A Life in Christ

Regardless of how successful, how prosperous, and even how philanthropic a life may seem to be, if it is not built upon faith in Jesus Christ, it is hollow. A life lived without Christ is a tragedy and a mirage that will continue in eternity separated from God Himself forever. The implications of that are beyond human understanding, but we as believers must never lose sight of the plight of the lost as well as the glorious treasure that is ours through Christ.
Eternity awaits while this present vapor moves relentlessly toward its Redeemer.

Jesus

The highest level of knowledge is Jesus. All truths find their source in Him, and He is the source of all creation. As Solomon discovered there comes a time when some men realize their lives are hollow and without any eternal substance. It is during that time when the Spirit presents Jesus. And in a moment, an instant, that heart believes upon Jesus. That is a moment of glory unequalled upon the earth. And a soul that climbed out of bed that morning dead in trespasses and sins, has been changed into a living, breathing child of the Living God. To say that is a miracle is to diminish the significance of that event.

Perhaps we will get some perspective when we see the Risen Christ one day. But until then, until we are like Him, just the foretaste of that day and the limited knowledge we have now sustains us and allows us to soar above this present world. To know Jesus is to know life.

At Calvary

At Calvary - Willaim Newell

Oh the love that drew salvation’s plan
Oh the grace that brought it down to man
Oh the mighty gulf that God did span
At Calvary

We may never fully know, much less understand, just how far God had to go to purchase our salvation. And when our hearts and minds come to understand the enormity of God’s redemption, and the enormity of our comprehensive limitations, it must elicit the greatest demonstrations of worship as well as unrestricted service. If I was outlining the path to divine redemption for mankind, I would have God just issuing a decree and with that be done. However the mystery of grace, juxtaposed against the mystery of iniquity, demanded an incredible sacrifice beyond all reason, logic, and understanding.
We cannot fully explain the making of a “spirit”, which is what God is, to say nothing of dissecting the makeup and operation of the Trinity. But God has not required of us to explain all mysteries or to be fully versed in all things invisible. But He has granted to us a knowledge so wonderful and so profound that we can never exhaust its depths or capture all its infinite facets. We are so limited in our view of love, and so subjective in our assessment concerning who deserves love. But God has loved His enemies before He ever made them. And God is, in fact, love itself. God not only exhibits the verb form of love; God is the noun itself. He is the essence; the epitome; the source; and the quintessential substance of all love. And it was by the power of this love that God Himself came disguised as one of His enemies.
And the provided grace was birthed through that love. And oh how expansive is that grace. There is no sin that is outside the power of this grace when it is made alive through faith alone. Indeed, only unbelief inhibits that grace and only the works of man rise as false and powerless counterfeits. God’s grace is antithetical to human reasoning and understanding. And when a sinner is required to leave everything he believes might help, however small and insignificant, at the door of grace he often recoils. How could God reject sincere attempts to serve Him and his creation? Why would He discard honest efforts to perform works of compassion to honor Him? And these questions crystallize our fallen understanding of God’s grace which are actually attempts to elevate ourselves. Grace is only for the dead man; dead in his sins and without any life.
The monkeys in India are captured many times by a simple technique. The man places a peanut inside a pot whose neck allows the open hand of the monkey to enter, but when the monkey grasps the peanut and cannot get his fisted hand free he is often captured. And so is fallen man when he continues to cling to his baptism or church membership or his philanthropy or his comparative goodness. God’s grace will not share an apartment with any works other than that of Calvary and the empty tomb. And the only difficulties in God’s grace are not any religious or moral hurdles that some claim it requires. The difficulty always lies within the stubborn and self righteous heart of man who demands a part in that grace.
And the gulf to which the song refers is gaping and irreconcilable without the grace of God. We pitiful humans have absolutely a limited view of sin and a negligible concept of holiness. We tend to think of holiness as something we do not do in order to remain pure and something we do to attain it. In reality rocks do not sin and yet they are not holy. Holiness, God’s holiness, is a state of being known only in essence by the Majestic Being named God and it is an absolute power that emanates from impeccable purity and exhaustive moral virtue. God’s holiness cannot be measured in degrees or levels. It is universal and eternally constant. And any holiness attributed to any man is wholly through imputation and without one iota of his own strength or effort. The difference between our condition and God’s holiness was a shocking and spiritually redoubtable chasm that no amount of human sincerity or works of earthly labors could ever constrict by the smallest whit.
And yet this gulf was not only constricted, it was eliminated without residue by the finished work of the Risen Christ! God did not just shorten the span so we could attempt to leap its breadth. In fact, just that thought reveals how little we understand about the magnitude and eternal devastation our sin had caused. When Jesus died for our sins, and when He arose from the dead as the victorious proof of who He was and what He had accomplished, the might gulf that separated us from God was closed without a seam. And this was done not with technology and higher human learning; this was done at Calvary. And what appeared to the carnal eye as a dead Jew on a Roman cross getting what he deserved, was to the spiritually enlightened eye the Redeemer in prophetic fulfillment receiving what we deserved.

