Month: December 2018

“And being found in fashion as a man, he humbled himself, and became obedient unto death, even the death of the cross.”      (Phil. 2:8)

In the Sermon on the Mount, when Jesus says in Matthew 5:13 that Christians are the salt of the earth…Jesus is that very salt that makes Christians salty.

In the next verse, Matthew 5:14…Jesus says that Christians are the light of the world.

As He is speaking at that precise moment…Jesus is the eternal Light of the world…He is our light (Jn 8:12)…and the light that will illuminate the new heavenly city of Jerusalem (Rev. 21:23).

Jesus the Son of God is absolute goodness and brilliant pure light.

Yet when Jesus became incarnate in a human body…by necessity He became part of worldly conventional normalcy.  Jesus had a mother, step-father, half-brothers and sisters as a human family.  Jesus worked as a carpenter…in a small rural town…as part of the nation of Israel.  Jesus was intimately engaged in His ministry to the Jews in the first-century…with all of the political, social, and religious issues that entails.

Yet Jesus emphatically declined the offer of Satan in the temptation in the wilderness to have “all the kingdoms of the world, and the glory of them” (Mt. 4:1-11; Mk. 1:12-13; Lk. 4:1-13).

When the people came to attempt to forcibly make Jesus a king…He resisted this temptation…the scripture recording that “he departed again into a mountain himself alone” (Jn. 6:15).

There is therefore a boundary line in the life-script of Jesus…regarding worldly conventional normalcy and thinking…beyond which He will not go.

The gap…the space…the distance to traverse for Jesus was to be the Passover Lamb of God…the atoning sacrifice for mankind’s sins.

Jesus the Word of God wrote His own life-script along with God the Father and the Holy Spirit.

The perfect life-script of Jesus did not lead to the coronation crown of Isaiah 9:6-7, but instead to the crown of thorns of rejection and the cross on Calvary Hill…of Psalm 22 and Isaiah 53.

This is the ingenious gap that God inserted into the life-script of Jesus the Son of God, that challenged Him in a similar way that we are challenged…in where we are now to where we need to go…requiring the help of God…yet Jesus is operating at the top-end of the goodness continuum of brilliant pure light…while we have a ways to travel up the continuum line from imperfection and sin toward more needed light.

Listen to what Jesus says leading up to the experience of the cross of Psalm 22 and Isaiah 53…compared to the coronation crown of Isaiah 9:6-7:

”But I have a baptism to be baptized with; and how I am straightened till it be accomplished” (Lk. 12:50).

In the Garden of Gethsemane the night before His crucifixion, Jesus prays “Father, if thou be willing, remove this cup from me; nevertheless not my will, but thine, be done” (Lk. 22:42).

We cannot understand what it would be like to be the sin-sacrifice for all of mankind’s shortcomings.

God wrote into the journey of faith life-script for the perfect Son of God Jesus this incredible gap…to take our place on the cross…to be our substitute…to be our Savior through the cross and the resurrection…because that is exactly what we needed at that point in human history…and not the coroneted king of Isaiah 9:6-7…although Jesus was the brilliant pure light and absolute goodness of a divine King during His entire life and ministry…especially so…as He hung on the cross for our sakes.

My point here is that Jesus is the perfect blend of worldly conventional normalcy and at the same time the higher ways of God…because Jesus followed His journey of faith life-script to be the Savior of the world…perfectly.

What is critical for Spirit-born Christians to consider as we enter the end-times…is that the divinely composed life-script for Jesus led directly to such a lethal conflict with worldly conventional normalcy…that it ends with Jesus being rejected and murdered in the one and only way that would procure the liberty and redemption from sin…as the Passover…that only God alone could imagine, set in motion, and flawlessly guide to its tragic yet glorious outcome.

This is the living God.  This is the biblical faith.

This gap between Isaiah 9:6-7 and Isaiah 53 in the life of the promised messiah…confirms the divine origin of the Bible from another angle…because this gap between imperfect people and a perfect God…which only Jesus Christ could fill…is a concept too complex and intellectually sophisticated for the non-existent contemplation of material particles and energy…as the explanation for its origin.

