In recent years there has been a growing trend towards entertainment in the church.  Church buildings are constructed like theaters.  The focus of the building is a stage rather than a pulpit and colored lights and elaborate sound systems are installed. 

In some of these churches multi-million dollar screens and closed circuit television pipe the messages of the “star” pastors to far flung satellite churches in differing locales.  Behind this trend is the notion that the church must sell the gospel to unbelievers.  Churches thus compete for the consumer on the same level as the latest TV reality show or a major motion picture.  More and more churches are relying on marketing strategy to sell the church. 

I have believed for years that Arminian theology is what drives this approach.  If one views conversion as fundamentally dependent on an act of the human will then any method is good if it works.

This whole plan for “doing church” presumes that church services are primarily for the purpose of recruiting unbelievers.  But in the New Testament church services are primarily for believers to worship God in spirit and in truth. 

Acts 2:42 tells us the pattern the early church followed in their assemblies:  “They were continually devoting themselves to the apostles’ teaching and to fellowship, to the breaking of bread and to prayer.” Note that the early church’s priorities clearly were to worship God and to edify the brethren.  The church came together for worship and edification; it scattered to evangelize the world.

In Matthew 28:19-20 the Lord Jesus Christ commissioned His disciples to “go into all the world proclaiming the gospel” not to wait for them to come to the church building.

At North Athens Baptist Church it is my desire that everyone feel welcome to meet with us, but unbelievers ought to be a bit uncomfortable.  The reason for this is because our services are primarily designed to worship God by the word and the ordinances of baptism and the Lord’s Supper.  These are things that the unbeliever has no frame of reference for until God regenerates them through our gospel witness and the converting power of the Holy Spirit.

Of all the truths of the Christian faith perhaps the one that 21^st century men find most distasteful is the exclusivity of Jesus Christ in salvation.  The great cry of our day is for tolerance and pluralism and this cry is being heard in the church as well as in secular society. 

Evangelicals maintain that salvation is to be found in Christ alone, by grace alone, through faith alone.  There are not many roads to heaven there is only one, Jesus Christ.  Men will laud our theology so long as we do not claim that Christ alone can provide the forgiveness of sin and righteousness that God demands for entrance into eternal life.  Yet, the Bible makes it abundantly clear that there is no salvation for anyone outside of Jesus. 

Acts 4:12 states unequivocally: “And there is salvation in no one else, for there is no other name under heaven given among men by which we must be saved.”  The apostles were merely echoing the words of Jesus Himself for He taught them in John 14:6 that he is the only way to the Father and so the only way to heaven and eternal life. 

If this truth is compromised then we are on a slippery slope that eventually leads to a loss of the gospel itself.  Dr Albert Mohler has written an article that speaks about this issue and of the continued health of the evangelical church.  It is interesting reading and can be found here.

The recent death of Michael Jackson has once again focused attention on the celebrity worship that is rampant in America and indeed, the world.  We are a culture that is infatuated with fame and the cult of celebrity has become a virtual religion whose congregants really worship themselves by giving their praise and adoration to the rich and famous that they wish to copy. 

 Years ago Andy Warhol famously prophesied that “…in the future everyone will be world famous for fifteen minutes.”  It seems that there is no price that people will not pay, no humiliation that they will not endure in order to achieve their fifteen minutes.  The sin of idolatry is at the heart of this cult.  Idolatry occurs when men and women love something else more than they love God (Mark 12:30-31; Revelation 2:4-5) when they serve something other than Him (1 Thess 1:9); when He is not the object of their praise (Deut 6:14). 

Paul makes it clear in the Book of Romans, chapter 1 that when men and women will not worship God they naturally worship something else (Romans 1:25).  When the worship of God is absent men substitute the worship of something or someone He has created.  But the sad truth is that none of these counterfeits will ever fill the emptiness of the human soul that was made for God and can only find true satisfaction when people worship Him in spirit and in truth.

Today we celebrate our Independence as a nation.  The privilege of living in this country is a gift from God and we should be thankful for the freedom that we enjoy.  However, the greatest freedom is not political but spiritual and it was procured for us at a price far beyond the blood of mortal men.  Dan Phillips of the TeamPyro Blogspot, has an excellent article on this here.  We should all contemplate this day what real freedom means.

One of the most militant of the new atheists is Dr Richard Dawkins, former professor at Oxford University.  He is the author of numerous books that tout evolution and atheism and recently bought ads on London buses trying to promote his worldview.  He is militantly anti-Christian, indeed he is against all religions but seems to especially hate Christianity.  He is now involved in an attempt to persuade children against religion by enrolling them in a “Summer Camp for Atheists.”  Dr Albert Mohler, President of The Southern Baptist Theological Seminary, has written about this camp in an article you can find here.  This is interesting reading.

