John Piper Proclaims “Christians” Condemned and in Need of Continued Salvation
Originally Published September 30, 2015
One of the major truths that will be emphasized in the present TANC book project is that the Protestant Reformation was NOT based on the Bible. The Protestant kerfuffle with Rome concerned differences in world philosophy—not theology. Sola scriptura is a blatant falsehood. Martin Luther concocted a contending worldview in opposition to an increased influence of Thomism in the Catholic Church. Luther then dressed up his philosophy in Bible verses. Actually, to be more specific, he dressed up Neo-Platonism in biblical garb. This is hardly some deep, dark secret; a cursory observation of church history reveals this, unless you get your church history from a Protestant seminary.
Since the Protestant Reformation was really based on Plato’s Republic, the necessary theological fit was/is progressive justification for those who are preselected and the last to know if they are really selected or not. They get the news at the final judgment. Until then, EVERYBODY is presently under condemnation and in need of continued justification because we have “present sin.” In order to be perpetually rejustified, we must “preach the gospel to ourselves every day,” obey the pastors, and be a faithful church member.
Due to the fact that sola scriptura is a farce, the present-day expression of authentic Protestantism via New Calvinists routinely contradicts the plain sense of Scripture in insane fashion, and nobody blinks an eye. Moreover, cowardly pastors who know better even as confused Protestants allow the New Calvinists to be named and quoted among their sheep.
Let’s talk about one example, the one that prompted this post. On August 22, 2015, John Piper prayed at a Christian anti-abortion rally at a Planned Parenthood location in St. Paul, Minnesota. In that prayer, he stated:
“And we acknowledge in the face of your holiness and power that we are sinners. Everyone standing here in this gathering is a sinner in desperate need of salvation that you offer in Jesus Christ. We know that our conscience condemns us, and if our own consciences do, how much more your holy law. So we have not lived up even to our own standards, let alone to your standards. And we confess our sins corporately before you as individuals.”
In direct conflict to the Bible’s clear definition of a believer, Piper proclaimed everyone at the gathering as condemned under the law; this is the Bible’s succinct definition of a lost person. In addition, Piper clearly proclaimed in the prayer that Christians are still in need of salvation.
How does he get away with this and stand as one of the most beloved evangelicals of our day? Because he supposedly has authority, and we the believers have no real ability to perceive truth. Clearly, if it comes down to what we understand our Bibles to say versus what John Piper says, he will win the day every time.
So then, for all practical purposes, he speaks for God.
paul
It’s Not Complicated
Right, that’s the Protestant gospel, and that’s why it’s false. If we must repeat the same way we “became” a Christian in our ongoing lives, that is obviously progressive justification per John Calvin’s chapter stating such in his Institutes of the Christian Religion (3.14).
In other words, Calvin clearly advocated a progressive salvation in that chapter which shouldn’t surprise us because that’s what Protestantism is. And, the favorite cover for this is the subtle exchange of “salvation” for “grace,” and in this case, “we became a Christian” as well. You can restate the meme this way: “We live by faith ALONE to keep ourselves saved.” It’s clearly perpetual salvation through living by faith alone.
By the way, anything we do with intentionality, no matter how passive, or whether active or passive to keep ourselves saved is a form of works salvation. Keeping ourselves saved by doing nothing with intentionality is still a works salvation. If salvation is not presently complete as apposed to Protestantism’s “final justification,” we must DO something to keep ourselves saved. An unfinished salvation is mutually inclusive with works salvation in every case; this is unavoidable.
And this is is nothing new; James wrote a treatise against faith alone in the Christian life, “faith without works is dead, being alone.” Rather, we live by “faith working through love” (Gal 5:6).
paul
The Problem With Institutional Love
“… the drunkenness of control-lust hardly seeks to advocate the law of individual conscience.”
Truism’s make us feel better and supply cover for living a lie in various venues of life. “The church isn’t a building, it’s the people.” Right. That one is only rivaled by the laugher in my line of work: “It’s about resident care, not personal agendas.” Right.
The problem with institutional caring, love, if you will, is that institutions are intrinsically related to authority. God, who is love, of course, has all authority, but is not an authoritarian. That fact is apparent; God is not presently in control of all things. That’s future; ie., the Millennial Kingdom. Even then, folks have freewill and things are not yet perfect, that comes via the “new heavens and new earth.”
