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
No one can comprehend what goes on under the sun. Despite all his efforts to search it out man cannot discover its meaning. Even if a wise man claims he knows, he cannot really comprehend it.
Ecclesiastes 8:17b
The Searcher’s claim is quite clear: life is too complicated, too vast, too filled with conflicting elements for any one of us to figure out all the answers. Though we stay up all night and day, trying to think through and understand the complicated events that bring to pass the circumstances of our lives, we will never fully understand.
The Bible attaches no stigma to trying to understand life. Rather, the pursuit of knowledge is everywhere encouraged in Scripture. We must never adopt the attitude of anti-intellectualism that characterizes some segments of Christianity today. We are to reason and think about what God is doing and what life gives us. But we must always remember that no matter how much we try to think about life, mysteries will still remain. We do not have enough data, nor do we have enough ability to see life in its totality to answer all the questions. We must be content with some degree of mystery.
Though the wisest man of the ancient world wrote these words, he admits that humans cannot know all the answers. He even says that diligence in labor will not unravel life’s mysteries: Despite all his efforts to search it out, man cannot discover its meaning. We will still be left knitting our brows, scratching our heads, asking the eternal Why?
Even when people claim to know the answers behind what happens to us, they are really only deceiving themselves. Many people are unwilling to accept the truth of Scripture until they can understand everything in it. But if you are waiting for that, you will never make it. Although this book was written almost 2,500 years ago, it is still true, even in our age of advanced knowledge, that no one can find all the answers.
When you think about your own life, about how many of the things that have happened to you have been determined by events over which you had no control—events that had to fall together in a certain pattern before they could ever come to pass—you can see how true these words are. No one can find out all the answers. Luis Palau has often remarked about the many events that had to come together for him and me ever to have met in a city in northern Argentina. We met in a rather simple way, yet that event changed both of our lives. That meeting eventually launched him into a worldwide evangelistic ministry, and thousands upon thousands have come to Christ as a result of it. How could that happen? As far as Luis was concerned, it all hung upon a simple decision to go or not to go to a meeting one evening. How can we understand that strange merging of simplicity and complexity? The Searcher argues that life is too complicated for us ever to answer all the questions.
Lord, teach me to cry out with the apostle Paul, Oh, the depth of the riches of the wisdom and knowledge of God! How unsearchable are his judgments, and his paths beyond tracing! (Romans 11:33)
Life Application
We soon run out of brain power when trying to find answers to the mystery of life. Is understanding everything in Scripture necessary before accepting it as truth?
16 When I applied my mind to know wisdom and to observe man’s labor on earth—his eyes not seeing sleep day or night- 17 then I saw all that God has done. No one can comprehend what goes on under the sun. Despite all his efforts to search it out, man cannot discover its meaning. Even if a wise man claims he knows, he cannot really comprehend it.
1 So I reflected on all this and concluded that the righteous and the wise and what they do are in God’s hands, but no man knows whether love or hate awaits him. 2 All share a common destiny—the righteous and the wicked, the good and the bad, the clean and the unclean, those who offer sacrifices and those who do not. As it is with the good man, so with the sinner; as it is with those who take oaths, so with those who are afraid to take them.
3 This is the evil in everything that happens under the sun: The same destiny overtakes all. The hearts of men, moreover, are full of evil and there is madness in their hearts while they live, and afterward they join the dead. 4 Anyone who is among the living has hope —even a live dog is better off than a dead lion!
5 For the living know that they will die, but the dead know nothing; they have no further reward, and even the memory of them is forgotten.
6 Their love, their hate and their jealousy have long since vanished; never again will they have a part in anything that happens under the sun.
Matthew 27:65-66 In this week’s lessons we note the futility of those who tried to keep shut the tomb that was soon going to be empty, and of the need for everyone to submit to the risen Lord Jesus Christ.
Theme
A Thriving Fellowship
There was another character who got into the act. In fact, he had been leading the battle against the Lord Jesus Christ for centuries. His name is Satan. We see him first in the Garden of Eden, where he tempts Eve to eat the forbidden fruit and thus participates in the ruin of the race. We see him in Egypt and in other nations as they persecuted God’s people, through whom the Messiah was to come. At last we see him waging war against the incarnate Jesus.
All through His life Christ’s greatest foe was Satan. At the time of His birth it was Satan who stirred up the evil imaginations of Herod the Great to murder the babes of Bethlehem, thinking by this means to secure himself against Christ. At the time of Jesus’ baptism Satan appeared openly to tempt the Lord to sin: “If you are the Son of God, tell these stones to become bread. . . . If you are the Son of God, throw yourself down. For it is written: “‘He will command his angels concerning you, and they will lift you up in their hands, so that you will not strike your foot against a stone.’. . . All this I will give you if you will bow down and worship me” (Matt. 4:2, 6, 9). Later in Christ’s ministry Satan moved the rulers of the Jews against Jesus. He even got Judas to betray Christ and the other disciples to forsake Him.
What a triumph Satan must have imagined as he goaded the people to cry for Christ’s death: “Crucify Him! Crucify Him!” What glee he must have felt as the governor’s judgment was pronounced and the One he hated most in all the universe was led to crucifixion! What delight he must have nurtured as the rough nails were forced through Jesus’ feet and hands and the friends of sinners eventually weakened and died! What bliss when Christ was buried! What есstasy when the Master’s grey and lifeless body was sealed in Joseph’s tomb! Satan had won! The devil had killed God’s Son! He had secured his evil kingdom against the second person of the divine Trinity!
Yes, yes, Satan had made it as secure as he knew how! But when the resurrection came he was no more effective than the soldiers in their attempt to resist the Lord of glory.
Satan did not give up. Indeed, he has not given up to this day. Though defeated, Satan still works against the power of the resurrected One. Satan persecutes the Church. Thus, when Jewish persecution (such as that of Saul of Tarsus) was insufficient, he engaged the strength of Rome and after that the powers of the state in most lands.
I note here the most important book ever written on the persecution of the Church of Jesus Christ, namely, John Foxe’s comprehensive Book of Martyrs.1 Foxe wrote during the days of Queen Elizabeth to document particularly the persecutions of English believers during the reigns of the preceding English monarchs. But he begins at the beginning, noting at the beginning of his massive study that Jesus had spoken to Peter on the occasion of his great confession of Him as “Son of the living God,” saying, “On this rock I will build my church, and the gates of Hades will not overcome it” (Matt. 16:18). Foxe took this to teach: 1) that Christ will have a Church in this world; 2) that not only the world but also the utmost strength and powers of hell should be arrayed against it; and 3) that notwithstanding the utmost hatred and malice of the devil the Church would remain and prosper until Christ’s return for it.
That has happened. Whipped to fury by the resurrection and subsequent outpouring of the Holy Spirit, Satan stirred the Roman world to despise and persecute the Christians. The first of the great persecutions was in the reign of Nero when thousands were burned as human torches or fed to wild animals in the Roman arena. Under Decius and Valerian the opposition spread throughout the Empire. In those days (AD 249 and 258) it became a crime to convert to Christianity, and those who were already Christians had their lands confiscated. In AD 303 Diocletian began the fiercest and longest of the persecutions. He too made it a crime to be a Christian. He circulated false documents purporting to explain the faith of the believers as a fraud. He reactivated the old pagan cults reorganizing them along “Christian” lines. Diocletian encouraged popular movements against the churches and caused the death of many. In the reign of Julian “the Apostate’’ (AD 361 and 363) the same tactics were repeated. Hatred! Persecutions! Banishment! Murders! These were the weapons by which the prince of darkness attempted to make his realm secure against the expanding forces of God’s anointed King.
Make it as secure as you can? Satan was trying, but it was no use. Jesus was risen, and the thriving communion and fellowship of His followers was advancing throughout the world.
1John Foxe, The Acts and Monuments of John Foxe, edited by Stephen Reed Cattley (London: R.B. Seeley and W. Burnside, 1841). My edition is in eight volumes, containing Foxe’s original twelve books plus background material on Foxe himself.
Study Questions
Give some examples of times when Satan tried to overcome the Lord Jesus.
How does Satan continue to work against the risen Son of God today?
Application
Application: How has Satan tried to afflict you in your Christian life? What needs to be your response to these attacks?
For Further Study: To look deeper into how religion can actually keep you from truly knowing God, download for free and listen to James Boice’s message from the book of Amos, “How God Views Religion.” (Discount will be applied at checkout.)
I have sinned and perverted what was right, and it did not profit me. Job 33:27(KJV)
What fruit am I getting from the things of which I am now ashamed? For the end of those things is death. Romans 6:21(ESV) And what am I profited if I should gain the whole world and forfeit my own soul? Matthew 16:26(ESV)
The deceitfulness of sin.
Sin has deceived me, and through the commandment killed me; Romans 7:11(ESV) for my heart has been hardened by the deceitfulness of sin, Hebrews 3:13(ESV) and I have been lured and enticed by my own desire. James 1:14(ESV)
It has promised me freedom, but has made me the slave of corruption; 2 Peter 2:19(ESV) has promised me that I shall not surely die and that I shall be like God, Genesis 3:4-5(ESV) but it has flattered me and spread a net for my feet. Proverbs 29:5(ESV)
The pride of my heart, particularly, has deceived me. Obadiah 1:3(ESV)
Though often treated as an ancient heresy confined to the early centuries of the church, Gnosticism remains a persistent theological temptation. Its modern expressions are rarely labeled as such, yet its core instincts continue to surface in Christian teaching, discipleship, and counseling. At its heart, Gnosticism elevates secret or superior knowledge, denigrates the material world, and disconnects salvation from embodied, covenantal life. From a Reformed perspective, Gnosticism is not merely historically erroneous but pastorally destructive. Understanding its history, its unbiblical nature, and its ongoing influence is essential for faithful teaching and counseling in the church today.
Gnosticism’s History
Gnosticism was not a single, unified movement but a collection of religious and philosophical systems that flourished primarily in the second and third centuries AD. Drawing from Platonic dualism, Middle Eastern mythology, and speculative Judaism, Gnostic groups shared several defining features: a radical distinction between spirit and matter, the belief that material creation was evil or defective, and the conviction that salvation came through secret knowledge (gnōsis) accessible only to the enlightened few (Jonas 2001).
Early Christian leaders quickly recognized Gnosticism as a serious threat to the gospel. Church fathers such as Irenaeus of Lyons argued that Gnosticism did not arise from apostolic teaching but represented a parasitic distortion of Christianity (Irenaeus 1992). By rejecting the goodness of creation and redefining Christ’s incarnation, Gnosticism fundamentally altered the biblical story of redemption.
Reformed theologians have emphasized that Gnosticism should not be viewed as a historical anomaly but as a recurring theological impulse. Herman Bavinck identified Gnosticism as an enduring form of false spirituality that seeks salvation apart from God’s self-revelation in creation and Scripture (Bavinck 2003). In this sense, Gnosticism represents a perennial challenge to orthodox Christianity rather than a relic of the ancient church.
Gnosticism Is Unbiblical
At every major doctrinal point, Gnosticism stands in direct contradiction to Scripture. First, Gnosticism denies the goodness of creation. Scripture opens with God’s declaration that the material world is “very good” (Gen. 1:31). Gnostic systems, by contrast, portray matter as a prison from which the soul must escape. This denial undermines the biblical doctrine of creation and God’s ongoing care for the physical world (Vos 1948).
