The Devil You Say?

WE live in an age of polls. News organizations constantly run the results of polls to judge the public’s position on every issue imaginable and politicians react to the polls. One of the more popular ones these days is the approval poll. No matter where we look we are faced with approval ratings for the Congress, the President, or candidates. The most telling thing about polls is how the data behaves over time. How does the public’s view of things compare to the views of ten years ago, twenty years ago, even a lifetime ago.

Some of the more interesting polls reflect Christian attitudes towards the core beliefs that form basic doctrine. In 2009, a poll conducted by the Barna Group revealed that most American Christians do not believe that Satan is a living creature, but rather is a symbol of evil. Only twenty-six percent of the Christians surveyed believed he is a real living being. The majority of these describe themselves as born again Christians.

This finding is consistent with similar polls run by Harris and others about the beliefs of Americans in general. Whether inside the church or outside, the percentage of people that  does not believe Satan is real remains roughly the same. A comparison of similar polls over time reveals that if anything, the percentage that sees Satan as real is decreasing. This is a very dangerous, but predictable trend.

Scripture is clear on the reality of Satan. It is equally clear about his hatred of God and God’s people. For this reason, his main target is going to be Christians. There is little reason for him to focus on non-Christians; they are already doing his will because by definition they are enemies of God. His best efforts are aimed at those of us who are born again. Peter warns us to be on guard against Satan who “prowls around like a roaring lion, seeking someone to devour.”
He then offers advice: But resist him, firm in your faith, knowing that the same experiences of suffering are being accomplished by your brethren who are in the world.1 Peter 5:8-9 (NASB)

But what should we be on guard against? What should we resist? The common thinking is that we need to resist the sinful pleasures of the world in varying degrees. If it feels good, it must be sinful is a standard defense. It is also terribly inefficient because like the Maginot Line of pre-World War II in France it points in only one direction and it is rigidly placed. In fact, our resistance to worldly pleasure is one of the tools Satan can use against us.

Satan is a worthy and cunning advisory whose main means of destroying Christians are rooted not in the world, but in our own doctrines and Scriptures. Satan knows Scripture better than most Christians will ever know it and he knows how to bend context and meaning to undo us at every turn. While we focus on the concept of the devil on one shoulder and an angel on the other constantly urging us to sin or not to sin, we miss the most obvious reality. There is no angel on the other shoulder. He counsels us to avoid the blatant sin by committing a less obvious one, disguising it as virtue.

We portray Satan with a pitchfork prodding us commit obvious sins when in fact, he works through reason and persuasion to seduce us into sins we do not see. Remember Christ in the desert was not tempted to do things against Scripture, but to make His own fulfillment of Scripture by unscriptural means. This is why we need to be on guard. Satan will use our own spirituality and reasonable argument against us at every turn.

There are three facets to Satan’s attack: deception, delusion, and distraction. Only the first is an attack from the outside. The other two are attacks from within. All three are hard to defend against but with a bit of understanding of Satan himself and with God on our side through prayer, we will see that resistance is not futile.

See the Barna Survey at http://www.barna.org/barna-update/article/12-faithspirituality/260-most-american-christians-do-not-believe-that-satan-or-the-holy-spirit-exis

Looking Back

 Before moving ahead, we should maybe look back at the thrust of the past three months of posts. A good pastor friend of mine asked me if I was always on the attack since he could identify sacred cows being slaughtered. I am not on the attack at all. I simply want us as Christians to be duly mindful of our place in this world and to not be drawn in by worldly thinking. The world is our present home, but not our homeland, so it does us little good to think of ourselves as anything other than aliens in temporary residence.

The world itself, no matter how old anyone claims it is, is temporary and destined for destruction. Everything in it will be consumed and destroyed – kingdoms, dominions, political positions, philosophies, pleasures and pains – all will be destroyed. And all who do not belong to God through His Son Jesus Christ will be destroyed with it. The world and all who are part of it will be gone, so there is no advantage in staking any claim on the world or its wisdom or falling prey to its seductions by believing we can achieve Heavenly ends by worldly means.

We have no idea when the end will come. Scripture is clear on this. Therefore we have to be constantly on guard and eager to spur each other to love and good works. We cannot afford to dissociate ourselves from other believers but need to be working to build them up. The Church is there for our care, our nurture and our growth in Christ. This doesn’t mean we should pull ourselves totally away from the world, but we need to not be influenced by it or the world’s cause of the moment.

God wants us to build homes, establish families and prosper, but those things are not and should not be our focus. He wants us to abide by laws, pray for and support our governments, pay our taxes and do nothing that can be fairly used to call us troublemakers. No matter how unfair, unjust, or inhumane we think a government is, God has still ordained its existence. Governments are of the world; we are not. It is just that simple. In this as in everything, we need to be sure that we are above reproach.

The thrust of our lives should never be to make the world comfortable for Christians. We do want to make the people in the world comfortable enough with us that we can spread the gospel of grace through Christ Jesus. Our duty is not only to care for and comfort each other, but also to pull others into our ranks.

