On This Day: How the ‘Unknown God’ Makes Himself Known

   So Paul, standing in the midst of the Areopagus, said: “Men of Athens, I perceive that in every way you are very religious. For as I passed along and observed the objects of your worship, I found also an altar with this inscription: ‘To the unknown god.’ What therefore you worship as unknown, this I proclaim to you. (Acts 17:22-23)

   As I was waking up this morning, it hit me: the centrality of the death and resurrection of Jesus Christ has not been the central interest in the churches I have been part of. The impact on me was that I must know how to attach to these realities with all my heart and, hopefully, to help others do the same!

   The reason this is standing out right now is that I have arrived in the chapter in Acts I was waiting for more than any other. In this present journey through Luke’s historical narrative, I wanted a fresh encounter, so to speak, in how Paul shared the good news of the kingdom with a thoroughly Gentile audience. And the Greeks of Athens were about as Gentile and disconnected from the Jews and the Scriptures as we could find.

   What I noticed yesterday was that, in Paul’s mingling with the Greeks in the marketplace, his side of the conversations revolved around “preaching Jesus and the resurrection.” In one way, this was nothing new. In another way, it was exactly what I needed settled in me: that it doesn’t matter who we are talking with, church-familiar, scripture-ignorant, evolutionist, atheist, agnostic, skeptic, religious, irreligious, it simply doesn’t matter. The “good news of great joy” is that God has given us “a Savior, who is Christ the Lord.” That Savior is Jesus, and the way he saves is through his death and resurrection.

   The very personal part of this is in the mirror. What do I see in the guy looking back at me? Do I see a longing that Paul described as “that I may know him and the power of his resurrection” (Philippians 3:10)?

   Do my prayers for myself and Jesus’ church exemplify knowing “what is the immeasurable greatness of his power toward us who believe, according to the working of his great might that he worked in Christ when he raised him from the dead” (Ephesians 1:19-20)?

   Do I long to hear,

   ...around the throne and the living creatures and the elders the voice of many angels, numbering myriads of myriads and thousands of thousands, saying with a loud voice,

“Worthy is the Lamb who was slain,

to receive power and wealth and wisdom and might

and honor and glory and blessing!” (Revelation 5:11-12)

   My point is simply this: that if telling people about the person of Jesus Christ and what he did for us through his death and resurrection is the way Paul would begin sharing the good news with the worldlings of Athens, then we can’t imagine we have a better way of doing things in our time.

   In Philippians 2, after detailing how Jesus died for us on the cross, Paul continued:

   Therefore God has highly exalted him and bestowed on him the name that is above every name, so that at the name of Jesus every knee should bow, in heaven and on earth and under the earth, and every tongue confess that Jesus Christ is Lord, to the glory of God the Father. (Philippians 2:9-11)

   Knowing the person, Jesus Christ our Lord, and the “It is finished” realities of his death and resurrection, ought to be everything to us so we cannot help but make Jesus and his resurrection everything in how we relate to everyone.

   Today, I am going to begin introspectively. I want to know Jesus in person, and I want to know his resurrection in power, more than ever before. In fact, the measure I often present to God applies very well here, that I may know Jesus and his resurrection as much as is possible to know these realities this side of heaven. If there’s more I can experience of this (and there is), I want it!

   And then, after whatever God wants to do with me about this, I will weave this into my conversations with people and see how God uses it to find his lost sheep.

 

© 2025 Monte Vigh ~ Box 517, Merritt, BC, V1K 1B8

Email: in2freedom@gmail.com

Unless otherwise noted, Scriptures are from the English Standard Version (The Holy Bible, English Standard Version. ESV® Text Edition: 2016. Copyright © 2001 by Crossway Bibles, a publishing ministry of Good News Publishers.)

 

On This Day: A New Way of Living the Word of the Lord

 

   And Paul and Barnabas spoke out boldly, saying, “It was necessary that the word of God be spoken first to you. Since you thrust it aside and judge yourselves unworthy of eternal life, behold, we are turning to the Gentiles.  For so the Lord has commanded us, saying,

“‘I have made you a light for the Gentiles,

    that you may bring salvation to the ends of the earth.’”

