Christ's Doctrine of Hell

There seems to be a kind of conspiracy, especially among middle-aged writers of vaguely liberal tendency, to forget, or to conceal, where the doctrine of Hell comes from. One finds frequent references to the "cruel and abominable mediaeval doctrine of hell," or "the childish and grotesque mediaeval imagery of physical fire and worms." . . .

But the case is quite otherwise; let us face the facts. The doctrine of hell is not " mediaeval": it is Christ's. It is not a device of "mediaeval priestcraft" for frightening people into giving money to the church: it is Christ's deliberate judgment on sin. The imagery of the undying worm and the unquenchable fire derives, not from "mediaeval superstition," but originally from the Prophet Isaiah, and it was Christ who emphatically used it. . . . It confronts us in the oldest and least "edited" of the gospels: it is explicit in many of the most familiar parables and implicit in many more: it bulks far larger in the teaching than one realizes, until one reads the Evangelists [gospels] through instead of picking out the most comfortable texts: one cannot get rid of it without tearing the New Testament to tatters. We cannot repudiate Hell without altogether repudiating Christ.

- Dorothy Sayers, A Matter of Eternity, ed. Rosamond Kent Sprague [Grand Rapids: Eerdmans Publishing Co., 1973], p. 86

Outloved by no heretic's god

In vain the firstborn seraph tries

to sound the depths of love divine.

-C. Wesley

The statement could perhaps be made that it is impossible to overestimate the degree of any attribute possessed by God. When we say God is faithful we could never overestimate His faithfulness. Or when we say He is just we could never overestimate His justice. No entity exists which possesses a higher degree of faithfulness or justice than God. I think this same rule can be applied to His other attributes. There are two attributes of God where I think this truth is especially important. This is because one of these attributes tends to be distorted and then underestimated in reaction to that distortion. The other of these attributes is either completely ignored or greatly underestimated even by the majority of those claiming the name "Christian." The first attribute is the love of God and the second is the holiness of God. And these two attributes and seeing them in their fullness are linked to one-another.

Most simply, in regards to God's love, it is twisted into a false licentiousness-encouraging attribute where God becomes not only a lover of sinners but also a lover of sin if not at least an affirmer of sinfulness. It is this false conception of the love of God which will speak of Christ spending time with and befriending notorious sinners while it refuses to speak of Him calling them to repentance. It is this false-love which will tell the story of the woman caught in adultery and Christ saying, "Let him who is without sin among you be the first to throw a stone at her (John 8:7)," but will leave off the end of the story where Christ says to this woman, "go, and from now on sin no more (John 8:11)." Christ's love was a love which defended the sinner but it was also a love which condemned sin and commanded repentance.

In reaction to this twisted version of God's love some who are orthodox in theology begin to speak as if this heretical conception of God, often held by theological liberals, is of a God too loving. This implies that the orthodox understanding of God, that is the true understanding, is of a God less loving. But the moment a "God less loving" is conceived of, this attribute of God, His love, is thought of in such a way that there could be an entity possessing a greater degree or quality of love than God. The God of whom it was written, under the inspiration of the Holy Spirit, "God is love (1 John 4:8b)," is not a God who should be thought of as possessing the attribute of love to a lesser degree than He possesses all of His other attributes such as omnipotence or omniscience. The love of God is not an attribute which can be overestimated.

God's love is underestimated in response to a heretical error. His holiness is underestimated out of our own sinful blindness to spiritual reality. It is uncomfortable and inconvenient to think of God's holiness. Our sinful flesh wants to bring God down to our level. Our sinful flesh wants to believe that God exists for man's convenience instead of the truth that man exists for God's glory. In our sinful blindness we can assume with the wicked in Psalm 50:19-21:

You give your mouth free reign for evil,

and your tongue frames deceit.

You sit and speak against your brother;

you slander your own mother's son.

These things you have done, and I have been silent;

you thought that I was one like yourself.

But now I rebuke you and lay the charge before you.

In forgetfulness of His transcendent and absolute moral holiness it is assumed that God is one like ourselves. Instead of a God who is a consuming fire (Heb. 12:29), instead of a God from whom the glorious and sinless seraphim must shield themselves (Isaiah 6:2), instead of a God who in His just wrath would be right to consume all sinners from the earth we make for ourselves a blasphemous and non-threatening self-help guru in the clouds. As with the powerful statement from the Apostle John concerning God's love, we find an equally powerful statement, repeated twice in Scripture, once in Isaiah and once by the same Apostle John. In this statement, God is revealed as thrice holy: "holy, holy, holy," say the seraphim of Isaiah and the four living creatures of Revelation (Isaiah 6:3, Rev. 4:8). No other attribute is ascribed to God in this same manner. The holiness of God can never be overestimated nor, I think, can we begin to grasp the infinity of His holiness in this life.

