Godly Character

Sinners or Saints?

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Driving home this evening, I got to thinking about what I’ve written here the last few days. Much of it centers around how we Christians perceive ourselves and what Christ has done for us. Saints of the Most High God!It’s the question of whether we see ourselves as sinners or saints.

The more I read the Scriptures, the more I realize we’re misunderstanding the extent of Christ’s work on the cross. And in that misunderstanding, we fall back into a grossly mistaken position.

The New Testament draws clear lines of distinction between sinners and saints. We, however, like to blur those distinctions whenever we call our post-conversion selves “sinners.” But I don’t see Paul going back to that well all the time. When he writes a letter to a church, he doesn’t say, “To all the sinners in the church of….” No, he repeatedly uses the word saints.

In truth, you and I are saints who are being changed by God through the putting off of our old sin nature. Our identities got swapped out. God doesn’t look at us as sinners, but saints because of the salvation purchased for us by Christ.

So why is it that so many of us go back to that hangdog “sinner” appellation? Aren’t we giving up what Christ did for us at the cross? If we truly are new creations in Christ, if He’s paid the penalty on our behalf, and He’s secured for us access to the Father, why do we fall back into thinking of ourselves as sinners and not saints?

If anything, the epistles drive this home:

So you also must consider yourselves dead to sin and alive to God in Christ Jesus.
—Romans 6:11

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

So you are no longer a slave, but a son, and if a son, then an heir through God.
—Galatians 4:7

So then you are no longer strangers and aliens, but you are fellow citizens with the saints and members of the household of God…
—Ephesians 2:19

See what kind of love the Father has given to us, that we should be called children of God; and so we are.
—1 John 3:1a

If we don’t have this mentality, then we’re missing out on what it means to be alive in Christ.

We then

  • set our expectations low and don’t believe God for the impossible because we still think we’re aliens and strangers,
  • fail to appropriate what Christ has purchased for us on the cross, because we mistakenly think the sinner in us is triumphant over the saint, and
  • muddle through and lament, rather than walk in our inheritance as children of God.

I’ve got to believe that our failure to move beyond identifying primarily as sinners is one reason why our churches lack power. It explains why so much of what we attempt for the Kingdom fails. It shows why so many of us limp through our days rather than rising on wings like eagles.

Church, it’s time to step out of the sinner ghetto and walk in the sainthood Christ so dearly paid for!

Wave-Lookers

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Yesterday, my pastor preached on believing God for the impossible.

For most of my life, I’ve been the kind of person who has believed God for the impossible. I believe that God can do anything. I put no limits on His ability to do anything.

Where I stumble is when I find that fellow Christians around me don’t believe as I do. Then I question whether I’m the nut and they’re the ones making sense.

And I look at the waves.

And in the fourth watch of the night he came to them, walking on the sea. But when the disciples saw him walking on the sea, they were terrified, and said, “It is a ghost!” and they cried out in fear. But immediately Jesus spoke to them, saying, “Take heart; it is I. Do not be afraid.” And Peter answered him, “Lord, if it is you, command me to come to you on the water.” He said, “Come.” So Peter got out of the boat and walked on the water and came to Jesus. But when he saw the wind, he was afraid, and beginning to sink he cried out, “Lord, save me.” Jesus immediately reached out his hand and took hold of him, saying to him, “O you of little faith, why did you doubt?”
—Matthew 14:25-31

In Hebrews it says that bad company ruins good morals. But what about faithless company ruining good faith?

We’re in a tough situation right now that calls for the impossible. As much as many Christians around me will nod their heads and say that God can do the impossible, the second I start laying out our situation here, out come the naysayers.

What happened to God doing the impossible?

I’m not sure I understand that phenomenon. Evangelicalism seems rife with supposedly faithful people who backpedal the second they hear of a really tough case.

Most times, the advice starts flying. Forget faith, here’s what’s got to be done to address the situation. You better roll up the sleeve on that arm of flesh, son! It’s as if God got the boot because you and I are better equipped to deal with the intractable.

That makes no sense to me, but it’s hard to shake the feeling that I’m wrong on my position of believing for the impossible when everyone starts giving me advice—and none of it is “Believe God for the impossible. And we’ll join with you in believing for it!”

That betrays something about us: We really don’t believe God.

