Paul's Passing Thoughts

The weak sanctification/kingdom living among Christians is due to a fundamental misunderstanding of the new birth. Once again, I was involved in a debate last week with several professing Christians who understand the new birth to be an idiom for our sins being covered rather than ended. Rather than being made, or recreated righteous, we still have sin that separates us from grace and requires an “imputation” of an “alien righteousness.” Our sins are only covered and we remain fundamentally unchanged.

Per the usual, the debate included Baptist pastors and missionaries which of course is completely terrifying. Wonder why your little Baptist church is dying a slow death? A false gospel perhaps?  

Ask many professing Christians if Christ died for our present and future sins and they will look at you like it is the stupidest question they have ever heard in their whole life, but this is indicative of the overall ignorance concerning the true gospel among professing Protestants.

Christ came to end the law, and where there is no law there is no sin. Christ only died for sins that are under law. When you are saved you are no longer under law—there is no penalty to be paid for any sin that is not under law.  That is the legal aspect, but it is also the reality of being.

The new birth puts the old person to death with Christ. A dead person is no longer under law. And where there is no law there is no sin. All sin is against the law; that is, the law of sin and death. That law no longer applies to the believer for two reasons: Christ ended it on the cross, and a dead man is no longer under the law. What happens when the Police find out a suspect is dead? Case closed. This is along the exact same line of argument Paul makes in Romans 7.

But there is also a resurrection. Even though the body of sin has been brought to nothing, and those who have died have ceased from sin, the soul of the believer is quickened (regeneration) and now is free to “serve another.” Who is the new person now free to serve? His/her new master; the law of the Spirit of life. The law is now our guide to loving God and others—it cannot condemn us. We were indifferent to the law when we were under it and it was condemning us, but now we love it (see Psalms 119).

If Christ died for our present and future sins, we are still under the law of sin and death. The law of sin and death is not ended—we are still under it, and in fact, Christ’s death needs to be applied to any present or future sin we commit—we are therefore not under grace.

This denies the new birth. We have not ceased from sin because we never really died with Christ. The sin we presently commit is not merely family sin that can bring chastisement from our Father—that sin can actually condemn us. There is still condemnation for those who love God.

A verse often quoted to refute the literal new birth and the ending of the law of sin and death is 2Corinthians 5:21.

“For he hath made him to be sin for us, who knew no sin; that we might be made the righteousness of God in him” (KJV).  

The idea in citing this verse is that the only righteousness we have is the righteousness of Christ imputed to us. Christ not only came to die for our sins, but instead of ending the law of sin and death, he came to obey it perfectly so that His obedience (righteousness) can be credited to our account because we are not literally righteous and fall short of obeying the law of sin and death perfectly. 1John 1:9 is often added to 2Corinthians 5:21 to make the case.

Moreover, this perfect obedience and His death must be reapplied to any new sin we commit against the still active law of sin and death. Hence, any obedience to the law done by us can only bring about death—we are not free to serve the law of the Spirit of life (Romans 8:2).

So, we have no righteousness of our own, and are not recreated righteous. We only have the righteousness of God, who is also Christ, so being interpreted: we are not righteous or recreated, but merely covered by the righteousness of Christ. “In Christ” means that the righteousness of God and the righteousness of Christ are the same thing.  

This idea not only turns the true gospel completely on its head for a number of reasons, but 2Corithians 5:21 is saying the exact opposite.

“In Christ” means that Christ made it possible for God to recreate believers as truly righteous beings through the baptism of the Spirit. Christ died on the cross so that we could die with Him and no longer be under the law of sin and death. Christ died for us so that we could die with Him. Christ was then resurrected by the Spirit so that we could be resurrected with Him as new creatures that are truly righteous. This is what 2Corithians 5:21 is saying.

The two words translated “made” in said verse are two different Greek words. The first in regard to Christ being made sin is the word poieō which, for the most part is the idea of assignment or appointment. The meaning has a wide use and is ambiguous. Not so much with the word ginomai used in regard to us being made the righteousness of God. The word means to make something, or create something completely. For example, this is how the word is used in Matthew 4:3…

“If you are the Son of God, command these stones to become loaves of bread.”

