New Thoughts: (10/30/13-11/03/13)
This passage begins with a ‘therefore’ which requires we look back across what Peter has thus far said. His therefore is no less significant than Paul’s in this regard. He has set before us the great worth of our salvation, a worth so great that even angels long just to see it. Salvation, we have been reminded, is a thing unlike the most precious of material things, for it will not pass away. And with that, Peter turns to his point. Given the great worth of what is already yours, there are things which become incumbent upon you. These are not, let us be clear, payments for services rendered. They are not somehow the responses that will activate the gift.
Let me put this in a present-day context. This company and that will send out credit cards to you, but there is an action required on your part before that credit card can be used. This salvation God has given, the faith through which we are able to see salvation and give it its full valuation; they come to us, like those credit cards, unsolicited. But, having come, they are ours in full. We can start using them today. We can count on faith today. We can be certain of salvation today. There is nothing further required on our part.
There is, however, a response to this gift which is in some ways mandatory. It is mandatory in that it is inevitable. Just as the reality of salvation cannot but lead to the fruits of the Spirit growing in our lives, so salvation cannot but result in a change of behavior on our part. When Peter, along with all the apostles, urges us to pursue this life of holiness, to actively work out our own sanctification – Paul would even say our salvation – it is not as urging us towards that which will earn faith or buy our salvation. It is because the saved cannot but desire this. Yet, the flesh will continue to get in the way.
No, we are not saying that physical, material life is evil and only the spiritual life is good. We shall not go down that Manichean path. But even Paul makes plain the struggle of sanctification. “What I would do, I don’t do, and what I would cease from, I find myself doing” (Ro 7:19). This reality can easily shake our confidence. It can leave us seriously doubting that God is at work in us at all. There is a point up to which such doubts are productive, and actually move us towards a healthy repentance. But, unless there is that in our lives which we can look to and see progress, those doubts are likely to go beyond such a point, and result in hopelessness.
I can happily argue that where doubts lead to hopelessness, salvation never resided in the first place. But, let us accept that argument, and it remains for hopelessness to be found a good thing, and the explanation of this reality is to our benefit. For, if we suppose hopelessness and salvation can somehow coexist within us, we will miss the warning signs of our spiritual danger. We will presume ourselves saved when we are not, suppose ourselves right with God when only judgment awaits. You may not ask a drowning man if he wishes to be saved, but if he doesn’t know he is drowning, you can be sure he won’t be asking you for rescue!
But, where salvation has come, there cannot but be a lively response. There cannot but be this urge to obey. Yet, the urge to obey, if grace is not fully comprehended, can only lead to frustration and hopelessness. It is to this end that Peter, having encouraged us to be mentally prepared for action, and to be serious, immediately sets grace before us. “Hope perfectly upon the grace”, as Young’s Literal Translation offers the clause. Hope on the grace. God’s grace is, after all, our only hope. Apart from these gifts He bestows on us so freely, there is no path to that holiness which is mandatory if we would be saved. There is no salvation which is mandatory if we would be holy. We are without hope, except that He has given us all we need to these very ends. Grace. Grace has saved you. And yet, Peter points us to something else, to grace upon grace. For, he is pointing our attention to that grace which is yet to brought to us, awaiting the revelation of Jesus Christ.
Hope on that grace. Grace has saved you. But, there is grace yet to come. You have been granted this immeasurable gift of being rescued from out of your sins and brought into the very household of God. But, there is a grace yet to come! You have been set on the path towards home, but there is this yet ahead: God is at work in you! The very sanctification that we are urged to pursue, He will bring about. He who began the work shall finish it! That latter grace is as certain as the first, because it is just as much God’s determined will as the first. We work because He works. We try because He will certainly do it. It seems as likely as not that He will do it in spite of us rather than by us, but He will do it.
It is with that perfect certainty of future grace in mind that Peter can tell us not merely to hope this might come about, in that way we hope for a sunny day tomorrow. No, he tells us to hope perfectly, to hope in the teleological way which brooks no doubt. It is a hope that is entire, complete, having nothing missing from it. “Fix your hope completely on the grace”, says the NASB. There is no other place to set it. There is no other target for your hope that can possibly justify that hope. Any other thing upon which you set your hopes will assuredly disappoint. Your disappointment in that unworthy target of hope will be just as complete, perfect, and entire as that grace which will be brought when Christ Jesus is revealed at His return.
Hope on that grace, and hope on it to the end. Hope on that and no other thing. And then, hoping with such certainty, be certain that this God Who has saved you has not changed down through the eons. As He was, so He is and ever shall be, and what He is primarily, above all things, is Holy. And it is this Holy God who has determined in His own wisdom to make you His children.
This moves us into the next portion of Peter’s discussion. He has made you children, so be obedient children. It is an act of honoring God whom you have taken to calling your Father. But, let us take a moment to consider that obedience to which Peter urges us. It is not the craven appeasement of pagans. It is not the empty obedience of one who does what is required of him by whoever is paying him. It is not the demanded obedience of the soldier under command. It is not the hopeless obedience of the slave who cannot do otherwise lest he be slain by his master. It is a willing subjection. Look at that! Free will enters into it. Yet, we would do well to recognize along with Martin Luther that apart from that gracious gift of faith our will would never have been free, that our will was so wholly in bondage to sin that we could not have chosen otherwise except God had redeemed us. And now, suddenly free of those bonds of sin, we find ourselves in the presence of a new Master, a good Master, a Master to whom we are only too pleased to subject ourselves.
