SECURITY IN JESUS CHRIST or THE LAW

“So then, the law was our guardian until Christ came, in order that we might be justified by faith. But now that faith has come, we are no longer under a guardian,for in Christ Jesus you are all sons of God, through faith.” (Galatians 3:25 ESV)

As we read the Scriptures we will be confronted by clear teaching about matters that are not final or fully worked out.until the fulfilled ministry of Jesus Christ. Our verse is one of these.

Prior to his conversion, Paul was a master craftsman in the administration of the guardianship of these laws, and yet he had to come to grips with the fact that, the reason for the laws he administered, had ceased to exist. He had to realize that, throughout their history, they were always leading to the grace of God in Jesus Christ, a fact which was dramatically revealed to Paul on the Damascus road.

God’s sovereign, gracious working  leads those who are His to  a similar place, mostly much less dramatic, but never-the-less, where God wants us to be.

Our guardian has been our enemy until this point , because it was weak, as Paul was to teach the Roman believers in Romans 8:3.

Yet so many, who claim to be Christian, want to cling to the law as a means of moral and ethical acceptance before God. They are exactly like the Judaizers, who were teaching the need to add law to the grace of God in Jesus Christ, amongst the Galatian Christians.

In some ways they are like some long term prisoners who have been incarcerated for such a  long  period that they have lost the power and ability to be independently responsible for their life and actions. Many released prisoners commit another crime to get back into the perceived safety of prison.

Until the tentative nature of the Old Covenant, had come to an end in the fulfilled ministry of Jesus, there was no alternative but to cling to the law.
  
The Lord Jesus Christ introduced a new order, in which He said, amongst many other things  “Truly, truly, I say to you,  everyone who commits sin is a slave to sin. The slave does not remain in the house forever; the son remains forever. So if the Son sets you free, you will be free indeed. (John 8:34-36)
The issue here is that there is no-one who is without sin. It doesn’t matter who you are, how pious, or religious you are, or how much you serve in, or attend your church. You still sin!
That doesn’t make you a slave to the act of sin, it makes you a slave to the law, which condemns your sin.

Ultimately, it depends upon where you find your safety.

So many people I know, even those who regularly stand behind pulpits, see themselves more like Paul described himself  “as to righteousness, under the law blameless “ (Philippians 3:5)

Their security is in law keeping, or self-righteous legalism. What happens when they, inevitably do sin, and they will, in one way or another.

Jesus said, in Matthew 5:20, “For I tell you, unless your righteousness exceeds  that of the scribes and Pharisees, you  will never enter the kingdom of heaven.”

Of course, Jesus then went on to tell them just what He thought of their attempts to please God.

We are deceived if we think we can, in any respect, be perfectly obedient to the Old Covenant.

Paul’s Damascus road experience must have been an amazing, but the challenge to his Old Covenant religious/spiritual understanding, must have shook him to the core of his being.  He had to understand that everything he had been taught, and understood, and obeyed was not in error, but temporary, and leading up to the very Person, in whom all things came to completeness, with whom he had come face to face, and in whom he would find the fullest revelation.

Paul had left the Old Covenant  moral and ethical prison, and tasted the freedom of the New Covenant of grace and life in Jesus Christ.

The cost was great, for Paul. He had established a reputation for himself. He was a leader of society, but he had seen the promised Messiah, the Lord Jesus Christ and was pleased to pay the price required to give his allegiance to Him, which entailed giving up everything, his reputation, his position, and his obedience to the religious  practices and laws of which he was a master.
 
There will be a cost to walk as one who lives under the New Covenant, giving up religious/cultural tradition, to follow Christ, who said,

” If you love me, you will keep my commandments”, and. “And you shall love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind and with all your strength.’ The second is this: ‘You shall love your neighbor as yourself.’ There is no other commandment  greater than these.”        

LEARNING MUST BE A WHOLE OF LIFE PROCESS

The first morning I sat in my office, as a young,inexperienced pastor, I prayed fervently that I would be kept an ordinary man. It was at that time it was impressed on me to make sure that those to whom I ministered recognized that it was their responsibility to ascertain the truth, or otherwise,of what I preached and taught.

