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by gouda on 21 March 2013 - 18:03
gouda
by Ruger1 on 21 March 2013 - 19:03
.
by Felloffher on 21 March 2013 - 20:03
I disagree that we are born with a basic knowledge of morality. Our morality is shaped by cultural/political beliefs, personal experience and our ability to rationalize these experiences with emotions such as empathy. A perfect example of this is the clash between Islamic and Western culture.
by Two Moons on 21 March 2013 - 20:03
by beetree on 21 March 2013 - 20:03
".....our ability to rationalize these experiences with emotions such as empathy."
Now you are talking. And the people who are lacking this quality? What of them. Whole countries are in the throes/process of redefining their cultural identity without this defining, human trait.
by Felloffher on 21 March 2013 - 20:03
What countries are you referring too?
by ggturner on 21 March 2013 - 22:03
Hate to break it to you Shtal, but Deanna and I both belong to the same denomination (PCA = Presbyterian Church in America). So, yes I also beleive in TULIP. I don't get on PDB much these days---teaching keeps me way too busy. I haven't had time to read every post on this thread. As far as salvation, if an individual is truly saved (by truly I mean they acknowledge their sin and a need for Jesus as their savior, repent, accept Jesus as their savior, and commit themselves to living a life which glorifies God), then they cannot lose their salvation. Consider the following verse: "And grieve not the Holy Spirit of God, by whom you were sealed for the day of redemption." Eph 4:30.
by Shtal on 21 March 2013 - 22:03
No problem :-)
gouda wrote: http://blogs.christianpost.com/engaging-the-culture/jacob-i-loved-esau-i-hated-8030/
Good post gouda, Perhaps I will paste here:
Jacob I Loved - Esau I Hated
by George W. Sarris
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By George W. Sarris
God blessed me with good parents, and I will be forever grateful to Him for that.
They were certainly not perfect – they had the same weaknesses and shortcomings, and made many of the same mistakes as other parents. But, I always knew that they loved me. I always knew that they wanted the best for me. And, no matter how much I messed up, I always knew they would never give up on me or abandon me.
My parents didn’t treat me and my brother the same because we were different. We had different personalities. We had different interests. We had different skills and abilities. At times, when my mom would make something special for my brother, I would tease her by saying, “You always did love Brian more than me!” I could say that because she and I both knew that it was definitely NOT true! She didn’t love my brother more than me. She and my dad loved us both with the same quality of love – a love that always had our ultimate best interests in mind.
There are very few things that I can think of that would be more disheartening than believing that my parents would have favored one of us over the other. And, yet, that is what many Christians believe about God – that He shows favoritism – that He deliberately chooses to extend His love and grace to some of those He created while intentionally withholding it from the rest.
Does God Have Favorites?
While Scripture specifically says in several places that God is fair and impartial, and encourages us to act in like manner toward our fellow man, our traditional understanding of how God deals with mankind would have us believe that He definitely shows favoritism.
The Westminster Confession of Faith, for example, specifically teaches that God has purposely chosen some of His creatures for salvation while ordaining others to endless suffering. In Chapter III, Article III, Of God’s Eternal Decree, it says
By the decree of God, for the manifestation of His glory, some men and angels are predestinated unto everlasting life; and others foreordained to everlasting death.
One of the most often quoted passages in the Bible to support this view is found in Romans 9:10-13 where Paul explains that God “hated” Esau.
. . . Rebekah’s children had one and the same father, our father Isaac. Yet, before the twins were born or had done anything good or bad – in order that God’s purpose in election might stand: not by works but by him who calls – she was told, ‘The older will serve the younger.’ Just as it is written: ‘Jacob I loved, but Esau I hated.’
Later in the chapter, Paul seems to justify God’s prerogative to choose some to be saved and some to be condemned by saying that God is the Potter who has “. . . the right to make out of the same lump of clay some pottery for noble purposes and some for common use.” Then Paul asks, “What if God, choosing to show his wrath and make his power known, bore with great patience the objects of his wrath – prepared for destruction?
Don’t these passages clearly imply that God hates and rejects some people – Esau at least – and that He prepares some people for wrath and eternal damnation?