A third underestimation, also touching on God’s love, must be taken into account. In underestimating God's holiness the attempt is made to pull God down to our level, but sinful man, in pride, also seeks to exalt himself to the level of God. He does this by underestimating his own desperate condition, by underestimating his own depravity. But Scripture teaches differently, revealing that, "every intention of the thoughts of his [man's] heart was only evil continually (Gen. 6:5)," that, "the intention of man's heart is evil from his youth (Gen 8:21)," that, "together they have become corrupt; there is none who does good, not even one (Psalm 53:3)," and as Paul teaches in Ephesians, outside of Christ we were dead in our sins and by nature children of wrath (Ephesians 2:1 & 3).

When God's holiness is underestimated or in reality denied no clear picture of God's love can be seen. When God's holiness is underestimated any kind of love ascribed to God will be of a lesser degree or quality than the love which is ascribed to a God who is infinitely holy, that is, the true God. Therefore the heretical god of liberal theology is in reality a god less loving than the true God of any orthodox believer. God’s holiness is connected with His love because only when He is known as infinitely holy can there be any conception of the guiltiness of sinners before Him and therefore of the depth to which He condescended, in love, in saving those same sinners.

Along these same lines, when human depravity is underestimated the nature of Christ’s mission in His incarnation, death and resurrection is obscured. It is obscured because we begin to see ourselves as somehow worthy of redemption. The condescension of Christ becoming man is lessened when we imagine ourselves to be better than we are. As with the necessity of a correct understanding of God’s holiness to see His love, our depravity must also be considered if we are to see the infinite degree of love displayed on the cross. Paul touches on this when he writes, “For one will scarcely die for a righteous person - though perhaps for a good person one would dare even to die - but God shows his love for us in that while we were still sinners, Christ died for us (Romans 5:7-8).” While we were nothing but God-hating rebels, God the Son descended among us to suffer our hate and God’s wrath to save sinners.

Christ defines love for us and His definition is put on display in His suffering and death on the cross. Christ said, "Greater love has no one than this, that someone lay down his life for his friends (John 15:13)." The Apostle John also reflects on Christ's definition writing, "By this we know love, that he laid down his life for us . . . (1 John 3:16a)." As sinful men whose hearts are "deceitful above all things (Jer. 17:9)," we will inevitably define love in a deficient manner. We must therefore look to Scripture to be corrected in our understanding of love. If Christ's death for sinners is the chief display of true love in the universe then we must also have a clear understanding of the meaning of His death. It is only when God's infinite holiness and our total depravity and unworthiness are taken into account that a clear picture of the cross and Christ's death emerges.

This true picture of the cross is the clearest revelation of our total depravity, God's absolute holiness and His infinite love. To see this holiness and love the truth about the cross as it is revealed in Scripture must be affirmed. The cross must be seen as that place where Christ, the perfect, sinless Lamb of God, was "crushed for our iniquities," and upon whom, "was the chastisement that brought us peace (Isaiah 53:5b)." It must also be affirmed that "it was the will of the Lord to crush him; he has put him to grief (Isaiah 53:10)." Paul wrote, "Since, therefore, we have now been justified by his blood, much more shall we be saved by him from the wrath of God (Romans 5:9)." When the prophecy of Isaiah and Paul's teaching are taken into account it becomes clear that on the cross Christ bore God’s wrath deserved by sinners. Why else would He cry out, "My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?(Matt. 27:46)" Christ's death was not like any other death. There is a reason why the One who calmed the sea, raised the dead and calmly faced all His opposition, including the devil, was said to be in an agony in the Garden of Gethsemane, with sweat like great drops of blood falling to the ground and praying, "Father, if you are willing, remove this cup from me (Luke 22:42a)." The reason being that the cup which Christ would drink on the cross was the cup of God's wrath, the wrath which rightfully belongs to every sinner whose sinfulness is an affront the absolute holiness of God. The cross as it is revealed in Scripture only makes sense if God is absolutely and infinitely holy and man is totally depraved, deserving of eternal wrath.