And when the Gentiles heard this, they began rejoicing and glorifying the word of the Lord, and as many as were appointed to eternal life believed. And the word of the Lord was spreading throughout the whole region. (Acts 13:46-49)

   Spending time with God in his word and prayer has two components. The first is the settled and unchanging word of God as we have it in the Scriptures. The second is the “new every morning” way that God’s word ministers to our hearts and leads us through whatever we are facing.

   Today, this stood out in two very significant ways.
   First, the expression “the word of the Lord” really stood out to me last year when I was reading Brad Jersak’s book of false teachings, “A More Christlike Word”[1]. At the same time as I was reading his book (that Peter described as, “which the ignorant and unstable twist to their own destruction, as they do the other Scriptures”[2]), I also came to the book of Acts in my audio-Bible sessions during my exercise times.  

   As I listened my way through Acts in two or three sessions, something stood out that I had never noticed before. It was the way the references to the “good news of the kingdom” seemed to change in a rhyming-thoughts kind of way. I am sharing all the references (even though most are repeated) just to show how much variation there is and how interchangeable the expressions are.

   The good news the early church preached was a mixture of “the good news of the kingdom” they received from Jesus, along with all the Hebrew Scriptures (our Old Testament) that spoke of him. This was called:

·         “the word” (4:4),

·         “your word” (4:29),

·         “the word of God” (4:31),

·         “the words of this Life” (5:20),

·         “the word of God” (6:2),

·         “the word” (6:4),

·         “the word of God” (6:7),

·         “the word” (8:4),

·         “the word of God” (8:14),

·         “the word of the Lord” (8:25),

·         “the word” (10:44),

·         “the word of God” (11:1),

·         “the word of the Lord” (11:16),

·         “the word” (11:19),

·         “the word of God” (12:24),

·         “the word of God” (13:5),

·         “the word of God” (13:7),

·         “the word of the Lord” (13:44),

·         “the word of God” (13:46),

·         “the word of the Lord” (13:48),

·         “the word of the Lord” (13:49),

·         “the word of his grace” (14:3),

·         “the word” (14:25),

·         “the word of the gospel” (15:7),

·         “the word of the Lord” (15:35),

·         “the word of the Lord” (15:36),

·         “the word” (16:6),

·         “the word of the Lord” (16:32),

·         “the word” (17:11),

·         “the word of God” (17:13),

·         “the word” (18:5),

·         “the word of God” (18:11),

·         “the word of the Lord” (19:10),

·         “the word of the Lord” (19:20),

·         “the word of his grace” (20:32).

   The reason this stood out to me so much was that Brad Jersak claimed “the word” we find in the Scriptures was not Christlike enough, but Dr. Luke used every expression he could think of to show that the early church used “the whole counsel of God” from the Old Testament (the Hebrew Scriptures of the day) along with the whole teaching of Christ as we have it now recorded in the gospels, the book of Acts, and the letters to the churches. It was such a glaring contrast to what Brad Jersak claimed that I began to hear on almost every page of his book what Satan first uttered to Eve in the Garden of Eden, “Did God actually say…?” (Genesis 3:1).

   Coming to these references again today was simply another affirmation of the glory of God’s word, and the delight we Gentiles can have that we are included in the good news this word proclaims. I would rather fellowship in the Spirit with Gentile believers of almost 2000 years ago who celebrated “the word of the Lord” than any of the Scripture-twisters of today who “steal, kill, and destroy” the joy people once had in Jesus’ word.

   The second thing that stood out in a very glaring and comforting way was the realization of what it was like for the Gentiles to rejoice and glorify this word. They had known very well that the only way to have anything to do with the God of Israel, the God the Jews believed in, was by becoming a convert to Judaism, abiding by the covenant God gave Israel through Moses, including the (ouchy) requirement of circumcision.

   I let myself imagine the feelings of those Gentiles that, when the Jews rejected the good news Paul and Barnabas were preaching, the men said, “behold, we are turning to the Gentiles” with the message of “eternal life” (Acts 13:46). That meant that the Gentiles could have what Paul was talking about without converting to Judaism. Paul and Barnabas were showing that the Gentiles could have the gift of God through faith in Christ, which is why “as many who were appointed to eternal life believed” (vs 48).

