I’m beginning to wonder…
I’m beginning to wonder if my pastor isn’t sneakily trying to go back on some previous things he has said. Hahaha, it’s a good thing believe me and I praise God for it. For awhile it looked like my church was starting to go in the Squishy Direction, but now I’m overjoyed because we’re starting to come back to good, solid teaching. Today we had a lesson on the doctrine of Regeneration (well, it wasn’t actually like, “Ok congregation we’re going to talk about the doctrince regeneration” more like, Colossians 3:8-11 talking about old and new selves). It was wonderful, and I want to talk about the doctrine of Regeneration. This might just be my favorite doctrine. I’m not sure, but it’s amazing. The Doctrine of Regeneration for those of you who don’t know is essentially this: Before you’re saved you’re dead in sin and in love with your sin, and once you get saved Christ immediately changes your heart and brings you to life. He puts a hatred for sin in you and love for holiness and this leads immediately to repentance from sins. It’s a marked change in your life where you literally became a new person. Not a change of opinion or lifestyle, but a change of who you are at the fundamental level.
Do you see how wonderful this is? Before you’re saved you have a heart of stone, a God hating heart that can do nothing pleasing to God, but God out of His gracious mercy saves you, and WAM! You get a new heart and new desires and you just love God! But we’ve almost forgotten about this doctrine in most churches, which is why I was so happy we talked about it today at church. Most churches support the doctrine of Carnal Christians, and that is a doctrine that started around 50 years ago. I liked what…I think it’s Spurgeon (i’m too lazy to look it up) said about new doctrine, “If a doctrine is new, it is wrong. Simply because for truth to be truth it must be old. Old as God Himself.” (that’s around the right quote). And really there is no Scriptural basis for this doctrine.
Constantly throughout the NT, believers are called upon to get rid of the sin in their lives, to seek after Christ, to be conformed to His image. In fact, the NT says that if we sin willingly as a lifestyle (i.e. a lifestyle of theivery, hatred, homosexuality, false doctrine, etc.) we prove that we’re not saved and that we’re under the wrath and condemnation of God. Yet today the churches by and large teach that a man can live in sin and have no repentance and no change and be saved as long as he said that prayer once, or was baptized once, or speaks in tongues, or had some vision, or did one of the hundreds of other silly little works that people say make someone saved. Let me say something, any flavor of religion that says that you have to do any kind of good deed to be saved is a damnable heresy. All that’s required of you is that you Repent and Believe, and even those two things are a gift straight from God. A dead man can neither believe nor repent. The doctrine of Regeneration is almost lost to the silliness of modern evangelicalism. But there is hope. Just as today my pastor talked about how if you are saved then you will have a change in the very core of your being. And you will continue to be changed more and more into the image of Christ, from his old viewpoint of yeah, but well this person has no change but they said the prayer and they go to church, so maybe they are, or maybe they aren’t. And then God graciously brought him back to the truth. Just like that, God can graciously bring all of American Christianity back to the truth, and He IS doing it. How do I know? Well I mean, hello, it just happened this morning. And I see it everywhere.
Pray for your pastor and friends to know the truth of Scripture. Study the Scripture and know what the truth really is. As my very good friend Aaron told me once, “Always, Always use the Bible as you compass, and remember no matter what you think, what you see, or what you feel, ALWAYS TRUST YOUR BIBLE!”
Yeah, but I need to pray for my youth pastor, we had a lesson on how God speaks to us and he never ONCE mentioned the Bible… God, give us revival, please.
@ Shawna
Hi Shawna, thanks for the response. Let’s take a gander at 2:1, where Paul states gives us a clue as to what his intent is:
1 You therefore, my son, be strong in the grace that is in Christ Jesus.
From this and the following verses (2-10) I think we can all agree that Paul is trying to encourage Timothy to, in light of his identity in Christ, endure hardship for the sake of the gospel and those that need to hear it (2:10). As we will see, this is the same kind of endurance that Paul speaks concerning himself in I Cor. 9:27 when he says that he disciplines himself so that he, after having preached to others, would not find himself disqualified.
With some context under our belt, let’s take a look at the verse(s) you asked about. I’m going to quote them (as has been my habit, from the NASB) here and then offer an explanation down below for each one.
