Category Archives: Heaven

Bible Interpretation, Books of the Bible, Heaven, Salvation, Strong Calvinism

What Is the Purpose of the Tests in 1 John? Part 2

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Post Author: Bill Pratt 

In part 1 we saw that the tests in 1 John cannot be about justification, about being born again. Joseph Dillow, in his book The Reign of the Servant Kings, explains what he believes the purpose of John’s letter is, and therefore the purpose of the tests.

Where is John’s purpose to be found?

It is found where one would often find a purpose statement in a book or letter, in the opening paragraph (1 Jn. 1:3):

“What we have seen and heard we proclaim to you also, that you may have fellowship with us; and indeed our fellowship is with the Father, and with His Son Jesus Christ (NASB).”

His purpose in writing to these regenerate people is so that they may walk in fellowship with God! As Braune puts it, “The manifest purpose of the Apostle [is] to preserve his readers in the fellowship with God.”

He is not writing to test their salvation; he is writing so that his “joy may be made complete” (1 Jn. 1:4). His joy was present; it had “begun” because they had been born again. But he wants to complete this joy by seeing them walk in fellowship. The completion of his joy does not refer to his desire to obtain assurance that they are really saved, but as the apostle himself explains, “I have no greater joy than this, to hear that my children are walking in the truth.” He wants to rejoice that his saved children are walking in the truth!

Dillow reminds us what Jesus told his disciples:

Jesus used the term in the same way when He addressed His regenerate disciples: “If you love Me, keep My commandments. . . . These things I have spoken to you, that My joy may be in you, and that your joy may be made full” (Jn. 15:11-12). To have one’s joy “made full” is not to become a Christian but, being a Christian already, to act like it!

What hasn’t been mentioned so far, but is covered extensively in Dillow’s book, is the fact that John is also writing this letter to counter Gnostic teachings that have influenced his readers. Gnostic teaching is not putting believers in danger of losing their salvation, but it is putting their fellowship with Christ in danger. In other words, their justification is not the issue, but their sanctification.

Dillow concludes:

How can [John] know they are walking in the truth, and how can they know it in the face of the confusion introduced into their midst by the Gnostics? The Gnostics were maintaining that a child of God could have sin in his life and still be in fellowship, abiding in Christ! The remaining portions of [1 John] . . . present several tests of whether or not a Christian is walking in fellowship with God, tests by which the falsity of the Gnostic teaching could be discerned. They are not tests of whether or not these born-again children are really Christians.

Bible Interpretation, Books of the Bible, Heaven, Salvation, Strong Calvinism

What Is the Purpose of the Tests in 1 John? Part 1

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Post Author: Bill Pratt 

In the previous blog post we argued from Joseph Dillow’s book, The Reign of the Servant Kings, that John’s intended audience in 1 John are true Christian believers who have been born again and regenerated by the Holy Spirit. If this is the case, then how are we to interpret all of the tests John gives his readers in the epistle?

Dillow explains that some theologians misunderstand the purpose of the letter.

It is common to seek the purpose of John’s epistle in his closing words: “These things I have written to you who believe in the name of the Son of God, in order that you may know that you have eternal life” (1 Jn. 5:13 NKJV).

According to the [strong Calvinist] interpretation, then, John writes to give believers several tests by which they can reflect upon whether or not they are saved. If they pass these tests, then they are truly saved. However, such a view of the purpose of the epistle depends entirely on the interpretation of the tests.

Are these tests of life, tests of whether or not one is born again, or tests of whether or not one is walking in fellowship with God? One cannot assume the former, which is the very point in question, and then use that to determine the meaning of the purpose clause. To do so is to argue in a circle. In a word, are they tests of regenerate life, or are they tests of abundant life?

The above verse is written to those “who believe,” that is, to regenerate people. How do born-again people acquire assurance that they are born again? It is not by reflecting on their works. Rather, as the immediate antecedent to “these things” says, “the one who believes in the Son of God has the witness in himself” (1 Jn. 5:10). He who believes has the Son, and “he who has the Son has the life” (5:12).

Although works can be a method of assessing one’s sanctification (process of becoming more Christ-like), the method for assessing your justification (regeneration by the Holy Spirit and adoption by God so that you can enter heaven) is to simply assess whether you are right now placing your trust in Christ alone for your salvation. You either are or you aren’t. Christ is the sole object of our salvation and our assurance. There is no need to wonder about whether you are being good enough or whether your works are sufficient to prove that you have been justified.

