BASIC BIBLE DOCTRINE

Lesson Two

Seven Axioms

By John McReynolds

In our last lesson we learned that being filled with the Holy Spirit is the key to comprehending the word of God and essential to any understanding of His plan for our lives. For that reason we are taking just a moment before we continue our studies to make sure we have confessed our known sins to the Father so that we will be cleansed of sin and filled with the Holy Spirit. So please do that now before we continue.

Thank You, Father, for making this provision for us to be cleansed of all sin in our lives so that we might have fellowship with You, and bask in Your marvelous word. Bless now this study so that we might be conformed to the image of Christ, so that we might be a beacon of hope to a lost and dying world, as those around us witness You working in our lives, for we ask it in Christ’s name—amen.

Today we’re continuing our studies in Basic Bible Doctrine. This is the second of a series that covers the doctrines essential for new believers to be grounded in and to lay a foundation for the rest of their Christian experience. It can also serve as a review for those who have been believers for a good while longer and who want to go over again the basic principles of the faith.

The whole reason for this course in basic Bible doctrine is to learn about God—who He is, why He has saved us, what His plan for us is. Studying about God is not like studying science or math or history or economics or any of the other realms of human knowledge. For one thing God is not someone we can directly see with our eyes, or hear with our ears, or even comprehend with our minds except at the most rudimentary level. When we approach the study of God there are some assumptions that must be made—some basic axioms that must be accepted as true—before we can make any meaningful progress in understanding who He is and what He has to do with us.

These axioms are not subject to any proof—you either accept them or you don’t. But accepting them is pretty much a prerequisite to everything else in Bible doctrine, and if you don’t accept them you’re probably just wasting your time.

What do I mean by an axiom? An axiom, also known as a postulate, is a term used in logic for something that is so self-evident that it is taken for granted as true without any need for proof. It is accepted without proof as self-evident and forms the basis for the formulation of other ideas and concepts.

Today, for our study of God we have seven of these axioms. They are:

• God exists
• God is absolute
• God reveals Himself
• God is understandable
• God has a plan
• You are the object of that plan
• You owe God a hearing

Now strictly speaking only two of these seven items are axioms—the others are conclusions based on the first two. But we’re going to treat them all as axioms, because space won’t allow us to develop them much. So now let’s look at these axioms:

God Exists

The first of these axioms is God exists. God doesn’t have to personally prove His own existence—He intends for it to be self-evident. The Bible doesn’t attempt to prove that God exists—it assumes it right from the start. Genesis 1:1 says, “In the beginning GOD…”

So what do I mean God intends for His existence to be self-evident? Well, to answer that we need to look at how God reveals Himself to us. There are two categories of Divine revelation—“Divine” refers to God, so “Divine revelation” means a revealing from God. These two categories are general revelation, and special revelation.

In general revelation God reveals himself to all of humanity. Now God doesn’t do this in an overpowering display of His infinite power, although His infinite power or omnipotence is evident to anyone who looks for it. He doesn’t stand with one foot in the Atlantic and the other foot in the Pacific and demand, “Puny mankind, you must worship Me!”

Such a direct display of limitless power would take away the whole central issue in the relationship between God and man, and that is the issue of man’s choice. God wants man to freely choose to have a relationship with Him. So God’s approach to man cannot be coercive—in other words, God does not want to force man’s choice by “putting a gun to his head” as it were.

So the whole issue of man’s free will is central to God’s dealings with us. This all has to do with what different theologians have referred to as “the War of the Ages” or “The Battle between Good and Evil” or “the Angelic Conflict.” This refers to an ancient war that started long before man was created and extends beyond when the last human being will be born. This war is going on right now, all around us, and it affects all of our lives from the day we are born to the day we die. It involves God, it involves a higher order of beings that God created we call angels, and it involves all of mankind—whether they’re aware of it or not. In fact, the whole reason man was created was to resolve the Angelic Conflict. We’ll look at this whole issue of the Angelic Conflict in a later study. For now let’s continue looking at how God reveals Himself to us.

We mentioned two categories of God’s revelation to us—general and special. In general revelation, God intends for mankind to become aware of Him—that He exists. And in the context of that general revelation God intends that we make a choice as to whether we want to know more about Him—to have a relationship with Him. If we indicate that we want to know more about Him then God moves us from receiving general revelation to receiving special revelation.

