The Authority of the Cross and Fellowship (Part 1)

What is the basis of our fellowship with God – our right standing with Him?  In what is our conviction grounded:

1. Because we are good enough morally?
2. Because we have the right grasp of all points of doctrine? Or at least, all the important ones?
3. Because we are affiliated with the right type of congregation?
4. Because we are purchased with Christ’s blood to be part of the new creation, His new covenant people, the new humanity?

For any sincere Christian and honest student of his word, to ask this question is to answer it.  We DO want to be doctrinally correct, and morally upright, and it IS an important consideration what type of congregation we affiliate with in the working out of our calling in our worship and mission.  But none of these things form the basis of our fellowship with the Father.  Rather, they are the result of it.  For the man/woman whose confidence lies in one or more of the first three, we are doomed to be torn between two poles:  on the one end, we might be arrogant beyond all decency, seeing ourselves as having “arrived” at moral excellence, doctrinal correctness, selection of the right church, etc.; on the other end, we might despair in hopelessness of ever achieving any such.  And in between there is mostly uncertainty – wavering between some wishful thinking that we are generally right on most points or morally decent, but in our moments of honesty, there is the growing realization that often we just do not measure up.  “Wretched man that I am!  Who shall deliver me out of the body of this death?” 

Now it is important to realize that in “Church of Christ” circles, a great many have been led pall-mall toward an almost exclusive practical emphasis on #2 or #3 as the key determinants of our “soundness” or faithfulness to God.   There have been at least three devastating consequences:

1. By and large, we are individuals concerned about religion but lacking in spiritual joy and peace and confidence in God.  Too many have raging – or at least smoldering - conflicts within: shame, guilt, fear, or at least serious doubt.
2. We are plagued with doctrinal disputes and divisions over every conceivable issue.  It is a natural consequence.  If we believe that our own fellowship with God depends on being right on all major doctrinal issues, then we must believe that the ones who disagree with us on those issues are NOT in fellowship with God.  This leads to division and the unending search to find a “sound” congregation that agrees with me.
3. As a result of one or both of the above, many churches have seen discouragement, distraction, despair, spiritual decay, and a slow and certain death.

[I am thinking of churches who see striving for doctrinal purity as desirable, and leave out of consideration altogether those progressive churches who have “matured” to the point where doctrinal issues are no longer important to them.  Such churches, by and large, see themselves as just another choice among denominations, and division in those churches will generally come because of money and politics, not over doctrinal disagreements.]

But the glorious news of the gospel is that the ground of our reconciliation to God is the cross of Christ! It is the power of God and the wisdom of God (I Cor. 1:18, 23, 24).  HE is the propitiation, through faith, by his blood (Rom. 3:25).  This is our “righteousness” squarely based on faith in Christ.  By Him, through him, by his blood, we are joined to him by faith, we are born again into the new creation (II Cor. 5:17).  This is not just “belief” and not “faith plus” obedience in the sense of achievement, but rather humble, trusting submission to the will of God.  In baptism we are born of water and the Spirit (Jn. 3), and we are united with him in his death so we can be raised to walk in newness of life (Rom. 6). 

If we are asked the basis of our confidence in our relationship to God, the ground of certainty we carry in our hearts, we must point to the authority of the cross!  There is none other.  This is what the scriptures teach.  Our fellowship with God is not grounded in our doctrinal correctness, moral excellence, or right standing with the right congregation or the right network of congregations.  On the conviction that we are sinners, we submit to Him as Lord and to the washing of his blood!  If we don't, we are without hope. We belong to Him by His purchase and we have no other authority on which to relate to each other in the spiritual realm.   When Paul was beginning his discussion in 1 Corinthians, aimed at healing the underlying problems of that fractured fellowship, he said something that we can easily overlook.  It is striking in its simplicity, and yet shocking in its power:  “For I determined not to know anything among you, save Jesus Christ and him crucified.” (1 Cor. 2:2).  Of course, Paul did not mean that he didn't speak about any other topic.  But he DID mean that the crucified Christ was the fundamental point on which his gospel was hinged.  The cross and its implications formed the central point on which everything else must be interpreted, the basis on which all religious problems must be solved!  This principle formed the basis of his appeal to them for unity, stretching over the first four or five chapters of the letter, perhaps more.  More on this in the next article.

