The Language of Salvation- A Further Look at Misusing Phrases and Imagery for Salvation

October 28, 2008

Just to continue the idea that I started yesterday, about the misuse of certain verses and imagery in presenting the Gospel message, I thought I would share with you guys a quote from Dr. John MacArthur which deals with the subject:

Listen to the typical gospel presentation nowadays. You’ll hear sinners entreated with words like, ‘accept Jesus Christ as personal Savior’; ‘ask Jesus into your heart’; ‘invite Christ into your life’; or ‘make a decision for Christ.’ You may be so accustomed to hearing those phrases that it will surprise you to learn that none of them is based on Biblical terminology. They are the products of a diluted gospel. (The Gospel According to Jesus, p.21)

These words strike even further to the core of what I simply breached yesterday which was the fact that many evangelists just throw around spiritual phraseology, to the point that we basically accept it as biblical talk, and yet at the end of the day most of it doesn’t stand up to the truth of Scripture.

The thing that is even more provoking about it is that all of these phrases seem to emphasize a highly man-centered view of the act of salvation. Now, I believe that man does have the responsibility of exercising repentance and faith in the act of redemption, as called by forth by Acts 2.42 and Romans 10.9, but by describing the receiving of salvation as “asking Jesus into your heart” or “accepting Jesus as your personal Lord and Savior” it seems we lose the very God-centered flavor of many passages in Scripture, such as 1 Peter 1.3 (”Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ! According to his great mercy, he has caused us to be born again . . . “) or Ephesians 2.4-5 (”But God, being rich in mercy, because of the great love with which he loved us, even when we were dead in our trespasses, made us alive together with Christ- by grace you have been saved“) or Colossians 2.13 (”And you, who were dead in your trespasses and the uncircumcision of your flesh, God made alive together with him, having forgiven us all our trespasses“).

Scripture is very clear that there is some sense in which it is God who “saved us . . . according to his own mercy” (Titus 3.4-7), and yet that is overlooked, even taboo in some circles of the church. Maybe this is part of our wanderings in attractional, self-esteem based evangelism which makes us desire the act of salvation to be a brass ring that we are skilled enough to grab, I don’t know. But I can tell you this, if we really long to see a change in the life of the American church we are in dire need of a return to the biblical accounts of salvation which emphasize God’s goodness and our inability, a humbling perspective on what has become a disgustingly consumerist idea.

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Are We Christian Yet?- Erwin Lutzer on the Purpose of Our Politics

October 26, 2008

With the whole country staring down the barrel of Election Day 2008, there are many opinions out there on who you should vote for and why (I have my own if you would like to hear them, not here though). A number of opinions out there will even brandish the moniker of the “Christian viewpoint.” Now, I’m not saying that there is not a viewpoint which is more consistent with Christianity than another, but if you take the whole landscape of people who claim to be giving you the “Christian” candidate you will be amazed by the worlds of difference in interpretation.

That’s not what this is about. What this is about is what our endgame should be in all of this. If Christians are getting involved in the electoral process, if Christians are throwing their support behind this candidate or that one, then the hope would be that these Christians have a clear purpose envisioned for what they are seeking. And we do, right? We want to end abortion, feed the poor, display the 10 Commandments, and protect the environment. We want to preserve the family and promote community. And we all know just who can do those things for us.

But at the end of the day next Tuesday, whether our guy wins or not, it is important that we keep a proper perspective about what we are to be striving for in the first place, and it is this that I think Dr. Erwin Lutzer proclaims well when he says:

[L]et us not think that getting a community to change its laws means that it has been ‘Christianized’ or that its citizens are closer to believing the Gospel. Christianity, properly understood, is a message that a holy God punishes sin, and if we do not flee to the protection of Christ, we will be damned forever. Redemption and not reformation is what we should be about. (Is God on America’s Side?, Lutzer, p.80)

That’s what it’s about. Yes, there are many social and economic issues that will make living the Christian life easier day-to-day in these United States, but above all else we must remember the words of Peter in Acts 4.12 when he said, “And there is salvation in no one else, for there is no other name under heaven given among men by which we must be saved.” Be it John McCain or Barack Obama, no one will be saved from the condemnation that awaits all of us without knowing Jesus Christ as Lord, and that should be what we campaign for more than anything else!

