Posts Tagged ‘David Hume’

Preaching with Fire by John R. W. Stott

Posted: September 2, 2011 in Book Reviews
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“Nothing is more nauseating to contemporary youth than hypocrisy, and nothing more attractive than sincerity.” With those piercing words, Stott launches his attack against hypocrisy and half-heartedness.This is my book review of John Stott’s Between Two Worlds (Chapter 7: Sincerity and Earnestness).

How can a preacher be sincere: “he means what he says when in the pulpit, and he practices what he preaches when out of it.”

Stott presents three arguments for sincerity.

1. The first argument for sincerity warns us of the dangers inherent in being a teacher (Rom. 2:17-21; Matt 23:1-3; Jas 3:1). “The reason why hypocrisy is particularly unpleasant in teachers is that it is inexcusable.”

2. The second argument for sincerity states that hypocrisy causes great offence. “We greatly hinder our own work, says Richard Baxter, if for an hour or two on Sunday we build up with our mouths, and then during the rest of the week pull down with our hands.”

3. The third argument for sincerity concerns the positive influence of being a real person.  Paul had nothing to hide as he says in 2 Cor 4:2. He could appeal to every man’s conscience. Hypocrisy repels and integrity attracts. “David Hume, was the eighteenth-century British deistic philosopher who rejected historic Christianity. A friend once met him hurrying along a London street and asked him where he was going . Hume replied that he was going to hear George Whitefield preach. ‘But surely,’ his friend asked in astonishment, ‘you don’t believe what Whitefield preaches, do you?’ ‘No, I don’t,’ answered Hume, ‘but he does.’”

“Earnestness,” Stott says, “goes one step beyond sincerity. To be sincere is to mean what we say and to do what we say; to be earnest is, in addition, to feel what we say.” “We must not talk to our congregations,” Stott quotes Spurgeon, “as if we were half asleep. Our preaching must not be articulate snoring.”

We are earnest when like Paul we are stirred to anger over idolatry because we are jealous over the glory of our God (Acts 17:16). We are earnest when we like Jesus can wept over a city of unrepentant sinners (Matt 23:37). Where are the Jeremiahs whose eyes were like a fountain of tears (Jer  9:1). Stott talks about D. L. Moody as an example of earnestness. “We are told that Dr. R. W. Dale, who for thirty-six years was pastor of Carr’s Lanes Congregational Church in Birmingham, was inclined at first to look on Mr. Moody with disfavor. But then he went to hear him, and his opinion was altered. He regarded him ever after with profound respect, and considered that he had a right to preach the gospel ‘because he could never speak of a lost soul without tears in his eyes.’”

While we cannot substitute heat for light, there must be “the combination of mind and heart, the rational and the emotional.” We need exposition and exhortation or as Spurgeon pled, that our preaching would be “as lava comes of a volcanic overflow.”

The three essentials of a sermon, according to G. C. Morgan are “truth, clarity and passion.” “On passion he told a tale of the great English actor, Macready. A preacher once asked him how he could draw such crowds by fiction, while he was preaching the truth and not getting any crowd at all. ‘This is quite simple,’ replied the actor. ‘I can tell you the difference between us. I present my fiction as though it were truth; you present your truth as though it were fiction.’”

Morgan’s successor at Westminster Chapel, Dr. Martyn Lloyd-Jones asked “What is preaching?” Here is his answer: “Logic on fire! . . . . It is theology on fire. And a theology which does not take fire, I maintain, is a defective theology . . . . Preaching is theology coming through a man who is on fire.”

But where does the fire in preaching come from?

“Fire in preaching depends on fire in the preacher, and this in turn comes from the Holy Spirit. Our sermons will never catch fire unless the fire of the Holy Spirit burns in our own hearts and we are ourselves ‘aglow with the Spirit’”(Rom 12:11).

From where does this Holy Spirit fire come? It comes from spending time in the Word. “The second secret was learned by the two disciples with whom Jesus walked to Emmaus on the first Easter afternoon. When he had vanished, they said to one another, ’Did not our hearts burn within us while he talked to us on the road, while he opened to us the Scriptures?’” (Luke 24:32). Stott adds this important thought, “It is still truth – Christ-centered, biblical truth – which sets the heart on fire.”

