Why Do You Try to Save Yourself by Works: Yes You Christians

You know, something has been striking me recently as sort of surprising, and really disturbing. There are so many people who claimed they are saved by grace, but then they go on living, as if they were saved by works. We see this same problem in Galatians, and for some reason we think we are far from it (Gal. 3:1-5, 11).

So here’s a practical example. If you sin a ton during one day, you lie, treat someone poorly, go home and look at porn, hide that from everyone, don’t pray or read your Bible for a few days, etc., then you probably feel like you are as far from God as possible, you and God aren’t doing too well  (because of your works). However, if you tithe, love your neighbor, read and pray for 2 hours a day, walk someone’s dog to be missional, fast (whoa) etc., then all of a sudden you a being a great Christian, and you and God are doing well (based on your works). Now, is this true? You may be tempted to say yes, and of course, I will say, if you are walking in the Spirit you are a lot more likely to do the latter things mentioned than the former. But really? You think that your relationship with God is based on the things that you do? Read Galatians 3, and you will see this is a foolish thought.

Listen, you were saved by grace, through faith, and guess what, right now, you are being kept by God by grace through faith, not of your own works. Your works are generally going to pull you away from God. Matt Chandler says that the way you can tell an immature believer from a mature one, is that when the immature one sins, he runs away from God, and thinks he is further, or worse than before, but when a mature one sins, he runs to God, who he knows is the author and perfector of his faith, it is not based off of his own works or merit.

This couldn’t be more true. Let’s take Adam, he foolishly sinned, and what was the first thing that he did? He ran away from God, went and tried to cover the mess up himself, and hid (Gen 3:7-8). Now, this shows that he didn’t understand who God really was. He thought that God was going to smash him, instead look at God’s response. He immediately calls Adam back to Himself (Gen 3:9), because He knows that Adam is safest by Him, and that He can love and protect completely. Then He made a better covering for Adam (Gen 3:21), showing His forgiveness. Notice what this covering was, animal skin, how did He get this? Through sacrifice? Atoning for Adam’s sin? Then He blocked the garden and didn’t allow Adam in (Gen. 3:22-24). Now you might say, how is that good? Because God knew if he ate from the tree of life, he would live forever in his sin, and God didn’t want that, he wanted him to be able to die, and be risen again as a new man through the cleansing of Christ for his sins, which is why he predicted Christ’s coming right away (Gen 3:15). Later, when we are perfect, we get to eat from the tree of life again, and live forever in perfection (Rev. 2:7). God was the earth’s first missionary, coming into this earth, and drawing men to Himself for forgiveness and repentance.

Now, did God discipline this sin? Yes, of course as He will always, but even this is a sign of deep love and affection (Heb. 12:7-11). But to punish us, to shun us, to push us away from Him? Foolishness, and a direct trick from Satan this is! Listen, God wants a RELATIONSHIP with us!!! This means we run to Him for everything. Blessings, we worship Him (1Pet. 1:3-5); mistakes, we cling to the Cross (Eph. 2:1-9); good things we do, we honor Him who gave us the ability (Eph. 2:10, 1 Co. 12:4-7); shortcomings, we plead with His help through prayer (Eph 3:20)… run to your Savior and Deliverer who is able to deliver you from all sins! Stop running away from the throne room of grace, but run towards it (Heb 4:16).

Stop thinking that you are saved, or rather should I say sanctified, by the good works that you do, know that it is Christ who redeems you (nothing you did), sanctifies you (nothing you can do), and will eventually glorify you and present you as a pure, and perfect vessel (nothing you will even do) (Eph. 5:27). THERE IS NOTHING THAT YOU CAN DO THAT WILL MAKE GOD LOVE YOU ANY MORE, OR ANY LESS, tell yourself that! If you have accepted Christ as the substitute for you on that Cross, and have believed in Him for the forgiveness of your sins, you are clean, and that is the end of it. Now we just try to love God and know Him more (Jn. 17:3), and make Him known to others (Matt. 28:19-20).Take freedom in knowing that we can run to Christ every second of our lives, and He is faithful and just to cleanse us from our unrighteousness (1 John 1:9). We cannot save ourselves with our good works, we never have been able too, and we never will be able too, remember that. You are beautiful to God, stop running away when you sin, run towards Him, and let Him love on you with His perfect, unfailing love.

Are You a Tool?

Are You a Tool?

So, I was super convicted of something the other day and figured I would share it since conviction is good! It sanctifies youJ 2 Timothy 2:20-21 says, “Now in a great house there are not only vessels of gold and silver, but also of wood and clay, some for honorable use, some for dishonorable. Therefore, if anyone cleanses himself from what is dishonorable, he will be a vessel for honorable use, set apart as holy, useful to the master of the house, ready for every good work.” Reread that passage, Scripture often does a great job of speaking for itself and I don’t want to do that for it!

I know that often one of the desires of people who are chasing after God is to be used by God. I often pray, as you probably do too, “Lord use me.” We say things like, “I want to serve you,” “Use me in ministry,” “Show me what you want me to do,” “I desire to advance Your Kingdom,” and on and on. This, no question about it, is a good desire. Whenever we desire to serve the Kingdom it is a good thing, since we are being obedient to what the Lord has called us to do. However, look at what this verse is saying again, “Therefore, if anyone cleanses himself from what is dishonorable, he will be a vessel for honorable use, set apart as holy, useful to the master of the house, ready for every good work.”

