The Neglected Attribute of God

By Bruce Mills

This Sunday, I am going to do something which will never be done in 90 percent of the churches in America—I am going to preach on the wrath of God. This singular attribute has fallen into a state of neglect because it is associated with “fire and brimstone” preaching, which few people desire to hear in this post-modern culture.

Tragically, many—if not most—Christians embrace a user-friendly picture of God, and regard divine wrath as something for which they need to apologize, if not reject altogether. They find the truth of divine vengeance distasteful, as though His retribution is somehow unprofitable for discussion or a blemish on His holy character.

Some consider God’s wrath to be in direct contradiction to His divine love; that is, that it is somehow a violation of His tender mercy. Still others consider it to be an outmoded, antiquated view of God that has become too unsophisticated for modern man. Therefore, they either leave out the message of divine wrath when they attempt to present the gospel, or they alter it in some fashion to try to make it more appealing to man’s “itching ears.”

However, when they offer God’s love without mentioning His wrath, they fail in our attempt to genuinely present His grace to lost and dying people. They compromise the Bible’s clear teaching on divine ven-geance and in so doing, unknowingly hurt their own cause. By downplaying God’s wrath, they inevitably downplay His love. In reality, they have created a god in their own image.

You see, just as a god without love and mercy is not God, a god without wrath is not God.

In the Bible, there is certainly no attempt on God’s part to hide the severity of His fierce anger against sin. Scripture refers more to God’s wrath than to any other attribute, even His love. Those two divine attributes are inextricably linked, and an understanding of His love always requires an understanding of His wrath.

From Genesis to Revelation, the Bible presents a consistent picture of a holy God who reserves wrath for sinners, who is angry with the wicked every day, and yet who, at the same time, loves sinners with the strongest, most tender love.

But everywhere you go, if you get into any kind of spiritual conversation about God with people, and you mention God’s wrath, you will be asked, “How can God be wrathful and tenderly loving?” To the human mind, that seems like a contradiction.

But this juxtaposition does not mean that His love negates His holy wrath. Nor does it mean that His grace cancels out the severity of His judgment. Rather, just the opposite is true. His love necessitates His wrath. The God who loves righteousness must equally hate every form of evil, wherever it is found.

Regarding this balance in God’s holy character, Psalm 45:7 says, “You love righteousness and hate wickedness.” God’s wrath is an essential part of His divine nature; a necessary part of His perfect being that fully embraces and magnifies His love. God must punish all forms of evil wherever they are found, or His love would be reduced to mere sentimentality, a shallow emotion that is not love at all.

He is absolutely holy, and a holy God cannot be indifferent toward the sin that violates His unblemished, pure character. He cannot stand idly by and condone that which rebels against His morally pure nature. He must hate sin. He must judge sinners. Otherwise, He would cease to be holy—which is, of course, impossible.

So, don’t neglect the doctrine of the wrath of God. You don’t need to apologize for believing in it. It is taught by Scripture and it is essential to the character of God. You cannot understand the magnitude of God’s grace until you understand His wrath.

If you want a great resource which will further develop your understanding of this attribute of God (as well as many others), I recommend Steve Lawson’s book, Made in Our Image: The Fallacy of the User-Friendly God. Dr. Lawson does a wonderful job of detailing God’s attributes and transcendent glory. I have often referred to and used it in my ministry. It is available from Amazon for $14.99. It is well-worth the investment of your money and time.

Selecting Teachers in the Church

By Bruce Mills

This past Sunday, I finished teaching through the latter portion of Romans 2. In this section of Scripture, Paul is addressing the Jews who prided themselves on their having the Law, but he castigates them for their hypocrisy in disobeying it. One part of this passage which I found particularly interesting is found in verses 21 and 22.

In those verses Paul uses four rhetorical questions by which he takes the Jews to task for thinking they kept the Law when, in reality, not only did their understanding and teaching fall far short of God’s Law, but their obedience to it also fell far short. They were blatant hypocrites.

In theological terms, their preaching reflected orthodoxy (right doctrine), but their lives did not reflect orthopraxy (right practice). They are much like the cop or the judge who takes a bribe, in direct contradiction to the laws they have sworn to uphold and endorse. And because of their greater responsibility, they bring upon themselves greater punishment.