Love has little to do with authority. True love flows from freewill and pure motives. Where authority is present, one is compelled to mimic love, especially when it is being paid for as a service. I am not sure there is a better example than the Nurse Aide line of work; those who receive immense satisfaction in caring and those who are just there for a paycheck are not hard to sort out. And when a resident knows they are being cared for by a clock-puncher, and trust me, they know, it is perhaps the most grievous form of abuse, but yet legal.
And in the Nurse Aide business, clock-punchers don’t like lovers because the lovers shine a light on their clock-punching. Certainly, institutions can cultivate a true love culture, but that is hard work and institutions are notorious for lazy management. Hence, nursing facilities are fraught with steroidal politics and loving aides pose a threat of challenging work for management. Mediocracy is easier to manage, but cultivating a culture of love is very hard work.
Well, they think mediocracy is easy to manage, but it is really misery on an installment plan. Primarily, facilities are notoriously shorthanded for the following reason; lazy management. Again, cultivated the right aide culture is hard work…initially, that is. But if the path of least resistance is the policy (because it seems that it is the least resistance), aides that love what they do who get in by happenstance will create all kinds of conflict leading to pretense-driven politics of the highest order. And how do aides who love what they do get in? Their presentations of themselves are assumed to be pretense or they appear to be clock-punchers because they don’t talk about what they do, they just do it after the fact. But if their actions raise the bar, Katy bar the door.
You can’t legislate love or the motives of the heart. Here is the thing about authority; it can’t make any person do anything. Sure, you can execute someone, but you can’t make them do anything they don’t want to do. They may capitulate to authority, but that’s not love, and in fact, one may reject some forms of authority out of pure love. This is where freewill is an obvious metaphysical fact. God Himself created mankind with the built-in impossibility of making anybody do anything they don’t want to do; He will eventually punish them for not doing what they were created to do in His image, but mankind is inherently a freewill creature.
God is love, and we are created in his image. People are able to love. God is presently in the love business, and when it is time for His authority, that will be very evident. His authority guarantees the outcome that He wants; it guarantees a happy ending for all who love Him and His ways of love, but He presently seeks those who will glorify Him through love.
Institutions attempt to accomplish things through authority which translates into a lack of love. When love takes place in an institution, it is a freewill individual act that can’t come from authority. Institutions, though absolutely necessary, have a very limited role in actual goodness and are intended to free goodness and individualism by force if necessary. In other words, institutions should free the individual to love, but are unable to produce that love.
To illustrate this from a biblical perspective, sin uses law to create desires within people to reject said laws. Laws, though necessary, assume the worst about humanity and reject the ability of individual conscience, and the ability to cultivate an individual conscience to produce more love. This is why institutions with authoritative high standards will end up being bastions of hypocrisy; conscience is legislated rather than assumed. If you tell people they are evil as illustrated by “necessary” laws to restrain such evil, they will act according to expectations.
In contrast, if the “Here is why we do it this way” is presented rather than “You better do it this way, or else,” coupled with the initial hard work of cultivating a culture of true love, employees will function more from personal conscience which determines their actions anyway. Institutions cannot replace personal conscience which is the only true source of love to begin with. Wise institutions, that is, as much as they can be wise, seek to create an atmosphere where consciences flourish, not conformity to pseudo-utopic laws.
This is why I am convinced of the following: the called-out assembly of Christ is meant to function as a cooperative body in a family-of-God setting rather than an authoritative institution. This is in addition to the fact that the Bible explicitly states such.
Institutions are God’s ministers to free the individual conscience according to what is evident to all, because God created conscience in all people according to His image. But institutions cannot produce love. Instead, unless their purpose and limitations are known, they incite the sinful tendency to control others within caste systems full of class-envy-lust where individual self-importance can be purchased through credentials, political skill, drugs, and sex. Invariably, the mentality that institutions are the endgame will produce a quagmire of political intrigue. And, the drunkenness of control-lust hardly seeks to advocate the law of individual conscience.
Only the individual conscience can produce love.
paul
Fear and Love
Fear dominates humanity. In fact, it saturates every level of human existence. Individually, it plagues us with thoughts of uncertainty, lack of confidence, and fear of an unknown future. Fear is not only a very poor prognosticator, but a deliberate liar; very little of what we fear comes true. Medically, in almost every case, fear is present as an agitator delighting in torment if not the primary culprit itself. And fear is always the weapon of choice for those who want to control us.