In special revelation God reveals specific information about how we can have a relationship with Him. We refer to this as Gospel information. Now there is more to special revelation than the Gospel, but we’ll save that for later. Our focus right now is on general revelation. And again, this is the category of God’s revelation that extends to all of mankind. Remember—our goal today is to explore these seven axioms, the first of which is that God exists.

In General revelation there are four basic ways that God demonstrates His existence to us. Let’s take a look at these—how does God reveal Himself to man?

1. Through Creation – This is also known as the cosmological argument for the existence of God. Essentially it says that:

• Every effect has a cause. In all things that we can observe, we can observe change. All changes are effects that have been produced by something else. All effects have a cause, whether we can see the cause or not.
• Every effect depends on its own cause for its existence. In the realm of time all causes exist prior to their effects by some interval of time no matter how small. Therefore all effects depend on their causes for their existence; if it were not for the causes, the effects would not exist.
• Nature cannot create itself – in other words no cause can be self-generating—there must be some external cause to generate the effect. Some of you may have seen that Max Escher drawing where two hands with pencils are drawing each other. That doesn’t happen in the real world—only in the imagination of artists.
• There cannot be an infinite chain of cause and effect. Somewhere the chain has to start and end.
• Therefore there must be a First Cause that is not itself an effect. In order for this First Cause to not be an effect, there must be nothing beyond it. The only way there can be nothing beyond it is that it must itself be infinite.

So through this chain of logic the unbeliever that observes Creation can understand that Creation does not simply exist by itself—some Creator made it. Not only that, but by this same process of logic he can understand that this same Creator also sustains His creation—that He interacts with His creation on a continual basis. And in fact this is what the Scriptures declare in Psalms 19:1-6; Romans 1:18-32, and other passages.

How else does God reveal Himself to man?

2. Through Order – This is known as the teleological argument for the existence of God. Essentially it says that the natural functions that we can observe in this world show purpose, order, and deliberate design. If there is deliberate design, there must be a Designer.  In 1802 William Paley used the illustration of a watch. If a watch exists there must be a watchmaker somewhere who made it. The watch could not have come about as a result of random processes.  To use another illustration from the negative standpoint, it is impossible for monkeys banging on a keyboard to produce the works of William Shakespeare, no matter how many billions of years you give them.

Essentially then, this teleological argument says that not only is there a First Cause, but that this First Cause is intelligent and acts with purpose, order, and deliberate design.

3. Through Man – This is referred to as the anthropological argument. The existence of man in all of his various facets—a being who has some sense of morality, of right and wrong, a soul, and some sense of God—demands a Creator. Random interactions of matter could not have possibly produced man. Man must have been created by Someone who made man like Him (although greatly limited in scope) in that he has awareness, intelligence, perception, free will, limited power to accomplish his will, morality, and a desire to know and be known. And indeed this is what Scripture declares in Genesis 1:26-27. Verse 27 says, “So God created man in his own image, in the image of God he created him; male and female he created them.” Also, Psalms 94:9 – “Does he who implanted the ear not hear? Does he who formed the eye not see?”

4. Through Existence – This argument is called the ontological argument, or an argument based on the idea of “being”. Essentially it says that we are beings who have the idea of a greater or most perfect being. In other words, within mankind exists the idea of God. How are we to account for that if God does not exist? If we proceed from a purely mechanistic viewpoint of the origin of mankind—i.e. we were evolved from apes—then we cannot account for the idea of God. If we are simply evolved creatures how in the world did we get the idea of God? Evolution cannot answer that.

All right, we’ve looked at the different ways that man can arrive at an understanding that God exists. God has provided us abundant evidence through His creation, through the order and design evident throughout His creation, through the very nature of man as an intelligent, moral being, and who has ingrained within him the idea and concept of the Creator God.

So with all of this evidence, how is it that we have atheists in the world? We all know them—they’re all over the place! We’ll study this concept later in this course on basics, but the short answer is that when they become aware of the idea of God, they simply reject Him.

People who deny the existence of God are not interested in relating to Him because they know that as a perfect being He will claim moral authority over them, and they do not want any moral authority over themselves apart from themselves.

But such overwhelming evidence of God in this world constantly reminds them of the foolishness of their position, so when a philosophy like atheism comes along they embrace it passionately and with great relief—here is something that gives voice to their attitudes—they are now members of that great fraternity of atheists!

