No Purpose

I do not nullify the grace of God, for if righteousness were through the law, then Christ died for no purpose. (Galatians 2:21 ESV)

I was considering these words of the Apostle this morning and the incredible depth of reasoning that this one verse holds. Here Paul, in simple terms, states the case that to believe one can live righteously by keeping the law as a Christian nullifies God’s grace and renders Christ’s work useless to us. It seems impossible that he should say so, but he does so in no uncertain terms.

Observe how carefully stated his reasoning is. He begins with I, meaning Paul the apostle; the believer. His statement here does not deal in any way with the justification that brought him from the world to God. He says, “I, as a believer, as an apostle, as I am now, do not nullify the grace of God.” His appeal is not to the ungodly to trust grace and be made righteous, but to those who have been made righteous not to nullify that righteousness.

Now he explains what, as a believer, would nullify the grace of God in his life; if he were to seek righteousness as though it were to be had through the law. As he goes on to say in 3:21, “If righteousness were through keeping the law, of what use is Christ to us? If we could merely have kept the law and been declared righteous, then the grace of God is a silly, useless thing.” He is making an argument to the Galatians so that, through very simple reasoning, they might recognize once again the scope of grace. “Galatians, God’s son did not die to ‘assist’ you in keeping some set of rules. He died so that you could live as free people able to determine God’s perfect will for your lives. The alternative to freedom in Christ is not another road to freedom, but to remain in bondage.” (See Romans 12:2)

The most shocking part of the verse is the last. First, that there is an outside chance that Christ died for no purpose is an utterly horrifying proposition. That would mean that we are once again hopeless. It is meant to shock them back to reality. Such an insult to God is this idea that even those who seek to maintain personal holiness through the law must shutter at the thought. Secondly, he is intimating that they are rendering the death of Christ purposeless. Not that it is purposeless in reality, but that in seeking to be made righteous through the law they have destroyed Christ’s purpose in their own lives. Those who would make themselves righteous have no part in the work of Christ at Calvary which actually brings righteousness. They nullify God’s grace in their lives.

It is an incredibly complete argument within one verse. If one can merely apply reason, apart from our emotional attachment to the ‘safety’ of law keeping, it becomes clear that Christ must be all in all. Or perhaps that he must be all or nothing to us. He is our righteousness or we have none. That is the gospel truth.

God Bless

Free Will? Yes and No

I’ve been reading a lot of Lutheran theology lately (meaning the theology of Martin Luther) and I think that he came up with the best explanation for what it scripturally means to be without free will. It has nothing to do with being a puppet as many believe. It does not make God some kind of evil dictator playing with rag dolls in this world. It is just an honest assessment of scripture and human nature.

Here it is in brief (and a lot of this is owed to the explanation of the idea by Gerhard Forde) – We want what we want. Yep. It’s not that we are manipulated and cannot choose what we want – it’s that we are bound to want exactly what we want. We are bound by our desires.

This plays out in real life if you think about it. Say I want a Porsche. Now I still have to get up in the morning and get dressed and work and eat and all of that, but in the back of my mind, I want that Porsche. I have ‘my heart set on it’ as we might say. It becomes for me the motivation for my actions. I might work more overtime to get it. I might shop and read reviews online about Porsche all the time. I might even check with my insurance agent to see what it would cost to insure it. I chose at one point to want a Porsche, but now my will is bound by my choice.

Now there are only two things that can change my will for a Porsche. One is external force. If I lose my job and my house and I am begging for my next meal, the desire for a Porsche will be supplanted by my desire to survive and my will is changed as a result of an external force. The second is if I find something I desire more. If, while shopping for a Porsche, I happen to drive a Ferrari and decide it is better than a Porsche, my internal desire for the Porsche is dislodged and replaced by my desire for the Ferrari.

So if we are bound to want what we want then the question becomes, as unsaved sons of Adam, what do we want? I don’t think I even need to answer that. Clearly we don’t want God because God won’t share his glory. As sons of Adam, we will not share our glory either. The mind of a person bound as he is by his Adamic nature to desire what is for his own glory cannot submit to God, nor will he. Hence Romans 7 & 8: “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. Those who are in the flesh cannot please God.” (Romans 8:7-8 ESV)

Now at this point, one might argue that the gospel falls under the second category of desire change: that it is a more desirous alternative. And that would be correct if one responds to a false gospel. This happens all the time, where people respond to a gospel that does not call for a clear death of Adam and crawl down off the cross to embrace Christianity as a superior desire. Unfortunately that only lasts until they become distracted by another squirrel. Then their bondage to their Adamic desire carries them away. The true gospel is an offense because it calls for the absolute death of our glory pursuit.

