Jeremy
As I mentioned in one of my earlier posts, friendship evangelism is a popular method of outreach in much of today’s evangelical church. In fact, it is more than just popular: It is the default approach, so much so that it usually seems to be assumed rather than biblically justified. Contrast that with the approach that one finds throughout the Bible—proclaiming God’s message to strangers in public places—which is scarcely mentioned nowadays.
There are probably many who will disagree with me, but I am convinced that the primary reason for friendship evangelism’s popularity is because it seems easy. After all, evangelism is far less daunting when you share the gospel message with someone who has already accepted you, isn’t it? A friend is less likely to reject you than a stranger, right? That makes friendship evangelism easier than sharing the gospel with strangers, doesn’t it?
Not really. Ironically enough, it is actually friendship evangelism that is harder. The longer you are in a friendship with someone, the more reluctant you are to do anything that might jeopardize that relationship you so enjoy. It’s just human nature: We will do our utmost to hold on to something that is near and dear to our hearts, so proclaiming the gospel to our friends will be moved further down our list of priorities as time goes on.
The polar opposite to friendship evangelism—outreach to strangers—while feared by many, is actually the easier approach because fearing the loss of the relationship is not a stumbling block. If a friendship does not exist, it cannot be lost.
God’s commands truly are not burdensome, and this is just as true with the Great Commission as it is with any other of God’s commands. Yet friendship evangelism actually makes the Great Commission harder than it has to be. What God has made simple, we make difficult and complicated because we think we know better than the Giver of the command and set ourselves up to be God’s editors. Our disobedience, our rebellion, and our sinful tendency to rewrite God’s commands are the greatest evangelistic difficulties we Westerners face.
For a long time now, I’ve been an adherent of the Way of the Master (WotM) approach to evangelism. For those who don’t know what that is, it is a technique that focuses heavily on using the Ten Commandments to bring the knowledge of sin to an unbeliever so as to pave the way for faith in Christ. After all, as the Scriptures say, “through the law comes knowledge of sin” (Romans 3:20, ESV). This approach usually involves giving someone what is known as “the good test,” a series of questions that usually follows this pattern:
Evangelist (E): Do you think you’re a good person?
Man on the street (MotS): Sure, I’m pretty good.
E: Would you like to take a quick test to see if that’s true?
MotS: Okay, sure.
E: Have you ever told a lie?
MotS: Sure, who hasn’t?
E: And what does that make you?
MotS: Ummm…a liar?
E: That’s right. What about blasphemy? Have you ever taken God’s name in vain (used it as a curse word)?
MotS: Yeah.
E: So what does that make you?
MotS: A blasphemer?
E: Correct. What about adultery?
MotS: No, I’ve always been faithful to my wife.
E: What about looking at women to lust after them? Have you ever done that?
MotS: Oh yeah, definitely.
E: Jesus said that anyone who looks at a woman to lust for her has committed adultery with her in his heart. Now by your own admission, you’re a liar, a blasphemer, and an adulterer at heart, and we’ve looked at only three of the commandments.
The above fictitious conversation does not always follow this pattern, and there are usually conversation and interaction both before and after the “good test” is given. What the above example shows, though, is the manner in which the WotM evangelist tries to drive home to the other person the reality of sin. Admittedly it is a very strategic starting point when presenting the gospel because, as the Scripture states, the work of the law is written on everyone’s heart (Romans 2:15). Since it is general revelation, it is something that all people know regardless of where they live or what time period they live in, so it is relevant to everyone without exception.
Let me say here and now that I value this approach and use it regularly in my own personal evangelism. I value the work that Ray Comfort and Kirk Cameron have done in not only making this approach popular but also in inspiring many Christians to take the gospel to the public. Nevertheless, I’ve seen a pitfall that those who use it should watch out for: The WotM’s heavy emphasis on using the Commandments could result in an overemphasis on the law and an underemphasis on the person and work of Jesus Christ, possibly because the evangelist feels that the unbeliever has not been convinced of sin enough to receive the Savior. As a result, the evangelist might be inclined to mention Christ only briefly at the end of the gospel presentation, squeezing Him in for good measure, as it were. The fact is, though, that no human being is capable of creating—or even discerning—such spiritual readiness. That is something that only the Holy Spirit can do. It is our job to communicate the entire gospel, not to withhold parts of it because we think our audience might not be ready.
