I’m recalling 2 Corinthians 10:5, though (mentioned by @chadrmangum not too long ago), and it may have application.
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Hearts and minds must be regenerated by the Holy Spirit for people to understand the gospel and trust in Christ. With all respect, this is not exactly news for anyone who holds to the Doctrines of Grace or a Reformed Confession. So you’ll have to forgive me that I am struggle to see the point you are trying to make in this thread.
Additionally, because you didn’t provide any questions to frame the discussion so you can’t blame people for not posting about the things you want them to discuss.
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I see you cut off my quote Dale. As I shared neither of us are being persuaded by one another.
Understand Christy.
I came over to BioLogos regarding COVID and vaccinations. Then I saw that this was a place for gracious dialogue about faith and science.
“This is a place for gracious dialogue about faith and science.”
There are obviously two different faiths at work here.
Finding out the Faith of Christ is being excluded and it is very offensive.
Oops my mistake, you are correct. I thought the OP raised the question.
You can edit or add to your own past posts by clicking the grey pencil underneath that post.
Then you are being too easily offended. I am trying to discuss the ideas you put up, that people can only know the truth about Christ if God opens their eyes. What are you expecting of people, and why are you saying they don’t have the faith of Christ if they engage your ideas with reference to other Scripture?
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Hi again Christy
You are absolutely right it is the Lord who reveals the truth and moves us on to maturity.
John 8:31 If you are my genuine disciples you will continue in My Word.
Not “you ought to”, but “you will”. It’s not a challenge. It’s not a duty. He says this will be the evidence that you belong to Me. That’s what God’s Spirit does in the life of the believer.
Continuing in the Word is beyond human means. It is a spiritual leading that drives us and leads us to the Word of God.
I suspect that for Jesus ‘continue in my word’ has much more Jewish connotations than might we often allow it to have. I would suggest that for Jesus it is supposed to evoke ideas of continuing in Torah - which is far more ethical than cognitive. In other words, to continue in Jesus words means to obey his commands, a la John 3:21:
But whoever lives by the truth comes into the light, so that it may be seen plainly that what they have done has been done in the sight of God. (NIV2011)
Or John 13:34-35:
“A new command I give you: Love one another. As I have loved you, so you must love one another. By this everyone will know that you are my disciples, if you love one another.” (NIV2011)
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Hi Liam
What do we use as a source to be transformed by the renewing of our minds?
Without the renewing of our mind one cannot serve the Lord as He has called us to do. It is the designed plan of God to be changed through His Word.
Look at these two responses one as a love-hate relationship the characteristics of the nonbeliever in verses 19 and 20: And this is the condemnation, that light is come into the world, and men loved darkness rather than light, because their deeds their works were evil. So they love the darkness verse 20 For every one that doeth evil hates the light, it’s a love hate relationship here, neither cometh to the light, lest his deeds should be reproved. That word reproved is a judicial term that means to present evidence for conviction in a court. If you want to come to God’s light He will present evidence to convict you that you are a sinner in that you are dying in your sins. If you don’t want that conviction you’ll stay in the darkness and you will not want to come to the light.
The characteristic of the believer in verse 21: But he that does truth, literally the one who practices the truth is coming to the light, that his deeds may be made manifest, that they are worked in God. The one who has a heart for the Lord comes to the light and basically says show me what is of me and what is of God. I just want to do the things of God. What’s the truth? I don’t want to hide, just manifest to me the truth. Two different kinds of people. Notes from PB study
John 15:18 If the world hate you, ye know that it hated me before it hated you.
John 15:19
If ye were of the world, the world would love his own: but because ye are not of the world, but I have chosen you out of the world, therefore the world hateth you.
You will know my disciples by their love for one another. It is not a challenge or a commandment. After the indwelling of the Spirit, the Lord will be loving through us.
It is the Holy Spirit working in us through faith in Jesus that transforms our minds. Sometimes that happens as we read the Bible, other times when we hear it read, or when we hear it explained, or when we pray, or read theology, or etc.
If it was the designed plan of God that we be transformed by his Word (that, is the Bible), how were the disciples minds renewed when the Bible didn’t exist?
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Or the untold number of early Christians that never saw a Bible.
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Right on.
Jesus quotes from each of the major sections of the Old Testament—including Moses and the Pentateuch (Matt. 4:1–11; John 3:14; 5:45–47), David in the Psalms (Luke 20:41–44), and Isaiah (Matt. 13:13–15) and Jonah (Matt. 12:39–40) from the Prophets. He affirms each as part of God’s authoritative Scripture by basing both doctrine and practice on what it says. The testimony of the apostles mirrors that of Jesus. They quote from the Old Testament in their preaching (Acts 2:17–21, 25–28, 31, 34–35; 3:22, 25; 4:25–26). They frequently build their case for the gospel in the New Testament from Old Testament citations (Matt. 1:22–23; 4:14–16; 8:17; 12:17–21; 13:35; 21:4–5; John 12:38–41; 19:24; Rom. 1:16–17; 3:9–20; 4:1–12; 9:6–13, 15–17, 25–26, 27–29, 33).
Even Paul’s evangelistic practice of going first to the Jews in the synagogues and reasoning from the Old Testament Scriptures attests to their unreserved acceptance of the Jewish canon (Acts 17:2–3).
Biblical Doctrine: A Systematic Summary Of Bible Truth
John MacArthur and Richard Mayhue
———————————————————————————————————————————————
We are told in Acts chapter 17 verse 11 that when Paul came into Berea, “They gladly received what he had to say but they searched the scriptures to see if it was true.”
How did they search the scriptures if you claim they didn’t have them?
They had the OT, but they sure did not have the New!
