by Tim | Jul 4, 2010 | God, My World, The Gospel |
I have always wrestled with this: I know that as Christians, we should help poor people, because it’s the “right thing to do.” Yet, helping the poor is something that everyone feels obligated to do–Christian or not. I often resist focusing in on it, as it often makes Christianity appear to be a “works-based” religion, when I know that salvation comes by God’s grace, not our works. In addition, it seems that in Christian circles, liberal/mainline Christians fixate on helping the poor or other social issues, and as a result sideline what I see as the core of the faith: salvation through Christ from eternal punishment for us sinners and new spiritual rebirth. So it baffled me every time I read in Galatians when Paul recounts how he was appealing to the leaders of the Church to recognize that the Gentiles could also become Christians without having to follow the Law (become circumcised, etc), and at the end how the leaders decide that indeed Paul is right. But according to Paul in Galatians, they give him this one instruction: All they asked was that we should continue to remember the poor, the very thing I was eager to do. Why does this keep coming up in Scripture and in Jesus’ words? Why does Jesus tell people to sell all their possessions and give to the poor? Why is this so important? Aren’t we saved by God’s grace, and not by good works, such as this? I would like to throw out something that I’ve been thinking recently: I have been realizing recently that I don’t really trust Jesus to...
by Tim | Jul 1, 2010 | God, The Gospel |
I’ve always said yes. Why? Because not everyone can recall a “crisis” moment of salvation where they can point back and say, “That’s when I became born again.” That’s because humans don’t usually make instantaneous decisions–the vast majority of our decisions come about through various lengthy processes. Unfortunately, I realize more fully today that I have often equated conversion as merely “when a person makes their decision to surrender to Christ,” and that is why I’ve considered the conversion of a soul to sometimes transpire as a process. But that’s because I’ve been one of those Arminians Gone Wild who often finds themselves reducing conversion to the un-supernatural realm of persons merely making a decision. And it’s true, many decisions we make in life are indeed not “crisis” decisions–many happen more as a process. So if we focus on conversion simply as a decision humans make to believe in Jesus, it’s obvious that we will conclude that conversion often happens over time as a process, with no definable crisis moment. Yet, today I’m reminded that conversion isn’t defined by a decision we humans make, so I must qualify my answer. According to the Bible, when we are born again, we become inhabited by the Holy Spirit. This is something God miraculously does–He converts us by giving us His Holy Spirit, we don’t slowly convert ourselves as we make this decision over time. There is no other way to understand God’s part in this process, except that it should occur in a precise moment in time–where at some specific moment, the Holy Spirit inhabits us and we become spiritually reborn....
