Billy Graham once told the story about a time when he was a young preacher with Youth for Christ and arrived in a town to preach. Having an urgent letter to mail, he began looking for the local Post Office but had gotten lost. He pulled his car beside a young boy walking along the road. Rolling down his passenger side window, Mr. Graham asked the youth, “Son, can you give me directions to the Post Office?”
Once directed and before driving away, Billy bade farewell to the lad with the following invitation, “Son, if you will come to the Baptist Church in the center of town tonight, I will give you directions to Heaven.”
The little boy replied, “Mister, you can’t even find the Post Office. How are you going to give me directions to Heaven?”
In John 3:1–6 (New International Version), we find a similar occasion when an important person, a religious leader, came asking for directions. His name was Nicodemus. He was a Pharisee, a ruler of the Jewish synagogue (v. 1). Without realizing the intent of his own question, he approached Jesus seeking directions to Heaven:
“Rabbi, we know that you are a teacher who has come from God. For no one could perform the signs you are doing if God were not with him” (v. 2).
From the text, we do not know what Nicodemus planned to discuss with Jesus under the cover of darkness that evening. But Jesus knew what he needed:
“Very truly I tell you, no one can see the Kingdom of God unless they are born again” (v. 3).
It would be completely predictable that an unregenerated human mind, even a brilliant one by the world’s standards, might ask the obvious:
“How can someone be born when they are old?” (v. 4).
I remember when the Holy Spirit first began to penetrate my heart with prevenient grace as an early teen. In the 1970s, the biblical experience of new birth was often described as Jesus coming to live within one’s heart. I remember asking my Sunday School teacher, Johnny Cason, the local florist, how Jesus could fit in my heart.
Maybe I asked Mr. Cason because he had a large barrel chest and maybe I could imagine Jesus squeezing in there. But if so, how could he live in mine—or anyone else’s for that matter?
Thankfully, I was to discover in just a few months forward that Jesus could indeed get into my heart through the indwelling presence of the Holy Spirit, and I would soon come to recognize him in others—now for fifty years, across the street and around the world.
Both Scripture and history tell us that Nicodemus made the same discovery, but we will get back to that in a few paragraphs.
Before we explore the nature of the new birth, let’s emphasize the necessity of it.
Couple John chapter 3 with John 14:1–6, where Jesus reminds his disciples during the last week of his earthly life that he is going to prepare a place for them to live eternally.
“You know the way to the place where I am going,” he said (John 14:4).
What a great setup Jesus made. He knew that they didn’t know the way quite yet, and he knew that at least one of his disciples would call him out on that. It was Thomas, the skeptical one:
“Lord, we don’t know where you are going, so how can we know the way?” (John 14:5).
About a decade ago, Kim and I had the privilege of “adopting” an international student at our local university into our home for holidays and special occasions. It has developed into a deep mutual friendship.
A Fulbright Scholar, this young man moved to our town to pursue his PhD in civil engineering. It necessitated his leaving home and his young bride in the Middle East to embrace this opportunity. Of course, the first question Kim wanted to know was about how they met.
It was an arranged marriage, like most in his country and many in Jesus’ day. She was a very young bride, who was required to bid her husband farewell after only six months of marriage. She was not allowed by their government to accompany him.
We then asked, “Where is she living?”
His response stunned me:
“Oh, she is living at my father’s house.”
You see, in the Middle East, now and then (Jesus’ time), when a couple get married, the husband will make space in his father’s house for them to live, often by building a new room.
Jesus reminded his disciples that he was “going to prepare a place” for them in his Father’s house (John 14:2).
So how do we get there, Thomas asks.
“I am the way and the truth and the life. No one comes to the Father except through me,” Jesus said (John 14:6).
Those are straightforward directions.
The new birth is not an option or suggestion for persons who want to spend eternity in God’s presence. It is an imperative. There is only one road that leads to Heaven and no shortcuts. The idea that all religions lead to the same place is a hellish lie designed to deceive multitudes of people.
Our culture does not appreciate imperatives. It never has. Today’s Millennials or Gen Z, even Gen Alphas, are not the first generations to insist upon finding their own way in this world. Exploration and a demand for independence are bound into the human heart (Proverbs 22:15).
When grace overwhelms our hearts with prevenient love, we realize that the Holy Spirit leads every generation back to the same eternal address—and the same Person (Matthew 7:7–12).
Imagine the audacity of Jesus to say that there is no other way to God but through Himself. We don’t like exclusivity in our culture, either.
Perhaps the greatest and simplest apologetic for the authority of Jesus’ imperative in John 14:6 was the argument of British scholar C. S. Lewis. Once an agnostic who came to faith in Christ in his late twenties, Lewis said (paraphrasing):
“Jesus Christ is either who He said He was, the Lord God of Heaven, or one can take their pick between liar and lunatic.”
There are no other options.
Nicodemus, you must be born again.
That goes for every other person who ever has or ever will leave shoeprints in the dust of planet Earth.
