Why I’m a 5 Points Calvinist 5

“And not only so, but also when Rebecca had conceived children by one man, our forefather Isaac, though they were not yet born and had done nothing either good or bad–in order that God’s purpose of election might continue, not because of works but because of his call– she was told, “The older will serve the younger.” As it is written, ‘Jacob I loved, but Esau I hated.’” (Romans 9:10-13)

 

As we continue on this subject of Unconditional Election, we have here in the letter to the Romans the clearest example of what it means to when it is said that God’s election is unconditional. 

 

“Though they were not yet born and had done nothing either good or bad”, God’s call on Jacob over Esau was not based on anything that either had done or upon any qualities one possessed over the other.  Jacob and Esau had not even been born yet, they had done nothing either good or evil, nothing that would either qualify or disqualify them from God’s favor.  Neither even had the possession of birthright in which to rely upon, in fact God goes against conventional protocol by blessing the younger over the older, but this also is a repeated theme throughout scripture as well (i.e. Ishmael and Isaac, Ephriam and Manasseh, etc.) 

 

The purpose of God’s choosing Jacob over Esau was that “God’s purpose of election might continue”.  This means that God is sovereign (in control) over the salvation of man; “might continue” means that God has been choosing from the beginning and that it will continue to be that way.  This choosing is by grace:

 

“For by grace you have been saved through faith. And this is not your own doing; it is the gift of God, not a result of works, so that no one may boast.” (Ephesians 2:8-9)

 

This choosing was also done before the creation of the world:

 

“…he chose us in him before the foundation of the world, that we should be holy and blameless before him. In love he predestined us for adoption through Jesus Christ, according to the purpose of his will” (Ephesians 1:4-5)

Why I’m a 5 Points Calvinist 4

And you were dead in the trespasses and sins in which you once walked, following the course of this world, following the prince of the power of the air, the spirit that is now at work in the sons of disobedience– among whom we all once lived in the passions of our flesh, carrying out the desires of the body and the mind, and were by nature children of wrath, like the rest of mankind. But God, being rich in mercy, because of the great love with which he loved us, even when we were dead in our trespasses, made us alive together with Christ–by grace you have been saved– and raised us up with him and seated us with him in the heavenly places in Christ Jesus, so that in the coming ages he might show the immeasurable riches of his grace in kindness toward us in Christ Jesus. For by grace you have been saved through faith. And this is not your own doing; it is the gift of God, not a result of works, so that no one may boast. For we are his workmanship, created in Christ Jesus for good works, which God prepared beforehand, that we should walk in them. (Ephesians 2:1-10)

Now we get to the most amazing and breath-taking part of this passage and the most awesome part  of what it means to a child of God.  The first part of this passage is all about our deadness and speaks of our inability to find salvation and the fact that in our natural state we cannot and would not even choose God since we loved our sin too much.  In the middle of all this talk about our inability we are told that God, because He is merciful and because of his great love, calls some out of their deadness and makes them alive!  They do not choose God, God chooses them and makes them alive!!  Let the reader beware that Paul is talking to the church here and not to mankind in general.

“Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, who has blessed us in Christ with every spiritual blessing in the heavenly places, even as he chose us in him before the foundation of the world, that we should be holy and blameless before him. In love he predestined us for adoption through Jesus Christ, according to the purpose of his will, to the praise of his glorious grace, with which he has blessed us in the Beloved.” (Ephesians 1:3-6)

“Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ! According to his great mercy, he has caused us to be born again to a living hope through the resurrection of Jesus Christ from the dead” (1 Peter 1:3)

In the acronym TULIP,  this would be the “U” which stands for “Unconditional Election.”  We do nothing to make ourselves alive, God does the whole work of salvation in the hearts of those that he elects.  Jesus is the “founder and perfecter (completer) of our faith” it all begins with God through Christ Jesus and it is perfected (completed) through Jesus Christ!  That is the heart of the message of the Gospel; God chooses us, we don’t choose Him, and if He chooses us, He will sustain and preserve us (more on that later).  Why should this be so hard to grasp? Didn’t God choose Abraham out of all the pagan idol worshippers of his time?  He chose one man in which to bless and told him:

“And I will make of you a great nation, and I will bless you and make your name great, so that you will be a blessing. I will bless those who bless you, and him who dishonors you I will curse, and in you all the families of the earth shall be blessed.” (Genesis 12:2-3)

Didn’t God choose Isaac over firstborn Ishmael; Jacob over Esau; Joseph over his brothers?  God has been choosing from the very beginning, why should we believe that He doesn’t choose today?  All throughout the history of the world there have been God’s covenant people and those that God allows to stay in their sin and idolatry. 

