Putting Words in God’s Mouth?

 A man told a friend, “My dad always said I loved alphabet soup growing up. But really it was just him putting words in my mouth.” Hmmm – I wonder if God might sometimes say that same thing about the things people say He said in His Word? The following (clearly fictional) story by James Meadows is a little lengthy but clearly illustrates the point. One Sunday, a minister was talking on baptism and illustrating that baptism should be performed by sprinkling and not by immersion. He said, “In the Bible where it says that John baptized in the River Jordan (John 3:23), it didn’t mean ‘in’ but close to, round about, or near by. Again, when it tells us Philip baptized the eunuch in the river (Acts 8:38), it didn’t mean ‘in’ but close to, round about, or near by.” When the service ended, one old fellow stopped by and said, “Preacher, that was the best sermon I ever heard, and it uncovered many mysteries of the Bible to me. For example, the Bible tells us Jonah was ‘in’ the belly of the great fish for three days and three nights (Jonah 1:17), but now I see he was not ‘in’ the fish, but that he was just close to, round about, or near by the fish floating in the water. Then there’s the story about the three young Hebrew men who were thrown into a fiery furnace but not burned and didn’t even get their hair or clothes seared. I thought that sounded impossible, but now I see they were not ‘in’ the furnace at all, but really were just close to, round about, or near by. But the hardest thing of all for me to believe was where Daniel was thrown into the lions’ den for a whole night but wasn’t hurt. Thanks to your sermon I now see he wasn’t ‘in’ the den but was close to, round about, or just near by, kind of like when you go to the zoo. The revealing of these mysteries was very rewarding to me. But the greatest comfort to me was because I have lived a wicked life and sinned much and the Bible tells me that the wicked will be cast into hell. But now I see I won’t really be case “into” hell at all, but just close to, round about, or near by. So every Sunday from    now on, I won’t have to be ‘in’ church, I can just be close to, round about, at the lake near by.”

The idiom “put words in someone’s mouth” is to suggest someone said or meant something that he or she did not actually say. Almost all believers agree that being saved from sin requires sinners to get “into” Christ. The spiritual blessings accessible to those “in Christ” are too numerous to list here. Ephesians 1:3 sums it up by saying God has “blessed us with every spiritual blessing in Him” (Christ]. So how does someone  “dead in sins” (Ephesians 2:1) come into Christ? The apostle Paul answers in Galatians 3:27 – “For as many of you as  were baptized into Christ have put on Christ.” That verse follows hard on the heels of the statement in verse 26 that “you are all the sons of God through faith in Christ Jesus” (note Paul didn’t say by “faith alone”). Both statements are part of a long argument by the apostle that sinners are not saved by keeping works of the law of Moses or any other law whereby we can earn, pay for, and merit God’s salvation. But Paul, unlike many preachers and believers in Jesus today, had no hangups in saying that faith in Christ and baptism into Him are part and parcel of the package we call “salvation from sin.” There is no ambiguity if we take God at His Word — if we want to be “in Christ” and not just close to, round about, or near by, we must be baptized into Him. Those words are in and from God’s mouth. We best leave them alone.

  by: Dan Gulley, Smithville, TN

Loopholes in the Bible?

W. C. Fields (American actor and comedian) was a self-avowed Bible skeptic & atheist. On one occasion a friend entered Field’s dressing room and was shocked to find the famous old comedian reading a Bible. When asked why, Field’s quickly shut the Book, & looking rather embarrassed, replied, “Looking for loopholes, just looking for loopholes.” ("The Sinai Summit," Rick Atchley,  Sweet Pub’g, 1993, p 138). The website merriamwebster.com defines “loophole” as “an ambiguity or omission in the text through which the intent of a statute, contract, or obligation may be evaded.” Remember that definition as we think for a few moments about New Testament teaching about baptism. 

