Justifying Justification

It occurred to me this week one reason why we have so much trouble understanding justification, and that’s the fact that the word “justify” has multiple meanings that are almost contradictory. Consider these common examples from everyday life and media: “I can justify having dessert tonight because I only had a salad for lunch.” “The jury agreed that self-defense was justifiable homicide in this case.” “I put this down as a business lunch in order to justify my travel voucher.” In these examples, justification is used as an excuse or an acceptable reason for doing something.

The biblical use of justification is entirely different. One definition from Wiktionary is “To absolve, and declare to be free of blame or sin.” God doesn’t excuse our sin, or declare that we had an acceptable reason for sinning. We can’t justify our sin by saying, “The devil made me do it,” or “I’m just weak in that area.” Our excuses don’t fly with God. Instead, God actually removes our sin from us through the ultimate punishment of Jesus’ death on the cross on our behalf. We’re free from blame only because Jesus took our sin upon Himself.

Romans 3:24 says that we “are justified by His grace as a gift, through the redemption that is in Christ Jesus.” Romans 4 goes on to talk about Abraham being declared righteous because he believed God. James does link faith with works, but points out that Abraham’s faith was “completed” or made evident by his actions. He trusted God, therefore he took the action of offering Isaac upon the altar.

An illustration came to mind this weekend while I was in the mountains. Perhaps you’ve seen fire towers in areas where forest fires are a danger. During fire season someone is posted in the tower to watch the surrounding land. But of course, they aren’t actually looking for flames. The first sign they will spot is the smoke coming up. By the time they see flames it’s too late. It’s similar with faith and works. Faith is the fire and works are the smoke. Smoke doesn’t do anything to make the fire hotter or bigger, it is simply the visible evidence of the fire. Just as it is virtually impossible to have a wood fire without smoke, so faith without works is impossible. It is possible to create smoke without having fire. (Just ask my smoke detector when I’m making toast!) So also it is possible to do good works without having real faith in God.

What creates fire? You need to have fuel, such as wood, an ignition source, and oxygen. Fire cannot create itself, and neither can faith. Faith is a gift of God (Ephesians 2:8). God provides the igniting spark and the breath of the Holy Spirit. And He’s given us sources of fuel such as Scripture, prayer, teaching & preaching, and fellowship. “For this reason I remind you to fan into flame the gift of God” (2 Timothy 1:6). God gives us all that we need to build the fire of faith. And as that fire grows, good works will come billowing forth (Ephesians 2:10). If we have no desire to do the good works God has prepared for us, we need to ask whether we actually have faith or just a nice pile of firewood. If that’s the case, we should seek God through Scripture and prayer and ask Him to ignite that faith within us.

True faith is saving faith (James 2:14). True faith is justifying faith (Romans 3:24). I think we tend to get confused about faith and works because we’re using the wrong definition of justification. My family has this strange habit of asking people “How do you justify your existence?” By which is meant, what work do you do that gives your life meaning and purpose? So in that sense, yes, our works do justify and give purpose to our life. But if we think that our works somehow add to our faith or improve our standing before God, we aren’t using God’s definition of justification. He has declared us free from guilt and sin. Our works can’t add anything to what He’s already done for us in and through Christ. The person who has a deathbed conversion is as justified before God as the pastor who came to faith as a child.

Faith and justification are gifts from God and are the source from which our works must flow. Otherwise we’re just blowing smoke! Does a fire choose whether to make smoke? No, it just comes naturally through the chemical process of combustion. Neither do we really choose whether to do good works. We can try to resist God for a time, but He will not allow the fire to die out completely. He is more than willing to turn up the heat on us if needed.

“In this you rejoice, though now for a little while, if necessary, you have been grieved by various trials, so that the tested genuineness of your faith—more precious than gold that perishes though it is tested by fire—may be found to result in praise and glory and honor at the revelation of Jesus Christ” (1 Peter 1:6-7).

