Yesterday, June 1st, an important new book hit shelves, nationwide. Love, Freedom, and Evil: Does Authentic Love Require Free Will? rises to address recent controversies over the doctrine of God’s love—does authentic love really require free will?

Author Thaddeus Williams, Orange County pastor and philosophy professor, probes deep into Scripture with a fine-tooth comb to find biblical truths that shed light on the moral issues of love, freedom, and evil.

Does love demand free will? Is humanity free to choose? If God causes someone to love him, does this dehumanize the lover? How does love and freedom relate to the problem of evil in the world?

With truth and grace, Williams tackles these questions and more.

Watch the promo video for the book:

Order the book today.

They went each to his own house, but Jesus went to the Mount of Olives. Early in the morning he came again to the temple. All the people came to him, and he sat down and taught them. The scribes and the Pharisees brought a woman who had been caught in adultery, and placing her in the midst they said to him, “Teacher, this woman has been caught in the act of adultery. Now in the Law Moses commanded us to stone such women. So what do you say?” Jesus…said to them, “Let him who is without sin among you be the first to throw a stone at her.” …[W]hen they heard it, they went away one by one, beginning with the older ones, and Jesus was left alone with the woman standing before him. Jesus stood up and said to her, “Woman, where are they? Has no one condemned you?” She said, “No one, Lord.” And Jesus said, “Neither do I condemn you; go, and from now on sin no more.”
(John 7:53-8:11)

A fresh look at the passage

This is probably one of the most popular passages in all of scripture, but last night it hit me in a new way.  I have always heard this as a call against judgment.  I would read where it says, “Let him who is without sin be the first to throw a stone at her,” and come to a place of humility and conviction of personal sin.
I think that was good.  But I also think that there is more to this passage.

Now, as I read this, I am realizing that this passage is not only about the fact that it is wrong for sinful people to judge one another.  It is also about the impotence of their judgments.

When I read this passage I now realize the importance of knowing who it is that I am to be reconciled with.  This woman thought that she stood condemned, and so did everyone else there.  Jesus told a different story.  It doesn’t matter how guilty you are in the eyes of man.  If Jesus does not condemn you, you are not condemned.  That’s the point. It doesn’t matter how innocent you are in the eyes of man.  If Jesus condemns you, you are condemned.

Romans 8:33-34 says:

Who shall bring any charge against God’s elect? It is God who justifies. Who is to condemn? Christ Jesus is the one who died—more than that, who was raised—who is at the right hand of God, who indeed is interceding for us.

No one can condemn me if I have been justified by Christ!

People will pass judgment and condemnation on us while we are in this world, but every one of those will be temporary.  There is only one judgment that will last eternally, and that is the judgment of Christ.

Eternally pardoned by Christ himself

What I see when I read this passage is this: get right with Christ, and don’t worry about the temporary, impotent judgment of any person. If I am condemned by Christ, I am truly and eternally condemned.  However, if I am pardoned by Christ, I am truly and eternally pardoned!

Could there be a sweeter truth?  Every Christian is the adulterous woman in this passage.  We have sinned, and there are many who are out to condemn or cast judgment upon us.  There are even some who wish us dead.  But none of this matters.  If they will judge me in this life, they cannot separate me from the love of God, and Christ still stands before me saying, “You are pardoned.”  If they will kill me, they will send me to my home with Christ.  The truth is that, if you are a Christian, the one judgment that will ever matter has already been declared for you—and it is in your favor.

Praise God for this, and do not heed the empty words of men.

Now the birth of Jesus Christ took place in this way. When his mother Mary had been betrothed to Joseph, before they came together she was found to be with child from the Holy Spirit. —Matthew 1:18.

What are we to do with the virgin birth?

For the believer, we have a long list of Scriptures and doctrines to defend. May the virgin birth be one of them.

The virgin birth is no small thing. It is not a doctrine to just pass by and read to our children as a mere story. Rather,  our redemption, which rests and relies on the shoulders of Christ, is attainable if this is true.

Through the virgin birth, God once again displayed His sovereign hand and unexplainable works through the work of sinful mortals. He also brought to fruition another one of His prophesies (Isaiah 7:14). It was also Almighty God’s display to the world that His son, perfect from everlasting, came into the world to conquer and set free the souls of many. The birth of Christ by virgin is so central to the believer that we must know it and believe it with all our hearts.

