John Wesley… Apparently Not a Christian

Via New Demonstration:

“In a letter to his brother Charles in June 1766, the Arminian evangelist John Wesley, now in his sixties, confesses that he does not and never did love God, believe or have the direct witness of divine sonship or even of things invisible or eternal. Read for yourself.

“In one of my last [letters] I was saying that I do not feel the wrath of God abiding on me; nor can I believe it does. And yet (this is the mystery), I do not love God. I never did. Therefore I never believed, in the Christian sense of the word. Therefore I am only an honest heathen…

And yet, to be so employed of God! And so hedged in that I can neither get forward nor backward! Surely there was never such an instance before, from the beginning of the world! If I ever have had that faith, it would not be so strange. But I never had any other evidence of the eternal or invisible world than I have now; and that is none at all, unless such as faintly shines from reason’s glimmering ray. I have no direct witness (I do not say, that I am a child of God, but) of anything invisible or eternal.“

“And yet I dare not preach otherwise than I do, either concerning faith, or love, or justification, or perfection. And yet I find rather an increase than a decrease of zeal for the whole work of God and every part of it. I am borne along, I know not how, that I can’t stand still. I want all the world to come to what I do not know.”

- Quoted in Stephen Tomkins, John Wesley, A Biography [Oxford: Lion Publishing, 2003], p. 168; italics mine)

From http://arminianheresy.blogspot.com/2006_06_01_archive.html“

… so…  just a really good salesman selling a really good product who had a really good career.

The Century of the Self or How We Have Been Played

(Disclaimer: This post may not be for everyone, but for students of 20th century history, psychology, sociology, marketing, media and politics, who are also believers in Christ, it think this documentary provides vital lessons. It should be watched through a filter of scripture, a few angles of which I have provided below.

Remember that “The chief end of man is to glorify God and enjoy Him forever”.

If you don’t want to be bombarded with all the worldly ills of “The American Century”, then you may want to invest your time elsewhere.)

“We must shift America from a needs to a desires culture.  People must be trained to desire, to want new things even before the old have been entirely consumed.  We must shape a new mentality in America.  Man’s desires must over shadow his needs.”

- Paul Mazer of the now bankrupt Lehman Brothers in the 1930’s

In 2002 the BBC aired a documentary series on the influence of Sigmund Freud and his family (and one of his students who rebelled against him) on America, via mass marketing, over the last hundred years. I watched it this week and it is one of most fascinating sociological documentaries that I have ever seen. If you are someone who has ever bought anything or had a worldview, you need to watch this.

I am a therapist, and was one long before I ever went to school. I naturally started falling into that role somewhere in junior high, and figured along the way that I should either stop it or learn how to do it right so I didn’t screw with people’s heads or their spiritual lives.

So I got a BS in Psych, with a concentration in child development, and an MS in clinical counseling with a concentration in adolescent and family therapy. During my upbringing under a good youth pastor and my education by good, ethical professors at Johns Hopkins, I had the same basic principle drilled into me:

That my skills and abilities were not to be used selfishly, to get what I wanted, but in the service of others, to meet their needs.

It was the message of Christ who gave up all his rights and power in order to serve sinners, and it is the message of good ethics in psychology where a therapists uses his power over his client to serve him in helping him to become more healthy, aware and functional. In both cases, stern warnings were given that those in power over another person were to tread very lightly as using the power that had been entrusted to them for selfish gain was wholly immoral and in the case of Christ, proof of being lost and bound for hell. (Matthew 23, Matthew 25:31-46).

As a result, it has always been difficult for me to watch those in power, both in the church and those in the mental health arena, abuse their power to serve their ego or their wallet. Watching this phenomena from the bottom of the societal food chain in my youth, (the best perspective for discerning who is who, but the worst place to be if one of the “wolves” are in power) it became clear that if you sat quietly and watched those in power closely enough, you could see who was who by their fruit. (Unfortunately I kept forgetting this lesson; failing to sit quietly and pay attention, put me to task to relearn this lesson a few times in life).

Which bring us to the BBC series, “The Century of the Self”.

It examines Freud’s basic thesis, shows us how his nephew Edward Bernays and his daughter Anna Freud, used them to control a nation and ultimately the western world.  It explains how one of his brilliant former students, Wilhelm Reich rebelled against him, and gave birth to the movement of overt narcissism that has personified the character of our country for the last 50 years.  It also introduces us to Matthew Freud, Sigmund’s great-grandson who currently heads Freud Communications, an international PR firm based in the UK.

I am embarrassed at how much I underestimated the influence of Freud while I was in school. I considered him someone that was only half right, and someone who clearly had sexual issues that he was projecting on all of society,  but since he was the first in his field, gave him props for getting some of the big brush strokes on how the human psyche worked. I could do so because I really thought that the damage he had done with his wrong and misapplied ideas was long over by the time I was born in the late 1960’s. Watching this I could not believe how much I had underestimated Freud’s influence on the world, and on ME!