The fact of the matter is that Jesus Christ’s person and work should dominate the message. One place where this is especially emphasized is in the Gospel of John. In that book’s own statement about its purpose, we read: “Now Jesus did many other signs in the presence of the disciples, which are not written in this book; but these are written so that you may believe that Jesus is the Christ, the Son of God, and that by believing you may have life in his name” (John 20:30–31, ESV). If there is anywhere in the Bible that God tells us explicitly what a person must know to have faith in Christ, it is here. The Holy Spirit inspired John to write that what a person needs to know about Christ in order to come to saving faith is the miracles that he performed, the signs that show he was truly the Messiah. The text says: “…but these [the signs, the miracles] are written so that you may believe…” It doesn’t say here anything about using the Commandments to bring a person to saving faith; John simply points to the miracles as accomplishing that. Was John missing something? Is his gospel incomplete? Not at all.
If we truly desire to think God’s thoughts after him on a given topic, we will look across the whole landscape of Scripture to discover all of His thoughts on the subject. When we do, we will see that the Commandments are rarely used in evangelism in the Bible. In all the gospel accounts, there is but one event that I know of in which Christ preached the Commandments to someone: when he dealt with the rich young ruler. Apart from that, the use of the Commandments as an evangelistic tool is scarcely mentioned in the Bible. Paul did not use them on Mars Hill, nor did Peter in his sermon on the Day of Pentecost. Certainly the audiences in both those cases were hardened: Paul confronted widespread idolatry on Mars Hill, and Peter addressed the very people who had crucified Christ. If ever there was an audience that needed to be humbled by the divine law, it was those people. Yet in spite of the hardness they encountered, they did not use the divine law in their gospel preaching.
Does any of this make the WotM wrong? Of course not. What it does suggest, though, is that there is no biblical reason to regard the use of the Ten Commandments as a litmus test for true evangelism. It is certainly an evangelistic tool that is advisable and powerful in certain, but not necessarily all, circumstances. The rich young ruler was self-righteous, confidently declaring that he had kept all the Commandments from childhood. Therefore, he had to be set straight, and his sin had to be brought home to him because he was in a dangerous state of denial. Others, perhaps, who know and admit their sinfulness, might not need to be brought under the unbending scrutiny of the divine law.
I wonder: Are those of us who use the law in our outreach (including myself) focusing on the law too much and not enough on Christ? If John—inspired by the Holy Spirit—said that it was knowledge of Christ’s miracles that bring a person to saving faith, shouldn’t we lift up Christ and his miracles as much as possible in our preaching instead of just mentioning him briefly like a mere afterthought? Do we labor to expound on the law in the hopes of bringing home to a person the reality of their sin and guilt, but then, after that lengthy discussion, insert Christ hastily like a footnote at the end of a long paper? I am not suggesting that we not mention sin at all; quite to the contrary, sin and its dangers must be driven home at all costs. My concern is that perhaps we focus so much on trying to convince people of sin that we are practically omitting the One who is the only means of forgiveness of sin. What good is it to talk long about the malady but barely mention the cure? To stress sin and condemnation while barely mentioning the remedy borders on cruelty.
I listened to Harold Camping’s Open Forum radio program last night and found myself shaking my head and chuckling to myself repeatedly, not only at Mr. Camping’s own words but also at some of the comments made by callers. One caller actually still supported Camping and even indicated that it was possible a spiritual judgment actually happened on May 21. He essentially asked, “Why not?” It was incredible to hear.
More importantly, what I noticed was a distinct pattern in Mr. Camping’s responses to callers. Repeatedly he answered callers with a statement to the effect that God is still opening our spiritual eyes, we are still learning, and the like. So that is Mr. Camping’s explanation for his errors: We’re still working on it, we’re getting there, we’re learning, and so on. Our eyes aren’t fully opened to all of this, but we can still see more than the rest of Christianity.
But that creates a pesky little problem: If he’s right, how can anyone know for sure that the next prediction he makes—or anything he teaches from now on, for that matter—will be correct? If he is still learning and God is still opening his “spiritual eyes,” then anything he teaches has a big question mark over it.
The fact of the matter is that a true prophet who is faithfully speaking what God has said would never have to back-peddle in such a way because he would have gotten it right the first time. He wouldn’t have to explain his way out of anything. The prediction would have happened exactly as foretold because it would have come from God. The only exception to that would be if God decided to relent from what He had said He was going to do, as in the case of Nineveh after Jonah preached there (Jonah 3:10). If Mr. Camping wants to claim that, however, he would have to substantiate that authoritatively from Scripture, but what Scripture says that on May 21, God relented from the destruction Camping said was going to happen? None at all.
