Stand to Reason Blog

Bible Translation Standards for Muslim Audiences

Alan and Greg wrote about the "Insider Movement," a missions movement that, in some circles, has gone beyond contextualizing the Gospel to compromising key elements of doctrine.  In attempts to remove the stumbling block that Jesus is the Son of God - a particularly offensive concept to Muslims - some Bible translations were actually changing the meaning of Bible passages with divine familial references.  Mission groups have begun to look into this and one, the Summer Institute of Linguistics, has issued new guidelines for their translators.

What are the top three arguments for Jesus' resurrection? (Video)

What are the top three arguments for Jesus' resurrection?

May Solid Ground - Two Miracles

In this month’s Solid Ground, Greg weaves two themes together with a third:  Death was the goal of the incarnation, but it wasn’t the end of the story.  A miracle followed.  Further, the death itself was no ordinary death, but rather a miracle all on its own.

Two miracles.  The first one left a corpse.  The second one brought life.  It’s an appropriate topic for our 20th anniversary edition of Solid Ground since verything we’ve done at STR for 20 years has been predicated on these two miracles.

Challenge: God Doesn't Care What We Believe

The challenge this week is a quote I found on Debunking Christianity:

What religious diversity shows us is that, if gods exist, they don't care what humans believe... any god worth their title could tweak things so that humans believed whatever they wanted them to believe if belief was important to them, and would have no one to blame but themselves if they were disappointed.... So either no gods exist, or they are fine with religious wars, misinterpretation, conflicting beliefs, and so forth.

Does religious diversity prove that God doesn't care what we believe? This seems to be related to another very common objection that we've discussed here before. If you can figure out which one, you'll have a head start! Tell us how you would respond to a friend who said this to you, and then we'll hear from Brett on Thursday.

[View Brett's video response.]

A Quick Summary of the Bible (Video)

How would you give a quick summary of the Bible for someone who doesn’t know what it’s about?

Why Is a Good God More Plausible Than an Evil God? (Video)

Why is a good God more plausible than an evil God?

Is Doubt a Sin? (Video)

Is doubt a sin?

How Tim Keller Made Peace with the Wrath of God

“My Father, if it is possible, let this cup pass from Me; yet not as I will, but as You will” (Matthew 26:39).

In a sermon titled “The Dark Garden,” Tim Keller explains how he came to understand that a god without wrath and Hell is not as loving as the God we find in the Bible:

Because [a cup of poison] was the method of execution for many people,…the Hebrew prophets came to use the cup as a metaphor for the wrath of God on human evil…. For example…Isaiah 54: “You will drink the cup of His fury and stagger.” So the reason why [Christian martyrs] who died for what they believed in didn’t die the way Jesus is dying—didn’t fall to the ground, didn’t find this horror coming down—was that they didn’t face the cup. They didn’t face the justice of God against all human wickedness and evil, which was just about to come down on [Jesus]….

It was in the Garden of Gethsemane that I came finally to grips—I made my peace, as it were—with the wrath of God. Now, it might shock some of you that…a preaching minister was struggling with the very idea of a God of wrath, a God who sends people to Hell…. And then it was studying the Garden of Gethsemane when I finally came to peace with it because I realized this: The reason why people get rid of the idea of Hell and wrath is because they want a loving God…. They say, “I can’t believe in Hell and wrath because I want a more loving God.” And I came to realize in the Garden of Gethsemane that if you get rid of the idea of Hell and wrath, you have a less loving God.

Because if there is no wrath by God on sin, and there is no such thing as Hell, not only does that actually make what happened to Jesus inexplicable—Jesus staggering the way He is, asking God, “Is there any other way?” [and] sweating blood means that He was wimpier than hundreds of His followers, if there was nothing like [God’s wrath]—but…the main thing is, if you don’t believe in the wrath and Hell, it trivializes what He’s done…. If you get rid of a God who has wrath and Hell, you’ve got a god who loves us in general, but that’s not as loving as the God of the Bible, the God of Jesus Christ, who loves us with a costly love.