There are two things we want to be careful to avoid. We do not want the Church to look like the world in any way. If that happens, there is no incentive for anyone to leave the world. We also do not want the Church, and with it Christ, to be held in contempt because we are on the attack. Defensive sinners are unrepentant sinners who reject what they see as a gospel of hate.

We were all sinners and dead in our sins. That is a fact. It doesn’t matter whether we were raised in churches or in drug houses or anywhere in between. Before we personally accepted the grace of God through Christ, repented our sins, and actively embraced salvation through baptism, we were dead – alive to sin, but dead to God. We were His enemies and deserving all judgment and condemnation. We were ripped from the world through grace and given the hope of salvation in Christ and with it a hope of eternal life. We accomplished this through acceptance through faith of Jesus and His saving grace, not through any works of our own or by our own strength. We must never, ever, forget that.

For this reason we are not sent to judge or condemn the world at this time, but to stand out as lights of God’s grace. In an evil world we are to be beacons of goodness, and kindness, of gentleness and humility. We will be tried. We will be tested. We may even be persecuted, beaten and even killed. And through it all, we will not fight back nor take up arms in revenge because those are the ways of the world. Consider Christ Jesus who suffered death on the cross. Though he was unjustly accused, inhumanely beaten, spat upon and cursed, He did nothing in protest. Had He wanted, he could have called legions of angels to His defense. Instead, for our sake, He went meekly, as Scripture says, like a lamb to slaughter. That should be our model. Can we do anything less and still say we are of Christ?

So, Am I Tares or Wheat?

LONG before I came upon the question of whether anyone would know if I were a Christian if I never opened my mouth, I stumbled on a perplexing problem related to one of Jesus’s better known parables: A farmer plants a field of wheat. During the night his enemy sneaks into the field and sows tare seeds along with the wheat. When the crop begins to grow the farm hands notice the tares growing up amongst the wheat and go to the farmer. “Should we root them out?” they ask. “No,” replies the farmer. “If you do that you will root up the wheat, too. Just let them grow until harvest and then we will harvest everything. Then we can thresh the wheat and burn the tares.” And that was how the farm hands handled it.

The explanation of the parable is pretty straightforward. The field is the world. The seed is the seed of the Gospel. The mature wheat that grows from it is the body of Christians – the Church. The weed seeds are false doctrine or worldly thinking and the tares that grow from it are church members who really aren’t Christians but who are mingled in with the wheat. Some commentators point out that except for not producing wheat, the tares pretty much look like the real thing – though I am sure there were subtle differences even when the plants were young because the farm hands caught the difference.

There are two different ways to process the parable. Both depend on understanding that every church has people who look like Christians but really aren’t. But one way looks outward, and the other looks inward.

The outward way looks at the people in a church to determine who the tares in the congregation are. In truth, this is a pretty useless exercise because even if we spot them, we cannot just throw them out. That would cause a lot of real Christians to suffer as well and would split the church. Besides, the tares are identifying other tares and making judgments. Implementing a tare identification program would create division, as well. And in the end, all that happens is the church gets distracted from its real work.

The inward way to process the parable is for Christians to begin asking themselves, “Am I a tare or wheat?” That causes us to second guess ourselves at every turn and because we are so focused on the question, we are drawn off track. For a long time, I was in the questioning mode. It really bothered me.

The question itself isn’t a bad question to ask if you know how to find the answer and realize that it isn’t up to you to make that determination any more than it is up to you to judge others. The best anyone can do is to do his best. To turn a common phrase from the Viet Nam era, “Bless ‘em all and let God sort it out.” But every once in a while, the question tickles the back of my mind.

When that happens I remember something I heard John MacArthur say in a radio message on the subject. In essence, what he said was this: If you are asking the question, you are wheat. Tares wouldn’t worry about it. Only a Christian would be bothered by the possibility. If you have to ask, you already have the answer.

So, when the question crosses my mind from time to time, I smile because I am reassured. If it bothers me, I am a Christian. Then I thank God for His mercy, and go about doing His work. 

Who Would Know?

Witness every day; when necessary, use words.  Saint Francis of Assisi

IN a departure from the usual, I want to take a minute or two to discuss a couple of questions that have been running through my mind in the last few weeks. The first one is a question that I don’t think many of us ask ourselves often enough: If I never said a thing, would anyone know that I am a Christian?

This is a real spiritual inventory question because it really cuts to the heart of what and who we are. It forces us to go beyond the obvious things that we think of as witness and to look at our lives up close and personal. It makes us set aside the hearsay evidences of faith (including our own) and examine the hard evidence. What is the hard evidence that testifies to our faith in Christ?

The circumstantial evidence is made up of some of the things we think are good witness but which are mostly superficial. Church attendance, giving, Bible reading, and public prayer, are outward signs we count on. So are bumper stickers, fish symbols and crosses. But these are just different ways in which we tell the world we are Christian rather than evidence of who we really are.

