Faith is Found In Christ Blog

I was talking with a professed Christian a couple of weeks ago, and the topic of abortion came up.

Stating the argument.

The professed Christian proceeded to make the argument, that we should not be taking away people’s freedom to make their own personal choices when it comes to abortion. What he was saying is that, human beings should be free to make the choices they want to, specifically the choice of a mother to abort a child if, for any reason, she felt that abortion was the best choice for her.

He then proceeded to ground the argument in the scriptures, saying, “human choice is found throughout the scriptures, therefore, the women’s choice to abort her child should not be taken away”.

After the conversation was finished, I walked away frustrated and I couldn’t figure out why.

After giving it some serious thought, I figured out why the conversation was so frustrating to me. It was frustrating precisely because the person was a professed believer but sounded nothing like a Christian regarding abortion.

The argument he gave (and incorrectly grounded in the bible), could have been spoken by a non-believer just as well.

Non-believers ground the right for women to kill their children in their wombs (which is what abortion is), in the right to autonomy of their bodily choices. The argument is “my body, my choice”, and basically the argument that this professed Christian made was a different version of that same argument.

His argument was that choice must never be denied or curtailed, rather it must be respected and upheld. People are and must be free to do what they believe is best for them.

If you open one door, you must open all the doors.

But once this argument, which enshrines human choice as something that must never be violated is stated, the one who proposes it has opened a door that can’t be shut.

By this argument ALL the doors of human choice are open and there is no standard by which to close any of them.

By this argument, there is nothing to stop all the doors of human choice to be opened and remain open because human choice must be respected.

If human choice must be respected and must not be denied in the case of a women being able to kill her child at any point, then the same must be true of say, the slave owner in the antebellum south. The slaveowner’s choice to hunt, round up, traffic, brutalize, rape and murder other human beings based on their skin color must be respected at all costs. It must not be denied, according to this professed Christian. That door must be kept open, because to deny the slave owner that right, would be to remove his autonomous choice to own, brutalize and to treat human beings as property.

By what standard would or should someone stop him from doing so, if human choice should not be violated? Says who or what?

Likewise, the choice for homosexuals to be married to each other in society (so called same -sex marriage) must be allowed in society based on choice, because to deny it, would be to infringe on a personal choice. But not simply homosexuality, ALL kinds of sexuality and tastes must be respected based on human choice. 

This would include polyamorous relationships involving several people, bestiality which is sex with animals and pedophilia just to name a few. If what this professed Christian is saying is true, then “my body, my choice” must be respected and protected everywhere. Another way to put it would be, by what standard should only same-sex marriage be legal? Why couldn’t multiple people being married (polygamy) or say Man-boy/girl relationship, where grown men would marry boys and girls who were underage be allowed? It is their choice, why shouldn’t they be allowed to? By what standard shouldn’t this be allowed?

In the same way, the same must be said of transgenderism. Parents must give their children the choice to take drugs that will stop their bodies from the natural progression of puberty in the name of their personal choice to be whatever gender they decide and at whatever age they decide it. It is there choice. To deny it would be to deny them the autonomy to choose whatever path they want in life, even if it means chemical castration, the inability to have children and the mutilation of their bodies. The door to these atrocities must be left open on the basis of human choice. No matter how evil the choice is, choice must be respected and never prohibited.

Coming back to abortion, on the logic of this professed Christian, why shouldn’t women be able to abort a child at any point of her pregnancy? It is her choice isn’t it? (this is exactly what some advocates for abortion argue in advocating for late term abortions all the way up to the point of birth).

And why not all the way up to birth and even after birth? If it is the women’s choice and the women’s choice must be respected, then if she decides, for whatever reason, that she does not have the means to take of the child or for ANY reason she deems sufficient, then she must have the right to end the child’s life at any stage.

Now the professed Christian might say, “Well, “my body my choice” can only be true and respected if it does not hurt anyone“. The glaring obvious truth is that every abortion is the intentional murder of a defenseless baby in the womb of a mother, (which would be hurting someone).

The position of the Christian who would espouse the “my body, my choice” argument, does not realize that they are opening all the doors to anything and everything that humans choose to do while at the same time, and imposing a universal standard that precludes any door from being closed.

The society that would be produced in following what this professed Christian was espousing, has resulted in the one we live in currently. 

Since the 1973 landmark decision in Roe VS Wade, which gave a woman the right to choose to have an abortion based on the right to privacy contained in the Due Process Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment, has resulted in 50 million abortions. It has resulted in human choice being elevated above human life.

