God today is very busy teaching us to learn to consistently “walk by faith,” i.e., cease trying to live by our addiction to trying to obey God’s law and instead believe that Jesus, by His Holy Spirit, is already doing so through us. The Bible says He is (Galatians 2:20; Philippians 2:13; Romans 8:4)—so I can believe it, irrespective of what I see in my own life, We saw last week that the path to learning to live this way is to ask myself,…
You may remember a few months ago I told you that I was ceasing to post regularly on my “Two Edges of the Sword” blog, and that I may post occasionally, but don’t count on it! That lasted about a week. After I had quit under the pressure of “ought to, need to and should,” I was free to do absolutely nothing if I so desired. Almost immediately, “naturally, spontaneously and unconsciously,” ideas began to fill my mind, and I literally could not keep…
“For My thoughts are not your thoughts, Nor are your ways My ways,” says the LORD (Isaiah 55:8). Occasionally, even frequently, God’s way makes no sense to us, on both a personal level and even a national one. This morning I heard a wonderful pastor on the radio preaching an excellent message, and, to sum it up, challenged me to “greater commitment and dedication to making better, more sacrificial choices” in my daily walk. With this blog posting already in my mind, after hearing…
The purpose of God’s law—as we saw last week in Galatians 3:23-25—is two-fold. The first use is the external use which controls us by keeping us fenced in, “under guard.” This preserves a society of sinful men. The internal, second use of the law, is to be a mirror that forces us to see our endemic sin and depravity, so we will repent and come to Jesus. Any encouragement to try to keep God’s law to be a better, more righteous person is noticeably…
To some readers, this is a shocking title for a posting by a blogger who is sometimes accused of being an antinomian (“against the law”) because, as I wrote last week, I believe that we follow God’s leading in our lives by doing exactly what we want to do, rather than by trying to obey God’s law. As we saw last week, one of the two indispensable edges of the two-edged sword of the word of God is God’s law, the gospel being the…
I believe one of Martin Luther’s greatest contributions, second only to his recovery of salvation by grace alone, was his differentiation between the GOSPEL and the KINGDOM. Everything he taught was founded on two distinct messages for us in the Bible; what is above us (our relationship with God), and what is beneath us (our relationships in His kingdom on the earth). These messages are like two fraternal twins, each honored and loved by their father. Both are making irreplaceable contributions to the family…
For the past two years we have faced one of the most difficult times in our country’s history. The freedoms assured us in our Constitution, and that our government officials swear to protect as they are sworn in, have been challenged. The Constitution, based on biblical truth, is itself under assault by a major political party for the first time in my lifetime. It has been a tense two years. This makes many wonder, “What does the future hold for America?” We don’t know…
If you have opened this blog posting you are, at the very least, a Christian who is semi-interested in following Jesus Christ and growing in your understanding of how to do that. I would like to share in this posting a rather unconventional, but I believe biblical, and absolutely essential idea that I have learned over the years about how to go about following Jesus. Once we “believe in Jesus” and then set out to live a Christian life, we soon learn from church…
For the last number of weeks I have been sharpening the kingdom edge of the sword of the Word of God in these blog postings. My intention has been to focus on what the Bible says about civil government, and what we have discovered has been shocking to many of us. However, I can always tell by the restlessness in my heart when it becomes time to switch our focus to the other edge of the sword—the gospel of the unconditional grace of God—and…
As we conclude our discussions on attempting to envision our country as officially a Christian one, you may have had one of the two following reactions to the changes I suggested: “This won’t work. It isn’t practical. To think that this is a workable plan is ridiculous. You could never get even a small percentage of the population to agree to such a scheme.” This is probably the reaction most of you had, and, of course, it is undeniably true. However, our task is…