Not My Own

The New City Catechism Devotional begins with this statement:

“What is our only hope in life and death? That we are not our own but belong, body and soul, both in life and death, to God and to our Savior Jesus Christ...

“Timothy Keller [comments]- It means, first of all, we are not to determine for ourselves what is right or wrong. We give up the right to determine that, and we rely wholly on God’s Word… we stop putting ourselves first, and we always put first what pleases God and what loves our neighbor… A woman once said to me, ‘If I knew I was saved because of what I did, if I contributed to my salvation, then God couldn’t ask anything of me because I’d made a contribution. But if I’m saved by grace, sheer grace, then there’s nothing he cannot ask of me.’”

That flies in the face of our culture of self-determination and expressive individualism—“I feel, therefore I am.” There are now two books titled Don’t Follow Your Heart (I’ve read the one by Jon Bloom), which both remind us that “The heart is deceitful above all things, and desperately sick; who can understand it?” (Jer. 17:9). If we follow our hearts, we are following a blind guide. The world, the flesh, and the devil have no power to save us or to fulfill our deepest needs. Only through faith in Christ can we become who God intended us to be from before time began.

I’ve been thinking a lot about the many experiences that have factored in to make me who I am today. Growing up in a Christian home, going to church weekly, and choosing a Christian college certainly played a large part in shaping my faith and my morality. Those were good things, but not everyone ends up in the same place after similar experiences. There were also plenty of negative experiences that shaped me, and I can truthfully say that it is only by God’s grace that I am alive today and that I am endeavoring to live in accordance with Scripture. I know the sinful desires of my heart that would otherwise be seen in my life if I hadn’t surrendered them to God’s will. There are many Scriptures that speak to this surrender of self-will. Here are just a few:

“Or do you not know that your body is a temple of the Holy Spirit within you, whom you have from God? You are not your own, for you were bought with a price. So glorify God in your body” (1 Cor. 6:19-20).

“As it is my eager expectation and hope that I will not be at all ashamed, but that with full courage now as always Christ will be honored in my body, whether by life or by death. For to me to live in Christ and to die is gain” (Phil. 1:20-22).

“I have been crucified with Christ. It is no longer I who live, but Christ who lives in me. And the life I now live in the flesh I live by faith in the Son of God, who loved me and gave Himself for me” (Gal. 2:20).

It boils down to this: if God created me, then He has the right to tell me how I am to live. And if He redeemed me by His grace, He also enables me to live in a way that glorifies Him, though I often fail to heed His will when I rely on my own strength and limited understanding. 

There are times when I wonder if it is all worth it, until I remember what eternity holds. Like Asaph in Psalm 73 when he began to envy the prosperity of the wicked and thought, “All in vain have I kept my heart clean” then he remembered, “Truly You set them in slippery places; You make them fall to ruin. How they are destroyed in a moment, swept away utterly by terrors!” (13, 18-19). And as Paul wrote in 2 Corinthians, “For this light momentary affliction is preparing for us an eternal weight of glory beyond all comparison, as we look not to the things that are seen but to the things that are unseen. For the things that are seen are transient, but the things that are unseen are eternal” (4:17-18).

There are sacrifices that we make in this life that seem quite painful at the time (hence they are called sacrifices!). We may feel like we are giving up our only chance to be happy and content. But in reality, we are only losing a brief earthly pleasure for an eternity of perfect peace and joy in the new heavens and new earth. I am not my own, but I belong to One who loves me far more than I love myself, and His plan for the entirety of my life is far better than anything I could ask or imagine.

“Whom have I in heaven but You? And there is nothing on earth that I desire besides You” (Psalm 73:25).

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Check out the song “I Am Not My Own” by Skye Peterson and Keith and Kristyn Getty.

© 2024 Dawn Rutan. Unless otherwise indicated, all Scripture are ESV and all images copyright free from pixabay.com. The opinions stated do not necessarily reflect the views of my church or employer.

O Captain, My Captain

We live in a culture that has tried to flip reality on its head. We are told that we discover or create our own truth, that there is no objective truth or source outside our own perceptions. And then we’re told that we have to accept, and even honor, everyone else’s perception of truth. If there is no God, no Creator, then whatever evolutionary processes formed my brain and cause my neurons fire to guide my thought processes is just as valid as anyone else’s. And, we might argue, my thoughts are best because I know how I arrived at my conclusions, but I don’t know how you arrived at yours.

