Tuesday, October 30, 2012

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.

Monday, October 29, 2012

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

Thursday, October 25, 2012

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.

Wednesday, October 24, 2012

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

Tuesday, October 23, 2012

The Competitive Nature of Pride

I ran across a little book (48 pages) written by Timothy Keller over the weekend, The Freedom of Self-Forgetfulness. If you have a Kindle, it is well worth the $.99 and the hour that it will cost you to read it. A less convenient form, in .pdf, is available here.


One of the most profound points that he makes, which I believe he actually gleaned from C.S. Lewis, is that pride does not stand alone. Pride is always a result of envy. Here he quotes Lewis from Mere Christianity:
Pride gets no pleasure out of having something, only out of having more of it than the next person. We say that people are proud of being rich, or clever, or good-looking, but they are not. They are proud of being richer, or cleverer, or better-looking than others. If everyone else became equally rich, or clever, or good-looking there would be nothing to be proud about.
Keller goes on to expand on what Lewis stated:
In other words, we are only proud of being more successful, more intelligent or more good-looking than the next person, and when we are in the presence of someone who is more successful, intelligent and good-looking than we are, we lose all pleasure in what we had. That is because we really had no pleasure in it. We were proud of it.
For some reason this led my mind back to the Parable of the Prodigal Son, specifically the older brother’s response to the return of the younger. When he heard the news that his brother had returned, he was angry and refused to go into the house to celebrate. His pride prevented him from enjoying the festivities with the rest of the family, because he couldn’t enjoy the feast for what it was but despised it for what it represented to him – the acknowledgement of the father’s love for one who had not worked as hard or been as faithful as he had.

The father spoke to him in the way God often speaks to us, “Son, you are always with me, and all that is mine is yours. It was fitting to celebrate and be glad, for this your brother was dead, and is alive; he was lost, and is found.” (Luke 15:31-32 ESV)  Though everything the father had was his, he had enjoyed none of it because he was focused on being the son with the ‘more substantial’ resume.

How subtle is Spiritual pride? Do we enjoy what God has given for the sake of enjoying it, or do we seek to use it to show some superiority over others? God has given us all things to enjoy, including himself, but our sin nature wants to turn even our relationship to him into some kind of one-upmanship. We are proud of our relationship to God. A relationship that was a gift in the first place, as Paul states - 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)

This is why it is so important for Christ to be the substance of our lives. For us to recognize that the approval of others, even the approval of ourselves, counts for nothing. All that counts is that we have the approval of the Father, which we already have in Christ if we believe. Please do read this little book. It can have tremendous impact on the way you see yourself and your faith. That’s the gospel truth.

God Bless

Monday, October 22, 2012

Grace That Fulfills the Law


Now we know that the law is good, if one uses it lawfully, understanding this, that the law is not laid down for the just but for the lawless and disobedient, for the ungodly and sinners, for the unholy and profane, for those who strike their fathers and mothers, for murderers, the sexually immoral, men who practice homosexuality, enslavers, liars, perjurers, and whatever else is contrary to sound doctrine, in accordance with the gospel of the glory of the blessed God with which I have been entrusted. 
(1 Timothy 1:8-11 ESV)
Paul was one to draw a sharp distinction between law and gospel, identifying the gospel as a superior covenant, but never discounting the law. Paul had great respect for the law, and always made it a point to proclaim it as good. As he stated in Romans 7:12, “the law is holy, and the commandment holy, righteous and good”.  He was careful, however, to make the case that the law was of no use in obtaining righteousness, and could not justify or sanctify anyone. The law was a perfect standard of holiness which was establish by God, but a standard has no power to bring about what it demands. The only power the law has is to condemn law-breakers.

This is why he states in 1 Timothy that “the law is not laid down for the just but for the lawless and disobedient”. What is meant by that? That those who keep the law have nothing to fear from the law? Yes, those who keep the law have nothing to fear from the law – as a motorist has nothing to fear from a police cruiser if he obeys the traffic laws. However this analogy breaks down in the case of the law of God if we realize, with Paul, that “all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God” (Romans 3:23) In other words, human beings do not have the ability to keep God’s law. While many of us think that we have nothing to fear from the law because we have kept it, close scrutiny of our lives in accordance with the literal law of God proves otherwise. Which of us has kept the letter of the law let alone the intent of the law by an act of human will? According to scripture, none of us.

