A Letter to the Protestant Church, Part II

Continuing with our look at the Letter to the Church at Sardis...

Jesus' command to the Sardisians to remember is similar to his command to the Twelve concerning the Lord's Supper. In that case the subject of recall was Christ himself, in this case it is what the Sardisians had embraced (received) and understood (heard) as believers. This is not the first time a NT writer used recalling that which had been experienced by believers as a means of correction. It seems that Christians forget what they've seen and heard, and which elicited and strengthened their faith in Christ at their own peril.

Instead, the Sardisians were told to guard (keep, watch over) what they had embraced and heard. Finishing one's work certainly progresses toward that end, but it also means revisiting, checking up on, remembering the things by which we stood and continue to stand in faith. The celebration of Communion can help with this, so long as it isn't seen as making the bread and wine instill some spiritual benefit of themselves, rather than being a means of remembering the Lord and what he's done to save us.

The Christians of Sardis needed to change their minds about and attitudes toward (repent) what they had already heard and known. It is my sense that human nature has a ready appetite for the fresh, that we are more intrigued by the new rather than what we have already been exposed to. We can be dismissive and even disdainful toward what was once fresh but is no longer on the cutting edge. Disregard for the foundational and worthy of continued attention can not only lead to works going astray but also faith going dry.

"Wake up!" Jesus commanded the Sardisians. Really, watchfulness is the practical outcome of wakefulness which seems to be the point Christ was making--pay attention to your ongoing faith walk with Jesus. The mention of his surprise appearance catching them unaware is reminiscent of the Parable of the Ten Virgins. Whereas there, sleeping per se was not cast in an irredeemable light (as it is here), the force there and here is the faithless lack of attention and concern some have toward what they have and are expecting in Christ.

As in any church, not everyone part of the congregation is truly part of the Church of the First-born. Some walk unsoiled (in this case, that is equivalent to unsleeping) and will be at the banquet when the Son of Man returns, some will not. Regardless, the action, one way or the other, is not attributed to Christ but to the one wearing the garment. If one keeps his garment unsoiled (perhaps that is the only proper garment for the occasion), he will thus have white garments, akin to Christ's and appropriate for eternity.

Take special notice to the typical use of white here. This treatment is consistent with the other symbolic uses of "white" throughout the scripture, but especially that in the Apocalypse. White is always associated with the good and right, never with the evil and unrighteous. Which, incidentally, is the reason the White Horse cannot be interpreted as evil (i.e. as representative of the Antichrist), but only as good (e.g. the Church turned loose on the Great Commission).

That one can have one's name "unwritten" or erased is a slam-dunk destruction of the Once-Saved-Always-Saved doctrine. As is clear from this letter, one whose name was written in the Book of Life can have that name erased from the Book of Life. Since that book is the instrumentality of final judgment later in the Apocalypse, the message is all too clear. There is a possibility that those who would have been saved eternally at one time in their lives, can at a subsequent time lose that status: the saved can become the unsaved.

Since we are saved by grace through faith, the consideration above would seem to indicate that the faith in question is something in the purview of the believer rather than God. There is in the believer that responsibility in regards to faith which is his or hers and dependent upon him or her to execute and maintain. God will not believe for the believer, the believer, ultimately, must do that for his or her self (despite their need for God's enabling assistance). For those that make the good confession of faith before men, Christ will confess them as his at the end before God and the angels.

A Letter to the Protestant Church, Part I

Zombies seem to be popular these days with just about everyone, but they don't hold much fascination with Jesus, at least as far as we can tell from his Letter to the Church at Sardis. There, Jesus excoriates the believers in that town for having the appearance of life but the reality of deadness. In other words, they were zombie Christians. Before their condition leads to their full and final expiration, he calls on the zombie Christians of Sardis to wake up, shake off the slumber of their hypnotic trance, and save what can be saved before all is lost.

Jesus' beef with the zombie Christians of Sardis is not founded upon mere conjecture. He's seen them in action, he's witnessed what they have done. They had a name, or reputation, for being a vibrant community of Christians, alive in God, but their actions did not measure up to their hype. It's not that they did nothing, they at least made a feint in following through with the works of God, but they stopped short and took a nap before they had pressed through to true fruitfulness (completeness) in God.

