“It is for freedom that Christ has set us free. Stand firm, then, and do not let yourselves be burdened again by a yoke of slavery.” ~ Galatians 5.1
Lord Jesus, it’s the Fourth of July – a holiday set aside to remember and revel in the freedom we enjoy as citizens of America. As broken as she is, we’re still thankful for our country and for the privileges we enjoy.
But the gratitude we feel for our USA citizenship pales in comparison with the joy generated by our citizenship in heaven. (Philippians 3.20) We praise you today for making us members of the “chosen people, a royal priesthood, a holy nation, God’s special possession“. (1 Peter 2.9) This is our true and lasting identity – our consummate passport and eternal liberty.
Indeed, Jesus, only those you set free are really free. (John 8.36) You took our guilt and gave us your righteousness. We’re no longer condemned for our sin or in fear of death. Hallelujah! Sin’s dominion has been broken in our lives; never again will it be our master. (Romans 6.14) We obey you because we love you – not because of pride, pressure, or pragmatics. Holiness is beautiful, and no longer a burden.
We get to run freely and boldly to the throne of grace – into your holy presence, where we only experience your welcome and joy. We’re free to own our sin and brokenness, and to repent with joy, for you bore our shame and we don’t have to pose or pretend anymore. Three Hallelujahs, for that!
You’ve set us free from seeking fool’s gold and a fool’s reward, by making us characters in, and carriers of, your story. Our tiny fiefdoms of self have been crushed under the grace of your all-things-new kingdom. We’re now free to love others as you love us – forgiving and forbearing, encouraging and hoping. Take us WAY deeper into this particular freedom, Jesus.
By the power of the gospel, we will seek to stand firm in these and the many more freedoms you’ve won for us, until the Day you return to usher in the new heaven and new earth. So very Amen we pray, in your liberating and loving name.
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NOTE: This prayer was originally composed by Scotty Smith for The Gospel Coalition (7/4/16)
When Samuel Blair assumed the pulpit of Faggs Manor Church in 1740, he found a congregation in a spiritual condition not uncommon in our day. Blair wrote that when he came to the church he found “many good religious people who performed their religious obligation rather well”. Yet they were, in his estimation, somewhat formal and unenthusiastic:
If they performed these duties pretty punctually in their seasons and, as they thought, with good meaning, out of conscience, and not just to obtain a name for religion among men, then they were ready to conclude that they were truly and sincerely religious. A very lamentable ignorance of the main essentials of true practical religion, and the doctrines nearly relating thereunto very generally prevailed. The nature and necessity of the new birth was but litle known or thought of, the necessity of a conviction of sin and misery, by the Holy Spirit’s opening and applying the law to the conscience, in order to a saving closure with Christ, was hardly known at all to most. It was thought, that if there was any need of a heart-distressing sight of the soul’s danger, and fear of divine wrath, it was only needed for the grosser sort of sinners; and for any others to be deeply exercised this way (as might in some rare instances observable), this was generally looked upon to be a great evil and temptation that had befallen those persons. The common names for such soul-concern were, melancholy, trouble of mind, or despair. These terms were common, so far as I have been acquainted, indifferently used as synonymous; and trouble of mind was looked upon as a great evil, which all persons that made any sober profession and practice of religion ought carefully avoid. …There was scarcely any suspicion at all, in general, of any danger of depending upon self-righteousness, and not upon the righteousness of Christ alone for salvation. Papists [Roman Catholics] and Quakers would be readily acknowledeged guilty of this crime, but hardly any professed Presbyterian. The necessity of being first in Christ by a vital union, and in a justified state, before our religious services can be well pleasing and acceptable to God, was very little understood or thought of; but the common notion seemed to be, that if people were aiming to be in the way of duty as well as they could, at they imagined, there was no reason to be much afraid.
