The Bad

The translation is a gender neutral which totally removes it from use for some people (I am referring to the people that think all gender-inclusive Bibles are evil). It does add to the language, but not nearly, or as bad, as the TNIV (Todays New International Version).

• The Hebrew characters are removed from Psalm 119 which takes out some of the character, but does not impact the meaning.
• Cheribum is simply translated as “creatures“, which certainly does NOT add any value to the splendor for God.
• References to God are lowercase as in the NIV (Note, that was also true in the old 1611 edition for you who think that capital references to God are absolutely needed).
• Some specific parts (womb for example) are translated way to general (body). Although the womb is part of the body, it is better to be more specific!

Some verses are TOTALLY translated wrong. I do not have a complete list, but a serious and common verse is this:

Romans 10:17
NASB – So faith comes from hearing, and hearing by the word of Christ.
KJV – So then faith cometh by hearing, and hearing by the word of God.
NIV – Consequently, faith comes from hearing the message, and the message is heard through the word of Christ.
NCV – So faith comes from hearing the Good News, and people hear the Good News when someone tells them about Christ.

As you can see, the typical translations focus on the word being the transforming mediator, but the NCV, the person becomes the mediator. This is certainly not faithful to the text. There are several other verses that can be used.

The Good

There is not much that I really considered extraordinary. There are a few verses that I liked the wording for Romans 1:32 – They know God’s law says that those who live like this should die. But they themselves not only continue to do these evil things, they applaud others who do them.

Other than that, one can get some comedy relief from reading Ezekiel 12 and counting how many times he writes “Human”…I can almost see a fraternity drinking game spawn out of this one. Why does it say this so much? Because the term “Son of Man” is not gender neutral!

Conclusions

I don’t quite think we should engage in book burning here, but when you get an NCV, you may not be getting the most faithful translation. It is of note that this translation is sold as many other names, most commonly, ICB, or the International Children’s Bible (I think that there are 7 verses that are different between the two).

¹⁶ But I say, walk by the Spirit, and you will not carry out the desire of the flesh. ¹⁷ For the flesh sets its desire against the Spirit, and the Spirit against the flesh; for these are in opposition to one another, so that you may not do the things that you please. ¹⁸ But if you are led by the Spirit, you are not under the Law. ¹⁹ Now the deeds of the flesh are evident, which are: immorality, impurity, sensuality, ²⁰ idolatry, sorcery, enmities, strife, jealousy, outbursts of anger, disputes, dissensions, factions, ²¹ envying, drunkenness, carousing, and things like these, of which I forewarn you, just as I have forewarned you, that those who practice such things will not inherit the kingdom of God.

Paul is writing this to a group of people that were overly consumed with their actions, trying to win salvation for good works.  Here, Paul is telling us that we should not live by our fleshy desires, for that sets itself against the flesh.  Let’s examine the basic conduct of football fans against this list in scriptures, shall we?

Immorality – This refers to general debauchery of the society.  I have to say that this one is not very common, there is too much focus on idolatry.  Besides that, 3 pages of a Google search did not yield any relevant to the search term.  I guess they are off the hook for this one.

Impurity – This would mean anything that taints perfection.  Football fans are becoming increasingly violent and profane in the cheering of their teams.  This passes the vulgarity down to next generations as kids are brought in droves to stadiums around the country.  It may even start with sharing drinks with kids at a ripe young age which will clearly send them to hell.

Sensuality – This root of this means to gratify the senses, or in biblical terms, to fulfill fleshy desires.  How many justifications occur for football, beer, overspending, etc all in the name of doing what feels good!

Idolatry – Football is synonymous with idolatry.  This is the biggest fruit of the flesh that that there is in the sport, but it exists to undying ends.  Take some mild and lukewarm Christians who are in a Bible study, they know very little about the Bible, where things can be found, etc.  But if you bring up the topic of football, the crowd will go wild!  People will start praising and worshiping at the image of the team, rattle off statistics, and arguing with one another about their god being better than everyone else’s god.

Sorcery – This is to practice divinity, witchcraft, and the other Harry-Potteresk Hogwarts classes.  We agreed in our conversation that if this indeed happen related to football, it is definitely not in the mainstream, so we are ok here.

Enmities, Strife – This means to have something against someone or something to a point of hatred, diabolical plans enter in and overtake your emotions to the point where you have a single mind to hate.  Enmities is also what is described by what happens when one group of college kids meets a group from the opposing team.

Jealousy – This is to have feelings of depressive anger toward someone for spending time with someone else, it can also stem from an intense desire to have what someone else has (like a victory).  You can see the presence of this.