The fruit, not the root.

But abortion is not the root problem, but rather the fruit of the problem. We live in a society which is rife with abortion, because we are steeped in a society that is drowning in sexual immorality coupled with a rejection of accountability to God and others. The truth of this statement is easily tested by asking one simple questions:

Has our society begun to identify itself more by our sexual identities or has it become more sexually responsible and given more value to sex so that we approach it cautiously with Godly reverence?

The answer is obviously the former. Our culture of killing children is a direct result of our giving God the middle finger and desiring autonomy from Him regarding sex (and everything else).

God has handed us over to the society and world we crave: One that is autonomous from Him (Rom. 1). The result is a society in which we are increasingly identifying ourselves by our perverse sexual identities and by our right to kill children in the wombs of mothers.

Abortion is lauded in the streets, women (and men, but mainly women) march loud and proud through the streets of the United States (and the entire world) demanding, heralding and parading their right to abort their own children!

What this professing Christian is arguing lends more support to the current society we have of rampant sexual immorality without accountability, more children being murdered in the wombs of mothers and more autonomy from God. What they are arguing for is satanic evil in the name of human choice.

By the logic and philosophy of the professed Christian that I was talking to, there is no standard to close any moral door. According to what he was saying, we must respect the choices of all people, including people like Stalin, Mussolini, Pol Pot, Idi Amin and others whose cruelty and sick evil destruction of people was unparalleled. If autonomous choice is to be exalted to a place that it must be respected and protected at all costs and not denied, then it takes the place of human value.

This is morally self-defeating unless this professed Christian would say that human life is more valuable than human choice. If he were to say that, then he would agree that the right to abort a child should not be given to women, because a child’s life in the womb is more valuable then the mother’s right to end that child’s life. The women does not have the right to murder a child in her womb because it would violate our most basic right as human beings: The right and choice to live.

My nine year-old daughter gets this.

The clear and glaring point which must intrude on the “my body, my choice” argument, is some choices are much worse than others and it isn’t your body.

My nine-year-old Christian daughter gets this and can explain it. I do not say this as an insult to the professed Christian who put forward the argument grounded in choice. I simply bring this up, to show that the truth and logic I am putting forward is not complicated and it is plain to a child.

The choice to kill children in the womb is a terrible evil that must be stopped and the child growing in the mother’s womb IS NOT the mother’s body, though it is dependent on her body. If both are true, then a woman’s choice to kill her child should not be respected, but rather should be prosecuted as murder (just like it is prosecuted when a mother and her unborn child is actually murdered; For example, in the Laci Peterson case, where Scott Peterson was charged with two counts of murder).

Where the conversation on abortion must start.

The conversation about abortion does not start with the supremacy of human autonomy and human choice, because that is not where scriptures starts with anything. EVERYTHING starts with God, because that is where scriptures starts, “In the beginning God…”. (Genesis 1.:1)

God, His glory, His purposes, His value, and ultimately His image in man is where the conversation on abortion does start, whether you are a man or  woman. Whether or not a woman should have the right to abort another human being with the inestimable value of God’s image, does not start with her freedom of choice, it starts with God (as does everything).

When we apply the foundational truth that human beings bear the image of God, bare his glory, value, purpose AND are specifically made through the Son of God, by the Son of God and FOR the Son of God (“All things were made through Him, and ALL things were made unto Him” – Colossians 1:16-17), then women should not be allowed to abort children, slave owners should not be able to own, rape, brutalize and murder slaves as though they were mere chattel, children should not be allowed drugs that stop the natural progression of their bodies growing into men and women, and they should not be afforded surgeries where their God given body parts, made in God’s image and for His glory, are cut up and cut off in the name of human choice; and no, human beings should not be allowed to engage in so called same-sex marriage.

This professed Christian should know and see this truth, but he does not. The reason he does not, is because he does not know, love, and submit to the scriptures or the God of them. His worldview is not Christocentric (meaning, it is not centered on Christ).

If you open one door, you must open all the doors and you do not have a standard to close any of them once they are open.

Lord Jesus, please help us poor, blind sinners see you, love you, honor and obey you.

(Written during the height of covid)

If you are looking for Christ in this weak and brittle world, He can be found in the same place He has always been: In His Word.

As the world continues to crack and unsettle like a brittle leaf, the church will continue to get stronger as they draw strength from God as He reveals Himself through His word.

