There are two ways to be fooled. One is to believe what isn’t true; the other is to refuse to believe what is true. —Soren Kierkegaard. "…truth is true even if nobody believes it, and falsehood is false even if everybody believes it. That is why truth does not yield to opinion, fashion, numbers, office, or sincerity–it is simply true and that is the end of it" – Os Guinness, Time for Truth, pg.39. “He that takes truth for his guide, and duty for his end, may safely trust to God’s providence to lead him aright.” – Blaise Pascal. "There is but one straight course, and that is to seek truth and pursue it steadily" – George Washington letter to Edmund Randolph — 1795. We live in a “post-truth” world. According to the dictionary, “post-truth” means, “relating to or denoting circumstances in which objective facts are less influential in shaping public opinion than appeals to emotion and personal belief.” Simply put, we now live in a culture that seems to value experience and emotion more than truth. Truth will never go away no matter how hard one might wish. Going beyond the MSM idealogical opinion/bias and their low information tabloid reality show news with a distractional superficial focus on entertainment, sensationalism, emotionalism and activist reporting – this blogs goal is to, in some small way, put a plug in the broken dam of truth and save as many as possible from the consequences—temporal and eternal. "The further a society drifts from truth, the more it will hate those who speak it." – George Orwell “There are two ways to be fooled. One is to believe what isn’t true; the other is to refuse to believe what is true.” ― Soren Kierkegaard
We must pray for grace to deliver us from death* and to carry us well through our dying moments.
Lord, make me know my end and what is the measure of my days; let me know and consider how fleeting I am, that my days are as a few handbreadths and all mankind stands as a mere breath! Psalm 39:4-5(ESV) My days on the earth are like a shadow, and there is no abiding. 1 Chronicles 29:15(ESV)
Lord, make me always ready, dressed for action with my lamp burning, Luke 12:35(ESV) for the Son of Man is coming at an hour I do not expect. Luke 12:40(ESV)
Keep me all the days of my service, waiting till my renewal comes; and then shall you call, and I will answer. Job 14:14-15(ESV)
Bring me to my grave like a sheaf gathered up in its season; Job 5:26(ESV) satisfy me with life, whether it be long or short, and show me your salvation. Psalm 91:16(ESV)
And when I walk through the valley of the shadow of death, be with me, that I may fear no evil; let your rod and your staff comfort me. Psalm 23:4(ESV)
Let goodness and mercy follow me all the days of my life, and let me dwell in the house of the LORD forever. Psalm 23:6(ESV) May steadfast love and faithfulness be with me. 2 Samuel 15:20(ESV)
Ransom my soul from the power of Sheol, and receive me; Psalm 49:15(ESV) guide me with your counsel, and afterward receive me into glory. Psalm 73:24(ESV)
* We must all die (save those alive when the Lord comes), so the author directs us to ask for deliverance not from the inevitable fact of death, but from the fear and power of death. Editor.
Isaiah 53 This week’s lessons explain how Isaiah 53 clearly points to the coming of the Lord Jesus Christ as the Suffering Servant who would accomplish salvation for His people.
Theme
A Prophecy Fulfilled
I do not know of any chapter of the Word of God that gives greater proof of the blindness of the human heart to God’s truth than Isaiah 53. This is very evident in regard to Jewish people. In the first twelve centuries of the Christian era Jewish people through their rabbis and other Old Testament scholars considered that this chapter referred to the Messiah who should come. But at that time a change took place in Jewish thinking, and today it would be very hard to find anyone who so regards it in the Jewish community. Instead, the chapter is taken as referring to Israel as a whole, that is, to the nation and not to an individual Savior. This is so even though verse 8 very clearly distinguishes between the Messiah and the people for whom He was to die: “For the transgression of my people he was stricken.”
As Christians read this chapter, it seems to them to refer quite clearly not only to the general outlines of the life of Jesus of Nazareth, but to particular aspects of that life—to His ministry, death, and resurrection. Yet there is blindness even here. Some reject the view of the atonement which is found here. Others refuse to apply these teachings to their lives.
There are two texts in the New Testament where the word “blindness” is used. The first is in Romans 11, where it is used of the Jews; and the second is in Ephesians 4, where it is used of the Gentiles. Paul is saying in both cases that people are blind to spiritual things. What shall we do about this? The only thing we can do is appeal to God to open our eyes to see His truth. We must pray, “Holy Spirit, open our eyes to see the truths that are found in this chapter, as we study it.”
I would like to take you through Isaiah 53 section by section, showing how this chapter traces out the coming, death, resurrection, and future glory of our Savior. I want to do it in five parts. The first part is found in verses 1–3. It speaks of the Messiah’s humble origins. The second part is found in verses 4–6. It speaks of the Messiah’s vicarious suffering. The third part is found in verses 7–9. It speaks of the Messiah’s exemplary life. The fourth part is found in verse 10a alone. It speaks of the Messiah’s divine commissioning. The fifth and last part is found in verses 10b–12. It speaks of the Messiah’s glorious triumph.
Study Questions
What change has taken place in how some people understand Isaiah 53?
If you were asked to teach on this passage, how would you approach it? Read Isaiah 53 carefully, and consider how else you might outline your study. Also list what application you would make for your hearers from it.
Application
Reflection: We know that the underlying cause of people’s blindness to spiritual things is sin. But how is this sin expressed in terms of specific reasons why people reject the Bible’s teaching?
For Further Study: Download for free and listen to James Boice’s message, “God’s Purpose in Human Suffering.” (Discount will be applied at checkout.)
The early dating of the Gospels is important because the authors cannot be eyewitnesses if they weren’t even present to see what the Gospel authors said they saw. Can we consider the Gospels eyewitness accounts? Were they written early in history?
To see more training videos with J. Warner Wallace, visit the YouTube playlist.
Have you ever considered your role on this earth from a heavenly perspective? The moment you commit to following Jesus Christ, your citizenship changes. You are no longer primarily a citizen of your country or culture; you become a kingdom ambassador. This calling is not just a title but a transformative identity that shapes how we live, interact, and influence the world around us. Your primary mission becomes representing the values and principles of God’s kingdom here on earth.
This isn’t about becoming a secret agent for heaven. Instead, it’s a call to live a visible, authentic faith. It means allowing the comprehensive rule of God to manifest in every area of your life — personal, family, church, and community. As we align ourselves with God’s agenda, we don’t just get a glimpse of heaven; we actively participate in bringing its reality to earth.
What Is a Kingdom Ambassador?
The apostle Paul describes believers as ambassadors for Christ (2 Corinthians 5:20). An ambassador is a high-ranking official who represents their home government in a foreign land. They don’t create their own policies or agendas; they faithfully represent the interests and values of their sovereign. As a kingdom ambassador, your allegiance is to heaven, and your task is to promote the values of God’s kingdom in the culture of this world.
Your Heavenly Mandate
This means that when the culture’s values conflict with God’s principles, you are called to stand with God. Your worldview, words, actions, and concepts should be informed by heaven’s standards. This is not about seeking conflict but about living with clarity and conviction. Whether you are at home, in the workplace, or in your community, your role is to promote God’s kingdom principles.
Living as a kingdom ambassador requires a fundamental shift in perspective. It means understanding that everything you have and everything you are comes from God. As 1 Chronicles 29:11-12 reminds us, “Yours, O Lord, is the greatness and the power and the glory and the victory and the majesty, for all that is in the heavens and in the earth is yours. Yours is the kingdom, O Lord, and you are exalted as head above all. Both riches and honor come from you, and you rule over all” (ESV). When we recognize God as the ultimate Source, we are freed from the anxiety and worry tied to earthly resources.
The Power of a Visible Faith
A silent ambassador has no influence. To be effective, your faith must be visible. People around you should be able to see the difference God’s kingdom makes in your life. This doesn’t mean you need to be perfect, but it does mean living with integrity, compassion, and purpose.
In 1 Peter 2:12, we are encouraged to “Keep your conduct among the Gentiles honorable, so that when they speak against you as evildoers, they may see your good deeds and glorify God on the day of visitation” (ESV). Your good works and your good words become a powerful testimony. They demonstrate the reality of God’s power and love in a way that words alone cannot.
When your Christianity is visible, it effects change. It unleashes kingdom authority and allows you to become a true kingdom influencer. This is about more than just personal piety; it’s about making a tangible difference in the lives of others and in the fabric of society. You become a conduit for God’s blessings and a participant in His redemptive work in the world.
Serving With Gladness and Gratitude
How should a kingdom ambassador carry out their duties? We can find a beautiful framework in Psalm 100. The entire psalm is a call to joyful service and worship rooted in thankfulness. “Serve the Lord with gladness!” it exclaims. “Enter His gates with thanksgiving, and His courts with praise! Give thanks to Him; bless His name!” (Psalm 100:2, 4, ESV).
This posture of gratitude is not optional; it is central to our role. Service that comes from a place of obligation or resentment lacks the heart of the kingdom. But service filled with gladness and thanksgiving reflects the goodness of the King we represent.
Cultivating a Grateful Heart
Everything you possess is a gift from God. Your life, your breath, your relationships, your resources — all are expressions of His grace. Cultivating a grateful heart means making thankfulness an automatic, ongoing response. Thank Him that you woke up today. Thank Him for your food and shelter. Thank Him for the people in your life.
This attitude of gratitude does more than just make you feel better; it invites God’s presence. When we approach God with thanksgiving, we acknowledge His sovereignty and goodness, opening the door for Him to work more powerfully in and through us. A grateful heart is a receptive heart, ready to receive His instructions and carry out His will.
Putting Kingdom Principles Into Practice
Living as a kingdom ambassador is a practical, daily commitment. It involves aligning every part of your life with God’s rule. This process begins by understanding and applying His principles. The Sermon on the Mount (Matthew 5–7) provides a foundational guide for kingdom living. Principles like meekness, mercy, purity of heart, and peacemaking are not just nice ideals; they are the strategic values of heaven.
Living as a New Creation
When we accept Christ, we become a “new creation” (2 Corinthians 5:17). This means our old way of thinking and living, which was shaped by the world, is replaced by a new identity shaped by Christ. We are called to “be transformed by the renewal of your mind” (Romans 12:2, ESV). This renewal happens as we immerse ourselves in God’s Word and allow the Holy Spirit to reshape our desires and priorities.
You are no longer defined by your past or by the standards of the culture. You are defined by your position in Christ as a beloved child and a trusted ambassador.
From Believer to Disciple
Many people are born-again believers, yet they hesitate to step into the full responsibility of discipleship. A true disciple is one who has counted the cost and committed to following Jesus without reservation. It means prioritizing God’s kingdom agenda above personal comfort, security, and desires.
