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 - Endorsed - Indifferent - Contested
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| The Nashville Statement
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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...
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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
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| Paul adjusts the focus... |
After introducing both himself and the topic upon which he is about to write, Paul explains that all men are sinners, and therefore justly condemned by God (Romans 1:18-32). This is the first step in a larger argument that Paul is making. It behooves us, as thoughtful readers, to follow the logic of the argument that Paul is building.
Having established that sin is universal, and universally condemning, Paul, in Romans 2:1-11, introduces the next rung on the ladder of his argument: a general conclusion based on his first observation. Here Paul reasons that those who pass judgment on other sinners condemn themselves, because they themselves are just as sinful as those that they are condemning for sin.
Paul’s argument shouldn't be difficult for any reader to follow. The rapist who demands that the thief be put to death is hanging himself. We get that. Paul has a purpose in laying these facts out before hand. As I said in the previous post, Paul understood that many of the Jews who were converted to Christ had received their Messiah without fully understanding that they had moved out of the Mosaic Covenant, and into Christ's covenant. He knew these same Jewish Christians were still zealous for the Law, and more, that unless these converted Jews understood the doctrines of grace, they would not only continue in their ignorance - they would also (as those whom the Gentiles around them were looking to for guidance in the faith) lead others into their own confused theology.
So I am reminded, when I read this far, of how the prophet Nathan confronted David's adultery by tricking David into condemning himself (see: 2 Samuel 12 for account). I say, I am reminded of this because that is exactly what Paul is doing to the Jewish believers who would read this epistle. These Jewish believers had accepted Christ, but were still looking to the law for righteousness. Paul is building a case against this error in particular. We see this as Paul begins to explicitly apply, starting in Romans 2:12, what he previously was implying.
See here in Romans 2:12-29, how Paul paints the same conclusion (again) using the Law of Moses as his brush and the Jewish convert as his canvas? The Gentiles who did not have the Law perished on account of their sins, just as the Jews who had the Law were judged guilty by it. Paul's argument, in case you're missing it, is that becoming a Jew does not improve this situation, because the Jews still sinned, even though they had the Law.
If you understand Paul's argument up to this point, you won't be derailed by his (seemingly) sudden fixation with circumcision. When a male Gentile converted to Judaism, circumcision was the final, and defining act of his conversion. It marked the moment the Gentile became a (proselyte) Jew. Remember that Christianity, at this point, was largely misunderstood by both the Jews and the Gentiles. Many viewed Christianity as simply the most correct (or simply the most recent) form of Judaism. That was the major hang-up of the Judaizers - it wasn't that they fixated on the surgical procedure (circumcision) - they were fixated on the Gentile’s conversion to Judaism (hence they were called "Judaizers”).
When Paul speaks of circumcision, he isn't alluding to the surgery, he is alluding to the idea of the Gentiles having to become Jews first (in order to become Christians afterwards). When Paul asks, in Romans 3:1, "Then what advantage has the Jew? Or what is the value of circumcision?" It is like asking, "Then what advantage has the Jew, or what is the value of becoming a Jew?"
Paul answers his own question: the value of being a Jew is that the Jews were the keepers of God's truth. If you were a Jew, you had ready access to this truth, even if you did not avail yourself of that access. In fact, if you did not avail yourself of it, that is, if you were unfaithful to God, God remained faithful to you. That was the Jewish advantage: they were entrusted with something that depended upon God's faithfulness, instead of their own (c.f. Romans 3:1-8).
In what can only be described as a masterful economy, Paul closes this thought in a way that both introduces a line of reasoning that he will rely upon heavily in the chapters to come, and simultaneously silences the objections that may otherwise have been raised at this point.
I hope to do these thoughts justice in the next post.Labels: Romans |
posted by Daniel @
11:31 AM
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| Paul Anticipates Trouble |
I want you to notice something in Acts 24. There we find Ananias' attorney (Tertullus) accusing Paul before (Procurator Marcus Antonius) Felix at Ceasarea. Note that Tertullus describes Paul as a ringleader of sect of Nazarenes (c.f. Acts 24:5). We see that word, "sect" (Greek: αἱρέσεως), used to describe both Sadducees (Acts 5:17) and Pharisees (Acts 15:5); that is, we see this word being used by Terullus (and by extension: the High Priest Ananias) to describe Christianity as a Jewish sect.
Why did the High Priest think Christianity was just the latest Jewish sect? Because those Jews who had converted to Christianity still considered themeselves to be Jews. Ananias was spiritually and theologically blind. He did not understand that the New Covenant that God had promised previously through such prophets as Jeremiah and Ezekiel had not only arrived but even now was replacing the Mosaic Covenant. Ananias saw only a new and wayward teaching that needed to be silenced.