Fear, Faith & Devotion

The following thoughts were spurred by a couple sources—Pastor Matt’s sermon this week on Church Devotion (and the subsequent H2H group discussion), as well as Mark Driscoll’s podcast from Mars Hill this week on The Cost of Discipleship. Driscoll commented that prior generations and other cultures probably have a better grasp on discipleship and devotion than we do in Western Christianity today. From the time of the early church, Christians understood that they were likely to suffer for their belief. Yet while we understand that logically, it doesn’t often have an impact on our daily life.

I’m reminded of Rafael, who grew up in a Muslim family in Mozambique. His father was a prominent Islamic leader in the community. When Rafael became a Christian, his father and brothers dragged him out of town, beat him, poured boiling oil on him, and left him for dead. I met Rafael at a Christian refugee center in Austria a couple years after that. Something like that would certainly deter a lot of people from even considering Christianity!

In our “consumer Christian” culture, we not only do not expect suffering, we don’t even want to be inconvenienced. With 350,000 churches in the US (mostly Protestant) we have people hopping from church to church looking for better programs, different meeting times, kinder people, or better theology. How many of these people would still consider themselves Christians if there were no legal church and no buildings to meet in? American Christians complain about the poor treatment they receive in the media. I hate to tell you, but if the media is our only concern we’ve got it easy. It’s going to get a whole lot worse, not better.

To bring this a little closer to home, I wonder how much devotion to Christ we live out each week. Not just attending church, reading the Bible, and praying, but seeking God’s will and endeavoring to live in an ongoing relationship with Him. The first three items can greatly help us in that relationship, but they can also be “done” without any relationship at all. If we don’t have that relationship, what is our motivation for performing Christian activities? Is it simply a habit, or seeking to win God’s approval, or looking like a dutiful Christian? But if we do have a relationship with God, hopefully our activities will flow out of a desire to know Him and to show our love for Him. While we can quantify time spent in Christian activities, it’s hard to get a reading on desire and devotion.

What happens when we encounter a little adversity, either internally or externally? It doesn’t even have to be because we’re Christians, but just the regular difficulties of life. As Driscoll points out, folks like to say, “That’s just the cross I have to bear” when talking about mundane issues that have no connection to the cross of suffering and persecution Jesus talked about in Luke 9:23-24. I’ve noticed in my own life a tendency to think, “If I just had more faith I wouldn’t be subject to that temptation or that challenge.” But that is a lie of the enemy, designed to keep us busy trying to fix ourselves rather than relying and resting in God’s love. We know that the health & wealth gospel is heresy, and yet we still tend to believe that a little more faith would take away all our problems. And then if the problems don’t go away, it can generate a fear that says, “My faith is inadequate. What’s wrong with me?” And the fear is multiplied by pride/shame saying, “I can’t let anyone know I’m still struggling because they’ll judge me for my lack of progress.”

Here are a few Scriptural admonitions that I know I need to work out in my own life. Maybe they’ll help some other folks as well.

• “I have said these things to you, that in Me you may have peace. In the world you will have tribulation. But take heart; I have overcome the world” (John 16:33). Don’t believe the lie that perfect faith precludes problems.
• “Rejoice in hope, be patient in tribulation, be constant in prayer” (Romans 12:12). Hope and patience are possible because we know Who wins in the end. Don’t forsake prayer and Scripture, because through them you can be strengthened.
• “Is anyone among you suffering? Let him pray… Is anyone among you sick? Let him call for the elders… And the prayer of faith will save the one who is sick, and the Lord will raise him up. And if he has committed sins, he will be forgiven” (James 5:13-15). Don’t let pride keep you from being honest with your brothers and sisters in Christ who can pray, encourage, and help you in difficult times.
• “More than that, we rejoice in our sufferings, knowing that suffering produces endurance, and endurance produces character, and character produces hope, and hope does not put us to shame, because God’s love has been poured into our hearts through the Holy Spirit who has been given to us” (Romans 5:3-4). Don’t give up!