Mercy there was great, and grace was free;
Pardon there was multiplied to me;
There my burdened soul found liberty at Calvary.

I can fully recall the general time in which my soul was set free. Since I did not walk down an aisle to believe on Jesus I do not recall the exact calendar day, but I can recall that night when overlooking Manhattan at night I became a son of the Most High God. And what a night it was! I knew no theology and little doctrine. I owned only one Bible that was given to me at a religious obligation they called confirmation. I could not have told you anything about what concerns the church nowadays, and I believed in evolution, smoked cigarettes, and had other bad habits. But that night, that glorious night, I was no longer who I used to be. I was now a rough piece of clay that God would begin to mold and still is molding with the same power and patience it required in March of 1975.

Years I spent in vanity and pride,
Caring not my Lord was crucified,
Knowing not it was for me He died on Calvary.

I cared for nothing but my happiness before I met Christ. And I would not have been swayed by political debates or even moral scoldings about my lifestyle. I am fully convinced that the core of evangelism is to present the Lord Jesus and His work in all its majesty along with exhibiting that same person through a loving and humble life. And we must not forsake eternity in our witness as if Jesus died to make our lives better and more prosperous upon this earth, Many are the saints whose lives became worse and even became poorer and more dangerous because they professed the Lord Jesus. Just as the Levites were not given a share of the land, our reward is not of this world. We await His appearing and a reward that far outweighs any pitiful offerings this world has to give.
God told the Levites that He Himself was their inheritance and reward. And make no mistake about it. Our reward for all eternity will not be our new bodies; it will not be the removal from the presence of sin; and it will not be the presence of the holy angels. Our reward will always be the Lord Jesus. And all this was purchased at Calvary.

Now I've given to Jesus everything,
Now I gladly own Him as my King,
Now my raptured soul can only sing of Calvary!

Avoiding Gossip

There is a secular source, the National Enquirer, that claims that a famous male televangelist and a famous female televangelist are having an affair and provided pictures as proof. Some Christian blogs have used that source to print the story and even scanned the photos. Even if that story is true is our calling as believers to spread such salaciousness and gossip? That kind of publicizing of such disgraceful behavior only encourages unhealthy voyeurism within the Christian community. And to use such filthy news sources as the National Enquire is reprehensible.

The cause of Christ is hindered when professing believers commit sins like adultery, and the same cause of Christ is hindered when professing believers feel obligated to market the sins of others.

