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2 Thessalonians 1:8 He will punish those who do not know God and do not obey the gospel of our Lord Jesus. (NIV)
This is one of those verses in the New Testament that progressive Christians hate. It draws a line between those who believe in Christ and those who don’t. It mentions a punishment for those who disobey Christ. The only way around this is to declare something like: “this was necessary for the first Christians; we are not bound by this scripture today.’
That’s why conservative Christians loathe liberals and pity progressives. They recognize the value and worth in Christ’s Church applying boundaries to our faith. There are things that we need to believe. They are lessons that come from God. There are limits as to how we should live our lives.
When this piece of scripture was written by Paul, the people believed that Christ’s return was imminent. Because this belief was so rampant amongst the Christian community, they lived faithfully. What they feared most was not persecution or death, arrest or imprisonment. The early Christian communities feared disappointing Jesus, especially when He returned to judge the whole earth.
These days, we have become so blasé about Christ’s Second Coming. It’s been two thousand years since He walked on the earth, so what makes us feel that He’s going to suddenly appear now? Some liberals and progressives actually believe that there is no Second Coming and God will be gracious to everybody who has ever lived on earth. Heaven will accommodate Satanists and Agnostics, Pagans and Heathens, Atheists and anti-Christian believers. Christ will be set aside, so that deities like Krishna and Kali, Loki and Thor, Zeus and Hera can take their rightful places beside God.
Do you understand how absurd all of that is? Do you realize now why Christ alone has the power, authority, and right to judge us? He is God’s Holy Son, who gave His life for all of us. If the whole earth became Christian overnight, this would be a wonderful planet to live on because everyone would be bound for glory and everybody would love one another.
We can’t pick and choose bits of the New Testament to suit ourselves, our life style choices, or our moral behavior. We all make mistakes and cannot live up to God’s expectations, but we can come to Jesus and seek His forgiveness, look for His love, and experience His blessing without demeaning His life, work, ministry, and teaching.
There’s only one way to be a progressive, liberal Christian…to progress onward and upward to God through the liberating grace of our Lord Jesus Christ.
Prayer: Lord Jesus, there’s a whole world of people who need to hear the Gospel to liberate them from fear and anxiety, superstition and unbelief. Help us to do what we can to share the Good News and to express our solid beliefs in You. In Your Holy Name, we pray. Amen.
Short daily devotions for busy Christians and Church meetings
12 comments:
Stushie,
This little sermon makes the classic Fundamentalist mistake of confusing obedience with belief. The verse clearly states that punishment is to those who do not “obey” the gospel of our Lord Jesus. Yet you immediately jumped to “There are things that we need to believe.”
This verse says nothing about what you need to believe! “Obey” is a “do” not a “believe”. Ask any soldier. Ask any employee. Ask any servant or slave.
It is my experience that Liberals and Progressives are much more concerned with “obeying” the gospel than the Fundamentalists. If you bump into a Fundamentalist on the street, they want to know if you have right beliefs. If you bump into a Liberal or a Progressive they want to know what you are doing. About everything. The only doings Fundamentalists seem to worry about are your sexual doings. Well, that and abortion. But for the Fundamentalist, the sanctity of unborn human life is the exception, not the rule. A pro-life liberal is also against war and the death penalty and tends to worry about the environment, the garden God gave us to care for, while a pro-life Fundamentalist seems to think killing all other non-Christian life forms is at worse a necessary evil, and at best a God given mission in life.
As far as ‘knowing’ God, the best scriptural interpretation to that statement comes from John who says it means to “love”, because “those who do not love do not know God because God >is< love.”
It seems that unless you continually prove yourself worthy by right believing (they will tell you what that is, don’t worry) the only Fundamentalist that will ever really love you, if she happens to be one, is your own Mother.
No, what I get from that verse is that if God is going to punish people, he is much more likely to punish disobedient Fundamentalists than disbelieving Liberals or Progressives. The only way to be a Fundamentalist and escape punishment is to rely on the fundamental mercy of God, and if that means sharing that mercy with “Satanists and Agnostics, Pagans and Heathens, Atheists and anti-Christian”, wouldn’t you agree it is still a bargain?
Jodie
Sorry, Jodie, you are way off kilter here. Time and time again in the Gospels God calls upon us to believe in His Son. Believing is obedience and our subsequent acts of faihtfulness are the works we do in the world, but they do not gain us any credit for salvation in God's eyes.
Christ is the only way to salvation...and yet, again, just as the candidate for ministry displayed, you are expressing universalist principles when you write that;
"and if that means sharing that mercy with “Satanists and Agnostics, Pagans and Heathens, Atheists and anti-Christian”, wouldn’t you agree it is still a bargain?"
That is classic universalism, Jodie, not Christianity. That's why I pity progressives; they walk off the path that leads to Christ and don't realize it.
Try reading Pilgrims Progress, Jodie - that's a Progressive path that I would heartily recommend.
Stushie,
Why Pilgrim's Progress?!
Personally I pity the Fundamentalists more than the Progressives, although at times I fear them more as well. Given a chance, their capacity for hurting others in the name of religion is almost limitless.
If the Universalists get the meaning of the Gospel and obey it, I have less of a problem with them than I do with the Fundamentalists who don't.
I don't mind sharing God's grace with the Universalists in the least.
Which doesn't prove that I'm off kilter or a Universalist myself, but probably does prove I am not a Fundamentalist.
