Belief Test

What do you believe? Many Christians may know how to speak “Christianese” but do they really know what the Scriptures teach. Each of these statements below represents what some people believe. Test your knowledge here by telling me whether you agree or disagree with each of these statements. Try to answer them quickly and don’t get help from anyone else. Send me an email with your answers or post them in the comments section. I’ll post the answers next week.

1. Agree or Disagree: The sign of a justified person is to say, “God have mercy upon me a sinner.”

2. Agree or Disagree: There is no one who is righteous, no one who understands, there is no one who seeks God, there is no one who does good.

3. Agree or Disagree: We are saved by grace after all that we can do.

4. Agree or Disagree: The heart is deceitful above all things and desperately wicked.

5. Agree or Disagree: Salvation is for those who do absolutely nothing to help save themselves but simply trust in a God who justifies wicked people.

6. Agree or Disagree: A Christian is someone who is simultaneously a saint and a sinner.

7. Agree or Disagree: No one can come to Jesus unless enabled to do so by the Father.

8. Agree or Disagree: God will not deny His grace to those who do what lies within their power.

9. Agree or Disagree: Salvation does not depend on man’s choice or effort but on God’s mercy.

10. Agree or Disagree: Even our good works are sinful and repugnant to God.

The Doctrines of Grace

God, who is glorious beyond description, has lavished His love on undeserving sinners with whom I readily identify. The salvation of sinful people is an act of God’s grace. In it He is magnificently glorified. His mercy and love are magnified as he forgives guilty sinners and His justice and wrath are magnified as He demonstrates His hatred of sin by not merely ignoring sins but by Christ bearing His wrath. Many people have a difficult time accepting the understanding of God’s grace that is sometimes called Calvinism. The basics of the Doctrines of Grace can be remembered by the acronym TULIP:


Total Depravity: This does not mean that all people are as sinful as they could possibly be, but that every aspect of human nature is infected and affected by our sinfulness. This is man's natural condition apart from any grace exerted by God to restrain or transform him.

We were dead in our trespasses. (Ephesians 2:5)

The mind that is set on the flesh is hostile to God, for it does not submit to God's law; indeed, it cannot. Those who are in the flesh cannot please God. (Romans 8:7–8)

The natural person does not accept the things of the Spirit of God, for they are folly to him, and he is not able to understand them because they are spiritually discerned. (1 Corinthians 2:14)

Unconditional Election: God has chosen or elected some people to receive his grace of salvation based solely on the kind intention of His will and not on any condition met by the individual. In other words, God chose, before the foundation of the world, those that would be set free from the bondage of sin by the death and resurrection of Jesus Christ in repentance and faith.

He chose us in him before the foundation of the world” (Ephesians 1:4).

As many as were appointed to eternal life believed. (Acts 13:48)

"I will have mercy on whom I have mercy, and I will have compassion on whom I have compassion." So then it depends not on human will or exertion, but on God, who has mercy. (Romans 9:15–16)

God chose what is foolish in the world to shame the wise. (1 Corinthians 1:27)

Israel failed to obtain what it was seeking. The elect obtained it, but the rest were hardened. (Romans 11:7; cf. 9:11–12; John 6:37)

My servant whom I have chosen, that you may know and believe me. (Isaiah 43:10)

Limited Atonement: The atonement is the work of God in Christ on the cross whereby he canceled the debt of our sin, appeased his holy wrath against us, and won for us all the benefits of salvation. This atonement is available for all who will repent and believe. The atonement is available to all but will be effective for the elect bride for whom Christ died.

Christ loved the church and gave himself up for her. (Ephesians 5:25)

I lay down my life for the sheep. (John 10:15)

I am praying for them. I am not praying for the world but for those whom you have given me, for they are yours. . . . And for their sake I consecrate myself, that they also may be sanctified in truth. (John 17:9, 19)

Irresistible Grace: God in His sovereign grace destroys every barrier that would keep one from continuing in rebellion toward Him. This does not mean that He saves people against their wills but that He changes their wills so that they willingly receive Him.

Even when we were dead in our trespasses, he made us alive together with Christ—by grace you have been saved. (Ephesians 2:5)

No one can come to me unless it is granted him by the Father. (John 6:65)

God may perhaps grant them repentance leading to a knowledge of the truth. (2 Timothy 2:25

Perseverance of the Saints: Those that God has graciously chosen and saved will continue in the fight of faith; God will work in them so that they persevere.