Enter the gospel, which states that Christ kept the law on our behalf. Christ lived the perfect life and died the perfect death in our place. He satisfied the judgment of God on our behalf so that the law no longer condemns, as Paul states in Romans 8:1. It would seem as if God has cast off all restraint and liberated us to do as we please. If we are justified entirely apart from the law (Romans 3:21) then the demands of the law mean nothing to us and hold no power over us. Can they simply be tossed aside, ignored; left to gather dust as we revel in our new-found freedom?

Note something interesting in this passage from First Timothy. Paul says that law is intended for a certain kind of people – the lawless and disobedient. He lists many of them in the passage, and then ends the list with the catch-all that the law is for those who do “whatever else is contrary to sound doctrine…” He then establishes where this sound doctrine may be found – “in accordance with the gospel of the glory of the blessed God with which I have been entrusted.” He brings this full circle so that we may understand that the aim of the law and the aim of the gospel are one and the same – true righteousness. Both covenants point to the same expectation of God – holiness – but seek to achieve it in very different ways. The law demands righteousness which it cannot bring about, and the gospel brings about righteousness which it does not demand. The law appeals to the flesh and results in condemnation, the gospel appeals to the Spirit and results in sanctification.

So each of the two ‘words’ of God – law and gospel – have a specific place. Law is not meant to be used to bring about righteousness in the just – those who have been justified in Christ. That is the purpose of the gospel. The ‘lawful’ use of the law is the make people realize that they have no power to keep the law to the satisfaction of God so that they will seek the savior (Galatians 3:24). By the same token the gospel is not to be used to bring about lawlessness or licentiousness in those who have been justified in obedience to the gospel. In the end, the law and the gospel are not at odds with one another as they both seek to bring about righteousness. Were the law empowered to bring about the righteousness it demands, it would bring about the righteousness which the gospel actually delivers.

Here is what Paul says: “For God has done what the law, weakened by the flesh, could not do. By sending his own Son in the likeness of sinful flesh and for sin, he condemned sin in the flesh, in order that the righteous requirement of the law might be fulfilled in us, who walk not according to the flesh but according to the Spirit.” (Romans 8:3-4 ESV) In the end, the righteous requirement of the law is met in us by the Spirit in accordance with the gospel. That is the gospel truth.

God Bless

Wednesday, October 17, 2012

Spiritual Discipline


When I was a young Christian I was taught to maintain many spiritual disciplines. Scripture reading, prayer, tithing, evangelism, stewardship, parenting, marriage… the list goes on and on. In great detail, down to the amount of time one should spend praying each day, I was trained to be a Christian Jedi. A Christian Guru, if you will. And I did Christianity by the book and the clock – if I missed a quiet time in the morning it was a disaster that impacted my whole day and frequently started a slide away from my ‘faith’.

This went on for years. I could sometimes maintain my disciplines for long periods of time and feel good about myself. Then the inevitable slip would come and I would crash to the lowest lows. I found myself dreading church on Sundays but keeping up the appearance of a disciplined Christian, living in fear that someone would find out that I was faking it. At a certain point (actually several) I just gave up. I realized that I couldn't do it – couldn't maintain the pace. I couldn't cut Christianity because it just required more of me than I could give. I couldn't focus enough energy on the myriad things that I was supposed to be doing (or not doing) and gain victory in any one of them let alone master them all to the point where I felt that I had satisfied God’s requirements. And through all of this there was no one there to tell me (or I didn't have ears to hear) that I wasn't expected to cut it; that if I could cut it then Christ was of no consequence.