The gospel actually falls under the first category of desire change: applied external force. Through the proper use of the law and gospel, God breaks into our world shockingly and knocks us from our high horse. He does not become the ultimate desire by being ultimately desirous, but by decimating all other desires and leaving us with no other hope. Death is the ultimate external force that ends our Adamic desire, so God kills us, and dead men don’t want for anything.

But he does not leave us dead. That which is found dead in Christ is raised with Christ by the same Spirit that raised him. To what? Newness of life. Our desires are changed. We are still bound to want what we want, but (as Pastor Roger is wont to say) our ‘want tos’ have changed. Now the body is still prone to be aroused to desire the things that Adam desires (the quest for our own glory) but the mind is no longer bound by the same desires. And “to set the mind on the Spirit is life and peace.” (Romans 8:6 ESV)

I hope this is helpful. It has been for me. In fact, in the span of this half hour God has really opened my eyes, and I have some apologies to make.

God Bless

Why the Resurrection is Paramount

The cross is the beginning of everything. It calls for the destruction of self, sin and death. The message of the cross is a powerful message that equally repels and attracts mankind. A tremendous offense to self-righteousness, it is none the less a fascinating proposal – that God through Christ has reconciled mankind to himself. That God can, through this incredible act of reconciliation, love the sinner. Not only so, but God seeks out the sinner with the intention of loving him, unlovely as he is.

Interestingly, Christians of almost every stripe will affirm this truth; that it is by faith alone that we are saved, apart from works. That no amount of keeping any law will buy us a part in this reconciliation, but that faith in Christ alone is equal to the task. A large part of them will even agree that to keep the law apart from grace is impossible. After that is where things go a little haywire. It seems that people understand how to find the door into Christianity, but like junior high school boys at a first school dance, they have no idea what to do once inside.

This indicates that while most people understand the basic function of the cross, they have no idea what the purpose is. We know that we are saved by what Jesus did on the cross, but why? A large number would say that it is so we may do good works – so that we may become ‘purpose-driven’ by God’s works. Some would say that it is so we may keep the law. Many believe that it is so that their sins may be forgiven and they can start fresh at being better people with God’s help. There are as many different purposes assigned to the cross as there are denominations – for it is not the effect of God’s work in the cross that we question, but His purpose. Purpose is the divisive issue.

The problem is that we see purpose as being an assignment. We assume that God saved us for the purpose of doing something. We want to make the fruit of salvation the purpose of salvation; all of the things that scripture mentions as being the fruit of salvation (good works, keeping the law, forgiveness of sin, becoming ‘better’ people) become to us a to-do list, and we divide ourselves on the basis of how we prioritize our lists. The typical result of the gospel in our lives is a new grace empowered to-do list looking suspiciously like the law-empowered to-do list we kept prior to salvation. Is that all there is? Forgiveness of sin is great, but what in the world am I to do?

We think we know what to do with the cross, but the resurrection – the purpose of the cross – is another matter. Without the resurrection the cross is destructive and divisive. If Christ dies to fulfill the law and atone for sin but never rises again, the world is left without any control. The sinful nature, no longer held to account, is free to do as it pleases. The Holy Spirit cannot come because Jesus never goes to the Father. Man is free to pursue his own self-seeking and self-god-making desires. The tree of life is restored to mankind while he still knows good and evil. Adam is no longer banished from Eden, but lives eternally in his fallen state. While this paints a bleak picture of the world at large apart from the resurrection, it is reproduced in countless ‘Christians’ every day, who would partake of the cross but never partake in the resurrection.

The purpose of the cross is to prepare for the resurrection.  Not just in a historical sense, but in a personal sense. God does not kill us through the law and forgive our sins just to abandon us to ourselves. No! He kills us so we can be made alive again! He does not seek out that which is lovely, but that which is unlovely so He may destroy the unlovely and create something lovely in its place. He does not send his Spirit to assist us with our doing, but to create something completely new of us that can actually bear fruit for Him. This is no remodel, but complete demolition and building from the foundation up.

