Man Shall Not Live by Bread Alone

Man Shall Not Live by Bread Alone

Oct 7, 2026 | The Gospel

All Christians are familiar with these famous words from Jesus in Matthew 4 as he rejects the temptations of the devil. Jesus had been fasting for 40 days and nights, and with understatement Matthew says, “he was hungry.” So Satan, called “the tempter,” knowing the power Jesus has tells him since he’s so hungry, why doesn’t he just tell the stones to become bread, which he should easily be able to do if he’s the Son of God. Jesus is having none of this.

4 Jesus answered, “It is written: ‘Man shall not live on bread alone, but on every word that comes from the mouth of God.’”

Jesus is quoting from Deuteronomy 8 where Moses is telling the Israelites they need to “follow every command” Moses is giving them specifically so they “may live and increase and may enter and possess the land the Lord promised on oath” to their ancestors. He tells them the Lord was testing them in the wilderness to humble them, causing them to hunger and then feeding them with manna, a food nobody had ever seen before. He did that specifically to teach them “that man does not live on bread alone but on every word that comes from the mouth of the Lord.”

Notice the connection between living on “every word that comes from the mouth of God” to being blessed by God. God’s will for his people is that they “may live and increase” and enter his land of promise. We might metaphorically see this land as God’s kingdom rule Jesus brought to earth and our entering into it as God through his Holy Spirit saves us from our sins. But the key phrase in Moses’ exhortation is “possess the land.” When we possess something we own it, we live it, we experience and enjoy it. The only way to fully live and increase and possess the blessings of the Christian life is living on God’s word. Every word of God specifically to and for us has been inscripturated in what we call our Bibles, which in our day makes it very easy to live on.

As my kids were growing up, and I still do it as they’re adults, I would push this metaphor to help them understand why daily spending time in God’s word is so important. It is no coincidence that Moses and Jesus, God himself, compares his word, the communication that comes from his mouth, as food. Try living without food. It’s not easy. If you do it for too long, you die. Which is why we think about and obsess over food all the time. It’s a requirement for our continuing to exist. Why don’t we do that with God’s word, our Bibles? Simply, we don’t believe that. I want to try to convey here why we should.

The Transformational Power in The Word of God
We often refer to our Bibles as “the word of God,” the phrase itself coming from that word. The whole is a representation of its authority in our lives and over the world, visible and invisible, while each word is its living, practical power in our lives to overcome the world, the flesh, and the devil. Many of us are familiar with this passage in Hebrews 4:

12 For the word of God is living and active. Sharper than any double-edged sword, it penetrates even to dividing soul and spirit, joints and marrow; it judges the thoughts and attitudes of the heart.

If we eat God’s word, daily live on his every word, it’s going to reveal our deepest thoughts and attitudes, and bring them into conformity to God’s way of doing life, so we may live long and increase and possess the land. In other words, be blessed. An Old Testament passage that captures this without reference to the word is in Psalm 139:

23 Search me, God, and know my heart;
test me and know my anxious thoughts.
24 See if there is any offensive way in me,
and lead me in the way everlasting.

I would suggest that praying this without daily meditating upon God’s word will never allow us to truly live in the way Jesus is using the word, specifically quoting Moses and referring back to live long and increase and possess the land. If we truly want our lives blessed, in good times and bad, in joy and suffering, then it can only come in two-way communication with our living and Savior God, Scripture and prayer.

Jesus is also revealing something to us in his encounter with Satan about the spiritual reality Paul writes about in Ephesian 6:

12 For our struggle is not against flesh and blood, but against the rulers, against the authorities, against the powers of this dark world and against the spiritual forces of evil in the heavenly realms.

We’re not talking about mere psychology here, about learning good ideas and putting them into practice. We’re involved in a mystery, a spiritual reality, one we can’t comprehend, but in which we are involved nonetheless. The dynamic of God’s word and the power of the Holy Spirit within us means as Paul lays out in that passage, we can put on the full armor of God and, as he says, “be strong in the Lord and in his mighty power.” How we change, become different people, is not because of our will or choices or determination or discipline, but because of God. The power of transformation is in his hand, but all of those things are required. It’s fascinating to me as I look back in my life that I finally learned this liberating truth that living the Christian life is ultimately not up to me, but is a supernatural work of God in my soul.

Learning How To Live on Every Word That Comes from the Mouth of God
Back when I was in my 40s I went through a bit of a dry spiritual time, for a lack of a better way to put it. We still went to church every Sunday and I still brought my children up in the nurture and admonition of the Lord. I continued to defend the Christian faith every chance I got, including to our children, but had an encounter in 2009 that made me realize I wasn’t very good at it. I look back at this time as the beginning of my realization that I had been trying to live on bread alone, but I had no idea that’s what I was doing. I don’t remember how much or often I was reading my Bible, but I know it wasn’t daily. I am sure I was severely spiritually malnourished. I call it my plausibility insanity phase where Christianity, even though I believed it true like I had most of my life, just didn’t seem as real to me as it once did.

The change to becoming the full on Jesus Freak I am today started when I got a new car in 2009 that had an auxiliary jack. I decided I was going to start studying and learning apologetics again so I would get better at defending the faith. I bought a little MP3 player and started downloading recordings from talks and podcasts, which were just starting to grow at the time, and listened to those in the car or on EarPods when I was taking my daily walk. Somewhere around this time we also started attending a church called Christ Church of Oak Brook (we lived outside of Chicago), and in early 2012 we decided to become members. As a requirement we had to write a short overview of our testimony, and when I read that today I don’t recognize that person. I’ll quote from that letter:

When I first became a Christian my faith was so dynamic and fresh and exciting. After 10 years or so went by it seemed like any relationship goes after a period of time, not as intimate and real. I continued to go to church as our family grew, read the Bible and prayed here and there, but it was nothing like those early days. I suppose every relationship can’t always be novel and exciting, where it moves into a type of maturity that requires love that takes a decision and commitment. God doesn’t always seam “real,” but I can’t help but believe in a living God who is actually there. Creation compels me to continue to believe; I can understand why some people find believing in God and the veracity of the Christian faith hard to accept, but both the evidence for Christianity and the creator God always amaze me, and brings me real joy.

But it would be nice if I could capture more of those early days when God seemed so real, when my faith fired my imagination and drove me to seek God with all my heart.

I did capture those early days and I’m going to share my “secret” with you right here, right now.