Fear is also accepted as a natural experience that has a cosmic right to be present. From there it plies its ability to compound itself and debilitate. No foe dumbs down human potential and a positive life experience more than fear.
According to the Bible, the formula is simple: condemnation leads to death/judgement and all fear flows from this dynamic. God’s law, the Bible, not only defines all of these realities, but creates certainty as set against fear’s uncertainty. The Bible states that ALL sin worthy of condemnation is imputed to the law. God created the law to define sin; apart from the law, there is no sin.
Then Christ came to end the law. Say to all dominated by fear: “Embrace Christ, and there is no law to judge you.” The apostle Paul stated it this way: “The sting of death is sin, and the power of sin is the law.”
Many want to control us through fear by presenting God in a certain way. How do you control people who are under no law that can condemn? You cannot; they are free souls. This is what slander is all about; if they have nothing on you to condemn, they will make something up, and since people who are under law have a tendency to feel guilty to begin with, slander is a very effective tool for controlling people.
However, those who embrace Christ are still under a law. The Bible calls it, “under grace.” The word “grace” simply means, “love in action, or help.” In every single place we see the word “grace” in the Bible, the word “love” fits in the context. Grace speaks to God’s love in action.
This now involves God’s dual purpose for the Bible. For the imputation of all sin that condemns, and the standard for loving God and others; it is a law that brings death for those not of Christ, and a law that brings life and love more abundantly for those in Christ.
Christ’s death and resurrection established the gateway to this salvation; the new birth. How certain should you be that you are not condemned in Christ? “Where there is no law there is no sin.” Those in Christ stand in no court that can condemn eternally. Even if a believer where to be taken to such a court, the judge has no law, and would say…
“There is no fear in love, but mature love casts out fear. Depart in peace, there is no condemnation for I have no law that condemns you.”
paul
The Crux: Husbands Must Reassume Their leadership Role Apart From Any Institution; Especially The Church
Originally published September 19, 2016
For some time Susan and I have been counseling in several marriage situations that seem hopeless. We want to be involved in these situations to help as much as we can while trying to learn how these marriages can be healed. And after many months of struggling with these situations, I believe the lightbulb has finally come on.
I have come to believe that good marriages are a product of functioning within God’s design for things. It is interesting to note what the definition of mental health is: the ability to cope with life. Period. This is why family is so important: families are organized units that help people cope with life. When a family is functioning like it should, it is a mighty stalwart as set against life. Love, resolve, peace, happiness, security, help, encouragement, wisdom, experience, and perseverance is found in the milieu of life through the family unit.
Life goes much better when things are used according to their purposes; no skilled surgeon uses a Bowie knife for anything regarding a patient, he uses special surgical tools.
In focusing on what Susan and I do know in all of this, we have emphasized marrying right to begin with. In regard to the woman, that means marrying a leader.
Let me now just pull the whole elephant out of the barn for you to see instead of feeding him to you a piece at a time like a Protestant hack. A good marriage requires the husband to be a leader; a bad marriage can be made good by the husband becoming a leader. A wife may think her husband is cute, handsome, funny, and sexy, and she may even love him, but if he isn’t a leader, she will not respect him and the marriage will eventually go south.
Now it is necessary to define what a leader is. A leader is an independent thinker. A husband leader is a thoughtful person who can think for himself. A leader is not indifferent to how the world works. The world demands this of him whether he knows it or not. There is no choice in the matter. Would you like an example?
So you are just a beer drinking, take it as it comes, live and let live, football-watching Joe, right? You work hard; bring home a check every week, and watching football on the weekend is your rest and escape from weekly duty, right? But as always, hardcore reality catches up with the way we like things; ideology, politics if you will, is now part of football. As a leader, if you are one, you will finally recognize the fact that the world will not allow you to hide from ideology. You can enter the arena of ideas now, or you can eventually be run over by the chariots—your call. You can fancy yourself as a good-old-boy that just goes with the flow all you want, but the flow will eventually drown you. The mindless always end up on a deathbed padded with a mattress of regret…always.
This is a world driven by ideology. If you are a lazy thinker who fancies himself as being along for the ride of life—life will eventually throw you off the bus and run you over. Then you will run to a professional thinker who you must trust because you have no foundational thinking of your own in which to gauge what you are being told.
