Category: Theology

Of God and falsehood

Romans 3:3-3, “For what if some did not believe? shall their unbelief make the faith [truth] of God without effect? God forbid: yea, let God be true, but every man a liar; as it is written, That thou mightest be justified in thy sayings, and mightest overcome when thou art judged.”IMG_5720

God is true; indeed, He is most true. Infinitely true! He is so true that He is immune from all deception. We are exposed to a legion of lies, a plethora of pretences. But God cannot be misled or tricked. “Be not deceived: God is not mocked! For whatever a man sows, that shall he also reap.”

God is is so true that He is incapable of falsehood. It is written in Scripture, “God, who cannot lie.” And “it is impossible fore God to lie.” Good men, however good they may have been, however well-proven their track record, even they can lie. Peter, the chief disciple among the rest, could hardly believe that he would deny Jesus. But so it was! That very night, just as Jesus predicted, he denied his master three times. But God is altogether incapable of lying. “In him is light, and there is no darkness in him at all.” Is this a defect in God? Is this inability a broad crack in the wall of His omnipotence? By no means! As Ambrose put it, “What then is impossible to him? Nothing that is difficult for his power but only that which is contrary to his nature.” Would you trust God implicitly if He could lie? Indeed, the Bible says that God is so true that when He swears, He can swear by none other than by Himself!

Further, God is is so true that it is even morally unthinkable for him to deceive. The very idea that God could be false, contradict Himself, deny Himself, or in any way to allow His creatures to subvert or make null and void any of His truth, is wicked. This is clearly taught above in Rom. 3:4-6. “God forbid!” It is brazen blasphemy to suggest or even entertain the thought that God could lie.

You and I are lost in the wilds of falsehood, deceived and deceiving each other – and ourselves! Only God, only His Son Jesus Christ, the last and great Prophet who came into the world to bear witness of the truth, only He can banish the lies, the soul-damning lies that have us in bondage and will seal our doom. He is the true Light. Emerge from your darkness and follow Him!

¡Oh el poder!

IMG_3868[1]“Cuan grande debe ser ese amor que produjo el bello tejido del universo, sin la ayuda de causa material alguna!  Esto proclama que es verdaderamente infinito: pues nada menos podria unir extremos tan distantes como el nada y el ser…Es por el Poder Divino que los objetos celestiales had rodado constantes en sus esferas por tantas edades, sin gastarse o salirse de su propio curso; y que los elementos tumultuosos han perseverado en su orden hasta el dia de hoy.  El preserva las alianzas de la naturaleza, pone fronteras al mar rugiente, y lo mantiene dentro de sus limites con una faja de arena.”

-Thomas Boston (1676-1732)

“The wrathful God is made loving”

“Secondly, propitiation is not a turning of the wrath of God into love. The propitiation of the divine wrath, effected in the expiatory work of Christ, is the provision of God’s eternal and unchangeable love, so that through the propitiation of his own wrath that love may realize its purpose in a way that is consonant with and to the glory of the dictates of his holiness. It is one thing to say that the wrathful God is made loving. That would be entirely false. It is another thing to say the wrathful God is loving. That is profoundly true. But it is also true that the wrath by which he is wrathful is propitiated through the cross. This propitiation is the fruit of the divine love that provided it. “Herein is love, not that we loved God, but that he loved us and sent his Son to be the propitiation for our sins” (I John 4:10). The propitiation is the ground upon which the divine love operates and the channel through which it flows in achieving its end.”

-John Murray, Redemption Accomplished & Applied

Jesus’ foresight

444px-Benjamin_Breckinridge_Warfield“The work which He came to do was a work ordained in the counsels of eternity, and in all its items prepared for beforehand with the most perfect prevision. In addressing Himself to the accomplishment of this work Jesus proceeded from the beginning in the fullest knowledge of the end, and with the most absolute adjustment of every step to its attainment. It is from this double view-point that each of the Evangelists depicts the course of our Lord’s life on earth. They consequently represent Him as having come to perform a specific task, all the elements of which were not only determined beforehand in the plan of God, but adumbrated, if somewhat sporadically, yet with sufficient fulness for the end in view, in the prophecies of the OT. And they represent Him as coming to perform this task with a clear consciousness of its nature and a competent control of all the means for its discharge, so that His whole life was a conscientious fulfilment of a programme, and moved straight to its mark. The conception of foresight thus dominates the whole Evangelical narrative.”

