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"Take
Heed" Ministries
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Cecil Andrews, PO BOX 13, Ballynahinch, BT24 8AL, Northern Ireland. Telephone/Fax 028 9756 5511. E-MAIL - takeheed@aol.com WEB-SITE - http://www.takeheed.net |
Don’t take your cue from Steve Chalke
[Part 2]
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In another article that I wrote
recently called ‘Moral Crusades and The Gospel’ I
quoted a saying by a former Pastor of mine. Well once more I want to quote one
of the sayings of this former Pastor and it was this ‘When a half-truth is
proclaimed as the whole truth it becomes a lie’. Why do I quote this
saying? Well at the heart of Steve Chalke’s book ‘The Lost Message of
Jesus’ I believe that ‘a half-truth is being proclaimed as the whole
truth and as a result it has become a lie’.
On page 63 Steve Chalke writes ‘The
Bible never defines God as anger, power or judgement – in fact it never
defines him as anything other than love. But more than
that it never makes assertions about his anger, power or judgement independently
of his love. So, though we read about his various attributes, in reality
they are, as Karl Barth points out never more than “repetitions and
amplifications of the one statement that God loves”.’
In this statement Steve Chalke
acknowledges that the Bible does reveal some of the ‘attributes’ of
God as being ‘anger, power and judgement’ but he
asserts, along with Karl Barth, that the one factor that guides God when
exercising His ‘attributes’ is His ‘love’ so that
any exercise of ‘anger, power or judgement’ is in reality an
expression or as Karl Barth puts it a ‘repetition and amplification’
of God acting in ‘love’. Can I just say that I find that
assertion ‘hard to swallow’ when I read of how God moved in ‘anger, power
and judgement’ against the cities of
I do believe that there is a
factor that does guide God when He exercises His ‘attributes’,
but I do not believe that it is His ‘love’ and in fact I believe
that His ‘love’ is itself guided by this other factor. Steve
Chalke wrote that in the Bible ‘it never defines him [God] as
anything other than love’. THIS IS SIMPLY NOT TRUE! In my Bible I read
this truth in 1 John 1:5 “GOD IS LIGHT and in him is no darkness at all”
and Paul, writing to Timothy in 1 Timothy
What truth did John, under divine
inspiration, want to convey when he wrote, “God is light and in him is no
darkness at all?” To answer that let me quote Pastor John MacArthur from
his devotional thoughts for October 4 in his book ‘Strength for
Today’ when he considers the verse 1 John 1:5 “God is light and in him
is no darkness at all” – Pastor MacArthur wrote ‘Light and
darkness are familiar metaphors in Scripture. Intellectually, light refers to
truth, and darkness to error; morally light refers to holiness, and darkness to
evil. Intellectually, the Bible reveals God as the God of truth…Morally, light
describes God’s absolute holiness and separation from evil…Understanding the
truth that “God is light” is foundational to dealing with sin in our lives.’ I
would like to add to this last statement and to say that ‘Understanding
the truth that “God is light” is foundational to God’s dealing with our sin’.
The truth that the Bible reveals
as being the guiding factor for God as He exercises His ‘attributes’
is not as Steve Chalke asserts God’s ‘love’ but rather it
is God’s ‘holiness’ – an inherent ‘holiness’ that
totally sets Him apart from His whole creation. Jesus Christ was “Emmanuel…God
with us” [Matthew 1:23] and He was “God…manifest in the flesh’ [1
Timothy 3:16] and John MacArthur gives this telling explanation concerning
the Incarnate Christ in his book ‘The Murder of Jesus’ [p71-72] - ‘When
Christ took on human flesh, he also took on Himself all the natural weaknesses
of humanity – except those that are inherently sinful. Hebrews 4:15 says “For
we do not have an high priest who cannot be touched with the feeling of our
infirmities, but was in all points tempted like as we are, yet without
sin”…Christ experienced every infirmity of human nature except for sin’.
This explanation by Pastor MacArthur explains why Christ could declare in John
Another character in the Bible,
the prophet Isaiah, was like-wise compelled to cry out one day in anguish of
soul, “Woe is me! For I am undone, because I am a man of unclean lips, and I
dwell in the midst of a people of unclean lips; for mine eyes have seen the
King, the Lord of hosts” [Isaiah 6:5]. Isaiah had been granted a vision of
God in His heaven and was it God’s ‘love’ that caused him to cry
out in anguish – absolutely not! In that vision, the angelic beings around the
Throne of God were not crying out ‘love, love, love’ – no – they
were crying out “Holy, holy, holy is the Lord of hosts” [Isaiah 6:3]. Isaiah
had received an overwhelming revelation of the absolute ‘holiness’ of
God that is perfectly summed up in 1 John 1:5 that “God is light and
in him is no darkness at all”.
