Blind Man's Fancy

I’ve been waiting a long time to read something like the following selections from Tullian Tchividjian’s book Jesus + Nothing = Everything.  Of course, regular immersion in Scripture will lead to the same conclusions, but you never know what you’ll run across in some downtime reading.

Expressing his disdain for “accountability groups” Tchividjian writes, “All parties involved believe that the guiltier we feel, the more holy we are” (p180).  I’ve found this to be generally true among the next generation of Puritan-reading, Reformed theology junkies.  (Although, its not the Puritan’s fault, but a faulty reading of them.)  If they’re not always downcast and bothered by some sin then, in their minds, they’re not taking sin seriously.  And soon the attention is “on our sin, and not on our Savior” (ibid.).  Ironically, those who champion justification by grace alone seem the least content in being justified by grace alone!  It’s as though total depravity swallows up irresistible grace.

“When the goal becomes conquering our sin instead of soaking in the conquest of our Savior, instead of growing stronger and more mature, we actually begin to shrink spiritually” (ibid., italics his).  Of course, Tchividjian and we are against sin.  We hate it and want it overcome.  But there is too often the trend in “accountability groups” to attach spiritual progress with how much sin we’re not committing anymore.  ”Because of this, these groups breed self-righteousness, guilt, and the almost irresistible temptation to pretend” (ibid.).  That is to say, too much of this navel-gazing and we “boast” more in how bad we are than in how great Christ is.

When we (or our friends) focus mostly on our need to get better, we actually get worse.  We become neurotic and self-absorbed.  Preoccupation with our guilt (instead of with God’s grace) makes us increasingly myopic and self-interested.  Real Christian growth, according to the seventeenth century Puritan Jeremiah Burroughs, ‘comes not so much from our struggling and endeavors and resolutions, as it comes flowing to us from our union with him’” (p181).

We become so consumed with examining or testing ourselves to see if we’re in the faith, that we rarely rest in the unchanging, unrivaled, immovable work of God to justify sinners.  That inevitably leads to an undue emphasis on what we’re doing for Jesus rather than enjoying what Jesus has already done for us.  The more we can gather at the Lord’s Table, the more we are graciously reminded that God works outside-in, not inside-out.  Ingesting the elements is a confession that my body and  blood are insufficient means of God’s grace.  Christ’s body and blood alone have become mine and therefore have reconciled God to me.

The sin that gives rise to our sinful behavior is a preoccupation with ourselves.  That’s the root sin that needs to be mortified.  That’s the under-the-surface sin that gives birth  to our misdeeds.  The first sin that needs to be rooted out and attacked is not immoral behavior; it’s immoral belief–the belief that my Christian life is all about my moral and spiritual progress (ibid.).

Again (I can’t stress this enough), it’s so important to understand that Christianity is not first about our getting better, our obedience, our behavior, and our daily victory over remaining sin–as important as all these are.  It’s first about Jesus! It’s about his person and substitutionary work–his incarnation, life, death, resurrection, ascension, session, and promised return.  We’re justified–and sanctified–by grace alone through faith alone in the finished work of Christ alone (ibid.).

Is there a witness in the house?

So, instead of trying to fix one another, why don’t we ‘stir one another up to love and good deeds’ by daily reminding one another, in humble love, of the riches we already possess in Christ? (p182)

Our greatest need is to look at Christ more than we look at ourselves, because the gospel is not our work for Jesus, but Jesus’s work for us.  As Sinclair Ferguson has said, ‘The evangelical orientation is inward and subjective.  We are far better at looking inward than we are at looking outward.  Instead, we need to expend our energies admiring, exploring, expositing, and extolling Jesus Christ’ (p184).

And finally:

The bottom line is this, Christian: because of Christ’s work on your behalf, God doesn’t dwell on your sin the way you do.  So, relax, and rejoice, and you’ll actually start to get better.  The irony, of course, is that it’s only when we stop obsessing over our own need to be holy and focus instead on the beauty of Christ’s holiness that we actually become more holy!  Not to mention that we also start to become a lot easier to live with.”

Amen and amen.

“…as sin reigned in death, even so grace would reign through righteousness to eternal life through Jesus Christ our Lord” (Rom 5.21).

It’s stock language in the Christian life that we’re to “hate sin” and “kill sin.”  Sin is indeed an interloper in the Christian soul, a squatter in the Spirit-indwelled heart.  Because of Christ, sin has no rights, privileges or legal claim on the Christian.  Therefore, it must be rooted out and put to death.  We are strengthened by the Holy Spirit to make progress against particular sins and toward Christlikeness.  Though a lifelong process, the mortification of sin is a hopeful process because Jesus has removed its sting (1 Cor 15.55-57).  I’m far more empowered to kill something that I’m assured cannot kill me back!

But, as pious as hating and killing sin sounds how do we go about it?  What metric do I use to determine how much I hate sin?  Is it enough to merely say we categorically hate sin really, really bad?  Is our hatred of sin to be measured by how bad we feel after committing it?  Does killing sin mean spending our days not sinning in certain ways?  Are we to wake up each day trying not to sin as a means of mortifying it?

Jesus taught us to be violently aggressive against sin.  We’re to cut out the wandering eye and cut off the offending hand, as it were (Mt 18.8-9).  Guerrilla warfare has no rules and sin is our fiercest guerrillero; therefore, killing is rarely easy and often messy.  We’re not merely to hate the category of sin, but to kill “the deeds of the body” in the power of the Holy Spirit (Rom 8.13).  It’s one thing to hate weeds in my yard while staring at them from the kitchen window, but quite another to get dirty pulling up the particular weeds.  We’re called to hate and mortify sin by being done with sins.

That said, I might suggest one metric to measure hatred for sin and a corresponding tactic for killing it.  Sin reigns in death, grace reigns through righteousness.  The grace that saves is the grace that demonstrates its power (reign) in sin-killing righteousness.  In other words, saving grace is not only measured by how much sin we get away with while still remaining God’s children.  Grace is measured also by the amount of righteousness that replaces sin.  Grace doesn’t reign through licentiousness, but through righteousness.

How can my hatred of sin be measured?  By the amount of opposing righteousness demonstrated in my life.  For example, I show how much I hate greed or theft by my level of generosity (Eph 4.28).  I show how much I hate sarcasm, gossip and slander by how much of an encouragement I am in any conversation (Eph 4.29).  I demonstrate how much I hate bitterness, wrath and anger by how kind, tender-hearted and forgiving I am (Eph 4.30; Col 2.8, 12).  I demonstrate how much I hate selfishness and conceit by the amount of humble service I offer (Phil 4.3-4).

The tactic, therefore, for killing sin is not simply not sinning.  Like trying not to think of a pink elephant immediately causes me to think of a pink elephant, trying so hard to avoid thinking about sin focuses our attention on the sin.  Laying aside entangling sin doesn’t mean focusing on sin’s knots, but fixing our eyes on Jesus (Heb 12.1-2).  Killing sin means defeating it by grace-reigning righteousness.  Sin must be evicted by the soul’s rightful resident: the Spirit of Christ putting Christ’s righteousness on display through us.

Killing sin is not a matter of waiting on God to “zap” the sinful desires out of you.  How many times have I prayed, “God, just take the desires away so I can’t be rid of this sin!”? If I had a nickle.  God typically doesn’t mysteriously take sin out of us while we sleep like he did Adam’s rib.  God has provided means of killing of sin; namely, grace.  And grace reigns through righteousness.

Therefore, if I want to kill angry it will be futile to spend every hour trying hard not to get angry.  Doing so will probably only make us angrier!  We kill anger with tender-hearted compassion.  Instead of trying not to be angry, exercise compassion and our anger will run out of food to eat and move on.  If I want to kill greed it will be futile to avoid shopping.  We kill greed by being generous.  Instead of trying hard not to be greedy, give yourself away and greed will slowly shrivel.  Killing gossip will take more than lip-zipping.  It will take gossip being evicted by Christ-centered encouragement of others.  Rather than trying hard not to gossip, try hard to encourage and gossip will become far less gratifying to our selfish soul.

Grace is freedom.  Liberty.  We don’t wake up each day with the burden of killing sin by sneaking around it or ignoring it or being enslaved to its orbit.  That’s like trying to evict a squatter by trying hard not to see him.  We wake up each day in the power of God’s grace to pursue righteousness.  Christ’s righteousness.  We will enjoy far more freedom from sin by pursuing those things that evict sin in the power of the Spirit than we will trying not to sin by our own power.  Grace reigns through righteousness.  Long live the King.

“Take care, brethren, that there not be in any one of you an evil, unbelieving heart that falls away from the living God.  But encourage one another day after day, as long as it is still called ‘Today,’ so that none of you will be hardened by the deceitfulness of sin.  For we have become partakers of Christ, if we hold fast the beginning of our assurance firm until the end” (Hebrews 3.12-14).

Thanks to a young brother in our church I’ve been drawn to this text for a week.  Thanks to the Spirit I have been drawn to a more hopeful and helpful interpretation of this text.

One thing is clear about this text is that Christian assurance is a community project.  One of the fundamental means of our assurance of salvation in perseverance in the gospel is the (local) church.  Every one of us is responsible to every one else of us (Rom 12.5).  That  fact hasn’t changed in my mind, but the application of it in the biblical community has.

Before now my sense of the text was one that created a Christian police-state.  Like elementary school nuns, each of us wields our rulers so as to snap everyone else into submission.  We see to that none of us has an evil, unbelieving by constantly pointing out how close someone is to sin and how quickly they should flee it.  ”Watch out for this!”  ”Watch out for that!” “You dare not step that way; in fact, I’d be careful of stepping anywhere because you just may fall away from the living God!”  Before long, our whole energy is spent terrified of the ubiquitous evil, unbelieving heart rather than assured of Christ.  We grow spiritually paralyzed and unfruitful.

I am not suggesting there is no place for exhortation or warning in biblical community.   There are sins to flee and flee we must.  When a brother or sister eyes the precipice of apostasy we must warn them and command their return with all spiritual force.

But it seems like the normal, day-to-day remedy against the evil, unbelieving heart is encouragement (v13).  The way we guard one another from an evil, unbelieving heart is not necessarily, but certainly not always, scaring each other away from sin.  Rather, we encourage one another toward Christ of whom we’ve become partakers (v14).  The hardening, deceiving effects of sin are powerless in light of the gospel and what God has done to make us part of Jesus.

The word translated “encourage” combines two Greek words: para (alongside) and kaleo (call).  It carries a far more positive tone than that of “warn.”  Taking care of our brothers such that they avoid an evil, unbelieving heart is not hollering from distance, “Hey, you’d better not do that!” or “Hey, don’t go there!”  Helping our sisters from sin’s hardening and deceiving effects is not sitting in the stands telling them where not to run.  It means coming alongside them, sharing in the same call of God to Christ.  It means coming alongside, holding up the precious value of Jesus so that we’re overcome by his glory rather than abject fear.

Imagine explaining someone directions to your house by telling them where they’re not supposed to turn.  Would they ever be quite sure they’re on the right road?  Would they ever have confidence that they’ll get to the right destination?  Holding fast the beginning our assurance firm until the end (v14) isn’t gauged by how much sin we’re always avoiding.  In fact, organizing our life around not sinning will most often lead to prideful, self-righteousness.

The measure of our assurance is gauged by how precious Christ is to us.  For example, assume a Christian brother is addicted to pornography and we don’t want to ruin his marriage. We could, and probably should, warn him from any practical avenues to it.  We could, and should, say, “Stop doing this or you’ll lose it all.”  But, it’s not that easy. He must be thrilled by a greater beauty than the centerfold.  His heart must be won to another “model.”  So, we come alongside him and say, “Stare at your wife.  Contemplate what God has done to unite you two.  Consider that she still puts up with you.  Consider that she is the one who has been with you through hell and back, while that airbrushed fantasy doesn’t care that you exist.  Consider this woman who has given you everything.”  Stopping the sin doesn’t necessarily stop the hardening of the heart.  But, contemplating grace does.

In contemplating Christ and his beauty our hearts are necessarily softened.  I am far more helped away from an evil, unbelieving heart by being “called” again and again to Christ and the gospel.  God has made us partakers of Christ and what better deterrent from sin than to see God’s glory in the face of Christ (2 Cor 4.4-6).  Yes, I should be warned early and often, but that warning must come through the whispers of my brothers rather than a megaphone from the sidelines.

As our gaze is constantly fixed more and more on Jesus, we find entangling sin coming unraveled from our feet (Heb 12.1-2).  We lay aside our sin by focusing our attention on our Christ, of whom God has made us partakers.  The ultimate reason we avoid sin is not because how bad it is, but because how great Christ is (Rom 6.20-22).

So before we feel the urge to call out and announce a brother’s sin in the name of keeping him from an apostate heart, let us first come alongside and help his gaze Godward. Rather than sit in the bleachers telling him where not to run, let’s enter the race beside him so that he not get distracted from Jesus.  Compel him to what God has done in Christ for sinners, sinners just like us.  We are sons, not slaves.  And Christ is a faithful Son over God’s house, whose house we are (Heb 3.6)!  In light of that, how can we harden our hearts?