Verses About Salvation

Makenna and I put together a list of verses for our group to memorize. They are all related to the issue of salvation so that we can use them in evangelism.

Man is depraved and sinful. Romans 3:10-12
The wages of sin is death. Romans 6:23
Man can be saved by the gift of God. Romans 6:23
Jesus was crucified to bear our punishment. 1 Peter 2:24
Jesus is the only way to salvation. Acts 4:12
If you believe on Jesus, you will be saved. John 3:16
Our faith is made complete by our deeds. James 2:22
The cost of following Jesus is great. Galatians 2:20
Followers of Jesus go for the approval of God, not man. Galatians 1:10
Plenty of people are in need of the Gospel, but there are few to give it to them. Luke 10:2
We should proclaim the good news to others. Matthew 28:19-20

So, this is our list. Any thoughts?

Thoughts on Predestination

I had a meeting with Sam and Makenna today, and we briefly brought up the subject of predestination, that is, whether or not believers are "predestined" to be saved. I currently don't really agree with predestination, but I admit I could be wrong. Here are just a few of my thoughts.

As far as predestination goes, I know the Reformers believe in "irresistible grace" and that people are saved when the Holy Spirit irresistibly fills them. However, I found this verse. “You stiff-necked people, with uncircumcised hearts and ears! You are just like your fathers: You always resist the Holy Spirit!” (Acts 7:51) Please do note what I'm saying, here, though... I'm not saying that God cannot overpower people through the Holy Spirit! I'm definitely not saying that God does not have power over man's decisions. I'm just saying that maybe He doesn't choose to use the full extent of His power on us so that we can still make a choice.

Also, if everything we do was predestined, then why should humans be condemned for sins that God essentially forced them to commit? If we have no choice about what we do, believe, etc., then we might as well live the way the atheists do, claiming no responsibility for our actions.

And Scripture states that salvation is a free gift. If I received a gift on my birthday from my father, and I reached out and took it, would I get the credit? No, not really. My dad would get all the credit for giving me the gift, of course! Sure, I had to accept it, but accepting it really didn't take much. Actually, I would have been doing much more if I had rejected the gift! It would have taken a lot more effort and stubbornness.

I do think that in a way everything is "predestined" - God knows everything, so He knew before and outside of the confines of time who would be saved. But I don't think He moves humans like pawns in the salvation process. And I don't think it subtracts at all from God's sovereignty if He gives man a choice.

This verse from Ephesians is often used to support predestination:
"For He chose us before the creation of the world to be holy and blameless in His sight. In love He predestined us to be adopted as His sons through Jesus Christ, in accordance with His pleasure and will - to the praise of His glorious grace, which He has freely given us in the One He loves."

This verse, to me, could be taken two ways. First of all, it could mean that each individual person who will be saved is predestined, that God hand-picked individuals to be saved before they were even created. It could also mean that God simply predestined the plan of salvation. He knew humankind would fall and created a way for the group of believers to be adopted as His sons. Christ was predestined, then. The believers are His chosen people, like Israel. But of course the Israelites did have the freedom of choice whether to follow Him or not. Not all the Israelites were saved, even though they were chosen!

I think a later verse rather helps to clarify this point. "And you also [referring to the believing Ephesians] were included in Christ when you heard the word of truth, the gospel of your salvation. Having believed, you were marked in Him with a seal, the promised Holy Spirit,"

In other words, later on, people are grafted into this chosen Body of Christ. The Body of Christ was chosen, yes, but perhaps it is not necessarily predestined who exactly is included in that body.

I'd really like to check with a Greek scholar on this passage.

I don't know, these are just my thoughts, and I could be wrong. Predestination could be right, wrong, or part right. Scientists are still freaking out over how light can act like a particle sometimes and like a wave other times. Yet they use light, because they know that no matter how it does it, light scatters darkness, and light is good.

Like Sam said today, though, whether you believe in predestination or not, we can all agree that God first loved us. That's the most important thing. And if we trust that Christ's atoning death on the Cross is what saves us - not our own choice or our election - then we will agree on the important thing, and we will be saved.

Slow Progress From Wimp to Evangelical

Well, I'm working slowly on becoming less of a wimp about sharing my faith in Christ. The title says it all. This post will be just a few witnessing-related thoughts.

Makenna gave me seven tracts a couple weeks ago. A biblical number, really. I took two to the grocery store tonight, determined to return with zero.

I did. Actually, I wish I had brought all seven.

I'm such a wimp. After years and years of being a Christian, I have spent probably less than a half hour total sharing my faith in Christ. Something is wrong with that.

Thousands upon thousands of people die every day. Every one of them goes, as a very nice black man I met said, "either upstairs or downstairs". And there is only one good destination if those people ever want to be joyful and full. The more I realize that, the more bold I become.

Seriously though. I wish I cared more. Satan has made me fall for a whole bunch of lies. I'm starting to see through these lies a little bit.