Having watched the God of Heaven
move in ‘anger, power and judgement’ against the
pursuing armies of Pharaoh by drowning them in the Red Sea [Exodus 14: 13-31]
we read in Exodus 15:1-10 that “Then sang Moses and the children of
Israel this song unto the Lord…The Lord is my strength…he is become my
salvation…The Lord is a man of war; the Lord is his name. Pharaoh’s chariots
and his host hath he cast into the sea…Thy right hand O Lord is become glorious
in power; thy right hand O Lord hath dashed in pieces the enemy…thou sentest
forth thy wrath which consumed them as stubble…Thou didst blow with thy wind;
the sea covered them; they sank as lead in the mighty waters”. Can anyone
doubt that this was God exercising His ‘attributes’ of ‘anger,
power and judgement’? Steve Chalke and Karl Barth would
have us believe that it was God’s ‘love’ that influenced Him to
take such action but verse 11 of Exodus 15 tells quite a
different story for the “song” concisely sums up God’s actions against
the Egyptians with these words “Who is like unto thee, O Lord, among the
gods? Who is like thee, GLORIOUS IN HOLINESS, fearful in praises, doing
wonders”? God’s move against Pharaoh’s army was influenced not by His ‘love’
but by His glorious [majestic] ‘holiness’.
I said earlier that God’s ‘love’
is itself guided by this other factor, namely God’s ‘holiness’ and
I want to illustrate this by contrasting what the Bible states to be the height
of human love’ with what is revealed as the height of God’s
‘love’. The Lord Himself in these words summed up the height of
human ‘love’ – “Greater love hath no man than this that a man lay down his
life for his friends” [John
The context in which He said this
was of course at the Last Supper where He was preparing His disciples for the
final phase of His earthly mission. What would that final phase be? It would be
a demonstration of the height of God’s ‘love’ and as we examine
some of the many passages in the Bible that confirm the reality of the height
of God’s ‘love’ we shall see that the motivating factor behind
God’s ‘love’ was His ‘holiness’. These passages
will confirm what I wrote earlier namely that ‘Understanding the truth
that “God is light” is foundational to God’s dealing with our sin’.
Because of His inherent ‘holiness’ God must act against that
which offends His ‘holiness’, namely our sin and the following
passages of scripture tell us how God, motivated by the offence against His ‘holiness’,
moved in ‘love’ on behalf of those who were not His
friends but His enemies. The most important truth that we shall discover from
these passages is that at the very heart of God’s ‘love’ is the
gracious and glorious truth that manifested itself by what happened at Calvary
– a truth that Steve Chalke, as we read in Part 1 of this article, totally
rejects in his book and that is the truth of ‘penal substitution’.
Earlier I quoted the words of the
Lord in John
John, who wrote in 1 John 1:8
“If we say we have no sin, we deceive ourselves, and the truth is not in us” also
wrote in 1 John 4:9 “In this was manifested the love of God toward us, that
God sent his only begotten Son into the world, that we might live through him”;
and how is this aim [“that we might live through him”] to be
accomplished – we read the answer in verse 10 “Herein is love, not that we
loved him, but that he loved us and sent his Son to be the propitiation for [penal
substitution] our sins”.
These three sinners, Paul, Peter
and John recognised the reality of their sin and its consequences [how it had
offended the ‘holiness’ of God] and they also recognised that
despite His offended ‘holiness’, rather than mete out to them His
warranted justice [“The soul that sinneth it shall die” Ezekiel 18:20; “The
wages of sin is death” Romans 6:23], God had invoked His ‘attributes’
of ‘mercy’ and of ‘love’ by dealing with
Christ through ‘penal susbstitution’ as He should have dealt with
them. This was certainly as John expressed it how God “manifested” His
love but behind the exercise of God’s ‘mercy’ and God’s ‘love’
lies this guiding factor - the truth that “God
is light and in him is no darkness at all”. The reason God “manifested” His
‘mercy’ and His ‘love’ was His ‘holiness’.
