Category: General Christian Teachings

Why Doesn’t God Just Forgive?

Couldn’t He just say it’s all good? Let’s plunge into the Deeper Waters and find out.

One objection that seems to be pretty common is asking why can’t God just forgive? It seems to work in Judaism and Islam. Right? Islam actually has never had to have a system of sacrifices in place. Jews today without a temple have other means of forgiveness open to them they say.

Christians have never needed animal sacrifices, but it seems we have gone a step further. Apparently, we need the Son of God to come and offer Himself as a sacrifice for us. Doesn’t that seem bloody and grotesque? Why would God have to have something like that?

Something to point out is that there are plenty of atonement theories. Sometimes when people ask me how it works, I try to focus also on the more important issues. Let’s say Jesus really did die on the cross and that He did rise from the dead and thus demonstrate His claims about who He was were true. We have that, but we’re not sure just how we are forgiven based on that.

Would that lead anyone to believe Christianity was false?

However, this is a question I have thought about and yes, I do have a response to it. To start off, everything is going to be going on the assumption that the basic Christian account is true. If you do not believe that, then accept it for the time being because this is a hypothetical scenario. It’s testing to see if Christianity is internally coherent and not if it lines up to the external world. If Jesus didn’t rise from the dead, this is just trivia. If He did, then this definitely matters.

If Christianity is true, then God is the greatest good in the universe. Nothing can top Him. Nothing can go beyond Him. God will also be consistent and treat Himself as the greatest good. If He does not, then He is denying His own nature.

So now we have people who sin. One problem could be we treat sin as such a nonchalant word. Imagine a doctor coming to you and telling you you’re sick. That’s not good, but you’re not going to be panicking. Now imagine the same doctor telling you you have cancer. Are you sick if you have cancer? Yes. The two are quite different. A fender bender is a car accident, but so is a total collision. The two are quite different.

So what is sin? It’s not a slip-up or an accident or a mistake. Locking yourself out of your house is a mistake. Breaking into your neighbor’s house is an evil. Sin is really an act of divine treason. It is an implicit statement that you oppose God and all He is and stands for and desire to sit on His throne. It is the same even for those of us who are forgiven Christians. Somewhere, we all still doubt God and think we can do better.

So if God just forgives us, then what does that say? It says that He values our good above His own good, which is also goodness itself. There is something greater than the good. The creation is more important than the creator. In a sense, God becomes an idolator.

Now can He just let us go and not provide any means of forgiveness to us? He can, and He would be just in doing so. God owes us all nothing. Whatever you think of Hell, be it real or be it annihilation, God does not have to save any of us from it. He is under no obligation to free anyone from sin and under no obligation to forgive.

But suppose He wants to anyway. God is just. Sin must be punished, but there is no way that we can pay that price, that price of death. After all, money and good works could never overcome what has been done and if they could, it would require an infinite amount, which we can never pay.

Who can pay an infinite amount? An infinite being could. That would mean Jesus. His sacrifice pays the need for justice and for mercy and still shows the love God has in being willing to go through this for our sakes. God is still the greatest good out there and humanity is shown goodness and love.

That’s my understanding of it at least. Hypothetically, even if this cannot be proven, I at least see it as coherent and thus the question is answered. Even if it wasn’t, that doesn’t show Christianity is false. It just shows we lacked understanding in something, which should shock no one.

In Christ,
Nick Peters
(And I affirm the virgin birth)

The Bible and Feeling Led

Where do we go to find this in the Scripture? Let’s plunge into the Deeper Waters and find out.

If you’re the average evangelical in America, you hear this kind of talk in the church a lot. If you feel led to be on this committee or to do this job in the church, then please apply. When the offering comes by, give as you feel led. If you feel led, please join us on this mission trip. We could go on.

So if we are good evangelicals, we want to see what the Bible says about a topic. So, let’s go to all the passages where this shows up.

………..

Well, that’s odd.