   The amazing thing for me (what gives me my unique journey in God’s universal and unchanging word)[3], was that I have had my own experience of discovering that I could have everything God is offering us in the good news of the kingdom without submitting to what I now call “Institutional Church” in established congregations run by power-brokers (the people who have been there the longest and control everything the church does). To me personally, there is a clear parallel to what Luke described of the religious Jews in Pisidian Antioch!

   When I considered the rejoicing and glorifying of the word of the Lord by the Gentiles, I could remember the joy that was felt first by a prayer group that formed to pray for the institutional church we were in, and then when we discovered we could meet in someone’s home as Jesus’ church without being bound to an institution, or the power-brokers who kept it under their control.

   This isn’t about what you think of the overly brief summary of our home church story. I’m simply pointing out that we all need to admit that the first two centuries of Jesus’ church growing was through home churches, so they clearly are an acceptable, if not preferable, way of meeting.

   My point is that we should be able to rejoice in and glorify “the word of the Lord” for giving us “such a great salvation” that can be lived by faith in Jesus Christ with any “two or three in my name” gathering of believers who have truly come to faith by “hearing… the word of Christ”, and are truly seeking to “Let the word of Christ dwell in you richly, teaching and admonishing one another in all wisdom, singing psalms and hymns and spiritual songs, with thankfulness in your hearts to God” (Colossians 3:16).

   The point for you?

   That the Scriptures we have in the Bible are “the word of the Lord” in all its rhyming, synonymous expressions, and our daily walk with God in his word and prayer ought to lead us to rejoice in this word with all our hearts and glorify it as the word of God it is.

   Jesus said that we are to “live by every word that comes from the mouth of God”. That clearly includes “the gospel of the kingdom” taught by the apostles and recorded in the New Testament Scriptures. “All Scripture is breathed out by God and profitable for teaching, for reproof, for correction, and for training in righteousness, that the man of God may be complete, equipped for every good work” (II Timothy 3:16-17), so let us walk in “the new and living way that he opened for us through the curtain, that is, through his flesh” (Hebrews 10:20), and see what the unchanging way gives us of our “new every morning” experiences of the word and the faithfulness of God.

 

 

© 2025 Monte Vigh ~ Box 517, Merritt, BC, V1K 1B8

Email: in2freedom@gmail.com

Unless otherwise noted, Scriptures are from the English Standard Version (The Holy Bible, English Standard Version. ESV® Text Edition: 2016. Copyright © 2001 by Crossway Bibles, a publishing ministry of Good News Publishers.)

---

[1] Because I have mentioned the book, I must give the copyright info. However, I do NOT recommend the book as a guide to Christian living! You can find my 100+ “journal journey” entries as I went “down the garden path” with the author and concluded he was as much a false teacher as I had originally discerned. A More Christlike Word, © 2021 by Bradley Jersak, Whitaker House, 1030 Hunt Valley Circle, New Kensington, PA 15068.

[2] II Peter 3:16

[3] Just a note to clarify that I do NOT mean “universal salvation”, as in the false belief that everyone will be saved in the end whether they have believed in Christ or not. By “universal” I mean that the same unchanging word to “the Jews first” is the word for us Gentiles. As Paul said in Ephesians 4:4-6, “There is one body and one Spirit—just as you were called to the one hope that belongs to your call— one Lord, one faith, one baptism, one God and Father of all, who is over all and through all and in all.” God “so loved the world,” not just Israel (John 3:16).

On This Day: The Gift of What Was Written and Fulfilled

   “Brothers, sons of the family of Abraham, and those among you who fear God, to us has been sent the message of this salvation. For those who live in Jerusalem and their rulers, because they did not recognize him nor understand the utterances of the prophets, which are read every Sabbath, fulfilled them by condemning him. And though they found in him no guilt worthy of death, they asked Pilate to have him executed. And when they had carried out all that was written of him, they took him down from the tree and laid him in a tomb. But God raised him from the dead, and for many days he appeared to those who had come up with him from Galilee to Jerusalem, who are now his witnesses to the people. (Acts 13:26-31)

   In the "God works all things together for good" category, my traumatic childhood trained me to listen carefully to why people believe what they believe. I can see why this is still helping me grow in my faith in Jesus Christ, my Lord and Savior.