Perfectionism Is Sin

This is a subject that has come to my attention only recently. I’d never really thought of perfectionism as a sin before, more like a personality trait. But the more I think about it, the more I realize that perfectionism is based entirely in pride. I should note that I’m not talking about our efforts to avoid sin but our work ethic. There are several questions that draw this out:

• What is my motivation for my actions? (Doing a good job or not making mistakes?)
• Who am I trying to impress? (God? Others?)
• Whose standards am I trying to meet? (Employer? Self? God?)
• When I do make mistakes, what is my reaction? (Embarrassment/shame? Condemnation?)

We all fall into the trap of trying to protect our reputation because of our pride. When you find something you’re good at, it’s natural to want to do your best. And we all like to be praised for doing something well. But sometimes our motivation gets twisted into seeking man’s approval instead of seeking to glorify God (Colossians 3:23).

I can say that this is a major problem for me. First, I put unnecessary expectations on myself. If a report is due the 31^st, I want to have it done by the 15^th. And if I can complete it by the 15^th, then why not the 10^th? My original logic was good—if I get something done early then I have time to recheck it before it is due. But after awhile there is no rechecking, it’s just “get it done and get it out.” Second, I pressure myself to get something done so fast that I start making unnecessary errors. And third, errors make me angry because “I should know better.” It becomes a vicious cycle of stress and frustration.

So what is the solution? I think the first step is to start asking the above questions in regards to a particular task. I can look at the actual deadlines and not try to move them up. Assuming I’m not procrastinating, I’ll probably still get things done ahead of time, but I don’t have to rush to meet some self-imposed deadline. Chances are good that no one will notice if a report goes out a week later than it used to. Even if they do, are they the ones who determine my responsibilities or my value?

The second step is to remember that I’m human and mistakes come with the territory. Football player Benjamin Watson was told by his father, “When our worth is tied up in our perfection, we are not only fighting an impossible battle, we are turning our back on God’s grace. There’s no freedom in that” (as quoted Guideposts Sept. 2013). We all make mistakes, but that doesn’t change our value in God’s sight, and it shouldn’t change our sense of self-worth either. That’s what God’s grace is for, and we should give ourselves some grace as well. When I inadvertently put the wrong number on a state sales tax form, I was relieved to learn that we could request a penalty waiver due to our “good compliance record” (no mistakes in 3 years). If the state can give a little grace, why can’t I?

The third step is to learn from mistakes, not beat myself up over them. I used to joke about my predecessor who did the same task three different ways to make sure he came up with the same numbers. I haven’t gone that far (which I think could become obsessive), but I do find ways to build “self-checks” into my procedures. I can either dwell on the past or I can move forward.

Philippians 3 is a great picture of pride that becomes rubbish. Paul had every reason for pride as a “perfect” Jew. But then Jesus got hold of him and all that went out the window as he realized the “surpassing worth of knowing Christ Jesus my Lord” (v. 8). Then the only perfection he sought was “that which comes through faith in Christ” (v. 9). Only then could he say, “One thing I do: forgetting what lies behind and straining forward to what lies ahead, I press on toward the goal for the prize of the upward call of God in Christ Jesus” (vv. 13-14).

May that be the only prize that I seek and my only motivation for work, not for power, prestige, or the praise of men!

All the Folly

I want to share a few thoughts about a song that brought me to my knees at church a few weeks ago—“My Jesus, I Love Thee.” The line that really got my attention was “For Thee all the follies of sin I resign.” The following is an expansion of what ran through my mind in the few seconds it took to sing that. (Actually, I think my whole thought was, “Ouch!”)

“For Thee” – My desire to be free from sin can’t be based on anything but God’s holiness and the righteousness He gives me in Christ. It’s not a self-improvement kick, to make me look better or even to be a better witness for Him. It’s not about my pride in overcoming sin. Nor is it about the flip side of pride, self-contempt for my failure to overcome sin. My only motivation should be “for Thee,” out of love for the One who loves me regardless of how good or bad I look.

