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Cultures of Life and Death

Toward a Radically Christian Counterculture
Toward a Radically Christian CountercultureSteve Gregg

In "Cultures of Life and Death," Steve Gregg discusses the concept of a "culture of death" that he believes is prevalent in modern society. He argues that this culture leads to physical and spiritual death, and that individuals must choose between aligning themselves with it or a culture of life. Gregg further emphasizes the importance of a distinctly Christian perspective in embracing a pro-life stance that values human life and avoids moral defilement. He encourages individuals to make intentional choices that reflect a fundamental world view rooted in Christian principles.

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Transcript

Tonight, we're continuing in our series on the general topic entitled Toward a Radically Christian Counterculture. And a counterculture, as I have defined it, is a subculture that has got an attitude. It's a subculture that is confronting the dominant culture from the high moral ground, at least from its self-perceived high moral ground.
The hippie culture 30 years ago thought that they had the higher moral ground. We can see now, in retrospect, many people could see at that time that it wasn't any higher than the ground that they confronted. In fact, it was lower in many respects.
But nonetheless, a counterculture is one where not only is it a subculture existing in the midst of some domicile nation, some society that has a different culture than itself, but it is a subculture that believes itself to have superiority and therefore the right to confront the dominant culture with its own values. Certainly, Christianity is supposed to be that. It is not an arrogant thing at all for Christians to say that the culture presented in the Bible is superior to that of the dominant culture.
The reason it's not arrogant is because we didn't make it up. If we made it up and said it was superior, that would be pretty proud of us. But we have it revealed from God himself in the scriptures.
And it's not an arrogant thing to acknowledge that God is wiser than man and to say that his ways are higher than our ways. As high as the heavens are above the earth, so high are his ways above our ways, it says in Isaiah 55. And so we're desiring to study the ways of God and as practically as possible, we want to apply them to the things we actually do in our lives, not just to holding to the right dogmas or performing the right ceremonies when it comes to religious activity, but the way we live our lives.
The Christians are supposed to live differently in many respects from the world. And as we do, the phenomenon that will be visible will be an actual alternative culture lived out in an alternative society. There are many such cultures, subcultures around.
And we've talked about some of them. We won't get into that now. But since we are talking about not just a subculture, but a counterculture, one that confronts the dominant culture, there are many areas that I would like to address in successive gatherings here.
Before we get into some of the more nuts and bolts practical things, I want to talk about some of the larger areas in which the culture of Christianity confronts the dominant culture. And by the way, those who've heard our tape series on this that I taught a few years ago, I've never given this lecture before. I prepared it yesterday and today for the first time.
So even if you've heard our previous series, this is a new lecture for the series. I've never been there before. I'm going to entitle this, The Culture of Life Confronts the Culture of Death.
The Christian culture is confrontational to the dominant culture. And the dominant culture is a culture of death. It's sometimes called the death culture by critics of modern culture.
And certainly, Christian culture is a culture of life. So life confronts death. Now, an image from the Gospels that I've always found, I suppose, inspiring, is that which is found in the story of Jesus and his disciples and a multitude following him, wending their way through the streets of a small Galilean town called Nain.
And we read that there was another procession going through that town. Unbeknownst to either group, they were going to intersect at a certain place on a certain street. That other procession was a funeral procession.
There was a widow in that town who not only had no husband, but she now had no son because her only son had died and it was his funeral. And there was a multitude of people following her. So there's this funeral parade coming through the streets of this little town.
And then there was this parade, as it were, led by the one that is referred to as the Prince of Life in Acts chapter 3. We have a procession of death confronted by a procession of life. And here they intersect. We've got those who are mourning and hopeless walking their way through the town.
And we've got those who have hope and zeal and excitement about salvation, about Jesus Christ and eternal life. And they're walking the other direction and they intersect. They confront one another.
And as the story goes, it's a predictable ending. Jesus comes to the coffin and touches the coffin, which Jews are not allowed to do without becoming defiled, but Jesus didn't care much about those things, those laws. He touched the coffin and he told the young man to arise.
And, of course, that culture of death, that procession of death, was transformed by the touch of Jesus Christ as the leading dead person in the group came to life and was restored to his mother, the widow. And I've always loved that story for the imagery it presents of these two contrary processions confronting one another and the superiority of Christ and the life that he has over that of death. Now, I'd like you to turn with me to an Old Testament passage.
This is in Deuteronomy chapter 30, verses 15 through 19. Near the end of Moses' long tenure as the leader of Israel, both as prophet and deliverer and lawgiver and so forth, he was near the end of his days. He was going to die within a few chapters of this.
So, he's kind of putting some finishing touches on his ministry, putting some exhortations as a capstone that all he'd said in the previous three books. And he says in verse 15, Deuteronomy 30, 15, See, I have set before thee this day life and good and death and evil. In that I command thee this day to love the Lord thy God, to walk in His ways, to keep His commandments and His statutes and His judgments, that thou mayest live and multiply.
And the Lord thy God shall bless thee in the land whither thou goest to possess it. But if thine heart turn away, so that thou wilt not hear, but shall be drawn away and worship other gods and serve them, I denounce unto you this day, ye shall surely perish, and that ye shall not prolong your days upon the land whither thou passest over Jordan to go to possess it. I call heaven and earth to record this day against you, that I have set before you life and death, blessing and cursing.
Therefore, choose life, that both thou and thy seed may live. Now, Moses says there's two options here for you. There's the way of life and there's the way of death.
And I put them before you very graphically here so that you will make no mistake about it. If you will follow the commandments of the Lord and the ways of the Lord, he says in verse 16, the ways that I've taught you that God has shown and revealed that we should live and walk, then you will have life. But if you reject that, if you go after other gods and reject the ways of the Lord, then you will have death.
Now, we live at a time, at least in this part of the world, this part of history, the American culture in the early 21st century has chosen the ways of death, has chosen to depart from the ways of God, has chosen to choose idols for itself, has chosen... And they've made a clear choice. I mean, Moses put the choice very clearly before the children of Israel. That choice lies before every individual in every society in every generation.
And we live in a generation where our... the society in which we live has chosen the ways of death. But there is still the opportunity for individuals and groups of individuals to choose the ways of God, which are said to be the ways of life. I want to begin by drawing a contrast between the philosophy of the world and the philosophy of Christianity with reference to these issues of life and death.
And then I want to talk about some very specific issues that affect the society that are related to this general difference in the philosophy of Christianity from that of the current culture in the world. We need to realize that the culture of the kingdom of darkness, and that is the kingdom that belongs to everybody who is not in the kingdom of God. If you've been born again, if you've been translated out of the power of darkness into the kingdom of His dear Son, then this does not apply to you.
At least it's not supposed to.
But it does apply to all others. Those who have rejected God are part of the kingdom of darkness and they follow the prince of darkness.
And that kingdom of darkness is a culture of death. And I'd like to draw your attention to a scripture that you all know, but I'd like to maybe clarify something about it that you may never have had clarified before. In Romans chapter 6, Romans 6 beginning at verse 16, Paul says, Know ye not that to whom you yield yourselves servants to obey? This word servants in the Greek is slaves.
His servants, or I'm going to read slaves every time this occurs here. Whoever you yield yourselves slaves to obey, his slaves ye are whom ye obey, whether of sin unto death or of obedience unto righteousness. But God be thanked that ye were the slaves of sin.
But ye have obeyed from the heart that form of doctrine or teaching which was delivered to you. Being then made free from sin, you became the slaves of righteousness. I speak after the manner of men because of the infirmity of your flesh.
For as ye have yielded your members slaves to uncleanness and to iniquity, unto iniquity, even so now yield your members slaves to righteousness unto holiness. For when ye were the slaves of sin, ye were free from righteousness. What fruit had ye then in those things whereof ye are now ashamed? For the end of those things is death.
But now being made free from sin, you become slaves to God. Ye have your fruit unto holiness and the end everlasting life. For the wages of sin is death.
But the gift of God is eternal life through Jesus Christ our Lord. Now notice, we have two kingdoms here. Each king has its slaves.