To argue that the tests of 1 John are there to help a person assess their justification is simply missing the boat. Our justification is about our belief, our faith, our trust in Christ for who he is and what he has done.

But if the tests in 1 John are not about our justification, then what are they about? The answer in part 2.

Heaven, Morality

Will Morality Always Be Expressed as Rights and Duties?

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Post Author: Bill Pratt 

It certainly seems that our moral and political discourse these days is always talking about rights and duties. Gay people want the right to marry. We tell people it is their duty to pay their taxes. These words seem to dominate the conversation.

George Mavrodes sees a day in the future when all of this talk of rights and duties will fade away. Morality will become something more beautiful.

I come more and more to think that morality, while a fact, is a twisted and distorted fact. Or perhaps better, that it is a barely recognizable version of another fact, a version adapted to a twisted and distorted world. It is something like, I suppose, the way in which the pine that grows at timberline, wind blasted and twisted against the rock, is a version of the tall and symmetrical tree that grows lower on the slopes.

I think it may be that the related notions of sacrifice and gift represent (or come close to representing) the fact, that is, the pattern of life, whose distorted version we know here as morality. Imagine a situation, an “economy” if you will, in which no one ever buys or trades for or seizes any good thing. But whatever good he enjoys it is either one which he himself has created or else one which he received as a free and unconditional gift. And as soon as he has tasted it and seen that it is good he stands ready to give it away in his turn as soon as the opportunity arises. In such a place, if one were to speak either of his rights or his duties, his remarks might be met with puzzled laughter as his hearers struggled to recall an ancient world in which these terms referred to something important.

This is, I believe, what heaven will be like. Rights and duties will be alien concepts that will simply disappear with our earthly life. We will simply do the good because it comes to us naturally. We will want to share whatever good we receive with everyone around us. I don’t know about you, but that sounds absolutely wonderful to me.

Grace, Heaven, Hell, Salvation

Would God Let Hitler in Heaven?

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Post Author: Bill Pratt

I find that many non-believers are hopelessly confused about salvation by God’s grace.  This confusion was amply illustrated the other day on an Unbelievable? podcast when the atheist debater challenged the Christian debater with the following: “Isn’t it true that the Christian God would have allowed Hitler into heaven if he had repented and trusted in Christ on his deathbed?”

The  atheist questioner clearly believed that Hitler, based on his numerous evil deeds (I still don’t understand how atheists can say that Hitler did anything objectively evil, but that’s another issue altogether), did not deserve to be accepted by God, and the fact that the Christian God would accept Hitler under any circumstances was simply unacceptable.   He (the atheist) could never believe in a God that would let Hitler into heaven because justice would be denied if this were to occur.

One can sympathize with this point of view if we are dealing with the God of Islam, who weighs everyone’s good deeds and bad deeds on a scale to determine where they will spend the afterlife.  It is hard to imagine that Hitler could ever get into heaven under that system, but that is not how the God of Christianity works.

The Christian debater correctly pointed out that nobody deserves to be accepted by God, but that through Christ’s work on the cross, God will accept those who have placed their trust in what Christ did for them.  God will apply Christ’s atoning sacrifice to every person who desires it by dedicating themselves to their Savior.  Christ paid the penalty for all of mankind’s sins, including Hitler’s.  If Hitler had truly repented and trusted in Christ before he died, like the thief on the cross, he would have been welcomed into paradise by God.  There is no reason to believe that he ever did this, so this is a purely hypothetical exercise meant to illustrate a point.

That is why Christians are always talking about the grace of God.  God offers us eternity with him, but only because of Christ.  God knows that if a scale of justice were applied, every single one of us would be condemned for our thoughts and our deeds.  According to the Bible and to anyone who has really looked within their soul, we are a million miles away from the goodness that God expects of us.  The scale, after all, is calibrated to weigh our deeds against the standard of the righteousness of God.  Does anyone really believe they can stand before God on their own merit?

I thank God that I will never have to, and if you’ve trusted Christ, neither will you.

Eschatology, Heaven, Jesus Christ, Religion

Is Fundamentalism Bad?

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Post Author: Bill Pratt

There are fewer words that are more loaded with a negative connotation than fundamentalism.  Generally when we hear that word, we have been trained by the media to react with either fear or disdain, or both.  After all, fundamentalists are supposed to be ignorant and violent.

To be a fundamentalist used to mean that a person believed in the fundamentals of their religious system or worldview.  They were people who stuck to the core beliefs, that did not stray away from them.  At some point, this meaning morphed into something else more sinister.

