Author Archives: osheadavis

The Corporate Creational Ordinance

A Biblical Worldview on Family, Calling, and Faithfulness

This essay is not about giving a positive doctrine on kids, but making a correct distinction of categories the bible lays out, so that from here, we can then formulate correct systematic theology on related topics. If you are violating definitions or the law of identity from the first chapter of Genesis, then your entire systematic theology on the subject and related ones will be wrong from the get go.

One of the most liberating truths in all of Christian theology is this simple but powerful distinction: some of God’s commands are given to humanity as a whole, not as a to-do list for every single believer to check off before breakfast. This one insight runs like a golden thread through Scripture, quietly reshaping how we think about family, babies, the so-called Cultural Mandate, and what actually counts as a “successful” Christian life. It’s not some obscure footnote—it’s a foundational safeguard against legalism, a celebration of God’s sovereignty over our callings, and a gentle reminder that spiritual fruit beats any biological or cultural scorecard every time.

Right at the center of it all sits Genesis 1:28: “God blessed them and said to them, ‘Be fruitful and increase in number; fill the earth and subdue it. Rule over the fish in the sea and the birds in the sky and over every living creature that moves on the ground.’” Same command shows up again after the flood to Noah (Genesis 9:1). Notice the wording: God is speaking to “them”—humanity collectively—at the two biggest population-reset moments in history. This is a creational ordinance for the race as a body, not a personalized marching order for every married couple in every era, in every possible way.

Picture the scene in Genesis 1:28. God looks at the brand-new human race—Adam and Eve together—and says, “Be fruitful and increase… fill the earth and subdue it.” Same reset button after the flood with Noah’s crew in Genesis 9. Notice He’s talking to “them,” the whole batch, not whispering a private to-do list in every ear. That’s the starting point, right there on page one. Scripture never flips the script later and says, “Oops, actually every married couple must personally check every box.” If it did, we’d have a contradiction bigger than a camel through a needle’s eye. But the Bible doesn’t do contradictions—it keeps its own identity: grace is grace, law is law, calling is calling, and corporate is corporate and individual is individual (thanks, Paul in Romans 11:6 and 1 Corinthians 7).

Mixing up these categories is about as logical as saying grace is works and works is grace. And here’s where the rule of first mention kicks in with perfect timing: from the very first page of the Bible, this is framed as a corporate creational command. Later Scripture can’t suddenly flip it into an individual absolute without clear evidence—and the burden of proof lies squarely on anyone who wants to make that switch. God could change it, sure. But He didn’t.

Vincent Cheung has been shining a spotlight on this for years. In his 2009 essay “True Son in the Faith,” he puts it plainly:

 “Reproduction is without doubt a part of the mandate. God commanded man to increase and fill the earth. Nevertheless, as with some of the other commands that have been intended to be carried out by entire communities, no individual is expected to fulfill it in all the possible ways… It is a mistake to think that every individual must have his own biological children in order to fulfill the Cultural Mandate. The Bible says that each man has his own gift from God, so that one might remain single, and another might marry. Each must contribute to the Cultural Mandate in his own way.”

Sure, humanity as a whole is supposed to fill and steward the earth—that’s good and beautiful. But turning it into “every Christian must personally rule politics, arts, business, and rock-climbing all at once”? That’s like saying every Israelite had to personally rebuild the whole temple. Nah. The church does it together through all kinds of gifts, just like the body has eyes and ears and feet. The real upgrade? The Great Commission: make disciples of all nations. Spiritual kids, spiritual legacy—that’s the Abraham-level blessing that never fades (Galatians 3:7, Romans 9).

This is systematic theology doing its job. Scripture never contradicts itself. Once you see Genesis 1:28 as corporate, trying to turn it into an individual, perpetual, high-intensity reproductive quota becomes not just wrong but comically impossible. The doctrine is defined from the outset by Genesis. All related scriptures align with this point and are be interpreted accordingly. If you see Genesis as individual, then of course you will reinterpret other passages to fit your opinion; and so the argument isn’t over other passages, but what this passage in Genesis means.  This is the argument. And nothing more needs to be said out it.

However, we can see where a wrong understanding will lead to impossible outcomes. Just ask Jesus. He never married, never had kids, and still managed to fulfill the entire law perfectly (Matthew 5:17). As Cheung points out in his February 20, 2026 Annex essay “Reproduction and the Measure of a Life”:

 “Jesus himself provides the clearest confirmation. He never married and never had children, and yet he lived in perfect obedience to the law of God. If reproduction were a universal moral requirement, then Jesus would have failed to fulfill the law he came to fulfill. That conclusion is impossible.”

The same corporate logic shows up everywhere in the Mosaic Law—national festivals, corporate tithes, sabbath-year land rest, levirate marriage. No single Israelite had to do it all, every day, at full volume. The nation carried the load together. Same principle today keeps us from turning God’s good creational blessings into private guilt trips.

That’s why Matthew 19:12 and 1 Corinthians 7 aren’t random “proof texts” someone yanks out of nowhere to justify optional childlessness. They are the consistent Genesis corporate doctrine being applied by Scripture to itself; the corporate creational ordinance that was never meant to function as a rigid, one-size-fits-all personal mandate. Jesus celebrates those “who choose to live like eunuchs for the sake of the kingdom of heaven.” Paul calls marriage and singleness different gifts from God and says, “Remain in the condition in which you were called.” These passages don’t create a supposed loophole that isn’t there; no, they simply show how the corporate ordinance doctrine from Genesis is consistently applied by scripture to itself, and how scripture has always operated inside God’s distribution of callings.

And let’s be crystal clear: nowhere in Scripture does God command married couples to have frequent, unprotected intercourse so He can “sovereignly decide” how many kids to hand out. That conclusion adds way more information than Genesis actually provides. It never once entered the mind of God or the pen of the biblical writers. It’s an extra-biblical invention that quietly collapses a corporate blessing into an individual obligation.

Cheung says it straight in “Unfading Beauty” (2005):

“Another purpose for marriage is that God is ‘seeking godly offspring’ (Malachi 2:15). This does not mean that every marriage must produce children, but it is a general principle, and if there are children, they must be raised for faith and holiness.”

The same lens corrects the popular over-expansion of the Cultural Mandate. Plenty of folks today take Genesis 1:28 and run it into a full-blown program requiring every Christian to “take dominion” over politics, arts, business, education—you name it—as a personal duty.

In Reformed, Kuyperian, Reconstructionist/Theonomic, and some postmillennial or “dominion” circles, Genesis 1:28 (“be fruitful and multiply, fill the earth and subdue it”) is routinely called the Cultural Mandate. Proponents argue it obligates Christians (individually and corporately) to transform every sphere of society—politics, economics, education, arts, media, business—into Christian culture. It is often presented as a standing command for believers to “take dominion,” build institutions, and redeem culture as a primary task of the church (sometimes alongside or even above the Great Commission). This view appears in writers influenced by Abraham Kuyper, R.J. Rushdoony, or modern “seven-mountain” and Christian-nationalist teachings.

 Cheung gently pushes back in that same 2009 essay:

“Although it is often called the ‘Cultural Mandate,’ and it is indeed a mandate, it does not suggest the scope of the culture-making that some Christians attempt to infer from it… The mandate indeed requires mankind to ‘make culture’ in this sense. But it seems too farfetched to make it justify everything from painting to capitalism, and from poetry to rock climbing.”

If we individualize the whole thing, every believer suddenly has to play parent (biological reproducer), ruler (civil dominion), and farmer (literal subduer of the earth) all at once. Good luck with that before your first cup of coffee! Instead, humanity—and now the church—fulfills these roles together through a variety of gifts and vocations. However, getting past the indirect argument here, the more important issue is this. Does scripture consistently apply an absolute individual application to itself from the rest of Genesis to Revelation in biological reproduction, dominion ruler and farmer to all people in full force in every possible way. No. So, not only do the words and context not mean absolute individual force in Genesis, but the rest of scripture does not apply it to itself that way in the three categories mentioned. It is a corporate creation ordinance.

This truth slots perfectly into the grand storyline of systematic theology: Creation → Fall → Redemption → Consummation. After the Fall, God introduced the spiritual distinction—two lines of humanity separated not by DNA but by sovereign grace and faith (Genesis 3:15; Romans 9; Galatians 3). Abraham’s real descendants are believers, not blood relatives. The Great Commission doesn’t cancel the Cultural Mandate; it fulfills and gloriously elevates it. Cheung nails it:

“As Christians, our mandate is not just to make children, or even to make culture, but to ‘make disciples of all nations.’ … our true sons are those who follow our Christian doctrine and example, and not those who inherit our genetic materials.”

So here’s the freeing bottom line: the measure of a life isn’t the size of your quiver, your cultural empire, or how well you match some imaginary “life script.” It’s simply this—faithfully receiving the full blessing of Abraham, the baptism of the Spirit, and every benefit of Christ’s atonement… and then living it out in the exact calling God has placed on you (sometimes that calling is just helping you fulfill the desires of your own heart). Spiritual children, spiritual legacy, spiritual fruit—that’s the prize.

Lose this corporate-individual distinction and legalism crashes the party like an uninvited guest. Suddenly we’re judging the childless, inventing bedroom rules, and grading spirituality by family size or Instagram influence. But Scripture offers something far better: truth. God is sovereign over fertility, over gifts, and over legacy. Our job is to believe, obey, and joyfully receive everything He has promised.

Here’s the fun part that feels like a weight lifting off your shoulders: God never slipped in an extra rule like “married folks must have frequent unprotected sex and let Me decide the number.” That idea isn’t in the text; it’s just extra baggage some folks added later. Lose the corporate-individual distinction and suddenly we’re grading people by quiver size or Instagram influence. But keep it biblical and—bam!—legalism gets shown the door. Your life’s measure isn’t a baby count or a cultural empire checklist. It’s this: receive everything Christ purchased, live out the exact calling He wired into your heart, and watch spiritual fruit explode.

This truth sets us free to chase real spiritual reproduction—making “true sons in the faith”—without a shred of guilt over biological or cultural metrics. It keeps the Cultural Mandate in its proper, limited, place: a corporate creational blessing, never an individual checklist.

