Tag Archives: righteousness

Comparing 21st Century Church to Early Believers

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How does the church in America in the 21st century compare to the church of the first century? When we read of the exploits of the early believers and compare their level of commitment to followers of Jesus Christ today, how do we compare? In Acts 17:6 there is a thought-provoking statement made by the enemies of the early believers that is truly amazing. They say, “These who have turned the world upside down have come here too.”

These who have turned the world upside down have come here too.

What a truly astounding accusation. What prompted them to make such an unbelievable assertion? What had those early believers been doing to gain such a powerful testimony in a relatively short period of time? What had they done, and what were they doing, that warranted this kind of attention?

If you’ll remember, back in the first chapter of the Book of Acts, we have Jesus telling His disciples to wait in Jerusalem until they received the promise of the coming of the Holy Spirit. They obediently followed His instruction, and ten days later the Holy Spirit came in a display of miraculous power. The room where they were meeting was all of a sudden filled with the sound a mighty rushing wind, tongues of fire appeared in the room and began to settle on each of the disciples gathered there, and they were all given the ability to speak in language they had never been taught.

These believers were so emboldened by the power of the Holy Spirit that they went out into the streets of Jerusalem, fearlessly proclaiming the message of the Gospel – the Good News of Jesus Christ being raised from the dead. The people gathered in Jerusalem for the Feast of Pentecost were overwhelmed by the intensity of the believer’s witness, and as they heard the Gospel being presented in all the different languages of people from all over the world they were brought under conviction by the work of the Holy Spirit. The result? On that one day about 3000 were saved and added to the fellowship of believers.

And that was but the beginning. Just a little later the number had grown to 5000 men, plus women and children. The testimony of the Acts record is that the Lord was adding to the church daily those who were being saved. It wasn’t long until believers were no longer being added, but multiplied. Churches were being added, as the number of those being converted to the Christian faith kept growing exponentially.

This growth was taking place in the face of much adversity and tribulation against the church. The Jewish authorities tried everything within their power to silence the voice of these early believers. Arrests were made. Incarceration was the experience of many. Many others were executed for being followers of Jesus Christ. It seemed that the more the church was dealt waves of persecution, the bolder they became in their proclamation of the Gospel.

Compare that to the state of the church in America. I don’t mean to come across as judge and jury, but by my personal experiences and observations it seems to me that the church in America today has become somewhat complacent, some even apathetic. The Acts record tells us that the early believers were gathering daily, going from house to house worshiping together, sharing all things in common, giving up their personal belongings to assist others who were in need. It shows clearly that the early believers were totally committed to their Lord, and it showed in every aspect of their lives.

I believe that the church of today pales in comparison. Let me make a few personal observations. As I think about churches I have served as pastor for over 40 years, I have seen a lot of Sunday morning “worshipers” who are conspicuously invisible Monday-Saturday. I’ve served as pastor of churches in which a very small percentage of the members did an enormous percentage of work/ministry. I’ve served churches where some were totally burned out from carrying more than their share because too many were carrying none.

I’m reminded of something Vance Havner said: “In every church there are pillars, and there are caterpillars. The pillars make up about 10% of the congregation, yet they do 90% of the work; the caterpillars make up about 90% of the congregation, yet they only do 10% of the work.” Sadly, from my personal experience, there is a lot of truth in Havner’s assessment.

There are pillars and caterpillars in every church.

The Bible teaches that God has equipped each believer with at least one spiritual gift which enables each one to serve God by developing and using our individual gifts in service to the church. As each member of a local body of believers uses his/her gift, the work of ministry is done, the workload is shared, and God is glorified. No one person, or small group of persons, becomes exhausted because they are having to do their share and someone else’s as well.

