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

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.

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

Sin Free

I've been struggling with a question in my own mind that was brought to a head Sunday in the church services. What part does the Holy Spirit play in our sanctification?

The statement was made in church on Sunday evening that a believer can be sin free; that because we have the Holy Spirit dwelling in us, we can simply choose not to sin. I think that is erroneous on several counts, not the least of which is 1 John 1:8 - "If we say we have no sin, we deceive ourselves, and the truth is not in us." The scripture makes it pretty clear that as long as we are in the flesh we will deal with sin. Sin is alive and well in the flesh, and none of us who still wear skin will ever be perfect as our heavenly Father is perfect (Matthew 5:48).

This leads to a larger issue. Because we as believers are to live life according the grace that God provides, is grace (the unconditional favor of God) negated by the indwelling of the Holy Spirit? Are we magically transformed (even potentially) into sinless beings when the Spirit dwells within us? Paul tells us that we are a new creation - that the old has passed away (2 Cor 5:17). Does that mean that we now possess the ability to always say no to sin? Experience would tell us that that is not the case. Paul tells us as much in Romans chapter 7. No matter how spiritual I am, I will find areas of my life in which "I do not understand my own actions. For I do not do what I want, but I do the very thing I hate." (Romans 7:15 ESV) Paul says that if anyone is “in Christ” he is a new creation. I would maintain that simply imagining ourselves to be in the Spirit and so be ‘beyond’ the need for the gospel is the opposite of being ‘in Christ’. It is, in fact, being saved apart from Christ.

To say that the indwelling of the Holy Spirit empirically allows us to live in perfection is to deny the grace of God in our lives. It is to say that we needed Grace to be saved, but we now live on a higher plane in which we can attain God's favor through something other than the propitiation provided at Calvary. In effect, to teach this is not significantly different than to teach that we can attain favor by keeping the law. It is to say that we can, with the proper help and motivation, redeem ourselves before God outside of the redemption which He provided (this stuff is hard to express properly, and I don’t mean to minimize the work of the Spirit – keep reading).

So what part does the Spirit play? In John 14, Jesus refers to the Spirit as ‘the Helper’. He intimates that the Helper has a specific purpose: “But the Helper, the Holy Spirit, whom the Father will send in my name, he will teach you all things and bring to your remembrance all that I have said to you.” (John 14:26 ESV) The Spirit does not allow us to attain perfection, but points us back to that which is perfect; Jesus Christ. In 1 John we read, “But the anointing that you received from him abides in you, and you have no need that anyone should teach you. But as his anointing teaches you about everything, and is true, and is no lie—just as it has taught you, abide in him.” (1 John 2:27 ESV) What is the anointing that we received from him? The Holy Spirit, of course. So the work of the anointing of Christ is to teach us to abide in Christ, to trust in the grace he purchased alone. The Holy Spirit was sent that we might not forget who we are; sinners saved by grace. His constant recollection of the gospel truth to our minds is what allows us to live according to that truth. This is in keeping with Paul’s statements that the gospel is the power of God for the salvation of everyone who believes (Rom 1:16) and the power of God to us who are being saved (1 Cor 1:18). To walk in the Spirit is to allow the Spirit to continually lead you back to the cross, and more importantly, to Him who died on the cross.

There is still much study that needs to be done here. My heart was burning with this stuff though, so I had to spill it out. Please feel free to leave comments and give me your two cents. I value it!

God Bless

Epic Failure

Everything I have ever attempted to do for God has been an epic failure. In fact, epic failure was critical to my salvation. Epic failure is critical to the salvation of mankind. Until we are convinced that all of our efforts to please God will result in epic failure, we cannot be saved.

To prove it, do this one thing for two minutes: “You shall love the LORD your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your might.” (Deuteronomy 6:5 ESV)

The Jeopardy theme is playing… GO…

Now, if you tried to do what was commanded on your own strength, you just encountered epic failure. You cannot meet the command by your own effort. Within 15 seconds your mind probably drifted on to something else, carrying your heart and might with it.

