Mailbag Episode! Questions about Baptism, Visiting a New Church, God's Decree and more!

Hey guys, it's Pastor Keith and welcome back to The Mailbag. This is where I take questions from you, the audience, that come in through our website and I seek to give a practical, biblical, and theological answer.

And we have several emails that have been coming in and I'm so grateful for everybody who has been engaging. Some of you

I've just been emailing you back if it's something that I can do rather quickly, but I've been saving a few for the show that I think would really help a wider audience.

So today we're going to be looking at several emails, beginning with the question, a practical question about baptism.

And the question is, can a layperson perform a baptism? So the email says this,

I belong to a non -denominational church that doesn't seem to care if it's laymen or elders giving the baptism, nor if it's in church or at home in private for a new convert, so long as the recipient makes a credible profession of faith.

However, I'm recently coming to a reformed baptistic conviction in a broader sense, and I've heard pastors who hold to the 1689

Confession or something similar discourage laymen from administering baptism. Would love to know what you think.

Also, if administered by a layman at someone's house, should the recipient go get re -baptized by an elder or no?

There's a lot in that question, and I know that this is something that would be answered differently depending on a particular person's tradition.

I am a Baptist, and our church holds to the First London Confession. And so in a moment,

I'm going to address what our confession says and compare it to what is said in the Westminster Confession and in the

Second London Baptist Confession, the 1689. But before I do that, I want to address two things from your email.

One, you asked my opinion, so part of this will be my opinion. And two, you're asking a couple of different questions.

So let me begin by saying that I'll tell you what I believe is correct on this.

I know that I'm going to differ with some other brothers as I'm going to read from the Confessions, but I do think that if we simply go to the

Bible and we look at the Bible and ask the question, does there seem to be a requirement of ordination for someone to perform a baptism,

I don't see it in Scripture. I don't see the requirement of ordination to baptize someone.

That being said, I don't think baptism is something that should be treated haphazardly, something that should just be administered willy -nilly, and I don't think that it is something that should be done outside of the context of the authority of the local church.

And so I would not encourage baptism to be done, say, like a father baptizing his child in a bathtub or something and just saying,

OK, my child's now been baptized. I wouldn't encourage that because that's outside of the context of the local church.

That is not to say that a baptism has to be done within the church building. Some churches simply don't have baptistries, or churches like ours where we have a baptistry, we sometimes will still do public baptisms as a way of bearing testimony to this person receiving

Christ. And so we might go to the beach. We live only a few miles from the Atlantic Ocean, so we may go to the beach and do a baptism publicly, which is still a corporate thing that we still invite the church to go.

And the church, remember, is not the building, it's the body. We invite the body to go with us and we go and do it.

And typically in our church, it would be one of the elders who is performing the baptism.

But there have been times in our church where we have allowed fathers to baptize their children.

And I'll show in a moment how that fits within our understanding of the confession that we hold to.

And I realize that that is something that not all Christians, not all churches agree to, not all would believe is appropriate, but that is where we are as a church.

And you did ask, you know, about us and me, particularly my opinion on this. And so let me read the confessions, as I said, because the

Westminster would preclude that. It would say that only ordained pastors are allowed to do this.

And this is what it says. This is Westminster 27 -4. And so only an elder, an ordained minister of the word, is able to dispense baptism and the

Lord's Supper under the Westminster Confession of Faith. Now, the 1689 confession in chapter 28 says this.

Paragraph two. These holy appointments are to be administered by those only who are qualified and thereunto called according to the commission of Christ.

And the citation in the confession is Matthew 28, the Great Commission. So it seems to be that the 1689 would at least open the opportunity for someone who is not ordained to still administer baptism so long as they are doing so in a way that is qualified, called, and according to the commission of Christ.

And that's where that language would have to be interpreted and understood. But the

First London Confession, which is the confession that our church holds to, says this. Let me restate that.

So if you go back and listen to that again, what it's saying is that the dispensing of baptism is not tied to a particular church office.

It's not tied to the office of elder or deacon or anything else, but rather it is simply someone who is considered a disciple, a student, follower of Christ, and someone who is able to preach the gospel.

Now, why does that matter? Well, the person has to understand the gospel. The person has to be able to proclaim the gospel.

In fact, in baptism, there is a proclamation of the gospel. And this doesn't mean that they have to be a preacher, a person who stands behind the pulpit and preaches.

But this does indicate that this person must be someone who, within the body, is understood as being a disciple of Christ who is able to proclaim the gospel.

