Jesus Will Return Once, Not Twice

 Around the world today there are millions of Christians who agree with what is known as dispensational theology.

This way of thinking differs in a number of important respects from traditional Christian beliefs, including in ideas about what will happen in the future.

The usual dispensational understanding of Jesus’s return

According to usual dispensational thinking about the end times, the following sequence of events is supposed to happen as regards Jesus returning from heaven to the earth:

First, Jesus will return without warning from heaven to the air above the earth, without setting foot on the earth itself. At that time, all Christians then on earth (according to some) or most Christians then on earth (according to others) will be caught up into the air to meet Him in the so-called ‘rapture’. Then He and the Christians who have been caught up will go immediately to heaven.

Next, there will be a time of severe suffering on earth, which is known as ‘the tribulation’. This will last for seven years, during which many people on earth will come to faith in Christ.

Then, after the seven years are completed, Jesus will return from heaven to the earth again and this time set foot on it.

So in usual dispensational thinking, Jesus will actually return from heaven to earth twice, once coming as far as the air above the earth, and once actually setting foot on the earth.

It is true that there is a small minority of dispensationalists who believe that Jesus will return only once. But a large majority of them are expecting Him to return twice, and it is this group that I will be thinking about in what follows when I use the label ‘dispensationalists’.

Lack of evidence that anyone believed this before the 1830s

In many parts of the world today, this pattern of supposed future events is so well known that many believers seem to think that this is what faithful Christians have believed during most of the last 2000 years.

Actually, this could hardly be further from the truth. I don’t think there is any evidence that anyone believed this before the 1830s. And this is despite the fact that there is an enormous amount of Christian literature that exists from the late first century up until that time.

This idea of the church being raptured up and in this way escaping the tribulation seems to have come from a dream that a girl had in the 1830s. Somehow, a man called John Nelson Darby became convinced that this was true and then had great success in persuading others. And the rest is history.

The apostle Paul’s use of certain words

Like the vast majority of Christians down through the centuries, I am convinced that Jesus will return from heaven to earth once, not twice. The Christians on earth at that time will indeed be caught up to meet Him in the air (1 Thess 4:17), but then He and they will descend immediately onto the earth itself. And this will be the one and only time that He returns.

There are many lines of biblical evidence to support the idea of a single return. Here I would like to focus on just one of them, which is  the wording the apostle Paul uses to refer to Jesus returning.

In the New Testament Paul uses three different Greek words in connection with Christ returning:

First, the word ‘parousia’ means ‘coming’ or ‘presence’.

Second, ‘apokalupsis’ means ‘revelation’ or ‘unveiling’.

And third, ‘epiphaneia’ means ‘appearance’ or ‘manifestation’.

Importantly, Paul uses each of these words in passages that dispensationalists believe refer to Jesus’s first return and in passages that they believe refer to His second return. And when he uses these words in these passages, he never says whether he is talking about Jesus’s first or second return.

I would suggest that if Paul thought that Jesus would return twice, we wouldn’t expect him to have used the same words to refer to each return, while at the same time never taking the trouble to explain which return he had in mind. That would be too unclear and confusing for his readers.

Or to put it another way, because it makes little sense to think that Paul has been unclear and confusing, especially when we bear in mind that this is inspired Scripture, it is reasonable to conclude that he hasn’t been unclear and confusing and that he believed that Jesus will return only once.

So as not to let this article become too long, I will concentrate on how Paul uses just one of these words, ‘parousia’, in connection with Christ returning. And I will limit my references to Paul’s letters to the Thessalonians.

It is worth noting, however, that if I were to look at all three words and at all the New Testament books, the same conclusion would be reached.

Parousia in 1 Thessalonians

Let’s start with 1 Thessalonians.

Firstly, in 1 Thess 2:19 Paul writes:

‘For what is our hope or joy or crown of boasting before our Lord Jesus at his coming [Greek: at the parousia of him]?’ (ESV)

Dispensationalists typically think this refers to the first return of Jesus.

Then in 1 Thess 3:13 Paul writes:

‘…so that he may establish your hearts blameless in holiness before our God and Father, at the coming [parousia] of our Lord Jesus with all his saints.’ (ESV)

Dispensationalists think this refers to Christ’s second return.

Then in 1 Thess 4:15 Paul says:

‘For this we declare to you by a word from the Lord, that we who are alive, who are left until the coming [parousia] of the Lord, will not precede those who have fallen asleep.’ (ESV)

Dispensationalists believe that this refers to Jesus’s first return.