Faith is not a super power that we posses, rather it is the indwelling gift of The Holy Spirit to treasure Christ and trust in Christ.

This comes gift is given through the revelation of Jesus Christ through the Gospel, the word of God.

Christ is where faith is found, and Christ Jesus is found in God’s word.

If you have not been, now would be a good time to not only turn off the news and social media; now would be a good time to encounter God in His word, because, “Faith comes by hearing, and hearing through the word of Christ” (Romans 10:17). 

Faith is continually strengthened as God reorients our affections to Him through His written word.

When we open God’s word up, we come into His holy sanctuary, where He dwells. This is what happened to Asaph as he wrote Psalms 73, “until I went into the sanctuary of God…”. (Psalms 73:17).

We come into the sanctuary of God, through His Word.

His word reveals Him, and It is Him who is our strength in these days, which are full of evil. As we look into the word of God and encounter Christ, through His Spirit, Christ is revealed  and therefore faith is found and strengthened.

To see Christ through the eyes of faith, that only the Spirit can give, is to have faith.

As the heart and soul of a believer are steeped in God’s word, their souls are strengthened, as their souls are satisfied in Christ.

Prayer: May our hearts and souls be strengthened and filled with God as our joy through the word of Christ.

Exodus 25:22

As the God-man writhes alone in pain, under the just wrath of God, on a wooden cross, 2000 years ago, God does away with any barrier to us having Him as our Joy and our greatest delight.  Our Faith, Joy and Love are blood soaked, blood purchased, and wrought by God himself for His glory and therefore for our joy. 

Christ pays the price that we owe to God, so that we may, “taste and see that he Lord is good” (Psalm 34:8). While Jesus chokes down all of our sin and all the wrath of God that we deserve, we get to enter into the presence of God, absolutely confident on account of Christ.

If we were to ask how serious God takes the glory of His name, His Holiness and His righteousness; we ought to see the life, death and resurrection of Christ and the lake of fire answering back to us “God takes the glory of His name deadly serious”. However this is also how we can have the uttermost confidence of God’s deep self-sacrificing love for us and have confidence that “Christ will never lose any Christian” (Doug Wilson); For it is in Christ’s atoning death that God propitiates all of His deep, personal and righteous wrath toward us. If you want to see how God reacts to us sinners and our sin, look at Christ on the cross; yet if you want to see the depth if the love of God for hell-deserving sinners look no further than the cross of our dear Lord and Savior.

We are naturally the objects of God wrath, however through the Gospel, Christ becomes the object of God’s wrath, as if He were the one who committed all of our atrocious sinful. 

This is why Christ himself is the long awaited mercy seat. Thank God, For Jesus.

From the cross, in the tomb, in the resurrection and enthronement of Jesus, God says to sinners, “There I will meet with you, and from above the mercy seat, from between the two cherubim that are on the ark of the testimony, I will speak with you about all that I will give you in commandment for the people of Israel.” (Exodus 25:22).

There is no other place that God meets with Humanity than in His precious Son, as He offers up His life. Christ is our mercy seat. 

Prayer: Father, Thank you, thank you, a million times over, thank Father for your Son. Oh my Lord God, Thank you for all you have given and all you have done. Jesus you are everything and everything belongs to you. Thank you God for all that you are for us in Christ. We trust and love you so much Please my Lord and my God, cleanse our hearts from sin and selfishness our hearts and prepare us by your Spirit to desire you above all things.

Romans 8:19-22

“As sinners are welcomed by the eternal flames of hell, all of creation will stand up and give a glorious shout of praise to God. Sinners will not make their way in to hell, to the sound of a somber song, but rather to the sound of applause. Creation will applaud God’s holiness, and justice. Creation will applaud the worthiness of Christ himself, as sinners take the first of many piecing hot breaths in the lake of fire” – Paul washer Heart cry Ministry.

Romans 8:19-22 “19 For the creation waits with eager longing for the revealing of the sons of God. 20 For the creation was subjected to futility, not willingly, but because of him who subjected it, in hope 21 that the creation itself will be set free from its bondage to corruption and obtain the freedom of the glory of the children of God. 22 For we know that the whole creation has been groaning together in the pains of childbirth until now.”

Creation itself is groaning for the praise and glory Christ. 

It longs for it. 

For, the goal of Creation itself is the glory and praise of God, not the value of man.

It is only in the glory of God, that man will find joy satisfaction and salvation.

