A New Year—thinking about . . . clothes?

Okay, this is an odd topic, but I figured I would be safer writing it now than when the weather gets warmer!

I’ve been intrigued by the Amish for years. There is something about their lifestyle that resonates with me. Perhaps it’s their simple way of living that seems appealing, a life without the constant barrage of information and entertainment (so much noise!).

Amish are easily identified—their clothing is a dead giveaway. Simplicity and modesty, perhaps to a fault, characterize their clothes.

While I’m not suggesting that believers need to hearken after Amish attire, I do think believers ought to recognize that their clothes say a lot about them. That our culture has become too complacent about clothing has become evident even to secular folks.

Major League Baseball has become the first professional league in North America to issue dress guidelines for media members. According to the Associated Press, “The media should dress ‘in an appropriate and professional manner’ with clothing proper for a ‘business casual work environment’ when in locker rooms, dugouts, press boxes and on the field, the new MLB guidelines say. Banned are sheer and see-through clothing, ripped jeans, one-shouldered, strapless shirts or clothing exposing bare midriffs. Also listed are ‘excessively short’ skirts, dresses or shorts cut more than 3-4 inches above the knee.”

The ideas of modesty and appropriateness have been lost in our society, and our church culture experiences the same loss. Folks think little about the seriousness of worship, and it shows when they enter the worship center on Sunday morning wearing shorts and flip-flops during the warmer weather months. Some defend such attire (or lack of it!) by saying that God looks on the heart. “Where in the Bible does it say that men have to wear a three-piece suit and tie and women have to wear ankle-length dresses?” Have you ever noticed how persons will use extreme examples to justify their positions? The issue isn’t suits and ties and ankle-length dresses. The issue is appropriateness. Worship is serious business. It doesn’t require a certain style of dress. Ties are not mandatory, but surely flip-flops and shorts are hardly proper attire for the serious business of worship.

What about our day-to-day clothing? Are appropriateness and modesty evident? Unfortunately, many girls and women, even professing Christians, allow the fashion of the day dictate their clothing choices. The apostle Paul gave this instruction: “Likewise also that women should adorn themselves in respectable apparel, with modesty and self-control” (1 Timothy 2:9a).

Concerning the Greek word translated as “modesty” in 1 Timothy 2:9, Mary Kassian writes, “[It] means that you choose clothes that are decent in His eyes . . . not clothes that are provocative, seductive, and that honor nakedness. When you dress decently, you recognize that God ordained clothes to cover, and not draw attention to, your naked skin. You cover up out of respect for Him, the gospel, your Christian brothers—and out of respect for who He made you to be. Decency means you agree with the Lord about the true purpose of clothing and set aside your self-interest to dress in a way that exalts Christ.” She provides this practical advice: “So in that dressing room trying on that skirt, take time to sit, bend, and stretch in front of that mirror, and ask yourself, Is this skirt decent? Does it do what it should do? Does it properly cover me up? Does it showcase my underlying nakedness—or exalt the gospel of Christ?” (http://www.girlsgonewise.com/what-not-to-wear/).

Likening inner vices and virtues to our outer clothes, Paul writes, “Do not lie to one another, seeing that you have put off the old self with its practices and have put on the new self, which is being renewed in knowledge after the image of its creator. . . . Put on then, as God’s chosen ones, holy and beloved, compassionate hearts, kindness, humility, meekness, and patience, bearing with one another and, if one has a complaint against another, forgiving each other; as the Lord has forgiven you, so you also must forgive. And above all these put on love, which binds everything together in perfect harmony” (Colossians 3:9-10, 12-14). What we are on the inside is more important than what we wear on the outside, but what we wear on the outside should not contradict what we are on the inside. Our clothes are not what we are, but our clothes tell a lot about us.

A blue Christmas?

Christmas seems to be a particularly depressing time for many people. Statistics reveal increased numbers of suicides and attempted suicide when compared to other times of the year. Mental health professionals report an increase in cases of depression.

Many reasons for increased depression are offered. Folks get overwhelmed with trying to find the “perfect” Christmas gift. All the festivities can crowd needed rest out of one’s calendar. Expecting one’s Christmas season to match a Hallmark movie doubtlessly produces a blue Christmas for many. Gatherings that force folks to be around others they dislike can be a downer.