Before I say that we shouldn't marvel at this blindness, as though Ananias was especially blind. Consider Peter's reaction to Christ's command in Acts 11:4-10:
But Peter began and explained it to them in order: “I was in the city of Joppa praying, and in a trance I saw a vision, something like a great sheet descending, being let down from heaven by its four corners, and it came down to me. Looking at it closely, I observed animals and beasts of prey and reptiles and birds of the air. And I heard a voice saying to me, ‘Rise, Peter; kill and eat.’ But I said, ‘By no means, Lord; for nothing common or unclean has ever entered my mouth.’ But the voice answered a second time from heaven, ‘What God has made clean, do not call common.’ This happened three times, and all was drawn up again into heaven. - [ESV]
Peter was so shocked by this command that he (initially) refused to even entertain it! Nevertheless God used Peter to usher the Gentiles into the kingdom, even though the Gentiles were not keepers of the law! You would expect with that kind of one-on-one instruction, and having been used to bring those who were not law keepers into the kingdom, that Peter would have understood that the laws given to Israel through Moses were no longer in effect because they belonged to a covenant that was no longer in effect. You would think that Peter would have grasped sooner, rather than later, the understanding that what was handed down from Moses, was incompatible with what had been received through Christ. You would think that Peter, having entered into the new (and better) covenant, would have put aside the old one like a hot potato...
Yet at Antioch, Peter played the Jew, as it were, when Judaizers came from Jerusalem to Antioch, and sat apart from the Gentiles at meal time. It was there, at Antioch, that Paul had to rebuke Peter, because Peter began again to set aside the New Covenant in order to observe regulations from the Old (Mosaic) Covenant.
If Peter himself - the man God used to bring the Gentiles into the kingdom - had a difficult time transitioning from the Mosaic Covenant to the New Covenant, it is fair to conclude that it was no easy thing for a Jew to accept the notion that the Mosaic law had served it's purpose, and was no longer binding.
This tidbit of information is germane to our study of Paul's letter to the church at Rome. Those Jews who had converted to Christ in Rome would have considered themselves Jews (who had received their Messiah); and what's more, Gentiles joining themselves to this church at Rome would have understood themselves to be becoming Jews, albeit Jews who understood that Christ was their Messiah.
With that in mind, consider the Gentile who was converted (or converting) to this form of Judaism (Christianity). Whom do you think the Gentiles would be looking to for their primary instruction in Judaism, other Gentiles converts, or those (converted) Jews at Rome? I mean, if you want to learn to speak Mandarin Chinese, and go so far as to move to China, do you then seek out a teacher among those who are themselves still learning the language? No. You (typically) seek out instruction from a native speaker of the language.
So too the Gentiles in Rome who had converted to Christianity, would have regarded the converted Jews as their primary instructors in the faith. That's an important thing to keep in mind, because as Paul labours to bring the believers at Rome into obedience of faith. He has to contend with the errant (though popular) notion that Christianity was just the latest sect being sewn into the existing fabric of Judaism.
Before Paul could really get into meat of his message, he would have to untangle this particular knot, and do so in a way that gently disarmed (beforehand) any anticipated "Jewish" arguments to the contrary.
Specifically, Paul needed to show those Jewish believers that Judaism had misunderstood the purpose and scope of Law, as delivered by Moses. To do that end, Paul begins, In Romans 1:18 to show that law not only [1] did not make anyone righteous, but more importantly, [2] could not make anyone righteous.
More on this in next post.Labels: Romans |
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posted by Daniel @
11:14 AM
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| More on Paul's epistle.. |
One notes that the epistle to the Romans begins with an appeal to the scriptures. The Messiah was not some innovation Paul (or anyone else) dreamed up, but was Someone whom God had promised (in the scriptures) to send to His people -- the same God who raised Jesus from the dead. It was this God who appointed Paul to be His apostle, and charged Paul to bring about the obedience of faith among the nations - for the sake of God's honor.
The bible doesn't explicitly describe how the church in Rome began, but it does say that there were present at Pentecost, Jews and (Gentile) proselytes who lived throughout the Mediterranean basin (including Rome), who had made the pilgrimage to Jerusalem to be present on the day of Pentecost (c.f. Acts 2:10). Most likely these "Roman" Jews and Gentile proselytes were converted at Pentecost, and returned to Rome as a congregation of new Christian converts.
Paul wrote the epistle to the Romans around 56 A.D. (a couple of decades after Pentecost). In that time I expect that some of the members of this new congregation would have travelled elsewhere, and come into contact with other believers (perhaps even visiting Jerusalem and receiving doctrinal instruction from the Apostles theme selves. Yet even though this is likely, the fact that the Holy Spirit moved Paul to write this epistle is evidence enough to tell us that this congregation was in need of instruction in the very foundational doctrines that explain Christianity. Paul introduces himself to this congregation as the Apostle whom God has charged with bringing about the obedience of faith among the nations (i.e. among such Gentile converts as were living in Rome and receiving Paul's epistle).
A lot of commentaries look to Romans 1:16-17 as the summary statement for all that Paul is about to write, but Romans 1:5 is helpful in putting what Paul is about to write into perspective. By his own testimony, he is charged by God to bring about obedience to the faith. Paul wrote this as the first work in bringing about this obedience to the faith in the believers at Rome, and what is foundational for their faith is also foundational for my faith, and yours also if you are in Christ.
