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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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| Does Abstaining from Sex Make You A Virgin? |
Provocative title? Check.
I am under no illusion. I know that when you include abstinence, sex, and virginity in the title of a blogpost, you are likely to get more visitors than you would have otherwise. So welcome to my blog you people that wouldn't have come here unless you saw the word sex in the link.
The question is a serious one, even though you can answer it before you read one word of this post. We all know full well (unless we are of the sort of conceit that prompts us to filter reality through the lens of some form of navel-gazing philosophy...) that you cannot produce new state of virginity by abstaining from sex after you lose your virginity. It doesn't work that way, and we all know it.
Given that virginity is not produced by abstinence, and (obviously), that abstinence is likewise not produced by virginity, we might wonder what exactly relates the two notions. I describe it this way: abstinence is a consonant adornment of virginity.
What I want to impart to you is the nature of that relationship. The notion that one does not produce the other, but is rather the natural expression of the other.
We know this intuitively, but I wanted to spell it out so that when I apply it, the application is as clear as possible.
Jesus kept the law of God. It wasn't the keeping of the law that made Jesus righteous. Jesus wasn't born in a neutral state, being neither righteous or unrighteous. He did not become righteous by keeping the law. When Christ kept the law it was simply the natural expression of His inherent righteousness.
Keeping the law (or let's just call it what it is: obeying the will of God) does not produce righteousness in you anymore than abstinence can produce virginity in a non-virgin. Christ obeyed God because He was righteous, and not in order to become righteous or produce new righteousness.
That is an important Christian concept because until we understand it properly, we won't understand what God is teaching us in the scriptures when the Spirit inspired men to write that without faith it is impossible to please God, or that there are none righteous, not even one.
Christ alone is righteous. Unless we have Christ, we do not have righteousness, and without righteousness, we will perish† in the judgment.
Whatever things we do that we think are obedient to the will of God, that is, our "righteousnesses" are described by God as spiritually unclean (cf. Jeremiah 17:9). Nothing we do in our own strength is righteous, and if that weren't enough we cannot take credit for anything we do in Christ's strength. That is, when Chrsit's righteousness is working in us, we err to think it is our own. It is His righteousness that saves us.
I want to unpack that a bit for our Catholic friends. If we say that Christ imparts His rightoeusness to us, we do not mean by that to suggest that Christ takes some of His own righteousness out of Himself, then puts it into us, so that it becomes ours. Nor do we mean by that that Christ zaps us and suddenly we start producing our own righteousness by obeying God - for obeying God does not produce righteousness, it merely reflects it.
If we obey God in the strength of Christ, our obedience reflects not our own righteousness, but Christ's righteousness that is in us through that spiritual union which is the new birth. It is as the prophet Jeremiah proclaimed in Jeremiah 33:16 speaking of the Messiah to come: "the LORD is our righteousness!".
In other words, the Christian is not in the business of making himself righteous. He can no more become righteous by his own effort than he can become a virgin through abstinence. We, Christians are and remain unrighteous in and of ourselves. We appeal to a righteousness that is at once not our own, yet again is ours but only in Christ.
There aren't as many in the church who understand this properly as there ought to be, so bear with me as I dwell on it for the sake of those who are new to this teaching.
The reason all your righteousnesses are as filthy rags to God is because none of them can wipe away the stain of your sin. Present obedience cannot undo former disobedience - and righteousness has nothing to do with sin. The person who has sinned is by no means righteous, and can never attain to righteousness ever again by any act of obedience, any more than the prostitute can become a virgin by subsequent abstinence.
Christianity is not, as some would have you believe, the process by which Jesus spiritually empowers you to obey, so that your newly empowered obedience produces an inherent righteousness in you that becomes the basis for your justification before God. God will not and cannot look to your obedience to justify you. You are a sinner, and even if you have managed to obey God in the strength that Christ supplies - that obedience is not the grounds for your forgiveness. Rather you obey God (in Christ's strength) as a consequence of the fact that Christ has saved you.
