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Christian Chronicles, March 2004 - Volume 7, Issue 99

| The Editor's Pen | Perspectives | Mid-East Update | Fruit of the Vine | The Bloody Message of Evangelism |
| Saved by Grace or Works? | Raised Because of Our Justification | Totally Depraved | The Passion of the Christ |

The Editor's Pen

We are privileged to serve in this ministry of God’s Word to His saints around the world. It is our normal practice to focus on a single theme each month, exploring it to whatever depth space will allow. We try to present a variety of doctrinal issues each year, but at least once each year we present an exposition of the doctrine of salvation, as well as one issue that deals with prophetic themes.

It cannot rightly be said that any doctrine of our faith is unimportant, for a complete understanding (or as complete as our finite minds can contain) of all the doctrines is necessary for the well-equipped minister of the Gospel. Nevertheless, we believe that the doctrine of salvation is fundamental to the service we perform for God in our earthly walk. Additionally, we believe that an understanding of prophetic themes is the foundation of our hope, seeing that we are yet earth-bound, longing for our eternal estate with Christ in New Jerusalem. The more we know of prophecy, the clearer becomes our understanding of the imminence of the translation of the saints at the rapture. As we explore the intricacies of international developments, our hearts surge with hope and we press ever more diligently “toward the goal for the prize of the upward call of God in Christ Jesus” (Ph 3:14).

We were tempted to feature prophetic themes this month, reserving next month’s issue for Salvation, since the April issue will mark our 100th edition of Christian Chronicles. However, prayer leads us to center our attention on the doctrine of Salvation now rather than later. It is our prayer that every subscriber to CC will be more fruitful on account of our labors, that we might all enjoy greater rewards when we at last receive that “upward call.”

Mid-East Update

Prime Minister Ariel Sharon announced that Israel would withdraw from the Gaza Strip unless there was some movement toward peace. It appears that Israel is on the verge of announcing the establishment of borders unilaterally between itself and what will become a Palestinian state. Withdrawal from Gaza and the completion of the security fence will be a de facto establishment of the borders. Israel certainly wants the Palestinians to establish a state of their own, if only to prevent becoming a minority in their own land. The population of Jews in the land between the Mediterranean Sea and the Jordan River has dropped from 60% in 1985 to 55% in the year 2000. An Arab majority would rob Israel of its Jewish character and again deny Jews a homeland of their own.

Of the security fence, David Makovsky (Senior Fellow and Director of the Project on the Middle East Peace Process at the Washington Institute for Near East Policy) writes:

“Several factors have shaped Israel’s current debate over the fence. From Israel’s perspective, there are two main reasons to build it: to reduce terrorism, and to find a way out of the settlement morass that lets Israel keep a Jewish majority within its own borders (while abandoning the settlers’ dream of control over all of the biblical land of Israel). Other factors, however, have to be brought into the mix when designing the fence. The planners must try to minimize Palestinian hardship, create incentives to bring Palestinian negotiators back to the table, and assure the contiguity of a future Palestinian state.

…Throughout the three years of the current intifada, terrorists have repeatedly penetrated Israel’s frontier and found their way into its vulnerable cities. According to the Israel Defense Forces (IDF), there have been 53 “successful” suicide infiltrations during this period, killing 472 Israelis, and another 70 suicide bombers have infiltrated Israel but have been stopped before they reached their targets.

…Meanwhile, since early 2001, not a single successful Palestinian suicide bomber has infiltrated Israel from Gaza, and mortar shells fired from within the territory have failed to kill any Israelis. Given that Gaza has been surrounded by a fence since 1994, this fact has had a heavy impact on arguments for a barrier around the West Bank… Proponents also cite IDF reports that the first stage of the West Bank fence has already stopped bombings from that area. There have… been no successful attacks from Tulkarm or Qalqilya since the fence around those areas went up in July 2002, and in November, Israeli Defense Minister Shaul Mofaz said that the number of attempted infiltrations from areas of the West Bank where the fence has been erected is a twentieth of what it was before the fence was built”

(Foreign Affairs—March April 2004, pg 54-57)

 

It is interesting to note that Ezekiel, in his prophecy of the invasion of Israel by Gog and Magog during the tribulation period, says that Gog and his allies will be coming up against a land of unwalled villages (Ezek 38:11). Therefore, since this invasion takes place just prior to the mid-point of the seven-year period, we can know that the fence will be taken down as a part of whatever agreement the Antichrist is able to forge between Israel and the other peoples of the region.

