Grace - Does the Holy Spirit Guide Christians by Using the Law?

The Law brings people to Christ, not by giving them Christ's life, but by showing them the fruit of death from their own lives. The Law is not for those who are righteous, but for those who are unrighteous! (1 Tim 1:8,9).

An incorrect understanding of the Law's purpose will lead Christians to look to the Law for guidance, for righteousness, or even to believe that the Holy Spirit directs them to obey the Law.  Tragically, Christians who believe the Holy Spirit leads them to live by the Law miss out on what true faith is.  How terrible!

Some also embrace the Law because they believe that's how one becomes a Christian.  Well, the Law leads you to die and then to be resurrected by faith in Christ.  But we must understand that the law ends where faith begins!  We do not become Christians by submitting to the law.  We become Christians when we die to the Law and our old nature in Adam, and then are made alive in Christ by being born from God.  Then, the Holy Spirit confirms with our spirit that we have been made new, that we are in Christ, and that we are children of God.  The law no longer has a role in the life of a Christian, because we died to it! (Romans 7:4)

I get really excited when I talk about how Christians are no longer under the law.  I hope you'll see that this is exactly what Paul says in each of the scripture passages below.  In fact, two verses in Romans 7 say we died and are released from the law, but some believe that the Holy Spirit subjects us again to that very Law from which we've been freed!  It's nonsensical and Romans 8 below confirms that!!!

The Law is based on a system of works in the flesh, but again and again we're called to faith.  Therefore, the Holy Spirit cannot point us (as Christians) to the Law to show us how to live.  Instead, the Holy Spirit confirms that, in Christ, we are sons!  The Law brought death; the Spirit gives life!

In Galatians 3, Paul criticizes the Galatians for starting out in the Spirit (by faith), but then going back under law by living according to flesh.  That is not sinning as we usually think of sinning!  Paul is saying that living according to the flesh is to go back under the law and to try and find righteousness and status before God by our actions!

In other words, trying to live your Christian life by following the law IS SIN!

The law does not require faith from you (Galatians 3:12).

Faith is the only thing that pleases God (Hebrews 11:6).

What is this faith?  It is the same faith that Paul taught again and again:

You are saved, justified, righteous, and holy by faith--simply by believing in Christ and receiving His life!

Again, Holy Spirit shows us life in Christ, not the law!  Why is that?  Because those who are under the law and live ACCORDING to the law are under a Curse!  Not for me, thanks!

And then, one of my favorite examples, Acts 15 where Peter says that they should not subject people to the law because no one could bear it!  Amazing!!!

I hope you'll take the time to read all the verses below and meditate how Christians are not led by the law, how they are dead to the law, and how there is a stark difference between life lived by faith and life lived by law.  Romans 10:4 - Christ is the end of the law!

Grace=Peace,

Jeremy



Romans 3:19-22:  "Now we know that whatever the Law says, it speaks to those who are under the Law, so that every mouth may be closed and all the world may become accountable to God;  because by the works of the Law no flesh will be justified in His sight; for through the Law comes the knowledge of sin.  But now apart from the Law the righteousness of God has been manifested, being witnessed by the Law and the Prophets, even the righteousness of God through faith in Jesus Christ for all those who believe."

Romans 4:14:  "For if those who are of the Law are heirs, faith is made void and the promise is nullified."

Romans 5:20:  "The Law came in so that the transgression would increase..."

Romans 7:4:  "Therefore, my brethren, you also were made to die to the Law through the body of Christ, so that you might be joined to another, to Him who was raised from the dead, in order that we might bear fruit for God."

Romans 7:6:  "But now we have been released from the Law, having died to that by which we were bound, so that we serve in newness of the Spirit and not in oldness of the letter."

Romans 8:14-15:  "For all who are being led by the Spirit of God, these are sons of God.  For you have not received a spirit of slavery leading to fear again, but you have received a spirit of adoption as sons by which we cry out, "Abba! Father!"


From where does the spirit of slavery leading to fear come?  From the LAW! (See Romans 7:6 above - He says that the Law is BONDAGE!)

Romans 9:30-32:  What shall we say then? That Gentiles, who did not pursue righteousness, attained righteousness, even the righteousness which is by faith; but Israel, pursuing a law of righteousness, did not arrive at that law. Why? Because they did not pursue it by faith, but as though it were by works" (i.e., by the Law).


Romans 10:4:  "For Christ is the end of the law for righteousness to everyone who believes."

Literally:  "the end indeed of law is Christ for righteousness to everyone believing"

Galatians 2:19-20:  "For through the Law I died to the Law, so that I might live to God. I have been crucified with Christ; and it is no longer I who live, but Christ lives in me; and the life which I now live in the flesh I live by faith in the Son of God, who loved me and gave Himself up for me."

Galatains 3:2-3:  "This is the only thing I want to find out from you: did you receive the Spirit by the works of the Law, or by hearing with faith? Are you so foolish? Having begun by the Spirit, are you now being perfected by the flesh?" (Remember, Paul considers flesh here the Galatians trying to adhere to the law.)

Galatians 3:10-13:  "For as many as are of the works of the Law are under a curse; for it is written, "Cursed is everyone who does not abide by all things written in the book of the law, to perform them." Now that no one is justified by the Law before God is evident; for, "The righteous man shall live by faith." However, the Law is not of faith; on the contrary, "He who practices them shall live by them." Christ redeemed us from the curse of the Law, having become a curse for us..."

Galatians 3:23-26:  "But before faith came, we were kept in custody under the law, being shut up to the faith which was later to be revealed. Therefore the Law has become our tutor to lead us to Christ, so that we may be justified by faith. But now that faith has come, we are no longer under a tutor. For you are all sons of God through faith in Christ Jesus."

Acts 15:6-11: "Peter stood up and said to them, "Brethren, you know that in the early days God made a choice among you, that by my mouth the Gentiles would hear the word of the gospel and believe. And God, who knows the heart, testified to them giving them the Holy Spirit, just as He also did to us; and He made no distinction between us and them, cleansing their hearts by faith.  Now therefore why do you put God to the test by placing upon the neck of the disciples a yoke which neither our fathers nor we have been able to bear? But we believe that we are saved through the grace of the Lord Jesus, in the same way as they also are."

Grace - God Remembers God's Oath

"And the Word became flesh, and dwelt among us, and we saw His glory, glory as of the only begotten from the Father, full of grace and truth.  For of His fullness we have all received, and grace upon grace."  John 1:14, 16

In the days of Herod, king of Judea, there was a priest named Zacharias, of the division of Abijah; and he had a wife from the daughters of Aaron, and her name was Elizabeth.  (Luke 1:5 NASB)

...the angel said to him, "Do not be afraid, Zacharias, for your petition has been heard, and your wife Elizabeth will bear you a son, and you will give him the name John."  (Luke 1:13 NASB)

I hope this finds you well and restful enough during this Christmas time.  After the passing of my father, I'm approaching this time like none I've experienced before.  In his absence and the sadness I feel, I do feel hope in this season, but it is difficult, especially as I look through old photographs and see a much younger father than I seem to remember.  Who was he?  What was he like in his 20s and 30s?  I see pictures of him even as a youth and realize he probably wasn't much different than the school children I see on a daily basis.  Memories fade, but photos bring back both fond and regretful memories alike.

It is during these times that we must stand on things greater than ourselves.  I know that there are those who rely upon their own strength, endurance, and determination in order to not be downcast; however, I believe wisdom calls us to not look at ourselves and our abilities, but rather the steadfastness of Christ in us.  Sometimes it's not easy, but it is the wisest thing to do.

So, to show you how and why we should look to Christ, I want look at the stories of how the births of John the Baptist and Jesus Christ were foretold.  And more particularly, the names of those involved.

Zacharias was of the priestly division of Abijah, which means "God is my father".  Elizabeth's lineage is from Aaron, whose name means "Light-Bringer".  I wonder if this is one reason why the apostle John goes to much effort to explain Christ as the Light of men in the first chapter of his letter:

There came a man sent from God, whose name was John.  He came as a witness, to testify about the Light, so that all might believe through him.  He was not the Light, but he came to testify about the Light.  (John 1:6-8 NASB)

Elizabeth, from the lineage of Aaron (Light-Bringer), brings forth the Light of the world.  Her son, John, will testify to that light.

In similar fashion, Zacharias shares in Elizabeth's message by testifying in his priestly role "God is my father".  The apostle John also picks up on this when he writes:

But as many as received Him, to them He gave the right to become children of God, even to those who believe in His name, who were born, not of blood nor of the will of the flesh nor of the will of man, but of God.  (John 1:12-13)

An even greater understanding of what has happened in the history of mankind will be had if we also look at the meanings of Zacharias' and Elizabeth's names--and this is where we really begin to marvel at God's plan!

