What's up with all the aliens?

I don't know if you've noticed the trend of new planets, that are almost certainly inhabitable, popping up in the news every few weeks. With much ado they proclaim that "we finally got one", followed by a much less publicized rebuttal a couple of weeks later when they discover that it is either too hot or too cold or doesn't have an atmosphere or is made up entirely of peanut butter or whatever.

Now to be generous I'll assume that the premature announcements of unconfirmed results are more due to the fear of someone else publishing it first, or grant money about to dry up, rather than dishonestly trying to promote certain worldview agendas. It's an issue I take with scientists in every field, not just this one.

But either way, It has struck me that the pattern seems to be exactly the same as that of the elusive "missing link" (that's still missing last thing I heard). But it took me a while to connect the dots. Because as christians, we don't really have much of a horse in the space race. However, evolutionists do.

To me, it hasn't been such a big deal whenever a telescope sees a sign of water on a celestial body. I'd be surprised to see them bring home a rock that contains primitive life like bacteria or amoeba, but it wouldn't really rock the foundations of my faith at all. Even if they should find a way to bypass the laws of physics and travel to a remote planet and discover a highly advanced civilization of space squirrels, It really wouldn't bother me theologically. The Bible doesn't say it's there, but nor can I see any reason it wouldn't be.

After all, there are beautiful flowers hidden in remote rain forests that will never be enjoyed by human eyes. There are gemstones and crystals hidden in the deep of the earth, which exist only to glorify the creative genius of God, without anyone else knowing of them. What he may have hidden away for himself in different worlds is a subject I'll want to explore in eternity when I have the time and occasion for it, but as of now whatever it may be won't affect me other than move to appreciate his creation more.

But while the issue is not too urgent for us, it is very much so for evolutionists. Since their theory is founded on the presumption that life will be brought into existence spontaneously from non-life and from there develop into more advanced life forms it is an embarrassment that not every planet is inhabited with at least some form of life. It does seem very conspicuous, doesn't it, that with so many billions upon billions of worlds ours is the only one where life has appeared.

Of course there are excuses. To hot, too cold, no water, toxic chemicals, and so on, but still they keep finding life here on earth in the most unlikely and hostile environments. Even places more hostile than other planets.

So it's easy to see why every uninhabited planet, just like every missing link, is a constant embarrassment to evolutionists. Because it's a constant reminder that the theory in which they have put their faith doesn't hold up to the evidence. And it's worth a few billion dollars of research grants to get that quieted, isn't it?

Nope, you still can't divorce (1Cor 7:15-16)

Yet if the unbelieving one leaves, let him leave; the brother or the sister is not under bondage in such cases, but God has called us to peace. For how do you know, O wife, whether you will save your husband? Or how do you know, O husband, whether you will save your wife? (1Cor 7:15-16)

This is a very controversial piece of text, since many are very eager to read into it something that isn't there. But let's start with the easy part. What everyone can agree on is that if the unbelieving spouse leaves, then let them leave. You don’t have to club them over the head and drag them to a dungeon in your basement so you can keep them around. When you have done everything you can to win them over, and at the end of it all they still decide to leave, then there’s nothing you can do about it.

The part that gets controversial is the question of what it means that the brother or the sister is not under bondage in such cases. Most theologians say that it means they are free to divorce their unsaved spouse and marry someone else. The text doesn’t specifically say that though. It just says they are not under bondage. That could very well mean under bondage to live together as husband and wife. After all that was the command the whole chapter started with. That is the basic doctrine that Paul is expanding on in this context.

And from looking at the Greek text a very strong case could be made for saying that the bondage referred to is not the marriage bond that God has bound them together with. First of all the word used here, dedoulotai - a form of douloo, is not the same as the Bible uses elsewhere when it talks about the marriage bond. Actually the word used means slavery, which is why some translations instead say that the brother or sister is not enslaved. I’m sure you’ll all agree with me that being bound to a spouse is not the same thing as being enslaved, even if they are an unbeliever.

In addition the phrase “not under bondage” is written in the perfect passive indicative tense. And we all know what that means, don’t we?

*chirp, chirp*

Well if we don’t we can do like I did and read about it on the Internet. It means that it is a present condition arising out of a past action. Which means that the believing spouse neither is, nor has been enslaved in such cases.

That means that if you are going to say that not enslaved meas free to remarry, you are saying that the spouse is not bound to the marriage, and never has been bound to the marriage. Even before the unsaved spouse leaves. But that would totally contradict verse 12-13, which say a marriage to an unbeliever is still valid. And that means we have to discard that interpretation.

So that that all this verse says is that a believer is not enslaved to an unsaved spouse who leaves them. They are free to not live together as husband and wife. Nothing more, nothing less.

Verse 16 confirms this interpretation. “For how do you know whether you can save your spouse?” What interpretation of the previous verse makes sense in combination with this one? Try it! If they leave, you are free to remarry, because you don’t know that staying single is going to save your spouse? That doesn’t fit together. This does: If they leave, you are free to let them go. But am I not responsible for staying with them and bringing them to Christ? No. How do you know whether they ever will be saved, and whether you’ll be the instrument to bring them there?

Making sense of 1 Cor 7:14

For the unbelieving husband is sanctified through his wife, and the unbelieving wife is sanctified through her believing husband; for otherwise your children are unclean, but now they are holy. (1Cor 7:14)

Now what do we have here? This is one of those verses that has always left readers scratching their heads. The lack of context has led to some strange interpretations, such as the idea that someone could achieve salvation simply by being married to a believer, or have a believing parent.

Others have used this to argue that there is clearly a transaction of holiness from parents to children, so therefore we should baptize infants.

But let’s take a closer look at the verse, and see if we can’t make better sense of it after all.

The verse starts with the word “for”, which binds it to the previous verse. You should not break off a marriage with an unbelieving spouse, for the unbelieving spouse is sanctified through the believing one. If that wasn’t so your children would be unclean.

I want you to notice that Paul doesn’t say “their children.” He says “your children.” That’s interesting. He is speaking in third person about those who are in mixed marriages, but then he switches to second person. So the children who would be unclean is not the children of an unbelieving spouse. It is the children of everyone in the Corinthian church.

Now that probably only made matters worse when it comes to understanding this verse. So let me explain how I read this verse.

I believe Paul is making a parallel between the relationship between a husband and wife, and the relationship between parents and children. He is saying that if those who are in mixed marriages can’t live with their spouse because they haven’t come to a saving knowledge of Jesus Christ, then you couldn’t live with your children either. Not until they had been saved.

He is agreeing that there is a problem with being married to an unbeliever. The holy and the unclean under the same roof. What is set apart for God being mixed with what is unclean. But the issue isn’t limited to those mixed marriages. It is an issue that exists in every Christian home where there are children who haven’t come to know God.

But in God’s eyes that does not make the christian unclean, but rather it makes the non-christian set apart in a certain sense because of the christian.

Do not divorce! (1Cor 7:10-13)

But to the married I give instructions, not I, but the Lord, that the wife should not leave her husband (but if she does leave, she must remain unmarried, or else be reconciled to her husband), and that the husband should not divorce his wife. (1Cor 7:10-13)

But to the rest I say, not the Lord, that if any brother has a wife who is an unbeliever, and she consents to live with him, he must not divorce her. And a woman who has an unbelieving husband, and he consents to live with her, she must not send her husband away.

Now we move on to the instructions to those who are already married. First to those where both spouses are children of God, and then to those where one spouse is not saved.

So to those who are married, he doesn’t say anything on his own, but reminds them of the words of the Lord Jesus when he dealt with the same question. “What God has put together, let no man separate.” And “Whoever divorces his wife and marries another woman commits adultery against her; and if she herself divorces her husband and marries another man, she is committing adultery”

I want you to look a little at the language used here though. It says the wife must not leave, or separate from, her husband. And then, remarkably it says “but if she does...” We’ll get back to that part later.

Then it says a husband must not divorce, or send away, his wife. There’s no “but if he does” in this case.

I don’t think the point here is to distinguish between men and women. I don’t see any hints of that elsewhere in the Bible. “Do not divorce” seems universal. Rather I think what Paul is doing is including both men and women, and distinguishing between divorce and separation.

So his command is the same as the Lords command: Do not divorce! And then he adds, do not separate either! But if you do, don’t further violate your marriage covenant, and seek to be reconciled to each other again.

Be careful so that you don’t interpret “but if you do” as a permission to break the command. “Do not separate” is still valid even if it is followed by “but if you do”. And the “but if you do” basically tells you to undo what has been done in the breaking of the commandment. It is a gracious provision to get you back on the track that you left, but you’d still be better off never leaving that track in the first place.

Then he goes on to address those who are married to someone who isn’t saved. When he says that these instructions are from himself and not from the Lord, he is not saying that this particular portion of scripture is not the word of God. That it’s just something that he made up on his own without any divine inspiration. What he’s saying is that Jesus didn’t specifically talk about the issue of mixed marriages during his ministry on earth..

This really is another case of “but if you do”, because as Christians we are commanded not to be bound together with unbelievers.