Reading the Bible and Praying Every Day Changes Everything
At some point in 2012 I guess I’d gotten tired of this spiritual malaise, the plausibility insanity, and one day made a commitment to God that no matter how I felt, every morning I was going to read the Bible and get on my knees and pray. That, as I look back on it, changed everything; I’ve been doing it every day ever since, if not always praying on my knees. When the writer to the Hebrews says God’s word is “living and active,” he means it! I know it’s just ink on a page (or pixels on a screen), but there is power in them through the inspiration of the Holy Spirit in our hearts. It’s a mystery how we “live on every word that comes from the mouth of God,” but that is the only way we can truly live. The Apostle James tells us how we can make this powerful dynamic a reality in our lives (James 1):

25 But whoever looks intently into the perfect law that gives freedom, and continues in it—not forgetting what he has heard, but doing it—he will be blessed in what he does.

First, we are to look intently. It means, to look “in a fully engaged or determined way that shows strength of purpose.” This isn’t mere browsing like you’re looking over the news of the day; it’s serious business. Next, we are to “continue in it,” meaning do it consistently and persistently. Since we don’t eat food every once in a while, we should not eat God’s word only once in a while. That’s the whole point of the metaphor. And lastly, we are to do what it says. If we do this, James is telling us, we’ll know a freedom from the bondage to sin and meaninglessness, and that God will favor us, we’ll be blessed. That means as difficult and challenging as life can be we can have a life full of meaning, hope, and purpose. Life will actually make sense, instead of being a meaningless cosmic joke because all we are is atoms in motion, so much lucky dirt.

At church during the services we’ve been reading a couple questions from the Westminster Shorter Catechism, and recently we read question 90 which builds on the exhortations of James:

90. How is the Word to be read and heard, that it may become effectual to salvation?A. That the Word may become effectual to salvation, we must attend thereunto with diligence, preparation, and prayer; receive it with faith and love, lay it up in our hearts, and practice it in our lives.

Have you ever  read a story or seen a movie about a lost or hidden treasure that someone will move heaven and earth to find? That treasure is in our Bibles, and for those “who receive it with faith and love,” it will pay temporal and eternal dividends. Going back to the exhortations of Moses to the people of Isarael, if we do what James and the Westminster Divines say, treat our Bibles and God’s word as the precious, life giving resource they are, we will be able to truly “live and increase and enter and possess the land the Lord promised.” This land, this abundant life is what Jesus died to give us, the eternal, forever, spiritual, God-life, on this earth, in this fallen world, even in our fallen bodies living among fallen people.

God as a Consuming Fire: Transformation in the Christian Life

God as a Consuming Fire: Transformation in the Christian Life

Sep 30, 2026 | The Gospel

I heard someone on a podcast recently say that when a person has an encounter with the living God the result in a person’s life is not emotion, but changed priorities. That phrase struck me because when God transforms us spiritually, inwardly, from death to life, darkness to light, we see everything differently, or should. Previously, things that were important without God, no longer are, at least in the same way. Previously unimportant things, now become significant to us. At that moment, everything changes, and if it’s real, it will. Noone can have a true encounter with the Living God and remain the same. Such an encounter obviously can and probably will include emotions, but too many Christians confuse emotions with something real just because they feel something. Whatever the feelings, changed priorities are a reflection of a changed life, the inevitable results of an encounter with the living God.

What prompted the discussion was Moses’s encounter with the burning bush, and the host explained that when something burns its molecular structure completely changes; it literally becomes a different thing, a transformation. I thought this was a great analogy because we are told in Scripture that, “our God is a consuming fire” (Heb. 12:29). We tend to read this as consumed up, as in there is nothing left after that, but fire always leaves ashes, the residue of that which is consumed. In other words, if we have an encounter with the living God it will change us. The reason it will have a transformational effect is because of what I call a radical relational reversal. Before Christ our relationship to God is one thing, one molecular structure, if you will, then after because of the fire who is God, the molecules are completely changed, rearranged into something different while remaining the same molecules, us. What surprises us is learning that the important relational change isn’t the one in us, but in God. In other words, it’s his changed disposition toward us that is the important thing, not ours toward him.

This can best be explained by the state of our relationship to God prior to our salvation. In our sin, our natural state from conception, God is our judge, jury, and executioner. Needless to say, that puts a bit of a damper on the relationship. Like Adam and Eve, when God shows up, we hide. The wages of sin, we’ll remember, is death, what God warned Adam would happen if he ate from the tree. When he did the death proved not to be instant physical demise, that would come later, but something even worse—spiritual death, complete and total alienation from God. The problem is God’s wrath toward us in our sin, not the state of our soul toward him. The relationship, the connection of human beings with God is life itself. As the Apostle John says of Jesus, “In him was life, and that life was the light of men.” Sin severed the relationship, and death was the result, spiritual and physical, along with all the other struggles and suffering existences brings in a fallen, sinful world.

What John, and the rest of the New Testament, tells us is that in Jesus the relationship can be put back together, as the great Christmas hymn says, God and sinners reconciled. When Christ said on the cross, “It is finished,” and the curtain in the temple was torn in two from top to bottom, the way was opened up to a relationship to God for sinful human beings. God’s wrath had been fully poured out on Christ, a frightful thing to contemplate, taking the penalty due our sin, and we receive Christ’s righteousness, earned by his perfect obedience to the Father in his life on earth. God as consuming fire would no longer consume us unto death, but the consuming would transform us unto life.

The Relationship Between the Holy God and Sinful Man
As modern secular people we don’t see a relationship to God as in any way problematic. We’re not all that bad, we think, and God should like us just as we are. The problem is that if God showed up as the consuming fire he is, we would instantly be a pile of smoldering ashes. Think Raiders of the Lost Art opening of the ark scene; not a pleasant experience. From early in God reestablishing his relationship to sinful human beings, he consistently communicates the danger of sinful man and holy God interacting, of thinking the one true living and Creator God is anything like the idols of the heathen nations. In fact, all the gods other than Yahweh are created in man’s image, rather than man created in God’s image.

Teaching humanity of the infinite divide between man and God, known as the creator-creature distinction, was the reason God decided in his plan of redemption to create a people for his very own where this message would eventually be communicated to the world. We know them as the Hebrew people, then eventually the Jews. Before he gets to the details of how this will work, we come to his revealing himself to Moses in the burning bush (Exodus 3). Here’s the passage explaining this very odd encounter.

Now Moses was tending the flock of Jethro his father-in-law, the priest of Midian, and he led the flock to the far side of the wilderness and came to Horeb, the mountain of God. 2 There the angel of the Lord appeared to him in flames of fire from within a bush. Moses saw that though the bush was on fire it did not burn up. 3 So Moses thought, “I will go over and see this strange sight—why the bush does not burn up.”

