Monthly Archives: March 2016

“It is Finished”

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The cross of Christ represents the end of earning, the end of seeking God’s approval based on our own “sacrifices.” This is why the writer of Hebrews specifies that one of the crucial differences between Jesus and the system of the past is the finality of the cross:

 11 And every priest stands daily at his service, offering repeatedly the same sacrifices, which can never take away sins. 12 But when Christ had offered for all time a single sacrifice for sins, he sat down at the right hand of God, 13 waiting from that time until his enemies should be made a footstool for his feet. 14 For by a single offering he has perfected for all time those who are being sanctified.

15 And the Holy Spirit also bears witness to us; for after saying,

16 “This is the covenant that I will make with them
after those days, declares the Lord:
I will put my laws on their hearts,
and write them on their minds,”

17 then he adds,

“I will remember their sins and their lawless deeds no more.”

18 Where there is forgiveness of these, there is no longer any offering for sin.  (Hebrews 10:11-18)

In a 2005 interview, Bono—the lead singer for the band U2—talks about how this magnificent picture of grace has led him away from thinking only in terms of “karma,” the law of cause and effect:

“I really believe we’ve moved out of the realm of Karma into one of Grace…You see, at the center of all religions is the idea of Karma. You know, what you put out comes back to you: an eye for an eye, a tooth for a tooth…every action is met by an equal or an opposite one….Grace defies reason and logic. Love interrupts, if you like, the consequences of your actions, which in my case is very good news indeed, because I’ve done a lot of stupid stuff…I’d be in big trouble if Karma was going to finally be my judge….It doesn’t excuse my mistakes, but I’m holding out for Grace. I’m holding out that Jesus took my sins onto the Cross, because I know who I am, and I hope I don’t have to depend on my own religiosity…The point of the death of Christ is that Christ took on the sins of the world, so that what we put out did not come back to us, and that our sinful nature does not reap the obvious death. That’s the point….It’s not our own good works that get us through the gates of heaven.”

One of the hardest things to fully wrap our minds around is this basic principle of grace. Sure, I love the idea of my slate being cleaned, but I might hate—absolutely hate—that grace robs me of the privilege to “boast” (cf. Ephesians 2:9) of my moral superiority. Don’t I deserve credit, after all?

The problem of this kind of arrogance is that it leads us into a dangerous path, relationally speaking. Because only one of two things can happen. First, my moral system might actually work for me, more or less. I may spend a lifetime devoted to strict moral obedience. Life goes well—I get a good job, raise good kids, and be respected as a pillar of my community. I conclude that I am blessed; my righteousness has earned God’s approval. And I am constantly sneering at my neighbors, who have not achieved my blessing—clearly because they’re just not as morally upright as I am. Secondly, my moral system might not work for me. I might spend a lifetime of trying, only to be routinely confronted by the naked brutality of this fallen world. I obeyed all the rules; why doesn’t God bless me? I become bitter—at myself, at God, at my fellow church-goers who—despite not sharing my strict moral convictions—always seem way happier than I can ever hope to be.

Life is far more messy than all that. But so is spirituality, so is grace. Jesus joins us in our mess and—as we’ve been saying—absorbs the stains of our sin that we might have God’s approval not through any—any!—works of our own, but only through the finished work that he achieved on our behalf.

This is why it’s hard to hear the gospel if you’re a religious person. Because it’s easy to assume that you already know it—when all along you’ve only been learning to cling more tightly to your moral code. And it’s killing you.

Moral character isn’t a disposable part of the Christian life, but if we make transformation a prerequisite to forgiveness we strip grace of its beauty and strip the cross of its power. At the cross we do more than repent of our self-indulgence; we repent quite equally of our self-righteousness. Let it go. Let it all go—your self-righteous moralism, your sense of self-importance and smug religious superiority, your condescending attitude toward the sin of others deemed to be worse than your own. Let it go, and stand in the glorious grace of the once-for-all grace offered by Jesus. We close this week with the words of an old hymn, a hymn whose title comes from the last words of Jesus on the cross: “It Is Finished.”

“Lay your deadly doing down,
down at Jesus’ feet.
Stand in him and him alone,
gloriously complete.”

Crux Sola

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“The cross is the key signature of our theology.” This was the conclusion of one German author, for whom the cross loomed large in his understanding of God’s great story of redemption. He may as well have been quoting from Martin Luther, who years ago famously said that “the cross alone is our theology.” To be a Christian is to be a “soldier of the cross,” to borrow language from the old hymn. Yet when Mel Gibson’s film The Passion of the Christ was released, many reviewers were baffled that Gibson would ignore every scrap of Jesus’ ethical teaching in favor of delivering a brutal portrayal of Jesus’ crucifixion. At least one reviewer sneeringly dismissed the film as the “Jesus Chainsaw Massacre,” revolted that a religious film would disproportionately focus on a man’s blood rather than his message.

But don’t you see? For Christianity, Jesus’ blood is the message: the message of love, of justice, of forgiveness all rolled into a singular, defining event.

This is why the writer of Hebrews—among others—sees the cross as fulfilling and replacing the Old Testament sacrificial system entirely:

8 When he said above, “You have neither desired nor taken pleasure insacrifices and offerings and burnt offerings and sin offerings” (these are offered according to the law), 9 then he added, “Behold, I have come to do your will.” He does away with the first in order to establish the second. 10 And by that will we have been sanctified through the offering of the body of Jesus Christ once for all. (Hebrews 10:8-10)

The cross was no great accident or interruption in God’s plan of redemption. It was the plan all along.

THE CROSS IN ANTIQUITY

We must not underestimate the sheer, shocking brutality of crucifixion in the ancient world. The ancient historians described “being nailed up” as the worst form of death.[1] Latin writers described it as an “infamous stake,”[2] the “barren and criminal wood,” [3] and “a most cruel and disgusting punishment.” [4]

Medical experts tell us that the most likely cause of death was slow, painful asphyxiation—that the lungs could not adequately expand and contract when suspended on the cross. But this might have been one of several causes of death, including death from blood loss, shock, or even being attacked by wild animals.