“Become” is the same word, and how it is used is obvious. Satan wasn’t demanding that Christ declare the stones to be loaves of bread in some kind of forensic declaration, he was demanding that Christ recreate the stones as bread. Nor was this going to be a gradual process of transforming the stones into bread, but would have been a final complete act. Get the picture?

2Corinthians 5:21 is simply stating that Christ made it possible for God to recreate us to be the same righteousness that defines our Father because we are truly born of Him—that’s the gospel.  

paul   

It is Sunday morning, and I am presently studying Physiology. The Bible states that we are wonderfully and fearfully made. Studying how the body works will, indeed, inspire awe regarding God.

This is one major definition of worship. Another is finding self-fulfillment in pleasing God by loving others.

Worship is not confined to a place or time. Would you like a temple to worship in? Very well, the New Covenant made the believer’s body the temple indwelled by the Holy Spirit. A believer cannot separate temple worship from any moment of existence.

Does the Bible ever state a place or time that is some sort of elevated worship? Never.

1. Authentic Protestantism as initiated by Martin Luther and John Calvin, and in accordance with Augustinianism, is progressive justification, and the apostle Paul’s definition of justification by the law. It defines grace as a covering for remaining under law.
2. The First Century ekklesia of Christ was defined as the family of God and functioned as a literal family. Church, by definition, is an institution, and institutionalized Christianity circa 350 AD. Hence, it should be expected that church will have all of the attributes of an institution, such as, politics, power struggles, and an infatuation with infrastructure, with the former defining its success.
3. The church’s ill behavior is directly linked to the law, which empowers sin.
4. Under grace does not mean the Christian is not obligated to the law; it means the new birth properly defined changes the Christian’s relationship to the law and is mutually exclusive to the unbeliever’s relationship to the law. This is due to an ending of condemnation, NOT a covering for condemnation.
5. The believer is righteous as a state of being. It is a righteousness inherited from God the Father through being born into His family. In addition, weakness is not defined as inherently sinful, or defined as sin.
6. A cult is defined by the integration of faith and authority. ANY religious organization claiming the authority of God by proxy that goes beyond the proclamation of the gospel, is by definition, a cult.
7. The Protestant Reformation was incited by the integration of Thomism into Catholicism as opposed to Augustinian philosophy.

I have been in nursing school for some time now, and before that, I was in school for a medication tech certification, so any time to write has been scarce. Nevertheless, I see Churchianity stuff posted on the internet here and there, and per the usual, it is low-hanging fruit. So far, I have resisted the temptation to write an article when I should be attending to school studies. Several weeks ago, I had an exchange with a former Facebook “friend” that was very postworthy, but I set it aside until I had a day to spare. That day is here.

Nothing is more illogical than church intellect. And unfortunately, church is thought to be synonymous with Christianity because that is what church has emphasized for almost 2000 years. I have written extensively on why that isn’t true, and will only touch on it lightly in this writing. Church is an institution by every definition and consideration. God’s literal family is not an institution. The utter foolishness we see unfolding in churches is the same foolishness common to any institution. Authoritative hierarchy, infrastructure, politics, and money walk hand in hand with institutionalism. The church defines Christianity through the prism of institutionalism. That means its theology is going to focus on maintaining the institution by obtaining loyalty through authority.

Christianity is defined by being part of God’s family in a literal family sense. The beginning and ongoing mode of operation by the assembly of Christ (ekklesia) was that of a family. There were no offices of authority; in contrast, there are gifts to be administered among God’s people. The mode of operation is that of a cooperative body, much in the same way a human body functions as a natural cooperation.

Several weeks ago, I posted a short article on why church ideology is a contraindication to nursing. It didn’t go over well with a Churchian who was on my Facebook “friends” list. The exchange was absolutely classic, and a blue-chip example of how church-goers think.