As you watch this, consider the principle that Christ taught that we were made to serve God, and that spiritual gifts were meant to serve the Church. Consider that the core ethical principle for psychologists is, from the moment that someone walks into your office, or even knows that you are a therapist, is that you are to know you have power and influence over them, to know when you are using that influence, and to always be checking yourself to make sure you are using it for their benefit and not your own.

And keep in mind that if you love someone with the love of Christ, and the wisdom given to you by the Holy Spirit, that you will naturally do what Christ was described doing in Philippians 2:

Philippians 5:1-15

Therefore if there is any encouragement in Christ, if there is any consolation of love, if there is any fellowship of the Spirit, if any affection and compassion, make my joy complete by being of the same mind, maintaining the same love, united in spirit, intent on one purpose.

Do nothing from selfishness or empty conceit, but with humility of mind regard one another as more important than yourselves; do not merely look out for your own personal interests, but also for the interests of others.

Have this attitude in yourselves which was also in Christ Jesus, who, although He existed in the form of God, did not regard equality with God a thing to be grasped, but emptied Himself, taking the form of a bond-servant, and being made in the likeness of men.

Being found in appearance as a man, He humbled Himself by becoming obedient to the point of death, even death on a cross.

For this reason also, God highly exalted Him, and bestowed on Him the name which is above every name, so that at the name of Jesus every knee will bow, of those who are in heaven and on earth and under the earth, and that every tongue will confess that Jesus Christ is Lord, to the glory of God the Father.

So then, my beloved, just as you have always obeyed, not as in my presence only, but now much more in my absence, work out your salvation with fear and trembling; for it is God who is at work in you, both to will and to work for His good pleasure.

And watch how, in a very real sense, Sigmund, Anna and Edward functioned in very tangible ways as ‘anti-christs’. Note the comments made about their personalities by other family members, how cold they were, and how they didn’t like people. Note that Edward Bernays’ daughter tells us that he thought people were contemptible and he called his own children stupid.

And watch, how a powerful understanding of people and how they worked, combined with contempt for them, lead to powerful men using persuasive means to meet their own selfish goals brought on most of the worst ills of the 20th century and beyond.

I can trace my own sin, the worst episodes in my life, back a century, because I listened to the world who listened to brilliant men who hated them. I have been played and I let it happen still.

I have so much to repent of, and so much to learn to do and not to do.

As you watch, notice that one bright, shiny lie threads through the century, taking on different shapes and different permutations, but still remains the same lie told in the garden… that man is god.

And as you watch, consider your own power, because we all have some power and influence over someone, and how using it for selfish means (“Do what thou wilt” to quote Aleister Crowley the founder of modern Satanism) can start a chain reaction of destruction that can be traced for a hundred years and beyond.

As you watch, consider Christs call for us to be the church, the “Ecclesia”, the “called out”, and note that you are watching what it is we are to be called out fom.

And think of all the times you are right there with the crowd… and repent.

The Century of The Self: Part 1
Happiness Machines

The Century Of The Self – Happiness Machines 1 of 6

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The Century of The Self: Episode 2
The Engineering of Consent

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The Century of The Self: Episode 3
There is a Policeman Inside All Our Heads: He Must Be Destroyed

CONTENT WARNING: As this documentary is about the 60’s and 70’s free love movement, and aired in the UK where nudity on the tele is not verboten, there are a few scenes that many believers may want to avoid. I will note them on the specific video, and encourage those who are sensitive to such content to minimize the window and listen to the commentary with out the visuals. We all know what a disaster that era was, I am sure you can fill in your own visuals

The Century Of The Self – There is a Policeman Inside All Our Heads: He Must Be Destroyed 1 of 6

The Century Of The Self – There is a Policeman Inside All Our Heads: He Must Be Destroyed 2 of 6

The Century Of The Self – There is a Policeman Inside All Our Heads: He Must Be Destroyed 3 of 6

The Century Of The Self – There is a Policeman Inside All Our Heads: He Must Be Destroyed 4 of 6

CONTENT WARNING: group nudity from 7:40 to 7:60 and 8:40 to 9:00

The Century Of The Self – There is a Policeman Inside All Our Heads: He Must Be Destroyed 5 of 6

CONTENT WARNING: nudity from 2:17 to 2:22

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The Century of The Self: Episode 4
Eight People Sipping Wine in Kettering

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Biblical Ignorance: MacArthur on the Problem, Sproul on the Solution

During the Ligonier National Conference Q & A session, John MacArthur was asked, “What is the biggest threat to Christianity today?”

This was his answer.

Last week I got into a conversation with someone who had looked to the bible to find out what to do in a conflict with another believer who was upset with her and had accused her of sin.  She had read Matthew 5:21-26 which contains the command, that:

“…if you are presenting your offering at the altar, and there remember that your brother has something against you, leave your offering there before the altar and go; first be reconciled to your brother, and then come and present your offering.”

