Religion versus Relationship

The buzzword in the church today is the word ‘relationship’. We say that being a Christian is not about religion, but about ‘relationship’. This is true in a sense – if we use the dictionary definition of the word relationship, meaning how two things or people are related to one another. Clearly true Christianity describes the way in which we are related to God in much different terms than does religion. But in modern culture the word ‘relationship’ carries a certain amount of baggage the does not necessarily apply to Christianity.

I want to first clarify how Christianity defines our relationship (how we are related) to God. It is summed up rather nicely in the five solas; by Scripture alone, by faith alone, by grace alone, through Christ alone, to the glory of God alone. In other words, it is not what we typically think of when we think of ‘relationship’ (i.e.: marriage, employer-employee, parenting, etc.)  This relationship, unique among all of our other relationships, is not dependent on us. It is dependent on the grace of God through faith in Christ Jesus that comes to us through the preaching of the Scripture and exists to bring God glory. You do not get out of this relationship what you put into it. To paraphrase Martin Luther, the only thing you ‘put into’ this relationship is the sin that makes it necessary. Because Christ has fully and finally completed the work necessary to justify us, he and he alone is the basis of our continuing relationship to the Father. There is no give and take on our part. We are takers (or partakers as Paul would say) only. 

This is where we can create confusion by the terms we use in the church. The word relationship implies to us that there is something that we must do (other than believing) that establishes or perpetuates our relationship to God, when in truth there is nothing we can do.  But, we protest, we must pray and read the Scripture and witness and tithe and attend church. Must we? Let me restate that with the emphasis where it should be; must WE? The very fact that we think I must do this and I must do that should throw up all kinds of red flags telling us that we are living according to a different gospel than the one we find in the Romans 10:9:

…if you confess with your mouth that Jesus is Lord and believe in your heart that God raised him from the dead, you will be saved.

All of this comes from our inborn fear of grace. Superficially, we fear grace because we think that if we preach salvation and sanctification as God’s work through faith alone that people will go wild and abuse grace. On a deeper level, I think we fear it because we know that it is the only thing with the power to truly change us from the inside out and we fear change. It is easier to take the Pharisee’s approach to grace and decry it as an excuse for sin than it is to fully embrace grace and allow it to kill the inner Pharisee altogether. We allow the Pharisee to convince us that grace is dangerous and needs to be used with great caution. My relationship with God cannot be a one-way street because that would render my inner Pharisee (me, at the core) worthless and strip me of any reason to boast. In the end, that road leads to the place where my only value is that value that is assigned to me by God through the death of His son for the payment of my debt to him.  The humiliation of Ephesians 2:8-9:

For by grace you have been saved through faith. And this is not your own doing; it is the gift of God, not a result of works, so that no one may boast.

This seeps over into our evangelism with devastating consequences. If I perceive the acceptance of God’s grace by faith alone as being ‘easy-believism’ , then my gospel will undoubtedly contain some mechanism to prevent this from happening.  In other words, my gospel will not reflect the liberating message of Jesus (For God so loved the world, that he gave his only Son, that whoever believes in him should not perish but have eternal life... Whoever believes in him is not condemned, but whoever does not believe is condemned already, because he has not believed in the name of the only Son of God – John 3:16,18) but will contain some kind of contractual language. “Give your life to Jesus” and “Surrender your life to Jesus” are two such contractual phrases that are commonplace in evangelism today. In order to receive God’s acceptance and forgiveness this is what you must do. We allow the inner Pharisee to subtly take the gospel and turn it into religion because, despite all bravado and YouTube videos to the contrary, we are terrified of the concept of grace as a gift. If the person is converted to our message, we now have a convert who believes he has received the grace of God because he has fulfilled the contractual obligation that we identified. He will continue to attempt to fulfill that obligation as a means of staying within God’s grace. Roll Matthew 23:15:

Woe to you, scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites! For you travel across sea and land to make a single proselyte, and when he becomes a proselyte, you make him twice as much a child of hell as yourselves.

The solution to this is not an easy one. It is an extremely painful one. It is the most painful thing that many of us will have to endure because it means the end of pride, the end of boasting, the breaking of contract and death to self.  But it is very simple; allow yourself for one brief moment to accept God’s grace as a gift with no strings attached. You don’t have to surrender to him  ‘as much as you know how’ right now. He does not demand that you ‘give your life’ to him. He says this; if you believe that I have done everything necessary to fulfill the law on your behalf through my sinless life and satisfy your condemnation for law-breaking through my death, you are saved. It is finished. Now breathe in through the nose and out through the mouth. Do you feel that? It might be freedom. That’s the feeling of Galatians 2:19-21:

For through the law [religion] I died to the law [religion], so that I might live to God. I have been crucified with Christ. It is no longer I who live, but Christ who lives in me. And the life I now live in the flesh I live by faith in the Son of God [how I am now related to God], who loved me and gave himself for me. I do not nullify the grace of God [how I am related to God], for if righteousness were through the law [religion], then Christ died for no purpose.