Ah, but if there is a God (as I’m convinced there is), the whole story is reversed. From the biblical narrative, God created the world on purpose and for a purpose—so that His creation might come to know and glorify Him (Rev. 15:4). Our bodies were created to reflect His image to the world (Gen. 1:27). Our minds were made to learn about Him and to communicate what we know to others (Acts 1:8). Our moral standards are to be defined by God, not by our own lesser thought processes (Is. 55:8). In fact, we often can’t trust our own thoughts and desires because they are corrupted by sin (Jer. 17:9).

The very first question, leading to the first sin, was “Did God actually say...?” (Gen. 3:1-4). From that moment, the guiding drive of mankind has been to become our own gods, determining our own version of good and evil, right and wrong. But we are deceived to think that we can truly say, “I am the master of my fate; I am the captain of my soul” (W.E. Henley). Just because we choose our course does not mean we are headed to the right destination or even a viable destination.

Many in our world today, including some professing Christians, are ignoring the reality that truth comes from God, and that He alone has the right to define morality and to tell us how we are meant to live. He has done that through the written Scriptures and through the incarnation of Jesus Christ, who stated, “I am the way, and the truth, and the life. No one comes to the Father except through Me” (John 14:6). If we choose to turn away from that Truth, or try to redefine it to mean something new, we place ourselves on the path that leads to eternal destruction. As the Apostle Paul wrote, “Examine yourselves, to see whether you are in the faith” (2 Cor. 13:5a). The consequences are eternally significant.

“Enter by the narrow gate. For the gate is wide and the way is easy that leads to destruction, and those who enter by it are many. For the gate is narrow and the way is hard that leads to life, and those who find it are few” (Matt. 7:13-14).

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PS: Dietrich Bonhoeffer lived in Nazi Germany, where it was the leadership of the government that was trying to redefine truth, reality, humanity, right and wrong. We’ve democratized the process to make everyone an autonomous god. His Ethics book has some helpful observations, if you can wade through it. Here are a couple pertinent quotes I discovered:

“God is love (1 John 4:16). For the sake of clarity, this sentence must first be read with the emphasis on the word God, even though we have become accustomed to emphasize the word ‘love.’ God is love: that is, love is not a human behavior, sentiment, or deed, but it is God who is love. What love is can be known only by one who knows God; the reverse is not true... Thus nobody knows what love is except through God’s self-revelation” (248, Reader’s Edition).

“It is not Christ who has to justify himself before the world by acknowledging the values of justice, truth, and freedom. Instead, it is these values that find themselves in need of justification, and their justification is Jesus Christ alone. It is not a ‘Christian culture’ that still has to make the name of Jesus Christ acceptable to the world; instead, the crucified Christ has become the refuge, justification, protection, and claim for these higher values and their defenders who have been made to suffer” (257).

© 2023 Dawn Rutan. Unless otherwise indicated, all Scripture are ESV and all images copyright free from pixabay.com. The opinions stated do not necessarily reflect the views of my church or employer.

Organizational Pride and Shame

As I’ve read the various reports coming out of the Southern Baptist Convention (including the 288-page report from Guidepost Solutions), it has struck me how many of their decisions were based on the image they wanted to present to the world. Up until recent years, the SBC might have been described as growing, influential, mission-minded, and reaching the world for Christ. And yet under the surface there was abuse, deception, and decay. The safety and security of vulnerable men, women, and children was sacrificed to the idol of the institution. Many Protestants, while watching similar events play out in the Catholic Church in prior decades, knew that the story wasn’t going to end there. Similar themes of the abuse of authority played out in the Mars Hill Church downfall. Russell Moore commented in the July 2022 issue of Christianity Today,

“[I]nstitutions seeking to protect themselves will take on the name of Jesus to say that victims, survivors, or whistleblowers are compromising ‘the mission’ or creating ‘disunity in the body’ when they point out horrors. But God will not long abide the misuse of his name for those who worship their own twisted appetites.”

Satan has expertly warped people’s priorities in order to undermine the influence of the Church as the Body of Christ. Some have no doubt concluded that if the Church can’t be trusted, then neither can the God it claims to represent. There are a number of things that I think we can learn—as individuals, churches, and denominations.

1) No human being besides Jesus Christ is infallible. “All have sinned and fall short of the glory of God” (Rom. 3:23). When we put our pastors, elders, and denominational leaders up on pedestals, they will be sure to disappoint us in some way. We need to look for ways to guard against sinful actions through true accountability, and we need to have plans in place for when someone does fall.

2) No human institution is infallible. While the universal Church is not manmade, many of our existing programs and polity are created through human ingenuity and consensus. None of us have perfect knowledge or foresight to predict every possible outcome or prevent any possible abuse, but we should endeavor to do our best. “Therefore, having this ministry by the mercy of God, we do not lose heart. But we have renounced disgraceful, underhanded ways. We refuse to practice cunning or to tamper with God’s word, but by the open statement of the truth we would commend ourselves to everyone’s conscience in the sight of God” (2.Cor. 4:1-2).

