DEPARTING TO BE WITH CHRIST

What is death like for the Christian? It is a departure to go and live somewhere else. It is moving from one location to another. That is all it is. It is not something to be feared, it is something to which we should look forward. Until then, we live for Christ for as long as God keeps us on this earth.

To leave the body in death is to go and be with the Lord, something that Paul said was “far better” than remaining on earth (Phil. 1:23). Nothing that this world can offer compares to what the believer has now and will have in Christ Jesus eternally. This is why it is so important to set our mind on things above (Col. 3:1-3). We should lay up for ourselves treasures in heaven rather than on earth (Matt. 6:19-21).

The reason that we think this way is because we know that to be “absent from the body” is to be “present with the Lord” (2 Corinthians 5:8). We are either here on earth or in heaven with Jesus. There is no other place for us. If we are not here, we are there. So when a believer dies, it means that he or she is with the Lord.

Because of the resurrection of Jesus and the promises that He makes, we know that the end of earthly life is a peaceful transition into the presence of Christ (1 John 3:2). There will be no sorrow or suffering there. It is a perfect place prepared for people who have been made perfect by the love of Jesus.

Jesus has promised that He will return from heaven to take us to be where He is (John 14:3). Why do Christians say things like, “This world is not my home”? Because our hearts are wherever Jesus is. He is our treasure, and where our treasure is, our hearts will be (Matt. 6:21). We look forward to heaven because we want to be with Jesus forever.

The reason that we do not sorrow “as those who have no hope” is because the promises of Christ are our consolation that we will live forever (1 Thessalonians 4:17). Focusing on Christ is the greatest adventure in life. We are free to serve Christ for the rest of our lives because we know we love Him and want to be with Him forever. He is our life, and eternal life with Him is what true existence is.

The best is always yet to come for the Christian. Serve Him faithfully for the rest of your life, looking forward to being with Him forever.

      Bryan Dewayne Dunaway

THE WONDERFUL CHRIST

He is the most important man who ever lived. He had the greatest impact on the world that anyone has ever had. The Son of God came into the world to save sinners. And that is exactly what He does. He is a “friend of sinners” (Matthew 11:19; Luke 7:34). And those who will admit their sin—the fact that they have transgressed the will of their Creator, Almighty God—will find in Him the best friend they have ever had. No one has ever loved or cared for you like Jesus does.

“This comes from the Lord Almighty as well— the Lord of hosts is wonderful in counsel and magnificent in wisdom” (Isaiah 28:29). The Lord is perfect and wonderful in every way. The things He knows, the wisdom He shares, the things He has done for us, the things He is doing for us presently, and the things He will do for us in the future and eternally all speak to the wonderful love and magnificence of Jesus.

One of the things that Christ’s earthly life reveals to us is that all of His works are good and mighty and wonderful. He makes no mistakes. He does no wrong. We often hear believers say that “God is good all the time.” And that is a totally accurate statement. It is impossible for God to do something that is not good.

A woman was healed by Jesus from an infirmity she had been dealing with for eighteen years (Luke 13:10-17). Luke described deeds such as this as “glorious things” being done by Jesus. His deeds were glorious and wonderful because His heart was glorious and wonderful. And these things are still true.

Our Lord is wonderful. Nothing can compare to Him. You will never exhaust beautiful things to think about Him. Set your focus today on Christ. Think about His wonderful nature. His unfailing love. His marvelous goodness. The magnificence of His person. Fill your thoughts with these things. The things of Christ.

     Bryan Dewayne Dunaway

THE ANGEL OF THE LORD

What does the Bible teach about the “Angel of the Lord”? Not angels in general. That is another discussion. No, there is someone in the Old Testament who is consistently called “THE” Angel of the Lord. Who is He and what do we learn from Him? Well, it’s in the Bible, so you know it has something to do with our Lord Jesus Christ.

People have been talking about the identity of this person for centuries. There is no doubt that there is some mystery involved as to exactly who He was. But He is definitely a prominent figure in the Old Testament narrative, and there is much to learn, I believe, upon a closer look. It is not something to argue about. It is not merely a theological doctrine. It has something to do with Jesus, and anything that has to do with Jesus, I want to know about.

He is definitely different from other angels. The word angel means messenger, and angels are created beings who go forth to do the work of God. Again, the Bible has much to say about angels. But this situation is unique. This individual, the Angel of the Lord, is not just an ordinary messenger. He speaks and acts with divine authority. There is something very different and unusual about Him.

One clue as to His identity is the fact that He is referred to as the Lord. While that may not be as cut and dried as to His identity as it sounds, it is definitely a clue.  Hagar met this Angel of the Lord when she went into the wilderness, and she said to Him, “You are the God who beholds me” (Genesis 16:13). We also see this Angel making covenant promises with divine authority. And He is portrayed as being omniscient—that is, knowing all things.

It was the Angel of the Lord who spoke at the last moment to stop Abraham from offering Isaac. He said to the great patriarch, “For now I know that you fear God, since you have not withheld your son, your only son, from me” (Genesis 22:12). That sounds like far more than other angels we read about in the Bible.

In the story of Moses at the burning bush, great insight appears to be given to the Angel’s identity. At first, it is the Angel of the Lord who is speaking to Moses, but then we are quickly informed that it is the Lord Himself who is speaking. Because when Moses asked who He was, He said: “I AM WHO I AM” (Exodus 3:14). Now, it is possible that the Lord was simply speaking through the Angel of the Lord, but the interchange here of the Angel of the Lord and God seems to suggest that this is God Himself.

The Angel of the Lord here also requires Moses to remove his sandals because he is standing on “holy  ground” (Exodus 3:5). Such a directive supports the fact that this was the presence of God in the burning bush. It was a sacred time. No other Angel spoke this way about being in His presence.

In the wilderness, when Moses was leading the people to the land of promise, the Angel of the Lord was in the driver’s seat. He was the one leading Moses and the Israelites. He proceeds behind them as a pillar of cloud and fire to protect them from the Egyptians (Exodus 14:19). So He was the one who led the people of God. He did not just deliver messages to the people of God or help the people of God, but He led them. He was a mediator and He had judgmental qualities that only God should possess. So He was not just a protector, but He was a very important leader.

One of the most amazing references to the Angel of the Lord takes place in one of the prophet Zachariah’s visions. The angel was an advocate for Joshua, the high priest, in a courtroom against Satan. Satan accuses Joshua, and the Angel takes Joshua’s sin from him and replaces his “filthy clothes” with clean ones (Zechariah 3:1-7). So consider what that means. The Angel of the Lord has the ability to cleanse one from their sins. To make people clean and whole and purified. Something that we see Jesus doing in His ministry upon this earth.

We see the balanced character of God in the Angel of the Lord, because we also see Him as a deliverer of God’s judgment and wrath. King David committed sin and the Angel brought judgment upon Jerusalem, which was only restrained by the authority of God (1 Chronicles 21:15). God is a God of judgment, and this is portrayed by the actions of the Angel.

So the indication is that the Angel has two responsibilities: to judge and to deliver. John the Baptist said of Jesus that He baptizes with the Holy Spirit and with fire (Matthew 3:11). In other words, the Son of God is either your Savior or your Judge. This seems to be foreshadowed in the work of the Angel of the Lord.

Therefore, it is not surprising that many Bible students and teachers take the position that the Angel of the Lord was a pre-incarnate (before He became a man in Bethlehem’s manger) appearance of Jesus Christ. Theologically that is called a Christophany. Is that who the Angel of the Lord was? Was this Jesus Himself before He became known as Jesus and became flesh and blood and lived on this earth an entire human life?

If so, this explains many things. It explains why He is the only Angel who accepted worship. And it explains why He speaks with authority, has the authority to judge, and is an agent of divine wrath, and yet is also not the same being as God the Father.

What we see the Angel doing in the Old Testament, such as giving Gideon the power that he needed (Judges 6:11-24) and making the divine promise of Samson’s birth (Judges 13:3-22), is definitely consistent with a foreshadowing of the ministry of Jesus, which we see later in the Bible.

It is also very enlightening to notice that the Angel of the Lord is not mentioned in the New Testament after Jesus was born. Why is that? Is it because the role that He played before He became a human was no longer needed AFTER He became a human? That He represents us and does the things that the Angel of the Lord did in the Old Testament now as God in the flesh?

What we definitely learn from the Angel of the Lord is that God has always worked in the lives of His people in the same way that He works now. He warns against rebellion against Him and forgives those who turn away from that rebellion. He has always done mediatorial and sacrificial work that is akin to the work that Jesus Himself did.

If the Angel of the Lord is indeed Christ before He became Jesus of Nazareth, then we must not make the colossal mistake of thinking that Jesus is an “angel” like other angels. Again, the word Angel means messenger, so He could just as easily be called the Messenger of the Lord. If the Angel of the Lord is Jesus, He is far more than an angel like Michael or Gabriel and all the other angels who are created by God. Jesus is not a created being. Jesus is the Son of God. He is the eternal “I AM.” He is far more than a “deified angel.” He is literally God in human form. Thanks be to God for His unspeakable gift and the way that He relates to us through His Son Jesus Christ.

                Bryan Dewayne Dunaway

SERVING CHRIST IN ALL WE DO

We are called by God to trust in Christ, to love Christ, and to express our love for and trust in Christ by serving Him faithfully throughout our lives. Since Jesus is what human existence is about, it would only make sense that we exalt Him as Lord of our lives by doing what He tells us to do.

No one could be offended at Christ’s requirement that we serve Him and serve others, since He first came into this world to serve us. His whole life was lived in service to others. He was thinking about you every day of His life. Everything He did was to serve you. He said that He “came not to be served but to serve” (Mark 10:45).

God, you see, cares about people. And that is why serving others in His name is what pleases Him. Do you want to please God? Then be humble and serve “the least of these” (Matthew 25:40). That is the way to be pleasing to God.

We should be concerned about what glorifies God. He is Almighty God. He deserves to be glorified. And we glorify Him by letting Him change our lives. Instead of living selfishly, we are to live a life of good works (Eph. 2:10). That means doing good instead of evil. Doing what is right instead of what is wrong. Being like Jesus and going about our lives doing good in every way that we can (Acts 10:38).

We should love Him because He first loved us (1 John 4:19). And we should let His love permeate everything about our lives, so much so that it overflows to others. Glorifying Him by serving others is what we are here to do (1 Peter 4:10-11).

Being a servant of Christ is about commitment. It means committing ourselves to living for Him and loving Him for the rest of our lives. A relationship with Christ is not about performing duties or going through religious rituals in a prescribed way. It is about adorning our lives with the celebration of Christ, rejoicing in who He is and sharing His mighty name and all that it represents with anyone who will listen. It is about being sincere before Him and living to please Him.

