"To Him be glory forever": sin

Showing posts with label sin. Show all posts

Tuesday, April 21, 2020

A Strong Warning

One of the books I'm reading right now is a collection of sermons from the 18th century pastor Theodorus Jacobus Frelinghuysen. He was a pastor in the Netherlands and was called to serve several churches in Raritan, NJ. In a sermon titled "The Miserable End of the Ungodly" he had this to say about sin:

"For however plausible it may sometimes appear, sin is nothing but deformity. Its origin is the devil. He that sinneth "is of the devil." Sin exhibits Satan's character, bears his image, and is the fruit of darkness.

Sin scorns God's majesty and is contrary to His holiness. It despises His goodness, denies His authority, questions His omniscience, and resents His justice. In a word, sin hates God and merits eternal condemnation. It is impossible to see sin as an abomination and a deformity without regarding it with hatred."

With language that is strong and sounds particularly harsh to our 21st century ears Frelinghuysen's goal is two-fold. First, he desires for Christians to clearly see what they have been saved from as they came to faith in Christ, as well as to strengthen them for the daily struggle with sin that still continues in their lives. And second, he paints a powerful picture of the truth of sin for the benefit of unbelievers, so that they may respond to the call to turn to the Lord Jesus as their only hope from the eternal damnation that will otherwise be certain.

The curious thing is that Frelinghuysen's description of sin is nearly 300 years-old, but it remains 100% the truth. For comparison the theological dictionary on my desk says this of sin:

"Theologically, sin is the human condition of separation from God that arises from opposition to God's purposes. It may be breaking God's law, failing to do what God wills, or rebellion. It needs forgiveness."

In all fairness there is a difference in purpose between a dictionary and a preacher in the pulpit, and it would appear the Frelinghuysen has merely given expansion and emphasis to what the dictionary describes.

Frelinghuysen's warning is strong, but it warms my heart. It's language helps me to see more clearly the danger to my soul from which my Savior and Lord has rescued me, and it urges me to be in prayer for those whom I preach to, that they may also be rescued.

Our culture may be 300 years down the road from Theodorus Jacobus Frelinghuysen but the same danger is just as real today as it has been throughout human history. May you see the danger and seek refuge in Jesus, our only hope.

Thursday, April 9, 2020

Every Last Bit, No Exceptions

Late this evening, shortly before Robin and I would ordinarily begin wrapping things up and going to bed I was looking on Facebook and saw a post from a woman who is a mutual friend of ours. She posted something that came from Psalm 130. I responded to her post with a comment and link to a version of that Psalm, set to music, that I am quite fond of. And, being fond of it, I put my headphones in and listened to it.

A few minutes later I heard Robin's phone begin to play some very familiar music. She had seen my link and was playing it for herself. I then connected the speakers to my laptop and we listened to the Psalm again.

In my Bible the last verse of Psalm 130 reads:

"And he will redeem Israel from all his iniquities."

In the song that verse is:

"Who will at last his Israel free,

from all their sin and sorrow."

That last phrase, "from all their sin and sorrow" then repeats a number of times, back-and-forth between a male and female voice, and then repeats and fades, like a haunting echo, as the music ends.

Earlier this evening, shortly before this whole episode I'm describing took place I read a sermon by George Whitefield. In the latter part of the sermon Whitefield made a powerful appeal to his listeners to consider how sinful their lives really were, when seen from God's point-of-view. He said that there was no way to soft-sell what they had done against God. He said that for the least of their sins they would bear terrible guilt and the truth of the matter was that they had many more sins than they could possibly imagine. Whitefield didn't cast them as any kind of exceptionally evil people, for he said that he was just as much of a sinner as any of them were.

But here is the thing. When they, or he, or you or I, for that matter, come to have faith in Jesus as our Savior, it is Jesus who deals with our sin. Every last bit, no exceptions. The freedom that Psalm 130 points forward to is ultimately fulfilled in Jesus.

Jesus isn't a Savior in the same way where I might sweep up a floor. Doing a job that may be pretty good, but not worrying too much about a missed spot here or there. Something that I will probably get the next time I get the broom out.

Jesus is the kind of Savior who removes every last bit of sin from every single person who has faith in him. He misses nothing. He prepares us for that moment of final judgment before the Father so completely as to make us spotless.