I would be tempted right now to think of a movie I once saw. A young thoughtless man followed his adventurous desires and rode with some outlaws. He and those he was riding with were shot by some not-so-politically-correct lawmen who rode up on the suffering boy lying on the ground, fatally wounded. One lawman looked upon the youngster, and seeing the fear in his eyes said, “Take your medicine boy.” If you are a lazy thinker, you will indeed take your medicine someday. Lazy thinkers let others think for them and end up wherever the thinkers want them to be. This is why people who need counseling hardly ever know how they ended up where they are at. And I would be tempted to gloat over the aforementioned movie motif, but as a recovering Protestant I am also guilty of letting others think for me.
Secondly, a leader is not a boss. Secondly, a leader is not a boss. Secondly, a leader is not a boss. As a husband, you have no authority. Leadership and authority are mutually exclusive. You think you have authority because you are a lazy thinker and others told you to think that. If you do have authority, you don’t need to be a leader; your wife merely does what you tell her to do for any or no reason whatsoever. Note that authority produces lazy thinking; you don’t need a good reason to demand anything in particular, it just suits your desires at the time.
Leadership and authority are mutually exclusive. And lazy thinkers will either be guided by desire or thinking. Desire always fills the void where thinking is absent.
“But, but, but, if no one is in charge, chaos will ensue!” See what I mean? Where did you get that idea thou lazy thinker? You were taught that by people who want to control you. A cursory independent research will prove that wrong.
Note: this is a discussion separate from the necessity of civil law and the proper administration of it according to God’s purposes.
Thirdly, your authority is your own conscience. Your conscience is who you are, and it is your duty to study life, and thereby inform your conscience according to truth resulting in an earned, truthful self-esteem. Before this statement makes you run to the little boy’s room, know this: somebody is going to inform your conscience which will dictate your behavior; that will be you, or others. Pick one; you have no third choice.
Fourthly, your wife has a right to her own conscience. Your wife should also be a thinker, but as a husband who leads, you are an overseer that makes sure healthy thinking is in process. You are joint-heirs of life, you are part of a family role that faces life TOGETHER, and as ONE flesh.
Be a leader who thinks and applies wisdom to your life, and your wife will respect you. If you have farmed out thinking to other authorities and have set that example for your wife, she will only respect you to the degree that you obey those authorities.
Take your medicine boy.
Listen, Susan and I hear this constantly from church wives: “I don’t respect him because he doesn’t respect the elders.” And this is regardless of anything the elders do. Why? Because they are in authority which requires no reason to do anything other than what they want to do. Worse yet, the husband’s usual objection is that they have usurped his supposed authority. Good luck with that because they are the supposed experts. Don’t play the authority game—you will lose that card game every time if you call their hand. Indeed, if you want to play the authority game, by all means, keep your mouth shut and put your temple tax in the plate. You will at least have a peaceful marriage. It’s a lie, but at least it will be peaceful.
And, the fact that the wife respects/obeys authority over reason is indicative of the husband’s abject failure as a leader. You farmed out the thinking to experts, now they have the marriage they want you to have whatever that might be. By the way, this also applies to the children; somebody is going to seek to lead them someplace by some kind of ideology. This is simply how the world works. As the leader you can be on top of that or asleep at the switch. If you are asleep at the switch, you might get lucky, or you might find your child in their bedroom closet dead because they misused the affixation thrill seeking technique.
In these seemingly hopeless church marriages, the hope lies in the husband assuming his role as a leader before God. This may include the defunding of the wife’s ability to follow others as pseudo authoritarians who demand the husband’s capitulation. You don’t pay for things you don’t believe in. That’s not grace and mercy; that’s stupidity.
Thriving marriages require husband leaders who know their wives and love them according to knowledge and wisdom resulting in wives that respect their husbands. The wife should contribute to figuring out life; it’s the husband’s role to make sure the figuring out is ongoing. I guess if there is one area where I have succeeded as a husband, as Susan will tell you, I constantly encourage her to think for herself according to her own pursuit of truth. A leader strives to make sure his wife and children take personal ownership of what they believe and that being a work built with their own labor.
It’s truth that sets us free.
This starts with knowledge deliberately neglected via Protestant orthodoxy which is based on authority and not leadership. It’s a knowledge that knows how the world works. Jesus calls for individuals to SEEK, not a blind following after the traditions of men cloaked in authority.
The way to heal these marriages is for the husband to become a properly defined leader; more than likely, the wife will like what she sees and follow. His life now makes more sense and works better. This also applies to husbands in general, but even more so with Christian husbands.
paul
Paul's Passing Thoughts 
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