Dying to Self

Equipping the Saints: Murder in the Church

Standard

Talk to enough Christians and it’s apparent that whatever is wrong with the world is also wrong with believers. Not a person reading this doesn’t know a dozen Christians who struggle constantly with their Faith, staggering from one ditch into another.

For years, I used to be on a team at church who prayed for folks who came up after the service. The stories I’ve heard…more hair-curling than a beauty salon. What I’ve learned in those times makes for discernment that never fails and a word of wisdom that always applies.

What did I learn? It’s in these words of Jesus:

For whoever would save his life will lose it, but whoever loses his life for my sake and the gospel’s will save it.
—Mark 8:35

The reason many Christians suffer needlessly is because we don’t know what it means to die to self. Nearly every problem we make for ourselves we make because we’ve skirted the cross and gone on our own merry way.

Consider any issue facing the American Church today. Below the surface, the crux of that issue goes back to one thing: not enough dead-to-self Christians.

Take the phrase “not enough are dead to self ” and see how remarkably it answers the following questions:

Why aren’t Christians more interested in evangelism?

Why do so few Christians know the Bible?

Why are Christians so prayerless?

Why do so few Christians serve their neighbors?

Why do so many Christians look just like the world?

Why do so many Christians get divorces?

Why do our Christian youth apostasize in such large numbers while in college?

Why are Christians making so little impact on our society and culture?

The number of such questions that can be answered with “not enough are dead to self ” accumulates rapidly.

A chilling verse:

For many, of whom I have often told you and now tell you even with tears, walk as enemies of the cross of Christ.
—Philippians 3:18

The Cross...I’m sure each of us could draw up a list packed with names of people or groups we would deem enemies of Christ.

But notice Paul’s phraseology. He chooses his words carefully. He did NOT say “enemies of Christ” but “enemies of the CROSS of Christ.”

That hits harder because it hits closer to home. In fact, such enemies may populate our churches. Worse yet, they may be you and me.

Paul concludes:

Their end is destruction, their god is their belly, and they glory in their shame, with minds set on earthly things.
—Philippians 3:19

Sounds like America 2009, doesn’t it?

What else explains the crossless preaching from our pulpits that tickles so many ears?  What else explains Christians who can’t seem to abide even the lightest correction or systematic discipleship? What else explains Christians who look just like the world?

Simple: They haven’t been to the cross.

Perhaps one Christian in 1,000 can say the following without risk of perjury:

But whatever gain I had, I counted as loss for the sake of Christ. Indeed, I count everything as loss because of the surpassing worth of knowing Christ Jesus my Lord. For his sake I have suffered the loss of all things and count them as rubbish, in order that I may gain Christ and be found in him, not having a righteousness of my own that comes from the law, but that which comes through faith in Christ, the righteousness from God that depends on faith– that I may know him and the power of his resurrection, and may share his sufferings, becoming like him in his death, that by any means possible I may attain the resurrection from the dead.
—Philippians 3:7-11

Jesus makes the the dividing line even more obvious:

So therefore, any one of you who does not renounce all that he has cannot be my disciple.
—Luke 14:33

And that dividing line is the cross.  The cross is death to anyone who lays hold of it with both hands:

But far be it from me to boast except in the cross of our Lord Jesus Christ, by which the world has been crucified to me, and I to the world. For neither circumcision counts for anything, nor uncircumcision, but a new creation.
—Galatians 6:14-15

Set your minds on things that are above, not on things that are on earth. For you have died, and your life is hidden with Christ in God.
—Colossians 3:2-3

But for those who die at the cross, a new hope exists:

I have been crucified with Christ. It is no longer I who live, but Christ who lives in me. And the life I now live in the flesh I live by faith in the Son of God, who loved me and gave himself for me.
—Galatians 2:20

Therefore, if anyone is in Christ, he is a new creation. The old has passed away; behold, the new has come.
—2 Corinthians 5:17

The saying is trustworthy, for: If we have died with him, we will also live with him…
—2 Timothy 2:11

Here’s one of the strongest spiritual truths: People who aren’t dead to self are nigh unto useless for the Kingdom. Most of what they do for God will be of the flesh, and that junk neither lasts nor produces genuine fruit.

But a man or woman dead to self and alive to Christ is unbounded. You can’t shame such people because you can’t shame the dead. You can’t hurt the dead because they feel no pain. You don’t have to dance around the willfulness of the dead because, hey, no will of their own; they pretty much do whatever you tell them.

And that’s the kind of person God will use immensely.

If we want to talk about equipping the saints, we also have to talk about de-equipping them of themselves.

Too few Christian leaders are bold enough to tell people to their faces that the sole reason for the majority of their annoyances is that they aren’t dead to self. Too few Christian leaders have the cajones to go up to lingerers at church and say, “The reason you’re useless for God is because you have no idea what it means to be dead to self. Maybe if you stopped crawling off the altar God would use you to fix the problems in His church that you’ve been griping about for decades.” Or something to that effect.