If God were not ‘holy’ there would have been no need for Him to
mercifully and lovingly have “spared not his own Son but delivered him up”
[Romans
In his book ‘The Murder of
Jesus’ Pastor John MacArthur gives an explanation of what Paul wrote in 2
Corinthians
Later in his book [p218-221]
Pastor Macarthur wrote words that could have been specifically penned to answer
Steve Chalke’s denial of ‘penal substitution’. Pastor MacArthur
wrote ‘As Christ hung there, He was bearing the sins of the world. He was
dying as a substitute for others. To Him was imputed the guilt of their sins
and He was suffering the punishment for those sins on their behalf. And the very essence of that
punishment was the outpouring of God’s wrath against sinners. In some mysterious way during those awful
hours on the cross, the Father poured out the full measure of His wrath against
sin and the recipient of that wrath was God’s own beloved Son! IN THIS
LIES THE TRUE MEANING OF THE CROSS. THOSE WHO TRY TO EXPLAIN THE ATONING WORK
OF CHRIST IN ANY OTHER TERMS INEVITABLY END UP NULLIFYING THE TRUTH OF CHRIST’S
ATONEMENT ALTOGETHER. [EMPHASIS MINE]…God was punishing His own Son as
if He had committed every wicked deed done by every sinner who would ever
believe. And He did it so that He could forgive and treat those redeemed ones
as if they had lived Christ’s perfect life of righteousness. Scripture teaches
this explicitly: “He made him who knew no sin to be sin for us that we might be
made the righteousness of God in him”…It was God’s own wrath against sin, God’s
own righteousness, and God’s own sense of justice that Christ satisfied on the
cross. The shedding of His blood was a sin offering rendered to God…when Christ
ransomed the elect from sin (1 Timothy 2:6), the
ransom price was paid to God. Christ died in our place and stead and He
received the very same outpouring of divine wrath in all its fury that we
deserved for our sin…The physical pains of crucifixion, dreadful as they were,
were nothing compared to the wrath of the Father against Him…all our worst
fears about the horrors of hell, and more, were realised by Him as He received
the due penalty of other’s wrongdoing”.
Pastor MacArthur’s biblically
based identification of what is termed ‘penal substitution’ stands
in stark contrast to what Steve Chalke wrote in his book [p182-183] ‘The
fact is the cross isn’t a form of cosmic child abuse – a vengeful Father,
punishing his Son for an offence he has not even committed. Understandably,
both people inside and outside of the Church have found this twisted version of
events morally dubious and a huge barrier to faith…If the cross is a personal
act of violence perpetrated by God towards humankind but borne by his son, then
it makes a mockery of Jesus’ own teaching to love your enemies and to refuse to
repay evil with evil. The truth is the cross is a symbol of love. It is a
demonstration of just how far God as Father and Jesus as his Son are prepared
to go to prove that love’.
In part 1 of this article I wrote
‘The flaw in this thinking is quite obvious – for God to JUSTLY punish
sinners for their sin would not be ‘evil’’. Steve Chalke is clearly of
the opinion that all ‘violence’ as he phrased it is ‘evil’.
But God’s Word does not view this thing that way and clearly teaches that
proportionate and warranted punishment [or ‘violence’ according
to Steve Chalke] is both justified and beneficial. The book of Proverbs
contains a wealth of divine wisdom and in Proverbs 29:15 we read, “The
rod [proportionate and warranted
punishment] and reproof give wisdom, but a child left to
himself bringeth his mother to shame”. The writer
to the Hebrews is in no doubt about the benefits of “chastening” [‘violence’
according to Steve Chalke?] as we read in Hebrews 12:5-6 & 9-11
“My son, despise not thou the chastening of the Lord, nor faint when thou art
rebuked of him; For whom the Lord loveth he chasteneth…Furthermore we have had
fathers of our flesh who corrected [‘violence’ according to
Steve Chalke?] us and we gave them
reverence…For they verily for a few days chastened us after their own pleasure
but he for our profit, that we might be partakers of his holiness. Now no
chastening [‘violence’ according to Steve Chalke?] for the
present time seemeth to be joyous, but grievous; nevertheless, afterward it
yieldeth the peaceable fruit of righteousness unto them who are exercised by
it”.