It became a regular matter for me to remind those to whom I was privileged to speak, and I quote,"If you believe everything I say to you, without checking it against Scripture for yourselves, you are fools". I never ever received a complaint, or admonishment for that.

Dave Black  recently quoted similarly, about which he commented,
"No truer words were ever spoken". :
" Danny Akin put it this way: "I don't care what you say. I don't even care what I say. The only thing that matters is the Word of God."

It was many years before I truly took my own advice, which reflects that of Danny Akin.

Dave Black, in his most recent comment, quoted Aeschylus, who write Greek tragedies, "It is always in season for old men to learn."

Having gone past my three score years and ten, and had that first prayer answered abundantly, I agree completely with Aeschylus, and find it hard to come to grips with the mentality of those of my contemporaries who are unwilling to challenge what they have traditionally accepted without question.

This same Greek also said, "He who learns must suffer,and,evenin our sleep, pain that cannot forget falls drop by drop upon the heart, and in our own despair, against our will, comes wisdom to us by the awful grace of God".

  

Aeschylus is speaking about my own experience quite a few years ago as I struggled with the vain spiritualizing of the traditional status quo, and the reality of which Scripture spoke, a changed people from whom "rivers of living water" (John 7:38) flowed.

I am blessed greatly when reading the blog of Paul Burleson, a contemporary, who, like me, is an old man who has learned, and is learning, especially his recent offerings.

Paul's son Wade, has broken the mold. He is a young man, a gifted writer, who, no doubt has learned from his father, as well as through the hard yards of experience. His blog, reveals the man who didn't have to wait until he was old. His recent efforts have so much value.

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JESUS + NOTHING = EVERYTHING

A dear blogging brother, Paul Burleson, has recently published a comment arising from a conference where he taught on Paul’s first letter to the  Corinthians. In his comment he says,

“Have you ever noticed that Paul NEVER mentions the Law of Moses in this letter we call 1st Corinthians? He's certainly having to deal with problems in the church that are grievous in nature such as drunkenness, arguing over who had been the greatest pastor, [ Paul, Peter, or Apollos] suing one another in courts of law and then there was that immoral situation they were not dealing with at all, and proud they were not as if it were a badge of honor that they were permissive.
In fact, the ONLY time Paul used the Law of Moses in his arguments for pure living was when he challenged the legalists who needed to be shown that even the law itself could not be kept in an effort to be holy. He NEVER used the law of Moses, even the ten commandments, as a standard to hold up for New Covenant behavior.”

That observation, in itself is extremely important, but he goes on to point out something very important for many today who forget that the genuine follower of Christ IS NOT FIGHTING AGAINST FLESH AND BLOOD, as he says,

 “ …………that Paul was willing to engage the culture of his day and wasn't angry toward it or did not rail against it as if it were some kind of witchcraft at work against the gospel. He recognized its weaknesses and its inability to speak to the deepest problems and need of the human race, namely dealing with the fallen and hopeless nature of the human condition, but had no real answers. The wisdom of God seen in the gospel does have answers, however. Paul thought so at least. I do too.

I hadn’t long read Paul’s thoughts when I came across this from Ed Trefezger’s blog, This Mystery, where he writes:

“I’ve been fol­low­ing Tul­lian Tchividjian’s pas­sion­ate advo­cacy of the suf­fi­ciency of the gospel and the dis­cus­sions he’s had with oth­ers who want to drive peo­ple to law for sanc­ti­fi­ca­tion. Two peo­ple at our church have brought up Tchividjian’s lat­est book,Jesus + Noth­ing = Every­thing, so I thought it was about time I read it. This snip­pet is from a sec­tion of the book sub­ti­tled, “The Great­est Threat”:

The Bible makes it clear that the gospel’s pre­mier enemy is one we often call “legal­ism.” I like to call it per­for­man­cism. Still another way of view­ing it, espe­cially in its most com­mon man­i­fes­ta­tion in Chris­tians, is moral­ism. Strictly speak­ing, those three terms — legalism, performancism, and moral­ism — aren’t pre­cisely iden­ti­cal in what they refer to. But there’s so much over­lap and inter­con­nec­tion between them that we’ll basi­cally look at them here as one thing.