11 It is a trustworthy statement:
For if we died with Him, we will also live with Him;
12 If we endure, we will also reign with Him;
If we deny Him, He also will deny us;
13 If we are faithless, He remains faithful, for He cannot deny Himself.
Here’s my response to these verses – I really hope that you’ll take a few minutes to honestly consider them, because there is some great encouragement here for believers. I noticed from your blog that you’re involved with AWANA and I’m sure you’re aware that the name is derived from these verses, so I want to talk about that (particularly, 2:15) at the end. We are so blessed to have such great words of encouragement from Paul here.
v. 11 – This idea of believers having died with Christ is a common one from Paul’s teachings. The idea is that as believers, we are identified with Christ in His death, burial, and resurrection – I would point out that, since we have gone through that process, it’s preposterous that we could lose our position in Christ, since that would require us to go backwards through the process. The fact that we are IDENTIFIED with Christ is a powerful idea and one that ought to give us great peace in this life, knowing that our POSITION is so secure!
v. 12a – If we endure, we will reign with him. Again, as in v. 10, Paul exhorts Timothy to ENDURE, with the promise of a future opportunity to reign with the Lord. This also seems to imply that if we do NOT endure, then we will miss out on that wonderful privilege to reign with Christ. Powerful motivation to endure and be approved by the Lord at the judgment seat of Christ.
v. 12b – I’ve seen this verse ripped from it’s context so many times, that it really makes me sad. Notice from the previous verses that Paul a) is talking to Timothy directly, someone he knows has believed the Gospel, b) hasn’t mentioned the Gospel or its content, and c) is speaking specifically about enduring and suffering in order to REIGN with Christ. With that in mind, Paul says that “If we deny Him, He will also deny us”. There are two questions here that need to be answered. First, where does this occur? The judgement seat of Christ, where believers are called to give an account of their lives. This is a judgment of believers to determine eternal rewards not to determine eternal life. Recognizing this, we can answer the second question we might have about what Paul means by ‘deny us’. Not all believers at the judgment seat will have endured. Not all believers will have the privilege of reigning with the Lord. Some will be denied by the Lord at the end of their lives. Many teachers strip this verse of its context and use it to teach that believers that don’t endure will be denied eternal life (usually saying either they lost it or never had it). But the context shows that eternal life isn’t in view in this statement at all! Paul is encouraging his fellow believer to endure in the hope of being approved (more on this in a second).
v. 13 – This was the verse that I’d cited. I didn’t just want to spring it on you because there’s some really cool ideas in this passage that you need the context for. In view of what Paul has just said, the next statement is incredible:
“If we are FAITHLESS, He remains faithful, for He cannot deny Himself”
The problem with understanding this verse is that, for many Christians, the idea of ‘belief’ has been so convoluted that they can’t understand it. It’s to simple to conclude that the Biblical idea of belief is simply trust (which it is – the words for faith, belief, and trust are the same). Most Christian teachers have succeeded in redefining “faith” as “perseverance” which is a real tragedy. Far too many believers walk around in perpetual fear of hell, terrified that if they don’t have the right flavor of faith they aren’t really saved and are just false professors.
The plain sense of this verse is simple: If we are faithless (unbelieving), He is still faithful to His promises because, in order to lose us, HE WOULD HAVE TO BREAK THEM! Wow. These are some powerful words – they communicate the idea that EVEN IF WE FAIL (and we do), He remains faithful to His promises and we can be certain that we have life everlasting, because it’s dependant upon Him and not us. Is that not an incredible statement! What tremendous motivation that is to endure in this life for the Lord Jesus, who has given eternal life to us so freely.
I hope you’ll take a few minutes to read through what I’ve written and judge it based upon the merits of the text and not upon what others have said. There is a lot of really bad teaching out there and the tragedy is that if we fail to accurately judge the text, then we fail to profit from it.
Now, I’d like to direct your attention to the verse from which the AWANA ministry gets its name, 2 Tim 2:15. I think it’s a wonderful verse which highlights our calling as believers:
15 Be diligent to present yourself approved to God as a workman who does not need to be ashamed, accurately handling the word of truth.
An approved workman. That’s Paul’s encouragement to Timothy – to endure the hardships in this life so as to be able to be named as approved workmen (and women!) that will have no need to be ashamed when we are called to give an account of our lives. The whole point of Paul’s discourse with Timothy is that he (and we) would strive to endure in our service for the Lord in this life so that, at the end, we would be approved and have no reason to be ashamed of a life that was wasted.
I realize this was a little bit longer than you probably anticipated, but I belief it’s important to correctly examine Scripture, rather than just cutting and splicing various verses together and declaring what it must mean. That’s not faithful to the text. Anyway… thoughts?
@ gmcastil
I have not ignored your response. I am just digging further into this passage and seeking council to see if I am correct or not as we all do err.
Shawna
Hi Shawna,
I appreciate your response and it’s encouraging to me that you’re willing to examine God’s word in terms of what it actually says. That sort of humility is crucial for all of us.
@ Everyone
I realize that I’ve made a lot of comments recently and asked a lot of questions, and it’s interesting to me that Shawna has been the only one to respond with legitimate questions. She’s to be commended for that.