The kingdom of darkness has those who are slaves of sin. And the wages of that kingdom is death. These things, as it says in verse 22, they have their... In verse 21, the end of those things is death.
But the other kingdom is those who are slaves of God, slaves of righteousness, and who do the will of God and they are pursuing away the end of which is life, eternal life actually. Now, the statement in verse 23, we all have learned early in our Christian lives. For the wages of sin is death.
And we often think of that verse as a good verse about going to hell. People who sin must go to hell. That is true, the Bible teaches that.
But I don't believe that fits Paul's context so clearly here. Paul is talking about all people as if they are servants of one master or another. Sin is one of the masters.
And sin pays its own wages. Now, if we think of this in terms of the wage of sin is death, that is going to hell, or the judgment of God, then it's God who's paying those wages. It's true that God is going to punish sinners.
And that judgment is going to be the second debt. But the first debt is the wages that are not paid by God to those who sin, but by their master. Wages are paid by your employer.
Those who are slaves of sin, sin pays them wages. It pays them in debt. God told Adam and Eve, the day you eat of this tree, you will surely die.
And had not there been animals sacrificed in their places that very day, they would have physically died. But they died in the persons of substitutes, animals that God slew to cover their nakedness. And they did spiritually die as well.
But the point is, sin leads to physical death. A life of sin tends toward death in all ways. In fact, in many ways, when it becomes very corrupt, it affirms death.
Now, Satan, you know, is associated with death in many ways. One is that it is said that he is the one who had the power of death. In Hebrews 2.14, it says that Jesus, through death, destroyed him that had the power of death.
That is Satan. So, obviously, Satan's realm is the realm of death. In Job chapter 1, we find that Satan sought to get permission to destroy Job.
And God did withhold from Satan initially. Actually, all the way through, He withheld from Satan the power to actually kill Job, which Satan would love to have done. But Satan was permitted to kill Job's children, for example.
It was part of the judgment, or the wrath, I should say, of Satan against a godly man. That Job's children were killed in this by an act of Satan's activity. Jesus said, in John 8.44, that Satan is a murderer.
He is a murderer from the beginning. In fact, Jesus said to the Jews who were resisting Him, He says, You are of your father the devil, and the will of your father you want to do. He was a murderer from the beginning.
And what He is implying is, your father Satan, the head of the kingdom that you are a part of, is a murderer, and therefore you, as participants in his ways, you are murderers too. You do the will of your father. Your father wants to kill, you want to kill.
It is Satan's nature to wish to kill. It is a result of a culture given over to this master. That becomes a murderous culture, and affirms death rather than life.
Jesus said in John 10.10, the enemy comes to rob and to kill and to destroy. Satan is prince of the realm of death. Now, in a culture, like our own dominant culture in this country, that is under Satan's sway, death becomes more and more prominent as an issue.
And the amazing thing is that it becomes viewed through a positive lens. That is the astonishing thing. Death is that great enemy of God and of man.
Jesus wept at the tomb of Lazarus, not, I believe, because of the lack of faith of Mary and Martha. That is not what I believe He is weeping about. I think the evidence of the scripture indicates He was weeping, because He was there confronting in a very graphic way the wages of sin.
And that is death. That death has come into man's experience. And even Jesus' dear friends were affected by it.
Even Christians will die, physically. Although we have eternal life, we will die. We'll live again.
We'll rise again, but we'll die.
And that is a reality that I believe Jesus confronted very poignantly there at the tomb of Lazarus, which is why, I believe, Jesus wept there. I believe that death is referred by Paul in 1 Corinthians 15 as the last enemy.
The last enemy that should be destroyed is death. And I believe it's the enemy of man and of God. It is Satan's realm, death.
And when a society begins to exalt death and begins to promote death, it is very clear evidence that that society is ceasing to... Well, they're throwing off any semblance of being a godly society and going wholly in the direction of the pursuit of Satan and his ideals. One reason that death becomes acceptable in a pagan society... And when I say death becomes acceptable, it doesn't mean that anyone in particular wants to die. Even a culture that affirms death, the individuals have a desire to live, because that's a natural instinct.
Self-preservation is the strongest natural instinct in every animal, and apparently in man too, until he is converted, in which his higher instinct is to want to glorify God, whether in life or in death. But the natural instinct of man and beast is self-preservation. Even when a culture affirms death, it affirms death not for... The individuals don't affirm death for themselves.
They affirm death for other humans. And the reason is because they have first lost the biblical teaching of what human life is. Human life, of course, as we shall see, is made in the image of God.
But according to our own culture, for example, and earlier cultures felt this too, Darwin did not invent the idea of the theory of evolution. He was not at all the first. It was existing in ancient Hindu cultures, ancient Egyptian culture.
The idea that man evolved from lower beasts has been around for thousands of years. Darwin simply made it respectable by putting it into terms that sounded scientific to somebody at the time. But the idea that man or humans are simply another part of the animal world means that they don't really have any intrinsic rights more than animals do.
The idea of the survival of the fittest is actually in Darwin's theory, which has been, of course, largely embraced in our culture. The idea is that the survival of the fittest is the way progress happens. Now, the survival of the fittest is putting it positively.
Those who are fittest survive, but there's another corollary of that. It means that those who are unfit don't survive. In the struggle for existence, there are some individuals that are more fit, more viable than others.
The ones that are more viable in the struggle for existence survive. But, of course, we have to realize that means at the expense of the others who are not fit for survival. And this is how progress comes about, by the elimination of the unfit, by the elimination of the inferior.
And therefore, once a culture has embraced the idea that man is not a creature made in the image of God, but is simply the product of natural evolution and is really just the most recent animal to come along. And if we're around millions or billions of years more, there'll be other animals more advanced than we are, according to evolution. We just happen to be at the top of the totem pole at the moment, but the totem pole is supposed to keep growing.
We're just another animal, just the most fortunate animal, the most fit. But even within every species, according to evolution, the specimens in each species that are most fit will eliminate those who are less fit. And so, it is a rationale that comes into existence in a society like this that people who are unfit, people who are unproductive, people who are inferior, people who are inconvenient, people whose activities are not good for the whole progress of the race, these people are justly and commendably eliminated.
Now see, if you believe that man is made in the image of God, it changes everything. But when you've got man simply as an exalted animal, then of course there is a perfect rationale for killing people at times. And human life, because it is no different than animal life in the mind of Satan's culture, has several corollaries.
One, as I said, is that inconvenient or unproductive specimens are dispensable. That's why our culture embraces abortion. It's a human life, but it's inconvenient to certain people to bring human life into their families, into their bodies.
They don't like them there. It intrudes into their pursuit of happiness. And by the way, in a contest between a living mother and a living fetus in the mother's womb, the survival of the fittest always goes to the mother.
She's always more fit for survival than the fetus. And therefore, for her to eliminate the fetus that would really hurt her standard of living, her quality of life, her convenience, her pursuit of happiness, well, what else should you do? I mean, if you've got a dog that ceases to be convenient and begins to kill your animals, your livestock, you shoot it. You know, it's an inconvenient pest.
So, a human being can be an inconvenient pest in the culture of death because humans are no different than animals. And therefore, the elimination of inconvenient or unproductive specimens. I put those two together because abortion, of course, views certain humans as inconvenient and therefore justifiably killed.
Euthanasia, at the other end of the deal, you know, of getting rid of the aged and the infirm, that would justify the killing of human beings because, not because they're inconvenient, although they might be, but because they're unproductive. And, by the way, we know very well that we're coming to a time where, for example, a society that depends on government aid for its subsistence and where the old people are, to a large degree, sustained by Social Security and where there's a diminishing number of young people because the older people didn't choose to have very many children, there's going to come a time when the older people who are on Social Security are taxing the system much more by their receiving benefits than will be able to be sustained by the small number of younger people paying into it. And it doesn't take a rocket scientist to figure out what the solution will have to be, either remove the benefits or remove the recipients.