If people get offended, too bad. It’s one of the signs they’re not dead to self. Sadly, the cemeteries are filled with the bodies of those who walked away from God because He didn’t fulfill their expectations. And each one of those people left because they couldn’t get past the cross and dying to self. Isaiah, in one of the most potent verses in Scripture, describes such people vividly:

“Woe to him who strives with him who formed him, a pot among earthen pots! Does the clay say to him who forms it, ‘What are you making?’ or ‘Your work has no handles’?
—Isaiah 45:9

You can tell when someone isn’t dead. While a dead body reeks of decay, a person not dead to self reeks of something far worse: pride.  Meanwhile, the sweet aroma of the Christian who is dead to self is that of humility, the first fruit of the image of Christ.

If we aren’t getting people to the cross, then all the equipping in the world will be worthless. If the raw material we’re hoping to see molded into the image of Jesus isn’t dead first, we might as reevaluate our fancy-dancy educational programming until it is.

Will that be hard? Heck, yeah! But it’s the only way that achieves great results for the Kingdom.

The Path Less Chosen

Standard

In light of the ongoing discussion from Monday’s post (“Killed All the Day Long“), I would like to talk about the path less chosen.

The idea of facing violence with something other than violence sounds crazy. “An eye for an eye” is so ingrained in us that “turn the other cheek” verges on madness. We are told we must always be vigilant so that others do not take away from us those things we believe own, even though the Scriptures say that all is God’s, we are not our own,  and to the one who asks for our shirt must go our cloak also. When asked to go one mile, why go two? Deny ourselves and take up a cross? How could any of that cloak-giving, cheek-turning, self-denying, and second-mile-going possibly profit us?

The older I get in the Lord, the more I understand that we humans are too often people who live at the poles of thought and practice. We think in terms of black and white, especially in the West (oddly enough, given the advanced education we Westerners have received). Attempting to see colors beyond those two is left for misty-eyed dreamers and ivory-towered philosophers. So rarely are we able to lay down our own pride and prejudices to step into the lives and minds of others, especially those whom we see as foes.

The problem of living in such a state is that we miss the path less chosen. The narrow path, by definition, is the one not often found. And it remains obscure because we do not have the mind of Christ, the mind that sees all things as they really are. For some of us, even when we do know the right way, our own willfulness and pride keep us from taking that narrow path.

A few weeks ago, I posted “A Dozen Sayings of Jesus That Will Change the World—If Christians Would Ever Believe Them.” Many of those sayings go unheeded because they ask us to move out of our extremes into a third way, which is Christ’s way. They put us on a narrow path that few take because the majority fails to understand how that path will lead anywhere useful. Such is the nature of our weak minds and hearts that we miss God’s way so readily.

For the rest of the week, I would like to open the conversation by asking a question of readers:

In what situations has Christ led you on a narrow path that was incomprehensible to others, even fellow believers, yet that choice led to major blessings?

Killed All the Day Long

Standard

Jesus said to [Martha], “I am the resurrection and the life. Whoever believes in me, though he die, yet shall he live, and everyone who lives and believes in me shall never die. Do you believe this?”
—John 11:25-26

As a younger man, my favorite book was The Journals of Jim Elliot, the personal writings of the famed missionary/martyr. Elliot was always a hero of mine. He and four others were speared to death by aboriginals in Ecuador, people they were trying to reach with the Gospel.

Only recently, They didn't fire their guns...though, did I read an interesting fact: Elliot and his companions carried guns, yet they chose not to fire them in self-defense. Instead, they took the spears and died.

The simple question: why?

Many believe that Elliot and his friends chose to die rather than kill others who, not knowing Christ, would be doomed to hell. They gave up their perceived right to life to keep others  from eternal death. They loved strangers more than they loved their own lives.

When I look around the American Church, I don’t find that mentality. If anything, we are Americans, first and foremost, and our right to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness trumps any idea of forgoing that right to save another from the lake of fire. Our enemies deserve to burn in hell; they’re our enemies, aren’t they?

Yet the Kingdom of God has different rights than the kingdoms of this earth. For instance, here’s one of the realities of the Kingdom of God:

As it is written, “For your sake we are being killed all the day long; we are regarded as sheep to be slaughtered.”
—Romans 8:36

Paul then notes that this reality makes us more than conquerers.

But we don’t think that way. Our view is that retaliation against our enemies and those who intend to harm us is our right as Americans. Yet Paul says it is for God’s sake that we lay down our lives.

An eye for an eye was most definitely the Old Testament way, as was the sword. But I struggle to find any evidence that the New Testament incorporates that same thinking:

Then Jesus said to him, “Put your sword back into its place. For all who take the sword will perish by the sword.”
—Matthew 26:52

When the inclination is to pick up the sword rather than the cross, then we live by the sword. And we in America most definitely live by the sword because we see it as our right to wield it.

