|
|
| |
 - Endorsed - Indifferent - Contested
|
| |
| The Nashville Statement
|
| |
|
|
| |
Name:Daniel
Home: Winnipeg, Manitoba, Canada
About Me: I used to believe that evolution was reasonable, that homosexuality was genetic, and that people became Christians because they couldn't deal with the 'reality' that this life was all there was. I used to believe, that if there was a heaven - I could get there by being good - and I used to think I was more or less a good person. I was wrong on all counts. One day I finally had my eyes opened and I saw that I was not going to go to heaven, but that I was certainly going to suffer the wrath of God for all my sin. I saw myself as a treasonous rebel at heart - I hated God for creating me just to send me to Hell - and I was wretched beyond my own comprehension. Into this spiritual vacuum Jesus Christ came and he opened my understanding - delivering me from God's wrath into God's grace. I was "saved" as an adult, and now my life is hid in Christ. I am by no means sinless, but by God's grace I am a repenting believer - a born again Christian.
My complete profile...
|
| |
Daniel's posts are almost always pastoral and God centered. I appreciate and am challenged by them frequently. He has a great sense of humor as well.
- Marc Heinrich
His posts are either funny or challenging. He is very friendly and nice.
- Rose Cole
[He has] good posts, both the serious like this one, and the humorous like yesterday. [He is] the reason that I have restrained myself from making Canadian jokes in my posts.
- C-Train
This post contains nothing that is of any use to me. What were you thinking? Anyway, it's probably the best I've read all day.
- David Kjos
Daniel, nicely done and much more original than Frank the Turk.
- Jonathan Moorhead
There are some people who are smart, deep, or funny. There are not very many people that are all 3. Daniel is one of those people. His opinion, insight and humor have kept me coming back to his blog since I first visited earlier this year.
- Carla Rolfe
|
| |
|
email
|
|
| No Bravery Without Fear... |
Daddy, what can I do when I don't want to obey you because I am afraid?
You've probably had to explain to your own little ones that unless one is afraid of something, one cannot act in bravery. I mean, every person knows fear (or should) but what makes a person brave is that they do not let their fear control their actions.
When my five year old is afraid of the dark, and because of this fear refuses to go to bed, we sit down and have "the talk". I explain first that there is nothing in the dark to fear, and that this fear is therefore unfounded; but because such information has never pacified a single five year old in the history of mankind, I am inclined to move onto step two, where I explain that in order to be brave you need fear, and that it is time for bravery in the face of this fear. etc.
My post isn't about parenting or fear, or bravery for that matter, but I believe understanding these things will help one to understand the metaphor I plan to use in the following spiritual encouragement.
What do I do, when I don't want to obey God?
Here is where the fear/bravery thing comes into play. If bravery requires fear, we might also say that obedience to God (when sinners are inclined against obedience) requires one to overcome self. Now before we get too far on that road, let me say right now that no one in their own strength can truly overcome self. We need, as Paul taught, to reckon our "self" as dead to sin, but alive to God.
The lesson isn't that in order to obey, you first need an inclination to disobedience, and thereafter you must "buck up" in your own strength, and this bucking up shares some sort of kinship with bravery. Rather the lesson is that in order for you to obey you must overcome the flesh in Christ.
That might sound like just a trite Christian phrase, "overcome the flesh in Christ". I bet some of you reading will say to yourself as you read that, "If I knew how to overcome the flesh in Christ, I would be doing that!"
But the phrase is deceptively precise. The trouble is that many Christians don't know what it means to overcome the flesh in Christ. They picture Jesus doing the work of overcoming in such a way that they are passive on-lookers. They imagine themselves, metaphorically speaking, pushing the "Jesus-do-this-spiritual-thing-for-me-now" button, and KAZAM! Victory! So they continue to look for the magic formula that will wake our slumbering Lord and cause Him to pour out victory on them now that they know the magic word to make that happen. But that isn't a right image of what is meant by "in Christ".
Perhaps it would be better to think in this way - in Christ means, in utter surrender to Christ. Utter surrender means utter abandonment - but even these words evoke an image of some soul "letting go and letting God" - which isn't the picture I am trying to paint. Surrender is not about letting go, it is about hanging on - hanging onto God's promise in Christ.
The promise is the gospel promise - which itself, for most believers, has been watered down to mean only the message of salvation that results in justification. That is, many believers think the gospel is for getting you into heaven, and after that you teach "doctrine" and "theology". But the gospel message is that God has done what you could not do. It is the hope of the Christian, not merely to spare them from God's wrath, but also to carry them as believers in their sanctification (drawing near to God).
The way we are called to obey is by faith; by trust in what God has promised, has done, and perhaps more importantly: is doing. We do not overcome our disobedient inclinations by trying harder to obey or by forming the habit of suppressing our sinful inclinations. That is the fluff of other world religions - we overcome our sinful inclinations by trusting in Christ.
I am going to be straight up with you. That sounds, to the uninformed ear, like a lot of spiritual posturing. It sounds good, and even Christian, but to many reading it also sounds rather obtuse, and even spiritually opaque. How is trusting in Jesus going to disincline me to sin?
Well, when we say trusting in Christ, we are not simply trusting that there is a Jesus, or worse, trusting that He is going to act in a situation according to our interpretation of what ought to be done (Stop me from having sinful desires right now Jesus!). What we mean is that we trust that Christ is with us, is in us, and is working out our salvation (from sin), regardless of the situation or how we feel. We trust that this work is not dependant upon ourselves, but rather something Christ is doing in love on our behalf, and not in answer to, or as a response to, our obedience.
The fact of the matter is that we enter into obedience, whenever that obedience is exercised in spirit and in truth, only because of Christ's work in us. This obedience does not come to us because we have pulled it down in prayer, or because we have earned it by our sincerity - it comes to us by grace, for we are saved by grace, and not by works.