Howard Hendricks made this observation: The church is like a football game – 22 people on the field in desperate need of rest, and 40000 people in the stands, in desperate need of exercise. Where are you in this game of life? Are you in the game – or are you resting comfortably in the stands? Let’s take a few minutes for a time of reflection and self-evaluation. Am I doing my part? Or am I causing someone else to carry my share of the load? I feel certain that each of us already knows the answer to that question. If your answer is that you are allowing others to carry your weight, then why not make a change – now. God would definitely be pleased with that decision.

Practical Atheism

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“Let me ask you, how many atheists are now in this house? Perhaps not a single one of you would accept the title, and yet, if you live from Monday morning to Saturday night in the same way as you would live if there were no God, you are practical atheists.” ― Charles H. Spurgeon

What a horrible thing to consider! Practical atheism – living life as if God does not exist. As Spurgeon puts it, “[Living] from Monday morning to Saturday night in the same way as you would live if there were no God.” Professing faith in Christ while at the same time living life without any thought of God or godliness.

Please understand that this does not mean that the individual lives a life of absolute evil. It does not mean that the individual commits horrific acts of sin. It does not mean that the individual is a murderer, a rapist, a thief, a terrorist, a wife-abuser or child-abuser, etc. It simply means that he/she lives life with no thought of God.

This type of individual may be well-respected in the community. They may do good things. They may give to worthwhile causes, live successful lives, have envious careers, live in the best of neighborhoods, drive the most luxurious automobile, have the most well-behaved children. They even attend church regularly and see to it that their families are there with them. But Monday through Saturday they live with no thought of God.

Something happens at the moment of salvation that changes a person instantly and permanently. He/she is instantaneously born again! The individual is taken out of spiritual death and ushered into spiritual life. By the amazing grace of God the individual puts off the old and replaces it with the new. He/she is a new creation who now has the Spirit of God living in them, imputing to them the righteousness of Christ, while at the same time imparting to them that same righteousness.

The imputation of righteousness, in its simplest terms, means that when God looks at the individual who has been saved by the precious blood of Jesus Christ, He now sees the righteousness of His Son. The individual is pronounced righteous because he IS righteous.

The impartation of righteousness means that in the realm of day-to-day life the individual now has the desire to live righteously before God and man. His mind-set changes, his attitude changes, his view on life changes – everything changes. He now lives life in the awareness of God’s presence, and with the desire to live his life for God’s glory. He no longer lives as if God does not exist, but he lives in the constant awareness of God’s presence and with the desire to please God in everything he does.

The individual who has truly been born again into the family of God begins to see things differently. He may not change careers, but his career now becomes a source of ministry through which he can share the goodness and grace of God with his coworkers. He now works for Christ, not for self. His desires become God-centered rather than self-centered. His vocation is now seen as a vehicle through which he is afforded the opportunity to be on mission for God. He no longer lives life with only self-serving interests, but now with God-centered interests.

What role does God play in your Monday through Saturday activities? Parents, do your children see you as a Christ-centered person, whose first priority in life is to show them and share with them the love of Christ, or do they see you as a self-serving person who does everything out of selfish ambition? Are you teaching them to strive for a life of Godliness, or are you pushing them to live for the moment, to put their own personal ambitions and desires ahead of any thought of seeking God’s will for their lives?

What role does He have in your life? Right now – this very moment – could you honestly say that others see Christ in you, and witness His presence in your attitudes and actions? Or would they be shocked to learn that you are a professing believer because they see no evidence of a commitment to Christ in your day-to-day life?

We are admonished by the teachings of Scripture to walk in the Spirit of God so that our lives would display His righteousness and would reveal to others His glory. Let’s not fall prey to the tendency to live lives of practical atheism, but to live lives of sincere and total commitment to God.

Until next time:

Blessings!

