GIG 188 - Trusting the Power of God or the Ability of the Flesh

This is a continuation of last week's chat about God's Work in Us. We talk about the difference between trusting the life of Christ in us/God's power at work in us, and trusting in our own efforts. Are the things we do the result of the life of Christ expressing itself in and through us or are they the result of the abilities of the flesh?

gigcast.graceroots.org

Law keeper? Law breaker?

As a Christian, do you keep God's law? Do you break His law?

The answer to both is "no!"

As a Christian, do I keep God's law (am I a law-keeper)? You might see me walking righteously - not stealing, not committing adultery, honoring my parents, loving my neighbor as myself, etc, and you might say, "See, you're keeping God's laws!" To which I'd say, "No, I'm not!" I'm not looking to God's law as the source of my righteous living at all. Rather, what you see is an expression of the Life of Christ in me. I'm not following the law, I'm not keeping the law. What you see is me walking according to the Spirit of Christ who lives in me and who is my life.

As a Christian do I break God's law (am I a law-breaker)? You might see me doing unrighteous things - stealing, committing adultery (Matthew 5:28, anyone?), not honoring my parents, not loving my neighbor as myself, etc, and you might say, "See, you're breaking God's laws!" To which I'd say, "No, I'm not!" What you see is an expression of my flesh acting out in independence, rather than me walking according to my true identity in Christ and my union with Him.

In Christ I'm not a law keeper and I'm not a law breaker. I have died to the law. The only way I could "live to God" in the first place was to die to the law! How can I 'keep' or 'break' what I've died to? In fact that old written code was "wiped out." It was against me (no matter how well I kept it or how badly I broke it), and God took it out of the way, removing it completely. He nailed it to the cross. My life is no longer defined by law keeping or law breaking. My life is now defined by the Life of Christ in me, and nothing else! How has this become one of the church's best kept secrets???

Col 2:13-14
13 And you, being dead in your trespasses and the uncircumcision of your flesh, He has made alive together with Him, having forgiven you all trespasses, 14 having wiped out the handwriting of requirements that was against us, which was contrary to us. And He has taken it out of the way, having nailed it to the cross.

Gal 2:19-21
19 For I through the law died to the law that I might live to God. 20 I have been crucified with Christ; it is no longer I who live, but Christ lives in me; and the life which I now live in the flesh I live by faith in the Son of God, who loved me and gave Himself for me. 21 I do not set aside the grace of God; for if righteousness comes through the law, then Christ died in vain."

No Longer Identified By Sin

[No Longer Identified By Sin]

In the second of twenty articles that I wrote for Heartland Vineyard Church between 2005 and 2007, I decided to "introduce" myself to the rather large congregation. However, while I did mention some details about me and the activities in my life at the time, the main purpose was not to talk about "me," but to point to the Christian's identity as "saint" and not "sinner." (Note: I fully understand the difference in opinion among my friends here of the interpretation of the Apostle Paul's words about "sin that dwells in me." That's all right, and it's not the focus of this article).

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Hi, I’m Joel Brueseke. It has been no less than a wonderful, joyful experience for the past 5 years for my wife and I to worship with and connect with the various parts of Christ’s body who call the Vineyard their home, as we do. Along with our two children, Jared and Noelle, we thank God daily in our prayers for extending our family by a couple of thousand people! I work part time at Covenant Medical Center as a Courier and I work part time at the New 89.1-The Spirit (aka KWOF-850AM in Waterloo). You might know me as Joel Sommers on the radio, and if you do know me in that capacity, my sincerest apologies!