The name Zacharias means "God remembers".  I think it would be enough to say that this points to the name of Abijah, meaning "God is my father".  In other words:  "God remembers that He is my father."  Sounds great.  But what if we combined Zacharias and Elizabeth's names?  Elizabeth means "God's Oath"

Zacharias and Elizabeth

"God Remembers God's Oath"

Simply amazing.  But there's more.  Here's what Zacharias said about their son, John the Baptist:

And you, child, will be called the prophet of the Most High; For you will go on before the Lord to prepare His ways; To give to His people the knowledge of salvation by [consisting in] the forgiveness of their sins, because of the tender mercy of our God.  (Luke 1:76-78a)

Forgiveness:  It's always been in the heart of our Father, and Christ demonstrated that on the cross.  Moreover, Christ demonstrated that men's sins were already forgiven:

I do not condemn you, either.  (John 8:11)

But so that you may know that the Son of Man has authority on earth to forgive sins"—He said to the paralytic, "I say to you, get up, pick up your pallet and go home."  (Mark 2:10)

But why?  Why did God extend and pay for forgiveness even before we asked?  The answer is not only found in the name of Jesus, which means Jehovah is salvation, but also in John's name.  Elizabeth's neighbors and relatives objected when Zacharias named his son John, as he was commanded by the angel Gabriel.  Elizabeth affirms the child's name when she says:

But his mother answered and said, "No indeed; but he shall be called John."  And they said to her, "There is no one among your relatives who is called by that name." (Luke 1:60-61)

But what does John's name mean?  "Jehovah is a gracious giver"

Hear my point:  It is significant that no one in Elizabeth's priestly line had been until that time been named John.  By making this radical change, God remembered His Oath and extends GRACE to mankind.  The name of John heralds a new covenant in the person of Jesus, moving God's people from the Old Covenant into the New.

In this season, I pray three things:

1.  That, if you haven't turned from your own strength, your own goodness, and your own insight and abilities to place your faith in Jesus Christ and receive His life, you would choose wisely and do so, experiencing His love for you and allowing that to change your life.

2.  That you would know that God remembered and fulfilled His Oath to you.

3.  That you would know and experience Him as a gracious Father and trust your life to His care.

"And the Word became flesh, and dwelt among us, and we saw His glory,

glory as of the only begotten from the Father, full of grace and truth.

For of His fullness we have all received, and grace upon grace."

John 1:14, 16

Merry Christmas!

Glory to God in the highest, and on earth peace, good will toward men,



Jeremy

Grace - Holiness in Old vs. New Covenant

The following can be found through City Church International's website:  http://www.ccihk.com/q&a/

I've highlighted a couple parts for you.  Enjoy!

What's the difference between holiness in the OC and NC?

Holiness is a gift in the New Covenant. We have received the gift of perfect holiness. We don't have to finish our holiness. We don't have to maintain our holiness. We don't have to fear being found unholy before God. To live holy is not about living sinless, but about living with faith in Christ.

There's no such thing now as one moment being holy and another moment being unholy.  You are always holy.  Jesus has made you holy once and forever more.  Of course, we can still give into temptation and sin, but that does not make us unholy.  In fact, sin has got nothing to do with you being holy or not now!  Under the Old Covenant it would, since your holiness would be based on your law keeping.  If you kept the law, you were holy; if you broke it, you were unholy.

The New Covenant is nothing like that, since Jesus fulfilled the law on our behalf and credited us with perfect holiness!  Holiness is to be in Christ.  Unholiness is to be outside of Christ.  Holiness is [to be separated] from your old life in first Adam where you [once] lived in the flesh, under sin and under a works-righteousness.  [Holiness is you now having come into Christ.]  The words holy and holiness is the Greek word hagiasmos.  It's the same word for sanctify and sanctification.  It simply means to separate!  It's got nothing to do with your performance of sinning or not sinning.  It has everything to do with faith in Christ and the work of the Spirit in bringing you out of death and into life, out of darkness and into light, out of flesh and into spirit, out of the position of sin and into the position of righteousness, out of law and into grace, out of first Adam and into Last Adam – Jesus Christ!

Living without sin is not holy living, it's the result of holy living!  Or, in other words, it's the result of living from your position in Christ by faith.  So, holiness is the once-off act of coming into Christ and the life of faith that flows from that place.

Holiness is not determined by what you do, but where you are!  Where are you?  You're seated in Heavenly places in Christ Jesus, having been born of God and made perfect forever through your faith in Christ and filled with all the fullness of God.

Grace=Peace,

Jeremy

Grace - Healing

Below is an excerpt from Randy Clark's book "The Healing River and its Contributing Streams" (pp. 15ff), available here:  https://globalawakeningstore.com/The-Healing-River-and-Its-Contributing-Streams.html

"Today I find more schools of medicine open to the power to heal through non-traditional medical means than I do divinity schools, and more graduates of medical schools (MDs) open to healing that graduates from seminaries (M.Divs).  No wonder there is so little real expectancy for receiving healing through prayer in many of the churches of America and Western Europe.  Their pastors have been trained in unbelief regarding healing through prayer by the very seminaries established to train them for ministry.

There are two main sources for this unbelief, this lack of expectancy for divine healing through prayer.  One is liberalism, based upon rationalism, which doesn't believe in anything supernatural happening today because of liberalism's belief in a world that is basically deist. In a deist worldview, God would not violate his laws of nature.  The other main source causing such terrible unbelief, this disempowering force regarding expectancy of a miracle, is Cessationism, which believes God did do miracles through Jesus and the apostles, but after the death of the apostles and their immediate successors, these gifts of healings and miracles died along with the offices of healer (1 Corinthians 12:28f).

There are now, today, two things happening at the same time regarding healing.  One is the New Age Movement with its strong emphasis upon healing.  The other is the move of God within the Church, which is currently experiencing a powerful revival of healing and rediscovering the message of the Kingdom of God.  This current move of God is more characteristic of the Church south of the equator where Christianity is growing most rapidly, and where most Christians live today, but it is also beginning to advance in North America, and in Europe, today's dark continents of unbelief."

"The New Age Movement would not have so large a following if the Church was moving in its divine right to heal and experiencing its divine empowerment made possible in the Holy Spirit.

We need to receive what jesus died to give.  The counterfeit is filling the void created by a form of Christianity that is less than it ought to be.  We Christians need to rediscover again the emphasis, the importance, and the proper place of the ministry of healing within Christianity and with our personal lives as Christians."

"Jesus told his disciples that when someone experienced deliverance, the Kingdom of God had come upon them...Luke's gospel makes this powerfully clear."

"Philip was an evangelist and believed by many to be one of the first deacons of the Church; however, he was not an apostle, thus proving that healing isn't just the domain of the apostles."

May you come to see what is available to you through Grace.

Grace=Peace,

Jeremy

Grace - It's Not Just One Blessing

Here are some excerpts from Paul Ellis' new book, "The Gospel in Twenty Questions":

"Those who say grace is one of God's blessing show their ignorance, for grace is not one blessing, but all of them together.  Grace is heaven's cure for the world's woes.  It's the power of God that turns sinners into saints and haters into lovers.  Grace raises the dead and heals the broken.  Grace gives strength to the weary and wings to the feeble.  Grace is divine...in three words, grace is God with us."

"I am often struck by the things Jesus didn't say as much as the things he did.  For instance, Jesus never said the word grace.  Not once.  Since Jesus is grace personified, this is remarkable.  It's as if Mozart never said the word music or Picasso never said paint.  Jesus may not have said it, but he surely showed it.  His sacrifice on the cross was the greatest demonstration of love and grace the world has ever seen."

Among the many ways Jesus revealed grace, one way was by showing unconditional forgiveness.

Some men brought him a paralyzed man, lying on a mat.  When Jesus say their faith, he said to the man, "Take heart, son; your sins are forgiven."  (Matthew 9:2)

"Jesus seems to contradict himself.  Didn't Jesus say we would be forgiven only if we first forgave others?  Yet the paralytic forgave no one.  There is no record of him forgiving those who had sinned against him.  Yet Jesus forgave him anyway.  That's unexpected.  That's undeserved favor.  That's grace.

It's as if Jesus came to show us two ways to live.  'You can live under the law where you reap what you sow, or you can live under grace where you reap what you I sow.  Your choice.'  To the religious and self-righteous, Jesus emphasized the law.  'You want to go that route?  Fine.  But go the whole way and be perfect as your Father in heaven is perfect.'  But to sinners and the sick, Jesus revealed grace.  'You're healed.  You're forgiven.  Peace be with you.'"

