Category: Articles and Devotionals

We’re living in a day and age of “identity politics.”  A time in which people gather with affinities for those who are like them and pinpoint others by their affiliations.  In one sense, this labeling is terribly wrong, making the assumption that everyone who identifies with a certain category, organization, or ethnicity is the same.  But in another sense, there’s an accuracy where there’s true identity.  Such is the case with the Image of God.

God’s Image is important to Him.  Jesus, the Son of God, perfectly is the Image of God.  He didn’t just display this Image.  He radiated and embodied God’s Image in all His glory.  

The Son is the radiance of God’s glory and the exact representation of his being, sustaining all things by his powerful word.  (Hebrews 1:3)

***

Mankind (Jesus’ brothers and sisters in the family of man) bears the Image of God.  But there’s a difference: Jesus is the Image of God, but we only bear this Image imperfectly on our side of Eden. 

Sadly, we have gradually departed from our desire to bear God’s Image and to do as Jesus would do.  How has this happened?  2 Corinthians 4:4 The god of this age has blinded the minds of unbelievers, so that they cannot see the light of the gospel of the glory of Christ, who is the image of God.

Indeed, we are blinded to our need for God and it expresses itself in a self-reliant rejection of God’s gracious offer of salvation in which we grow in Christlikeness.  2 Corinthians 3:17 “Now the Lord is the Spirit, and where the Spirit of the Lord is, there is freedom. 18 And we, who with unveiled faces all reflect the Lord’s glory, are being transformed into his likeness with ever-increasing glory, which comes from the Lord, who is the Spirit.”

It also clouds our hearts to seeing the humanity of others: the unborn, the unlovely, the sinner, and anyone who believes differently than ourselves. 

What do we do instead, even in the Christian community?  James 3:9 “With the tongue we praise our Lord and Father, and with it we curse men, who have been made in God’s likeness.” 

One look at our political climate and we see this horror in full-bloom. 

Call it Resist or Hate or Trolling, it doesn’t matter. 

It’s wrong because we’re failing to see the humanity of others. There are people behind all labels, even the NRA and the anti-gun lobby…  

It’s a death-trap being conceived in the heart and leads to many atrocities.

Food for thought: 

1. There are many ways this dehumanizing of our fellow man/woman results in willing mistreatment of others.  Can you think of a few?
2. Identify all the ways rejecting the identity of God-follower and Image-bearer results in rebellion against God and hatred of our fellow man in 2 Timothy 3:1 But mark this: There will be terrible times in the last days. 2 People will be lovers of themselves, lovers of money, boastful, proud, abusive, disobedient to their parents, ungrateful, unholy, 3 without love, unforgiving, slanderous, without self-control, brutal, not lovers of the good, 4 treacherous, rash, conceited, lovers of pleasure rather than lovers of God– 5 having a form of godliness but denying its power. Have nothing to do with them. 6 They are the kind who worm their way into homes and gain control over weak-willed women, who are loaded down with sins and are swayed by all kinds of evil desires, 7 always learning but never able to acknowledge the truth. 
3. What are we doing when we mistreat others who are not like us? Matthew 25:40 “And the King will answer and say to them, ‘Truly I say to you, to the extent that you did it to one of these brothers of Mine, even the least of them, you did it to Me.’
4. Are there any ways you need to repent of rebelling against the Image of God in Jesus Christ and against His Image, broken and needing restoration, in yourself?
5. In the Life of Pi which we’ve been using as our launchpad for 40 questions “Why?” the priest suggests that Jesus is someone with whose sufferings we can identify as with a brother’s.   How does God’s Image perfectly shown in the sufferings of the Son of Man call us back to Himself?

Join me tomorrow for “Why Didn’t Jesus Just Appear to All Without His Body?”

==

For Lent 2018, we’ll explore the questions of Pi and Chi (the Greek letter beginning the word Christos, which means Christ, Messiah, the Anointed One). We’ll ask and answer the question “Why?” as we discover the uniqueness of Jesus Christ.  Join me for the 40 days of Lent which began February 14, 2018 by liking Seminary Gal on Facebook or having these devotionals sent to your email box which you can do via the sign-up on my Home page.  Thank you for blessing me with this opportunity to study together the Word of God.