Perhaps more persons need to feel blue at Christmas, though not for any of the reasons often offered. The thrice-holy Christ entered the world. Juxtaposed against his holiness, any human should be filled with dread and shame, a state of the darkest blue.

In Isaiah 6 we find the prophet in the presence of the Almighty. Confronted with perfect holiness, Isaiah shrinks, “Woe is me! For I am lost; for I am a man of unclean lips, and I dwell in the midst of a people of unclean lips; for my eyes have seen the King, the Lord of hosts!” (v. 5). Isaiah saw himself and his people as they really were: wicked and evil. “For out of the abundance of the heart his mouth speaks” (Luke 6:45) correlates what a person says with what a person is. That is not a comforting thought.

One might ask, “Well, that’s all well and good, but we’re talking about Christmas. What does Christmas have to do with Isaiah’s experience with the holy God?” The apostle John records this account in his gospel: “Though he [Jesus] had done so many signs before them, they still did not believe in him, so that the word spoken by the prophet Isaiah might be fulfilled: ‘Lord, who has believed what he heard from us, and to whom has the arm of the Lord been revealed?’ Therefore they could not believe. For again Isaiah said, ‘He has blinded their eyes and hardened their heart, lest they see with their eyes, and understand with their heart, and turn, and I would heal them.’ Isaiah said these things because he saw his glory and spoke of him” (John 12:37–41, ESV; emphasis added).

Isaiah saw Christ in his glorious holiness and saw himself as wicked and unworthy. Somehow, that’s a reality we need to grasp during the Christmas season. We are not celebrating the miracle of a birth, though the Virgin Birth was certainly that. We are not celebrating the innocence of a little child, though this Child is the only one who has ever been born as innocent after Adam’s fall. Too much of Christmas in our culture borders on sappy emotionalism, and a lot of it is thoroughly baptized in sappiness. Even the “Put Christ Back into Christmas” campaigns miss the mark, because most people would be aghast at who Christ really is. Perhaps beside manger scenes should be a depiction of Revelation 19:11-15: “Then I saw heaven opened, and behold, a white horse! The one sitting on it is called Faithful and True, and in righteousness he judges and makes war. His eyes are like a flame of fire, and on his head are many diadems, and he has a name written that no one knows but himself. He is clothed in a robe dipped in blood, and the name by which he is called is The Word of God. And the armies of heaven, arrayed in fine linen, white and pure, were following him on white horses. From his mouth comes a sharp sword with which to strike down the nations, and he will rule them with a rod of iron. He will tread the winepress of the fury of the wrath of God the Almighty.”

Seeing Christ as Scripture depicts him should drive us to the cross, for there “he made him to be sin who knew no sin, so that in him we might become the righteousness of God” (2 Corinthians 5:21, ESV). Seeing Christ in his holiness reveals us in our sinfulness and lawlessness. By his grace, we loathe our sin, repent of it, and embrace his atonement for us. And, yes, we celebrate Christmas, but for no sentimental reason. We celebrate because our kind, benevolent, gracious, holy Savior God has satisfied divine justice due our sin and has clothed us in his righteousness.

Thankful, but to whom?

National holidays are known in our nation for their commercialization, and this is especially true, or so it seems, with those associated with Christianity. Easter? New clothes and Easter bunnies, must-have new baskets for the little ones. Christmas? When Christians campaign to “keep Christ in Christmas,” you know it’s a lost cause culturally.

Even the worshipers of darkness find their Halloween sullied with the buying and giving of large stashes of candy for the trick-or-treat darlings in their newly-bought outfits for the occasion. I was waiting in a check-out line at Wal-Mart a few days ago as the cashier was dealing with a customer ahead of me. A cell phone rang behind me, and the woman who answered it notified her caller that she had just picked up her Halloween costume. Glancing back at her, my first thought was . . . , oh well, never mind.

But then there’s Thanksgiving. Finally, a non-commercialized holiday, or so many think. Folks gobble their turkey and dressing as they work their way through the Black Friday sales, getting to bed early so they can get the jump on the crowd the next morning.

Really, though, that is not the worst thing about Thanksgiving. A greater problem with Thanksgiving in our day is that thanks is extended to no one in particular. Watch television news broadcasters. They will run stories about acts of kindness during the Thanksgiving season and may even share some of their favorite Thanksgiving memories, stories about family and food and football, stuff to make you feel all warm inside. But to whom are they thankful? Rarely is there even a nod to God.

