D.J. Williams | February 25, 2010 in Quotes | Comments (0)
Tags: Judgment, Liam Goligher, Sin
“The devil or the serpent can now build on her distortion. ‘You will not surely die,’ he says. What he’s implying is ‘God is being selfish, threatening your potential. God knows that if you eat of that tree you will be equal with him. Your eyes will be open, you will acquire the knowledge of good and evil, you will become like God.’ He is flatly denying the idea that God would ever judge sin with death. It’s interesting that it’s the doctrine of judgment that is the very first to be denied. It frequently still is.”
- Liam Goligher, The Jesus Gospel
D.J. Williams | February 11, 2010 in Bible | Comments (2)
Tags: Holiness, Sanctification, Sin
“When the unclean spirit has gone out of a person, it passes through waterless places seeking rest, and finding none it says, ‘I will return to my house from which I came.’ And when it comes, it finds the house swept and put in order. Then it goes and brings seven other spirits more evil than itself, and they enter and dwell there. And the last state of that person is worse than the first.” – Luke 11:24-26
In the process of sanctification, our lives are marked by a series of battles against sin. Some things seem to blow up in our faces overnight, while other battles are long, hard, daily grinds to beat out sins that we fall into far too easily. In either case, one of the most dangerous things we can do is to follow a moment of spiritual victory with the notion that we’ve got that one taken care of. Complacency is the enemy of every Christian. We need to remember that the process of growing in holiness is akin to driving a car up a steep mountain. Taking your foot off the gas and shifting into neutral only guarantees that you’ll roll quickly backward. It may not seem so at first as momentum carries you briefly forward, but it won’t be long before you inevitably come crashing back to the bottom of the hill. With that in mind, and to use a twist on Jesus’ analogy referenced above, the next time you decide to do a little spring cleaning in your spiritual house, don’t just clean the house. Remember to lock the door when you’re done.
D.J. Williams | February 2, 2010 in Bible | Comments (0)
Tags: Ed Welch, Matthew, Sin
Counselor Ed Welch has written a great article about the guilt that nags at some people over whether or not they’ve committed the unpardonable sin Jesus mentioned in Matthew 12:32. The old cliche answer you hear from people is some variation on “if you’re worried you’ve committed the unpardonable sin, you probably haven’t.” Welch does an excellent job of going into textual and contextual detail to show why that trite assertion actually isn’t too far off base. Here’s one of his conclusions…
“God forgives those who come to him. Whenever there is turning to Christ in repentance, there is always forgiveness. There is no account in Scripture of someone who felt godly sorrow and repented, but was not forgiven. None. Not one.”
If you’ve ever wondered about this passage (and who hasn’t?) or want to be ready to counsel others about it well, the whole article is definitely worth a read.
HT: Justin Taylor
D.J. Williams | January 27, 2010 in Sermons | Comments (0)
Tags: Douglas Wilson, Sin
D.J. Williams | November 18, 2009 in Theological Reflections | Comments (1)
Tags: Ethics, Gambling, Sin
That question seems to be a hot topic in the blogosphere this week. First, Phil Johnson recounted an exchange he had with a college student a few years back and examined the morality of gambling (first post here, second here, with more to come). Then, Kevin DeYoung examined the question, prompted by a paragraph from theologian John Frame. Both bloggers end up saying (Johnson explicitly, DeYoung by implication) that gambling is indeed sinful. I don’t think I can agree.
First up, read the other posts before continuing on. The student Johnson talks about in his first post presents a case that I think is pretty strong, so I won’t elaborate on those points here. I’ve never been to a casino, but I’m hard-pressed to see a difference between spending a hard limit, say $100, on an evening of entertainment playing poker and spending that same $100 on tickets to a sporting event, for which you receive nothing but the experience in return. You might say that gambling easily leads to addiction, but one look at the credit card debt numbers in our country seems to say that iPhones, Xboxes, and flat screen TVs do too - and I don’t see anyone calling us to boycott Best Buy for their exploitation of the masses.
I don’t find the essay quoted by DeYoung to be particularly compelling, namely because each of the arguments it raises could also be made about alcohol (can destroy lives, is pushed hard for profit by a large and sophisticated industry, etc.), which is clearly not inherently sinful from a biblical standpoint. More worthy of careful consideration are the issues raised by Johnson in his second post – especially the point that when someone wins while gambling, someone else must necessarily lose (and lose something of value, unlike an athletic competition where the loser really doesn’t lose anything tangible). Thus, he says, gambling is inherently sinful because it takes from others – it breaks the biblical prohibition against stealing. Does it, though? In fact, isn’t our entire economic system built on this principle – for one to gain, another must lose? If I open a business that makes a really cool gadget that everyone decides they must have, and my bank account gets padded by people who are racking up their credit card debt, isn’t that essentially the same thing here? You might raise the objection that my business is different because I offer something in return (the gadget). But what of businesses whose product is entertainment, such as Universal Studios or the NFL? They offer nothing tangible, just an entertaining experience for your dollar, which is the same thing a casino does.
I believe that inconsistency is one of the best indicators there is of poor moral reasoning. If you can’t apply a moral principle across the spectrum of life with consistency, it’s a good sign your moral reasoning is faulty. Because of that, I cannot say that gambling is a sin. Unwise? Perhaps, but not a sin in and of itself. Agree? Disagree? See a problem with my own consistency here? Let me know in the comments, and let’s seek to think carefully about this issue.
“The devil or the serpent can now build on her distortion. ‘You will not surely die,’ he says. What he’s implying is ‘God is being selfish, threatening your potential. God knows that if you eat of that tree you will be equal with him. Your eyes will be open, you will acquire the knowledge of good and evil, you will become like God.’ He is flatly denying the idea that God would ever judge sin with death. It’s interesting that it’s the doctrine of judgment that is the very first to be denied. It frequently still is.”