4 When the Lord saw that he had gone over to look, God called to him from within the bush, “Moses! Moses!”

And Moses said, “Here I am.”

5 “Do not come any closer,” God said. “Take off your sandals, for the place where you are standing is holy ground.” 6 Then he said, “I am the God of your father, the God of Abraham, the God of Isaac and the God of Jacob.” At this, Moses hid his face, because he was afraid to look at God.

Notice the bush itself isn’t burning, but the fire is coming from within the bush. In other words, the fire was separate from the bush, and not using the bush for fuel. We call this a theophany, or “God made manifest.” Since God is invisible, at times in redemptive history he makes himself visible so he can manifest himself to sinful creatures. All the gods of the ancient peoples were made visible to them in some way, in some kind of physical idol, so God had to make himself plausible as a divine reality to the Hebrews in some visible way, and fire was an important way do it, without making an image like the heathen gods. God’s people needed to understand that their God was nothing like any created thing because he was creator of all things, a radical, unheard of concept in the ancient world.

As for a burning bush that does not burn up, you have to imagine Moses was utterly perplexed that fire would not burn the bush. Then he hears his voice being called, twice, out of the bush. Fire speaks? Then God reveals something to him, and us, about this relationship of the holy God to sinful man—it’s dangerous.

God further reveals this danger by fire to the people of Israel later after they escape Egypt and it is terrifying. We read about it in Exodus 19 as the people come to Mount Sinai and God is telling them how they will become his people, and out of all the nations his “treasured possession.” In Deuteronomy 4 Moses reminds the people of this event and what it means for them, and he emphasizes the fire, mentioning it seven times. He wants them to remember they didn’t see any form, but only heard the voice as he declared his covenant to them, and gave them the Ten Commandments. It is from this chapter the writer to the Hebrews gets the phrase that our God is a consuming fire. Moses further reveals to us that he is “a jealous God,” taken from the first of the Ten Commandments, and because of that they shall have no other gods before him.

Then God begins the process of teaching his people, including us, of the vast gulf between him and we his creatures, that this relationship is not something to be taken for granted as if he were anything like us. The display on the mountain made that clear enough, but we’re forgetful creatures. So God has them build an intricate system giving them access to his presence, but only in an extremely limited way. Everything about the tabernacle they build in the wilderness, and then eventually in the Temple, tells us we need to be separate from this God for our own safety, but at the same time we need access because God himself is life and outside of him is only death and decay. His presence, then, is represented by the Holy of Holies, the inner sanctum where only one man as a representative for the people could come, and that only once a year, to make sacrifice for his and the people’s sins.

The New Covenant and the New Way to God
Breaking the Jewish people out of this conception of an inapproachably holy God would not be easy, but the point of God’s plan of redemption was to do exactly that, so he could be just, and the justifier of many. In other words, the relationship could be re-established, God and sinful man reconciled, while God remained who he is, a consuming fire. Only now, the fire would not consume but transform his people for his glory and their good. It would be the fulfillment of a 2,000-year long promise he made to Abram that through him all the peoples on earth would be blessed, and that means us!

Jesus gives us a hint of this early in his ministry when he teaches the disciples what we know as the Lord’s Prayer. For Jews at the time God as a loving father would have been inconceivable. Your father isn’t your judge, jury, and executioner. Your father doesn’t kill you if you get too close to him. Yet Jesus was teaching his disciples when praying to God to address him as Father. At the time this was radical. You have to imaging Jews at the time, which they all were, wondering if they heard Jesus correctly. As with much of the conundrum that was Jesus, it would have been completely unexpected. For all of Isreal’s history, God was never portrayed as a father figure, but as wholly other, a God to be feared, not like my dad who loved me and would die for me. In fact, as my Father, he did love me, and he did die for me! This would all become clear in due course, but it had to be confusing at the time.

We see the radical difference between the Old and New Covenant in Jeremiah 31. In the Old, God’s people were commanded to love God. In Deuteronomy 6 right after the Hebrews were told that God is one, what Jews call the Shama, they are given this command:

5 Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your strength. 

The command is repeated six other times in Deuteronomy, but never again emphasized in this way. However, what love means in practice is reiterated throughout the Old testament because it means:

  • obeying His commandments
  • walking in His ways
  • serving Him
  • holding fast to Him
  • refusing other gods
  • listening to His voice

There is one minor problem sinful human beings had trying to love God like this—it’s impossible! Without God himself enabling us to do this, we don’t have a chance. Jesus, when asked what the greatest commandment in the law is, doubles down saying with his answer.

37 Jesus replied: “‘Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind.’ 38 This is the first and greatest commandment. 39 And the second is like it: ‘Love your neighbor as yourself.’ 40 All the Law and the Prophets hang on these two commandments.”

God gives us the answer to our dilemma in Jeremiah 31 as he reveals a new covenant coming that will be unlike the one he made with the generation he lead out of slavery in Egypt.

33 “This is the covenant I will make with the people of Israel
    after that time,” declares the Lord.
“I will put my law in their minds
    and write it on their hearts.
I will be their God,
    and they will be my people.
34 No longer will they teach their neighbor,
    or say to one another, ‘Know the Lord,’
because they will all know me,
    from the least of them to the greatest,”
declares the Lord.
“For I will forgive their wickedness
    and will remember their sins no more.”

The solution is the gospel! The good news of God taking our vile, sinful, rebellious hearts, and replacing all of that with his very law inscribed on our hearts and in our minds. When Jesus died, rose from the dead, ascended to heaven at the right hand of God, and then sent his Holy Spirit at Pentecost, we could now obey the greatest commandment. Loving God with everything in us was no longer a pipe dream filled with failure, but a reality of transformational blessing, our telos or purpose as created beings in God’s image finally fulfilled. Now as God’s living temple with his Holy Spirit living in us, it is not only possible to walk in obedience to his law, but also have affection for him as our Father. We’ve moved from justifiable condemnation to dearly loved children, as radical a relational reversal as there ever could be.

Does God Want All People to be Saved?

Does God Want All People to be Saved?

Sep 23, 2026 | Parents and Family, Theology

This post is not going to make me popular with, oh I don’t know, maybe 90% of Christians. We Calvinists are in the minority among the faithful, but we are a confident and determined lot. I’m grateful, however, that God will not require a theology test to get into heaven, which brings up the most important thing in this discussion. We are not saved because of the rightness of our beliefs, but because we put our trust in Christ, that we look to him alone for our salvation. And on that day, whenever it is, we won’t be obsessing about theological niceties, but looking in hope to our Savior, all of us, every Christian from every tradition of every theological permutation. As Jesus assured us in John 3:

14 Just as Moses lifted up the snake in the wilderness, so the Son of Man must be lifted up, 15 that everyone who believes may have eternal life in him.”

