The Bible Nerd

With many things in our lives, achieving the proper balance brings the greatest pleasure out of life.  The right amount of work and play.  The perfect number of icons on your computer desktop.  Knowing when to say something and when to shut up when communicating with your wife (or husband for that matter).  Is balance therefore helpful in understanding the interaction between God and man?  Not so much.  There isn’t a cosmic scale on this issue, but if there was, God would be way down and we would be way up on the scales.  That’s right, I am talking about old school scales with a balance and counter balance.  When God is desiring to accomplish something that fits into His overall redemptive plan for mankind, my best Biblical advice would be “Get out of the way!”.

There are several examples from Scripture that demonstrate this, but Paul’s favorite seems to be Pharaoh and the Exodus.  In Romans 9:18, he uses this as a sample case to show that “God shows mercy upon who He desires, and hardens the hearts of who He desires.”  In Exodus chapters 4 – 12, God has a showdown with Pharaoh and the “so called” gods of Egypt.  It is part of His Redemptive Plan to bring the Jews out of Egypt and turn them into a nation called Israel.  It is out of this nation that He will bring the Messiah, Jesus.  God warns Moses ahead of time in Exodus 4:21 that the end result of the plagues will be that “He will harden the heart of Pharaoh” and will bring glory for Himself out of that situation.  Sure enough, although Pharaoh hardens his own heart a few times, eventually God steps in and directly hardens Pharaoh’s heart.  This results in Pharaoh’s army being crushed in the sea (which made for a way better movie! Thanks God.)

Where was Pharaoh’s free will in this story?  I truly believe that Pharaoh was given a chance to let the people go, even though God knew that he wouldn’t.  The plagues start out not as destructive, and it is actually God’s mercy that they only gradually worsened in their effect.  Moses is quite clear when he tells this story though in Exodus 9:12, that God stepped in, exerted His sovereign control, and MADE Pharaoh do what He wanted him to do.  The bottom line is that when people try to get in God’s way and obstruct His plan, God overrides free will to accomplish what He wants.  Pawn on a chess board anyone?

Let us also rethink the conversion of Saul to Paul.  Saul is a violent persecutor of the church, and is on his way to Damascus to arrest some Christians there.  Jesus meets him in power on the road, and strikes Paul with blindness.  Then, God tells a Christian named Ananias to go and pray for Paul (I bet he was thrilled with this job!).    Paul allows him to pray for him, and his blindness is healed.  For Paul, I believe being struck with blindness was to show him his spiritual blindness and convince him to obey the call of Jesus to preach the Gospel to the Gentiles.  Did Paul really have a choice of whether to follow God?  You could say he does, but you wonder if he felt that way.  Would God have healed his blindness if Paul had continued to persecute the church?  Do all of us get this type of dramatic call and guidance?  That doesn’t seem fair.

Now, we have finally come to a disturbing conclusion, albeit necessary one.  God is not fair.  Not how we as humans define fairness.  God does somethings with some people and people groups, that He doesn’t do with others.  Only the Jews received the amazing gifts of God that Paul lists out in Romans 3 and 9.  All of us don’t get dried up fleeces or the parting of waters in our lives and ministries.  Was it fair that God choose Jacob rather than Esau?  Neither one of them deserved God’s election any more than the other.  My Mom always used to tell me that “life isn’t fair”.  I didn’t like hearing it then if it meant my sister got something or got to do something that I didn’t, and I don’t like to hear it from God either.  But, it is still true, so thank you mother.  Another one of your perfect moments to add a comment to this post and say, “I told you so”.  Unless you aren’t reading this, and then what kind of Mom doesn’t read her own son’s blog?

As a final conclusion in this discussion, let me summarize some main points.  The Bible clearly teaches that God is sovereign and is in control.  It also teaches that man was created with a free will and is held accountable for his decisions in this life.  We don’t have the exact words or paradigm to explain how this all works, but we trust that God presents us with truth in His Word.  There is not a balance, as God’s plan will always be accomplished, sometimes in spite of our choices.  In the next post, I will attempt to pull all of this together into an illustration that may be helpful to you.  If not, try not be to upset that I just wasted another 10 minutes of your life.  At least it wasn’t just that annoying IQ test with the lady spinning around (don’t even try to tell me that you saw her spin both ways!)