The call to serve Christ is the call to “present your bodies as a living sacrifice, holy and acceptable to God, which is your spiritual worship” (Rom. 12:1). Everything that we do is to be done with God in mind. All of our acts of service are the “true worship” that Jesus spoke of in John 4:23-24.

Everything that you do at home or on the job or in your community or in assemblies with other believers is your spiritual service of worship. We serve Christ by doing what we do “from the heart, as for the Lord and not for men” (Colossians 3:23). Do everything out of love for Jesus.

      Bryan Dewayne Dunaway

DECIDE TO BELIEVE IN HIM

You believe in God by choosing to believe in God. It is a decision that only you can make. No one can make that decision for you, but no one can stop you from making it. Always remember that.

You can decide to believe in God anytime you want to. And believing is how you interact with God. Faith in Jesus is how we serve God and please Him.

Faith is the foundation of the Christian life because it is the only way that we can focus on Jesus Christ. To focus on God’s Son, you have to believe in Him.

Consider these words from the 11th chapter of Hebrews about faith: “Now faith is the substance of things we hope for, the evidence of things we do not see. For by faith the forefathers  received a good testimony. By faith we know that the worlds were made by the word of God, so that the things which are seen were not made by things which we see with our physical eyes. By faith Abel offered a more excellent sacrifice to God than his brother Cain did. By doing this, he demonstrated that he was a righteous man, and God accepted and testified of the gifts that he offered. By his faith, Abel still speaks to us through the things that he did, even though he himself is dead. Enoch walked with God and was taken away to heaven so that he did not go through death here on earth. When people sought him, he was not found because he had gone to be with the Lord. Why? Because he had this testimony: he pleased God. But without faith it is impossible to please God, for the one who comes to God must believe that He exists, and that He rewards those who diligently seek Him” (Heb. 11:1-6).

Simply put, faith is where it’s at when it comes to our relationship to God.

Salvation is from faith to faith (Rom. 1:17). That is, everything about our relationship with Christ is based on trusting in Him and loving Him. It begins with faith and it ends with faith.

Jesus is the author and finisher—the beginning and the end, the source and the goal—of our faith. “And so because we are surrounded by such a great cloud of witnesses who demonstrated to us what it means to live by faith, let us lay aside every weight, and the sin which so easily entraps us, and let us run with endurance the race that is set before us. We can only do this by looking to Jesus, the author and finisher of our faith, who for the joy that was set before Him endured the cross, despising the shame, and has sat down at the right hand of God’s throne” (Heb. 12:1-2).

This means that living for God begins with faith and it ends with faith. You start by believing in Jesus and you end by believing in Jesus. You believe in Him until you leave this world.

And believing in Jesus is a decision. It is putting all of your trust and all of your heart into accepting that He is who He claimed to be. Accepting Christ means to give Him your life. You turn everything over to Him.

Your life and my life is to be about Jesus. And by living our lives for Jesus, we believe God and we are ready to meet Him. Jesus is the one who can get you in. He is the one who seeks us. He is the one who can and will save you.

Without Him, we are lost. There is no hope without Christ. But with Christ, everything is going to be fine. Everything will be alright. If you have Jesus as your Lord and Savior, you will go into the next life and live forever in bliss and glory. It is Christ who is salvation.

      Bryan Dewayne Dunaway

NO CREED BUT CHRIST

Beware the “Church” that Requires You to Accept a Human “Creed”

Creeds. Human statements of belief. The Nicene Creed, the Apostles’ Creed, the Belgic Confession, the Canons of Dort, the Augsburg Confession, the Heidelberg Catechism, the Westminster Confession of Faith, the Larger Catechism, the Shorter Catechism, the 39 Articles of Faith, and so on. All man-made and all unnecessary.

Man-made denominations often require you to agree to their “creed” or doctrinal statement before you can join their fellowship of believers. You have to agree with what they say is the Bible’s true teaching.

Certainly, you cannot blame a group for wanting its leaders to agree with what it believes about church doctrine. But to teach or imply that one who does not adhere to some man-made creed is not a true Christian, and therefore cannot be accepted into the fellowship of God’s community of believers, is wholly incorrect. That is the spirit of the world, is it not?

Christ is our creed. That should be the perspective from which we view interpreting the Bible and living the Christian life together in the fellowship of God’s family. “No creed but Christ” is a wonderful slogan, but it means nothing if we do not really apply it. But what does it mean?

“I believe” is what the Latin word credo, from which we get the English word “creed,” means. So to say that Christ is our creed means that He is what we believe. He is our faith. Remember He said, “I am the truth” in John 14:6. Remember Paul said that we live “by the faith of the Son of God who loved us and gave Himself for us” (Galatians 2:20).

No creed but Christ means that our statement of faith is a person. We believe in Jesus the person. It is not that we believe certain things ABOUT Him. It is that we believe in HIM. We trust in HIM. We love HIM. And everyone who loves Him and trusts in Him is on the same side that we are on and is part of the same group that we are part of.

Having Christ as our creed means that we put our trust in Him and have Him as the unity of our faith. We build our community and our unity around Him, personally. It is the same as saying, “I am a Christian only,” as opposed to saying I am a Baptist, Methodist, Pentecostal, etc. Christians is all we should be and Christ should be our only creed.

It also means that the Christian life is not about believing a complex system of doctrines or knowing anything about “systematic theology.” It is not being concerned about what “historic Christianity” teaches as much as it is about being united with Jesus in a living communion of faith. It is about knowing, loving, and following Christ rather than focusing on believing the right “things.” And no one can tell me there is not a difference. We see people all the time who are focused on their denomination’s doctrines, but have no interest in talking about Christ Himself. This is what must change. Christianity is about Christ.

Our creed should be Paul’s creed: “I am crucified with Christ and I no longer live, but Christ lives in me. The life I now live in the flesh, I live by the faith of the Son of God, who loved me and gave Himself for me” (Galatians 2:20). Union with Jesus. Loving Jesus and living for Jesus. That should be the focus of our faith.

The Christian life is defined by Christ in us. It is not defined primarily by “what we believe.” The world has seen enough of “Christians” who “believe correct doctrine,” but who do not have the Spirit of Christ in them. Christ lived for us so that we can live for Him. He took our sins so that we can take His righteousness.

We exchange places with Christ in the eyes of God. We get to live the life of righteousness because we are united with Jesus. That is why He is our belief, our faith, our creed. We do not depend on our own understanding (Proverbs 3:5-6). We do not get caught up in empty and vain philosophies and traditions of men. “Don’t let anyone take you captive with empty philosophies and high-sounding nonsense that come from human thinking and from the spiritual powers of this world, rather than from Christ. For in Christ lives all the fullness of God in human form. So you also are complete through your union with Christ, who is the head over every ruler and authority” (Colossians 2:8-10). We trust in Christ “in whom lie hidden all the treasures of wisdom and knowledge” (Colossians 2:3). That means Christ is our creed.

“I am the way and the truth and the life. No one comes to the Father except through me” (John 14:6). Jesus’s words here make it clear that there is only one path and it is not a system, it is a Savior. It is not a plan, it is a person. Or to say it another way, the system is the Savior and God’s plan is the Person. Jesus is God’s plan of salvation. What we must believe is in Christ. Period. Someone trusting in their church or their own understanding does not accept who Jesus is or what the good news of Jesus is about. The true Gospel will cause you to trust in nothing but Jesus.

He is the Way

Jesus is the only way to the Father. That is the same as saying He is the only way to heaven. He does not just enlighten our path, He IS the path. We are not looking for directions, we are looking for a deliverer. It is true that those who trust in Jesus will seek to follow His lead and His direction. We have pointed that out many times. But it is only by focusing on Christ Himself that we can follow Christ. When it comes to the basis of our faith and what it is all about, Jesus does not point to a way, He IS the way. Jesus stands alone in a world of competing philosophies, ideologies, and “paths.”

He is the Truth

Outsiders often ask why can’t Christians agree with one another and work together? And the answer is very simple. Christianity, to many, means a religion where you believe the right things and go to the right church. But what Christianity really is is a personal relationship with a man named Jesus. He does not just speak and teach the truth, He IS the truth. And by knowing Him, the truth, we will be made free from sin, self, Satan and from human doctrine (John 8:31–32).

He is the Life

The life that Jesus gives is union with Himself. He told Martha, “I am the resurrection and the life” (John 11:25). Again, He does not just give life, He IS life. There is no living without Him, and there is no true life without Him. Being united with Christ through faith and trust in Him gives us victory over the struggles of life here and now and takes us to eternity to live with Jesus forever (John 10:10; John 16:33: 3:16).

Paul chose to focus on Christ as his doctrine. He told the Corinthians, “I did not come to you with excellence of speech or of wisdom declaring to you the testimony about Christ.” Instead, he says, “For I determined to know nothing among you except Jesus Christ and Him crucified” (1 Corinthians 2:2). For Paul, Christ was his creed. He was determined to preach and focus on nothing but Christ. There is no reason for believers to be divided over anything if we all love and follow Jesus.

Faith rests on the power of God, not on human wisdom or the ability to decipher puzzles and put together “orthodox” systems. You cannot focus on a man-made system and on Jesus at the same time. We must resist the constant temptation to “assist” the Gospel with our personal opinions and ideas. We must resist the temptation to “editorialize” on the Gospel in any way. We must not add to or take from God’s message, which is Jesus.

Let us lay our self-sufficient intellect in the dust. It is not impressive to God and it should not be impressive to you or anyone else. We are not here to show how theologically intelligent we can be. We are here to lead the world to Jesus. He is the only way of salvation. “Salvation is found in no one else, for there is no other name under heaven given to mankind by which we must be saved” (Acts 4:12).

This declaration means that Christ is the only way. Which means that FOCUSING ON Christ is the only way. It is not our “busyness” for Jesus. It is not our works. It is Christ and Christ alone. Other things will flow from faithful allegiance to Christ as a person, but the emphasis must be on Him. And the unity must be in Him. And in nothing else.

The only thing that matters is, do we love and trust Jesus, and are we seeking to please Him with the way that we live. Christ. He is our creed.

      Bryan Dewayne Dunaway

UNION WITH JESUS CHRIST

Union with Jesus Christ is the Gospel. When the true Gospel of Christ is preached and taught, people will know that they can be united with Christ in a relationship of continual intimacy and love. This is not “theology” as that term is usually used. This is a sustained life of spiritual connectedness to “the author and finisher of our faith” (Heb. 12:2). It is connection to our Lord and Savior on a daily basis by faith.

