Bible Beliefs
A Brief Theology statement
The Bible
The Bible is the inerrant, life changing message of God to people.
God
God the Father, God the Son (Jesus), and God the Holy Spirit are ONE God, in 3 Persons.
Each one has existed and will exist eternally. Each one is all that God is.
There is nothing that God is that each one is not all by Himself.
God is eternal. He is every where and every when all at once. This is what the name I AM means- which is only used of God twice, in Exodus 3.
God is all-knowing. Prophecy is not the predicting of the future, it is the statement of the future God is now living, a future God causes to be exactly as God wants it to be.
The ultimate goal of God the Father is to bring glory to Jesus (God the Son) and to the Holy Spirit. The ultimate goal of Jesus is to bring glory to God the Father and to the Holy Spirit. The ultimate goal of the Holy Spirit is to bring glory to God the Father and to Jesus. Thus, when we read that God is a jealous God, it is not God being selfish but each member of God wanting the absolute best for the other two members of the godhead.
Man
God created man so God can put His incredible mercies on display before angels who existed before this universe was created, bringing more glory to God.
God first created Adam and Eve. All people are descended from them.
Man is body, soul, and spirit. The body is the avenue Satan brings temptations to us through, the Spirit is the avenue God encourages us to live His ways through, and the soul is the area that decides on a moment-by-moment basis which way to go.
Man has free will, and simultaneously man will always do exactly what God decided he will do. Man lives free to choose to do what God wants him to do. (Jesus was the ultimate example of a man choosing to do what God wants.) Man also lives free to choose to not do what God wants him to do. (Jesus could have chosen to disobey God but always chose to obey.)
Except for Jesus, every person ever to exist existed in spiritual form in Adam and Eve, and chose with Adam and Eve to rebel against God. This makes each person personally responsible for sin before being born and explains how we were conceived in sin.
The only person to ever live who did not exist in Adam and Eve is Jesus. He is fully human, being born from the virgin Mary, but not one of the men who chose against God in Adam. He existed before His human birth as God the Son. At His birth He became the GodMan, both fully God and fully Man. He continues to be the GodMan.
Our current life is not a reincarnated life. Each individual only lives one physical life and then goes to God’s judgment. In Adam and Eve each person was alive in spirit form only. We each get a body and one life to live before the judgment.
We exist so God can demonstrate His mercies to angels as He grants mercies to us and then the angels will glorify God more. Most probably, angels sinned before this universe was created and this universe was created to be a means for God to explain mercies to the angels.
We were created to suffer in this life (and only in this life for those of us who enter in relationship with God through Jesus). The reason we were created to suffer is that we are meant to show how God reacts to suffering. God reacts to suffering by offering mercies to those who cause Him to suffer by sinning against Him and abandoning relationship with Him but later repent and enter into a very personal relationship with Him (the blood covenant relationship covered elsewhere). We are to do the same. In this way angels see that God reacts to His suffering by offering mercies.
A person gets true purpose in life from doing God’s will by living by God’s lifestyle principles. This includes but is not limited to showing mercies to people.
Jesus
Jesus is fully God and fully Man, all at once.
Jesus is God in every sense of the word. Jesus temporarily set aside the use of His God abilities so He would live 100% as a Man- living 100% as man ought to live- while on Earth.
Jesus is a Man in every sense of the word.
Jesus was conceived supernaturally in the womb of a human mother by the Holy Spirit which made Him fully human without being one of the people (the rest of us) who sinned in Adam and Eve.
He was born fully human, He lived fully human, He was limited like any human is (Philippians 2:5-9), He died like every human will, He faced eternal judgment like every human will. And His only way to avoid eternal condemnation (because He took our sins into Himself, while He Himself never did a single sin to be condemned for) was to receive God the Father’s mercies, just like us. (We in fact receive those same mercies by means of Jesus.)
While on Earth Jesus operated under the authority of God the Father and in conjunction with God the Holy Spirit. Jesus always and only did what God the Father guided Him to do.
Jesus is the unique Son of God in the sense of receiving God the Father’s lifestyle principles directly from God the Father and living by them perfectly. Jesus did not begin His existence when He was born as a human, since He is eternal. He is a Son in the sense of receiving God the Father’s lifestyle principles from the Father directly. We in turn receive the same lifestyle principles by means of Jesus.
Jesus Christ, who never did one single sin, became sinful in the very fabric of Who and What He is (2 Corinthians 5:21), taking into Himself every sin committed by every person ever to live. Jesus Christ WAITed on the cross for the mercy of forgiveness and for the mercy of being changed to being holy (again) from God the Father for every single sin done by any person (Psalm 40).
