The unbelieving world has repeatedly demonstrated that it has the mistaken belief that Christians are the “good people.” The world often describes Christians (often sarcastically so) as those who follow the rules, do things right, always be moral and so forth. That’s why they are so very quick to point out professing Christians who sin publicly. There is a perverse pleasure in putting on display, for the world to see, a Christian who did something wrong, who failed to measure up. In the eyes of the world, the Christian is someone who lives their lives always obeying God, earning favor with Him by doing what is right. Because of this belief, they feel justified when we fall, because it means that, since we can’t toe the line, why should they bother? But this belief is rooted in a complete misunderstanding of what it means to be a Christian. Christianity is not a “do” religion; it is a “done” religion. Our standing before God is not based on what we do for Him, but what He has already done for us.
I have previously written on how Christianity can be the only way when there are a myriad of other world religions. The truth is that there are really only two religions, the religion of God and the religion of man. The religion of man is the broad path of human achievement which leads to Hell. Man seeks to atone for his own sins through various works to appease whatever false god he has set up in his mind. His works cannot ever bring salvation because his nature is sinful; therefore, all that he does is sinful by consequence. A sinful work can never atone for a sinful heart. Every religion outside of Jesus Christ is part of the religion of man. The true religion of God is that which is accomplished in the completed work of Jesus Christ. His bloody sacrifice on the cross is the only possible atonement for sin because it is the perfect, sinless blood of the God-Man, Jesus Christ. His propitiatory death paid the debt sinners owe to the perfect Judge in Heaven. His resurrection, the resounding defeat of sin and death, promises eternal life to all who submit themselves to Him in repentance and faith. This is religion of the narrow path that few find because it requires that man humble himself, acknowledging his own inability to save himself, and trust in the work of God to redeem him.
When the world looks at Christians and assumes that we are a people who are part of a “do” religion, it errs on a monumental level. True, biblical Christianity takes someone who is depraved by nature and, through a supernatural work of the Holy Spirit, changes his nature completely. The Christian is freed from the bonds of sin and is made righteous in the eyes of God. Rather than having to follow a bunch of spiritual do’s and dont’s to appease God, the Christian is made perfect in God’s eyes by being given the perfect righteousness of Christ. In other words, all of Christ’s perfect work is already credited at the times of salvation to the Christian. There is nothing more the Christian can do to add to the completed work of Jesus. Nor can the Christian take anything away by his failure to obey God. He is at one time justified. Additionally, as stated above, the Christian’s nature is changed. Prior to salvation, all people are slaves to their sinful nature. Nothing we do is without the taint of selfish, self-pleasing, sin. We are bound to it like a slave to his master. Yet, in Christ, the Christian is freed from the bonds of sin. He is now able to choose to not sin because he has been given a new heart with godly desires. The Christian obeys God, not out of an attempt to earn God’s favor, but out of a genuine love for the One who changed him.
This new nature, while free from sin, still resides in the sinful flesh in which it was born with. So while the Christian is not enslaved to his old nature, he still feels the temptation to fulfill the lustful desires he was once bound to. The flesh craves sin, it feeds on it. Therefore, the lust of the flesh, the lust of the eyes, and the pride of life are forever before the Christian, tempting him to succumb, to give in and feed those desires. The Christian is in an ongoing process of being sanctified while he lives in this world. That means God is progressively changing him to look more like Jesus Christ. He slowly, over time, exposes ongoing sin in his heart, bringing him to a constant state of repentance. While he is perfect in a legal sense before God, he still must go through the work of being made to conform to the image of our Savior. Because he goes through a constant process of revealing of sin and repentance, this means that the Christian will still be sinning while in this world. This is what the world so often fails to grasp. It sees “being good” as a work that makes a person right before God (or whatever god it has created). So Christians are seen as hypocritical because they fail to live up to the perfect standard of God. Yet, it is actually the struggle to overcome the desires of the flesh that is one of hallmarks of a true Christian.
Unfortunately, far too often, even Christians fall prey to the idea that it is our works that prove our salvation. Don’t misunderstand, Scripture teaches us that we are to test ourselves to see if we are truly in the faith. We are to examine our walk and our hearts to see if they are in line with the commands of God. However, it is not that we are perfect in our thoughts, words, and deeds that prove our regeneration. We cannot attain perfection this side of the veil. We are commanded to examine ourselves so that we might see if there is an ongoing lifestyle of sin that never causes us an iota of conviction before the Lord. It is possible to be sorrowful over the effects of sin, but never be convicted over the sin itself. If we are unrepentant in our sin, if we are in a constant state of justifying our sinfulness, and if we see no need to strive to live a life of holiness, then examining ourselves reveals we were never in the faith to begin with. But this examination is not meant to cause the true Christian to doubt his salvation.