Second, Gnosticism distorts Christology. Many Gnostics rejected the true incarnation of Christ, teaching either that Jesus only appeared to be human or that the divine Christ temporarily inhabited the man Jesus. The apostle John explicitly counters such claims, insisting that “the Word became flesh” (John 1:14) and that denial of Christ’s true humanity marks the spirit of antichrist (1 John 4:2–3). Reformed commentators consistently identify these passages as apostolic refutations of proto-Gnostic thought (Carson 1991).
Third, Gnosticism redefines salvation. Rather than redemption by grace through faith, salvation becomes liberation through special knowledge. John Calvin sharply rejected this speculative approach to theology, arguing that true knowledge of God is always tethered to Scripture and obedience, not mystical insight or intellectual elitism (Calvin 2006). Scripture presents salvation as public, preached, and sacramentally sealed within the covenant community, not hidden among spiritual elites.
The Effect of Gnosticism on Pastoral Teaching and Counseling
While few modern Christians identify as Gnostics, Gnostic assumptions subtly shape contemporary pastoral practice. In teaching, Gnosticism appears when doctrine is minimized in favor of personal experience, when embodied practices such as worship and the sacraments are treated as secondary, or when Christianity is reduced to inner enlightenment rather than lived obedience.
In counseling, the effects are even more pronounced. Functional Gnosticism encourages excessive inward focus, treating self-knowledge as salvific and minimizing the role of the body, the church, and ordinary means of grace. David Powlison warned against counseling models that abstract the soul from embodied life, noting that Scripture addresses people as whole persons living before God in concrete circumstances (Powlison 2003).
Biblical counseling, grounded in Reformed anthropology, resists these tendencies by affirming the unity of body and soul, the communal nature of sanctification, and the sufficiency of Scripture. Heath Lambert emphasizes that genuine change comes not through secret insight but through repentance, faith, and ongoing growth within the local church (Lambert 2016). Likewise, Joel Beeke and Paul Smalley underscore that union with Christ encompasses the whole person and unfolds through ordinary, embodied piety rather than mystical ascent (Beeke and Smalley 2019).
Pastorally, Gnosticism weakens hope in suffering by encouraging escape rather than endurance and resurrection hope. Scripture calls believers not to flee the body but to await its redemption (Rom. 8:23). Faithful pastoral care must therefore resist Gnostic shortcuts and patiently shepherd believers toward Christlikeness through Word, sacrament, and community.
Summary
Gnosticism is not merely an ancient heresy but a persistent distortion of biblical faith. Its history reveals a counterfeit gospel, its theology stands opposed to Scripture, and its influence continues to undermine pastoral teaching and counseling. Reformed theology offers a robust antidote by affirming the goodness of creation, the reality of the incarnation, and the embodied nature of salvation. For pastors and counselors, vigilance against Gnostic tendencies is essential, not only to guard doctrinal fidelity but to shepherd God’s people toward mature, whole-life discipleship in Christ.
Resources for Further Study
Bavinck, Herman. 2003. Reformed Dogmatics, Volume 1: Prolegomena. Edited by John Bolt. Translated by John Vriend. Grand Rapids, MI: Baker Academic.
Beeke, Joel R., and Paul M. Smalley. 2019. Reformed Systematic Theology, Volume 3: Spirit and Salvation. Wheaton, IL: Crossway.
Calvin, John. 2006. Institutes of the Christian Religion. Edited by John T. McNeill. Translated by Ford Lewis Battles. Louisville, KY: Westminster John Knox.
Carson, D. A. 1991. The Gospel According to John. Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans.
Irenaeus of Lyons. 1992. Against Heresies. Translated by Dominic J. Unger and John J. Dillon. New York: Paulist Press.
Jonas, Hans. 2001. The Gnostic Religion. 3rd ed. Boston: Beacon Press.
Lambert, Heath. 2016. A Theology of Biblical Counseling. Grand Rapids, MI: Zondervan.
Powlison, David. 2003. Seeing with New Eyes. Phillipsburg, NJ: P&R Publishing.
Vos, Geerhardus. 1948. Biblical Theology. Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans.
I recently watched a documentary about the laying of the first transatlantic telegraph cable. It was a heroic enterprise. At the time, communication between Europe and North America was limited by the speed at which a ship could cross the ocean. The first cable allowed for near instant communication. It was described as the conquering of space and time. Today such means of communication seem quaint at best. Anyone with a cell phone knows what they have is just better.The writer of Hebrews wrote to Christians who were tempted to return to keeping the Law of Moses. They were facing persecution and believed it would be better to abandon faith in Christ and return to faith in their own ability to keep the Law. The writer of Hebrews warns them against this decision. Central to his argument is the idea that Jesus and the new covenant are better than what they had before (vv. 3, 6).It’s not that the old covenant was bad, it is just that the work Jesus does for those who trust in Him surpasses anything that came before. Jesus inaugurated a new covenant, which freed people from the obligation to keep the Mosaic Law as a means of relationship with God (Luke 22:20).This was a hard thing for some early Christians to accept. They came from a Jewish background, committed to keeping the Law of Moses as a way of earning favor with God. But the writer notes that Jesus is a better high priest. While the Israelite high priests served in a physical Temple, offering physical gifts according to the Mosaic covenant, Jesus serves in heaven, the true sanctuary of God, according to a better covenant (vv. 1, 6). This new covenant is built on better promises (v. 6). Why would anyone return to the old covenant?
Go Deeper Why did people want to return to their old ways of worship? What did Jesus provide that the old way never could give? Extended Reading:Hebrews 1-3
Pray with Us God, we are grateful for the deep truths of faith in the book of Hebrews. Thank You that in Your Son we received a better law, a better covenant, and a better high priest. Jesus, Your love is better than life!
Ver. 19. God is not a man, that He should lie.— The unchangeable God:— I. GOD IS UNCHANGEABLE. God cannot change; to suppose that He could change would be to suppose Him not Divine. A finite being may refuse to change, adhering rigidly to some purpose; but all the while that being is capable of change, there is n thing in his nature which makes it absolutely impossible that he should change. But it is so with God. We here speak of unchangeableness in regard of God’s dealings with His creatures, though of course it is also in Himself, in His essence, in His own property, that God is unchangeable; and it is an amazing and overwhelming contemplation, that of our Creator as in no respect capable of change, immutable because infinitely perfect. II. THE CONTRAST BETWEEN GOD AND MAN. This unchangeableness is indispensable to the Creator, but incommunicable to the creature. It is indispensable to the Creator, forasmuch as the Creator must be in every respect infinite. But all change ends in addition or diminution: if anything be added, He was not infinite before; if anything be diminished, He is not infinite after. But if indispensable in the Creator, it is incommunicable to the creature. We say nothing against the powers of God, when we say that God could not have made an unchangeable creature. Must not that which is unchangeable be self-existent, and therefore eternal? That which has already had beginning, has already undergone change—the change from nothing to something, so that a creature, because not eternal, cannot be unchangeable. God alone is unchangeable, because God alone is eternal. It is self-evident that He cannot make an eternal creature, and therefore certain that He cannot make an unchangeable creature. The creature, then, is changing, the sun as well as the atom, the archangel no less than the worm (Psa. 102:25–27). Was it only of the material fabric of the earth, with its many productions—of the firmament, with its majestic troop of stars, that the Psalmist asserted this? Nay, it is true of the intelligent creation as well as of the material. And spirits are immortal: sparks from the eternal fire, they shall never be quenched; but though immortal, they shall not be the same; indestructible, they shall be always on the march. Angel and man, they shall not, as we have already said, be ever at a stand. Stand! when there are new heights to be scaled, new depths to be fathomed? Nay, it were imperfection, it were wretchedness. It is the glory of the Creator that He never changes; it is the glory of the creature to be always changing. Eternity shall be one mighty progress to all except the Eternal. “I am Jehovah, I change not, the Father of lights, with whom is no variableness, neither shadow of turning.” (H. Melvill, B.D.) The word of God unchangeable:—
“God is not a man, that He should lie.” Balaam knew how capable he himself was of deceit and falsehood, how liable to be changed by bribery from one course to another; and it is possible that he might have entertained such unworthy notions of the Almighty as to imagine Him also movable and uncertain. But God has no admixture of evil, no imperfection; nor can He “be tempted with evil.” Men have their own corrupt interests to serve; their own gain to study, their own gratification to seek: and when these things cannot be so readily compassed by integrity, recourse is often had to deceitful dealing. It may not always be that a man’s word is actually broken; but there is very commonly, in the children of this world, some kind of double dealing to suit a carnal purpose. From all this, and from all approach to this, the Lord is purely free: He can neither deceive nor be deceived.
“Neither the son of man, that He should repent,” or change His purpose. Man is ignorant and short-sighted; often knows not what will be for the best: and the plan, which he bad contrived with his utmost skill, is not seldom injurious; and thus he is compelled to alter and relinquish. But God is all-wise: “O the depth of the riches both of the wisdom and knowledge of God!”
We may infer— (1) That all the Divine judgments against sin and sinners will be infallibly executed. And— (2) That every promise of God to His people will, in due season, be abundantly accomplished.
The imminent danger of sin, and the certain ruin from it, if persisted in, are by no means believed and perceived, as they ought to be. The Almighty has declared, throughout His word of truth, that He is a God of holiness; and that in unholiness, in disobedience, in unrepented guilt, no man can be accepted, no man can approach Him.
And, blessed be the holy name of God, the gracious promises of mercy to His faithful and obedient servants are not less frequent than the threatenings of wrath upon the impenitent and forgetful. (J. Slade, M.A.) The unchangeableness of Jehovah:— I. SOME MEN THINK THAT GOD WILL LIE. God has told us, with strong and repeated asseverations, that “we must be born again” (John 3:7); but this is totally disbelieved by—
The profane. They persuade themselves that such strictness in religion, as is implied in the new birth, is not necessary; and that they shall go to heaven in their own way.
The self-righteous. These consider regeneration as a dream of weak enthusiasts, and are satisfied with the “form of godliness, without” ever experiencing “the power” of it.
The hypocritical professors of religion. These, having changed their creed, together with their outward conduct, fancy themselves Christians, notwithstanding their faith neither “overcomes the world,” nor “works by love,” nor “purifies their hearts.” That all these persons think God will lie, is evident beyond a doubt; for if they really believed that old things must pass away and all things become new (2 Cor. 5:17), before they can enter into the kingdom of heaven, they would feel concerned to know whether any such change had taken place in them; nor would they be satisfied till they had a Scriptural evidence that they were indeed “new creatures in Christ Jesus.” II. OTHERS FEAR HE MAY LIE. This is common with persons—
Under conviction of sin. When men are deeply convinced of sin, they find it exceedingly difficult to rest simply on the promises of the Gospel; such as John 6:37; Isa. 1:18; 55:1.
Under temptation or desertion. God has declared that He will not suffer His people to be tempted above what they are able to bear (1 Cor. 10:13). But when they come into temptation, they are apt to say, as David, “I shall one day perish,” &c. (1 Sam. 27:1). III. BUT GOD NEITHER WILL NOR CAN LIE.
He will not lie. (1) Let us hear the testimonies of those who have tried Him. Moses (Deut. 32:4); (Josh. 23:14); Samuel (1 Sam. 15:29). (2) Let us attend to God’s own assertions and appeals (Isa. 5:4; 49:19). Would He ever venture to speak thus strongly on His own behalf if His creatures could make good their accusations against Him? (3) Let us look to matter of fact. Are not His past actions so many types and pledges of what He will hereafter perform? (2 Pet. 2:4–9; Jude 7).
