Thankful Thursday

I’m thankful that God is omnipotent. God’s power created the universe and his power sustains it. Today I walked the dog down by the pond and we watched ducks swim. The dog, the ducks, and I, were all energised by God’s sustaining power. 

Everything I have comes by way of God’s power: His power causes the sun to shine and the rain to fall; his power causes the tomatoes to ripen and the flowers to bloom; his power supplies the food I eat and the clothes I wear; his power keeps me safe as I travel and healthy as I work.

That God is omnipotent means he can always do what he wills to do. Nothing can stop him from carrying out his plans. That’s another reason I can count on him to keep his promises, isn’t it?

God’s “power toward us who believe” means I have security despite my weaknesses. The God who spoke the universe into existence, who sustains it by his word, who raised Christ from the dead, and who is always, ever working all things according to the counsel of his will keeps me by his power (1 Peter 1:3-5). I cannot, will not, keep myself by my own power, but the God of all ability is on my side, keeping me by his power. 

It is through the power of God that 

…neither death nor life,
nor angels nor principalities nor powers,
nor things present nor things to come,
nor height nor depth,
nor any other created thing,
shall be able to separate us from the love of God
which is in Christ Jesus our Lord.
(Romans 8:38,39)

The limitlessness of God’s power is one more reason I can trust him. It’s on more reason I have hope. Praise God for his omnipotence!

Penal Substitution = Universal Salvation?

One  objection to penal substitution is that implies universal salvation, and we know that’s not right. According to Steve Jeffery, Michael Ovey and Andrew Sach in Pierced for Our Transgressions: Rediscovering the Glory of Penal Substitution, the argument can be laid out something like this: 

(a) According to penal substitution, Jesus’ death fully pays the debt of those for whom he died.

(b) Jesus died for all people.

(c) From (a) and (b) it follows that Jesus’ death fully pays the debt of all people. 

(d) But the Bible teaches that some people will pay their own debt in hell.

(e) From (c) and (d) it follows that God is unjust, for in hell he demands payment for a debt already paid in full by Christ. In other words, he punishes the same sin twice.

(f) This conclusion (e) is unthinkable, and so we must reject penal substitution (a) on which the whole argument rests.

But rejecting penal substitution (a) is not the only way out of this “unthinkable” conclusion (f). We could reject universal redemption (b) instead, and that’s what some—me, for instance—do.

Of course, those who reject universal redemption don’t do it simply to “prop up penal substitution.” 

Rather, particular redemption was part of the fabric of Reformed theology in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, and only when this was denied did some become uncertain about penal substitution.

There are, however, many people who hold to both penal substitution and universal redemption without holding to universal salvation. I’m guessing they just affirm it all without thinking too much about how it fits together. But traditional Arminians usually do reject penal substitution, holding to a governmental theory of the atonement, and the argument above is one of the reasons.

Round the Sphere Again: Bible

Moses
Steve Hays at Triablogue outlines his argument for Mosaic authorship of the Pentateuch.

John the Baptist
Don Carson walks us through Matthew 11:2-19, the passage in which John the Baptist sends his disciples to ask Jesus, “Are you the one who is to come, or shall we look for another?”.

Here are three of the questions answered:

• Why did John ask this question?
• Why does Jesus mention the blessings without the judgments?
• Why is the least in the kingdom, this side of the cross, greater than John the Baptist? 

Jesus
How did Jesus view the Bible?

[I]t is impossible to revere the Scriptures more deeply or affirm them more completely than Jesus did. The Lord Jesus, God’s Son and our Savior, believed his Bible was the word of God down to the tiniest speck and that nothing in all those specks and in all those books in his Bible could ever be broken..

Jesus’ Doctrine of Scripture by Kevin DeYoung. (The post is highly recommended; the comments no so much.)

God
“[T]he Bible isn’t mainly about me, and what I should be doing. It’s about God and what he has done”—Teach Children the Bible Is Not About Them by Sally Lloyd Jones at Desiring God Blog.