Surely they’re here somewhere…..

Oh, wait. They’re not.

Why do I speak against this? I do because I think there can be a serious danger here. We live in a culture where more and more the emotions lead the way and then the rationality follows. Naturally, both sides of us are fallen, but ultimately, the danger is that the subjective determines the objective. What goes on internally is supreme and the outer world must conform.

Kind of like the whole transgender movement.

This also leads to several contradictions. If God is leading me to apply for a position, where surely He wants me to have it, so why do I even need an interview? Go ahead and give it. Oh? It has to be verified that God is leading someone? How will that be done? Who are we to deny what someone feels God is telling them to do?

Also as evangelicals who claim that Scripture is our supreme authority, we get to explicit IGNORE what Scripture has to say on these matters. Let’s look at giving for example. We have 2 Corinthians 8-9 that give us all instructions on how we are to give. Nowhere in there does Paul tell us to base it on feeling led. If anything, he commands us instead to be cheerful when we give. While there is nothing explicitly saying 10%, I am of the opinion that 10% is a good baseline for giving.

Let’s consider a church office also. In 1 Tim. 3, we have a list of requirements for someone who desires to be an overseer. Note that Paul says nothing about subjective emotion there, but simply asks if someone wants to be one and even says that that person desires a good thing. He then lists the requirements. He does this in other places to such as in Titus 2 when he talks about being an elder and about other teaching roles in the church.

There is also the problem here that we have too often treated experience from God as if it was normative and then when someone doesn’t have this experience which they think everyone around them is having, then they either think they are a deficient Christian and/or unloved by God, or they think that Christianity is just false. Rarely will they go back and say “What does Scripture say?” Neither of those alternatives is a good one.

When it comes to daily decision making also, we have some guidelines for that. It’s a book called Proverbs. it teaches us how to make wise decisions and the criteria to use to make those decisions. I don’t think anyone denies that our world could use some more wisdom today.

If you are an evangelical and you say Scripture is your authority, then let it be here as well. I am not saying God cannot speak to people today, but if you are claiming God is speaking to you in some way, that requires some serious backing. The Old Testament people would be willing to face death for such a claim. Today, we take it way too lightly.

In Christ,
Nick Peters
(And I affirm the virgin birth)

Pets and Food

How does feeding your pet teach you about God? Let’s plunge into the Deeper Waters and find out.

Have I told you about my cat lately? If you read my blog regularly or see me on Facebook, you know that I adore my cat, Shiro, pictured above. One of my great joys in coming home to my apartment at the end of a day of school or work is getting to see Shiro.

I try to call my folks once a day on my Echo and sometimes as I sit on my loveseat, Shiro jumps up on the arm of the loveseat and my folks get to see both of their boys. When he does this, he’s usually nuzzling me to no end giving me constant kitty kisses, as I call them. This can even be after his food machine has already gone off.

Nowadays also, when I get into bed, I do some Kindle reading, but usually Shiro finds his way right up next to me and lies down right next to me. When it’s time to go to bed, he jumps down. Still, the way the boy seems to follow me everywhere is quite adorable.

As I indicated earlier, Shiro has a food machine. It goes off at 8 AM and 8 PM so I don’t have to be around to feed him, but I do have to refill it every other day. There are plenty of times that Shiro is loving to me, but there are also times that it’s right before his food goes off and I know what he’s wanting. After all, as soon as that machine goes off, it’s off to the races.

Psalm 104:27 tells us that the animals look to God for their food. That idea of dependence is something incredible to think about. If you have an indoor pet, you know this is true. An outdoor pet could possibly go out and hunt everything they eat, but in some communities even this could be a challenge.

For Shiro, he is definitely dependent on me. If I did not feed him, he would starve. I provide his food, his water, and his litter box, and on top of that I am the one person he trusts to give him attention. After all, I lived with my parents for nearly a couple of years and their chance of petting him was a hit and a miss. Sometimes he did, but many times he would still run from them.