"The grace of Jesus does not sit well with our religious urge for self-improvement.  Our innate desire to impress God with our goodness collides with his desire to impress us with his.  Religion demands that we try, but grace inspires us to trust."

http://www.amazon.com/Gospel-Twenty-Questions-Paul-Ellis/dp/1927230101/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1387212282&sr=8-1&keywords=paul+ellis

Grace=Peace,

Jeremy

Grace - From the Top

Ok, folks. Let's take it from the top:


1. Pharaoh enslaved the Hebrews.
2. God brought His people a Hebrew who was not a slave to Pharaoh.
3. This free Hebrew condemned Pharaoh by sending a curse upon him.
4. This free Hebrew then rescued God's people.
5. God destroyed Pharaoh.
6. God's people were free from Pharaoh's power forever.
7. God's people struggled to believe the truth of their freedom.

Or, maybe you can see it this way:


1. Sin enslaved us.
2. God brought us a Man who was not a slave to Sin.
3. This free Man condemned Sin by himself becoming the curse.
4. This free Man rescued us.
5. God destroyed Sin.
6. We were freed from Sin's power forever.
7. We, too, struggle to believe the truth of our freedom.

Either believe you're still captive to an enemy who is alive and well or believe you're now free from a defeated foe which once enslaved you.

It's your choice: Look at your sin or look at your Son.

Grace=Peace,


Jeremy


Romans 8:3 - For what the Law could not do, weak as it was through the flesh, God did: sending His own Son in the likeness of sinful flesh and as an offering for sin, He condemned sin in the flesh.

Hebrews 9:26b - but now once at the consummation of the ages He has been manifested to put away sin by the sacrifice of Himself.

2 Corinthians 5:21 - He made Him who knew no sin to be sin on our behalf, so that we might become the righteousness of God in Him.

Grace - Working Out

The following is from Paul Ellis:

http://escapetoreality.org/2010/08/11/gospel-of-grace/

The greatest thing you can do is believe the good news of God's grace revealed in the One he has sent. Believe that because of what Jesus has done, you are forgiven, you have been clothed with His righteousness, and you have been adopted into His family. When you say "Yes!" to Jesus, He moves into your life and you become one with him in spirit. On the inside, you now look exactly like Jesus and your status before God is "perfect forever" (Heb 10:14).

But your outside still needs work. Your mind needs to be renewed. Your body may need fixing. Your relationships may need mending. Your neighbors and workmates probably need saving. And God's plan is to bring heaven to your corner of the world through you.

God has empowered you through his Spirit and the precious promises of His word to fulfill the gospel mandate. We do not need to hunker down and ask God to give us things. We just need to believe that through Christ we already have everything we need to get the job done (Eph 1:3, 2 Pet 1:3).

"Working out your salvation" means discovering who you are in Christ, taking risks for Jesus, and ministering in His power and authority. It means representing Jesus and His cross-wrought victory in areas where sins' effects are still being felt. When you shine with Jesus-light, darkness flees and the dominion of the king is enlarged. Sin, sickness and poverty are put under his feet when you put them under your feet. We complete the mission the same way we started – by trusting in God's amazing grace:

"But by the grace of God I am what I am, and His grace toward me was not in vain; but I labored more abundantly than they all, yet not I, but the grace of God which was with me." (1 Cor 15:10, NKJV)

Grace=Peace,



Jeremy

Grace - From the Author of "One Way Love: Inexhaustible Grace for an Exhausted World"

If you haven't seen the following article, you need to:

http://jonathanmerritt.religionnews.com/2013/10/02/tullian-tchividjian/

Grace=Peace,

Jeremy


Billy Graham's grandson takes Christians to task: An interview with Tullian Tchividjian
By Jonathan Merritt.  Follow @jonathanmerritt

William Graham Tullian Tchividjian is the grandson of the iconic American evangelist, Billy Graham. But he's also much more than that. Tchividjian is senior pastor of Ft. Lauderdale's Coral Ridge Presbyterian Church–formerly the congregation of the late D. James Kennedy–as well as a visiting professor of theology at Reformed Theological Seminary, a contributing editor for Leadership Journal, and the author of several bestselling books including Jesus + Nothing = Everything.

In his most recent book, One Way Love: Inexhaustible Grace for an Exhausted World, Tchividjian takes Christians to task for their legalistic focus on performance. But he also casts a vision for a more grace-filled future. Here, we talk about what he thinks is wrong with the Christian church today and what he believes the answer is.

JM: One criticism that has been leveled against the church is that we've been more concerned with behavior modification than with grace. Am I correct in saying that you believe this is a valid criticism?

There's no question that for far too long the church has been primarily concerned with external change. Preachers are afraid of grace because they think it undercuts obedience and encourages apathy. If Jesus paid it all and it is finished, if the judgment against us has been fully and finally taken care of, aren't we opening the door to lawlessness? This is what Judaizers were afraid of: they didn't like Gospel of free grace because they thought people would get out of control.If God is not mad at me and if he will never love me more than he does right now, then why can't I party my way through life? The underlying fear is that unconditional grace leads to licentiousness.

While attacks on morality will always come from outside the church, attacks on grace will always come from inside the church, because somewhere along the way we've come to believe that this whole thing is about behavioral modification and personal moral improvement. We've concluded that grace just doesn't possess the teeth to scare us into changing. As a result we get a steady diet of "do more, try harder" sermons; we get a "to do list" version of Christianity that causes us to believe the focus of the Christian faith is the life of the Christian. So we end up hearing more about "Christian living" than the Christ.

We think this will be what gets people to clean up their act, to fix themselves, to volunteer in the nursery, to obey, to read their Bibles, to change the world–but it actually has the opposite effect. A steady diet of "do more, try harder" sermons doesn't cause people to do more or try harder…it makes them give up. Legalism produces lawlessness 10 times out of 10.

The fact is, that the solution to restraint-free immorality is not morality. The solution to immorality is the free grace of God. Only undeserved grace can truly melt and transform the heart. The route by which the New Testament exhorts sacrificial love and obedience is not by tempering grace but by driving it home. Charles Spurgeon nailed it when he said, "When I thought God was hard, I found it easy to sin; but when I found God so kind, so good, so overflowing with compassion, I beat my breast to think I could ever have rebelled against One who loved me so and sought my good."

JM: Where do you think Christianity has missed the mark of offering living water? How did we get where we are today?

TT: The Christian church has sadly not proven to be immune to performancism. Far from it. In recent years, a handful of books have been published urging a more robust, radical, and sacrificial expression of the Christian faith. I even wrote one of them—Unfashionable: Making a Difference in the World by being Different. I heartily "amen" the desire to take one's faith seriously and demonstrate before the watching world a willingness to be more than just Sunday churchgoers.

The unintended consequence of this push, however, is that if we're not careful we can give people the impression that Christianity is first and foremost about the sacrifice we make for Jesus rather than the sacrifice Jesus made for us; our performance for him rather than his performance for us; our obedience for him rather than his obedience for us. The hub of Christianity is not "do something for Jesus." The hub of Christianity is "Jesus has done everything for you." I fear that too many people, both inside and outside the church, have heard this plea for intensified devotion and concluded that the focus of the Christian faith is our love for God instead of God's love for us.

Furthermore, it seems that the good news of God's grace has been tragically hijacked by an oppressive religious moralism that is all about rules, rules, and more rules; doing more, trying harder, self-help, getting better, and fixing, fixing, fixing–—ourselves, our kids, our spouse, our friends, our enemies, our culture, our world. Christianity is perceived as being a vehicle for good behavior and clean living and the judgments that result from them rather than the only recourse for those who have failed over and over again.

Sadly, too many churches have helped to perpetuate the impression that Christianity is primarily concerned with legislating morality. Believe it or not, Christianity is not about good people getting better. If anything, it is good news for bad people coping with their failure to be good. Too many people have walked away from the church not because they're walking away from Jesus, but because the church has walked away from Jesus. Ask any of the so-called "religious nones" who've answered their census questions differently in past years, and I guarantee you will hear a story about either spiritual burn-out or heavy-handed condemnation from fellow believers.

"Works righteousness" is the word that the Protestant Reformation used to describe spiritual performancism, and it has plagued the church—and the world—since the Garden of Eden. It might not be too much of an overstatement to say that if Jesus came to proclaim good news to the poor, release to the captives, freedom for the oppressed, sight to the blind, then Christianity has come to stand for, and in practice promulgate, the exact opposite of what its founder intended (Luke 4:18–19).