[Source: The Forming of an American Tradition: A Re-Examination of Colonial Presbyterianism, by Leonard J. Trinterud; Westminster Press, 1959; pp. 77-78]
Unfortunately, it seems that this same presumption still exists in too many congregations, and among too many professing Christians. Brennan Manning, in his thoughtful book, Ruthless Trust, identifies the problem with the superficial spirituality of pretentious piety:
In a world where the only plea is “Not Guilty”, what possibility is there of an honest encounter with Jesus, who “died for our sins”? We can only pretend that we are sinners, and thus only pretend that we are forgiven.
I appreciate Justin Taylor for causing me to consider two seeming conflicting perspectives from two 20th Century giants of the Christian faith: A.W. Tozer and C.S. Lewis:
A. W. Tozer, from The Knowledge of the Holy:
What comes into our minds when we think about God is the most important thing about us.
The history of mankind will probably show that no people has ever risen above its religion, and man’s spiritual history will positively demonstrate that no religion has ever been greater than its idea of God. Worship is pure or base as the worshiper entertains high or low thoughts of God.
For this reason the gravest question before the Church is always God Himself, and the most portentous fact about any man is not what he at a given time may say or do, but what he in his deep heart conceives God to be like.
We tend by a secret law of the soul to move toward our mental image of God. This is true not only of the individual Christian, but of the company of Christians that composes the Church. Always the most revealing thing about the Church is her idea of God.
C.S. Lewis, from The Weight of Glory:
I read in a periodical the other day that the fundamental thing is how we think of God.
By God Himself, it is not! How God thinks of us is not only more important, but infinitely more important. Indeed, how we think of Him is of no importance except in so far as it is related to how He thinks of us.
It is written that we shall “stand before” Him, shall appear, shall be inspected. The promise of glory is the promise, almost incredible and only possible by the work of Christ, that some of us, that any of us who really chooses, shall actually survive that examination, shall find approval, shall please God. To please God . . . to be a real ingredient in the divine happiness . . . to be loved by God, not merely pitied, but delighted in as an artist delights in his work or a father in a son—it seems impossible, a weight or burden of glory which our thoughts can hardly sustain. But so it is.
Are these thoughts contradictory of one another? If not, how do we reconcile them? And assuming these statements can be reconciled, and shown not to be contradicting, what wisdom can the Christian gain that might shape the way we live?
What do you usually do immediately after your Sunday morning church service ends? If you’re like most of church-going humanity, you probably have a routine. Upon the final “Amen”, you arise from your regular spot and your body follows a subconscious script. You may go to the nursery to pick up a child, maybe you have your weekly chat about the high school sports team with the person seated in the row behind you, or perhaps you hightail it toward the coffee to snag a to-go cup on your way out the door.
There’s nothing wrong with being a creature of habit, but many of us have the same routine at the end of a church service as we do at the conclusion of a sporting event or any other public gathering. We gather our belongings, utter some niceties, and shuffle toward the exits. That’s a problem. More specifically, it’s a bad habit.
Since the church body is a family of brothers and sisters in Christ, the end of the formal part of a service is not the end of church but rather the beginning of a new segment of the family gathering. When the structured gathering ends, an indispensable aspect of Christian vitality and growth—fellowship—continues.
Don’t get the wrong idea. You don’t have to be an extrovert who seeks people out like a goldendoodle puppy to faithfully participate in the fellowship of the church. You just have to be intentional.
If you’re one of the many believers with a bad habit of neglecting the broader fellowship of the church after the service, here’s one simple suggestion: set apart ten minutes after the gathering concludes and devote that time to getting to know others in the church family. This is a ten-minute commitment to invest in your eternal faith family and show hospitality to those not yet in the family.
To help set these ten minutes apart, it may help to consider what not to do, in order to be free and available for fellowship with the body of Christ.
1. Don’t Talk to Your Besties
There’s nothing wrong with having close friends in the church (in fact, there’s much right about that), but the weekly gathering is the one time each week when all the people you don’t naturally bump into are gathered in one place. Don’t miss that opportunity to experience the fullness of the body of Christ by getting to know those who are unlike you or from different life stages and interests. Not only will you benefit from a more diverse fellowship, but over time the supernatural unity of the Spirit will be gloriously on display as members of a church family have genuine care and concern for those outside their immediate circles. Let your closest friends know that right after the service (and, ideally, before the service as well), your aim is to engage the larger fellowship of the church family. Maybe this will encourage them to do the same!