Paul’s first question in verse 21 particularly caught my attention. It is, “You, therefore, who teach another, do you not teach yourself?” I like the way J. B. Phillips words this question in his paraphrase, because I think it helps us understand Paul’s meaning. He renders it, “But, prepared as you are to instruct others, do you ever teach yourself anything?”

The application of this question to us in the church today goes far beyond Paul’s immediate and primary purpose in addressing the hypocritical Jews of his day. We also need to understand the importance of practicing what we preach, particularly those of us who teach the Scriptures.

Scripture places a higher standard for righteous conduct upon those who teach the Word. Those who teach others are expected to live lives which reflect God’s true righteousness as revealed in the Word. God is very clear about this. James gives this very somber warning in James 3:1—“Let not many of you become teachers, my brethren, knowing that as such we will incur a stricter judgment.”

I am tremendously bothered by those churches who will have someone come along who makes a profession for Christ, starts studying his Bible and gains a little knowledge, is all excited about what he is learning and naturally wants to share it with others, so the church sticks him into a teaching position within a year or so of his profession of faith. He really hasn’t had enough time to be grounded in the faith, and to demonstrate through his life both the genuineness of his salvation or the on-going sanctification of the Spirit in changing him into the image of Christ. Yet they will put him into a teaching position simply because he is excited about the Bible and wants to teach others what he knows.

Sometimes the leaders of those churches will even try to justify doing such by saying, “Well, we are very careful. We don’t allow them to teach adults; we just have them teach the children. We use a Sunday School curriculum that they just have to read to them.” In other words, they are willing to entrust the eternal souls of their youngest, most eager learners to someone who barely knows more than those he is teaching with the hope that he will not teach heresy to those children.

But how often have you seen someone who seemed to have come to faith in Christ, but a year or so later, when the trials of life came, they turned and walked away and went back to their old way of life, and thereby demonstrated that they never were genuine believers in the first place?

All that does is create an environment where when you come along and try to witness to an unbeliever who has observed such things, they laugh and say, “Oh yeah, I’ve seen how effective your Jesus is; I knew a guy who claimed to receive Jesus, and he quit his drinking and his carousing, and he was teaching in the church, and a year later, he was back doing the same things again. So don’t tell me about how your Jesus is going to change my life forever. I don’t believe it.”

And even in those cases in which the individual is a true believer, it simply isn’t fair to him or to those he teaches because he really hasn’t had time to be sufficiently grounded in the Word and become knowledgeable of sound doctrine. Even the apostle Paul, after his conversion on the Damascus Road, went away to Arabia and Damascus to learn, meditate, and study the Old Testament for three years. He began to preach in Damascus and they ran him out of town, so then he returned to Jerusalem to spend a couple of weeks with Peter and James, both of whom were the leaders of the church there. So Paul’s formal ministry didn’t really get started well until three years after his conversion.

Now, I’m not saying that three years is a “magic number,” but what I am saying is that we shouldn’t grab new professing believers simply because they are excited about Christ and willing to tell others what they have learned, and throw them into a teaching position. I believe every Christian should be sharing with others what they have learned from Scripture, but not necessarily in a formal sense of being a teacher over a group of other people. Those who are going to set themselves up as teachers of God’s Word need to spend a sufficient amount of time before doing such to learn sound doctrine and demonstrate the reality of that doctrine in their lives, as they live in accordance with it.

This is particularly important when a church or denomination is going to ordain someone to the ministry. Paul told Timothy in 1 Timothy 5:22, “Do not lay hands upon anyone too hastily and thereby share responsibility for the sins of others.” In other words, don’t ordain someone to the ministry too quickly, because when you do, you share responsibility for the sin they commit if it turns out they weren’t truly a faithful servant of God. You need to give plenty of time to make sure they are truly one of God’s chosen voices for Him, and the evidence will be in how they live their lives, not in what they say.

What About Capital Punishment?

By Bruce Mills

The other day, one of the supervisors at my office who is also a follower of Christ flagged me down in the parking lot, saying, “Hey, Bruce, can I see you for a minute? I need to ask you a question.”

I thought he wanted to ask me a question about my job responsibilities, but instead, his question caught me by surprise. He said, “A deputy sheriff friend of mine is looking to get a tattoo of a reference to a Bible verse that talks about law enforcement being ordained by God to carry out His purposes. I gave him Romans 13:4, but I wanted to make sure that I was correct in my understanding. Is Romans 13:4 referring to law enforcement?”