What the actual nature of their shortcomings was Jesus did not say. Conjecture and personal application is left to us; in my case, it reminds me of the Parable of the Sower. Rocky soil or weedy soil has the start of something good in reaction to the gospel, an appearance of life, but whatever the initially promising impact may have been, it is not followed through on with dedication and focus. What began to grow withers or remains fruitless (incomplete) as a result.

I look at this and wonder if Jesus could have been writing to the Protestant Church. The promise of a return to the Word and the reformation of what had become mere superstition, idolatry  and commercialism certainly gave the name of life to the Protestant Church. However, given her history and current state of affairs, what would Jesus say of her works? Protestants have fallen asleep in the light while whatever spiritual life and light they may have had has ebbed away. The promise of greatness for that body is all but past, now it would be sufficient if she just woke up, came to her senses, and bolstered what remained.

The Protestant Church is struck, in my opinion, with an overreactive fear of works. I am firmly in the sola camp, so I have no issue with the Reformation's protestation against depending on works for status, position, or merit with God. Works certainly cannot save us nor can they keep us saved. That is not the same, however, as acknowledging that what we do does matter to God, as the Old and New Testaments readily attest! The Protestant Church has, since the Reformation, offered a confusing, befuddled notion of what in the scriptures is the clearly communicated expectation of godly works.

The truth of the matter is that Jesus himself said that final judgment is correlated to works. James did in fact say (notwithstanding Luther's opinion of his epistle's canonicity) that faith without works is dead. That Christ reiterates the concept in the Apocalypse by relating deadness to unfinished or incomplete works should surprise no one. The truth is that there is a consistent emphasis in the New Testament on the works Christians do, and even the need for those to comport with the confession that Christ is the Lord.

Let there be no misunderstanding, we are saved by grace through faith; however, saving faith must be actual faith in order to save. Actual faith that Christ is the Lord motivates change in a person and inspires the one believing to do the works that God has prepared for them. It's not that anyone can be perfect in the sense that their works are nothing but good or that they are above being tempted to walk in their former works. Yet, if anyone has true faith, and any time at all to live in such, his or her life will evidence God-inspired works which demonstrate the reality of his or her faith in Christ.

Being a Protestant should never entail protesting that one is alive despite the lack of any recent works which demonstrate it. To have the name of life but the reality of death is a sham seen through entirely by Jesus Christ. If we are able, that is not incapacitated, it is perfectly fine for a Christian to look at his or her actions and wonder to themselves if they truly believe that Jesus is Lord (God certainly does). A person who truly believes is never undone by such an examination, even if they realize they have works to repent of and sins to confess.

Christ's works may be finished, but ours go on--not to gain salvation, but merely because we are truly saved. 

The Shroud of Turin

Earlier this year, just in time for Easter, the news came out that the Shroud of Turin may be authentic after all. It has been claimed to be a forgery by knowledgeable people since it's been in the West (~1390 CE). And it's been claimed to be authentic by relic apologists and the faithful just as long. In 1998 what was apparently a slam-dunk scientific examination proved it was a forgery.

But now, supposedly better testing techniques, better controlled for contamination have yielded results that make the Shroud possibly contemporaneous with Christ. Different dating technique, no fibrous contamination, and viola, what was not so, now may be so. To tell you the truth, I could care less. Nothing about my belief in Christ rests on the Shroud. I do admit, however, that it would be cool if it did turn out to be possibly authentic...

Jesus burial clothes were part of the Gospel account of the resurrection story. I can't imagine Mary, Mary, Peter or John leaving the empty cloth in the empty tomb.

Is There A Person God Cannot Save?

Is there a person that God cannot save? I suppose it depends on what one means by "save".  In any given perilous situation (e.g. my car going off a cliff) the answer would have to be "no", God could save anyone in any situation. If what is meant by use of the term is to be preserved alive after the final judgment of sin, then the answer is "yes", and resoundingly so. That being said, I still must confess that scripture convinces me that if God could save everyone from judgment, he would.