Jesus was clear about this commitment. He told one potential follower, “No one who puts his hand to the plow and looks back is fit for the kingdom of God” (Luke 9:62, ESV). A kingdom ambassador must be forward-looking, with their eyes fixed on Jesus and their hands committed to the work He has given them to do.
As you embrace your role as a kingdom ambassador, you will discover a life of profound purpose and impact. By submitting to God’s rule, you don’t just touch heaven — you help change the earth. You become a visible manifestation of His love, grace, and power in a world that desperately needs it.
Experience life to the fullest with an intentional alignment to God’s rule and power. In Unleashed: Releasing God’s Glorious Kingdom in and Through You, bestselling author and beloved pastor Tony Evans writes about the Holy Spirit’s power that is within us and how we can release it to greatly impact the kingdom of God both now and for eternity.
As followers of Jesus, we have been transferred out of the kingdom of darkness and into the kingdom of Christ. We live in this world but are now informed by another. It’s time for us as kingdom ambassadors to unleash kingdom work for the glory of God.
Eric discusses how evangelism and apologetics intersect, why every believer is called to defend the faith, and how to engage with skeptics effectively and biblically.
Now we have received, not the spirit of the world, but the Spirit who is from God, that we might know the things freely given to us by God, which things we also speak, not in words taught by human wisdom, but in those taught by the Spirit, combining spiritual thoughts with spiritual words. (2:12–13)
The process of the Spirit’s transmission of God’s truth is called inspiration. His truth cannot be discovered by man; it can only be received. In order to be received, something must first be offered. God’s truth can be received because it is freely given. The Spirit who is from God, not the spirit of the world (that is, human wisdom) has brought God’s Word—which comprises the things freely given to us by God. The Bible is the Spirit’s vehicle for bringing God’s revelation. The we’s and the us of verses 12–13 (as in vv. 6–7, 10) do not refer to Christians in general but to Paul himself. God’s Word is for all believers, but was revealed only to the apostles and the other writers of Scripture. Only those men properly can be said to have been inspired. The promise of John 14:26 (“But the Helper, the Holy Spirit … will teach you all things, and bring to your remembrance all that I said to you”) is for the benefit of all believers, but was given only to the apostles. Paul and the other writers of Scripture did not record their own ideas and interpretations. They recorded what God gave them and only what He gave them. We have received … that we might know. The Spirit used words that the human writers knew and used, but He selected them and arranged them in precisely the order that He wanted. The Bible, therefore, not only is God’s Word but God’s words. It is not simply the “Word behind the words” that is from God, as many liberal and neoorthodox interpreters maintain. “All Scripture is inspired by God [lit., ‘God-breathed’]” (2 Tim. 3:16). Scripture means “writings,” and refers specifically to what God’s chosen men wrote by His revelation and inspiration, not to everything they said and wrote. It refers, as Paul explains, to the things freely given to us by God, to the “God-breathed” words they recorded. When Jesus responded to Satan’s first temptation in the wilderness, He said (quoting from Deut. 8:3), “Man shall not live on bread alone, but on every word that proceeds out of the mouth of God” (Matt. 4:4). God gave His own Word in His own words. “Every word that proceeds out the mouth of God” is revealed, inspired, and authoritative. Which things we also speak, not in words taught by human wisdom, but in those taught by the Spirit, combining spiritual thoughts with spiritual words.
MacArthur, J. F., Jr. (1984). 1 Corinthians (pp. 62–63). Moody Press.
Now we have received not the spirit of the world but the Spirit who is from God, that we may know the things freely given to us by God. a. “Now we have received.” In the previous verse, Paul spoke in generalities that involved man’s spirit. But here he specifies the Corinthians and himself by using the plural personal pronoun we. This pronoun takes the first place in the Greek sentence and so receives emphasis. With this inclusive pronoun, Paul has come to the heart of the paragraph on God’s Spirit versus man’s spirit. He offers the comforting assurance that we have received the Spirit, whom God has given us. b. “Not the spirit of the world but the Spirit who is from God.” The negative clause not the spirit of the world has been interpreted in various ways: it describes the rulers of the world who crucified Jesus (v. 8); it denotes evil that has established its own rules and objectives (see 2 Cor. 4:4; 1 John 4:4; 5:19); it is equivalent to the wisdom of this world (1:20); it is the spirit in man that is worldly.
We say that the spirit of the world is the spirit that makes the world secular. From the time Adam and Eve fell into sin, the spirit of this world has revealed itself in opposition to God’s Spirit: for example, in the lawlessness prior to the flood, in the building of the tower of Babel, and in the false teachers who sought to destroy the church in apostolic days (2 Peter 2; 1 John 4:1–3; Jude 4–19). It is the spirit that rules a person in whom God’s Spirit does not live. It is a power that determines “all the thinking and doing of men, which places itself over against the Spirit who is of God.” By contrast, as Paul expresses in eloquent Greek, believers have received the Spirit that proceeds from God (see John 15:26; Gal. 4:6). God’s Spirit comes to the believers from a sphere other than this world and conveys knowledge of God, creation, redemption, and restoration. Since Pentecost, God’s Spirit dwells in the hearts of all believers (6:19). c. “That we may know the things freely given to us by God.” Why does God grant us the gift of his Spirit? The answer is that we may know innately the things that pertain to our salvation. The Spirit teaches us the treasures we have in Christ Jesus, whom God handed over to die on a cross so that we have eternal life (1 John 5:13). If God delivered up his Son, he certainly will graciously give us in him all things (Rom. 8:32). Believers appropriate the gift of salvation through the work of the Holy Spirit. They realize through faith that in Christ sin and guilt have been removed from them, that God is reconciled to them, and that the way to heaven has been opened for them.
Kistemaker, S. J., & Hendriksen, W. (1953–2001). Exposition of the First Epistle to the Corinthians (Vol. 18, pp. 88–89). Baker Book House.
The lip of truth shall be established for ever; but a lying tongue is but for a moment.Proverbs 12:19
Truth wears well. Time tests it, but it right well endures the trial. R; then, I have spoken the truth and have for the present to suffer for it, I must be content to wait. If also I believe the truth of God and endeavor to declare it, I may meet with much opposition, but I need not fear, for ultimately the truth must prevail.
What a poor thing is the temporary triumph of falsehood! “A lying lip is but for a moment!” It is a mere gourd which comes up in a night and perishes in a night; and the greater its development the more manifest its decay. On the other hand, how worthy of an immortal being is the avowal and defense of that truth which can never change; the everlasting gospel, which is established in the immutable truth of an unchanging God! An old proverb saith, “He that speaks truth shames the devil.” Assuredly he that speaks the truth of God will put to shame all the devils in hell and confound all the seed of the serpent which now hiss out their falsehoods.
O my heart, take care that thou be in all things on the side of truth, both in small things and great; but specially, on the side of Him by whom grace and truth have come among men!
The doctrine of predestination, including both election and reprobation, has long been controversial. The Bible clearly teaches that God is sovereign over all things. He saves sinners by his grace alone. God elects his people and rejects others. Yet the Bible also teaches that people bear personal responsibility for their actions.
People have many questions about predestination. Here are some of the most common ones.
1. Does God will the salvation of all people?
Paul says that God “will have all men to be saved, and to come unto the knowledge of the truth” (1 Tim. 2:4). However, this Scripture cannot mean that God chooses to save every human being. God accomplishes all his will (Ps. 135:6), but he does not save all mankind (Matt. 7:13–14).
It is better to understand “all men” to refer to people from every kind and category. God saves kings and subjects, rich and poor, educated and uneducated, women and men, young and old. Paul calls for prayer for “all men; for kings, and for all that are in authority” (1 Tim. 2:1–2). Therefore, we should tell the gospel to all kinds of people. We do not know whom God chose until, by his grace, they are saved by faith in Christ to the praise of his glory (Eph. 1:3–4, 11–14).
2. How could a good and loving God choose to damn some people?
It is certainly true that God is love (1 John 4:8). He is good to all people (Luke 6:35). But God is free to exercise his love as he chooses (Ex. 33:19). He did not choose to give eternal life to all sinners. Rather, he chose to save some sinners but to give others the punishment that their sins deserve.
God is the source of all good (James 1:17). Likewise, suffering comes as God’s punishment of sin (Rom. 5:12; 6:23). Thus, God damns sinners not because of any malice in him, but because of his justice against sin. Even in his wrath, God remains good. It is sinners who are evil. The Lord says, “O Israel, thou hast destroyed thyself; but in me is thine help” (Hos. 13:9).
3. Why should we teach predestination instead of just preaching the gospel?
We should preach the gospel. But we should also teach predestination. It gives solid hope to those who believe the gospel. Paul says,
We know that all things work together for good to them that love God, to them who are the called according to his purpose. For whom he did foreknow, he also did predestinate to be conformed to the image of his Son, that he might be the firstborn among many brethren. Moreover whom he did predestinate, them he also called: and whom he called, them he also justified: and whom he justified, them he also glorified. (Rom. 8:28–30)
Since God chose whom he would save, he will bring his chosen ones to glory.
Paul then asks a series of questions (Rom. 8:31–39). If God is for us, who can be against us? If God gave up his Son for us, how will he not also grace us with all things? Who will bring any charge against God’s elect? Who will condemn us? What can separate us from God’s love in Christ? Every one of these questions drives us to the same happy conclusion: those in Christ may rest assured that God’s love will never fail them. God will bring them safely through every sorrow to be “more than conquerors” (Rom. 8:37). Therefore, election is a message of enduring hope.
Ultimately, it boils down to this: God is God. Predestination brings us to face the absolute and incomprehensible glory of God, and we must worship him.
4. Did God choose those whom he foreknew would trust and obey him to the end?
The golden chain of salvation begins with those “whom he did foreknow” (Rom. 8:29; cf. 1 Pet. 1:2). This might be taken to mean that he chose them because he knew they would believe—a doctrine called conditional election. But Paul rejects the idea that God’s predestination was based on man’s future actions. He says of Jacob and Esau, “For the children being not yet born, neither having done any good or evil, that the purpose of God according to election might stand, not of works, but of him that calleth” (Rom. 9:11).
What, then, does it mean that God “foreknew” those whom he predestined (Rom. 8:29)? In the Holy Scriptures, “to know” often means to love or to choose with approval and blessing (Gen. 18:19; Ps. 1:6; Jer. 1:5). Therefore, Paul means that God predetermined those whom he loved and chose beforehand to become like Christ. Augustine said, “He chose us, not because we believed, but that we might believe, lest we should be said first to have chosen Him, and so His word be false (which be it far from us to think possible), ‘Ye have not chosen me, but I have chosen you [John 15:16].’ ”1
5. If God’s election cannot fail, then why did his chosen people reject Christ?
Paul was very sad that many of his fellow Jews did not believe in Christ (Rom. 9:1–3). He said, “My heart’s desire and prayer to God for Israel is, that they might be saved” (Rom. 10:1). We, too, must grieve over the lost and pray for their salvation.
