People tend to make two mistakes when they think about the redeemed life. The first is to underestimate the sin that remains in us; it’s still there and it can still hurt us. The second is to underestimate the strength of God’s grace; God is determined to make us new. As a result, all Christians need to say two things. We admit that we are redeemed sinners. But we also say boldly and joyously that we are redeemed sinners.
~ from Cornelius Plantings, in Beyond Doubt
…but God shows his love for us in that while we were still sinners, Christ died for us. Since, therefore, we have now been justified by his blood, much more shall we be saved by him from the wrath of God. ~ Romans 5.8-9
Matt Chandler passionately proclaims the profound practical benefits of God’s grace to us.
“So Repentance begins with an attitude of brokenness over our sin. But true repentance will be followed by an earnest desire and a sincere effort to put away the sin we are repenting of – to put on the Christlike virtues that we see missing in our lives. These efforts often seem to be characterized by failure as much as by success. But the frequent failures should bring us back to a broken and contrite heart that mourns over our sin. Brokenness, contrition, and repentance are all marks of a growing Christian, a person who is experiencing the work of the Spirit in being transformed gradually more into the image of God’s Son.”
In Colossians 3, the Apostle Paul commands us:
Put to death therefore what is earthly in you:sexual immorality, impurity, passion, evil desire, and covetousness, which is idolatry. (v. 5)
His list should not be seen as exhaustive, but rather suggestive. There are many other things that could be included in this list – things which are mentioned in many other passages throughout the Old and New Testaments.
But while Paul’s list here may not be complete, his message is clear: “Put your sin to death!”
For those who cling to the notion that once we are secured in the grace of Jesus that we have little or no need to give serious and ongoing thought to our sin and the lingering effects it has upon us – that all we need to do is look at the positives of the promises of the gospel – Paul’s words provide a much needed corrective.
Certainly, the promises of the gospel give us a tremendous status. But there is still much to be done; much we need to be doing. The gospel gives us the confidence that no matter what we may find when we look deep into the recesses of our own hearts, we will never be forsaken. Whatever we may find in the dark and dank depths of our souls, it is no surprise to God. He already knows. And he is the one who is encouraging us to take a look for ourselves. God, our Father, does this with the reassuring promise that no matter what we find he will not love us any less.
Still, easier said than done.
I appreciate the work Jonathan Dodson has done to develop the concept of Fight Clubs to help us put our sin to death. Dodson bases Fight Clubs on three essential principles:
1. Know Your Sin
Look for the sinful patterns in your life and trace them to the “identity of the moment” that you are looking to for worth and/or meaning (good person, faithful parent, creative artist, successful entrepreneur, etc.). For instance, your sin could be sulking and your false identity could be victim…
2. Fight Your Sin
Once you know your sin/identity issue, you can begin to fight it.
There are two primary ways God calls us to fight our sin.
First, confess your sin to God and ask for his forgiveness for your God-belittling desires and decisions. (1 John 1.9) Follow your confession to God with confession to community so you can experience healing and encouragement of the church. (James 5.16)
Second, encourage one another to take sin seriously, to “put sin to death”. (Romans 8.13 & Colossians 3.5) Don’t let identity-twisting sin just roll off your back. Get tenacious about glorifying and enjoying God!
In short, you could summarize it this way:
- Confess your sin (to God and one another)
- Get serious about fighting for true joy
3. Trust Your Savior
Trusting our Savior for gospel identity instead of an identity-of-the-moment is the most difficult and important part of being a disciple.
Robert Murray McCheyene said:
“For every look at sin, look ten times at Christ.”
How does Christ offer you a better identity than the false identity?
Dodson writes:
If my sin was sulking and my identity was victim, 2 Peter 1.3 reminds me that my identity is godly, a partaker of the divine nature. I was sulking in ungodliness because I thought I deserved better circumstances. I felt weak. Peter reminds us that we have “divine power granted to us for life and godliness.”
This scripture reminded me of my identity — godly — but it does not stop there.
It also offers us a Savior to trust, a counter-promise of divine power necessary to live a godly life, not a sulking life. What a relief! Our identity is godly, and our promise is divine power!
So, again, in short:
- Find your Gospel counter-Identity
- Trust your Biblical Promise
“There are two methods which the Lord graciously adopts, in order to draw our heart away from this present world:
… Now it is much better to be drawn by the joys of heaven than driven by the sorrows of earth.
The believer should not wait to be shaken out of the present things…There is no difficulty in giving up the world when we have, by faith, laid hold of Christ: the difficulty then would be to hold it.”
~adapted from C.H. Macintosh, Notes on Genesis (1879)
Eugene Peterson, in the Introduction to the book of Hebrews in his book The Message, writes:
“It seems odd to have to say so, but too much religion is a bad thing. We can’t get too much of God, can’t get too much faith and obedience, can’t get too much love and worship. But religion – the well intentioned efforts we make to ‘get it all together’ for God – can very well get in the way of what God is doing for us. The main & central action is everywhere, and always what God has done, is doing and will do for us. Jesus is the revelation of that action”.
