If we reject “organized” religion, where does that leave the Lord’s Supper? Are we really “Christians” today if we don’t take seriously an observance that, in the New Testament, was so extremely important to Christians in the New Testament period?
Creating beings with a free will is exactly what God did when He created us. And the result is that those who accept Him, whether many or few, do so freely and lovingly — rather than under the compulsion of any “irresistible” programming by God.
It was surely God who chose whom He would save, but what He chose was a class of people defined by a criterion: the “obedience of faith” (Romans 1:5). This group is open to all who will obey. No one is barred by an eternal, unchangeable edict of God.
To say, as Calvinism does, that even as infants we are guilty of Adam’s sin — and are in a lost spiritual condition because of what Adam did — is to make a cruel joke out of Ezekiel’s statement, “The wickedness of the wicked shall be upon himself.”
Naaman’s obedience certainly did not “earn” him the cleansing of his leprosy. It had no “merit” that would cure him. Nevertheless, if he had not been humble enough to accept the conditions that were stipulated, his leprosy would have remained.
The hope of the gospel is that in eternity we will be with God. Having lived all our lives in this broken world, frustrated by our inability to have direct, face-to-face access to our Father, imagine what it will be like to actually be with Him!
Our “personhood” can’t be explained from below itself — its origin can only be from above itself. The non-personal could not have produced the personal, no matter how many trillions of years it had to work with. Our Creator must be a personal Being.
The Scriptures are no ordinary documents. To disregard the authority with which God speaks to us in the Scriptures is to do a very foolish thing. In all the great issues of life, it is the standard of the Scriptures to which we should appeal.
In the Parable of the Sower, Jesus used the analogy of four kinds of soil to teach that hearers have different hearts — just as the seed sown by a farmer doesn’t always fall on productive soil, the gospel doesn’t always fall into receptive hearts.
Who’s to say what is “impossible”? It’s a strange world, is it not? Let us, then, be open-minded enough to admit the possibility that the resurrection COULD have happened — and then have the courage to assess the historical evidence fairly.
