06/09/2024 – Discussion input for 06/06/2024 – Day 004 – Psalm 1 – 2 questions. // Post 2 of 2
Categories :
Christian Apologetics
- Since God is sovereign, why doesn’t He just send Christ to crush all rebellion and end all this suffering?
- We could go all the way back to the Garden and Satan tempting Adam and Eve to sin. He could have crushed Satan on the spot. But God is Holy, he cannot live with sin, that would be contrary to His very essence. He had a plan for more than just two souls. So God allows what He hates in order that the greatest good, His will, is realized. He could have made us all robots but that would remove our free will, and His love would not allow that either.
2. Can a person accept Christ as Savior without accepting Him as Lord? Cite biblical support.
- To be saved, a person must not only profess Jesus as Lord with his or her mouth, but have a willingness to follow him. Matthew 7:21, Jesus warns, “Not everyone who says to Me, ‘Lord, Lord,’ shall enter the kingdom of heaven, but he who does the will of my Father in heaven.” // Romans 10:9: “If you confess with your mouth the Lord Jesus and believe in your heart that God has raised Him from the dead, you will be saved.” To confess, represent a commitment to live according to the teachings of Jesus Christ. // Jesus asks in Luke 6:46: “Why do you call Me ‘Lord, Lord,” and do not do the things which I say?’ Note, we are saved by grace, not by our works. But we cannot possibly have a fully-committed heart for God, and not have it reflected in our daily walk.
3. – How would you answer a critic who said, “If God is sovereign over everything, then He is the author of evil”?
- To be the “author of evil” is to be “evil”. God is unfathomably Holy, we cannot conceive of it. (see answer #1 above)
4. God’s wrath seems like an outmoded concept in our day. How can we get people to take it seriously?
- How? Prayer!
- Take a look at Isaac Watt’s quote in the earlier post today : He said that with one notable exception, all others that he had witnessed to in his life to that point : “have come within my notice have rather first awakened to fly from the wrath to come through the passion of fear.”
- For those few that approach it logically, I would suggest “Pascal’s Wager.”
- God’s wrath does not necessarily lead to hell. God has poured out His wrath on His covenant people, the nation of Israel. Why, because he loves them, and that path leads to redemption. Remove wrath and you remove love as well.
- Now with respect to hell, I will share with you just a few bullet points from my “Pocket Handbook of Christian Apologetics”, pgs. 106 through 110 :
- “To believe there is no hell presupposes that both Scripture and the Church lie, for both clearly teach the reality of hell.
- “If Scripture and the Church do not lie about what Jesus said about hell, then it presupposes that Jesus is the liar. For he was far more explicit and adamant about hell than anyone else in Scripture.”
- “If there is no hell, Christ is not only a deceptive teacher but a wicked one, for he terrifies us needlessly, falsely and harmfully.”
- “If we drop hell because it is unbearable to us, that presupposes the principle that we can change whatever doctrines we find unbearable or unacceptable; in other words, that doctrine is negotiable. Christianity then becomes a human ideology, not a divine revelation.”
- “If there is no hell, then salvation is universal and automatic. If salvation is universal and automatic, then ultimately there is no free will. Free will and hell go together, scratch at the idea of free will and you will find underneath it the possibility of hell.”
- “If salvation is automatic, Christ’s sacrificial death was a stupid mistake, a tragic accident.”
- “Why do we believe that God is love? Not by philosophical reasoning. What logic can prove that the perfect, self-contained , independent Reality, who has no needs, nevertheless loves these superfluous creatures of his so much that he became one of them to suffer and die for them?
Soli Deo Gloria!