Facing Death with a Clear Conscience: Remembering Steve Walker

 [In the fall of 2013, my dear brother Steve lost his battle with cancer.  It all happened so fast.  He was a year younger than me, and in apparently great health in January 2013 when our Dad passed away.  But between the spring and the fall, he steadily grew weaker and sicker, and soon he was gone.  He was a blessing to me, and to so many.  I admired him in his outlook toward dying.  He was gentle and peaceful and gracious.  He faced death with a clear conscience.  What a blessing to those who know this secret!  A few reflections about that…] 

We are made in God’s image, spiritually.  Adam and Eve connected with God in the spiritual realm, that perfect spiritual harmony was the foundation of their communion.   Animals cannot sin – because they cannot make a moral choice, cannot have a spiritual relationship with their maker.  They do not have a moral conscience - are not made in his image spiritually.

When Adam and Eve sinned, look at the sense of their souls toward God – hiding from God, afraid of God.  It is the result of distrust and rebellion, selfishness [I will have it my way].  They hid because they were afraid.  They felt guilt and shame and fear. THEY had changed.  God had not changed.  They cut themselves off from their perfect union with God, but notice they did not escape his law or his love.  Fear and guilt today causes us to hide from him. “I know my transgressions, and my sin is ever before me,” Ps. 51:3.

A wonderful thing is this conscience, which God gives us to provoke our awareness of sin.  The conscience is woven into our being, and guilt and fear result from it.  It tells us things are not right with us, within us.

But this guilt and this fear are blessings from God – his gift to us of the consciousness of sin.  It is the mark that we are divided in our nature.  There is still that spark of the divine in us.  If we were completely degraded we would not have a consciousness of it.   There are men who progress to that point.   This is worse than death – to sear your conscience and harden your heart to the point there is no consciousness of sin, no fear or guilt.  That is worse than death.

When they sinned, they were brought face to face with the consequences of their sin.  We sometimes think of this as their punishment, arbitrarily imposed by God – since you did THAT to me, I am going to do THIS to you.

But think of what God said to them. 

1. curse of the serpent [enmity between woman’s seed and his]
2. pain for the woman, corruption of the marriage relationship
3. curse of the ground FOR THY SAKE
4. sweat and toil for the man
5. death of the body – return to the earth.

Death is the natural course of sin.  Sin is the seed of which death is the fruit.  So James says, “sin, when it is finished, brings forth death.”  Death is the completeness of sin. To fall short of what we were designed to be is to fall short of that spiritual harmony with our Father, to be cut off from our true Life, and what can that end in but death?

And it must be that way.  While evil lasts, suffering and death are necessary.  Suffering, men think, is the cause of their misery.  If I could just get rid of this disease, this trial, I would be happy.  But the suffering is the result of sin, and is necessary to our salvation.   Death is the result of sin, and is NECESSARY to our salvation.  We MUST learn to come face-to-face with death in order to look at life in the right perspective.  If we did not suffer consequences of sin, how wicked would we be? If you knew you would never die, where would you stop in your selfishness?

God does not play games and he does not deal in fictions.  It is I who have sinned, and it is I who must die.  “The soul that sins, it shall die.”  As long as the world stands there is no escaping it.  It is fixed and immutable.  Even if I could be avoid physical death, what would that accomplish in terms of my relation to God?

But where does that leave us?  What shall we do?  We are sin-stained, and we know we are guilty, and we cannot wash it off.  It is eaten into our soul and it is part of our nature now.  And we know that sin is death, and that we MUST die, and that we ARE dying.

Sin IS Death – there is no escaping it, they cannot be separated. This is the truth – BUT IT IS NOT THE WHOLE TRUTH.  It is not the end of the story.