2. Don’t Talk to Blood
Similarly, in those first ten minutes after the service, skip the chit-chat with your family. This is not to denigrate your family. If you get to regularly attend church with your extended family, that is a gift from God to be cherished. But very often, one’s family becomes the relationally safe enclave that undermines more intentional branching out into the broader church family. If your habit is currently to huddle up with your family to chat after church, it’s time to replace that habit with a better one. You’ll talk to your family later, so in those first moments after the official time is done, reorient your family outward toward the broader fellowship of the church family.
3. Don’t Talk Shop
While circumstances will arise that need the attention of a staff member or ministry leader, the goal in the minutes prior to and following the service is to be freed up for fellowship. It’s common for those involved in the formal functions on a Sunday (music ministry, kids ministry, elders, deacons, staff, etc.) to ‘talk shop’ with others who are also involved in leading and serving. But again, this is the one time each week that the building is filled with the faith family! The shop talk can wait or be accomplished with an email. You might even need to politely tell a fellow ministry leader, “Let’s discuss this later. I want to go meet those people before they leave.” In doing so, you’re not only prioritizing what matters, you’re setting the tone for a culture in which all the ministry leaders are flock-oriented.
Habits are what we do without noticing. Most people are not actively trying to have shallow relationships with the church family. But without realizing it, many people are missing the gift of rich church fellowship due to unexamined Sunday habits. I encourage you to devote ten minutes after the service for conversing with others in the faith family—and soon you’ll likely find that ten minutes is not nearly enough.
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This post was written by Andy Huette, Senior Pastor of Christ Community Church in Gridley, Illinois, and orignally published by Mattthias Media. Here is the link to the original post: The Ten Minutes After Church Ends.
Listen to how Bob Flayhart, Senior Pator at Oak Mountain Presbyterian Church in Birmingham, AL, describes a Gospel-centered Christian Life:
A Gospel-centered life is the Christian Waltz. A waltz is a dance made up of three steps. Christians need to consider the Christian three step when it comes to growth.
In the first step, we acknowledge our need as we see our sin in light of the Law. In the second step, we look to Christ to change us. In the third step, we fight against sin and fight to choose righteousness in the strength of the Holy Spirit. Repent! Believe! Fight!…Repent! Believe! Fight!…Repent! Believe! Fight!
An emphasis on the love and grace of God lays the dance floor,or the foundation, for the waltz. Unless Christians are convinced of God’s love for them and His favor over them by virtue of their union with Christ, they will minimize their sin and engage in blame-shifting and excuse- making in order to feel justified before God.
Unfortunately, many in the Church today teach believers a Two-step. The two-step is to simply repent and fight. They acknowledge their sin and proceed with new resolve to try harder to avoid sin. The problem with this approach is it bypasses the cross of Christ and the power of the resurrection.
If we are going to grow in grace, we must stay aware of being both sinners and also loved children in Christ.
Keller’s paradigm reminded me of something Edward Payson – “Praying Payson of Portland” – wrote long ago:
True Christianity consists of a proper mixture of fear of God, and of hope in his mercy; and wherever either of these is entirely wanting, there can be no true Faith. God has joined these things, and we ought by no means to put them asunder.
He cannot take pleasure in those who fear him with a slavish fear, without hoping in his mercy, because they seem to consider him a cruel and tyrannical being, who has no mercy or goodness in his nature. And, besides, they implicitly charge him with falsehood, by refusing to believe and hope in his invitations and offers of mercy.
On the other hand, he cannot be pleased with those who pretend to hope in his mercy without fearing him. For they insult him by supposing there is nothing in him which ought to be feared. And in addition to this, they make him a liar, by disbelieving his awful threatenings denounced against sinners, and call in question his authority, by refusing to obey him.
