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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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| Grieving Over Someone Else's Sin can be instructive. |
Imagine that you love the Lord with all your heart, and not in the selfish way that some might imagine - that is, not because you "have" to in order to make God look upon you favorably enough to bless you or something like that. I mean imagine that the love you have for God is the real kind, and not just self preservation dressed up as "love".
Now imagine that you have a son or a daughter who is just coming out of puberty, one who used to, as far as you could tell, love the Lord whom you love. You enjoyed those shared times where you could sing to, and converse about, God together. You enjoyed what you felt was a deepening fellowship with your child, a person whom you have invested yourself in every day of their life; and then imagine that you discover one day that their love of the Lord was not what you thought it was. Imagine that whatever facade had convinced you that they were on the same page as you, has begun to peel back, and you begin to glimpse the horrible truth --that your son or daughter loves their sin more than they love anything else, and that they have just been faking their own love for God because doing so in your house was the most profitable way to live.
Now, get past the sense of betrayal, and the hurt of realizing how much of what you thought was faith was in fact your own aspirations being projected on them, set aside your own hope-driven blindness, and sense of utter failure, and you are left with an ache that cannot be undone by demanding they conform themselves externally to the godly behavior you wish was flowing from within.
This ache is a wound in your own soul that bleeds at the thought that sin, like a devouring lion, is destroying not only who you thought they were, but also everything you had hoped they would be. This ache, if you can imagine it (or worse, if you have actually known it first hand) can be a powerfully instructive, but perhaps not in the way you think.
Can I be blunt with you, dear reader? You would probably love everyone this way if you had the same investment in everyone. That is, if you felt that their loss was in fact your loss, then at the very least you would, for purely selfish reasons, desire that each and every one of us be set free from the bondage to sin. The plain hard truth is that selfishness is still the greatest motivator for much of what we do - and the instruction typically given to people is to try and generate something positive through that same selfishness, rather than to abandon it altogether.
Let me explain that, because it is probably confusing for some.
I say that this sort of ache I described is instructive, not as an example of how we are to love others - good gravy no! I will not call you to generate (or try to spiritually discover) this sort of love/desperation and then apply it to others. That would be pointlessly futile, and even counter-productive to genuine faith.
You see, the reason a person aches for someone else in this way (and simultaneously fails to ache for everyone in this way) is because they expected their investment to produce something for them, and this sudden turn threatens the return on their investment. For all the poetry in the picture above, beneath it all a selfish motive persists.
The instruction I mean to give is not that you should try and mimic investing yourself in others the way you invest yourself in those close to you, in order that you may generate a similarly powerful (but flawed on account of being similarly selfish at its core) affection, whereby you will be motivated to "ache" for others with the same ferocity with which you ache for those close to you. Have I said good gravy already? Good gravy no! I shall not call you to some pragmatic "solution" dressed up as something spiritual.
Rather my instruction began with this (hopefully) powerful imagery, to underscore the fact that even the most visceral motivations we can imagine for such things as intercessory prayer, cannot and do not produce, or even give vent to) the love of God by which we are commanded to love others.
Is your child wayward? That is going to hurt you in proportion to how dearly you love the Lord, and again, how much you have invested in your child. Yet the whole world is wayward, and yet you do not hurt for the world the way you would hurt for your little one. This ought to show you that whatever it is that you feel for your child is (at the very least) mixed with (at the core) something selfish. Your paternal concern is real, painful, and even right and proper, but ultimately, and genuinely, it is self serving at the core of its being.
To extend a metaphor, the love with which God loves your child is by no means superior to the love with which God loves your neighbor, or even your enemy. God's love does not wax or wane depending upon how much you have invested yourself in someone. This you know. So don't imagine that because you ache for someone that this is "God's love" being expressed in you. If you don't ache that way for everyone, it is just your own affections that are being roused because the world isn't doing what you want it to.
With this in mind, I say, perhaps too boldly, that anyone who holds some example of love, powerful or weak, and then teaches you that it is the job of the Christian to imitate that same kind of love --applying it to others, is teaching you to adhere to a form of religious behavior, nothing more.
At this point, I hope that some of you reading will begin to look at the way you love others, and find in your introspection a truth you don't often look at. Are you one who is beginning to see yourself as having failed to truly love others? Let me say something a little provocative: if you don't see yourself in this, you're quite blind.
Consider the thought: if the love that we express for those closest to us is riddled through with selfishness, how worthless will a self-generated imitation of that kind of love be? Knowing then that we are commanded to love others, we are left with one of the most real, and common, Christian dilemmas: we are commanded to do something we most certainly cannot do.
Don't get me wrong, we can certainly put on a show. We can certainly go through the motions externally, and this we can even do with profound emotion and satisfaction, but ultimately, our mimicry is nothing more than self serving pragmatism, and for all our effort, it is spiritually worthless misleading. That which is born of the flesh, is not spiritual.
The truth is that we cannot love others, not the way that God commands, and God isn't in the business of creating in us a well of new, but now "righteous", love out of which we may now, as Christians, love others. Until we receive our redeemed bodies, we remain, at our core, sinfully flawed. We are (and remain in this world) broken vessels that cannot hold water. In other words, the love with which we are called to love others is not our own, tragically flawed love, but rather with Christ's love.
Don't mistake me, I do not deny that we can and do feel affection for others, and we can do nice things for people. We can ache for others and all that - but the love that God calls us to love others with has no self serving component mixed into it. It is a perfect, selfless love - a self sacrificing love. A love that cannot originate in, and ultimately cater to, self. A love that you are so entirely incapable of generating, that the way out of this dilemma will sound impossible, and even incomprehensible to some, and yet is perhaps the most simple thing one might ever learn.
You see the bible tells us that we are to walk by faith. Walking, in this sense, is a metaphor for the way we conduct ourselves on the earth; it describes the things we do, and the way we do them. Walking then is a metaphor for the way we conduct ourselves, and if our conduct includes being commanded to "love others" (and it does), then even loving others is something that must be done by and through faith.
But there is the rub isn't it? How does one "love" another by faith? I mean, for some that question is going to be about as obtuse as asking how to "smell" the color blue. Loving by faith? How does one do that?
The problem with many, I suppose, is that even after you explain to them that their concept of loving others is actually self serving and flawed; and even after you convince them that they need to learn to love as Christ loves, when you actually explain the way that they are supposed to love, they typically, and unconsciously, take what you have said and attempt to apply it in the same framework as the thing you are telling them to step away from. When we ask, "How do I...?" we demonstrate that we are still self centered in our approach.
The question should be, "How does Christ...?"
"Ah", says, the reader, "I am beginning to see the tipping of your hand", but let's not skip ahead. Many will take this tidbit and imagine they know where this is going, and that they get it already, so they don't have to pay attention to what is coming next, but to these I say, "hold up a little, it may not be what you think". You see, many are going to hear me say "How does Christ...?" and will immediately reframe that into the exact same self-o-centric framework that we are trying to get away from. The only difference is they will modified the notion ever so slightly to, "how do I make Christ do it...?"
Obviously, we can't make Christ do anything. Our "faith" is not divine puppet fuel, whereby we exercise it, and God reacts by moving His mighty puppet-arms. Faith means that we trust what God has done, and is doing. It means that we trust that the love of Christ that is in us through the Holy Spirit is sufficient for what God commands. It means we abandon once and for all our failing attempts at producing or "receiving" a love of our own in order to use that love as a motivator from which (hopefully) new obedience can flow.
Do you get it? I mean, I think of the Catholic who imagines that God's grace serves to impart actual, personal, righteousness in the believer. Such that the believer eventually becomes so personally righteous (by grace!) that God becomes obligated to honor their righteousness by granting them salvation. We know how utterly confused and wrong that notion is, but are we not doing the same thing when we think that God imparts new love to us, by which we are supposed to love others? Are we not imagining (or hoping) that Christ eventually will impart enough "love" in us that we may draw from this personal supply of love in order to obey our Lord? When this is our understanding, and we fail to love others, we are left to conclude that Christ isn't doing much in the way of supplying our love --which itself causes many to conclude that they must not be saved (enough), and so they redouble their efforts to try and get Christ to do what they imagine He is "failing" to do - or worse, they conclude that no matter how they work, they will never be able to be perfect enough to warrant the bestowment of this personal love from which all things Christian become easy-peasy. Or alternately they just give up on Christianity because it doesn't "work".
Well, having said this much, one might imagine that I am overlooking the fact that genuine affection can and does show up in our lives, and that we can ache for others even as strongly as we might ache for a wayward spouse or child. I do not mean to diminish our grief - that raw emotion we may feel when someone we care about begins to fall away from the faith, or is struggling against sin. The pain in such instances is real, and there is nothing godly about ignoring it, or making light of, or diminishing it. What I write here, concerning the nature of these emotions, is not meant to suggest that such emotions are out of place or something to avoid. Rather I say only that we must avoid the temptation to create a motivation for obedience by trying to replicate these emotions in other situations as the "magic key" to Christian success in loving others.
The bottom line is this: We are more likely to experience real grief over another person's sin when the person is someone we are intimately acquainted with (such as a spouse, a parent, a close friend, or a son or daughter). That strong desire that forms in us, that they would repent and be restored is not something we feel for others who are sinning, because (frankly) we are not as invested in others. The instruction is not that we try and invest in others in order to generate stronger feelings, and thereby generate an emotional motivation that is a little wider in scope than just family and friends. Rather the instruction is to recognize that the reason we grieve stronger for those close to us, and fail to grieve as strongly for those who are not close to us, is because we have invested in those close to us, and stand to lose more on that account. Our grief is tainted, if you will, with self interest. Because this is so, we are taught not rely upon our emotions - even our most intense emotions, to motivate our obedience (concerning the command to love others). The command to love is a command to depend on Christ's love, and not our own love.
That's probably still a little fuzzy for some, but I am going to put it out there anyway. Perhaps it will help someone anyway.Labels: Grief, love, motivation, sanctification |
posted by Daniel @
7:58 AM
7 comment(s)
 
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| Learning To Love Others |
You have heard, no doubt, someone say that love is an action word. The grammarian in me chafes a little at that, preferring to express this particular thought with less poetry and more precision, thus: love is a verb.
A verb, if you will recall, is an action word. So it may sound unnecessarily pedantic, or perhaps only superficially didactic to say that I prefer to use the word "verb" instead of "action word" when in fact a verb is an action word.
Yet I think the distinction will be seen as a good one to make if I explain what it is that so concerns me, that I would bother to make the distinction. When most of us think of love, we think of an emotion - and not just any emotion, but the most intimate sort of emotion we can conceive of, and in particular, an emotion that cannot be summoned by choice - it is either there, or it is not there. I can't force myself to "feel" love for someone, even if I am commanded to do so.