Do you see therefore how wrong-headed it is to imagine that your obedience adds anything to your righteous standing? Your obedience, if it is more than just a frightened person trying to appease and angry God in the hope that by doing so they might avoid damnation, is a consequence of God's work in you --not something you do to earn God's favor. If you are obeying the Lord from your heart it is something that comes from Him, and not you - and itself testifies to the fact that God is showing you His favor already. In other words, real obedience does not produce favor, but reveals the fact that God already favors you.
Not that we look to our obedience for assurance, rather we look to the Spirit within us who is compelling our obedience as the assurance that we are God's children.
If keeping the law did not make Christ righteous, but demonstrated that He was righteous already, then keeping the law will not make you righteous, and how much less given that you were not righteous to begin with?
Finally, this righteousness that every sinner needs to apprehend, the righteousness of Christ, is obtained by faith and not by obedience; yet when it is obtained, obedience naturally (and inescapably) follows. That is, as many as are justified by Christ, the same are sanctified by Christ.
This is where we make a distinction between righteous and holy. We are called commanded to be holy. That is to be "set apart" to God. We do this by obeying God (Don't miss this last part) which does not make us righteous, but makes us holy. Do you see that? Do you see that your obedience is expected, because you are commanded to be holy, but your obedience does not make you righteous. Your righteousness is not your own, but Christ's righteousness.
This is what people mess up the most. The moment you tie your obedience to "personal righteousness" rather than to personal holiness, you step on the little mouse wheel of human effort, and no matter how you run, you simply tire and are no closer to your destination for all your effort than you were when you began. You are pursuing a righteousness that you can never, ever attain. But when accept Christ's righteousness, and stop setting about to establish your own, you are free to pursue holiness, the actual avenue through which men are meant to draw near to God.
The one who hungers and thirsts after righteousness shall be filled with the righteousness of Christ, and thereby enabled to pursue holiness in spirit and in truth. Obey God therefore, not to make yourself more acceptable to Him, but because He has commanded that His childnre be Holy (set apart to Him).
† that is, the second death: being cast into the lake of fire to suffer torment eternally.Labels: God's glory, justification, sanctification |
posted by Daniel @
7:10 AM
3 comment(s)
 
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| Reformation Day Lesson is up... |
I know, you prefer to refer to October 31st as all Hallow's eve, or 'Halloween', but it is also the day that Luther nailed his 95 thesis to the door, and the reformation was ignited.
Following along with William Gurnall's the Christian in Complete Armor, this past Sunday's lesson was on answering the question of our spiritual posture when we are vexed by the enemies accusations over our sin - of the four answers Gurnall supplies, we discuss the second - which is to rehearse again the cause of our justification.
Thus this teaching deals primarily with the facts of our justification, examining the Old Testament shadow in the temple sacrifice, to the New Testament reality in our Lord Jesus, showing that it is by grace and mercy freely given and this as a gift, and not according to something we provoke in God, but rather something God provokes in us.
It is next to impossible to squeeze all that we could say about justification into a forty minute lesson, and that task is even more impossible when we are discussing our justification as it pertains to our spiritual posture when standing against the accusations of the enemy. Nevertheless, the study attempts to broach the impossible, as it were, and deal with the matter biblically and bluntly.
You can stream the audio from that study (October 31, 2010) straight to your computer right now by locating it in the right hand margin (in the "SermonDrop" widget under the heading "Adult Bible Study") and double clicking on the October 31 lesson, which (being presently the latest) should be the one on top.
Alternately, if you wish to download the audio file in MP3 format and listen to it when you are away from your computer, you can go to the Doulogos page on SermonDrop and download not only the latest lesson, but any one of (or all of) the past several lessons by clicking here.
These same lessons are available on my Church's web site (see: Faith Community Church of Winnipeg), but the bandwidth requirements on our host does not stream the audio, and that which can be downloaded there has been compressed to save space, which in turn degrades the sound quality somewhat. I am hosting the audio portion of my teaching on the sermondrop server because it allows me to stream the lessons in a widget on my blog - the fact that the sound quality is monumentally better is just a nice side effect.