“The chief end of man is to glorify by enjoying Him forever”“

“He which testifieth these things saith, Surely I come quickly. Amen. Even so, come, Lord Jesus.”  (Revelation 22:20).

Christ himself is coming soon to get that which has always belonged to Him and which was prepared for His glory from eternity past. 

Prayer: Oh my Lord and My God that you might get all the glory you so richly deserve. May we not toy with sin and rationalize it, for you did not toy with the cross which we deserved; rather you embraced it on our behalf. Give us yourself, and therein we will have all that we need in this sinful world to follow you, until you bring us to yourself forever.

Hebrews 2:8b-9

“Now in putting everything in subjection to him, he left nothing outside his control. At present, we do not yet see everything in subjection to him. But we see him who for a little while was made lower than the angels, namely Jesus, crowned with glory and honor because of the suffering of death, so that by the grace of God he might taste death for everyone.” (Hebrews 2:8b-9)

There could be no tasting of the marriage supper of the lamb to come(Revelation 19:6-10), without Christ first tasting and experiencing every single drop of the wrath of God, and allowing the death to take Him.

The drink was so bitter, the death so unimaginably horrific. God did not spare one drop of His wrath when it came to Christ on the cross.

God poured out all of His unmitigated and undiluted anger for our sin out on The Son….in our place.

The cost of our salvation we will never fully grasp in this age, but rest assured, Christ received every part of God’s Holy wrath for our sins.

The wages of sin is death, and Christ experienced and tasted it in its full.

May we never lose sight of how precious Jesus is and how worthy He is.

While the world toys around with selfie’s, critical race theory, twitter posts and you-tube popularity, and all the rest of the silly and trite delicacies the world has to offer; Christ the rightful heir of all things, is barreling toward this world with the consummation of His Kingdom. 

When Christ comes, it will not be a donkey He rides on, but a white horse ready for war and judgement.

This time He is coming to “judge and make war”, and the sword proceeding from his mouth, will “strike down the nations” (Revelation 19:11-16).

What a glorious day it will be to look into his glorious face.

When He comes, then we will know we are home.

Take courage church, Christ is as glorious as His word says He is, and more than able to sustain His church to the end. 

Acts 2:22-24, Philippians 3:10

“22 Men of Israel, hear these words: Jesus of Nazareth, a man attested to you by God with mighty works and wonders and signs that God did through him in your midst, as you yourselves know— 23 this Jesus, delivered up according to the definite plan and foreknowledge of God, you crucified and killed by the hands of lawless men. 24 God raised him up, loosing the pangs of death, because it was not possible for him to be held by it.” (Acts 2:22-24)

It is God’s grace to us to remove the poisonous of pride and self-exaltation from our souls, by creating weakness in our lives.

God knows exactly what you need, and what you need is Him and dependence on Him. 

God, out of everyone, is keenly aware of just how fragile and weak we all really are.

It is His grace to us, to give us a savior who is not only well acquainted with our frailty and weakness, but one who is unselfish with God in His weakness.

There was not one hint of pride in Jesus as He offered up His innocent and pure life. What a gloriously fragrant offering to the Father.

It is by Christ’s submission and giving up Himself in humble weakness to the obliteration of God’s Holy wrath, that we are guaranteed eternal life.

God’s grace to us is to allow us to share in Christ’s weakness. 

For it is in His weakness that God received and continues to receive all the glory that He is due.

We should not be surprised then, when God pre-ordains weakness in our lives.

Why are we surprised at this?

In one word: Pride.

Pride is the poisonous root running underneath all of our rebellion to God’s creating weakness in our lives. God’s reaction to pride is pure red hot wrath; The cross tells us just that.

What underlies both the unbelief in the atheist as well as the Christian, is pride.

It is therefore God’s grace to us to remove the poisonous of pride and self-exaltation from our souls, by creating weakness in our lives.

We would do well to look, see and  hear as Jesus prays over and over again in the Garden of Gethsemane as the poison of our pride is poured out all over our savior’s soul, as though He was the one shaking His prideful fist at God demanding that He recognize our right to His throne.

God the father,  lead His Son by his Spirit, to the place of crushing on account of  our pride.

We would be foolish and naive to think that God will not lead us to that place as well, over and over and over again.

As God conforms us to the image of His Son, He conforms us to the death of His Son as well.

God is not doing this to be punitive. It is not out of His anger that He creates weakness in our lives.

It is His mercy, as He eradicates the root of all of our sinful rebellion against Him by creating weakness in our lives.