I think that the main reason that people have difficulty believing in the Doctrine of Predestination and Election is that man, in his pride, does not want God to have sovereignty over his (man’s) life.  We want to believe that we are in control and that God responds to our sovereignty, thus making God our servant.  I once heard a Pastor say “We don’t know how many women God had to ask to bear the Son of God before Mary said ‘yes’”!!  Well, that is the most man-centered thing that I have heard; the God of the universe is not up for election; His plans are not thwarted by His minuscule and puny creations!!  God only had to “Call” upon one woman to bear the Son of God because when God does the choosing it is an effectual calling and His purposes will come to pass according to God’s glorious will!!

In the next section I will elaborate further on this issue of Unconditional Election by exploring what Paul had to say in defense of God’s sovereignty.

  

Why I’m a 5 Points Calvinist 3

I want to continue to speak to what the natural state of all men is so that no one can boast about their own righteousness or goodness before God. 

“The heart is deceitful above all things, and desperately wicked: who can know it? (Jeremiah 17:9)

We may become self-righteous because we have not acted upon our sinful desires; we may deceive ourselves into thinking that because we can hold back that we are righteous, but in reality it is God’s restraining hand that keeps us from being and doing all the evil that is in our hearts.  In God’s mercy he doesn’t allow us always to act upon every evil impulse or we would all be imprisoned for our crimes against humanity. 

“The LORD saw that the wickedness of man was great in the earth, and that every intention of the thoughts of his heart was only evil continually.” (Genesis 6:5)

While this passage is speaking about the way of mankind before the flood, Jesus said:

“Just as it was in the days of Noah, so will it be in the days of the Son of Man. They were eating and drinking and marrying and being given in marriage, until the day when Noah entered the ark, and the flood came and destroyed them all. Likewise, just as it was in the days of Lot–they were eating and drinking, buying and selling, planting and building, but on the day when Lot went out from Sodom, fire and sulfur rained from heaven and destroyed them all” (Luke 17:26-29)

We are in that generation that Jesus talked about.  When compared to God’s righteous, holy standard, we truly are living in times when “the thoughts of his heart was only evil continually.”

“The generations of mankind on the earth did not begin until after the fall. The beginning of the posterity of our first parents was after the fall. For all their posterity, by ordinary generation, are partakers of the fall, and of the corruption of nature that followed from it.” (Jonathan Edwards “The History of Redemption”)

The universal state of human kind can also be summed up in these words from the prophet Isaiah as he talked about the coming Messiah:

“All we like sheep have gone astray; we have turned every one to his own way; and the LORD hath laid on him the iniquity of us all.” (Isaiah 53:6)

No one, either Jew or Gentile is free from this judgement:

“What then? Are we Jews any better off? No, not at all. For we have already charged that all, both Jews and Greeks, are under sin, as it is written: “None is righteous, no, not one; no one understands; no one seeks for God. All have turned aside; together they have become worthless; no one does good, not even one.” ‘Their throat is an open grave; they use their tongues to deceive.’ ‘The venom of asps is under their lips.’ ‘Their mouth is full of curses and bitterness.’ ‘Their feet are swift to shed blood; in their paths are ruin and misery, and the way of peace they have not known.’, ‘There is no fear of God before their eyes.’” (Romans 3:9-18)

You will notice that most of this passage is quoting other passages of Scripture some of those references are: Psalms 14:1-3, 53:1-3, 53:1-6 and14:1-7, with some slight variations.

