Search Results for: spiritual gifts

Those Spiritual Gifts Tests? Maybe You Ought to Ignore Them.

August 2, 2017 by Dan Olinger 3 Comments

Since in my last post I raised the issue of spiritual gifts, I’d like to engage in a little iconoclasm here.

Much of what you read in those spiritual gifts books, and in those online tests, is completely made up. It’s folklore, not based in Scripture. Might be true, but might not.

There. I’ve said it.

Now the hard part: I need to back it up.

The Bible lists the spiritual gifts in 4 chapters: Romans 12, 1 Corinthians 12 (with a discussion continuing into chapters 13 and 14), Ephesians 4, and 1 Peter 4. The 1 Corinthians chapter contains 3 lists, while each of the others contains just one. 4 chapters, 6 lists, 5 by Paul, 1 by Peter. Here’s a chart that lays them out for comparison.

Some things to notice:

Thing 1: No list is exhaustive; there are blank cells in each list.

So if we combine all the lists, is that list exhaustive? Or, to put it another way, does the Bible name all the spiritual gifts?

The correct answer is “We don’t know.” It’s important to know when you don’t know something. Here’s why.

The Bible clearly states that every believer has at least one spiritual gift (1Cor 12.7, 11). Those online spiritual gifts tests typically assume that you have one of the gifts listed in Scripture; but what if there are other gifts? And what if yours is one of those? You take the test, and, assuming it’s accurate (more on that in a minute), it shows that you have “none of the above.” What’s a believer, particularly a new one, going to conclude?

Must not be saved. Must have done it wrong. Must have not really meant it. Must have …

We can do great spiritual harm when we think the Bible says something that it doesn’t—and when we teach others our unstated assumptions (Jas 3.1).

So are there spiritual gifts that the Bible doesn’t mention?

I don’t know. And neither does anybody else. And we ought to quit acting as though we do.

And if you’ve taken one of those tests, and you’ve scored a Big Fat Zero, freak out thou not.

Thing 2: We don’t even know what some of the gifts are.

Several of the gifts we know a lot about: prophecy, pastor-teacher, speaking in tongues. Lots of biblical information.

Word of wisdom? Not so much. We know what wisdom is—there’s a whole genre on that—but what “word of wisdom” specifically refers to? Nope. It occurs in only 1 list, and it’s not defined there. No mention of it elsewhere in Scripture, no account of someone who had the gift, nothing. Same thing for word of knowledge. And discerning of spirits.

Have you ever noticed that more than half of the listed spiritual gifts—12 of 21, by my count—appear in only 1 list? And that the lists don’t define anything, they just, well, list? How much can we possibly know about those gifts, unless we meet someone in Scripture who is specifically said to have that gift?

So what is discernment of spirits? We don’t know.

Now how are you going to write a test for that? What questions are you going to ask?

Here’s what I think the test authors did. They made up a definition for the gift out of their own heads, and they wrote test questions to identify those traits.

Fair enough.

But let’s not pretend that’s what the Bible teaches.

Are the tests helpful? Well, they might be. For certain gifts. If you have them.

But I wouldn’t take them very seriously on matters where they don’t have any biblical backup.

Thing 3: If we don’t know what some of the gifts are, is it possible that we don’t need to know for sure what our gift is?

Nowhere in the Scripture are we told how to identify our gifts. For that matter, nowhere in the Scripture are we warned to distinguish between spiritual gifts and natural abilities. Even though The Folklore seems to think that’s very important, God doesn’t seem to care at all.

If my gift is discerning of spirits, and I don’t know what that phrase means, how will I know I have that gift?

I suspect that a lot of Christians take those gifts tests for the same reason some people read horoscopes.

Oh, I’m a Virgo? Cool! I understand myself so much better now!

Oh, my gift is mercy? So that’s why I cry so much!

Your spiritual gift is not about you. In fact, you’re the only person in the world that your gift is not for. It’s for everybody else.

Here’s my Official Biblical Spiritual Gifts Test:

What can you do?
Do it for Jesus.
For the glory of God’s name and the edification of his people.

There.

That won’t sell a lot of books or generate a lot of web traffic to my gifts test site, but it’ll make a huge difference for God’s people, if we’ll just do it.

Photo by Matt McLean on Unsplash

On Building Spiritual Muscle, Part 1

January 13, 2020 by Dan Olinger Leave a Comment

What’s the most important question in the world?

I think my fellow Christians would agree with me that it’s the question of where you’re going to spend eternity. If there’s life after death, and if that life is eternal, and if there are different possibilities for the nature of that life, then it’s hard to imagine any question more important than that one.

Life and death. Heaven and hell. It doesn’t get any more consequential than that.

