Wednesday, November 30, 2011

Love Your Enemies


“But love your enemies, and do good, and lend, expecting nothing in return, and your reward will be great, and you will be sons of the Most High, for he is kind to the ungrateful and the evil. Be merciful, even as your Father is merciful.”

(Luke 6:35-36 ESV)

This is a hard word of Christ. At least for me it is a hard word. How does one love his enemies? I never could do this on my own strength. It is simply impossible. In this imperative, there are several hidden but critical ideas that must first be dealt with.

The first thing I must deal with is the question of who I am. If I have some idea that I am better than my enemy because I am ‘wiser’, ‘more holy’, ‘more pious’ or any such thing, I will never be able to love my enemy. Love does not recognize condescension. I must realize that I and my enemy suffer equally from the effects of law and sin. We are both beggars.

Paul said it best: “The saying is trustworthy and deserving of full acceptance, that Christ Jesus came into the world to save sinners, of whom I am the foremost.” (1 Timothy 1:15 ESV)  

If my attitude is that I have it all right and my enemy has it all wrong, there is no room for me to be able to do him a kindness or to love him. I will ever see him as inferior to myself and anything I do for him will not be love, but charity from my pity. When I come to understand that my enemy and I are on the same footing, under the same influence of sin, the world, and the devil, I can begin to have empathy for him. I can begin to love him when I recognize our base commonalities, regardless of our differences.

It will come down to how I read this statement:  "he[God] is kind to the ungrateful and the evil". Do I view myself as ungrateful and evil? How do I view my enemy? You see, relative to God we are all ‘ungrateful’ and ‘evil’. Christ is not telling his disciples that their enemy is ungrateful and evil, but that they are.  And being evil, how much mercy has God shown them in loving them? It is from this understanding of God’s mercy toward us as ungracious and evil beings that we may truly love our enemy by extending the grace that God has extended to us.

It is, in a way, an easy thing to extend outward friendship toward our enemies. We can by force of will behave civilly to almost anyone. But Jesus is not calling for civility here, but love. Love is a different thing entirely. Love as in patience, kindness, keeping no record of wrongs done. That is not civility, which is an outward obligation to treat others with respect, but a deep and true love. Love that sees a person as being more important than ourselves. And Jesus asks us to extend this kind of love not to those who love us back, but to those who do us wrong and use us harshly.

The bottom line is that all of humanity is born condemned. Your enemy does not choose to do you wrong, he is under the compulsion of 'powers and principalities' that he may know nothing about. We are all sinful at heart. Before God there is not a negotiable difference between Adolf Hitler and Mother Theresa. It is only through the grace of God that we are redeemed before God. Therefore, our enemy is just as we are had God not been merciful to us. We can claim no superiority in ourselves, because what we are other than human is only of God. Knowing this, we may begin to love our enemies and do good.

God Bless

Tuesday, November 29, 2011

Head and Heart

"May grace and peace be multiplied to you in the knowledge of God and of Jesus our Lord."
(2 Peter 1:2 ESV)

The Heart of Man 

Any study of the heart of man has to lead us to the conclusion that it is wicked to the core. As Jeremiah says, "The heart is deceitful above all things, and desperately sick; who can understand it?" (Jeremiah 17:9 ESV) Unless we base our understanding of who we are on this fact, we can never approach God with any transparency in our intent. Hard as it may be to accept, the overarching description of man is that "every intention of the thoughts of his heart [are] only evil continually." (Genesis 6:5 ESV)

It must be further understood that this is not something that we choose; it is in our makeup. Consider the case of the alcoholic; he knows and understands that his behavior has consequences to his health, family and livelihood. If he had simply to choose not to be ensnared in his sin, it would be an easy matter to weigh the consequences against the 'pleasure' he finds in his sin and abandon the damaging behavior. Reason would indicate that he therefore does not have the choice, since no reasonable being would choose to continue destroying himself. Even Paul faced a struggle despite his acknowledgement of sin as sin. "So then, I myself serve the law of God with my mind, but with my flesh I serve the law of sin." (Romans 7:25 ESV) The Christian heart contains the same evil thoughts and intents as the unsaved person. Have you ever found yourself sitting in a church service and thinking the most vile thoughts that will not go away despite your best efforts? That's the law of sin working against the law of your mind.

