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How Can I Know Which Bible Promises Apply to Me?

Because of two recent posts on wrongly applying biblical promises to ourselves (Jeremiah 29:11 and Exodus 14:14), we’ve been receiving questions about how to determine which promises do apply to us.

The most basic place to start is to look at what is said to New Covenant believers versus those who were under the specific terms of the Mosaic Covenant with its promised blessings and curses. If a promise was made as a term of the Mosaic Covenant (for example, that they would have good crops if they obeyed the Covenant’s commands), then that is not part of our Covenant. However, we can learn much about who God is from how He dealt with people in the Mosaic Covenant, and His character does not change. From His dealings with people in the Old Testament, we learn that He is just, that He is gracious, that He loves undeservedly, that He’s trustworthy and faithful to those He’s covenanted with, that He has their ultimate good in mind, that He’s working everything together for His plan to glorify Himself and redeem the world. God doesn’t change, so what we learn about Him in the Old Testament is still true of Him today. The only question is about how He promises to act today on those characteristics of love, grace, etc.

When we get to the New Covenant, we see these same characteristics of God play out in terms of the New Covenant. For example, “because of His great love with which He loved us,” and by His grace, we’re reconciled to God through Christ’s death on the cross and are made alive with Him; we are given the Holy Spirit as a secure pledge of God’s faithful covenant with us (Ephesians 1–2). (All who are united to Christ are also heirs of the promises made by grace to Abraham—Galatians 3:15–29.) The particular promises and commands of this Covenant may be different, but His character is the same. We know specifically that His love, grace, wisdom, and purpose are directed towards making His people like Christ (Romans 8:29), and that everything in our lives is working towards that end good (Romans 8:28). It’s the trustworthy character of God that we cling to throughout this difficult life, regardless of whether He heals us or increases our “crops.”

So when reading the Old Testament, we look to see what we can learn about God in any given passage. Who is He? What is He like? How does He treat His people? In terms of promises, the biggest promise of the Bible is the promise of who God is. This is the promise we depend on. We find we have cancer? We trust the promise that God is good, that He’s sovereign over history, that He loves us, and that He seeks the good of His people. We can’t trust that He’ll heal us (that isn’t always the greatest good for us and for God’s kingdom), but we can trust that God is good and sovereign, and that our suffering has a purpose.

Always look for what you can learn about God through His dealings with human beings throughout the Bible. When God makes promises about who He is, that always applies. When God promises to give something specific, look more closely at the context to see if He’s promising it in a unique situation (or under the terms of the Mosaic Covenant).

Here’s how I would apply that approach in the case of Jeremiah 29:11. In Jeremiah 29:11, we learn that God cares for His people and doesn’t abandon them, and that He hasn’t abandoned them even if it seems everything has gone wrong in their lives. We see that His good purposes are still moving forward, even when everything looks grim. This, we can cling to, because it’s an understanding of God’s character, which doesn’t change. What we can’t cling to is the specific outworking of God’s character in that unique biblical situation. That is, in that particular situation, God’s goodness and wisdom decreed that He would bring back those who were exiled to Babylon, saying, “I will restore your fortunes and gather you from all the nations.” But in a different situation, God’s goodness and wisdom may decree something different. John the Baptist was beheaded, not released from jail (Matthew 14:1–12). Stephen was stoned, not saved (Acts 7:54–60).

We can’t trust that things will work out the way we hope they will. However, throughout any and every situation, we trust in God—that He is loving, powerful, wise, and committed to the good of His people—and we trust His promise that everything is working towards the good of making us more like Christ. For these reasons, we take whatever comes our way, and we depend on Him when we go through suffering.

If you’d like to learn more about how to read and interpret the Bible, How to Read the Bible for All Its Worth and Playing with Fire: How the Bible Ignites Change in Your Soul are great places to start.

