Grace is the source of and the fruit of justification — being declared righteous by God Himself, our Savior Jesus Christ.

Context

I write this post in response to my friend Perry So’s post on lust and dealing with sin. He, like you and I, are struggling with living as a redeemed child of God and yet all the while still sinning against God. I thank God for his humility in being naked and open before our Holy God, and yet I pray also for Perry that even in sharing his heart God would cleanse his tears of repentance with the saving and sustaining blood of Jesus Christ. (This post also relates well to my series on Harmartiology, which I am trying to return to soon.)

Content

The source of my thoughts is from reading Jerry Bridges‘ book “The Discipline of Grace“; I just recieved the book in the mail on Tuesday morning from Amazon.ca and have finished almost 3 chapters already just from reading it on my commute. I read a gracious review of it from Tim Challies a few months back, and consequently, I also highly recommend this splendid Reformed book on what it means to truly live sola gratia.

Consequent Convictions

Grace is God’s unmerited favour towards sinners — those who deserve condemnation and wrath. To understand ourselves, we must first begin to understand grace. It is the driving force behind the gospel, and the very thing that enables us to be justified by faith. Without grace we are left under the wrath of God and in line to receive punishment, and ultimately eternal seperation from our Creator. However, by the grace of God, the Father has chosen before the ages began a people that would be saved… the elect whom He puts His grace upon and enables them to recieve His son Jesus Christ through the indwelling of the Holy Spirit as his/her personal Saviour. By this monergistic act of God, the Father brings the spiritually dead person to life–thereby regenerating him/her. By the same Spirit, the redeemed come to faith in God and repentance from sin, and consequently, into relationship with the triune God. All this was, is and ever will be possible only because God’s one and only begotten son, Jesus Christ, died on the Cross to be atonement for our sins, and rose to life on the 3rd day to raise us to new life.

But God, being rich in mercy, because of the great love with which he loved us, even when we were dead in our trespasses, made us alive together with Christ—by grace you have been saved—and raised us up with him and seated us with him in the heavenly places in Christ Jesus, so that in the coming ages he might show the immeasurable riches of his grace in kindness toward us in Christ Jesus. For by grace you have been saved through faith. And this is not your own doing; it is the gift of God, not a result of works, so that no one may boast.
–Ephesians 2:4-9, ESV

At the heart of the gospel is penal substitutionary atonement, of which has 2 equally important components: propitiation and expiation. Christ became our substitute and paid the penalty for that we deserved, thereby becoming propitiation for our sins and assuming our obligations of righteousness he expiated our guilt, covered/cleansed it, by the vicarious punishment which he endured. In essence, this is saving grace.

Beloved, let us love one another, for love is from God, and whoever loves has been born of God and knows God. Anyone who does not love does not know God, because God is love. In this the love of God was made manifest among us, that God sent his only Son into the world, so that we might live through him. In this is love, not that we have loved God but that he loved us and sent his Son to be the propitiation for our sins.
–1 John 4:7-10, ESV

But as believers, Christians, followers of Christ, we still must seek to understand what it means to be sustained by grace. As Bridges noted (30), to do so we committed Christians must address 1) the need for a humble realization of our sinfulness, and 2) the need for the grateful acceptance of God’s grace. We may be continually failing in our pursuit of holiness either because we don’t know how sinful we are, or because we don’t know how gracious God is.

Jesus paid it all, all to Him I owe;
Sin had left a crimson stain, He washed it white as snow!

The Pharisee

One popular attitude among committed Christians is Pharisaism, an attitude of self-satisfaction with one’s walk with Christ. “We can drift into this attitude because we are convinced we believe the right doctrines, we read the right Christian books, we practice the right disciplines of a committed Christian life, or we are actively involved in some aspect of Christian ministry and are not just “pew sitters” in the church.” (30)

When we feel this way, we become self-righteous about our spiritual lives since we see that the world around us is so much more flagrantly sinful. We start feeling really good about ourselves because we don’t commit such gross forms of sin. As it says in Luke 18:11-12,

The Pharisee, standing by himself, prayed thus: ‘God, I thank you that I am not like other men, extortioners, unjust, adulterers, or even like this tax collector. vI fast twice a week; I give tithes of all that I get.’