For Such WERE Some of You

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Do you not know that the unrighteous will not inherit the kingdom of God? Do not be deceived. Neither fornicators, nor idolaters, nor adulterers, nor homosexuals, nor sodomites, nor thieves, nor covetous, nor drunkards, nor revilers, nor extortioners will inherit the kingdom of God. And such were some of you. But you were washed, but you were sanctified, but you were justified in the name of the Lord Jesus and by the Spirit of our God. 1 Corinthians 6:9-11

In my last post, I stated that many are embracing – both in the pew and the pulpit – lifestyles that are clearly denounced in Scripture as being abominations in the eyes of God. This alarming shift in the way churches, and even entire denominations, view the seriousness of sin is a clear indication that the church is moving toward a state of spiritual apostasy. It seems that the church, in general, has strayed from its spiritual moorings, anchored firmly in the word of God, and has now attached itself to the shifting winds of cultural change.

The passage quoted above is an amazing testimony to the power of grace given to the individual who experiences salvation. It is a statement verifying Paul’s assertion in Second Corinthians 5:17: “Therefore, if anyone is in Christ, he is a new creation; old things have passed away; behold, all things have become new.” Salvation brings forth change in the life of the believer.

Make special note of the emphasized phrase in the passage quoted at the outset of this post: And such were some of you. BUT… Read again the sins and sinful behaviors Paul mentions: fornicators, idolaters, adulterers, homosexuals, sodomites, thieves, covetous, drunkards, revilers, extortioners. And when Paul adds, “Such were some of you,” he states the obvious: they have now changed. They are no longer living lives characterized by these sinful lifestyles and actions. They are literally new creations in Christ.

When Paul adds, “Such were some of you,” he states the obvious: they have now changed.

When the church – individual, local congregations, or entire denominations – embraces these sinful lifestyles as being acceptable then it has lost its distinctiveness as the body of Christ. It is then not only in the world, but it is of the world. The church is to be a beacon of hope to those who are without Christ. It is to shine the light of God’s love and grace to those who are shackled to sinful lifestyles and behaviors that are contrary to the teachings of the Bible. It is to show the way out of the darkness and decadence of spiritual death, and point the way to spiritual life, which is found only in Jesus Christ.

When the church embraces these sinful lifestyles as being acceptable, then it has lost its distinctiveness as the body of Christ.

Admittedly, it seems that the church today focuses only on what it deems to be the more serious sins in Paul’s list. It often seems that the focus is on homosexuals, sodomites, adulterers, and fornicators. But the list includes thieves, drunkards, covetous, and others. Oftentimes, we tend to categorize sins. Some are viewed as more offensive to God than others. But note carefully the entire list. It clearly shows that all sin is an affront to God, and it teaches that salvation brings about a change from the old to the new. Such WERE some of you – but praise God you are no longer bound to the sins of your past!

So, let’s consider, in closing, a question and answer posed by the Apostle Paul that should give further clarification to this matter. In Romans 6:1-2 he says:

What shall we say then? Shall we continue in sin that grace may abound? Certainly not! How shall we who died to sin live any longer in it.

Being in Christ, having been made a new creation with all things becoming new, means that we are dead to sin and alive to righteousness. Our lives should bear testimony to that truth. And if not, then we are showing that we never truly died to sin and are thus still enslaved to it.

The church should bear the message of hope for those who are shackled to, and under the power of, sin. We should share the message of salvation to those who are still living in darkness, with the prayer that God would open their eyes to see and embrace the truth of His amazing offer of forgiveness and newness of life. But we must not allow ourselves to embrace and accept these alternative lifestyles as normative. We must, rather, embrace and propagate the message of the life-changing, behavior-altering power of the gift of God’s salvation.

Until next time:

Blessings!

Do You Know Him? – YAHWEH-Tsidkenu

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And he [Abram] believed in the Lord, and He accounted it to him for righteousness.

Genesis 15:6, NKJV

One of the most grace-filled, and yet at the same time gravely demanding, names of God found in Scripture is YAHWEH-Tsidkenu – “The Lord our righteousness”. The context of the verse quoted above will shed much light on this matter. God had just promised Abram that his son, who was yet to be born, would be the one through whom God’s promises to Abram in Genesis 12:1-6 would come to pass. Abram had been trying to figure things out on his own, but God had already mapped out the entire plan. And here, in Genesis 15:6, we are told that Abram, in simple, child-like faith, believed God. The name by which God revealed Himself to Abram here is “YAHWEH-Tsidkenu”.