Those only who both fear him and hope in his mercy, give him the honor that is due to his name.
Both Payson and Keller give credence to thw wisdom of Puritan Thomas Watson:
The two great graces essential to a saint in this life are faith and repentance. These are the two wings by which he flies to heaven.
Here is an important reminder and challenge from Richard Lovelace, from his monumental Dynamics of Spiritual Life:
Only a fraction of the present body of professing Christians are solidly appropriating the justifying work of Christ in their lives… Many… have a theoretical commitment to this doctrine, but in their day-to-day existence they rely on their sanctification for their justification… drawing their assurance of acceptance with God from their sincerity, their past experience of conversion, their recent religious performance or the relative infrequency of their conscious, willful disobedience. Few know enough to start each day with a thoroughgoing stand upon Luther’s platform: you are accepted, looking outward in faith and claiming the wholly alien righteousness of Christ as the only ground for acceptance… Christians who are no longer sure that God loves and accepts them in Jesus, apart from their present spiritual achievements, are subconsciously radically insecure persons… Their insecurity shows itself in pride, a fierce, defensive assertion of their own righteousness, and defensive criticism of others. They come naturally to hate other cultural styles and other races in order to bolster their own security and discharge their suppressed anger.
This paragraph, surprisingly, caused somewhat of a stir when I posted it on my Facebook page yesterday. Most appreciated it. Some who expressed appreciation, I wondered if they really understood what Lovelacve was saying. I hope so.
So, how do we respond if we find ourselves among the majority who are not functionally appropriating the justifying work of Christ?
If I had a favorite hymn from Red Mountain Music, this would probably be it. It reflects the common duality of our hearts, simultaneously Believing and Struggling to Believe; simultaneously Saints & Sinners. (See Mark 9.24) It reflects and explains the cause of Paul’s dimemma: Failing to do what he wanted to do, and doing what he hated. (Romans 7.15) It points us to the answer: Resting in the Grace & Power of Christ.
We are not desperate to pray because we are self-deceived. We are blind to our depravity. We don’t see ourselves as we really are. Do you want to learn to pray more? Learn of your sin. Ask God to show it to you, to give you a glimpse of your need. Ask him to show you what your sin cost him. Look at the cross again and again until you can say, “Lord, I’m so sinful, so weak, so deceived. Please, God, don’t let a day go by without reminding me of this. Make me dependent.”
Then, in faith, draw near knowing that you have needed cleansing but have been cleansed. Know that you have deserved wrath but have been fully loved. Sit down with your Beloved and hear him speak to you. Unburden your heart before him. Have fellowship with your heavenly husband. Be fully assured; he loves you when you pray, and he loves you when you don’t. You’re his bride when you hide from him, when you ignore him, when you think he doesn’t really care. Run, now, to the lover of your soul.
“We can put it this way: the man who has faith is the man who is no longer looking at himself and no longer looking to himself. He no longer looks at anything he once was. He does not look at what he is now. He does not even look at what he hopes to be as the result of his own efforts. He looks entirely to the Lord Jesus Christ and His finished work, and rests on that alone. He has ceased to say, ‘Ah yes, I have committed terrible sins but I have done this and that…’ He stops saying that. If he goes on saying that, he has not got faith…Faith speaks in an entirely different manner and makes a man say, ‘Yes I have sinned grievously, I have lived a life of sin…yet I know that I am a child of God because I am not resting on any righteousness of my own; my righteousness is in Jesus Christ and God has put that to my account.”
How shall we distinguish a healthy faith from one that is built on more shaky ground? Consider this insight from John Calvin:
“Now we shall possess a right definition of faith if we call it a firm and certain knowledge of God’s benevolence toward us, founded upon the truth of the freely given promise in Christ, both revealed to our minds and sealed upon our hearts through the Holy Spirit…..
If then, we would be assured that God is pleased with and [is] kindly disposed toward us, we must fix our eyes …on Christ… We see that our whole salvation, and all its parts, are comprehended in Christ. We should, therefore, take care not to derive the least portion of it from anywhere else.”
