The Mystery of the Incarnation

If we can use our imagination Jesus, shortly after His birth, it would be true to say that humanly speaking, He was fragile as He was being held in the arms of His mother; yet if we could peer for a moment beyond the physical, Jesus as God, was not only holding His mother, but every cell and atom together in this Universe.

Talking of Christ, Colossians 1:16, 17 says, “For by him all things were created, in heaven and on earth, visible and invisible, whether thrones or dominions or rulers or authorities—all things were created through him and for him. And he is before all things, and in him all things hold together.”

He is the Creator of all things and in Him all things hold together. That’s quite a thought isn’t it?

More on this here.

Arminianism v. Arminians

“I do not serve the god of the Arminians at all; I have nothing to do with him, and I do not bow down before the Baal they have set up; he is not my God, nor shall he ever be; I fear him not, nor tremble at his presence… The God that saith today and denieth tomorrow, that justifieth today and condemns the next… is no relation to my God in the least degree. He may be a relation of Ashtaroth or Baal, but Jehovah never was or can be his name.” – C.H. Spurgeon

“They are Arminians to a man; they deny the absolute sovereignty of God, his eternal choice of an elect people, and that Christ bore their sins only. They deny the total depravity of man, for they insist that he possesses a free will and can accept Christ and besaved by a decision of his own; thus directly repudiating God’s word,as found in John1:13; 6;44; 8:36; Rom 9:16, and other passages. And where any teacher or preacher is unsound on these basic truths, no confidence must be placed on him on any other subject. If he is all wrong at the foundations, his superstructure is bound to be faulty.” – A. W. Pink, Letter to Lowell Green August 19, 1934

“A “god” whose will is resisted, whose designs are frustrated, whose purpose is checkmated, possesses no title to Deity, and so far from being a fit object of worship, merits nought but contempt.” – A. W. Pink

Having said that, while the doctrines of Arminianism are to be rightly despised, maturity and balance is needed concerning how we view Arminians. See this article here, and this one here.

The same Spurgeon who wrote so forcefully about Arminianism (above) also said this:

“We give our hand to every man that loves the Lord Jesus Christ, be he what he may or who he may. The doctrine of election, like the great act of election itself, is intended to divide, not between Israel and Israel, but between Israel and the Egyptians, not between saint and saint, but between saints and the children of the world. A man may be evidently of God’s chosen family, and yet though elected, may not believe in the doctrine of election. I hold that there are many savingly called, who do not believe in effectual calling, and that there are a great many who persevere to the end, who do not believe the doctrine of final perseverance. We do hope the hearts of many are a great deal better than their heads. We do not set their fallacies down to any willful opposition to the truth as it is in Jesus but simply to an error in their judgments, which we pray God to correct. We hope that if they think us mistaken too, they will reciprocate the same Christian courtesy; and when we meet around the cross, we hope that we shall ever feel that we are one in Christ Jesus.”

“I do not ask whether you believe Calvinism. It is possible that you do not. But I believe you will before you enter heaven. I am persuaded that as God may have washed your hearts, He will wash your brains before you enter heaven.” – Spurgeon, Sermons, Vol. 1, p. 92

Do Christians commit shirk?

Islam teaches that shirk (Arabic: ???? širk) is the sin of idolatry or polytheism, i.e. the deification or worship of anyone or anything other than the singular God, or more literally the establishment of “partners” placed beside God. Within Islam, shirk is an unforgivable crime; God may forgive any sin except shirk.

According to this Islamic scholar, “Saying ‘Merry Christmas’ is worse than fornication or killing someone.”

“To our Muslim readers: We (Christians) worship one God, who has manifested Himself in Three Persons. One Yahweh, one God, Three Persons. No association of anything created or non-eternal. No married gods, no wives or consorts (contra Q. 6:101). Three co-equal and co-eternal Persons sharing fully the one, indivisible being of God. While the Qur’an attempts to identify this as shirk, the author of the Qur’an clearly did not understand the doctrine he was seeking to deny.” – Dr. James White