When I say that love is an action word, the impression many of you will get is that if you or I truly feel the emotion of love, it will cause us to do things in response to that feeling; that is, when I say that love is an action word, you may think I am saying that love provokes me to action; or said in terms of logical order: love is the cause of or motivation for the action.
The biggest problem with thinking of love in terms of experiencing an affection that provokes us to act , is that when we are commanded to love, we are unable to do so because the emotion hasn't shown up. If we expect love to fall on us and thereby empower our obedience, we are going to be pretty confused when it doesn't. We will likely conclude that we are either doing something wrong, or more likely, that God is so displeased with us (on account of the fact that we are not perfect), that He is withholding the love until we can make ourselves acceptable to Him through a greater effort on our part to love Him and obey Him.
It should be obvious, but it isn't always, so I will say it plainly: this is an immature and wrong-headed way of thinking of love.
Yet I suspect that many preachers think (and preach) that the problem isn't a wrong understanding of love, but rather a wrong understanding of the process by which God imparts the love (i.e. emotion) that He (according to this avenue of thought) commands. These will use a passage like the healing of the ten lepers (recall that they were "healed as they went") to suggest that God expects us to act like we love someone (fake it), that is, if we "prime the pump", God will reward our fakery by granting us the genuine article.
This approach, no doubt, will produce (on some level) a positive effect. The question is whether the effect is a spiritual one. Can I give you an example? I used to hate cats. My wife one day "rescued" a cat from the local animal shelter, and I was forced to live with the thing. Guess what? In a few months I started to like the little fur ball. Is this because God enlarged my heart? No. I started to like the cat because it seemed to prefer me to my wife. You know what? I still don't like cats, but I did like that one. We got rid of it however because I found out that I am allergic to cats. In the same way, if you invest yourself in another person - even someone you presently have no affection for, there is a good chance that you will eventually find in that person something that you like. There is nothing spiritual in that, any heathen, secular humanist, atheist, or person in any other world religion can generate this kind of affection - you don't need Jesus for that; and that is why I think it is a carnal, rather than a spiritual, approach to the problem of lovelessness - and worse, it is attempting to create a missing emotion - which was never the problem in the first place.
The scriptures tell me that I love myself, and that you love yourself too. Some of us are so in love with ourselves that we feel the world doesn't love us as much as we deserve - and so we are displeased with our lot, and wish we had more. This sort of narcissism may well produce a very real discontent within, but this is driven by self love, and not indicative of a lack thereof.
If we all know how to love ourselves, and we do, then we can deal biblically with the problem of failing to love others. The Apostle Paul describes our self love in Ephesians 5:29 thus, "for no one ever hated his own flesh, but nourishes and cherishes it, just as Christ also does the church" - how is this love expressed? It is expressed in terms of nourishing and cherishing. We feed ourselves, we clothe ourselves, we make arrangements for our needs, and even for our own entertainment. This is described by Paul as on par with how Christ loves the church.
The command to love others as yourself is a command that every last one of us can understand perfectly. There is no reason for this command to remain vague or esoteric. No reason for any believer to wonder how to keep this command, or what is required to be able to keep it. Every last one of us knows how to care for his own flesh - and that same care that instructs everything we do, ought to extend beyond ourselves and into others. If I have food, and you do not, and I eat my food while you go hungry - I am not loving you. It isn't an emotion, it is a verb.
The love that I have for myself is not an emotion, it is selfishness, plain and simple. We love others when we set this self love aside, and instead direct the same care and attention to others. It isn't an emotion, it is an act of worship.
This is the main problem for most of us: everyone wants to go to avoid hell, but practically speaking, who wants to actually worship God? Can't we just go to church, and read our bibles, and attend functions and stuff? I mean, isn't singing a "church" song an act of worship? Yada, yada. How many of us really regard our obedience as worship? Let me tell you that the reason most believers obey, when they are not inclined to obey, is not out of love, but out of fear. That is, it isn't an act of worship, it is an act of self preservation.
I hope the Holy Spirit will connect the dots for you: self love = artificial, fear driven obedience; denying self = worship motivated obedience.
When we say that love casts out fear, we are saying that if you obey as a genuine act of worship, it isn't fear that God is going to damn you (or worse) for failing to do so that is driving you, rather it is the love that God calls you to perform that is driving you. Not an emotion that overwhelms you, but a realization (that the Holy Spirit grants you) that you cannot love your self and love God at the same time - you have to let go of the one in order to grasp the other. It is a lesson that every last one of us is capable of understanding, because we all love our selves. If I know how to love me (and I do), I know what God requires of me when it comes to others. I cannot love God, or anyone else, if my first and primary concern is fulfilling my own desires (loving myself).
I suppose it is sort of like rocket science, in that if you don't know the math, you will never get it no matter how simple someone tries to make it. So also, if you don't understand that "dying to self" is the same as "living for others" or that "loving God" is the same as "denying self", you simply won't get it, because you haven't understood the spiritual math. The equation is pretty simple though, so I will give it to you:
You must, as an act of worship, redirect the love with which you love yourself, at God.
Doing this is called:
- denying yourself, or
- taking up your cross, or
- living the crucified, or
- being spiritually filled, or
- not loving the world, or
- loving God with your whole heart, or
- putting to death the old man/self
To be sure, I could make that list pretty long, but you probably get the point even with such a truncated and beggarly list as this. The point is that if you want to stop floating around in your Christian life wondering what is missing, you should sit down and look at how much you love yourself, and then set your mind and heart on redirecting all that effort away from self and into serving God.
Christ showed you what love looked like when He served you. Now go and do the same in the service of God.Labels: Bunk; self love, Christ, love, sanctification |
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posted by Daniel @
7:40 AM
8 comment(s)
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| Whole Hearted. |
My pastor preached an edifying sermon this past Sunday, and whatever else he may have said in the sermon, or whatever the point of it may have been, it was his mention of serving the Lord with one's whole heart that provoked a sudden stirring of Christ's Spirit within me.
In particular, I was considering my own inconsistent obedience. I have known profound victory over sin in several areas of my life - and not the false victory that some claim when they have finally, through their own effort, finally formed a lasting habit whereby they are able to (most of the time) automatically suppress some particular temptation, rather than entertain it. No, the victory I am talking about is the removal of the thing as a genuine temptation, where once I desired a thing, and where now that desire is a memory that has never stirred again.
When I think of inconsistent obedience, I am really thinking of those things in my life where I do not want to apply Christ's rule. We might call such things strongholds, because we are unwilling to surrender them to Christ. This is the very picture of double-mindedness. On the one hand we surrender to Christ on several levels and in many ways, and on the other we retain for ourselves the "right" to draw a line - this far into my heart you are, and remain my Lord, but beyond this line, I will not have you rule over me.
No one wants to paint their own inconsistencies in hues of rebellion, and in the language that scripture reserves for rebellion. Instead we dress it up with language like "struggles" and "inconsistencies" and whatnot. But if we are willing to drag it under, and expose it to the light, we will see it for what it is: something less than the whole hearted devotion we are called to.
Even though I know that no victory has ever come to me except through travailing prayer where I, with the Lord, plumb the depth of my depravity, and cry out from the well of my being to be set free from -who--I--am-, and always will be.
Said another way, I know that until my heart is actually -set- on Christ, I am only half-heartedly pursuing the Lord; and I know, as well as you do, that one does not "find" the Lord until one seeks for Him with one's "whole" heart.
So it is an exercise in utter madness when a believer refuses to sit down, and talk straight with God concerning some besetting sin that destroys his or her peace. When that believer chooses instead to offer up to God sacrifices of ministry, and praise, and every other religious thing - while witholding from God his or her whole heart.
Why do we do that?
May I suggest that we do that because we are inclined, in and of ourselves, to flee from, rather than cling to, the Lord. Except that Lord draws me to Himself, every effort to approach him is superficial, self serving, and ultimately illegitimate. Yet when I recognize this within myself, when the Spirit of Christ within me begins to provoke my soul so that I find no rest in the status quo, it is only then that I begin to feel the weight of my sin, and only then that I begin in earnest to seek that deliverance from sin's power that is already mine in Christ.
I have yet to be able to set my heart on Christ in some whimsical, off the cuff way. It has always required a deep travailing in prayer, not unlike labor pains that must be endured until finally I come to the end of myself seeing myself for what I am, and throwing my hope and my life entirely and without reservation, upon the Lord. It is then, when I have seen my sin for what it is, and my Lord for who He is, that I am able to, by faith, turn away from some sin in earnest.
I don't know how it is for others, but I know how it has been for me. My relationship with Christ has been fraught with all manner of false religion that would take my eyes of the simplicity of Christ - but always, like a loving Shepherd, the Lord draws me back to Himself by grace through faith, so that I can take no credit for the love, faith, and devotion He Himself imparts - whatever crown I may possess on that day of Judgment that is coming; it will be one that I cannot claim to have earned, but must be laid down at the feet of Him who placed it on my head by His own merciful hand.
Jesus is not a far away God, but a very near one. Not looking down from on high, but working intimately from within. His love is more profound than can be known, His mercies more tender than can be measured, His grace more sufficient, His wisdom more sound, His rule more fitting than any heart can fathom.
Do not be afraid little Christian, for the Lord loves His own, and is not willing that any of His should perish.Labels: Christ;, sanctification |
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posted by Daniel @
9:45 AM
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| No Bravery Without Fear... |
Daddy, what can I do when I don't want to obey you because I am afraid?
You've probably had to explain to your own little ones that unless one is afraid of something, one cannot act in bravery. I mean, every person knows fear (or should) but what makes a person brave is that they do not let their fear control their actions.
When my five year old is afraid of the dark, and because of this fear refuses to go to bed, we sit down and have "the talk". I explain first that there is nothing in the dark to fear, and that this fear is therefore unfounded; but because such information has never pacified a single five year old in the history of mankind, I am inclined to move onto step two, where I explain that in order to be brave you need fear, and that it is time for bravery in the face of this fear. etc.
My post isn't about parenting or fear, or bravery for that matter, but I believe understanding these things will help one to understand the metaphor I plan to use in the following spiritual encouragement.
What do I do, when I don't want to obey God?
Here is where the fear/bravery thing comes into play. If bravery requires fear, we might also say that obedience to God (when sinners are inclined against obedience) requires one to overcome self. Now before we get too far on that road, let me say right now that no one in their own strength can truly overcome self. We need, as Paul taught, to reckon our "self" as dead to sin, but alive to God.