As the Philippian jailer put it so clearly and succinctly all those years ago, “What must I do to be saved?” (Ac 16.30).

And interestingly, according to the Scripture, the answer is remarkably simple and direct. As Paul replied to the jailer, “Believe in the Lord Jesus, and you will be saved” (Ac 16.31).

God has been kind to make the answer to such a consequential question so simple.

Over the years, quite a few Christians have behaved as though The Most Important Question is the only important question.

I said the prayer. I got my ticket out of hell. It’s all good.

Now. What do I want to be when I grow up? Whom do I want to marry? Where do I want to live?

But the Scripture doesn’t see conversion as merely a ticket to ride. Conversion is a commencement—it’s the start of something really, really big, a whole lot of which takes place before you get anywhere near heaven.

I’ve written on some of that before.

Conversion begins a lifetime of being changed, through the work of the Spirit of God, to be more and more like Christ—to the degree that we can be like someone who is God as well as man. It’s a life in which everything—everything—is being morphed, refreshed, improved, renovated (2Co 3.18).

For many Christians it comes down to trying to be good now. Trying to get better, to turn over a new leaf. And, like new year’s resolutions, it gets old and tired, and we end up not making much progress. I’ve known people who said, “I’ve tried the Christianity thing. Didn’t work for me. Wish it had, but it didn’t.”

But it’s not about trying to do better. It’s not just a New Life’s Resolution. It’s a sure, certain work, by the omnipotent and faithful Spirit of God, to conform you to the image of Christ.

Which brings me to what I often call The Second Most Important Question in the World:

How do I achieve reliable, steady spiritual growth?

Or, as I’ve titled this series,

How do I build spiritual muscle?

I suppose many Christians would reply, “You just pray for it.”

I’d like to suggest that that’s not really the right answer. I’m all for praying—in fact, we’ll get to that topic later in the series—but I’d suggest that that’s not the answer that the Bible gives to this question.

Yes, the Bible does say that if we lack wisdom, we should just ask for it (Jam 1.5). And the Scripture makes much of God’s generous willingness to pour out his blessings on us, if we’ll only ask (e.g. Lk 6.38). Prayer is certainly part of the answer. But it’s not the whole answer.

Perhaps an illustration will help.

Suppose I want serious abs. Ripped abs. A washboard. (Come to think of it, how do you know I don’t already have them? ?)

And so I pray: “Dear Lord, please give me abs.”

And I lie on the couch, watching TV and eating half-gallons of ice cream straight from the carton.

Six-pack?

Nope. Not outside of well-insulated cooler, anyway.

Doesn’t work that way. God could answer that prayer miraculously, of course. But he won’t, and not just because we don’t have “enough faith.”

There’s a way to get abs.

Now let me ask the application question.

If the Bible has told us how to build spiritual muscle—if it’s given us the exercises, so to speak—and we don’t do the exercises, do you think God’s going to give us spiritual muscle miraculously?

Sure, in the end our spiritual growth is a miracle. But I’d suggest that God has placed some of the responsibility for sanctification on us.

And for what it’s worth, the theology books, both Calvinist and Arminian, agree with me. Sanctification is a synergistic work between the Spirit of God and the believer.

So. How do we build spiritual muscle? What are the exercises?

Join me for the next few posts, and we’ll work through the biblical data.

 Part 2 | Part 3 | Part 4 | Part 5 | Part 6

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The Gifts of Salvation, Part 21: Breaking the Tape

May 27, 2019 by Dan Olinger Leave a Comment

Introduction
Our relationship to sin: Conviction / Repentance / Regeneration / Forgiveness / Redemption / Justification
Our relationship to God:
Before conversion:Election / Drawing / Faith
At conversion:Reconciliation / Positional sanctification / Adoption / Union with Christ / Spirit Baptism / Sealing / Indwelling / Assurance
After conversion:Progressive sanctification / Filling / Glorification
Conclusion

Are you a tortoise or a hare?

How’s your pace in the great marathon we call sanctification—that one element of salvation that grows and changes throughout our entire lives?

Making any progress?

Well, biblically, the answer is “yes, of course.” If you’re in the vine, you bear fruit (Jn 15.5), which the Spirit is enabling in all kinds of character development (Gal 5.22-23). You’re making progress, a little bit at a time (2Co 3.19). You’re becoming more like Christ.

But chances are you don’t feel like it.

Maybe you feel like you’re taking two steps backward for every step forward. Up and down, up and down, progress and failure, over and over again.

Or maybe you feel as though the goal is so far away—Christ is infinite and perfect, after all, and you are so filled with flaws and lusts and selfishness and evil inclinations that seem to spring out of nowhere—that you’ll just never get there. You can’t run that far.

Maybe you’re just tired.

Can I encourage you to take heart?