If you are still reading after the last post, then you agree that God does interact with His people, and somehow this whole God’s sovereignty and man’s free will works out somehow to make that possible.  Either that, or you are just gathering more evidence for your new blog titled “The Heretic Headlines”.  I made the vain promise last time that I would attempt to guide us through how that interaction works, although now it seems I may have been better off promising to play Amazing Grace on the piano while juggling chainsaws.  Oh well, here it goes…

We will start with the amazing promise of Jesus to His disciples in Mark 11:22-25.  In a lesson on faith and prayer, Jesus says, “So I tell you, whatever you ask for in prayer, believe that you have received it, and it will be yours.”  Seriously Jesus?  All we have to do is use our free will, pray and believe, and we get anything?  How about my hair on the back of my head?  Obviously, this statement of Jesus was meant to be taken in context with His other teachings as well as the rest of the Bible.  Otherwise, I would have a pretty sweet ride and would look like the guy on Hawaii Five-O (doesn’t it bother you that he is actually Australian and has the nerve to play an American? We would never do that).  However, there is definitely a connection that Jesus is making between our faith and what we receive in prayer.  If it was a matter of God’s sovereignty alone, what does it matter if we have faith or not?  This story is far from over though.

What does it mean to pray for something “in Jesus’ name”?  Many people pick names today merely because they like the way the name sounds without any regard on the meaning of the name (say like, calling your kid Apple).  In Biblical culture, names were very important, and God will often rename someone for prophetic purposes.  A name then was associated with that person’s life, deeds, and personality.  To “pray in Jesus’ name” then means to pray for something that Jesus would pray for.  We have to be challenged by His priorities, compassion, and worldview to answer that question.  Would Jesus pray for Bose stereo system?  I am not so sure we are always praying for things that Jesus would pray for, so we can have all the faith in the world and still not get that Ipad.

How can we know if we are praying for something Jesus would pray for?  1 John 5:14-15 tells us that we must pray for things according to God’s will.  Now, we see the apostle John bringing God’s sovereignty and man’s faith together in this statement on prayer.   When we pray in full faith and receive what we pray for, we know that we are praying “according to God’s will”.  Often, we pray for things that we think we need, or think should happen, but they run counter to the will of God.  God knows way better what we need, or what needs to happen in a situation.  For example, we pray as best we can in intercession for the nations, but only God has all the knowledge to make a conclusion on what will lead that nation to Him.

The passage that really impacted me most was 2 Corinthians 12:7-10.  In order to keep Paul humble, God allows for him to suffer from a “thorn in the flesh” (whatever that is, it isn’t pleasant I am sure).  Paul says he prayed three times for God to remove this suffering, and each time God didn’t do what Paul was asking.  So, if prayer and God’s interaction with us rests on faith alone, we are in big trouble.  If God didn’t answer Paul because he didn’t have enough faith, I might as well give up now.  This is a guy who saw people rise from the dead, healed by shadows, and was personally healed from a stoning.  No, God’s answer is clear to Paul that He isn’t answering this prayer because His will is to show the power of Christ through Paul’s weakness.  God’s grace would be sufficient for Paul without the thorn being removed.

Having all of our prayers would not always advance the kingdom of God.  Healings or vast finances do not always give the best witness to the Gospel of Jesus Christ.  Our question is:  are we willing to pray and allow God to decide which prayers will advance His kingdom?  is that our goal, to advance His kingdom, or are we just concerned with our desires and needs being met?

 I leave you with a final beautiful picture of the intertwining of sovereignty and free will from Revelation 8:3-5.  We are in the throne room of God in heaven.  The throne room that is fully described in chapter 4.  The whole picture is one reinforcing the control and sovereignty of God.  Only He is on the throne.  Only  He is in control and in full knowledge of the whole flow of history.  Yet, we see the incense bowl which is the prayers of the saints.  These prayers are the free will act of intercession of the saints of God crying out for justice and the righteous judgment of the Lord.  He  takes these prayers, mixes it with fire, and pours it out on the earth.  God interacts with those prayers and answers them in His sovereign reign.  Amen.

God could have been really kind to us.  He could have thought, “there is no way these little, pea brain creatures will ever be able to figure this out, so I will just leave out the free will stories.”  Alas, He did not do this.  He left some real fun ones for those of us who believe in God’s sovereignty, to have complete meltdowns over.