Of course, things have not always been so in our country, much to the chagrin of those who try to rewrite our nation’s history. For instance, Governor John Hancock of Massachusetts issued the following proclamation in 1783 to celebrate our nation’s independence from Great Britain:

Whereas … these United States are not only happily rescued from the Danger and Calamities to which they have been so long exposed, but their Freedom, Sovereignty and Independence ultimately acknowledged.

And whereas . . . the Interposition of Divine Providence in our Favor hath been most abundantly and most graciously manifested, and the Citizens of these United States have every Reason for Praise and Gratitude to the God of their salvation.

Impressed therefore with an exalted Sense of the Blessings by which we are surrounded, and of our entire Dependence on that Almighty Being from whose Goodness and Bounty they are derived;

I do by and with the Advice of the Council appoint Thursday the Eleventh Day of December next (the Day recommended by the Congress to all the States) to be religiously observed as a Day of Thanksgiving and Prayer, that all the People may then assemble to celebrate . . . that he hath been pleased to continue to us the Light of the Blessed Gospel; . . . That we also offer up fervent Supplications . . . to cause pure Religion and Virtue to flourish . . . and to fill the World with his glory.

There has been for decades a concerted effort in the United States to remove any vestiges of Christianity from the public square. We lament the effectiveness of those who hate Christianity. Let’s be honest, though. They have been effective in removing Christian words and symbols because we as a nation have essentially removed God from our lives individually. It’s not a great step to remove God from our lives collectively.

There’s not much we can do directly to reverse our culture’s neglect of God, but we can do something directly in our lives and in our families. We can recover a lifestyle of verbal gratefulness to God for his blessings unto us. A people of God is a people who explicitly give him thanks. David’s words should be ours: “Oh give thanks to the Lord; call upon his name; make known his deeds among the peoples!” (1 Chronicles 16:8, ESV).

Here I stand

On October 31, 1517, a seemingly insignificant action ignited a theological explosion in Germany that changed the course of Christianity. An obscure monk by the name of Martin Luther nailed a document of ninety-five theses on the cathedral door in Wittenberg. Luther contended against the selling of indulgences, basically a fund-raising scheme, a church bake sale on steroids.

The practice of Johann Tetzel, who sold indulgences to collect money for the bishop of Mainz, in particular provoked Luther’s ire. As Luther pointed out in Thesis 27:

They preach only human doctrines who say that as soon as the money clinks into the money chest, the soul flies out of purgatory.

Announcements routinely were nailed on the church door, but Luther’s went to the heart of the abuses and excesses of the Roman church. The idea of indulgences went to the heart of what it means to be forgiven and to be declared right with God, to be justifies. The first five theses set the stage:

1. When our Lord and Master Jesus Christ said, “Repent” [Matt. 4:17], he willed the entire life of believers to be one of repentance.
2. This word cannot be understood as referring to the sacrament of penance, that is, confession and satisfaction, as administered by the clergy.
3. Yet it does not mean solely inner repentance; such inner repentance is worthless unless it produces various outward mortifications of the flesh.
4. The penalty of sin remains as long as the hatred of self, that is, true inner repentance, until our entrance into the kingdom of heaven.
5. The pope neither desires nor is able to remit any penalties except those imposed by his own authority or that of the canons.

As a younger man, Luther had been deathly afraid of dying outside of God’s forgiveness. He would go to his priestly confessor, seeking absolution for what many would deem the most insignificant sins. He so wore out his confessor that Luther was told not to return to the confession booth till he had something worthy of confessing!

Luther, however, came to understand the reality of justification through faith alone in Christ alone. He recognized the biblical teaching that the person who repents and believes on the crucified Christ is justified, counted righteous, in the sight of God. “The righteous shall live by faith” (Romans 1:17).

The church’s pronouncing the forgiveness of sins not only for the one who paid the indulgence but also for deceased family members who may be undergoing punishment in Purgatory was contrary to the teaching of Scripture, so Luther protested:

36. Any truly repentant Christian has a right to full remission of penalty and guilt,11 even without indulgence letters.
37. Any true Christian, whether living or dead, participates in all the blessings of Christ and the church; and this is granted him by God, even without indulgence letters.