What I need, if my death is not to be my final end, is to go through death in such a fashion as to conquer it.  THAT IS MY NEED!  Yes, if there were only some way…

But praise be to God, this is exactly the way he tells us about in the Bible.  This is EXACTLY the message of the cross.  This is exactly the victory that God hinted at in the garden – the seed of the woman shall crush the head of the serpent.

Jesus offers it – emptied himself taking the form of a servant.  Jesus says to us, “You have to die (physically).  There is no escaping it.  But I can go through it with you.  I can show you the way through it.  You don’t have to do it alone.  I can show you how to die, and in dying conquer death. Through death, into life.  You don’t have to die like a tired old dog, with no choice but to endure it.  You don’t have to die like a convicted criminal, just blocking out what’s on the other side.  You don’t have to die in a terrible accident, where suddenly you are seized with fear and your whole life flashes before you in regret.  You don’t have to die with a dreaded disease, where fatigue and pain and hopelessness.  You can DIE in victory, with me by your side…”

His life can be MY life.  I can live in HIM!  His death can by MY death.  I can share his life and I can share his death.  I can make them mine! 

I am so thankful to God for brothers and sisters who understand the message of the cross and follow it to the death.  And especially today for my dear brother Steve, with whom I shared so much in daily living in our early years, and so much in spiritual fellowship in our later years.  That spiritual bond still stands, and cannot be shaken.  

“Man’s Part” in Salvation?

“Then I set my face toward the Lord God to make request by prayer and supplications, with fasting, sackcloth, and ashes. And I prayed to the LORD my God, and made confession, and said, “O Lord, great and awesome God, who keeps His covenant and mercy with those who love Him, and with those who keep His commandments, we have sinned and committed iniquity, we have done wickedly and rebelled, even by departing from Your precepts and Your judgments… O Lord, righteousness belongs to You, but to us shame of face, as it is this day…”  from Dan. 9:3-7 NKJV

From the time I was a boy, I heard many sermons about “God’s part” in salvation vs. “man’s part”.  Generally the context had to do with the grace on God’s part and the faith plus obedience on man’s.  How many invitations have you heard that go like this?  “God has done his part through Christ and the cross.  Now it is up to us to do our part in obedience to him.”  Now while there is an element of truth in this, and many proof-texts can be quoted, Satan can quote scripture too, and many preachers and gullible saints have been led off into the most shameful ideas following this reasoning.   

We can easily begin to think of God’s part and man’s part as if we are equally responsible for our salvation.  Often it might even be expressed that “we must meet him half-way”, or “it has to be 50-50.”  Even where it might not be stated exactly that way, the underlying assumption is often that we are “doing our part” to get the job done.  The idea is “God fulfilled his end of the bargain, now we will accomplish the rest by our obedience…”

Bite your tongue! Fall on your face! We achieve NOTHING! We accomplish NOTHING!  We have no “part” in salvation but to submit to his will.  And even that is only possible because of HIM!

Think of the prodigal son - crawling back to his father, begging forgiveness and asking to be taken on as a servant.  See the father weeping, rejoicing, welcoming him, reinstating him to the family.  Now suppose a few weeks later the son is talking with his friends and they ask how he was able to enjoy all the blessings of home again. Imagine the son saying, well “Father did his part, and I did my part to get things back to normal”?  Say what?

Or imagine a drunken man staggering along a rocky coast on a stormy night.  He stumbles into the ocean and is swept away by the waves.  He is helpless and hopeless. He cannot last long.  A crew risks their own lives going out into the storm in a boat, to rescue him.  Finally they find him, draw near, throw him a lifeline, which he is barely able to tie around himself.  From the brink of death, he is pulled to safety.  Suppose the next day he is being interviewed in the hospital, and he says proudly, “Well, I am grateful to the crew.  They did their part, and I did mine - in the rescue.” 