However she had also read that Paul and Barnabas had been in conflict (the details of which are vague and don’t seem to include charges of wrong doing but rather a disagreement over a staffing decision), and had parted ways, only to be reconciled later.  She decided that she would use that story as her guide and not practice the didactic teaching found in Matthew 5 by going to be reconciled to her former friend, instead hoping that things would just get better like they did for Paul and Barnabas. Years of estrangement has followed because this woman (seemingly sincerely)  believed that she didn’t have the obligation to go to her sister in Christ and ask the simple question, “What have I done wrong”, and listen to her correction.

The most upsetting thing about this story? This woman is not just a church member, was not just raised in the evangelical church for more than three decades, she is a lay leader in a position that oversees around two hundred people and has been so for around five years.

Sadly John MacArthur is right on.  Professing Christians don’t know the bible or how to interpret the bible.

So I am stealing a post by Harry over at Salvation By Grace (whom I also stole the MacArthur quote from) that outlines RC Sproul’s teaching to Christians how to interpret the Bible.

Note that we are to interpret the narrative by the didactic, the implicit by the explicit, and the obscure by the clear.

The outline is followed by the audio of Sproul’s lesson

R.C. Sproul on How to Study the Bible

R.C. Sproul from 2005 Ligonier National Conference

Fundamentals of biblical interpretation, from his book “Knowing Scripture”

There is only one meaning in interpretation of scripture

10 practical rules for biblical interpretation

• 1. Read the bible like reading any other book
  • the bible is the only book that comes to us from the inspiration of God and in that sense it is unique among books, but a verb is a verb and a noun is a noun – there is nothing spiritual that changes the basic grammatical, historical sense in which the bible was written
  • no “lucky dip”
• 2. Read it existentially
  • not through the prism of existential philosophy
  • do not read it as a removed ancient document
  • try to get in the sandals of Abraham
  • enter into the reality of scripture as it is presented
  • become passionately involved in what you are reading, not just a spectator
  • put yourself under the microscope and you find yourself being judged by God instead of you judging the word
• 3. Interpret the narrative by didactic
  • the bible will tell you a story and later on like in the epistles you read the meaning of the narrative
  • if you are there watching the crucifixion, it is not immediately clear to you that what is happening here is a cosmic act of atonement – you need the didactic portion of scripture to explain those events to you
  • what happens if you interpret the didactic by the narrative?
    • his complaint with Pentecostal theology is that it interprets Pentecost in a way that is completely opposed to the NT interpretation of Pentecost
      • it’s view of Pentecost is too low, because they submerge the didactic portion of scripture to inference drawn from the narrative
    • even worse the scourge in Evangelism today is open theism – it is now trying to persuade you that the Lord God omniscient, is not the Lord God omniscient, that He does not know all things, he doesn’t know what you are going to do before you do it, because there is no way He can know the future of free events done by moral agents and the bible proves it because in the narratives we see Abraham offering Isaac and the angel coming and saying “now I know that you are going to obey Me.”
      • and they heap up these verses of God’s relenting and God’s repenting and they say see the Bible teaches that God changes His mind, He is not immutable, that God learns things, he is not omniscient, and this justifies our gastly theology – never mind the portions of scripture that God is not a man that He should not repent and teaches you didactly and that God does know what you are going to say before you say it even though in the narrative it may be told from a human perspective as if God were learning – you are kept from coming to that conclusion by the didactic portion – interpret scripture by scripture
• 4. Interpret the implicit from the explicit, not the explicit from the implicit
  • this would be the death blow to Arminianism
  • John 3:16
    • whosoever
      • this means everybody has the moral power to choose Jesus and all who do will be saved
      • He cannot find in that passage
        • the text says all who do A, will not receive B, and will recieve C
        • all who believe will not perish – all who are in the category of believers will not be included in the category of those who perish, but will be included in the category of those who inherit eternal life
        • what the text teaches explicitly: that is what the text tells us, it tells us what happens to those who believe versus those who do not beleive
        • now what does it say to the question of who has the moral power to believe – NOTHING
        • what does the bible say explicitly about natural man’s ability to incline himself to Christ or to things of God
          • John 6:44 “No one can come to me unless the Father who sent me draws him.”
          • People trump this explicit teaching from something implicit from the same author just three chapters earlier
        • Luther said you interpret the obscure from the clear, not the clear from by the obscure
• 5. Pay close attention to the meaning of individual words
  • This is the danger of dynamic equivalency translations
  • So many times in the bible debates are settled on the meaning of individual words
  • Woman is to be saved in childbearing (1 Tim 2:15)
    • saved means salvation
    • saved also means from any type of danger or peril situation
    • Paul is not saying there are two ways for ultimate salvation
      • Justification by faith for men
      • Justification by having babies for women
        