Two of these “favorite” stories of my students have been:

-Moses’ intercession after the Golden calf in which “God changes His mind” (Ex. 32); what if Moses hadn’t have interceded?  Would God have really started all over again, destroyed the Israelites, and began anew from Moses’ family?

-the repentance of Nineveh bringing the “change in God’s mind” over destroying the city (Jonah 3-4);  Would God have destroyed the city if they hadn’t have repented?

Some people teach that these passages/stories are here to show us that God does interact with our free will, and changes His actions based on what we pray and do.  Moses interceded and God did something.  Nineveh repented, and God did something.  Of course, He knew that was going to happen, and He caused things which affected the outcome, yet the people involved were allowed to make a choice and God’s plan intertwine with that.  Is that right?  Let’s take a closer look at these two stories.

Most of us are very familiar with the story of the Golden Calf in Exodus 32.  I have heard lots of sermons about Aaron and his lack of leadership, the dangers of idolatry, or how quickly the Israelites turned away from God.  The real page turner is when Moses intercedes for the people after their sin in 32:11-14.  God tells Moses that He is going to destroy the people and start over with Moses (being a new Abraham of sorts).  The depth of Moses’ love for his people comes out when he tries to convince God not to destroy Israel.  Moses reminds God of His promises and worries about the witness to pagan nations if God destroys the people (like God needed to be reminded…).

The next thing we know, the Bible tells us that “God changed His mind”.  Depending on your translation, this also might read, “God relented” or even more troublesome “God repented”.  The Hebrew word “nachum” (5162) can be translated as “to sigh or breathe strongly; to be sorry; to have pity; to rue; to repent” depending on the context of the sentence.  This same word is used in Exodus 13:17 when God directs them away from the way of the Philistines lest Israel “nachum” and go back to Egypt (change the direction from heading to the promise land and turn around toward Egypt).  This Hebrew word is different from the typical word used for “repent” which is “shuwb” (7725), and has the connotation of men turning from their own evil ways.

If we believe that God is unchangeable (Hebrews 13:8, Malachi 3:6, Psalm 104 and 110), and that He is sovereign, how do we explain this passage?  Strong Calvinists find ways through talking about God’s foreknowledge or through anthropomorphism (now that is a Scrabble triple word score if I have ever seen one).  God foreknew that Moses would intercede, already planned not to destroy Israel, but was testing Moses as a leader.  God allowed Moses to see his real love for the people that he would need to guide them in the wilderness, and wanted the Israelites to know that they deserved to be destroyed, but God gave grace instead.  Moses didn’t change God’s course of action in reality, because God is sovereign.  The better translation would be “God relented from the disaster He could have brought”.

Anthropomorphism is when we used human characteristics to describe God.  These figures of speech can only go so far, because God isn’t a man.  For example, in Exodus 6, it says that God will rescue Israel from Egypt with His “outstretched hand”.  The last time I checked, God doesn’t really have a hand.  In the same way then, Moses is describing his interaction with God through his humanist view.  To Moses, the closest expression he can find in Hebrew (human language) to describe it is to say that “God changed His mind”.  In a human, this implies changeability and often an admission of a mistake being made.  Just like God doesn’t have hands, He also doesn’t have a “mind” in our sense that would “change” like ours does.  Of course, He has a mind, but His doesn’t function like ours because He is perfect.

Now in the midst of these explanations, I can logically think, “Oh, that makes sense”, and there is no doubt that anthropomorphism is being used and that God foreknew what was going to happen.   But, would it also make sense to just read the story plainly and say that God is teaching Moses and Israel the power of intercession and prayer?  Isn’t He showing them that He isn’t an angry or vindictive God, but rather one who values relationship and interaction with His people?  It would seem misleading to me for God to behave this way with Moses, include this story in Scripture, and it has nothing to do with free will at all.

That would be nice if there was just this one story, and we could write it off as a “hard passage”.  Unfortunately, there are many others, and other ones that specifically state that “God changed His mind/relented”.  Again, we all know and love the story of Jonah and the Big Fish (or whale for those whom the Bible isn’t specific enough to fit a good children’s book).  The part of Jonah we all may not be as familiar with is the wording used when Nineveh repents.  God tells Jonah to announce that Nineveh will be destroyed in 40 days.  There is nothing conditional stated AT ALL.  The king and the people repent anyway, even making the cows repent (that seems a bit extreme to me).  In Jonah 3:10, God sees their repentance and “changes His mind” or “relents”.