JM: I'm with you, but you're a pastor yourself. What are the ways in which you–yes you, as a clergy person–have been complicit in perpetuating this system?

TT: I'm so embarrassed by many of the sermons I preached early on. I wish I could go back and apologize to all the people who heard them. My primary concern at that time was to get people to do more, try harder, and change. The end result was stunted spiritual growth for our people because I was causing them to fix their eyes on themselves rather than on Christ.

Eugene Peterson has wisely said that "discipleship is a process of paying more and more attention to God's righteousness and less and less attention to our own." The way many of us think about sanctification is, well, not very sanctified. In fact, it's terribly narcissistic. We spend too much time thinking about how we're doing, if we're growing, whether we're doing it right or not. We spend too much time pondering our spiritual failures and brooding over our spiritual successes.

Ironically, I've discovered that the more I focus on my need to get better, the worse I actually get—I become neurotic and self-absorbed. Preoccupation with our performance over Christ's performance for us actually hinders spiritual growth because it makes us increasingly self-centered and morbidly introspective—the exact opposite of how the Bible describes what it means to be sanctified. Sanctification is forgetting about yourself. As J. C. Kromsigt said, "The good seed cannot flourish when it is repeatedly dug up for the purpose of examining its growth."

In those early early days, I was treating the Bible like it was a heaven-sent self-help manual. The fact is, that unless we go to the Bible to see Jesus and his work for us, even our devout Bible reading can become fuel for our own self-improvement plans, the place we go for the help we need to "conquer today's challenges and take control of our lives."

What I've learned since those days is that the Bible is not a record of the blessed good, but rather the blessed bad. The Bible is not a witness to the best people making it up to God; it's a witness to God making it down to the worst people. The Bible is one long story of God meeting our rebellion with his rescue; our sin with his salvation; our failure with his favor; our guilt with his grace; our badness with his goodness.

So, if we read (or preach) the Bible asking first, "What would Jesus do?" instead of asking "What has Jesus done" we'll miss the good news that alone can set us free. Evangelicals desperately need to recover the truth that the overwhelming focus of the Bible is not the work of the redeemed but the work of the Redeemer. This means that the Bible is not first a recipe book for Christian living, but a revelation book of Jesus who is the answer to our unchristian living.

JM: What was it that triggered this grace-awakening in you?

TT: Life, suffering, and failure have a way of transforming you from an idealist to a realist—from thinking that you're strong to reminding you that you're weak.

When I was 25, I believed I could change the world. At 40, I have come to the realization that I cannot change my wife, my church, or my kids, to say nothing of the world. Try as I might, I have not been able to manufacture outcomes the way I thought I could, either in my own life or other people's. Unfulfilled dreams, ongoing relational tension, the loss of friendships, a hard marriage, rebellious teenagers, the death of loved ones, remaining sinful patterns—whatever it is for you—live long enough, lose enough, suffer enough, and the idealism of youth fades, leaving behind the reality of life in a broken world as a broken person. Life has had a way of proving to me that I'm not on the constantly-moving-forward escalator of progress I thought I was on when I was twenty-five.

Instead, my life has looked more like this: Try and fail. Fail then try. Try and succeed. Succeed then fail. Two steps forward. One step back. One step forward. Three steps back. Every year, I get better at some things, worse at others. Some areas remain stubbornly static. To complicate matters even more, when I honestly acknowledge the ways I've gotten worse, it's actually a sign that I may be getting better. And when I become proud of the ways I've gotten better, it's actually a sign that I've gotten worse. And 'round and 'round we go.

If this sounds like a depressing sentiment, it isn't meant to be one. Quite the opposite. If I am grateful for anything about these past 15 years, it's for the way God has wrecked my idealism about myself and the world and replaced it with a realism about the extent of His grace and love, which is much bigger than I had ever imagined. Indeed, the smaller you get—the smaller life makes you—the easier it is to see the grandeur of grace. While I am far more incapable than I may have initially thought, God is infinitely more capable than I ever hoped.

JM: The kind of grace you describe in One-Way Love sounds scandalous, and if I know my fellow Christians like I think I do, you'll get a little blowback from this message. What do you anticipate will be most surprising?

TT: I'm sure it will get mixed reactions. This isn't the kind of book that people can feel neutral about. People who are aware of their weakness, failure, smallness, and incompetancy will love it. Those who are aware of their desperation love grace and they will find new life and breath in One Way Love. But those who want to believe that they're strong and competant, capable and sturdy, will be offended. That's fine.

I'll never forget hearing Dr. Doug Kelly (one of my theology professors in seminary) saying in class, "If you want to make people mad, preach law. If you want to make them really, really mad preach grace." I didn't know what he meant then. But I do now. The law offends us because it tells us what to do–and we hate anyone telling us what to do, most of the time. But, ironically, grace offends us even more because it tells us that there's nothing we can do, that everything has already been done. And if there's something we hate more than being told what to do, it's being told that we can't do anything, that we can't earn anything–that we're helpless, weak, and needy.

The law, at least, assures us that we determine our own destiny—we get to maintain control, the outcome of our life remains in our hands. Give me three steps to a happy marriage and I can guarantee myself a happy marriage if I follow the three steps. If we can do certain things, meet certain standards (whether God's, my own, my parents, my spouse's, society's, whatever) and become a certain way, we'll make it. Law seems safe because it breeds a sense of manageability. It keeps life formulaic and predictable. It keeps earning-power in our camp. The logic of law makes sense. The logic of grace doesn't.

Grace is thickly counter-intuitive. It feels risky and unfair. It turns everything that makes sense to us upside-down. It's not rational. It offends our deepest sense of justice and rightness. It wrestles control out of our hands and destroys our safe, conditional world.

So, it doesn't surprise me at all when I hear people react to grace with suspicion and doubt. It doesn't surprise me that when people talk about grace, I hear lots of "buts and brakes", conditions and qualifications. That's just the flesh fighting for its life, after all. As Walter Marshall says, "By nature, you are completely addicted to a legal method of salvation. Even after you become a Christian by believing the Gospel, your heart is still addicted to salvation by works…You find it hard to believe that you should get any blessing before you work for it."

But while I'm not surprised when I hear venomous rejoinders to grace (the flesh is always resistant to "It is finished"), I am saddened when the very pack of people that God has unconditionally saved and continues to sustain by his free grace are the very ones who push back most violently against it.

It is high time for the church to honor its Founder by embracing sola gratia anew, to reignite the beacon of hope for the hopeless and point all of us bedraggled performancists back to the freedom and rest of the Cross. To leave our "if's," "and's," or "but's" behind and get back to proclaiming the only message that matters—and the only message we have—the Word about God's one-way love for sinners. It is time for us to abandon once and for all our play-it-safe religion, and, as Robert Farrar Capon so memorably put it, get drunk on grace. Two- hundred-proof, unflinching grace. It's shocking and scary, unnatural and undomesticated…but it is also the only thing that can set us free and light the church, and the world, on fire.

Grace - It's Wise To Be Drunk

Consider the following quotes:

[Wisdom] has prepared her food, she has mixed her wine; She has also set her table; She has sent out her maidens, she calls from the tops of the heights of the city:  "Whoever is naive, let him turn in here!"  To him who lacks understanding she says, "Come, eat of my food and drink of the wine I have mixed."  Proverbs 9:2-5

He has brought me to his house of wine and his banner over me is love.  Song of Solomon 2:4


...the love of God has been poured out within our hearts through the Holy Spirit who was given to us.  Romans 5:5b


There is no fear in love; but perfect love casts out fear, because fear involves punishment, and the one who fears is not perfected in love.  1 John 4:18

Isn't it the task of the Holy Spirit to introduce some madness and intoxication into the world?  Why this propensity for balance and safety?  Don't we all long for one moment of raw risk, one moment of divine madness?

Rolheiser, Ronald.  Against an Infinite Horizon:  The Finger of God in Our Everyday Lives.

I, too, believe it's something we all long for--the experience of freedom from all inhibition.  It's certainly what the world longs for and it's why man seeks after every intoxicating substance he can imagine and create.  But why do we have inhibition?  It's because of fear.  There is an ungodly fear that has stifled us and kept us from rising up.  This fear began in the garden of Eden when we first began to believe that God was not for us...that He was not good.

We're too intellectual.  We're too caught up with ourselves.  We're motivated more by fear than by having known and experienced God's love.