 

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Challenge Response: There Is No Evidence for God

Here's my response to this week's challenge:

You’ll Never Outgrow Your Need to Meet with God

This article by Donald Whitney on the danger of drifting away from a daily time of communion with God through Bible reading and prayer is true and scary, but also strangely motivating and encouraging. It’s a reminder that something real is happening when you meet with God daily. An excerpt from “Spiritual Disciplines and the Sinkhole Syndrome”:

As the pressures of life increase and more deadlines loom, it becomes harder to maintain time for the devotional life. And herein is where the erosion begins.

At the outset it’s likely that very few will know when the hidden part of your spiritual life begins crumbling. Just as imperceptible movements of water underground can carry away the earth beneath long before anyone on the surface perceives it, so the pressures of life can secretly displace the soil of our private spiritual disciplines long before the impact of their absence is visible to others. The more public parts of a Christian’s life, such as church involvement and various forms of ministry, can often continue with little observable change right up until the awful moment of collapse and the hypocrisy is revealed….

Never be deceived by the temptation to think that with the increasing spiritual maturity you expect to come with age, the less you will need to feast your soul on Christ through the Bible and prayer. What Jesus prayed in John 17:17 for all His followers—“Sanctify them in the truth; your word is truth”—applies to us all throughout our lives.

I just finished Matt Papa’s Look and Live, and I recommend it to you if you need a jump start for your devotional time.

Soundbite of the Week: Does Jeremiah 29:11 Apply to Us Today?

Greg explains how we should never read just one Bible verse to understand it's true meaning and purpose. We need to read the context. 

Sometimes We Suffer Like Lazarus, Not Job

Author and apologist Nabeel Qureshi asked for our prayers when he announced this week that he has advanced stomach cancer. This is difficult news. Soon after I heard, I came across “Waiting to Die,” a deeply honest post written by Michael Patton of Credo House when it seemed his own death was imminent, reminding us that sometimes we suffer like Lazarus (the one in Jesus’ parable), not Job, without restoration or any humanly discernible good resulting. As he says, “God sometimes does kill us.”

So many times we see our suffering through the lens of Job and not Lazarus. Job lost everything but eventually got it all back, and more. We think to ourselves that what God has taken he will restore or use it mightily for his kingdom. We have seen it a thousand times. God turns so much water into wine. He takes our lives of anguish and uses it to lift others up (2 Cor. 1:4). I don’t know how many times that I have turned to the suffering of Job to be encouraged. David’s time in the mire of doubt, lifts me out of the mire. John the Baptist asking if Jesus was really the Christ lets me know I am not alone. I have always gravitated toward other Christians who spoke about their dark side with openness. It brings purpose to their pain. That is the Job story. It is very real. God does often bring us through trials so that we can, once restored, display the fortitude and resilience of our faith to others.

However, there is also pitiful Lazarus. He was thrown at the gate of the rich man (probably because his friends did not know what else to do with him), begging for food, and watching as the dogs lick his sores. In the eyes of the Jewish people of the day, he was one who God had abandoned. He was never healed. He was not restored. We find nothing in the story about him using his pain to help others. He wrote no books about how to deal with suffering. He did not blog daily about how he was keeping the faith. He just died. He was waiting to die and then died. Alone, with the dogs licking his sores, he assumed room temperature. And most shocking of all, his name (a rhetorical device in the parable) means “God helps.” The rich man (at whose gate he was thrown) had everything: money, honor, and respect. And he was even a splendidly happy guy. He was the one everyone thought God was helping, but he remains unnamed (another rhetorical device). “God helps” died at the gate without ever preaching one sermon….

[S]ometimes we do suffer, endure, go through trials and then we simply die. This does not mean our suffering was gratuitous in any way. God holds closely his secret council in which he allows for pain and kills for his sake his children. We don’t have to know the reason why. We just keep the faith.

We keep the faith because of the cross. On the cross, God showed His great love for us—the Father by giving His son, the Son by sacrificing His life and suffering the Father’s wrath, the Spirit by graciously applying this work to us, turning God’s undeserving, rebellious enemies into His children. God showed His wisdom and sovereignty by bringing history to that intended point. He showed His power by raising Jesus from the dead.