So it is not tied to a church office in our understanding.

It's not tied to a church office in our confession. But in certain churches, it is. So here's where this will apply for you.

You're in a non -denominational church. You said that in your email. But if you're leaning toward a more

Reformed church, and you begin to seek out a Reformed church, and you decide to go to, let's say, a 1689 church, this may be a question you want to ask your elders.

How do they understand the phrase qualified and called and commissioned by Christ in the 1689?

Do they understand that as someone who has to be ordained? And if so, then understand that when you join that church, you're submitting to their understanding, and that will be the way that the church practices this.

And that may ask the question of, well, if someone's baptized by a layman, will they need to be rebaptized?

That may be something that has to be discussed. This is an area where good brothers can disagree. So if you are submitting to a church, and you're submitting to being a member of a church, just remember these are questions that you may want to ask to understand how the leaders understand what the

Scripture says about this particular issue. So I hope this was helpful, at least understanding how different churches in different contexts look at this particular thing.

And when you go outside of the Reformed community, you maybe go into other groups—Lutherans,

Catholics, and all that—you're going to have all kinds of different answers to this question. But within the

Westminster Confession, the 1689 Confession, and then the confession we hold to, there are different answers.

And so I hope this has been helpful in clarifying why we hold the position we do. Moving on to the next question.

Thank you for sending in that question. I really do appreciate it. And again, if you want to be part of this conversation, you want to send in questions just like this one and have me give you an answer, you can go to keithfoskey .com,

send in the questions right from the contact form, comes right to my email, and I seek to answer them as best as I can.

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All right. So moving on to the next question here. This, again, a lot of questions that come in are very practical.

Some of them are biblical. We're going to have some theological questions in a minute. But some of these are just practical questions.

And this one is, what should I look for in a church? I want to read the email. It says, can you give any advice or guidance to someone trying to find a faithful church body?

Yielding the obvious point that there are no perfect churches, since they're all made of flawed humans, my wife and I have struggled over the years to find a solid body.

Assuming for the moment that it is the correct decision to seek a new congregation, what advice can you provide from a practical standpoint?

Obviously, we want to watch. We can watch sermons online in advance and make sure the worship team isn't playing reckless love.

But any other suggestions would be welcome. Thank you all for the encouragement you provide through your media.

Well, thank you so much for participating in the mailbag and sending in your email. And I want to read to you, because the person who sent this,

I did email you back. But I said this might be helpful for everybody. So I'm going to read the email that I wrote back, because I think

I put some thoughts in here that might be good for others to hear. So the short answer is that it really does take work.

It takes work to find a good church. Previewing and researching is good, but you won't know for sure until you're sitting among the people.

I would say be especially on guard for heavy -handed leaders, men who believe it's their duty to manage your life rather than disciple you.

I'm not charismatic, but I still believe that you will feel things are off if you visit a church and it's not a good environment for you or your family.

Watch for how men treat their wives, how children behave with their parents, and what the overall sense of fellowship is among the people.

Theology must be there, but you also have to live your Christian life with these people. So make sure you're not joking yourself—this is a typo—make sure you're not yoking yourself to a community which is unhealthy.

So let me just elaborate on that, since that's the answer I gave. I have seen a lot of contexts where churches have what would be considered sound theology, but the leadership is either overly heavy -handed or the leadership is woefully immature, and both of those can be a dangerous thing.

So just because a church marks off the boxes of your theological needs and desires does not mean that that church is necessarily the most healthy place for you to be.

And so when you go to a church, as I said, look at how the people treat one another. The Bible does say they will know we are

Christians by our love. I know that's a song, but it's also Jesus said, people will know you're my disciples by how you love one another.

And so if the atmosphere of the church is not one that is loving and discipling and encouraging, but is one that is very heavy -handed, is one where the leadership has a cowboy mentality rather than a shepherd mentality—I don't know if you've ever heard that phrase, but I remember hearing that years ago.

It was a great illustration. It says, cowboys get behind the cattle and drive them. Shepherds get out in front and lead, and the difference is huge.

It's very important. Also, something that I have tried to practice in my ministry is something that I heard years ago, and that is this—shepherds smell like sheep.

So if there is no fellowship in the body with your leaders, if there's no opportunity for you to have a real relationship with the people who are leading you, who are shepherding your souls, that's going to be a red flag for me.

Now, if you're going to a megachurch, if you're looking for a church that has thousands of members, then yeah, you're probably not going to get any personal interaction with your pastor.