What in the world is an ordo salutis?  If you had one would you know it?  Why do theologians have to use Latin phrases anyway?  Well, I’m no theologian but I do read works on theology and this term simply means, “order of salvation.”  In the discussion about original sin and free will the question arises: what is the relationship between regeneration (the new birth) and faith?  Is the new birth a monergistic or synergistic work?  In other words is the new birth a work of God’s grace upon the sinner or does the sinner work with God to produce his regeneration?  Does a person have to believe on Jesus Christ in order to be born again or does a person have to be born again in order to believe?  These are important questions and what you believe about original sin and free will determines how you answer them.  If man is born innocent and is not a sinner until he chooses to commit sin, as Pelagius taught, then without the assistance of grace he can choose to obey God.  Theoretically, in this system of thought he could be sinless as Jesus was, since everything is dependent on his choices and not God’s grace.  If man is free to believe (as Arminius taught) and is capable of receiving the gift of salvation from God by his own will then he is born again after he believes.  But if man is dead in his sins (Eph 2:1) and incapable of seeking God (Rom 3:11) because he is by nature a child of wrath, then he will not and cannot believe unless God enables him to do so by sovereign grace.  In our experience regeneration and faith happen instantaneously but regeneration is a logical necessity to faith.  How can dead men believe?  How can those who are spiritually unresponsive respond?  In John chapter 3 Jesus met a ruler of the Jews, a man who was deeply religious and told him that unless he was “…born again” (or from above) he could not see the kingdom of God.  Jesus said in John 6:44, “No one can come to me unless the Father who sent me draws him…”  In the original language it means “no one is able to come to me.”  This implies that no human being in the world, on his own, has the moral and spiritual ability to come to Jesus unless the Father gives him the desire and the inclination.  It is clear that a sinner must believe the gospel to be saved but I think the Bible clearly teaches that God must graciously enable the sinner to believe.  That makes salvation completely monergistic and totally a work of grace.  It also means that all the glory for our conversion goes to God alone.

In Ephesians 2:1 the Apostle Paul says this about the believers in Ephesus: “And you were dead in trespasses and sins…”  Some years ago a movie circulated in American theaters entitled The Way We Were.  It was a nostalgic look at the past, which is the way most people want to remember earlier years.  In the first verses of Ephesians 2 Paul, too, looks at the past.  Only his view is not nostalgic.  On the contrary, it is filled with the utmost realism.  Many have pointed out that these first three verses of Ephesians 2 are a short summary statement of what is found in the first three chapters of Romans.  This caused Paul to paint one of the most pessimistic pictures of human nature found anywhere.  Paul first plumbs the depths of pessimism about man. However, after he has done this he also “rises to the heights of optimism about God” and of how his grace saves sinners.  How are we to assess human nature? In the whole history of the human race there have only been three basic answers to that question.  The first is that man is healthy, man is sick and the Biblical answer: man is dead.  Like a spiritual corpse, a sinner is unable to make a single move toward God, think a single thought about God, or even correctly respond to God-unless God is first present to bring the spiritually dead person to life, which is what Paul says God does.  There is a phrase in verse 3 that shows the seriousness of deadness.  At the end it says, “We were by nature children of wrath, like the rest of mankind.” In other words the things we have done to bring the wrath of God upon us we have done by nature.  We need a Savior not just because we have sinned, but because we are by nature sinners.  At the end of verse two it says that we are “sons of disobedience.” Which is another way of saying that disobedience is in our spiritual genes.  Rebellion runs in the human family.  It is part of our sinful nature.  Now what does that have to do with being dead? It sounds like we were very much alive and active in our rebellion and disobedience.  Indeed we were.  But in being alive to disobedience we were dead to obedience.  In being alive to rebellion we were dead to submission.  In being alive to unbelief we were dead to faith.  We had no living spiritual nature to incline us to do anything for the glory of God and in reliance on his power.  And lacking that spiritual nature we were dead: dead to righteousness, dead to holiness, dead to obedience, and dead to faith.  Spiritually speaking I was dead.  Without a Savior I had no spiritual inclinations at all, for there was no spiritual life at all.  And therefore I needed a Savior not only to forgive me for my sins, but also to give me spiritual life so that my heart would incline to trust him and obey him.  In these verses, as in the first three chapters of Romans, we see clearly outlined the nature of man without God.  So when Christians discuss the “free will of man” here is where they must begin.  Man will always act according to his nature.  What is his nature?  He is “…dead in trespasses and sins…and by nature children of wrath…” 