For those of you who don’t know off the top of your head what Romans 13:4 says in regard to the government, it reads, “for it is a minister of God to you for good. But if you do what is evil, be afraid; for it does not bear the sword for nothing; for it is a minister of God, an avenger who brings wrath on the one who practices evil.”

I quickly assured my friend that since law enforcement is the arm of government by which justice against evildoers is initiated, Romans 13:4 is certainly an endorsement of that profession. But what interested me was the motive of the man seeking the tattoo. So I asked my friend why the deputy wanted to get such a reference permanently inked into his skin.

He explained that this deputy knew about the sixth of the Ten Commandments which, in the old English language of the King James Version states, “Thou shalt not kill,” and he had come to my friend who he knew was a Christian and wanted to know whether God endorsed the fact that in his role as a law enforcement officer, he might have to take someone’s life. When my friend explained that God did such in Romans 13:4 with the statement, “for it does not bear the sword for nothing,” the deputy decided that he wanted to have that Scripture reference tattooed onto his body as a permanent reminder that what he was doing as his chosen profession was endorsed by God as one of His purposes for mankind. But later on my friend began doubting his understanding of that phrase in the verse, wondering if it was, in fact, an endorsement of the government’s right to take a life.

I then went on to explain a basic overview of that statement to my friend, but I would like to expound upon it further in this post, for anyone who might wonder about the government’s authority to execute criminals for certain crimes. The seeming conflict between “Thou shalt not kill” and what it means to “bear the sword” have created much confusion in the minds of some Christians.

First of all, when God gave Moses the Ten Commandments with the included command, “Thou shalt not kill,” He was not prohibiting any killing by any one at any time. Rather, when that statement is examined in the original Hebrew language, it simply says, “No murder.” Instead of referring to the government’s use of capital punishment for certain crimes, or the justifiable use of deadly force to protect oneself or others, it refers to the crime of murder; that is, the unjustified killing of another person. The translation which has come to us in the old language of the King James Version has unfortunately concealed the true meaning of the commandment, and consequently, caused a great deal of misunderstanding. That statement has nothing whatsoever to do with capital punishment or defending oneself or others.

God is the one who instituted capital punishment all the way back in Gen. 9:6— “Whoever sheds man’s blood, by man his blood shall be shed, for in the image of God He made man.” Because man was created in God’s image, for someone to murder a man is such a heinous offense against the image of God that the person must pay with his own life.

However, some people say, “But that was the Old Testament law. Things are different since Jesus came. He spoke about being gentle and merciful and said we are to be peacemakers. He said we are to turn the other cheek when someone attacks us, so capital punishment is no longer valid for mankind.”

However, when Jesus made those statements in the Sermon on the Mount, He was talking about the individual’s response to mistreatment. He was not speaking of the responsibility of government in terms of maintaining justice and protection for its citizens. But, when Jesus was in the Garden of Gethsemane, and the authorities came to arrest Him, Peter took out his sword to start fighting against them. He even tried to take off the head of the high priest’s servant, but the fellow apparently ducked and Peter got only his ear. Jesus, recognizing that the government authorities were ordained of God, said something very important to Peter. He said, “Put your sword back into its place; for all those who take up the sword shall perish by the sword” (Matthew 26:52).

What was He saying? Let me first tell you what He wasn’t saying. He wasn’t saying, “If you fight with a sword, you’re liable to meet somebody who will fight back with a sword and kill you.”

No, Jesus was saying, “You take a life, Peter, and I will affirm the right of this government to take your life.” Jesus was affirming capital punishment as a proper extension of civil authority. He was saying, “Peter, if you use that sword, then I affirm by God-ordained law that you will die by the sword.” He was reminding His disciple that the penalty for his unjustified killing one of Jesus’ enemies would be to perish himself through execution, which the Lord was acknowledging would be justified.

Also, when the apostle Paul stood before the Roman governor Festus and made his appeal to Caesar, he said, “If, then, I am a wrongdoer and have committed anything worthy of death, I do not refuse to die…” (Acts 25:11). In saying that, he was acknowledging that capital punishment was sometimes justified and that he would willingly accept it if he were to be found guilty of a capital crime.