3) The Church can only have one priority. Up until the past hundred years, the word priority had no plural. The Church exists to glorify God by obeying His Great Commission and Great Commandment. We cannot “prioritize” people, pastors, buildings, money, or statistics. To do so is to remove God from His throne. “No servant can serve two masters, for either he will hate the one and love the other, or he will be devoted to the one and despise the other. You cannot serve God and money” (Luke 16:13).

4) The Church and its leaders will have to give an account to God. We should desire to do whatever it takes for each person to have a clear conscience before God. “Obey your leaders and submit to them, for they are keeping watch over your soul, as those who will have to give an account. Let them do this with joy and not with groaning, for that would be of no advantage to you. Pray for us, for we are sure that we have a clear conscience, desiring to act honorably in all things” (Heb. 13:17-18).

5) When any segment of the Church has failed, we should seek to make amends and hold sinners accountable. We are called to confront sin in the local church (Matt. 18:15-17), and to come alongside those who have been wounded by the sins of others (Rom. 12:15-17). Those who seek to cover up sin by showing partiality are just as guilty as those who have sinned. “If you really fulfill the royal law according to the Scripture, ‘You shall love your neighbor as yourself,’ you are doing well. But if you show partiality, you are committing sin and are convicted by the law as transgressors. For whoever keeps the whole law but fails in one point has become guilty of all of it” (James 2:8-10).

Sometimes that may mean removing a person from church membership or leadership and sometimes that may require dismantling the manmade institutions that have been corrupted (1 Cor. 5:1-13). The glory of God requires that we do not seek to protect the reputation of sinful individuals or institutions. “For nothing is hidden that will not be made manifest, nor is anything secret that will not be known and come to light” (Luke 8:17).

“And the haughtiness of man shall be humbled, and the lofty pride of men shall be brought low, and the Lord alone will be exalted in that day” (Isaiah 2:17).

© 2022 Dawn Rutan. Unless otherwise indicated, all Scripture are ESV and all images are copyright free from pixabay.com. The opinions stated do not necessarily reflect the views of my church or employer.

Truth and Error

Last week I stopped by the library to pick up an autobiography that had been referenced in another book I was reading. I didn’t know much about the author, but I recognized her name as having written some Christian articles. However, after reading about 80 pages of her book I’d had enough. Yes, at one time she was a conservative Christian writer, and she probably still considers herself a Christian, but she has adopted some very unorthodox beliefs. The book started out with her discomfort with the patriarchal heritage of culture and of Christianity in particular. Some of her concerns are quite valid, and I’ve experienced similar frustrations with figuring out where women are supposed to fit in church leadership. But her solution was one I cannot accept, as she embraced a rather radical feminism. I won’t even dignify her position by sharing her name here. If I’d read the book reviews on Amazon first I never would have picked up the book.

As it turns out, this experience dovetailed nicely with the discussion in our Sunday school class today from 1 Timothy 4:1-5. Verse 1 (ESV) states: “Now the Spirit expressly says that in later times some will depart from the faith by devoting themselves to deceitful spirits and teachings of demons.” I’m sure this woman didn’t start out by adopting heresy. She started with the good intentions of questioning what she’d been taught and wondering if that was truth. Her first error came in her understanding of Scripture. She stopped reading the Bible as God’s authoritative Word and started reading it as a collection of stories written by men and full of male dominance. She read it through the lenses of her own feelings and discomfort rather than examining her own feelings through the lens of Scripture. She essentially started defining truth for herself rather than letting God’s truth define her. She also started turning to non-Christian and pseudo-Christian sources to explain her own experiences. Her belief system started to adopt beliefs out of Greek mythology, Native American tradition, mysticism, and various other sources. It seems like her “theology” took in anything that made her feel empowered as a woman, regardless of whether it was Biblically correct or not.

This is the kind of “departure from the faith” that the Apostle Paul was warning about in the first century, and it is increasingly prevalent in our culture today. People are looking for whatever “truth” will make them feel better about themselves and will help them identify their place in the world. Even many who call themselves Christian are only in it for the parts they like. Whenever the teaching gets uncomfortable or convicting, they will move on to something else that makes them feel warm and cozy.