   It’s crazy to think that six decades have passed since I was first aware of God. However, during that whole time, I have never heard anyone present arguments against God's word that hold a candle to the intricate and complex weaving together of divine revelation. What was revealed over the centuries (as “men spoke from God as they were carried along by the Holy Spirit”) had to be carried out by God’s enemies to fulfill what was written about Jesus' suffering, death and resurrection. Only God could write the script and orchestrate its fulfillment!

   Not only that, but today's gift just happened to come after God helped me accept that I must let go of people and things he is not working in (at least in relation to me), and prepare to fully join him in anything he gives our church to do, while trusting him to provide everything we need to do his will.

   What do we do with such a gift as this? When God shows in the Scriptures how only he could have coordinated 40 different men, over a period of fifteen centuries, to write their puzzle pieces of revelation into God’s word, it calls us to RSVP to his invitation.

   “What invitation?” you ask.

   The invitation to know the Creator through his word.

   The invitation to be raised from death to life in the salvation provided by Jesus Christ.

   The invitation to feel the “faith” that “is the assurance of things hoped for, the conviction of things not seen” (Hebrews 11:1). That “assurance” is not speaking of the feeling of assurance, or the feeling of confidence about something.

   Rather, the word in the Greek means, “title (deed) n. — a legal document to effect a transfer of property and to show the legal right to possess it” (Bible Sense Lexicon). In other words, faith is our “document” of assurance, the certificate of authenticity, so to speak. If we have faith, that faith is our deed to eternal life and all it entails.

   After examining the claims of professional skeptics like Bart Ehrman, the priests of the evolutionary religion like Darwin, Dawkins and DeGrasse Tyson, and false teachers like Brad Jersak, I now see in all of them the first words of the serpent in the Scriptures, “Did God actually say…?” (Genesis 3:1). They never give evidence against the evidence of Scripture. They only parrot the devil’s own thoughts, to make people question the authority of what God said, so they become pawns in the game of the evil one instead of children of God on assignment from their Father.

   Even though my faith has been growing since childhood, and I believe I am putting into practice Paul’s exhortation to Timothy to “Practice these things, immerse yourself in them, so that all may see your progress” (I Timothy 4:15), what I am getting out of my campout in Acts 13 makes me feel like I am “building yourselves up in your most holy faith” as Jude encouraged (Jude 1:20).

   If you do not yet know that your faith in Jesus Christ stands up to every claim of skeptics and enemies of the cross, read God’s word and take it as the Holy Spirit teaches it to you. Faith DOES come from hearing, and our hearing DOES come from the “word of Christ”, so listen for Jesus’ voice in his word, the Bible, and follow him where he leads, no matter how many wolves are howling in the distance, or roaring lions are prowling around seeking someone to devour. 

   As our big brother John wrote,

For everyone who has been born of God overcomes the world. And this is the victory that has overcome the world—our faith.
(I John 5:4)

  

 

© 2025 Monte Vigh ~ Box 517, Merritt, BC, V1K 1B8

Email: in2freedom@gmail.com

Unless otherwise noted, Scriptures are from the English Standard Version (The Holy Bible, English Standard Version. ESV® Text Edition: 2016. Copyright © 2001 by Crossway Bibles, a publishing ministry of Good News Publishers.)

 

 

On This Day: From Justice Denied to Justice Satisfied

   Now the passage of the Scripture that he was reading was this:

“Like a sheep he was led to the slaughter
    and like a lamb before its shearer is silent,
    so he opens not his mouth.
In his humiliation justice was denied him.
    Who can describe his generation?
For his life is taken away from the earth.”

   And the eunuch said to Philip, “About whom, I ask you, does the prophet say this, about himself or about someone else?” Then Philip opened his mouth, and beginning with this Scripture he told him the good news about Jesus. (Acts 8:32-35 in context of Acts 8:26-40)

   What did you feel when you read that line, “In his humiliation justice was denied him”?

   Jesus' “humiliation” summarizes all the unjust ways he was treated, culminating in the shame of death by crucifixion. Paul described it like this,

   though he was in the form of God, did not count equality with God a thing to be grasped, but emptied himself, by taking the form of a servant, being born in the likeness of men. And being found in human form, he humbled himself by becoming obedient to the point of death, even death on a cross (Philippians 2:6-8).

