Welcome to the living by faith podcast, my name is Josh DeGroote and this is episode number fifteen. Thanks for listening. This is a podcast where I take a look at some news items, theology, and history from the perspective of the Christian’s life of faith in Jesus Christ. Let’s jump in.

What if you were required to pay for abortions? What if you, even though you are fully pro life in every way, had to pay for abortions. Would you have a problem with that? Well, there is a piece of legislation that is currently keeping taxpayers from having to pay for abortions - it is the Hyde Amendment. What is the Hyde Amendment? Well, it is an amendment named after the late Illinois Representative Henry Hyde that prohibits federal medicaid funds from being used for abortions. 

The year was 1976, just three years after the infamous Supreme Court ruling Roe v. Wade, when Henry Hyde introduced the amendment named after him as part of a larger piece of legislation. Hyde made it clear he wanted all abortions outlawed, but at the time took an incremental approach and saw the way medicaid money was appropriated as a way to reduce the number of abortions by not allowing medicaid funds to be used for abortions.

When the amendment first passed, it did so by a wide margin in the House - which at the time was held by Democrats. And for almost 40 years, this was viewed and agreed upon in largely a bi-partisan way. But Oh, how things have changed. Opposition to the Hyde Amendment in the Democratic Party has been picking up steam in the past 5-6 years. In 2015 a bill introduced by Democratic Representative Barbara Lee from CA introduced a bill seeking to ensure that all receiving health care through the federal government would get coverage for abortions. The next year the Democratic Party officially embraced ending the Hyde Amendment in its party platform. And it was during the Democratic presidential primaries that Hillary Clinton and Bernie Sanders publicly opposed the Hyde Amendment, both voicing support for repealing it if elected. 

And in 2018 and 2019 bills to repeal the amendment, major bills have been put forward that would repeal the Amendment. When the 2019 bill was introduced in the Senate several of the Democratic candidates for president were co-sponsors including Kamala Harris, Kirsten Gillibrand, Bernie Sanders, Elizabeth Warren, Amy Klobuchar, and Cory Booker. And recently Joe Biden has changed his longstanding position on the Hyde Amendment. Make no mistake, if Biden wins the White House and the Democrats take both chambers of congress, they will set their sites immediately on the Hyde Amendment. The Democratic party and their radical push for aborion on demand for any reason or no reason knows no bounds; they even want you to pay for it.  

Let’s just say the truth - one of the two major parties in American politics is telling the American public, “We want to use your money to kill unwanted children.” The culture of death has descended to such a degree that they want abortions to be restricted under NO circumstances.  The question we have to ask is why? Well, in one sense it is the only consistent position for them. 

But the first reason is that the left has bought into the myth of human autonomy. Supposedly the highest good is for a woman to be able to choose to keep her baby or to kill it. They believe that a woman ought to be able to do whatever she wants with her body, including terminating the life of the baby in her womb. It is tragic. It is evil. But it is all wrapped up in the feminist mantra, “My body, my choice.” Of course, as Christians we believe there is another body of a human being and that the mother, along with the doctor is intentionally ending the life of that baby in direct violation of the law of God.

** 2) And this leads to the second reason which is very much connected to the first. As long as there is a restriction, any restriction on abortion, there will be a stigma attached to abortion. So defenders of the right to abortion have been working hard to get rid of the stigma of abortion. They call it pro choice, pro women, reproductive rights, women’s health care. Abortion to the left is a positive good. But there is something extremely disturbing about that. And as hard as they try, they will never be able to get rid of the stigma of abortion. We can’t. We are made in the image of God. His law is written on our conscience. In Romans 2, the apostle Paul speaking of the Gentiles who did not receive the written law as the Jews did said, 

They also show that the work of the law is written on their hearts, while their conscience also bears witness, and their conflicting thoughts accuse or even excuse them on that day when, according to my gospel, God judges the secrets of men by Christ Jesus. (Romans 2:15-16)

Their conscience accuses them that what they are doing is wrong. As Christians, we need to remind the advocates of abortion about this. We need to remind them that it is God’s law written on the conscience that condemns them, and that the only way to be freed is the gospel of the Lord Jesus Christ. Which is why the gospel is the power of God for salvation to everyone who believes… (Romans 1:16).

Catechesis section 

The next section is the catechesis section.  For centuries Christians gave themselves to the practice of learning the doctrines of the Christian faith by way of a catechism.  Catechesis simply means to teach orally or instruct by word of mouth.  This is a practice that is sorely missed in our day and I think we would benefit tremendously by taking it up again, and so I want to do my part to promote the practice of catechesis.  Mention “Children’s Mode”.

All that said, I’m making my way through a modern catechism called New City Catechism.  It takes the form of 52 questions and answers with scripture - so one for each week.  You can buy the book online or you can download the app on your phone for free. So we are on question 15 this week:Question 15: Since no one can keep the law, what is its purpose?

Answer 15: That we may know the holy nature and will of God, and the sinful nature and disobedience of our hearts; and thus our need of a Savior. The law also teaches and exhorts us to live a life worthy of our Savior.

