Author: Tim Hayes

Intercession for Us

When a truly righteous person offers to pray for me, I feel honored, hopeful God will hear them. Appealing to the Supreme Power of the Universe on my behalf … what an unspeakable privilege!

What then do I make of the fact that God Himself prays for me? The Spirit of God Himself appeals to the Holy Father on my behalf, making intercession for me! (Ro 8:26) How can the Holy Ghost pray amiss, or not be heard? He Who knows and loves me better than I know and love myself always prays according to the perfect, unique will of God for me! (Ro 8:27) Wow!

And not only this, but the very Son of God also joins with the Spirit of God to intercede for me to His Father! (Ro 8:34) Two-thirds of the Godhead are already praying for me, perfectly, flawlessly, right now, without ceasing! Can I imagine that they will not be heard? That their prayers will be in vain? About anything?  Not a chance!

What else could I possibly need spiritually! Victory is in hand, not because of me,  or anything I can do or have done, but because God is doing everything that needs to be done to save me and sanctify me (Jud 1:24); He Himself is living out victory in me. (1Co 15:57)

How can I be depressed? How can I be defeated? How can I be lost? Who can lay any charge against me, when it is God Who justifies me? (Ro 8:33) Who can condemn me when Christ has died for me (Ro 8:34), quickens me (Jn 5:21), gives me eternal life (Jn 17:2) and lives in me? He’s everything I need: my wisdom, righteousness, sanctification and redemption. (1Co 1:30) How could I ever glory in myself, or in anyone else but Him? (2Co 10:17)

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Few Find It

Christian Universalism is the teaching that all people will eventually be saved and enter Heaven. It sounds nice, the typical fairy tale happy ending to eternity, but is it true?

All people certainly would be saved if everyone earnestly sought salvation from God (1Ti 2:3-4), but even though all are invited to do so (Re 22:17), very few are willing to come, and none on their own initiative, apart from the drawing of God. (Jn 6:44)

Christ tells us to strive to enter Heaven, that many will seek to enter their own way but won’t be able to (Lk 13:24), that the way to Heaven is narrow, obscure, hidden, and that very few will find it. (Mt 7:14)

Further, Christ teaches that there are certain types and degrees of sin that are never forgiven, neither in this world, nor in the world to come. (Mt 12:32)

Since God is eternally merciful to those who repent and yield to Him (Is 55:7), it would appear that the problem with universalism isn’t that God is unloving or holds grudges, but that Man refuses to repent, even from the flames of Hell. If God waited for men to repent on their own accord, He’d wait forever. (Ps 81:15)

Man is incapable of transforming himself (Je 13:23); not even infernal torments convince the wicked that it’s reasonable to repent and seek God. (Pr 27:22) The only hope any of us have is the irresistible grace of God; God is able to work in the human heart according to His will (Php 2:13), moving in us to seek Him and obey Him.

It is perhaps a mystery why God does not choose us all; one must look to God’s purpose in Creation to find the answer. (Ro 9:22-23) Evidently, God will be the most glorified in the way He chooses (Ps 46:10), and this is enough for me.

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Continual Sorrow

What’s the proper response to all the sinfulness and brokenness about us? When others aren’t walking with God, asleep in dead works, should we be concerned that they’re heading for an eternal, fiery Hell?

Clearly, sorrow and concern is warranted: Paul felt great heaviness and continual sorrow over Israel’s rejection of Messiah (Ro 9:1-3), and wept over the worldliness of false teachers. (Php 3:18-19) But there’s a vast difference between grieving over sin, and grieving over God’s response to it; the former’s a concern for the pleasure of God, the latter an indictment of His character.

