…to those sanctified in Christ Jesus and called to be holy…
(1 Corinthians 1:2 – NIV)
We are called to holiness, or wholly otherness, so that our lives will match our testimony. We are called out individually, but also corporately. Individually, when the chips are down, our lives will be different than others, and our testimony will bear weight. We are saints in position, but we need to act like saints in condition.
Corporately, we will see the power of God demonstrated when we lean on Him instead of the arm of the flesh through partnering with the world. We are not only to proclaim, but also to live out the truth of the gospel, not complain, and live out our pitiful use of the gospel. The gospel has the power we need individually, and corporately. We need holy gladness and holy boldness. We need courage and conviction that God is enough.
We are to bring the message, to speak and to live the message out (Philippians 2:15), not have unbelievers come in with their message so that we can then give them ours. Our credibility is in godly living, not worldly appeal. We seem to have this feeling in the Church today that we need to beg them to come and do everything like the world, we have to entertain them to get them to come in, and now the church looks just like the world, only with baptized “Christian” terminology, like so-called “Christian yoga”.
The truth is that so-called Christians today will do anything and just put the tag of “for God”, or “for Jesus”, on it and somehow this is supposed to baptize it into sanctity. The problem is that we are alienated from the life of God by the hardness of our hearts (Ephesians 4:17-18). We are not broken by our sin, and we feel like it is our right and amazingly we call darkness light and say it is our responsibility to redeem the culture by becoming like it. Blasphemy! Titus 1:16 and 2:11-12 apply here.
This is exactly what we are seeing these days. The truth is that the worldly fascination proves that they have not been BROKEN by their sin, they are self-ish, and what they want is a Jesus who will let them cling to Him while still clinging to their old man and his ways. "Christian homosexuals", "Christian Goth", “Christian nudist camps”, “Christian raves” etc; it is all about "redeeming it for Christ", they say. If the tree is bad, so will the fruit be.
What we need is new life, not our best life now, including all those goodies we won't leave behind. They defiantly will not listen, and claim that they belong to Christ because they are not broken, again I say. The true gospel offends people, and makes them count the cost. This reminds me of what goes on in Hindu countries, where you evangelize; they say that they want Jesus, but only to add Him to their pantheon of gods. Here in Laodicea, we want Jesus plus our entertainment...The gospel cannot be partnered with the world (2 Corinthians 2:15-16).
12 comments:
How about "sinners for Jesus"?
Who has the right to decide who is a Christian and who is not? Is this not Christ's job alone?
I don't disagree that these things seem contradictory, but I suspect that God wants us to leave such things up to Him, no?
[FTM]
First of all, cool, thanks for coming over. I went to Nate's blog again after seeing the article in Slice, and your comments were over there, so I went to yours, and you came to mine, so again, cool.
Now for some clarity...
Philippians 3:18 (NLT) – For I have told you often before, and I say it again with tears in my eyes, that there are many whose conduct shows they are really enemies of the cross of Christ.
Be aware of this fact: it is not those who don’t even claim the name of Christ that Paul is talking about in this passage, it is those who remain self-indulgent, who don’t press on to maturity, but who keep feeding their old man, and then try and justify it by saying that they are allowed, or even that it is somehow right. They are ripe for deception, and are already deceived. It is not those who are trapped in sin, even, that Paul is discussing and warning about, it is those who defiantly state that they are of Christ but who won’t take their self-indulgent old man to the Cross. This is why Paul says to be following him and those who walk right because there are many who don’t, and they are dangerous.
Romans 16:18 – and they try and win others to this view, which is why they are doubly dangerous, because it spreads because it is an easy way. Their feelings, emotions, and passions rule them, meaning they do what they want to do; their god is their own self-ish desires, with its self-indulgent agenda. They are proud of their liberty, thinking they are more enlightened than those whom they see as more narrow-minded, and they are constantly trying to defend their “right” to import this or that practice from the world. They are worldly, they thought they could be whatever they wanted to be, worship however they wanted to, and approach a holy God anyway they saw fit, and still keep Jesus too.
They wouldn’t let anyone correct them, they wouldn’t accept rebuke or be admonished, and they thought that they knew better. They are not broken by their sin and instead of falling on Christ, He will fall on them to their peril (Matthew 21:44). They wouldn’t suffer the death of the flesh; they are enemies of the Cross of Christ.
In this way are they enemies of the Cross: they may have thought they believed in it for Jesus, and indeed that is all it takes to be saved, believing Jesus died on the Cross for your sins is a saving knowledge of Christ. However, the bible clearly teaches that this knowledge if held in truth will cause a believer to also follow Jesus to the Cross. Godliness teaches us to become more and more repentant, our lives will progressively become more and more unlike the world, not like the world.