Like the Pharisee, many of us are orthodox in our values and morals, and thus committed in practicing what the Bible teaches. We have met the threefold description of discipleship, Bridges says: spiritual disciplines, obedience, and service. The problem with the Pharisee as Jesus saw it was self-righteousness, self-satisfaction, and religious pride. And the parable does not apply to just unbelieving sinners, but also to us sinful believers. Just because we have already been justified by faith and have trusted in Christ’s atoning sacrifice for our sins doesn’t mean we don’t need to preach the gospel to ourselves.

Jesus told the parable to the Pharisee in all of us–believers and unbelievers alike who have put our confidence in their own performance, rather than Christ’s grace. As committed Christians, like the unsaved, we also need to a humble realization of our own sinfulness; this may mean that we need to feel guilty and shameful for what we have done. Our sinfulness may not necessarily be in those gross areas committed by unbelieving people, but may very well be in areas that Bridges calls “refined sins” (33-36). Sins like judging and speaking critically of others, unwholesome talk, gossip, resentment, bitterness, an unforgiving spirit, impatience, stubbornness and irritability may not be clearly visible but may still have a profoundly effect on our lives. We must be aware of our own sinfulness which grieves the Holy Spirit, and thus come to the Cross of Jesus daily to receive His grace.

The Tax Collector

For others among us, we may be seeing ourselves as the tax collector in same parable from in Luke 18.

But the tax collector, standing far off, would not even lift up his eyes to heaven, but beat his breast, saying, ‘God, be merciful to me, a sinner!’

God bless you if this is you… because “this man went down to his house justified, rather than the other (Pharisee).” We will receive a gift from God if we acknowledge that we have no righteousness in our own actions apart from the righteousness of Jesus Christ who fulfilled the Law perfectly. In humility he gratefully accepted God’s grace.

However, I know that even as a sinner who’s saved by grace… we may soon find ourselves changing from a tax collector to a Pharisee in our mindset. These are the times when we start comparing ourselves to other Christians, and start looking at how good we are at living the Christian life. And I think herein is where we need to start telling ourselves daily the same story about the Cross that we first heard when we became saved.

Preaching to ourselves

Romans 3:19-26:

19 Now we know that whatever the law says it speaks to those who are under the law, so that every mouth may be stopped, and the whole world may be held accountable to God. 20 For by works of the law no human being will be justified in his sight, since through the law comes knowledge of sin.

21 But now the righteousness of God has been manifested apart from the law, although the Law and the Prophets bear witness to it— 22 the righteousness of God through faith in Jesus Christ for all who believe. For there is no distinction: 23 for all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God, 24 and are justified by his grace as a gift, through the redemption that is in Christ Jesus, 25 whom God put forward as a propitiation by his blood, to be received by faith. This was to show God’s righteousness, because in his divine forbearance he had passed over former sins. 26 It was to show his righteousness at the present time, so that he might be just and the justifier of the one who has faith in Jesus.

As devoted Christians, we are just like unbelievers who need to hear the gospel. But in a deeper sense, we must continually remind ourselves of the depth of our depravity–or rather, the seriousness of sin. Bridges found the 3 words of rebellion, despise, and defy as apt words to describe what is that we do when we fall short of God’s glory, whether in gross or refined sinning.

As 2 Samuel 12:9-10 says, we make our sin a despising of God and His Word because of the infinite majesty and sovereignty of the God who gave the commands. 1 King 13:21 tells that we have “disobeyed the word of the Lord”, or rather as the NIV and HCSB tells, we defy or rebel against God’s word, directly challenging his authority. Just as Leviticus 16:21 retells, our sin whether it be refined or grossly scandalous, it is to God a rebellion against His sovereign rule over His creation.

Guilt, shame, a sense of obligation or duty will never be able to stimulate enough humility for us to pursue holiness for a lifetime. Rather, it must be God’s grace itself that will sustain us in our walks.