Do Not Restrict The Spirit With Silence

Saying women must stay totally silent in church—to the point they can’t pray aloud, sing, or operate the gifts of the Spirit like prophecy—isn’t harmless tradition. It’s straight-up resistance to the Holy Spirit, flirting with the very blasphemy Jesus warned about. Fleshly control dressed up as “order”? Hard pass.

First off, 1 Corinthians 11:5 isn’t whispering in a corner—it flat-out assumes women are already praying and prophesying right there in the public gathering. Paul says “every woman who prays or prophesies” with her head covered (or not) is the issue, not whether she does it at all. That’s the “when,” not the “if.” Same letter, same churches. Flip to chapter 14:34-35 and you get “women should remain silent.” Boom—looks like a clash, right? But deduction from the Logos says Scripture doesn’t play gotcha games with itself. Paul isn’t schizophrenic; he’s the guy who just spent the whole chapter regulating prophecy and tongues so everything stays “decent and in order.” The silence command sits smack in the middle of that chaos-control section, right after instructions on how prophecy should flow orderly.

Look, 1 Timothy 2:11-12 is crystal clear: women are to learn in quietness and full submission, not to teach or exercise authority over a man. That’s the biblical line on roles, straight from creation order—Adam first, then Eve. Paul doesn’t stutter. But zoom out, church. The same apostle, writing to the same churches, assumes women are already praying and prophesying right there in the assembly. 1 Corinthians 11:5 says, “But every woman who prays or prophesies with her head uncovered dishonors her head—it is the same as having her head shaved.”

Context check: this is the public gathering, not “in your prayer closet with just you and hubby.” Boom. Paul isn’t saying if she prays or prophesies—he’s saying when she does. Head covering honors the order; the praying and prophesying? Fully expected. The Spirit moves through daughters just like sons. The same Holy Ghost who filled the Upper Room didn’t suddenly get gender-specific stage fright.

Flip over to Acts 2:17-18, quoting Joel: “In the last days, God says, I will pour out my Spirit on all people. Your sons and daughters will prophesy… Even on my servants, both men and women, I will pour out my Spirit in those days, and they will prophesy.” Peter didn’t slip in a sneaky footnote: “Except in church, ladies—zip it.” This is New Covenant reality. Philip’s four daughters were known prophets (Acts 21:9). The Spirit doesn’t play favorites or half-measures. He hands out gifts—tongues, prophecy, healing, words of knowledge—as He wills, to build up the whole body. Silencing half the body isn’t submission. It’s doctrinal amputation. Ouch.

And 1 Corinthians 14:34-35? “Women should remain silent in the churches. They are not allowed to speak, but must be in submission, as the law says.” Context, people. Right before this, Paul is regulating prophecy and tongues so everything stays decent and in order—not nuking the gifts. The “speaking” here targets disruptive chatter—wives probably grilling or contradicting their husbands’ prophecies mid-service, or wielding gifts in a way that steamrolled male leadership by overly drawing attention to themselves. I’ve seen the flip side too: women who claim “I’m under authority” but somehow end up front-and-center, loud, and calling themselves pastors. That’s not submission; that’s disobedience.

It’s easy to yank verses out of context and ignore systematic theology. Take 1 John 5:19—pure gold: “the whole world is under the sway of the evil one.” At first glance it sounds like planet-wide lockdown, right? It doesn’t just say “world,” but “the whole world,” so it must mean all, right? There cannot be any other meaning, right? Flip back one verse: “the one born of God is kept safe, and the evil one does not touch him” (5:18). Plus we’re explicitly “not of the world” (John 15:19; 17:14-16). If Christians got lumped in, you’d have the Holy Spirit under Satan’s thumb. Not only a contradiction—you’d be blaspheming the Spirit Himself. Deduction wins: “whole world” = the unbelieving system, not us. “Whole” doesn’t always mean “whole,” in all possible ways.

Key Discussion in Systematic Theology 

In the section on hermeneutics and interpretation (pp. 156–158 in Vincent Cheung’s “Systematic Theology*”), Cheung nails it:

 “However, only the most untrained and naïve exegete would assume that the words ‘all’ and ‘everyone’ in the Bible always refer to all human beings. There are endless examples in our daily speech in which the scope of these seemingly universal terms are limited by the context…”

He gives examples:

Matthew 10:22 (“All men will hate you because of me…”) — Context (vv. 21, 23) and historical setting (1st-century Israel) restrict “all men” to relevant unbelievers (e.g., family betrayers, those rejecting the gospel), not every human alive or ever.

Romans 8:32 (“He who did not spare his own Son, but gave him up for us all…”) — “Us all” refers only to the elect/chosen (per the chapter’s context and Romans 1:7), not every person.

Acts 2:17 (“I will pour out my Spirit on all people”) — Restricted by surrounding verses to ethnic/national universality (“from every nation”) among “all whom the Lord our God will call” (i.e., the elect), not every individual.

Other cases: “All the Jews” in Acts 26:4 means those relevant to Paul’s situation, not literally every Jew; “everything under his feet” in Psalm 8:6/1 Corinthians 15:27 excludes God himself.

He applies similar logic to “world” (kosmos) and “whole world”:

1 John 5:19 (“the whole world lieth in wickedness”) — Refers to the realm of non-Christians/unbelievers under Satan’s influence (the “world” as opposed to the elect/church), not every person literally or the physical planet in a salvific sense. This fits the systematic distinction between elect and reprobate.

“World” often denotes fallen humanity in its rebellion (not implying universal salvation or love in a saving sense for all individuals). God’s providential/natural benefits may extend broadly, but spiritual love and atonement are particular to the elect.

Cheung stresses systematic context throughout: Interpretation must integrate the whole of Scripture (clarity of Scripture, but with diligence against distortion—see 2 Peter 3:16). Naïve out-of-context readings lead to errors like universalism or Arminian misapplications.

Our approach to biblical interpretation consistently emphasizes contextual exegesis over isolated literalism, much like his handling of terms such as “all,” “world,” or “whole world” (as discussed previously). We apply the same principle here: Scripture must be read in light of its immediate context, the broader biblical teaching, and logical consistency, without forcing contradictions.

1 John 5:19 move is the chef’s kiss. “The whole world is under the sway of the evil one” can’t swallow up believers, or you’d have the Holy Spirit under Satan’s thumb—total contradiction, and we’d be blaspheming the One who keeps us safe (v.18). Context and the whole of Scripture limit the scope, just like with those “all” and “world” examples. Same principle here: “silent” doesn’t mean mute button when the same apostle already green-lit public praying and prophesying a few chapters earlier. Scriptural Deduction wins again, as it always does; Paul’s keeping the wind orderly, not tying it down like a kite in a hurricane.

So when Paul says women must “remain silent,” does he mean mute in every way in the assembly? No. Just like “whole world” in 1 John doesn’t include believers, Paul already affirmed (a few chapters earlier in the same letter!) that a woman prays and prophesies with a symbol of authority on her head.

Total silence would contradict his own teaching.

Paul isn’t schizophrenic. He’s keeping chaos out of the assembly and protecting male leadership while the Spirit still flows freely. Sing? Ephesians 5:19 commands all of us—“speaking to one another with psalms, hymns, and songs from the Spirit.” Pray? The whole church is told to pray without ceasing. A total mute button on women? That’s not Scripture. That’s religious flesh trying to play air-traffic controller with the wind of God.

Here’s the sharp edge: Jesus called blasphemy against the Holy Spirit the one unforgivable sin—attributing the Spirit’s clear, powerful works to Satan or stubbornly resisting them (Matthew 12:31-32). In the blasphemy essay I wrote, I laid it out: when someone whispers “dial it back” on miracles, healing, or gifts, red flags everywhere. They might be channeling opposition without realizing it. The Pharisees watched the Spirit heal a blind, mute, demon-possessed man through Jesus and said, “Beelzebul.” Same spirit today when folks say the Spirit’s gifts can’t operate through women in church. You’re not “being careful.” You’re quenching the Spirit (1 Thessalonians 5:19-20: “Do not quench the Spirit. Do not treat prophecies with contempt”). You’re telling the wind of God, “Blow only where I say.” That’s muzzling the Spirit like a dog and calling it order. I’d politely suggest they muzzle their mouths first—hoping it’s not too late and they haven’t already crossed the line.

The kingdom of God is not advanced by telling the Spirit to shut up but by obeying Jesus’ command to be filled with the Spirit and power, in and out of an official church meeting. There is no other way but this way of truth and power.

Jesus the Healing Hero – IS the Gospel

Right from the opening pages of the Bible, God doesn’t ease in with pleasantries. He drops the declaration of war and victory in the same breath. After the fall, He turns to the serpent and says, “I will put enmity between you and the woman, and between your offspring and hers; he will crush your head, and you will strike his heel” (Genesis 3:15). Think about that for a second. Before Adam and Eve even finish sewing their fig leaves, God is already pointing to Jesus—the promised Seed—and saying, “This Hero is coming to end you.” Satan gets a bruised heel. Jesus gets total conquest. That’s the opening scene of the whole story. The protoevangelium is not some poetic footnote; it is the explosive launch sequence of redemptive history, the first unmistakable shout that the Seed of the woman would march straight into the fight and settle the score once and for all.

Satan didn’t charge in like some obvious monster. The coward used lies. “Did God really say?” he whispered, and the doubt took root (Genesis 3:1). They ate, and God kept His word exactly as He said He would. The curse hit creation hard—thorns, pain, death, the whole mess (Genesis 3:16-19). And from that day forward the devil has exploited it nonstop, hammering people with his favorite dirty weapon: sickness. It’s how he oppresses, how he victimizes, how he keeps humans under his thumb. Sickness isn’t neutral. It’s bad. Straight-up evil. Let’s be real—Scripture never once calls disease a helpful life coach or a mysterious divine favor. Jesus looked at that woman bent double for eighteen years and named the culprit outright: “Satan has kept her bound” (Luke 13:16). John 10:10 draws the battle line with zero ambiguity: the thief steals, kills, and destroys; Jesus brings life to the full. The fingerprints don’t lie.