That is hard to see sometimes, living here in the world and continuing to struggle with sin. But it is the Bible's truth, and the Bible never lies.

Turn to Jesus. Now. And know freedom from "all your sin and sorrow." Every last bit, no exceptions.

Wednesday, January 8, 2020

Believing In Nonsense

I came across something last week that I had heard before. The idea was credited to John Piper, and it was basically this: "We read whole books, and should read whole books, but rarely does a whole book change us. What grabs us and makes an impact is a chapter, or more often a paragraph, or a sentence, or a phrase." The idea is that reading books is worthwhile but most often what we come away with and are shaped, or influenced by, are just one or two things within that book.

So I had that thought hanging out someplace in the back of my mind while I was reading According To Plan: The Unfolding Revelation Of God In The Bible, by Graeme Goldsworthy. It is an introduction to the field of biblical theology. It's a pretty good, and very readable book, that walks through the revelation of God's plan of redemption, beginning with creation and ending, presumably, with Christ. I'm a bit past halfway in my reading of it.

And so I was reading about the people of God, having left slavery in Egypt and headed for the Promised Land, when they receive the Law and are called to live in obedience to it. Goldsworthy writes this:

"Salvation or redemption means being restored to a position of sonship and fellowship with God. To claim to have received the gift of friendship with God while persisting in a life marked by alienation and enmity is clearly nonsense."

That sentence in bold just stopped me in my tracks. Goldsworthy cuts to the chase in saying how impossible it is to claim to have faith in Jesus as Savior and Lord, and then continue to live each day as if you are your own savior and lord. To claim one as true but to live for all practical purposes as if it's not is "clearly nonsense."

Have you ever known times of prayer, where perhaps you confessed of a sin, repented of it, and almost as soon as your prayer ended your mind turned to thoughts of getting back to it. I know that I have. The biblical phrase for this is:

"a dog that returns to his vomit."

We could praise God for many specific things but the ones that come to mind as I wrote this is his mercy and forgiveness. I was reading Psalm 130 earlier today, where the Psalmist writes:

"If you, O LORD, should mark iniquities, O LORD, who could stand?

But with you there is forgiveness, that you may be feared."

So I can praise God that when in those times I am living on the wrong side of the tracks in my relationship with him, that he is forgiving when I come back to him. Or, to refer to the biblical phrase above, when I see how disgusting the thing I am "eating" truly is, he has forgiveness as I came back to him. Which is infinitely better than to continue believing and living in what is truly, and clearly, nonsense.

Note: It appears that one of our cats had an upset stomach sometime today.

Tuesday, July 23, 2019

Killing Sin

In the Old Testament book of Judges, chapters 4 and 5, there is a little detail that has mystified me. Judges 4 tells the story of Israel's oppression by an enemy, and a man named Barak being raised up to defeat them. But Barak is hesitant, refusing to do so unless Israel's judge, Deborah, goes with him. Deborah agrees, but tells Barak that because of his hesitance, the honor of the final victory will go to someone else.

The leader of the enemies is a man named Sisera, who army is crushed in the battle. Sisera escapes and takes refuge on the way home at the tent of Jael. While he naps, Judges 4:21 tells us this:

"But Jael the wife of Heber took a tent peg, and took a hammer in her hand. Then she went softly to him and drove the peg into his temple until it went down into the ground while he was lying fast asleep from weariness. So he died."

Judges 5 is the song of Deborah and Barak, basically repeating the details of the story, describing the death of Sisera like this:

"She sent her hand to the tent peg
    and her right hand to the workmen's mallet;
she struck Sisera;
    she crushed his head;
    she shattered and pierced his temple.
Between her feet
    he sank, he fell, he lay still;
between her feet
    he sank, he fell;
where he sank,
    there he fell—dead."

Judges tells the history of God's people shortly after the time they took possession of the Promised Land. Because they were often disobedient to God they had a lot of trouble with their neighbors. The story of Judges 4 & 5 is one of God's mercy as he delivers them from an enemy. But today, several thousand years later, do we read anything within the story besides a historical account? Is there anything here to guide us as we live by faith in Jesus? I believe there is, and that it is seen in the details of the death of Sisera.

Israel is victorious as Sisera flees from the battle. But Sisera is still a danger, and so his death is necessary. Similarly, sin is defeated by Jesus on the cross, but it remains a danger to those of us living with faith in Jesus as our Savior and Lord.