The above passage from Proverbs refers to wisdom calling us to drink the wine that it has mixed.  This is referring to two things:

1.  The practice of ancient Hebrews mixing additional herbs and spices into their wine which produced the effect of an aphrodisiac.  Conversely, the Greeks apparently watered down their wine to reduce its effects.

2.  A spiritual application in which the wine refers to God's Holy Spirit and His intoxicating love for us.  God seeks to overwhelm us through Christ's love.  His love removes all fear; it removes any ungodly inhibition.  The wrong way to lose inhibition is through alcohol or drug use.  The right way is being filled with the Spirit.

Fortunately, the church does talk a lot about God's love, but what it hasn't done well is to provide an environment where His unconditional love has been felt.  We've done a great job at coming up with programs and service orders, sermons and resources, but His presence has been restricted.  Our services are too restrictive--they can't be too emotional.  We can't take time away from the sermon.  But all of that cannot replace the felt presence.

I pray that you will be overcome, overwhelmed, and baptized by His love for you.  May you be drunk in God's love, for that is Wisdom's offering to you.  Once this has happened, you'll finally believe that nothing is impossible for God, and nothing is impossible for you.  Oh, then the works that He will do through you will be only what He can do!  Get drunk and go heal some sick people!

Grace=Peace,

Jeremy

Grace - Christ in You: Nature

Grace and peace be multiplied to you in the knowledge of God and of Jesus our Lord; seeing that His divine power has granted to us everything pertaining to life and godliness, through the true knowledge of Him who called us by His own glory and excellence.  For by these He has granted to us His precious and magnificent promises, so that by them you may become partakers of the divine nature....  2 Peter 1:2-4a

"I may say to a glove, 'Glove, pick up this Bible,' and yet, somehow, the glove cannot do it.  It has got a thumb and finger, the shape and form of a hand, and yet it is unable to do the thing I command it to do.  You may say, 'Well, of course not.  You have never told the glove how!'  But I may preach to and instruct that glove until my patience is exhausted, but the glove, try as it will, still cannot pick that Bible.  Yet I have a glove at home that has picked up my Bible dozens of times--but never once before I put my hand into it!  As soon, however, as my hand comes into that glove, the glove becomes as strong as my hand.  Everything possible to my hand becomes possible to that glove--but only in the measure in which the glove is prepared simply to clothe the activity of my hand.

That is what it is to have Christ, by His Spirit, dwelling within your redeemed humanity.  You are the glove, Christ is the Hand!  Everything that is possible to Him becomes possible to you, and with Paul you may say, 'I have strength for all things in Christ Who empowers me--I am ready for anything and equal to anything through Him Who infuses inner strength into me, [that is, I am self-sufficient in Christ's sufficiency]' (Phil 4:13 AMP).  The presence of the living Christ, by His Spirit within you, imparts to you all the things that pertain to life and godliness, all that you need to live a life of righteousness and nobility of character."

From The Saving Life of Christ, Major W. Ian Thomas, p. 40.

Grace=Peace,

Jeremy

Grace - How Do You Define the Gospel?

Here are two possible definitions of the word Gospel.  What do you think?  How would you define it?

"Evangelion (that we call the gospel) is a Greek word and signifieth good, merry, glad and joyful tidings, that maketh a man's heart glad and maketh him sing, dance, and leap for joy… [This gospel is] all of Christ the right David, how that he hath fought with sin, with death, and the devil, and overcome them: whereby all men that were in bondage to sin, wounded with death, overcome of the devil are without their own merits or deservings loosed, justified, restored to life and saved, brought to liberty and reconciled unto the favor of God and set at one with him again: which tidings as many as believe laud, praise and thank God, are glad, sing and dance for joy." - William Tyndale, A Pathway into the Holy Scripture, 1531

"Christianity is NOT a religion; it is the proclamation of the end of religion. Religion is a human activity dedicated to the job of reconciling God to humanity and humanity to itself. The Gospel, however – the Good News of our Lord and Savior, Jesus Christ, is the astonishing announcement that God has done the whole work of reconciliation without a scrap of human assistance. It is the bizarre proclamation that religion is over – period." - Robert F. Capon, The Astonished Heart: Reclaiming the Good News from the Lost-and-Found of Church History, 1996

Grace=Peace,

Jeremy

Grace - Great Pic!

Enjoy the attached picture!

Grace=Peace,

Jeremy

Grace - Christ In You: Now

Victorious Christian living is not a method or technique; it is an entirely different, revolutionary principle of life.  It is the principle of an exchanged life--"not I, but Christ liveth in me" (Gal. 2:20b).

The true spiritual content of our gospel [is] not just heaven one day, but Christ right now!  Christ in you, on the grounds of redemption--this is the gospel!

That is the work of God.  It is your living faith in the adequacy of the One who is in you, which releases His divine action through you.  It is the kind of activity that the Bible calls "good works", as opposed to "dead works".

From The Saving Life of Christ, Major W. Ian Thomas, pp. 23-24

When I talk to a believer, there's usually one point I try to get across more than any other.  That is the unity between them and Christ.  Whether we're talking about "Christ in you" or "You in Christ", the point is the same:  that believers begin to understand this amazing life we have in/through/with/because of Christ.

I ask myself sometimes:  How can a Christian--someone whose very faith, hope, and trust rest on the supernatural resurrection of a man 2,000 years ago--not believe in God's power for today?  Oh yes, I understand that their faith has been watered down to "God gives me the strength to make decisions and go through life's difficult situations", but honestly, while that is necessary and good and well, it's so far beneath the potential of Christ's life.

Do you know why the vast majority of Christians will never literally hear a word for someone from God or lay their hands on a sick person and see them healed?  It's because they lack biblical faith.  It's an uncomfortable answer, especially for someone who has never done those things, and especially for someone who doesn't believe it's possible today, but's it the truth.  It's not their fault, though.  It's what they've been taught.  It's what we've all been taught, what we ourselves taught, and maybe even are still teaching!

The mixture of Moses' Covenant and Jesus' Grace has put limits in our minds on God's goodness toward us.  The Law imparts neither life nor righteousness and when our thinking is based on either a law mentality or a mixture between law and grace, the miraculous is hard, the supernatural unnatural and difficult, and our faith formulaic and powerless.  This actually feeds our doubts and fears on all that we would like to be possible in this world.  This inoculates us from the reality of life in Christ and His power toward those who believe.  (There's a verse right there for you!  If you can't produce the power, it's probably because you don't believe!  Ouch!)

But the answer really is this simple:

Is Christ in You?  Does Christ have life?  Does His life conquer death?  If you answered "Yes" to those three, simple questions, then let His life in you release His divine action through you.  Take a risk, be willing to look foolish to a dying world, and see the salvation of the Lord (which includes healing--physical, emotional, and spiritual).

Grace=Peace,

Jeremy

Grace - Understanding Sex, Ourselves, and the Heart of Our Father

It's the Number One issue in a man's life.  It can be a tremendous blessing if he handles it wisely; a curse if he foolishly misuses it.  It manifests itself in sex, but...

Sex is not the issue

Rather, it's whether a man sees how God has revealed His heart of love for him and for others.  If we don't understand this, then the world will see nothing different about us—they won't see anything different between worldly love and Christ's love.  We can't miss this guys.  How we treat women matters, because it shows (or conceals) Christ's love to the entire world.

Give back what you've stolen from women, and realize your first love must come, has to come, from God.

The idea that premarital sex or even living together is unwise and wrong is not just traditional or old-fashioned.  Although it is widely disregarded now, it is not legalistic or unnecessarily strict, nor is it just passé.  Its reason lies at the very core of marriage itself:  to demonstrate Christ's type of love to the church and to the world—not a human's definition of love.  We see several marriages and other covenantal unions in scripture.  In the case of marriage, the time leading up to the wedding, during the wedding, and after the wedding (i.e., the marriage) has deep significance.  For godly Jews, their religion (as well as biblical Christianity) and their culture (but not ours!) does not allow for premarital sex; thus Joseph's fearful reaction to Mary becoming pregnant.  The result of premarital sex in their culture was not honor which would have stemmed from a proper marriage ceremony, but rather shame.  To "Honor your father and mother" does not just address proper relationship with one's parents, but because our parents' authority should represent God's authority, this fifth commandment is also a call to honor God as Father—the One Who has created us and provides for us and seeks to guide our lives in wise and righteous choices which reflect His heart.