You’re not alone in this struggle. Others are having the same experience.

As a matter of fact, everyone’s having the same experience. Every believer living today is crammed into that tiny boat with you. We might not admit it—we’re embarrassed by our failures, and we keep them as secret as we can—but we’re all struggling, all stumbling, all frustrated that we’re not making better time per mile on this marathon God’s called us to run.

There are no super Christians.

But let’s be frank. The fact that we’re all in the same boat isn’t really much encouragement in itself. Misery may love company, but in the end we don’t want miserable companions—we want victory. We want to win.

Since we’re being frank, let’s admit that having company in the lifeboat isn’t really the solution—though it’s worth noting that in God’s plan of salvation, those walking along beside us do play a role in strengthening us for the battle through their encouragement and the exercise of their spiritual gifts in our behalf. We can help each other out, in innumerable ways. Walking this path alone is exceedingly foolish.

But there’s a much, much bigger reason to take heart. I’ve mentioned it already in this series.

It’s predestination.

You see, God has predestined you to be “conformed to the image of his Son” (Rom 8.29). He has guaranteed that you’re going to arrive—successfully—at the destination of perfect Christlikeness:

We know that when He appears, we will be like Him, because we will see Him just as He is (1J 3.2b).

You’re going to plod along, with ups and downs, fits and starts, successes and failures. And then in an instant—“in the twinkling of eye,” as Paul says (1Co 15.52), “we shall all be changed!” (1Co 15.51).

Here’s what that means: no matter how inconsistently, erratically, just plain badly you run this race of sanctification—no matter how far you are from the finish line of Christlikeness when your life here comes to an end—if you’re a genuine believer, God is going to pick you up and take you all the way to finish line at the end. And he’s going to do it in an instant.

We call that glorification, and you can read more about it in 1 Corinthians 15.20-57. And thanks to that controversial word, predestination, you can be as certain of that as that the sun will come up tomorrow (Gen 8.22).

So. What do we do in the meantime?

Earlier in this series I mentioned a long bicycle trip I took in seminary. One of my big takeaways from that trip was a change in my regional thinking. I was born in the West, where we would routinely ridicule Easterners for their talk about “mountains.” “Mountains?!” my Dad would say. “Those aren’t mountains; they’re pimples on the prairie. Now out here, we have mountains!”

And then I rode a bicycle through those eastern mountains. The first day out of Boston, the Berkshires like to killed me. Then a bit of the Catskills, then the Blue Ridge, including a bit of the Smokies—a pretty decent survey of the Appalachians, north to south.

I decided those are mountains. And my days were spent head down, dripping sweat, lost in concentration, just pedaling one step at a time, one foot after another.

Just do it.

The Christian life is a lot like that. Except that the prize at the end is a lot better than even Greenville. :-)

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The Gifts of Salvation, Part 18: Assurance

May 16, 2019 by Dan Olinger Leave a Comment

Introduction
Our relationship to sin: Conviction / Repentance / Regeneration / Forgiveness / Redemption / Justification
Our relationship to God:
Before conversion: Election / Drawing / Faith
At conversion: Reconciliation / Positional sanctification / Adoption / Union with Christ / Spirit Baptism / Sealing / Indwelling / Assurance
After conversion: Progressive sanctification / Filling / Glorification
Conclusion

There’s one more thing that happens at the instant you’re converted. It seems to be a result of the Spirit’s taking up residence in us. He gives us assurance—he “bears witness with our spirit that we are the children of God” (Rom 8.16).

We should begin with a clarification. There are really two kinds of confidence. One is objective—for example, you’re safe because you’re strapped in to the roller coaster, and the track has been carefully engineered and was inspected just moments ago, and the operator is trained, and you’re following instructions. You’re safe, whether you feel like it or not. We call that “security.”

But “assurance” is different. It’s subjective; it has to do with how we feel. On the roller coaster, you can be perfectly safe and not feel like it at all—security without assurance. On the other hand, you might be in a different situation and be in great peril but be completely unaware of that fact, like the passengers on the Titanic. Assurance without security.

In salvation, we have security. God has made promises, and he unfailingly keeps them. You can take that to the bank.

I should insert a word here about a theological dispute. As you know, there’s disagreement among Christians about what is often referred to as “eternal security.” Can a Christian “lose” his salvation? Or is it “once saved, always saved”?

I have an opinion on that, and I’m pretty sure I’m right. :-)

But for now I’ll just point out that Arminians, who hold that a genuinely converted person can, under certain circumstances, end up in hell, would not say that they don’t believe in “security.” One Arminian friend of mine says that he’s as secure as the promises of God. But he believes that a Christian can harden his heart against the promptings of the Spirit to the point where the Spirit will give him up to the desires of his own hardened heart. The result would not be a surprise to the Christian, and it’s not something that happens while he’s not paying attention; it’s something he deliberately chooses. So, my friend would say, if you’re concerned about your spiritual state—if you’re worried that you’ve “lost” your salvation—then you obviously have not chosen to harden your heart, so stop worrying. You can reject your salvation, he would say, but you can’t “lose” it.