As I typed
these words from the book of Hebrews about how ‘no chastening for the
present time seemeth to be joyous, but grievous; nevertheless, afterward it
yieldeth…fruit” I thought very much of the prophetic words of Isaiah 53 where
we read that the Son was “smitten of God [His Father] and afflicted” [verse 4], of
how “the Lord [His Father] laid
on him [The son] the
iniquity of us all” [verse 6], of how “it pleased the Lord [His Father] to bruise
him [The Son]; he [His Father] hath put him
[The Son] to
grief” [verse
10]. Would all
this ‘cosmic child abuse’ as Steve Chalke blasphemously phrased
it yield any “fruit”? The answer is ‘yes’ for we read on in verse 11
“He shall see of the travail of his soul and shall be satisfied; by his
knowledge shall my righteous servant justify many; for he [Christ – by penal substitution] shall
bear their iniquities”. Isaiah wrote pre-Calvary but the
post-Calvary writer to the Hebrews echoed these truths when he wrote of “Jesus,
the author and finisher of our faith, who for the joy that was set before him,
endured the cross” [Hebrews 12:2].
Because God’s ‘holiness’ had
been offended by man’s sin, God the Father and God the Son covenanted to
lovingly and mercifully and graciously solve the twin problems occasioned by
man’s sin, namely God’s ‘anger’ and Man’s ‘guilt’
by allowing the Incarnate Christ, through what has come to be theologically
known as ‘penal substitution’, to be “delivered…and…crucified
and slain” [Acts 2:23] as “the lamb of God who taketh away the sin of
the world” [John 1:29]. This “lamb” was pictured in the Old
Testament by the “Passover lamb” of Exodus 12 that, through its
death and shed blood being applied to the doorposts and lintels of houses,
saved the occupants from divine wrath and judgement. It comes therefore as no
surprise to read of Paul referring to the Lord as “Christ, our Passover, is
sacrificed for [penal substitution] for us” [1 Corinthians 5:7].
Probably the most well-known
passage of scripture that identifies ‘penal substitution’ as
being at the heart of God’s loving solution to His offended ‘holiness’ is
found in John 3:16 “For God so loved the world that he GAVE his only
begotten son”. What does it
mean that “God GAVE his only begotten son”? Surely it means that the
Father ‘GAVE’ His son as a sacrificial “lamb” so that through His
substitutionary death [penal substitution] on behalf of guilty sinners,
there would be “reconciliation”.
In Revelation 13:8 we read of “the lamb slain from the
foundation of the world” [
Steve Chalke alleges in his book
[p174] that ‘we have learnt how to explain what a Christian is without
reference to the resurrection’ and he goes on to also say ‘The
task of the Church is to preach Christ crucified. But surely its task is
equally to preach Christ resurrected’. The “gospel” is set out
succinctly by Paul in 1 Corinthians 15:1-4 and not only does Paul
mention the death and burial of the Lord Jesus Christ as being “according to
the scriptures” but also that “he rose again the third day according to
the scriptures”. Clearly the resurrection is important as it is an integral
part of “the gospel” [the good news] and therefore it must be properly
preached if anyone is to come to a true understanding of ‘what a
Christian is’.
So how does Steve Chalke explain
or preach the ‘resurrection’ in the context of understanding ‘what
a Christian is’. On pages 192-193 of his book he writes ‘Taken on
its own, the death of Jesus on a cross outside
According to Steve Chalke the
resurrection means ‘you can trust Jesus with your life’ but of
course for him this does not mean that you can believe that by ‘trusting
Jesus’ [in the sense of ‘penal substitution’] you can be
perfectly pardoned and absolved from all the guilt and punishment due to you by
God because of your sin. The Bible puts it that you can be “justified”
[perfectly pardoned] but the Bible also states the grounds upon which God’s “justification”
of guilty sinners is possible. Paul wrote, “For all have sinned and come
short of the glory of God. Being justified [perfectly pardoned] freely
by his grace [through no personal merit] through the redemption that
is in Christ Jesus [the sole grounds of God’s justification] whom
God hath set forth to be a propitiation [a means of turning away God’s
wrath from sinners] through faith in his blood [his penal substitution
at
Christ lived a sinless life and
then offered himself as a substitutionary sacrifice to obtain pardon for guilty
sinners and to redeem them and reconcile God to them. We read in Hebrews 9
“Christ, who through the eternal Spirit, offered himself without spot to God”
[verse 14] “once in the end of the ages hath he appeared to put away sin by the
sacrifice of himself” [verse 26] “So Christ was once offered to bear the sins
of many” [verse 28]. How is a Christian to know that the sacrifice offered
by Christ was sufficient and accepted by God the Father? Paul tells us in Romans
I mentioned that Steve Chalke’s
assertion that ‘in the Bible ‘it never defines him [God] as
anything other than love’ was in effect a lie. It was a lie that
ignored the revealed biblical truth that “God is light and in him is no
darkness at all”. Who would want to cover up this truth of God being “light”?