The practice of crucifixion had been invented as early as the culture of Assyria, though it was the Romans who had perfected it into the form of an art. The methods of crucifixion varied person to person. The Jewish writer Josephus tells us that “The soldiers out of rage and hatred amused themselves by nailing their prisoners in different positions…”[5] The Latin writer Seneca lamented: “I see crosses there, not just of one kind but made in many different ways: some have their victims with head down to the ground; some impale their private parts;  others stretch out their arms on the gibbet.” [6]

This was not done in obscurity; this was done publicly, in the ancient equivalent of the corner parking lot of the local strip mall. The whole purpose, of course, was to shame you, and shame your followers. When Spartacus was defeated after his rebellion against Rome, 6,000 of his most loyal followers were crucified on the 120-mile stretch of road between Capua and Rome. I did the math on this. This means if you left Tri-State Fellowship and drove to Lancaster, roughly 60-70 yards, on either side of you, you’d see a person hanging in agony on the cross. One ancient writer lamented:

“What death is more shameful than to be crucified?  What death is worse than this condemnation is conceivable?  Even now he remains a reproach among all who have not yet received faith in him!”[7]

CRUX SOLA

In the ancient world, when someone was crucified, the public places were chosen so that people would stop and look. And so today, when we speak of the Savior crucified, we must stop and look. We must see the blood. We must see the nails. We must cringe at the (literally) God-forsaken spectacle we see before us, we must see the Savior pushed to the bitter edges of the world that we might be invited to taste in Heaven’s sweetness.

And above all, we must see that here is our shame, lying not on our own shoulders, but on his. On Christ’s. On our behalf.  Here is the sacrifice that lifts away the sin of the world (cf. John 1:29). My shame died there with him. He was broken that I might be made whole again. “The deformity of Christ forms you,” wrote Augustine. “By his wounds,” God said through Isaiah, “we are healed” (Isaiah 53:5).

If you are not a follower of Jesus, then this is your time to begin. If you’ve been following our devotional writings for the past two weeks, then you’ve been confronted with the inescapable truth of your own wickedness, a stain you can’t clean on your own. The cross sets you free from your guilt and shame, it transfers that debt from you to Jesus. Jesus took the penalty that you deserve so that you could be reunited in relationship to God. All you need to do is pause, bow your head, and tell God two things:

  • I know that I am a sinner in need of your grace,
  • I believe that your Son Jesus died in my place. I ask for your forgiveness.

It’s as simple as that. That’s grace. That’s your first small step toward a larger world. If you have said that prayer—either now or as a result of our recent sermon series, we’d love to hear from you. You may find our contact information through the Church’s website (www.tristatefellowship.org), or you can contact me personally at my email address (chris@tristatefellowship.org).

[1] Demosthenes, Oratio, 21.105.

[2] Anthologia Latina 415.23

[3] Seneca, Epistulae Morales 101.14

[4] Cicero, Contra Verres in The Verrine Orations, 2.5.64.

[5] Josephus, Bellum Judaicum, 5.11.1

[6] Seneca, Dialogue 6, 20.3

[7] Eusebius, Preparation for the Gospel, 10.9

A True and Better Priest

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I need you to imagine something.

Let’s imagine that you need to go in for surgery. We’ll imagine that it’s an appendectomy—a fairly standard procedure, but in the absence of treatment can become something much more dangerous.

If you’ve ever had surgery, you know there’s a whole pre-flight checklist that everyone goes through. It’s more than just dotting “i’s” and crossing “t’s.” It’s a whole protocol that ensures the absolute safety and integrity of each participant from patient to surgeon. The final step is to wheel you into the operating room where you are put under for the procedure. Now imagine, right as your eyes are about to shut from the anesthesia, that you look over to see the surgeon walk in the room. Instead of wearing the sterile scrubs, mask, and gloves you expect, your surgeon is covered in mud, or wearing those ugly rubber orange gloves she found in the janitor’s closet.

If you caught such a vision, your last thoughts before shutting your eyes would be paralyzing fear. This was the one person you were counting on for what would ultimately be a life-saving procedure. Yet your health had now been compromised by her lack of purity.

A DEFILED PRIEST

In the book of Joshua, we catch a vision of the high priest on what seems to be the great Day of Atonement, the day when the high priest would offer a sacrifice for the provision of the nation:

Then he showed me Joshua the high priest standing before the angel of the Lord, and Satan standing at his right hand to accuse him. 2 And the Lord said to Satan, “The Lord rebuke you, O Satan! The Lord who has chosen Jerusalem rebuke you! Is not this a brand plucked from the fire?” 3 Now Joshua was standing before the angel, clothed with filthy garments. (Zechariah 3:1-3)

at in the Hebrew, we would notice that it doesn’t just say “Satan,” but “the satan,” which might simply mean “the accuser.” Again, this is a vision, not reality, so we wouldn’t be surprised to see such supernatural elements here, but it’s not necessarily clear that Zechariah is referring to the devil himself or merely an enemy of Israel hurling accusations.

What we are meant to see is the defilement of Joshua, the high priest. Customarily, priests like Joshua were sequestered for a week to prevent them from coming into contact with anything unclean so that they could perform the ceremony undefiled.  There was even a set of ritual bathings, after which Joshua would emerge wearing pure white robes.

But in Zechariah 3:3, Joshua is wearing “filthy robes.”  The original Hebrew seems to suggest that he is actually covered in excrement.  He is expected to be clean, to bring purity to the nation.  But in God’s eyes, all the rituals and duties do not truly cleanse the stain.

