Pastor's Blog

A seed change has taken place in biblical Christianity over the last gener-ation, a change which has been driven by the prevailing philosophy of the unbelieving world reaching back more than two centuries. That change discounts the possibility of certainty in matters of thought and religion. It begins with the denial of the possibility of knowing whether there is a god, and if there is, what he is like and whether he has revealed himself. Be-cause knowledge is in the mind of the knower, to make objective truth claims is regarded as sheer arrogance. No one can have any certainty as to how the world came into existence, and from that point, their agnosticism reaches to many other parts of the human experience. Of course, nobody lives like this. In day-to-day life, we could not exist without certainty. If you walk in front of a speeding truck, you will die. Likewise if you take a deep breath under water. Food will satisfy hunger; the sun will rise tomorrow morning. Your living room chair will support your weight. You can think of many more examples. Thus, knowledge has become very fragmented; there is no central truth that governs our world or our existence. The result of this thinking is moral relativism in which every person is his/her own authority, individually determining what is right or wrong. What this means in the real world is that the whole notion of truth has been undermined. Most modern people are convinced that we live in a universe governed by chance with a god who is nothing more than an impersonal force. God, if there is a god, is a mystical “god within.” Because biblical revelation has been rejected, for many people, religion has been re-duced, not to facts based in reality, but to feelings. In many of our churches, the result is a conflict between the head and the heart, and conflict that is often reflected in the church’s worship and preaching. The New Testament gives us a very different picture. Let’s let the Apostle Peter speak to this point. According to him, knowledge is basic to our faith. In fact, salvation is impossible without it. He writes, “for you have been born again not of a seed which is perishable, but imperishable, that is, through the living and enduring word of God” (1 Pet 1:23). God’s Word is revealed truth, an utterly reliable testimony to the reality about God, the world, mankind, evil, salvation, human experience, and the future. There is a body of facts that must be known and accepted before a person can believe in the Lord Jesus Christ and receive His gift of free grace. The Christian faith, therefore, is first of all a matter of the head. This is the mandate for the systematic, expository, in-depth teaching of God’s Word. That said, however, human experience is likewise a reality. Once a per-son receives the Lord Jesus, a process of growth is initiated which equally depends upon the Word of God. God has “granted to us His precious and magnificent promises, so that by them you may become partakers of the di-vine nature, having escaped the corruption that is in the world by lust” (2 Pet 1:4). In other words, there is sin to be avoided as we become more and more like Christ, and the means to that end is God’s Word. Peter also ex-horts us, “like newborn babies, long for the pure milk of the word, so that you may grow in respect to salvation” (1 Pet 2:2). This growth should be at the heart of our daily lives in the real world. As Peter says in closing his second epistle, “but grow in grace and in the knowledge of our Lord and Sa-vior Jesus Christ” (2 Pet 3:18). Thus both knowledge and experience—both head and heart—are vital to our Christian lives. How we think and how we live are both governed by God’s Word. We cannot live independently of His truth; we are not the final arbiters of right and wrong. And yes, we can know this truth for certain!