Jesus himself described the origin of the sin that works its way to the surface of our lives. "But what comes out of the mouth proceeds from the heart, and this defiles a person. For out of the heart come evil thoughts, murder, adultery, sexual immorality, theft, false witness, slander. These are what defile a person.” (Matthew 15:18-20 ESV) There can be no question that our hearts are desperately wicked, beyond even our own understanding of that wickedness.

Understanding all of this, a question naturally arises when Jesus announces in the beattitudes, "Blessed are the pure in heart, for they shall see God." (Matthew 5:8 ESV) How can the desperately wicked heart of man ever be 'pure'? This is one of the questions that Christianity, and only Christianity, can answer for us. Because the natural state of the heart is wickedness without hope of redeeming itself, there must be an outside force involved in its redemption. Because it is impure, it can only be pure if He who judges it accepts it as pure. 

Though we are fond of saying such things as "I gave my heart to Jesus", the truth is that there must be an awakening of the understanding, the mind, that leads us to a pure heart condition.

Peter on Knowledge

Since I so often refer to the writings of Paul in my own writing, I am going to depart from Paul and turn to Peter for an understanding of the process of this 'head-to-heart' conversion. Let's look at a passage from 2 Peter 1:
His divine power has granted to us all things that pertain to life and godliness, through the knowledge of him who called us to his own glory and excellence, by which he has granted to us his precious and very great promises, so that through them you may become partakers of the divine nature, having escaped from the corruption that is in the world because of sinful desire.
(2 Peter 1:3-4 ESV)
It is with the mind that we begin to recognize all that has been given us of God. Through this knowledge, we understand the promises that he has made to us, namely, that we are partakers of his divine nature. By understanding that we are partaking in his nature, we escape the corruption that the rest of the world is ensnared in because of the sinful desires of the heart. God first leads us to understand what he has done for us, and that understanding leads us to become what God's wants us to be. We become the pure in heart not by striving to be pure (Law), but by believing God when he tells us that we are pure because of what he has accomplished for us through Christ (grace).

There is a segment of the church that wants, once again, to get the cart before the horse. I always speak of indicatives and imperatives. Here is another example. The indicative: God has made us, through our knowledge of Christ, partakers of the divine nature. The imperative: We escape the corruption of the world that is caused by sinful desire. They will say that the knowledge of God does not lead to heart change. That Jesus must come 'into your heart' for a change to take place. The scripture teaches that it is a continually growing knowledge of God that brings our heart under the control of the Spirit. This idea of 'Jesus in your heart' is fabulously romantic, but nominally Biblical. If we are not growing in grace by growing in the knowledge of God, our hearts will continue to run wild. 

Interestingly, Peter leaves the door open to the sinful desires of the heart. While stating that the Christian has escaped the corruption of the world caused by the sinful desires of the heart, he does not deny that the sinful desires remain, even in the escapees. They do remain and yet are defused by the knowledge that we are partakers of a new nature so that we do not participate in the corruption. This runs counter to the idea that Jesus inhabits our hearts and drives out the sin within them. We are, and shall remain, utterly sinful so long as we are encumbered with a heart of flesh, despite being redeemed. This is the doctrine of  Simul justus et peccator...at the same time saint and sinner, and is found throughout the New Testament.

