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Tag: gospel
Lusting, Loathing and Lying
In Colossians 3:5-9 Paul describes our 'earthly nature.'
First lusting:
sexual immorality, impurity, lust, evil desires and greed, which is idolatry (v5)
then loathing:
anger, rage, malice, slander and filthy language. (v6)
then lying:
Do not lie to each other, since you have taken off your old self with its practices. (v9)
Now Paul doesn't explicitly teach a progression here. But is it too much to see one at work? Especially when you put this together with Jesus' and James' teaching.
In Matthew 5, Jesus particularly puts His finger on loathing (v21-26) and lusting (v27-30) and in James 4:1-2 he co-ordinates the two:
What causes fights and quarrels among you? Don't they come from your desires that battle within you? You want something but don't get it. You kill and covet, but you cannot have what you want. You quarrel and fight.
First you desire. But then your desire is thwarted and you hate and kill. Lusting leads to loathing.
And then, back in Colossians 3, perhaps we can see the crowning sin to this progression: lying. Because lying is part and parcel of 'our old self with its practices.' In the raw we are lusters and loathers, but then lying becomes our sophisticated method of getting what we want. It's our lusting and loathing woven into a whole relational style. It's the mask we wear to avoid or to win the quarrels and to fulfil our lusts.
But Paul says, we've taken it off. So let's trace back the verses in Colossians 3.
v9: The mask is gone, no more lies.
And we might think - Yikes, I'm exposed.
v8: Maybe it reveals anger and quarrels.
Where do these come from?
v5: Our lusts.
What should I desire instead?
v1-4: Set your heart and mind on Christ. He's the one to desire.
In obsessing ourselves with Jesus, our new self gets renewed in knowledge in His image. (v10)
Anyway, those were some thoughts that didn't make it into my Sunday sermon on Colossians 3.
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Rules to remember
I was walking through our local shopping centre on Thursday morning and I bumped into some friends. We were chatting away and then the whole place went quiet. For a second we were puzzled but then we remembered - it's 11 o'clock.
So quickly we shut up and started remembering. But for the next two minutes, the shopping centre was divided into two camps. On one side there were lots of people bustling along, chatting away, oblivious to the time and its significance. They were breaking the “silence” rule.
On the other side there were those who had remembered to remember. And you know how they spent the next two minutes? Glaring at passers-by, tapping their watches, pointing to their poppies and rolling their eyes to one another. If they weren’t so resolved to be silent I reckon the tutting would have been deafening.
And so I wonder... out of those two minutes, how much time was spent remembering the sacrifice of others and how much time was spent feeling superior?
Maybe I’m wrong, maybe it’s possible to simultaneously glare angrily at the rule-breakers and to remember our war-dead. But I’m guessing there wasn’t a lot of remembering done, even by the rule keepers. And actually their zeal for the rules worked against the spirit of remembrance.
But, time and again, that’s what rules do. They make you feel safe and they make you feel superior.
They make you feel safe because you’ve drawn a line and put yourself on the right side of it. You’ve done your bit, you’ve played your part, you’ve ticked your box, and now no-one can touch you. You're with the in-crowd. You're not babbling away in the shopping centre, you're with the moral majority. Rules are so often kept as a way of distancing yourself. When something is asked of you, or the world impinges on your personal sphere in some way, very often our reaction is, "No fair, I kept the rules!" We feel like if only we play by the book we ought to be free from the claims of others. Rules make us feel safe.
And rules make us feel superior. Because now we can look down our nose at those on the wrong side of the line. We can feel better than others. There was a lot of superiority going on in that shopping centre on Thursday. Lots of people kept the tradition of remembrance. Few people followed the spirit of actually remembering.
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Christianity Explored week 2 talk notes
In the past I've posted up some Christianity Explored talks of mine (weeks 1, 3, 5 and 7). I've preached all the weeks many times but I'm becoming more and more unhappy with how I've put things.
Thanks to good chats with Mike who I'm currently co-leading with, I'm re-thinking how to teach Mark.
On the identity of Jesus I've tended to preach Jesus as merely bigger than sin, sickness, death, demons and storms. But the point of Him defeating these powers is that these are the forces that hold humanity in bondage. It's not just that Jesus is strong enough to bind the strong man, it's that He's loving enough to do it to rescue us. When He does it, the response should not so much be - "He's a great Power", but "He's a great Saviour - doing everything the Messiah's meant to - remaking the world."