And, as my friend accurately told the deputy sheriff who asked him about whether the Bible endorsed his role as a law enforcement officer in taking a human life when necessary, Romans 13:4 also provides justification for the government’s use of capital punishment or deadly force by the statement “for it does not bear the sword for nothing.”

In biblical times, the Roman government was well-known for its well-developed criminal justice system. It used capital punishment as the punishment for certain crimes deemed to be worthy of death. If the guilty party was not a Roman citizen, crucifixion was often the means by which the offender was executed. However, crucifixion was such a horrible means of death that it was prohibited for use as a means of executing those who were Roman citizens. For Roman citizens, the means of execution was beheading with a sword because it provided instant death rather than the protracted, painful death which came by crucifixion. Thus, the reference in Romans 13:4 to the government “bearing the sword” is referring to capital punishment as a means of punishing evildoers.

So then, both the Old Testament and the New Testament endorse and authorize the government’s use of capital punishment for those guilty of evil deeds deemed worthy of execution. Government’s role is to function as God’s avenging minister to exercise His wrath on those who practice evil.

Now, whether it is a good idea for a law enforcement officer to get Romans 13:4 tattooed onto his skin in order to remind himself that he is acting with God’s authority if he finds himself in a “deadly force” situation is another matter altogether. But that discussion is best left to another time and place.

Can A Person Get to Heaven by Keeping God's Law?

By Bruce Mills

I recently received the following question regarding Romans 2:13-15 from a dear Christian friend with whom I periodically interact on theological issues: Does this passage lead us to believe that some who never heard of Christ—never had the opportunity—will still enjoy everlasting life in Heaven with God if by nature they have kept God’s law?

I would like to try to summarize my response to him, which as I look back on it, was far too long and detailed. But I figure that if a well-taught Christian with a good understanding of Scripture is asking such a question, there may be others who wonder the same thing. Since I recently taught this passage in my Sunday School class, I also have the advantage of having material ready-at-hand which I can boil down into a blog-sized version. So with that introduction, here goes.

In Romans 2, Paul is explaining the basis upon which God judges mankind. He is writing particularly to the Jewish moralists who would look at their being Jewish as eliminating the possibility of God’s judgment falling on them because they were God’s chosen people. So throughout this chapter, Paul is explaining why the Jews are just as guilty before God as the unbelieving pagans, and what bases God will use to judge them and the rest of mankind.

One of the principles upon which God’s judgment is based or by which it is characterized is God’s impartiality. This is discussed in verses 11-15: For there is no partiality with God. For all who have sinned without the Law will also perish without the Law, and all who have sinned under the Law will be judged by the Law; for it is not the hearers of the Law who are just before God, but the doers of the Law will be justified. For when Gentiles who do not have the Law do instinctively the things of the Law, these, not having the Law, are a law to themselves, in that they show the work of the Law written in their hearts, their conscience bearing witness and their thoughts alternately accusing or else defending them.

Verse 11 functions as the conclusion to the paragraph found in verses 6-10 about the deeds of the saved and the unsaved. And the conclusion is that God is impartial in how He judges. But verse 11 also functions to lead into another paragraph which ties together the two principles of judgment; namely, man’s deeds and God’s impartiality.

The word translated “partiality” means “to receive a face,” that is, to give consideration to a person because of who he is. That’s the idea behind the symbol of justice which is a woman who is blindfolded, holding a set of scales in her hand upon which she weighs the evidence. It signifies that she is unable to see who is before her to be judged and therefore is not tempted to be partial either for or against the accused.

Unfortunately, there is partiality even in the best of human courts. But there will be none in God’s day of judgment. Because of His perfect knowledge of every detail and because of His perfect righteousness, it is not possible for His justice to be anything but perfectly impartial. A person’s position, education, influence, popularity, or physical appearance will have absolutely no bearing on God’s decision concerning his or her eternal destiny.

Think about God’s impartial judgment of Lucifer. Here was the most magnificent, exalted, wise, beautiful, and important creature God made. But because of his prideful ambition to raise himself even above his Creator and to make himself “like the Most High,” even the highest-ranking, most majestic being ever created was cast out of heaven by God. The most exalted became the most debased. If there ever was a being whose position merited special favor before God, it was Lucifer. But his high position made him more accountable for his evil rebellion and therefore, he will receive the greatest punishment of any creature in hell.