• 6. Be careful to recognize the presence of certain literary forms especially in poetic portions of scripture of which there are many and one thing we need to learn are the basic types of parallelism found in Hebrew literature
  • Is 45:6-7
    • God does not create evil
      • there are at least eight different types of evil the bible speaks about
      • God brings peace and prosperity and also brings calamity, there is a contrast there
  • We need to know the difference between proverbs and law
    • in addition to the different types of law in the OT (absolute law and case law) we also have proverbs and proverbs cannot be turned into law
      • Proverbs 26:4-5
        • this is not a contradiction
        • the proverbs give general principles of wisdom that in some circumstances show us what is the wise thing to do and sometimes it is wise not to answer a fool according to his folly and other times it is the better part of wisdom to show the fool the folly of his folly
• 7. The spirit and the letter of the law
  • The Pharisees were guilty in keeping the letter of the law and ignoring the spirit of the law and what God wants from his people is to keep the spirit of the law not the letter of the law
  • No what God wants from his people is to keep the spirit of the law and the letter of the law
  • we excuse our violations of the letter of the law by saying well I am keeping the spirit of the law and trampling all over what God actually says
• 8. Take very special care with parables remembering parables are for the most part not to be interpreted as allegories (a figurative mode of representation conveying a meaning other than the literal), one is at least, but most are not
  • most parables have one only central meaning and if you try to find meaning of each part of a parable you will find yourself in all kinds of trouble
• 9. Be careful with predictive prophesy – take it seriously, study it deligenlty, but be very, very careful to check your interpretation particularily of imaginative language by taking the laborious task if you see a difficult symbol or image and see what its usage is in scripture
• 10. Don’t just rely on your own relationship with the Holy Ghost – God has given teachers to the church

Legalism, Liberalism and True Grace

I got into two discussions on legalism this week with people in a liberal church. It seemed that their understanding of legalism/phariseeism extended to cover someone (like me) who insists that professing Christians be obedient to scripture and repent when they fail to do so, and (like me also) someone who harshly rebukes church leadership who are rebelling against God’s word.

I never got to finish either conversation to find out for sure.

However, I, being someone like me, feel the need to have a more thorough examination of the matter, so I wrote a more lengthy discussion of the Legalism/Liberalism/True Grace discussion that Keller et. al. were discussing in my last blog post….

Legalism, Liberalism and True Grace

Legalism - works with out faith

Legalism is the idea that The Law can save you (The Law being the OT and/or NT commands of God depending on if you claim to be a Jew or a Christian). That by conforming to every Letter of The Law you earn God’s favor and earn your way to heaven. In this practice Law usurps Grace.

This is wrong on many levels, the first of which is that no one can fulfill the law, all have sinned and fallen short of the glory of God, so no one can earn God’s favor through a lifetime of focused obedience. Another is that, if this was actually possible, then there would have been no need for Jesus to come to earth and die for our sins. And of course the message of Jesus and the entire NT is that salvation is through faith in Christ.

This is what the Pharisees were practicing. But in truth, they were not even practicing legalism (since it cannot actually truly be practiced by man as all are fallen and will always sin), because they were still violating portions of the law.

Matt 23:23
“Woe to you, scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites! For you tithe mint and dill and cummin, and have neglected the weightier provisions of the law: justice and mercy and faithfulness; but these are the things you should have done without neglecting the others.”

They disobeyed the command in Proverbs 31:8-9 to defend the rights of the poor, in fact, abusing their legal authority to confiscate the homes of women whose husbands had died and could not defend themselves. They disobeyed Micah 6:8 which commanded them to “do justice, love mercy and walk humbly with God”. They were unjust, would not extend grace when it was appropriate, and were arrogant. They made a false claim that obedience to a standard could save, and claimed to be living up to that standard (both were lies). They were lawyers who abused The Law privately while running a great PR campaign of public holiness.

Matthew 23:28
Woe to you, scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites! For you are like whitewashed tombs which on the outside appear beautiful, but inside they are full of dead men’s bones and all uncleanness. “So you, too, outwardly appear righteous to men, but inwardly you are full of hypocrisy and lawlessness.

They had also actually added to the commands of God, and then were holding the people accountable to things that God never said, all to their advantage of course. In Matthew 12 when the Pharisees scold Jesus and the disciples, they were scolding them for breaking the Pharisees version of the rules that came from The Law, while they never actually broke The Law.

God called men to keep the sabbath holy and not to work on that day.

Exodus 34:21
“Six days you shall work, but on the seventh day you shall rest. In plowing time and in harvest you shall rest.

The Pharisees then redefined what was “work” and then tried to accuse Jesus and his boys of sin. Jewish farmers were not to harvest on the Sabbath, but there is no rule against picking food off the stalk to eat any more than there was for picking up food off a plate to eat.

Matthew 12:1-2
“Jesus went through the grainfields on the Sabbath, and His disciples became hungry and began to pick the heads of grain and eat. But when the Pharisees saw this, they said to Him, “Look, Your disciples do what is not lawful to do on a Sabbath.”

At this point my husband likes to ask, “What were the Pharisees doing hanging out in a grain field?” They were likely following them around, trying to trap Jesus and his disciples doing ANYTHING so they could claim that they were in sin by breaking the Sabbath. Eating was the worst accusation they could come up with.

Jesus responds by pointing out their sin and hypocrisies and then healing a man to make them mad.