So just as fear is the furnace from which true bravery comes, so also faith in Christ is the furnace out of which true obedience flows. I know that is going to seem counter-intuitive to many (immature) Christians, because when we become Christians, we begin to flee from sin because we loathe the fact that we indulge in it. We become like the runner who is so afraid of what is following him, that he dares not risk a glance back. lest in doing so he slows his pace, and is overtaken. The guilt of our sin so burdens us that we dare not risk adding more to it by setting aside our (sometimes strict, sometimes slack) war against sin.
But if the weapons of our warfare are entirely carnal, that is, if we battle sin with the same weapons that every other world religion battles sin (adhering in our own strength to some external standard of righteousness), then our war against sin is really an empty farce --all light and no heat. Our weapons must be spiritual; and that flies in the face of conventional wisdom. The notion that we can overcome sin by faith seems nice, but impractical.
It isn't until some crisis, or perhaps some lasting spiritual draught causes us to abandon our false oasis, that we begin to take seriously the plain instructions of scripture, and begin to make Christ, and not church, religion, or daily devotions, the object of our faith. When we do this, in earnest, we grow in grace and find our inclination to obey stronger than our inclination to disobey - and this because we are drawing near to Christ, rather than trying to appropriate righteousness apart from Him (and that in order to please Him, as though our setting aside of Him to pursue a righteousness apart from Him would or could possibly please Him).
We grow into these truths, so don't be put off if they seem difficult to understand at first blush. The main point is that your focus needs to be on Christ, specifically on drawing near to God through Him. Do this, and everything else falls into place (Seek you first the kingdom...).Labels: Christianity, encouragement, sanctification |
posted by Daniel @
6:55 AM
0 comment(s)
 
|
|
|
|
| Does Christianity Cure Homosexuality? |
Can Christianity cure homosexuality?
The best place to start with a question like that is to lay all my cards on the table at the outset, then go from there.
First of all homosexuality is not a disease, therefore the notion of curing it is irrational. One does not cure homosexuality anymore than one cures lechery, or pride, or arrogance. So the short answer is that Christianity cannot cure homosexuality, because cures are for diseases, and have nothing to do with giving in to sinful desires.
In the first chapter, book of Romans, in verses 26 and 27, the Holy Spirit, speaking through the Apostle Paul communicates what God the Father thinks about homosexuality:
"For this reason God gave them over to degrading passions; for their women exchanged the natural function for that which is unnatural, and in the same way also the men abandoned the natural function of the woman and burned in their desire toward one another, men with men committing indecent acts and receiving in their own persons the due penalty of their error." - Romans 1:26-27 [NASB]
Which is to say that when a person desires to gratify himself or herself (sexually) with a person of the opposite gender, that desire is in accord with the natural, created order. Conversely, when one desires to gratify himself or herself contrary to the created order, that desire is contrary to the created order, and as such is described as abominable, as opposed to only sinful.
Note that in both cases, the desire is to gratify one's self sexually, but what makes this gratification abominable is when one attempts to gratify that desire contrary to the created order.
I describe desire in this way (the desire to gratify yourself sexually) because it is more precise than saying having sexual desires for people of one gender or the other. The desire you have is to gratify yourself - that is the desire - you may excite this desire according to nature, or contrary to nature, but the desire itself is a desire for sexual gratification.
I want to frame the discussion in this way to avoid the sort of confusion that arises when we dig deeper into the issues at hand. It is common and easy to come at these things rather superficially, and then with a bigoted mindset, and as much as I am able, I want to avoid that. So I am careful to be as precise as possible, lest what I am saying be misinterpreted or misunderstood.
Every married person on the planet eventually experiences a desire that will tempt them to consider gratifying themselves sexually with someone other than their spouse. It can be a passing thought that is immediately dismissed (that is, it can be a temptation that is not pursued, and therefore does not become a sin), or it can be an unchecked desire that the one who experiences ends up fostering, whether or not that leads to a consummation or not. Even our Lord Jesus Christ was temped by sexual desires when He Himself walked among us in the flesh, we know this because the scriptures tell us so (c.f. Hebrews 4:15 - "For we do not have a high priest who cannot sympathize with our weaknesses, but One who has been tempted in all things as we are, yet without sin." [NASB]), but our Lord by no means indulged or pursued these temptations. In the same way there is no sin in being tempted by a desire, but there -is- sin in pursuing that desire if the desire runs contrary to what God has allowed you as an individual.
You see, sin is, in its simplest expression, willful rebellion against God's rule. God says, "No", and you say, "Too bad, I want to do it, so I am going to do it even though you have forbidden it." Not that you coherently express these things when you sin, but rather that you set aside the way God has ordered things in favor of the way you want things to be. That is what Paul describes in Romans 1:18 when he writes, "For the wrath of God is revealed from heaven against all ungodliness and unrighteousness of men who suppress the truth in unrighteousness," [NASB]. In order live with your own conscience when you pursue a known sin, you must suppress the truth about what God has commanded. Sin is rebellion, and no one who honestly believes there is a God whom they will answer to one day, will willingly rebel Him, so that in order to pursue things that God denies mankind, that is, in order to willingly rebel against the command of God, one must convince himself or herself that there is no God - that is, one must suppress the truth of God.
Thus the married man who pursues a desire to gratify himself sexually with someone other than his wife is sinning. It isn't defined as sin according to whether the man desires to gratify Himself in accord with, or denial of, the created order, rather it is defined as sin because it goes against the command of God. Yet if the man desires to gratify himself contrary to the created order, his sin is not only sinful but abominable as well - which is worse in that it is doubly wicked.
Now I want to be clear here. It is the pursuit of a gratifying yourself sexually through some forbidden avenue that is sinful, and not the temptation to gratify yourself through some forbidden avenue that is sinful. In other words, whether the desire to gratify yourself sexually is excited through a heterosexual temptation or a homosexual one, unless you pursue that temptation there is no sin.
That might be difficult for some to swallow, but what I am saying is that the problem with homosexuality isn't that you want to gratify your sexual desires contrary to nature (though that remains an abominable desire); the problem is that have decided to gratify yourself sexually in a way that God forbids.