You get the picture. That is arrogance and ungratefulness in the extreme.  We only escape the bondage of sin by the grace and mercy of God.  We only continue in walking in the light and receive cleansing by the grace and mercy of God.  We only take our next breath by the grace, mercy, and providence of God. In this light, it is ALL the grace of God.  “Man’s part” is to lay hold in humble and grateful surrender.  Everything we have is of Him.  God makes it possible.  Christ reveals it.  Our spirit in fellowship with His Spirit is the reality in us.

The concepts we have about grace, faith and obedience muddy the water on this issue.  We have accepted the denominational definition of faith as “belief” - as a mental exercise of acceptance, distinguished from any action.  And on this assumption, then the Baptist preacher says that’s all there is to salvation – faith without works; just believe and mentally accept Christ into your heart.  Eager to combat this idea, the “Church-of-Christ” preacher proceeds to emphasize “man’s part” and so he requires “faith plus something else”.  Both are wrong. The Bible concept of faith (in Hebrews, e.g. but also everywhere else) is trusting SUBMISSION to Jesus Christ.  It is the "surrender of the will based on conviction" (GC Morgan).  It is that disposition of heart/will that is the plane on which we connect to the invisible (spiritual) realm.  By faith in Christ we relate to God; this surrender of our wills to His is the ground of our justification.  It is the deliberate choosing to give ourselves to follow him on the basis of the conviction HE makes possible; it is the opposite of “shrinking back” in fear (Heb. 10:38).

So faith is a trusting submission to the will of God through Christ.  It is, by definition, obedient.  But there is no achievement in it, no “accomplishment”, nothing to be proud of, nothing to look at and boast, “I did my part!”  God designed it all, executed it all, and made it all possible.  It is all of Him!  “Our part” is to willingly surrender to him and fall on our faces before Him.  “Lord, what would you have me to do?” 

Larry Walker, February 2014

Our Aged Saints: Hope Fixed on God

[In early February 2014, Sis. Billie Hall, one of our beloved sisters, passed from this life.  She was a precious blessing to our whole group.  We will miss her in so many ways.]

“Now she who is a widow indeed and who has been left alone, has fixed her hope on God and continues in entreaties and prayers night and day…”  I Tim. 5:5  NASB

In the world around us the values that are held precious are health, strength, physical beauty, popularity, and the ability to be connected and be on the move.  Many people will even give up their wealth to have these things, and they will sell their souls to hold on to them.

All of those things are vanity – even while we have them, as regards our real happiness, they turn out to be empty.  Peace and hope and joy are not in them. And even though we might have them, it will only be temporary.  No matter how hard we cling to them, as we get older they fade away, slip from our grasp, and they are gone. Strength fails, mobility falters, physical beauty fades, and (no surprise) popularity - among the people who value those things - goes down the drain.

But it should not be so among the people of God! How precious are the aged saints!  With Sister Hall’s passing this past week, I think we say farewell to our oldest member.  It is a GREAT loss!  We will miss her example of holding faithfully to God’s word, even when she had to do it alone. Holy Father and our Lord Jesus, receive her into your arms, and tell her “thank you” from all of us.

I am thinking of those sisters in our congregation who are alone.  They are staying the course in the walk of faith year after year – decade after decade – through disappointment and loss, sometimes in bitter and lonely tears, when others quit – they hold steady to the goal.  With little glory or recognition, with no earthly reward for doing it, they keep battling to “walk in the light”.  They are faithful to do what they can for the kingdom of God; as Jesus said of Mary’s service to him just before he went to the cross, “she hath done what she could”. 

See Paul’s description in the verse above of the widows who were to be cared for by the church.  One with her “hope fixed on God”, who continues in entreaties and prayers night and day.  It is very telling about us that we do not value the prayers of our aged saints. We think that because of their age – especially older women - there is “nothing they can do”.  We may talk that way.  Why do we want the preacher to pray for us?  We think he has a special “connection” to God and he can get us what we want.  But how often will we ask an aged saint to pray for us?  It means we do not really value prayer in the right way.  With Sister Billie’s completion, we will be missing her prayers offered up on our behalf.

We must turn our attention now to the living.  Look around in the congregation and bless each other and serve each other – young and old, each and every one. Amen.