15 December 2023
(A) What does true Christianity offer?
The answer to the above question is very important. The right answer to this question must be given in the presentation of the gospel; this right answer needs to be reinforced in our walk and discipleship as believers; and it needs also to be reinforced, not only intellectually, but in reality throughout our pilgrimage on earth as followers of Christ.
The answer not given correctly in the presentation of the gospel might end up with those making decisions for Christ based on the wrong premise and expectation (the qualification that only the Holy Spirit is the one who converts is not to be overlooked), and ending up disillusioned and ‘broken’ spiritually.
Similarly, so-called believers and disciples also become discouraged, having to deal with ‘setbacks’, unexpected negative relationships with fellow believers, sufferings of all sorts, primarily because the correct and wholesome understanding of what true Christianity offers is sadly missing in their lives.
Scriptures communicate the need to “putting on Christ” as a child of God in order that the believer may finally become a real son or daughter of the Lord God. What we need to emphasise is that this is not one among many jobs a Christian has to do; and it is not a sort of special exercise for the top class (eg. apostles) – it is in fact the whole of Christianity.
Note: Christianity offers nothing else at all – it differs from ordinary notions of “morality” and “being good”.
It is not the ‘run in the mill’ “how to” books and ideas which offer ‘positive thinking’; it is not even taking an interest in ‘spirituality’ (with the new age movement, spiritism, communicating with the spirits and dead, ‘witchery’, etc., most of them being ‘abominations’ to God).
It is not the contemporary understanding and outworking of what we call ‘morality’ or ‘decent behaviour’ or ‘the good of society’; and not ‘right’ that we are expected to do, and ‘wrong’ we must give them up.
C.S. Lewis described it aptly: ‘we are very like an honest man paying taxes but does hope that there will be enough left over for him to live on…we are still taking our natural self as the starting point’.
As long as we are thinking this way, one or other of two results is likely to follow. Either we give up trying to be good, or else we become very unhappy indeed. Make no mistake – if you are really going to try to meet all the demands made on the natural self, it will not have enough left over to live on. The more you obey your conscience, the more your conscience will demand of you – and the natural self which is thus being starved and hampered and worried at every turn, will get angrier and angrier. In the end, you will either give up trying to be good, or else become one of those people who, as they say, “live for others” but always in a discontented, grumbling, and complaining way – always wondering why the others do not notice it more and always making a martyr of yourself. And once you have become that you will be a far greater pest to anyone who has to live with you than you would have been if you had remained frankly selfish.
The Christian way is different: Christ says “Give me All. I do not want so much of your time and so much of your money and so much of your work; I want You. I have not come to torment your natural self, but to kill it. No half-measures are any good. I do not want cut off a branch here and and a branch there. I want to have the whole tree down. I do not want to drill the tooth, or crown it, or stop it, but to have it out. Hand over the whole natural self, all the desires which you think innocent as well as the ones you think wicked – the whole outfit. I will give you a new self instead. In fact, I will give you Myself: my own will shall become yours.”
And when Jesus said, “If any man would come after me, let him deny himself, take up the cross, and follow me”, He is in fact calling us to die – to die to self, to die with Him at the cross, to be buried, and to be raised with Him to the “heavenly places”. The ‘seed must die’ before it can bear fruit.
God is making ‘everything new’, beginning with us, the creation, the universe – a new humanity and a new heaven and new earth.
Again the words of C.S.Lewis: It may be hard for an egg to turn into a bird: it will be harder for it to learn to fly while remaining an egg. We are like eggs at present. And you cannot go on indefinitely being just an ordinary decent egg. We must be hatched or go bad”.
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Many of us may be bothered by the words of our Lord Jesus, “Be you perfect”, “You shall be holy as I am holy”. I once even heard a pastor on the pulpit muttering, after quoting the latter, ‘how can this be’?
What the Lord may be saying is, “The only help I will give is help to become perfect. You may be something less: but I will give you nothing less.”
This is perhaps the reason why the Lord warned people to “count the cost” before becoming Christians. He may in fact be saying, “Make no mistake – if you let me, I will make you perfect. The moment you put yourself in my hands, that is what you are in for – nothing less. You have free will, and if you choose, you can push Me away. But if you do not push Me away, understand that I am going to see the job through. Whatever suffering it may cost you in your earthly life, whatever inconceivable purification it may cost you after death, whatever it costs Me, I will never rest, nor let you rest, until you are literally perfect – until my Father can say without reservations that He is well pleased with you, as He said He was well pleased with Me. This I can do and will do. I will not do anything less” (credit to C.S. Lewis in “Mere Christianity”).
The point is not what we intended ourselves to be; but what He intended us to be when He made us. He is the Creator, we are the created; He is the potter, we are the clay (Romans 9:21); He is the painter, we are only the picture.
On the one hand we must never imagine that our own unaided effort can be relied on to carry us even through the next twenty four hours as ‘decent’ believers. If He does not support us (through the Holy Spirit), not one of us is safe from some gross sin. On the other hand, no possible degree of holiness or heroism which has ever been recorded of the greatest saint is beyond what He is determined to produce in every one of us in the end.
The job will not be completed in this life: but He means to get us as far as possible before death (note: no perfection yet here on earth). Hence be not surprised if we are in for a rough time (1 Peter 4:12-14). The process will be long and in parts very painful, but that is what we are in for – nothing less – He meant what He said.