You see, God doesn't just forbid things that run contrary to His created order, He forbids things that do not run contrary to the created order as well. You are not allowed to have sex with your sister - even if your parts are compatible. You are not allowed to have sex with anyone or anything outside of marriage - even if their genitalia is compatible.
If we are going to suggest or pursue a Christian "cure" for homosexuality, will we also pursue a Christian cure for those heterosexual desires that, while not abominable, are equally sinful (adultery, premarital sex, etc. etc.)?
I think it is the business of every believer to turn from sin. If you consider yourself a "homosexual" - that is, if your desire to gratify yourself sexually is excited contrary to the created order - it is my duty to Christ, to call you to turn from this sinful desire, and if you engage in it without repentance, it is my duty to come to you and both encourage your repentance, and support you in it. If you reject that, I am to come to you with other believers, and together we are to encourage you to turn from this course of rebellion in following these sinful temptations into sin - not that we call you to try and change what excites you sexually - for that is not what we are called to do - we call you to turn away from indulging in that which is forbidden, and if you still persist, I am to take you before the whole congregation, giving you another chance to turn from your rebellion, and if you love your sin more than obeying the Lord, I am to cast you out of our fellowship, since you unrepentant heart is like a cancerous leaven that must be purged, lest others in the congregation are emboldened to rebel against God according to whatever sinful desires they want to indulge.
I will be the first to say that the desire to gratify yourself sexually is a universal desire amongst physically mature human beings. I don't think that this desire is excited in us, one way or the other, because of genetics. I mean do we mean to suggest that the man who finds overweight women more attractive does so because of his genetics? What about liking blondes? or preferring long legs to a nice smile? I expect that we will never know entirely (or at least definitively) what it is exactly that moves us to be excited by one thing over another. Maybe we have control over these things, maybe we don't - but I think the answer to that is moot.
In other words, Christianity is not interested in "curing" people who have desires that run contrary to the commands of God. Hello? I have a thousand desires (er, that's an hyoperbole) that run contrary to the commands of God each morning before breakfast. Newsflash - this flesh in which we find our souls presently bound, is called "sinful flesh" for a reason. Even we who are believers have not yet had our flesh redeemed - we still live in it, and it continues to churn out (daily) ungodly desires. There is no cure for these desires, that is, we cannot make our flesh stop desiring sin - and guess what? This is true whether our sinful desires run contrary to God's created order, or are in harmony with it. There is no cure for the flesh, therefore there is no cure for its sinful desires. We cannot "cure" homosexuality anymore than we can cure greed, or gluttony, or selfishness, or adultery.
I say, we cannot cure these things, but we are called to live apart from them - to put those desire to death daily. This is the work of the believer, and every believer that sets that work aside, and refuses to take it up, but wilfully sets his or her mind to continue indulging their sin rather than turning away from it, must be (if we are to be faithful to God's command) put out of the church.
Here is the kicker: If we attempt to put to death the deeds (note: deeds, not desires) of the body, by denying our sinful desires in any other manner than by faith - our efforts will remain superficial, and powerless. We will not overcome sin, but sin will overcome us. The Israelites did not take the promised land from the Canaanites because they were stronger or more numerous than them - they took the promised land because they believed that God was giving it to them. So also we must overcome sin, not in our own strength, but rather by faith.
Make no mistake, some people use Christianity as an excuse to foster a xenophobic hatred of homosexuality. I hope that nothing I have said here will be used to encourage such behavior. My point is that Christianity does not, and cannot cure homosexuality. What Christianity can do is reconcile you back to God, and put in you a new desire (through the indwelling Holy Spirit), to turn away from your sinful desires, and obey God's will.
That means that the Christian man, even if he wants to engage in sexual activity outside of a God sanctioned (ie. consenting man and woman) marriage, denies that desire and instead conforms himself, heart and hand (meaning, in both his thinking and his acting) to the will of God. No special case is made for, or required for, the person whose sinful desire would be called by the world a "homosexual" one. There are really only two categories of desire - righteous, and sinful, and one need not have homosexual desires to have sinful desires.
Thus I regard the whole curing of homosexuality as seldom more than glorified reprogramming. Human effort, with human results. God doesn't call us to stop having sinful desires - for we cannot stop that from happening - he calls us to stop acting on them, the very thing He died to make possible.Labels: Christianity, controversy, homosexuality |
|
posted by Daniel @
8:56 AM
1 comment(s)
|
|
|
|
| What kind of Christians are we trying to be? |
Can I be open and shamelessly honest with you, dear Internet reader?
I started my faith ignorant of the bible, but I was granted a hunger for truth, and began to read the scriptures over and over again in a strength that felt all my own, but was certainly God's grace at work in me. With each reading of the bible I became more certain of some things, and less certain of others. I began to challenge beliefs I had picked up in my early life - things I heard on television, or that others had said with enough authority that I took their word as truth, but things which ultimately scripture refuted. As many errors as my eyes were opened to see, these I set aside without remorse, in my passionate pursuit of the truth.
In a short while I became one of those rare Christians who actually had read the whole bible, and then, later, and rarer still, one who had read the whole bible more than once, then more than twice, then more than a dozen times, and so on. I refused to agree with scripture the way that some agree with a software license - you know, where you don't bother reading any of it, scroll to the bottom, and check off the "I agree" box in order to install or run your program? I had enough grace working in me that I was delivered out of being that kind of Christian.
Then again I was delivered from being the sort of Christian who reads the bible once and forever after regards it as a reference manual, to be consulted, but never read through, except rarely, for recreational purposes, or to follow along in sermons on Sunday. They might crack it open in moments of "need" and then only to the psalms and the gospels to give them a temporary spiritual "shot in the arm". No, I ventured into that (dishearteningly) rare realm of actually reading the bible over and over and over again. Not because I thought myself a better Christian for doing so, or because I wanted to have something to brag about - rather because I was hungry for it, ashamed of my ignorance, and the more I read it, the more convinced I was that God's word was my lifeline to God Himself - correcting me, leading me, assuring me. How could I follow Christ and ignore His word?