Again… no law against healing on the Sabbath, but he knew that because they had artificially narrowed the meaning of “no work” (orthodox Jews still believe that it is sin to flip a light switch on the sabbath), the would take exception to what He was doing. However, I think you would have a hard time making the argument that healing a man’s hand was “work” for the God who spoke the entire universe into existence.

Also note the accusation by inference that the pharisees made in verse 10, “Is it lawful to heal on the Sabbath?”  They knew it was, as they had no law to refer to and say, “Look here Jesus, it is written that you cannot heal people on the Sabbath”, so they could only infer that He was doing something wrong. In addition, their tone was not of worry for Jesus and the disciples, that they were offending God and should repent. Merely accusations with out an offer of grace or mercy.

Jesus again pointed out their hypocracy and then brought them around to the “Spirit of the Law” argument, that the Sabbath was made to replenish man, not to burden him further with silly rules that God never made. They had redefined the law to the point that the law became meaningless and absurd. If you worked for me and I told you to take the day off so you could relax, then dropped by your house to find you gardening because that is your hobby, and claimed that you were defying me, that would be stupid. You would be using your “sabbath” exactly for what I (and God) had intended.

Out of this passage comes a LOT of false doctrine and a heresy that is opposite to Legalism – Liberalism.

People claim that this was Jesus breaking the law and saying it was OK to break the law. That Jesus was saying “The spirit of the law is what is important, not the letter of the law”, but that flies in the face of everything else he taught.

See my post on East Coast v. West Coast Heresy.

If you are in the West, or in an “Emergent Church” look out for the opposite heresy…

Liberalism - faith with out works (Antinomianism)

This is the idea that one can have faith in God that saves him, and because man is saved by “faith alone”, obedience to the law is unnecessary.

Paul dismissed this idea in Romans, and James spent his whole book putting nails in the coffin of this heresy. Faith that does not result in good works, obedience to the whole of scripture, is not saving faith. It is just making a claim to a faith that you don’t actually have.

James 2:17-20
“Even so faith, if it has no works, is dead, being by itself.

But someone may well say, “You have faith and I have works; show me your faith without the works, and I will show you my faith by my works.”

You believe that God is one, You do well; the demons also believe, and shudder.

But are you willing to recognize, you foolish fellow, that faith without works is useless?

Was not Abraham our father justified by works when he offered up Isaac his son on the altar?

You see that faith was working with his works, and as a result of the works, faith was perfected; and the Scripture was fulfilled which says, “AND ABRAHAM BELIEVED GOD, AND IT WAS RECKONED TO HIM AS RIGHTEOUSNESS,” and he was called the friend of God.

You see that a man is justified by works and not by faith alone.”

The passage where Jesus heals the man with the withered hand in the temple is often misused to back the assertion that Christians can ignore scriptural commands, don’t have to repent after doing so, and are still right with God. That the “Spirit of the Law” is more important than the “Letter of the Law”.

But that is just as heretical as Legalism.

In fact Jesus Himself says that people who claim to be believers and don’t practice good works are not Christians:

Matthew 7:15-26
“Beware of the false prophets, who come to you in sheep’s clothing, but inwardly are ravenous wolves.

“You will know them by their fruits. Grapes are not gathered from thorn bushes nor figs from thistles, are they? “So every good tree bears good fruit, but the bad tree bears bad fruit. “A good tree cannot produce bad fruit, nor can a bad tree produce good fruit. “Every tree that does not bear good fruit is cut down and thrown into the fire.

“So then, you will know them by their fruits.

“Not everyone who says to Me, ‘Lord, Lord,’ will enter the kingdom of heaven, but he who does the will of My Father who is in heaven will enter.

“Many will say to Me on that day, ‘Lord, Lord, did we not prophesy in Your name, and in Your name cast out demons, and in Your name perform many miracles?’ “And then I will declare to them, ‘I never knew you; DEPART FROM ME, YOU WHO PRACTICE LAWLESSNESS.’

“Therefore everyone who hears these words of Mine and acts on them, may be compared to a wise man who built his house on the rock. “And the rain fell, and the floods came, and the winds blew and slammed against that house; and yet it did not fall, for it had been founded on the rock. “Everyone who hears these words of Mine and does not act on them, will be like a foolish man who built his house on the sand.

Notice that those rejected by Christ put forward their great public works, and Jesus points out their rebellion to His commands. Note that Jesus says the difference between those whose houses stood and those whose fell were their actions (because actions spring from the heart and will prove or disprove a man’s claim of faith).

John 14:21-24
He who has My commandments and keeps them is the one who loves Me; and he who loves Me will be loved by My Father, and I will love him and will disclose Myself to him.”

Judas (not Iscariot) said to Him, “Lord, what then has happened that You are going to disclose Yourself to us and not to the world?”

Jesus answered and said to him, “If anyone loves Me, he will keep My word; and My Father will love him, and We will come to him and make Our abode with him. “He who does not love Me does not keep My words; and the word which you hear is not Mine, but the Father’s who sent Me.