That’s why when Peter stands up for the very first official gospel sermon to Gentiles in Acts 10, he doesn’t start with abstract theology. As Vincent Cheung points out in “The Dividing Line,” Peter tells the classic hero-versus-villain story God loves telling. “God anointed Jesus of Nazareth with the Holy Spirit and power, and how he went about doing good and healing all who were oppressed by the devil, for God was with him” (Acts 10:38). Satan is the bad guy. Sickness is his bad tool. Jesus the Hero shows up anointed with power and starts setting people free from it—one healing after another. God is perfectly happy framing the good news this way. No need to complicate it. The simple showdown works just fine. Peter could have opened with justification by faith or the doctrine of election—glorious truths, no argument there—but the Spirit led him to lead with power and healing, because that is how the gospel first detonated into the Gentile world. Goodness and healing are welded together in the same sentence. Oppression and the devil are welded together in the same sentence. The Bible refuses to separate them, and frankly, neither should we.

Peace comes through violence and conquest, not some polite negotiation. The Son of God appeared for this very reason—to destroy the works of the devil (1 John 3:8). He didn’t just rescue us from the judgment we deserved; He yanked us out of the original villain’s grip too. Forgiveness? Yes. But also tangible freedom right now. Notice Satan’s go-to weapon is always sickness. That’s bad. Healing is good. Jesus healing every single person oppressed by the devil is the Bible’s hero story preached at the launch of Gentile ministry. Matthew 8:16-17 makes the connection unmistakable: “He drove out the spirits with a word and healed all the sick. This was to fulfill what was spoken through the prophet Isaiah: ‘He took up our infirmities and bore our diseases.’” The cross wasn’t only about sin. The same atoning work that substituted guilt for righteousness, substituted sickness for healing. Isaiah 53:4-5 and 1 Peter 2:24 stand shoulder to shoulder—by His wounds you have been healed. The Greek tenses shout finished reality. Not “maybe someday.” Not “if it’s God’s will in some vague sense.” Healed. Period.

Picture the devil showing up at the cross like a landlord waving an overdue rent notice marked “sickness stays forever,” and Jesus just rips the contract in half, spikes it to the wood with the nails, and laughs out loud while every demon in the vicinity does the fastest tactical retreat in history. The same Spirit and power that rested on Him to destroy oppression now rests on us. Stop playing victim to a defeated snake. You’re seated with the Hero who crushed his head (Romans 16:20). The devil is not your personal trainer. He is a conquered foe whose only remaining strategy is to convince you the fight is still fair. It isn’t—come on, the head is already crushed.

The faithless try to muddy the water with their “maybe God is using sickness to teach you” nonsense. That’s like cheering for the villain in the movie because it “builds character.” Dumb. Jesus already bore our sicknesses and carried our pains so we wouldn’t have to. By His stripes we are healed. It’s like the devil is still trying to collect rent on a house Jesus already foreclosed on, burned to the ground, and turned into a victory bonfire while the angels roasted marshmallows over the flames. The same Spirit and power that rested on Him to destroy oppression now rests on us. Stop playing victim to a defeated snake. You’re seated with the Hero who crushed his head (Romans 16:20).

Command that sickness to leave in Jesus’ name. Lay hands on the sick and expect recovery (Mark 16:17-18). Believe like the victory is already yours—because it is. The gospel is still advancing through power, healing, and authority in Christ. Live it out loud. The Hero won the war. Now go enforce the victory.

Let me press this a little deeper, because the stakes are eternal. When Jesus sent out the Twelve and then the Seventy-two, He gave them authority over all the power of the enemy and told them to heal the sick (Luke 9:1-2; 10:9). That commission did not expire at the end of the first century. The same Jesus who walked the shores of Galilee is the same yesterday, today, and forever (Hebrews 13:8). The same Spirit who raised Him from the dead lives in every believer (Romans 8:11). If sickness were somehow God’s loving tool, then Jesus would have been working against the Father every time He healed someone. That is theological insanity. The Father anointed the Son precisely to destroy what the devil had built. Every miracle was a preview of the age to come crashing into the present. Every healing was a declaration: the kingdom is here, the curse is broken, the Hero has arrived.

When Christians remain in sickness, besetting sins, broken relationships and poverty, it is Satan’s middle finger at God shouting, that Jesus’ kingdom is not here and the curse is not broken and the Hero did not arrive.

Some will object that not everyone gets healed instantly. Fair observation, however, because it is based on observation it is logically irrelevant for knoweldge. Notice what Jesus never did: He never blamed the Father for the delay. He never told the sick to embrace their condition as a gift. He blamed unbelief when it blocked the flow (Mark 6:5-6), and He trained His disciples to keep pressing until faith rose. Paul left Trophimus sick, not because sickness was God’s will, but because the apostolic team was on mission and timing mattered (2 Timothy 4:20). Yet the same Paul commanded the church at Corinth to examine itself so they would not be weak or sick (1 Corinthians 11:29-30). Sickness was the exception to be judged and removed, not the rule to be celebrated. The New Testament pattern is relentless: preach the gospel, heal the sick, cast out demons, raise the dead. That is not optional flavor. That is the normal Christian life.

Think about the woman with the issue of blood. She had suffered for twelve years, spent everything on doctors, and grew worse (Mark 5:25-26). The doctors could not help because the real oppressor was not a germ or a hormone—it was the kingdom of darkness. She touched the hem of Jesus’ garment and was healed instantly. Jesus called her “daughter” and sent her away in peace. That is the gospel in miniature. The Hero sees the victim, feels compassion, and ends the oppression on the spot. He is still doing it. The same power that flowed through His robe now flows through His body on earth—you and me. The same power that raised Jesus from the dead and put Him above all names, times and places is the same power the works in us who believe (Eph 1:19-21).

So grab your spiritual eviction notice, look that defeated snake square in the eye, and say, “Not today, not tomorrow, not ever again—your lease was canceled at Calvary, and the new Landlord is moving in with healing, power, and zero tolerance for your sh@t.” The gospel is not a theory to be debated in seminaries. It is power to be demonstrated in streets, homes, and everywhere. Peter preached it that way to Cornelius’ house, and the Holy Spirit fell while he was still speaking (Acts 10:44). The same thing can happen when you open your mouth with the same message.

The devil has had two thousand years to refine his lies, but the Hero has already crushed his head, and God’s truth is indomitable. The blood still speaks. The name still works. The Spirit still moves. Sickness is still bad. Healing is still good. And Jesus the Healing Hero is still the gospel.

 Watch the kingdom advance exactly as it did in the book of Acts. The victory is already yours. Now go enforce it with joy, with boldness, and with the full expectation that the same HERO who healed all who were oppressed by the devil, is now sitting at the Power’s right hand, doing it through you.

Aliens Cannot Disagree With the Bible

The cultural tide is turning right now. The United States agencies are beginning releasing government files on UFOs, UAPs, and potential extraterrestrial life. More unexplained incidents that cannot be classified as modern human technology will soon enter the public conversation. Many people — even Christians — will feel unsettled.

Satan, who holds the whole world in his sway (1 John 5:19), will not miss this moment. His endgame has always been to attack the exclusive lordship of Jesus Christ. Expect a new rhetoric to spread: “Jesus was an alien — one of several powerful star lords from across the galaxy.” Then will come claims of a new “star lord” or ascended being arriving with fresh revelations for humanity. Its the same game the same trick, over and over. We know how the evil one works.

This is not new revelation. It is ancient idolatry wearing a sci-fi costume.

We already have documented cases of people (see creation.com) — many of them atheists or agnostics — experiencing what they call alien abductions. In their final desperation they cried out, “Jesus, help me!” and the experience stopped instantly. Some of those people later became Christians. Why would beings from another planet respect and flee at the name of a Jesus Christ? The answer is obvious: because they are not extraterrestrials. They are demonic entities.

Most reported experiences come from degraded minds, fear, drugs, or advanced human technology. But a genuine subset is demonic. As Paul wrote, when people sacrifice to idols they are actually sacrificing to demons (1 Corinthians 10:20). When men give themselves over to the obsession of seeking “higher beings,” “star people,” or alien contact, they are not innocently curious. They are ramming a bulldozer through the front door of their soul and exposing themselves completely to demonic harassment.

Remember Moses and Pharaoh’s magicians. Those pagan sorcerers performed real supernatural acts — their staffs really became snakes. The Bible says so. The power was genuine, but limited, demonic, and ultimately powerless before the true God. The same limit applies today. Demonic manifestations can produce lights in the sky, fast-moving objects, and strange encounters — but they collapse before the name and authority of Jesus Christ, because He has already triumphed over them (Colossians 2:15).

Demons love this game. Show the stupid humans some shiny lights and unnatural motion and they chase the distraction instead of the Creator. Satan is playing with humans like a human plays with a cat using a laser pointer.

The Theological Reality

Could intelligent extraterrestrial life exist somewhere? Theologically it is possible — God could have created it. But it is highly, highly unlikely, and even if it did exist it would have zero relevance to us. Why? Because Scripture declares that all things are summed up in Jesus Christ (Ephesians 1:10). Humanity, created in God’s image and redeemed by the blood of the eternal Son, is the pinnacle of creation. The incarnation, the cross, and the resurrection happened here, for us. Unless the Bible itself tells us something is summed up in Christ or has direct bearing on His redemptive work, it is ultimately irrelevant to the Christian life and worldview.

Jesus is not “one of the star lords.” He is the Logos — the eternal Reason and Creator through whom all things were made and in whom all things hold together (John 1:1-3; Colossians 1:16-17). Any narrative that reduces Him to one being among many is already false on its face.

The Real Refutation: Presuppositional Collapse

But here is where the discussion becomes simple — almost boringly straightforward for anyone who understands biblical apologetics.

The same fatal flaw that destroys every anti-Christian worldview destroys the entire alien/star-lord mythology before it can even get off the ground.

All things necessary for intelligence only converge in the Christian worldview. Knowledge, logic, categories of thought.

When the mind looks at a scene — whether lights in the sky, supposed alien craft, or claims of new spiritual teachers — it does more than receive raw impressions. It interprets using concepts such as contradiction, identity, difference, number, relation, time, and cause (etc.). All these concepts are necessary in order to have intelligence about anything.  A first principle that does not give us knowledge and justify these, does not make intelligence possible. Starting points such as empiricism and materialism, and naturalism, or any worldview with any reliance on empiricism at all cannot justify these things that we must have in order to think and say something with meaning.

