Tag: christians and the law

PHILIPPIANS #14: CONFIDENCE

On By Pastor TomIn Philippians, Podcast, Religion, Sermon, UncategorizedLeave a comment
Pair of hands raised upward in prayer with sunlight streaming through a church window
Hands lifted in prayer inside a sunlit church

If you feel that you are a bad Christian because of your failures, you might be putting confidence in the flesh. If you feel that you are doing OK as a Christian (because, well, you are doing OK, at least right now), you might be putting confidence in the flesh. But the Holy Spirit calls us to put all our confidence in Christ, not our own performance.

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This is our third installment on Philippians 3, verses 1-11. Last time we focused primarily on putting Jesus above all else, and considering everything a loss compared to the surpassing wonderfulness of knowing Jesus Christ. But I want to return to something Paul said here:

“For we are the circumcision, who worship by the Spirit of God and glory in Christ Jesus and put no confidence in the flesh”

We talked a little bit about how Jewish people put their confidence in how well they observed man-made regulations about the law of Moses. Paul did that himself. But this time, I want to talk about what it means for Christians to put no confidence in the flesh. Most of us are not putting confidence in how well we obey the Jewish Sabbath regulations, and so on. But even so, we are prone to putting confidence in the flesh.

“Flesh” in this sense means, “not the Spirit of God, but human effort, or human values.” Another way to think of flesh is “the self, apart from God.” So when we put confidence in the flesh, it shows up in two major flavors. One way of “putting confidence in the flesh” is to feel that we have performed well. So, for instance, when I manage to pull together some self-discipline and maybe change some ungodly habits, (like gluttonous eating) I might feel pretty good about myself. Or, perhaps I’ve started a godly habit of praying every day, or serving others every week, and so I feel that I’m in a better place with God than I was  a couple weeks ago, when I only prayed once, and dodged every chance I had to help anyone. Now, here’s the important part: In these examples, even though we are trying to live more godly lives, we are doing so by putting confidence in our flesh. To put it bluntly, we feel that we are better off because we have performed better. This was the way in which Paul previously put confidence in the flesh. He was incredibly self-disciplined, and so he performed well, and he thought that made him right with God. Our good feeling is not because we have confidence in Jesus and what he has done for us, it is because we have done well. Our confidence that we’re doing well with God is based on our own performance.

There’s another way that also puts confidence in the flesh, and it is this: we feel badly about our spiritual state because we have performed badly. Yes, this, too, is putting confidence in the flesh. Our hope is in our flesh behaving well, and that hope has disappointed us. But our hope, our confidence, even in this situation, is still in our flesh, not in Jesus Christ. We feel bad because we feel that some measure of the Christian life is up to us. We are still judging ourselves and our performance based on how well (or not) our flesh behaves.

To summarize: If you feel that you are a bad Christian because of your failures, you might be putting confidence in the flesh. If you feel that you are doing OK as a Christian (because, well, you are doing OK, at least right now), you might be putting confidence in the flesh.

This is part of what Paul considers “loss” and “rubbish” compared to Jesus Christ. You think you should feel good about yourself because you’ve managed to stay disciplined for a few months? Rubbish! Trash! Don’t put any confidence in your own good performance. Do you feel badly because you can’t seem to put two decently-Christian days together in a row? Garbage! Filth! Don’t put any confidence in your own bad performance.

I’ve had to wrestle with this in my own ministry. When I was 25, I started a network of house churches. After just two months, the first non-believer became a disciple of Jesus. He was followed by two more a few months later, and then an avalanche of people who had never followed Jesus began to do so. Along the way we experienced miracles of healing and deliverance and words from the Lord. Believers who had been stuck in their faith began to grow. The church grew. People were delivered from demonic forces, from psychological problems, from troubled marriages, and so many other wonderful things happened. I look back at some of the sermons that I wrote then, and think, “Where in the world did I get that kind of wisdom at 25 years old?”

Well, as it happens, both then and now, I knew where the wisdom came from, and where the miracles came from, and everything else: It was all the work of the Holy Spirit. At the time I was very clear about not claiming any credit for myself, and today I stand by that. It was a wonderful work of God, and I just got to go along for the ride.