Finally, in 1 Thess 5:23 Paul writes:

‘Now may the God of peace himself sanctify you completely, and may your whole spirit and soul and body be kept blameless at the coming [parousia] of our Lord Jesus Christ.’ (ESV)

Dispensationalists generally think this refers to Christ’s first return.

Note that each of these verses refers to the coming/parousia of Christ rather than to a coming/parousia, which more naturally suggests one rather than two returns. And note too that there is not the slightest hint in any context that there will be more than one return.

Furthermore, because each of these verses is in the same letter, this means that these verses were designed, by Paul and of course also by God, to be read by readers while the preceding verses are still fresh in their minds. This makes it all the more unnatural for readers to switch back and forth between understanding Paul to be talking about a first and a second return of Christ.

In short, it seems more than a little strange for Paul to have written in this way if he expected Jesus to return twice. We would expect him to have explained himself more clearly.

Parousia in 2 Thessalonians

The same point can be made, but even more strongly, about 2 Thessalonians.

First, in 2 Thess 2:1 Paul writes:

‘Now concerning the coming [parousia] of our Lord Jesus Christ and our being gathered together to him…’ (ESV)

Dispensationalists typically think this refers to the first return of Jesus.

Then in 2 Thess 2:8 Paul says:

‘And then the lawless one will be revealed, whom the Lord Jesus will kill with the breath of his mouth and bring to nothing by the appearance of his coming [parousia].’ (ESV)

Dispensationalists believe this refers to Jesus’s second return.

Importantly, these two uses of ‘parousia’, used to refer to Jesus returning, are found not just in the same letter but in the same passage, and without the slightest suggestion in the context that two different returns are in view.

It is very difficult to think that Paul expected his readers to understand him to be talking about two different returns. If that were the case, I think we would have to say that Paul has written very clumsily.

Instead, the far easier solution is to say that Paul hasn’t written clumsily and that he believed that Jesus will return from heaven to earth only once.

Summing up

A look at how Paul has used the word ‘parousia’ in 1 and 2 Thessalonians in connection with Christ returning from heaven to earth suggests that there will be one, not two, returns. And the rest of the Bible also points us in the same direction.

The idea that Jesus will return twice is a late development that doesn’t fit Scripture or historical Christian beliefs, and it should be abandoned.

 

See also:

The Problems with Claiming to Interpret the Bible Literally

Beware of Interpreting Bible Prophecies Too Literally

Is the Church Spiritual Israel?

Is It God’s Will for There to Be Another Jerusalem Temple?

Beware of Those Who Seek to Pin the Blame on White People

 As Christians, we need to be clear-eyed about what is going on around us, as far as ideological trends are concerned. Where an evil ideology is gaining ground in popular opinion, we must be careful to avoid being caught up in its mindset. And where appropriate, we need to take a stand against it.

There is an evil ideology that has been gaining ground in the last few decades around the world that I think many Christians are unaware of. It is a racist ideology, and I would suggest that it is now one of the more significant race-hate movements that exist today. Basically, it is the attempt to pin the blame for most of the world’s problems – often for a large majority of the world’s problems – on white people.

This ideology is sometimes called ‘Critical Race Theory’. I won’t use this label myself, because people use it in different ways, and I don’t want to use potentially confusing language. So I will just stick to talking about the attempt to unfairly blame white people for things.

A close parallel with Nazi propaganda

When I have heard supporters of this ideology speak in recent times, the thing that has struck me is the close parallels with Nazi propaganda of the early-mid 20th century.

I don’t know if you have ever seen a video of Adolf Hitler giving a speech in the German parliament in the 1930s. If you have and you have managed to get through it to the end, you won’t have failed to see him spend some time furiously denouncing Jews.

In the Nazi narrative, Jews were the race that was to blame for Germany’s problems and for most of the world’s problems.

This is, of course, a ridiculous thing for the Nazis to have claimed, but claim it they did. And then their well-oiled propaganda machine got to work trying, with a lot of success, to persuade people that it was true.

For Hitler and others to try to convince people that Jews were the ones to blame, they did several things:

First, they ignored all the good things Jews did.

Second, they pointed to the bad things Jews did. (Obviously, Jews, like other racial groups, had their fair share of blame for Germany’s and the world’s problems.)

Third, they added to the list of bad things with lies.

And fourth, they massively downplayed the bad things that non-Jews did.

The result of all this was a picture of a race of evil people that was to blame for Germany’s and most of the world’s problems.

The modern attempt to pin the blame on white people also does all four of these things. It ignores the good things white people do and have done. It focuses on the bad things white people do and have done. It adds to that list with lies. And it massively downplays the bad things non-white people do and have done.