“Blessed are you when others revile you and persecute you and utter all kinds of evil against you falsely on my account. Rejoice and be glad, for your reward is great in heaven, for so they persecuted the prophets who were before you.”
—Matthew 5:11-12

Persecuted didn’t just mean opposed, unless Isaiah’s being sawn in two can be considered mere dissent on the part of those who  “persecuted” him.

“You have heard that it was said, ‘An eye for an eye and a tooth for a tooth.’ But I say to you, Do not resist the one who is evil. But if anyone slaps you on the right cheek, turn to him the other also.”
—Matthew 5:38-39

What part of “Do not resist the one who is evil” do we not understand?

“But I say to you, Love your enemies and pray for those who persecute you, so that you may be sons of your Father who is in heaven.”
—Matthew 5:44

Isn’t “Hate your enemies and counterattack those who persecute you” more the way we live? Don’t most of us think a chromed Dan Wesson .45 with a walnut grip a better response to one’s enemies than prayer? Don’t we all smirk when someone offers that we  should “kill ’em all and let God sort ’em out”? Well?

“A disciple is not above his teacher, but everyone when he is fully trained will be like his teacher.”
—Luke 6:40

And how were Christ’s disciples like their teacher? Nearly all died deaths at the hands of those who reviled them. What’s more, the Bible hints that they welcomed such a death. (“My desire is to depart and be with Christ, for that is far better.”—Philippians 1:23 / “And they have conquered him by the blood of the Lamb and by the word of their testimony, for they loved not their lives even unto death.”—Revelation 12:11)

“And when they bring you to trial and deliver you over, do not be anxious beforehand what you are to say, but say whatever is given you in that hour, for it is not you who speak, but the Holy Spirit. And brother will deliver brother over to death, and the father his child, and children will rise against parents and have them put to death. And you will be hated by all for my name’s sake. But the one who endures to the end will be saved.”
—Mark 13:11-13

Was Jesus ignorant of how those trials would end?  What retaliatory plans did He offer His followers in the wake of their sentencing?

Here’s a good example of one such trial:

Now when they heard these things they were enraged, and they ground their teeth at [Stephen]. But he, full of the Holy Spirit, gazed into heaven and saw the glory of God, and Jesus standing at the right hand of God. And he said, “Behold, I see the heavens opened, and the Son of Man standing at the right hand of God.” But they cried out with a loud voice and stopped their ears and rushed together at him. Then they cast him out of the city and stoned him. And the witnesses laid down their garments at the feet of a young man named Saul. And as they were stoning Stephen, he called out, “Lord Jesus, receive my spirit.” And falling to his knees he cried out with a loud voice, “Lord, do not hold this sin against them.” And when he had said this, he fell asleep.
—Acts 7:54-60

I believe some would have preferred that Stephen, doing his best Chuck Norris, pull out a couple of AK-47s and dust every last person holding a rock. Yeah, man!

Instead, Stephen died praying for his enemies because he knew that vengeance belongs to the Lord alone.

Paul wrote this:

For to me to live is Christ, and to die is gain.
—Philippians 1:21

In that spirit, I offer this scenario (not for the fainthearted):

One day, your enemies come for you and your Christian family. Instead of reaching for your shotgun, you attempt to share the love of Christ with them. Their response? They force you to watch as they rape your daughter, then slit her throat. Then they put a couple slugs into your wife’s face and do the same to you. For a finale, they set your house to flame to ensure that your young son, who is hiding somewhere inside, doesn’t make it out alive.

A few months later, one of those enemies, having heard the life-filled testimonies and seen the holy martyr deaths of enough Christians,  gives his life to Jesus.

I believe that one of the reasons that such a response on our parts seems so inconceivable is because we don’t really live as if a mansion in glory awaits us. The question of Jesus to Martha that opens this post receives an answer of yes in our heads, but no in our hearts. We love this life too much because it’s the only thing that seems real to us. We can’t see the value in giving that up willingly. Only fools, weaklings, and cowards would do such a thing. Better that we go down with a pistol in hand than be thought impotent against our enemies’ attacks.

Yet Jim Elliot’s holstered gun speaks long after its owner took his last breath.

As an American, all this is foreign to me. It’s not the way I have ever thought or even think now.  I encounter an Elliot or a Dirk Willems and such people exist outside my own worldview box. No, I would prefer to think that Corrie and Betsy Ten Boom pulled out a couple Walther P38s and sent a dozen Nazis to hell before they and their family and their boarders were hauled off to the concentration camps. That the Apostle Paul yanked out a secreted knife and gutted his executioner before the Romans managed to strap him down and remove his head.

But when the room is quiet and it’s just the Lord and me, I realize I think that way because my mind is not as Christlike as I would believe.

So I ask, when they finally come for you and me, will we go down fighting like men who don’t believe in the world to come? Or will we kneel in prayer and die like Christians?