Appeasing a guilty conscience?

Dear brothers and sisters, the longing of my heart and my prayer to God is for the people of Israel to be saved. I know what enthusiasm they have for God, but it is misdirected zeal. For they don’t understand God’s way of making people right with himself. Refusing to accept God’s way, they cling to their own way of getting right with God by trying to keep the law. For Christ has already accomplished the purpose for which the law was given. As a result, all who believe in him are made right with God. (Romans 10:1-4)

Could we substitute "Israel" for anyone we know, including ourselves? It is likely we know someone, (or are someone), who has a great deal of enthusiasm for the 'things of God' but lack a personal relationship with him. They are 'rule-followers' at best, kind of hoping all the 'good deeds' they manage to accomplish on this earth will somehow find them favor with God. They 'refuse to accept God's way' - always trying to 'get right' with God through what they 'do'. We get this all wrong - doing follows faith. Doing doesn't equate to faith. It is the outflow of faith.

All who believe in are made right with him. Have you heard the adage, "No good deed goes unpunished"? Well-intentioned actions don't always lead to good outcomes, do they? In this world, we cannot just rely upon our good deeds to get others to appreciate or like us, can we? In our workplace, we cannot just go about doing good things and expect our boss will take notice, promote us, and give us a raise, can we? If we are brutally honest here, good deeds or positive actions don't always return good things our way. 

Faith in Jesus and right standing with God is not 'acquired' - it is 'given'. God gives us the faith to believe that he is the one true God, and that his Son gave his life for our sins, making a way for each of us to enter into his family by faith and not works. All good actions flow from us being 'made right' with God. Faith is the beginning of a heart change, and that heart change produces good works. Until the heart change is made, all the 'good works' we can muster on this earth are merely a way of appeasing a guilty conscience. Just sayin!

Do you have living faith?

A person’s body that does not have a spirit is dead. It is the same with faith—faith that does nothing is dead! (James 2:26)

Faith is meant to produce something - it isn't just an ethereal thing that we 'have' but never put to use. Faith is meant to have feet and hands - it is meant to be put into action. Democritus once said, "Our sins are more easily remembered than our good deeds." Wouldn't it be wonderful if our good deeds were the things others remembered instead of our sinful actions. It takes only one bad deed to damage a reputation, and it can take thousands of good ones to restore it!

Faith and deeds are interrelated. You cannot separate one from the other. Ephesians reminds us that we are saved by faith in Jesus Christ, not our 'good deeds', but that living for and in Christ Jesus means that we will produce good deeds. In other words, our life is lived for others, not just ourselves. Prior to welcoming Christ into our lives, we did 'good works' in the hopes we might find our way to right standing with God. After welcoming him into our lives, our attitude toward doing good works actually changes - we do them as an outflow of grace.

Transformational grace has a way of working its way out of us - it turns us away from the 'me, me, me' focus and toward seeing the needs of others. It helps us see beyond the end of our own nose, so to speak. In seeing needs around us, there is an urgency within us to be used in whatever way God desires - allowing the grace resident within us to affect the lives of those around us. These 'works' are not to earn favor with God but are an act of gratitude for all he has already done for us!

As a body without a spirit is dead, so is a 'stated faith' without the evidence of 'grace actions' flowing from it. We might say we are 'Christian', but does our life reflect the transformation of Christ within us? If so, it is natural to see the actions of grace extended beyond our lives - we become the hands and feet of Christ to a hurting, mixed up, and crazy world. Faith without works is dead, but faith isn't accomplished by works. They are an outflow of his work in us. Just sayin!

Embrace faith, not works

I want to belong to him. In Christ I am right with God, but my being right does not come from following the law. It comes from God through faith. God uses my faith in Christ to make me right with him. All I want is to know Christ and the power that raised him from death. (Philippians 3:9-10)

There is no other way to be 'made right' than through Christ Jesus. There is no other set of rules or 'belief system' we need to follow in order to 'gain righteousness'. With that said, why do we still try to 'be made right'? I observe those who have given their hearts to Jesus trying to 'earn' their way into heaven or some such thing, all through 'righteous actions', family traditions, and deeply rooted traditions of 'the church'. For some reason, Satan has been able to convince many that they need 'more' than Christ in order to be 'made right'. They strive without purpose because all God has purposed has been accomplished in Christ Jesus, therefore all their striving and 'deeply rooted traditions' are nothing more than religion. God asks us to enter into relationship with him and then stop 'striving'. It is time to put down that which we thought would earn anything in God's kingdom and begin to lean into the faith he gives. When all we count on is the faith he provides to be made right with him, we begin to engage in actions that he purposes for us. Those actions aren't done to 'earn', but because there is a genuine interest in seeing others set free from their bondage to sin and made right with Christ. 

