Could You Spot Judas?
If there is a way to spot a Judas it’s not found in results of ministry, it’s not found in eloquent speech, it’s not even found in what he/she appears to be treasuring. We are probably healthiest when we do not treat people with unwarranted suspicion but also when we aren’t surprised by depravity. True discernment will be grounded in hope instead of suspicion.
He appointed the twelve that they might be with him and that he might send them out to preach and to have authority to drive out demons.
Be with Jesus.
Preach.
Drive out demons.
Picture that ministry in your mind. What was the preaching like? What would you conclude about the powerful ministry where the works of darkness are being overturned? And what must we say about the preacher who has “been with Jesus”?
Now check out who appears in the list of those appointed by Jesus.
“…and Judas Iscariot, who betrayed him.”
Sit with that for a moment.
There is absolutely no indication that anything was “off” in Judas’ preaching ministry. No indication that he was the guy in the group who just couldn’t seem to drive out demons. And there’s no indication that he was always lurking in the shadows and being the weird guy in the group.
There is no indication that when Jesus said, “one of you will betray me” all eyes suddenly lit upon Judas. This means that his preaching was at least adequate. There was nothing that caused the other disciples to shake their head at his weird take upon the good news. Every sign pointed to Judas being one of the gang.
What Does This Mean?
A few weeks ago my wife and I stumbled upon this show on Peacock called Traitors. It’s a ridiculous show, honestly. But it hooked us and so we kept watching to the end.
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The Longer I Live, the Less I Understand Christmas
Jesus entered our world in the lowest, most humble manner possible to identify with humanity at our lowest and most humble (cf. Philippians 2:5–8). He experienced the full gamut of our finitude—he knew hunger, thirst, and exhaustion, and “in every respect has been tempted as we are” (Hebrews 4:15). He then died in the cruelest, most agonizing manner ever devised. Consequently, we can know that Jesus knows all we are going through today. He is praying for us right now (Romans 8:34) with complete understanding of our every issue, problem, and pain.
Scientists still don’t know why cats purr, why bicycles stay upright when ridden, how animals migrate, or why we sleep. And they speculate as to whether the universe is finite or infinite.
The omniscient Christ of Christmas has no such questions today (cf. John 2:24; 16:30; 21:17).
Speaking of the universe: NASA’s James Webb Space Telescope recently captured stunning images of Uranus along with its numerous rings and fourteen of its twenty-seven moons. The space agency also recently captured images of a solar flare that disrupted radio signals on Earth.
Max Lucado noted that every square yard of the sun is “constantly emitting 130,000 horse power, the equivalent of 450 eight-cylinder car engines.” He added, “Our globe’s weight is estimated at six sextillion tons—that’s a six with twenty-one zeroes!”
The omnipotent Christ of Christmas made all of that (Colossians 1:16).
Then, in a miracle-defying comprehension, he reduced all of his grandeur and glory to become a fetus in the womb of a peasant teenage girl. Then, on the first Christmas day, he was born as a helpless baby into the world he created.
Twenty-one centuries later, we still celebrate that first Christmas. But the longer I live, the less I understand it.
Why did Jesus come the way he did?
We know that Jesus came into the world to die for the world: “For God so loved the world, that he gave his only Son, that whoever believes in him should not perish but have eternal life” (John 3:16). This was always God’s plan: Jesus was “the Lamb who was slain from the creation of the world” (Revelation 13:8 NIV).
However, it would seem that the divine Son of God could have entered our world at any age in any way he wished.
Scripture records that “Jesus, when he began his ministry, was about thirty years of age” (Luke 3:23). Why not come to our planet then? We know little about his birth and nothing about his adolescence apart from a single episode when he was twelve years of age (Luke 2:41–51). Why enter the world as a baby?
I understand that his birth fulfilled numerous biblical prophecies.
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Another Reason Why the Covenant of Works Matters
Written by R. Scott Clark |
Tuesday, November 23, 2021
When we understand what was at stake in the covenant of works, when we contemplate communion with God, when we meditate on all that Jesus (the Last Adam; 1 Cor 15:45) did for us and has given to us, we are filled with joy and the Scriptures become not dull but alive with the story of the promise, accomplishment, and application of our redemption.Yesterday a prominent evangelical theologian tweeted “The gospel does not begin with Genesis 3 and human sin. The gospel begins with Genesis 1 and God’s goodness and our grandeur. If we start with Genesis 3, we make the gospel seem tiresome, predictable. If we start with Genesis 1, the gospel becomes captivating, thrilling.” This is an important question and worth considering for three reasons: 1) how we characterize the gospel; 2) how we understand what was offered to humanity before the fall; 3) how we should think about God. Each of these is a significant question in its own right and, treated properly, deserves a monograph (a book devoted to a single topic). It is also useful, however, to think of them together as it is put before us in what is, in effect, a theological thesis. By the way, this is one of the better uses of Twitter. For most of two millennia Christian theologians have posed brief theses, just like this one, for debate and discussion.
What Was Offered Before the Fall
Since the very earliest days of the post-apostolic church it has been understood implicitly, later made explicit, that Adam was the federal head of all humanity (see e.g., Irenaeus) and in a probationary arrangement with God. Augustine, in The City of God, called that arrangement a covenant. It came to be a given among Medieval theologians that Hosea 6:7 referred to a covenant between God and Adam. The Reformed Reformation would take up that idea and refine in it light of their distinction between law and gospel and in light of their doctrine of salvation by grace alone (sola gratia), through faith alone (sola fide), and in light of their distinction between justification on the basis of the imputed righteousness of Christ and progressive sanctification.