We find a similar theme in the letter of Hebrews—though here the author focuses not on the priests or the Day of Atonement, but the entire sacrificial system:

For since the law has but a shadow of the good things to come instead of the true form of these realities, it can never, by the same sacrifices that are continually offered every year, make perfect those who draw near. 2 Otherwise, would they not have ceased to be offered, since the worshipers, having once been cleansed, would no longer have any consciousness of sins? 3 But in these sacrifices there is a reminder of sins every year. 4 For it is impossible for the blood of bulls and goats to take away sins.

5 Consequently, when Christ came into the world, he said,

“Sacrifices and offerings you have not desired,
but a body have you prepared for me;
6 in burnt offerings and sin offerings
you have taken no pleasure.
7 Then I said, ‘Behold, I have come to do your will, O God,
as it is written of me in the scroll of the book.’” (Hebrews 10:1-7)

There’s no doubt about it: sacrifices ultimately meant nothing.

A TRUE AND BETTER SACRIFICE

Not to keep using such visceral imagery, but we need to truly wrap our minds around the culture of sacrifice in the ancient world. To do this, we can actually look at the history books from the ancient people and catch a glimpse of what their religious system looked like.

The writer Josephus, for example, tells us that major Jewish holidays attracted so many worshippers to the temple that there were over 200,000 sacrifices made for 2.7 million people. [1] Even if you think this is an exaggeration, we might point out that Jewish commentaries describe the need to install drainage systems in their temple system:

 “At the south-western corner [of the Altar] there were two holes like two narrow nostrils by which the blood that was poured over the western base and the southern base used to run down and mingle in the water-channel and flow out into the brook Kidron.”[2]

The Kidron would have looked like the Chicago river on St. Patrick’s Day—only instead of green it would have gradually become a deep red.

In short: the system was bloody.  So when Jesus made a once-for-all sacrifice, it would have stood in sharp contrast to this older style of worship.  Imagine living in a city where once a year, the local river turned red from all the killing.  Where the sounds of thousands upon thousands of animals being slaughtered could be heard above the traffic.

Inadequate, the Bible says. Only a shadow of what’s to come.

See, we need a better high priest—a true and better Joshua. We find this in Jesus. He’s the true and better high priest who offers a true and better sacrifice, so that his once-for-all sacrifice could atone for the sins of God’s people, past, present, and future.

 

 

 

 

[1] Josephus, Bellum Iudaicum, 6:423-427.

[2] Mishnah, 3:2.

Paying the Debt

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Do we need forgiveness?

By now, we’ve already established the sheer magnitude of the problem of sin—both Biblically and psychologically. The question we might be faced with is why we can’t simply overlook it. Move past it. Get over it. After all, if even the Bible emphasizes that we’re all sinners, can’t we just accept this truth and move on?

Thing is, there are some things in life we just can’t move past—nor should we, really. A friend of mine told me the story of why he and his fiancée ended things. He’d been away on business—the ministry, actually—and didn’t see her for a few months. When he returned, he discovered that she’d moved into the apartment of another man. Their relationship was over. He was devastated.

More significantly, though, he was left with something psychologists occasionally call “emotional debt.” He still loved her. The relationship had ended with the abruptness of a car wreck, but the sheer momentum of his love was propelling his heart forward even now, scraped raw against the tarmac. But his fiancée, well…she had already moved on. She wasn’t hurting—at least not as bad as he was. So all—all—of the hurt, all of the betrayal, all of the sudden raw loneliness lay on his shoulders to carry. This was a tremendous debt.

What do we usually do when we experience this? We try and manage that debt by spreading it around. We talk badly about that person. We “warn” others about them—though this is usually just a form of gossip. We let ourselves stew and fester over the past. We fantasize about their downfall—or, alternately, we fantasize about surpassing that person’s success, and inciting their jealousy.

So what happens if we don’t do those things? Then that emotional debt is ours and ours alone to carry.

And that hurts.

Now what if we were the ones who did the offending? And what if the person we offended was not just another sinner like us, but the infinitely good and righteous character of God himself? I’m cautious not to start applying terms like “emotional debt” to an infinite God (as if we God fits into our psychological categories), though there are plenty of places in Scripture when God’s grief comes welling up like a rejected lover thumbing through a tear-stained wedding album.

“I have fond memories of you…how devoted you were to me in your early years.  I remember how you loved me like a new bride; you followed me through the wilderness, through a land that had never been planted.  What fault could your ancestors have possibly found in me that they strayed so far from me?” (Jeremiah 2:2-5, NET)

If there is to be true justice, if there is to be a sense of wrongs being put right, then this debt must be paid.

The Bible describes this in the language of something called “atonement.” Atonement is the finished work of a blood sacrifice. What does it mean to “atone?” Eugene Merrill of Dallas Seminary does a wonderful job of helping us examine the deeply-storied meaning of the Hebrew word kaphar. Merrill says that if we dig through the related words in Akkadian and other ancient languages (similar to how we might look at Latin roots of English words in the dictionary), we find a lot of language that emphasizes not merely covering over sin, but blotting it out entirely. Wiping it clean.

We find this meaning in an unlikely place—the story of Jacob and Esau in Genesis 32. Though used as part of God’s larger, spectacular plan to fulfill his promise to Abraham and establish his people, Jacob got his start as something of a con man. After cheating his brother out of the family inheritance, he went on the run. Now, he was about to be reunited with Esau, and that was a scary prospect. So he sent a whole series of material gifts ahead of him. Ever the shrewd manipulator, he was trying to “buy off” his brother with material gifts. Here’s what the text of the story says was going through his mind:

For he thought, “I may appease him with the present that goes ahead of me, and afterward I shall see his face. Perhaps he will accept me.” (Genesis 32:21)

If you were to read that in the Hebrew, you might notice that the text reads something like “I will atone him” or—if we paraphrase—“I may wipe his face clean [of anger].” Atonement, we see, is deeply relational.