That's one of the major things you give up in the megachurches. But those are things that I would say to look for, especially if you're looking for a church that is a size that is one in which the pastor can—pastor and elders, not just the single pastor.

I believe in a multiple pastor model or what we call plurality of elder model.

And so with that, I would encourage you to look for men who smell like sheep, who are invested in the lives of their people, not just getting up and telling everyone, this is what you must be doing, and going around and looking for ways to rebuke people, but are legitimately seeking to live their lives among the people of God.

And so that's my practical advice for looking for a new church. Yes, the theology must be there.

Yes, you don't want churches that are singing songs that are ungodly or things like that. All that's important.

But you can learn that online. You can't get the other thing online. You actually have to go and sit among the people.

And I recommend doing that for a while before you make a commitment to covenant and join with a local body.

All right, so moving on to the next question. This one was very practical.

This is from a person who leads a teenage group in a church, a midweek teenage group.

And what I did was a longer email. So I took and put their email into a summarizer.

It's an AI summarizer. And this was the summary that it gave me. And I think it does well.

It summarized the email. It says, I teach a Wednesday night teen class at our church with a small group of homeschoolers who've been raised in strong Christian homes.

They have a solid grasp of Scripture and even understand hermeneutics, making teaching them challenging as most teen curriculums are too basic.

We recently finished Paul Washer studying the Holy Scriptures, but now the group is interested in exploring deeper topics such as the end times,

Reformed soteriology, and discerning God's will for their lives. Do you have any suggestions of resources you'd point me to?

Is this apparent lack of material just due to the many Reformed churches being fully integrated and not doing age segregated classes?

Well, I do think that last question does kind of put a finger on the pulse of something. A lot of Reformed churches, a lot of especially

Reformed Baptist churches, tend to be at least somewhat family integrated. I know our church is family integrated as far as worship is concerned.

We do have an age graded Sunday school program, but even that, it's just we have little kids

Sunday school, and then we have teens and adults are all together. And then on Wednesday night, we have catechism class, which is up to middle school.

After that, teenagers would go in with the adults. So you're looking at young adults, teenagers in a class, in a context, and some people would say that's absolutely wrong.

I don't think it's necessarily wrong. I think it's the context of your church and your leadership. That's what they've determined is right.

And so I think that's fine if that's the direction they want to take it. But it will be harder for you to find material.

And one thing that the summarizer didn't pick up, but you did say in a longer email, is that you didn't want to write the curriculum yourself.

You wanted to find something that you could use. And I respect that. Not everyone is given to the ability to write curriculum.

I prefer, I love to write my own curriculum when I'm teaching. That's my desire. But not everybody has that desire, and I understand.

So a couple resources. I mentioned this in the email that I responded to you in. One, Founders has a tremendous amount of good information, especially if you're a

Reformed Baptist church. I would say go to Founders, check them out, see what they have. Answers in Genesis has some good stuff, even for teenagers.

But it sounds like your group is pretty well versed in a lot of areas. So here's the recommendation that I would have you consider.

And if you were in my church, and you were one of our leaders, and you came to me with this, here's what I would recommend.

If you have a pastor who is preaching an expositional message on Sunday, and it's good, solid meat, there's enough meat in that sermon to carry you through the week.

There's enough meat in that sermon to go further than just what you're getting on Sunday morning.

So my recommendation to you would be to create a conversation on a

Wednesday night about what they're learning on Sunday. Create that conversation based on some very pointed questions about what they're learning on Sunday.

And honestly, I mention this because this is what we are currently doing in our church. We have a midweek group that meets.

Our adults meet on Wednesday night. And for years, I've just done on Wednesday essentially what I do on Sunday, is

I've preached. But it's come to the point where I felt like I wanted to devote more time to prayer and more time to giving people an opportunity to engage with what

I'm teaching on Sunday. So we've begun to do sermon review on Wednesday night. Sermon review allows us to ask questions, answer questions, and dig deeper.

And me as the pastor, it gives me an opportunity to talk about things I maybe didn't have time to talk about on Sunday. Because usually, and most pastors

I think would admit to this, is normally we have so much more that we've studied and have than what we actually present, because we have to whittle it down to the things that really matter and connect.

But there are other things we would talk about if time allowed. So Wednesday night gives you the opportunity to do that.

So something you can do, since you don't want to write curriculum, and again, that's fine, is perhaps ask the pastor who is preaching, if you have a pastor who preaches the majority of the time, or if you have a shared pulpit,

I don't know. But whoever the pastor is that's preaching, say, would you take your message and write six to ten good questions that go along with your message and provide me those questions weekly?