Do not be bound together with unbelievers; for what partnership have righteousness and lawlessness, or what fellowship has light with darkness? Or what harmony has Christ with Belial, or what has a believer in common with an unbeliever? (2Cor 6:14-15)

And in verse 39 in this chapter when we get to the instructions for widows, Paul says they can marry whomever they want to, but with one stipulation. They must be “in the Lord”. They have to be believers.

So this provision seems to have been made primarily for those who were already married before they were saved, and therefore had an unbelieving spouse, although there might have been some who had foolishly let themselves be bound together with an unbeliever after they had been saved as well.

This teaches us something about the nature of marriage. These are people who were married before they knew God, in a pagan temple, according to pagan customs. Their covenant was not established before God. But still he holds them to it. He considers their marriage to be valid, and expects them to honor it. In God’s eyes they are married even though it wasn’t a Christian marriage. I’m just pointing that out because you may find it useful when counseling people who come to Jesus with a complicated past when it comes to marriage.

Check back on Monday to see if there's an exception to this rule if you're married to someone who isn't saved (hint: There isn't)

God's word to the single (1Cor 7:8-9)

But I say to the unmarried and to widows that it is good for them if they remain even as I. But if they do not have self-control, let them marry; for it is better to marry than to burn with passion. (1Cor 7:8-9)

Having laid out some principles about marriage and singleness, Paul now moves on to give more concrete advice, first to the unmarried and then to the married. We'll deal with the unmarried today, and move on to those who are married on Wednesday, Lord willing.

To the unmarried and to widows he says it is good for them to remain single. We talked a little about why last time, and we’ll talk more about it later. If you are single you don’t have to worry about all the things that married people worry about. You have fewer responsibilities, and more time to devote to serving God.

If I may be so bold, I want to point out one thing that Paul doesn’t touch on here, and that is that while some are called to be single and some are called to be married, all of us are called to be single in seasons of our lives. Even if you know you are ultimately called to marriage, you still have to be single until you get married. And since it is the exception that spouses die at the same time, there’s a good chance that you will go through another unmarried season as a widow or widower.

So if you are called to marriage, you are still called to seasons of singleness as well. And if you are in one of those seasons, in spite of your gifting and calling, God has a plan and purpose for that. A lot of us, myself included, wasted many of the extra opportunities that season brought by focusing too much on making it end.

There’s nothing wrong with wanting the single season to end, because along with unique opportunities it brings unique temptations. It is better to marry than to burn with passion. Marriage is a high calling, bu it is not your primary calling. Your primary purpose is to glorify God and enjoy him forever. Marriage is one way to do that. While you’re waiting to get there, you can still glorify God and enjoy him in other ways. If you can’t glorify God as a single person, you can’t glorify him as a married person. If marriage is the primary purpose of your existence, then God isn’t It’s as simple as that.

Marriage or singleness - What's best? (1 Cor 7:6-7)

But this I say by way of concession, not of command. Yet I wish that all men were even as I myself am. However, each man has his own gift from God, one in this manner, and another in that. (1 Cor 7:6-7)

A concession means that an exception is made to the general rule. An accommodation made necessary by extraordinary circumstances. The rule that the exception is made to is the one we see in verse 2: Each man is to have his own wife and each woman her own husband.

Of course when a single man like Paul says that every man should have his own wife, it’s natural to ask why he doesn’t have one himself. If singleness is not spiritually superior to marriage, then why doesn’t he, as their spiritual father, take a wife.

Paul deals with this question with tremendous wisdom. He says he wishes everybody was like him; single and satisfied living his life in celibacy. But he also recognises that that his ability to be satisfied without a wife is a special gift from the Lord that not everybody has. From his vantage point he sees many advantages to being single. In stead of focusing on a wife and children he is able to devote his life totally and completely to Christ in ways that no married man can do. He is able to travel the world, to dangerous places where Christians are persecuted for Christ’s sake. All his time and energy can be put into proclaiming the Gospel.

It is important for us not to miss the last sentence in verse 7, though. Each man has his own gift from God, one in this manner and another in that. Like the Corinthians we’re inclined to ask the question “What is best?” The answer is that what is best depends on your calling and gifting.

If you are going to travel like Paul to preach the gospel in places where it’s likely that you and your family will face severe persecution, and in addition God has gifted you in a way that allows you to be satisfied as a single man without facing any great temptations because of it, then it is probably best for you to remain single, in the same way that it was best for Paul to be single.

However, if God has called you to be a husband and a father, or a wife and mother, then it’s probably best for you to marry.

As we go through the rest of this chapter over the next weeks, that will be a reoccurring theme. How you apply this chapter to your life depends on your particular calling and gifting. We don’t get absolute answers. Just the right questions to ask, so that we can find the right answer for ourselves in our unique situations.

Don't quote this verse to your wife (1 Cor 7:3-5)

The husband must fulfill his duty to his wife, and likewise also the wife to her husband. The wife does not have authority over her own body, but the husband does; and likewise also the husband does not have authority over his own body, but the wife does. Stop depriving one another, except by agreement for a time, so that you may devote yourselves to prayer, and come together again so that Satan will not tempt you because of your lack of self-control (1 Cor 7:3-5)

Paul goes on to warn married Corinthians, that there is no spiritual gain in abstaining from sex with your spouse. To the contrary, you owe it to each other, and depriving each other will put both of you in serious spiritual danger. If you do, you’ll be tempted to fulfill your God-given desires for marital intimacy in less God-honoring ways.

So false gnostic ideas of spirituality is what is in view here. That is what the verse talks about, and that’s the context in which we are to use it. But there is another use that is very tempting to some, and I want to take a couple of minutes to warn you against that use in hopes to bless your marriages and point out the importance of always practising good hermeneutics.

If you are blessed to be married, you’ve probably noticed that you are two separate people, and as such you are almost certainly different. And one of the differences that most often cause conflicts in marriages are the different levels of physical desires and needs.

I’ll direct this advice to the husbands, although some times it’s reversed. This is my challenge to you, men: If this is an area of conflict in your marriage, then make a commitment today to never quote this verse to your wife. You may win the argument with it, but you’ll lose your wife’s heart. In stead be a man and sacrifice for her. You be the one who yields to her! You find out what her needs are and meet them. Study your wife. Love her like Christ loves the church. Make her want you by loving her sacrificially. Not by legalistic duty.

Now notice that I’m not saying there’s anything wrong with this Bible verse. What I’m telling you is that this verse is not for this use. The issue Paul is addressing is the idea that abstaining from sex in marriage makes you more spiritual. If that is the issue in your marriage, feel free to make an exception to my rule, and quote this verse to your wife every day. In that case this truth would liberate her to fully enjoy all of God’s gifts in marriage.

But most likely that is not your issue. That is not an idea that is very prevalent in our culture at all. So all you would achieve by quoting this verse is using guilt to pressure your wife to do something she for some reason is reluctant to do. There are two great dangers here. First you put her soul at risk by leading her into legalism. Second, you take away any inclination she might have to enjoy it. If you make sex a duty it will cease to be a joy.

With this in mind, we get to the exception that Paul makes. That is, that you may by mutual consent abstain for a period of time for the sake of prayer. There are times in our christian walk when we pray about certain things with great urgency. Often when we or someone we love are going through a great trial, or we have an important decision to make that we don’t feel a peace about. Whatever the situation is, God puts this urgency on our hearts and draws us into prayer in such a special way that everything else becomes unimportant. Even food. And this can go over a period of hours or days or longer.

I’m sure you would agree with me that if you are in such a state it’s not a good time for your spouse to come and suggest you take a trip to the bedroom. The good and understanding husband or wife will in stead join their spouse in prayer, and agree to put their immediate physical needs on hold until God has released their spouse from their calling to urgent prayer.

Abstaining from sex, in itself, is not spiritual, just as abstaining from food in itself is not spiritual. But some times you do it, not for the sake of false spirituality or legalism, but because God moves you to do it.

Hands off the ladies? (1 Cor. 7:1-2)

Now concerning the things about which you wrote, it is good for a man not to touch a woman. But because of immoralities, each man is to have his own wife, and each woman is to have her own husband. (1 Cor 7:1-2)

Paul’s first sentence in this chapter invites us to do a little bit of speculation. What were the things about which they wrote? Actually it doesn’t take too much speculation to get a rough idea. In the rest of the chapter he answers questions about marriage versus singleness. Although the questions aren’t stated, the answers give us a pretty good idea of what kind of questions they might have been.

He answers that while singleness is good, marriage is also good, and each have their strengths and weaknesses based on the particular gifting you have, what your calling is, and other circumstances. He answers that those who are married to unbelievers should do their utmost to preserve those marriages. And he says that while those who are single have more freedom to serve the Lord, those who are married should not divorce so that they can share in this privilege.

Apparently the idea that celibacy was superior to marriage had gained some traction in Corinth. In some ways it’s easy to understand, considering the prevalence of sexual immorality there as we have seen in the last two chapters. And Paul himself was a single man, so perhaps they thought he would agree with them that, for the sake of avoiding such carnal pleasures, it was better to avoid sex altogether, even in the context of marriage.