The lesson isn't that in order to obey, you first need an inclination to disobedience, and thereafter you must "buck up" in your own strength, and this bucking up shares some sort of kinship with bravery. Rather the lesson is that in order for you to obey you must overcome the flesh in Christ.
That might sound like just a trite Christian phrase, "overcome the flesh in Christ". I bet some of you reading will say to yourself as you read that, "If I knew how to overcome the flesh in Christ, I would be doing that!"
But the phrase is deceptively precise. The trouble is that many Christians don't know what it means to overcome the flesh in Christ. They picture Jesus doing the work of overcoming in such a way that they are passive on-lookers. They imagine themselves, metaphorically speaking, pushing the "Jesus-do-this-spiritual-thing-for-me-now" button, and KAZAM! Victory! So they continue to look for the magic formula that will wake our slumbering Lord and cause Him to pour out victory on them now that they know the magic word to make that happen. But that isn't a right image of what is meant by "in Christ".
Perhaps it would be better to think in this way - in Christ means, in utter surrender to Christ. Utter surrender means utter abandonment - but even these words evoke an image of some soul "letting go and letting God" - which isn't the picture I am trying to paint. Surrender is not about letting go, it is about hanging on - hanging onto God's promise in Christ.
The promise is the gospel promise - which itself, for most believers, has been watered down to mean only the message of salvation that results in justification. That is, many believers think the gospel is for getting you into heaven, and after that you teach "doctrine" and "theology". But the gospel message is that God has done what you could not do. It is the hope of the Christian, not merely to spare them from God's wrath, but also to carry them as believers in their sanctification (drawing near to God).
The way we are called to obey is by faith; by trust in what God has promised, has done, and perhaps more importantly: is doing. We do not overcome our disobedient inclinations by trying harder to obey or by forming the habit of suppressing our sinful inclinations. That is the fluff of other world religions - we overcome our sinful inclinations by trusting in Christ.
I am going to be straight up with you. That sounds, to the uninformed ear, like a lot of spiritual posturing. It sounds good, and even Christian, but to many reading it also sounds rather obtuse, and even spiritually opaque. How is trusting in Jesus going to disincline me to sin?
Well, when we say trusting in Christ, we are not simply trusting that there is a Jesus, or worse, trusting that He is going to act in a situation according to our interpretation of what ought to be done (Stop me from having sinful desires right now Jesus!). What we mean is that we trust that Christ is with us, is in us, and is working out our salvation (from sin), regardless of the situation or how we feel. We trust that this work is not dependant upon ourselves, but rather something Christ is doing in love on our behalf, and not in answer to, or as a response to, our obedience.
The fact of the matter is that we enter into obedience, whenever that obedience is exercised in spirit and in truth, only because of Christ's work in us. This obedience does not come to us because we have pulled it down in prayer, or because we have earned it by our sincerity - it comes to us by grace, for we are saved by grace, and not by works.
So just as fear is the furnace from which true bravery comes, so also faith in Christ is the furnace out of which true obedience flows. I know that is going to seem counter-intuitive to many (immature) Christians, because when we become Christians, we begin to flee from sin because we loathe the fact that we indulge in it. We become like the runner who is so afraid of what is following him, that he dares not risk a glance back. lest in doing so he slows his pace, and is overtaken. The guilt of our sin so burdens us that we dare not risk adding more to it by setting aside our (sometimes strict, sometimes slack) war against sin.
But if the weapons of our warfare are entirely carnal, that is, if we battle sin with the same weapons that every other world religion battles sin (adhering in our own strength to some external standard of righteousness), then our war against sin is really an empty farce --all light and no heat. Our weapons must be spiritual; and that flies in the face of conventional wisdom. The notion that we can overcome sin by faith seems nice, but impractical.
It isn't until some crisis, or perhaps some lasting spiritual draught causes us to abandon our false oasis, that we begin to take seriously the plain instructions of scripture, and begin to make Christ, and not church, religion, or daily devotions, the object of our faith. When we do this, in earnest, we grow in grace and find our inclination to obey stronger than our inclination to disobey - and this because we are drawing near to Christ, rather than trying to appropriate righteousness apart from Him (and that in order to please Him, as though our setting aside of Him to pursue a righteousness apart from Him would or could possibly please Him).
We grow into these truths, so don't be put off if they seem difficult to understand at first blush. The main point is that your focus needs to be on Christ, specifically on drawing near to God through Him. Do this, and everything else falls into place (Seek you first the kingdom...).Labels: Christianity, encouragement, sanctification |
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posted by Daniel @
6:55 AM
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| Deuteronomy 7:17-18 applied to your struggle. |
If you should say in your heart, ‘These nations are greater than I; how can I dispossess them?’ You shall not be afraid of them; you shall well remember what the LORD your God did to Pharaoh and to all Egypt: - Deuteronomy 7:17-18 [NASB]
This passage pictures the difficulty behind, and the solution to, the main hurdle of our sanctification.
In the context Moses is addressing a very real sense of hopelessness that was threatening to paralyze the Israelites, as they prepared to conquer Canaan. It seemed an impossible task, given the strength of their enemy, and the weakness of their own might. Recall that this was the very reason they were made to wander in the wilderness in the first place - because they chose to believe that the inhabitants of the land would destroy them even though God had promised them victory.
We understand, as Paul writes in 1 Corinthians 10:11, that "these things" referring in general to those things that happened to the Israelites in the wilderness, "happened to them as an example, and they were written for our instruction, upon whom the ends of the ages have come.". The instruction we want to take from this passage concerns our own sense of hopelessness, not in overcoming the inhabitants of Canaan, but more gravely, in overcoming the sin that rules us in our life - that is, in overcoming our bondage to sin.
There is a parallel, I say, between Romans 6 and the conquering of Canaan, one that you, as a believer, must come to understand if you are to benefit from the word God has left us. The land of Canaan was given to the Israelites - promised to them (hence the promised land) - before they ever set foot in it. God said to Israel, in Deuteronomy 11:25, "No man will be able to stand before you; the LORD your God will lay the dread of you and the fear of you on all the land on which you set foot, as He has spoken to you." - That is a powerful promise indeed. They hadn't even entered the land yet, but they were promised it, promised victory over the inhabitants of the land - even though those inhabitants were greater in number and power than the Israelites.
In Romans 6 Paul tells us that we are no longer slaves to sin, that we who are in Christ have been set free from sin's power. A truth as true as the promise given to Israel concerning the land of Canaan, and yet (perhaps) even more difficult to appropriate, given the Christian's certain knowledge that sin owns him entirely.
The first hurdle to our sanctification then is similar to the hurdle the Israelites had to face - unbelief. They had to overcome the thought that they could not defeat the Canaanites, and trust, not in their own strength, but in the victory the Lord would give them if and when they eventually began to take hold of the promised land. The Christian, likewise, must believe over and against his own experience that he will truly be able to overcome sin, or more specifically, to believe that in Christ he has already overcome his former bondage to sin, in spite of how things seem. Just as Peter looked to the fierceness of the storm and began to sink, when he ought to have been looking to Christ (both literally and figuratively), so too we, when we take our eyes off the truth of what God has said, and focus instead on the way things seem to be - we also fail.
We love our sin so much that we are ready to believe that our sinful disposition is "greater than I" - and without Christ it certainly would be - even as without God the Israelites would not have stood a chance against the Canaanites - yet gripped by this concern, we are unable to see how we could possibly overcome this bondage. As I said, the problem, at the root, is unbelief. We think that God will not deliver us because our bondage is so great - even as the Israelites feared that God could not give them victory because their enemy was so strong. Do you see that that is like saying that God can only deliver us from those situations wherein we could have delivered ourselves in our own strength? In other words, we refuse to believe that God -will- help us. We accept that God could help us, but we believe that on account of our own wretchedness, God will not help us.
Oh how our enemy has a field day in a flock that doesn't know what is going on when they think themselves so miserable that God won't keep His promise to deliver them! Convincing men that their failure secretly proves that God is not for them, but is in fact their enemy waiting to judge them - thus keeping them from turning to Him who is their Helper. Our enemy is a master strategist who has honed his craft over millennia. Don't be surprised then when you find yourself wallowing in his wiles - but don't for a second imagine that this wallowing is supposed to be normative. The defeated, suffocating Christian, however common in this present age, is not the intended Christian norm.
It is imperative then, that you, Christian, who are struggling in sin and unbelief, learn from this passage the way of escape that God Himself points you to. The encouragement given to the Israelites was that they should remember the great works of God, works done on their behalf in the past - works that testify to the fact that God is for them, and not against them, and thereby renew their trust in God.
The cure for that sense of hopelessness, that sense that you will never overcome sin - is to renew your trust in God. Meditate of what God has done, and what God says He will do and is doing, and soon your trust will not rest in the miry clay of what seems likely, but in the anything-is-possible-for-Him glory of God who is at work in you to will and to do His good pleasure.
Listen: Typically we fail in this because we are more persuaded by our guilt, shame, and self loathing, than we are by the love of God, His promises, and His faithfulness. My brothers, this ought not to be.Labels: sanctification |
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posted by Daniel @
6:37 AM
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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 |
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posted by Daniel @
7:10 AM
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| What kind of Christians are we trying to be? |
Can I be open and shamelessly honest with you, dear Internet reader?
I started my faith ignorant of the bible, but I was granted a hunger for truth, and began to read the scriptures over and over again in a strength that felt all my own, but was certainly God's grace at work in me. With each reading of the bible I became more certain of some things, and less certain of others. I began to challenge beliefs I had picked up in my early life - things I heard on television, or that others had said with enough authority that I took their word as truth, but things which ultimately scripture refuted. As many errors as my eyes were opened to see, these I set aside without remorse, in my passionate pursuit of the truth.
In a short while I became one of those rare Christians who actually had read the whole bible, and then, later, and rarer still, one who had read the whole bible more than once, then more than twice, then more than a dozen times, and so on. I refused to agree with scripture the way that some agree with a software license - you know, where you don't bother reading any of it, scroll to the bottom, and check off the "I agree" box in order to install or run your program? I had enough grace working in me that I was delivered out of being that kind of Christian.
Then again I was delivered from being the sort of Christian who reads the bible once and forever after regards it as a reference manual, to be consulted, but never read through, except rarely, for recreational purposes, or to follow along in sermons on Sunday. They might crack it open in moments of "need" and then only to the psalms and the gospels to give them a temporary spiritual "shot in the arm". No, I ventured into that (dishearteningly) rare realm of actually reading the bible over and over and over again. Not because I thought myself a better Christian for doing so, or because I wanted to have something to brag about - rather because I was hungry for it, ashamed of my ignorance, and the more I read it, the more convinced I was that God's word was my lifeline to God Himself - correcting me, leading me, assuring me. How could I follow Christ and ignore His word?