The illustration is given by some of a lump of clay being slowly and carefully worked on by a skillful sculptor to create a beautiful sculpture. But the sculptor has to chip away a lot of clay that is in the way of creating his masterpiece. The “chipping away” of negative ‘elements’ by the Lord in our life may be very painful, but He is determined to finish the job, for “the joy that is set before Him”.
(B) What Christianity offers – the implications for the believer and the church
We have looked at what true Christianity offers – we saw how God does not want what we can offer in time, money or work; He wants us – He has come in Christ not to torment our natural self but to kill it; He offers Himself to us and expects us to give all of ourselves to Him.
We saw also how He desires us to be holy as He is holy; He desires us to be perfect – this will take a long process but if we let Him, He is going to see the job through. Whatever suffering it may cost us in our earthly life, whatever it may cost Him, He will never rest until we are made perfect and fully pleasing to the heavenly Father.
What then are the implications for the believers and the church in the light of this understanding? If these are what God desires for His children, then the outworking in the church must not just be in line with the teaching and theology; it has also be seen in what we or do not do – in other words, it is possible for the church to acknowledge this teaching but in practical outworking, she denies it by failing to do so.
Practical application and outworking in church life and personal discipleship may still retain a nodding acquaintance with God’s Word, but will not allow it to be in the driver seat. When this is the case, we can be certain that worldly strategies and human methods and policies will take over.
Only God can bring spiritual life to birth, and if we are to see that happen, we have to trust, pray, and obey (proclaim by life and lip).
When multiplication-methodologies take us over, if building our little ‘Christian’ empires becomes our main focus, we may not be without achievements, but they will be like their creators: transient, mortal, with obvious feet of clay. We may produce great entrepreneurs, able communicators, first-class Christian management consultants. They may organise attractive, life-coaching churches whose members are encouraged to look to a ‘great God’ whose main purpose is to help them to fulfil their potential, to make them more beautiful, healthy, wealthy and wise than they already are; but, in the end, shall we not discover that they made a ‘union’ with the world and her methods (manipulated by the evil one).
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We now outline what is the approach in the outworking in church life following the understanding of what Christianity offers:
We have noted that it is the Lord who would build the lives of believers and the church and not multiplication-methodologies, even though the latter may produce results which seem impressive, but are actually transient and mortal.
For believers, and the church, the focus should then be on TRUST (focusing on prayer), FAITH and OBEDIENCE.
This faith is not an intellectual position merely, but a heart trust and a life of obedience at the most practical levels of everyday experience. A careful study of Scriptures is the approach to assess and to discern what is needed in the midst of our current perplexities and frequent compromises among believers and in the church.
God’s people must go on believing that He will vindicate His name, fulfil HIs promises, and punish wickedness. So we must live by faith as we quietly observe His prototypical judgements in the present history which foreshadow the certainty of His ultimate fulfilment time.
In the OT, the prophets were commissioned by God to exhort the believers to go on trusting Him, even in the midst of uncertainties, conflicts and pain, and to look forward to the fulfilment of God’s promise and deliverance in the near future or in the consummation of the end of the age. This also applies to us, believers in the new covenant.
We need to give due weight to the idea of spiritual purification through God’s covenant discipline as seen in Hebrews 12. While it is gloriously true that the price is paid (through Jesus’ sacrifice) and that those who trust God’s promises find the righteousness which He provides by grace through faith, nevertheless God loves us too much to let us get away with the consequences of our fickle, double-minded discipleship. He so often schools us, through adversity, in the lessons of trust and obedience. We are all imperfect learners but covenant faithfulness of God will not give us up and will not let us go.
Prayer is another great lesson to learn and apply consistently. God alone is the Lord, the giver of life. Only when we really believe that, will prayer be central to our lives and ministry in this world; but only then will we be able to claim with any credibility that our faith is real.
One indication of whether we are spiritually healthy, or not, will be our appetite for, and attitude to, the Word of the Lord, the Scriptures. How far are we willing to receive and respond to this very word in these last days? There are many ‘voices’ everywhere, especially in this era of AI, mass media, false or worldly ‘prophets’ and spiritual ‘influencers’; will we hearken to the Word of God revealed to us by the Holy Spirit, our teacher and guide, or are we easily swayed by every false ‘wind’ and ‘doctrine’.
Another aspect is the need of trusting God in WAITING, in patience and yet with perseverance and endurance, in the midst of circumstances which seem so far removed from what God promises. We see how this also is prominent in the writings of the OT prophets. For instance, although Malachi spoke of the coming of the Messiah, almost 400 years of ‘silence’ pass by before the birth of Jesus. And even this, in the NT context, we are to wait with faith for the second coming of the Lord Jesus. It is hard to wait if we desire quick and immediate results and answers from God. We see how Jesus caused perplexity to Martha and Mary when He delayed to come to heal Lazarus when the latter was so ill and at the point of death. Yet Jesus exclaimed that Lazarus’ illness and subsequently death, was for the glory of God.
It is easy to expect quick results with human methods and management principles, but the results are transient and not eternal, and surely not pleasing to God. Will we, as God’s people learn to wait, to trust and to obey, even when the results are not forthcoming?