“First, the categories of thought that make intelligence itself possible. To even formulate or argue this theory, one must employ fundamental categories: identity and difference (distinguishing “Jesus” from other supposed lords), cause and effect (claiming His name causes the entities to flee), unity and plurality (a cosmic hierarchy of multiple powers), substance and attribute, time, relation, and number. These are not learned from experience—whether from abduction reports, UFO videos, or ancient astronaut theories. They are the logical preconditions for any meaningful experience whatsoever.

How could anyone “learn” causality by observing sequences of alleged alien events unless he already assumed that every event must have a cause? The empiricist pushing “evidence-based” alien-Jesus speculation is caught in hopeless circularity: he uses the category of cause to justify the category of cause. The rationalist who tries to reason his way to a polytheistic star-lord federation without biblical revelation fares no better—his innate ideas float in mid-air with no ontological anchor. Only the biblical God, whose mind is the source of all rational order, provides that foundation.

Second, science—the great idol of modern unbelief. Every interpretation of “aliens traveling interstellar distances,” “consistent abduction patterns,” or “Jesus operating within discoverable cosmic rules” secretly assumes the uniformity of nature: that the future will resemble the past, and that the laws observed today will hold tomorrow across the universe. Yet no amount of past observation can guarantee future uniformity on naturalistic, evolutionary, or multi-lord grounds. David Hume saw the problem centuries ago and despaired. Bertrand Russell admitted that science rests on a “postulate” it cannot prove.

The unbeliever nevertheless proceeds as if induction is reliable. Why? Because he is stealing from the Bible—which declares he is wrong and that only its revelation is true. Scripture alone grounds the uniformity of nature in the faithful providence of the one sovereign Creator (Colossians 1:17). Your “Star lords” theory offers no such guarantee; it secretly borrows rationality from the very worldview it attacks.

Third, the fatal flaw in probability arguments. When unbelievers say the biblical resurrection or miracles are “highly improbable” if Jesus were merely an advanced extraterrestrial, or that a hierarchy of Star lords is “more likely given the size of the universe,” they commit a devastating epistemological error. To calculate any probability, one must know the complete denominator—the full, overarching set of all relevant possibilities. Finite humans do not and cannot possess that exhaustive knowledge. If they somehow already knew the denominator, they would possess knowledge far greater than what their observations provide, rendering the entire appeal to probability irrelevant. Their calculations are therefore not science but prejudice dressed up as numbers.

Fourth, the active interpreting mind. When the mind looks at a report of strange lights, beings, or an abduction that halts at the name of Jesus, it does more than receive raw impressions. It actively interprets the scene using concepts such as identity, difference, number, relation, time, and cause—categories that are logically prior to experience, not derived from it. A child tracking a ball flying through the air already employs time and continuity to follow its motion from one moment to the next. Without these, there is no “motion,” no “through the air,” no coherent sequence—only a disconnected blur of sensations that cannot even be called a blur. When the same mind declares that “the name of Jesus stopped the entity,” it invokes causality and relation. To recognize any pattern at all—let alone a cosmic federation of Star lords—requires identity through time and rules for connecting one case with another. The alien theory cannot account for why these interpretations correspond to reality rather than demonic deception or hallucination. Only revelation from the God who created both the mind and the world in perfect correspondence provides that.

In the end, this entire hypothesis saws off the branch it sits on. It depends at every point on the Christian worldview for its intelligibility while reducing the eternal Creator and Ruler of heaven and earth (Acts 17:24) to one creature among many. It is self-refuting speculative philosophy of the worst kind.”[1]

Logic: Where does the unbeliever (or the new-age star-lord enthusiast) get the laws of logic he uses to argue for aliens or against the exclusivity of Christ? From the eternal Logos — the Lord Jesus Christ Himself (John 1:1; Colossians 2:3), in whom are hidden all the treasures of wisdom and knowledge. He is not one “star lord” among many. He is the eternal Reason by which all things were created and by which all things hold together.

Science itself — the great hope of those searching for extraterrestrial life — fares no better on non-Christian grounds. Every search for aliens assumes induction: that the future will resemble the past and that laws observed here apply universally. Naturalism cannot justify this. Only the God of Scripture, who faithfully sustains creation, can. The person who says, “Aliens prove the Bible is incomplete or that Jesus is just one being among many” has already stolen the very tools that only the Christian worldview can account for. On his own assumptions, logic is just brain chemistry, categories of thought are evolutionary byproducts or social constructs, and knowledge is impossible. Yet he continues to use them as if they were universal and necessary.

He is like the man who says, “I disagree with the law of non-contradiction” while using that very law to disagree. Or the fish trying to prove the ocean doesn’t exist while swimming in it.

There is no possible world — real or imaginary — where a coherent argument against biblical Christianity can be made, whether from philosophy, science, or supposed alien revelation. All reasoning presupposes the Triune God of Scripture.

God’s revelation in the Bible is the first principle and necessary starting point for all knowledge. Subjects and predicates, logic, truth, and intelligence itself are defined by God’s mind, decree, and Word. As 2 Timothy 3:16-17 declares, all Scripture is God-breathed, equipping us for every good work — including the work of thinking clearly about lights in the sky and spiritual deceptions.

Jesus Christ is the Logos. The law of non-contradiction flows from God’s unchanging character. In Him all things consist. Any “new revelation” from a so-called star lord that contradicts the Bible is immediately exposed as false, because the Bible says it is true and all others are false. It needs no permission from human reason, government disclosures, or demonic manifestations.

Philosophy cannot disagree with the Bible. 

Science cannot disagree with the Bible. 

And supposed aliens or new star lords certainly cannot disagree with the Bible without using it. But the bible they are using says it alone is true and all others are false by logical exclusion (See Vincent Cheung. Captive to Reason pg. 44. 2005/2009.)

This is why apologetics is boring in a sense. All anti-Christinas have the same dumb human speculation and illogical superstition. Our apologetic is always the same: divine revelation. Thus our answer and attack is always the same.

[1]  Paraphrased summaries (adapted to present topic of aliens) and informed by Vincent Cheung’s ‘Paul and the Philosophers’ (2025) and his other works on biblical apologetics” See His works for more.”

See Related:

Philosophy Cannot Disagree With the Bible

Philosophy Cannot Disagree With the Bible

Someone asked: “Why does philosophy disagree with the Bible?” 

Simple answer: It doesn’t. It can’t. 

Imagine trying to argue that “2 + 2 = 5” while using math that only works if 2 + 2 really equals 4. You’d be using the very rule you’re denying. That’s silly, right? The contradiction sits there naked, impossible to hide.

That’s exactly what happens when someone says, “Philosophy disagrees with the Bible.” It’s like the moron who says, “I disagree with the law of non-contradiction.” They use the thing they claim to disagree with to make their disagreement possible in the first place. The very sentence they utter borrows the logic they pretend to reject.

People sometimes ask, “Why does philosophy disagree with the Bible?” But here’s the truth: it can’t. There is no possible world—real or imaginary—where true philosophy stands apart from Scripture. And the reason is simple: the Bible isn’t just part of philosophy; it is the foundation of all philosophy.

To argue against the Scripture, the unbeliever must employ logic, reason, and coherence. Yet, on his own secular, materialistic assumptions, universal and immaterial laws of logic cannot be justified. He is forced to borrow from the Christian worldview—where logic is grounded in the infallible mind of God—in order to construct an argument against God.

The unbeliever who says, “Philosophy shows the Bible is wrong,” has already borrowed the very tools that only the Christian worldview can justify. Where does he get the laws of logic? From the mind of the Logos, the eternal Reason who is Christ (John 1:1, Colossians 2:3). Where does he get the uniformity of nature that allows him to reason from cause to effect? From the sovereign God who “upholds all things by the word of His power” (Hebrews 1:3). Where does he get the moral indignation to accuse the Bible of injustice? From the image of God stamped upon his soul, which he suppresses in unrighteousness (Romans 1:18-21). Where does he the concepts of time and the law of identity? He cannot even open his mouth to object without standing on ground that belongs to the Triune God of Scripture.

Where does he get such laws? If his worldview is materialistic, logic is nothing but electrochemical fizz in the brain—contingent, local, and changeable. If his worldview is evolutionary, logic is a survival mechanism that might have been otherwise. If his worldview is pluralistic or postmodern, logic is a social construct. In every case the laws lose their necessity and universality. Yet he continues to use them as if they were eternal and absolute. He steals from the Christian worldview, where logic is the reflection of the mind of the eternal Logos, the Lord Jesus Christ, “in whom are hidden all the treasures of wisdom and knowledge” (Colossians 2:3). Without the Christian God, logic collapses into absurdity. The unbeliever cannot even deny God without first affirming the very rationality that only God supplies.

Next, the categories of thought that make intelligence possible. Identity and difference, cause and effect, unity and plurality, substance and attribute—these are not learned from experience. They are the preconditions for experience. How could anyone “learn” causality by observing sequences of events unless he already assumed that every event must have a cause? The empiricist is caught in hopeless circularity: he uses the category of cause to justify the category of cause. The rationalist without revelation fares no better; his innate ideas float in mid-air with no ontological anchor.

Science, the great idol of modern unbelief, fares no better. Every experiment assumes the uniformity of nature—that the future will resemble the past, that the laws observed today will hold tomorrow. Yet no amount of past observation can guarantee future uniformity on naturalistic grounds. David Hume saw the problem centuries ago and despaired. Bertrand Russell admitted that science rests on a “postulate” it cannot prove. The unbeliever nevertheless proceeds as if induction is reliable. Why? Because steals from the bible, which says he is wrong and only it is true.

When unbelievers use probability as a path to truth (such as dismissing the resurrection as “highly improbable”), Vincent Cheung points out a fatal flaw (see “Paul and the Philosophers” and his other apologetic works. These have helped me understand some of these forementioned points above.). To calculate probability, one must know the “denominator”—the complete, overarching set of all relevant possibilities. If you lack comprehensive knowledge, you cannot establish that denominator. If you somehow already knew the denominator, you would possess knowledge far greater than what the specific experiment or observation offers, rendering the experiment irrelevant.

“When the mind looks at a scene, it does more than receive raw impressions. It interprets using concepts such as identity, difference, number, relation, time, and cause. These are not derived from experience; they are logically prior to it. A child tracking a ball flying through the air already employs time and continuity to follow its motion from one moment to the next. Without these categories, there is no “motion,” no “through the air,” no coherent sequence—only a disconnected blur of sensations that cannot even be called a blur. When the same child declares that the ball broke the window, he invokes causality. To recognize any pattern at all requires identity through time and rules for connecting one case with another.” (A paraphrased summary from “Paul and the Philosophers.” Vincent Cheung.)