We choose, Lord, to be servants in Your kingdom. We subject ourselves willingly to those things You reveal as our duties. This is the necessary cry of every Christian heart. I don’t say that as indicating that some new requirement is set upon you to prove your valid claim to faith. I say it in the sense that it is inevitable. The heart freed by Christ cannot but long to be bound to His service. The soul rescued by Him cries out with Peter, “Where else would I go, Lord? You have the words of eternal life!” Please, God, don’t leave me to wander off. Mark me in the ear, that I may be known as a servant to Your household for life.
Note, however, that even as we look solely to that grace to come, we do not sit idly by. Peter launches into this passage with the call to ‘gird your minds for action’. This is as much an image drawn from military practice as is Paul’s many references to Roman military practices. It presents the image of one who has pulled up the hems of his robe and belted them to his waist so as to have full freedom of movement in the action ahead. Wuest tries to give us more of this flavor in his translation. “Having put out of the way once for all everything that would impede the free action of your mind.” This is exactly what we are doing in our pursuit of sanctification and holiness.
To gird one’s mind is to take captive every vain imagination, as Paul would tell us. It is to actively seek out and eliminate every thought which presents us with temptation to sin, every thought which promulgates the least seeds of doubt. Gird your mind! Belt it up! Tie off any loose flaps of idolatry, lasciviousness, pride, or any other habit of mind that runs counter to the holiness of God. There is the message. There is the labor of the redeemed. There is the impossibly tall order set before us, and yet we do our utmost even knowing the impossibility of total success. I may not be able to remove every distraction, every clinging habit. In truth, left to my own devices, I could not remove a one. That remains as true today as it was before I was saved. The distinction lies not in some new power of self-salvation, but in a change of heart and mind. I will try. I will know concern for those things which I have tried and failed to eliminate. I will continue to work at this matter of girding my mind because it matters to me. I may not have power to resist the call of sin, but I have knowledge of my sin, and the power to call upon my God to save.
Moving on, Peter gives us yet another incentive for this labor. For, it is a labor, but as he will now demonstrate, it is a labor of love. How shall we do these things? We shall do them as obedient children (v14). The Living Bible makes the dependency of this clause plainly visible. “Obey God because you are his children.” In rather circular fashion, he loops back to notice those things not in keeping with such obedience, and then reminds us of the critical characteristic of our Father: He is holy. He is perfectly holy. He is the very definition of Holy. And, because He is thus, we must be likewise, who are His children.
I will grant that Peter, in this description, is speaking of us solely as tekna, children only in the sense of being produced by the Father. We are not arrived at huios. But, if we would be, there is no other path than for us to adopt the ways of our Father, to develop those character traits that define our Father. This is the very thing our Father commands. “You shall be holy, for I am holy.” You must needs become like Me, and you will, for I have already called you My children. And now, Peter turns that around. He points to us and says, “If you call Him your Father, let your reverence for Him show it!”
Let me set that in more parental terms. You call Him Father, so act like it! I doubt very much that I am the only parent ever to look upon his child and say, “If you wish to be treated like an adult, act like one.” Here we have God, through Peter, saying much the same. “If you wish to be counted a child of God, then act like one!” I must note this distinction, though: To the best of our understanding, this is not spoken in rebuke, but as encouragement. You are His children, for He has said so. Your confidence in this fact is fixed wholly upon the grace to come, the knowledge that He has said so, that He has established an inheritance for you in heaven, that He is the very one working in you to achieve the change for which He calls. If you are going to be holy, it is precisely because He is holy, and He is working as He is calling.
But, again, there is no room for passive faith here. There is no idler who can expect that God is at work inside of him. You shall be holy because He is holy, yet you have your part in this. If you are calling Him your Father, then strive to behave like His son. Be holy in all your behavior. Go about your business in reverence so long as you must trod this earth. Look, says Peter, He is working in you, and don’t you doubt it for a moment. But, don’t doubt this part, either: He judges every man’s work impartially. That still includes you!
Much is made, in reformed circles, of this balance of Law and Gospel. It is reasonable to see Peter making much of that very same balance in what he is writing now. John is familiarly presented to us as the Apostle of Love. God is Love. And, we latch onto that aspect of His being as though it somehow trumps and eclipses every other characteristic. James very nearly spins us in the reverse direction, painting God as demanding active obedience from us, and speaking little to nothing of His love. Peter, it seems to me, is showing us both. Yes, God is merciful in showing us His grace. Yet, He has not ceased from being just. He is at work in you, and yet, He remains the One who will judge your own work in Him. If you are going to call Him your Father, act like it! If you call yourself a Christian, act like one!
I think we need to hear this with more of that tone of rebuke in our day, for it has become too easy to play the role of stealth Christian. R.C. Sproul will speak of the way our society coaxes us into keeping our faith ‘on the reservation’, of freedom of religion, so long as it’s only on Sunday mornings and only in buildings designated for said purpose. The pressures to behave in this fashion are many and insidious. Those of us under a certain age have been trained to think this way all our lives, or for sufficiently large a portion of our lives that it becomes second nature to us. Of course we don’t speak of religion at work. Of course we don’t bring it up in polite company. It is not a fit topic for discussion when we are out and about town, and our employers surely don’t pay us to proselytize. Add to that the peer pressure of knowing ourselves likely to be ridiculed for clinging to these silly superstitions and really, what’s the point of speaking up?
