Author: Dennis Griffith
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Transforming Power of the Gospel
“The good news of the Kingdom is that our King has won a marvelous victory for us. Through his sinless life, sacrificial death as our substitute, resurrection, and ascension, he has not only conquered death for us, removing its penalty, but he has also conquered sin’s power over us… Now through repentance faith, God means for us to tap into the powerful victory of our King, so that we might be transformed into true worshippers of God and more authentic lovers of people… Through faith we are always to be placing our affections on Christ”.NOTE: This quote was taken from Steve Childers‘ unpublished paper True Spirituality: The Transforming Power of the Gospel. Steve is president of Global Church Advancement and professor at Reformed Theological Seminary – Orlando. The whole article is well worth reading, and can be accessed and downloaded from GCA web page. Click: True Spirituality
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Confession of a Recovering Legalist
The guy seemed somewhat indignant. “There are no legalists in this room”, he insisted in response to an indirect, and unintentional, indictment made by another member of the presbytery.
Little did he know.
“Absolutely there are legalists in the room”, I thought outloud.
I cannot say with certainty that this man, who felt compelled to defend himself and all those like him, is indeed a legalist. I suspect he is. There seems quite a bit of evidence that suggests he is. But I don’t know what is in his heart – or the heart of any other man in that room.
What I do know is my own heart. And even if no one else there in that room matched the description, at heart I am a legalist.
That would surprise many. In our presbytery, which is historically characterized as being very narrow and uptight, I am, I suspect, by comparison seen as being ‘looser’ and to the Left of center. (NOTE: It’s probably the only place I ever go where I am consisered Left of anything.) I am the guy who frequently points out the emptiness of Fundamentalism and all the associated rules as compared to the greatness of the grace offered us in Christ.
But as Craig Cabaniss articulately points out:
Legalism, however, is not a matter of having more rigourous rules. It’s far more lethal than that. It strikes at the very core of our relationship with God.
C.J. Mahaney explains:
Legalism is seeking to achieve forgiveness from God and acceptance by God through obedience to God. In other words, a legalist is anyone who behaves as if they can earn God’s approval and forgiveness through personal performance.
Now I am not usually so foolish as to think I can or will gain God’s forgiveness or acceptance by my behavior. I realize my only hope is in Christ. And I know that Jesus – and He alone – has already accomplished everything that is necessary to reconcile me to God. (This is known as forensic justification.)
But I often get the feeling that God likes me better than those uptight legalists because I am not as uptight. And I like that feeling. Furthermore, I like to think I am more committed to the advancement of Christ’s kingdom than they are. I am not sidetracked by mind-numbing minutia, as some others seem to be. In short, I like ‘knowing’ that I am ‘better’ than others because I am faithful -more or less – to a set of behavioral standards that others are not so visibly faithful to observe.
And that is what makes me a functional legalist.
A legalist is not defined by narrowness or the imposition of rules upon others. It is the erroneous sense that I can earn God’s favor by my behavior – by what I do and what I don’t do. And for me it is favor and not forgiveness that I desire through my legalism.
Cabaniss points out:
Legalism is a heart condition that can easily affect… and color any activity. Legalism can taint our Bible reading, praying, witnessing, eating, sleeping, lovemaking, working, recreating, joking, shopping – we can be legalistic about anything!
The solution is not lowering our standards. It is necessarily raising our understanding of and response to the glorious grace of God.
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Contextual Asessment Starter Questions
One of the greater frustrations I have experienced in the church I serve has not come from the people within the church as much as it has from well intended (I presume) outsiders and fringe folks who espouse a missional approach. This is surprising because I want to embrace a missional approach. But much of the advice I repeatedly get is to make implementation without regard for the context of the culture in which our church is set, and without regard to the understanding of the people that have long been within the church.
The models that these well-intended Christians admire (and the models these folks have often reminded me are far different from what I have to-date effectively implemented) look a lot like those models I read about from cutting edge missional churches in Seattle, Dallas, and Metro Atlanta. They are excellent examples of missional thinking put in practice. And it is exciting to read about what God is doing in those cities. But I don’t live in any of those places. Nor, obviously, does anyone who regularly attends our church. Nor do any of our neighbors that God has put us here to love.
So, in short, the reality is that much of the well intended criticism I receive is by those who desperately want to be missional, but whose advice is not really so much “missional” as it is the imposing of particular personal preferences on a people through practices and structures. The irony is that their advice is just as much driven by their own personal preference as are the practices of the “Traditional Church” these folks rail against.
