Showing posts with label 1 John. Show all posts
Showing posts with label 1 John. Show all posts

Wednesday, December 21, 2022

Flipping the Switch

I was sixteen, I think, watching a young man in his twenties give his testimony.

It was one of those beauties so full of clichés you might have been forgiven for mistaking it for the creative output of a team of Hollywood screenwriters or perhaps the lyrics to a Bryan Adams song. He had even been a sailor, if you can imagine. I mean, who goes to sea to act out these days? He’d tried the “broken cisterns”, as the old hymn goes, and “Ah, the waters failed.”

Except it seems they tasted pretty good to him at the time.

Tuesday, August 06, 2019

Kissing Jesus Goodbye

Joshua Harris, pastor and author of 1997’s moderately controversial I Kissed Dating Goodbye, on doing much the same thing to the man he once called Lord and Savior:

“I have undergone a massive shift in regard to my faith in Jesus. The popular phrase for this is ‘deconstruction,’ the biblical phrase is ‘falling away.’ By all the measurements that I have for defining a Christian, I am not a Christian. Many people tell me that there is a different way to practise faith and I want to remain open to this, but I’m not there now.”

Put bluntly, Mr. Harris has apostatized.

Tuesday, October 23, 2018

Anonymous Asks (10)

“How can we know that God is actually real?”

That’s an interesting question, and one that can be approached from a number of angles. The most obvious angle is scientific knowledge. Can we prove in a lab that God exists? Of course not. We can look into a microscope or up into a night sky and witness all kinds of evidence that points to a Creator, but can we demonstrate his existence from these things with 100% certainty to someone who doesn’t believe?

No, we should probably concede that we can’t.

Wednesday, April 11, 2018

How Occasional is Occasional?

I have a Christian acquaintance of many years who is morbidly obese at the very high end of the spectrum. No quasi-medical justification (hormones, glands, depression, etc.) can fully account for her inability to lose weight. While there are certainly other factors involved, one is surely the consumption of large quantities of superfluous calories.

It is well established in scripture that gluttony is a sin, like any other out-of-control behavior. While obesity and gluttony are not synonymous (one can be thin and voraciously gluttonous), it is hard to argue that the inability to say no is normal, healthy Christian behavior.

My simple question: is she saved?

Monday, April 09, 2018

Not a New Problem

When the apostle John wrote his first of three letters preserved for us in the New Testament, it’s quite possible he was attempting to address a very specific local issue, and that the letter’s intended recipients would have understood what he wrote primarily in their own local context.

If so, he wrote it in a remarkably broad and general way, touching on issues that have troubled mankind since the very beginning of its history.

It seems to me that in his thinking John goes right back to the first chapters of Genesis.

Tuesday, June 06, 2017

No Reinterpretation Required

Love is a two-stage project: there is the declaring of it and then the hard work of actually doing it. It is impossible to effectively communicate love without doing both.

The order of operations is not terribly important, but both elements are critical.

Now of course declarations of love on their own may mislead us and require us to do a little contextual reinterpretation. A classic Canadian rock tune from 1970 made the point that we often say “I love you” when we actually mean something else entirely.

Thursday, May 11, 2017

Christian Confession: An Elaborate Fabrication?

Is it really necessary for Christians to confess our sins in order to be forgiven them?

Peter Ditzel says no, that being forgiven for the sins we commit from time to time as believers does not depend on regular confession. That, he says, would be working for our forgiveness.

He is also not a fan of John MacArthur’s take on 1 John 1, which draws a distinction between judicial and parental forgiveness that Ditzel thinks is an “elaborate fabrication”. He sees the ongoing search for MacArthur’s “parental forgiveness” as a Protestant form of penance.

The judicial/parental distinction probably did not originate with MacArthur. I’ve been hearing it my whole life. It is a very common explanation of what the apostle John has to say about forgiveness.

But is it correct?

Monday, August 08, 2016

Flipping the Switch

The most recent version of this post is available here.

Wednesday, June 08, 2016

Game Misconduct

Most hockey fans are familiar with it, though I suppose it happens less in international play than in the NHL.

Hockey has two minute penalties, five minute penalties, compound penalties like “double minors” and a variety of other ways of maintaining order. But it is only the rarest and most egregious offenses that call for ejection. The player who receives such a penalty is sent straight to the dressing room.

Game over.

It’s called a game misconduct, and something similar may happen to Christians.

Sunday, April 24, 2016

In the Power of the Evil One

The whole world lies in the power of the evil one,” says John the apostle.

That’s an intimidating thought, and there’s plenty of evidence to back it up. Today, just as in John’s day, there is not a single nation on earth that orders its politics and governance — let alone its popular culture — on principles consistent with the will of God and the character of Jesus Christ. Not one.

As a Christian, no matter who you are and where in the world you happen to live, you are in enemy territory.