me, O God, for in you I take refuge.
2 I say to the Lord, “You are my Lord; I have no good apart from you.”
3 As for the saints in the land, they are the excellent ones, in whom is all my delight.
This seems to be an apparent contradiction at first look. How can David say he has "no good apart from" God, yet he says all his delight is in the saints?
We must understand God's glory is multifaceted, in that, He can not be completely understood from one perspective. To bring home my point, let me use the Inklings as an example.
This is a paraphrase, but it's verifiable nonetheless. When Charles Williams died, CS Lewis thought and wrote, "Good! Now I can get MORE of Tolkien," but in reality, Lewis received LESS of Tolkien. Why? Because Williams was able to pull aspects of Tolkien's personality out that Lewis could never get.
This, I believe, is very applicable. What does Paul say in 1 Corinthians 15:3? "For I delivered to you as of first importance what I also received: that Christ died for our sins in accordance with the Scriptures,"
The Gospel is of First Importance which means It is the focal point of our (Christian) reality. This means there is nothing that is as important (i.e. ethnicity, skin color, hair texture/color, geographic location, etc...) as the Gospel itself.
This is why Christians from any and every ethnicity, family, etc... can come together and fellowship; not like people discussing sports or the weather, but as A people who have been saved to the uttermost! (Hebrews 7:25) because "There is neither Jew nor Greek, there is neither slave nor free, there is no male and female, for you are all one in Christ Jesus" (Galatians 3:28).
So when people in churches begin to dispute about these other trivial things (tension over length of service, style of preaching and music, and even how to address the preacher) have become of first importance and have made the Gospel trivial.
This does not mean that the issues relating to ethnicity are unimportant. The Gospel puts them in their proper perspective and gives light to the answer. As a white guy, I can humble myself because of Jesus and ask sincerely, "What is really bothering my black friends, and how can I help?" "How can I understand the fundamental issues that effect both of us?" "How can I understand our great God from a different perspective?"
I, as a white man, will not understand Who God is without my black brothers and sisters to show me their perspective of Who God is- and vice versa. Because not one group of people has all the answers.
It may not be easy, but it sets us in the right direction. " >Why Did God Make Different Races? A Continuation of Thought and Incomplete Response
To be honest, I attend a church which identifies itself as within the Fundamentalist movement. But I would not count myself loyal to Fundamentalism (or even the larger Evangelical arena), per se, only faithful and loyal in so far as the Gospel Itself is concerned, as far as It is preached and applied. And I am thankful for my Pastor's proclamation of the Gospel- in season and out of season.
My goal, as is many Fundamentalists I know, is to be faithful to Scripture, its commands, demands, and statutes in general and the Gospel specifically. This means searching the Scriptures, asking questions, and taking God at "face value" based on what we see in Scripture. This means, on a basic level at least, being looked down upon because we do not agree on various levels of doctrine.
That's fine by me.
This, I believe, is one of the reasons YF consider leaving Fundamentalism. They do not see, for instance, the doctrine of separation in its typical Fundamentalist application as the right way to apply it. This, then, can get (and does get) misconstrued by other Fundamentalists who think YF do not believe in separation at all.
YF want to be faithful to the Gospel; not Fundamentalism. Jesus died for us. Fundamentalism did not die for us. The problem, as I see it, is there is an assumed equality between Fundamentalism and the Gospel. The Gospel does not equal Fundamentalism. But if Fundamentalism equals the Gospel- no less, no more- then I will be faithful to it. And as long as that's the case, I'll just use the biblical term- Gospel.
Another reason I see YF consider leaving Fundamentalism is the seeming lack of scholarly and loving discourse. How many times have I stepped into a Fundamentalist church and heard phrases like, "Be Fundamental!!" ~ whatever that really means. Or the fact that the various Fundamentalist preachers I have sat under in years gone by were striving to be so faithful to the Written Word (which I agree!) that they leave the point of ALL of Scripture out of their messages- namely Jesus.
This is a functional denial of the Gospel, a functional denial of Jesus being our Mediator between God and man.
You will hear things like, "Be holy," "walk humbly with your God," and "take out the beam from your eye before you address the speck in another person's eye" which are all biblical things to proclaim. But when Jesus is not proclaimed in mediation of these commands, all we hear are self-help messages in Christian-ese.
After all, the mediating command which MUST be obeyed, before any other command can be fulfilled in us, is, "Believe in the Lord Jesus Christ!!" For when we obey this command, we automatically receive the righteousness of the law as if we have fulfilled every jot and tittle because Jesus fulfilled it! Conversely our sin AND our good works (which are filthy rags in reality) are placed upon Jesus Who became sin for us!
How can I be holy if Jesus is not my holiness? How can I be humble if Jesus is not my humility- after all, isn't humility slippery in that once we think we have it, we've lost it? And how can I take the beams of my sin out of my eye if I am not looking to my Standard of Righteousness Who is Jesus? Otherwise, I've exchanged my current sin-beam for a less noticeable sin- sin of and in the heart- namely pride?
Further, how can we be justified in urging people to Jesus when all we've preached is works righteousness while speaking of Jesus as a passing comment? Even in a Gospel-Saturated context, if Jesus is not preached even one time, the hearers will begin to think that they need to do whatever the exhortation is without faith in Christ. Think, "Lord, I believe! Help my unbelief!"
This, certainly, is not an issue only with Fundamentalism but with any Bible preaching church- Fundamentalist or Evangelical.
How often do Fundamentalists speak against the heretical teachings of the Osteens of the world (which is needed!) but yet, they allow near heretical/heretical men who base their whole ministries on a lie and use Scripture totally out of context and misapplications! It wasn't until the one I'm thinking of was "caught" that they "separated" from him (I am still reeling after that one- to be flatly honest- and I constantly preach the Gospel to myself to combat the effects of that situation every time I think of it). The issue is that these people preach Scriptural things but from the wrong passages AND they do not preach Christ. If we're faithful to Scripture, that means we should be faithful to the context from which a sermon is brought.
Fundamentalists have their own accepted associations which, from where I sit, are equal to if not worse than John Piper in the Baptist General Conference or Mark Dever in SBC.
And lastly, I believe some YF consider leaving Fundamentalism because they see that Fundamentalism is not perfect. Granted, no church in Evangelicalism or Fundamentalism is perfect. After all, every church is filled with sinners. Fundamentalism, as a whole, may be categorized by legalism but many Evangelical churches can be characterized by license- Both need the Gospel AND law- for you can not have one without the other. If you emphasize the one without the other, you fall into error.
However, many Fundamentalists seem to give the impression that Fundamentalism is the primary group / movement in which God works.
What utter foolishness and pride.
God is faithful only unto Himself which means He is faithful to the Gospel (after all, God is the Gospel- Jesus). And God's faithfulness to us is a result of His being faithful unto Himself. It is the Gospel that is the power unto salvation- not Evangelicalism or Fundamentalism. God will bless each in so far as the Gospel is rightly proclaimed and applied.
If I may be so blunt, who cares if YF consider "leaving" Fundamentalism? IF they're pursuing faithfulness to the Gospel, then separation from the separatists may be necessary. Ironic? Maybe, but sometimes faithfulness to the Gospel demands ironic actions.