   Isaiah’s prophesy set the stage to explain how the injustice against the Messiah would bring about the justice of God against our sin. Since “the wages of sin is death,” the Messiah would suffer the injustice of dying to save us from the just (and deadly) condemnation of our sins.

   Part of the reason this stood out so strongly this morning is the current movement to attack God’s “injustice” against his Son. The “More Christlike” cult claims that this portrayal of Yahweh is not Christlike enough. To the proponents of this teaching, it is not like Christ to do something so unjust to someone as to cause them to suffer for someone else’s sins. In their minds (not God’s), Isaiah’s revelation of Yahweh is not Christlike enough and needs to be corrected. I spent considerable time slogging through one of the books this cult has published and found it a horrible example of the New Testament warnings about false teachers.[1]

   The other reason this stood out is simply the realization of how hopeless we would be if God did not “put forward” his Son “as a propitiation by his blood, to be received by faith” (Romans 3:25). Propitiation means for one person to bear the justice of God against another person. God gave his Son “to make propitiation for the sins of the people” (Hebrews 2:17). “In this is love, not that we have loved God but that he loved us and sent his Son to be the propitiation for our sins” (I John 4:10).  

   These Scriptures are talking about “In his humiliation justice was denied him.” In Jesus’ suffering, justice was denied him because he was bearing God’s justice against the sins of others. And it is only because “He himself bore our sins in his body on the tree, that we might die to sin and live to righteousness. By his wounds you have been healed” (I Peter 2:24).

   So, when Paul wrote that, “It was to show his righteousness at the present time, so that he might be just and the justifier of the one who has faith in Jesus” (Romans 3:26), he was summarizing what Jesus did through the injustice against him. He willingly bore our sins (the injustice of a man being humiliated in crucifixion when he had done nothing wrong), so that God’s justice was fully satisfied and we could be forgiven.

   One of the most awe-inspiring expressions of this is, “For our sake he made him to be sin who knew no sin, so that in him we might become the righteousness of God” (II Corinthians 5:21). That’s what Isaiah spoke about 700 years before Jesus died on the cross. God fully satisfied his justice against our sin by pouring out his wrath upon his Son, and that means God is fully just to make us righteous with his own righteousness.

   Please be guarded against anyone claiming that there is something wrong with God punishing his Son for our sins. Jesus went willingly to the cross. He willingly suffered our condemnation. God’s love for us is without question, and so is his genius in making a way of salvation that turns sinners into saints. His plan was to have a people in his own image and likeness, and satisfying his justice against our sin was a necessary part of the plan from before time began.

   And please allow your heart to rejoice in the so great salvation we have in Jesus Christ. Included in Isaiah’s prophecies about Jesus was this glorious expression:

   Out of the anguish of his soul he shall see and be satisfied;
by his knowledge shall the righteous one, my servant,
    make many to be accounted righteous,
    and he shall bear their iniquities (Isaiah 53:11).

   Jesus felt the unjust “anguish of his soul” in suffering for us, but he saw the very thing for which he died and was “satisfied”. “It is finished!” And because Jesus came to “bear their iniquities”, we can be one of the “many” who would “be accounted righteous”.

   And if all that amazing weaving together of truth in the divine tapestry doesn’t lift your soul with wonder and praise, perhaps you first need to be the “blessed are the poor in spirit” who admit you are the sinner who needs such a Savior as this.

 

© 2025 Monte Vigh ~ Box 517, Merritt, BC, V1K 1B8

Email: in2freedom@gmail.com

Unless otherwise noted, Scriptures are from the English Standard Version (The Holy Bible, English Standard Version. ESV® Text Edition: 2016. Copyright © 2001 by Crossway Bibles, a publishing ministry of Good News Publishers.)

---

[1] I was asked to read the book by Brad Jersak titled, “A More Christlike Word” in which the author claims the Bible is not Christlike enough and he and his helpers are a much better authority about Jesus than the prophets (like Isaiah). I had already considered Brad Jersak to be a false teacher from listening to him being interviewed, and going through his book solidified that conclusion. The fact that he also says that the God of the Old Testament (Yahweh) is not Christlike enough, and the Way of the church Jesus is building is not Christlike enough, secures Brad Jersak in Paul’s warnings about false teachers, and the “More Christlike” movement as a cult that is leading people away from both the “word” and the “Word” of God.