Well, here’s that point! If God’s your Daddy, then be His children. Don’t conform yourselves to this blind, misguided and outright evil so-called civilization. It is not your civilization. This is not, at the end of the day, your country. How far off track we have gotten, nor are we the first, to think that America is the thing we ought to preserve as the last bastion of holiness. If this is the last bastion of holiness, then the war was long since lost! No! We, like these to whom Peter is writing, are sojourning as aliens in a foreign country, and shall be doing so for the duration. We will always be foreigners here, throughout the time of our stay (v17). We walk the earth as representatives of another nation, a higher kingdom. That message is delivered over and over and over again, because we will forget otherwise.
So, then, Peter points us to our Father, and then lays out this contrast between this One Who called us with those earthly fathers who begot our physical being. This Father who has given us new birth into a life worthy of being called life, a life that never ends and which will in time require a body able to keep up, redeemed us from what? From the futility of that way of life we inherited from our earthly fathers (v18). The NET indicates that the emphasis on this contrast between fathers is far greater than the English language can express while remaining true to the Greek. But, it doesn’t take a great deal of effort to see the contrast. Just look at the flow of Peter’s thoughts. On the one hand we have Father: Perfectly holy; the perfectly impartial judge of all men. On the other hand we have our parents: Teachers of ‘frivolous habits of life’, as Weymouth sets it down for us.
On the one hand, we have an inheritance from our Father which is “imperishable, undefiled, and will not fade away, being reserved in heaven for you” (1Pe 1:4). On the other hand, we have “frivolous habits”, a “futile way of life”. On the one hand, God Himself, the giver of Life. On the other hand, idols of clay: Dead, lifeless lumps incapable of giving anything. On the one hand, Life and on the other, death. Choose you this day! It always comes down to that. Choose! And having chosen, act. But, do not act as the hypocrites act. No! Take on the character of that one you have chosen. If you have chosen Life; if you have chosen your Father in heaven, then the action required is the pursuit of that holiness which is His chiefest characteristic.
Reading the instruction of verse 14, it would be hard not to hear Paul’s voice. Whether Peter is purposely seeking to incorporate Paul’s views as he writes to those churches planted by his fellow apostle, or whether this is his own voice echoing Paul’s, the common thought is there. Paul would set it down thusly. “Don’t conform to the world. Be transformed as your mind is renewed to prove that the will of God is only that which is good, acceptable, and perfect” (Ro 12:2). Note that the same correlation of command and reason are set down here. Don’t conform, be transformed. Why? Because God is perfect. The accents may be different, but the points are the same.
I would take this thought a step further, and suggest that the theological tendency to propound a distinction between Pauline, Petrine, and Johanine doctrine is confronted here with the thread that unites. I have long held the view that this distinction of doctrines is at the least misleading. Fundamentally, it should concern us to suppose that the one Gospel of Jesus the Christ born, died and resurrected for our salvation could or should promulgate three or more distinct bodies of doctrine in the text inspired by His own Holy Spirit. Perhaps we could ease the difficulty by proposing a triune nature to this: That these three have unique doctrinal understandings and yet they are one. But, that feels a bit forced. I would accept that the three had specific themes they tended to accent more strongly. But, I must maintain that there can be but one body of doctrine.
Our plurality of denominations would seem to run counter to such a statement, yet it holds. Our denominations cannot, certainly should not, lay claim to being founded upon direct revelation from God. They are not institutions that can point to the Holy Spirit’s direct inspiration in their founding, nor can they truthfully declare that they have the absolute, infallible exposition of Truth. Every denomination is a work of fallible men. If men were infallible, there would be no need for denominations. We would have one catholic (as universal) Church with one perfect body of doctrine understood in the same way by all. But, we don’t have this. We have many divisions of thought as to various aspects of faith. There is that common core which must hold for all who would truthfully declare themselves Christian. But, there are many other matters in which men of good faith, careful students of Scripture, arrive at distinct, orthogonal beliefs.
We can take the long-standing debates as to the nature of baptism, or the way communion ought rightly to be understood. We could consider the various perspectives on the end times. We could fold in the more recent, but equally heated debates as to the present day nature of Spiritual gifts. To this day, you will encounter strenuous disagreement concerning the sovereignty of God as over against the free will of man. Churches are divided on these points. Families are divided on these points. But, the Apostles, the Word of God? These are not divided. They have the advantage on us, having been directly inspired agents of revelation. And it ought properly to be unthinkable to us that the One True God of heaven would directly inspire contrary doctrines in revealing Himself.