Honestly, if I had a leader ask me to do that, I would be happy to do it. It might be a burden for your pastor.

He may not have the time or may not be able to do that, but I imagine he probably would be excited to want to participate and help you.

So if you take those questions and you have them, that provides you the outline for your conversation.

And you have the text. It's the text he was preaching on. And so all of those things working together can provide a lesson to those young people.

So that would be my recommendation. Again, it may not work in your context, I don't know. But for me, that's the answer

I would give if you were in my church. So hopefully that will be a good answer for you.

All right, moving on. This question is about dealing with a family member who claims to be saved but doesn't seem to be saved.

And I'm not going to read the whole email just because some of it is a little personal, but I'll give you the gist.

It begins, it says, thank you for your boldness and ministry. I have an older brother that is living a lifestyle that mirrors the world more than a

Christian. And I recently called him out in the context of our family. And since then, he's cut himself off and he professes to be a believer.

But he is living in a situation, again, I don't want to get too much into the particulars here.

Basically, he's living a lifestyle that would indicate he's an unbeliever. How should I treat him? Should I see him as a prodigal son or should

I see him as a mission field that needs to be evangelized? And again, there's more information here in the email that he's living in a condition that would indicate that he is an unbeliever.

And so this is a great question. The reason why I wanted to add this question into today is it gets to the practical implication of how do we see others who profess to be

Christians if they're not living like Christians? Do we see them as prodigal sons or do we see them as just unbelievers who are not saved?

And this is a real issue because the question of,

OK, we have a person who has confessed Christ. We have a person who maybe at some point in their life was living a life that would be in line with that confession.

But now they've abandoned that. So do we see them as a person who has, A, lost their salvation, which if you believe in eternal security, that's not the answer,

B, that they are in a period of sin, but God's going to bring them back, or C, they were never saved to begin with, and then thus you're dealing with an unbeliever.

Honestly, I think in most cases—maybe that's a little strong word—but

I would say, and in many of the cases that I've dealt with, it seems like you're dealing with just an unbeliever because we do have a context in our world where so many churches are willing to apply the title of Christian and believer to people who merely confess

Christ with their mouth but don't have any expression of faith in their life. And this is a product of a whole lot of issues.

But one of the issues that it's the product of is it's the product of almost a contest mentality among churches that has been going on for so many decades, and that is the mentality that we want to be able to say we've had this many people get saved and this many people be baptized, and because of that we're willing to run people through almost as it were like a mill because we say, you know, well, this person walked forward, this person said a prayer, therefore they must be saved.

And years ago I was asked to speak at a conference—it was a homeschool conference—and I was asked to speak on the subject of why young people leave the faith when they become adults, and my answer was that the reason why most young people leave the faith is that they were never saved to begin with.

They were never really a part of the faith to begin with. They may have been a part of the faith community because they were part of the church, but they weren't really in the faith, and that's an issue because we confirm upon them all of the vestiges of faith.

We baptize them, we feed them the Lord's Supper, we do these things, and so in that context people will begin to think that they're saved even though they're not, and that seems like the situation that's here.

This person is in a position where he considers himself to be a believer, but it's likely he never had a conversion experience.

So what do you do with that? How do you treat that person? I think the answer is you evangelize that person. You seek to do as best you can to share the gospel with them as God gives the opportunity.

Pray that God would open their heart to believe and have a serious conversation about them with their life, and say, is your life in line with someone who confesses the gospel?

All right, moving on. We're going to now get to our last two questions. Both of them are theological in nature, and the first one is in relation to how

God knows everything. Now, I put this email that was longer into a summarizer, and this is the summary.

Does God need to determine everything in order to know everything? If so, does this limit his sovereignty as his knowledge would be dependent on his own determinations?

This question also raises concerns about God's communication with his creation. For instance, in Genesis 4, when

God tells Cain, quote, if you do not do well, end quote, it seems contradictory if God had already determined that Cain would kill

Abel. However, if God simply knows Cain's future actions, the statement may serve a purpose beyond Cain, perhaps for the benefit of others.

All right, so again, that's the summary of the question, and really the heart of the question is, does God have to determine all things to know all things?

And this does come down to the question of, how does God know what's going to happen?

Does God know for certain what's going to happen, or does God have a good idea of what's going to happen?

Because he knows men, and he knows their natures, and he knows how men are going to behave in any given instance. Is there opportunity for differences to happen?

And you end up with sort of a Molinistic view, where there are different, what are called counterfactuals, or if this happened, then this would happen, or if this happened, then this would happen.