As I mentioned earlier, In studying the scriptures, many false notions I had picked up in my ignorance came to light, and were set aside. There were things that I had always thought were in the bible, that were (in fact) quite absent - and again there were things in scripture I had never imagined to find, but there they were plain as day. I found that there were many things that I had been told about Christianity, or had seen on television, or had believed for whatever reason - that scripture plainly denied, so that I wondered how on earth anyone could have propogated such errors. Than again there were things in scripture so profound and beautiful that I could not understand why these things weren't being shouted daily from rooftops everywhere - things that I had never heard anyone mention before in my life.
Even in the fellowship of other believers I found that many of the things "we" did as a congregation were not biblical, but were being done because that was the local tradition. I was perplexed to find more than a few of the traditions that were followed by this congregation or that congregation were not merely absent from scripture, but were even contrary to what Christ instructed. So it was that I came to see how few Christians there were that actually knew, from scripture, how to be Christians, or how to "do" church. It isn't like I ever made a conscious decision to compare what I saw in the church with what I read in scripture, rather at some point I became aware that there were only a precious few people I knew who (themselves) knew enough of the scriptures to reason from them on matters of Christian conduct.
It has been my experience, my burning desire since the day I came to Christ, to live a life that is pleasing to God. This desire was the fuel that burned in me, driving me to read and learn from the scriptures - not so that I could sit around and learnedly discuss what I had just read amongst some group of Christian elitist, nor was it to hear my own voice speaking the things of God with some academic authority (to the praise of men no less!), rather it was in order that I might find that seemingly elusive way to live in the one and only way God that God intends His children to live. That is why I read the scriptures, why I prayed, why I obeyed - in order that through these things I might know the peace that supasses understanding.
Some things were more difficult than others. How I grappled with the idea of walking in the Spirit for instance! What on earth (or in heaven above) could "walking in the Spirit" possibly mean? How does one go about walking in the Spirit? Here there is a fellow who says that it means to live sinlessly by finally and utterly surrendering the flesh to the will of God. Here another says that it means that the Holy Spirit is talking to you all the time, but that you just aren't listening, because you haven't developed spiritual ears to hear yet - another says that you have to obey every passing intuition that crosses your mind, for that is how God speaks, through gut feelings and intuition, and failure to follow every flitty though means you risk offending God. Still another hears voices, and another has dreams, all are trying to walk in the Spirit, but they are all doing different things. And so there was a lot of misinformation out there to wade through.
Like everyone else, and certainly like some of you reading this today - I was tossed to and fro, as it were, by the doctrines of men. I tried to achieve sinless perfection, I listened for voices and spiritual urges, I tried suppressionism, and legal adherence, and in trying out as many as seemed momentarily plausible I found that utter failure was the primary thread that ran through all these.
You know, I hope you can appreciate what I am saying. I knew the word of God, and I wanted to keep it perfectly, but I didn't know how to do that consistently.
It came to me one day, as I was meditating on the nature of my desire ("to be pleasing to God") that it was actually a fools errand that I was on.
The fact is, that I am already pleasing to God, not because of my obedience, but because I am in Christ. Do not the scriptures teach that God bestows grace on us in Christ according to the kind intention of God's will (cf.Ephesians 1:5-6)? God Himself predestined us to adoption as sons through Christ this in opposition to the idea of brokering some kind of adoption through ourselves or our own righteousness. When God redeemed us, He was redeeming what scripture describes as His own possession. Until I understood that redemption was the buying back of God's own property - that is, until I understood that God wanted me because I was His already, I didn't really understand redemption properly.
I began to ask myself, what kind of Christian I really wanted to be? Should I set aside whatever knowledge scripture imparted in order to try and be pleasing to God apart from the way outlined in the scriptures? How can a person please God? The answer is they cannot. That is why it is so important to wrap your mind around the fact that Christ has already pleased God.
God sent Christ to redeem those whom God had predestined to adoption as sons. I am the recipient of that same grace - a grace that cannot be appropriated by me or anyone else, but was (and had to be) bestowed upon me, in the mind of God, before there ever was an earth for man to walk upon. It is a grace that God delivered to me directly through Christ. In the wake of this, I ask myself, am I going to be the kind of Christian that is so focused on trying to please God in what I do, that I forget that the basis of my relationship with God is Christ (and not myself or what I do)?
That is a rubber-meets-the-road kind of meditation.
I think there comes a time in every faith where we have to ask some hard questions: am I being the Christian God has called me to be? Am I really abiding in Christ, or am I actually abiding in self? Am I really living the crucified life, or am I just conforming my life to a set of lifeless Christianized habits? Is what I do as a Christian drawing me nearer to Christ each day, or am I just becoming more church-y? Does attending all the meetings, reading the bible, and praying dutifully really draw me nearer to Christ, or am I doing all those things and still finding myself exactly as far away from Christ in my affections as ever I was? What am I resting in? Am I resting at all, and if I am, am I resting in my own (eventually) failing efforts? Is my rest really in Christ or is it in something else - something that is unwittingly displacing my rest in Christ?
Here is what I want to get at today. The reason our faith is supposed to be all about Jesus is because true faith really -is- all about Jesus.
My faith must be for Jesus, in Jesus, and coming to me through Jesus. I cannot draw near to God without drawing near to Christ. Unless my faith is decidedly aimed at knowing Christ, my faith is actually running amok.
Listen: Christianity is not about conforming myself properly to the one and only correct tradition; Christianity is about knowing Jesus. If our obedience is not driven by the desire to draw near to Christ - then our obedience serves no one but ourselves - it remains worldly, carnal, and inevitably fruitless. On judgment day, God isn't going to care one lick about how many rules the believer managed to keep. God is not going to be impressed, even if I have somehow managed to muster profound obedience because such obedience cannot bring reward, it only reveals the areas in my life where there was actually loss - for any obedience to God that is done for any other reason than to draw near to Christ (in order that we may know Him) - is corrupt, flawed, and worthless obedience. It missed the point, and there is no reward for corruption.