“for all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God,” (Romans 3:23)

Every person who has ever lived since the time of Adam has sinned against God except one; Jesus Christ.  We all were dead in our sins (most still are) and none of us could do, or even wanted to do anything that would free us from the bondage of sin that we were under.  We loved our sin and hated God.  We were totally dead to the things of God and were spiritually dead, “…having no hope and without God in the world.”  Ephesians 2:12

Why I’m a 5 Points Calvinist 2

And you were dead in the trespasses and sins in which you once walked, following the course of this world, following the prince of the power of the air, the spirit that is now at work in the sons of disobedience– among whom we all once lived in the passions of our flesh, carrying out the desires of the body and the mind, and were by nature children of wrath, like the rest of mankind. (Ephesians 2:1-3)

I want to spend some considerable time laying a foundation for what the state of natural man is and then attempt to show that because of man’s natural state there can be basis to believe that any man has the ability to draw himself to God.  When I look at these verses, I see a picture of dead body.  Like Lazarus in the tomb, or like Dorcas from Acts 9, or Jairus’ daughter in Mark 5, or even the valley of dry bones of Ezekiel 37.  All of these are examples and pictures of what we all are in our natural state.  You will notice what is universally true of mankind, we ALL have lived or are living in the passions of our flesh and ALL of us are naturally “children of wrath”; children of the devil. 

But we are all as an unclean thing, and all our righteousness-es are as filthy rags; and we all do fade as a leaf; and our iniquities, like the wind, have taken us away. And there is none that calleth upon thy name, that stirreth up himself to take hold of thee: for thou hast hid thy face from us, and hast consumed us, because of our iniquities. (Isaiah 64:6-7)

The natural man is not capable of doing anything that is not permeated with corruption.  None of our so called righteousness-es are anything more than “filthy rags”, in fact, we do not have any righteousness-es, all we have is a deceitful and wicked self-righteousness which is pure sin.  In both of these passages so far, what we see is that our trespasses, iniquities, and sin are at the root of our deadness.  No one is free from this corruption, “for all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God” (Romans 3:23).  Matthew Henry had this to say in his commentary on this passage:

“We have all by sin become not only obnoxious to God’s justice, but odious to his holiness; for sin is that abominable thing which the Lord hates, and cannot endure to look upon.”

I have more to say regarding natural man…

Why I’m a 5 Point Calvinist

As you can probably tell by the name of my blog, I’m a Calvinist.  What I mean by that, if you are not familiar with the term, is that I believe that God in his Sovereignty has chosen those who he is going to save and that he did so based only on His sovereign rule and upon nothing that the individual has done or what He foresees that they will do.  I haven’t been a predestinarian for a long time, in fact, I was firmly arminian in my understanding until a few short years ago.  The main reason for this change is that I never really knew that there was anything else out there, but when I was exposed to the truth of election in God’s word I can’t help but see predestination and election all over the pages of Scripture. 

I was first exposed to Christianity back in the early ’80s when I attended a Charismatic Pentecostal church, and after a long period of “backsliding” (about 20 years), I started attending a Pentecostal church with my wife.  I no longer subscribe to much of the teachings and practices of the charismatic movement.  I find that there is much misunderstanding about the gifts and workings of the Holy Spirit, I also see how much heresy has been perpetrated against the church in recent years within Pentecostalism.

Getting back to the 5 points of Calvinism, The 5 points can be summed up in the acrostic:

T- Total Depravity

U- Unconditional Election

L- Limited Atonement

I- Irresistable Grace

P- Perseverance of the Saints

I would like to share with this post one of the passages of Scripture that I thinks speaks clearly of God’s sovereign plan of election:

And you were dead in the trespasses and sins in which you once walked, following the course of this world, following the prince of the power of the air, the spirit that is now at work in the sons of disobedience– among whom we all once lived in the passions of our flesh, carrying out the desires of the body and the mind, and were by nature children of wrath, like the rest of mankind. But God, being rich in mercy, because of the great love with which he loved us, even when we were dead in our trespasses, made us alive together with Christ–by grace you have been saved– and raised us up with him and seated us with him in the heavenly places in Christ Jesus, so that in the coming ages he might show the immeasurable riches of his grace in kindness toward us in Christ Jesus. For by grace you have been saved through faith. And this is not your own doing; it is the gift of God, not a result of works, so that no one may boast. For we are his workmanship, created in Christ Jesus for good works, which God prepared beforehand, that we should walk in them.  (Ephesians 2:1-10)