If you do give the lesson a listen, feel free to comment on the contents in the comments.Labels: Gurnall: the Christian in complete Armour, justification |
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posted by Daniel @
9:44 AM
2 comment(s)
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| Righteousness vs. Righteousness, etc. |
I must assume, for brevity's sake, that your theology recognizes Christ's own righteousness as the sole (and therefore only) grounds upon which you stand justified before God. I will pause here however, at the outset, to spend a moment making sure you understand the chicken/egg, or rather, the horse/cart relationship between righteousness and obedience.
Whatever righteousness is, it certainly is linked in some way to God's will. We might say that God is perfectly obedient to His own will, and in this way define His obedience to His own will as righteousness. For many people that would be a sufficient definition of righteousness; especially given how well that kind of definition lends itself to scale: Righteousness, they would say, is produced by obeying God's will.
Yet that puts the cart of obedience before the horse of righteousness, so that a person produced new righteousness through present acts of obedience. The truth is that a state of righteousness is not, and cannot be, produced by any number of righteous acts. We cannot reclaim perfection by acts of righteousness subsequent to the fall anymore than we can reclaim virginity by and through abstinence. Thus obedience does not produce righteousness; yet obedience - the kind that is described as worshipping in spirit and in truth - can flow from real righteousness, though not from any righteousness that originates in ourselves.
Consider Jesus. He didn't become righteous by obeying the law of Moses. The reason Jesus obeyed the law of Moses was because Jesus was righteous. That is what righteousness produces: obedience. If it were the other way around, if obedience produced righteousness, then Jesus, during the incarnation, was without righteousness until such time as He could comprehend and obey the world of God. The idea that our unchanging Lord lacked righteousness for a time is, of course, absurd. Jesus never experienced a lack of righteousness, not prior to, during, or following the incarnation - and He never will. He had always been righteous and it was on account of this self existent righteousness that Christ obeyed. His obedience revealed the fact that He was righteous, just as our disobedience reveals that we are not.
Can I restate that last point in a way that might help to put the fact that Christ was righteous into a biblical context? The fact that Jesus was the only righteous man who had ever been born (Adam wasn't born) revealed that Jesus alone was the Messiah. His righteousness proved it. The opposite is also true, and worthy of note: the fact that we are not righteous shows that we are not the Messiah. The law of Moses is the tutor that teaches us who the Messiah is. He is the one who can keep the Law of Moses. The law is the tutor that brings us to Christ, first in that it identifies the Christ, and secondly in that it identifies us as in need of Christ, since it proves to us that we our selves are not righteous. Even if we could keep the law from now until the day we die, it would not undo our current state of unrighteousness.
I mention this because the quick point I hope to make in this post has to do with the distinction between [a] being right with God in Christ, and [b] what we would commonly call acts of righteousness.
Let me give you an example using the virginity/abstinence model again: A widowed mother determines that she will not remarry after the death of her spouse. She raises the children she has without remarrying, and thereby lives a life of perfect celibacy. Does/Can her rigid and perfect celibacy restore her virginity? Unless you are trying to make points in a liberal university for how soft-hearted and tenderly kind you are (not to mention how fluffy and air-headed your thinking tends to be) you are going to answer that no, celibacy cannot restore a person to a state of virginity. In this same way, no righteous act can restore a state of righteousness.
That single truth is foundational to a right understanding of sanctification, by the way.
The person who doesn't understand the relationship between [i] a state of righteousness, and [ii] their own acts of righteousness, will often fall into the error of meritorious works. These may try to "be righteous" in order to recapture (by "righteous" acts of merit) God's favor. In fact, they may well regard sanctification as simply doing things that are "righteous", for the sake of staying in God's good books. People that fall into this error conclude that you become more sanctified as you force yourself to greater and greater acts of righteousness.
