Category Christ

Feb 29 2008

“..if I should die before I wake…”


Today we buried an associate. A 60 year old woman who had been selling real estate since 1972. Dying at 60 is way premature to this almost 63 year old.

Where is she now? With the Lord I think, I hope, but I don’t really know do I? I shared the very good news with her and she assured me she was “satisfied”. Though in some way I wish I could do more, I suppose I did what I could. I will take her word and find some measure of peace in the knowledge that she had found peace with God.

I have decided that if I must err, (and we all must err) that I should err on the side of the love and grace of God. After all God does love people more than you and I do. And, He has done something remarkable to prove His love by giving His only Son to completely pay for the sins of wicked people. Wicked? Yes wicked!

I don’t hear the word “wicked” used to describe humans much in sermons any more, except for my own. According God’s book, at the center of every man is a spiritual heart which is “deceitfully wicked” and only God can really know it. (Jeremiah 17:9) And, Christ died for the “ungodly”. 

The problem with you and me is that we measure ourselves by ourselves (each other). God on the other hand measures us by Himself. We lose every time!

Christ did not come into this world to condemn it but that people might be saved through Him. I don’t think I will be in the business of condemnation either since I am to be used in His stead in some mysterious way.

I will tell folks the very good news about His love, and how their sin debt has long been paid, and God’s gracious offer is forgiveness of sins and eternal life along with all the trimmings described in the Bible. I will tell them that by simple child like trust they can know the peace of God and have peace with God through Christ. And not by ritual, religion, saying certain phrases, going certain places, and going to certain houses of worship. Nope, only take Him at His word and expect Him to do what He has promised.

Every one of us, saved and unsaved, are flawed human beings. A remedy has been provided for every one of us. His name is Jesus. In the words of comic/song writer/singer Mark Lowery “I catch them God cleans them”.

Each of us contributes one sinner each to the formula of salvation. That is about it. Jesus has done and will do the rest. Have you put your whole trust in Him? You’ll sleep better once you have……”and if you should die before you wake….”

His peace,
Royce Ogle

Jan 18 2008

The Deity of Jesus…part 1


Was Jesus God? Surely the deity of Jesus Christ is one of the essential beliefs of the historic Christian faith. Yet many people who claim to be Christians boldly deny that Jesus was truly God in flesh.I continue to be shocked and saddened by the rampant unbelief of professing followers of Jesus. Not only is Christ’s deity questioned but the resurrection of Christ is debunked by some of these same people.

In the next few post I will present a biblical case for the deity of Jesus Christ. I will not give you my opinion but rather the clear unvarnished testimony of the Word of God. Do I expect everyone to believe what the Bible says? Absolutely not. Perhaps somebody you will see the truth and abandon your unbelief.

Jesus when speaking to unbelieving Jews made this statement. “Jesus said to them, “If God were your Father, you would love me, for I came from God and now am here. I have not come on my own; but he sent me. Why is my language not clear to you? Because you are unable to hear what I say. You belong to your father, the devil, and you want to carry out your father’s desire. He was a murderer from the beginning, not holding to the truth, for there is no truth in him. When he lies, he speaks his native language, for he is a liar and the father of lies. Yet because I tell the truth, you do not believe me! Can any of you prove me guilty of sin? If I am telling the truth, why don’t you believe me? He who belongs to God hears what God says. The reason you do not hear is that you do not belong to God.” (John 8:42-47 NIV)

How you respond to God’s truth was the acid test in the first century and it is the same today. Those who do not belong to God reject truth and those who do belong to God accept it. Like those Jews of Jesus’ day who rejected His words, those today who reject His words have a father but it is not God.

Jesus claimed to be God, the prophets said he would be God, His mastery over nature proved He was God, His supernatural knowledge proved He was God, and His resurrection from the dead proved He was God.

If Jesus was God He necessarily then would have to possess the eternal attributes of God. The first of those is His eternal existence. Jesus did not have His beginning in the cradle of Bethlehem. Far from it. What is the record of the Word of God? I will mention a few verses.

The fist and perhaps the most obvious one is in John 1. “In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. He was in the beginning with God. All things were made through Him, and without Him nothing was made that was made. In Him was life, and the life was the light of men. And the light shines in the darkness, and the darkness did not comprehend it.” (John 1:1-5 NKJV) Verse 14 makes it clear who is being spoken of in verses 1- 5, “And the Word became flesh and we beheld His glory…”

Not only did Christ precede creation but was also the Creator. For Jesus to be God He could not be “a god” as some of the cults teach, He could not be “created”. No He had to exist outside of time, outside of creation. These words in John 1 leave no doubt to those who are willing to accept truth. Jesus existed before the world was created. The prophet Micah in Micah 5:2 said of Him “… Whose goings forth are from of old,
From everlasting”. Jesus said to the Jews “Most assuredly, I say to you, before Abraham was, I AM” (John 8:58 NKJV) Then in Jesus great prayer in John 17 He said these words of Himself claiming His eternal existence, “And now, O Father, glorify Me together with Yourself, with the glory which I had with You before the world was” (John 17:5 NKJV)

There are other verses that make the same point. I believe it should be clear to any honest seeker of truth that according to the Bible Jesus existed in eternity before the creation of planet earth and teaches clearly that He lives forever, His life has no end.