One of the primary marks of missional is to actually exegete the culture where you live and worship. It requires an understanding of the real values, the faith shapers and influencers, and the idols that may offer peculiar obstacles to the gospel specific to ones own area.
The question is, then, how to determine what those factors may be in a particular community or region.
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Christians & Politics: Faith-filled or Faith Fooled?
In case you have been sleeping like Rip Van Winkle, this is a Presidential Election year in the USA. Faith will be declared, inspected, invoked, and provoked from all sides over these next few months. Some will offer opinions from positions of knowledge, while others will offer authoritative sounding opinions from positions of functional ignorance. It may become particularly true of this election since both presumed candidates have expressed faith traditions outside the American norm. One, the Republican, is in no respects a Christian. The other, the incumbent Democrat, professes a form of Christianity that leaves many understandably skeptical.
So, given these choices, how should American Evangelicals approach the coming season? Should we vote for a darkhorse Independent or Third Party candidate, who has no realistic chance to win but, who matches our Evangelical identity? Should we sit this one out, and wait until next time when we might have a viable candidate more in line with our theological ideologies?
Dick Doster says forgoing the election is not an acceptable option. Here’s why:
Christians, when rightly informed and motivated, change the character of political debate. They bring the moral standards of God’s kingdom into the civic realm and thereby become agents of His common grace — of His provision for those who believe as well as those who don’t.
This is the opening paragraph of Doster’s thought provoking article, Politics: Why Christians Must Be Involved, published at byFaith Magaizne. Click the article title to read Doster’s whole piece.
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The Need for Silence
Wise words from Paul Tripp about… not speaking words.
I have learned this lesson well over the years. My words, both spoken and written, are far more tempered than they were even just a few years ago. But as almost anyone who knows me can attest, my natural deficit in this area is so great that what I have learned is as nothing when compared to what I have still to understand. As I too often demonstrate, I am in regular need of this reminder from Paul Tripp.
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Diving Deep Into Gospel-Centered Living
Last week I confessed my envy of a book written by J.D. Greear, Gospel: Recovering the Power that Made Christianity Revolutionary. I admitted that I wish I had written the book. Here, in J.D.’s words, is a synopsis of Gospel-centered Christianity that expresses exactly what I would want to communicate to everyone in my church, to everyone who reads this blog, to everyone who I encounter:
Living a life centered on the gospel is not about praying the Sinner’s Prayer to make sure you’re going to heaven and then learning a bunch of new principles to master the Christian life. Gospel-centeredness is about saturating your heart in the good news of Jesus – letting it so remake your mind so that you see everything about yourself and your life through its lens.
Growth in grace is not going beyond the gospel, but deeper into it.
Make the gospel the center of your life. Turn to it when you are in pain. Let it be the foundation of your identity. Ground your confidence in it. Run to it when your soul feels restless. Take solace there in times of confusion and comfort there in times of regret. Dwell on it until righteous passions for God spring up within you. Let it inspire you to God-centered, death-defying dreams for his glory.
My soul has found its resting place. No longer do I struggle, in anguish, over what I must do for God to be pleased with me. Christ has accomplished it all on my behalf. I can add nothing to it, and I can take nothing away. I have a lot of room to grow in my Christian life, but my position in Him is secure.
Having found (or better yet, been found by) Him, and overwhelmed at his grace, my heart is growing in love for him and others. Generosity is like a stream that flows ever stronger in my heart. I give away more money now than I ever have, not because I have to, but because I want to. I think about myself less now than I ever have – mainly because I have found a greater, more captivating kingdom to live for than my own. The splendor of his Kingdom has made me bored with mine.
So I invite you to dive deeper into the gospel. Study it deeply – [not just] like a seminarian studies doctrine, but like you study a sunset that leaves you speechless; or like a man who is passionately in love with his wife studies her, until he is so captivated by her that his enthrallment with her drives out any allurement toward other women.
The gospel is not merely the diving board off of which you jump into the pool of Christianity; the gospel is the pool itself. So keep going deeper into it. You will never find the bottom.
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Practical Prayer Ideas from D.A. Carson
Here are some ideas for prayer practices adapted from D. A. Carson’s A Call to Spiritual Reformation:
Apart from any printed guides I may use, I keep a manila folder in my study, where I pray, and usually I take it with me when I am traveling.