Psalm 104:27 says that all the animals look to God for food. These are the animals that can even hunt and don’t rely on humans at all. God is responsible for the environment they live in in which they find food. I do realize that there are questions about animals eating other animals, but that is for another post.

What can we learn? The animals are meant to teach us something about ourselves. Every time I feed Shiro and see him coming to me expectantly wondering when he gets to eat, I can think of how I approach God the same way. My own meals, even though I go buy them at a store normally, come from him as well. Do I give thanks accordingly or am I living with an idea of self-sufficiency?

Technically, I’m not that. No one is. Take the richest CEO you can out there. His money comes from somewhere still. For me, I have a part-time job at the seminary and I have an active Patreon for those who want to support me and this ministry. I’m thankful for all of them. I enjoy my job and new supporters are always a blessing and encouragement and motivate me to work harder here and give me more hope.

By the way, thankfulness is serious business. Romans 1 tells us one of the problems with sinful humanity is that they did not acknowledge God nor give thanks to Him. If we do not give thanks for small blessings anyway, why should we expect God to give us more?

Right now, I’m sure Shiro is at home and probably sleeping somewhere. He’ll be fine to see me when I get home, but will still sleep some more. Later in the day, he’ll be happy to get his food and be happy as well to have me pet him some. Will I show thankfulness to the one who provides for me as well?

In Christ,
Nick Peters
(And I affirm the virgin birth)

Should You Go To Seminary?

Should you embark on this journey? Let’s plunge into the Deeper Waters and find out.

What I am posting today applies not just to seminary, but also to Bible College for those wanting an undergrad. This is a question I sometimes get asked in email as to if someone should go to school. I also have strong opinions on who should be allowed into a pulpit in a church and also what are some grounds that are insufficient to state if you should seek higher education in ministry. However, I want to focus on one really big bad reason.

I am sure this will shock many of you, but I do not really take seriously claims someone has that they are called to preach.

Now let’s also be clear that going to seminary doesn’t mean that you will be a pastor, as some can want to be professors, some missionaries, some counselors, some teachers, or any number of positions. The call to preach is the most common one I hear and usually seems like an obvious given. Everyone believes in a call to ministry. Right?

Well, no.

But look at people like Moses and Jeremiah and Paul!

Yes, and you are not them.

There seems to be some idea in Christianity in the West that our experiences should be just like the great heroes of the Bible. We see Moses go up on the mountain and speak to God face to face as a man speaks to his friend. That’s us! We’re not at all like any of the other Joe Israelites at the bottom of the mountain who didn’t get this privilege. Nope! We are the ones who are privileged.

It’s really an arrogant position.

Or we are like Paul and Barnabas. Why the Holy Spirit Himself personally spoke to the congregation and asked them to set apart these two for missionary work. That’s what he’s going to do to us! Never mind that when Paul went on his second journey there was no call. He just said he wanted to go see those cities again.

I have seen too many pastors that have said they are called to preach and they do not have a clue on how to preach or any real knowledge of Christian doctrine. They just have a lot of strong emotion. This is how you get people like Dan Barker. There is even a Clergy Project for ministers who have left the faith and become atheists or agnostics.

If all you have is a call, then seriously reconsider entering official ministry capacity. Ministry requires a lot of work and if you run just on your emotional leanings, you will run dry. If you approached marriage, parenthood, work, or anything else wanting to run on pure emotion alone, you will not make it.

Bible College and Seminary I think are a lot of fun indeed, but they are also very hard. Later this week I plan to blog about that and explain why, but it is not really an easy path. If you go this route, you could get burnt out in seminary alone, which could be a good thing. It could show that maybe you should try something else, and there’s no shame in that. God needs people in every field.

Now someone could say “Yes, there are a lot of people that say they are called to preach and turn out to not really be, but you’re basing your position on the wrong experiences instead of the true ones.”

