Is the Incarnation or Atonement More Important?

Is the incarnation or atonement of Christ more important? That's just one of the questions we'll be answering on today's edition of CORE Christianity. Well, hi, this is Bill Meyer along with Pastor Adriel Sanchez, and this is the radio program where we answer your questions about the Bible and the Christian life every day. We'd love to hear from you. Here's our phone number.

It's 833-THE-CORE. Now, you can also post your question on one of our social media sites. In fact, you can watch us live on YouTube each day, and you can always email us your question at questionsatcorechristianity.com. Well, first up today, let's go to April calling in from Missouri.

April, what's your question for Adriel? Yes, I was just inquiring what Scripture has to say about whether or not we each have a soulmate or whether a soulmate is you. Yeah, I have to be careful how I answer this because my wife might be listening.

You know, she'll say, you better say it. Yes. It doesn't seem to me like the Bible suggests that we each have this one person that we really need to connect with. Certainly in 1 Corinthians chapter 7, Paul says that when somebody desires to be married, that they need to marry in the Lord.

He doesn't say, well, you know, there's that one person out there that, you know, you have to find that person. No, you're free to marry whoever you want. So long as they're in the Lord, that is, in Christ. So sometimes I think we can overthink this. Now, that's not to say that God doesn't providentially work in our lives, you know, in relationships. And so I think what we should do is seek the face of the Lord and say, God, bring the right person into my life, the person that is indeed in you. Then we can grow together and love you together and love each other in you. But my concern with the whole soulmate thing is that sometimes I think, you know, people are wanting to find someone, they can be overly picky. And that actually keeps them from committing to anyone because they think, well, but is this the one? You know, I don't get those butterflies that I thought I would get or that, you know, the clouds aren't parting from heaven. And I was expecting that.

So it was one of the bigger questions. What is an individual looking for? And we have to be careful that, you know, we're not trying to find the one in a sense that, you know, I think this soulmate idea sometimes presents that person to us.

But instead, thank God, here's the parameters that you've given to me in your word. And that doesn't mean I should settle for someone, but it also means that there's some freedom here. And I don't need to look for the clouds to part from heaven to know that this person is the person that I'm supposed to be with. In fact, when you get married or when you're with this person, then that becomes your person. That is the person who God intended you to be with. And so the way that works out, you know, in terms of man's responsibility and freedom and God's sovereignty, I don't think that's part of the mystery, but it's a beautiful mystery.

To rest in him in all things. God bless. You know, one of the things you said there at the beginning, Adriel, which is so critical, and unfortunately I think there are a lot of Christians that are just not abiding by this, is how critical it is to marry someone within the faith. Yeah. Oh, absolutely. I mean, that is one of the big issues. And of course, I've seen this.

I'm sure you have too, where people will settle. They'll say, oh, well, you know, they used to go to church, right? They used to go to church when they were younger. Or they're open to the things of God and they're sort of spiritual. They're sort of spiritual. They're spiritual. They're not religious. They're spiritual. And it says, no, man, be committed to someone or commit yourself to someone, pursue someone who is committed to Christ first and foremost.

Don't let that be a question in the relationship and in thinking about pursuing this other person. And so that really is so important, Bill. You're listening to Core Christianity with Pastor Adriel Sanchez. If you have a question about the Bible or the Christian life, you can call us 24 hours a day and leave us a voicemail at this number. It's 833-THE-CORE.

That's 1-833-843-2673. Let's go to Phil calling in from Minnesota. Phil, what's your question for Adriel? I've heard about the prodigal son for years and years and years and years. And I enjoy the fact that his father was raised when he came home and his father welcomed him home through the big parties. But recently I've got to wondering, what's his status now as a son? Does he have any inheritance available to him or is he just out on his own?

It's an excellent question. And by the way, Phil, one book that we've recommended on the broadcast before and which does speak to your question is Tim Keller's book, The Prodigal God. You might consider picking that book up because the whole book is just about this parable that we find in Luke 15, one of the most beautiful sections of Scripture, I think, in all of the Bible.

Luke 15 verses 11 through 32. Now, the question here is, the prodigal son squanders his inheritance. He basically says to his dad, I wish you were dead. Give me the inheritance now, which he would have gotten upon his father's death. He says, just give it to me now.

I wish you were dead. Takes it all and squanders it with a sinful lifestyle. Then comes to his senses and realizes, what have I done? I'm going to go back home and see if my dad will just let me be like one of his servants.

