If there is any passage in the Bible that Calvinists love, it is Romans 9:6-24.  Upon a casual reading it seems to confirm the Calvinist doctrine of predestination.  It talks at great length about God’s mercy and God’s choice being the deciding factors in human existence, and in the context, Paul cites a number of Old-Testament figures to prove his point.  When first I began to study the Bible on my own, this context intimidated me.

However, as is often the case, when we consider this text in a wider context, it takes on a different meaning.  Paul’s goal in Romans 9-11 is not to explain the salvation or damnation of individuals; it is to explain why the physical nation of Israel, despite having received God’s promises, largely has rejected Jesus and His salvation.  Romans 10:6 implies the question Paul is answering:  has the word of God failed?

In response, Paul argues that the promises to the patriarchs are not fulfilled through their fleshly descendants (the physical Israel) but through the children of the promise (Christians).  It always has been this way; according to the flesh, Ishmael and Esau should have been the heirs of the promise, but God chose Isaac and Jacob as heirs.

In this, Paul continues, God is not being unjust.  If He wants to show mercy to Christians instead of Israelites, He has the right to do that, and if He wants to use Israel as a tool to make known His glorified people from all races, He can do that too.

None of this has anything to do with the predestination or salvation of individuals.  Ishmael was not automatically lost because he was not the heir of the promise; in fact, we know nothing about his salvation or condemnation.  The same is true of Esau.  In many ways, he looks like a more righteous man than his younger brother.

The issue of Pharaoh is trickier.  As Paul’s quotation from Exodus 9:16 shows, God did indeed raise Pharaoh up so that He would be glorified through him.  However, at least for a time, Pharaoh had a choice about how God would be glorified.  Cyrus-like (compare Isaiah 45:1-6), Pharaoh could have let God’s people go immediately, which would have made the book of Exodus much shorter and less interesting.

However, that’s not the choice that Pharaoh made.  Though God did harden Pharaoh’s heart later (in much the same way that I might harden my wife’s heart by doing something that I know drives her buggo), the first time that Pharaoh’s hard heart is attributed to anybody, it’s attributed to Pharaoh, in Exodus 8:15.  Now, God only could be glorified through Pharaoh’s humbling and destruction.

All of these Old-Testament characters are introduced, though, only to prove Paul’s main point.  God can do whatever He wants with the physical nation of Israel, and He can do whatever He wants with the spiritual nation of Christians.  Only the second nation will be saved, but as Paul’s own example proves, there was nothing hindering Jews from joining the spiritual Israel except for their own hardheartedness. 

The same holds true for us today.  We know which group will be saved.  Whether we belong to that group is up to us.

During our recent trip to Hawaii, my wife and I saw many amazing things.  Of them all, though, the most amazing was the active volcano.  Lauren saw that Kilauea had begun erupting again just before we left, so we decided that we wanted to visit the crater rim after dark, when it would be most visible. 

We ended up on the rim about a mile away from the molten part.  We could see steam hissing out of vents all over the caldera floor, one of which was stained a brilliant yellow by the sulfur coming out of it.  After dark, we could see molten orange cracks forming and closing, and the sides of the crater were lit with red. 

As I took the spectacle in, I thought to myself, “Well, I know a sermon request when I see one!”  I literally saw a lake burning with fire and brimstone, but I was quite safe from it.  However, the day is coming when billions will encounter a lake burning with fire and brimstone, and they will not be safe from it.  That’s not a fate I would wish on anyone, so I figured it was time for some straight talk about hell.

The first thing that we must understand about hell is that IT IS A HORRIBLE PLACE.  Consider Jesus’ description of it in Mark 9:42-48.  Note first of all the list of things that Jesus said are preferable to being cast into hell.  It’s better to have a millstone hung around your neck and be drowned.  It’s better to have your hand chopped off.  It’s better to have your eye gouged out.  It’s better to have your foot severed. 

None of those are things we want to have happen to us!  However, if we were offered a choice between those things and hell, we would be wise to say, “Bring on the millstone.  Bring on the axe.”