Basically, church ideology is dual-minded. Its intellectual confession is different from its practical functioning. Hence, people who go to church, for the most part, don’t function according to their intellectual confession. That doesn’t make them hypocrites per se, it’s merely a result of their ideological framework. Here is the framework: 1/3 ideological pretense, 1/3 ideology that matches function, and 1/3 functionality. I know, that’s not a dualism, but the dualism is between intellect and function, with the intellect being divided into two ideological constructs under the same category. This construct is how church gets away with being overtly illogical. And, we can’t forget this; both parties, the deceiving church leadership, and the “deceived” parishioners have something to gain and are receiving what they want. You are not going to be successful in convincing a parishioner that anything in this post is true because they are getting what they want from church, which we will discuss in the conclusion.

Again, the exchange I had with the aforementioned person several weeks ago is a classic illustration of what I am writing here. It started with an article I wrote about the 1/3 Protestant ideology of total depravity/total inability (under the category of intellect) of man and how it is a contraindication to nursing. Due to time constraints, it was a very short post, so I will cite the whole post:

I don’t see nursing and Protestantism fitting together well. Protestantism focuses on the weakness of the individual and subsequent need for seeking ongoing mercy from God. Nurses hardly see weakness as a sin. One does harm, the other invokes needed care.

Protestantism focuses on the inability of mankind. Nurses can’t do that; nursing demands perfection. Someone in nursing school may do really well on a test, say they only missed three questions out of 100 on a test. That’s pretty good. The only problem follows: theoretically, three people could be dead.

In nursing school, we are learning that the initial introduction to a patient must establish trust. What do you think of this as an introduction?

“Hi, my name is Jake, I am the RN who will be working with you pre, and post op. Say, I am seeing on your chart that you are a fellow Baptist, and so am I (does this establish trust via the Christian label?). So, as you know, this is all in God’s hands and I am just a totally depraved sinner saved by grace. By no means put your trust in me, a mere sinner. We want God to get all the glory on the results, so I won’t be very diligent because I don’t want to please God ‘in my own strength.’ I will do the assessment, and then we will pray.”

A really good example of my theses is the Tim Callies blog, authored by a shameless celebrity pastor shill. His blog features both sides of church intellect: pretense, and total inability. But what is the pretense exactly? The pretense is the idea that the church believes in good old-fashioned practical living and wisdom that leads to good deeds. How this is condoned is a complicated philosophical matter only discussed among church elites while hanging out in venues most parishioners can’t afford. Anyway, examples of these ideological contradictions, pretense of human ability, and total inability, can be seen throughout his blog. A few examples are here: https://www.challies.com/sponsored/have-you-believed-the-false-gospel-of-productivity/ compared with this: https://www.challies.com/book-reviews/work-its-purpose-dignity-and-transformation/

How does this work? Practical metaphysics, that is, what is evident to all people through God-given, God instilled common sense, is taught as a pretense to play on assumptions. Yes, this is a deliberate deception. It is done to attract the unchurched and to keep fairly new parishioners intact until they are fully indoctrinated into church Gnosticism, which is a form of simple dualism, which is the idea that the material realm is evil, while only the spiritual realm is good. Furthermore, those in the material realm cannot know any truth of the spiritual realm except everything under the heading of total inability, viz, “True wisdom is knowing that you cannot know.” Obviously, total inability would also include the ability to know stuff. However, it is important to know that there is somewhat of an exception to this under the auspices of total inability: as those illumined by the Holy Spirit, if we go to church and sit under “gospel preaching,” and submit to the authority of “gawdly men,” we can understand the depth of human depravity (including the “saved”) as set against the holiness of God. This, in a nutshell, that is, the mere understanding thereof and its depth, is the Protestant definition of sanctification in totality. It is a mere “seeing” or perception and not a doing; sanctification is done TO you and not BY you. This was Luther’s Gnostic construct, while Calvin framed it primarily in inability to fulfill the law, which led to the doctrine of double imputation or double substitution.

