Treating Sin

Happy Tuesday evening! I trust that the start of your week has been pleasant and fruitful. I’m putting the finishing touches on my new home mortgage. I’m also beginning to pack up and purchase furniture for my new home.  In fact, I worked last night to get a 36-inch-wide couch through a 30-inch- wide door. Somehow, some way (with a little help, including a door removal), the couch made it through the door! Who says God doesn’t still work miracles?

              One of the things I’m most looking forward to about home ownership is finally having a lawn to manicure. I mentioned in one of my earlier posts that I’m pretty OCD when it comes to lawn maintenance.  I plan to take pride in how my yard looks. I got it from my dad. He got it from his dad. There could be worse traits to inherit!

              Dad spends countless hours each week perfecting his grass, landscaping, and patio. I must say that everything looks immaculate – except for one nagging issue.  Due to the lack of shade in some parts of the property, the lawn is prone to being infiltrated by Bermuda grass. Bermuda is a short, thick grass that is the bane of any green-thumb’s existence. You see, Bermuda often starts as a small patch. Soon enough, however, the Bermuda takes root in the soil and spreads to other areas of the lawn. Once Bermuda has taken hold, it can become very difficult to contain and eradicate. My dad’s yard was knocking on the door of being completely covered in Bermuda.

              Just as Bermuda grass takes hold of the soil and spreads aggressively, so too does the sin in our lives. Some of us may have patches of sin in various aspects of our lives whiles others may have one big, nagging patch of sin. Bermuda is notoriously difficult to get rid of. Dad had to kill off most of his lawn using chemicals and re-seed the entire yard. Similarly, if we don’t treat our sin in a timely manner, it can take hold and eventually consume our entire lives.  So how do we “treat” the sin in our lives to ensure it doesn’t spread? I’m so glad you asked! Following the four forthcoming steps will allow you to contain sin and stop its spread:

1.       Acknowledge

2.       Analyze

3.       Ask

4.       Awaken

Acknowledge – The first step in controlling sin is to acknowledge that we are all sinful human beings. Best known as the doctrine of the “total depravity of man”, Scripture teaches us that the very essence of our human nature is that we are inherently sinful and do not seek the ways of God. Take for instance Romans 3, verses 10 and 11: “None is righteous, no, not one; no one understands; no one seeks for God.” Furthermore, Paul tells us in 1 Corinthians 2:14: “The natural person does not accept the things of the Spirit of God, for they are folly to him, and he is not able to understand them because they are spiritually discerned.” In other words, to be human is to be sinful. Only one man was able to walk without sin on this Earth – I’ll give you a hint, it isn’t you or I!

Analyze – To combat sin, we must analyze the what leads us in to sin. If you didn’t skip over the first point (caught you!), you know that as humans, we are sinful by nature. While this is an important point and should not be minimized, the Christian life requires us to avoid situations that may give rise to occasions of sin. Likely, there are certain places, people, and thoughts that appear in your life and make you more prone to sinful decisions. I know that rationalization is a thought I have that makes me much more likely to commit sin. I shared in my debut blog post that I struggle with over-consumption of alcohol. I often rationalize that I’ll only drink two or three beers and stop. A lot of times I do just that! However, there are times where two or three beers may become five or six. Before I know it, my rationalization has led me into sin. Knowing which environmental factors or thought processes push us toward sin is key in being able to prevent sinful roots from taking hold.

Ask – One of the most important (and often overlooked) steps in fighting sin is to simply ask God to deliver us from instances or occasions of sin. It sounds so simple doesn’t it? I worked through the content of this blog post on the way to work Friday morning. However, it wasn’t until Sunday morning that I realized why this step is so important. Sunday morning, I had the privilege of attending service at Yellow Creek Baptist Church in Cumberland City, Tennessee. The morning’s sermon was delivered by Pastor Mark Proctor.  The pastor noted that we take our problems to everyone around us – our spouse, our siblings, our co-workers, our pastor. But he noted that we often fail to take our problems to the only person who can work all things for good – our almighty God. Romans 8:28 tells us: “And we know that all things work together for good to them that love God, to them who are the called according to his purpose.” In fact, Jesus Christ himself taught us to pray this way. In the words Jesus taught us, we are exhorted to ask God to “lead us not into temptation, but deliver us from evil”.

Awaken – So what do we do after we acknowledge our sinful nature, analyze what leads us into sin, and ask God to deliver us from sin? We simply awaken to the good news of what Jesus Christ accomplished on our behalf on Calvary. In the opening point, I hammered home the point that sinfulness is the defining human characteristic. Luckily, God made a way for wayward humans to be made right with him. Through Christ’s bloodshed on the cross, all who believe in Him can be cleansed of sin and raised to everlasting life. 1 John 1:7 tells us: “But if we walk in the light, as he is in the light, we have fellowship with one another, and the blood of Jesus his Son cleanses us from all sin.” The Spirit of God led the writer of Hebrews to write in 9:22: “Indeed, under the law almost everything is purified with blood, and without the shedding of blood there is no forgiveness of sins.” So rejoice in this truth- that our inherent sinful nature does not reflect our status in the eyes of the omnipotent Father.  God knows our sin better than we do, and he chose to love us anyway!