If God was impartial in His judgment of Lucifer, why should any mortal man ever expect God to show special favor in judgment? So, in a similar manner to Lucifer, those of mankind who have the greater light of God’s revelation will receive greater judgment because they are more accountable for what they knew.

In other words, God’s judgment upon the unsaved of the United States will be harsher than His judgment upon the native of the Amazon rainforest who never heard the gospel of Jesus Christ. Both are responsible before God for their knowledge of the true God as revealed in nature, but those who have heard the gospel and rejected it will fall under greater condemnation.

Beginning in verse 12 and continuing through verse 15, Paul now ties together the two principles of judging people by their deeds with God’s impartiality, and He explains how these principles work together. He begins by mentioning that there are two distinct groups of sinners: those who have not had opportunity to know God’s Law and those who have had the opportunity to know it. He is speaking, of course, about the Law given through Moses to the people of Israel, and those who did not have the Law, who were the Gentiles.

Now, it is not that those without the special revelation of the Law have no awareness of God or sense of right and wrong. Paul has already established that, through the evidence of creation, all men have witness of God’s “eternal power and divine nature” (1:20).

So then, it doesn’t really matter very much whether people have received the Law in a formal sense or not; all are under condemnation. Gentiles, “who have sinned without the Law will,” therefore, “also perish without the Law,” that is, they will be judged according to their more limited knowledge of God. The lost Gentile will just as surely perish as the lost Jew, but as Paul has already implied in verse 9, their eternal tribulation and distress will be less than that of the Jews, who have had the immeasurable advantage of possessing God’s law.

Jesus stated the principle clearly, using the illustration of slaves whose master went on a long journey, and He spoke of the differences between the slaves who were looking for the master’s return and those who ignored the possibility that the master would soon return. And then one day the master suddenly returned, and in Luke 12:47-48, He said, “And that slave who knew his master’s will and did not get ready or act in accord with his will, will receive many lashes, but the one who did not know it, and committed deeds worthy of a flogging, will receive but few. From everyone who has been given much, much will be required; and to whom they entrusted much, of him they will ask all the more.”

In other words, there were slaves who knew what the master expected and didn’t get ready, and there were slaves who had no idea what the master expected. Both were punished, but those who knew what the master expected got it much worse.

So too, it will be in hell. All mankind has the light of God’s revelation of Himself, but those who have greater light through His revealed Law and His Son and still reject Him will receive much greater punishment than those who have less light. All unsaved will be punished with eternal hell, but some will receive greater punishment in terms of its degree.

That’s what Paul means when he says to the Jew at the end of verse 12, “all who have sinned under the Law will be judged by the Law.” They had the extra light of God’s revealed Word given to them, so if they rejected its truth, they will receive greater judgment.

However, the people who will receive the harshest judgment are those who have knowledge not only of the OT Law but also of the NT gospel, and still reject the truth. That describes many of the people here in our nation. They will be like the Jewish cities of Chorazin, Bethsaida, and Capernaum, which not only had God’s Law, but witnessed God’s own Son in their midst performing miracles and teaching. Yet they rejected Him as their Messiah, and Jesus told them it would be better on the Day of Judgment for the pagan cities of Tyre, Sidon, and Sodom than for them (Matt. 11:20-23).

In verse 13, Paul says, “for it is not the hearers of the Law who are just before God, but the doers of the Law will be justified.” Paul expresses the same idea that James does in his letter (James 1:22-23), and interestingly, they both use a word for “hearers” that is not the usual word for hearing. This word refers to those whose business it is to listen.

The idea is much like that of a college student. His primary purpose in class is to listen to the teacher’s instruction. Normally, he also has the responsibility of being accountable for what he hears and is tested on it. If he is simply auditing the course, he is only required to attend the class sessions. He takes no tests and receives no grade. In other words, he listens without being held accountable for what he hears.

But God does not recognize mere “auditors” of His Word. The more a person hears His truth, the more he is responsible for believing and obeying it. Unless there is obedience, the greater the hearing, the greater the judgment.