As I mentioned earlier, In studying the scriptures, many false notions I had picked up in my ignorance came to light, and were set aside. There were things that I had always thought were in the bible, that were (in fact) quite absent - and again there were things in scripture I had never imagined to find, but there they were plain as day. I found that there were many things that I had been told about Christianity, or had seen on television, or had believed for whatever reason - that scripture plainly denied, so that I wondered how on earth anyone could have propogated such errors. Than again there were things in scripture so profound and beautiful that I could not understand why these things weren't being shouted daily from rooftops everywhere - things that I had never heard anyone mention before in my life.
Even in the fellowship of other believers I found that many of the things "we" did as a congregation were not biblical, but were being done because that was the local tradition. I was perplexed to find more than a few of the traditions that were followed by this congregation or that congregation were not merely absent from scripture, but were even contrary to what Christ instructed. So it was that I came to see how few Christians there were that actually knew, from scripture, how to be Christians, or how to "do" church. It isn't like I ever made a conscious decision to compare what I saw in the church with what I read in scripture, rather at some point I became aware that there were only a precious few people I knew who (themselves) knew enough of the scriptures to reason from them on matters of Christian conduct.
It has been my experience, my burning desire since the day I came to Christ, to live a life that is pleasing to God. This desire was the fuel that burned in me, driving me to read and learn from the scriptures - not so that I could sit around and learnedly discuss what I had just read amongst some group of Christian elitist, nor was it to hear my own voice speaking the things of God with some academic authority (to the praise of men no less!), rather it was in order that I might find that seemingly elusive way to live in the one and only way God that God intends His children to live. That is why I read the scriptures, why I prayed, why I obeyed - in order that through these things I might know the peace that supasses understanding.
Some things were more difficult than others. How I grappled with the idea of walking in the Spirit for instance! What on earth (or in heaven above) could "walking in the Spirit" possibly mean? How does one go about walking in the Spirit? Here there is a fellow who says that it means to live sinlessly by finally and utterly surrendering the flesh to the will of God. Here another says that it means that the Holy Spirit is talking to you all the time, but that you just aren't listening, because you haven't developed spiritual ears to hear yet - another says that you have to obey every passing intuition that crosses your mind, for that is how God speaks, through gut feelings and intuition, and failure to follow every flitty though means you risk offending God. Still another hears voices, and another has dreams, all are trying to walk in the Spirit, but they are all doing different things. And so there was a lot of misinformation out there to wade through.
Like everyone else, and certainly like some of you reading this today - I was tossed to and fro, as it were, by the doctrines of men. I tried to achieve sinless perfection, I listened for voices and spiritual urges, I tried suppressionism, and legal adherence, and in trying out as many as seemed momentarily plausible I found that utter failure was the primary thread that ran through all these.
You know, I hope you can appreciate what I am saying. I knew the word of God, and I wanted to keep it perfectly, but I didn't know how to do that consistently.
It came to me one day, as I was meditating on the nature of my desire ("to be pleasing to God") that it was actually a fools errand that I was on.
The fact is, that I am already pleasing to God, not because of my obedience, but because I am in Christ. Do not the scriptures teach that God bestows grace on us in Christ according to the kind intention of God's will (cf.Ephesians 1:5-6)? God Himself predestined us to adoption as sons through Christ this in opposition to the idea of brokering some kind of adoption through ourselves or our own righteousness. When God redeemed us, He was redeeming what scripture describes as His own possession. Until I understood that redemption was the buying back of God's own property - that is, until I understood that God wanted me because I was His already, I didn't really understand redemption properly.
I began to ask myself, what kind of Christian I really wanted to be? Should I set aside whatever knowledge scripture imparted in order to try and be pleasing to God apart from the way outlined in the scriptures? How can a person please God? The answer is they cannot. That is why it is so important to wrap your mind around the fact that Christ has already pleased God.
God sent Christ to redeem those whom God had predestined to adoption as sons. I am the recipient of that same grace - a grace that cannot be appropriated by me or anyone else, but was (and had to be) bestowed upon me, in the mind of God, before there ever was an earth for man to walk upon. It is a grace that God delivered to me directly through Christ. In the wake of this, I ask myself, am I going to be the kind of Christian that is so focused on trying to please God in what I do, that I forget that the basis of my relationship with God is Christ (and not myself or what I do)?
That is a rubber-meets-the-road kind of meditation.
I think there comes a time in every faith where we have to ask some hard questions: am I being the Christian God has called me to be? Am I really abiding in Christ, or am I actually abiding in self? Am I really living the crucified life, or am I just conforming my life to a set of lifeless Christianized habits? Is what I do as a Christian drawing me nearer to Christ each day, or am I just becoming more church-y? Does attending all the meetings, reading the bible, and praying dutifully really draw me nearer to Christ, or am I doing all those things and still finding myself exactly as far away from Christ in my affections as ever I was? What am I resting in? Am I resting at all, and if I am, am I resting in my own (eventually) failing efforts? Is my rest really in Christ or is it in something else - something that is unwittingly displacing my rest in Christ?
Here is what I want to get at today. The reason our faith is supposed to be all about Jesus is because true faith really -is- all about Jesus.
My faith must be for Jesus, in Jesus, and coming to me through Jesus. I cannot draw near to God without drawing near to Christ. Unless my faith is decidedly aimed at knowing Christ, my faith is actually running amok.
Listen: Christianity is not about conforming myself properly to the one and only correct tradition; Christianity is about knowing Jesus. If our obedience is not driven by the desire to draw near to Christ - then our obedience serves no one but ourselves - it remains worldly, carnal, and inevitably fruitless. On judgment day, God isn't going to care one lick about how many rules the believer managed to keep. God is not going to be impressed, even if I have somehow managed to muster profound obedience because such obedience cannot bring reward, it only reveals the areas in my life where there was actually loss - for any obedience to God that is done for any other reason than to draw near to Christ (in order that we may know Him) - is corrupt, flawed, and worthless obedience. It missed the point, and there is no reward for corruption.
I don't know how many ways I should say this - but Christianity is all about drawing near to God in Christ. If that isn't behind whatever you are doing, then whatever it is you are doing is (in fact) a waste of your time - and how much greater a tragedy that is (or will be), if in doing what you do you think that you're doing just fine.
Paul didn't say that that the longing of his heart was to find some way to obey God. Paul mourned over his sin, even as every soul made righteous does - but Paul's longing was to know Christ. It was this desire to know Christ that drove Paul to obey? The certainty that disobedience took you off the path of knowing our Lord, provoked obedience in Paul. It was not fear that kept Paul, but love. He knew that that one cannot ascend the holy hill (that is, draw near to God) with impure hands, and so he pursued holiness (obedience) - in order to draw near to God - in order to know Christ more intimately.
If you have forgotten these things, or never understood them - look into the word of God again and see if this is not so. My heart's desire for myself, my wife, my children, my church, and for you dear reader, is that you would know the Lord, and in knowing Him, know the peace that surpasses understanding. In Him are all the promises yea and amen. In Him is our life hid. In Him, in Him, in Him.Labels: Christianity, exhortation, how to be a Christian, sanctification |
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posted by Daniel @
7:54 AM
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| Stop acting like you've lost your muse. |
Have you ever heard the sermon where you are told that you have to love the unlovable? I want to share something about that today.
It is easy to love my children, my spouse, and my friends, and by easy, I mean that I have an affection for them that motivates me. I don't have to work up this affection, nor do I have to work to draw it from some place within me in order to bring it out. It is just there, and it makes showing affection for these people natural and easy.
But my affections are necessarily limited. I don't know everyone that there is, and so when I try to love people in the world, I cannot draw that love out of some pre-existing personal affection I have for them.
It should come as no shock then that many of the "love the unlovable" sermons you will likely hear these days end up being about finding the right muse. The reason you aren't loving the unlovable (I am speaking as though I am preaching one of these sermons) is because you don't spend enough time with, or prayer on, such people. If you pray for them every day, and make an effort to spend time with them - they will become people that you care about - and loving them will become easier and more natural. In other words the reason you do not love is because you are not investing yourself in other people.
I have a serious problem with that sort of psycho-babble. First, it isn't biblical. God no where instructs us to foster affection in order to motivate love. That is just a human-o-centric crutch that many hold up to justify to themselves their own disobedience. I can't love my neighbor, they say, because the love isn't there. "Why isn't the love there?", asks the preacher who is about to answer his own question, "because you are not doing the work that fosters it."
Do you understand what is being suggested? It is easy for you to love your family, therefore, in order to make the command to love others easy, you need to do whatever it takes to make loving someone else easy also. In other words, you have to learn some trick that will make the yoke of loving others as light and easy as loving your family - and the best way to do that is by investing yourself in someone whom you don't presently show a lot of affection for.
Here is the thing though: the love I have, even for my family, is insufficient. How many times have I failed to love them with a perfect love? How many times has some selfishness in me trumped the love I ought to be expressing to them? Frankly, when I stop to think about it, I know that I could spend the rest of my life trying to love "properly" those who I already love the most - and I would never succeed. The very people who are easiest to love are loved insufficiently and -dare I say it- corruptly.
The notion then, that I should foster a better affection in order to make the command to love others more palatable not only contradicts, but in some congregations, supplants the biblical instruction. Listen: it is great that you find it easy to show affection for your family - but that affection is never going to be sufficient for you to love them the way Christ commands you to. How much less when you are trying to foster a similar, but ultimately lesser affection? How much less, I say, when this plan is being put forward as the way to make God's commands doable? Hello Pharisee? Have you found some way to make God's commands doable in the strength of your own flesh?
I contend therefore that the way to love others is not to try to make loving them easier. You can't even love those in your family with a perfect love, so trying to foster a better imperfect love for the "unlovable" is futile. Even if you do manage to make showing affection for someone you previously weren't "loving" - all you have done is found some muse by which you imagine you can do what God commands more easily. But I tell you that if God were satisfied with such buffoonery, He would have sent you a better muse instead of His Son.
The way to love others is to stop satisfying your own desires, that is, to set them aside, and (as an act of worship) do what God commands. You will not desire, nor will you ever desire (in your flesh) to love the unlovable. But you can deny that flesh, and allow the Spirit to do what God would have you do through you. This surrendering of self to the will of God is an act of worship - that is, your obedience is an act of exalting God. This is what it means to crucify yourself or to die daily, as Paul writes - it is the Christian "way" that we read about in scripture, that has been supplanted by religion.