Look up and trust in him is all that’s required.

Now hopefully that I have some of that 90% open to what I’ll say, let’s discuss whether God does in fact want all people to be saved. I don’t think about this much, but as I was reading through I Timothy 2, Paul got me thinking about it again

3 This is good, and it is pleasing in the sight of God our Savior, 4 who desires all people to be saved and to come to the knowledge of the truth. 5 For there is one God, and there is one mediator between God and men, the man Christ Jesus, 6 who gave himself as a ransom for all, which is the testimony given at the proper time.

Reading this passage, I’m reminded that Paul doesn’t always mean each and every one when he uses the word all. The non-Calvinists insists he does. See, they say, God obviously wants all people, each person who has ever existed, to be saved, therefore all, every person, should have the possibility of being saved. Clearly not all are saved. No orthodox Christian believes in universalism, that everyone will in the end be saved.

The reason all meaning each and every person never made sense to me once I learned about Reformed theology, is that if a ransom takes place there must be an exchange or it cannot be considered a ransom. One thing must be given for another. If it is, an exchange will have taken place, Christ’s righteousness for the sinner’s sin. If Christ ransomed all people, each and every one, died for them, then all people, each and every one, must be saved, and universalism is true. But it isn’t true because we know some people will end up in hell. So, Paul either means Christ made salvation possible for all people, which makes the word ransom meaningless, or he must mean all people Christ ransomed will be saved.

And lest you think I’m just hanging everything on one verse, to the concept of ransom in the idea of Jesus purchasing people by his blood, there are a number of verses referencing the concept of exchange. The first verse that comes to my mind when I’m thinking about this is Revelation 5:9:

And they sang a new song, saying: “You are worthy to take the scroll and to open its seals, because you were slain, and with your blood you purchased for God persons from every tribe and language and people and nation.

You go to the store, pick up a bottle of wine, go to the clerk and hand her some money. You get the wine, the store gets the money, and a purchase and exchange has taken place. Another verse that comes to mind is Mark 10:45:

For even the Son of Man did not come to be served, but to serve, and to give his life as a ransom for many.

The word ransom is used again by the writer to the Hebrews in chapter 9:

15 For this reason Christ is the mediator of a new covenant, that those who are called may receive the promised eternal inheritance—now that he has died as a ransom to set them free from the sins committed under the first covenant.

Notice how he specifically connects those who are called as the ones who are ransomed. The same concept is used by Paul in a different context in I Corinthians 6 and 7. In chapter 6 he’s discussing sexual immorality and the body, then says:

19 Do you not know that your bodies are temples of the Holy Spirit, who is in you, whom you have received from God? You are not your own; 20 you were bought at a price. Therefore honor God with your bodies.

In chapter 7 he is discussing slavery and how we are ultimately Christ’s slave, then he says:

23 You were bought at a price; do not become slaves of human beings.

Add I’ll add one more when Paul is bidding farewell to the Ephesian elders who he’ll never see again as he’s on his way to Rome (Acts 20):

28 Keep watch over yourselves and all the flock of which the Holy Spirit has made you overseers. Be shepherds of the church of God, which he bought with his own blood.

All of these verses supporting the idea of Christ’s death actually saving people, not just making their salvation possible, are confirmed when Jesus is given his name by an angel before he is born. Speaking to Joseph in a dream he says (Matthew 1):

21 She will give birth to a son, and you are to give him the name Jesus, because he will save his people from their sins.”

And there is a footnote in some of our Bibles saying, “Jesus is the Greek form of Joshua, which means the Lord saves.” Jesus came to specifically to save his people, not make salvation possible for all people. It wasn’t the people’s choice that makes them his, but God’s choice. We have this confirmed in John 6 when Jesus says:

37 All that the Father gives me will come to me, and whoever comes to me I will never cast out.

Our Alienation from God
This is a hard pill for many Christians to swallow, but biblically it’s undeniable. In order to believe the Arminian position, that God makes salvation possible for all and only those who decide to trust Jesus are saved, all these verses, and many more, have to be explained away. I’ll never forget the night I heard this Calvinist or Reformed perspective the first time and thinking, this is upside down from how I’ve believed in Christianity for over five years. Then I went home and at the suggestion of my mentor to be read Ephesians 2, a chapter I’m sure I’d read many times before. All I could think was, how had I missed this? Here are the first 10 verses:

As for you, you were dead in your transgressions and sins, 2 in which you used to live when you followed the ways of this world and of the ruler of the kingdom of the air, the spirit who is now at work in those who are disobedient. 3 All of us also lived among them at one time, gratifying the cravings of our flesh and following its desires and thoughts. Like the rest, we were by nature deserving of wrath. 4 But because of his great love for us, God, who is rich in mercy, 5 made us alive with Christ even when we were dead in transgressions—it is by grace you have been saved. 6 And God raised us up with Christ and seated us with him in the heavenly realms in Christ Jesus, 7 in order that in the coming ages he might show the incomparable riches of his grace, expressed in his kindness to us in Christ Jesus. 8 For it is by grace you have been saved, through faith—and this is not from yourselves, it is the gift of God— 9 not by works, so that no one can boast. 10 For we are God’s handiwork, created in Christ Jesus to do good works, which God prepared in advance for us to do.

I noticed that all of the initiative is God’s. I didn’t believe because I decided to believe, I believed because God raised me spiritually from the dead. We can go to a cemetery, the old fashioned kind with headstones and grave markers, and preach the gospel with the eloquence of Whitfield, Moody, and Billy Graham combined, and not one of those people are capable of responding in faith—they’re dead! For Paul’s dead isn’t like Westley in The Prince’s Bride, mostly dead; it’s all dead, spiritually. In Colossians 2 Paul says the same thing:

13 When you were dead in your sins and in the uncircumcision of your flesh, God made you alive with Christ.

I didn’t believe when the message was preached because I decided it was a good idea, I believed because God in Christ had already raised me spiritually from the dead. Regeneration preceded belief. By God’s sovereign power because I was one of his people from before the creation of the world, my spiritual eyes were supernaturally opened, and I believed. And it’s even worse than being dead in our sin. In our unsaved spiritual state we are enemies of God. Paul says in Romans 5:

10 For if, while we were God’s enemies, we were reconciled to him through the death of his Son, how much more, having been reconciled, shall we be saved through his life!