I am basing it on first off, Scripture never gives any such requirement. Some people are called to ministry in Scripture, but it does not follow that everyone in ministry in Scripture or outside is called to ministry. When Paul finds Timothy, he finds Timothy is well-spoken of and wants to take him along. There is no indication that there was a divine call on the life of Silas. Paul listed requirements for elders and deacons and callings were never any of them.

Not only this, but we run the risk of being like Mormons with this. Consider how the Mormons have the burning of the bosom test. If you pray about the Book of Mormon and you receive the burning in the bosom, then the Book of Mormon is true! If you didn’t get it, well, you weren’t sincere in your prayer. All disconfirming experiences are ruled out as not true and all the ones that get the desired result are true. Hardly a real test.

Well, that’s a brief look at an insufficient call, but what are some real reasons to consider seminary? That’s for next time.

In Christ,
Nick Peters
(And I affirm the virgin birth)

Book Plunge: Becoming Worldly Saints

What do I think of Michael Wittmer’s book published by Zondervan? Let’s plunge into the Deeper Waters and find out.

How on Earth can you be a worldly saint? Why would you want to be one? You are not to love the world nor the things of this world. Right? You could think that, until you also see that Scripture says God gives us everything richly for our enjoyment (1 Tim. 6:17) and the whole debate on eating meat offered to idols was about if you could enjoy the meat without thinking you are wronging God, and the fact that our Bibles have Song of Songs in them, a book about the delight of sexuality in marriage.

Wittmer writes to deal with these kinds of issues with the idea of not only should you enjoy your life, you can only really love God if you do love the things of this world. The writing in 1 John about the things of this world refers to what he says earlier, the lust of the eyes, the lust of the flesh, and the pride of life. It does not refer to what many of us might think.

Wittmer writes about how he knew an old preacher who used to talk about how we didn’t care about our worldly matters. Well, except we all did. Wittmer would go out and play whiffle ball with friends and family and watch some of their favorite TV shows like Dukes of Hazzard, but not Dallas because, well, they weren’t that worldly. We can try to deny it, but all of us have aspects of this world we enjoy, and that is not a bad thing.

The unique aspect of Wittmer’s book is he gives a big picture perspective. He points to the purpose of the kingdom and the future consummation of all things. In doing this, he argues that we can further the kingdom by bringing people into the delight of God, including the delight of this world. We can enjoy our lives which will also show people a kind of life they want to live. Honestly, think about the people you have met who are Christians and seem to have no interest in anything else. How many of you want to be like those people?

Wittmer gives such an example. He talks about a well-known evangelist he picked up at an airport for a conference once. He asked him about his experience with leading people to Christ and the man went on and on with story after story and after awhile, Wittmer realized this guy didn’t care about him at all, the person who gave of himself to pick him up and wondered how many people the man had led to Christ were coming to Christ just to get him to be quiet.

While I find this book helpful, I did point out it was a big picture perspective which leads to one weakness. I would have liked more on the whole practical level such as general guidelines to follow. Of course, the difficulty is that it can lead to a kind of legalism. Perhaps we should more often realize that if we are concerned, perhaps we don’t need to be? If we were Christians not giving ourselves to God and seeking Him, we wouldn’t be asking the question.

In Christ,
Nick Peters
(And I affirm the virgin birth)

The Feeling Will Be Gone

Do those feelings last? Let’s plunge into the Deeper Waters and find out.

She came into the seminary post office where I was working and was talking to me and a co-worker. They were talking about marriage and how she was still a newlywed. She said she still was in that honeymoon stage and that she hoped this feeling would last forever.

“It won’t,” I said.

Hey. I cut to the chase.

I then went on the explain that that’s a good thing. If that feeling lasted forever, you would never be able to function. Who could go through their lives with a lovesick attitude going on around them constantly? When you enter the stage of falling in love, you can’t think of most anything else and the person is the most perfect individual God ever made.