The Dirty Doctrine Word

With that, let's discuss for a moment the dirty word I just used; doctrine. The 'Jesus in your heart' camp has a real problem with it. This leads to statements like "Christ didn't give His life for church doctrine. He gave his life for people". First we need to understand that the word doctrine means 'teaching'. I might remind you that the Bible is teaching. It is doctrine. That is why it was preserved by God in written form through the ages. It consists of words which are meant to lead us to productive knowledge of God (as it frequently states). The idea that Jesus gave his life as an atonement for sinners is, surprise, DOCTRINE! As J. Gresham Machen said in his classic Christianity and Liberalism:
"Christ died"--that is history; "Christ died for our sins"--that is doctrine. Without these two elements, joined in an absolutely indissoluble union, there is no Christianity.
I'm sure that many of my friends feel that I am far too cerebral in my faith; that I think too much. But I don't do this for the joy of being a 'deep thinker' or to show off. I am led to believe that the path to heart change lies in 'the renewing of the mind'. I am led to this both by scripture and experience. The years I lived under the romantic 'Jesus is in my heart' idea were unfruitful and corrupt, self-driven and full of evil desires satisfied. As I grow in the knowledge of grace, I find that my heart is gradually brought under the control of the Spirit as a productive knowledge of God renews my mind. By this knowledge of grace the way I relate to others, to the world, to the church have all been changed. Grace and peace are being multiplied in my life.

Now that does not mean that I can't topple at any second. All of that filth is still down there in my heart. But it means that the corruption of this world cannot dominate me so long as I daily acknowledge what Christ accomplished on my behalf and let that rule my heart, pathetic as it is. 

Finally

Don't let the heart camp convince you that your heart, as a Christian, is trustworthy. Look at the history of Israel in the Old Testament. They were frequently led by their hearts - led to the Baals and Ashteroths. We can similarly follow our hearts and they will dutifully lead us away from God. Rather, 'be transformed by the renewal of your mind." (Romans 12:2) Paul gets the last word after all!

God Bless

Saturday, November 26, 2011

A Holy Law


Those who read my posts and notes might easily begin to think that I have lost all respect for the Law of God. With this post I want to make clear that that is not so. I have great respect for the Law of God.

A Perfect Law and Flawed People

First of all, as did Paul, I acknowledge that God’s law is holy, righteous and good (Romans 7:12). There is no question about that. Were a man able to keep the whole moral will of God, as expressed in the Commandments, he would be morally pure. In this regard the Law is beautiful. Any words that could this concisely present the will of God to mankind are words that should inspire awe in us. The Law is an awesome thing.

The Law is indeed perfect. It perfectly expresses the perfect will of God. As evidenced by our inability to keep it, it is perfectly holy. It is so different from the will of man that it must clearly be recognized as being of divine origin; separate and at enmity with the worldly wisdom of mankind. And because the Law carries with it the penalty of judgment, it commands the respect of men. It tells us exactly what it is that God intends for us, and threatens judgment if we refuse to become what it demands. The Law is always the voice of judgment over us.

Ultimately, though the Law itself is perfect, the sin within ourselves renders it completely incapable of helping us meet its demands and becomes to us nothing but a mechanism of pure judgment. Our sin looks at the Law and intentionally defies it, and much of this takes place apart from our will (Romans 7:15-23). Not only can we not keep the law, but we willfully and unwittingly rebel against it. The Law, despite its perfection, is weakened by our sin and becomes ineffective at producing the holiness it demands. Because it is so weakened by the flesh, it cannot be used to change our lives from the inside out (Romans 8:3). At the same time, the sin in our flesh makes it impossible for us to be changed by the Law from the outside in.