Ahhhh. That is the gospel truth.

The Gospel Conference

My home church was treated to something very special early this week. Two very gifted young preachers - Timothy Haupt of Buffalo, Missouri and Joshua Hedger of Bolivar, Missouri - came and presented the gospel over the course of two evenings. When I say presented the gospel I mean unapologetically. There were absolutely no holds barred. Just as Paul proclaimed it - by grace alone through faith alone in Christ alone to the glory of the Father alone - so did they. The reaction has been overwhelming.

Do American Christians have any idea what Paul is talking about when he announces in Romans 1:16 that he is not ashamed of the gospel because it is the power of God for salvation? The number one comment I heard was that the preaching was powerful. I think that Tim and Josh would both agree that the power behind the preaching is not their education or talent as public speakers. The power is the gospel itself. Any one of us, having the boldness to preach an unadulterated gospel of justification by the blood of Christ and nothing else, can wield the same power. So why don't we?

I honestly believe it is because we don't know it. We haven't been taught nor have we wrapped our heads around the idea that our salvation is completely of God. In fact, for many of us, the initial invitation we heard was not to obey the powerful gospel but a plea to make a 'decision for Christ'. As a result, we have lived a life devoid of the power that the gospel supplies while struggling to make good on that 'decision'. Far from being set free in Christ we have been imprisoned in the worst sort of self-imposed morality that dooms us to failure and disappointment year after year. Having become awakened to our nature as sinners, we lock horns with ourselves in an attempt to muster the righteousness that we know a Holy God demands. Like Paul's Jewish contemporaries we are ignorant of the righteousness of God in Christ and go about seeking to establish our own (Romans 10:1-4). When the real gospel comes, the vastness of grace that it conveys is shocking to us. It is both exhilarating and bewildering.

Can we hold on to that sense of awe? Can we be continually exhilarated and bewildered by the gospel truth? The answer is yes. But there is a key, of which I was reminded through listening to several hours of pure gospel preaching; faith comes by hearing. If we neglect the hearing of the gospel, our faith grows stale very quickly. If we approach the scripture without our 'gospel goggles' on, it becomes a series of impossible demands. The only way I know to continue in awe of the gospel is to be keenly aware of and reminded of the gospel of grace every day. To preach it to yourself and to others, and to allow them to preach it to you. That is the gospel truth.

Sinners Anonymous: What the Church Could Learn from AA

My name is Scott, and I am a sinner. Yes, I am a child of God, redeemed, justified and in the process of being sanctified, but I am none the less a sinner. Not everyone I know is redeemed and justified and in the process of being sanctified, but everyone I know is a sinner. That is the only common ground I have with everyone, both inside and outside the church.

I think in many ways the church has forgotten this. Have you ever heard the saying that the church is not a museum of saints but a hospital for sinners? You would be hard-pressed to make that case when you look at the average fellowship today. It looks very much like a museum. Sinful ‘artifacts’ come in the front door and we set to work cleaning and repairing them so that we may proudly display them in our collection. When cracks appear in the artifacts, we pull them from public view and put them in the archives so we may replace them with ‘more significant’ artifacts. We don’t want to display the pieces with imperfections.

In conversation with a friend the other day that is familiar with AA, I realized that we are approaching ‘church’ in the wrong way. How many people do you know who go to AA meetings just because it is the thing to do or because all of their friends are doing it? How many people who have never had or admitted a problem with alcohol abuse would attend an AA meeting just to try it out? People who attend AA meetings understand that they have a common problem – alcoholism. People who deny that they have an alcohol problem will not attend, and AA does not gear itself toward them. The first step is admitting you have a problem. AA cannot help you until you get there.