However, because those feelings fade, that allows you to move into a deeper stage. This is a stage that transcends your feelings. I told her that one day if you haven’t already, you will wake up and ask yourself, “Why did I ever marry this bozo?” When you wonder why you married someone, you have to remember that you did marry them and your responsibility to the covenant doesn’t depend on your feelings.

After all, anyone can do loving things when they feel like it. What accomplishment is that? It’s when you don’t feel like it that you are definitely acting out of true love. True love is not demonstrated in the feeling, but it is in the absence of the feeling.

Could this also indicate a danger in our situations today that we are often chasing after perpetuating a feeling, which never lasts forever, instead of building up the covenant the feeling is about? We also do the same with Christianity. How do we know what God is telling us supposedly? Look at your feelings. Do you feel led? Do you feel like you are being called? Then someone feels like God is angry with them or has rejected them and all of a sudden the feelings aren’t reliable. When the feelings are what we want, we trust them. When they’re not, they’re not reliable. Wonderful system.

This is not to be opposed to emotion either. It’s to say that it can’t be our diet. C.S. Lewis said that emotion can be the explosion that starts the engine, but it can’t run on that emotion. It needs to get locked into something steady and unchanging. Something firmer than that. It’s realizing you’re locked into something greater than yourself. You have a commitment to more than just your immediate happiness. You refuse to do what is wrong just because you want something for yourself.

Of course, in any marriage, it’s okay to have disagreements and even fights if you will. I get concerned when I hear of couples who aren’t having those. What will be remembered in the times when the relationship is the hardest is that you made a promise regardless of your feelings. The same applies to your Christian walk as well. Our feelings can be powerful motivators, but they are horrible guides.

In Christ,
Nick Peters
(And I affirm the virgin birth)

When Your Enemy Suffers

What do you do when your opponent suffers? Let’s plunge into the Deeper Waters and find out.

Proverbs 24: 17 Do not gloat when your enemy falls;
    when they stumble, do not let your heart rejoice,
18 or the Lord will see and disapprove
    and turn his wrath away from them.

I was about to write out another blog on the next chapter of Bradley’s book when I saw the news shared in the thread on it at theologyweb.com. Bradley died earlier this year at 91. I had to pause some at that one.

Do I like Bradley’s book? No. Normally, I enjoy going through atheist material, but this one just seems same-old, same-old and is a real disappointment. My reading through Sean Carroll’s The Big Picture is at least engaging. If anything, I find reading Bradley embarrassing as he thinks he knows what he’s talking about when really he doesn’t and pulls out the same old tripe arguments that have been answered multiple times before.

However, I still had sadness when I saw this. My longing at the time and my personal prayer was that he somehow managed to get a bit of grace before he died that he turned to the Lord he had shunned throughout his adult life. Do I know that this happened or have any strong evidence? No, but a man can hope.

I have at least two vivid memories of the opposite happening in my past. One time was when Stephen Jay Gould passed away. I was on America Online then and I remember being in the chat room and hearing the people speak who were vocal creationists, whether YEC or OEC I don’t know, and saying things like “You think it’s hot where he is right now?”

Whatever your doctrine of Hell, this is something that should never be said. People who hold to conditional immortality and people who hold to eternal conscious torment should all agree on one thing. It is a tragedy when people go to Hell. We would all like in some way for universalism to be true, but I fear that it isn’t. I found it just awful thinking that some people were practically gloating that their enemy was in Hell. If it wasn’t for the grace of God, they would be too and frankly, I didn’t see a lot of that grace there.

The other incident was on PALtalk when the Pope had died. Now I do not believe Catholics are outside of the grace of God. Some people do. Let’s suppose that’s true. Even if it is, should you have the attitude that these people did that the Pope busted Hell wide open, as I remember hearing? That should be a cause of sorrow for you.