But the fact of the matter is it might seem really strange to suggest that a culture like ours that has been enlightened as recently as half a century ago could ever come to the place where they suggest actually eliminating old and unproductive people. Stranger things have happened in the last 30 years in our culture, and I wouldn't be surprised if the next 30 could see things that we would not imagine thinkable in that respect. Because we think it's okay to put a beast out of its misery when it's suffering, and it is as far as I'm concerned, and because people are simply beasts in the minds of a culture of death, then of course people who are sick, terminally ill, suffering, it's only reasonable you ought to put them out of their misery.
That's euthanasia. That's mercy killing, killing them out of mercy to them. The state I moved from about a year ago, of course you know, passed some resolutions to allow physician-assisted suicide, and this is considered to be a merciful thing by those who voted for it.
Euthanasia, by the way, comes from two Greek words. Eu means good, and thanasia comes from the Greek word thanatos, which means death, good death, or beautiful death. Euthanasia means attractive death, good death.
And so once mankind is not viewed as being made in the image of God, but just another animal, then all the things that are true of animals in terms of management of populations and so forth, can be justified in the terms of managing human populations. So that culling the population, just like you would with certain, well I mean even in nature, you know, the predators cull the population of the herbivores by taking out the weak and the sickly and so forth, and that's considered to be healthy for the population. And it is.
It is.
And people who have livestock or other things realize that selective breeding and culling and even now, cloning. You know, these are all things that we consider to be ethically open to us, with animals, of course.
And I'm not really sure I object to any of those things with reference to animals. I'm not sure about cloning, but, you know, these other things with animals are quite justifiable. But if people are animals, then they become justifiable with people too.
And, you know, loss of an awareness of what human life is, because Satan has blinded the minds of those who don't believe, will lead to all kinds of social ills. And we are seeing many of them already on the table. Some of them have already been in practice for some time.
Of course, in the philosophy of the culture of death, an individual might very well serve the interests of humanity best by taking his own life, because we consider it merciful to put a creature out of its misery. Is it not also okay to put myself out of my misery? If I'm a miserable person, if I'm a person who's unhappy, or if I'm a burden on my children because I'm old and cost them a lot of money and medical bills, wouldn't it be really wiser for me to just take myself out? That is, of course, what many people think. So you've got a culture of death around us that affirms abortion and euthanasia, assisted suicide.
All these things are about death. But, you know, those are just things where physical death is the result of a certain practice. You have to realize that the Bible indicates that following the ways of sin is following the way of death in general.
Even if it doesn't in some way justify murder, it still is the case that sin is by nature self-destructive. Now, that's not the worst thing about sin. The worst thing about sin is that sin is an affront to God.
That is what makes sin so detestable to those who are godly, is that sin is an affront to God. And that is the greatest wickedness of sin, is its impact on God. But there's a corollary to that, and that is that sin is also self-destructive.
It's destructive of your life. Now, this is why it's offensive to God. If you ever wonder why God chose to prohibit this and not prohibit that, you know, as if everything is just being capricious, and just thought, well, let's see, I think I'll put all these things on this list of don'ts, and let's see, here's some things I'll stick those over on this list of do's, and we'll see how people do at keeping these rules.
God has reasons behind all the laws he gave. And the reason he hates sin is because sin hates us. Sin destroys us.
The wages that sin pays us is death. And death is the enemy of man and of God. And so, sinning, a life of sin is destructive of life.
Of course, we all physically die because of sin. If a person never sinned, they would never have to die. Jesus is the only man who's ever lived who never sinned, and he didn't have to die, but we know he laid his life down.
Jesus said, no one can take my life from me. He says, I have the power to lay it down. I have the power to take it up again.
No one can take Jesus' life because he hadn't sinned, and the wages of sin is death. He had no wages due him in that respect. He'd never served sin.
Everybody else, however, has served sin, and therefore, all will die. And in the meantime, the more we serve sin and walk in the ways of darkness, of the kingdom of darkness and the culture of death, the more not only our lives may be shortened by sinful activity, we can all think of ways in which people shorten their lives by behaving sinfully, but also the quality of our life will be diminished by sin, and the quality of many other people's lives. In other words, human life is denigrated, human life is diminished, human life is shortened, all because of sin.
And that's the culture of death. Now, all secular cultures, all cultures that don't embrace Jesus Christ, Lordship, are cultures of death, but not all of them are so blatantly so. Ours, in this country, has become very blatantly so.
So much so that the forces of decency, some of which are Christian, some are not, have actually launched, as we know, a counterattack on the culture of death. And it's sometimes called pro-life. The pro-life movement.
And, you know, if you ask me whether I'm pro-life or not, I guess I'd have to say I am, since I would define pro-life as being anti-abortion. I am pro-life, but I don't know that the pro-life movement is to be identified with the radically Christian counterculture necessarily. Many people who are pro-life, like myself and probably yourself, are Christians, but not all are.
You can be pro-life without being distinctly Christian at all. You can be an atheist and be pro-life. You can be a Jew or a Muslim and be pro-life.
There's nothing distinctly Christian about that. And so Christianity and the radically Christian counterculture is not to be identified with the pro-life movement, per se. I've always believed that Christians should do what they do, the good deeds they do, they should do in the name of Jesus.
And while I can appreciate the intentions of many Christians who start organizations to stamp out this or that social evil, let's say abortion or pornography or some other social evil, and they do so by giving their organization a title like Citizens Against or Americans Against or something like that, because that kind of a label provides a big umbrella where they can get more clout, more political clout. Because if you have Christians against abortion, then only Christians are going to join you. If you have citizens against abortion or Americans against abortion, then anyone who is against abortion will feel free to join you.
But then what is done and accomplished is not accomplished in Jesus' name. Paul said, don't be unequally yoked together with unbelievers. And what is more an example of an unequal yoke? See, yoking is where you put a yoke over the necks of two animals and they pull together on a project.
You don't work together on the project of the kingdom of God with unbelievers in the same yoke. And again, while I appreciate the intentions, and in many cases I appreciate the results that are accomplished by some organizations that I'm making this criticism of, I still believe that Christians need to act as Christians in the name of Christ so that whatever is accomplished, or at least whatever witness is given, is given distinctly in the name of Christ, not in the name of citizens or Americans or some other category. Now, Christianity is the culture of life.
The gospel is a message of life. We all know, and we just read a moment ago, the gift of God is eternal life through Jesus Christ our Lord. But when we read of life in the New Testament, although in many cases it is eternal life, this supernatural ongoing resurrection life that the New Testament is talking about, we should not think that that does not in itself also affirm human life in general.
Because what is there good about eternal life unless life itself is something good, worth perpetrating eternally? To suggest that Jesus came to give life, and that more abundantly, suggests that life is a good thing in the sight of God, something He wants us to have more of, more abundance of it. And He extends it into the future forever and ever for those who are saved. But what is the use of extending something forever and ever that is not worth having in the first place, unless it is something that is in itself valuable and good? And the gospel everywhere affirms life over against the devil's affirmation of death.
There is an interesting Old Testament Scripture that points this out, I think, in Proverbs 19. Proverbs 19.23 It says, The fear of the Lord tendeth to life. Now there is an interesting summation of what I am trying to get across.
Going God's way, living in God's way, is because you fear Him. That tends toward life. Now in this passage, it is not referring to eternal life necessarily.
There are many things in the Proverbs that talk about how length of days will be given to the wise man, but the fool will shorten his life and so forth. We are talking here about temporal life. The fear of the Lord does not only result in eternal life, it also tends toward prolongation and improvement and abundance of life here and now.
You see, there are certain things that people do who don't fear the Lord that are simply destructive of their own life. If somebody goes out and takes drugs or drinks excessively and doesn't quit, in all likelihood they are going to damage themselves. They are going to probably shorten their life.
And if they drive a car under the influence, they may shorten theirs and other people's lives. Those ways tend toward death. People who are sexually promiscuous, likewise, they take a very great risk.
Not everyone who is sexually promiscuous dies of a venereal disease. Some die sooner of something else. But we know very well that there is a proliferation of various diseases.