Back to the Basics Series: The Problem of Evil, Part 1

Posted: October 27, 2010 in Pastoral Theology, Sermons, Sin
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Chris Sheeter and I were students at BJU and friends in 1981. Chris was tall, handsome, musical, with a great personality. He also was a good preacher. Chris was studying to pastor. We attended the same church, Southside Baptist Church and worked as waiters at the same Seafood restaurant, Old Mill Stream Inn. I graduated one semester before he did and started pastoring in N.C. and I drove back to Greenville, S.C. just to fellowship with Chris. During his last semester, he was a life guard at a local hotel. At the end of a shift, he dove in the pool just to swim across and go home. As he was swimming across the bottom, his friends notice he stopped about half way. Chris drowned.

Chris studied seven years, spent nearly $100,000 to prepare to pastor and never got to pastor one day. I remember asking myself, not out loud, why did God lead him to go through the rigors of four years of undergraduate work and the even tougher studies of three years of seminary and then allow this tragedy to happen?

William Safire, in a New York Times editorial, wrote after the 2004 India tsunami in which over 200,000 people were killed from 14 countries, “Where was God? Why does a good and all powerful deity permit such evil and grief to fall on innocent people? What did these people do to deserve such suffering.”

David Hume, the eighteenth century philosopher, connected the problem of evil and the existence of God: “Is He willing to prevent evil, but not able? Then He is impotent. Is He able but not willing? Then He is malevolent. Is He both able and willing? Whence then is evil?”

Jewish rabbi, Harold Kushner in his book, When Bad Things Happen to Good People, answered, at least to his satisfaction, Hume’s dilemma. The death of his son drove Kushner “to question his traditional Jewish faith. Though a rabbi, Kushner came to believe that God could not have prevented his son’s death. He is frank: ‘I can worship a God who hates suffering but cannot eliminate it, more easily than I can worship a God who chooses to make children suffer and die’” (D. A. Carson. Reflections on Suffering & Evil: How Long O Lord? Grand Rapids: Baker Book House, 1990, 29). Kushner’s solution to the problem of evil is not to reject the existence of God, but to deny God’s omnipotence.

Though the innocent Job suffers in the book that bears his name, the question this book asks and answers is not, “Why do bad things happen to good people?” But “Why do suffering believers continue to serve the Lord?”

That is the question Satan posed to God in reference to godly Job in 1:9. “Does Job serve God for nothing?” was really an attack against God’s worth to be served. Satan was saying that God had to bribe Job to serve Him with his wealth. Satan was attacking the motives of Job in serving God and the worth of God to be served.

It is true Biblically that there are no innocent people. All suffering is the result of the Fall of Adam. Each of us is born a sinner and in time willfully sin against God which made clear in the New Testament in Romans 3:23 and the observation of any individual.

D. A. Carson is right when he observes that “on the whole, the biblical writers are surprised, not by punishment, but by the Lord’s patience and forbearance. God does not punish the Amorites until their sin has reached full measure (Gen. 15:16). Again and again we are told that the Lord is longsuffering, slow to anger, and very merciful. . . .From this perspective, it would have made more sense to write a book full of wonder under the title When Good Things Happen to Bad People (Carson, 48-49).

Yet, Job 1:1 makes it very clear that Job was not suffering retribution for some lifestyle of sin. The godliness of Job is repeated by God in 1:8 and 2:3.

Job forces us to examine our motives, “Do we serve God for nothing?”  The book of Job answers Satan’s question in 1:9.

The author of Job answers Satan’s question in the three major sections of Job.

1. God’s Suffering Believer in the Hands of Satan (Chapters 1 and 2).

A. Job was godly. Job was “perfect” not sinless.

The word “perfect” was used to describe an animal sacrifice that was blemishless and ready for sacrifice (Lev 22:21). The blamelessness of Job is well established in the narrative section of Job. This point will be very important when Job’s friends begin to accuse Job of suffering because of sin in the second section.

B. Job was blessed by God. Job’s wealth is inventoried in 1:2-3.

J. Vernon McGee said donkeys were OT pickup trucks, oxen were OT tractors, and camels were OT delivery trucks. Job was in the trucking business.