There are numerous metaphors employed in the New Testament writings to describe this wonderful relationship that is available to us in Jesus. The Bible was not written to confuse you. It is given to lead you to Jesus. And that is why simple metaphors are used to illustrate divine truth about Christ.

Jesus used a very simple metaphor, comparing Himself to a vine and His people to branches connected to that vine. “I am the vine, you are the branches. Whoever remains in me and I in him, bears much fruit, for apart from me you can do nothing” (John 15:5).

The point is that all we are called to do is abide in a relationship of faith and love with Christ Jesus. If we do, living for Him will take care of itself. Focus on Christ and the fact that you are one with Him rather than focusing on “being a better Christian.” That will take care of itself if you focus on Jesus.

Those who accept Christ and sustain their faith in Him in a personal relationship are “a new creation in Christ” (2 Cor. 5:17). Our past no longer matters. We are freed from self, sin and Satan in order to serve the Savior. We can focus on where we are going from here with Jesus, not on where we have been.

When we believe that we are united with Jesus, and our trust is in Him, then we are crucified with Christ and “it is no longer I who live, but Christ lives in me” (Gal. 2:20).

Because Christ lives in us in a relationship of love and dependence upon Him, we have access to every aspect of His saving work and we possess all spiritual blessings in Christ (Eph. 1:3).

“There is therefore now no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus” (Rom. 8:1). Being “in Christ Jesus” refers to a personal relationship with Him where we depend completely on Him and nothing else. When we do this, we are joined to the Lord, we are united with Him, and we become a temple of God because Christ lives in us by the presence of the Holy Spirit (1 Corinthians 6:17, 19).

Let your identity be found in Christ. He is what matters. He is your salvation and your sanctification. He is everything that you need. Focus on Him every day of your life. You cannot go wrong by keeping your faith and your attention focused on Jesus, the man.

      Bryan Dewayne Dunaway

CHRIST IS EVERYTHING

To read the New Testament to try to find a pattern of form and function for the New Testament church is a mistake. This is where many believers and groups have gone astray. That is not their (the New Testament books) purpose, nor was it ever their purpose. One will seek in vain to find a clear pattern for how to do all things “church” and organization in the Book of Acts and in the Epistles.

The purpose of the New Testament writings is the revelation of Jesus Christ. Once you begin to look for anything other than a personal relationship with Him—how to develop and sustain it—you have gotten distracted into the realm of human philosophy. Systems and patterns and organizations are built upon human reasoning.

The Book of Acts and the Epistles can be used to “support” anything anyone wants them to if they misuse it and “teach” people who do not have a good foundation in the doctrine of Christ. That is why there are so many different religious groups all claiming to follow the same Bible, who do not agree with one another. Jesus has been lost in the process. The focus must be kept upon Him or you strip the Bible of its power. The power is tied to the purpose. You must read the Bible for the correct purpose—learning about and knowing Jesus.

The Bible talks about many things that have turned into “isms” among believers instead of being ways to focus upon Jesus personally. Since the Bible talks about sanctification and the kingdom of God and prophecy and Christians assembling together, people build human institutions around these doctrines. They become the dogmas of denominations and people are confused in the process. The reason that there is so much division in the religious world is because of a refusal to stop focusing on things like the second coming or the end times or speaking in tongues or baptism or church organization.

If we would steadfastly stay focused on Christ, the kind of division that we see in the world of Christendom would be impossible. None of these doctrines matter in and of themselves. They do not stand alone, and the moment you begin to be distracted by them, which manifests itself in thinking about these doctrines specifically separated from Christ Himself, then you play into the hands of the enemy, who wants you to think about anything other than Jesus.

Consider that there is so much talk today among Evangelicals about the “Kingdom of God.” It is certainly true that the Bible has much to say about God’s kingdom. Old Testament predictions and prophecies were made concerning it and the New Testament speaks of it as something coming up soon (Matthew 3:1-2; 4:17; Mark 9:1), then turns to speaking of it as a present reality in the epistles (Colossians 1:13).

But as the story unfolds, and as more revelation is given throughout the New Testament record, we come to see that the kingdom of God is not an “it” at all. It is Jesus Christ Himself. That’s right. What is the kingdom of God? It is Jesus. He is God’s rule and reign and revelation.

He said the kingdom of God is within you (Luke 17:21). Yet, the only thing within the believer is Christ (Galatians 2:20). And so we should see it and view it in that way. We don’t need books or denominations built solely around a metaphor. We need to trust in Christ and focus on Him and Him alone. Then we will be living in the kingdom of God.

Consider a doctrine such as justification. Much ink has been spilled over the doctrine of “justification by faith alone.” And entire denominational systems have been built around this phrase, this doctrine, this “it.”

For a long time now, many believers in Christ will not accept as a brother or sister someone who will not speak emphatically about “justification by faith.” But where does the Bible say that we have to use that terminology? Where does the Bible speak of justification by faith as though it were a thing in itself? It is not.

Justification is Christ. That’s what we should be talking about. We should be listening, not to whether or not a person uses our particular brand of denominational nomenclature, but whether or not they talk about Christ. I want to hear someone say how wonderful Jesus is, and how much they love and trust Him. I don’t need to hear their thoughts, particularly, on “justification by faith.”

And then there is the doctrine of “sanctification.” Much debate and discussion has been engaged in over this concept. Is sanctification synonymous with salvation? Or is it something that occurs subsequent to salvation? And while people argue over that and divide and separate themselves into different camps, it is easy to see that sometimes the Bible speaks of sanctification and salvation synonymously, and sometimes not.

But when you look at the overall doctrine of sanctification, then you see that it is not an “it” at all. It is not a “thing.” It is not even, properly understood, a doctrine that stands alone. It is Christ. He became our sanctification (1 Corinthians 1:30). Those who are in Christ, who love Him and share fellowship with Him and focus on Him, have their sanctification. The Holy Spirit lives within them and transforms them into the image of Christ.

They are not doing it themselves. They are “beholding as in a mirror the glory of the Lord” (2 Corinthians 3:18). And as they behold Him—keep their focus on Him—the Spirit of God changes them into the image of Christ. Sanctification is Christ in us. It is being set apart because we have accepted Christ and He lives within us and we live in Him.

If you argue about sanctification as a doctrine in and of itself—which Christians and “churches” and denominations have done for centuries—then you will be separated from other believers over something that was designed to make you think about Jesus. Not about being “right on sanctification.”

And then there is the “indwelling of the Holy Spirit.” Does He dwell in us through the Word of God? Or does He dwell in us personally and directly? These are foolish, foolish questions. The Holy Spirit is not a doctrine. The Holy Spirit is not an “it” or a “thing.” The presence of the Holy Spirit in our lives, the “indwelling of the Holy Spirit,” is Christ.

The Holy Spirit is in us to form Christ within us (Galatians 4:19). He “testifies” about Jesus (John 15:26) and leads us to think about Jesus. How do you know that you are being led by the Spirit? If you are thinking about Jesus. If you love Christ, then the Holy Spirit is working in you. You have had your “encounter” with the Holy Spirit if Jesus is in you and you are focused on Christ. There should never be a doctrine or an argument or a denominational division over “how” the Holy Spirit dwells within us. It should simply be a matter of Christ. Thinking about and loving Christ. That should be what we are doing and thinking about and talking about.

And what about the celebrated “baptism of the Holy Spirit?” Has there ever been an “it” or a “thing” or a “doctrinal dispute” that has divided believers in God’s community as much as this one has over the “baptism of the Holy Spirit?”

Of course the Bible talks about the baptism of the Holy Spirit, because the baptism of the Holy Spirit makes you one with Christ (1 Corinthians 12:13). Some say it is something that only happened to the apostles. Some say it is something that happens when you accept Christ. Some say it is something that happens subsequent to receiving Christ that gives you strength to live for Jesus. And therefore, people are seeking an experience.

And they are asking questions like “how do I know if I have been baptized in the Holy Spirit?” If you receive Jesus and trust in Him and live for Him, then you can be sure that all things which God works through the Holy Spirit has happened to you. All of the things and works He is to do in your life has been done if you are loving and focusing on Jesus. The Spirit is leading you, but you don’t have to think about Him leading you, because He is leading you to think about Christ.

If you are constantly thinking about and talking about the Holy Spirit, then you have nothing in common with the apostles’ doctrine and preaching in the New Testament. Because they talked about Jesus. They preached Christ. If the Holy Spirit is truly in you and working in you, in other words, it will not be manifest in jumping church pews and falling down and speaking in blather that you have psyched yourself up to speak. There are people who love Jesus who participate in all of those things, but they still have nothing to do with the Holy Spirit.

That kind of “manifestation” is not of the Holy Spirit and is divisive among believers. Because not all believers can have that “experience.” No two people, in fact, can have the exact same emotional reactions to something, even if they are similar. Some are very emotional, others are more intellectual and stoic. This has nothing to do with Christianity. These things do not matter.

What matters is love for Christ and focus on Him. The mark of the Christian is not “speaking in tongues.”  The presence of the Spirit in an assembly of God’s people is not “felt” by certain ones, as they say. I have known of situations where churches preached Jesus and focused on Jesus, and yet, because they did not jump and shout, some would say “I don’t feel the presence of the Holy Spirit here.”

Dear friend, anywhere where Jesus is being exalted and talked about and loved, the Holy Spirit is there. So stop thinking and talking about and arguing about and building denominational dogmas around “baptism of the Holy Spirit“ and start talking about Jesus. He is the one we can all unite around. It is “HE who baptizes in the Holy Spirit” (John 1:33) and that is all you need to know. That is the focus of the Holy Spirit – HIM. Jesus. Christ our Lord.

And we need to be careful concerning doctrines about the person and nature of Christ. What the New Testament leads us to do—if you just stay with what is taught in it—is to focus on Christ. The person. To love Him and to grow in your appreciation of who He is, and what He does and what He has done and what He will do.

In a relationship with another human being, for example, you do not have to understand everything about that person. You want to know their personality and the things that they like, and what pleases them, but you do not sit around and argue about the nature of their circulatory system. Or argue about whether they are introverted or extroverted. You don’t get involved in “things” or doctrines or concepts about them. Instead, you just focus on THEM.

Welcome to true Christianity. That is what it is all about. When you focus on Christ, you don’t argue about how to understand His incarnation or His divinity. The “proper way” to think of it, or the “orthodox” position on the virgin birth or Christology as it pertains to the essence of His being, will not be under constant discussion. Denominations have been built around “oneness” versus “Trinitarian” doctrines. These are not “things,” friends. Christ is a person. He is the focus and the center. He is our doctrine. He is the New Covenant. He is what it is all about.