Physical birth is an awesome analogy of spiritual birth. The parallels are more synonymous than similar. Isn’t it interesting how God designed it that way before ever breathing life (ruach, breath or wind in Hebrew) into Adam’s lungs?
Adam was the only human being never to be born the old-fashioned way. Well, except for the Second Adam (1 Corinthians 15).
Attempting an explanation to Nicodemus about the mystery of the new birth, Jesus said:
“No one can enter the Kingdom of God unless they are born of water and the Spirit” (John 3:5).
There are many reasons, biblically and historically, to support the practice of infant baptism. There is also honest interpretive disagreement in the Body of Christ, and among Wesleyans, about the practice. It is not our purpose to debate that here and now.
However, it is a misinterpretation of John 3:5, in my opinion, to suggest that the water to which Jesus refers is the water of baptism.
In the next verse, Jesus continues the analogy and makes clear what kind of water he is referencing:
“Flesh gives birth to flesh, but the Spirit gives birth to Spirit” (John 3:6).
There is a bag of water, called the amniotic sac, that surrounds a baby in utero until the time of physical delivery. Kim and I were in the grocery store when hers burst before delivering our second child. That is the water of physical birth.
Just as one is born of water, one must also be born of the Spirit. The flesh produces the first kind of water; the Spirit of God produces spiritual life. One cannot produce the other.
And the Church, as vital as it is to our nurturing as newborn babies in Christ (1 Peter 2:2), as well as mature adults (Ephesians 4:11–16), cannot confer salvation upon an individual, no matter how beautiful the ceremony or meaningful the ritual.
Flesh and blood cannot reveal this reality to us, only our Father in heaven (Matthew 16:17).
Now, let’s qualify here: God can and often does use the sacramental practices of a vibrant church as a spiritual midwife in the process of new birth. But no church should presume to believe that it can do the Holy Spirit’s work.
That takes a lot more audacity than Jesus proclaiming to be the only way to the Father.
There is no human or ecclesiastical assembly line to life in Christ. Conception and birth take place in God’s timing.
One reason, among many laudable ones, we like rituals in church life is because they give us a sense of control over things. But God’s birthing schedule cannot be controlled.
Therefore, we must learn to trust people with the Holy Spirit and trust the Holy Spirit with people when it comes to the timing of grace.
Just as a baby is conceived in its mother’s womb in an intimate moment of loving expression, the Holy Spirit conceives Jesus in us through what John Wesley called “prevenient grace,” the grace of God that precedes our spiritual conversion.
It is an intimate and holy moment when a soul is conceived, when an individual, overshadowed by the Holy Spirit, as Luke chapter 1 said of Mary the virgin mother of Jesus, is longing to do something in us that has eternal ramifications.
Like Mary, we have a choice to make. If, like Mary, we respond (paraphrasing again):
“Yes, Lord, have your way in me. I will do whatever you want; all I want is to be yours” (Luke 1:38),
then we are on our way to spiritual birth.
We are then propelled through the Holy Spirit’s birth canal into new life in Christ (1 Corinthians 5:17).
With all due respect, when a church tries to make a baby through ritual observances and sacraments alone, the offspring is always stillborn.
And stillborn babies grow up to be loyal church members who sit in pews and secretly wonder why worship is so boring to them. They have a form of godliness but no spiritual power (2 Timothy 3:5).
Please hear my heart in writing these words. I love the local church. When it works the way God designed it, there is spiritual life abounding.
There is no joy like that experienced by a Sunday School teacher, youth leader, or children’s ministry volunteer participating in leading a person to spiritual birth and subsequent growth.
Sometimes God anoints a confirmation class in such a way that leads an entire group of youth into life-altering encounters with Jesus that spark revival in a congregation or community.
At other times, there is the one quiet teenager who seldom gets noticed in the crowd but is genuinely born again while others go through the motions and give assent to the Catechism.
We are right to value the processes that help us ritualize the reality of life in Christ and practice them.
But, if you are a church leader or pastor, don’t confuse the process with the product. The consequences of that mistake are just too eternally tragic for the people in our care.
And (respectfully), for God’s sake, let us proclaim to our people the plain truth: Only God can do for us and in us what nothing or no one else can do.
Preach the necessity of new birth in Christ for everyone—yes, even to those who assume themselves to be children of God by virtue of being active in church, and much more so to those in our communities who are far from God.
Have you, the reader, been born again? How can we know?
It is not because we have a church certificate, but because the Holy Spirit convinces our own spirit that we are a child of God (Romans 8:15–16).
The flesh/Spirit analogy works well here. How do we know that we are physically alive? There are many signs, but here are three: we breathe, our heart beats, and we get hungry every day.
We can know for certain that we are spiritually alive in Christ because he becomes our breath, our reason for being.
We can know we are spiritually alive because our heart is changed; it beats with the rhythm of God’s heart. What God loves, we love. What offends God breaks our tender new heart.
We can know we are spiritually alive because we hunger for his presence and his Word every day and can’t get enough to eat.
