Dead Man Blogging

My cell group is currently going through a study about what the Bible says about our finances. We’ve discussed debt, honesty, and giving so far. I think the discussion about work is next.

One discussion that came up the other day was about “God loveth a cheerful giver”. What does that mean? Does the Bible really mean that we ought to be giddy with excitement every time we write out a check? What are the right motives for giving to God? Am I wrong for giving because I know it’s what I’m supposed to do?

My answer to this question is pertinent to a couple of other discussions. Various bloggers and commenters have expressed the idea that our obedience to God ought to spontaneously spring from a deep sense of gratitude as a response to the grace of God. The author of a book I have once carried it to such an extreme that made it sound like if you had to put any effort into obeying God, you were doing it wrong. Because after all, that’s not living out of gratitude for God’s grace.

I wholeheartedly agree that our obedience ought to be primarily out of sincere devotion to God. Now there are other legitimate motivations, such as reverential fear, but it really ought to boil down to Christ’s simple formula: If you love Him, obey Him. He’s the God that brought us out of Egypt, He redeemed us, He died for us. If that doesn’t motivate us to love and good works, then there’s a real serious problem.

It is entirely correct to say that Christians are not under the law, but under grace. We are to obey God, but that does not make Him love and accept us. Even our obedience falls far short. Our works are only pleasing to God because they are surrounded by His grace within the context of Christ’s atoning death.

It’s also correct to say that our love for Christ will produce obedience. If we walk after the Spirit, we will not fulfill the lusts of the flesh. We will obey. This is the natural result of the sanctifying work of the Holy Spirit in us.

And I agree that God does not want mere outward obedience. He wants much more than that. The goal is sincere obedience out of a pure heart that genuinely loves God. This is repentance.

But I take issue with the way this idea is sometimes presented. For example, the author of the book I referred to earlier expressed this as “Sin is stupid”. It’s the idea that if we just love Jesus enough, we’ll effortlessly and spontaneously stop sinning and start doing what we ought to. And again, there is some truth to this, but it’s not always presented very well.

I love my family. That’s why I go to work, Monday through Friday, day in and day out. I want to provide for my family. I love them.

My wife loves our family. That’s why she works hard to make our home a haven. That’s why she changes diapers, cooks meals, and does the laundry. She loves us.

But of course, I do not go off to work every day skipping along, gleeful that I can provide for my family. I just get up and go to work. My wife does not get all weak in the knees when she puts a casserole in the oven.

Does this mean I’ve traded the love of my family for law and duty? Of course not. It’s still true that I provide for my family because I love my family. But my love for my family is far deeper than just an emotion. It’s also a commitment that is much more stable than my feelings. As Rich Mullins sang, “There’s a loyalty that’s deeper than mere sentiment”.

I love Jesus. God created me, redeemed me, sustains me. I love Him because He first love me. But again, this is a lot more than emotions and feelings. My love and gratitude manifests itself as a commitment. I obey and serve Him because I love Him, not because of how I feel.

That commitment, born of love and gratitude, should produce work and discipline. There is indeed effort to the Christian walk. Sin may be stupid, but Satan is a roaring lion not to be scoffed at but to be firmly resisted through the power of the Holy Spirit. It takes work. It takes discipline. It takes commitment. And all that is born of a desire to obey God, which is born of gratitude and love for Him.

Imagine someone giving instructions on how to write well. What would you think if that person stood up and said “What you have to do is just really, really want to write well” and stopped at there. You’d think he was nuts. Instead, books on writing well include detailed instruction, exercises, lessons, etc. All to support the goal of fulfilling the reader’s desire to write well.

Or what would you think of an athlete who thought his desire to be a good athlete was sufficient, and did not bother training? No, an athlete trains because he wants to be a good athlete. He practices for the race.

So I do not give because I have to. I give because God said to. And I do the things God says to do, because I love Him. But my eyes don’t always swell with tears of joy when I write out that check. I just do it because I know it is right.

There are at least two ways to go wrong here. The first is “This is the law. Keep the law, and be righteous.” That’s self righteous legalism, and it is rightly confronted with the grace of God and our sincere obedient response out of gratitude. But there’s a ditch on that side, too. We don’t obey the rules just because they are the rules, but that doesn’t mean there are no rules. And it certainly doesn’t mean that it won’t take effort. This error is rightly confronted with the Biblical instruction to run, to persevere, to discipline yourself, to work, etc.

There is no tension between geniuine love and gratitude, and a commitment born of that genuine love and gratitude. We read in the Bible both “if you love Me, keep my commands” and “discipline yourself for godliness”. There is no conflict there.