These powerful truths lift up and glorify the name and character of God…likewise beyond human invention and creative imagination.

From A Popular Defense of the Bible and Christianity.

In the now 160 year-old evolution/creation debate…following the 1859 publication of Charles Darwin’s worldview changing book On the Origin of Species…most of the scientific focus has been placed upon a search for how complex and well-defined living creatures and plants…through a purely naturalistic process without any help from an outside Creator God…could reach…could get to the advanced point of having enough functional development to be able to survive in a competitive environment…and to be able to successfully reproduce.

An equally important question to consider…as profound as any other issue in this area of the human search into the understanding of the origin of life, our world, and our purpose in it…is how conceptually and in actuality…would this development appear to “stop on a dime” in our present day?

In a Darwinian macroevolutionary program…that by pragmatic necessity must have wide-open genetic boundaries for variant traits and natural selection to produce the incredibly complex and well-defined diversity we see in the natural world…of substantial physical changes which theoretically should be able to freely progress forwards but also regress backwards and sideways in all directions…unguided…then what purely naturalistic law, entity, or “good sense” would “tell” the human heart when it has reached the optimum sweet-spot in size, architectural design, and performance…and then stay there fixed at that one optimum point…once achieved?

In a naturalistic program…what would tell the human liver, the two kidneys and the pancreas…when to stop growing in size…and when they had achieved optimum function in their physical architecture, capacity, and performance?

What would tell the human eyes to develop to the point of normal “20/20” vision…then stop there at this fixed point of utility for human usage…and not instead develop further to the point of eagle-eye vision…far beyond the performance quality of 20/20 vision?

What mechanism…in naturalistic materialism…puts up the decisive “stop sign” in the enumerable features in the human body…from the density-to-strength ratio of bones, the tensile strength of muscles and tendons, the pressure, viscosity, and temperature of blood, to the electrical impulses that generate all coordinated movements and functions…from balanced upright walking to formulating understandable speech.

What processes in a naturalistic origin and development of the vast diversity of life…would set the current boundaries around human lifespans at between 80 to 100 years?  Why not 200, or 400, or 500 years?

Why would not a blind and mindless naturalistic process of forwardly improving progress…being indifferent and unguided in the area of purposeful intention…continue on in the same direction on a gradual upward incline…to add more years on to the length of human lifespans?

Why would something as important as human lifespans come to an abrupt stop at 80 to 100 years…when the unguided and mindless program of naturalism is supposed to be entirely indifferent to such things?

And if we are allowed to be brutally honest, blunt, and frank here…what purely naturalistic mechanism would invent…by random-chance, trial-and-error accident…the ardor of human sexual anticipation affecting both our bodies and our brains…then limit the time-duration of the pleasurable muscle contractions and fluids production that defines the human sexual climax…to somewhere around 10 seconds…give or take a few seconds?

Why would not the theoretical paradigm of naturalistic materialism…be working to further increase the time-duration and intensity of the human sexual climax to 20 or 30 seconds?

Why are people not out in the streets with protest signs…picketing congress to spend more research funds to discover the genetic means to lengthen our lifespans…and to improve sexual performance?

The logically satisfying sweet-spot in the high performance levels of virtually everything we observe in the natural living and non-living world…confirms our commonsense assessment that the world we live in…and indeed our very selves…are the product of the most brilliant, intentionally well-defined, creatively discriminating, intellectually thoughtful design…and not the random-chance result of complex things like elephants, lions, salmon, eagles, redwood trees, and honeybees blindly falling into individually discreet body-plan architectures and lifestyle habits…through the unguided self-assembly of naturalistic causes alone.

To propose that these decisively governing stopping points…occupying universal and unchallenged precedence for the billions of living things…that are at the centerpiece of the defining characteristics that determine what each of these living things are and are not…that these intelligently arrived-at stopping points are the creation of blind, unguided, mindless, indifferent, trial-and-error, random-chance processes…is nonsensical.