On the problem of sin I've tended to preach it behaviourally in spite of Mark's massive heart focus - hearts pumping out evil, hard heartedness, etc. The 'public gallery of my life' is not the real problem, it's the heart that produces it. I certainly have preached this, but haven't let it percolate through everything.
On the issue of judgement - I've missed lots of the alreadyness of condemnation (Israel in exile needing to recross the Jordan, judgement being the sickness they already have (whether they admit it or not), Gehenna being an eternal and dreadful rubbish dump but like what they know).
On salvation - I've not focussed on 1:15 - the good news of the kingdom. I could be heard as slightly Islamic "submit to His rule."
On repentance, I haven't been as clear as I should that it's a change of mind.
And I'm sure lots of other problems too. Ah well, semper reformanda.
Anyway, I haven't re-written my talks in full but I thought I'd post up some notes for the sake of those who run CE themselves. I reckon the re-jigging Mike and I have been thinking through has been well worth it...
...continue reading "Christianity Explored week 2 talk notes"
Preaching sin when they already hate themselves
I've written a little gospel presentation on Emma's site. It's for anyone but I've had in mind younger folk who have difficult relationships with food and their bodies. It's called Good News for Dark Places.
It's raised the question in my mind - how do we address the problem of sin with those who might well be very religious and already they are full of self-destructive feelings?
It's important in any setting - but here it's particularly vital - to define sin as a failure to receive. I don't think you'll do much good in pastoral settings if you're not convinced that sin is, at base, not receiving from God. Let me know what you think...
[I've just described the Father, Son and Holy Spirit in loving union]...
This is who the real God is – a community of love and absolute togetherness. In fact their life together is too good to keep to themselves. They want to share it with others.So this God made something else – a world – so that we can share in this life. We exist so that we can pull up a chair at the table. The meaning of our lives is to join this Party.
But there’s a problem, and it goes back to our first parents. Humanity has always said to God: “No, I’ll make it on my own.”
God is a family of love, but we prefer our own company. God is a fountain of life but we go off and dig for mud. God is a community of light, and we slink off into darkness.
It’s so easy for us to think of God as a kill-joy. But this God is not the kill-joy, it’s us. We are offered the deepest relationship and joy possible but we have refused it. We close ourselves off and will not receive His love. This is the essence of our problem - what the bible calls 'sin'.
Many people think that sin is about doing naughty things - as though it's basically about what we offer or don’t offer to God. The Bible has a different take. God isn't needy! He's the Giver. So at the heart of it, sin is us refusing to receive from God. Do you see the difference? It's not so much that I'm a bad offerer, I'm a bad receiver. My problem's not so much how I perform for Him, my problem is not resting in Him.
Sin is closing ourselves off to the life of God so that now we manage out of our own resources. And so, as sinners, we’re condemned to live our lives cut off from His life.
Sinning really isn’t the worst thing [repost]
Oh it's bad. It's very bad. It's murdering your Maker. It's cheating on your Lover. It's grieving His Spirit. It's tearing apart your soul. It's bad. Bad, bad, bad.
But not receiving forgiveness is far worse. Failure to accept the grace of Jesus dwarfs all other sins in its monstrosity. To refuse the vulnerable humility of God; to trample on the Lamb and blaspheme His Spirit as they offer blood-bought mercy and cleansing - this is unspeakable evil. It's the reason people perish eternally.
Don't believe me? 1 Thessalonians 2:10:
They perish because they refuse to love the truth and so be saved.
Those in hell are there for refusal to love the life-saving truth of the gospel. To sin is one thing. To refuse forgiveness is itself unforgivable.
Now we know this on a macro level. We know that eternity does not depend on minimizing sin. It depends on receiving forgiveness. We believe it for that Day, but do we believe it this day? Do I live today as though sinning (or not sinning) is the ultimate spiritual barometer? Or is my spiritual barometer daily calibrated to the forgiveness of Christ?