He cannot lie. Truth is as essential to the Divine nature as goodness, wisdom, power, or any other attribute; so that He can as easily cease to be good, or wise, or powerful, as He can suffer one jot or tittle of His word to fail. (C. Simeon, M.A.) The Lord is unchangeably true in all His ways, words, and works:— His decrees are immutable and irrevocable, and without shadow of turning (Psa. 105:7, 8, 10). To this purpose the apostle saith, “The gifts and calling of God are without repentance” (Rom. 11:29). By all these places we see that God is unchangeable in His mercy and goodness toward His Church and children. The reasons follow to be considered.
First, He is not like unto man, His ways are not like man’s ways, nor His thoughts like unto man’s thoughts; but as far as heaven is distant from the earth, so far are the works of God from ours. We know by experience the changeable nature of man. He is constant to-day, he changeth to-morrow. He loveth one day, and hateth another.
Secondly, His love and mercy to His people is not changeable as the moon, unconstant as the wind, floating as the sea, uncertain as the weather, but stable as the earth that cannot be moved out of his place, and steadfast as Mount Sion that remaineth for ever. This will plainly appear unto us if we consider the similitudes whereby it is expressed. His love is like to the covenant of waters, and as sure as the promise that He made to Noah, that the waters should no more overflow the whole earth, as the prophet Isaiah teacheth, chap. 54:7, 8, 9.
Again, His goodness is as the ordinance of God, that hath set an order for summer and winter, for day and night, for seed-time and harvest, for cold and heat, which shall not be changed, therefore the Lord saith (Jer. 31:35, and 33:20). Nay, His mercy is said to be more stable than the mountains (Isa. 54:10). Now let us come to the uses of this doctrine.
First, hereby we learn that God is to be preferred before all creatures.
Secondly, we may from hence assure ourselves that God will make us unchangeable like Himself, and we may rejoice in the comfort of this His favour. For seeing His nature is unchangeable, He will make us in our measure partakers of immortality. This is a great comfort unto us in these days of sorrow, to consider that the time will come, when our state shall be changed, and we continue for ever without change. Here we are subject to many turnings and returnings, but after this life shall be no more place for changing; our happiness shall be unchangeable, and firmly established with God. This the prophet sets down (Psa. 16:11).
Thirdly, it teacheth that it is time for us to repent and turn unto God. An unchangeable God, an unchangeable word. Let us be transformed into the obedience of it. It is not a leaden rule to bend every way to us. All our ways must be framed unto it. And when once we are turned to God, let us not return back again to our old ways, but persevere constant unto the end. The unchangeable God requireth an unchangeable servant.
Lastly, herein is great comfort offered to the servants of God, as on the other side horror to the wicked and disobedient. For seeing God is immutable, we may from hence take strong consolation by former examples of God’s dealing toward His children, and in all temptations build ourselves upon that blessed experience, as upon a sure foundation that can never fail us. (W. Attersoll.)
Exell, J. S. (n.d.). The Biblical Illustrator: Leviticus and Numbers (Vol. 2, pp. 269–271). Anson D. F. Randolph & Company.
GOD’S WORD IS AN IMMOVABLE ANCHOR IN TIMES OF STORM.
NUM. 23:19
The words of King Darius echoed through Daniel’s mind as servants lowered him into the lion’s den. “Your God whom you constantly serve will Himself deliver you” (Dan. 6:16). Workers then laid a heavy stone over the opening to the underground chamber. Even after assessing his dire situation, Daniel did not waver in his faith. The next morning, King Darius found Daniel untouched and proclaiming, “O king, live forever! My God sent His angel to shut the lions’ mouths, and they have not harmed me” (vv. 21, 22). How did Daniel survive? Were the lions not hungry? Historians tell us animals used for such planned executions went unfed for days in an effort to ensure the death of the accused. But Daniel’s fate was never in the hands of men. His life belonged to God, and therein lies the victory. Daniel survived by placing his trust in God and his faith in God’s promises. Each of us can remember times when we wished we had a sure word from God—something we could cling to when doubts and fears arose. God knows when we need encouragement, guidance, and hope. This is why He provides specific promises in His Word, that we might understand His nature and trust Him. In emotionally devastating times, God’s promises are essential to our spiritual welfare. God’s Word is therefore a compass, a guide, and an instruction book to life. Just as we use instruction manuals at work or in the kitchen, we are to use God’s Word as our resource for wisdom and truth. No one would think of baking a cake without a recipe, nor would a mechanic rebuild a car engine without a manual. Some of God’s promises are conditional (see “How can I claim God’s promises?” placed near Heb. 10:23), but we can stand in faith on the vast majority of them. It’s not a matter of naming and claiming a promise, however; promises should be coupled with prayer and an earnestness to know God’s will for our lives. While God wants each of us to experience His best, He also wants us to know and enjoy His presence in a personal way that best expresses His sufficiency. Claiming a promise without leadership from His Holy Spirit will lead to disappointment, disillusionment, and frustration. At times God brings a specific Scripture to mind that ministers His hope and reassurance to our hearts. At other times He challenges us to pray and seek His wisdom on a certain issue. When King David sought God’s heart regarding his desire to build the temple, the Bible says: “Then king David went in and sat before the LORD” (2 Sam. 7:18). David didn’t order his men to begin construction. He waited for God’s leadership—and it was a good thing he did, because God wanted David’s son Solomon to do the job instead. God honored David’s attitude, however, and gave him a wonderful promise: “Your house and your kingdom shall be established forever before you. Your throne shall be established forever” (2 Sam. 7:16). God always honors our desire to seek His guidance and wisdom. If we will come to God expecting Him to answer, He will never disappoint us. In Daniel’s day, God spoke through visions, dreams, and sometimes audibly. Today, He speaks primarily through His Word, since He never wants us involved in anything that contradicts Scripture. Any verse can be taken out of context and twisted. But if we are true to God’s Word and interpret Scripture within its context, then we will find God’s promises rewarding. When we look to God in faith, He will lead us according to His will. Of course, this may not happen overnight! Many times God wants us to meditate on a certain Scripture over a period of time before He gives His guidance. Instead of being emotionally blown one way and then another, we learn to stand firm in our commitment and trust in Christ. Consider God’s promises your spiritual anchors. Once you learn to follow Him, pursue His lead wherever He goes. God never fails to keep a promise He makes. He wants us to get in His Word and listen for His voice. This is where our responsibility comes in. God gives promises, but we must be willing to patiently wait for Him to fulfill them. Never try putting God in a time box! Instead, leave room for Him to bring everything together according to His plan and His timing. You’ll be glad you did.
Stanley, C. F. (2005). The Charles F. Stanley life principles Bible: New King James Version (Nu 23:19). Nelson Bibles.
There are plenty of these lame ones, both male and female. You may meet “her that halteth” twenty times in an hour. They are in the right road and exceedingly anxious to run in it with diligence, but they are lame and make a sorry walk of it. On the heavenly road there are many cripples. It may be that they say in their hearts—What will become of us? Sin will overtake us; Satan will throw us down. Ready-to-halt is our name and our nature; the Lord can never make good soldiers of us, nor even nimble messengers to go on His errands. Well, well! He will save us, and that is no small thing. He says, “I will save her that halteth.” In saving us He will greatly glorify Himself. Everybody will ask—How came this lame woman to run the race and win the crown? And then the praise will all be given to almighty grace.
Lord, though I halt in faith, in prayer, in praise, in service, and in patience, save me, I beseech Thee! Only Thou canst save such a cripple as I am. Lord, let me not perish because I am among the hindmost, but gather up by Thy grace the slowest of Thy pilgrims—even me. Behold He hath said it shall be so, and therefore, like Jacob, prevailing in prayer, I go forward though my sinew be shrunk.
FORGET NONE OF HIS BENEFITS volume 25, number 8, February 19, 2026
. . . present your bodies a living and holy sacrifice, acceptable to God, Romans12:1.
In the spring of 1974, while at baseball practice, Marvin Stringfellow showed up. Several years earlier Marvin was a star pitcher for Florida State and was a graduate assistant coach during my freshman year at Alabama. Marvin was in Tuscaloosa to recruit college Christian baseball players to participate on a team with a ministry called Sports Ambassadors. After Marvin’s presentation I committed myself to go on the trip. This was a life changing event for me. I met a lot of great guys with whom I traveled throughout Honduras, Guatemala and Nicaragua playing baseball games against teams in the various cities. Baseball was not very well developed in Guatemala or Honduras but Nicaragua was a different story. We played their national team and they were very good. Nicaragua has produced lots of major league baseball players over the years. Our team met every morning for prayer and Bible study and then played games at night. After the game we would give a short evangelistic service and urge people to repent and call on the name of Jesus to be saved. Our translator was a seventeen year old missionary kid named Jaime Cocanower who later pitched in college at Baylor and for several years for the Milwaukee Brewers in the Major Leagues.
After a week or two of being in Central America I began to lose interest in actually playing in the games and asked our coaches if I could simply spend my time going into the stands and using my very limited Spanish and gospel tracts to speak with as many people as I could about Jesus. They agreed and from that point on every day and night I was sharing Jesus with whomever I could. I had one more year of eligibility left at Alabama but I decided I did not want to play any longer. I sensed God’s calling to preach the gospel and believed I should prepare myself for that calling. So in the fall of 1974 I finished my degree at Alabama.
In the meantime Wini was in summer school at Tuscaloosa. We never talked specifically about getting married, but I believed this was God’s plan for us so on March 28, 1975 I asked Wini to marry me and we were married on August 16, 1975, shortly after her graduation. We both were working in Birmingham and in November, 1975 I was a groomsman in Randy Pope’s wedding. I met Pastor Jim Baird of First Presbyterian Church (FPC), Macon, Georgia at Randy and Carol’s wedding and about two months later Jim asked me if we would be interested in coming to Macon to serve on his church staff. We jumped at the idea and moved there in February, 1976 and were there for two and one half years working with junior and senior high students and loved every minute of it. There was a mighty movement of the Spirit at FPC Macon at the time. Lots of people were getting saved and many young men under Jim Baird’s tutelage became preachers and missionaries. Macon was and still is a high point of our lives. We still have many friends from our time there.
After Wini’s conversion, while at Alabama she began to work with the senior women leaders of Campus Crusade for Christ and early on caught the vision for discipleship.These two women staff workers modeled the Christian life for Wini and she says that all she knows about evangelism and discipleship she learned during her involvement with Crusade. So Wini began discipling women her age or a year or two younger at Alabama. When we moved to Macon she immediately began to spend time with junior and senior high girls and saw wonderful fruit in that ministry. We are still in touch with some of them fifty years later. From shortly after her conversion Wini has always had a group of women she was discipling. There are now disciples to three and four generations through her leadership and she has friends who were in her groups living all across the United States and world.
Before we moved to Macon we were at Faith Chapel Church in Birmingham and Pastor Bill Prince spent a lot of time with me, giving me good Reformed books to read, teaching me how to preach and giving me several opportunities to preach. I also had the opportunity to work with junior high students at the church. It seemed like we were at church all the time—Sunday morning and evening worship, Monday night discipleship group with other men, Tuesday night evangelism visitation, Wednesday night prayer meeting.