In fact, Jesus describes hell as a place where the worm does not die and the fire is not quenched, a description He takes from Isaiah 66.  Most of us have experienced a burn, though hopefully only a minor one.  Most of us have seen roadkill in the summer that is seething with maggots.  Other passages describe hell as utter darkness. 

Those things are what hell is like, except that hell lasts forever.  In Matthew 25, Jesus talks about eternal fire.  In 2 Thessalonians 1, Paul describes eternal destruction.  On earth, eventually what burns is burned up.  The maggot-ridden corpse is consumed.  The darkness is ended by dawn.  However, there is no relief from the torments of hell.

Of course, these things are not literal.  Instead, they are meant to convey to our minds what it’s like to be eternally separated from God.  When some people hear this, they say, “Well, that’s not so bad!” 

However, we only say such things because we never have experienced the complete absence of God.  Every good gift that every one of us enjoys in our lives comes from Him.  When God leaves, He takes all the good with Him, and all that is left is misery, suffering, and all the cruelties that the devil can devise.

Second, IT IS FOR SINNERS.  Look at Revelation 21:6-8.  As the words of the Father here make clear, there are only two choices.  Either we inherit eternal life from Him, or we are cast into the lake that burns with fire and brimstone.  There’s no third way.

Also, the catalogue of sins in v. 8 is meant to be representative rather than exhaustive.  Hell is not only for those who practice those particular kinds of wickedness.  It is for anyone who practices any kind of wickedness.  If we practice sin, hell will be for us.

For many, this is their single biggest problem with Christianity.  The Bible teaches both that God is love and that most people will spend eternity in hell.  Isn’t that a contradiction?

However, I think that those who propose this dilemma have failed to reckon with what God has done for us.  First of all, God has been fair.  He has revealed Himself to every human being through His creation.  He’s given every one of us a conscience. 

We all had the opportunity to honor Him and walk righteously before Him.  Did we take it?  We did not.  We chose to reject Him and be evil instead. 

In addition, God is merciful.  He gave us the opportunity to find salvation through His Son.  Do most take advantage of that?  They do not.  God is reaching out to them, pleading with them to accept the most precious gift anyone ever has been offered.  In response, they turn their back on Him and go on being evil. 

What’s God supposed to do?  Confirm His word with lots of miracles?  He’s tried that lots of times.  It didn’t work.  Reveal Himself directly to people?  Last time God did that, they crucified Him.  Win them with kindness?  He’s doing that right now.  It also doesn’t work.  Warn them with suffering?  He does that too, again with little success.

In short, there is nothing that even God can do with hard-hearted, wicked sinners.  He sends them to hell because it’s the only option left.  That’s not a loving God’s fault at all.  It’s 100 percent theirs.

Hell is a horrible place, it’s where all sinners go, and ONLY JESUS CAN SAVE US FROM IT.  Let’s read from His words in John 14:5-6.  To begin with, let’s notice here that the alternative to being gathered up and cast into the fire is abiding in Jesus.  This means two different things.  First, it means being connected to Jesus.  We must be saved through Him.  We must become His disciples.

Second, abiding means staying connected to Jesus.  After we rise from the waters of baptism to walk in newness of life, we actually have to live that way.  If we’re uncertain about whether we’re abiding in Jesus or not, He proposes a simple test here.  Those who abide in Him and vice versa bear much fruit.  There are many things in their lives that show they are disciples.  However, if we are living fruitless lives, we should be concerned about that.  It shows that we aren’t abiding in Him, and the alternative is not good.

However, we must be careful about assuming that discipleship is nothing more than another opportunity to justify ourselves by works.  That’s not it at all.  Our good works reveal us as His disciples, but they do not and cannot establish our righteousness before God.

Now that I know that my life is going to be considerably shorter than I had anticipated, as you might imagine, I’ve been giving a lot of thought to its end.  Let me tell you, brethren—if I believed that my eternal destination was determined by the things I’ve done, I would be terrified.  I know that the only name I can claim on my own is “sinner”.  