Brother Edward Wharton wrote: “According to the New Testament writers’ own statements of its purpose, baptism, preceded by repentance, is an expression of faith in Christ to receive forgiveness of sins (Acts 2:38) and to bring us into union with Christ (Romans 6:1-7) . . . It is, then, at baptism that the lost sinner is united with Christ as His own possession” (commentary on Galatains, "Freed For Freedom," p 118). Jesus taught baptism is involved in saving us after we believe the gospel (Mark 16:15-16). Both men and women in Samaria were baptized “when they believed Philip” as he preached the gospel in their city (Acts 8:18). When Lydia heard the gospel preached by the apostle Paul, her heart was opened to heed and “she and her household were baptized” (Acts 16:15). Later in Acts 16 a Roman jailor came to believe on the Lord Jesus Christ and was baptized after midnight (verses 25ff, esp’ vs 34). Saul of Tarsus (who became Paul the apostle of Christ) was confronted by Christ for persecuting Christians in Acts 9:1ff. After being without sight and neither eating or drinking and praying for three days, a disciple named Ananias was sent to Saul by Jesus to tell him what the Lord wanted him to do (Acts 9:9-11). Years after those dramatic events, Paul testified that when Ananias came to him, he said, “And now why are you waiting? Arise, and be baptized, and wash away your sins, calling on the name of the Lord” (Acts 22:16). The apostle Peter wrote that baptism is involved in saving us (1 Peter 3:21), not  from any dirt on our bodies, but from sin on our souls. Colossians 2:10-13 teaches we are “buried with Him [that is, Christ] in baptism” and then “raised with Him through faith in the working of God, who raised Him from the dead.” Baptism is a work, yes it is! But it is not the penitent sinner who works nor the baptizer. Rather, the apostle declares, God is working, excising a person’s sins in a “circumcision made without hands,” making the baptized person “complete in Him” and “alive with Christ” and “forgiving you all trespasses”!! Galatians 3:26-27 declares, “For you are all sons of God through faith in Christ Jesus. For as many of you as were baptized into Christ have put on Christ” [the NIV says “clothed yourselves with Christ.” In these passages, the purpose and place of baptism in the conversion process is clear.

Here’s the take-away point. All these words about baptism are inspired by God (2 Timothy 3:16). What preachers’ and theologians’ say about them are not! Look, and look long as you want, but there is no “faith alone” loophole that allows us to evade or escape inspired teaching about baptism. God’s pronouncements are clear, not ambiguous. Baptism was an essential and beautiful part of the plan Christ and His apostles taught. There are no loopholes in God’s Word. God help us to faithfully proclaim the same gospel they did.  

       by: Dan Gulley, Smithville, TN 

The Tree That Can Set You Free!

The greatest story ever told doesn’t begin, ‘Once upon a time.’ It begins, ‘Once upon a tree.’” I heard that ear-grabbing statement nearly 45 years ago from Irish preacher Jim McGuiggan, and like an annular nail driven into a piece of hard oak, they have stuck fast in my head and heart throughout the years. McGuggian was referring of course to the fact that Jesus Christ died on a cross for our sins. The image of the cross as a tree is a very Biblical one. Let me cite one passage and note a few others.

In Galatians 3:13-14 we read these amazing words: “Christ has redeemed us from the curse of the law, having become a curse for us (for it is written, “Cursed is everyone who hangs on a tree”), that the blessing of Abraham might come upon the Gentiles in Christ Jesus, that we might receive the promise of the Spirit through faith.” The apostle’s reference to one who hangs on a “tree” is from Deuteronomy 21:22-23. In that passage the Law of Moses legislated that the body of one who was stoned for a capital offense, that is “a sin deserving of death” (verse 22) would be hung up on a tree as evidence that “he who is hanged is accursed of God” (verse 23).

New Testament images of the cross as a “tree” can be found not only in Galatians 3:13, but also at Acts 5:30 * Acts 10:39 * Acts 13:29 * 1 Peter 2:24. The 1 Peter 2:24 passage is specific that Christ “Himself bore our sins in His own body on the tree ... by whose stripes we were healed.” The verse also calls Christians in response to this to die to sin and live for righteousness. This passage provides what amounts to inspired commentary and keen insight on the apostle Paul’s declaration in Galatians 3:13 that Christ has “redeemed us from the curse of the law.”

We don’t stone people for sinning these days, but that doesn’t mean the penalty of death has been lessened, for God’s word still declares “the wages of sin is death” (Romans 6:23a), that is estrangement and separation from God in hell (Isaiah 59:1-2). This is the “curse of the law” Paul mentions in Galatians 3:13. From that estrangement and from that curse, Paul claims Christ has “redeemed” us, that is (we don’t have space to study it out), paid the price / cost to buy us back and set us free the guilt and condemnation of sin (see Acts 20:28 * 1 Corinthians 6:19-20 * 1 Peter 1:18-19 * Ephesians 1:7). How did He do that? Paul is blunt: He “became a curse for us” and gave His life for us.