Mr. Camping’s prediction, then, did not come from God. It came from his own mind and an erroneous interpretation of Scripture.
For example, Mr. Camping’s proof-text for his method of interpreting the Bible allegorically comes from Matthew 13:34, which says, “All these things Jesus said to the crowds in parables; indeed, he said nothing to them without a parable.” He takes this verse and applies it to everything in the Bible even though the text in Matthew 13 clearly has in mind Christ’s words to the crowds, not the words of the Bible. This is made even clearer when we see a parallel passage, Mark 4:33–34 (ESV, emphasis added): “With many such parables he spoke the word to them, as they were able to hear it. He did not speak to them without a parable, but privately to his own disciples he explained everything.” Thus, Mr. Camping ignores the context in order to cling tenaciously to his hermeneutical approach.
Mr. Camping also needs to consider this: If everything in the Bible were a parable, then the very text quoted above—”he said nothing to them without a parable”—would itself be a parable and therefore would also have to be taken figuratively.
Perhaps Mr. Camping’s eyes have not been opened to that, either.
Harold Camping is now defending his erroneous prediction by claiming that Judgment Day indeed happened on May 21—only spiritually, not physically.
This kind of response is nothing less than outrageous. In this International Business Times article, he is reported as saying that Judgment Day did come, but “it was spiritual.” That kind of rationalization should not surprise us, seeing how Mr. Camping has often used spiritualization and allegorization to get around objections from people or Bible verses that don’t fit his theories. Now he is using the same technique to get around the stark reality that his prediction failed to come true on May 21. On top of that, he still claims that the end will come on October 21. Will he use the same evasive maneuver when that does not come true?
Mr. Camping is also reported as saying, “We don’t always hit the nail on the head the first time.” No true prophet would ever have to make such an excuse because genuine prophets always “hit the nail on the head” the first time, every time:
And if you say in your heart, ‘How may we know the word that the LORD has not spoken?’— when a prophet speaks in the name of the LORD, if the word does not come to pass or come true, that is a word that the LORD has not spoken; the prophet has spoken it presumptuously. You need not be afraid of him. (Deuteronomy 18:21–22, ESV, emphasis added)
Camping is also recorded as saying, “All I am is a humble teacher.” No, that is not true. He is a false prophet who says things that God never said. The above quoted passage from God’s inspired word declares that authoritatively to be true.
Regarding his recent failed prediction that the end of the world would happen this past Saturday, Harold Camping has told a reporter, “I’m looking for answers … But now I have nothing else to say.” (For the full story, click here.)
I, too, scratch my head, though not for the same reasons as Mr. Camping. I wonder how a man who has studied the Bible for so long could actually believe that he could reduce the awesome mystery of the time of Christ’s return to a simple mathematical formula, and that based on arbitrary, subjective interpretation. I also scratch my head in wonder how so many people could hang on his words so devoutly. No doubt I will continue to wonder.
“I’m looking for answers … But now I have nothing else to say.” That is what he should have said all along instead of making brash, overconfident predictions which he had no authority whatsoever to make. My hope is that he will humbly admit his error and repent. It would not undo what he has done, but it would at least be comforting to know that he is willing to turn from the error of his ways. I would even go so far as to say that he should step down from his position and turn over the reins of Family Radio to a responsible teacher of the Bible.
That might be hoping for too much, but I will say it here very emphatically anyway: Mr. Camping needs to step down. If he were a qualified, divinely called teacher of the Bible who was placed in his teaching position through the proper biblical process, he would have never made the horrible errors he has made, and it would not have taken a failed prediction—and all the unpleasant consequences that went along with it—to bring him to say, “I’m looking for answers.” He would have taken that attitude all along because he would have been under the authority of elders in a local church, humbly submitting his teaching to their scrutiny to keep him from going off the deep end. But this is what happens when people set themselves up as Bible teachers without submitting to any authority in the church.
I do pity Mr. Camping. I sympathize with him—believe it or not—because of the inner anguish I know he must be dealing with right now. But my sympathy can’t change the fact that he must step down. He must stop plaguing the church with his false teachings. He must stop leading others astray. He must stop trifling with Scripture and treating it as his plaything to do with as he pleases. MR. CAMPING: PLEASE STEP DOWN FROM YOUR POSITION.