Of course in practice few (if any) every progress very far on that road. They try, they fail, they try again, they fail again, and then they start to get used to failure, so they don't bother trying as hard. Then they feel guilty, so then they try really, really hard, maybe even recommitting themselves to Christ, and "getting serious" with all their failure - only to fail at that too (eventually). They continue (usually) until the despondency of their unending failure becomes sufficient to convince them that they are either [1] not Christians, or [2] that God can't (or won't) help them. Either way they make a shipwreck of what they originally were given.
Back to our opening thought for a moment...
What a right thinking believer refers to "his righteousness" is not actually his own righteousness, but the righteousness of Christ that is his through his having been crucified with Christ, having died with Christ, and most importantly, having been raised with Christ. He is a recipient of Christ's righteousness - the same righteousness from which Christ's own acts of obedience flowed, becomes the well from which the believer's acts of righteousness flow. The believer does not merely have Christ's righteousness put to my account for the sake of a justified standing before God - but the believer has access to the Christ's own righteousness through so strong a union that even death was not able to break it. For the believer became a partaker of Christ's own righteousness through faith, and more than having this same righteousness accounted to him, the believer has this righteousness through the union described in Romans six as a baptism into Christ, a union whereby we received the life and righteousness of Christ directly (in the person of the Holy Spirit) who then indwells us and moves us to act in accord with His own righteousness.
I want to be clear about what that means. It means that I am not personally righteous apart from the righteousness of Christ. Succinctly stated: I am not righteous at all (in and of myself), nor do I (or can I) become righteous by engaging in the doing works that are themselves considered righteous. That may confuse some people, but it is true never-the-less. Doing something righteous does not impart righteousness to us.
Here then is the doctrine of righteousness: I am a partaker of Christ's own eternal righteousness, and this by faith, and not by any works of righteousness that I might do. If a work I do is a genuinely righteous work, the work itself does not imbue me with righteousness, nor does the righteous deed flow from my own personal righteousness - but the work flows from Christ who is in me through the indwelling Holy Spirit, and it flows from His righteousness that I have become both [a] a recipient of, and [b] am a vehicle for.
While this is an entirely true accounting of the nature of truly righteous deeds (and when I say "truly righteous" deeds I mean those deeds that flow from Christ's own righteousness and not from any inherent personal righteousness that I might imagine myself to possess.), yet it does not account for those acts that we or anyone else might do, as a personal act of charity or goodness.
Is it Christ who is at work in the Muslim/Buddhist/Atheist/non-Christian who feeds the poor? Is this not simply an adherence to a false religion or moral framework? Don't these people simply believe, deep down, that their adherence to these acts of charity/kindness/goodness increase their odds of a better afterlife, or maybe even just a better reputation in this one? We don't want to confuse acts of self preservation or self promotion - acts that ultimately flow from selfishness, for acts that flow from Christ's own righteousness.
Each of us, regardless of our religion or lack thereof, is inclined by our fallen nature, to serve our own best interests. If we imagine that doing good will produce for us a better afterlife, or that doing evil will secure us a worse one, doesn't it stand to reason that we choose to respond to sense of self preservation or self interest that we will at the very least limit our evil, and attempt to perform (at the very least) some few pacifying "good" deeds? Few people think that deeply about their own motivations. They live in a world where good and evil are defined not by their motivations, but by the act itself. This sort of naivety is as pervasive as it is unchallenged. We might even call it common knowledge.
Self preservation/interest is the underlaying motivation for every single "good" act performed by anyone outside of Christ. That is what Isaiah means when he says that even our righteousnesses are as filthy rags. No one, Christian or otherwise, can do a good work in and of themselves - every such act performed outside of Christ is an act of selfishness dressed up as something better. Whether it benefits someone else or not, whether it is big or little - the outcome of the act does not define whether it is righteous or not - but the heart that it flowed from does. Every wise person puts away money for their retirement. No one enjoys living in the moment with less, but we are willing to do so in order to avoid living without in our old age. Many are willing to do good and forsake evil today because doing so is like putting away something for their future afterlife. Others may benefit from their self preserving efforts, but it is their own comfort which is the ultimate motivation, and not the comfort of others. That is the moral economic that drives every false religion. That's "karma" - do unto others in order to secure the best afterlife for yourself...
