A Good Read

I've been reading a lot lately and yesterday I was reading a chapter out of one of the books I am reading. The subject matter was on serving God and how to do that in your life. I really enjoyed what I was reading and the author was making some very good points. Imagine my surprise last night when I stumbled onto a website on which someone was writing on the very same topic, saying almost the exact same thing. The website was really good and I decided to post something from it here.

New Testament Christianity: The Heart of the Matter

". . .Why do you not know how to interpret the present time?" (Luke 12:56)

Long term readers of my commentaries are well aware that the twin passions of my life are: 1) the desperate need to recover the truth about America's Christian heritage, and 2) the even more desperate need for a nation-wide revival of the Christian faith.
As I was doing a radio interview over the phone today, the interviewer and I were talking about the general spiritual condition of America's churches. My impression, gleaned from what I read in magazines and newsletters, hear on TV and radio, and pick up from various conversations with people, is that there is a dangerously shallow level of understanding about what it means to be a Christian in our churches these days. I have been doing preaching and teaching missions on Christian growth and maturity for over 35 years, and I am afraid that there might well be less understanding about true New Testament Christianity now than there was three decades ago! And yet, I hear these ridiculous claims that we are experiencing revival in America! Now, maybe some folks are experiencing revival in their congregation, or even in their city, but as for nation-wide revival---it ain't happenin' yet, folks!
"Well then," you might ask, "what is true New Testament Christianity? Where would you start to define that?"
"I'm glad you asked that," I would respond. And this would be my answer:
Becoming a Christian can never be properly understood as long as that is defined as getting God's forgiveness just for particular sins. That is only a part of the issue, and it is not the primary part, either. Yet, it seems to be the focus of so much fundamentalist and/or evangelical preaching. Other churches, especially some main-line denominational ones, but also some charismatic fellowships, seem to virtually ignore the issue of sin, and put their emphasis either on having some kind of intellectual "belief" relationship with Christ, or on making some sort of all-too-vague personal commitment to Him as Savior and Lord. In either case, that's supposed to take care of becoming a Christian. But, it doesn't BEGIN to take care of it. You see, the horrible danger in people being allowed to think this way is that either they don't take sin seriously at all, or, if they can't find very many of the Biblical list of sins that they have committed they are then under the delusion that they are "ok" with God, that somehow they are more acceptable to Him than the people who have racked up a large score on the list. Wrong on both scores. God takes our sins very seriously.
But, He's even more concerned about our sinfulness.
What's really involved in God making a Christian out of me? What's involved is that I have a far more basic problem than the sins I have committed. The real problem with me, and you, and everybody, is that we each have a fallen sinful nature. We inherited it, from our parents, and their parents. . . and the inheritance stretches all the way back to the First Parents. We didn't have anything to do with this heredity problem---we didn't make a choice about it, one way or the other. But, in spite of the fact that we didn't choose it, God's Word says that we are all "children of wrath" by nature (Ephesians 2:3)---that is, we are by nature under God's judgment, separated from Him. That means that we are not naturally children of God, in contrast to the saying you hear all the time: "we're all children of God." No, we are not! John 1:12 tells us we have to become children of God.
And yet, God commands us to be holy: "You shall be holy, as the Lord your God is holy" (Lev. 20:7; 1 Peter 1:16). That is literally an impossible commandment for any human being to pull off on his or her own---totally beyond the realm of possibility. Nonetheless, there it stands. All that commandment, and the equally impossible teaching of Jesus in the Sermon on the Mount, can do is to create despair in the natural, non-born again person. But, that's really the point---we are supposed to come to the end of ourselves, so that we'll be ready to hear the Good News of a loving God's solution.
People simply do not understand, because it's not preached today, that this loving God is still utterly serious about this business of holiness and righteousness. He hasn't changed the ground rules just because we're in the 21st Century. So, here is this impossible commandment, and our total inability to meet it. What can we do?
First, holiness from God's point of view has much more to do with our nature than it does with particular sins. You have to be born again to become a child of God. Jesus bluntly states that in John 3:3: "Truly, truly, I say to you, unless one is born again, he cannot see the kingdom of God."
That is something no one can manage---it is totally supernatural, above and beyond natural capabilities. God Himself has to do this for us; we can do nothing to accomplish this.