And there always have been. In biblical times there were too. These diseases were known in biblical times.
In the book of Proverbs, a man is warned against being promiscuous, lest he say in his latter end, when his flesh is consumed, how have I hated instruction? You see, morality is healthy. And by healthy I mean conducive to life. Now, there is no guarantee in Scripture that a man who fears the Lord will necessarily live a long time or always be well because there are other factors besides his own actions that come into being.
A very godly person may be killed in an accident by a drunk driver. And the drunk driver might survive that one. And the Christian may die.
Or a man like Jesus may die in the middle of his years though he didn't commit one sin. Or Stephen or many of the other martyrs. There are many times and many ways in which a Christian can die young.
There is no guarantee of long life to everyone who pursues godliness. But there is this principle. The fear of the Lord tends toward life.
All other things being equal. Now, not all other things are equal in the real world. But given that all other things were equal, the person who lives a godly life will live a better life, a healthier life and a longer life.
Barring, of course, accidents and things like that that occur in a fallen world. Now, therefore Christianity and godliness promote and encourage and affirm life. Human life especially.
This is because, first of all, that life is something that originates from the giver of life who is God. And every good gift and every perfect gift is from above and comes down from the Father of lights with whom is no variableness, neither shadow of turning. The one who gives life is a good God.
And what he gives is good. Now, you see here, right at the starting point, the radically Christian counterculture has a different fundamental world view about this issue than the culture of death has. Because the culture of death believes that mankind is simply a developed animal.
And that the earliest animal to ever appear, the earliest living thing, actually was given life by non-life. By matter and energy that had no life at all in them. Somehow these non-living things created the first living thing and then everything else resulted from that.
However, the scripture indicates, and by the way science does too, that life never comes from non-life. That used to be believed by scientists until the days of Louis Pasteur who proved that life does not come about except from pre-existing life. They believed in those days in spontaneous generation.
The idea that garbage would just, you have a pile of garbage and rats and mosquitoes and frogs and such would just kind of spontaneously generate from it. I have a theory that trash actually spontaneously generates in my car on the floor. But it's not alive, so that's a possible theory.
But the fact is that living things, we've never known, and science has never demonstrated it to be possible, never known for any living thing to ever originate from a non-living thing. And therefore, Christians have nothing to be embarrassed about when they affirm that life is a sacred thing and a divine thing because it came from He who had life in the beginning. And that is God.
It is a gift from God. It is not something that nature simply produced haphazardly, randomly and accidentally. And so, we know from scripture that God is the one who gives life.
Jesus is the Prince of Life, according to Acts 3, 14 and 15, where there is an interesting contrast there. Peter is preaching to the Jews in Acts 3. In verses 14 and 15, he points out that they asked that a murderer, meaning Barabbas, would be released to them and required and killed the Prince of Life. Here we've got the two, the contrast.
Here is a murderer on one side and then here is the Prince of Life. And they chose the way of death. They chose the murderer.
And they rejected the one who had life. This is what our culture is doing right now. Now, because life is a gift from God, according to Christian theology, like all gifts from God, it must be stewarded faithfully.
Now, what does stewarded mean? It just means managed. A steward is somebody who manages what doesn't belong to himself. But he's entrusted with it by the actual owner.
And he is responsible to make use of that for the benefit of the owner. Now, we usually think of stewardship in terms of money. And there are a number of parables that Jesus told where stewards were handling money for someone else.
And of course, it's wise for us to realize that those parables do teach, among other things, that even our money belongs to the Lord. And we are stewards of that. But that's not the only thing God has given us.
He's given us many things, the chief of which is life. Jesus told us not to worry about food and clothing and possessions like that. He said, it's not life more than food.
Life is more than food. And God has given us both. He's given us life and He's given us food to sustain life.
But the life is better. The life is a more important gift. And if we are to be stewards of the material possessions we have, how much more are we to be stewards of that greater thing that's been entrusted to us, our lives? Now, how does this translate into behaviors? Well, I do believe that a steward answers to his own master and not to other stewards or other servants.
Therefore, no one in this room or in any room, except my own children, have to answer to me about how they steward their lives. But that doesn't mean that given the freedom of conscience before God to do whatever you wish, that doesn't mean there aren't wise and foolish ways to steward it. I personally believe that smoking cigarettes is one of the things that is not a very good stewardship.
Now, it's interesting. In America, even the unbelievers don't believe in smoking. A lot of them smoke, but they don't believe in it.
You'll hear all the time ads on the radio about every kind of gimmick trying to help people give up smoking. The impression is that even though people do smoke, they do so because they're in bondage to it. An awful lot of them must be willing to pay a lot of money to be able to quit.
And of course, we know that politically, the liberals are very much against smoking, against tobacco and so forth. But for different reasons. Christians in America have been actually against smoking more than Christians in most other countries.
You go to Europe, it's not uncommon to go out. I've been in many countries in Europe and after church, people go out and they light up on the porch of the church and just fellowship. I remember D.L. Moody, who didn't believe in smoking or drinking, he once visited England and met, what did he meet? I believe he met C.S. Lewis.
And someone, when he came back here, some journalist asked him, what do you think about C.S. Lewis? And Moody said, well, he smokes and he drinks, but I do believe he's saved. Which is quite an admission for Moody to make. But Lewis was not very different than Christians in Europe in that respect.
I myself have never smoked. I find it a very offensive habit. But I think that when Christians condemn smoking in this country, it's very largely a cultural sensitivity here that doesn't exist in some other countries.
I think we need to be careful if we're going to condemn smoking, which by the way, I do. But we have to realize that if we condemn smoking, we may also in the same act justly condemn a lot of other things that we don't condemn. People in America, Christians usually will condemn smoking by saying, well, your body is the temple of the Holy Spirit.
And whoever destroys the temple of the Holy Spirit, God will destroy. Now, Paul said words to that effect in 1 Corinthians 3 and in 1 Corinthians 6. However, in those places, he was not talking about the physical management of the health of the physical body. He was talking about idolatry and fornication.
He was talking about the spiritual defiling of the temple or the moral defiling of the temple. He was not talking about doing things that are unhealthy physically. However, the fact remains that our bodies are the temple of the Holy Spirit and if that means nothing else, it means it belongs to God and it's something we need to be good stewards of.
Now, if we're going to condemn smoking because some people who smoke have diseases that people who don't smoke don't get as often, we might have to look at potato chips too or refined sugar or things like that. Now, do I eat sugar and potato chips? I do. Therefore, I'm very cautious about condemning smokers because sugar and greasy foods and junk foods are very culturally acceptable in this country whereas smoking is not culturally acceptable even among Christians.
I sometimes drink a lot of coffee. Now, I don't know if that's very bad for us. It can't be very good for us.
We know that it kills vitamins in your body. Now, I don't believe it's a sin to drink coffee. What I'm talking about is not thou shalt not smoke cigarettes, thou shalt not drink coffee, thou shalt not eat white sugar.
I'm saying that we are stewards of our bodies and we will answer for our stewardship. No one can answer for us. No one can point to you and say you cannot smoke a cigarette.
They can't do it on biblical authority. They can't say you can't eat a milkshake or french fries. They cannot say that on biblical authority.
But one can say on biblical authority you should be aware that your life is not your own and that you are to even eat and drink to the glory of God. And whatever you do should be done with a mind that what you are doing may have an impact on your life which is a gift from God. And you should be as good a steward of it as you can be.
And that may mean that even things that there's no law against doing, you might choose not to do because it's not as healthy as some other choice you can make. Now, you can go crazy over it. There's a guy named Paul Bragg, health food store people know him.
He wrote a lot of books. Healthy man. Very healthy man.
He had all these books about health. Well, he said he was going to live to be over 100. He died in a car accident when he was 60 or something like that.
So, he didn't live forever. And you can go crazy over this trying to avoid death. You can be extreme about it and yet you will die when it's your time to die.
But I believe even if you neglect your body, you will die when it's your time to die. You just might find it's your time earlier than would have normally been predicted. If you lay down on a train track and say, well, I can't die until God wants me to die, you might find out that's the day God wants you to die.