The first sheet in that folder is a list of people for whom I ought to pray regularly: they are bound up with me, with who I am. My wife heads the list, followed by my children and a number of relatives, followed in turn by a number of close friends in various parts of the world…
The second sheet in my folder lists short-range and intermediate-range concerns that will not remain there indefinitely. They include forthcoming responsibilities in ministry and various crises or opportunities that I have heard about, often among Christians I scarcely know. Either they are the sort of thing that will soon pass into history (like the project of writing this book!), or they concern people or situations too remote for me to remember indefinitely. In other words, the first sheet focuses on people for whom I pray constantly; the second includes people and situations for whom I may pray for a short or an extended period of time, but probably not indefinitely. . . .
The next item in my manila folder is the list of my advisees — the students for whom I am particularly responsible. This list includes some notes on their background, academic program, families, personal concerns and the like, and of course this list changes from year to year.
The rest of the folder is filled with letters — prayer letters, personal letters, occasionally independent notes with someone’s name at the top. These are filed in alphabetical order. When a new letter comes in, I highlight any matters in it that ought to be the subject of prayer, and then file it in the appropriate place in the folder. The letter it replaces is pulled out at the same time, with the result that the prayer folder is always up to date. I try to set aside time to intercede with God on behalf of the people and situations represented by these letters, taking the one on the top, then the next one, and the next one, and so forth, putting the top ones, as I finish with them, on the bottom of the pile. Thus although the list is alphabetized, on any day a different letter of the alphabet may confront me.
While these ideas are expressions of Don Carson’s practice, it is not difficult to see how they could easily be translated into our own situations.
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Gospel-Driven Sanctification
Early in my Christian life I heard someone say, “The Bible was not given to increase your knowledge but to guide your conduct.” Later I came to realize that this statement was simplistic at best and erroneous at worst. The Bible is far more than a rulebook to follow. It is primarily the message of God’s saving grace through Jesus Christ, with everything in Scripture before the cross pointing to God’s redemptive work and everything after the cross–including our sanctification–flowing from that work.
There is an element of truth in this statement, however, and the Holy Spirit used it to help me to see that the Bible is not to be read just to gain knowledge. It is, indeed, to be obeyed and practically applied in our daily lives. As James says, “But be doers of the word, and not hearers only, deceiving yourselves” (James 1:22).
With my new insight, I prayed that God would use the Bible to guide my conduct. Then I began diligently to seek to obey it. I had never heard the phrase “the pursuit of holiness,” but that became my primary goal in life. Unfortunately, I made two mistakes. First, I assumed the Bible was something of a rulebook and that all I needed to do was to learn what it says and go do it. I knew nothing of the necessity of depending on the Holy Spirit for his guidance and enablement.
Still worse, I assumed that God’s acceptance of me and his blessing in my life depended on how well I did. I knew I was saved by grace through faith in Christ apart from any works. I had assurance of my salvation and expected to go to heaven when I died. But in my daily life, I thought God’s blessing depended on the practice of certain spiritual disciplines, such as having a daily quiet time and not knowingly committing any sin. I did not think this out but just unconsciously assumed it, given the Christian culture in which I lived. Yet it determined my attitude toward the Christian life.
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Cherokee People, God’s People
For these next few days I get to spend some time at the Cherokee Indian Reservation in North Carolina, preparing for a mission trip a team from our church will be again taking this Summer. I have come to love our work in Cherokee and look forward both to opportunities to go over the mountain to the reservation and to opportunities to share why we do what we do.
Some have wondered: “Why Cherokee?” Perhaps this is part of a bigger question: “Why Native American Mission?” After all, I supposed some assume, it is not like they are a pagan people, unexposed to the gospel.
While it is certainly true that Native Americans have had interaction with Christians for years, I find people are stunned when they hear how few Indians are followers of Jesus Christ. I know I was.
Overall only about 3% of Native Americans profess to believe the gospel. To be considered an Unreached People Group a People must be less than 2.5% evangelized. So it is obvious that despite having the “advantage” of regular interaction with American Christianity, Native Americans almost qualify as an Unreached People. When I think of this, and then consider that, at least in Cherokee, the vast majority of those in church on any given week are very, very old, it will not be long until Native Americans revert back into Unreached Peoples – unless they are reached now.
Perhaps the thing that first struck me, and continues to fuel my commitment to Native American Mission, was an ad I saw several years ago in a Christian magazine. I do not recall what mission agency had placed the ad, perhaps First Tribes, but the caption read:
“Why should America’s First People, be the last to hear?”