We cannot live lives that are free of sin, but we mustn't play with our sin, or minimize it, or ignore it, or pretend it doesn't exist. We must deal with it. We must put it to death.

We all have sins that we struggle with. The story of Sisera reminds me to see mine for what they are, and to seek God and his rescue from them. May you also seek the Lord's help as he shapes you in his image, killing the troubling, persistent sins in your life.

Wednesday, April 17, 2019

Cut To The Chase

Sometimes the Bible confronts us with a clear piece of truth. God cuts to the chase. As I was reading Ecclesiastes, chapter 7, which seemed to wander as it compared wisdom and folly, tossing in a few other seemingly random thoughts, verse 20 jumped right out at me, saying:

"Surely there is not a righteous man on earth who does good and never sins."

That sentence is a short and direct statement of fact. There is no person, man or woman, who is completely righteous, which we are told means both doing good and never sinning.

Reading that verse this week, the week of Easter, points me straight to the cross and the empty tomb. At the time Ecclesiastes was written there was no one who lived who had met that simple definition of righteousness. And since that time there has only been one, Jesus. No one you know personally, such as a dear and precious grandmother, meets that definition. Neither does anyone you know and admire, such a famous person living now, or one from some other point in history. Neither does the person you see in the mirror. They each may do lots and lots of things that we would see as being good, but it is the "never sins" part that trips them up. Every single one.

Those sins, no matter how minor they may seem from our point-of-view, are a barrier between each person and God. We can't remove them. We can’t pretend they doesn’t exist. All we can do with them is turn towards God and seek for him to forgive the sins we've committed against him. And when we have faith in Jesus, as the one who saves us from our sin, that sin, each and every last bit of it, is forgiven.

At one particular point in time there was one man, who was righteous in doing good and never sinning. The Lord Jesus. For Jesus "doing good" ultimately meant laying down his life so that sin could be removed from all who believe in him as their Savior.

Try as I might I can't live the perfectly righteous life, but this week of Easter reminds me that because Jesus did, my faith in him brings me peace with God. May you find rest and hope by faith in him too.

Monday, December 18, 2017

We're Not So Different

Robin and I are currently reading the Old Testament prophet Ezekiel. Last night, as we read chapter 8, the word "abomination" loomed large. According to Ezekiel's testimony, the Lord Himself takes Ezekiel into Jerusalem and to the Temple, to show him what goes on there.

As Ezekiel witnesses the first abomination he is told something along the lines of "If you think that was bad, wait until you see what is coming up." This happens three times, culminating in the last abomination, which verse 16 describes like this:

"And he brought me into the inner court of the house of the Lord. And behold, at the entrance of the temple of the Lord, between the porch and the altar, were about twenty-five men, with their backs to the temple of the Lord, and their faces toward the east, worshiping the sun toward the east."

That last image is the epitome of contempt for God. Twenty-five men, at the singular place of worship for God, with their backs toward the Creator as they worship the creation. These are presumably Jews, who if they know nothing else of God know the first of the Ten Commandments,

"You shall have no other gods before me."

In the face of this provocation, this open hatred of God, God's response is:

"Therefore I will act in wrath. My eye will not spare, nor will I have pity. And though they cry in my ears with a loud voice, I will not hear them."

There are a lot of things that we might say about ourselves to show how different we are from the people of Ezekiel's day. To show how much more advanced or sophisticated we are. I mean, sure, we don't exactly follow all of God's ways in our daily life, but who does? Who is without error? Who doesn’t make any mistakes? In our efforts to rationalize our thoughts and behaviors we nearly stumble over our own feet in avoiding the word "sin."

Yet it is precisely that word that we have in common with the people of Ezekiel 8. We sin. We disobey God and try, again and again, to live as our own gods. And if that doesn't quite work we make our own gods and bow down to them, for their demands are exceedingly low and easy for us to meet.

And while we may want to believe that God's wrath is an old-fashioned and outdated concept, efforts to do that just add to our self-deception. His wrath is just as much a part of God's character as is His justice, His righteousness, His holiness, His peace, His mercy.

God's mercy. That is where we can truly be different from the men of Ezekiel 8. Before the day of wrath comes, and come it will, we can respond to the call found throughout both testaments of the Bible to repent of our sin and believe in God, a call made crystal clear in the New testament as we repent and believe in the person and work of Jesus Christ, who comes to save us from our sin.