I just finished listening to a sermon by RC Sproul in which he challenges us to be as righteous as a Pharisee. The Pharisees were roundly criticized by Jesus, but they did do some things right. Consider

Matthew 23
14 Woe unto you, scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites! for ye devour widows’ houses, and for a pretence make long prayer: therefore ye shall receive the greater damnation. 15 Woe unto you, scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites! for ye compass sea and land to make one proselyte, and when he is made, ye make him twofold more the child of hell than yourselves. … 23 Woe unto you, scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites! for ye pay tithe of mint and anise and cummin, and have omitted the weightier matters of the law, judgment, mercy, and faith: these ought ye to have done, and not to leave the other undone. 24 Ye blind guides, which strain at a gnat, and swallow a camel. 25 Woe unto you, scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites! for ye make clean the outside of the cup and of the platter, but within they are full of extortion and excess. 26 Thou blind Pharisee, cleanse first that which is within the cup and platter, that the outside of them may be clean also. 27 Woe unto you, scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites! for ye are like unto whited sepulchres, which indeed appear beautiful outward, but are within full of dead men’s bones, and of all uncleanness. 28 Even so ye also outwardly appear righteous unto men, but within ye are full of hypocrisy and iniquity. 29 Woe unto you, scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites! because ye build the tombs of the prophets, and garnish the sepulchres of the righteous, 30 And say, If we had been in the days of our fathers, we would not have been partakers with them in the blood of the prophets. 31 Wherefore ye be witnesses unto yourselves, that ye are the children of them which killed the prophets. 32 Fill ye up then the measure of your fathers. 33 Ye serpents, ye generation of vipers, how can ye escape the damnation of hell?

The Pharisees made long prayers. Now, they did it for “pretense”, but they prayed regularly. How’s _your_ prayer life? Are you doing even as well as a Pharisee?

The Pharisees travelled across “sea and land to make one proselyte” and then discipled that proselyte. They made him a child of hell, but they were evangelistic. Do you support missions? Do you regularly share the gospel? Are you doing as well as a Pharisee?

The Pharisees tithed on even the smallest herbs. They did omit the “weightier matters”, but they were faithful in tithing, and Christ said that was good. Do you tithe? Are you as righteous as a Pharisee?

The Pharisees “[built] the tombs of the prophets, and garnish[ed] the sepulchres of the righteous”. Do we show the same concern for the house of God? I know that God is not worshipped only in the church building, and the building is not the church, but the sanctuary is used for a sacred purpose and I believe should be regarded as special. Do we respect the house of God as much as a Pharisee?

The Pharisees were whitewashed tombs, beautiful and clean on the outside, but full of wickedness on the inside. Are we even clean on the outside?

Christ said that the problem with the Pharisees is that they were faithful in the small, external, outer things, and they neglected the inward and weightier matters such as judgment, mercy, and faith.

One could argue that we Christians have the opposite problem - we get the weighty matters right, but miss the minor points. Jesus, however, said “He that is faithful in that which is least is faithful also in much: and he that is unjust in the least is unjust also in much.” (Luke 16:10) That pretty much blows that argument out of the water, doesn’t it?

The Pharisees were “the separated ones”. They sought righteousness. Many of them missed it, and wound up with self-righteousness and hypocritical, external obedience. But they tried to be separate, they tried to be righteous. God calls us today “Come out from among them, and be ye separate”. He tells us to let our light shine before men, that they may see our good works, and glorify our Father which is in heaven.

How is it that the self-righteous legalistic Pharisees who crucified our Lord, were arguably more sanctified than the blood bought saints of God? They carried the heavy burden of legalism. We have Christ’s light yoke. We are adopted as sons, by grace through faith plus nothing. And yet the Pharisees were more faithful than we are.

Do we really think that Christ saved us so we could be _less_ obedient than the Pharisees? Are we, under grace and grateful for the sacrifice of Christ, somehow _less_ obligated to obey God than the Pharisees?

Here’s something else to chew on:

Matthew 5
5:19 Whosoever therefore shall break one of these least commandments, and shall teach men so, he shall be called the least in the kingdom of heaven: but whosoever shall do and teach them, the same shall be called great in the kingdom of heaven.
5:20 For I say unto you, That except your righteousness shall exceed the righteousness of the scribes and Pharisees, ye shall in no case enter into the kingdom of heaven.

Christ emphasizes that even the _least_ commandments are vitally important. Want to be least in the kingdom of heaven? Break even some of the little matters of the law, and tell others that’s OK. Not the big stuff like justice and mercy, but the little stuff. Like tithing.

It can be argued that our righteousness _does_ exceed that of the scribes and Pharisees, since we have Christ’s righteousness imputed to us, but that does not seem to be the sense of verse 20. He seems to be speaking of our own sanctification. Not only are we responsible for the tiny little outward matters (tithing, prayer, evangelism, outward righteousness), which the Pharisees could do - we’re also responsible for those weightier matters like mercy, judgment, and faith. And _that_ is the righteousness which exceeds the righteousness of the scribes and Pharisees.

Luke 6:22, 23, 26
22 Blessed are ye, when men shall hate you, and when they shall separate you from their company, and shall reproach you, and cast out your name as evil, for the Son of man’s sake.
23 Rejoice ye in that day, and leap for joy: for, behold, your reward is great in heaven: for in the like manner did their fathers unto the prophets.
…
26 Woe unto you, when all men shall speak well of you! for so did their fathers to the false prophets.