Your theology may be good. Your application may be terrible. And speaking of laying on train tracks, I don't know many people who do that unless they're actually suicidal.
But there are things that people do, even Christians, that are plain dangerous, that take extraordinary risk. I'm not going to name them because there's a lot of people here who would probably be angry at me. And while I can't avoid people being angry at me, I can steward my opportunities to avoid it as much as possible.
But there are activities, maybe just driving dangerously, maybe doing extreme sports. You know something? I'm not very athletic. I've never done any kind of sports, much less extreme sports.
So, I really am not much of an authority about them. But one thing I have figured out about extreme sports is that they're extreme. And whatever is extreme is not moderate.
And things that are extreme in sports usually are so because they are dangerous to life and limb, at least potentially. Now, why do people do extreme things? Well, in most cases, I would say it stems from an addiction to adrenaline, which is a drug. It's a natural drug, but it has much the same effect as some street drugs you might put in your body.
You get high. I don't believe that any of us would feel that people ought to risk their lives as Christians just to get high on drugs. But because adrenaline is produced naturally in the body when we stimulate it beyond natural levels, we think of it as a legitimate thing.
I'm not saying that Christians can't do any of those things. I'm saying that we need to, as Christians, say this life of mine is a stewardship of God, and I have to decide which things God really wants me to do with it, which things are really wise stewardship. You might decide that bungee jumping or that whatever, skydiving or climbing face rock, rock face, excuse me.
There was a rock called face rock where we used to live, climbing rock face, that those things are for the glory of God. And there might be someone out there who could make a good case for that. I haven't heard it yet, but it may be possible to do in some cases.
But I dare say in most cases, the only case that can be made for those things is to say they're exciting. They're fun. And one of the hardest lessons I've tried to teach my children is fun is not really a justification for any activity.
It's fun is a very common reason given. Sometimes when I ask my children to stop doing it, I'll get the response, but it's fun. I will allow appeals sometimes.
If someone tells me, if I tell them to do something, they say, well, they can give an appeal back, but they better have a good reason. Simply saying it's fun is not a good reason for doing anything. Some things that are good are fun too.
And there may be good reasons for doing them even though they are fun or even though they're not. But fun itself is not a justification for anything except among 21st century Americans. Adrenaline is fun.
I suppose so is LSD, but that doesn't make it the right thing for Christians to alter their consciousness with. And I believe that there's plenty of action and fun and so forth, things that can be done that don't require risking the life that God gave you extremely. Now, getting up in the morning and going outdoors is risking your life.
I mean, any day you might get hit by a truck and die. I'm not saying you have to be real protective of your life. Jesus said, he that seeks to save his life will lose it.
But He didn't say, he that gives up his life for fun's sake shall find it. He said that he that gives up his life for my sake shall find it. There's nothing wrong with losing your life in the service of Jesus Christ if you're doing His will and lose your life in the course of doing so.
But if you lose your life because of, well, just lack of wisdom, there is a requirement on God's people that they act wisely because they're stewards and they need to be good and faithful stewards. So, I think Christians ought to and spiritual Christians tend to examine many areas of their lives with reference to the sanctity of life. This life that God gave me, I am a steward of it.
There might be some things I like to do that I should just choose not to do. Might be things I eat. Might be, who knows what it might be.
There's a lot of things in our culture that are enjoyable to the flesh but aren't very good for our lives. And I leave it to each person to sort it out between themselves and God as to which things those are. There are things I do that I enjoy that some might say, well, Steve, you're taking more risks than you should.
My wife thinks I take more risks than I should in my driving. Now, in my own judgment, I don't. But that's a matter of opinion.
And so, also, I might think you're taking more risks than you should and maybe you know that you're not. Or you think you're not. That's why, let not one man judge another man's servant.
To his own master he stands or falls. But to his own master, he does stand or fall. We will give account of ourselves to God.
No one has to give any account of themselves to me about this but you are well advised to know that you will give account of yourself to God for your stewardship and we ought to be wise and concerned about those things. Now, the Christian message of life also tells us that human life is the divinest of all forms of life. There is, of course, plant life.
There's bacterial life. There's animal life. But then there's human life.
And of all the kinds of life that God made, as far as we can tell from the record of Scripture, human life is the most divine species because it is made in the image of God. We're not even told that the angels were made in the image of God. If anything, human life seems to be above that of angels.
Although the Bible says that humans are made for a while a little below the angels for the suffering of death. Yet, ultimately, Paul said in 1 Corinthians 6, we shall judge angels. We actually are children of God.
In Christ, we are co-heirs with God. The angels are not that. They're just servants.
They're just servants of God. We're His co-heirs, joint heirs with Christ. There is a sense which human life is superior even to angel life.
It's amazing how people who don't know this, like New Agers, they tend to worship angels, which Colossians 2 warns us not to do. But they worship angels. They don't realize that the angels are in awe of those who are in Christ because we stand in Christ who is above every principality and power and every name that is named and all dominion and so forth.
And so, we are in Him above all those things. Human life has more potential than angel life because we should be like Christ. When He appears, we should be like Him.
When He appears, we will appear with Him in glory. Angels don't have the same destiny. So, even when we take into consideration angel life, human life is more divine, more like God because it is made in the image of God.
We are told that, of course, in Genesis 1.27. So, God made man in His own image and the image of God made Him. Male and female made He them. Both men and women are made in the image of God.
What that image means, we do not know exactly. Some people picture it as more or less the actual visual image. The way that we look is somewhat similar to the way that God looks.
Other people see it, and I will be among them, and see it as not referring to physical image but to something more innate, the spiritual nature or the rational aspect or the creative factor or whatever it is. God has made us different than the animals, not only in the way we look but qualitatively in many, many spiritual and rational ways that I believe are the image of God. Now, that being so, because man is made in the image of God, disrespect for man is disrespect for God.
If I came into my children's room and found that they had a picture of me, let's say they had a picture of their mother on the wall and they were using it for a dart board, I would say, you can't do that anymore. And they say, why? It's only a piece of paper. It's not mom.
We are not throwing any darts at mom. Well, why do you choose a piece of paper that has your mom's image on it? Is it not in order to show disrespect to your mother in such a case? To disrespect the image is to disrespect the person who bears the image. We bear the image of God.
And even in our fallen state this is true. James chided people who are inconsistent with their speech. He says, with the same mouth we bless God and with the same mouth we curse men who are made in the similitude of God.
And that statement that men are made in the similitude of God is what is supposed to show the incongruency there. We profess to honor God, but we are dishonoring people who are made in the image of God. And these two things cannot be.
My brethren, these things ought not so to be, he says. Can the same fountains send forth sweet water and bitter and so forth? And so, respect for God requires that we respect His image in people. In Proverbs it says, he that reproaches the poor dishonors his maker.
Why? Because the poor man is made in the image of God just like the rich man is. And to reproach him as a human being is to dishonor God who made him in His image. So, respect for humans is essential.
That is one reason that lies behind the whole teaching of Jesus about loving even your enemies. Jesus said, if you love only those who love you, so what? The publicans do that and they are not saved. It doesn't take a Christian to love people who love you.
It doesn't take a Christian to salute those who salute you and to honor those who honor you. Now, some people are so base that they don't even do that. You can love them and they won't love you back.
But if you love them and they do love you back, they are not doing anything virtuous. They are doing what any pagan can do. But Jesus says, you need to be more like your Father.
You need to love those who hate you and do good to those who persecute you and bless those who curse you. Why? Why should I do that to them? They are not treating me right. But whether they know it or not, whether they are acting like it or not, they bear the image of God.
And I love God. And I honor God. And in so doing, I must honor and love that which is in His image, even if it is behaving quite unworthy of that image.
Now, another part of the biblical teaching about life is that God is sovereign over life. He is not only sovereign over the details of our lives. He is sovereign over the beginning and the end of life.
Sovereign is a word that means He has the authority of the king. He has kingly authority. He can make the decisions about this.
