Self-Improvement, Holiness, and Repentance

“Woe is me!  I am ruined!  For I am a man of unclean lips, 

and I live among a people of unclean lips,

 and my eyes have seen the King, the Lord Almighty!” 

Isa. 6:5

How can a prophet and man of God have such a reaction before the Living God?  Did not God call Isaiah through the vision into His presence?  Why would God allow Isaiah to feel this way and to have such an experience?

We have such a tendency to make our understanding of God and faith centered upon us and our experiences and needs.  We are often like small children going through the grocery store with our parents.  Seeing the food around us, we realize we are hungry and we demand our needs be met immediately.  We do not care that we are on our way home to eat a nutritious meal.  We do not care that our bodies need healthy food.  We want the candy bar that is within reach at the checkout line.  

In other words, what we want and what we really need are often two very different things.

We want to be accepted just as we are.  We wish that God would affirm us, give us some candy, and always have a smile for us.  These are our greatest wants and desires.  In fact, these are our greatest needs!  

The problem is that we insist that God gives us the candy bar without feeding us the healthy meal.  We want God to change so we do not have to.

Ultimately, our greatest problem in life is our lack of self-awareness concerning our true condition before God, others, creation and ourselves.  Here is where this passage in Isaiah can help give us some perspective.

In Isaiah 6, we see the prophet encountering the Holy God.  He is undone before Him.  He has seen God and he knows he needs grace!  Fortunately in the next verse, a seraph took a live coal from the alter and touched Isaiah’s mouth declaring, “See, this has touched your lips; your guilt is taken away and your sin atoned for.” (vs. 8)  As Isaiah met God, he became aware of his need, and he called out for grace.  God answered his need by sending grace.

In my experience, such experiences of grace cannot come often enough.  They often lead to rapid advances in Christian maturity and understanding that work out in increased love for God and others.  Such life-changing times of growth often occur at conversion, but they should also continue at different times throughout our Christian life.  Why?  As we grow to know the Holy God better, we should see our need for grace more since we see our sin more.  This is also the prime mark of authentic revival!

So why do we not see this often as a mark of Christian faith and practice?  Why do we lack such awakenings, which lead to true revival?

There are many factors.  First, we have not been taught this form of spirituality as the norm.  An emphasis on humility and brokenness runs counter to the American spirit of individualism and self-effort. 

Second, this spirituality runs counter to the workings of our fallen soul.  It does not sound nearly as good to us as “self-improvement” through works on the one hand or free and easy grace and forgiveness that doesn’t involve brokenness and humility on the other.  The truth is that many of us would rather keep a holy God at arms length.  Unfortunately, there are always religious peddlers who will wittingly or unwittingly give us what our hearts want by minimizing God’s holiness and our need. 

The result is a watered-down spirituality that lacks vitality.  Thus, we do not have true awakening and revival.  This is particularly true among those profess Christ for years.  New believers often have a glimpse of their need and God’s grace; but as they continue in the Christian faith, they lose their vitality.

Why?  Instead of growing in their understanding of God's holiness, which would lead to deeper repentance and an understanding of our need for Christ, many believers never grow from their initial understanding of God's holiness and their need.  In His mercy, God allows us through life to see our need, but we cover it up with denial or blaming others.  The result is shallowness and fakery!  Instead, we should embrace a deeper repentance, live a life of authentic confession, and find God's incredible mercy in Christ is increasing real for us.

Where are you today?  Do you have a spirit of revival and awakening in your life?  Do you have a vital, living faith?  Do you want such a life?  If so, come before the Holy God and pray for mercy to see both your need for Christ and Christ’s love for you!  True revival awaits.

Another Gospel Counterfeit- The Judgmentless Gospel

As we read on Monday, the gospel is like a three-legged stool.  Each leg represents an important part of the entirety of the gospel; and if any part is missing, the entire stool falls to the ground.  

These three legs include the gospel story, the gospel announcement, and the gospel community.  Yesterday we looked briefly at the therapeutic gospel.  The therapeutic gospel denies the beginning of the gospel story by rejecting the biblical truth of the fall of humanity.  It makes our happiness the goal of Christianity instead of God's glory.  In the process, the therapeutic gospel denies our very real need to repent and confess the very real sin that inhabits each of our hearts in this fallen world.  Such a practical theological move diminishes the need for Christ and God's grace.

Today we will briefly look at the Wax's second counterfeit gospel, the judgmentless gospel.  This fake is becoming increasingly popular in the evangelical world, and it matches perfectly with the tolerance movement driven by the popular culture of the day.  It takes many forms, but at its heart it denies the reality that God's judgment will be given on all.  As Wax states,

The Temptation in our day and age is to let the last part of the Apostle's Creed slip by unnoticed.  Many evangelicals talk a lot about justice and very little about judgment.  Justice here and now is a popular subject.  Judgment there and then?  Not so much.

But justice and judgment are two sides to the same coin.  You cannot have perfect justice without judgment.  God cannot make things right without declaring certain things wrong.  It's the judgment of God that leads to a perfectly just world.  Try to take one without the other and you lose the good news.

The judgmentless gospel distorts a major part of the gospel story- the end.  And if you've ever heard a good story, you know that once you change the ending, you alter everything. (The Counterfeit Gospels, 68)

So what does this look like in real life?  Some people claim that everyone is going to heaven.  It appears that the old Protestant heresy of universalism is alive and well!  

Others claim that what is really important is not the afterlife, but our mission in life.  This point is somewhat true, and it might be a corrective to those churches which teach the sole goal of believers is to get people into heaven.  The problem is when people go to the other extreme of believing and teaching that the real goal of Christianity is social justice.  

Honestly, Wax does not do a great job of fleshing out the expressions of this false gospel.  I am not sure why he did not go into more detail!  For many of the points he makes, he could just point out that old school Protestant liberalism has maintained many of these perspectives for 140 years!  

The judgmentless gospel is Protestant liberalism.  The problem is that in recent years, many evangelical leaders and churches have suddenly become infatuated with these ideas.  They believe they have uncovered something new; but when they forget the holiness of God and the reality of God's justice, they branch unto well-worn paths that have led to the demise and contraction of most mainline denominations.

How do they get on these well-worn paths?  In the name of tolerance and love, folks stop speaking of God's holiness and the reality of sin.  In so doing, they reject the need for Jesus to be a savior for very real sinners.  He becomes a good moral teacher or an example.  He is not a savior.  What often follows is a rejection of substitutionary atonement as important.  From this we lose justification and instead focus on our works as what proves our righteousness.  From this, we have a mix of Christianity, Buddhism, self-help messages, and other moralist religions.  In one generation, the Christian part transforms into something sub-Christian at best.

A better book to deal with this judgmentless gospel is Tim Keller's, Generous Justice: How God's Grace Makes Us Just.  It is simply not true that one either has to be concerned with someone's salvation or working toward a just society.  The real gospel allows and encourages both!  

If we give up the message of the gospel story, we lose our entire message.

Freedom, Deadness, and Grace

"Go and say to this people:

'Keep on hearing, but do not understand;

keep on seeing, but do not perceive.'

Make the heart of this people dull,

and their ears heavy,

and blind their eyes,

lest they see with their eyes,

and hear with their ears,

and understand with their hearts,

and turn and be healed."

Isa. 6: 9-10

As a pastor, I have served churches in many parts of the United States.  I have also served as a witness for Christ in a 10 week summer mission trip to southeast Asia.  Lord willing, I hope to be a witness for Christ in many other parts of the world in the next 20 years.  In every place I have gone, I have seen people come to know Jesus and others who have been completely hardened to the gospel.  Why is there such a range of response?

In the passage above, Isaiah has just seen the Lord, and he has fallen before Him.  The Lord took a burning coal, touched his lips, and made him a vessel ready to bring the Word of the Lord.  In other words, Isaiah just experience repentance and faith from seeing his true condition before the Holy God and calling out for mercy.  Such a cry the Lord always answers!

After this conversion, Isaiah hears the voice of the Lord asking, "Whom shall I send, and who will go for us?"  Notice the plural "us", which demonstrates the multiple personhood of God, Father, Son, and Holy Spirit.  In response to this question, Isaiah says, "Here am I!  Send me."  The above passage is the message the Lord gives Isaiah.

So, why do some believe the message of the gospel and many others reject it?  The human condition apart from God's grace is that of deaf, blind, and hard-hearted to spiritual truth.  As Paul says, "And you were dead in your trespasses and sins."  Dead people cannot respond to outside stimuli!  Apart from being made alive again, they cannot respond.