C. Job was attacked by Satan in 1:6-19.

1. Job lost his wealth when Satan was permitted by God to attach Job on all fronts.

a. From the South by the Sabeans

b. From the west by a thunderstorm

c. From the north by Chaldeans

d. From the east by a storm

Job’s business going belly up proves the motive for Job’s service to the Lord was not material possession.

2. Job lost his children. Job attended a funeral with ten coffins. Job, also, lost the support of his wife (2:9-10). J. Vernon McGee said the reason Satan did not take her when he took the ten children was that she was more useful to Satan alive. The motive for Job’s service to the Lord was not family.

3. Job lost his health (2:1-8). There are 16 medical updates throughout the book. Job suffered from

a. Painful boils (2:7)

b. Severe itching (2:7-8). Job is on the ash heap.

c. Great grief (2:13)

d. Loss of appetite (3:24)

e. Insomnia (7:4)

f. Worm and dust infested flesh (7:5)

g. Continual oozing of boils (7:5)

h. Hallucinations (7:14)

i. Decaying skin (13:28)

j. Shriveled up (16:8)

k. Severe halitosis (19:17)

l. Teeth fell out (19:20)

m. relentless pain (30:17)

n. Skin turned black (30:30)

o. Raging fever (30:30)

p. Dramatic weight loss (33:21)

Job still served the Lord when his health was gone. So far Job is proving Satan wrong.

In Part 2, we will see Job in the hands of Christian critics and finally in the hands of God. The second section of Job (Job 3-42:6) is no longer Hebrew narrative where God expresses his view of Job’s innocence. The next section of Job is Hebrew Poetry which is the language of the soul. Hebrew poetry is the genre that expresses people’s emotions. Sometimes the positive emotions of praise is expressed in Hebrew poetry as in the Psalms (for example Psalm 103) and other times as in the second section of Job the negative emotions of Job’s ”miserable comforter” and Job are vented in the three cycles of debate.

What is interesting about the second section of Job is the fact that Satan is no longer mentioned. In chapters 1 and 2, Satan is persistent in attacking Job’s faith. But when Job’s Christian critics take over in the next section, they do such a good job of verbally pounding on Job, perhaps Satan felt he could leave Job in the hands of his ash heap critics and go destory some other believer’s faith.

An Expose of Emerging Church Preaching, Part 1

Posted: November 16, 2009 in Emerging Church, Homiletics/Preaching
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In the following posts, I want to explore the current doctrinal and practical impact of the emerging church on preaching.

With some humor, hyperbole, and much accuracy, the authors of Why We’re Not Emergent (By Two Guys Who Should Be) provide a detection list for Emergents (See Tim Challies’ review). Notice this list begins and ends with references to preaching:

You might be an emergent Christian: if you listen to U2, Moby, and Johnny Cash’s Hurt (sometimes in church), use sermon illustrations from The Sopranos, drink lattes in the afternoon and Guinness in the evenings, and always use a Mac; if your reading list consists primarily of Stanley Hauerwas, N.T.Wright, Stan Grenz…(not to mention McLaren, Pagitt, Bell, etc.) and your sparring partners include D. A. Carson, John Calvin, Martyn Lloyd-Jones, and Wayne Grudem;…if your political concerns are poverty, AIDS, imperialism, war-mongering, CEO salaries, consumerism, global warming, racism, and oppression and not so much abortion and gay marriage;…if you love the Bible as a beautiful, inspiring collection of works that lead us into the mystery of God but is not inerrant; if you search for truth but aren’t sure it can be found;… if you believe who goes to hell is no one’s business and no one may be there anyway; if you believe salvation has little to do with atoning for guilt and a lot to do with bringing the whole creation back into shalom with its Maker; if you believe following Jesus is not believing right things but living the right way;…if you disdain monological, didactic preaching; if you use the “story” in all your propositions about postmodernism… then you might be an emergent Christian. [1]

The current impact of the Emerging church (hereafter EC) is seen in the preachers of the EC who have large churches, best sellers, and high profiles in American Christianity. Brian McLaren is a prolific writer. He was listed among “The 25 Most Influential Evangelicals in America” Time, 7 Feb 2005.  Another prominent name in the emergent movement is Rob Bell. He is the founding pastor of Mars Hill in Grand Rapids which was started in 1999. 10,000 people attend his church weekly. Bell is also the creator of the widely viewed Nooma movies. Mark Driscoll, pastor of Mars Hill in Seattle, Washington and co-founder of Acts 29 Network, also played a part in the initial discussions of the movement. Driscoll, who reveals the theological diversity of the EC, now is exposing many of the doctrinal errors of the left wing of the EC that he refers to as the Revisionists. Over 6000 attend Mars Hill on Sundays and 100,000 download his sermons weekly. While the EC preachers enjoy mega popularity and connect to our postmodern audiences, the Biblical content, style, and effect of their overhauled preaching is adversely altered by postmodernism’s rejection of absolute truth.