We’ve only skimmed the surface here. But you don’t have to be a trained theologian to understand that, whatever the more technical nuances and meanings of words in these verses may be, one truth is crystal clear — God is dying to save you! I read a story (fictional but helpful) about a young man, twice-convicted for a lesser offense, on trial for yet a third time for murder. Terror washed over him as he surveyed the jury in the courthouse. Positive he’d never beat the murder rap, he managed to get a message to one of the kinder-looking jurors & bribed her with a large amount of cash through an anonymous person, asking her to go for a manslaughter verdict. Sure enough, at the end of the trial the jury convicted him of the lesser charge, saving him from the death penalty. Tears of gratitude spilled from his eyes, and he managed a moment with the juror before being led away to serve 20 years in prison. “Thank you, thank you, thank you — how did you ever pull it off?” The juror admitted, “It wasn’t easy. The rest of them wanted to acquit you.” That’s what Christ wants to do for you!  Praise God for the tree that can set you free!  (see Galatians 3:26-29.

    by: Dan Gulley, Smithville, TN

Ransom Paid to Save!

You may or may not have ever heard the name Bruno Richard Hauptmann. Hauptmann was arrested, incarcerated and eventually executed for being the perpetrator of one of the most famous kidnapping cases in American history. His victim, Charles Augustus Lindbergh, was the 20-month-old son of famed aviator Charles Lindbergh and his wife Anne Morrow Lindbergh. The case was a complex one. It involved a series of ransom notes ranging from $50,000 upwards to $100,000, received over a period of several weeks. A payment of $50,000 was eventually paid. Some ten weeks after the baby was kidnapped, his little body was found, partly buried and badly decomposed, about four and a half miles southeast of the Lindbergh home on the rural outskirts of Hopewell, New Jersey. The head was crushed, there was a hole in the skull, and there were some missing body members. The Coroner’s examination concluded the child had been dead about two months and that death was caused by a blow to the head.

A super-intensive investigation by many different law-enforcement agencies eventually led to Hauptmann’s arrest two and half years after the crime. After his conviction by a jury for first degree murder, Hauptmann was electrocuted at 8:47 p.m. on April 3, 1936 after several appeals. The crime was exceedingly heinous, and the case is a fascinating one about a ransom that was paid but failed to save. A sad and tragic story.                       

 Let’s look much further back in history to the day another famous crime took place, and a ransom paid at the same time and place! The apostle Paul describes it in Galatians 3:13 with these words: “Christ has redeemed us from the curse of the law, having become a curse for us (for it is written, ‘Cursed is everyone who hangs on a tree’).” We don’t have space to dig very deep here, but Paul is teaching that Jesus made a ransom payment that paid off our debt of sin, a debt He did not owe and that we could not pay! The word picture Paul paints is from the slave market. The Greek word translated by the English “redeemed” means to buy up at the marketplace. The term involves the idea of going into a slave market and paying the price to take somebody completely out of slavery and setting them free! Thayer’s Greek Lexicon defines “to redeem” as “payment of a price to recover from the power of another.” The term is used metaphorically by Paul in Galatians 3:13 of Christ freeing men and women from the dominion of the law at the price of His vicarious death on the cross. Don’t miss it — by hanging on the “tree” of the cross, He became a curse “for us,” that is, in our place (Deuteronomy 21:23 * Acts 10:39 * Acts 13:29). Isaac Watts’ rousing song asks, “Was it for crimes that I have done He groaned upon the tree?” The answer is yes, yes! — for at the cross “the Mighty Maker died for man, the creature’s sin” (verses 2 and 3 “Alas! And Did My Savior Bleed?”). The unspeakably glorious and good news is “He Himself bore our sins in His own body on the tree” — and if we die to sin and live for righteousness, then “by His stripes we are healed” (1 Peter 2:24). At the cross Christ paid in full the ransom sin demanded to set us free. That ransom fails to fully save only if we fail to trust and obey our Redeemer (see Galatians 3:26-29 * Romans 6:4-6, 16-18 * Colossians 2:10-13 ). Praise be to God!

 “In Him we have redemption through His blood, the forgiveness of sins, according to the riches of His grace” — Ephesians 1:7    

by: Dan Gulley, Smithville, TN

What’s Wrong With The Solas (keep reading)?!