While in Macon we invited churches from Albany, Savannah, and Perry, Georgia to bring their teens for a week long evangelistic conference. Tim Fortner, Bill Prince, and Henry Krabbendam spoke in succeeding years. Lots of young people were converted during those meetings. The 1978 “Macon Youth Crusade” was led by Dr. Henry Krabbendam and this is when we first met and we have been close friends ever since, traveling throughout the United States and world preaching and teaching. The last summer we were in Macon was 1978 and just before we left to enter Reformed Theological Seminary in Jackson, Mississippi, Wini and I took about fourteen high school students to Costa Rica for a two week mission trip. Mission trips are now very common but I don’t think that was the case back then. I had never heard of one. Not only did the students raise their own expenses for the trip in various ways, but they also raised enough money to give the missionary there in Costa Rica a van which he used to distribute Christian literature throughout Central America.
I could go on and say much more but I think you get the point. We are saved to serve the Lord. We all are to love God, to love people, and to multiply disciples. Evangelizing and multiplying disciples is not an option. Both are means for our sanctification. After Paul the apostle lays down the glorious theology of Romans 1-11 where he writes of the universality of sin, justification by faith alone, the necessity of growing in holiness, the place of the law, the glorious truth of no condemnation and no separation for those in Christ, and God’s plan for the Jews, he then switches to the intensely practical and begins his last section, chapters 12-16, by urging us to present our bodies as living and holy sacrifices to God, which is what any true worshipper of God should do. We are commanded not to be conformed to this world’s way of thinking or living. Instead we are to be transformed by the renewing of our minds.
In this context please consider the following words, which I find terribly convicting for my own life. I think the following quote is from Leonard Ravenhill. We have time to eat and drink; we have time for pleasures and our worldly pursuits; we have time to talk and visit with friends and loved ones; we have time for just about everything the world has to offer, but where is the time for prayer? Where is the time for waiting upon God? Where is the time for meditating upon His word and crying unto Him for holy lives? We have time to hunt and fish, swim and play, ski and skate; time to go on vacations, to entertain and be entertained; we have time to work, go to school, and enjoy all the world has to offer in the form of pleasure; we have time for television, radio, stereo, and movies; but where is the time for God, His word, and for waiting in His presence? Where is the time for God’s work and service?
I will turn seventy-four years old in March of this year and I have recently been thinking about the brevity of life. My oldest son’s wedding was twenty-four years ago. In another twenty-four years he will be seventy-three. My youngest son graduated from high school twenty-four years ago. We moved to St. Simons Island, Georgia thirty-three years ago. Wini and I moved back to Birmingham, our home town, fourteen years ago. All of these events seem like they happened last week. If you are getting up in years like me then I am sure you are feeling the same thing, asking the question, “Where has all the time gone?” How have the years passed so quickly?” Life indeed is but a vapor.
Twenty years ago seems like yesterday. Now obviously only God knows when I will leave this world for heaven. It could be this week. It could be in five or ten years, maybe twenty years. But the end is on the horizon. And then there is the question of how long I will be healthy enough to engage in ministry. I feel great. I run close to fifty miles a week. I still have my mind, as far as I can tell. LOL. But the door for effective ministry is closing. Think of it like this, if you live to be eighty then you will live approximately 29,200 days. If you are fifty, then that means you have about 11,000 more days on this earth. If you are sixty, then you have about 7300 days left. And if you are seventy-four, like me, then we have only 2190 days left on this earth. My friend Tim Hanley daily counts the days he has left on earth, using a formula similar to this one. Pretty sobering, isn’t it?
It seems that I am late in the “fourth quarter” of my life. Maybe I still have lots of time, or maybe I am in the last “two minutes” of the game. Either way, the end is drawing near. I don’t want to waste time. What will you do with the rest of your life? Do you need to re-evaluate your priorities? You, like me, are saved to serve Jesus.
Typically, seeking godly counsel from the Holy Spirit can help with big choices like moving, witnessing to a neighbor who may not be saved, or making other big life changes. Going to the Lord should be a Christian’s primary source for guidance, complemented by Scripture, and consulting godly brothers and sisters in the faith.
SEOUL, South Korea – More than 5,000 leaders from the World Evangelical Alliance gathered recently in Seoul, South Korea, to celebrate spreading the Gospel. They also renewed the commitment to reach every corner of the world, hoping to accomplish the vision of “The Gospel for Everyone by 2033.”
A parade of flags from 161 member nations signified the World Evangelical Alliance’s unity in diversity, shining the Light of God through language, culture and the different communities.
Since the organization’s 2019 gathering in Indonesia, its family has grown by 27 countries, with most of the representation coming from Africa, Asia, and Central Asia. Research shows that today, 70% of the world’s evangelicals are in Africa, Asia and Latin America.
Mary welcomes back Pastor Mike Abendroth to talk about forgiveness, such a timely topic in an age where selfishness and brutality seem to rule. What does the Bible teach us about forgiveness? What in the heart of God prepares us sinful humans to be forgiven, AND to forgive? The thing is, times not withstanding, the Word of God has the final say. And it is the characteristic mercy of God that even allows for it. We look at what mercy is, what grace is, what true forgiveness is – and what it isn’t. Yes people are brutal; they often don’t care about truth or mercy in their deepest inward parts. But God. Mike’s passion is preaching the Bible in a verse-by-verse fashion and training other men to do the same. Pastor Mike is also the author of the book entitled Jesus Christ: The Prince of Preachers. Mike has been the Senior Pastor at Bethlehem Bible Church (BBC) in West Boylston, MA since April 1997.
Therefore be imitators of God, as beloved children; and walk in love, (5:1–2a)
The walk of the believer is a key matter to Paul. He has introduced the fact that ours is to be a worthy walk (4:1) and a walk different from the world’s (4:17). He will also call for a walk in light (5:8) and a walk in wisdom (5:15). In this verse the apostle pleads with believers to walk in such a way that daily life is characterized by love. Growing in love is a continuing need for every believer, since love fulfills all of God’s law (Rom. 13:8–10). As we grow in love we also see the need to be even more loving. And since biblically defined love is so contrary to the flesh, we are always in need of reminders and encouragement to love. Therefore refers back to the last part of chapter 4, especially verse 32. Kindness, tender-heartedness, and forgiveness are characteristics of God, who is love. God Himself is infinitely kind, tender-hearted, and forgiving, and we achieve those virtues by imitating their Source. Mimētēs (imitator) is the term from which we get mimic, someone who copies specific characteristics of another person. As imitators of God, Christians are to imitate God’s characteristics, and above all His love. The whole of the Christian life is the reproduction of godliness as seen in the person of Christ. God’s purpose in salvation is to redeem men from sin and to conform them “to the image of His Son” (Rom. 8:29). To be conformed to Christ is to become perfect, just as God is perfect (Matt. 5:48). “As obedient children,” Peter tells us, “do not be conformed to the former lusts which were yours in your ignorance, but like the Holy One who called you, be holy yourselves also in all your behavior; because it is written, ‘You shall be holy, for I am holy’ ” (1 Pet. 1:14–16; cf. Lev. 11:44). The great hope of believers is, “We know that, when He appears, we shall be like Him, because we shall see Him just as He is” (1 John 3:2). Imitating His love is possible because “the love of God has been poured out within our hearts through the Holy Spirit who was given to us” (Rom. 5:5). When Alexander the Great discovered a coward in his army who also was named Alexander, he told the soldier, “Renounce your cowardice or renounce your name.” Those who carry God’s name are to be imitator’s of His character. By His grace it is possible to reflect Him even in our present limitations. To know what God is like we must study His Word, His revelation of Himself, His great Self-disclosure. Yet the more we learn of God’s character the more we learn how far above us He is and how impossible in ourselves it is fulfill the command to be like Him, to be absolutely perfect, just as He is. That is why we need “to be strengthened with power through His Spirit in the inner man” in order to “be filled up to all the fulness of God” (Eph. 3:16, 19). The only way we can become imitators of God is for the Lord Jesus Christ to live His perfect life through us. We are totally dependent on His Spirit to become like Him. If we are to obey Paul’s admonition to the Corinthians, “let all that you do be done in love” (1 Cor. 16:14), we must submit to the controlling influence of the Spirit. It is natural for children to be like their parents. They have their parents’ nature and they instinctively imitate their parents’ actions and behavior. Through Jesus Christ God has given us the right to become His children (John 1:12; Gal. 3:26). As Paul declared at the beginning of this letter, God “predestined us to adoption as sons through Jesus Christ to Himself, according to the kind intention of His will” (Eph. 1:5). Because our heavenly Father is holy, we are to be holy. Because He is kind, we are to be kind. Because He is forgiving, we are to be forgiving. Because God in Christ humbled Himself, we are to humble ourselves. Because God is love, as His beloved children we are to walk in love. This ability is not natural, however, but supernatural—requiring a new nature and the continuous power of the Holy Spirit flowing through us by obedience to God’s Word. The greatest evidence of love is undeserved forgiveness. The supreme act of God’s love was to give “His only begotten Son, that whoever believes in Him should not perish, but have eternal life” (John 3:16). God’s love brought man’s forgiveness. God loved the world with such a great love that He offered forgiveness to sinful, rebellious, wretched, vile mankind, by sending His own Son to give His life on the cross that they might not suffer death. He offered the world the free gift of eternal fellowship with Him. Because forgiveness is the supreme evidence of God’s love, it will also be the most convincing proof of our love. Love will always lead us to forgive others just as love led God in Christ to forgive us (Eph. 4:32). Nothing more clearly discloses a hard, loveless heart than lack of forgiveness. Lack of forgiveness betrays lack of love (see 4:31). The presence of forgiveness always proves the presence of love, because only love has the motive and power to forgive. The extent of our love is the extent of our ability to forgive. Whatever another believer may do against us, no matter how terrible or destructive or unjustified, Christ has paid the penalty for that sin. No matter how others may hurt, slander, persecute, or in any way harm us, Christ’s sacrifice was sufficient to pay their penalty. When a Christian expresses, or even harbors, vengeance toward a brother, he not only sins by allowing selfish hatred to control him but he sins by profaning Christ’s sacrifice—by seeking to mete out punishment for a sin whose penalty has already been paid by his Lord. Because Christ has paid the penalty for every sin, we have no right to hold any sin against any person, even a nonbeliever. Peter thought that forgiving someone “up to seven times” was generous. But Jesus said, “I do not say to you, up to seven times, but up to seventy times seven” (Matt. 18:22). In Christ all our “sins are forgiven for His name’s sake” (1 John 2:12); He has “forgiven us all our transgressions” (Col. 2:13, emphasis added). “In Him we have redemption through His blood, the forgiveness of our trespasses, according to the riches of His grace” (Eph. 1:7). Just as the depth of God’s love is shown by how much He has forgiven, the depth of our love is shown by how much we forgive. “Above all,” Peter says, “keep fervent in your love for one another, because love covers a multitude of sins” (1 Pet. 4:8). The Greek word behind “fervent” refers to a muscle stretched to the limit. Our love is to stretch to the limit in order to cover “a multitude of sins” The greater our love the greater the multitude of sins it will cover in forgiveness. The depth of our love is also shown by how much we know we have been forgiven. When Jesus was eating dinner with Simon the Pharisee, a prostitute came into the house and anointed Jesus’ feet with her tears and with expensive perfume. Simon was incensed at what she did and was disappointed in Jesus for allowing such a woman to touch Him. Jesus responded by telling a parable: “ ‘A certain moneylender had two debtors: one owed five hundred denarii, and the other fifty. When they were unable to repay, he graciously forgave them both. Which of them therefore will love him more?’ Simon answered and said, ‘I suppose the one whom he forgave more.’ And He said to him, ‘You have judged correctly.’ ” After comparing the ways that Simon and the woman had treated Him, Jesus said, “For this reason I say to you, her sins, which are many, have been forgiven, for she loved much; but he who is forgiven little, loves little” (Luke 7:36–47). Because Simon had no real sense of the enormity of the sin in his own life, and therefore sensed no need for forgiveness, he was unforgiving of others—especially those whom he considered moral and social outcasts. Unforgiveness is the measure of self-righteousness just as forgiveness is the measure of love. Our ability to love, and therefore to forgive, depends on our sense of how much God has forgiven us. Unforgiveness is also a measure of unbelief, because the person who feels no need for forgiveness feels no need for God. Robert Falconer tells the story of his witnessing among destitute people in a certain city and of reading them the story of the woman who wiped Jesus’ feet with her tears. While he was reading he heard a loud sob and looked up at a young, thin girl whose face was disfigured by smallpox. After he spoke a few words of encouragement to her, she said, “Will He ever come again, the One who forgave the woman? I have heard that He will come again. Will it be soon?” “He could come any time. But why do you ask?” Falconer replied. After sobbing again uncontrollably, she said, “Sir, can’t He wait a little while? My hair ain’t long enough yet to wipe His feet.” The person who sees the greatness of his own forgiveness by God’s love will himself in love be forgiving. He forgives in love because his heavenly Father has forgiven in love and he desires to be an imitator of His Father.