I fear for those unbelievers who attend sound, evangelical, Bible-teaching churches week after week and sit under the sound of the Word being clearly taught, verse-by-verse, with its truths expounded to them, yet walk away untouched, continuing to live their moral, but unregenerate, lives. Unless they turn in repentance to Christ, they will receive an eternal judgment which is far greater than their drug-abusing neighbor who drinks himself into a stupor every night at the local nude bar, then goes home and beats his live-in girlfriend, and has never darkened the door of a sound Bible-teaching church or heard a clear presentation of the gospel of Jesus Christ.

“Doers of the Law” are those who come to God in repentance and faith, realizing that His Law is impossible for them to keep apart from His enabling power, and that knowledge of it places them under greater obligation to obey it. And after they have come to Him in faith, their obedient lives give evidence of their saving relationship to Him and of the fact that they “will be justified.”

I want to discuss this phrase “will be justified” at the end of verse 13. It is the Greek word which means “to declare righteous.” It is a forensic or legal term meaning “to acquit.” It is the normal word to use when the accused is declared “not guilty.”

Contrary to what some have said, it does not mean “to make righteous.” When a person comes to saving faith in Christ, he is not “made righteous,” but rather, he is “declared righteous.” In other words, he does not become guiltless, but rather God declares him to be “not guilty” based on the guiltless Son of God’s substitutionary atonement in his place. Jesus’ perfect righteousness is imputed to that person’s account, and when God looks at him, rather than seeing the person’s sin, He sees the perfection of His Son and declares the believer to be righteous.

It stands as a perfect contrast to the term “condemnation.” “To condemn” someone does not mean “to make wicked,” but rather it means “to declare guilty.” So too, “to justify” means “to declare just (or righteous).”

Now here at the end of verse 13, it says that “the doers of the Law will be justified.” Notice that the term “will be justified” is in the future tense; it is something that will happen to them at some future point in time. No one can be declared righteous in this life by obedience to the Law, so this is referring to the future Day of Judgment when God, who sees the heart, will examine those whose lives of obedience to His Law demonstrated the genuineness of their faith in Christ and will declare them righteous.

At this point, one of Paul’s Jewish readers might ask, “Does that mean that the Gentiles are excused from external judgment and punishment because they didn’t have the advantage of the Law, and therefore, had no basis for obedient living?” So Paul answers that in verse 14. He says, “No! The Gentiles may not have the Law, but they ‘do instinctively the things of the Law’ being ‘a law to themselves,’ and by that ‘they show the work of the Law written in their hearts, their conscience bearing witness and their thoughts alternately accusing or else defending them.’”

So, if someone ever asks you why you believe that the heathen who have never heard about Christ are nevertheless lost and condemned to eternal hell, let me give you four reasons which you can give them…four reasons why the heathen are lost.

First, as Paul states in Romans 1:18-21, their rejection of their knowledge of God available through His creation condemns them. God has clearly revealed His eternal power and divine nature to mankind, yet the vast majority of mankind rejected the true God and chose to worship false gods.

Second, their conduct, based on the knowledge “of the Law written in their hearts,” condemns them. The fact that mankind has established laws against certain things such as murder and theft, and values such virtues as honesty, respectfulness, faithfulness, and generosity across all cultural lines, simply proves that they have a knowledge of God’s Law which has been written in their hearts. Therefore, if those people never come to trust in the true God, their good deeds will actually witness against them on the Day of Judgment that they had an understanding of God’s Law.

Third, the heathen are condemned because of conscience. Gentiles who do not have the privilege of knowing God’s law nevertheless have a “conscience bearing witness” to His law. So the pagan who has never heard of the Bible or Jesus Christ is still guilty because his conscience tells him what is right and what is wrong. His refusal to listen to it is evidence of his fallen, sinful rebellion against God.

Fourth, the heathen are lost because of their contemplation. Paul says, “their thoughts alternately accusing or else defending them.” This natural faculty is obviously closely related to conscience. Using their conscience which provides a basic knowledge of right and wrong, unbelievers have the obvious ability to determine that certain things are basically right and wrong.

Many people have a highly developed sense of what is just and fair, right and wrong, without ever having a saving relationship to Jesus Christ. Even the most godless societies become incensed when a child is brutally attacked or murdered. You can see this in our prison system where the most vicious drug dealers, murderers, thieves, rapists, and gang members are kept. When a child molester or child killer is sent to prison, the officials have to keep them isolated from the general prison population because if they do not, the prisoners will quickly administer justice by murdering the child molester.