The first 3 verses show the  “T” of the acrostic.  Total Depravity does not mean that everyone is as bad as they could possibly be, but that they are utterly depraved and have no inclination toward the things of God.  The only thing that keeps people from being as bad or wicked as they are capable of being is the restraining hand of a gracious God.  Everyone is spiritually dead in their trespasses and sins, we have no inclination for the things of God at all.  We all followed the ways of the “world” and the “prince of the power of the air” which is Satan.  We passionately pursued the sinful desires of our wicked hearts without any affection towards God, and were with the rest of mankind children of the Devil and therefore deserving of God’s wrath.

Homosexuality

Here are some excerpts of recent letters to the editor of the Star Tribune regarding homosexuality and the church and then some of my comments:

 “The Christian churches, including the Catholic Church, desperately need to reexamine their understanding of and teachings on human sexuality. It’s time to take a step out of the 16th century and dare to listen to the Holy Spirit speaking to the churches in the Third Millennium.”   

To this I say, the Holy Spirit hasn’t changed his mind about homosexuality or any other sin, “God is not a man… that he should repent” Numbers 23:19.  The first chapter of John says that Jesus is the Word of God, and since “Jesus Christ is the same yesterday and today and forever.” (Hebrews 13:8)  Jesus hasn’t changed His mind about sin either.  The truth is that it is time for those who claim to be Christians to get in step with God’s word and reexamine their own understanding of God’s revealed will (the Bible).  It’s time for the creature to submit to the creator and to truly listen to what the Holy Spirit is saying to “the churches in the third millennium.”, which is the same message as all other millennia! Stop fighting against the Word of God.  God’s word hasn’t changed!  If you don’t accept the authority of Scripture, then don’t claim to be a follower of Christ.   

“As human beings, all made in the image and likeness of God…” 

Yes, we are all created in the “image” of God but we are not all children of God.  Jesus made a distinction between the children of God and the children of the Devil.  “You are of your father the Devil” (John 8:44)  Those who do the will of the Father are the true children of the Father.  “I suggest that the archbishop remove the log from his own eye before he worries about the speck in others’.”  Some people seem to quote Scripture well when it suit their needs…What about this one: “You shall not lie with a male as with a woman; it is an abomination” (Leviticus 18:22) or, “Do you not know that the unrighteous will not inherit the kingdom of God? Do not be deceived: neither the sexually immoral, nor idolaters, nor adulterers, nor men who practice homosexuality” 1 Corinthians 6:9  

“Why doesn’t the church provide support for our children who enter puberty and find out they’re not heterosexual?” 

The church should be a place where God’s Word is preached in truth, the sacraments are rightly administered, and where church discipline is carried out.  The church is also a place where there is support of brothers and sisters in Christ and where you “Confess your faults one to another, and pray one for another, that ye may be healed.” James 5:16 

“Sincere, adult, committed relationships strengthen people, regardless of the sexual identities God gave them.“ 

The only sexual relationships that God approves of are those between a man and his wife.   All sexual activity outside the bonds of marriage between a husband and his one and only wife is sin.  Jesus equated even lust (having sexual thoughts about someone) as adultery, “’You have heard that it was said, ‘You shall not commit adultery.’ But I say to you that everyone who looks at a woman with lustful intent has already committed adultery with her in his heart.” (Matthew 5:27-28)  The sexual desires that we have and act upon outside God’s revealed will are a direct result of the fall and thereby our sinful human nature.  Every person, prior to being born-again by the Spirit of God is outside the will of God and separated from God, so all the acts that they do are sin (Romans 14:23) 

The last thing that I have read and heard is that Jesus never said anything about homosexuality.  Apart from the fact that Jesus agrees with all of revealed Scripture, Jesus did talk about God’s plan for human sexuality when he said, “But from the beginning of creation, ‘God made them male and female.’ ‘Therefore a man shall leave his father and mother and hold fast to his wife, (Mark 10:6-7).  So Jesus confirms that God’s plan for sexual relations is within the bonds of heterosexual marriage only!  That is why God created them male and female.  