We are not so different from the men of Ezekiel 8. In rejecting God our peril is great, greater than we can really comprehend. But in God's mercy, through faith in Christ alone as our Savior and Lord, our end can be as different as night is from day. Amen.

Tuesday, August 22, 2017

Having a Thought Towards the Future

"Her uncleanness was in her skirts;

she took no thought of her future;

therefore her fall is terrible;

she has no comforter."

Those words come from the opening chapter of Lamentations, as the author expresses his grief over the fall of Jerusalem and the carrying off of the people of Israel into captivity. Last week I finished reading through Jeremiah, where the prophet makes repeated calls for the people of Israel to repent of their sin and turn to the Lord. The call for repentance is accompanied by a word of warning of the dangers of persisting in their disregard for God. Lamentations follows Jeremiah, with grief over the fact that God's chosen people got exactly what they were warned about.

As I read Lamentations that one phrase, "she took no thought of her future," hit me hard and stuck with me. The people of Israel are God's chosen people, called by Him and set apart by Him as His witnesses in the world. It is they to whom He has revealed His law and it is through them that He will work out His promised plan of redemption. When it comes to sin, or willful disobedience of the will of God, they, of all people, should know better.

They should know better, and they probably do know better, and yet they persist in following their own will rather than Gods. Living in the present, with whatever temporary sense of pleasure, or escape or what have you, as they disobey and disregard God, with no thought of their future.

I don’t know about you, but those words are convicting to me when I look back at my sin. It was something I did at the moment without any care for its effects in the future.

Ongoing sin, unfortunately, is part of the Christian life. We can understand our weakness in one area, and deal with it accordingly, and then find that as soon as we turn from that one thing we fall into another.

While I am convicted by the words of Lamentations, I am also comforted, knowing that in Christ Jesus there is a truly merciful Savior. The fall into sin does not have to be a free fall into a bottomless pit, or a fall to a hard landing and no possible way out.

My sin has consequences, affecting me, and, both selfishly and unfortunately, other people as well. May God, in His grace, make me more mindful of that truth, as well as the grace that come through Christ, the next time I consider taking a step into the pit. May I live with a thought towards the future in terms of the effects of my sin, and also a future where one day sin will be no more. Amen.

Tuesday, February 28, 2017

Set Free

Do you ever find yourself occasionally longing for another time or place in your life? A time when you recall certain things or circumstances with fondness, and you have a desire to return there, if only for a moment? I know that I do.

For me some of these longings include a time with my children or a particular scene on a vacation. And in all honesty, in my case more often than not these longings involve running. I'll be out on my run and find my mind wandering back to a particular day and I long to be able to run at a certain pace again, or to re-live a particular competitive moment. Those days are, as they say, in the history books. I might recall them fondly but there is no going back.

When I was a new Christian I used to look back on some of my sins that way. Sure, I had learned that I shouldn't do them because God said so, but they felt so good! It hardly seemed right that something that delighted me in a particular way should have to be left at the wayside. Turns out that for God's people this is a way of looking at things that is very old, and likely very common.

I was reading from Exodus and the Hebrews were in a tough spot. They were fleeing from slavery in Egypt and reached the Red Sea, a seemingly impassable barrier. Faced with the sea in front, they also know that the army of Egypt is chasing them and closing in from behind. And so in this predicament the people cry out to Moses, saying:

"What have you done to us in bringing us out of Egypt? Is not this what we said to you in Egypt: "Leave us alone that we may serve the Egyptians'? For it would have been better for us to serve the Egyptians than to die in the wilderness."

The Hebrew people see the choice starkly. Serve as slaves or die in the wilderness. What they have lost track of is the fact that they are God's chosen people and that they are in the wilderness because He is leading them there. In a moment of crisis they long for the familiarity of slavery.

But the thing is that God loves them too much to let them remain as slaves. He is leading them to freedom. The road may be bumpy but He is, as they say, "driving the bus."

This God, the One True God, is doing the same thing today. He is reaching into the lives of His children, snatching them from slavery to sin, and setting them free. And I might add that He does this without asking anyone's permission.

As a person grows as a Christian they learn that those "good old days," separated from Christ and oblivious to that fact, weren't so good. They learn that those sins that felt so good weren't just an illusion. They were a delusion.

