Beginning with the Spirit but Walking in the Flesh

Let me ask you only this: Did you receive the Spirit by works of the law or by hearing with faith? Are you so foolish? Having begun by the Spirit, are you now being perfected by the flesh? (Galatians 3:2-3 ESV)

Does he who supplies the Spirit to you and works miracles among you do so by works of the law, or by hearing with faith—just as Abraham “believed God, and it was counted to him as righteousness”? (Galatians 3:5-6 ESV)

Here, at last, is the unmistakable link between the gospel and sanctification. It is easy for us to accept that the gospel is the message that leads to justification, but much harder to understand how the gospel continues to play into our sanctification.

Verses 2 and 3 are past tense. Paul asks a question; did you receive the Spirit by living in accordance with the law, or by hearing with faith? Of course you received the Spirit by hearing with faith. He addresses the fact that they were justified by faith alone, apart from works.

Verse 5 and 6 are present tense. Does God continue to supply the Spirit and work miracles among you by the works of the law? No, your sanctification – the means by which God supplies the Spirit and works the miracles – is by hearing with faith in the same way your justification was.

This is where we often go astray in the modern church. We assume that God has supplied the Holy Spirit to us so that we may be perfected by working the law. We believe that we begin with the Spirit but then, in the name of the Spirit, we seek to be perfected by the flesh.  We think that we earn the Spirit by and for our works.

But God supplies the Spirit and works miracles among us by continued hearing with faith. No hearing, no Spirit. According to Paul, seeking perfection through law-keeping – even as believers – does not actually lead to perfection. On the contrary, we deny God’s supply of the Spirit when we refuse to simply hear with faith.

Paul instructs the Colossians,  Therefore, as you received Christ Jesus the Lord, so walk in him, rooted and built up in him and established in the faith, just as you were taught, abounding in thanksgiving. (Colossians 2:6-7 ESV) This is the same thing; as you received Christ by hearing with faith, so walk in him by hearing with faith. Again, the gospel is no ordinary message – it is the only means to the supply of God’s grace.

Let us abandon our Galatian tendencies. We can, with Paul, cast aside our feeble attempts at perfecting ourselves by the flesh. Though we may try to attribute them to the Spirit, they are not. Let us continue to allow God to supply the Spirit and work miracles among us by hearing with faith that we might truly be perfected in spite of ourselves. That is true sanctification. That is the gospel truth.

God Bless

Grace and Peace

Grace to you and peace from God our Father and the Lord Jesus Christ, who gave himself for our sins to deliver us from the present evil age, according to the will of our God and Father, to whom be the glory forever and ever. Amen. (Galatians 1:3-5 ESV)

Grace and peace. Paul begins almost every one of his epistles with these two words and Galatians is no exception. It has often been said that grace is the root and peace is the fruit of faith in Christ. Without grace, there can be no peace. If we embrace God’s grace through Christ, the result will be peace.

In studying the first chapter of Galatians I am struck once again with the absolute insistence of Paul that grace is administered through the gospel. The only means by which we can procure God’s grace is through the good news; faith comes from hearing, and hearing through the word of [about] Christ, as Paul states in Romans 10:17. In fact, the entire book of Galatians is about the importance of the purity of the gospel message, for without the absolutely unadulterated message of grace (free from all hint of justification by law) there can be no true faith in Christ. When we mix the gospel of free grace with any other message, our hearers end up with an impure faith – they will trust Christ to the extent of their knowledge of his grace, but from that point they will rely on works of the law for their justification or sanctification. If they respond to a message of the absolute free grace of God, as I believe Paul preached, that grace will extend freely into every corner of their lives without limit.

So often when we fail to recognize the good news as the means of grace in our lives and we end up experimentally seeking grace through experiences – spiritual mountaintops – or through works. We wonder all the time if this or that is God’s will for our lives. All of these things – spiritual experiences, good works and the knowledge of God’s will – are meant to be fruit that grows out of the good soil of His grace at work in our lives.

Let me ask you only this: Did you receive the Spirit by works of the law or by hearing with faith? Are you so foolish? Having begun by the Spirit, are you now being perfected by the flesh? (Galatians 3:2-3 ESV)

Do we often stop to think that we actually received the Spirit by hearing with faith? Do we think that we can walk in the Spirit by any other means as Christians? We set aside the gospel of grace – the means by which the Spirit is administered – and seek some experience of the Spirit through the flesh. We seek the Spirit to make us spiritual, when in fact the Spirit is evidence of the hearing with faith that truly makes us spiritual. This is why Paul is absolutely resolved to preach a pure gospel that excludes every work of the flesh, including trying to please God by means other than faith by hearing.

We concentrate on each little victory and fret over each little opportunity we encounter because we limit the work of God’s grace in our lives. We will only allow Him to save us so much before we begin to try and save ourselves. Paul, for one, allowed God to save him completely by refusing to find security in anything but the grace of God which had been revealed to him in the gospel. He never allowed himself to place limits on God’s grace, because the gospel which he had been given (by direct revelation of Christ) was a gospel of unlimited grace.

To end today, let me share this with you. God can love you unconditionally because Christ met every condition of God on your behalf. What that means is, to the extent that you believe it, you are free. Free from seeking the approval of God, yourself and others. If you hear that with faith, you will receive the Holy Spirit who will produce the fruit of God in your life. Don’t seek the fruit which grace produces as the means of grace. Seek grace (His Kingdom and righteousness) first and all of these things will be added to you. That is the gospel truth.

God Bless

The Weekend Round-up 12/7/2012

Hope you had a great week in the service of the Lord. A few things of interest around the web this week:

Don't Thingamatize Christmas - Hot on the heels of thanking God for all the things in our lives comes this post by Jared Wilson. What ought we truly be thankful for?

Five Dangers of Poor Eschatology - Eschatology is the study of end time events. It is a worthy endeavor, but has some pitfalls, which Mike Leake points out in this piece.

How Faith Effects Your Work - Tim Keller gives a brief synopsis of his latest work... er, book.

The Doubly Deceitful Heart - Just in case you missed it, this is one of mine from earlier this week.

Is your church just hip, or is it 'Contemporvant'?

More Precious Than Gold

Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ! According to his great mercy, he has caused us to be born again to a living hope through the resurrection of Jesus Christ from the dead, to an inheritance that is imperishable, undefiled, and unfading, kept in heaven for you, who by God's power are being guarded through faith for a salvation ready to be revealed in the last time. In this you rejoice, though now for a little while, if necessary, you have been grieved by various trials, so that the tested genuineness of your faith—more precious than gold that perishes though it is tested by fire—may be found to result in praise and glory and honor at the revelation of Jesus Christ. (1 Peter 1:3-7 ESV)

I have, in times past, interpreted the words of Peter as meaning that God grieves us with trials in order to strengthen our faith; that faith is built in the crucible of pain. I thought that Peter was telling us that when we reached a time of trial in our lives we were to muster our faith so that we can prevail in the circumstances of the trial; that our response to our trials should be greater faith.