2 Corinthians 5:14-15

For the love of Christ controls us, because we have concluded this: that one has died for all, therefore all have died; and he died for all, that those who live might no longer live for themselves but for him who for their sake died and was raised.

It is Christ’s love that compels us (NIV) to a life of worship, obedience and discipleship. “Duty or guilt may motivate us for awhile, but only a sense of Christ’s love for us will motivate us for a lifetime.” (25). “For the love of Christ ..presses on me from all sides, holding me to one end and prohibiting me from considering any other, wrapping itself around me in tenderness, giving me an impelling motive.” Through the message of the gospel and the outpouring of God’s love into our hearts by the Holy Spirit, the love of Christ for us can be the motivating force for a lifetime of discipleship. “As we continually reflect upon the gospel, the Holy Spirit floods our hearts with a sense of God’s love to us in Christ. And that sense of His love motivates us in a compelling way to life for Him.” (26)

Like Paul, we must find a way to renounce our won self-righteousness in order to gain the righteousness from God that comes only by faith in Christ Jesus. When we find the way of humility driving us from our self-righteousness, we will soon find ourselves counting everything as rubbish just to know Christ, to gain Him (Philippians 3:1-9).

“To preach the gospel to yourself, then, means that you continually face up to your own sinfulness and then flee to Jesus through faith in His shed blood and righteous life. It means that you appropriate, again by faith, the fact that Jesus fully satisfied the law of God, that He is your propitiation, and that God’s holy wrath is no longer directed toward you.” (59)

“Your worst days are never so bad that you are beyond the reach of God’s grace. And your best days are never so good that you are beyond the need of God’s grace.”

In and of ourselves we are only sinners…saved by grace, but in, of, and through Christ we are saints. So as His chosen ones, holy and faithful, may we all be disciplined by God’s grace, to pursue a life of holiness.

I had a busy weekend attending the “Coming To The Table” Conference held by the Tribe of Issachar @ TCMC; KBBQ birthday dinner for my church friend James Lau; 18th anniversary of my church where we had a special joint service with our District Superintendant speaking and a drama/sharing program after lunch on Sunday;  then Family Cell Group at night.  All in all, quite tired after a jam-packed weekend.

18 years has passed since my church, Toronto Jaffray Chinese Alliance, started in 1988.  My family first attended Scarborough Chinese Alliance when we first migrated to Scarborough… so other than missing the first couple services, my family and I have been here since the very beginning.  Much has changed over the years: we’ve moved from one rented building to another, the departure of our founding Senior pastor, which caused the departure of many church members… a few pastors coming and going… the move into our own building in 1995… and even a female elder being elected.  It’s been interesting seeing it all happen before my eyes and ears; for a large part of my allife I did not understand what was going on, in terms of church politics/conflicts/people leaving.  But over time, I grew up and grew older, and began seeing and understanding things a bit more.

I can’t believe that I’ve actually been serving, leading worship for over 10 years now; part of me doesn’t want to admit it!  I just feel so old and prefer to think of it as less than a decade LOL  When I first started serving on worship team, I recall that it was because I was asked by Uncle Alfred, our english ministry elder/deacon back then (I think!).  I’ve never had any musical training whatsoever, and I really don’t know what was in the mind of the church leadership asking me to serve, but I am thankful that they did.  They helped me find my place in God’s kingdom by pushing me into serving at church; and praise God that I wasn’t stubborn but was humble enough to take a step of faith into it.  Over a decade has past, and our english congregation has moved from the small “Hosanna” room where we first had our own “English Service” in 1995, then into the fellowship hall in the basement, then in recent years finally moving up to the main sanctuary!  I’ve had the privilge of serving with and being lead into the Word of God by 2 English Pastors so far… and for that I will always be thankful for the Spirtual guidance they have provided me and our congregation.