First of all, hopefully Harold Camping has learned not to trifle with the word of God as he has done for so long. He was wrong about September 1994, and he was wrong about May 21, 2011. How many wrong predictions does a man have to make before he and his followers realize that his predictions never entered the mind of God?
That leads me to the next lesson that I hope has been learned from all of this: I hope that those who have followed him—believed him, hung on his every word as though he had the secret key to unlock the mysteries of Christ’s return, given up so much to follow a false prophet’s false message—that they will turn from this man and support him no longer.
Having said that, I must admit that all of this May 21 teaching has actually taught me something, too. It has made me realize that I have been guilty of forgetting about the Second Coming of Christ almost completely over the years. It was not until recently, with all this May 21 Judgment Day talk, that I have actually thought about end times and Christ’s return more than I have in a long time. That does not justify Harold Camping’s irresponsible method of interpreting the Bible and leading so many astray—not by a long shot—but it certainly does make me ask myself: Have I pushed the Second Coming of Christ so far from my mind that it takes a false prophet who sets a wrong date for Christ’s return to make me think about the end? Apparently so. And shame on me for that.
It is certainly easy to do. It is easy to reason, “Well, Jesus didn’t come back last month, so he won’t come back next month. And Christ did not return last year, so he probably won’t return next year, either. For that matter, he has not returned in the past decade, so he probably won’t come back in the next decade, either….” That is no excuse, though. Christ plainly and strongly commanded his disciples to watch and to be ready. That means living for the kingdom of God faithfully and looking eagerly for Christ’s return, as is made clear by the following passage:
”Who then is the faithful and wise servant, whom his master has set over his household, to give them their food at the proper time? Blessed is that servant whom his master will find so doing when he comes. Truly, I say to you, he will set him over all his possessions. But if that wicked servant says to himself, ‘My master is delayed,’ and begins to beat his fellow servants and eats and drinks with drunkards, the master of that servant will come on a day when he does not expect him and at an hour he does not know and will cut him in pieces and put him with the hypocrites. In that place there will be weeping and gnashing of teeth.” (Matthew 24:45–51, ESV)
Clearly, then, followers of Christ are to be serving Him faithfully and consistently and avoiding the pitfall of complacency. What a danger there is in growing lackadaisical and complacent. Such an attitude can cause us to lapse into a life of sin like the wicked servant in this passage. Woe to us if that happens because, just as with the wicked servant, the Lord might take us by surprise, exposing us as hypocrites whom He never knew.
But this has also made me realize something else: I haven’t heard the return of Christ preached much in church pulpits. The topic of the end times seems to be rarely addressed in church sermons, at least in my experience. But why? Has the emphasis been placed so much on our “best life now” that we don’t think about end times anymore? Have sermons been so focused on improving our present lives and solving our current problems that there has been no room for looking forward to the end? If that is the case, we need to take Paul’s exhortation to the Colossians very seriously:
If then you have been raised with Christ, seek the things that are above, where Christ is, seated at the right hand of God. Set your minds on things that are above, not on things that are on earth. For you have died, and your life is hidden with Christ in God. When Christ who is your life appears, then you also will appear with him in glory. (Colossians 1–4, ESV)
What is ironic is that focusing on the end times can have a dramatic impact on our present lives. Peter wrote to Christians it was their very knowledge of the end of the world that should have an impact on their lives in the present, spurring them on to great holiness in light of the dire events that will occur at the end:
But the day of the Lord will come like a thief, and then the heavens will pass away with a roar, and the heavenly bodies will be burned up and dissolved, and the earth and the works that are done on it will be exposed.
Since all these things are thus to be dissolved, what sort of people ought you to be in lives of holiness and godliness, waiting for and hastening the coming of the day of God, because of which the heavens will be set on fire and dissolved, and the heavenly bodies will melt as they burn! But according to his promise we are waiting for new heavens and a new earth in which righteousness dwells. (2 Peter 3:10–13, ESV, emphasis added)
Camping was wrong, but the frenzy of concern about the end that he stirred up should make us examine what place the return of Christ really has in our hearts. Shouldn’t we be lovingly expecting his return, anticipating it greatly and eagerly? Indeed we should, and shame on us if we have not been doing so. We should be living every day with the same fervent expectation of Christ’s return as Camping’s followers did on May 21. Every day for Christians should be a sort of “May 21, 2011.”
The “sinner’s prayer” is a very popular tradition in evangelical churches. It is so widespread, in fact, that for many it has become an integral, necessary part of the gospel message itself, so much so that any evangelism that lacks it will most likely be regarded with suspicion.