Obedience to scripture is necessary for salvation, in fact it is proof of salvation. Claiming that you are saved with out good works is like claiming that someone is alive despite having no heartbeat or respiration. That might be true for 10 minutes or so, but after a sustained absence of “proof of life”, its a pretty sure bet that the subject is dead in both cases.

Liberalism says that only “The Spirit of The Law” is important and that “The Letter of The Law” may be ignored.

This argument can be used to excuse ANY sin, or any pattern of sin, including unrepentant sin, while still claiming to be a Christian.

Legalism and Liberalism – both just two sides of the same coin

In the end, both of these approaches are just different ways to excuse your own unrepentant sin (whether it be the sin of unbelief or the sin of disobedience) while laying claim to being in Christ. In our sin and selfishness, we usually have a dominant practice, but switch into the other when it suits us.

The Legalist unrepentantly sins in private, claiming he has no sin. The Liberal unrepentantly sins in public, claiming it is not sin. They both claim to be right with Christ when they are not.

Which brings us to the most important part:

True Saving Grace – faith AND works! WHEEE!!!!!

The entirety of the New Testament teaches we are saved by our faith in Christ, He thus attributes HIS righteousness to our account (which all have negative balances) and fills us with the Holy Spirit who does good works through us.

Any who claim that either “The Spirit of The Law” or “The Letter of The Law” is more important are both wrong.

God has commanded us to obey both the Spirit of The Law AND The Letter of The Law!

Let’s go back to the first verse I quoted:

Matt 23:23
“Woe to you, scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites! For you tithe mint and dill and cummin, and have neglected the weightier provisions of the law: justice and mercy and faithfulness; but these are the things you should have done without neglecting the others.”

God didn’t tell the Pharasees to start neglecting the Letter of The Law, but to honor both.

And most importantly, when we are in a right relationship with God, knowing how sinful we are and how undeserving of His amazing Love we are, we WANT TO EMPHASIZE BOTH!

Please see my previous post on justification of lying, which ask the question, “Hey wait… shouldn’t we WANT to tell the truth in the first place?”

Our salvation is priceless. We deserved prison and he gave us a castle.

True Love and Gratitude toward Christ + True humility = True Desire to Please God Through Obedience!

So if we are tempted to start making up rules that we can keep to justify ourselves via good works and practicing legalism, then we just need check the humility meeter, realize what big fat failures we are, and figure out why we are rejecting God’s freely given grace?

And if we don’t feel like being obedient to scripture, then we just need stop the madness and go back and find our first love!

If we find ourselves resisting obedience to Christ’s direction (which includes loving enemies and always offering grace), that is our signal that we need to stop what we are doing, wander back to the cross, throw ourselves in a pile before God and let Him do his work in us through the Holy Spirit.

When that happens we neither dismiss the Letter of The Law nor The Spirit of The Law. We learn to love the law like Christ did, wonder at its brilliance and worship the genius God who created it.

East Coast Heresy v. West Coast Heresy

This is an interesting conversation between Tim Keller, John Piper and D.A. Carson where Keller touches on something relevant to those who I have been getting to know who have come out from the dying evangelical church. He was discussing the different ways that people approach Christianity and noted the two false understandings and practices in the faith. He then contrasted them with the one true way. He said this:

Keller: “Do you see… that there are three ways to live, which is… there is moralism/pharaseeism, there is Gospel Christianity and there is hedonism/relativism…. I think the opposite of moralism is cheap grace.

I really appreciated reading Bonhoeffer’s “Cost of Discipleship” in the earliest days of my Christian life. Especially when you realize he was writing it in the context of the German Church which had capitulated to Hitler, and had essentially turned to Luther’s justification by Grace as a way of basically avoiding the importance of prophetic, moral seriousness.

So what Bonhoeffer had to say was this grace of God is free to you, but costly to God. And the law and the will of God is so important, the moral absolutes of God are so important, the God couldn’t just forgive us. Jesus had to die. To turn away His wrath against our sin. To pay the penalty. If you see that… I consider this a paradox.

On the one hand, I see that the law of God is so serious, that it cost Jesus His life. And when I see that the Bible says, “Thou shalt not commit adultery, sex is for just inside marriage”, I have to take that seriously. It cost Jesus His life that humans were violating that. You can never look at that with out fear and trembling.

But at the same time, I am told, that despite my imperfections, that there is no condemnation for me ever again, even if I screw up in the future. That is the paradox.

Because when you say its costly grace, you can’t be morally lax, and at the same time you can’t always be beating yourself up about your failures. And it is tough for a pastor have both those shoes drops.”

Piper: “So you must then think… Gospel centered…”

Keller: “And the word “centered” gets across this idea, [using his hands, on one side] ‘cheap grace, [on the other side] ‘moralism’, [in the center] “Gospel”. [On one side] ‘relativism”, [on the other side] ‘legalism’, [in the center] “Gospel”. Something balanced, and yet at the same time, not a compromise, about the Gospel. That really sets it apart from even, I would have to say, from fundamentalism and liberalism. I guess if you define fundamentalism in the more negative sense of separatist, legalistic. Liberalism defined in the more negative sense of relativistic.