They have it better off than me right now. I mean, there's a lot of shame there. You get the shame that the prodigal son had. And the father, I mean, such a beautiful picture of God's love. The father welcomes him back, and doesn't just welcome him back, you know, begrudgingly. He welcomes him back with a party, with just this embrace of love and generosity. He brings him back into the family. Which makes, I mean, you can understand why the older brother here, who is also, we often overlook the older brother, but the older brother is an important part of this parable.

Maybe one of the main parts of the parable. He's upset because now this son who has squandered his inheritance is back in the family. And is he going to get another inheritance? Is he brought back into the inheriting?

Is that going to cost me? So there certainly is some jealousy here and some frustration. And of course, the older brother in particular is supposed to be a picture of the religious leaders. I mean, that's very clear in the context of Luke chapter 15 begins, Now tax collectors and sinners were all drawing near to hear Jesus. And the Pharisees and the scribes grumbled, saying, This man receives sinners and eats with them. In other words, the tax collectors and the sinners, they're the prodigals who are coming back, who are joining the fold. And the Pharisees and the scribes are the older brother, upset about that.

And so there's a lot for us to explore and to think about there. But just the simple answer to your question is, he was brought back into the inheritance. He left and he came back and he was brought back into the inheritance. And that just highlights the lavish love of the Father. Thanks for reaching out to us. So glad you mentioned that Tim Keller book. Just such a great book for anyone to read, regardless of their religious background, to really understand God's unconditional love for them.

It's marvelous, so thank you for that. And we do miss Tim Keller, the late Tim Keller, and what a great man of God and a great author he was. This is Core Christianity with Pastor Adriel Sanchez. We'd love to hear from you if you have a question about the Bible or the Christian life, doctrine, theology. You can email us anytime at questions at corechristianity.com. And our phone number again is 833-THE-CORE. Let's go to John in St. Louis. John, what's your question for Adriel?

Yes, I appreciate you guys taking my question. My thing is, with all these false heresies coming to church, where in the timeline does that relate to Christ coming back? And another thing is, why are some pastors so reluctant to preach about prophecy, about revelations, about Christ coming back?

Is it because their people don't want to hear it, or is it just some different doctrinal changes? Thanks a lot. Okay. The two questions there. Where are we in the timeline?

And I wish I could tell you. I wish I could say we're 78% through, or we're two years away from the coming of Jesus. I can't.

No one can. And if anybody says to you, you know, Jesus is coming back on this date, I think he made it very clear, right? Nobody knows the day or the hour, and so we should be skeptical of people who claim to know because they don't know. Now, that doesn't mean that we can't look around us and say, we are living in the end times, but the fact of the matter is, as John says, and said in his first epistle, that we've been living in the end times since Christ ascended into heaven. We're looking forward to the second coming of our Lord Jesus Christ, and the spirit of the Antichrist is already at work in the world. And so our focus shouldn't be so much on what's happening around us, but on the Lord himself. That's how we're prepared for whatever happens, come what may. And it's so easy for us to get, you know, concerned about the things that we see around us and think, okay, are these the end times?

And then we focus all of our attention on what's happening in the Middle East and, you know, the newspaper and so forth that we can miss, if we're not careful, we can miss the importance of fixing our eyes on Christ every single day, being nourished by the words of truth and growing together with Christian community is so important. But with regard to the second question that you had, why are some pastors, you know, timid when it comes to preaching about prophecy or that, you know, they don't want to touch the book of Revelation with a 10-foot pole? I preached on the book of Revelation last year, into this year a little bit as well, and I think part of the issue for a lot of people is they've been taught that the book of Revelation is like this code book.

It's this great mystery and, you know, full of enigmas, full of mysteries, who can really understand this? And so they avoid it. They don't touch it for that reason because it just seems like that doesn't seem practical for me or for our church, unlocking these, you know, Nostradamus type codes, you know, that sort of a thing. But that's a misunderstanding of the book of Revelation. The book of Revelation is actually an insanely practical book for the church. It was written to suffering Christians in the first century, and it was written to help them persevere, to give them a glimpse of what's taking place in heaven so that they would have confidence in what God was doing, in the fact that God was sovereign over the kingdoms of the world, even the kingdoms of the world that were persecuting his people, to help them have confidence in the fact that Christ ultimately is going to win, that the Lord himself has the victory and has already conquered through his death and resurrection and ascension. And so the book of Revelation actually is very practical, and I think part of the reason that people don't preach it is because they don't realize that that's the case. They don't see how they can apply these, you know, these beastly prophecies, these images to their church.