A Costly Law

That the Law is precious to God and ought to be precious to the Christian is obvious in the tremendous cost of satisfying the Law’s demands. The judgment of the Law is that all who do not obey shall die. “For all who rely on works of the law are under a curse; for it is written, ‘Cursed be everyone who does not abide by all things written in the Book of the Law, and do them’” (Galatians 3:10 ESV). Since there is no one who can fulfill the demands of the Law according to the flesh, all are under the judgment of death (Romans 3:10-12).
To be satisfied, the judgment of the Law demands death. So the value of the Holy Law is the cost of a life. If we continue to live under the judgment of the law, we can only satisfy it by our eternal death, at which time the sentence is served. So it would always be had it not been for Christ Jesus. He met the judgment of the Law on behalf of humanity so that those who place faith in his work on Calvary are imputed to have served their sentence (they have died) and been freed from judgment by the Law. This is not cheap grace; it is extremely costly. If you dare say that release from the demands of Law is cheap grace, you slander Christ and discount his death and resurrection. This is not God doling out favors like Halloween candy. This is God giving himself as a sacrifice for sin, dying a pitiful and spiritually agonizing death on your behalf to satisfy his own holy justice for you!

We must never cheapen the Law that demands our death to be satisfied, nor should we ever cheapen the grace that satisfied that Law on our behalf.

Faded Glory

In 2 Corinthians 3, Paul refers to the Law as the ministry of death and condemnation:
Now if the ministry of death, carved in letters on stone, came with such glory that the Israelites could not gaze at Moses' face because of its glory, which was being brought to an end, will not the ministry of the Spirit have even more glory? For if there was glory in the ministry of condemnation, the ministry of righteousness must far exceed it in glory. Indeed, in this case, what once had glory has come to have no glory at all, because of the glory that surpasses it. For if what was being brought to an end came with glory, much more will what is permanent have glory.
(2 Corinthians 3:7-11 ESV)
Christian, the only way in which the Law may speak to you is with threat of condemnation and death. It does not speak righteousness into your life, or grace. It is a hammer designed to break you into a thousand pieces that you might cry out for mercy to God. That is its purpose from the beginning. The Law can only say to you, “You will die! You will die! You will die!” The glory of the Law has faded in light of the ‘ministry of righteousness’ that was introduced at the cross. The Law is merely a shadow of grace.

Do not think for one moment that the Law ever speaks to you in any other way. When you leave the sheltering grace of God and seek to be made righteous by the Law, you will immediately hear its icy voice again. “You have failed. God is condemning you for your lawlessness. You are too imperfect. You shall die!” That is the language of the Law.

But the language of grace is much different. “You have failed, but you have not failed me. You cannot fail me because I have made you what you are and you cannot disappoint me. You are imperfect and yet you are perfect in my estimation. You shall live!”

I do not disregard the holiness, perfection, or the demanding nature of the Law. It is of God. But I know that the Law does not have the power to bring about within me what it demands; it no longer has glory in this world. It is grace (God’s totally lop-sided love for me) that meets the demands of the Law within me. Grace is the permanent glory of God which I must live by, always.

God Bless

Saturday, November 19, 2011

Doers of the Word...


But be doers of the word, and not hearers only, deceiving yourselves.
(James 1:22 ESV)


While reading in James 1 this morning, I began to wonder what is meant by being a doer of the word. Did James mean that we should work to satisfy the law? It seems that in order to be doers of the word, we need to know what the word is that we should be doing.

James gives us a clue in verse 21: "Therefore put away all filthiness and rampant wickedness and receive with meekness the implanted word, which is able to save your souls." (James 1:21 ESV) He says that the word he is speaking of is implanted and that it is able to save our souls. That's a pretty strong clue.

If we do a quick study of the word 'word' in the new testament, we can fairly easily form an idea of what it refers to. A few scriptures:

And the Word became flesh and dwelt among us, and we have seen his glory, glory as of the only Son from the Father, full of grace and truth.
(John 1:14 ESV)
Truly, truly, I say to you, whoever hears my word and believes him who sent me has eternal life. He does not come into judgment, but has passed from death to life.
(John 5:24 ESV)
Truly, truly, I say to you, if anyone keeps my word, he will never see death.
(John 8:51 ESV)
Already you are clean because of the word that I have spoken to you.
(John 15:3 ESV)
So those who received his word were baptized, and there were added that day about three thousand souls.
(Acts 2:41 ESV)
And the word of God continued to increase, and the number of the disciples multiplied greatly in Jerusalem, and a great many of the priests became obedient to the faith.
(Acts 6:7 ESV)
While Peter was still saying these things, the Holy Spirit fell on all who heard the word.
(Acts 10:44 ESV)
So faith comes from hearing, and hearing through the word of Christ.
(Romans 10:17 ESV)
Now I would remind you, brothers, of the gospel I preached to you, which you received, in which you stand, and by which you are being saved, if you hold fast to the word I preached to you—unless you believed in vain.
(1 Corinthians 15:1-2 ESV)
For we are not, like so many, peddlers of God's word, but as men of sincerity, as commissioned by God, in the sight of God we speak in Christ.
(2 Corinthians 2:17 ESV)
In him you also, when you heard the word of truth, the gospel of your salvation, and believed in him, were sealed with the promised Holy Spirit, who is the guarantee of our inheritance until we acquire possession of it, to the praise of his glory.
(Ephesians 1:13-14 ESV)
And most of the brothers, having become confident in the Lord by my imprisonment, are much more bold to speak the word without fear.
(Philippians 1:14 ESV)
At the same time, pray also for us, that God may open to us a door for the word, to declare the mystery of Christ, on account of which I am in prison—that I may make it clear, which is how I ought to speak.
(Colossians 4:3-4 ESV)
And we also thank God constantly for this, that when you received the word of God, which you heard from us, you accepted it not as the word of men but as what it really is, the word of God, which is at work in you believers.
(1 Thessalonians 2:13 ESV)
...since you have been born again, not of perishable seed but of imperishable, through the living and abiding word of God... And this word is the good news that was preached to you.
(1 Peter 1:23,25 ESV)
Okay, so that was a lot of scripture! But from it comes a clear understanding of what the New Testament word of God is. It is the gospel; the announcement that God sent His own son to live a sinless life, be crucified and resurrected on our behalf. James is not telling us to become slavish adherents to the Law nor even the imperatives of the New Testament, but to humbly accept the gospel (the word of truth) and to live by it - do it, if you will. It is like a mustard seed, as Jesus said. The seed may indeed be small, but within that seed is the complete potential of the believer. James is not encouraging us to become an olive tree, something different than our God-given nature, but to grow up into our nature and become a mature mustard tree with spreading branches.

It is not enough to simply acknowledge the gospel intellectually. We need to grasp the biblical concept that the gospel is an entirely alien kind of righteousness that is imparted as the gift of God. It has nothing to do with our old self-righteousness nature, and will not coexist with that nature. It demands that we stop our own 'doings' and begin acting according to the truth that we have been made righteous through the life and death of Jesus Christ. His righteousness within us produces fruit. That is what it means to be 'doers of the word'.

The problem is that we are forgetful creatures. If we are not constantly immersed in the gospel word of God, we invariably and inevitably wander back into the wasteland of our own self-righteousness. Lest there be any question that this is what James is speaking of, let's look at James 1:25: "But the one who looks into the perfect law, the law of liberty, and perseveres, being no hearer who forgets but a doer who acts, he will be blessed in his doing." James can only be referring to the gospel as the 'law of liberty'. The Mosaic Law was no law of liberty, but of bondage (see Galatians 3). So it is in this 'looking' into the gospel that we find the power and will to 'do', providing that we 'hear' and 'persevere'.

I find this all very refreshing and encouraging - liberating! For a while I struggled with the book of James because I thought it set forth quite a different message from the balance of the New Testament. But the more time I spend with it, the more I am encouraged to run to the gospel and seek to be a 'doer' of it.