They had “sacred writings” but not even an organized OT. The Christians did that first. The Jewish canon probably dates to late 1st - early 2nd century (after digging out my reference on this).
A good book on the development of the canon is On the Formation of the Biblical Canon by LM McDonald.
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Hey Kelli, thanks for your quote from MacArthur and Mayhue. It certainly illustrative of the practices of Jesus, Paul, et al. Unfortunately, it doesn’t prove your your original claim that “It is the designed plan of God to be changed through His Word“.
As you can see, I never said they didn’t have some form of scripture, just that they didn’t have a Bible.
As to the Bereans, I think we should be careful of importing a modern meaning of Scriptures = the Bible/OT canon into verses like this. In the first century papyrus was expensive and the vast majority of people were non-literate. So books and scrolls were primarily for record purposes and for reading publicly. They weren’t for private reading and referencing they way we read and reference today. And certainly, people didn’t have private copies.
A synagogue might have some scrolls (one or two), but it highly doubtful that they had a collection or complete set (whatever that set may have included a that time). Instead the ‘scriptures’ primarily existed in oral form in the minds of the community, the tradents, and rabbis.
So for Luke to say that they searched the scriptures he probably means ‘read aloud the scrolls they had available to them and discussed what Paul said’ or ‘they reflected on Paul’s words and discussed them together in light of their memorised knowledge of Torah, Prophets, and Writings’ or both. The common preacher’s argument of “what if were more like the Bereans? Reading through the Bible every time we want wanted to answer a question or check something was true” is ultimately anachronistic.
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Liam, are you denying this?
2 Timothy 3:16
All scripture is given by inspiration of God, and is profitable for doctrine, for reproof, for correction, for instruction in righteousness:
2 Timothy 3:17
That the man of God may be perfect, thoroughly furnished unto all good works.
Matthew 4:4
But he answered and said, It is written, Man shall not live by bread alone, but by every word that proceedeth out of the mouth of God.
Deuteronomy 8:3
And he humbled thee, and suffered thee to hunger, and fed thee with manna, which thou knewest not, neither did thy fathers know; that he might make thee know that man doth not live by bread only, but by every word that proceedeth out of the mouth of the LORD doth man live.
———————————————————————————————————————————————-
Biblical Doctrine: A Systematic Summary of Bible Truth
John MacArthur and Richard Mayhue
Beginning with Moses (Ex. 3:15), God’s prophets were recognized as authoritative messengers from God speaking directly on his behalf. Their authority was such that what they said on God’s behalf was viewed as God himself speaking. Moses was told to go directly to Pharaoh and address him on God’s behalf
by saying, “Thus says the LORD” (Ex. 4:22). That pattern is followed throughout the Old Testament by God’s prophets (see Joshua, Josh. 7:13; 24:2, 27; Gideon, Judg. 6:7–18; Samuel, 1 Sam. 2:27; 10:18; 15:2; Nathan, 2 Sam. 12:7, 11; and many others, 1 Kings 11:31; 12:24; 13:1–2; 13:21; 14:3–7). When a prophet speaks for God, the typical decree formula used is “thus says the LORD,” and it can even include the prophet speaking for God in the first person (e.g., 1 Kings 20:13). The standard concluding formula is “declares the LORD,” coupled with the repeated use of first-person statements to demonstrate that what the prophet said, God was saying through him (Ezek. 20:1–45).
In the same way that God gave Moses the very words he wanted spoken or written, he enabled other prophets to speak on his behalf (Ex. 4:11–12). David recognized that God was speaking through him when he said, “The Spirit of the LORD speaks by me; his word is on my tongue” (2 Sam. 23:2). It was the very fact that prophets spoke directly for God that necessitated God giving instructions on how to distinguish between true and false prophets (Deut. 12:32; 13:1–5; 18:15–22).
The Old Testament Records Dictated Speech from God. There are several accounts in the Old Testament that were written down as God’s own words at his instruction (Ex. 34:27). At the end of his life, Moses was commanded to write down in the final book of the Law all the words that the Lord had commanded him (Deut. 31:24–26). At other times, God simply instructed him to write down what happened (Ex. 17:14). Both forms are equally authoritative and divinely inspired in their composition. In the case of Jeremiah, he was instructed to write all the words God spoke to him (Jer. 30:1–4). When David penned his psalms, he knew it was God speaking through him, yet the Davidic psalms are clearly the result of David’s own thoughts, words, and emotions. Regardless of the actual process of composition, what was written was considered to be God’s own words conveyed through his human prophet. What the prophet wrote, God revealed.
Based on the practices of Jesus (recorded in the Gospels), the preaching of the apostles (recorded in Acts), and the writings of the New Testament (in the Epistles), there can be no doubt that for Christ and his apostles, the thirty-nine books of the (modern-day English) Old Testament were (1) inspired by God and (2) the full extent of the Scriptures up to that time.
For a Christian, there can be no better witness to a correct understanding of the character, nature, and authority of Scripture than Christ himself. His view must be the believer’s view. As one works through the many references Jesus makes to Scripture, a clear perspective emerges. Jesus used Scripture in all matters of doctrine and practice. He based his own identity and mission on it. He defined it personally as truth.All this confirms that Jesus understood the Scriptures to be the inspired, inerrant, authoritative Word of God in both Testaments. It can be shown from Scripture that Jesus (1) affirmed the Old Testament as Scripture (by affirming its authority, inspiration, and historicity) and (2) preauthenticated the New Testament as Scripture.
Jesus Affirmed the Authority of the Old Testament. In his every use of the Scriptures, Jesus declared the authority and veracity of the Old Testament.
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Are people going to stand before the Lord and say, I studied creation according to what I could see?
But the Lord will say, what was your response to my Light?
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