Outbursts of Anger, Disputes, Dissensions, Factions – I group these together because they are all closely related.  Disputes and anger go hand in hand, dissensions and factions occur from the point of anger, and the people break into roaming hate-mobs (OK, so I am exaggerating this point a little too much, but the point remains, sports fans can be very violent and rowdy).

Drunkenness – Do we even have to talk about this one?  I think that beer was invented for football, or at least the other way around.

Carousing – This is teasing / taunting / being generally uncontrollable.  We see this in sports fans all the time.

So there we have it, the majority of the fruits of the flesh are all bound up in football!

OK, so that article was a little accusative, and yes, it was satirical.  The truth is, football is like anything else that is neutral in this world.  We can make it good and we can make it bad.  Paul says several times in 1 Corinthians that all things are permissible, but he would not be mastered by anything.  That is the truth.  Watch football during this season, enjoy yourself, but remember to be more focused on God than you are on your hobbies.  Draw near to Him and He will draw near to you.  Resist the Devil and he will flee from you (James 4:7-8a).

Process of Salvation

To understand sanctification, we must first understand what it is, and what it is not.  There does exist a great coin, the coin of salvation.  I use the illustration of a coin for our salvation because there are two parts to the process, but they are the same coin.  The first is Justification, and the second is Sanctification.  Justification is entirely of God, the term is a legal word meaning that we are no longer culpable for our sins before God.  Justification happened at one space-time point for all people from Adam to the child that is not born yet.  It happened when Jesus Christ died on the cross.  At that point in time, the sins of the elect were covered and God no longer considered them.  All Old Testament saints looked forward to it, all New Testament saints look back to it, one point, when Christ died.  You can read more about it on Grace to You.

Sanctification is a process, and it is a process that must include God the Father, God the Son, and God the Holy Spirit, and man the sinner.  It is the Father that decided that you will be saved (if you are or will be saved), it is the Son that accomplishes that task (on the Cross), and it is Holy Spirit that guides your conscience toward Him every day.  There is a past in sanctification, we were set apart for salvation (Ephesians 1).  There is a present in Sanctification, where we are right now in working toward becoming like Christ by the renewing of our mind (Romans 12:2), and there is a future when we will be perfectly sanctified in the process of Glorification meaning that all sin is removed from our bodies (this point is after the second coming of Christ).

I want to focus this article on my position for the present, the fact that our present sanctification is dependent on both God and man to accomplish.  We do have a free will, not to the degree where we choose our salvation, but rather, a will to make our every day choices.  I can choose to go home and look at stuff on the internet that I should not see, or I could choose to go home and focus on God in prayer, the Word, or by some other means.  God, the Holy Spirit will move me toward the things of God, but my sin nature will lure me into the sins of man.  The one that I tend to feed by my habit of choices is the one that will usually win (Romans 7:14-25).

How to Be Sanctified

Fortunately, there is a prescription to move toward sanctification given in 2 Peter 1:1-11.  The book starts with this opening statement (2-4):

Grace and peace be multiplied to you in the knowledge of God and of Jesus our Lord; ³ seeing that His divine power has granted to us everything pertaining to life and godliness, through the true knowledge of Him who called us by His own glory and excellence. ⁴ For by these He has granted to us His precious and magnificent promises, so that by them you may become partakers of the divine nature, having escaped the corruption that is in the world by lust.

Peter is telling us that we have been selected, everything that is of life and Godliness is granted to us, we are given promises that we have divine truth, and we can escape the world.  There is so much in that paragraph that we could write pages just on that, but I digress.

Peter then moves on the prescription for sanctification.

Verse 5a – We need to be diligent about being morally excellent.  Of course many modern Christians think that striving for moral excellence is synonymous with self-righteousness and fleshly living.  I submit to you that this text means exactly what it says.  Peter is commanding you to work hard at living a moral life.  We should not be passing gas and laughing, stealing paper and pens from work, teasing people and jesting and joking about it.  We should live with very upright and moral lives and quit blaming our sin nature on the fact that we are not perfect.

Verse 5b – We should start to accompany our moral excellence with knowledge.  That is knowledge of the doctrines of the Bible, not the surface fluff.  Again, I see many American Christians that want to stay at the basic level of the Gospel, but is that not a negative as reported by the author of Hebrews?  No.  We are rather to seek the knowledge of God.

Verse 6a – Once we have moral excellence and knowledge, we need to add in a dose of self-control.  This is also called discipline and it is one of many exhortations in the scriptures.  The word self-control appears many times in the book of Titus, and Paul uses the concept of discipline in 1 Corinthians 9:24-27 about living our Christian life.  Sadly, many Christians do not discipline themselves in anything whether it be to Biblical study or a plan to lose weight!