In the causes of justice, I think some exceptions can be made I was on PALtalk again when someone messaged me about Saddam Hussein’s sons being found and killed and said “Isn’t this good news?” In a sense, it is good in that they will not be able to bring about evil on this Earth anymore. In another sense though, it is sad, because now they are quite likely in a place of dark eternity where there is no escape.

The Bible does show times of celebration when the enemies are defeated, but let us make sure we are celebrating first that God acted according to His covenant and provided justice and relief and secondly, that their evil is no longer being done. If we act like we are pure and innocent and don’t deserve judgment, we’re asking for it.

As a divorced man, I have to watch myself with this. I do have times of anger every now and then, but they are rare. If anything, for my ex-wife, I pray for her well-being and blessing. I don’t know where exactly she is right now. I do not check. I do not search.

Am I saying she is my enemy? In a sense, she did hurt me deeper than anyone else ever has and she has spread untruths about me claiming that I abused her, but I don’t like to think about her that way. I prefer to see her as someone who is hurt and confused and needs to come to grips with her own issues. I prefer to think that nothing was done out of a malicious attempt to hurt me even though that is what happened.

After all, I have my own sins that God could call me to account for if He wanted to. Forgiveness was not owed to me. Now God did promise He would forgive, but it was conditional on that I repented. Had I never done that, God had no obligation to forgive and indeed I have no reason to think He would. Every moment I spend in a blessed eternity with Him will be a gift of grace. There will never be a time in my existence when I am not dependent on that grace.

I hope Dr. Bradley somehow came to Christ in his final moments before he passed on. God will do what is right and no one will say it wasn’t fair, but I can hope. May I live with grace and forgiveness to my own personal enemies throughout my life.

In Christ,
Nick Peters
(And I affirm the virgin birth)

How To Ace Bible Trivia

Is answering trivia the goal? Let’s plunge into the Deeper Waters and find out.

A few days ago at my workplace, I found an item someone decided not to purchase that had been left behind. It was a book for middle schoolers on how to ace a world history exam. As I saw it, I thought that is part of the problem with the education system today. We teach students how to pass tests. They are taught knowledge for the sake of knowledge. They are not taught how to apply it.

When we don’t see the relevance of something to our lives, we quickly forget it. I can remember how to get through levels on video games I played decades ago, but I don’t remember a bit how to do quadratic equations, with respect to my algebra teacher. Why is that? Because I have never once had to use the process to do quadratic equations, but I sure have played my share of video games.

Fortunately, this doesn’t go on in the church. In the church, we only learn what is relevant to our lives. We don’t just give information so we will know stuff. We show the relevance of….oh please stop laughing already.

Yes. This is exactly what we do in the church. Let’s take something simple. We teach our children the ten commandments. Okay. That’s good. Why do we follow them? Don’t murder? That seems like an obvious one, but why not? Why is murder condemned? How many of us as young children also cited “Do not commit adultery”, but we had no clue what adultery was?

We teach our children how to do Bible drills. Congratulations! You can look up Philippians 4:13 faster than anyone else in the church! What good will that do you if you don’t have a clue what the passage really means? If we teach them anything about verses, well, it’s all about them. Philippians 4:13 is not about the glory of Christ, but it is about winning football games.

Don’t forget the trips that we send them on! They go on these trips that are youth conferences and come back and get super excited and want to tell the world about Jesus and life is awesome!

For about a week or two if that long.

After that, it’s right back to the same old thing.

If all we are teaching our youth is the content of the Bible, we are failing them. This is nothing against said content. This is just saying that we need to know the relevance of the content. We don’t need just pieces of Christianity. We need a whole tapestry of Christianity woven together so the students do see the importance and relevance of it in their daily lives.

Otherwise, the guy is with the girl and they’re alone together and she starts coming on really strong to him. So here he has a hot girl that he will really want to be intimate with and on the other hand, he has a verse in his head saying “Do not commit adultery” with no reason why other than don’t. Which one is he going to listen to? Now imagine instead if he has a whole biblical worldview on sex and marriage and understands based on that the importance of waiting for marriage and how giving in to temptation dishonors the God He serves who is to be His king?