The problem with that formula is that it rests upon the flawed idea that we become righteous by doing things that in and of themselves are universally considered righteous: taking in orphans, feeding the poor, etc.. in fact, most of what passes for righteousness today is really just deceitful fruit that grows from our own self service or self preservation.
But this post isn't intended to define the difference between truly righteous acts and those self serving acts that only seem selfless. This post is concerned instead with the subtle distinction between our being righteous, and our doing deeds that flow from that righteousness.
If we think our righteousness is being generated by, or maintained by good works (i.e. righteous deeds), then we not only [a] misunderstand our own righteousness (for we have none in and of our selves, and look only to Christ's righteousness which we are partakers of by faith), but we [b] misunderstand works of righteousness altogether.
I said earlier that a right understanding of this distinction is required for a right understanding of our sanctification. Some are taught that the moment they sin they fall out of a righteous standing, and into an unrighteous one. This is just bad theology, but I fear that needs some qualification...
God doesn't abandon the believer the moment the believer sins. The Spirit of Christ within that believer remains within that believer according to the promise given in the new covenant - God does not leave us, God does not forsake us, but continues to work that same work in us that drew us to Him when we were yet unsaved.
Some cannot accept such a thought without qualifying it in such a way as to make it mean almost the opposite of what they say. I am talking about those who use the language of "broken fellowship". Theses make a distinction between [1] our status as God's children (which they would defend with all their strength as being impeccable, unbreachable, and eternally secure no matter what) and [2] our "fellowship" which they would argue is severed the moment we sin.
Severed fellowship? ...huh??
I know this will shock some of you who have been swallowing this pabulum since the cradle, but I have to say, I think this is a wrong-headed (albeit, well meaning) teaching.
Listen: When my conscience is quiet within me, and I am walking in obedience, I am at peace with my conscience, and so are you. That is what the language of scripture tells us to expect - that is what is supposed to be our personal experience according to God's word. I know (from scripture) that knowingly transcending my conscience not only sears it, but grieves the Holy Spirit within me; but God doesn't walk away from His work in me at this point. God doesn't stand suddenly aloof in His work in me on account of my transgression; neither does He withhold His blessings from me. The story of the prodigal son doesn't have the father leaving the son... When I sin, I lose the joy of my salvation until such time as I repent of my sin. You who are the Lord's and have sinned know by your own witness that this is true.
Some people describe the feelings that are associated with having sinned - the guilt etc. - as experiencing a "broken fellowship" between themselves and God. I understand what they are trying to describe, or at least I understand what the first person who ever used that phrase probably meant. He was describing the sensation of guilt that Satan uses to keep the sinning believer from getting off the ground, where he has fallen on his face, and continuing on in trusting in God. That is the language of severance and separation - the language of the sheep being singled out and separated from the flock - the language of hopelessness and despair. You are out of fellowship with God! Your sin has severed God's love for you! You are unclean and dirty, a hypocrite and a false believer. You don't deserve to be called God's child. You are false and phoney, and until and unless you can prove otherwise, God wants nothing more to do with you. You are out of fellowship.
It is bad enough that our enemy is so well versed in this attack, but he has the most unlikely accomplices in those who are in the church, for many a Joe-has-been-a-Christian-for-years not only falls on his face under that assault, but then becomes a unwitting soldier in the enemies army in promoting this propaganda to others. This one uses the language of broken fellowship to teach that God sets aside those who stumble until such time as they "make things right".
When I first became a believer, I wondered at all the wonders of Christian-ese. God told this person such and such, and showed another this and that. This guy over here is out of fellowship with God, etc. etc. I thought people were hearing voices, seeing things, and experiencing some sort of tangible mystical union that I, for all my fervor, had never known. Surely there was something lacking in my faith, lacking in my walk, lacking in my zeal. The harder I tried to apprehend these wonderful experiences, the more convinced I became that either something was entirely wrong with my faith, or something was entirely wrong with my understanding of these things.
