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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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| 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)
 
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| Thoughts on James 2:14-17 |
What good is it, my brothers, if someone says he has faith but does not have works? Can that faith save him? If a brother or sister is poorly clothed and lacking in daily food, and one of you says to them, "Go in peace, be warmed and filled," without giving them the things needed for the body, what good is that? So also faith by itself, if it does not have works, is dead. - James 2:14-17 [ESV]
If one regards the teachings of Christ (as recorded by the authors of the New Testament) to be accurate and truthful (and I count myself in this group), then one is forced to conclude that whenever anyone is saved they are necessarily saved by grace through faith in Jesus Christ, and that no other way of salvation exists.
It is not only possible, but all too common for people who call themselves Christians to agree entirely with the words I have used to summarize my own understanding - yet when you compare what they believe to what I believe concerning the gospel, you will find that we are far from one another in our understanding of what it meant.
Starting with the word faith. Do you remember the old School House Rocks cartoon vignettes that used to be played on Saturday mornings? I liked the Grammar ones the best, though I have a soft spot in my heart for the one where the bill becomes a law. In the vignette on conjunctions ("Conjunction Junction") - the conductor who is singing the song introduces the conjunction "or" with the words, "And then there's or: Oh or!" If you know the tune, and the part, I want you to inject that exact inflection into these words as you read them: And then there's faith. Ohhhhh faith. If you aren't familiar with School House Rocks, well, that's your loss. The one on pronouns is quite a hoot.
I have heard some whom I would regard as doctrinally astray, describe faith in terms of intellectual assent. They would define faith as having sufficient conviction that a thing is true. Thus faith, for the "easy believer" or "free gracer" is nothing more than an intellectual conviction.
Now, while I won't go so far as to defend someone who is so confused about what faith is that they reduce it to an intellectual conviction, I will say that I can understand why some of them (at least) want to define faith in such superficial terms - they think they are guarding the gospel of grace from a gospel of works.
Scripture everywhere teaches that the way to draw near to God is through contrition, ie., through surrender to God's rule. We cannot draw near to God except through our own humility. Unfortunately when we think of humiliation we don't tend to think of someone surrendering their will to another, rather we think of someone feeling grossly embarrassed about something. So also when we say "humble" we tend to think of being humble as simply having a very low opinion of our selves. But when the bible says humble it means willing to obey, and not that we have a low self image.
The word scripture uses most often to describe contrition and humility is couched in the context of man's rebellion against God. Until a person accepts God's authority to rule over their life, they are in a state of rebellion against God. When a person changes their disposition towards God, and moves from rebellion to contrition - the bible refers to this change of heart as repentance.
Thus the way of salvation that is given again an again in the scriptures is that sinners should repent (of their rebellion against God) and believe the good news concerning Jesus Christ.
Martin Luther entered the history books because by his day, the Catholic church had so corrupted both the way of salvation and again the way of sanctification, that grace became something not only could earn through meritorious conduct, but indeed something you needed to earn in order to offset various sins by which you were condemning yourself all over again.
Without delving too deeply into the Catholic system, it is enough to say that evangelicals reject entirely the notion of meritorious works. Yet some have fallen off the horse on the other side, in that they not only reject meritorious works, but reject the teaching that contrition (giving up your rebellion against God, recognizing His authority over you, and surrendering your will to God) is a necessary component of saving faith. They would argue that this contrition (or repentance) is a "work of merit" - and so reject the teachings of Christ and the Apostles that we are to repent and believe the gospel, and supplant that with a thinner, easier version, whereby we need not repent at all, we need only to believe.
This is an old error. A very old error, for we find James the brother of our Lord correcting it in the passage that makes the header of this post. There we have, by way of an example, the gist of what James is saying on the matter.
When James speaks of "works" he is speaking of those works of contrition that necessarily testify to the validity of our surrender to God. We could call them "works of repentance" - meaning works that flow from our having turned away from rebelling against God's rule.
Thus James is saying that there is a difference between the faith of someone who has surrendered control of their life to God, and someone who hasn't. He likens it to one who sees another in need but rather than supply their need gives them empty words ("Go in peace, be warmed and filled,"). Faith without surrender is just lip service - that's what James is saying.
His argument is that the faith that saves flows from contrition, and not rebellion. The man who refuses to surrender to God's rule, and at the same time imagines that God is going to save him because he has managed to convince himself that the gospel is true - is not only mistaken, he is worse off than the man who has never heard the gospel in the first place - for who, after having become convinced that the way is broad, wants to embark on the narrow? The broad way is better they say, and so having set their foot on the road of ruin, are happy to boldly stomp their way into every increasing ignorance and folly.
Instructing a person out of such an error is a work and a half - because the person has rejected the notion of repentance, and believes themselves to be able to hold onto Christ without every letting go of the world.
Faith that never gives evidence of contrition is not saving faith. I say this with only one caution - and that is the caution that Christ gave with regards to the angels being unable to discern by looking between immature faith and false faith (ie. between the tares and the wheat). The purpose of such instruction is not to make you a "fruit inspector" who goes around judging the validity of anyone's profession of faith. Rather the purpose of this post is to make a distinction between easy believism and genuine saving faith - and thereafter to apply that teaching to ourselves, comparing it to what we believe.Labels: doctrine, edification, faith, foppy faith., repentance |
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posted by Daniel @
12:25 PM
2 comment(s)
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| 1029: Grace and Faith |
I am guessing here, but I suspect that the average evangelical congregation, or even to be more specific, the average evangelical Christian, would not have a problem with a pastor who stood up one Sunday and preached from the pulpit that those who are being saved are being saved by their faith.
As someone who has preached, I have, from time to time, endured the unfortunate intellectual or academic pummelling of some carping caviler, who (however well intentioned) cannot help but express after some sermon or teaching, how much better it would have been had I expressed myself according to their fancy rather than my own.
I want (therefore) to be certain (and I want you the reader to be certain) that I am not engaging in that sort of nit pickery in the writing of this post. So I ask you in advance to be careful in how you hear what I have to say - to listen with scrutiny as it were, to chew on what is said before you attempt to digest it.
You see, I am not carping or caviling when I say that it is wrong to preach that we are saved by faith. I think, in fact, that many an error begins with just such a teaching.
Now, if you are a little confused by that statement, I hope that I will be able to both explain what I mean, and that having done so, you will not only agree with me, and be fed in the process, but more than this - that when you see the truth of it, you will find in that truth a path by which you may, should you exercise youself upon it, be drawn into a closer walk with God.
We are not justified by works, nor are we justified by works "plus" faith, nor (and here is the kicker) by faith alone. What the bible teaches is that we are saved by grace through faith. Most of us can quote Ephesians 2:8 in some form or other ("For by grace you have been saved through faith; and that not of yourselves, it is the gift of God"), but among those who know this passage, I suspect that many fail to see that we are saved by God's grace.