When we arrive at the matter of holiness, it is clear that we have found if not the central thread of Scripture, then one of the most critical. Here, we can find all three of these apostles speaking as one. Peter: As obedient children of the Holy One who called you, be holy yourselves. Paul: God hasn’t called us for impurity, but for sanctification (1Th 4:7). Work out your salvation with fear and trembling, seeing it is God working in you (Php 2:12-13). John: Everyone (without exception) with hope fixed on Him purifies himself just as He is pure (1Jn 3:3). We can toss in James’ “faith without works is dead” (Jas 2:26). These all drive at the same point. If God is Who He is, and you are His, you cannot but be seeking to be as He is. Faith, in this regard, is not passive. Hope, for its certainty, must move us to action, must drive us to strive towards that holiness which will most fully reveal the truth of our sonship. Yes, they will know we are Christians by our love, but they will know we are God’s by our holiness.
And, this is the doctrinal point we arrive at: Holiness is not an optional aspect of a life of faith. It is a requirement. Look at that quote Peter draws from Deuteronomy. “You shall be holy, for I am holy.” It is very tempting to strip the first two words, to make the command language more clear. “Be holy because I am holy.” But, with those two leading words, the command is conjoined with promise. You must be, and you will be. There is Paul’s statement. God is at work in you (the promise), so you must needs be working (the command). We cannot make any claim of being a Christian if this effort is not in us. We have no right to speak of our certain hope if we are not striving to rid ourselves of the sins which once defined us, which sadly continue to define us.
This is not a pursuit upon which our salvation depends. Rather, it is a pursuit that depends from our salvation. Return to Peter’s statement in verse 13. “Fix your hope completely on the grace.” Solely on the grace! That is your certainty. That is your guarantee. That is your only cause for expecting a welcome in heaven, and a welcome ruling by the impartial Judge of all. But, that certainty, if it is certain, must produce its fruit. We know the list: Love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, self-control (Gal 5:22-23). We can summarize them as sanctification – holiness. That’s it. That’s the whole thrust of the Bible. Yes, our salvation is all about God, all by God, and – though the reason may evade us – all for God. But, faith is not passive. Faith works. Redemption from slavery to sin sets us free to willingly submit ourselves as slaves to the King of kings.
We are just as bound. Let us understand that. We are just as constrained to act according to the dictates of our Master. But, we have been removed from the chains of sin, where obedience was not a choice but a coerced necessity. Now, though we are bond-slaves, we are bond-slaves by choice, proud to serve, happily taking upon ourselves the mark of a permanent status as servants in His household. And, He is equally pleased to speak of us as sons. Here, Peter has restrained his thoughts to that of teknon, but God is determined to see us made huios. Jesus is the first-born of many brothers, He who is the Huios of God. His brothers cannot but be likewise huioi of God. They cannot but share in the character of the Father, pursuing the pursuits of the Father, as a people defined by the Father’s ways.
When we consider this matter of holiness, it is worth considering in light of that spotless, unblemished Lamb of God by whose sacrifice our own holiness has been made possible. Jesus, in His culminating, once for all sacrifice, embodied the long-standing requirements of service to God. God is perfect. In His holiness He is perfect. In His purity is not the least, microscopic mote of sinfulness. Indeed, we are told His holiness is so complete that He cannot even abide the presence of sin in His proximity! And where, we might ask, is He ever not proximate? The world He has created must arrive at the perfection of holiness, because He is holy. That which cannot be purified must be banished across the Great Divide, as C. S. Lewis named it. There, across that divide, is the one place we might conceive of God’s presence being wholly absent, and indeed, that is a fundamental aspect of our understanding of hell. Hell is that place where God is not. It is being separated, permanently and entirely, from His presence, never to behold His beauty, never to know His love, an eternity of living death under the full penalty of Eden’s curse.
If we would know life, if we would be fit for eternity, then we must arrive at the perfection required of His servants, a perfection of holiness equal to His own. Does that sound a tall order? It is! It is impossibly tall, apart from His own work in us. But, go back through the pages of the Old Testament. Those who were appointed to serve in the temple were required to be free of every disease and deformity. Read through the history of those dark days prior to the advent of Christ, and one sees competitors for the office of high priest inflicting physical deformities upon their competition so as to disqualify them. Look to the sacrificial system. Here, though every provision was made to make it possible for even the poorest to bring their offerings, yet those offerings were not to be a culling of their herds. Don’t be bringing your lame ox, your defective lamb, the produce of your garden which you deemed unfit for your own table. No! Bring your best. If it is to be an offering to the perfect God, it must be a perfect offering.
This requirement for perfection was, of course, fulfilled in Christ. He is the perfect offering as no other could possibly be. The most physically sound of animals could not completely fit the bill. And certainly no son of Adam could ever lay claim to the perfection of character required. It needed God Himself, come to walk the human life in perfect obedience to every least commandment of God. It needed the sinless One to die for our sins, to finish once for all the need for a sacrifice.
As a very quick aside, we recognize this finality of the sacrificial system in Christ. Why, then, is there such a fascination amongst Christian circles for the idea of seeing the Temple and the temple system restored? How can we suppose that God, having fulfilled every type and shadow instituted in that system which pointed all men to Christ would, having completed His work in Christ, return to types and shadows? What would be the point? Is God one to go backwards? I think not.