I don't know how many ways I should say this - but Christianity is all about drawing near to God in Christ. If that isn't behind whatever you are doing, then whatever it is you are doing is (in fact) a waste of your time - and how much greater a tragedy that is (or will be), if in doing what you do you think that you're doing just fine.
Paul didn't say that that the longing of his heart was to find some way to obey God. Paul mourned over his sin, even as every soul made righteous does - but Paul's longing was to know Christ. It was this desire to know Christ that drove Paul to obey? The certainty that disobedience took you off the path of knowing our Lord, provoked obedience in Paul. It was not fear that kept Paul, but love. He knew that that one cannot ascend the holy hill (that is, draw near to God) with impure hands, and so he pursued holiness (obedience) - in order to draw near to God - in order to know Christ more intimately.
If you have forgotten these things, or never understood them - look into the word of God again and see if this is not so. My heart's desire for myself, my wife, my children, my church, and for you dear reader, is that you would know the Lord, and in knowing Him, know the peace that surpasses understanding. In Him are all the promises yea and amen. In Him is our life hid. In Him, in Him, in Him.Labels: Christianity, exhortation, how to be a Christian, sanctification |
|
posted by Daniel @
7:54 AM
2 comment(s)
|
|
|
|
| Faith? |
Why did so many of the prominent Jews of Christ's day reject Him as their Messiah?
Think this through for a second: Was it because those Jews rejected the idea that God was going to send a Messiah? I don't think so - these Jews were described by Paul in the book or Romans as zealous. I don't think they were ignorant, and I don't think they were denying the fact that God was going to send a Messiah - what they were denying was that Jesus was this Messiah.
I believe I am describing what an empty faith looks like.
James, the brother of our Lord and author of the epistle that bears his name, spoke of two kinds of faith, one that cannot apprehend good works, and the other which cannot help but to apprehend good works. As I understand it, when James teaches that good works flow from a legitimate faith, and that the same do not flow from an illegitimate faith, he is not suggesting that the way to correct an illegitimate faith is to append a regiment of good works to your illegitimate faith. What he is saying is that unless living water is flowing out of your innermost being, the faith that you have isn't the kind that saves.
That is the kind of faith the Jews who rejected Christ had. They believed that there was a God, and that He was indeed the God of the scriptures. They even believed that God was going to send His Messiah - but when that Messiah came and they rejected Him, they demonstrated to all of creation the illegitimacy of their faith. It wasn't that they didn't believe the facts to be true. They believed in God so long as He remained a distant and unknowable entity. They believed in God so long as He remained impersonal and unapproachable. They believed in God so long as their belief never had to be more than an intellectual assent to certain facts. But their "faith" showed itself for what it really was (insufficient) the moment they had the opportunity to believe God was actually doing something in their midst.
When I share the gospel, I don't ask people to pray a prayer. I just let them know the truth: that God is not neutral towards them. That God has in fact damned them to suffer the full weight of His wrath the very moment they die, and this on account of their rebellion against Him. That God, as their Creator, is right to demand their obedience, and right to condemn them on account of their ongoing and continual disobedience. I explain from passages in scripture† that God Himself blinds and confuses those who are being damned on account of their day by day rebellion, in order that they may continue in it without fear of the inescapable day that the consequences of their rebellion catch up with them. I let them know, in as much as I am able, that God is not neutral towards them but hates‡ them - that the only reason they are alive right now is because God has granted them, in His profound grace, an opportunity to be reconciled to Him through Christ, and I do all in my power to encourage them to be reconciled to God.
If they are willing to be reconciled, I explain the way of salvation: That man cannot by himself, or through his own effort reconcile himself to God, that no one on earth can even desireϑ to be reconciled to God, such is the state of our depravity, that unless God grants them the grace to repent and believe, they will by no means be able to do so. Some may argue that this is putting an unnecessary burden on the person, but I would argue that it is in fact removing the unnecessary burden of trying to generate their own salvation through finding and applying the "correct" self effort that ends in their salvation. Instead I give them the simplicity of the gospel call; explaining that no one avoids God's wrath, that all must pass through it, whether "Christian" or non-Christian. That everyone who passes through God's wrath suffers the full effect of God's curse, just as it was in Noah's day - where all men on earth were made to share the same condemnation - the flooding of the whole earth a picture of the judgment that is to come - that all will face the flood of God's wrath, but that God has made a way to pass through this wrath unscathed just as Noah and his family passed through God's wrath safely in the ark, so also, God has made Jesus the Ark of our salvation - that everyone who is reconciled to God through repentance (surrendering the rule of their life to God) and trusting that God will save them in Christ if they call upon Him to do so. That every repentant soul who seeks to be reconciled again to God by calling upon the name of Christ will be baptized into the Spirit of Christψ by Christ Himself - what scripture calls the new birth, so that the wrath that God pours out on the believer is poured out on Christ whom the believer is "in" through that union with Christ that happens in the moment we are born from above, the very thing that our water baptism pictures - the moment we step out of the flood of damnation and into the ark of Christ we become partakers of Christ's eternal life. It isn't that our lives become eternal, it is that we become partakers of His eternal life - the same life that God raised from the dead, and in doing so, eternally secured all who have entered into Christ through this course of repentance and trust.
When I have presented this to someone who professes a willingness to be reconciled to God, I call on them to cry out to God for this salvation. I don't lead them in a prayer, and I don't try to provoke them into the kingdom with stories about people who have heard the gospel, and ignored it, then died suddenly on their way home because they didn't "make a decision" that night. I just let them know that they aren't saved until they are in Christ, and that the moment they are in Christ they will have full assurance that they are His.