What this literally means is that Jesus has to put His own nature into us---that's what it means to be born again. God cannot accept sin or sinfulness in His presence. He is Holiness and Righteousness itself, and sin simply cannot physically exist in the presence of His all-consuming Holiness. But, He can accept us with the presence of His Son's nature in us, as a substitution for our sinful and fallen nature. In other words, He can accept the nature of His Son in us---and that sinless nature makes us holy in God's sight. We can only be holy "in the Lord," or better said, we can only be holy because the Lord is in us. That is why the Bible says, "Christ in you (is) the hope of glory" (Colossians 1:27).
How do I enter into this condition of having the nature of Jesus Christ in me? I have to come to the realization that I need a nature transplant, a transfusion of the nature of Christ into my human spirit. Will I still have my fallen, sinful nature? Yes, until the day I die. It doesn't just magically disappear. But, it will no longer have power over me. The nature of Jesus Christ is stronger, the blood that Jesus Christ shed on Calvary's Cross is stronger, than anything in my nature.
I become born again by admitting my great need to Jesus, and in a conscious, verbal, and open surrender of myself to Him, ask Him to put His nature into me. At the same time, I openly and verbally confess to Jesus that I am choosing to believe that He died on that Cross for me personally---to forgive my sins and redeem my sinfulness. And, I tell God the Father that I receive His forgiveness, won by Jesus' death for me---forgiveness for my sins (confessing out loud the ones the Holy Spirit of God brings to my remembrance) and for my sinfulness.
There's one more thing I also need to do at this same time, and that is to tell Jesus that I receive Him into my heart as my Savior and my Lord. That means that I confess to Him that there is absolutely nothing I can do to save myself---that is to make myself acceptable to God, because of my sin problem. I now realize that He alone is my Savior, and I tell Him so. Further, I tell Him that I receive Him as my Lord, which means that I am surrendering the control of my life into His hands, and promise to seek Him from this time forward in all decisions.
In becoming a Christian I am giving up my self-dependency, and becoming dependent on the life of another---Jesus Christ.
Now, those of you who have already done all this may feel that you have learned nothing new from this commentary so far. But, hang on! There is an important revelation for those of us who call ourselves Christians.
If becoming a Christian is a matter of receiving the nature of Jesus Christ into us, then relying on the nature of Jesus Christ is also the only way to live the Christian life. Christ in me is just as much the only hope of glory after I have been regenerated as it was before. As Christians we have to learn to rely on the indwelling spirit of Jesus to be able to live the Christian life. Because God has put a new nature within me, the nature of Jesus Christ, I can obey Him and live according to His will. But, I am going to have to learn how to rely on the nature of Jesus, and not my own efforts.
Far too many of us Christians understand that we have to be supernaturally born again to become Christians, but then we proceed to try and live the Christian life as if it depended on our own efforts, with a little bit of prayer added. In this kind of scenario, self and self-effort is still in the center---we have not yet learned how to rely on Jesus power in us; we haven't yet learned how to call on Him for everything we need throughout the day.
For example, I am not trying to write this commentary on my own. It's not a matter of whether I think I can manage it without His help. Of course I could write it without His help. But that's not the point. I want it to be the way He wants it; I want it to be His thoughts and words, not just mine. I want it to glorify Him; I want it to be used by Him to accomplish His purposes in readers' lives. So, I am writing it in an attitude of prayer---asking Him to help me with it, line by line.
What if we lived like this 24/7 ? I certainly don't yet, and I'll bet you don't either. But, we could.
If living the Christian life depends upon a reliance on the Spirit of Jesus within us, then we need to realize that His teachings about living the Christian life take for granted that we will rely on Him. Here's the new revelation about this, which I never quite understood in these exact terms until now: His impossibly difficult teachings, about loving your enemies for example, are meant to apply to His life within us. Jesus in me can love my enemies, Jesus in me can love the homeless, or the murderer, or the homosexual---or whatever it is that you or I find impossible to do on our own. The Sermon on the Mount is not meant to be a code of Law that we find impossible to obey, even with the help of prayer. It is meant to be seen as the standard of Kingdom life, to be accomplished by Jesus in me, as I yield to Him and seek to operate by His power and love.
In the Gospels, when Peter asks Jesus how many times he must forgive his enemies, and generously offers the number seven as a possible limit to his forgiveness, Jesus shocks him by telling him that he must forgive seven times seventy---470 times! Is this an impossible legal demand that Jesus has just laid on Peter? No! Jesus knows that only He can forgive like that, and so does Peter! But, after Peter is filled with the Spirit of Jesus on the Day of Pentecost, Peter comes to find out that Jesus can and will exercise that kind of forgiveness in and through him. I'm sure that Peter experienced that when they ended his earthly life by crucifying him upside down, if the legend is accurate.
These realizations bring the very real prospect that ordinarily sinful folks like us can learn to live out our Christian discipleship by relying on the real presence and power of Jesus in our hearts. And then, His righteousness and holiness can become real in our lives. That's "amazing grace"! --- Peter J. Marshall