Hence, leaders of the church institution are the sultans of knowing we cannot know and anointed by God to oversee His salvation on earth. Salvation, according to this ideology, really boils down to being under the authority of God’s anointed. But, how is this all reconciled with a church full of chemists, professors, engineers, and secular educators of all stripes? In Dualism, Platonism, and Gnosticism (basically the same ideology), wisdom is divided into material knowledge and spiritual knowledge. So, worldly knowledge about science etc., has a practical material purpose, but is totally separate from spiritual knowledge. According to Protestant orthodoxy and the early (medieval) Catholic Church driven by Neo-Platonism, using practical knowledge to interpret the spiritual, or any crossing over of material knowledge into spiritual wisdom, was/is the essence of anti-gospel functioning.

I want to add an aside before we move on to the actual discourse I experienced several weeks ago that demonstrates all of this in real time. Church, by definition, is a cult. Why? The definition of a cult follows: it is any system that combines a spiritual belief with authority. Dualism is predicated by authority over the masses by an elite few. Remember, the primary nemesis of the first century ekklesia was a Gnostic cult called the Nicolaitans. Note:

The name “Nicolaitans” is derived from the Greek word nikolaos, a compound of the words nikos and laos. The word nikos is the Greek word that means to conquer or to subdue. The word laos is the Greek word for the people. It is also where we get the word laity. When these two words are compounded into one, they form the name Nicolas, which literally means one who conquers and subdues the people. It seems to suggest that the Nicolaitans were somehow conquering and subduing the people.

https://renner.org/article/who-were-the-nicolaitans-and-what-was-their-doctrine-and-deeds/

Now we can move on to the aforementioned experience of which the introduction is complete, so here is the screenshot:

Keep in mind, her response was to the article I reposted above. It offended her. The first thing she notes is her belief in a metaphysical dichotomy between the lost and the saved. Remember, this is a typical churchgoer using common church jargon. The saved are strong; the unsaved are weak. Now, note her definition of being strong: being weak. Got it? I hope you see the correlation with my above theses. Being strong in a practical sense is altogether different than being strong in a spiritual sense. There is opposite meanings. The spiritual is separated totally from the material. She had the strength to choose Jesus because she recognized her total worthlessness. Got it?

Also notice that regardless of what any unsaved person does, there whole life is “sin.” Got it? And they are also weak because a sinful life always chooses the easy way and is, in fact, “easy” and essentially “arrogant” in every regard. And the church wonders why the lost don’t find their gospel appealing.

And then the big payoff: when I referred to how nurses function in the real world, what did she say? “Two different plains.” So, you thought my theses was far-fetched didn’t you? That’s what she said; in essence, two different realms. That’s pure unadulterated Gnosticism, which is how churchgoers function. They are functioning Gnostics. Notice one more thing: my “intelligence,” like many others, was going to keep me from Jesus. Got it? That’s the reason (the use of logic) that Luther hated so much. This is the rejection of applying empirical observation to spiritual matters. She said it; not me.

Notice, per the normal, that most Protestants are clueless regarding what the Reformers taught or what medieval Catholic scholarship proffered, but they actually function according to that ideology. This is a direct reflection of what they are taught indirectly in church. Pretense knowledge is taught to listeners who are assuming a connection between material functioning and spiritual functioning while they transition to a full Gnostic understanding and functioning.

What church leaders gain from all of this is obvious; power and money. Control lust is a major pillar of sin itself. These are people who live in ivory towers that are unable to survive in the real world. Picture this: John MacArthur in a position where he has to get a real job. Of course, like all of these guys, they have amassed enough money to easily live on the rest of their lives compliments of the great unwashed. But, what do parishioners gain from this? The answer follows: the easy believism that evangelicals claim to fustigate. Remain faithful to the church till the end, and you are in. And, of course, don’t “touch God’s anointed.” All of your thinking is done for you, and you can put your trust in something that you can strongly perceive: human authority. Actually believing that ONE person is the final authority in our lives is beyond their faith paygrade, while boldly proclaiming the “authority of Scripture,” which has always been determined by church authority.

Notice the contradiction; that’s what dualism is. In church ideology, EVERY precept has a contradictory element regarding the 5 senses and empirical observation. Strength is weakness. Knowledge is ignorance, etc. Furthermore, those who rule over you are experts in regard to what can’t be known, so how can they be questioned?

It’s good work if you can get it.

paul