“The gifts and calling of God are irrevocable”
Romans
11:29
Not
so long ago a man wrote a book with the title “Honest
to God”.
The
erstwhile Bishop John A T Robinson wrote a book in which he threw
out ‘The God out there’ and made God the ground of being in man
alone. The only God there is, he maintained, is the god within. There
was great uproar among many bible believing Christians at the very
idea of a God being capable of dying,
since God was
previously seen
the only source of life there ever was. So
whereas the Christian life is a gift of God to mankind according to
the Bible, the Bishop saw the life within man apart from that gift as
being the only true God. The idea of “a death of God “ became the
core of the liberal theology prevalent to this day. A loud and
prominent
movement arose
in
the United States and
in the UK and
basically stated what the Encyclopedia Britannica states: “Though
thinkers of many varied viewpoints have been grouped in this school,
basic to practically all of them is the idea that belief in a
God
(‘out
there’) is
impossible or meaningless in the modern world and that fulfilment is
to be found in secular life.
“ God,
so it is claimed, is equally present in all of mankind. As man is apart from the new birth!
The
origin of the actual phrase came
from
a German
Philosopher, Friedrich Nietzsche,
who termed the phrase “Gott ist tot” back over one
hundred and
forty
years
ago.
What
he meant was not that a really existing God had actually died, but
that all the ideas about God which had ruled mankind in the past were
no longer relevant to modern man. By every definition possible
Nietzsche was an atheist. But he saw something very important that
would happen if you did remove God from society, and from the
consciousness of the people: “The
death of God didn’t strike Nietzsche as an entirely good thing.
Without a God, the basic belief system of Western Europe was
in jeopardy, as he put it in Twilight
of the Idols: “When
one gives up the Christian faith, one pulls the right to Christian
morality out from under one's feet. This morality is by no means
self-evident… Christianity is a system, a whole view of things
thought out together. By breaking one main concept out of it, the
faith in God, one breaks the whole.”
("God
Is Dead": What Nietzsche Really Meant - Big Think
)
Nietzsche
saw that removing God from the scheme by which we understand our
world would ultimately lead to what is called nihilism. The
destruction of all values and the need to reconstruct the entire
human society. He foresaw the development of the next 200 years and
his dystopic view of human society is our reality in the entire
western world today. Let go of God and you need to say goodbye to man
as made in the image of God. Far from arriving at a superior human
being, his concept of the Uebermensch,
(the
antithesis to God in the world, thus an Anti Christ,) we
have arrived at the opposite end of mankind, a kind that lives below
every standard of the standards
imposed on mankind by the Creator, and made possible by law and
grace. Mankind without God is no longer true
mankind.
That is the understanding of the entire bible. It is encapsulated in
the succinct words of Jesus Christ: “Without me, you can do
nothing.” John
15:5 And
echoed by Paul the apostle: “In me, in my flesh, there is not a
single good thing.” Romans
7:17-18.
The
‘death of God theology’ flatly denies the need for being born
again, for receiving the life of Christ and for surrendering the self
to the Maker of individuality and personality. The self centred man
must die according to the Bible, it can not represent God in it’s
fallen condition. The evidence for regeneration is the divine element
that is only available through the death to the self. The life of
faith is by definition miraculous and cannot be achieved by the
natural man. Becoming a Child of God is not an achievement of the
‘flesh’. It is available by a transaction involving the death to
myself in order to receive the life of Christ. It
is the refusal to die to this self that leads theologians to invent
the death of God.
Unless
we understand the utter impossibility of the natural man to have any
concept of spiritual reality then nothing in the NT makes any sense
at all. The new life within responds to the words that are Spirit and
Truth. The mere natural man does not have the ability to do so. All
attempts and all striving to elevate the natural to the spiritual
stumbles and falls at the clear and unequivocal command: “you must
be born again”. Nothing
holy can be understood by the unholy. Nothing divine is understood by
those who only seek gratification in the things offered in the
world.
Without faith in the God who is, there is no pleasing of
God at all. However glorious a human career is as seen by the world,
it
is glorious only on the terms of
a world in enmity to God. God is more than justly suspicious of human
endeavour. “But
the Lord saw that
the wickedness of humankind had become great on the earth. Every
inclination of the thoughts of their minds was only
evil all the time. The Lord regretted that
he had made humankind on the earth, and he was highly offended.“
Genesis
6:5-6.