But the sad condition of many Jews does not mean that God’s plan failed. Paul says, “They are not all Israel, which are of Israel” (Rom. 9:6). There are two Israels, the physical descendants of Abraham and his spiritual descendants (Rom. 9:8). The latter are Abraham’s descendants by God’s election. God chose Isaac but not Ishmael, though they had the same father (Rom. 9:7–9). God chose Jacob but not Esau, though they had the same father and mother (Rom. 9:10–12). Therefore, God’s election did not fail. He has always chosen some but not others.
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6. Did God choose people for salvation as a group or as individuals?
Some people argue that Romans 9 is not about individuals but about groups. They say that God does not choose individual people for salvation but only the whole group of those who believe in Christ—whoever they might be. This idea is called corporate election.
But Romans 9 is about the salvation of individuals whom God chose. The main idea of Romans is salvation. In chapters 9 and 10 of Romans, Paul focuses on the salvation of Jewish individuals (Rom. 9:1–3; 10:1). He talks about being “children of God” (Rom. 9:8). God’s saving “call” is “not of works” (Rom. 9:11; cf. 2 Tim. 1:9). Paul speaks in terms of individuals, what each one does, and whether God has mercy on each one.
God predestined individuals, just as he calls individuals, justifies individuals, and will glorify individuals (Rom. 8:30). He did not choose an idea (“believers” or “the church”). He chose people (Eph. 1:4; 2 Thess. 2:13). Paul can even say to an individual Christian that he is “chosen in the Lord” (Rom. 16:13).
7. Is God unjust in choosing to save some but not all?
Paul expects someone to ask, “Is there unrighteousness with God?” He answers firmly, “God forbid” (Rom. 9:14). Paul explains that God has total freedom to show mercy on whom he pleases. He quotes the Lord’s statement, “I will have mercy on whom I will have mercy, and I will have compassion on whom I will have compassion” (Rom. 9:15). God’s grace is a free gift apart from any human choice or effort: “So then it is not of him that willeth, nor of him that runneth, but of God that sheweth mercy” (Rom. 9:16).
Paul also quotes what the Lord said to wicked Pharaoh: “For this same purpose have I raised thee up, that I might shew my power in thee, and that my name might be declared throughout all the earth” (Rom. 9:17).
God ordained Pharaoh’s defiance and disobedience to glorify himself. Paul concludes, “Therefore hath he mercy on whom he will have mercy, and whom he will he hardeneth” (Rom. 9:18). This is not about God being just or fair, but about the absolute sovereignty and freedom of his mercy to sinners.
8. If God chose whom he saves, how can he blame man for his sin?
Paul again expects an objection: “Why doth he yet find fault? For who hath resisted his will?” (Rom. 9:19). Paul’s answer is breathtaking, for he makes no attempt to explain God’s ways. Instead, the apostle says, “Who are you, O man, to answer back to God?” (Rom. 9:20 ESV). The greatness of God demands that we be silent in such matters.
Paul compares God to a potter who has the right to make different vessels out of the same clay (Rom. 9:21). Some people are “vessels of wrath fitted to destruction” for God “to shew his wrath, and to make his power known” (Rom. 9:22). Others are “vessels of mercy, which he had afore prepared unto glory” so he could “make known the riches of his glory” (Rom. 9:23). God has the right to choose because he is God. He also has the right to judge because he is God. Ultimately, it boils down to this: God is God. Predestination brings us to face the absolute and incomprehensible glory of God, and we must worship him (Rom. 9:33–36).
Notes:
Augustine, On the Predestination of the Saints, 19.38, in NPNF1, 5:517.
Joel R. Beeke (PhD, Westminster Theological Seminary) has written over one hundred books. He is chancellor and professor of systematic theology and homiletics at Puritan Reformed Theological Seminary; a pastor of the Heritage Reformed Congregation in Grand Rapids, Michigan; the editor of Banner of Sovereign Grace Truth; the board chairman of Reformation Heritage Books; the president of Inheritance Publishers; and the vice president of the Dutch Reformed Translation Society.
Paul M. Smalley (DD, Puritan Reformed Theological Seminary) is faculty research and teaching assistant to Joel Beeke at Puritan Reformed Theological Seminary. He is also a part-time pastor at Grace Immanuel Reformed Baptist Church in Grand Rapids, Michigan, and previously served for twelve years as a Baptist pastor in churches in the midwestern United States.
The terms election and predestination are often used interchangeably, both referring to God’s gracious decree whereby he chooses some for eternal life.
It is pitiful how we can take the Bible teaching about predestination that should result in humility, praise, and comfort and instead talk about it with sinful pride, divisiveness, and anxiety.
Andy Naselli answers a few of the most common questions about the doctrine of predestination, including what the Bible really says about it and what impact this teaching may have on the idea of free will.
In this sermon, Laramie dives into Matthew 22:23-33 as the Sadducees—the religious liberals who denied the resurrection —attempt to trap Jesus with a question about a woman who married seven brothers. You’ll discover “The Trap” and “The Truth” that Jesus delivers
Welcome back to Contending for the Word. After exploring the marks of true revival, conviction of sin, repentance, and renewed devotion to Christ, it is vital that we now ask the opposite question, what is false revival?
Scripture warns that not every movement claiming to be a work of God actually is. In Jeremiah 23:16–22, the Lord exposes the false prophets who promised peace and blessing without repentance. “They speak visions of their own minds, not from the mouth of the Lord.” Their messages soothed the people’s consciences, but their hearts remained unchanged.
True revival humbles people before God, false revival flatters them.
False Revival Exalts Man, Not God
The first sign of a counterfeit revival is that it draws attention to people rather than to the Lord. The false prophets in Jeremiah’s day spoke what the people wanted to hear. They appealed to emotion and pride, not to truth.
False revival thrives where God’s Word is replaced by human ideas, experiences, or personalities. When movements center on leaders, feelings, or claims of new revelation instead of Scripture, they cease to glorify God. Genuine revival always magnifies Christ, false revival magnifies man.
False Revival Offers Comfort Without Repentance
Jeremiah 23:17, “It shall be well with you, they say to everyone who stubbornly follows his own heart.”
They offered assurance without holiness, hope without humility, and peace without repentance. This is one of the clearest marks of false revival in any generation. It tells people what they want to hear rather than what they need to hear. It calls for enthusiasm, not brokenness, it celebrates emotion, not obedience. The message of cheap grace always produces counterfeit awakening. True revival calls sinners to repentance and faith in Christ, false revival leaves them comfortable in their sin.
False Revival Ignores the Word of God
Jeremiah 23:21-22, “I did not send the prophets, yet they ran, I did not speak to them, yet they prophesied. But if they had stood in my council, then they would have proclaimed my words to my people.”
False revival bypasses the authority of Scripture. It replaces preaching with performance, repentance with results, revelation with experiences. True revival begins with “Thus says the Lord”. The Spirit never contradicts or bypasses the Word He inspired. When movements claim to speak for God yet neglect Scripture, they lead people away from truth, not toward it.
False Revival Bears Temporary, Not Eternal Fruit
Matthew 7:16, “You will recognize them by their fruits.”
False revival may produce temporary excitement, crowds, and emotional displays, it cannot produce lasting holiness. When the emotion fades, the movement fades with it. True revival bears the fruit of transformed hearts, humility, holiness, and perseverance. False revival, like shallow soil, springs up quickly and withers when tested by truth.
Conclusion
False revival is dangerous because it imitates what is real while leading people away from Christ. It replaces repentance with emotion, doctrine with experience, and Scripture with spectacle.
The remedy is simple and profound, test every spirit by the Word of God. Those who truly stand on God’s Word will proclaim Him faithfully. May the Church reject every counterfeit and seek the genuine awakening that comes only when the Spirit and the Word work together to exalt Christ.
Does evil disprove God? If not, what is God’s purpose for evil? Why would a good God allow evil that seems to have no purpose, like the recent m*rder of Charlie Kirk? What is God’s ultimate solution to evil? Join Dr. Frank Turek in this LIVE presentation of, ‘If God, Why Evil?’ delivered at The Ohio State Univ. (Columbus, OH) on MON. 11/3 at 7:30 PM ET in the Ohio Union Archie Griffin Ballroom followed by Q&A which will take place to honor the life and legacy of Charlie. Thanks to our generous donors, this event is FREE and open to the public.
