faith for faith

In my short life I have been a part of a few accountability groups and have witnessed a few in action, and I also have witnessed others confess things before the church seeking help with particular sins and weaknesses. And unfortunately, the way that confessed sin is oftentimes addressed is not with disgust and loving rebuke, but it is with an impotent sympathy that does more to ease the conscience of the confessor than it does to address the problem which he confessed. And I am not guiltless of this. I have had brothers confide struggles with me, and I have neglected their sin by assuring them that we all struggle with similar sins. What I should have done (and what we should do) is, even if we can sympathize with their struggle, address their sin in such a way that they would want to be rid of it, not so that they would feel better about themselves in their sinning.

For in addressing sin in this way, we are actually doing more harm than good, for instead of nurturing a public sort of conviction for the confessor so that he would be all the more diligent in the mortification of his sin, we downplay the seriousness of his sin and weaken the conviction that he has by our supposed sympathy. And while we might understand certain struggles and while we might share the same struggles, we should be wholeheartedly committed to the destruction of those sins rather than edifying a brother or sister with false edification.

When we think upon the declaration of Romans 8:28, namely that, “For those who love God, all things work together for good,” its implications are staggering. “All things work together for good, you say? Do you mean all things?”

Well, when we think upon the all things in Romans 8:28, we must understand it in its context. The apostle Paul is speaking there particularly of the suffering of the saints, manifesting itself in tribulation, distress, persecution, famine, danger, nakedness, and death (v. 35). These things seem to come to the saint from external sources, such as from those whom the apostle labels, “Life and death, angels and rulers, things present and things to come, powers, height and depth, and everything else in all of creation (vv. 38, 39). None of these things, the apostle says, “will be able to separate us from the love of God in Christ Jesus our Lord” (v. 39).

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Therefore, since our baptism into the death of Christ has crucified our old and fleshly man so that we would be set free from our slavery to sin, the apostle Paul exhorts the church to live in a way that is consistent with this reality. He gives this exhortation to the church, not because men who have been baptized into Christ are able to overpower the work of the Spirit of God, but because natural men have and always will find their way into the ranks of the fold of God. We know this is true because of the apostle’s later declarations in his discourse, and we see it clearly elsewhere in the promise of the surety of God’s work in the elect. The apostle writes, “I am confident of this very thing, that he who began a good work in you will perfect it until the day of Jesus Christ” (Ph. 1:6 NASB). For when God begins a work in a soul, he finishes it (cf. Rm. 8:29, 30).

Therefore the apostle gives this command to the church, “Let not sin therefore reign in you mortal bodies to make you obey its passions” (v. 6:12). In other words, do not submit yourself to the slavery of sin and let sin be your Lord so that you follow after the fleshly passions of your body. As those who have been baptized into the death of Jesus Christ, we are cleansed not only from the condemnation of our wicked deeds, but we are released from the slavemaster who commands them of us so that we can live our lives in such as way that we do not submit to the passions of our flesh. For now, Christ has redeemed our flesh so that which was once use for wickedness can now be used for the sake of righteousness.

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“Baptism is the most important event in the life of a child of God.” If one were to declare thus in a typical American Baptist church, that person would almost immediately be labeled a heretic or at least be charged with misunderstanding the Word of God. “Baptism is merely an outward picture of an inward reality,” they would answer. “Baptism does not save a soul.” To which I would respond, “A symbol of what?” To which they would reply, “Of dying with Christ and being raised with him.” “Which is what?” I would ask. To which I would expect an “I do not know,” or a “Being born again,” or an “Accepting of Jesus Christ as your personal Savior.”

The sad irony for most of us who call ourselves Baptists is that we bear baptism in our denominational title, yet we by and large have no clue what baptism is. In this way, we are much like the Circumcision party of whom the apostle Paul writes in Galatians 5 in that we, like them, bear the symbol of God’s covenant in our title, and, we, like them, understand the symbol of the covenant with great precision, and yet we do not understand the reality behind the symbol. We, like the Circumcision party, are zealously meticulous about practicing the symbol correctly, giving lectures and preaching sermons on why baptism by immersion is the only acceptable mode of baptism, all the while neglecting to teach upon the reality of baptism. We will harp upon the mode of the symbol to such detail so as to say that a baptizer cannot hold the nose of the one being baptized because dead people do not hold their noses, yet we neglect to teach that baptism is matter of the heart performed by the Spirit of God not by the letter of the law.

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And we all, with unveiled face, beholding the glory of the Lord, are being transformed into the same image from one degree of glory to another. For this comes from the Lord who is the Spirit (2Cor 3.18).

Listening to a rather enlightening sermon this weekend, I came to the realization that in my personal warring against the deeds of my flesh by the Spirit (cf. Rm. 8:17), I have been praying for the wrong things and searching for the wrong remedies. And though it is indeed comforting that in spite of my ignorance of how I ought to pray that the Spirit of God intercedes for me with groanings that accord with the will of God (cf. Rm. 8:26, 27), it is nevertheless wonderful and helpful when the Spirit shares his groanings with me either through his Word or through expositors of it.

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I had a great conversation the other day with one my wonderful brothers in Christ concerning our failings as believers and how we are to respond to those failings. And though such failings among God’s people are inevitable because of the nature of our present state in this age, we oftentimes do not know how to respond rightly to those failings. And it is not a simple issue. For when we fall into sin and temptation as children of God, our whole soul is cast into upheaval. For our mind understands our fall and logically seeks to rectify it, our heart feels it and is torn by it, our will comprehends it and strives against it, and our spirit is broken by it and feels as though it is severed from the very Spirit of God.

And because of this turmoil that captivates our souls when we fall into sin and by it turn from our God, we long to jump up quickly and turn back onto the path of obedience. However, despite our desire, the path back to obedience is not always as quick and easy as we would like it to be. And I have found this to be the case in my life, where I have walked the path of obedience and then, seemingly out of nowhere, fell into temptation and then found that the obedience that I desired to have was even more difficult than it was prior to my fall.

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Dear Reader,

It has been almost a year since I began writing at faithforfaith.org, and this post is the 200th in that time that began on October 1, 2008. I have written much in that time and have shared much that has been on my heart, and yet I have not been as transparent as I ought to have been in my writings. The fact is that though I have been saved by grace and have been made holy by Christ, my life is far from a picture of holiness. And while few would likely expect me to use this medium as a display of my shortcomings, I feel that it is my duty to be open about who I am so that, one, I might not boast in the façade of holiness that is erected by my writings, and, two, so that I might be humbled at the revelation of my failures. Therefore, this post is one of my failures and weaknesses, so that in all things I might be reckoned truthful and that Christ alone might receive the glory. Soli Deo gloria.

Confession 1: I am an Prideful Man
Though a casual reading of the Scriptures would reveal that God has accomplished all things so that no man might boast (cf. Rm. 3:27; Eph. 2:8), my heart is often inclined to boasting in myself. In spite of what I know to be true, namely that God ordains and controls all things so that he might get the glory in all things, I have at times fallen and wallowed in my self-centeredness and have boasted in that which I have no right to boast. And though I believe that I have come far in this regard from that time when God first called me to himself, I am often reminded by my own desire to be known and heard that I have far to go in humility. I confess that even at the times when my heart’s desire is to honor Christ, I have slipped into hoarding a slice of that glory for myself, and in that I am ashamed.

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There is therefore now no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus. For the law of the Spirit of life has set you free in Christ Jesus from the law of sin and death. For God has done what the law, weakened by the flesh, could not do, by sending his own Son in the likeness of sinful flesh and for sin, he condemned sin in the flesh, in order that the righteous requirement of the law might be fulfilled in us who walk not according to the flesh but according to the Spirit (Rm. 8:1-4).

In some ways, the Roman Road basis of evangelism has been both a blessing and curse to American Christianity. For on the one hand, the Romans Road has taken verses that are fundamental to the Faith and has made them well known to many, and yet, on the other hand, it has taken those same verses and ripped them from their contexts and has in the process watered down the Gospel.

For while it is indeed true that, “The wages of sin is death, but the free gift of God is eternal life in Christ Jesus” (v. 6:23), the verse taken from its context removes the very foundation of eternal life, namely regeneration and sanctification. For v. 6:23 is the apex of the apostle’s chain of salvific events that begins with identification with Christ in his crucifixion by baptism (v. 6:2), the freedom afforded by Christ’s death from the body of sin (v. 6:6; cf. v. 7:23) and thus from slavery to sin (v. 6:6; cf. v. 7:14, 25), and ends with the Christian’s being brought into slavery to obedience, to righteousness, and to sanctification, and sanctification’s end–eternal life (v. 6:16, 18, 19, 22). For the gift of God indeed is eternal life in Christ Jesus, however eternal life never comes apart from obedience, righteousness, and sanctification.

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There is little doubt that when the Holy Spirit through the prophet Moses penned the narrative of the life of Joseph that Joseph was portrayed in such a way to make him a pre-figuring of the coming Messiah promised in Genesis 3:15 and realized in Jesus Christ. We see this in the narrative sinlessness and blamelessness of Joseph (though we know he was a sinner, yet there is never any mention of his failings), and how, through the person of Joseph and his unmerited sufferings, that he saved God’s people from starvation and extinction and thereby fulfilled the Promise of God given to Abraham. In Sunday School yesterday, our teacher made an excellent observation concerning the narrative of Joseph and Potiphar’s wife found in Genesis 39. The observation was in the similarity between the Joseph’s temptation in the house of Potiphar and Adam’s temptation in the Garden. Both, though low in rank compared to their masters’, were given charge of their masters’ estate and were permitted to enjoy all things save one–in the case of Adam, eating from the Tree of Knowledge of Good and Evil, and in the case of Joseph, Potiphar’s wife. Both were tempted to take both, yet unlike Adam, Joseph did not fail. Where Adam did not succeed, Joseph did, thereby demonstrating the coming Messiah’s position as the Second Adam, the second head of the human race, who, rather than imputing his sin to his subjects as did Adam, imputes to his subjects his righteousness (cf. Rm. 5:12-21). Just as through Joseph’s righteousness and obedience, God saved Israel from physical annihilation, so too now through Christ’s righteousness and obedience, God has saved spiritual Israel from eternal destruction (cf. Gal. 6:16). Just a thought.

Through chapters two and three of Romans, there are seeming paradoxical and contradictory statements made by the apostle concerning the advantage that the Jews have over the Gentiles in having the written code and circumcision. We find first in Romans 2:13 the declaration that “it is not the hearers of the law who are righteous before God, but it is the doers of the law who will be made righteous.” Following this there is the condemnation of Jews who esteem themselves as teachers because they know the will of God and know what is excellent because they are instructed from the Law, but, though these know the law, they dishonor God by breaking the very law that they boast in and therefore cause the name of God to be blasphemed among the Gentiles by their hypocrisy. Therefore because they break the law, their circumcision is regarded as uncircumcision (v. 2:25), and those who are physically uncircumcised but keep the law are considered circumcised (v. 2:26), because circumcision and Jewish-ness is not an outward manifestation nor is it based upon physical descent exclusively, but it is a matter of the heart by work of the Spirit of God.

It is in chapter 3 that Paul makes his two seemingly contradictory statements. First he writes, “What advantage has the Jew? Much in every way. To begin with, the Jews were entrusted with the oracles of God” (vv. 3:1, 2). Okay, therefore the Jews’ having the oracles / the word of God is an advantage. Case closed. But then the apostle makes this statement a few verses later, “What then? Are we Jews any better off? No, not at all. For we have already charged that all, both Jews and Greeks, are under sin” (v. 3:9). In other words, oracles or no oracles, the state of Jews and Greeks are the same. Why?–Sin. Sin is the great equalizer. Sin has so captivated all men, both Jews and Greek, to such an radical degree so as to make written code / Scriptures of no benefit by itself. This is why apostle follows with this statement with the all familiar declaration of man’s natural state: “None is righteous, no, not one; no one understands; no one seeks God. All have turned aside; together they have become worthless; no one does good, not even one” (v. 3:10-12), and why the apostle writes earlier, “Circumcision is a matter of the heart by the Spirit” (v. 2:29). For just as no one is righteous on his own accord, so no one can circumcise his own heart to obedience. It is the Spirit’s work alone, not according to man’s will or exertion (cf. Jn. 3:6-8; Rm. 9:16).

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