How To Talk Like the Bible

The Bible writers are unlike the Christians who fancy themselves skillful in theology. Christians get obsessed with several doctrines and then they expect every sermon, every book, every conversation, and even every biblical passage to talk exactly like how they think using the exact narrow expressions they use.

You see this a lot in Calvinists. No one teaches a more extreme doctrine of divine sovereignty than I do, because I affirm that it is absolute. So someone can only teach it equally as strong, but not stronger. That said, I would talk freely about man’s decisions and responsibilities just like the Bible writers, with God’s sovereignty always assumed, but not always mentioned. I find no problem in telling people to “choose” Christ. The Bible says, “Choose you this day whom you will serve.” But God’s sovereignty is the explanation for why people choose what they choose. So when this is the topic of discussion, Christ said, “You have not chosen me, but I have chosen you.”

I find no problem in preaching to people, “Believe in Jesus Christ, and save yourselves from hell.” Peter said, “Save yourselves from this evil generation.” I find no problem in saying that sickness comes from the devil, even saying that it is “not from God.” The Bible says that Jesus went about healing all who were oppressed by the devil. And God said to Israel, “They will surely gather against you, but not by me.” God’s sovereignty is always assumed, but there is freedom in expression when we are not talking about metaphysics, but about our regular interaction with creation.

Christians are very amateurish in theology when they become obsessed with the few ideas and terms that their traditions emphasize, to the point that even the Bible is not biblical enough for them. The Bible finds no need to obey our technical jargon. I don’t either. Once I used the word “condition” in a discussion about faith, and some Calvinists immediately seized on that and said, “Vincent Cheung says faith is a condition for salvation!” False Calvinism! Arminian impostor! With them, the word can only mean prerequisite. But I am not a Calvinist, and I am not Reformed. I am not a moron either. I don’t need to follow their stupid rules. No, I meant condition as in a “state of affair.” So the word almost carries the meaning of “anything.” Thus I was saying, “Anything that is found in the Christian came from God in the first place.” But they could not even understand something simple like this. Once people become zealots for a tradition or a pet doctrine, they become theologically and religiously stupid. Intellectually broken. It is a psychological dysfunction, a mental stronghold.

The same applies to other doctrines, such as the fate of unbelievers. Terms like “destruction” and “death” are just the way the Bible refers to the punishment God will apply to reprobates. You cannot use these terms to prove annihilationism, just like you cannot prove Arminianism with biblical passages that tell us to choose and to save ourselves. There is no excuse for missing this. Even in our ordinary speech, “destruction” does not often mean “total disintegration of every part” or “remove from existence” in the metaphysical and ontological sense. Annihilation is a separate issue. It needs to be established by other considerations, such as what the Bible reveals about the immortality of the soul and the nature of the judgment. When God says, “I never knew you!” he does not mean, “Hey where did you come from! I never knew you existed!”

From: email