Lie #1: Shouldn't you get to know people before you witness?
Response: 9/10ths of the witnessing conversations in the Bible are to total strangers. If we're going biblical, we'll be witnessing to strangers. Besides, if you try to do it that way, it will never happen. You get to know someone and don't talk to them right away about Jesus. Three months into the relationship, you don't talk to them about Jesus. Six months, still no Jesus.

Lie #2: Jesus is kind of off-topic right now.
Response: By the world's standards, Jesus is always off-topic! That's the point! He will never be on-topic. What am I waiting for? Someone to ask me about Jesus? That could never happen, and there are thousands of people dying and going to Hell every single day. What's off-topic is the way those people - and us - are living our lives. In contrast to that stark reality. Witnessing is on-topic. Everything else is off-topic.

Lie #3: Isn't witnessing kind of invasive?
Response: Absolutely. Lots of acts of love are very invasive. It's extremely invasive to tie your best friend to a chair so he can't shoot himself, and yet I would do that any time, any day. Shouldn't we be quicker to be invasive if people are shooting themselves in an eternal sense?

Lie #4: That person is on the job, he/she doesn't have time for this.
Response: It doesn't actually take that long to witness. About as long as a friendly conversation does, and people on the job are supposed to have those. Besides, a person's soul is more important than their job!

I met an old man today and gave him a tract. He got sort of a twinkle in his eye and asked what it was about. When I gave him my version of a not-so-eloquently worded bare-bones plan of salvation through Christ, he absolutely lit up! This random old man I had selected to hand a tract gave me a big hug! He told me that he had been a pastor and had started five churches and most of all, absolutely loved Christ.

He was so enthralled that I would be out witnessing, and he gave me some extremely encouraging words. But the best encouragement was just the look in his eye, the absolute love for God and the delight that someone would be telling others about Christ.

I'm just really encouraged and a lot more ready to share my faith. I need to start learning to view witnessing as a joy. I can help Christ in the salvation process! Obviously, I can hardly move an iota in the grand scheme of things, but boy, am I happy to be able to help!

The old man took the tract, and I doubt that he will waste it. The man who took the other tract was a deli worker who seemed very genuinely interested in the information and tucked the tract inside of his white deli coat.

Even though you might not ever read this, thanks, Makenna, for turning my opinions on witnessing on their head.

Thanks to the old man in the grocery store, for all the encouragement. I really needed it.

And thanks, Jesus. I cannot believe what You did for me. Let me be able to share Your joy with others.

Overcoming Pride

One of my great struggles in life has been overcoming pride.

Pride is extremely dangerous. As C.S. Lewis has noticed in his book, Mere Christianity, pride is the only sin that alienates people from other people.

Every other sin can bring people together in some way. People who like stealing go on raids together. People who like lying pull off complicated deceptions. People who like adultery will congregate to do inappropriate things.

But pride is different. Pride is the one sin that makes someone completely alienated. When you are prideful you want to be above and beyond everyone else, having no fellowship with them at all. Sure, people's compliments can fuel you for a while, but those compliments only serve to push your airy head as far past those people as it can get.

And worse, pride can alienate us from God. Ezekiel tells us that Satan fell from Heaven because of pride. He loved how good he was, he pushed himself above and beyond everyone else, including God, and he rebelled and got kicked out. He's still rebelling, and we're helping him every day.

Yup, pride is dangerous, and I've definitely been guilty of it. Worse, I've usually been very confused about how to fix it.

But I've been thinking about it a lot and studying the Bible, and I think I may have figured out my problem. It can be summed up in one phrase.

Dealing with pride is not done by thinking less of yourself. Dealing with pride is done by thinking more of others.

That's the problem. I usually try to think less of myself - oh, never mind, sure, I did that, but I'm not really that great a guy. I belittle myself and try to fake myself out that I don't think too highly of myself.

But maybe there's another way to fix the problem. Maybe instead of trying to knock my opinion of myself down, I can raise my opinion of others. Maybe instead of trying to serve myself less I can try to serve others more.

As a last thought, I think I'll share something from Communications class. It's the most valuable thing we learned all year, in my opinion. It is the acronym:

JOY

It stands for Jesus, Others, and You. That's the order of priorities.

Not the Kind You Kill

I've been realizing something very big, and one phrase sums it up pretty well.

If you watch a lot of action movies and read a lot of Scripture, you quickly begin to run into some contradictions.

Like any kid, I've daydreamed of being an action hero - smashing through panes of glass and dropping fifteen feet to down one crook, giving another a jaw-crushing uppercut, backflipping to avoid a third crumb's kick, and delivering a whirling kick of my own right into his solar plexus. And naturally, I would save someone. Likely a girl. I'd be a hero with my quick moves.

Adrenaline is pretty intense.

But after lots of Scripture reading, studying the Bible and studying the ways of God, I've started to understand things in a different light. Actually, I'm rather embarrassed of my action movie and adrenaline-fueled ways of thinking, and I'm starting to view it as rather wrong.

