No Debating

I have a penchant for useless disputes. I’ve actually argued that Timothy and Titus were in fact the same person. I once got so swept away with predestination that I brought my dear wife to tears telling her that our kids may not be elect. Extremes entice me. I’m not into rappelling or white-water rafting, but as far my mind goes… Surf’s up! Being prone to the edges as I am, I need the balance that so many offer me in the Body of Christ. They reign me in time after time. The Bible itself does that too, if I let it. It’s amazing – I can spend hours reading each side of some theological slugging-match, and go away feeling so far from the Lord. Then, simply opening my Bible to read a passage totally unrelated leaves my jaw dropping at how ludicrously wondrous the Lord Jesus is. There’s no debating that.

The centrality and supremacy of the Lord Jesus Christ is so beyond dispute that I can safely spend all my days enraptured by Him, without a care for whoever might think such-and-such. It’s a freeing thing. Knowing that my personal theology is flawed in countless places, I can rest in the fact that I can’t get Jesus wrong. He’s made it too difficult to do so. “Altogether Lovely” is His uncontested title. What aspect of His life has ever been maligned? Except for the mystifying way the likes of Bertrand Russell may object to the withering of the fig-tree, the Lord Jesus remains the highest example of character the world has ever known. Religions of the world attest to his greatness. He has won the admiration of both the Believer and the Atheist – and the Agnostic. And He keeps winning mine.

Paul said, “To live is Christ.” Jesus is life. He’s a safe place to waste my time. He’s a worthwhile space to clear my calendar (and my head) for. His life began under a magnetic star that drew those thrice-gifted worshippers. All we know of his boyhood was that he baffled Rabbi’s not with answers, but with questions. As Mary searched for Him among her relatives on the road, she was simply rehearsing for the day when He would set His face like a flint toward Jerusalem once again, to be lost in the darkness of death. In both cases, He was found on the third day.

Whether He was getting the Man of the Tombs some clothes, or endearingly calling the Syro-Phoenician woman a dog to draw out her faith in Him – I can’t help being enamored with the Lord Jesus. Mary chose the better part than Martha, and her Lord promised that it would not be taken from her. Christ will defend me when I do the same. Sitting at His feet, I hear Him say the most with the fewest words – “Abide in me, and I in you.” May my reputation be that I am so heavenly-minded (because that’s where Christ is) that I am useless down here. My uselessness is no limit to Christ. “It is no longer I who lives, but Christ lives in me.” Fixated on Him, I am removed as a hindrance to what He wants accomplished here.

I will be distracted again by various winds of doctrine. I will get caught up in other vacuous endeavours. But at the back of the unrest I will find as I engage in all that has nothing to do with Christ – there I will find a longing to examine the face of Jesus with the eyes faith has provided. An open bible will be curtains thrown wide, tied-together, and climbed down, to escape from the Christ-less confine I make for myself all the time. He’s been throwing pebbles at my window as far back as I can remember. “Behold I stand at the door and knock…”

BJ

Selfish Faith

Only sinners go to heaven. I can still hear the voice of the preacher who phrased it that way. There was a touch of flabbergast in it and down-right stupefaction - “Only sinners go to heaven!” It’s a crazy thought. But it’s right. Here’s the way Paul phrased it in Romans 4:5 “But to him who does not work but believes on Him who justifies the ungodly, his faith is accounted for righteousness” – It’s about believing “on Him who justifies the ungodly” – On Jesus who makes right the wrong. When faith is placed in the one who makes sinners righteous by his death, salvation follows. That means that faith can’t change the fact that one is a sinner. It must be possible for faith itself to be an unrighteous act.

There has been a controversy in Theological circles about whether or not people can believe on Christ in an unregenerate state. I think I might have just glazed your donut. I need a can of Vacant-Expression-Be-Gone. There’s nothing like big theomological words to shut down discussion. Ok, let me say it another way: Faith sounds like a good thing, so how can bad people do that? Well, faith can be a good thing, but it doesn’t have to be. You can place your faith in the wrong object, and then it’s not so good is it? You can believe that the Sock-Gremlins have created one giant knee-high and are planning to slip it over the CN Tower. But even when faith is placed in the right thing – the Lord Jesus – it still might not qualify for being a good thing.

You have to ask yourself, why do people put their faith in Jesus? Well, they want to be saved. It’s a pretty selfish thing, really. You’re looking out for number one. It involves the instinct of self-preservation. They know they cannot save themselves, because they are sinners through-and-through. They reach out with the hand of faith to take the free gift of salvation. Can that be considered a righteous act worthy, even in part, of the salvation offered? Well, if you think a depraved person selfishly taking something that only benefits him or herself is a righteous act, then that’s a strange kind of righteousness, for sure.

Sin has left no part of our existence untouched. There is no little vestige of pre-fall life in us. We are in complete and utter need of saving. Even the faith we would exercise to receive the gift of life in Christ is messed up. Belief precedes life. That’s the Biblical order of things. But faith is not seen by God as worthy of righteousness. The way our verse about puts it is: “his faith is accounted for righteousness”. That’s a re-valuation of faith. It’s like a pre-Euro currency today being converted into gold. It’s not a good deal. But it’s the deal God has offered. His graciousness has made it possible.

So, only sinners go to heaven, and a sinner’s selfish faith in a self-less Christ is the way. Depravity and faith are friends after all. There is more to the story of salvation than this, of course. Is there any divine influence (or wooing) that goes on before a person exercises faith in Christ? There sure is. But we cannot think for one moment that any given person might have no possible chance of being born again. That would negate the words, “God is not willing that any should perish.” Faith is our responsibility, but that doesn’t mean that we have a hand in saving ourselves. God does it all. He gets all the glory. He even uses our selfishness to bring us to him.

BJ