Now I see something different in these words. Knowing that faith is the gift of God, I understand that faith is not something that depends on my faithfulness. I realize that there is no way that I can build my faith by being more faithful, rather, it is the faith which God has given me that sustains me in times of trial. The trial is a test that shows me the genuineness of that gifted faith, not a means of forcing me to resign myself to some self-deluded hope that ‘everything is going to work out fine.’ To be specific, trials show us our need for the object of our faith – Jesus Christ.

This kind of approach to trials by Christians (at least in the west) is indicative of the fact that our faith is not really rooted in the savior, but is rooted in itself. We have faith in our faith rather than in Christ. As a result, when we face trials and our faith fails, we become defeated and fail the test.

The next time you face a trial, remember this scripture and think of it in terms of grace. Reading it according to the law will render it to you like this: God desires, through this test, that I prove my faithfulness to Him. Reading it according to grace renders it exactly the opposite: God desires, through this test, to show how faithful He is. In the midst of the trial, which would you rather rely upon, God’s faithfulness or your own? Test the faith He has given you, the faith that is your real connection to Him, and you will discover that it is more precious than gold because it will not perish even in the most fiery of trials. At the revelation of Jesus Christ that gift of faith, not your faith, will be found to result in praise and glory and honor. That is the gospel truth.

God Bless

The Doubly Deceitful Heart

By this we shall know that we are of the truth and reassure our heart before him; for whenever our heart condemns us, God is greater than our heart, and he knows everything. Beloved, if our heart does not condemn us, we have confidence before God; and whatever we ask we receive from him, because we keep his commandments and do what pleases him. And this is his commandment, that we believe in the name of his Son Jesus Christ and love one another, just as he has commanded us. Whoever keeps his commandments abides in God, and God in him. And by this we know that he abides in us, by the Spirit whom he has given us. (1 John 3:19-24 ESV)

Does your heart ever condemn you? Do you let it? Sometimes we do something sinful and we let that old heart just beat us up over it. Our hearts get at us coming and going since all wickedness comes from the heart (see Mark 7:21-23) and after we have followed that wicked heart into sin (James 1:14-15) it condemns us for doing the very thing it led us to do.

The two-faced Roman god Janus

John says that we can know we are of the truth if we can recognize that God – His grace – is infinitely greater than our own hearts. Verse 21 says that if our heart does not condemn us, we can have confidence before God. It seems as if John is saying that when our conscience is clear, we can walk confidently before God. But if you look again at verse 21, you realize he is actually saying something profoundly different – namely, that God is greater than our heart. God forgives where the heart will not, and until we recognize that God has in fact forgiven us despite the condemning voice of our own hearts, we can have no assurance that we are of the truth.  

Look at what Paul says in 1 Corinthians 4:

But with me it is a very small thing that I should be judged by you or by any human court. In fact, I do not even judge myself. For I am not aware of anything against myself, but I am not thereby acquitted. It is the Lord who judges me. (Verses 3-4 ESV)

Here the tables are turned. Paul states that his heart does not condemn him, but that is not what makes him free from condemnation. The Lord is his judge, and in Christ the verdict is not guilty. He refuses to judge himself, because he knows he cannot trust his deceitful heart.

Jiminy Cricket (whose name, by the way, has become a vain euphemism of our Lord’s name – not that I think Disney is firmly under the control of demonic forces) once said “Let your conscience be your guide”. This is great advice for the world at large, where without the conscientious constraint of the human heart every outburst of anger might easily become an act of murder. But for the Christian to allow his conscience to guide him is to allow his fallen nature to guide him. This is why John ends the passage above in this way - by this we know that he abides in us, by the Spirit whom he has given us. The Spirit that reminds us, when our hearts condemn us, that for Christ’s sake God has pardoned us; that the pardon of God is infinitely greater than the condemnation of our own sinful hearts. That is the gospel truth.

God Bless

How To Win Souls and Silence Ignorance...

Be subject for the Lord's sake to every human institution, whether it be to the emperor as supreme, or to governors as sent by him to punish those who do evil and to praise those who do good. For this is the will of God, that by doing good you should put to silence the ignorance of foolish people. Live as people who are free, not using your freedom as a cover-up for evil, but living as servants of God. Honor everyone. Love the brotherhood. Fear God. Honor the emperor. (1 Peter 2:13-17 ESV)

I was struck by the power of Peter’s words this morning in light of what the Christian church in America is experiencing right now. I have had numerous conversations these past weeks since the election that end up with someone asking me, “Okay, at what point do we resist the government?”

It’s a valid question from a purely wordly viewpoint. We look back over 200 plus years of economic, political and religious liberty and pine for ‘the good ol’ days’. I myself have felt a certain sense of mourning related to the apparent loss of liberties which were hard-won and kept – the blood of patriots and defenders which seems now to have been spilled for nothing if we simply allow our civil liberties to slip away. It is heart-wrenching.

But in a bigger sense, we as Christians have not only the ability but the responsibility to live lives which are separated from all of this earthly in-fighting. We are not above politics, but we are not of it either. We are to be in the world but not of it – subject to political turmoil but not emotionally invested. And this is what I saw for the first time today in the words of Peter quoted above. I have said before that the liberty that the government allows me does not make me free. It is Christ who makes me free. When we confound civil liberty with true liberty and become invested in the battles of this world, we have ceased to be free people, even as we fight to remain ‘free’ in a civil sense.

The picture that Peter paints in the passage above is one that makes no sense to the natural mind. He offers no opportunity for fear, subversion or fighting against human institutions. None. If the American church were to live in accordance with the words of Peter, we would live as people who are free regardless of what the government imposes upon us. We would not be shouting down the opposition, but by doing good we would silence the ignorance of our opponents (who happen to be every political faction in this country). We would not be stock-piling weapons and installing solar power so we could go off the grid, but actually continuing, without complaint, to be a city on a hill. We would honor all people regardless of their political views. We would be a people who refuse to play the game but go about God’s business knowing that human institutions rise and fall and rise again as the Kingdom of God is steadily, surely advanced.

Note that this is not a position of weakness, but of strength. A person who is aware of his freedom in Christ cannot be stopped in the service of God even by death. He will continue to operate under the most oppressive human regimes (as can be witnessed in other parts of the world and throughout human history) without regard for his own safety, seeking to do good to others for the sake of his Lord. His resistance is not overtly pointed at any human institutions, but at the powers and principalities that direct human institutions. This is the ultimate threat to any and all human institutions, because it is not sided with any of them and therefore cannot be debated nor fought from any of their positions. This doing good for God’s sake is more powerful than any armed resistance. It cannot be stopped by the weapons of this world because it does not belong to this world.

Interestingly enough, the American church has taken a stance that attempts to co-opt the political process in bringing about Kingdom growth. We have decided that the way to bring about heavenly change is to harness earthly institutions. So we have become emotionally invested in the process in such a way that we cannot offer honor to anyone who disagrees with us. The effect of this is that we have become little more than a political faction ourselves, being both in and of the world. This is a position of tremendous weakness because it relegates us to the use of earthly weapons in a battle that is ultimately fought in the heavenlies. We are severely limiting ourselves and are in direct disobedience to the commands of God. We are casting aside our freedom in Christ to fight on behalf of the human institutions that seek to enslave us. And we are throwing away the strength of our witness as it becomes apparent that we are as petty as the other participants.