But then again, sometimes faithfulness to the Gospel demands you stay where it's not perfect to proclaim and practice the Gospel to all those who need It. Because everyone needs the Gospel- not just the people you like. " >Why YF's Consider Leaving Fundamentalism (My View)
Biblical Resources
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This kind of thinking is no gospel. Where is the good news?This writer says, "If your love is distracted by someone else then you are not worthy. If your love is not given completely, then you are not worthy."But isn't that the point? None, may I repeat this, none of us is worthy (Isaiah 64:6).Scripture tells us we love God because He first loved us. We are not worthy of God's love but that's Who God is (God is love just don't confuse with love is God...). God loves us and demonstrated His love for us by sending Jesus to die for our sins and even our bad motives for good things we do.Even our very effort to be worthy falls completely short of God's glory (Romans 3:23). Even if I can love God completely, I am still a fallen creature in need of saving.I can't pick myself up by my own bootstraps and "be worthy". It's impossible.This is why we need grace. We're not worthy of anything God gives us except His wrath, and Jesus is our propitiation (He satisfied God's wrath for us and in our place). Without Christ, we are children of wrath but with Christ we are children of grace.I am not worthy of God's love but He certainly is worthy of my love and devotion. Thankfully I rest in Christ's work on my behalf and not on my own effort or merit.I am not worthy but Christ is worthy for me and in my place. That's good news." >We Are Not Worthy - That's Why There is Grace
- see here pdf). What this means, at least in part, is we will either show all of the Fruits of the Spirit in a strong way or all in a weak way. This also means if I am demonstrating a couple of the "fruits" I am most likely picking myself up by my bootstraps and trying to demonstrate them in my own strength; hence, I'm not demonstrating all of them.
This is why the Gospel is so vital. We need to reflect on Jesus, His birth, life, death, and resurrection, by all of which He fulfilled everything God required of us but couldn't or didn't want to fulfill. Jesus was patient, kind, full of peace, love, joy, and the rest.
Jesus was patient even until the cross. He was patient towards everyone. He was patient for us and in our place.
What Jesus did frees us to be patient. We can't do it, but Jesus did and His finished work becomes the Fruit of the Spirit in our lives as we continually trust Him and the Good News that He is and has done.
Don't fret. Trust Jesus. He's done it all. You reap the fruit.
"
>The Gospel Produces PatienceThink of any religious or secular (non-religious) philosophy out there (even some forms which go under the umbrella of "Christianity" but are not truly Christian). Go ahead, I'll wait. The philosophy of your choice falls under one of the two categories expressed in Luke 15.
In their very essence, all other religious / secular thought is works-based righteousness. In other words, you work to become righteous. "I do, therefore I'm accepted."
But the Gospel changes everything. Christianity is antithetical to all other religious and non-religious systems of thought. In a word: Grace.
True Christianity says, "I'm accepted, therefore I do."
And that's the rub. People want to establish their own righteousness. This idea is the foundation of both sons' actions.
But the Christian Gospel says, "Jesus fulfilled all that God requires of people for us and in our place. Believe in Him, and He will be your righteousness." Everything we strive for is fulfilled in Christ, and what He has done to obtain God the Father's favor becomes fruit in our lives as we believe in Him as Savior.
THIS is good news. THIS is why the Gospel changes everything. Believe the Gospel.
"
>The Antithetical GospelHere's the thing about this question: The questioner assumes the Christian is making the judgement call.
Yes, the Christian is making a judgement call but only based on what and how the Scriptures have laid it out.
In other words, the Scriptures explainwhat is sin, therefore, the Christian compares what Scripture says and what people do which enables the Christian to say, "this is sin".
So who are we, as Christians, to say people are in sin?
It is God in His Word, the Bible, Who tells us we're sinful. It is us Christians who are repeating what God has already said.
If Scripture is anything to us, It is the foundation upon which we rest in our judgments. Scripture tells us, in no uncertain terms, we (humans) are all sinners. By nature. We are not sinners because we sin; we sin because we are sinners. David tells us we are conceived in sin. Isaiah tells us even our best deeds are like polluted garments before God. And Paul explains, "for all have sinned and fallen short of the glory of God".
We are sinful people telling other sinful people that salvation is of the Lord. Martin Luther explains, "We are all mere beggars telling other beggars where to find bread."
Who are we, as Christians, to tell others they're sinful? We're sinners saved by grace wanting other sinners to be saved by grace. There is no other way to be saved. From our sin. From ourselves.
It is Jesus Who lived and died FOR us and in our place because of our sin, and we want others to believe in Him, too.
"
>Who Are YOU, Christians, to Tell Me I'm in "Sin" ?The very real and typical answer is by the Grace of God. Period. See Ephesians 2:8 & 9.
But there are other reasons which are an outflow of God's Grace in our lives.
Christianity's Claim: Research the facts for yourself.
The Bible is a collection of over 60 books of different genres (history, poetry, wisdom, apocalyptic, etc...), spanning over 1,500 years, written by over 40 authors including shepherds and kings, fishermen and doctors, soldiers and lawyers. Compare that with any other religious book.
Further, there are over 5600 Greek manuscripts in existence which far outweigh the number of manuscripts to other ancient writings. Think Plato, Aristotle, Homer (Illiad), and others (See this chart for details).
Skeptics do not see this as definitive enough, however, "if the critics of the Bible dismiss the New Testament as reliable information, then they must also dismiss the reliability of the writings of Plato, Aristotle, Caesar, Homer, and the other authors." It's almost as if skeptics dismiss the Bible without looking into the evidence.
The Bible may look like it has contradictions and other issues on the surface, but the Bible has a self-consistency that surpasses other religious books. The internal consistency of the New Testament documents is about 99.5% textually pure.
If you are skeptical of these claims, go research it out yourself before you deny its viability of truth.
Christianity's Claim: The Eyewitnesses are telling truth
"All Christianity asks of men on this subject, is that they would be consistent with themselves; that they would treat the evidence of other things; and that they would try and judge its actors and witnesses, as they deal with their fellow men, when testifying to human affairs and actions, in human tribunals,” writes Simon Greenleaf, one of the founders of Harvard Law School. “Let the witnesses be compared with themselves, with each other, and with surrounding facts and circumstances; and let their testimony be sifted, as if were given in a court of justice, on the side of the adverse party, the witness being subjected to a rigorous cross-examination.
"The writers of the Biblical accounts invited critical analysis, as revealed in 1 Thessalonians 5:21; 1 John 4:1; and Revelation 2:2. They wanted people to believe their testimony was true. It was imperative they provided accurate, objective and truthful information, because lives were at stake. Not just their lives, but the lives of those who received their message.
When the authors of Scripture describe events, they use specificity. In other words, only when real events are described can the details be verified and consistent. There were eyewitnesses of events such as feeding of the 5,000, 500 eyewitnesses of Jesus appearance after his death, not to mention Paul's first hand experience with Jesus on the road to Damascus, as well as, James, Jude, John, and many many others. The authors mention all of these people as if to say, "Don't believe me? Go talk with these first-hand witnesses yourself." Many eyewitness were still alive when people received the letters and documents of Scripture.
"There were plenty of people around when the New Testament documents were penned who could have contested the writings. In other words, those who wrote the documents knew that if they were inaccurate, plenty of people would have pointed it out. But, we have absolutely no ancient documents contemporary with the First Century that contest the New Testament texts."
For further reading and research, check out: http://www.tektonics.org/guest/truthfulness.htm
I also recommend CARM: http://carm.org/
"
>Three Reasons Why I Am A ChristianPeople love, love, love their religion. Religion makes us feel good. When we participate in religion, we gain a sense of accomplishment. A sense that we are actually doing something good for God. We think we are accepted by God based on our doing.
Surrender to God? Check. Loving others? Check. Seeking peace? Check. Acceptable to God? Not so much (See Isaiah 64:6).
These things are fruit. Fruit of the Spirit--the Spirit of Christ that dwells within us.
There is a difference between focusing on the Gospel and focusing on the fruit of the Gospel.
Focusing on "surrender" inherently draws our attention and action inwardly. "Can I muster enough effort to surrender enough?" But focusing on the Gospel automatically motivates me to surrender.
Do you see the difference? This is subtle but so freeing. One is looking at the fruit, but the other looks to the Tree of Life (Jesus and His Gospel) and the fruit of looking at the Gospel is produced in our lives.
Galatians 5:22 But the fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness,23 gentleness, self-control; against such things there is no law.24 And those who belong to Christ Jesus have crucified the flesh with its passions and desires.
The fruit of the Spirit mentioned in Galatians 5 is not an exhaustive list. We could add surrender to Jesus, humility, wisdom, godliness, growing in faith for faith, eating and drinking to the glory of God, abhorring and running from sin, orphan care, and the list could go on and on.