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Are We Truly Being Disciples?- Baxter on the Necessity of Christian Studies

October 14, 2008

“And Jesus came and said to them, ‘All authority in heaven and on earth has been given to me. Go therefore and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, teaching them to observe all that I have commanded you. And behold, I am with you always, to the end of the age.’” -Matthew 28.18-20

“For though by this time you ought to be teachers, you need someone to teach you again the basic principles of the oracles of God. You need milk, not solid food, for everyone who lives on milk is unskilled in the word of righteousness, since he is a child. But solid food is for the mature, for those who have their powers of discernment trained by constant practice to distinguish good from evil.” -Hebrews 5.12-14

This is a pet peeve of mine, and maybe I get a little too harsh on it sometimes, but I was excited to see Richard Baxter address it in his book The Reformed Pastor. The issue is that of Christian brothers who are not interested, sometimes even disdainful, of studying the deeper things of God.

Maybe you know who I’m talking about. Those brothers and sisters who week in, week out want to come to church to hear the same old message on John 3.16 or Philippians 4.13 or Jeremiah 29.11, a message of encouragement and self-esteem, and maybe even a word or two about someone else’s sin. The ones who get mad at you or think you are trying to act smart when you use words like ‘justification’ or ‘penal substitutionary atonement.’ The ones who put books like Your Best Life Now and The Shack on the best-seller list while skipping over more edifying works such as Don’t Waste Your Life or Knowing God. On this, I know I have much to say, but I really liked the way Baxter said it, with all his Puritan tongue-in-cheek:

Convince [the church members] what a contradiction it is to be a Christian, and yet to refuse to learn; for what is a Christian but a disciple of Christ? And how can he be a disciple of Christ, that refuseth to be taught by him? And he that refuseth to be taught by his ministers, refuseth to be taught by him; for Christ will not come down from heaven again to teach them by his own mouth, but hath appointed his ministers to keep school and teach them under him. To say, therefore, that they will not be taught by his ministers, is to say, they will not be taught by Christ; and that is to say, they will not be his disciples, or no Christians.

As I finish The Reformed Pastor and as I move on into Light and Heat: The Puritan View of the Pulpit, I am becoming more and more convicted of the need of strong, deep, challenging Biblical teaching from the pulpit and Sunday School classes of our churches. As a Sunday School teacher myself, I see the tendency of church-goers to slip into a humanistic coma, unaware that the doctrines of God’s majesty and man’s total inability to reach him are just as applicable as passages on prayer and the Proverbs.

More importantly, the church continues sliding away into liberalism and pluralism, neglecting the Word of God, because, I believe, they see so much of the Word of God as unnecessary. What matter is it if we deny a fifth of the text when we see half of the text as being of no use to begin with? The battle for the authority of Scripture is more than just a battle over inerrancy, it is a fight over the proper purview of the Living Word in our everyday lives.

We can no longer be satisfied being Christians that aren’t disciples of Christ. We must be committed to the study of the Word or else we might as well neglect the whole thing!

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The Corruption of Modern Cultures- The Papacy Weighs in on the Decline of “Christian” Societies

October 6, 2008

“For the wrath of God is revealed from heaven against all ungodliness and unrighteousness of men, who by their unrighteousness suppress the truth. For what can be known about God is plain to them, because God has shown it to them. For his invisible attributes, namely, his eternal power and divine nature, have been clearly perceived, ever since the creation of the world, in the things that have been made. So they are without excuse. For although they knew God, they did not honor him as God or give thanks to him, but they became futile in their thinking, and their foolish hearts were darkened. Claiming to be wise, they became fools, and exchanged the glory of the immortal God for images resembling mortal man and birds and animals and creeping things.” -Romans 1.18-23

In light of some former posts on the problems facing the church in so-called “Christian” societies such as Great Britain, France, and even the United States (see The Laodicean Project), I thought it was interesting to hear the words which Pope Benedict XVI had to say this weekend is opening up a synod on Biblical relevancy. [Note: I do want to remark that I am in no way endorsing the papacy or the Catholic church, but only find this interesting as a matter of general Christian awareness]

Here are a few of the quotes from his speech:

Today, nations once rich in faith and vocations are losing their own identity, under the harmful and destructive influence of a certain modern culture.

There are those, who, after deciding that ‘God is dead,’ declare themselves to be ‘god’ and the artisan of their own destiny, the absolute master of the world.