When one begins to consider Christ's suffering in His sacrifice for us it should also become obvious that no greater love could ever be expressed than the love expressed toward sinners in the Son suffering on our behalf and the Father giving His beloved Son. The love of God revealed in the cross is a love which is greater than any love that could ever be imagined by someone with a deficient view of God's holiness, the atonement or the depravity of man. No conception of God except for the true and orthodox one can come close to approaching the degree of love displayed by the one, true and holy God of the Bible.

Was it for crimes that I have done,

He groaned upon the tree?

Amazing pity! Grace unknown!

And love beyond degree!

-Isaac Watts

Delight in Assertions!

Luther's The Bondage of the Will has turned out to be a captivating read. One aspect of it which I find somewhat amazing is that it seems Luther speaks to the situation in the Church today no less than he did 500 years ago. In the section below Luther reprimands Erasmus for minimizing the importance of assertions or belief in objective statements of truth from God's Word. Erasmus' goal in downplaying the importance of these assertions seems to have been, to some degree, a desire for unity among Christians - a desire for unity between Luther and the pope. But ostensibly good ends (unity among Christians) do not justify evil means (compromising on truth). I found this reminder from Luther very timely as this lack of respect for right assertions, that is, right doctrine (orthodoxy), seems rampant within Evangelicalism today. As in Luther's day, minimizing the importance of right doctrine today is often done in the name of unity.

To take no pleasure in assertions is not the mark of a Christian heart; indeed, one must delight in assertions to be a Christian at all. (Now, lest we be misled by words, let me say here that by 'assertion' I mean staunchly holding your ground, stating your position, confessing it, defending it and persevering in it unvanquished. I do not think that the term has any other meaning, either in classical authors or in present-day usage. And I am talking about the assertion of what has been delivered to us from above in the Sacred Scriptures.) . . .

. . . Away, now, with Skeptics and Academics from the company of us Christians; let us have men who will assert, men twice as inflexible as very Stoics! Take the Apostle Paul - how often does he call for that 'full assurance' (Col. 2:2, 1 Thess. 1:5; Heb. 6:11, 10:22) which is, simply, an assertion of conscience, of the highest degree of certainty and conviction. In Rom. 10 he calls it 'confession' - 'with the mouth confession is made unto salvation' (v. 10). Christ says, 'Whosoever confesseth me before men, him will I confess before my Father' (Matt. 10:32). Peter commands us to give a reason for the hope that is in us (1 Pet. 3:15). And what need is there of a multitude of proofs? Nothing is more familiar or characteristic among Christians than assertion. Take away assertions, and you take away Christianity. . .

. . . The Holy Spirit is no Skeptic, and the things He has written in our hearts are not doubts or opinions, but assertions - surer and more certain than sense and life itself.

-Martin Luther, The Bondage of the Will

Liberals do it too

I recently attended an interesting showing of a documentary film on the Loma Linda University campus called The Last Generation which exposes a new conservatism or "fundamentalism," as the documentary makers would have it, among Seventh-day Adventist youth. The documentary was well-made and interesting but as a non-Adventist I don't really have "a dog in that fight." Even so it was interesting to be in a packed auditorium in the new Centennial Complex filled mostly with Adventists on a sabbath-afternoon. After the showing there were some strong feelings expressed during a Q and A session. Both liberals and conservatives expressed their opinions on the film. Even though I would disagree with both sides on some important theological matters, I certainly resonated more emotionally with the conservatives.

At one point a more liberal questioner posed a question to the panel which included the film-makers and some Loma Linda and outside professors. The questioner basically said something like, "is it possible to have dialogue with these fundamentalists when they might not even think you're a Christian at best or that you are a tool of the devil at worst." I was surprised by the wise answer which was given by one of the panel professors. This professor, who I think was more liberal-leaning, said something to the effect that while conservatives may say those things and that this can shut down dialogue, liberals do exactly the same thing when they question the intelligence or sanity of conservatives.

I thought this was an excellent point. I don't lift up the value of endless "dialogue" anywhere near as much as a lot of people do but I think it was interesting to point out that liberals are just as guilty of shutting down dialogue as conservatives, they just do it differently and in a way which seems more acceptable to many people.

"... not in any meaningful sense a Christian."

...truth from the mouth of an Atheist.

When I was home for Christmas some of my friends alerted me to an article which had appeared in an issue of a local magazine called Portland Monthly. The article was a dialogue between famed Atheist Christopher Hitchens and a Portland area pastor who claims to be a liberal Christian. While I disagree with many things Hitchens said, I did appreciate his assessment of the liberal's belief system:

Marilyn Sewell (Liberal “Christian”): The religion you cite in your book is generally the fundamentalist faith of various kinds. I’m a liberal Christian, and I don’t take the stories from the scripture literally. I don’t believe in the doctrine of atonement (that Jesus died for our sins, for example). Do you make and distinction between fundamentalist faith and liberal religion?