In this sense the resurrection may be less understood than the cross because it is even more offensive and off-putting than the cross itself. It doesn’t allow anything to pass through the cross. When we get to the other side of the cross and stare resurrection face to face, it refuses to recognize us if any part of us is still alive. More than that, it insists that old Adam must not exist any longer. It insists that ‘all things are made new’. Not even a scrap of our old filthy righteousness, our fleshly to-do list keeping Adam, can be resurrected. The Spirit says, “My purpose is not to help your Adam become a better Adam. My purpose is to raise you from the dead. Since you are not dead, there is nothing I can do for you.”  So many of us at that point become junior high school wall flowers – we came to the dance, but we didn’t know we were supposed to actually dance. We take our to-do list out of our packet and go find people whose to-do list resembles our own and solace each other with the idea that God can’t mean we actually have to die to live.

The cross is divisive. It divides everything; law and grace, sin and the fruit of the Spirit, Adam and the new creation, death and life. The work of the cross is not as ambiguous and sentimental as we think it is. Its one purpose is to kill us. It is the instrument of our execution. And it does this for one reason – to prepare us for resurrection. Even if we somehow crawl off the cross alive, the Spirit recognizes the life in us and cannot resurrect us. Christ had to die specifically so he could be resurrected, and so must we. If we refuse to die, if we refuse to let go of the Adam and the to-do list that he holds dear, we still belong to this world and there is nothing –nothing – that God can do for us. Drop the to-do list, come off the wall and join in the dance, my friends. Let the cross prepare you in death so that you can be made truly alive.

God Bless

What is the Gospel

My dad, who oddly enough is in my Sunday school class, asked me a very important and pertinent question yesterday. “What is the gospel?”

As I have meditated on the question, I understand why he asked it and how important it is that we understand exactly what the gospel is. If I am to say that all of Christian life is contingent on the gospel, which is the power of God, I had better make a clear explanation of what the gospel is.

Those who spend time around me know that I speak often of God’s love as being unconditional, and that it is the unconditional love of God that gives us the latitude to break free from this world’s system and live for God. Perhaps I should make an effort to tell it exactly as it really is; God loves us without placing any conditions on us. To say simply that God’s love is unconditional is inaccurate.

This world and its law, including the law of God, absolutely demand payment for everything. There can be nothing which is completely unconditional, because law always places conditions on everything. No one gets out of this world alive. The language of law is always “If… then.” The wages of sin is death, as Paul says. “If you sin, you shall die.” Somebody has to die, as that is the condition of the law. Were God to love us completely unconditionally it would be a major violation of His own character. That would mean that we get of scott free, which cannot happen because God’s own justice must be answered or God Himself is unjust.

As Paul has said, the wages of sin is death. Someone must pay those wages in order for justice to be satisfied. So God did something incredible in sending his son, him who knew no sin, so that he might become sin for us. He paid the wages of sin himself because in our sinful condition, we couldn’t. He met the conditions of the law in a way that the world suspects is very sneaky indeed! This is one of the reasons that the cross is such an offense; it is patently unfair to our humanity (original sin) because it does not satisfy the personal accountability that self-righteousness demands. And yet, dogonnit, it is clearly perfectly legal! God outwitted the system of the world by giving himself as the wages for sin. Well played, God! Law never saw that one coming.

So God’s love in not truly unconditional, but God himself met the conditions that had to be met so He can love us freely (even as sinners). And because He has done this – paid our debt to the law - He has a legal right to love us without placing any further conditions on us. In order to be just, he cannot place further conditions on us, because to do so would be to declare Christ’s work as incomplete, which would be unjust. Justice, once served, can never be served again – especially when that justice requires the death of the unjust. So because Christ the just became unjust and died in our place, our debt is paid.

Now that alone is exceedingly good news. Oh happy condition – free from law and sin and death! This is freedom from self – from trying to pay the wages ourselves. This is death of slavish bondage to our self-seeking desire for recompense to and from God and others. But the good news of the gospel does not stop there, for if it did it would leave a mighty and frightening vacuum in our lives. If God were to remove the restraining influence of law from our lives without replacing it with something, leaving us to the nature we inherited from Adam, we would be in a worse state than before!