And what really is that one thing?

Well, it shows up when we fail to believe the gospel. It shows up when behav­ioral oblig­a­tions are divorced from gospel dec­la­ra­tions, when imper­a­tives are dis­con­nected from gospel indica­tives. Legal­ism hap­pens when what we need to do, not what Jesus has already done, becomes the end game.

Our per­for­man­cism leads to pride when we suc­ceed and to despair when we fail. But ulti­mately it leads to slav­ery either way, because it becomes all about us and what we must do to estab­lish our own iden­tity instead of rest­ing in Jesus and what he accom­plished to estab­lish it for us. In all its forms, this wrong focus is anti-gospel and there­fore enslaving.

Tchivid­jian, Tul­lian.Jesus + Noth­ing = Every­thing. Wheaton, IL: Cross­way, 2011. Print. (p. 45–46)”

How good it is to read the work of those who know that Jesus + Noth­ing = Every­thing, and, as a consequence, have no desire to drive people back to the prison from which Christ set them free!

By the way! If you want a good read, look at Ed's "Completed by the Spirit"!

A New Heart and a New Covenant

Recently, I experienced an event which was, to say the least, life changing. No! I’m not writing about the new birth, which was also, most definitely, life changing, entailing a changed heart attitude. 

I am alluding to  heart surgery requiring a triple by-pass. The heart that beat in my chest 5 weeks ago is now substantially altered, with three grafts made from a vein in my right leg supplying blood to the required parts. During these weeks I’ve been given a new lease on life, experienced the prayer fellowship of brethren world-wide, and an assurance of the Lord’s presence, of His being “with me” such as I have never known previously. I was given a peace which I would have loved to give to many who were worried about my condition.

I’m not sure why, but whilst thinking of these events, I’m drawn to think of things such as new wine skins, and the fact that new wine was never placed in old wine skins, simply because the old skins could not contain the pressure of the new wine, and would burst.

The old veins around my heart could not do the work required of them, and despite having led a life conducive to good heart health, other factors such as heredity came into play. My paternal grandfather died from a heart attack, my father had a heart attack and eventually died from the consequences. My mother suffered similarly.

I consider that, to all intents and purposes, because I had no damage to my heart muscles, I now have a new heart, reconditioned with sound blood vessels, but not simply patched up, like an old wine skin.

The New Covenant is very much like these new blood vessels. It is NEW, not the Old Covenant patched up.  It is new because of the New Covenant Person (Isaiah 42:6) who is the New law written on the heart by the indwelling of His Holy Spirit.

Here is “the riches of the glory of  this mystery, which is Christ in you, the hope of glory”, Christ dwelling in us by His Spirit is our New Covenant Law.  (Jer. 31-34)

Jesus fulfilled all the requirements of the Old Covenant and then as our New Covenant Person He revealed what was hidden in the Old Covenant types and shadows in the light of His person and ministry . He did not come to abolish the law or the prophets but to fulfill them, to meet all the requirements and expectations of the Old Covenant as it was given to Moses  (Matt. 5:17) Hence His cry from the cross, "It is finished!"

He made concrete, and gave reality, to what the Old Covenant foreshadowed, and could never achieve (Heb.8:7).

It foreshadowed a people who would  function by the power of  the Holy Spirit, being led by the Spirit, and who are directed and caused by the Spirit to be lovers of Christ, and of each other. 

This is the evidence of a changed heart which Jesus spoke of to the old  Pharisee, Nicodemus (John 3:3). This is a radical life change. It is New wine requiring New wine skins to contain the absolute newness and power of a life motivated by love towards the One who took our covenant place before the justice of God, and our brethren. 

You and I are "in Christ", if we are as Jesus soke to Nicodemus, "born again", and as such we are a "new creation " as Paul told the Galatians in 6:15. Our relationship with God through this "new birth" involves much more than"becoming a Christian" or "joining a church." 