The bottom line: Pursuing the fruit establishes religion. Looking to Jesus and His Good News (the Gospel) produces fruit.
Pursuing the fruit is religion. Pursuing the Gospel is Christianity.
"
>Pursuing the Gospel or Its Fruit?Let me explain.
"But if Jesus is who he said he is, and if his promises are as rewarding as the Bible claims they are, then we may discover that satisfaction in our lives and success in the church are not found in what our culture deems most important but in radical abandonment to Jesus." ~Platt p3
"'Anyone who does not carry his cross and follow me cannot be my disciple.' Now this is taking it to another level. Pick up an instrument of torture and follow me. This is getting plain weird...and kind of creepy. Imagine a leader coming on the scene today and inviting all who would come after him to pick up an electric chair and become his disciple. Any takers?
"As if this were not enough, Jesus finished his seeker-sensitive plea with a pull-at-your-heartstrings conclusion. 'Any of you who does not give up everything he has cannot be my disciple.' Give up evertying you have, carry a cross, and hate your family. This sounds a lot different than 'Admit, believe, confess, and pray a prayer after me.'" ~Platt pp10-11
Throughout the book, there is a plea to surrender to Jesus, which is good, but the pleas are expressed either by making a person feel guilty or via a command to surrender.
There is no connection with the Gospel itself. How does my surrender flow from and out of the Gospel? How does my surrender to Jesus get motivated by Jesus' birth, life, death, and resurrection? This is the Gospel, and my surrender MUST, it MUST, flow out and from the Gospel.
The Gospel is mentioned but the "surrender to Jesus" is not connected WITH the Gospel.
Yes, we can "surrender to Jesus" but how do you know your surrender is sincere enough? How do you know your surrender to Jesus is surrender enough? Can you surrender EVERYTHING for Jesus?
Sure. We WANT to surrender everything, but the reality is, our sin touches every part of our being, sin corrupts our every molecule to such a degree that even our best surrender and abandonment to Jesus is as filthy or polluted rags before God. See Isaiah 64:6.
Ask yourself this: Can I absolutely, 100% abandon EVERYTHING in my life for Jesus? This means there is NO turning back; this means you cannot, even for a split second, think "wow, it'd be nice to have X for a moment" or "I miss X...."
I cannot do that. I want to. But I cannot DO it. It is a law I cannot fulfill.
But Jesus DID do it. For me. In my place. And it is HIS work of surrender and abandonment to God that I rest in.
Speaking of Jesus parable of the treasure in a field in Matthew 13:
"This is the picture of Jesus in the gospel. He is something--someone--worth losing everything for. And if we walk away from the Jesus of the gospel, we walk away from eternal riches. The cost of non-discipleship is profoundly greater for us than the cost of discipleship. For when we abandon the trinkets of this world and respond to the radical invitation of Jesus, we discover the infinite treasure of knowing and experiencing him."
This is very true, but this statement does not go far enough.
How does the Gospel motivate me to "abandon the trinkets of this world and respond to the radical invitation of Jesus?"
Platt explains the Gospel very well, but there is a disconnect between the Gospel and its motivation of our doing.
Without this connection of our motivation with the Gospel, the command to surrender all is just a command, a heavy weight placed upon us we can never fulfill.
Show me the beauty of the Gospel, don't just tell me it's beautiful.
Let me quote large portions of Radical and let Platt speak for himself:
"Biblical proclamation of the gospel beckons us to a much different response and leads us down a much different road. Here the gospel demands and enables us to turn from our sin, to take up our cross, to die to ourselves, and to follow Jesus. These are the terms and phrases we see in the Bible. And salvation now consists of a deep wrestling in our souls with the sinfulness of our hearts, the depth of our depravity, and the desperation of our need for his grace. Jesus is no longer one to be accepted or invited in but one who is infinitely worthy of our immediate and total surrender.
'You might think this sounds as though we have to earn our way to Jesus through radical obedience, but that is not the case at all. Indeed, 'it is by grace you [are] saved, through faith--and this not from yourselves, it is the gift of God--not by works, so that no one can boast.' We are saved from our sins by a free gift of grace, something that only God can do in us and that we cannot manufacture ourselves.
"But that gift of grace involves the gift of a new heart. New desires. New longings. For the first time, we want God. We see our need for him, and we love him. We seek after him, and we find him, and we discover that he is indeed the great reward of our salvation. We realize that we are saved not just to be forgiven of our sins or to be assured of our eternity in heaven, but we are saved to know God. So we yearn for him. We want him so much that we abandon everything else to experience him. This is the only proper response to the revelation of God in the gospel.
"This is why men and women around the world risk their lives to know more about him. This is why we must avoid cheap caricatures of Christianity that fail to exalt the revelation of God in his Word. This is why you and I cannot settle for anything less than a God-centered, Christ-exalting, self-denying gospel.
"I pray continually for this kind of hunger in the church God has given me to lead and in churches spread across our country's landscape. I pray that we will be a people who refuse to gorge our spiritual stomachs on the entertaining pleasures of this world, because we have chosen to find our satisfaction in the eternal treasure of his Word. I pray that God will awaken in your heart and mind a deep and abiding passion for the gospel as the grand revelation of God." ~Platt pp38-40
"The dangerous assumption we unknowingly accept in the American dream is that our greatest asset is our own ability. The American dream prizes what people can accomplish when they believe in themselves and trust in themselves, and we are drawn toward such thinking. But the gospel has different priorities. The gospel beckons us to die to ourselves and to believe in God and to trust in his power. In the gospel, God confronts us with our utter inability to accomplish anything of value apart from him. This is what Jesus meant when he said, 'I am the vine; you are the branches. If a man remains in me and I in him, he will bear much fruit; apart from me you can do nothing.'" ~Platt p46
"It is the way of Christ. Instead of asserting ourselves, we crucify ourselves. Instead of imagining all the things we can accomplish, we ask God to do what only he can accomplish. Yes, we work, we plan, we organize, and we create, but we do it all while we fast, while we pray, and while we constantly confess our need for the provision of God. Instead of dependence on ourselves, we express radical desperation for the power of his Spirit, and we trust that Jesus stands ready to give us everything we ask for so that we might make much of our Father in the world.
Think about it. Would you say that your life is marked right now by desperation for the Spirit of God? Would you say that the church you are a part of is characterized by this sense of desperation?
Why would we ever want to settle for Christianity according to our ability or settle for church according to our resources? The power of the one who raised Jesus from the dead is living in us, and as a result we have no need to muster up our own might. Our great need is to fall before an almighty Father day and night and to plead for him to show his radical power in and through us, enabling us to accomplish for his glory what we could never imagine in our own strength. And when we do this, we will discover that we were created for a purpose much greater than ourselves, the kind of purpose that can only be accomplished in the power of his Spirit. ~Platt p60
Do you have this desperation for the Spirit of God? How do I know my desperation for the Spirit of God is enough?
I can tell you, my desperation will NEVER be desperate enough. My abandonment will NEVER be abandoning enough. To command me to do these things even in the context of the Gospel is still placing a law upon me I can never fulfill. Connect me to the Gospel. Connect my doing to the Gospel and that fruit will grow in my life because only my conforming into Christ's image will be done.
"'Abandon all, take up your cross and follow me.' If in responding to this command our stress is primarily upon our own responsibility, we will first look within, at the quality and sincerity of our own faith and repentance, rather than without, at the vicarious life and death of Christ. 'Gospel proclamation' that leads Christians to think mainly about what they must do, rather than mainly about what Jesus has done as our substitute inclines the hearers to stray from gospel-centered missional living.
"The good news of the gospel is that Jesus has done it all--for us and in our place. Only as we believe and live in the reality of what he has done are we progressively freed to live truly missional and radically obedient lives in a broken world.
"As we grow in understanding the reality of who Jesus is for us, we are progressively freed from our personal and missional paralysis and empowered to turn outward for the gospel-good of others. The good news of who Jesus was and is for us as the God-man turns dread into joy and frees us from self-preoccupation to move outward in mission."