There would be much that Luther would refine about his theology, but on October 31, 1517, he placed his vocational security and even his earthly life in jeopardy in standing upon the Scriptures. When later called upon to renounce his positions, Luther responded,

Since your most serene majesty and your high mightiness require from me a clear, simple, and precise answer, I will give you one, and it is this: I cannot submit my faith either to the pope or to the councils, because it is clear to me as the day that they have frequently erred and contradicted each other. Unless therefore I am convinced by the testimony of Scripture, or by the clearest reasoning— unless I am persuaded by means of the passages I have quoted—and unless they thus render my conscience bound by the Word of God, I cannot and I will not retract, for it is unsafe for a Christian to speak against his conscience.

Luther would allow the Scriptures alone to determine his beliefs:

Here I stand. I can do no other. May God help me. Amen.

Serious about the faith

What is the Christian faith to you? What does it actually mean in your life? Is Christianity integral to your living, a moment-by-moment recognition that you are Christ’s possession and your life is to be lived for God’s glory, or is Christianity relegated to the “religious” compartment of your life, something that keeps you somewhat tied to a church but really doesn’t impact your daily living?

How you answer this, it seems to me, goes a long way in determining how serious you are about the faith you profess to hold. In reality, it goes to the heart of the gospel. Is Christ simply your Savior who gets you out of an eternal jam so you can avoid hell and go to heaven, or is Christ your Savior and Lord, your master who not only will take you to heaven but who determines how you will live during this life?

The “Savior-only” perspective is characterized by those who like the idea of being religiously minded. After all, a lot of blessings come from religion. It’s the mind-set that sees prayer as a good-luck charm to keep bad things from happening. For many in the South, it’s sort of a good-ole-boy “thing: “mom, God, apple pie, football, and NASCAR,” all being pretty much synonymous.

Speaking of NASCAR (I’m really not picking on racing fans—really!), this all-too-flippant-view of the faith was vividly illustrated in the “invocation” offered by Joe Nelms at the Nashville Superspeedway a couple of weeks ago. Pastor of the independent Family Baptist Church in Lebanon, Tennessee, Nelms made Christianity the religion of buffoons as he thanked God “for Roush and Yates partnering to give us the power that we see before us tonight, . . . for Sonoco racing fuel and Goodyear tires that bring performance and power to the track.” When you thought he couldn’t get lower with his “all-about-me” prayer, he said, “Lord, I want to thank you for my smokin’ hot wife tonight, Lisa, and my two children, Eli and Emma, or as we like to call the ‘The Little E’s.’” Nelms’ buffoonery became blasphemy as he ended his prayer with “in Jesus’ name, boogity boogity boogity, amen.”

Many loved Nelms’ display, laughing that it was “the greatest prayer ever.” That is not surprising when you see how little Christianity really affects folks’ living. The words of Jesus are haunting: “Not everyone who says to me, ‘Lord, Lord,’ will enter the kingdom of heaven, but the one who does the will of my Father who is in heaven. On that day many will say to me, ‘Lord, Lord, did we not prophesy in your name, and cast out demons in your name, and do many mighty works in your name?’ And then will I declare to them, ‘I never knew you; depart from me, you workers of lawlessness’” (Matthew 7:21-23 ESV).

Contrast Nelms’ silliness with this perspective from John MacArthur: “Over the years I have ministered quite a lot in Russia, Ukraine, Belarus, and other parts of the former Soviet Union. The church in those countries, repressed by Communism for so many decades, is nonetheless vibrant and dynamic today.One of the significant things that struck me when I first began to minister there was the terminology that virtually all Russian-speaking believers use to describe conversion. They do not speak of accepting Christ as one’s personal Saviour. They would never say merely that someone ‘made a decision for Christ’ or that the person ‘invited Jesus into his or her life.’ The language they use is simple and entirely biblical: the new believer is someone who has repented. If a person shows no evidence of repentance, he or she would not be embraced as a Christian, no matter what sort of verbal profession of faith was made . . . . By contrast, we live in a culture of such shallow religion that most of what goes by the name of ‘Christian’ in Western society has little or no emphasis on repentance of any kind. The call to repentance has been deliberately omitted from the most popular gospel presentations of our generation” (cited in Iain H. Murray, John MacArthur: Servant of the Word and Flock [Edinburgh: Banner of Truth, 2011], 152.)