Where this propaganda is successful, the result is hatred for white people, which at times leads even to violence and murder.

It may well be true that at the present time only a small minority of people who buy into this ideology go as far as actually wishing that white people didn’t exist. But this could easily change.

Let’s not forget that at the beginning of the Nazi movement of the last century, relatively few Nazis wanted to go as far as killing Jews. At that time most of them would have been content for Jews simply to be forced out of Germany.

But later, as the propaganda did its work, more and more Nazis were no longer content with just expelling Jews. They wanted them dead. And the same growth of hatred could well happen in the future in connection with the anti-white ideology that exists today.

I am not saying that white people will ever be in as much danger overall as Jews were last century. In most places we have much more safety in numbers. But hatred for white people does have the potential to increase a lot, and so does the number of racially motivated murders.

White people who buy into this ideology

It isn’t just non-white people who help to push this ideology. More than a few white people do so too.

I am not saying that these people are deliberately trying to whip up hatred against their own race. But unwittingly they are helping to do this.

There are many white people, myself included, who look at some of the evil things that members of our race have done in history and are appalled. In and of itself, there is obviously nothing wrong with this. To call evil by its name and hate it is a good thing to do.

However, for some it doesn’t stop at just hating evil. There are many who go further in problematic ways.

Firstly, there are those white people who actually seem to accept some personal guilt for sins their ancestors committed.

However, Ezekiel 18:19-20 is clear that people are not guilty of sins committed by their ancestors. In this passage God says:

‘Yet you say, “Why should not the son suffer for the iniquity of the father?” When the son has done what is just and right, and has been careful to observe all my statutes, he shall surely live. The soul who sins shall die. The son shall not suffer for the iniquity of the father, nor the father suffer for the iniquity of the son. The righteousness of the righteous shall be upon himself, and the wickedness of the wicked shall be upon himself.’ (ESV)

So it is a mistake to see ourselves as guilty of sins that our ancestors committed.

Secondly, many of the white people who are fixated on past sins by members of their own race seem to have the idea that white people have historically been worse than other racial groups.

This is complete nonsense. When history as a whole is taken into account, the truth is where we would expect to find it, that white people have on balance been no better or worse than other racial groups. I would suggest that anyone who reaches any other conclusion cannot remotely be trying to be fair with the data.

The United Nations declaration

The influence of the ideology I am opposing in this article has been considerable.

On 25 March 2026 the United Nations voted to recognise the transatlantic slave trade (t.s.t.) as the gravest crime against humanity in human history.

I think this is an astonishing thing to claim. Of course, the t.s.t. was clearly a major act of great evil that affected millions of people. But there have been hundreds of other similar evil acts in human history.

Why, for example, was the t.s.t. worse than the Nazi holocaust that killed and displaced more people? Why was it worse than the Arab slave trade in black Africans that lasted for more than half a century after the t.s.t. came to an end? Why was it worse than the horrors of the Japanese empire of the last century or the Mongol invasions of Europe or the Aztec practice of breeding captive tribes of people to sacrifice to their gods? And so on, and so on.

It is true that part of the reason for the U.N. vote had to do with the attempt by some countries to get money from European and North American countries as ‘reparations’. But I am sure that in part it was also influenced by the ideology that seeks to pin the blame for things on white people. After all, this is an increasingly fashionable thing to do.

Christians must oppose all racism

As Christians, we need to take our stand against all racism, whether it is against white people or black people or brown people or whoever.

The idea that there is one racial group that is especially to blame for the world’s problems is an evil notion that serves to divide people and encourage hatred, quite apart from the fact that it is utter nonsense.

Let us all, then, have nothing to do with this destructive ideology.

 

See also:

A Christian Perspective on Racism

Most People in Western Countries Completely Misunderstand What Human Beings Are

‘Human Rights’: A Big Idol among Christians Today

The Arrogance and Hypocrisy of Western Society

If the Bible Says It, That Is Enough

Something that you may come across from time to time is a Christian asking God for a sign to confirm biblical teaching.

What happens is that the Christian thinks that the Bible teaches something, but because they don’t like what it teaches, they decide that they will obey its teaching if God provides a sign confirming that this is what He wants.

Some examples

As a case in point, I can remember some years ago hearing about a young Christian man and woman who were engaged to be married.

One evening they were feeling amorous and were tempted to sleep together before the wedding. Instead of choosing to resist this temptation and wait until they were married, they decided to pray that God would send someone to tell them not to sleep together if He really didn’t want them to do this.