“For freedom Christ has set us free; stand firm therefore, and do not submit again to a yoke of slavery.” (Galatians 5:1 ESV) To become embroiled in the affairs of men is to abdicate your freedom in Christ and become ensnared once again in the 'elementary principles' of this world. That is the gospel truth.

God Bless

Weekend Round-up 11/23/2012

Some of the stuff I found interesting around the blogosphere this week:

…preach the real Gospel with its comfort without hesitation C.F.W. Walther. If the gospel is good news, why do we feel we have to mix a little bit of bad news in to make people behave?

On the law and the gospel - Poetry by Ralph Erskine.

Not Faith, but Christ - Horatius Bonar. The righteous shall live by faith. But faith in what. So often we place faith in our faith rather than in Christ. "Faith does not justify as a work, or as a moral act, or a piece of goodness, nor as a gift of the Spirit, but simply because it is the bond between us and the Substitute; a very slender bond in one sense, but strong as iron in another."

The Indignity of Giving Thanks - It is impossible to worship God without gratitude, and it is impossible to be grateful while clinging to self-sufficiency and entitlement at the same time. Yes, there is some vulnerability in gratitude sincerely expressed, but that is because we are relational beings whose deepest needs can only be met in partnership with others and ultimately with God.

Rightly Dividing the Word

God gives two words. These two words are law and gospel. Neither necessarily carries more weight, but each has a particular function in Christian life and preaching. They stand as complete words separately, yet complement each other beautifully. Failure to distinguish between the two words or to preach some mixture of them as the same word invariably leads to confusion and often to exasperation and rejection of both. It is, therefore, of utmost importance that we learn to carefully distinguish between the two and understand their respective functions.

The Law is meant to terrify. It never comforts, and offers no relief from its relentless demands of perfection. It says “Thou shalt” and “Thou shalt not” and can bring nothing but wrath upon those who fail to keep it. It does nothing to woo us to obedience, but demands obedience with no offer of aid. We cannot be justified by doing it because it was never intended to justify. As Paul states in Romans 3:20, ”…by works of the law no human being will be justified in his sight, since through the law comes knowledge of sin.” This passage indicates what the law does and does not do; it does not justify but makes us aware of our sin.

The first function of the Law is to show sinners their sinfulness. It is the very thing that destroys our illusions of self-righteousness. It shows us that we are law-breakers, and in so doing leads us to despair. We might be ever so secure in our sinning – imagining ourselves to be ‘pretty good’ relative to others – until the law comes and shows us that the standard is not ‘pretty good’, but perfection. Since none of us is perfect, the law passes judgment on our imperfection and exposes us to the truth that we are “vessels of wrath prepared for destruction.” (Romans 9:22 ESV) The law is meant to terrify.

The other word of God is the gospel. It is meant to comfort those who have been terrorized by the law. The law points the accusing finger at us and declares “guilty”. The gospel says to us, “There is one who has fulfilled the law on your behalf. Believe that He has done it and be declared righteous.” The gospel, unlike the law, makes no demands of perfection. It is an invitation to enter into the rest which was won by Christ – to be sheltered from the terrifying demands of the law. The person who has accepted this invitation has been released from the tyranny of law.

In practice, as Christians, the law will often come to terrify us with its threatenings. It will repeatedly remind us that we are not yet perfect in thought, word or deed. But, for the Christian, the law does not carry the promised wrath that it does for the non-Christian. “There is therefore now no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus.” (Romans 8:1 ESV) The law still threatens us, but has no power to condemn us. To the Christian, the law is a sheep dog. If a sheep strays from the heard, the purpose of the sheep dog is to threaten it in such a way as to drive it back to the safety of the shepherd without injuring it. Like the sheep, we don’t always understand that the law has no intention of injuring us. When it barks at us, we might bolt away from the shepherd in terror or stubbornly challenge it. This causes the law to redouble its efforts to drive us back to the shepherd and safety. If we learn that comfort and safety are found when we are near the shepherd, we can save ourselves much grief and terror. The shepherd is the only one who can truly protect us from both the threats that lay outside the heard and the sheep dogs within. We must come to understand that the shepherd and the sheep dogs are on the same team, and the goal of the team is our safety, but they have very different functions. In the end, we must not run at the dogs, but to the shepherd. The closer we stay to him, the less the dogs will threaten us.

This is where we so often get ourselves in trouble. When we sin, we fall back into our old habits of either softening up the law to make it appear possible to keep, comparing ourselves with others to justify our sin, or believing that this is the only word of God that applies to us and running from it. This is because we misunderstand the purpose of the law, again thinking that we are somehow justified or condemned by it. When we sin, it is not struggling to meet or run from the law that will bring us back to God, but the richness God’s mercy which is demonstrated in the gospel. If the gospel of God’s kindness is mixed with the wrath of the law, it cannot comfort us but only force us to continue running. This ‘law/gospel hybrid’ does not maintain either the sharp edge of the law or the welcoming comfort of the gospel and in the end is good for nothing.

It is important for us to learn to make a sharp distinction between the two words of God and allow each to function as it is intended in our lives. It is doubly important that we understand this when presenting the two words to others. If we terrorize with the law without offering the comfort of the gospel, there is no balance in our evangelism and we will produce sheep that run from the shepherd. If we comfort the self-righteous who have never been broken by the law, we will produce sheep that have no regard for the safety that the shepherd alone offers and wander without regard for the law. If we mix the two as if they are one, we produce sheep that are ultimately brought to absolute confusion and disgust with the whole thing.

That is the gospel truth.

God Bless

The Weekend Round-up 11/16/2012

Here's your round up for the week...

Sermon: Halloween vs Christmas - Transcription of a sermon by Nick Lannon. Probably worthy of Christian hate-mail in the Bible belt, but a fun read with some good points.

A great quoted bit from Martin Luther - posted on Liberate by Tullian Tchividjian.

Ralph Erskine on the Law - ...I run to my sweet husband, who hath sugared and sweetened the law, with a gospel-dress and form; which, giving strength to obey, and shewing the believer’s freedom from the wrath of God...

Standing on My Tiptoes - A great piece by Elyse Fitzpatrick about how we track our Christian growth in an attempt to measure up.

Hallelujah! What a Savior - John Dink: Cheap law weakens God’s demand for perfection, and in doing so, breaths life into the old creature and his quest for a righteousness of his own making. And what I’m telling you is this: what doesn’t kill him, makes him stronger. Lowering the bar lets the Old Adam peek into the Promised Land. It allows the flesh to survive by rebelling in a form of external piety.

Stuff Christians Say - We have our own music, our own movies, our own coffee houses and even our own cuss words. A humorous look at why we may appear 'peculiar' to the world, not necessarily in the biblical sense of 'peculiar'.

Hebrews 11 & 12; Heroes of Faith?

I have had the pleasure of reading through Hebrews chapters 11 and 12 again these past few days with fresh eyes. I love it when scripture takes on fresh meaning!