In time I came to see that these people weren't hearing voices - at least not the rational ones. Likewise, God wasn't showing people things visually and in person, this was just the language they adopted so that every intuition they felt (or heartburn for that matter) was explained as being spiritual significant. Many did all kinds of wacky and unbiblical things in the name of these ... er.. passions. They pursued these experiences, and believed their imaginations even when doing so led them to believe that God was directing them to do things that were inexcusably contrary to His word.
I threw all that in the trash early on in my walk of faith - trusting that the same God whose careful stewardship over His eternal commands ended in a book that hasn't changed one jot or tittle over the course of millennia - that is, the same God who went out of His way, as it were, to make sure that His truth came to mankind objectively, and without a shadow of turning (if you will), could not possibly be the God of intuitive, subjective, spiritisms. We are told to test the spirits, and I find the "spirit" of interpreting my own intuition came up lacking.
Yet I held onto the notion of "broken fellowship" for a long time, since I knew that when I purposely and willfully set aside obedience in favor of entertaining some temptation, that I felt absolutely awful, and full of shame, and far, far, away from God. I was told that this was the conviction of the Holy Spirit - but it wasn't conviction I was feeling, it was condemnation.
Do you want to know when the Holy Spirit convicts you of sin? He convicts you before you do it. I marvel that people go to such elaborate lengths to try and articulate the difference between Holy Spirit conviction, and Satanic accusation. Listen: The Holy Spirit convicts you up front: "don't do this, it is a sin" that's Holy Spirit conviction. It works in concert with your conscience, assuming you haven't entirely seared it into deadness. Once you have sinned, then the enemy accuses you. You are not a real believer, you are not God's child, God doesn't love you, God won't forgive you, you alone must atone for your transgression some way, you must so mourn over your sin that God knows you're really, really sorry - and until you do, don't expect to have any fellowship with God!
Hear this: The Holy Spirit, after you sin, is the voice of reconciliation. It is the Holy Spirit who continues to draw you to God even in the onslaught of these accusations. It is the Holy Spirit that comforts you in the mire of your sin, who (through scripture) reminds you that you are God's child and -that- through faith. While the enemy works to devour you, the Holy Spirit continues to draw you to God, just as He was drawing you to God prior to your sin. Notice I don't say that the Holy Spirit is drawing you "back" to God, as though God has gone somewhere. God didn't go anywhere, and His work in you didn't come to a halt just because you fell on your face on the battlefield. All that has happened is that you have served your own flesh instead of God, and in doing so, denied yourself peace and joy. You have become the prodigal son, who has taken all that God gives, and tried to enjoy it apart from Him. He hasn't turned away, but you are trying to take what He gives of Himself, and enjoy it in a vacuum.
I could go on and on (and I am sure my friend David Kjos will testify that I have been doing that for the past ten paragraphs... Thanks David), but the notion of broken fellowship is grossly exaggerated in many congregations, and even out right wrong-headed in some. When a person has this kind of thinking, they embark on trying to "get right" with God, in order to restore this mystical fellowship, that apparently is brokered through their own obedience, or worse, emotional state, or subsequent ability to re-remind themselves that they are acceptable to God in, and only in, Christ.
Thus their sanctification suffers for it, since they are constantly falling flat on their sinful faces, and taking forever to convince themselves that they are back in God's good book, only to once again fall on their face at the next "big" temptation.
Having thought about this problem for many years now, and again, from many angles, I think people fall into this sort thing because they are on some level convinced that the things they do will form the reality of their faith, rather than understanding that it is the reality of their faith that is supposed to form the things they do.
My wife always wants me to take anything I teach, and then reduce it to some practical thing that people can do. I suppose one way to put such a teaching into practice is to ask yourself why you are doing whatever it is you are doing that you regard to be spiritual. Are you going to church this Sunday because you feel that if you don't God will disown you? Are you sharing the gospel this week because you know that if you don't, that probably means you aren't really a Christian? Are you putting the toilet lid down after you use the John because that's just what a good Christian does? Ask yourself why you do what you do, and compare that against the thought that you do what you do, not to make God like you, or to pacify Him, or to satisfy Him, or to stave off His wrath, but rather because [1] you are convinced from scripture that it is the right thing to do, and [2] you know that this conviction is the work of the Holy Spirit in you. Relish in your obedience - not because it makes God like you, but because when you look deep enough into yourself (and are God's child) you will remember that you actually love God; and being biblically literal - you will remember that you only love Him because He first loved you.
