Tag: Theology

The simple definition of saving belief in the Bible, is the belief that Jesus is God’s son and he died on the cross in my place for the payment of my sin. The Bible teaches that this belief results in salvation. This is the truth.

But I think that what we believe, beyond the simple definition, affects what we are saved from.

I think it is possible to believe very little of the full beautiful gospel, and to be saved in a legal way, but miss out on being saved in the fullest way that God intends/desires us to be saved.

The implications of the cross are huge.  I think that we stop too short in our belief.  Each aspect of the gospel requires unpacking, and we need to examine our beliefs about each aspect to experience salvation in the fullest sense.

There is so much more to believe or not believe.

Who is God?

God is love.  All his motivations are out of love.  God is good. I can trust him. He is the source of life. He is the power source of our freedom.  He is in control. I am not.  He is the rightful authority.  He has the truth about how life should be lived.

If you don’t believe he is good you may hate, or fear him.

If you don’t believe he is your source, you may not experience his power.

You may believe that Jesus died for your sins, but not really trust God’s way of life. You may continue to make decisions for yourself about how to live.

Who are we?  What does it mean for us to be restored to our original design?

The truth is that you are God’s prized creation.  You possess dignity. You are worthy of respect.  You are worthy of high esteem. You are God’s chosen and adopted child.  You are a loved son or a loved daughter. You are a citizen of heaven.  You are God’s heir.  You are worth dying for. You are worth saving.  You are worth loving every day of eternity. God’s love is the source of all of our needs, and our very life.  God’s love provides our identity, value, confidence, and security.   We would become dependent upon God to get our needs met for love, significance and affirmation.

Do you believe this, or do you chronically struggle with looking to sources other than God? Do you go to other things to meet your needs, because you believe that they will fill you?

What is the truth about the world and its values?

Humanity and the whole world system is broken and needs fixing. Do you believe that there is anything to be saved from?  We may really believe that the world is just fine.

What is our Purpose?

What is our mission in the world?

You could also believe so many versions of the gospel.  If we don’t examine our beliefs, we can easily go very wrong.

If you believed that the message of the gospel was that you would go to hell if you didn’t pray a prayer, then you might pray a prayer out of fear and then just go back to living your life your own way.

If you believed that God is primarily an angry judge, then you might live in fear of sinning and losing God’s love. You might live in shame because you can’t live up to God’s standards, and give up in defeat.

If you believe that God only accepts those who perform you may work tirelessly to earn his approval but never reach your goal.

If you believe that God is primarily a loving father who has your best interest in mind you will receive life from his love, and desire to follow him.

If you believe God’s original design for life was good, you will want to return to it.

This is all complicated by the fact that we can hold contradictory beliefs at the same time. We have many subconscious beliefs, that are opposed to the intellectual belief that we think we have.

We should be searching ourselves to discover what we really believe.  It doesn’t do any good to force ourselves to live according to truths that we don’t believe.  It won’t work, because actions flow out of our deepest subconscious beliefs.

I think that if we want to be completely restored to our original design, and experience the abundant life that God offers, and experience God himself, then there is so much more to believe then the fact that Jesus died for our sin.

See the next post for an exploration of the concept of Salvation.

When I was first introduced to the gospel, Sin was defined for me as actions or thoughts that were against God’s law.  Belief referred to believing that Christ died for my sins, and Salvation was defined as being saved from eternal punishment.

I learned that the important steps to growing as a Christian were to read the Bible, pray, witness, go to church, and live a holy life.

This is a true and simple presentation of the gospel, but sometimes I think the gospel gets made so simple that is loses everything that is beautiful and powerful about it.  The gospel is so much bigger.  I think that by simplifying it, we lose out on the fuller concepts.  It is the fuller concepts of Sin, Salvation and Belief that have changed my life.

Sin

In the garden, Eve’s sin was not just eating the fruit when she was told not to.  Her sin started when she believed that she could find wisdom and life apart from God. The action was a result of something much deeper at work, believing the lie.

We were designed to be dependent upon God for affection, wisdom, leadership, protection, and Life.  The beginning of all sin is believing that we can find a source of Life, other than God.  We allow sin in when we believe that we know, better than God, how to live an abundant and meaningful life.  We sin when we don’t trust God with our lives.  All of our sin actions flow out of our sin beliefs.

When we overlook sin at the level of belief, we are missing the root of our sin actions.  How will we ever change our actions if we don’t discover our beliefs and examine them?  And what good is managing our actions on the outside, if we are still not experiencing abundant Life, because of our faulty beliefs that we hold on the inside?

Sin is far more than immoral thoughts and behaviors.  Sin encompasses everything that we believe, think, or do that is not in accordance with our original design.  Sin includes all of our values, pursuits, aspirations, anything and everything that is even slightly off from what God had in mind for us.  Sin is all of the ways that we are deceived, and how we live out that deception.  All lies lead to death, not life.  Sin is the influence that we let in, that leads to death not life.  We all struggle every single day with looking to sources other than God for life.  We try to find love, significance, affirmation and security from sources like our parents, spouses, jobs, and children, just to name a few.  We do this in small ways, like wishing that we would get more respect, affection, praise, or appreciation. Even if we control our behavior and don’t do any action that is listed in the Bible as sin, the belief that we could find life in these things rather than God, is, in a very real sense, living in sin.

