God. Real. Right.

Here is the audio of a message on Hebrews 9:1-15. If you right click the previous sentence you can download the file. If you left (normal) click it, it will begin playing in a new page. If you click the little arrow next to it, it should play on this page.
I presented it to one of my “home” churches, Bethany Baptist Church in Pleasant Grove. It is based on a sermon I prepared from that text for a summer leadership camp for youth in Kerrville, TX.
I apologize to those of you who listen to most of the messages I put online, because the final illustration is one I have used in another sermon here. :O

Because I am normally speaking in other churches on Sundays, I don’t get to sit in my Sunday morning Bible study class as often as I would like. But I was there this week. I am fortunate to have a teacher (Tom Green) who is smart, loves to study, and very good at provoking the members of the study to think about the material he is covering each week. Like many other SBC Bible study groups this week, we were studying 1 Samuel 24-31–in particular, the narrative about Saul in the cave (chapter 24) and camped with his troops (chapter 26), and the one about Nabal and Abigail (chapter 25).
Here is one thing provoked by that Bible study.
The context: Chapter 24 is about David’s Read the rest of this entry »

I know there is much confusion about how Jesus could be in the grave for three days and three nights if He died on Friday and rose on Sunday. The phrase three days and three nights is specifically given as the length of time Jesus says He will be in the grave in Matthew 12:39-40. It is certainly possible that Jesus is using a common expression to emphasize that He would not rise until the third day, rather than giving a hard “moment” of resurrection; that is, exactly seventy-two hours, zero minutes, and zero seconds. So Matthew 12 could be taken either way. The question is, which way should it be taken. (Remember, Jewish days begin at 6 pm.) Does Jesus need to die at the last moment on Wednesday afternoon, so there is time for him to be in the tomb all day and night Thursday, Friday, and Saturday, and then He is resurrected on the fourth day, which would be Sunday? Of course not, since although there are Read the rest of this entry »

Romans 5:12 Therefore, just as through one man sin entered into the world, and death through sin, and so death spread to all men, because all sinned.
The propositional components of this verse are:
(1) Just as
(2) through one man sin entered into the world
(3) and death through sin
(4) and so
(5) death spread to all men because all sinned
The broad flow of the verse is governed by (1) and (4). The words indicated by (1) are important to isolate because they anticipate a parallel or a comparison through (4). (2) and (3) together will be the content joined to (5) by (1) and (4). In other words, there will be a parallel between the intent of “through one man sin entered into the world and death through sin” and the intent of “death spread to all men because all sinned.”
Defining the terms: The flow of (2), (3), and (5) hinges on identifying some generic terms which will indicate where Paul is expecting an identifiable (if not fully equivalent) relationship between terms or phrases. So, in (2), “through one man” refers to the act of one man, which will be labeled “A”, for “Adam sinned”. Read the rest of this entry »

