peace to live by

02 March 2025
2-Minute Features | 23 February 2025

The Old Life vs. The New Life, Part 1 (TMF:2565)

Friday, March 07, 2025
Peace to Live By: The Old Life vs. The New Life, Part 1 (TMF:2565) - Daniel Litton
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       This brings us back roundabout to what was being said a couple weeks ago, in discussing the conversion experience for the Christian. And it was said that it is indeed an experience, where one transforms from one life to another life, a new life. Paul contrasts the difference of the old life with the new life. Characteristics of the old are, one, alienated from God. Not having peace with him. Not knowing him. And two, he says we were “hostile in mind.” That is, we followed ways that were not in alignment with God’s ways. This brings to mind what Paul told the Corinthians, remember, in chapter 6, and this ties in well to our theme here of “eternal punishment”? He said, “Do you not know that the unrighteous will not inherit the kingdom of God? Do not be deceived: neither the sexually immoral, nor idolaters, nor adulterers, nor men who practice homosexuality, nor thieves, nor the greedy, nor drunkards, nor revilers, nor swindlers will inherit the kingdom of God” (1 Corinthians 6:9, 10, ESV).

Will All People Be Brought to God? Part 2 (TMF:2564)

Thursday, March 06, 2025
Peace to Live By: Will All People Be Brought to God? Part 2 (TMF:2564) - Daniel Litton
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       Some try then to say people will come out of Hell—that they will be saved after going there. One by one they will come, turning from their disbelief, or their rebellion, and repent, and thusly enter into eternal peace with God. The problem with that, and a verse that seems impossible to get around, is what Jesus said in Matthew 25. There, starting in verse 45, he says, “Then he will answer them, saying, ‘Truly, I say to you, as you did not do it to one of the least of these, you did not do it to me.’ And these will go away into eternal punishment, but the righteous into eternal life” (Matthew 25:45, 46, ESV). Notice the word “eternal” before punishment. Paul doesn’t follow that line of thinking, for the next verse confirms it. Notice the contrast: “And you, who once were alienated and hostile in mind, doing evil deeds, he has now reconciled in his body of flesh by his death, in order to present you holy and blameless and above reproach before him” (Colossians 1:21, 22, ESV).

Will All People Be Brought to God? Part 1 (TMF:2563)

Wednesday, March 05, 2025
Peace to Live By: Will All People Be Brought to God? Part 1 (TMF:2563) - Daniel Litton
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       This brings up the idea, while discussing these two people groups, that all will be saved. All will be saved. Universalism. The belief, the idea, that in the end, God will end up bringing everyone into Heaven, or everyone to the new earth. Hell may not exist, or it may exist and then people turn out of it. These are the ideas. And while they certainly sound appealing, and while some individuals have gone to great lengths in trying to argue the case for it—there simply is a lack of evidence. To deny Hell, that’s nearly impossible in reading the Gospels and New Testament both. Some try then to say people will come out of Hell—that they will be saved after going there. One by one they will come, turning from their disbelief, or their rebellion, and repent, and thusly enter into eternal peace with God. The problem with that, and a verse that seems impossible to get around, is what Jesus said in Matthew 25.

Christ- Bringing People to God (TMF:2562)

Tuesday, March 04, 2025
Peace to Live By: Christ- Bringing People to God (TMF:2562) - Daniel Litton
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       Re-reading verse 19: “For in him all the fullness of God was pleased to dwell, and through him to reconcile to himself all things, whether on earth or in heaven, making peace by the blood of his cross.” And there it is. That’s what was just being discussed. That’s the church. Those who have been reconciled into relationship with God. It’s also the physical elements, those of Heaven, and those of the earth. Physicality. Humans as well as the creation have been brought into peace with God by the blood Jesus shed on the cross. This contrasts with the relationship with God that existed in the Old Testament, where sins had to be atoned for every so often with animal sacrifices, where there was a veil in the temple of God that represented the separation between God and mankind. It could also be inferred from this that there is peace between the Jews and Gentiles, in that God accepts both as his children.

Christ- the Fullness of God, Part 2 (TMF:2561)

Monday, March 03, 2025
Peace to Live By: Christ- the Fullness of God, Part 2 (TMF:2561) - Daniel Litton
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       So, just as the Son is the fullness of God, so the church is the fullness of the Son. It is almost as if the Apostle is responding to a counterargument, and that does seem likely to be the case. There were those who had influence in Colossae who were teaching that Christ was not actually God, and one reason for this, as the reasoning goes, is that God would not reside in a human body. That would be too beneath him. He wouldn’t do that. (We will return to this in a little while.) So, what Epaphras had taught them, the truth about Christ, was being strived against from these incorrect people. We understand that this kind of belief, this line of thinking, is still present in our world today—seemingly within what some would call ‘Christian’ thought, where a group uses this verse to deny the Godship of Christ, the Deity of Christ. We would know these people as the Jehovah’s Witnesses.