I suspect, I say, that many see grace in this passage as a theological precursor to the faith "that saves". Faith then, they reason, saves us, but it isn't a faith that comes from our own self, but a faith that springs up from grace.
I would agree, that faith does spring up from grace, but scripture presents the formula to us in this way: not that faith that saves, but rather that grace saves through faith.
If you fail to see the difference between "saved by faith" and "saved by grace", such that you believe yourself to be "saved by faith" - you are going to suffer the theological fallout of that error in discernment.
If I am saved by my faith, then, I am making faith the cause of my justification instead of God. Do you see the difference this (seemingly) small confusion introduces?
Now when I am want assurance, I do no look to the grace of God by which I was saved, instead I look to my faith. I put my trust (my hope of salvation) not in God, but in my own estimation of the legitimacy of my faith - my hope is that my faith is legitimate, rather than my hope being in God's grace.
Do you see the folly of trusting in faith? Scripture, and by extension God, does not call us to trust in our faith, but to trust in Him. Whether in the pulpit or the pew, whether we have inherited some clumsy theology, or have come to it of our own (sloppy) study, if we forget that we are saved by grace, and start saying we are saved by faith - we are in error, and that error is going to have consequences in our walk.
Oh I know for some the difference seems a trifle. What does it matter, some will argue. Sure, okay, "technically" we are saved by grace, but since we must exercise "faith" in order to be saved, the distinction is (more or less) moot. That sounds reasonable, I suppose. I mean we can be saved, and remain saved whether our understand of these things is precise or imprecise. What does it matter?
Well, if all we were concerned with was whether or not we were justified, then I suppose the distinction isn't all that important. But living the Christian life entails more than becoming justified by grace through faith - it involves being saved from sin by grace through faith.
I personally have spent a lot of time and effort showing that we are saved from sin (c.f. Matthew 1:21) just as surely as we are saved from God's wrath (c.f. Romans 5:9) - striving to show, over many posts, that sanctification is a work done by God in us through faith - but I suppose I have been neglect in showing that while this same work is the product of grace, that manifests itself in and through faith.
Why is this important to me, and why should it be important to you?
It is important because some of you who are reading are finding it difficult to plug God into your religion. You have a vibrant and perhaps even orthodox form of godliness, but you deny it's power (c.f. 2 Timothy 3:5). You are somewhat estranged from God in your affections because you either have forgotten or never properly understood that everything about your religion hinges on God's grace. It is God who is at work in you, to will and to do His good pleasure. If you are looking to your faith instead of to God, you are missing out on the relationship that ought to be the well from which you draw your strength, joy, and hope, and are instead drawing such things from the puddle of your own faith.
My hope, of course, is that if you find yourself looking to your own faith instead of to God's grace, you will adjust your gaze, and in doing so, be blessed.Labels: faith, grace, sanctification |
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posted by Daniel @
8:30 AM
2 comment(s)
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| 1014: Justified By Faith (Part III): Living by faith. |
In part I and II of this post, I have expressed the notion that Christianity is not a set of rules to follow apart from God, but rather a life that is supposed to flow from a walk of faith. In this post I hope to show how the preceding posts are put into practice in the Christian life by comparing living by faith with living apart from faith.
the righteous will live by his faith...
for we walk by faith, not by sight...
I will put My Spirit within you and cause you to walk in My statutes
For those who are according to the flesh set their minds on the things of the flesh, but those who are according to the Spirit, the things of the Spirit
But I say, walk by the Spirit, and you will not carry out the desire of the flesh
If we live by the Spirit, let us also walk by the Spirit.
I have been crucified with Christ; and it is no longer I who live, but Christ lives in me; and the life which I now live in the flesh I live by faith in the Son of God, who loved me and gave Himself up for me.
But my righteous one shall live by faith; and if he shrinks back, my soul has no pleasure in him.
And without faith it is impossible to please Him
Scripture teaches that faith is not simply something you have, but the orthodox "way" to be a Christian. That's a heady concept because we tend not to think of faith as something you "do" we are inclined instead to think of it as something you either possess or lack.
The notion of faith is further confused by the way many limit its application to justification. Everyone who understands justification knows that you -need- faith in order to become a Christian. Arminians would argue that you need to continue generating new (saving) faith in order to remain a Christian as well; though a Calvinist would correct that errant notion and say that saving faith does not wax and wane being a gift not generated by man, but received by him, and depending not on the person to maintain, but rather on God to sustain.
It doesn't matter if you are an Arminian, a Calvinist, somewhere in between, or in the fringe vociferously rejecting both views in favor of your own special understanding, I am guessing that there are many in your group, however common or elite it may be, whose application of faith in their lives is primarily limited to their justification.
Among those who recognize that sanctification is also by faith, we still have many, perhaps even the majority, attempting to become sanctified by applying faith according to a variety of mystical formulas, plans, and methods. It has been my experience both in person and online, that only a very few congregations are ever taught how sanctification works, and again, fewer still that are taught how sanctification *really* works.
Let's start with the gospel. How did you become a believer? You became a believer the moment you appealed to be reconciled to God on the basis that God would accept your appeal in Christ. We might describe that more commonly, by saying you became a believer the moment your repented and believed the gospel.
The trouble I have with clichés is that they are repeated until they become a Christian phrase that no longer means what it says - and people no longer are being indoctrinated according to the actual meaning, but rather according to the current cultural meaning associated with the phrase.
So I say you became a believer the moment you appealed to God to be reconciled to Him on the basis that God would accept your appeal in Christ. That describes what a repentant heart is doing. It is saying, I repent of my rebellion, that is, of obeying the voice of my own will, and desire to be restored to that position for which I was created - that is, I desire to be abandon my sinful rebellion and incline myself to be ruled by God the Father; I appeal to be reconciled, not because I am worthy of it, but because I trust that God Himself has made provision in Christ for my reconciliation, and that my reconciliation will not be brokered through any self merit, but entirely through God's provision appropriated through the impossibly gracious requirement of simply trusting that God will indeed reconcile me to Himself if I appeal to Him in Christ. I recognize that my sins condemn me, but that God is just in forgiving me by uniting me with Christ, so that I am in Christ (joined to Him through a spiritual union) during the crucifixion. I see that my sins have therefore been put away justly having received a full condemnation in Christ, and that Christ, being himself innocent could not justly be kept in the grave, and so was raised from the dead, and that by virtue of my union with Christ I too have been raised in from the dead - my sins having been left in the grave (as it were), so that the fact of Christ's resurrection is the stamp of my acceptance with God, for if I were not acceptable to God, He could by no means have raised me up in Christ. The fact that Christ is raised demands that I am acceptable to God in Christ. This all becomes a reality the moment I receive grace to humble myself before God, and accept His rule thereby having been restored into a right relationship through Christ, that is, restored as God's servant.