One of the explanations for why we look at the marvels of the living world with awe and respectful wonder…yet take for granted the speed of the cheetah, the power of the lion, and the cunning hunting skill of the leopard…is that we perceive no room for further development in the architectural body-plans and lifestyle habits of the billions of individual life-forms…all performing at the highest optimum end-points of their completed, actualized, conceptual definitions.

We do not look at the African elephant and think that it should be larger, that the giraffe should be taller, that the Labrador puppy should be cuter, or that human babies should be up and walking at 3-weeks old.

The realization of the required role of functional coherence in the successful formulation of complex systems…of completed definition that describes the essence of one thing and by doing so excludes the definition of something else…can be seen in one prime example of computer software language code that facilitates the application for word processing…but not for financial accounting spreadsheets.

From A Popular Defense of the Bible and Christianity.

I welcome your comments.

Looking back with the benefit of hindsight…from the vantage point of living in the middle of what is being called the Information Age…doesn’t commonsense Christian apologetics tell us that the oddity of the variableness of faith in the personal relationships between people…should have been an obvious offsetting fact to Charles Darwin when he wrote his famous book The Origin of Species?

Should not the high quality of the variableness of faith be a compelling counter-argument against a naturalistic explanation for the origin of human intelligent decision-making, moral reasoning, qualitative judgment, free-will choice, and communication skills…all coordinated into a functional coherence that cries out for an Intelligent Designer and a Master Craftsman of sublime ability?

On the surface, establishing and maintaining faith in our relationships with other people should be much easier and simpler than it is.

As Christians, it should be easier to place our faith in God in the middle of attacking the current, temporary life-crisis at hand…the current life-lesson for ourselves…and for others in need.

But this is one reason why faith is such an important moral reality…such a central factor in personal relationships.

In our Christian journeys of faith, the challenging issues always seem to come back around to the same successful strategy of centering our trust in God, releasing our faith, relinquishing self-sovereignty over the control of our lives, listening in the Spirit, and patiently waiting…for the answer to our prayer…for the inspirational solution needed…or for the one right path of action to follow…all of which have an element of built-in difficulty.

Why does the foreign missionary find themselves in the difficult situation of trying to make do with limited resources in their balanced evangelical effort to bring the light and the transforming power of the gospel message to the lost…along with the help that is needed in terms of financial and material support to alleviate poverty…and in the process discover what is the elusive sweet-spot balance…which only real-life events and circumstances can define and delineate…between the eternally valuable and the temporally practical needs of people?

Why does the local church pastor find themselves frustratingly short of finances, church member volunteers, and community support to solve the many social problems and desperate needs they confront on a daily basis?

Why does the heart-broken grandmother find herself investing many hours on her knees as a prayer warrior on behalf of a wayward grandchild…temporarily lost in drug or alcohol addiction and walking along the dangerous edge of falling into the abyss of oblivion at any moment?

Why does the calling of Abraham in the Bible involve a time-period of waiting for the birth of his son Isaac?

Why does Moses, part-way through the ten miraculous plagues in Egypt, find himself waking up each morning without Pharaoh relenting and releasing the Israelites from bondage?

Why does David have to walk through the valley of the shadow of death as penned in his beautiful and famous Psalm 23?

Why does Jesus the divine Son of God say in the Garden of Gethsemane the night before His crucifixion: “Father, if thou be willing, remove this cup from me”…then without missing a beat says in perfectly executed faith: “nevertheless not my will, but thine, be done” (Lk. 22:42).

            Why is there this curious space…this interval…this gap…in time and in outcomes…between where we are and where we want to get to…for ourselves or on behalf of others in need…that creates the opportunity…the space…for free-will choice and biblical faith to operate together in tandem?

Certainly within the vast region of secular pursuits there is an equivalent gap between where people are and where they would like to get to.

This reality is what motivates people to pursue a college degree, advance in their careers, save up money for a European vacation or their future retirement, explore the natural world through scientific investigation, and search for the cure for cancer.