THE PATTERN
just as Christ also loved you, and gave Himself up for us, an offering and a sacrifice to God as a fragrant aroma. (5:2b)
A young child often learns to draw by tracing. The more carefully he traces, the truer the likeness of his copy is to the original. The pattern for Christian living is Christ Himself, the one by whom every believer is to trace his life. The great difference between this tracing and that of a young child learning to draw is that we will never have a time when Christ will cease to be our pattern. And we will never be “on our own,” sufficiently skilled in ourselves to live as He lived. In fact, our part is not so much to pattern our lives ourselves as to allow God’s Spirit to pattern us after His Son. Second Corinthians 3:18 expresses this profound truth in magnificent terms: “But we all, with unveiled face beholding as in a mirror the glory of the Lord, are being transformed into the same image from glory to glory, just as from the Lord, the Spirit.” The summum bonum of Christ that we are to imitate is His love. He loved us and gave Himself up for us. Giving of oneself to others is the epitome of agapē love. Biblical love is not a pleasant emotion or good feeling about someone, but the giving of oneself for his welfare (cf. 1 John 3:16). Divine love is unconditional love, love that depends entirely on the one who loves and not on the merit, attractiveness, or response of the one loved. Christ did not simply have a deep feeling and emotional concern for mankind. Nor did He sacrifice Himself for us because we were deserving (cf. Rom. 5:8, 10). “While we were yet sinners,” He gave Himself us for us purely out of sovereign, gracious love, taking our sin upon Himself and paying its penalty in our behalf. God’s love, and all love that is like His, loves for the sake of giving, not getting. With conditional love, if the conditions are not met there is no obligation to love. If we do not get, we do not give. But God’s makes no conditions for His love to us and commands that we love others without conditions. There is no way to earn God’s love or to deserve it by reason of human goodness. Romantic, emotional love between husband and wife ebbs and flows, and sometimes disappears altogether. But loss of romantic love is never an appropriate excuse for dissolving a marriage, because the love that God specifically commands husbands to have for their wives is agapē love (Eph. 5:25; 3:19; cf. Titus 2:4; etc.)—love like His own undeserved love for us, love that is based on willful choice in behalf of the one loved, regardless of emotions, attraction, or deserving. Romantic love enhances and beautifies the relationship between husband and wife, but the binding force of a Christian marriage is God’s own kind of love, the love that loves because it is the divine nature to love. It is the love of giving, not of getting; and even when it ceases to get, it continues to give. Where there is the sacrificial love of willful choice, there is also likely to be the love of intimacy, feeling, and friendship (philia). God loved us while we were still sinners and enemies, and He continues to love us as believers, even though we continue to sin and fall short of His perfection and His glory. He loves us when we forget Him, when we disobey Him, when we deny Him, when we fail to return His love, and when we grieve His Holy Spirit. When Jude said, “Keep yourselves in the love of God” (Jude 21), he was indicating the responsibility to stay in the place where that divine love sheds its blessing. Those who are given God’s nature through Jesus Christ are commanded to love as God loves. In Christ, it is now our nature to love just as it is God’s nature to love—because His nature is now our nature. For a Christian not to love is for him to live against his own nature as well as against God’s. Lovelessness is therefore more than a failure or shortcoming. It is sin, willful disobedience of God’s command and disregard of His example. To love as God loves is to love because God loves, because we are to “be imitators of God, as beloved children” and because Christ also loved [us], and gave Himself up for us, an offering and a sacrifice to God. God’s love not only is forgiving and unconditional but is also self-sacrificing. Therefore to love as God loves is to love sacrificially, to love by the giving of ourselves as He gave Himself. The Christian’s walk in love is to extend to every person, believer and unbeliever. If God’s love can reach out even to His enemies, how can we refuse to love our enemies? If He loves His imperfect children with a perfect love, how can we not love fellow believers, whose imperfections we share? And if divine love led Christ to sacrifice Himself for unworthy and ungrateful sinners, how can we not give ourselves to fellow sinful people, unbelievers as well as believers, in His name? Shortly before His betrayal and arrest, Jesus was having supper with His disciples. During the meal the disciples began arguing among themselves as to which was the greatest. Their Lord was facing His ultimate humiliation and affliction, and yet their only concern was for themselves, for their own prestige, rank, and glory. When the Lord most needed their comfort, encouragement, and support, they acted as if He were not with them. All their attention was focused selfishly on themselves (Luke 22:24). It was then that Jesus picked up a basin of water and began washing their feet, a task usually reserved for the lowest of servants. Despite their callous lack of concern for His impending suffering and death, Jesus humbly, forgivingly, unconditionally, and self-sacrificially ministered to them. After He finished washing their feet and returned to the supper table, “He said to them, ‘Do you know what I have done to you? You call Me Teacher and Lord; and you are right, for so I am. If I then, the Lord and the Teacher, washed your feet, you also ought to wash one another’s feet. For I gave you an example that you also should do as I did to you. Truly, truly, I say to you, a slave is not greater than his master; neither is one who is sent greater than the one who sent him” (John 13:12–16). Later He commanded them to love in this same manner (John 13:34–35). Christ’s giving Himself up for us, an offering and a sacrifice to God was a fragrant aroma to His heavenly Father because that sacrifice demonstrated in the fullest and most ultimate way God’s kind of love. The words for us indicate the personal expression of love directed at all who believe. (This does not limit the provision of the atonement only to believers, as other Scriptures make clear. See John 1:29; 3:15–16; Rom. 10:13; 2 Cor. 5:14; 1 Tim. 2:4, 6; 4:10; 2 Pet. 2:1; 1 John 2:2; 4:14.) The first five chapters of Leviticus describe five offerings commanded by God of the Israelites. The first three were the burnt offering, the meal offering, and the peace offering. The burnt offering (Lev. 1:1–17) depicted Christ’s total devotion to God in giving His very life to obey and please His Father; the meal (grain) offering (Lev. 2:1–16) depicted Christ’s perfection, and the peace offering (Lev. 3:1–17; 4:27–31) depicted His making peace between God and man. All of those offerings obviously spoke of what was pleasing to God. Of each, the Scripture says it provided a “soothing aroma to the Lord” (Lev. 1:9, 13, 17; 2:2, 9, 12; 3:5, 16). Philippians 4:18 explains that the fragrant aroma meant the sacrifice was “acceptable, … well-pleasing to God.” But the other two offerings—the sin (Lev. 4:1–26, 32–35) and the trespass (Lev. 5:1–19) offerings—were repulsive to God, because, though they depicted Christ, they depicted Him as bearing the sin of mankind. They depicted the Father’s turning His back on the Son when “He made Him who knew no sin to be sin on our behalf” (2 Cor. 5:21), at which time Jesus exclaimed from the cross, “My God, My God, why hast Thou forsaken Me?” (Matt. 27:46). While Christ was the sin-bearer, God could not look on Him or rejoice in Him or be pleased in Him. But when the Father raised Christ from the dead, the sacrifice that caused Him to become sin became the sacrifice that conquered sin. The sin that put Him to death was itself put to death, and that great act of love was to God as a fragrant aroma. That fragrant aroma spreads its fragrance to everyone on earth who will place himself under the grace of that sacrifice, and it will spread its fragrance throughout heaven for all eternity. In all aspects, our lives should please God (cf. 2 Cor. 2:14–16).
MacArthur, J. F., Jr. (1986). Ephesians (pp. 193–199). Moody Press.
On the Imitation of God
Ephesians 5:1–2
Be imitators of God, therefore, as dearly loved children and live a life of love, just as Christ loved us and gave himself up for us as a fragrant offering and sacrifice to God.
The fifth chapter of Ephesians begins with one of the most startling admonitions in the New Testament: “Be imitators of God.” It is the only place in the Bible where these words occur, and what makes them so startling is that they point to a standard beyond which there is no other. William Barclay calls this “the highest standard in the world.” Alexander Maclaren calls it “the sum of all duty.” To Martyn Lloyd-Jones it was “Paul’s supreme argument … the highest level of all in doctrine and in practice … the ultimate ideal.” “Be imitators of God” reminds us of Thomas à Kempis’ classic, Of the Imitation of Christ. Thomas was born in 1380 at a time when Europe was in turmoil. The church was split by rival popes, one of whom still sat on the throne of St. Peter in Rome while the other exercised a rival rule in Avignon. The Hundred Years War was in progress. The Black Death had ravished city after city. Thomas grew up in the midst of corruption, unrest and disillusion, entered a monastery and, presumably in the 1420s, wrote what has since been called “the most influential book in Christian literature.” To be honest, Of the Imitation of Christ has never moved me as other books have, but it has been influential, and for more than five hundred years Christians have apparently found no difficulty with the concept of imitating the Jesus of history. But the imitation of God the Father is quite another matter—or at least it seems so. How is it possible to imitate one who is infinitely above us, the sovereign God of the universe?