So now let’s circle back to Nicodemus, the man who came to Jesus at night.
Like a future Oxford scholar and son of a prominent Anglican clergyman in England, who would also have his heart strangely warmed by an evening encounter with Christ seventeen centuries later (May 24, 1738), if anyone could gain salvation through religion, it would be Nicodemus and John Wesley.
No, Nicodemus could not find his way back into his mother’s womb. But that night, prevenient grace conceived something in his heart.
We know from Scripture that he helped provide a place for Jesus’ burial (John 19:38–42). More than sympathetic to the cause of Jesus the Christ, Nicodemus had likely been born again.
Oral tradition and some credible church history recounts that he was removed from the Jewish Sanhedrin after the death of Jesus and may have later been martyred.
Surely, Nicodemus was aware of what Jesus had spoken to a grieving family at the tomb of a good friend:
“He who believes in me will live, even though he dies. And he who believes in me will never die” (John 11:24–25).
In fact, it was the resurrection of Lazarus that caused the Jewish rulers to plot the death of this Rabbi Jesus who had gone too far (John 12).
The world says, “We live, then we die.”
But God’s Word says, once we’re born into spiritual life, we never die.
For the Christian, death is not the end of life or the beginning of another life. It is a change of address—the address of the Father’s house.
By Joy Smith Griffin, FAS Board Member
NOTE: This article was originally published in The High Calling, Jan/Feb 2023 issue.
About four weeks into the semester, our women’s softball team had made it into the championship game and we were in the bottom of the ninth inning, up by just one run. We had two outs on the other team, but needed one more out to win the game. The problem was there were runners on second and third bases, so if the ball got through the infield on the ground, it would be all over for my team and the coveted championship. With victory so near I could just about taste it, I was hoping for an easy out with a strike-out or pop fly. But when the ball was pitched, the ace batter connected with a magnificent, rocket-like line drive that was great for the other team but doomsday for ours. Still, I knew there was one last chance, if only I could run fast enough to catch that ball!
I dove into the ground, similar to the way you’d slide into first. Plopping soundly into my glove like ice cream into a cone, that ball and I melded together. We WON! Even as the crowd leapt to their feet and erupted with cheering, my momentary elation was quickly eclipsed by a searing pain and the sudden awareness that I was trapped on the ground, immobilized in my own body.
Instantly paralyzed, I was at the mercy of those around me who rushed to my side. I don’t recall many details because of the shock that temporarily kept me from realizing the desperation of my circumstances, but I do remember the doctors telling me I would never walk again. When I fell, the trauma caused the muscles, nerves, and bone tissue to rip away from my spine, leaving everything inside me in one big, tangled jumble. The internal trauma was so deep that it even caused my monthly periods to stop.
Crushed emotionally as well as physically at the tender age of 22, I tried to wrap my head around the devastating reality that I would never walk down a church aisle to meet my bridegroom. I would never cradle a newborn baby in my arms. I couldn’t even do something as basic as use the toilet. A bedpan became my constant companion next to the pallet that my mother arranged for me on our living room floor.
As distressed as I was by physical infirmity and relentless pain, my most tormenting thought was, Now I’ll never even be able to go out and find someone to help me understand how to become like Jesus. What I didn’t take into account was that Jesus wanted for me to know him even more than I did. He had already set a plan in motion that would forever transform my life.
For the next eighteen months, with the help of a dear pastor, I struggled to understand the meaning of God’s love, holiness, and sanctification. Finally, one muggy July night, I heard, “Joy, just take one step and jump!” The unmistakable voice of Jesus spoke right then and there to me. I could trust him. No longer straddling the fence with one foot in and one foot out, it was as if I had been given a brand-new heart.
This was what I’d been looking for all along, but my heart couldn’t receive it because I had not yet fully surrendered. I gave all I had to him, and he gave me all I would ever need. Himself.
Every summer in the county where we lived in rural Georgia, there were Methodist camp meetings that had taken place annually for at least 150 years. With rustic, open-air structures set in the fragrant, piney woods, these revival meetings would attract young and old from miles around. My family always went, but I hadn’t been able to go the previous year because of my paralysis.
One day shortly after my radical change of heart, my parents came into the living room with the local newspaper. “Joy, look at this! See if you know anybody that’s speaking at the camp meeting next week.” As they held the paper so I could see an article with pictures of the featured speakers, I recognized a classmate from my brief stint at the seminary who would serve as the camp youth director.
“Hey, I know this guy! He was at the seminary with me and we talked about how we were both struggling with what holiness was all about. I would really like to see him and his wife, to tell them all about how Jesus has changed my heart,” I said. My parents knew it was excruciatingly painful for me to be moved, but they suggested perhaps they could lay me in the back seat of the car and take me to the meeting with them. Excited at the prospect of sharing my good news with these friends, I agreed.