God created us. He knows us. He knows it is not possible for us to maintain the discipline it takes to be Christlike. No amount of spiritual score-keeping or to-do-listing can create holiness within us because He alone is holy. When He demands holiness from us, he is demanding that we be found in Him, not some imitation of his holiness, but His holiness. And because He knows we are weak, He sent his son to pay for our weakness and destroy that separation that existed between us and Him that we might come and participate in a relationship with Him which makes us holy apart from anything we do or fail to do. I frequently go back to this conversation from John Chapter 6:
Then they said to him, “What must we do, to be doing the works of God?”
Jesus answered them, “This is the work of God, that you believe in him whom he has sent.”
(John 6:28-29 ESV)
Did you hear what the son of man said? He did not say, “These are the works of God; to love God, to pray, tithe, steward, witness, be a good husband and father, attend church every Sunday, treat others with grace, avoid lust, avoid anger, avoid coveting…” Clearly these are things that God requires, and yet they are not the things that Jesus identifies as the work God requires of us.  The work that God requires is that we believe in him whom he sent. This is our assignment. This is the discipline that God requires – to continue to believe upon Christ. It is our relationship to Christ that makes us holy, and that relationship is one of faith. In order to be holy, then, that relationship must be established and strengthened by a continued faith in Christ alone. Not faith in our disciplines or our ability to maintain our disciplines, but faith in the Son of God. Faith that comes by hearing again and again the good news that “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 5:21 ESV)

So what about all the rest? What about prayer, tithing, marriage, parenting, lusting, coveting, anger, love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, etc.? If God demands these things of us, how are we to meet the demands? We are not. We cannot. If we view these demands as law and attempt to meet them ourselves, we nullify the grace of God in our lives and will never, ever succeed (Galatians 2:21). But if we realize that God’s demand is simply to believe in the one who has actually accomplished spiritual victory, what can we do but pray? Where else can we turn? Why would we not tithe, knowing that all things are the gift of a gracious Father?  How can we not be better spouses and parents, being set free from the slavish desire to seek our own interests ahead of those around us by this news that we are loved and approved even as undisciplined sinners? We become hungry for time in the scripture knowing that faith comes through the hearing of this word about Christ. From this one discipline of continued faith in Christ, these things become fruit – an organic expression of the holiness of God that works powerfully in us, almost without effort.

Make no mistake; believing that all has been accomplished in Christ and maintaining robust faith is not easy work. It requires us to seek out the gospel at every turn - a process made difficult by our complete aversion to grace and our hunger for discipline-driven goals. Perhaps the hardest commandment in the Bible is “believe in him whom he has sent” because it is so contrary to our discipline-oriented nature to do so. But this is the demand of God, and a demand that He sends his Spirit to fulfill in us that we may continue to live in the freedom he has called us to. Freedom from slavish attempts at holiness. Freedom to be holy. That is the gospel truth.

God Bless.



Monday, October 15, 2012

A Dangerous Assumption

In the past several years, I have heard this thought stated in various ways within the church – “We’ve done a good job of evangelizing in the past 50 years, but a terrible job of discipleship. People know what it means to be saved, they just need to get up and do something.”


If we analyze this line of reasoning, we find it to be in contradiction to the scripture. It is not as if scripture indicates we are to do nothing, and that is not at all my argument. To the contrary, Jesus himself stated, “So, every healthy tree bears good fruit, but the diseased tree bears bad fruit. A healthy tree cannot bear bad fruit, nor can a diseased tree bear good fruit… Thus you will recognize them by their fruits.” (Matthew 7:17-20 ESV) I think we often assume that the church is full of a bunch of trees which have been made healthy by knowledge of salvation, yet refuse to bear fruit. As such, we want to ‘encourage’ them to bear fruit by continually cajoling them to good works. This is a common-sense, knee-jerk reaction which fails to recognize the underlying spiritual problem that leads to church apathy. As Jesus says, a diseased tree cannot bear good fruit. We should not be assuming that healthy trees are simply not bearing fruit or are bearing bad fruit, but that the lack of good fruit is an indication of disease in the tree.

