Author: Texas Gospel

Why believers are urged to keep meeting together

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TEXAS GOSPEL VOLUNTEER

A familiar passage in the tenth chapter of Hebrews urges believers to keep gathering and to encourage one another all the more as the day draws near. Some people say it’s a reason to attend church regularly, and that reading matches what the writer intended. The call to keep assembling highlights how much a believer needs time with people who share the same precious faith.

The passage also describes what happens in those gatherings. Believers are stirred toward love and good works as they encourage and hold one another accountable. The New Testament is full of commands built around the phrase one another. We are are told to admonish, exhort, confront, pray for and love one another, and each of those instructions plays out in the fellowship of the body of Christ.

Isolation makes the Christian life hard. A person who withdraws from other believers will struggle to be effective, to walk as a Christian should walk, and to live a holy life. Close, intimate fellowship with God’s people draws a believer in and keeps him near the Lord. It keeps him answerable to the teaching of Scripture and strengthens him, so that he becomes useful in the kingdom and to those outside the faith.

Isn’t this the exhortation at the heart of Hebrews 10?

and let’s consider how to encourage one another in love and good deeds, not abandoning our own meeting together, as is the habit of some people, but encouraging one another; and all the more as you see the day drawing near.

Hebrews 10:24-25

Believers will one day judge angels

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TEXAS GOSPEL VOLUNTEER

A brief passage in the New Testament states that believers will one day judge angels, though it offers little detail about how that will unfold. The word translated “judge” has a broad range of meaning. I could mean to rule, oversee or govern, which opens up more than one possibility. It is reasonable to assume the angels in question could be either fallen or holy, though scripture gives no direct teaching about believers participating in judgment over fallen angels specifically.

A more likely explanation is that believers will one day hold a position of leadership or oversight regarding the holy angels, not because those angels are sinful or in need of correction, since they remain eternally holy, but because of the exalted position believers will hold in Christ.

During his time on earth, Christ was made lower than the angels for a season before being exalted above them. Since believers are being conformed to Christ’s likeness and made joint heirs with him, inheriting all that he possesses, that inheritance includes a measure of authority extending even over the angels of heaven.

But we do see Him who was made for a little while lower than the angels, namely, Jesus, because of His suffering death crowned with glory and honor, so that by the grace of God He might taste death for everyone.

Hebrews 2:9

The difference between remorse and true repentance

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TEXAS GOSPEL VOLUNTEER

The Bible describes Esau weeping bitterly yet finding no place for repentance. It’s a verse that can be misread as though he wanted to repent but God refused to allow it. That is not what the text is saying. Esau’s tears reflected sorrow over the consequences of his choices rather than genuine repentance. He regretted the direction his life had taken because of what he had lost, which is a very different response from turning away from sin toward God.

Judas offers perhaps the clearest illustration of this distinction. He experienced deep, visible remorse after betraying Christ, returning to the temple and throwing down the money he had received before hanging himself. According to the book of Acts, his body later fell and was fatally injured. His anguish and guilt were real, yet none of it led him toward repentance, a pursuit of holiness or a changed direction of life. Tears and regret alone do not equal repentance.

Doesn’t true repentance move a person toward God rather than merely toward despair over consequences.

For the sorrow that is according to the will of God produces a repentance without regret, leading to salvation, but the sorrow of the world produces death.

2 Corinthians 7:10

Does “husband of one wife” rule out single pastors?

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TEXAS GOSPEL VOLUNTEER

Among the qualifications listed for pastors and elders is the requirement that a man be the husband of one wife, a phrase some have taken to mean that unmarried men cannot serve in those roles. I believe that reading goes further than the text intends.

The apostle Paul himself appears not to have had a wife for most of his ministry, though he may have been a widower earlier in life, since reaching his standing within the Jewish world of his day typically required marriage.

Paul acknowledged elsewhere that ministers had a right to take a wife, but described it as a right rather than an obligation. The qualification is less about marital status and more about marital fidelity. A married man who leads must be singularly and completely devoted to his wife, avoiding not only adultery but any interest in another woman. This standard also excludes practices such as polygamy.

An overseer, then, must be above reproach, the husband of one wife, temperate, self-controlled, respectable, hospitable, skillful in teaching,

1 Timothy 3:2

Secure, not because of how you are holding on

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JEFF TURNER

When hardship arrives, and it will arrive, the first thing the enemy of your soul will do is attack the foundation. He will work to make you feel that your security before God depends on how you are performing in the trial, how strong your faith is holding, how well your responses are measuring up. And if he can get you believing that, he has succeeded in replacing the solid rock with sand beneath you.

Here is the truth that must be reaffirmed in the middle of every storm. You are not secure because your conduct has been exemplary or because your faith has been strong. You are secure in the person of Jesus Christ, on the basis of his sacrificial, all-sufficient, death at Calvary.

The moment you received him, having been chosen by him, a new birth took place and God himself assumed the responsibility of your protection. This is not a matter of holding on to him, because in our weakness we sometimes, honestly, let go. He holds you.

In the valley, when the weight grows heavier the longer you carry it, the place to begin is not with a fresh assessment of your own strength. It is with a reaffirmation of his.

My sheep listen to My voice, and I know them, and they follow Me; and I give them eternal life, and they will never perish; and no one will snatch them out of My hand.

John 10:27-28