They then prayed but no one was sent, so they slept together.

A similar situation that sometimes occurs is when a Christian starts to commit a sin, watching expectantly for God to give them a strong warning that they are outside His will, maybe by striking them down with an illness or something like that.

However, to their surprise, nothing seems to happen. The apparent lack of response from God then makes this Christian think that this sin probably isn’t actually a big deal in God’s eyes, and they keep committing it.

Two important points about biblical revelation

These examples highlight a couple of very important points about biblical revelation and Christian living.

Firstly, if the Bible says that something is wrong, that's all we need to know to decide not to do it.

Secondly, if the Bible says that something is wrong, it is a big mistake to expect God to intervene in our lives to confirm this.

We know from life experience, as well as from Scripture, that God allows us to go wrong in many ways. It is true that there are times when He does take action to stop us committing a sin. But there are also many occasions when, in His wisdom, He allows us to commit sins.

So for any Christian to think that a sin can’t be a big deal to God, because He didn’t take action to stop it, makes no sense at all.

Testing God

Asking God for a sign to confirm biblical teaching is not just pointless and foolish. It actually amounts to testing Him.

In Matthew 16:1-4 we read about a time when some Pharisees and Sadducees did this:

‘And the Pharisees and Sadducees came, and to test him they asked him to show them a sign from heaven.

He answered them, “When it is evening, you say, ‘It will be fair weather, for the sky is red.’ And in the morning, ‘It will be stormy today, for the sky is red and threatening.’ You know how to interpret the appearance of the sky, but you cannot interpret the signs of the times. An evil and adulterous generation seeks for a sign, but no sign will be given to it except the sign of Jonah.”

So he left them and departed.’ (ESV)

These Pharisees and Sadducees were asking for a sign to point to something that should already have been obvious. It should have been clear to all who saw and heard Jesus that He was sent by God.

We must note too how strongly Jesus condemns what they were doing. He calls them ‘evil and adulterous’ for seeking a sign.

What these Pharisees and Sadducees were doing is really the same thing that I spoke about above, i.e., asking God for an unnecessary confirmation of something. So this Bible passage should leave us in no doubt that this is something the Lord deeply dislikes.

God will answer our prayers when we ask for something in faith and in line with His will (1 John 5:14-15). But He is hardly at our beck and call to do things that are completely unnecessary. We need to fit in with where He is at rather than expecting Him to go out of His way to pander to our desires. There is something really insulting to the Lord, not to mention arrogant, about asking Him to give unnecessary confirmations of things.

Did God really say that?

In Genesis 2:16-17, we are told that after God created Adam, He said to him:

‘You are free to eat from any tree of the garden, but you must not eat from the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, for on the day you eat from it you will certainly die.’ (CSB)

Then in Genesis 3:1 the snake asks Eve, who has clearly learned from Adam what God had said:

‘Did God really say you must not eat the fruit from any of the trees in the garden?’ (NLT)

The snake in this passage represents Satan, so here we see Satan trying to put doubts into the mind of Eve about the truthfulness of something God had said.

In this respect, nothing has changed. Today, just as ever since the days of the first humans, Satan and his subordinates, i.e., evil spirits, continue to lie to God’s people in this way. Revelation 12:9 says that Satan deceives the whole world, and one way he does this is by inciting doubts about what God has said.

If the Bible says that something is wrong, however, that is enough. That is all we need to know to make our decision about how to act. We need to accept what it says and obey it without testing God by asking for confirming signs.

 

See also:

Salvation Is Not by Doing Good but Only Those Who Do Good Will Be Saved

The Importance of Taking Steps to Avoid Temptation

The Radical Nature of the Normal Christian Life

Learning to Discern the Attacks of Evil Spirits

How to Respond to the ‘Two Consenting Adults’ Argument Regarding Homosexual Practice

I am sure that, like me, you will have heard people try to justify homosexual practice by using the two-consenting-adults argument, i.e., by saying that if two consenting adults are involved, then what's the harm.

In the thinking of people who use this argument, if someone is not causing distress to another human being, it makes no sense to say that they are doing anything wrong.

A need to respond to this argument

In sharp contrast to secular thinking on sexual morals, the Bible teaches that sex is only appropriate in a marriage relationship between a man and a woman. And it strongly condemns homosexual acts.

However, for people who don’t accept the Bible’s authority, quoting chapter and verse on homosexuality isn’t going to cut any ice.

Of course, if we can persuade people of the truth of the Bible, that is a very worthwhile thing to do. But nevertheless, it would be helpful if we can use some other arguments too.