God established an elaborate system of sacrifices used to shape his people’s relationship with him—particularly in the area of the cleansing of sin. The writer of the letter of Hebrews says:

Indeed, under the law almost everything is purified with blood, and without the shedding of blood there is no forgiveness of sins. (Hebrews 9:22)

Naturally, we hear the echoes of the Old Testament law, here:

11 For the life of the flesh is in the blood, and I have given it for you on the altar to make atonement for your souls, for it is the blood that makes atonement by the life. Leviticus 17:11

Blood would be the means by which God’s people made atonement for their sins.

Now, if you’ve been in church for a while, you might know that each of the sacrifices meant something very specific. But, as Leon Morris points out in his book The Apostolic Preaching of the Cross, if we fast-forward to Jesus’ day, the first-century Jews had blurred the system so that every sacrifice made was thought to remove sin.

Such language must seem shockingly barbaric in the walls of today’s sanitized sanctuaries. Why would animal sacrifice be such a major part of worship for such a long period of human history?

Because it’s gross.

See, I have this theory. You know those awful videos they show you in Driver’s Ed? The ones where they show the bloody aftermath of drinking or texting while driving? They’re almost cliché, really. We’re numb to it. But what if we showed cars running over animals. Dogs. Cats. Pets. That sort of thing. The cuter and fluffier the better. We can watch teens text and drive, then watch puppy guts get splattered along the roadside. I guarantee you this would be infinitely more effective than the footage they show now.

If that horrifies you, that’s the point. Sin is as offensive before a holy God is as blood is before a people who treasure their animals. Granted, a sacrificial lamb would probably not have tugged at the heartstrings as much as a family pet, but the unblemished, male lamb would have been quite valuable to the family. And now the worshippers would watch it bleed to death. It’s as if God is trying to remind us, This is your sin. This is your filth. This is your shame. This is the price of atonement.

As before, we need to let this sink in. We need to let this haunt our imaginations and turn our stomachs. We need to be horrified by a God that is so ferociously holy that he demands blood from the people that have incurred such an impossibly massive debt.  Hear the cries of the lamb. See its blood flow in crimson streaks. And let your own tears flow at the knowledge of God’s plan to remove the debt, to cleanse the stain—to bring healing, to bring relationship.

The Stain of Sin

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In the late 1990’s, a physician by the name of Karl Menninger wrote a book called Whatever Became of Sin? His book focused on the way the modern world took the concept of evil and human wickedness and packed it away in the attic along with all the other religious notions we’d grown out of. What we once explained in spiritual terms, we now could understand through psychology or sociology. This is why when you turn on the evening news, the talking heads on the screen strain to find some explanation behind some recent act of violence—usually attributed to the perpetrator’s childhood trauma or the collective weight of social forces. Even recent terrorist activity in the Middle East has been blamed on poor economic and social conditions. Perhaps all of this is an attempt to deny the radical wickedness that rots and stinks at the core of each of us. “There’s no evil inside of me, no sir.”

But even human psychology reveals that “sin” hasn’t been packed away as tightly as we might have assumed. The field of “moral psychology” deals with what are often called “moral emotions.” While some of these emotions can be quite positive (gratitude, for example, would be called a moral emotion), others are much more negative: guilt, shame, anger, disgust. While Sigmund Freud had identified “moral anxiety” in the late nineteenth century, it really wasn’t until the 1980’s and 90’s that psychologists really started examining these emotions with greater interest.

If you follow Jesus, their findings shouldn’t really shock you. Because while yes, cultures and people vary widely when it comes to ethics and moral questions, there are some things about us that are the same. No culture is neutral on issues such as the perseveration of life, sexual ethics, and respect for the dead. Could this be that yes, we do have some remnant of God’s image still alive within us?

But one of the most fascinating “moral emotions” is disgust. Essentially all cultures have some clear boundary line between what is “clean” and “unclean.” Cross that line and it grosses us out. Psychologist Paul Rozin calls this “core disgust.” It’s what we feel when we imagine ourselves handling a live cockroach, or eating something off the floor of the men’s room.

Now, we might attribute some of our disgust to biological preservation against germs. But we also seem to have a strong reaction of disgust when we think about moral contamination. Rozin’s most famous experiment illustrates this well. He asked a group of participants about their willingness to wear a sweater once owned and worn by Adolf Hitler. And of course the participants said “no.” Even if no one would ever know who it belonged to. Rozin kept changing the parameters: what if the sweater was thoroughly laundered? What if it were sent to Mother Theresa to be worn and sent back? What if the sweater were completely unraveled, re-dyed, and re-knit? The answer was still “no.”

Disgust and morality are closely linked. Hitler’s sweater is only the tip of the iceburg. Paul Bloom summarizes:

“Experimental research shows that feelings of disgust make us judge others more harshly. In the first experiment along these lines, the psychologists Thalia Wheatley and Jonathan Haidt hypnotized participants to feel a flash of disgust whenever they saw an arbitrary word. When the participants later read stories of a mild moral transgression, those who saw the word rated the behavior as more immoral than those who didn’t. In other experiments, participants were asked to make judgments at a messy, disgusting desk, or in a room that had been blasted with [an offensive odor]; or after being shown a [disgusting scene from a movie]. All of these situations made the participants more morally disapproving about the acts of other people. Even eating a bitter food, which evokes a sensation akin to physical disgust, makes people harsher toward moral transgressions…The consensus from the world and from the lab is clear: disgust makes us meaner.” (Paul Bloom, Just Babies: The Origins of Good and Evil, p. 140-41)

All this to say that when the writers of the Bible used the language of “clean” and “unclean,” they weren’t merely appealing to cultural standards; they were identifying that “core disgust” within each one of us.