Every Christian will likely face the struggle of having assurance of his or her salvation. I believe that much of this stems from the same misconception that the world has of what Christianity really is. We spend much of our lives evaluating people, and ourselves, by what they accomplish. As Christians, even though we have a new nature, we still have a penchant for setting benchmarks for ourselves. We want to be able to say that we are successful because we have accomplished a set number of goals. The problem is that we cannot determine the successfulness of our Christian walk by our own works. When we use works as our standard, we fall into sin because we are showing ourselves to be self-righteous. Christ is the perfect standard, not us. It was His perfect obedience to the commands of God which purchases our salvation. We must evaluate the success of the faith on His works, not our own. But when we set ourselves up as the standard, we seek to dethrone Christ. We no longer are relying on His perfection, but in our own “righteousness.”
Such temptation to evaluate our salvation based on our works I believe is found in failing to understand that we can sin and yet be justified at the same time. We understand that our sins are forgiven due to the sacrifice that Jesus Christ made on our behalf. Our sins were so grievous that God had to make a way of forgiveness for us because we could do nothing for ourselves. God extended forgiveness when we repented and trusted in that completed work. Looking back at our past sins, we can see how Christ’s work paid it backward. Yet, it is difficult to understand how that same sacrifice also paid for the sins we have yet to commit in the future. We trap ourselves into believing God could forgive for what we did before, but how can He forgive us now while we are still sinning? If we were forgiven for so much, then we should start living righteous and holy lives without sin. Such a belief is rooted in self-righteous pride, the idea that we are actually capable of not sinning of our own accord. We fail to recognize we are only free from the grip of sin because of God’s supernatural work. We only grow in our obedience to God because He is working in us by the power of the Holy Spirit. Our ability to choose not to sin is not a work of our own, but a supernatural gift of God.
To avoid the sin of self-righteousness, we must always look to the completed work of the cross as the assurance of our salvation. The cross points us to the cost of sin. Does it break us to know that we deserve the death that Christ received? Does it bring us to tears to know that our sin is an offense to the One who loved us to the point of His death? Do we want to be freed from the constant struggle against the temptations of the flesh, not because of the consequences, but because we love Him who redeemed us? These are not the convictions of the unregenerate heathen, they are the supernatural works done in our heart by the Lord. The cross is the focal point of all of the Christian faith. It is where the justice of God and the mercy of God came together in perfect harmony. We strive in our efforts to be Christ like, not to earn the favor of God, but because God lavished His favor on us at the cross. If we love the cross, if we love the Savior because of His work on the cross, if we want to be changed because we deserve the cross, then these are the assurances we look to. We examine our walk to see that God is growing and changing us because of the Cross. If we do not see the conviction of sin and the desire to be changed because we love Christ, then there is reason to fear for our salvation. But if we can look back at what we once were, yet be humbled, trusting in the work of the Holy Spirit, because there is much more yet to be done, we can be assured God has redeemed us.
The world cannot understand these precious truths about Christianity. It can only look at people and try to determine if they are good or bad based on what they do. The world works on a self-righteous system that is based entirely on the presupposition that man is good and can make up for his own errors. That is the only possible basis for man-centered religion. No matter how much the unbeliever states that he believes man commits sin and needs some kind of redemption, as long as he sees that redemption in himself, he believes in the innate goodness of man. That being the world’s basis for evaluating all religion, it can never understand, outside the supernatural work of God, Christianity. The Christian faith tears down the self-righteous walls built by man and exposes him for the fraud he is. Therefore, the world rebels against this and attempts to ascribe to the Christian the only method of evaluation it has: what has the Christian accomplished? If the Christian fails in any way, if he sins in any fashion, then he is a hypocrite and not worthy of acknowledgment of the world.
Therefore, the church must understand that we cannot engage the world at its level. The world is blinded by sinful preconceptions that are contradictory to the tenets of our faith. To attempt to reason with a world blinded in this manner is akin to explaining quantum physics to a child who has never learned basic math. They simply are not going to make the connection. The world needs supernatural intervention to remove the blinders from its eyes that it may see. God has given the Christian only one means by which this may be done, the proclamation of the gospel. Until the unregenerate are changed by the power of the Holy Spirit, he or she will forever be at war with the true religion of God. Therefore, the supernatural message of the gospel – that man is a sinner by nature who deserves the wrath of God, yet that wrath was poured out on the Son in the place of sinners – is the only means by which the hardened heart can be broken and redeemed. Christians must take this message into the world and share it, unadulterated. It is God’s only approved method by which we can see hearts and minds changed.
The Christian need not fear the judgmental stare of the world. Rather, the Christian should expect this because our Lord and Savior taught us that it would happen. The world hated Jesus and crucified Him. Therefore, those who truly follow Christ will likewise be hated and even persecuted. It is not for us to attempt to change the world’s opinion of us by living in a manner of which it approves. We are to be counter to the things of this world, a light in a world darkened by sin. Our lives should model Christ like behavior, and should be marked by not only an admission of our sinful behavior, but a genuine repentance that the world can see. At the same time, we should be bold proclaimers of the gospel message. It should be our heart’s desire to expose unbelievers to the law of God, showing them their sinfulness and the just wrath of God. Then we led them to the only hope of salvation, the cross of Jesus Christ that they might be saved. In doing so, we stand separate and apart from the world, pointing not to human achievement, which damns all to Hell, but the perfect achievement of Christ, who died to save sinners.
Reblogged this on Revival Bible Study.