In what follows, I will give some ideas for how to respond to people who try to justify homosexual practice by using the two-consenting-adults argument. Some of my arguments will assume that God exists, so these particular arguments wouldn’t necessarily have much impact on those who deny His existence. Nevertheless, I think that even these arguments should sometimes help to get through to some people.

Living within the pattern that God designed

One thing we can say to people who use the two-consenting-adults argument is that human beings need to live the way that God made us to live. It is true that He has given us a lot of freedom, but there are limits to this. We need to live within the pattern that He designed.

If we think about homosexuality, the big thing that should strike us immediately about it is that this isn’t what God made. The human body is obviously designed to fit together heterosexually with another body. This is clearly what God created.

I think people know instinctively that there is something unnatural about homosexuality. Of course, many will deny this, and if people are unwilling to listen to the truth, there is only so much we can do to persuade them. But speaking about the design of human beings will sometimes help to get through to people on this issue.

What human beings want is not the key thing

The second point to make about the two-consenting-adults argument is that it puts human beings on a pedestal in a way that doesn’t match reality.

This argument assumes, either consciously or unconsciously, that human beings are in the place of ultimate authority. In other words, it assumes that what people want, and not what God wants, is the key thing.

It is impossible to overstate how wrong this kind of thinking is. The first thing that anyone should ask about any activity is whether God is OK with it. That is infinitely more important than whether a human being is OK with it.

Only if we are sure that God is fine with something, should we then go on to think about human consent.

This is another point that may have some success in getting through to people on the issue of homosexual practice.

Asking what they think about incest

Another approach that I think would be very worthwhile, when responding to people who use the two-consenting-adults argument, is to refer to incest.

If someone says that homosexual practice is fine if two consenting adults are involved, we can ask them if they believe the same about incest, particularly incest involving a parent and an adult child.

If they are horrified, or at least uncomfortable, with incest of this kind, as I think a large majority of people would be, then we can point out that their discomfort shows that the two-consenting-adults argument is hopelessly simplistic. The rightness or wrongness of sexual relationships is a much deeper issue than people who use this argument think it is.

However, it is true that a few might say that they have no objection to incest involving a parent and an adult child. If they do, we can press further and ask them if they would be fine with this kind of incest in their own family. If the person we are talking to is a parent or grandparent themself, it may even be appropriate to specifically refer to their child or grandchild when asking the question.

If the person gets angry and offended by this question, we can say that we agree that these are offensive thoughts and that that is precisely the point. The fact that they are repulsed by these thoughts shows that the two-consenting-adults argument is far too simplistic. Sometimes, two consenting adults in a sexual relationship is a horrifying prospect.

Then we can say that if this is the case with incest, potentially the same could be true of homosexual relationships too.

I think the vast majority of people would be appalled, or at least uncomfortable, about the prospect of incest in their own family between a parent and a child, so this argument should carry some weight. If they can see that incest is a disgusting thing, even when two consenting adults are involved, they might possibly come to see that homosexual practice is just as disgusting, even when two consenting adults are involved.

It is sad to say, however, that if the moral depravity of Western culture continues to increase, we may reach a time not that many years from now when the average man or woman on the street really won’t have a problem with incest between a parent and child. And it may be that those of us who object to this will be attacked as bigots.

Nevertheless, at the present time this appeal to incest is something that I think should make people stop and think.

Speaking in love

Of course, as Christians, when we criticise sinful behaviour, we must always be careful to remember that we ourselves are sinners saved by grace.

We must never look down on unrepentant sinners from some imagined position of superiority. Instead, we need to look horizontally across to people, speaking in love, remembering that we have committed many sins ourselves and that God has chosen to forgive us.

So if we find ourselves in the position of using the sorts of arguments that I have outlined in this article, let us make sure that our hearts are in the right place as we do so.

 

See also:

Answering the Accusations of the LGBTQ Movement

What Attitude Should Christians Have to Homosexuality?

How Serious a Sin Is Sex outside Marriage?

Most People in Western Countries Completely Misunderstand What Human Beings Are

Are You an All-Weather or a Fair-Weather Christian?

The Bible makes it clear that suffering is a part of the normal Christian life.

In Romans 8:17, for example, Paul says that Christians are ‘heirs of God and fellow heirs with Christ, provided we suffer with him in order that we may also be glorified with him’ (ESV).

Similarly, in 2 Timothy 3:12 Paul states that ‘all who desire to live a godly life in Christ Jesus will be persecuted’ (ESV).