===

Acknowledging that former years’ devotional series remain popular:

1. Lent 2013 looked at The Letter to the Romans: Paul’s Masterpiece to reclaim foundations of our Christian heritage and began February 13, 2013.
2.  A very special and ever popular offering was Lent 2014’s Be Still and Know that I AM God  which can be obtained through the archives beginning in March 2014. 
3. Lent 2015 began on February 18, 2015 with a series entitled With Christ in the Upper Room: Final Preparations.  We explored what is often called “The Upper Room Discourse” found in John chapters 13-17. 
4. ReKindle, the Lent 2016 series, began on February 10, 2016 and encouraged us to rekindle our spiritual lives.
5. Light: There’s Nothing Like It was the 2017 Lent series and explored this metaphor often used to portray Christ.  It is archived beginning March 1, 2017.

Do you get tired of waiting?  Do you wish Jesus would just come to take us all home now?  Do you feel like a perennial child asking from the back seat of the station wagon,

Are we there yet?”

In the movie Life of Pi that we’ve been using for our Lent 2018 devotional series, Pi recounts his father’s abandonment of Hinduism in favor of atheism.  His father had been sick and Hinduism didn’t serve him the way Western medicine did.  He abandoned religion in favor of science.  Hindu gods had taken too long and provided no visible answer.

The Jewish people must have felt like that when Jesus first showed up on the scene.  They’d been persecuted and mistreated from Egypt to Rome to Babylon.  In their history books, they’d been gathered up, paraded through the Red Sea and wandered around in the desert for 40 years.  They’d been a great kingdom and a divided kingdom and a small remnant.  They’d lived in plenty and in famine.  They’d been homegrown but also exiled.  And all the while waiting for the vindication of God’s chosen people that had been promised to Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, prophesied by Isaiah, Ezra, and Joel.  They had the Scriptures and knew what God had promised. 

But a long time passed between the promise made and the Messiah promised.

This issue of time and its being among the things no human can control, only manage, is a wedge of faith. Hebrews 11:1 Now faith is being sure of what we hope for and certain of what we do not see.

***

Funny thing is, God doesn’t think it took too long.  He alone knew the day and hour back then and He alone knows it for Jesus’ return.  He wants you to agree His timing is perfect.  It wasn’t enough time to forget the promise, but enough time to cultivate desire.  The world needed to be widely inhabited and time for the infrastructure of Rome to be established.  There needed to be a common language (koine Greek to enable the spread of the Gospel).   All of this made God’s timing perfect for Jesus to arrive.  Galatians 4: 4 But when the time had fully come, God sent his Son, born of a woman, born under law, 5 to redeem those under law, that we might receive the full rights of sons.

Food for thought: 

• In what way was Paul acknowledging the appointed time?  Titus 1:1 Paul, a servant of God and an apostle of Jesus Christ for the faith of God’s elect and the knowledge of the truth that leads to godliness– 2 a faith and knowledge resting on the hope of eternal life, which God, who does not lie, promised before the beginning of time, 3 and at his appointed season he brought his word to light through the preaching entrusted to me by the command of God our Savior. 
• In what ways do science and this issue of control still present an obstacle to faith?
• Are you looking for Christ’s return or have you given up on waiting? 
• What things need to happen for Christ’s return to be the perfect timing?  Romans 11:25,  Revelation 1:7 Look, he is coming with the clouds, and every eye will see him, even those who pierced him; and all the peoples of the earth will mourn because of him. So shall it be! Amen.
• How might smart phones and 24-hour news cycles be making it possible for all eyes to see His return?

Join me tomorrow for who is this Jesus and “Why Is God’s Image So Important?”

==

For Lent 2018, we’ll explore the questions of Pi and Chi (the Greek letter beginning the word Christos, which means Christ, Messiah, the Anointed One). We’ll ask and answer the question “Why?” as we discover the uniqueness of Jesus Christ.  Join me for the 40 days of Lent which began February 14, 2018 by liking Seminary Gal on Facebook or having these devotionals sent to your email box which you can do via the sign-up on my Home page.  Thank you for blessing me with this opportunity to study together the Word of God.

===

Acknowledging that former years’ devotional series remain popular:

• Lent 2013 looked at The Letter to the Romans: Paul’s Masterpiece to reclaim foundations of our Christian heritage and began February 13, 2013.
•  A very special and ever popular offering was Lent 2014’s Be Still and Know that I AM God  which can be obtained through the archives beginning in March 2014. 
• Lent 2015 began on February 18, 2015 with a series entitled With Christ in the Upper Room: Final Preparations.  We explored what is often called “The Upper Room Discourse” found in John chapters 13-17. 
• ReKindle, the Lent 2016 series, began on February 10, 2016 and encouraged us to rekindle our spiritual lives.
• Light: There’s Nothing Like It was the 2017 Lent series and explored this metaphor often used to portray Christ.  It is archived beginning March 1, 2017.