Those who have truly followed Christ have paid a price for their journey. They understand the gravity of declaring allegiance to Christ. Instead of using Christ to promote themselves or merely to escape a place of eternal punishment, they count the cost, repent of their sin, and trust in the crucified and resurrected Lord.

Serious about the fellowship

The idea that the local church is more than an organization which people join and for which there is little, if any, accountability is a foreign one to the twenty-first century American church. Tom Ascol commented on the high tolerance for sin in the fellowship with these observations: “The corporate discipline of the church has gone the way of the Mastodon in the thinking of most Southern Baptists. There was a time when church discipline was recognized by Protestants in general and Baptists in particular as one of the distinguishing marks of a true church. The teaching of Jesus in Matthew 18:15-17 was not only regarded as inerrant, the steps which he outlined there were actually practiced by the churches. Today it is tragically common to have church members living in open immorality with absolutely no response from the congregation of which they are a part.

“Thus it hardly even shocks us to read Hollywood badgirl and former Playboy pinup Shannon Doherty describe herself in TV Guide as ‘just a nice, Southern Baptist, Republican girl.’ Of course she is! Why should shameless immorality stand in the way of being a church member? Somewhere along the line, Southern Baptists have lost their moral nerve. The world’s relativism (‘nothing is always right or wrong’) and sentimentalism (‘because I love you I will let you’) have displaced the Bible’s moral absolutism and genuine love that cares enough to correct.

“John Dagg, the first Southern Baptist theologian to produce a systematic theology textbook . . . , argued that ‘when discipline leaves a church, Christ goes with it.’ If Dagg is correct, what does that say for the state of our churches today?” (Thomas Ascol, “Southern Baptists at the Crossroads: Returning to the Old Paths,” The Founders Journal, Winter/Spring 1995, 3).

Jesse Mercer was one of the most renowned of Georgia and Southern Baptists during the first four decades of the 1800′s. Historian Charles Mallary noted: “Mercer firmly held to the necessity of church discipline. He maintained that ‘all divisions are the fruit of contention and strife, originating in pride and ambition, the agitating of “unlearned questions,” or departures from the true faith and order.’ He continued: ‘I consider the causes of these divisions, which have rent our churches and spoiled our beauty, as a denomination, are to be found in the neglect of a godly discipline, and the consequent results’” (Memoirs of Elder Jesse Mercer, 248).

Avoiding church discipline has always been the easy way for churches. L. Fletcher, in the December 12, 1855, issue of Kentucky’s Western Recorder, recounted how believers are to “Let their light so shine before men as to exert a healthful and saving influence upon the community around them.” He reminded readers that Christians reveal their love for the Lord by their obedience. He noted pointedly that “as Baptists, we glory in proclaiming to the world that the Word of God is our only rule of faith and practice. And yet, we fear that very few of our churches either believe or practice all the teachings and requirements of the Son of God!”

The cause of Fletcher’s concern was the failure of some churches to exercise church discipline. “Our principles and practice when legitimately carried out and rightly understood, commend themselves to the judgment and understanding of all honest and unprejudiced minds; but, when there is a glaring discrepancy between what we profess and practice, our doctrines become unsavory and our name a reproach.” Churches which refuse to discipline members of known sins greatly hinder their influence in the world for the cause of Christ: “Can we think it strange that, under such circumstances, we have so few revivals of religion, or that so many that profess conversion under the high pressure system of protracted meeting, return again to the beggerly elements of the world?”

Fletcher reminded his readers that discipline is not for revenge, but “with a view to the well-being of the offender, the purity of the church, and the honor of Christ.” His concluding remarks need to be broadcast to Baptist churches in our day, churches unfortunately more concerned with numerical success than with biblical faithfulness: “Let all our churches, instead of glorying in the number of their membership, go to work with the pruning knife of discipline, and disencumber themselves of their unfruitful branches, and thus purge out the old leaven of unrighteousness that has hitherto paralyzed their influence for good, and then they will become as beautiful as Tirzah, comely as Jerusalem, and as terrible to evil-doers as an army with banners.”