In our society today, many believe the church is a place where respectable people spend their Sunday mornings. People who seem to have it all together. People who have earned the right to say ‘God, I thank you that I am not like other men, extortioners, unjust, adulterers… I fast twice a week; I give tithes of all that I get.’ (Luke 18:11-12). This is the worst possible thing that the church could lead the world to believe because it is not the ones who have it together that need Christ, but the ones who are falling apart. The ones who are standing far off, not even daring to lift their eyes, beating their breast and saying ‘God, be merciful to me, a sinner!’ (Luke 18:13)

I would love to attend a church that was thought of as AA is. A church where no fine, upstanding, self-proclaimed saint would ever go because to be a part of that church would be to admit that you you need the savior; where fellowship implies that you are sinful. A place where you could stand up and say “My name is Scott, and I am a sinner” and no one in the room would look down on you because they would all freely and honestly make the same confession.  Study the gospels carefully and you have to believe that that is the church the Jesus came to create. “Those who are well have no need of a physician, but those who are sick. I came not to call the righteous, but sinners.” (Mark 2:17)

To become a church that was thought of as is AA, you would have to rely on the grace of God to an uncomfortable degree. You would have to believe that pulling yourself up by your bootstraps is impossible. You would have to believe and teach that the healthiest thing in the world is to admit that you are a big fat sinner and to keep admitting it long after you no longer behaved ‘like other men.’ You would have to abandon performance as the standard by which you judge yourself and others. And this admission would have to be more than lip service. It would have to come from the heart; truly understanding that saying ‘I am a sinner’ is not a doctrinal position, but a stark and ugly reality.

A church like this would appear to the world as unhealthy. It would appear to other churches as unhealthy. No one would ever attend this church because it was the thing to do or because all of their friends were doing it. If you invited your neighbor to this church they would look at you with utter horror because you were specifically implying that they were not the fine, upstanding individual they believe themselves to be. This church would not cater to or seek to attract museum pieces but would open its doors to the injured and bleeding of the world.

This would be the bride of Christ looking very much like her groom. She would be surrounded, as He was, by prostitutes and tax collectors and sinners. There would be no room in this fellowship for those who believed they had exercised sin from their lives. In the end, sin would not be the only thing they had in common. They would also share their desperate need for a savior.

A church like this would be so refreshing. There would be no need to put on the church face. We could be honest with one another and help one another to expose the sin in our lives to God’s light because the ugliness of sin made necessary the beauty of the gospel. As John wrote:

But if we walk in the light, as he is in the light, we have fellowship with one another, and the blood of Jesus his Son cleanses us from all sin. If we say we have no sin, we deceive ourselves, and the truth is not in us. If we confess our sins, he is faithful and just to forgive us our sins and to cleanse us from all unrighteousness. If we say we have not sinned, we make him a liar, and his word is not in us. (1 John 1:7-10)

In this church, the continual confession of our sin would pave the way for our cleansing from sin. We would foster this and encourage one another in this. Recognizing that we never arrive at the point that we don’t need our brothers and sisters or our savior, we would be bound together by the two things we have in common; sin and savior. That is the gospel truth. 

God Bless

Chasing After the WInd

I used to despise the book of Ecclesiastes. It seemed so defeatist, pessimistic and depressing. Just griping about life. Now I think that is because I used to be young. I still believed the world was going to heal to my desires – that I was going to be somebody important. That I was going to make a difference. When older people would tell me that I would someday settle down, I denied it.

But I have settled down. In an odd way I now find great comfort in the writings of ‘the Teacher’, Solomon. The book is just the dose of reality I need to remind me how important my faith in Christ is. As Solomon paints us into a corner with the absolutely oppressive plodding of time toward death and the pointlessness of wealth, knowledge and works, my salvation shines more brightly than it ever has. I have begun to agree with Solomon’s philosophy of life on this planet:

All things are full of weariness; a man cannot utter it; the eye is not satisfied with seeing, nor the ear filled with hearing. What has been is what will be, and what has been done is what will be done, and there is nothing new under the sun.

At least I have come to realize at this point in my life that if there is anything new under the sun, I will not be the one to discover or market it. I’ll be the one stuck on the treadmill continuously rediscovering that which my predecessors already knew. I’m okay with that.

I’ve been conversing online with a young man who is far from this place. His dreams are still a reality to him. With his life ahead of him, he has every expectation that he will leave a sizable mark on the world. He hasn’t said that, but I know it because I was once in his shoes. His confidence is yet in mankind; that we are smart enough, resourceful enough and honest enough with ourselves to save ourselves. He is a young Solomon. 

Like the older Solomon, I realized several years ago that I am mortal. Then I realized that mortality is not merely an issue for the body. Mortality draws nearer every day to take away all that I have learned, all that I have created and all of my hopes and dreams. At least that would be the case if all of those things were mere earthly treasure. If my faith were in science, death would be the end of all that I am because death is the only part of dying that science recognizes. Within a few generations very little would be remembered of me. Then only my name for a while. Then nothing at all.