One of the most interesting points from the movie Life of Pi (which our Lent 2018 devotional series is using to ask Why?) is the way it can remind those of us in the Christian West or in Judeo-Christian America–at least what remains–that we’re a privileged sort. Most of us don’t have a whole football team of gods who come charging out of the locker room to play the game every Sunday that we’ve learned from birth. Doctrine is inculcated early so when the young boy Pi sees the universe in Krishna’s mouth in a comic book, he believes. Thousands of gods offered his Hindu family everything they need. 

In the Christian world, we start with the assumption of monotheism–one god religious belief.  There are 3 great monotheistic religions (Judaism, Christianity, and Islam).  Of those, Judaism and Christianity share some Scriptures (what Christians call the Old Testament, not because it’s old and was supplanted by the new, but because it’s historic, even at the time Jesus walked the earth.)  The knowledge of One True God is ingrained in many of us.

Other areas of the world, however, don’t begin with that assumption.  In their worldview, they collect gods like some people collect souvenir shot glasses or those decals on the back of an RV.  It’s no big deal for them to add Jesus to the mix.

But what are they really doing? 

That’s not how Jesus does things.  He’s not one to play on some other god’s team.  He knows there are no other gods.  (Isaiah 44:1-18)

It’s important that Jesus preexists with the Father because that’s what Scripture says about Jesus, the Word of God. 

John 1:1 In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. 2 He was with God in the beginning.

***

Without His being eternally God, we’d have two gods or maybe even more.  Without His being sent from the Father to reveal the Father to us, we’d find ourselves able to make Jesus a god of our own making instead of a God of His own revealing. 

Ask any world religion where their gods come from and it tells you a lot.  If it’s not Jesus alone–sent from the Father as Emmanuel, God with us–their god is just one among many idols.

Food for thought:

• If Jesus wasn’t eternally God, then how can He BE the way? (John 14:4-6) John 14:6 Jesus answered, “I am the way and the truth and the life. No one comes to the Father except through me.”
• How does knowing Jesus came from the Father comfort us and give us hope? John 14:1 “Do not let your hearts be troubled. Trust in God; trust also in me. 2 In my Father’s house are many rooms; if it were not so, I would have told you. I am going there to prepare a place for you … 8 Philip said, “Lord, show us the Father and that will be enough for us.” 9 Jesus answered: “Don’t you know me, Philip, even after I have been among you such a long time? Anyone who has seen me has seen the Father. How can you say, ‘Show us the Father’? 10 Don’t you believe that I am in the Father, and that the Father is in me? The words I say to you are not just my own. Rather, it is the Father, living in me, who is doing his work.

Join me tomorrow for “Why Did It Take So Long for Him to Show Up? “

==

For Lent 2018, we’ll explore the questions of Pi and Chi (the Greek letter beginning the word Christos, which means Christ, Messiah, the Anointed One). We’ll ask and answer the question “Why?” as we discover the uniqueness of Jesus Christ.  Join me for the 40 days of Lent which began February 14, 2018 by liking Seminary Gal on Facebook or having these devotionals sent to your email box which you can do via the sign-up on my Home page.  Thank you for blessing me with this opportunity to study together the Word of God.

===

Acknowledging that former years’ devotional series remain popular:

• Lent 2013 looked at The Letter to the Romans: Paul’s Masterpiece to reclaim foundations of our Christian heritage and began February 13, 2013.
•  A very special and ever popular offering was Lent 2014’s Be Still and Know that I AM God  which can be obtained through the archives beginning in March 2014. 
• Lent 2015 began on February 18, 2015 with a series entitled With Christ in the Upper Room: Final Preparations.  We explored what is often called “The Upper Room Discourse” found in John chapters 13-17. 
• ReKindle, the Lent 2016 series, began on February 10, 2016 and encouraged us to rekindle our spiritual lives.
• Light: There’s Nothing Like It was the 2017 Lent series and explored this metaphor often used to portray Christ.  It is archived beginning March 1, 2017.

The young boy Pi (whose questions we’re investigating during Lent 2018) is talking with the Catholic priest who seems genuine and kind and soft-spoken and has one answer to every question: 

All you need to know is that He loves you.” 