All this to say, say these things; just say them in a different way--in a way in which the Gospel is my motivation not a command.
" >[Review] Radical - Taking Back Your Faith from the American Dream
Genesis 1:26 tells us, "Then God said, 'Let us make man in our image, after our likeness. And let them have dominion over the fish of the sea and over the birds of the heavens and over the livestock and overall the earth and over every creeping thing that creeps on the earth."
We, that is you and I, are made in the image of God. This means we are the crown jewel of ALL of creation. We are special, because we are made in God's image. But then something horrible happened.
Romans 5:19a "For as by the one man's (Adam's) disobedience the many were made sinners..."
Due to the fall (this is when Adam and Even took of the fruit they were commanded not to eat and ate it), we all fell into sin, because we were all in Adam, so to speak. So we became sinners in Adam which is why we sin.
Sin, simplistically speaking, is any deviation from performing God's law perfectly in attitude and action. Another way to put it, we do not love God and love others with ALL of our being (our body, soul, spirit, and emotions).
The prophet, Isaiah, tells us, "We have all become like one who is unclean, and all our righteous deeds are like a polluted garment." This means, even our best GOOD (deed or thought) is like a polluted garment. And the polluted garment? Well, let's just say it's a feminine product and leave it at that.
In other words, We are miserable failures even at our BEST of times!
Have you ever thought, "wow, I did a good job, but THIS could have been improved," or have you found yourself NOT doing what you've told other people to do? The apostle Paul tells us in Romans that even WE do not live up to OUR OWN standards and expectations, little alone God's standard of righteousness. So this leaves us in a VERY precarious spot.
The apostle Paul further explains that our sin DESERVES to be punished. And not just with any punishment but by the punishment of DEATH (Romans 6:23).This is why there is death in the world. This is why, one day, you will die.
BUT there is GOOD NEWS!
Romans 1:16-17 "For I am not ashamed of the Gospel, for it is the power of God for salvation to everyone who believes, ... For in it the righteousness of God is revealed from faith for faith, as it is written, the righteous shall live by faith."
So, what is this Gospel? This Good News?
The Gospel is: Jesus and His life, death, burial, and resurrection.
But what does the Gospel mean?
The Gospel means that Jesus fulfilled EVERYTHING God requires of YOU and ME. You know those Ten Commandments? Jesus fulfilled them. Perfectly. In word, deed, action, thought, emotion - He loved God and loved others as Himself for us and in our place! There is nothing left for us to do!
Romans 5:19b "..."so by the one man's (Jesus Christ) obedience the many will be made righteous."
Jesus is Who saves you, and He saves you through faith in Him. It's as simple as that.
It is the same for those of us who have already believed in Jesus as Savior. We continue to believe in Him. And it is through our faith that He continues to save and sanctify us.
Sanctify is a word that means, we grow in grace and continue to be conformed into the image or likeness of Jesus.
Philippians tells us, "He who began a good work in you will bring it to completion at the day of Jesus Christ". This is a guarantee! It's a done deal. It's as good as done!
This is why Christmas is so important to Christians. IT commemorates the birth of Jesus, God the Father's Son. His birth brought him under the curse of the law even unto death, even the death of the cross FOR US and in OUR place. This is why Easter is so vital. Easter is the culmination what Christmas began.
Be blessed as you celebrate Christmas, but more importantly, believe in Jesus for He will save His people from their sins. He is the inexpressable gift!
This, I think, is what makes the Gospel so applicable- even to the issue of ethnic identity.
As I was reading La Shawn's article, my mind was drawn to Psalm 16:
1 Preserve me, O God, for in you I take refuge.
2 I say to the Lord, “You are my Lord; I have no good apart from you.”
3 As for the saints in the land, they are the excellent ones, in whom is all my delight.
This seems to be an apparent contradiction at first look. How can David say he has "no good apart from" God, yet he says all his delight is in the saints?
We must understand God's glory is multifaceted, in that, He can not be completely understood from one perspective. To bring home my point, let me use the Inklings as an example.
This is a paraphrase, but it's verifiable nonetheless. When Charles Williams died, CS Lewis thought and wrote, "Good! Now I can get MORE of Tolkien," but in reality, Lewis received LESS of Tolkien. Why? Because Williams was able to pull aspects of Tolkien's personality out that Lewis could never get.
This, I believe, is very applicable. What does Paul say in 1 Corinthians 15:3? "For I delivered to you as of first importance what I also received: that Christ died for our sins in accordance with the Scriptures,"
The Gospel is of First Importance which means It is the focal point of our (Christian) reality. This means there is nothing that is as important (i.e. ethnicity, skin color, hair texture/color, geographic location, etc...) as the Gospel itself.
This is why Christians from any and every ethnicity, family, etc... can come together and fellowship; not like people discussing sports or the weather, but as A people who have been saved to the uttermost! (Hebrews 7:25) because "There is neither Jew nor Greek, there is neither slave nor free, there is no male and female, for you are all one in Christ Jesus" (Galatians 3:28).
So when people in churches begin to dispute about these other trivial things (tension over length of service, style of preaching and music, and even how to address the preacher) have become of first importance and have made the Gospel trivial.
This does not mean that the issues relating to ethnicity are unimportant. The Gospel puts them in their proper perspective and gives light to the answer. As a white guy, I can humble myself because of Jesus and ask sincerely, "What is really bothering my black friends, and how can I help?" "How can I understand the fundamental issues that effect both of us?" "How can I understand our great God from a different perspective?"
I, as a white man, will not understand Who God is without my black brothers and sisters to show me their perspective of Who God is- and vice versa. Because not one group of people has all the answers.
It may not be easy, but it sets us in the right direction. " >Why Did God Make Different Races? A Continuation of Thought and Incomplete Response
To be honest, I attend a church which identifies itself as within the Fundamentalist movement. But I would not count myself loyal to Fundamentalism (or even the larger Evangelical arena), per se, only faithful and loyal in so far as the Gospel Itself is concerned, as far as It is preached and applied. And I am thankful for my Pastor's proclamation of the Gospel- in season and out of season.
My goal, as is many Fundamentalists I know, is to be faithful to Scripture, its commands, demands, and statutes in general and the Gospel specifically. This means searching the Scriptures, asking questions, and taking God at "face value" based on what we see in Scripture. This means, on a basic level at least, being looked down upon because we do not agree on various levels of doctrine.
That's fine by me.
This, I believe, is one of the reasons YF consider leaving Fundamentalism. They do not see, for instance, the doctrine of separation in its typical Fundamentalist application as the right way to apply it. This, then, can get (and does get) misconstrued by other Fundamentalists who think YF do not believe in separation at all.
YF want to be faithful to the Gospel; not Fundamentalism. Jesus died for us. Fundamentalism did not die for us. The problem, as I see it, is there is an assumed equality between Fundamentalism and the Gospel. The Gospel does not equal Fundamentalism. But if Fundamentalism equals the Gospel- no less, no more- then I will be faithful to it. And as long as that's the case, I'll just use the biblical term- Gospel.
Another reason I see YF consider leaving Fundamentalism is the seeming lack of scholarly and loving discourse. How many times have I stepped into a Fundamentalist church and heard phrases like, "Be Fundamental!!" ~ whatever that really means. Or the fact that the various Fundamentalist preachers I have sat under in years gone by were striving to be so faithful to the Written Word (which I agree!) that they leave the point of ALL of Scripture out of their messages- namely Jesus.
This is a functional denial of the Gospel, a functional denial of Jesus being our Mediator between God and man.
You will hear things like, "Be holy," "walk humbly with your God," and "take out the beam from your eye before you address the speck in another person's eye" which are all biblical things to proclaim. But when Jesus is not proclaimed in mediation of these commands, all we hear are self-help messages in Christian-ese.
After all, the mediating command which MUST be obeyed, before any other command can be fulfilled in us, is, "Believe in the Lord Jesus Christ!!" For when we obey this command, we automatically receive the righteousness of the law as if we have fulfilled every jot and tittle because Jesus fulfilled it! Conversely our sin AND our good works (which are filthy rags in reality) are placed upon Jesus Who became sin for us!