I wish I could stay around longer, because it really is my desire to serve and be a part of this beautiful bride of Christ here at Jaffray.  And even though things may not go the way I want it to sometimes, even though change takes a long long long time here, and even though I am finding that my personal conserative, Reformed & Charismatic theology not being compatible with that of our church.  And even though all sorts of emerging literature and theology is slowly and silently seeping into our English congregation…. –I love my church, and want to stay and to serve here.  If there’s one thing that the “Coming To The Table” Conference helped me see this weekend, is that I should be truly thankful for my church and how far we have come.  PRAISE GOD for letting me be part of such a beautiful body of Christ!  I really wish I could stay a while longer, though I forsee that it might not be possible if God relocates me for work.  I just want to follow God wherever He leads me: in obedience and in sacrifice.

There are negotiables and there are non-negotiables in church.  We must keep the main thing the main thing.  And where non-negotiables have become negotiable, I think those would be the areas where serious diaologue must be exchanged between the church’s eldership, pastoral staff, and congregation.  I pray that our pastoral staff would be more humble in seeking the congregation for our views on these things, because indeed some people and some circumstances may make it too easy to just sit back & gossip & not talk about it.

Anyways, this post wasn’t intended to be all about just church.  Saturday night and Sunday morning, I had quite some trouble sleeping… just wrestling in my head and in m heart about God’s timing, and where I am in life.  Just been thinking to myself how there will likely never be a “right time” to start a relationship, how I will likely be in a job which will make it extremely hard to have one, and how where God is taking me in life will not be easy for any relationship.  As I sat silently awake in bed, I couldn’t help but feel saddened and disappointed at this… how in the next 3-5years there will never be the right time to start a relationship; how difficult it will be to start and maintain one; how it will never be easy.  Patience is needed.  Above all, faith in God alone is needed; trust.  Trusting in God’s timing and that I am doing the right thing, doing what God desires of me can often be hard… Sometimes the options can both seem so similar in being what God would want from me, and I guess this is where I need Divine discernment, to know what God’s will of command is.

Before I went to bed on Saturday night, God led me to Psalm 34 in my HCSB Bible:

8 Taste and see that the LORD is good.
How happy is the man who takes refuge in Him!
9 Fear the LORD, you His saints,
for those who fear Him lack nothing.
10 Young lions lack food and go hungry,
but those who seek the LORD
will not lack any good thing.

I focused on verse 8 for the past couple days… just trying to think upon the goodness of the LORD, to taste it, to savour it, to see it and believe it: the goodness of the Father to me.  And then just meditating upon the happiness of being in His refuge.  The ESV says “blessed” instead, but I think the wording of the HCSB is also accurate: if I take refuge in Him–I will be blessed, I will be happy!

Tonight, I just want to focus on fearing God in order that I may lack nothing.

Fear the LORD, you His saints,
for those who fear Him lack nothing.

To take refuge in Him… and to revere Him with humble fear.

Grace Church On-The-Hill (Anglican), Toronto

“Many in the church today believe that the only way to reach the world is to give the unchurched multitudes what they want. Hundreds of churches have followed precisely that theory, actually surveying unbelievers to learn what it would take to get them to attend.

Subtly the overriding goal is church attendance and worldly acceptability rather than a transformed life. Preaching the Word and boldly confronting sin are seen as archaic, ineffectual means of winning the world. After all, those things actually drive most people away. Why not entice people into the fold by offering what they want, creating a friendly, comfortable environment, and catering to the very desires that constitute their strongest urges? As if we might get them to accept Jesus by somehow making Him more likable or making His message less offensive.

That kind of thinking badly skews the mission of the church. The Great Commission is not a marketing manifesto. Evangelism does not require salesmen, but prophets. It is the Word of God, not any earthly enticement, that plants the seed for the new birth (1 Peter 1:23). We gain nothing but God’s displeasure if we seek to remove the offense of the cross.

Something is wrong with a philosophy that relegates God and His Word to a subordinate role in the church. It is clearly unbiblical to elevate entertainment over biblical preaching and worship in the church service. Sadly, some actually believe that their salesmanship can bring people into the kingdom more effectively than a sovereign God—a philosophy that has opened the door to worldliness in the church.”

