Distracted Christianity
One of my favorite verses is Romans 1:16 - "For I am not ashamed of the gospel for it is the power of God for salvation to everyone who believes,..." The Apostle Paul wrote this just after the introduction to his letter to the Roman believers in which he gave them a brief summary of the gospel saying, "Paul, a servant of Christ Jesus, called to be an apostle, set apart for the gospel of God, which he promised beforehand through his prophets in the holy Scriptures, concerning his Son, who was descended from David according to the flesh and was declared to be the Son of God in power according to the Spirit of holiness by his resurrection from the dead, Jesus Christ our Lord, through whom we have received grace and apostleship to bring about the obedience of faith for the sake of his name among all the nations, including you who are called to belong to Jesus Christ," (Romans 1:1-6 ESV).
For Paul the gospel was not merely something that was to be shared with a non believer so that they could then move on to more important things. We see this as Paul states, reminds, illumines, and alludes to the gospel in all of his letters. Even here in Romans 1:16 Paul is making a very large statement about the gospel that we should not miss. Paul says that the gospel is the power of God for salvation, but salvation has a past, present and future to it.
Once a person has heard the gospel and has responded in faith they are at that moment justified. Justification is the legal pronouncement of God that the believer is no longer seen as guilty and in sin, they are at that moment clothed in Christ's righteousness. The old sayings go, "Justified, just as if I had never sinned, and just as if I had always obeyed." For a believer justification is the 'past tense' aspect of salvation because it happened at the moment they came to faith in Christ.
Glorification is the 'future tense' aspect of salvation when we will be transformed and will be given our eternal resurrection bodies. Just like justification, glorification is made possible because of Christ's perfect work on the cross and His resurrection from the dead. Colossians 1:15 says that Jesus was the first born of all creation, and that is especially true because He is the first to receive a permanent resurrection body. Our glorification and future inheritance are firmly established because of the historic work of Christ, and it is the gospel message which reminds us of this sure hope. "We have this as a sure and steadfast anchor of the soul, a hope that enters into the inner place behind the curtain, where Jesus has gone as a forerunner on our behalf, having become a high priest forever after the order of Melchizedek.
(Hebrews 6:19-20 ESV)
This brings us to the 'present tense' aspect of salvation which is called sanctification. Sanctification is a lifelong process of being made into the image of Christ, being 'set apart' or made holy. This is the aspect of salvation that is an ongoing process and so, as it should, it gets much attention. It is not be hard to see why most sermons, Bible studies or 'accountability' groups spend the vast majority of their time focusing on this aspect of salvation. Every Christian should desire to be more like Christ!
The question is, what makes sanctification happen?
There are many sayings and quips about how sanctification is 90% the Holy Spirit and 10% us learning to trust and obey. While some of these may be helpful I want us to look at this from a different perspective. First we must briefly look at the two most common substitutes to genuine sanctification. Legalism and liberalism.
One of the most repeated themes in the New Testament epistles, especially Paul's, is that of warnings to avoid the sins of legalism and liberalism. Legalism is adding to the gospel, it is saying that we are saved by 'grace AND' anything. Paul could not be more forceful than he is in his letter to the Galatians even saying 'anathema' (or literally, "I damn to hell.") to anyone that changed or added to the gospel. Legalism is a huge threat to the church because it looks at Christ's sacrifice and says, "Not good enough."
On the other hand we have liberalism or licentiousness which is seen as living sinful, worldly lives void of any 'rules' except the ones that the person makes for themselves. The thing about liberalism is that it is really just another form of legalism, instead of adding more rules to salvation by grace alone, this person just decides that they will choose for themselves their path to salvation by scrapping all the 'traditional' rules and creating their own set. However they soon find out that even their own rules are impossible to keep, and once again it makes a mockery out of Jesus claiming to be the only 'way, truth and life.'
Clearly sanctification cannot come by either adding to the gospel or changing the gospel in for something of our own making, so what causes or brings about our sanctification? I believe Paul hints at this for us in Romans 1:16. The gospel is the power of God for salvation - past, present and future.
Now, for anyone that has been genuinely saved they instinctively desire to be involved in many Christian activities because they are a new creation in Christ. They should desire to be with Christ's body (the church) because they have been brought into God's family by believing in the gospel. But, we must be careful that the list of Christian do's doesn't replace the gospel. Even our present sanctification is deeply rooted and grounded in being reminded and washed in these gospel truths again and again. There is no sanctification apart from a continual renewal of seeing ourselves as now being in Christ, which is the heart of the gospel message.
In one sense all sin is a failure to worship God as we should. Just a couple verses later in Romans 1:25 we read that they, "worshiped and served the creature rather than the Creator..." The problem is that we are surrounded with the created, and as the hymn says we are 'prone to wander'. This wandering especially includes making good things and activities into ultimate things. Even Bible studies can turn into idols that lead us away from God if we treat them as though they are evidence of sanctification.