Redemption

God is redemptive, and in fact, He is THE Redeemer. Everything about God centers on redemption, and in the end all eternal judgment will take place in spite of God’s desire for all to be redeemed. Even the law was not meant for judgment, but its core purpose was to point sinners to redemption and ultimately the Redeemer. This divine redemption comes with no strings attached and without any kind of works. This redemption is empowered by love, saturated with grace, and effective through faith alone. There is no other eternal redemption then that which comes through faith in Jesus Christ. None.
Why creation? That is a mystery known only within the Godhead, but we can be assured it had everything to do with redemption. And redemption is fully in the hands of the Redeemer and the redeemed are at His mercy. Even the faith with which we believe on our Wonderful Redeemer was a gift from God so boasting for our sakes is without merit and hollow self righteousness. All the glory and praise must be adorned upon the Person of the Redeemer who eternally deserves more praise than we could give Him.
When a sinner is redeemed through faith and becomes a child of the living God, that new creature must exhibit and shine the attributes of the Redeemer. We must live within the Redeemer and both share His gospel and live His person. Our very calling is redemption and we must never dilute or compromise that calling with the works of man or with moral hurdles. Eternal redemption has already been purchased and our message is to present that good news to those who are in need. Getting embroiled with politics and other distractions just dulls and even sometimes changes the message of redemption. What must a sinner do to receive eternal redemption? Believe, only believe.
What an offer from the Creator who had every right to withhold that redemption but because of His very nature not only offered it, but paid for it as well. Redemption, salvation, and deliverance are all related. Man volitionally rebelled against God, and even a redeemed man sometimes volitionally rebels against God. That not only reveals God’s loving commitment to His redeemed church, both individually and collectively, but it reveals the eternal love of God manifested through His Son the Lord Jesus. The cross was for us not God even though it still glorifies Him. There are a lot of things about God that remain a mystery, but there is no mystery about His commitment to redemption. He is not willing that any should perish but that all should be redeemed.

And what does the Redeemer ask of His redeemed?

He asks us to die and for Him to live in and through us.

That, my redeemed friends, is a labor of love.

The Bible

The sixty-six books we call the Bible are the bedrock and power of our faith. The words are life and the fountain of all wisdom and knowledge. The Bible is also one of the most significant idols in the world, and especially among religious people. It can be used to manipulate others, and it can be used to support deadly falsehoods through deception and through treacherous linguistic engineering. Even when presenting and teaching the very truth it reveals, it is often used in self righteousness.

But the two predominant thrusts of Scripture are to present Jesus Christ and draw sinners to Him, and to remake believers into the image of that same Jesus.

The Deceived - Part II

Bear ye one another's burdens, and so fulfil the law of Christ.
For if a man think himself to be something, when he is nothing, he deceiveth himself.
But let every man prove his own work, and then shall he have rejoicing in himself alone, and not in another.