We are spiritually new, the spiritual offspring of the Father, born as a new creation in Christ, old things have passed away; behold, all things have become new (2 Cor.5:17). We are part of a new humanity that is only marking time in this world as we know it.  In Christ we have been baptized into one body by one Spirit, which is not governed by man's laws of organization, but by the life and nature of the New Covenant Person who created it. 

Our hope of righteousness puts no weight in personal acts of piety but in the changed heart that has been placed within you. And, as I was promised as a young man, "He who began the work in you will finish it to the praise of His glory".

Our very existence as God's children, is in heavenly places in Christ Jesus. Our citizenship is in heaven, ". . . we have a building of God, a house not made with hands, eternal in the heavens" (2 Corinthians 5:1). As the book of Hebrews, makes clear, we have already come to the heavenly Jerusalem and to the heavenly assembly, the church of the firstborn (Hebrews 12: 22-24). The New Covenant requires a circumcision made without hands (Colossians 2:11) and a new heart in the Spirit (Romans 2:29), not the flesh.

My Times in His Hands

Had thoughts of article for Christmas, but all circumvented by some dramatic events leading to triple by-pass heart surgery, one week ago.

Been home two days, which makes it seven days since surgery. No doubt of the Lord's hand in these events.

May the Lord bless those who read, and those who don't!

THE CHURCH IS CHANGING!

A MUST READ!

Wade Burleson's article: http://www.wadeburleson.org/2011/11/church-is-changin-reformation-of-church.html

CHRISTIAN ONE-UPMANSHIP?

I am reminded of Jesus’ words when He prayed, “I thank you, Father, Lord of heaven and earth, that you have hidden these things from the wise and understanding and revealed them to little children; yes Father, for such was your gracious will”.

Religious pride was something Jesus observed quite often. It was seen in displays of  arrogance and superiority of knowledge amongst the Pharisees.

There was  strong confidence in their learning, in their own righteousness and personal interpretation of what they had learned. In fact they looked down on everybody else, who didn't think and act as they did.

Is it possible to, on the one hand, speak and write about humble Christ glorifying living, write Biblical messages and blogs which give advice about the self effacing, others focused manner of true disciples of Christ, and, on the other hand, display in one’s writing, the very same Pharisaical pride with which Jesus was confronted?

I have found myself having strong sensibilities on behalf of other brethren when comments on blogs are made, or, advice given, which, to my mind, comes across as proud and thoughtlessly patronizing.

It seems to me that the same proud spirit which has accompanied much traditionalism, is now accompanying some of those who, a few years ago, started off so well in challenging that which was clearly not according to Scripture, and have now come to a new tradition which they have developed and with which they are now comfortable.

 If it’s not the same spirit as the Pharisees exhibited, maybe it’s the very similar carnal game of one-upmanship?  A clash of egos?

William Barclay tells a story with a strong message regarding this matter of which I speak, "Once I made a journey by train to England. As we passed through the Yorkshire moors I saw a little whitewashed cottage and it seemed to me to shine with almost radiant whiteness. Some days later I made the journey back to Scotland. The snow had fallen and was lying deep all around. We came again to the little white cottage, but this time its whiteness seemed drab and soiled and almost gray in comparison with the virgin whiteness of the driven snow."

And then Barclay observes: "It all depends what we compare ourselves with."

It seems that it is an unconscious (?) ability that we have, of  comparing ourselves, what we preach, write, or believe, with what others preach write or believe.

There is only One against whom we ought compare ourselves:

When I survey the wondrous cross
On which the Prince of glory died,
My richest gain I count but loss,
And pour contempt on all my pride.

Forbid it, Lord, that I should boast,
Save in the death of Christ my God!
All the vain things that charm me most,
I sacrifice them to His blood.

See from His head, His hands, His feet,
Sorrow and love flow mingled down!
Did e'er such love and sorrow meet,
Or thorns compose so rich a crown?

Were the whole realm of nature mine,
That were a present far too small;
Love so amazing, so divine,
Demands my soul, my life, my all.