Folks. It’s not enough anymore to just teach our youth facts about the Bible. They will forget them just as quickly as we forget things in school we don’t deem relevant to our lives. They need to be taught a whole worldview, a whole curriculum. They need to be taught about how every facet of their lives intersects with Christianity. It can’t just be about them. We also don’t just teach them isolated verses. We teach them the context of those verses and how they apply.

In the end, they’ll have a greatly informed biblical worldview that does apply to them to help them in their lives.

And they’ll probably still rock at Bible drills anyway.

In Christ,
Nick Peters
(And I affirm the virgin birth)

What’s Happening In Genesis 22?

Why does Abraham get told to sacrifice Isaac? Let’s plunge into the Deeper Waters and find out.

In Genesis 22, God calls Abraham to go and sacrifice his only son to Him. What is going on here? Nothing in the text has indicated that God accepts human sacrifices. Sure, the gods of Canaan and others do, but not YHWH. The fact that we see that should strike us right at the beginning. This is supremely out of character.

It’s interesting that this is one rare state where we don’t see Abraham giving some pushback, but we can assume there was some. If he gave pushback on every other incident, why not this one? What was it that was making this request so hard? Was it just the sacrifice of the son?

Isaac was the son of the promise. God has had a habit in Genesis of keeping His promises to Abraham. His wife wound up giving birth at 90 and he was there to witness the destruction of Sodom and Gomorrah. Nothing in the text then indicates Abraham was mentally ill. Being mentally ill doesn’t make a 90 year-old woman pregnant.

Isaac wasn’t just the son of Abraham. He was the promised son of Abraham. Abraham had been told that it was through Isaac that his offspring would be reckoned. Isaac would be the one through whom Abraham’s legacy would continue.

Kind of hard to do that if the son is dead.

Nevertheless, Abraham does obey. Notice also what he tells his servants. He assures them that he and his boy will return to them. Abraham is confident even here that somehow, Isaac will be brought back.

Now what about Isaac? Was this child abuse? No. Isaac at this point would have been a strapping teenager with a Dad nearly 100 years older than he was. Had Isaac wanted to, he could have easily taken down Abraham in a fight. In our world, we often think of Isaac being psychologically scarred, but in his world, survival everyday was a part of life and death was always just around the corner. You could say Isaac would do this for an afterdeath experience, but at this point in Biblical history, very little if anything had been revealed about such a state.

We know the story. Abraham is about to sacrifice Isaac when the Angel of the Lord stops him, the Angel who I take to be an early appearance of Christ Himself, and tells him not to sacrifice Isaac and reveals a ram with his head in the thicket. (Yes. A male lamb with its head caught in thorns. That should sound familiar.) That ram is sacrificed.

Then the Angel says “Do not lay a hand on the boy,” he said. “Do not do anything to him. Now I know that you fear God, because you have not withheld from me your son, your only son.”

Was God ignorant of the state of Abraham’s heart?

Of course not. We already know through Scripture that God knows the hearts of men. God knew that Abraham’s descendants would be captives for 400 years in another year and mistreated there. The position that God doesn’t know the future would prove too much. Based on other events in Genesis, we would have to say God doesn’t know the present either, such as how many righteous people are in Sodom and Gomorrah or whether Adam had sinned or what was going on at Babel.

So what is going on? God is speaking in a way Abraham can relate to. He is not speaking to teach deep theology or metaphysics. What is going on is a review of sorts. Abraham had proven his faith to be true. He had proven that he believed God could even raise the dead, quite astounding at that point in time.

It is also a reminder of the faith we are to have. If Abraham can believe God can raise the dead even long before Jesus, how much more should we believe in what God can do after the resurrection? There is no reason none of us can have faith in God like Abraham had.

In Christ,
Nick Peters
(And I affirm the virgin birth)