It goes back to last week’s post about prosperity. We don’t want to believe that God can prosper someone materially because then we have to face the truth of those folks who don’t prosper materially. What then? So we spiritualize the promises of God. Better that we put those promises outside our physical plane of existence where no one can spot the results. A wave-looker and his oppositeThat way if there are no immediate results, we can make excuses about them being “invisible.”

Isn’t that the fallback position in most of the American Church?

Is that faith?

Our super-rationalism has gotten the better of us, hasn’t it? As bad as it was for fisherman Peter when he tried to walk on those waves, it’s a million times worse for us post-Enlightenment Americans. We run screaming into the arms of whatever earthly answer comes our way, but the last thing we’ll do is stand on God’s promise to do the impossible.

Several years ago, I was walking through a mall when a shoe salesman corralled me. I knew right away where his insistence would take us: nowhere.

I wear a ridiculously hard-to-find shoe size. Over in Europe, I can find my size easily, but here in the States, fat-footed people reign and I’m lucky to find anything, especially non-dress shoes.

Politely, I said, “You won’t have anything in my size.”

He grinned, stared at my feet, and said, “We’ve got every size they make. Come inside and I’ll set you up.”

Waving him off, I countered, “No, you don’t have my size.”

“Try me.” He folded his arms and leaned back, pummeling the ether with waves of confidence.

“Okay,” I said, ready to deliver the blow, “how about 13AA?”

“Sheesh,” the guy said, laughing and turning aside to arrange a pile of shoes on a table, “we don’t have that!”

We reek of the same sort of confidence as the cocky salesman. We tend to place our faith in what we have in stock, and that stock, in America at least, isn’t quite as deep as we think it is. We encounter someone with a real problem and we end up sheepishly arranging shoes.

But that “far-off country” has a solution. And the fact that few of us get there means we never discover what it has in stock. We’ll exhaust our local reserves, but we won’t go to that far country to get what we need.

Even in the Church, we put too much faith in man-made answers. We’ll push those answers without a thought because we’ve been indoctrinated to believe they can solve problems. But they don’t. In fact, they fail more often than not. That’s when we start getting serious about prayer, isn’t it? As the last resort. Even then, we’re afflicted by the nagging doubt that our man-made answers didn’t work, so how can God’s?

Is God a fairy tale? Then why do we treat Him like one? Knowing adults wink at each other when surrounded by children who believe in Santa Claus, and sadly, it seems we do the same to people who believe that God is the resolver of the impossible. We’ve made the Lord of All into just another figment of the imagination.

Is it pride? It seems like it to me. We don’t want to have to explain why our involving God in a situation didn’t work for some untold reason. It might make us look stupid. And we all know the worst thing that can befall a self-respecting American, Christian or not, is to look stupid.

Me? I’d rather look stupid than be faithless. Still, even that’s tough to do when everyone else is looking at the waves.

But Jesus looked at them and said, “With man this is impossible, but with God all things are possible.”
—Matthew 19:26

OT Christians vs. NT Christians

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One of the many mistakes I believe Christians make today concerns viewing the Bible as a book of answers. That may be true to a point, especially for the babe in Christ, but I find that as I mature the Bible holds just as many questions as it does answers, perhaps more.

Take the opening Psalm:

Blessed is the man who walks not in the counsel of the wicked, nor stands in the way of sinners, nor sits in the seat of scoffers; but his delight is in the law of the LORD, and on his law he meditates day and night. He is like a tree planted by streams of water that yields its fruit in its season, and its leaf does not wither. In all that he does, he prospers. The wicked are not so, but are like chaff that the wind drives away. Therefore the wicked will not stand in the judgment, nor sinners in the congregation of the righteous; for the LORD knows the way of the righteous, but the way of the wicked will perish.
—Psalm 1

Out getting our teeth worked on today, my son and I listened to John MacArthur’s “Grace to You” program. See, I’m one of those countercultural fools who likes my Christian radio packed with teaching, as opposed to what passes for music on those same channels. Fortunately, I just so happened to tune in right as MacArthur started his program. When I heard he’d be expositing Psalm 1, one of my favorite Psalms, I stayed put.