Try this one: “Set your minds on things that are above, not on things that are on earth.” (Colossians 3:2 ESV) And GO…

Again, epic failure. This is why you never seem to see commands of this type standing alone in the New Testament. Because Biblical commandments set a bar so high that the inevitable result is epic failure without an understanding of God’s success on our behalf. When Paul wrote his letter to the Colossians he knew that they would immediately pick up on his command to set their minds on things above, which is why he continued with “For you have died, and your life is hidden with Christ in God.” (Colossians 3:3 ESV) It is the knowledge that you have died and are hidden with Christ that makes it possible for you to set your minds on things above. A deep understanding of these truths removes the burden of the commandment.

Now I think we intuitively know this. The problem is that the dying makes us uncomfortable so we skim over that part. Our humanity searches for the ‘can dos’ of scripture because we want to be vitally involved in our salvation. The ‘is dones’ of scripture force us into the uncomfortable realm of death to self and so we simply gloss over them as we look for what we feel we need to accomplish to satisfy God. As a result we bounce from one epic failure to another until the day, by the grace of God, we are so worn down by failure that we recognize the futility of it all and fall back on what God has already accomplished for us.

Most evangelism today is very focused on the love of God. Of course the love that God has for us is the motivating and fruit-producing force behind true Christianity. But a very important part of evangelism is to reveal human fallibility. The Old Testament Commandments were given for this purpose. They reveal the epic failure of mankind to please God by what he does. Many of us were lured to Christ by a message of love and forgiveness which did not show us our complete inability to please God by our fleshly ability. The result is that we enter into Christian life trying with all our might to meet the commandments of scripture instead of accepting the fact that Christ met the commandments on our behalf. Christian life then becomes a long string of epic failures, which is why so many drop out of it.

The truth is that Christ has kept the commandments for you. Look to his perfect life on your behalf instead of to yourself for the perfection God requires and you will find rest, having died and been hidden in him. Resting in him will allow you the leisure you need to love the LORD your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your might. Accept what he has done in order that, as Paul says, "the righteous requirement of the law might be fulfilled in us, who walk not according to the flesh but according to the Spirit." (Romans 8:4 ESV)

God Bless

The Myth of Mortification

I was reading Tim Challies’ blog yesterday and he has been reading and summarizing John Owens’ book ‘Overcoming Sin and Temptation’. It is a treatise on the mortification of sin in the life of a believer; in layman’s terms, the process by which the believer ‘kills’ the sin in his life. Relative to my understanding of scripture it seems to be a work of fiction.

I admit that I tried to read this work by Owens, and found it very difficult reading. First of all, it is an incredibly dense book; very heavy reading. Secondly, at the time I picked it up I was wrestling with the Romans 7 teaching of Paul and how all that played out in the life of the believer. I was coming to terms with the fact that sin is not something we choose, but something that lives within us and wars against the regenerated mind. Had I continued to read and subscribe to Owens’ idea that the believer has to work to kill off the sin in his life, I would never have come to the conclusion, as does Paul, that sin remains within the flesh of the believer and cannot be vanquished by any means of our own. Concentrating on the war with sin quite simply leads to more sin.

The more I come to know the scripture, the more I understand that anything we see being manifested outwardly in ourselves is really no more than a symptom of an inward condition (hmm… I seem to remember reading something similar to that somewhere – perhaps the gospels). Sin is a symptom of a struggle against the law. Holiness is a symptom of the surrender to grace. To suppress sin in our lives is to apply a topical treatment that may or may not treat the symptom but will not treat the underlying condition. To attempt to establish our own holiness is to clean the outside of the dish, but leave the inside filthy. What are we to do?

Challies quotes Owens on sin: “It is a cloud, a thick cloud, that spreads itself over the face of the soul, and intercepts all the beams of God’s love and favor. It takes away all sense of the privilege of our adoption; and if the soul begins to gather up thoughts of consolation, sin quickly scatters them.” What a hopeless mess! In other words, our ability to have God’s love and favor is dependent on our exercising the sin from our lives, else sin prevents them from reaching us. What this idea finally leads to is this; my relationship with God is completely dependent on me. I might as well once again be under the crushing hand of the law. In essence, the one who tries to deal with sin as Owens suggests is still under the crush of law. Owens’ Christ died in vain.