Would God have destroyed them if they had not repented?  Was this just another lesson for the people, and God was always going to do this based on His foreknowledge?  Does this story have nothing to do with how God responds to man choosing to repent?  We don’t have enough time to deal with 1 Samuel 15:35, but I think you get the picture.

I believe we are not dealing with God “changing”, but rather we are dealing with two characteristics of God that never change: His justice and mercy.  God is 100 % just and 100 % merciful.  However, in a given situation, He can’t act upon both at the same time.  He either carries out justice, or offers mercy.  That is what we are seeing in these stories.  None of this means that God doesn’t or can’t know the future.  It does have implications on how He interacts with us though, and in the next post, we will have to deal with this interaction.  That’s enough for now though, so take a break and go check out that cool link someone posted about Tebow.

Apparent paradox.  That would have been a better way to phrase my views on the “mysteries of the faith”.  Someone posted a comment on my post, and it helped me see that though I explained what I meant by a paradox, it would have been better to use the word “apparent”.  That way, you all understand I am saying TO MAN it is a paradox, and TO GOD it isn’t.  Of course, some people would still disagree and say that there really isn’t a paradox for man either, and then give some detailed explanations to show us how passages that seem to contradict their view, really aren’t contradictory at all.  You will have to decide on your own, but “apparently” someone is reading this blog.

In my opinion, Paul the apostle truly understood the paradoxical nature of this issue, and yet fully embraced and taught it to his disciples and converts.  Paul believed fully in God’s unstoppable will and election, and yet at the same time gave his life so that every man, woman, and child on earth would hear the Gospel and have a chance to respond.  He knew that often his prayers didn’t line up with God’s will and so were not answered no matter how much faith he had (2 Cor. 12), yet not only continues to pray, but also implores his followers to keep praying (Eph. 6, 1 Thess. 5).

First, we must establish the foundational truths:

1)    God is in control.  His will is always accomplished.

2)    God is good and love.

3)    Man has a free will and has the ability to make choices.

4)    The Bible emphasizes BOTH God’s sovereignty and the consistent appeal for man to make the right choices in life.

That these are true should not be in question.  I could cite many Scriptures for each (and I would suggest the first few chapters of Geisler’s book “Chosen But Free” for examples).  We will discuss many of the passages in the next few blogs, unless you have already decided to strangle me and burn me at the stake.

Let us take a look at two passages of Paul that will offer some paradigm to look at these foundations: Ephesians 2 and Romans 9-10. (the impress your nerdy friends at a party word of the day is “paradigm”).

Ephesians 2:8 “for by grace you have been saved through faith”.  Here is the combination of God’s election and man’s free will in one compact statement of Paul’s on the nature of salvation.  He begins with “by grace” as always emphasizing God’s grace in salvation, meaning His unmerited favor poured out in the election of the saints.  No works involved, no earning of God’s favor or forgiveness, God initiates a plan of salvation through Christ unaided.  Just one chapter earlier, Paul drops the P bomb (Predestination that is).  However, Paul includes the response of man: faith.  Man responds to God’s initiation of grace in believing and receiving this grace.  Is that a work of man then?  Does it all rest on faith making election ultimately a work of man?  Not at all.  Who takes credit for receiving a gift?  When you have a party, and someone gives you a birthday gift, you don’t take any credit for the acquisition of that gift.  You didn’t buy it, pick it out, or do anything to earn it.  All you simply did was to receive it.  Yet, you had a choice.  You could have rejected the present.  You didn’t, you accepted it, but the possibility was that you COULD have rejected it.  And the same is true of salvation, in that God knows that you will accept it, has predestined it, yet you COULD have rejected it by not having faith.

Here again we come to the mystery.  How does God’s foreknowledge and predetermination fit together?  I could offer fancy explanations as many have, yet in the end, we can’t fully understand it.  We want to point out the apparent paradox:  if it is up to man to accept it, then salvation is conditional and is ultimately dependant on man.  Paul doesn’t allow that paradox of man to interfere with his presentation of the truth, whether he can fully explain it or not is not important.  It is truth revealed by God, and that is the ultimate issue to Paul.  Paul could have left the “faith” part out, but he didn’t.  He is consistent with pointing out both aspects of our salvation.