This curious space…this interval…this gap…in time and in outcomes…insightfully observed and brilliantly described in Hebrews 11:1…is the underlying, fundamental reason for the creation of this physical universe having the temporal aspects of time, space, orderliness, and intelligibility.

If we are looking for a reason for why our physical world is the way it is…and why we are here…this curious space…this interval…this gap…in time and in space to create the context for a Hebrews 11:1 adventure of biblical faith to actualize…this may be the answer (Heb. 11:6).

A thesis of this book is that the reality of the universal existence of this space…this gap…between where we are and where we want to go…is a necessary condition for the variableness in degrees of faith to exist…to match the unique variableness of the challenges of our individual callings.

Without this space or gap…as universal and as real as anything we observe and experience…on the vertical continuum scale of good and evil…with absolute good at the very top…the free-will choice to exercise faith in God that defines and differentiates variable degrees of righteousness…cannot exist (Heb. 11:1).

            For righteousness to be eternally sustainable for created, non-divine human beings having the moral reasoning capacity for free-will choice…a broad understanding of good and evil…spread-out along this vertical continuum scale of reality…must be fully in-play in our daily experiences in this world environment.

It is also a theme of this book that the exercise of biblical faith…that of enlisting God’s help and participation in closing this space or gap in some particular scenario of circumstances…whatever that may be…is singularly unique in all of human thought and experience.

In my opinion, this is an intellectually plausible and heart-satisfying answer to the universal question of why we are here…in combination with the fact that we are not robots…but instead possess the mental faculties to process and evaluate the deepest of theoretical and philosophical issues (1 Cor. 2:6-12)…such as we are doing in this book.

In my opinion, this is the logical, rational, and reasonable place where we end up after drilling down into the reasons why the world is a rough-and-tumble reality of life for most people.

This curious dynamic of the interaction of faith between the living God and people…in mutually working together through an adventure of faith journey to close the gaps from where we are to where we want or need to go…falls so far outside of worldly conventional normalcy and thinking…so far above self-sovereignty and autonomous self-reliance…that this requires an adequate and satisfactory explanation for believers and unbelievers alike.

This explanation is found within the biblical narrative stories of faith…and nowhere else.

My book…A Popular Defense of the Bible and Christianity…is a free Kindle e-book giveaway on Amazon on Thursday 12/27 through Saturday 12/29.

 “This then is the message which we have heard of him, and declare unto you, that God is light, and in him is no darkness at all.” (1 Jn. 1:5)

It is time to consider a basic question…why can faith be so difficult for us?  Why is it faith of all possible things…that separates self-sovereignty from God-sovereignty…in determining the all-important course and direction of our lives?

Why does the Bible characterize placing faith in ourselves alone…as self-autonomous kings and queens sitting upon the thrones of our lives…as reprehensible…but instead placing faith in God within a journey of faith as righteousness (Heb. 11:7)…again a concept that is as far removed from the autonomous individualism of conventional thinking as is imaginable?

Why is faith the central element…the most important thing…in our personal relationship with God that is tested and put at risk…that is the bonding agent that connects us…that is being twisted and pulled and stretched by the challenging events and circumstances of our lives?

The issue of difficult challenge…inherent in a faith-journey following God…is a central theme in every positive person of faith throughout the Bible (Rom. 4:3; Ex. 3:11; Josh. 1:5-7; Jud. 6:14-17; Lk. 22:42; Acts 23:11; Heb. 11).

In our current cultural and social exploration into the question of the existence of God…the spot-on accuracy of the biblical description of the variableness of faith in our personal relationships…especially in a relationship following the leading of God…beginning thousands of years ago at the start of the book of Genesis…should give us momentary pause.

Is it rational and plausible to think that material particles and energy…according to the philosophy of naturalism…could conceivably be the source and origin of the incredibly complex value judgment system that is an inseparable part of the variableness of faith in our relationships with other people…and with our Creator God?

Does the sheer existence of this thing called faith…which exists only within the personal interactions between moral beings having the capacity for free-will choice and cognitive thinking…place the reality of the entire framework of the natural world above and outside of any naturalistic explanation?