-John MacArthur
(Answering “What is wrong with the seeker-friendly model of ministry?”
Adapted from “Ashamed of the Gospel”, pp. xviii-xix)

 

In a different world, in a different time… it could be different.

But have you ever met somebody who was completely different than just about everybody around you?  …like, even different from most of the so-called, self-declared Christians you know?  I do.

I have a friend who practically has her heart and mind set on things above instead of things on earth, almost every waking minute I can tell.  While most people her age are enamoured with all the pleasures of this world–money, shopping, clothes, toys, fame, popularity, vanity–she hardly cares a single bit about shopping and the attainment of material things.  The false sense of “satisfaction” that accumulating more and more stuff does not entice her at all; she finds no interest in buying or keeping up-to-date with the latest fashions, shoes, or handbags.  My friend has all that she needs and wants in God Himself; I have never seen her drink from earthly wells that ultimately run dry.  She’s a person who finds no happiness in seeking after worldly pleasures, and she knows that loving pleasure itself will make her poor rather than rich.

Instead, this friend of mine delights herself in God–the Provider of all things, the Giver of life Himself.  She finds both her duty and delight in seeing and savouring God, and counts everything of this world as loss because of the surpassing worth of knowing Christ Jesus her LORD and Saviour.  In fact, her love for her Savior and the compassion she has for God’s people is the driving force behind all that she does–a selfless ambition that moves her to the hardest places in the world…just so she could be used by the Holy Spirit to save some.  The life that she lives on this earth is one that is alive to God and dead to the sins of this world; nothing of this world fills or satisifies her like the Word of God does.  She would rather spend an eternity in the house of the Lord with the Father instead walking through a shopping mall; she desires the fellowship of Jesus more than earthly relationship can give.  Indeed, because of her Kingdom mindset, she considers even her own achievements and accomplishments as rubbish… just so she can gain Christ all the more. 

I write this post just to tell you of how much I admire true humility in Christians, and how thankful I am to have such a good friend in my life who is not conceited or puffed up with pride.  I myself am learning so much week in and week out from her example of humility, finding that I myself still have too much pride and am still too stubborn.  She is what some may call a “Christian hedonist”, a child of God who simply seeks to pursue her maximum pleasure in God.  And over the past year, she has helped me tremendously in moving forward in my pursuit of holiness and righteousness–a holiness and righteousness that isn’t founded upon what I can do or can accomplish, but upon Christ Jesus and what He has already accomplished and what He can do through me by the indwelling of the Holy Spirit.

“Brothers, I do not consider that I have made it my own. But one thing I do: forgetting what lies behind and straining forward to what lies ahead, I press on toward the goal for the prize of the upward call of God in Christ Jesus.”

-Philippians 3:13-14, ESV

And so, that is my calling, and that is what lies aheadof me that I am pursuing with all of me: to know God, to love God, and to glorify God… that is my goal and that is my prize.  But furthermore, to tell others about the life-cleansing redemption that can only be found in Christ Jesus… wow, this is both a gift and a privilege!

I do not know where I am going in this life.  All I know is that it looks like God is taking me to places beyond my own comfort zone.  I am only following where He is going, fully depending on the Holy Spirit for guidance in the path ahead of me, and eagerly expecting Him to put in places & situations where I can see Him move and where He can find me humbly responding to His activities.  I wish could stay home and enjoy the intimacy of friends and family, especially her… except so far, it doesn’t seem like it is in the will of God at this moment in time.

I wish things could be different, and that we could better, more intimate of friends who can tell each other our deepest, most heartfelt thoughts and feelings.  It amazes me that I can talk to my friend about every nitty gritty thing that bother my heart and mind, things that would bore most people to death…but her, she listens, she understands, and even cares.  However, we are indeed at different life stages right now, and at this age and in this moment in time, the stars are just not crossed in our favour for this to happen.  Maybe, in a different world and in a different time, it could be different.

I just cannot figure out for the life of me why God won’t move mountains right now for us to happen.