In Systematic Theology 2025 I explain that God’s revelation is the first principle of all knowledge—the starting point for everything we can know or think. All the things necessary for any intelligence only converge in the biblical worldview. You can’t even get to logic, truth, or intelligence unless God reveals Himself. Revelation is not one option among many; it is the necessary ground beneath every thought we think. Without this divine starting point, every claim collapses into skepticism, because there is nothing left to justify why your thoughts should match reality at all.

This is why I stress the first principle of Scripture for all public knowledge and the method of it being self-authenticating for apologetics. The Bible doesn’t need permission from human reason to have knowledge. Rather, subjects and predicates get their definition from God’s Mind, decree and revelation. And His nature is revealed in His Word. As 2 Timothy 3:16-17 declares with divine authority, “All Scripture is God-breathed and is useful for teaching, rebuking, correcting and training in righteousness, so that the servant of God may be thoroughly equipped for every good work.” That “every good work” includes the work of thinking, reasoning, and building a coherent worldview.

The Bible isn’t just a book about ethics. It is the very definition of systematic philosophy. It tells us where truth comes from, who God is, what logic is, and how to think straight. Jesus Himself is called the Logos— He is the law of contradiction and naturally used this thinking motion to create the universe (John 1:1). “In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. He was with God in the beginning. Through him all things were made; without him nothing was made that has been made.” This is no mere metaphor. The eternal Son is the wisdom or reason or logic. Colossians 2:3 adds that in Christ “are hidden all the treasures of wisdom and knowledge.” The law of non-contradiction? It comes from God’s unchanging character; meaning, the law of contradiction is simply one of the eternal constant motions of God’s thinking. You can’t throw that law out the window and still have a conversation that makes sense, because without it language dissolves into gibberish and thought becomes impossible.

So when a person tries to use reason to attack the Bible, they are actually standing on the Bible’s own foundation to do it. They borrow God’s rules of thinking and intelligence while claiming God’s rules are false. That’s not clever—it’s impossible. There is no reality where this works. It’s like a fish trying to prove the ocean doesn’t exist while swimming in it. Talk about an intellectual own-goal: flapping around in denial while the very medium that makes flapping possible laughs at the absurdity.

Every true philosopher must begin with scripture. Anyone who doesn’t, is not really philosophizing—they’re just daydreaming with big words.

Most people think of philosophy as a neutral playground where we decide what is true. That’s a dumb mistake. There is no neutral ground. To “disagree” with the Bible using philosophy is like trying to use the rules of mathematics to prove that numbers don’t exist. It’s a personal malfunction and not actual philosophy, because you’re denying the very foundation of your own thoughts. Men can come together and pretend to have a philosophy, but that’s all it is—men in a mental delusion. There was never any philosophy; they only pretended. But it only takes one person to stop pretending and the game is up. I will be the person. I will not pretend with them.

Philosophy cannot question the Bible without ceasing to be philosophy. Philosophy only starts with the Bible, because the bible says so. You also must start with the bible so that your questions have intelligence. If you reject the Word of God, you lose the right to claim that anything is knowledge and that anything you say has any intelligence.

Stop trying to find knowledge from the outside looking in. Step into the Light, and you’ll realize the Light was what allowed you to see the path all along. Wisdom only begins with God. Intelligence ends at any disagreement with God.

So here’s the bottom line: A philosopher who rejects Scripture has already rejected the foundation of philosophy itself. They were never a philosopher. They only pretend to be one.

You can pretend to disagree with Scripture, but you can’t form a logical disagreement without first borrowing the very tools—logic, truth, coherence, intelligence, knowledge, subject and predicates—that only come from God’s revelation. That’s why Scripture never trembles before human questioning. It stands firm because it is the mind of God revealed. As 1 Corinthians 2:16 asks, “For who has known the mind of the Lord so as to instruct him?” Yet we have the mind of Christ.

When we align our thinking with Scripture, we aren’t limiting ourselves—we’re finally standing on the only solid ground for the pursuit of wisdom and intelligence. In a world of shifting sands and human opinion, the Word of God remains the rock that cannot be shaken. Let all who seek truth come here, bow before the King of kings, and find the true beginning of philosophy—not as man’s invention, but as God’s gift to those who fear Him.

Let God’s sovereignty be a foundation for more and more healings and miracles. Let His Word be our theology, our doxology, and our apologetic. 

Endnote: “This presentation has been informed by Vincent Cheung’s ‘Paul and the Philosophers’ (2025) and his other works on biblical apologetics.” See His works for more.”

Parallel in Your New Creation

A Huge Communication Problem

How involved were you when God created you? When God knit you together in your mother’s womb, how much were you involved in this? Did you have a say in being created? Did you do anything to affect how you were created? Did God ask you if you wanted to come into existence?

Of course the answer is no on every count. You contributed nothing. You offered no input on your genetic makeup, your personality traits, or the precise moment of your first breath. As Psalm 139:13-16 so beautifully declares, “For you created my inmost being; you knit me together in my mother’s womb. I praise you because I am fearfully and wonderfully made; your works are wonderful, I know that full well. My frame was not hidden from you when I was made in the secret place, when I was woven together in the depths of the earth. Your eyes saw my unformed body; all the days ordained for me were written in your book before one of them came to be.” God sovereignly decided and executed your creation without your consultation or cooperation. That is what it means to be a creature. By definition, the Creator brings existence out of nothing, unilaterally, and Jeremiah 1:5 confirms the same eternal foreknowledge: “Before I formed you in the womb I knew you, before you were born I set you apart.”

Paul tells us in 2 Corinthians 5 that we are a new creation. We do not even know Jesus from a human point of view anymore, and neither do we see ourselves from a human point of view, because like Jesus we have a new type of existence. How did this new existence happen? Jesus told Nicodemus it is like the wind. “The wind blows wherever it pleases. You hear its sound, but you cannot tell where it comes from or where it is going. So it is with everyone born of the Spirit” (John 3:8). It is by the sovereign work of God; you don’t know where it came from or where it went. You were not consulted. You did not vote. You did not assist. The Spirit swept in like an invisible force and performed a total reboot, a supernatural species upgrade that left the old humanity behind forever.

Paul says our old selves died with Jesus and we were raised in a new life. This new creation is intellectual and spiritual first, and because of this intellectual and spiritual foundation it is also physical. Before the curse animated our bodies in decay and death. But as Paul says in Romans 8:11, “the Spirit of him who raised Jesus from the dead is living in you, he who raised Christ from the dead will also give life to your mortal bodies because of his Spirit who lives in you.” The Father did not think we were part of Jesus’ body in the old sense. In our new creation the Father thinks we are part of Jesus. In His mind He thinks we are already seated with Him in the heavenly places, and all spiritual blessings are already given to us. Jesus sends the Spirit to baptize us in power, just like He has power. We are totally and utterly a new creation; no longer human in the old Adamic sense. Our old man with sins died. A new man who is both blameless and the righteousness of God exists in God’s mind.

I say this to illustrate how important we need to categorically see our new life in Jesus. Just as we did not ask God to bring us into existence and had no ability to effect our existence, it is exactly the same in our new creation. God did not ask me if I wanted to be the righteousness of God. Rather, He sent His Son and made it a reality, and faith arrives the moment God makes me aware that He created me as God’s righteousness in Jesus. Second Corinthians 5:21 settles it once and for all: “God made him who had no sin to be sin for us, so that in him we might become the righteousness of God.” No negotiation. No application process. Just sovereign grace.

I did nothing to earn or contribute to my existence. I did not earn the ability to breathe. I did not earn the ability to think. God gave it to me as part of existence itself. I can choose to think well, but that is because I am already a person. The point stands: I do nothing for my existence by definition—I cannot. It is the definition of the Creator to create existences. The same holds true with my new creation. I did nothing to earn or contribute to my new existence. I did not earn the ability to be God’s righteousness. I did not earn the ability to have God be my paycheck. I did not earn Abraham’s blessing. I did not earn to have all my sickness healed. Without asking, God made me a new creation in all these things. I do nothing for it. It is a creation issue. It is God’s doing.

People often struggle with forgiveness and seeing themselves righteous because they still have not given up on their old selves. But the old man is dead and buried. My old man is a corpse. It is my old existence, and because I am already a new creation it has nothing to do with me in my standing before God. Yet every aspect of my existence follows this same pattern. God is correct, and what He thinks is reality. I am a new creation, but if I am foolish enough to still see my old self as alive—a walking corpse or zombie—I will have a defeated and pathetic life. Let’s call it what it is: zombie theology. The old you is pushing up daisies in the graveyard of Calvary, yet some folks keep digging it up for life advice. God is probably face-palming from the throne: “I buried that guy with My Son—stop exhuming the past!”

My new creation has no conscience of sin, because it does not logically apply to my new creation. That corpse is dead and buried. Romans 8:1 shouts with finality, “Therefore, there is now no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus.”

This is the same with something like healing and prosperity. Jesus took my sickness as lashes on His back—Isaiah 53:5 says “by his wounds we are healed”—and my old man died there with Jesus’ death. In substitution He gave me healing. My old man tried to use either human effort and money to get healed, or to earn it by merit from God in a begging prayer. But that old man is a corpse in God’s eyes and in mine. Who am I to disagree with God? The new creation of Oshea does not use human effort or money to get healed. The new creation of Oshea exists as part of Jesus’ body, in the mind of God. Does Jesus need to use money to get healed? Then I don’t. Does Jesus need to earn favor to deserve to get healed? Then I don’t.

Jesus became my poverty—2 Corinthians 8:9 declares “though he was rich, yet for your sake he became poor, so that you through his poverty might become rich”—and I died with Jesus in that substitution. Then He gave me His wealth. The old man tried to use human effort to get prosperity. But in the creation I exist in now, Jesus is my paycheck and wealth, not me. We are to work because it is a command of God, but because Jesus already took our poverty and already gave us His wealth, we are to look to Him to be our breadwinner. We are to look to Him for the supernatural power to gain wealth, doors of favor, and miracle money finding its way to us. The old man, with his five senses and self-effort, was foundation and ability. But now my foundation is God’s revelation and my ability is Jesus’ ability. Trying to bootstrap what God already purchased is like showing up to a feast with your own peanut-butter sandwich while the host has slaughtered the fatted calf and says, “Dude, put that away—I’ve got this.” It is easy to pay tithes when you see yourself as a new creation where Jesus is your funnel of money, not your self-effort. The same holds for healing and good relationships. It is easy to give your time to knowing God when you see God as your favor that blesses you with good relationships.