No chapter argues more significantly or more voluminously for the truth of the resurrection than 1 Corinthians 15. Interestingly, however, Paul is neither asserting nor proving that truth to unbelievers. Rather, he speaks to Christians (albeit weak and even carnal ones) who are part of the church at Corinth. So his argument actually works through a different means and in a different direction than how it is usually preached. Normally the passage is used apologetically–that is, it is given as if to say the historical veracity of the resurrection is empirically undeniable, having been witnessed by those identified in verses 5-9. But that direction is not where Paul takes the argument at all.
The heart of his argument for the resurrection is in the syllogism he presents in verses 13-19, to which he then adds verses 20ff to make obvious the impact of the syllogism and to clarify that the relationship between the resurrection of Christ and everyone else’s resurrection is efficient rather than simply implicit. To save space, take DR to represent the proposition “that there is a resurrection of the dead,” CR to be “that Christ has risen from the dead,” PV to be “that the apostle’s preaching is vain,” FV to be “that the Corinthians’ (believers’) faith is vain,” SS to be “that the believers are still in their sins,” SP to be “that those who sleep (have physically died) in Christ are destroyed,” and MM to be “that believers are the most miserable (pitiable) of people.” Also, take “that we have hope in Christ in this life only” as equivalent to the denial of DR (”that there is a resurrection of the dead.” Paul’s syllogism then should be fairly obvious, beginning in verse 13 and ending in verse 19. (For those not familiar with the symbols, “~” means “not,” “–>” means “implies,” “^” means “and,” and “. :” means “therefore.”)
Verse 13 provides the first premise (in this case the minor premise) and is supported by (or simply restated in) verse 16. Verse 14 provides the beginning of the second premise (in this case the major premise) completed and supported in verses 15, 17, and 18. Finally, verse 19 provides the conclusion, which is, as it turns out, a reduction to absurdity (a reductio ad absurdum argument.) So the syllogism starts out looking like this:
~DR –> ~CR
~CR –> PV ^ FV ^ SP ^ SS
. : ~DR –> MM
The lack of syllogistic structure above is resolved with the simple observation that Paul refers to believers as the most miserable (pitiable) of people in verse 19 in order to abbreviate his (hypothetical) claim that the apostle’s preaching is vain (in verse 15), that the believers’ faith is vain (in verse 17), that the dead in Christ are simply rotting in the grave (in verse 18) and that the Corinthians are still in their sins (in verse 17.) (To be a bit more precise, SS is actually an implication of FV in Paul’s argument, but that fact does not change the value of this structure.) With that equivalence, the structure is straight up.
~DR –> ~CR
~CR –> MM
. : ~DR –> MM
Here’s the point, especially clarifying verse 19: Paul is not saying that if there is no resurrection, Christian life is an abysmal disappointment. Rather, Paul expects his readers to see MM as an absurdity. Since the structure of his argument is undeniable and he has emphasized (if not proven) the truth of the implicit relationship between each subject and predicate in the premises, then the absurdity of the predicate of the conclusion can lead to only one conclusion, the denial of the subject of the first (minor) premise, that the dead rise not. Like this:
~DR –> MM
~MM
. : DR
In other words, Paul assumes (for good reason) the Corinthians will respond to verse 19 by asserting that they certainly are not the most pitiable of all people. That is, he believes they will assert that the preaching they have heard is not vain, that their faith is not vain, that they have been delivered from their sins, and that their dead loved ones are not just decaying in the grave. And he has argued such that if they make that assertion, they will have to acknowledge that the dead do indeed rise. That acknowledgment then at least allows for the possibility that Christ also rose. Of course, the possibility of Christ rising is not at all the final disposition of the argument for Paul, which is why he asserts in the next verse (20) not only that Christ has risen from the dead, but that Christ’s resurrection not only makes the resurrection of the dead necessarily possible (the contrapositive of the original first premise in verse 13,) but more importantly that Christ’s resurrection of the dead paves the way for the resurrection of the dead more generally.
Now back to the weight of the reductio ad absurdum argument in verses 13-19: Paul does not begin with the fact of the resurrection then argue that the Corinthians ought to be more holy as a result of the fact for which he has provided evidence. Rather, he argues that their commitment to the faith is already real (although poorly lived, as the rest of the epistle attests) and that therefore the resurrection is undeniable. It is a more fideist than evidentialist argument. Of course, it could hardly be otherwise, written not as an apology to unbelievers but an appeal to believers.
The point here is simply that if believers’ lives have been changed by the gospel then the objective content of the gospel message, including the literal nature of the resurrection, is thereby validated. As always, miracles (even the greatest miracle: the resurrection) do not produce faith; rather, in this case epistemologically, faith (and its subsequent transforming power in the lives of the Corinthians) justifies the miracle–a fideist position indeed!

An explanatory note and a followup question:
An explanatory note: Fideism here is not just that salvation is by faith alone, nor does it include the idea that faith is purely subjective, without regard to objective content. It is simply the advocation of initial, volitional faith as the foundation within which Christianity is preached both to the lost and saved. That commitment of faith is independent of sufficient evidence or any other prior cause and therefore an expression of the free will (a gracious gift from God to humans.) The lost ought to make that commitment-choice. The saved have made that commitment-choice.
A followup question: But is it not possible that Paul made his evidential apologetic (based on the witnesses) first, then argues from that fact to the conclusion that without the resurrection they would be the most pitiable of men? The answer is no, because he already introduced the belief they have in reality in verse 2. In fact, he premises all his claims with the necessary relationship between their faith (unless you believed in vain,) their salvation, and their standing in what he preached to them. First they believe in the content of his message, which includes the objective truth of the resurrection. Everything else follows.

There are a few key passages which are disappointingly abused in defense of determinism in its varying forms and implications. Here is one of them.