Verse 6b – Perseverance is a critical step.  It is means to stick with it.  See it through.  I experience this difficulty every morning.  I need to discipline myself to get out and run.  Once I do that, I need to keep perseverance to not stop running (at least for seven minutes which are the hardest seven in a run).  Scripturally, this means not giving in to sin and saying, “what does it matter, I am covered by the blood, I will do it just once”.  No, we need to keep up the faith understanding that we will be persecuted.  Be strong.

Verse 6c – Adding Godliness means that we will start to live out our life not with the external morality (by the way, it is a great start to have external morality in the flesh), but Godliness is when the morality impacts our conscience and we are truly living the Fruit of the Spirit in our attitude, not just our body.

Verse 7a – Once the Fruit of the Spirit is inside of our regular attitude, we will be able to love other people.  Brother in this verse refers specifically to Christians.  That is the start of love to the whole world, first you love the brothers and sisters in the church.

Verse 7b – Once we can love our brothers, we are commended to love.  Love extends to all people, all places, all (dare I say it) religions!  We are simply to love other people and by that love, the Mark of the Christian is manifest in our life.

The next statement that Peter makes is the center of it all.  If these qualities are yours and are increasing, they render you neither useless nor unfruitful in the true knowledge of our Lord Jesus Christ. By verse 9 is the negative correlative: For he who lacks these qualities is blind or short-sighted, having forgotten his purification from his former sins. Amazing.  Not only do we participate in this process through hard work and discipline, but Peter says that we are blind if we do not do them.  He concludes the statement on sanctification with verses 10-11 placing the responsibility on the practice of these things with us.  Once we work hard and diligently at these things, the Holy Spirit will unite with that work in us and make us more and more like Christ.

So in the final analysis, Sanctification is a process that requires us to start it, and God to finish it.  We cannot lay back claiming to be covered by the blood and not work on our spiritual growth.  To do so, we demonstrate to God that we have forgotten about our cleansing from Sin.

An old fitness adage is true: “No pain, no gain”.  I know that my workout tonight was great because I feel stretched, tired, used.  That is true for our physical body and also for our mental body, our spiritual body, and also our emotions.  It is true for ministry and goals.  It is universally true.  I thought about this concept at a Bible study the other day when a student was announcing that they received all A’s on a report card.  As a former teacher, I said that she needs to get into the topic a little more advanced, and she insisted that she wants to stay where it is easy to get good grades to make it into a good college.  That attitude will kill her motivation and her education in the long run.  Below I will detail why from the book of John.

In the 15^th chapter of the book of John, we read about our relationship to Christ and our relationship to each other, and then finally, about our relationship with the world.  The latter will not discuss here.  The first portion, John 15:1-11, talks about how we are to stay in Christ.  Jesus talks about how we are already clean because of the word, he talks about the fact that if we are in Him, we will bear fruit, and of significance here if we bear fruit, God the father will prune us so that we bear more.  This is a picture from gardening or farming.  If you have a plant that is producing fruit, you cut off the branches as they are starting to flower.  The plant will then produce two more branching the leaf-stem of that cut branch and each of those two will bear flowers, so cutting the fruit (pain) increases the fruit (gain).  The rest of the first section talks about bearing much fruit, obeying the Word, and those are evidence of Christ.  God as the vine-desser (gardener) does the pruning on your spiritual life.

The second part, John 15:12-17, Jesus is talking about the command to love one another.  He talks of the believers to love each other as Christ has loved them, and He concludes this section with the command to go and bear more fruit.  I have come to the conclusion that bearing much fruit with love to your fellow Christian is to serve together and create deep friendships around loving other people and helping those around you grow in Christ.

From these first two parts of John 15 we see that we are commanded to do good works, to work, to stretch ourselves (loving your brother is more of a spiritual discipline than an inherent emotion).  It is only through the process of pruning and stretching that God grows us, but I believe that we can also contribute to that pruning.  If we sit around and do nothing with our Bible, we become spiritually dead.  We can talk about a lot of Bible terms and argue over doctrine, but we are not actually growing.  If we sit around and do not exercise, we become obese, if we do not map out our future, we end up in the same place we are now just with more wrinkles and more convinced that the rich just get richer and the poor get poorer.  My encouragement to you is to set goals in all areas of your life, serve people through church or parachurch ministries.  Get exercising, and challenge yourself in your education.  You will be surprised at where you are in just a few years of consistently doing these things.  Here are some resources to help.  Some of these resources I am familiar with, others I am not as familiar with, but I wanted to give some diverse options.

