All in What Is? Series
“Saints”.
We’ve all heard of them. What do you think of when you think of a saint? Paintings of biblical figures with halos over their heads? Mother Teresa serving the needy in Kolkata, India? Usually you think of sainthood as something wonderful you did so therefore you are qualified to be canonized as a saint. Saints, or patron saints, are like superheroes.
Prayer is often misunderstood or misrepresented. It is commonplace after a tragedy is highlighted in the news media for many people (even irreligious) to send their "thoughts and prayers"--but what does that mean? Is prayer merely quieting myself and meditating while I think pleasant thoughts of comfort toward people? Does the Bible explain what prayer is--and is not?
The church is a building. Perhaps you are envisioning a grand cathedral, a quaint chapel, a location in a strip mall, or a school auditorium. While these are just a few of the many places that the church gathers, this is not the sort of building pictured throughout Scripture. In fact, it is ironic that when you ask most people about the church they attend they usually identify a physical building. Yet we see that Romans 16:5 says
The doctrine of the Trinity is one of the most significant doctrines found in all of Scripture and foundational to the Christian Church. Knowing and having some understanding of the Trinity is therefore important to knowing God and how we are to relate to Him. The great challenge lies in how to effectively communicate this spiritual truth in a clear manner. There is nothing in our natural world that remotely compares to the Trinity and any attempt to draw from nature or human experience as a way of such comparison falls woefully short.
Prayer is often misunderstood or misrepresented. It is commonplace after a tragedy is highlighted in the news media for many people (even irreligious) to send their "thoughts and prayers"--but what does that mean? Is prayer merely quieting myself and meditating while I think pleasant thoughts of comfort toward people? Does the Bible explain what prayer is--and is not?
But what is salvation? What does it really mean to be saved? The word “saved” in the Bible is also translated as “delivered.” So a Christian is a person who has been delivered from something or someone, which begs the question - what or who has the Christian been saved from? For these answers we must look to the Scriptures. Let me also add that this subject is far too exhaustive to explore in one article. We will only scratch the surface of what it means to be saved.
Proverbs 30:5 says that every word of God is true. John 10:35 says that Scripture cannot be broken. Psalm 12:6 says the words of the Lord are pure. Obviously, if God is perfect, and God has spoken, it would naturally mean that all that was written in the inspired documents is without error. Infallibility is related to inerrancy--but means more powerfully: not able to be wrong.
Over the last two-thousand years, there have been countless views as to who the person of Jesus was. Some have claimed and believed that Jesus was a prophet of God. Others have said that he was a good teacher, still, others say that he was nothing other than a historical figure; a man, a first-century carpenter from the city of Nazareth. There have been many others who have gone so far as to argue that Jesus never existed and is simply a myth.
You would think such a straight forward question would be relatively simple to answer. However, that is not the case. When the question has been posed to a variety of people it is amazing at the amount of significantly different answers or non answers have been provided. Some of the responses I have heard or read about have included the following.
Repentance means to “change one’s mind”. In the scriptures, we see that true repentance is a change in one’s mind as to who the person of Jesus Christ is and what He has done. In Acts chapter 2, the Apostle Peter delivers a sermon to a group of non-believers in Jeruselum where he proclaims the good news of the Gospel of Jesus Christ
According to Guinness, the Bible is still the world’s most distributed book (link). At the time of this article, the Bible has been translated into 1,659 languages. And between 1815 and 1975, some 2.5 billion Bibles were printed, of which 1.5 billion were handled by Bible societies. Within its 66 books, 1,189 chapters, 41,173 verses, and 774,746 words, we read about a variety of topics from religion, love, war, history, poetry, foretelling the future, songs, and wise sayings. We read narratives about betrayal, bravery, honor, cowardice, obedience, and rebellion.
Have you ever stopped to realize the strangeness of the Lord’s Supper? Many Christians have taken this meal for years and perhaps have found themselves in a familiar routine: A call to remember the sacrifice of Jesus. A morsel of bread. A sip of wine. This strangeness no longer confronts our senses. But imagine you are attending church for the first time or you are a young child witnessing Christians receiving these elements. As each member holds a piece of bread you hear “This is my body.” Then wine (or grape juice) is received and the pastor says, “This is my blood.” What in the world is going on here?
Charles Spurgeon believed that a theology that promoted the supremacy of the glory of God is worthy of “every second of our attention.” In a day and age in which humanism is the prominent worldview, this is the kind of truth that must saturate our souls. Many would strive to make man be the reason God acts, but that is not what the Bible declares. Why does God do what he does? God does everything for the sake of His glory.
This is the pertinent question is it not? What is the Gospel? Certainly, the Apostle Paul had the utmost importance of the Gospel when he said in Romans 1:16, “For I am not ashamed of the gospel, for it is the power of God for salvation to everyone who believes, to the Jew first and also to the Greek.” So, if the gospel is the power of God for salvation, what is it? What is the substance and essence that makes up the definition of the “gospel?”