However, I don’t rely on myself.  I rely on the mercy of the One who justifies the ungodly.  I know Him too, and I know that I can trust Him.  Only He can rescue me from the horrible fate I deserve, and when He does, I will spend eternity praising Him for His salvation.

Most Christians are aware that when it comes to serving God, we need to take our cues from His word rather than from the world.  However, the dangers here are broader than we often realize.  It is not only conformity to the world that poses a problem.  A rejection of worldliness that is so emphatic that it pushes us to the other, equally ungodly, extreme is equally problematic.

Consider, for instance, the reaction of the Lord’s church to the denominational practice of clerical celibacy.  We correctly note that nothing in the Bible requires vows of chastity from religious leaders, and we correctly identify the many temptations and problems that such vows create.

However, in our zeal to oppose such error, we end up denying that singlehood can have spiritual value at all and exalting marriage as the truest way to live a godly life.  Married brethren may not be able to sense it, but any Christian who has been unmarried for a while will tell you that there is a caste system in the church that puts couples and families at the top with single Christians as second-class citizens. 

To detect signs of this caste system, we need look no further than the subjects of our sermons.  Marriage and family is probably the single most common subject for a gospel meeting.  How often do we hear of gospel meetings directed exclusively at the unmarried?

If the Scriptures supported this bias, that would be one thing, but instead, they have as much to say about the spiritual value of the unmarried as of the married.  Yes, the qualifications of elders and deacons involve marriage, but we also must reckon with Paul’s words about the usefulness of being unmarried in 1 Corinthians 7.  In vs. 32-35, he points out that unmarried Christians can devote themselves entirely to God, whereas married Christians are inevitably torn between pleasing God and pleasing their spouses.

Brethren commonly dismiss the implications of this discussion by saying that it relates only to “the present distress”, and it is true that some of what Paul says here in praise of singleness (especially vs. 29-31) is limited to a context of great upheaval.  However, vs. 32-35 is not context-specific.  I love my wife and family, and I would not surrender them for anything, yet I spend as much time and energy on pleasing my wife as godly husbands did 2000 years ago.  If I didn’t have a family, I could use all those resources in the Lord’s service instead.

Single Christians, then, are not second-class spiritual citizens.  Even if they do not currently experience many of the joys that married Christians know, they have been presented with unique opportunities to glorify their Master.  Rather than mourning what they do not have, they ought instead to rejoice in all that they can do.  Even the best marriage only will last a lifetime, but good works are an eternal memorial before God.  When single Christians give their time, talents, and money to Him, they are storing up a treasure for themselves that will last forever.

In our consideration of the original languages of the Bible, we’re fairly used to the idea that koiné Greek has elements that modern English doesn’t.  Most Christians have heard that there are four Greek words equivalent to the English “love”.   However, the opposite also is true.  There are things that modern English does that Greek doesn’t.

In particular, the Greek manuscripts of the Bible don’t use capitalization, along with punctuation and spaces between words.  However, we do use capitalization.  In a religious context, we use it to refer to deity.  God is our Creator, not our creator.  Jesus is Lord, not lord. 

This often makes a difference in comprehension.  If I say that my daughter has a generous spirit, readers understand that I am discussing her attitude and demeanor, not claiming that she is inhabited by a heavenly being.  However, when I say that the apostles were baptized with the Spirit on the day of Pentecost, I clearly am talking about the heavenly being.

In Greek, those cues are absent.  All the capitalized references to God in our Bibles were capitalized by the translators.  In this, they did not apply some sort of esoteric knowledge.  Rather, they considered the context and determined whether the word in context appeared to be talking about deity or not.

Sometimes, there is little question.  “Spirit” in 2 Corinthians 13:14 obviously is about the Godhead; “spirit” in 1 Corinthians 5:5 obviously is not.  However, there are many verses in which the correct choice is less obvious, and in those situations, our translations tend to employ the capital S.   