  However, in an attempt to resolve the conflict with the people who asked me to read the book, I spent over 5 months making a “journal journey” through the book, honestly assessing what the author taught, and honestly responding with what I was reading for myself. You can find my 102 blog posts about this book under the label of “Countering Counterfeits” on my blog.

   Here is a link to the first entry titled, A Journal Journey with Brad Jersak’s “Different” Jesus – Day 1: https://in2freedom.blogspot.com/search?q=A+Journal+Journey+with+Brad+Jersak%E2%80%99s+%E2%80%9CDifferent%E2%80%9D+Jesus+%E2%80%93+Day+1

On This Day: Stephen’s Prayer for Saul’s Forgiveness

   Then they cast him out of the city and stoned him. And the witnesses laid down their garments at the feet of a young man named Saul. And as they were stoning Stephen, he called out, “Lord Jesus, receive my spirit.” And falling to his knees he cried out with a loud voice, “Lord, do not hold this sin against them.” And when he had said this, he fell asleep. And Saul approved of his execution. (Acts 7:58-8:1)

   Sometime in the past couple of weeks, someone posted another stereotypical post about Christians only having two options in dealing with how we relate to those who wrong us. One option is always presented as forgiveness (even if the person hasn’t repented), the other option is always presented as anger or bitterness. Since we all know we shouldn’t give room for sinful anger or bitterness, we are tricked into thinking we must then choose to forgive people who have never repented of what they have done.

   When I ask people who believe this where in the Bible do we have an example of God, the prophets, Jesus, or the apostles forgiving someone who is clearly unrepentant, I am never given a text where this is shown. I can show multiple examples of unrepentant people not being forgiven, but there isn’t one example where a person is unrepentant about their sin but is forgiven anyway.

   However, there are two Scriptures that are claimed as proof that we are to forgive unrepentant people. One is when Jesus from the cross prayed, “Father, forgive them, for they know not what they do.” The other is when Stephen was dying and he prayed, “Lord, do not hold this sin against them.” I am told that this was them forgiving their enemies. And, because I just came to Stephen’s prayer this morning, it seems timely to once again share some very liberating insights.

   My response to the claim that Jesus and Stephen were forgiving their enemies is always something to the effect of, “Read it again.” If the texts were telling us that Jesus and Stephen were forgiving their persecutors, the wording would need to be from Jesus, “Father, I forgive them…”, and from Stephen, “Lord, I do not hold this sin against them.”

   The wording by both Jesus and Stephen is prayer. They are both talking to “our Father in heaven”, and they are both praying for their persecutors. When we realize Jesus DID instruct us to pray for our persecutors, and we see that this is what Jesus was doing, we can back up a bit and ask ourselves what it would look like for us to pray for our enemies like that.

   Back in 1993, I was introduced to the concept of “freedom in Christ”. I was on the verge of heading through one of the most painful valleys of my life as childhood trauma and abuse came leaking out of my people. I began to see how many Scriptures spoke of God doing things for us that I had not seen him doing in me or others, and I felt a longing to experience God the way I was learning in his word.

   In the 3+ decades since then, it has become clear to me why it is so important to show people the difference between praying that God would forgive someone (like Jesus and Stephen did) and just forgiving them even if they haven’t repented (which can’t be found in Scripture). When we know that God never forgives people until they repent, then our prayer for their forgiveness is with the understanding that people “presume on the riches of his kindness and forbearance and patience, not knowing that God's kindness is meant to lead you to repentance”.

   Why do we need God’s kindness leading us to repentance if we are forgiven without repenting? If all our sins are cancelled without repenting, why did Jesus say that “repentance for the forgiveness of sins should be proclaimed in his name to all nations, beginning from Jerusalem” (Luke 24:7)? There is no forgiveness anywhere in the Bible without repentance.

   It is very liberating for abused and traumatized people to understand that no one is forgiven until they repent. Their abusers, their persecutors, their enemies, will not be forgiven unless they repent. If we pray for God to bless them, he won’t answer that prayer without humbling them to repentance first.

   So, instead of these victims cringing at the feeling of injustice with the “just forgive” mantra that can’t be found in the Bible, they can let God lead them into his grace where they truly want God to reach those people with his love and mercy because they have no hope until they repent and are forgiven.

