To Tell You The Truth

The Gospel Changes Everything

cruv@totellyouthetruth.net (cruv) — Mon, 22 Dec 2008 08:09:32 -0500

If there's one thing I've learned (and am still learning) over the years it's that the Gospel Changes Everything! This includes (but not limited to) my understanding of 'Scripture. The Gospel is so comprehensive in its power to change everything that it frees me from my previous understandings of Scripture to understanding passages anew and afresh. In other words, as my understanding of Scripture changes, I am free to embrace my new understanding instead of being fearful that "I am rejecting what I've been taught all these years!"

If we are hesitant in switching our view on (any) subject that Scripture addresses because we think "Scripture CAN'T teach that because I couldn't believe in a God who would say or express that in Scripture" then we definitely do not understand the Gospel nor Its power to change verything.

And we have a caricature of what Scripture teaches rather than what Scripture actually teaches.

The Gospel frees us to believe what we see Scripture teach. The Gospel, properly understood, frees us to say, "Wow, Scripture teaches THAT? That's a shocking revelation! If I see that in Scripture, I must believe it because Scripture teaches it."

I am not saying that the struggle to understand Scripture is wrong, but that the Gospel frees us to believe what we see in Scripture even WHEN it changes our paradigm of life and rocks our world.

For example, the Gospel frees us to switch from Dispensational Premil to Historic Premil or PostMil to Amil. And this is just eschatology! The Gospel frees us to change our views on subjects without fear that we are apostasizing (well, outside of the orthodox doctrines which establish the Christian faith).

The Gospel frees us to believe what Scripture teaches without fear. For fear is not of God and God has given a spirit of power and of love and of a sound mind.

Yes, what we see in Scripture may rock our world and change how we view and interpret Scripture, but the Gospel frees us to embrace what we see so that we may bind our consciences to Scripture alone and not to what we think we ought to believe.

Yes, the Gospel changes everything.

The Issue of the Gospel and Purity

cruv@totellyouthetruth.net (cruv) — Wed, 19 Nov 2008 08:32:09 -0500

Sadly, many people (not just men any more) have become enslaved to their lust. Many lives and families have been destroyed because of this stranglehold of sin. Here are some good resources for anyone who struggles in this area of lust and purity. But the best advice I can provide you is to take the first step and talk to your Pastor. He is there to help you. It won't be easy, but it will be worth it. It's the hard things of life that truly make a difference.

Michael Spencer, aka Internet Monk (iMonk) wrote a Gospel-Centered article called The Man in the Shadow of Adultery.

Joshua Harris also has a few articles relating to love and lust taken from his book Sex is not the Problem (Lust is). Fighting Internet Porn (aka Purity Download - Tip 1). Purity Download - Tip 2. Purity Download - Tip 3. Purity Download - Tip 4. Too bad Joshua (and SGM) won't provide this great book as a free download.

David Powlison from Christian Counseling and Educational Foundation has provided a free resource for pornography addiction - Breaking Pornography Addiction.

And last but not least, Mark Driscoll has recently released a PDF book called Porn Again Christian. You can download it here. Be warned, Mark takes no hostages as he addresses the topic. It is a frank discussion.

Together for Adoption Conference

cruv@totellyouthetruth.net (cruv) — Sat, 01 Nov 2008 13:25:59 -0500

Together for Adoption Conference

cruv@totellyouthetruth.net (cruv) — Sat, 01 Nov 2008 11:12:41 -0500

Rick Phillips - The Doctrine of Adoption

cruv@totellyouthetruth.net (cruv) — Sat, 01 Nov 2008 10:45:25 -0500

After a delay of fiddling with CoverItLive software, we are in the midst of the preaching of Rick Phillips.

Our adoption is not regeneration; we need both. We are justified by legal decree and regeneration gives the ability to live out our justification.

Does prayer work via our technique? No. Prayer works because of our Sonship with Christ. We have access to the Father because of His love for us in Christ, in the Gospel. Why does prayer work? Because God has taken it upon Himself to adopt us as children of God through the great grace He has bestowed upon us in Christ.