To be complete, the gospel must include the resurrection of Christ as well. For one thing, it is proof of his divinity. But more importantly, it tells us that if we died with Christ, we shall also live with him. And this living is in the same manner as his, resurrected from the dead never to die again, a beloved son in whom God is well pleased, always seeking to do the will of the Father because being set free we can do the will of the Father. The law was put in place to restrain the influence of self-will, our rebellious and desire-bound Adamic nature. But the law was weakened by that nature so that it became an occasion to sin, a challenge to the rebellion within us. If and when we die to that influence, God gives us His own Spirit so that we may live in a new way which is alien to the world. “For through the law I died to the law, so that I might live to God… in order that the righteous requirement of the law might be fulfilled in me, because I walk not according to the flesh but according to the Spirit.” (Galatians 2:19 and Romans 8:4, ESV translation altered)

I suppose that is a bit of a long winded answer. And I honestly believe that an eternity will not be long enough to understand all the mystery that is bound up in this exceedingly good news. It is the very center point of history – the point at which holy God contacts sinful man and expresses perfect love. All that went before and all that comes after makes little difference because it all radiates like spokes from the hub of Calvary (Luther’s analogy, not mine). But if faith starts there and seeks outward from there, all of the rest of the picture falls into place. Only in light of the cross does creation, law, the prophets and prophetic visions of things to come make sense. Only in light of the cross does life make any sense at all!

God Bless

Not as the World Gives

Peace I leave with you; my peace I give to you. Not as the world gives do I give to you. Let not your hearts be troubled, neither let them be afraid. (John 14:27 ESV)

These are the words of the incarnate God. This is the uttered mind of God. This is the definition of God’s character straight from the horse’s mouth. “Not as the world gives do I give to you” is God’s message to mankind, and in this one simple passage God says so much. “My beloved, do you want to know how I give my gifts? I shall tell you. I give them not as the world gives them.” If we are to understand the nature of God’s gifting we need merely understand how the world gives and deduce what kind of giving is not of this world.

So how does the world give? The world’s one aim is fairness. Eye for eye, tooth for tooth. You scratch my back and I’ll scratch yours. This world always demands recompense to the penny. You break-ee you pay-ee.  Plain and simple, this world lays down the law and says that for everything I do I must receive something in return and vice versa. For good I receive good and for bad, bad because that alone is fair. This is how the world gives it’s ‘gifts’, as wages.

And what is the opposite of that? If God gives ‘not’ as the world gives, what does that mean? For the longest time I believed (perhaps because I was taught it) that it meant God is not an ‘Indian giver’. He doesn’t take his gifts back. While true, that is not of primary importance in understanding these words of Christ. God gives not as the world gives because He expects nothing we can give in return. His gifts are not wages to be earned as are the world’s gifts. His gifts are actual gifts – free of any requirement for recompense from us. In fact, because we don't have the ability to recompense Him, and He recompensed Himself on our behalf as the ultimate gift.

Many preachers have pointed out from the greeting that Paul used in all of his epistles (“Grace and peace to you”) that grace is the root that produces the fruit of peace in our lives. Grace which is given not as this world gives, but given freely; not as wages, but as a gift. For this reason alone can our hearts have peace – that we are no longer required to give and take as the world does, but we may give and give and give as living sacrifices in this world because we have been recompensed by God. Neither ought we to let our hearts be afraid, because “There is no fear in love, but perfect love casts out fear. For fear has to do with punishment, and whoever fears has not been perfected in love.” (1 John 4:18 ESV) The perfectly unconditional love of God destroys fear in the hearts of those who truly believe because they have come to understand that God does not give as the world gives, meaning He keeps no account of rights and wrongs with the intent to reward or punish as does the world and its law. All of that has been accounted to Jesus at Calvary; God made complete recompense for us there. Christ became for us ‘the wages of sin’ so that, believing, we might enjoy all that God gives as pure gift. No law and no strings attached. His complete satisfaction of the law means we have no fear of 'double jeopardy'; we will never be tried again for our crimes.

In the end, the goal of all of this is freedom; freedom from anxiety, freedom from the dog eat dog system of this world (attempted adherence to law and sin as its result) freedom from fear of man and punishment, and freedom from ourselves. For it is only as people who are free of the world’s system that we may be ‘the light of the world’, living ‘to the praise of His glory’.