So, fast forward a few years. I love our New Joy Fellowship, and our Life Together Churches network. I love that a lot of other people I’ve never met tune-in online. But, objectively, things haven’t gone quite as stunningly well as they did during my younger years. Things seem to be moving a lot more slowly. Several years ago, I was kind of lamenting this, and assuming responsibility for it. I thought I must be failing in various ways, since things were so different than they were when I was younger. My wife said to me: “Tom, did you take credit for all those wonderful things when we were younger? Would you take credit for them today?”

The answer was a clear and obvious, “Of course not.”

She said, “So why are you trying to ‘take credit’ for things not going the way you want them to right now? You said back then it was all the Lord. If that’s true, than isn’t this time also all up to the Lord?”

I married a wise woman.

If any of that good stuff when I was younger came about simply because of my effort, then it was not worth much. The point is this: The good stuff is rubbish unless it came from Jesus. And so is the bad stuff. I have never been perfect, when I was young, or now. But it doesn’t matter. I put no confidence in good flesh, or bad flesh.

I want to flesh out (hah!) what I mean by putting confidence in bad flesh. I’ll call out a few of my own sins and failings here. I have been really trying to stop being so angry and judgmental toward the many (many!) abysmal, horrible, thoughtless, moronic, ____, drivers that I encounter when I get in the car (you see my problem). We can laugh about it, but it’s not actually funny. What comes out of me when another driver offends me is ugly, rageful, and rude, prideful and selfish. My family have seen me that way, and I would be genuinely ashamed for anyone else to see me when I’m like that. Now, when I fail in that way, I should, and do repent, apologize to the Lord, and to whoever is in the car with me. But what happens after that? I have two possible paths. One, the path of “bad flesh.” It looks something like this: I think “When am I ever going to grow up and get over this stupid reaction I have? How can I possibly preach to people that Jesus changes us, when, week after week, month after month, I still fail in this way? What kind of pathetic Christian am I, anyway?” If it’s really bad, I can go into a cycle of thinking this way for days. Now here’s the thing we may not realize: when I act this way, spending a lot of time and energy being bothered about my failure, I am putting confidence in the (bad) flesh. To put it simply, I am acting as if the flesh matters. But in Christ we are to put no confidence in our performance whether it is good or bad. When we are in Jesus, the flesh doesn’t matter either way. Good performance doesn’t matter. Bad performance doesn’t matter. We shouldn’t give any weight to our performance, either way.

Paul helps us with this when he is talking about his potential reasons for confidence in the flesh. He starts off mentioning his reasons for confidence in “good flesh:” his birth, circumcision, career as a Pharisee, and so on. But then he says “as to zeal, a persecutor of the church.” Why throw that one in there? I think Paul is saying, “If I wanted to put confidence in the flesh, I could also spend a lot of time thinking about what a terrible person I have been.” In other words, the fact that he was persecuting the church tempts him to give weight to “bad flesh” in his life.

Now, if we really get this, and we say, “The flesh doesn’t matter if it’s good, or even if it’s bad,” some questions naturally come to mind: “Why bother to be good? Why worry about being bad? If it’s really true that neither one matters, why don’t I just live to please my own desires, even if they are sinful?”

The answer to such questions is love. I am legally married to my wife Kari. That remains a legal fact, no matter how I behave. There was nothing in my marriage vows about doing dishes, listening, cuddling, holding hands, taking walks, managing finances, being supportive, or taking the garbage out. I can do those things, or not, and still be married to Kari. So, why would I do any of those kinds of things? The answer is obvious: love. I have learned the sorts of things that are important to Kari, and because I love Kari, I try to engage in such behaviours. I do not do so perfectly, not by a long shot. When I fail to do certain things, it causes injury to our relationship. Listen carefully: it doesn’t end our relationship, it just means that I need to recognize that I’ve hurt Kari, and that we need to talk about it, forgive one another, and move on. I don’t live this way with Kari because of some kind of rule or law. I do it because I love her.