God Bless











Thursday, November 17, 2011

Too Much Grace

I guess I have been thinking for some time now that there is no such thing as too much grace in our lives, so I was a little shocked last night to hear one of the church leadership say that you have to strike a balance between law and grace and that 'too much grace is a dangerous thing'. The first thing that came to my mind was Ephesians 2:8-9: "For by grace you have been saved through faith. And this is not your own doing; it is the gift of God, not a result of works, so that no one may boast." (ESV) Since we are indeed saved by grace, to say that there can be too much grace is akin to saying that there can be too much salvation. You could just as well say that 'too much salvation is a dangerous thing'. Get saved to a degree, but don't go overboard.

I know exactly where this thinking comes from. I know that there is an assumption that everyone understands grace and they are sitting around on their 'blessed assurance' saturated in grace and thinking, "I got my ticket to heaven, and I'm just gonna sit here and warm a pew until I'm dead". There are a lot of folks in our churches that are like that. But the answer is not to encourage them to be 'doers of the word' by insisting that 'the Bible tells us what to do - now get up and do it'. Again, the law of Moses was impossible to keep; the Commandments of the New Testament are infinitely more onerous short of God's grace in Christ. Many of our folks are in the state they are in because they have already worked themselves to burnout and are holding on to faith by a thread just hoping they can make it across the finish line with their salvation intact.

There is a reason that Paul calls the fruit of the Spirit 'fruit'. In contrasting it with 'the works of the flesh' in Galatians 5, he could have easily called it 'the works of the Spirit', but he didn't because it is not our work. It is literally the fruit of God's grace in our lives. The more we rely on grace, the more of this fruit we will produce. If it were possible to be completely consumed by grace, everything in our lives would be fruit. Is that dangerous? Only in the respect that Christ was dangerous. C.S. Lewis described the Aslan character (a representation of Christ) in 'The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe' in this way; ’He isn’t safe. But he’s good'. Likewise Jesus is not safe, but good. Grace is not safe, but good.

I pray that the entire church could trash this pelagian religious notion. We have a Saturday-morning-cartoon idea of Christianity, as if we have an angel on one shoulder and a devil on the other whispering to us what to do while God keeps score of our good and bad deeds. I've been quoted to from Hebrews 6 "Therefore let us leave the elementary doctrine of Christ and go on to maturity, not laying again a foundation of repentance from dead works and of faith toward God, and of instruction about washings, the laying on of hands, the resurrection of the dead, and eternal judgment. And this we will do if God permits." (6:1-3 ESV) The implication is, of course, that the gospel is the basics of Christianity. The thinking is "You are already saved, for goodness sake. Do something". But therein lies the problem. Our doing is not the fruit of the Spirit, but the works of the flesh, and leads to burnout and frustration, lack of generosity as well as extremely poor use of resources for very little Kingdom return. If you see those symptoms in your local church, you can be sure that there is not enough emphasis on grace.

Let me assure you, friend, there is no such thing as 'too much grace' any more than there is a such thing as 'too much Jesus' or too much 'fruit' in your life. Abandon yourself to God's great salvation as fully as you can. Become as grace-saturated as you can and bear fruit for God. Resist the temptation to seek God's pleasure by obedience to temporal 'requirements' which will steal your time and energy, and cast yourself headlong into the depth of this great salvation.

God Bless




Monday, November 07, 2011

Modern Monasticism, A More 'Radical' Religion


Reading Timothy Keller’s ‘Gospel in Life’ sessions, I came across this statement by the author: “It is not enough to simply think there are two ways to relate to God. There are three: religion, irreligion, and the gospel.” I have attempted to relate to God in all three ways, and I can tell you both from scripture and from experience that the gospel is the only one that works.

I have been thinking specifically about religion of late. There is the not-so-subtle variety that vigorously attempts to please God by refraining from or engaging in certain activities which we perceive to displease or please God. This would be the attempt to keep his commandments by our own flesh – the religion of the Pharisee. But there are other, more subtle variations, that are perhaps more dangerous and harder to detect.