But
how do you connect “the God is dead” idea to the quotation from
Romans 11?
What
did it say?
“The
gifts and calling of God are irrevocable”. If the God who gives
gifts and makes choices in time is so unreliable so as to have the
ability to die, in any sense of the word, then He is plainly not God
by any definition, and most certainly not the God of the Bible. And
then all his gifts and callings are equally uncertain and cannot be
relied on. Far from reflecting His eternal being, his gifts and
callings are then as fickle and unreliable as He is himself. Does God
evolve?
Is God different in one aeon of time from how He is in
another aeon?
What does the scripture say about this
chameleon God?
Numbers
23:19
“God
is not a man, that he should lie,
nor a human being, that
he should change his mind.
Has he said, and will he not do
it?
Or has he spoken, and will he not make it happen?”
Psalm
33:11
“The Lord’s
decisions stand forever;
his plans abide throughout the ages.
“
Psalm
119:89-91
“O Lord,
your instructions endure;
they stand secure in heaven.
You
demonstrate your faithfulness to all generations.
You
established the earth and it stood firm.
Today they stand firm
by your decrees,
for all things are your
servants.”
Ecclesiastes
3:14
“I
also know that whatever God
does will endure forever;
nothing
can be added to it,
and nothing can be taken from it.
God
has made it this way,
so that men will fear Him.”
Hebrews 6:17-18
“ In
the same way God wanted to demonstrate more clearly to the heirs
of the promise that his
purpose was unchangeable, and
so he intervened with an oath, so that we who have found refuge
in him may find strong encouragement to hold fast to the hope set
before us through two unchangeable things, since it
is impossible for God to lie.”
James
1:17
“All
generous giving and every perfect gift is from above, coming down
from the Father of Lights, with
whom there is no variation
or the slightest hint of change.”
1
Timothy 1:17
“Now
to the King eternal, immortal,
invisible, the Only God, be honour and glory for ever and ever..”
1
Timothy 6:14-16
“..obey
this command without fault or failure until the appearing of our Lord
Jesus Christ, whose appearing the blessed Sovereign, the King of
Kings and Lord of Lords, will reveal at the right time. He alone
possesses immortality
and
lives in unapproachable light, whom no man has ever seen or is able
to see. To him be honour and eternal power! Amen.”
Against
this backdrop then, let me ask a question based on the phrase from
Romans 11:29. Is it likely that the living God will equip His son,
and the Son His own body, the Church, with gifts that suddenly, but
totally without forewarning
and supported by not one single word of Scripture, would disappear
for ever?
Because
you see, here is another, but very well disguised death of God. A
death defended by some evangelical theologies to the utmost. If God
can be separated from His gifts, all or just some, then obviously
there must be a horrendous silence, the silence of a muted and dead
God, in the Churches.
The secularized and demythologizing
liberal theologians did not mince about the issue. They proclaimed
boldly that “God is dead”. Whatever we mean by using the word
“God” now, must be redefined along the lines of natural man’s
refusal to let God be the God of the Bible. And those churches are
dying as a result, or they are filled with those to whom a dead God
eases their conscience as it also means that nobody will be called to
account by this “God”.
But what shall we say of those
who whilst maintaining the principle of “Scripture alone”, have
gagged God from saying anything but what the carefully selected
scriptures are still allowed to say, that seem to support this
deafening silence? Not that there is a single one. On the contrary,
you have just read about a totally immutable God, a God who does not
revoke His gifts and callings. Not if reasonable exegesis is applied.
In order for a church to say that this or that ‘gift’ of God is
no longer available to the church in our age, they
would need the gift of spiritual discernment to identify which gift
is no more! So
without the gift of discernment and the gift of identifying what
spirit is active in what ever gift is exercised, there cannot be any
rejection of any gift. But logic tells you that if you need a
spiritual gift to deny the existence of a specific spiritual Gift,
then you no longer submit to God, but you have now become His
taskmaster and His Instructor.
Romans
11:29-35
“For
the gifts and the call of God are irrevocable. Just as you were
formerly disobedient to God, but have now received mercy due to their
disobedience, so they too have now been disobedient in order
that, by the mercy shown to you, they too may now receive
mercy. For God has consigned all people to disobedience so that
he may show mercy to them all.
Oh, the depth of the riches and wisdom and knowledge of God! How unsearchable are his judgments and how unfathomable his ways!
