Your Soul Has Great Value

There are two really good posts that I wanted to share here today.  The first, from Truth 2 Freedom’s blog is entitled, Why So Many Religions and False Teachers?

There are a lot of false teachings in the world. Paganism, Gnosticism, Buddism, Hinduism, Sikhism, Taoism, Confucionism, Shaminism, even Judaism, Polytheism, Pantheism, Deism, Darwinism, Naturalism, Secular Humanism, Feminism, Agnosticism, Atheism, and Islam…ism.

All these different ways to get to God or be a god or deny God. But Jesus said, “I am the way, the truth, and the life. No one gets to the Father but by me” (John 14:6).

Of course, not everything that claims to be of Christ is truly of Christ (Matthew 7:21). Like Catholicism, Mormonism, Unitarian Universalism, Oneness Pentecostalism, Heaven Tourism, Jehovah’s Witnesses, Eastern Orthodoxy, Word of Faith, the New Apostolic Reformation, and Rob Bell.

So why all these false religions and teachers? Why would God allow there to be so many, many lies? Two reasons: Testing and judgment.

The Bible says of those who refused to love the truth and so be saved, God “sends them a strong delusion, so that they may believe what is false, in order that all may be condemned who did not believe the truth but had pleasure in their unrighteousness” or their sin (2 Thessalonian 2:9-12).

InDeuteronomy 13:1-4we are told, “If a prophet or a dreamer of dreams arises among you and gives you a sign or a wonder, and he says, ‘Let us go after other gods,’ you shall not listen to that false prophet. For the Lord your God is testing you, to know whether you love the Lord with all your heart and with all your soul.”

When it comes down to it, there are only two religions: you either worship the created or the Creator, when we understand the text.

The second one is Five Reasons Why Your Soul Matters.

When our children were very young, we spoke about the soul like this: “I have a soul. My soul is inside me. I can’t see it, but it lasts forever.”

Jim Packer says that your soul is your “conscious personal self,” the “I” that knows itself as “me.” Your soul is the identity that makes you who you really are. It is the seat of your memory, and your feelings, and your imagination, and your convictions, and your desires, and your affections.

In Mark 8:35-36, Jesus says our soul has great value. Do you know why this is? Here are five reasons why your soul matters more than anything else you have.

1.) Your soul is breathed into you by God.

The LORD God formed the man of dust from the ground and breathed into his nostrils the breath of life, and the man became a living creature. (Genesis 2:7)

Grasping this is of huge importance in knowing who you are, and why your life is of such great value. Adam was created in two stages. There were two steps in the process by which God gave him life.

The first was that God, “formed the man of dust from the ground.” God formed a body. It was made from the dust of the ground. Now in this way, the man and the woman were similar to the animals: “Now out of the ground the LORD God had formed every beast of the field and every bird of the heavens” (Genesis 2:19).

There is a second stage in the creation of Adam which shows why we are different from animals:

The LORD God formed the man of dust from the ground and breathed into his nostrils the breath of life, and the man became a living creature. (Genesis 2:7)

God breathes life into this corpse, and this makes Adam different from the animals. He is more than a body. Adam is a living soul. This soul is capable of knowing God and enjoying God, and it is capable of sinning against God, something the animals cannot do.

This is at the heart of what God is saying when he says, “You are made in the image of God” (Genesis 1:26-27). God has breathed life into you and that life will never end.

2.) Your soul is the source of all your achievement.

The body apart from the spirit is dead. (James 2:26)

Think about everything that is important in your life, and you will say, “Yes, that came from my soul.” Think about this in relation to the world.

Think about music: The symphony, classic rock—where did these things come from? They came from the soul of the composer who wrote it.

Think about art: The ability to depict beauty came through the hands of the artist, but where did it come from? It came from the soul of the artist.

Then think about sports: You may say, “Surely sports depends on the body.” But James says, “the body without the spirit is dead” (James 2:26). Every great sports achievement has come through relentless commitment, disciplined desire, and the determination of the athlete, which is of course in the soul.