We are in the same situation with Jesus. When we love him, we want to do things that make him happy. When we fail, we need to go through reconciliation. But the whole thing is not based upon performance, but on relationship, on love. In fact, we find that Jesus and his apostles taught us that this is exactly how it works. Jesus said:

15 “If you love me, you will keep my commands. 16 And I will ask the Father, and he will give you another Counselor to be with you forever. 17 He is the Spirit of truth. The world is unable to receive him because it doesn’t see him or know him. But you do know him, because he remains with you and will be in you.(John 14:15-17, CSB)

Now, it can be easy to misunderstand. It can sound like Jesus is saying, “In order to prove you love me, you must do what I command.” But I think what he is actually saying is this: “If you love me, you will naturally, as a result of that love, want to do the things I want you to. If you love me you won’t want to intentionally hurt or disappoint me, and you will want to do the things that are important to me.” He then adds a brief statement about the Holy Spirit. Why? Because it is only through the Holy Spirit that we can truly love Jesus. We don’t have to come up with love for God out of our own strength (that would be relying on the flesh again). No, the Holy Spirit within us helps us to love God.

When a teacher of the law asked him about the commandments, here’s another way Jesus put the same concept:

36 “Teacher, which is the great commandment in the Law?” 37 And he said to him, “You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind. 38 This is the great and first commandment. 39 And a second is like it: You shall love your neighbor as yourself. 40 On these two commandments depend all the Law and the Prophets.” (Matthew 22:35-40, ESV)

Of course, Jesus told the story of the Good Samaritan to show us that our neighbor is everyone we encounter in this life. So, if we love God, we will want to do things his way. If we love our neighbor, we will not intentionally hurt other people.

Now, believe me, I know the next objection: “But I do actually do things my own way, rather than God’s (often!), and I do sometimes do things that I know will hurt other people. Therefore I must not really love God, or my neighbor.”

So, two things here. First, a question: Do you want to do such hurtful things? Obviously, a part of you must want to. We’ll call that part the flesh. But isn’t there also a part of you that says, “I wish I wasn’t this way. I wish I could do better. I don’t really want to be like this.” If there is, than you have confirmation of the fact that part of you is made from flesh that is in rebellion against God. That’s the part that is not interested in being loving, unless you can get what you want that way. But the other part of you is the Holy Spirit of God in you. So, there is a part of you that does love God and neighbor. Your heart agrees with God about what is right or wrong, even when you don’t follow it.

I had a friend who wasn’t a follower of Jesus, and then eventually, he became one. He told me that after becoming a Christian, he started to struggle with lust. This surprised me. I asked him to explain. He said, “Before surrendering to Jesus, I didn’t struggle with lust. I just lusted. There was no struggle involved. But now, part of me doesn’t want to lust anymore.”

So, if you struggle to do the right thing, the very fact that part of you wants to do it shows that you do, in fact, love God, and your neighbor. It also shows that your body is corrupted by sin, and is working against those loves. But remember: the flesh is irrelevant.

Loving God is not the same thing as putting confidence in your flesh. Your performance—how well you love God (or not)—is irrelevant. God loves you, regardless of how you perform. You love God, in spite of the fact that sometimes you don’t act like it.

Here is another wonderful thing. As I mentioned above, it is not up to us to come up with love, like it would be up to us to come up with good performance. No, the Holy Spirit, who enters us when we trust Jesus, will himself give us the ability to love God and our neighbor. If you feel like you don’t know if you really do love God enough, ask him to help you love him better. That’s a prayer he will answer!

Put no confidence in the flesh—not when you can make it behave, not when you can’t. Instead, fix your eyes on Jesus Christ. Through faith you have a righteousness that has nothing to do with the flesh, or the law. It is righteousness that comes from the Holy Character and Life of Jesus Christ himself, based upon him, not you.

DOES THE OLD TESTAMENT REALLY STILL APPLY?

On By Pastor TomIn Jesus, Matthew, Old Testament, Podcast, Religion, SermonLeave a comment

 

law

Jesus did not come to make it OK to sin. He came to make us holy from the inside out. He came to defeat sin. Jesus didn’t come to change the law. He came to change us.