How often do we underestimate God? (All the time!)  We wonder, “Why Couldn’t a Smart God Find Some Other Way?”  Maybe we need a bigger box to see the genius of God’s work.

I try not to go back to recap what is in prior devotionals, but sometimes I find I don’t know how say it any better than what I said before.  In talking about how God’s Way wasn’t some quickly devised Plan B to bail out mankind by a God who didn’t think things through very well, I spoke about God’s amazingly beautiful Plan A that resolved our problem to absolute perfection:

“It really is remarkable (although, I suppose not surprising) how perfect His resolution to the dilemma was.

• God punished sin (demonstrating His perfect justice).
• God brought us back into relationship with Him (demonstrating His mercy).
• God showed us what His Image looks like (demonstrating His holiness, wisdom, and compassion).
• God acted in every way loving toward us, His Image bearers (demonstrating His love).

Justice Served.  Love Triumphs.”

***

That’s the beauty of the Cross, ridiculed as foolishness by the world (1 Corinthians 1:18-25).  It’s not foolish–it is complete genius. 

The Cross.  It is there the perfection of God’s justice intersected with the perfection of God’s love.

This is how God showed his love among us: He sent his one and only Son into the world that we might live through him. This is love: not that we loved God, but that he loved us and sent his Son as an atoning sacrifice for our sins.” (1 John 4:9-10)

Ponder the genius of it all:

1. What if God hadn’t punished sin?  What if He just ditched the relationship? 
2. What if He didn’t care about His image? 
3. What if He gave Himself freedom to take a vacation from loving us, just this once? 
4. What would happen to His perfection?

Join me tomorrow for “Why is It Important Where Jesus Comes From?”

==

For Lent 2018, we’ll explore the questions of Pi and Chi (the Greek letter beginning the word Christos, which means Christ, Messiah, the Anointed One). We’ll ask and answer the question “Why?” as we discover the uniqueness of Jesus Christ.  Join me for the 40 days of Lent which began February 14, 2018 by liking Seminary Gal on Facebook or having these devotionals sent to your email box which you can do via the sign-up on my Home page.  Thank you for blessing me with this opportunity to study together the Word of God.

===

Acknowledging that former years’ devotional series remain popular:

• Lent 2013 looked at The Letter to the Romans: Paul’s Masterpiece to reclaim foundations of our Christian heritage and began February 13, 2013.
•  A very special and ever popular offering was Lent 2014’s Be Still and Know that I AM God  which can be obtained through the archives beginning in March 2014. 
• Lent 2015 began on February 18, 2015 with a series entitled With Christ in the Upper Room: Final Preparations.  We explored what is often called “The Upper Room Discourse” found in John chapters 13-17. 
• ReKindle, the Lent 2016 series, began on February 10, 2016 and encouraged us to rekindle our spiritual lives.
• Light: There’s Nothing Like It was the 2017 Lent series and explored this metaphor often used to portray Christ.  It is archived beginning March 1, 2017.

It’s hard to contemplate the full extent of perfect love.  What it’s like to truly love unconditionally.  With mankind this is impossible as our nature is a broken one, even in loving others.  

But it’s something that comes naturally to God, after all, He is love. (1 John 4:16)

Most of us, if we’re honest, would give up on those who chronically disappoint us.  Eventually, we would reach a breaking point of feeling like someone is so incorrigible that it’s time to throw in the towel.  Even parents.  Even children.  We want to keep loving them and to keep believing that they’ll turn out okay or they’ll change their ways.  But then another disappointment and we end up feeling like we just can’t do this anymore.  When our loved ones are living righteously, they’re easy to love!  But to love unconditionally, when others fail us continually or dish out nothing but hate and rebellion, responding with perfect love is truly difficult.

How can God keep loving us even when we let Him down over and over and over again?  Why Does God Still Love Us After All That?

The young Pi, in the movie Life of Pi that we’ve been using as our launch pad for 40 hard questions Why during Lent 2018, asks that very question.

The only answer I can come up with is that He’s not like us. 

Psalm 145:13 Your kingdom is an everlasting kingdom, and your dominion endures through all generations. The LORD is faithful to all his promises and loving toward all he has made.

He loves unconditionally because He is love.