Hebrews chapter 11, as most of us will know, is the hall of fame of faith.  The writer begins by telling us what faith is – “faith is the assurance of things hoped for, the conviction of things not seen.” (Verse 1) He tells us that the people of old were commended (worthy of confidence or notice) by their faith. He tells us that by faith we believe all things were created by God. He then lists a number of saints by name and tells of the things they did by faith:

1.  Able offered God a more acceptable sacrifice
2. Enoch was taken up without dying
3. Noah built the ark
4. Abraham left his home and went to a place he did not know
5. Sarah conceived a child
6. Abraham offered up Isaac
7. Isaac blessed Jacob and Esau
8. Jacob blessed the sons of Joseph
9. Moses’ parents defied pharaoh by keeping their son from death
10. Moses refused to live as one of Pharaoh’s house
11. Moses led the Israelites out of Egypt
12. The Israelites passed through the Red Sea while the Egyptians were drowned
13. Joshua and the Israelites brought down the walls of Jericho
14. Rahab did not perish with the people of Jericho because she welcomed the Israelite spies

That’s a pretty handy early history of Israel that shows how individuals were involved in bringing about the plan of God. In the past, I always read this passage more as a list of heroes who had exercised great faith and accomplished great things. My problem was that I had weak faith compared to them. But this time through, my mind went back to the definition of faith that we find often in the New Testament – a belief in the promise of God that is birthed in us when we hear the promise of God. (Romans 10:14)

When we look at it that way two things happen. First, we stop idolizing the characters as heroes because they were just common people to whom God had presented a promise, and that promise created faith within them. They were no more able to muster up faith than we are. Their faith had the same source as ours – simply trusting the spoken word of God. Second, we see clearly that God brings about His will in this world through the faith which he gives. We can clearly trace the hand of God in the history of Israel, but here the writer takes us in close to see how God’s gift of faith to certain individuals was instrumental in directing the course of that history. They all failed in many ways, and yet because they trusted the promise which had been given they were able to accomplish much for God.

The writer then lists many others by name, and still other nameless ones who won incredible victories and endured unimaginable torture by faith. And he wraps it all up by saying that all of these were commended by God simply because they heard the promise in such a way that it created faith in their lives. Despite the fact that they lived according to the promise they were given, they never received what was promised. But they did receive the Word. The Word which was to become flesh, as John 1 explains.

Just about the time I thought I was interpreting all of this a little too loosely, I turned to chapter 12, and the interpretation was confirmed:

Therefore, since we are surrounded by so great a cloud of witnesses, let us also lay aside every weight, and sin which clings so closely, and let us run with endurance the race that is set before us, looking to Jesus, the founder and perfecter of our faith, who for the joy that was set before him endured the cross, despising the shame, and is seated at the right hand of the throne of God. (Hebrews 12:1-2 ESV)

The Word which became flesh, Jesus Christ, is both the founder (the originator) and the perfecter of our faith. In other words, faith doesn't begin and end with us. Faith comes by hearing the word about Christ. When we hear the promise, it creates the very same faith in us that it did in Able, Abraham, Moses, etc. Only better, because now the promise is perfected. The Logos has become flesh and fulfilled the promise, and we, by the faith of the promise, have Him. 

One last thing; when we read the history of Israel it is easy to see God’s hand moving – as it is always easy to see as we look back. But we forget that Abraham had no idea where he was going or what he was getting into when he left home for the Promised Land; Noah had never seen a raindrop when he built the ark, Jacob had no idea that he was blessing Jacob instead of Esau. These people did not plan out the course of history, but simply lived according to the promise they had been given as well as they could. They failed often, protested that they were ill-suited, and were given to sin the same as we are. But by faith – belief in the promise which the promise itself brought about – they were used to alter the course of history. That is something for us to consider as we seek to live lives which are pleasing to God. God doesn’t commend people for the things they have done or will do, but for their acceptance of His promise. That is the gospel truth.

God Bless

Spiritual Finance 101

Most of us are familiar with the terms ‘in the red’ and ‘in the black’ as they are used in finance. To be ‘in the red’ is to be running a deficit – to be spending more money than one is taking in. The United States government is currently ‘in the red’ by trillions of dollars. To be ‘in the black’ is to be without deficit. It means we are making a profit – bringing in more than we are spending.

All people start out spiritually ‘in the red’ with God. We all rack up a debt of sin that we cannot repay, and whether we recognize it or not we all spend a good part of our lives working like dogs in the attempt to repay that debt. We make a ledger of good and bad and try to keep the good out-weighing the bad. But however long the good column becomes, the Law of God will continually point out our failings and add more to the bad column. Paul’s description: “Now before faith came, we were held captive under the law, imprisoned until the coming faith would be revealed.” (Galatians 3:23 ESV)

For some of us, the day comes when we realize that we will never get ‘in the black’ on our own. Someone presents the gospel to us and we realize that the only way to be ‘in the black’ with God is through Jesus Christ. “And you, who were dead in your trespasses and the uncircumcision of your flesh, God made alive together with him, having forgiven us all our trespasses, by canceling the record of debt that stood against us with its legal demands. This he set aside, nailing it to the cross.” (Colossians 2:13-14 ESV) We accept that he has paid our debt, cancelled our deficit and given us a zero balance in the ledger. The grass seems a little greener and the sky a little bluer for a while as we begin to actually operate our lives to profit God. Then the first bill comes due and payable as our sin returns with a vengeance.

When this happens, many of us as Christians perceive that we are once again spiritually ‘in the red’. We feel that we are again underperforming and running a deficit with God. We do not live up to His standards and begin expending almost all of our energy trying to bring our faith back ‘into the black’. This has got to be one of the enemy’s greatest traps because there is no way we can move forward and create Kingdom growth so long as we are consumed with fighting this perceived deficit. This is exactly the reason he constantly accuses us of our wrongdoing – so that he can eat up vast amounts of time and energy by convincing us that we must work to be ‘in the black’.

Once we place faith in Christ, the scripture tells us that God sets our account ‘in the black’ to stay. Even if we go on a spending binge (with sin as the capitol) we run no deficit. Common sense will tell us that this is ridiculous – that there is no such thing as a free lunch. Our pride bridles against such a hand-out and wants to force us to enter everything in the deficit column of our ledger. But the more we enter in the loss column, the more God places in the profit column to balance the account again. “Now the law came in to increase the trespass, but where sin increased, grace abounded all the more, so that, as sin reigned in death, grace also might reign through righteousness leading to eternal life through Jesus Christ our Lord.” (Romans 5:20-21 ESV)

Why?

You see, God has called us for a purpose, and that purpose is to advance His Kingdom. He knows that we cannot and will not advance His interests as long as we are expending every ounce of our energy trying to get back ‘into the black’. I think about the Manhattan Project of World War II (the development of the atomic bomb). All stops were pulled out because the United States did not want the scientists worrying if they were spending too much in reaching their goal. The government was willing to pay any costs associated without hesitation so that the ultimate goal could be met. God has done the same for us. He doesn’t want us worried about where every spiritual penny is being spent – he doesn’t even want us wasting time with a ledger – so he has extended us endless spiritual capitol to use in attaining His goal. He has literally thrown the ledger out the window and told us that we are free to expend whatever we need to advance His Kingdom.

So God’s grace must abound more than our sin because we are sinners. And yet God has chosen us, as sinners, to bring Him glory in this world. To do so, we must be free people – constantly ‘in the black’. In Christ, God continues to pay our debt not so that we can sin more extravagantly, but so that we can operate unhindered in His calling. If you feel trapped ‘in the red’ today, that is merely a feeling. The truth is that God has put you, as a Christian, ‘in the black’ to stay. He has freed you so that you may serve him freely. That is the gospel truth.