Postmodernism’s Impact on the EC beginning

The term “emerging” was first used by Leadership Network (hereafter LN) based in Dallas. LN hired Doug Pagitt to find the next generation of leaders and hosted a gathering in 1997 in Colorado Springs called Gen X 1.0 to discuss why the youth were leaving the church. The popular idea at the time was that the problem was generational. The generational advocates said that Busters think differently from Boomers and decided to attract young people by making church cool. Brad Cecil, an evangelical pastor from Texas, who had been researching postmodernism and listening to men like the French Father of Deconstructionism, Jacques Derrida, attended the meeting and argued the reason the church was losing young people was epistemological and not generational. Brad Cecil diagramed on a white board a mega shift that was occurring in epistemology:

Pre-modernism            Modernism (1550-1945)        Post-modernism

Absolutes are known           Absolutes are known                    There are no   

through God’s written         through reason as in                      absolutes

revelation and reason         Rationalism or Empiricism

The ultimate outcome of that pivotal meeting was the EC. To minister to those caught in the mega shift of postmodernism there must a mega shift in church ministry. The result is the Emerging Church’s new ecclesiology.

In the 1997, a second conference (Gen X 2.0) met at Mount Hermon, CA on how the church can reach “Gen X” or the postmodern generation. Mark Driscoll agreed with Cecil that “Gen X” was different from the Boomer, Seeker, and Traditionalist churches and spoke on how to minister to the church that was in transition from modern to postmodern.[2]

The Three Periods of Epistemology

The Emerging church sees a paradigm shift from modern to postmodern epistemology. Epistemology is the “philosophical inquiry into the nature, sources, limits and methods of gaining knowledge”[3] and has gone through three major phases. We will briefly survey the three major phases of epistemology, pre-modern, modern, and postmodern.

Pre-modern Epistemology

Pre-modern or the Judeo-Christian epistemology existed for two millennia before the Enlightenment with Western theologians’ and philosophers’ belief in absolute, universal truths. The foundation for pre-modern epistemology was God’s written Word and philosophy. There developed an emphasis on reason with Thomas Aquinas (1225-1274). Aquinas believed the Fall did not so adversely affect the reason of man that he could not through rational arguments (Aquinas’ theistic arguments for God’s existence) know truth apart from God’s written truth. In the modern or the second phase of epistemology, thinkers would take Aquinas’ view to the extreme of totally abandoning the need for God’s written Word to know truth.

Modern Epistemology

Modern epistemology or the Enlightenment prevailed during the 17th century to roughly the mid 20th century. While the foundation for pre-modern epistemology was God’s written revelation and or objective truth, the foundation for modern epistemology was reason (rationalism) or experience (empiricism) that could discover God or at least truth for those who rejected the existence of God. Thinkers like David Hume, Immanuel Kant and Friedrich Nietzsche took Aquinas’ rationalization to exclude God’s written revelation.  These men were precursors for the postmodern epistemology rejection of absolute truth in the form of language being the barrier to reality.[4]

Postmodern Epistemology

Postmodernism rejects foundationalism. There is no absolute knowledge in postmodernism. In postmodernism truth is discovered, not individually, but in the language of each community.[5] “There are as many worlds as there are communities and languages. There is at least one Christian world, as well as a Muslim world, a Buddhist one, a Hindu one, a secularist one, a Mormon one, and many, many others.”[6] This secular postmodern community view of truth has morphed into an evangelical postmodern view in the left wing of the EC.

The following posts will discuss postmodernism’s impact on three areas of  Emerginng Church preaching: Content, Style, and Effect.