What do we learn from all of this? Well, God gave Abraham far more land than Israel is claiming. This must surely serve to satisfy the devil. The bitter recrimination and hatred continues to brew between Israel and her enemies despite efforts to create peace. The devil must surely be satisfied with that. Israel is erecting a wall in order to ensure that she has only the land that she has, even to the point of giving up some of what she has. The devil must be laughing at that. Everyone who gets involved in the thorny negotiations toward peace becomes frustrated. The devil will supply their needs, but will ensure that no real peace ensues. The fence has no bearing on prophecy, seeing that it need not be removed for some three years after the rapture. It is little more than an interesting diversion from our hope.

Fruit of the Vine

Perspectives

“For by grace you have been saved through faith, and that not of yourselves; it is the gift of God, not of works, lest anyone should boast. For we are His workmanship, created in Christ Jesus for good works, which God prepared beforehand that we should walk in them” (Eph 2:8-10).

There are works, and there are works. Some are advantageous and some are not at all good, even though the world might call them good works. The things that the world calls good are usually some form of attempt to reform and clean up one’s act. Well, it is not bad, is it, to do those things? No, it is not. However, the merit or demerit of that sort of work depends upon one’s motivation and his method. If one is cleaning up in order to please God with the deeds of his flesh, he is in deep water indeed. He is in danger of drowning in seas of fleshliness. The key to understanding the verses above lies in the phrase, “For we are His workmanship…”

Every Christian is reborn with an inherent desire to become pleasing to God. Every child wants the approval of his parents, and Christians are children of God, so that we naturally (supernaturally) want to please Him. At the same time, there is a great fallacy being promoted by the apostate church that characterizes much of professing Christendom today. The notion that we become pleasing to God by eliminating sin in our lives has led many would-be disciples down a path of discouragement, disillusionment and despair. So many churches teach that the pathway to holiness is through the elimination of sin. They teach that one must clean up his act before he can be holy.

Now, let us be clear. We do not promote sin in any form. Sin is as wrong today as it was before the cross. However, it is not through subtracting something from our lives that we become better. Rather, it is by adding something. It is by adding faith; faith and the works that spring from it. Without faith it is impossible to please God (Heb 11:6). We do not become pleasing to God by looking at ourselves and trying vainly to become sinless. Rather, we become pleasing to God by looking to Him through eyes of faith, trusting that He can and will use sinners to perform the good works that He has prepared beforehand for us. We do not become spiritually mature by eliminating sin in our lives, but we become spiritually mature by serving God and looking to Him daily for direction. It is not something negative, but something quite positive. We are not to focus on our sins but on our Savior. The more we seek to reform that old man, the more deeply we are drawn into communion with him. The more we seek to serve God, the more deeply we are drawn into communion with Him. But do not be deceived. The service that we are to perform for God has nothing to do with sin. Oh no, but our service to God has to do with the spread of the Gospel. Paul is very clear in Second Corinthians 5:18-21 in stating that our proper role here on earth today is to serve as ambassadors from heaven, preaching and ministering the word of reconciliation.