because the love of God has been poured out within our hearts through the Holy Spirit who was given to us. For while we were still helpless, at the right time Christ died for the ungodly. For one will hardly die for a righteous man; though perhaps for the good man someone would dare even to die. But God demonstrates His own love toward us, in that while we were yet sinners, Christ died for us. (5:5b–8)
A fourth marvelous link in the unbreakable chain that eternally binds believers to Christ is their possession of the divine love of God, which has been poured out within our hearts through the Holy Spirit who was given to us. When a person receives salvation through Jesus Christ, he enters a spiritual love relationship with God that lasts throughout all eternity. As the apostle makes unambiguous in verse 8, love of God does not here refer to our love for God but to His love for us. The most overwhelming truth of the gospel is that God loved sinful, fallen, rebellious mankind, so much “that He gave His only begotten Son, that whoever believes in Him should not perish, but have eternal life” (John 3:16). And as the apostle proclaims in verse 9 of this present chapter, if God loved us with so great a love before we were saved, when we were still His enemies, how much more does He love us now. As if that were not enough, God even graciously imparts His love to us. For those who accept His offer of salvation, God takes His indescribable and undeserved love and pours it out within the hearts of those who believe, through His own Holy Spirit who he gives to them. Taking the truth of eternal security out of the objective area of the mind, Paul now reveals that, in Christ, we are also given subjective evidence of permanent salvation, evidence that God Himself implants within our deepest being, in that we love the One who first loved us (1 John 4:7–10; cf. 1 Cor. 16:22). Poured out refers to lavish outpouring to the point of overflowing. Our heavenly Father does not proffer His love in measured drops but in immeasurable torrents. The very fact that God gives His Holy Spirit to indwell believers is itself a marvelous testimony to His love for us, because He would hardly indwell those whom He did not love. And it is only because of the indwelling Spirit that His children are able to truly love Him. Speaking to His disciples about the Holy Spirit, Jesus said, “He who believes in Me, as the Scripture said, ‘From his innermost being shall flow rivers of living water’ ” (John 7:38; cf. v. 39). Those rivers of blessing can flow out of believers only because of the divine rivers of blessing, including the blessing of divine love, that God has poured into them. In the same way, our spiritual security is not in our ability to live godly but in the power of the indwelling Holy Spirit to make us godly. Only God can make men godly, and the Spirit’s leading us into godliness is one of the great evidences of salvation. “For all who are being led by the Spirit of God,” Paul declares, “these are sons of God” (Rom. 8:14). With the longing to love, even the genuine desire to be godly is produced by the Holy Spirit. Whenever we sincerely aspire to righteous living, whenever we have an earnest desire to pray, whenever we yearn to study God’s Word, whenever we long to worship the Lord Jesus Christ with all our hearts, we know we are being led by the Holy Spirit. Whenever we experience the awesome awareness that God is indeed our heavenly Father, it is “the Spirit Himself [who] bears witness with our spirit that we are children of God, and if children, heirs also, heirs of God and fellow heirs with Christ” (Rom. 8:16–17). The natural man has no such desires or experiences, and even Christians would not have them apart from being indwelt and led by the Holy Spirit. Because acknowledging His promises with the mind does not necessarily bring personal confidence to the heart, God makes provision for the emotional encouragement as well as the mental enlightenment of His children. When the Lord is given free reign in our lives, the Holy Spirit will bear fruit in and through us, the first fruit of which is love (Gal. 5:22). But when we grieve Him through our disobedience (Eph. 4:30), He cannot produce what He intends. Therefore, when we live in disobedience, we not only will not feel loving toward God but will not feel His love for us. With perhaps that truth in mind, Paul prayed for the Ephesian believers: “For this reason, I bow my knees before the Father, from whom every family in heaven and on earth derives its name, that He would grant you, according to the riches of His glory, to be strengthened with power through His Spirit in the inner man; so that Christ may dwell in your hearts through faith; and that you, being rooted and grounded in love, may be able to comprehend with all the saints what is the breadth and length and height and depth, and to know the love of Christ which surpasses knowledge, that you may be filled up to all the fulness of God” (Eph. 3:14–19). The Holy Spirit strengthens the inner man and enables him “to know the love of Christ which surpasses knowledge.” By the gracious work of the Spirit within us, our hearts are able to experience a depth of love that our minds are unable to grasp, “the love of Christ which surpasses knowledge.” Knowing that his readers would want to know more about the quality and character of the divine love that filled them, Paul reminds them of the greatest manifestation of God’s love in all history, perhaps in all eternity: For while we were still helpless, at the right time Christ died for the ungodly. While men were utterly helpless to bring themselves to God, He sent His only begotten Son, Jesus Christ, to die for us, notwithstanding the fact that we were ungodly and completely unworthy of His love. When we were powerless to escape from our sin, powerless to escape death, powerless to resist Satan, and powerless to please Him in any way, God amazingly sent His Son to die on our behalf. Natural human love is almost invariably based on the attractiveness of the object of love, and we are inclined to love people who love us. Consequently, we tend to attribute that same kind of love to God. We think that His love for us is dependent on how good we are or on how much we love Him. But as Jesus pointed out, even traitorous tax collectors were inclined to love those who loved them (Matt. 5:46). And as theologian Charles Hodge observed, “If [God] loved us because we loved him, he would love us only so long as we love him, and on that condition; and then our salvation would depend on the constancy of our treacherous hearts. But as God loved us as sinners, as Christ died for us as ungodly, our salvation depends, as the apostle argues, not on our loveliness, but on the constancy of the love of God” (Commentary on the Epistle to the Romans [Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1974 reprint], pp. 136–37). God’s immense love is supremely demonstrated by Christ’s dying for the ungodly, for totally unrighteous, undeserving, and unlovable mankind. In the human realm, by contrast, Paul observes that one will hardly die for a righteous man; though perhaps for the good man someone would dare even to die. Paul is not contrasting a righteous man with a good man, but is simply using those terms synonymously. His point is that it is uncommon for a person to sacrifice his own life in order to save the life even of someone of high character. Still fewer people are inclined to give their lives to save a person they know to be a wicked scoundrel. But God was so inclined, and in that is our security and assurance. Saved, we can never be as wretched as we were before salvation—and He loved us totally then. But God demonstrates His own love toward us, in that while we were yet sinners, Christ died for us. That sort of self-less, undeserved love is completely beyond human comprehension. Yet that is the love that the just and infinitely holy God had toward us even while we were yet sinners. The God who hates every sinful thought and every sinful deed nevertheless loves the sinners who think and do those things, even while they are still hopelessly enmeshed in their sin. Even when men openly hate God and do not have the least desire to give up their sin, they are still the objects of God’s redeeming love as long as they live. Only at death does an unbeliever cease to be loved by God. After that, he is eternally beyond the pale of God’s love and is destined irrevocably for His wrath. In Christ, we are forever linked to God by His love, demonstrated in (positive) blessings and (negative) mercy.
THE BELIEVER’S CERTAINTY OF DELIVERANCE
Much more then, having now been justified by His blood, we shall be saved from the wrath of God through Him. For if while we were enemies, we were reconciled to God through the death of His Son, much more, having been reconciled, we shall be saved by His life. (5:9–10)
As if the first four were not enough to completely overwhelm us with assurance, there is a fifth link in the unbreakable chain that eternally binds believers to Christ, which is their certainty of deliverance from God’s judgment. The phrase much more then indicates that what follows is even more overwhelming and significant than what has preceded, astounding and wonderful as that is. Having been justified by His blood refers to the initial aspect of salvation, which for believers is past. In light of the fact that we already have been justified, Paul is saying, we are assured of being saved from the wrath of God through Him, that is, through Christ. Because we are now identified with Christ and are adopted as God’s children through Him, we are no longer “children of wrath” (Eph. 2:3). As part of His atoning work, Jesus delivered us “from the wrath to come” (1 Thess. 1:10; cf. 5:9), because on the cross He took upon Himself the penalty and suffered the wrath that we deserve. Paul’s next thought is closely related to the previous one (v. 9) and is the central message of this passage: For if while we were enemies, we were reconciled to God through the death of His Son, much more, having been reconciled, we shall be saved by His life. If God had the power and the will to redeem us in the first place, how much more, does He have the power and the will to keep us redeemed? In other words, if God brought us to Himself through the death of His Son when we were His enemies, how much more, now that we are His reconciled children, will He keep us saved by the life of His Son? If the dying Savior reconciled us to God, surely the living Savior can and will keep us reconciled. The thrust of this truth for believers is that our Savior not only delivered us from sin and its judgment, but also delivers us from uncertainty and doubt about that deliverance. If God has already made sure our rescue from sin, death, and future judgment, how could our present spiritual life possibly be in jeopardy? How can a Christian, whose past and future salvation are secured by God, be insecure during the time between? If sin was no barrier to the beginning of our redemption, how can it become a barrier to its completion? If sin in the greatest degree could not prevent our becoming reconciled, how can sin in lesser degree prevent our staying reconciled? If God’s grace covers the sins even of His enemies, how much more does it cover the sins of His children? Paul here reasons from the greater to the lesser. It is a greater work of God to bring sinners to grace than to bring saints to glory, because sin is further from grace than grace is from glory. Every blessing a Christian has comes from Christ. Through Him we have peace with God (Rom. 5:1), grace and the hope of glory (v. 2), perseverance, proven character, and hope (vv. 3–4), God’s love poured into our hearts by His Spirit, who is Himself the Savior’s gift to us (v. 5), deliverance from sin by His atoning death (vv. 6–8), deliverance from God’s wrath (v. 9), reconciliation with God the Father (v. 10a), and preservation during this present life (v. 10b).
MacArthur, J. F., Jr. (1991). Romans (Vol. 1, pp. 283–287). Moody Press.
God’s Love Commended
Romans 5:6–8
You see, at just the right time, when we were still powerless, Christ died for the ungodly. Very rarely will anyone die for a righteous man, though for a good man someone might possibly dare to die. But God demonstrates his own love for us in this: While we were still sinners, Christ died for us.
There are a number of preachers today, some of them quite famous, who do not want to say anything unpleasant about sinful human nature. They describe their approach to Christianity as “possibility thinking” and argue that people are already so discouraged about themselves that they do not need to be told that they are wicked. I do not know how such preachers could possibly preach on our text. They should want to, I think, Romans 5:6–8 (and verse 5, which precedes this paragraph) speak about the love that God has for us. The greatness of this love, which is mentioned here in Romans for the very first time, is an uplifting and positive theme. Besides, it is brought into the argument at this point to assure us that all who have been justified by faith in Christ have been saved because of God’s love for them and that nothing will ever be able to separate them from it. This is the climax to which we will also come at the end of Romans 8. Nothing could be more positive or more edifying than this theme. Yet Paul’s statement of the nature, scope, and permanence of God’s love is placed against the black backdrop of human sin, and rightly so. For, as Paul tells us: “God demonstrates his own love for us in this: While we were still sinners, Christ died for us” (v. 8). How can we appreciate or even understand that statement without speaking about the evil natures of those whom God has thus loved? This is a very practical matter for two reasons. First, since Paul is describing the love of God against the dark background of human sin, he is saying that it is only against this background that we are able to form a true picture of how great the love of God is. In other words, if we think (as many do) that God loves us because we are somehow quite lovely or desirable, our appreciation of the love of God will be reduced by just that amount—just as a beautiful but very vain woman might have trouble appreciating the love of her husband, or of anyone else. If we think we deserve the best of everything, we will not appreciate the love we receive irrespective of our beauty, talent, or other supposedly admirable qualities. The second point is this: If we think we deserve God’s love, we cannot ever really be secure in it, because we will always be afraid that we may do something to lessen or destroy the depth of God’s love for us. It is only those who know that God has loved them in spite of their sin who can trust him to continue to show them favor.
God’s Love for Sinners
I begin with Paul’s description of the people God loves and has saved, and I ask you to notice the four powerful words used to portray them, three in the passage we are studying and one additional word in verse 10. They are “powerless,” “ungodly,” “sinners,” and “enemies.” It is important to know that we are all rightly described by each of these words.
Powerless. This word is translated in a variety of ways in our Bible versions: “weak,” “helpless,” “without strength,” “feeble,” “sluggish in doing right,” and so on. Only the strongest terms will do in this context, since the idea is that, left to ourselves, none of us is able to do even one small thing to please God or achieve salvation. One commentator distinguishes between “conditional impossibilities” and “unconditional impossibilities” in order to show that this kind of inability is truly unconditional. A conditional impossibility is one in which we are unable to do something unless something else happens. For example, I might find it impossible to repay a loan unless I should suddenly earn a large sum of money. Or I might be unable to accept an invitation to some social event unless a prior commitment is canceled. An unconditional impossibility is one which no possible change in circumstances can alter, and it is this that describes us in our pre-converted state. What specifically were we unable to do? We were unable to understand spiritual things (1 Cor. 2:14). We were unable to see the kingdom of God or enter it (John 3:3, 5). We were unable to seek God (Rom. 3:11). Paul elsewhere describes this inability vividly when he says that before God saved us we were “dead in [our] transgressions and sins” (Eph. 2:1). That is, we were no more able to respond to or seek God than a corpse is able to respond to stimuli of any kind.