This is such a foreign way of thinking! Elsewhere, Jesus tells us that we ought to expect persecution. For some, this was (and is today) intense physical suffering. This passage does not describe physical suffering, but still! Here’s something you should count as blessing: People will hate you. They won’t want to be around you. They’ll say horrible things to you and about you. All this because you love and obey Jesus. On the other hand, if people generally speak well of you, that’s a warning sign.

I asked in an earlier post why we weren’t being persecuted. I didn’t intend to limit that to just physical persecution. Verbal abuse, rejection, etc., are real types of persecution. But in my opinion and experience, the periodic op/ed, the occasional movie or TV show, the “documentaries” that challenge the historic authenticity of Christianity - these just don’t rise to the level of “persecution”.

The gospel is offensive. Whether we preach it verbally or with our lives, it is offensive. It begins with judgment and condemnation, and for those who will not receive it, it also ends there. You cannot faithfully preach the gospel without being offensive.

I don’t mean to limit that to pronouncing God’s judgment for man’s sins. This is more than “Admit you are a sinner, Believe Jesus died for your sins, Confess Him as Lord.” The offense of the gospel permeates the message of the gospel. The inherent offense is not “admit that you have done bad things” but “admit that your entire life is wicked.” You have to accept that you’ve lived as an enemy of God. In that sense, even the offer of grace is an implicit judgment. To offer justification and regeneration means one is guilty and needs justification, but - even more significantly - that one is _wicked_ and needs regeneration.

We do not need to go out of our way to be offensive - it is quite possible to be hated and maligned just because you’re a jerk. You do not prove your holiness by being disliked. But Jesus says we will be hated and maligned just for obeying and serving Him, and I think we aren’t being hated and maligned. Maybe there are a few really exceptional cases where some really nasty folks are vicious, but in general we are pretty much left alone.

It might be interesting to speculate on the reasons for this, but I want to focus on just one thing in particular. Jesus told us to expect to be mistreated, rejected, and unpopular. But today, we take popularity as a sign of _success_ and unpopularity as a sign of _failure_. Various strategies for evangelism have told us that what we really need to do is get people to like us. Build relationships. Do things to attract the unchurched. We introduce surveys and marketing strategies to guide our decisions.

I assume the proponents of this have only the purest motives. But the fact remains that Jesus told us we are blessed when we mistreated, but we judge our success largely by our popularity. That’s true for individual relationships, churches, artists, and so on on. We think that the key to being an effective witness for Jesus is to be really nice and moral, have a bubbly personality, and people will like you. An effective church, we’re told, determines what the unregenerate unchurched people in the community want, then cater to that. Otherwise you are irrelevant. If a Christian band can be popular enough to be played on secular stations and even open at Lollapalooza, well, that’s great.

Jesus said that if you are despised, rejected, and persecuted for His sake, you are blessed. And if all men speak well of you, woe to you! And the church has gotten it backwards today.

18 If the world hate you, ye know that it hated me before it hated you. 19 If ye were of the world, the world would love his own: but because ye are not of the world, but I have chosen you out of the world, therefore the world hateth you.
John 15:18-19

Jesus said that Christians should expect persecution. But in general, Christians in 21st century America are not being persecuted. I know that I’m not. I can only think of a few possibilities.

1. Maybe Jesus was wrong.

2. Maybe we are living in such a sanctified time that most people are saved, and the fulfillment of the kingdom of heaven is just around the corner, at least in America. Everybody loves Jesus, pretty much, so we aren’t being really persecuted.

3. Maybe when people say things like “Organized religion is a crutch for the weak” and say or write nasty things about us, and hold ugly signs about Christians, maybe _that_ is what Jesus meant by “persecution”. Sometimes they even make fun of us in movies and on TV.

I don’t really think any of those options could be correct. Instead, maybe what Jesus said explains it: If ye were of the world, the world would love his own.

Could it be that we are not being persecuted, not because America is so godly, but because Christians are worldly? There’s no real reason to persecute us. No reason to persecute me. I’m not all that different from anyone else. There’s sort of a fuzzy middle ground in our experience that includes the upper-lower, middle, and lower-upper classes; moral people who have only been divorced once or twice max, who don’t swear too much (or in Christians’ cases, not at all, right?), who don’t go to really trashy movies, are heterosexual, don’t have abortions, don’t beat their kids, don’t run around on their spouses, and so on. Just sort of normal middle-class America. Good morals, love their families, keep their grass mowed types. Sometimes say grace before a meal, at least at Thanksgiving.

I fit right in.

God calls me to “be blameless and harmless, the sons of God, without rebuke, in the midst of a crooked and perverse nation, among whom ye shine as lights in the world” (Philippians 2:15) and I’m not. There is not a difference between me and a moral pagan, at least not a difference that could be reasonably described in the terms of “light” vs “a crooked and perverse nation”.

Either God was exaggerating, or our nation is not “crooked and perverse”, or maybe - just _maybe_ - I’m not “blameless and harmless”, “without rebuke”, shining “as lights in the world”.

It’s a simple test. If you’re doing what’s right, you ought to be hated by the ungodly. I feel like I’m failing this test. I don’t stand out, and I don’t think it’s because we’ve managed to dispel the darkness.