That idea stems from a heresy known as gnosticism, and the basic premise it that the material world is inherently evil, and that there is a special knowledge (gnosis) that allows us to break free from the physical realm into the spiritual. This usually involves various practices of self-denial and self-abasement. Paul confronts this more directly in his letter to the Colossians:

If you have died with Christ to the elementary principles of the world, why, as if you were living in the world, do you submit yourself to decrees, such as, “Do not handle, do not taste, do not touch!” (which all refer to things destined to perish with use)—in accordance with the commandments and teachings of men? These are matters which have, to be sure, the appearance of wisdom in self-made religion and self-abasement and severe treatment of the body, but are of no value against fleshly indulgence. (Col 2:20-23)

So answering their first question he says yes, it is good for a man not to touch a woman. It is good for a man to live a celibate lifestyle, but only insofar as that doesn’t put him in a situation where he’s tempted to commit immorality. But because of the risk of immorality, every man who desires a wife should be allowed to have one, and every woman who desires a husband should be allowed to have one without being subjected to man-made commandments of self-abasement.

What you do to your body, you do to God's temple (1Cor 6:18-20)

Flee immorality. Every other sin that a man commits is outside the body, but the immoral man sins against his own body. Or do you not know that your body is a temple of the Holy Spirit who is in you, whom you have from God, and that you are not your own? For you have been bought with a price: therefore glorify God in your body. (1Cor 6:18-20)

Concluding this section dedicated to sexual immorality, Paul says flee from it. That means run. Run for your life. Run faster than you run from every other sin, because this one defiles you in a way that no other sin has the power to do.

If you’re like me, you’re tempted to say “Wait a minute. There are other sins that affects your body. How about drug abuse? Or suicide? That has to affect the body more than fornication”

If you still think of your body as merely a biological entity, you’d be correct in stating those objections, but Paul argues that since the Holy Spirit lives in you, your body is a temple. And the worst sin you can commit against a temple is not tearing it down. It is defiling it. Bringing that which is unclean into it.

The Lord never let fire rain down on the Roman army that destroyed the temple in Jerusalem in 70 AD. But when Nadab and Abihu approached God’s altar with a fire that wasn’t from God, he torched them alive (Lev 10:1-2)

Your body is a temple. It is holy, set apart for God. It doesn’t belong to you. It is his. He bought it at the price of his son’s blood. Therefore glorify God in it.

Don't prostitute Christ (1Cor 6:14-17)

Now God has not only raised the Lord, but will also raise us up through His power. Do you not know that your bodies are members of Christ? Shall I then take away the members of Christ and make them members of a prostitute? May it never be! Or do you not know that the one who joins himself to a prostitute is one body with her? For He says, “THE TWO SHALL BECOME ONE FLESH.” But the one who joins himself to the Lord is one spirit with Him. (1Cor 6:14-17)

The stomach and the food in it will pass away, we learnt in the last verse. But you are a member of the Body of Christ. And that is not temporary, but eternal. God raised him from his grave, to live eternally, and he has promised to raise us up to eternal life with him as well.

As members of the Body of Christ - his hands and his feet, his eyes and his ears and mouth - whatever we do with our bodies we also do with his body. If we prostitute our own bodies, we prostitute his body.

Now when Paul says “he who joins himself with a prostitute”, you need to know how common prostitution was in Corinth. In our culture prostitution is considered immoral, but it is not considered immoral to sleep with just about anyone you’re not married to as long as there’s no exchange of money involved. In Corinth it was almost the other way around. Ancient Greece was a society very much divided by class, and to defile a free woman was a very serious matter. A slave or a prostitute on the other hand was no big deal. So with the average age of marriage for men being 30 years, you can probably imagine how common this sin was.

In addition Corinth had a temple to the goddess Aphrodite. Like with modern paganism, Aphrodite worshippers saw sexuality as a pathway to religious experiences, and their ceremonies were very sexual in nature. That made the temple a natural marketplace for those who sold such services.

So when Paul is talking about joining oneself to a prostitute, he is not saying that prostitution is the only form of fornication that is wrong. But he’s addressing the most common form of fornication that took place in their culture.

While prostitutes were looked down upon, their clients were not accustomed to being under the same stigma. And telling them that if they sleep with prostitutes they are no better than them would be as strange to them as saying if you eat beef you’re no better than a cow.

But sex has the power to create a very unique and powerful union between a man and a woman. Indeed that was the purpose for which God created it. To tie a wife and a husband together for life with unbreakable bonds. Those who treat it as just another biological process soon end up discovering the pain for those bods being torn apart as you move from one partner to another. You have joined yourself to them. In Biblical terms, you have become one flesh with them.

Now when you make yourself one with a prostitute, than you’ve made yourself a prostitute. And if you are one spirit with Christ, if you are a member of his body, then you have prostituted him.

On eating forks (1Cor 6:13)

Food is for the stomach and the stomach is for food, but God will do away with both of them. Yet the body is not for immorality, but for the Lord, and the Lord is for the body. (1Cor 6:13)

Some things are made for each other, and others aren’t. The stomach is for food. A couple of years ago, a dutch medical magazine published an article about a 52 years old woman who came to the hospital complaining about a stomach ache. They ended up giving her an x-ray that revealed that her stomach contained no less than 78 spoons and forks that she had swallowed.

When asked about it she gave the following explanation: “I don't know why but I felt an urge to eat the silverware - I could not help myself.” (Source: The daily mail)

I think you’d join me in saying that woman was insane.The stomach is not for forks and spoons. And if you swallow them it has serious repercussions for your health. Yes indeed. But don’t let yourself get of any easier. The body is not for immorality, and if you use it for that you are no less insane than that woman. And if I ask you about it, you’ll answer with sorrow-filled eyes, those words that so many have uttered before you: “I don’t know why but I felt an urge to commit immorality - I could not help myself”

The particular type of immorality in view in this verse is sex outside of marriage, as we talked about last time. It’s the same Greek word “porneia”.

My hope today is to get you to the point where you’d rather eat a fork than commit fornication. Not because I’m against sex, but because I’m for it. If you love food, you will not eat forks. Because you know that a stomach full of forks will hinder your ability to eat, enjoy and digest food. Now if I may be so blunt as to say this: If you love sex, you ought to know that a past full of sin will limit your enjoyment of it. Those old fork-wounds will add a constant pain of shame and regret to that aspect of your life that will follow you for many years.

Every hint of immorality counts. Don’t console yourself by saying “I haven’t gone all the way”, as if that is all that counts. I’ll tell you that if you’ve gone half the way you have half the wounds. And if you’ve gone half the way twice - well it doesn’t take more than two half forks to make a whole one, does it?

Now what you do with your stomach doesn’t really matter in the big picture. It is a temporal matter of appetite and biology. God will do away with both your stomach and the food in it. But as we will see in the next verse, sex is not merely a temporal matter of appetite and biology. It has eternal significance.

The wrong question (1Cor 6:12)

All things are lawful for me, but not all things are profitable. All things are lawful for me, but I will not be mastered by anything. (1Cor 6:12)

Does God allow us to sin?

It’s always hard to find right answers to wrong questions. And this question, that has apparently been posed in some form or another by the Corinthians, is most definitely wrong.

No doubt Paul had taught the Corinthians about Christian liberty when he worked among them. He would have preached the good news of a new covenant, where your relationship with God is not founded on works of the law, but on the Grace of God poured out on them through the sacrifice of Jesus Christ.

So if we asked “will God punish us for our sins”, the answer -- according to the Gospel -- is a loud, clear no! If God has given you new birth through his Spirit, then he also has by his sovereign decree chosen to love you unconditionally. No matter what you’ve done in the past, and no matter what you do in the future.

So doesn’t that mean the same as allowing us to sin?

The question still sounds odd, doesn’t it? It’s odd because it presumes that you want to sin. And as a born-again believer in Christ, you are overjoyed by the fact that God allows you not to sin. And you’re not -- or at least you shouldn’t be -- looking for a way back into the misery that God saved you from.

It’s kind of like asking “will God allow me to knock myself over the head with a two-by-four and then poke out both of my eyes with a rusty shrimp-fork?” Well, he may not have loved you any less if you were to do that, but that doesn’t mean that it’s not still stupid. And it doesn’t mean that there won’t be any consequences if you do it. Your head will still hurt, and you’ll still be blind, even if God still loves you.

Sin is the same way, only a lot more stupid, and with much greater potential to hurt both you and everyone you come into contact with. So are you “allowed” to do it? Is it lawful? If you still insist on asking the wrong question, than yes, it is “lawful”. But it’s not profitable. And it will master you.

I was born this way (1Cor 6:11)

Such were some of you; but you were washed, but you were sanctified, but you were justified in the name of the Lord Jesus Christ and in the Spirit of our God. (1Cor 6:11)

We all have issues with the way we were born. That’s why Jesus said that unless one is born again, he cannot see the kingdom of God (John 3:3)

“Such were some of you”. Yet something happened to you, so that you’re not defined by your past sins and inclinations any more.

You were washed. You’re not dirty anymore. Your past sins no longer defile you. There is no need for you to feel dirty, because God has washed your old dirt away.