If I don't stop there, this post will get too long, and I will not post it, so I will pick it up in the meta if there is anything unclear or weird sounding in what I have writtenLabels: justification, love, righteousness, sanctification |
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posted by Daniel @
11:55 AM
10 comment(s)
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| Continuing a theme... |
Jim over at faith classics said, Repentance is not a one time thing but rather a continual dealing as the light of God's word exposes our natural thinking and self centered focus.
Jim, for those who you who don't know him, is a godly man whom I have met on several occasions. His hearts desire is that people stop pretending to be Christians, and get on with the real deal, and I share this passion with him without reservation. So my reply to him, which follows, is not intended to be overly correctional, but rather I am springing off that quote. You should read the post in context to understand what Jim is saying...
If the "repentance towards God" that Paul preached as half of his gospel (c.f. Acts 20:21) is in fact the ongoing process you describe, then we must conclude that justification is a process that is completed after we die, as it depends upon a completed regiment of repentance.
I think you are confusing justification and sanctification?
Repentance, first and foremost is something God grants , and we must understand what it is and what it is not.
The unbeliever, above all else, denies God's rule over his life. That is the nature of rebellion, and it is a nature that no man can overcome by himself. But those whom God draws to Himself are granted repentance, that is, they are granted a change of mind from that of the closed "I will not have this man to rule over me" heart, to that of an open, receptive heart. It is into this God-prepared receptive heart that faith takes root.
Repentance, as I understand it, is a one time thing.
Notwithstanding - the nature of repentance is that one has changed masters - no longer do self and sin rule as master, but Jesus is Lord. That being the case, the believer thereafter is driven by the indwelling Holy Spirit to no longer walk in the flesh, but in the Spirit. Failure to do so results in chastening in the hear and now for as many as God loves.
I agree, there is no excuse to live a carnal and loose life given that we have truly been set free from that, but it is not the fear of judgment that ought to drive us - for no one has ever been sanctified by fear of judgment, and frankly, it is a beggarly motivator at best. Rather we are cleansed and made righteous by faith.
We walk (righteously) by faith, not by sight. When this is understood properly, fear is replaced by love as the motivating factor of our walk, and we escape the legalistic pull-yourself-up-by-your-own-bootstrap mentality that rises from an understanding of the Christian walk that blurs the line between justification and sanctification.
Which is not to argue that we sit around and wait to be made holy - we are commanded to walk in the Spirit by faith. We ought not to grieve and quench the Holy Spirit by Whom we are sealed unto that day, we are to walk in the good works prepared for us beforehand by God, but that in the strength that -He- supplies.
If we do all the right things in our own strength, we get the glory, and not God, and even these acts that seem righteous, and maybe even make us feel "good and right with God" so long as we do them - these same acts become the very thing that keeps us away from God, because rather than resting in the finished work of Christ, we look to our own righteousness to propitiate God and in doing so we turn away from all that Christ alone has done for us, and our second state is worse than our first, because from thence forth, unless we are sorely shaken from that path - we will always pursue God through our own righteousness, and the constant failure will only wear us out, or make us so arrogant we cannot be reasoned with.Labels: justification, repentance, sanctification |
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posted by Daniel @
11:37 AM
27 comment(s)
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| The Gospel Preached By The Apostle Paul |
12I thank him who has given me strength, Christ Jesus our Lord, because he judged me faithful, appointing me to his service, 13though formerly I was a blasphemer, persecutor, and insolent opponent. But I received mercy because I had acted ignorantly in unbelief, 14and the grace of our Lord overflowed for me with the faith and love that are in Christ Jesus. 15The saying is trustworthy and deserving of full acceptance, that Christ Jesus came into the world to save sinners, of whom I am the foremost. 16But I received mercy for this reason, that in me, as the foremost, Jesus Christ might display his perfect patience as an example to those who were to believe in him for eternal life. 17To the King of ages, immortal,invisible,the only God, be honor and glory forever and ever. Amen. - 1 Timothy 1:12-17 [ESV]
In Matthew 23 Christ describes the Pharisees as traveling land and sea to make a single convert, and that when a Pharisee finally makes a convert, the convert becomes twice as much a son of hell as the Pharisee who led him to that end ever was.