Food for thought:

• When you examine the loves in your life, how often are there strings attached? 
• With whom are you most likely to know love free from conditions and caveats?
• Do you love someone because of how they treat you or because of the nice things they do or because their Match profile matches yours? 
• What makes others love you? 
• Why is it hard to grasp God’s unconditional love?  1 John 4:10 This is love: not that we loved God, but that he loved us and sent his Son as an atoning sacrifice for our sins.

Join me tomorrow for “Why Couldn’t a Smart God Find Some Other Way?” 

==

For Lent 2018, we’ll explore the questions of Pi and Chi (the Greek letter beginning the word Christos, which means Christ, Messiah, the Anointed One). We’ll ask and answer the question “Why?” as we discover the uniqueness of Jesus Christ.  Join me for the 40 days of Lent which began February 14, 2018 by liking Seminary Gal on Facebook or having these devotionals sent to your email box which you can do via the sign-up on my Home page.  Thank you for blessing me with this opportunity to study together the Word of God.

===

Acknowledging that former years’ devotional series remain popular:

• Lent 2013 looked at The Letter to the Romans: Paul’s Masterpiece to reclaim foundations of our Christian heritage and began February 13, 2013.
•  A very special and ever popular offering was Lent 2014’s Be Still and Know that I AM God  which can be obtained through the archives beginning in March 2014. 
• Lent 2015 began on February 18, 2015 with a series entitled With Christ in the Upper Room: Final Preparations.  We explored what is often called “The Upper Room Discourse” found in John chapters 13-17. 
• ReKindle, the Lent 2016 series, began on February 10, 2016 and encouraged us to rekindle our spiritual lives.
• Light: There’s Nothing Like It was the 2017 Lent series and explored this metaphor often used to portray Christ.  It is archived beginning March 1, 2017.

Isaiah 35:1 The desert and the parched land will be glad; the wilderness will rejoice and blossom. Like the crocus, 2 it will burst into bloom; it will rejoice greatly and shout for joy. The glory of Lebanon will be given to it, the splendor of Carmel and Sharon; they will see the glory of the LORD, the splendor of our God. 3 Strengthen the feeble hands, steady the knees that give way; 4 say to those with fearful hearts, “Be strong, do not fear; your God will come, he will come with vengeance; with divine retribution he will come to save you.” 5 Then will the eyes of the blind be opened and the ears of the deaf unstopped. 6 Then will the lame leap like a deer, and the mute tongue shout for joy. Water will gush forth in the wilderness and streams in the desert. 7 The burning sand will become a pool, the thirsty ground bubbling springs. In the haunts where jackals once lay, grass and reeds and papyrus will grow. 8 And a highway will be there; it will be called the Way of Holiness. The unclean will not journey on it; it will be for those who walk in that Way; wicked fools will not go about on it. 9 No lion will be there, nor will any ferocious beast get up on it; they will not be found there. But only the redeemed will walk there, 10 and the ransomed of the LORD will return. They will enter Zion with singing; everlasting joy will crown their heads. Gladness and joy will overtake them, and sorrow and sighing will flee away.

===

Devotionals for Lent 2018, Pi and Chi (the Greek letter beginning the word Christos, which means Christ, Messiah, the Anointed One) continue tomorrow in which we’ll ask and answer the question “Why?” and discover the uniqueness of Jesus Christ.  Join me for the 40 days of Lent which began February 14, 2018 by liking Seminary Gal on Facebook or having these devotionals sent to your email box which you can do via the sign-up on my Home page.  Thank you for blessing me with this opportunity to study together the Word of God.

===

Acknowledging that former years’ devotional series remain popular:

• Lent 2013 looked at The Letter to the Romans: Paul’s Masterpiece to reclaim foundations of our Christian heritage and began February 13, 2013.
• A very special and ever popular offering was Lent 2014’s Be Still and Know that I AM God  which can be obtained through the archives beginning in March 2014. 
• Lent 2015 began on February 18, 2015 with a series entitled With Christ in the Upper Room: Final Preparations.  We explored what is often called “The Upper Room Discourse” found in John chapters 13-17. 
• ReKindle, the Lent 2016 series, began on February 10, 2016 and encouraged us to rekindle our spiritual lives.
• .Light: There’s Nothing Like It was the 2017 Lent series and explored this metaphor often used to portray Christ.  It is archived beginning March 1, 2017.

While God doesn’t tell us what He was doing prior to creating the heavens and the earth and all the living creatures, God tells us how He feels about what He created: Genesis 1:31 God saw all that he had made, and it was very good.

God looks for the good and loves what He has made. Psalm 145:17 The LORD is righteous in all his ways and loving toward all he has made.