Why is the doctrine of the virgin birth essential?

First, Christ was born fully man (from a woman) yet fully God (conceived by the work of the Holy Spirit) through the virgin birth. This “incarnation of God” allowed Christ to become our perfect sacrifice. In order to be our atoning sacrifice, Jesus needed to be both fully man and fully God.  He had been tempted and tried as a man, yet was blameless in all His ways. We all were naturally born into and conceived in sin by our mothers (Psalm 51:5); on the other hand, Christ was not born of man but of God. He fulfilled all of the law and was able to become our substitute. And though He was not born of a man, He was born as a man—a man who was able to die and resurrect to new life, only by the power of God. Through His bodily resurrection, He defeated the sting of death.

Second, the virgin birth also confirms that Christ is the second person in the Godhead, thus displaying His heavenly origin. Through the work of the Holy Spirit, the seed was placed into Mary proclaiming to all the world that He is not the son of just another man but of God Himself. The virgin birth displays Christ’s perfect union with His father and confirms that He has always eternally existed—begotten not made. Jesus, unlike us, did not have a beginning in the construct of time.

Thirdly, Christ was able to live a perfect and spotless life because He had no sin. He was neither stricken with original sin from man, nor was depravity with Him from birth. Man’s sinful blood did not run through his veins and hate was never in His heart. In contrast, you and I are sinful from birth because of the Fall. It is our sin nature. Christ, however, having a heavenly origin, was not subjected to man’s sinful bend. The federal headship of Adam which all creation is subject to was not inherited by our Lord. His Father is in Heaven, not of this earth.

This, dear Christian, is exactly why we should be filled with joy and praise to our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ this Christmas. The virgin birth tells us that God became man so that he could serve as the perfect sacrifice for our sins. We must fervently believe and defend this. As Al Mohler once said: “All those who find salvation will be saved by the atoning work of Jesus the Christ—the virgin-born Savior.”

I know your works: you are neither cold nor hot. Would that you were either cold or hot! So, because you are lukewarm, and neither hot nor cold, I will spit you out of my mouth. For you say, I am rich, I have prospered, and I need nothing, not realizing that you are wretched, pitiable, poor, blind, and naked (Revelation 3:16-17).

It is clear in reading this passage that a lukewarm person is a person who feels no need for God. The lukewarm feel self-sufficient and satisfied in themselves, but we see that this feeling is very far from the truth. The lukewarm are not Christians.

Unfortunately, many of us have approached this verse and applied it to a Christian life. We say things like, “Oh, well he believes that Jesus is his Savior…he is just lukewarm, ya know.” To that, I say this: No, God does not spit his children out of his mouth.

I know this because of Philippians 1:6, and 2 Timothy 2:13. God speaks plainly in his word about the fact that he keeps his children. He tells us that he initiates our salvation, and therefore, he sustains it. He tells us that we have been given his righteousness—through the blood of Christ, his own righteousness—, and that he cannot disown himself. God cannot spit his children out of his mouth because he would almost be spitting out himself.

No, the lukewarm are not just Christians who are feeling less than extreme about God, they are people who have been lulled by Satan, flesh and the pleasures of this world into believing that they do not need God. Anyone who believes this has never believed the Gospel.

It is important for us to know: if God saves us and sustains our faith, then we can never lose that which he has given us. Our God never fails. Is it also important for us to question whether or not we have truly believed in our need for the Cross. If you have not, I pray that you will right now.

So, it should be clear that God’s children are not lukewarm, because God does not spit his children out of his mouth. However, this seems problematic at first; if this is true, I need to know two things:

1. How do I become hot?
2. Why doesn’t God spit the cold out of his mouth?

I will deal with the latter first. How can God stand a cold soul? Doesn’t he want a heart that is on fire with a passion for his glory? In order to answer this, let’s look at why God says he spits the lukewarm out. He says that those who are lukewarm think they are fine, without even knowing that they are in a wretched and needy state. The great sin of the lukewarm is the blasphemy of the Holy Spirit! “No, God,” they say, “I am doing fine on my own.” The great sin of the lukewarm is twofold: (1) they insult the sufficiency of a wonderful God by supposing themselves to be in no real need, and (2) they are content with being fine when God is offering eternal joy and satisfaction! The lukewarm insult an extravagant God by being content with too little.