God Bless.

Dead Works from a Guilty Conscience

Reading in Hebrews 9 this morning, I was struck in a new way by the outward appeal of the law to the flesh. In particular, the writer speaks of the effect of the ceremonial law with regard to sin:

For if the blood of goats and bulls, and the sprinkling of defiled persons with the ashes of a heifer, sanctify for the purification of the flesh, how much more will the blood of Christ, who through the eternal Spirit offered himself without blemish to God, purify our conscience from dead works to serve the living God. (Hebrews 9:13-14 ESV)

I suppose what really caught my attention was that the ceremonial blood rites were to ‘sanctify for the purification of the flesh’ and that this was contrasted with the blood of Christ which is able to ‘purify the conscience’. The sprinkling of blood and ashes were to deal with the outward sin of one’s life, but had no power to cleanse the conscience. Only the blood of Christ will cleanse the conscience.

This led my mind back to the words of Christ in Matthew 5. His series of statements with regard to the moral law – “You have heard that it was said to those of old, ‘You shall not murder… commit adultery… swear falsely’” – remind us that the law is aimed at the flesh in an attempt to sanctify a person’s actions. This is sanctification for the purification of the flesh, as the writer of Hebrews puts it. The corresponding series of answers – “But I say to you…” – are pointed at the inner man. These statements take aim at the place within us that cannot be purified by works or religious ceremony but only by the blood of Christ.

We cannot turn from dead works to serve the living God so long as our consciences condemn us. We will, like our first parents Adam and Eve, continue to hide and run from the condemnation of a holy God. This is why we need a savior – because “without the shedding of blood there is no forgiveness of sins.” (Hebrews 9:22 ESV) Until our consciences rest in the assurance that Christ has given account for every wrong committed by our sinful hearts, past, present and future, we cannot openly commune with the living God, let alone serve him in accordance with His will. To be useful to God we must concede that religious ceremony and dead works which give the appearance of cleanliness to the outer man cannot cleanse the heart, which is where the problem truly lies. “For out of the heart come evil thoughts, murder, adultery, sexual immorality, theft, false witness, slander. These are what defile a person. But to eat with unwashed hands does not defile anyone.” (Matthew 15:19-20 ESV)

The passage from Hebrews quoted above tells us the purpose for the cleansing of our consciences; that we might serve the living God. Christian, if you are trusting in your works as a Christian to prove your sincerity toward God, you are on sinking sand. If you feel as though you must always be doing something in order to please God, you have forgotten that the only thing that pleases God is faith in the efficacy of Christ’s blood. Our consciences are to be cleansed by the blood of Christ so that our works are not conscience driven, but Spirit driven. Perhaps you have forgotten that at one time your conscience mercilessly drove you to perform dead works in an effort to please God and have fallen into that habit once again. If your conscience is bothering you, go to Christ who gives rest. He will not give you more than you can handle, but your conscience will never stop heaping on dos and don’ts.  The blood of Christ will purify your conscience from dead works so that you might truly serve the living God.

That is the gospel truth.

God bless.

The Weekend Round-up

I thought I'd start a new feature at Undomesticated Grace, the Weekend Round-up. I will try to aggregate some of the best blog posts from around the web that I have read the previous week and present them here on Friday afternoon in the hopes that you can find time over the weekend to enjoy them as well. Here goes:

Smilingly Leading You to Hell - We like to be around people who are nice at least in large part because we are comforted by their pleasant words or deeds and by their adherence to whatever social custom dictates. It is an attractive quality, but it can also be a deceptive one.

Moralism Vs. Jesus-Centered Preaching - There is, in the end, only two ways to read the Bible: is it basically about me or basically about Jesus? In other words, is it basically about what I must do, or basically about what he has done? If I read David and Goliath as basically giving me an example, then the story is really about me. I must summons up the faith and courage to fight the giants in my life. But if I read David and Goliath as basically showing me salvation through Jesus, then the story is really about him. Until I see that Jesus fought the real giants (sin, law, death) for me, I will never have the courage to be able to fight ordinary giants in life (suffering, disappointment, failure, criticism, hardship).

Living Moment by Moment in the Reality of One's Justification -  The Christian life is acting moment by moment on the same principle, and in the same way, as I acted at the moment of my justification. -Francis Schaeffer

Whitefield on Election - For if we deny election we must, partly at least, glory in ourselves.

The election post you have to write. - Jon Acuff's take on the obligatory election post.

Jimmy Kimmel - I Told My Kid I Ate All Their Halloween Candy Again
You have to watch this one to the end. Made me tear up a bit...

Boasting in Our Hope

Christians have issues with boasting on several levels. On the one hand, we are meant to be people of humility. On the other, scripture frequently tells us we are to boast. As with many truths of scripture, it can be hard to detect exactly how these two things coincide. But they do and I hope to explain how.

First off, let’s identify what we are to actually boast in. The title of this post comes from Hebrews 3:6 – “And we are his [God’s] house if indeed we hold fast our confidence and our boasting in our hope.” The writer says we are to “boast in our hope”. What is our hope? Christ is our hope.

I think we do often boast in our hope, but that our hope is misplaced. For example, if our hope is in our faith, we will boast of our faith. If our hope is in God’s provision, we will boast about God’s provision. If our hope is our gifting, we will boast of our gifting. If our hope is in another man, we will boast of that man. Paul rebukes the Corinthian church for boasting about such things – “What do you have that you did not receive? If then you received it, why do you boast as if you did not receive it?” (1 Corinthians 4:7 ESV) In other words, the things about which they were boasting were unearned gifts for which they had no right to boast.

Part of our problem with boasting could be that we don’t realize that so much of the Christian life lies outside of ourselves. We boast of ‘our’ wisdom, righteousness, redemption and sanctification almost as if we are responsible for them. We tend to forget that God chose us not on the basis of any of these things, but especially because we were foolish, unrighteous, lost and sinful. Apart from Christ we are, in a very real sense, still all of these things. “God chose what is low and despised in the world, even things that are not, to bring to nothing things that are, so that no human being might boast in the presence of God. And because of him you are in Christ Jesus, who became to us wisdom from God, righteousness and sanctification and redemption, so that, as it is written, “Let the one who boasts, boast in the Lord.” (1 Corinthians 1:28-31 ESV) Christ himself is wisdom, righteousness, sanctification and redemption to us. Those are his attributes and remain his attributes alone. They are credited to us only by faith in him, which faith is likewise the gift of God (Ephesians 2:8).

As we begin to understand how much of what we consider to be ours actually belongs to Christ, it becomes apparent what it is we ought to boast in. It may seem subtle, but there is a world of difference between boasting that “Christ has made me righteous” and “Christ has become my righteousness”. Do you see that the one is a boast in yourself and the other boasting in Christ? If our boast is in Christ we will never need to exercise false humility. I do not need to feign humility with regard to the fact that Christ has become my wisdom, because the wisdom is not mine, it is his. He is my hope, and boasting in him comes naturally.