Paul says, "I will cast all my care upon you because you care for me." We have God the Father taking upon Himself the obligation to take care of us in this life. This is not prosperity teaching. He is not Santa Claus. But God takes care of us. The Psalmist says, "I have never seen the righteous forsaken."

Because of Christ we can call God, "Father" Even in death God takes care of us. We are a beloved child of God; He will receive us.

Because God's name is upon us, we have the privilege of discipline. He describes a plane ride in which a young boy was disobedient to his father and showing disrespect. Rick would not discipline the boy because he doesn't love him. But God LOVES us, therefore He disciplines us.

I love myself and have a wonderful plan for my life. I desire children who are all-star athletes, beauty queens, but God loves me even more than I love myself and He gives me trials to make me what He wants me to be- righteous, holy, blameless. How do we understand our trials and struggles? "Father,you love me. You have sent your Son and care for me. You have dreams for me that I scarcely dream for myself. There is a day that I will be glorious. As CS Lewis says, "If we see others as they will be, we would be tempted to worship each other."

We can come to God's presence because of Christ. All whom are Sons of God will come into the full inheritance of all that God has given us.

We are heirs of the Glory of God. Adoption answers the question, "what do we look forward to as a Christian?" We are heirs of the Father- incomplete in this life, but we have by the promise in the Word of God that we will possess the full inheritance which is rightly Christ's but given to us also.

"My Son give me your heart" says Proverbs. God wants our heart and desires our affection because He loves us- He is our Father. When we understand how God has adopted us, we will approch the orphans in the world in a new way. We will seek out a new manner in which we live out what God has done for us.

God has chosen us to be adopted because of Christ. There is nothing in us that merits God's choosing to adopt us in Christ. God did not come to the cosmic adoption clinic to pick people who have something to offer God. There is nothing good in us with which to offer God- all we have is demerit and corruption.

When we live in the freedom of the Son, we know that our adoption is all of grace. We possess love to give as we have been given by God in Christ.

A Note to T4A Readers

cruv@totellyouthetruth.net (cruv) — Sat, 01 Nov 2008 10:42:25 -0500

There is a technical difficulty which is not allowing the use of CoverItLive, the software we are trying to use for live blogging today's T4A conference. Please stay tuned for published posts by refreshing preriodically. Once the CoverItLive software begins to function once again, we will use that.

11/1 - Together for Adoption Live Blog

cruv@totellyouthetruth.net (cruv) — Sat, 01 Nov 2008 08:00:00 -0500

Live Blogging the Together for Adoption Conference

cruv@totellyouthetruth.net (cruv) — Fri, 31 Oct 2008 07:34:39 -0500

Tomorrow is the BIG day! Together for Adoption (T4A) is sponsoring its inaugural regional adoption conference that will focus primarily on vertical adoption (i.e., God adopting us in Christ), with a secondary focus on its implications for orphan care and horizontal adoption (i.e., couples adopting children). In fulfillment of the objectives, the desire to see conference attendees walk away from a T4A event with these key thoughts:

Understanding why it is that vertical adoption is the highest blessing of the gospel
Rejoicing afresh in the gospel
Moved to act on James 1:27 both locally and globally

There is too much information to reproduce here, so head over to the Together for Adoption website. But before you go, remember, if you can not possibly make it to the conference tomorrow (November 1 beginning at 8:00a.m. sharp!), you can log on to To Tell You The Truth for virtually instantaneous updates.

More to come...

(In-Brief) Why I Believe and Promote a Christocentric Interpretation of Scripture

cruv@totellyouthetruth.net (cruv) — Wed, 01 Oct 2008 19:50:02 -0500

Why do I believe and promote a Christocentric interpretation of Scripture (both OT & NT) as the primary interpretation?

I will list off a few reasons and only touch on a couple.

1. Christ is the Mediator between God and Man.

2. God is Three-in-One (Trinitarian)

3. We can not directly know the Father except through the Son.

4. The Father can not be seen except in the Son.

5. Jesus is the face of God.

6. We can not know how good the Father is without knowing how good the Son is.

With all of this said (there are other reasons, too), if we see an issue or "fault" with the Christocentric view, it is not an issue with this view but with those whom have not represented it fully enough.