All of us must strive to do a better job of focusing on Jesus and leading others to focus on Jesus. Let’s talk about HIM. Let’s be in love with HIM. A simple person who bows at His feet and annoints His feet with precious oils, and yet understands practically nothing “theologically,” is far more pleasing to God than “theologians” excited about things that engage their curiosity and entertain their intellect, but who never focus on loving Jesus Himself (Luke 7:36-50).

When God is leading, and you are really being directed by Him, then He is leading you to the feet of the Master. The Savior. The Son of God. That is where your attention will be. You will not be talking about earthly kingdoms or the “signs of the times” or “wars and rumors of wars.” These were things that were mentioned during a preparation time. When Jesus was revealing who He is.

Now that we have a completed revelation of Him, both IN the word of God and personally AS the word of God, then our attention and focus should be entirely on Him. God does not lead you to a “thing” or an “institution” or an “organization” or a “denomination.” He does not lead you to a certain position on the “issues.” He does not lead you to what men call “orthodox theology.” Where has all of this gotten us? Where has it led? To endless divisions among the saints of God and endless distractions away from the beauty and glory and majesty of the Lord Jesus Christ.

People want to talk about the Second Coming, and they will build doctrines around the Second Coming and denominations around it. But what is the return of the Lord? It is the return of THE LORD. Paul writes in the Second Thessalonian epistle that Christ is coming to be glorified in His saints (1:10).

The purpose of His coming is that it is HE who is coming. But rather than talking about the wonder and splendor and the majesty of Jesus that we enjoy now, and how the return of Christ and the end of the world will be that time when people will see Christ in all of His beauty and glory—rather than enjoying Him now, and looking forward to enjoying Him even more forever—we would rather talk about who the “antichrist” is or what the situation in Iran or Russia or some other place has to do with the “prophecy“ of the Scriptures.

The answer is nothing. Thinking about world events and what they mean is a distraction. This is the reason that Jesus gave no signs of His return. He was leading people to focus on Himself. So all of these “isms”—premillennialism, preterism, dispensationalism, pre-tribulation versus post-tribulation “rapture,” etc.—are a foolish waste of time. And they are a distraction from what is important and what matters. That is Christ and Christ alone. Only He matters. Not prophecies or doctrines. But Christ.

We are talking about the focus of our lives. We are talking about what our lives are all about. There are people who are worried and distracted about “many things“ (Luke 10:41-42), and who are thinking about ideas and concepts concerning “doctrine.” Don’t do that. Think about Christ. Because biblical knowledge alone—and especially speculation when it comes to certain mysterious “prophecies” in the Bible—will distract you from a living reliance on and relationship with Jesus Christ.

Some who have all of these doctrines in their minds and “know” so many things have no personal development and growth in Christ. They can sit around and talk about doctrines all day, but talking about Jesus is a foreign concept. People are too often uncomfortable talking about Christ Himself. Watch them. Observe. They can talk about “doctrines” in the Bible, but when it comes to the splendor and majesty of Jesus Himself, to which the Bible points, it is as though their tongues have been taken from them. They have nothing to say. Why? Because that is not what they have been thinking about. They have not been thinking about Christ. When you think about Christ, you will talk about Christ. It’s as simple as that.

Watch when a renowned “prophecy expert” comes to speak somewhere. Watch when someone comes to talk about how to “live your best life” or the “financial promises of God.” Watch how notebooks come out and people receive these teachings with eager anticipation.

Listen when a writer talks about how the current president is “God’s chosen man” to lead us into whatever it is they believe is coming. Watch when they talk about the things going on in Palestine, and when they talk about how Israel as a nation from a fleshly standpoint is possessive of the “chosen people of God.” This is what they want to talk about.

Go in and start talking about the fact that he who has this hope in Him purifies himself just as Jesus Himself is pure (1 John 3:3) and how the hope of Israel and the hope of the Gospel and the hope of the world and the fulfillment of prophecy is Jesus the person, and the interest will subside among many, if not most, believers. The excitement over Jesus Himself is not there. But the excitement over doctrines and ideas and things and isms is always there because it appeals to the fleshly nature.

Someone offers an objection, though, that Hebrews tells us to leave the elementary things about Christ and move on to maturity (Hebrews 6:1). But if you think that loving fellowship with Christ, and focusing on Christ, is what the Hebrews writer meant by “elementary things,” then there is your problem. You do not see what the depths of Christianity are all about.

They wanted to return to the very things you are obsessed with. They wanted to return to doctrines and ideas and concepts, while the Book of Hebrews, as well as every piece of writing in the New Testament, was leading them to Christ the person. When you have the wonder and amazing joy of Christ Himself—when He, the person, is your focus—you have moved on to “maturity” and are where you are supposed to be.

When Jesus came to raise Lazarus from the dead (John 11), Martha ran out to meet Him, and she told Jesus that she believed in the resurrection. She was talking about the doctrine of the resurrection. “Your brother will rise again,” Jesus told her. “I know he will be raised again at the last day,” she replied. And then do you remember what Jesus said to her? “I AM the resurrection and the life.”

Do you see how our Savior took her from a doctrine to a person? He brought her focus from a “belief” to Himself.  She believed in the resurrection at the end of time, and that is a good thing. But what she needed to understand was that believing in Jesus Himself is what matters. Always move from the doctrinal to the personal. It is not about believing the right things, it is about knowing the right person.

All things are in Christ. You are complete in Him (Colossians 2:10). He is to be formed in you. That is the true gospel of Christ and that is true Christianity. Imbibe from the fountains of men and focus on their shallow doctrines if you wish. But you will only be a Christian of depth and maturity when Jesus alone is what matters to you.

                   Bryan Dewayne Dunaway

MARRIAGE, DIVORCE AND REMARRIAGE (1) — LAYING THE GROUNDWORK

God does not deal in guilt. The devil does. And yet, when it comes to considerations concerning marriage, and, particularly, divorce and remarriage, many believers are bound by guilt and overcome with despair. And what many religious  leaders teach does not help or bring any light on the matter. It just causes more guilt and confusion.

In this series of articles about marriage, divorce, and remarriage (MDR), we will seek to provide some biblical clarity on these issues. Believers need to be focused on Jesus, and when you are distracted by worry over certain doctrines because of things that misguided people have taught, then we need to deal with that and get that out of your head so that you can return to a Christ-centered focus on His grace and His love as you move forward with your life.

One of the most common errors in some circles on this matter is the teaching that if a person gets remarried after a divorce then it is possible for them to “live in sin” with their new spouse. Some even refer to this as an on-going state of “living in adultery.” Did Jesus or the apostles teach any such thing? No, they did not.

Listen to some preachers and teachers talk, to some of the self-assigned “defenders of the faith,” and you will find a doctrine that goes like this: If a Christian woman, who is faithful to her husband, starts being abused by him verbally and even physically, and she divorces him for those reasons, she can never get remarried as long as she lives. She may be twenty-five years old when she has to leave the marriage because of the abuse. Doesn’t matter. To legalistic “Bible teachers,” she can never, with God’s approval, get married again. That is what these brethren believe.

They also believe this: A young man and woman get married right out of high school, and it doesn’t work out. Neither of them committed adultery; they were just too immature when they married, and so they divorce and go their separate ways.

The young woman later finds a good man, they get married and have five children. Years later, she and her husband come to Jesus Christ for salvation and decide to live the Christian life. According to these teachers, this couple would have to get divorced to even become Christians because they are “living in an adulterous marriage.”

You have to repent of your sins, after all, to be saved, and since—according to these teachers—this whole marriage is a sin (because you can only get divorced if your spouse “cheats on you” sexually), then in order to repent of their sins, they must divorce. They are “not married in the eyes of God” but are only “living in adultery.”

But they have five kids! Doesn’t matter. It would not matter if the couple had been married for sixty-five years and had twenty grandchildren. Legalism doesn’t care what it does to people’s lives. It’s all about obeying “the rules.” The man-made rules.

People with good sense hear this and think, “Who could possibly believe this foolishness?” But believe me, they claim to believe it and they do believe it. And they preach it and they break up families over it.

They also believe this: If a man divorces his wife because he doesn’t like her anymore, he can never get married again. But if, instead of divorcing her, he murders her, then he CAN get married again, because he “has no living wife.”

Very few of them are honest enough to admit that this is what they believe, unless you press them hard on it, but it is. They cannot avoid this position, because it is the only logical conclusion to the positions they have taken.

According to them, the fact is, his wife is dead (even though he is the one who killed her), and death is, according to their doctrine, one of the only two reasons God gave for a marriage to end (adultery being the other one). So regardless of how she died, she is dead. And if he repents of his sin of murder, he can marry again and be perfectly fine in the sight of God in his new marriage. And even if he does not repent of the murder, his new marriage is still an acceptable marriage in “the eyes of God” even if he is not saved.

Maybe through a “pen pal program” in the prison, he meets the right woman and marries her. That is acceptable to God. So the man who murdered his wife can get married again, but the woman who divorced her husband because he was abusive can never get married again.

So this horrible view, ultimately, says it is better to murder your spouse than to just divorce them. I am telling you, these kinds of MDR doctrines are nuts.

That is the fruit of the belief that “God gave only two reasons for a marriage to end: adultery or death.” If your marriage did not end for one of those two reasons, then you can never get married again. If your marriage did end for one of those two reasons, then you are good to go. Provided, that is, that you are not the one who committed adultery.

You see, the “guilty party” who committed the adultery can be divorced by his or her mate, and that mate is free to go and find a new husband or wife. But the “guilty party” (another man-made term) cannot repent of their adultery and decide to do better in a future marriage. They can never get married again. Why? Because to do so would put them in a position where they would be living in an “adulterous marriage.”

Now, even people who don’t study the Bible know what adultery is and that it has to be committed against a mate. If two “unmarried” people have sex, no one would say that they are committing adultery. You have to have a mate to commit adultery. You have to be married to commit adultery. Two single people cannot commit adultery. They commit fornication. But only someone with a spouse can commit adultery. If a person has no spouse, then they cannot commit adultery against the spouse that they do not have.

It is difficult to keep a moderate attitude when dealing with something so foolish, and I hate to lay it out in such plain terms because it shows the utter stupidity to which these views lead. But it must be done. Anything that leads to an illogical conclusion is not a logical position. Any teaching that leads to error is erroneous teaching. We will consider this matter further.

    Bryan Dewayne Dunaway

GROWING UP IN THE LORD

Choosing to trust in Christ for your salvation means choosing to accept Him as your Savior. It means to believe that what He did for salvation, He did for you. And when we receive Him as Savior, we receive Him as Lord. You entrust your soul to Him and your life to Him and try to live the way He wants you to live. No one does that perfectly, but we can all do it faithfully.