His perfect demands were met with His own perfection. When Jesus proclaimed, “It is finished!” it meant just that. Nothing remains to be done. All has been accomplished. Salvation has been made certain. But, the demand of perfection remains. God is holy, therefore you be holy. God is holy, and therefore we who are called by Him can rest assured that we will be holy. But, so long as the work goes on, we must surely find in ourselves that which works with fear and trembling towards that very goal. We cannot recognize His holiness without recognizing our own sinfulness. Yes! We, the redeemed; we the born again, Spirit-filled, saved children of God, are as yet utterly sinful. Our need for repentance did not abate at our calling. It persists, and it will persist until that point when we see Christ as He truly is, and His work in us is demonstrably complete.
More specifically, I would point out that the demand for perfection in the priesthood of God has not ceased. And, as Peter will tell us later in this letter, we have been made a holy priesthood (1Pe 2:5). Listen! This message is not going to abate. It is the entire thrust of Peter’s letter. It is the entire thrust of Scripture. From the first day in Eden to the final day in the Revelation, this drumbeat of holiness continues. And, for just as long, man has failed to heed. This is true, certainly, of those who remain amongst the reprobate. To them, the message is unchanged from the days the Church was first finding its feet. “God having overlooked the times of ignorance is now calling on all men everywhere to repent” (Ac 17:30). Yes, there was a day when you might have claimed ignorance as your defense, but that day has passed. There is now only one recourse left you, which is to repent, in truth and in full, and place your faith in Christ.
With that, we find ourselves faced with three impossibilities. We cannot place our faith in Christ. He must place His faith in us, and His faith is irresistible. We cannot repent. We can try, and we who have been given this faith in Christ by Christ will certainly repent as best we may. But, our best efforts at repentance rarely exceed regret. Scripture asks, “Can the leopard change his spots?” (Jer 13:23). And note where Jeremiah takes that. “Then you also can do good who are accustomed to doing evil.” That’s the difficulty, the impossibility, with which we are faced. We are incapable. We have so trained our flesh to this course of behavior that it all but defines who we are.
Repentance, we must bear in mind, consists not only in regret for past deeds, but also in a change of behavior moving forward. It is a determined turning around and going the other way. It is a recognition that our actions set us on the road to death, and only by turning back towards life can we hope to survive. Yet, we find ourselves so enamored of those things we have pursued in the darkened habits of our past that it proves beyond us to turn back for more than a moment.
Now we add on the demand for holiness – holiness like unto God’s own. Any chance of that was blown the moment we were born! Before we were born! Like David, we are forced to concede that our birth was brought about with iniquity, and even our very conception was steeped in sin (Ps 51:5). And, God is going to demand that we be holy? It’s already too late. Holiness, particularly that perfection of holiness that would match His own, must needs mean never knowing the stench of sin. Such holiness would release us from the commanded repentance, for were we capable of holiness, there would be no need to repent of our unholiness.
Once again, it becomes necessary for us to return to Peter’s precedent. “Fix your hope perfectly on the grace to be brought to you.” Your hope is not in your willingness or ability to repent. Your hope is not, surely not in your own holiness. That way lies disillusionment and futility. It is a path every bit as futile as those ways of life you learned from your fathers. Either way, only death can result. Isn’t that something? Pursue the life of pagan abandon, or pursue the life of rigid adherence to every demand of the very Law of God, and the results are equally futile; the one for failing to even see the need, the other for failing to see the impossibility. There is only the one hope: That hope which is fixed wholly and completely upon Christ Jesus, upon His righteousness, upon His perfect, atoning sacrifice made on our behalf. If there is any good in me, it is Himself. If there is any power to repent in me, it is because He has been so gracious as to bring it about. If there is to be any holiness in me, it can only be brought about by His working in me.
So, it’s a bit of a paradox, isn’t it? We are commanded to pursue this holiness, and yet we cannot possibly attain to this holiness unless God Himself provides it. Yet, it is no paradox at all. What, after all, is paradoxical about pursuing what is provided? What is really contained in that pursuit is not so much the idea of obtaining the thing given us, but rather of letting go those things of our past which are still clinging to us, as Paul describes it, like the dead corpse of a victim bound to us as part of our sentence. This body of death: This reminder of failure, this stench of sins that, even as we try to repent, we know we will play the harlot with again. Holiness is just beyond us. However willing the spirit, the flesh is disgustingly weak. The backbone is gone out of us.
If we see a brother who seems, so far as we know, to have won this battle, we stand in awe of him, almost as we would stand in awe of our Lord. Can it be? Has he really attained? Has he truly cast off the last entanglements of sin? Certainly, there have been those who have made such claims, and even been believed by many. But, the reality of our own condition ought to tell us this isn’t so. The sacrifice of Christ ought to tell us it isn’t so. If it were in a man to reach this place of holiness where no least thought of sin can find entry, then His sacrifice was unnecessary. If ever in this life we come to a place where we no longer need Him, depend on Him for our very being, then His death and resurrection were never a requirement, the hope we have set on Him is a false hope, and every man among us who does not keep himself perfectly holy from birth to death is doomed. That is sufficient to say that we may as well give up the whole effort right now, and return to a life of, “Eat, drink, and be merry, for tomorrow we die.”
But, God does provide. He is Provision. We are left to struggle as we go through the term of our life in this earthly exile, and that is a source of no end of questioning. Why, God? If You are working in me, if You have provided the very holiness You demand of me, then how is it that I am in this struggle? How can it be? Yet, it is, so rather I should be asking, what is the point? What is Your good purpose in my struggle with sin? Is it nothing more than a means of keeping me mindful of my need? Keeping me humble before You? I suppose that would be enough in itself, yet it seems to me it must serve some greater purpose than that.