The answer is that those who “preach another Jesus [and] have
received another spirit [and] another gospel” [2 Corinthians 11:4]. Who
are such people? “For such are false apostles, deceitful
workers, transforming themselves into the apostles of Christ” [2 Corinthians
Just a few hours after writing
this article I received via email a ‘Cyber sermon’ from Pastor Alan Morrison [http://www.diakrisis.org
] that looked at lessons to be learned from the
slaying by the Lord of Aaron's sons, Nadab and Abihu [Leviticus 10:1-7] and a similar occurrence in the
New Testament involving Ananias and Sapphira [Acts 5:1-11]. This
is part of what Alan Morrison wrote on the Ananias and Sappira incident
‘This whole incident is a real slap in the face for all those who think that God never becomes angry or makes awful judgements. True, His anger is not like ours. His is divine wrath against all that which contradicts His law, which is about as far from human anger as it could be. It is revealed everywhere in Scripture, but it is especially poignantly manifested in the incidents involving Nadab and Abihu and Ananias and Sapphira. Yet many professing Christians today -- even influential Christian leaders -- deny the existence of the wrath of God or His judgement. Here is a typical quotation from the words of one of today's evangelicals:
"The Bible never defines God as
anger, power, or judgement -- in fact it never defines him as anything other
than love. But more than that, it never makes assertions about his anger, power
or judgement independently of his love. So, though we read about his various
attributes, in reality they are, as Karl Barth points out, never more than
'repetitions and amplifications of the one statement that God loves'"
[Steve Chalke & Alan Mann, "The Lost Message of Jesus", Zondervan, 2003, p.63].
This book, described in a review in one Christian paper as "an alarming,
painful, dangerous book" [review by Andrew Sach & Mike
Ovey of Oak Hill Theological College, London, in "Evangelicals
Now", June 2004, p.27], is typical of many that can be found
in Christian bookshops today. In the same book, which is an object lesson in
the misapplication and misinterpretation of Scripture (not to mention the
tendentious manipulation of its readers), the authors claim that the Son
of God could not have been punished by the Father as this would be "a form of cosmic
child abuse" [Chalke & Mann, op. cit. p.182]. Remember
that Steve Chalke is a keynote speaker at the highly popular Spring
Harvest/Word Alive evangelical conferences in the UK, a television personality,
director of the Oasis Trust, who works closely with Youth For Christ and has
been associated with evangelical youth movements in the UK for many years.
One wonders how such people gain credibility in the Christian
scene at all. From the time that he was promoting the
In conclusion, in relation to this
book, ‘The Lost Message of Jesus’ it seems to me that the only thing
that may be ‘lost’ is its primary author, Steve Chalke.
Cecil
Andrews – ‘Take heed’ Ministries –
After having spent the best part of a day ‘wrestling’ with Steve Chalke’s heresies in order to write this report, the following hymn that was the opening hymn at the Sunday service that Margaret and I attended yesterday evening came as a spiritual ‘tonic’ to my soul. As I sang it, I thought of how Steve Chalke’s views contained nothing of the comforting theological truths so beautifully set forth in this hymn by its writer,John Newton, particularly verses 4 & 5.
Approach
my soul, the mercy seat,
Where
Jesus answers prayer;
There
humbly fall before His feet,
For none
can perish there.
Thy
promise is my only plea;
With this
I venture nigh:
Thou
callest burdened souls to Thee
And such,
O Lord, am I.
Bowed down
beneath a load of sin,
By Satan
sorely pressed,
By war
without and fears within,
I come to
Thee for rest.
Be Thou my
Shield and Hiding place;
That,
sheltered near Thy side,
I may my
fierce accuser face,
And tell
him Thou hast died.
O wondrous
love! to bleed and die,
To bear
the Cross and shame,
That
guilty sinners, such as I,
Might
plead Thy gracious Name!