In our new creation in Jesus, because we are part of Jesus’ body, Jesus is our provider for all things. The old creation looked to self and empiricism, but the new self looks to Jesus who richly provides us all good things, as 1 Timothy 6:17 reminds us.

The more you live as if the old you is relevant to your standing before God, the greater the degree you will have conscience of sin, be sick, and live in poverty. You need to live and see yourself in your new creation and definition in Jesus. The old you is utterly and completely irrelevant to your standing before God. The old you has no logical relevance to how you gain wealth and get healed. The old you does not exist in God’s mind. When you approach God for these things and act like the old you exists, God will still see the new you. And this is why your prayers have so little effect. You are seeing one reality and God sees another one. That is a huge communication problem. You must approach God as He sees you and engage Him on that reality. Then you will have success in receiving all freely given things that already belong to you in your new existence. Faith is not a beggar’s plea; it is a king’s decree, declaring what the Father already thinks about you in Christ. So walk in it. Act like the dazzling royalty you are. The old man is gone. The new has come. And that, my friends, changes everything.

The God of Peace Will Crush

Ah, the God of peace—sounds like a serene deity lounging on clouds, doesn’t it? But flip open your Bible, and you’ll see He’s more like a divine general, marching into battle with a strategy that leaves enemies flattened. Romans 16:20 declares our thesis statement plainly: “The God of peace will crush Satan under your feet shortly. The grace of our Lord Jesus Christ be with you. Amen.” Notice it was not under God’s feet, but your feet. When Satan eyes meet yours, it should be when he is crushed under your feet. This is the only correct position for Satan to meet your gaze.  

Jesus Himself chimes in from John 16:33: “These things I have spoken to you, that in Me you may have peace. In the world you will have tribulation; but be of good cheer, I have overcome the world.” This isn’t some fluffy, feel-good tranquility; it’s peace forged in victory, the kind that comes when God stomps out what’s troubling you. If your idea of peace is just a balanced brain chemistry or a quiet afternoon without the kids yelling, you’re missing the biblical punch. God’s peace is intellectual and material—your mind aligns with His unbreakable promises, stabilizing your whole being, and then reality bends to match, with enemies crushed underfoot. Peace comes through war, blood and triumph.

Let’s unpack this. The Bible hammers home that true peace arrives through conquest, destruction of foes, or flipping former adversaries into allies. You don’t get heart-peace by ignoring the chaos; you get it because God removes the chaos-causer, by destroying it. The enemy isn’t politely asked to leave—he’s demolished. Joshua 21:43-45 spells it out: God handed Israel the promised land, giving them “rest on every side” after delivering enemies into their hands. No foe stood against them because God fulfilled every promise. Rest? Peace? It came post-victory, after the dust settled from crushed opposition. Or take 2 Samuel 7:1: Once David was palace-settled, “the Lord gave him rest from all his enemies around him.” God’s provision of peace followed conquest, not some mystical inner glow detached from reality.

Then there’s 1 Chronicles 22:9, where God promises David a son of peace: “I will give him rest from all his enemies on every side.” Solomon’s reign would embody this—peace through subdued threats. Even Proverbs 16:7 adds a twist: “When a man’s ways please the Lord, he makes even his enemies to be at peace with him.” God doesn’t just crush; sometimes He recalibrates relationships, turning rivals into reluctant allies. But make no mistake, it’s His sovereign hand at work, not some human diplomacy. This isn’t a chemical brain balance or anti-intellectual fuzziness. No, God’s peace is rooted in logic and substance: your mind assents to His truths and promises, renewing your propositional framework to be stable and healthy. That’s why Philippians 4:7 calls it “the peace of God, which surpasses all understanding”—not because it’s beyond intellect, but because His promises blanket every life scenario. You might not eyeball the “how” in a tough spot, but faith knows He’ll deliver peace. It will happen.

Jesus embodies this perfectly. He overcame the world, so we cheer amid tribulation. Think Jericho: marching and trumpeting wasn’t busywork; it was praise rooted in promise. God vowed victory, so those walls were toast before the first lap. They praised pre-fall because faith treats God’s word as done deal. God crushed those walls under their feet, bringing peace. Paul’s line in Romans labels God “of peace” precisely because He’ll “soon crush Satan under their feet.” Not in some distant heaven, but here, now. Heaven will be a place of peace, because all enemies will be crushed. Crushing enemies “is” the act of peace-bringing. Jesus nailed this at the cross, pulverizing sickness, poverty, curses—the lot. It’s done. Isaiah 54:17 echoes: “No weapon formed against you will prosper.” Weapons form—tribulations like demons, illness, lack—but cheer up! Jesus defeated them; by faith, they’re soon underfoot.

Don’t get me wrong; this peace starts intellectual, in the mind’s assent to God’s guarantee, but it spills into flesh and circumstance. We praise pre-victory, as with Jericho, because faith’s useless post-fact. It’s for the “before,” fueling praise that knows enemies will crumble, yielding total peace. Peace without crushed foes? That’s non-biblical bunk, a counterfeit calm that leaves Satan smirking.

Dig deeper into Scripture, and this crushes any watered-down view. Isaiah 45:7 has God declaring, “I form light and create darkness; I make peace and create evil; I am Yahweh; I do all these things.” Peace isn’t accidental—God authors it, often through calibrated calamity for the reprobate and triumph for His elect. No weapon prospers against you, but they do form. The promise is simple. With faith the weapons will be ineffective against you. God did not send those people to attack you, and so you are free to condemn them in the name of Jesus and crush them under your feet.  For reprobates, even sunshine fattens them for slaughter (Psalm 73). But for us, temporary trials and forged weapons against us, yield an opportunity for easy game XP for our level ups.

Look at Colossians 1:19-20: “For in Him all the fullness of God was pleased to dwell, and through Him to reconcile all things to Himself, having made peace through the blood of His cross.” Peace via bloodied conquest—Jesus reconciling by demolishing sin’s divide. Or Romans 5:1: “Therefore, since we have been justified by faith, we have peace with God through our Lord Jesus Christ.” Justification swaps enmity for alliance, but it’s God’s doing, not our charm.

And Isaiah 53? Brutal beauty: “He was wounded for our transgressions, He was crushed for our iniquities; the chastisement for our peace was upon Him, and by His stripes we are healed.” Chastisement for our peace—Jesus bore the bloody atonement so we carry calm. He says, “My peace I give you” (John 14:27), not some generic vibe, but His substitutionary shalom. Leviticus’ scapegoat “carried away” our sins; same word in Isaiah for Jesus bearing sickness. He was led outside the camp as our diseased substitute, so we don’t carry illness or turmoil, because He carried on Himself so that we don’t. That is what the idea of a substitution means. If you carry the same sickness Jesus carried, then there was no substitution. Peace in soul, body, life—it’s contractual, sealed in blood, already carried away to the grave by Jesus’ substitution.

Hebrews 4 ties peace to approaching God’s throne: redeemed, we boldly ask and receive help. No spiritualizing—it’s literal receipt. Jesus contrasts pagan prayer myths. When the pagans pray they mainly give to their gods, and when they do ask, it is done without much hope, even with trepidation, knowing the request could be used against them. Jesus’ prayer doctrine contradicts this. God gives us a fish for fish, a miracle for a miracle, a child of a child, prosperity for prosperity, a spouse for a spouse and Spirit for Spirit (Matthew 7:7-11). If evil humans give good gifts, how much more our Father? Our Good Father gives us the things we ask for; anything less is demon dogmatics.

This crushes defective ethics peddling unbelief. Faith-fumblers teach God’s stingy or sickness teaches lessons—nonsense! Experience as a teacher is the worst type of teacher. For us, revelation’s our sole teacher of knowledge. Sickness comes from Satan not God. Therefore, destroy it in Jesus’ name, advancing His kingdom. If you are doing something to give a foothold, correct your behavior. To let Satan’s attacks linger glorifies hell, not God. Mindset matters: the atonement is finished and the benefits already deposited into your account by grace. Faith sees them, withdraws at will. Forgiveness, healing, prosperity are not begged, but claimed in faith. The natural man, using the five senses, cannot receive the things of the Spirit, who reveals to us all the good things God has freely deposited to our accounts.

Cheer up! Praise God before the crushing, knowing God’s promises are guaranteed. Peace starts in faith-filled minds, and manifests in crushed foes. Biblical peace is where God’s crushes Satan shortly under your feet. Notice it was not under God’s feet, but your feet. When Satan eyes meet yours, it should be when he is crushed under your feet. This is the only correct position for Satan to meet your gaze.  If doubters peddle less, get them out of your life. For us? We assent, crush, receive and advance. All things possible when you believe—mountains move, enemies flatten. That’s God’s type of peace: conquest, not compromise.

What You Will

John 15:7 packs a divine punch: “If you abide in me, and my words abide in you, ask whatever you will, and it shall be done for you.” The main point here is simple, yet it slices through centuries of theological fog like a hot knife through butter. When men scream, “if God wills,” regarding answers to prayer, Jesus—or God, that is—screams the contradiction to this. Jesus says, ask whatever “you will,” and it will be done. When men focus on God’s will, Jesus focuses on our will. This is the Jesus we pray to. He is asking for your will, and He will do it. This is why the “if it is God’s will” focus is a scam. The faith and prayer dogma Jesus taught was about man’s will, not God’s. He said, “What do you want me to do for you?” Yet, the faithless focus on the contradiction to Jesus’ teaching by saying, “What can we do for God?” Jesus’ gospel gives to us; we do not give to Him. This is why His focus is on our will—because from the Garden to Abraham to the gospel being finished, it forces a worldview where God is the one who gives to us and not us to Him. In a world where the gospel has already been accomplished—in a reality where God gives to man, not man to God—Jesus says, “What is your will? Tell Me about it, and I will do it.”