The Great Commission wasn't given to the apostles in order for them to 'earn' anything in God's kingdom. In fact, it was to help spread the good news about the way into God's kingdom - a way bought and paid for by the blood of Jesus. The believers were to share the good news and in turn, God would show these sinners the way into his kingdom through the finished work of Christ. “All authority in heaven and on earth is given to me. So go and make followers of all people in the world. Baptize them in the name of the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit. Teach them to obey everything that I have told you to do. You can be sure that I will be with you always. I will continue with you until the end of time.” (Matthew 28:18-20) Nothing in the commission says we are to show them how to do 'works' in order to be welcomed into God's kingdom. Authority was given to share the good news and 'make followers' - by showing them they can live in 'liberty' in service to the King of Kings and Lord of Lords. the 'commission' involved teaching 'obedience' to the Word of God - obedience to God's will.

If we don't realize it, we are living, breathing 'testimonials' of all God has done for us, in us, and ultimately through us. Faith given becomes faith replicated. Obedience taught becomes obedience learned. Do we learn it naturally, or by following some set of rules? No, we learn it by example - the example of Christ, who although divine in all ways took on the form of a man and lived without sin in a very sinful world. We'd do well to study his example, sharing in the grace he gives, and learning at the feet of our heavenly Father. Then we need to share what it is he has taught and what we have learned. Really all the learning we do is because God grants us the ability (through faith) to embrace it. Just sayin!

Trust in the Truth

I am shocked that you are turning away so soon from God, who called you to himself through the loving mercy of Christ. You are following a different way that pretends to be the Good News but is not the Good News at all. You are being fooled by those who deliberately twist the truth concerning Christ. Let God’s curse fall on anyone, including us or even an angel from heaven, who preaches a different kind of Good News than the one we preached to you. I say again what we have said before: If anyone preaches any other Good News than the one you welcomed, let that person be cursed. (Galatians 1:6-9)

In the early church, Christ's message was being embraced and shared, but the Jewish leaders were still preaching that all of the Law of Moses still needed to be kept. Christ's message proclaimed that we are saved by faith, while the Law of Moses taught that works upon works were necessary. Christ's message showed how God worked his way to us through Christ Jesus, while the message of the Law of Moses kept men working their way to God. They were different messages - the Law of Moses being done away with by the life, death, and resurrection of Christ. Paul found there were individuals who began their walk with Christ through faith in this finished work, but then they listened to the preaching of the Jewish leaders that they still needed to do all manner of works, keeping this feast day and all the 'regulations' proclaimed within the Law of Moses and the Torah. In other words, those who had been set free by grace were being bound again by works.

Man can work his way toward God all he wants, but apart from grace, there is no way of ever reaching God! We may think all the 'good stuff' we are doing is going to assure us of entry into heaven, but as Jesus said, God won't be impressed by those works - only our testimony of faith and trust in the finished work of Jesus. We 'enter in' through the blood sacrifice that made all other sacrifices outlined in the Law of Moses obsolete. We 'remain in' by trusting in the grace and forgiveness found at the foot of the cross - continually bringing all our struggles, pain, and doubts to him for him to guide us through each of them. From the beginning of time, Satan has tried to deceive anyone hearing the Word of God and actually beginning to trust in that truth. He has been aptly called the deceiver of the brethren because he likes to twist the truth and get our minds confused. This is one of the greatest tactics he uses - taking truth, adding a lie to it, then proclaiming it as 'truer' than truth. We must guard against all those who seek to 'add to' God's truth - for truth is no longer truth when we add to it.

The truth - no one earns their way to God. The lie - you need to do this or that in addition to saying 'yes' to Jesus. You may ask, "Don't we have to do good stuff as Christians?" This is what confuses so many, for we see the early church caring for the sick, meeting the needs of the poor, embracing those others would reject. Isn't that 'works'? It come back to the heart motivation behind what we are 'doing'. If we 'do' in order to 'earn', it is the wrong type of 'works'. If we 'do' in a spirit of love and service, focusing first on our relationship with Christ, then in meeting the need we observe before us, we are not attempting to 'earn' anything by the 'work'. Relationship always stands opposed to religion - one relies upon the finished work of Christ (we cannot earn our way to God) and the other focuses on doing in order to be right (attempting to earn through our own merit what God gave as a gift to all who will accept it). How we choose is important - one leads to freedom and joy, the other to bondage and a constant dashing of our hopes. Just sayin!