One of the most grieving things that I have seen in even the most Bible based church movements is an abdication of the gospel. There is an attitude that the gospel gets us in, but then our growth is based upon doing more Bible studies, being more involved in church, growing in prayer (often times by attending prayer meetings), and good fellowship with brothers and sisters in Christ that help to keep us accountable. While these are all good things, if these things do not cause us to re-focus our lives upon the firm foundation of Christ's work for us as seen in the gospel, then we are running the risk of adding to or taking away from the gospel. If our Christian activities are not causing us to look again and remember that our salvation - past, present and future - is solely based upon the finished work of Christ we are eventually going to misplace our worship.
It has been said that far too often the devil gets blamed for every seemingly bad thing that happens, but since the devil is not an omnipresent being as God is, it just doesn't seem reasonable to blame him for tricking believers every time they are tempted. I think that it is far more likely that the devil is careful to work in ways that we are far less likely to notice. If we always readily recognized his lies then he wouldn't be very good at being a deceiver of the brethren now would he?
What if his main area of 'deceiving the brethren' has been far more subtle? Clearly he is no fool and realizes that telling an obvious lie is a futile activity. Trying to convince millions of Christians that there is no God is truly a waste of his time. But what if instead he focused all of his efforts on busying Christians with so much church activity and Bible studies and retreats and accountability groups etc. that they never even noticed when those activities were completely void of the gospel of Jesus Christ which is the power of God?
This is truly an ingenious tactic, keeping us sidelined and even satisfied with our 'Christianity' when all the while we have been distracted from the one thing that Scripture clearly tells us is the source of God's power for our lives. What if he was smart enough to recognize that he couldn't stop Christians from being Christians, but he could distract them from being fruitful?
I fear that the vast majority of churches in America have fallen victim to this scheme. While we all love the Lord and we all desire to be made more into His image, we have slowly settled for Christian activity and busyness over true sanctification which can only come as we are daily reminded of the gospel. The gospel is the power of God for our salvation AND our sanctification, it can be no other way, but have we been so busy that we have forgotten this truth? Has 'Christianity' (or as my good friend Casey Pater says, "Church-ianity") been distracting us from the gospel?
Graeme Goldsworthy said that the question shouldn't be whether or not a message can be a Christian message without talking about what Jesus has done. The question should be, "Why would we ever want to try to teach a Christian message without talking about what Jesus has done and accomplished for us?!?" Have we been distracted with generic Bible studies that have given us lots of good facts and information, but have been completely void of the true message of the gospel of Jesus Christ?
We can never think on, talk about, listen to or share the gospel enough let alone too much. May we see how dangerous it is to be a distracted Christian.
For Paul the gospel was not merely something that was to be shared with a non believer so that they could then move on to more important things. We see this as Paul states, reminds, illumines, and alludes to the gospel in all of his letters. Even here in Romans 1:16 Paul is making a very large statement about the gospel that we should not miss. Paul says that the gospel is the power of God for salvation, but salvation has a past, present and future to it.
Once a person has heard the gospel and has responded in faith they are at that moment justified. Justification is the legal pronouncement of God that the believer is no longer seen as guilty and in sin, they are at that moment clothed in Christ's righteousness. The old sayings go, "Justified, just as if I had never sinned, and just as if I had always obeyed." For a believer justification is the 'past tense' aspect of salvation because it happened at the moment they came to faith in Christ.
Glorification is the 'future tense' aspect of salvation when we will be transformed and will be given our eternal resurrection bodies. Just like justification, glorification is made possible because of Christ's perfect work on the cross and His resurrection from the dead. Colossians 1:15 says that Jesus was the first born of all creation, and that is especially true because He is the first to receive a permanent resurrection body. Our glorification and future inheritance are firmly established because of the historic work of Christ, and it is the gospel message which reminds us of this sure hope. "We have this as a sure and steadfast anchor of the soul, a hope that enters into the inner place behind the curtain, where Jesus has gone as a forerunner on our behalf, having become a high priest forever after the order of Melchizedek.
(Hebrews 6:19-20 ESV)
This brings us to the 'present tense' aspect of salvation which is called sanctification. Sanctification is a lifelong process of being made into the image of Christ, being 'set apart' or made holy. This is the aspect of salvation that is an ongoing process and so, as it should, it gets much attention. It is not be hard to see why most sermons, Bible studies or 'accountability' groups spend the vast majority of their time focusing on this aspect of salvation. Every Christian should desire to be more like Christ!
The question is, what makes sanctification happen?
There are many sayings and quips about how sanctification is 90% the Holy Spirit and 10% us learning to trust and obey. While some of these may be helpful I want us to look at this from a different perspective. First we must briefly look at the two most common substitutes to genuine sanctification. Legalism and liberalism.