Getting Started

I have studied goals from every angle that I can find.  I want to know how successful people have done it, so here are some ideas that will help you out.  First, my top pick book on goal setting is The Power of Focus.  I also like the time management organization of First Things First by Stephen Covey.  Dave Ramsey also has some great tips on his website.  In his method, there is a five step process:

1.) Your goals should be specific

2.) Your goals should be measurable

3.) Your goals should be your goals

4.) Your goals should have a time limit on them

5.) Your goals should be written down.

I personally follow a system that is like this one.  I have set goals in the area of fitness, personal, spiritual, business goals, and goals to develop new business ideas.  Each of my goals is written down specifically, with a time line and a way to measure them.  The goals also list a reward for achieving various levels complete with pictures of what I want as a reward for the goal.  The goals and the measurement logs for the goals are in the same place and they have a master dream plan for my life, all assembled as a booklet.  This booklet took about a week to type it all up and make it very nice to look at.  Other than my Bible, it is the only book that I go to every single day and focus on.  Here are some other resources that I have found on goal setting.  Note that my system is a hybrid of various methods that I have read.  I created the one that works for me.  What will work for you?

Mind Tools

Top Achievement

Goal Setting for Success

Spiritual Help

As I have mentioned before, we should focus on several methods of growth spiritually.  I believe that we will grow best if we do the following:

1.)    Read the Bible quickly as an overview one or two times a year

2.)    Do an in-depth study of specific books

3.)    Make prayer a regular part of the day

4.)    Listen to what other people have said about the Bible in the form of sermons.

In my last article, Filling the Empty Cup, I talk a little more about growing spiritually and I also give my recommended general reading list.

Ministry

Local ministry can be found in most places. The best thing to do is to ask your pastor of any needs in your church.  If you like working with kids, check around your church or other churches for Awana.  If you can not find one, consider starting a chapter here.  I personally tend to work as a minister in non-Christian arenas (it tends to help my prayer life) and I prefer Big Brothers Big Sisters.  You can also check to see if Child Evangelism Fellowship has a chapter in your area.  Your local Christian radio stations also likely have some opportunities.

Exercise

I have frequently heard the expression, “I wish I had that kind of energy” usually when someone sees kids running all over.  This is usually the time that I start doing the same thing.  I have energy because I have a regular exercise pattern.  I have found that in times that I do not keep up with it, I tend to get groggy and lack energy, but it is amazing what 15-20 minutes of running in the morning will do for your day.

This is what I recommend. First, if you are over the age of 20 you should probably check with a doctor before you start an exercise program, but I promise, he will be all for it!  If you are out of shape, first start by walk/walk about 3-5 minutes on and then walk for a bit and build up until you can run non-stop for whatever your target time is.  Even if you can run for 25 minutes straight, the first 5 minutes is still the hardest running time.

Next, find some method of weight training.  It could be pushups, sit-ups, etc, or you could get a pass to a gym.  I do weight training three days a week, usually Monday, Wednesday, and Friday.  This method seems to work out best for me, and I get nine exercise sessions in a week (6 days a week running and 3 days a week weight lifting).  Here are some fitness websites:

Bodybuilding

workoutz

We are all prodigals.  We run from Christ, righteousness, and holiness.  But in this message, unlike usual, I do not want to dwell on that.  I want to focus on the response.  In a way, this will be a review of a little book that I just received from John MacArthur entitled Grace for You, which is a summary of the A Tale of Two Sons: The Inside Story of a Father, His Sons, and a Shocking Murder.

In the book, MacArthur outlines the parable of the prodigal son, but adds a very well thought out twist to the story (you will need to keep reading for that).  The story starts out by discussing the sinner, and then moves onto a discourse on truth about the nature of sin.  After sin, MacArthur moves onto repentance, salvation, and complete restoration.  The final section is titled The Stately Sinner, which if I could retitle, I would call, “The Acceptable Sinner”.

As we embark in the well known parable found in Luke 15:11-32, we first note the sinner.  This punk kid basically says to his father, “I wish you were dead!  Give me my inheritance.”  Fortunately, most of us do not give our inheritance to own kids who are likely teenagers (at least he acts like it in this parable), but this father does.  If you were raised in the church, you probably can not even imagine the sins that this kid committed.  He lived wastefully and extravagantly.  But he did so without having any source of income.  He ran out of money in his sin, and having nowhere else to go, he took on a job that was only detestable to his upbringing.  MacArthur says “When all attempts at avoiding sin’s payday are finally exhausted, the sinner truly hits rock bottom.”  In my difficult experience, only when you hit rock bottom can you truly look into that bright light and beg the Savior to grab your hand.