When I meet someone who is super fit, I want to say, “This has come from your soul. All the work you have put into sculpting your body came from a desire in your soul. Without that desire that was in your soul, you would be a couch potato!”

All that you achieve in life, everything that is achieved in the world, will arise from the life of the soul.

3.) Your soul is the cause of all your sin.

Each person is tempted when he is lured and enticed by his own desire. (James 1:14)

Where does sin come from? James 1:14 is a very important verse in the Bible because it tells us how temptation works.

Temptation comes to us through the world, the flesh, and the devil. The problem is that, wherever it comes from, it attaches itself to the soul. Our souls are sticky toward sin. Sin attaches itself to our souls.

If this was not the case, then temptation would not be a problem for any of us. If it was pure, then when you saw a house that you couldn’t afford, your soul would say, “I can’t afford that, and I don’t need it,” and you would move on. Because of our sinful desires. When temptation comes, the soul receives it, retains it, welcomes it, embraces it and holds on to it.

The problem is that our souls are not pure. So what happens is that you see something, whatever it is, that someone else has, and you say, “That’s what I want,” and it sticks.

4.) Your soul will last forever.

Do not fear those who kill the body but cannot kill the soul. (Matthew 10:28)

Your life had a beginning, but it does not have an end.

One day you will die and your body will be laid in the ground. But your soul will last forever. So, “Do not fear those who kill the body, but cannot kill the soul.” Your soul has an endless life. That’s why it’s so important. It’s immortal. It has a beginning, but it has no end.

I have a soul. It’s inside me. I can’t see it, but it lasts forever.

Some of you are actively trying to decide if you are going to follow Christ, knowing that it’s costly. You need to know what’s at stake. You try to save your life and you lose it. But Jesus says “If you lose your life to me, you will save it.”

5.) Your soul will experience everlasting joy or misery.

The poor man died and was carried by the angels to Abraham’s side. The rich man also died and was buried, and in Hades, being in torment, he lifted up his eyes and saw Abraham far off and Lazarus at his side. (Luke 16:22-23)

Our Lord tells the story of two men who died. One of them was carried to Abraham’s side. Certainly not the poor man’s body. That would have remained on the earth. So what was carried to Abraham’s side? Not the poor man’s body—his soul!

Then we read: “The rich man also died and was buried,” so everyone knew where his grave was. His body was placed in a rich man’s tomb, with words and dates carved into it. What then was in hades? Not the rich man’s body. It was in the tomb. It was the rich man’s soul!

The point here is very simple: Death takes life from the body, but not from the soul. When you die, your soul goes on to one of two places: One is a place of great joy. The other, according to Jesus, is a place of great torment. And there is a great gulf fixed between them (16:26). You can’t get from the one to the other in either direction.

There is a heaven to pursue and a hell to avoid. You have a soul: Your soul can be saved and it can be lost. To lose your soul is the ultimate disaster, because it is the only loss from which you can never recover.

Do you see now why your soul is so valuable?

[This article was adapted from Pastor Colin’s sermon, “Valuing Your Soul,” from his series Soul Care, Part One]

Five Reasons Why Your Soul Matters — Unlocking the Bible

Hat tip: Truth 2 Freedom’s Blog

Hat tips to all links.

“The Woman Taken in Adultery” – Truth2Freedom’s Blog

Truth 2 Freedom’s blog has a great essay up today on The Woman Taken in Adultery.

I suggest going to the link above and reading the entire essay. Here is just a portion of what is written there:

Sin’s Horror

First, the story reveals sin’s horror. And, of course, I do not mean the sin of the woman. I mean the sin of the rulers. Adultery is sin, certainly. The woman was guilty of adultery. But compared to the sin of the men who were using her in an attempt to trap Jesus, her sin was minimal—a mote in her eye compared to the beams that were in their eyes (Matt. 7:1–5).

To understand precisely what these men were doing we must understand that not only was their approach to Jesus a trap; they actually had already been active in trapping the woman. In fact, it could hardly be otherwise, on the basis of their testimony and in light of the very exacting requirements of Jewish law in this and other capital cases. Under Jewish law, as it was practiced by the rabbis in the time of Christ and later, it was necessary to have multiple witnesses to the act of intercourse before the charge of adultery could be substantiated, and even this was to be under the most exacting of circumstances. Thus, as one scholar points out, “There is absolutely no question of [the witnesses] having seen the couple in a ‘compromising situation,’ for example, coming from a room in which they were alone, or even lying together on the same bed. The actual physical movements of the couple must have been capable of no other explanation, and the witnesses must have seen exactly the same acts at exactly the same time, in the presence of each other, so that their dispositions would be identical in every respect.”

Under these conditions the obtaining of evidence in adultery would be almost impossible were the situation itself not a setup. We are justified in supposing that the liaison had been arranged, perhaps by the very man who committed adultery with the woman. Was he a member of the Sanhedrin? Whatever the case, the arrangement must have involved the posting of witnesses in the room or at the keyhole.

We see the horror of the sin of these men in another way too. For the fact that only the woman was brought to Jesus reveals their dishonesty. If adultery could be proved only by the testimony of witnesses who had seen the couple in the very act of adultery and if this is what the rulers were claiming, as they were, where then was the man in the story? Why was he not brought with the woman? At the least, the rulers allowed the man to escape. At the worst, the man had been in on the plotting and had been granted immunity beforehand. How horrible! Yes, but it is only the old case of the double standard that exists still today. Men should take their stand with the women in such cases, confessing their share of the guilt, which is usually greater anyway. But they do not. The poor woman had to bear the shame alone.

God of Circumstances

The horror of sin is not the only subject these verses introduce, however. They also reveal the mastery by God of all circumstances.

I love that last sentence.  “They also reveal the mastery by God of all circumstances.”

My comment at the link:

Great essay on the encounter with the adulterous woman and how Jesus dealt with it. I learned several new things about this portion of Scripture, especially when you wrote:

Some suggest that this was a symbolic action, intended to remind the accusers of Jeremiah 17:13—“O Lord, the hope of Israel, all who forsake you will be put to shame. Those who turn away from you will be written in the dust.”

It makes me wonder whether or not any of the accusers in this encounter genuinely saw the need to repent of their sins.   Or, did they just drop the stones because they knew that they were guilty of sin in their lives. The feeling of guilt does not necessarily bring someone to the point where they see their individual need for repentance.

If they were not truly sorrowful for their sins, then what happened was that it probably made them even more bitter towards Jesus for having their sinful guilt pointed out by Him. The prophetic verse of Jeremiah 17:13 applies very well here.

Hat tip:  Truth2Freedom’s Blog

Priorities?

I did not need another reason to avoid G00gle or Facebook.  I have discovered enough reasons in the past.  See this post. [Note: scroll down the page a bit because the huge graphic at the top is no longer available.] If you REALLY want to see what types of content Facebook censors, see Facebook Censorship.com

The latest “kill babies in the womb” mindset of these company executives continues to display, and add onto, their sick and evil ways!

Daily Caller: Google And Facebook Co-Sponsoring Protest Of Pro-Life Women’s Health Care Clinic.

While looking for this article, I went to Breitbart.com and discovered the existence of a disturbing video. It’s only animation…but when you think of a real human being dismembered in the womb in this way, it’s terribly sad, evil, shocking, and gut-wrenching!

One-Third of ‘Pro-Choice’ Women Turn Against Abortion After Viewing Video of Procedure.

I couldn’t help but think…ONLY one-third of pro-abortion women turn against abortion after viewing the video of the procedure?

Obviously, the other two-thirds are so blinded by their pro-death-to-babies in the womb ideology that they cannot see (or, refuse to see) the absolute evil of abortion!

Choose Life…Your Mother Did!

Hat tips to The Daily Caller, Breitbart, and StartPage-found graphics.

The Bible and same sex relationships: A review article.

There is a very interesting essay written by Tim Keller at Redeemer Report: The Bible and same sex relationships: A review article.

Keller wrote this report in answer to the two most vocal “gay” Christian authors who have written their own books on the subject.

Excerpt:

Vines, Matthew, God and the Gay Christian: The Biblical Case in Support of Same Sex Relationships, Convergent Books, 2014

Wilson, Ken, A Letter to My Congregation, David Crum Media, 2014.

As Bible-based Christians, we need to be armed with biblical arguments against those (especially “gay Christians!”)  who are trying to create their own  ideological case in support for that which is clearly forbidden in Scripture.

Several weeks ago, I started to listen to a rebuttal against Matthew Vines, whose self-identification label is listed as a “Gay Christian.”

I must admit, this man’s discussion was quite refreshing because he spoke of those who oppose his views with cordial respect.  This is entirely unlike the radical homosexual activists who verbally blast, hatefully abuse, erroneously sue, and viciously disparage Christians (or anyone else) whose deep religious beliefs encourage them to hold to God’s idea of marriage as being between one man and one woman.  The video I was watching was very, very long, and I did not complete it. Perhaps I can locate it again and share a link to it within this post for anyone interested in the back and forth between Vines and the biblical marriage traditionalist.

For now, here at Talk Wisdom I will share some significant excerpts, including the subtopics being discussed at the Redeemer.com site. You can follow the link above to read the entire essay.

Excerpts:

1.  Knowing gay people personally.

In this portion, the idea that homosexuality is a sin that cannot be forgiven by God is shown to be incorrect, (and  THAT incorrect notion could also be considered a form of bigotry) but it can’t be used to say that Scripture approves of homosexual behavior.

So I say good riddance to bigotry. However, the reality of bigotry cannot itself prove that the Bible never forbids homosexuality. We have to look to the text to determine that.

2.  Consulting historical scholarship.

This is highly significant! Read it all at the link, but here is the conclusion based on the evidence:

I urge readers to familiarize themselves with this research. A good place to start is the Kindle book by William Loader Sexuality in the New Testament (2010) or his much larger The New Testament on Sexuality (2012). Loader is the most prominent expert on ancient and biblical views of sexuality, having written five large and two small volumes in his lifetime. It is worth noting that Loader himself does not personally see anything wrong with homosexual relationships; he just — rightly and definitively — proves that you can’t get the Bible itself to give them any support.

Mr. Loader should be commended for his honesty!

3.  Re-categorizing same sex relations.
The following argument is one that is used quite extensively by homosexual activists. However, as you read through the complete section at the link, you will find that the need to “change their interpretations” in today’s era because views changed against slavery is not supported by evidence.

A third line of reasoning in these volumes and others like them involves re-categorization. In the past, homosexuality was categorized by all Christian churches and theology as sin. However, many argue that homosexuality should be put in the same category as slavery and segregation. Vines writes, for example, that the Bible supported slavery and that most Christians used to believe that some form of slavery was condoned by the Bible, but we have now come to see that all slavery is wrong. Therefore, just as Christians interpreted the Bible to support segregation and slavery until times changed, so Christians should change their interpretations about homosexuality as history moves forward.

[But] historians such as Mark Noll (America’s God, 2005 and The Civil War as a Theological Crisis, 2006) have shown the 19th century position some people took that the Bible condoned race-based chattel slavery was highly controversial and never a consensus. Most Protestants in Canada and Britain (and many in the northern U.S. states) condemned it as being wholly against the Scripture.

David L. Chappell in his history of the Civil Rights Movement (A Stone of Hope, 2003) went further. He proves that even before the Supreme Court decisions of the mid-50s, almost no one was promoting the slender and forced biblical justifications for racial superiority and segregation. Even otherwise racist theologians and ministers could not find a basis for white supremacy in the Bible.