   And when we can truly pray for these people that God would forgive them, and we know this can only happen if they repent, we are able to accept God’s will in this because we can allow ourselves to want these people to experience God’s kindness leading them to repentance just as we experienced for ourselves.

   I know I am in the minority when I show these things from God’s word. If you’re not convinced, I’m still waiting for someone to show me a scene in Scripture where someone is clearly unrepentant and either Yahweh or his prophets in the Old Testament, or Jesus and his apostles in the New Testament, forgave the unrepentant person who was continuing in sin. In all my times through the Bible, I have not come across one instance of this.

   To encourage me in this viewpoint of Stephen’s prayer for his persecutors (not him forgiving his enemies), I found this comment from William Hendriksen in his commentary on Acts 7. He wrote,

Reflecting on the death of Stephen and Paul’s consent, Augustine made this penetrating comment:
    “If Stephen had not prayed,
    the church would not have had Paul.”[1]

Augustine (and William Hendriksen with him) saw that Stephen’s prayer, “Lord, do not hold this sin against them,” is linked to our introduction to sinful Saul, who became the beloved apostle Paul. When we continue down the road and see how God’s kindness brought Paul to repentance, we can see how Stephen’s prayer was answered in God’s gift to Paul of repentance and faith.

   For me, this hit the bull’s eye of my heart today, not as a way to win a debate on the topic of “to forgive or not to forgive”, but to realize that I have “Sauls” in my life who need me to pray for their forgiveness. I know God will only answer that prayer by leading them to repentance (I have lots of Beatitudinal Valley illustrations to go along with this), and I know I want them to experience that mercy from God as I have on so many occasions.

  Ultimately, we do not pray to make God do something our way. Our praying is to line us up with God’s will. God leading me to pray this way is his will, and it is up to him if I ever see the answer. Stephen did not see his prayer answered that day because he died just seconds later. But seeing Paul’s arrival in eternity some decades later (whatever that feels like in the spiritual realm) would have been an experience of joy filled with praise to God.

   Today, I will pray in hope and praise in confidence. God will work it for good, and I might live long enough to see some of my Sauls reconcile with both God and his people. In the meantime, praying the way Jesus and Stephen did keeps my heart free, and that’s what the people in my life need from me each day. 

 

© 2025 Monte Vigh ~ Box 517, Merritt, BC, V1K 1B8

Email: in2freedom@gmail.com

Unless otherwise noted, Scriptures are from the English Standard Version (The Holy Bible, English Standard Version. ESV® Text Edition: 2016. Copyright © 2001 by Crossway Bibles, a publishing ministry of Good News Publishers.)

 

---

[1] Kistemaker, S. J., & Hendriksen, W. (1953–2001). Exposition of the Acts of the Apostles (Vol. 17, pp. 281–282). Baker Book House.

On This Day: When God Serves Notice on Sin

   But a man named Ananias, with his wife Sapphira, sold a piece of property, and with his wife's knowledge he kept back for himself some of the proceeds and brought only a part of it and laid it at the apostles' feet. But Peter said, “Ananias, why has Satan filled your heart to lie to the Holy Spirit and to keep back for yourself part of the proceeds of the land? While it remained unsold, did it not remain your own? And after it was sold, was it not at your disposal? Why is it that you have contrived this deed in your heart? You have not lied to man but to God.” When Ananias heard these words, he fell down and breathed his last. And great fear came upon all who heard of it. The young men rose and wrapped him up and carried him out and buried him.

   After an interval of about three hours his wife came in, not knowing what had happened. And Peter said to her, “Tell me whether you sold the land for so much.” And she said, “Yes, for so much.” But Peter said to her, “How is it that you have agreed together to test the Spirit of the Lord? Behold, the feet of those who have buried your husband are at the door, and they will carry you out.”  Immediately she fell down at his feet and breathed her last. When the young men came in they found her dead, and they carried her out and buried her beside her husband. And great fear came upon the whole church and upon all who heard of these things. (Acts 5:1-11)

   Yes, I have kazillions of questions about this. However, they come down to two main ones. Why doesn’t God judge liars in the church today the way he did that one time? And what is the church to do about lying, hypocrisy, cheating in business, deceiving, bearing false witness, and whatever synonymous expressions come to mind?