Can we save this word and return it to mean what it used to mean?  Maybe not, but I would like to challenge the idea that fundamentalists of all worldviews or religious systems are all ignorant and/or prone to violence.  There are fundamentalists who are ignorant and violent, but there are many fundamentalists who are not ignorant and not violent (me being one of them).

Whenever we approach a person who claims to believe in the fundamentals of their religious system, we should first ask, “What are the fundamentals you believe in?”  Their specific beliefs are far more relevant than the fact that they hold core beliefs at all.  We shouldn’t fear people who have fundamental beliefs, but we possibly should fear the fundamental beliefs that some people have.

Tim Keller addresses the issue of fundamentalism with the following:

It is common to say that “fundamentalism” leads to violence, yet as we have seen, all of us have fundamental, unprovable faith-commitments that we think are superior to those of others. The real question, then, is which fundamentals will lead their believers to be the most loving and receptive to those with whom they differ? Which set of unavoidably exclusive beliefs will lead us to humble, peace-loving behavior?

Of course, the prime example in the history of the world of humility and love was Jesus Christ.  Here is a man whose last act as he died on a Roman cross was to ask God to forgive his enemies.  Here is a man who sacrificed his own body for the rest of mankind.

When you see what the fundamentals of Christianity are, you realize that the true Christian fundamentalist is not someone to be feared at all.  In fact, imagine what the world would be like if everyone totally embraced Jesus as their model to live by.  If you’ve dedicated your life to Christ, one day in the future you won’t have to imagine, because it will become a reality.

Heaven, Love

Does God Love You Just the Way You Are?

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Post Author: Bill Pratt

In one sense God loves you just the way you are, but it’s a bit more complicated than that.  Let’s unpack this statement.

God loves each of his children unconditionally, wherever we are, whoever we are.  Even if we are sinning, living a dissolute life, He still loves us.  But what does love mean?  The classic definition of love is to desire the good of another.  God most definitely desires the good for all his children regardless of who they are.  As human parents, we strive to love our children in the same way.  Even though they are behaving badly, we still desire their good – we still love them.

The implication of the person who says that God loves them just as they are is often that they do not need to change anything about themselves; God will be perfectly content for them to be the same forever.  Here is where they are making a serious error.

The very fact that God loves you, that He desires your good, entails that He will not be satisfied with you until you are perfect, until you become the perfect creature He had in mind when he created you.  The current version of you that lives today is nowhere near what God planned for you when He conceived your existence in His divine mind.

Your body is decaying, you suffer physically and emotionally, your thoughts are wicked, you behave selfishly, you make immoral choices every day, you neglect to think about God, you don’t pray to Him – you have a long way to go!

When God creates the new heaven and new earth, all of your flaws will be history.  You will have an imperishable body, your suffering will end, your thoughts will be good, you will put others before yourself, you will make all moral choices, you will think about God all the time, and you will commune with Him unceasingly.  At this time, God will be completely satisfied with you, but not a moment before.

God certainly does love you just as you are, but He wants so much more for you and He will not be satisfied with you until you are perfected.  Never use the fact that God loves you as an excuse for maintaining your evil thoughts and behavior.  The good that God desires for you is far beyond where you are today; it is past the horizon that you can immediately see.  There is no higher love.

Difficult Bible Passages, Heaven, Sin, Theology, Top Ten Posts of 2010

Can God Be in the Presence of Sin? – #3 Post of 2010

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Post Author: Bill Pratt

The Bible clearly teaches that God is morally perfect and holy, that he hates sin.  Habakkuk 1:13 says that God is too pure to look on evil.  Christians often say that God cannot allow any sin in his presence.

But, this is not the whole story.  There are also several instances in the Bible where Satan and other demons are said to be in God’s presence (e.g., Job 1:6; 2 Chron. 18:18-21; Rev. 12:10).  In addition, the prophet Isaiah, himself a sinful man, was in the presence of God, as recorded  in Isaiah 6.

We also know that God is omnipresent, which means he is present everywhere.  “‘Am I only a God nearby,’ declares the Lord, ‘and not a God far away?  Can anyone hide in secret places so that I cannot see him?’ declares the Lord.  ‘Do not I fill heaven and earth?’ declares the Lord” (Jer. 23:23-24).  If he is present everywhere then he cannot but be in the presence of sinful creatures.

So what are we to make of all this?  I think the simple answer is that Habakkuk 1:13 is a commentary on God’s moral perfection and holiness.  It is not meant to be a statement about proximity.  In fact, the full rendering is, “Your eyes are too pure to look on evil.”  But we know God does not literally have eyes!  God is spirit (John 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!