So we see the analogy between the church’s view of slavery and its view of homosexuality breaks down. Up until very recently, all Christian churches and theologians unanimously read the Bible as condemning homosexuality. By contrast, there was never any consensus or even a majority of churches that thought slavery and segregation were supported by the Bible.

Wilson, Vines, and many others argue that same-sex relations must now be put into this category. Since we see that there are sincere Christians who disagree over this, it is said, we should “agree to disagree” on this.

However history shows that same-sex relations do not belong in this category, either. Around each of the other items on Wilson’s list there are long-standing and historical divisions within the church. There have always been substantial parts of the church that came to different positions on these issues. But until very, very recently, there had been complete unanimity about homosexuality in the church across all centuries, cultures, and even across major divisions of the Orthodox, Roman Catholic, and Protestant traditions. So homosexuality is categorically different. One has to ask, then, why is it the case that literally no church, theologian, or Christian thinker or movement ever thought that any kind of same sex relationships was allowable until now?

One answer to the question is an ironic one. During the Civil War, British Presbyterian biblical scholars told their southern American colleagues who supported slavery that they were reading the Scriptural texts through cultural blinders. They wanted to find evidence for their views in the Bible and voila — they found it. If no Christian reading the Bible — across diverse cultures and times — ever previously discovered support for same-sex relationships in the Bible until today, it is hard not to wonder if many now have new cultural spectacles on, having a strong predisposition to find in these texts evidence for the views they already hold.

What are those cultural spectacles? The reason that homosexual relationships make so much more sense to people today than in previous times is because they have absorbed late modern western culture’s narratives about the human life. Our society presses its members to believe “you have to be yourself,” that sexual desires are crucial to personal identity, that any curbing of strong sexual desires leads to psychological damage, and that individuals should be free to live as they alone see fit.

These narratives have been well analyzed by scholars such as Robert Bellah and Charles Taylor. They are beliefs about the nature of reality that are not self-evident to most societies and they carry no more empirical proof than any other religious beliefs. They are also filled with inconsistencies and problems. Both Vines and Wilson largely assume these cultural narratives. It is these faith assumptions about identity and freedom that make the straightforward reading of the biblical texts seem so wrong to them. They are the underlying reason for their views, but they are never identified or discussed.

4. Revising biblical authority.

Vines and Wilson claim that they continue to hold to a high view of biblical authority, and that they believe the Bible is completely true, but that they don’t think it teaches all same-sex relations are wrong. Vines argues that while the Levitical code forbids homosexuality (Leviticus 18:22) it also forbids eating shellfish (Leviticus 11:9-12). Yet, he says, Christians no longer regard eating shellfish as wrong — so why can’t we change our minds on homosexuality?

This is another very familiar argument.  In fact, several weeks ago a more liberal relative used the old “shellfish” argument with me in order to support homosexuality as now also being exempt from the laws in the Bible.

Tim Keller answers this argument masterfully!

Here Vines is rejecting the New Testament understanding that the ceremonial laws of Moses around the sacrificial system and ritual purity were fulfilled in Christ and no longer binding, but that the moral law of the Old Testament is still in force. Hebrews 10:16, for example, tells us that the Holy Spirit writes “God’s laws” on Christians’ hearts (so they are obviously still in force), even though that same book of the Bible tells us that some of those Mosaic laws — the ceremonial — are no longer in binding on us. This view has been accepted by all branches of the church since New Testament times.

When Vines refuses to accept this ancient distinction between the ceremonial and moral law, he is doing much more than simply giving us an alternative interpretation of the Old Testament — he is radically revising what biblical authority means. When he says “Christians no longer regard eating shellfish as wrong,” and then applies this to homosexuality (though assuming that Leviticus 19:18 — the Golden Rule — is still in force), he is assuming that it is Christians themselves, not the Bible, who have the right to decide which parts of the Bible are essentially now out of date. That decisively shifts the ultimate authority to define right and wrong onto the individual Christian and away from the biblical text.

