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The sinful nature of humanity wants what it wants. It doesn't want to be hindered from what it wants even on the best of days. It will do many things to get what it wants. I see it in scripture and I've watched it.
Everyone is going to do what he wants to do against the will of God. Everyone. However, I'm not writing about that in this post. I've done many wrong, sinful things that I regret. I'm writing about permanent positions or activities, where someone doesn't turn from the belief or behavior.
All true believers have the same faith, based upon the same book, the Bible, with the same meaning. God's Word means only one thing. It hasn't changed. 2 Peter 1:1 says they (all true believers) "have obtained like precious faith." They obtained the faith, so they didn't invent it or originate it. True faith is of God. Because of that it is "like," the Greek esotimon, which means "equal, of the same kind."
Peter begins his book by saying that faith isn't going to be different for anyone as it is obtained from God, so what happens? What's the problem? As you follow from the rest of the epistle, the problem is lust (1:4, 2:10, 2:18, 3:3). Other related words or phrases are "self-willed" (2:10), "as they that count it pleasure" (2:13), "covetous" (2:14), "loved the wages of unrighteousness" (2:15), and "wantonness" (2:19). In conjunction with the lust is the parallel problem with authority, essentially the same as lust, because if you want to do what you want to do, then you don't want to do what someone else wants you to do. This is represented by these two phrases or clauses in 2 Peter:
denying the Lord that bought them, 2:1They don't like the authority of scripture (2 Peter 1) and they don't like the second coming of Jesus Christ (2 Peter 3), when they will give an account for what they've done.
not afraid to speak evil of dignities, 2:10
2 Peter mirrors what Paul writes in Romans 1. They know God, so what's the problem? It's not a knowledge problem. Just because they know, doesn't mean they'll believe and then practice what they should. They "hold the truth in unrighteousness" (Rom 1:18), that is, they suppress the truth. It's rebellion. It is a will or a want problem, which is why, when God gives them up, He turns them over to their own lust (1:24). They don't want God or what He wants, so He gives them what they want, which turns to their own destruction. It defiles everything in their life, and one tell-tale expression of their lives is "disobedience to parents" (1:30), the most rudimentary rebellion against authority for a person.
What I'm writing can be seen all over scripture, but right from the beginning, the two sides of the same problem manifest themselves. Eve wanted the fruit from the tree that was forbidden. She distrusted God against His commandment or authority, and the man, we know from 1 Timothy 2, abdicated his headship for her, which again indicates a problem with authority. When Eve wanted to do what she wanted to do, her lust, she did it against the command of God and the headship of her husband, which he obtained from God.
John says that every diversion from the right path is lust of the flesh, lust of the eyes, and then pride (1 John 2:16-17). Someone wants what he feels, he wants what he sees, and he's putting himself first to get it, pride. Scripture is what gets in the way of lust and pride. God says, no, I want you to do what I'm telling you, what I want. A person either believes and does what God says, or he conforms what God says in some way into his own lust and pride.
I've established from scripture the real, actual reason for capitulation in doctrinal, practical, or cultural issues as stated in the title of this post. There will always be the temptation to capitulate. It's also what I've witnessed in my lifetime. Let's take something doctrinal, like the doctrine of preservation of scripture.
Only two positions exist. God either preserved all of His Words and they've been available to every generation of believer, or He did not. In scripture, God says that He did. The uncertainty of God's Words diminishes authority. If we don't know what the Words are, then it's also less likely we would know what they mean. There is also the pride of scholarship, fitting into the academy, which says we can't and don't know because we don't have the evidence to know. This all describes the lust, very much akin to what we read in 2 Peter.
The false teachers say that we can't call scripture the Words of God. They are closer to fables, writings that came by the will of man, not holy men of God speaking by the Holy Spirit. What's real is uniformitarianism, no sign of direct divine intervention, explaining why no fulfillment of the guarantees of the second coming. Those prophecies can't be trusted, because they aren't being fulfilled. Real evidence debunks the authority of scripture and a real Jesus, one who would come back as he supposedly promised. Hence, they can walk after their own lust and ask, where is the promise of his coming? Eschatology itself is too hard to be understood, nothing to be certain about, so why should we deny ourselves the pleasures we desire to please someone we're not certain exists?
The preservation of scripture is intervention from God, but according to the critics, there isn't evidence of what God said He would do, so those promises are debunked. If that's the case, why should they change on any number cultural or social issues either? Maybe they will hold on to the major teachings, but why should they regulate everything in their lives based upon a book that they aren't certain about?
David in Psalm 16:4 writes:
Their sorrows shall be multiplied that hasten after another god: their drink offerings of blood will I not offer, nor take up their names into my lips.The truth is that sorrows will multiply for those who go after other gods. Because of that David will not participate in their worship, nor will he take up their names into his lips. David is trusting the Lord, so he will associate himself only with the true God.
What would tempt David to associate with other gods, take up their names into his lips? The other god might be more popular than the true God. This is where lust and pride have their affect. Lust and pride motivate association with the world's music, entertainment, celebrity, and causes. Rather than trust the Lord about their multiplied sorrows, they will take up their names into their lips.
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