We can not understand the Father without understanding the Son. We can not truly understand passages like Psalm 103 without understanding God from a Trinitarian view with a Christocentric focus. Yes, we understand God is the Good Father, but God is the Good Son and the One can not be Who He is without the Other.

How do we know God is the Good Father? He gave us His Son. How do we know Jesus is the Good Son? Because He obediently submitted Himself as a Servant even unto death, even the death of the cross.

I do not want to cut this short, so I will point you to an earlier article I wrote about some of these issues with relation to Isaiah 6.

Blessings!

Your Rright Hand Upholds Me

cruv@totellyouthetruth.net (cruv) — Fri, 26 Sep 2008 19:45:59 -0500

A Psalm of David, when he was in the wilderness of Judah.

63:1 O God, you are my God; earnestly I seek you;
my soul thirsts for you;
my flesh faints for you,
as in a dry and weary land where there is no water.
2 So I have looked upon you in the sanctuary,
beholding your power and glory.
3 Because your steadfast love is better than life,
my lips will praise you.
4 So I will bless you as long as I live;
in your name I will lift up my hands.

5 My soul will be satisfied as with fat and rich food,
and my mouth will praise you with joyful lips,
6 when I remember you upon my bed,
and meditate on you in the watches of the night;
7 for you have been my help,
and in the shadow of your wings I will sing for joy.
8 My soul clings to you;
your right hand upholds me.

9 But those who seek to destroy my life
shall go down into the depths of the earth;
10 they shall be given over to the power of the sword;
they shall be a portion for jackals.
11 But the king shall rejoice in God;
all who swear by him shall exult,
for the mouths of liars will be stopped.

A Gospel Reflexion On The Love of God

cruv@totellyouthetruth.net (cruv) — Mon, 15 Sep 2008 08:01:58 -0500

God created mankind in the image and community of the eternally existing Trinitarian God (Genesis 1:26) producing an inherent need and desire for "community" displayed in love by loving God with our whole being and loving others as ourselves (Deuteronomy 6:5, Matthew 22:37-39). God created us so that we may know Him. His creative work of mankind was the act of drawing near to us which was an act of love When God acts, He acts in love because God is love.

"...God's nature is the grammar of God's will, which is a Wittgensteinian way of saying that God's being and acts are one. God is love (I John 4:8) – that is the defining divine perfection – and God is love from tip to toe. God's only power is the power of love, in which there is no domination, coercion, or violence. Such is the imminent perichoretic, self-giving, non-rivalrous love of the Trinity, economically embodied in the cross (and, as Luther said, crux robat omnia). 'Omnipotence,' T. F. Torrance urges, 'is what God does, and it is from His 'does' rather than from a hypothetical 'can' that we are to understand the meaning of the term. What God does, we see in Christ ..." (HT: Curt).

Likewise, God's love is what God does, and it is from His 'does' rather from a hypothetical 'can' that we are to understand the meaning of the term. What God does, we see in Christ. P.T. Forsyth explains,

What ought we say about the love of God? In the cross, God's love for himself, his name and his authority, and his love for his creatures, is taken up and met in one action wherein God exhibits the very nature of his being as unconditional Holy Love. That's why not only is the doctrine of the Trinity necessary to make sense of the atonement, but the atonement is necessary to reveal the Trinitarian fellowship of God. The Holy Love that defines the perichoretic life of the Triune God has, by the grace of the Father in the action of the incarnate Son and by the mission of the Spirit, overflowed freely towards those outside of God's community that creatures may enter into the Holy Love communion that the Triune God has ever known and spoke creation into being for participation in.

In Jesus Christ, God has shown not only that he does not want to be God without us, but that he does not want us to be without him. And in the action of the Holy Spirit, the Triune God is present and active among us to hear and answer our prayers, to sustain us in all the happenings of life, and to continuously bring home to us afresh the good news of the Father's sanctifying action in Jesus Christ, guaranteeing our inheritance, and empowering us to live in the reality of being 'holy and blameless' before God (Ephesians 1:4).