And so this does come—there is a lot that goes into this question, and you might say, well, why am

I putting in a mailbag? Why not just do a whole lesson on it? Well, I have done other podcasts and things talking about God's sovereignty and God's omniscience and those things.

But I wanted to try to give a summary answer, and that is that I don't think that we have to see

God determining every single thing in the sense of God causing every single thing to still see

God as sovereign and the one who is ultimately over all things.

And so when we read that, for instance, in the Confessions, that God has decreed all things that come to pass, well, we have to understand what the word decree means.

We have to understand how that operates and how it's to be understood.

And I like the writing of James Pettigrew Boyce on this, because he talks about when you hear the word decree, that can be off -putting.

That can be difficult to understand. But when you say God has a plan, and he said that's another word that can be used there, you say

God has a plan for what is happening. He has determined his plan, and he is working out his plan according to what's going on.

And so there are hard determinists who would say God has—every single action and thought of man is predetermined by God.

And then there are what are called compatibilists, which would be more where I would be.

And that is to say that men have the ability to choose and to have their own thoughts, make their own decisions, and yet God is working out his plan in accord with those things.

And where it really becomes the issue is I would be able to say that I think that there are times where God's decree does have a sense of allowance, where God would allow certain things, where some people would say, oh,

I don't want to use the word allow, and they would get upset because they would think we were somehow robbing

God's sovereignty. But when I say the word allow, I'm simply saying that there are things that are outside of God's commands, but yet he still allows them to take place because he has a purpose for them.

And this is where the real issue comes, is I believe that everything that happens is for a purpose.

I do believe that God is causing all things to work together for the good of those who love him and are called according to his purpose,

Romans 8, 28. And so because of that, I can say that whatever does happen,

God has decreed it in the sense that he has either determined that it would be or he has allowed that it would be for a purpose, and that in that purpose, he has something that fits into his plan, that there is something in that that is according to his design for the future, that whatever it is that's going to take place.

And so therein is where I would be a compatibilist, not a hard determinist.

And so when we look at the passages, which you referenced, the person who wrote the email, when we look at passages like the if passages, well, if you do this, if you do not do well, this will happen, or if you do well, this will happen.

Choose this day whom you will serve and all those things. Those are legitimate things that the scripture says are the case.

You as an individual are going to make choices, but those choices will not ultimately override the plan of God.

God's plan will be the plan that is worked out.

And so how those two come together, how those two fit together, men's ability to make choices, and yet God still working out his plan, is something that we have to sort of begin to try to come to some conclusions about.

And this is where the divergence happen, whether you become a hard determinist or a molinist, or even now seems to be rising up as dynamic omniscience and views of God's understanding of the future,

God knowing the future. As I said, I believe that God has determined everything that will take place in the sense that if something were going to thwart his plan, if something was going to thwart his will, he would not allow it.

And so in that sense, he is still sovereign over what's going on.

God's plan was not going to be thwarted by Cain killing

Abel. Even though God said, he said, if you do not do well, he said that phrase, he's telling

Cain the truth. But at the same time, the plan of God is not going to be thwarted by this.

I asked a question several months ago about the question of necessity, and got a lot of interesting comments on this, because I was,

I believe I was quoting Luther at the time, where Luther said that all things, because God knows the future, all things happen by necessity.

Because if God knows something is going to happen, then it is necessarily going to happen.

And so however you understand how

God is working in all this, if you believe God is absolutely certain what will happen, then we do have to say that that thing is happening necessarily.

And so there's a lot that goes into this question. There's a lot that is part of this question.

But to say, does God have to determine all things to know all things?

You have to come back and say, well, what do you mean by determine? And I think that God does determine all things in the sense that he determines whether to cause things or whether to allow things.

And if God chooses to allow something, he allows it for a purpose. And if God chooses to not allow something, he does the same for his purpose.

And so I don't believe anything is done that is outside of the sovereign authority of God.

So I hope that's at least somewhat helpful in the struggle to try to find an answer to what is ultimately a very difficult question.

All right. Finally, the last question of the day, at least the last one we're going to deal with today, is the question of Jesus on the cross.

And the question is, Hi, Keith. I have a question for the mailbag episode.

Matthew 27, 46. My God, my God, why have you forsaken me or abandoned me is the word he used.

Do you take the position that Jesus is quoting Psalm 22 or another position? The reason why

I'm asking is I was looking through R .C. Sproul's commentary on Matthew, and he doesn't take the Psalm 22 position.