Thank God for this, because what Paul is teaching in this epistle applies to every believer who intends to pursue that same obedience of faith which the Apostle was charged to bring about. What he has written to these Christians in Rome, the Holy Spirit has preserved for your instruction in the very same thing. Do you want to know what God expects of you Christian? Devour Paul's epistle to the Romans - it is Christianity 101 - it is the foundation of Christ explained.Labels: Romans |
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posted by Daniel @
9:48 AM
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| One of Paul's Epistles... |
I hadn't really given it much thought, but when scripture describes the Apostle Paul as having travelled around the Mediterranean basin, preaching Christ - I sort of pictured it differently. I mean, Paul was, by his own testimony, the Apostle sent to the Gentiles, and given that his journeys were more often than not, taking him through the various Roman provinces that bordered the Aegean sea, I sort of envisioned Paul's ministry as something akin to a foreigner standing on the street corner pitching a new religion. I suppose my default opinion was that all of Paul's missionary encounters in the Gentile lands resembled (more or less) his experience at Athens (Where he preached directly to pagans).
But this image is very wrong. Historians such as Cicero, Strabo, Philo, Seneca and Josephus all bear witness that in this ("Gentile") region where Paul was preaching, Jewish populations could be found in each city. These outside witnesses lend credibility to what Luke affirms in the book of Acts, that when Paul came to such cities as Salamis, Antioch, Perga, Iconium - and even at Athens, Corinth, and Ephesus - he would seek out the local synagogue and preach Christ there on the Sabbath. Of course there would be Gentiles also in these synagogues, but those Jews who rejected the notion that Christ was the Messiah, quickly turned against Paul wherever he went.
In fact, most of the suffering that Paul endured in the Gentile lands, came about because the Jews in those cities had not only rejected the message of Christ, but gone so far as to incite the communities they lived in against Paul.
It is worth noting that it wouldn't take very long to polarize the Jewish community in each of these Gentile cities. After a few Sabbaths worth of teaching, I expect most of the Isrealites living in these communities would not only have heard Paul speak, but would have formed an opinion for or against his teaching. The same could be said of those Gentiles who were God fearers. Some would reject Paul's teaching concerning Christ, and some would receive it. In the case of the Jews, Paul's instruction given in the synagogue would find its way into every Jewish ear in a very short order as people who were not there for the instruction were brought up to speed (Remember, Paul's teaching was "turning the world upside down" according to the scriptures - so it is no stretch to imagine that the buzz in the Jewish community spread quickly and thoroughly). But the Gentile community was exponentially larger than the Jewish communities, and so while the buzz saturated the Jewish community in a few weeks, yet the same could not be said of the Gentile community. Thus Paul's message - preached to Jews in their synagogues, bled over to the Gentiles who eventually made up a much larger body of believers.
For all that, I think it is safe to say that Paul learned the hard way not only what sort of reception he could expect from the Jewish community, but also what sort of arguments they would bring against the gospel, and what was lacking in their theology to cause them to pursue those arguments. After ten years of preaching the gospel in the Gentile lands, Paul wrote his epistle to the Romans. We should not marvel therefore that Paul not only anticipates what conclusions his readers will likely jump to, but he also anticipates why they will jump there, and so he makes a point of answering anticipated objections thoughtfully and thoroughly - a consideration we must bear in mind as we look into Paul's epistle to the Romans.
If you have a moment sometimes today - open your bible and skim over Paul's letter to the Romans. Note how Paul carefully qualifies each item he begins to teach, showing in every qualification that his teaching hasn't fallen out of the sky, but is in step with all that the OT scriptures teach. Maybe read over Luke's rendering of Paul's message to the church in Antioch (c.f. Acts 13:14-ff) to get a feel for how Paul typically presented Christ to people, reasoning from the OT to the Christ, and then reasoning from the Christ to the people of God. See how, towards the end of that message Paul begins to teach how Christ frees you from all the things the law could not - and see that as soon as Paul teaches that grace overcomes what the law could not, the Jews begin to reject him and set out to contradict the message he was preaching.
Paul is anticipating just this sort of reception - and so, like a carpenter building a house, Paul makes sure he digs deep before he lays in the foundation. That is what I want you to look for as you skim over the book of Romans - identify the "prep" work that Paul is doing prior to laying down those sacred doctrines that are the lifeblood to every living faith.
In one or more follow-up posts, I'd like to ask (and answer; if the Lord provides the grace to do so) why Paul bothers to tell us about Adam's sin, and our bondage, etc. Is it just information? Is Paul just reading off a shopping list of "Christian facts" - or are these facts bound together to answer a bigger question Paul is addressing?
I hope this will be a fun and edifying read.Labels: Romans |
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posted by Daniel @
12:08 PM
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| Romans 10:4 |
"For not knowing about God's righteousness and seeking to establish their own, they did not subject themselves to the righteousness of God. For Christ is the end of the law for righteousness to everyone who believes. - Romans 10:3-4 [NASB]
If I tell you that my work day will end at 3:00 p.m., you will understand intuitively that the word end, in this case, describes the point at which my work day ceases. On the other hand, if I tell you that the end justifies the means, you will understand that the word end, in this case, is describing a purpose or conclusion. I think that is why the word end is used to translate the Greek word τέλος, since the English word end shares this range of the semantic spectrum with τέλος.
This verse is therefore telling us that either Jesus (for God's righteousness) brought the law to an end, or that Jesus was the purpose of the law (for righteousness)?
When Paul speaks about Christ being the end of the law for righteousness in verse 4, we know from verse 3 that Paul is referring back to God's righteousness. Thus verse for is telling us one of two things, either Christ is the cessation of the law for the God's righteousness, or Christ is the purpose of the law for the God's righteousness. In order to know for sure which use Paul intended, we should follow his argument in the next few verses.