Even though no one can keep the law perfectly it is still important. More than that, Paul calls it holy, and righteous, and good (Romans 7). And our answer gives us three reasons. First, that we may know the holy nature, character, and will of God. Our greatest need is to know God. AW Tozer. Without the law, we have a truncated view of God. The law shows us what God is like. The first table of the law - commands one through four - shows us the nature of God by revealing what he requires of us in relation to him. The second table of the law - commands five through ten - shows us the nature of God by revealing what he requires of us in relation to other image bearers of God. God is holy and righteous and good and thus his law is. 

The second reason for the law is to show us the sinful nature and disobedience of our hearts and thus our need for a Savior. When we honestly assess how we measure up to God’s law - even on our best days - we realize how woefully we fall short. Paul said that nobody can be accepted to God through law keeping because the law is meant to show us our sinfulness. This is God’s intention of the law. In Galatians, Paul likens the law to a schoolmaster or a tutor to lead us to Christ. The law teaches us that we are sinners and rebellious and in need of a Savior. The law drives us to believe in, cherish, and cling to Christ.

And the third reason for the law is to teach and exhort us to live worthy of our Savior. The law is good to show us God’s standards for holy living. Not as a means to earn salvation, but as saved people with new hearts and the law of God written on our hearts, longing to please the Lord. This is often a forgotten element of the continuing importance of the law for believers. We take the words of Paul in Galatians where he says we are no longer “under the law” and assume that means obedience to the command, “You shall not covet” is optional. We are not under it in the sense that our obedience merits anything from God. But we are most certainly obligated to obey our Lord out of love for him and submission to his lordship.

Romans 3:20: For by works of the law, no human being will be justified in his sight, since through the law comes knowledge of sin

History Section

In the history section, I want to continue talking about early heresies that Christians had to combat. Last time we talked about Marcionism. This time I want to take just a brief look at gnosticism. Gnosticism is the oldest, most dangerous, and most persistent heresy to plague the Christian church. The name gnosticism comes from the Greek word gnosis (knowledge - or special knowledge). 

Gnostics believed that the physical creation was bad and evil and that salvation was achieved through escaping the physical world. They also believed the goal was to obtain special, secret knowledge received through subjective and mystical means - dreams, visions, private revelations, angelic visitations, and so forth. 

Early gnostics also believed that the God of the OT was not the God of the NT. The God of the OT was a God of law, judgment, wrath, and genocide, while the God the NT was kind, loving, and benevolent. Two NT books that take direct aim at some form of early gnosticism are Colossians (Paul) and 1 John. 

This heresy continued to dog the church after the death of the last apostle of Christ (John), the battle against this heresy continued. Perhaps the most notable champion to take up the fight against gnosticism was a man named Irenaeus who was probably a spiritual grandson of the apostle John.

Irenaeus opposed gnosticism vehemently, seeing it as a great evil and serious threat to the Christian church. He saw it as a teaching that had crept in “like locusts, to devour the harvests of the gospel.” Iranaeus wrote several books, but the most important or well known was called “Against Heresies” where he takes up the task of refuting gnosticism. 

But gnosticism is also extremely persistent. It hasn’t done away. There really is nothing new under the sun. This ancient heresy, has its modern descendents alive and well in our day and as Christians we need to be on guard against it. Here are some things we want to guard against… 

1) An emphasis on special knowledge: through dreams, visions, ecstatic experiences, special revelations. Paul warns against paying attention to false teachers who insist on “the worship of angels, going on in detail about visions, puffed up without reason by his sensuous mind...” (Colossians 2:18). Much of the new age can be characterized like this - with its emphasis on esoteric teachings and philosophy and ecstatic experiences without objective truth. Some parts of the Christian church can fall prey to this temptation to emphasize special, secret information that you can only get from them.

2) The tendency to separate the spiritual from the physical. Gnostics deny the incarnation of Christ. How could the Son of God take on flesh - because in ancient gnosticism the physical creation is seen as bad and evil and salvation is achieved through living on a higher plane than the physical and somehow being liberated from the physical. But in the Christian gospel, we recognize the goodness of God’s creation. It’s marred by sin, but it is good. And as Christians, to enjoy physical things like good food, sex within marriage, and enoying creation is a good and righteous thing. 

3) Separating faith from works. In gnosticism, since the goal is special, secret, mystical knowledge and the tendency is to separate the spiritual from the physical, the natural result is to separate faith from obedience. Believing from doing. What matters is what you think and feel, not what you do. To this, John says: “Let no one deceive you. The one who practices righteousness is righteous, as he is righteous.”

Christianity is a public religion with public knowledge, public revelation. We are to live our lives in the real world with real bodies that God has given us, in order that we might know God and do his will with our hands and feet, for his glory. And salvation is not about escape from our bodies and the world through some secret knowledge. The consummation of our salvation is the Lord Jesus Christ coming in glory and establishing his kingdom in a new, perfected earth. A physical earth. And we will be with him in new, resurrected bodies forever. This is our hope. Paul says, “For in this hope we were saved.”  Not the hope of escape from the body. The hope of a new, immortal one. 

Conclusion: 

Thanks again for listening to the living by faith podcast.  If you found it helpful, please subscribe, like, and share.  Until next time, “may the grace of the Lord Jesus Christ and the love of God and the fellowship of the Spirit be with you all.”