I’ve declined the Ottawa job offer, fyi.

Also, check out 11 things to make everyone dislike you & shipwreck your faith!

Download a free sermon from the WorshipGod06 Conference, titled “Sanctification through Serving” (promo code FREEDOWNLOAD).

Tim Challies reviews Dan Southerland’s book “Transitioning“, which aims to help churches move from traditional to Purpose Driven; not recommended (as is the PDC methodology)!

Chris Tomlin’s new CD “See The Morning” is being released on Sept. 26!

It was 5 years ago on this day… let us take a moment and pause, and reflect.  (See also CNN for coverage)

I just began reading a book that I bought earlier this year but had not had the time or religious-academic fervor to read. It is “Reclaiming the Center“, edited by Erickson, Helseth and Taylor, published by Crossway. As the subtitle reads, the book is a collection of scholarly articles about “confronting evangelical accommodation in postmodern times“.

For many of you reading my post here, you’re probably thinking–”what in the world are you talking about?” I’m talking about the confrontation between people within the church as we know it, and how there’s a significant shift taking place today in some segments of evangelicalism. These people within these segments of Christianity are trying to reach our postmodern culture with the the Message of Jesus Christ and the Kingdom of God–which is a good and Biblical mission that we should all have. However, in the process of doing so, they are accommodating (/changing/reforming) the entire message itself to suit the times and culture; they have tried to contextualize the Gospel message to be appealing to seekers but have gone so far as compromising truth itself.

My post here isn’t intended to be too in-depth, but just to tell you about the struggle I am facing as a Christian and as one who has been called on by God to “fight the good fight of the faith” and to “contend for the faith that was once for all delivered to the saints“. I feel very alone in this fight here in Toronto where I live out my faith… I feel like very few people actually know what I am talking about, or even see the shift in the way church is being done; most brothers and sisters in Christ I know don’t even care about such issues (of ecclesiology, missiology, and epistemology). (As you can see, using big church words like I just did quickly puts people off! LOL)

Why do I care so much about this stuff? I don’t know exactly… but from what I can tell, it’s all the Holy Spirit’s working. Over the years from serving in church and fellowship, leading worship… I’ve developed an intensive and extensive passion for the glory of God, and how worship is the fuel for mission’s flame and the heart of its aim. I care because God cares, and He wants me to care… Christ suffered, and bled and died and gave Himself up for the church, and thus it is the most precious thing on this earth. As Christ loves the church and calls me to be an imitator of Him, so too I must love and care for it as He does.

“The Spirit of the Lord God is upon me, because the Lord has anointed me to bring good news to the poor; he has sent me to bind up the brokenhearted, to proclaim liberty to the captives, and the opening of the prison to those who are bound…” (Isaiah 61:1, ESV)

On most days, I wake up not wanting to care about all these issues… because it is such a huge burden to think and wrestle about. To just be a regular Joe who follows Christ and to deal with this stuff day in and day out is one thing; to be called to do something about it (& help others in this) is a complete massively mind numbing thing altogether.

Newayz, the fact is, things are changing… the goal is honourable, but what’s being done to get there is, quite frankly, apostasy. We can put many labels on these people who are pushing for change in the postmodern church: postconservatives, postfundamentalists, postfoundationalists, postpropositionalists, postevangelicals, post-everythings, reformists…or the more popularily known “emerging church“. Whatever the label, they all have some common characteristics about how to re-do church and become a new kind of Christian. Christianity is being seen as more a narrative rather than doctrines/principles or propositions of truth; tradition, culture and the contemporary experience is being seen as the source of theology rather than just the Bible itself. As Justin Taylor writes, these people are “self-professed evangelicals seeking to revision theology, renew the center, and transform the worshipping community of evangelicalism, cognizant of the postmodern global context within which we live.”

