Queen's Road Cell

We considered the question: Could God have created a world without the Fall, with perfectly obedient and happy people, and without consequent suffering? I said we could break up this question into at least 2 parts: 1. Did God institute of redemption only as a 'Plan B' after the Fall, or was the Fall something He planned from the beginning? There is clear teaching in Ephesians 1 that we were chosen by the Father in Christ " before the foundation of the world" (v.4). This would indicate that, before the Fall, before anything we could have done, we were already part of God's "plan for the fullness of time, to unite all things in him, things in heaven and things on earth." (v. 20). Romans 8 tells us that God foreknew and predestined us for glory (v.29). "Foreknowledge" is sometimes taken to mean "knowing that an individual would make a decision to receive Christ, resulting in predestination to salvation. But "foreknowledge" is p...

We talked about two recent sermons in church. In the first, the preacher spoke about 'hell' and mentioned that Christ in His resurrection set imprisoned spirits in the part of Sheol (death, the grave) free. There is certainly evidence that there are two separate areas where the dead go in the OT (Lk 16:19ff): "Abraham's bosom" for the saved, and..somewhere else for the unsaved. We may take Abraham's bosom as a way of describing the complete happiness and satisfaction found when the righteous leave the world to be with God. So descriptions of Sheol in the OT where we are told that "in death there is no remembrance of you; in Sheol who will give you praise" (Ps 6:5) or "there is no work or thought or knowledge of wisdom in Sheol" (Ecc 9:10)are best seen as descriptions of the inability of the dead to participate in the course of events contrasted with the ability of the living, rather than statements of Sheol as a limbo-like state without awa...

I said that today's study is deceptively simple. There are issues there that need some subtlety  - and more to the point - a great deal of faith. If Jesus is sovereign Lord, then what does it mean when the preamble to the study says that "He has given each of us free will to live out our lives the way we like"? Do we conclude that God chooses to limit His sovereignty in favour of human 'free will'? If "the god of this world has blinded the minds of the unbelievers" (2 Co 4:4), how can humans even be free, or held accountable? Is Christ Lord when bad things happen to us? Of is it the case that God will always keep His children safe and well and our suffering is a reflection of our lack of faith or a temporary triumph of Satan. Jesus was very clear in Luke 13 that both natural disasters and the evil of men are what every one of us deserves and are not outside of God's sovereign control. We are spared what we deserve only because of grace.And our ideas...

We covered some basic questions that Joshua's BB boys asked him at devotions. If God is all-powerful, why doesn't He make everybody worship Him? I now cannot remember who said what! I think Joshua said he framed this in terms of relationship. Relationships cannot be forced. You can't force someone to love you. On reflection this may be slightly simplistic. God, being God, would have the ability to make us sincerely and truly love Him. Even so, we who are made in the image of God have the ability to choose to love Him. I did not mention this, but we are held responsible for our moral choices (e.g. to love God or not). This is not to be confused with 'free will'. Our wills are bound by sin and we are spiritually dead. And so we are told that we cannot love God and come to Him unless he enables us to do so. But that is probably a bit much to throw at Sec 1 boys all at once. Why is there a hell? This is a tough question because teaching that non-believers go t...