We also have to go beyond the things we proclaim – family values, for example – to something far more elemental that is evident even when we say nothing. The hard evidence is the way we live our lives on a day-by-day basis. It the silent witness that screams the inner core of our lives.

So what is the really hard evidence of our faith? How do I show that I am Christian if  I never open my mouth or proclaim my faith? Here is the evidence in the form of ten questions that deal with not just how I want other Christians to see me, but with how I want the world to see me, as well:

1.    Am I marked by compassion for those who have made poor choices in life?

2.    Am I known for forgiveness when I am sinned against?

3.     Am I seen as encouraging those who are discouraged?

4.     Do I use my faults as a brake against judging others harshly?

5.     Do I try to force others into moral behavior, or do I work to help them develop their own moral compass?

6.     Do I freely accept other Christians based on the common bond we have in Christ?

7.     Do people in the world feel safe in coming to me for advice or comfort when they are troubled?

8.     Do people see me as fair and honest and trustworthy?

9.     Am I marked by love, first for God, and then for others?

10.  Above all, do people actually see Christ living in me?

Every one of us should be able to compile his own list, and everyone’s list will be slightly different. But there is one thing that will be common to all: None of us can achieve a solid ten on the list by his own power. Even trying to accomplish that on my own will lead to hypocrisy. The result will be self-righteousness, pride and a total lack of awareness that I am off the mark.

Though answering "yes" to every question on the list is unachievable by exercising my own will, any one of us can achieve it by the power of Christ’s Spirit within us. The people I have known who come closest to “yes” to all ten questions are the ones who are mostly unaware of just how many of these qualities they show. They have so immersed themselves in Christ these things are part of their nature. The mere existence of the list of questions is a measure of how far I have yet to go. When I have arrived, the list won’t matter.

The next question: Am I Wheat or Tares?

The Unpayable Debt

Or do you not know that your body is a temple of the Holy Spirit who is in you, whom you have from God, and that you are not your own? For you have been bought with a price: therefore glorify God in your body. (1 Cor. 6: 19-20, NASB)

For he who was called in the Lord while a slave, is the Lord’s freedman; likewise he who was called while free, is Christ’s slave. You were bought with a price; do not become slaves of men. Brethren, each one is to remain with God in that condition in which he was called. (1 Cor. 7: 22-24, NASB)

THESE days debt is on everyone’s mind – both the governments and our own personal debts. We have borrowed ourselves beyond are capacity to pay and a generalized resentment has overtaken us because we feel like we are slaves to our creditors. The banks own us. If someone were to come along and offer to pay off all our debts, we might jump at the chance, but we would still recognize that, even with no strings attached, we would always be in our rescuer’s debt. Those who have managed to escape the slavery of debt on their own are still haunted by its memories.

On the spiritual level, every one of us has a debt we cannot pay. It is called sin and the payment is death. But worse, like the accumulating interest on a credit card, there is a further payment beyond the payment of death itself. In our lives, we are saddled by the consequences of our sinful actions. Worse, Death itself is followed by a time of endless suffering, what Scripture describes as “weeping, and wailing, and gnashing of teeth.” Then comes the second death.

On our own, there is no amount of good we can do that will offset the sin debt because at heart, “no one who does good, not even one.” (Ps. 53: 3, NASB) Even our hearts cannot be trusted to consider good because “The heart is more deceitful than all else and is desperately sick; Who can understand it?” (Jer. 17: 9, NASB) If we think we can live sinless lives, we only kid ourselves. Our debt accumulates with every passing day.

But our situation isn’t hopeless. There is One who has already paid that debt for us; One who willingly gave up His own life for our salvation. And because He is the only One who could do it, He is the only salvation we have. All we have to do is accept Christ and his sacrifice and the debt of sin is paid – forever.

By accepting that sacrifice we belong to Him just as surely as we would be indebted to anyone who came along and paid our financial debts. Everything comes with a price. We still have to pay some of the interest – there are consequences on earth for things we have done, but Death no longer has a hold on us; the debt of Death itself is paid in full.

But wait! There is more! Not only has Christ paid our debt, He has given us clothing we could never have afforded on our own. He clothes us in His own righteousness so that we can stand before God as free people, no longer slaves to sin. God has adopted us as His own children because of this. We owe everything to Christ.

Unfortunately, there are those who keep trying to pay off the debt through righteous works long after Christ paid it. While Christ expects us to change our lives to model His own, He also expects us to change from within through a changed nature. We cannot do anything of our own will that will compensate for what we have done nor add any value to what Christ has done for us. What we have to do is let Him work within us to “clean up our act” so we no longer have the spending habits that got us into trouble to begin with.

Too often we forget this. We look with contempt rather than compassion on those who are still drowning in sin’s debt when we need to show compassion. Christ died for all though all might not choose to accept his sacrifice for themselves. But unless we show the world the power of Christ’s love, they will never know the choice exists. The world cannot afford for us to forget how and why we became Christians in the first place.