The pastor of this shift in evangelicalism, Brian McLaren, is pushing for freedom from the bondage of modern categories… advocating dialogue over debate, community over individualism, and experience over proof. As can be seen in his numerous books, McLaren argues that Christianity should be focused around Jesus’ message about God’s kingdom which relates to us in our place and time–not just about whether individual souls get to heaven when they die. Hence, this Emergent leader calls for this kingdom emphasis in the community not just individuality, and all of creation not just individual souls. Furthermore, the shift is towards an spirituality-based experience of God, instead of a creed-based one; and how this spiritual formation should be done is to look to Richard Foster and Dallas Willard for methods that stem from Roman Catholicism and eastern mysticism.

What’s been happening in my little corner of Christianity was that we began to read more and more postmodern literature, as encouraged by my church & pastor. (I don’t wanna point fingers here; I’m just telling ya of how my thinkings came about). It started with my pastor being a crazy fan of Erwin McManus–which is for the most part fine, except that McManus is known to be quite emergent-esque; for a while sermons at church were laced with McManus quotations. We have also used Rob Bell’s Nooma videos for fellowship (and even Sunday Service once), the church having purchased many of them dvds, and thus supporting Bell’s ministry financially. Then we started reading McLaren’s “A Generous Orthodoxy” in the young adults small group, for the most part without directly and purposely measuring the book against Scripture. And in more recent days, I hear quotes from Dallas Willard way too often during Sunday Service and even find them on the back our bulletins. If this isn’t enough, the push in our english congregation is towards MISSIONAL. Yes, there I’ve said it… what every emerging church is these days: missional. (I’m not against being missional, I’m all for it; it’s just the emerging/Emergent flavour that I find really sour and quite detrimental to evangelicalism.) And of course, you can also throw into this mix “authentic community“, and “holistic“–2 very popular concepts in the neo-liberal emerging church (again, both of which aren’t necessarily bad… just the emerging twist of it may not be Biblical sound).

All in all, “gulity by association” can very much be said to be occuring around me. (I should also mention that we also went through a “Purpose Driven Life” phase where we did go through the book; thankfully our eldership found the Purpose Driven Church model garbage & we don’t follow it).

As of late, the contemplative spirituality thing has been infiltrating the minds of some friends and my parents too. Richard Foster and the spiritual disciplines that this famous writer promotes is really seeping into the Christian circles. I am finding that sooner or later, many of the good’ ole Christian pastors/writers we read so much of could very well be contemplative too. Like recently, finding out that a book I got for Christmas from a friend, Max Lucado’s “Cure for the Common Life”, has been found to have very contemplative messages and theologies. I won’t say too much about this, except that if God really had a way for us to really experience Him better in life–don’t you think He would have mentioned it in the Bible? If we’re seeking to hear God speak to us through experience, personal revelation, and listen for it…. …. shhhhhhh…. SILENCE–is God’s Word given to us in the Holy Bible not enough for faith and life?

In essence, 3 big things are happening too close to home in this emerging kind of Christianity. This movement/conversation in the church is fostering contempt for authority, breeding doubt about the clarity of Scripture, and sowing confusion about the mission of the church. These trends are very much widespread: God’s word is thought to be profitable but not authoritative, these people who read it deny that they can know any truth there in with any certainty/assurance/strong conviction believing rather that they are too humble to be certain about anything–‘who am I to interpret what it really means? Everything can be interpreted differently by different people.‘ Scripture isn’t clear enough for us to believe any of it with confidence, these peeps think… which then leads us to change the missional missiology found in Scripture to one that aims to adapt church to our culture, with very little if any regard for our duty as the church and as Christians to proclaim the Gospel message of Christ’s substitutionary atonement and our need for repentance and faith.

With all that is happening, we evangelicals must fight to defend the Truth and reclaim the center of Christendom. Christ came to save sinners. If we leave out the message of salvation through Christ which includes both propitiation and expiation–we leave out the very thing that saves sinners. We can help people with getting food, shelter, a nicely run home and stable financial situation…but without the one thing that they really need (to be saved, by Jesus) they will still spend an eternity without God.