Although the deeply-rutted dirt roads made me grit my teeth to endure the pain, I was overjoyed when we arrived at the camp, sensing I was supposed to be there. Laying me and my pallet carefully on the cement porch slab, my parents went off to greet their friends as mine came over and welcomed me back. With my brain and my mouth in serious overdrive, I began to share how Jesus had poured out his love on me through the Holy Spirit.
“Wow, Joy—that’s incredible!” said my friends from the seminary. Just then, a car pulled up and an older gentleman emerged, someone I recognized from his picture in the newspaper article my parents had shown me. I knew he was an evangelist named Tom Barrett from south Georgia and was connected somehow to Asbury Theological Seminary in Kentucky, as well as with Indian Springs Holiness Camp Meeting. Both of these would prove to be incredibly influential in my life.
Coming over to where I was lying on the cement, he peered down at me and said rhetorically, “You’re not lying there for the fun of it, are you?” Before I could even say a thing, my seminary friend jumped in and told him all about my accident. Thinking this man would probably respond with polite sympathy just like everyone else, I had no expectation of anything different. Most people who met me after the accident would say, “Oh, I’m so sorry. I’ll be praying for you.” But no one seemed to have any hope that I could be healed, and no one had actually offered to pray for me in person.
“Have you ever asked God to heal you?” asked Rev. Barrett. Caught completely off guard, I had to take a moment to even think of a response. My inner self was saying, “Don’t you understand that I just pray for enough relief from pain to be able to fall asleep every night?” I didn’t really think healing was an option for me.
Without waiting for a response, Rev. Barrett continued, “Honey, I don’t claim to understand healing. I don’t know why some are healed and some are not; why we sometimes go to church and pray for someone to be healed, and then they die the same week. But I do know that everywhere in the Gospels where it says they brought people to Jesus, he healed them. The Bible says in Hebrews 13:8, ‘Jesus Christ is the same yesterday, and today, and forever.’ It also tells us in James 5:14 to call on the elders to pray. I just want you to know I’m willing to ask Jesus for you to be healed.”
“Yes, sir, I’d like you to pray for me. But I don’t have much expectation.”
“Well, young lady, Jesus says in Matthew 18:19, ‘If two of you agree on earth concerning anything that they ask, it will be done for them by My Father in heaven.’ Before I pray, I want to know what you can agree with me on. Would you agree with me that God could heal you in six months?”
“Yes, sir. But six months is a long way off, and I know that the people I know would not give God the credit if he did heal me because they’d probably say I just got better gradually, or maybe that I’d had a special surgery. I want people to know the same Jesus I know, the Jesus who radically healed my heart two weeks ago. I don’t want any human being to get the credit for what God does because no one is good but God. I want him to get all the glory!”
Now I want to make clear that I firmly believe God uses the gifts he has given doctors and nurses and pharmacologists and other medical personnel to bring healing to his children. I believe most people are healed gradually in that way. Instantaneous healing, at least in the times in which we live, is unusual.
“So, Joy, could you agree with me that God could heal you right now?” he asked.
Bursting into tears, I cried, “No, sir. I can’t. I’m in so much pain and I can’t even move. The doctors say I’ll never move again. I can’t imagine even sitting up in a chair, much less walking or running. I’ll never be able to walk down the aisle to get married or have babies!” I was completely undone.
Persisting gently but firmly, Rev. Barrett said, “I don’t mean to be flippant, Joy. But tell me this: Before two weeks ago, could you ever have imagined feeling the kind of love, joy, and peace God gave you when he sanctified you and filled you with his Spirit?”
Only God could have led him to say that, because it suddenly took my mind off myself and refocused it soundly on Jesus. As I recaptured the glory of the miracle he had done on my heart two weeks before, I realized it was the greatest thing I could ever imagine, even more for me than the miraculous parting of the Red Sea, because Jesus had made my heart totally clean and filled it with his love.
Answering Rev. Barrett’s question, I said, “That was the greatest miracle I could even imagine, having my heart become clean like that. If God could do that for me, I know he can do anything.”
Without asking my permission, brother Tom launched into a conversation with God, so simple and straightforward, no flowery language, no Thee’s and Thou’s. I don’t remember specifically the words he used until he said this: “Father, because of Matthew 18:19, I agree with Joy that it is DONE!”
With those words, everything was suddenly different, as if I had gone absolutely numb. Feeling like I must have fallen asleep, I was aware of the conspicuous absence of pain. I thought, It’s so wonderful to not hurt! I hope nobody wakes me up because I could stay like this forever!
But brother Tom was very present and asked, “Joy, did anything happen?”
“I don’t know,” I said very tentatively, reluctant to verbalize my thoughts.
“Well, can you move anything?” he persisted.
Not stopping to see if I could even wiggle my toes, I shot up off the ground like a rocket. Thrusting my arms up and my legs out, I did jumping jacks, I ran in place, I leaned backwards, performing a back bend like a gymnast—everything I used to do! It was as if I had never been paralyzed. There was absolutely not even any muscle atrophy, something that defies the laws of medical science.