As I share a little bit more about myself, I’ll use someone else’s words to describe my thoughts:

“I tried keeping rules and working my head off to please God, and it didn't work. So I quit being a "law man" so that I could be God's man. Christ's life showed me how, and enabled me to do it. I identified myself completely with him. Indeed, I have been crucified with Christ. My ego is no longer central. It is no longer important that I appear righteous before you or have your good opinion, and I am no longer driven to impress God. Christ lives in me. The life you see me living is not "mine," but it is lived by faith in the Son of God, who loved me and gave himself for me.” (Paul, in Galatians 2:19-21, The Message)

My friend Mike Kapler (also with KWOF and this church) has often brought up that we humans tend to identify ourselves by what we “do.” You find out what other people “do” and you tell them what you “do.” “I’m a salesman.” “I’m a hairdresser.” “I do construction work.” “I work in radio.” “I race cars.” “I’m a pastor.” “I work in a factory.” In introducing myself above, I first told you what I “do.” But because what I do is generally the fruit of who I am, or even the fruit of who I perceive I am, I first want to grow in and be grounded in who I am.

The Bible says that my identity – who I am – is not “me” anymore! When I was born, I was identified with Adam and unfortunately it was a life which didn’t quite cut the mustard when it came to being right with God. So, as an act of His great love for us, God made a way for all of us who were born in Adam to be “born again” into Christ. But in order become this “New Creation,” as Paul phrases it in II Cor. 5:17 and Gal. 6:15, it was necessary for the old “me” to die. So, that identity was crucified with Christ. It is dead and buried, expired, six feet under, bereft of life, pushing up daisies. It’s rung down the curtain and joined the choir invisible. It’s stone dead. (Thanks to a Monty Python skit for those synonyms for DEAD!) My new identity (who I really, actually am) is identified by the very life of Christ in me.

Plainly put, before coming to Christ we were identified as “sinners.” Now, after coming to Christ by faith, we have a new identity as saints! As Bill Gillham writes in his book, “What God Wishes Christians Knew About Christianity,” and as our pastor has often said, we are not “sinners saved by grace.” It is grace alone which has saved us, but now in addition to having been forgiven of our sins, we have been made holy, blameless and righteous - saints! That is actually, factually what God has made us to be! He doesn’t just “see” us as holy and righteous. We are holy and righteous.

We do contain the capacity to sin, and the reason is that sin dwells “in” us (see Rom. 7:17,20). The good news is that we are not identified by what is in us but rather by who we actually are! When you have a virus “in” you, you don’t say “I am a virus” or “I am a runny nose and swollen tonsils.” What is in you might temporarily have power over your bodily functions, but it does not define who you are. In Christ, sin doesn’t define us. We are defined as a saints. Nothing we “do” can change that identity, just as nothing we did created that identity in the first place. It was all the work of God and it will always continue to be the work of God. The prodigal son didn’t lose his identity as a son, even when he went off and squandered his inheritance.

The book mentioned above says, “Believe you are a ‘sinner saved by grace’ and you’ll act like one; believe you are a holy, purified saint who admittedly sins at times, but who hates that life-style, and you’ll be highly motivated to act like such a saint.” Our new life in Christ is lived by trusting and resting in what God has already done, and in His very life which is in union with ours!

God doesn't need your good works - He produces them

The words of Paul that I shared in a post earlier this week from Titus 3:4-7 included these words: "He saved us, not because of righteous things we had done..."

That's something to cling on to and never forget! Our good works - our righteous deeds - play absolutely no part in getting us saved, (and if they play no part in getting us saved, they play no part in keeping us saved either - it's all by God's mercy and grace).

I suppose some could take this to mean that good works, or righteous deeds, are therefore irrelevant in the life of a Christian. Perhaps Paul had that thought in mind as he followed up those words about the wonderful gift of salvation in verses 4-7 with the words of verse 8:

This is a faithful saying, and these things I want you to affirm constantly, that those who have believed in God should be careful to maintain good works. These things are good and profitable to men.

In similar fashion, Paul also talks about good works in Ephesians 2:10, again, immediately after talking about how "by grace you have been saved through faith, and that not of yourselves; it is the gift of God, not of works, lest anyone should boast" (Eph 2:8-9).

He says:

For we are His workmanship, created in Christ Jesus for good works, which God prepared beforehand that we should walk in them.