Part of this problem stems from the fact that we have taken the doctrine of eternal security somewhere it was never meant to go. Once saved, always saved is true in the sense that through faith in Christ alone we are reconciled to the Father, and that reconciliation is permanent and eternal. But we have expanded the idea to include things which it never was meant to include, such as the idea that we are somehow given perpetual ‘super-powers’ at salvation. We might say that we assume ‘once a healthy tree, always a healthy tree’, as if being saved and being healthy are one and the same. We are led to believe that we are enabled by one act of saving faith to fulfill the commandments of God by some portion of His power which is given us – forgetting that God’s power is His alone and never becomes ours except by faith in Christ which must be continually renewed through the hearing of the gospel. We stagger along for a while doing good by our own will to ‘be Christian’ until we experience sheer burnout. Then the good fruit stops, and we wonder why we, as presumably healthy trees, have no ability let alone desire to bear good fruit. Our churches attempt to drive us to produce good fruit by any and all means, including guilt and condemnation, asking the same question of us – if you are healthy trees, why are you bearing no good fruit? – as if the bearing of good fruit is the cure for the disease at the root.

All of this becomes a downward spiral. The church, thinking that the lack of good fruit among its members is a result of laziness on the part of capable people, preaches a ‘do more, try harder’ message out of frustration. The people do more and try harder for a while and then burn out, begin to feel more incapable than ever and eventually begin to doubt their salvation. Many fall away. We are told we must be driven by a purpose (good works) without being watered by the promise (good news). 

The apostle Paul tells the Galatians, “Him we proclaim, warning everyone and teaching everyone with all wisdom, that we may present everyone mature in Christ. For this I toil, struggling with all his energy that he powerfully works within me.” (Colossians 1:28-29 ESV) He worked hard at bearing good fruit in the proclamation of the gospel, not by his own energy, but by God working powerfully through him so that he never burned out. The question is ‘how’? I think it was because he was immersed in the promise of the good news. He knew he had nothing to prove to a God who was satisfied by faith in the proof-giver (Christ) alone. This was the ongoing cure to the disease at his root which demanded that he satisfy himself at the expense of God and others. And as a sinner who was being renewed day-to-day by the grace of God in his life, he bore good fruit naturally without the need for guilt or condemnation to drive him to it. He lived as a free man who bore good fruit freely.

Here’s the thing; diseased trees cannot bear good fruit. If we concentrate on the symptoms we should be able to make the simplest of diagnosis – the tree is healthy or the tree is diseased (you will know them by their fruits). Assuming that non-fruit bearers are healthy trees which do not require gospel fertilizer today because they once prayed ‘the sinners prayer’, were baptized, taught Sunday school, served as deacons, etc. is just plain foolishness. This does not mean they are not saved – the truth was planted and flourished at one time in their lives. It means simply that disease has crept into a healthy tree and destroyed its ability to bear good fruit. The cure for the disease is none other than Christ – the continual feeding and watering of faith by the hearing of the good news of the gospel. Until the tree is healthy again, no amount of guilting, encouraging, condemning or bribing will cause it to bear good fruit. But if the tree can be brought back to health and that health maintained by continuous gospel immersion, the result will be good fruit in great abundance, 30, 60 or 100-fold! That is the gospel truth.

God Bless


Thursday, October 11, 2012

Substance Abuse


Therefore let no one pass judgment on you in questions of food and drink, or with regard to a festival or a new moon or a Sabbath. These are a shadow of the things to come, but the substance belongs to Christ. (Colossians 2:16-17 ESV)
What we can see is seldom what truly matters. We can look on the outside of a person and that person may appear to be ever so clean and godly with regard to food and drink, religious festivities and Sabbaths - a host of shadowy legalities and observances – and yet may have no connection to the substance of these things, which is Christ. We do not know the heart motivation of others, but we can know our own. We must ask ourselves; is Christ the substance of my obedience?

One of the definitions for the word substance in Webster’s’ dictionary is an “ultimate reality that underlies all outward manifestations and change”. We are all constantly looking for substance in our lives – the reality that causes us to be what we are. Some of us look for that reality (or alternate reality) in drugs and alcohol, which are ironically called substances. Some of us look to work, some to family, some to politics or religion, hobbies, sports or entertainment, even religious ministry. All human beings long to find something that substantiates living – the purpose of our existence.  A reason to be.

The scripture calls us into obedience to God. For many that translates into a relationship with religion in which a moral standard or set of doctrines or required works become the substance of life. Their obedience flows from and is based on an established religious tradition which deems certain things as acceptable and others unacceptable. The substance of their obedience is religious obligation. They seek works-righteousness. Sadly, many born-again Christians have settled into this rut and abandoned their first love for a sort of comfortable and predictable religious obedience – a Christless subsistence. They search for meaning in the shadows having forgotten that the light has already come.