Contrast this with the timid traditions that twist prayer into a guessing game, hedging every request with “if it be Thy will,” as if God were some cosmic bureaucrat withholding stamps of approval. Jesus flips that script entirely—He spotlights the believer’s desire, not divine reluctance. Blind Bartimaeus didn’t mumble about sovereignty; he shouted his will for sight, and Jesus asked, “What do you want me to do for you?” (Mark 10:51). The faithless flip it to “What can we do for God?”—a pious dodge that ignores the gospel’s core: God lavishes on us, from Eden’s abundance where He strolled as Provider, to Abraham’s blockbuster covenant of stars and land (Genesis 15:1-6), sealed in blood as an unbreakable yes through Christ (2 Corinthians 1:20). Abraham didn’t earn it by groveling; he believed God’s giving nature, and it was credited as righteousness. The cross finishes this: Jesus absorbs our curse so we inherit the goodies (Galatians 3:13-14). Yet the doubters peddle a scam, fixating on “God’s mysterious will” like it’s a shield for unbelief, denying the Spirit’s miracles and baptism as outdated relics.

The faithless build walls of “what if,” fearing to impose on God, while Jesus urges imposition: “Whatever you ask in my name, I will do it” (John 14:13-14). Their worldview starves on self-serving scraps; ours feasts on Abraham’s excess, where God swears by Himself to overflow us with favor, healing, and fruitfulness.

Jesus’ gospel is one-directional: It is God giving to us, not us giving to Him. From the very first moment in the Garden, God is the sole Giver—walking with Adam, freely bestowing paradise, life, dominion, and fellowship without Adam contributing anything. When that original giving was lost, God immediately promised a coming Seed who would crush the serpent and restore.

Centuries later, He appeared to Abraham and unilaterally swore by His own name to give him land, innumerable descendants, blessing, fame, and an everlasting covenant—Abraham’s only role was to believe and receive. God gave to Abraham the blessing; the only thing Abraham gave was the faith to receive. And even in the testing, when God asked Abraham to give up his only son, it was an illustration that God was not finished giving, because He was going to provide and give His only Son for man. Even the test was a point about God giving to man and not man to God. God gave to Abraham an exceedingly great reward and then made a point to say, “I’m not done giving; I will be giving my only Son as well.” The only thing Abraham gave, was agreeing with God that God will be faithful to give all the good things He promised.

On this topic, King David has this question: What should I do to repay God? His response was to renew his vows and to take up the cup of salvation. The cup of salvation is all about God delivering and blessing David. So even on the direct topic about what David can give God, it was mostly about agreeing and praising God that He is the one who gives good things to David, not David giving to God.

Every subsequent covenant, every prophetic promise, every miracle, and finally the finished work of the cross and resurrection maintain the same unbreakable pattern: God is the Giver, man is the receiver. The atonement does not end with Jesus taking our sin; it climaxes with Him imparting His righteousness, His healing, His peace, His Spirit, His authority, and His inheritance to us. This sweeping redemptive history forces a non-negotiable worldview: God is always the fountain, and we are always the open hands.

Jesus, being consistent with this worldview God established, does not ask us what we can offer Him; He asks us what we desire so that He may give it. “What do you want Me to do for you?” is not a polite formality—it is the natural, inevitable question that flows from a finished gospel that gives to us, not us to God. When He says “ask whatever you will,” He is continuing the same unstoppable worldview: God gives, man receives. In this world where God has already given in the gospel, Jesus asks us what we want, what is our will, and He will do it. He invites us to name what we want Him to give next. God isn’t running a cosmic tit-for-tat; He’s handing out inheritance to heirs who believe and ask. When God focuses on your will, He’s being faithful to His worldview that His nature and promise established from Eden to Jesus’ finished atonement.

What is your will? Abide in Him and tell God about it. God wants to bless your will.

Incapable Of Producing Human Works

So we have stopped evaluating others from a human point of view. At one time we thought of Christ merely from a human point of view. How differently we know him now! This means that anyone who belongs to Christ has become a new person. The old life is gone; a new life has begun! 2 Corinthians 16-17 NLT. There’s a shift here that’s not just cosmetic—it’s ontological, a complete overhaul of how we exist in God’s eyes. And if we’re honest, most of us skim over this like it’s inspirational wallpaper, but Paul is dropping a metaphysical bombshell. The old you? Buried. The new you? Alive in a way that defies human categories.

“If you depend on the righteousness of Christ that has been applied to your account, then when it comes to your standing before God and your boldness before Satan, your own righteousness is irrelevant.” Vincent Cheung, Faith Is good enough.  Irrelevant—now that’s a word that should make the faith-fumblers squirm, because it forces us to reckon with a righteousness that’s not earned by our sweaty efforts but imputed by divine decree.

The point of focus is how God sees us in His own mind and definition. Not how we see ourselves, but How God sees us. It is about us agreeing with God, not sensation. Our standing before Him, as defined by His own thoughts.

Consider how God’s mind is the ultimate arbiter of reality. He doesn’t dabble in opinions or probabilities; His thoughts shape existence itself. When He looks at your sinful past—that laundry list of failures, rebellions, and half-hearted attempts at goodness—He sees it as belonging to a person who’s already dead. Not metaphorically dead, but actually, definitively gone. God transferred that record onto Jesus, who bore it as if it were His own, enduring a punishment so severe it led to the cross and the grave. The intensity of that exchange wasn’t some mild rebuke; it was lethal, a divine judgment that extinguished life. This is the profound symbolism in baptism’s immersion: you went under, into death, sharing in Christ’s burial. We don’t grasp this through feelings or empirical evidence—no lab test or emotional high confirms it. We know it because God has revealed it in His Word, and His revelation trumps every sensation or doubt. In the sovereign mind of God, that old version of you is six feet under, decomposed, irrelevant to the present equation. Meditate on that until it sinks in: the old you isn’t lurking in the shadows, waiting to sabotage; it’s obliterated.

If you claim to see your sins, you cannot do this without claiming to see the east from the west. I would consider such a person as too stupid to waste my time talking.  As far as the east is from the west, that’s how invisible my human sins are to God; and I agree God is correct. Some try to bridge that gap with a telescope of observation, but knowledge comes by God’s word, not observation.

God’s mind defines reality, not ours. He sees a new Oshea, a new creation, with a list of God’s righteousness baked right into my definition.

Now, flip the script to the new creation. God’s mind, being the only one that counts, has redefined you with a record that’s spotless, infused with His own righteousness. This isn’t a patch job or a fresh coat of paint; it’s a total rewrite of your essence. Your righteousness now mirrors Jesus’—not a diluted human version, but the unblemished, divine standard that God Himself upholds.

This means I’ve died to any notion of human righteousness in my standing before God. Since my old man was human, I’ve died to defining myself that way. To think I’ve produced righteousness by my own actions is to cling to that dead human identity—but that Oshea is history. I’m not human anymore in that sense. My existence is defined as part of Jesus, with His righteousness as mine. My righteousness is God’s, not some DIY human version.

This category shift is huge—like upgrading from bicycle to first-class eternity. If you grasp this distinction, neither your conscience nor Satan can lob accusations at you. The only list of wrongs and rights I have is exclusively in the category of God’s works. Human wrongs or rights? They don’t apply to me anymore—it’s like trying to charge a cloud with murder. A cloud is not a man and so God’s laws do not categorical apply to it. God sees my list as pure divine righteousness. When God thinks about me, He doesn’t slot me into a human category, so it’s logically impossible for human mistakes to stick.

By stripping away my human list of wrongs, killing the old man, and exclusively crediting God’s righteousness to me, my very category of existence got a new definition.

The old self operated in the realm of human effort, where righteousness was something you might scrape together through good deeds or moral striving. But that framework died with the old you. To even entertain the idea of producing your own righteousness now is to resurrect a corpse, to pretend you’re still playing by obsolete rules. You’re not human in that sense anymore; your existence is intertwined with Christ’s, defined by a righteousness that’s categorically divine. It’s like trying to apply the laws of gravity to a spirit being—utterly inapplicable. When God contemplates your standing, it’s through the lens of His own perfection, unmarred and glorious.

This redefinition slams the door on accusations, whether from your own nagging conscience or that slimy accuser, Satan. How can human faults stick to someone who’s no longer classified as merely human? The old you could rack up demerits in that category, but the new you exists in a different ontological bracket altogether. Your record is exclusively filled with God’s works—His faithfulness, His holiness, His victories. Attempting to pin a human sin on you now is a logical absurdity, like accusing a cloud of being too heavy. The faithless might try, whispering doubts or dredging up memories, but they’re arguing against God’s own verdict. And let’s not forget the grafting: God hasn’t just slapped a new label on you; He’s woven you into Christ’s body, making you one with Him in spirit and substance.

For my conscience, Satan, or the faithless to accuse me of sin, they’d have to pretend I’m still human, still capable of churning out human righteousness. But I’m not. I don’t have the ability to produce human righteousness anymore—that guy died ages ago. Think about it: I’m as incapable of producing human works as empiricism is justifying the laws of logic. It’s a category that doesn’t fit me. Even if I tried, I couldn’t whip up my own righteousness. Because God has redefined me in a new category, it’s logically impossible for me to produce human works anymore—which means I can’t even produce human sin. All the sins I did commit were already transferred to Jesus, died, and buried with Him. As Hebrews says, Jesus once and for all removed my sins, even future ones and already perfected me.

Some might say, “But yes, you can still produce human works.” Nah—I’m no more able to do that than Jesus can produce human works. The categories just don’t line up. Even if I attempted it through my own effort, it’d only be “human” in the narrow sense of my mind wandering into a delusional fantasy world that doesn’t exist. This delusion in biblical terms is called unbelief. God’s mind is the sole definer of reality. In this reality, I’m not human in that old way, so I’m incapable of producing mere human works.

One reason the works I do, which are not built upon Christ, will be burned up, is because they were done in the delusion of my mind thinking I was still human, a reality that doesn’t exist in God’s Mind. They are burnt up, because they cannot logically be attributed to me, who isn’t human anymore. God is the law of non-contradiction and Identity. He doesn’t say one thing and then the opposite. He has defined me as not human and so He will not attribute any human works to me, whether good or bad.  Can a rock produce human works and earn righteousness? No, because it is not human.