Just a few hours after I leapt off the ground, praising God like the paralyzed beggar in Acts 3, God gave me another miracle. My monthly period, which had been dormant for the past 18 months, suddenly started. God had truly answered every single prayer.
Joy Griffin and her husband, Wes, co-founded the International Leadership Institute (ILI) in 1998 to accelerate the spread of the life-transforming power of the Gospel through training and mobilizing leaders of leaders around the world. A member of the FAS Board of Directors, Joy is the chair of the Outreach Committee. This article is taken from her recent book, Jumping for Joy (Francis Asbury Press, 2022; originally self-published). Used with permission.
By John R. W. Stott (1921–2011)
In his book The Cross of Christ (IVP Books, 1986), John Stott gives a “layman’s introduction” to the monumental work Cur Deus Homo? (“Why Did God become Man?”), written by Anselm (1033–1109), the archbishop of Canterbury. Perhaps no book in history made the connection between Christmas and Good Friday, the Incarnation and the Atonement, more strongly than this one! Stott reminds us that though Anselm’s scholastic reasoning caused him at times to wander beyond the boundaries of the biblical revelation, his ideas continue to be of great importance for serious Christians today. The following article is taken from pages 118–120 of Stott’s book and has been slightly abridged and edited.
In the eleventh century, Anselm of Canterbury offered a fresh approach to understanding the atonement. In his important book Cur Deus Homo? he made a systematic exposition of the cross as a satisfaction of God’s offended honor. James Denney called Anselm’s book “the truest and greatest book on the atonement that has ever been written.”
Anselm was a godly Italian who first settled in Normandy and then in 1093, following the Norman Conquest, was appointed archbishop of Canterbury. He has been described as the first representative of medieval “scholasticism,” which was an attempt to reconcile philosophy and theology, Aristotelian logic and biblical revelation. His overriding concern was to be “agreeable to reason.”
In Cur Deus Homo? Anselm’s great treatise on the relationship between the Incarnation and the Atonement, he agrees that the devil needed to be overcome, but rejects the patristic ransom theories on the ground that “God owed nothing to the devil but punishment.” Instead, humans owed something to God, and this is the debt that needed to be repaid. Anselm defines sin as “not rendering to God what is his due,” namely the submission of our entire will to his. To sin is, therefore, to “take away from God what is his own,” which means to steal from him and so to dishonor him. If anybody imagines that God can simply forgive us in the same way that we are to forgive others, he has not yet considered the seriousness of sin. Being in inexcusable disobedience of God’s known will, sin dishonors and insults him, and “nothing is less tolerable than that the creature should take away from the Creator the honor due to him, and not repay what he takes away.” God cannot overlook this. “It is not proper for God to pass by sin thus unpunished.” It is more than improper; it is impossible. “If it is not becoming to God to do anything unjustly or irregularly, it is not within the scope of his liberty or kindness or will to let go unpunished the sinner who does not repay to God what he has taken away.”
So what can be done? If we are ever to be forgiven, we must repay what we owe. Yet we are incapable of doing this, either for ourselves or for other people. Our present obedience and good works cannot make satisfaction for our sins, since these are required of us anyway. So, we cannot save ourselves. Nor can any other human being save us, since “one who is a sinner cannot justify another sinner.” Hence the dilemma with which Book One ends: “man the sinner owes to God, on account of sin, what he cannot repay, and unless he repays it he cannot be saved.”
Near the beginning of Book Two, the only possible way out of the human dilemma is unfolded: “there is no-one who can make this satisfaction except God himself. But no-one ought to make it except man.” Therefore, “it is necessary that one who is God-man should make it.” A being who is God and not man, or man and not God, or a mixture of both and therefore neither man nor God, would not qualify. “It is needful that the very same Person who is to make this satisfaction be perfect God and perfect man, since no-one can do it except one who is truly God, and no-one ought to do it except one who is truly man.” This leads Anselm to introduce Christ. He was (and is) a unique Person, since in him “God the Word and man meet.” He also performed a unique work, for he gave himself up to death—not as a debt (since he was sinless and therefore under no obligation to die) but freely for the honor of God.
The greatest merits of Anselm’s exposition are that he perceived clearly the extreme gravity of sin (as a willful rebellion against God in which the creature affronts the majesty of his Creator), the unchanging holiness of God (as unable to condone any violation of his honor), and the unique perfections of Christ (as the God-man who voluntarily gave himself up to death for us).
This article was first published in The High Calling, November-December 2018 issue.
By D. James Kennedy (1930–2007)
Evangelist, broadcaster, author, and for many years senior pastor of Coral Ridge Presbyterian Church (Fort Lauderdale, FL), Dr. Kennedy responds to the anti-Christian sentiment in our culture by emphasizing the positive impact Christ has made upon human history. In his book What If Jesus Had Never Been Born? (Nelson Books, 1994), he imagines what our planet would be like if Christmas had never happened. The following abridged and slightly edited article is taken from the first chapter, “Christ and Civilization” (1–8).