Ouch.
Paul, as you likely know, was not only the son of a Pharisee (c.f. Acts 23:6), but a Pharisee himself and was so entirely zealous a Pharisee that he personally led a one man persecution-marathon against Christianity. If your garden-variety Pharisee was a considered by Christ to be a son of hell, how much more a son of hell was someone like Paul who persecuted the early church?
We see therefore that Paul's description of himself as the foremost of sinners was not entirely hyperbole. Yet the account of Paul's conversion leaves us staggering under the truth of what Paul is saying here. See the reason Paul gives for his conversion? He says that it was because he was the foremost of sinners that Christ showed mercy on him. Do you see the flow of Paul's thought here? Christ came to save sinners, and if you doubt that you need only look to Paul whose conversion experience demonstrates loudly that salvation is not given to those who merit it by their own righteousness, but rather Paul's own salvation demonstrates that it is given as a gift to sinners, for only a fool would dare to argue that Paul was seeking Christ on the Damascus road... Paul's point is that his own salvation proves the character of Christ - for in saving Paul Christ put His own perfect patience with sinners eternally on display.
Paul wasn't fretting about whether or not he was "chosen" - his Damascus road experience was clear testimony enough, not only to him, but to us as well. Paul was chosen, his relationship with Christ began not as an initiator of his own faith, but rather in response to Christ's initiation. In Paul's experience, as well as in Paul's theology - God initiates faith, not man.
What we see here in this passage is that even though Paul was a sinner, and not merely a sinner, but a sinner who was by design and deep conviction a man entirely opposed to Christ and Christianity, even though Paul was as far from Christ as a man is likely to get in this lifetime - yet in a single moment on the road to Damascus, even this greatest of sinners was not hindered by his sin in coming to Christ, and especially, was by no means helped along the way by his own understanding of righteousness.
Paul knew and taught that we cannot take credit for our justification, that we cannot take credit for the faith that led to our justification, and that we cannot even take credit for the circumstances that gave us the opportunity to extend faith - that is, Paul understood that salvation is -all- of grace. That from beginning to end God decides whom He will show mercy upon, and that this decision by no means depends upon a person's worth or a person's initiating decision - or else Paul could not have been saved, for Paul was certainly not worthy by virtue of his great sin to receive salvation, and Paul was by no means the initiator of his faith, being about as far (at the time) from initiating a relationship with Christ as any man could ever be.
Paul's gospel was by no means Pelagian or SemiPelagian, it was all grace, yet what was orthodox has become repugnant, and what was heresy is now embraced. Men are offended by the idea that God chooses whom He will save by grace through faith. They picture all men as being equally deserving of salvation, when the right picture is that of all men being equally deserving of damnation. From their perspective, God cannot choose whom he will show mercy upon, because he must show mercy to all or he is "unfair". Thus they prune God down into a god who fits their understanding. They embrace an image of God wherein God is trying to save everyone, but can't save anyone unless the person does the right thing by coming to God in faith.
I hope you can see that were that the case, Paul could by no means have come to God in faith, because his own testimony teaches us that Paul was not coming to God in faith, nor in good works - but was in both running as fast as possible away from God IN THE VERY MOMENT that Christ came to him.
Whatever else Paul was, he was absolutely not SemiPelagian or Pelagian and by no means imagined that salvation followed the error of the Arminian scheme, whether in whole or in part.Labels: gospel, justification |
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posted by Daniel @
1:26 PM
1 comment(s)
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