Look what it cost. Look what He did. Look what He was taking. You get rid of wrath and Hell, He’s not taking anything close to this. And therefore, what you’ve done is you’ve just turned His incredible act of love into just something very trivial, very small….

And by the way, if the anticipation of these sufferings—if the very taste of these sufferings—sent the Son of God into shock, what must it have been to drink them to the bottom?

We see the height of God's costly love in what He did to give us grace, but you can't know the beauty of this grace—the very concept of grace will be meaningless to you—if you reject the rightness of His justice.

Our Certificate of Debt

On the cross, Jesus fulfilled the Law of Moses by satisfying the demands of it.  By doing that He paid our certificates of debt we each earned.

The certificate of debt is a concept that lies behind Paul's comments about the certificate of debt in Colossians 2:13-14:  And when you were dead in your transgressions and the uncircumcision of your flesh, He made you alive together with Him, having forgiven us all our transgressions, having canceled out the certificate of debt consisting of decrees against us and which was hostile to us; and He has taken it out of the way, having nailed it to the cross.

In Roman times, this certificate was a list of crimes committed against the state that required "payment," much like an indictment in our legal system today.   The Romans gave Jesus a certificate of debt when He was sentenced to die; it was nailed to the cross:  "Jesus the Nazarene, the King of the Jews" (John 19:19).  When the crimes were paid for, the certificate was canceled and was stamped with the word tetelestai, meaning "paid in full."

Paul says that Jesus "canceled out" (paid) our certificate of debt (v14).

Jesus' last words, His victory cry on the cross was, "It is finished!", literally in Greek was "tetelestai!" "He said, 'It is finished!' And He bowed His head and gave up His spirit." (John 19:30).  "Paid in full."  What was finished?  His work of redemption paying for our certificates of debt against God.

Ancient Myths vs. the Bible

In Tom Gilson’s review of John N. Oswalt’s The Bible Among the Myths: Unique Revelation or Just Ancient Literature?, he lists some of the key differences between the God of the Bible and the gods of the myths:

I have asked in the past how the ancient Hebrews could have been so far ahead of their time. The Bible Among the Myths extends the question: how could they have been so utterly different from every other culture in history? For the contrasts are great. Oswalt identifies these common (if not universal) features of myth, contrasted with the Genesis view:

• Cyclical time: there is a lack of definite beginning and no clear direction to reality (with no one to give it direction). The Bible speaks of history with a beginning, with progress, and with a destination.
• Nature symbolizing the divine. The Bible specifically rejects this.
• The significance of magic, specifically the use of ritual and/or manipulations of matter to cause predictable results in the realm of deity. This, too, is nowhere to be found in biblical religion.
• Obsession with fertility and potency, often expressed in religious (temple-based, even) prostitution of every base description. God is not sexual, nor is the religion he revealed.
• Polytheism: obviously not the case for biblical theism.
• The use of images in worship: expressly forbidden in the Ten Commandments.
• Eternity of chaotic matter: see above; not so in the Bible.
• Low view of the gods, who are more powerful than humans but no better ethically; the Bible depicts God as perfectly holy, just, loving, and righteous.

There is considerably more….

The God of the Bible is “serenely supreme,” unable to be manipulated, and perfectly moral. It’s not hard to see why cultures wouldn’t make up a God like this. A being who is before all and knows all, and who can’t be swayed from His righteousness and justice, is a frightening one. Frightening, that is, without grace.

I think the most amazingly unique thing about the true God is the way He solved the justice/grace problem—that is, without compromising His perfect justice, without lowering His standards, without denying one ounce of the evil of our sin, “because of His great love with which He loved us,” He executed His perfect justice and secured for us the benefits of His self-giving grace in one action on the cross.

On his own, no man ever came up with the brilliant, game-changing truth that God is both just and the justifier.