Or again, in Hebrews 12:7 the author says, ‘It is for discipline that you have to endure. God is treating you as sons. For what son is there whom his father does not discipline?’ And then in v. 11 he adds, ‘For the moment all discipline seems painful rather than pleasant’ (ESV).

There are also many other passages that teach along the same lines. Basically, there is no doubt that suffering is a normal part of Christian experience.

Times of great suffering

Most sufferings we experience are relatively low-level. These are minor problems of all sorts that we have to face on a daily basis, that cause us no more than a small amount of distress. We can expect to experience these almost constantly for the duration of our lives.

But I would suggest that it is also normal for Christians to experience times of great distress now and then. To have times like these often is fairly unusual but never to have such times is also unusual.

Many of the Psalms, for example, were written by David and others, when they were suffering really badly (e.g., Psalms 6, 38, 42, 77). And the New Testament tells us that the Old Testament was written for the instruction of Christians (Rom 15:4). There is no good reason for thinking that it is normal for Christians to go through their entire lives avoiding times of deep distress such as we read about in the Psalms.

So if we are devout followers of Jesus – as, of course, we should be – then there will probably be some times of intense suffering in our lives.

If we understand this, we will be in a much better place to face these times when they occur.

Christians who go to pieces in times of bad weather

We could compare seasons of life to different kinds of weather.

Good weather, or fair weather, is when life is not that difficult, when there are only minor sufferings to be dealt with. Bad weather is when the big sufferings hit.

It is not uncommon to find Christians who do very well in times of fair weather but who go to pieces when the weather turns bad.

In fair-weather times they are models of Christian discipleship, devoting themselves to prayer, Scripture, using their talents, sharing the faith, helping people, etc., etc. They cope reasonably well with the minor problems and sufferings that Christians experience in times of fair weather.

But when the big hits come, the agonies, that’s when their discipleship collapses. Instead of letting their sufferings drive them to God for help in their dire straits, they run away from Him.

These are the people represented by the seed sown on rocky ground in the parable of the different kinds of ground:

‘And others are like seed sown on rocky ground. When they hear the word, immediately they receive it with joy. But they have no root; they are short-lived. When distress or persecution comes because of the word, they immediately fall away.’ (Mark 4:16-17; CSB)

When the bad weather comes, we need to run towards God

When the weather turns bad and we are in deep distress, for whatever reason, that is the time not to run away from God but to run to Him. He is able and willing to help us, and He will surely do so. I have been able to testify to this myself on many occasions.

Life without God is totally meaningless and hopeless anyway. A godless life is a tragic, empty thing. Running away from God is only going to make things worse for us.

Besides, we each have a need to be rescued from God’s eternal punishment, and only those who endure to the end will be finally saved (Mark 13:13). So quite apart from the fact that life here and now without God will not go well for us, life after death will go infinitely worse if we walk away from Him.

In John 6:66-69 we read about a time when many of Jesus’s followers stopped following Him, and He asked the Twelve if they wanted to do the same. On this occasion Peter gave an excellent reply:

‘Lord, to whom will we go? You have the words of eternal life. We have come to believe and know that You are the Holy One of God.’ (CSB).

All our hopes need to be in God and in reaching fullness of joy in His presence after we die.

Warning new Christians

When people first become Christians, they often have quite an easy time of things to begin with. This doesn’t always happen, but fairly often it does. New Christians can therefore sometimes start to think that the absence of deep suffering is what they can expect for the rest of their lives.

I would suggest that it is helpful for new Christians to be warned that it is normal for believers to experience times of deep distress now and again. If they aren’t told this, they can be devastated when these times arise.

Let’s be determined to keep going

Let us all, then, be clear-eyed about the nature of Christian discipleship. It is normal for followers of Jesus to experience seasons of great suffering now and then. It is normal for the weather to turn bad from time to time.

When this happens, let’s be determined to keep going on the narrow path, following the Lord, regardless of what we face.

 

See also:

Some Things for Christians to Do When They Are Hanging On by Their Fingernails

Charismatic Churches and Their Attitude to Hardship

What to Do If You Feel Like Blaming God for Something

Taking Heart from the Apostle Paul’s Experiences of Setbacks and Failed Plans

The Seriousness of the Sin of Hypocrisy

The Gospels make it clear that when the Lord Jesus was on earth, something that really infuriated Him was hypocrisy.

Of course, there is no doubt that Jesus hated, and still hates, all sin with a passion. But hypocrisy is one of the things that clearly made Him especially angry when He was doing His earthly ministry.

What is a hypocrite?