One of the debates that has raged in the church since its early days has been over the matter of free will.  In the 5^th century a British monk by the name of Pelagius took exception to a prayer of Augustine that said: “Grant what thou commandest, and command what thou dost desire.”  Pelagius had no quarrel with the last phrase in the prayer but the first one greatly angered him.  He deduced, correctly, that Augustine was saying that divine grace was necessary for a human being to obey God’s commands.  For Pelagius the command to obey implies the ability to obey.  He postulated that if God commands people to believe in Christ, then they have the power to believe in Christ without the assistance of grace.  Pelagius believed that man had autonomous free will and if that free will were properly exercised then man could achieve whatever was required by God in matters of morality and religion.  Augustine argued correctly that if God is sovereign then man cannot be autonomous and if man is autonomous then God cannot be sovereign.  The two are mutually exclusive ideas.  The church in several councils agreed with Augustine and Pelagius was condemned as a heretic.  At the time of the Reformation this debate raged again between Martin Luther and Erasmus and prompted Luther to write what he considered his most important work,  The Bondage of the Will.  This issue is important and continues to be debated (though many believers are unaware of the issue) because it goes to the heart of the Christian faith.  It affects ones “order of salvation” and largely determines how we do evangelism.  To answer the question posed by the title: Does Man Have Free Will? I would answer that man is free to act according to his nature.  In the next article I will write more on fallen man’s nature and more about this doctrine.

The prevailing view of fathers in our society is heavily influenced by Hollywood and the television “fathers” we watch.  For the most part they are a sad, pitiful group of ignorant buffoons that can barely get through the day without help from their wives.  Dr Albert Mohler suggests in an article here that this is due to the radical feminism that pervades the entertainment culture and the academic world.  His assessment to me is right on target.  We need men to step up and fill the role of a father in the way that the New Testament demands.  The older that I get the more I am grateful for my father.  My Dad was a member of the “Greatest Generation” he fought his way across Europe, serving in the United States Army in World War II and then came home to build a better world for his children.  He had very little formal education and worked in a factory his whole life but I cannot imagine having a better role model.  He loved God, my Mom, his children and his church.  For a long time it was difficult for him to tell us that he loved us, he just went out and proved it every day by the way he lived.  The concept of a loving heavenly Father was never difficult for me to grasp because of his love.  I remember seeing an interview of a well known movie star some years ago and in it he said: “Down south they say you are not a man until your Daddy says you are.”  Implicit in that statement is the idea that deep down all men want their fathers to be proud of them.  It has been my great privilege in life not only to have a Godly father but also to have been blessed with two sons who are also good fathers.  They are striving to bring up their children in the “fear and admonition of the Lord.”  In our culture today that is not an easy task and I admire their efforts.  If your father is still living take time today to tell him you appreciate him and love him.  If, like me, your father has already gone to heaven, be thankful for his influence in your life.  And if you have sons pray for them and tell them you are proud of their efforts to be men of God and good fathers.  So to David Robert and John Felix: Happy Father’s Day boys, you are good men and your Daddy is proud of you.

Today was a day for doing unpleasant tasks and one of them was spraying weed killer around the house.  Our yard is not particularly good for growing grass, as a matter of fact, I have probably spread approximately a million pounds of grass seed on it over the last 18 years and about three blades of grass have come up!  However, the weeds come up everywhere.  A gravel drive on one side of the house is covered in them and they are constantly coming up through the landscaping gravel in the flower beds.  The other day I told my wife that the way to get really good ground cover over the yard would be to gravel it.  Why is it that weeds are so prevalent?  Well, because we live in a fallen world and the sin of Adam not only affected him and his posterity but the physical creation as well.  Concerning the earth, God told Adam after the fall: “…cursed is the ground because of you…thorns and thistles it shall bring forth for you…” (Gen 3:17-18).  As the creation has been affected so has man.  The doctrine of Total Depravity means that man, like the earth, is radically corrupt.  That does not mean that man is as wicked as he can possibly be; even Hitler loved his dog.  It does mean that corruption pervades our lives and that our lives deteriorate as time progresses.  It also means that apart from the life changing power of Jesus Christ there is nothing that fallen man can do that pleases God.  We may please other men and do things that are applauded by them as being noble, virtuous and beautiful but they do not merit us any favor from God.  In order to please God our sin must first be dealt with, not just our “sins” but our sin nature.