So regardless of your position on “eternal security”—Arminian or Calvinist—you’re secure. God’s going to keep his promises to you. He’s not going to send anyone to hell who hasn’t chosen to go there.

But what about assurance, the subjective side?

It really comes down to a matter of trust, doesn’t it?

Do you believe God, or don’t you?

When a man comes up to me offering a fancy watch at a very low price, I’m not going to buy it. Why not? It’s a good deal, right? Well, not if it’s a knockoff, a counterfeit, it isn’t. And that depends on whether this guy has any morals or not. And if he’s a stranger, my instinct is going to be to assume the worst. I’m not going to trust him.

But if someone I know well comes to me with a great deal—and I’ve known him for a loooong time, and he’s demonstrated unbroken faithfulness to me, and at great personal sacrifice, in situations that cost him significantly—well, I’m going to trust him.

I trust my wife. It would be wrong not to.

So where are we with God?

He created us, knowing we would disappoint him, and has given us everything we really need for free and in abundance. And when we disappointed him, he pursued us, first by stepping into our world, at permanent and infinite cost, and then, astonishingly, by dying in our place. And then he offered us rescue, freely, despite everything we’ve done.

Is he going to cut you loose?

Don’t be ridiculous. What nonsense.

Today, in your heart, the Spirit of God has taken up residence, and he is constantly whispering in your ear words of love, of faithfulness, of commitment, of assurance.

Listen to him.

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The Gifts of Salvation, Part 15: Spirit Baptism

May 6, 2019 by Dan Olinger 2 Comments

Introduction
Our relationship to sin: Conviction / Repentance / Regeneration / Forgiveness / Redemption / Justification
Our relationship to God:
Before conversion: Election / Drawing / Faith
At conversion: Reconciliation / Positional sanctification / Adoption / Union with Christ / Spirit Baptism / Sealing / Indwelling / Assurance
After conversion: Progressive sanctification / Filling / Glorification
Conclusion

With our conversion, our relationship with all three members of the Godhead is transformed. In adoption, we have a specific relationship with the Father; in union, we have a specific relationship with the Son. And among this pile of gifts there are several that have to do with our specific relationship with the Spirit.

The first of these (and yes, they’re all simultaneous in our experience) is Spirit baptism, by which we are joined with the body of Christ, the church (1Co 12.13).

There’s not a lot of material in the Scripture on this event, and we need to be careful not to ascribe things to it that the Scripture doesn’t (::cough:: like the Wikipedia article ::cough::). It’s predicted a couple of times (once by John the Baptist [Mt 3.11; Mk 1.8; Lk 3.16; Jn 1.33], and once by Jesus, just before the Ascension [Ac 1.5, recalled by Peter in Ac 11.16]). Then there’s the 1 Corinthians verse noted above, and that’s it. In that passage Paul seems to compare it to “being made to drink into one Spirit,” which is an interesting expression, but still doesn’t tell us much.

I conclude, then, that Spirit baptism includes a couple of benefits for us—

We’re united with Christ’s body, the church. And that makes sense in the light of our union with Christ.
We’re united in some way with the Spirit; we’re “drinking him in.” That seems to imply spiritual power for following and serving Christ.

There are a couple of questions that come up with this event. The first is the terminology itself, which varies among Christians. You’ll see “baptism in the Spirit,” “baptism with the Spirit,” “baptism by the Spirit,” “baptism of the Spirit,” and just “Spirit baptism.” The difference comes from the fact that Greek prepositions, like English ones, can mean a lot of different things. Think about the following statements:

I eat ice cream with a spoon.
I eat ice cream with hot fudge sauce.
I eat ice cream with my wife.
I eat ice cream with great joy.

Wait—come back! Get away from that freezer!

I apologize for the distraction.

Each of the listed statements means something very different from the others, but the little word with is doing all the work.

In Greek it’s the same way. We are baptized “en” the Spirit. And that word can speak of agency—“by”—or of instrumentality—“with”—or of sphere—“in.” If you’re baptized “in” the Spirit, then the Spirit is the water in which you’re being immersed (yes, my baptistic bias is showing here, but it doesn’t make much sense to use “in” of pouring or sprinkling). If you’re baptized “by” the Spirit, then the Spirit is the pastor, and he’s putting you in the water.

So which is correct?

I dunno. Most English versions, from the KJV to the NIV, say “by.” I prefer “Spirit baptism,” which admittedly isn’t a literal rendering of the Greek but avoids the ambiguity altogether.