So being saved means being a disciple of Jesus. A disciple is someone who learns from and follows another. Therefore, the Christian life is not something where you remain in spiritual infancy. If we are truly following Christ, then we will be growing in our relationship with Him. Because we are to “grow up in Christ” (Eph. 4:15).

Being a mature Christian, growing up in the Lord, is not something that we accomplish by our own good deeds or self-effort. It is depending upon God every day of our lives, rather than on ourselves. Without Jesus, we can do nothing (John 15:5). And that includes growing in the Christian life. Only His power can do that in us and through us, but it only will when we allow it to.

A tree must have strong roots in order to grow and produce fruit. The nourishment and power is found in what we are rooted in. The power is found in a personal relationship with Christ Jesus. Focusing on Christ and loving Him. If we are rooted and grounded in Him, we will grow up in all things (Colossians 2:7).

How does this growth take place? Growth happens naturally when things are healthy. We need to be healthy in our walk with Jesus. We need to focus on “sound doctrine,” which literally means healthy teaching (2 Tim. 1:13; Titus 2:1).

Focus on the teachings of Christ and allow the Holy Spirit to apply them in your life. Depend on Jesus to give you the strength that you need every day to please Him. And, of course, diet is essential to growth. So we are to “desire the pure spiritual milk of God’s Word” so that we may grow up in our relationship with Christ (1 Peter 2:2-3).

By maintaining intimate dependence upon Jesus daily, we will grow as believers individually. And when you have a group of individuals growing up in Christ, then the body of Christ is built up. The fellowship and community of believers grows by individuals growing into maturity. The goal of walking with Jesus, in principle, is always to “reach the unity in the faith and in the knowledge of the Son of God and become mature, coming to the whole measure of the fullness of Christ” (Ephesians 4:13).

When we grow spiritually, it shows that we are rooted and connected to Jesus. A believer who never learns and grows does not represent a personal relationship with Christ to others. We will bear fruit if we abide in Him as the power source of our lives and that is what proves that we are His disciples (John 15:8). Start from where you are and grow in Christ by feeding on Him and His word daily, walking in faith, and keeping Jesus at the center of your thoughts. This is the life that glorifies Him.

     Bryan Dewayne Dunaway

PREDESTINATION

Paul wrote some amazingly wonderful things in the Book of Ephesians. In the first chapter, particularly, we are led to rejoice at the wonderful gift of salvation. We have received all spiritual blessings through Christ (Ephesians 1:3). It is here that Paul says God “chose us in Christ prior to the foundation of the world…having predestined us to adoption as children through Jesus Christ to Himself” (1:4-5).

This is great news. It is something to rejoice about. It means that those who are lost can be saved. But does it teach that your personal salvation was determined by an active choice of God in eternity past, before you were even born? Which would logically mean that it is not YOUR choice in the matter that is involved? Definitely not.

While I certainly am not the judge of John Calvin the man, he should not be celebrated as a responsible Bible student or teacher in the overall matter of the things that he taught. He took that position, that we are irreversibly chosen by God to salvation or damnation, before we were born. The Westminster Confession of Faith—which seems to be more influential in some Presbyterian and Reformed circles than the Bible is—does the same.

The Presbyterian Westminster Confession of Faith stated: “By the decree of God, for the manifestation of His glory, some men and angels are predestinated unto everlasting life, and others foreordained to everlasting death.”

Now, many do not like the term “free will” and I understand why. The will of man is never completely free. We are never completely free from things influencing our decisions. But human personal responsibility is something the Bible teaches plainly. And such a ridiculous statement as that which is made by The Westminster Confession denies any form of human responsibility, whether its adherents accept that conclusion or not.

If someone has their salvation determined for them from eternity past, before they were even born, then there is absolutely no reason to preach the Gospel to anybody. This is totally nonsensical.

The Calvinist will answer that we should preach the Gospel because the Bible says to and the command is sufficient. But the Bible does not give commands to disciples of Jesus that are arbitrary and make no sense and fly in the face of anything logical of which one can conceive. If the elect have been chosen to be saved in the sense that Calvinism teaches they have, then they are going to be saved.

Why should one be motivated to get out and try to tell people about Jesus if the elect are coming to Him regardless? Even if I share the Gospel with the lost because I am “commanded” to do it, whether I understand why or not, I am certainly not going to have the same passion and enthusiasm for trying to convince people to accept Christ if I believe the elect are coming to Him no matter what.

Paul spent time reasoning with people and debating people and trying to get them to accept Jesus (Acts 9:22; 17:3, 23-31; 13:23, 13:32–33, 39; 19:8; 28:23). He said, “Knowing the terror of the Lord, we persuade men” (2 Corinthians 5:11). Persuade them to what? Be saved? Being saved is equivalent to being one of the elect, biblically speaking. So Paul was persuading people to “become” one of the elect.

Therefore, election cannot mean what the Calvinist says that it means. Because in their view, the decree of God concerning the elect cannot be changed. If “the elect” are going to heaven no matter what, then why would we even need preachers at all?

One cannot get around the fact that Ephesians chapter one, one of the most celebrated texts among Calvinists, repeatedly talks about being “in Christ” (vv. 1, 3, 4, 5, 7, 9, 10, 12, 13, and 14). In Christ. In Christ. If someone did not have “help” from the Calvinist, and they just read Ephesians 1 honestly from the heart, they would come away with no such notions as the idea that God has determined ahead of time which individuals will be saved and which ones will be lost. To say that God alone made that decision for you is a fine imitation of heresy if it is not heresy.

God chose that those in Christ would be saved, but who makes the decision about who is in Christ? Who decides whether or not you, as an individual, will be “in Christ”? Did God make that decision for you? Or do you have to decide to accept Christ for yourself to be “in Christ”? That is the question that will separate Calvinism from the Gospel.

In Galatians 3:26-27, Paul makes it clear that we are in Christ if we have faith in Christ and are baptized because of that faith. We are in a relationship with Christ. “You are all the children of God by faith in Christ Jesus,” he writes. All who put their faith in Christ are “in Christ.” Roman 6:3-4 says that through faith in the death and resurrection of Christ, we are “in Christ.”

We can close this ridiculous case by asking one question. Does everyone have the freedom to choose whether or not they will be in Christ? Whether or not they will put faith in Christ? If you will not sign your name to the following statement: “God has given everyone the freedom to choose whether or not they will put faith in Jesus Christ,” then you are not preaching the Gospel. You don’t even understand the Gospel. Calvinism is not the Gospel. And not to be unfriendly, but you should be ashamed to refuse to say that God loves everyone and everyone who chooses to put faith in Christ will be saved.

So clearly, this is how it should be viewed: God decided to save sinners. We do not deserve to be saved. We do not earn salvation. God “elected” that He would save sinners and “predestined” them to be saved. It was a loving decision made from the heart of God, who is full of mercy and love. He did not elect individuals to be saved or lost, but He elected that those who put their trust in Jesus will be saved, in spite of the fact that they are sinners.

So we as a group have been “chosen” to be saved, and that group is made up of those who are “in Christ.” In Christ, we are saved because God elected it to be that way. Salvation was not just a concept that drifted around and happened on its own. God decided on the plan of salvation. And anyone who wants to be in that group of people, those who are “in Christ,” can be a part of that group. Anyone.

If you want to be one of the “elect” then choose to accept Christ. God has lovingly predestined that those who do will receive eternal life through Jesus Christ our Lord.

                       Bryan Dewayne Dunaway

THE DEITY OF JESUS

To believe in the Jesus of the Bible is to accept what the Bible says about Him, whether we understand it fully or not. True Christianity teaches that Jesus is God. He is not God the Father, He is God the Son. But the deity of Jesus is a fundamental, basic Christian doctrine that the Bible teaches many times. God became man. That is the good news of Christianity.

In two of the most amazing and yet mysterious texts, the inspired apostle Paul writes of Jesus that “in Him dwells all the fullness of the Godhead in human form” (Colossians 2:9), and that He was “in the form of God” yet took on humanity (Philippians 2:6-7). These are references to the incarnation—the fact that God became flesh and lived among us. He lived a human life as a man. Because humanity had messed up our lives so badly, He came to do for us what we could never do for ourselves.

The man who is presented in the Gospel accounts of Matthew, Mark, Luke and John was more than just a mere human. He is presented as “God in the flesh” repeatedly. Only God has power over the natural order, and yet Jesus demonstrated authority over nature (Matthew 8:26-27). His power and authority caused even His disciples to ask, “What kind of man is this that even the winds and the waves obey Him?” God created the universe and all things in it and only God controls such things.

Jesus also demonstrated His authority to forgive sins. The religious leaders asked, “Who can forgive sins but God alone?” (Luke 5:21).  And that is a good question. No mere human can forgive people’s sins. If you sin AGAINST ME, and ask for forgiveness, I can forgive you for what you did to me. But only God can forgive someone’s entire sinful life. And that is what Jesus claimed the ability to do and worked miracles to prove that He had the authority to do (Matthew 9:6).

Jesus has always existed. He did not “begin” when He was born or conceived as a human. He is from everlasting to everlasting (Micah 5:2). John’s Gospel begins by telling us about the eternal existence of Jesus: “In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. He was in the beginning with God. Everything was made by Him, and without Him was not anything made that was made" (John 1:1-3). Notice that not only does John say Jesus was there from the beginning, but that He created all things. Only God is our creator. So Jesus is God.

When we say that Jesus is God, we do not mean that He is God the Father. He is God the Son. Their unique unity and relationship is beyond our current ability to understand and grasp fully. But Jesus Himself claimed unity, divine unity, with the Father. He said, “I am one with my Father” (John 10:30). Those who heard Him knew exactly what He was claiming (John 10:33). He was claiming to be God.

When Jesus said that before Abraham existed, “I AM” in John 8:58, that was the equivalent of claiming to be Jehovah God. Because when Moses was being sent by God to deliver the Israelites from their bondage in Egypt, Moses asked, “Whom shall I say has sent me to go?” And God answered from the burning bush, tell them “I AM” has sent you. So God identified Himself as “I AM” in Exodus 3:14. And Jesus identified Himself as I AM. Again, those who heard Him wanted to kill Him for saying this. They understood exactly what He was claiming.

Another thing that must be considered is that Jesus allowed people to worship Him. Angels did not (Revelation 22:8-9; 19:10). The apostles did not (Acts 10:25-26; Acts 14:14-15). But Jesus did. Only God is worthy of worship (Matthew 14:33, 28:9; John 9:38). Yet, when Thomas declared “My Lord and my God!” (John 20:28), Jesus did not rebuke Him, but accepted the praise and the worship. Because He IS our Lord and our God. Jesus also accepts praise and worship in John’s Book of Revelation (Revelation 5:12).