So, for those four reasons—creation, conduct, conscience, and contemplation—no person can stand guiltless before God’s judgment. The fact that they do not turn to God proves they do not live up to the light God has given them. Paul assured his pagan listeners on Mars Hill in Athens, that God “made from one man every nation of mankind to live on all the face of the earth, having determined their appointed times and the boundaries of their habitation, that they would seek God, if perhaps they might grope for Him and find Him, though He is not far from each one of us” (Acts 17:26-27). And the person who genuinely seeks to know and follow God is divinely assured that he will succeed. In Jeremiah 29:13, the Lord said, “You will seek Me and find Me when you search for Me with all your heart.”

So, to sum up, verses 13-15 are not teaching that a person who has never heard the gospel can attain eternal life by keeping the Law, because Paul’s continual argument in Romans is that it is impossible for man to keep the Law, even though it is written on his heart.

Every Knee Will Bow

By Bruce Mills

Recently I’ve been thinking about the verses found in Philippians 2:10-11, which read: “so that at the name of Jesus every knee will bow, of those who are in heaven and on earth and under the earth, and that every tongue will confess that Jesus Christ is Lord, to the glory of God the Father.”

A few implications of these verses have been sort of rattling around in my head. First, it strikes me that those who oppose what they refer to as “Lordship Salvation” have not considered what it means that “every knee will bow…and…every tongue confess that Jesus Christ is Lord.” What is pictured here is the final judgment; that event at which unredeemed mankind will bend the knee and acknowledge that Jesus is the Sovereign Ruler of the universe, with the just right to do whatever He wishes with their lives. The corollary truth which stands in contrast to that fact is that those who are redeemed have already bowed the knee and acknowledged Him as their Lord. Thus, genuine salvation must include the individual’s surrender to the authority of Christ to reign over his life. The believer may not fully understand the significance of what such means, but there must be a willing submission to Christ or their supposed salvation is spurious. So, while believers have already acknowledged Christ’s lordship over their lives at the time of salvation, the unredeemed will only acknowledge His lordship when it is too late. But the point is simply that eventually everyone will acknowledge that Jesus Christ is Lord.

The second implication flows out of the first. It is not original with me, but it is a powerful thought. James Montgomery Boice once articulated this idea. He said that when every knee bows and every tongue confesses Christ as Lord, they are acknowledging that He is righteous and just in sending them to hell for all of eternity. His logic was that since mankind will be acknowledging that Jesus is the Sovereign God of all and therefore perfect in every way, His decision to condemn them to hell is a right and perfect and just decision because they deserve that penalty for their sin against His infinite holiness. This line of reasoning is certainly borne out in Isaiah 45:23-24, the passage which is quoted in Philippians 2:10-11. God, speaking through the prophet, says, “I have sworn by Myself, the word has gone forth from My mouth in righteousness and will not turn back, that to Me every knee will bow, every tongue will swear allegiance. They will say of Me, ‘Only in the Lord are righteousness and strength.’ Men will come to Him, and all who are angry at Him will be put to shame.”

Finally, as I pondered these things, I noticed the rather obvious conclusion which one must draw when Isaiah’s statement is compared with Paul’s statement in Philippians. In Isaiah, God says, “that to Me every knee will bow, every tongue will swear allegiance.” But when Paul quotes that statement in Philippians, under the inspiration of the Holy Spirit, he says, “at the name of Jesus every knee will bow…and that every tongue will confess that Jesus Christ is Lord.” So, we understand from Paul that it was Jesus who was speaking when Isaiah quoted God (YHWH). So Jesus and YHWH are one-and-the-same. When we teach about a Trinitarian God, some people misunderstand and think we are speaking of three Gods, rather than One. But although we can never satisfactorily explain nor completely understand how God can be three persons, yet one God, that is the clear teaching of Scripture. God the Son is just as fully, infinitely, and completely YHWH as are God the Father and God the Holy Spirit. So when Isaiah says that every tongue will swear allegiance to YHWH, it is synonymous with Paul’s statement that every tongue will confess that Jesus is Lord.

I hope you will also think on these things, and that you have already bowed the knee and sworn allegiance to Christ. If not, I plead with you to come to Christ today before you find yourself bowing the knee to Him when it is too late to avoid eternal condemnation.