How can I be holy if Jesus is not my holiness? How can I be humble if Jesus is not my humility- after all, isn't humility slippery in that once we think we have it, we've lost it? And how can I take the beams of my sin out of my eye if I am not looking to my Standard of Righteousness Who is Jesus? Otherwise, I've exchanged my current sin-beam for a less noticeable sin- sin of and in the heart- namely pride?
Further, how can we be justified in urging people to Jesus when all we've preached is works righteousness while speaking of Jesus as a passing comment? Even in a Gospel-Saturated context, if Jesus is not preached even one time, the hearers will begin to think that they need to do whatever the exhortation is without faith in Christ. Think, "Lord, I believe! Help my unbelief!"
This, certainly, is not an issue only with Fundamentalism but with any Bible preaching church- Fundamentalist or Evangelical.
How often do Fundamentalists speak against the heretical teachings of the Osteens of the world (which is needed!) but yet, they allow near heretical/heretical men who base their whole ministries on a lie and use Scripture totally out of context and misapplications! It wasn't until the one I'm thinking of was "caught" that they "separated" from him (I am still reeling after that one- to be flatly honest- and I constantly preach the Gospel to myself to combat the effects of that situation every time I think of it). The issue is that these people preach Scriptural things but from the wrong passages AND they do not preach Christ. If we're faithful to Scripture, that means we should be faithful to the context from which a sermon is brought.
Fundamentalists have their own accepted associations which, from where I sit, are equal to if not worse than John Piper in the Baptist General Conference or Mark Dever in SBC.
And lastly, I believe some YF consider leaving Fundamentalism because they see that Fundamentalism is not perfect. Granted, no church in Evangelicalism or Fundamentalism is perfect. After all, every church is filled with sinners. Fundamentalism, as a whole, may be categorized by legalism but many Evangelical churches can be characterized by license- Both need the Gospel AND law- for you can not have one without the other. If you emphasize the one without the other, you fall into error.
However, many Fundamentalists seem to give the impression that Fundamentalism is the primary group / movement in which God works.
What utter foolishness and pride.
God is faithful only unto Himself which means He is faithful to the Gospel (after all, God is the Gospel- Jesus). And God's faithfulness to us is a result of His being faithful unto Himself. It is the Gospel that is the power unto salvation- not Evangelicalism or Fundamentalism. God will bless each in so far as the Gospel is rightly proclaimed and applied.
If I may be so blunt, who cares if YF consider "leaving" Fundamentalism? IF they're pursuing faithfulness to the Gospel, then separation from the separatists may be necessary. Ironic? Maybe, but sometimes faithfulness to the Gospel demands ironic actions.
But then again, sometimes faithfulness to the Gospel demands you stay where it's not perfect to proclaim and practice the Gospel to all those who need It. Because everyone needs the Gospel- not just the people you like. " >Why YF's Consider Leaving Fundamentalism (My View)
Christian Worldview
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This kind of thinking is no gospel. Where is the good news?This writer says, "If your love is distracted by someone else then you are not worthy. If your love is not given completely, then you are not worthy."But isn't that the point? None, may I repeat this, none of us is worthy (Isaiah 64:6).Scripture tells us we love God because He first loved us. We are not worthy of God's love but that's Who God is (God is love just don't confuse with love is God...). God loves us and demonstrated His love for us by sending Jesus to die for our sins and even our bad motives for good things we do.Even our very effort to be worthy falls completely short of God's glory (Romans 3:23). Even if I can love God completely, I am still a fallen creature in need of saving.I can't pick myself up by my own bootstraps and "be worthy". It's impossible.This is why we need grace. We're not worthy of anything God gives us except His wrath, and Jesus is our propitiation (He satisfied God's wrath for us and in our place). Without Christ, we are children of wrath but with Christ we are children of grace.I am not worthy of God's love but He certainly is worthy of my love and devotion. Thankfully I rest in Christ's work on my behalf and not on my own effort or merit.I am not worthy but Christ is worthy for me and in my place. That's good news." >We Are Not Worthy - That's Why There is Grace
- see here pdf). What this means, at least in part, is we will either show all of the Fruits of the Spirit in a strong way or all in a weak way. This also means if I am demonstrating a couple of the "fruits" I am most likely picking myself up by my bootstraps and trying to demonstrate them in my own strength; hence, I'm not demonstrating all of them.
This is why the Gospel is so vital. We need to reflect on Jesus, His birth, life, death, and resurrection, by all of which He fulfilled everything God required of us but couldn't or didn't want to fulfill. Jesus was patient, kind, full of peace, love, joy, and the rest.
Jesus was patient even until the cross. He was patient towards everyone. He was patient for us and in our place.
What Jesus did frees us to be patient. We can't do it, but Jesus did and His finished work becomes the Fruit of the Spirit in our lives as we continually trust Him and the Good News that He is and has done.
Don't fret. Trust Jesus. He's done it all. You reap the fruit.
"
>The Gospel Produces PatienceThink of any religious or secular (non-religious) philosophy out there (even some forms which go under the umbrella of "Christianity" but are not truly Christian). Go ahead, I'll wait. The philosophy of your choice falls under one of the two categories expressed in Luke 15.
In their very essence, all other religious / secular thought is works-based righteousness. In other words, you work to become righteous. "I do, therefore I'm accepted."
But the Gospel changes everything. Christianity is antithetical to all other religious and non-religious systems of thought. In a word: Grace.
True Christianity says, "I'm accepted, therefore I do."
And that's the rub. People want to establish their own righteousness. This idea is the foundation of both sons' actions.
But the Christian Gospel says, "Jesus fulfilled all that God requires of people for us and in our place. Believe in Him, and He will be your righteousness." Everything we strive for is fulfilled in Christ, and what He has done to obtain God the Father's favor becomes fruit in our lives as we believe in Him as Savior.
THIS is good news. THIS is why the Gospel changes everything. Believe the Gospel.
"
>The Antithetical GospelHere's the thing about this question: The questioner assumes the Christian is making the judgement call.
Yes, the Christian is making a judgement call but only based on what and how the Scriptures have laid it out.
In other words, the Scriptures explainwhat is sin, therefore, the Christian compares what Scripture says and what people do which enables the Christian to say, "this is sin".
So who are we, as Christians, to say people are in sin?
It is God in His Word, the Bible, Who tells us we're sinful. It is us Christians who are repeating what God has already said.
If Scripture is anything to us, It is the foundation upon which we rest in our judgments. Scripture tells us, in no uncertain terms, we (humans) are all sinners. By nature. We are not sinners because we sin; we sin because we are sinners. David tells us we are conceived in sin. Isaiah tells us even our best deeds are like polluted garments before God. And Paul explains, "for all have sinned and fallen short of the glory of God".
We are sinful people telling other sinful people that salvation is of the Lord. Martin Luther explains, "We are all mere beggars telling other beggars where to find bread."
Who are we, as Christians, to tell others they're sinful? We're sinners saved by grace wanting other sinners to be saved by grace. There is no other way to be saved. From our sin. From ourselves.
It is Jesus Who lived and died FOR us and in our place because of our sin, and we want others to believe in Him, too.
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>Who Are YOU, Christians, to Tell Me I'm in "Sin" ?The very real and typical answer is by the Grace of God. Period. See Ephesians 2:8 & 9.
But there are other reasons which are an outflow of God's Grace in our lives.
Christianity's Claim: Research the facts for yourself.
The Bible is a collection of over 60 books of different genres (history, poetry, wisdom, apocalyptic, etc...), spanning over 1,500 years, written by over 40 authors including shepherds and kings, fishermen and doctors, soldiers and lawyers. Compare that with any other religious book.
Further, there are over 5600 Greek manuscripts in existence which far outweigh the number of manuscripts to other ancient writings. Think Plato, Aristotle, Homer (Illiad), and others (See this chart for details).