We say repent and believe, but those words are quite pregnant, and tossed about like bones that could use a bit of meat on them, given the rampant theological ignorance of our day.
So when I speak of sanctification by faith - I do not mean that I try and do good or try and do what I am required to do as a believer, and that I am supposed to "trust" that it will work when I do so. It means that the same gospel that I trusted on day one - the gospel that saved me, also sanctifies me. The moment I rest in the fact that God is for me, and not against me; the moment that I trust that I am reconciled to God in Christ, I am free to draw near to God, and free to choose to do His will. If I try to do God's will apart from resting in this knowledge, I am going to be doing it in my own strength.
A lot of sermons are spent on trying to motivate believers to act like believers. This pastor says that gratitude ought to be our motivation. Another pastor says it is love, we have to love God so much that we are pumped to do good works. Another says we ought to just read the bible a lot and hope something good happens. Another says that we are too prayerless, we need to pray more, or maybe all the time, so that we can surf the spiritual high into good works or obedience. We have to keep the fire stoked, to be on guard against losing the buzz - we want to be hyped all the time, so that we can always be ready to perform the Lord's will. Still others preach asceticism, or denying self - we need to just stop doing everything we want to do, and if we do that, we will be obeying God.
As a casual observer, I would suggest, based on what I see, that we are all prone to this sort of thing. We want to obey God, and never stop to consider whether we want to obey God because we are satisfied in Him, or whether we want to obey God in order to feel that He is satified with us.
Listen: The Christian who is looking for the right "motivation" for obedience, this Christian is not living by faith - he is failing in his effort to live by works and is floundering to find the right way to make the Christian life a "light yoke and easy burden". He is trying to find a way outside of living by faith, to live the life of faith.
Consider within yourself dear reader, how amazing it is that we are inclined to use the right language ("the life of faith") but fail to actually employ faith in the mundane process of daily living.
The example I gave in the last post whereby I was frantically praying for my daughter, only to realize that I was performing a religious duty without actually resting in God was given as an example of living in faith. That is what it looks like, that is how it is done. It is nothing more than trusting that every situation rests in God's hands. It is acting in the certainty of God's provision, and not freaking out when things don't go the way we think they are supposed to go.
Try and generate love, or patience, or assurance in your own strength. If you manage to conjure up something, whatever it is, it is superficial and powerless. You will never work yourself up into a lather sufficient to drive you the rest of your life. The love of the Lord is the strength of the believer. We rest in what He has done and in the knowledge of that finished work we find peace, comfort, assurance, and grace. The more we learn to walk in this way, the less concerned we are with generating motivations - we don't care to be motivated, but operate from the groundwork of genuine contentment.
Every other formula I have tried, has frustrated me and failed according to my own failing strength. Throughout all this however, as my faith has grown, I have learned to simply rest in the Christ, rest in the finished work of God - to recognize that this is life more abundantly - and as the song goes, the things of this world become strangely dim. In the strength of contentment and assurance, what do I care if I am to perform some task that would otherwise be loathesome to my flesh? Is my Lord and God with me? Does this please Him? Am I content to be His servant? Then I will rest in the work, whatever it may be.
Sure, I will stumble and fall, but I will rise up again, and run the race with endurance.
Be encouraged then, to walk by faith, to live by faith, and to stop looking for the magic key by which you can avoid God but still live an obedient life. You're problem is you are still running away from God even as you desire to please Him. Stop running away, and see what happens. Stop kicking against the goads, but accept the yoke, and see if there is any comfort in the Lord.
That's all I think I need to say on this point.Labels: faith, living in Christ. |
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posted by Daniel @
9:54 AM
11 comment(s)
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| 1010: Justified By Faith (Part II) |
Have you ever felt like your prayers are not getting through to God?
You know, where you feel like even though God is aware of all things at all times, that is, even though you know that God must hear your prayer, yet because you know that you are not as holy and pure in your prayer today as you were on your best day, that because of your current spiritual deficit, or rather your currently acute awareness of the same spiritual deficit you had even on your "best" day, you are certain that your prayer is utterly useless. You tell yourself that even though God "hears" your prayer, yet He will not respect it because you haven't been perfect in your obedience, and you see yourself for a hypocrite, and imagine that anything you say is worthless because you're such a phony.
Well if you're a genuine Christian, I am pretty sure you have been there, and probably more often than you would comfortably admit.
What is it that draws a believer out of a funk like that?
A woman I knew once remarked at a bible study that she used "praise and worship" music to get her in the mood for church. As a personal rule, I am something of a bulldog when people say stuff like that around me. "In the mood for church?", I asked, "what does that mean?" I don't recall the exact wording of her answer, but the gist of it was that she felt she could not receive God's word unless or until she was hyped up emotionally. In a nutshell, unless or until she felt spiritual, she believed she wasn't being spiritual.
Don't get me wrong, I have experienced a very real, spiritual elecation through sining in a congregation of people who are actually worshipping God in song. I have tasted the exaltation of God in my soul when singing worship songs. I do not suggest for a moment that a Christian cannot be drawn closer to God through worship in music. But this did not seem to be the nature of what she was describing. Her response was not about coming to a place of worship, but rather coming to a place of heightened emotional response. In her mind, she equated high emotions with spirituality, and low emotions with a lack thereof.
I am not sure if this was my first exposure to this sort of quackery, but it was certainly one of the first, and if my soul could form facial expressions in the wake of this response, it would have been one of wide-eyed, gaping mouthed, horror. Let me qualify my reaction a bit further though; I do not mean to present myself as so far above this sort of thing that I am looking down upon it from some great spiritual height. In the infancy of my own faith I was by no means immune to the influence of various superstitions, empty traditions, and well intentioned appeals to the mystical. If I was appalled, it was only in the knowledge that this person had been a Christian from her youth, and in all that time had never learned any better. I was not appalled by the quality of her ignorance, as much as I was that it should still exist after so many years.
Every new believer wants tangible assurance that they are genuine - that their faith is the real deal. I myself wanted, in the infancy of my faith, to be able to appeal to some "saved" feeling whenever I needed assurance. Said another way, I wanted to be able to supernaturally sense that I was saved. I think that is a common felt "need" of every person who joins themself to Christ - and it is common to both the genuine and the illegitimate. I was more or less ignorant of the scriptures, so I didn't really know what assurance was supposed to be like. Was it emotional? Tangible? Mystical? I had my own preconceptions, and in my case I was certain that whatever assurance was, it would come with a serious and settled "saved" feeling. This feeling would be supernatural in origin (mystical) - a sensation of sorts that only I was aware of, but something that was always there so that I could, by tapping into it at will, always know that I was really, really a Christian.