Now, He is sovereign over the womb. People come into existence because God chooses for them to come into existence and for no other reason. Now, some people think that is rather naive and they say, no, we understand very well how procreation works.
People who God is not even involved in their life, they sometimes will produce babies. God had nothing to do with it. Some of them were even in sin when they did it, not doing what God wanted.
How can you say that was God's doing? It is just the way the Bible talks. Regardless what was the state of mind, the moral state or whatever of the persons who produced babies, those babies were really produced by God. Now, if that sounds naive, it only sounds naive in our scientific age because we can explain more scientifically than they could in biblical times, than people could, about what conception really involves with the mixture of DNA and all that kind of stuff.
However, the ability to explain it scientifically does not eliminate the proposition that God is the one who creates it. If we say that, and I have given this illustration in another connection before, but if the tea kettle is whistling in the next room and someone says, why is that tea kettle whistling in there? One answer might be given very scientific. Well, we understand that the flames under the tea kettle actually transfer heat from themselves into the metal of the teapot.
And from there, the heat is transferred into the water in the teapot. And with the increased temperature, there is increased motion of the molecules. And as the molecules require more space to move, they feel confined in the container there.
And so they have to find a way out. And the more active they become, especially as the liquid turns into steam, and it really needs a lot more space, it's much less dense, all these molecules try to escape through this little tiny hole. And then someone could explain how the motion through that hole is what causes that whistling sound.
Well, all that might be a true answer to the question, why is the tea kettle whistling in the other room? But another answer might be, it's whistling because I wanted a cup of tea and I put it on the stove. That's another way of answering why it is. One gives the scientific description, one gives the real reason it exists.
You can tell me all about why water seeking to escape from a hole in a tea kettle makes a whistling sound, but you won't tell me why that's really there. It's there because of the will of somebody. And you can explain all you want how the baby is conceived in the womb, scientifically, but you haven't told me whether or not God made it happen or not.
And we know that scientists in a laboratory can take all the components of a living cell and put them together and test them, stir them up and shoot them through with electrical rays and so forth, and they can't make it come alive. There's something more than the scientific facts about the creation of a living being. People who try very hard to prevent conception often end up with children.
And people who try very hard to conceive often end up with none. And the way the Bible explains this, especially in the Old Testament, it says God closed Rachel's womb. God opened Leah's womb.
God closed Rebecca's womb. God opened Rebecca's womb. Now, biblical writers knew about sex, too.
And they knew that babies come as a result of sex. But they also knew that when people are having sex and there's no babies, God is the one who's withholding conception. And when they have sex and there are babies, God is the one who opens the womb.
God is the one who is sovereign over the beginning of life. And He's also sovereign over when people die. That is to say, no one has the right to go over God's head about when you or anyone else should die.
God is the sovereign in these matters. He holds all the cards, and He's the one allowed to make the decisions. This has, of course, ramifications toward many practices in our society, including in the church.
It might have ramifications on the issue of birth control. It certainly has ramifications on the issue of abortion. It certainly has ramifications on the issue of suicide or euthanasia.
If God is the one who reserves from Himself the prerogatives in these areas of life, then when man seeks to intrude in those areas and force the issue when God has not, then man is simply trying to play God. And that's something our society definitely would like to do. Now, a couple of other things here.
Christians possess eternal life. The Bible tells us this. And eternal life changes our whole mood about our own physical lives.
We know that we can afford to die. We can't afford to die in sin. And therefore, we cannot sinfully bring our own death upon ourselves prematurely.
But we can afford to die if the providence of God is such or the leading of God is such that we go into a situation and there we confront a premature death. This is not regarded as a tragedy to the Christian. To die in the will of God is more important than to live, to be an old man and not be in the will of God to the Christian.
And to die young is a privilege of it if it's to die in the will of God. Jesus died young. Many martyrs have died young.
Paul would have liked to have died young, he said. In Philippians, he said that he had this desire to depart and be with the Lord. In 1 Corinthians 15, Paul said that when Christ raises the dead in the last day, that then will be brought to pass that saying of Scripture that is, O death, where is your victory? O death, where is your sting? O grave, where is your victory? There is no sting in death for those who know that they will be resurrected.
And therefore, they can take risks in the will of God with their earthly lives even that may bring about a shortening of it without it being regarded as a tragedy or something necessarily to be avoided. As I said, the strongest natural tendency of man is to self-preservation. But there is a stronger tendency in the believer and that is to glorify God whether in life or in death.
And that is the stuff that makes martyrs and no one who is a Christian should consider it a tragedy when someone is a martyr. But having said that, there is one other corollary of this I want to bring up and that is that even though a Christian has eternal life and should not be fearful of dying, it is still the case that he should revere his mortal life as long as God chooses for him to have it. Some people might think, well, since I am going to go to heaven anyway, it does not matter if I live or die.
Well, that is true in the will of God. But for you to take chances or to do foolish things or whatever to shorten your life because you are not afraid to die is to take the matter out of God's hands as it were or to try to do so. And it is a sinful thing to do.
We should realize that so long as God gives us life, He has purpose for life. When Paul said in Philippians 1, I have a desire to depart and to be with Christ, which is far better, he then said, however, for me to remain here is more fruitful for you. And he said, therefore, I have this confidence that I am going to stick around.
He did not think God was going to let him off very quickly. And He did not. Because he realized that although it is okay to die in the will of God, it still may be better to live for the time being.
God only knows. God has a certain amount of fruit, a certain amount of things He wants us to accomplish. And we are not entitled to take our lives prematurely.
Of course, all these things have ramifications on abortion. They have ramifications on euthanasia as I pointed out. Now, a lot of these issues are your classic conservative versus liberal issues in our present social conflicts between liberals and conservatives.
Obviously, the abortion issue, euthanasia, those issues, pro-lifers are on one side, which usually means conservatives, and pro-choicers, which usually means liberals, are on the other side. And for the most part, on those issues, what we have seen so far, Christians affirm essentially the same thing that conservatives in general affirm, because there are biblical grounds for doing so. Some Christians are not so sure about abortion, strangely enough.
I don't know why any Christian would be unsure about abortion, but you do meet Christians sometimes who aren't so sure that abortion is murder. And I guess that might be addressed very briefly here, because some would say, well, you know, it's not until you take a breath that you really have the spirit of life in you. When God breathed into the nostrils of Adam and Eve, the spirit of life, they became living beings.
And so, until the child takes its first breath, it's not a living being, not a living human, and therefore it's okay to take its life, some would say. However, of course, the child is living on oxygen all nine months, but it's in the womb too. It's just not breathing with its lungs at that point, but it still is taking in oxygen and metabolizing things just like it will later on, but through a different process.
The fact is, the Bible does teach that the child is alive and is a human in the womb. I remember hearing someone, may or may not have been a Christian, they said, if it's not alive, why is it growing? If it's not human, what kind of thing is it? It's not a dog. Why does it have human DNA? You know, a creature with human DNA is a human, and if it's growing, it's alive, and so it's a living human being.
I mean, it's just so reasonable that anyone who would just pause for a moment to reflect on it would see it if they have no prejudice to the contrary, but many people do. There are specific scriptures, though, that I believe address it. Of course, most people who have been savvy on the pro-life issue of anti-abortion are familiar with Exodus chapter 21, 22 through 23, where God made a law that if two men are fighting and there's a pregnant woman standing nearby and she gets bumped or jostled in such a way that her seed goes from her, notice she gives premature birth, it says, if no mischief follows, then there won't be severe penalties, but if mischief follows, then there will be recompense, which includes a life for a life.
Apparently, if the baby is far enough along that it can be prematurely born and not die, then the person who is guilty of causing the miscarriage will not be held to a strict standard, but if the baby dies, it's life for a life. There's capital punishment for that. Capital punishment for causing abortion.
Does that have ramifications on abortion doctors today or mothers who get abortions? I don't know why it wouldn't. Now, I'm not a vigilante, so I'm not in favor of going out and killing these people, but if one wants to ask the Christian's view of things, then an abortion doctor deserves to die for what he does as much as any other murderer does. Now, lest anyone get a hold of this tape and say I'm stirring up trouble here, I'm not going to kill anybody, and I don't recommend it.