So, my question is, are you a tool? Hopefully that answer is yes. Hopefully you are a tool that the Lord is able to use in every situation. Hopefully you are a vessel that God uses for every good work. But, how do we attain that status? By cleansing ourselves from what is dishonorable. Also known as killing sin in our lives. So often we desire to be used by God but sin is just dripping from every nook of our lives. If we desire to be used by God, in every situation and in every way, we have to demolish sin that so easily entangles us, and slows us down from running this race. Sin is our biggest enemy, and sin dwells in your flesh. So, you have to make vicious war against your sin and kill it, as aggressively as possible, for several reasons, and to be effective in the Kingdom of God is one of them.

I am not sure what the problem is, but I have been convicted lately that we are so nonchalant with our sin. We know we shouldn’t sin, and that it is bad, but hey, “Nobody will ever be perfect right?” That’s a passive, pathetic lie! Jesus says to be holy like he is holy, and Peter repeats it. Paul in Romans argues completely against that logic, it is vain and silly to think like that. Yall, kill sin, kill it. It ruins everything. It ruins our relationship with God, destroys our relationship with others, and makes us ineffective the more we allow it to dwell in our lives. KILL SIN, do not sit there and let it reign in us, only to murder us in the end. Every time somebody is taken out of ministry, what is the reason? Sin. DO you want to be used by God? Then kill sin, make war against it.

I know that I often feel most intimate with God when I am getting to serve in ministry and be used by Him. When we sin we know we are breaking fellowship with the Spirit, and grieving Him. More than that though, we are disqualifying ourselves for ministry on many different levels. I am not saying if you sin you cannot be used by God, by no means. I sin daily, and I hope the Lord uses me and I think He does. However, I am saying, the more you kill that sin in your life, the more likely you will be a vessel that the Lord can use in any situation.

Now, lest we think we have the power to do this on our own, let me remind, we are too weak to do this by ourselves! Everything in us screams our desperate need for a Savior, and that includes this area. We are not strong enough to kill the sin in our lives. We know this because we have all been in the situation where we know what we should do, but do the exact opposite anyway! We are sinners, born attracted to death, and we need to deeply rely on and depend on the Holy Spirit to lead us if we are to gain victory here. At the same time though we have to be proactive in walking in the Spirit and putting to death the deeds of the body. It is a hard balance, and a whole other topic, but we must kill sin by the Spirit, through our obedience and discipline. Nonetheless, freaking kill sin.

So, how proactive have you been about walking by the Spirit, and slaughtering the sin that is in your life? Do you desire to be used by God? If so, one of the first qualifications is to murder the sin in your life. Let me know your thoughts, failures, and victories.

Legalist, Are You Sure You're Not One?

Legalist, Are You Sure You’re Not One?

So I was reading Romans the other day and came across a passage that sparked a lot of thought in my mind some years ago, and sort of re-sparked those thoughts today. Romans 7:5 says, “For while we were living in the flesh, our sinful passions, aroused by the law, were at work in our members to bear fruit for death.”  Read this verse a few times… what pops into your mind? In mine it’s a deep idea that our sinful passions are aroused by the Law. Now, this may not seem huge, but think about it, even in a simple sense, when your mom makes cookies, they smell good, look good, and you want to eat them, and maybe you do have one or two. However, when she says “Don’t you dare think about eating those cookies!” Now what happens? You deeply, extremely, really, really want them! You may even try to sneak one in your mouth without getting caught, and you may even feel a deeper pleasure from doing that. What is that called? Well, that is your sinful flesh, which is being “aroused by the law” that your mom created.

Now, this is extremely important for two reasons and I will briefly tackle both - the first is beautiful for us. Paul goes on in Romans 7 and talks more about the law, and his flesh. Since the law seems to produce in us a desire to sin, the thought could be, “Well then, is the law bad, or even sin?” Paul smashes that and says by no means, it obviously isn’t. The law however does what? It points out our sins, shows us how wicked we are, and the fact that we can’t keep the law to save our lives, we just desire to break it. That means the law is a beautiful thing; do you know why? Because it shows us our deep need for a Savior! The law produces in us a desire to break it, and therefore shows we need Jesus. The Law, specifically the Old Testament Law, points directly to our need for Jesus. Just like everything else in the OT (and I believe almost everything in the world), it points to the fact that we can’t do this alone, and then points directly to Jesus as the answer. We need someone to help our pathetic hearts. Without God, we just fall shorter and shorter. So the Law in and of itself is not bad, it just shows that we need Jesus.

That brings me to my second important reason to understand this verse (and section of Scripture, being Romans 7:4-12). If the Law, or laws in general, just produces in us a desire to sin, or as Paul puts it, our flesh is aroused by the Law, or literally it is turned on by the Law (let your mind think about that for a second!), then why in the world do we think we can defeat sin by putting silly laws in our lives? That makes zero percent sense! So we are struggling with, say, sexual sin, and then the way we try to defeat that is to create man made laws to try to tackle this sin and kill it. According to Paul here our flesh will just leap at the opportunity to break another law, and we will just make it even harder on ourselves to gain victory in that area! Do you follow what I am saying? In our desire to be righteous, we create our own laws, and really just tempt our heart and flesh more!