The second question is between some Pentecostals / Charismatics and mainstream Protestants. It’s typical of the former to use the term of a “Pentecostal experience”—“I got the baptism of the Spirit, and I spoke in tongues!” Setting aside for a moment the issue of the genuineness of the experience, the term itself doesn’t match the biblical use; it appears to me that Pentecostalists are confusing Spirit baptism with “filling,” which is a different phenomenon, and which we’ll get to several posts down the road. If Spirit baptism is the event by which we’re placed into the body of Christ (1Co 12.13), and if all believers are members of the body (same verse; note “all”), then by definition every believer has received the baptism, whether he realizes it or not. It’s not a later experience after conversion; it’s simultaneous with it.

So you’re one with the body of Christ, the church. That has all sorts of ramifications. Plunge in.

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The Gifts of Salvation, Part 7: Justification

April 8, 2019 by Dan Olinger 1 Comment

Introduction
Our relationship to sin: Conviction / Repentance / Regeneration / Forgiveness / Redemption / Justification
Our relationship to God:
Before conversion: Election / Drawing / Faith
At conversion: Reconciliation / Positional sanctification / Adoption / Union with Christ / Spirit Baptism / Sealing / Indwelling / Assurance
After conversion: Progressive sanctification / Filling / Glorification
Conclusion

Your relationship with sin has been long, intimate, and at its core unrewarding. God’s Spirit has graciously opened your eyes to see that, and he’s led you to change your mind about that relationship, with the result that he has given you new life, spiritual life. And with that regeneration have come three simultaneous and significant changes. The first two are forgiveness and redemption. We now come to the climax of that process in justification.

You’re getting a divorce. The legal relationship you had with sin is coming to an end.

Yes, this is a legal matter. With redemption we were in the economic sphere, the marketplace. With justification we step over into the courtroom to take care of the paperwork, so this relationship will be officially ended.

In court you are never held to be innocent. Some reporters write their news stories using that language, but it’s incorrect. The question in court is not whether the defendant is guilty or innocent; it’s whether he’s guilty or not guilty. And the difference is significant. What the court decides is not whether it can prove that you didn’t do something; it’s whether it can prove that you did. If it can, you’re guilty. If it can’t, you’re not “innocent”; you’re “not guilty.”

That’s a matter of legal standing, not of fact. If you’re found not guilty, then in the eyes of the law you’re not liable to any penalty for any violation—whether you did the violation or not. You’re acquitted. You’re justified.

That’s how it works in divine justification as well. In our case, there’s no question as to our guilt. Yes, we did it. But God pronounces that you are righteous—that there is no stain on your legal record, in spite of what you have done. You bear no guilt for sin, and consequently you face no penalty.

Done.

How can God do that? How can he declare someone to be righteous when he obviously isn’t? In the Mosaic Law, God says that he would never clear the guilty (Ex 34.7; Num 14.18). So what’s going on here?

The key to justification is a related theological concept: imputation. Since I’ve written on that before, I’ll just summarize it here: in what has been called “the Great Exchange,” God has transferred the guilt for your sins to Christ (Is 53.5-6), who has graciously offered to pay the penalty—death—in your place. And he has placed the credit for Christ’s righteous life on your account, so that you are now righteous, so far as the law is concerned (2Co 5.21).

Paul spends some time on this in Romans 3.21-26, in what one New Testament scholar has called “the most important single paragraph ever written.” There he notes that the Law itself, which condemns us, also foretells this great act of justification (Rom 3.21); that the righteousness of God comes to all those who believe, regardless of background (Rom 3.22); and that all this is on the basis of Christ’s death in our place (Rom 3.24-25). The upshot is that God remains just, even as he justifies those who are not just in themselves (Rom 3.26).

Some of us were taught in Sunday school that justified means “just as if I’d never sinned.” That’s not very good etymology, but it’s excellent theology. By a righteous act, God has declared your remitted sins to be vaporized, and he has declared you consequently to be righteous, just as righteous as the Christ himself. As a result, your old relationship with sin is officially over.

But there appears to be a problem. As I’ve noted before, the ex keeps calling us, harassing us, pretending that there’s still something going on. What are we going to do about that?

Well, there’s a really, really good story there. There’s a new relationship, with a righteous God. And it’s to that story that we’ll devote the rest of this series. That story is longer than the one we’ve told so far, and deeper, and much, much more interesting. You won’t want to miss it.