Ungodly. This word conveys the same idea Paul expressed at the beginning of his description of the race in its rebellion against God: “The wrath of God is being revealed from heaven against all the godlessness and wickedness of men who suppress the truth by their wickedness” (Rom. 1:18). In these verses, “ungodly” and “godlessness” mean not so much that human beings are unlike God (though that is also true), but that in addition they are in a state of fierce opposition to him. God is sovereign, but they oppose him in his sovereignty. They do not want him to rule over them; they want to be free to do as they please. God is holy, and they oppose him in his holiness. This means that they do not accept his righteous and proper moral standards; they do not want their sinful acts and desires to be called into question. God is omniscient, and they oppose him for his omniscience. They are angry that he knows them perfectly, that nothing they think or do is hidden from his sight. They also oppose him for his immutability, since immutability means that God does not change in these or any of his other attributes.
Sinners. “Sinners” describes those who have fallen short of God’s standards, as Romans 3:23 says: “For all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God.” It means that we have broken God’s law and in this sense is probably parallel to the word wickedness in Romans 1:18, which was cited above. “Godlessness” is being opposed to God; that is, to have broken the first table of the law, which tells us that we are to worship and serve God only (cf. Matt. 22:37–38). “Wickedness” means to have broken the second table of the law; we have failed to treat others properly, to have respected them, and to have loved them as we love ourselves (cf. Matt. 22:39).
Enemies. The final word Paul uses to describe human beings apart from the supernatural work of God in their lives is “enemies,” though the word does not appear until verse 10. This summarizes what has been said by the first three terms, but it also goes beyond that. It affirms that not only are we unable to save ourselves, are unlike and opposed to God, and are violators of his law, but we are also opposed to God in the sense that we would attack him and destroy him if we could. Being like Satan in his desires, we would drag God from his throne, cast him to hell and crush him into nothingness—if that were possible—which is what many people actually tried to do when God came among them in the person of Jesus Christ. What a terrible picture of humanity! No wonder the possibility thinkers choose other, more uplifting themes to speak about! Yet it is only against this background that we see the brightness of God’s love. “You see,” writes Paul, “at just the right time, when we were still powerless, Christ died for the ungodly. Very rarely will anyone die for a righteous man, though for a good man someone might possibly dare to die. But God demonstrates his own love for us in this: While we were still sinners, Christ died for us” (vv. 6–8).
Love at the Cross
Any contrast has two sides, of course, and thus far we have looked only at one side. We have looked at the dark side: ourselves. We have seen that God loved us, not when we were lovely people who were seeking him out and trying to obey him, but when we were actually fighting him and were willing to destroy him if we could. That alone makes the measure of God’s love very great. However, we may also see the greatness of the love of God by looking at the bright side: God’s side. And here we note that God did not merely reach out to give us a helping hand, bestowing what theologians call common grace—sending rain on the just and unjust alike (cf. Matt. 5:45), for instance—but that he actually sent his beloved Son, the Lord Jesus Christ, to die for us. There is a further contrast, too, as Paul brings these great ideas together and compares what God has done in dying for sinners with what human beings might themselves do in certain circumstances. Paul points out that, while a human being might be willing to give his life for a righteous or, better yet, a morally superior woman or man under certain circumstances, Jesus died for us while we were still sinners, which is the precise opposite of being good, or righteous. In his excellent study of this text Donald Grey Barnhouse gives two illustrations of exceptionally great human love. In one story two men were trapped in a mine cave-in, and poisonous gas was escaping. One man had a wife and three children. He also had a gas mask, but his mask had been torn in the underground explosion and he would have perished apart from the act of the man who was trapped with him. This second man took off his own mask and forced it on the man who survived, saying, “You have Mary and the children; they need you. I am alone and can go.” When we hear of an act like this, we sense we are on hallowed ground. The other story concerns a tough youngster from the streets of one of our large cities. His sister had been crippled and needed an operation. The operation was provided for her. But after the operation the girl needed a blood transfusion, and the boy, her brother, was asked to volunteer. He was taken to her bedside and watched tight-lipped as a needle was inserted into his vein and blood was fed into his sister’s body. When the transfusion was over, the doctor put his arm on the boy’s shoulder and told him that he had been very brave. The youngster knew nothing about the nature of a blood transfusion. But the doctor knew even less about the actual bravery of the boy—until the boy looked up at him and asked steadily, “Doc, how long before I croak?” He had gotten the idea that he would have to die to save his sister, and he had thought that he was dying drop by drop as his blood flowed into her veins. But he did it anyway! These stories sober us, because in them we recognize something of the highest human love. Yet, when we read of the love of God in Romans 5, we learn that it was not for those who were close to him or who loved him that Jesus died—but for those who were opposed to God and were his enemies. It is on this basis that God commends his love to us.
An Argument for Hard Hearts
Isn’t it astounding that God should need to commend his love to us? We are told in the Bible, though we should know it even without being told, that all good gifts come from God’s hands (James 1:17). It is from God that we receive life and health, food and clothing, love from and fellowship with other people, and meaningful work. These blessings should prove the love of God beyond any possibility of our doubting it. Yet we do doubt it. We are insensitive to God’s love, and God finds it necessary to commend his love by reminding us of the death of his Son. So it is at the cross that we see the love of God in its fullness. What a great, great love this is! You may recall that when the Swiss theologian Karl Barth was in this country some years before his death, someone asked a question at one of his question-and-answer sessions that went like this: “Dr. Barth, what is the greatest thought that has ever gone through your mind?” The questioner probably expected some complicated and incomprehensible answer, as if Einstein were being asked to explain the theory of relativity. But after he had thought a long while, Barth replied by saying: “Jesus loves me, this I know. For the Bible tells me so.” This was a profound answer and a correct one. For there is nothing greater that any of us could think about or know than that Jesus loves us and has shown his love by dying in our place.
The Greatness of God’s Love
I would like to close this study by reflecting on the greatness of God’s love for us, but I wonder how anyone can do that adequately. How can any merely human words sufficiently express this wonder? Some years ago I was preaching through the Gospel of John and had come to that greatest of all verses about the love of God: John 3:16. “For God so loved the world that he gave his one and only Son, that whoever believes in him shall not perish but have eternal life.” I wanted to say that the love of God is great, remembering that Ephesians 2:4 uses that very word: “But because of his great love for us.…” But the English word great is not great enough for this subject. The week before, I had been at Houghton College in New York, and I remembered having said that I thought the work of the college was great, that some of the points the other speakers had made were great, and that I had had a great time. I was sincere in my use of the word great. But what were such uses of the word compared to the use of the word to describe God’s love? Someone once tried to express the greatness of God’s love by printing on a little card a special arrangement of John 3:16, with certain descriptive phrases added. The twelve parts of the verse were arranged down one side of the card, and the added phrases were printed across from them. It went like this:
God the greatest Lover so loved the greatest degree the world the greatest company that he gave the greatest act his only begotten Son the greatest gift that whosoever the greatest opportunity believeth the greatest simplicity in him the greatest attraction should not perish the greatest promise but the greatest difference have the greatest certainty everlasting life the greatest possession
The title placed over the whole was: “Christ—the Greatest Gift.” Let me try to express the greatness of the love of God by the words of a hymn by F. M. Lehman. Lehman wrote most of this hymn, but the final stanza (the best, in my opinion) was added to it later, after it had been found scratched on the wall of a room in an asylum by a man said to have been insane. The first and last verses of the hymn and the chorus, go as follows:
The love of God is greater far
Than tongue or pen can ever tell;
It goes beyond the highest star,
And reaches to the lowest hell.
The guilty pair, bowed down with care,
God gave his Son to win:
His erring child he reconciled
And rescued from his sin.
Could we with ink the ocean fill,
And were the skies of parchment made;
Were every stalk on earth a quill,
And every man a scribe by trade;
To write the love of God above
Would drain the ocean dry;
Nor could the scroll contain the whole,
Tho stretched from sky to sky.
Oh, love of God, how rich and pure!
How measureless and strong!
It shall forevermore endure—
The saints’ and angels’ song.
Did you know that the love of God seemed so great to the biblical writers that they invented, or at least raised to an entirely new level of meaning, a brand-new word for love? The Greek language was rich in words for love. There was the word storgē, which referred to affection, particularly within the family. There was philia, from which we get “philharmonic” and “philanthropy” and the place name “Philadelphia.” It refers to a love between friends. A third word was erōs, which has given us “erotic,” and which referred to sexual love. This was a rich linguistic heritage. Yet, when the Old Testament was translated into Greek and when the New Testament writers later wrote in Greek, they found that none of these common Greek words was able to express what they wanted. They therefore took another word without strong associations and poured their own, biblical meaning into it. The new word was agapē, which thereby came to mean the holy, gracious, sovereign, everlasting, and giving love of God that we are studying here. Alas, I feel that even yet I have not begun to explain how great the love of God is. There is nothing to be done but to go back to our text and read again: “You see, at just the right time, when we were still powerless, Christ died for the ungodly. Very rarely will anyone die for a righteous man, though for a good man someone might possibly dare to die. But God demonstrates his own love for us in this: While we were still sinners, Christ died for us.” Perhaps I should say one more thing on this subject: If you do not yet fully appreciate (or perhaps have not even begun to appreciate) the greatness of the love God has for you, the explanation is probably that you have never really thought of yourself as God saw you in your fallen state. Perhaps you have never thought of yourself as someone who was utterly without strength or powerless before God saved you. Perhaps you have never considered yourself to have been ungodly. Nor a sinner. Nor God’s enemy. But that is what you were—and still are if you have never come to Christ in order to be justified. It is only if you can recognize the truth of these descriptions that you can begin to appreciate the love that God holds out to you through the death of his Son. If you have never responded to this great overture of the divine love, let me encourage you to do that, assuring you that there is no greater truth in all the universe. Can you think of anything greater? Of course, you can’t. How could anybody? God loves you. Jesus died for you. Let those truly great thoughts move you to abandon your sin, love God in return, and live for Jesus.
Full Salvation
Romans 5:9–11
Since we have now been justified by his blood, how much more shall we be saved from God’s wrath through him! For if, when 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 by his life! Not only is this so, but we also rejoice in God through our Lord Jesus Christ, through whom we have now received reconciliation.