You are sanctified. That means you are in a process of becoming more and more holy. Gradually those sins become less appealing to you. And in place of the inclination to sin you’ll find an increasingly strong inclination toward serving and obeying God.

You were justified. That is a legal term, which means you are declared not guilty. Yes, you have sinned, but Jesus took on himself the guilt for your sin. He took the punishment that belonged to you. Jesus was punished to the full extent of your guilt. Now you’re free to go. No punishment, no grudges. Your guilt is erased, and your record is clean. It is just as if you had never committed those sins in the first place.

I know many of us have things in our pasts that we are deeply ashamed of. But if you have been born again, let these truths penetrate the way you think about those sins. There’s no need to feel dirty. There’s no need to hide your guilt, or to explain yourself, or justify yourself. Doing that only serves to hold on to what you were, and hinder you in what you now are.

Let it go!

180 movie / Join the abolition movement

It is easy to admire people who in the past have risen up against great evils. Brave men like William Wilberforce who put an end to the slave trade, Dietrich Bonhoeffer known for his bold stand against Nazism, or the reformers who sacrificed their lives to free the people of God from the bondage of the Catholic Church.


But have you ever wondered where you would be if you lived in those times? Whether you would have stood your ground next to them or run for cover? Perhaps you have secretly wished yourself back to a time when there were great cultural evils to fight against, as a hero looking for a cause.


Well no time travel is needed. Ray Comfort has done an excellent job in revealing the greatest evil of our day. The worldwide legalized massacre of unborn children. There is a movement on the rise for the abolition of abortion. Do you want to stand with us? Help spread this movie to your friends. You just might save the life of one of their future children.

You'll probably read this, cause it is about sex... (1Cor 6:9-10)

Or do you not know that the unrighteous will not inherit the kingdom of God? Do not be deceived; neither fornicators, nor idolaters, nor adulterers, nor effeminate, nor homosexuals, nor thieves, nor the covetous, nor drunkards, nor revilers, nor swindlers, will inherit the kingdom of God. (1Cor 6:9-10)

One of the great blessings of studying the Bible verse by verse as we have done, is that our understanding of each verse becomes so much richer. So in these verses we find more than a list of sins that bring on the judgment of God.

We already saw in chapter 5 the connection between Gods condemnation and Church discipline. If God has rejected someone the church should not accept them. That is connected in here.

Another thing that is connected is our discussion last time about law suits. “Do not be deceived” takes on two different meanings here: Do not be deceived into thinking that if some brother has sinned against you, justice won’t be done unless an earthly court rules in your favor. God will certainly bring them to justice.

And do not be deceived into thinking you can get away with anything either. If you are taking your brother to court with the intention to defraud him, God knows your heart.

And on top of all that, these verses also transition us into a longer discussion on sexual immorality. We have here roughly the same list of sins that we found in chapter five, when we talked about church discipline. Except this time Paul is a bit more specific about some sexual sins that apparently must have been prevalent in Corinth.

First in the list is Fornicators, or “pornos” in Greek, that we discussed briefly back in chapter 5. The word means someone who commits any kind of sexual immorality.



What's in a word?


A question that has been much debated over the last few decades is what is actually immoral and what is not. For the first 1900 years or so after these words were written, “pornos” was more or less universally understood to mean any sex outside of marriage. Over the last 50 to 100 years, our culture has gone through a massive paradigm shift when it comes to sexual morality. And we seem to be almost at the point where it is considered immoral to even suggest that sex is limited only to marriage. But at the same time we know that God is unchanging, and what he considered immoral 2000 years ago, he still considers immoral today. So someone must be wrong here. It’s either us or everyone who lived before us.

So given our cultural context, I find myself being forced to look for a Bible verse that explicitly states that sex is immoral outside of marriage, without understanding the word “pornos” to mean what it has meant for nearly two millennia. It is a bit of a challenge, but even if we reduce the semantic range of the word to mean only marital unfaithfulness as many have suggested, we still have a rich supply of arguments and implications that support the traditional view of sex.


The true meaning of marriage

First we can look to God’s original design for marriage. The first marriage took place as early as Genesis 2:21-25:

So the LORD God caused a deep sleep to fall upon the man, and he slept; then He took one of his ribs and closed up the flesh at that place. The LORD God fashioned into a woman the rib which He had taken from the man, and brought her to the man. The man said, “This is now bone of my bones, And flesh of my flesh; She shall be called Woman, Because she was taken out of Man.” For this reason a man shall leave his father and his mother, and be joined to his wife; and they shall become one flesh. And the man and his wife were both naked and were not ashamed.

When God instituted marriage he did it for a very specific reason. He didn’t let us know what that reason was right away, but in Paul’s letter to the Ephesians he makes it very clear:

Wives, be subject to your own husbands, as to the Lord. For the husband is the head of the wife, as Christ also is the head of the church, He Himself being the Savior of the body. But as the church is subject to Christ, so also the wives ought to be to their husbands in everything.

Husbands, love your wives, just as Christ also loved the church and gave Himself up for her, so that He might sanctify her, having cleansed her by the washing of water with the word, that He might present to Himself the church in all her glory, having no spot or wrinkle or any such thing; but that she would be holy and blameless. So husbands ought also to love their own wives as their own bodies. He who loves his own wife loves himself; for no one ever hated his own flesh, but nourishes and cherishes it, just as Christ also does the church, because we are members of His body.

FOR THIS REASON A MAN SHALL LEAVE HIS FATHER AND MOTHER AND SHALL BE JOINED TO HIS WIFE, AND THE TWO SHALL BECOME ONE FLESH. This mystery is great; but I am speaking with reference to Christ and the church. Nevertheless, each individual among you also is to love his own wife even as himself, and the wife must see to it that she respects her husband. (Eph 5:22-33)

What I want to impress on your minds is how highly God esteems marriage, and how profound that union really is. It is more than a couple of signatures on a document. Yet in our culture that is what it has been reduced to, and thus it’s easy to argue that those signatures make no significant difference. If you love one-another and are committed to one-another, what is really the difference morally if you sign a contract that you can get out of anyway if you want to?

That’s not what God designed marriage to be though. It is an unbreakable, life-long covenant between a man and a woman, where they play out a small-scale version of the unbreakable life-long covenant between Christ and the Church.

So marriage is a relation unlike any other. This is so lost in our culture, that I dare to say that many who are married on paper are still committing fornication because they are not married according to God’s definition of what marriage is. And God’s definition is what goes, no matter what documents our government decides to issue.

In light of what marriage is then, God commands us to esteem it, and keep the physical relation that comes with it undefiled:

Marriage is to be held in honor among all, and the marriage bed is to be undefiled; for fornicators and adulterers God will judge. (Heb 13:4)

Does all of this combined, even without the word “pornos” meaning what it actually means, add up to an explicit command not to have sex outside of marriage? I’d say we’re at least getting very, very close. And I chose to take you down this road because understanding the reason for a command is the best way to be convinced of it. It is a lot easier to obey commands when we understand why they exist.


What "pornos" means elsewhere...

But with this foundation being laid, I also want to take a few seconds to convince you that the Greek word “pornos” also includes sex out of marriage, and that Paul would uses that word to mean sex out of marriage just a few sentences away from where we’re at. We’ll jump a bit ahead of ourselves to chapter 7, verse 1 and 2:

Now concerning the things about which you wrote, it is good for a man not to touch a woman. But because of immoralities, each man is to have his own wife, and each woman is to have her own husband.

The word immoralities here is the “porneia” in Greek. It is a different form of the same word, both from the common root “porneo”. What Paul is saing here, is that there are some advantages to being unmarried (and we’ll learn more about that when we get here in our studies), but that because of the temptation to have sex outside of marriage, each man should have his own wife, and each woman her own husband. It can not mean anything else. Try substituting it for adultery, and the sentence doesn’t make sense.


Homosexuality and scripture twisting

Having laid a solid foundation with God’s original design for marriage and sex, we are now better suited to understand the reasoning behind the two other sins that we didn’t already go through in chapter 5. We see that included in the list of people who will not inherit the kingdom of God are effeminate and homosexuals.

Of course the meaning of these words have been subject to some controversy as well. They refer to the passive and the active partner in a homosexual relationship. In Ancient Greek culture homosexuality was very common, and young boys were even dragged into this and abused by older men. Knowing this, many have tried to argue that it is only this practice Paul was forbidding. Not relationships between consenting adults.

So if this verse only forbids older men (the active parner) from abusing young boys (the passive partner, or the effeminate), let’s try to insert that meaning into the text: “...nor children who are molested, nor the people who molest them … shall inherit the kingdom of God.” How’s that interpretation working out for you?


God's unpopular stance on homosexuality

It is not politically correct to say this, and it is not unlikely that it will soon become illegal to say this, but we need to say it anyways. The Bible is crystal clear that homosexuality is a sin. Our culture has trained us from childhood to be abhorred at such a suggestion, and to automatically ascribe a motive of hatred, prejudice and self-righteousness to whoever dares say it. It is a sin worse than not rinsing and folding your milk cartons before you put them in the recycling bin.