In fact, I sort of thought that unless I had some sort of ever-present supernatural experience going on, I might not even be a real Christian! Especially having listened to the sort of superficial Christian conversations that were the mainstay of my early fellowship - Christians talking to one another in language that made it sound like their lives were sprinkled liberally with supernatural impressions. When someone said, "the Lord showed me this morning that..." I took that to mean that they either had some sort of supernatural ability to hear God speak that I lacked, or worse, that I was receiving messages from God all the time but was not spiritual enough to interpret them properly. I began to consider every stray thought as a possible message from God, and every twinge of guilt as condemnation from the same. Being inclined towards compulsive thoughts I would think about the most horrible thing that God might want ask me to do, then convince myself that God was in fact "moving me" to do it, and that my reluctance to obey the voice of God was the most heinous of sins. My walk of "faith" was more of a stumbling, barely controlled free-fall down a careening path, twisting and turning, and driven by the winds of guilt at not answering immediately every stray thought that God was "beaming" in to my head.
My walk was a mess, and my faith was a burden to me, for I longed to be righteous, but was weighed down with the notion that God was micro managing the minutia of my existence, and that I was failing left, right, front, and center, to answer every buffetting wind. As exposed myself to God's word, I began to be set free from these lying doctrines, and man-made, mystical superstitions. The truth set me free, just as it sets all free who genuinely seek and find it. Afterwards, I equated my former ignorance with immaturity, and though I was ashamed and embarrassed that I should have been so foolishly led, I chalked it up to the infancy of my faith, and set it aside. When I was a child, I spoke and acted like a child, but I grew out of that, and put it away from me. My assumption was that everyone else in church must have gone through that long ago, and that I had only come lately to be where they were at, if I had even attained to that height.
So when I heard this woman speak of needing to be emotionally hyped up in order to do anything spiritual, I was shocked and stunned by the news. Shocked that anyone who has spent their life in the company of Christians could, in practice, be so flaky, and stunned I say, by the magnitude of her zeal, given how sorely misplaced it was. How was it that no one had corrected her of this notion? How was it that when I spoke against it, I felt like Paul on Mars Hill - I was speaking strange things that offended and confused people?
My point is not to drone on about this one instance, but rather to show in real life ignorance in the church produces empty religious rituals that go no where, and do no good thing, rather they only contribute to the demise of a church.
Getting back to the first point in this post: the path out of a dead prayer life; the path out of the agony of feeling that God doesn't hear your prayers, is not to find some emotional pick-me-up, but to find again the first truth that you have set aside covered over with empty and even superstitious religious notions.
That truth is that if you are in Christ God will hear your prayers. God will hear your prayers whether you feel you are right and acceptable to Him (because of some merit earned through righteous living), or you whether you feel you are too sinful and unacceptable to Him (...having failed to produce this same personal merit).
Certainty does not (and cannot) come from your emotions. Certainty comes when you trust that God hears you because of Christ's finished work on the cross. Certainty - or assurance, flows from faith, and not the other way around.
Let me give you real life account from my own life. My oldest daughter had a bit of a crisis last night, and in part that is why I use this particular example of prayer to introduce the big picture. She is only ten, and after listening to me read Isaiah 23 last night, and in the course of the discussion that followed about the end of the world, she began, though she had given her life to Christ a couple of years ago, to be sorely concerned for her soul. She realized, perhaps for the first time publicly, that she was afraid that her faith might not be real, and that when she dies she might not go to be with God, but instead would be exposed to His wrath. Through large tears she confessed that she knew she wanted to believe God, but that she found herself not trusting that He really would save her.
I call "judgment day clarity" like that a God send, and rightly so. She saw herself, perhaps for the first time, for who she truly was - someone who wanted to avoid hell, but who didn't really believe God. She came face to face with a burning anguish that would not be pacified by any platitude, grand or small. She saw that [1] she needed to believe, and [2] that she couldn't "make herself" believe.
Would that more believers had such a clear understanding of their truest dilemma! We talked for hours, my daughter and I, and I had to deny myself several times as I so wanted to placate her torment with cries of, "Peace! Peace!" when it was evident that such cries of peace would be more for my benefit than hers.
I explained faith to her ten times in ten different ways, and I underscored the fact that she cannot ride on my faith, but has to deal with God personally and directly. I couldn't give her faith, nor could she generate it herself, but she had to turn to the Author of faith Himself, and deal directly with Him, for He alone was the only one who could raise her up out of her dilemma.
But here is the crux of this personal example: I myself was praying up a storm as we talked, I was begging God silently for wisdom, for the right words, for His words (i.e. words from scripture), that I might not speak from my own wisdom, but quote His, and though I have been in Christ many years now, - I began to feel a little impotent when all my prayers seemed to be having no immediate effect.
My daughter was still tormented having her eyes of understanding glossed over in doubt. Why wasn't God opening her understanding?? I wasn't exactly panicked, but I was definitely off my game, as it were. At one point she went to the bathroom, trail of tears in her wake, and I was able to turn my soul full faced to the Lord and pray not alongside what I was doing, but as it were, I was able to be alone with the Lord long enough to realize that I was no longer exercising faith, but had begun to simply pleah with God to do my will, and wondering where the lions were.
You see, I had taken my eyes off of Christ. I had started to worry, to fret, to try and call down from heaven the sort of resolution I thought the situation needed.
When the solution I thought was necessary failed to materialize, I began to question whether God was listening, or whether my own prayers were fruitless, ...useless. I wasn't praying in faith, I was praying as a form or diligent religion. I knew that prayer was called for, I knew that unless God built this house, the labourer (me) would labor in vain. But for all that, I hadn't actually been coming to God in faith while talking to my daughter, but coming to God in pretense. I was coming to God in my desperation and trying to force God (through prayer) to do my will (calm my daughter, and open her understanding... now!), and this primarily for my own benefit. I was trying to do the right thing and wanted God's power to make it happen - rather than resting in God, and trusting that the situation was in His hands and not my own.
When I saw that I was floundering in prayer, in that moment I set my heart on the truth - that God hears me in Christ, and that having committed my path to the Lord, I was willing to rest in whatever God would do. These matters were in His capable hands, hadn't I appealed to my God? Hadn't He heard my prayer? The bible teaches that He heard my appeal, for it is surely His will that I instruct my children in the way they are to go, that I share the good news of Christ, and that sinners repent, and the gospel be proclaimed. In the blink of an eye I went from a desperate father full of concern, to a man so certain of God's goodness and provision, that I was at once filled with all patience and joy. I was in the Spirit, not some mystical place of emotion, but resting in the certainty of God's presence, God's power, and God's provision. Jehovah Jireh, amen.