There are really no bad guys. Not the kind you shoot at and punch and chop and kill, anyway.
We're all bad guys, really. We're all just out to feed our own selfish selves. We're all out to snub other people to make ourselves feel better. We're all just out in total opposition to God. Like my pastor says, with every sin, we try to kill God.

But the main thing I've been realizing is that those who would be portrayed as "villains" in action movies - villains to be attacked and decimated without regret - are just people. People every bit as real as you and me. People who have hurts and pains and desires. People with the Imago dei, the Image of God.

People Jesus died for.

That's how I hope to change my mindset. I am hoping and praying that if anyone ever pulls a fast one on me - stealing my money or kidnapping my friends - I will be able to do the same thing Jesus would do, the same thing Jesus did do for those who "pulled a fast one" on Him.

He loved them.

I hope and pray that I will be able to see everyone as valuable in God's eyes. I hope that I will be overcome with the beautiful love God has for people. And if anyone tries to "pull a fast one" on me, I hope I will not use him as a human punching bag like the action movies say to do.

I hope that I can show him the hope that I've found. It seems so right and so Jesus to witness to someone who's just wronged you. Because I could be there, in his shoes, by all rights a villain. Actually, I guess I am.

No human is so degraded that he is a punching bag to be kicked, shoved, and spit on. Every human deserves it, but that's what grace is all about.

Thoughts on Bible Translations, Mostly the KJV

I was going to send the following message to a couple of friends of mine. We're working on starting a "Do Hard Things" (think Alex and Brett Harris) group under the premise that the world has enough groups that just sit and talk about things (including churches!) and very few that actually go and do stuff. So we hope to have a group that goes out and shares the good news of Jesus Christ, memorizes Scripture, and does service projects.

I was going to send this to my friends, but it's a bit long and rant-like, so I thought I would just post it here, on my blog, my thinking space and give them a merciful condensed version. These are just a few of my thoughts on Bible translations and especially the KJV. I edited it and expanded it a great deal. I wasn't actually going to send them all the Greek stuff!


As far as what translation of the Bible to use, I think we should use a modern translation, although be a bit careful in that respect, because a lot of modern translations are very off-base and liberal. I'm not a KJV-er, though, for various reasons.

First of all, I don't consider the KJV to be an English translation, because you have to understand Old English to read it. The point of a translation is to make things understandable to the reader, and the KJV isn't good for many readers, including me, since I grew up with the NIV. I can understand the Old English fine, but the extra step of deciphering it keeps me distracted from the actual content of the Bible. Of course, I am OK with the KJV, and I know those who have grown up with it and don't have a problem with it because they can understand it well. But if we're witnessing we will most likely encounter people like me who aren't so well-grounded in Old English, so we might not want to go KJV.

Secondly, I'm a little bit wary of the cult-like following the KJV has gotten. I know of many people who hold that the KJV isthe literal, inerrant Word of God. They believe it's an inspired translation. I simply don't believe that, and if you need examples of translation errors I can provide them . I think there is no substitute for studying the original Greek/Hebrew/Aramaic manuscripts to truly understand the Bible. At the very least I don't think the KJV is an inspired translation.

Let's take, for instance, the famous verse, John 3:16. "For God so loved the world, that He gave His only begotten Son, that whosoever believeth in Him should not perish, but have everlasting life."

The KJV-ers are quite pleased with the use of "only begotten" in this text. This phrase comes from two Greek words. You will probably recognize both!

mono - one, only
genesis - beginning, creation

So the KJV translators translated "monogenesis", a compound Greek word, into "only begotten". Good, right?

No, because like in English, compound words in Greek can mean something completely different than if the words were separate! For instance, "firefly" is very, very different from "fire fly". "Firefly" means a little flying lightup insect. "Fire fly" means flying fire! And so monogenesis means something very different than mono genesis!

I think there's a serious theological error here too. "Begotten" insinuates that Christ was created, which isn't indicated anywhere in the Bible. If He's part of the Trinity, then He couldn't have been created. Also, Christ was involved in the creation process, as the book of John tells us. How could He create if He was in fact created?

If I'm correct the actual translation of monogenesis is a lot closer to "unique" or "precious", which is how it is translated in the Psalms. It also carries with it some of the meaning of the birthright - the rights of a son to the power of the father, or something along those lines.

I use the NIV, which I definitely think has several serious translation errors, probably easily as bad as the KJV. I don't consider either translation more superior to the other, I'm just used to modern English and also a bit put off by those who insist that the KJV is inspired. I don't think there is an inspired English translation of the Bible, and if there is, I haven't run into it yet. KJV, NKJV, NASB, and NIV alike all have their share of translation errors.

But I believe the last statistic I heard is that English translations such as the ones above are 99% free of error, so we should be fine. I just prefer not to throw Old English at someone! But NKJV, NASB, and NIV are all fine by me for witnessing. If anyone has any comments or disagreements, please don't hesitate! Hopefully you two won't mind that I went on something of a rant concerning this subject.