But the Bible is still insistent:

You shall not lie with a male as one lies with a female; it is an abomination. (Lev 18:22)

For this reason God gave them over to degrading passions; for their women exchanged the natural function for that which is unnatural, and in the same way also the men abandoned the natural function of the woman and burned in their desire toward one another, men with men committing indecent acts and receiving in their own persons the due penalty of their error. (Rom 1:26-27)

These and several other passages are very clear in their condemnation of homosexuality. Not because God hates them, but because is is a sin which by nature obscures God’s original purpose for marriage. The picture of Christ and the church is obscured when marriage becomes anything else than a life-long covenant between a man and a woman.

That being said, it is a fact that many still find themselves primarily attracted to someone of the same sex. It is much debated whether they are born that way or become that way through cultural influence. The argument is that if they are born that way, then certainly God cannot blame them for being that way. So many feel like if we can prove that they weren’t born that way that would absolve God of responsibility in the matter.

On closer examination though, we realize that God holds us responsible for following all kinds of inclinations that we were born with. God commands us not to lie, yet we were all born with the inclination to lie. No one had to teach me how to do it. I figured it out all on my own the first time I found myself in a situation where the truth was to my disadvantage. My parents didn’t have to teach me how to do it, they had to teach me not to lie. Now just because I was not born with any inclination toward homosexuality, I discovered fairly early in my life that I had an inclination to be attracted to girls. I was born that way. But that doesn’t mean I’m not guilty for the sinful thoughts and actions that have resulted from that inclination.

Now I don’t mean to be insensitive to those who are experiencing same-sex attraction, because at the very least I had the hope of some day living out those inclinations that I had in a righteous and God-honoring way, even though I had to wait for a bit. They do not. Still the truth is we all at some level have to deny the inclinations we were born with to obey God. And the key to being able to do that comes to us in the next verse...

Stay tuned!

Why not rather be wronged? (1Cor 6:7-8)

Actually, then, it is already a defeat for you, that you have lawsuits with one another. Why not rather be wronged? Why not rather be defrauded? On the contrary, you yourselves wrong and defraud. You do this even to your brethren. (1Cor 6:7-8)

Jesus said some very radical things about the attitude a believer should have toward being wronged. He said:

You have heard that it was said, ‘AN EYE FOR AN EYE, AND A TOOTH FOR A TOOTH.’ But I say to you, do not resist an evil person; but whoever slaps you on your right cheek, turn the other to him also. If anyone wants to sue you and take your shirt, let him have your coat also. (Matt 5:38-40)

So then it becomes obvious that going to court against anyone is already a defeat. By doing so we put on display a heart that seeks revenge, rather than reconciliation. We reveal that we are not like Jesus, who by his death opened up the door to heaven for his killers. In fact one of the Roman centurions who conducted his execution, when he saw the supernatural events that followed Jesus’ death, he said “Truly, this was the son of God”. I would not be shocked to one day see this roman centurion in heaven. That is the grace of Christ.

“Why not rather be wronged? Why not rather be defrauded?” Those are indeed strange questions for those who do not have this mindset that our savior has, who died praying for the for forgiveness for those who killed him.

Having this mindset is a statement of trust in the supreme, eternal justice of God. It means setting aside your desire for immediate justice, knowing that God will not let any wrongdoing go unpunished:

Never take your own revenge, beloved, but leave room for the wrath of God, for it is written, “VENGEANCE IS MINE, I WILL REPAY,” says the Lord. (Rom 12:19)

Do you believe in the wrath of God? When someone does wrong to you, God is angry. And he will make sure justice is done in the end. Even if they live a long and happy life, and die in peacefully at old age without ever seeing any retribution, God will pour out his wrath on them in Hell.

Or even better, if they repent from their sins they will have part in the atoning death of Christ, when God poured out his wrath over their sin on his own son. And they will have part in the same undeserved salvation that we have.

Taking your own revenge is denying these realities. So in stead of trusting in God’s justice, you put yourself in his place, and execute your own judgment. You may get the immediate satisfaction you’re looking for, but God’s perfect will is always best, and sin always takes you out of God’s perfect will.

So in light of this, Paul offers another way of dealing with evil. Not combating it with further evil, but defeating it with good:

BUT IF YOUR ENEMY IS HUNGRY, FEED HIM, AND IF HE IS THIRSTY, GIVE HIM A DRINK; FOR IN SO DOING YOU WILL HEAP BURNING COALS ON HIS HEAD.” Do not be overcome by evil, but overcome evil with good. (Rom 12:20-21)

So then going to court against a brother is an act of unwillingness to forgive and to show another the same kind of grace that God has shown us. And it is an act of deliberate injustice, by circumventing the church and seeking mediation from those who do not know God, hoping that they will rule unjustly in your favor, rather than the church ruling justly in favor of your opponent, or telling you to let it go. And finally it is an act of distrust in the supreme eternal justice of God. It is shoving God out of the courtroom to deal with things on our own, in ways that fall short of God’s perfect justice.

See you in court? (1Cor 6:1-6)

Does any one of you, when he has a case against his neighbor, dare to go to law before the unrighteous and not before the saints? Or do you not know that the saints will judge the world? If the world is judged by you, are you not competent to constitute the smallest law courts? Do you not know that we will judge angels? How much more matters of this life? So if you have law courts dealing with matters of this life, do you appoint them as judges who are of no account in the church? I say this to your shame. Is it so, that there is not among you one wise man who will be able to decide between his brethren, but brother goes to law with brother, and that before unbelievers? (1Cor 6:1-6)

Usually in literature chapters come at natural breaks in the text, and changes of topic. That’s true most of the time in the Bible as well, but we need to keep in mind that the division into chapters and verses were added to the text 1500 years later.

So then we need to ask ourselves, does this break considerably from what we were talking about in chapter five with church discipline, or is it just a natural extension of it?

Last time we were talking about how the church deals with a member who sins, and this time we’re talking about how the church deals with a member who sins. The difference is this time the sin has caused a deep disagreement between two members of the church, and it is not immediately clear which one of them actually is the sinner and which one is the victim.

So, being the Greeks they are, and being children of their time, the most natural thing for them to do is to take their brother to court to have the dispute settled. The courts of the time were called the dikastic courts, and were run by fairly simple principles. There was an assembly of 200 to 500 men, depending on the type of case. These men held the title of dikastai. They were appointed at the beginning of every year. To become a dikastai, you had to be a legal citizen over the age of 30, and you had to be willing to take a dikastic oath.

The accuser would make a speech before the court, and then the defendant would do the same. Then the dikastai, would vote in favor of one of them. If it was a crime that required punishment, they would have another round afterward, where the accuser and defendant both proposed what they saw as an appropriate punishment, and they would decide that as well by vote.

The democratic courts were the pride and joy if the Greek civilisation. The symbol of their civility and wisdom. In most other cultures at the time, you would take them before a regional leader appointed by the king, or even just someone who had great power because he was rich, and the verdict and punishment would be completely at this one mans discretion.

But the wisdom of the world is not like the wisdom of God. And what is right in the eyes of a democratic assembly is not necessarily what God wants.

God’s laws are written on every man’s heart, and this is reflected in every law text of every country in the world to some degree. But sin clouds our judgment and causes us to collectively make up provisions for it. And those compromises make it into law as well. So even though the laws and morals of unbelievers are influenced by God, they are not a perfect reflection of his righteousness.

So Paul poses the question, why would you not rather go to those who have the spiritual wisdom to judge? Why do you go to those who lack an intimate knowledge of the heart of God, and ask them to decide? The implication being, maybe the unregenerate are more likely to rule in your favor. Maybe they will not see your subtle “legalized” sin in all of this, but rather rule against the one you’re disagreeing with. While in God’s eyes you yourself are the offender. It is probably in this sense Paul say that you wrong and defraud your brethren, when you go to court against them in verse 8.

The saints will rule the earth with Christ in the millennial kingdom. And angels will be subject to us as well. So is the spiritual state in Corinth so poor that there isn’t even one in the church who has the wisdom to pass good judgments? Do they need to get an unbeliever to decide in even the most minor of disagreements?

Paul is not proposing here, that we should set up a Christian court system, like the Muslims do with their sharia courts. What would have been the right response is for the man who feels he has been defrauded, to go about the normal procedure for church discipline. After all this man would probably have committed a sin that would warrant church discipline. So first he would need to talk to the offender and see if he would repent. Then take with him one or two other brothers, and finally, if he refused to repent, take him before the whole church.

Now if this man was expelled from the church, I suppose by this text, it wouldn’t be unlawful to then open a court case against him, but as we will see soon that is not really the heart of a believer. Stay tuned for the next post!

Listen, then Speak

If one gives an answer before he hears, it is his folly and shame. (Prov 18:13)

How quick are you to voice your opinion in matters of doctrine, morals or politics? The public debate of our day is  replete with strongly held, yet poorly thought through opinions, voiced with great aggression. Sadly, Christian debate is no exception. I say "sadly" because being quick to speak and quick to anger is a mark of ungodliness. We are commanded to be the opposite: Slow to speak and slow to anger (Jas 1:19)

I recall my first steps into christian online debate forums around a decade ago. Full of self-confidence I would revile against anyone who held differing doctrinal understandings on issues like baptism, the ministry of the Holy Spirit, or forms of worship. I was shocked to find that those who were older and wiser than me were able to destroy my arguments with the greatest ease. Why? Because I hadn't thought it through. I was just parroting what I'd heard other people say. And I really hadn't taken the time to understand the position of those who disagreed with me. No wonder then, that every arrow I fired at them seemed to miss.