Let the one who boasts, boast in the Lord. Not in what the Lord has done, not in what the Lord can do, but in who the Lord is. Boast in him as salvation. Boast in him as the fulfillment of the law. Boast in him as righteousness. But boast in him. Only make sure that he (not what he has done or can do) is your hope, and it becomes easy to boast in him.

That is the gospel truth.

God Bless

Note to Self: You Can Do Nothing

Already you are clean because of the word that I have spoken to you. Abide in me, and I in you. As the branch cannot bear fruit by itself, unless it abides in the vine, neither can you, unless you abide in me. I am the vine; you are the branches. Whoever abides in me and I in him, he it is that bears much fruit, for apart from me you can do nothing. (John 15:3-5 ESV)

I can do nothing. That is true death to self; not choosing to live in a certain way, but recognizing that there is no way of living that can win the Father’s favor. Losing my life for his sake is simply coming to the realization that apart from Him, I can do nothing. I cannot ever redeem myself by leaving off doing bad things nor taking up doing good. I cannot ingratiate myself to God by anything I do or think. I am helpless apart from Christ.

Lying in bed last night this hit me again like a ton of bricks. He has made me clean by the word He has spoken to me – the good news we call gospel – through the power of the Holy Spirit. To die to myself is to accept that this is not of me, not dependent on me, not waiting for me. This is a gift to be accepted, not wages to be earned. I have received it and now I must simply enjoy it.  The death to self is the death of self-determined destiny – the death of trying to manipulate God or my circumstances or the people around me to create a specific outcome of my own will. God has determined the outcome and He will make it so. This is the freedom for which Christ has set me free.

Dying to ourselves is not an act of our will, but an act of God’s will. He chose to place us in Christ so that we might share in His suffering and death, and also His resurrected life. Dying to self is accepting that this is all from God and of God and that there is nothing I can do to enhance it or detract from it. If I abide in this gift, he will dress me and cause me to bring forth much fruit. If I pursue death to self as something I must earn, independent of Christ, then it never comes. Death is resting from works that seek to bring about life. It is blissfully abiding in the life more abundant, with all of it's joys, trials and persecutions.

When we struggle to die to self, we show that we do not yet understand what death to self means. Death to self comes not with struggle, but with release. Release of our will to please God with the understanding that God is pleased with us only as we abide in His son. Until then, we are of no use to God. We can do nothing.

That is the gospel truth.

God Bless

What Fellowship has Light with Darkness?

So what is the latest fad among churches? It seems to be Small groups or ‘Life Groups’ that include Christians and non-Christians. Here is an example I found on the internet:

The primary focus of every Christian Life Group however, is to provide an opportunity for strong life-giving relationships to develop between Christians, and between Christians and non-Christians. Through these relationships non-Christians have an opportunity to come to know Christ in a very genuine and personal way, and Christians can grow toward maturity in Christ.

On the face of it, this seems a good and reasonable idea. We make our small groups friendly and inviting to the non-Christians around us with the idea that they will join us in relationship which leads them toward salvation. We provide an environment in which we can love them into the Kingdom. Now I have no idea if there is documented proof that this works (I would not have been interested as a non-Christian) and even if a church could document that they had increased attendance in this way they could not truly document what happened within the hearts of non-Christians who had joined. I doubt no one’s sincerity in believing that this is a legitimate method of Kingdom building, but scripture makes a strong case to the contrary.

The book of Acts tells us of the early church that “day by day, attending the temple together and breaking bread in their homes, they received their food with glad and generous hearts, praising God and having favor with all the people. And the Lord added to their number day by day those who were being saved.” (Acts 2:46-47 ESV) This is a tight community, one who worships together and shares their homes with one another. They have favor with ‘the people’, which I assume to mean the non-Christians around them, and the number of the saved is growing daily. So does this mean that they were embracing non-Christians as part of the body, or that the favor they found with non-Christians was the primary method of Kingdom growth? If we look at Acts 5, we will see that “they were all together in Solomon's Portico. None of the rest dared join them, but the people held them in high esteem.” (Acts 5: 13 ESV) Evidently the favor and esteem of the people toward the early church were not the primary cause of growth but, as Acts 2:47 states, the LORD added to their number day by day.

This is where the modern church gets side-tracked so easily. Salvation, rather than being a violently invasive Spiritual event which is completely of God, has become a slow sales pitch for us. We keep endlessly searching for methods of Kingdom building that involve friendship with this world while forgetting that this world is at enmity with the Lord of the Kingdom. Living in America certainly does not help, since being ‘Christian’ here could mean anything from simply believing that there is a God to attending church or voting conservatively. The people of Jerusalem who surrounded the early church understood what it meant to be Christian. From a Jewish standpoint it meant being put out of the synagogue and socially shunned; they would not have dared to attend a small group as non-Christians unless they were led of the Spirit to do so.

We also need to understand that the separation between ourselves and those in the world is a stark one. This is not ‘us against them’, and I would be the first to admit that I am a sinner – not unlike those in the world – in need of grace. But the admission of the need of grace makes all the difference. I can have fellowship with those who have made a similar admission, but there is no fellowship with those who haven’t. Paul states it plainly to the Corinthian church:

Do not be unequally yoked with unbelievers. For what partnership has righteousness with lawlessness? Or what fellowship has light with darkness? What accord has Christ with Belial? Or what portion does a believer share with an unbeliever? What agreement has the temple of God with idols? (2 Corinthians 6:14-16 ESV)

Man that is intense! Even I think that these words seem divisive - seem to be a mandate for ‘spiritual racism’ - until I realize that these are the words of a man who gave his whole life and heart in the attempt to win those in darkness and lawlessness to Christ by the preaching of the gospel. Paul loved these lost ones, but he realized that there was no possible way to keep fellowship with them. To do so was to be unequally yoked to those who remained dead to God.

Paul would have recognized the danger in the small group outreach model. First, there is danger that we will leave off preaching law and gospel in favor of ‘friendship evangelism’ (which we largely have). The law brings us the bad news that we cannot satisfy God by what we do, and the gospel, as good news, is the instrument that the Holy Spirit uses to bring about salvation in the life of an individual (Romans 1:16). I defy anyone to find any instance in the scriptures where someone was ‘loved’ to Christ without the preaching of the gospel. Secondly, there is great danger that the individual we are ‘loving’ into the fold will simply begin to model Christian behavior without true heart conversion. In essence, the small group outreach model is just a scaled-down version of ‘invite-somebody-to-church-Sunday’. If we invite somebody to church and they do not hear the gospel (whether it’s not preached or they just don’t have ears to hear) it accomplishes nothing. Sitting in a church does not equal salvation or sanctification. Neither does attending small group. But there is a danger that many will believe it does.

It all comes back to Acts 2:47; it is the Lord that adds to our number day by day. To accept the small group outreach model is an admission that we believe, in opposition to scripture, that non-Christians are basically good people who need a little direction in their lives rather than sinners who need to radical intervention of the Holy Spirit through the hearing of the gospel to save their endangered souls. Perhaps that is a bit harsh, but at the very least it shows that we are unwilling to offend them by the violent, life-invading truth of the gospel. Part of that truth is that there can be no true friendship between us and the world:

You adulterous people! Do you not know that friendship with the world is enmity with God? Therefore whoever wishes to be a friend of the world makes himself an enemy of God. (James 4:4 ESV)

As harsh as that is, that is the gospel truth.