For
who has known the mind of the Lord,
or
who has been his counsellor?
Or
who has first given to God,
that
God
needs
to repay him?
For from him and through him and to him are all things. To him be
glory forever! Amen.”
“As
the father has sent me, so send I you.”
Jesus Christ is the giver of the gifts to the Church, gifts called
Apostles, Prophets, Evangelists, Teachers and Shepherds. Those are
servants of Christ sent to serve the Church and give the Church
structure and impetus as long as the Church shall stand in the World.
But the gifts of the Spirit are for the membership of the church
since they are the workforce of the Church in the world. As long as
there are unresearched nations, unsaved people, hidden sins and
satanic bole-works raised up against Christ, the Church needs the
equipment of the eternal Spirit. If the gifts are silenced then all
that is left is a Church that makes no noise which would disturb one
sinner from their sleep.
After his resurrection Jesus
equipped the Church with the Spirit. “When
he had said this, he showed them his hands and his side. Then the
disciples rejoiced when they saw the Lord. So Jesus said to them
again, “Peace be with you. Just as the Father has sent me, I also
send you.”And after he said this, he breathed on them and
said, “Receive the Holy Spirit.
And the Spirit which they
received, has never had his
brief changed: to equip the saints for their work. But this same
Spirit is quenched, grieved and extinguished and even blasphemed by
churches who prefer the
long-winded preaching of
human beings
and mistake it for being all
that is left to them, and therefore never
notice the silence of God. A silent God is not much different than a
dead God. With hearing ears they hear not. Anything God says falls
on deaf ears. It is not the lack of ears that is the problem, it is
the refusal to obey the meaning of the words. Neither is there
an absence of words extracted
and purloined from the Bible,
but the presence of effective filters screening out what
God has said in those
scriptures which upsets the
natural man.
Everything of the Holy Spirit upsets the
carnal believer. He or she is unable to discern Spirit from Flesh,
because of a
theology that allows them to deny the very gifts that are needed to
do so.
One way or the other, God is dead, and the
Churches’ lack of vibrant life confirm it.
Let
me finish this consideration by reflecting on what would be left if
the Charismata, the Gifts of Grace as such were removed from the
Church.
1. God is not consistent and his promises are not “Yea
and Amen” at all, they are subservient to the church and the
understandings of unregenerate men and women, who by denying the
Gifts of God also deny their own ability to discern spiritual from
merely natural.
2. The scriptures are only understood on a social, intellectual and linguistic level. They may be stored in the minds of men but have no means of effecting the needed change, the new Birth in men.
3. Everything an assembly of such people decides to do is purely the result of accumulated ignorance of the things of the Spirit. No amount of natural knowledge ever arrives at Spiritual truth. Spirit and Flesh, I e the life of God and the ordinary life of unregenerate man are never in agreement on anything. There is enmity between them. To understand the Messiah demands revelation from God the Father Himself. The mere reading of the scriptures may convince the brain, but only direct revelation convicts the heart of man. The work of the Spirit cannot be exchanged for any other work.
4. Nothing that happens in the assembly is only explicable in terms of a God consistent with His self revelation in the Scriptures. The content of scriptures is bent to fit into the activities of mere man but clothed in religious jargon.
5. It has a form of godliness but denying the power thereof. You could be a member of the church all your life and never suspect that God exists apart from the words spoken about God. The major evidence for the “virtual death of God” is the palpable and tangible absence of the presence of His Glory in the midst of the assembly.
6.The
ultimate fulcrum on which the issue hangs is this: “When the Holy
Spirit has come over you, you will receive power to be my witnesses.”
If God is dead then no such power will be in evidence. If the world
in which the church exists has not the slightest notion of the Church
as a true and powerful witness,
I e
executively pushing back the darkness in the world, then the claim to
be alive in Christ is not creditable. And unless it is the Life of
Christ in the Church that
keeps it at work, then it is
naked, blind and dead cold.
If
God could die, what would be left is what is here now, a
form of religion saying the right things but doing nothing that is
sufficiently “other” to show God at all. And yet it calls
itself “this or that church”. The evidence of the death of God is
readily found in the dismemberment of the body
of Christ on doctrinal and
denominational lines. Thereby
denying the highest and definitive reality of the presence of God:
“That you love one another, the way the Father has loved me.”
You
can only
dissect a dead body.
*******
Teddy Donobauer Doncaster 28.6.21
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