In the book of Proverbs, for example, we read:

There is a kind who is pure in his own eyes, Yet is not washed from his filthiness. (Proverbs 30:12)

King David, after his affair with Bathsheeba, cried out to God:

Have mercy on me, O God,
according to your steadfast love;
according to your abundant mercy
blot out my transgressions.
2 Wash me thoroughly from my iniquity,
and cleanse me from my sin!
3 For I know my transgressions,
and my sin is ever before me. ( Psalm 51:1-3)

None of us are clean.

There are two great temptations to avoid here. The first is the temptation to become defensive—“I’m not really as bad as all that.” The second is to take too lightly the promise of God’s grace—“God will forgive me anyway.” By that I don’t mean that God’s grace can ever be insufficient, only that sometimes we skip over the sheer awful gravity of our sin to “get to the good stuff.” In either case, there’s a sickness in each of us, a filthiness, a stain. Even in a culture of social media and digital transparency, there are things you and I would never say to family or share with our friends. We are ashamed.

So there is value, I think, in not moving on just yet to the “good news” of the gospel, but taking time to really reflect on—nay, mourn—the appalling truth about who we really are. It’s not for nothing that the Biblical writers spoke of tearing their garments or sitting in sackcloth—or the way Job encounters God and can only “repent in dust and ashes” (Job 42:6). Learn from this. Take some time, this day, to truly sit and consider the dreadful sickness that runs rampant through our hearts and through our towns and, yes, through our sanctuaries. For only in our glorious cringe can we truly find renewed appreciation for the wonderful cure.

 

Obviously and Clearly Guilty – Romans 3:1-20

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On the day that I write this, I heard on the news about a trial in our region of a person accused of murder. The accused has professed innocence and absence from the scene of the crime. However, witnesses place the person there and DNA from the victim’s blood was found on the clothing of the accused. That is pretty damning.

I have often pondered what it must feel like to be facing a trial in a courtroom, seeing an aggressive prosecuting attorney bring forward evidence after evidence to accuse you, all the while with a judge and jury looking on. There must be a terrible sense of pending doom.

But that is our condition, the condition of all mankind, before a perfect and omniscient God and judge. We stand there fully guilty in our unrighteousness.

In this final passage we look at this week, Paul wraps up his prosecutorial case against mankind, and all are obviously guilty …

3:1 – What advantage, then, is there in being a Jew, or what value is there in circumcision? 2 Much in every way! First of all, the Jews have been entrusted with the very words of God.

3 What if some were unfaithful? Will their unfaithfulness nullify God’s faithfulness? 4 Not at all! Let God be true, and every human being a liar. As it is written:

“So that you may be proved right when you speak and prevail when you judge.”

5 But if our unrighteousness brings out God’s righteousness more clearly, what shall we say? That God is unjust in bringing his wrath on us? (I am using a human argument.) 6 Certainly not! If that were so, how could God judge the world? 7 Someone might argue, “If my falsehood enhances God’s truthfulness and so increases his glory, why am I still condemned as a sinner?” 8 Why not say—as some slanderously claim that we say—“Let us do evil that good may result”? Their condemnation is just!

No One Is Righteous

9 What shall we conclude then? Do we have any advantage? Not at all! For we have already made the charge that Jews and Gentiles alike are all under the power of sin. 10 As it is written:

“There is no one righteous, not even one; 11 there is no one who understands; there is no one who seeks God. 12 All have turned away, they have together become worthless; there is no one who does good, not even one.”

13 “Their throats are open graves; their tongues practice deceit.”   “The poison of vipers is on their lips.” 14  “Their mouths are full of cursing and bitterness.”
15 “Their feet are swift to shed blood; 16 ruin and misery mark their ways, 17 and the way of peace they do not know.” 18 “There is no fear of God before their eyes.” [most of these quotes are from passages in the Psalms]

19 Now we know that whatever the law says, it says to those who are under the law, so that every mouth may be silenced and the whole world held accountable to God. 20 Therefore no one will be declared righteous in God’s sight by the works of the law; rather, through the law we become conscious of our sin.

Boom! The gavel drops. All are guilty! Everyone fails to live up to God’s law. And we see in the final verse the purpose of the law: it was not to provide a pathway for people to become just in God’s sight, but rather it was to make a person aware of their sinful condition.

Theologically speaking, we are talking about the doctrine of original sin. The problem started with the original sin of the original parents. The curse and debt has been passed down, we were born bad. We weren’t born good, sinned one day and then became bad. We were never good, or righteous. We didn’t become sinners when we first sinned. We proved we were sinners when we first sinned.

Last Sunday I shared a story with a visual … of a dirty shirt. While biking this past summer, I chose to not sufficiently heed or believe a sign that warned of the danger of a wooden-plank bridge, the warning saying that it was dangerously slippery when wet. Pfff! How slippery could it be?  Well … sorta like ice, and out went the wheels one day and I looked like a baserunner sliding into second base on a bicycle. The shirt picked up the dirt and greasy filth from the bridge surface, and NOTHING can clean it — no washing or scrubbing — it is filthy!

Think of the shirt as representative of the human condition. The first father ignored God’s warning and got the stain, and that stain and curse has passed down to be inherited by everyone from that point forward. There is no new shirt, everyone inherits a stained shirt.

But, one human — due to the virgin birth — did not inherit the dirty shirt stain, and after a perfect life took voluntarily upon himself the stain of everyone else’s shirts. He washes out the stain, and then he gives you back something even better — his perfectly clean shirt for you to wear before God. If you receive that shirt, that righteousness, you stand not in your own goodness (whatever that is worth, which is nothing), but you stand in the righteousness of Jesus Christ.

This first of the four weeks of this series has been heavy on describing the problem that creates the need for the gospel, whereas following sermons and writings will be heavy on the solutions. But getting a jump on that, let me ask, “What shirt are you wearing?  Have you denied your shirt is dirty?  Have you futilely tried to clean your own? … Or have you come to God and asked him to give you the clean shirt of the righteousness of Jesus Christ?”