"‘...As I live!’ declares the Lord God, ‘I take no pleasure in the death of the wicked..."     Ezekiel 33:11 NASB

It is quite clear from scripture that there is a place of eternal judgment and that it will be populated with unsaved sinners as well as the demon horde. Eternal confinement to a lake that burns with fire seems harsh, minimally--not at all the kind of thing one might anticipate someone styled "Savior" doing. I think it would be natural to think that God would have done something about that, if he could have.

He did.

"...I urge that entreaties and prayers, petitions and thanksgivings, be made on behalf of all men, for kings and all who are in authority, so that we may lead a tranquil and quiet life in all godliness and dignity. This is good and acceptable in the sight of God our Savior, who desires all men to be saved and to come to the knowledge of the truth. For there is one God, and one mediator also between God and men, the man Christ Jesus, who gave Himself as a ransom for all..."      1 Timothy 2:1-6 NASB

It seems to me, what God could do to save all humanity from judgment he did do. If all humanity does not end up saved, the fault will not lie with God, but with man. He has provided a substitutionary sacrifice for sin that effectively meets the demand that both man and God see for justice, and effectively reconciles the broken relationship between God and man the sinner. All that is left is for man to no longer want to be a sinner.

Now that is not something that can be imposed. It can be coaxed, an invitation can be made, and a supernatural effort to convince the sinner of his perilous status can be undertaken. But to write over the will of the person in order to make it happen would only serve to cause the sinner to cease being a man. The result could not be said to be a man being saved, but would represent a man being transformed into something other than a man, something less than the image of God.

Man was made in the image of God, to do as he pleased. A man could not be said to be a man on those terms if someone else's pleasure were substituted (especially unwillingly) for his own. To be a man is to have independent will. Unfortunately, it is also to have the possibility of withstanding every effort of God to turn that will to the obedience of faith.

Is there a person God cannot save? Yes, the one who won't repent and believe the gospel.

What Is Sin?

A good definition of sin is helpful in dealing with just about any issue involving God and man. Unfortunately, the Bible is not as straightforward as one might think in providing one. At one point, sin is described as breaking the law; at another, sin is said to have been in the world even when there was no law. If nothing else, that certainly tells us sin is more than breaking a rule.

Therefore, the mere concept of lawbreaking is insufficient for defining sin, since sin does not need to reference a command in order to exist or be described. In light of that, let me suggest, as I have before, that sin is nothing more than the exertion of will contrary to the will of God. A command from God would certainly invoke such a definition, but then too would any awareness of what God's will was, whether it came through conscience, conviction or comprehension. Really, will exerted presumptiously, without regard to God, could invoke a charge of sin, even if done in complete ignorance of God's will. 

Now, the Bible does say that sin is not imputed, or reckoned against one's record, where there is no law. There must be some distinction that God maintains between knowingly transgressing and ignorantly transgressing his will. Yet, as is clearly stated in the Word, death has spread to all humankind because all humans sin, even though many have had not so much as an inkling of the law. So, even if sin is not reckoned to one's account apart from the law, it still leads without exception to the penalty for sin which is death.

A child reaching for a flame, may have had no reason to believe mom or dad did not want her to do such a thing, but may nonetheless be greeted with a quick smack on the fingers as she tries to do so. She won't be punished further as she might have been had she known better, but she did receive a penalty regardless! Discovering that something is against God's will after the fact doesn't alter that it was against his will before. In other words, sin does not require the offense to be an overtly realized transgression on the part of the offender in order to be sin. 

If one knows God's will, or if one merely suspects what may be God's will, or if one is completely oblivious to God's will concerning any willful exertion, that one sins by taking a course contrary to God's whether in word, deed, or thought. Of course, if all occurs according to God's will (as in determinism), it follows that there is and could be no sin. Since it is scripturally clear that sin does exist, it is also quite clear that stuff happens that God did not will. Sin is stuff that is not "his". 

Therefore, sin is an unfortunate consequence of freewill. Without freewill sin would not and could not occur, but then neither would love nor the image of God exist.

Is Evil Necessary for Good to Exist?