One of the most repeated themes in the New Testament epistles, especially Paul's, is that of warnings to avoid the sins of legalism and liberalism. Legalism is adding to the gospel, it is saying that we are saved by 'grace AND' anything. Paul could not be more forceful than he is in his letter to the Galatians even saying 'anathema' (or literally, "I damn to hell.") to anyone that changed or added to the gospel. Legalism is a huge threat to the church because it looks at Christ's sacrifice and says, "Not good enough."
On the other hand we have liberalism or licentiousness which is seen as living sinful, worldly lives void of any 'rules' except the ones that the person makes for themselves. The thing about liberalism is that it is really just another form of legalism, instead of adding more rules to salvation by grace alone, this person just decides that they will choose for themselves their path to salvation by scrapping all the 'traditional' rules and creating their own set. However they soon find out that even their own rules are impossible to keep, and once again it makes a mockery out of Jesus claiming to be the only 'way, truth and life.'
Clearly sanctification cannot come by either adding to the gospel or changing the gospel in for something of our own making, so what causes or brings about our sanctification? I believe Paul hints at this for us in Romans 1:16. The gospel is the power of God for salvation - past, present and future.
Now, for anyone that has been genuinely saved they instinctively desire to be involved in many Christian activities because they are a new creation in Christ. They should desire to be with Christ's body (the church) because they have been brought into God's family by believing in the gospel. But, we must be careful that the list of Christian do's doesn't replace the gospel. Even our present sanctification is deeply rooted and grounded in being reminded and washed in these gospel truths again and again. There is no sanctification apart from a continual renewal of seeing ourselves as now being in Christ, which is the heart of the gospel message.
In one sense all sin is a failure to worship God as we should. Just a couple verses later in Romans 1:25 we read that they, "worshiped and served the creature rather than the Creator..." The problem is that we are surrounded with the created, and as the hymn says we are 'prone to wander'. This wandering especially includes making good things and activities into ultimate things. Even Bible studies can turn into idols that lead us away from God if we treat them as though they are evidence of sanctification.
One of the most grieving things that I have seen in even the most Bible based church movements is an abdication of the gospel. There is an attitude that the gospel gets us in, but then our growth is based upon doing more Bible studies, being more involved in church, growing in prayer (often times by attending prayer meetings), and good fellowship with brothers and sisters in Christ that help to keep us accountable. While these are all good things, if these things do not cause us to re-focus our lives upon the firm foundation of Christ's work for us as seen in the gospel, then we are running the risk of adding to or taking away from the gospel. If our Christian activities are not causing us to look again and remember that our salvation - past, present and future - is solely based upon the finished work of Christ we are eventually going to misplace our worship.
It has been said that far too often the devil gets blamed for every seemingly bad thing that happens, but since the devil is not an omnipresent being as God is, it just doesn't seem reasonable to blame him for tricking believers every time they are tempted. I think that it is far more likely that the devil is careful to work in ways that we are far less likely to notice. If we always readily recognized his lies then he wouldn't be very good at being a deceiver of the brethren now would he?
What if his main area of 'deceiving the brethren' has been far more subtle? Clearly he is no fool and realizes that telling an obvious lie is a futile activity. Trying to convince millions of Christians that there is no God is truly a waste of his time. But what if instead he focused all of his efforts on busying Christians with so much church activity and Bible studies and retreats and accountability groups etc. that they never even noticed when those activities were completely void of the gospel of Jesus Christ which is the power of God?
This is truly an ingenious tactic, keeping us sidelined and even satisfied with our 'Christianity' when all the while we have been distracted from the one thing that Scripture clearly tells us is the source of God's power for our lives. What if he was smart enough to recognize that he couldn't stop Christians from being Christians, but he could distract them from being fruitful?
I fear that the vast majority of churches in America have fallen victim to this scheme. While we all love the Lord and we all desire to be made more into His image, we have slowly settled for Christian activity and busyness over true sanctification which can only come as we are daily reminded of the gospel. The gospel is the power of God for our salvation AND our sanctification, it can be no other way, but have we been so busy that we have forgotten this truth? Has 'Christianity' (or as my good friend Casey Pater says, "Church-ianity") been distracting us from the gospel?
Graeme Goldsworthy said that the question shouldn't be whether or not a message can be a Christian message without talking about what Jesus has done. The question should be, "Why would we ever want to try to teach a Christian message without talking about what Jesus has done and accomplished for us?!?" Have we been distracted with generic Bible studies that have given us lots of good facts and information, but have been completely void of the true message of the gospel of Jesus Christ?
We can never think on, talk about, listen to or share the gospel enough let alone too much. May we see how dangerous it is to be a distracted Christian.
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