Mere Religion Ain’t Good Enough – (Romans 2:17-29)

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Though I’ve been a member of the local Rotary Club for about 20 years, I’ve never been an exemplary member. I’m sort of like the Christian who attends church on Christmas and Easter and those other Sundays where there is not a higher priority thing to do. I participate in some of the Club projects, particularly those related to early childhood education in the schools. But my level of involvement is about to expand. I was asked if I’d be interested in serving on the board of directors for one year and said I’d be open to it. I missed a meeting in January, and found out later that I got elected!

Sometimes when my attendance at the Club has fallen off a bit, I’ve realized I needed to pick it up and get more involved. And the same is true of many of life’s connections. For example, if your busyness at work means that your spouse is being unfairly ignored, you make some effort to reverse the situation and get back into good graces.

In terms of a relationship with God, realizing to some measure that God has a posture of wrath toward unbelief and sin, the natural first thought is to up your game of religious involvement — to attend church more and do those things that mark the disciplines of faith. That is not wrong, but all alone, neither is it fully right, especially if it is nothing beyond a religious mask.

Paul’s attention in proving the guilt of all mankind shifts away from the Gentile world to focus upon the Jews — who at this point of his letter might have been feeling a bit more secure.

Indeed, the Jewish people could be rightly pleased with their heritage, they could make nice quotes about themselves and their privileged position. But Paul takes them apart as well …

17 Now you, if you call yourself a Jew; if you rely on the law and boast in God; 18 if you know his will and approve of what is superior because you are instructed by the law; 19 if you are convinced that you are a guide for the blind, a light for those who are in the dark, 20 an instructor of the foolish, a teacher of little children, because you have in the law the embodiment of knowledge and truth— 21 you, then, who teach others, do you not teach yourself? You who preach against stealing, do you steal? 22 You who say that people should not commit adultery, do you commit adultery? You who abhor idols, do you rob temples? 23 You who boast in the law, do you dishonor God by breaking the law? 24 As it is written: “God’s name is blasphemed among the Gentiles because of you.”

25 Circumcision has value if you observe the law, but if you break the law, you have become as though you had not been circumcised. 26 So then, if those who are not circumcised keep the law’s requirements, will they not be regarded as though they were circumcised? 27 The one who is not circumcised physically and yet obeys the law will condemn you who, even though you have the written code and circumcision, are a lawbreaker.

28 A person is not a Jew who is one only outwardly, nor is circumcision merely outward and physical. 29 No, a person is a Jew who is one inwardly; and circumcision is circumcision of the heart, by the Spirit, not by the written code. Such a person’s praise is not from other people, but from God.

God had given the Jewish people a wonderful and privileged history. They were truly God’s special and chosen people. But rather than be amazed at God’s grace, they reveled rather in a prideful posture of condescension toward others. They had forgotten what God had said about their selection …

Deuteronomy 7:7 The Lord did not set his affection on you and choose you because you were more numerous than other peoples, for you were the fewest of all peoples. 8 But it was because the Lord loved you and kept the oath he swore to your ancestors that he brought you out with a mighty hand and redeemed you from the land of slavery, from the power of Pharaoh king of Egypt.

In arrogance, the Jews saw themselves as unique and righteous, simply because of their heritage. But Paul says that, upon closer examination, they were rather far from perfect. Their history was one of committing all of the same sins as those whom they judged. They stood guilty and in need of a savior in the same fashion as the rest of the world. Paul reminds them that they were in actuality the Exhibit A of “physicians that needed to heal themselves.”

Religious disciplines and faith exercises are great. But alone, as a mask that hides the true character of an unregenerate heart, they are not enough. A works-oriented religion is nothing more than a mask.

So don’t be like that. Don’t think that just being in church is going to make you right with God. Sitting in a library doesn’t make you a scholar, and wearing the latest Under Armor sports gear doesn’t make you a professional athlete. To be right with God you will need the cleansing of re-birth and the applied righteousness of Jesus Christ … our themes in coming weeks. Don’t miss it, but neither should you attend just to attend; you need to take these truths into your life through faith.

Good Enough Ain’t Good Enough – Romans 2:1-16

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Middle school girls at a slumber party aren’t the only ones who judge themselves to be better than someone else. People do it all of the time in relation to their self-evaluation of the depth of their sin. It usually takes some form of “I might not be perfect, but I’m not as bad as ____.”

Actually, that whole statement is probably true. The person making it is likely nowhere near as bad as whatever person or group he/she is comparing. Big deal. The problem is that the first half of the statement is equally true, and it is totally damning.

As we wrote about on Monday and will return to again in the third week, every sinner needs perfect righteousness in order to be received by God. And being pretty good just ain’t going to be good enough. Besides that, the situation is likely far worse than the self-righteous person believes.

I told the story Sunday of recently being in California for a pastors conference and staying several days with a good friend who lives in West Hills, north of Los Angeles. In driving through a somewhat remote mountainous area of many canyons, he told me that it was the location where Hollywood shot a lot of their movies. This reminded me of a picture I saw recently of an error in the Gladiator movie, where, in one scene, if you look closely, you can see a jet aircraft in the sky! Not so perfect.

And that is how it is with many people’s lives. Even those who have a guidance of the residue of the image of God in them — their conscience — when looked at closely will fall far short of righteous. And the passage today condemns such people who feel good about themselves as compared to greater sinners around them.

2:1 – You, therefore, have no excuse, you who pass judgment on someone else, for at whatever point you judge another, you are condemning yourself, because you who pass judgment do the same things. 2 Now we know that God’s judgment against those who do such things is based on truth. 3 So when you, a mere human being, pass judgment on them and yet do the same things, do you think you will escape God’s judgment? 4 Or do you show contempt for the riches of his kindness, forbearance and patience, not realizing that God’s kindness is intended to lead you to repentance?