I know this biblical teaching goes against what so many of us wish to believe.  Yet it is true.  We are dead to true spiritual situation unless the Lord opens our eyes, unstops our ears, and changes our hearts.  When He does, we turn or repent and we find healing!  

This teaching does not mean that we do not have a measure of a free will.  We can love our families and friends.  We can be honest.  We can be generous.  We can have good self-control.  We can even give up drinking or anything else we call a vice.  In other words, we are not robots!  Being created in the image of God gives us great gifts and abilities.

So what happened?  What is dead within us is the gift of Faith which brings us in repentant and trusting faith to the living God.  Such faith is foreign to our fallen human nature.  Without God's grace, we will not have living faith!

We need true revival because apart from God's grace we cannot bring lasting transformation to anyone. We may improve someone's morals.  We may help them have a positive outlook.  Yet, we cannot bring repentant faith apart from God's grace.  We cannot unstop their ears, open their eyes, or soften their hearts to the gospel.  Why?  Because apart from God's grace, they freely choose to walk in their own paths and decisions apart from repentant faith.

We need true revival in most parts of the world today!  Let's pray that God will send it.  Pray for individuals and groups of people that God will open their eyes and ears so they may see and hear the gospel.  Pray that they may have hearts softened and ready to respond.  May many turn and find healing for their souls!

Justification as the Key the Authentic Living

Today is the final day of 2011.  I am pleased that this post was the most viewed of 2011.  It is the heart of what I wish to proclaim.  It begins with a long quote from one of my seminary professors, Richard Lovelace, and it continues with some basic reflections upon this quote.  May the Lord bless your reading!  Happy New Year!

"Only a fraction of the present body of professing Christians are solidly appropriating the justifying work of Christ in their lives.  Many have so light an apprehension of God's holiness and of the extent and guilt of their sin that consciously they see little need for justification, although below the surface of their lives, they are deeply guilt-ridden and insecure.  Many others have a theoretical commitment to this doctrine, but in their day-to-day existence they rely on their sanctification for justification, in the Augustinian manner, drawing their assurance of acceptance with God from their sincerity, their past experience of conversion, their recent religious performance or the relative infrequency of their conscious, willful disobedience.  Few know enough to start each day with a thoroughgoing stand upon Luther's platform: you are accepted, looking outward in faith and claiming the wholly alien righteousness of Christ as the only ground for acceptance, relaxing in the quality of trust which will produce increasing sanctification as faith is active in love and gratitude."

Richard Lovelace, Dynamics of Spiritual Life, 101.

In recent years much of the scholarly literature on the gospel has turned away from Luther's understanding of justification to an understanding that emphasizes our faithfulness as the key to being right with God.  I think this theological move is rife with error on a number of fronts.  

The most important is that it dooms Christianity to be a religion for the strong- those who can get their act together through their will-power.  Such a theological move makes spirituality shallow, and it denies hope to those who are not smart enough or strong enough to make surface changes.  In a brief paragraph, Lovelace diagnoses the symptoms of shallow spirituality, and he describes the basis of true spirituality. 

Why?  First, Luther's though emphasizes the holiness of God.  Many of us do not understand the true holiness of God.  We have made God in our image instead of letting His image challenge and confront our sin.  Thus, we believe that surface changes are all that is needed to be "right with God".  

What is needed is a heart transformation not just surface changes!  Because we cannot change our heart, we feel guilt-ridden and insecure.  Instead of understanding the real issue of our heart, we blame others or events for our condition instead of confessing our need for God.  At other times, we profess belief in God’s work in Christ, but we judge our relationship with God by how well we are doing.  Again, we feel guilt-ridden and insecure, but what can we do about it?

Luther's answer is simple yet profound.  He consistently encourages us to believe the gospel.  The gospel is not just a ticket to heaven, but a way of daily life.  God does not just accept me, but He loves me!  Why?  Because of Jesus: His perfection and life have been given to me.  My righteousness comes wholly from Him.

From this point the entirety of Luther's and Protestant spirituality makes a consistent refrain: take time to remember and believe the gospel!  We often want something deeper, but what is deeper than the gospel?  Pray.  Read the Word of God.  Confess your sins and needs.  Repent of your self-effort and lack of faith.  Ask for grace to love others.  Make all these activities Gospel-centered.  Repeat daily.  

There really is nothing deeper than living in light of our new identity in Christ!