The degree of effectiveness in an individuals life is not the question, the resolve to do it at all or to deny the need to is the matter at hand (1 Corinthians 5), the desire to become sanctified in practice, rather than defiantly avoiding the possibility of going to the Cross for the gradual death of the self life, that is the question. In essence, they deny this saving knowledge in practice, if not in doctrine, by not believing in and following Jesus to the Cross in their own life.
If your church library doesn't already have it, the book Who Are You to Judge? has something to say about the issue. I read it, and it's definitely worth buying.
Bottom line? There's a big difference between arrogant condemnation and the responsibility to be discerning.
Thanks, Craver, Dr. Lutzer ought to know, and I was just writing about this as it is part of my sermon for Sunday. In Romans 2, Paul tells those who judge those who do all those wicked things he lists in 1:23-32 that they are also in trouble without God, but this doesn't mean he is saying not to judge at all...the most repeated verse in the world today is not John 3:16, but Matthew 7:1, misapplied, of course, as the devil would and loves to have it...
OooOoOoOooo Dr. Lutzer, my dad enjoys listening to Lutzer a lot.
"who do all those wicked things he lists in 1:23-32 that they are also in trouble without God"
Uhm, I think I'm going to object. In chapter 2 Paul gets on the case of the people WHO might think they were ok because they DIDN'T DO those things.
They DIDN'T DO them, yet they were somehow still guilty. Somehow they were doing something that still put them in the same category as everybody else. And that is, namely, not having faith and instead thinking they were going to work their way to heaven only by knowledge and understanding and obeying the Letter (Law which is week in THE flesh) as apposed to having God Given FAITH (which Paul gets into in chapters 3 and 8) to get them there.
So then they thought that because they were laying judgements on others, because they thought they were high and mighty and had it all figured out, that they were ok. As Piper says in his sermon on this... "they were BLIND and WRONG to their own sin" (or something like that).
So it's not the judging that was bad, because we make judgements every day. However, it's the selfrighteous judging that is bad.
Frank thanks so much for coming over, and thanks for the comments, so lets hack this out a little...
Indeed, but they still did those things in their heart, and some of those things at least some or one time, as Piper also says (just listened to yesterday)...
From my sermon notes for Sunday...
Those who look at the list and say, yeah, those things are bad and those people are bad, Paul says this is you too, and he gives the Jews as the examples because they were likely the ones who might be dong this, having a greater knowledge of God than others like the Gentiles. He is talking about hypocrisy. One cannot escape judgment by judging others, by appealing to how much worse their behavior is to your own. Such judgment leads one away from the necessary self-examination and repentance for one’s own sin, and leads to inevitable judgment.
He is not condemning judging others, or using discernment, per se, but judging others without first judging yourself.
You may not do these bad things as much as the other guy or as much as you used to but you have done some of them or all of them once or occasionally, and a miss is as good as a mile (James 2:10). Going even further, really, it is not so much that you do the identical actions, but that your conduct is the same, i.e., you sin against light; against the knowledge of God you have turned this into idols. You are not perfect, you are not righteous, and you are not a qualified judge. The standard is perfection, the righteousness of God. That is how the righteousness of God is revealed in the Gospel; it is against the backdrop of the depravity of man. Yes some men are worse than others in a sense but all are worse than God, and that is the point that Paul is making. Those whom judge have done some of the same things; they are just as in need of a savior as those who never do anything but bad things. It isn’t a matter of degree it is a matter of having done any of these things at all, and all have, and so all are without excuse.
So I agree with you in a sense Frank but in the fullest sesne we are all guilty of all things, the whole world of depravity resides in every human heart...agreed?
ummm reading you again, did you realize that you were saying the same thing I did...of course I know what Rom 2 is saying, sorry to stick up for meself like that but methinks ye were looking over it too fast..we agree, not disagree..
Yea I think we do... I think what threw me off is when you said "who do all those wicked things he lists in 1:23-32 that they are also in trouble without God". It sounded like you were saying that they were doing the same exact things outwardly. I'm not necessesarily sure it was the same, but rather... had somehow channeled whatever heart issue to some other outward sin. Kind of like what I was talking about with lust in my most recent post.
Yep, thanks again, your presence here is most appreciated, check us out as we post 5 days a week...
I wonder why the last comment never showed up on the front pages, only in the pop ups? Blogger is really weird sometimes...
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