No Crisis Experience #4

In this part of the sermon: Martin briefly reviews his previous week's critique of using the four Pentecost passages in Acts to support a normative post-conversion crisis experience. He provides an…

A man moves into a new house that is still under construction, receiving benefits in stages (protection from elements, then running water, then electricity). His friends, however, enter the completed house with all its blessings at once. This illustrates how early disciples experienced new covenant blessings in stages during a transitional period, while modern believers receive all blessings at conversion.

But the moment they are united to Christ, they become heirs of all of the blessings of the new covenant. The illustration is this. A man is building a new home. The roof is up.

15:43 - 15:57 Read in full sermon

The point: Be armed against error, especially when it comes disguised as pseudo-scholarship, by understanding proper biblical interpretation.

A father tells his son to 'eat up your dinner' using an aorist imperative, meaning a definite act of obedience immediately. However, this single act doesn't mean the son never has to eat again. This illustrates that an aorist imperative calls for decisive action but not necessarily a 'once for all' action that negates future similar actions, countering the misuse of the tense in arguments for a crisis experience.

and in one very important sense only preparatory to the real business of Christian growth this cutting off of the hand removes the hindrance to growth and makes it possible but it is not the growth itself just as surgery removes the cause of illness and makes possible better health in the future however a word of caution is called for here whereas the use of the heiress tense does imply a decisive step of obedience we are not entitled to build on this a doctrine of a once for all crisis of surrender subsequent to conversion and then he goes on to demonstrate how the heiress intent and imperati...

35:07 - 36:34 Read in full sermon