He had a purpose for the evil Jesus suffered at the hands of men. He has a purpose for all that you suffer, even if, like Lazarus, you suffer and then die without restoration in this life, without understanding why.

We keep the faith through suffering because of all that God revealed of Himself on the cross. Look to the cross.

Three Common Objections to the Personhood of the Holy Spirit

In my last post, I outlined a straightforward and concise argument for why Christians believe the Holy Spirit is a person. Namely, I demonstrated from Scripture that the Holy Spirit has a will, a mind, and emotions. Since these are the attributes of persons, not impersonal forces, it is better to understand the Holy Spirit as a person.

Let’s now turn to the three objections that were offered to me in response to my case.

The Holy Spirit language is a personification. My Witness guests did not attempt to deal with the specific texts that I presented; rather, they dismissed these verses as personifications. A personification is when personal qualities are attributed to something impersonal. They admitted that some passages appear to portray the Holy Spirit as a person, but said this is merely a literary device.

There are many problems with this response. First, it is a blanket assertion that ignores the specific context of the personhood passages. This response does not even attempt to honestly exegete each passage.

Second, it assumes what needs to be proved. When a Jehovah’s Witness comes to a straightforward personhood passage (e.g. 1 Cor. 12:11; Rom. 8:27; and Eph. 4:30), they assert that it must be a personification. But how do they know it’s a personification? Because they have already assumed the Holy Spirit is an impersonal force. This is reasoning in a circle. Jehovah’s Witnesses need to show that the Holy Spirit is an impersonal force before they can even begin talking about supposed personifications. But this is exactly what they cannot do.

Third, there are many instances that cannot be explained away by a personification. For example, what does it mean to grieve (Eph. 4:30), or to blaspheme (Matt. 12:32), or to lie to (Acts 5:3), a personified impersonal force? In addition, the Holy Spirit speaks to individuals at historical events. For example, in a meeting at the church at Antioch, the Holy Spirit says, “Set apart for me Barnabas and Saul for the work to which I have called them” (Acts 13:2). This is the Holy Spirit using person pronouns of Himself. It appears the Spirit thought Himself to be a person, not a personification.

The Holy Spirit lacks a name. My Witness guests were adamant that if the Holy Spirit is a person, then He would have a name. They stated, “Since no name is mentioned, the Holy Spirit is not a person.”

This is a deeply fallacious argument. Just because the Holy Spirit is not given a personal name in the New Testament, that does not mean He isn’t a person. Spiritual beings are not usually named in the Bible, but that doesn’t mean they aren’t persons. For example, at the beginning of Jesus’ earthly ministry, Jesus heals a man with an unclean spirit (Luke 4:31-36). Notice that this demon is both unnamed and a person. Furthermore, spirits are routinely identified by a particular characteristic. This was an unclean spirit.

In the same way, the Holy Spirit is identified by His chief characteristic: holiness. If the Holy Spirit can’t be a person because we don’t know His personal name, then all the angels and demons in the Bible who are unnamed can’t be persons either.

The Holy Spirit fills people. My Witness guests offered one last argument. If people are filled with the Holy Spirit, then the Holy Spirit cannot be a person. “How can one person be filled with another person?” they asked. “It makes more sense to be filled with an impersonal force.”

Again, this argument is demonstrably false. As already discussed, undisputed spiritual persons, like unclean spirits, have the ability to enter into human persons. This doesn’t disqualify them as persons, so why would it disqualify the Holy Spirit?

Moreover, our personal God is said to fill things. If God’s presence can fill the temple (2 Chron. 5:14), or fill the whole earth (Num. 14:21), then why is it so hard to believe that the Holy Spirit could fill believers? In fact, Paul calls our bodies the “the temple of the Holy Spirit” (1 Cor. 6:19).

These responses were very instructive. Rather than address explicit texts raised against their view, the Jehovah’s Witnesses I spoke to relied on circular reasoning and demonstrably false argumentation. The Watchtower position that the Holy Spirit is an impersonal force simply cannot be supported by the testimony of Scripture.

