Category: Article

*** Sarcasm Alert: For those who cannot easily spot sarcasm in printed material, the following article is not meant to be taken completely seriously. ***

For many who have watched this past NFL season which culminated in Sunday’s broadcast of Superbowl XLII, it has often been difficult to draw distinct lines of demarcation between New England Patriots’ head coach Bill Belichick and the divine. Certainly listening to Coach Belichick’s aloof responses to mere mortals such as newspaper reporters and/or the NFL commissioner would not necessarily show us that, at least in the coach’s mind, there is a difference. Therefore, it is my goal to undertake the seemingly insurmountable task of defining for you, the discerning public, at least one point of dissimilarity between God and Bill Belichick.

The Difference: Holiness

Revelation 4:8b – “Holy, holy, holy, is the Lord God Almighty, who was and is and is to come!”

Holiness is a quality that only God possesses. To be holy is to be so completely perfect that you are different than all others. No one is like God, because God is infinitely perfect, pure, and righteous.

While one might think that the coach’s failure to lead his team to a Superbowl victory is where I’m aiming, think again. Truly demonstrating Coach Belichick’s lack of perfection is the Spygate scandal. Reports are swirling around the NFL that a former Patriots assistant, Matt Walsh, may have illegally videotaped the practices of Patriots’ opponents as far back as 2001. Earlier this season, Coach Belichick was fined $500,000 by the NFL for his illegal videotaping of the hand signals of New York jets’ coaches during a game. So, regardless of the near perfect season, Belichick is a proven cheater, and thus is less than divine.

Some have attempted to argue, by the way, that God is a cheater too. God, his opponents point out, is perfectly just; yet he chooses to forgive the sins of those who come to him in repentance and faith in Jesus Christ. Forgiving the guilty does not seem to be perfectly just. Thankfully, the Bible helps us to see an answer to this difficult objection. All people are indeed sinners before a holy God and thus deserving of the wrath of God (Romans 3:23). God is indeed just, and must rightly punish sin in order to remain just. So, how could God get out of the cheating allegation? The only way is to prove that God actually does punish all human sin. And, he does so for the forgiven by sending Jesus Christ to be our sacrificial substitute. For all who are willing to turn from their sin and place their faith in Jesus alone, God will count Jesus as guilty of their sin and count them as righteous. Why did Jesus have to take our place and suffer for our sin?

Romans 3:25b-26 – “This was to show God’s righteousness, because in his divine forbearance he had passed over former sins. It was to show his righteousness at the present time, so that he might be just and the justifier of the one who has faith in Jesus.”

So you see, God is perfectly just. All people will either have their sins forgiven by God and the punishment carried out on Jesus on the cross or they will pay for their own sins by suffering god’s wrath. God is no cheater. And that is why we know that God is different than Bill Belichick.

[For another difference, see God’s promise never to leave or forsake his own (Deuteronomy 31:6).]

Did you think that indulgences were a thing of the past? Nope. According to an article in the London Telegraph, “Pope Benedict XVI is offering relief from purgatory to Roman Catholics who travel to Lourdes over the next year, the Vatican said yesterday.”*1

If you do not understand what this means, let me help. The Catholic church teaches that faith in Jesus Christ alone is not enough to fully cleanse us of our sins and make us righteous enough to immediately enter into heaven. They therefore teach, contrary to the Bible, that there is a third option, neither heaven nor hell, where people may go after they die in order to suffer for their sins for a period of time sufficient to purge them of those sins and prepare them to enter into heaven. This place is called purgatory (think of the word purge).

Now, in Lourdes, France, there is a cathedral where, 150 years ago, a peasant girl claimed to see an appearance of the virgin Mary, the Madonna. The Pope wants to increase the traffic of visitors to this site, and thus is offering a plenary indulgence to any pilgrim who will make the journey this next year. The plenary indulgence means that you will be able to cut off your time in purgatory. Or, in Monopoly speak, you will receive a “Get out of purgatory free” card for visiting the site.

What is the problem? The first problem is that we dare not say that the blood of Christ has not sufficiently covered and cleansed us from all sin. No amount of our own suffering could ever make us right before God. Ephesians 2:8-9 makes it clear that we are saved by grace through faith, and none of that comes from ourselves either in our merit, our will, or our suffering. To say that we pay any amount of price for the remission of our own sin or for our own cleansing is to deny the truth of the work of Christ done once for all. If someone has saving faith in Jesus, they will not be sent somewhere to burn off sins that Jesus’ blood somehow did not get to.

Also, there is no true love shown to the church even if the concept of indulgences was somehow legitimate. As martin Luther asked in 1517, “Why does not the pope empty purgatory, for the sake of holy love and of the dire need of the souls that are there, if he redeems an infinite number of souls for the sake of miserable money with which to build a Church? The former reasons would be most just; the latter is most trivial.” (#82 from Luther’s 95 Theses).*2 Said in modern speak, “If the Pope can let people out of purgatory, he ought to do so because he loves people, not to simply make money or drive people to visit an attraction.”

Sources:

*1 Telegraph Article: http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/main.jhtml?xml=/news/2007/12/06/wpope106.xml
*2 Luther’s 95 Theses: http://www.iclnet.org/pub/resources/text/wittenberg/luther/web/ninetyfive.html

Every so often, something will happen in the entertainment world that will draw strong reaction from the Christian community. Remember the outcry against “The Da Vinci Code?” Warranted or not, these reactions from the community of faith have often done more to heighten curiosity about the offending pieces than to turn people away from them. And, just in case you think Christians are the only ones guilty of decrying something in entertainment only to make it wildly popular, do not forget that Mel Gibson’s “The Passion of the Christ” was a movie that no one, and I mean no one, expected to make the kind of cash or stir the kind of discussion that it did.

Now stand back, hold your breath, and watch what happens when New Line Cinema’s “The Golden Compass” hits screens. The controversy is already brewing. Articles, Blog entries, and radio talk shows (not to mention way too many emails) have already been devoted to the discussion of the movie which is based on a series of novels by atheistic (or at least militantly agnostic) author Philip Pullman.

Before we find ourselves swept up in this controversy, perhaps it would be good for Christians to look before we leap. Let’s take a moment to think clearly about the film, the book, and our reaction. At this point, without seeing an advanced screening of the film, I can only comment based on the writings of those who have already seen it. Word on the street is that the film, while maintaining some of its religious material, is a somewhat sanitized telling of Pullman’s story.

The stronger concern that I have been hearing expressed is that the movie could lead to a spike in the popularity of Pullman’s His Dark Materials trilogy, of which The Golden Compass is the first book. In that series of books, Pullman presents a world in which the mission of the main characters is to overturn the concept of original sin. In Pullman’s mind, sin is what makes us who we are, and most certainly should not be thought of as bad. The author considers the church to be an evil institution which tears the very souls away from people by trying to turn them away from sin, autonomy, and human sexuality and toward the principles of a tottering yet tyrannical deity.

So, what about our reaction? First, as Southern Baptist Theological Seminary president, R. Albert Mohler, wrote on his web site (www.albertmohler.com):

A good first step would be to take a deep breath. The Christian faith is not about to be toppled by a film, nor by a series of fantasy books. Pullman has an agenda that is clear, and Christians need to inform themselves of what this agenda is and what it means. At the same time, nothing would serve his agenda better than to have Christians speaking recklessly or unintelligently about the film or the books.

We must be careful. If we, as believers, work ourselves into a tizzy over this movie, we are likely to make ourselves look like the false caricature of the church that Pullman describes in his books. We must find a better response.

And there is a better response. It has been said that the best way to contradict a falsehood is not to attack the lie, but to present the truth better. Christians, we must do a better job of showing the world the truth of who God is than Pullman does in presenting a false view of Christianity. God is our loving Creator. We have rebelled against his perfect standards, to our own harm. God has graciously provided the means for our forgiveness through the sacrificial death of his son, Jesus Christ. And this loving God offers us the highest of all possible joys, the joy of experiencing his beauty and glory for eternity, if we will but turn from our self-destructive ways and receive his grace through faith.

On Tuesday, October 23, the Olney Baptist Association passed the following resolution as part of its annual meeting:

Concerning integrity in church membership

Whereas the Baptist Faith and Message states that the Scriptures are “the supreme standard by which all human conduct, creeds, and religious opinions should be tried” (Article 1); and

whereas life in a local church should be characterized by loving discipline as the Bible teaches in passages like Matthew 18:15-18, 1 Corinthians 5 and Titus 3:10-11; and

whereas the ideal of a regenerate church membership has long been and remains a cherished Baptist principle as described in Article VI of the Baptist Faith and Message; now, therefore, be it

resolved that the messengers of the Olney Baptist Association urge the churches of our association to repent of our failure to maintain responsible church membership, and be it further

resolved that we urge the churches of the Olney Baptist Association to repent of the widespread failure among us to obey Jesus Christ in the practice of lovingly correcting wayward church members (Matthew 18:15-18), and be it further

resolved that we plead with pastors and church leaders to lead their churches to study and implement our Lord’s teachings on this essential church practice, and be it further

resolved that we encourage associational servants to support and encourage churches that seek to recover and implement our Savior’s teachings on church discipline, especially when such efforts result in the reduction in the number of members that are reported in those churches, and be it finally

resolved that we commit to pray for our churches as they seek to honor the Lord Jesus Christ through reestablishing integrity to church membership and to the reporting of statistics in the Annual Church Profile.

* * *

While the language, to some, might seem a bit lofty, it is doubtful that the Olney Baptist Association could have passed a more important resolution during our annual meeting. By passing this resolution, the messengers of the OBA unanimously declared that it is inappropriate for our churches to continue with our present practice of membership. We agreed together that we must do something about the outrageous discrepancy between official church membership and actual church participation.

What does all this mean? First and foremost, it means that our churches have been urged by their association meeting in annual session to repent of our failure to rightly handle our churches’ membership. We are to make it a priority to seek out those who are officially our church members, but who, for whatever reason, are no longer actively participating in our churches. We are to follow the clear biblical understanding that only believers be allowed to be considered members of a local church. We are to call those who are living in sin by refusing to participate in the life of any local church to repentance. We are to urge our churches and their leaders to be honest and accurate in reporting statistics to our state and national agencies. We are to take responsibility for those who have placed themselves under the care of the local church, even if that responsibility means that we involve them in loving church discipline as commanded by the scriptures.

If you understand what all this means, you will recognize that the above resolution has the potential to have a major impact on the OBA as well as all those associated with us. If our churches will follow this resolution, some of them may have their membership statistics drastically decreased. However, if we will follow this resolution faithfully, we will also have churches which are more honest to the association, to the church itself, and to the community around them. We will more faithfully honor Christ by seeking out the sheep who have strayed. I think it is doubtless that we will find our churches blessed by God as we seek to faithfully care for all of our church members.