[1] Kevin Deyoung and Ted Kluck. Why We’re Not Emergent. (Chicago: Moody, 2008), 20-22.

[2] Darrin Patrick, “History of the Emerging Church,” October 22, 2007. http://www. journeyon.net/sermn/session-one-the-histroy-and-streams-of-the-emerging-church. Accessed December 20, 2009.

3 Stanley J. Grenz, David Guretzki & Cherith Fee Nordling. Pocket Dictionary of Theological Terms (Downers Grove: Intervarsity Press, 1999), 45.

[4] David Hume (1711-1776) was a empiricist, who believed truth was discovered through the five senses, which excluded God since God could not be seen or experienced through the senses. Hume said we could not know the “real” world because we are “trapped” behind our sense experiences of sight, smells, and sounds. Things in our everyday existence “like chairs, tables, and even other people are projections of the mind.” Immanuel Kant (1724-1804) “attempted to answer Hume’s empiricism in order to defend rationalism….Kant’s attempted answer becomes an important precursor to current postmodern ideas. …We cannot know objective reality (what he would call the noumena); we only know how it appears to us (the phenomena).” Friedrich Nietzsche (1844-1900) was the first one to introduce the idea that language somehow is involved in the process of how we know the world” Scott Smith, Truth and the New Kind of Christian (Wheaton: Crossway, 2005), 28-30.

[5] Ludwig Wittgenstein (1889-1951) and Martin Heidegger (1889-1976) make the transition from our senses being the barrier to reality to language being the obstacle that stands between us and objective reality. “No longer was it thought that we are ‘stuck’ behind our experiences and cannot get ‘outside’ to the real world. Instead, they developed the idea that we are on the ‘inside’ of language and cannot know reality.…This shift in emphasis in philosophy from experience to language is what is called the linguistic turn, and it marks a turn toward postmodern thought” Ibid., 30.

 [6] Ibid., 31.

Answers for The Skeptic

Posted: February 5, 2009 in Book Reviews
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Buchenwald Slave Labor CampIs life fair?” “Are all men created equal?” “Is every one born with a silver spoon in his mouth?” “Does every cloud have a silver lining?” “Is all pain equally distributed throughout the earth?” I asked my friends on Facebook to give me examples of innocent people who suffered because of the sins of others. Here are some of the unedited examples they sent me.

“Kids who have been abused, kids in Africa that have contracted AIDS through their mothers who were mistreated.”

“A drunk driver who kills someone-the family suffers.”

“Divorce. Just because the husband and wife refuse to work things out, the child suffers greatly. He or She is constantly being moved from home to home, not having a constant father figure while seeing no love between their parents. Selfishness in marriage which leads to divorce is devastating not only to the child but to everyone else who is around the couple.”

“The Holocaust”

Elie Wiesel is a Nobel Prize winner, author, and Jewish survivor of Holocaust at Auschwitz. In the picture, Elie is the seventh man on the second row of beds.  ”In the concentration camp, he was compelled to witness the hanging of two Jewish men and one Jewish boy. The two men died almost instantly, but the lad struggled for about a half-hour on the gallows. Someone behind Wiesel muttered, ‘Where is God? Where is He?’ Then a voice within him seemed to say, ‘He is hanging there on the gallows.’”[1] “Where is God?” He is here! God is not remote, untouched, or uninvolved but in the fiery furnace with us. He is not only exaltedly transcendent but intimately immanent.

The skeptics have several arguments with the problem of evil and the existence of God.

First Argument of the Skeptic: How can God and Suffering Co-exist?

David_Hume, the eighteenth century philosopher, is often quoted as articulating the problem of evil and the existence of God: “Is He willing to prevent evil, but not able? Then He is impotent. Is He able but not willing? Then He is malevolent. Is He both able and willing? Whence then is evil?”[2]

Does this argument solve the dilemma? Those who reject God say evolution is the alternative to the existence of God juxtaposed with suffering, rejection, hunger, and death. But is evolution problem free? Tim Keller exposes the weakness of that logic: “The evolutionary mechanism of natural selection depends on death, destruction, and violence of the strong against the weak-these things are all perfectly natural.”[3] If only the strong survive in evolution then the innocent suffer. So the elimination of God has not eradicated the suffering of the innocence.