If someone comes to me and says I have prayed and asked God to save me, but I am not sure that He did, I will tell them what I truly think: that they have not truly believed. That they are like the Pharisees who have assented to the truth of what is true without actually placing their trust in any of it. That they are not simply doubting because they are immature, but that it is more likely that they never really believed in the first place. I will sit with such a one and gladly spend as long as it takes to go over the promises of God with them until the truth becomes more to them than a formula for salvation - until they surrender to God for real, and in doing so come into life - not because they hope it worked, but because they have actually believed.
I think many in the church would consider me a real jerk because I don't fall all over myself telling people they are saved when they have doubts. I don't want to give these people a reason to continue believing they are the real deal if they aren't. Listen: if you don't know for sure that you are saved, you aren't saved. The Jews who believed there would be a Messiah but rejected Christ didn't have real faith - even as they assented to the truths of scripture.
The grand problem in our churches today is not that Christians are immature - though they are - it is that we are so politically correct and biblically ignorant, that we welcome people into the church who themselves couldn't tell you for sure that they are Christ's, and no one is willing to challenge them for fear of upsetting them or coming off as a jerk.
What kind of Christian are you, reader? Would you have recognized Christ, or would you have held onto your orthodox theology hoping to find salvation in the fact that you believe the words of Moses to be true, even as you deny in your heart the things they taught?
May God shake up the chaff, that it might turn and be saved.
| †The LORD will send upon you curses, confusion, and rebuke, in all you undertake to do, until you are destroyed and until you perish quickly, on account of the evil of your deeds, because you have forsaken Me.- Deuteronomy 28:20 [NASB] | | ‡The boastful shall not stand before Your eyes; You hate all who do iniquity. - Psalm 5:5 [NASB] | | ϑas it is written,"THERE IS NONE RIGHTEOUS, NOT EVEN ONE; THERE IS NONE WHO UNDERSTANDS, THERE IS NONE WHO SEEKS FOR GOD; ALL HAVE TURNED ASIDE, TOGETHER THEY HAVE BECOME USELESS; THERE IS NONE WHO DOES GOOD, THERE IS NOT EVEN ONE. - Romans 3:10-12 [NASB] | | ψOr do you not know that all of us who have been baptized into Christ Jesus have been baptized into His death? Therefore we have been buried with Him through baptism into death, so that as Christ was raised from the dead through the glory of the Father, so we too might walk in newness of life. For if we have become united with Him in the likeness of His death, certainly we shall also be in the likeness of His resurrection. - Romans 6:3-5 [NASB] |
Labels: Christianity, encouragement, faith, gospel, repentance |
|
posted by Daniel @
9:27 AM
2 comment(s)
|
|
|
|
Is A Jew Justified By Being A Jew?
The Christian Perspective. |
I want you to imagine a Jewish person who is as sincere in his religion as is humanly possible, full of zeal for God, and as faithful to his religious duty as is humanly possible. Even as I set up our hypothetical Jewish person, I can't help but think how that describes the Apostle Paul prior to his conversion to Christianity, but while I might hit on that in a bit, let's just ignore it for now.
What I want to establish is that our hypothetical Jew is by no means a hypocrite - he is not adding to the scriptures any modern practice, or skimping on anything, or living like the world - but is constant in prayer, in meditation on the OT, and again, in practicing biblical righteousness. He is no slough - but about as real a deal as you can get.
Such a man would be an admirable thing indeed, for a faithful Jew lives to serve the one and only God.
Now, let us also say that our hypothetical Jew lived in a bubble somehow, with other hypothetical Jews, who had never in his life ever been exposed to the gospel of Jesus Christ, nor even heard that someone had come to earth 2000 years ago, claiming to be the Messiah, and proving that claim not only by signs and wonders, but by a righteous life, by fulfilling every Messianic prophesy that relates to the incarnation, and finally by being raised from the dead by God the Father; let's say that our Jew has never even heard of such a thing, nor has any in his community.
The question is, can this Jew be justified by being a Jew.
We set up the question in this way, because we do not want to say this Jew is rejecting Jesus Christ, for in order to reject the Christ, he would have to have heard about Jesus. So I want to underscore the fact that this hypothetical Jew has never heard about Jesus.
Suppose our hypothetical Jew lives his entire life in profound devotion, and dies calling on the name of the Lord even as the Patriarchs did. Will this Jew be justified at the judgment?
Having set up the scenario as I have, I suspect that some readers might be inclined to say, "Yes" - that this Jew, having never heard the gospel, and therefore having never rejected the Messiah, would likely be justified by his faithfulness as a Jew. The same would argue that his religion was the best it could be and was limited only to the light he was given, and therefore having lived as well as could be expected given the available revelation, that God would be unjust to expect more from on judgment day.
I set up the elaborate scenario to answer the question, is there more than one way to be justified, or put another way, can you be justified in the OT way now that the NT has been established, and the orthodox answer is "No" you cannot.
In truth, if such a hypothetical Jew did exist, and lived his life according to the OT standard, and died ignorant of Jesus, having never rejected him - this would not justify him on the day of judgment. On the day of judgment, God would examine this Jews sins, and all his religion will not suffice to cancel out even the smallest of sins. The hypothetical Jew cannot be saved under the old covenant scheme because that scheme was invalidated by the Messiah. Men were never justified by keeping the law, but by grace through faith - as Paul argues in the NT, showing how scripture says Abraham was justified - not by being righteous, but by trusting God - that is, Abraham was justified by faith, not by works of the law. So too our hypothetical Jew, having kept the law as perfectly as humanly possible (which means imperfectly), cannot be justified by it any more than Abraham himself could have been justified by righteous deeds.
The objection that arises in some camps is that this isn't "fair". This hypothetical Jew was sincere, and did all that he knew to do - how can a just God condemn a man who lived a better life than most Christians live today? An objection that betrays a gross misunderstanding of how we are justified.