In my ever-so-humble opinion, all the capital S’s can introduce a level of mystical confusion into texts that would be straightforward if translated in lowercase.  Romans 8:1-11 is perhaps the most obvious example of this.  With capital S’s, throughout the context, Paul is paralleling a being (the Spirit) with a non-being (the flesh).  Additionally, he appears to be claiming that Christians are simultaneously indwelt by the Spirit of God, the Spirit of Christ, and the Spirit of Him who raised Jesus from the dead.  Great is the mystery, indeed!

However, the mystery vanishes in lowercase.  Now, Paul is discussing the difference between those who walk according to the flesh (by following their fleshly impulses) and those who walk according to the spirit (by following their spiritual impulses).  So too, having the spirit of God, the spirit of Christ, and the spirit of Him who raised Christ from the dead doesn’t mean that we have a multitude of supernatural entities sharing our headspace.  Instead, it means that we share God’s motivations and perspectives. 

A little Greek is a dangerous thing, but so too is unquestioningly accepting translators’ decisions in areas where thoughtful Christians are competent to decide for themselves.  I may well be wrong about Romans 8.  Certainly, others are free to disagree with me!  However, all of us ought to be aware of the issue and address it thoughtfully, as befits those with a Berean spirit.

Earlier this week, I posted about Paul’s discussion of justification by works in the first four chapters of Romans.  In it, he says that justification by works requires perfect obedience to God, which no one but Jesus has achieved.  Thus, Christians must seek salvation by faith apart from works.  Similarly, baptism for forgiveness of sins is an expression of faith, not an attempt to justify oneself by works.

In response, I received a question about justification by works in James.  In his epistle, James appears to directly contradict Paul.  After all, in Romans 3:28, Paul says that a man is justified by faith apart from the works of the Law.  In James 2:24, James says that a man is justified by works and not by faith alone.

What gives?  How can it be that two inspired writers would say such different things?

The key to resolving the question is to recognize that Paul and James don’t mean the same thing either by “works” or by “faith”.  In context, this is obvious.  Throughout Romans, Paul uses “works” as shorthand for perfect Law-keeping (or perfect righteousness by a Gentile).  In Paul’s terms, justification by works requires a lifetime of perfection.

James, however, doesn’t use “works” to mean a lifetime of perfection.  Instead, he uses it to refer to specific righteous actions.  In his discussion of the issue, he cites two examples of justification by works:  Abraham offering up Isaac (James 2:21) and Rahab saving the spies (James 2:25). 

Neither of those people was justified by works in a Pauline sense.  Abraham lied because his faith was weak.  Rahab also lied, and she was a prostitute besides.  Both sinned and therefore fall short of the glory of God.  However, both also revealed their faith through their behavior, and by those faith-filled works, they were justified.

Interestingly, James’ definition of justification by works is quite similar to Paul’s definition of justification by faith.  Paul’s two examples, Abraham and David, were justified by faith (David being fully as imperfect as Abraham was), but neither was a spiritual do-nothing.  Both believed the promises of God and acted in accordance with those promises.  Indeed, Paul goes on to make the point in Romans 6 that our receipt of grace through faith requires us to transform our lives.  Pauline faith works.

Not so with Jamesian “faith”.  His two examples of faith without works are the Christian who doesn’t help a brother or sister in need (James 2:15-16) and the demons (James 2:19).  Both acknowledge that God exists; neither honors Him as King through obedience. 

James’ most telling comment about them appears in James 2:14, where he observes that such a one “says he has faith”.  Though he’s not going to debate the point, James doesn’t really think that the non-worker has faith either.  The Pauline analog, as per Romans 6:15, is the one who sins because he is under grace, not law.

As we would expect, there is no contradiction between Romans and James.  The two epistles address two different problems.  The former is concerned with Judaizing teachers who bind circumcision even though doing so only makes sense as part of an attempt to justify oneself by works.  The latter is concerned with Christians who don’t think they have to follow Christ.  Additionally, both epistles have the same bottom line.  We must seek salvation through faith, but we also must live lives of obedience that show that our faith is genuine.