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The Gifts of Salvation, Part 4: Regeneration

March 28, 2019 by Dan Olinger 1 Comment

Introduction
Our relationship to sin: Conviction / Repentance / Regeneration / Forgiveness / Redemption / Justification
Our relationship to God:
Before conversion: Election / Drawing / Faith
At conversion: Reconciliation / Positional sanctification / Adoption / Union with Christ / Spirit Baptism / Sealing / Indwelling / Assurance
After conversion: Progressive sanctification / Filling / Glorification
Conclusion

Our repentance is the spiritual equivalent of an atomic bomb. It blows up everything, setting off multiple chain reactions that change everything about us—the way we feel, the way we think, the way we live out our thinking, the course of our life, and the course of eternity.

Everything.

A whole bunch of stuff happens in the instant of our repentance. The most significant of those things, and the one that makes all the others possible, is simply unbelievable.

We rise from the dead.

Oh, we didn’t feel dead before we repented. We were thinking, and feeling, and doing things. But we were alive in only the physical sense—and we are much more than just a physical body, just a collection of about a buck’s worth of chemicals. As I’ve noted before, God created us in his image, with a physical body, of course, but with much more than that—with a non-physical part that survives the death of the body (2Co 5.1-8) and that is in fact the most important part of us (Lk 12.4). And that part of us—the part that really lives, the part that can know God—that part of us was dead.

Like a doornail.

Paul puts it this way:

And you were dead in your trespasses and sins, in which you formerly walked according to the course of this world, according to the prince of the power of the air, of the spirit that is now working in the sons of disobedience. Among them we too all formerly lived in the lusts of our flesh, indulging the desires of the flesh and of the mind, and were by nature children of wrath, even as the rest (Eph 2.1-3).

Dead. Not kinda dead, not sorta dead, not even mostly dead.

Dead.

Now if someone is truly dead, he’s going to need help—divine help—to change his state. People talk about their having “died” on the operating table, but what they mean is that their heart stopped—perhaps because of sudden cardiac arrest that was quickly reversed, or perhaps intentionally, during open-heart surgery. But these people weren’t really dead—they were full of cellular life, and their brains were still producing waves. A few years ago medics were stunned to find that cold-water “drowning” victims could be resuscitated after they had been immersed for astonishing lengths of time. None of these people were really dead.

Now, Lazarus—he was dead. He’d been in the tomb for 4 days, and as his sister Martha so indelicately put it, “by this time he stinketh” (Jn 11.39). And he was not coming back without divine assistance.

That was our state. We were dead and decomposed, and we stankethed.

And in an instant, He made us alive.

We call that regeneration. Rebirth. Being “born again,” or born from above, as Jesus put it to Nicodemus (Jn 3.3).

Now that has a lot of implications for the days ahead. We’ll explore those in the second phase of the series, when we discuss the changes that salvation brings to our relationship with God. For now, though, I want to think about what it means for our relationship to sin.

Paul says that when we became alive to Christ, we died to sin (Rom 6.2). It’s an odd picture: we were dead, but now we’re alive, which means that we’re dead to what we were before. But that’s precisely the language that Paul uses.

What does it mean to be dead to sin?

Well, it doesn’t mean that we don’t sin anymore; Paul makes that clear in Romans 7, and John makes the same point in 1John 1.8-10. But it does mean that we’re now disconnected from our old lifestyle—that we have options now that we never had before.

We don’t have to sin. We can say no.

I’ll say more about this idea when we get to the gift of redemption, but for now let’s just revel in that thought for a moment.

You’re alive. You can do things. You have choices. And among those choices is the ability to tell your old life and your old slave-driver to just get lost.

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A Denier Redirected, Part 6: Living Out the Greatness 3 (Church 1)

March 24, 2025 by Dan Olinger Leave a Comment

Part 1 | Part 2 | Part 3 | Part 4 | Part 5

Peter has applied his fundamental principle—submission—in the social sphere (government and marketplace) and inside the home. Now he turns to the third arena in which we play out our lives: the church. As it’s often said, we’re called to be in the world, but not of it (cf. Jn 17.11-16), and of course we’re called to prioritize our family. But we are also part of a not-this-world, and another family, which is the family of believers. The Bible calls that the church, the assembled ones.

Peter begins with the observation that “the end of all things is at hand” (1P 4.7). This is not the ranting of some wild-eyed prophet with a sandwich board; it’s the studied observation of an apostle, passing along what he has heard from Jesus himself. In the biblical history, the church is the result and manifestation of Christ’s climactic work of atonement and resurrection, and it is the outworking of his people’s abundant life that will persist unto the very end of time (Mt 16.18). Ever since the church began at Pentecost, it has been the final stage of God’s temporal plan.

So we ought to pay attention (“be sober,” 1P 4.7) to the most important things, and we ought to get busy.

Get busy with what?

I’d suggest that Peter lays out before this spiritual family several ways in which we can share our standing before God as we await the end of all things.