Romans 8:29-30 is usually taken as an unbroken chain of activities directed at the elect–meaning: God glorifies every person He justifies, justifies every person He calls, calls every person He predestines to be like Christ, and predestines every person He foreknows. Of course, such a reading is not as self-evident as its proponents would like to make out. In fact such a reading controverts, or at least eisegetically obscures, the contextual meaning of the passage. The problematic nature of that reading begins to be evident when the first word in the chain, “foreknow” has to be reinvented in a way to allow God only to hold foreknowledge of those He glorifies. While it is now common practice to strain the meaning of foreknowledge down to nothing more than “intimate, relational knowledge,” as in Adam “knowing” Eve, such a reduction of meaning is an inexcusable abuse of language. That the Old Testament euphemizes sexuality with knowledge in no way changes the meaning of the verb “to know.” Claiming that ??????? inherently implies prior “intimate, personal” knowledge in Romans 8:29 rather than simply prior knowledge requires claiming that the recipients of Peter’s second epistle (in 2 Peter 3:17) have prior “intimate, personal” knowledge of the cataclysm to accompany Christ’s return–something of which they can only by definition have knowledge by description, not by acquaintance (to use Bertrand Russell’s terms). The only other choice is to admit that the eisegeter has here (back in Romans) interpreted the passage to mean that there is an unbroken chain, then strained and limited the first term in the chain to avoid what would otherwise follow from his reading, universalism. It is right that the scriptures do not teach universalism, that all men are ultimately glorified (using the wording of the passage.) And it is right that if there is an unbroken chain in this passage, and God’s foreknowledge is taken as what it is, complete, then universalism is implied. What is wrong is assuming that this passage implies an unbroken chain.

Reading the passage as an unbroken chain puts the focus of the text on exactly the wrong object. ??? ??????? ??? ????????? is typical of the rest of the phrases. “Whom he foreknew also he foreordained.” The object (the accusative relative pronoun, “whom”) is given once at the beginning of each similar phrase, but not repeated within each phrase. The strength of the rhetoric is to create a perfect parallel of activity on God’s part within each phrase by creating syntactically parallel verb forms (all third person singular aorist active indicatives which as pairs share each accusative relative pronoun) and from one phrase to the next by repeating the last verb of the previous phrase. In other words, the focus of the rhetoric here is not on “whom” but on what God has done. It is an important, but not conclusive, nuance. Further, the only emphasis that can be placed on the objects (the “whom”) of each act is within each pair, not from pair to pair. Saying “God foreordains those He foreknows,” then saying “God calls those He foreordains” is different from saying “God calls those He foreknows.” To be clearer: the syllogism read into the passage by those advocating a broken chain says that foreknowledge implies foreordination, that foreordination implies calling, and that therefore foreknowledge implies calling. Obviously, the implications of the syllogism are carried forward to glorification so that finally, foreknowledge implies glorification, leading to the previously defined problem that either God’s foreknowledge must be limited or redefined, or that all men end up glorified, neither of which readings is either acceptable or necessary. The above reduction to logical propositions (implications) simply misses the point of the passage–misses the point of both the wording and context. Here, what is significant is that it misses the fact that Paul’s focus is not on the objects of God’s activity, but on God’s activity. In other words, this casual paraphrase is wrongheaded: “Every person God foreknows is a person He foreordains, and is therefore a person He calls, and is therefore a person He justifies, and is therefore a person He glorifies.”

A better paraphrase follows both from the wording and from the context. The context, as plain as a simple reading of verses 1 through 11 (Christian recipients) and 28 through 39 (security of the believer), is establishing that those in Christ are secure and should have confidence in their Savior and their salvation. So, of course, every person who is the recipient of this letter is foreknown, foreordained, called, and justified–they are all saved. It is Paul’s point that their glorification, the completion of their salvation, is as certainly accomplished (just as “aorist active indicative”) as the elements of their salvation already secured temporally. Simply put, the relative pronoun of Romans 8:29-30 is limited to the saved not because the meaning of foreknowledge is limited but because the context of the letter (especially this portion) is limited.

So here is the point. While it is possible to read the passage as paraphrased above, it is far more accurate to paraphrase (in a thoroughly expanded form) the passage something like this: “It was God who knew you before you were, and predetermined that you should be like Christ. It was God who predetermined that you should be like Christ, and called you to that purpose. It was God who called you when you were not seeking Him, and who made you righteous. And it was God who made you righteous, and who perfected your salvation.” The rhetorical impact of that last statement is this: “The same God who already justified you (and did all those things that led up to your justification) will just as certainly perfect your salvation, making you just like what He wanted you to be like, Christ.” Or it could be worded like this: “If God did all of that to get you to this point (justification), do you not think He will finish (glorification) what He started?” Clearly, in context, the point is that the Romans should have as much confidence in their yet future glorification as they have in their already accomplished justification. To use the passage to establish some logically necessary progression of God’s edicts and activities is to misuse a passage which simply and powerfully reminds Christians that if God loved them enough to save them when they were His enemies, then He certainly loves them enough to preserve them when they are His children!