Some people have made transformational changes in one department of human learning or in one aspect of human life, and their names are forever enshrined in the annals of human history. But Jesus Christ, the greatest man who ever lived, changed virtually every aspect of human life—and most people don’t know it. The greatest tragedy of the Christmas holiday each year is not so much its commercialization (gross as that is), but its trivialization. How tragic it is that people have forgotten him to whom they owe so very much.
Jesus says in Revelation 21:5, “Behold, I make all things new.” The word “behold” means, “note well,” “look closely,” “examine carefully.” Everything that Jesus Christ touched, he utterly transformed. He touched time when he was born into this world; his birthday utterly altered the way we measure time. Now, the whole world counts time as bc, Before Christ, and ad. Unfortunately, in most cases, our illiterate generation today doesn’t even know that ad means anno Domini, “in the year of our Lord.” It’s ironic that the most vitriolic atheist writing a propagandistic letter to a friend must acknowledge Christ when he dates that letter.
Jesus said that the kingdom of heaven is like a mustard seed, which is tiny in and of itself, but, when fully grown, provides shade and a resting place for many birds. This parable certainly applies to an individual who embraces Christ; it also applies to Christianity in the world.
Christianity’s roots were small and humble—an itinerant rabbi preached and did miracles for three and a half years around the countryside of subjugated Israel. And today there are more than 1.8 billion professing believers in him found in most of the nations of the earth! There are tens of millions today who make it their life’s aim to serve him alone. Napoleon said: “I search in vain in history to find the similar to Jesus Christ, or anything which can approach the gospel . . . . Nations pass away, thrones crumble, but the Church remains.”
Despite its humble origins, the Church has made more changes on earth for the good than any other movement in history. To get an overview of some of the positive contributions Christianity has made through the centuries, here are a few highlights:
The last one mentioned, the salvation of souls, is the primary goal of the spread of Christianity. All the other benefits listed are basically just by-products of what Christianity has often brought when applied to daily living.
Many are familiar with the 1946 film classic It’s a Wonderful Life, wherein the character played by Jimmy Stewart gets a chance to see what life would be like had he never been born. In many ways this terrific movie directed by Frank Capra is the springboard for this book. The main point of the film is that each person’s life has impact on everybody else’s life. Had they never been born, there would be gaping holes left by their absence. My point in this book is that Jesus Christ has had enormous impact—more than anybody else—on history. Had he never come, the hole would be a canyon about the size of a continent.
But some people wish Christ had never been born. Not all have been happy about Jesus’s birth. Friedrich Nietzsche, the nineteenth-century atheist philosopher who coined the phrase “God is dead,” likened Christianity to poison that has infected the whole world. “I condemn Christianity,” he wrote in his book The AntiChrist. “It is, to me, the greatest of all imaginable corruptions . . . . it has turned every value into worthlessness, and every truth into a lie.”
Many of the ideas of Nietzsche were put into practice by his philosophical disciple, Hitler, and about 6 million Jews died as a result. Both Nietzsche and Hitler wished that Christ had never been born. Others share this sentiment. My purpose in writing is to say to Nietzsche and to Hitler, as well as to Freud, Lenin, Stalin, Mao, the ACLU, anti-faith college professors, leaders in Hollywood who constantly denigrate Christianity, and anti-Christians of the past and present, that the overwhelming impact of Christ’s life on Planet Earth has been positive, not negative.
The next twelve chapters will look at a dozen areas where Christianity has made important contributions to world civilization. Then, we will also deal with the negative aspect of the Church’s track record in history. We’ll deal with the sins of the Church, trying to come to grips from a Christian perspective with the Crusades, the Inquisition, and anti-Semitism by the Church. But we will also look at the sins of atheism. We will show how the post-Christian West ventured into a much more bloody history precisely because the restraints of Christianity were removed. We’ll also put to rest the myth so often repeated that “more people have been killed in the name of Christ than in any other.”
Dr. James Allan Francis puts Christ’s life and influence into perspective so well in his famous narrative One Solitary Life, which concludes with these words:
Nineteen centuries have come and gone, and today he is [still] the central figure of the human race. All the armies that ever marched, all the navies that ever sailed, all the parliaments that ever sat, all the kings that ever reigned, put together, have not affected the life of man on this earth as much as that one solitary life.
This article first appeared in The High Calling, November-December 2018 issue.
By Stan Key
Getting out of Egypt and beginning the journey to spiritual wholeness is both harder and easier than you might think. Before we begin to follow Christ, we tend to think that the hard part will be discerning the way, finding provisions, winning the battles, and going the distance. As for putting our faith in God, that’s easy. However, once embarked on the journey of salvation, we discover that just the opposite is true. The easy part is doing the walk and freely receiving God’s gracious provision every step of the way. But trusting in God when all hell is breaking loose? This may be the hardest thing we’ve ever done! “Lord, I believe; help my unbelief!” (Mark 9:24).