The godly grieve over wickedness (Je 13:17) as God’s Law is violated (Ps 119:136), but not over God condemning and punishing rebellion. Those in Heaven aren’t weeping over the suffering of the wicked (Re 19:1-2), knowing God’s perfectly righteous and just in everything He does (Ps 55:15); the problem is with Man, not God. (Re 15:4)

All the works of God should move us to worship (Ps 145:10), even His response to the lost. (Lk 10:21)

Concern for others springs from love, praying that they’ll turn from their ways unto God. God is grieved when people neglect Him, and invites all to come to Him. Father, help me weep for the lost, and to do so for the right reason.

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Christ Lives in Me

I have been observing that I don’t live in perfect peace as I ought; there’s definitely room to grow. I often tense up and experience anxiety over incidental things, worrying about what people might be thinking, or potential trouble that might cause me grief. How do I combat this?

One thought I’ve had recently relates to “Christ in you, the hope of glory.” (Col 1:27) Jesus Christ lives within me (Ga 2:20), thinking and feeling as a real person. The real incarnate Christ, Who lived, breathed and walked this earth 2000 years ago, Who created the universe (Col 1:16), lives within my spirit and will as a whole person, as a divine intellect, emotion and will; not a separate person from me, but not entirely the same either. I cannot quite explain this to my own satisfaction, but it is still very, very real.

So, along the lines of the famous question, “What would Jesus do?”, I’ve started asking myself, “What is Jesus doing? What is He thinking and believing and feeling in me, right now?”

In a sense, I think this may be described as a kind of putting on of Christ, a way of emulating Him, but it seems to me a bit deeper than this. It is acknowledging that Christ Himself is already in me living and doing according to His will, as a very part of me. As I acknowledge this and align with Him, He lives ever more freely and fully and undiluted in me, delivering me from lust, fear, anxiety and worry.

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A Good Conscience

The conscience is the part of us affirming us in doing right, and shaming us when we aren’t. It’s like a map and compass in the race of life: absolutely indispensable.

But a conscience can become wounded and weak (1Co_8:12), even defiled and corrupted (1Co 8:7) through our lies and hypocrisy, seared with a hot iron. (1Ti 4:2) Then it’s useless, corrupting everything about us (Tit 1:15); then we’re calling evil good and good evil. (Is 5:20)

We cleanse our conscience by continually recalibrating it with God’s Word (Ps 119:9), comparing its assessments with what God says instead of the world, thereby renewing our minds by persistently aligning our conscience with revealed truth. (Ro 12:2) and allowing it time to adjust. At first, a weak conscience troubles us as we persist in obeying truth with our wills, just as it does when it’s clean and we’re offending against the truth, but it eventually heals and aligns with our will when our actions are according to truth. This is, in fact, the very goal of Torah. (1Ti 1:5)

God tells us to hold on to a good conscience, to protect and guard it (1Ti 1:19), to cleanse our evil conscience (He 10:22) from dead works through His blood. (He 9:14) He does this in us as we obey what we already know to be true (Ja 1:22), repenting of sin and walking according to all the truth we have (He 13:18), consistently delivering ourselves from bondage unto more and more freedom (2Ti 2:25), and ever seeking more truth (Ps 119:30), wisdom and understanding. (Pr 4:7)

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Perverse Disputings

Assuming others might know something I don’t, and being open to learning from them, makes perfect sense; I don’t know everything about anything, so I can potentially learn something from everyone I meet.

But there are certain people with whom I should avoid engaging in prolonged or repeated discussions, those who fail to think in a certain way. Paul refers to perverse disputings of men of corrupt minds, and exhorts us to withdraw from such folk. (1Ti 6:3-5)

Evidently, there’s a certain kind of attitude in debate that’s perverted, unhealthy, irrational, twisting and corrupting the purpose of debate. When a person isn’t thinking clearly, having lied to themselves so often that they’ve seared their own conscience (1Ti 4:2), there isn’t any way to reach them with facts and evidence, so we must have some other purpose in engaging them in conversation, or we’ll be be frustrated and irritated. (Pr 29:9)

There’s a difference between being ignorant, and being self-deceived. I tend to make the mistake of thinking that if people just have enough evidence then they’ll change their minds. The longer I live, the more I think this is a rarity. Most people aren’t open to learning and changing their minds about anything; they’re just in the debate to exalt themselves by putting others in the wrong, but this isn’t the purpose of debate.