I have been expounding Romans 5:1–11 for five studies now—this is the sixth—and in every one of these studies I have said that the point of these verses is to assure Christians of their salvation. They are to know that they are eternally secure in Christ so that they might be able to rejoice in God fully. In this study we find the same idea. I might be inclined to apologize for this repetition were it not for the fact that this is clearly the emphasis of the chapter—and that it is going to continue in one form or another until the end of chapter 8. This has not been mere repetition, however, since the thesis (which is repeated) has been supported by a variety of arguments:
We can be assured of salvation because God has made peace with us through the atoning work of Jesus Christ.
We can be assured of salvation because, through that same work of Christ, we have been brought into a new relationship with God in which we continue to stand.
We can be assured of salvation because of the sure and certain hope that we shall see God.
We can be assured of salvation because of the way we are able to react to sufferings in this life. We see God’s purposes in them and therefore rejoice in them, which unbelievers cannot do.
We can be assured of salvation because God sent Jesus Christ to die for us, not when we were saved people, as we are now, but when we were God’s sworn enemies. In this last section, Paul provides yet another argument or, what is probably more accurate to say, draws his previous arguments together: “Since we have now been justified by his blood, how much more shall we be saved from God’s wrath through him! For if, when 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 by his life! Not only is this so, but we also rejoice in God through our Lord Jesus Christ, through whom we have now received reconciliation.”
Sound Logic
In the sayings that have come down to us from the great Rabbi Hillel there are some principles for Bible interpretation that Paul, as a Jewish thinker, frequently used in his writings. One is called qal wʾchomer, from the Hebrew words for “light” and “heavy.” It refers to a form of arguing in which, if a lesser thing is true, a greater thing must clearly be true also. Here is an example from the teaching of Jesus: “If you, then, though you are evil, know how to give good gifts to your children, how much more will your Father in heaven give good gifts to those who ask him!” (Matt. 7:11). Obviously, if we who are evil know how to do good to those who are close to us (this is the “light” part of the comparison), God, who is utterly good (this is the “heavy” part), will do good to his children. A second principle related to the light/heavy argument is the opposite, an argument from the “heavy” to the “light.” It argues that if something great is true, then something lesser in the same category will obviously be true also. Paul uses this principle twice in these verses:
“Since we have now been justified by his blood, how much more shall we be saved from God’s wrath through him!” (v. 9), and
“For if, when 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 by his life!” (v. 10). Each of these arguments is based upon things God has already done for us through the death of Christ. They are great works: justification on the one hand, and reconciliation on the other. They are so great that they are used by God to commend his love to us, as Paul stated earlier. But if God has already done such great works on our behalf, justifying us in Christ when we were ungodly and reconciling us to himself when we were his enemies, God will obviously continue his work in the lesser task of seeing us through life and through the final judgment.
Saved from God’s Wrath
When we look at verse 9, we have a tendency to think that we have already heard everything this verse has to teach. After all, “wrath” is the term we began with back in Romans 1:18, and the doctrine of “justification” was developed fully and compellingly in Romans 3. Besides, Romans 5:9 seems to be almost an identical repeat of verse 1 of this chapter. It is true, of course, that this is the first time we have encountered the word saved in the letter. But what have we been talking about all this time if it has not been salvation? To understand what is happening we have to realize that “saved” is used in at least three different ways in the Bible, in three different tenses. Sometimes it refers to something past, at other times to something present, sometimes to things yet to come. Let me illustrate. Suppose you are a Christian and that someone asks you, “Are you saved?” How do you respond? I suppose you would most likely just say, “Yes, I am.” But it would be possible for you to answer in three different ways, the answer you gave (“Yes, I am”) being only one of them. If you are thinking of what Jesus accomplished on your behalf by dying for you on the cross, it would be correct to have answered as you did, for Jesus did save you by his substitutionary death. But if you are thinking of the present and of what God is accomplishing in you day by day, it would also be correct to say, “I am being saved.” Paul himself uses the word this second way in 1 Corinthians 1:18: “For the message of the cross is foolishness to those who are perishing, but to us who are being saved it is the power of God.” This verse means that God works through the power of the cross to save us from sin now. Third, you could think in future terms and answer the question by saying, “No, I am not saved yet, but I will be when Jesus returns.” In this case you would be looking forward to your future glorification when the work begun in the past by Jesus and continued into the present by the power of the Holy Spirit, who works in us, will be perfected. In that day we will be delivered even from the presence of sin and made like Jesus forever. I mention these three tenses of the word, because it is important to see that it is in the third sense, the future sense of salvation, that Paul speaks here. He is not denying the other tenses, particularly not the first. But he is thinking of the judgment to come and is saying that because we have already been justified by God on the basis of the death of Christ, we can be certain of being saved from the outpouring of God’s wrath in the final day. D. Martyn Lloyd-Jones says, “The apostle’s argument is that this method, this way of salvation that God has planned, is a complete whole, and therefore, if we have been justified by Christ’s blood we are joined to Christ, we are in Christ, and we shall therefore be saved by him completely and perfectly.” Or we could put it like this: If God has already justified us on the basis of Jesus’ atoning death, if he has already pronounced his verdict, any verdict rendered at the final judgment will be only a confirming formality.
Reconciled
Arguing from the “heavy” to the “light” is, if anything, even more apparent in verse 10, where Paul speaks of reconciliation. I begin with the “heavy” part. What is this “heavy” thing God has done for us? It is the very work we were looking at in detail in the last study. There we were dealing with the love of God, and we saw that the basis upon which God commends his love to us is that it caused him to send his Son, the Lord Jesus Christ, to die for us while we were yet sinners. Our sinfulness was spelled out in three powerful terms, and these (as we saw) are followed by a fourth term in verse 10. Paul describes us as powerless, ungodly, sinners, and enemies. Let us review those terms:
“Powerless” means that we are unable to help ourselves. It is what theologians mean by total depravity, not that we are all as bad as we could possibly be, but that we are all equally and totally incapable of doing anything to save ourselves. We are not able to seek out and eventually come even to understand the way of salvation.
“Ungodly” means that we are opposed to God in his godly nature. We do not like him for being who he is.
“Sinners” means that we are violators of God’s moral law, particularly that second table of the law meant to govern our conduct toward other persons.
“Enemies,” the word used in the verses we are studying now, is the worst term of all. It means not only that we dislike God in his godly nature, but that we are so opposed to God in that nature that we would destroy him if we could. Like a soldier approaching his counterpart in an enemy army in wartime, we consider it a matter of “kill or be killed.” We think of God’s law as suffocatingly oppressive and destructive of who we want to be. So we are set on destroying God or at least destroying his influence so far as the living of our lives is concerned. But, says Paul, it is while we were like this that God reconciled us to himself through Jesus’ death. “Reconcile” means to remove the grounds of hostility and transform the relationship, changing it from one of enmity to one of friendship. In our case, as Paul has shown earlier, it meant taking us out of the category of enemies and bringing us into God’s family as privileged sons and daughters. If God did that for us while we were enemies, Paul reasons, he is certainly going to save us from the final outpouring of his wrath on the day of judgment, now that we are family members. If God has done the greater thing, he will do the lesser. If he has saved us while we were enemies, he will certainly save us as friends.
Rejoice in God
The last verse of our text, which also marks the end of the first half of Romans 5, says that now, having been reconciled to God, “we also rejoice in God through our Lord Jesus Christ.…” There is a sense in which this idea returns us to where we started out, since the first sentence of Romans 5 speaks of just such a rejoicing: “we rejoice in the hope of the glory of God.” But careful reading will show that the object of our rejoicing is not the same in both cases. In verse 2, our rejoicing is in “hope of the glory of God.” That is, it is in our glorification. Knowing that we are going to be glorified is a cause of great joy for us. However, in verse 11, the object of our rejoicing is not our glorification, important as that is, but God himself who will accomplish it. And, of course, of the two ideas the second is obviously the greater. To rejoice in God is the greatest of all human activities. We affirm this in the response to the first question of the Westminster Shorter Catechism. Question: “What is the chief end of man?” Answer: “Man’s chief end is to glorify God and to enjoy him forever.” Up to this point I have not marked the number of ways and times Paul has referred to God in the first half of Romans 5, but this is the place to do it. In the first paragraph, he has referred to each person of the Trinity: “… we have peace with God through our Lord Jesus Christ.… And we rejoice in the hope of the glory of God.… And hope does not disappoint us, because God has poured out his love into our hearts by the Holy Spirit …” (vv. 1–2, 5, emphasis added). In the passage as a whole, the Holy Spirit is referred to once, God the Father seven times, and the Lord Jesus Christ five times, plus four more times in which Jesus is referred to by a personal pronoun. What exactly shall we rejoice in, if we are to “rejoice in God”? We can rejoice in any one or all of his attributes. Our passage suggests these:
God’s wisdom. Several chapters further on in Romans, after Paul has traced the marvels of God’s great and gradually unfolding salvation work in history, he will cry out: “Oh, the depth of the riches of the wisdom and knowledge of God! How unsearchable his judgments, and his paths beyond tracing out!” (Rom. 11:33). But even at this point in our study we can marvel at a wisdom so great as to be able to save powerless, ungodly, sinful enemies. The question is: How can God save sinners without ignoring or otherwise condoning their sin? How can he save those who are filthy without dirtying himself? How can he be both just and the justifier of the ungodly? The answer is: through Christ, through his death for us. But we would not have known this or even have been able to suggest it by ourselves. It took the wisdom of the all-wise God to devise such a plan of salvation. There is also a special display of God’s wisdom in the way suffering works for our good, as Paul has shown in verses 3 and 4.
God’s grace. Grace is usually defined as God’s favor to the undeserving. But we rejoice in God’s grace because, in our case, grace is favor not merely to the undeserving but to those who actually deserve the opposite. What do “enemies” deserve, after all? They deserve defeat and destruction. God did not treat us that way, however. Rather, he saved us through the work of Christ.
God’s power. We often forget God’s power when we think about salvation, reserving this theme for when we contemplate creation. But the Scripture speaks of God’s power being displayed preeminently at the cross. In fact, the earliest reference to the cross in the Bible does this: Genesis 3:15. In this verse God is speaking to Satan, describing what will happen when the Mediator comes: “And I will put enmity between you and the woman, and between your offspring and hers; he will crush your head, and you will strike his heel.” In this verse the cross is portrayed as a battlefield on which Satan and his hosts will be defeated. And so it was! The power of God was revealed at the cross when Satan’s power over us was broken. We rejoice in God’s power when we think of the cross, as well as in his other attributes.
God’s love. There are a number of attributes of God that may be learned from nature, chiefly his power and wisdom, and perhaps his grace. But the only place we can learn of God’s love is at the cross. Perhaps that is why this attribute is the only one explicitly developed in our passage: “But God demonstrates his own love for us in this: While we were still sinners, Christ died for us” (v. 8). It is when we look to the cross that we begin to understand what love is and how much God has loved us.