But God didn’t stop at just adding divine righteousness to my record—He grafted me into the body of His beloved Son. That’s another layer of why God doesn’t pin any lawbreaking on me: if He saw a wrong attached to my list, it’d be attached to Jesus too. Since God thinks I’m part of Jesus, He can’t think of me with wrongs without implying Jesus has them—because we’re one body and one Spirit.

Satan can’t accuse me of sin without accusing Jesus of sin, because I’m one body and one Spirit with Him. If I’m, for example the toes of Jesus’ body, and those toes have sin, then Jesus has sin. If Satan tried to accuse me, he’d have to stand before God and point the finger at Jesus.

Satan and the faithless can’t deny that I’m God’s righteousness without denying that Jesus is, because I’m one with Him. Is there any part of Jesus that isn’t perfectly righteous? Any blemishes in Him? Nope—so I’m always the perfect righteousness of Jesus.

When I pray, I can’t approach with human righteousness because that human Oshea is dead. It’s impossible for me to have human merits or faults—that version doesn’t exist. When I pray, I do so as part of Jesus’ body. I pray as His righteousness. God sees Jesus when He looks at me, because He no longer thinks of me as human, but as one with His Son in body and Spirit. Does God think Jesus is righteous? Then He thinks the same of me. This is the Oshea who exists today—the only one that can.

I know when God sees me, He sees His Son, so I can pray as a righteous person. I can pray knowing God views me as Jesus’ righteousness. Thus, I can have effective prayers, because I only exist today as God’s righteousness, and the old human category is dead and buried. I can pray knowing any human notions of wrongs or rights don’t apply to me. Just as “heavy” doesn’t apply to God (who’s pure Spirit), human wrongs or rights don’t stick to me anymore—I’m something new and different. The only righteousness category for me is God’s, as part of Jesus.

Take this doctrine and rock effective prayers, burst with joyful souls, and use it as power to slam Satan’s face in the ground when he tries to accuse you.

Keeping Your Love For Jesus White Hot

Jesus had this against the church in Ephesus: they had walked away from God as their first love. He approved their hatred for the evil deeds and false doctrines committed by others, but in their testing, exposing, and hatred( all things Jesus himself endorsed) they had stopped doing the most important positive action, which is loving God. It’s a sobering reminder, isn’t it? You can be doctrinally sharp, spotting false teachers like a hawk spots a mouse, yet if your heart grows cold toward the One who first loved you, you’re making a fatal error. Revelation 2:4 puts it bluntly: “Yet I hold this against you: You have forsaken the love you had at first.” Jesus doesn’t mince words here. He calls them to repent and return to the works they did at the beginning, or risk having their lampstand removed. That’s church-speak for “lights out,” and I will move on to those who will love Me.

The question revolves around how Jesus wanted them to correct their behavior to receive and give God’s love. It does involve some speculation, but not much, to extrapolate from the book of Ephesians and the book of Acts the specific things God told the Ephesian church. Ephesus was an important hub for the early church because Paul stayed and taught in a public school for two years. This would make it a hub of educated Christians. Thus, it makes sense for Jesus in Revelation to say they were good at doctrine and good at exposing false teachers. But Paul did more than just educate them. He had his usual miracle ministry of healing, casting out demons, and leading people to be baptized in the Spirit. In addition to all that, Acts 19:11-12 says that God performed “special” or “extraordinary” miracles through the Apostle Paul in Ephesus. These miracles were so unusual that handkerchiefs or aprons that had touched Paul’s skin were carried to the sick, resulting in healings and the departure of evil spirits. Think about it—miracles so potent they worked via second-hand contact. That’s not your average Sunday service; that’s Jesus blasting his followers in the power of the Spirit to tear down the gates of hell and expand His Father’s kingdom

Even before I start to conclude, some readers should already pick up where this is going. In the book to Ephesus, Paul quickly flies by doctrines of the atonement, resurrection, predestination, and election, likely because they were already well educated in these things. But there are two important highlights in this letter. One is in chapter 3 where Paul focuses on how, through the Spirit and knowing God’s love, the inner man is strengthened. Paul did not say it was hours of education that did this, but the Spirit and receiving how much God loves you that makes your inner man strong. Obviously, you need right teaching to know about God’s love, but the focus is not broadly about Christian teaching, but the power of the Spirit to help you believe how much God loves you. This is interesting because Jesus’ accusation against them is about them not loving God as they ought, when Paul is making a special plea to them to strengthen their inner man by receiving God’s love for them. Ephesians 3:16-19 spells it out: “I pray that out of his glorious riches he may strengthen you with power through his Spirit in your inner being, so that Christ may dwell in your hearts through faith. And I pray that you, being rooted and established in love, may have power, together with all the Lord’s holy people, to grasp how wide and long and high and deep is the love of Christ, and to know this love that surpasses knowledge—that you may be filled to the measure of all the fullness of God.”

This is the first part of what it means for the Ephesians to love God. They will love God when they are properly receiving how much God loves them, in the power of the Holy Spirit. The focus is not how much they love God, but how much God loves them. The conclusion Paul gives for a person strengthened by the Spirit with God’s love is that they ask God to give them things, and God gives them exceedingly, abundantly, beyond all they think or ask. Thus, Paul’s test of orthodoxy for a person who is properly receiving God’s love is someone who is praying for God to give them stuff, and God is going overboard in supplying their request. Think of all the baskets left over from the feeding of the 5,000 and 4,000. If you want to know that you haven’t stopped loving God, then the proof is that you ask and receive big from God because the Spirit has made your inner man strong by knowing how much God loves you. It’s almost comical how straightforward this is—God loves you so much He wants to spoil you rotten with answers to prayer. Not because you’re earning it, but because His love is that extravagant. If your prayer life is drier than a desert, it might be time to check if you’re really soaking in His love or if you have it backwards and are focused on giving to God. The point is about His love to you, not your love to Him. The way you love God more, is receiving how much He loves you.

The second interesting focus in Paul’s letter was about putting on God’s armor and weapons and being strengthened in God’s power. Paul ends the letter by saying, “Finally my brethren, be strong in the Lord and in the power of His might.” To say “finally” indicates something Paul felt was important or even the number one reason why he might have written the letter to them. It was not about more studying or education but about raw, explosive “power.” Remember, Paul’s time with the Ephesians was a time with great miracle power and the baptism of the Spirit. In fact, in Acts 19, the whole section starts off with Paul walking into Ephesus, finding believers, and the very first thing he says is, “Have you received the Spirit?” The first thing he asks is not about Jesus Christ, but about the baptism of the Spirit for power. Think about that carefully. I dare say even most Pentecostals do not show this level of importance on the Baptism of the Spirit as Paul was showing here. Acts 19:5-6 records: “On hearing this, they were baptized in the name of the Lord Jesus. When Paul placed his hands on them, the Holy Spirit came on them, and they spoke in tongues and prophesied.”

Paul helps them receive the Spirit for power, and they pray in tongues and prophesy. Thus, the Ephesians, with their personal experience with Paul, understand when he says “the Spirit” or “pray in the Spirit,” it is referring to spiritual power, miracles, and praying in tongues. I do not have time to go over all the aspects of Ephesians 6, but I will draw your attention to two things. One is the command to put on God’s power and walk in His might. Paul uses three different words about power and strength regarding God. The command is to put on God’s power and strength and wield it as your own. You do not have the option to walk around like a hot-mess weakling, because it is a command to walk in God’s almighty power. Paul did extraordinary miracles when he was with the Ephesians, and so when he talks about walking in God’s power, it means to have so much power that a handkerchief you had in your pocket gets passed around and heals people. Ephesians 6:10-11 urges: “Finally, be strong in the Lord and in his mighty power. Put on the full armor of God, so that you can take your stand against the devil’s schemes.”

And lastly, the sword of the Spirit is directly connected to “always praying and praying in the Spirit.” Again, the Ephesians in their personal experience with Paul knew of praying in the Spirit as praying in tongues. Thus, to properly take up the helmet of salvation and the sword of the Spirit cannot be done correctly without praying in tongues. By praying in tongues, you are better at taking up the helmet of salvation and the sword of the Spirit to attack the devil and the kingdom of darkness, which Paul says is our real battle, not the things of the flesh. Ephesians 6:18 adds: “And pray in the Spirit on all occasions with all kinds of prayers and requests.” It’s like spiritual cardio—keeps your heart pumping with divine energy. Without it, you’re swinging a dull blade in a fight that demands sharpness.

It is also noteworthy, since our topic is about loving God and not forsaking our love for Him, that Jude says in verses 20-21: “But you, dear friends, by building yourselves up in your most holy faith and praying in the Holy Spirit, keep yourselves in God’s love as you wait for the mercy of our Lord Jesus Christ to bring you to eternal life.” Praying in the Holy Spirit—aka praying in tongues—keeps yourselves in the love of God. You keep yourself in God’s love by praying in tongues. This is why reprobates cannot overcome Jesus’ rebuke to return to loving Him first, because they cannot pray in tongues. Because they cannot believe Jesus to be filled in the Spirit, they cannot pray in tongues. Because they do not pray in tongues, they do not keep themselves in God’s love. It’s a vicious cycle of unbelief, and frankly, it’s tragic. But for those who embrace it, it’s like stoking a fire that never goes out—white hot, passionate, and powerful. How important is it to you to keep yourself in God’s love. If it is then love yourself and pray in tongues. If you do not pray in tongues it is a sign that God does not like you, or a sign you do not like God, because staying in His love is unimportant to you.

Do not stop loving Jesus. You do this by being filled with the Spirit, who will help you know and believe how much God loves you. You improve loving Jesus more, not by focusing on loving Jesus, but by focusing on how much He loves you. The proof you are doing this correctly is by asking for stuff and God giving you more wealth and health than you asked for. You love Jesus not by walking in lowly human weakness, but by obeying His command to walk in His power and strength, to walk in healing the sick, casting out demons and to walk with your head held high. Lastly, you protect your love for God from growing cold by praying in tongues. It’s not rocket science, but it is supernatural; and because the supernatural can only be done by faith, it excludes most people. And let’s be honest, in a world full of faithless perverts, keeping that love white hot, will keep you in God’s love and it will be the spark that sets the world on fire for Him. So, dive in—receive His love, wield His power, and watch as your heart stays ablaze.