When men proclaim themselves to be absolute masters of themselves and sole masters of creation, can they truly build a society where freedom, justice and peace reign?

As a point of information, these comments were directed specifically at the withering communities of Western Europe which have in the past half-century seen secular humanism replace Christianity, and are on the verge over the next half-century of seeing Islam replace Western society as a whole. I am curious to see how the wider Christian community deals with this issue, as these words coming from the papacy, though certainly nothing new, may strike many people for the first time as to the degradation plaguing the culture around (and possibly including) them.

I’ll be the first to say that a return to the 1950’s is not what we need, but it would be negligent to think that things aren’t snowballing downhill rather quickly these days. In a time when the Gospel message has all but vanished from our daily lives, I am thankful for any voice which may speak awareness to this in the Christian community (even if it is the Pope).

Here is the full news story from the Associated Press: Pope decries godless nature of modern societies

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Rebuilding the City- Drawing Lines in the Sand

September 20, 2008

“But when Sanballat the Horonite and Tobiah the Ammonite servant and Geshem the Arab heard of it, they jeered at us and despised us and said, ‘What is this thing that you are doing? Are you rebelling against the king?’ Then I replied to them, ‘The God of heaven will make us prosper, and we his servants will arise and build, but you have no portion or right or claim in Jerusalem.’” -Nehemiah 2.19-20

These days it seems there are two things you can count on: one, everybody is going to claim to be spiritual in some sense of the word, and two, everyone will have a “justification” for what they do that comes from the Bible. Mark Driscoll illustrates this point when he talks about a group of potheads in Seattle saying that they all know two verses from the Bible: “I have given you every seed-bearing plant” (Genesis 1.29) and “Thou shalt not judge” (Matthew 7.1). Of course these aren’t legitimate excuses for breaking the law with the use of marijuana, but to most Americans this is a ground which they will not question, that being the ground of faith.

This senselessness creeps into our congregations as well. Look to the Methodist churches in California whose ministers are defying church rule and performing marriages for their gay communicants, making statements in defense of their actions such as “This is my flock. It’s a matter of integrity and a matter of what it is to be a pastoral ministry.” So, in order not to violate the consciences of these ministers the Methodist leaders of Southern California “recognized ‘the pastoral need and prophetic authority’ of clergy and congregations to make marriage available to all.”

Clearly this is a problem. When we have churches that begin changing their stances based on individuals consciences and personal opinions about what is hateful then we lose all notions of a church which is standing on the Word of God. I know I refer to this a lot, but Tim Keller’s quote from his book The Reason for God is so true here:

To stay away from Christianity because part of the Bible’s teaching is offensive to you assumes that if there is a God he wouldn’t have any views that upset you. Does that belief make sense?

Except, unlike in the quote where Keller is addressing people who avoid Christianity because it offends them, what we are finding instead is people who are “embracing” Christianity and yet declaring from the inside that it must change because it is offensive to them. How ridiculous is that?

It is my belief that the church, in order to build its walls strong once again, must take the approach of Nehemiah saying “Excuse me. You clearly don’t belong here. Please get out.” Yeah, it sounds harsh, but so do the words of Jesus in Matthew 7.21-23 when he says “I never knew you; depart from me, you workers of lawlessness.” Guess what? It’s supposed to be harsh. We are not supposed to just put up with whatever in the church. This is repeated numerous times in not so many different ways throughout the Bible (Try 1 Corinthians 5.12-13 which says, “Is it not those inside the church whom you are to judge? . . . ‘Purge the evil person from among you’“).

If we are to be serious about rebuilding the church, returning to the place where God’s presence is felt among us and where we are able to stand as a city on a hill and a light unto the world, then we must not be afraid to be harsh and hurt a few feelings. I certainly would much rather offend a fallen human here on earth than the only perfect God in heaven. The Methodist ministers in California are right, it’s about integrity. But that integrity is not the integrity of being PC in the world, it’s the integrity of standing under God’s Word in every action we take. And sometimes that’s not going to make everybody happy. And it’s not supposed to!