For those who don’t know, the sinner’s prayer is a prewritten prayer for salvation that often appears at the end of gospel tracts or is provided by a preacher at the close of a presentation of the gospel message. The idea is that if an unbeliever prays the prayer word for word sincerely, he or she will be saved.
I imagine a whole book could be written about this method, but I just want to touch on a few issues. First, the Bible says nothing about it either explicitly or implicitly. This biblical silence on the sinner’s prayer should prompt us to wonder where it comes from. To be fair, though, this silence alone is not enough to make it wrong. After all, the Bible is silent on many other popular aspects of Christian culture, such as Sunday School and Christmas trees, yet we continue with those.
Second, this method is a relatively recent development in evangelical circles. Compared to other Christian teachings that have been around for the roughly 2,000 years of church history, the sinner’s prayer is really a new kid on the block—a theological novelty. As such, it was never passed on by the apostles. Not only that, but if this technique were really as vital as many make it out to be, one has to wonder how the church got along without it for so many centuries.
Third, it invites the wrong kind of assurance. True assurance of salvation is not based on a one-time prayer made in the heat of a past moment but rather on the presence and increase of spiritual fruit in a person’s life. In other words, biblical assurance stems from a sustained pattern, not a single prayer. If a single prayer gave us assurance of salvation, then we would not be commanded in Scripture to make our calling and election sure by producing an increasing abundance of spiritual fruit in our lives (2 Peter 1:3–11).
Finally, leading someone in such a prayer could really be an attempt to do what only the Holy Spirit can do: draw someone to Christ. Like it or not, we have no power whatsoever to draw others to Christ. Our job is to sow the seed of the Gospel; the condition of the soil is up to God. When that soil is good, we will see fruit, and it will grow. Regenerated people will pray to Christ in contrition and brokenness over their sins. You can be assured of that. They will repent. They will come to Christ sincerely. Their new nature will lead them to do those things, and even more. If they do not have a new nature—if they are not born again—then all the sinner’s prayers in the world will amount to nothing. Consider this parable that Jesus told:
“The kingdom of God is like a man who casts seed upon the soil; and he goes to bed at night and gets up by day, and the seed sprouts and grows—how, he himself does not know. The soil produces crops by itself; first the blade, then the head, then the mature grain in the head. But when the crop permits, he immediately puts in the sickle, because the harvest has come.” (Mark 4:26–29, NASB)
Just like the seed sower in this parable, we do not know how the kingdom of God grows; our job is simply to sow the seed, not to try to make it grow. That growth comes from God alone.
I have no doubt that God is fully able to convert someone through a sinner’s prayer, but I think it must be used very wisely and only in conjunction with certain teaching. Such accompanying teaching should include the following.
- The gospel should be carefully and clearly explained.
- The cost involved in following Christ should be conveyed (count the cost!).
- It should be emphasized that a single prayer cannot be relied upon for salvation. Only Christ can be relied on for salvation, and He must be relied on every day for the rest of one’s life.
There is only one means of atoning for sin, and that is the blood of Christ. Faith is like a hand that receives that blood and all its benefits, but the hand itself does not do any saving. It is only instrumental, and Scripture bears that out:
being justified as a gift by His grace through the redemption which is in Christ Jesus; 25 whom God displayed publicly as a propitiation in His blood through faith [διὰ πίστεως]. (Romans 3:24-25a, NASB, emphasis added)
When the Greek preposition dia is followed by the genitive case (as in the bracketed Greek words at the end of the quote), it indicates instrumentality, the means through which something happens.
Faith cannot appease God’s wrath for sin. Only the blood of Christ can do that. It’s the difference between a cause and an agent. To use an analogy, if you are underwater and breathe air through a straw, what is the thing your body needs to remain alive—the air or the straw? It needs the air. It needs the straw, too, but only as an agent through which the air is breathed in. The straw, in and of itself, cannot directly keep your body alive because the straw does not keep your lungs going. It is the air coming through the straw that does that. If you were in outer space and you had a hose to connect you to an oxygen tank, but the tank were floating out of reach of the hose, trying to breathe through the hose would do you no good at all. It’s similar when we talk of faith and the blood of Christ. Faith—like the straw and the hose—is the conduit through which the benefits of Christ’s saving blood come to us, but that precious blood—like the air—is what actually saves.