Listen! I will tell you this much: The struggle can, if we are not well founded and reinforced in our faith, lead to despair. For those of the persuasion that saving faith is a thing one can lose, it is a terrible thing! I am still sinning, and I look at John’s letters, and he tells me that True Believers ™ don’t do that, so I must not be a true believer. Woe is me! How shall I find hope, when I cannot even bring myself to repent as I ought? How terrifying, really, is a faith built on works. How quickly must totter any thought of salvation that rests on my steadfastness! How worthless a faith that is subject to my whims. If I chose God, I could as easily choose to walk away from Him tomorrow. If faith is my choice, what comes when I change my mind, when I become forgetful? If it’s all about me, my ability to change, to believe, to persevere, then it is all nothing. But, if God, the Unchanging, Everlasting God, has chosen me? If it is God Who is in me to will and to work? Well, then, how can I possibly fail?
Is there struggle? To be sure. Those who think Paul was speaking of somebody else as he writes of the struggle of faith in Romans are deluding themselves. They insist he must have been above such doubts because they insist that they are themselves above such doubts, or at least could be if only they tried hard enough, if only they had enough faith. But, no. The only possible results of following down that path are self-delusion or disillusion.
We will, given the nature of this letter, have ample time to consider the pursuit of righteousness. It is not something we can set aside, even in the understanding that if God does not do it in us, it cannot be done. No, the recognition of our utter dependence upon Him in no way negates our own efforts. Indeed, as I have already noted from Paul’s writings, it should spur us on. It is the very recognition of God working in us that ought most to inspire us to greater efforts of our own – even as we recognize the impossibility of perfect performance. Add Peter’s encouragement: He’s your Father, so act like His Sons. Real sons honor their fathers. Real sons are inclined to give that filial honor by doing as their father does. How often do we hear Jesus Himself making that point? “I do only what I see My Father do. I say only what He tells Me to say.” There’s a reason He is called the Son of God, the Huios. His character is His Father’s character. If you have seen Him, you have seen the Father.
We who call ourselves His disciples are called to do as He does, to so closely match our own ways to His ways that like Him, we can say, “If you have seen me, you have seen Him.” Paul instructs the Thessalonians to follow his example (2Th 3:7). Elsewhere he advises to follow him as he follows Christ, though I cannot seem to find the reference this morning. Would we be so bold? Would we advise that for our lives outside the church? Would we hold up our workplace persona as a proper model for Christian behavior? How about our efforts as parents? As children of aging parents? How about when it’s just ourselves, those moments when we are pretty sure nobody can see? Yet, this should be our state.
I was talking with a brother of mine yesterday, having been contemplating many of these same thoughts, and it was good that I did. We need, often, the encouragement of our fellow believers to remind us that our struggles are the norm, not the exception. We need to be reminded that our feelings of inadequacy are just par for the course, and frankly, to feel adequate is already an overestimate of our true state. We are called, constantly called, higher. God does not lower His standards for us, He lifts us up to His standards. But, it is a long, drawn out process from our perspective. We long to be at the finish line and we’ve barely left the starting gate.
Why do we struggle so? Why does God not simply flash-fry us into perfect holiness? I cannot answer. I only know He does not do so, and that in not doing so, He has our good in mind. I only know that He is constantly calling us to pursuits that we feel utterly unfit to do. Think Moses faced with rescuing Israel out of Egypt. Me, Lord? You’re kidding! I have enough trouble talking to sheep, and You want me to speak Your words to Pharaoh? Think David, called to the throne? Really! I am the least son of a shepherd in the least tribe of Israel, and You say I’m going to rule over the whole thing? C’mon. Or, as we were studying Gideon last week, we could take his example as well. It’s going to take a lot of convincing, God, before I buy that You want me to do this thing, that it’s really You commanding. And, that’s not necessarily a bad thing. If we find ourselves on the receiving end of such direct and immediate communications, we should require solid evidence that it is from heaven and not from heaven’s enemies that we are hearing. That is, if anything, more the case now than it was then. We who have the revealed Word of God have that much more reason for skepticism towards anything that would claim to add to what God has spoken.
I am not, by any stretch, ruling out the possibility of God directly intervening. No way! My own conversion hangs upon just such an event. I know of missionaries who, in their darkest, loneliest moments, heard their Lord speaking, if not audibly then internally, to comfort them and restore confidence. I have heard that voice. Perhaps no more than the once, but that once was critical. How, then, shall I deny that He may yet speak to His children? Indeed, why would He not? That is, however, a different matter than to speak of new, revelatory knowledge. He has revealed Himself, what remains to reveal? He has left us a book sufficient to fill our lifetime with pursuit of its wisdom. Most of us will not even expend the effort to truly seek to understand the wisdom He has provided. Why, then, should He bother with giving us more, if we will not truly take in what He has already provided?