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Matthew #14. Matthew 5:17-20

 

“Don’t assume that I came to destroy the Law or the Prophets. I did not come to destroy but to fulfill. For I assure you: Until heaven and earth pass away, not the smallest letter or one stroke of a letter will pass from the law until all things are accomplished. Therefore, whoever breaks one of the least of these commands and teaches people to do so will be called least in the kingdom of heaven. But whoever practices and teaches these commands will be called great in the kingdom of heaven. For I tell you, unless your righteousness surpasses that of the scribes and Pharisees, you will never enter the kingdom of heaven. (Matt 5:17-20, HCSB)

Christians commonly forget that Jesus said this. It is important for the rest of the sermon on the mount, so let’s unpack it a bit.

First, let us understand that Jesus talking about the Old Testament in its entirety, not just certain “laws” or “rules.” The New Testament is written in Greek, but it is safe to assume that Jesus spoke in Aramaic and Hebrew. The word “law” in Hebrew is “Torah” and it refers not just to specific commands, but to all of the first five books of the Bible, sometimes called “The book of Moses” (Genesis, Exodus, Leviticus, Numbers, Deuteronomy). “Prophets” is the way Jews referred to all the rest of the Old Testament. In other words, when a Jewish person said “The Law and the Prophets” he meant “the entire Old Testament.” In short, Jesus is affirming that the entire Old Testament remains valid, even for those who follow him.

Jesus got even more specific than that. He said not one “iota or least stroke of a letter” can be removed from the law (and by implication, the rest of the Old Testament. This is an extreme statement. Look at this word in Hebrewיֹּ֗יֹּ֗אמֶרַ This is the Hebrew word “said.” The smallest letter in Hebrew is “yodh” which is the first on the right on this word, the one that looks like a comma up in the air. The equivalent letter in Greek is “iota” which is like an i without the dot. The second letter in from the left is “Mem.” On the right hand side at the top of the Mem is a little stroke that looks a bit like a horn. The expression “least stroke of a letter” refers to little marks like this. Jesus said, not even an iota/yodh, not even the little horn on a Mem will be undone. In other words, Jesus is very serious about this. We can’t “fudge” on God’s word. Right here, Jesus says that it will remain until “heaven and earth pass away.” In addition, he says that he himself fulfills its purpose. Christians typically don’t think this way. How can this be?

First, and I’ve mentioned this in other sermons, yes, the whole law applies to Christians. For example, even the koshers laws still apply to Christian. Now, before you click away, read this paragraph. The New Testament clearly teaches that we don’t have to eat kosher any more. Have some pork chops, bacon or fried shrimp, and feel no guilt. But in the life of a Christian, there are still applications for the kosher laws of the Old Testament. The main reason for those laws was to keep God’s people from worshipping pagan deities (which were sometimes demonic powers – Paul associated idol worship with demons in 1 Corinthians 10:20). A second reason was to help God’s people trust him more: pigs were some of the easiest animals to raise for meat, and by forbidding pork, the people had to rely upon God that much more for their food. Finally, the kosher laws showed everyone that God’s people were different.

Now, should we still refrain from worshipping pagan deities and demons? Of course! Should we still trust God to provide for us? Absolutely! Should we still be noticeably different from those who don’t follow God? You betcha. So the kosher laws still apply. Not in an exact, literal sense, but we don’t eliminate them from God’s word to us. There is something about those laws which still brings benefit to Christians, and should still have force in our lives.

In terms of Jesus fulfilling the laws let us consider the following:

In the first place, the promises of the Old Testament are about Jesus Christ, and are fulfilled in him:

Then beginning with Moses and all the Prophets, [Jesus] interpreted for them the things concerning Himself in all the Scriptures. (Luke 24:27, HCSB)

Then [Jesus] told them, “These are My words that I spoke to you while I was still with you — that everything written about Me in the Law of Moses, the Prophets, and the Psalms must be fulfilled.” Then He opened their minds to understand the Scriptures. (Luke 24:44-45, HCSB)

For [Paul] vigorously refuted the Jews in public, demonstrating through the Scriptures that Jesus is the Messiah. (Acts 18:28, HCSB)

To remove part of the law or prophets is to remove part of the revelation of Jesus Christ; to weaken the promises that are fulfilled in him.

Second, Jesus fulfilled the law by obeying it perfectly himself.