Share the Gifts

Peter is the only New Testament author besides Paul to address the subject of spiritual gifts, and his mention is by far the briefest. Since I’ve written elsewhere on the topic, I’ll move quickly here.

Peter starts with love (KJV “charity,” Greek agape), as well he should (1Co 13.13), and he elevates it with the phrase “above all things” (1P 4.8). We need to love one another.

And now follows one way that we demonstrate that love. We show hospitality (lit. “love [phile] of foreigners”) without holding back (1P 4.9). What do you need? OK, here it is. For free. As much as you need.

And whatever other gift or gifts we have, we exercise them for the benefit of the others in the body (1P 4.10). That’s what they’re for.

Here Peter names two more gifts—or, I would suggest, two categories into which all the gifts may be organized—namely, speaking and serving (KJV “ministering”) (1P 4.11). Platform, front-of-the-room gifts, and those that work outside of the limelight and typically get little notice.

When we do that, we edify the church as a whole (cf. Ep 4.12-13), and we bring glory to the church’s head, Christ (Ep 1.22-23).

Share the Suffering

Jesus never preached Prosperity Theology. He did say that our needs will be met—fowls of the air, and lilies of the field, and all that (Mt 6.25-34)—but he also said that we would be persecuted: his words about sparrows falling and the hairs on our heads being numbered were spoken in a context of persecution: “I send you forth as sheep in the midst of wolves” (Mt 10.16; cf 17-33).

So Peter counsels, “Think it not strange concerning the fiery trial which is to try you” (1P 4.12).

It’s coming.

So how should we respond?

Based just on verse 12, we ought to respond with confidence. We’re not shocked; we’re not surprised; we’re not wondering what has gone terribly wrong and why God has allowed this awful thing to happen to us. We square our shoulders, we face the persecutors, and we do not quake.

Further, we respond with joy (1P 4.13-14). Since Peter knows that’s an odd request, he gives us the reason for it: our joy reflects confidence and trust in God, and the fact that he is worthy of that trust speaks well of him—it glorifies him, or gives his reputation more weight in our eyes, as well as in the eyes of the persecutors (if they have any sense).

Third, we share the suffering innocently (1P 4.15). We don’t behave in ways that justify the persecution. These days I’m seeing Christians post things—snide, inciteful (not insightful), hateful things—that can result only in giving the enemies of God reason to blaspheme. Peter seems to imply that such people deserve whatever persecution they get.

We respond with gratitude for our safe standing in God (1P 4.16-18) and with trust in the God who has given us that standing (1P 4.19).

That doesn’t remove the pain, but it does make sense of it. And it puzzles the persecutors in the healthiest of ways.

Next time: two more ways we share our lives with the rest of the body, the church.

Photo by 愚木混株 cdd20 on Unsplash

On Discipline, Part 5: Mentors 

August 5, 2024 by Dan Olinger Leave a Comment

Part 1: Perspective | Part 2: Action | Part 3: Dependence | Part 4: Thought

One more item in Paul’s list of areas we should give attention to and discipline:

Those things, which ye have both learned, and received, and heard, and seen in me, do: and the God of peace shall be with you (Php 4.9).

He encourages the believers in Philippi—a church that he planted—to imitate his example, to follow his practices. These days we call such a person a mentor, and those who imitate him proteges.

Some people might find this surprising. Isn’t this arrogant of Paul—especially since Christ is the only perfect example?

Good point. And as it happens, Paul says that himself elsewhere:

Be ye followers of me, even as I also am of Christ (1Co 11.1).

He’s clearly not placing his value as an example above that of Christ.

I’ll note that Paul’s exhortation here indicates that he has been careful to set the kind of example that the Philippians should follow. He’s been helped in that, certainly by the fact that he’s an apostle, guided by the Spirit into all truth (Jn 16.13).

Slight sidetrack: Many interpreters would apply Jn 16.13 to all believers. I don’t, because I know that I’m not guided into all truth, and as I tell my students, I have written documentation in a file cabinet in my office that they are not guided into all truth either. I think this is a promise to the apostles that they would be inerrant in their reporting of Jesus’ life and teachings—their proclamation of the gospel. This of course would come to us through the New Testament. But since only three men in the room in John 16 wrote any New Testament, I’m also inclined to believe that the rest of the apostles, though not sinless (Ga 2.11), were inerrant in their preaching—which makes Luke’s description of the Bereans all the more remarkable (Ac 17.11; but cf 1Th 2.13).

But to return.

Paul here encourages the Philippians to imitate his example.

Might this exhortation have broader significance? Should we, two millennia after Paul’s death, imitate him too? It occurs to me that we’ll have a harder time doing so, since we can’t see Paul’s example in his day-to-day life, as the Philippians did. But there are certainly a good many things we can know about him, and those things we can imitate.

