To Infinity and BeyondDavid TateMarch 10, 2019the paradox of our faith, christian, bible study, christ, bible, now lets be honest, faithComment

The Paradox of Our Faith

To Infinity and BeyondDavid TateMarch 10, 2019the paradox of our faith, christian, bible study, christ, bible, now lets be honest, faithComment

The following is a reflection on 1 Samuel 26.

“Who can put out his hand against the Lord’s anointed and be guiltless?” (1 Sa 26:9)

Think about this question, posed by David in response to his second opportunity at taking Saul’s life. His point is obvious: Regardless of who is in the right and who is in the wrong, to act against the Lord’s anointed is to seemingly disregard the will of the Lord. To act against the Lord’s anointed is to act against the Lord Himself.

And yet this is precisely what we did when we impaled the Son of Man! We lifted our hands against Him and with our sins crucified the Anointed One, the Christ, crying out “His blood be on us and on our children!” (Mt 27:25). Oh, wretched soul of mine, you crucified your Savior! With every sin you commit, you put your hand against the Lord’s Anointed and declare yourself guilty, guilty, guilty! Where David took the spear and water jar of Saul, you left sweet Jesus thirsty (Jn 19:28) and plunged a spear into His side (Jn 19:34). David would not harm even the evil king whose throne he had been called to replace, yet you crucified the righteous King of Kings who reigns eternally because you sought His throne!

And yet aye, there’s the rub. Yes, for in this defiant act of utter sinfulness…in this abominable act of sinful man crucifying the sinless Son of God…here is the greatest paradox of the Christian faith. For though by my crucifying the Savior I am demonstrated to be most guilty, by that same cross I can be declared perfectly innocent. When the world enacted her greatest sin, the Lord enacted His greatest grace. By my unrighteousness I crucified Christ, but in the crucified Christ I am declared righteous. When I was most deserving of death, God was offering the greatest abundance of life. Through God’s greatest act of humiliation arises His greatest act of glorification, and when He appeared to be weakest, He declared Himself and proved Himself strongest. By my poverty I killed Him, yet by His death I am made rich. In my pride I pierced Him, but in knowing that I pierced Him I am made humble. When I watched Him breathe His last breath with hammer held in my hand, I proved myself a slave to sin; but in breathing that last breath, He said “It is finished (Jn 19:30) and declared me free.

And so, David’s question remains: “Who can put out his hand against the Lord’s anointed and be guiltless?”

There is only one answer: No one. No one who performs such an act can be declared guiltless, and yet we all have done of it – every single one of us, each one of us, any of us and all of us. Each of us are guilty. None of us are guiltless. “None is righteous, no, not one” (Rom 3:10), for “All we like sheep have gone astray; we have turned – every one – to his own way; and the Lord has laid on Him the iniquity of us all” (Isa 53:6). Yes, “all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God” (Rom 3:23) – we have each put out our hand against the Lord’s anointed and declared ourselves guilty – and “the wages of sin is death…

“…but the free give of God is eternal life in Christ Jesus our Lord” (Rom 6:23). Oh, how glorious the last half of that sentence is! For yes, Jesus Christ died, but that was merely the end of the beginning. He “was delivered up for our trespasses and raised for our justification” (Rom 4:25). Forgiveness came in His death; life came in His resurrection. In His death, we are delivered from death; in His resurrection, we are resurrected to new life. And so we can say in confidence, “if you confess with your mouth that Jesus is Lord and believe in your heart that God raised him from the dead, you will be saved” (Rom 10:9).

And so while we were His enemies, God offered us friendship; while we were dead, God offered us life; while we were slaves, God offered us freedom; while we were guilty, God offered us innocence.

Add the word “most” to each of these statements and you will begin to scrape the most basic understanding of the foundation of how marvelous and great is this Good News – this Gospel – given unto us. For you see,

…we were not merely enemies, but murderers, and He offers to call us not only “friends,” but “sons,” “daughters.”

…we were as dead as we could be in our sins, yet He offered the most life – into eternity!

…we were the most enslaved – dedicated to the cause, willing slaves of our own fleshly desires – yet He offered us the most freedom, making us coheirs to His kingdom, alongside the very one whom we crucified and yet who saved us!

…when we were at our guiltiest, His arms were suspended from east to west on the cross as HE cried out, “Father, forgive them” (Lk 23:34) and said to our very souls, “As far as the east is from the west, so far does He remove [your] transgressions from [you]” (Ps 103:12).

So yes, the limp body of the bloodied and crucified Christ bears testimony to the most shameful thing we have ever done – sin, for in sin we rebelled against our very Creator, the One for whom our very hearts beat and the One for whom our very souls long and the One for whom our very spirit live. Yet from our greatest shame comes our greatest triumph, for our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ transformed what was plain water into the sweetest wine, blind eyes to possessing perfectly clear sight, the raging tempest within us into perfectly calm seas. Our white and leprous skin he turns into clean and fresh skin, while our hearts, so bloodied by our own sin, are in turn washed white as snow. If He has transformed enemies to friends and if He has transformed death to life and has transformed the slave to the free and has transformed the guilty into the innocent, He can, oh my soul, transform even the act of your greatest shame.

And so, while I did indeed put my hand out against the Lord’s Anointed and I am guilty and I am ashamed of what I have done with my each and every sin, “I AM NOT ASHAMED of the gospel, for it is the power of God for salvation to everyone who believes, to the Jew first and also to the Greek” (Rom 1:16).

Now indeed, this is Good News.

David Tate

To Infinity and BeyondDavid TateAugust 04, 2017bible, bible study, jesus, christian, gospel, salvation, now lets be honest15 Comments

Why You Should Stop Inviting Jesus Into Your Heart

Church, we’ve got a huge problem, and it has to do with our Gospel.