Okay, back to
Paul, a former Pharisee, presumes that his countrymen are going to refute what he has just written by quoting Leviticus 18:5 (cf. So you shall keep My statutes and My judgments, by which a man may live if he does them; I am the LORD [NASB]). In anticipation of this refutation, Paul himself alludes to the passage when he writes the following in verse 5, "For Moses writes that the man who practices the righteousness which is based on law shall live by that righteousness.". Paul equates up front what his Jewish readers are going to equate: the keeping of God's statutes with the righteousness which is based on the law.
But in verses 6-8 Paul challenges the depth (shallowness) of this understanding by digging deeper into the Torah:
But the righteousness based on faith speaks as follows: "DO NOT SAY IN YOUR HEART, 'WHO WILL ASCEND INTO HEAVEN?' (that is, to bring Christ down), or 'WHO WILL DESCEND INTO THE ABYSS?' (that is, to bring Christ up from the dead)." But what does it say? "THE WORD IS NEAR YOU, IN YOUR MOUTH AND IN YOUR HEART"--that is, the word of faith which we are preaching, Romans 10:6-8 [NASB]
Look at the texts Paul is quoting and take instruction from the fact that Paul inserts Christ in this passage in the place of observing God's commands:
"For this commandment which I command you today is not too difficult for you, nor is it out of reach. It is not in heaven, that you should say, 'Who will go up to heaven for us to get it for us and make us hear it, that we may observe it?' Nor is it beyond the sea, that you should say, 'Who will cross the sea for us to get it for us and make us hear it, that we may observe it?' But the word is very near you, in your mouth and in your heart, that you may observe it. - Deuteronomy 30:11-14 [NASB]
Now back to Romans 10:4, and our question concerning which meaning of the word τέλος did Paul intend. Paul's argument is that the Jews misunderstood the Torah by concluding that a man is made righteous by keeping the law, rather than is proved righteous by having kept the law. The distinction is subtle, so bear with an almost vulgar illustration. A person who has lot their virginity cannot become a virgin through any amount of abstinence. The virgin is the one who has abstained, but abstinence does not produce virginity. In the same way the One who has kept the law perfectly (Christ) has demonstrated that He is righteous. His keeping the law did not generate righteousness, it revealed it. No amount of law keeping can create new righteousness. This was what the Jews had missed. They thought that keeping the law produced righteousness in men, when it did no such thing.
Thus when Paul shows that Christ kept the command of God, it shows that He alone is righteous, and his overarching argument is that Christ is our righteousness - and that this righteousness is God's righteousness, not our own - not something we generate.
Going back to the text then, is Paul saying that Jesus Christ has terminated the law for God's righteousness, or is Paul saying that Jesus Christ is the fulfilment of the law by which everyone who believes is able to partake of God's righteousness? If you have been following the flow, you must conclude, as I do, that Christ is the fulfilment of the law proving Himself to be God's righteousness for those who believe.
Some argue from this text that Christ has abrogated the law, I think this is not the text to use to make that argument. This text does not teach that Christ terminated the law, it teaches that Christ was the fulfillment of the law.Labels: Romans |
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posted by Daniel @
8:37 AM
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| The Living Dead... |
"For to me, to live is Christ and to die is gain." - Philippians 1:21 [NASB]
You're walking along in that part of downtown where there are a lot of street people begging. You feel justified in not giving a lot to these because you really don't know whether giving them money would do more damage than good. It is one thing to give to one who is in need, and quite another to give to a man who is unwilling to work (c.f. 2 Thessalonians 3:10). But it does happen that you will find, from time to time, someone who is in genuine need, and my presumption is that when you encounter such a one, you willingly give the change in your pocket up to help this one along.
My question to you is why do you stop there? Why, is it that when you see a legitimate need, and are even provoked within you to give something, you do as little as is humanly possible?
The question is actually a rhetorical one. I plan to tell you why you do that, and hope that in doing so you are edified.
Let's ask our selves that tired old cliche, "What would Jesus do?". But, let's not ask that question intending for the answer to become the motivational squeeze that forces our hand to act. That would be using our understanding to "guilt" us into activity. That would be using guilt as a motivation - or worse, fear of spiritual repercussion as a motivator. We don't want to ask that question in order to provide some motivation, we want to ask that question as a diagnostic, so that we can see the gulf between ourselves and Christ. If Christ would do more than we are willing to do, that tells us something.
You see, the reason we would do as little as possible is because our old man is dead in trespasses and sin. It is the old man who sees the situation, and has no love within him for someone else. The old man can be motivated by guilt and fear to a level of civic virtue, but there is nothing spiritual in a virtue that is born of guilt and/or fear.
I should explain what I mean by civic virtue. Anytime a person does something that outwardly is perceived as a charitable or good work - that person is performing a civic virtue. Whenever a Muslim gives money to the poor, the external act is indeed a civic virtue, but the Muslim is not performing this seemingly virtuous act in response to a prompting by God's spirit. From the Christian perspective, we reason that the Muslim is simply responding to guilt or fear of repercussion. The Muslim would disagree, but I am speaking from the perspective of a Christian. Now, what I say of the Muslim is true of any world religion, Buddhism, secular moralism, atheism, Hinduism, etc., and unless a person is acting in Christ, it is true of the Christian who performs a civic virtue also.