Why Believe the Holy Spirit Is a Person?

A week ago I had two friendly Jehovah’s Witnesses over for what turned out to be a two-hour conversation. You can read more about that experience here. One of the topics that my Witness guests kept coming back to was the Holy Spirit. Jehovah’s Witnesses do not believe that the Holy Spirit is the third person of the Godhead. Instead, they believe that the Holy Spirit is an impersonal active force.

In our conversation, they were adamant about talking about the Holy Spirit. They repeatedly told me that the Holy Spirit is never referred to as a distinct person. This led me to ask a question, what attributes would distinguish a person from an impersonal force? Or, to ask the question a different way, does the Holy Spirit have the attributes of personhood?

There are three primary characteristics of personhood: will, mind, and emotions. It should be obvious that a force, like gravity or electromagnetism, cannot possess these properties. However, the New Testament demonstrates that the Holy Spirit has a will, a mind, and emotions. For simplicity, I walked through one example of each with my guests.

The Holy Spirit has a will. Paul tells us in 1 Corinthians 12:11 that the Holy Spirit distributes spiritual gifts as He wills. Paul writes, “All these are empowered by one and the same Spirit, who apportions to each one individually as He wills.” It is clear from the context that it is the Holy Spirit who makes the decision about what gift each respective Christian receives. An impersonal force does not have the ability to make decisions. This is an attribute of persons, not impersonal forces.

The Holy Spirit has a mind. In Romans 8, Paul describes how the Holy Spirit intercedes (or prays) for believers. He says, “Likewise the Spirit helps us in our weakness. For we do not know what to pray for as we ought, but the Spirit himself intercedes for us with groanings too deep for words. And He who searches hearts knows what is the mind of the Spirit, because the Spirit intercedes for the saints according to the will of God” (Rom. 8:26–27). In verse 27, we are told that God the Father knows the mind of the Spirit. An impersonal force does not have a mind and, therefore, could not intercede for believers. This passage only makes sense if the Holy Spirit is a person.

The Holy Spirit has emotions. Probably the most conclusive passage on this point is Ephesians 4:30. Paul states, “And do not grieve the Holy Spirit of God, by whom you were sealed for the day of redemption.” How does one grieve an impersonal force? Grief is an emotion that is experienced by a person, not a force. Yet, Paul tells us explicitly that we cause the Holy Spirit to grieve when we commit sins.

After going through these three clear passages, I had one question. If the Holy Spirit has a will that decides (1 Cor. 12:11), a mind that thinks (Rom. 8:27), and emotions that feel (Eph. 4:30), how can anyone rationally claim the Holy Spirit is an impersonal force?

What happened next is very telling. Rather than deal with the argument that I presented, my Witness guests offered three challenges by way of response. In my next post, I will walk through their three responses that I received to this argument and how I responded.

If you want to learn more about witnessing to Jehovah’s Witnesses, read my Solid Ground article titled “Ready for the Knock on Your Door.” You may also want to watch this video on the same subject.

Discussing “17 Points of the True Church” with Mormons

If you’ve ever spent time speaking with a Mormon missionary before, you may have been handed a card listing the “17 Points of the True Church.” Here are the points many Mormons think ought to determine for us which church is the true one:

1. Christ organized the Church. (Eph 4:11–14)
2. The true church must bear the name of Jesus Christ. (Eph 5:23)
3. The true church must have a foundation of Apostles and Prophets. (Eph 2:19–20)
4. The true church must have the same organization as Christ’s Church. (Eph 4:11–14)
5. The true church must claim divine authority. (Heb 5:4–10)
6. The true church must have no paid ministry. (Acts 20:33–34, John 10:11–13)
7. The true church must baptize by immersion. (Matt 3:13–16)
8. The true church must bestow the gift of the Holy Ghost by the laying on of hands. (Acts 8:14–17)
9. The true church must practice divine healing. (Mark 3:14–15)
10. The true church must teach that God and Jesus are separate and distinct individuals. (John 17:11, 20:17)
11. The true church must teach that God and Jesus have bodies of flesh and bone. (Luke 23:36–39, Acts 1:9–11, Heb 1:1–3)
12. The officers must be called by God. (Heb 5:4, Ex 28:1, 40:13–16)
13. The true church must claim revelation from God. (Amos 3:7)
14. The true church must be a missionary church. (Matt 28:19–20)
15. The true church must be a restored church. (Acts 3:19–20)
16. The true church must practice baptism for the dead. (1Cor 15:16, 29)
17. “By their fruits ye shall know them.” (Matt 7:20)