Now, I am not saying that we should just lay down and do nothing. Jesus is serious when he calls for a sanctified Christian life, but to create our own form of righteousness is silly, and honestly detrimental to our progress. You know what we need to do to kill our flesh? My first point in this blog - run hard to Jesus as the Savior, not only of our souls but in every area of our lives. Obviously he calls us to fight (and a bloody fight too - gouging out our eyes and cutting off our hands!), and fight we should. But we should not create laws in our lives to overcome our weak sinful areas, instead we should lean heavily into Jesus’ grace, and try our hardest to follow the path and plans He has set out for us, and abide in His mercy to overcome our short-comings, while fighting for His glory and pleasure. I know that there is a thin-line between the two (creating our own laws and correctly fighting our flesh), but it is something that we must learn how to do. Let me give you a personal example, and then I would love some comments on this one!

So for a while I really struggled with sexual temptation, and self-pleasure specifically. I knew that this was wrong, and honestly when I found out it was wrong, it only got harder and harder to kill. I would try everything, but always feel back into the same old sins over and over and over, feeling more guilt and numbness each time. Finally one day my best friend and I were holding each other accountable, and I realized this idea of the law and the flesh. I thought back through my times trying to kill this disease and realized that I literally would try to flush this out with simply another sin, legalism. I would create rules for myself (don’t lay in bed for more than 5 minutes after you wake up), and then when I would keep these rules, I would feel proud, pat myself on the back and say I was being a good Christian. When I feel, well, you know the feeling. Until finally I began to realize that I was creating my own rules of religion, do’s and don’ts that I couldn’t keep, killing my spirit! So when Nick and I held each other accountable, things began to change. I recognized that I had victory not through my efforts, but because of what Christ did on that Cross. Not because I was strong enough (I suck), or determined enough (my spirit is willing, but my flesh, weak), or willed enough, but because Jesus has given me victory already, I just must abide in Him. This does mean winning the little victories, like bouncing my eyes and keeping myself out of tough situations, but this comes through a deep love for Christ and Him alone, not a deep love for the rules that I have set-up to try to attain to Him.

This is a very, very, very thin line, please don’t mistake, I am not saying lay down, but I am saying we can’t be legalistic in our efforts to kill sin, or have daily quiet times, or whatever, it has to come from our love and knowledge of what Christ did and the fact that He has grace, mercy, and love for us. Anything else produces legalism, which leads to our flesh just gaining desire to sin because of the laws we set-up, and then guilt. So fight hard, dang hard, in your efforts to murder your flesh, but lean heavily, dang heavily, into Jesus during that process. Thoughts are very welcomed as I need to learn to put this into words much better than I did here in this blog! So write some stuffJ

Can we do this without God?

So, I was praying today and I started to feel extremely convicted about “doing things” by my own power and strength. So, as probably everyone reading this knows, I started a new job as a small groups coordinator (and possibly Pastor, we will find out next Monday) and I thought, you know, I just need to sit down for about an hour, and just pray that the Lord blesses this ministry, and the work He does through me.

Well, it’s been 3 days now since I started, and I haven’t done that. So I was praying, and having a quiet time, and I just got extremely convicted, so here are my thoughts:

Why is it that we try to do things without asking God for His direction, and to completely bless them? Like, check it, do I really think I can lead His Kingdom? Seriously, how ludicrous a thought! But, that is what I am doing right now (and what you probably do too!) by not begging Him to use me and to bless this. I am trying to lead without even knowing where He is going!!!

So often we begin to do some work, and then ask God to bless it, as if that is honoring to Him. Let me see, the last time I checked the Bible, we need to be following Him, not the other way around! When the Israelites were in the desert, what did God do to lead them? “And the LORD went before them by day in a pillar of cloud to lead them along the way, and by night in a pillar of fire to give them light, that they might travel by day and by night. The pillar of cloud by day and the pillar of fire by night did not depart from before the people.” (Ex. 13:21-22).

First off, that’s an amazing miracle there for the Israelites, and extreme grace, but my point is, that the Lord went before them, or in front of them, He didn’t follow them, they followed Him. So why is it, that we are trying to do things by ourselves and not surrender and allow God to be the one leading us?

Our works produce bloody rags (Is. 64:6), and please imagine, you offering God a bloody rag as an offering of incense before the Lord… that is just convicting! And so, why do we try to do things, without allowing God to speak to us, and bless us first? Just some thoughts, but I was seriously convicted to allow God to work instead of me. I mean, would it be so bad as to instead of “working” for an hour, pray for an hour for our ministries, knowing that the only way good work can be produced is if God is in it, because every good gift comes from Him (Jas. 1:16-17)? Don’t get me wrong, He wants to use us, so that we can better know Him and His grace, but by no means can we do this without pleading with Him to move before us. Feel free to comment.