We must not think of ourselves higher than we are. We possess nothing special, nor do we offer any benefit to God for God to choose us. Deuteronomy 7 explains, "For you are a people holy to the Lord your God. The Lord your God has chosen you to be a people for his treasured possession, out of all the peoples who are on the face of the earth. It was not because you were more in number than any other people that the Lord set his love on you and chose you, for you were the fewest of all peoples, but it is because the Lord loves you and is keeping [His] oath..." We are God's treasured possession; not because of anything good we possess but because God loves us. And God loves us because He loves us. "We love because he first loved us" (1 John 4:19).

This great love with which God loves us can not truly be experienced without our setting love upon others. "If anyone says, 'I love God,' and hates his brother, he is a liar; for he who does not love his brother whom he has seen cannot love God whom he has not seen. And this commandment we have from him: whoever loves God must also love his brother" (1 John 4:20-21). I believe C. S. Lewis says it well,

"When I have learnt to love God better than my earthly dearest, I shall love my earthly dearest better than I do now. Insofar as I learn to love my earthly dearest at the expense of God and instead of God, I shall be moving towards the state in which I shall not love my earthly dearest at all. When first things are put first, second things are not suppressed but increased." - Letters of C.S. Lewis (8 November, 1952)

"... May our Lord Jesus Christ Himself, and God our Father, who loved us and gave us eternal comfort and good hope through grace, comfort your hearts and establish them in every good work and word. ... May the Lord direct your hearts to the love of God and to the steadfastness of Christ. ... The grace of the Lord Jesus Christ and the love of God and the fellowship of the Holy Spirit be with you all." (2 Thessalonians 2:16-17, 3:5, 2 Corinthians 13:14).

Why I Am...

cruv@totellyouthetruth.net (cruv) — Fri, 12 Sep 2008 14:12:49 -0500

Yes, I am taking my (extreme) time in doing this series. Why? Because I want to make sure that this series is done in love with humility so that each view is presented accurately and expressed understandably without caricature.

Below are links to four articles of proponents from each view I am covering in this series. Be forewarned, they are lengthy, but they are worth the effort in order to understand their view. My thinking is if you can not understand a particular view, and you have questions about the other views (like how can they believe in the Postmil view? or How can the Amil position be legitimate?) then you must understand what those positions really believe before you denounce them. Why? Because many of us grew up and are in churches which present only one view (typically the Dispensational) as if it is the only view of Israel, the Church, and End Times. So, by default we do not understand the other views except in caricature form.

If we're looking for biblical fidelity and searching for truth, it is our duty to understand these views and let Scripture speak for itself.

Without further ado, go check out these articles. Don't worry, I'll wait....

Why I am a dispensationalist with a small "d" by Darrell L. Bock

Historic Premillennialism Extract from a post on the Free Republic Religion Forum

The Biblical basis of Postmillennialism based on the book Postmillennialism: An Eschatology of Hope by Keith A. Mathison

Why I am an Amillennialist: Additional Reflections by Robert Lowery

God IS Good News

cruv@totellyouthetruth.net (cruv) — Thu, 28 Aug 2008 20:42:23 -0500

How often do we think of theology as an impractical exercise? I think, at least in part, the issue is that we have been inadvertently taught that. People say, "I want practical things, not theology."

Theology IS practical, though. The problem is it takes some effort to put "feet" on the ethereal theological point we're considering.

Eschatology 101 - 7 Interpretive Helps to Revelation - More First Thoughts

cruv@totellyouthetruth.net (cruv) — Thu, 28 Aug 2008 10:18:33 -0500

Justin Childers has a helpful article on understanding the book of Revelation called 7 Interpretive Helps to Revelation. I hope he doesn't mind my reposting the whole thing:

People of the Word must be People of the Word

cruv@totellyouthetruth.net (cruv) — Wed, 27 Aug 2008 08:00:13 -0500

How often are people people of the (God's) Word but are Christless in their thinking! On the other hand, how many people are people of the Word (John 1:1) yet they know nothing of God's Word? That is existentialism.

Oh to be people of the Word that we may be people of the Word! We must be both.