Healthy debate can only occur among those who are seeking truth, and it’s extremely beneficial, iron sharpening iron. Outside that unique context, we need to set expectations reasonably, and persist only to improve our own understanding, enhancing our ability to give an answer to those who ask sincerely (1Pe 3:15), not expecting to help those who aren’t.

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Examine Yourselves

The questions we ask reveal our hearts. Are we asking, “Which of God’s law must I obey?” Or are we asking, “Which of God’s laws am I allowed/permitted to obey?”

As God writes Torah into the minds and hearts of His own (He 8:10), He’s revealing that Torah is holy and just and good (Ro 7:12), such that we “delight in the law of God after the inward man.” (Ro 7:22) As He transforms us we’ll be obeying every law that we’re able to obey as well as we can, and continually asking Him to help us obey Torah better, more perfectly. (Ps 119:35)

But if we don’t delight in Torah, we’ll be looking for excuses and explanations that relieve us of any sense of duty (Ec 12:13), and most any deception will do. (2Ti 4:3) This is the posture of the carnal mind (Ro 8:7), enmity against Torah, and ultimately against the heart of God. (Ps 119:136)

So, ask yourself the question: “What kinds of questions am I asking? What does this reveal about my heart?” Examine yourself (2Co 13:5): does your life reflect the things that accompany salvation? (He 6:9) If our questions don’t reveal a delight in Torah, then something’s wrong with our inward man.

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God Created

The Bible begins with a profound statement: “In the beginning God created the heaven and the earth.” (Ge 1:1) It’s a scientific statement, yet it’s also obviously a metaphysical and a spiritual one, a link between spirituality and science. How so?

The 1st and 2nd Laws of Thermodynamics, basic rules which no scientific observation has ever violated, tell us: [1] matter and energy can’t be created, or come into existence from nothing, naturally (The Law of Conservation of Energy explicitly states this.); and [2] the universe came into existence – it’s not infinitely old; it had a beginning, before which there was nothing (The Law of Increasing Entropy implies this by contradiction: an infinitely old universe would be at steady state with maximum entropy, and our universe is not so).

Putting these two facts together implies that a supernatural event, a miracle, must occur for anything at all to exist – the material universe had to be created by a deity. In other words, the basic, time-tested laws of physics prove that God exists. To deny this is to deny everything we’ve ever discovered about the universe through science.

And, by definition, a miracle is a spiritual thing, an act of deity which reveals the existence, nature and character of the divine. The earth and the heavens are such a miracle, declaring the glory of God (Ps 19:1) to all Mankind. (Ro 1:20)

So why are there atheists and agnostics? Those I’ve encountered say science has discredited and replaced spirituality, that it can explain anything. Yet it seems to me that skeptics must ignore science in order to persist in disbelief. They appear to be living exactly like the religious simpletons they disdain, blindly ignoring the One they’re desperately hoping doesn’t exist.

If we don’t obey the truth we already know we deceive ourselves. (Ja 1:22) We’re each accountable for how we respond to evidence; a persistent unwillingness to acknowledge God and seek after Him (Ac 17:27) reveals an enmity towards Him that’s entirely unjustified. (Ro 8:6) It would make anyone with any self-respect angry to be treated like this — of course it makes God angry. (Ro 1:18-19) Why wouldn’t it?

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Dead Works

One of the first principles of spiritual life is repentance from dead works. (He 6:1) What are dead works? How do we repent of them?

Dead things are missing that life force from God, the energy and vitality He gives to all living things (Ac 17:25), making them sentient, conscious, aware of their surroundings, causing them to change and grow and function according to His design.