1

Paula White

Here we go again, another Word Faith preacher on Larry King preaching the me‑centered gospel of wealth, health, and self-awareness!  Larry loves to have these people on his show; I see them all the time from Paula White to Joel Osteen and Creflo Dollar.  The focus of these shows is usually the amount of money that is made by these “preachers”, their extravagant lifestyles, and the self-centered, man-exalting books that they write! 

Last night on Larry King Live, Paula White was talking about her new book, her divorce, and the investigation by the Senate Finance Committee into possible improper use of church money and 501C3 tax exempt status.  She sure is someone I would turn to if I wanted to make sure I was walking the straight and narrow!  When I watch these Word Faith preachers, I don’t hear the Gospel of Christ but the gospel of greed, envy, and materialism!  I can’t remember the last time that I heard any of them talk about the deadly plague of  all of mankind which is sin, I don’t think they even like to use the word “sin”, they would rather use the words “mistakes”, or “wrong choices” because these words are less offensive. 

So we have Paula White on last night’s show ducking questions about what led up to her divorce, (she never did give a reason), trying to explain why it is okay for her to make millions of dollars as a “preacher”, and pumping her new book called “You’re All That”.  The problem I have with this is that what these people preach is not the Gospel of Christ, but Larry King gives these people a platform to peddle their wares and the world gets a twisted heretical portrayal of God’s plan of salvation.  No wonder one of the excuses that the world uses against church or Christianity is that it is all concerned about money.  These people want to be so liked by the world that they will get bigger congregations, more fame and notoriety, sell more books, and pad their own pocketbooks!! 

Christianity is NOT about becoming rich!!!  Preaching the Gospel is not about becoming rich either,

Feed the flock of God which is among you, taking the oversight thereof, not by constraint, but willingly; not for filthy lucre, but of a ready mind; (1 Peter 5:2)

Christianity is about having your sin debt paid for and using your life to glorify Christ and not ourselves!  I read something recently by Dr. John Piper, he said, “Why would you want to encourage someone to do something that Jesus said would make it harder for them to get into the Kingdom of Heaven?”  Jesus said that it is harder for a rich man to enter into the kingdom of heaven than it is for a camel to go through the eye of a needle.  The issue is that the rich (some, not all) are self-sufficient and think that they don’t need to depend on God for anything.  God would just interrupt their plans for making more money.  The Psalmist Agur spoke well when he said,

“…give me neither poverty nor riches; feed me with the food that is needful for me, lest I be full and deny you and say, “Who is the LORD?” or lest I be poor and steal and profane the name of my God. (Proverbs 30:8-9)

My heart breaks as I see the air time that these false teachers get on shows like Larry King and on networks like TBN.  These people don’t understand what the Gospel is all about; they treasure health, wealth, and prestige and not Christ.  My prayer is that these false teachers would be revealed for the greedy hucksters they are and that they would crumble in broken‑hearted repentance rather than continuing to make their disciples twice the sons of hell as they are.   

What is the Church?

I was going to write a post about a Catholic Church that recently denied authors Carol and Robert Curoe a chance to speak about their book “Are There Closets in Heaven?”  The book is about the struggles that Carol’s father Robert (a staunch Catholic) went through when Carol “came out” as a lesbian. 

I agreed with the church’s decision to not allow Carol and Robert speak at the church, but when I started listing the reasons for my affirmation I began to wonder if it really mattered anyway.  I wanted to say some things that the church shouldn’t be, or allow, what is appropriate and what isn’t appropriate, and what the purpose and mission of the church should be.  It was at this time that I had to ask whether the Catholic Church meets the criteria for a true church. If the Catholic Church doesn’t meet those criteria in the first place then any attempt to make it fit into the Biblical model , even if they are right in some instances, would be disingenuous.  