My book A Popular Defense of the Bible and Christianity is a free Kindle giveaway on Amazon Thursday 12/27 through Saturday 12/29.

A person does not have to be a scholar to see in the Bible and to experience first-hand…that God initially takes people having hidden potential…yet at the start of their calling are broken, lost, and aimless in life (Mt. 9:10-13)…and through the divinely supportive respect and acceptance over time of salvation, redemption, and the life-altering insertion of a God-composed adventure of faith…aided and energized by the Holy Spirit…turns them into something vastly better than they could have previously imagined.

This is one of the main themes of the Bible.  Some people will accept God’s lead and follow Him into their destinies…others will push God away and follow their own course.

This in itself should be a telling argument against the random-chance naturalism of self-sovereign worldly conventional thinking…by virtue of the sheer inexplicability of the origin of the concept of biblical faith and its persistent longevity.

Naturalistic materialism…if true…should produce one monotonous, homogeneous human mindset…either belief or unbelief…one lifestyle habit per creature type…like the rest of the living world.

This should tell us…that as human beings…we are different (Gen. 1:26-27).

The complexity of the information content, the innovative originality of the main concepts, and the utter crash and collision with worldly conventional normalcy and thinking…makes a compelling commonsense apologetic case in itself for the divine origin of the journeys of faith recorded in the Bible…above and beyond humanistic literary invention.

This is the easier half in answering the question of why Jesus did not walk down Main Street and into the Temple a few days after His resurrection…which would have changed the dynamics of a journey of faith following Jesus Christ…instead into the type of absolute, visual, foolproof evidence that atheists and skeptics demand…but would be useless in establishing a person relationship.

The hard part in analyzing the wisdom behind the delicate balance between belief and unbelief in this current world environment…discussed later in more detail in chapters two and four…is as follows.

After Jesus raised Lazarus from the dead…John 11:45-48 reads:

45 Then many of the Jews which came to Mary, and had seen the things which Jesus did, believed on him.

46 But some of them went their ways to the Pharisees, and told them what things Jesus had done.

47 Then gathered the chief priests and the Pharisees a council, and said, What do we? for this man doeth many miracles.

48 If we let him alone, all men will believe on him: and the Romans shall come and take away both our place and nation.

The religious elites in Jerusalem decided to continue worldly conventional normalcy and thinking…self-autonomous self-rulership…by sacrificing Jesus Christ…by removing Him out of the way.

This is expressed in John 11:49-50:

49 And one of them, named Caiaphas, being the high priest that same year, said unto them, Ye know nothing at all.

50 Nor consider that it is expedient for us, that one man should die for the people, and that the whole nation perish not.

Caiaphas said this in order to perpetuate the status quo…for the continuance of worldly conventional normalcy and thinking as it existed at that time and place…and not at all for the initiating or the maintaining of biblical-quality journeys of faith…which the early church would step into and demonstrate to the world shortly…”turning the world upside down” (Acts 17:6).

Killing Jesus through Roman crucifixion…falsely as a political and religious malefactor…simply foretells what would happen if this same attitude of self-sovereignty…at its worst extreme version of self-interest demonstrated at the cross…was imported into heaven for all eternity.

One reason why God drove Adam and Eve out of the Garden of Eden was to prevent access to the Tree of Life (Gen. 3:22-24).

An eternity of disruptive, self-centered rebellion in heaven is and would be unacceptable.

I recently watched on U-tube (on the internet) the debate between Richard Dawkins and John C. Lennox on the topic of The God Delusion…hosted and organized by the Fixed Point Foundation.

Recognizing my starting bias as a Christian…I would judge the debate a 60-to-40 win in favor of John Lennox…or maybe 70-to-30…or even 80-to-20.

Richard Dawkins made some well-reasoned points on behalf of atheism and against belief in God…and thus walked away from the debate…along with a proportion of the viewing audience…with his atheistic philosophy still intact and functional within his worldview.

This is the difficult half of the analysis of why Jesus did not walk openly down the main street of Jerusalem and straight into the Temple to continue to teach…a few days after His resurrection…and demonstrate at that time…for all time…that He is the divine Son of God and the Passover Lamb of God, atoning sacrifice for sin.