Paul wrote that “All things (which has to include the evil of child molestation, death by drunk drivers, divorce, rape, murder, etc.) work together for good” in Romans 8:28. Paul did not say all these evils are good but that God can use evil for good. One preacher, R. A. Torrey, said Romans 8:28 was a soft pillow for a tried heart. During World War II, another prominent preacher called Romans 8:28 “the hardest verse in the Bible.” So which is it? I recently visited the emergency room at Forsyth Hospital and meet a wife who had just been dealt the devastating blow that her 44 year husband had died and her 13 year old son who sat by her side was visibly in shock. The mother-in-law said to me out in the hall of the hospital, “I see no purpose in this.” Is Romans 8:28 a soft pillow or the hardest verse in the Bible for this family? Which is it to you?

This strategic verse must be interpreted in the context of the entire book of Romans. The overarching theme of Romans is the Righteousness of God through the Gospel. In chapters 1-8, Paul develops this truth doctrinally.

  • In chapters 1:18-3:20, Paul argues like a defense attorney that all people are guilty sinners. Evil is not just in the world, evil is in each of us. The skeptic is hypocritical when he points out the evil of God allowing innocent people to suffer and die as if the skeptic has never cause an innocent person to suffer, like his parent, or his child or his spouse. Besides there are no innocent victims as Paul states in his concluding argument: “There is none righteous, no, not one” (3:10). C. S. Lewis said, “Natural disasters do not increase deaths, all of us will die.”
  • In chapters 3:21-5:21, Paul gives hope for the sinner in the doctrine of justification by faith alone.
  • In chapters 6-8, Paul demonstrates that the doctrine of sanctification is the result of justification by faith.

In chapter 6, Paul outlines the steps of sanctification
In chapter 7, Paul admits there are struggles in sanctification
In chapter 8, Paul rejoices in the security of sanctification

Chapter eight begins with “no condemnation” and ends with “no separation” for those who “walk not after the flesh but after the Spirit” (8:4). If you have been justified you will have a changed life which gives assurance. You and I can and must have this assurance in the midst of evil and suffering. In Romans 8:1-25, the whole planet is “groaning” and suffering under the curse. Sometimes when the earth groans there is an earthquake, or a hurricane, or a mudslide, or a tornado. That suffering gets closer home for the believer in Romans 8:26-27, where we come to such a low point of weakness we do not know how to pray.

In Romans 8:28-30, Paul declares that God has determined from eternity past our likeness to Christ (perfect sanctification) in eternity future and is presently using daily circumstances to painfully fashion that likeness.

Scripture’s Argument: God and Suffering must Co-exist.

What is the greatest example of suffering in human history? The Holocaust where six million Jews were massacred? The tsunami in December of 2004 which killed 250,000 people? The terrorist attack on 911 in which 2740 died? As horrific as all of these tragedies were, there is one example that is in a class all by itself. That example is found in our chapter: “For what the law could not do, in that it was weak through the flesh, God sending his own Son in the likeness of sinful flesh, and for sin, condemned sin in the flesh” (Romans 8:3).

The skeptic says that God and suffering cannot coexist, but Scriptures affirm they have to co-exist for there to be salvation from present sin and all future suffering.

Was God at the cross? The God/Man was on the cross: “God sending his own Son.”

Was suffering at the cross? Christ “in the likeness of sinful flesh” died for our sins.

Was evil at the cross? God “condemned sin in the flesh” of His Son.

God and suffering also co-exist in our lives. These daily circumstances include the “all things” of evil and suffering. The neuter plural adjective παντα “all things” has no restrictions. The Skeptic in you might be saying, “I wish Paul would have used the masculine. My masculine knight in shining armor just dumped me for another damsel in distress. Others of you are thinking, “I wish Paul would have used the feminine. There is this feminine doll on campus, and I am in love with her, but she doesn’t even know my name.” When Paul used the neuter he included “all things” including your masculine and feminine problems. God is in your suffering accomplishing His will. Maybe you were dumped so God can lead Mr. Right into your life. Maybe see doesn’t know your name now but when it is God’s time she will bear your name. Maybe, don’t take that statement as a prophecy or an absolute.

Second Argument of the Skeptic: Why did God make His Son Suffer?