In this verse, along with many others found in the Bible, we see the gracious act of God in His provision of righteousness to the unrighteous. This is a sovereign act of God, provided through His preordained plan to send His own Son, Jesus Christ, into the world to provide salvation for sinful man.

The imputation of righteousness, and the impartation of righteousness.

This act of God provides two essential needs of man which no man can provide for himself. These are: the imputation of righteousness, and the impartation of righteousness. In order to understand this, we need to re-visit the story of Adam and Eve. When Adam committed his act of disobedience in the Garden of Eden, he was immediately cursed with the penalty of rebellion against God. As the head of the human race, his sinful nature was then passed down to all humans born. This is the act of the imputation of sin: we are sinners because we are born with a sin nature passed down from Adam.

The imputation of Adam’s sin also means that the ability to sin, or, to put it a better way, the inability not to sin, was passed down to us. Because of the imputation of the sin nature, we sin because we are sinners. We do not become sinners when we sin.

As a result of this sordid spiritual mess we find ourselves in, we have no hope of a relationship with God. None! We are spiritually dead in trespasses and sins, as Paul says in Ephesians.

So, God did what only God could do. He is YAHWEH-Tsidkenu, the Lord our righteousness. Since all of our righteousness is “as filthy rags” (Isaiah 64:6) before God, we are in desperate need of someone providing righteousness for us. God did this in providing His Son to be the propitiation for sin – the sin-bearer, who paid the full penalty of our sin through His sacrificial death on the cross through which He objectively met the righteous demands of God’s law.

Through this act, He provided for the imputation of His righteousness to the unrighteous. This is the reason Paul can say that we are saved by grace – through this amazing act of Jesus Christ on the cross. His righteousness is now, by virtue of His victory over death, hell, and the grave, imputed to lost sinners. When God the Father looks at the believer, He now sees the righteousness of His Son, and not the unrighteousness of the individual. He can then say, as He did to Abram, that his faith was counted to him as righteousness. Not because Abram was inherently righteous, but because God’s righteousness was imputed to him. Amazing grace!

But that is only half of the story. Alongside this declaration of the grace-filled imputation of righteousness is the declaration of the gravely demanding impartation of righteousness. Not only has God imputed to the believer the righteousness of Jesus Christ, He has also imparted to us the ability to live righteous lives. Remember, Adam’s act of sin resulted in the fact that all of humanity would be unable not to sin. We all sin and fall woefully short of God’s demands for righteousness.

But now, through the imputation of the righteousness of Christ, we are able not to sin. And with this ability not to sin comes the command of the Bible that we be perfect. In the Sermon on the Mount we hear Jesus say that we must be perfect as our Father in heaven is perfect (Matthew 5:48). Wow! Is that even possible? How can a sinful human being be perfect? We still have our old nature, don’t we? Yes! We still have the ability and the propensity to sin, don’t we? Yes! So how are we to live under the crushing weight of this demand for perfection?

It is through the imputation, and the impartation, of the righteousness of Jesus Christ. It is through His ability that I am made able. It means that I have the ability to say “No” to temptation. It means that, as Paul says, I have the ability to walk in the Spirit, and by doing so I will not fulfill the lusts of the flesh. It means that by His grace I have His righteousness imputed to my account, and I have His righteousness imparted to my being. I am pronounced righteous, and I am made righteous.

Have you paused to thank God that He has pronounced you righteous by the righteousness of His Son? Have you paused to petition Him to grant you the daily grace to live life righteously, to His glory? If you are a child of God, then you are the recipient of His saving grace which gives you the imputation of His righteousness, and you are the recipient of His daily, sanctifying grace, which provides for you the impartation of His righteousness which enables you to live in victory over sin.

Until next time:

Blessings!