When the moral wherewithal to help the needy descends upon me, it is always coupled to a carnal indifference, and my default reaction to this tension is to satisfy them both. Give to the needy satisfying the moral imperative, and give as little as possible, satisfying the carnal indifference. You do that too.
That is why at the moment the moral imperative comes, we ought to consider how far Jesus would go to help this person. Would Jesus dig into his pocket, set consciously push past the bigger bills, to find the smaller coins, and then hand them over, and move on? Would Jesus give all the money in his pocket and then move on? Would Jesus stop and talk to the person? How far would He go?
Now, why is it that "we" don't want to go that far? Because the "we" in that question is what the bible calls the old man. It is the old man that has no interest in the things of Christ. It is the old man that we obey by default. But that old man is twice dead and we need to reckon on both deaths if we are going to live as Christ lived.
Here is what I mean by twice dead. The old man is dead in his tresspasses and sin. What the old man desires is what death itself desires. The old man is a dead man, and the desires of the old man are the desires of death. Death, here means that which is void of life. Everything that the old man desires translates into that which has no life in it. The old man lives in, and thrives in death - that is, he thrives in all things in from which life is absent. The desire of the old man is to flee anything even remotely connected to life. This isn't meant to be some ethereal, metaphysical, and therefore vague and unfathomable thing I am saying. I am speaking in plain and literal English. I do not use metaphors here, I mean exactly this - the old man is not dead in some figurative sense - but is the well of death that flees from life in all that it desires. It has no desire for life - it hates life, and Jesus is Life.
That's the first dead. The second dead in what I meant by "twice dead" is the fact that the "old man" of every genuine believer was crucified with Christ. Our old man died on Calvary. The death of the old man on Calvary freed every believer from our bondage to sin, and through sin, our bondage to the death that the old man was "living" to produce. This may well be difficult to understand for some, so it is enough (for now) to understand this second "dead" as meaning that the desire of the old man to flee life, is no longer binding on you.
When you come to the beggar then, and the old man desires one thing, and the Spirit another, we are called to obey the one by reckoning on the death of the other. That is the way to fully obey the Spirit is not to compromise with the flesh, but to consider how Christ wrought the death of the old man on Calvary - consider that the thing which wants us to be indifferent is actually a dead man walking - a thing that flees from life, and has always and ever been at work to produce and maintain an absense of life in us - it is a murderous thing bent on our eternal destruction, a thing whose only desire is death, a desire that Christ Himself gave his life to free you from the power of.
You have heard it said, "Make war against sin" - don't take that to mean make war against individual sins as they come up - it means make war against giving into the desires of the living dead within you. Don't feed it by obeying it's desires, but reckon it dead - identify what it desires, and do more than simply turn away from them - for the sake of our Lord, turn to Christ, and obey the desires of the Spirit instead.
Let me tell you, the only thing that is stopping you from being like Christ is your own habitual willingness to compromise your obedience - your willingness to obey the death that lives on in you. If that thing and its desires find no purchase in you - let me tell you, you will not be the same person. You will be as the Apostle Paul described - crucified with Christ.
Knowing this puts you one step closer to acting on it. But you cannot act on it in your own strength. First you must be convinced from scripture that this is how is is supposed to be - then you must learn that you yourself need grace to act, and that grace comes from the throne of Christ. You cannot enter into this without deep, prayerful repentence.
Your days are numbered, so don't put it off for too long.Labels: repentance, Romans, sanctification, The Sinfulness Of Sin |
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posted by Daniel @
9:52 AM
7 comment(s)
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I would like to be more spiritual,
But I don't have enough time... |
On judgment day God is going to show many of us that we actually did have enough time, we just weren't willing to let go of a multitude of worthless things in order to do what God was calling us to do.
"I don't have enough time" translates for many of us into, "I don't have enough time to do all that God calls me to do because deep down given a choice between what I want to do with my time and what Christ calls me to do with my time, I consistently and continually choose what I want to do, and thereby grieve that Holy Spirit that calls me to surrender myself..."
Walking in the flesh is the default walk for all of us. It simply means choosing to live out the desires of the flesh - whatever the flesh demands, that is what the will agrees to do. If the flesh says you don't have enough time to gratify me and God both, you choose to gratify the flesh and leave God wanting. That is what walking in the flesh looks like.
The immature believer wants this: the flesh to desire godly things. They pray for that in their ignorance - Dear God, please make me patient, make me obedient, make me more loving, make me ... the list doesn't end.
Listen: God isn't going to make your flesh suddenly desire godly things. That is a pipe dream, a farce, a lie, a false hope that can keep a well meaning Christian on a rat wheel running but going nowhere for decades. Learn this from scripture - the only thing God does with the desires of the flesh is tell you that the thing that is producing them died with Christ on Calvary, and that you no longer are it's slave on that account.
You see, we have our own opinions about what freedom from the bondage to sin should look like. Most of us start out thinking that freedom from the bondage to sin is going to mean that we no longer have sinful desires. We presume freedom from means an absence of desire. But God did not such the sin out of our lives as one sucks poison from a wound. No, "us" that we call "the flesh" is not our skin and bones, it is the part of us that we would call "sin" - and it will -not- be cured by God, it will be destroyed. To be succinct, it has already been destroyed on Calvary two millenia ago.