-B. B. Warfield

God wholly one

img_4115“God is wholly one Deut. 6. 4. Gal. 3. 20. 1 Tim. 2. 5. Hos. 13. 4. Mal. 2. 10. All creatures are subject to multiplication; there may be many of them and are many; many Angels, men, starres, and so in the rest. Not one of them is singular and onely one so; but one might conceive that there should be more; for he that made one of them, can make another and another, and as many as he pleaseth; but God is simply one, singular, and sole essence; there neither is, nor can be more then one God, because he is the first and best essence; and there can be but one first, and one best. He is Infinite, and there cannot be but one Infinite because either one of them should include the other, and so the included must needs be finite, or not extend to the other, and so it self not be Infinite. There was a first man, and a first in every kind of creature, but not any absolute first save God: one Eternall, and one Incomprehensible, saith Athanasius in his Creed.”

-Edward Leigh (1602-1671)

The self-sufficient God

img_4122II. God has all life,[25] glory,[26] goodness,[27] blessedness,[28] in and of Himself; and is alone in and unto he himself all-sufficient, not standing in need of any creatures which he has made,[29] nor deriving any glory from them,[30] but only manifesting his own glory in, by, unto, and upon them. He is the alone fountain of all being, of whom, through whom, and to whom are all things;[31] and has most sovereign dominion over them, to do by them, for them, or upon them whatsoever himself pleases.[32] In his sight all things are open and manifest,[33] his knowledge is infinite, infallible, and independent upon the creature,[34] so as nothing is to Him contingent, or uncertain.[35] He is most holy in all his counsels, in all his works, and in all his commands.[36] To Him is due from angels and men, and every other creature, whatsoever worship, service, or obedience he is pleased to require of them.[37]

–Westminster Confession of Faith (1646), 2.2

El Dios autosuficiente

img_4122II. Dios posee en sí mismo y por si mismo toda vida, (1) gloria, (2) bondad (3) y bienaventuranza; (4) es suficiente en todo, en sí mismo y respecto a si mismo, no teniendo necesidad de ninguna de las criaturas que El ha hecho, (5) ni derivando ninguna gloria de ellas, (6) sino que solamente manifiesta su propia gloria en ellas, por ellas, hacia ellas y sobre ellas. Él es la única fuente de todo ser, de quien, por quien y para quien son todas las cosas, (7) teniendo sobre ellas el más soberano dominio, y, haciendo por ellas, para ellas y sobre ellas toda su voluntad. (8) Todas las cosas están abiertas y manifiestas delante de su vista; (9) su conocimiento es infinito, infalible e independiente de toda criatura, (10) de modo que para El no hay ninguna cosa contingente o incierta. (11) Es santísimo en todos sus consejos, en todas sus obras y en todos sus mandatos. (12) A Él son debidos todo culto, adoración, servicio y obediencia que tenga a bien exigir de los ángeles, de los hombres y de toda criatura. (13)

1. Juan 5:26
2. Hechos 7:2
3. Salmos 119:68
4. 1 Timoteo 6:15; Romanos 9:5
5. Hechos 17:24,25
6. Job 22:2,3
7. Romanos 11:36
8. Apocalipsis 4:11; Daniel 4:25,35; 1 Timoteo 6:15
9. Hebreos 4:13
10. Romanos 11:33,34; Salmos 147:5
11. Hechos 15:18; Ezequiel 11:5
12. Salmos 145:17; Romanos 7:12
13. Apocalipsis 5:12-14

–Confesión de Fe de Westminster (1646), 2.2

The cross, the Tree of Life

https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Beautiful_tree_at_Akershus_Fortress_(Akershus_Festning)_(29252416734).jpg“This tree is my everlasting salvation. It is my food, a shared banquet. Its roots and the spread of its branches are my own roots and extension. In its shade, as in a breeze, I luxuriate and am cared for. Its shade I take for my resting place; in my flight from oppressive heat it is a source of refreshing dew for me. Its blossoms are my own, my utter delight its fruits, saved from the beginning for my harvest. Food for my hunger and well-spring for my thirst, it is also a covering for my nakedness, with the spirit of life as its leaves. Far from me henceforth the fig leaves!

“Fearful of God, I find it a place of safety; when unsteady, a source of stability. In the face of a struggle, I look to it as a prize; in victory, my trophy. It is the narrow path, the restricted road. It is Jacob’s ladder, the passage of angels, at whose summit the Lord is affixed.  This tree, the plant of immortality, rears from earth to reach as high as heaven, fixing the Lord between heaven and earth. It is the foundation and stabilizer of the universe, undergirding the world that we inhabit. It is the binding force of the world and holds together all the varieties that human life encompasses. It is riveted into a unity by the invisible bonds of the Spirit, so that its connection with God can never be severed.

“Brushing heaven with its uppermost branches, it remains fixed in the earth and, between the two points, its huge hands completely enfold the stirring of the air. As a single whole it penetrates all things and all places.”

-Pseudo-Hippolytus (tr. by B. Ramsay)