He confirms our natural state of spiritual rebellion in Colossians 2:

21 Once you were alienated from God and were enemies in your minds because of your evil behavior. 22 But now he has reconciled you by Christ’s physical body through death to present you holy in his sight, without blemish and free from accusation.

The Greek words Paul uses for enemies leave no doubt that choosing Christ in that state of heart and mind would have been impossible. For the Greek of enemies, Strong’s says:

properly, an enemy; someone openly hostile (at enmity), animated by deep-seated hatred. 2190/exthros (“enemy”), implies irreconcilable hostility, proceeding out of a “personal” hatred bent on inflicting harm.

In a state of sin we have a deep-seated hatred of God and a personal hatred bent on inflicting harm. It’s not just that me and God we’re/ not getting along—we’re at war! There is an alienation between lost sinners and God that no amount of good news, the gospel, can overcome, unless we are by the power of God born again, and nobody chooses to be born.

God’s Initiative and the History of Redemption
We’ll notice in the history of redemption, of God saving his people from their sins, he is the one always taking the initiative. Nobody seeks God. Quite the contrary, they’re all running away until he does something remarkable to turn them back. From the very beginning that’s what rebellious sinners did. When Adam and Even disobeyed God, what did they do? They hid; they were afraid. God was now their judge, jury, and executioner because the penalty for eating from the tree was death. No wonder they were afraid.

What did God do? Took the initiative. Not only did he come looking for them, he killed an animal, the first sacrifice in human history, to clothe their nakedness and shame. Then he announced the gospel, or as the theologians call it, the protoevangelium (Gen. 3):

15 And I will put enmity
between you and the woman,
and between your offspring and hers;
he will strike your head,
and you will strike his heel.”

The offspring or seed of the woman as we know is Christ. The plan of salvation, what we call the covenant of redemption, what already set in place prior to God even having created the world. Then after driving them out of the garden God judged the world but picked Noah and his family to make a covenant with man, that he would never again destroy the human race because of their sin.

Then it really begins, God building for himself a people he will save from their sins. Out of all the human beings on earth he picked one man, Abram, and announced that through him all nations on earth would be blessed. Then his descendants become enslaved in Egypt for 400 years, and God again takes the initiative when he picks Moses by first saving his life by allowing him to be born, then saving him again when he’s an adult. He helps the Hebrews escape slavery in Egypt, and gives them his law and a sacrificial system to enable him to forgive their sins. He guides them for 40 years through their rebellion eventually into a land he promised them, and thus begins the history of Israel.

Eventually he chooses a king, David, who will become a type of the Messiah to ultimately save his people from their sins, sending prophets for hundreds of years to predict that, and to warn the people in their rebellion. Then he sends a last prophet, John the Baptist, to prepare the way. He himself comes through a woman’s birth canal as an infant, conceived in a virgin, s what we know as the incarnation, God becoming man. He is given the name Jesus by the angel, and allows himself to be tortured and killed for the his people whom he came to save, redemption accomplished. Then rose from the dead, ascended to heaven at the right hand of God, and sent his Holy Spirit to his people to save them, redemption applied. He is doing that to this very day and will continue until he has placed all his enemies under his feet, the final enemy to be defeated is death (I Cor. 15:25).

God taking the initiative and orchestrating the entire history of redemption doesn’t mean he destroys the nature of his creatures. Our agency is never compromised in the process of salvation. We are still choosing and accountable beings who must respond, and whose choices have real consequences. How all this works, God’s sovereignty and human freedom, we have no idea. I just know it’s the clear testimony of Scripture that both are true and real. God wants all his people to be saved, and he will save them.

Christian Patriotism vs. Christian Nationalism

Christian Patriotism vs. Christian Nationalism

Sep 16, 2026 | Politics & Government

Christian Nationalism is a completely worthless phrase; worse, it’s a distortion. Most of the time people use it as a dishonest rhetorical device to discredit any Christian who believes nations must be Christian. The assumption of those using it, never discussed or defended, or probably even thought through, is that we can and should have a secular nation, as if such a thing is even possible. Secularism is a religion; it is a faith, a belief system, a worldview. The main reason Christian Nationalism is unhelpful is because there is no single definition of it. It’s like a bucket people pour into it whatever they want, and that’s Christian Nationalism! It’s not because it doesn’t exist. It’s a figment of each user’s imagination.

Before we get to the meat of the discussion, it will be helpful to understand the history of the nation out of which could flow an “ism” attached to it. The modern nation-state is a relatively new phenomenon in the history of the world. It developed in the Christian West out of the Peace of Westphalia in 1648 in the aftermath of the 30-Years War. Prior to that nations were ill defined, and the concept of a sovereign geographic entity with its own political system and sovereign boarders didn’t exist. In world history prior to the Middle Ages, might made right, and whatever nation or state (modern concepts) had the most power, called the shots. Basically borders didn’t exist. Kingdoms and ethnic geographic entities existed to one degree or another, but boarders were malleable if they existed at all. That slowly began to change with the development of the Holy Roman Empire (greater Western Europe) after the rise of Charlamagne in 800 AD, but wouldn’t fully develop until after the Peace of Westphalia.

Once nations developed it wasn’t long before the word “nation” would define what a state is, and that it should demand supreme loyalty. The American and French Revolutions where the first “nationalist” movements where loyalty would no longer be to an empire or monarch, but to the nation itself. It further developed throughout the 19th century and into the 20th when the “ism” was added.

We must always be careful when “ism” is attached to a word. It means the concept has been turned into some kind of doctrine, theory, system, or ideology. It’s one thing to have a commune, but quite another to have communism. It’s one thing to have capital, but another to have capitalism. So, a nation is a geographic entity with recognized sovereign defensible boarders, while nationalism is some kind of ideology built around that nation.

The reason the word nationalism tends to distortion and is unhelpful is the undercurrent of Nazism. Remember they called themselves National Socialists defined by the blood of the German volk, or people. Only pure blood, white, Aryans were considered part of the volk and thus legitimate citizens in the state. After World War II, the word nationalism could never be fully divorced from this association. The critics of Christian Nationalism will throw around the phrase “blood and soil” as an epithet. They may as well be calling those who espouse Christians nations Nazis. The fact of the matter is that every nation is blood and soil to one degree or another which over time develops each nation’s unique culture. It’s when blood and soil become an “ism” like Nazism that problems arise.

