A Small Faith

“In fear-based repentance, we don’t learn to hate the sin for itself, and it doesn’t lose it’s attractive power. We learn only to refrain from it for our own sake. But when we rejoice over God’s sacraficial, suffering love for us – seeing what it cost him to save us fom sin – we learn to hate the sin for what it is. We see what the sin cost God. What most assures us of God’s unconditional love (Jesus’s costly death) is what most convicts us of the evil of sin. Fear-based repentance makes us hate ourselves. Joy-bases repentance makes us hate the sin.”

- Timothy Keller, Counterfeit Gods (New York, NY: Penguin Group, 2009), 172.

HT : Of First Importance

Yep. This is the stuff :

The man who has faith is the man who is no longer looking at himself, and no longer looking to himself. He no longer looks at anything he once was. He does not look at what he is now. He does not [even] look at what he hopes to be as the result of his own efforts. He looks entirely to the Lord Jesus Christ and His finished work, and he rests on that alone. He has ceased to say, ‘Ah yes, I have committed terrible sins but I have done this and that…’ He stops saying that. If he goes on saying that, he has not got faith… Faith speaks in an entirely different manner and makes a man say, ‘Yes, I have sinned grievously, I have lived a life of sin… yet I know that I am a child of God because I am not resting on any righteousness of my own; my righteousness is in Jesus Christ, and God has put that to my account.’

D. M. Lloyd-Jones, as quoted by Timothy Keller

HT : Of First Importance

Thought this would provide a good counterpoint to the opinion expressed in my previous post. It’s a little long but worth it.

There is nothing between the person of the Lord Jesus and the person of the believer as that union and communion develops and grows. I think this is a very important thing for us to grasp. Let me put it the way I sometimes put it: The union with Christ we have is not that we somehow or another share His grace. Because – follow me carefully – there actually is no ‘thing’ as grace.

That actually is a Medieval Roman Catholic teaching. There is a ‘thing’ called grace that can be separated from the person of Jesus Christ. It is something Jesus Christ won on the Cross and He can bestow it on you. And there are at least seven ways it can be bestowed on you and they all, as it happens, turn out to be in the hands of the church. And you can have this kind of grace, and this kind of grace, and this kind of grace …

There is no such ‘thing’ as grace! Grace is not some appendage to His being. Nor is it some substance that flows from us: ‘Let me give you grace.’ All there is is the Lord Jesus Himself. And so when Jesus speaks about us abiding in Him and He abiding in us – however mysterious it may be, mystical in that sense – it is a personal union.

Do not let us fail because of the abuse of expressions. Do not let us fail to understand that, at the end of the day, actually Christianity is Christ because there isn’t anything else. There is no atonement that somehow can be detached from who the Lord Jesus is. There is no grace that can be attached to you transferred from Him. All there is is Christ and your soul.

Sinclair Ferguson speaking on John 15 at the Banner of Truth Ministers’ Conference in Spring 2007

Can grace somehow be defined as power? And can we then we then follow certain steps to get more grace/power from God? The pastor at a Baptist church we visited recently certainly thinks so. Here’s a little snippet from his sermon :

…We take our faith and we direct it to God. It doesn’t take a lot of faith, because God has a lot of power, a lot of grace, that will come through that pipe no matter how small it is. And God’s grace can do a lot. So God’s grace equals power in our life.

The question then becomes, how do we get more of that power? Because what Christian in their right mind is going to say they don’t want that? The solution, according to this pastor, is found in eight easy steps taken from James 4:6-12 which starts out “God gives grace to the humble”. These then would be the practical steps to achieve that goal :

• Relinquish control of your life
• Resist the devil and he will flee
• Renounce sinful actions
• Restore worship
• Reject a sinful attitude
• Refrain from a frivolous attitude
• Respond humbly to [spiritual] success
• Refuse to slander your brother

Funny thing is, Camille posted on this exact thing a few days before we visited this church. And my response on her post fits this one as well. His basic mistake is treating grace as a force rather than as an unchanging part of God’s character. When you start making a separation between the two you start treating grace as a power source to be tapped into and it just goes downhill from there. It becomes all about you and what you need to do to get that power.