Here's how I naturally assess my Christian walk. I rate my 'performance' largely by how much distance I've managed to put between me and my last 'big sin.' (Of course it's 'big sins' I'm interested in, if I worried about the little ones my holy-count would never get off the ground). When the number of 'sin-free' days hits double figures I'm doing great. In fact, once I'm talking in weeks rather than days it rockets me into the righteousness stratosphere. Best of all, it finally allows me to minister to people from the safe distance of 'All-figured-out-holiness.'
Of course when I sin it sucks. Why? Because I'm back to zero. My functional righteousness is caput and I'll have to endure the hassle of a 'holy' fortnight before I can feel good again. If I minister to people it will have to be out of broken messiness and a dependence on the grace of Jesus. Ewww.
Now that's a stark way of putting it. But I don't think there is a nice way of portraying this mindset. While ever we pursue the Christian life as though sinning is the worst thing and 'not sinning is the most important thing' then such a foul system will develop. But it's to entirely forget the gospel.
So friends, perhaps you've really blown it recently. Praise God this could be the opportunity to realize your profound and continual need for the blood of Jesus. Allow this to teach you the truth - the person you showed yourself to be in your sin is the person you have always been. It springs from a heart full of evil which you will carry to the grave. Your only hope lies far above and beyond yourself at God's Right Hand. He is your profound and continual need.
Perhaps you blew it a while ago but you just can't seem to get beyond it. Friend - the Word of God forbids you to take your sin more seriously than Christ's forgiveness. Is your sin great? Yes. But is it greater than the Lamb slain before the foundation of the world? Is it beyond the redeeming value of God's own blood (Acts 20:28). I think your sin has met its match in the blood of God, don't you?
Perhaps you haven't blown it for a while now but you're realizing you operate according to a functional righteousness. You hate sin only because it spoils your 'holy count'. You're proud and graceless. Well meditate on Philippians 3:1-11. Know that such 'righteousness' is dung and reckon it all as loss compared to the surpassing greatness of knowing Christ. He alone is your life and peace.
Or perhaps you're a blogger who writes about grace. You can dissect the sins of works-righteousness and see through latent Pharisaisms. Well neither are you righteous for your pithy critiques of the flesh. You haven't got it figured out. If you know anything it's that you're ignorant. If you have any strength it's only found in your helplessness. There's no credit to your insight, there's only rest in His mercy. You are nothing. Jesus is everything.
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Sinning really isn't the worst thing [repost]
Oh it's bad. It's very bad. It's murdering your Maker. It's cheating on your Lover. It's grieving His Spirit. It's tearing apart your soul. It's bad. Bad, bad, bad.
But not receiving forgiveness is far worse. Failure to accept the grace of Jesus dwarfs all other sins in its monstrosity. To refuse the vulnerable humility of God; to trample on the Lamb and blaspheme His Spirit as they offer blood-bought mercy and cleansing - this is unspeakable evil. It's the reason people perish eternally.
Don't believe me? 1 Thessalonians 2:10:
They perish because they refuse to love the truth and so be saved.
Those in hell are there for refusal to love the life-saving truth of the gospel. To sin is one thing. To refuse forgiveness is itself unforgivable.
Now we know this on a macro level. We know that eternity does not depend on minimizing sin. It depends on receiving forgiveness. We believe it for that Day, but do we believe it this day? Do I live today as though sinning (or not sinning) is the ultimate spiritual barometer? Or is my spiritual barometer daily calibrated to the forgiveness of Christ?
Here's how I naturally assess my Christian walk. I rate my 'performance' largely by how much distance I've managed to put between me and my last 'big sin.' (Of course it's 'big sins' I'm interested in, if I worried about the little ones my holy-count would never get off the ground). When the number of 'sin-free' days hits double figures I'm doing great. In fact, once I'm talking in weeks rather than days it rockets me into the righteousness stratosphere. Best of all, it finally allows me to minister to people from the safe distance of 'All-figured-out-holiness.'
Of course when I sin it sucks. Why? Because I'm back to zero. My functional righteousness is caput and I'll have to endure the hassle of a 'holy' fortnight before I can feel good again. If I minister to people it will have to be out of broken messiness and a dependence on the grace of Jesus. Ewww.
Now that's a stark way of putting it. But I don't think there is a nice way of portraying this mindset. While ever we pursue the Christian life as though sinning is the worst thing and 'not sinning is the most important thing' then such a foul system will develop. But it's to entirely forget the gospel.
So friends, perhaps you've really blown it recently. Praise God this could be the opportunity to realize your profound and continual need for the blood of Jesus. Allow this to teach you the truth - the person you showed yourself to be in your sin is the person you have always been. It springs from a heart full of evil which you will carry to the grave. Your only hope lies far above and beyond yourself at God's Right Hand. He is your profound and continual need.
Perhaps you blew it a while ago but you just can't seem to get beyond it. Friend - the Word of God forbids you to take your sin more seriously than Christ's forgiveness. Is your sin great? Yes. But is it greater than the Lamb slain before the foundation of the world? Is it beyond the redeeming value of God's own blood (Acts 20:28). I think your sin has met its match in the blood of God, don't you?
Perhaps you haven't blown it for a while now but you're realizing you operate according to a functional righteousness. You hate sin only because it spoils your 'holy count'. You're proud and graceless. Well meditate on Philippians 3:1-11. Know that such 'righteousness' is dung and reckon it all as loss compared to the surpassing greatness of knowing Christ. He alone is your life and peace.
Or perhaps you're a blogger who writes about grace. You can dissect the sins of works-righteousness and see through latent Pharisaisms. Well neither are you righteous for your pithy critiques of the flesh. You haven't got it figured out. If you know anything it's that you're ignorant. If you have any strength it's only found in your helplessness. There's no credit to your insight, there's only rest in His mercy. You are nothing. Jesus is everything.
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On not taking yourself too seriously
I was recently asked why I made a virtue out of not taking onesself too seriously. Here's my reply...
First of all, this truth needs to be held together with the other half of it: Take God seriously. Once I take God seriously - and by that I mean the trinitarian God of the Gospel - only then am I freed to get my eyes off myself.
Every human religion has humanity working before a watching God. The true God works before a watching humanity - Isaiah 64:4. In fact, as Isaiah says, that is the distinctive of the living God - He is the God of the gospel. And this gospel is that the Father, Son and Holy Spirit take salvation entirely into their own hands and leave not one calorie of effort to be done by us.
Once we see the Son taking our humanity, empowered by the Spirit to live our life before the Father and then die the death we should die, all in our place and on our behalf, then we see that it's out of our hands. Completely out of our hands.
Hence the punchline of so many of Paul's gospel explanations: "Where then is boasting??!" (Rom 3:27; 4:2; 1 Cor 1:29,31; 3:21; Gal 6:14; Eph 2:9). Boasting is essentially the definition of taking yourself too seriously. And it's the opposite of joy!
The gospel means that we must get off centre-stage, sit in the audience and watch the living God work salvation for us. And thus we take God seriously and we do not take ourselves seriously. In fact the essence of faith is to transfer our focus entirely from self to Christ.
Before Paul came to faith he used to take himself very seriously. He would spend his time building and making known his spiritual CV: Circumcised on the 8th day, of the people of Israel... (Phil 3:5ff). But when he came to see Christ as the gift of righteousness from God to be received by faith he counted that whole self-focused, CV-building, take-myself-very-seriously Pharisaism as dung! Total crap! (Phil 3:8). (And if we don't like those words maybe we need to lighten up and stop taking ourselves so seriously!)
Now he just wants to be found in Christ (Phil 3:9). The old Paul is dead, crucified with Christ (Rom 6:3ff; Gal 2:20; 6:14). And he entrusts every judgement about himself into Christ's hands:
I care very little if I am judged by you or by any human court; indeed, I do not even judge myself. My conscience is clear, but that does not make me innocent. It is the Lord who judges me. (1 Cor 4:3-4).
In the (half-remembered) words of Tim Keller, Paul is basically saying "I don't care what you think of me, I don't even care what I think of me." Paul has been so liberated by Jesus from self-focus, he knows his life is hidden with Christ in God - that's where his true life is (Col 3:1-4). And he refuses to be drawn back down into navel-gazing.
So that's what I basically mean when I say, Take God seriously, Don't take yourself seriously. Be released by Jesus into happy dependence. Then you can roar with laughter and not worry about what a goof you look. Then you can make fun of yourself and all your ridiculous self-salvation projects. Then you can hold everything else lightly because you know that you yourself are gripped by the triune God.
