"Multitudes of Christians within the church are moving toward the point where they may reject the institution that we call the church. They are beginning to turn to more simplified forms of worship. They are hungry for a personal and vital experience with Jesus Christ. They want a heartwarming personal faith. Unless the church quickly recovers its authoritative Biblical message, we may witness the spectacle of millions of Christians going outside the institutional church to find spiritual food." (Billy Graham, 1965, World Aflame, pp. 79-80)

Good works are not the root of justification, they are the fruit of justification.

The Lord opened her heart

A common allegory used in the Bible to describe the process of conversion is that of a seed that gets sown in the ground.  In Mark 4 Jesus tells the story of a sower who sows seeds.  Some seed landed on the ground and was immediately eaten by birds.  Some seed landed on rocky ground and so could not take root and was quickly scorched by the hot sun.  Other seeds fell among thorns which choked them off.  But some seeds fell on good fertile soil and produced a massive harvest.  The seed to which Jesus is referring is the message, called the Gospel, that Jesus is the Lord and Savior of the world (Mark 4:14).  The ground the seed lands on is the heart, and the hospitable condition of the heart is critical to the message's ability to take root and grow fruitfully.

Unfortunately due to sin the ground this seed lands on is dead (Ephesians 2:1).  It is inhospitable to spiritual life and the message cannot and will not take root.  Paul wrote, "The natural person does not accept the things of the Spirit of God, for they are folly to him, and he is not able to understand them because they are spiritually discerned." (1 Corinthians 2:14)  Who is the natural person?  Anyone who has not been "born again" by the Holy Spirit (John 3:5-6).  How does someone become born again?

The Pharisee Nicodemus asked Jesus this exact question.  Nicodemus asked, "How can a man be born when he is old? Can he enter a second time into his mother's womb and be born?" (John 3:4)  Jesus responded, "Truly, truly, I say to you, unless one is born of water and the Spirit, he cannot enter the kingdom of God. That which is born of the flesh is flesh, and that which is born of the Spirit is spirit." (John 3:5-6)  Notice Jesus said "unless one is born of water and the Spirit"...  Being "born again" is described as a two-part process performed on the sinner: 1) being washed and cleansed and 2) being renewed.  In Ezekiel 36, God tells Israel He will first sprinkle clean water on them to cleanse them and then He will renew their heart by removing their heart of stone and replacing it with a heart of flesh:

25 I will sprinkle clean water on you, and you shall be clean from all your uncleannesses, and from all your idols I will cleanse you. 26 And I will give you a new heart, and a new spirit I will put within you. And I will remove the heart of stone from your flesh and give you a heart of flesh. 27 And I will put my Spirit within you, and cause you to walk in my statutes and be careful to obey my rules.  Ezekiel 36:25-27

Likewise, in Titus 3:5 we are told God saved us "according to his own mercy, by the washing of regeneration and renewal of the Holy Spirit".

The point here is in our natural state our hearts are hardened, dead, and unable to respond positively to the message of the gospel.  The truth of the gospel will not make sense to us unless the Holy Spirit first does a work of preparation on our hearts.  Jesus told his disciples, "It is the Spirit who gives life; the flesh is no help at all." (John 6:63)  In Acts 16, we are told the story of when Paul journeyed to Philippi.  He spoke and a women named Lydia heard him.  We are told, "The Lord opened her heart to pay attention to what was said by Paul" and she was later baptized.  The Lord opened her heart.

"You must picture me alone in that room in Magdalen, night after night, feeling, whenever my mind lifted even for a second from my work, the steady, unrelenting approach of Him whom I so earnestly desired not to meet. That which I greatly feared had at last come upon me. In the Trinity Term of 1929 I gave in, and admitted that God was God, and knelt and prayed: perhaps, that night, the most dejected and reluctant convert in all England. I did not then see what is now the most shining and obvious thing; the Divine humility which will accept a convert even on such terms. The Prodigal Son at least walked home on his own feet. But who can duly adore that Love which will open the high gates to a prodigal who is brought in kicking, struggling, resentful, and darting his eyes in every direction for a chance of escape? The words “compelle intrare,” compel them to come in, have been so abused by wicked men that we shudder at them; but, properly understood, they plumb the depth of the Divine mercy. The hardness of God is kinder than the softness of men, and His compulsion is our liberation."  (C.S. Lewis, Surprised by Joy: The Shape of My Early Life)

The law is only necessary because of lawbreakers

The second speeding ticket of my life occurred at 8:20am.  I know this because had it been 8:30am I would not have gotten the ticket.  I was driving home one morning after working out at the YMCA and I entered a school-zone.  The speed limit had been 40 mph but between 7:30am and 8:30am the speed limit dropped in the school-zone down to 25 mph.  I was pulled-over and given a ticket for going 45 in a 25.

Here's an interesting thing the speeding law I broke:  If people always drove less than 25 mph in school zones we would not need a law punishing people for going above 25 mph.  Laws are required only because people do bad things.  If people did not murder we would not need laws punishing people for murder.  If people did not steal we would not need laws punishing people for theft or burglary.

In Matthew 19:3-8, a group of Pharisees asked Jesus, "Is it lawful to divorce one's wife for any cause?"  Jesus responded, "Have you not read that he who created them from the beginning made them male and female, and said, ‘Therefore a man shall leave his father and his mother and hold fast to his wife, and the two shall become one flesh’? So they are no longer two but one flesh. What therefore God has joined together, let not man separate."  The Pharisees were testing Jesus and wanted to catch him in conflict with Moses.  So they asked, "Why then did Moses command one to give a certificate of divorce and to send her away?"  Pay attention to Jesus response here:  He said, "Because of your hardness of heart Moses allowed you to divorce your wives, but from the beginning it was not so."