The Purpose of Election
To gain a proper understanding of what Paul is intending to say, it is important to look at the context. The common view of this passage is that God has sovereignly chosen some for salvation and others for perdition. But, that is not Paul’s argument here. The passage is, indeed, referring to God’s sovereign purpose in election, but Paul is not referring to election to salvation. Rather, he is referring to God’s election to service of those He has chosen to be His instruments.
Paul’s purpose in chapters 9-11 is to show how God is merciful to both Jews and Gentiles, and can justly incorporate Gentiles into His plan. He starts by telling his readers that God’s plan has always been to choose some for service, but not others. God chose Isaac, not Ishmael. He chose Jacob, not Esau. He chose them for a special purpose. But, that choice does not mean that the ones God did not choose are irrevocably rejected and destined for eternal suffering in Hell. It simply means that they were not part of the covenant community that God chose to use to fulfill His promise to Abraham that through him all nations would be blessed.
The comment Paul quotes about Jacob and Esau is from Malachi 1:2-3 and actually refers to their descendants – the nation of Israel and the Edomites – not to Jacob and Esau themselves. God is not talking about literally “hating” Esau. The true intent of His comment is in accordance with the Hebrew use of extreme statements to make a point. Jesus Himself illustrated this clearly in Luke 14:26 when He said,
If anyone comes to me and does not hate his father and mother, his wife and children, his brothers and sisters – yes, even his own life – he cannot be my disciple.
Jesus obviously did not mean that we should literally “hate” our parents, wives, siblings, and children because that would require us to violate the clear Biblical commands to honor our parents, love our wives and children, and love our neighbors as ourselves. He meant that parental, spousal and brotherly love must take second place to love for Him.
Similarly in the passages in Malachi and Romans, God explains that contrary to the established cultural conventions of the day relating to the inheritance rights of the firstborn son, Esau must take second place to Jacob. Paul’s point is that Scripture foretold that the promise to Abraham would pass through Isaac to Jacob, not Esau. Even though Ishmael and Esau were descendants of Abraham, they were not the chosen instruments through whom God would work to redeem the world.
God’s Mercy
In Romans 9:14-15, Paul asks if God can do this without breaking His promise to Abraham. Is it “unjust” for God to go around cultural conventions to use the descendants of Jacob instead of the descendants of Esau to fulfill His promise? Of course not! God has always been selective. But, His purpose has always been the same – to show mercy and compassion.
What then shall we say? Is God unjust? Not at all! For he says to Moses, ‘I will have mercy on whom I have mercy, and I will have compassion on whom I have compassion.’ It does not, therefore, depend on man’s desire or effort, but on God’s mercy.
Paul goes on to explain that God made Pharaoh’s heart “firm” in order to proclaim His power and make His name known in all the earth. Then he tells us that God is a Potter who fashions out of the same lump of clay – in this case the natural descendants of Abraham – some vessels for honorable use and some for common use.
Ishmael, Esau, and most of the natural descendants of Abraham that made up the Jews of Paul’s day were not chosen to experience the honor of serving as God’s chosen vessels to bring about the fulfillment of His promise to Abraham. That honor went to a remnant of the Jews and the believing Gentiles in accordance with what God has always purposed. But, “common” use does not in any way imply that those vessels are eternally rejected and cursed. They were simply not vessels chosen for that special, “honorable” purpose.
The “objects of wrath” that Paul refers to in verse 22 are those God bore with patiently in order to make them objects of His mercy. As he said in Ephesians 2:3,
All of us also lived among them at one time, gratifying the cravings of our sinful nature and following its desires and thoughts. Like the rest, we were by nature objects of wrath. But because of his great love for us, God, who is rich in mercy, made us alive with Christ even when we were dead in transgressions . . .
Paul himself was once an object of wrath who later became an object of mercy. Assuming that you are now “in Christ,” so were you. And so was I.
Paul sums up his argument in Romans 9-11 by telling his readers,
God has bound all men over to disobedience so that he may have mercy on them all.
Who Does God Love . . . Really?
The Pharisees prided themselves on their knowledge of the Law. But, in their zeal to defend the holiness of God, they completely missed the main point of what God was doing in the world. Jesus told them to
. . . go and learn what this means: ‘I desire mercy, not sacrifice.’