Only God is separate from creation, separate from time, not bound by natural law, and has the ability to create by His spoken word. Next time we will examine other texts that show indeed that Christ was in fact God in human form.

His peace,

Royce Ogle

Jan 10 2008

“Churches of Christ in the Untied States”, 2006 Edition raises some questions


Today a copy of the book “Churches of Christ in the United States” 2006 Edition was placed into my hands for my review. This was quite an opportune time since my only productive function this week is to attend to my wife, who is ill, and help boost the stock of Kimberly-Clark, the makers of “Kleenex”. I have the mother of all allergic reactions, a condition I unintentionally succumb to at least twice each year. After an injection in my left hip today, beginning a “Z-Pack” and various and sundry other remedies my wife forced me to take, I am still a mucus fountain. Enough with my complaining, back to the book.As I thumbed through this volume I was impressed with the obvious time and effort spent to produce such a large book with well over 600 pages of facts, statistics, and detailed data. My hat is off to anyone who embarks on such a task. I think it is very well done. It did raise some questions though.

First, since we are a fellowship whose favorite text of the Bible is Acts 2:38, and since our teaching on baptism is one of the distinctives that separates us from the rest of the evangelical world, I thought it was curious that baptism only got a category in the stats along with “adherents””(both baptized and unbaptized individuals)”,  who regularly attend in a given location. “Members” include only those who are “baptized”.

Had I been gathering data for such a volume, one of the most important questions I would have asked would have been something like, “How many folks has your congregation baptized since we last surveyed?” If think the absence of a question such as I suggest is a glaring omission. Why would we not want to measure baptisms? It is interesting that Southern Baptists (the historical objects of our collective scorn) measure their churches effectiveness by “baptisms”. Although their numbers are in decline, in 2006 they reported 364,826 baptisms (world wide), down from 2005 by 7,024. They don’t measure their evangelistic efforts by how many “prayed the sinners prayer”, or “how many came forward” but by number of converts they baptized. I can’t imagine why we in churches of Christ would not want to know that about ourselves.

The second curiosity is that in the book, “mainstream” congregations include both what I would tag “traditional” and “progressive”. All of the other usual divisions result from different nuances of methodology and teaching about how a congregation “does” what it does on Sunday morning. I too find this interesting since the largest 1,000 congregations in the United States and its territories comprise only about 7.5 % of the total congregations, yet have about 35% of all members. It is comical to me that at the top of that list is North Richland Hills church in Texas, slowly inching its way toward being double the size of any other congregation in our fellowship. If I am to believe the “brotherhood” publications, blogs, and messages given in several lectureships, NRH is hardly “mainstream” to many, many of our brothers. I don’t have the information, but it would be interesting to know how many of those largest 1,000 congregations have been the objects of brotherhood wrath because they are not perceived to be “mainstream” in teaching and ministry?

Perhaps in the future, more and more congregations will lift high the blood drenched banner of a crucified and resurrected Christ, who alone is the only answer to man’s common evil enemies, sin and death. I pray that it is so.

His peace,
Royce Ogle

Jan 7 2008

In defense of the gospel of Christ


Brother Edward Fudge, attorney, author, Bible teacher, from Houston, Texas just today sent out the following exchange in one of his “graceEmail” posts. Over the past few years I have communicated with Bro’ Fudge on some issues and have found him to be a kind gentleman whose love for Christ is unmistakable. I have great respect for the way Edward Fudge responds to critics of his view of salvation which rests wholly upon the work and merit of Jesus and not upon human work or merit.

I quote him here word for word with his kind permission. 
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YOU KNOW BETTER

“A church acquaintance with whom I grew up in North Alabama fully a half century ago wrote recently to tell me that I am preaching “another gospel” which is no gospel at all, for which I will be eternally lost, and that he knows that I “know better” than my expressed convictions on a variety of religious issues.

* * *

This unhappy gentleman is representative of a category of people who place their hope in a particular religious organization or in a system of man-made doctrine and whose allegiance naturally follows their hope. Missing is an understanding that Jesus really is our Savior, that he took our place in his own perfect doing and dying to set us right with God, and that our energies now are devoted to responding to God’s grace and not to cobbling together some kind of personal righteousness with which we hope to barter or bargain with the Almighty. In the view of my friend, salvation depends on being in the “right” church and reaching all the “right” conclusions in studying the Bible. Because this understanding of salvation provides no room for error, those who advocate it must pretend that they are now correct on every doctrinal point and persuade themselves of that illusion.

Laboring under this impossible burden, its carriers also feel logically obligated to condemn all who differ with them, who — since they themselves are definitely right — must be absolutely wrong. Wearing these blinders, one might acknowledge that another person generally lives a godly and upright life (as my friend would say of me), yet not hesitate to conclude and to announce to others that the person who differs from himself is willfully twisting God’s Word, knowingly teaching fatal error and consciously misleading others into what he clearly knows to be wrong.

I wrote back to this gentleman and assured him that my theological differences with him resulted from intensive Bible study over many years and are truly spoken in all good faith. I expressed regret that he seemingly trusts in something that can never provide hope or salvation. And I prayed that the God who spoke light out of darkness in the beginning would now shine in this friend’s heart to show him the divine glory in the face of Jesus Christ (2 Cor. 4:6). I understand where my friend is in his thinking. I was there once myself — and still would be, but for the grace of God.”
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….and I would too.

His peace,
Royce Ogle