But the victory of the cross and the resurrection…demonstrated and recorded openly through the dimensions of time and space…within human history on this earth…is not a 60-to-40 or 70-to-30 or 80-to-20 win…it is a 100-to-zero long-term victory for God and for human beings…and for all the host of heaven…because it exposes the dangerous character of self-sovereignty when it is pushed to the extreme end of the spectrum-line…when it is given the freedom to choose between the continuance of worldly conventional normalcy and thinking…or eliminating a journey of faith…following God…off the playing field altogether…by crucifying Jesus Christ.

Absent the heavenly influence of the divine light and majestic power surrounding the divine personage of Jesus Christ (Rev. 12:7-9; Isa. 14:12-17)…this is how God set up the unique conditions for the cross at Calvary…and Resurrection Day on Easter morning…to occur.

This is why the humble carpenter from Nazareth is rejected by the religious elites in Jerusalem and crucified by the Romans…in first-century Israel.

And this is why the winning arguments made by John Lennox are not a total and complete victory…sweeping away all doubt and unbelief.

To our amazement…the two opposing dichotomies of belief and unbelief will continue until the end of time on this earth (Dan. 12:10; Mt. 24:14; Rev. 12:11, 16:15)…yet at the same time Jesus can say to His disciples and to Christians today:

“These things I have spoken unto you, that in me ye might have peace.  In the world ye shall have tribulation: but be of good cheer; I have overcome the world” (Jn. 16:33).

From A Popular Defense of the Bible and Christianity

It isn’t that Jesus didn’t clearly tell people publicly who He was.

Jesus said that He is the source of eternal life (Jn. 5:24), the resurrection (Jn. 5:25-29, 11:25), that He is the one the scriptures testify of (Jn. 5:39), the bread of life (Jn. 6:32-33, 48), the light of the world (Jn. 8:12, 12:46), the liberator from sin (Jn. 8:36), the divine “I am” (Jn. 8:58), the good shepherd (Jn. 10:11), Lord and Master (Jn. 13:13), and “the way, the truth, and the life” (Jn. 14:6).

Yet the religious and political elites in Jerusalem rejected Jesus of Nazareth in part on the basis of His low social status.  They rejected Jesus based upon their own biased prejudice for wealth and power according to the norms of worldly conventional thinking…thus condemning this very mindset in not being able to come down to the lower level of humility…as brilliantly and intentionally expressed in Jesus the Son of God and Messiah …presenting Himself to the world in the unexpected low estate of a common carpenter.

Respect is the foundation for every positive human relationship.  In pinning the already beaten and battered body of Jesus Christ to a wooden cross using 7-inch long metal spikes…the religious and political elites in Jerusalem demonstrated the most disrespectful and de-valuing rejection of Jesus imaginable.

This exposed the true violent character of the worldview of “the lust of the flesh, and the lust of the eyes, and the pride of life” (1 Jn. 2:16) at the extreme margin of self-sovereignty living apart from God and “going about to establish their own righteousness” (Rom. 10:3) according to our own thinking and standards (Isa. 53:6).

In one brilliant stroke God simultaneously judged the rebellion aspect of going our own way…against His rightful rulership… expressed violently at the cross…demonstrated through self-sovereign self-autonomy…and unexpectedly in the same cross at Calvary enabling and providing eternal salvation to all those who will put their faith and trust in Him…who will voluntarily come to God in faith.

Spirit-born Christians look upward in admiration to Jesus on the cross…and the blood He shed…for our salvation…and not to our own good works (Eph. 2:8-9).  Christian discipleship is about surrendering and yielding our misguided claim to self-autonomy…to instead follow God’s higher ways for our lives…in faith and in trust in God…going forward from the moment of our salvation conversion.

The injunction of 1Thessalonians 5:18…”In everything give thanks: for this is the will of God in Christ Jesus concerning you” is a vital part of a living and vibrant faith that trusts God for everything that comes our way in the Christian life…whether up on the mountaintop, down in the valley, or in-between…and like the apostle Paul…places our trust in God to lead us into all truth and into a personal knowledge of Him…come what may (Phil. 4:11-13).