One of the problems we have since the enlightenment took us back to Greek philosophy is the propensity for understanding things in polar opposites. Greek dualism had a tendency to contrive that if belief in Christ led to salvation, then disbelief obviously led to perdition, but the Scriptures never really go there, do they?
Greek philosophy was by definition a means to salvation through right thinking and believing, and there is a lot to say for sound rational thinking, but it's not really how the (Hebrew) Scriptures define the Gospel.
Again, not off kilter, but definitely not a Fundamentalist doctrine.
Jodie
See, Jodie, there you again, off kilter.
You write: “Greek dualism had a tendency to contrive that if belief in Christ led to salvation, then disbelief obviously led to perdition, but the Scriptures never really go there, do they?”
Obviously you’ve not read the Gospel of John, otherwise you would know John 3:18 off by heart:
John 3:18 Whoever believes in him is not condemned, but whoever does not believe stands condemned already because he has not believed in the name of God's one and only Son.
As well as reading Pilgrim’s Progress, Jodie, maybe you should read the New Testament.
Stushie,
Thanks for your reply. Not to try your patience too much, but it could be that you presume too much.
Memorizing bible verses has the well known effect of causing out of context mistaken interpretations. Much better to memorize the entire text that contains the verse. I knew a pastor once who knew the entire bible by heart.
The passage you quote is firmly sandwiched between “do” statements. A deeper reading of it shows an interplay between “do” and “believe” with the clear implication that there is no belief without love doing, and that those who stand convicted as non-believers are the religious bible scholars who in spite of their biblical knowledge still practice evil, thus choosing to remain in darkness. This is not confessional disbelief or disbelief for lack of knowledge, but disbelief as demonstrated by evil doing on the part of deeply religious people who knew their Scriptures quite well.
In today’s America, it is the Fundamentalists that are most demonstrating disbelief through evil doing while hiding behind a façade of religious piety. By picking on the Progressives and pitying them for what you perceive as disbelief you put yourself in the shoes of the Fundamentalist Bible Scholar who gives thanks to God for not being like the poor miserable Publican. But it’s the Publican that is found righteous before God.
This is probably the real context for that pastoral candidate you mentioned. Trick questions and out of context quotes were the methods the religious authorities used to convict Jesus of heresy as well.
I think it would be better to be a tax collector.
Jodie
Thank you, Jodie, for your comments. I assure I'm not isolating the verse from its context. The context is belief in Christ, which is based upon Nicodemus' question "How can someone be born again?"
The action that takes place is God's giving of Jesus to the world. Belief is a non-judgmental response to this. To believe in Jesus as the Messiah, Sacrifical Lamb and the One who atones for the world is to be a Christian. All other beliefs are condemned, both from God and in Christ's words.
No matter how much wiggle-room you give yourself, Jodie, you are no match for Jesus. His own words condemn universalism. With free-will, you can either take it or leave it. The eternal consequences are of your own doing.
Stushie,
I didn’t think they had even invented universalism at the time of Jesus. If anything, the Gospels stand out against the Particularism of the Jewish faith. According to the first Jewish Christians you had to be a law abiding Jew before you could even be called a Christian. But what really surprised me was your comment that I am “no match for Jesus”. Are you seriously implying that to argue with you is to argue with Jesus?
For the record, my argument is with you, not Jesus.
You misused a bible passage to launch an unmerited attack against Progressive and Liberal Christians. You don’t have any credentials or credibility to do so. But if you really must single out a version of Christian to criticize and correct, you should pick on the ones you really know, rather than the ones you don’t. The Fundamentalists have done a pretty good job at corrupting the Gospel and the Scriptures and have plenty of evil of their own to account for. If you really believe salvation is for some and not for others, you should start with asking yourself if you really meet the criteria. Do you and yours know what the gospel is? Do you do what it takes to obey it? In what ways would you say that you don’t? Then ask some Progressives and Liberals if they agree. Meet their criteria as well as your own.
Clean up your own house first.
Then you might have some credibility to discuss the homes of others.
As things currently stand, your criticism is nothing more than a noisy gong.
Don't get me wrong, some of the stuff you blog is pretty good, but on this one you are pretty much way off base.
Jodie
PS,
To be a Christian it is not enough to believe he is the Christ. You know that. Even the devil believes Jesus is the Christ. "believes and trembles".
Being >>obedient<< to Christ is what makes one a Christian.
Your beef isn't with me, Jodie, it's with the Lord. He says that not to believe in Him is to be condemned. I'm just the messenger conveying His words.
As for my credentials and credibility, you really don't know me, Jodie.
Thanks for reading the blog. I would read yours, too, if I could find it.
PPS
Now who's quoting out of context, Jodie? The verse from James is about monotheism and nothing to do with who Christ is.
Tsk,tsk...
James 2:19
19 You believe that there is one God. Good! Even the demons believe that-and shudder.
NIV
Stushie,
That's odd... I thought the context of the passage was that "believing" without "doing" to substantiate said belief was empty (faith without works is dead) - showing one's faith by one's works is precisely the battle cry of the Progressives and the Liberals. It comes straight out of this very passage of James.
In any case I still don't see your point. The statement is about belief. The context is about belief. Even the demons believe.
"Tanto monta."
On a slightly different note but still on the topic of Fundamentalists vs Progressives...
I heard an interesting comment from Jimmy Carter the other night. He said a Fundamentalist can never admit he is wrong because [in his mind] it would be the same as admitting God is wrong.
I was wondering if you would agree?
I guess, Jodie that's the equivalent of a progressive saying "I don't see what the scripture actually says, because that would make me blind."
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