P.S. On the first Sunday of our new believer’s class, we had an unsaved gentleman come in and sit quietly as each of us shared our testimony. The conviction of the Holy Spirit came upon him and one of our class members presented the good news to him and he obeyed the gospel. If we were willing to use our small groups as such an opportunity to bring people in and share testimony and gospel, that would be a Biblical and useful practice. The scriptural objection would be to expecting that there would be continued ‘fellowship’ between Christians and non-Christians with the expectation that the non-Christians would eventually ‘catch on’. That is not a Biblical form of evangelism. Don't take my word for it, search the scriptures and see for yourself.

One Body, Many Parts: Of Short-term Missions, Soup Kitchens, and Church Splits

In our home group last night we looked at some length at what the church is. We looked at the Biblical definition of church, and identified the first factor that makes us (as a people) a church: God’s calling. We are called, as Peter says, to be a ‘chosen race’ (1 Peter 2:9). It is this calling of God that first distinguishes us as ‘the church’.

We then looked at the purpose for which we have been called ‘a people’. Peter continues to tell us that our purpose is to “proclaim the excellencies of him who called you out of darkness into his marvelous light.” There is very little argument here – just about all Christians would agree that the purpose of the church is to bring glory to God through the proclamation of his Excellency.

At this point, the conversation kind of veered in a direction that I had not envisioned. Even within a fairly small and intimate group of believers it became obvious that there was a difference of opinion as to how that purpose should be accomplished. Where we might all agree as to what the church is and why the church is, we began to diverge at how the church is to accomplish her purpose.

After a little more search of the scripture, it became (to me) obvious as to why this should be. While we have all been called out as a church and given a purpose as a church to perform, we have all been gifted in different ways.  We ended up in 1 Corinthians 12, where Paul speaks at length about this very issue. If I had to guess, I would say that the Corinthian church had become divided as each individual or group with a common interest began to push their own way as the correct way to pursue the purpose given the church. His words to them:

Now there are varieties of gifts, but the same Spirit; and there are varieties of service, but the same Lord; and there are varieties of activities, but it is the same God who empowers them all in everyone. To each is given the manifestation of the Spirit for the common good. (1 Corinthians 12:4-7 ESV)

Paul is telling the church that indeed God has given them each gifts to use in the building up of the church. You are empowered by the same Spirit, he says, but that Spirit manifests itself in diverse ways through many gifts, areas of service and activities. How many church splits happen because we don’t understand this? If one group within the church is interested in short-term overseas missions, and one desires to start a soup kitchen, which is right (by the way - these categories are arbitrary and hypothetical)? Well, so long as each is exercising the calling and gift which God has given them, they are both right. They both desire to build up the body of Christ, just in different ways. But what happens so often is that rather than encouraging one another to be used in our gifts, we become protective of our ‘specialty’ and begin to view other ‘specialties’ as competition for limited resources within the body. So the soup kitchen crowd decides to start their own soup kitchen church and splits from the body as a whole, dividing the body from it's necessary parts.

There are several things at play here. First, both groups have forgotten that it is the same Spirit that brings about every work that the church is involved in (hopefully - but that’s a subject for a different post). In our human short-sightedness, we become proud of our own gifting, as if it were from us and not God. When that happens, we begin to look down on those around us and start thinking that ‘we’ are the real church – leading us to think we don’t need the others. Could this have been the case in Corinth? Paul’s letter is a response to the Corinthian’s own letter to him, and one can’t help but wonder if there wasn’t some whining going on. Along the lines of “if these people are going to start a soup kitchen and refuse to join us in short-term missions, then we don’t need them”. See if you can detect where that might be the case based on Paul’s response:

For the body does not consist of one member but of many. If the foot should say, “Because I am not a hand, I do not belong to the body,” that would not make it any less a part of the body. And if the ear should say, “Because I am not an eye, I do not belong to the body,” that would not make it any less a part of the body. If the whole body were an eye, where would be the sense of hearing? If the whole body were an ear, where would be the sense of smell? But as it is, God arranged the members in the body, each one of them, as he chose. If all were a single member, where would the body be? As it is, there are many parts, yet one body. (1 Corinthians 12:14-20 ESV)

In effect; the soup kitchen folks might think that because they are not interested in short-term missions they are not a part of the body. But indeed they are because they have been called by God to be a part of the body and given the same Spirit as the short-term mission folks. If the soup kitchen folks split and start their own ‘specialty church’, where would they be? They might be able to support a fantastic soup kitchen for a while on the strength of their gifts until it became obvious that without those gifted in administration, evangelism, teaching and so forth they are not a church. As Paul says, “If the whole body were an eye, where would be the sense of hearing?”

In the end, what I came away with last night is that we each need to pursue that to which God has called us. Moreover, we need to encourage others to do the same. If God wants the church to begin a soup kitchen, he will gift enough people in that ministry to make it happen, and likewise with short-term missions. Each is of equal importance because in the end each is worked by the same Spirit. I need not feel guilty that I am not called or gifted to participate in everything that every group is called to do. At the same time I should not expect that every individual in the church is going to participate in my area of giftedness. But as it is, God arranged the members in the body, each one of them, as he chose. He knows what we need, and has given those in the body who are gifted to meet that need. We are one body, and we need each part if we are going to proclaim the excellencies of him who called us out of darkness into his marvelous light. That is the gospel truth.

God Bless

Discipleship

What does it mean to be a disciple? The Greek word, mathétés, can be very simply translated as a learner or pupil. We tend to place a lot of baggage on the word that it really doesn’t carry, which is why it is interpreted in so many different ways within the church. We think of it as a follower, someone who behaves in a certain fashion, someone who models Christ. While discipleship is intended to bring about a change in behavior and Christlikeness, it is to take place from the inside out – from the mind to the heart to the hands. To be a disciple is to be a learner of God.

To understand how learning brings about behavioral changes in the life of a believer, we need to grasp something important - namely, that we are to be ‘transformed by the renewal of the mind’ (Romans 12:2). Changes in behavior are secondary to this transformation – they are the fruit that results from it. The gospel is not primarily an appeal to us to change our behavior, but an instrument that the Holy Spirit uses to change our thinking, which leads to behavior change. Look, for example, at Paul’s description of the natural person in 1 Corinthians 2:14:

The natural person does not accept the things of the Spirit of God, for they are folly to him, and he is not able to understand them because they are spiritually discerned.

The natural mind cannot discern spiritual truth. As Paul says in Romans 8:7 “For the mind that is set on the flesh is hostile to God, for it does not submit to God's law; indeed, it cannot.”  In its natural state, the human mind cannot submit to God; rather, it is hostile toward God. Note that Paul says it cannot submit, not that it will not submit – even if we willed to submit, we could not. If we follow this line of reasoning (and it is everywhere in the scriptures) it becomes obvious to us that in order for us to be transformed by the renewal of our mind, something miraculous has to take place. We must be given a mind that is not hostile toward God, one that can accept the things of the Spirit. This is what God does by the Holy Spirit when we are presented with the good news. By means of the Spirit, those who believe have their minds set on the things of the Spirit.