              So, acknowledge, analyze, ask, and awaken. Seems easy enough, right? But I’ll add one caveat – Don’t expect your sin to vanish after "treating" it just once. My dad initially sprayed chemicals on his Bermuda and re-seeded last fall. Early this spring, his yard was looking immaculate. Nonetheless, slowly but surely small patches of Bermuda began to reappear. Dad was forced to spray the Bermuda with chemicals once again to destroy the unwanted patches. Don’t be discouraged if occasions of sin reappear in your life. Stopping the spread of sin is an ongoing process that will consume the rest of our lives. Our joy is in the knowledge that sin has no eternal power over us as Christians. Christ has won the battle for us, and His blood has purchased our salvation.

In Christ,

Kendal May

Certainty In Christ

              Allow me to reintroduce myself! Just kidding, but it has been quite a long time since I’ve sat down to write in this space. It’s been a busy few weeks at work with mid-year financial result reviews. I’m also happy to announce that I bought a house. Come the middle of August, I’ll be an official resident of Murfreesboro, Tennessee! The new location should cut down my commute by about 30 minutes, so needless to say I am extremely excited. While I am excited to be sure, I’d be lying if I said I wasn’t a little nervous. Being a first-time homeowner, there will be a lot of things I’ll have learn on the fly. I’ll have to make mortgage payments (Nashville area ain’t cheap!), manage maintenance expenses, and find various ways to make the house a home. To sum it up, there’s a lot of uncertainty.

              But uncertainty is nothing new in our lives, is it?  How many things in our life do we truly have control over? Think about all the things in our lives that are variable:

-          What will traffic be like during our commute tomorrow?

-          Will we get that raise or promotion at work?

-          Will gas prices go up?

-          What will the economy be like next year?

-          Who will be the president in 2020?

-          Will bro country ever die?

-          Will Bartolo Colon ever retire (look him up!)?

-          Will Michigan beat Ohio State this year (there’s always hope, c’mon Jim!)?

But you get the point. Our daily lives are filled with more variables than a high school algebra test - You never ended up using any of that stuff, did you? But this column isn’t meant to be a downer today – the news gets better. What if I told you there is certainty in the single most important area of our lives? Well, it’s true! Scripture clearly articulates that our God never changes. Take Hebrews 13:8 for example: “Jesus Christ is the same yesterday and today and forever.” The point is further driven home in James 1:17: “Every good and perfect gift is from above, coming down from the Father of the heavenly lights, who does not change like shifting shadows.” In case you wondered if God’s character changed in the Old Testament, let’s look at Numbers 23:19: “God is not human, that he should lie, not a human being, that he should change his mind. Does he speak and then not act? Does he promise and not fulfill?”

Don’t you wish you had this level of certainty that all the other various aspects of our lives wouldn’t change? I sure do, but if I had to choose, I’d rather be certain of the possibility of spending eternity with the Creator than anything else. I’m not trying to turn this post into a debate over eternal security (once saved, always saved). There’s always Twitter (or my comment section below – have at it!) for that discussion. Regardless of where you fall on the doctrine of eternal security, I think we can agree on the basics. If we place our faith entirely in Christ and by doing so fulfill the law of Christ (love God and love neighbor), we can have the certainty of eternal life.

Trusting God shouldn’t be as difficult as it is. Trusting God is like knowing the outcome of a ball game before placing a big wager. (Not condoning gambling!).  Trusting God is like knowing the return on your stock shares before you purchase them. It’s like knowing if that cute girl will say yes when you casually ask her to coffee. Through the divine gift of the Scriptures, we have certainty of what is in store for us when we place our faith in Christ. We know the result of the battle. Christ was and is the victor. Through his victory and blood shed on Calvary, we can be reconciled to God despite our sinful and wicked nature. What a thing to be certain of!

So I’d ask you to pray for me as I enter a time of newness and uncertainty in my life. Pray that I stand on the promises of the Godhead found in Scripture. I’ll certainly do the same for you. Please submit any prayer requests in the comments section directly below this post! I’d love to get to know my readers.

In Christ,

Kendal May

Reflecting on Galatians

Another weekend has come and gone. Where has the time gone?  I thought this was supposed to be a long weekend? I hope you had a great holiday weekend and were able to enjoy time off work with family and friends. I’m currently house hunting and put in my first offer on a house yesterday! Unfortunately, the offer didn’t work out and the search marches on. It’s a tough market out there to be sure! As I write this, strong storms are surging through the Franklin, TN area. My power went out briefly, so if I don’t finish this post you know why.  Let’s pray that the storms pass with no significant damage.

