Wednesday, April 8, 2009

Deicide!

Over the next few days leading up to Easter I am going to post some Grace Gems that I have been collecting that all have an Easter theme; today I have an excerpt from Arthur Pink's work Beholding the Crucified Christ.

"They kept shouting--Crucify Him! Crucify Him!"
Luke 23:21
The Word of Truth declares that "the carnal mind is enmity against God" (Romans 8:7). Men do not believe it--in fact most of them pretend the very opposite. Nevertheless, at Calvary--they gave proof of their hatred of God.

Not only was Christ unwelcome here--but men hated Him--and that "without a cause" (John 15:25). He gave them every reason to admire and adore Him--but they had an inveterate detestation of Him!

Multitudes go through the form of paying homage to God--but it is a "god" of their own imagination. They hate the true and living God, and were it possible--they would rid the universe of His existence! This is clear from their treatment of Christ, for He was none other than "God manifest in flesh" (1 Timothy 3:16). They hated and hounded Him to death--and nothing short of His cruel death by crucifixion would appease them!

Here at Calvary the real character of man was revealed, and the desperate wickedness of his heart was laid bare. There it was shown, that man was capable of the blackest of all crimes!

As evil as man had shown himself all through his history--the coming of Immanuel to this earth brought sin to such a head--that all that which had gone before, was relatively but a trifling thing--when compared with the monstrous wickedness which was done against Love incarnate! In the treatment which the Son of God received at the hands of men--we see sin in its true colors, stripped of a disguise, exposed in its hideous reality; revealed in its true nature as contempt of God, and rebellion against Him. Here at Calvary we behold the climax of sin--and the fearful and horrible lengths to which sin is capable of going! That sin which germinated in Eden--culminated in the crucifixion! Here at Calvary, we see sin at it's apex--Deicide--in the slaying of the Lord of Glory!
"They kept shouting--Crucify Him! Crucify Him!"
Luke 23:21
Arthur W. Pink
As we approach Good Friday I encourage you to take some time to think about your own sin and the part that you played in the crucifixion of our Savior. It's a hard thing to say, or even to think about for that matter, but if you and I had been there in the crowd that day we would have been screaming "Crucify Him" right along with every one else.

And you know what, He still would have willingly died in our place.
Print This Post

6 comments:

Maria said...

Hi Chris,

I have a question I thought you may know the answer to. I have an atheist friend who wanted to know if there were any Christian denominations (offshoots, or even marginalized sects) who thought everyone was going to heaven? For instance, Christians, Jews, Muslims, Atheists, Agnostics, etc. were all going to heaven. Do you know of any? I couldn't think of one but I only know the major Christian denominations.

Thanks!

Maria

Christopher said...

Hi Maria,

There are not any major Christian denominations that I know of that think that, but it is becoming more prominent in the Emergent movement. There are several teachers in this movement that are teaching universalism to varying degrees (universalism is the belief that everyone will eventually end up in heaven).

One of the people that you may have heard of who teach this is William Young who wrote The Shack.

Universalism goes against the clear teaching of the Bible and has been renounced as a heresy throughout church history.

I hope this answered your question; if not let me know and I'll try again.

Chris

Maria said...

Thanks Chris. I think that pretty much answered my question. Although now I think I have more... Are universalists Christians? And is that the same as Universalist Unitarians? Moreover, by eventually do you mean there are pit stops along the way to heaven? I suppose I could go look this up myself now that you have given me references.

I was going to ask you this on facebook but I thought this may be a place that other people had similar questions.

M

Christopher said...

Maria,

Universalists are not Christians because they deny what the Bible teaches about salvation through Christ alone and instead teach that it is not important what you believe as long as you follow what you believe sincerely.

Universalism is somewhat different than Unitarianism in that Unitarianism at its most basic level is just people creating their own religion by picking-and-choosing what they want to believe from any other religion and rejecting whatever they don't like. If you attend a Unitarian church they may use the Bible one minute and the Koran the next; they may take a little Christianity and mix in some Buddhism and some Hinduism (and whatever else makes them feel good). They reject that the Bible is the only inspired word of God and teach that all "holy" books are equally valid.

The problem with that is that all of the religious books in the world can be wrong, but they cant all be right since they contradict each other. For example, the Bible teaches that Jesus is the way, the truth, and the life, and that no one comes to the Father except through Him. Either that is true or it is not, and if another book teaches reincarnation it can also be true or not, but they both can't be true.

As far as pit stops go, I have never really thought of that before; I have heard these people say "eventually" but I never really stopped to think about what that might mean. That is a very good question and something that I am going to have to look in to.

Have a great day!
Chris

P.S. Feel free that ask all the questions you want (either here or on Facebook). I'll answer whatever I can.

Maria said...

Chris,

I'm thinking that by "eventually" you may have to come back as a slug if you were a bad person...and then once you are good you can go to heaven. So maybe you can go straight to heaven if you were a good slug, but only after serving "time." I think there's another religion out there that believes this idea...Hindus, maybe?

One of my college roommates was a UU and I do recall her saying they accepted all religious texts/ideas. As an aside, I also remember a conversation where she got mad because I told her she wasn't really a Christian if she was buying into all of these things. She told me I was the bad Christian since I wasn't accepting other people's beliefs. We never resolved that one.

I'm wondering if the original thought process behind Unitarianism was one where some people thought if they practiced all religions they would be "safe" when judgment day came. By covering all of their bases they couldn't be wrong. I'm not sure there would be any evidence for this hypothesis since Unitarian churches market themselves as welcoming for all religions regardless of gender, sex, class, sexuality, religious beliefs, etc. So they wouldn't want to also say well we're just doing this "just in case." I'm babbling. My apologies.

Thanks for your research and input! It's really very interesting.

M

Bob Jones said...

"She told me I was the bad Christian since I wasn't accepting other people's beliefs. We never resolved that one."

Just tell her that according to her own judgment of you, that her belief also made her a bad Christian since she didn't accept your belief.

Being guilty of judging others for the same sin that you accuse them of is hypocrisy.

So not only is she a bad Christian by her own definition, she is a hypocritical one.