If you want the highest authority possible that Jesus is God, then all you need to do is believe the word of God the Father. God the Father says that Jesus, His Son, is God, too. To Jesus, the Father said, “Your throne, O God, is forever and ever” (Hebrews 1:8). If God the Father calls Him God, then you and I should certainly call Him God.

Again, Jesus is God the Son, not God the Father, but He and the Father are one in ways we do not fully understand. Jesus is the “exact representation of His glory and the exact representation of His person” (Hebrews 1:3).

You simply cannot appreciate who it was who saved you without recognizing that Jesus is God. The Gospel teaches that God became man to save us. Jesus was not a created being. He was not a glorified angel. He is the eternal I AM. He is Jehovah God. And we should know that He is “our great God and Savior, Christ Jesus” (Titus 2:13). God is our Savior. Our Savior is God.

Only God created the world, and only God can sustain the world. Jesus did both of those things and does the sustaining even now. The reason the world exists and continues to exist is because God upholds it with His power (Hebrews 1:3). And it is Jesus who created it and sustains it. (Colossians 1:16-17).

An ordinary man cannot die for other’s sins because all ordinary men are sinners themselves. The fact that Jesus became human and died on the Cross, meaning that God became a man and died for our salvation, is crucial to appreciating what salvation is all about. He can reconcile us to God the Father because He is God the Son. God Himself gave Himself to reconcile us to Himself (Colossians 1:20).

The hope of the Gospel is tied to recognizing and celebrating Jesus as the God-man. That Jesus is God and God came to save us. Love Christ, serve Christ and worship Christ. He is our Lord and our God.

                     Bryan Dewayne Dunaway

THE HUMANITY OF JESUS

The Gospel of Jesus Christ teaches that there was a man named Jesus who once lived on this earth, who was actually God in the flesh (John 1:1-3, 14). This man came to live in a human body as a man to do for us what we could not do for ourselves. Our salvation was the purpose of His entrance into the world.

Down through the centuries, some have claimed that God only took the visual “appearance” of a man, but the Bible teaches that He was made like us in every way (Hebrews 2:17). He came into the world as a child. He was born from the womb of a woman. And, interestingly and significantly—although also mysteriously (i.e., we don’t understand how God in the flesh transformed)—Jesus grew and “increased in wisdom and stature, and in favor with both God and man,” the way any other child would (Luke 2:52).

The fact that Jesus was truly human is easy to demonstrate from the Scriptures in a variety of ways. He did not star in a play or in a movie. He wasn’t acting. He was a real human being, just like we are, only He was without sin. He knows what it is like to be physically hungry (Matthew 4:2). He got tired from walking in the sun and had to sit down and rest (John 4:6). At the Cross, He cried out, “I am thirsty” (John 19:28). These are all human experiences. He really was human in every sense of the word.

The Bible describes Jesus as putting on “flesh and blood” in an absolute sense. He experienced all of the problems that go with living a human life on earth (Hebrews 2:14). His humanness was not a costume. It was a permanent identification with those whom He created (Philippians 2:7). He came to be like us so that we can be like Him (2 Corinthians 5:17).

When we consider the humanity of Jesus, we must also be aware of the fact that we are not just talking about being human in a strictly physical sense. Emotionally, He had the same battles that we have. The range of emotions that living in this world brings to everyone, Jesus experienced. The shortest verse in the English Bible says that “Jesus wept” (John 11:35). He had lost one of His closest friends in Lazarus, and at the tomb, He wept with Lazarus’s sisters. Why? Because He felt the grief and disappointment that humans feel in situations like that (John 11:33-35). The Bible also tells us that He was “deeply moved and troubled in spirit” when faced with the extreme amount of sorrow He encountered in this life (John 11:38).

While Jesus did not get angry in the way that sinners do, He did experience that emotion, as well. His was a righteous anger, but it was anger nonetheless when He saw people abusing others in the temple of His Father (Matthew 21:12-13). In the Garden of Gethsemane, He also felt overwhelming sorrow that caused Him to sweat blood. He said, “My soul is very sorrowful, even to death” (Matthew 26:38).

These things do not present a “robotic angel” sent from heaven. These are the experiences of a real man who can serve as our High Priest because He can “sympathize with our weaknesses,” being “in all points tempted as we are, yet without sin” (Hebrews 4:15). To think that the Son of God would choose such an existence, would choose to go through so much physical suffering, and to do so for the sole purpose of its culmination in death for our sins, is truly amazing to consider.

One thing we learn from the life of Jesus here on earth is His perfection. Even though He was fully human, He also lived a perfect life. There is mystery surrounding how He did that and we do not have to understand it in order to appreciate it and be thankful for it. Because He did it for us. He died for us. He lived perfectly for us. He is our perfect example, and there is much that we learn from Him human life about living.

He did not depend on superhuman powers to live for God. He depended on God just like we must do. He got alone by Himself to pray and seek His relationship with the Father (Luke 5:16). He made the choice to put God’s will above His own, stating in His prayer in Gethsemane, “Not as I will, but as you will” (Matthew 26:39).

Indeed, He was God in the flesh, fully human and fully divine. That is the mystery of the Incarnation, and while we do not understand it, we can be aware of and appreciative of the fact that He did not use His divinity to live a charmed life. God the Father did not make things “easy” for His Son, and Jesus did not use His powers to do that either (Matthew 4:3-4).

Rather, He humbled Himself and was “obedient to the point of death, even death on a cross” (Philippians 2:8). By doing so, He showed us what a life lived in radical dedication to God looks like and He serves as our model for the radical way in which we should live in submission to the will of God (Hebrews 5:8-9).

Jesus relates to humans because of His humanity. In Christ, we have a Savior who is divine, and, therefore, can represent God to us. But He is also human and can represent us to God. Because He was a real human being who lived a life of love and sacrifice, He is “not ashamed to call us brothers and sisters” (Hebrews 2:11). It was for all of humanity that He lived and died. He took on human flesh to suffer, to bleed, to die as a sacrifice for our sins so that we could be reconciled to God, and live eternally with Him in heaven (Hebrews 2:17). The “man Christ Jesus” is the one and only mediator between God and humanity (1 Timothy 2:5). We need no other mediator and we have no other mediator. Jesus alone is the one.

Jesus took our sins and our brokenness for the purpose of healing it. He did not come to condemn us(John 3:17). He came to save and help us. Through sacrificial love and commitment, by being willing to live and die as a human being, He showed His great compassion for us so that He could bring us to God and we could be what we need to be. Everything He did as a human being, He did to help the rest of us (Hebrews 2:14, 18). What amazing love!

The Bible describes Him as a faithful and merciful High Priest, representing us to God, bringing us to God, and offering the help that we need to get through this life. We cannot say that He does not understand. He understands how difficult the journey of human life is because He chose to take part in it. And He did it all to help us (Hebrews 4:15-16).

Jesus is the Son of God and the Son of man. He is the God-man who came into this world to bring us to Jesus. Let us bow our knees in humble adoration and praise and thanksgiving for what God has done for us through the human life of Jesus.

                      Bryan Dewayne Dunaway

CONCERNED WITH WHAT JESUS THINKS

There is a certain way that believers are to live and conduct themselves as representatives of God on earth.

If we believe, we will behave. If we love Him, we will live for Him. In other words, our lives will always follow the things that we have in our minds. If Jesus is our focus, then pleasing Him and living for Him will be the focus of our lives.

Jesus asked in Luke 6:46, “Why do you call me, Lord, Lord, and not do what I tell you?” If He is Lord, then that means He is in control. He is to be the one who directs our steps. We are to live under and by His authority.

The authority of Christ means that He speaks and we obey. We are not here to question Him, we are to obey Him. We are to love Him enough to serve Him out of a heart of appreciation. We are members of His family, and we are to honor the family name.

Paul said this very thing to Timothy: “I am writing this so that you will know how you must live as a member of God’s household” (1 Timothy 3:15). How could being adopted into the family of God not affect every aspect of our lives? How could it not determine the way that we choose to live?

The thing that separated the way Christ lived and the way everyone else has ever lived is that He did everything to please His Father. Every single moment of every single day, that was His mission. To obey God.

Pleasing God was His only concern. He was not concerned with the opinions of men. He did not concern Himself with His reputation in the eyes of the world.

He was focused like a laser on obeying His Father. On the things of heaven. On the things that really matter. He wanted to be pleasing to God. Because He loved God. That’s what love for God will always seek to do.

This is what Christ will produce in us. If we love Him and trust His power to work in our lives, we will have this same kind of focus. Paul said that Christ lives in us (Galatians 2:20), which is a way of saying that we are to surrender the way we live to the way Christ lived. His power is there to make us what we need to be.

With Christ in us, we will not be “pleasing men, but God who tests our hearts” (1 Thessalonians 2:4). You cannot do both, and yet there is always that constant struggle within us. We spend more time thinking about what people think than about what God thinks. And that is sad for so many reasons.

God created us and He has been there the entire time. We owe everything to Him. As far as life and salvation and everything that we have, we owe no one but God.

God has also proven that He cares about us. Some people do, but most people don’t. And even those who do cannot possibly care like God does.

It is sad indeed to think about the fact that people who do not even like you get more of your attention than God. Pleasing people is a waste of time.

Someone can start one rumor and have a multitude of people thinking negatively about you. And then that reputation that you worked so hard for and that meant so much to you is gone in a minute.

But God has already decided how He feels about you. And your mistakes do not change that. He has already determined to love you.

This is why He should have our attention. He should have the focus of our lives. But we spend more time thinking about what others think and say about us than we do about what God thinks.

Learn to live your life for an audience of one—the one being Christ Jesus. Live only to please Him, because He is the one who is going to be with you every step of the way.

He is the one who has never let you down and is never going to let you down. He will never lie to you, never judge you unfairly, never turn on you. He never goes based on hearsay. If your heart is right before Him, then you are pleasing Him.

That is what He thinks of you. And that should be all that matters. And by choosing to focus on Him, that will be all that matters.

      Bryan Dewayne Dunaway

THE MARK OF THE BEAST

Many speculative interpretations have been given to the Bible’s teaching about the “Mark of the Beast” found in Revelation 13. This writer is convinced that it was a symbol.

The Book of Revelation is set forth in “signs and symbols.” Of this there can be no dispute. It is not to be read with wooden literalism. The Greek word translated “signified” or “communicated” in the first verse literally means to set forth in signs and symbols. So the first verse of Revelation reveals how to read and interpret it.