Incommunicable Attributes
Part of our problem comes from the nature of God and from what theologians call his noncommunicable attributes. In theological textbooks a distinction is made between God’s communicable attributes, in which we share, and God’s noncommunicable attributes, in which we do not share. For example, when we talk about God we often begin with the fact that he is self-existent, self-sufficient, and eternal. Self-existent means that God has no origins and consequently is answerable to no one. This sets God utterly apart, for everything else does have origin and is accountable. Human beings are accountable to people (parents and friends), organizations (the church, the state, the company for which one works), and ultimately God. Everyone will face a final judgment. Self-sufficient means that God has no needs and therefore depends on no one. That is not at all true of us. We need countless things—food, warmth, clothing, homes, companionship, oxygen. If our supply of oxygen is cut off even for a few minutes, we die. Eternal means that God has always existed and will always exist. That is not true of us either. We have a point before which we did not exist. Moreover, we change as time passes. God does not change. He is always the same in his eternal being. To these initial attributes, without which God would not be God, we can add such things as omnipotence, omnipresence, omniscience, majesty, and holiness in its fullest sense. We cannot be like God in these characteristics. Omnipotent means all-powerful. We are not nor will we ever be all-powerful. If we could be, we would be God. Omnipresent means being everywhere at once. We will never possess this ability. We are finite creatures and will always be finite. Omniscient means knowing all things. We will never know all things. We will spend all eternity learning. Majesty and holiness also set God off from his creation. They are what make him “wholly other.” We are not that. Each of these incommunicable attributes sets God apart from us and delineates an area in which we cannot and never will be like him. But we are also overwhelmed by God’s communicable attributes, that is, those attributes in which we share. They are things like justice, wrath, wisdom, faithfulness, goodness, love, mercy, compassion, tenderness, forgiveness. We can exercise these attributes and indeed we ought to. But when we think of them in reference to God the Father, who is perfect in them, we are necessarily overawed and wonder properly if there is any point in comparing our wisdom to God’s wisdom, our goodness to God’s goodness, our faithfulness to God’s faithfulness, and so on. That is a healthy comparison, which should humble us, if nothing else. But it is nevertheless true that in our text Paul says that we are to imitate God. We are to imitate God “as dearly loved children.” In other words, just as a son should imitate a good father (though he is not a father and cannot imitate his father in many respects) and just as a daughter should imitate a good mother (though she is not a mother and cannot imitate her mother in many respects), so should the children of God imitate God. And they have this going for them: They have the enabling life of God within through the indwelling Holy Spirit. Consequently, just as physical genes should lead a child in the direction of a parent’s chief characteristics, so should a Christian’s spiritual genes lead in the direction of the moral character of God.
Forgiving Love
When we look at the passage in which the command to imitate God occurs we see at once that it is not just any attribute of God that Paul has in mind for our imitating, though it would be possible to imitate God in more ways than the one he mentions. What Paul chiefly has in mind is the imitation of God’s love. Indeed, this is what ties Ephesians 5:1 to the end of chapter 4 and links it also to the following verse. (Ephesians 5:1–2 are part of the preceding paragraph.) The entire text says, “Be kind and compassionate to one another, forgiving each other, just as in Christ God forgave you. Be imitators of God, therefore, as dearly loved children and live a life of love, just as Christ loved us and gave himself up for us as a fragrant offering and sacrifice to God.” It is in loving that we are to imitate the Creator. What kind of a love is this? The passage answers this question in several ways, and the first answer is that this love is to be forgiving. Since God the Father forgave us through the work of Christ, we are to forgive one another. This is love’s nature. This link between God’s forgiveness of us and our forgiveness of others is important, because it is only through knowing ourselves to be forgiven that we are set free to forgive others lovingly. People are in desperate need of forgiveness. Some years ago I was talking with a friend who is a psychiatrist, and he said, “As far as I am concerned, most of what a psychiatrist does is directly related to forgiveness. People come to him with problems; they feel guilty about their part in them; they are seeking forgiveness. In effect, they confess their sins to the counselor and find that he forgives them. Then a pattern is set up in which they can show their change of heart in tangible ways toward others.” In his book on confession John R. W. Stott quotes the head of a large mental hospital in England as having said, “I could dismiss half my patients tomorrow if they could be assured of forgiveness.” That is what we have in Jesus Christ—forgiveness—and because we find forgiveness there, we can in turn be forgiving. God’s forgiveness is not a mere overlooking of sin, as though he said, “Well, boys will be boys (or girls will be girls). We’ll overlook it for now; just don’t let it happen again.” God takes sin with such seriousness that he deals with it fully at the cross, and it is on that basis—the death of Jesus—that we can know we are forgiven. Do you know that, really know it? So long as you think you are a pretty good person who does not really need to be forgiven, you will naturally have a very hard time loving and forgiving others. But if you know yourself to have been a sinner under God’s just wrath, all that is changed. God says that in his sight even the best of us is vile to the extreme: It is written,
“There is no one righteous, not even one;
there is no one who understands,
no one who seeks God.
All have turned away,
they have together become worthless;
there is no one who does good,
not even one.”
“Their throats are open graves;
their tongues practice deceit.”
“The poison of vipers is on their lips.”
“Their mouths are full of cursing and bitterness.”
“Their feet are swift to shed blood;
ruin and misery mark their ways,
and the way of peace they do not know.”
“There is no fear of God before their eyes.”
Romans 3:10–18
That is the way God sees us. If we see ourselves through his eyes, knowing our vile rebellion against his love and moral standards and yet finding ourselves forgiven on the basis of Christ’s death for us, then we will inevitably love and forgive others. For nobody can act as badly toward us as we have acted toward God, and yet he has forgiven us. If we are not forgiving in our love, we really do not know the extent of God’s forgiveness of us. We still consider ourselves to be better than we are. But if we see ourselves as forgiven sinners, then we will be set free to love others in imitation of God.
Giving Love
The second thing these verses teach about the love of God, which we are to imitate, is that it is a giving love—not merely forgiving but also giving. Again, God is the model of such love, and the point at which it is most clearly demonstrated is the cross. What is it that God chiefly gives us? He has given us all things, of course. Before Adam and Eve were even created God had prepared a wonderful environment to receive them. It was a place of beauty and interest, with meaningful work to do. Sin marred that environment, as we know. But even marred by sin, our experience of God’s gifts to us is not entirely unlike the experience of our first parents. God has given us life itself, and he has placed us within an imperfect but nevertheless beautiful and fascinating world. And the work we have to do in it is important. Having said this, however, we have to admit at once that it does not even come close to an expression of the full measure of God’s giving love. For that, like God’s forgiving love, is seen primarily at the cross:
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 (John 3:16).
This is love: not that we loved God, but that he loved us and sent his Son as an atoning sacrifice for our sins (1 John 4:10).
God demonstrates his own love for us in this: While we were still sinners, Christ died for us (Rom. 5:8).
I have been crucified with Christ and I no longer live, but Christ lives in me. The life I live in the body, I live by faith in the Son of God, who loved me and gave himself for me (Gal. 2:20).
Greater love has no one than this, that he lay down his life for his friends (John 15:13).
I am particularly interested in Philippians 2:5–8, for those verses tell us that even Jesus did not merely give up things to save us; he gave himself. He did not only give up things which were outward accompaniments of his divinity: his outward glory, the service of the angels, his position at the right hand of God the Father: “Who, being in very nature God, did not consider equality with God something to be grasped, but made himself nothing, taking the very nature of a servant, being made in human likeness.” The heart of the passage is that Jesus gave himself, to the point of even death: “And being found in appearance as a man, he humbled himself and became obedient to death—even death on a cross.” The greatest expression of love is not that it gives things or even that it gives up things, but that it gives itself. In this too we are to be God’s imitators. Years ago, Donald Grey Barnhouse was counseling a couple who were having marital difficulties. The husband spoke in frustration at one point, saying, “But I don’t understand it. I have given you anything a woman could want. I’ve given you a nice house. I’ve given you a car. I’ve given you all the clothes you can wear. I’ve given you …” The list went on. At last the man ended and his wife replied sadly, “Yes, John. That much is true. You have given me everything … but yourself.” Why don’t we give ourselves to other people? It is because we are afraid to, and because we are selfish. We want ourselves for ourselves, and we are afraid that if we give ourselves to others, we will be hurt or disappointed. Only those who have God are set free from these fears and can give to others out of God’s own immensity.
Living Love
The third thing our text teaches about the love of God which we are to imitate is that it is to be a living love: forgiving, giving, but also living. It occurs in verse 2, where Paul says, “and live a life of love, just as Christ loved us and gave himself up for us as a fragrant offering and sacrifice to God.” There are two things that a living love suggests. First, it suggests a practical or active love. This is what Paul’s whole section on practical Christianity involves. For if we ask, “What does it mean to ‘live a life of love’?” the answer is in the very thing Paul has been saying. To use the outline of the last chapter, it means: (1) to put off lying and speak truthfully, (2) to put off anger, (3) to put off stealing and work for a living instead, (4) to put off unwholesome talk and instead speak to help others, and (5) to put off bitterness, rage and anger, brawling and slander, along with every form of malice, and instead to be kind, compassionate, and forgiving. That is what it means to live a life of love. Second, living love suggests love that is made alive by the very life of God and is therefore an eternal love, as God is eternal. What a need we have for this today! Our loves are weak and faltering, variable and untrustworthy. What we need in our loves is something of the character of God’s love as Paul writes about it in Romans:
Who shall separate us from the love of Christ? Shall trouble or hardship or persecution or famine or nakedness or danger or sword? As it is written: “For your sake we face death all day long; we are considered as sheep to be slaughtered.” No, in all these things we are more than conquerors through him who loved us. For I am convinced that neither death nor life, neither angels nor demons, neither the present nor the future, nor any powers, neither height nor depth, nor anything else in all creation, will be able to separate us from the love of God that is in Christ Jesus our Lord. Romans 8:35–39
Can you be an imitator of God in such an eternal love as that? The answer, if we look only to ourselves, is no. No, we cannot. Nothing that is natural to us is eternal, or forgiving or giving either, for that matter. But the answer is yes, if we look to God. The very man who wrote Ephesians 4:1 said, “I can do everything through him who gives me strength” (Phil. 4:13). But we must spend time with God if that is to happen. The word that our text translates “imitate” or “imitator” is mimētai, from which we get our English word “mimic.” Mimic means to copy closely, to repeat another person’s speech, actions, or behavior. That is what we are to do with God. We are to repeat his actions, echo his speech, duplicate his behavior. How can we do that if we do not spend time with him? We cannot, because we will not even know what his behavior is. Spend time with God! Spend time with God in prayer. Spend time with God in Bible study. Spend time with God in worship. It is only by spending time with God that we become like God. We need men and women who are like God today.
Boice, J. M. (1988). Ephesians: an expositional commentary (pp. 171–177). Ministry Resources Library.
“The virtues of men are of more consequence to society than their abilities; and for this reason, the heart should be cultivated with more assiduity than the head.” —Noah Webster (1788)
U.S. moves military toward Iran: A massive U.S. military buildup is underway in the Middle East with Iran in the crosshairs. The USS Abraham Lincoln carrier strike group had already moved into the region, but now the USS Gerald R. Ford, the largest warship ever constructed, has reached the Mediterranean and is moving toward Iran. Numerous Arleigh Burke-class guided-missile destroyers are in the region, along with Independence-class littoral combat ships and at least one nuclear submarine. Aircraft, including Stratotankers, AWACS, and F-22s, have been traversing Europe in that direction in such numbers that tracking software has started to fall behind. Trump administration officials have been strategically cagey about their plans for the buildup, but Iran has been encouraged to “make a deal” in the ongoing diplomatic talks. All necessary forces for a possible action will be in place by mid-March, a senior official said.
The Andrew formerly known as Prince arrested: Andrew Mountbatten-Windsor, brother of King Charles III, received a 66th birthday surprise — he was arrested. The ex-prince is further embroiled in the Jeffrey Epstein scandal, as he is charged with forwarding confidential trade documents to Epstein. Andrew was taken into custody at his Sandringham Estate in eastern England early Thursday and faces possible life imprisonment for public office misconduct. He was reported to the police earlier this month following the release of the Epstein files. King Charles conveyed his “deepest concern” over the arrest but stated that the “law must take its course.” Prime Minister Keir Starmer said, “One of the core principles in our system is that everybody is equal under the law and nobody is above the law.” He’s happy to hold the white British royals accountable for misconduct but allow Muslim Pakistani rape gangs to roam free.