              Over the past few nights, I’ve gotten back into the Word of God. I spent time reading through the entire Epistles of James and Galatians (They are short!).  Daily reading of the Word was one of the “Spiritual Terraces” I wrote about in my sophomore blog post.

You can read that post here: https://kendalwordandsacrament.blogspot.com/2019/05/spiritual-terraces.html

              Getting back into the Word has been very edifying for me. I can honestly say I’ve taken something away from each chapter I’ve read. I’ll work through James in a future blog post when I compare James’s words to Paul’s writings in the Book of Ephesians.  So for tonight, I’ll reflect on what I took from Paul’s epistle to the churches in Galatia.

              A little bit of trivia to start out with! Galatians is the only one of Paul’s epistles to specifically be addressed to multiple churches. Paul addresses his communication to the “churches of Galatia”. In this particular epistle, Paul sounds like a disappointed parent admonishing his children for turning away from the true Christian faith. I don’t yet have children, but I’m sure the parents out there can empathize with Paul! I’m sure I will know the feeling one day.

              Paul tells us that the Christians in Galatia have fallen victim to the Judaizers. Who are the Judaizers you ask? They were religious teachers who insisted that in addition to following Christ, Christians much also observe the Jewish Mosaic law in order to be saved. Paul points out the Galatians were still engaging Old Covenant circumcision (replaced by Baptism in the New Covenant no less!) as a result of the erroneous teachings of the Judaizers.

              So how was the heretical Gospel proclaimed by the false teachers able to take root so quickly after Paul had initially departed from Galatia? First, the Judaizers engaged in political-ad style attacks on Paul and his teachings. They claimed that Paul’s teachings did not accord with those of James, Peter, and John. To set things straight, Paul recounts the story from the Acts of the Apostles in which Peter was eating and fellowshipping with the Gentiles (Galatians 2: 7-14). In Chapter 5, Paul notes that the Judaizers claimed that Paul had once taught that circumcision was necessary. Paul makes it perfectly clear he no longer believes circumcision to be necessary in 5:11, saying “And I, brethren, if I still preach circumcision, why do I still suffer persecution? Then the offense of the cross has ceased.”

              In addition to the smear campaign, the message proclaimed by the Judaizers could have been seen as a very attractive one. I read several commentaries on Galatians that note that the Judaizer Gospel was a way for the Galatians to set themselves apart as a higher order of Christians – ones that relied on obeying the law of Moses in addition to placing faith in Jesus Christ.  Sounds pretty heretical doesn’t it? No Christians today would ever place their eternal hope in anything but Jesus, would they?

              Let’s not be too hard on the Judaizers and Galatians.  Our churches today are littered with people who try to earn God’s favor through various good works. I count myself among them sometimes (Hey, I’m working on it!). My pastor (Dr. Matt Pearson) points it out in his sermons all the time. To many of us measure our justification before God by how many Bible verses we have memorized, how many committees we serve on, or how many rosaries we pray (Shout out to my Catholic readers!). Let the Galatians be a lesson for you. When the temptation to justify yourself on works arises, remember Paul’s admonition to place our faith in Christ – and Him alone.

              One last thing I wanted to touch on – Paul’s insistence that we must persevere in our faith. Galatians 6:2 implores us to “Bear one another’s burdens, and so fulfill the law of Christ”. In Chapter 5:19-22, Paul warns the Galatians “The acts of the flesh are obvious: sexual immorality, impurity and debauchery; idolatry and witchcraft; hatred, discord, jealousy, fits of rage, selfish ambition, dissensions, factions and envy; drunkenness, orgies, and the like. I warn you, as I did before, that those who live like this will not inherit the kingdom of God. But the fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace, forbearance, kindness, goodness, faithfulness”.  Let’s draw a distinction here – In the same letter in which Paul declares us free of the law of Moses, he binds us to the law of Christ. How do we fulfill the law of Christ? When God draws us out of the darkness and into an intimate relationship with Him (a work of grace), Christ’s righteousness is imputed to us through the work of the cross. As part of the intimate relationship, God graces us perpetually through His word as well as the sacraments. This grace alone (and nothing we conjure up of the flesh) allows us to fulfill the law of Christ – to love God and love neighbor.

In Christ,

Kendal May

                           

The Question of Works (Part I)

It’s been a while since I’ve written one of these! It’s good to be back after a fruitful start to my work week. Summer is in full swing here in Tennessee as attested to by the brutal streak of mid-90s weather we’ve had. After enduring several years of brutal (but beautiful!) West Michigan winters, I won’t complain! Over the past few weeks, I’ve enjoyed following the Southern Baptist Convention annual meeting as well as the Presbyterian Church in America’s General Assembly. There were certainly some interesting developments from both camps. Maybe, I’ll devote a post to my thoughts on those assemblies here soon.