When Jesus said "from the beginning it was not so" he meant before there was sin in the world there was no divorce.  The sanctioning of divorce by Moses was a result of the Israelites' sin--what he called "hardness of heart".  The law permitting divorce was given only because there was sin in the world, but it is not the way God designed it from the beginning.

It is revealing that to answer the Pharisee's question about divorce Jesus did not refer to the Law that was given as a response to sin--the Mosaic Law--but to the pre-sin design that God ordained from the beginning of creation.  When God created Adam and Eve the creation was good and it existed in perfection.  As Christians that is our goal, our ideal, and so the "Law" we appeal to for guidance in our relationships with other people and God himself should be the design that was in place from the beginning--what Jesus did when he said "from the beginning it was not so."  The two greatest commandments: love the Lord your God with all your heart, soul, mind and strength, and love your neighbor as yourself are the linchpins of God's pre-sin design.  That's why Jesus said, "On these two commandments depend all the Law and the Prophets." (Matthew 22:40)

“true Christians consider themselves not as satisfying some rigorous creditor, but as discharging a debt of gratitude"  (William Wilberforce, Real Christianity)

Don't hang on the dishwasher

Last night as I was unloading the dishwasher I walked across the kitchen and put some plates away.  When I turned around my son Lee had pulled out the top drawer of the dishwasher and was hanging on it like it was a jungle-gym.  Afraid he would bend it I yelled, "Lee, don't do that!"  Of course, Lee is less than two-years-old and so hanging on the drawer seemed like the fun thing to do.  As a parent I've come to realize I cannot blame my child for doing something wrong if I never told him it was wrong.  How else would he know?

The experience made me think about Paul's explanation about the purpose of the law given to the Israelites in the Old Testament.  There are a couple things I want to mention about the law and then apply it practically.

First, the law revealed what sin is.  If I had instructed Lee "Do not hang on the dishwasher" then he would know that behavior was wrong.  Without my instruction Lee wouldn't know.  Paul said, "if it had not been for the law, I would not have known sin. For I would not have known what it is to covet if the law had not said, 'You shall not covet.' " (Romans 7:7)  What he means is God gave Israel the law to show them how they should live; to show them what is appropriate behavior and what is inappropriate behavior.  Paul calls the Law Israel's "guardian" (Galatians 3:24-26).  It functioned as a parent to a child:  instructing, guiding, and disciplining.

Paul also said the Law was given to increase sin (Romans 5:20).  If I drive 85 mph in a 25 mph zone I will probably get a massive speeding ticket.  I may even lose my license to drive.  Why is that?  Because people in my state's legislature passed a law that says speeding is illegal and speeders will suffer punishment.  However, if I drive 85 mph on the autobahn in Germany where there is no speed limit I don't have to worry about getting a ticket.  Where there is no law there is no transgression (Romans 4:15).  Consider the 430 years between Abraham and Moses.  For 430 years the Israelites did not have the Mosaic Law and so there were lots of bad things that happened that did not have consequences.  A teenager may have bad-mouthed their parent and people knew it was generally problematic but there was no specific commandment not to bad-mouth your parent.  Then the Mosaic Law is given with the commandment "Honor your father and your mother" and all of a sudden bad-mouthing your parent has consequences.  The sin of bad-mouthing one's parent became more sinful when it happened after the commandment was given.

Why would God want to increase sin?  Because He wanted to show us that we could not attain His promises through our own obedience.  It was only through faith that God's promises were available to us.  The law was given to show us our deficiency by increasing our sin.  That why Paul says,

12 So the law is holy, and the commandment is holy and righteous and good. 13 Did that which is good, then, bring death to me? By no means! It was sin, producing death in me through what is good, in order that sin might be shown to be sin, and through the commandment might become sinful beyond measure.  (Romans 7:12-13)

I recently visited a paint store to buy some white paint to re-paint the molding and trim around my house.  I was amazed at how many variations of the color white there are.  There was an entire wall of paint chips with probably 40 or 50 different shades of white.  I picked up "Eggshell White", which looked white to me, but then I saw "Extra White" which was even whiter.  In fact, when I held "Eggshell White" and "Extra White" side-by-side, "Eggshell" looked yellow.  Then my eye caught "Bright White" which was even whiter than "Extra White".  "Bright White" made "Extra White" look yellow.  When I held one color up against the other I could immediately see the difference.  Likewise, when we hold our lives up against the law we can see our sin more clearly than ever before. The law is intended to give us a reference point to show us we're not as perfect as we think we are.  Paul said the law was "holy and righteous and good."  If the law rubs us the wrong way that's not an indictment of the law, it's an indictment of our heart.  And that reality will humble us and remind us to put our hope in Christ who perfectly fulfilled the law for us.  We are not righteous because of anything we do but because of what Christ did.  That is exactly why Paul says, "Wretched man that I am! Who will deliver me from this body of death? Thanks be to God through Jesus Christ our Lord!" (Romans 7:24-25)

That is the gospel.

A freeing reality

22 But the fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, 23 gentleness, self-control; against such things there is no law.  Galatians 5:22-23

Do you have good health but no peace?  Wealth but no joy?  The perfect spouse but no love?

I would rather have the worst of life's circumstances but have an abundance of the fruit of the Spirit than have the best of life's circumstances and have none of fruit.