All preaching that glitters is not gold–a look at Joel Osteen

The April 22-24, 2011 issue of USA Weekend featured an article on Joel Osteen entitled “My gift is encouragement.” Writer Cathy Lynn Grossman accurately notes that “quite possibly no one smiles more, ear to ear, day after day, than Pastor Joel Osteen.” She continues, “He is the blue-eyed beaming Texas preacher known worldwide for exuberant declarations of health, prosperity, wisdom, confidence, and courage.”

There are some things about Osteen that I like. He hasn’t felt the need to don the “it-doesn’t-matter-what-you-wear” jeans and casual shirt attire of preachers seeking to relate to people. Osteen still wears a suit and tie, dressing as though worship were a serious activity.

Osteen is a positive person, and that is attractive. No one like a sour puss, someone whose constant dour expression can snuff out the candles of an octogenarian’s birthday cake with one quick glance.

Another positive is that Osteen has not given into political correctness by failing to call homosexuality a sin. He does soften his declaration by saying that homosexuality is not “God’s best for a person’s life,” but at least he doesn’t characterize deviancy as something to be celebrated, as do many theological liberals.

Despite Osteen’s appeal, his preaching entails critical problems. Grossman, while praising Osteen, unintentionally reveals a key issue with Osteen’s brand of preaching: “Small wonder that Osteen, 48, has built up the nation’s largest congregation by far, thronged by people in Houston and global visitors who come to hear about hope and God’s love—not his wrath. Let others carry spears in the culture wars and veer into politics: Osteen is the Lord’s Pollyanna, looking on the bright side of all trouble and travail.” Magnifying God’s love at the expense of his wrath, Osteen’s hearers fail to get the message of what makes God’s love “love.”

The description of Osteen as Pollyanna points to the superficiality of Osteen’s message. There really is little there but nice sounding but relatively meaningless platitudes. “We are victors, not victims.” “Magnify God, not your problems.” Grossman writes, “In Osteen’s sermons, bad times can be reimagined as opportunities. Someone left you? Lost your job? Thank God! You didn’t need that person. A better job awaits. ‘God wants to double your blessings as he did for Job,’ he says.”

Misusing Scripture is the norm in Osteen’s preaching. “I tell people, ‘You are created a masterpiece.’ If you are missing the mark, that’s what sin is. You are missing the best of what God offers you.” Actually, “for we are his workmanship, created in Christ Jesus for good works, which God prepared beforehand, that we should walk in them” (Ephesians 2:10) comes on the heels of “for by grace you have been saved through faith. And this is not your own doing; it is the gift of God, not a result of works, so that no one may boast” (Ephesians 2:8-9). It is the regenerated follower of Christ who is God’s “masterpiece,” not the unsaved individual who is looking for a divine fix for his problems.

All of this points to the central problem with Osteen’s brand of Christianity: it is man-centered, not God-centered. Everything is about making life better, more pleasurable, more useful, more worthwhile, more meaningful. The centrality of the glory of God is absent. Christ’s dying to reconcile God to man is not in the picture. Richard Niebuhr’s criticism of early-twentieth-century Protestant liberalism could justly be leveled at Osteen prosperity preaching: “A God without wrath brought men without sin into a kingdom without judgment through the ministrations of a Christ without a cross.” In his book Become a Better You, Osteen writes, “As long as you’re doing your best and desire to do what’s right according to God’s Word, you can be assured God is pleased with you.” In essence, Osteen preaches “another gospel” and stands under the condemnation of Galatians 1:8, “But even if we or an angel from heaven should preach to you a gospel contrary to the one we preached to you, let him be accursed.”

A serious faith

For as long as I can remember, a sentimental Christianity, one based more upon emotions than upon the Scriptures, has been unappealing to me. Frankly, it simply seems useless. Such a Christianity, unfortunately, pervades the American religious landscape.

Something like the following is all too common. Roger and Sally have a son named Charles. Charles has been married and divorced several times and is now married again. Roger, Sally, and Charles are life-long church members and don’t hesitate to use God-talk whenever conversations take a religious turn. The couple has never rebuked the son for his multiple marriages and divorces, and the son has never repented. When a church took steps to discipline Charles after he left his first wife and children for another woman, both Roger and Sally were “hurt” by the stand the church leadership was taking and eventually left the church for another. Charles had already left that church and had been welcomed into another local church of the same denomination by a pastor who had been fully informed of Charles’ sin.

