Cletus
Senior Member
Posts: 2,517
|
Post by Cletus on May 18, 2018 22:11:43 GMT -5
if you never heard this sermon find the time. its a good one.
|
|
|
Post by tlsitd on May 19, 2018 9:07:55 GMT -5
if you never heard this sermon find the time. its a good one.
Mr. Reidhead makes some good points about humanism infiltrating and influencing Christianity, and about self-centered motives on the part of the Christian warping his or her Christianity, with which I agree. But I think he mistakenly creates a false dichotomy by presenting the desire to be saved from the just condemnation of God for one's sins and desiring the glory of God as being mutually exclusive or opposed to each other, when the Scriptures make no such dichotomy. It's not an either/or deal.
It is plain from the Scriptures that God wants men to be saved not only because He deserves to be glorified in and by man---because He is worthy of glory by nature of who and what He is, and because Jesus purchased mankind with His blood and deserves what He purchased---but also because He loves man and doesn't want man to perish (that is, to spend eternity in the lake of fire). And those two desires are not in any kind of conflict with one another, such that if a man desires to be saved from the wrath of God he knows he deserves that he has unrighteous and selfish motives for coming to Christ.
If a person desires to be saved from the judgment of God for his sins and to reap God's mercy and salvation because God has put that conviction and desire in his heart, there's nothing unrighteous or selfish about it. The desire that God puts into the heart of the man He draws to Himself is the desire of God Himself.
Now if, on the other hand, a man comes to Jesus for his own reasons and not because God has given him the conviction and the desire to be saved, but because he doesn't want to go to hell, and wants Jesus as a guarantee against the punishment for his sins and a guarantee of heaven, but still wants to live for himself---that man hasn't been drawn by God; his motives are unrighteous and he will not be answered by God. God doesn't save people like that. Such a man might be told that he is saved, or be convinced in his mind that he is, but God will not save a man who loves his sin and merely wants to escape the consequences of it.
The glory of God comes after salvation. People don't come to Jesus because they want to glorify God; they come to Jesus because they know they are sinners and deserve God's judgment and want to be reconciled to Him and saved from the condemnation they know they deserve. They come for a Savior, but after He saves them, they live for a Master. At least, that is how God intends for it to be.
Unfortunately, as Mr. Reidhead noted, many Christians never get used to the idea of no longer being the master and center of their own lives, and they think of God as an asset to a better life and a means to their own ends, and make God their servant instead of the other way around. I do believe humanism's infiltration of Christianity has caused or contributed much to that way of thinking, which is clearly contrary to New Testament doctrine. A simple reading of the New Testament with a sincere heart would suffice to squelch and refute that mentality and philosophy as being Christian; but Christians don't want sound doctrine because they're choosing, with their own free will, to listen to and serve their sinful nature rather than keeping in step with the Spirit and being obedient to the word of God and living submitted to Christ. (Humanistic philosophy appeals not only to unsaved people who don't know God but also to apostate Christians who are choosing to serve the wrong master.)
I don't find any disharmony between a person convicted by God wanting to be saved from hell because God wants him to be saved from hell, and the redeemed person living for the glory of God after being saved by Him or God desiring the same of him. Jesus and His apostles preached not only God's desire for His rightful glory from man, but the coming judgment of God and that men needed to be saved from it, and that God wanted them to repent in order to be saved from it. They preached and taught both God's love for mankind being His reason for giving His Son as the atoning sacrifice for the sins of mankind and His righteous judgement on man's unrighteousness. Jesus wept over Jerusalem not for the sake of God's glory, but for the sake of the spiritually perishing; and both the Old and New Testament are filled with God's desire for man to be saved from the judgement for his sins because He loves and cares about man, and not merely because He desires His own glory.
It seemed to me that Mr. Reidhead was reacting to the offense and error of humanism, but his reaction propelled him from one wall to the other like a ricocheting squash ball. I don't know any sinner who would come to Jesus and say, "Jesus, I don't care if I serve You all my life and wind up in hell at the end of it, so long as You get the glory," or any Christian who would say this. There's nothing in the Scriptures to suggest that that is what God wants either. He clearly desires us to desire to be saved from the lake of fire and also to desire not only the joys of heaven and of the new heaven and the new earth but also rewards from Him---not for our glory, but for His (because we can only earn rewards by His working through us, in us and for us, and having more rewards is to God's praise). God Himself tells us to anticipate the reward of eternity with Him, and not merely to serve Him because He's worthy of our obedience and deserves to be glorified (which is true), regardless of what we get in the end. And there's nothing selfish or unrighteous about desiring what God desires us to desire.
|
|