For example, in Romans 9, Paul spends the whole chapter pointing out God’s sovereignty and election, even pounding the reader for the inevitable question of the fairness of God (clay analogy).  Yet, in the very next chapter 10, he utters the famous Pauline quote destined for evangelistic tracts, “if you believe in your heart and confess with your lips that Jesus is Lord, you will be saved”.  The paradox again, yet Paul reveals it as truth, whether it can be fully understood by man or not.  Paul gives us here in these two passages the paradigm:

1)    God is in control and is the initiator of salvation.  It is completely based on His grace and mercy and the work of Christ on the cross.  Man didn’t ask for it, pray for it, intercede for it, for it was planed before the “foundation of the world” (Eph. 1).

2)    Man is the responder and receiver of God’s grace and election.  He must respond with faith, which is merely receiving that gift of grace.  He does nothing of his own work for that salvation, he simply says, ” I receive it.”

There can be no boasting or dependence on free will in this, for if God had not initiated and carried out the plan of the cross, there would be nothing for man to CHOOSE.  He could be free all he wants, but would without choices, freedom is not truly freedom at all.  Unless the prison door is opened, escape from jail is not an “option”, and the knowledge that if it WERE open you could choose to escape, does you no good at all.   Before the cross, there was only one option: hell!

How and why does God choose to work within the environment of free creatures?  We could extrapolate from Genesis and the rest of Scriptures that again His very character and nature of love caused this.  Creatures without free will can never truly “love” and as God is love, He created creatures “in His image”, therefore with an ability to love and a necessity for free will to do so.  How could He create a world in which man is free to love, yet He is in control to insure that His love would bring Christ, the forgiveness of sins, and election of the saints to heaven without voiding the free will He gave?  That is the answer Paul knows we will never truly have, yet it makes neither of those two premises false.

Wow, we need a break.  I think it is time for Angry Birds.  Tune in tomorrow, when we talk about “God changing His mind.”  At least that will be an easier topic.

Let’s get ready to rumble! I always wanted to say that, although I can’t remember if it comes from boxing or wrestling or the “Outsiders”.  Over the next few blog posts, we will attempt to discuss the age old debate about God’s Sovereignty and Man’s Free Will (I capitalized that so you would know how important this is..cool, huh? in the next blog, I experiment with crazy fonts, look out!)  However, before we get into the discussion, we need to establish a few things.

1)    There is an apparent paradox within Scripture.  There is no way getting around the fact that to human reason and intellect only one of these can be true.  Either God is in control or man is in control.  To say that both are true can’t be fully explained, and this is due to our finite, limited nature as man.  This is not a cop out or easy way out, it is simply reality.  If we can’t accept that, we might as well quit now, as the Bible presents Scriptures which, taken individually seem clear, but when compared seem to be incompatible.

If we are willing to accept this apparent paradox, and say they are not actually a paradox, but only appear that way due to our limitations, how we can even discuss them intelligently?  Paul did indeed foresee this reaction and made sure we came to this conclusion in Romans 9 -11.  First of all, after presenting God’s election and the hardening of Pharaoh’s heart, he gives the analogy of the potter and clay.  By picturing us as clay, he is clearly pointing out our inability to question and understand God’s will and character in this.  After presenting faith and God’s plan for Israel, in chapter 11 Paul again points us to the “unsearchable” ways of God.  Paul was a brilliant man who did indeed give much thought to this apparent paradox.  He gives us paradigms to understand, yet stops short of giving a full explanation, because he knows it is IMPOSSIBLE for man to fully understand the ways and nature of God!  That is what we need to do: create paradigms to understand, with the reality that full understanding in this issue is simply not obtainable.

2)    As a whole, Calvinism emphasizes God’s sovereignty over man’s free will.  Let me be clear on this point (and don’t go posting this on a website or emailing it to friends, oops too late…).  The Bible as a whole emphasizes God’s sovereignty over man’s free will, so as good inductive students and teachers, this conclusion is natural and understandable.  As I stated in another blog, if we just read Isaiah 40 – 48, Ephesians 1, or Romans 9, we could all become hard core Calvinists.  However, when we take this conclusion about God’s sovereignty and then attempt to connect it into a whole, detailed, systematic theology, then we can tend to leave inductive reasoning behind and wander into human logic and reasoning.