Churches whose primary emphasis is on sin and its consequences rarely ever speak of service in ministry. Like the Romish priests of old, they seek instead to control behavior by looking constantly at the sinner, castigating, convicting, discouraging and alienating. Those churches that seek to equip their congregations to go out into the world prepared to preach the word of reconciliation have a positive message, one of hope and eternal reward. Those which teach self-reformation have a negative message, one heavily freighted with fear of judgment and eternal condemnation. Paul said to the churches in Galatia, “I say then: Walk in the Spirit and you shall not fulfill the lust of the flesh” (5:16). Those who teach that the pathway to spirituality is through sin-avoidance have the cart before the horse. The way to sin-avoidance is through a spiritual walk, and that has nothing to do with sinlessness, but with service. When we are walking in the Spirit, we are doing those works that God has prepared for us. And those works are not works of reformation, but of reconciliation. The changes that God wants to make in our lives are the workmanship of His own hands, not ours. We do not reform ourselves, but God changes the things that we desire as we serve Him more and more consistently as we grow spiritually. Holiness is not moral purity. Not at all, though some measure of moral purity springs from the fount of holiness. Holiness is not sinlessness, but separation. We do not make ourselves holy, but God has made us holy by separating us from the things of the world and unto Himself. As our minds and hearts are turned ever more steadily onto Christ and onto the rewards that await faithful servants, they are also turned more and more steadily away from the things of this temporal life. Our separation becomes more real in our lives and we find that our works become works of fruitfulness.

The Bloody Message of Evangelism

You did not choose Me, but I chose you
And ordained you
That you should go and bear fruit,
And that your fruit should remain,
That whatever you ask the Father in My name
He may give you.
These things I command you,
That you love one another.

(John 15:16-17)

We are here for a very distinct purpose. Our Lord chose each of us, out of all the people in the world, separated us unto Himself, ordained (appointed) us to go out into the world to bear fruit. Let us establish at the outset that it is a bloody business, this evangelizing of the world. Not only are we covered in blood, but we also cover those to whom we minister with blood. For without the shedding of blood, there can be no remission of sins (Heb 9:22). Unfortunately, not everyone knows this. Fortunately, however, the blood that must be shed has already been shed.

It started way back in the Garden of Eden. Adam and Eve had sinned, and had been confronted by God after covering their nakedness with fig leaves. God cursed the serpent, Eve, and then Adam. Then He made them coats of skin. The fig leaves, representing the works of their own hands, were not sufficient to atone for the sin they had committed, so God provided coverings for them in those coats of skins. Lest any misunderstand, we should be careful to point out that these were not fur coats, but coats of skin. God had told Adam that in the day he ate of the forbidden fruit, he would surely die. God could have killed Adam right then, but He was merciful. Still, the sin had to be atoned for, so God killed a substitute. It was an animal, presumably a lamb, but we are not told what it was explicitly. God surely ripped those fig leaves off, leaving Adam and Eve standing naked before the eyes of Him with whom they had to do. Then He slew however many animals it took to provide the tunics of skin, and wrapped those bloody hides around Adam and Eve’s naked flesh. They must have been aghast. The wages of sin is death, and God killed the animals in their places, substituting the blood of an innocent in order to save the guilty.

Of course, that was not the end of it. Rivers of blood have been shed on account of sin down through the millennia. That’s what the story of Cain and Abel is all about. Cain was a farmer, and Abel was a shepherd. When it came time to offer a sacrifice for their sins, each gave of what he had. Cain sacrificed vegetables, while Abel offered a lamb. Since Cain’s offering did not involve the shedding of blood, it was not accepted. But Abel’s lamb was accepted. Cain became jealous, and in his wrath, killed his brother.

It goes on and on, all through the pages of the Old Testament. When the Jews were captive in Egypt, and Moses was importuning Pharaoh to let God’s people go, he brought a series of plagues down on Egypt. We all know those stories. The water turned to blood, the frogs, the lice, the flies, the boils, hail mixed with fire — oh, it was a terrible time to vacation in Egypt. There were moments when Pharaoh weakened and determined to let the Jews leave the land of Egypt, but each time, his heart was hardened and he refused afresh. Finally, Moses told Pharaoh that on that very night, the first-born in all the land of Egypt would perish. Naturally, or perhaps unnaturally, Pharaoh did not believe Moses. After all the preceding plagues, one would think that Moses would have had some credibility with Pharaoh, but there we have a testament to the incorrigibly sinful and rebellious heart of unregenerate man. In any case, Pharaoh defied Moses’ warning and refused to let God’s people leave Egypt. Moses then went to the Jews and told each family to kill an unblemished lamb and smear its blood on the doorpost and the lintel of the doors of their houses. When the death angel passed over Egypt that night, he would pass over the homes that were covered by that bloody insurance policy. What a night it was! Tens of thousands died; not just babies, but grandmothers, dads, everyone who was a first-born. And not only people, but the first-born in all the great herds of cattle, sheep and camels. First-born pets died. Ah, but this time Pharaoh relented. “Get out!” he said. The Jews were instructed to make a remembrance of that night every year throughout all their generations. The feast of Passover is that remembrance, and it is still celebrated today. What saved the Jews? Blood. Sacrificial blood. Innocent blood to save the guilty.