God Bless

The Smoke Screen

What if sin is not the greatest enemy of humanity? What if sin is merely a distraction sent by Satan as a smoke screen? A screen that covers the underlying causes of the world’s ills? A decoy that draws us away from what truly separates us from God and keeps us from focusing on a deeper, more nefarious magic (to use C.S. Lewis’ Narnian analogy)? What if we are spending all of our energy and resources fighting at the expected invasion point while we are flanked by a far superior force that we never see coming? We have been.

Sin is a rather shallow magic. It is the top crust of human depravity; the symptom of a deeper disease. It is ‘bearing fruit for death’ (Romans 7:5). Sin has no power to hold its victims and can do nothing to them in and of itself because it is not the root of evil, but the fruit. It is not the source of depravity, but the byproduct.

The root of all sin is law; the legalistic system that Adam so graciously introduced to the world. “If you want something, you’ve got to do something about it.” There is no such thing as a free lunch in this old Adamic world. You want wisdom? You don’t need to ask for it, just eat this fruit. You want to be like God? That’s simple – just do this. For every action, there is an equal and opposite reaction. Give and take is the name of this world’s game. What causes quarrels and what causes fights among you? Is it not this, that your passions are at war within you? You desire and do not have, so you murder. You covet and cannot obtain, so you fight and quarrel. (James 4:1-2 ESV) Give and take, give and take. Self-righteousness, earning our own way – call it what you will, it is this world’s default setting. If I do something for you and you do nothing for me, I am angry because you are not playing by the rules.

To the law of sin (the law of Adam) was added the law of God, which increased the trespass with the intent of making people aware of the sickness of give and take. But people mistook this law as being like the law of Adam, and assumed that obedience was something they could give God that would get God’s favor. And so the law of God, turned inside out by man, became nothing more than a mechanism that aroused the sinful passion that seeks and fights after its own interest.

Checking sin is merely the removal of the symptom. It does not strike at the underlying disease. Were one to spend his entire life mortifying his sin so that no outward evidence of sin remained (as did the Pharisees) he would still be a white-washed tomb filled with dead men’s bones. He would still belong to this worldly kingdom and be governed by its rules and judgments. He would still be imprisoned, though he looks ever so clean. And he would still be in violation of the commandments because he would be incapable of truly loving, without condition or expectation of reciprocation, his God or his neighbor. Whoever continues under the system of law does not yet know love, which is entirely give. He only knows give and take.

So Christ did not come simply to set us free from sin, though he does. But he does it not by treatment of the symptom, but by curing the disease. He sets us free from the old system of this world. He sets us free from the give and take. He gives and takes nothing in return. By keeping the law of God perfectly in loving his God and his neighbor perfectly he breaks the law of this world. And he invites us to break it with him. He invites us to undergo death to the system of this world that always demands something in return and be raised to a new kingdom, a new system, where nothing is expected in return. Where we are free to love, not required to love. Where we can love unconditionally as God does.
Can you see why it is so advantageous to the enemy to keep us focused on sin? It keeps us focused on sprucing up our old Adam, with the hope that that is what will please God. It keeps us from discovering the ‘deep magic’, the clash between law and gospel. The difference between give and take and becoming a ‘living sacrifice’ to be used up joyfully and freely in service to God and others. Jesus did not conquer our sin by conquering our sin but by setting us free from the ‘deep magic’ so that we no longer continue to bear its fruit. To all who will believe, God makes a promise that all sin is forgiven because we have followed him in death, and law has no jurisdiction over the dead, and “apart from the law, sin lies dead.” (Romans 7:8 ESV)

God Bless.

A Question of Quantity...

This is a quick one that probably deserves more time. I want to get it down for now though, so I don't forget it. I have grown extremely suspicious of anything sounding like part of the gospel that requires a certain unknown quantity or quality of human action to be accomplished. Here's what I mean:

What if I didn't repent sincerely enough?

What if I don't have enough faith?

What if I don't love God enough?

What if I don't hate sin enough?

The first problem with all of these questions is the I. Did I? If I am relying on myself for repentance, faith, love of God or hatred of sin then I have a salvation that depends on me. Period. I have no assurance.

The second problem is that nobody can answer the questions. How do you know that your repentance was sincere? You don't. And no one else can tell you. If your salvation is based on the idea of sincere repentance and you can't know what that means, you can't know you are saved.