My belief is that the Catholic Church does not meet the criteria for a true church.  I will be endeavoring to explain my reasoning in the next several posts.

“Facing The Giants” A Movie Review

My wife and I watched the movie “Facing the Giants” over the weekend and here are some of my observations. 

I don’t know much about who put out this movie, but if Joel Osteen or Bill Hybels had something to do with it I wouldn’t be surprised.  This movie is the epitome of what I believe is wrong with the current state of the “church” and the gospel (not Gospel) they preach.

The tale revolves around a private high school’s football team, its coach, and how Christ will make everything better and solve all your problems or obstacles (giants).  Please give me a minute to remember all of his problems…okay, losing team (6th losing season), dilapidated car, a house that apparently has quite an odor, infertility, kids at the school that don’t understand what Jesus can do for them, and (if that wasn’t enough) job insecurity.  Things just keep going from bad to worse for this guy and then something amazing happens.  Almost spontaneously, it would seem, all the kids in the school get saved and what breaks out next would rival most old-time tent revivals.  Kids break into prayer groups, confess their sins to each other, praying for each other and many if not all “accept” Jesus “into their hearts”. 

Then the miraculous happens, all their problems go away.  Disobedient children go to their parents and repent of their disobedience, the football team wins the state title, the coach gets a new truck free and clear, his wife gets pregnant, the coach and his wife find the source of the odor in their house (it was a dead mouse), and the team goes on to win 2 straight state titles.

That’s what Joel Osteen, Bill Hybels, and Robert Schuler would like you to believe happens to everyone that “accepts Jesus into their heart”.  What did Jesus have to say about becoming a disciple of his?  Let’s look at some portions of scripture to get a clear picture.  Jesus said:

Behold, I am sending you out as sheep in the midst of wolves, so be wise as serpents and innocent as doves. Beware of men, for they will deliver you over to courts and flog you in their synagogues, and you will be dragged before governors and kings for my sake, to bear witness before them and the Gentiles. (Matthew 10:16-18)

“And brother will deliver brother over to death, and the father his child, and children will rise against parents and have them put to death. And you will be hated by all for my name’s sake. But the one who endures to the end will be saved.” (Mark 13:12-13)

“Do you think that I have come to give peace on earth? No, I tell you, but rather division. For from now on in one house there will be five divided, three against two and two against three. They will be divided, father against son and son against father, mother against daughter and daughter against mother, mother-in-law against her daughter-in-law and daughter-in-law against mother-in-law.” (Luke 12:51-53)

 What about other New Testament examples of what it means to be a Christian?  Consider these: 

“Five times I (Paul) received at the hands of the Jews the forty lashes less one. Three times I was beaten with rods. Once I was stoned. Three times I was shipwrecked; a night and a day I was adrift at sea; on frequent journeys, in danger from rivers, danger from robbers, danger from my own people, danger from Gentiles, danger in the city, danger in the wilderness, danger at sea, danger from false brothers; in toil and hardship, through many a sleepless night, in hunger and thirst, often without food, in cold and exposure.”            (2 Corinthians 11:24-27)

“As it is written, “For your sake we are being killed all the day long; we are regarded as sheep to be slaughtered.” (Romans 8:36)

 Doesn’t sound much like the “Come to Jesus and He will make everything in your life work out okay” does it?  You see, the modern “evangelical” mega-church model would not allow that kind of preaching or teaching; that kind of teaching doesn’t bring in the crowds, but an an-Biblical message like “God wants you to be healthy, happy, and rich” surer will and it continues to draw big audiences.   The true Gospel is that we all are wretched sinners that deserve hell as a punishment for our sins.  We have all broken God’s commandments, not just once, but thousands of times and ten thousand good deeds could never wipe away the guilt of just one sin.  We are totally helpless and we need a Savior.  Jesus Christ is that Savior, He lived a perfectly sinless life (something that we could never do), yet “…He poured out his soul to death and was numbered with the transgressors; yet he bore the sin of many, and makes intercession for the transgressors. (Isaiah 53:12)  With that act, the pouring out his soul to death, he paid the debt of God’s righteous wrath and indignation against us and became a “propitiation” (wrath absorber) through his blood. This gift is to be received by faith, we do not “accept Jesus” God accepts us through His Son If we would turn from our sins and put our faith in Christ and trust in his work on the cross alone as the means of our salvation we can enter into this salvation and our adoption as children of God.                      

