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Let me give you a principle: When Satan is going to deceive a believer, he first makes it religious. There are a lot of Christians who think that because someone quotes Bible verses and looks religious, it’s of God. That’s not true. The truth is that the most spiritual person you know probably isn’t and the least spiritual person could be a servant of God… sent to get you to be a little less religious. I hate religion and God does too. Religion is our effort to please God and find him. The Christian faith is God’s effort to get to us and tell us that, because of his Son, he is already pleased. The only people who made Jesus angry were not the winebibbers, the prostitutes and sinners. He was angry at the religious folks…
-Steve Brown
A question I have heard over the years goes something along the lines of Did Jesus come to introduce a new religion? The answer isn’t as tough as we might think.
The old adage If it ain’t broke don’t fix it couldn’t be more appropriate when it comes to religion. There are a good number of folks who are indifferent to religion and others who vehemently hate it. And then there who those so unfortunate to be addicted to it’s lure and happy within it’s confines and spell—these are the very kinds of folks who hung Jesus on the Cross (seeing that Jesus wasn’t an advocate for their religion).
Religion isn’t only broken—it’s condemned and never will be fixed.
Whatever your affection or disdain for religion—the truth is, religion has been broken from it’s inception. We make a mistake of mass calculations by assuming that Jesus came to reform or modify—replace—add to—or even offer an alternative to religion. He did nothing of the sort.
Now, in these last sentences, I want to emphasize in the bold scrawls of my personal handwriting the immense importance of what I have written to you. These people who are attempting to force the ways of circumcision on you have only one motive: They want an easy way to look good before others, lacking the courage to live by a faith that shares Christ’s suffering and death. All their talk about the law is gas. They themselves don’t keep the law! And they are highly selective in the laws they do observe. They only want you to be circumcised so they can boast of their success in recruiting you to their side. That is contemptible! (Galatians 6:11-13, The Message Bible)
God sent us Jesus to introduce himself whereas religion gives us hell.
When men and women get their hands on religion, one of the first things they often do is turn it into an instrument for controlling others, either putting or keeping them ‘in their place.’ The history of such religious manipulation and coercion is long and tedious. It is little wonder that people who have only known religion on such terms experience release or escape from it’s freedom. The problem is that the freedom turns out to be short-lived…
-From the Introduction to Galatians, The Message Bible (Eugene Peterson)
Religion is nothing more than smoke and mirrors.
If Jesus came to bring us freedom from anything he came to bring us freedom from religion—he came to deliver us from it’s death-grip. It wasn’t restraint Jesus came to deliever us from so much but it was from the old code of rule-keeping and polishing up our own spiritual resumes if you will. And nothing has changed—plenty of the same old thing goes on today.
Do you ever wonder why non-believers find us so difficult to get along and converse with? Maybe one of the big glaring reasons is our fascination with passing out a thousand rules instead of simply sharing the glorious freedom offered within the gospel message? Jesus didn’t suffer and die so that we would have the freedom to merely keep a couple of rules.
Christ has set us free to live a free life. So take your stand! Never again let anyone put a harness of slavery on you. (Galatians 5:1, The Message Bible)
I am convinced that religion is largely responsible for a good number of church people who are straight on their way to hell. So much for the separation of church and state—I’m one person who would rather see religion get the you know what out of the church.
Every man must do two things alone; he must do his own believing and his own dying.
-Martin Luther
There is no salvation by osmosis.
We can’t bank on our spouses relationship with Jesus—and the same applies to our mom or anyone else for that matter. We may have the best pastor in our city—he can’t believe for us. God makes no provision for riding right on into heaven on someone else’s coattails. We must trust Christ for ourselves. The only coattails that can bring each one of us into right-standing with God are those of Jesus Christ and him crucified. It is the greatest miracle of all—a personal relationship with God through Jesus Christ his only Son—is by far unsurpassable.
Nicodemus, the secret seeker I will call him (he did come at night to speak to Jesus after all)—came to Jesus to find out more about the spiritual teachings of Jesus. Jesus didn’t waste any time with the prestigious and religious man.
3 Jesus answered him, ‘Truly, truly, I say to you, unless one is born again he cannot see the kingdom of God.’ 4 Nicodemus said to him, “How can a man be born when he is old? Can he enter a second time into his mother’s womb and be born?” 5 Jesus answered, ‘Truly, truly, I say to you, unless one is born of water and the Spirit, he cannot enter the kingdom of God.’ (John 3:3-5, ESV)
Notice that Jesus didn’t inform him that one of his contemporaries could stand in proxy for him.