Christopher Hitchens (Atheist): I would say that if you don’t believe that Jesus of Nazareth was the Christ and Messiah, and that he rose again from the dead and by his sacrifice our sins are forgiven you’re really not in any meaningful sense a Christian.

The whole interview is here.

Islands in a Sea of Meaninglessness

More recently, in some of the post modern readings, we are called to all experience Christ in our own way and not be bothered by the confines of some ancient Apostolic proclamation. Post modernism urges us to live as independent islands in a sea of meaninglessness. Your autonomous opinions, they argue, are just as meaningful and valid as those who deliberated at Nicea or who were first commissioned by the Risen Lord. A hermeneutic of proclamation and faith is replaced by a hermeneutic of suspicion and doubt and both called equally valid. According to this scheme, theology, it seems, is really – after all – only anthropology. The church is a human construct, not a divinely ordained community. Yet, in the face of all of this - though the tempest rages for a season, the church is once again reconstituted into the truth. What we are experiencing in our day has been the re-emergence of a more faithful church from other quarters, mainly in the non-western world and the great unanimity of the church throughout the ages marches on, because God is the one who preserves His church and its living witness to Jesus Christ...

...If Nicea does not lay out boundaries, then we are left only with self-identification and we can no longer use the word ‘Christian’ or ‘Body of Christ’ with any real meaning. For if you don’t have doctrinal stability, you cannot have ethical stability and if you don’t have ethical stability you don’t have stability of worship and therefore we are no longer related vitality and necessarily to the headship of Jesus Christ. Our historic boundaries would become lost in a post-modern sea of autonomous self-definitions. What a contrast from the Apostle John who gives that final testimony at the end of time which gives us the courage to know that in the Final Day the church will be preserved out of every snare for he hears this act of worship in heaven, testifying not to another gospel or something novel, but to the Apostolic proclamation:

You were slain and with your blood you purchased men for God from every tribe and language and people and nation…and so… to him who sits on the throne and to the Lamb be praise and honor and glory and power forever and ever (Rev. 5:9,13), thus fulfilling those words of the Apostle Paul in Col. 1:18: And He is the head of the body, the church; He is the beginning and the firstborn from the dead, so that in everything He might have supremacy.

- Dr. Timothy C. Tennent, President of Asbury Theological Seminary from his essay here.

1941

At Loma Linda, School of Medicine students are required to take religion classes during our first two years. This quarter I've been taking a class called "God and Human Suffering." Various strains of thought regarding the existence of an omnipotent, good God and the reality of evil in the universe have been very interesting to me for some time so I looked forward to this class.

Our instructor, a Seventh-day Adventist physician and New Testament scholar gave us a lecture in our second to last session this week that I was impressed by. We briefly talked about the history of Christian thought on evil and he emphasized Origen and his writing Contra Celsum to give a taste of the thought of the early church on evil. Our professor, Dr. Tonstad, called this a triangular view of history with God, man and Satan all as actors. He then contrasted this with much of modern thought on evil, even thought claiming to be Christian which tends to completely de-emphasize the role of Satan in evil. In his lecture he quoted D.F. Strauss and Barth but the high point of his lecture revolved around a quote from Rudolf Bultmann, "We can no longer believe in spirits, whether good or evil." Bultmann wrote this in Germany, in 1941. In a prior lecture we had watched some of the film Shoah. It was some of the most disturbing footage on the holocaust I had ever seen. Our instructor's point was that if there was ever a time in history when man could believe in real evil, a real evil greater than ourselves in the spiritual world, it was 1941. I think he was right to point out the irony of Bultmann's statement in 1941 and his rhetoric made a strong impression on me. It is amazing that in a time like our own more people than ever before are quick to deny the existence of spiritual evil and the depraved state of man.

A god Less Loving?

I was recently discussing with friends some error-ridden sermons we had heard preached by some who would come down on the more theologically-liberal end of the spectrum. One in our group suggested something to the effect that the god who was being preached was "too loving."

But I think any conception of the One True God, the God of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob, the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, as being less loving than some heretic's conception of God is seriously mistaken. The most conservative believer, if he is orthodox, should be able with no problem to affirm what the Holy Spirit tells us in 1st John 4:8 and 4:16, where twice it is repeated "God is love."