On the other hand, Arminianism emphasizes man’s free will over God’s sovereignty.  Let me be clear on this point.  The Bible talks A LOT about our choices, individual responsibility, and accountability.  All we need to do is read Ezekiel 18, pretty much the whole book of Hebrews, or Exodus 32, and we could all become Arminians (or is the correct term Arminianists… Arminiani?).  Again, if we just take these passages alone and connect them into a whole, detailed, systematic theology, we can easily leave the Bible and enter into our own logic.

3) I believe there is another factor which contributed to the current emphasis on God’s sovereignty within conservative denominations and seminaries :  the rise and prominence of moral government teaching, and the recent  offshoot of this doctrine known as open (process) theology.  Many Bible scholars have quickly labeled both moral government and open theology as heresy or false teaching.  We have discussed open theology in a previous post, but moral government was prevalent first and is the initial step toward open theology.  Moral government in a nutshell believes that man is free to make moral choices apart from his sinful nature.  Basically, man is born neutral, and can make the right choices in life.  This focus on man’s free choice led to conclusions about God having free choice, and therefore led some to question God’s knowledge of the future.  As these teachings have become popular in some circles, they have evoked a strong response and call toward Calvinism.

So, why should we care about this stuff anyway?  Let those eggheads argue about it and let’s get on with our real lives.  Those guys are just losers blogging from  their parent’s basement, and like to impress people with words like “efficacious grace”.  (I have to admit I like dropping these word bombs too like “corporate headship”)

We should care because this theology affects major parts of our Christianity!

Should we evangelize?  Can people truly choose God, or are they just destined for heaven or hell?

Why do we pray?  Does our faith matter or is prayer just God communicating with us what He has already decided?

Can we lose our salvation?

Rats.  I guess we do have to care.

Seventeen years ago, I attended a nine month Bible school.  At the time, I was 23 years old, and was convinced that 9 months would be enough time for me to answer all of my Bible questions.  Forget the fact that great Bible scholars and church leaders had argued and wrestled with the Scriptures for thousands of years, they were amateurs compared to me.  Tertullian, Augustine, Luther, Schaeffer; all lightweights compared to my vast intellectual powers.  I mean, think about how much time those guys wasted doing useless chores like lighting candles, cutting firewood, studying dead languages, translating the Bible, or pounding theses to church doors.  Other than an occasional distraction like buying a Coke and Snickers, I had way more time to devote to studying the Bible.

Needless to say, all those questions about the Bible weren’t all answered, in fact I left with way more than I had when I started.  Over the years though, the same, main questions come up time and time again.  Questions about Revelation and the end times, the Holy Spirit and the gifts of the Spirit, and the 3 main ones I call the Paradoxes of the Faith (and no I am not even going to mention Melchizedek or the Nephilim, unless Melchizedek was a Nephilim… did you ever think of that???).  A paradox is a group of statements that when added together (if true) would defy human logic and reason.  The big three that I have seen are 1) God’s Sovereignty and Man’s Free Will; 2) The Trinity; and 3) The Deity and Humanity of Jesus.

It is no wonder then, that these three have seen massive division within the church.  We also tend to see extremism with each one as human logic pushes people to declare one side to be true at the expense of the other.  For example, Hyper Calivinism vs. Open Theism, Modalism vs. Jehovah’s Witnesses, and Doceticism vs. Historical Jesus.  God is in control and man only appears to have free will.  Man is free and God doesn’t know the future.  God is one and only manifests differently.  God is one and Jesus is not God.  Christ is God’s Spirit resting on Jesus the man.  Jesus of history was a man, whereas Christ the God was invented by church fathers.  Take your pick.

Another name for these three could be the mysteries of the faith.  Not mysterious in that God is intentionally hiding truth from us.  Mysterious because perhaps our human brains simply can’t fully comprehend these truths that seem to be paradoxical when comparing Scriptures.  Can we only as Paul says in Romans 9 be the lump of clay that doesn’t argue with it’s potter?  Not likely this side of heaven!  We have proven incapable of humility as a race, and the consequences of extreme views is too harmful to the church to not attempt to grasp these concepts.

God’s Sovereignty and Man’s Free Will?  Here we come.  Tremble at our intellectual might.