It should be pointed out, though, that like all analogies, these ones eventually break down and can be easily misunderstood. They do not mean that faith is some kind of work that earns salvation. Faith is merely passive; it simply receives. Another analogy is that of an eye: The eye does not create the light or deserve the light; it simply receives it. In addition, faith is not something that a person can do on his or her own. Scripture clearly says that faith is a gift from God; it is not something that one can create inside oneself.
Scripture makes it pretty clear that our assurance is based on the presence of spiritual fruit in our lives as well as a pattern of spiritual growth and increasing maturity:
For land that has drunk the rain that often falls on it, and produces a crop useful to those for whose sake it is cultivated, receives a blessing from God. But if it bears thorns and thistles, it is worthless and near to being cursed, and its end is to be burned. Though we speak in this way, yet in your case, beloved, we feel sure of better things—things that belong to salvation. (Hebrews 6:7-9, ESV, emphasis added)
But what are these fruits? That also is made clear:
His divine power has granted to us all things that pertain to life and godliness, through the knowledge of him who called us to his own glory and excellence, by which he has granted to us his precious and very great promises, so that through them you may become partakers of the divine nature, having escaped from the corruption that is in the world because of sinful desire. For this very reason, make every effort to supplement your faith with virtue, and virtue with knowledge, and knowledge with self-control, and self-control with steadfastness, and steadfastness with godliness, and godliness with brotherly affection, and brotherly affection with love. For if these qualities are yours and are increasing, they keep you from being ineffective or unfruitful in the knowledge of our Lord Jesus Christ. For whoever lacks these qualities is so nearsighted that he is blind, having forgotten that he was cleansed from his former sins. Therefore, brothers, be all the more diligent to make your calling and election sure, for if you practice these qualities you will never fall. For in this way there will be richly provided for you an entrance into the eternal kingdom of our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ. (2 Peter 1:3-11, ESV, emphasis added)
Unless I’m misinterpreting this passage, the text does two things, in general: 1) It commands us to make our calling and election sure (i.e., to seek assurance), and 2) it tells us how to go about obtaining that certainty. Since what Peter described here is a process, it seems clear that gaining such certainty is not instantaneous. It is acquired only after developing a pattern of increasing holiness, Christlikeness and maturity.
I cannot imagine that God would give anyone assurance of salvation who is stagnating in their Christian life, failing to grow or, even worse, taking steps backward. There is only one proper direction for the true Christian: forward into more and more Christlikeness. If that forward progression is not happening, we have good reason to doubt our salvation.
This wild, untamable beast is in everyone’s house. It is not a dog or a cat—far from it. It is more ferocious than the most aggressive predator you know of, more vicious than the fiercest lion, and more insidious than the most cunning snake—yet more alluring than any treasure you have known. Its grotesqueness is indescribable: horrific stench, insoluble filth, unimaginable ugliness.
Some think they can tame it and control it, and for a time they can do so by keeping it locked up in a cage. This strategy is doomed to failure, however, for eventually they feel sorry for the beast and decide to release it from confinement. “Just for a short while,” they assure themselves, “and then back in the cage it will go.” Then it wreaks utter havoc and destruction in their home. But it won’t stop there. It will jump through one of the windows and attack others in the neighborhood, affecting them as well. Only with difficulty and pain can the beast be returned to its cage. Nevertheless, sooner or later the owner’s heart will once again go out to it, sympathizing with the beast and longing to release it yet again. Thus the horrible cycle will repeat.
The only way to deal with the beast is to exterminate it. Complete annihilation is the only solution. There can be no mercy for it: A knife must be taken to the beast’s throat, or a gun to its head, so as to destroy it once and for all. Again, though, our love for the beast works against us even there. How hard it is for us to take such drastic measures against it. We sympathize with it, foolishly take pity on it, and pamper it, telling ourselves the lie that the beast is really not all that bad.
“[S]in is crouching at the door. Its desire is for you, but you must rule over it.” (Gen. 4:7b)
“For if you live according to the flesh you will die, but if by the Spirit you put to death the deeds of the body, you will live.” (Rom. 8:13)
“Put to death therefore what is earthly in you: sexual immorality, impurity, passion, evil desire, and covetousness, which is idolatry. On account of these the wrath of God is coming.” (Col. 3:5–6)
About the Author
The author of this blog, Jeremy (Jehanne), is a Catholic who strives to think God's thoughts after Him and obey Christ's exhortation to take up the cross daily and follow Him on the way to Golgotha. He likes reading theology, evangelizing, and, of course, writing.
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