Christ must have understood the crushing weight of this realization. Though he was not mortal he understood how oppressive mortality was. In Matthew 6:19-21 he said:

“Do not lay up for yourselves treasures on earth, where moth and rust destroy and where thieves break in and steal, but lay up for yourselves treasures in heaven, where neither moth nor rust destroys and where thieves do not break in and steal. For where your treasure is, there your heart will be also.”

You have an option, he says. There is life eternal. There is an alternative to nothingness. If you choose to lay up your treasures here – your wisdom, your creativity, and your wealth – mortality will swallow them up. But lay up your treasures in heaven and they, along with you, are eternal. I don’t think he is teaching that we should live for the day when we die and go to heaven. In order to live this life with any joy and hope, there must be some kind of continuity between our time here and our time there, else life here is a mere chasing after the wind. When I set my heart on the things of this world, I am acutely aware that they will be taken away by mortality. But if I set my heart on heavenly treasure I can use and enjoy the things on this earth without making idols out of them. I do not fear losing them because they are not my treasure.  Christ is my treasure.

I will not mention the young man’s name, but I would ask that you would pray for him – that the Spirit will draw him to be reconciled to God. He is lost and the things of Christ are utter foolishness to him. Perhaps he may come to his senses before he has to run smack up against mortality. I will pray for him and preach to him with that hope.

God Bless

The Condemnation of Sin

There is therefore now no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus. For the law of the Spirit of life has set you free in Christ Jesus from the law of sin and death. 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 8:1-4 ESV

I Am Uncondemned

The opening verses of Romans 8 are critical to us as Christians. Verse 1 tells us the life-altering, paradigm-shattering truth that there is no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus. We are not condemned when we sin because our righteousness is by faith in Christ alone. This is an important

truth because it allows us to believe, live, act and speak boldly as Christians in the face of our constant failure to keep the commandments of God. If as Christians we still lived under the condemnation of God, we could not be considered free people but those who are yet under the dominion of the written law and sin.

Because we often think of Christianity as something that cleans us up, that makes us good people, the idea that God has set us free from condemnation seems completely counter-intuitive.  If God will simply forgive us our sin for Christ’s sake, what possible motivation do we have for change? A God who would accept us without placing conditions on us and requiring us to toe the line simply has no teeth or weapon to force us to change our behavior. We can literally get away with murder and pay no penalty for our actions. 

That kind of thinking comes from this world’s system. We have been conditioned to think that every action deserves an equal reaction. That every transgression should be punished and every obedience rewarded. That is the scheme under the dominion of law that we were all born into and are very comfortable with. Yet, if that were the system that Christ died to perpetuate, he would never have needed to die at all. If we could embrace obedience and resist transgression by our own power then Christ died in vain, faith in Christ means nothing and we are all still condemned. That is life under the law.

My Sin Is Condemned

God is a step ahead of us. By His grace he has forgiven and will continue to forgive our transgressions because He knows that as sinful beings we will refuse relationship with Him if he does not forgive us our sin. We simply will not pursue the light knowing that our profound darkness is going to be exposed and we will be condemned by the light. God’s answer is to free us from condemnation for our darkness while condemning the darkness that resides in us.

This Paul tells us in verse 3: “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…” This is God ‘loving the sinner but hating the sin.’ He is well aware that sin dwells within us but He does not condemn us for that sin but rather condemns the sin itself.

Being released from condemnation for our sin through faith in Christ allows us to come into God’s light. The more time we spend in His light, the more our darkness is exposed and the sin within us is condemned and destroyed. This process can only take place because of what Christ has accomplished on our behalf. Because of Calvary we are not condemned or destroyed ourselves in the presence of the Father.

This is how justification through Christ leads us to sanctification before God. Allowed into God’s holy presence through faith in Christ’s atonement, we are conformed to the image of the son that ‘the righteous requirement of the law might be fulfilled in us, who walk not according to the flesh but according to the Spirit.’ We fulfill that law not by struggle, but by boldly entering in the presence of God moment by moment and allowing our sin to be exposed and dealt with. 

I don’t know about you, but I want God to condemn the sin in my flesh. I know what it is like to loathe God and to avoid Him, shrink back from His holiness and seek to escape His presence. That is what I want the sin in my flesh to experience. I want to be exposed to the light so that the darkness within me flees in terror. That is the gospel truth.

God Bless