This is the epitome…the pinnacle…of respect for Jesus Christ and for God the Father (2 Thes. 1:10).

But this actualization of Hebrews 11:1 biblical-quality faith can only become reality within a God-composed journey of faith life-script as patterned for us in the biblical narrative stories of faith…creating the context for personal relationships with God as prophesied in Jeremiah 31:31-34 for Christian believers…in the new covenant age…from the least to the greatest.

As argued in this book, this reality is simply outside of any conceivable motivation originating from within the worldly conventional normalcy and thinking of self-sovereign self-rulership…the default worldview that produced the crucifixion of Jesus Christ on Calvary Hill in Jerusalem nearly two-thousand years ago…and is still the prevalent worldview of modern mankind today.

            Ask anyone on the street today to articulate the difference between self-sovereignty and God-sovereignty…and they will say they have no idea what we are talking about.

The innovative novelty of the living God displacing our ways with His higher ways as described in the life-scripts of Abraham, Joseph, Moses, Gideon, Ruth, David, Esther and Mordecai, Elijah, Jeremiah, Daniel, Peter, John, James, and Paul…to name but a few…is an important part of the gospel message of hope…of the liberation from our own life of sin…lost in our own foibles and shortcomings…now with a God who can bring new, real, positive change into our lives.

If this displacement element is a powerful argument for the divine origin and inspiration of the Bible…then an Abraham-style adventure of faith should be a normal and expected function of our Christian discipleship being lived and preached throughout Christendom.

But oddly and sadly it is not.  The all-important displacement part is left out.

In a church growth, seeker-friendly approach toward bringing in the un-churched, God’s “plans” are reduced to over-simplified 3-point or 5-point plans that often only manage to confirm our own hopes and dreams in conformity to worldly conventional aspirations and expectations…rather than picking up our cross to follow Jesus Christ into a whole new world of faith and trust…following God-scripts unique to the Bible alone.

A Popular Defense of the Bible and Christianity

One of the compelling arguments for the divine origin of this cross element in the biblical narrative stories of faith…the displacement of our own plans by the plans of God in a tightly scripted, God-composed journey of faith…is this absence of any wiggle-room for alternative self-sovereignty and our own self-ruled contrivance to change the details of the script.

This element of God’s plans…that removes us off the thrones of our lives in the key critical area of the course and direction of our lives…is as contrary to humanistic thinking and the pride-fueled, worldly expectation of entitlement to conventional normality…as is imaginable.

This is the originally novel concept that is seamlessly integrated into the narrative stories of faith in the Bible…starting with Abraham…that precludes any rational pretense that these stories are human-generated or the product of inventive mythological fiction writing.

The cross element of displacing our ways with God’s higher ways is the most offensive and infuriating part of the biblical gospel message…to worldly conventional thinking…and produces the most agitated and violent pushback from people committed to self-autonomy and worldly self-validation.

As discussed in the previous sections…the entire life-script of Jesus the Son of God and the eternal Word (Jn. 1:1-2) was designed in such a way as to expose the huge gap between self-sovereign self-interest…and God-sovereign unselfish service.

This gap is differentiated using the universally recognizable currency of human-esteemed high social status…as a measurement of worth and value…on the one hand…versus the contrast of a God-engineered, radically self-effacing humility at a divine level on the other hand (1 Jn. 2:15-17)…which was below the resolution level and comprehension as a valued character trait…by worldly standards.

The Pharisees, Sadducees, lawyers, and scribes were never going to follow the preaching of John the Baptist at the river Jordan (Mt. 23:25), never going to follow Jesus the lowly carpenter from Nazareth (Jn. 7:27), and never going to join themselves to the new Christian church in Jerusalem.