“Saint” Teresa of Calcutta?

Agnes Gonxha Bojaxhiu known to the world as Mother Teresa of Calcutta was a woman that was tormented most of her life with doubts as to the existence of God.

 

This is revealed in a new book entitled “Mother Teresa: Come Be My Light”.  In letters to superiors and confessors, Mother Teresa disclosed decades of spiritual darkness; feeling abandoned by Jesus, calling Him “the absent one.”  She claims to have had a “mystical” experience with Jesus in 1958 and when that ended, she no longer felt his presence.  Mother Teresa continued her work in the slums of Calcutta, though, even when all she claims to have experienced was spiritual darkness and rejection by God.   While I’m not denying that saints of God can experience depression from time to time (C.H. Spurgeon was said to suffer from depression), that is not what marks one that has true communion with the Triune God.  Here are some Scriptures of what God wants for and gives to his children: 

 

“But the fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, self-control…” (Galatians 5:22-23)  

“Then he said to them, “… And do not be grieved, for the joy of the LORD is your strength.” (Nehemiah 8:10)

“You make known to me the path of life; in your presence there is fullness of joy; at your right hand are pleasures forevermore.” (Psalms 16:11)

“May we shout for joy over your salvation, and in the name of our God set up our banners! May the LORD fulfill all your petitions!” (Psalms 20:5)

“Be glad in the LORD, and rejoice, O righteous, and shout for joy, all you upright in heart!” (Psalms 32:11)

“Shout for joy in the LORD, O you righteous! Praise befits the upright.” (Psalms 33:1)

I did a search on the word “joy” and in the English Standard Version there were 171 verses in the Old and New Testaments with the word “joy” in them, most of these passages were commands to have joy.  I found 152 verses when I did a search on the word “rejoice”, here are a few:

“And you shall rejoice in all the good that the LORD your God has given to you and to your house…” (Deuteronomy 26:11)

“Glory in his holy name; let the hearts of those who seek the LORD rejoice!” (1 Chronicles 16:10)

“Through him we have also obtained access by faith into this grace in which we stand, and we rejoice in hope of the glory of God.” (Romans 5:2)

I found it ironic that the title of the book, in part, is “Come Be My Light”.  How can one be expected to be someone’s light when their own life is filled with darkness and why would you want one who is in darkness to guide you?  If one’s light is full of darkness, then they are not a saint at all.  Jesus said: “…If then the light in you is darkness, how great is the darkness!” (Matthew 6:23), “Therefore be careful lest the light in you be darkness.” (Luke 11:35), and “…I am the light of the world. Whoever follows me will not walk in darkness, but will have the light of life.” (John 8:12)

So, what kept Mother Teresa in her vocation of heling the poor in India?  Quite possibly it had to do with the doctrine of the Catholic Church that says that one is not saved by faith alone, but one must do good works in order to be saved.  This form of works righteousness, whereby one participates in their own salvation is one of the great heresies of all time.  Scripture tells us plainly that salvation is by grace, through faith in Christ alone, not a result of works so that no one can boast.  Grace is a free gift and is totally underserved, we cannot produce it.  Grace gives us the faith to believe on Christ and grace produces repentance that is necessary for salvation along with faith in Christ Jesus. 

 Does this then eliminate good works?  Absolutely not!! Good works are the result and fruit of being “in Christ” not the reason for being “in Christ”.  The Jews of Jesus’ day depended on their righteousness to gain them favor with God and so do many in the world today.  Trust in Christ for righteousness because none of your accumulated “good works” can ever atone for even one of your sins.  “For our sake he made him to be sin who knew no sin, so that in him we might become the righteousness of God.” (2 Corinthians 5:21)