We can’t leave this discussion without talking about a logical fallacy called begging the question. Today for most people that phrase means “raising the question,” but that’s only because it sounds like it should mean that. It comes from a Latin phrase, petitio principii, or assuming the starting point. It’s a form of circular reasoning. It is something in an argument or discussion that is assumed without having proved or argued for it, and it happens all the time. When you know what begging the question really means, you see it being done all the time, and in discussions of Christian Nationalism it’s almost a requirement! We’ll be exploring that question begging for the rest of the post. (I won’t defend the idea of a Christian nation here, but I described what that is in a piece earlier this year titled, “What Does It Mean to Baptize Nations?”

Christian Patriotism vs. Christian Nationalism
In a post on Twitter titled, “Two Very Different Visions,” we are supposedly seeing what, in the subtitle is, “What the PCA Report Helps Us See.” These visions are only in the writer’s imagination. The Presbyterian Church in America recently put together a study committee on Christian Nationalism and recently issued a report. This is one man’s version of the report, one that bears little resemblance to what is in the report.

The question begging starts with a bang. He claims that Christian Patriotism (CP) “loves country and follows Christ,” while Christian Nationalism (CN) “exalts nations and races toward power.” Those embracing CN are in effect guilty of idolatry. They can’t just love their country, they worship it. They also don’t follow Christ because they are most interested in power, presumably political power, as if that’s a bad thing. Are Christian nationalists even Christians in his book? Doesn’t seem like it. And this is just the beginning. Next he creates a chart comparing the two on six variables or metrics.

CP: Christ is king over all. Our ultimate loyalty is to Jesus and His kingdom.
CN: The nation expresses the kingdom. Loyalty to the nation is equated with loyalty to Christ.

Like all of them, this is a faulty and lazy comparison. Every person who believes nations should be Christian believes Christ is king over all. We all believe our ultimate loyalty is to Jesus and his kingdom. As for God’s kingdom, what does a nation expressing the kingdom mean? And why is that a bad thing? Is he saying we believe the nation is the kingdom? God’s kingdom can and must be expressed in the nation, but geopolitical entities like states are not to be confused with the kingdom. As I’ve written here previously, the kingdom of God is not identical to the church either. Lastly, I’ve never read or heard someone equate loyalty to the nation with loyalty to Christ. He is either assuming this from what he thinks he knows about them, or he’s being disingenuous, maybe both.

CP: Church and state have different roles. The church proclaims the gospel; the government maintains justice and order.
CN: Blurs the line between church and state. The government is given religious roles that belong to the church or to Christ alone.

I’ve yet to come across anyone who believes in Christian nations that doesn’t believe the church and state have different roles. Nobody teaches it or believes it. What they do believe, and this must be what he’s thinking, is that CNs believe God’s law should apply in every nation. The degree is to what extent, and among CNs there is considerable disagreement. Everything turns on what one means by “religious roles,” and there is considerable disagreement there as well. His assertion is as simplistic as it is inaccurate. 

CP: Welcomes all people. Every ethnicity is welcome in God’s family.
CN: Elevates one group. Advocates a cultural identity or ethnic hierarchy that diminishes the universality of the kingdom.

What does “welcomes all people” mean? Does he think nations shouldn’t protect their boarders, that boarders should be wide open to let anyone in who wants to get in? Probably not, but this is another lazy formulation. He confuses “God’s family” with the nation, which I thought we weren’t supposed to do. There is a grain of truth to his second contention among some promoters of CN, but it has nothing to do with the universality of the kingdom. Again, the nation is not the kingdom but can and should be a reflection of it. Those who espouse CN do believe that culture and cultural identity are not infinitely malleable. Each ethnic people have a unique culture and that is the way it should be.

CP: Values humility and kindness. Speaks truth with grace, charity, and respect.
CN: Uses power and division. Often marked by anger, contempt, and disrespect toward opponents.

Power and division are not inherently sinful, and nor are they a contrast to humility and kindness. We should use the latter in advancing the former. That some who espouse CN act in ways inconsistent with the fruit of the Spirit only proves sinners sin and says nothing about CN.

CP: Seeks the common good. Works for justice and the good of all people.
CN: Seeks Christian privilege. Pushes for special treatment of establishing or coercion of others.

This might be the most egregious display of question begging in this list, and it is slanderous. We don’t seek the common good? Really? The reason nations need to be Christian is exactly for the common good. When God promised Abram in Genesis 12 that all peoples on earth would be blessed through him, the promise was fulfilled in Christ and proclaimed in the Great Commission. The gospel is the good news that all nations, or peoples, tribes in the Hebrew, would be blessed, not just the individuals within those nations. CN by its very definition is for the common good! It is not to work for injustice, which is what he is implying. Like I said, slanderous.

As for seeking Christian privilege, absolutely! He is assuming there is some neutral space in a society where all religions should be treated equally, and no one religion held up as superior to others. Christianity, however, claims exactly that! Some religion or worldview, and it’s ultimate faith commitments, will inform the laws and mores, the culture, of a nation. The only question is which one it will be. Those against CN think a neutral secular nation is a possibility, and pluralism and maximal religious freedom is possible. It is not—it’s a disaster. Witness America in the last 60 plus years.

The last distortion is that CN seeks to coerce others. That is a big fear of the anti-CN folks, and it is simply not true.

CP: Knows our true home. We love our country, but we know our citizenship is in heaven.
CN: Makes the nation our hope: Believes political power is needed to advance God’s kingdom.

These statements reflect the unfortunate mentality of the modern church steeped in Pietism. It borders on Gnosticism, and is most definitely influenced by it. He is referencing Philippians 3:20 where Paul says,

But our citizenship is in heaven. And we eagerly await a Savior from there, the Lord Jesus Christ.

In my Pietistic days I used to believe this meant we Christians were just wondering through the desert of this fallen world like the Hebrews wondering in the desert after they were rescued from slavery in Egypt. We’re just strangers and aliens in this world. In a way we are, but escape to our true home in heaven isn’t the point of this verse. Rather, it is Paul telling us that as the Philippians are citizens of Rome and are building an outpost of the Empire in Asia Minor, so we are citizens of heaven building an outpost of God’s kingdom here in this fallen world. The point of the Christian life is, Thy kingdom come, Thy will be done on earth as it is in heaven, not getting away from this earth to get to the kingdom in heaven. We are bringing heaven to earth! My next book which will be published later this year is all about this, and my hope is that we begin to change the church’s focus earthward to spread the blessing God promised us 4,000 years ago.