We are not justified because we are good people or righteous, we are justified because Jesus was good and righteous, and in trusting Christ, we were baptized by Him into the body of Christ (the church) - united with Christ in such a way that when Christ was crucified, we too were crucified (in Him), so that our sins were carried by Christ to Calvary where God carried out a Judgment against them. God poured His wrath on Christ, and He, along with all who were united together with Him, died. Death had no claim on Christ however; Christ gave up his life and died the death that He died because He was willing to be united to those sinners whom God had elected to save from His wrath through Christ. It was the lives of these sinners that death had legitimate claim to, and when Christ received this wrath it was not for His own sin, for He was without sin, but was for the sin of those who were united together (by faith) with Him. Death took Christ, along with all who were in Him, but death had no claim on Christ.
It was for that reason that God, in order to remain righteous, had to raise Christ again from the dead - and it was for this reason that we who were united together with Christ, were raised from the dead in Christ - that is, just as Christ received death through our sins, so too we receive life through Christ's righteousness, for when God raised up Christ, He raised up all who were in Christ - this was the purpose of our union with Christ. Just as this union took Christ's life on Calvary, so it gave life to us on the third day - resurrection day.
The Jew who is not joined to Christ through faith, is not, nor cannot be saved, from God's wrath through his law keeping, sincerity, or own righteousness - it just isn't sufficient. The Jew is still a sinner, and his own righteousness, no matter how profound it is compared to others on the planet, does not attain to the level of righteousness required - which is a perfect righteousness.
One might object at this point also, saying, well then, how were the Jews ever justified? If they were justified by the law prior to Christ, why can't a hypothetical Jew who has never heard about Jesus be similarly justified?
Again - no person, Jew or otherwise, was ever justified by keeping the law, or prior to the advent of the law, by being personally righteous. The only means of justification has always been as an act of God's grace through faith. Before a law was ever given men were justified this way - by faith, that is, by seeing themselves as sinners, and therefore utterly and absolutely unworthy. In seeing themselves as sinners, they acknowledge that they cannot undo their sin - they cannot simply do enough good to cancel out those acts of rebellion (disobedience) that they have committed in the past - they see their own righteousness for what it is - vacuous, impotent, and as the prophet says - a filthy thing; and they look to God to save them from this - that is, they call on God to save them, and do not look to their righteousness as qualifying them for it. They call on God not to assist them in their righteousness so that they can earn heaven, but rather to have mercy on them, since they realize they can never earn heaven by their own acts of righteousness.
The objection at this point would probably focus on the fact that the Jew didn't "reject Jesus" - as though the reason God pours out his wrath on sinners were something other than their sin - that is, as though the reason hell is populated is because people "reject Jesus". This sort of objection springs from a corrupted teaching - the idea that sin doesn't condemn sinners, but rather failing to acknowledge Jesus as the Messiah and turn to Him in faith condemns sinners.
Here is how this works. Everyone who has sinned will be condemned by God for their sin on Judgment day. Big, small, young, old, domestic and foreign -we will all face the judgment, and everyone who has sinned will receive the same guilty judgment, and all who have sinned will receive God's wrath for their sin.
Hold on you say, what about those who are saved?
Those who are saved will be judged like everyone else on Judgment day, but the sentence for their sins has already been carried out - God has poured His wrath out on them already in Christ. God does not "enter into" judgment (i.e. carry out the judgment) when they are judged, because He has already done so in Christ.
Those who are condemned and are not in Christ, will certainly receive God's wrath. Here is a subtlety, so listen up. All of these will have lived a life that rejected God as their ruler, whether that their understanding of God as revealed in the Old Testament, or whether that be a greater rejection, having rejected the revealed Christ. But it will not be their rejection of God that condemns them - it will be their sin. To be sure, the very nature of sin - the very heart of it - is to reject God; that is where sin comes from - a heart that rejects God's rule, and in rejecting God's rule, rejects God.
God will not be moved by those who performed outward signs of righteousness, if inwardly they rejected Him. No one will go to hell "because they rejected God" they will reject God because that is what sin is, and they will go to hell because they did not repent of this rebellion in their life. Some will have spent their life pursuing sin with wanton abandon, and others will have spent their life in religious duty trying to earn a better afterlife by their righteous deeds - without ever acknowledging that they are and have always been, rebels who resent God's dominion. Whatever seeming obedience sprouted from ones such as these was always and ever intended to pacify God, to jump through the hoops God put before them, in order that they would reward them with a better afterlife. All their righteousnesses were performed to purchase something for themselves - that is, every seeming good deed was in fact an act of self preservation - an act of selfishness - an act of sin and rebellion.
The subtlety here is that some truly believe that you are condemned for failing to acknowledge the Messiah, when it works the other way - it is sin that causes every last person on earth to "fail to acknowledge" the Messiah. It doesn't matter whether we hear about the Messiah or not - from the cradle we reject God's rule, and we go right on rejecting God's rule throughout our life whether we are religious or not. We do this BECAUSE we are in bondage to it; that is, to sin. That is what sin looks like.
How then can anyone be saved? I mean, if we all start off as rebels because of our bondage to sin - why is it that some people turn to Christ and others do not?
The scriptures tell us. No man can come to Christ unless God the Father draws that person to Christ.
What was Paul doing when Christ met him on the road to Damascus? Who was Paul? Paul was Saul of Tarsus - a zealous Jew, and by zealous, I mean a keeper of the law, a student of the best schools in Jewish law, a man driven to do for God all that can be done for God. Saul was, according to his own understanding, acting in accord with all of Judaism when he took letters in his hand with him to Damascus - to bring the Christians he found there to "justice" - Paul had been engaged in rooting out the Christians so that they might be stoned to death. He was about as far away from being a Christian as one could possibly be - and yet he was full of zeal for God.