Will He speak to preserve us against certain specific calamities that lie in our path? Again, I would have to say that He does do so on occasion, for I have known Him to do so on occasion. Hard to deny personal experience. Is He required to do so? Who could make such a requirement of Him? If there be such a one, then he ought to be God rather than God being God. Can He heal? Clearly. Does He heal? Certainly. Must He heal? No. All is for Him, according to His good purpose. We, His servants, can hardly suppose ourselves in a position to demand certain behaviors from Him. Servants serve, they don’t command. If we have any authority, it is because He has delegated it to us. And, let me take it a step further. It is because He has commanded us to a certain action. If He has not done so, we cannot truly claim to be exercising that delegated authority in accord with His will, and therefore, all claim to authority becomes null and void. Just as the ambassador who promises what he is not authorized to promise cannot bind the nation he represents by those false promises, so with us. Our mere claim that we are acting according to His will is insufficient. It is only as we truly accede to His will, truly pursue His purposes by our actions that we act with any authority whatsoever, no matter our words.
This line of thought begins to turn my thoughts towards the last item I had in mind for comment. It concerns the role of shepherd, a role I have taken up in the church of late, but a role that has been my duty at home for so long as I’ve had a home and a family. Two passages that came up as parallels for the present text touch on this elder, shepherding nerve. “Guard both yourselves and the whole flock amongst which the Holy Spirit has made you overseers. Shepherd the church of God which He bought with His own blood” (Ac 20:28). Clearly this has the wider church as its intended point of application. Yet, in a real sense, every Christian household constitutes a church. There is a reason that Paul’s requirements for elders point back to family management.
It’s not just that ability to cherish a wife and raise children provides a means to measure the candidate. It’s that wife and children are a church, the first church of which a man is called to serve as elder and shepherd. If you will not guard your own flesh and blood, why should it be supposed you will guard these others, were they set in your charge? And yet, there is this: “The Holy Spirit has made you overseers.” However inadequate I may feel, it is not my strength and skill that has set me in this place. It is the Holy Spirit, acting as ever upon the determined will of the Father. He has chosen for me to take up this task, and as with my sanctification, it lies wholly in His strength to make me a useful and effective shepherd. It is when I look at my own strength and prowess that I am made weaker. It is there that I find cause for doubt and despair. But, I did not choose this! I acceded to the call, and if it was truly His call, how could I not? But, His Church, much though we make of our forms of governance and our bylaws and the like, is His. He runs it. He rules it. He cares for it and preserves it.
We must never lose sight of that. It’s easy enough for us to look about at other denominations and see their failings, even their departure from Christianity. But in doing so, we can just as easily be giving pride an in with our own church. Thank God we’re not like them! Praise be that we, at least, have our doctrine and theology nailed! Our elders aren’t fallible, our pastors don’t sin, and our children are perfect in obedience. Sure, they are.
On the flip side, we may – almost certainly will at some point – fall into criticizing our own church. What’s wrong with our leaders? Why isn’t the pastor preaching something meatier? What are those folks teaching our kids? Can’t they pick some more current songs to sing? Can’t they do more hymns? Things just aren’t what they used to be around here. I think the Spirit has left the building. Watch out! It is the Holy Spirit, according to God’s Word, who has chosen your overseers, your elders, your presbytery. It is He who as called them, He who has caused their assignment over you, and it is to Him they will answer, as will you.
I often come upon the warnings for the teacher. Let not many of you seek this role, for the demands are greater upon the teacher. Much more the elder! Here is the watchman set upon the walls of the congregation. Woe to that watchman who fails to warn of the battle being brought to us. Woe to that shepherd who has no thought for the sheep, who cares more for his own comfort and safety than for those he was assigned to protect. Woe to us if we are leaving our people to their own devices, to make their own way as best they can. How will we not arrive back at that terrible state Israel found herself in, when every man did what seemed good in his own eyes (Jdg 17:6)?
Coming back to that verse from Acts, I see that the same cause is given for service. Consider the price God paid for His church! If you will not shepherd it as you ought, do you suppose He will sit idly by while you destroy what He bought? No! The Holy Spirit made you an overseer, and the Holy Spirit will see you dispossessed and discredited if that is what is needed for the sheep. For, if they are under your charge, rest assured they are primarily under His. You are at best under-shepherds like the priests of old. Don’t let yourself be accounted a mere hireling. Consider the assessment Jesus gives of such men. “He who is a hireling and not a shepherd sees the wolf coming and runs, leaving the sheep to be snatched up by the wolf. He flees because He doesn’t care about the sheep” (Jn 10:12-13). We who take up this task of leadership are not called as hirelings. We are called as shepherds. We are called to care, to lay down our life, if necessary, for the ones we are watching over.
And with that thought, let me look to Peter’s second letter. “False prophets also arose, and there will be false teachers among you, too, who secretly inject their destructive heresies – even to the point of denying the Master who bought them! They bring swift destruction upon themselves” (2Pe 2:1). Here is the critical point of that quote. “There will be false teachers among you, too.” That part never stops, for the devil never gives up his futile efforts. And, there will be those weaker ones among us who are inclining their ears to these false messages.
I am inclined to point my finger more at the Charismatic and Pentecostal side of the aisle in addressing this, because it seems that these more spirit-focused congregations are less firmly founded in their doctrine and theology. There is a predisposition for spectacle and newness in those ranks which makes them prime targets for this sort of infiltration. But, the more conservative among us, even the Reformed among us, are hardly immune. If they were, there would be no Universalist church, no Unitarianism, no wasting remnants of 19th century liberal theology. If they were, Harvard would still be a seminary of worth. if they were, we would not be hearing of denominations splitting over what really ought to be clear-cut matters of doctrine, but which are being trumped by the opinions of man.