Those who disagree with what I have to say will be quick to say I am being legalistic, but that is most certainly not true.  At the center of this issue is God's heart itself, not simply a law such as "Thou Shalt Not Commit Adultery."  Revealing the law is one way He showed us His heart—and His heart is for our protection.  His law also shows us our actions toward others with are inconsistent with, as I have said before and will say again, Christ's type of love.  That being said, Christ's type of love could not be perfectly demonstrated through the law, but required (and still requires) a person willing to yield to His Spirit, for only those who are new creations, born-again from above, and who now, by nature, rely on His strength, love, and life can properly discern and act upon Christ's love.  Those who take matters into their own hands and their own moral justifications will miss out on the process of God supplying life and strength to them to accomplish His love toward them and others.

Something I hear from many people who justify their premarital intimacy is that God is "OK" with it.  Let's consider Joseph and Mary again.  They stayed together after Mary was found pregnant.  God was definitely OK with that.  Perhaps Joseph even loved her.  But to put it as delicately as I can, neither Mary nor Joseph sinned.  It is for that reason that their situation was entirely different.  God knew that Joseph was a righteous and honorable man and that they both would do the honorable thing and take a certain course of action regarding Jesus' sinless birth from a virgin mother.  But this is not a call or an example for couples to stay together because of their "love."

Those who have engaged in a physical relationship that the Bible calls a blood covenant have formed not only a physical bond, but a spiritual one as well.  It is our Father's heart that the two individuals not be wounded, but since the two have indeed formed a spiritual bond, being wounded is exactly what has happened and happens more and more everyday to those who ignore the significance and importance of a godly design and a godly commitment to a marriage—even during the time before the marriage takes place.  Those who find themselves in such a situation and who desire to marry should do the honorable thing and follow clear scriptural principle—either honor the blood covenant and marry legally in the presence of a legal representative of the community along with friends and family, or separate until the arrangements can be made for a proper wedding celebration.  Otherwise, if you have had sex, but marriage with the other person not an option, do the honorable thing and don't have sex again until you are married.  Sex outside of marriage is equivalent to thievery—a man stealing from something that doesn't belong to him.  Looking at again Joseph's actions, we see that his desire was to keep himself and especially Mary from shame, showing himself to be a man who honored his father and mother, his friends, and his wife-to-be.  Joseph was a protector.  So should you be.  From now on.

Since Christ is central to this discussion, let it also be said that He is also the One Who defines marriage itself—both marriage and its parameters.  God does not consider a sexual union between those who share the same gender or a union involving more than two persons a marriage.  Those are examples of perversion.  But so is premarital sex, because it is a distortion of godly love and the result of selfishness and a darkened, sinful desire.  It is sad and grievous to the heart of our Father that such distortions and misrepresentations exist and damage those He loves.

Going back to the cultural example of Jesus' day (founded on scripture):  As was the custom, the husband-to-be would have prepared the home before the marriage.  Neither the man nor the woman would have engaged in sex.  The blood covenant of sex was only entered into after marriage.  The phase of preparation before marriage is an important step for every man.  After many years of discipling young people, I know that most do not understand that anticipation is not something to be eliminated or avoided.  We live in a "microwave" culture and those who remove this stage of anticipation for whatever reason, even for mere convenience's sake, are missing a major life-lesson.  Anticipation contributes positively to marriage.  By seeking to remove anticipation and delay, one indulges in illegitimate pleasure and robs him- or herself of certain greater aspects of the first sexual union, which was to be accompanied by the celebration and support of all of their loved ones.  There is, however, something much greater and much more important.

Is it not clear?  It is during the phase of anticipation through which God enters into the marriage and begins to pour the foundation of His power for the husband and the wife to be faithful and trustworthy to one another.  The willingness to endure anticipation is part of what proves to one's spouse that their marriage partner will be faithful; for, when times of doubt arise (and they will), one will have tangible evidence that their spouse will rely on God's power for their deepest needs during the worst of situations.  If a man didn't cheat with his fiancée before they were married, his wife can be even more confident that he won't cheat on her after they're married.  Why would a man who desires to honor God, parents, friends, and future wife decide that this step is unnecessary?  Premarital sex and cohabitation erode future marital security, no matter how good the intentions of the yet-to-be-married couple may be.

In Jesus' culture, when the time came for the marriage ceremony, the couple would be united before God and friends and family to celebrate their union.  It was only after this time, when they had made a covenant with each other before all present, that the sexual union would take place.  Our culture is so focused on the wedding as the pinnacle of marriage, and that is why most couples place so much importance on the wedding day.  But, the wedding day is not what unites family and friends:  it is the sexual union that is at the center here, for that and that alone is what forms the sexual, social, intellectual, emotional, and physical covenant between husband and wife in the presence of God and family and friends.

There is a reason why the pastor says "You may now kiss your bride."  The communion bread and the wine, the wedding cake and the champagne, the exchange of names, the blood shed during the first intercourse…it all represents the lives of those entering into covenant, and it all includes the community.  It is the covenant that is celebrated between the wedding couple with the encouragement and support of loved ones…not the ceremony itself.  In other words, the wedding day and its rituals are far less important than the blood covenant itself.  Our culture has this entirely backwards and has diminished the significance of the covenant, forgetting the meaning behind the ritual—only for the sake of celebrating a day and its rituals.  So much effort and concern is put into a day, when reality and statistics show, not to mention the example set forth by God Himself, that the foundation of the marriage has been neglected and the marriage will most likely end in disaster.

Our culture has a wrong definition of commitment.  When I hear someone say that they're committed, that they love each other, and there's nothing wrong with having sex while unmarried, I know that they have been influenced by our culture and they have bought into our culture's definition and example of commitment.  Culture's definition and example can usually be seen through every "love" relationship on the big screen.  Boy meets girl, boy and girl fall in "love", boy and girl overcome personal differences and misunderstandings, boy and girl decide to stay together whether or not parents, friends, or community agrees.  When it fails—and real life, not the movies, tells us it will, boy finds a new girl and girl finds a new boy.  Rinse and repeat.

When I hear someone say that they're committed--it usually means that they've paired off and decided to rely solely on their devotion to each other.  "Love will keep us together."  No, that's Hollywood.  That's a fairy tale.  It's not real life.  Their "commitment" fails, because what is almost always missing is a mutual relationship with God--especially hearing and obeying the leading of the Holy Spirit in regard to how Christ would love that person and include family and friends in the commitment.  To say that you're committed to someone when you've never stood in the presence of God, family, and friends is in reality no commitment at all.  The sacrifice for the other person's best, which is based on Christ's love and His example, is the real demonstration and fruit of commitment.  A man who has been influenced by culture thinks it's enough to privately commit to her.  A man who has been influenced by culture thinks that it's enough to declare a commitment publicly to her on his wedding day.  A man who has been influenced by culture believes that his feelings of love for her are sufficient to declare "undying" commitment.  A man who has been influenced by culture never goes through the phase of anticipation where he has to rely on God's strength and character and not his own.  A man who has become a product of his culture defines his own rules on sex, and always does so in his favor.  Christ's type of love and commitment is so much greater, and this man's is so much lower.

Whatever one's belief may be, premarital sex and cohabitation do not follow clear scriptural teaching and example on how a man and a woman are to join together as one.  One may say, "We've proven our love and commitment to faithfulness to each other", but it was not done on God's terms, in the manner He has prescribed, or on the proving grounds He has ordained.  Couples who say they're committed have usually defined those testing areas on their own, effectively removing God from the equation by ignoring His wisdom altogether.  The Bible uses a word for this exclusion of God, refusing His instruction.  The word is fornication, which has a severely negative connotation in our culture; it's a word we don't hear anymore, but scripture speaks very loudly concerning this word and it's not only against His law, but more importantly, it does not demonstrate Christ's type of love, commitment, and faithfulness to us.  Sex outside marriage is a perversion of God's intended blessing for us.  Moreover, it is one of the results of the flesh.  The flesh reigns whenever man believes He knows better than, can do better than, and thus, ignores God...or creates his own god.  The flesh perverts the love of God and crafts it for its own selfish purposes, but the end result is always the same:  someone is dishonored and someone gets hurt.

All of this is because culture, a system set in place by fallen man, has become the accepted context wherein those with corrupted hearts and corrupted minds live.  But here's the hope:  it's not too late.  A wise couple would choose to live separately until marriage and not engage in sexual activity; a person who has had casual sex would stop viewing something so sacred with such casualness.  This is not some figment of my own imagination, nor is it theoretical, but can be found in both scripture and every source of experienced, wise counsel on the topic.  Because I have this view, see it supported by scripture, and voice my beliefs, I am not setting myself up to be God, nor do I recognize that God would approve a couple's decision engage in premarital sex and/or live together.  Neither have I relied mainly on the Law of God to defend and voice my stance.  Sexual activity outside of marriage simply goes against scripture, kingdom culture, biblical precedent, and is an affront both to God's character and His demonstrated love toward us.  It violates His heart and destroys ours.