Repentance leads to salvation, and salvation leads to restoration.  When a sinner looks into his life truthfully and says, “I am a sinner, and I am unable to change that, and I so desperately want to change that….but I can’t” that is the point where Jesus steps in and salvation has been found.  When you recognize your inability over sin, and believe on Jesus Christ, you have found salvation.  When Jesus redeems you, you begin the process of sanctification.  It is this journey that is a combination of you and Christ together that leads to soundness in faith and also to restoration.  Once sin is atoned for and forgiven by God, it is grace that now enters.  Grace says that we understand that all of these other fellow humans are not perfect just as we are not perfect.  Grace frees us from the guilt of our sin, and opens us up to the Love of the Father.  It was grace that this prodigal received, and it is grace that causes us to be transformed more and more like Jesus.

But notice the older brother.  He was not full of grace, but rather hypocrisy.  He was angry that his father would honor this sinning brother, rather than happy for his return.  The very twist is that this parable is about the Pharisees who do not rejoice over the salvation of these sinners.  They do not want to give grace to the sinners.  Notice the stories, The woman caught in adultery (John 8:1-11), Samaritan woman at the well (John 4:5-26), Anointing of Jesus (Luke 7:36-50).  There are many more examples.  Let us not be these Pharisees that point out the sins of others, but rather, let us have the grace to love them.  For only through grace and love and people brought safely into the kingdom.

I would highly recommend this book, and I do look forward to reading the expanded version, A Tale of Two Sons: The Inside Story of a Father, His Sons, and a Shocking Murder, when I get the opportunity.

Saints that have a Past

So what is a saint? According to the Bible, a saint is a person that trusts in Christ (Ephesians 2:19-22). But if you were to look that up, let us start by examining Ephesians 2:1-3:

And you were dead in your trespasses and sins, in which you formerly walked according to the course of this world, according to the prince of the power of the air, of the spirit that is now working in the sons of disobedience. Among them we too all formerly lived in the lusts of our flesh, indulging the desires of the flesh and of the mind, and were by nature children of wrath, even as the rest.

We can see that we all started out dead; we lived in lusts and sins. Basically, we had a past full of all of the things that God hates. The hatred that God has for these deeds granted us to be, by our very nature, objects of His wrath. If you are a saint, do you remember your past? Does it humble you when you are sharing the Gospel of Jesus Christ? Perhaps it was lust, vulgarism, callousness, or any other difficult sin from the fruits of the flesh (Galatians 5:19-21). Before you came to Christ, you were living in a way that was ignorance, painful to others. If you were like me, you even had all sorts of people praying for you that you would leave behind the life of sin and come to Jesus a saint. Indeed, all saints do have a past.

Sinners that have a Future

This brings us to the sinners that have a future. So what is a sinner? It comprises everyone that is not a saint of course! Have a ready through the passage in Romans 3:10-18:

As it is written,
THERE IS NONE RIGHTEOUS, NOT EVEN ONE;
THERE IS NONE WHO UNDERSTANDS,
THERE IS NONE WHO SEEKS FOR GOD;
ALL HAVE TURNED ASIDE, TOGETHER THEY HAVE BECOME USELESS;
THERE IS NONE WHO DOES GOOD,
THERE IS NOT EVEN ONE.”
“THEIR THROAT IS AN OPEN GRAVE,
WITH THEIR TONGUES THEY KEEP DECEIVING,”
“THE POISON OF ASPS IS UNDER THEIR LIPS”;
“WHOSE MOUTH IS FULL OF CURSING AND BITTERNESS”;
“THEIR FEET ARE SWIFT TO SHED BLOOD,
DESTRUCTION AND MISERY ARE IN THEIR PATHS,
AND THE PATH OF PEACE THEY HAVE NOT KNOWN.”
“THERE IS NO FEAR OF GOD BEFORE THEIR EYES.”

This passage pretty much covers everything, but just in case you are unsure, consider also Romans 3:23, For all have sinned and fallen short of the Glory of God. Now you should be convinced that each person who is not a saint is a sinner, we need to examine their future. Also from Romans, the wages of sin is death, but the free gift of God is eternal life through Christ Jesus our Lord. That free gift, eternal life, has its beginnings in this planet in the course of action mediated by Christ, to transform us from objects of wrath, to recipients of immeasurable riches (Ephesians 2:3-7). Sinners are indeed redeemed into a future on this planet, and even for eternity beyond. Let us rejoice in Christ Jesus and do the good works that He has prepared in advance for us to do. I will conclude with Ephesians 2:10: For we are His workmanship created in Christ Jesus for good works, which God prepared beforehand so we would walk in them.