Jesus came to Earth, God in the flesh, so He could wait on the cross for God the Father’s mercies for us. Jesus is God with us. He is the Anointed One (“Christ”) who passes that anointing of the Father’s lifestyle principles on to us. Jesus is “God is salvation”, very God of very God who brings salvation from our sins to us. Everything Jesus did He did in response to the Father’s desires concerning us, and He did it the way God the Father wanted it done. He did not deviate from that in any way.
Jesus did not merely pay God the Father for our sins on the cross. That would have been easy for Jesus, as God, to do. Instead, Jesus acted as every human is supposed to do. He WAITed for God’s mercies. Jesus did this WAITing on the cross. He did it as a human. He did it facing the penalty for sin just like any other human faces the penalty for sin. Due to His waiting Jesus received the mercies of God the Father. Only due to His WAITing did Jesus receive the mercies of God the Father.
While on the cross Jesus, as a Man, despaired of receiving God’s mercies (Psalm 40).
Jesus’ cry to God about being abandoned (Mt. 27:46) while hanging on the cross was real. He was worried. As a man, WAITing for the mercies of God, He was facing spending eternity in Hell for our sins. The only way to avoid Hell was to receive God the Father’s mercies. And the only way to receive those mercies was to WAIT for God the Father to provide them due to Jesus, as a man, being in blood covenant relationship with God the Father. (Ps. 40)
If Jesus had paid God the Father for our sins there would have been no need for, and no room for, mercies from God the Father. The legalistic idea that Jesus paid for our sins requires the Bible to be translated in a way that supports legalism. That is not the only way the verses can be translated, and there are translation and theology problems with interpreting the Bible legalistically.
Under legalism:
Jesus didn't need help
Jesus was the source of mercies, not God the Father
Jesus did not fully experience humanity
Jesus Christ passes the mercies of forgiveness and being changed to holiness from God the Father to us when we voluntarily and willfully enter into relationship with Jesus Christ by confessing our sin to God and desiring to be made holy. At this time Jesus Christ merges His life with ours in blood covenant relationship.
Jesus will return to Earth in the future and rule it for 1,000 years. After that there will be future events we are not filled in on and then Satan will be eternally put in Hell and Earth will be renewed to perfection.
Salvation
God the Holy Spirit convicts people of sin so they enter relationship with God through Jesus, then He enables and guides us to live by the lifestyle principles that Jesus implants in us. This leads to us being actually holy, becoming ever more holy as we are continually more changed to be people who live by God’s lifestyle principles.
Jesus enters into a blood covenant relationship with us when we repent of our sin and seek to be in relationship with Him. At this point His life becomes my life and my life becomes His. Our lives are totally intermingled.
People who experience eternal separation from God will spend eternity in Hell. Any person who does not enter into relationship with Jesus will end up in Hell eternally, a place of physical torment. They will experience eternal death, which is eternal conscious painful separation from God. This separation is the ultimate punishment, and what all the miseries the unsaved will go through flow from.
Any person who enters into relationship with Jesus lives eternally with Jesus, whether He is in Heaven or on Earth at the time. People who are in relationship with Jesus will co-rule with Him. They will experience a life of no suffering or pain, but rather of total joy.
Godly living
God gives his followers abilities, many in the form of spiritual gifts, so we can do the things God wants done on Earth. Our job is to promote the Kingdom of the Heavens. The Kingdom of the Heavens is anyplace where the lifestyle principles of God are lived by. The lifestyle principles are things like the fruit of the spirit (love, joy, peace, kindness, etc. as found in Galatians 5:22-23) and the ideas found in the Sermon on the Mount (Matthew 5). These things form the psychology of God that we live by.
God’s psychology is contrary to the psychology taught by the world. The psychology of the world can lead to professional certification. It is always contrary to God’s psychology. The two psychologies cannot be truly mixed. God’s psychology is always based on Bible teachings, the world’s psychology is always based on satanic teaching. The originator of the world’s psychology, Sigmund Freud, had spirit guides and attended seances and other satanic influences. This influence continues on to today. A popular modern psychologist- Carl Rogers- also had spirit guides and attended seances and etc.
“Christian” counseling is a mingling of God’s psychology and Satan’s psychology. Mingling God’s teachings and Satan’s teachings is forbidden by God.
For Christians the proper way to help people is called soul care. It is often done with friends helping friends work through things. This has been proven many many times to be more effective than professional counseling.
