The Power of Christian Living is Found in Family Relationship NOT a “Personal” Relationship
One of the prevailing pithy truisms of churchianity is that “Christianity” is a “personal relationship” with none other than Jesus Christ. Of course, per the usual, because it sounds spiritual, no one thinks beyond the surface of the truism and questions what that means exactly. Be sure of this: the statement promotes a specific soteriology, worldview, and philosophy of life. If a string of memes replace the meat of Scripture, the latter is effectively replaced, and that is exactly what has happened in our day with the personal relationship with Jesus meme leading the way.
What’s really behind it and why has it sucked the life out of Christianity? First, it denies a biblical definition of the new birth. It replaces a literal family of God reality with ONE pseudo-relationship that is at best ambiguous. Proponents of the truism, when they care to add some sort of substantive mini-treatise to the meme, separate the reasoning of propositional truth expressed in words, even words from Jesus Himself, from this highfalutin “Christianity is a relationship [singular], not a religion.” The supposed antithesis in this case, “religion,” according to the logical conclusion, is propositional truth of some sort expressed in a common understanding of Bible sentences. This is the way it is sometimes expressed: “Jesus is a person, not a precept.” Supposedly, if one attempts to follow Jesus according to a reasonable interpretation of what He said as recorded in Scripture, we miss the point by appealing to reason. Instead, we need to seek a relationship with Jesus that is “more like falling in love” as expressed in two bestselling contemporary works by Jason Gray (a #1 song) and Francis Chan (the book, “Crazy Love.”).
Hence, if salvation is strictly experiential, like being “madly in love” with someone, it’s not works on our part and enables us to live out our “Christian” lives by faith alone, and apart from reason to boot. After all…“we [Christians] live [our Christian lives] by faith [alone] NOT by sight [ie., reason]” as the twisting of 2Corintians 5:7 is often applied. This mystical lovey-dovey Jesus is my boyfriend theology effectively separates professing Christians from a literal true-to-life family of God application via the new birth. It replaces a salvific family relationship with a singular relationship. The differences are ever-so subtle, but catastrophic. Rather than our identity being that of a literal child of God in a family setting, we are “Christ’s bride” whom He has married regardless of our shortcomings. Yes, we are supposedly lowly lovers married to a “friend of sinners” who “bring nothing to the marriage.”1 Yes indeed, the lowly lovers identity versus family children enables the redefinition of the new birth as some sort of ongoing exhilarating experience with our “lover.”2
But what is the new birth from a true biblical perspective? It is “the free gift”3 and “the promise.”4 Salvation is the receiving of the promised Spirit that was even a promise made to Christ Himself.5 Christ made the coming promise of the Spirit possible by dying for our sins and ending the law of sin and death. Prior to the coming of the promised Spirit, Jews and Gentiles were not baptized into one body, but at any rate, this baptism of the Holy Spirit makes a person a literal family member of God. This is a onetime personal event that is irreversible—you cannot unborn someone.
The aversion to biblical new birth finds its roots in Gnosticism which rejects the uniting together of holiness and the material. Even though Christians remain in mortal bodies, they are yet God’s righteous children. 1John ch.3 makes it clear that we are God’s literal offspring and His seed is within us. In contrast, the idea that our relationship is with one person who substitutes everything for us as opposed to a family relationship is the major consideration. Rather than Christ making the onetime baptism of the Spirit possible through His onetime death, He is made to be a salvific avatar that substitutes everything efficacious to salvation through faith in Him alone. This is a denial of the new birth and our true identity as God’s righteous children. Salvation is not a onetime spiritual birth, it is a process through the worship of one person who substitutes a life that we don’t actually possess. Worship is not family life, it is something that we do to keep our salvation by faith alone. Hence, the idea of faith alone actually becomes a work on our part as it evokes the substitutional work of Christ for Christian living. Obviously, therefore, the “Christian’s” true ability to love is circumvented.
When one desires to receive the promise—the free gift, the Holy Spirit falls on them and baptizes them into Christ’s death and resurrection.6 This is the literal new birth. This makes us righteous children of God in the literal sense per Romans ch.6. Why we are literally righteous is explained in Romans ch.7, and our fulfillment of the law to our Father’s pleasure is explained in Romans ch.8.
In other words, the substitution of Christ happened once to make the new birth possible, but the so-called “personal relationship” calls for a continued substitution that negates a literal family relationship which is given mere lip service. Along with the avatar approach, not to mention sub-avatars, is the institutional angle. Institutions go hand in hand with the idea of religious authority and hierarchy. This is where the Christianity brand is found impotent in both reproduction and functionality.