Skeptics do not see this as definitive enough, however, "if the critics of the Bible dismiss the New Testament as reliable information, then they must also dismiss the reliability of the writings of Plato, Aristotle, Caesar, Homer, and the other authors." It's almost as if skeptics dismiss the Bible without looking into the evidence.
The Bible may look like it has contradictions and other issues on the surface, but the Bible has a self-consistency that surpasses other religious books. The internal consistency of the New Testament documents is about 99.5% textually pure.
If you are skeptical of these claims, go research it out yourself before you deny its viability of truth.
Christianity's Claim: The Eyewitnesses are telling truth
"All Christianity asks of men on this subject, is that they would be consistent with themselves; that they would treat the evidence of other things; and that they would try and judge its actors and witnesses, as they deal with their fellow men, when testifying to human affairs and actions, in human tribunals,” writes Simon Greenleaf, one of the founders of Harvard Law School. “Let the witnesses be compared with themselves, with each other, and with surrounding facts and circumstances; and let their testimony be sifted, as if were given in a court of justice, on the side of the adverse party, the witness being subjected to a rigorous cross-examination.
"The writers of the Biblical accounts invited critical analysis, as revealed in 1 Thessalonians 5:21; 1 John 4:1; and Revelation 2:2. They wanted people to believe their testimony was true. It was imperative they provided accurate, objective and truthful information, because lives were at stake. Not just their lives, but the lives of those who received their message.
When the authors of Scripture describe events, they use specificity. In other words, only when real events are described can the details be verified and consistent. There were eyewitnesses of events such as feeding of the 5,000, 500 eyewitnesses of Jesus appearance after his death, not to mention Paul's first hand experience with Jesus on the road to Damascus, as well as, James, Jude, John, and many many others. The authors mention all of these people as if to say, "Don't believe me? Go talk with these first-hand witnesses yourself." Many eyewitness were still alive when people received the letters and documents of Scripture.
"There were plenty of people around when the New Testament documents were penned who could have contested the writings. In other words, those who wrote the documents knew that if they were inaccurate, plenty of people would have pointed it out. But, we have absolutely no ancient documents contemporary with the First Century that contest the New Testament texts."
For further reading and research, check out: http://www.tektonics.org/guest/truthfulness.htm
I also recommend CARM: http://carm.org/
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>Three Reasons Why I Am A ChristianPeople love, love, love their religion. Religion makes us feel good. When we participate in religion, we gain a sense of accomplishment. A sense that we are actually doing something good for God. We think we are accepted by God based on our doing.
Surrender to God? Check. Loving others? Check. Seeking peace? Check. Acceptable to God? Not so much (See Isaiah 64:6).
These things are fruit. Fruit of the Spirit--the Spirit of Christ that dwells within us.
There is a difference between focusing on the Gospel and focusing on the fruit of the Gospel.
Focusing on "surrender" inherently draws our attention and action inwardly. "Can I muster enough effort to surrender enough?" But focusing on the Gospel automatically motivates me to surrender.
Do you see the difference? This is subtle but so freeing. One is looking at the fruit, but the other looks to the Tree of Life (Jesus and His Gospel) and the fruit of looking at the Gospel is produced in our lives.
Galatians 5:22 But the fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness,23 gentleness, self-control; against such things there is no law.24 And those who belong to Christ Jesus have crucified the flesh with its passions and desires.
The fruit of the Spirit mentioned in Galatians 5 is not an exhaustive list. We could add surrender to Jesus, humility, wisdom, godliness, growing in faith for faith, eating and drinking to the glory of God, abhorring and running from sin, orphan care, and the list could go on and on.
The bottom line: Pursuing the fruit establishes religion. Looking to Jesus and His Good News (the Gospel) produces fruit.
Pursuing the fruit is religion. Pursuing the Gospel is Christianity.
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>Pursuing the Gospel or Its Fruit?Let me explain.
"But if Jesus is who he said he is, and if his promises are as rewarding as the Bible claims they are, then we may discover that satisfaction in our lives and success in the church are not found in what our culture deems most important but in radical abandonment to Jesus." ~Platt p3
"'Anyone who does not carry his cross and follow me cannot be my disciple.' Now this is taking it to another level. Pick up an instrument of torture and follow me. This is getting plain weird...and kind of creepy. Imagine a leader coming on the scene today and inviting all who would come after him to pick up an electric chair and become his disciple. Any takers?
"As if this were not enough, Jesus finished his seeker-sensitive plea with a pull-at-your-heartstrings conclusion. 'Any of you who does not give up everything he has cannot be my disciple.' Give up evertying you have, carry a cross, and hate your family. This sounds a lot different than 'Admit, believe, confess, and pray a prayer after me.'" ~Platt pp10-11
Throughout the book, there is a plea to surrender to Jesus, which is good, but the pleas are expressed either by making a person feel guilty or via a command to surrender.
There is no connection with the Gospel itself. How does my surrender flow from and out of the Gospel? How does my surrender to Jesus get motivated by Jesus' birth, life, death, and resurrection? This is the Gospel, and my surrender MUST, it MUST, flow out and from the Gospel.
The Gospel is mentioned but the "surrender to Jesus" is not connected WITH the Gospel.
Yes, we can "surrender to Jesus" but how do you know your surrender is sincere enough? How do you know your surrender to Jesus is surrender enough? Can you surrender EVERYTHING for Jesus?
Sure. We WANT to surrender everything, but the reality is, our sin touches every part of our being, sin corrupts our every molecule to such a degree that even our best surrender and abandonment to Jesus is as filthy or polluted rags before God. See Isaiah 64:6.
Ask yourself this: Can I absolutely, 100% abandon EVERYTHING in my life for Jesus? This means there is NO turning back; this means you cannot, even for a split second, think "wow, it'd be nice to have X for a moment" or "I miss X...."
I cannot do that. I want to. But I cannot DO it. It is a law I cannot fulfill.
But Jesus DID do it. For me. In my place. And it is HIS work of surrender and abandonment to God that I rest in.
Speaking of Jesus parable of the treasure in a field in Matthew 13:
"This is the picture of Jesus in the gospel. He is something--someone--worth losing everything for. And if we walk away from the Jesus of the gospel, we walk away from eternal riches. The cost of non-discipleship is profoundly greater for us than the cost of discipleship. For when we abandon the trinkets of this world and respond to the radical invitation of Jesus, we discover the infinite treasure of knowing and experiencing him."
This is very true, but this statement does not go far enough.
How does the Gospel motivate me to "abandon the trinkets of this world and respond to the radical invitation of Jesus?"
Platt explains the Gospel very well, but there is a disconnect between the Gospel and its motivation of our doing.
Without this connection of our motivation with the Gospel, the command to surrender all is just a command, a heavy weight placed upon us we can never fulfill.
Show me the beauty of the Gospel, don't just tell me it's beautiful.
Let me quote large portions of Radical and let Platt speak for himself:
"Biblical proclamation of the gospel beckons us to a much different response and leads us down a much different road. Here the gospel demands and enables us to turn from our sin, to take up our cross, to die to ourselves, and to follow Jesus. These are the terms and phrases we see in the Bible. And salvation now consists of a deep wrestling in our souls with the sinfulness of our hearts, the depth of our depravity, and the desperation of our need for his grace. Jesus is no longer one to be accepted or invited in but one who is infinitely worthy of our immediate and total surrender.
'You might think this sounds as though we have to earn our way to Jesus through radical obedience, but that is not the case at all. Indeed, 'it is by grace you [are] saved, through faith--and this not from yourselves, it is the gift of God--not by works, so that no one can boast.' We are saved from our sins by a free gift of grace, something that only God can do in us and that we cannot manufacture ourselves.
"But that gift of grace involves the gift of a new heart. New desires. New longings. For the first time, we want God. We see our need for him, and we love him. We seek after him, and we find him, and we discover that he is indeed the great reward of our salvation. We realize that we are saved not just to be forgiven of our sins or to be assured of our eternity in heaven, but we are saved to know God. So we yearn for him. We want him so much that we abandon everything else to experience him. This is the only proper response to the revelation of God in the gospel.