To get your mind around that, know that what Christ took to the cross includes your yesterdays, today, and tomorrows. Sin is going to be with you until the day you die, and all that sin will do to you every day of your life - all of that Christ took to the cross. If you are in Christ, it is a matter of factual information that you have been crucified with Christ, it is a factual matter that the thing inside of you that continues to rebel against God and demand that you obey its desires - that -sin- no longer has dominion over you, but that doesn't mean sin is absent from you, it means that Christ Who overcame sin abides with you, is in you, and is Lord over you, and through your union with Christ, you now have been set free from that bondage: you are longer "owned" by sin, but owned by God in Christ.
Hear me children, brothers, sisters - You will never overcome sin by seeking its absence, you over come sin because you have a new indwelling Master who by Himself has defeated sin and death. You overcome sin not by gritting your teeth and suppressing it, but by surrendering to the Lordship of Christ. If you are in Christ you now have two desires - the "old", default desire of the flesh, which we often simply think of as "our own desires", and now a new desire to please God that came upon us the moment Christ entered into us. Moment by moment we are given the choice of surrendering what we do to one or the other desire. If we surrender our will to the flesh and obey its desires we are walking in the flesh, but if we surrender our will to the Spirit of Christ and obey His desires, we are walking in the Spirit.
The mind that makes excuses for, and justifies a continued obedience to the flesh scripture describes as being "set on the flesh" - it is a "carnal mindset" - not living in subjection to the will of God, but expressing its enmity for God in an open disdain for, and subsequent setting aside of, God's will.
That is why the Christian life is war.
We are at war with the flesh and its desires. It writhes on the cross, flesh from the cross - refuses to regarded as a defeated foe. It makes its demands of us as though it still owned us, and only the defeated and ignorant make a habit of laying down their sword, and making camp under its banner. The duty of every Spirit filled believer is to know who they are in Christ - to know that they are called moment by moment to this battle - to take the fight beyond putting band-aids on the symptoms and start dealing with the disease.
The part of you, if you are in Christ, who wants to obey God - the part that convicts you that you ought not to surrender yourself to this sin or that sin? That is the will of Spirit you received the day you believed, and resisting that will is far easier when we are ignorant and full of lies. When scripture says that the devil seeks to devour people, let me tell you, although the father of lies devours in many ways, I think a very common way is to keep believers ignorant or deceived about these truths I mention today. The Romans six through eight truths - the "Christ is in you now, you must obey Him now" truths.
If the devil can keep you convinced that you aren't there yet, you will continue to chase the wind thinking that you are pursuing a righteousness that you never seem able to obtain. No, you must learn that the battle isn't about being free from sin's desire - because you won't get free from sin's desire, that isn't how it works - you are set free from sin's power, from its authority, from its ability to own and rule you. In -Christ- who defeated sin you can (if you obey Christ) deny even the desires that your sinful flesh today is calling you to obey. He has defeated sin, you won't unless you surrender to the one who has defeated sin, there is no victory for you. Know Christian, that the thing that is producing sinful desire in you is dying right now Calvary 2000 years ago in Christ, the same Christ who defeated it - who is in you - who is FOR you, and who is directing you this moment and every moment down the path - HIS - path, to victory. You cannot defeat your sinful desires, but Christ already has. Your job therefore is to stop trying to defeat sin, and instead obey Christ and in doing so He will defeat sin in you - not by your power to resist sin, but by His victory 2000 years ago over that thing that is presently demanding you to obey its sinful lusts - that condemned foe who would continue to rule you.
Every moment you live Christian you must choose whom you will obey, that which is killing you, or that Him who is freeing you from that death. Do you want to fellowship with Christ - learn who Christ in you is. You cannot fellowship with a person you consistently and continually ignore and disobey - learn who it is you are shunning when you obey the flesh - listen - the love you have for Christ isn't supposed to be some amorphous thing that your affections can't quite pin down. Like trying to hang a sign on a wall that lacks a nail - that isn't how your relationship with Christ is supposed to be. He is here, if you are in Him, and nearer than a brother. The problem is you are so busy obeying the flesh, and resisting Him, you never fellowship with him except when you pray and beg him to change your flesh, which He will never do.
You must come to the Christ that is in you Christian - you cannot make up another Christ and try going to Him. Don't waste your time imagining that you must build a bridge by your own righteousness to God, Christ is the bridge, and He is in you, and if you would only learn to obey instead of forsake Him, you would know fellowship with him - and truly, that fellowship will be a fire in your soul the next time the flesh calls. You were never meant to walk alone brother, sister, you were meant to walk in the Spirit.
May God open eyes to His truth, to His son, and do a work in our generation.Labels: Romans, sin |
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posted by Daniel @
5:25 AM
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| My take on Romans 7 |
 What I want to do, I don't do.
What I don't want to do - that is the thing that I do.
Is Paul describing himself or making an illustration in the first person? If he is describing himself, is he describing his former conduct as a Jew, or his current struggle as a mature Christian?