Paul knew that those who found their substance in Christ would be a radical bunch. They might not always look like the button-down religious crowd expected. The freedom they had might be viewed as sacrilege by the ‘orthodox’. Not that they were called to act in disobedience, but that they were called to true obedience – the substance of which was not a religious to-do list but Christ. No longer bound by religious convention, they would no doubt be judged as irreligious by those who still sought their substance among the shadows of a greater righteousness to come. And yet this obedience, whether in a form that leads them to refuse or embrace the observance of any tradition or standard, is true obedience because it is substantiated by Christ alone.

In the end, obedience alone is not proof of relationship to Christ, for if obedience is a manifestation of anything other than Christ it is merely self-preservation and counts for nothing. It is ‘filthy rags’ righteousness. This kind of obedience is merely ‘shadowing’ true righteousness which is found only when Christ becomes the very substance of our lives. That is the gospel truth.

God bless.

Monday, October 01, 2012

Value

This topic keeps coming up over and over again lately. The question is one of what we value. Is the gospel a call to give up that which we value in order to gain Christ? It seems that many think so. Many preach so. Does it not make sense that we must give up our idols to embrace the true God?


I think the answer is tricky. Often times, what seems so obvious to us in scripture may not be quite as simple if we look beneath. Take for example the rich young ruler of Luke 18:
And a ruler asked him, “Good Teacher, what must I do to inherit eternal life?” And Jesus said to him, “Why do you call me good? No one is good except God alone. You know the commandments: ‘Do not commit adultery, Do not murder, Do not steal, Do not bear false witness, Honor your father and mother.’” And he said, “All these I have kept from my youth.” When Jesus heard this, he said to him, “One thing you still lack. Sell all that you have and distribute to the poor, and you will have treasure in heaven; and come, follow me.” Luke 18:18-22 ESV
First of all, we must consider the question; “What must I DO to inherit eternal life?” Immediately Jesus knows that this is a man who seeks to earn salvation. He has yet to recognize that salvation is by faith alone. Jesus lists some of the commandments to him, which he states he has kept, so Jesus tells him what he lacks if he is to earn his salvation: he must sell all of his great possessions and give his money to the poor. Not surprisingly, the young man cannot find it in himself to do this and walks away ‘very sad’.

On the face of it, it seems that Jesus is making a demand that must be met before the young man can be saved. But we must remember that the young man asked specifically what he must DO to be saved. Jesus asks of him the very thing that his nature cannot bare – to part with his wealth. I think Jesus knew beforehand what the outcome of the conversation would be, and as such I don’t believe he ever had an expectation that the young man could or would comply with his demand. Could Jesus have possibly meant by this that there is a way to be saved apart from faith? No. So the conversation is not what it appears.

The gospel is never a demand to give something up to gain eternal life. If it were, it would be law – something we must do to earn eternal life. The gospel is the good news that there is something of exceedingly great value in Christ that surpasses everything this world can offer. It is a message that unfailing hope, security and approval exist and can be ours – the very things that we all seek to attain by our flashy idols. It is not in competition with our idols because it is in a different league altogether. It actually delivers what it promises, unlike the things of this world.

How many walk away ‘very sad’ week after week from our church services because we present the gospel as a demand rather than as good news? If we preached the gospel as good news – as the promise of abundant life and eternal security – rather than as an alternative to idols, what would be the impact? We wonder why so many Christians (in America) are lukewarm in their faith as we continue to beg them to exchange their idols for Christ as if he were for sale to the highest bidder. We need to preach the good news until people can say, like Paul,
“Indeed, I count everything as loss because of the surpassing worth of knowing Christ Jesus my Lord. For his sake I have suffered the loss of all things and count them as rubbish, in order that I may gain Christ and be found in him, not having a righteousness of my own that comes from the law, but that which comes through faith in Christ…” Philippians 3:8-9 ESV
It’s got to be pretty good news that makes people desire to ‘suffer the loss of all things’. It has to be the gospel truth.

God Bless