A Slow Poison
Once allowances have been made for terminally ill children, the question will inevitably be asked, “What about physically suffering children who aren’t terminally ill?”…This is how the culture of death works its slow poison. This is how voices of death are elevated as kind and compassionate, while voices of life are drowned out as inhumane, fanatical.
Look to Holland. That’s what conservatives tracing the progress of international euthanasia law over the years have learned to do. For that matter, look to either Holland or Belgium. These two countries are to Europe as Oregon or California are to the United States: first and worst. As they have raced each other to the bottom, they offer a glimpse of what the future might look like, unless someone cares enough to change it.
Holland first made euthanasia legal for adults in 2002, and Belgium followed only months later. In 2014, Belgium became the first country to legalize “voluntary” euthanasia for terminally ill children of any age. This week, Holland has finally followed suit, after years of limiting the “service” to minor teens and terminally ill newborns (who could be killed with parental consent if a doctor judged that the baby’s suffering was “unbearable” and incurable). Now, the gap between ages 1 and 12 has been filled. No child left behind, as it were.
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What does “God has Spoken by His Son” Mean in Hebrews 1:2?
Jesus Christ is more than a prophet; He is God’s Son, True and better Israel, and the prophesied King who will reign on David’s throne forever. When Jesus opens His mouth, God speaks, for Jesus is fully God and fully man. Jesus the Son shares the ultimate revelation of God the Father through His perfect life, authoritative teaching, atoning death, and victorious resurrection.
Long ago, at many times and in many ways, God spoke to our fathers by the prophets, but in these last days he has spoken to us by his Son (Hebrews 1:1–2a, emphasis added)
Jesus is the Ultimate Word from God
While idols often have mouths but cannot speak (Psalm 115:1–8; Jeremiah 10:1–10), we worship the Creator of the universe who does speak and has chosen to reveal Himself progressively to sinful humanity.[1]
God first revealed Himself through the prophets, using many of them to write the Old Testament Scriptures. God’s revelation to and through the prophets was fragmented, incomplete, varied, and anticipated a greater revelation. That greater revelation has come through Jesus Christ (see Luke 24:44; John 5:39–40; 1 Peter 1:10–11).
Jesus Christ is more than a prophet; He is God’s Son, True and better Israel, and the prophesied King who will reign on David’s throne forever. When Jesus opens His mouth, God speaks, for Jesus is fully God and fully man. Jesus the Son shares the ultimate revelation of God the Father through His perfect life, authoritative teaching, atoning death, and victorious resurrection.
All of history led up to the incarnation of Jesus Christ, and the rest of history flows from it, until its culmination when Jesus returns “to save those who are eagerly waiting for Him” (Hebrews 9:28). The new covenant ushered in by Jesus makes the old obsolete (Hebrews 8:13; Jeremiah 31:31–34). Thus, the revelation we have in Jesus Christ is final and definitive. No other revelation is needed; no greater revelation is possible. We don’t need prophets, priests, or kings like in Old Testament times because we have the ultimate Prophet, Priest, and King, Jesus Christ.
To underline this point, the author to the Hebrews continues in 1:2b–4, describing the identity of God’s Son.
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Kept by Jesus Christ
As Christians who have assurance of eternal life, we must be people of strong and biblical convictions. We must know that we are heard by God, liberated from sin, protected from Satan, distinct from the world, and united to Christ. It is my prayer for our churches that, in an unstable world built on shifting sand, we would be people who embrace these immovable convictions built on the rock, the true God, our Lord Jesus Christ.
One of the blessings of being a believer in Jesus Christ is having a certain knowledge of our salvation and eternal destiny. This knowledge, however, must produce certain convictions throughout our Christian life.
We live in a time where people are often weak, wishy-washy, devoid of real convictions, and content to just go with the flow and swim wherever the tide of the world take them. The apostle John rejects all of that in the life of a believer, asserting that if we have eternal life, then we should be strong; we should have convictions; and we should have certainty as a defining mark of our spiritual lives. In 1 John 5, John gives us five convictions that we should manifest as Christians who know that we have eternal life.
The first conviction we should have as believers is that we are heard by God.
Our confidence about our salvation should lead to confidence in our prayers. When we come into the presence of God in prayer – to make requests, to cast our burdens upon Him, to seek His grace and His help in a time of need – we should come with confidence and boldness. This attitude in prayer should be expansive; John tells us we can ask for anything according to God’s will. We have a certain knowledge God hears us because we know that we belong to Him and that He will give us whatever we ask of Him that is according to His will.
The one qualifier is we must ask according to His will, referring to anything revealed in Scripture. If we go through the New Testament, we see hundreds of promises and commands from God we are called to believe and obey – and we should pray that God would strengthen us to believe and obey His Word. The amazing thing is that we can pray all of these things with confidence, knowing God will perform His work in us to answer our prayers.
The second conviction we have as a result of our certainty of salvation is that we are liberated from sin.
If we want to be strong and stand firm in the evil day, then we must be convinced that not only are we saved and have eternal life, but we must also have been liberated from sin. We cannot be the kind of people who, when confronted with sin in their lives, respond, “I can’t help it!” We can help it because we have been born of God. We know we can battle against sin and win because of what God has done for us in Christ.
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Still Not Good to be Alone
Marriages will be more difficult to secure and preserve in a culture that’s blind and rebelling against God’s designs for sexuality, identity, and the meaning of happiness. But in this cultural moment, Christian marriages become more significant, countercultural, and life-giving projects. Men’s need for marriage may never have been universally acknowledged, but way back in Eden, the Creator of the universe did indicate that it is “not good” for man to be alone.
Jane Austen’s famous novel Pride and Prejudice opens with the memorable words, “It is a truth universally acknowledged, that a single man in possession of a good fortune, must be in want of a wife.” Over 200 years later, readers still disagree over whether Austen intended the line ironically or sarcastically. But while the politics and pressures of marriage have shifted since her time, the question lingers: Do men need, or benefit from, marriage?
For years, radical feminists have argued that marriage is a prison for women. But, more recently, right-wing online influencers have been arguing that marriage is “objectively a bad deal“ for men—so risky and inconvenient that they’d be better off avoiding it entirely.
But is marriage a bad deal for men? Perhaps the greatest risk to a marriage-minded man is the possibility that the entire marital agreement falls apart in a divorce. Research indicates that women initiate nearly 70 percent of divorces in America and generally do so for superficial and transient reasons.
After the introduction of state no-fault divorce laws in the 1970s, divorce rates skyrocketed. As political science professor Scott Yenor notes, the “bold policy change, disguised as a bureaucratic adjustment, ended the idea of marriage as an enforceable contract.” Children, women, and men have all suffered. For children of divorce, the fallout manifests in increased poverty, suicide, depression, drug use, and crime. Women, some family law attorneys argue, actually fare worse than men financially in divorce proceedings.
But the disaffected right argues that men get the worst of it all. Indeed, when judges have discretion, they tend to favor women in custodial settlements. U.S. Census data indicates that men are the custodial parent only 20 percent of the time—a reality that poses profound harm and grief to some of the divorced fathers in question.
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