Sincere, godly men disagree on this point, so I expect some of you who read this to sincerely disagree with my understanding of the text - I take that as a given. There is a lot at stake in this passage, and many of us hold our understanding of it quite passionately - and, if I may be so bold, I would say especially those of us who hold that Paul is describing his current state as a believer - since we who see ourselves in the struggle of Romans 7, and know ourselves to be genuine believers - are apt to make conclusions favorable to our own experiences.
Now, as a preamble, allow me to say that I hadn't intended to make a post on Romans 7 per se, but having mentioned Romans seven in the sermon and having discussed it afterwards with Bryan, (who has disagreed with me for a few years now on our various interpretations on this passage, and having read this post over at Bryan's blog, I thought, and having started to reply to his post over at his blog and finding my response too verbose for a casual comment - I thought it best to reply here on my own blog - and link to it from there. What you see therefore is my reply to Bryan, and subsequently, my understanding of the text in question.
Now, before we continue, I should add that I know all about the "present tense" of Paul's discourse, and while we use the present tense to describe things that are presently true, we also use the present tense linguistically when presenting hypotheticals - so I am not shaken by nor overlooking Paul's use of the present tense in this passage, I am merely regarding it as an hypothetical illustration rather than an autobiographical aside.
My understanding of this portion of Romans 7 is not that it does not describe a "Christian" - but rather that it describes a person who is not experiencing victory over sin by walking in the spirit - it depicts what walking in the flesh looks like.
Paul has just spent the previous chapter saying that we (those who are in Christ) shall not continue in sin - that is, that we shall no longer be in this kind of Romans 7 bondage, because we died with Christ and in doing so we died to our previous bondage.
Let's be honest - anyone can suppress sin in their own strength - in fact, that is what every other moral scheme and world religion is founded on. But the death described in Romans 6 provides the only power in creation to spiritually deal with sin - only this power operates through a very specific, and counter-intuitive means: faith. It manifests itself after one begins trusting that one is in fact dead to sin and alive to God (literally) in Christ Jesus - and after one begins putting all their trust in the fact that it is going to be =this= union with Christ in death that frees an individual from sin's dominion, and that carnal, external obedience (suppressionism) having no power to free you from sin's bondage, will simply save you from expressing the sin within in the moment, and do nothing to deal with the sin within that is producing this stuff.
That is not to say that you sit around and meditate and sin goes away - nor is it to say that you simply auto-suggest your sin's away by suppressing with a better, more spiritual cork. The plain truth is that there is -no- substitute for faith. You can go through the motions, but if you do not really believe that you are dead to sin because Jesus made you dead to sin, you will be in Romans 7 throughout all your effort. =THAT= is what Romans 7 is describing - a struggle to obey God without the power to do so - that is, a struggle in the flesh. Anything that is not of faith is by default of the flesh - no matter how righteous it might look on the outside.
Paul himself explains what Romans 7 is describing, he does so in Romans 7:21-23 "So I find it to be a law that when I want to do right, evil lies close at hand. For I delight in the law of God, in my inner being, but I see in my members another law waging war against the law of my mind and making me captive to the law of sin that dwells in my members. "
Romans 7 describes the law of sin that was "bring[ing] death to [him]"
But Paul does not cave in there and say that we remain in bondage to this law of sin in our members that is producing death in us. He immediately comes to the solution for which he bothered with the parenthetical illustration in the first place. In 7:24 he asks,"...Who will deliver me from this body of death? " he labels the experience he has just described - not as "the normative Christian experience" but as "the body of death" - referring to the fact that this body is controlled by a law of sin that produces death. His question underscores the fact that he is in the middle of teaching a deliverance from the bondage to this law of sin and death that was started in Romans six - this was no autobiographical aside, this was a practical exposition of what Paul means when he says "the law of sin and death" - for when Romans 8:2 tells us that the Spirit of life in Christ Jesus sets us free from the law of sin and death - we need to know up front what the law of sin and death -is-.
The law of sin and death is that law that is in our members that makes us obey sin - that is what Paul was describing - he begins it in Romans six in summary form: "Sin shall no longer have dominion over you because you are no longer under law but under grace" - as soon as he gives this summary he starts qualifying it because if he doesn't one might imagine that the moment you become a Christian you magically stop sinning. His reponse therefore to the idea that this grace from God allows you to continue in sin is to say, "By no means!" - but he then begins to show that even when you are not a legitimate slave, yet if you present yourselves to a master and obey him, you are (for all intents and purposes) that one's slave whom you obey. In other words even if you have been set free, if you continue to obey your old master, you are are still in bondage - even though you don't have to be. Paul sums up his thoughts there by thanking God that we have been set free from sin by becoming slaves of righteousness, and in doing so he gives us a crucial part of the deliverance plan - you are either obedient to Christ, or you are enslaved to sin - there is no middle ground.
When Paul begins Romans 7 with the question - "do you not know?" he is introducing an expository discourse - arguing from the lesser to the greater - he wants to show to the Jewish mindset that what he is teaching is not contrary to the way in which God's covenant works - by showing that just as the law of marriage binds the wife to her husband while he yet lives, and is no longer binding after the life that held her in bondage (her husband's) is dead, so too when we died in Christ we were set free from something in us that was "aroused by the law" and "at work in our members bearing fruit for death" - but up until this point "that something" that we have been set free from (just as the widow was set free) has yet to be given a label.