My daughter came back from the washroom calm and at ease. I told her about my own lack of faith in our discussion, and how in the moment it was restored to me, I was at peace, trusting in God to do what I could not. She was so excited to hear this because she said in the two minutes she had left to go to the washroom, she suddenly found herself comforted and calmed - she was excited to hear how God had answered my prayer in her. It is one thing for a little girl to hear about God answering prayer, and another to be the knowing recipient of it.
Now, she didn't come back and tell me about some transcendent peace and calm that overcame her mystically with some sort of tangible tingle; rather I told her about my prayer, and then she told me about how it was answered, and knowing that I couldn't have known about her calmness she realized that God must have heard my prayer and answered it, and that her sudden calmness and renewed certainty were proof that God had answered my prayer. If she was calm when she came back, she was strengthened spiritually by the news that God had heard and answered my prayer in providing her with the calmness that comes from resting in the Lord.
I could go on and on about the grace and majesty of God, especially as it pertains to my daughter whom I so dearly love, but I mention this only to introduce faith as a component of the Christian life.
When scripture says that the just shall live by faith, it isn't describing the process of the new birth, it is describing the life that follows the new birth.
It isn't that the just shall inherit life by faith, it is that the just shall live by faith. Faith is not merely the foundation of our justification, it is also, and perhaps more significant given how this point is practically unheard of in many congregations - the foundation of our sanctification. I hope to show in the next post, that many immature believers today are not living their Christian lives by faith as they should, both to God's glory, and to their own joy. I hope also to articulate, as best I can, exactly what it means to live by faith.Labels: faith, Faith and prayer., prayer |
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posted by Daniel @
7:46 AM
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| 1005: Do not be distressed. |
There is a scene in Genesis (c.f. Chapter 45), where Joseph's brothers are reacquainted with him. Recall that as a youth, his brothers despised him first because their father favored him, and again because he had dreamt two dreams that, when interpreted, suggested his brothers would all bow down to him one day. On a day when the brothers were together, and far away from their father, Joseph came to them, and having seen him approaching from a long way off, they determined to kill him.
That's some serious hatred.
Now to be sure, not all the brothers were okay with murdering Joseph. Reuben sought to preserve Joseph by suggesting they kill him by tossing him into a deep and dry pit (where presumably Joseph would die of thirst). That way, I suppose, they can tell themselves they (personally) didn't kill him, they just put him in a pit. Thirst killed him - or something like that. I am speculating of course. What is certain however is that putting him in the pit was intended either to end his life, or perhaps to just hold him while they thought of how they were going to kill him.
It happened of course, and you know the story, that they saw an opportunity in the form of a passing caravan, and rather than simply let Joseph die in a pit (or alternately, kill him themselves), they should sell him, thereby ridding themselves of Joseph, and making a profit at the same time.
That was the last time they saw Joseph, and now he was standing before them endowed with power over them by virtue of both his exalted status, and again by their pronounced and obvious poverty. Here was a man that had it in his power to enslave them all, or worse, have them executed.
Can you imagine? Here was the man they had abused so long ago, and it was he who now had supreme power over them. The roles were reversed big time, and they were cut to the core with this knowledge - stunned by it; suddenly aware that a "biblical proportion" come-uppence had just opened their barred door, and waltzed into the center of their lives, and that they were powerless to do anything. What little squeaks might have come out of them had someone squeezed them in that moment I can only guess, but here is what Joseph said to them, "And now do not be distressed or angry with yourselves because you sold me here, for God sent me before you to preserve life".
The thing is, even though Joseph clearly forgave them, they didn't really believe it.
Oh sure, they lived as though they were reconciled to Joseph, but deep down they said to themselves, Joseph is only forgiving us for our father's sake. I say this because when Jacob passed away, the brothers resumed their old terror once again, even putting a post mortem command into Jacob's mouth concerning their well being. We see this in the last chapter of Genesis:When Joseph’s brothers saw that their father was dead, they said, "It may be that Joseph will hate us and pay us back for all the evil that we did to him." So they sent a message to Joseph, saying, "Your father gave this command before he died, 'Say to Joseph, Please forgive the transgression of your brothers and their sin, because they did evil to you.' And now, please forgive the transgression of the servants of the God of your father." This is the not a picture of people who believed Joseph the first time - they doubted his sincerity even as they lived years in the proof of it. How did Joseph respond to their fear and doubt? Read and see:But Joseph said to them, "Do not fear, for am I in the place of God? As for you, you meant evil against me, but God meant it for good, to bring it about that many people should be kept alive, as they are today. So do not fear; I will provide for you and your little ones." Thus he comforted them and spoke kindly to them. Okay, so what does that picture.
I mean, seriously.
There are believers today who ought rightly to be called doubters. They doubt God loves them, they doubt God *really* has forgiven them. They live their lives in the fear that God will suddenly realize that they still commit sin, and in His wrath He will disown them. They refuse to believe, just as Joseph's brothers refused to believe, that there could truly be forgiveness for them.
Their problem is the same problem as Joseph's brothers were experiencing - just as they didn't trust that Joseph had really forgiven them, so these, though they claim saving faith, do not trust that God will forgive them in the end.
Don't be like that. Faith comes by hearing, and hearing by the word of God. Do you doubt God's love or His forgiveness? Maybe you doubt His steadfastness or immutability? These do not persist in you because God's character is lacking, they persist because your knowledge and certainty of God's character is lacking.
If this is you, then I say read the bible ... moron1.
1Of course I mean "moron" in jest, but the admonition to read scripture is dead serious.Labels: Advice, faith, love |
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posted by Daniel @
7:15 AM
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| Not So Well Seasoned |
I was going to use the metaphor of rose coloured glasses, but in truth, rose coloured glass acts as a filter so that you are not seeing the whole picture, but only the part of the picture that is allowed through the filter - such that everything seems rosy because you are filtering out the light that isn't rosy.
But that didn't capture the flavour I was going for. In fact, flavour itself makes a better metaphor because, while seasoning can enhance flavour, seasoning can also mask flavour, even so far as to (effectively) change it.
God gives clear testimony to His character in His word. The bible doesn't provide us with as exhaustive a description of God as most of us would like - but the description the bible gives is consistent and clear. We do not have to wonder what God's character is like, for we know enough of God from His word to understand how God relates to His children. That God describes our relationship to Him as paternal is itself descriptive of God's character.
But, I find that even after years of study, and what I hope has been a very sincere walk with the Lord - yet I still anticipate that God will deal with me not according to the personality I find in scripture, but rather in accord with that personality as flavoured by my own fears and failures.