As soon as the gold in the casket rings, the rescued soul to heaven springs.” Ever heard those words? They form one of the outrageous claims of the 16th century Roman Catholic cleric John Tetzel. Some people quote the last phrase in the claim as saying, “another soul from purgatory springs.” Tetzel was put in charge of raising money for the construction of St. Peter’s Basilica in Rome through the sale of “indulgences,” and he became famous (better, infamous) for being good at the job. The          wacky idea of indulgences is that a full or partial remission of the punishment of sins could be procured, even for dead people, by contributing money to the church. The teaching was popular, especially among the rich! To be fair, the official position of the Catholic church is that they never sanctioned indulgences. Sanctioned or not, Tetzel sold them. Ray Cavanaugh said Tezel was “peddling purgatory relief” (“Peddling purgatory relief: Johann Tetzel” @ nconline.org). The idea that forgiveness and grace could be bought and merited by human payment stirred the ire of Martin Luther who became the seminal figure in the Protestant Reformation. He rejected some teachings and practices of the Catholic church, and in particular disputed the sale of                indulgences. Rejecting the idea sinners could earn or buy forgiveness, Luther taught that salvation is by “sola fide,” Latin for “faith alone.” So it is that phrase and the phrase “grace alone” have been around since Luther’s day in the early 1500's. In our time preachers are heard saying, “We are saved by grace alone, through faith alone, in Christ alone, as revealed by Scripture alone, to the glory of God alone.”                                     

But let’s hold our theological horses for a minute! Our tweety world loves to use cliches and sound bytes in an attempt to squeeze huge, vast ideas and subjects into a few catchy words, even in religion. The problem with that is well stated by David Servant in these words: “It isn’t easy, however, to summarize all that God has revealed about salvation in Scripture with four Latin words. In fact, it is impossible. That is one reason why God gave us an entire Bible, and not just four words” (“Grace Alone and Faith Alone: What is Wrong With the First Two Solas?” @ davidservant.com). The Bible is clear we are saved by grace (Romans 3:24) and justified by faith (Romans 5:1). But it never says we are saved by “grace alone” or “grace alone through faith alone.”

In Galatians 3:6-12 the apostle Paul affirms we are, indeed, children of Abraham, if we exercise the trusting, obedient faith he did, as opposed to believing we earn or merit salvation by perfect performance and rule keeping. The spectacle of God’s bloodied, battered Son on a cross is proof enough we could never do that. Add to that the words Servant said above, “God gave us an entire Bible.” It is most unwise to try and squeeze the Bible’s doctrine of how God saves into a few selected verses and words. The    Bible says in Hebrews 11:8, “By faith Abraham obeyed ...” (see James 2:21-24). Let us say what Scripture says in Ephesians 2:8-9: “For by grace you have been saved through faith, and that not of yourselves; it is the gift of God.” But let us also affirm what another inspired writer said at Hebrews 5:9 (speaking of Jesus): “He became the author of eternal salvation to all who obey Him.” Bible writers stiffly opposed the idea sinners can ever earn or merit salvation. But they never taught we are saved by grace alone through faith alone. They taught that faith obeys God’s commands. We will teach that, too, if we teach what they taught.

       by: Dan Gulley, Smithville, TN  

Our Only Hope!

 

"The power of hope defines the psychological victim and psychological survivor. If I could find a way to package and dispense hope, I would have a pill more powerful than any antidepressant on the market. Hope is often the only thing between man and the abyss. As long as a patient, individual or victim has hope, they can recover from anything and everything.” Those words were written by Dr. Dale Archer, M. D., in an online blog @ psychologytoday.com (“The Power of Hope,” posted July 31 2013). The doctor also said, “However, if they lose hope, unless you can help them get it back, all is lost.” 

        I don’t know if Dr. Archer is a Christian or even a believer. What I do know is that our world needs hope. Unless you just arrived from another planet, you don’t need me to tell you why. Another thing I know for sure is that the New Testament and the church described on its pages are unequaled when it comes to hope and the power that comes packaged with it. Hope is standard equipment when you buy into the Gospel of Jesus Christ. Christ’s apostles heralded the message that Jesus Christ is “our hope” (1 Timothy 1:1). They believed people outside of Christ had “no hope and [were] without God in the world” (Ephesians 2:12). The apostle Paul referred to God as “the God of hope” who can “fill you with all joy and peace in believing, that you may abound in hope by the power of the Holy Spirit” (Romans 15:13). We are saved in a hope that cannot yet be seen and we “eagerly wait for it with perseverance” (8:4-25). The early church preached Jesus as the “one hope” we have for overcoming sin and death (Ephesians 4:4). The apostle Peter describes the Christian hope as “a living hope” (1 Peter 1:3), grounded not on wishful thinking or a hunch or luck, but in the rock-solid reality that Jesus Christ died on a cross, went into a tomb, but three days later got up and walked out of it alive, never to die again (Revelation 1:18)! The writer of Hebrews 6:18b-19 urged Christians to “lay hold of the hope set before us”, and that, “This hope we have as an anchor of the soul, both sure and steadfast, and which enters the Presence [of God, that is] behind the veil.” That hope anchors our souls in Heaven even as our ship is battered and tossed by earthly winds and storms that beat into our souls here on earth. Edward Mote expressed it this way in his beautiful song “My Hope is Built on Nothing Less” (1834: "In every high and storm gale, My anchor holds within the veil ... When all around my soul gives way, He then is all my hope and stay.” For that reason, it is wise to “put on ... as a helmet the hope of salvation” (1 Thessalonians 5:8b).