This is the context in which Paul begins the discourse in question - after he boldly says that we have been released from the law (that aroused sin in us) having died to that which held us - he then begins to illustrate the very thing we have been set free from - that is, he begins to illustrate how the law does not deliver a person out of bondage to sin - for the one who has the law and tries to obey the law finds that the law has no power against sin - it only demonstrates that he is a sinner because it shows him what is wrong, and he finds himself unable to resist doing what is wrong even though he has the law to tell him that it is wrong. The law in no way empowers him to do what he wants to do (obey the law) and does nothing to deliver him from doing what he does not what to do (disobey the law).
Paul is showing that there is something that the law can not do in that it is powerless to deal with the corruption we inherited from Adam - the "sin" that remains in our flesh.
He is bringing us through this illustration so that when he again states that we are saved from this in Christ, we know what we are saved from.
In Romans six Paul teaches:
[1] that God delivered us from sin in Christ, and
[2] this deliverance is bound up in our union with Christ, that Christ's death on the cross, our union with Him, and God raising us up in Christ is the means by which (through faith) God does in us what the law wasn't able to do - deliver us from sin's power.
This deliverance is brought about by our death in Christ, for that death delivered us from our former bondage - In Romans 7 Paul shows that the way this death delivers us from bondage is not contrary to God's ways, but in fact complementary - for just as the bride is bound to the law so long as that which binds her lives, so too we are bound to law that governs our "flesh" for only as long as the "flesh" lives. He then contrasts this great deliverance with the very bondage one is being delivered from (which is, of course, what is being described in the passage in question) - he contrasts it with the law of sin and death so that when he concludes the description of the law of sin and death, his proclaimation that you are free from that "law of sin and death" has tangible context.
The struggle in Romans seven is not an autobiographical description of Paul's "current" struggle with sin - it is the logical and necessary continuation of a point he began to make in Romans 6 - an illustration of what "the law could not do" an illustration that gives substance to his conclusion: that the Spirit of life has set us free from something in Christ - it sets us free from the law of sin and death - that is, it sets us free from "Romans 7."
I agree therefore with the Piper quote this far: Paul is not teaching that we should make peace with sin - though I would say that Chapter six teaches that we have already won the war against sin (in Christ), as opposed to "will win the war" - but I would word it in such a way that there is no room to use Chapter seven to excuse "tactical defeat" in the battle against sin, and I would be careful to show that tactical defeat was not a necessary, or normative component of the process. I would say chapter 7 illustrates the law of sin and death that Christ delivered us from in Himself, and that the struggle described there is nothing more than the default, carnal approach to trying to obey God when we are doing so in a spiritual vacuum; even if this is our default approach the moment we come to Christ, and I would add, even the default fall back position that we immediately assume the very moment we neglect to walk in faith, or said another way, the moment we fail to walk in the Spirit. When we walk in the spirit we do =not= give into the flesh.
Piper's concluding remark was:
It's the earnestness of the war and the response to defeat that show your Christianity, not perfection.
I don't pretend to correct Piper, but for the sake of this discussion, I would elaborate on that conclusion thus:
The earnestness of our war is demonstrated by our unwillingness to continue to walk (by default) in the flesh. The Christian who is ignorant of the doctrine of deliverance nevertheless abhors in himself this carnal walk even if he cannot describe it in theological terms. This desire to be free from a carnal walk does not originate in his flesh, but is the divine character of the Holy Spirit within him. This abhorrence for sin shows that the Holy Spirit is within him and that he is a genuine child of God, but until he begins to deal with sin spiritually in Christ, that is, according to the only provision God has made - he remains carnal and impotent; though in truth he has been set free from sin's power, that freedom is only in Christ, that is, it is only appropriated his when he walks in Christ by a determined and willful act of faith. The consistency of his walk in Christ (and consequently, his deliverance from sin) reflects his spiritual maturity. Spiritual maturity is not a measure of how regenerate you are, it is a measure of how Christ-like you are. When you are in the Spirit you are perfectly Christ-like, and when you are not in the spirit, you are carnal and not Christ-like at all - even if in the strength of your flesh you manage to near-perfectly approximate the character of Christ (through habitual suppression of sin, forming sin breaking habits, and doing good deeds even though your heart is secretly not in it) - yet this asceticism has absolutely no power, and is a mark of immaturity as surely as wanton sin is. An unsaved person can be quite earnest in the war against sin (how many orthodox Jews do we need to know before we understand this?), but his earnestness doesn't suggest he is a Christian - it only shows he is earnest.
The Romans 7 struggle depicts a man trying to obey through means other than grace. That could be a Jew, or it could be a theologically confused believer - it doesn't matter who it is, what matters is that in your flesh the law of sin and death reigns until you stop obeying it - and you cannot stop obeying it except through faith - through reckoning yourself dead to sin and alive to God in Christ - it is a faith thing, not a grit your teeth and obey thing.
Trying to obey the law is good for you - especially if you are earnest and zealous - because it will wears you out faster - because nothing brings you to Christ faster than trying to keep law and failing miserably because you are unable to do so.
Let me know if that explains it or not.Labels: Q and A, Romans, sanctification, Theology, union with christ |
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posted by Daniel @
10:07 AM
6 comment(s)
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