The book even makes explicit reference to its symbolic nature. Revelation 12:1-18 expressly says that “A great SIGN appeared” referring to the woman and the dragon. In Revelation 1:20, John himself interprets the “seven lampstands” for us by revealing that they represented the seven churches to whom Revelation was written. They were not literal lampstands. This is symbolic literature. You don’t read symbolism the same way that you read historical narrative like the Book of Acts or the Gospel of John. That must be kept in mind when you read Revelation.

Some people think they have figured out all of the signs and symbols, but no one has with absolute certainty. The Book of Revelation was written FOR us, but it was not written TO us. It was written to first century believers—specifically seven churches in Asia (Revelation 1-3). Therefore, its original audience would have understood the signs and symbols, but no one today fully understands them.

This does not mean, however, that there is not great value in reading and studying the Book of Revelation. The New Testament is a book of principles to guide us in the Christian life and to focus on Christ. When you read Revelation correctly, you read it devotionally to bring you closer to Jesus. And, when studied from that vantage point, it is easy to see what the point of the book is.

The “Mark of the Beast” was some kind of symbol dealing with persecution of various kinds, particularly economic persecution, in the first century. Christians were persecuted greatly by the Roman Empire during that time. John was writing to them to warn them and encourage them to stay faithful to Jesus, no matter what they had to endure. To say that believers were under tremendous pressure would be an understatement.

I do not believe that there is any basis for interpreting the mark of the beast as something that is still to come in the future or something that could happen now in our day. What would that have meant to first century Christians? How would the nature of the world today have encouraged or warned believers who lived 2,000 years ago? No, the farthest thing from John’s mind would have been a computer chip or some other sort of implant or literal “mark” in our day. I don’t believe that is the way to interpret this at all.

Rather than seeing it as literal and futuristic, we should note that believers during that time were being pressured and persecuted to give their commitment and service and dedication to a temporary, worldly empire in Rome rather than eternal allegiance to the Lord Jesus Christ. They were being told that they must worship the emperor, and if they refused, then they would be persecuted and ostracized, and would experience financial and social repercussions from which they would not recover on this earth.

Rather than a microchip, or a barcode, or a tattoo of some kind, or any literal marking, the mark of the beast had religious and social implications for the people to whom the Book of Revelation was originally written. Rome was a pagan society that was opposed to a religion like Christianity, or even Judaism for that matter. Christians, especially, were persecuted severely under the Roman regime of that day. Believers in Jesus were told to worship the emperor, forced to make a decision between the eternal and the temporal. Between God and the world.

There were religious aspects to Caesar’s rule. He saw himself as a god, and his imperial cult was threatened by the advancing cause of Christ. The way he chose to handle the situation was to persecute and try to eradicate Christianity. Citizens under Roman rule were required to participate in various rituals and sacrifices that were completely pagan in nature.

Refusing to take part in what the empire wanted meant that one was marked for specific and prolonged persecution. It could have literally meant the loss of life for believers. It was a serious and scary time. Christians were viewed as disloyal to the emperor, which brought on his wrath.

While it is a sin to worship and love money, no one can survive without it in some form. That was true then as it is true now. Economic oppression was not as immediately painful as physical persecution, but in the long run, it would mess up one’s life tremendously. John writes that those not possessing the “mark” would not be able to buy or sell. If someone is not able to buy things or at least have someone buy things for them, they will not survive, generally speaking. Food normally has to be bought. Necessities have to be bought. One of the ways that Rome wanted to get at Christians was to deny them the ability to do this.

Remember that in the first century Roman Empire, coins bore the image of Caesar (because he thought he was a god). Commerce was controlled by the royal cult. There were religious overtones to far more about the Roman Empire than most people realize. Peter, John, Paul, and the rest of the apostles, as well as all of the Christians of the first century—well, it is shocking to learn and consider all of the pressures that they faced.

Consider also that there was a different kind of seal that had already been mentioned back in Revelation 7. It was the “seal of God” and it was placed on the forehead of those who followed Christ. But did the believers get a literal mark on their foreheads? Does this teach in some way that believers in the future will have a literal mark on their foreheads?

Again, I am convinced that it was a reference to the fact that those who follow Christ belong to God and have given ownership of their lives over to Him. Everyone belongs to either God or the devil. There are only two sides. And that is one of the basic, overall points of the Book of Revelation. One side or the other. There is no fence to straddle. There is no middle ground. Jesus said, “He who is not with me is against me” (Matthew 12:30).

So the “mark” of God would refer to the fact that God will see His people through, no matter what kind of persecution they endure. Even if they lose their lives, they will receive eternal life in heaven with Him (Revelation 2:10).

The protection of God is not earthly and temporary, although sometimes God brings about that kind of deliverance. But the only kind of deliverance that He promises us is eternal deliverance, regardless of what we face here in this life. And that applies in principle to us today as much as it did to them back then.

So the “beast’s mark” would represent an identifier of those who follow the devil. And there are many identifiers of those who follow the devil rather than God. Worldliness and a refusal to give our lives completely to Jesus would be the most obvious ones. Rome was not just a non-Christian Empire, it was an ANTI-Christian empire. It was against everything that Christianity stood for.

If all of this is true—and obviously, I am convinced that it is—then who is the beast and what is the significance of the infamous 666 number? No one knows for sure, of course. Scholars have debated this for centuries and virtually no two in-depth Bible students agree completely on what all of these symbols mean. But the “beast” referred to a man and 666 was “his number” (Revelation 13:18).

Responsible Bible study recognizes that we do not have to know what something does mean in order to know what it does not mean. And if 666 refers to something in our day or something that is still coming in the future, then what was its significance to people 2,000 years ago?

Remember when interpreting the Book of Revelation—and we cannot stress this enough—that the book was written to people in the first century who were facing real issues and persecution. If we view the beast from the sea (Revelation 13:1-10) as representing, not a literal beast, but a man involved with the Roman Empire in symbolic language, then that fits what the believers were facing.

Of course, someone may ask, why all of the symbolism? But if the book is about Christianity overcoming its enemies, and its enemies were in power at the time that it speaks of, then the book was written in code so that only Christians would understand its meaning. It would have only accelerated the persecution if it fell into the hands of the Roman authorities and they could understand it.

When it comes to the number 666 (Revelation 13:18), I believe it is important to know about the ancient practice of “gematria.” None of this is something you have to know to go to heaven, nor do you have to know it to get the point of Revelation and read it devotionally to help you focus on Christ. But if you are going to try to give a reasonable interpretation of what some of the signs and symbols mean, then it is important to know gematria, where letters correspond to numerical values.

I believe the Book of Revelation was written before the fall of the temple in AD 70, which would mean that Nero Caesar was the emperor at the time. Historically, we know he hated Christians and persecuted them mercilessly. That is something you learn from history books.

Interestingly, when the name “Nero Caesar” is converted into Hebrew and the numerical values are added, the amount is 666. This makes perfect sense to me in that, since John was writing to encourage believers who were living under an emperor who wanted to destroy them and their religion, he identified Nero in code without bringing further charges of treason and further persecution upon them.

Of course, only God Himself knows for sure what all of those symbols mean. But I do believe the people to whom they were written knew what they meant. The Book of Revelation, in other words, does not contain literal directions or descriptions of life for 2025 or beyond. It was relevant to whom the people it was written, a message of hope and encouragement.

If we read it focused on Jesus, which is the way to read the Bible, then the point we see is still applicable. Christ triumphs over all of His enemies. So trust in Christ and be on the winning side. No matter what happens to you in this life, you will ultimately prevail through Jesus.

What we have presented here means that these things were fulfilled in the first century and referred to events that the people who were the recipients of the Revelation of John were facing and experiencing. Doesn’t that make more sense than to think that John was writing to give them a description of things that would happen 2,000 years after they were all dead and gone? I believe that this interpretation moves the text from today’s fanciful speculation.

The prophecy “experts” are always “identifying” the mark of the beast and the number 666, and they contradict each other and always have these things referring to different events that are happening now. Or that will, according to them, happen sometime in the future. We are always “living in the last days” with “prophecy being fulfilled right before our eyes” and the Book of Revelation is always going to be fulfilled “soon.” And it’s been that way for two hundred years.

For example, consider throughout your lifetime how many people have been identified as the “antichrist.” It’s always someone different, depending on what is going on in the world. The fact is, they cannot agree among themselves and they are always wrong because the Book of Revelation was written for us, but not to us directly. We are the secondary audience, not the primary one.

I could be wrong, of course, in my interpretation of all of this, because no one on earth today knows for sure what all of those signs and symbols mean. When it comes to 666, for example, it corresponds perfectly to Nero Caesar, when using the numerical values to which I have referred, but that is certainly not the only way it could have been interpreted. That is assuming that those numerical values are what John had in mind. Which we do not know for sure because he did not tell us.

God did not, in fact, tell us what all of the symbols in revelation mean. Which means it is not something that you have to know to go to heaven. But rather than letting that cause you to stay away from the Book of Revelation, I believe it encourages you to read it. Because when the pressure is off of trying to figure out all of the signs and symbols that no Bible teachers have ever agreed completely on, then you can read it as a part of the love letter of Jesus Christ to you. It becomes less “spooky” and confusing when we look for the overall point.

And the point is that Christ is on the throne, no matter what is going on down here, and we will be saved by Him no matter what. Keep your attention focused on Jesus, in other words, not on trying to figure out things like the mark of the beast. There is nothing wrong with studying it, and seeing what you believe. But it is easy here—very easy—when dealing with such matters that appeal to our curiosity and our emotions, to get distracted from Jesus and obsessed with things like Bible prophecy and the mark of the beast. Please don’t make that mistake.

This interpretation—of an historical fulfillment of these things rather than it referring directly to things in our day—makes the message of Revelation and all of the things in it a timeless message in principle that applies to believers everywhere at all times. The devil is out to destroy us, but he cannot win if we have a Savior named Jesus and we stay focused on Him.

Regardless of what we know or don’t know about the symbolism, we get the point and that is what matters.

               Bryan Dewayne Dunaway

BELIEVING DAILY

Caring about Christ means that we know about His care for us. We are aware of His presence and His concern for our lives. He watches over us, inviting us to “cast all of our care upon” Him (1 Pet. 5:7). No Christian should be unaware of how present Christ is in our lives. If we go about our days never giving thought to the presence of God—His supremacy, His sovereignty, His love, His reality—how can we truly call ourselves believers?

What is the difference between the atheist who verbalizes his lack of belief in the existence of God and the “believer” who never actualizes that belief in a practical way by living his life in awareness of His presence? We simply cannot be believers without believing in Him daily.