I have said that only God can handle being God-like. What I meant by that was that only God can act freely (i.e. God-like) while acting in agreement with his own will in every instance. If that was not the case he would be a contradiction, and that can never be the case. It's not that he actually has to weigh his choices before acting, his very acts are the expression of his will, it's just that God is neither conflicted nor tempted in acting.

Any other agent acting freely, autonomously, is bound to transgress God's will at some point. Though that agent is made in God's likeness, since that agent is not God, that agent cannot independently replicate God's will. God did not, indeed could not, make himself in creating such agents, he merely created something that had a power of will analogous to his own (i.e. they do as they please). To be able to replicate God's will precisely an agent would have to be God.

If that is so, it means that given the decision to create independent, freewill creatures, sin (or evil) would be inevitable. Generally, if something is inevitable it can be said to have the quality of being necessary. If sin (or evil) is necessary to the creation of God's image, that would be sufficient to establish that evil was necessary, at least for the particular good of making creatures in the image of God. Furthermore, if that is the case, sin and evil would have been authored, knowingly, purposely, by God upon the decision to create.

That is not case, however, because the inevitability in question is not the result of a decree from God concerning the agent's will (as in determinism). Instead, the inevitability arises from the agent's distinction from God in identity. The agent sins because he can will like God but isn't God. Therefore, God is not the author of such sin, the free agent is--even though God could foresee such sin and did author the freewill that made it possible.

I have already established that the freedom of will entailed in the image of God was good per se. So, if inevitability does not translate into necessity and the authorship of sin (evil), it cannot lead to the conclusion that evil was necessary for that good to exist. If, in fact, there was a way to unite the identity of God with the identity of the agent, freewill would not necessitate transgression at all, as is ultimately demonstrated by Jesus, the Son of Man.

However, I am forced to conclude that if such unity was not possible, indeed, if it was not God's purpose in creating man in God's image, freewill with it's inevitable failure to sin would have been immoral, even though God was not the author of the sin. If that unity were not possible, the only conceivable end in creating free agents would be to destroy them in judgment. That may be judiciously righteous, but there is no way it could be beneficial to the creature. Redemption had to be baked into the cake at creation, or the cake was baked with evil intent.

Hopefully, it is becoming clear to you, dear reader, that this is all resolved in faith, that is in trusting submission to God. The Bible tells us that Jesus, himself God in the flesh, learned obedience, while in his earthly frame, by the things he suffered. It may not be possible to learn submission in any other way. Even Adam and Eve had their opportunity to learn obedience via this route as they fell to sin, although their test of suffering (self-denial) was meager at best.

It takes freewill in order to express this faith. Paradoxically, that same freewill inevitably leads to sin (and evil). Faith, it seems, is the counterweight to willfulness within the human soul. I think it's safe to say that if faith could have beaten willfulness to the punch, evil would never have existed (at least theoretically).

When a free agent, coaxed by the Spirit of God, voluntarily yields, or submits, to the place of God (Lord) and to the will of God, that one becomes open for God to share his Spirit (person) with. When God's Spirit is fully engaged in such an agent, God's identity is united with the identity of that agent, and the exercise of freewill becomes harmonized with the will of God. That will be the joy of eternity for God and redeemed man.

For the joy set before him, Christ endured the cross, scorning its shame, and sat down at the right hand of the throne of God.         Hebrews 12:2

The Problem of Physical Evil

Why does an omnibenevolent, omnipotent God allow evil such latitude in our age? That God will judge such in a time to come, and cause it to cease thereafter forever is an answer, but it seems a marginal one at best to those living through this age. And to be honest, eternal judgment in the Lake of Fire for the evil done temporally seems only to exacerbate the problem, fighting evil with evil for all intents and purposes. Natural evil--catastrophes, pestilence, genetic abnormalities--seems capricious and only adds to the miserable mystery.

Physical evil certainly is a vexing problem. It rains (too much or too little) on the just and the unjust, earthquakes do not shake merely the morally shaky, tornadoes have been known to sweep through Bible-believing churches while the congregation was in the midst of worship and prayer, and pestilence, mutations and snakes strike apart from any discernment protocol. God may have pulled the plug on this creation because of sin, and let it slowly spiral down the drain, but on the surface, for those twisting in the vortex, it doesn't seem very just or loving. Who can make sense of it?