And lastly we come back to the slander. Those of us who believe a nation must be Christian most certainly do not make the nation our hope! Christ alone is our hope, which is why we insist the nation must be Christian and not secular or any other religion. As for political power, like anything else humans do, it will be used either to advance God’s kingdom and his righteousness, or Satan’s kingdom. There is no neutrality.

A Christian Nation and the Myth of Neutrality
Someone has said, rightly, that culture is religion externalized, and a nation’s government is a reflection of its culture. That means, no nation can be religiously neutral. Yet since the end of World War II there has been a presumption in the West that nations can be secular, which to them means a declaration of religious neutrality. That is, to put it plainly, an impossibility. A nation is made up of human beings, who in addition to Aristotle’s dictum that “man is by nature a political animal,” are also religious animals, but not in fact animals but beings made in God’s image. And if we can agree that a morally neutral human being doesn’t exist, putting them in a political community doesn’t all of a sudden make the product of their community morally neutral.

By the middle of the 20th century, secularism had so worked its deceits into the West’s cultural blood stream that cultural elites completely embraced the myth of neutrality. Christianity, and religious practice in general, was exclusively for people’s private lives, and a mythical Berlin Wall of separation between church and state became the new dogma that must be obeyed. In due course we got secular tyranny. This got so ridiculous that a school would no longer be allowed to display the Ten Commandments on its walls. Sadly, although this is changing, most conservatives and Christians buy into this myth. A couple years ago I even heard Larry Arnn, the president of Hillsdale College, say a Christian nation is an oxymoron. For the most part this is dogma among doctrinaire conservatives, and if moral neutrality is a myth, then it cannot be true.

It was Jesus himself who commanded us to create Christian nations. We remember that as the Great Commission, and what makes it great is that it isn’t just for individuals, but for the nations that individuals create. All authority in heaven and on earth had been given to Jesus, and because of that he told his disciples to, “make disciples of all nations.” In doing that they were to baptize them in the name of the Triune God and teach them to obey everything he commanded. As the individuals within the nations are brought to Christ they are to take that transforming power into everything they create cultural and politically. As I said in my post about baptizing nations, “nations are baptized when the nation, it’s worldview and value system, reflects Christianity as the aspirational guiding system of the country.” That is the task before us, to take the power of the gospel out of our homes and churches into everything we do that as God promised to the Patriarchs, the nations might be blessed.

The Transformational Nature of Faith

The Transformational Nature of Faith

Sep 10, 2026 | Explanatory Power

When most people hear the word faith they instantly think of religion. This is especially true in our secular age when it came to be assumed that faith is something religious people need, while those who are not religious do not. If we think about it for even a moment we’ll see how that contention is inaccurate, but atheists over the last two or three hundred years did a great job defining faith in a way that delegitimized religion, and specifically Christianity. It got so bad during the brief era of the so-called “New Atheists,” (there was nothing new about them), that for a brief time they got away with defining faith as, “belief without evidence,” as in, there isn’t enough evidence but I’ll believe it anyway. Mark Twain, the quintessential cynic made the quip, “Faith is belivin’ what you know ain’t so.” That most certainly is not faith!

Before I get into why faith is transformational, it’s important to define it so we’re all on the same page:

Faith is belief based on adequate evidence.

That’s it. Another word for faith is trust. It is being willing to act with limited knowledge, and given we’re finite creatures who can only ever have limited knowledge, faith is a requirement for daily existence. In other words, everyone lives by faith. It is not a religious concept, but a human concept, something required if we’re to exist, and we utilize it every day of our lives. All of this comes down to a complicated topic called epistemology, or the study of how we know things. But it’s not necessary to go down that philosophical rabbit hole to grasp the simple reality that our knowing is limited and never absolute, and faith is required to act in spite of it. Do I trust the bridge to hold my car if I drive over it even though I can’t be absolutely certain it will. The examples are endless.

As you walk down the aisle in mere moments joining with the woman who will become your wife or the man who will become your husband, you are exercising faith. You and your spouse decide to have children; talk about faith! It’s terrifying, but you do it anyway because you believe, you trust, there will be far more joy and blessing than heartache. Do you know that? Of course not, but you do it anyway. That’s faith. Or you take a job or invest in a business venture. Do you know it will work? No, but you do it anyway. That’s faith. When you love someone, do you know they will reciprocate? Of course not, but you do it anyway trusting that the person will love you in return.

We’ve recently celebrated America’s 250th anniversary as an independent nation. America is a product of faith, massive, deep, and abiding faith because few people thought it would work, and most were convinced it wouldn’t. Think of all those people starting with the Pilgrims in the 1630s who got in small rickety boats and travelled over 3,000 miles on the Atlantic Ocean to chase the dream of a new life. That is incredible faith! That faith eventually built the greatest nation on earth. Or go back earlier to Christopher Columbus, a man burning with faith to discover new worlds and share the gospel of Christ. No discovery ever happened without faith. Every explorer or discovery in history was driven by faith. All of science, in fact, is built on it.

Nothing happens without faith, and its corollary is true: faith is required for anything to happen. Just waking up in the morning is an act of faith. As is eating the food you buy from a grocery store or restaurant. Is it safe to eat? Faith. When you go to the doctor or dentist? Faith. When you plant seeds in the garden? Faith. Without faith there would be no farmers. Farming is a leap of faith because the uncertainties and difficulties are endless.

From these few examples it is apparent that faith is transformational, that believing or trusting something or someone when you can’t have absolute certainty changes things, for good and for ill. We can put our faith in the wrong thing or the wrong person, and bad things can happen. The German people in 1933 put their faith in Adolf Hitler, and that didn’t turn out so well. That means epistemology, or what we know, is a critical component of faith. As my definition implies, our faith and actions are always based on some kind of evidence, or what we think we know. Faith is a human necessity and like everything else about us, both glorious and fallen. This is why wisdom and knowledge are so emphasized in Scripture. When we step out in faith in any circumstance, we don’t want to do that in ignorance, or what we call blind faith. Faith should never be blind.

Christian Civilization and Faith
If we take a look throughout the history of the world there is a stark contrast between BC and AD, between the world before Christ and the world after Christ rose from the dead, ascended to heaven, and sent his Holy Spirit at Pentecost. We might even look at it as before and after faith. Even though faith has always been required for human beings to exist, Christianity changed the nature of what people believed in, and that made all the difference for human existence. Everything started to change well before that, however, when the Hebrew people were introduced to the world. Christianity was the fulfillment and the flowering of the change in perspective God brought through his people. Let’s look at some of these changes.