While I've revised some of my opinions since then, most of them still remain the same. My problem was not that I was wrong. My problem was a lack of thoughtfulness. I was quick to speak, but I was not wise. I would have done well to heed the advice of the Bible; If you just shut up, people won't know you're stupid.

Whoever restrains his words has knowledge, and he who has a cool spirit is a man of understanding. Even a fool who keeps silent is considered wise; when he closes his lips, he is deemed intelligent. (Prov 17:27-28)

There is a time to speak, but before that time ever comes around there is a time to be quiet and just listen, so that you can gain understanding and wisdom. And if you get this order wrong, you will almost certainly end up looking like a fool.

The Weeds - A Parable Against Church Discipline?

You may regard this as a bonus feature to my ongoing Bible study on the book of 1. Corinthians. As I've been working my way through the doctrine of Church Discipline, as presented in chapter 5, I'm increasingly aware of the fact that most churches either ignore it or actively resists it.

Some have tried to present the parable of the weeds as an argument against the Biblical doctrine of Church discipline. Of course pitching scripture up against scripture like this is an absolutely dreadful hermaneutic. The true Christian is not willing to loose a jot or tittle of God's written revelation, so trying to invalidate a scripture with another goes against every fiber of our being. But that apparently doesn't stop people from doing it. So let's deal with it. Here's the text from Matthew 13:24-20:

He put another parable before them, saying, "The kingdom of heaven may be compared to a man who sowed good seed in his field, but while his men were sleeping, his enemy came and sowed weeds among the wheat and went away. So when the plants came up and bore grain, then the weeds appeared also. And the servants of the master of the house came and said to him, 'Master, did you not sow good seed in your field? How then does it have weeds?' He said to them, 'An enemy has done this.' So the servants said to him, 'Then do you want us to go and gather them?' But he said, 'No, lest in gathering the weeds you root up the wheat along with them. Let both grow together until the harvest, and at harvest time I will tell the reapers, Gather the weeds first and bind them in bundles to be burned, but gather the wheat into my barn.'"

So the argument goes, that we should not go plucking people out from the church just because we think they may be weeds. We may be wrong about them, so we should let them stay in the church until God judges them. It might at the outset seem like a fair interpretation of the parable, but it does not align with Jesus' own interpretation of it a few verses down.

You see in this interpretation the field is the church, and gathering up the weeds is setting them outside of the church. But when Jesus explains the parable, the field is the world (verse 38) and gathering up the weeds would mean to eliminate them from the world. This is what Jesus is speaking against. He is warning against establishing a religion of the sword, trying to cleanse the world of unbelievers. That is his own job, that he will send forth his angels to do at the close of the age (verse 39)

Introducing Anya Mae Ravatsås

On July 26. 2011, at 2:54 PM, the Lord was pleased to make this precious addition to our family. Our first child, Anya Mae is 3430 g and 49 cm  (7 lbs 9 oz and 19 in.) of pure cuteness. My wife was amazing, delivering her at home in water without medical intervention. They are both strong and healthy.

Do judge! (1Cor 5:12-13)

For what have I to do with judging outsiders? Do you not judge those who are within the church? But those who are outside, God judges. REMOVE THE WICKED MAN FROM AMONG YOURSELVES. (1Cor 5:12-13)

Matthew 7:1 has become one of the most quoted verses in the entire Bible. “Do not judge so that you will not be judged”. It’s commonly used as an attack against Christians who are willing to say that the Bible condemns certain sins. If someone ever throws this verse at you, ask them if they think it’s wrong for you to judge others. When they say yes, ask them to kindly stop judging you. And if you feel up for it, try to explain to them the difference between judging someone and telling them what the laws are.

We understand from the context of Matthew 7, that the kind of judgment Jesus is talking about, is a self-righteous hypocrisy that sets up a higher standard for others than for self. But that doesn’t mean we have to stop differentiating between right and wrong. To the contrary, not only do we have to differentiate, but when someone claims to be a christian, and consistently acts in a way that brings reproach to the name of Christ, then the church is not only authorized but commanded to judge them. Not with an arrogant attitude, and not with a higher standard than we use on ourselves, but with humility, concern and genuine fear for the eternal destination of their souls.

When it comes to those who are outside of the church, they are not under the church’s jurisdiction. We are not commanded, or even allowed to pass similar judgments on them.

If you think about it, that should be quite obvious. You can’t kick someone out of the church if they’re not in it. And excluding someone from the church is as far as our authority goes. Once someone is outside of the church - whether they are under church discipline, or they have never been part of the Church - God has it from there. The church doesn’t make eternal judgments. It doesn’t decide who goes to Heaven and Hell. That is God’s office.

When to bind, and when to loose? (1Cor 5:11)

But actually, I wrote to you not to associate with any so-called brother if he is an immoral person, or covetous, or an idolater, or a reviler, or a drunkard, or a swindler—not even to eat with such a one. (1Cor 5:11)

It is time to look at what kinds of transgressions that would warrant disciplinary action from the church. Just to make sure, Paul again specifies that this is for those who call themselves brothers. And then he goes on to give a list of six specific categories of sinners. We’re going to look closer at them.

• Immoral people: (gr. “pornos”) The literal meaning of the word is a male prostitute, but in the Bible it is used of all kinds of sexual immorality (which in itself implies that all sexual immorality is of the same nature as prostitution).
• Covetous people: People eager to have more, especially what belongs to others. Covetousness is really a form of the next sin, which is Idolatry (Eph 5:5, Col 3:5)
• Idolaters: Idolatry is when God is not of primary importance to you. You don’t determine this by your ability to manipulate yourself into a certain state of emotion, but rather by what you tends to fill up your mind, what your actions are aiming toward and what gives you comfort, security and pleasure.
• Revilers: A reviler is one who assaults and abuses with words. He will make harsh insults and accusations, intended to humiliate someone or damage their reputation.
• Drunkards: No further explanation is needed, except perhaps to point out that any compulsive or addictive behavior, that inhibits your sound judgment, would be a form of this sin.
• Swindlers: (gr. “harpax”) It can mean a swindler, robber or extortioner. Basically anyone who by violence, threats or deceit takes something that rightfully belongs to another.

Keep this list in mind, and let’s go to a couple of other passages:

Or do you not know that the unrighteous will not inherit the kingdom of God? Do not be deceived; neither fornicators, nor idolaters, nor adulterers, nor effeminate, nor homosexuals, nor thieves, nor the covetous, nor drunkards, nor revilers, nor swindlers, will inherit the kingdom of God. (1 Cor 6:9-10)

For this you know with certainty, that no immoral or impure person or covetous man, who is an idolater, has an inheritance in the kingdom of Christ and God. (Eph 5:5)

What I want you to notice here is how well the list of sins that qualify for church discipline correlates with the list of sins that disqualify a person from inheriting the kingdom of God. Not because we earn our entrance there by avoiding certain sins, but because sins of that type are symptoms of a heart that has not been transformed by God.

Church discipline is about the church on earth accurately reflecting who has their names in the book of life and who doesn’t (Matt 18:18). We do not want to include those who God has excluded, but nor do we want to exclude those who God has included.

Spiritual discernment is rarely cut-and-dry. It would be nice if it could be condensed into a six-point checklist that applied to every possible situation, but that’s just not the case. Paul gave us six examples of sins that qualify for church discipline, but without doubt there are more. (for example he left out murder from the list). And we can’t really apply a one strike and you’re out policy to the ones he did mention either, because that’s not what God does. He gives grace and second chances to those who are repentant.

So when Jesus teaches about this in Matt 18, he makes sure to set up a “procedure” that gives the sinner several opportunities to turn:

If your brother sins, go and show him his fault in private; if he listens to you, you have won your brother. But if he does not listen to you, take one or two more with you, so that BY THE MOUTH OF TWO OR THREE WITNESSES EVERY FACT MAY BE CONFIRMED. If he refuses to listen to them, tell it to the church; and if he refuses to listen even to the church, let him be to you as a Gentile and a tax collector. (Matt 18:15-17)

Possibly it was this Peter had in mind when he asked in verse 21: “Lord, how often shall my brother sin against me and I forgive him? Up to seven times?” Maybe seven times sounded very generous to Peter, but Jesus was not impressed, and went on to tell the parable of the king who settled accounts with his servants to help Peter put forgiveness in the proper perspective. We commit a great sin if we throw a repentant sinner out of church because of an unwillingness to forgive, no matter how great his guilt is. We can not withhold forgiveness from our fellow servants, and still expect to be granted forgiveness ourselves.