Francis Schaeffer, of his own testimony, writes:
“I became a Christian once for all upon the basis of the finished work of Christ through faith; that is justification. The Christian life, sanctification, operates on the same basis, but moment by moment. There is the same base (Christ’s work) and the same instrument (faith); the only difference is that one is once for all and the other is moment by moment… If we try to live the Christian life in our own strength we will have sorrow, but if we live in this way, we will not only serve the Lord, but in place of sorrow, He will be our song. That is the difference. The ‘how’ of the Christian life is the power of the crucified and risen Lord, through the agency of the indwelling Holy Spirit, by faith moment by moment.”
An important -even essential – distinction. It’s not just for the sake of doctrinal precision. It makes all the difference in how we live out our lives.
In his excellent, perspective shaping book, Broken-Down House, Paul Tripp reflects some of the amazing paradoxes of the gospel. Take some time to ponder these; feel the tension. This is what genuine grace is and does:
So grace is a story and grace is a gift. It is God’s character and it is your hope. Grace is a transforming tool and a state of relationship. Grace is a theology and an invitation. Grace is an experience and a calling. Grace will turn your life upside-down while giving you a rest you have never known. Grace will convince you of your unworthiness without ever making you feel unloved.
Grace will make you acknowledge that you cannot earn God’s favor, and it will remove your fear of not measuring up to his standards. Grace will confront you with the fact that you are much less than you thought you were, even as it assures you that you can be far more than you had ever imagined. Grace will put you in your place without ever putting you down.
Grace will enable you to face truths about yourself that you have hesitated to consider, while freeing you from being self-consciously introspective. Grace will confront you with profound weaknesses, and at the same time introduce you to new-found strength. Grace will tell you what you aren’t, while welcoming you to what you can now be. Grace will make you as uncomfortable as you have ever been, while offering you more comfort than you have ever known. Grace will drive you to the end of yourself, while it invites you to fresh starts and new beginnings. Grace will dash your hopes, but never leave you hopeless. Grace will decimate your kingdom as it introduces you to a better King. Grace will expose your blindness as it gives you eyes to see. Grace will make you sadder than you have ever been, while it gives you greater cause for celebration than you have ever known.
Grace enters your life in a moment and will occupy you for eternity. You simply cannot live a productive life in this broken-down world unless you have a practical grasp of the grace you have been given [in 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.
“When I look at the cross, I learn to say: ‘The Son of God loved me, and gave Himself for me’ (Galatians 2:20). I begin to believe with Paul that if God did not spare His own Son, but gave Him up to the cross for me, then He loves me so much He will always give me only what will bring me blessing (Romans 8:32).”
This song comes from a beautiful poem by John Newton. It is a powerful reminder to me about God’s grace and how God works.
Like Newton in the opening lines of this poem, I often ask God to grow me in grace and faith and the fruits of his Spirit.
I asked the Lord that I might grow
In faith, and love, and every grace;
Might more of His salvation know,
And seek, more earnestly, His face.
And like Newton expresses in the third stanza, in my mind this is something noble and therefore should be experienced mystically, gently and painlessly:
I hoped that in some favored hour,
At once He’d answer my request;
And by His love’s constraining pow’r,
Subdue my sins, and give me rest.
Spiritual growth is easy, right? It should be automatic. Like sleeping, or breathing. Certainly it should be no more difficult than eating, or learning to ride a bike or drive…
What do you do with the person who says: “I’ve asked God to forgive me, but I still feel guilty?”
A noted writer (R.C. Sproul, I think) was asked [this] once. [His reply:] “Well, if You still feel guilty, then pray to God again, but this time don’t ask Him to forgive you for the sin that is haunting you. Rather ask Him to forgive you for insulting His integrity by refusing to accept His forgiveness. Who are you to refuse to forgive yourself when God has forgiven you…it is often a very difficult thing to accept the grace of God. Our human arrogance makes us want to atone for our own sins to make it up to God with works of super-righteousness”.
“Just so you know, the need for repentance, redemption, and forgiveness is universal. I don’t care if you are a liberal or a conservative, a religious fanatic or a militant atheist, a ‘spiritual’/’religious’ person or someone who runs from all that. It doesn’t matter to me if you listen to Billy Graham or follow Camus – you are in need. No one in the human race is exempt. Its in our DNA…
When we finally acknowledge our need for forgiveness and come to God in repentance, we find true power; for we now have nothing to hide or protect, we don’t care what people say or think about us, we are willing to speak truth gently, and we are enabled to speak with tremendous, supernatural power.”
~ Steve Brown, from Three Free Sins
NOTE: Watch a preview video and listen to Tullian Tchividjian interview Steve Brown about Thee Free Sins: here
Steve Brown, professor at Reformed Theological Seminary and president of Key Life Network, penned a marvelous word picture of the motive and expression of a life gripped by God’s grace:
When I became a Christian, two things happened. I got saved, and I got loved. I got loved so deeply that it still amazes me when I think about it. Because I got loved so deeply, I want to please the One who loved me that much. I may not always please him – sometimes I even run in the other direction, because his love can really hurt. I may chafe against pleasing him; I may not even speak to him. But I’ll tell you something: I want to please him, and when I don’t please him, it hurts. Now if I really want to please him, I must know what pleases him. I find that out by reading the Word and listening to his commandments. When I know what he wants, I want what he wants. Love does that to you. But I must know what he wants. That is why we must never soften the teaching of the Law of God. Holiness is a very important teaching as long as it is given in the context of God’s love.
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.
GRACE & PEACE 