It was a narrow escape after all. Once again, Pharaoh changed his mind and went in pursuit of the Jews. But this time God was not going to give him the opportunity to recapture His people. He parted the Red Sea, leaving high walls of water on the left and on the right, and the Jews passed across the seabed on dry land. As Pharaoh’s armies pursued them, after the last Jew (there were some two million of them) climbed the bank of the Sea, God caused the waters to close upon the Egyptians, giving the Jews a clean escape.

Leaving Egypt, they found themselves in the Sinai Peninsula. It was called the wilderness, and so it was. Rocky, barren, mountainous in places, dry. They would wander through that rugged country for the next forty years before God would bring them to the Promised Land.

While they were there, three months after they fled Egypt, Moses went up onto Mount Sinai, where he received the Ten Commandments. He came back down, but while he had been gone, his brother Aaron had persuaded the Jews to surrender their gold jewelry in order to make a golden calf to worship, which they gladly did. Perhaps as a sign of what was to come, Moses threw those stone tablets onto the ground, shattering them. He no sooner had the Law than he broke every one of them.

Up he goes one more time. This time he receives a new set of stone tablets with those same ten commandments. But while he is on Sinai, God shows him a pattern of the tabernacle in heaven. He is instructed to build an earthly replica of that tabernacle so that the Jews would have a place to perform their religious rituals. In that tabernacle, God would dwell with the Jews on earth, in a special chamber called the most holy place, or the holy of holies. In addition to the pattern for the tabernacle, God gave Moses a total of six hundred thirteen laws, governing every area of Jewish life, from civil to economic, to criminal, to religious and ceremonial, to social and judicial. Every area of their lives was governed by the Law of Moses.

Now, God knew that not a single Jew would be capable of keeping every aspect of the Law, no matter how badly they may have wanted to, or how hard they tried. Therefore, God included in that Law many provisions for ritual blood sacrifice. Once a year, on the Day of Atonement, the High Priest would enter into the most holy place with the sacrificial blood—innocent blood, substitutionary blood—and pour it over the mercy seat, the lid of the ark of the covenant. The ark was essentially a large gold-plated box in which were the tables of the Law, Aaron’s rod that budded, and a golden pot that contained manna. The High Priest would pour that blood over the mercy seat, symbolically covering the Law, just as those tunics of skin covered Adam and Eve’s nakedness. God loved the Jews (He still does, intensely and jealously), and so He made sure that there was a provision made for the atonement for their sins.

Finally, the Jews crossed the River Jordan and entered into the land that God had given to Abraham so many years before. Centuries passed. There were periods of faithfulness and periods of apostasy. Just as they had worshiped the golden calf in Sinai, there were times in the history of Israel when they worshiped the idols of the heathens and the pagans that surrounded them. But they kept on shedding that blood every year. Each family would have its sacrificial animal, commensurate with their means, from a bull down to a sparrow.

The Jews in the land had a judicial system in which judges oversaw various parts of the land, by district. Or by tribe. But they reached a point when they determined that their King ought not be some invisible God, but a man whom they could invest with all the glory of the Gentile kings. God said, “Ok. If you want a king, here’s Saul.” Saul was the first human king of the Jews. Then there was David, one of the great men of all human history, in spite of his dreadful sins. He wanted to build a glorious temple. Perhaps the tabernacle was showing its age. Seriously, David wanted to erect a house for God that was equal to His stature. Silly, but true. But God wouldn’t let David build the house. That would be an honor reserved for his son, Solomon.

Surely, it was a grand structure. Each year, on the Day of Atonement, the High Priest would make an offering for the sins of all the Jews, sprinkling the sacrificial blood over the mercy seat. Ah, the awful tragedy of sin! Year after year! Decade after decade! Century after century! How many animals were slain, all on account of the total depravity of man? What rivers of innocent blood! Every year, the same thing, until one day, John was baptizing Jews in the River Jordan, and looked up and said, “Behold! The Lamb of God, who takes away the sins of the world!”

And here we come to the root of evangelism. An effective witness must do more than merely say that Jesus died for our sins. He must impart some measure of understanding of what that actually means. The Old Testament is the Preparation for all that would occur in the New Testament. It is the preparation for the sacrifice of the Son of God, so that when He was sacrificed, the Jews would understand what His death really meant. The Gospels are the Manifestation of the Son of God. The Book of Acts details the Propagation of the Gospel. But it is in the Epistles that we find the Explanation of the Gospels. Of course, the Book of The Revelation of Jesus Christ is the Consummation of the whole Bible. But it is in the Epistles where we take lost souls who want to know what the crucifixion really means. To present the Gospel without the explanations provided in the epistles is usually fruitless.

The devil will tell you that Jesus died for your sins, but he will never, ever tell you that the shedding of that innocent blood has effected the complete salvation and redemption for each and every soul who will accept that sacrifice as sufficient to fully pay the penalty for every sin he ever has or ever will commit. My friend, the devil loves nothing more than to stand in the pulpit, speaking great swelling words of vanity, mentioning God’s name and talking about Jesus, but always leaving out that precious tide of blood that flowed at Calvary. He will tell you that you must be like Jesus, implying that you must become sinless if you want to get into heaven. He will make God a stern Judge, sitting on His hill of judgment, gleefully awaiting the day when He can cast sinners into hell. Ah, that is the ugly message of the apostate church. It is sad but true that the devil has many, many more preachers than God does. He has deceived the world with his lies. But he will come to a sorry end indeed. But we digress.

It is interesting that Jesus, after He informed His disciples that they did not choose Him but that He had chosen them, said, “These things I command you, that you love one another.” It might seem a strange place to insert that injunction, but it is not really so strange. The fifteenth chapter of John is where the Vine and the branches are discussed. Of course, the context of that discussion concerns the bearing of fruit, and love is an intimate and necessary part of the evangelization equation. In that discussion, Jesus said, “If you keep my commandments, you will abide in My love, just as I have kept My Father’s commandments and abide in His love… This is my commandment, that you love one another as I have loved you” (v. 10, 12). It is also in this passage that Jesus makes the famous statement that no man has greater love than to lay down his life for his friends. Christians are enjoined to love one another because the world will persecute those who seek to serve God (2 Tim 3:12). In the Gospels, the love of God is manifested, and in the epistles, it is explained. But in this passage in particular, fruitfulness is linked firmly to love. When a Christian presents the message of the Gospel, the love of God must be evident in him. Scofield has a pertinent footnote in 2nd John, at verse five. He writes:

“The new law of Christ is the divine love, as produced in the renewed heart by the Holy Spirit (Rom 5:5; Heb 10:16), which flows out in the energy of the Spirit, unforced and spontaneous, toward the objects of the divine love (2 Cor 5: 14-20; 1 Thes 2:7-8). It is, therefore, ‘the law of liberty’ (Jas 1:25; 2:12) in contrast with the external law of Moses. Moses’ law demands love (Lev 19:18; Deut 6:5; Lk 10:27); Christ’s law is love (Rom 5:5; 1 Jn 4:7, 19-20), and so takes the place of the external law by fulfilling it (Rom 13:10; Gal 5:14). It is the ‘law written in the heart’ under the New Covenant.”