Maybe I should show you where I would like to place the emphasis here. You see, the problem doesn’t have do with our Gospel, but it has to do with our Gospel. We are the problem, not the Gospel itself, and this is what I mean: the way in which we present the Good News of Christ to every single lost soul we encounter on a day-to-day basis is flawed, rooted in something extremely unbiblical. The Gospel itself is something so beautiful and unique that only a church run by imperfect sinners could screw it up, but the sad thing is that, I hate to break it to you, but we are a group of imperfect sinners, and it’s negatively affected this group of people we call our Church.

We’ve screwed up the Gospel.

To Infinity and BeyondDavid TateAugust 04, 2017bible, bible study, jesus, christian, gospel, salvation, now lets be honest15 Comments

Why You Should Stop Inviting Jesus Into Your Heart

To Infinity and BeyondDavid TateJanuary 01, 2018eden, garden of eden, here and now, christ is enough, christ, christian, bible, bible studyComment

Here & Now

In my own humble opinion, one of the most enticing and yet aggravating concepts of all Scripture is that of Eden.

What must it have been like to walk with God in the garden? For Adam specifically, what must it have been like to be alone with your Creator for days, weeks, months, perhaps even years on end, walking and talking and laughing and working? We do not know how long Adam was in the garden before Eve was introduced, but if he successfully named each animal before recognizing there was no suitable companion for himself, it surely must have been some time. What was it like to spend such an extended period of uninterrupted intimacy with the Lord, to wake up every morning with knowledge of His presence and go to sleep each night knowing that He would be there to meet with you next day?

What was it like to be free from the burden of sin? What was it like to walk openly amongst the plants and animals, naked and unashamed? What was it like to see things in their true beauty, untainted by man’s fallen blindness? What was is it like to taste the fruit from un-cursed ground, to drink from streams purified beyond any form of natural purification? What was it like to see animals in harmony with one another – no death, no disruption, but just peace? What was it like to dream? Were dreams mere reflections of the reality around you, or was every dream a nightmare when compared to the magnificent world in which you lived?

To Infinity and BeyondDavid TateJanuary 01, 2018eden, garden of eden, here and now, christ is enough, christ, christian, bible, bible studyComment

To Infinity and BeyondDavid TateJanuary 05, 2018logan paul, harvey weinstein, fifty shades of grey, now lets be honest, bible, jesus, christian1 Comment

Why Are We Surprised?

"Professing themselves to be wise, they became fools."

That phrase was written in Greek to a church in Italy by a Jewish tentmaker nearly 2,000 years ago, but perhaps it applies even more so to modern-day America.

A few days ago, YouTuber Logan Paul gave rise to massive controversy when he posted a video containing footage of a hanging dead man, which they found while filming a vlog in the Japanese suicide forest. The internet erupted in hatred and started slamming the 22-year old left and right, with politicians and celebrities alike condemning him for displaying “sociopathic qualities” and failing to “honor those who have committed suicide.” Within two days, Paul issued a public apology in which he admitted that his actions were wrong and went on to set aside “time to reflect” on his actions, yet people continue to blast him, continue to defame him, continue to tear him to shreds. Angsty internet users tell him to kill himself. A recent petition asking YouTube to terminate his account has reached over 200,000 signatures.

My question is this: Why?

To Infinity and BeyondDavid TateJanuary 05, 2018logan paul, harvey weinstein, fifty shades of grey, now lets be honest, bible, jesus, christian1 Comment

To Infinity and BeyondDavid TateSeptember 18, 2018gospel, christian, now lets be honest, bible, texas a&m, aggie, marriage, freely, spurgeon, christ, churchComment

On a Trip Fully Paid

In one of my classes this morning – amidst talk of morality and revenge and Nietzsche’s [frankly odd] views of justice and punishment – we arrived at the happy tangent of the Gospel promise and what it meant for the Christian life, especially as it pertains to the factor of human choice coupled by divine sovereignty.

“imagine you have been offered the chance at a luxurious trip by which you can skip school without punishment, and that trip is fully paid,” said one student, or something along those lines. “That is the Gospel.”

“If it’s been fully paid, why would you not accept the offer?” asked another.

Precisely, thought many people throughout the room. A few said it out loud.

“But if you get on the plane and go on the trip, what prevents you from doing bad things?” asked another, this in response to the matter we had been discussing, that idea of a true Christian not continuing on in an abundantly sinful life. “What motive do they have to do the will of the one who paid the price? The metaphorical salvation has already been grasped, so why do good things at all?” From this broke out discourse over definitions of mercy and grace and sin, and in no time we had wandered so deeply into the weeds that every Calvinist and Arminian in the room was getting sweaty at their palms.

Then Nietzsche came calling once again, and our tangent came to an abrupt end. Back to what we were actually supposed to be studying.

But this thought stuck with me throughout the day…

To Infinity and BeyondDavid TateSeptember 18, 2018gospel, christian, now lets be honest, bible, texas a&m, aggie, marriage, freely, spurgeon, christ, churchComment

To Infinity and BeyondDavid TateMarch 12, 2019the witch of endor, humanistic religion, ten shekels and a shirt, 1 samuel 28, christian, bible study, now lets be honest, king david, medium of en-dor, endor, en-dor, necromancyComment

One Does Not Simply Walk into En-Dor

The following is a reflection on 1 Samuel 28.

“But Saul swore to her by the LORD” (1 Sa 28:10).

Here we read of the case wherein Saul, fearing the upcoming battle with the Philistines, disguises himself and crosses into enemy territory in the midst of night to consult with the medium of En-dor, through whom he seeks to access the spirit of the dead prophet Samuel.

A man such as Saul is dangerous. In fact, double-mindedness might be one of the greatest dangers plaguing the modern church today…