Another book I’ve started reading is Good Faith: Being a Christian When Society Thinks You’re Irrelevant andExtreme, by David Kinnamon and Gabe Lyons. They share many statistics on what U.S. adults think about Christianity, evangelism, and other religious activities. It’s clear that few people want to accept that there is any universal truth at all, much less that any one religion can point to Truth. For most people, religion is only valuable in so far as it reinforces their own desires and feelings. That also ties in with today’s sermon from 1 Corinthians 6:12-20. If pleasure is the goal and master of life then we will be slaves of our bodies, and it’s not surprising that our culture is now legalizing whatever feels good. That is the next logical step when there is no ultimate authority who can tell us we’re sinning with our actions or attitudes.

In a recent sermon, Alistair Begg quoted the old saying “God said it, I believe it, that settles it,” but he rightly pointed out the flaw in that statement. It should say “God said it, that settles it, therefore I believe it.” Those of us who do still claim the Bible as authoritative and who call Jesus our Lord and Savior need to be careful to give God preeminence in all things, not just the parts we like. There are some things in Scripture that make me uncomfortable, but I have no right to remove them. There are also some areas that I think have been misinterpreted by various denominational traditions, but it is not my place to tell them they are wrong. They will be held accountable for their beliefs and actions on the Day of Judgment just as I will be. Some who claim to be Christians have wandered so far from the true faith that they will be surprised to hear Jesus say “Depart from Me, I never knew you” (Matthew 7:23).

May we not be among those who make a shipwreck of our faith (1 Timothy 1:19), but train ourselves for godliness (1 Timothy 4:7), that by testing we may know the will of God (Romans 12:2) through the Word of God.

“Let us hold fast the confession of our hope without wavering, for He who promised is faithful” (Hebrews 10:23).

© 2016 Dawn Rutan.

Who's in Charge?

For a while now I’ve been thinking about that controversial word “submission.” It is often considered a dirty word by anyone who has ever felt downtrodden. I’ve wrestled with it myself at times, but I can’t avoid what Scripture commands:

• “Whatever you do, work heartily, as for the Lord and not for men, knowing that from the Lord you will receive the inheritance as your reward. You are serving the Lord Christ. For the wrongdoer will be paid back for the wrong he has done, and there is no partiality” (Colossians 3:23-25 ESV).
• “Obey your leaders and submit to them, for they are keeping watch over your souls, as those who will have to give an account. Let them do this with joy and not with groaning, for that would be of no advantage to you” (Hebrew 13:17).
• “Now as the church submits to Christ, so also wives should submit in everything to their husbands” (Ephesians 5:24).
• “Let every person be subject to the governing authorities. For there is no authority except from God, and those that exist have been instituted by God” (Romans 13:1).

Wives submitting to husbands is only one example out of many. In a recent sermon on James 4, Alistair Begg stated that failure to submit to one another is failure to submit to God. Sam Andreades wrote in enGendered (a book I would recommend):

 “Obeying or submitting ‘as to the Lord’ is really about trusting the One who tells you to do this… [Y]ou are doing it because you are trusting God, trusting that God is in this picture, that He will take care of you and your own…” (117).

Sometimes it is hard enough just to trust that God is in control, much less to trust those He has placed in authority in any particular situation. But it seems apparent from Scripture that submission is expected. As an employee, a citizen, a church member, [and spouse if I were married] my responsibility is to submit to my leaders, knowing that they will be held accountable for their use or abuse of authority. That’s not to say that there are never occasions for civil disobedience or removal of authority, but that should be the exception to the rule.

As I’ve thought through the conflicting emotions related to submission, it seems that most of the power struggle is rooted in fear. How am I going to be hurt or what am I going to miss out on if I’m not the one in control of this decision? Andreades wrote: “People submitting in relationship are vulnerable, dependent upon the careful and righteous stewardship of the one in authority” (102). 

I’ll be the first to admit that the vulnerability that comes with submission can lead to painful interactions. Trust is built slowly as a relationship deepens, but it can be lost in an instant. None of us really want to be vulnerable and dependent, and yet that is a big part of God’s will for us. We are inherently dependent on Him for life, breath, daily provision, and salvation (among other things). Our relationships on earth are a mirror of that fundamental relationship, to remind us that we are designed to live in community and dependence on one another. It is also a reflection of the mutual dependence and fellowship within the Godhead.

I could raise all sorts of questions as to what submission should look like in various contexts, but I think we each need to wrestle through Scripture for ourselves. The conclusion that I have come to is that I need to trust God more fully and to ask Him for clear guidance for all the relationships in my life.

“Therefore do not be foolish, but understand what the will of the Lord is… Be filled with the Spirit… giving thanks always and for everything to God the Father in the name of our Lord Jesus Christ, submitting to one another out of reverence for Christ” (Ephesians 5:17-21).

© 2016 Dawn Rutan.