For we do not have a high priest who is unable to sympathize with our weaknesses, but One who has been tested in every way as we are, yet without sin. (Heb 4:15, HCSB)

God made the one who did not know sin to be sin for us, so that in him we would become the righteousness of God. (2Cor 5:21, NET)

Jesus not only affirmed the law and fulfilled its promises: he himself personally obeyed every part of it.

Third, Jesus reconciles us to the standards of the law.

There is no problem with the law. The problem is with us. Put simply, the Law is God’s holiness translated into human terms. It shows us what holiness looks like in a human being. The Law is not wrong. It is not evil. It accurately shows us the standard required for holiness.

The standard is what it is, because holiness is what it is. It is a law of God’s nature. And what the law shows us, is that we cannot reach the standard. It makes it clear that the standard is impossible for us. That is all that the law can accomplish. It shows us that we are not holy, that we are sinners. And every time you try and reach that standard, the law will show you the same thing again. Because of the sin of Adam and Eve, we were born without a chance. We were born with a congenital illness called sin, and the law shows us that we simply cannot overcome that. The law is not a means to get right with God. It is a measurement that shows that on our own, we can never get right with God.

Jesus did not come to get rid of the law. He did not come to change the standard. He says the law will remain. Instead, he came to fulfill the law Himself, to meet the standard on our behalf, to fill us up with His own holiness.

If we try to set aside the moral requirements of the law, we are saying “anything goes.” There is a tremendous difference between “anything goes” and “anything can be forgiven.” If we try to set aside the law, we are saying “anything goes.” That doesn’t mean sin is forgiven, it means there is no wrong – but it also means there is no right. That doesn’t mean God loves us, it means God doesn’t care. It means he doesn’t care if you lie to your boss or sleep with someone outside of marriage. But it also means he doesn’t care if someone rapes you or murders you, or steals your job or your spouse. If there is no sin, there can be no justice. If nothing is wrong, if there is no standard, then the powerful can do whatever they please, and it is just bad luck for everyone else. The concept of: “there is no sin” would be very bad news for the human race.

So, we cannot set aside God’s standard. It is absolutely wrong to say: “You don’t have to be holy anymore,” or “the law isn’t valid anymore.” Jesus repudiates that idea in the verses. Jesus did not come to make it OK to sin. He came to make us holy from the inside out. He came to defeat sin.

Jesus didn’t come to change the law. He came to change us. And that is terrific news! The standard remains. It is just that now, if we will trust him to do it, Jesus meets that standard on our behalf.

That is another way in Jesus came to fulfill the law. The law is good and right. But before Jesus, it was incomplete. It gave us the standard, but no way to meet the standard. Jesus completes it, because through him, the standards of law can be satisfied for us.

This is also the key to understanding what Jesus means when he says “unless your righteousness surpasses that of the scribes and Pharisees, you will never enter the kingdom of heaven.” The scribes and Pharisees had turned God’s Holy standard into a set of rules. For instance, where the Old Testament said “remember the Sabbath and keep it Holy” they had created a set of rules to define what that meant. The defined righteousness as “following the external rules of our religion.” You could hate God, but if you followed the rules, the Jewish religion would still say you were right with him. But Jesus knew two things:

· The man-made rules defined by the Jewish religion were not the same thing as God’s holy standard, defined by the Old Testament.

· The focus of the scribes and Pharisees was all external. The evil and depravity of their hearts was left unaffected by the fact that they outwardly followed rules.

So when Jesus tells us his followers must be even more righteous, he is telling us that we need him to fulfill the law on our behalf, and to make us truly holy – especially within our hearts. The way to be even more righteous than the Pharisees and scribes is to trust Jesus to make us holy from the inside out, and keep saying “yes” to him as he works that holiness into our everyday lives.

There is no point in pretending that we are capable of doing what the law requires. But to set aside the law is to invite chaos, brutality and injustice. The answer, is to trust Jesus to fulfill the law. We still seek to apply in ways that are relevant to our daily lives. We still try to follow it, because Jesus, living inside us, wants to follow it. But, in Jesus, we are free from the condemnation that comes when we fail.

 

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