Roger and Sally and Charles will talk with great affection about God, the church, the cross, and heaven. They are “nice” people and do “nice” things for others. Their local church plays a central role in their lives. When it comes to making difficult choices in following Christ, however, they always justify taking the easier route, the road that never has to confront sin, either their own or their children’s.

The problem with such folks is that their Christianity is a man-centered religion. For them, the reason Christ came to earth was to make life more pleasurable for his followers. The purpose for the death of Christ is so they can enter heaven. Such thinking betrays a worldly and sentimental view of Christianity and is naive and foreign to the Scriptures.

Bernard of Clairvaux, writing in the twelfth century, maintained that following God is a matter of finding in him our desire, the very centrality for our living: “We read in Scripture that God has made all things for himself. His creatures must aim, therefore, at conforming themselves perfectly to their Creator and living according to his will. So we must fix our love on him, bit by bit aligning our own will with his, who made all for himself, not wanting either ourselves or anything else to be or to have been, save as it pleases him, making his will alone, and not our pleasure, our object of desire.”

Bernard’s thinking is much more in line with what Jesus taught than is the thinking of the Rogers and Sallys and Charleses of our American Christianity. In Luke 9:23–25 Jesus taught, “If anyone would come after me, let him deny himself and take up his cross daily and follow me. For whoever would save his life will lose it, but whoever loses his life for my sake will save it. For what does it profit a man if he gains the whole world and loses or forfeits himself?” Jesus spoke these words to religious people, folks for whom God-talk was a pleasing thing.

Sentimental Christianity refuses to make the hard choices, refuses to make real and tangible sacrifices, refuses to respond to the sin in one’s life. In the end, many whose Christianity is merely a sentimental longing will find themselves outside the atoning work of Christ. Biblical Christianity, though, sees the loathsomeness of sin, both one’s own and that of others, sees the graciousness of a forgiving Father and the loving sacrifice of his Son, and takes seriously what the Scriptures teach.

Biblical Christianity exalts the will of God above one’s own and desires ultimately that God be glorified. Jim Elliott, the missionary whose life was taken on an Ecuadorian mission field, recorded this prayer: “Father, take my life, yea, my blood if Thou wilt, and consume it with Thine enveloping fire. I would not save it, for it is not mine to save. Have it, Lord, have it all. Pour out my life as an oblation [a drink offering] for the world. Blood is only of value as it flows before Thine altar.” May that be our attitude and prayer as well.

Good works, anyone?

We recognize that the death and resurrection of Jesus Christ are central and essential to our salvation. Were Christ not made sin in our stead, the wrath of God would justly come upon us (2 Corinthians 5:21). Were Christ not resurrected, we would remain in our sin (1 Corinthians 15:17). The resurrection reveals that the death of Christ was sufficient to satisfy God’s wrath.

The death of Christ, though, not only affects our standing with God. It also affects our living in the world. In Titus 2:14, Paul makes this declaration: “[Christ] gave himself for us to redeem us from all lawlessness and to purify for himself a people for his own possession who are zealous for good works” [ESV].

Paul writes that Christ “gave himself for us,” revealing that his death was “voluntary, exhaustive, and substitutionary,” as D. Edmond Hiebert points out. Christ’s death was voluntary in that he lay down his life (John 10:18), exhaustive in that he gave of himself completely (John 6:51), and substitutionary in that he died in the place of believers (Galatians 1:4). Christ came to earth “to give his life a ransom for many” (Matthew 20:28).

Paul presents a two-fold purpose for the death of Christ in Titus 2:14. The first purpose is negative: “to redeem us from all lawlessness.” Sinners are enslaved to sin (Romans 6:17), being in rebellion to the law of God. Christ has delivered those who believe in him from that slavery, having freed them to be able to live unto righteousness. Stephen Charnock [1628-1680] maintains, “All our works before repentance are dead works (Hebrews 6:1). And these works have no true beauty in them, with whatsoever gloss they may appear to a natural eye. A dead body may have something of the features and beauty of a living, but it is but the beauty of a carcass, not of a man. . . . Since man, therefore, is spiritually dead, he cannot perform a living service. As a natural death causes incapacitate for natural actions, so a spiritual death must incapacitate for spiritual actions.”