The early church met exclusively in private homes, why? Because they understood that they were a literal family. They also had “all things in common”7 What family builds a separate building and pays to maintain it for the purpose of Thanksgiving dinner and other family get-togethers? How much sense does that make? And how many families organize systems of commerce within the household? If a sibling in a household learns something new about living, does he write a book and sell it to his brothers and sisters? No, he shares it at the dinner table or other like family experiences.
A hierarchical corporate mentality and structure naturally subjugates a literal family system. The two function differently in almost every respect. This is the key to revival—a return to the apostolic assembly of Christ and its literal family construct and function. It is a multifaceted relationship with many, not ONE.
paul
1Paul David Tripp: How People Change, Punch Press 2006
2Francis Chan: Crazy Love
3Romans 5:15,16, 17 “the free gift” stated 5 times.
4Acts 2:39, Ephesians 2:12, Galatians 3; “promises” “the promise,” “by promise” 8 times.
5Galatians 3:16
6Acts 11:15
7Acts 2:44
New Calvinists: Unregenerate and Singing Joyfully About It
Originally published March 13, 2013
“But our ongoing Potter’s House studies in the book of Romans reveals something else even more incredulous: the song is a self-described depiction, according to the apostle Paul, of the unregenerate response to the law.”
One of the more popular songs in our New Calvinist nation is “More Like Falling in Love” by antinomian heartthrob Jason Gray. Like all anti-law proponents of our day, he has been allowed to own the dialogue which usually results in winning the argument. In his own bio about the song, he states the following:
Is it weird to anyone else that we’ve made salvation a matter of who has the best information?
Notice how Gray trades the word “truth” for “information.” Switch the words in his sentence, reread, and he is exposed for the wretch that he is. When heretics are allowed to own the dialogue, they can write their own metaphysics. Here are the lyrics to the song:
“More Like Falling In Love”
Give me rules
I will break them
Show me lines
I will cross them
I need more than
A truth to believe
I need a truth that lives
Moves and breathes
To sweep me off my feet, it’s gotta be
More like falling in love
Than something to believe in
More like losing my heart
Than giving my allegiance
Caught up, called out
Come take a look at me now
It’s like I’m falling, oh
It’s like I’m falling in love
Give me words
I’ll misuse them
Obligations
I’ll misplace them
‘Cause all religion
Ever made of me
Was just a sinner
With a stone tied to my feet
It never set me free, it’s gotta be
More like falling in love
Than something to believe in
More like losing my heart
Than giving my allegiance
Caught up, called out
Come take a look at me now
It’s like I’m falling, oh
It’s like I’m falling in
Love, love, love
Deeper and deeper, it was
Love that made me a believer
In more than a name
A faith, a creed
Falling in love with Jesus brought
The change in me
More like falling in love
Than something to believe in
More like losing my heart
Than giving my allegiance
Caught up, called out
Come take a look at me now
It’s like I’m falling, oh
It’s like I’m falling
More like falling in love
Than something to believe in
More like losing my heart
Than giving my allegiance
Caught up, called out
Come take a look at me now
It’s like I’m falling, oh
It’s like I’m falling in love
It’s like I’m falling
(Falling in love)
It’s like I’m falling
Much could be contested here once you get past the initial shock of the song’s brazen anti-truth stance, especially the idea that love-feelings verify authentic truth. But our ongoing Potter’s House studies in the book of Romans reveals something else even more incredulous: the song is a self-described depiction, according to the apostle Paul, of the unregenerate response to the law. In the song, Gray posits the idea that the law merely provokes sin. For the lost person that’s true:
Romans 4:15 – For the law brings wrath, but where there is no law there is no transgression.
Romans 7:7 – What then shall we say? That the law is sin? By no means! Yet if it had not been for the law, I would not have known sin. For I would not have known what it is to covet if the law had not said, “You shall not covet.” 8 But sin, seizing an opportunity through the commandment, produced in me all kinds of covetousness. For apart from the law, sin lies dead. 9 I was once alive apart from the law, but when the commandment came, sin came alive and I died. 10 The very commandment that promised life proved to be death to me. 11 For sin, seizing an opportunity through the commandment, deceived me and through it killed me. 12 So the law is holy, and the commandment is holy and righteous and good.
13 Did that which is good, then, bring death to me? By no means! It was sin, producing death in me through what is good, in order that sin might be shown to be sin, and through the commandment might become sinful beyond measure. 14 For we know that the law is spiritual, but I am of the flesh, sold under sin.