What needs to remembered in such considerations is that, according to God's standard, it's not the other guy who is evil, it's us--all of us, every single one that has ever come into existence. By God's reckoning, any opposition to his will is evil, even merely eating a piece of fruit he did not want us to. We think we are innocent (so long as we have not overtly harmed another creature), but that is just not the way God sees it. The truth is that humans do as they please, they do without regard to God, they do in opposition to God, and thus they demonstrate that they are, in fact, evil.

That humans have what opportunity they do have to live in a dying world is an accommodation of the magnanimous grace of God. "Wait just a minute," you might be thinking, "we didn't ask to be born at all, let alone the way we are where we are." How is allowing some of us to be particularly evil, while letting all of us live in an environment consistently evil, grace? Well, I think that it demonstrates that God has not written off the human race.

Everything could have ended with the failure of the prototype (Adam and Eve). God could have wiped out everything at The Fall, and been justifiably done with it. Starting over again would not have been an option, because in granting a creature freewill, the same evil to which the prototype succumbed would have been in play for any built like them (in the image of God, that is). The truth is, only God can handle being like God: those that are merely like God, but not God, must live submitted to God in love and faith.

So, though God cannot allow evil to stand and so pulled the plug on this universe, in his love for what was made good, he patiently continues what seems to us the slow, inexorable unfolding of judgment, which is physical evil, because there is a possibility of redemption. Evil creatures, which rebelled in the darkness of ignorance, can be illumined and change their mind and heart about going their own way. If they can truly take to heart the necessity of submission to and agreement with God, he can recast and reset them in a new universe untainted by the fall of the originals.

So there really isn't a problem with physical evil, but there's still a bit more I'd like to talk about...

Evil and Freewill, Concurrence & Moral Sufficiency

There could be no evil whatsoever apart from the capacity of something in creation to oppose God. That opposition would have to be something initiated independently of God; that is, it could not be decreed or impelled by God. Something nominally opposed to God but actually decreed by him could only have the appearance of evil--in actuality, it would be the very will of God. There can be no evil, therefore, apart from freewill, and since there is evil in this world, this world is one which free will exists.

Yet, even though freewill is expressed in a way that is not determined by God (or it wouldn't be free), it is allowed by him and it's exercise sustained by him. It reflects his will for the way things should be, and without such concurrence, it wouldn't be. If that is so, how can the same difficulties which determinism suffers from in regard to the problem of evil not ultimately be true for freewill as well? If God, the omniscient and omnipotent, proceeds despite evil he could foresee or does not stop what is proceeding against his will, there would seem to be a problem with evil after all.

I don't think that is so two reasons. First, God is good, and making something in his image just could not be evil by any stretch of the imagination. Even among human beings, we consider it good to have a son or daughter, even though we know they will do things that are bad. The beauty of being made in God's image is an amazing thing, human beings are amazing creatures. That God would want to make us in his image, able to will as he does and love as he does, is a remarkable demonstration of benevolent grace and something that properly could only be said to be very good.

Second, evil isn't being allowed. It's only the perspective of the current regimen of time that makes it seems so. Death and entropy themselves are arguments against evil being allowed, revealing that God has pulled the plug on this fallen realm of fallen beings. Within our bubble of time we may think evil is allowed and that it's been going on forever, but from God's timeless perspective evil is being dealt with virtually immediately. In this realm's wake, after it's been flash-burned in a cosmic reboot, evil will be something not likely to be even vaguely remembered.

So evil exists because God made creatures in his image which had the power to will, freely, as he does. That was not an evil thing to do, only good, because God is only good, and so too would be those creatures made like him at the time of their creation. Only creatures made with this god-like capacity would be able to experience the full spectrum of God's goodness relationally. God is inherently good, and inherently relational (e.g. the Trinity), and so creating creatures who will as God wills, and love as God loves could be nothing but good.