“All” – Is it really my desire to give up all sins, or just the ones that are evident or shameful? I may be able to hide certain sins from most people, but not from God. Pride makes me want to keep up a good façade, but nothing is hidden from God’s judgment. Is it His standard I follow, or the “average Christian” standard? I know I won’t be sin-free in this lifetime, but that should be my desire.

“The follies of sin” – Do I really believe that sin is folly? From various dictionaries, folly means foolish, costly, unwise, stupidity, evil, and wickedness. It is not just a mistake or error, but a foolish choice to elect sin over obedience, wrong over right. I don’t want to make stupid choices when I know what is right. But again, it should not be because I need to be right, but because God is holy and right and good.

“I resign” – I can’t just take a vacation from sin, or change positions within the company, but I need to quit. I don’t work for that master anymore. I have a new Master in Christ, and I need to listen to Him. Even when the old master promises benefits and rewards I think I want, I can’t return to his employment.

The verse goes on to say, “My gracious Redeemer, my Savior art Thou; if ever I loved Thee, my Jesus, ‘tis now.” He has redeemed me from the power of sin, so why do I still feel powerless? He has saved me from the consequences of sin, so why do I still feel condemned? I am more convinced than ever that I have a very real enemy who wants to keep me living as if I am in bondage, instead of living like the free, loved, child of God that I am.

The second verse begins, “I love Thee because Thou hast first loved me, and purchased my pardon on Calvary’s tree…” On my own I can do nothing. I would be bound to serve the enemy forever. But because of Christ’s love I can love, I can overcome sin, and I can live in the freedom of Divine pardon. I’m not just let out of prison, but I am pardoned from all guilt and my record is wiped clean.

Sam Storms writes in Pleasures Evermore, “The power that the pleasures of sin exert on the human soul will ultimately be overcome only by the superior power of the pleasures of knowing and being known, loving and being loved by God in Christ” (p. 20). And in The Singing God, “I can accept the fact that God is love and that He delights in pouring out His affection on us. But my heart yearns to feel the gentle and reassuring warmth of His love for me with all my faults and failures, with all the secret sins no one else knows about but God, without my first changing and becoming different… or better. I need to know that God loves me just the way I am now… today!” (p. 7).

I feel like I keep repeating the same themes in my blog posts, but that’s because I have to keep being reminded of what God is trying to teach me. And from what I’ve read and heard, I know I’m not the only one who struggles to believe that the Christian life is not about what I do but about being loved, accepted, chosen, and redeemed by the God of the universe.

Just Trust Me

I just finished rereading Running on Empty by Fil Anderson. One of the thoughts I marked was this:

“Bottom line, I had read the Scriptures looking for anything that might support my own interests and desires and would allow me to live in the illusion that I was in control. I had become frighteningly like the Pharisees who were, in fact, the best Bible students of the first century, yet in the process they missed out on knowing Jesus. Jesus read them accurately when he said, ‘You search the scriptures because you think that in them you have eternal life… Yet you refuse to come to me to have life’ (John 5:39-40). Like the Pharisees, I was more interested in security than intimacy” (p. 120).

I suspect we’ve all been guilty of this at times. We search the Scriptures for answers to our questions; looking for peace, joy, and hope; seeking guidance and purpose; researching a sermon topic; maybe even looking for excuses for our sin and weakness. But how often do we go to Scripture simply seeking to know God better, or more specifically, to find our life in Jesus Christ? We can be filled with facts about God and about the Bible and yet never know the One who gives us eternal life.

I’m not saying there’s anything wrong with having a good knowledge of the Bible. Sometimes you have to absorb the bare facts before you can begin to interpret their meaning and understand the bigger picture of what God is doing in and through our world. But if we never get beneath the facts, we can miss out on the relationship with our Savior. We may even become one of the many church-goers who never truly become Christians.

For myself, I know I tend to look to Scripture (and plenty of other books) for answers to my problems, often forgetting that Jesus Christ is really the only answer. A couple other quotes from Anderson:

“God appears to equip people for service while they struggle through places of sorrow and suffering” (p. 164).