Before going any further, I think it would be good for me to try to give an accurate definition of what a hypocrite is, because a lot of people don’t get this quite right.

Many have the idea that a hypocrite can be defined as someone who does the same thing that they criticise others for doing.

It is true that very often someone who does the same thing that they criticise others for doing is being a hypocrite. But not always.

So, for example, suppose I am driving my car and I make a minor mistake and another driver hoots his horn at me. But suppose too that the next day I am driving again and this time another driver makes a minor mistake and I hoot my horn at him.

So I am criticising the other driver for a mistake that I myself occasionally make. Does that make me a hypocrite? Surely not.

Or suppose that a husband lets his wife down in some small way and she criticises him for what he has done. But suppose too that the next day she lets him down in a small way and this time he criticises her. Does that make him a hypocrite? Surely not.

Instead of defining a hypocrite as someone who does the same thing that they criticise others for doing, I would suggest the following as a definition:

A hypocrite is someone who pretends to be good in a certain way that they know isn’t true.

In other words, a hypocrite is essentially a fake, a fraud. This is unlike the two examples I gave above, where there was no pretence on my part to be a better driver than I am, and where there was no pretence on the part of the husband that he never lets his wife down.

Hypocrisy, then, is about fakery, about pretending to be good in some way, while knowing full well that this is a lie.

Bible passages on hypocrisy

As far as Bible passages on this topic are concerned, Matthew 23 surely stands out. In Jesus’s strong words against the scribes and Pharisees in this chapter, He uses the word ‘hypocrites’ (Greek: hupokritai) no less than six times, as well as the word ‘hypocrisy’ (Greek: hupokrisis) once. And just reading through the chapter, we can feel the anger that Jesus clearly had for the hypocrites that He was talking to.

The scribes and Pharisees Jesus was addressing pretended to be morally upright citizens, but they were a million miles from being that. And they knew it.

Jesus’s words in verses 25-28 give a vivid description of what hypocrisy is and what He thinks of it:

‘Woe to you, scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites! For you clean the outside of the cup and the plate, but inside they are full of greed and self-indulgence. You blind Pharisee! First clean the inside of the cup and the plate, that the outside also may be clean.

Woe to you, scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites! For you are like whitewashed tombs, which outwardly appear beautiful, but within are full of dead people’s bones and all uncleanness. So you also outwardly appear righteous to others, but within you are full of hypocrisy and lawlessness.’ (ESV)

We can see clearly in this passage what Jesus made of hypocrisy when His earthly ministry was in progress. And there is not a shadow of a doubt that His attitude remains the same today.

The world is full of hypocrites

It seems to me that everywhere I look in the world today there are huge numbers of monumental hypocrites.

For example, take those feminists who claim to be appalled by sexism, but who will seize any chance they can to discriminate against men.

Or we could think of the protestors against the Israeli actions in Gaza, who claim to be outraged at the deaths of civilians there, but who would never dream of protesting against the regimes around the world that kill far more civilians than the Israelis do.

Or again, take those political pundits who claim to be horrified by the erosion of freedom of speech, but whose horror suddenly disappears when people they disagree with are not allowed to speak.

And the list could go on. We live in a world that is crammed full of people who are utter fakes, frauds and hypocrites.

Christians need to be stunningly different

In this context, in this dark world of ours that is full of fakery and deceit, Christians need to be totally different, stunningly different. We need to be who we claim to be, to the nth degree.

Where we have faults, we need to acknowledge them. And where we have principles, we need to put them into practice all the time and without favouritism. Basically, we need to be sincere and without pretence.

In 2 Corinthians 1:12 the apostle Paul says something about this sort of attitude:

‘For our boast is this, the testimony of our conscience, that we behaved in the world with simplicity and godly sincerity, not by earthly wisdom but by the grace of God, and supremely so toward you.’ (ESV)

Similarly, in 2 Corinthians 4:2 he writes:

‘Instead, we have renounced secret and shameful things, not acting deceitfully or distorting the word of God, but commending ourselves before God to everyone’s conscience by an open display of the truth.’ (CSB)

And Joshua’s words in Joshua 24:14 are just as relevant today as they were when they were first spoken over 3000 years ago:

‘Now therefore fear the LORD and serve him in sincerity and in faithfulness.’ (ESV)

Let all of us who are followers of Jesus, then, redouble our efforts to avoid being hypocrites. The Lord requires this of us, and He deserves nothing less.

 

See also:

The Seriousness of the Sin of Pride

How Serious a Sin Is Sex outside Marriage?