Paul writes to Titus that the second purpose for the death of Christ is positive: “to purify for himself a people for his own possession who are zealous for good works.” Those who are redeemed have been freed from the guilt of sin and are thereby the unique people of Christ. Concerning the Greek word which is translated as his own possession in the ESV, William Barclay writes, “It means reserved for; and it was specially used for that part of the spoils of a battle or a campaign which the king who had conquered set apart specially for himself. Through the work of Jesus Christ, the Christian becomes fit to be the special possession of God.” God has saved us primarily for his purpose, not for our pleasure.

As “his own possession,” Christians do not grudgingly perform good works out of a sense of obligation or coercion; they zealously perform good works because they are now God’s own possession. Peter understood this distinctive relationship between Christ and believers and between belief and good works: “But you are a chosen race, a royal priesthood, a holy nation, a people for his own possession, that you may proclaim the excellencies of him who called you out of darkness into his marvelous light” (1 Peter 2:9). Likewise, Paul writes in Ephesians 2:10 that Christians are God’s “workmanship, created in Christ Jesus for good works, which God prepared beforehand, that we should walk in them” (Ephesians 2:10).

It is not that we lead godly lives because we are supposed to do so and we grudgingly comply. We have been liberated by the death of Christ from the power of sin and are now able to do what before we could not have done. As followers of our crucified and resurrected Lord, may our lives be characterized as being “zealous for good works.”

Whose counsel do you follow?

We read a passage of Scripture such as Psalm 1 and, unfortunately, meditate too little upon it:

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.

Yawning, we assure ourselves that we’ve got these verses nailed down as we move on to our television program.

Do we really have them nailed down? Do we walk “in the counsel of the wicked,” stand “in the way [path] of sinners,” and sit “in the seat of scoffers”? I think we may, though unwittingly, simply because we fail to think through matters biblically.

For instance, consider the concept of retirement. Worldly philosophy maintains that you work a certain number of years so that you can retire and spend the last couple of decades or so of your life at ease and pursuing leisure. Here’s something to think about: Where in the Scriptures do we find that notion?

Instead of looking toward “retirement years” as an opportunity for a lifestyle devoted to leisure and recreation, would it not be more scriptural to look at those years as an opportunity for serving God and others? If you have a job that allows you to retire at age sixty-five or so, God is granting you an opportunity to serve him in ways that you never could have during your years of regular employment. You have more time to study the Scriptures, to pray, to teach others, to take a younger person under your wing to disciple him or her. Sure, you may have the opportunity to take a trip that you could not have taken when you had your regular job. Go and take it and enjoy it, but leisure is not our calling, serving God and others is: “You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your strength and with all your mind, and your neighbor as yourself” (Luke 10:27).

What about the clothes you wear? To say that we live in a day when too many women care little about modest clothing is to state the obvious. “But it’s the style,” someone counters. While there is no virtue in dressing fifty years behind the times, neither is there virtue in slavishly following the style of the day in order to attract attention to oneself, especially when that style entices men to mental impurity.

While worldliness is often displayed by our choices, worldliness is at root a matter of the heart. Writing in the seventeenth century, Thomas Watson provides a helpful illustration: “All the danger is when the world gets into the heart. The water is useful for the sailing of the ship; all the danger is when the water gets into the ship, so the fear is when the world gets into the heart.” The apostle John commands, “Do not love the world or the things in the world. If anyone loves the world, the love of the Father is not in him. For all that is in the world—the desires of the flesh and the desires of the eyes and pride in possessions—is not from the Father but is from the world. And the world is passing away along with its desires, but whoever does the will of God abides forever” (1 John 2:15-17).

As the redeemed children of God, we were made for more than finding our pleasure and satisfaction in that which pleases and satisfies the world. If the world is too much in our thinking and in our living, we are settling for an existence that is far less than the fulfilling and joyous life of one devotedly following God. In The Weight of Glory, C. S. Lewis maintains, “If we consider the unblushing promises of reward and the staggering nature of the rewards promised in the Gospels, it would seem that Our Lord finds our desires not too strong but too weak. We are half-hearted creatures fooling about with drink and sex and ambition when infinite joy is offered us, like an ignorant child who wants to go on making mud pies in a slum because he cannot imagine what is meant by the offer of holiday by the sea.”