Notice Paul is speaking in the past tense. Before he was saved, the sin that he was enslaved to utilized the law to provoke sinful reactions. And like Jason Gray states in his song,
Give me rules
I will break them
Show me lines
I will cross them….
Give me words
I’ll misuse them [right, like switching “truth” with “information”]
Obligations
I’ll misplace them
Throughout Romans, Paul describes this state as being “under the law” as opposed to being “under grace”:
Romans 6:14 – For sin will have no dominion over you, since you are not under law but under grace.
You are either “under law” or “under grace.” When you are under law, sin has “dominion over you,” κυριευω (kyrieuo) has both the idea of lordship and control. Paul further explains in Romans 8:7-9:
7 For the mind that is set on the flesh is hostile to God, for it does not submit to God’s law; indeed, it cannot. 8 Those who are in the flesh cannot please God. 9 You, however, are not in the flesh but in the Spirit, if in fact the Spirit of God dwells in you. Anyone who does not have the Spirit of Christ does not belong to him.
Again, exactly as Gray proudly boasts:
Give me rules
I will break them
Show me lines
I will cross them….
Give me words
I’ll misuse them
Obligations
I’ll misplace them
However, when one is “under grace,” their minds are enslaved to the law:
Romans 7:25 – Thanks be to God through Jesus Christ our Lord! So then, I myself serve the law of God with my mind, but with my flesh I serve the law of sin.
The word for “serve” is “δουλευω (douleuo), a verb form of doulos which is a bond slave. Hence, as believers, our minds are enslaved to the law though we don’t keep it perfectly. Nevertheless, the law is now inclined to incite us to obedience rather than disobedience. Paul states it this way in Romans 8:3-4:
3 For God has done what the law, weakened by the flesh, could not do. By sending his own Son in the likeness of sinful flesh and for sin, he condemned sin in the flesh, 4 in order that the righteous requirement of the law might be fulfilled in us, who walk not according to the flesh but according to the Spirit. 5 For those who live according to the flesh set their minds on the things of the flesh, but those who live according to the Spirit set their minds on the things of the Spirit.
Furthermore, when we don’t seek to love God by learning and doing, we become ignorant in regard to the law and the likes of Jason Gray can propagate this New Calvinist antinomianism unfettered. And again, the dialogue is not challenged as well. Paul stated,
Romans 6:17 – But thanks be to God, that you who were once slaves of sin have become obedient from the heart to the standard of teaching to which you were committed, 18 and, having been set free from sin, have become slaves of righteousness.
But Jason Gray states:
More like falling in love
Than something to believe in
More like losing my heart
Than giving my allegiance
“Allegiance”? Paul called it a commitment to a “standard of teaching.” We are now slaves to righteousness leading to sanctification (ROM 6:18-19).
That’s New Calvinism: singing praises to Jesus as they draw nearer and nearer to a day of reckoning where they will give an account for their false gospel.
paul
New Calvinists: Unregenerate and Singing Joyfully About It
“But our ongoing Potter’s House studies in the book of Romans reveals something else even more incredulous: the song is a self-described depiction, according to the apostle Paul, of the unregenerate response to the law.”
One of the more popular songs in our New Calvinist nation is “More Like Falling in Love” by antinomian heartthrob Jason Gray. Like all anti-law proponents of our day, he has been allowed to own the dialogue which usually results in winning the argument. In his own bio about the song, he states the following:
Is it weird to anyone else that we’ve made salvation a matter of who has the best information?
Notice how Gray trades the word “truth” for “information.” Switch the words in his sentence, reread, and he is exposed for the wretch that he is. When heretics are allowed to own the dialogue, they can write their own metaphysics. Here are the lyrics to the song:
“More Like Falling In Love”
Give me rules
I will break them
Show me lines
I will cross them
I need more than
A truth to believe
I need a truth that lives
Moves and breathes
To sweep me off my feet, it’s gotta be
More like falling in love
Than something to believe in
More like losing my heart
Than giving my allegiance
Caught up, called out
Come take a look at me now
It’s like I’m falling, oh
It’s like I’m falling in love
Give me words
I’ll misuse them
Obligations
I’ll misplace them
‘Cause all religion
Ever made of me
Was just a sinner
With a stone tied to my feet
It never set me free, it’s gotta be
More like falling in love
Than something to believe in
More like losing my heart
Than giving my allegiance
Caught up, called out
Come take a look at me now
It’s like I’m falling, oh
It’s like I’m falling in
Love, love, love
Deeper and deeper, it was
Love that made me a believer
In more than a name
A faith, a creed
Falling in love with Jesus brought
The change in me
More like falling in love
Than something to believe in
More like losing my heart
Than giving my allegiance
Caught up, called out
Come take a look at me now
It’s like I’m falling, oh
It’s like I’m falling
More like falling in love
Than something to believe in
More like losing my heart
Than giving my allegiance
Caught up, called out
Come take a look at me now
It’s like I’m falling, oh
It’s like I’m falling in love
It’s like I’m falling
(Falling in love)
It’s like I’m falling
Much could be contested here once you get past the initial shock of the song’s brazen anti-truth stance, especially the idea that love-feelings verify authentic truth. But our ongoing Potter’s House studies in the book of Romans reveals something else even more incredulous: the song is a self-described depiction, according to the apostle Paul, of the unregenerate response to the law. In the song, Gray posits the idea that the law merely provokes sin. For the lost person that’s true:
Romans 4:15 – For the law brings wrath, but where there is no law there is no transgression.