Lastly, they all come down to an attempt at justification by works. The inclusion of the quantitative term 'enough' indicates that we are expecting a reciprocal response from God once a certain unknown benchmark is met. This is the hallmark of law, and reduces these important elements of Christian life to human works.

All Christians would do well to steer clear of anything that is supposed to justify us but is left open-ended. The gospel tells us that God's love for us is complete and unconditional. We cannot work for it even by repenting 'more' sincerely or mustering up 'more' faith or love. God has done all of this for us so that we can stop worrying about it and get on with life. Real life without the 'what ifs'.

God Bless

I Have Bad News, and I Have Good News

When I wrote my book “The Gospel Truth”, I was very much growing in a new understanding of God’s grace in my own life. In fact, writing the book was part of that growth. I have since said that I will probably never write another book because I have found that I cannot find it in myself to build walls around my understanding of doctrine (which is a good thing). The knowledge of God is an ever expanding thing, and to put down in public writing that which God has taught you at some point in the path of spiritual maturity creates a harsh temptation to stick by your guns, even as God would lead you farther along.

There are themes within the book that I think are very solid. The idea that faith comes by hearing the preached word is rock solid. The idea that preaching does not necessarily demand a proper motive rings true, since the power is in the words of the preacher (the gospel or good news) and not the preacher himself. But the Wesleyan influence of overemphasis of the law in evangelism is something that God is leading me away from. I quoted John Wesley in the book - "Preach 90 percent Law and 10 percent grace.” As God has shown me more and more the magnificence of grace I have begun to doubt the truth of that instruction.

This is not to say that the law is not important. Paul makes it clear that only by the law do we know what sin is, how bad it is, and that we need a savior. The problem is that people are already familiar with law. We are bombarded inside and out with thousands of messages of law every single day; I need to lose weight, I would look good in a BMW, I need to handle my finances better, my children are failing, just say no, just do it, stop, yield, my hair looks awful today, thou shalt not commit adultery. Paul says it best in Galations 3:23 – “Now before faith came, we were held captive under the law, imprisoned until the coming faith would be revealed.” In other words, law is old hat. Law is this world’s default scheme. It is the four prison walls we have been familiar with all of our lives. We have always felt its pressure and longed for a way out, screaming, "Stop the world, I want to get off!"

So there is nothing truly otherworldly about law, even God’s law. The life experience of the unbeliever is 100% law and 0% grace. So if we are not very careful in handling the law in preaching we can just ratchet it up to 190% law and force people to close their ears off to the 10% grace we plan to preach. To someone who already understands that life is nothing but a long string of messages highlighting their incompetence, more law is simply adding insult to injury.

What is truly otherworldly is the message of grace – the gospel. Law is to be found everywhere in this world, but unconditional love - unmerited favor - do not exist in nature. They are sometimes fabricated in fiction and Hollywood, but are found nowhere in creation. The gospel is good news precisely because it is the only message that does not demand anything from us other than belief. It is the very antithesis of every other message we hear every day. Two years ago I would have said that unless people are terrified by the preaching of law to turn to Christ, they would not turn to Christ at all. Today I can recognize that the whole world lives every moment in abject terror of law, waiting for someone to preach freedom to them. If the preaching of Christ's rescue of sinners from the law is cheap grace in the eyes of the church, so be it. It is the only message that does not belong to this old world, so I'll preach it.

Perhaps it is the importance of the good news to the believer that is convincing me of this. The law still barks bad news sound bites at me thousands of times a day, but I am learning to ignore them in favor of listening for the good news. As I consider the savage attacks of the law on old Adam, I am reminded of what life was like before good news, and I feel a sorrow for those around me who live life without it. I am getting to the point that I no longer want to be just another voice in the bad news choir. I want to run into the street and yell at the top of my lungs “You can be free from the law! Let me tell you the good news!”

God Bless

Good Dog, Bad Dog

Ever hear the story about the old native chief who claims to have two dogs fighting inside, a good dog and a bad dog? When asked which one wins he answers, "The one that I feed." This is a great illustration, and I have heard several use it to describe the inner struggle of the Christian. The problem is that often the dogs are not correctly identified. Usually they are made to represent virtue and sin. Feed virtue and it wins. Feed sin and it wins. By mislabeling the dogs, we have led many to inadvertently feed dogs which aren’t even in the fight. If we label the dogs correctly, the parable comes into line with the truth of scripture and is tremendously helpful in understanding our struggle and its resolution.