Since evil can be so evil, however, one has to wonder if doing the good of creating such creatures was a sufficient moral cause for the omniscient God to create them. I think that it was, but that it will not demonstrate itself to be so in time, where those creatures continue in evil even as God does the good he can in regard to them. Only in eternity when freewill creatures have embraced that they have been made in his image, have submitted themselves to be in that image, and choose to abide in it in agreement with God, will those creatures be like Christ and live eternally free but in perfect harmony with God. That situation will be as good as good can possibly get!

That will result in unspeakable joy for God and those creatures so abiding in it, and I think it is more than a sufficient moral cause for allowing the potential of evil in making those creatures in the first place. Does that provide a sufficient moral cause for allowing evil in the meantime, or for having to contain it endlessly, idly, incapably in the age to come? Since God is good and omnipotent, could he not have accomplished his aims some other way without allowing evil? Probably not, but since God is good, I think we have to give him the benefit of the doubt regardless.

Of course that won't stop me from saying a bit more on the subject...

The Problem of Evil

Supposedly, Christianity has a problem explaining the existence of evil in the world given the existence of God, who is good. I don't see the problem at all, so let me do my best to explain why. Primarily, I think the bulk of the problem arises from not understanding what good and evil are. So, let me start there.

God is good, Jesus said uniquely so. God is good, and nothing but good, the very essence of what good is. Evil, on the other hand, is not a thing so much as it is a description. At best, it is understood negatively, by what it isn't. Simply put, evil is that which is not good, much in the same way that darkness can be defined as the absence of light. Light is the something, darkness is the privation of it. Evil is a privation of God, an incidence of something God is not in, so to speak.

In being good, then, God can have no part of himself that is not good, or not God, or else he would be a contradiction. In the creation account in Genesis, the word translated "good" has the general sense of beneficial, so I think we can say by extension that good is that which comports usefully with the beneficial purpose of God. Since God can have nothing in him or about him which is set at cross purposes against himself without being a contradiction, good is that which is in accord with the purpose and will of God and evil is that which which is opposed to God.

As a consequence of this nature, it is possible for a thing to be both good and evil at the same time. A thing meant to thwart God most definitely comes from an evil intention on the part of the would-be thwarter, but in God's providence it may actually further his agenda of good. With that in mind, one might surmise that things which seem to us to be detrimental to life, to which our guts recoil, and which we see as nothing but evil are actually not evil from God's point of view. God intends such things for good or such are not from God who is only good.

And yet everything which exists, exists, ultimately, as a result of God's doing. Why would one who is only good, allow the existence of that which appears so obviously non-beneficial, so outrightly evil? Even if that could be written off as merely a momentary or passing appearance (to us) which served a larger good (from God's perspective), that wouldn't make those moments of evil less evil. So to me, such an explanation seems disingenuous.

What I mean is that evil is evil, even if just for an instant. If God is, then all instants are his, so why any evil whatsoever? God would not be the god who is good if there are flashes of evil in him, bits of momentary lapse where his "other side" is displayed, even if that is not his general character. No, it seems to me the existence of any evil whatsoever does not comport with the existence of an almighty god that is good; and yet, it is my unshakeable belief that the Sovereign Lord does exist and is nothing but good, and that evil exists here and now.

How can that be so? It must be that a good that God did, that was only good, must have given rise to evil. Having given rise to evil that which was made good by God, but which had become evil, has been allowed to remain so for the good that God continues to do in regard to it. So, present reality consists of the good that God, who is only good, continues to do while that which was created good, but is no longer so, continues to express it's evil.

Since evil, by definition, is that which is against God, that good that God did which became evil must have been able to act in a way that opposed God. The only way that would be possible would be for that something which God made good, but which became evil, to have had the ability to act freely, uncompelled, without necessity, as does God. Since God is good, there could be nothing evil about making something commensurate with God, but in doing so, the possibility of opposition, and therefore evil, would be intrinsic to that act.

What should begin to be clear from this discussion so far is that there could be no evil in a world in which God's will was the only one that determined things. If God determines everything that is and occurs, then evil could not possibly exist. For evil to exist within a deterministic framework, God himself would have to be evil. Since God is clearly not evil, and yet there is evil in this world, this world cannot be a deterministic one.

And there is more to delve into...


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