He takes the position that not only did he feel forsaken, but that he was forsaken.

At least that's how I read it. All right. So that's a great question. And this is a question that I want to just say from the outset,

I don't agree with Dr. Sproul. I've heard him teach on this. I don't have his Matthew commentary to compare, but I've heard his teaching on this.

So I can say, and I said this in my email back to you, this is one of the times when I would politely disagree with the good doctor, because I love him so.

But, you know, there are times where we disagree, obviously. But the question is, was

Jesus abandoned on the cross? And for many people, that's just an automatic, well, yeah, of course,

Jesus said, you know, my God, my God, why have you forsaken me? And so the issue becomes, okay, if Jesus was abandoned or forsaken on the cross, then how does that look?

How does that work? Inter -Trinitarian questions begin to arise. But the other issue, and this is the other side of the question is, if he wasn't abandoned, why did he say he was, right?

And so there is the rub. That's where the sort of the tension is.

He said, why have you forsaken me? Which insinuates that he is being forsaken. While at the same time, we would ask the question, well, if God the

Father and God the Son are in some way disunified on the cross, abandoned on the cross, if that's the case, does that create some type of inter -Trinitarian division, which is not possible since God's essence cannot be divided?

So therein is the real issue here. And I have come to the conclusion, as many that would be different than Dr.

Sproul, that what Jesus is saying on the cross is not that he is being forsaken, but rather he is quoting from the psalm where the psalm begins with the question, why have you forsaken me?

But ends with the victory, ends with the reality that God has not forsaken him.

And so, as Dr. James White has pointed out about this passage, if you heard someone say, for God so loved the world, well, they don't have to finish that quote for you to know what they are referencing in that moment.

They're referencing John 3, 16. So if someone says, my God, my God, why have you forsaken me?

And they're familiar with the Old Testament scripture, they're familiar with the psalms, then they would know that that is the beginning of a psalm, and it would call to mind everything that that psalm has contained within it.

So I would take the position that Jesus is calling to mind this psalm, that what is seen is the appearance of being forsaken, but what is actually happening is an opportunity of victory in the cross.

There is victory that's taking place in the cross. Now, where that becomes an issue, and where I understand the position that Dr.

Sproul is making, is we do believe that Christ is undergoing the wrath of the Father on the cross for the sake of the sins of men.

And they would say that's the moment of forsaking. Okay, I understand the argument, and if that's the position that you come to, you know, we can disagree on this, but I know how you're getting there,

I understand how you're arriving there, and I know it preaches real good, and that's one of the things that often has to be considered, is man, this just preaches so good.

You know, Jesus is on the cross, and he's crying out, you know, my God, why have you forsaken me? Because this is the moment where he's receiving the wrath of God, and he's being forsaken by the

Father, and these things. And all that sounds great, and I think, again, you know, is it potentially, possibly the truth of what's happening?

Yes, but the thought that I would say is, you are having to address the inter -Trinitarian conflict.

And the inter -Trinitarian conflict is, can the Father and the Son be disunified? And the answer, at least historically, is that God is not divided.

Even though we have one essence shared by three persons, these three persons perfectly share the three— the three persons perfectly share the fullness of God.

All the fullness of the Godhead was in Christ bodily, the book of Colossians says. And so the idea that there's division within the

Trinity cannot stand, no matter how you understand the idea of being forsaken. So the issue is the word forsaken, whether you understand him as simply quoting the psalm, or you understand him as this is the experience he's undergoing.

And some would say, well, it's just his human nature that's being forsaken, not his divine nature. And again, there you end up with—now you're not dividing the

Trinity, now you're dividing the hypostatic union, the two natures, and the one person of Christ. So there's a lot of issues that come up.

I'm satisfied to simply say that I believe Christ was quoting Scripture, that he was quoting

Scripture to point to the greater reality of the victory that's taken place. And there is the apparent forsakenness of the one who is on the cross that is going to be overcome in victory when he says to Telestai, it is finished, because what he's doing on the cross is the very thing he came to do.

He came to die for the sins of those who would believe. And then all of that is vindicated in his resurrection.

So those are my thoughts on the passage. I hope they're helpful. Again, I'm certainly willing to say that I recognize

Dr. Sproul's understanding was mature and brilliant and godly.

And so if a person disagrees with me and chooses to agree with him, then I get it.

But that's where I am on that particular passage, and I hope that was helpful. All right.

So this finishes up today's mailbag. I hope that these episodes are continuing to be an encouragement to people.

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