Okay, you say, that covers salvation. But now that an individual is saved, he or she needs to learn how to live as Christ, right? This is where we often fail in discipleship because we think that it comes down to ‘What Would Jesus Do’. After all, Jesus said, “Go therefore and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, teaching them to observe all that I have commanded you.” (Matthew 28:19-20 ESV) This is clearly a call for a Christian to-do list – teach them to observe all that I commanded. We begin to press our ‘disciples’ to start doing certain things and stop doing other things, presenting discipleship is a form of behavior modification. We become the agent of transformation to them, rather than continuing to teach spiritual truths with an expectation that the renewal of their minds by the Holy Spirit will lead to a transformation of their lives. We say ‘Do not be conformed to this world, but be transformed by the changing of your behavior’.

As a result, so much of our discipleship effort is wasted in creating Pharisees. The outside of the cup and the bowl may be clean, but the inside is filthy, all because we don’t trust the word of God to effect the transformation of the mind. But, we say, these people have been in Sunday school for years. They have listened to thousands of sermons. They are so full of the word of God that they are comatose. That’s not working, so we have taken things into our own hands because it seems obvious to us that the word of God alone is not doing the job.

Paul said in 1 Corinthians 2:6-7 “Yet among the mature we do impart wisdom, although it is not a wisdom of this age or of the rulers of this age, who are doomed to pass away. But we impart a secret and hidden wisdom of God, which God decreed before the ages for our glory.” This is where we have missed the mark. Most of our scriptural-based teaching has not been the secret and hidden wisdom of God that Paul speaks of, but little more than vacation bible school for grown-ups. We pick out the heroes and villains of the Bible and set them up as examples of what to do or not do. In other words, our teaching has not been aimed at bringing about a transformation of thinking, but we have used the Bible as an instrument of our behavior modification program.

It is the secret and hidden wisdom of God alone that can affect the renewal of the mind that leads to transformation and non-conformity to this world. What is that? Paul told the Corinthians that he decided to know nothing among them except “Jesus Christ and him crucified” (V1:2) That is the secret and hidden wisdom of God – the gospel. It is hidden to those who do not believe, and all too often hidden to those who do by our own discipleship programs. To be a disciple is simply to be a learner of this secret and hidden wisdom, learning to observe the commandment of our Lord – “And this is his commandment, that we believe in the name of his Son Jesus Christ and love one another, just as he has commanded us.” (1 John 3:23 ESV) That is the gospel truth.

God Bless.

Playing Church

Like all institutions and cultures, the church has developed its own language terms to describe situations that we all encounter. Sometimes it is helpful to look at these terms and define them so that we may better understand what they mean to us and others. I would like to explore the term ‘playing church’ in this post.

We often hear that people are tired of ‘playing church’. What does that mean? I think most times it means that we are tired of just going through the motions. Church becomes a religious obligation to us, or we go simply because we’ve always gone, or because we feel it’s the right thing to do. There’s no excitement, no anticipation, no wonder surrounding involvement in the church. It becomes simply an automated process. It becomes part of what we do to appease God – the fulfillment of a requirement without any joy.

So when we say that we are ‘playing church’, we are saying that we are participating in religious activity. Robert Farrar Capon said “Religion consists of all the things (believing, behaving, worshiping, sacrificing) the human race has ever thought it had to do to get right with God.” We may not feel that we are attending church to ‘get right with God’, but when we feel that we are ‘playing church’ I think more often than not we are involved because being involved seems to us the right thing to do. Even though it doesn’t feel right, it is right. That is the essence of religion – and outward compliance to a standard that is imposed on us by ourselves or others in an effort to please God.

Christianity is the antidote to religion. If religion is man’s effort to reconcile himself to God, then Christianity is the polar opposite in that it teaches that “in Christ God was reconciling the world to himself.” (2 Corinthians 5:19 ESV) Christianity can be defined as a message; a message from God to mankind that He has effected perfect reconciliation between us and himself through the life, death and resurrection of Jesus Christ. The message calls us to believe that this work of Christ alone reconciles us to God. Those who believe this become a unique family of individuals called ‘the church’ whose purpose is to promote the glory of God and proclaim the message of reconciliation:

All this is from God, who through Christ reconciled us to himself and gave us the ministry of reconciliation; that is, in Christ God was reconciling the world to himself, not counting their trespasses against them, and entrusting to us the message of reconciliation. Therefore, we are ambassadors for Christ, God making his appeal through us. We implore you on behalf of Christ, be reconciled to God. For our sake he made him to be sin who knew no sin, so that in him we might become the righteousness of God. (2 Corinthians 5:18-21 ESV)  

‘Playing church’, then, becomes anything short of this ideal. If we are not allowing God to make His appeal through us, we are ‘playing church’. If we are not recognizing that God is reconciling the world through Christ, we are ‘playing church’. If we do not believe that God has reconciled us to himself through the work of Christ alone, we are ‘playing church’.

Perhaps another Christian buzz word enters the conversation at this point; relationship. We say that we don’t want religion – don’t want to ‘play church’ – we want a relationship with God. The problem ends up being that we so often turn our quest for this illusive relationship into religion again. In earthly relationships, we expect to get out of them what we put into them - we often assume that our relationship with God is the same. So we put in and put in and put in to this relationship and it ends up feeling like we are ‘playing church’. Somehow we never recognize that our ‘putting in’ is religion. We don’t get the good stuff as a result of our putting in and we wonder why – never making the connection that in Christ God has given us the best stuff already. In Ozark English – it don’t get no gooder.

We need to have a Biblical understanding of what the church is if we are to avoid 'playing church'. Church is not the building where people meet on Sunday morning, nor is it the activities that take place in that building. The church is a group of people whom God has called out of the world. We are truly a 'people group' in our own right, though we come from different ethnic, economic, political and societal backgrounds. Peter tells us "Once you were not a people, but now you are God's people; once you had not received mercy, but now you have received mercy." (1 Peter 2:10 ESV) We have become a people not because we share common interests or backgrounds, but simply because we have been the recipients of God's mercy. It is not our building programs, mission activity, teaching or friendship toward one another that makes us the church, but God's calling in each of our lives. As in the life of the individual, the church that understands that it has been called out of the world by God will bear good fruit.

Look again at the passage quoted above from Second Corinthians and notice that Paul starts the second sentence with a ‘therefore’.  With it he is telling us why we are ambassadors for Christ – why we (as a church) implore people to be reconciled to God. It is because God has reconciled us to himself. It is not because we try harder, or are better people, or are involved in more charitable works or work to have a deeper relationship with God. It is because God, in mercifully reconciling us as individuals to himself, has created a body of peculiar people who can bring Him glory and proclaim the message of reconciliation. That is the only kind of church that is not ‘play church’.

‘Playing church’ is really a buzzword for religion. For many of us ‘relationship’ is also a buzzword for religion. What we need to concentrate on is neither religion nor relationship, but reconciliation. We need to remind ourselves and be reminded constantly that God alone effected our reconciliation to himself through the completed work of Christ at Calvary. It is only then that we can stop ‘playing church’ and start living church. That is the gospel truth.

God Bless