..We are Gospel centered.”

When I get into conversations with people who have fled churches that were not preaching, practicing and enamored with the True Gospel, we don’t have to be talking long to figure out which wrong their old church was practicing, legalism or liberalism. And not surprisingly, those who have been jacked by a church on the east coast or in the south, are more likely to be condemning legalism and those like us who left a church on the west coast are condemning liberalism.

Thought with the spread of the uber liberal emergent movement, those lines blurring.

But I have also noticed that those coming out of one trap become vulnerable toward the other. I have seen those fleeing liberalism overshoot the True Gospel and trip into liberalism, and those who become unshackled from legalism be seduced by liberalism.

As we leave our respective dead churches, looking for the thing that was missing, let us not abandon either obedience/repentance or forgiveness/grace, but remember that repentance and forgiveness are two sides of the same coin and you can never find one with out the other.

Voddie Baucham on Brokenness

The Fruit of Persecution

Whom the Lord loves, He reproves. Persecution disciplined Richard Wurmbrand, and he found out who he really was.

Matt Chandler: Jesus Wants the Rose

I saw this video from Matt Chandler and it has summed up my anger with what poses as the “church leadership” more succinctly than anything that I have seen since we started on this journey to understand, recover from and shine the light on the corruption of the American evangelical church.

That these false shepherds have lost the gospel, both missing the spirit of it and the letter of it, and are teaching worldly lessons that cannot save, while allowing the lost to believe that they not only saved, but often qualified for church leadership.

The link to the entire talk, entitled “Shepherds and Unregenerate Sheep”, is here.

He goes on to talk about his bitterness toward the what I think you could call Churchanity following this experience.

He, like us, became itinerant, but God’s ultimate call for Matt Chandler has been to send him back into evangelicalism as a missionary to the dead church. “To reach the lost in the culturally Christian south”

The bitterness he describes is something that we wrestled with constantly for the first year after we left Bel Air, working always to ‘never let the sun go down on our anger’. We are still in jeopardy of falling into it when the evil spirit that we walked away from tries to punch a hole back into our world, but God has given us a wonderful tool bag to pull from on how not to allow righteous anger to turn to bitterness, and how to move quickly into humility.

I need to spend some time writing about that.

But… for today… if you are in danger of falling into bitterness because of the unrepentant sin of a pastor who is in the pulpit lying to his dying congregation, remember that you are just as unworthy of Christ’s love, attention and sacrifice. And then listen to this piece by Voddie Bachum.

After you remember where who you are in relationship to God and where you stand, then when you go back to deal with the problem of the dead church posing as the living church and loving your enemies, praying for those who persecute you, and finding the right balance of speaking the truth in love is not so difficult.

But don’t stop calling out the negligent homicide that is going on by men like the ones that Matt Chandler is describing.

San Diego Requires Home Bible Study to Get Permit or Shut Down

This is truly outrageous. World Net Daily is reporting that a pastor has been holding a bible study of about 15 people at his house and a county government official knocked on their door to investigate and demand that they pay thousands of dollars for a permit to do so.

“Do you have a regular weekly meeting in your home? Do you sing? Do you say ‘amen’?” the official reportedly asked. “Do you say, ‘Praise the Lord’?”

The pastor’s wife answered yes.

She says she was then told, however, that she must stop holding “religious assemblies” until she and her husband obtain a Major Use Permit from the county, a permit that often involves traffic and environmental studies, compliance with parking and sidewalk regulations and costs that top tens of thousands of dollars.”

So I guess you can have an Oprah book club for free, but have to pay to have a Jesus book club? Absurd.

Reposting the whole article:

FAITH UNDER FIRE
Home: No place for Bible study
County demands pastor spend thousands on ‘Major Use’ permit to host friends
Posted: May 22, 2009
5:13 pm Eastern

By Drew Zahn
© 2009 WorldNetDaily

A San Diego pastor and his wife claim they were interrogated by a county official and warned they will face escalating fines if they continue to hold Bible studies in their home.

The couple, whose names are being withheld until a demand letter can be filed on their behalf, told their attorney a county government employee knocked on their door on Good Friday, asking a litany of questions about their Tuesday night Bible studies, which are attended by approximately 15 people.

“Do you have a regular weekly meeting in your home? Do you sing? Do you say ‘amen’?” the official reportedly asked. “Do you say, ‘Praise the Lord’?”

The pastor’s wife answered yes.

She says she was then told, however, that she must stop holding “religious assemblies” until she and her husband obtain a Major Use Permit from the county, a permit that often involves traffic and environmental studies, compliance with parking and sidewalk regulations and costs that top tens of thousands of dollars.

And if they fail to pay for the MUP, the county official reportedly warned, the couple will be charged escalating fines beginning at $100, then $200, $500, $1000, “and then it will get ugly.”