Some today are accusing God of Divine child abuse. Instead of Sola Scriptura (only Scripture), their view is Sola Cultura (only culture). Just because there is injustice in society you cannot force that reality on the meaning of the cross. Did only the Son suffer at the cross. No! Did God drop his Son off on the doorstep of earth and abandon him?

Scriptures’ Argument: God suffered at the Cross. 2 Cor 5:19 “God was in Christ, reconciling the world unto himself.” Can deity suffer? Yes! Those who teach that God cannot suffer teach the impassibility of God, that is, He is incapable of feeling pain. God is not only deity but personality. God the Spirit (who has no human body or nature like Christ) can be grieved. “Grieve” is a love word. Who can grieve a parent? The neighbor? The fellow employee? No! Only a child. We are made in the image of God who has intellect, will, and emotions. Romans 8:32 gives us a unique look at the suffering (not redemptive) of the Father at the cross.

The Skeptic in you might be asking, “Why is God making me suffer?” God is also with you in your suffering. God did not save you and drop you off on the doorstep of life and abandon you. God is mentioned twice in 8:28. Once “God” is an implied subject in 8:28. Here is how Paul wrote Romans 8:28 “and we know that to those who are loving God all things (“He” implied) works together for good.” We don’t have to guess as to why God is making us suffering or what is the “good” is in verse 28. The answer is in verse 29: So that we can be conformed to the image of God’s Son.

Someone defined “Providence as the Hand of God in the glove of my circumstance.” Just as God was in Christ reconciling the world unto Himself, God in is you conforming you to the likeness of Christ.” Your pain, sufferings, troubles are not in vain.

Third Argument of the Skeptic: Why did God not create us where we could only choose Good?

Because He wants us to choose to “love” Him just as He chose to love us. You who are married, would you want to be married to Star Wars C-3PO? Maybe sometimes?

My wife and I are doing the 40 day Love Dare. We watched Fireproof and I bought two Love Dare books. I especially liked day three which was a Wednesday where we were to buy our spouse something during the day that told them that we were thinking of them. I bought my wife a Craftsman 3/8 socked wrench and told her that on Saturday we could take her new socket wrench and together change the oil and bound. Actually, I bought her a rose. She put the rose in a vase on the dining room table and bragged on its beauty everyday and it sat there until the peddles wilted, turned black, and dropped off. Would it have meant as much if I were C-3PO and before I left for work that Wednesday she commanded me. “Bring home a rose for me?”

Dr. J. Robertson McQuilkin was formerly the president of Columbia Bible College and Seminary….He is a conference speaker and author of note. But none of those credentials exceed his exemplary and heart-gripping love for his ailing wife, Muriel. She has walked down the grim and lonely world of Alzheimer’s disease for the last twenty years. Dr. McQuilkin gave up his presidency and numerous other responsibilities to care for her and to love her. He has penned his emotional journey in one of the most magnificent little books ever written. At one point in the book he recounts this incident:

Once our flight was delayed in Atlanta, and we had to wait a couple of hours. Now that’s a challenge. Every few minutes, the same questions, the same answers about what we’re doing here, when are we going home? And every few minutes we’d take a fast pace walk down the terminal in earnest search of-what? Muriel had always been a speed walker. I had to jog to keep up with her!

An attractive woman sat across from us, working diligently on her computer. Once, when we returned from an excursion, she said something, without looking up from her papers. Since no one spoke to me or at least mumbled in protest of our constant activity, “Pardon?” I asked.

“Oh,” she said, “I was just asking myself, ‘Will I ever find a man to love me like that?’”[4] When I read this love story the thought hit me: Is God asking, “Will I ever find a believer to love me like that?”

The Scriptures say God created us to choose to love Him voluntarily, willfully, and sacrificially. Do we? There are answers for the skeptic in the world and in you in Romans 8:28. Let God encourage you and strengthen your faith through this powerful verse.

First book review The Reason For God
Second book review part 1
Second book review part 2 “Exclusivity”

[1] Erwin W. Lutzer. Ten Lies About God (Nashville:Nelson, 2000) 75.

[2] Timothy Keller. Reason For God (New York: Dutton, 2008) 249.

[3] Ibid., 26.

[4] Ravi Zacharias. Jesus Among Other Gods (Nashville: Nelson, 2000) 129.