“Each day it’s absolutely crucial for me to listen for God’s voice, affirming that I am God’s beloved child. Only then can I resist the temptation to reinhabit my false identity. Only when I am listening to God’s voice, and not my own, am I set free from having to prove to the world (or to myself) that I am worth loving, because God has already, repeatedly, affirmed his love for me” (p. 176).

If I were God, I probably would have written the Bible as a self-help manual. “Here are all the instructions you need to follow to get from birth to eternal life. Now get to work.” Instead, God says, “Here’s what you need to know about Me. Now trust that I’m in control.” We try to state our case for why we need more information—“Just trust Me.” We comb through Scripture for some hidden code we might have missed—“Just trust Me.” We plead for a change in circumstances or feelings—“Just trust Me.” We look for someone else to give us love, affirmation, and direction—“Just trust Me.”

Whether we believe it or not (and sometimes it’s very hard to believe), God is in control and He knows what He’s doing. The question is whether we know Him well enough to trust Him when life is hard, confusing, or dark. Like little children, we should have the confidence to hold His hand and go where He leads. But more often than we’d like to admit, we pull our hand away and sit down and pout. When was the last time God carried you, kicking and screaming, out of the candy aisle and home for a good meal and a nap? We recognize the immaturity and self-centeredness of children, but are we really much different?

I don’t think it is any mistake that Scripture calls us “children of God” many times. We aren’t independent, self-sufficient, adult heirs of the Father, but dependent, needy, often confused, little children. May we learn to trust our Father, who really does know best.

“Those who know Your name put their trust in You, for You, O Lord, have not forsaken those who seek You” (Psalm 9:10).

Dry Bones

Human bones are around 22% water. Normally, bones are slightly flexible or else we’d experience a lot more breaks than we do. Once a person dies, the water begins to evaporate and the bones become dry and brittle. I think perhaps a similar process may happen in the human spirit at times. Without regular infusions of the Living Water, we become dry and brittle and lose the resiliency we would otherwise have.

When Ezekiel had his vision of the valley of dry bones in chapter 37, after they were resurrected and breath returned to them, they still said, “Our bones are dried up, and our hope is lost; we are indeed cut off” (v. 11). Having physical life is not enough to restore hope, but they need the Spirit and the promises of the Lord, and so do we.

I wonder if the man at the Pool of Bethesda (John 5) was “dried out”? He’d been an invalid for 38 years and apparently had spent most of his life laying there waiting for a chance to be healed. But when Jesus showed up, He had to ask “Do you want to be healed?” It seems like the man had lost hope and all he had left were excuses. The Samaritan woman at the well (John 4) was another person who was dried up and seeking water. Jesus introduced Himself as the Living Water that would fill her real needs. It’s funny how both these people were seeking something more than the physical water that was readily available.

We’ve probably all had some dry times, when life beats you up or knocks you down, when it seems like you’re at the bottom of a well with no way to climb out. At least a couple folks in Scripture found themselves literally at the bottom of the well—Joseph and Jeremiah. I think we can learn a few things from them.1) They didn’t get out of those wells on their own. They had to be lifted out. 2) God knew exactly where they were and used their circumstances for His own good. 3) They didn’t get transported directly to the mountaintop. Their lives still had a lot of ups and downs after the well. We face the same issues.

1) We need help to get us out of whatever well we may be in. That help may come in many forms—encouragement, prayer, physical aid, wise counsel, healing, etc. Whatever the case, it certainly looks like human help is essential. Rarely does God intervene by miraculous means without using people in the process.

2) Our circumstances are never a surprise to God. He knows where we are, how we got there, how we’ll get out, and how He’s going to use it for His ultimate glory. This is one hope we can cling to when all seems lost. We probably won’t know all those answers right away and we don’t need to. God’s grace is sufficient for wells, storms, and thorns (2 Cor. 12:9).