God’s immutability. Several times in these studies I have referred to immutability as something for which unregenerate men and women hate God, because he does not change in any of his other attributes. But it is important to say that, although in our unregenerate state we may hate God for his unchanging nature, in our regenerate state we find this something to rejoice in, since it means that God will not waver in his love and favor toward us. Having loved us and having sent the Lord Jesus Christ to save us from our sin, God will not now somehow suddenly change his mind and cast us off. His love, grace, wisdom, and other attributes will always remain as they have been, because he is immutable. Arthur W. Pink wrote of God’s immutability: “Herein is solid comfort. Human nature cannot be relied upon; but God can! However unstable I may be, however fickle my friends may prove, God changes not. If he varied as we do, if he willed one thing today and another tomorrow, if he were controlled by caprice, who could confide in him? But, all praise to his glorious name, he is ever the same.”
Do We Rejoice?
The last verse of this section says, “Not only is this so, but we also rejoice in God through our Lord Jesus Christ.…” This is a positive statement: “We rejoice!” It has led one commentator to say, “The one clear mark of a true Christian is that he always rejoices.” But do we rejoice? Have we actually come as far as Paul assumes we have in verse 11? Honesty compels us to admit that often we do not rejoice in God. Why is that? D. Martyn Lloyd-Jones gives a number of reasons, which I list for the sake of our self-examination:
A failure to grasp the truth of justification by faith only.
A failure to meditate as we ought, that is, a failure to think about what we do know.
A failure to draw the necessary conclusions from the Scriptures. I do not know if these are your failures (if you have failed to rejoice in God) or whether there is some other hindrance in your case, as there may be. But whatever the cause, anything that keeps us from rejoicing in God is inappropriate and should be overcome by us. I challenge you to overcome it. I challenge you to think about these great truths, meditate upon them, learn how great the love, power, wisdom, and grace of God toward you are. Then glory in God, as those who have known God throughout the long ages of human history have done before you. It will make a profound difference in your life, and you will be a blessing to others.
Boice, J. M. (1991–). Romans: The Reign of Grace (Vol. 2, pp. 535–550). Baker Book House.
“During the course of administration, and in order to disturb it, the artillery of the press has been levelled against us, charged with whatsoever its licentiousness could devise or dare.” —Thomas Jefferson (1805)
Thwarted terror plot in Dearborn: On Halloween morning, FBI Director Kash Patel reported that conspirators in a potential ISIS-inspired terror attack had been arrested. The arrests in Dearborn, Michigan, came months after the Arab-majority city’s mayor called a resident an Islamophobe for opposing a street named after a pro-jihadi. Undercover FBI agents discovered the plot in an online chatroom. Suspects had visited a shooting range to practice high-speed reloads with AK-47s. Those involved range in age from 16 to 20; two have been arrested, and three were questioned. A lawyer for one of the suspects asserts no terror plot existed, and the arrestees were just gamers with a legal interest in firearms.
Obama campaigns in VA: With election day tomorrow, Barack Obama has hit the campaign trail in Virginia. Why did Obama choose Virginia when Democrat Abigail Spanberger has maintained a consistent lead over Republican Lt. Gov. Winsome Earle-Sears? It appears that Obama’s primary aim was to gin up flagging support for controversial VA attorney general candidate Jay Jones, who infamously texted his murderous desires against the then-VA Republican House speaker in 2022 to a fellow lawmaker. At a rally with Spanberger and Jones, Obama expressed absolute cognitive dissonance: “[Spanberger] knows that if we want to make progress on the things that we care about, we have to be able to disagree without calling each other nasty names or demonizing each other.” Obama is employing this sleight-of-hand rhetoric to dismiss Jones’s highly problematic record because he knows Democrats need the state’s AG to lead legal efforts against President Trump’s agenda.
Maine Nazi-tattooed Dem candidate loses another campaign member: Maine Democrat Senate candidate Graham Platner of Nazi tattoo infamy is having trouble keeping campaign staff. Just days after his second campaign manager quit, his treasurer, Victoria Perrone, decided to throw in the towel on Tuesday. Then, on Friday, Platner’s national finance director, Ronald Holmes III, announced his resignation from the campaign. “Somewhere along the way, I began to feel that my professional standards as a campaign professional no longer fully aligned with those of the campaign,” Holmes explained. On Saturday, Platner avoided addressing the resignations, simply posting on X, “Our movement is powered by the people of Maine. The people of Maine will not be propagandized. And they will not be bought.”
Trump designates Nigeria as Country of Particular Concern: China, Cuba, North Korea, Tajikistan, and eight other countries have some new company on the Countries of Particular Concern list after President Trump added Nigeria due to the ongoing slaughter of Christians in that country. Trump announced the change on Friday after arriving at Mar-a-Lago, where he asked House Appropriations members Riley Moore and Tom Cole to investigate and report back. Nigeria is home to the Islamist terror group Boko Haram, which is responsible for the attacks. At least 7,000 Christians are believed to have been killed this year, with more than 7,800 abducted. Political pundit Bill Maher brought attention to the issue in September, when he summed up the situation: “They are literally attempting to wipe out the Christian population of an entire country.”
Illegals DO get healthcare money: CMS Administrator Dr. Mehmet Oz has found in a preliminary audit of five states that taxpayer money is going to healthcare for illegals. More than $1.35 billion in federal Medicaid funds was spent in the “last few months” by California, Illinois, Washington, Oregon, Colorado, and Washington, DC, on illegal immigrants. This is only the most egregious example of taxpayer dollars being given to illegals, as Medicaid funding responsibilities are shared between the states and federal government, and the law only prevents federal dollars from going directly to illegals, allowing blue states to routinely skirt the law by using federal funds on their lawful citizens and state funds on illegals. The Left claims such funding is impossible because “it’s illegal,” but Dr. Oz has found the receipts to give the lie to their claim.
Border Patrol prevents over 6,000 terrorists from entering U.S.: According to the National Counterterrorism Center, 6,525 known or suspected terrorists (KSTs) were prevented from entering the U.S. this year. Furthermore, U.S. Customs and Border Protection and Border Patrol arrested over 3,000 KSTs in FY2025. During Joe Biden’s entire tenure, a total of 1,903 KSTs were apprehended, with the vast majority — 1,216 — arrested at the U.S. northern border with Canada. The big increase in KST arrests this year is due in large part to President Trump’s designation of criminal cartels Tren de Aragua, MS-13, and others as foreign terrorist organizations (FTOs). Designating these criminal cartels as FTOs has helped authorities prevent more KSTs “from entering our country that under the previous administration would have been allowed in,” noted National Counterterrorism Center Director Joe Kent. “This is just the tip of the iceberg. We’re doing this and more every day.”
Expanding suicide in Canada: Canada’s euthanasia program, known as MAiD (Medical Assistance in Dying), was started back in 2016 for people whose natural death was “reasonably foreseeable.” Now the advocacy group Dying With Dignity Canada is not only pushing for 12-year-olds to be included but also clamoring to allow 16- and 17-year-olds to be killed by a doctor without their parents’ consent. The group says “maturity,” not “chronological age,” should be the determining factor, but the problem with that argument is who decides or defines “maturity.” Dr. Aaron Kheriaty, a psychiatrist and director at the Ethics and Public Policy Center, correctly states, “Once you cross the line of accepting the basic premise of the euthanasia movement — which is that some lives are not worth living and therefore these people should be killed by the medical profession — then it’s very hard to argue that there should be any limitations.”
Federal judge rules Trump can’t require citizenship proof on voter form: District Judge Colleen Kollar-Kotelly of Washington, DC, ruled on Friday that the president is unable to add a proof-of-citizenship requirement to federal voter registration forms due to the separation of powers. Kollar-Kotelly explained that the Constitution grants election regulation to the states and Congress; therefore, the president and the U.S. Election Assistance Commission lack the authority to make these changes. Other parts of Trump’s order, such as a requirement that ballots be received by Election Day rather than merely postmarked on that day, still face legal challenges. If Americans want safe and fair elections, they will likely need to pressure Congress to address the issue.
AZ school under fire over mistaken mocking of Charlie Kirk’s assassination: Cienega High School in Vail, Arizona, finds itself in hot water over a controversial Halloween photo featuring the school’s math teachers wearing white T-shirts with the words “Problem Solved” printed on them and the left sides covered in blood-red paint. District Superintendent John Carruth claimed that the shirts had nothing to do with Kirk and were “part of a math-themed Halloween costume meant to represent solving tough math problems.” Carruth further noted that these shirts had also been worn last year, adding, “We are truly sorry for the hurt or upset it has caused.” Amazon did have an ad for this shirt as early as 2024. TPUSA spokesman Andrew Kolvet responded, “We’ve seen enough evil since Charlie’s murder that I’d actually be relieved if this isn’t another example.”
Headlines
Trump says tariffs critical to national security as Supreme Court prepares landmark decision (Fox News)
Sean Duffy says flight delays, cancellations will continue amid government shutdown (The Hill)
Judge blocks Trump National Guard deployment to Portland, citing lack of justification (Fox News)
He took us for $16 million. The least he can do is give us an interview.
That’s probably not how it went down in the CBS boardroom, but it’s no doubt what the purveyors of “60 Minutes” were thinking. Indeed, the network practically said as much on Friday when it announced the biggest of all “gets.”
“This is Mr. Trump’s first interview with 60 Minutes in five years — and his first since he sued and then settled with CBS parent company Paramount over a 2024 interview with then Democratic presidential candidate Kamala Harris. The settlement did not include an apology.”
Notice how the network didn’t mention the price tag of that settlement. I wonder why. It seems newsworthy, no? And get a load of that last sentence: “The settlement did not include an apology.”
No, they didn’t issue a formal apology for having interfered in the 2024 presidential election by deceptively editing their interview with a dim-witted and ill-prepared Kamala Harris. But they didn’t need to. They apologized 16 million times.
When it comes to their word and their integrity, the Big Three news networks would have us believe that they’re as ballsy as Tony Montana. In reality, though, they’re as craven as Groucho Marx: “Those are my principles, and if you don’t like them … well, I have others.”
But there’s a new sheriff in town at CBS News, and her name isn’t Billy Ray Valentine. It’s Bari Weiss.
Weiss is the classically liberal champion of free speech who left the lowly New York Times in disgust five years ago to found Common Sense, which became The Free Press. Then, last month, she sold her enterprise to CBS’s parent company, Paramount, for $150 million while at the same time negotiating an impressive twofer. As our Nate Jackson noted last month, “The Free Press will continue to operate, but as part of the deal, she has taken the helm as editor-in-chief of CBS News.”