Can I be forthright and frank? Of course I can, it's my blog. If you find it difficult to obey God, and are looking for some way to make it easier - what you are doing is setting the Christian way aside, and trying to find some other way to be a Christian. There is only one way to live as a Christian, and that way requires you to take up your cross - which is a metaphor for denying yourself the things that you want to do, and instead obeying the commands of God as an act of worship.
These are spiritual truths, and by that I mean, you will not really understand them unless or until God opens your understanding. But you can understand this: the problem is not that you haven't got the right motivation - the reason you are not obedient is not because you haven't found the right motivation, it is because you are trying to "spiritualize" your walk in the flesh.
Hear this: That which is born of the flesh is flesh, and that which is born of the Spirit is Spirit - Pagans are not walking in the Spirit when they love their children, spouse, or friends; neither are you. Thus the advice to try and foster a similar love for the unlovable is (for all the smoke and mirrors) actually just a call to find the "bestest" way to walk in the flesh. Your problem isn't that you lack the right motivation - it is that you are trying to find the best way to make the flesh "act" spiritually.
Christians are not called to act spiritually, they are called to be spiritual. Since there is nothing in our flesh that is in and of it self spiritual, we are commanded to walk in the Spirit - a Spirit who is both with us but also foreign to us. We cannot walk in obedience to the Spirit while we are doing the will of our flesh, so to walk in the Spirit we must deny the desires of our flesh. Everyone who is born of Christ is -able- to do this because the Holy Spirit who is in us, not only enables us to do so, but yearns for us to do it - a yearning that we share as our own - a yearning that runs contrary to the yearnings of our mortal frame.
You see, we want to gratify both the yearnings of our flesh, and the yearnings of the Spirit, and that is why people invent crazy schemes like trying to find the right motivation for obedience. They refuse to surrender control of their life to God, refuse to deny their flesh the right to do as it pleases - but mitigate this failure, by trying to find someway to please God without setting the flesh aside - to find a way to make their flesh pleasing to God - but those who are in the flesh, or so the scriptures teach - cannot please God.
The solution is, as I have been saying, to stop trying to please God in your flesh. Stop trying to find some way to motivate your flesh to act spiritual. Even if you do find some way to motivate your flesh - you will be doing nothing spiritual - you will just be deceiving yourself into thinking that you have finally found a way to obey God in your flesh. No: the solution is to decide today whom you will serve - your flesh, or God.
Do you want to love the unlovable? No, you don't. God wants to. The only way God can do that in you is to do it through you when you get out of His way - that is, when you set aside your own desires, and present yourself to God as a willing servant.
I am not saying you are going to be perfect in this, you won't but this is what it means to walk in the Spirit, and as you learn to do so, you will find your love for God exploding. Godly desires will well up unclogged within. It is good stuff - real joy, real peace. The flesh wants none of it, but it is waiting for everyone who walks in the Spirit.Labels: sanctification, walking in the Spirit |
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posted by Daniel @
7:28 AM
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| The Rational Response. |
Doctor to two patients addicted to the same poison, one is rational, the other irrational: This is a bottle of slow acting poison. It's effects are cumulative - every drop you drink will destroy you a little, an effect that cannot be reversed - there is no way to restore the damage done. Likewise there is no way to build up an immunity to its effects over time. Each drop you ingest brings you one drop closer to an easily avoidable, but otherwise utterly certain death.
Irrational Patient: Yes. I believe that is all true. I have put this all upon a scale and weighed it and have decided that even though it is killing me, and will eventually and more or less swiftly bring me to an easily avoidable death, yet I am going to ignore all that because I like the taste of this poison.
Rational Patient: I know that what you have said is true doctor. It is madness to consume (even a single drop of) poison if that same poison will do irreparable damage, and ushers in a waiting and certain death. I too like the taste of this poison, but I see now, having weighed the thing in my thoughts, that the reason I am destroying myself is because the it is the nature of this poison - the pleasure of it - that provokes me to slay myself by it. How can I continue to consume the thing that not only is killing me, but makes me a willing helper in its murder of me?
Clearly I am not really talking about a doctor and two patients. I am talking about the nature power of sin.
Sin's power is that it produces death in us. I described it metaphorically above, because I think doing so highlights the points I want to make understood today. The power of sin is that we want to indulge it. That's sin's power. That is what is meant when the author of scripture says that sin produces death in us. He is talking about the manner in which sin manifests itself within us. Or said another way, he is talking about the nature of our fallenness - the way in which our "fallenness" manifests itself or works. If we didn't want to indulge in sin, sin would have no power over us. The fact that we want to sin - even though we know it is death to do so, tells us that it is sin that is provoking this irrational response in us.
Without Christ, there can be no rational response to sin's dominion over us. When the Apostle Paul writes to the Romans about being in enslaved to sin, he is writing about being unable to escape sin's power (it makes you want to sin). Fear of the consequences may give us pause, but the hunger to sin eventually overcomes every fear, and drives us, at length, to sin again. Every motive we conjure to suppress sin's desires to hold out against them, whether for the sake of appearances, for fear of consequences, or even for the false hope of self mastery - all (without exception) fall short. We sin the very moment exhaustion overtakes us. That is what it means to be fallen. That is what it means that there is none righteous, not even one. No one is born into this fallen world, that does not experience this, and none can escape it.
So when I say that without Christ there is no rational response to sin's dominion over us, I am drawing a line between what we are able to do in ourselves and what we are able to do when we are in Christ. In Christ we are able, not only to see sin's dominion, but to be free from it. Free in this sense - though we will still want to sin - there will be an alien desire within us to please God rather than our self. Sin is, after all, rebellion against God. Instead of saying, "not sinning" we say, "not rebelling" - it means the same. If we say, "not sinning" we tend to think of just not breaking a set of rules. But rebellion resides in our hearts first can be there even when our hands are idle. It isn't what we do that damns us, it is what we are that damns us. What we do is just the outflow of what we are. This is the foundational truth that our Lord laid out when he said that the mouth speaks out of the heart's treasure. The problem isn't the mouth, it's the heart.
But Christ is Israel's new heart - the one God promised to give to Israel. When you become a Christian, you are put into Christ, who was an Israelite according to the flesh. You are grafted into the olive tree that is the Israel of God - so that the new heart of Israel, becomes your new heart also - that being Christ. Out of this Heart, to continue the metaphor, flows the ability to respond to sin in a rational way - that is, to turn away from it, and towards God.
To repent is to be reconciled to God. We become reconciled to God when we stop rebelling against His rightful rule over us. The rational response to sin is repentance. But no man can repent unless God grants it. That is how profoundly inescapable the fall of mankind truly is - no man can come to Christ (ie. repent) unless the Father draws him. Thus there can be no faith where there is no desire to be reconciled to God - for why would a man who hates God, and wants only to satisfy his own desires, have anything to do with God? There is no room for such a man to trust in God to save him, because he doesn't want to be reconciled to God - he cannot want that (that is the nature of his sinful predicament) - he only wants to avoid condemnation. He is God's enemy, and like a leopard, is unable to change his spots.
When God draws a person to Christ, and grants them the repentance that ends in faith, they are baptized in (ie. put into) the Holy Spirit by Christ Himself - it is the Spirit, the very presence of the Holy Spirit, that makes possible the only rational response to sin. The only rational response to sin (rebellion) is an obedience that flows into the hands from the new Heart. We have access to the new Heart (Christ) through the Holy Spirit who is in every believer. Thus every genuine believer has been set free from sin's bondage - that is, set free from sin's power - the power being that we so want to sin, that we eventually do. Now we have a new desire - a desire to please God in obedience - a desire that is foreign to our old nature - foreign to the old self, or old man (as Paul writes).
It isn't complicated, but it can be confusing if we are expecting something different. If we expect that we are suddenly supposed to be immune to temptations, or free from sinful desires - then we will be fairly perplexed about why we keep on having the "same old" desires - and why we keep giving into them. We do this because we have a habit of doing this. There was a time when we could do nothing else. So we continue to walk the old roads, except now we do so with a crushing guilt, and a real concern about the legitimacy of our faith. The problem here is that we don't understand that Christ sets us free in order that we have a genuine option to obey Him. Like having a new pair of shoes - you didn't have the option to wear them until you possessed them, and now that you do have new shoes, you still wear your old ones because they are more comfortable. The work of the Spirit is to make your old shoes uncomfortable, and your new shoes more comfortable.
Thus, the whole of sanctification can be summed up with the thought that God is doing a work in you by which you hate your sin more and more, and by which you have a real option every moment to obey God - so that you increasingly obey God, even as you increasingly hate sin. You will ever feel increasingly loathsome over your sin, but also strive more and more to root out every false way within yourself. You will struggle with prayer - because you will no longer be satisfied with lip-service. You will struggle with heart attitudes, because you know that they define you more than what your outward behaviour shows. You will loathe your many failures, and cherish the Lord's mercy and grace all the more. This is the work of the Spirit in you. Conforming you into someone who wants to obey God - or said another way - progressively causing you to partake of God's own desires - for it is God working in you to produce this will in you, to drive you to obey from your heart - it is a work that requires the putting to death of the old ways - the deeds of the body - a painful work, but with much precious fruit. People think that the refiner's fire is some painful experience that a few believers go through - but I tell you that your failures, your suffering because you want to be righteous and find yourself lacking - the horribly sloooooow progress of sanctification in your life that causes you often to despair - this -is- God refining you, this is the refiner's fire. It is not some passing problem, some temporary valley you walk through - it is the life you are in, and you will not step out of that fire in this lifetime.
But be encouraged - for just as Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego stood in the furnace unscathed, so you also, for all the light and heat are spiritually unscathed - for your life, the one that matters, is hid in Christ, so entirely secure and safe that all your failure cannot undo it.
Take encouragement then, Christian - beloved of God, chosen, and placed into the Holy Spirit by Jesus personally - and this as your own personal guarantee that He will not leave or forsake you, and that He will finish the work He began in you.
For today however, and every day - you have the power of Christ to obey, which is your rational response - your reasonable act of worship.Labels: sanctification |
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posted by Daniel @
6:25 AM
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| The word of grace |
And now I commend you to God and to the word of his grace, which is able to build you up and to give you the inheritance among all those who are sanctified. - Acts 20:32 [ESV]
Paul was about to depart from Ephesus, on his way to Jerusalem where the Holy Spirit had informed him he would be incarcerated. He knew this was going to happen, but if he was daunted by it at all, it is clear that his willingness to obey God in the matter overcame this concern.