***

To completely destroy what was very good (all His Image-bearers) because many humans chose to do wrong—well, it’s a classic case of two wrongs don’t make it right. God would not destroy all His Image-bearers because God is always right. He had something far better in mind:

Redemption! He would redeem what was originally very good out of what had turned terribly wrong with Adam and Eve’s choices.

It’s both redemption and purification. In doing so, He would highlight the magnitude of His love, grace, and forgiveness, something the young boy Pi in our devotional series for Lent 2018 finds both curious and compelling.

It’s truly amazing how God never excuses sin or sweeps it under the cosmic rug. He still retained His holiness in the face of sin by paying the price…Himself.

Food for thought:

• Have you ever thought about how God’s love was magnified because of sin? How it gave God the opportunity to showcase His beauty? Romans 5:20 But where sin increased, grace increased all the more, 21 so that, just as sin reigned in death, so also grace might reign through righteousness to bring eternal life through Jesus Christ our Lord.
• Consider all the world religions you know about. Do any of them solve the sin problem without diminishing sin to just a choice or making it possible for man to earn his way back as penance?
• If God didn’t want to start over, then why did the flood happen? Hmmm? Why did He destroy the earth once before? Genesis 6:5 The LORD saw how great man’s wickedness on the earth had become, and that every inclination of the thoughts of his heart was only evil all the time. 6 The LORD was grieved that he had made man on the earth, and his heart was filled with pain. 7 So the LORD said, “I will wipe mankind, whom I have created, from the face of the earth– men and animals, and creatures that move along the ground, and birds of the air– for I am grieved that I have made them.” 8 But Noah found favor in the eyes of the LORD.”
• Why won’t He again? Genesis 8:21 The LORD smelled the pleasing aroma and said in his heart: “Never again will I curse the ground because of man, even though every inclination of his heart is evil from childhood. And never again will I destroy all living creatures, as I have done.”
• How does “starting over again” with righteous Noah and his family maintain the promise made to Adam and Eve in cursing the serpent (Genesis 3:15) and fulfill the blessing of God’s Image filling the earth? When is starting over, not really starting completely over?

Tomorrow, we rest for the Sabbath which is not included in the 40 days of Lent. Join me again on Monday for Why Does God Still Love Us After All That?

===

For Lent 2018, we’ll explore the questions of Pi and Chi (the Greek letter beginning the word Christos, which means Christ, Messiah, the Anointed One). We’ll ask and answer the question “Why?” as we discover the uniqueness of Jesus Christ.  Join me for the 40 days of Lent which began February 14, 2018 by liking Seminary Gal on Facebook or having these devotionals sent to your email box which you can do via the sign-up on my Home page.  Past devotionals can be accessed via the archives.  Thank you for blessing me with this opportunity to study together the Word of God.

===

Acknowledging that former years’ devotional series remain popular:

• Lent 2013 looked at The Letter to the Romans: Paul’s Masterpiece to reclaim foundations of our Christian heritage and began February 13, 2013.
•  A very special and ever popular offering was Lent 2014’s Be Still and Know that I AM God  which can be obtained through the archives beginning in March 2014. 
• Lent 2015 began on February 18, 2015 with a series entitled With Christ in the Upper Room: Final Preparations.  We explored what is often called “The Upper Room Discourse” found in John chapters 13-17. 
• ReKindle, the Lent 2016 series, began on February 10, 2016 and encouraged us to rekindle our spiritual lives.
• Light: There’s Nothing Like It was the 2017 Lent series and explored this metaphor often used to portray Christ.  It is archived beginning March 1, 2017.

In the movie, Life of Pi, which we are using as our launch pad for Pi and Chi, asking and answering 40 questions, the young Pi quizzes the priest at the International Catholic Church in Munnar asking,

If God is so perfect and we’re not, why would He want to create all this? Why does He need us at all?”

The caricature Catholic priest in the movie replies with a Sunday school answer, “All you have to know is that He loves us.”

Here’s a news flash: God doesn’t need us.  He wanted us.

***

He wanted us to bear His Image and to bring Him glory by displaying His rule and reign throughout the world.  He still wants us to do that. Let’s consider ourselves (you, me, and all mankind) to be God’s exponential increase of love.  More people to love and more glory for Him.