But to go a step further. Can we take Paul’s words as a general endorsement of the concept of mentorship? There are a good many Christian books on discipleship that do just that, and I don’t see a reason to disagree with them. Paul’s teaching on spiritual gifts seems to imply strongly that all believers should sit under gifted teachers and should live exemplary lives before their church assemblies.

So, I would suggest, we can all benefit from following the examples of exemplary believers. (The apparent redundancy there is intentional and is not actually redundant.) And Paul’s words here in verse 9 indicate that we should be careful whom we choose.

I suppose it could go without saying that we should choose as models those who follow Christ well, consistently, carefully, graciously. We should choose them not because they’re popular, or good-looking, or socially adept. We should recognize something of the character of Christ in them and then seek to integrate that character trait into our own thinking and lifestyle. We should ask them questions, and we should listen to the answers.

I suppose it’s worthwhile to insert a caution here.

You and I are not called to be anybody else. God has made us all different, and he has gifted us to serve in ways that are the sum of our DNA, our upbringing, our experiences, our sanctification, and yes, our gifting. I’ve known Christians who want desperately to be just like somebody they admire, and those efforts always end in disappointment. We’re called to be ourselves, remade in the image of Christ.

But we ought to follow examples, carefully chosen, in our lifelong journey to be like Christ.

Photo by Dave Lowe on Unsplash

On Independence Day

July 4, 2024 by Dan Olinger 1 Comment

Since the Fourth of July falls on a Thursday this year, and since I post on Thursdays. I’m going to interrupt the current series to say something about the holiday.

I suppose I could say something about what it means to be an American, and about the sacrifices of the many who have bestowed this blessing on us. I could engage my inclination toward theology to discuss the concept of independence as the Bible presents it, or the significance of our national identity against the backdrop of divine providence. I could meditate on the importance of celebration, or the joys of tradition, or what happens when someone uses fireworks foolishly. Or even about why the Articles of Confederation didn’t work out so well.

Maybe on a future Independence Day, one on a Monday or a Thursday, I’ll hit some of those ideas. But this time, I want to point out the day’s relationship to a very large theological theme.

Political liberty is a divine gift. The American founders recognized that fact without apology, and various leaders along the path of its history have repeated the theme—leaders as theologically diverse as Abraham Lincoln and Franklin D. Roosevelt and John F. Kennedy and Ronald Reagan.

I’ve had the privilege of being in at least two other countries—one in Asia, one in Africa—as they were celebrating their independence days. I found it oddly satisfying to rejoice with them in their freedom, to feel something akin to patriotism toward a land that was not my own. (I suppose the fact that both countries were celebrating independence from Great Britain gave my Patriot heart a certain resonance with theirs.) I’d suggest that it’s perfectly normal for God’s people to celebrate his gifts to others (Ro 12.15).

And speaking of gifts, the Bible spends quite a bit of time talking about a specific class of gifts that God gives to his people, which he calls charismata, “spiritual gifts.” He makes it very clear that God is lavish with these gifts, seeing to it that every individual believer has at least one, and distributing personally through his Holy Spirit (1Co 12.11-13). We are not to take credit for the abilities these gifts entail, for we did not earn them; God has given them freely.

But on the other hand, he expects us to steward them, to use them wisely and effectively. He expects us to develop them, to make the best use of them that we can (2Ti 1.6). We will give account for that stewardship.

In a similar way, even as we rejoice in the delights of the gift of freedom, we are not to be casual about them, for they are the gift of God. We hold a solemn responsibility to steward our freedom, to make the best use of it. I would suggest a few specific ways we can do that.

By not abusing it. I am free to do all sorts of things, but that fact does not mean that I ought to do everything I am free to do. I am free to speak my mind to political adversaries, but I will give account for every idle word that I speak (Mt 12.36), particularly words that imply my adversaries are not, like me, created in the image of God (Ge 1.26-27) and of infinite value. I am free to spend my hard-earned money on myself, but I am not free to ignore the plight of those in need.

By attempting to extend it to others. I have fellow citizens whose freedom, and other natural and constitutional rights, are being impinged; and of course citizens of multiple other countries are in a similar or worse condition. I can steward my freedom by using it to expand the freedom of others.

By defending it. My country has not called on me for military service—I learned as a teen that the government was not particularly inclined to let someone with only one working ear fly its multi-billion-dollar fighters—but I can defend it in other ways. All that requires is being attentive and inclined to take a stand.

Gratitude for God’s gifts, and stewardship of it. Most of theology is about giving balanced attention to both divine sovereignty and human responsibility.

To my American friends, Happy Fourth.

And to my other friends, I rejoice with you in God’s particular kindness to you.

Or, as we say in my region of my country, to y’all.

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