How sad that I know many people who have ventured so far into the area of grace and have been blocked from entering into true freedom because of this kind of teaching. There is so much fear of licentiousness that they cannot accept the full and free grace of God. Anyone using the grace of God as an excuse or license to sin does not know the first thing about grace. Grace, which is a free gift, includes such things as true holiness (separation from sin), righteousness and the God-given ability to bear the fruit of the Spirit. If you are afraid to preach the freedom that is ours in Christ, consider this: Is someone who masquerades under grace as an excuse to sin more condemned than someone who masquerades as a holy person under law? Perhaps, but sin is sin. And either way, it is faking it.

It is by entering into the rest of God, which Christ secured for us at Calvary, that sin is mortified within us. Again, the work that God requires is that we believe in the one whom He sent (John 6:29). Any artificial work of ‘mortification of sin’ is fantasy. I guarantee that it will lead to more subjection under the law, which in turn will lead to more sin. Don’t waste precious time trying to secure for yourself what Christ has already secured on your behalf.

God Bless

War

What shall we say then? Are we to continue in sin that grace may abound? By no means! How can we who died to sin still live in it?

(Romans 6:1-2 ESV)

There is an ongoing battle in this world against an undead foe. That foe is sin. As a Christian, I invested many years of my life engaged in a constant conversation with sin. A give and take relationship. It consumed me to the point where I could think of nothing else but the battle. A barrage of scripture memorization here. An amphibious accountability assault there. Boom, boom! War all around me!

During that time, I was looking to get just the tiniest foothold of control in my life. If I could just establish a beachhead, I thought, I could begin to drive the enemy back bit by bit. Sometimes I did get that beachhead and make advance against the enemy, but time and again I was repulsed and forced back into the sea. The prospects for victory looked bleak indeed.

But my enemy was fighting on borrowed time. Like the German army toward the end of the second world war, he could still put up a pretty impressive fight at the front but his ability to make war, to win the war, was already broken at home. Though the soldier on the beach at Anzio might not know it in the midst of a heated skirmish, the enemy he fought was already a defeated foe. If he had the advantage of the bigger picture, the overall trend of the war, he would realize that his side had already won. Down in the trenches, though, where the bullets are whizzing around you and your buddies are dying (think 'Private Ryan') its hard to reconcile that.

God wants us to have the bigger picture. That bigger picture is the gospel; the message of the cross. We are not to be mired in the trenches of our life fighting for each square inch, but reveling in the victory that was won at Calvary. I would be willing to bet that almost each of us who have been saved, at an early stage in our Christian life, felt that victory clearly. For a time we were lifted above the battlefield and witnessed the trend of the war - victory! And then we were told to stop day-dreaming and get back in the trenches, which we dutifully did (what we erroneously refer to as 'discipleship').

That victory is won, Christian. The truth is that we are no longer in the trenches locked in mortal combat with the law and sin. Christ has set us free from that. Completely free. The devil would love to have us continue to focus on the battles because our victories are short-lived and out defeats are many and extremely discouraging. Take a moment and put down your weapon and listen to the announcement from headquarters; "Now hear this - you are no longer under bondage to the law and to sin. Lift up your heads and see that the enemy is defeated! Victory is yours!"

Freedom. Grace. Forgiveness. Acceptance. All of these are ours in Christ. God himself has disarmed us by one act of love. Why has he disarmed us? Because we are not to fight any longer. We are to set down our weapons and hear things we have not heard in a long, long time; birds singing, rain, the surf on the beachhead. Things that remind us of our freedom. Rest.

Here is the battle you really face. Everything in you (and your enemy) says that if you lay down your weapon, you will die. And indeed you will. You will die to the law and sin. The battle will still rage around you, but you will no longer be participants, but "strangers and exiles on the earth." (Hebrews 11:13 ESV) That is what is meant by being dead to sin. Your reason will tell you that to ignore the law will lead to lawlessness. Human reasoning has always thought that, which is why Paul has to so often defend his position that salvation and sanctification are by grace alone through faith alone apart from works. The catch to living apart from the law is understanding that to do so means you have died to sin. "For apart from the law, sin lies dead." (Romans 7:8 ESV) Don't let the enemy convince you otherwise.

Are you tired of the fight? Lift up your head and hear the announcement Jesus came to give: "He has sent me to proclaim liberty to the captives and recovering of sight to the blind, to set at liberty those who are oppressed..." (Luke 4:18 ESV) As the German army used to say to captured POW's, "For you, the war is over."

God Bless