I said all of the above to establish that "good works" are indeed a part of the life of the Christian. But unfortunately the error that legalists have made is to make "good works" out to be the root of the Christian life. That is, legalists say that good works are necessary to maintain salvation. In their eyes, the work of Christ is superseded by our good works that we do 'for' Him. But look at the two passages I just shared (and there are plenty more passages along this line) and notice two things. First, notice the purpose of good works. Second, notice the source of good works.

In the passage from Titus, Paul says that those who have believed in God should be careful to maintain good works. Why? Because these things are good and profitable to people. You're not going to score any points with God, especially in regards to maintaining your right standing before Him, through any effort of your own! No amount of good works will help to maintain your acceptance by Him. It's all by His grace. Your good works are simply an outflow of His working in you, as the passage from Ephesians implies. You are God's workmanship (you are not your own workmanship). He Himself - His very life in you - is the very source of your good deeds. The good works that He works in and through you are good and profitable to people!

"Let us not give up meeting together, as some are in the habit of doing," wrote the writer of Hebrews. Why? Was is so legalists could turn Sunday mornings and evenings, and Wednesday evenings, and whenever the church doors are open, into "service times" at a "building" that Christians should attend to maintain their good spiritual standing before God and man? It sure has been made out to be that way today, hasn't it? But rather, the real reason for the "good habit" of meeting together was simply to encourage one another and to spur one another on toward love and good deeds (Hebrews 10:24-25). It's pretty simply, really.

(By the way, have you ever looked at the surrounding context of Hebrews 10:24-25? Did the writer simply suddenly decide to add those two sentences out of the blue? What exactly was the "hope we profess" (vs. 23), that the writer had been writing about? I think it's worth spending some time with in order to understand how he led up to those words, and I encourage you to look at it on your own).

Good works are a fruit of our life in Christ. They are most certainly not the root by which our righteousness is established or maintained! Christ is the Vine. We are the branches of the vine. The LIFE is in the Vine, and the fruit grows not as the branches struggle and strive to produce fruit for the Vine, but as the LIFE of the vine flows into the branches as the branches abide - rest - in the Vine. The branches have no life in and of themselves to produce anything anyway! "Abide in Me," Jesus says, "and you will bear fruit."

In Christ, we have become one spirit with God (1 Cor 6:17). We have become partakers of the divine nature (2 Peter 1:4). It is God who works in us to will and to act according to His good purpose (Phil 2:13). All my evangelical life I've heard things like, "God's depending upon you to do His will." "God's counting on you to complete His work." Hold on a second! He's not depending upon us! He doesn't need us! He loves us and desires us, but AS IF He needed anything! We are jars of clay, fully dependent upon Him!

Analogous

Well I had to do this. :) I can't help but see an analogy between the story I shared about my coffee experience ("But the label is GREEN") and something else that happens in real life.

As I previously wrote, for about 3 or 4 weeks I was using coffee from a green coffee can that I thought was decaffeinated. The can was green, and decaf coffee comes in green cans, right? After a prolonged, unexplained buzz that I just couldn't seem to shake, and a very irritating and somewhat debilitating heaviness and pressure in my head, not to mention chest pain and a fluttering heart, I finally looked at the label and found out that the green coffee can from which I'd made almost a pot of coffee per day (because I'm a sick, twisted coffee freak) actually contained caffeinated coffee.

And so it can be with religion and religious duty vs. freedom and walking in the Spirit. Religion can often look very much like the thing we really want - spiritual living. We can drink from the religion can, working harder and harder out of our own self effort, trying to please God, trying to carve out some sort of spiritual legacy. It can indeed appear very good! And so we get used to the religious lifestyle, putting on the plastic smile and making others (and even ourselves) think that we've got it all together and that we've got this Christian thing down. But before long, we get to a place where we can't deny the pressure in our heads, our fluttering hearts, our chest pain - which may come to each of us in various forms - but no matter how it comes to us we realize that something is wrong about the way we're going about our Christian 'business.' We realize we've been drinking from the wrong can.

My hope and prayer for myself, and for you, is that God will continuously keep our eyes open to understand the subtle differences between fleshly religious duty and the life-giving, life-sustaining life of Christ that is within us. And that we'll always enjoy great coffee.