The simple definition of sin is a clear, black-and-white list of do’s and don’ts.  It is easy to mistakenly believe that if we are following all of these rules, then we are living without sin.  But if we don’t depend on God, then the essence of sin is at work deep in our soul, and we are still not receiving life or living in a way that brings life.  Living a good Christian life devoid of a dependent connection with God is not living a good Christian life, it is living a good moral life.  Salvation from sin is not merely salvation from the sin actions, but the sin attitude of self-reliance in any given moment.  If we ever want to experience abundant life, we need to acknowledge the spiritual battle over our daily beliefs that keep us from looking to The Source.

There will never be a point in time where I will be able to claim to be without sin.  We have way more sin in our lives than a list of rules could ever uncover.

Now don’t think I am trying to say that because we are more sinful than we used to believe, that we should feel more judgement or shame than we did before.  As Christians, there is no need for experiencing judgment or shame in the first place.  Jesus took away our shame completely, once and for all, when he died on the cross.

Rather than thinking of sin in terms of making you good or bad, think of Sin in terms of making you dead or alive.  I am saying that we are actually more dead than we thought, not more evil than we thought.  God wants to save us from our sin which encompasses all of our false beliefs and empty pursuits, and He desires instead to give us Life; a life that He had designed for us all along, a Life that flows from a deep connection to, and dependence on, His Life-giving Spirit; the Spirit who is working in our hearts to nourish and transform.

See the following Blog for an exploration of the concept of Belief.

Many Christians believe that when they sin, God turns away from them, he leaves them because he can’t be in the presence of sin.  And then when we repent he comes back.

I have been thinking about this and it seems to me that the Bible teaches something different.

First of all, there are many examples in the Bible that make it clear that God can be in the presence of sin.  Satan was in the presence of the Lord in Job chapter 1 verses 6-12 and chapter 2 verses 1-7. God not only allowed Satan in his presence, but took his suggestion to strike Job.   Jesus was God incarnate.  He came into our world and lived and ate with sinners.  Also the Bible teaches in Jeremiah 23:23-24 that God is omnipresent.  God is present everywhere.  He fills heaven and earth.  If he is everywhere, then he is in the presence of sinful people.

If God could only be around us when we were morally perfect, wouldn’t that mean that such a thing was possible?  Have you ever had a day you were morally perfect? I haven’t.  Every Christian in the world wrestles with sin every single day of his or her life.  Even the apostle Paul complained, “The good that I will to do, I do not do; but the evil I will not to do, that I practice” (Romans 7:20).  Paul also said in 1 Corinthians 4:4 that even though his conscience is clear, it does not mean that he is innocent.  None of us is conformed to the image of Christ overnight.  Sanctification is a lifelong process.  That process will not be complete until we are clothed with our imperishable bodies, enter the Holy City, and see the Lord face to face.  If we had to be morally perfect for God to be in our presence, then he would never be in our presence. And yet God lives inside of us. (1 Cor. 3:16) And he is with us. (Matt. 28:20; Heb. 13:5)

If God can only be around us when we are sinless, that would make God’s forgiveness conditional.  God’s love for us always has been and always will be in spite of our behavior, not because of our behavior. (Eph. 2:4-5 “We were by nature objects of wrath.  But because of his great love for us, God, who is rich in mercy, made us alive with Christ even when we were dead in transgressions.”  Titus 3:3-5 At one time we were foolish, disobedient… but when the love of God appeared, he saved us, not because of righteous things we had done, but because of his mercy.” Rom. 5:8 “But God demonstrates his own love for us in this: while we were still sinners, Christ died for us.”)  The Bible clearly teaches that salvation is given because of God’s grace, not because of our good behavior.  And if it is not based on our behavior before our salvation, it doesn’t get taken away based on behavior after. (Rom. 11:6; Gal. 2:16, Gal. 2:21; Eph. 28-9)  The Bible also clearly teaches that there is no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus. (Rom. 8:1-2; Jn. 3:17; Rom 8:33-39)

Maybe the idea that God can’t be in the presence of sin comes from Habakkuk 1:13 where it says that God’s “eyes are too pure to look on evil”.  Could it be that Habakkuk 1:13 is a picture of God’s moral perfection and holiness?  Maybe it is not meant to be a statement about his physical presence. We know God does not literally have eyes.  God is spirit (Jn. 4:24) and does not have a physical presence.

The Bible teaches that God is opposed to sin and evil, that he is holy and righteous.  We know that eventually he will quarantine evil from good when he creates the New Heaven and Earth (Rev. 21).  At that time, God will physically separate those who love him from those who don’t.  Those who love him will no longer be in the presence of sin from that point forward.

Until then, God tolerates the presence of sin in order to accomplish his purposes with mankind.  Thank goodness, because if God truly could not be in the presence of sin, none of us would be here!