Bhattacharya to head CDC temporarily: National Institutes of Health Director Dr. Jay Bhattacharya has been tapped by the Trump administration to act as the temporary head of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention after former Acting Director Jim O’Niell’s exit. Bhattacharya gained prominence early in the COVID pandemic when he coauthored the Great Barrington Declaration, which criticized the government’s overly aggressive, pseudo-scientific response to the pandemic. Bhattacharya will remain NIH director as the Trump administration seeks a permanent CDC director, who must be confirmed by the Senate. Donald Trump’s first CDC director, Susan Monarez, served for only a month before resigning in opposition to HHS Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr.‘s vaccine policy.
GOP sues to stop VA Dems’ gerrymandering: A group of Republicans filed a lawsuit against Virginia Democrats’ redistricting ballot referendum, seeking an emergency motion to stop the measure ahead of the March 6 early voting date. The lawsuit contends that Democrats have violated state law and used misleading language in pushing their blatantly partisan redistricting map that fails to represent Virginia’s near-even voter split. National Republican Congressional Committee Chairman Richard Hudson observed, “Virginia Democrats are ignoring their own Constitution and trying to rig the system in their favor.”
CNN “documentary” will frame Kirk’s memorial as a radicalizing event: CNN’s Pamela Brown announced this week a documentary expected to air this weekend on how Charlie Kirk’s assassination became a “rallying call” for Christian nationalism. “Christian nationalism” is a deliberate effort to turn Christian citizenship into a slur that can be used against the Right. That, of course, gives away CNN’s game. This is not a hard-hitting documentary meant to highlight the grief the Christian Right felt over Kirk’s murder and how many are feeling led to live up to his example; it is a propaganda piece meant to turn its audience against the idea of Christian nationalism. A clip from the documentary shows Professor Matthew Taylor casting doubt on the persecution of Christians … while discussing Charlie Kirk’s assassination.
Mamdani shifts gears, restarts homeless encampment sweeps: During his campaign, New York City Mayor Zohran Mamdani blasted his predecessor, Eric Adams, for his policy of clearing out homeless encampments in the city. Upon taking office, Mamdani immediately suspended such sweeps, calling them inhumane. However, just over a month into the post, and following the death of at least 19 individuals due to cold exposure, Mamdani is changing his tune. On Wednesday, he announced that he is reauthorizing the sweeps, though he noted they would not be carried out by the police but by the city’s homeless services department. Coalition for the Homeless executive director David Giffen criticized the decision, arguing, “When a city worker shows up and throws out all your belongings, you’re not going to trust that person the next time they show up offering you a place to sleep inside.”
Trans Bill of Rights: Once upon a time, the 10 rights enumerated in the Bill of Rights were considered applicable to all Americans. Today, in an era when the Left is pushing “identity groups” rather than patriotism, that is no longer the case. That’s why House Democrats have introduced the “Trans Bill of Rights.” The bill itself is vague, aiming only to expand transgender access to public “services” and “accommodations.” Despite claiming to ask for “equal access,” what this bill truly wants to enshrine in law is the right of a perverted man in a dress to enter protected women’s spaces. Additionally, it would require institutions to play along with the transgender fetish and taxpayers to pay for gender reassignment surgeries. Under the Trump administration, this bill is expected to be dead in the water, but it establishes the playbook for the next Democrat administration.
NYU Langone and Baystate Health get rid of “gender-affirming care”: If you can’t appeal to their conscience, appeal to their wallets. That’s the motto behind the Trump administration’s policies that have now led to the termination of NYU Lagone and Baystate Health’s gender mutilation. Baystate, the largest healthcare system in western Massachusetts, and Lagone, a major Manhattan hospital, were not convinced by the Cass Review and subsequent banning of “gender-affirming” surgeries in the UK. Nor were they convinced by the American Society of Plastic Surgeons and the American Medical Association’s statements that no “gender-affirming” care should be given to minors. But once the secretary of Health and Human Services announced that their Medicaid and Medicare funding would be cut off, they ended their evil practices posthaste.
High school trans wrestler accused of sexual assault drops out of girls state tourney: A male high school wrestler who identifies as a “transgender girl” and has been accused of sexually assaulting a female competitor during a match has withdrawn from the Washington State girls wrestling championship tournament. State authorities have yet to announce whether charges will be raised against this individual. A Washington Interscholastic Athletic Association spokesperson explained that the male athlete was “replaced by an alternate from the same WIAA District qualifying event.” The girl accusing him of sexual assault is not the alternate competitor.
Dispatches from Oakland: In Oakland, California, no one is above being targeted by the criminals — not even the mayor. A thief reportedly stole Mayor Barbara Lee’s car keys from her office and, two days later, returned to steal the car. The mayor’s abandoned black SUV was later discovered nearby in Vallejo, California. The Oakland Police Department has yet to locate the thief. Apparently, Oakland has the highest auto theft rate in the country, with 9,914 motor vehicle thefts in 2024, according to FBI data. Its overall crime rate was also four times the national average in 2024, likely due to the fact that the Oakland Police Department is suffering from a severe shortage of officers. Even the Soros-backed Oakland DA wasn’t exempt from brazen burglars who broke her SUV window to steal her laptop. Ironically, though, she claims she “doesn’t feel unsafe” living there.
Headlines
Judge rules that authorities can’t re-detain Kilmar Abrego Garcia (Townhall)
Trump “taking an interest” in social media bans for teens (NY Post)
Ex-South Korean President Yoon gets life sentence (Washington Times)
Thief breaks into Oakland mayor’s office, steals her car (Not the Bee)
Eight dead, one missing in Lake Tahoe avalanche tragedy (NY Post)
The Executive News Summary is compiled daily by Jordan Candler, Thomas Gallatin, Sterling Henry, and Sophie Starkova. For the archive, click here.
Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg has previously testified before Congress about the addictive nature of social media and the effect it has on kids and teens. Yesterday, for the first time, the Facebook founder testified before a jury in a liability lawsuit in Los Angeles on the same subject.
One plaintiff, referred to as “KGM,” is a 20-year-old who believes that social media addiction led to her psychological issues, including depression, body dysmorphic disorder, and self-harm. She began using YouTube, owned by Google, at the tender age of six and had access to Instagram, owned by Meta, at age nine. …
The trial will specifically address whether or not the jury finds Meta and Google liable for the deterioration of KGM’s mental health due to the addictive nature of their platforms.
Griffin noted that proving liability for Meta and others may be a heavy lift for several reasons, including the frequently cited Section 230. That provision in the 1996 Communications Decency Act largely shields platforms from liability for user-generated content. However, those platforms have often behaved like publishers, “fact-checking” and censoring (primarily conservative) content in a tacit admission that social media changes behavior.
As for youth, The New York Times reports, “In internal documents that surfaced in some of the [other] lawsuits [facing the company], Mr. Zuckerberg and other Meta leaders repeatedly played down their platforms’ risks to young people, while rejecting employee pleas to bolster youth guardrails and hire additional staff.”
The Daily Wire adds, “Zuckerberg bolstered his argument by noting that less than 1% of Instagram’s revenue comes from teenagers, emphasizing the demographic has limited purchasing power and is therefore less attractive to advertisers. He argued that, from a business perspective, attracting teenagers is not ‘meaningful in the short term.’”
That may be, but if a product is meant to hook adults so they spend money, it will hook kids, too, if there are insufficient guardrails in place. Teen users also soon become adult users.
On Wednesday, Zuckerberg largely stuck to his talking points, steering clear of anything that might be taken as an acknowledgment of Instagram’s addictive “qualities.” Still, he was confronted with a 2015 memo, in which the Times says he “encouraged executives to prioritize increasing the time that teenagers spend on Meta’s apps.”
Much more recently — November 2023 — Instagram head Adam Mosseri sent a memo to employees, saying, “As you are building out your 2024 plans, I’m asking that the business teams stay laser focused on 1) teens, particularly in developed markets and 2) Threads, and in that order.”
Oh.
In this particular case, Meta’s lawyers are trying to prove that KGM had a turbulent home life and that social media, including Instagram, was a coping mechanism, not the cause of her mental health issues.
It seems relevant that, in his 2024 congressional testimony, Zuckerberg turned to several families and offered what appeared to be a spontaneous apology. He told parents he was “sorry for everything you have all been through.” Maybe that was all scripted, but likely not. In any case, it wasn’t exactly an admission of guilt.
Yesterday, Zuckerberg said Instagram made a conscious decision to prioritize utility over time spent on the platform. His “basic assumption,” he explained, is that “if something is valuable, people will use it more because it’s useful to them.”
The idea that Instagram or any other social media platform isn’t actively doing everything possible to keep people scrolling and staring is absurd on its face. They go out of business if people don’t stay on the platforms, and their own internal documents belie his claim.
Ultimately, however, this is a tough case. No one wants to be on the other side of grieving parents who have lost children to suicide. No one wants to admit responsibility for harm to children.
You can say that parents should take charge of how their children use things, but as the parent of teenagers, I can tell you that, unless you keep them under lock and key, they will find ways to do dumb stuff. Heck, I was a teenager once myself.
As a Gen Xer, I grew up without any of this stuff. I learned to type on a typewriter. I didn’t even send an email until I was in college, and I got my first cellphone when my wife was pregnant with our first child. In other words, my brain was fully developed (cough, cough — I swear) by the time social media was a gleam in Mark Zuckerberg’s eye.
For kids growing up in the last 20 years, however, separating fact from fiction or reality from make-believe is much harder because of social media. For example, there wouldn’t be a “transgender community” if it weren’t for Big Tech platforms.
Does that mean Meta and the rest are liable for every bad thing — or even just certain really bad things — that happens to a kid?
Some are looking to the Australian model of banning social media for kids. Some 86% of Americans want to hold platforms accountable for “predatory” social media addiction.
As for specific liability, this Los Angeles jury will go a long way to setting a precedent, one way or another.
Emmy Griffin: A Putrid Potomac Problem — The Potomac River is chock-full of sewage, and the Trump administration and Democrat officials are exchanging blame. Who’s actually at fault?
Thomas Gallatin: Colbert, Talarico Lie About FCC ‘Ban’ — “Late Show” host Stephen Colbert falsely claims the FCC banned his interview with Texas Democrat Senate candidate James Talarico.
Samantha Koch: Hillary Clinton Stands by Her Man Again — Her “women’s rights” panel featured Tim “Sarah” McBride, the Democrat congressman from Delaware, who expressed his views on women’s rights.
Gregory Lyakhov: Enforcement Without Efficiency Is Not Enforcement — Immigration enforcement is not strengthened by turning one contested case — like that of Kilmar Abrego Garcia — into a national spectacle.
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Latest PodcastPopCon #134: Rupert Lowe: “We Will Not Manage the West’s Decline”The West is in a moment of crisis, and British MP Rupert Lowe’s new political movement, Restore Britain, has, in the words of U.S. Secretary of State Marco Rubio, “no interest in being polite and orderly caretakers of the West’s managed decline.”