There is not any corner of God’s Church that does not need this warning. It can happen so swiftly. It could happen through me, God forbid. False teachers, false prophets. They ‘secretly inject’ their lies. It’s not going to be blatant. If it were, it could not hope to gain a hearing, let alone a foothold. No, it will be clothed in all the right language. It will sound ever so righteous – just like the Pharisaic teachings sounded truly pious. It will be attractive. It will come with powerful delivery, promising great glory to God. It will come with every manner of good-sounding encouragements. Look! God is reshaping His church! It’s not going to look like it used to. It’s going to be exciting now, no more of this drudgery of learning and hearing over and over again from His Scriptures. No! We’re going to see power displayed! Miracles from on high! Everybody goes home a winner. We’re going to see heaven on earth in our day.
Beware! Oh, beware. It seems no matter how clearly Jesus has told us His return will not be announced ahead of time, won’t need an announcer, yet we are inclined to hear anybody who seems to have a clue.
But, here’s the thing that really grips me this morning. This stuff is being pumped straight into our homes. It is just as prevalent and just as destructive as pornography. Much has been made of the internet having made it possible to pursue our most disgusting lusts in privacy. We don’t need to worry about being seen because we’re home alone. Well, that same delivery vehicle is stopping at our houses for other, equally nefarious purposes. “Among them are those who enter into households and captivate weak women weighed down with sins, led by various impulses, always learning but never able to come to the knowledge of the truth” (2Ti 3:6-7).
Oh! That will be decried as misogynistic and outdated. It’s Paul’s Jewish patriarchal roots showing. This is clearly his own voice, and not that of God. But, no. Like it or not, what he has written he has written at the behest of the Holy Spirit. You know, the One Who oversees His church and assigns His selected leaders to guide and guard? This is a great risk today. Every purported preacher of the Word can set up his own website. Given a cheap camera, he can produce videos, distribute them out on youtube or wherever else he may choose. He can put together an elegant website that promises to teach you all manner of spiritual secrets you just won’t learn anywhere else.
That, quite frankly, should be the first warning sign. Promises of inside knowledge for the coming revival? There’s the second warning sign. Everybody else has had it wrong, and I’m going to tell you what God said to me about getting it right? Run, don’t walk! “If anyone comes to you and does not bring this teaching, do not receive him into your house. Don’t even greet him, for to do so is to suggest support for him, and thereby to participate in his evil deeds” (2Jn 10-11). Don’t let it into your house!
Whatever happened to, “Be careful, little ears, what you hear”? We thought it was just about listening to sex talk or swearing or some such. But, far worse, far more insidious, is listening to these wolves in sheep’s clothing. Far worse is allowing the sensational word of the lying liar cause us to find the Word of God preached truly a dull thing. God appoints not only His elders but His pastors. And, the same Word of God they preach proclaims to us that their preaching is the Holy Spirit speaking to the church. I ask you: Would you yawn in the face of the Spirit as He spoke to you? Surely, you would not. You would be more likely face down on the ground in awed reverence. Would you so lightly value His word as to think yourself fit to pass judgment on its delivery? No. But, we no longer hear the pastor as the Spirit speaking. Indeed, if there is one charge that needs to be leveled at the Reformed church in our time, it is probably that the Holy Spirit is largely neglected. If the Pentecostals have lifted Him higher than they ought, we have been so laser-focused on Jesus that we forget the Spirit He Himself sent to our aid.
It is difficult, admittedly, to listen past the man in the pulpit to hear the voice of God speaking. It is even risky. If we are listening with that mindset we are likely to fall into yet another trap, and begin thinking of the pastor or teacher more highly than we ought. After all, if God is speaking through him, is he not infallible? And if he is not infallible, how can it be that God is speaking through him? Yet, I have never met a pastor or teacher worth his salt who would not warn you of his fallibility. Go and check in the Word of God. See if what I am telling you is true or not, and if it is not, then come back and show me my error, that I too may grow in Christ.
But, all of this, important as it is, is a bit of evasion on my part. For, I know there is that coming into my own household that is cause for grave concern. Yet, I have been loath to confront it. Oh, my beloved. She needs her dose of the old charismatic. Surely, it is harmless. But, it isn’t is it? It is far from harmless. It is deadly. And I, the shepherd of this household: Can I sit idle and let this stuff pour in? And pour in it does! It’s not some one-off message. It’s a movement – that most dangerous of things in Christianity. It’s a name movement. It’s a man with a mission. It’s a leader who has ceased to be a servant.
I am asked to give it a fair hearing. I’m not certain I can, nor even certain I should. But, what I clearly cannot do is blow it off while it festers and rots what is good and lovely and true in my partner.
Lord, give me both the strength and the gentleness to do this right. Let me not run from the battle, but join it in Your strength. Let me not shirk my duty in favor of a comfortable and relaxing day, but let me take up the responsibility You set upon me and discharge my duty in full. But, Oh! Go ahead of me, God, and prepare the ground. Go ahead of me, and show me every step to take, that I may be faithful in doing all You desire of me.