In the story of the Emperor’s New Clothes, an entire city of people doggedly praise their emperor’s newly tailored outfit—even though he is really naked as a jaybird!  The non-existent clothes he is supposedly wearing has been declared to be visible to those who are smart and classy but invisible only to those who are stupid and low class. So the emperor’s court and all the people of the city doggedly claim to be able to see his new clothes so they won’t be considered stupid and worthless themselves. In the same way atheists doggedly deny a whole world of evidence, just so they can avoid having to submit to an absolute moral Authority, and so they won’t be ostracized and condemned by their peers.

So then, the first of our seven axioms is that God exists. Now for the second axiom:

God is Absolute

The absolute nature of God is a hard concept for people to get their heads around. We are so used to dealing with flawed, limited people that we tend to impose those same limitations on God—but He has no such limitations.  By absolute I mean that God is infinite in His being, perfect in His qualities, complete in His essence, and unique in His existence. Let’s take these down in points.

1. God is infinite in His being. He is infinite or limitless in that He is all powerful, all knowing, everywhere present, and He exists eternally without beginning or end.

2. God is perfect in His qualities. He is perfectly righteous—He defines absolute good, and there is no evil in Him at all. He is perfectly just and fair. He loves with a perfect love. He is perfect truth—there is no falsehood in Him at all.

3. God is complete in His essence. All of the different facets of God blend in perfect harmony as attributes of His perfect character. There is nothing that God needs to improve Himself. Because He is perfect and complete in His essence He does not change, He needs not change, and for that matter, with respect to His essence, He cannot change. God cannot change because He is already perfect—any change would diminish Him, make Him less perfect, and that cannot be.

Some of you reading this lesson may be old enough to remember the TV show “Happy Days”. Remember “Fonzie”—how he used to come up to the mirror to comb his hair? He would look at himself in the mirror, start to comb his hair, then stop as he realized his hair was already perfect, and he would spread his arms in admiration as he looked at himself and say, “Aaay!”

We laugh at that, but that’s actually how it is with God. He is perfect and so He doesn’t change. Nothing can be added to Him and nothing can be taken away. And it’s comforting too, because the security of the believer depends on God’s unchangeableness.

Now from time to time God does change His actions and attitudes toward man and so He appears to change, but that’s not the same thing as changing His essence. We’ll cover how God can change His policies or attitudes toward individuals or even whole populations of mankind in a later lesson.

4. God is unique in His existence. That means that He has no rival. Satan likes to think of himself as God’s rival, but there is no comparison. There is nothing or no one beside or beyond God. This is declared in the Book of Isaiah chapter 43, verse 10 – “‘You are my witnesses,’ declares the LORD, ‘and my servant whom I have chosen, so that you may know and believe me and understand that I am He. Before Me no god was formed, nor will there be one after Me.’”

Isaiah 44:6 – “This is what the LORD says—Israel’s King and Redeemer, the LORD Almighty: ‘I am the first and I am the last; apart from Me there is no God.’”

Isaiah chapter 45 verses 5 and 6 say this: “I am the LORD, and there is no other; apart from Me there is no God. I will strengthen you, though you have not acknowledged Me, so that from the rising of the sun to the place of its setting men may know there is none besides Me. I am the LORD, and there is no other.”

Notice here that even though men reject God He is still faithful to give them the both ability and the evidence to understand that He is God. Giving men the ability to understand is what’s meant by the phrase, “I will strengthen you…”

Giving men the evidence is what is meant by the phrase, “…so that from the rising of the sun to the place of its setting men may know there is none besides Me.” The “rising of the sun to the place of its setting” is a Hebrew idiom for horizon to horizon, and it refers to all of the evidence of nature, of the order of creation, and of man himself, that God is, that He is absolute, and that He created all that is.

All right then, if God is absolute—our second axiom—then He exists uniquely and there is nothing or no one beyond Him, it follows that He created everything else that exists—including all of us as members of mankind. Since He is all knowing He knows each one of us on the most intimate level. Since He knows us intimately it follows that God would want us to know Him. So this becomes the third axiom:

God Reveals Himself

It makes absolutely no sense to think that God would create living, sentient, intelligent beings and then not reveal Himself to them. And in fact Scripture tells us that God has revealed Himself in many different ways to mankind: vocally with Moses in the burning bush, through dreams and visions, through the agency of angels, through prophets and apostles, and most importantly, through the pages of His Word. Not only does God reveal Himself, but He does it in such a way that His revelation makes sense—which gives us the fourth axiom:

God Makes Sense

Now God cannot just reveal Himself by showing himself directly to us. For one thing, God’s essence cannot be directly viewed by mortal, sinful man. In Exodus 33:20 God, speaking to Moses, said “…you cannot see My face, for no one may see Me and live.”