The problem, in my view, is not the quantity of God's love. The quantity of real love from the true God is greater than anything that could be conceived of and it is certainly greater than the quantity of love from any heretic's god. The difference, I think, is in the quality or nature of God's love compared to the gods which people make in their own images. The quantity of the true God's love is not lacking in any way but it is an utterly holy and jealous love. It is an intra-Trinitarian love where His glorification is the chief end. But it is also a love that has a greater benefit to those who are being saved than anything we could imagine because it is a love which necessarily entails our beholding, loving and worshipping God for all eternity. It is a love which allows us to do what we were made for, namely to glorify God and enjoy him forever.

So I think that any conservative who can't whole-heartedly embrace John's words, "God is love," is missing the point on the nature of God's love. But liberals are already heretics because they try to interpret away much of what God has revealed about himself and the reality he has created, namely his wrath that was quenched in the death of His Son upon the cross and the eternal hell, which we all deserve, that awaits those who are not in Christ.

The Making of a Charismatic or “Fan the Flame”

Some of you who know me well know a bit of my Christian journey. I was baptized as an infant at Ontario United Methodist Church in Ontario, Oregon and I asked Jesus to be my Savior when I was 13. I remained a very immature but zealous Christian until college. In college I wanted to party so I decided to become a liberal “Christian.” God by his grace brought me back to the faith with some relationships, some books and with my own inner struggle. For the next few years, while I was a youth pastor at a United Methodist church, I tried to embrace mainstream Evangelicalism. It was actually a very good time where God’s presence was very evident in my life and where I began to ask the Holy Spirit to take control of my prayer. I felt called to seminary and went to Asbury where I was richly blessed by God.

God messed with me a lot during my first year at Asbury. I came out of that year broken. I struggled regularly with fits of depression and anxiety. I told a friend that I felt “weak.” I also struggled with doubt a lot during that time. There were weeks when I had to will myself into being a Christian. But during that time God continued to meet me, I would say, miraculously. When I returned home to Washington from seminary in 2006 I was invited by a good friend and brother in Christ, Josh Monen, to a church service that was a ministry of a local Pentecostal church. The ministry was called ‘Fan the Flame,’ taken from 2nd Timothy 1:6 - “For this reason, I remind you to fan into flame the gift of God, which is in you through the laying on of my hands.” I was suffering the first time I went. The service was held in a barn in the countryside not far from my house. We worshipped and there was a short message. Then there was a prayer time. A family went up to be prayed for and I imagined that the service would wind down and I would talk with my friend for a while and go home. But that’s not what happened. As I said, I was suffering. I was standing about halfway back in the congregation, minding my own business, when the guy who had preached, Ross, pointed at me and said something like, “you need prayer.” He couldn’t have been more right. I went up and balled my eyes out before a whole congregation of people (something I had never done before and couldn’t imagine myself doing) while brothers and sisters layed on hands, prayed, prophesied and spoke in tongues. I asked for healing and I received it. I was free of the frightening depression and anxiety that had plagued me for months and it has not returned since. That was the first miracle of that summer. Fan the Flame continued to amaze me throughout the summer. I’ve commented to Josh that Fan the Flame has been the only place where, on a Monday, I was excited about what might happen at church on Sunday that week. There were a number of amazing things that happened that summer but one other thing is worthy of note. I’ve mentioned it on this blog before. One Sunday we had a guest preacher at Fan the Flame. I came to the service as usual not knowing what to expect but excited about what God had in store for that night. After he had preached, the guest preacher began telling random people from the congregation to stand up. He would then lay his hand on their head, pray, speak in tongues and prophesy. I am a skeptic. My natural reaction to every situation is to find a naturalistic explanation. I was skeptical about this preacher. I didn’t want him to prophesy over me because I loved Fan the Flame and I knew that if he said something that wasn’t true, I would be devastated. He walked down the center aisle, pointed at me and said, “stand up!” I obeyed and he began to speak in tongues and prophesy. He said something to the effect of “you have been hurt by a church in the past and you still need to forgive them.” First of all, I was happy that what he said was true. But I was also able to remain skeptical because I thought to myself, “lot’s of people have been hurt by churches - he could probably have said that to three quarters of the people here.” The fact was that I had been hurt by a church - the liberal church I had grown up in. But I thought I had forgiven the people there. After the service I went up to the preacher, Frank, and I let him know that what he said was true but that I felt like I had already forgiven those people. He looked at me and said something like, “I have something more to tell you - you are bitter about that church and that bitterness is affecting your theology.” I was surprised about having been contradicted but two words he used surprised me. The two words were “bitter” and “theology.” As I thought about it, I realized that this guy who didn’t even know me told me the same thing that the guy who knows me best, Blake Brodien, had been telling me for months at seminary. Blake had been telling me that I was bitter about liberalism and this ‘prophet’ now said the same thing. The other word that struck me was “theology.” This struck me because I was studying theology - and bitterness certainly was affecting it. In fact, I’d be willing to say that bitterness about liberalism was the primary force driving my theology. As you can imagine, that is a pretty unhealthy source of theology. As I thought about this true prophet’s words I grew more and more amazed. I was so amazed that I later asked my friend Josh whether he had talked to this preacher about me before the service - he hadn’t. On further thought, another aspect of the words of this prophet which struck me was that what he had to say was what I really needed to hear. At the service, before he prophesied over me, I had thought about what God would probably want to say to me through a prophet. I thought about the obvious struggles with sin in my life. I thought about lust among other things. But the struggle that this prophet hit me with was something that was very real but also something that I was in denial about. Hearing that I was bitter from him made me finally listen up after my best friend had been telling me the same thing for months. I would be lying if I said that the bitterness was gone - it’s not. But I’m aware of it and I realize that stoking it and feeding on it is keeping me in a kind of bondage that God wants me to be free of.