The traditional view is this: Yes, there are things in the Bible that Christians no longer have to follow but, if the Scripture is our final authority, it is only the Bible itself that can tell us what those things are. The prohibitions against homosexuality are re-stated in the New Testament (Romans 1, 1 Corinthians 6, 1 Timothy 1) but Jesus himself (Mark 7), as well as the rest of the New Testament, tells us that the clean laws and ceremonial code is no longer in force.

Vines asserts that he maintains a belief in biblical authority, but with arguments like this one he is actually undermining it. This represents a massive shift in historic Christian theology and life.

5. Being on the wrong side of history.

More explicit in Wilson’s volume than Vines’ is the common argument that history is moving toward greater freedom and equality for individuals, and so refusing to accept same-sex relationships is a futile attempt to stop inevitable historical development. Wilson says that the “complex forces” of history showed Christians that they were wrong about slavery and something like that is happening now with homosexuality.

Charles Taylor, however, explains how this idea of inevitable historical progress developed out of the Enlightenment optimism about human nature and reason. It is another place where these writers seem to uncritically adopt background understandings that are foreign to the Bible. If we believe in the Bible’s authority, then shifts in public opinion should not matter. The Christian faith will always be offensive to every culture at some points.

6. Missing the biblical vision.

This section is my favorite part!  Why?  Because it presents a new argument (one that I had not considered until now) regarding God’s design for “complimentary things that [are] made to work together” and how the reason why God made us male and female really do matter – and are designed to work together!

The saddest thing for me as a reader was how, in books on the Bible and sex, Vines and Wilson concentrated almost wholly on the biblical negatives, the prohibitions against homosexual practice, instead of giving sustained attention to the high, (yes) glorious Scriptural vision of sexuality. Both authors rightly say that the Bible calls for mutual loving relationships in marriage, but it points to far more than that.

In Genesis 1 you see pairs of different but complementary things made to work together: heaven and earth, sea and land, even God and humanity. It is part of the brilliance of God’s creation that diverse, unlike things are made to unite and create dynamic wholes which generate more and more life and beauty through their relationships. As N.T. Wright points out, the creation and uniting of male and female at the end of Genesis 2 is the climax of all this.

That means that male and female have unique, non-interchangeable glories — they each see and do things that the other cannot. Sex was created by God to be a way to mingle these strengths and glories within a life-long covenant of marriage. Marriage is the most intense (though not the only) place where this reunion of male and female takes place in human life. Male and female reshape, learn from, and work together.

Therefore, in one of the great ironies of late modern times, when we celebrate diversity in so many other cultural sectors, we have truncated the ultimate unity-in-diversity: inter-gendered marriage.

Without understanding this vision, the sexual prohibitions in the Bible make no sense. Homosexuality does not honor the need for this rich diversity of perspective and gendered humanity in sexual relationships. Same-sex relationships not only cannot provide this for each spouse, they can’t provide children with a deep connection to each half of humanity through a parent of each gender.

This review has been too brief to give these authors the credit they are due for maintaining a respectful and gracious tone throughout. We live in a time in which civility and love in these discussions is fast going away, and I am thankful the authors are not part of the angry, caustic flow. In this regard they are being good examples, but because I think their main points are wrong, I have had to concentrate on them as I have in this review. I hope I have done so with equal civility.

Hat tip:

Redeemer.com

1Co 6:9

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 homosexuals, [fn] nor sodomites,

1Co 6:10

nor thieves, nor covetous, nor drunkards, nor revilers, nor extortioners will inherit the kingdom of God.

1Co 6:11

And such were some of you. But you were washed, but you were sanctified, but you were justified in the name of the Lord Jesus and by the Spirit of our God.