The low social status of Jesus Christ was so off-putting to these ruling elites in Jerusalem…so low on the respectability scale regarding their concept of who and what the Messiah should be like…so below the cut-off line of their expectations according to worldly conventional thinking…they did not even bother to ask Jesus…or His mother Mary…the preliminary starting messianic question of the city of His birthplace…Bethlehem…not Nazareth.

The life-script for Jesus the Son of God was brilliantly crafted to create the greatest reaction of violent offense to self-sovereign self-autonomy…to facilitate the appointed place and date of destiny for Jesus the Messiah to be the Passover Lamb of God sacrifice for sin…through His utter and total rejection (Ps. 22; Isa. 53).

Jesus failed to satisfy the requirements for the long-awaited Messiah according to worldly conventional normalcy and thinking.

The people who instigated the crucifixion of Jesus Christ…by doing so demonstrated a complete lack of respect for Jesus…the placing of zero value upon His person and His life in the most emphatic and clear-cut way imaginable.

The worldly disgrace and de-valuing of a human life by execution through Roman crucifixion…actually exposes and condemns as unrighteous, unloving, and devastatingly counter-intuitive…the rebellion component in its worst rendition…in this example of misdirected human self-sovereignty  (Jn. 5:23).

From A Popular Defense of the Bible and Christianity

The life of Jesus Christ is the perfect example of the called-out person…the called-out life.

As we read through the Sermon on the Mount…any elevated worldly status…as a military liberator or political leader…would seem totally out-of-place and out of character for the Son of God Jesus making the fundamental case for people then and now to exchange self-sovereignty for God-sovereignty in their lives.

If we are called-out to be missionaries in the rainforests of the Amazon or in New Guinea…to be evangelists and church-planters in Africa or Western China…or to be the first-century disciples of the early Christian church sent out into the world to spread the good news of salvation through Jesus Christ…like Peter, Paul, and the other apostles and disciples…we will experience hardship in this life in service to the gospel message (Acts 14:22).

But in the Bible, God also raises people up to worldly prominence and status…according to God’s unselfish purposes for the benefit of mankind.

Abraham is a wealthy man to the point of being able to respond quickly and assemble a small army to go and successfully fight another small army in rescue of his nephew Lot (Gen. 14:14).

Within God’s callings, plans, and guidance…Joseph becomes governor of Egypt, Moses is an equal match to Pharaoh in delivering the Israelites, and David becomes a king.

God raises-up mighty and powerful prophets that deliver the people from oppressors…and to oppose and denounce wayward kings.

Other notable names in the Bible that come to mind are Boaz, Abigail, Daniel, Esther and Mordecai, Solomon, Joseph of Arimathaea, and the “chief of Asia”…friends of Paul (Acts 19:31)…people who all experienced some elevated measure of worldly prominence and status…in service to God and other people.

So whether we are called-out to be pastors or foreign missionaries…or called-out to be federal court judges, state senators, college presidents, Bible college professors, concert pianists, professional athletes, stay-at-home moms, or successful business people…we have no one ultimately to answer to in regard to our individual callings except God our Creator…in the leading and course of our lives (2 Tim. 4:7).

In leaving behind His outwardly appearing heavenly glory…and rejecting all claims to elevated worldly status and acclaim…Jesus Christ the Son of God creates a platform of credibility from which to offer a radically different lifestyle alternative that only the Passover Lamb of God sacrifice-for-sin could plausibly and justifiably make.

What is inexplicable in terms of humanistic literary invention…because it runs so contrary to our notion of self-sovereignty…is that Jesus is offering Himself as the leader of this alternative lifestyle expedition…dethroning us…taking our place.

When Jesus says in John 14:6…”I am the way, the truth, and the life: no man cometh unto the Father, but by me”…He is exemplifying and articulating the second and only other major worldview possible in all of existence.

The radical insertion of a Prince and the Pauper lifestyle journey into the discovery of the knowledge of good and evil…of leaving the palace to go out into the risk and adventure of the outside rough-and-tumble world (Mt. 9:10-13)…can only be actualized into real, empirical human experience by the one Person who invented and literally embodied this concept…Jesus Christ the Son of God.

From A Popular Defense of the Bible and Christianity