For another thing, God is infinitely higher than man. God must “stoop” so to speak, or condescend in order to communicate to man. Otherwise His communication would be meaningless to us. Can you imagine trying to communicate with amoebas? We couldn’t do it! But remember: absolute, all-powerful God can do anything He desires. So He is able to communicate with us in a way that not only makes sense, but makes perfect sense. And because God is perfect, He is orderly, and He makes orderly, organized sense. Therefore His revelation to us is presented in the form of a plan we can understand.

So now we have axiom five:

God Has a Plan

Now God created us. Because He is perfect, He didn’t just create us by accident. Since He created us on purpose He has a purpose for us. Since He desires to reveal Himself it follows that He desires us to know His plan and purpose for our lives. Since He is perfect, His plan is perfect. And since He is omniscient, or all-knowing, His plan includes a perfect plan designed personally for you. This, then, gives rise to the sixth axiom:

You Are the Object of God’s Plan

Of all the truths of Scripture few are so frequently presented as the fact that we are the object of God’s plan. Salvation scriptures reveal this: John 3:16 – “For God so loved the world that He gave His uniquely born Son, that whoever [that’s you] believes in Him should not perish but have everlasting life.”

John 20:31 – “But these are written that you may believe that Jesus is the Christ, the Son of God, and that by believing you may have life in his name.”

God’s plan for us doesn’t stop at salvation either. Many hundreds of scriptures reveal that we are the objects of God’s plan for us in time as well as in eternity. So the fact that God has produced an incredible plan just for us individually takes us to our last axiom:

You Owe God a Hearing

God left nothing in His plan undone—there’s nothing that we can add to His perfect work. He gave us everything when He gave us the gift of His Son. But there is one thing we can give Him and that’s a hearing.

Now up to this point we’ve been stressing God reaching out to us—God doing all the work and taking all the initiative. But just because God does all of that doesn’t mean that He shoulders the entire responsibility. He did take the initiative, and He did take the responsibility to do those things that we could not do for ourselves. But He left us the responsibility in one area only—and that is in the area of our own individual choice.

When God created us He did so in His own image as declared in Gen. 1:27. What does the Bible mean by “the image of God”?  One of the meanings of that phrase is that man is a free moral agent—mankind has choice or volition. And because God has gone to enormous trouble—from our viewpoint at least—to create a plan for us, and has given us choice with respect to our participation in that plan, we owe it to God to hear that plan.

If we refuse to listen—or having listened we reject that plan—then we must endure the consequences of that choice. God holds us responsible for our choices related to His plan for our lives. There’s no avoiding that responsibility.

Unbelievers will be called to account at the Great White Throne judgment, Rev. 20:11-15 – “Then I saw a great white throne and Him who was seated on it. Earth and sky fled from His presence, and there was no place for them. And I saw the dead, great and small, standing before the throne, and books were opened. Another book was opened, which is the book of life. The dead were judged according to what they had done as recorded in the books. The sea gave up the dead that were in it, and death and Hades gave up the dead that were in them, and each person was judged according to what he had done.

Then death and Hades were thrown into the lake of fire. The lake of fire is the second death. If anyone’s name was not found written in the book of life, he was thrown into the lake of fire.”

We believers must face the Lord at the Judgment Seat of Christ. Romans 14:10-12 says, “You, then, why do you judge your brother? Or why do you look down on your brother? For we will all stand before God’s judgment seat. It is written: ‘As surely as I live,’ says the Lord, ‘every knee will bow before Me; every tongue will confess to God.’” So then, each of us will give an account of himself to God.

So at the Judgment Seat of Christ we believers will be called to account for the lost opportunities contained in God’s plan for our individual lives. God has provided us with many opportunities to fulfill His plan for us, and we are responsible to exploit those opportunities. For us these consist of one, the opportunities to take in God’s Word and two, the opportunities to apply those truths to our daily lives. You’ve exploited one of the opportunities to take in God’s Word today when you chose to read this lesson. So knowing that you owe God a hearing on an ongoing basis, then God willing, and the Rapture doesn’t occur in the meantime, you’ll have another opportunity to give Him a hearing when you read the next lesson.

We’re grateful Heavenly Father, for these things that You have for us today. May the Holy Spirit take these truths and build us up with them that we might begin to glorify Christ in our bodies, for it’s in His name we ask it, amen.

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Christ Report – Seven Axioms – Basics 02
Oct 20, 2009 18:40

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Nov 5, 2009 8:45