I believe that's the government's duty to do, not for me or for the vigilantes. If they don't do it, well, people like to pose all kinds of ethical dilemmas about this. Like if you saw a murder taking place in the alley, wouldn't you intervene to stop it? And if you see someone going to get an abortion, wouldn't you intervene to stop it? Yes, I would in one case at least, but I don't think I'd use lethal force in that case.
We'll not worry about that right now. All I can say is the Bible does indicate that to cause an abortion is a capital offense if the abortion results in a dead baby, and that means that the baby is a human and that the killing of it is murder in God's sight. In Psalm 139, David talks about how God, before any of my members were formed in my mother's womb, you knew me, you knew them all.
And God said to Jeremiah in Jeremiah chapter 1, before you were in your mother's womb, I knew you and I ordained you to be a prophet. Now, some people say, well, that's a special case. Jeremiah was a prophet, not everyone's a prophet.
I mean, this baby we want to abort, maybe God doesn't know this one or hasn't caused it to be a prophet. Yeah, maybe he has though. Who knows? For all you know, that might be the next Jeremiah in there.
You don't know. That's up to God to decide. God knows a baby before he's born.
How can he know a non-person? How can he know a non-entity? He knows them. Paul said that God separated him to be an apostle from his mother's womb. But there's lots of things in the Scripture that indicate that the fetus is alive, not the least of which is the story of John the Baptist in Luke chapter 1. In verse 44, it says that, well, earlier it said he would be filled with the Holy Spirit from his mother's womb.
In Luke 1, verse 44, it says that he leaped for joy in his mother's womb when Mary greeted Elizabeth. Now, here's a baby, and he's in the beginning of the third trimester, but he leaps for joy. This is a human being.
And if he's filled with the Spirit from his mother's womb, it seems clear he's alive and he's human. God doesn't fill chipmunks with the Holy Spirit or fish or camels. He fills people with the Holy Spirit and none other.
So the Bible's teaching on it is not difficult to discern for those who really want to know it. There are some who really don't want to know it, but Christians should not be of that class. What about the issue of capital punishment? Where do Christians stand on that? We're a culture of life.
Do we approve of capital punishment? I believe biblically we do and should. There is a statement, a principle God made back in Genesis chapter 9 in verse 6. He says, Whoso sheds man's blood, by man shall his blood be shed. Other places in the law, it says, an eye for an eye, tooth for tooth, stripe for stripe, blow for blow, burn for burn, life for life.
You kill somebody in premeditated murder, you'll be put to death for it. At least that's what God ordained should be done. Now some people say, Well, it's not our prerogative to kill life.
You yourself said it's God's sovereign choice when people die. True, it is His sovereign choice and He has sovereignly declared when it should be. When a person does something that's a capital crime, they should be put to death.
That's God's declaration. If a murderer is put to death, that is by God's sovereign expression of His will about the subject. God can express Himself by decree as well as by providence.
If a person dies providentially by the act of God, we know that that was God's will for him to die. But if God says, That man shall be put to death, then it was God's will for him to die too. And the Bible frequently says it was.
A lot of people say, Well, didn't Jesus kind of come on with a different ethic about that? I mean, what about that woman taking adultery? She committed a capital crime and Jesus let her off the hook. He said, I don't condemn you. Go and sin no more.
It's true. He did not condemn her. But He did not deny that her crime deserved capital punishment.
They came to Him and said, Moses, what should we do with this woman? Moses said she should be stoned. What do you say? What did Jesus ultimately say? Did He say she should be or shouldn't be? What did He say? Let him that is without sin do what? Cast the first stone. Isn't that stoning someone? Didn't Jesus say, essentially, she does deserve to be stoned, but that these people were simply morally unworthy to do it? He did not say she shouldn't be stoned.
He just pointed out that these people were amazingly hypocritical in that they were guilty of the same kinds of sinful lifestyles as she, and yet they wanted to be her executioners. He was the only one in that crowd who had the legitimacy and the qualifications to stone her. He chose not to do it, but that didn't mean she didn't deserve it.
The fact is that in the New Testament, the teaching of the apostles was, and they taught what Jesus taught, and they expanded on it, that the government has been ordained by God to punish evil doers. It says in Romans chapter 13 and verse 4 that the governing authorities are the ministers of God, the executioners of His wrath on those who do evil. And He says, fear Him, He does not bear the sword in vain.
That sword was used for executing people. Paul knew it well. He eventually died by the sword of the Roman executioner.
But Paul was not one who wanted to himself go out and execute people. He believed that was the government's role. See, in the Old Testament, the role of killing a murderer was left to the next of kin.
In the Old Testament law, it was called the avenger of blood. In the New Testament, that shifted. In the teaching of the New Testament, it shifted to the governmental authorities.
When someone has done something worthy of death, the governmental authorities are supposed to do it. Now, Paul states his opinion about capital punishment very plainly, I think. When he was on trial for his own life in Acts chapter 25 and verse 11, he was on trial before Festus for his life, charged with capital offenses as far as the Jews' interpretation of law went.
But he said to Festus, he says, If I am an offender or have committed anything worthy of death, I refuse not to die. I don't refuse to die. But if there be none of these things where they accuse me, then no man shall deliver me into their hands.
I appeal to Caesar. Now, Paul acknowledged there are some things that people can do that are worthy of death. He says, If I've done any of them, I don't oppose to being executed.
That's essentially what he said. If I've done anything worthy of death, I'm not opposed to dying. I don't refuse to die.
That's fair. Fair enough. But he says, I haven't done any of those things.
So, I'm not going to die at their hands. I appeal to Caesar. No one's going to deliver me to them.
Notice Paul's view about capital punishment was, if it's deserved, he has no objection to it, even if he's the one that deserves it. There are things that people do that are worthy of death. Paul said so, and he said in such cases, he doesn't object to the government doing its duty.
Now, that doesn't mean that Christians should be glad to see people die. At one level, of course, there's a relief when wicked people die, but there's another sense where there's a grief in the heart of the Christian because we do value life, even fallen human life, even sinful human life. Even God values it.
In Ezekiel 33, 11, God says, Turn you, turn you at my reproof, for why will you die? He says, I have no pleasure in the death of the wicked, but rather that the wicked should turn from his evil ways and live. God is into life, but He's also into the death of the wicked when there's no other way to have justice prevail. He says, I don't have pleasure in the death of the wicked, but in the same statement, He's saying, basically, if you don't turn, you're going to die at my hand.
I'm going to kill you. I won't enjoy it because I don't have pleasure in that. I'd rather you turn from your wicked way and live.
I think Christians, if they're going to be fully biblical, have to endorse the legitimacy and the justice of capital punishment when it is deserved, but at the same time, not with any glee and not with any great reveling in it. We should be sorry that a man had to die that way rather than having turned to God and had life if we're going to share God's opinions about those things. Now, what about the use, then, of deadly force? Now, in self-defense, what about the use of deadly force in self-defense? There are Christians, Mennonites, Quakers, people like that, and others who believe that the use of any kind of forcible resistance is not right because they say Jesus said to turn the other cheek, Jesus said to not resist the evil man, Jesus said to do good to those who hurt you, and so forth.
And these things are true. Jesus did say that. And yet, Jesus never really talked directly in the passage that's being quoted there in Matthew 5. He never talked directly about a situation where a person's life was in danger.
He talked about someone slapping you across the cheek while you turn the other cheek. You can absorb the injury and the insult, but your life's not in danger in that scenario. People who curse you or do evil to you or persecute you may indeed not be attempting to kill you.
Much persecution and cursing happens where there's no intention to kill you and where your life is not really in danger. To love and bless and so forth, and those people it's called for. The question, what about when it goes so far as they are trying to kill you? What then? What shall you do then? Now, that... You know, Christians would like to simplify everything into simple rules.
Do this, don't do that. Do this, don't do that. So that we'd have a new law like Moses gave people.