Paul put it this way: “By grace you have been saved through faith” (Eph. 2:8a, emphasis added). Salvation is “not a result of works.” All we must do is believe. It sounds easy, doesn’t it? But have you tried believing the promises of God lately? Listen to me: trusting in God is not only difficult, it’s impossible! Unless God touches your doubt-filled heart with grace, you will never be able to do it—never. But that is precisely what God wants to do. He stands ready to graciously enable your stubborn, rebellious heart to grab hold of those precious promises and believe! “This is not your own doing; it is the gift of God” (Eph. 2:8b, emphasis added).
Nothing better illustrates both how easy and how hard redemption is than the story of the passage through the Red Sea as told in Exodus 12–14. It all begins with a lamb. Who could have imagined that deliverance from slavery would begin this way? Each family was to take a lamb and kill it at twilight. By putting lamb’s blood on the two doorposts and the lintel of their houses, they would be spared when the angel of death passed over the land. The flesh of the lamb was to be roasted and then eaten to provide strength and nourishment for the journey ahead (see Ex. 12:3–13, 24–27). No one gets out of bondage without first getting “under” the lamb’s blood and eating its flesh. The lamb dies so that we can live. Redemption starts here!
With the completion of the Passover meal, the people of God began their journey. God provided a pillar of fire to be a constant source of direction every step of the way (see Ex. 13:17–21). God had given his people something far better than a map: they had a guide.
The air must have been thick with excitement as the people set out on their journey. Perhaps they sang and danced as they followed the pillar of fire before them. Surprisingly, God led them to the shore of the Red Sea where steep mountains rose on both sides. They were boxed in. God had led them to a place where there was no way out—and the Egyptian army was in hot pursuit (see Ex. 14:5–9). Had God led them into a trap? Many threw up their hands in despair. “Is it because there are no graves in Egypt that you have taken us away to die in the wilderness?” the people grumbled to Moses. “It would have been better for us to serve the Egyptians than to die in the wilderness” (Ex. 14:11–12). What looked like disaster, however, was about to be transformed into victory!
In the biblical story, water is often associated with salvation. Just as the waters of the flood carried the ark to safety while at the same time destroying those who persisted in unbelief, so the water of the Red Sea provided redemption for the faithful but judgment on those who rebelled against God. As in baptism, water symbolizes a new beginning.
The story of what happened at the Red Sea illustrates what it takes for God to accomplish our salvation. Most importantly, it takes a promise from God. True freedom is never the result of human effort or wishful thinking. Our sins hold us in a stronger grip than we can break on our own. Without divine help, we will remain in bondage forever. However, if the sovereign God makes us a promise of deliverance then everything changes. This promise was heard most forcefully perhaps when God said to Moses at the burning bush: “I promise that I will bring you up out of the affliction of Egypt to the land of the Canaanites… a land flowing with milk and honey” (Ex. 3:17, emphasis added).
But a promise, to be effective, must be believed. No one experiences redemption who does not put into practice what the New Testament calls “the obedience of faith” (see Rom. 1:5; 16:26). At the Red Sea, when faced with an impossible situation, the people of God discovered that faith meant more than an intellectual acknowledgment of the truth about God. Even demons have this kind of “faith” (see James 2:19). God’s people gave evidence of genuine, saving faith when they responded to the three commands that came to them at the Red Sea.
And Moses said to the people, “Fear not, stand firm, and see the salvation of the Lord, which he will work for you today. For the Egyptians whom you see today, you shall never see again. The Lord will fight for you, and you have only to be silent.” The Lord said to Moses, “Why do you cry to me? Tell the people of Israel to go forward.” (Exodus 14:13–15)
Fear not. When the Bible tells us not to fear, it doesn’t mean we are not to have feelings of fear. Rather, it means we are not to be controlled by our fears. As emotional beings, few of us can stop from trembling in the face of sudden danger. But we can control whether we permit our fears to lead us into paralysis and disobedience.
Stand firm. We can easily imagine at this point what the Hebrews may have been tempted to do: run, hide, negotiate, surrender, swim, etc. However, such responses would have thwarted the deliverance that God was about to perform. In this situation, the command was straightforward and clear: be still and let God do the rest. This was his battle. We are familiar with the adage, “Don’t just stand there; do something!” For the Hebrews, their challenge was to do just the opposite: “Don’t do anything; just stand there!”
Go forward. God had just told the people to be still and do nothing. Now, he tells them to march forward. Though the commands at first seem contradictory, they are really two ways of saying the same thing. The key is timing. There is a time for passive trust, and there is a time for active obedience. When we remember that the waters of the Red Sea had not yet parted at the time this command was given, we begin to realize what a bold step of faith they were being called to make! But as the people resolved to trust God and simply do what he told them to do, Moses held up his rod, the waters divided, and a highway appeared through the sea. God made a way where there was no way. Often God delivers his people through their difficulties rather than from them.
This issue of The High Calling is about the all-important first step on the journey of salvation. Some call it conversion, others the new birth, and still others justification by faith. Whatever the term, the Red Sea refers to that crisis moment when we are empowered to step boldly forward in the obedience of faith. If you have never made that step, we pray this may be the moment for you to come to a life-changing decision. It is both easier and harder than you think!