The verse reveals not only the heart of the Apostle in his concern for those at Ephesus, but also his understanding that the gospel was, at its very core, the message (word) of God's grace, which was able, not only to justify those who were presently lost, but also to sanctify those who were presently justified.
To be so certain that God has done something for you that you not only did not merit, but could never "deserve" is to trust in the grace of God. Unless a person is able to trust that God will show them grace, they do not have a faith that can save them. If they are lost and cannot trust that God will be gracious, they will remain lost, and again if they have trusted in God's grace to justify them, and there found their trust arrested, so that they will not trust God to sanctify them, then they will not be sanctified.
I want you to understand the relationship between sanctification and trusting in the grace of God. The person who has trusted in God's grace for justification is certainly able to trust in God's grace for sanctification - but the flesh doesn't want to. The flesh -did- want to trust in God's grace for justification, because it wanted to avoid wrath, but the flesh has no interest in sanctification, and so the the work of sanctification is harder for the one who has learned to love his flesh.
Briefly, there are some who are not saved but think they are because they have assented to the orthodoxy of some profession - that is, they assent to the fact that the gospel is real, and rest their hope in the fact that they have "rested their hope" in the "right" gospel. They are not trusting God to save them so much as they are trusting their faith to save them. It's subtle, but their hope isn't in God, it is really in themselves - they trust that they have believed the appropriate belief, and having checked that off the salvation list, God is required to save them. If you ask them they will give you the orthodox expression of faith, but for all that, they still are not trusting in God personally, rather they are trusting that what they have done will require God to do something, and their trust, at the core, is in themselves for choosing the right way to make God do something.
These who are not saved, but imagine themselves to be saved, will likewise fail to pursue sanctification by trusting in God - they may not pursue sanctification at all, but it is likely that they will, and this because it is something that others expect of them, and again, their religion expects of them. In order to convince themselves that their faith is real, they must do what faithful people do - even if pursuing sanctification is utterly alien to their unregenerate condition. That is what being deceived looks like - you try to do everything a legitimate believer does, not because you trust God, but because that is what you are convinced "proves" you are a Christian.
So when I speak of the justified believer who accepts sonship by having rested his trust in the certainty that God has indeed extended grace to him, but thereafter halts or stutters in the walk of sanctification because the flesh has no desire it, I want to be clear that both genuine believers, and false believers will have the same struggle. The genuine believer still has the same sinful desires as the false believer - and those desires are more than sufficient to overcome all his affections for God. The difference between the true believer and the false believer is that the true believer will have an uncompromised and unquenchable desire to become holy in order that he or she may be more pleasing to God, while the false believer will desire only that God would accept him as he is, and resent (deep down) the call to holiness - pursuing it begrudgingly, and self-servingly - as one might willingly embark on a healthy diet and course of exercise in order to avoid health problems, and not out of a love for healthy eating and exercise.
I make the distinction between the false and genuine believer on this point because the encouragement I intend to offer will be of little benefit to anyone but a genuine believer, and again will be entirely different than the advice I would give someone who is a false convert and deceived into believing his faith is the genuine article.
I encourage you, if you are trusting your orthodox expression of faith to justify you before God, to reconsider. The Pharisees mistook the correctness of what they believed and did as meritorious, and you are making the same mistake. God isn't obliged to passover you in judgment because you have acknowledged that the gospel is in fact true, nor is God obliged to spare you His wrath simply because you have believed the truth and thereafter began worshipping God and trying to be a better person. Unless you repent of your rebellion against God you will not be reconciled to God through Christ, and you will not repent of your rebellion against God until you trust God personally. Don't put your trust in the things you do or believe, but your trust in God - trust that He will extend grace to you when you repent of your rebellion against Him, and you will be baptized into Christ even as God has promised. This is the new covenant, and you cannot enter into it sideways.
I encourage you, genuine believer, who are halting at your sanctification - to remember the gospel by which you entered into God's grace. It was not anything you did that brought you here, but that work in your heart whereby you surrendered your whole self, not only in the here and now, but all your being and all you would ever be, to Christ. In this humility you entered through the gate, and now, and it is in this same humility you must walk. The desires of your flesh kept you away from God, and almost damned you eternally - these can produce only death, if not in you, it will fortify it in others - do not lay down in peace with these desires, but rise up and make war. Yet do not war as a fool wars, but pick up the weapons that are effective for the fight - they are spiritual weapons - humility (willing obedience) is the greatest - but it finds its strength in Gods grace. That is, all the surrender in the world counts for nothing if I don't believe God is going to be gracious. I must trust in God's grace as I surrender.
I know that your flesh has no desire for surrender, and that is why you are halted - because although you are a believer, yet you are living as though you were not. You are living in the flesh, and being in the flesh, you refuse to surrender your will to God, and this you do because you don't believe God is going to do anything if you "do" obey. That is where you are making a critical error. God commands you to walk in the Spirit - to be filled (as a sail is filled with wind) by the Spirit, which means only that you are to be surrendered to the will of the God who is with you in the person of the Holy Spirit, who informs your conscience through the scriptures, and convicts you so that you know the path of righteousness. The reason you don't surrender to the Holy Spirit is not because you don't know how, it is because you don't believe that doing so is going to "work". The problem, as our Lord said, is that you have little faith. Not that your faith is small, for even the smallest faith can move mountains - but rather that you have little practice in exercising faith.
Become, therefore, experts in faith - and faith is just the resting in the certainty that the promises God has made will be applied to you as an act of grace on God's part. Christ walked in the promises of God, showing what faith looks like. We are supposed to do the same. My encouragement then is that, if you are rejecting sanctification for yourself, ultimately because you don't want to trust in God's grace, though you have known the saving power of it - that you get judgment-day honest with yourself and stop abusing God's grace. You are being like an insolent child who knows the will of his father, but resists him because you want to have your own way. What father does not chastise such a one? Every good father does, and my encouragement to you then is to avoid this, for if you are a genuine child of God, and you continue to resist that sanctification that He is working in you - you will be chastised, and I know that you know this, which makes your rebellion even more sour.
Not that I would encourage you with threats of chastisement only, let me also remind you of that joy of your salvation - the day that you surrendered your life to Christ, and basked in the sweetness of fellowship - would that this precious moment of unity, certainty and joy could wash over you again. It can. In fact it can be your every day experience. Christ came to give life, and that more abundantly. Why settle for less? Repent - that was Christ's final message (in scripture) for the church, and if ever it was relevant, it is relevant today. Repent, trust in the word of grace which is able to build you up and to give you the inheritance among all those who are sanctified.Labels: grace, repentance, sanctification |
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posted by Daniel @
6:16 AM
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| The apathetic Christian |
I wish this weren't so, but I believe it is. I believe that the average person who professes faith in Jesus Christ does not make it his or her daily practice to walk in the Spirit.
Do you understand what that means? It means that I believe the average Christian is apathetic when it comes to living the Christian life.
Somewhere along the way the ability to articulate an orthodox expression of evangelical faith became trump, and it didn't really matter all that much if you were actually walking in that faith.
I can't imagine painting this picture with a bigger brush, and by that I mean I understand that I am making a statement so broad that there will likely be a great many exceptions to what I have said, nevertheless I believe it is true.
Yet why is that? Why do I think that the grand slice of Christianity is Christian in theology only, and not in actual practice? I think that way because I don't see a great deal of surrender in the church; perhaps I am blind or have a jaundiced eye - I allow the possibility that it is not the church that is suffering, but rather my discernment. I would prefer that this was the case, but if I am deceived, then I am wholeheartedly deceived, because I believe this thing will all my being. I do not see sacrificial living, rather I see a sort of Christianized paganism, and let me be the first to say, I am not guiltless in the charge I bring.
Whenever I have heard this person or that person say, "this is my 'life verse'", I have always wondered what that meant. I supposed that it meant that this particular verse was definitive to them in some way - that is, it defined for them some principle that they had settled on as the primary principle by which they lived. If that is the case, I think Paul said it best when He said, "For me, to live is Christ, and to die is gain", I think if I were going to choose one single teaching from the scriptures to set up as the primary "goal" or though - Paul's thought there would be a good one.
But really, I could find dozens of texts that would be just as suited to that purpose, in fact I would be hard pressed to actually choose just one verse - though I think I might be able, if pressed, to select a single theme; knowing Christ for instance. Yet I would not find it difficult to find a single verse to describe the way Christians are supposed to be living their day to day lives. For that I would choose, "But I say, walk by the Spirit, and you will not gratify the desires of the flesh." (Galatians 5:16 [ESV]).
But I don't see surrender in the church, more often than not, I see religion. I see people who profess a faith that they are unwilling to surrender their lives and live. They have grabbed hold of a better afterlife, but haven't let go of this one in their heart.
Worse still, if they are genuine... they know they are doing this.
I encourage you, therefore, believer who is apathetic, to repent while you are still able.Labels: apathy, repentance, sanctification |
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posted by Daniel @
11:41 AM
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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
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| Sanctification - Done Right. |
I followed a link from David Kjos's blog the other day (www.ThirstyTheologian.com), over to the Gospel Coalition's blog (www.thegospelcoalition.org). The link was to Justin Taylor's corner of the blog, and the article in particular was provocatively titled, in the Puritan tradition, How Do I Know If I'm Mortifying Sin by the Law or by the Gospel?. Here Mr. Taylor listed the eight subject headings from a sermon given by the Puritan Ralph Erskine, outlining the difference between [1] attempting to put sin to death by the strength of your own might (and therefore as an act of theologically confused piety), and [2] actually mortifying the body of sin (i.e. living in a way that denies the desires of the body of sin) according to the gospel (c.f. Matthew 1:21). He provided a link to the sermon, (which if you want to read it can be found at the linked article above), that pointed to a web site I had been to many times in the past. It is there that we find, in full, a book written by the Puritan Walter Marshall entitled, "The Gospel Mystery Of Sanctification" - a book I consider a -must- read for anyone serious about their own sanctification.
I meet far too many believers who are adrift theologically, and subsequently (inevitably?) spiritually as well - at least in regards to their sanctification. These are not pursuing sanctification in any systematic way, but are sort of attempting to be sanctified in reactionary fits of guilt and effort.
Now, as it happened, after I had studied the sermon, with much nodding and humming, I received an email from a fellow I had had the privilege of counseling in the past, and in the course of this email, I was able to see an immediate need for the passing along of this information. But rather than just link to the original sermon, I rewrote and expanded it a little, and sent it off, with some other encouragements, and that would have been the end of it, except I decided that I ought to post something today. So, because I spent a bit of time on this already, I decided I would simply post that rehash. So here it is, taken from a much longer email, and tweaked it bit for Internet consumption:
It is a good and proper thing to try and live without sin, but there are two ways by which a man may attempt such a thing, and these two ways differ themselves on eight important points. What we are talking about, when we talk about "trying not to sin" is "putting sin to death" in our lives - what the Puritans called, "mortifying sin". The two ways can be described as the [1] right way, versus the wrong way, or if you prefer, the [2] spiritual versus the carnal, or again, the [3] gospel way versus the law way.