   When we face scenarios where God did something once and it never appears to be repeated, I see it as God serving notice. A singular event can still reveal things about what God is like as a person, what he wants us to understand about what he’s up to, and how he works to get things done. Noah’s flood will never happen again, but we certainly learn a lot about God in that unique event. Moses’ burning bush was a once-in-history experience, but through it we come to know so much about who God is as the great “I AM”, and how he speaks to his people about what he is doing so we can join him in his work.

   When we come to God’s death sentence on Ananias and Sapphira, and the way it instilled godly fear in everyone when they realized how seriously God took dishonesty, we must accept that this is still what he is like, it is still how he feels about falsehood, and he still wants us treating lying and deceiving as seriously as he does.

   The church is living between that unique event when God pronounce a death sentence on Ananias and Sapphira, and the coming judgment when “all liars, their portion will be in the lake that burns with fire and sulfur, which is the second death” (Revelation 21:8). God has served notice through his judgment on the church’s first two liars, and he has served notice of the judgment that will come on all who live in such sin.

   When I then consider how the church is to live in light of this revelation of God, I am aware that many of us may wonder why God doesn’t do this judgment again with those people who have hurt us so terribly by lying about us, bearing false witness about us, and deceiving people into believing their lies instead of the truth. Yes, I have often asked God why it wouldn’t be advantageous to stop liars from doing so much damage to the church!

   The problem is stated by the Psalmist: “I said in my alarm, ‘All mankind are liars’” (Psalm 116:11). You see, if God put to death every liar in the church there wouldn’t be any church! Okay, maybe that is an exaggeration, but I think you get the point. Who hasn’t lied? Who hasn’t pretended to be doing well when inside we are really dying? Who hasn’t listened to slander about another believer because it was one of our favorite people telling the story? Who hasn’t answered someone to their face with one story and then gone and told our people a totally different one?

   My point is that God served notice how he feels about the sin of lying, and we are now to help one another in the church take this seriously. This means that the church, the body of Christ, must address lying in the church without favoritism or partiality. We side with the truth. We “speak the truth in love”. We worship God “in spirit and in truth”. We seek to be our real “in Christ” selves with all people so that, even when we can’t tell people everything going on inside us, we certainly don’t promote external appearances that contradict our inner love of truth. We must express genuineness, realness, sincerity, so that, even if we keep to ourselves things that only concern us, what we express and say to others is still our truthful and real expression of trying to “Let no corrupting talk come out of your mouths, but only such as is good for building up, as fits the occasion, that it may give grace to those who hear” (Ephesians 4:29). We can absolutely aim to do that in sincerity and truth even while having other struggles and difficulties inside us that we are dealing with just between us and God.

   Obviously, there is much more to say on this matter. However, the main point for me is that, through Ananias and Sapphira, God has told us how deadly serious he is about lying because it is so not him, and it is so Satan. We can ask God if it would be advantageous to do this again in scenarios that seem even more grievous to us than what that first partners-in-crime brought into the church. However, he has left church discipline to the church, so we must follow Jesus’ instructions, follow the apostles’ teaching and examples in the New Testament, and be absolutely truthful in any participation regarding lying, dishonesty, and deception in the church no matter who it is we must side with and who it is we must hold to accouny for sin.

   And, since so many churches can’t discipline the liars because of the power of church politics, we need to be at peace with God that “Beloved, never avenge yourselves, but leave it to the wrath of God, for it is written, ‘Vengeance is mine, I will repay, says the Lord’” (Romans 12:19).   

   Today we must look in the mirror of God, his word, and his Spirit, confess anything in us that smacks of dishonesty, repent and reconcile with people we have hurt with our lying, entrust to God’s sovereign goodness and justice anyone who has wronged us and never repented, and go into our days seeking to “walk in the light, as he is in the light,” because that is the way “we have fellowship with one another, and the blood of Jesus his Son cleanses us from all sin” (I John 1:7).

  

© 2025 Monte Vigh ~ Box 517, Merritt, BC, V1K 1B8

Email: in2freedom@gmail.com

Unless otherwise noted, Scriptures are from the English Standard Version (The Holy Bible, English Standard Version. ESV® Text Edition: 2016. Copyright © 2001 by Crossway Bibles, a publishing ministry of Good News Publishers.)