[Editor’s Note: This article is from the May/June 2020 issue of The High Calling.]
The first thought that slowly got my attention was the fact that the Bible begins its message to us by telling us the way things are supposed to be, not the way things are. What did God have in mind when he created all this world? I listen to the daily news and think, ”What a jungle!” In Genesis, I learned that this is not the way he made it. He made a garden, a paradise that we call the Garden of Eden. God did not put his children in a mess for them to straighten out. His intent was that we should live in a garden where our work would be a joy. That was a bit of a shock, and I was a little slow absorbing it. Then I noticed something else that was hard for me to absorb. In the first two chapters of Genesis, there is a lot written about work. The Garden of Eden was not like a place where you retire to play golf. The story found in those first two chapters is all about work. The surprise to me though was that it is not about Adam working. This story is not like the other creation stories of the world. The worker in these first two chapters is God himself, and he is working for man, not demanding that man work for him. Apparently, God likes to work. The Bible seems to tell us this, and Jesus, his Son, told the disciples that his Father works (John 5:18–21). In fact, Moses seems to think that God has a regular work schedule.
In the Garden, the servant is not Adam. It is God figuring out what more his creature would need and might enjoy. When he forms Eve out of Adam himself and gives her to Adam, Adam is clearly quite delighted. As I read it this time, I remembered my own wedding. It was a bit of a surprise to me to notice that my father-in-law seemed almost more proud of what was happening than I was as he watched me steal his precious daughter from him. I wonder if God was not thinking joyously of the possibility now for Bethlehem and the New Jerusalem. That may be supposition on my part, but the first chapter is clear that God was pleased with what he had done in that first week of work. Right before he formed Adam out of the dust of the earth, God looked at everything he had made and said: “Good!” He then formed Adam from the very dirt of the earth. (The Hebrew name Adam is taken from the Hebrew word ‘adamah, which is the term for the dirt of the earth.) He then spoke a second time: “Very good!” I wondered if Michelangelo felt like that when he finished his David or his Pieta.
Thinking about the Garden took me back a number of decades. I remembered what it was like growing up during the depression. My father came home one day and told my mother that the bank in which our family kept its savings had gone bankrupt, and we had lost all that they had carefully saved. He changed his clothes. He got his hoe. He headed off for his garden, singing. I think it was “How fi rm a foundation, ye saints of the Lord, Is laid for your faith in His excellent Word!… Fear not, I am with thee, O be not dismayed, For I am thy God and will still give thee aid.” The family had to be fed, and the means was a garden. So for the next decade, we extracted most of the food on which we lived from a big vegetable garden. My father worked it early every morning and after work every evening. I have a strange memory. I do not remember my father being sad when he came home from his law office and changed his clothes as he prepared to go work in the dirt of the garden. It was almost as if he had endured his work day to get to his garden.
There was another garden in my life, though. It was my mother’s! It was a flower garden. It was not quite as big as the vegetable garden, but it was as big as the lot on which our house sat. It was the joy of my mother’s life. My mother was not strong. I would watch her as she worked around the house to care for the family and how she would tire. It was obvious. In the afternoons, she would slip out into her garden. There she worked among her dahlias, her tulips, and her roses. When she came back in, there was a new look on her face. The lines had changed. The sparkle in her eyes had returned, and she was ready to fi x supper. And in her hands she always brought a handful of flowers that she had cut so that she could bring something of the beauty of the garden into our home for her loved ones.
As I thought about the contrast between the picture of man and his world that the first two chapters of Genesis give us and the picture of what human life was like when man found himself outside the garden, some unexpected questions began to grip me. One had to do with a biblical understanding of work. The other had to do with the nature of joy. There is nothing in those fi rst two chapters of Genesis that seems to imply that work ought to be onerous, something from which one should want to escape. We, in our ignorance, may think that a paradise— and that is what we have thought the Garden of Eden actually was—would be a place of joy where others might work, but we would not have to work. Funny, the third chapter of Genesis tells us how work became something that a normal person would want to escape. We call it the curse, which comes because of sin. It is there we cease to enjoy the world in which we live. The world that once was a garden is now more jungle, and we have to extract from it—onerously—enough for life. What caused the change?
A superficial reading of chapter three has caused many of us to find the cause of the tragic change to be produced by the fruit of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil from which Eve ate when God told her not to. As I read this time, I realized that the big change is shown in the difference between Genesis 1–2 and Genesis 3. In Genesis 1 and 2, the work is for someone other than oneself. However, the work at the end of chapter 3 is contaminated by the self-centeredness that Adam and Eve had chosen. Could that self-centeredness be what turns joy into onerous duty? I think it may be.
I hope you have someone in your life for whom it is a joy to spend yourself. If so, I think you are among those the Bible would call rich.
[This article was originally published in The High Calling, January/February 2015.]