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SHORT CUTS
Race Bait
“What’s so interesting about the MAGA regime to me is they’re all white nationalists, even the brown-skinned ones, even the Latinos.” —podcaster Jennifer Welch
Shot/Chaser
Q: “I notice that when you urge people to action, you often include the word ‘peacefully.’ Is that to avoid another Jan. 6-type incident?” —CNN reporter
A: “With all due respect, it’s to avoid people like you guys saying that I’m anything but.” —right-wing activist Scott Presler
Democrat Infighting
“We did receive information suggesting that the federal government did not shut down this segment. … It is our understanding that either Mr. Colbert or CBS decided that they just didn’t want to air it. And this was because of a fear that the FCC may say something to him and that there may have been advice to just have me on.” —Rep. Jasmine Crockett (D-TX) suggesting that the Democrat establishment collaborated to support her Texas Senate primary opponent
For the Record
“CBS’s late night host wanted to deny a black woman equal time on television in the middle of an active election and with his super-Christian best friend, lied about it.” —Erick Erickson
“I, for one, am enjoying the Democrats throwing Jasmine Crockett under the bus.” —Amy Curtis
Re: the Epstein Files
“By releasing document after document, not only have victims been needlessly exposed without their consent, but we also risk applying guilt by association to anyone for the sole crime of simply being named in the files — a door that, once opened, cannot be closed.” —Ian Haworth
Climate Swindle
“Since the global warming crusade started some 30 years ago, the temperature of the planet has not been altered by one-tenth of a degree — as even the alarmists will admit. In other words, $16 trillion has been spent — a lot of people got very, very rich off the government largesse — but there is not a penny of measurable payoff.” —Stephen Moore
Belly Laugh of the Day
“We send billions of dollars to dead people and they get cashed — the checks get cashed. … We’re talking about all kinds of checks. … So I had to go pass a bill. … So far as I can tell, dead people can still vote, but they can’t cash checks because we’re not going to be sending them to them anymore.” —Sen. John Kennedy (R-LA)
Leading the Way
“Success for Turning Point wasn’t beating the NFL in ratings. It was proving that an alternative halftime show was viable and that Turning Point could pull it off. It succeeded on both fronts. … There’s a lesson here for conservatives. It’s not enough to rightly point out the many things wrong with our culture and society. Conservatives must create alternatives.” —Victor Joecks
And Last…
“The ideas that the left uses to discredit the West are uniquely Western ideas. The West came up with … equal rights, tolerance, of freedom from religious domination. These are all Western ideas that now the left hurls back against us and say, ‘You’re not perfect in them.’ No, we’re not, but no other civilization is as well.” —Heather Mac Donald
ON THIS DAY in 1945, the U.S. Marines launched the 36-day Battle of Iwo Jima with 70,000 men attacking 21,000 Japanese who were dug in and prepared to fight to the death. Only a couple of hundred Japanese soldiers surrendered, while 19,217 Americans were wounded and 6,871 were killed in action. The Medal of Honor was awarded to 22 Marines and five Sailors, 14 of them posthumously.
Missouri Gov. Mike Kehoe (L) welcomes Secretary of War Hegseth./Image video screenshot via @DOWResponse/X
On Wednesday, aerospace giant Boeing announced it will return its Defense, Space & Security headquarters to St. Louis following almost a decade in Virginia.
The move comes only weeks after radical Virginia Gov. Abigail Spanberger (D) took office.
Steve Parker, Boeing Defense, Space & Security CEO, said in a statement, “It’s important for leaders to be side-by-side with our teammates, listening to their feedback and acting to remove obstacles as we continue to stabilize and strengthen our business.”
“The headquarters move, coupled with our senior leaders being based at and spending their time at major engineering, production and manufacturing centers across the U.S., reflects our continued focus on disciplined performance across our business.”
Fox News reports that Missouri Republican Gov. Mike Kehoe celebrated the move as a major “win for the heartland.”
“Missouri is the best place in the nation for aerospace and defense manufacturing, and having the Boeing Defense headquarters back where it belongs is a win for our workers and a win for the heartland,” said Kehoe, adding, “We are proud to see this leadership return to the production floor where the real work of defending our nation happens every day.”
Kehoe welcomed Secretary of War Pete Hegseth to celebrate the news.
Secretary Hegseth spoke to a crowd in St. Louis and shared the news, noting, “I’m delighted to be here in St. Louis, known as ‘fighter land USA.’”
“And it is an important day,” he continued. “Boeing Defense announced, just today, that the headquarters for Defense, Space & Security is moving from DC to St. Louie, as it should be.”
“More out of Washington, more out in the heartland of America.”
Watch:
🚨🇺🇸 Sec Hegseth announced Boeing Defense just moved its headquarters from DC to St. Louis.
Defense jobs are leaving Washington and going back to the heartland where things actually get built.
Sounds like the Chicago Bears are on the way out of Chicago, which honestly sounds crazy even writing, but it would appear they are sick of Democrat rule, like the rest of us. Hey, Boeing is bailing on Virginia after Spanberger took over. We’re honestly shocked any organization or corporation has remained in Chicago under Mayor Brandon Johnson.
The city just gets worse and worse.
And yet, Democrats still don’t get that their backwards, government-forward policies are bad.
Wild, right?
Mayor Brandon Johnson is freaking out, as he should be.
BREAKING: Chicago Bears are moving out of Chicago, building a stadium in Indiana pic.twitter.com/7MzOlSiouS
Guys — take a breath. If this happens, it will be a game-changer. The City of Chicago and the State of Illinois have let the privilege and the importance of tradition in keeping the Bears slip away. At this point, the Bears staying in Chicago feels like remaining in a broken…
With millions of additional pages of documents being released about Jeffrey Epstein’s web, it is becoming clear that he was more than “just” a child sex trafficking monster. The billionaire Deep State operative’s ties to education and academia shed light on one of the most disturbing agendas imaginable.
“Rage bait” was the 2025 Oxford word of the year, but the term still carries relevance in February 2026. Rage bait is defined as “online content deliberately designed to elicit anger or outrage by being frustrating, provocative, or offensive, typically posted in order to increase traffic to or engagement with a particular web page or social media content.”
I don’t know about you, but I feel like rage bait is at an all-time high right now, and it always seems to spike post-Super Bowl halftime show. So let’s play a game. I’m going to share some popular buzz words and phrases, and I want you to pay attention to how you react, whether it’s with an internal eye roll, palpable tension or anxiety, or even a small spark of frustration.
Epstein Files. Inflation. ICE. Measles. Transgender athletes. DEI policies. Border security. Healthcare costs. Microplastics. Pesticides. China relations. TikTok bans. Gun control. Censorship. Election integrity. AI regulation. Police reform. Covid vaccine mandates. Crime rates in major cities. President Trump. Super Bowl halftime show. Bad Bunny. Kid Rock.
Now I want you to notice something. If you had a response to one or more words or phrases listed, do those that you responded to have anything in common? Does your response align with the political party you associate yourself with? Or does your response have to do with what you see on your news feed each day? How much of your response is driven by what you pay attention to regularly?
I’m guessing that much of what stirs you up and incites you to “rage” is influenced by what you consume daily through your news sources, creating selective outrage and keeping you fired up and focused on the issues that frustrate you. And that guess I’m making isn’t just based on my own assumption; it’s backed by science.
The neuroscience of attention
I wrote about the impact of cognitive dissonance and the role it plays in generating rage last fall, but another aspect of why our brains are so attuned to selective outrage is that God designed them with an internal threat detector called the amygdala.
When your brain picks up on a threat (real or perceived), the amygdala sends an alarm that reverberates throughout your entire nervous system, keeping your body ready to fight, flee, or freeze. (This is why you might feel your pulse race or start perspiring under stress: it’s protective.)
Because the goal is survival, your brain is primed to notice the negative over the neutral. News outlets know this.
When news headlines broadcast a crisis or conflict, it activates “threat mode” in your brain. And once your nervous system is activated, you’re more likely to stay tuned in. This is something the news media has known for years, but with social media, it takes it to the next level.
What you see on social media is purely driven by what you pay attention to (and what your amygdala is activated by). Thanks to this algorithm, your selective outrage–filtered based on your ideology–becomes even more selective. You can even hide posts (or people) you don’t agree with, creating a news feed that is strictly curated through your preferred view of the world.
Modern neuroscience teaches us that neurons that fire together, wire together. This refers to the concept that the brain thrives on repetition and forms connections with familiar information.
So if your newsfeed is filled with right-leaning information, you’ll get outraged by things Republicans are outraged about. If your newsfeed is filled with left-leaning information, you’ll get outraged by things that Democrats are outraged about. And your newsfeed won’t stop feeding you that information until you click on something different.
Last fall, I experienced an influx of AI-generated reel clips in my newsfeed documenting “life in ancient Egypt.” Because I was studying the book of Exodus at the time, I clicked on one reel, which then turned my whole feed into articles about ancient Egypt. I wasn’t mad about it, but it was quite different from my typical feed filled with health facts and recipes.
What I found interesting is that it aligns so closely with what we know from neuroscience. When you shift your attention and change your thought patterns away from the default program, your attention shifts and creates new patterns of thought.
But neuroscience isn’t the only way we know this concept is true. The Bible speaks about it as well.
Whatever is true
I doubt the apostle Paul knew about the amygdala. I doubt he knew about neurons and attention. But Paul knew something significant: what you think about matters. He even wrote to the Philippians about neuroscience:
Finally, brothers, whatever is true, whatever is honorable, whatever is just, whatever is pure, whatever is lovely, whatever is commendable, if there is any excellence, if there is anything worthy of praise, think about these things (Philippians 4:8).
God designed your brain to adapt to patterns of thought and be renewed and rewired. But here’s where modern algorithms make this more complicated.
Focusing on “whatever is true” becomes more challenging when what you perceive to be true is what someone else believes is false, based on each of your curated social media newsfeeds. Your truth is selective. Your outrage becomes even more selective based on that truth. And that selective outrage becomes exhausting, wreaking havoc on physical and mental health.
Physically, negative emotions like fear, anxiety, and outrage can trigger distress in the body. As I write in my book, “Neuropeptides, also referred to as the ‘molecules of emotion,’ are chains of amino acids that are believed to be formed by emotions that originate in the brain. In response to different types of stress, neuropeptides can signal inflammatory cytokine production in the body, which is immune-protective in the short-term but can wreak havoc and bring more distress to the body in the long-term.”
Mentally, negative emotions cause excessive ruminations that create patterns of negative thought. If your negative thoughts are familiar to the brain, they will become increasingly repetitive, and they will look like the truth—even when they’re not. This pattern of thought will drive wedges between your relationship with God, others, and even yourself.
Rewire your thought patterns
Today’s Christians are faced with a dilemma. How do we respond to this selective outrage? When do we choose to engage, and when do we choose to sit back and let the rage baiters run the show? I think there are three things we can look at to help us rewire beneficial patterns of thought in our minds.
Examine your filter. Determine if your perspective is based more on the truth of this world or the truth of God’s Word. If you find yourself spending excessive amounts of time scrolling or watching the news, ask, “Is this pattern drawing me to God’s Word or away from his truth?”
Consider your energy expenditure. Oftentimes, we use up our energy stores on what is happening on our handheld screens, leaving little for the people and work we are called to steward right in front of us. Ask yourself, “How much of my energy is being used up on matters that are out of my control, and is this negatively interfering with my relationships and/or God-given purpose?”
Renew your mind with God’s Word every day. Checking your phone may be the first thing you do every morning. Ask yourself, “How much of my primary attention is going to the truth of God’s Word versus the truth in my newsfeed?” Make a change to your routine and choose to spend time in God’s Word before activating your amygdala with headlines.
While selective outrage monopolizes precious mental real estate, your brain can change. Even if you feel overly activated by the ever-changing rage bait headlines, your brain can learn new patterns that bring hope and peace. After all, the God who designed your brain has given you the tools to do just that.
Pastor Andy Woods discusses the anti-Christian NFL, social justice, half-time shows, TPUSA, the gospel, discernment, NAR, ecumenism, and moral clarity in a confused culture.
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