Romans 7:7 – What then shall we say? That the law is sin? By no means! Yet if it had not been for the law, I would not have known sin. For I would not have known what it is to covet if the law had not said, “You shall not covet.” 8 But sin, seizing an opportunity through the commandment, produced in me all kinds of covetousness. For apart from the law, sin lies dead. 9 I was once alive apart from the law, but when the commandment came, sin came alive and I died. 10 The very commandment that promised life proved to be death to me. 11 For sin, seizing an opportunity through the commandment, deceived me and through it killed me. 12 So the law is holy, and the commandment is holy and righteous and good.
13 Did that which is good, then, bring death to me? By no means! It was sin, producing death in me through what is good, in order that sin might be shown to be sin, and through the commandment might become sinful beyond measure. 14 For we know that the law is spiritual, but I am of the flesh, sold under sin.
Notice Paul is speaking in the past tense. Before he was saved, the sin that he was enslaved to utilized the law to provoke sinful reactions. And like Jason Gray states in his song,
Give me rules
I will break them
Show me lines
I will cross them….
Give me words
I’ll misuse them [right, like switching “truth” with “information”]
Obligations
I’ll misplace them
Throughout Romans, Paul describes this state as being “under the law” as opposed to being “under grace”:
Romans 6:14 – For sin will have no dominion over you, since you are not under law but under grace.
You are either “under law” or “under grace.” When you are under law, sin has “dominion over you,” κυριευω (kyrieuo) has both the idea of lordship and control. Paul further explains in Romans 8:7-9:
7 For the mind that is set on the flesh is hostile to God, for it does not submit to God’s law; indeed, it cannot. 8 Those who are in the flesh cannot please God. 9 You, however, are not in the flesh but in the Spirit, if in fact the Spirit of God dwells in you. Anyone who does not have the Spirit of Christ does not belong to him.
Again, exactly as Gray proudly boasts:
Give me rules
I will break them
Show me lines
I will cross them….
Give me words
I’ll misuse them
Obligations
I’ll misplace them
However, when one is “under grace,” their minds are enslaved to the law:
Romans 7:25 – Thanks be to God through Jesus Christ our Lord! So then, I myself serve the law of God with my mind, but with my flesh I serve the law of sin.
The word for “serve” is “δουλευω (douleuo), a verb form of doulos which is a bond slave. Hence, as believers, our minds are enslaved to the law though we don’t keep it perfectly. Nevertheless, the law is now inclined to incite us to obedience rather than disobedience. Paul states it this way in Romans 8:3-4:
3 For God has done what the law, weakened by the flesh, could not do. By sending his own Son in the likeness of sinful flesh and for sin, he condemned sin in the flesh, 4 in order that the righteous requirement of the law might be fulfilled in us, who walk not according to the flesh but according to the Spirit. 5 For those who live according to the flesh set their minds on the things of the flesh, but those who live according to the Spirit set their minds on the things of the Spirit.
Furthermore, when we don’t seek to love God by learning and doing, we become ignorant in regard to the law and the likes of Jason Gray can propagate this New Calvinist antinomianism unfettered. And again, the dialogue is not challenged as well. Paul stated,
Romans 6:17 – But thanks be to God, that you who were once slaves of sin have become obedient from the heart to the standard of teaching to which you were committed, 18 and, having been set free from sin, have become slaves of righteousness.
But Jason Gray states:
More like falling in love
Than something to believe in
More like losing my heart
Than giving my allegiance
“Allegiance”? Paul called it a commitment to a “standard of teaching.” We are now slaves to righteousness leading to sanctification (ROM 6:18-19).
That’s New Calvinism: singing praises to Jesus as they draw nearer and nearer to a day of reckoning where they will give an account for their false gospel.
paul
Paul's Passing Thoughts 
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