Another important point that we must realize and face is the fact that God is interested in everything that we do as His children. It is the daily life that He wants. So many want to give Him the first day of the week or some other preappointed time. And while those things are good, they are not what He primarily wants.

He wants our hearts. Our lives. He wants and demands that every aspect of our lives be brought under His dominion. Our entire existence is to be lived in His service if we are to truly be called His children and disciples of His Son.

The key to success in pleasing Him is as simple as knowing who He is and what He wants from us. Faith recognizes God. It thinks about God. It relies on God. It is the attitude that says I am nothing without Him. It is the recognition that we owe every day, every breath, to His providential care. It is the bowing of the human will to the divine will. And that is something that no one can do for you. That is a decision we can only make for ourselves.

Approach God daily. Think of Him every moment. Be aware of His presence. We cannot ignore Him and expect to please Him, and we must not think of pleasing Him as some mysterious, difficult task. Christ has done the difficult part. We should now focus on Him and love Him because of who He is and what He has done for us. Every. Single. Day.

      Bryan Dewayne Dunaway

LOVING CHRIST

To love Christ means to dedicate our lives to Him. It is not just an emotion. It is not even primarily an emotion. It is a decision to love the Son of God because He loved us first. And it will transform you. Loving Jesus will change your life like nothing else will.

John wrote, “We love Him, because He loved us first” (1 John 4:19). Divine love comes from God. It is His initiative. He decided to love us because He is love (1 John 4:7). There is nothing in us that makes God love us. Nothing that merits His grace. He loves us because it is His nature and we need to keep that in mind.

Many often question, “Have I been so bad that God does not love me?” Remember John’s statement: We love Him because He first loved us. Nothing we did made Him love us in the first place, and therefore our mistakes and sins do not cause Him to stop loving us. It is not what we do or did, but who He is, that is the reason for His love.

We must remember that we are loved if we are going to live a life of joy in Jesus Christ. Christ is the love of God personified. He bridges the gap between God and those of us who are His enemies, but no longer want to be. It was God’s love that caused Him to send His Son into the world to save us (John 3:16). And we must see Jesus as the expression of God’s love because He is what the Christian faith is about (Romans 5:8; 1 John 4:10).

We do not have to live lives of fear and worry. We can live with confidence and joy, knowing that Christ has been so good to us. That God the Father loved us so much that He sent His only begotten Son into the world to save us. That God the Son loved us so much that He willingly came into the world to save us. The love of God drives out fear (1 John 4:18). Let it do so in your life by focusing on how much you are loved.

If we are in Christ, then we are in a relationship that is based on love. A more powerful love than the love of Jesus does not exist. Therefore, as we appreciate His love more and more, our love for Him will grow more and more.

Dedicate your life to Jesus. You have probably heard that expression many times. But what does it mean? It means that we are to devote ourselves to loving Jesus.

That’s right. Being a Christian is, properly understood, nothing more or less than loving Jesus Christ with all of our hearts. If you love Him, everything else will fall into its Christian place in your life.

Jesus said that life is about loving God supremely. “You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, and with all your soul, and with all your mind” (Matthew 22:37). It is about putting Him first. And those who love Him this way are honoring the love of God and honoring Him with their lives.

You cannot “go too far” with loving Jesus. It is impossible to “get carried away” with it. Radical love for Jesus will change your life and make you into the person that you need to be. It is the source and foundation of a truly spiritual life (Matt. 22:38; Deut. 6:5).

How do you know if you love Jesus? The most obvious way is in whether or not you want to please Him as Lord of your life. Jesus said that those who love Him will obey Him (John 14:21). It is an established scriptural fact that you cannot claim to love Jesus if you do not live your life to please Him.

So if we love Jesus, we will let Him direct our lives (Deut. 11:1). That is as basic as it gets. Make it your goal to do what He wants in your life rather than what you want (Matt. 10:38).

     Bryan Dewayne Dunaway

APPRECIATE THE CROSS

To know spiritual truth, you must first know about the Cross of Christ. To accept the message of the Gospel, you must accept the significance of Calvary. As disciples of Jesus, we must continually strive to appreciate the atoning work of Christ on the Cross.

Christianity is not a law system, it is a love system. It will only work if you appreciate the Cross—the ultimate expression of the love of God. Appreciation for God’s love does not grow out of occasional Bible study and prayer, mere abstinence from “worldly” activities, or occasional “church” attendance. Gratitude for the Cross grows out of a life lived close to God.

As we seek Him, as we walk with Him, as we get to know Him better, we appreciate more and more the free gift of salvation. To know Him is to love Him, and those who know Him best love Him most.

The message of the Gospel is the message of the Cross. Any “message” that emphasizes what man has done rather than what God has done is not the Gospel.

The Bible is a book about the Jesus and the Cross. Any Bible student should be able to clearly see that the emphasis of the New Testament is Jesus. Our allegiance must be to Him, and our message must be His death, burial, and resurrection (1 Cor. 15:1-4).

Sadly, many who claim to be Christians do not give their allegiance to Christ. When we speak and act as though we can be saved by our own righteousness and goodness, we minimize the importance of the Cross. When our lips proclaim, “Lord, Lord,” and yet our lives are not in harmony with the Bible, we turn our backs on the Cross (Matt. 7:21; Lk. 6:46). Jesus did not die so that you and I could live “any way we want to live.” The Cross demands obedience and commitment.

Give your heart and life to Jesus and live for Him, appreciating the Cross on which He died for you.

                   Bryan Dewayne Dunaway

SEEK TO KNOW HIM

David knew the love of God. He said in Psalm 131, “Lord, my heart is not proud, nor are my eyes haughty. I don’t concern myself with matters too difficult for me to understand. Instead, I am calm and at peace like a weaned child with its mother. O Israel, put your hope in the Lord— now and forever.” It is one of the most beautiful statements in the Bible.

Here is someone who knows that there are things he will never understand about God. God does not owe him any explanations. He is not concerned with understanding mysteries or figuring out great Bible doctrines. He is concerned with pleasing the Lord and loving Him. Study the life of those who were close to the Lord throughout the Bible. They were focused on loving Him, not understanding Him.

It is the relationship that God seeks. Paul labored for the Lord unceasingly. And yet, his desire was to know Christ and the fellowship of His sufferings (Philippians 3:10). He did not need to know all of the answers.

Do not spend your time trying to “figure things out.” Spend your time seeking to know Christ. To know Him better as a person. To grasp His love more fully so that His love will grasp your heart more tightly. Do everything you do for Him, to know Him better and to love Him more.

Bryan Dewayne Dunaway

WHAT DOES THE BIBLE TEACH ABOUT HELL?

What is the “proper” punishment for sin against Almighty God? It does not matter what we “feel” the punishment is or should be. All that matters is what God has said. Because you and I are sinners, we do not understand the depths of sin’s horrific nature. But a holy God can tell us exactly how bad sin is. As can the only perfect man who ever lived dying on Cross.

The Bible teaches that “hell”—whether that is the best word to use or not, people understand what you are talking about—is the punishment for sins. The wrath of God is found in the eternal nature of His divine punishment. More than anything else, hell is about separation from God for all eternity. And that is something that no one wants to experience whether they think they do or not.

No one understands everything the Bible teaches about hell. Exactly what it will be like is beyond the scope of our current human ability to understand. All sorts of theories and ideas and different interpretations abound in the religious world, but that just demonstrates that certain aspects of this topic are confusing and difficult. It does not do away with the doctrine itself. As with any other “controversial” Bible topic, the point is clearly seen by anyone willing to examine what the Bible teaches.

Whether or not the topic is difficult or comfortable to us is irrelevant. The Bible teaches hell as a fact, as a reality. Jesus said more about hell than anyone else in the Bible, and He did so in very vivid and descriptive terms. He said it is a place where there is “unquenchable fire” where “their worm does not die” (Mark 9:43-48). He also said that hell is a place of “outer darkness” where there will be “weeping and gnashing of teeth” (Matthew 8:12).

The reality behind the figures of speech has to be worse than the figures themselves used to describe it. There can be no disagreement or debate over the fact that Jesus described hell as reality and as something more terrible than we can imagine.

The just punishment of God is difficult for sinners to embrace. The wrath of God is not something that is popular to preach. “God is love” (1 John 4:7) people love to say, and that is true. But love is not God. God must define love. And He defines it as giving His Son to die for us to keep us from perishing in hell (John 3:16).

Those who have rebelled against God and rejected His free offer of salvation will wind up in hell, but that is not what God desires. There is nothing in the Bible to suggest that God created people to be lost. He created us for fellowship and desires that eternal fellowship so much that He gave His Son to die for us, proving His love (Romans 5:8). The love of God cannot be defined without the wrath of God, because the love of God is shown by the death of Christ. But why did Christ have to die for us? The short answer is to keep us out of hell.

God takes no pleasure in the death of the wicked (Ezekiel 18:32). There will be no pleasure for God in the destiny of those who reject Jesus Christ. He delights in showing mercy (Micah 7:18-19). He is in the saving business. Jesus came to seek and save the lost (Luke 19:10). While that truth logically implies that everyone without Jesus is lost—on their way to hell—it also means that is not what God wants for you. God did not send His Son into the world to condemn the world, but to save it (John 3:17). We were “condemned already” (v. 18) because of our sins and our rejection of Christ. But by His grace, we can be saved by trusting in Christ as our Lord and Savior (Ephesians 2:8–9).

To ignore or explain away what the Bible teaches about hell is to make a mockery of the Gospel. The Gospel teaches that Jesus died for us. Without the bad news of hell and condemnation, there would be no need for the good news of life and salvation. You cannot accept what the Bible teaches about heaven without also accepting what it teaches about hell. Understand everything about hell? No one does. Know that the Bible warns repeatedly about what being lost will be like and how we do not want to go to hell? Absolutely. That is the truth. Jesus came to rescue us from hell.

So the doctrine of hell highlights both the holiness and love of God. The cross of Jesus is where these two things meet, where His wrath and His mercy intersect for the salvation of sinners. We do not have to go to hell. We can trust in Jesus and be saved forever (Matthew 25:46).

Some scholars believe that hell is not the eternal, conscious “torture chamber,” as they call it, that theologians have often made it out to be. Maybe they are right, but that is not what is important. What is important is the reality that the perfect Son of God gave Himself to die for us, as a sacrifice for our sins, to save us from something that is so horrible that human words can not fully describe it. Whatever hell is, you do not want any part of it. And you don’t have to go there because Jesus died to save you. Trust in Christ and get your life right with God through Him.

     Bryan Dewayne Dunaway