"This is why men and women around the world risk their lives to know more about him. This is why we must avoid cheap caricatures of Christianity that fail to exalt the revelation of God in his Word. This is why you and I cannot settle for anything less than a God-centered, Christ-exalting, self-denying gospel.
"I pray continually for this kind of hunger in the church God has given me to lead and in churches spread across our country's landscape. I pray that we will be a people who refuse to gorge our spiritual stomachs on the entertaining pleasures of this world, because we have chosen to find our satisfaction in the eternal treasure of his Word. I pray that God will awaken in your heart and mind a deep and abiding passion for the gospel as the grand revelation of God." ~Platt pp38-40
"The dangerous assumption we unknowingly accept in the American dream is that our greatest asset is our own ability. The American dream prizes what people can accomplish when they believe in themselves and trust in themselves, and we are drawn toward such thinking. But the gospel has different priorities. The gospel beckons us to die to ourselves and to believe in God and to trust in his power. In the gospel, God confronts us with our utter inability to accomplish anything of value apart from him. This is what Jesus meant when he said, 'I am the vine; you are the branches. If a man remains in me and I in him, he will bear much fruit; apart from me you can do nothing.'" ~Platt p46
"It is the way of Christ. Instead of asserting ourselves, we crucify ourselves. Instead of imagining all the things we can accomplish, we ask God to do what only he can accomplish. Yes, we work, we plan, we organize, and we create, but we do it all while we fast, while we pray, and while we constantly confess our need for the provision of God. Instead of dependence on ourselves, we express radical desperation for the power of his Spirit, and we trust that Jesus stands ready to give us everything we ask for so that we might make much of our Father in the world.
Think about it. Would you say that your life is marked right now by desperation for the Spirit of God? Would you say that the church you are a part of is characterized by this sense of desperation?
Why would we ever want to settle for Christianity according to our ability or settle for church according to our resources? The power of the one who raised Jesus from the dead is living in us, and as a result we have no need to muster up our own might. Our great need is to fall before an almighty Father day and night and to plead for him to show his radical power in and through us, enabling us to accomplish for his glory what we could never imagine in our own strength. And when we do this, we will discover that we were created for a purpose much greater than ourselves, the kind of purpose that can only be accomplished in the power of his Spirit. ~Platt p60
Do you have this desperation for the Spirit of God? How do I know my desperation for the Spirit of God is enough?
I can tell you, my desperation will NEVER be desperate enough. My abandonment will NEVER be abandoning enough. To command me to do these things even in the context of the Gospel is still placing a law upon me I can never fulfill. Connect me to the Gospel. Connect my doing to the Gospel and that fruit will grow in my life because only my conforming into Christ's image will be done.
"'Abandon all, take up your cross and follow me.' If in responding to this command our stress is primarily upon our own responsibility, we will first look within, at the quality and sincerity of our own faith and repentance, rather than without, at the vicarious life and death of Christ. 'Gospel proclamation' that leads Christians to think mainly about what they must do, rather than mainly about what Jesus has done as our substitute inclines the hearers to stray from gospel-centered missional living.
"The good news of the gospel is that Jesus has done it all--for us and in our place. Only as we believe and live in the reality of what he has done are we progressively freed to live truly missional and radically obedient lives in a broken world.
"As we grow in understanding the reality of who Jesus is for us, we are progressively freed from our personal and missional paralysis and empowered to turn outward for the gospel-good of others. The good news of who Jesus was and is for us as the God-man turns dread into joy and frees us from self-preoccupation to move outward in mission."
All this to say, say these things; just say them in a different way--in a way in which the Gospel is my motivation not a command.
" >[Review] Radical - Taking Back Your Faith from the American Dream
Genesis 1:26 tells us, "Then God said, 'Let us make man in our image, after our likeness. And let them have dominion over the fish of the sea and over the birds of the heavens and over the livestock and overall the earth and over every creeping thing that creeps on the earth."
We, that is you and I, are made in the image of God. This means we are the crown jewel of ALL of creation. We are special, because we are made in God's image. But then something horrible happened.
Romans 5:19a "For as by the one man's (Adam's) disobedience the many were made sinners..."
Due to the fall (this is when Adam and Even took of the fruit they were commanded not to eat and ate it), we all fell into sin, because we were all in Adam, so to speak. So we became sinners in Adam which is why we sin.
Sin, simplistically speaking, is any deviation from performing God's law perfectly in attitude and action. Another way to put it, we do not love God and love others with ALL of our being (our body, soul, spirit, and emotions).
The prophet, Isaiah, tells us, "We have all become like one who is unclean, and all our righteous deeds are like a polluted garment." This means, even our best GOOD (deed or thought) is like a polluted garment. And the polluted garment? Well, let's just say it's a feminine product and leave it at that.
In other words, We are miserable failures even at our BEST of times!
Have you ever thought, "wow, I did a good job, but THIS could have been improved," or have you found yourself NOT doing what you've told other people to do? The apostle Paul tells us in Romans that even WE do not live up to OUR OWN standards and expectations, little alone God's standard of righteousness. So this leaves us in a VERY precarious spot.
The apostle Paul further explains that our sin DESERVES to be punished. And not just with any punishment but by the punishment of DEATH (Romans 6:23).This is why there is death in the world. This is why, one day, you will die.
BUT there is GOOD NEWS!
Romans 1:16-17 "For I am not ashamed of the Gospel, for it is the power of God for salvation to everyone who believes, ... For in it the righteousness of God is revealed from faith for faith, as it is written, the righteous shall live by faith."
So, what is this Gospel? This Good News?
The Gospel is: Jesus and His life, death, burial, and resurrection.
But what does the Gospel mean?
The Gospel means that Jesus fulfilled EVERYTHING God requires of YOU and ME. You know those Ten Commandments? Jesus fulfilled them. Perfectly. In word, deed, action, thought, emotion - He loved God and loved others as Himself for us and in our place! There is nothing left for us to do!
Romans 5:19b "..."so by the one man's (Jesus Christ) obedience the many will be made righteous."
Jesus is Who saves you, and He saves you through faith in Him. It's as simple as that.
It is the same for those of us who have already believed in Jesus as Savior. We continue to believe in Him. And it is through our faith that He continues to save and sanctify us.
Sanctify is a word that means, we grow in grace and continue to be conformed into the image or likeness of Jesus.
Philippians tells us, "He who began a good work in you will bring it to completion at the day of Jesus Christ". This is a guarantee! It's a done deal. It's as good as done!
This is why Christmas is so important to Christians. IT commemorates the birth of Jesus, God the Father's Son. His birth brought him under the curse of the law even unto death, even the death of the cross FOR US and in OUR place. This is why Easter is so vital. Easter is the culmination what Christmas began.
Be blessed as you celebrate Christmas, but more importantly, believe in Jesus for He will save His people from their sins. He is the inexpressable gift!
This, I think, is what makes the Gospel so applicable- even to the issue of ethnic identity.
As I was reading La Shawn's article, my mind was drawn to Psalm 16:
1 Preserve me, O God, for in you I take refuge.
2 I say to the Lord, “You are my Lord; I have no good apart from you.”
3 As for the saints in the land, they are the excellent ones, in whom is all my delight.
This seems to be an apparent contradiction at first look. How can David say he has "no good apart from" God, yet he says all his delight is in the saints?
We must understand God's glory is multifaceted, in that, He can not be completely understood from one perspective. To bring home my point, let me use the Inklings as an example.
This is a paraphrase, but it's verifiable nonetheless. When Charles Williams died, CS Lewis thought and wrote, "Good! Now I can get MORE of Tolkien," but in reality, Lewis received LESS of Tolkien. Why? Because Williams was able to pull aspects of Tolkien's personality out that Lewis could never get.
