By Scott L: Guest Blogger
The word ‘church’ shows up 106 times in the New Testament. The first occurrence of the word is found on the lips of Jesus in Matthew 16:13-20. Though we could spend a little time on this Scripture alone, I am going to move on to something else, and maybe I will revisit this specific passage in the near future.
In my last several posts, we began the process of looking at each of the components of TULIPS in order to see how well this model of salvation aligns with Scripture. In looking at Total Depravity, we agreed with much of the traditional position though we found no Scriptural evidence for: regeneration prior to faith; an understanding that death means spiritual inability to act; and that the non-believer is unable to exercise faith. Thus, we stated that a person will never seek God in their sinfulness. However, through the conviction of the Holy Spirit, God seeks each individual making them aware of their standing before Him. It is at this point that a person does or does not exercise their faith in Jesus. Once they believe, they are given life which is the presence of God through the Holy Spirit living in them. All the benefits of salvation are immediately bestowed upon them (though final fulfillment awaits our resurrection).
Believe it or not, this post is near the 1,000 word maximum (woo hoo!!!). Since most of us will agree on this one (I haven’t seen too many Arminians involved in our discussions, so this should draw them out if they are out there), I’ll forego the beginning joke…just the fact that I’m staying in my word limit should make you smile :) .
Rather than starting every article with a joke, I decided to use a real life story which, often times, can be funnier than any joke.
I have a three year old son whose chief delight is playing in either dirt or mud. So much so, that we have needed to place limitations on his mud-playing. For instance, since we generally don’t allow him to play outside when it is wet and rainy, he found that he needed a source of water for his mud-making. So, he would often find a bucket, turn on the faucet that is outside our house, fill the bucket and go off to his mud-making. Of course, once his use for the faucet was over, it was forgotten, and rather than shutting it off, within a short amount of time we would have gallons of water flowing down our driveway. To remedy this, we placed rather strict parameters on the use of the outside faucet (i.e. NO usage except with Dad or Mom’s permission)…
Those of you who have kept up with these posts know how this works?if you don?t like jokes, skip to The Beginning of the Article, though IMHO, you?ll be missing out on a really good one. In either case, I have once again gone way beyond the 1,000 word maximum and won?t even try to get it close. So, if you skim, it?ll be your loss :).