As a child of God, know that God loves you too much to let you stay in slavery to sin. He has set you free in Christ and He is taking you to an infinitely better destination. The road may be rough at times but nothing will compare to the joy you'll know when you arrive. Amen.

Monday, June 29, 2015

What is Christian love?

Last Friday the Supreme Court made its ruling on the case related to gay marriage. The internet has been abuzz with responses and emotions run high on both sides of the issue. I have read a number of articles in an attempt to understand the decision and its implications, particularly in regard to my role as the pastor of the Jicarilla Apache Reformed Church.

Two weeks ago it was my privilege to attend the annual meeting of my denomination, the Reformed Church in America, where issues around homosexuality have been primary points of discussion for many years. This year was no exception. While gay marriage may now be a decided matter as a civil concern, within the church issues related to homosexuality are not so clearly settled. At least not within my denomination. Many other denominations have reached settled positions, on each side of the issue.

So at our meetings this year we talked openly about the fact that we have an "elephant in the closet," freely identifying what that elephant was and recognizing that, for better or for worse, as a denomination we should make a decision about the elephant. We need a decision, one way or the other. And we set forth on a process to reach a decision.

I could go on about the process we are going to use and some of the things that will come up in the discussions and decision-making process. But not today. For the sake of this post I would say that the two sides of this issue have fundamentally different understandings of the idea of "Christian love." The issue of gay marriage has been framed in society and the church as being all about love. But what is love? More specifically, what is Christian love?

Before going farther I want to quote what my wife, Robin, posted to her blog on Sunday about Jesus and love. She said:

Jesus told us to love one another.

John 13:34 says that we are to love one another as Christ first loved us. Jesus didn't hate sinners! He loved us. And then he told us to love each other. He didn't say, "Love your neighbor as yourself, unless he's ___________." ANY word can go in that blank because Jesus didn't exclude anyone. And neither should we.

Her post was titled "Four things this Christian wants to say about the Supreme Court ruling."

At our denominational meeting one thing that everyone seemed to agree on was that no one should be excluded from the church. No one said anything like, "Those people don’t belong in the church. If we let them in then I am leaving." I never heard anything like that. And the reality of our day is that it is very possible that gay men and women are in nearly every congregation of our denomination.

The issue isn't a matter of if these people are present, but how do we show Christian love towards them? And to this question I see two possible answers.

The first is that we welcome them for who they are, meaning that we accept them as homosexual because they were created that way. Humans are created in God's image, these people are created in God's image and they are gay, therefore there is nothing that we might say is right or wrong about their sexual identity.

The loving thing is to welcome them, to celebrate them and their relationships, as much as we would celebrate any heterosexual relationship. Jesus loved everyone. God is love. We practice Christian love by welcoming and celebrating gays as fellow sisters and brothers in Christ.

Again, that is one possible way of defining and practicing Christian love. This is my understanding of the application of Christian love by one side of this discussion.

But there is another way, a perhaps more radical way, to show Christian love. It, too, recognizes that all women and men are created in the image of God, but also acknowledges that all women and men come into the world under the curse of sin.

We don’t get to choose which particular sins we are most susceptible too, or the sins we seem most enmeshed in. We don’t get to choose the sins that in our internal conversations, and even our prayers to God, we continually try to deny, explain away, or pretend don’t exist.

If you call yourself a Christian then that means, nearly universally, as a minimum definition, that you are a sinner who has been saved from the eternal consequences of your sin by the work accomplished by Jesus on the cross and at the empty tomb. Saved from the consequences of your sin, but still living as a sinner in a fallen world.

And this is where the second understanding of expressing Christian love comes in. The reality of the eternal consequences of sin, as described in the Bible, are horrible. The Bible never soft-peddles the wrath of God that is directed towards sin.

Is it loving to allow what the Bible calls sin to just go on within the lives of people in the church, to even celebrate those things, and not to say a single word about repentance and the need for every sinner to seek God's help in living a life that looks more and more like the life of their Savior?

I don’t think so.

Salvation in Jesus is a sweet and beautiful thing. And receiving those eternal promises changes the way I have to live in the world. As His beloved child, one that He loved so much that He gave His very life for as the payment for my sin, means that I need to change the ways I live. I need to change them each and every day. I need to search out those things in my life that are contrary to His will and sincerely seek to deal with them. And sincerely dealing with them means, at a minimum, that I have to acknowledge that these things, these sins, are present, and seek God's help in changing my attitude and behavior towards them.