That’s the backstory behind yesterday evening’s “60 Minutes” interview with Donald Trump — an interview that lasted more than an hour but was edited down to 28 minutes by CBS News.
Asked by host Norah O’Donnell about the government shutdown, Trump affixed the blame right where it belongs — with Senate Democrats: “[Chuck] Schumer is a basket case,” he said. “He’s become a kamikaze pilot.”
When asked by O’Donnell why he hasn’t done more to end the shutdown, Trump fired back: “I’m not gonna do it by being extorted by the Democrats who have lost their way. There’s something wrong with these people.”
True to CBS form, O’Donnell also asked a context-free question after displaying some context-free footage: “More recently,” she began, “Americans have been watching videos of ICE tackling a young mother, tear gas being used in a Chicago residential neighborhood, and the smashing of car windows.”
To which Trump responded, “Um hum.”
She then asked, “Have some of these raids gone too far?”
Trump, though, was in a counterpunching mood: “No,” he replied, “I think they haven’t gone far enough because we’ve been held back by the judges, by the liberal judges that were put in by Biden and by Obama.” Which, of course, is absolutely true. We’re either a nation of laws, or we aren’t. And everyone being snatched up by ICE has come into our country illegally.
O’Donnell also asked Trump about his decision last week to restart our testing of nuclear weapons. “We’re the only country that doesn’t test,” he said, “and I don’t wanna be the only country that doesn’t test.”
As it turns out, Trump made that announcement just prior to his summit meeting with Communist China’s Xi Jinping — which would explain why the commie dictator looked like he’d just swallowed a fishbone.
In the end, what was perhaps most remarkable about the interview was how unremarkable it was in terms of fireworks. It was pure Donald Trump, yes, but CBS seemed to be on generally decent behavior.
Call it The Bari Weiss Effect.
Many years ago, when I saw the “blue ocean” market share being gobbled up by Fox News on the Right, while all the other networks — CBS, NBC, and ABC, and CNN, MSNBC, and PBS — were fighting each other for market share in the chum-filled red ocean on the Left, I wondered: When would one of these networks respond to the citizenry, and to business and market realities, and shift their news more toward the middle?
Time will tell, but maybe CBS is making a subtle move in that direction.
Nate Jackson: Oh SNAP — More Judicial Diktats — Senate Democrats are keeping the government closed, and Donald Trump is not a king. Nevertheless, two district judges claim the authority to open the spigot for food stamps.
Thomas Gallatin: Debating Who Gets Deported — The Trump administration has made significant progress in cleaning up the illegal immigration mess the Biden administration left, but there is still much work to be done.
Emmy Griffin: ‘Stand Your Ground’ Under Attack — The Wall Street Journal makes a specious case for allowing an aggressor to attack and possibly kill you — and its timing sure seems suspicious.
Brent Ramsey: Behind the Wall of Government Schools — You will not believe the abysmal environment of America’s public schools due to institutional neglect and political agendas warping what is taught.
Roger Helle: Walking Point — We knew the Viet Cong were watching our every move, waiting for us to make a mistake. That mistake was made one night in early March 1966.
“We cannot lose our democracy to these f***ing dorks. I mean, Stephen Miller is the worst. … And then you get to JD Vance, who is a failed drag queen. … He’d be so much cooler if he’d just come out.” —podcaster Jennifer Welch
Lack of Self-Awareness Award
“We have to be able to disagree without calling each other nasty names or demonizing each other.” —Barack Obama campaigning in Virginia on the same stage as Jay Jones, who wanted to kill his political opponent
What Could Possibly Go Wrong?
“I think we should reduce [the] voting age to 16.” —Kamala Harris (A trip down memory lane: “What else do we know about this population, 18 through 24? They are stupid. … They make really bad decisions” —Kamala Harris, May 2014)
Friendly Fire
“No Democrat wants to hear from [Kamala Harris]. … Just get out of the way.” —Democrat strategist James Carville
“It was easier to get Donald Trump on the phone than to get the deputy press secretary for the Kamala Harris campaign.” —ABC News’s Jonathan Karl on having called Trump directly on election night
Theater of the Absurd
“One of the reasons that President Trump is refusing to negotiate is because he likes the fact that the government is closed because he thinks he can exercise king-like powers. He can open up the parts of the government that he wants. He can pay the employees who are loyal to him. I mean, this is a leader who is trying to transition our government from a democracy to something much closer to a totalitarian state.” —Sen. Chris Murphy
“Donald Trump has spent more time talking to Hamas and the Chinese Communist Party than he has in talking to Democrats on Capitol Hill to end the Trump shutdown.” —House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries, whose party shut down the government
What Comes Around Goes Around
“No Congress before this one has ever — ever — in history been irresponsible enough to threaten default, to threaten an economic shutdown to suggest America not pay its bills just to try to blackmail a president into giving them some concessions. … We’re not going to submit to this kind of total irresponsibility. … If Republicans do not like the law, they can go through the regular channels and processes to try to change it. That’s why we have elections. … You do not threaten the full faith and credit of the United States of America.” —Barack Obama in 2013 on the threat of a government shutdown to defund or repeal the so-called Affordable Care Act
The BIG Lies
“It appears to most reasonable observers that Donald Trump was punked on the world stage by the Chinese Communist Party.” —Rep. Hakeem Jeffries
“China has called Donald Trump’s bluff, and Donald Trump has folded.” —Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer
Delusions of Grandeur
“[Joe Biden] I think was one of the most successful presidents in the last century. … And I will defend that to my grave.” —California Gov. Gavin Newsom
Re: The Left
“Democrats’ support for programs like SNAP is now reduced to cynical control over people’s lives. This last month has shown that the party who constantly says it puts people over politics does the complete opposite.” —Agriculture Secretary Brooke Rollins
“Up until fairly recently, it was considered rude, and perhaps even racist or sexist, to notice that the White House press secretary was a thoroughly ineffective communicator who kept babbling barely coherent answers and offering implausible spin. But now that Jean-Pierre is on her book tour and defending her and Joe Biden’s record? [E]verybody’s lining up to take a hard whack at her like she’s a piñata.” —Jim Geraghty
For the Record
“The surge in transgender identification in recent years wasn’t the revelation of a hidden biological truth. It was a social phenomenon shaped by imitation, ideology and institutional reinforcement.” —Colin Wright
“Throughout modern political history, rising anti-Semitism has been an unmistakable marker of cultural decay.” —George Weigel
Israel keeping up attacks on Hamas and Hezbollah terrorists, as President Trump says the ceasefire is holding, adding that Hamas could be taken out immediately if necessary, and Israel gets more hostage bodies back; Trump threatens to send US military forces to Nigeria to stop the slaughter of Christians, and the US could take other actions, such as sanctions; key off-year US elections will be held tomorrow, including for Mayor of New York City, where Democratic Socialist Zohran Mamdani is the frontrunner; Eli Sharabi, author of the new book “Hostage,” talks to CBN News about his 491 days of captivity by Hamas, where he had multiple near-death experiences and suffered deprivation and humiliation ; and as this year’s Daylight Saving Time comes to an end, a new poll shows what Americans think about changing their clocks twice a year.
There’s a new political trend that is beyond disturbing. In this 22-minute video from Answers in Genesis, Answers News hosts Bryan Osborne and Avery Foley, interview Virgil Walker about his recent article on fascism after the October 18, 2025 “No Kings” rallies. The post appeared first on The Stream .
“…mothers dropped off their infants, babies, toddlers, and preschoolers to paid workers who tended up to 20 or more children at a time, making sure those children were safe and fed, but not necessarily held, loved, comforted, taught, or nurtured.”
(Joan Swirsky – RenewAmerica) Going back 250 years, the enemies of America thought long and hard about how to destroy the fledgling experiment of a Democratic Republic that our Founding Fathers envisioned. It was (and continues to be) clear to our enemies that America’s strength is a function of three phenomena:
A fervent belief in the God who makes miracles happen––for example, the crushing defeat of the enormously powerful English Empire’s armies by courageous patriots like General George Washington and his ragtag army of American heroes.
An equally ardent belief in and passion for the concept of Freedom. Men who were willing to die, and their wives who believed their husbands’ possible deaths would be for the noble cause of freedom––all sacrificed to bring about our victory over the insensitive monarchy that wanted to rule over us.
The most passionate factor was the embrace of, belief in, and allegiance to the family, its sanctity, its strength, its ability to weather all storms and overcome all obstacles. View article →
Massive fraud has been taking place in the US government’s Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP), including benefits being paid to illegal aliens, according to Secretary of Agriculture Brooke Rollins.
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In an interview with Fox News, Rollins described the program as “broken and corrupt” after funding lapsed at the weekend because of the ongoing government shutdown.
Rollins said that 21 states refused to hand over data to the Department of Government Efficiency regarding whether illegal aliens were claiming SNAP benefits fraudulently. Two states sued the USDA.
In hundreds of billions of dollars of spending, thousands of cases of illegal benefit were detected, Rollins added, over a hundred people have been arrested and thousands of dead people were still receiving benefits.
On my first day @USDA, we told every state to send us their SNAP data so we could make sure illegal immigrants aren’t getting benefits meant for American families. 29 states stepped up. 21 blue states refused — and two SUED US FOR ASKING! 🤦🏻♀️
She also linked the massive growth of SNAP under the Biden administration—the program almost doubled in size in 2023—to attempts to “buy the election.”
“It’s time to drastically reform this program,” Rollins said, “so that we can make sure those who are truly needy, truly vulnerable are getting what they need, and the rest of the corruption goes away and we can serve the American taxpayer.”
SNAP covers around 42 million people from low-income households, giving an average of $187.20 per month to be spent on food. The program is administered by the US Department of Agriculture.
SNAP benefits are provided through accounts called EBTs. Beneficiaries spend the food stamps using EBT cards, which are like prepaid credit cards. Benefits are provided on a certain day each month.
“Millions of Americans, as of tomorrow, will no longer receive SNAP,” USDA Secretary Brooke Rollins told a briefing in Washington on Friday. The pause, which came into effect at the weekend, is the first in the program’s history since it was implemented in 1964.
Funding for the program has stalled since the beginning of last month. Democrats have voted against reopening the government on more than a dozen occasions, and Republicans have voted to prevent funding for SNAP while a broader agreement on ending the shutdown is reached.
On Friday, a US district judge ruled that the USDA must use $5 billion in contingency funding to pay for SNAP; although this amount is just over half the $9 billion monthly cost of the program.
In a post on social media following the decision, President Trump said he had instructed lawyers to ask federal courts what could be done to ensure SNAP is funded.
“I do NOT want Americans to go hungry just because the Radical Democrats refuse to do the right thing and REOPEN THE GOVERNMENT,” Trump wrote.
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