When we look at the cross, we ought to see that God sees who we really are: savage invaders who are hellbent on dethroning God and replacing Him with ourselves or some other desire.

Prayer: God please help us in these last days to keep our eyes on your precious Son, for it is by His precious blood that we have been reconciled to you.

Oh how we need more of you and so much less of us.

Thank  you father for allowing us to participate in the sinless life, atoning death and powerful resurrection of your beautiful Son; and may we treasure your Holiness as much you do.

May your Son be crowned with all of our crowns, for He is the one who has earned them for us, and may we lay them at His feet as the one who deserves all the eternal praise.

Father please destroy all of our pride, and and thank you for the weakness you create in our lives, for it is the means by which you transform us into the image of your glorious Son.

May we along with Paul, be blessed to say, “that I may know him and the power of his resurrection, and may share his sufferings, becoming like him in his death, that by any means possible I may attain the resurrection from the dead.” (Philippians 3:10).

Jesus may your name be praised for all for eternity and may you come quickly to get all the glory you so righteously deserve.  

Isaiah 53:7-8

 Jesus waited silently and patiently……for the cross which you earned with both your blasphemous words and sinful heart and actions.

Your patience isn’t noble, it is a blood bought, Christ wrought fruit of the Spirit of God in you, to Christ’s glory.

It, in and of itself is a blessedness, purchased and worked by the Spirit of the one who waited patiently to receive the cross for all your sin and rebellion.

Here is why  the Gospel is the power of God unto salvation for all who believe. Our salvation lies within a person, and that person is unbelievably mighty to save.

 He carries us on His whipped lashed back into the very presence of God, in which we are unable to be convicted on account of His unjust conviction in our place.

A perfect plea is what we have at the right hand of our good and glorious God.

Our salvation is but ” to the praise of His glorious grace”.

Praise God for what He has done.

Jesus is our good, and He is so worthy.

He will do what He has promised.

Colossians 1:12-14, Colossians 2:10, Hebrews 13:13-14

My daughter just finished 1st grade and she is so excited to be done with school. I asked her yesterday, “Sweetie, why should your school allow you to go into 2nd grade next year?”. She replied, “I have no idea”.

I said, “it is because you finished 1st grade that you are qualified to move on to second grade. Without going through 1st grade, there is no way you could go into 2nd grade; 1st grade is what makes you qualified or sufficient to enter 2nd grade”.

This word “qualified” is one that Paul uses in Colossians 1:12-14, he writes, “giving thanks  to the Father, who has qualified you to share in the inheritance of the saints in light. He has delivered us from the domain of darkness and transferred us to the kingdom of his beloved Son, in whom we have redemption, the forgiveness of sins.”

Qualified. The word in greek means, “reaching the place of sufficiency and hence making someone qualified, i.e. able” .

The place of sufficiency that we sinners need to reach, Christ has reached for us ahead of time for us.

This place of sufficiency is God’s perfect holiness and righteousness, and God Himself has provided the means by which we have reached this exact qualification: Christ sinless life, atoning death and resurrection from the dead.

The amazing thing about this verb is the tense that it is written in: It is written in the Aorist. 

The aorist tense in greek represents not an ongoing process, but rather a past completed action. The completed action isn’t something from our perspective, rather, it is something from God’s perspective. 

To God, our salvation does not go up and down with our feelings, the world, or the strength of our faith. 

To, God, our salvation stays just as true and steady as Christ is true and steady.

Right now, we are as qualified for God’s presence as Jesus is, because we are “in Him”.

As God look’s over the duration of our lives, it isn’t our lives He is pleased with, rather it is Christ’s life He is pleased with.

Just as Christ is 100% righteous, we are 100% righteous. It is His life given us by the power of God, through the Holy Spirit, that we are made righteous, holy and sufficient both now and forever, “and you have been filled in him, who is the head of all rule and authority.” (Colossians 2:10)

If we are looking to see the strength of our salvation, the first place we ought to look is the worthiness of Christ; and the last place we are to look is our own goodness.

Truly Christ is where faith and freedom are found for all who come to Him no matter who they are and no matter what they have done.

The world, in its sinful rebellion against God, and prideful unrelenting unwillingness to worship our loving and gracious Lord have sealed their own eternal doom, by stubbornly standing on their own righteousness and morality.

May we not make the same foolish mistake. May we, as the writer of Hebrews has written, “go to him outside the camp and bear the reproach he endured. For here we have no lasting city, but we seek the city that is to come.” (Hebrews 13:13-14)