The Reformed came to see that what was offered to Adam, as the representative of all humanity, before the fall, in the covenant of works or the covenant of nature or the covenant of life (which he able able to keep by virtue of being created righteous and holy and because God “endued him with power and ability to keep it” [WCF 19.1]) was eternal life and blessed communion with God. The condition of entering into this state of blessedness was “personal, entire, exact, and perpetual obedience” (WCF 19.1). The Lord planted two trees in the garden in which he placed Adam: the tree of life and the tree of death (Gen 2:9). Adam was commanded not to eat from the tree of life. This was a very compressed expression of God’s natural, moral law: love God with all your faculties and your neighbor (Eve and all his posterity) as yourself (Matt 22:37–40). God promised life upon Adam’s successful fulfilling of this test and he “threatened death upon the breach of it.”
Make no mistake, however, what loomed before righteous Adam, should he exercise his free choice righteously, unencumbered and uncorrupted by sin as it was nothing short of consummate blessedness which “no eye has seen, nor ear heard, nor the heart of man imagined” (Isa 64:4; 1 Cor 2:9). Theologians call what was offered the eschaton, the final state. The study of the eschaton is called eschatology. It means more than just last things in history (e.g., the return of Jesus etc). Broadly, it has to do with the relations between heaven and earth. What was on offer to Adam was, in sense, what we call the New Heavens and the New Earth. Of course, when we think of that, it is after the fall, and in light of our Lord’s death, resurrection, ascension, session, and glorious return. What the first Adam failed to accomplish, the Last Adam (1 Cor 15:45) accomplished. So, the thesis is both correct and incorrect. What was revealed to Adam before the fall (we must not forget that) was glory. The condition of entering into glory, into the final (eschatological) state was righteous obedience. That offer, however, was not the gospel. Adam was not a sinner when God entered into the covenant of works with him. He had no need yet of the Good News.
The Gospel
Adam did come desparately to need the Good News (Gospel). He needed it because mysteriously he choose freely, without compulsion, without the corruption of sin, to disobey God, to listen to the lies of the Serpent, (the Devil), who offered a false, lying covenant to him. The Evil One offered not glory but equality with God, something he wanted for himself, something he could not give and something that Adam, tragically, sought to grasp (Phil 2:5–11). Adam broke the law (1 John 3:4). He brought condemnation upon himself, his wife, and his posterity (us). As the American colonial ABC book said, “In Adam’s fall sinned we all.” We are all dead in sins and trespasses (Pss 32; 51; Eph 2:17ndash;4). After the fall, in Adam, we are hopeless and helpless.
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Christian Writers, Preachers, and Organizations That Promoted Francis Collins Should Break Their Silence
Many of these men and organizations regularly call the church to repentance. This would be a proper time to perhaps lead by example.
It is now a matter of public record that former National Institute of Health director Francis Collins either presided over, ordered, funded, or indirectly participated in the following during his tenure:
Record-level spending on scientific experimentation performed on fetuses obtained from abortions
University of Pittsburgh experiment that, among other things, grafted infant scalps onto lab rats
Experiments on the harvested organs of aborted, full-term babies
Endorsement of unrestricted funding of embryonic stem cell research
Policies that exchanged merit-based grants for those partially determined by left-wing “diversity, equity, and inclusion” exams
Millions of dollars in taxpayer grants spent on transgender research on minors
Opposite-sex hormone treatments given to children as young as 8-years-old
Mastectomies performed on girls as young as 13-years-old
Millions of dollars in grants to an app program that tracked teenage boys’ homosexual activities including anal sex, all without parental knowledgeIt is also known that Collins personally attended former President Barack Obama’s celebratory signing of an Executive Order to undo a George W. Bush-era ban on scientific experiments done on human embryos, and acquiesced to the reality that the kind of genetic testing he promoted led to increased killing of Down Syndrome babies.
Yet despite this horrific ethical track record that would preclude any rational mind from concluding that these are the life fruits produced by one who possessed the indwelling of the Holy Spirit, the last two years have seen some of the most recognizable, trustworthy names and organizations in American Christianity laud Collins as a trustworthy Christian brother.
Given their prominence and influence, it’s important to name names.I admire greatly the wisdom, expertise, and, most of all, the Christian humility and grace of Francis Collins.Former ERLC-head Russell Moore
Francis Collins is a national treasure. Thank you for your faithful service.Evangelical writer David French
In Collins, restless genius is other-centered…a life so relentlessly committed to the human good.Evangelical Washington Post columnist Michael Gerson
And a cadre of other well-respected Christian ministers, professors, and teachers happily platformed and promoted Collins as he carried the Biden administration’s COVID messaging uncritically. They directly or indirectly questioned the Christian conscience and love of any believer who didn’t follow a slew of now-factually-suspect-or-debunked guidance, all on the authority of “brother Collins.” This who’s who of evangelicalism included Ed Stetzer, Rick Warren, Tim Keller, NT Wright, and notable Christian publications like The Gospel Coalition, Christianity Today, and the Billy Graham Center.
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