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Rebuilding the City- The Work of the Church in the 21st Century

September 8, 2008

“Then I said to them, ‘You see the trouble we are in, how Jerusalem lies in ruins with its gates burned. Come, let us build the wall of Jerusalem, that we may no longer suffer derision.’” -Nehemiah 2.17

“‘Whoever is among you of all his people, may his God be with him, and let him go up to Jerusalem, which is in Judah, and rebuild the house of the LORD, the God of Israel- he is the God who is in Jerusalem.’” -Ezra 1.3

Over the past week I have begun reading over what is probably my second favorite book of the Bible, and definitely my favorite in the Old Testament, that being the book of Nehemiah. In reading it my attention has been turned once again to Nehemiah’s call to rebuild the city of Jerusalem and his efforts to cleanse the city of all of its’ impurities, be it from within the Israelites or from without. This, of course, is great biblical history, but I can’t help but seeing something more when I read it.

The something more I see in Nehemiah is this: Nehemiah has been called to return to God’s holy city, to rebuild its walls and to reestablish his people there. For over a hundred years the Israelites were beat down and derided in this place, but in the years of his ministry Nehemiah (along with Ezra and others) saw to it that Jerusalem would once again stand out as the city on top of the hill, shining down the glory of God to all the nations. In the same way, as we stand, the church in America has been ravaged, attacked from all angles, inside and out, and subjected to ridicule and hatred in the public square. It has fallen from the shining city on a hill which led the foundation of this country and has become a place of scorn or of “useful idiots” for advancing secular agendas. Just as Nehemiah came and rebuilt Jerusalem, so must we rebuild the church in our nation (This of course, is not specifically a flaw in America, but in all Western societies in general. Refer back to my posts on The Laodicean Project for more).

So, what I propose to do with my posts over the next couple weeks is to extract a few principles that we see revealed in God’s Word in the books of Nehemiah and his contemporaries (Ezra, Haggai, Zechariah, and Malachi) and to discuss what I think it says to us as Christians about how we should act in moving towards rebuilding the church in our nation.

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Can We Please God Outside of Faith?- A Look at Hebrews 11.6

July 26, 2008

Recently in the “blogosphere” I have been engaged in a lot of discussions where people have argued for the ability of man to participate in doing things which are pleasing to God while not actually being submitted in faith to Christ. This is apparently their way of trying to rectify one, why people who do “good things” can be okay even if they aren’t Christians, and second, how people who have never been presented with the Gospel can still be saved. This latter idea is so infectious that it even seems to have stricken “the great evangelist” Billy Graham (there is even more to read in the transcript). However, instead of just taking these “well-meaning” arguments at face value I think we should look at what Scripture says in Hebrews 11.6:

“And without faith it is impossible to please him, for whoever would draw near to God must believe that he exists and that he rewards those who seek him.“

The first question must be, “What is ‘faith’ ?” Look to the preceding chapter, Hebrews 10.39. The author,
writing to Christians, says, “But we are . . . of those who have faith and preserve their souls.” This discourse then continues into chapter 11 and so we must conclude that ‘faith’ here is saving faith, namely, faith which believes “God raised [Christ] from the dead” (Romans 10.9), faith which justifies (Romans 3.28), faith through which grace saves us (Ephesians 2.8). Thus, we are being told that without saving faith, and so salvation and a regenerate heart, no man may please God!

So what? Well, this means that those who would argue that people are pleasing God by their good deeds, people like Oprah or Angelina Jolie or whoever, and yet deny Christ or the necessity of believing in him, are wrong. That means that people who claim a person can be saved because they lived a life that was pleasing to god outside of faith are wrong. It is faith, and being raised to a living hope by God (1 Peter 1.3), which puts us in a position to please God and not remain as “children of wrath” (Ephesians 2.3) as we all sure are without Christ.

This is such a prominent error among people but we must stand firm that no man is able to please God apart from being reborn through faith in Christ.

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Salvation or Whiskey?- An “Electric” Quote by D. Martyn Lloyd-Jones

May 12, 2008

I’ve recently been doing a lot of reading and listening to a preacher from mid-20th century London named Martyn Lloyd-Jones. Dr. David Martyn Lloyd-Jones was the minister of Westminster Chapel in London, England from 1939 until 1968. His original career was as a medical doctor, but six years into his profession Dr. Lloyd-Jones left it behind to go into the full-time preaching ministry. This appears to have been the right decision, a choice which affected many a future preacher on its own:

When J. I. Packer was a 22-year-old student he heard Lloyd-Jones preach each Sunday evening during the school year of 1948-1949. He said that he had “never heard such preaching.” It came to him “with the force of electric shock, bringing to at least one of his listeners more of a sense of God than any other man” he had known.

Therefore, in hopes that an interest in Dr. Lloyd-Jones may inspire more people, even 27 years after his death, I thought I would include a quote from him that I feel accurately conveys the character of this amazing preacher:

“So the first effect of Christianity is to make people stop and think. They are not simply overawed by some great occasion. They say, ‘No, I must face this. I must think.’…the greatest trouble is that men and women go through life without thinking. Or they think for a moment but find it painful, so they stop and turn to a bottle of whiskey or television or something else—anything to forget.” (D. Martyn Lloyd-Jones, Authentic Christianity)

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Living the Revolutionary Lifestyle in Anger

March 2, 2008

“And they came to Jerusalem. And he entered the temple and began to drive out those who sold and those who bought in the temple, and he overturned the tables of the money-changers and the seats of those who sold pigeons . And he would not allow anyone to carry anything through the temple. And he was teaching them and saying to them, “Is it not written, ‘My house shall be called a house of prayer for all the nations’? But you have made it a den of robbers.” “ - Mark 11:15-17

“And I was very angry, and I threw all the household furniture of Tobiah out of the chamber.” - Nehemiah 13:8

One of the more complicated issues for the revolutionary Christian to address is that of anger. When we think of anger the first image that comes to mind is of a person screaming and cussing and breaking things. This certainly is not something that would be considered Biblical. So, in understanding and trying to cope with this it is easy to construct rules which say not to get mad. In fact, in Christ’s teachings he even says that “everyone who is angry with his brother will be liable to judgment” (Matthew 5:22). Therefore, it can be settled that Christianity and anger are incompatible and so Christians should never be angry.

There is just one problem with this, that being, Christ himself got angry, angry even to the point that threw some tables around. I have found it to be a good marker for bad teachings, that we want to be careful not to create a theology which disqualifies Jesus. Thus, if it is not sinful for Christians to be angry, what is the right interpretation of how to behave?

Plainly put, I believe the solution can be found in Ephesians 4:26-27:

“Be angry and do not sin; do not let the sun go down on your anger, and give no opportunity to the devil.”

It is alright to be angry. Anger is just one of the myriad emotions which God has created and giving to the human palatte for application. So, we clearly see that anger is not a sin in and of itself, but that we should be careful not to allow anger to lead us into some other sin.

We see an illustration of this in Nehemiah 13. In this chapter Nehemiah becomes aware that one of the priests has allowed an outsider to marry into his family and moreover has prepared for this man an apartment inside the store room of the temple. As it says above, Nehemiah was very angry and threw out all of the man’s possessions. Why? Because this was the house of God and the part which was to be used for storing the offerings to God were instead being used to house a man who by God’s decree was forbidden to join in the assembly of the Israelites. Thus, Nehemiah’s anger was towards the disobedience and irreverence being prosecuted against God. Was Nehemiah angry because some personal harm had been done to his person? No. Did he go overboard and kill the man out of rage? No. He simply got angry and cleansed the temple so that the proper respect may be paid to God, and then he let it go.

We also see an illustration of this in Genesis with the story of the rape of Dinah (Chapter 34). In verse 7 it says that “the sons of Jacob had come in from the field as soon as they heard of it, and the men were indignant and very angry, because he had done an outrageous thing in Israel by lying with Jacob’s daughter, for such a thing must not be done.” However, in response to this anger two of Jacob’s sons, Simeon and Levi, devised and executed a plan to slay all of the peoples associated with the man who committed this act (vv.25-26). Later, when Jacob goes to bless his sons, he chastises not all of the sons who were angry but just the two who carried their anger into sin (Genesis 49:8). Similarly, we have an account in 1 Samuel where the spirit of the Lord descends upon Saul and it says of Saul that “his anger was greatly kindled” (1 Samuel 11:6). As a result of this Saul splits two oxen in half and threatens to do the same to any persons oxen who does not come to stand up against a great injustice, and because Saul acted in the spirit of the Lord all went well with him.

Therefore, as a revolutionary Christian, we must get angry when God is disrespected or maligned, or whenever a great act of injustice or tragedy is committed against our brethren, however we must be careful not to sin in doing so. Our purpose must be to see God glorified and obeyed in the proper manner and not to fulfill a personal vendetta (”‘Vengeance is mine, I will repay’ says the Lord,” Romans 12:19). It is okay to get angry, to teach otherwise is sheer legalism, but as with many other things, our anger must be carried out with the Lord’s prayer in mind: that God’s will be done.

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Living the Revolutionary Lifestyle in Accountability, part 3

February 26, 2008

“As for you, you meant evil against me, but God meant it for good, to bring it about that many people should be kept alive, as they are today.” - Genesis 50:20

“And forgive us our debts, as we also have forgiven our debtors.” - Matthew 6:12

“For all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God, and are justified by his grace as a gift, through the redemption that is in Christ Jesus, whom God put forward as a propitiation by his blood, to be received by faith. This was to show God’s righteousness, because in his divine forbearance he had passed over former sins.” -Romans 3:23-25

So far in looking at how to live a revolutionary lifestyle in accountability we have discussed the need for transparency and admitting to the sins we commit and also have focused on how we can recognize Biblical repentance which leads to life versus false repentances which will lead to death. However, in this present culture of psychotherapy, antidepressants, and Dr. Phil, it is also necessary for us to discuss one last aspect of accountability, that being the avoidance of playing the victim.

I am a victim of my circumstances. Everyone has heard this, and if we’re honest, most of us have probably said a similar thing at some point in our life. These days everyone is a victim of what they don’t have. If you are poor then you’re a victim of not having the right clothes or living in the right neighborhood. If you’re rich then you are a victim of not having the right Coach purse or the right limo at prom. If you are married then you are victim of not having enough freedom to flirt with the new girl at work. If you have kids then you are victim of having to go to Disney World instead of Vegas on vacation. We can all claim some kind of victimization in our lives.

Moreover, in claiming this status of being a victim we seek some sort of compensation. This is what leads to school shootings and divorce and abortions. We feel slighted by our classmates or our spouse or by condoms and it is up to us to take care of getting retribution for the pain we have been caused. And so, the big question about all of this is “Is it Biblical?”

Is it Biblical to seek retribution for “wrongs” done against us, be it physical wrongs such as abuse, emotional wrongs likes neglect, or perceived wrongs like our upbringing? The straight-talk answer is a resounding “No!” It doesn’t take much studying to realize this either. Starting in Genesis 3, at the time when sin first enters the world, we see Adam and Eve caught up in the original blame game. God accuses Adam of sin, Adam blames Eve, Eve blames the serpent, and God curses them all! Why? Because none were holy. Even though the temptation was initiated by the serpent, Eve sinned in her pride to seek the wisdom from the Tree of Knowledge in disobedience to God’s command, and Adam sinned first in his lack of spiritual leadership over his household and secondly in partaking of the fruit as well. All were guilty and as such all had to bear the consequence.

Similarly for us, irregardless of what may have happened to us, and I don’t want to seem incompassionate because some people have terrible things happen to them which should never be done to any person, but we are nonetheless not holy either. David says in Psalm 58:3, “The wicked are estranged from the womb; they go astray from birth, speaking lies.” Here the wicked applies to all of us, for as we recall from Ephesians 2:1, we are all dead spiritually prior to God’s gift of regeneration.

Thus, as we see in Romans 3:23-25 and in 1 John 4:10, we are sinners separated from God, deserving of His wrath. We have sinned against God, and because He alone is holy, then He would be just to punish us for this sin. Yet that is the wonderful gospel! God’s wrath was averted by Christ’s atoning death on the cross. He was our propitiation, which literally says that His death was the means by which God’s wrath towards us was satsified. God took all of the horrors that were rightly ours because of our sin and executed them upon the Son, who stood as our substitute so that we may live. So, in light of this, what right do we then have to crucify someone else for the sins they commit against us?

This teaching couldn’t be anymore clear, and yet we quickly fall into the mindset of deflecting our own shortcomings onto others in attempt to make ourselves look or feel better. But, in order to exercise revolutionary Christianity we must reject this way of thinking. We must be accountable to our sins and not get caught up in playing the blame game to try and portray a false piety in front of the world. If we truly desire to be a revolutionary like Christ we must be accountable for our own sins and quick to forgive the sins of others against us, for as has long demonstrated, God is powerful enough to take that stuff which is meant by man to be purely for evil and use it for His greater purpose in the salvation of the elect.

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