How, we say, did Paul meet Christ then - was he looking for Him? Was he trying to become a Christian? Did some coincidence happen by which he decided to become a Christian after changing his mind about things? NO! Jesus Christ came to Paul on the Damascus road, and intervened in Paul's life directly - having chosen Saul as one of His ministers before Saul was ever born - and having chosen this moment to reveal Himself to Saul, for this purpose - to call Saul to Himself on the day of His own choosing. Saul was struck blind and led to Damascus, and there he fasted, neither eating nor drinking for three days, and spent his time praying - and it was in this attitude of humility before God that Saul became a believer. Did Saul just arbitrarily choose one day to become a Christian? No, God drew Saul to Christ - just as God draws all who come to Him to Himself.
Anyone who is saved, is saved from sin - that is, they are saved from rebellion against God's rule in their heart, by and through God calling them to Himself. As many as God calls in this way, will come.
Some might balk at that because they have a corrupted understanding of righteousness. They believe that if God calls one person, it is only right for Him to call all people, lest some lack the opportunity to be saved. But such a presupposition imagines that there is something wrong or unrighteous about letting a guilty person receive the wages of their sin - that is, that God, in order to be "good" has to try and save people from His wrath, as though being merciful to one sinner suddenly made it unjust to allow any sinner to face God's wrath unless they too were given the same opportunity. I say, they have a corrupted understanding because they fail to understand that God's mercy here doesn't provide a mere opportunity to escape - but causes everyone who receives that mercy to turn away from their rebellion, and turn towards God in faith - that is, this act of mercy is the granting of repentance - the granting of the ability to overcome rebellion by turning to God in faith.
You see, if a Jew today were to live in accord with orthodox Judaism, keeping the law as best he can - even if he never hears about Jesus in his whole life - he will by no means be justified by being a good Jew - for no Jew was ever justified by being a good Jew. Justification happens by faith, and not by works.
Now, in order to make the example for "realistic" - let's describe two hypothetical Jews, one who is justified, and one who is not justified, and we will do this in both the OT and again in the NT.
JEW #1 in the OT (Not Justified): Keeps the law, prays, goes to temple, tithes, etc. Trusts that doing these things will satisfy God's shopping list of requirements, and looks to these acts of righteousness, coupled with his own ancestry, to qualify Him as a member of Abraham's covenant, and therefore justify him in the judgment. He will not be justified.
JEW #2 in the OT (Justified): Keeps the law, prays, goes to temple, tithes etc. Puts no trust in keeping the law as a means of justification but trusts God, even as Abraham trusted God, and as a son of Abraham's faith - that is, as one who did as Abraham did - believed God and it was accounted to Him as righteousness - is justified by faith.
Jew #1 in the NT (not Justified): Keeps the law, prays, goes to the synagogue, tithes, etc. Trusts that doing these things will satisfy God's shopping list of requirements, and looks to these acts of righteousness, coupled with his own ancestry, to qualify Him as a member of Abraham's covenant, and therefore justify him in the judgment. Whether he has heard about Jesus and rejected him or hasn't heard about Jesus at all - he will not be justified.
JEW #2 in the NT (Justified): Keeps the law, prays, goes to the Synagogue, tithes etc. Puts no trust in keeping the law as a means of justification but, trusts God, even as Abraham trusted God, and because of this trust is able to see that Christ is the Messiah - thus he too is a son of Abraham's faith - that is, he did as Abraham did - he believed God and it was accounted to Him as righteousness - and is justified by faith, but his faith is in God's Messiah, Jesus whom he is able to recognize because of his genuine faith.
The orthodox position, while I may not have articulated it perfectly above, is plain and clear - no one, whether of Jewish or Gentile birth, can be justified by adhering to a form of Judaism that fails to recognize the Christ that Judaism announced would come.
Do I believe that the Jewish people are going to be justified? Yes and no. I believe that those Jews who are of the same faith as Abraham will recognize their Messiah in Christ, and be justified, and those Jews who are of the same cut as the Pharisees who rejected Christ will not be justified, and will reject the Christ even as their forefathers did.
When Judaism was still the womb of God's Messiah, there were Jews who were of the faith, and Jews who were not. Only those who were of the faith were justified. But when Judaism gave birth to God's promised Messiah, those who were of Abraham's faith believed in God's Messiah. So it is today. Christianity is what Judaism has always promised, and anyone who claims to believe the promises of God, and the God of those promises, but rejects Him whom God had always promised - is deceived, thinking themselves to be of the faith, but lacking the very thing they imagine themselves to have.
So, no. A Jew, however kind, sincere, and magnanimous, is not, and cannot be justified by practicing a form of Judaism which denies the whole purpose of Judaism - God's Christ. Adhering to Judaism doesn't save anyone, and it has never has saved anyone, yet in the revelation that God delivered to the Jews, we find the faith of Abraham which justifies, and the promise of God's Messiah which all of Judaism was intended to bring into being.
If you are a Jew and are reading this, that is what most evangelical Christians believe. We believe that the Messiah would come from the Jews, as the Scriptures teach, and that He has come in the person of Jesus Christ. We believe that God is one God, and that there is no other, but that this one God exists as three persons, God the Father who decrees and directs His will, God the Son Jesus Christ, who though perfectly sharing the will of God the Father, acts in creation to carry out His will, and God the Holy Spirit who while perfectly sharing the will of God, acts as the power by which the Father's decree is carried out by the Son. We do not believe these are three God's but one God, unified in will and purpose, but revealed to us as three personalities, one of whom took on human flesh in order to redeem mankind from sin as part of God's eternal purpose which was determined before mankind, and this universe ever came into being.
My intention is not to offend, but to instruct. This is what most evangelicals believe. There are some evangelicals who would deny bits and pieces of this, some more, some less - as consensus is based on study and discernment, and we are not all equal in these things. But I think I have given a fairly accurate portrayal of the general understanding.
If you are an evangelical who has pondered these things, I hope that you see, or are beginning to see, that we are justified by faith and not by works of the law, which is what this post underscores. Saved by God, not by religions, not by works, not by doing the right things, jumping through the right hoops, etc.
Grace and peace.Labels: Christianity, Judaism |
|
posted by Daniel @
8:22 AM
5 comment(s)
|
|
|
|
|
|