And I think it just means we need to dig a little bit deeper. And one of the, well, two resources that I want to recommend. One, there's a book written by New Testament scholar Dennis Johnson called The Triumph of the Lamb, which is a commentary on the book of Revelation that I think is really accessible and will help you, you know, get your arms around this book that so many people I think have a hard time with. But we also have that Bible study on the book of Revelation.

That study was actually also written by Dr. Dennis Johnson, and that's another resource I would recommend. That's something you could go through with some friends in your church or on your own as well, just to try to get a deeper understanding of the book of Revelation. And I had the opportunity to sit in your church and hear one of your sermons on Revelation, and it was really lively, I must say. Why were you sleeping then, Bill? I've been wanting to ask you that question. How come when I looked over it seemed like your head was in your lap? Okay.

You were at a very exciting point in the book, so you couldn't fall asleep during that. This is Core Christianity with Pastor Adriel Sanchez. We'd love to hear from you. If you have a question about the Bible or the Christian life, here's our phone number, 833-843-2673.

That's 833-THE-CORE. By the way, if you've got our voicemail system, feel free to leave your question there. Every holiday season, it seems like, we start getting calls from Christians who say, is it wrong to celebrate Christmas? Some people actually do believe it's wrong to celebrate it. They talk about the, quote-unquote, pagan roots of Christmas.

And we actually have a great free resource for you that answers those questions. It's wrong if you're drinking eggnog, which I think is, I don't know, that just seems Christian. You just don't like eggs, just be honest.

Yeah, so eggs and milk and whatever that is. But is it wrong to celebrate? I mean, a great question and one that, as Bill was saying, does get asked. People ask us this. So we have a newer resource called Five Reasons Why Christmas Isn't a Pagan Holiday.

I'm sure you've heard people say that. Oftentimes, atheists or just people who want to criticize Christianity will say, well, you guys have these pagan celebrations and you don't even know it. Well, share this resource with them and get it for yourself if you have questions about this. Again, Five Reasons Why Christmas Isn't a Pagan Holiday, and you can get it for free over at corechristianity.com. We have a lot of great resources at our website. And by the way, if you're a regular listener to Core Christianity and you believe in what we do, we would encourage you to prayerfully consider making a year-end gift to this ministry. You can do that at corechristianity.com. And you can join a group that we call our Inner Core.

You can find out about that there, too. Yeah, the Inner Core is a group of people who support us with a monthly gift of $25 or more. And we're just so thankful for each and every one of our Inner Core listeners supporting us and helping us to do the work that we're doing.

Really, we get to partner together, and that's what's so exciting. We get to partner together to help people grow in their understanding of the Bible, in their relationship with God. And so if you've been blessed by the work that we do by Core Christianity as a broadcast, would you consider getting in the saddle with us, partnering with us, and joining the Inner Core? And you can find out more at corechristianity.com forward slash inner core. That's corechristianity.com forward slash inner core. Well, here's an email question that came in from one of our listeners.

This is from Kevin. He says, A friend of mine is Eastern Orthodox, and he says that his church focuses more on the Incarnation than on the crucifixion, as many Evangelical Christians do. This seemed weird to me. I know we celebrate this at Christmas, but my friend said we only celebrate the Incarnation because it means that Jesus came to die for our sin.

But why is that bad? What else did Jesus do when he became incarnate that we don't talk about? This is an excellent question, and this does highlight, I think, one of the differences with regard to emphasis that you sometimes find in Christian traditions, in Eastern Orthodox tradition, for example, where there is a tendency to focus on the Incarnation and the Resurrection and less on the Passion, whereas in the Western Church, a lot of times there's been this focus on the Passion of Christ, on his death on the cross, on different atonement theories, for example. And so it's not that one rejects the other, per se, it's just sometimes a matter of emphasis or focus in theology. And so I think what I could say, just speaking for myself now, what I would say is it does seem to me like in a lot of Western Christian traditions, there tends to be not really a big emphasis on the Incarnation as a redemptive act of God, but the Incarnation is important because it leads to the death of Jesus. So Jesus was born just to die, and you do see that.