The "Christianity" of the Oslo terrorist

Yesterday I posted my response to the claims that the Oslo terrorist was a Christian. Many others have written about this much better than I have. One I want to point out is Tim Challies, who offers an excellent analysis on his blog Another one is the piece below, written by my friend Conrad Myrland, who has taken the time to analyse what the terrorist says about his own faith in his manifesto. He has graciously allowed me to republish it on this blog

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The terrorist who committed the horrible atrocities in Oslo and Utøya 22 July 2011 recorded his faith as "Christian" in the Facebook-profile he designed short time before the attack.

He has therefore being portrayed as a "Christian terrorist" or a "Christian fundamentalist" in both Norwegian and international media.


NO RELATIONSHIP TO GOD OR JESUS

But this is how the terrorist describes his own Christianity in his 1500 pages "manifest":

If you have a personal relationship with Jesus Christ and God then you are a religious Christian. Myself and many more like me do not necessarily have a personal relationship with Jesus Christ and God. We do however believe in Christianity as a cultural, social, identity and moral platform. This makes us Christian. (Quote page 1307)

He is saying that he doesn't have a personal relationship with Jesus Christ and God. So HE IS NOT a Christian, according to Jesus and the apostles. He is NOT a Christian according to the New Testament. HE IS NOT a Christian, according to the doctrine of the church(es) through two millenniums.

The terrorist has created a Christianity in his own image.

It reminds me of a note to self I made 12 July 2011: When you study Christianity you will either become proud to partake of its uniqueness and its blessed effect in the Western world, or you will be humbled by it's great God. The former path leads to hell. The latter to eternal life.

The great danger is that many people in the West has the terrorist's kind of "Christianity".

Dear reader: Is this the Christianity YOU follow?


NO RELATIONSHIP TO THE HOLY SPIRIT

The Holy Spirit is mentioned twice in 1500 pages (according to a limited search). One time as a name of a local church, the second time where the terrorist declares that a personal relationship to the Trinity is not important. (See further down.)

A person with no relationship to the Holy Spirit is NOT a Christian.

The great danger is that many people who regard themselves as Christians is in the same situation as the terrorist.


PERVERTED UNDERSTANDING OF THE CROSS

Moreover, a Christian will always have somehow an understanding and a personal experience of the cross. This is the terrorist's understanding of the cross: European Christendom and the cross will be the symbol in which every cultural conservative can unite under in our common defense. It should serve as the uniting symbol for all Europeans whether they are agnostic or atheists. (Quote page 1307)

This is such an affront to Jesus and the cross on which he died, that no words can describe it. The terrorist believed in the supremacy of Europe, and hated marxists and Muslims. This should disqualify him as a Christian in itself. The one who hates, is a murderer, and has no eternal life. Moreover, there is no little dot in his manifest suggesting that he was a Christian with a personal relationship to God the Father, Jesus the Son and The Holy Spirit.


A PERVERTED UNDERSTANDING OF MARTYRDOM

The terrorist believed in "fighting for the cross". It was a fight for the perverted cross, and therefore also a perverted fight. He writes on page 1360: If you want to fight for the cross and die under the “cross of the martyrs” it’s required that you are a practising Christian, a Christian agnostic or a Christian atheist (cultural Christian). The cultural factors are more important than your personal relationship with God, Jesus or the holy spirit. Even Odinists can fight with us or by our side as brothers in this fight. Followed by the quote from page 1362: You don’t need to have a personal relationship with God or Jesus to fight for our Christian cultural heritage. It is enough that you are a Christian-agnostic or a Christianatheist (an atheist who wants to preserve at least the basics of the European Christian cultural legacy (Christian holidays, Christmas and Easter)).

No true Christian martyrs throughout the centuries would have accepted a definition of martyrdom anywhere like this. Christian martyrs die because of their loyalty to Jesus Christ, being ready - because their Savior and Lord lives in them - to forgive their killers, even love them.

Dear reader! May God's grace bring all of us under the Lordship of Jesus Christ and renew our hearts by His Holy Spirit every day.

God bless you! One day he will sweep away every tear from the eyes of those who belong to Him!

Conrad Myrland
conrad@myrland.com

How antinomianism causes hypocrisy (1Cor 5:9-10)

I wrote you in my letter not to associate with immoral people; I did not at all mean with the immoral people of this world, or with the covetous and swindlers, or with idolaters, for then you would have to go out of the world. (1Cor 5:9-10)

Let’s take a moment to deduce what is going on here; Earlier in the chapter we learned that the Corinthians were not only tolerating sin in Church, but were actually celebrating it. Here we see that Paul has written to them about this in the past. And that upon receiving that message from him, the Corinthians had limited it to only demand a higher standard of unsaved people, while still allowing for immorality in the church.

As easy as it is to point out the blatant hypocrisy in that, recall our discussion on antinomianism from chapter 4. antinomianism, as you may remember is the doctrine that says there is no longer any value in obeying God’s commands because we are free from the law. Antinomianism is grace abuse. And it is a very short leap to go from antinomianism to demanding a higher moral standard for unsaved people. Since the unsaved are not under grace, they would still be under the law, so if you are going to be consistent you’ll have to go there. You really can’t avoid it.

Anders Behring Breivik - Fundamentalist Christian?

In the wake of the bomb in Oslo, and following massacre at the Labour Party youth camp at Utøya, I've noticed a very peculiar thing about the coverage of the event in American media. Many of them seem to be perpetuating the idea that the terrorist, Anders Behring Breivik is a fundamentalist Christian.

While I suspect that this misinformation is being perpetuated on purpose by a small group of secularist journalists who intend to exploit this tragedy to spread their agenda of hatred against Christians, I still feel obliged to make one clarification to my American friends, and help them see this through Norwegian eyes.

Breivik has authored (largely by copying and pasting) a 1500 page manifesto, where he uses some rhetoric around preserving our christian culture and heritage. European journalists, even the most left-leaning of them, understand what this means. We are immersed in the idea that our nations are "Christian nations", because we have state churches. They understand that the Christianity he talks about is the same Christianity they practice themselves when they take their children before the priest to get sprinkled, and when the go to Church on Christmas eve to get into the proper Christmas mood. It's what Norwegians do. They don't mean anything by it, and the moment they are out of those church doors they proceed to go about their secular lives as usual. This Christianity does not spring from a sincerely held faith in Christ. It's just a wholesome tradition that is closely tied to our national identity. And who knows, maybe there even is a God out there who will look on us favorably for jumping through these hoops, right?

This type of nationalistic Christianity lends itself perfectly to this type of abuse. Increasing numbers of Arab immigrants are spreading Islamic culture, so what is the remedy? We need to fight for our Christian cultural heritage!

And so it was that the name of Christ was dragged into this atrocity. Breivik may see himself as a Christian. It's a delusion he has in common with most of the Norwegian population. It seems he might even at occasions have prayed. Most people tend to do that whenever they're in a pinch, even if they don't really believe anyone is listening.

But I can say one thing for certain. Breivik does not have anything in common with the people who are generally labeled fundamentalist Christians. These are people who let the teachings of Christ have genuine influence in their lives. They love their enemies, bless those who persecute them, and the sword with which they spread their message is the Word of God. And they all share my disbelief and disgust with the atrocities that have been committed.

Please feel free to spread this around as a counterweight to the false information that is being spread.

An introduction to kicking people out of Church (1. Cor 5:1-8)

It is actually reported that there is immorality among you, and immorality of such a kind as does not exist even among the Gentiles, that someone has his father’s wife. You have become arrogant and have not mourned instead, so that the one who had done this deed would be removed from your midst. (1 Cor 5:1-2)

In this chapter, Paul addresses something that has grieved him deeply to hear. He has received reports of a certain sin in the church. Now of course, sin in the church is nothing new. Where there are humans in the church, there is bound to be sin. And there will be grace for the sinner to find forgiveness for it and freedom from it. That doesn’t mean that there’s something wrong with the church, but only that it’s operating normally, and doing what it’s supposed to: Putting redeemed rebels together for their common sanctification.

But you wouldn’t expect to find the type of sins that shock and disgust even unregenerate people, simply because as Christians we are not who we used to be, but we are in the process of becoming holy like God is holy. So there is bound to be an improvement compared to what we were. And as we come further and further in that process, our conscienes grow more and more sensitive, and the sins that we’re dealing with are usually things that we as unregenerate people would not even think twice about.

So when a transgression of this magnitude had happened, you’d expect the church to be at least as shocked and disgusted as the world, and to mourn this atrocity. But in stead, Paul says, they had become arrogant. In stead of being ashamed, they were proud. How could that be?

It seems like the Corinthian Church seems to have fallen into a heresy that uses grace as a means to sin in stead of to holiness. That says Christ died so that I could keep sinning, and not be punished for it, in stead of Christ died to take my punishment and set me free from the power of sin.

They would see their freedom in Christ as a freedom to sin, rather than a freedom from sin. So when they saw what they perceived to be freedom flourishing in such abundance in their church, then in stead of grieving, they became arrogant toward those whom they perceived as slaves to the law of God.

For I, on my part, though absent in body but present in spirit, have already judged him who has so committed this, as though I were present. In the name of our Lord Jesus, when you are assembled, and I with you in spirit, with the power of our Lord Jesus, I have decided to deliver such a one to Satan for the destruction of his flesh, so that his spirit may be saved in the day of the Lord Jesus.  