I admit that this can all sound quite radical because we tend to think that spiritual people are very serious people. And the more spiritual, the more serious. Well that's true for every human religion. But the gospel of Jesus is utterly different. And it's the one power to liberate us from the slavery to self and truly release us into the joy of the Spirit.
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Passover sermon – Exodus 11-12
It doesn’t matter what’s on the inside, it’s what’s on the outside that counts.
It’s not the interior – it’s all about the blood on the doorposts. It’s not about the LORD inspecting your house. It's ONLY about the blood outside.
It’s not even about how much faith you have in the blood. If the blood is applied at all, you’re saved. Strong faith in the blood and wavering faith in the blood lead to exactly the same outcome. Because it’s not faith IN the blood that saves - it’s the blood.
People say to me, “I don’t have very strong faith.” And I say “Me neither. But thank God we’re not saved by how strong our believing feelings are! Thank God we are saved, not so much by our faith in Christ’s blood, thank God we’re saved by Christ’s blood!”
...It’s not about the quality of your living, speaking, acting, praying. It’s not even about the quality of your own faith. It’s only about the blood. It’s the quality of His death, not the quality of your life. Your salvation has nothing to do with YOU – and everything to do with HIM. Nothing to do with your performance and everything to do with His performance.
People so often worry that their sins have cost them their relationship with God. Well you can’t out-sin the Blood of God can you?! Think about your sins. No matter what they are. Is your sin bigger than the blood of God?? Nonsense. You have not out-sinned the blood of Jesus. You cannot out-sin the blood of Jesus. Impossible! It’s about His blood outside – not your heart inside...
What would cheap grace look like? (Repost)
...The younger brother came to himself and said, 'My dad's an old softy. I reckon if I returned looking all dirty and sorrowful he'd bail me out. Worth a try anyway.' he reasoned.
And so he rose and made the journey back to his father rehearsing his sorry-speech along the way.
'Father, my father. I know I messed up. I know I don't deserve anything from you. You'd be well within your rights to shun me forever. But, father, my father, I'm throwing myself on your mercy, a poor stinking wretch. But I know you're a good dad - will you help me out?'
By the time he got to his father's house his speech was pitch-perfect. He rang the door-bell and waited.
Eventually he heard his father's shuffling steps, then the locks turning in the door, one after the other - four in all. At last it creaked open a crack and the old man squinted up at his son.
Ahem. 'Father, my father. I know I messed up. I know I don't deserve anything...' began the prodigal.
The father's look began to thaw. From frowning, to shocked recognition and then he softened. The speech was good. Perhaps the best yet. By the end the old man couldn't help but blurt out,
'Ah my son! You certainly know how to tug at my heart strings. What can I do for you?'
The son took a moment to congratulate himself on another triumph.
'Well, father,' he said, clapping his hands together and rubbing them. 'Wild living ain't cheap! And Lord knows how I'm going to afford my ticket back to the far country...'
'Back? You want to go back?' asked the father, his face falling.
'Well just for now. Unfinished business you see. But I'm definitely planning on returning...'
'...Because, son, you know there's always room for you here...'
'Yes, sure. Absolutely dad. And I'll definitely be returning. Probably quite often. But there's things I need to do and, well, I need your help.'
'How much?'
The prodigal couldn't suppress a guilty smile. He'd been found out.
'Well dad, there's the ticket. Then I need the deposit on a new place. I've found the perfect pad - downtown, the ladies love it. But that's another thing,' he said chuckling, 'they sure are expensive those women!'
'How much?' he asked again.
'It's hard to put a figure you know dad, it could be anything.'
They looked at each other for a full minute. The father broke the silence.
'Blank cheque then?'
'Blank cheque would be great! Yeah thanks. Phew. You're a real life-saver dad. Wow. I'd hug you, but I'm a bit smelly from the pigs. Speaking of which, do you have any food? Ham sandwich maybe?'
'Ham sandwich?? Look, come inside. I'll kill the fattened calf. Tonight we'll feast!'
'Gosh, dad. That's sweet but I really don't have time. Listen, I'll just grab something from drive thru. The cheque's fine. And, now that I think of it, don't make it out to the family name. I've changed it. Yeah, too many people were associating me with you and... well. You know...'
Within five minutes the younger son was heading back down the drive. He spotted his brother in the field and, holding the cheque aloft, called out. "Ciao bro'! Enjoy the slaving!"
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