Dean Broyles of the Western Center for Law & Policy, which has been retained to represent the couple, told WND the county’s action not only violates religious land-use laws but also assaults both the First Amendment’s freedom of assembly and freedom of religion.

“The First Amendment, in part, reads, ‘Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion or prohibiting the free exercise thereof,’” Broyles said. “And that’s the key part: ‘prohibiting the free exercise.’ We believe this is a substantial government burden on the free exercise of religion.”

He continued, “If one’s home is one’s castle, certainly you would the think the free exercise of religion, of all places, could occur in the home.”

Broyles confirmed the county official followed through on his threat. The pastor and his wife received a written warning ordering the couple to “cease/stop religious assembly on parcel or obtain a major use permit.”

“The Western Center for Law and Policy is troubled by this draconian move to suppress home Bible studies,” said the law center in a statement. “If the current trends in our nation continue, churches may be forced underground. If that happens, believers will once again be forced to meet in homes. If homes are already closed by the government to assembly and worship, where then will Christians meet?”

On a personal note, Broyles added, “I’ve been leading Bible studies in my home for 13 years in San Diego County, and I personally believe that home fellowship Bible studies are the past and future of the church. … If you look at China, the church grew from home Bible studies. I’m deeply concerned that if in the U.S. we are not able to meet in our homes and freely practice our religion, then we may be worse off than China.”

Broyles also explained to WND that oppressive governments, such as communist China or Nazi Germany, worked to repress home fellowships, labeling them the “underground church” or “subversive groups,” legally compelling Christians to meet only in sanctioned, government-controlled “official” churches.

“Therein lies my concern,” Broyles said. “If people can’t practice their religious beliefs in the privacy of their own homes with a few of their friends, that’s an egregious First Amendment violation.”

WND contacted a spokeswoman for San Diego County, who acknowledged the description of the incident seemed “bizarre,” but who was unable to locate the details of the account. She simply could not provide comment yet, she said, until she could become familiar with the case.

Broyles said the WCLP is nearly ready to file a demand letter with the county to release the pastor and his wife from the requirement to obtain the expensive permit. If the county refuses, Broyles said, the WCLP will consider a lawsuit in federal court.

Broyles also told WND the pastor and his wife are continuing to hold the Bible study in their home.

Bible-Man or Jesus-Man?

As Tim Keller says, “Men are idol factories”. We are always falling in love with one created thing or another, and loving it more than the creator of the thing.

I have recognized that I do this with scripture.

The bible is genius! When I read that thing, after reading it for three decades, and make new connections or have some new insight, I truly love it. I am continually astonished at the wisdom that is contained in in, and wowed when implement some new practice of obedience and watch what happens. God was so smart when He wrote that thing.

But I also realized that I get so wowed with the text, and how actually ‘living’ it is, that I can seek exchanges with it over the God who wrote it.

I can become infatuated with the law and forget the law giver.

I think that this phenomenon is one that reformed believers should watch especially carefully for, as we tend to connect with God on an intellectual basis via scripture most frequently. It may be harder to notice if we begin to worship truth itself.

Terry Rayburn at Grace for Life offers me this good reminder:

One of the most important verses in all of the Bible is John 5:39…

Jesus said, “You search the Scriptures, because you think that in them you have eternal life; and it is these that bear witness of me”. The Pharisees and scribes were Bible scholars, but they missed the Messiah, Who was the Author.

I love the Bible. I love the Word of God. I believe it is all inspired (God-breathed) and “inerrant in the original”, and that we should let it “dwell in us richly”.

But having said that, here are four reasons why John 5:39 is such an important verse:

1. Relationship is more important than raw data. Dictionary definition of “Data”: Factual information, especially information organized for analysis or used to reason or make decisions. Jesus is not data. He is our Shield, Defender, Advocate, Savior, Lord, Brother, Friend, and Beloved. A relationship to Him is even more important than info about Him.

2. A Guide is more important than a Guidebook. Don’t think of the Bible as “The Owner’s Manual”, used for fixing up your life. See Jesus on every page, lovingly guiding as you walk this road of life arm in arm.

3. Life is more important than Lists. I love Bible lists as much as the next guy. The Kings of Judah, Wells of the Bible, Furniture of the Temple, etc. But Jesus said, “I came that they may have life, and have it abundantly.” (John 10:10) We can’t say, “He who reads the Bible every day, has life”. But we can say, “He who has the Son, has life”. (1 John 5:12)

4. Spiritual understanding is more important than scholarship. The “scholars” of the Jesus Seminar, or some Time Magazine article on who Jesus really was, are often blind. They are brilliant scholars, but “The natural [unregenerate, unsaved] man cannot understand spiritual things, for they are foolishness to him. He cannot understand them for they are spiritually discerned.” (1 Corinthians 2:14)

If we miss Jesus, then searching the Scripture is worse than worthless. It’s “always learning and never able to come to a knowledge of the Truth” (2 Timothy 3:7). But if we search the Scriptures for Him, then we will know Him Who is the Way, the Truth and the Life.

The bible is after all a created thing.