5 But because of your stubbornness and your unrepentant heart, you are storing up wrath against yourself for the day of God’s wrath, when his righteous judgment will be revealed. 6 God “will repay each person according to what they have done.” 7 To those who by persistence in doing good seek glory, honor and immortality, he will give eternal life. 8 But for those who are self-seeking and who reject the truth and follow evil, there will be wrath and anger. 9 There will be trouble and distress for every human being who does evil: first for the Jew, then for the Gentile; 10 but glory, honor and peace for everyone who does good: first for the Jew, then for the Gentile. 11 For God does not show favoritism.

12 All who sin apart from the law will also perish apart from the law, and all who sin under the law will be judged by the law. 13 For it is not those who hear the law who are righteous in God’s sight, but it is those who obey the law who will be declared righteous. 14 (Indeed, when Gentiles, who do not have the law, do by nature things required by the law, they are a law for themselves, even though they do not have the law. 15 They show that the requirements of the law are written on their hearts, their consciences also bearing witness, and their thoughts sometimes accusing them and at other times even defending them.) 16 This will take place on the day when God judges people’s secrets through Jesus Christ, as my gospel declares.

This passage has some complexity to it. It is saying, beyond the issue of those with a self-righteous judgment, that obedience to the law is what is required. But here is the problem: nobody obeys it perfectly, except the one person who did. More on these ideas as we go along.

The Day God Gave Up (Romans 1:18-32)

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After Sunday’s rather intense sermon about the sinful condition of man, I received a humorous note that said, “Thanks Randy for telling us how bad we are!”  You’re welcome.

Malcom Muggeridge, the British journalist and author, is famous for noting that “sin is the one thing that man tries to deny, but the one doctrine most easily proven.”  Indeed, if you can’t see the problem in the world around you, just look into the mirror.

Before one can be “found,” one must understand that they are “lost.”  Reflecting back to even my high school years and in times of sharing the gospel with people, I recall early on that it seemed to me that the majority of people with whom I spoke had no sense of being lost or being in eternal danger.

I am unlikely to go to the doctor and pharmacy to get a prescription for something unless I am convinced that I have a medical condition that needs medicinal treatment.

Martin Luther famously wrote that … “The [manifold corruption of nature] should be emphasized, I say, for the reason that unless the severity of the disease is correctly recognized, the cure is also not known or desired.  The more you minimize sin, the more grace will decline in value.”

So just how bad is the problem of sin?  It’s bad … very bad. Paul writes …

2:18 – The wrath of God is being revealed from heaven against all the godlessness and wickedness of people, who suppress the truth by their wickedness, 19 since what may be known about God is plain to them, because God has made it plain to them. 20 For since the creation of the world God’s invisible qualities—his eternal power and divine nature—have been clearly seen, being understood from what has been made, so that people are without excuse.

Paul says that God’s wrath — his anger at sin — is justly focused upon human sin, godlessness and wickedness. This is because people have suppressed the truth that is plainly evident to them, having been put there for them to clearly see by the creator God.

We are talking here about what we call “general revelation” or “natural revelation.”

John Calvin wrote best in speaking of this. In his Institutes of the Christian Religion, he taught that man was to look at himself, and also to look at the majesty of creation, and to sense that he was a creature in a created world. This should cause him to desire and seek to know the creator. But over time, this truth was lost, the natural condition of sin prevailed, and truth has been set upside-down.

21 For although they knew God, they neither glorified him as God nor gave thanks to him, but their thinking became futile and their foolish hearts were darkened. 22 Although they claimed to be wise, they became fools 23 and exchanged the glory of the immortal God for images made to look like a mortal human being and birds and animals and reptiles.

This is a history of the natural decline of the human condition after the fall of man. Truth was forgotten, foolishness and futility prevailed, and rather than the creature worshipping God, man fashioned his own stupid gods out of the materials of creation.

The remaining verses we look at today contain a statement repeated three times: “God gave them over…”

24 Therefore God gave them over in the sinful desires of their hearts to sexual impurity for the degrading of their bodies with one another. 25 They exchanged the truth about God for a lie, and worshiped and served created things rather than the Creator—who is forever praised. Amen.

26 Because of this, God gave them over to shameful lusts. Even their women exchanged natural sexual relations for unnatural ones. 27 In the same way the men also abandoned natural relations with women and were inflamed with lust for one another. Men committed shameful acts with other men, and received in themselves the due penalty for their error.

28 Furthermore, just as they did not think it worthwhile to retain the knowledge of God, so God gave them over to a depraved mind, so that they do what ought not to be done. 29 They have become filled with every kind of wickedness, evil, greed and depravity. They are full of envy, murder, strife, deceit and malice. They are gossips, 30 slanderers, God-haters, insolent, arrogant and boastful; they invent ways of doing evil; they disobey their parents; 31 they have no understanding, no fidelity, no love, no mercy. 32 Although they know God’s righteous decree that those who do such things deserve death, they not only continue to do these very things but also approve of those who practice them.

So, what does this mean that God gave them over? Does it mean that he gave up? Well, yes, in a sense. It is a Greek word (paradidomi) that means to give over, to hand over, to allow something — in the sense of giving up the resistance against an action.

So in this context it has the idea of God withdrawing his restraining and protective hand, thus allowing the consequences of sin to have their inevitable and destructive outcome.

That’s cold, that’s hard.

But wait, there’s more …

This is not the only time that “paradidomi” is used of God giving up. It is the verb in this sentence as well, later in Romans (8:32) “He who did not spare his own Son, but gave him up for us all—how will he not also, along with him, graciously give us all things?”

But wait, there’s more …

It is used of what Christ did … “I have been crucified with Christ and I no longer live, but Christ lives in me. The life I now live in the body, I live by faith in the Son of God, who loved me and gave himself for me.”