The question may occur to us: What difference is there between faith and hope? We find it difficult to see any difference. Faith and hope are so closely linked that they cannot be separated. Still there is a difference between them.
Consider the following distinctions offered by Martin Luther, from his commentary on Galatians:
First, hope and faith differ in regard to their sources. Faith originates in the understanding, while hope rises in the will.
Secondly, they differ in regard to their functions. Faith says what is to be done. Faith teaches, describes, directs. Hope exhorts the mind to be strong and courageous.
Thirdly, they differ in regard to their objectives. Faith concentrates on the truth. Hope looks to the goodness of God.
Fourthly, they differ in sequence. Faith is the beginning of life before tribulation (Hebrews 11). Hope comes later and is born of tribulation (Romans 5).
Fifthly, they differ in regard to their effects. Faith is a judge. It judges errors. Hope is a soldier. It fights against tribulations, the Cross, despondency, despair, and waits for better things to come in the midst of evil.
Without hope faith cannot endure. On the other hand, hope without faith is blind rashness and arrogance because it lacks knowledge. Before anything else a Christian must have the insight of faith, so that the intellect may know its directions in the day of trouble and the heart may hope for better things. By faith we begin, by hope we continue.
Jonathan Dodson, of Acts 29 Network, has posted a great synopsis of beliefs in an article titled: The Message of Resurging Calvinsm. This falls into the category of: I Wish I’d Written That – it so simply and concisely summarizes what I have been teaching at Walnut Hill Church.
Dodson clearly describes 5 areas of important Faith distinctives:
Gospel vs. Religion
Us vs. Them
Big vs. Small
Conservative vs. Liberal
Suburban & Urban
In this post there are some references to the New Calvinism. In some respects this label seems a bit of a misnomer since, it seems to me, it is really a just a great expression of healthy Calvinism… But I don’t want to be nit-picky.
As a pastor from a confessional denomination one of the more difficult tasks I regularly – even constantly – encounter is helping people past a distatse for doctrine.
I understand why so many are so often hesitant to embrace any system of doctrine. “Doctrine divides” is a commen lament. And, regretably, it is often an accurate one. I see many who are at odds with others over secondary principles. Another issue is that sometimes those who are the strongest proponents of sound theology carry rather “ugly” attitudes. Looking at life, and the church, with a singular perspective (as opposed to tri-perspectival) some assume that mere apprehension and submission to a system of doctrine is the only thing that matters. As one of my old pastors often said: “Their theology is dead right – but mostly dead.”
Of course there are other reasons to be considered.
The historical influence of the Second Great Awakening continues to infect large portions of the American church. One of the most significant effects is that many Christians, and a number of church traditions, are flarly anti-intellectual. Their faith is almost entirely “feelings” built aroud a few simple theological propositions.
And maybe the biggest hurdle is that developing a comprehensive understanding of a system of theology is, simply, hard work. Like learning anything, it is challenging and takes time and study.
Whatever the reasons for hesitancy, I maintain it is still important. In this brief video Tim Keller affirms the benefits of sound doctrine. In fact he asserts, I believe correctly, that everyone already lives out their theology…
If this so, it would seem important to think it all through.
I’ve been a fan of Brit Hume ever since, during my college years, I saw him as a panelist of a debate for the 1984 Presidential Election. The panelist preceding Hume asked a question to one of the candidates, who then essentially filabustered – he talked in non-sensical circles until his time had elapsed. In his turn Brit Hume followed up by asking the candidate: “My first question is, Why didn’t you answer the previous question?” I liked that.
Hume’s directness has again stirred some controversy when last weekend he chimed in on the saga of Tiger Woods. Boldly and with clarity he said something I had been thinking, essentially: “If Woods would turn his life to Christ he could experience forgiveness and restoration.” (See clip above. Also watch as Hume explains his comments to Bill O’Reilly.)
GRACE & PEACE 