I could not give an answer, and the unjust irony struck a chord. So now, I am laboring to be part of the answer.
To give you a good introduction to the work we are doing, and why we are doing it, please watch the video above.
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I Wish I Had Said That
OK. I’ll admit it. After reading J.D. Greear‘s book, Gospel: Recovering the Power that Made Christianity Revolutionary, I found myself subtly frustrated… Disappointed…
Why?
Not because of anything in the book J.D. wrote. But because it was a book that I wish I had written! So I am jealous… envious… and greatly appreciative.
This is a book I could have written. It is not that I would have written it as well as J.D. did. But in this book J.D elaborates on a number of practical issues that I have found need to be explored and explained from a gospel-centered perspective. And J.D. nails it. He interacts with the writings of many of the same folks who have helped shape my own understanding, illustrates the principles, and applies them to an assortment of questions and confusions that many seem to have when first introduced to gospel-centered Christianity.
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No One Without the Other
There’s a lot of talk about “Cross-centeredness”…as if the death of Christ is more important than the life of Christ.
Christ’s death is not the center of the gospel any more than his life is the center of the gospel. One without the other fails to bring about redemption.
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Bad Religion: How We Became a Nation of Heretics – An Interview
I am not a fan of Diane Rehm, by any measure. Not only do I find her views unpalatable, her voice grates my ears. But as I was driving to an appointment today I clicked the NPR preset on my JEEP radio and in the matter of seconds had my attention arrested by the discussion between Rehm and her guest, New York Times columnist Ross Douthat. Earlier this week Douthat released a book provocatively titled Bad Religion: How We Became a Nation of Heretics. This book was only on my “To Read” list – or at least, it was on the list to put on my list, but now it on my “Definite Read” list.
I have no doubt that there are areas of doctrinal difference that I have with Douthat, but as I listened to him make his points and respond to Rehm and some of her regulars, I could not help but nod in agreement. Douthat offers some astute cultural observations that, being missional, I cannot ignore.
To listen to today’s interview click: Bad Religion
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5 Causes of the Decline of the American Church
Previewing Ross Douthat’s new book, Bad Religion: How We Became a Nation of Heretics, which hit bookstore shelves yesterday, Tim Keller draws five observations about the causes of decline in the American Church.
As Keller notes:
In his second chapter, Douthat attributes the change to five major social catalysts that have gained steam since the 1960s…
Here are the five factors:
- First, the political polarization that has occurred between the Left and Right drew many churches into it (mainline Protestants toward the Left, evangelicals toward the Right). This has greatly weakened the church’s credibility in the broader culture, with many viewing churches as mere appendages and pawns of political parties.
- Second, the sexual revolution means that the Biblical sex ethic now looks unreasonable and perverse to millions of people, making Christianity appear implausible, unhealthy, and regressive.
- Third, the era of decolonization and Third World empowerment, together with the dawn of globalization, has given the impression that Christianity was imperialistically “western” and supportive of European civilization’s record of racism, colonialism, and anti-Semitism.
- The fourth factor has been the enormous growth in the kind of material prosperity and consumerism that always works against faith and undermines Christian community.
- The fifth factor is that all the other four factors had their greatest initial impact on the more educated and affluent classes – the gatekeepers of the main culture-shaping institutions such as the media, the academy, the arts, the main foundations, and much of the government and business world.
I find these observations significant. As God’s missional people, it is important that Christians recognize not only the reality of the decline of our influence within our culture, but the specific contributing factors. Simply wishing things were the way they used to be won’t accomplish anything. It is akin to sticking our heads in the sand. But when we discern what is going on in the world around us, a number of signs direct us toward ways we may address the causes, both directly and indirectly.
Read Keller’s entire article: Redeemer City to City
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Pay Attention!
In his book, Joy Unspeakable, Martyn Lloyd-Jones notes:
Pay attention!
I am certain that the world outside is not going to pay much attention to all the organized efforts of the Christian church. The one thing she will pay attention to is a body of people filled with the spirit of rejoicing. That is how Christianity conquered the ancient world. It was this amazing joy of these people. Even when you threw them into prison, or even to death, it did not matter, they went on rejoicing; rejoicing in tribulations.
Perhaps we would be wise to recover this attitude. It seems to me, many of our contemporaries spend too much energy griping about the world, and about lessened stature in the estimation of the culture. But if we recover the joy that should be an inherent attribute of our faith, perhaps we can regain our effectiveness as redeeming and preserving agents in this world.
GRACE & PEACE 