Food for thought:

• How does creating mankind accomplish the exponential increase of love?  Genesis 1:28 God blessed them and said to them, “Be fruitful and increase in number; fill the earth and subdue it. Rule over the fish of the sea and the birds of the air and over every living creature that moves on the ground.”
• How does our obeying this command and experiencing this blessing display God’s rule and reign?

Join me tomorrow for “Why Didn’t God Let Adam & Eve Die & Start Over?”

===

For Lent 2018, we’ll explore the questions of Pi and Chi (the Greek letter beginning the word Christos, which means Christ, Messiah, the Anointed One). We’ll ask and answer the question “Why?” as we discover the uniqueness of Jesus Christ.  Join me for the 40 days of Lent which began February 14, 2018 by liking Seminary Gal on Facebook or having these devotionals sent to your email box which you can do via the sign-up on my Home page.  Thank you for blessing me with this opportunity to study together the Word of God.

===

Acknowledging that former years’ devotional series remain popular:

• Lent 2013 looked at The Letter to the Romans: Paul’s Masterpiece to reclaim foundations of our Christian heritage and began February 13, 2013.
•  A very special and ever popular offering was Lent 2014’s Be Still and Know that I AM God  which can be obtained through the archives beginning in March 2014. 
• Lent 2015 began on February 18, 2015 with a series entitled With Christ in the Upper Room: Final Preparations.  We explored what is often called “The Upper Room Discourse” found in John chapters 13-17. 
• ReKindle, the Lent 2016 series, began on February 10, 2016 and encouraged us to rekindle our spiritual lives.
• Light: There’s Nothing Like It was the 2017 Lent series and explored this metaphor often used to portray Christ.  It is archived beginning March 1, 2017.

As we continue our Lent 2018 devotional series Pi and Chi looking at questions “Why?” and how they are all answered in Jesus Christ the Son of God, we’ll explore a subject Jesus spoke about a lot: Hell.  If Jesus could talk about Hell often, I ask your indulgence for one more day because eternal destination is really, really important. 

Why is There Hell? Especially if God is so loving, as the Catholic priest in the movie keeps saying, why would God even invent a place like that?

First, we must acknowledge there are some Christian scholars who deny the existence of Hell as a place of eternal torment.  These “annihilationists” believe the unsaved become nothing after the final judgment.  Advocates for that position include John Stott, Clark Pinnock, and John G. Stackhouse, Jr.  They have theological reasons for believing it. 

Others admit they don’t know:  F.F. Bruce and N.T. Wright are among the “agnostics.”

Critics of this annihilationist view include Wayne Grudem, J.I. Packer, R.C. Sproul, Tim Keller, Franklin Graham, Rick Warren, John F. MacArthur, and they argue that Hell is very real.

Perhaps those names are meaningless to you.  You may recognize some as authors and pastors you admire. 

My point is this: we can disagree on some things in the world of Christianity and happily remain brothers and sisters in Christ.  I own books from individuals in all those camps.

In case you’re curious, my view is that Heaven is just as real as Hell—Jesus spoke of both.  Hell is an uncomfortable subject.  Therefore, I think there are plenty of Christians who diminish Hell because it’s uncomfortable, embarrassing, and hard to explain.  They choose to believe that God will find another way since God is Love (1 John 4:16). He’s a loving God. 

My view is predicated upon the assumption that Hell is not a “place” like Dubuque or Dubai or Dublin.  You can’t set your GPS for it as a physical location.  Think of “Hell” as “Not Heaven”.  The Bible says of Heaven, “Nothing impure will ever enter it, nor will anyone who does what is shameful or deceitful, but only those whose names are written in the Lamb’s book of life.” (Revelation 21:27).

Just as there was the Garden of Eden (holy) and a location outside of Eden (unholy), there is the presence of Holy God in His fullness (that’s called Heaven), but there’s a place away from God, too.  For those who hated God, rebelled against Him and every opportunity to be reconciled to their Creator, they are outside of God’s presence forever.  No second chances for the unholy after death.  No third or fourth chances after ripening in purgatory.  Just as God didn’t let Adam and Eve back into His presence in the Garden, there will be no coming back into God’s presence and it will feel like Hell. 

Hell is essentially one’s choice to reject God… carved in stone.  Having nothing to do with God is Hell.

And that’s why I believe you can be present with God (with Christ’s forgiveness applied to you by faith even today) … or you can reject/be without Him (it’s a daily choice).  But when it’s Game Over, there are no shades of faith just like there are no degrees of pregnant.  You either are or you’re not.  There are no fence-sitters in God’s world.  You’re either 100% in Heaven as a person made 100% holy or it’s 100% Hell of one’s unholy choosing day-by-day, fixed eternally.