This verse suggests hope in Jesus Christ is like a “helmet” to cover the head, protecting against the mind’s proneness to wander and providing spiritual protection against the vagaries, doubts, and fears we often encounter as human beings, and even as God’s children. Terri Guillemets said, “I still believe in some faraway place where it’s all okay.” It’s not all okay here on Planet Earth. The Bible’s message is that in this devil-dominated, sin-saturated world, it never will be okay. But there is a place where all is okay. A place where “God will wipe away every tear from their eyes; there shall be no more death, nor sorrow, nor crying ... no more pain ...” (Revelation 21:4). A place “where Christ is, sitting at the right hand of God” (Colossians 3:1). Is there any other hope of being forgiven of sins, defeating death, and being with God forever? The world denies it, but the Word of God says Christ is our only hope. That being the case, “Let us hold fast the confession of our hope without wavering, for He is faithful who promised” (Hebrews 10:23).

        by: Dan Gulley, Smithville, TN

Senseless Christians?

 

Sometimes it seems we humans just “park our brains” or at least sound that way. A man named Jack Ray illustrated the point with a humorous piece in the March 2004 edition of the Readers Digest (p 76). He wrote: “The trouble with being a landlord? Tenants. Especially those who write letters like these: * The toilet is blocked and we cannot bathe the children until it is cleared. * This is to let you know that there is a smell coming from the man next door. * Will you please send someone to mend our cracked sidewalk? Yesterday, my wife tripped on it, and she is now pregnant.” Sometimes the “funny” things we say or hear are just funny. But at other times not so funny. It may be that the senseless-sounding things people say sound “senseless” because they are senseless — that is, the people saying them aren’t “thinking it through” and aren’t being fair and reaching a logical conclusion from the facts.

A passage written by the apostle Paul in Galatians 3:1 accuses some first century Christians of being mindless, that is acting on and / or believing something without thinking logically and reasonably. In a very blunt approach, Paul asked in Galatians 3:1, “O foolish Galatians!  Who has bewitched you that you should not obey the truth, before whose eyes Jesus Christ was clearly portrayed among you as crucified?” When is the last time you heard a preacher address his congregation that way?! These days, Paul would be chewed up and spit out on social media as being harsh, judgmental and non-inclusive. But I digress. We don’t have space here to lay it out in detail, but in essence Paul is accusing them of being mindless! Through Paul’s teaching they were people “before whose eyes Jesus Christ was clearly portrayed among you as crucified”!             

Throughout the letter Paul juxtaposes two opposing ideas. First, being saved from sin by faith in Christ and by the grace of God expressed supremely through the death of Christ for our sins (2:16; 1:3-6). The second idea (the one Paul sees as totally senseless and foolish) is the idea that keeping what in the original context was “the works of the law” of Moses (2:16), including circumcision (5:2-3), somehow merits and qualifies sinners and puts God in their debt. No way, Paul says, suggesting such an idea means he has “set aside the grace of God (2:21). Think carefully now, it’s not that Paul thought that seeking to obey God’s teachings and commands wasn’t important or even necessary for God’s Old Testament people who lived under the Law of Moses or for those under the New Covenant who were saved by grace. Later at 3:26-29 this same apostle who is arguing so vigorously we are saved by God’s grace through “the faith of the Son of God who love me and gave himself for me” (2:20) — that same grace-preaching apostle in this same letter shows that being saved by grace through faith does not negate the fact we must be “baptized into Christ” if we are to “put or” or “be clothed with Christ,” thus belonging to Christ and becoming a spiritual descendant of Abraham! At the same time the cross of Christ is Paul’s ultimate argument against the notion anyone can merit, earn and deserve salvation from sin to the point God owes it to us without Christ. George Washington Robertson said, “God gave us two ends, one to sit on and the other to think with. A man’s success depends on which end he uses most. It is a case of heads you win, tails you lose.” God grant us to be fair with His word and not be senseless in what we believe. The success of our very souls depends on it.

        "These were more fair-minded...they searched the Scriptures to find out whether these things were so” - Acts 17:11

   by: Dan Gulley, Smithville, TN