Your boasting is not good. Do you not know that a little leaven leavens the whole lump of dough? Clean out the old leaven so that you may be a new lump, just as you are in fact unleavened. For Christ our Passover also has been sacrificed. Therefore let us celebrate the feast, not with old leaven, nor with the leaven of malice and wickedness, but with the unleavened bread of sincerity and truth. (1 Cor 5:3-8)

We already saw it in verse 2: “so that the one who has done this deed would be removed from your midst”. Now we are going to get in to what that entails. What Paul is about to teach the Corinthians here has become one of the most unpopular doctrines in the entire Bible. Partly because in some circles it has been abused and misapplied, and partly because it’s not a pleasant or easy thing to do.

But the church has both a right and an obligation to publicly disassociate themselves from anyone who claims to be a brother, but persists in unrepentant sin.

Since this is such a controversial issue, I will be very careful to limit myself to saying what the Bible says, and not draw any conclusions and implications, except for those that are so painfully obvious that there’s no way to avoid them. So with that in mind we are going to make three observations in these verses.

1. Church discipline happens in the context of the church being gathered together:
The church is to carry out this task in unity. Paul orders them to gather the church together and pronounce a judgment on this man in unison. And though he’s absent, he adds his consent to this judgment. Another key passage on church discipline says the same:

If your brother sins, go and show him his fault in private; if he listens to you, you have won your brother. But if he does not listen to you, take one or two more with you, so that BY THE MOUTH OF TWO OR THREE WITNESSES EVERY FACT MAY BE CONFIRMED. If he refuses to listen to them, tell it to the church; and if he refuses to listen even to the church, let him be to you as a Gentile and a tax collector. (Matt 18:15-17)

Jesus goes on to say, in Matthew 18, that when the church is gathered together in unison like this then he is gathered with them. When they are judging according to his word, they are acting as his agents, pronouncing his judgments. And they are as valid in heaven as on earth:

Truly I say to you, whatever you bind on earth shall have been bound in heaven; and whatever you loose on earth shall have been loosed in heaven. “Again I say to you, that if two of you agree on earth about anything that they may ask, it shall be done for them by My Father who is in heaven. For where two or three have gathered together in My name, I am there in their midst.” (Matt 18:18-20)

So church discipline is not something we tuck away and deal with privately. And that public process will benefit everyone in the church, as they are reminded of the dangers of starting down a path of sin. Every one present, if their hearts are right with God, will walk out of that meeting, not with a sense of pride, but with a renewed commitment to fight any appearance of evil in their own hearts.

2. The aim of church discipline is restoration:
The explanation Paul offers for his decision to put this man out of the church is so that he might have a hope of being saved: “I have decided to deliver such a one to Satan for the destruction of his flesh, so that his spirit may be saved in the day of the Lord Jesus.” The word flesh, can mean two things. It can mean our actual body, but it is more often used about our natural inclination toward evil. And that seems to be the most natural understanding here as well, because putting someone out of the church doesn’t really do any harm to their body.

It is also worth noting here, that Satan serves as a tool in this process. Martin Luther said something profoundly true when he said “The devil is God’s devil”. God and Satan are not equal forces battling against each other. God is the only God and infinite creator, and Satan is merely a created being in rebellion to his master. And God is keeping him on a tight leach for as long as it serves his divine purposes. Always remember that!

3. The aim of church discipline is to purify the church:
The third observation from these verses is that church discipline purifies the church. A leaven is a peace of sourdough, that was kept from one batch to the next, to get the new dough to start rising. Once the leaven was kneaded into the dough, the whole dough would take on those same properties, and you could even take a new lump from that dough and keep for the next one.

That is what happens with sin when it gets to exist within the church. It inevitably spreads to the whole church, and no one can remain unaffected by it.

Paul points to the symbolism that God installed into the passover celebration 1500 years earlier, as he freed his people from their captivity in Egypt. On the day when he told them to slaughter a lamb and put its blood on the doorposts of their house. So that the angel that God sent to execute Gods punishment over Egypt would see it, and pass over their house. And then to bake a loaf of unleavened bread, as a sign of his promise of a new nature.

At the time this provided a very real way of salvation from God’s judgment for Israel, but it was yet to be revealed that all of this was pointing to a much greater salvation. 1500 years later God slaughtered a lamb himself. And that lamb was his only son. And the blood from this lamb, his blood shed to atone for sins, covers all those who believe in him and receive him, so that on the day of judgment, God will pass over us. But if God has put the blood of his lamb on our doorposts, he has also transformed us to unleavened bread, and we are not to change that by mixing ourselves with the leaven of malice and wickedness.

Church discipline purifies the church. It helps us by freeing us from a sinful influence that would otherwise pull us down, and it also helps our outward testimony. Isn’t one of the main accusations that are leveled against the church that there are so many hypocrites in it? How many people have been turned off from the Gospel because the church has not done it’s job and cleansed out those who only claim to be Christians, but really aren’t?

I repeat that this is not a pleasant thing to do, but it is important. It’s usually not perceived as a good thing, but we can not afford not to do it. The truth is that some people are of Christ and some are of the devil. And if we allow the latter to infiltrate the church and muddle the line between the two categories, that is a wicked thing to do.

Next time we'll look more into what exactly qualifies for church discipline, so if this is all new to you, please don't go to church this Sunday applying this teaching on everyone you don't like. So please hold off at least until you get the full picture.

Porn and lentil stew

No one really believes in the popular rationalization that porn is a victim-less crime. But few understand the full cost of it in their own lives and the lives of those they love the most. At least until it's too late.

I'd like to address especially the single men today, for two reasons. First of all they need it the most. A man is never as vulnerable to this temptation as when he is young, inexperienced, burning with passion and yet without any legitimate outlet for it. Secondly, because they have the least resources available. Most men who write about this are married men, writing to other married men. And their solution, of directing their passions toward their wives seems very unhelpful to someone who doesn't have one.

What I'd like to get across to you is this: Watching porn is like selling your birthright for a mouthful of lentil stew. You're trading in one of Gods most valuable gifts to you for something essentially worthless. Read this passage with me, from Genesis:

When Jacob had cooked stew, Esau came in from the field and he was famished; and Esau said to Jacob, “Please let me have a swallow of that red stuff there, for I am famished.” Therefore his name was called Edom. But Jacob said, “First sell me your birthright.” Esau said, “Behold, I am about to die; so of what use then is the birthright to me?” And Jacob said, “First swear to me”; so he swore to him, and sold his birthright to Jacob. Then Jacob gave Esau bread and lentil stew; and he ate and drank, and rose and went on his way. Thus Esau despised his birthright. (Gen 25:29-34)

Esau was a game hunter. A man with a taste for red meat. But he was hungry. So hungry that even lentil stew looked good to him. I believe many of you reading this would be able to identify with this. you're the kind of man who has an appetite for what God originally created sex to be. Yet somewhere along the way you became so famished that even the pathetic pictures that perverted pornographers throw after you start to entice you.

Your hunger is as real as Esau's. I understand your temptation. Now I want you to understand this: That the satisfaction porn offers lasts no longer than it would take Esau to get hungry again, and the price you pay for it is as high as the one he paid.

What is the price exactly? First of all, porn is as addictive as any narcotic. You'll want it more, and find less satisfaction in it for every time. You essentially sell yourself into a lifetime of slavery. Secondly, it will warp your view of sex, and leave you unable to find satisfaction in the real thing as well. As a single man hoping to get married, you need to be aware that the future pleasures God has reserved for you to enjoy together with your wife are what you give in exchange for that mouthful of stew.

If you lend Satan your eyes, and let him train you to find pleasure in perversions, it won't take long before sex the way God intended it seems boring to you. When you do get married you'll quickly find yourself dissatisfied with your wife, because somewhere along the way your appetites switched. And you're no longer longing for sex and trying to substitute it with porn. You're longing for porn and trying to substitute it with sex.

Not only have you traded in your satisfaction in marriage, but also your future wife's satisfaction. You will deprive her of the deep intimacy she needs and desires, seeking to play out your own pornographic fantasies. And it still won't satisfy, because sex really isn't very much like porn at all. Porn actors are just that. Actors. They act as if what they do is pleasurable, while in real life most of it it's usually uncomfortable or straight-out painful.

Easu's choice had repercussions for his children and his children's children until this very day. Had he not given up his birthright, they - instead of Israel - would have been the nation through whom God manifested his power in the old covenant. With the click of a mouse you can deprive your future children of a happy, harmonious home, and lead them on a path of destruction. Because, make no mistake about it, apart from divine intervention they will follow.

Don't go down that path! When Jesus said it's better to gauge out your eyes, he wasn't kidding. Yes, the hunger to love and be loved in that special way is real. But like all the best things in life, you have to wait for it. And you can. Do not believe the devil when he says it's impossible, and tells you you can't take it any longer. Believe that "no temptation has overtaken you but such as is common to man; and God is faithful, who will not allow you to be tempted beyond what you are able, but with the temptation will provide the way of escape also, so that you will be able to endure it." (1.Cor 10:13)

Hold on to that, until God again grants you a moment of sanity and clarity of mind,and renews your strength before the next battle.