Food for thought: 

• To have 2 destinations doesn’t diminish God’s being Love. He provided the way, the truth, and the life…in Christ (John 14:6)…fulfilling John 3:16-17 and saving us from Hell.  Are two destinations incompatible with a God of love?  
• In what ways did God respect both our Image-bearing and freedom of choice?
• What do you think about Hell? 

Join me tomorrow for Why Did He Create Us at All?

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For Lent 2018, we’ll explore the questions of Pi and Chi (the Greek letter beginning the word Christos, which means Christ, Messiah, the Anointed One). We’ll ask and answer the question “Why?” as we discover the uniqueness of Jesus Christ.  Join me for the 40 days of Lent which began February 14, 2018 by liking Seminary Gal on Facebook or having these devotionals sent to your email box which you can do via the sign-up on my Home page.  Thank you for blessing me with this opportunity to study together the Word of God.

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Acknowledging that former years’ devotional series remain popular:

• Lent 2013 looked at The Letter to the Romans: Paul’s Masterpiece to reclaim foundations of our Christian heritage and began February 13, 2013.
•  A very special and ever popular offering was Lent 2014’s Be Still and Know that I AM God  which can be obtained through the archives beginning in March 2014. 
• Lent 2015 began on February 18, 2015 with a series entitled With Christ in the Upper Room: Final Preparations.  We explored what is often called “The Upper Room Discourse” found in John chapters 13-17. 
• ReKindle, the Lent 2016 series, began on February 10, 2016 and encouraged us to rekindle our spiritual lives.
• Light: There’s Nothing Like It was the 2017 Lent series and explored this metaphor often used to portray Christ.  It is archived beginning March 1, 2017.

If there was ever a Christian turn-off, this one would be it: Why Does God Send People to Hell? 

It even makes Christians uncomfortable, this whole idea of hell.  It doesn’t jibe with the God of love (John 3:16) whom the end zone at football games and the Catholic priest in our devotional series launched from The Life of Pi proclaim.  

In the minds of discomforted Christians (and especially those who think Christianity is stupid), they picture God sitting up in some cloud, grabbing perfectly normal people, and throwing them into some gaping chasm in the ground with hot lava boiling in the bottom.  And He somehow does all this with a huge angry scowl on His face … with or without that diabolical laugh in your Hollywood version.

What a misunderstanding and a tragic one!  Let me say it clearly:

God does not SEND people to hell.  They send themselves there.

***

God RESCUES people from hell.  That’s why Jesus came.

***   

For God did not send his Son into the world to condemn the world, but to save the world through him.”  (John 3:17) 

Food for thought: 

• Why is it convenient for those who hate Christianity to point to this question, thinking of it as being “checkmate” in the game of religious thought?
• In what way does it all depend on God? 
• In what ways do people send themselves to hell? 
• In what ways is hell the default destination?  Read Genesis 2:17 for insight. 
• In what ways do we have a say in where we end up?  Read Romans 10:1-15 for insight.

More on this subject tomorrow with “Why is There Hell?”

===

For Lent 2018, we’ll explore the questions of Pi and Chi (the Greek letter beginning the word Christos, which means Christ, Messiah, the Anointed One). We’ll ask and answer the question “Why?” as we discover the uniqueness of Jesus Christ.  Join me for the 40 days of Lent which began February 14, 2018 by liking Seminary Gal on Facebook or having these devotionals sent to your email box which you can do via the sign-up on my Home page.  Thank you for blessing me with this opportunity to study together the Word of God.

===

Acknowledging that former years’ devotional series remain popular:

• Lent 2013 looked at The Letter to the Romans: Paul’s Masterpiece to reclaim foundations of our Christian heritage and began February 13, 2013.
•  A very special and ever popular offering was Lent 2014’s Be Still and Know that I AM God  which can be obtained through the archives beginning in March 2014. 
• Lent 2015 began on February 18, 2015 with a series entitled With Christ in the Upper Room: Final Preparations.  We explored what is often called “The Upper Room Discourse” found in John chapters 13-17. 
• ReKindle, the Lent 2016 series, began on February 10, 2016 and encouraged us to rekindle our spiritual lives.
• Light: There’s Nothing Like It was the 2017 Lent series and explored this metaphor often used to portray Christ.  It is archived beginning March 1, 2017.