To my knowledge, there is no wise marriage counselor, Christian or secular, who would recommend premarital sex or cohabitation.  On the contrary, most, if not all of them, would recommend the opposite.  Two people may say that their decision to live together is not a problem, but I am convinced, based both on the advice of multiple sources and the marriages I have seen fail, that if one is willing to overlook this first, primary step in marriage, then there will be more issues to appear in the future which could have been avoided.  Yes, every couple will have problems, but this is a step that plants issues from the very beginning and will most likely create severe issues regarding trust and selflessness.   In short:  the experts say stop now and do the hard thing, because it is precisely that which will make your marriage stronger, but more than that:  it may even mean the difference between success and failure.  And no one ever gets married expecting to get divorced, but so many couples lay an initial foundation for their marriage which simply cannot last.

Build a building high enough on an incline and soon enough the building will topple over.  And it won't be pretty.  The foundation must be flat and square.

I know that a man and a woman may have strong feelings of commitment toward each other and feel secure that, based on those feelings, the decision to live together and create a sexual union together before marriage is right and approved by God because they "love" each other.  I do not deny the strength of feelings toward earnest commitment.  I do know that emotions make it seem impossible to backup, restart, or even separate, but this sacrifice is what Christ would do and how He has called men to live in relationship to women.  Do the hard thing.  Make the sacrifice and protect the heart of your heavenly Father's daughter and demonstrate to her Christ's type of love so she will never again give herself to another man who will abuse her body and spirit.

Christ and His type of love must be central in such a relationship; He must be the foundation.  Why?  Because the Bible does not simply say:  "Husbands, love your wives."  Rather, the Bible makes Christ essential to marriage by saying:  "Husbands, love your wives, even as Christ loves the church", just as it says "Wives, be subject to your own husbands, as to the Lord."

Lastly, just as Christ is essential to marriage, confirmed by scriptures, even our definition of love cannot be our own; it must come from the Lord.  For this reason, we also read:  "Therefore be imitators of God, as beloved children; and walk in love, just as Christ also loved you and gave Himself up for us, an offering and a sacrifice to God as a fragrant aroma."  Christ's love involved a sacrifice:  He forgave us and gave up His life for us (hence, the "therefore":  forgiveness and sacrifice).  But when a couple chooses to engage in sexual activity and/or live together before marriage, they are doing two primary things:  1.) removing any foundation for forgiveness throughout the marriage, because 2). someone who chooses to not sacrifice for another has chosen to not do what is in the best interest of the other, and that cannot act as a foundation of trust.  In the case of marriage, the sacrificial act that honors the covenant, honors the other person, honors God, friends, and family, is a willing delay of gratification that can and will endure anticipation.  This is Christ's love, and this is far above the type of love a couple declares for each other when Christ is not honored or involved in the preparation for marriage.

For this reason I have again and again stated that we must love as Christ has loved us; we must sacrifice our convenience for others as Christ did for us; we must understand commitment as He showed us His type of commitment; we must honor each other as He has honored us; we must defy culture's model of instant gratification and instead rely on God's power and faithfulness.

Above all, men, we must stand and defend the world's most lovely, yet most abused creature, Woman, even from ourselves.  Will you choose to hear our Father's heart in this matter?  Will you choose to feel with Him how His heart breaks when a woman is lied to? abused? treated as commodity? regarded with selfish love? denied true, godly commitment?  robbed?

We have been called to live higher than this and it will require sacrifice.  Will you choose to see her as a sister and co-heir?  Are you willing to deny yourself, to understand your Father's love for you and for her?

I pray that you will be able to see past the methods and trickery that the world has taught us to use so we could escape these questions.  Do the hard thing and see how God will reveal His heart to you, for you, and through you.

Christ is in you and He is not a Predator.  Neither are you.  You are a Protector, just as is Christ in you.

Grace=Peace,

Jeremy

Grace - OT out of Context

As Rob Rufus says:  "A text out of context is a text that will con you."  Below is a quote from Matt Chandler and it's just another illustration of how poorly most Christians 1). know what scripture actually says and, 2). are able to rightly divide the word--either Old Covenant or New.  Personally, I always find it amusing, yet sad, when such errors are made and perpetuated.

Enjoy the following quote from Chandler's book, The Explicit Gospel, p. 50, as he shares how he also has heard scripture misused.

"When I first got saved, I started reading the Bible, and I learned that a lot of evangelicals use texts completely out of context.  My favorite is the one they use out of the prophet that says, 'I am doing a work in your days that you would not believe if told' (Hab. 1:5).  They throw that on T-shirts, and they print up flyers, and they get architects to draft expansions plans, and they get one of those fundraising thermometer displays in the sanctuary.  'God's going to do something amazing in our day, and even if I were to tell you, you wouldn't believe it!'  But if you read the rest of the book, the amazing thing he's talking about is killing everybody.  He's like, 'Literally, I'm going to let your enemies kill you, your families, your donkeys, your cattle, and your business, and I'm going to burn the earth that you walked on.'  And we put that on our coffee cup.  'Something amazing's gonna happen!'  Keep reading, dummies; it goes poorly."

Grace=Peace,

Jeremy

Grace - Freedom from Addiction 12

This is my last post in my series of blogs on addiction.

Our souls may have been scarred by the chains with which our addictions have bound us, but at least they were familiar chains. We were used to them. And as they loosen, we are likely to feel a vague sense of loss. The things to which we were addicted may still be with us, but we no longer give them the ultimate importance we once did. We are like caged animals beginning to experience freedom, and there is something we miss about the cage. - Gerald May

As I've talked with people throughout the years, one of the common threads I see in their struggles is an ignorance of their union with Christ and the freedom they have as a son or daughter of the King.  Most of them are bound by a great, nagging sense of condemnation as they view and critique their lives through the religious lens of what I term "Institutional Christianity".  I was having a conversation recently with a friend and we were discussing how their goal of perfection in behavior had actually resulted in very negative effects.  I'm not saying that right behavior is not desirable; I'm saying that it's how one goes about it that matters.

In this series on addiction, we've learned that our attempts to control our lives lead to addiction.  Either through concerted effort and reliance on some source other than Christ for strength, or an escape through some other object of attachment when our efforts have failed, addiction is the result of our search for peace when that search leads us to something or someone other than Christ Himself.  This search and reliance is not necessarily because we're weak, but it has more to do with the fact that we were created to be in union with God our Father.  Religion is simply man's effort to construct a reliable, predictable engine to help us keep things underway and simulate the benefits of what would have been that union with God.

With this in mind, we go back to the discussion I mention above to realize how a religious goal of perfect behavior is so deadly.  This goal can either be God's law itself or its imprint, in that our own law which we've placed upon ourselves reflects God's handiwork on our hearts and minds.  From wherever it comes, the law we are under will never free us, because it will always point out our own failures.  Additionally, where our own law may justify us, we know in scripture that God's law is greater and will only condemn, for that is its purpose toward those who seek to justify themselves.

The result of our addiction, then, is that freedom becomes a lost concept to us.  We desire it.  We work for it, but it has become less familiar than the chains our addiction has brought to us.  So, we choose to remain with the chains.  Like a prisoner freed after years of imprisonment, we yearn for someone else to structure our day.  We've become accustomed to confinement and darkness.

It is for this very reason that Christ became one of us.  To be among us and work to convince us that we are free.  He took sentence for our crimes upon Himself and became a prisoner on our behalf.  Because His life is eternal, He could fulfill the terms of our imprisonment, but He also eventually destroyed the jail, leaving us free from fear.  Our freedom from Pharaoh and his army is secure for evermore.  It's just that we have a hard time believing it.

The goal for us to understand now is not so much that we should behave perfectly, but more so that we have been given the grace and freedom to enjoy our freedom.  In other words, Christ empowers us to say "Yes" to His life within us.

I want to end this series with one last quote from Dr. May:

...addiction to a religious system and its tangible representations, like addiction to anything else, brings slavery, not freedom.  Freedom can be risky and frightening to someone who has learned to rely upon the tangible, either through objects in hand or through emotions. God calls us to trust Him anew each day and turn from that with which we've found familiarity.