Keller identifies the problem we have with religion as being ‘idolatry’, and I think that is a fair assessment. I also think it is open to wide interpretation and can lead some to attempt to attack the sin of idolatry in their lives with religious fervor (to understand the folly of this, see my previous post The Believer's Guide to the Law of Sin).  I would identify our religious problem as self-righteousness. Any attempt to please God by religious behavior is really an act of self-righteousness. Perhaps we make an idol out of our self-righteousness, but it seems to me that idolatry is actually the result of self-righteousness. When we ignore the righteousness we have in Christ, we will create idols out of those things we think can satisfy our insatiable needs for the approval and fulfillment that can be ours in Christ alone.

In the past several years, several young pastors have risen to the surface with a ‘radical’ message of anti-idolatry. In their message, you hear the words of Jesus as definite commands to cast aside all idols and live radically for God. This seems very ‘gospely’ at first glance, but is it? Or is it just a subtle religious spin on the gospel? Take a moment to watch the book trailer to Radical by David Platt at this link.

The book description includes this: “He shows what Jesus actually said about being his disciple--then invites you to believe and obey what you have heard.” My question to you is this; is the effort to root idolatry out of your life a commandment of Jesus? In effect, what I hear Platt saying is that your problem is the idols in your life – your money, home, fame, job, nationality. If you want to follow Jesus, all of that has to go because you cannot serve both. Once you have sufficiently exercised the idols out of your life, you will become a true disciple of Jesus.

This is not a new concept. It is akin to Christian Monasticism. As defined by Wikipedia, monasticism is “is a religious way of life characterized by the practice of renouncing worldly pursuits to fully devote one's self to spiritual work.” To be fair to Platt, he is not calling us to withdraw from the world, but to withdraw from idolatry of the things of the world, which is what Jesus called for as well. There is a very distinct, if subtle, difference between the two calls though.

The call of Platt is essentially this; there is too much competition in your life which is distracting you from God. Get rid of the clutter so you can know and serve God.
The call of Christ is essentially this; there is nothing in this world that competes with God. If you are distracted by the things of this world, you do not know God.

Do you see the difference? While not overtly religious enough to be a call to the work of casting aside all idols that compete with God in order to create right relationship to God, that is the message. The call of Platt is to give up everything you own so that you may be a follower of Jesus. This seems to be the call of Jesus as well. But Paul sums up the result of the call of Jesus like this: “Indeed, I count everything as loss because of the surpassing worth of knowing Christ Jesus my Lord. For his sake I have suffered the loss of all things and count them as rubbish, in order that I may gain Christ… (Philippians 3:8 ESV).

Paul’s effort here was not to get rid of everything that he owned so that he may gain Christ, but to gain Christ even if it meant giving up whatever he had previously considered to be of value. He was not about the business of giving up everything that was in competition with Christ in his life, he simply saw that nothing in this world can possibly compete with Christ. It was just one big pile of dung (literally) relative to gaining Christ.

I struggled in coming to grips with this at first, because the call of Platt and others seemed to be on the mark. It has a distinctive gospel ring to it, especially because it does not appeal to the ‘law’ of God, but to the New Testament commands of Jesus. But the truth is that we can no better meet the commandments of Christ without the gospel than we can the demands of the Mosaic law. Without the gospel truth that God accepts us solely on the basis of faith in Christ, the commandments of Jesus are even more wearisome and impossible than those of Moses. God could care less what we have (in fact, he has given it all) so long as our first aim is to seek the righteousness that he has provided in Christ. Idolatry is sin, and must be dealt with as any other sin, by recognizing that there is nothing of value to the Christian that is not found exclusively in the gospel truth.

Again, it is confusion in order between indicatives and imperatives. The indicatives (what God tells us is true about us in the gospel) must precede the imperatives (what God tells us we must do in the gospel). Any time imperatives precede indicatives, you have religion and not gospel no matter how ‘Godly’ the teaching appears.

God Bless.