3) When we do get out of the well, we can have a tendency to think, “I’m glad that’s over. I’ve done my time and now the rest of life will be a breeze.” But that may not be the case. Living in a fallen world, opposed by spiritual forces, God doesn’t promise that the scales of pain and happiness will be balanced in this life.

Ultimately, our hope, peace, and joy must be rooted in the faith that God is who He says He is and that His promises are true. That faith is strengthened by the Word of God and by the Body of Christ. We need regular filling with both to keep us watered and growing and to keep us from drying out and blowing away.

If you’re feeling dried up and hopeless, maybe you need to look at your source of water and see if it is Living Water or just an imitation. “Whoever drinks of the water that I give him will never be thirsty again. The water that I will give him will become in him a spring of water welling up to eternal life” (John 4:14).

I Wish

Fill in the blanks in this old commercial jingle: “I wish I were __ _____ ______ _____. That is what I’d truly like to be; For if I were __ _____ ______ _____, Everyone would fall in love with me.”

This is not just a catchy tune. (My apologies for getting it stuck in your head.) It’s also a pretty accurate description of our mentality. Not that we want to be hotdogs, but that we’re always trying to fill in the blank with whatever we think will make us happy, successful, and loved. If I were just prettier, smarter, richer, married, divorced, taller, tanner, a parent, an empty-nester, a homeowner, employed, retired… The list goes on and on. We think that the next thing will finally satisfy our needs. As the old saying goes, “How much money is enough? Just a little more.”

There are several attitudes and beliefs that both feed into this mentality and grow out of it.

• Discontentment – What I have is not enough. I feel I deserve something more or better.
• Envy – My neighbor has a better house, job, family, etc. I wish I could have that.
• Lack of thankfulness – How can I be thankful when I don’t have everything I want or need?
• Lack of trust – God hasn’t satisfied my desires, so He must not love me. People have failed to provide for me. I have to take care of myself.
• Lack of love – I don’t feel loved, therefore I must not be loved, therefore I don’t need to love people who don’t love me.

Obviously Scripture has a lot to say about where our hopes and dreams should be placed and what our expectations should be:

Paul says, “I know what it is to be in need, and I know what it is to have plenty. I have learned the secret of being content in and every situation, whether well fed or hungry, whether living in plenty or in want.” And what is that secret? “I can do everything through Him who gives me strength” (Phil. 4:12-13). Contentment lies in knowing the One who loves us, cares for us, and provides for us all that we really need—eternal life with Him.

 “What causes fights and quarrels among you? Don’t they come from your desires that battle within you? You want something but don’t get it. You kill and covet, but you cannot have what you want. You quarrel and fight. You do not have, because you do not ask God. When you ask, you do not receive, because you ask with wrong motives, that you may spend what you get on your pleasures” (James 4:1-3). We may not literally be guilty of quarreling and murder, but that envious attitude can sure kill a relationship.

“Be joyful always; pray continually; give thanks in all circumstances, for this is God’s will for you in Christ Jesus” (1 Thess. 5:16-18). Don’t just give thanks when all is right with the world, but in all circumstances.

“Delight yourself in the Lord and he will give you the desires of your heart. Commit your way to the Lord; trust in Him and He will do this: He will make your righteousness shine like the dawn, the justice of your cause like the noonday sun” (Psalm 37:4-6). If God’s desires are ours, we can be sure that they will be fulfilled. But if our focus is anywhere else, we’ll be frustrated when things don’t go our way.

“A new command I give you: Love one another. As I have loved you, so you must love one another. By this all men will know that you are My disciples, if you love one another” (John 13:34-35). Our love doesn’t depend on feelings or on the people around us, but on God alone. He has shown us the ultimate love, and so we are to love others regardless of how we feel in the moment.

You’d think that Christians ought to be the most joyful and content people on earth, but much of the time we don’t seem to be any different than the non-Christians around us. We’re all working to get a little more money, a little more knowledge, a little more recognition, etc. One day we will wake up and see that all our discontentment has been a waste of time and energy, though for some of us that moment won’t come in this lifetime.