In The Gifts of the Jews: How a Tribe of Desert Nomads Change the Way Everyone Thinks and Feels,  Thomas Cahill explores the many ways Jewish belief and practice was completely unique in the ancient world. As we look at just a few of these gifts, it’s apparent these ideas transformed the faith of people, what people came to believe and trust in, and which would eventually transform the world.

Fate: Before the Hebrew people came along, life was viewed as something determined by inscrutable forces beyond any person’s control. There was nothing to be done about it but submit. That changed forever when God revealed through Scripture that He created man, male and female He created them, in His own image.What Judaism and then Christianity brought to the world was the concept of human agency, that we are not just cogs in the endless grind of existence that have to accept whatever fate and the gods bring our way. We can actually change things. This didn’t fully come to fruition until Christ because instead of this unique worldview being only available to one ethnic people in one geographic location, it became available to every person on earth. It’s easy to see how fate is inimical to faith, to believing we can make a difference and then having the trust to act on it.

Time: Prior to the idea of “In the beginning God,” all peoples of the world viewed time cyclically, one season moving into another, a wheel turning forever going nowhere. The people of Israel, by contrast, introduced the concept of past, present, and future; that history was going somewhere, something inconceivable to all other ancient peoples.This idea of history going somewhere, of it having some kind of telos or purpose, is so radical it could only have come from a divine source. It is what made Christian Western civilization possible, what transformed a brutal ancient pagan world into a modern world of comfort, security, and abundance. Referring again to America’s founding, those men realized they were creating something for their posterity because people could build on their making history and be blessed by it.

A transcendent, personal Creator God: All other ancient peoples believed in gods who were visible (idols), and in fear of the forces of nature, believed they could manipulate the gods who presumably controlled the forces. The Hebrews introduced a concept no other peoples could conceive: a personal God, in some way like them, and the only true God. I can imagine an ancient person encountering these strange people saying, One God… who created everything? That’s crazy! Cahill writes that the God of Abraham, “no longer your typical ancient divinity, no longer the archetypal gesturer—is a real personality who has intervened in real history, changing its course and robbing it of predictability.”In other words, this is a God we can trust, who wants our good, who is committed to guiding and blessing us if we would just listen to him.

For me when speaking about faith, I always go back to God’s covenant promises in Christ. Unlike the gods of the ancient pagans who were fickle and unpredictable, our God is faithful to his promises for our good and his glory.

God’s Covenant Promises: The Foundation of our Faith
One thing I learned early is that my faith was never in my faith. Most Christians are familiar with Jesus’ saying “if you have faith as small as a mustard seed, you can say to this mountain, ‘Move from here to there,’ and it will move. Nothing will be impossible for you.” The reason is that the issue isn’t the quantify of faith we possess, but rather what we have faith in. And as Jesus said, “with God all things are possible.” Faith is a powerful human dynamic even without God, and that is because faith is always in something other than the person exercising it, in some vision of what can be, in the possibilities of what doesn’t yet exist, the dream. When faith turns inward is when it usually dies.

First, we’re made in God’s image, which is why faith is possible, and what makes it so powerful as a transformational force. In Romans 4 Paul is speaking of the faith of Abraham, that which was credited to him as righteousness. He says of God that he “gives life to the dead and calls those things which do not exist as though they did.” Literally, he calls things into existence that do not exist. That is some serious power! We call the creation of the world in Latin, Creation ex nihilo, or that God created everything out of nothing and not out of pre-existing matter. God merely said, and it was. As his image bearers, we have a similar power to call things that are not as though they were, but for us we have the raw material of creation and transform it into something useful and glorious that can bless others. This can be music or stories or buildings or cities or a home or children or businesses or schools or civilizations—the possibilities are endless.

All of this, though, goes back to God’s covenant promises to bless. Sadly, this is one of the most neglected and overlooked of God’s purposes in salvation, that he wants to bless his people. And I don’t just mean “spiritual” blessing, but material blessing as well. We can see the radical change in both after Christ accomplished his mission, as I said above, about the contrast between BC and AD. The book of Genesis, the foundation of our faith, is a book of blessing. The word is used over 60 times, more than any other book of the Bible, with Psalms and Deuteronomy coming second and third. Blessing is serious business to God, and he backed it up with his promises, what we know as covenants, basically ancient legal agreements that cannot be broken.

The reason we can trust in God’s promises is that they have nothing to do with us. The foundation is the covenant of redemption, where in eternity the Triune God made the promise to save his people from their sins before the world was even created. Then once man fell, God promises in the garden to defeat Satan. Then in Genesis 12 he promised Abram that all peoples on earth will be blessed through him, and confirmed it with a legal ceremony in Genesis 15. He reiterates his covenant promises to Isaac and Jacob of which Christ was the ultimate fulfillment. The blessings couldn’t go to all peoples until Christ came to restore man to his rightful place in creation.

All of this is accessed by faith, by trust, by as the writer to the Hebrews defines it, confidence in what we hope for and assurance about what we do not see. Many years ago now I read the classic work by George Gilder called Wealth and Poverty. It was published in the first year of Reagan’s presidency, and was instrumental in building the “supply side” revolution in economics that would pull the American economy out of the Carter malaise and turn the decade into the “Go Go 80s.” Prosperity was back, and faith made it happen. I will quote a paragraph from early in the book. Next to it I have the word “Classic!” written, and it says perfectly what I’m grasping at trying to say in this post.

Faith in man, faith in the future, faith in the rising returns of giving, faith in the mutual benefits of trade, faith in the providence of God are all essential to successful capitalism. All are necessary  to sustain the spirit of work and enterprise against the setbacks and frustrations it inevitably meets in a fallen world; to inspire trust and cooperation in an economy where they will often be betrayed; to encourage the forgoing of present pleasure in the name of a future that may well go up in smoke; to promote risk and initiative in a world where the rewards all vanish unless others join the game. In order to give without the assurance of return, in order to save without the certainty of future value, in order to work beyond the requirements of the job, one has to have confidence in a higher morality: a law of compensation beyond the immediate and distracting struggles of existence.

It was Christianity alone that made such faith possible. That’s why he wraps up his list of faith with the providence of God. The blessings of prosperity, or wealth, of the good things that allow us to enjoy this life and it not be in a constant struggle for survival come from God’s covenant promises given long ago to bless the nations. Christ as the fulfillment of redemptive history allowed the conditions within the human heart for this kind of faith to be exercised. It was only in the Christian West that it could have developed. God’s promised blessing to the Patriarchs were always intended to express themselves materially in the material world. Spiritual blessings always do.