This, I believe, is very applicable. What does Paul say in 1 Corinthians 15:3? "For I delivered to you as of first importance what I also received: that Christ died for our sins in accordance with the Scriptures,"
The Gospel is of First Importance which means It is the focal point of our (Christian) reality. This means there is nothing that is as important (i.e. ethnicity, skin color, hair texture/color, geographic location, etc...) as the Gospel itself.
This is why Christians from any and every ethnicity, family, etc... can come together and fellowship; not like people discussing sports or the weather, but as A people who have been saved to the uttermost! (Hebrews 7:25) because "There is neither Jew nor Greek, there is neither slave nor free, there is no male and female, for you are all one in Christ Jesus" (Galatians 3:28).
So when people in churches begin to dispute about these other trivial things (tension over length of service, style of preaching and music, and even how to address the preacher) have become of first importance and have made the Gospel trivial.
This does not mean that the issues relating to ethnicity are unimportant. The Gospel puts them in their proper perspective and gives light to the answer. As a white guy, I can humble myself because of Jesus and ask sincerely, "What is really bothering my black friends, and how can I help?" "How can I understand the fundamental issues that effect both of us?" "How can I understand our great God from a different perspective?"
I, as a white man, will not understand Who God is without my black brothers and sisters to show me their perspective of Who God is- and vice versa. Because not one group of people has all the answers.
It may not be easy, but it sets us in the right direction. " >Why Did God Make Different Races? A Continuation of Thought and Incomplete Response
To be honest, I attend a church which identifies itself as within the Fundamentalist movement. But I would not count myself loyal to Fundamentalism (or even the larger Evangelical arena), per se, only faithful and loyal in so far as the Gospel Itself is concerned, as far as It is preached and applied. And I am thankful for my Pastor's proclamation of the Gospel- in season and out of season.
My goal, as is many Fundamentalists I know, is to be faithful to Scripture, its commands, demands, and statutes in general and the Gospel specifically. This means searching the Scriptures, asking questions, and taking God at "face value" based on what we see in Scripture. This means, on a basic level at least, being looked down upon because we do not agree on various levels of doctrine.
That's fine by me.
This, I believe, is one of the reasons YF consider leaving Fundamentalism. They do not see, for instance, the doctrine of separation in its typical Fundamentalist application as the right way to apply it. This, then, can get (and does get) misconstrued by other Fundamentalists who think YF do not believe in separation at all.
YF want to be faithful to the Gospel; not Fundamentalism. Jesus died for us. Fundamentalism did not die for us. The problem, as I see it, is there is an assumed equality between Fundamentalism and the Gospel. The Gospel does not equal Fundamentalism. But if Fundamentalism equals the Gospel- no less, no more- then I will be faithful to it. And as long as that's the case, I'll just use the biblical term- Gospel.
Another reason I see YF consider leaving Fundamentalism is the seeming lack of scholarly and loving discourse. How many times have I stepped into a Fundamentalist church and heard phrases like, "Be Fundamental!!" ~ whatever that really means. Or the fact that the various Fundamentalist preachers I have sat under in years gone by were striving to be so faithful to the Written Word (which I agree!) that they leave the point of ALL of Scripture out of their messages- namely Jesus.
This is a functional denial of the Gospel, a functional denial of Jesus being our Mediator between God and man.
You will hear things like, "Be holy," "walk humbly with your God," and "take out the beam from your eye before you address the speck in another person's eye" which are all biblical things to proclaim. But when Jesus is not proclaimed in mediation of these commands, all we hear are self-help messages in Christian-ese.
After all, the mediating command which MUST be obeyed, before any other command can be fulfilled in us, is, "Believe in the Lord Jesus Christ!!" For when we obey this command, we automatically receive the righteousness of the law as if we have fulfilled every jot and tittle because Jesus fulfilled it! Conversely our sin AND our good works (which are filthy rags in reality) are placed upon Jesus Who became sin for us!
How can I be holy if Jesus is not my holiness? How can I be humble if Jesus is not my humility- after all, isn't humility slippery in that once we think we have it, we've lost it? And how can I take the beams of my sin out of my eye if I am not looking to my Standard of Righteousness Who is Jesus? Otherwise, I've exchanged my current sin-beam for a less noticeable sin- sin of and in the heart- namely pride?
Further, how can we be justified in urging people to Jesus when all we've preached is works righteousness while speaking of Jesus as a passing comment? Even in a Gospel-Saturated context, if Jesus is not preached even one time, the hearers will begin to think that they need to do whatever the exhortation is without faith in Christ. Think, "Lord, I believe! Help my unbelief!"
This, certainly, is not an issue only with Fundamentalism but with any Bible preaching church- Fundamentalist or Evangelical.
How often do Fundamentalists speak against the heretical teachings of the Osteens of the world (which is needed!) but yet, they allow near heretical/heretical men who base their whole ministries on a lie and use Scripture totally out of context and misapplications! It wasn't until the one I'm thinking of was "caught" that they "separated" from him (I am still reeling after that one- to be flatly honest- and I constantly preach the Gospel to myself to combat the effects of that situation every time I think of it). The issue is that these people preach Scriptural things but from the wrong passages AND they do not preach Christ. If we're faithful to Scripture, that means we should be faithful to the context from which a sermon is brought.
Fundamentalists have their own accepted associations which, from where I sit, are equal to if not worse than John Piper in the Baptist General Conference or Mark Dever in SBC.
And lastly, I believe some YF consider leaving Fundamentalism because they see that Fundamentalism is not perfect. Granted, no church in Evangelicalism or Fundamentalism is perfect. After all, every church is filled with sinners. Fundamentalism, as a whole, may be categorized by legalism but many Evangelical churches can be characterized by license- Both need the Gospel AND law- for you can not have one without the other. If you emphasize the one without the other, you fall into error.
However, many Fundamentalists seem to give the impression that Fundamentalism is the primary group / movement in which God works.
What utter foolishness and pride.
God is faithful only unto Himself which means He is faithful to the Gospel (after all, God is the Gospel- Jesus). And God's faithfulness to us is a result of His being faithful unto Himself. It is the Gospel that is the power unto salvation- not Evangelicalism or Fundamentalism. God will bless each in so far as the Gospel is rightly proclaimed and applied.
If I may be so blunt, who cares if YF consider "leaving" Fundamentalism? IF they're pursuing faithfulness to the Gospel, then separation from the separatists may be necessary. Ironic? Maybe, but sometimes faithfulness to the Gospel demands ironic actions.
But then again, sometimes faithfulness to the Gospel demands you stay where it's not perfect to proclaim and practice the Gospel to all those who need It. Because everyone needs the Gospel- not just the people you like. " >Why YF's Consider Leaving Fundamentalism (My View)
Family Blogs
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This kind of thinking is no gospel. Where is the good news?This writer says, "If your love is distracted by someone else then you are not worthy. If your love is not given completely, then you are not worthy."But isn't that the point? None, may I repeat this, none of us is worthy (Isaiah 64:6).Scripture tells us we love God because He first loved us. We are not worthy of God's love but that's Who God is (God is love just don't confuse with love is God...). God loves us and demonstrated His love for us by sending Jesus to die for our sins and even our bad motives for good things we do.Even our very effort to be worthy falls completely short of God's glory (Romans 3:23). Even if I can love God completely, I am still a fallen creature in need of saving.I can't pick myself up by my own bootstraps and "be worthy". It's impossible.This is why we need grace. We're not worthy of anything God gives us except His wrath, and Jesus is our propitiation (He satisfied God's wrath for us and in our place). Without Christ, we are children of wrath but with Christ we are children of grace.I am not worthy of God's love but He certainly is worthy of my love and devotion. Thankfully I rest in Christ's work on my behalf and not on my own effort or merit.I am not worthy but Christ is worthy for me and in my place. That's good news." >We Are Not Worthy - That's Why There is Grace
- see here pdf). What this means, at least in part, is we will either show all of the Fruits of the Spirit in a strong way or all in a weak way. This also means if I am demonstrating a couple of the "fruits" I am most likely picking myself up by my bootstraps and trying to demonstrate them in my own strength; hence, I'm not demonstrating all of them.