I may not be deceived about salvation by faith alone in Jesus Christ, but if there is self righteousness in me about that then I am deceived as well. Deception is a spirit and is not confined to roam among the Rob Bell’s and Brian McLaren’s of the religious world. It wanders with ambition and design. It seeks victims. And deception does not introduce itself before entering, in fact, it fabricates its identity and plays the friend. If this spirit cannot leverage an outright denial of Christ and His gospel, it aids in constructing a denial of the same with compromise and ingenious doctrinal manipulation that seems to be compassionate and even Biblically profound, but in reality strays away from that same gospel. That can and does end up in heresy and eventually apostasy.
But there are those of us who have not only not strayed from the simple gospel of Jesus Christ, but we have seen and identified the teachings of some who have become false teachers. This is necessary, of course, but do not believe that we are free from deception simply because we see deception’s stronghold in others. And just because we are not deceived about the gospel does not mean we are immune to deception in a host of other areas including, and most significantly, thinking and living as Jesus Christ. And within the “orthodox” community there is an unspoken understanding that assumes that if you believe the true gospel then you are not deceived or at least your deception is commonplace and not noteworthy and serious. This is a grievous error in thinking and in practice, and it is a hindrance to the gospel we believe and a blemish on the Person and character of Jesus Christ.
And many times the orthodox community, especially those who become obsessed, if not enchanted, with searching out and exposing error, have no stomach and little energy to search for error in their own lives. They consider their own “shortcomings” as par for the course and they merrily dispense with them through routine “repentance” and redundant acknowledgment before God. And that is one of the residual dangers of seeking out the deception in others and having that become your dominant purpose and your constant drone. Your sin does not look so horrid when you spend your time reviewing, investigating, and uncovering the sin of Charles Manson. The same is true when we are preoccupied with the doctrinal error of others and become blind, or at least ambivalent and contented with your own sin. And the passion that you have to find the sin and error in others seems very measured and lethargic when it comes to your own sin and areas of deception.
Many times this scenario emerges because the orthodox community has compartmentalized error, become complacent about their own life’s revelation of Christ, and believes it knows much more than it actually does. It is a heart problem that that has become a willing host to a parasite that feeds on self righteousness but gives off a fragrance of doctrinal soundness. Make no mistake, it is entirely possible, and demonstrated regularly, to be fully orthodox on systematic theology and fully unrecognizable as a believer. Now there is a paradox, brethren. And it is that paradox that confounds the sinner and even pushes some saints to seek men like Bell and McLaren since they have become disenchanted with mainstream evangelicalism and the toxicity displayed by many in the orthodox community. Some false teachers and heretics exhibit remarkable humility and charm which is used by the spirit of deception to lure the unsuspecting and the disillusioned.
But to pitch your spiritual tent within the self satisfying campgrounds of the errors of others is spiritual death. And to be clear: We in the western orthodox community are deeply deceived in many, many areas and in fact have changed the template of what it means to live for Christ so drastically that we are a significant stumbling block to the gospel itself, and like the Pharisees we block the door to the kingdom with our unremarkable and self absorbed lifestyles. But we remain contented with that situation because we hold up the scalps of false teachers and heretics as our trophies, and we are galvanized by who we are against rather than taking a deep and uncomfortable look into how far we ourselves are from a living representation of Jesus Christ that should be far more glorious than receiving an “A” on our doctrinal thesis or the “Discerner of the Year“ award. In short, we are deceived.
I truly believe that if the church took one entire year and sought the face of God and beseeched the Spirit to filet our hearts and illuminate our souls we just might see a spiritual landscape that lies substantially desolate. If for a while we turned our attention and energies into investigating our own sin and shortcomings, and our own spiritual straw men we use to supposedly represent Christlikeness, we might see a revival. Did it ever occur to us that one main reason that heresy and false teachers have sprung up so aggressively is that we have lost our saltiness and vigor, and that we have strayed from Biblical Christianity while clinging to doctrinal orthodoxy?
Deception is a wild ride and overcoming it requires much prayer, both personal and corporate. And with the situation as it stands, why are the church houses dark during the week? Why do the orthodox folk file in on Sundays with their well worn Bibles and versed in what they should believe and yet with dry eyes and cold hearts? And most believers spend more time washing their bodies on Sunday morning then they do washing their souls. Do believers rise early at least on Sunday mornings in order to spend an hour in intimate prayer and heart preparation before they go to a corporate worship service? Have they fasted some time during the month? Have they gone out of their way to witness to a lost person? Have they prayed for an hour the past week for missionaries? Have they wept with compassion over the plight of the poor and the lost? And yet these are the people who claim they are not deceived.
Is being unloving considered heresy? Is being self righteous a form of heresy? Is prayerlessness heresy? Is caustic and personal attack language considered heresy? Is hedonism heresy? Oh my brethren, let us draw back and examine ourselves to see whether or not we are in the faith. And after, by God’s grace we have found an assurance in our hearts about belonging to Christ, let us examine ourselves to see whether we are living the faith.

Whatever is unlike Christ is heresy and reveals a definite deception in all of us.

Being Christ

If you are willing to communicate the gospel by words to an illegal Mexican, but you refuse to feed, clothe, and help him because he is illegal, then you, my friend, are living as an American and not a Believer. There are many more Christians whose lifestyles are American rather than Christian. It will cost you little to minister to those who need help. You will be accused of being liberal; you will be accused of breaking the law; you will be accused of being unpatriotic; you will be accused of sinning against God; you will be accused of sedition; and you will be accused of disobeying the Scriptures.
In the end though those accusations should mean nothing to us. Christ Himself was accused of these things and it cost Him His life. Perhaps, if we lived as did He, it would cost us ours as well.