Our faith must include our emotions.  Emotions are vital.  I know many Christians who are afraid of their emotions and view the emotions of others in worship as weird and out of place.  It is in those same people that I rarely, if ever, see real joy, especially in regard to the reality of the gospel and the new covenant.  To be painfully honest, their prayers are boring, although very sincere, and so is their worship.  There's no engagement.  There's no excitement about an impossible situation being answered by an all-powerful, all-loving God.  I don't see the outbursts of joy as seen in Acts.  The miracles are also absent--and they should not be.  The same Holy Spirit Who was alive and active then is also now alive and active, and yet His people seem to be stuck in the mud.  There is a vitally important place for emotions inspired by the Holy Spirit and when I see a Christian who is not joyful, I wonder if a foundation of the true gospel has been laid.

However, as I have said before, our faith cannot rest on our emotions.  It is this idea that Dr. May addresses:  Freedom can be risky and frightening to someone who has learned to rely upon the tangible, either through objects in hand or through emotions.

Our faith cannot rest on our emotions; it must rest on Truth.  This is also to say that Christ is the foundation of our faith, and yet many Christians do not rest their faith on His person.  We must read scripture and hear teaching that, just as Paul did, exalts Christ alone and our union with Him, both in death and in life.  He is our life.  He is our righteousness.  He is our holiness, our sanctification.  As He is, so are we.  He represents us fully and perfectly.  All of our prior efforts to survive judgment through our good deeds are pointless, because only true faith and trust in Him provides the acceptable foundation which instills confidence and boldness.  His hope is the anchor for our souls.

Thus, as we see Christ, addictions fall away and freedom becomes more tangible, because we begin to see the futility in our efforts.  Those objects of attachment lose their power.  He not only frees us, but He also supports us as our beliefs transition from condemnation resulting in addiction to acceptance resulting in freedom.  Our emotions will be affected, but we cannot define our condition based on our emotions.  We cannot say "I am close to God because I feel Him".  Let truth influence emotion, not the other way around.

Finally, I'll share something that God spoke to me nine years ago.  Sitting in a church service, I was worried about something very specific.  In fact, I was jealous that someone was about to experience a blessing I lacked.  In the multitude of thoughts spinning around inside my head, I heard one very noticeable, calming voice:  "Trust Me".  I knew instantly that is was God.  I wish I could say that I trusted instantly or that I've trusted perfectly ever since, because I haven't.  What I want to say is this:  God is good and He is always safe toward His children, even though trusting Him seems like a risk on our part.  His character is reliable and throughout my dealings with addictions, with the use of spiritual gifts, and in the uncertainty of life's issues, He has spoken to me and through me and been patient as I stumbled here and there.  Perfect behavior is great, but it can't be a goal we strive for in our strength.  Perfect use of spiritual gifts such as prayer for healing or prophetic words can't be the goal, but they are a part of our inheritance in the kingdom.  I felt freedom from God to make mistakes and take risks as I learned how to do those things.  I pray that your death to the law will show you how much freedom you have and how much Christ has given you.

Trust God.

Grace=Peace,

Jeremy

May, Gerald G. Addiction and Grace: Love and Spirituality in the Healing of Addictions. San Francisco, CA: HarperOne, 2005. Print.  pp. 105 and 97, respectively.  The above quotes may have been edited for clarity and understanding outside their context.

Grace - Lions and Bears Were Just Target Practice

Then Saul said to David, "You are not able to go against this Philistine to fight with him; for you are but a youth while he has been a warrior from his youth."  But David said to Saul, "Your servant was tending his father's sheep. When a lion or a bear came and took a lamb from the flock, I went out after him and attacked him, and rescued it from his mouth; and when he rose up against me, I seized him by his beard and struck him and killed him.  Your servant has killed both the lion and the bear; and this uncircumcised Philistine will be like one of them, since he has taunted the armies of the living God."  1 Samuel 17:33-36

"Long before becoming king, David was a simple shepherd boy.  While his brothers were on the frontlines fighting the Philistines, David was stuck on the sidelines tending sheep.  David felt like he had been put out to pasture, but God was honing an uncanny ability that would catapult him into the national limelight....

I may be reading between the verses, but I have a hunch.  I think David prayed for his sheep.  I can't prove it, but I think there are some compelling reasons why he would.  What child doesn't pray for his pets?  I think David loved and prayed for his sheep just like we love and pray for our pets.  Besides that, David's sheep were his livelihood.  Just as a farmer prays for his crops, a shepherd prays for his flocks.  In fact, I bet David specifically prayed that God would protect his flock by keeping lions and bears away.  Makes sense, doesn't it?  But David's prayers went unanswered.  On numerous occasions, lions and bears attacked David's flock.  I wonder if David ever questioned God:  Why doesn't God answer my prayers for safety?

The answer dawns on David as he's getting ready to face Goliath....  David realizes that the bears and lions were target practice.  They were preseason games that perfected his skills as a slingshot marksman and prepared him for his sudden-death playoff with the Giants, led by Goliath."

From Batterson, Mark, In A Pit With A Lion On A Snowy Day.  pp. 62-63

Grace - Remember

Do you know this wonderful hymn?

Turn your eyes upon Jesus.

Look full in his wonderful face.

And the things of earth will will grow strangely dim

In the light of his glory and grace.

Helen Howarth Lemmel (1863-1961)

Then consider also the following quote:

"Herein would I live; herein would I die; hereon would I dwell in my thoughts and affections, to the withering and consumption of all the painted beauties of this world, unto the crucifying all things here below, until they become unto me a dead and deformed thing, no way meet for affectionate embraces. For these and the like reasons, I shall first inquire into our beholding of the glory of Christ in this world by faith."

From The Naked Gospel by John Owen, D.D., 1616-1683  (Yes, that's right, these words were written 400 years ago.)

Separated by a span of nearly 200 years, English lyricist Helen Howarth Lemmel and the English theologian John Owen both wrote the on the same idea--beholding the glory and grace of Jesus Christ.

I think we would do well, were we to do the same.

Do you struggle with a sin?  Are you lonely, depressed?  Have you lost hope?  Does your trust in Him falter?

Are you unsure?  Do you long for happiness and peace?  Do you question whether God will prove good to you?

Have you insisted on doing life your own way?

Then do as God instructed His people, both in the Old Testament and the New:  Remember.

In the Old Covenant, God's people were called to build memorials and to make lasting covenants with external reminders.  In the New, He calls on us to fellowship with and encourage each other, to take communion in remembrance of Him and, as in the Old, to worship.

Zoom in on His face, on His glory, on His grace.

I pray that like Peter, after you've failed so many times, you will remember the kindness of God.  Let it shine upon you, and you will remember you have nothing to fear but the overwhelming love of a good and gracious Father.

Remember.

With "affectionate embraces" of Grace and Peace,

Jeremy

Joseph Prince visits the USA with the message of Grace and the centrality of Jesus

Watch this!


http://video.foxnews.com/v/2781548227001/worldwide-phenomenon-brings-christian-message-to-us/


He will be preaching in Newark, Houston, and Dallas. Please go see
him if he's coming near you.

You can find his schedule here:

http://josephprince.org/



Grace=Peace,


Jeremy

Grace - The gospel of Jesus is epic

From Matt Chandler, The Explicit Gospel, pp. 137-138.

"The gospel is the fulfillment of every nation's political, religious, cultural, and historical longing.

The gospel of Jesus is epic.  When Jesus says he saw Satan fall like lightning from the sky, he is saying that the gospel is about the overthrow of evil itself, not just about our sinful behavior.  When Jesus casts out demons, he is saying that the gospel is about his authority and God's sovereignty.  When Jesus heals the sick and the lame, he is saying that the gospel is about the eradication of physical brokenness.  When Jesus feeds the five thousand, he is saying that the gospel is about God's abundant provision through Christ to a world of hunger.  When Jesus walks on water or calms the storm, he is saying that the gospel is about his lordship over the chaos of fallen creation.  When Jesus confounds the religious leaders, overturn tables, tells rich people it will be hard for them, renders unto Caesar, enters the city on a jackass, predicts the temple's destruction, and stands silent before the political rulers, he is saying the gospel has profound effects on our systems.  When Jesus forgives sin and raises the dead, he is saying the gospel is about individuals being born again, but he's also saying that the gospel is about his conquest of sin and death.

The mission of Jesus is so big that John the Baptist, in Matthew 3:3, wants us to remember these words from Isaiah 40:3-4:

In the wilderness prepare the way of the LORD;

make straight in the desert a highway for our God.

Every valley shall be lifted up,

and every mountain and hill be made low;

the uneven ground shall become level,

and the rough places a plain.

Do you see that the work of Jesus is epic?  It is earth-shaking.  This work culminates, of course, in the end for which the Son was sent:  to die on a cross and rise again."  

Grace=Peace,

Jeremy