I think being a father is a profound responsibility. I think that because my understanding of God's love, mercy, and grace looks to earthly examples of the same for some foundation. That is, until someone points to a colour and says, "this one is orange" we don't really know what "orange" is. Likewise, if your childhood lacked perfect love, mercy, and grace, you will find yourself having no tangible point of reference for God's love, mercy and grace. That means that on some level each one of us will have some gaps to fill between what we have experienced in this life of love, mercy and grace, and the perfect image of these as found in the character of God.
For myself, I find that unless I make a careful choice to do otherwise, I tend to fill in these gaps with the sort of stuff that fear and ignorance can generate. That is, though I know the character of God in scripture, yet in practice I often season the character of God with the spice of my most frightened expectations.
It is this sort of "carnal seasoning" that keeps us from fully trusting God.
It isn't that God is untrustworthy, it is that we presume that God is going to abandon or fail us because we so often fail Him. The image we have of God has been seasoned by our carnal experiences. We cannot fathom His faithfulness because we have no experience with that kind of steadfastness.
I know this will describe some of us quite well, and others only marginally so, but it is something that I believe we are all in danger of falling into. I catch myself from time to time being afraid that God is going to not answer some prayer, or not be there for me because I fail Him daily - and I must catch myself because I know that is not only a horrible slander against God Almighty, but on a more personal level, it is the very opposite of faith - it is unbelief. It is me saying believing that God is different than He describes Himself as being, and I do that because I refuse to believe that God can remain charitable to such a sinning failure as myself.
But God is not as my fears paint Him to be. He is not a treacherous reed that if you lean on Him He splinters in your hands, rather He is a Strong Tower, and the righteous run into Him. How weak I am in faith and prayer when I take my eyes of the true character of God.
My encouragement then, to you dear reader, is to remember that no matter where you find yourself as you read this, know that God has set in place a throne of grace by which you may come to Him for help in time of need. He will not leave you, nor forsake you, but answers all who call on His name. His response is not based on your character, or your faithfulness, but upon His own. He is not like a man who withholds Himself or His blessing until He is certain that He will receive something good in return - but instead He is perfect in humility, in selflessness, in love.
Lean on God today, and not on your own understanding.Labels: faith |
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posted by Daniel @
7:07 AM
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If You Don't Believe It All
You Don't Believe At All. |
"If you don't believe all the scriptures, you don't believe the scriptures at all, no matter what you think, and no matter how zealous you appear to be."
I am paraphrasing what Jesus said to the Jews who were seeking to kill Him in the fifth chapter of John's gospel. Recall how Christ explains their rejection of His testimony: (v. 38) "You do not have His word abiding in you, for you do not believe Him whom He sent." [NASB]. Don't picture these Jews as slackers either. They were not slackers, they were students of scripture at a time when scripture was copied by hand at great expense. If the individual had a private copy of scripture, he likely had to pay the wages of the scribe who copied it for him - a task that would take months. These people were serious about their religion - dead serious. So when Christ says of them, (v.39) "You search the Scriptures because you think that in them you have eternal life; it is these that testify about Me." [NASB], Christ is describing the deeply religious Jews.
How is it that these religious Jews failed to see their Messiah? Bad interpretation? Poor schooling? None of the above. Christ plainly says,(vs.46-47) "For if you believed Moses, you would believe Me, for he wrote about Me. But if you do not believe his writings, how will you believe My words?"
Had you asked these Jews whether or not they believed Moses' writings, you would have received a zealous and resounding "YEA AND AMEN!" They regarded themselves as people who believed Moses. But here Christ shows that they didn't believe all that Moses wrote, because Moses wrote of Jesus, and they denied Him. They were convinced that they were the real deal, even though Christ showed them that they were not - and he showed them that they were not by pointing out that they didn't believe all that Moses wrote.
Do you believe all the scriptures? Or do you believe as much as seems reasonable to you? What would our Lord say of your faith?Labels: Difficult for some to understand., faith, musings |
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posted by Daniel @
10:49 AM
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| Faith & Repentance: How I See It. |
The debate about which came first, the chicken or the egg is fairly easy to answer from a biblical perspective. Adam and Eve were created mature and grown, even if they lacked belly buttons on that account, so too we can say that the first chicken was probably full grown and not hatched. No big deal for the Christian. The post modern university kids would have a harder time accepting a simple rational like that because they have been training kids in universities these last few decades to believe that it is intellectually superior not merely to think outside the box, but to presume that there is no answer in the box or even close to it - that there are in fact only relative answers to anything such that the most virtuous conclusion is far removed from certainly by arrogant design, and so long as the rational is clever, poetic, consistent, or even merely complex - it is not regarded as "just" acceptable, but it expects to be praised and exalted, and especially it expects to be above challenge, since that would be bigoted and small minded.
I say, this is what universities are presently good at - teaching young people to believe precision is not merely impossible, but vulgar and contemptible because it demonstrates ones lack of intellectual savvy. In (post-modern) intellectualism, if you don't play along, you are bigoted and anti-intellectual.
But that is not the point of my post. I was just off on a bit of a rant there.
4Or do you presume on the riches of his kindness and forbearance and patience, not knowing that God’s kindness is meant to lead you to repentance? - Romans 2:4 [ESV]
In my own experience I have always believed that there was a God. I had my own superstitions about who God was etc., based primarily upon what I had heard in my upbringing on television or through my mother's dead catholic faith. In my teen years I was an intellectual atheist, in that while I knew there was a God, I denied him with my intellect because that seemed more intellectual, and it also helped me to live with the fact that I was a sinner. My attitude was that if there was a God so what? I lived a moral life, surely a good God would be inclined to overlook my failing to believe in Him as long as I wasn't a wicked person why would he send me to hell?
So in this way I kept myself intellectually isolated from God. There was no reason to look into God, because even if there was a God there was no good reason to follow Him. Now, this wasn't something I had laid out and planned to believe, it was just the sort of default position that doing absolutely nothing about God produced in my life.
So on the day I decided to try to trick a church into sending me out as a missionary to some far away country, and the pastor began to ask me about my salvation - I was quite taken aback. I won't pester you with the details, if you are interested in them there is a link in the right hand column that tells you "How to be saved" and you can go there and read it, for some of my testimony is in it. It is suffice to say that I had always thought that no one could know if they are going to go to heaven or not. Even though I was at best an agnostic with Christian leanings - I felt that it was preposterous to presume upon such a thing. Only God, if there is a God, can say if a person is saved or not. I mean isn't He the judge?