Why does God spit out the lukewarm and not the cold? Because the cold man knows his need, and therefore praises God by needing him. This is the prayer of a cold man: “God, be merciful to me, a sinner!” (Luke 8:13). No one will get to heaven who supposes himself to be enough for himself. We should not think of the cold as those who openly despise God (though we often do), we should think of them as those who know that—of themselves—they are naked wretches in the snow. This is despair.

And if we understand this, the answer to the question “How do I become hot?” does all but answer itself. We do not and cannot make ourselves hot! Our heat is, rather, the heat of God himself. God does want our hearts to burn with a passion for his glory, but that passion comes from the presence of his Spirit. The more you need God, the more hotly his Spirit will burn within your heart. The hot and the cold are not two—they are one! Within every Christian exists both the feeling of frostbite in the flesh, and the blaze of an eternally burning fire within the Spirit. The one feeds the other so that we hate the flesh, and love the Spirit.

Unfortunately, I have spent much of my life seeing this Biblical metaphor as the attitudes of three different groups of people toward God. I see now, however, that they describe the attitudes of two groups of people toward themselves. The one who knows his need knows God’s satisfaction, while the one who insists on feeding and clothing himself starves and freezes without even knowing it. Do not be diluted to the degree of your need!

My prayer for you, reader, is that you would FEEL your need for God, that the cold chill of sin would reach to your very bones, and that from that place you would come to know Jesus Christ as the only unquenchable, and all-satisfying source of heat and life for your cold, dead soul.

There are occasionally impressions of the Holy Spirit which guide men where no other guidance could have answered the end. I do not doubt the old story of the Quaker who was disturbed at night and could not sleep, and was led to go to a person’s house miles away, and knock at the door just at the time when the inhabitant was about to commit suicide — just in time to prevent the act. I have been the subject of such impressions myself, and have seen very singular results therefrom; but to live by impressions is oftentimes to live the life of a fool, and even to fall into downright rebellion against the revealed word of God. Not your impressions, but that which is in this book must always guide you. “To the law and to the testimony;” if it be not according to that word, the impression comes not from God — it may proceed from Satan, or from thine own distempered brain. Our prayer must be, “Order my steps in thy word.”

(HT: The Daily Spurgeon)

Reflecting on Isaiah 44, Cam Huxford from Mars Hill Church (Seattle, WA) created this short video to tell of his idolatry.

Isaiah 44:21-22:

Remember these things, O Jacob,
and Israel, for you are my servant;
I formed you; you are my servant;
O Israel, you will not be forgotten by me.
I have blotted out your transgressions like a cloud
and your sins like mist;
return to me, for I have redeemed you.

(via The Resurgence)

And so we burned everything we owned. Because, who cares? And because why not? And because who are you? And because we don’t need you. And because if we don’t need you, you can’t hurt us. So we learned to drink bitterness and eat disappointment, and every time you failed we feasted. And we wanted to tear down walls, because we thought if the roof collapsed, we would see the sky. And we did everything you said we couldn’t, because who are you anyway? And who are we? And why do you care? And why do we? And if I knew who I was asking, I might get a better answer. And if i knew who I was fighting, I might strike a better blow. And because it felt better to swing than to sit, I kept on fighting. And you kept on failing. And we kept on eating and drinking. And we gave questions that couldn’t be answered. And you gave answers that couldn’t be questioned. And we stood in lines staring one another down, waiting for someone to blink. And we were sure. And you were sure. Yet we were right because we didn’t blink.

So we began to get closer to the sky. To do this we tore down one wall at a time. First we tore down the wall of need. You gave us this wall. You gave us malls, and churches, and clothes, and ovens, and cars. And so we burned them, and tore them down. After that we could see the east. Next we tore down the wall of hurt. You told us hope, and ideas, and futures, but you never gave them to us. And when we tore down this wall we could see the north. Encouraged by our new view, we decided to take down the walls of God and laws both at once. God gave us laws, and hopes, and needs, and we had never seen him provide for any of those–so we knocked out both at once. But we should have knocked out the roof, which was made of fact, because when those two walls collapsed, the roof collapsed with them. And as I lay crushed into a hard reality under the weight of fact, I decided that bitterness did not quench, and disappointment did not fill, and that a staring contest is no way to settle an argument.