January 18, 2018
When we first started our student question series, we started with the question of: If God is Sovereign over everything, why am I held responsible for my actions? Being a hard question to wrestle with, it spurred a lot of other questions on, one of them being: If God is sovereign, what happens to infants who die young, or those who are born without the ability to think at a level high enough to comprehend a creator God and their need for a savior, or people who’ve never heard the gospel? Last night, we tackled these questions, and dug into scripture to try and figure out what God has to say. Starting in Romans 4:12-21, we studied in groups and found that Adam’s sin is inherited by every person, and that the seal of sin in one’s life is death (Romans 4:12-14). So, starting from the groundwork that every person born into this world is sinful, including infants and the incapacitated, we turned to John 9:41, where Jesus says to the Pharisees, “if you were blind, you would have no guilt; but now that you say, we see, your guilt remains.” Most scholars interpret Jesus’ words here to mean that, if someone lacks the natural capacity to see God’s glory (ie, infants), they are guiltless, meaning that God makes a way for them to have mercy through the blood of Christ. This is in-line with the character of God throughout all of scripture, and I boldly hold to the interpretation that God has predestined all infants who die young, and the incapacitated without the natural ability to see and behold God, for glory in heaven with Him through Christ. Praise God!
We also talked about those who’ve never heard the gospel by turning to Romans 1:18. Paul tells us that …”what can be know about God is plain to them, because God has shown it to them… so they are without excuse.” In light of this verse, we can say that there is no one who is innocent, because all have seen God in and through his creation. Therefore, the need is great for us to go on mission, to be the mouthpiece of Christ to the nations so that every knee would bow, and tongue would confess. We talked for a while about being difference makers (as we all want to make a difference), and how the biggest difference you could ever make is sharing the gospel with people who haven’t heard and don’t believe. We have the Bible that breathes life into dry, dead bones. With that, I challenged the students to think about making a difference through missions, and to study and know the word so that they could articulate it.
Categories: Youth Night Updates, Youth Tough Questions