I mean, you do see that kind of language in the Bible, and you certainly see that in the Church Fathers at times as well, so throughout the history of the Christian Church. But there's more to the birth of Jesus than just him needing to die, per se. We also have the reality of the fact, and this is one of the things that is often emphasized in the Eastern Church, the reality of the fact that God the Son was restoring humanity, that humanity had fallen through sin, and so the reason the Son of God had to assume humanity is to restore what was fallen, what was broken. And so the Incarnation as this healing act, if you will, this act of God coming to restore that which was broken. Now, that doesn't mean that the Incarnation in and of itself is what saved us. No, certainly you have the death of Christ, his burial, his resurrection, but it's all a part of the Gospel. Sometimes when we think of that word, gospel, we only focus on one aspect of Christ's ministry, his death. And certainly that was the culminating act of what Jesus came to do. But even in his birth, he is accomplishing redemption.

He is coming for our salvation. So I think we can talk like that, and we can again see how there's at times a little bit of a different emphasis in Christian traditions, but that doesn't mean we can't learn from each other and grow. And certainly I think we wouldn't want to minimize any of those.

We wouldn't want to minimize the cross. We wouldn't want to minimize the importance of the Incarnation and the significance of the fact that God the Son assumed humanity from the womb of the Virgin Mary. So I think this helps us to be well-rounded and to really, I think, praise God for the majesty of what Jesus has done for us.

So well said. Thanks for that, Adriel. You're listening to Core Christianity with Pastor Adriel Sanchez. You can leave us a voicemail any time, 24 hours a day at this number. It's 833-THE-CORE.

That's 1-833-843-2673. Here's a voicemail that came in from one of our listeners named Anna Maria. My question is if you can help me to find a verse to pray for my students.

I'm a teacher in a public school, and I have students with a pretty hard life. And I know that the only thing that I can do is to pray for them so they can find Jesus and that God will give them peace somehow. So if you can give me some verses, we appreciate, because I pray for my classes before the classes start. And also, I just wanted to say thank you. Thank you so much for your ministry, to you and Bill. You guys have helped me so much to grow in my faith and to know God better. So thank you very much, and God bless you both and your families.

Thank you so much, Anna Maria. I'm very humbled to hear you say that and grateful to get to serve you and encourage you. And what a position you're in to be a public school teacher and to be praying there on the front lines for these kids.

Just a quick story. I grew up in public school, raised nominally Catholic, a mom who was just amazing, worked so hard to provide for me and for my siblings. But we really didn't go to church a ton.

I wasn't going to a Christian church. And years later, when I did start going to church, one of the families that was instrumental in me coming to the Lord, they had gotten together with a group of other Christians in their church, and they would take just the school yearbook, I guess it was, and pictures and names of the kids in the schools, and they would pray for them. And I always wondered, boy, were they praying for me? Had they prayed for me? And I'm sure that they did because they would just go through systematically, you know, praying for these students. And I just want you to know, Anna Maria, that God hears your prayers, and you're asking, well, what can I pray for them? But I think you already hit the nail on the head.

I mean, you know them. And you know the kinds of things that they're going through, the difficulties that some of them are facing at home. So you can pray specifically for each one, and then I think generally that God would guide them to himself, that Christ would be present there, that he would even use you as a shining light, as an example, as you seek to follow Jesus and exhibit the fruit of the Holy Spirit in your own life, that they would see that and say, wow, there's something so wonderful about our teacher, the peace that she has, the love that she has, the concern that she shows for us. We can really use you there, sister, and I do pray that he does. I do want to take a moment for us to pray for you. But I would say praying for that peace that you talked about, praying for their salvation, because ultimately that peace that we need above all else comes from the work of Christ.

Paul says in Romans chapter 5, having been justified by faith, we have peace with God through our Lord Jesus Christ. We pray that they would experience that peace and that God's peace would reign in their homes as well, that his presence would be there and that he would use you. And brothers and sisters, let's pray for our sister right now, that God would strengthen her and give her wisdom in this.

Father, we thank you so much for our sister, Anna Maria, and for the work that she has teaching in public school. Would you bless her? Would you be with her?

Would you use her to be a shining light in her community and the students that she gets to work with and encourage? Lord God, would you be with them? Would you draw them to yourself? Would you help them to know you and love you?

And would you fill them with your peace, a sense of your presence, and the knowledge of the gospel? In Jesus' name, amen. Anna Maria, thanks for reaching out. May God bless you, and I hope to hear from you again. Thank you so much. Join us next time as we explore the truth of God's Word together.