To help people use this LDS list as a starting point for discussions, I created a second list of 17 points. Some of the points are direct responses to their numerical counterparts on the LDS list, and some bring in ideas not mentioned on the LDS list that are unique to Christianity and not shared by Mormons. Since each list includes aspects of the unique theology of its group, by going through their list and ours and examining the context of the verses cited, you can quickly move into deep and meaningful conversations with your LDS friends. (Download a card-sized version to print and cut out here.)

1. The true church must base its doctrine on what the Bible teaches. (2 Tim 3:16–17, 2 Pet 1:21, Ps 12:6)
2. The true church must teach there is only one God. (Isa 43:10, Isa 44:6, Isa 44:8)
3. The true church must teach that God has been God from all eternity. (Ps 90:2, Mal 3:6, Jas 1:17)
4. The true church must worship only one God (the LORD, Jehovah). (Ex 34:14)
5. The true church must teach that God does not have a physical body. (John 4:24, Luke 24:39, 1 Kings 8:27, John 1:18, 1 Tim 1:17)
6. The church must teach that within the one being of God there are three Persons. (Matt 3:16–17, Matt 28:19–20)
7. The true church must teach that the eternal, fully divine person of Jesus took on a human nature when He came to Earth. (Phil 2:5–8, John 1:14)
8. The true church must worship Jesus. (Matt 28:9, Matt 2:11)
9. The true church teaches that the Gospel is: Christ died for our sins, was buried, and rose again on the third day. (1 Cor 15:1–4)
10. The true church teaches that when you believe the Gospel, you receive the Holy Spirit, you are born again, and He makes you into a new creation. (Acts 10:36–45, John 3:1–8, 2 Cor 5:17)
11. The true church teaches that a trusting belief in Christ is all one needs to be saved to eternal life with God. (Acts 16:30–31, John 6:28–29, 1 John 5:11–12)
12. The true church must not teach that eternal life with the Father can be reached only after doing certain works. (Eph 2:8–9, Rom 11:6, Gal 3:2–3)
13. The true church must not make the issue of what we eat or drink a requirement of the Gospel. (Mark 7:18–20, Rom 14:14–18, Col 2:13–17)
14. The true chruch must teach that we are forgiven of our sins when we confess them. (1 John 1:9, Heb 10:10, 14–18)
15. The LORD commands his people to financially support those devoted to ministry. (Num 18:8–24, Luke 10:2–7, 1 Cor 9:7–14, 1 Tim 5:17–18)
16. The true Church was established by Jesus, has never been overcome, but has existed on the earth throughout all generations since Jesus. (Matt 16:18, Eph 3:21)
17. The true church must compare all new revelation with the Bible and reject whatever disagrees. (Deut 13:1–3, Gal 1:8, Isa 8:19–20, 1 Thes 5:21, Acts 17:11)

For more discussion of the LDS 17 points, see Alpha and Omega Ministries and Mormonism Research Ministry. See also these related articles on the differences between LDS and Christian doctrine:

• LDS View of Atonement Clarified
• Is God an Exalted Man?
• LDS Test Is Necessary, Not Sufficient
• Is Mormonism Just Another Christian Denomination?
• “Mormons Aren't Christians” Is Not an Epithet

Challenge Response: There’s a Contradiction at the Core of Christianity

Here's my response to this week's challenge: