6 comments

1. How is this related to the Gospel? How does this information build up the Body? Why do I as a Christian need to know this?

   • Hi Phil,

     Whenever I get this question, which comes every few years, I think to myself, “Self, I wonder if the internet works differently where they live? Does it somehow force people to read things they do not wish to read?” It’s a puzzle.

     More seriously Phil, I post quotations from things I read that I think are illuminating. Right now we are facing a serious threat to the freedom of speech in the USA. Since Christians have a twofold citizenship, i.e., like Paul, we have both a Roman citizenship (e.g., Acts 16), as it were, and a heavenly citizenship (Phil 3:20), it seems useful to be well informed about both spheres or realms. I think free speech is a natural right uniquely preserved in the American constitution. We should not give it up without some resistance.

     Because I am convinced that we live in a twofold kingdom, I’m not a Pietist or a Quietest. I think there is real value in cultural engagement. I’m confident that the apostles were culturally engaged (not to say cultural transformationalists). The Apostle Paul quoted a pagan poet from memory at the Areopagus (Acts 17) and another pagan poet to Titus (1:12). I think we should follow his example.

   • Phil, whilst Dr Clark’s reply seems to me more than adequate, I can’t resist gilding the lily by asking you why one of the disciples didn’t ask Jesus “How is the devouring of widows’ houses by our ethical teachers related to the Gospel? How does this information build up the body? Why do I as a disciple need to know this?”

2. What struck me in the article is that one client that has paid her astronomical fee is the YMCA. This started out as a Christian charity, and whilst there is, I think, very little Christian left about it, it is still supposed to be a charity. Aren’t charities supposed to be responsible in the use of funds and not allow themselves to be grossly overcharged? Quite apart from the fact that the expensive training she peddles doesn’t work …

3. Phil:

   The Bible is replete with warnings in both Old and New Testaments about turning away from God to serve other things. Were you to inherit $1,000,000.00 tomorrow, it WOULD change you. If you had the opportunity to acquire millions of dollars by engaging in intellectual dishonesty, you might take the bait. The sins in the NT are the sins of Christians. Even though the Corinthians heard the gospel, some of them had to be rebuked for embracing the bad news, in the process of redirecting their attention to Christ.

   The Christian’s motivation is to promote the gospel. The forces of darkness promote the love of money, promiscuous sex and the lust for power, among other things. Christians are not immune to these influences. They are an ever present threat.

4. The book of Joshua documents 40 years of faithfulness to God by his servant Joshua. Judges, the book that immediately follows, records nearly 400 years of Israel’s unfaithfulness to God. There was something seductive about other religions and the foreign women who worshipped idols. Seductive to a people who had experienced God’s deliverances firsthand and had the Creator of the Universe dwelling in their midst.

   Those foreign women and their pagan nations should not have been there. They should have been driven out per God’s command. Their ideas about how the world worked their invitations for the Hebrews to join them should have been defeated.

   In the modern world, Paul would characterize the battle like this:

   The weapons we fight with are not the weapons of the world. On the contrary, they have divine power to demolish strongholds. We demolish arguments and every pretension that sets itself up against the knowledge of God, and we take captive every thought to make it obedient to Christ. —2 Cor. 10:4-5

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