MacArthur did a great job, but then stumbled egregiously on the very heart of the Psalm:

He is like a tree planted by streams of water that yields its fruit in its season, and its leaf does not wither. In all that he does, he prospers.
—Psalms 1:3

See, MacArthur got super-spiritual and claimed that “In all he does, he prospers,” refers to spiritual prosperity. But the text doesn’t say that. It says in ALL he does he prospers. Yes, his spiritual life prospers, but so does his physical, emotional, and intellectual life. God blesses him with prosperity in all aspects of life. He’s got a supermodel for a wife, the world’s greatest klatch of kids, money in the bank, the respect of his peers, a voice that people heed, a powerful network of business partners, and on and on. When the town needs something done, it goes to the Psalm One Guy.

What bothered me was MacArthur’s New Testament-izing of that Old Testament passage. And it shows me how poorly we Christians integrate the Old Testament with the New. In fact, I would say that we don’t truly integrate the OT and NT, but instead form our denominations around which one we prefer!

What do I mean by that?

Well, I think that we have folks in the Church who divide into two camps, one that leans heavily on the OT for its theology, and one that goes NT.

Pentecostals, Assemblies of God, charismatics, and a lot of mainline Protestant churches stand their ground on the OT. When they talk about believing the promises of God, they stand on verses that God spoke over His chosen people, verses that talk about taking the land, abiding in the promises, overthrowing giants, growing from the least into the greatest, and fire coming down out of heaven to consume one’s enemies. It’s a view that sees the godly man as the pillar of his community, chessmen.jpga community of chosen established by God. It’s lowly Israel made a great nation, its men held up for esteem so that kings seek them out.

On the other side, many Evangelicals pitch their tent in a NT view that sees the Church as a persecuted, ragtag bunch of misfits held together by grace. The godly man is not only poor in spirit, but quite possibly poor in purse. Verses that appeal to this view hold up dying to self, renouncing worldly gain, becoming the scum of the earth, and abandoning earthly prosperity for heavenly reward. The godly man is the one speared to death in a Roman colosseum, a martyr for the cause of Christ.

So these two camps war. The NT proponents enter the OT and start revising all the verses to fit their idea of what the true NT man must be. The OT proponents, though, wade into the NT and try to dismantle the NT camp’s “suffering servants.”

This, to me, explains why John MacArthur must overlay Psalm 1 with a spiritualized meaning rather than taking it at its word. He espouses the NT camp’s philosophy, so it can’t possibly mean that God prospers a man by giving him earthly wealth. As MacArthur jumped back into the NT for the rest of his teaching, he showed his hand by defaulting to NT readings that reinforced the spiritualization of Psalm 1.

And that leaves me with questions.

To me, Psalm 1 is clear, as are the rest of the OT passages that support God prospering the righteous with wealth, power, and respect. And I also see the NT side that supports a view of the Church as the downtrodden of society who have received the Good News when the rich and powerful did not. Both are clearly in the Scriptures, and both are clearly true.

Now, how do we reconcile them?

First, I’d like the OT camp to realize that “taking dominion” doesn’t always look like a Lexus in the driveway. Sometimes the greatest saints of God are the most lowly. To the NT camp, not every person who’s named the name of Christ winds up crucified upside down. Many of the Church’s greatest scholars and theologians came from privileged homes. Some even bankrolled their churches.

God may desire to have some become poor to prosper the Kingdom, while in His good measure He deems that some acquire wealth, power, and respect to expand that same Kingdom. Both OT and NT Christians don’t wish to hear this, though. It strikes me even more odd that many of the world’s poor take the OT side, while the rich of the world take the NT side, yet neither truly experiences the reality of the side they hope to claim!

Like so many things in the Christian walk, the truth may well reside in the middle of those two views. Attempting to make a law out of either side only creates trouble and misunderstanding. The Pentecostal who believes that God will bless and prosper him gets the “prosperity gospel” label by the other side, while the conservative Baptist is seen as a sad sack who hasn’t appropriated his inheritance as a child of the King of Kings.

Despite what the two camps say, I don’t believe they’re mutually exclusive. But finding that overlap (where I believe truth reigns) requires work and possibly abandoning preconceptions, two things that don’t come easy to the American Church circa 2007.

It means asking plenty of questions, too. I’m willing to work at discovering that middle ground, though. Anyone else?