Does God love you more than your neighbor? Even worse, does He love your neighbor more than you? No! His love and mercy ultimately extend to all.
by ggturner on 21 March 2013 - 22:03
Soft Hearts, Solid Spines
by Joe Holland
The Internet allows unprecedented opportunity for communication between Christians from different theological traditions. The results have not been pretty. Comment threads are the Devil’s playground and blogs his amusement park. And even if we exclude online media, theological bickering between Christians is and has been pervasive. Regrettably, Christians who hold to the Reformed confessions are often viewed by other Christians outside our tradition as some of the least winsome members of what we call the communion of the saints.
The command to love has been lost by us, if not lost on us. But how can the theologically astute love their equally theologically astute brothers and sisters across contentious theological and denominational lines? The solution is in the life, death, and love-commanding witness of Jesus.
Consider Jesus’ silence for a moment. As a weekly synagogue attender and itinerant preacher, Jesus was bombarded with heterodoxy, moralistic deism, theological mush, progressive nationalism, and spiritual immaturity. And I’m only speaking of what came from devout Jews. Jesus was able and entitled to rebuke the slightest theological imprecision among the faithful at any moment. But when we consider how much theological correction He could have done, His silence speaks more than His teaching. Jesus did not draw attention to every theological imprecision that He heard. He loved sinners and was patient with their theological inaccuracy and spiritual immaturity.
Next, consider Jesus’s admonition concerning those whom the disciples labeled as outsiders. InLuke 9:49–50, we find a man casting out demons in Jesus’ name even though he was not one of the twelve. John bristled at the notion of commending this rogue exorcist who lacked the kind of theological instruction that the twelve were receiving. But Jesus’ command was just the opposite. He said, “Do not stop him, for the one who is not against you is for you.” Jesus commended the ministry of a man who lacked knowledge of the finer points of Jesus’ ministry.
Jesus also loved and encouraged the less theologically astute. Consider Jesus’ new command: “Love one another: just as I have loved you, you also are to love one another. By this all people will know that you are my disciples” (John 13:34). The shadow of the cross falls on John 13. But how would the world know that these men and women were followers of Jesus? Would they be known by their rigorous theological debate? No. According to Jesus, they would be known by their rigorous love for one another.
Love for all Christians is the common ground between orthodox Christology and orthodox missiology. When was the last time a class on evangelism emphasized love among Christians? If the world will know our Christology by our love for one another, our missiology must include a strong exhortation to treat all Christians with aggressive affection.
Lastly, consider how Jesus crowned His command to love with His cross of love. If the disciples were expected to love the thousands of converts they were to see in the coming years based on their agreement on the finer points of theology, then Jesus’ command to love is naïve at best and laughable at worst. But if Jesus provided at the cross a unifying principle and redemptive power that could humble the proud, lift the humble, and soften the contentious, His command finds glorious fulfillment at Golgotha. The centrality of the cross of Jesus, shared by all Christians, is the foundation of Christian love and the antidote to angry Calvinism.
This truth was driven home to me this past summer. I was hiking through the Blue Ridge Mountains, praying for my congregation. I was praying about a contentious conversation I recently had had with a couple in my growing church plant. I was clearly right and they were clearly wrong, or so my self-centered narrative went. But as I prayed, I remembered that Jesus died for this couple. He spilled His blood for them, and all I could spill was self-righteous vitriol — in prayer, no less.
I still think I was right in the theology of my argument. But I was grossly wrong in how I loved them. I undermined my theological precision by wielding it with loveless blunt force trauma.
This is not to say that Jesus intends us to abandon meticulous theological study or debate. There is a malignant false dichotomy today that pits charity against orthodoxy. To show charity is to risk being labeled a liberal progressive. To express theological concern is to risk being labeled contentious. To help guide us, we must remember that although brothers and enemies both fight, how they fight makes all the difference. The honor of Jesus demands both a soft heart and a titanium spine.
Diligent theological study must lead us to humility-soaked love for all the blood-bought followers of Jesus. If it does not, we have missed one of the most basic principles that Jesus taught His disciples. Visible and unifying love toward one another is not an option for the worldwide church. It is a command.
by ggturner on 21 March 2013 - 23:03
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