I mentioned eight ways in which these two approaches differ (and I am borrowing heavily from the writings of the Puritan Ralph Erskine, as I do so), they are, briefly: [1] the principles from which they proceed, [2] the weapons with which they fight against sin, [3] what they are trying to mortify (put to death), [4] the reason they imagine they must fight sin in their life, [5] The motive behind their fighting with sin, [6] the nature of their mortification, [7] the extent they are willing to go in battling sin, and finally [8] the success of their efforts.
Hereafter I will follow Erskine's map, as it were, and compare the two paths on these eight points, to give some direction to your struggle against sin, so that, being informed, you might understand that pursuing a deliverance from sin according to the flesh, not only will be difficult and painful, it will always and ultimately be useless and never work anyway.
[1]. Two Different Sets of Principles behind efforts to stop sinning
The Right/Spiritual/Effective/Gospel Principles:
Romans 8:13 says, "for if you are living according to the flesh, you must die; but if by the Spirit you are putting to death the deeds of the body, you will live."
The first principle therefore regarding your efforts to put sin to death in your life, is that you must do so by the Spirit of God.
Acts 15:9 says, "and He [i.e. The Holy Spirit] made no distinction between us [Jews] and them [Gentiles], cleansing their hearts by faith." (I added the parenthetical parts to help you keep the verse in context in your thinking).
The second principle therefore, regarding your efforts to put sin to death in your life is that the death of sin flows out of faith.
In 2 Corinthians 5:14 we read, "For the love of Christ controls us, having concluded this, that one died for all, therefore all died;"
Thus the third principle behind your efforts to be put sin to death in your life is that you are constrained to do so by the love that Jesus has for you.
According to the gospel of Jesus, according to the teaching we find in the new testament, your efforts must be founded upon these principles, that you overcome sin by the Spirit of God, by Faith, and because of the love that Jesus has for you. This is the stream from which your sanctification is supposed to flow. Do you notice that each of these principles finds its origin in God? By the Spirit, in faith (faith is a gift), according to Christ's love for us?
Who is doing the work here, according to scripture? God is. It is plainly stated, of course, in Philippians 2:13, where we read, "for it is God who is at work in you, both to will and to work for His good pleasure." - but these principles are foundational - God is at work - we must have, as a foundational understanding the certainty that God is at work in us, that we overcome sin through the Holy Spirit, by faith, and because of Christ's love for us. The work is being driven by God, and that, because of His love for us.
Any effort to battle sin that is ignorant of this truth, or sets it aside in favor of some other way, is poisoned at the outset.
The Wrong/Carnal/ineffective/Legal Principles:
Consider the efforts of the Pharisees in Christ's day. Even though they were ungodly poseurs, they sincerely struggled to overcome sin in their life, but they were doing so in order to satisfy some false presumptions.
First they regarded holiness as something you attained by what you did, rather than where you heart was. You could hate God with all your heart, but if you were keeping yourself from sinning externally, you were a holy man, and God Himself had to honor that holiness. Thus they regarded one's adherence to obeying the letter of the law as a source of comparison amongst themselves. So and so kept the law better than such and such, therefore so and so was more worthy of respect and praise. As this was the case, the praise and applause of men became a primary foundation for any effort to be sinless - as though God had set up the rules, as it were, in order for men to rise above other men, comparing themselves amongst themselves to see who was most worthy. They strove to free themselves from sin in order that they might have the best reputation amongst their peers.
Consider Paul before his conversion - he was zealous for the law of God, suppressing sin in his life, not for the sake of God's glory, not out of thankfulness, or desire to see God exalted - but out of a desire to excel at being a Jew. After his conversion, Paul counted all his efforts to be a godly man as rubbish.
Again, consider those who, from a natural conscience, find sin distasteful, even as they commit it, and so offend their conscience, desire to have their conscience clean, and so, regardless of whether there is a God in heaven, are willing to battle sin just to be free from the guilt of it.
Again, consider those who see others battling sin, and because they associate themselves with these others, are inclined, for the sake of retaining a favorable opinion of themselves, or of fitting into the group, strive against the sin in their life so that they may present themselves acceptable to one another.
Again, consider how some have a common motion of the Spirit, and believe that if they do so and so, God will reward them with such and such. They want to, say, do miracles, or see some tangible, spiritual phenomenon, and believe that in order to have this gift or this experience, they need to be free from sin, so they pursue the putting to death of sin in their life in order that they might achieve or attain to some place whereby they can personally produce or manipulate a spiritual phenomenon.
Again, many times the very principle that they try to be free from one sin is to protect another. Consider the man who, in the company of other believers, sees a lusty image of a scantily clad woman, and though his heart longs to drink in her image with her eyes, and would otherwise linger thus, yet because he doesn't want to appear a sinner in the eyes of his companions, he forsakes the sin of lust in order to satisfy the sin of pride over one's reputation.
The first difference therefore between the right and wrong way to put sin to death in your life, is in the principles upon which your efforts rest or are derived from.
The second difference, is in the weapons that are employed to put sin to death in your life.
The Right/Spiritual/Effective/Gospel Weapons:
The gospel believer fights to put sin to death in his life using the grace's weapons, namely: [a] the blood of Christ, [b] the word of God, [c] the promises of the covenant, and [d] the virtue of Christ's death and cross.
The Blood of Christ: Not the red fluid, but as the scriptures teach, the blood represents the life that was spent in its shedding, such that the first weapon the Christian has in fighting sin is the life that Christ spent on his behalf. It isn't that the Christian recites some sort of mantra or spell that invokes the "blood of Christ" as is common, I suppose, in some neo-cultic churches (plead the blood!), that is, we do not overcome some temptation to sin by verbally (or even silently and prayerfully) invoking the "blood of Christ" as some sort of ward against sinning. It is rather that we do not attempt to overcome sin from the perspective of one who is alienated from God, such that failure to overcomes sin means we have offended God, and are cast out by God, and have to do something extra to be reconciled again to God - for if that were our weapon, then it would work against us rather than for us, sin there is no one who does not sin. We regard it therefore, the work of Christ on our behalf, reconciling us to God, as a strong tower that we run into, as it were, when the guilt of our sin would turn us away from God. Being certain that God is for us, and not against us, will be our strength when sin gets the best of us.
The Word of God: In putting sin to death in our life, we must not rely upon our experiences or even our expectations of what a successful battle against sin looks like, rather we must depend upon what God has said in His word to guide us in our efforts, and in the certainty of His work in them.
The Promises of The new covenant: That is, the promise of the gospel, that Jesus came to save His people from their sin (Matthew 1:21); the promise of reconciliation in Christ, the promise of acceptance in Christ, and the promise that God is at work in us, etc.
The virtue of Christ's death on the cross: In Galatians 6:14 we read, "But may it never be that I would boast, except in the cross of our Lord Jesus Christ, through which the world has been crucified to me, and I to the world." Here Paul speaks of the death of Christ as being that which crucifies him (Paul) to the world (i.e. following the sinful practice of 'those who are in the world'). Scripture here tells us that Paul was able to put the sins of his earthly life to death by virtue of Christ having been crucified in Paul's stead.
You see that the weapons of our warfare, are not carnal (things that we do to try and stop sinning), but spiritual. We do not, and cannot produce or purchase success in our efforts by human effort, it must come through relying on what God has done for us. We -will not- draw near to God in truth, so long as we depend upon our own righteousness to make a way for us to do so. We must set that carnal mind set aside, and trust in what God has already done - which is exactly what the scripture teach us.
The Wrong/Carnal/ineffective/Legal Weapons:
The man who is trying to fight sin in order to satisfy some requirement of righteousness does so by appealing to both the promises and the threatenings of the law; Again, he may well look to his own willpower and resolution as a weapon to be used in putting sin to death.
The promises: They battle against sin because they believe, deep down, that doing so (keeping the law as it were) will guarantee them (or at least give them a better chance at obtaining) eternal life. They put sin to death in their life in the hope that by doing so they will win a place in heaven.
The threatenings: They rail against the sin in their life because they have concluded that unless they do, they will certainly go to hell and be damned when and should, they die.
Human Resolve: They have kept themselves from some particular sin now for a whole month! Thus they resolve within themselves that they will not destroy this winning streak by giving into the same sin today. The temptation comes, small or great, and this one looks to his own resolve to deliver him out of it.
Thirdly, they are trying to put to death two entirely different things.
The Right/Spiritual/Effective/Gospel thing they are putting to death:
Both the Spiritual approach, and the carnal approach attempt to put sin to death, but what they mean by "sin" is different. Carnal man is concerned with those individual sins that plague his rest. He sees himself committing sins and regards these sins as marks against his worthiness, such that if he could eliminate all marks, he could set himself before God as worthy. The Spiritual man however knows that even if he could keep himself from all sin, yet the problem is not in what he does, but who he is - he wants to sin, he desires sin, and this because he is corrupt. The spiritual man understands that the sins we commit flow from the well of our own corruption, such that even should we suppress all sin, we will have done nothing to overcome the true problem - our corruption.
Thus the spiritual man does not set about to mortify the sins that he commits, rather he is concerned with mortifying that which is corrupt within him - he is concerned with putting to death what scripture describes (c.f. Romans 6:6) as the "body of sin" - that is, he is not trying to kill the sins, but kill the corruption, and this by denying the desires of the flesh.
The spiritual man understands that he personally has no power to deliver himself from this body of death (c.f. Romans 7:24), that only Christ can so deliver him - and so he is not focused on cleaning the oil that spills from the well of his soul, as though he would be clean if he actually got rid of it all, but rather he is concerned with the burst pipe of sin - the fount from which all the oil of his sin is flowing (to use a present day example). He battles against, that is, he is working to mortify, himself - that is who the spiritual man chooses to deny. That is cleaning the inside of the cup, as opposed to merely cleaning the outside.
The Wrong/Carnal/ineffective/Legal thing they are putting to death:
The legalist's quarrel is more especially with the sins committed in his day to day life. Instead of battling the king who continues to send the troops against him, this one simply makes war with those troops he meets on the field. They continue to come, and he continues to war against them, never dealing with the root problem.