My guide in doing all this is God's word. He defines what a sin is, and I have no say in the decision-making process. I may be deeply in love with something that He calls sin. My feelings about it don’t matter. The culture may exalt a particular thing His word says is wrong. His will does not yield to the culture.

If I truly belong to Jesus then living according to His guidelines is part-and-parcel of my identity. A changed life is not optional, and He drives the changes.

As a pastor I won’t, I can't, deny that dealing from a Christian perspective with matters of sexual identity and behavior, in the culture of our day, is a very complex matter. When the culture virtually screams that so many different things of human sexuality, heterosexual and well as homosexual, are morally neutral and to be celebrated, that is a hard force to resist. But the loving thing is not to join in the celebration. The loving thing is to speak God's truth to it. As a Christian the loving thing is to call sin what it is, and to walk with that brother or sister to a closer place to their Savior. To our Savior.

In 1 Timothy 1:15 Paul writes,

"The saying is trustworthy and deserving of full acceptance, that Christ Jesus came into the world to save sinners, of whom I am the foremost."

Those words apply to me. The foremost of sinners. They apply to me as fully as they apply to Paul or to any other sister of brother in Christ.

Christian love does not celebrate sin. It cannot celebrate sin. But it does help sinners see who they really are and then leads them towards a life that is shaped more and more like their Savior's.

To Him be glory, now and forever. Amen.

Saturday, October 11, 2014

Left Behind

Tomorrow morning I am going to be preaching from 1 Peter 4:1-6. In verse 3 Peter writes this:

"For the time that is past suffices for doing what the Gentiles want to do, living in sensuality, passions, drunkenness, orgies, drinking parties, and lawless idolatry."

Peter is writing to teach and encourage Christians how to live as people who are very different from the largely unbelieving culture around them. He gives them a list of the kinds of things that they may have done as an ordinary part of their lives before they came to have faith in Jesus. These are things that they did in ignorance of God's ways, because they did not have faith and so they didn't know, and didn't care, about the things of God. When Peter says that this list is what "the Gentiles want to do" he does not mean 'Gentiles' in the sense of referring to all people who are not Jewish, but in the sense of all people who do not have faith in Jesus.

And the key for us here is this phrase: "For the time that is past suffices." We have done these things, or things very similar to them. We have come to learn that they are sinful. And in Jesus we have been forgiven of our sins. Peter hasn't written a complete list of every sinful behavior, but he has given us a list that helps us to see the kinds of things that displease God. I think that this list is saturated in selfishness and living for the pleasures of the moment, without any thought or care for anyone else. But "the time that is past suffices."

Have you ever gone on a trip to visit someone that was very dear to you? The trip ends and you get into the car to drive home. You look in the mirror as you drive away and see them waving at you. If it was in your power you would turn the car around and go right back to continue your visit.

Our sin can be something like that. We are forgiven in Christ and heading in a different direction. We look in the mirror and see it calling for us. We remember how, in our ignorance of sin, we used to enjoy those things. We may feel a yearning, a strong yearning, to go back.

Peter is saying to us: "Those things are in the past. Drive on down the road and don't look back at them. Don't let desire for them arise in you again. They are left behind, and rightly so."

We can't remove any of our sin from our past. It happened and we can’t undo it. But, in Christ, we can leave it behind and be glad to be headed in a different direction.

Friday, March 8, 2013

"Did God actually say..."

Yesterday I got involved in an online discussion with some pastors about an issue one of them was dealing with within their congregation. The question that was asked had already had some responses, none of which I read before putting in my two-cents. My answer was simple and to the point.

My answer received a bit of ‘push back,’ which gave me the opportunity to add a bit of depth to my first thoughts. Which, again, generated some response. All of this was very civil and respectful, which is not always the case online and I appreciated the grace that was shared among the conversation partners.

The initial question had to do with a matter of behavior, one that I think the Bible speaks clearly about. The other side of the conversation had to do with situations and circumstances in which the behavioral choice being considered would be acceptable, perhaps even encouraged. While agreeing that there are many situations which are personally challenging, and where we would wish to create a space for acceptable exceptions, as Christians we read our Bibles and seek God’s strength to live in the ways He leads us.