To repent is to start believing the truth about something, and to start acting differently as a result. (2Ti 2:25-26)

So, repentance from dead works must be to start thinking truthfully about our lives, understanding why we’re living as we are, identifying what sort of works we’re doing (1Co 3:13), and to stop doing things which are not energized by God, activities that are apart from and outside of Him, rooted in a carnal mind. (Ro 8:6)

Christ says that unless we’re abiding in Him, we can do nothing that’s worth doing (Jn 15:5); unless we’re aligned with Him, seeking to honor and obey Him, we’re working against Him. (Mt 12:30) In other words, if we’re willing to continue living our lives apart from Him, out of fellowship with Him, for our own pleasure, then we’re the walking dead (1Ti 5:6), having only the outward appearance of life (Re 3:1): we’ve yet to begin the spiritual life. (Ep 2:1)

The difference between a living work and a dead work lies in the motive, and there’s only one proper motive: God is doing it. (Jn 5:19) Christ in us (Col 1:27) is living in our life (Col 3:4), breathing in our breath, willing through our wills, and doing through our doing (Php 2:13), as we actively seek to please and honor God with everything we have. (Col 3:17) When we’re living to please Him as deliberately as we know how, actively seeking His will and pleasure every moment, He is living through us and we’re abiding in Him. (Jn 17:21)

Everything we do, we choose to do; to repent of dead works is to start making different choices in every choice we make. It’s a fundamental life change, a transformation, living for a different reason than we’ve been living, living for God instead of for ourselves.

If there’s something we’re thinking that Christ can’t be thinking, that He would find distasteful or repugnant, let’s stop thinking that; if we’re going where Christ wouldn’t go, let’s stop going there; if we’re speaking words He wouldn’t speak, let’s stop speaking them. Let’s be thinking what Christ in us is thinking, doing what He’s doing, and going where He’s going. If Christ dwells in us, let’s let Him live as He will in us, incarnating Himself again in this evil world through us. Everything we do, let’s do it in Christ’s name with thanksgiving (Col 3:17) for God’s glory. (1Co 10:31)

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As Little Children

Christ says that unless we’re converted, and become as little children, we can’t go to Heaven. (Mt 18:3) Whatever salvation is, according to Jesus, it includes becoming childlike.

The context of His teaching was a question among the disciples about who would be the greatest in Christ’s earthly kingdom, granted the most privilege and power. (Mt 18:1) The disciples were evidently making comparisons among themselves, trying to exalt some over others, vying for position. Christ tells them that unless they’re changed in the core of their nature, free of such comparison and self-exaltation, they aren’t going to make it into His kingdom at all. In other words, the disciples, at this point in time, are yet unregenerate: lost. Their pride gives them away. It gives everyone away, except the regenerate.

This isn’t the first time the topic has surfaced; in His initial recorded teaching, Christ tells us the poor in spirit own the kingdom of God: they comprise it — all those in the kingdom are poor in spirit, and all the poor in spirit are in the kingdom. Unless pride begins to die in us, until humility begins to flourish in us, and we’re esteeming others better than ourselves, nothing of Heaven can live in us.

Christ continues in His analogy by saying those who humble themselves to become more like little children are the greatest in His kingdom. (Mt 18:4) This relates to a parallel concept: those who obey all of God’s laws and teach others to do the same, are considered great in the kingdom. (Mt 5:19) For both to be true, the two concepts must be equivalent in some way.

Small children tend to be free of pride, haughtiness and ambition; they naturally feel inclined to look up to and emulate their elders; they aren’t preoccupied with judging others, comparing themselves with others, or posing and posturing to be more than they are. They know they’re utterly dependent on others to care for them, and tend to be trusting, not suspicious or jaded. When properly disciplined and loved, young children tend to be obedient and faithful.

In these same ways, those who come to God in salvation as a little child acknowledge their utter dependence on Him, trust Him and believe on Him, taking Him at His Word, obeying Him and seeking to be close to Him.

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