First of all, human virtue is fiction according to the Bible. The Bible tells us, contrary to the highest human desire for virtue, that “all have sinned and fallen short of the glory of God.” (Romans 3:23 ESV) “The heart is deceitful above all things, and desperately sick; who can understand it?” (Jeremiah 17:9 ESV) “We have all become like one who is unclean, and all our righteous deeds are like a polluted garment…” (Isaiah 64:6 ESV) They say the first step to recovery is admitting you have a problem, but the first step to admitting you have a problem is identifying the problem you have. Our problem is not a deficiency of virtue, but a complete lack of it. In other words, we can’t feed the virtuous dog because it flat doesn’t exist. When we think that virtue exists in us by nature, we can easily believe that salvation is God ‘teaching an old dog new tricks’. As if He were ‘treat training’ the good dog in us to become better. For that to be true there would have to be a good dog somewhere in us to start with, which the Bible flatly denies. That’s one dog out of the fight.

In the way this illustration is typically applied, the bad dog is sin. If we choose to feed this dog, the reasoning goes, it will grow and grow until it destroys all the other dogs in the fight. The funny thing is we don’t want to feed this dog; we know better. We know deep down that if we strengthen this dog he will destroy us eventually, and yet he just keeps getting fatter and stronger all the time. The harder we try not to feed him, the more he finds to eat. Paul describes the struggle with the sin dog: “For I have the desire to do what is right, but not the ability to carry it out. For I do not do the good I want, but the evil I do not want is what I keep on doing.” (Romans 7:18-19 ESV) I must be crazy! Somehow I keep feeding that dog!

Paul finally realizes something remarkable; there is another dog in the fight – the law dog – sin dog’s big brother. What is happening is that as Paul feeds the law dog, and the sin dog grows stronger. He comes to understand that sin is aroused by law and that feeding law is strengthening sin. “So I find it to be a law that when I want to do right, evil lies close at hand. For I delight in the law of God, in my inner being, but I see in my members [my body] another law waging war against the law of my mind and making me captive to the law of sin that dwells in my members [my body].” (Romans 7:21-23 ESV) Law is constantly barking that he wants to be fed, and his barking always gets the sin dog worked up. You will notice if you watch that sin seldom gets aroused until you allow law to start barking at you.  So despite appearances, law dog is the real bad dog in this fight. He is the instigator.

Having properly identified the bad dog in the fight as law, we must now know who the good dog is. The good dog is promise. He sometimes goes by the name gospel. His proper name is Christ. Promise dog is a very good dog. He never barks at us. We can forget to feed him for years and he will never make a whimper. He is always happy to see us because he loves us, no matter how much we neglect him. He is constantly wagging his tail to tell us that he loves our presence – that he has forgotten any and all wrong we have done him. He is a graceful dog.

How does all of this get worked out in real Christian life? First of all, we have to realize that law is not really a bad dog. He is doing what he is trained to do. He is a watch dog and when he sees us doing something suspicious, he begins barking at us because that is his purpose. He has always barked at us when we sin as a means of warning us that what we are doing is not right. But what he can’t understand is that as Christians, we are no longer afraid of him because we are dead to him. “But now we are released from the law, having died to that which held us captive, so that we serve in the new way of the Spirit and not in the old way of the written code.” (Romans 7:6 ESV) He still sees our old Adam (the flesh) as a very lively and active threat which is to be barked at. Being in Christ, to us he is nothing more than a silly old toothless dog whose barking is nothing but a nuisance. But since he and sin are always making such a fuss, we are tempted to feed and scold them and pet them to make them be quiet. All the while promise waits quietly for us to return to him.

As Paul said in Romans 10:17, faith comes through hearing. If what we hear is the vicious barking of law, we will place faith in the law and his promises to build our virtue - which he has no power to do - or we will live in fear of him despite the fact that he has no teeth. We need to learn to ignore law, knowing that his bark is worse than his bite. Actually Paul says “Faith comes through hearing, and hearing through the word of Christ.” If you want to see promise win, you have to feed Him. You have to seek out promise every day and learn to hear the still small swish of His wagging tail over the din of law and sin. That is the word of Christ. That is the gospel truth.

God Bless