Journey Outside the Camp

Direction, not perfection

One of the misconceptions about being a Christian is that we are goody two-shoes. People, including Christians themselves, think that once they believe on Jesus, they can become good people overnight.

How I wish that were true. It is true that believing on Jesus justifies us. This means that the punishment we deserve for sin we have (and for future sin we may commit) is paid for completely by Jesus. We can stand before God and be counted as righteous. That is what we call justification (see for example Romans 4:22–5:1).

That doesn't mean we gain perfection. That will only come with our resurrected bodies. In the meantime, together with God's help, we work on the process of sanctification. Romans 6:1–14 tells us that we need to fight to keep sin away from our bodies. Verse 12 says, "Do not let sin reign in your mortal bodies." Reign is the keyword here. The word reign conjures up images of rulers and slaves, kings and soldiers. Make no mistake, the process of sanctification is not a walk in the park. It is a daily battle of surrendering our body and mind to God, in order that we can be armed to fight sin in every area of our lives. Like the character of  Christian in John Bunyan's Pilgrim's Progress, we are on a journey, heading towards God's heavenly city. Galatians 5:16–24 reminds us to walk by the Spirit and we will not gratify the desires of the flesh. That to me is a clear indication that though we have been justified, the old sin nature still lurks beneath the surface. It is no surprise then, when it rears its ugly head and we by natural instinct obey its lusts. We are by no means perfect. But we are to use the Spirit and kill our sinful inclinations and keep marching on towards God.

This process we will never finish. We will always have more sin inside us to kill. But the promise of God is that "he who began a good work in you will bring it to completion at the day of Jesus Christ." (Philippians 1:6). We will see perfection on the day of Jesus Christ. What a promise. So having faith and being justified is only the beginning. That work is God's alone. Sanctification is God's Spirit working in us as we direct our lives toward God himself. Justification brings direction, not perfection.

The people who pray

I came across a quote today about prayer that really struck home. It struck home not only because there is great truth in the words but because I know it was God reminding me to get on my knees a whole lot more. It just so happened that my wife and I were talking about our prayer life and she said we needed to spend more time praying. I told her we were already maxed out with our schedule. And then this morning I read these words from S. D. Gordon:

"The great people of the earth today are the people who pray. I do not mean those who talk about prayer; nor those who can explain about prayer; but I mean those people who take time and pray. They have not time. It must be taken from something else. This something else is important—very important and pressing, but still less important and less pressing than prayer."

Yes, I will take more time to prayer. (Find out more about S. D. Gordon or read more of his writings from ChristiansUnite.com.)

The Gospel precludes arrogance

Sometimes you hear the charge that Christians are arrogant. We have been accused as people who think they alone hold absolute truth and that their God is the only one and that their way is the only way. What arrogance! Christians! Bah!

The fact could not be further from the truth. The very nature of the gospel makes it impossible for us to be arrogant. This is because we understand that we are truly wretched people with nothing in us that makes us worthy to be saved from eternal damnation. We recognise that we have no merit that we can hold up to claim we deserve God's love. Rather, we deserve his righteous judgment.

But God decided on his own, to save us. We are stunned that God has shown us mercy. Such amazement causes us to look away from ourselves and to the one who has shown as such grace. Those who understand this, cannot be arrogant. Instead, we are deeply humbled. And we are excited to take what we've received and tell others about it, so that they too will be saved just as we have been.

The Bible says in Ephesians 2:8,9—"For by grace you have been saved through faith. And this is not your own doing; it is the gift of God, not a result of works, so that no one may boast."

And again in Titus 3:5,6—"...he saved us, not because of works done by us in righteousness, but according to his own mercy, by the washing of regeneration and renewal of the Holy Spirit, whom he poured out on us richly through Jesus Christ our Saviour..."

There is no arrogance in the gospel. Only a humble, face-to-the-ground gratefulness toward our Saviour.

Which is better: to do it yourself or to let God lead?

A friend of mine talked about a DIY life. My friend believes in making oneself a success through personal hard effort. This includes getting one's emotions under control, managing relationships and being successful at work. My friend believes that taking the road less travelled (and the harder road at that) will make one stronger in the end.

However, till date, my friend doesn't feel there has been much success or progress. My friend was in the dumps. My friend wanted to know how I managed my life. My simple answer was that I don't. I had recognised some time back how incapable I was at managing my life. I was making a mess of it. I had poor relationships at work, I had some rough patches with my wife and I genenrally was living a life of quiet desperation. Then the Holy Spirit helped me make the most counter-intuitive move: I surrendered control of my life. I surrendered because I had tried it my way and it didn't work. Now I was going to surrender control of my life to God.