Some Steps That Christians Can Take to Avoid Judging People

The Importance of Taking Steps to Avoid Temptation

Every Christian Should Be a Theologian

When they hear the word ‘theology’, the reactions of Christians tend to vary enormously.

For some, this word suggests something positive, an attempt to deeply understand God and His purposes, which will benefit the person who succeeds in gaining insight.

For others, this word suggests something negative, wasting time on discussing things that have little value or connection to everyday life.

And, of course, others will take a view that is somewhere between these other views.

I am firmly in the first camp on this issue. When I hear the words ‘theology’, ‘theological’ and ‘theologian’, I hear something positive.

What is theology all about?

In essence, theology is the study of God, things that are true about Him. And a large part of this has to do with true things about Jesus Christ, including how His death and resurrection bring forgiveness to guilty human beings.

Of course, it is important to understand that as Christians we don’t just know true things about God. We actually know God Himself (e.g., John 17:3; Phil 3:10). We are in relationship with Him.

Nevertheless, it is certainly right to say that the more true things about Him we know, the more we will know Him. It makes no sense to think that learning more about what God is like and what He has done won’t affect our relationship with Him.

The same is true of human to human relationships. The better we know what someone is like and what they have done, the more we will know that person and the more closely we will be able to relate to him or her.

So theology is really a positive thing. It is a form of study that should lead to us knowing God better.

How it all fits together

There is a vast number of things that are true about God and His actions. However, it isn’t the case that these are just separate items on a long list. In reality they all fit together to make one big tapestry. And some parts of Scripture do a great job of joining the dots.

For example, take the book of Romans. In this book Paul doesn’t just say, ‘Jesus died for you, and you will be saved if you believe in Him’. Instead he goes into detail explaining how the nature of God fits with His plan to save human beings from their sins.

Or take the book of Hebrews. Here the author shows at length how the Old Covenant sacrificial system foreshadowed what Christ accomplished on the cross. In other words, he explains how much of what God did in Old Testament times fits together with what He did in the first century.

To some extent, then, theology has to do with figuring out how parts of the tapestry fit together. And the more we can join things up in our minds, the more anchored our faith should become.

Difficult to understand

I think one reason why so many Christians dislike theology is because they find it difficult to understand.

Of course, Christians have different levels of ability to engage in academic-style learning. Some are more academically inclined than others.

But here’s the thing. We all find theology difficult to understand. No matter where we are on the spectrum of ability to understand this subject matter, there will be things that we struggle with and that, in some cases, are too difficult for us.

We even find the apostle Peter, in 2 Peter 3:15-16, saying explicitly that his fellow-apostle Paul’s letters contain things that are hard to understand!

It simply isn’t the case that any Christian just sits down and reads the Bible and everything falls easily into place. We have to fight to understand, and we will have some successes and some failures as we do this.

But we have to try. It’s not OK for Christians just to skip parts of the Bible because they think these parts are too difficult for them. There are sections of Scripture that are too difficult for each of us at our present level of understanding. But if we fight, we can expect to make progress.

If we want to grow in our knowledge of God, then, we each need to be a theologian, striving to grow in our understanding of what He is like and what He has done. This is for every Christian.

Not the most important thing, but still important

I am not saying that growing in theological understanding is the most important thing in the Christian life. Nor am I saying that the best theologians are always the strongest Christians.

In my years as a Christian I have met many believers who are fairly weak theologically but who are full of love. And if there was a choice to be made between strong theological understanding and strong love, I would choose love every time.

But this isn’t a real choice. Obviously, it is possible to be full of love and strong in theology.

How to grow in theological understanding

So how do we go about growing in theological understanding?

Well, the most important thing is to spend lots of quality time reading the Bible. And it is often helpful to read at a very slow pace. If we read something we don’t understand, it is usually worth pausing to think deeply about the point in question to see if we can resolve things.

Something else that will be a great help is to read commentaries by Christians on parts of the Bible. There are many of these to choose from. Some are very detailed books that will be not be suitable for beginners, but others are much easier to follow.

There are even English translations of the Bible that come with helpful explanatory notes on the same page as the text itself. For an absolute beginner, this may be the place to start.

When all is said and done, I am sure that many Christians will continue to dislike the word ‘theology’ and similar words, but that is really a minor point. Regardless of whether we use this word or not, we must all strive to grow in our understanding of what God is like and what He has done. This is not optional for a follower of Jesus Christ.

 

See also:

Using the Bible as a Filter

Charismatic Churches and Their Attitude to the Mind

The Radical Nature of the Normal Christian Life

The Justice and Mercy of God