But the pastor showed me not how to be saved, but whether or not I was going to heaven, and through scriptures he began to show me that there was absolutely no hope of getting to heaven by being good. That even the smallest sin locked the door of heaven, and condemned you to hell and that there was absolutely no good deed that you could do to undo this condemnation. He showed me from scripture that this was not merely his own "twisted" interpretation of the text, but pulled me beside him and had me read the bible myself and see. Verse after verse he showed me, and as He did my condemnation went from distant possibility to absolute certainty.
The pastor reasoned that if there was a God, and this is what He has said, then I can know for certain that I am as lost as a man can be.
That was perhaps the first time I took an active interest in my own salvation. Until then I felt that salvation was something that happened at the judgment seat if it happened at all, and frankly, all you could do about it was live a good life and hope for the best. The thought of condemnation wasn't pleasant, but it was so pleasantly vague that I didn't consider myself lost. I would have admitted that I was a sinner, but certainly not condemned.
When my own condemnation became an intellectual certainty, I found within myself a sudden fear and trembling. I guess deep down I really did know there was a God, and suddenly my relationship with Him had real, measurable boundaries. I was going to go to hell because I was a sinner. Black and white. But that didn't sit well with me, for I immediately reasoned that if I was going to hell because I was a sinner so was everyone else. Suddenly God seemed tyrannical, for it seemed according to my new boundaries, that everyone must be going to hell.
That was when the pastor told me about Jesus Christ and how He (though God in the second person) came to earth in human flesh to live sinlessly before God and to offer His own life on the cross so that as many as believe in Him would not taste this condemnation they had earned, but that their condemnation would be tasted by Christ on the cross in their stead - and that God would certainly punish their sins, but that Christ would bear that punishment and thereby save those who come to Christ in faith from the wrath of God directed at their sin.
In that moment, and I am trying to put this in chronological order to give my understanding of the chicken/egg relationship between faith and repentance, in that moment I suddenly saw the kindness of God for the first time. I would never have understood the kindness of God had I not first been convinced of my own condemnation - but being suddenly thirsty for life, weary of condemnation, and afraid of my Judge on that account, to suddenly learn that this same Judge sent His own son to die for Me gave some very welcome boundaries to my understanding of God and salvation - this God was not merely just, but loving and self sacrificing. In the very instant that I became aware of God's kindness and goodness towards me - in that instant the possibility of my salvation rested entirely upon the character of God, and when I saw God's kindness towards me on this account - it was this kindness towards me that caused my heart to yearn, not for saving myself from the fire below, but to yearn for reconciliation with God. God's kindness towards me, the moment it because real (as opposed to some intellectual abstraction) - the moment I knew that God was actually extending to -me- this profoundly selfless offer of reconciliation, in spite of my sinfulness, and entirely because that was who He was - a kind, loving, forgiving, self sacrifice, do-whatever-it-takes-to-save-you kind of God - when I saw the character of God it caused me to repent of my rebellion against Him, and to turn to Him for this salvation.
The process, theologically speaking, looked like this:
[1] God convinced me that I was a sinner. This happened when the Holy Spirit showed convicted me of sin (c.f. John 16:8) through the reading of the word.
[2] God convinced me that as a sinner I was condemned. Again, this was the Holy Spirit convicting me of sin and of judgment through the reading of God's word (c.f. John 3:18)
[3] God convinced me that He was just in condemning me. Again, this was through the Spirit's conviction and reflected in the bible passages the pastor had been showing me. (c.f. psalms 7:11, & 51:4).
[4] God opened my eyes to the true nature of His character. He granted me that I should believe Him to truly be loving, kind, and good. (c.f. Acts 16:14)
[5] God granted me repentance. In the strength of the certainty of God's good character, it became suddenly (and unexpectedly!) possible for me to turn to God and away from sin. Prior to this moment no thought could have been more alien to my mind.
[6] God drew me to Himself. I gave my life to Christ - all of it. I could have said no in the same way that a person "could" say no if while dying of thirst someone offered them water. I knew that I could reject God and be forever damned, but in that moment even though the option was there, it wasn't really an option. I surrendered to this God who loved me and gave Himself for me.
Faith in God's character preceded repentance and faith in God's promises in the logical layout of my salvation - but though I have laid them out thus, the reality is that this all happened more or less simultaneously. Surely my sudden vision of God's true character cannot be separated from the effect of that certainty - a trust in His promises, and a desire to be reconciled. It is not really a practical thing to split them up. Surely I could never have repented had God not opened my heart to see Him as He is, and surely I could not have seen Him as He was and failed to repent.
The faith that saved me and the repentance that came with it are so closely bound it is impossible for one of my limited discernment to determine which one is the facet of the other. Yet experientially I suppose I would argue (in the intellectual realm at least) that repentance must have preceded faith since the first thing God granted was that I would repent of my faithlessness.
I suppose it is similar for all of us who were saved. What I wanted to draw out in this post however, and I hope you are still reading at this point and not skimming, was not some sad little argument about which came first - but to remind you Christian that when you are struggling to obey and asking yourself the hard questions: Where is my repentance?? Why do I sin?? - that you will look back to how God granted you repentance in the first place.
Why is it that I allow myself to fall into sin? That is, why do I resist the Holy Spirit when He would grant me grace to repent? The pull-yourself-up-by-your-own-bootstraps-fundie-admonishment™ is because you love your sin and you hate the idea of being sanctified. You don't want to be sanctified, and you don't love God. That is why. And I am not going to tell you otherwise here - that certainly is the reason, but it doesn't give us much advice does it? So I should like to follow that with this: remember that it was knowing God's character that drew you to Him in the first place.
You can try (with limited/carnal/empty success) and make yourself repent. You can make yourself stop doing what is bad, and start doing what is good motivated as you are by the fear that failing to do so will cause God to regard you poorly. Surely we see this work to great effect in all the other world religions. Good Muslims, Jews, Hindus, and Buddhists all share in this, they know how to improve themselves morally speaking, and you can do the same with the same gusto, and of course, with the same spiritual vacuum, for it is as I have said, an entirely carnal work to improve yourself thus. There is nothing Christian about it - even if it looks Christian on the outside.
No, if you want your repentance to be more than fear motivated, self improvement you have to repent like you did at the start - and that begins in Romans 2:4. The goodness of God causes you to repent. Don't sit there and meditate about how much God hates you for sinning and how you better "get right" fast "or else". Instead meditate upon God, look to Christ. Not just 'oh save me, save me, save me, save me, save me, save me.' ad nauseum. No, look to God's character. Rehearse to yourself who God is. The reason you drew near to God in the first place is not because you were trying to improve yourself morally, it was because God made Himself known to you. You saw God as forgiving and loving, and were overwhelmed by His character - you were more than infatuated, you were "owned" by God - you wanted to be reconciled not because you were afraid, but because God was utterly irresistible to you the moment you truly saw His character.