Thinking about this again as I was running this morning I believe that where we often stumble is when we wrestle, consciously or not, with the question asked in Genesis 3:1,

“Did God actually say…”

That question, which unfortunately was not asked last night, lies at the heart of the discussion. It is a question that is relevant time and again for each of us each day, as we confront choice after choice with the option of believing what God says and acting accordingly, or not.

Paul is absolutely correct when he wrote to the Ephesians and said in 6:12:

“For we do not wrestle against flesh and blood, but against the rulers, against the authorities, against the cosmic powers over this present darkness, against the spiritual forces of evil in the heavenly places.”

Sin, our active rebellion against God, is an ever-present reality, driven by a relentless, but, in an eternal sense, an ultimately futile cosmic force.

We do not wrestle against flesh and blood, but we do wrestle in situations that are palpably real in their physical and emotional dimensions. And as Paul writes on, in verses 13- 18, God has equipped us for the struggle:

“Therefore take up the whole armor of God, that you may be able to withstand in the evil day, and having done all, to stand firm. Stand therefore, having fastened on the belt of truth, and having put on the breastplate of righteousness, and, as shoes for your feet, having put on the readiness given by the gospel of peace. In all circumstances take up the shield of faith, with which you can extinguish all the flaming darts of the evil one; and take the helmet of salvation, and the sword of the Spirit, which is the word of God, praying at all times in the Spirit, with all prayer and supplication.”

The next time we find ourselves asking “Did God actually say…” let’s remember that He did, and also that he has equipped us to follow Him in obedience, to His glory.

Wednesday, March 28, 2012

Silence

In my Bible study class last night one of the things we studied and discussed was Jesus’ trial before Pilate. I wrote a bit about this in my most recent post but I have another thought tonight from a little bit farther on in the text.

John 19:1 says,

“Then Pilate took Jesus and flogged him.”

While the biblical text in this and the succeeding verses discusses the treatment Jesus received there is no mention that Jesus made any kind of response. Similarly, the accounts of Jesus’ trial in Matthew, Mark and Luke are quiet concerning any response that Jesus may have made there. And none of the other Gospels describe anything as violent as the flogging that John reports in his account.

If we accept that the lack of any biblical record of Jesus’ response means that he was silent as he was being flogged then the next question is “Why was he silent?”

For many people Jesus was silent in fulfillment of the prophecy of Isaiah 53:3-7, which says,

“He was despised and rejected by men; a man of sorrows, and acquainted with grief; and as one from whom men hide their faces he was despised, and we esteemed him not.

Surely he has borne our griefs and carried our sorrows; yet we esteemed him stricken, smitten by God, and afflicted.

But he was pierced for our transgressions; he was crushed for our iniquities;

upon him was the chastisement that brought us peace, and with his wounds we are healed.

All we like sheep have gone astray; we have turned—every one—to his own way;

and the Lord has laid on him the iniquity of us all.

He was oppressed, and he was afflicted, yet he opened not his mouth; like a lamb that is led to the slaughter, and like a sheep that before its shearers is silent, so he opened not his mouth.”

I can agree with the idea that silence during his physical punishment fulfills the scripture prophecy, but in trying to answer the question of “Why?” we need to go deeper.

Jesus torture and death are for the punishment of sin. Jesus is bearing on himself my sin, and the sin of all who believe in him.

My wife and I have one child at home, a pre-schooler who when asked why she does one thing or another almost automatically answers, “I don’t know.”

Sometimes she really doesn’t know, or perhaps she doesn’t know quite how to express her reason, if she could think about it in those terms. But other times she does know and “I don’t know” is an attempt to escape responsibility and any consequences that may come from her actions.

When I sin it is because I choose to act in ways that are contrary to those ways laid out by God as being good and God-honoring. I usually don’t think about it in those terms but that is what the real truth is. If God were to ask, “Brad, why did you sin?” any “I don’t know” on my part would just be a lie. It would be piling another sin on top of the first one. There really is no defense for the actions, for the thoughts, that I make that are outside of God’s good rules and boundaries.

And that is why Jesus is silent in John as he is flogged and crucified. He is bearing my sin in the honest way before God that I cannot. He is bearing it silently, knowing that as a sinner before God there is no excuse. Sin cannot exist in the presence of a God that is not just loving, but also holy, righteous and just. And neither can there be an excuse for sin.