We wouldn't have to ever be led by the Spirit of God. But I believe in these issues we need to be led by biblical principle. And that principle applies, I think, in some scenarios in different ways.
For example, is it right to defend yourself against someone who wants to kill you? But Jesus didn't. Stephen didn't. Should we? In James 5, verse 6, James is rebuking certain rich men who were oppressors of the church.
And he says to them, you have condemned and killed the just. The just means the righteous ones. And he does not resist you.
These people were killing Christians and the Christians were not resisting. Here they were facing deadly attack on themselves and they did not resist. They followed the example of Jesus.
Now, we might say, well, from these Scriptures it's plain that self-defense is wrong for Christians. Christians should be willing to die rather than defend themselves especially in using deadly force. The way it's often argued is that we can afford to die, my attacker cannot.
The fact that he's my attacker means he's ready to go to hell, not heaven. I can afford to die and go to heaven and it is more loving, it's more like Christ for me to allow myself to die and say, Father, into your hands I commit my spirit and let that man live to have another chance to be saved. In fact, not only let him live, but forgive him.
As Jesus said, Father, forgive them. They don't know what they do. Or Stephen said, Father, do not lay this sin to their charge.
There is a genuinely and radically Christian spirit of non-resistance in the face of self-danger. But there are other things that nuance the situation that we need to take into consideration. That are not in those examples or in the teaching of Jesus.
And that is, what about when it's not just you? What if they're coming after your whole family and you just happen to be standing in front and you're just the first they're going to take and your family is depending on you? Well, that brings different considerations into the picture, it seems to me. Now, not everyone will agree. A lot of people will say, well, you know, just like you trust God for your eternal safety, your family has to trust God too.
They're not supposed to trust you, but they should trust God. But there are responsibilities that a head of a household has. Or any innocent party, seeing another innocent party suffer.
I believe that when the Bible tells us to do unto others, as we would have done to ourselves, and to love our neighbor as we love ourselves. The Bible does tell us to love our enemies, but it doesn't say to love them more than we love good guys. I can love a man who's a wicked man, but I'm not supposed to love him more than I love a good man.
And there are arguments that can be made that the Christian has an obligation to stand in the defense of the helpless victims of criminal violence. Now, we don't have examples of this in the Scripture, because we simply, we don't have any cases where people were in the position to violently resist someone who was hurting somebody else necessarily, near as I can tell. In the New Testament.
In the Old Testament, we have cases like that. And of course, the righteous people always came to the rescue. When Saul... It's interesting, when the Gibeonites were in danger of invaders who said, we'll let you surrender only if you pluck out your right eye and cut off your right hand.
They said, well, give us a few days to think about it. And they sent messengers off to Saul, and Saul was out there plowing. And when he heard about it, the Bible says, he was filled with the Spirit, and he was full of wrath.
Interesting fruit of the Spirit in this case. The Holy Spirit comes on him, he's full of anger. And he marshals the army of the Israelites, he goes out and he defends the defenseless.
Now, that's what he did under the moving of the Holy Spirit. There is such a thing as a selfless activity of resistance, and in that case, he used deadly force. There are many arguments on both sides of this, which is why the church has been divided for a long time on it, and on the war issue as well.
And I would say that Christians need to study this out better than most of them have, and reach their own conclusions from the Scripture, and try as much as possible to eliminate their own visceral, and fleshly, and ingrained cultural thoughts about this, and try to get the mind of God from Scripture. I believe if you do that, you may reach different conclusions than I do, but my conclusion is that I should be willing to die, rather than take the life of someone who just wants to hurt me. But, if there are others that I am charged with the protection of, then there may be times when I have to defend myself only because it's part of defending them.
Now, I also believe because of our love for life, and God's love for life, and because He has no pleasure in the death of the wicked, that self-defense or defense of a family, as much as possible, should be done without lethal force. I think lethal force, obviously, is the last resort. It is with God.
God had no pleasure in the death of the wicked, but He sometimes eventually said, well, there's nothing more for it, I'm going to take them out. And He waited 400 years before He did that to the Canaanites. It was long patience.
I believe that if resistance can be done without lethal force, the Christian spirit would be to do whatever must be done, and to avoid lethal force if possible. But, if it's not possible, then that's another story. Now, about war.
This, too, is a big controversial issue. It wasn't controversial among the early Christians. All the early Christians were opposed to Christians fighting in war.
They believed that it violated the teaching of Christ in the Sermon on the Mount. War became acceptable for Christians when Constantine became emperor. At that point, Constantine declared that the Roman Empire was essentially the kingdom of God.
So, the wars of Rome were the wars of God, and godly people had to fight in the wars of Rome. And so, things got really muddled, and forever since. Christian countries have always had citizens who were Christians who felt like they should fight for their countries.
Now, the defense of this, biblically, is always from the Old Testament, because there's no New Testament defense for this activity. And, usually, they point out, well, God commanded the Jews to go to war, and to kill, and do all kinds of things. And that is true.
But, before we decide that that tells us what we should do in modern wars, we have to ask ourselves whether there's any real ethical parallel between a modern war and the wars of Israel. Israel was a nation of God's people. All the wars they fought were against people who were not God's people.
There is no nation on the planet today, including this one, that is God's people. The only nation that is God's people is a spiritual nation, the Church of the Living God. A holy nation.
A peculiar people. And those people live in all political nations. And wherever there is a war between two political nations, there are God's people in both.
It's not parallel. Not a parallel situation. Now, there are a lot of things to consider about this, and maybe I'll give a separate talk just about the issue of war, because it is a big one.
Not only war, but civil war. Not only civil war, but vigilantism. These things are on the minds of some people, including Christians today.
And I understand why. And so, perhaps, I wasn't planning to do it, but I'm out of time for this lecture. Maybe I should devote an entire lecture next time to the issue of war.
It certainly deserves that much attention. And there are two sides to the subject. That Christians can argue.
And I think every Christian ought to, as open-mindedly as possible, consider the arguments for both sides, biblically, and then make up their own mind. At the end of the day, I believe every Christian has to do what he believes the Holy Spirit is leading him to do, enlightened by what he believes the Scripture to teach, in those kinds of ethical dilemmas. But I don't think that most Christians, I know, have really considered all the biblical sides of that issue yet.
And so, perhaps, we should next time. Thank you.

Series by Steve Gregg

Beyond End Times
Beyond End Times
In "Beyond End Times", Steve Gregg discusses the return of Christ, judgement and rewards, and the eternal state of the saved and the lost.
How Can I Know That I Am Really Saved?
How Can I Know That I Am Really Saved?
In this four-part series, Steve Gregg explores the concept of salvation using 1 John as a template and emphasizes the importance of love, faith, godli
2 Timothy
2 Timothy
In this insightful series on 2 Timothy, Steve Gregg explores the importance of self-control, faith, and sound doctrine in the Christian life, urging b
Habakkuk
Habakkuk
In his series "Habakkuk," Steve Gregg delves into the biblical book of Habakkuk, addressing the prophet's questions about God's actions during a troub
Galatians
Galatians
In this six-part series, Steve Gregg provides verse-by-verse commentary on the book of Galatians, discussing topics such as true obedience, faith vers
Ecclesiastes
Ecclesiastes
Steve Gregg teaches verse by verse through the book of Ecclesiastes, exploring its themes of mortality, the emptiness of worldly pursuits, and the imp
Hosea
Hosea
In Steve Gregg's 3-part series on Hosea, he explores the prophetic messages of restored Israel and the coming Messiah, emphasizing themes of repentanc
Gospel of Mark
Gospel of Mark
Steve Gregg teaches verse by verse through the Gospel of Mark. The Narrow Path is the radio and internet ministry of Steve Gregg, a servant Bible tea
Making Sense Out Of Suffering
Making Sense Out Of Suffering
In "Making Sense Out Of Suffering," Steve Gregg delves into the philosophical question of why a good sovereign God allows suffering in the world.
1 John
1 John
Steve Gregg teaches verse by verse through the book of 1 John, providing commentary and insights on topics such as walking in the light and love of Go
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