Look therefore, sinner, look to God. Meditate again upon the one who loved you and gave Himself for you. God grant that you not only see His character, but see how glorious it is and that the fire be kindled anew for this God who loves you so. You will repent brother, sister, you will repent when you see the goodness of God again, and you won't have to fight to make it happen, it will be the joy of your soul as it was the first time. Stop trying to solve your carnal problems carnally. You need to go to the fountain and not the slue.
Sorry about the length.Labels: faith, how to be a Christian, repentance |
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posted by Daniel @
5:25 AM
38 comment(s)
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| The just shall live by faith? What is faith?? |
Even if you are not an evangelical Christian, you may have heard the quote taken from the second chapter of a book called Habakkuk (in the Old Testament of the bible) that says, "The just shall live by faith".
The passage is a little difficult to understand if one doesn't really know what the words "just", "live" and "faith" are talking about. Now, I intentionally say "doesn't know what the words are talking about" as opposed to "doesn't know what the words mean because by now if you are able to read this you surely have defined these words long ago. Yet it is what the words are talking that interests me in this post.
The just for starters does not imply that there are people on the earth who practice some higher moral ethic and are therefore regarded as just. The "live" does not refer to the common day moving about without dying, and the faith does not simply refer to believing a thing to be true. Which is not to say, as some might imagine, that I am about to argue that the text means something entirely foreign to the words found in it - no! I do not say that. But rather that these words are pulled together to make spiritual as opposed to natural points, and though they could not have been knit together any clearer, yet spiritual truth is not discerned because we have mighty intellects, but because we ourselves are spiritual who are in Christ.
I tend to be long winded about these sort of things, but I am opting for an abruptness this morning due to uncontrollable constraints on my time. For that reason I may not be as clear as I should like - but I will accept that as a possibility and forge on.
The "just" refers to those who shall live through the judgment, in the same way "live" refers to being in full possession of one's life on the other side of judgment (justice). Faith refers to the path through that judgment - since we pass through judgment by faith.
Yet our intellect sometimes spins its wheels here. What is faith? How do I bottle it? I want more of it, what do I do???
First and foremost, let's talk about what happens when you go about doing religious stuff without faith. Even a cursory skimming of Paul's epistle to the churches in Galatia provides the answer: you tend to try and build a bridge to God by your own effort. -That- is what faithlessness looks like. It isn't (necessarily) that you run away from the church and do as much evil as you can, nor is it (necessarily) sitting with your knees tucked up rocking back and forth while weeping in the cellar because you just can't make yourself believe... It can be those things, but more often than any other way, I believe faithlessness (doubt) plays itself out practically in empty religious activity.
I won't paint a picture about what empty religious activity is - I will let God's spirit do that. You who are reading will know what is revealed to you, if this teaching is indeed a spiritually true thing.
I mention what faithlessness looks like to give a more clear description of faith. We tend to think of faith as "believing" in some vague sense, and when we want more faith, we tend to think we need to "believe" more acutely or perhaps with more "perspiration". Yet let me try in one sentence to describe faith to you, and let the Spirit be glorified if you can see it:
Faith is trusting that no matter what your walk looks like, GOD WILL SEE YOU THROUGH IT TO THE OTHER SIDE OF JUDGMENT.
That is all there is to it.
Really, that is the heart of faith. It is trusting that God is going to see you through to the other side. It is the heart of the gospel, because it begins and ends with Christ. It cannot be apprehended by effort, but can only come by hearing the truth in the Spirit.
The heart that wonders how many commandments it must keep in order to be certain of salvation does not understand grace - it does not understand faith. Faith is the substance of things hoped for. The evidence of things not seen. It is -not- the evidence you find in your works, it is not a substance that can be examined as such, it is a resolve in your heart that contrary to what your flesh might imagine - God is going to finish in you what He has started.
Period.Labels: faith |
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posted by Daniel @
9:12 AM
19 comment(s)
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| Vague Faith.... |
 "A Vague Faith never saved anyone from anything... ever."
No one has ever been, or ever will be, justified by a nebulous, ambiguous faith - and to go one step further, when scripture talks about how we are cleansed by faith - that cleansing is not based upon some vague and unspecific hope, as though resting on the idea that God is a nice guy and generally "good" is the way we overcome sin in our walk. We overcome sin by putting to death the deeds of the body by the Spirit - and when I say "by the Spirit" I mean by trusting that God, in the person of the Holy Spirit (whom Christ sent to be our helper and comforter) is going to see to it that every single promise God has ever made to us is kept. The faith that overcomes sin is not vague it is very specific.
First, Trust that God, in the person of the Holy Spirit, is with you and in you. Don't let that be some vague hope - ground it in the scripture that teaches it - we worship in Spirit and in Truth, get the truth in you, and use it, for doing so is an act of worship. If you are not a "memorizer" become one - you don't want to be in this battle without your sword. God is with you in the capacity of a Helper, a Comforter, and a Teacher. Do not doubt that.
Second, learn what is true with regards to your relationship with Christ, and who you are in Christ - learn it so that you can remember it at any given moment - to call upon these truths in a time of need is an act of worship. This too is achieved by memorizing the scriptures that speak to the truths of who you are.
Third, learn what God has said He would do if you do something. I listed this separately from truths, because while a truth is true right now whether you understand it or not, there are some things that God has said he would do -if- you do something to warrant it. I hesitate to call these outright promises only because I think too many people call things promises that are not really promises, and I want to keep some distance between what I am saying and how that word is tossed around. Suffice it to say that God has said in many places that he will do this if you will do that. Find out what the conditions are for these truths, and trust them.
Forth, Hold God to His word.
That might sound like a flea shaking His fist at God, but listen, we worship God in truth - if God has said he is going to do it, he will do it, and you can hold God to that. Don't demand that God works at your pace, but let your faith go beyond hoping that God might just do what he said, all the way up to, but just shy of outright demanding that God do what He said. Listen, God loves to be shown faithful. Don't get all soft and think God is pleased by your softness in not expecting anything from him. The violent take the kingdom by force. Get in the fray. God is your supply sergeant, don't be all wishy-washy when you ask for ammunition, you are His soldier, in His fight, and you are promised support from Him personally - go and get it!
Remember, you are a son or daughter of the Lord God Most High - you have a throne of grace open to you - use it... but don't go through your walk all wishy-washy, hoping on blurred hopes, and half-trusting on the unspecific goodness of God. God put 7487 promises in his word so that you wouldn't have to be vague. Learn what God has said he will do, and then take that sword out of its sheath and slay within you that would hinder the reign of Christ.
God is glorified by a Christian who grows up into a soldier.Labels: encouragement, faith |
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posted by Daniel @
9:05 AM
1 comment(s)
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