You must be born again.
The guy you sit next to at work can’t pass his relationship with God over to you like he might his sandwich he offers to share with you. Sitting in a garage won’t make you a car. Hanging out in the locker room of your favorite NFL football team won’t make you a professional football star.
The prophet Ezekiel faced a people caught up with the notion that somehow they wouldn’t personally be held accountable for their own sin. They were tossing around a saying quite regularly along the lines that suggested that sons somehow were not responsible for their own sins because of their fathers sins. God wasn’t going to have any of it any longer—he instructed Ezekiel to warn the people—”As sure as I’m the living God, you’re not going to repeat this saying in Israel any longer. Every soul—man, woman, child—belongs to me, parent and child alike. You die for your own sin, not another’s (The Message Bible).”
We will each stand by our lonesome before the judgement seat of Christ and we won’t be given the opportunity to blame our fathers for our own dis-belief when it came to Jesus Christ.
No one else can have faith in Jesus for you—you must have a personal relationship with Jesus for yourself.
Anything that one imagines of God apart from Christ is only useless thinking and vain idolatry.
-Martin Luther
As we discussed yesterday—Jesus is the Savior, not the judge, for those who trust in him alone. And yes—the news is most terrible for those who don’t.
If you have ever been married you understand the need for exclusivity. Most marriages that are more than simple arrangements won’t last if not. The vast majority of husbands don’t want their wives having a pool boy and the same applies to wives—they won’t tolerate a mistress. If you want your marriage to last—let alone enjoy a good one—there’s only room for one.
I recently watched the film Fracture which featured Anthony Hopkins (a favorite of mine). Hopkins plays a husband who catches his wife in an affair only to have her lie to his face about it—he then murders her in cold blood and ends up framing her lover who just so happens to be the detective who arrives on the crime scene. You’ll have to watch the movie to find out how it turns out.
Some things don’t leave room for two.
The exclusivity presented in the Gospel and the subsequent Epistles of Paul and others goes directly against the grain of modern thought—that thought which runs rampant and says there are many paths to God. There is no tolerance within the Scriptures—or biblical Christianity I’d say—for any such notions of plurality when it comes to salvation. When it comes to Who we must get to heaven by trusting solely we can’t have Buddha and Jesus—or even Jesus and Mary for that matter.
You don’t have to go any further than the most popular television personality on the planet to get a dose of what I am talking about. Oprah shares her views openly:
One of the biggest mistakes humans can make is to believe there is only one way. Actually, there are many diverse paths leading to what you call God.
He says I am the way–not one of several diverse paths.
11 ‘This Jesus is the stone that was rejected by you, the builders, which has become the cornerstone. 12 And there is salvation in no one else, for there is no other name under heaven given among men by which we must be saved.’ (Acts 4:11-12, ESV)
The gate remains narrow—It’s Jesus plus no one.
I have come into the world as light, so that whoever believes in me may not remain in darkness. If anyone hears my words and does not keep them, I do not judge him; for I did not come to judge the world but to save the world. The one who rejects me and does not receive my words has a judge; the word that I have spoken will judge him on the last day. -Jesus Christ (John 12:46-48, ESV)
Jesus didn’t come to condemn the world—it’s already condemned.
We can remain right where we always have been—in darkness—or we can come to Jesus. It gets no plainer than that. I remember coming to Jesus the first time. And now it is a way of life.
I can’t count the times he came to me.
That Jesus didn’t come to point fingers at all of us sinners may not sound like news, but it is. It’s news that needs repeating over and over and over again. We can be sure that to present Jesus as the one who will forgive us no matter what—even if we fail to trust him—is not to present Jesus at all. But presenting Jesus as the grand condemner as the soap-box preachers do—as some sort of hell-bent nut intent on sending as many people to hell as possible—isn’t the Jesus of the Bible either. But the good news will never change no matter who attempts to re-write it—Jesus came to save sinners and to somehow make saints out of them—not to throw stones at them. John 3:16 could easily be the most recited verse in the Bible—but the verse that follows is as good as any in the Holy Scriptures.
For God did not send his Son into the world to condemn the world, but in order that the world might be saved through him. (John 3:17, ESV)
He came to save those who would simply trust him enough to come to him.
Period.
For those of us who wish to put Jesus into a box and somehow fit him into the small ideas we have about him—we need to think again.