As we continue to move through Lent, Good Friday is a little more than one week away. I invite you to take some time and ponder your place before God, a place made possible by the finished work of Christ, a work that reached its culmination on the cross, in the painful and perfect sacrifice of Jesus, given for me, and given for you.

Friday, December 2, 2011

The Only Antidote

Any person exercising the ability to cast their eyes on God will find that when they turn their vision back to their own life, or onto the world around them, that there is much in our lives that displeases God. The thoughts in our minds, the desires of our hearts, the words from our mouths and the actions of our hands are very often contrary to God’s will. And things that we think, desire, speak and do that are in opposition to what would please God are what we know as sin. The essence of sin is anything that we do that is not aligned with God’s will, what is “good, acceptable and perfect” according to his standards, not ours.

The other day I was reading some thoughts related to a treatise on original sin written by Jonathan Edwards, the 17^th century pastor and theologian. The central idea of original sin, i.e. that humans are sinful by nature, from birth, runs contrary to the notion common to our time that all people are basically good. We may make occasional bad choices, but our reference point for our selves, and most of the people we know, is that deep down we are good people.

When we check our assumptions about the goodness of humanity with the Bible we find something profoundly different. In both the Old and the New Testaments we find God’s teaching on the true nature of our hearts. Psalm 51:5 says “Behold, I was brought forth in iniquity, and in sin did my mother conceive me.” Isaiah 64:6 says “We have all become like one who is unclean, and all our righteous deeds are like a polluted garment.” In John 5:42 Jesus says “But I know that you do not have the love of God within you.” And I John 1:8 sums up the notion of original sin with this declaration: “If we say we have no sin, we deceive ourselves, and the truth is not in us.”

God’s word in the Bible provides the corrective to our well-intentioned but misguided modern ideas about who we are. We are sinners, and have always been so. Original sin is not an arcane notion of long-dead theologians but a constant aspect of the human condition. Herman Bavinck wrote “If anything is certain, it is that sin is not an accidental phenomenon in the life of individuals, but a state and manner of life involving the whole human race, a property of human nature. The sinful deeds, which occur not just now and then but characterize all persons of all ages and circumstances, point back to a sinful inner disposition, just as bad fruit presupposes a bad tree and muddied water and impure spring.”[1]

The words from the Bible and people such as Edwards and Bavinck could lead us to believe that all is lost, that we are so sin-soaked as to have no hope. But those words merely tell us the truth plainly, so that we can more clearly see the solution, our only hope. And the problem of sin in our lives is dealt with by Jesus Christ. He provides the antidote, the only possible treatment for the sin that has infected us from our very beginning.

I like the idea of Jesus as the antidote to sin, because an antidote is “a remedy to counteract the effects of poison,” and absent the work of Christ sin is the most deadly of poisons, a poison with eternal effects.

Paul wrote to the Colossians “For in him all the fullness of God was pleased to dwell, and through him to reconcile to himself all things, whether on earth or in heaven, making peace by the blood of the cross.” Paul then adds that being reconciled to God through the finished work of Christ has this effect: “And you, who once were alienated and hostile in mind, doing evil deeds, he has now reconciled in his body of flesh by his death, in order to present you holy and blameless and above reproach before him.”

We who are in Christ are no longer alienated from God. We are no longer seen as hostile in mind. No longer seen as doing evil deeds. No longer slaves to original sin but free in Christ, to be presented by him before the throne of God as holy, as blameless, as above reproach. That we would be receive such love from God, that we would be reconciled with God through Christ is at the heart of John Newton’s hymn, Amazing Grace.

The other day, as I was reading of Edwards and Original Sin I was listening to Chris Tomlin and I as I heard his rendition of Newton’s hymn I was struck anew with the power of God’s love as the antidote for our sin. I invite you to click on the song link and listen. If you know Jesus as your Lord and Savior, pray as you listen, giving him your thanks and praise for his great gift to you. And if you are unsure of where you stand before God then listen and ask yourself if this is the time that he is calling to you, offering to you the only antidote for the deepest of ailments. May you know the grace and peace that is only found in Jesus Christ.

[1] Bavinck, Herman, Reformed Dogmatics (Grand Rapids: Baker Academic, 2006) 3:88.