Those whom he justified he also glorified. (Romans 8:30)

My sheep hear my voice, and I know them, and they follow me. I give them eternal life, and they will never perish, and no one will snatch them out of my hand. (John 10:27–28)

I am sure of this, that he who began a good work in you will bring it to completion at the day of Jesus Christ. (Philippians 1:6)

I press on to make it my own, because Christ Jesus has made me his own. (Philippians 3:12)

Salvation truly is an act of the grace of God. May you rest in Him and pursue Him.

~Ryan

How Can I Answer Those Opposed to Christianity? The Columbo Tactic

"The belief in God is irrational."  "The Bible is full of errors."  "It is ridiculous to believe that Jesus rose from the dead and ascended into heaven."  How can you handle questions like this?  One way to help steer a conversation in a positive direction is to use The Columbo Tactic.

"The key to the Columbo tactic is that the Christian goes on the offensive in a disarming way with carefully selected questions to productively advance the conversation. If you hit a roadblock when witnessing, ask a good question. There are three basic ways to use the Columbo tactic that can tame the most belligerent critic, each launched by a different question. Three uses, three questions:


1. To gain information and stay out of the "hot seat" - "What do you mean by that?"

2. To reverse the burden of proof - "Now how did you come to that conclusion?"

3. To indirectly exploit a weakness or a flaw in someone's views - "Have you considered...(then finish the sentence by offering an alternative view that gently challenges his/her beliefs, possibly exposing a point of weaknesss you uncovered in the answers to your first two questions. For example, "Have you ever considered that the existence of evil is actually evidence FOR the existence of God, not against it?")

This quote was taken from Greg Koukl's Ambassador Basic Curriculum, "Tactics in Defending the Faith" which can be obtained at his website, http://www.str.org/.  Hopefully this will can serve you as you seek to be a faithful of our Lord Jesus Christ.

-Ryan

How Good Do I Have To Be?

Earlier this morning I was looking up various passages dealing with the sovereignty of God and especially those dealing with His choosing of people. Of course this led me to the book of Romans chapter 9. I was again blown away by this amazing God who does all things for His own glory. As I read I was struck by the words at the end of the chapter,

What shall we say, then? That the Gentiles who did not pursue righteousness have attained it, that is, a righteousness that is by faith; but that Israel who pursued a law that would lead to righteousness did not succeed in reaching that law. Why? Because they did not pursue it by faith, but as if it were based on works. They have stumbled over the stumbling stone, as it tis written, "Behold, I am laying in Zion a stone of stumbling and a rock of offense; and whoever believes in him will not be put to shame."

I was again confronted by the Good News, the Gospel. This is the good news that God can and does declare unrighteous people (me) to be righteous. A good standing before God is not something that anyone can work for. God alone is righteous and He alone can impute righteousness to us and He does not do it based on our merit but rather He makes the sinner righteous who is trusting in His Son. He alone gets the glory. None will stand justified before Him on their own merit. But to those who trust not in themselves but in Him who justifies, they are saved by grace through faith.

What an amazing God. Let my pride fall; I have nothing in myself of which to boast. Let my guilty conscience rest; I have been declared righteous before this holy God forever. Hallelujah!!! What a Savior!!!

Just What is the Gospel?

THE GOOD NEWS (The Gospel)

The Good News is God's message for all people in all places. You can remember the Gospel by reminding yourself of these four points: God, man, Christ, response.

GOD – There is only one God and He has revealed Himself in the Bible. He is the Holy One, who is both transcendent and immanent. He is the creator of all and as Creator He has established the laws by which His creation is to operate, therefore He is the Lawgiver. As the Lawgiver He is also the Judge who will hold His creation accountable for their attitudes and actions.

MAN – All people have been created by God and for God. But man has rebelled against His Lord and stands guilty of breaking His laws (by lying, stealing, lusting, not honoring God above everything else, etc…). All sin must be punished and so man, on his own, stands guilty before God and without hope.

CHRIST – Jesus Christ, the second person of the Trinity and God’s Son, came to earth 2,000 years ago in human flesh to live the perfect life that people could not live and to die on the cross bearing the anger of God for the sins of men. He was buried and He rose from the dead three days later. He did this to display the justice and mercy of God in saving a people from their sins.

RESPONSE – The Bible tells us that we are to repent and believe. Repentance carries the idea of changing our minds, that is recognizing that we are guilty sinners and desiring to stop dishonoring the Lord. In repentance we seek to turn from our sins and in belief we turn to God. We believe that when Jesus Christ died that He took our sins with Him upon the cross and bore the wrath of God that we deserve. We believe that Jesus is the Son of God and that only through His sacrifice can we gain forgiveness of sins and eternal life. We are granted eternal life, not because we are good people, but because we are bad people who have been forgiven by the good God.