Sin
Christians do sin. The “little children” Christians of 1 John are trying God out, seeing if they want to stay with God or abandon their relationship with God. They are real Christians in real relationship with Jesus but have not yet made an unbreakable agreement to stick with God. They can leave the relationship. God will not force them to stay. If they leave the relationship they lose their salvation. If they leave the relationship they will do so by committing idolatry- the worship of a false god, the worship of Satan in one way or another. As long as they do not leave the relationship they will have God’s mercies applied to their lives and be Heaven bound.
The “young men” and “fathers” of 1 John have made a permanent decision to stay in their relationship with God. In return God makes sure they will never be so tempted that they will abandon the relationship. They will never worship a false god. Ever. They will always have God’s mercies applied to their lives and be Heaven bound. They have eternal security of salvation.
Jesus is currently in Heaven, in a human body, fully human and fully man, representing us, assuring that we will be in Heaven with Him no matter what our sin is if we are a Christian (except for the possibility of “little children” turning away from God).
Satan
Satan was created to be willful opposition to God, creating circumstances in which God can display His mercies. (See my commentary on Genesis 1.)
Satan is a limited created being.
Satan has been trying to get control of the universe ever since Genesis 1. God has continually foiled his plans and even used Satan to further God’s plans. Satan is used by God (Matthew 1, 26) even while being at war with God.
Satan’s goal is to steal the universe from God so he can create a utopia for himself. He plans to kill every human so God has no ability to make a claim on the universe. (God granted the universe to humans, Satan plans to displace humans as the owners of the universe.) Satan is working to destroy every influence of God in this universe. Satan wants to destroy any likeness to God in this universe so this universe can be what Satan wants it to be- his place to run his way.
At this time Satan is trying to clone humans, have his demons inhabit the clones, kill all humans, and have full control of the universe.
Satan has limited knowledge of the future. He does not fully understand God’s prophecies.
Jesus became sin / God became sin
This is a difficult idea to grasp.
The reason it is hard to understand is that the brain must wire itself to understand.
In a class I was taking one part required understanding a math concept. Some people had extreme difficulty understanding the concept. I told them that they must be patient, and just keep on trying to grasp the idea, the understanding would come. I told them their mind must rewire itself so they could understand it. One day one of the students who had been having trouble commented that he understood it. He also said he could not understand why he could not understand it before. I again told him he just had to wait for the mind to make physical changes and then the understanding would come.
It is hard to understand that Jesus who is God, who never did a single sin, became totally sinful. It is hard to understand that our sin, my sin, so totally affected Jesus that it made Him sinful. My sin, our sin, totally affected the very fabric of Who Jesus is, of what Jesus is made of, so to speak. It is like red food coloring in water. The food coloring completely changes the color of the water to red.
It takes time to understand. It takes effort. As you mull the idea around in your mind, dwell on it, think about it from different angles, only then will it make sense. This is why only some theologians understand this idea. They reject it up front and do not think it through enough. They do not dwell on it. They do not look at it from various angles until they see the various connections, until they form the connections in their mind so it suddenly makes sense. In the process they totally miss what blood covenant relationship is all about.
If you do not understand that Jesus so totally became human, He so totally united Himself with us, He so totally united you and me with Himself, that His very nature was thoroughly affected by us and our very natures are affected by Him, then you do not understand 2 Corinthians 5:21, you do not understand blood covenant relationship, and quite frankly, you do not thoroughly understand salvation.
And if you don’t understand 2 Corinthians 5:21, you don’t understand Jesus’s desperate cry, “My God, My God, why have You abandoned me?”, nor do you understand “He helped me.” In fact, you don’t understand how God the Father is the source of mercies- you see Jesus as the source- and Jesus claimed God the Father is the source. And you don’t understand why Jesus praised God the Father for giving Him mercies. And the list goes on.
Jesus needed God the Father’s mercies. Just like we do. Jesus needed to be saved. Just like we do. Jesus was a sinner (for 3 hours). Just like we are. Jesus got saved- just like we do.
And now Jesus passes on God the Father’s mercies to us. Salvation comes to us through Jesus. Only through Jesus.
Why was blood covenant relationship forgotten? The Church had to deal with the Trinity, and with the idea of sin, and with the idea of the Church itself. And more. In the process the difficult topic of blood covenant relationship was lost. Also, verses got (mis)translated in a legalistic sense- legalism is easier to understand than blood covenant relationship. Wrong, but easier.