The essence of sin is we human beings substituting ourselves for God, while the essence of salvation is God substituting himself for us. We—put ourselves where only God deserves to be; God—puts himself where we deserve to be.
-John Stott (The Cross of Christ)
Jesus took our place.
It’s called substitutionary atonement. Truth be told, we deserved to be in his shoes and the fact that he put himself in our shoes makes all the difference. If he had passed—we’d be in a hell of a different position.
Suststitutionary atonement is a doctrine in Christian theology which states that Jesus of Nazareth died—intentionally and willingly—on the cross as a substitute for sinners. This doctrine presents Jesus’ death as a supreme act of love for mankind, and a heroic act to save people from hell. It stresses the vicarious nature of the crucifixion as being ‘instead of us’. (Wikipedia)
The perfect giving himself for the unworthy. The clean taking the place of the filthy. The sinless standing in proxy for the wretched. The spotless serving the penalty for the guilty.
He suffered our death, our torment, and our defeat.
And we get to walk free.
4 Surely he has borne our griefs and carried our sorrows; yet we esteemed him stricken, smitten by God, and afflicted. 5 But he was wounded for our transgressions; he was crushed for our iniquities; upon him was the chastisement that brought us peace, and with his stripes we are healed. 6 All we like sheep have gone astray; we have turned—every one—to his own way; and the LORD has laid on him the iniquity of us all. (Isaiah 53:4-6, ESV)
It is an exchange of incalculable proportions.
…the forgiveness of sins, the resurrection of the body, and the life everlasting. Amen
-An except from The Apostles Creed
Back in grade school we all had that moment when our teacher paused and informed the whole class that she wanted to hear questions—The only stupid question is the question you don’t ask—or something along those lines. And for the most part that’s true I suppose. Any question that’s sincere can’t be all bad. And so to wonder about forgiveness is only to be human—even if we have experienced it’s powerful reality—we still want to understand it, as we should.
The forgiveness of sins is listed with some pretty big names there in the creed several of us would have grown up reciting—the resurrection of the body and the life everlasting are no small potatoes.
The truth is that without the forgiveness of sins the other two are a mere wish.
The question Who gets forgiven? is easier to answer than we might guess—especially for us left-brainiacs. Entire volumes have been written on the matter but I think it comes down to a very basic issue. I’m not going to discuss the hot potato doctrines of election or free will and develop some sort of middle ground we can all gather around the camp fire and agree upon. Maybe some day I will get into those views and what the Bible says—and I could—but today I will leave that to the ivory tower types. I do have my moments I like to put on my Sunday best and present the five points of Keneism—I will spare my fine readers the agony. But just because I’m not going to draw a proverbial line in the sand doesn’t mean I won’t say something.
What I fear is a say-nothing-of-substance-approach when it comes to important doctrines (in case we have forgotten, Jesus was controversial—not for controversies sake but for the sake of truth). I’d rather stand for something than fall for anything—and I want the truth of God in any matter. Seems to me enough of us already don’t take the Bible seriously enough at times—me included. When it comes to our subject at hand—forgiveness—it is ever-so dangerous to take on the mind-set that much of our culture does: God just forgives every-body’s sins because he’s a nice guy. Nothing could be further from what the Bible actually teaches. God takes sin seriously (Jesus didn’t die a brutal humiliating death on a tree at the hands of blood-thirsty barbarians for nothing) as he also takes seriously the forgiveness of the hideous offense it represents to him. Just because we like to remind one another that God hates the sin and not the sinner we must not forget that God hates the very hint of sin for many reasons including but not limited to what it does to debilitate and destroy the very people who commit it—namely you and I.
1 And when he returned to Capernaum after some days, it was reported that he was at home. 2 And many were gathered together, so that there was no more room, not even at the door. And he was preaching the word to them. 3 And they came, bringing to him a paralytic carried by four men. 4 And when they could not get near him because of the crowd, they removed the roof above him, and when they had made an opening, they let down the bed on which the paralytic lay. 5 And when Jesus saw their faith, he said to the paralytic, ‘Son, your sins are forgiven.’ (Mark 2:1-5, ESV)
Jesus went on to heal the young man of his debilitating physical condition as well—however, the healing of his soul by the forgiving of his sins was the first order of business.
It always is.
That God in the person of Jesus forgives sin shouldn’t be taken lightly or for granted.
It’s a big deal.
Heaven and hell are at stake.
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