Fourthly, they differ in the reasons for their participation in the struggle:
The Right/Spiritual/Effective/Gospel reason for their participation in the struggle:
The reason the spiritual man seeks to make war against the corruption in his flesh is because he sees that it [1] dishonors the God who is saving him, [2] opposes the work of Jesus Christ on earth, and [3] grieves the Holy Spirit within Him whom he received as the guarantee of his reconciliation.
Because sin dishonors God: The man who is reconciled to God through Christ, does not produce or retain this reconciliation through or by putting sin to death in his life. This one therefore sees sin in his life as dishonoring the great work that God has wrought in him. He sees that he has been given a great gift, and desires to honor that gift in honoring the giver of that gift.
Because sin opposes Christ: The man who is reconciled to God through Christ, likewise sees that sin opposes that great work that Christ is doing in himself, so that he sees the need to put sin to death, in order to stop opposing that good work that is being done in himself by Christ. He sees sin as that which wrought havoc in his life, by virtue of it marring and barring the work that Christ is presently and continually doing in our life. He sees that allowing sin to continue to oppose this work, is really working against his own peace and joy, and so he takes up his arm against sin in order that Christ's work might not be hindered in him, and have its greatest effect.
Because sin grieves the Holy Spirit: The man who, being reconciled to God through Christ, knows that he has received the Holy Spirit as a guarantee (as if the reception of the Holy Spirit was the first payment of many to prove that the rest was coming) of those things God has promised the believer. The ministry of the Holy Spirit is to assist us here and now, in our sanctification (hence the "Holy" Spirit). The believer therefore recognizes the ministry of the Holy Spirit as doing the work of separating the believer from the thing that is destroying the believer: personal corruption (the body of sin). Since the believer understands that this corruption of self, left to its own, will continue unchecked in influencing the believer to sin, and thereby impede the work of God in His life - a work that his very soul desire be accomplished, the believer inclines himself to resist that which the Holy Spirit convicts him is sinful, and embrace and pursue that which the Holy Spirit convicts him is righteous. He knows that sin not only impedes this work but grieves the one who is working it - the Holy Spirit.
The Wrong/Carnal/ineffective/Legal reason for their participation in the struggle:
The carnal believer is willing to battle sin in his life because sin breaks his peace, troubles his conscience, and has, according to his understanding, the power to hurt him personally.
Because sin breaks his peace: The carnal believer is upset by the guilt of sin, and desiring to be out from under this guilt, is willing to strive against it in the hope of living without the constant fear and feeling of condemnation.
Because sin troubles his conscience: The legal believer's conscience tells him that he is a sinner, and the condemnation that flows both from this fear, and the incorrect theology that drives it, is sufficient to weigh upon the believer's conscience. In order to alleviate this constant nagging, the legal believer is willing to satisfy the requirements of the law, and thereby (theoretically at least) slay the guilt of his sin.
Because sin hurts him by bringing wrath and judgment on him: These are all just the same flavor, hashed out differently really - but the wrong reason to be in the struggle against sin is because you are afraid of God's wrath and judgment. God's wrath and judgment was poured out on Christ, there isn't any left for those who are in Christ. The only people who are right to fear God's wrath and judgment are those who are not in Christ. Thus the believer who finds himself willing to battle sin on the grounds that if he doesn't he will face God's wrath, neither understands the gospel rightly, nor sanctification rightly. He is willing to battle sin, because he believes it is in his best (eternal) interest to do so.
The fifth difference between those who put sin to death in the right way, and those who attempt to do so wrongly is in the motives behind their fight, and in the expected end of their effort.
The Right/Spiritual/Effective/Gospel motives:
The spiritually dependant believer will not serve sin because he is alive to God and dead to sin. He loves God, and is motivated by that love, and this because he is certain already (because scripture teaches this to be true) that God loves him, and even loved him while he was yet unconverted.
Motive: Alive to God: The spiritual believer understands that it is the desire of the Holy Spirit within himself, passed along to the believer through our union with Christ, to be at peace with God. This does not flow from our own flesh, but is ours through our union with Christ. We are "alive" to the things of God, through the Holy Spirit. It isn't that our flesh desires to be righteous, for it has no such, nor can it produce such, a desire. We are motivated spiritually, therefore, to overcome the sin in our live. Said another way - God, in the person of the Holy Spirit, motivates us to put sin to death in our lives, and this by sharing His own desire for that very thing with our own heart - so that we feel his desire as though it were our own (knowing that no such desire can rise up out of our corrupt flesh).
Motive: Dead to sin: The spiritual believer recognizes that if we are united together with Christ in His death and resurrection, and if Christ himself was dead to sin - then the life of Christ which is within every believer is itself dead to sin, so that we are motivated to allow the life of Christ to live within us, rather than our own corrupt desires to dictate our actions, patiently depending on the thought that as we allow this life to manifest itself in us, the victory over sin that is inherent in this life, will begin to manifest itself in our daily living.
The believer who approaches putting sin to death by trusting in the work God has done, that is, by apply the good news that God has already made it possible for them, this same believer will be motivated by the life of Christ within them to pursue the magnification of Christ's life within them - a pursuit that necessarily includes denying the flesh (putting to death the deeds of the flesh).
The Wrong/Carnal/ineffective/Legal motives:
The carnal believer tries to deny sin in order that he might make it possible for God to love him.
Motive:His hope is that by doing such and such, or not doing so and so, he will incline God's affection for himself, by which he imagines himself to become a partaker of what scripture says God has already given him.
This one is driven, primarily by personal experience. He wants a sign or wonder to prove what God has said, and is motivated by the hope that enough effort will eventually produce a sign.
Naturally this is an extremely dangerous and flawed notion, because since it cannot succeed, the one who pursues it will typically invent something that looks like success, and thereafter pursue this false success, to their own detriment, since it never brings them closer to God, but is really and empty form of religion.
Sixthly, their understanding of the nature of their mortification of sin is different.
The Wrong/Carnal/ineffective/Legal nature:
The legalist may oppose sin, but deep down, he will not pursue the utter destruction of self will. He will not surrender utter control of his life to God, because he reserves the "right" to do whatever he wants.
Thus the legalist wants to pacify God by not sinning, and in this way, he deceives himself, for he believes that he has found a way to avoid the Lordship of Christ - and this by satisfying whatever expectations (short of surrender) are placed upon him. He is willing to mortify sin -instead of- surrender his whole being to God. He is willing to put individual sins to death -instead of- eternally and finally and thoroughly humbling himself before God, so that he will do the will of God without hesitation or question. He is willing to battle individual sins instead, even though it is pointless to do so from a rebellious heart.
The Right/Spiritual/Effective/Gospel nature:
The spiritual believer, having a nature and principle contrary to sin, seeks not only to have sin weakened, but eradicated. His quarrel is irreconcilable; no terms of accommodation or agreement; no league with sin is allowed, for he will not suffer himself to be a hypocrite in this matter. He is determined to make war with that which assaults him, that which would cause him to deny Christ's reign in favor of its own reign.
The seventh is similar to the sixth in that these two paths differ in regard to how far they are willing to go when it comes to putting sin to death in their lives.
How far will the Right/Spiritual/Effective/Gospel believer go?
The spiritual believer is willing to go all the way, both objectively and subjectively
Objectively: The spiritual believer truly hates every false way, and will not suffer himself to pursue a way he knows to be false.
Subjectively: Everything that makes up that which is regenerate in the believer, screams in unison against sin. It isn't fakery or hopeful thinking, it is the nature of that life which was placed within the believer in the moment of their justification - the moment they were saved from sin.
The spiritual believer will not make peace with sin, though he may, through error or misinformation pursue for a season some false way, and flounder thereby, yet even in this the spiritual believer will not be satisfied in sin, but continue to pursue its demise in his life. Corruption will never be long be tolerated, for the struggle is driven by the new life within, a life that is Christ's, a life that will not expire, and will not surrender, and will not fail. Thus the spiritual believer is willing to make war against sin forever - it is perhaps easier to describe it in the negative - the spiritual believer will never be satisfied until sin is eradicated, and this because God within Him will never be satisfied thus.
How far will the Wrong/Carnal/ineffective/Legal go?
The hypocrite or legalist; is willing to spare some sin or other, and willing to allow some rebellion to remain nested at the core of his being, for his opposition to sin is carnal, not spiritual. He does not truly wish for sin to be eradicated, rather he desires that the condemnation of sin be removed from himself, and so he labors against sin in order to be free from condemnation, he has no desire for God, but desires to pacify him by his efforts. His heart continues to approve sin, even as he rails against it in order to save his own hide. His opposition to sin is at best, short lived and shallow. He gladly dispenses of that which is of greatest hindrance to his peace, like a man who is satisfied having cleared a small, relatively clean place for himself to sit in a barn full of manure. He has no desire to clean the barn out, for he likes the manure, but for the sake of some girl whom he would woo, he is willing to wash his clothes, and keep the common areas of his barn clean in the hope that she might be charmed by his effort, and meet him there.
The hypocrite will not persevere, for he is not truly at war with the corruption within him, rather he is at war with the condemnation against him, and his efforts are not to put to death that which deserves to die, but rather to preserve it through pacifying the judgment against it.
Finally, these different paths differ in their success.
The Wrong/Carnal/ineffective/Legal path ends in perpetual failure.
The carnalist, the legalist, the ineffective man, with his wrong approach to putting the sins of his body to death, will always fail to do what he has set out to do. He is not fighting the disease, but hoping to suppress it's symptoms, so that even if it were possible to suppress them fully, the body would still be as sick as when it began, only more comfortably so. But it is not possible. For what looks like a victory on the left, only opens another breach on the right. For all the effort, the hypocritical, carnal, legal, wrong-headed efforts spent here, the one who thus spends them is, at the end of the day, no closer to God than at the outset.
His corruption has never been denied, it has only been toyed with, pampered on the one hand, while half heartedly poked on the other.
The Right/Spiritual/effective/Gospel path however, ends in success.
That is not to say that this path leads to a sinless existence, for that is not the end of sanctification. The one who by the Spirit is putting to death the deeds of the body, is not purifying his own corruption, rather he is training himself to deny the flesh and obey the Spirit, and this for the sake of God's glory, and his own joy. He understands that the victory is our own spiritual maturity - and that being a fostered and cultivated dependance on God in all things.
The one who learns to stop opposing the work of God, and to trust in what God has done so that he is not trying to purchase God's love, or favor - this one is able to draw near to God in deeper and fuller fellowship - something that God desires, not for His benefit, but as an expression of the greatest gift God can give us - Himself.Labels: gospel, sanctification, sin |
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posted by Daniel @
8:05 AM
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