It was the best move I ever made. After all, no one knows me better than God. He made me. He knows me better than I know myself. He knows what type of personality I have, he knows my strengths and he definitely knows my weaknesses since he designed me! Once I let God lead and I moved in obedience, things have taken a radical turn. I no longer worry about my career. I no longer worry about who will take care of my family. I love my wife in ways not possible if I were still hogging the throne of my life.

Not worrying about my life doesn't mean I don't have concerns. But whenever I do, I run to my Father, just like my children run to me whenever they encounter problems. But unlike me, my Heavenly Father has perfect knowledge, perfect control and a perfect plan for me. This plan will actually involve hardship and pain. It will involve loss. But it is the best plan for me. (Romans 8:28—"And we know that for those who love God all things work together for good, those who are called according to his purpose.") There is much joy and confidence when I rely my Father.

I explained all this to my friend. I hope my friend understood. I know how difficult it can be to understand if one has not experienced the joy of letting God take charge. My friend claimed to be not into spiritual things. But I left this challenge for my friend to think about:

Why are we here? What is the point in life?

Figure out the answer to that question and life makes a whole lot more sense and we can have purpose and meaning. For me, the answer was this:

God created me to have a loving relationship with him in order that his glory be displayed through my life. When I fulfill my purpose of treasuring him with my whole life, I get the joy and he gets the glory. I was made for this. To not do this would be a waste of my life.

It would be like using a silver spoon to dig a trench. Can the spoon be used that way? Sure, but it would ruin the spoon and the spoon will hate every minute of it. The spoon was made for a higher purpose. We too are like a silver spoon. We were made for a higher purpose rather than just the drudgery of living life and then dying. We were made to enjoy a deep and joyful relationship with God.

The Gospel is binary: Are you under law or under grace?

Here is one of the definitions of binary from the Merriam-Webster:

relating to, being, or belonging to a system of numbers having 2 as its base <the binary digits 0 and 1>; involving a choice or condition of two alternatives (as on-off or yes-no)

So binary is a choice between all on or all off. It's either 1 or 0. There's no in-between state. How does this relate to the Gospel?

As I was reflecting on Romans 6, it dawned on me that the Gospel could be described as binary. Consider the tail end of Romans 6:14—"you are not under law but under grace". Paul reminds us that we are under grace. That is, we are saved 100% by what Jesus did on the cross. We contributed nothing toward our salvation. Zero percent.

There are those in Paul's time—as there are in ours—who think that they can contribute something toward their salvation. They are trying to keep the law in order to attain righteousness. Paul calls them "under law". In his day, they would insist on doing parts of the law like circumcision. In our day, such people may insist on a sinner saying the Sinner's Prayer, or that going to church, or that regular tithing, etc., makes one acceptable in God's sight. They are under law.

Such thinking is wrong. Either we rely on Jesus 100% for our salvation, or we do not. We cannot think that we can contribute 1% towards our righteousness through right living or Bible reading or service to the poor. Christ either saves us completely by his effort, or he is not our saviour at all. 1% of our effort plus 99% of Christ's work on the cross does not equal salvation. It equals death. Paul makes this point very clear in Galatians 5:2–3—"If you accept circumcision, Christ will be of no advantage to you. I testify again to every man who accepts circumcision that he is obligated to keep the whole law." In other words, if you want to contribute to your own salvation, Christ's work on the cross is meaningless to you and instead, you must try to keep every letter of the law. Either God does all the work in saving us and giving us righteousness or he does nothing for us.

Hence my thought that the Gospel is binary. Jesus does it all (1) or he does nothing at all (0). It's all Jesus or nothing. Paul unequivocally states that believers of Christ Jesus are under grace, not law. Obeying the law has no part in our salvation because if we want to be under law, we must obey all of the law perfectly. And we know no one is capable of that. As James 2:10 says, "For whoever keeps the whole law but fails in one point has become accountable for all of it." (Italics mine.) And again from Paul in Romans 3:23—"all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God". So there is no one who is capable of keeping the whole law. It is death to be under law. It is life to be under grace. Jesus does all the work in saving us (grace) or he does nothing for us at all (law). Ergo, the Gospel is binary.