Diving in…

Recently, during a discussion on the faith, I heard a shocking statement. I was told that Jesus “never spoke of how to be saved”. First and foremost, I was blown away by the fallacy of this statement. In many instances in the Gospel testimonies, Jesus speaks of how to come to eternal life.  Just to point out a few:

John 14: 6 – Jesus answered, “I am the way and the truth and the life. No one comes to the Father except through me.”

John 3:3 - Jesus answered him, “Truly, truly, I say to you, unless one is born again he cannot see the kingdom of God.”

I could go on and on. These are just a few examples (heavy on John tonight) in which Jesus Christ speaks clearly on the means of salvation. Although my friend’s statement on Jesus was just proved to be patently false, it did make me think a little harder about Christ’s earthly ministry. I certainly don’t claim to be a Bible scholar, but it seems to me that Christ’s earthly ministry (pre- death and resurrection) focused on the following areas.

1.       Teaching on salvation

2.       Teaching on morals

3.       Performing signs and miracles

Numbers one and three above are inextricably linked. More specifically, the signs and miracles performed by Jesus served to attest to His divinity.  His divine nature then gives credence to the fact that He is who He says He is - “the way, the truth, and the life”.  Signs and miracles were physical acts designed to show us that all things, most importantly everlasting life, can be accomplished through Christ. In a similar way, Christ now gives us the sacraments as a physical representation of His almighty power and grace.

So that leaves number two. Christ spent a good chunk of his earthly ministry instructing his followers on morality. Perhaps, the most famous teaching on morality is contained within the Sermon on the Mount.  From this monologue we get the beatitudes in Matthew 5: 3-10:

“Blessed are the poor in spirit, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven.

 “Blessed are those who mourn, for they will be comforted.

 “Blessed are the meek, for they will inherit the earth.

 “Blessed are those who hunger and thirst for righteousness, for they will be filled.

 “Blessed are the merciful, for they will receive mercy.

 “Blessed are the pure in heart, for they will see God.

 “Blessed are the peacemakers, for they will be called children of God.

“Blessed are those who are persecuted for righteousness’ sake, for theirs is the kingdom of            heaven.”

              Furthermore, Jesus tells us in Matthew 7: 21-23: “Not everyone who says to Me, ‘Lord, Lord,’ shall enter the kingdom of heaven, but he who does the will of My Father in heaven.  Many will say to Me in that day, ‘Lord, Lord, have we not prophesied in Your name, cast out demons in Your name, and done many wonders in Your name?’23 And then I will declare to them, ‘I never knew you; depart from Me, you who practice lawlessness!”

              Clearly morality is important to Jesus. If something is important to Jesus, it most surely should be important to us as Christians! Above, I made the assertion that the signs and miracles performed by Jesus are directly linked to His message of salvation. That begs an obvious question – Are the moral teachings and exhortations of Jesus also linked to His message of salvation? This question is one that served as the basis for the 16^th century Protestant Reformation. In fact, you could make the claim that this question is the very essence of the magisterial Reformation.

 Based on the Scripture I presented above (among numerous other passages), I believe there is certainly a  link or relationship between works of charity or morality and salvation. Now, before you stone me and accuse me of being a closet Roman Catholic – the relationship between works and salvation is NOT one of cause and effect – i.e. works are not the basis for our salvation.  Rather it is just the opposite – our salvation is the basis for our works. Salvation is no less than the merciful act of a sovereign God.

              Well, it’s going on midnight here in Tennessee. Today was inventory day at work, so I got into the office around 5:30 AM. Thus, I think my consideration of the relationship between faith and works will have to be carried over to another blog post. However, before our next discussion, I wanted to provide the two Scriptures that I will be looking at for much of my next post. To ensure I don’t take Scripture out of context, I plan to read through the entirety of Ephesians and James before writing part II of this post. I hope you’ll join me in that endeavor.

The first focus text is the classic Protestant proof text, Ephesians 2:8-9 – “For it is by grace you have been saved, through faith—and this is not from yourselves, it is the gift of God— not by works, so that no one can boast.”

The second is a lesser known passage from James 2:24 – “You see that a person is considered righteous by what they do and not by faith alone.”

              At first glance, these texts certainly seem paradoxical! In fact, Martin Luther was not at all enamored with the Book of James. There is some speculation that he wished to remove James from the Biblical cannon. It's also true that there was some dispute in the early church regarding whether or not James's letter was an inspired text. Nonetheless, the Book of James stands as part of the Word of God and thus must be contemplated. The reconciliation (the accountant in me is coming out!)  of these two texts is critical to understanding how the Christian walk is to be lived out.

I can’t wait to break this down in further detail soon.

In Christ,

Kendal May