At least that’s what I think. What about you guys?

Was cleaning up some stuff and ran across this questionnaire I did as part of a worldview class a few years ago. Thought it might be of interest to someone out there.

Note : Most of these aren’t original with me. Looks like I swiped a good part of them from here.

1. Is the amount of good in the world limited, or can more good be produced?
2. Are evil and good equal and opposing forces?
3. Are there things which are inherently evil in this world?
4. Why do so many unfair or mysterious events occur?
5. Does God sometimes change his mind?
6. Does God involve himself in human events? If so, in what ways?
7. Does God communicate with all humans or only certain chosen ones who speak on his behalf? If so, in what ways does he communicate?
8. Can God be affected or changed by human actions or beliefs?
9. Can we anger, please or grieve God?
10. Can we change God’s mind on a particular question or plan?
11. In prayer, do you seek to change God’s mind about something, or align your will with his already-determined plan?
12. What is meant by “agreeing with God” in prayer?
13. Is God free to reveal himself directly to other peoples as he did to the Hebrews?
14. Is God free to do whatever he wants?
15. Does a visit to a church of another denomination imply that you agree with the teachings or practices of that denomination?
16. Which is more important, the unity of the group or agreement on a principle or belief?
17. Should people cooperate if they agree on the goal or task, even if they disagree over the reasons for it? What about Christians with opposing viewpoints?
18. Should the failings or sins of an individual be considered his fault personally or the fault of his society or family, or Satan?

Something about the meeting last night brought to mind a Ken Myers talk I listened to recently. Yes, I’m linking Ken Myers and “emergent” but I think it’s because they have some of the same concerns. Namely, seeing God’s plan as more than just individualistic salvation and then working out the ramifications of how we live embodied in this creation. I’d love to see the Emergent guys move towards Myers’ more robust and historically connected views on these subjects.

This is from about the 36:30 mark in his talk :

Culture is the cultivation of the order of creation.

Now for many American Christians, culture is not the pursuit of ramifications of the order of creation in ways that honor our nature and the nature of the world. Cultural experiences are just pleasant diversions or opportunities for evangelism. Because we tend to separate creation from redemption and because we’ve tended to think of redemption as an escape from creation to a purely spiritual existence, culture tends to be trivialized.

I spoke with someone recently about some church leaders who had made, in my judgment, some rather bad choices in the culture of their church. The person I was speaking to [said] “…they mean well, they’re trying to get as many people to Heaven as possible”. I said that’s exactly the problem. They see the church’s ministry as an escape plan rather than a recovery project.

Some Christians believe that creation is a lost cause because of Adam’s sin and thus our salvation involves a deliverance from creation. Our spiritual lives don’t have much to do with our embodied life and so cultural choices can be made according to the very pragmatic standard of what enables evangelism. Evangelism understood very minimally is encouraging someone to respond to a few propositions about sin and grace. That view depicts an inadequate view of the relationship between the order of creation and the effects of God’s redemptive work in Christ and thus I think misunderstands the church’s cultural obligations.

I think in the Biblical picture, the church is not simply a fellowship of spiritually and internally and invisibly renewed people. We are a people who recognize the cosmic lordship of Christ [and] who strive to configure our lives as best we can in ways that conform to the kinds of creatures we were made to be. And in whom by God’s grace our full humanity will eventually be realized.

A few months ago I mentioned that Ken Myers was speaking in Nashville as part of a Humanitas Forum lecture series. Myers, along with Jeremy Beer, were speaking on Jesus as More Than a Personal Savior. If you missed that but are interested in hearing the talks then good news for you! All the lectures from the weekend(along with a Q&A) are available for free. Just go here and download to your heart’s content.

And if you benefit from you hear, consider making a donation to the Humanitas Project and the work they are doing. (note : I receive nothing for my shameless plug)