In my experience with Pentecostalism, I have seen little of what seems so problematic to those on the outside. That’s not to say that the problems aren’t real. But in my experience, Pentecostals are a group of people who value intimacy with God above all else, who believe the Bible and who are willing to live self-sacrificial lives. They are also aware of the marvelous and miraculous ways in which God acts in people’s lives today and they expect miracles in their churches. I believe that God honors this openness to His power by doing amazing things in Pentecostal churches.

For All Men From All Sin

As I said in my post yesterday, doing construction gives me a lot of time to think. Today I was thinking about what is central to the faith. I don't claim to have gotten some revelation, but I feel like God was messing with me. I was thinking about what I would be willing to break fellowship with a person over. I became convinced that a lack of commitment to holiness would be one of the first things I would break fellowship over. I would break fellowship over the issue of holiness before a lot of other theological issues that I also feel strongly about.

Holiness is central and many Christians have forgotten it or just don't want to deal with it.

I think that the only kind of Christian there can be is a radical Christian. Anything less and I think a person is risking, "Lord, Lord, did we not prohesy in your name, and in your name drive out demons and perform many miracles? Then I will tell them plainly, 'I never knew you. Away from me, you evildoers.'" Do we not believe that the road is narrow leading to salvation? Have we forgotten "unless your righteousness surpasses that of the Pharisees and the teachers of the law, you will certainly not enter the kingdom of heaven." Anyone who is not seeking utter obedience to God is condemned by Christ's words, "If anyone loves me, he will obey my teaching. My Father will love him, and we will come to him and make our home with him. He who does not love me will not obey my teaching." What was Christ's teaching on sin? To the woman caught in adultery he said, "leave your life of sin." He says the same thing to all of us. Do we love him enough to do it?

Is this holiness easy? Do we just get saved and have no desire to sin? Perhaps some have experienced entire sanctification at conversion but most do not. So what does this mean? It means that the Christian life is a constant battle against the flesh. It means that there are things in us, things that seem to be central to who we are that must be renounced and rejected in obedience to and trust in God. Jesus said, "If anyone would come after me, he must deny himself and take up his cross and follow me." Self-denial, cross bearing - not things that feel good but things we MUST do to follow Christ. There is no other way. These are the basic values that liberal "christians" utterly reject and that many other true Christians try to ignore.

We must also trust that it is out of God's love that he calls us to this holiness. If God becomes our portion, that is, if we truely experience the Presence of God in this life then I think that all the things we are called to leave behind will appear weak and ugly compared to what we gain in God.

Did Jesus' death and resurrection free us from needing to be holy or did they allow us to become holy? On a plaque outside of the chapel at Asbury College is written, "Salvation For All Men From All Sin." I believe it. Christ frees us from sin. That is what he calls us to. He didn't just die to give us a ticket to heaven. Heaven can begin now and there is no sin in heaven. 1st John 3:4-6 says, "Everyone who sins breaks the law; in fact, sin is lawlessness. But you know that he appeared so that he might take away our sins. And in him is no sin. No one who continues to sin has either seen him or known him."

Amen