But wait, there’s more …

Again, of what Christ did as a model for us … “Follow God’s example, therefore, as dearly loved children and walk in the way of love, just as Christ loved us and gave himself up for us as a fragrant offering and sacrifice to God.”

But wait, there’s more …

Again, of the model of Christ’s sacrifice … “Husbands, love your wives, just as Christ loved the church and gave himself up for her…”

So aren’t you glad that God didn’t give up on us, but that he gave up for us?

The Essence of the Gospel (Romans 1:1-17)

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The essence of the gospel is the focus of this month-long sermon series and associated devotional writings. A summary statement could be the following, as oft-spoken by the well-known New York City pastor Tim Keller …

The gospel is this: We are more sinful and flawed than we could imagine … Yet more loved and accepted in Jesus Christ than we ever dared hope.

I underlined accepted in Jesus Christ. That is because our acceptance is truly “in Christ — due to what HE has done.”  It is not because God just can’t stop loving us a humans because he’s a sucker for how cute we are, as if he sees us like a bunch of little puppies and kittens tumbling all over each other in the most adorable fashion, or like a grandfather in his dotage who can’t see anything wrong in his grandkids. No, it is by his grace that he loves us, based upon what Jesus has done.

In this series we will focus on two elements: human sin and God’s love—the latter explained through the forgiveness of the cross (week two), the righteousness imparted to us (week three) and the promise of new life in him (Easter Sunday and week four).  But we open this week with the first element that sets the stage: human sin.

And to talk about the natural condition of man as fallen into sin and hence under the pending judgment of a righteous God, we of course turn to the opening chapters of Paul’s letter to the Romans. We will read this week from Romans 1:1—3:20.

Our primary interest today as we open in chapter one relates to the final verses of this section through verse 17. But let’s begin with Paul’s opening greetings to the Christians in Rome. He too begins to talk about the gospel immediately in his opening sentence, noting that the gospel is not a Johnny-come-lately teaching, but is rather sourced in the promises of the prophets of old …

1:1 — Paul, a servant of Christ Jesus, called to be an apostle and set apart for the gospel of God— 2 the gospel he promised beforehand through his prophets in the Holy Scriptures 3 regarding his Son, who as to his earthly life was a descendant of David, 4 and who through the Spirit of holiness was appointed the Son of God in power by his resurrection from the dead: Jesus Christ our Lord. 5 Through him we received grace and apostleship to call all the Gentiles to the obedience that comes from faith for his name’s sake. 6 And you also are among those Gentiles who are called to belong to Jesus Christ.

Paul continues with basic greetings, expressing his thanks for them and his longing to be able to personally be with them.

7 To all in Rome who are loved by God and called to be his holy people:

Grace and peace to you from God our Father and from the Lord Jesus Christ.

8 First, I thank my God through Jesus Christ for all of you, because your faith is being reported all over the world. 9 God, whom I serve in my spirit in preaching the gospel of his Son, is my witness how constantly I remember you 10 in my prayers at all times; and I pray that now at last by God’s will the way may be opened for me to come to you.

11 I long to see you so that I may impart to you some spiritual gift to make you strong— 12 that is, that you and I may be mutually encouraged by each other’s faith. 13 I do not want you to be unaware, brothers and sisters, that I planned many times to come to you (but have been prevented from doing so until now) in order that I might have a harvest among you, just as I have had among the other Gentiles.

Paul is writing to Christians, to “brothers and sisters;” but then he goes on to speak of the obligation of his calling: to preach the Gospel to them in Rome. But wait, these people already know the gospel, right? They are already believers.

But here is something to understand, the gospel — the good news — is more than the basic entry information packet that gets you saved and in right standing with God, it is the defining message that is pervasive throughout everything that defines faith in Jesus Christ. It is the big picture of it all, not just “Roman numeral #1 about Christianity.”

14 I am obligated both to Greeks and non-Greeks, both to the wise and the foolish. 15 That is why I am so eager to preach the gospel also to you who are in Rome.

16 For I am not ashamed of the gospel, because it is the power of God that brings salvation to everyone who believes: first to the Jew, then to the Gentile. 17 For in the gospel the righteousness of God is revealed—a righteousness that is by faith from first to last, just as it is written: “The righteous will live by faith.” [from Habakkuk 2:4]

Verses 16 and 17 are those of greatest interest for us. In any study of the Book of Romans, these verses are identified rightly as stating the theme of what Paul is writing about: the gospel message of the righteousness of God that brings salvation to all who trust in it through faith.

Any of you who are reading this who have also at some point over the years attended one of my community groups … you have gone through the following exercise …

Let me ask this question: what is the one most important thing that you need to be saved?

I ask that, and then receive the answers. What invariably comes back is first something like “faith.”  And I’ll say that yes, we need faith for sure, but there is a better answer. And the next person will say “grace.”  After all, it says in the Bible that we are saved by grace through faith … but I’ll again say there is a better single answer. A few other suggestions will be offered, but seldom does someone give the very, very best answer. And that is “righteousness.”

God is perfect; that is what righteousness is — perfection. God’s justice demands judgment on anything in his presence that is not perfect and pure. So, if we are to be saved and to be with God and not face his judgment, we have to be perfect; we have to have righteousness. And there is the great problem. We do not have it, we cannot earn it, it has to come from somewhere else, only one person has ever had it, and we therefore need to get it from him.

So the book of Romans will talk about how all of that happens. And the first item is to make the case that, indeed, all mankind is totally lost and justly in line for God’s judgment. Paul will prove that whoever you are — Jew, Gentile, a really fine person compared to everyone else — you are a condemned sinner in a heap of trouble.

This shouldn’t be hard to do, right?  Everyone knows they’re a sinner. But obviously, since the vast majority of people are not worried about this by being keen to see the issue of their pending sentence of judgment nullified, we have to spend time talking about the underestimated gravity of the sin situation.

And the situation is, as we said in the summary above, worse than we imagined.