Taking a look at the Book of Jude, you can find that this is the only book in the New Testament that is strictly devoted to confronting apostasy… that is defection from true, Biblical faith. Reading through this short letter a few times and digging a bit deeper via the MacArthur Bible Commentary, I’ve found that Jude (Christ’s half-brother) wrote to condemn the apostates and to urge believers to fight for the faith against false teachers & false teachings. He called on the church for discernment and a rigorous defense of Biblical truth. Jude described the apostates in terms of their character and unconscionable activities, but he never specifically mentioned the content of the false teachings. We can, however, find that the degenerate personal lives and fruitless ministries showed that they were masquerading their teaching of error as if it were truth. What Jude emphasizes is the common theme of personal curruption within all false teachers, thus calling Christians to look beyond their false spiritual fronts of clever, subtle, deceptive, enticing methods & methodology… and to see the wicked truth of their lives that is behind the fake gospel they preach.

3 Beloved, although I was very eager to write to you about our common salvation, I found it necessary to write appealing to you to contend for the faith that was once for all delivered to the saints. 4 For certain people have crept in unnoticed who long ago were designated for this condemnation, ungodly people, who pervert the grace of our God into sensuality and deny our only Master and Lord, Jesus Christ.

Jude 1:3-4, ESV

Reading this letter, I feel like God is speaking directly to me about what is happening in our churches today, and the spiritual warfare that is happening beyond what our human eyes can see. Jude lived in a time about 25 years before the full-blown Gnosticism that the apostle John wrote about in his epistles; Christianity in Jude’s time was under severe political attack from Rome and aggressive spiritual infiltration from apsostates and libertines who sowed lots of seed for a gigantic harvest of doctrinal error. Where Jude begged the church in this letter to fight for the truth in the midst of intense spiritual warfare, I feel the Spirit of God calling upon me to do the same, here and now, in my place and time in history. These false teachers of today–hollow men of what is known as the Ecumenical Church of Deceit–preach and live a counterfeit gospel, consequently misleading an unknowing, unsaved people, who need to hear the true gospel. Just like it was in Jude’s time before the 1st century A.D., God calls us to wage war against error in all forms and to fight strenuously for the truth, like a soldier who has been entrusted with the task of guarding a holy treasure.

This truth and message of faith & salvation that we are to defend is found in God’s Word: we must know the sound principles/doctrines within, to discern truth from error, and to confront and attack error. In our times, we must understand that the fight is being put on by so-called, self-proclaimed Christians against us who have a high view of the perspecuity, authority, and sufficiency of Scripture. (These emerging Christians aren’t waging war against those who deny Biblical truth but rather making friends with them, along with all the traditions of Christianity.) As soldiers who are dead to sin and alive to God, we have been given the responsibility to study God’s Word, to preach/share it with un/believers, and to fight for its preservation! This is what it means to contend for our faith.

And so the question remains, will we do it? Will I take up this responsibility, this massive task. The way I see it, I don’t have much of a choice; to not put up a fight is not an option. To give up and live in this garbage that is seeping into our churches is to die in the aftermath of open theism, universalism and paganism. It won’t get any better with time but only worse and worse. As Paul wrote in the chapter 3 of his 2nd letter to Timothy, this is the danger of the last days he mentions: people who have the appearance of godliness but deny its power, “always learning and never able to arrive at a knowledge of the truth.” (2 Tim 3:7, ESV) The time has come when people don’t endure sound teaching, accumulating for themselves teachers to suit their own passions–because that’s what their itching ears want to hear… hence, wandering into myths and turn away from listening to the truth. Their unhealthy craving for controversy and quarelling about words produce nothing edifying to believers or glorifying to God, except godlessness. We must avoid irreverent bable, twisted and unbiblical authors and their books, flee youthful passions and instead pursue righteousness, faith, love, and peace.

In this day, as in Jude and Timothy’s days… God calls us to confront evangelical accommodation, to live a humble orthodoxy. May we live a life worthy, then, of His calling.

Now to him who is able to keep you from stumbling and to present you blameless before the presence of his glory with great joy, to the only God, our Savior, through Jesus Christ our Lord, be glory, majesty, dominion, and authority, before all time and now and forever. Amen.

-SDG