 

God’s love is poured into the reborn Christian, and it flows out to those whom God seeks to love through our ministries. True evangelism is always an act of love. It is expressed, not with heavy, thick emotion, but in sincerity and in truth. And that is where the epistles come in. The first eight chapters of Romans are filled with evangelistic tools. Paul writes, “For I am not ashamed of the Gospel of Christ, for it is the power of God to salvation for everyone who believes, for the Jew first and also for the Greek” (1:17). He then goes on to prove that everyone who has ever lived has been a sinner, concluding in chapter three with the clear statement, “There is none righteous, no, not one; there is none who understands; there is none who seeks after God. They have all turned aside; they have together become unprofitable; there is none who does good, no, not one” (3:11-12). It is a strong indictment of a fallen race. Then Paul crushes any hope of self-righteousness by saying, “Now we know that whatever the law says, it says to those who are under the law, that every mouth may be stopped, and all the world may become guilty before God. Therefore, by the deeds of the law no flesh will be justified in His sight, for by the law is the knowledge of sin” (3:91-20).

If the Bible ended right there, we would all be in most serious and desperate trouble. Fortunately, Paul goes on to show that the righteousness of God is imputed to those sinners who believe that Christ’s sacrifice is sufficient to pay the penalty for the sins they have committed (3:21-28). He shows in that passage that justification is not by the works of the law, but by faith in the completed work of the cross, Christ Himself being the propitiation for our sins. That is, Christ’s death on the cross satisfied the demands of the law for the execution of judgment upon sin.

In chapter four, Paul shows that future sins will not be imputed to the believer. He says, quoting David, “Blessed are those whose lawless deeds are forgiven, and whose sins are covered; blessed is the man to whom the Lord shall not impute sin” (4:7-8). Speaking of Abraham, Paul said, “And therefore, ‘it was accounted to him for righteousness.’ Now it was not written for his sake alone that it was imputed to him, but also for us. It shall be imputed to us who believe in Him who raised up Jesus our Lord from the dead, who was delivered up because of our offenses, and was raised because of our justification” (4:22-25).

Chapter five opens with great blessing: “Therefore, having been justified by faith, we have peace with God through our Lord Jesus Christ…” (v.1). Then, in chapter seven, Paul explains how the law of Moses created in him all manner of sin, but how grace relieved him of it. He describes the warfare that constantly occurs between the two natures—the old Adamic nature that we are all born with and the new divine nature with which we are reborn (7:15-25), concluding, “O wretched man that I am! Who will deliver me from this body of death? I thank God—through Jesus Christ our Lord! So then, with the mind I myself serve the law of God, but with the flesh the law of sin” (7:24-25).

Chapter eight is the pinnacle of Christian doctrine. It begins, “There is therefore now no condemnation to those who are in Christ Jesus” (8:1). He explains that the only way to walk in the Spirit is to have the Spirit of God dwelling in you (v. 9). In verses 10-27 Paul details the workings of the Holy Spirit in the lives of Christians. From there to the end of the chapter, the love of God for those whose faith is in Jesus is made absolutely certain and the eternal security of the believer is given rock-solid assurance.

In other words, the first eight chapters of Romans present and explain the Gospel of Christ. The implications of Christ’s substitutionary death on the cross are fully laid out in perfect order. Of course, the message of salvation and the explanation of the Gospels are not limited to the epistle to the Romans. The whole of Galatians is wonderful for imparting an understanding of the opposing relationship of the law to grace. Indeed, every epistle, from Romans to Jude, is useful in making an exposition of the Gospel record. Nevertheless, if the one who seeks to present the Gospel will establish the Biblical imperative for the substitutionary shedding of innocent blood, and then present Jesus as the sinless Lamb of God whose blood was offered at Calvary, and then carry his listener through the explanations provided in the epistles, then more often than not he will be effective and fruitful. A bloodless gospel has little meaning and is nothing more than an interesting story of a man who was killed unjustly.

So often, in personal testimonies, Christians will talk about how God has blessed them in their temporal lives, or about how they once habitually committed one sin or another and now no longer do so. This is the sense in which they speak of the love of God. That is all well and good, but until one begins to speak of the love of God in the context of Calvary, and the salvation that sprang from the fountain of His blood, all the personal blessing will have no meaning. Until one begins to speak of the imputation of righteousness in spite of present sin, the idea persists that salvation is all about getting rich, healthy and righteous. The unsaved soul that is convicted by the Holy Spirit will not respond to anything other than the goodness and the grace of a loving God who has provided redemption for sin that the sinner cannot avoid. The convicted soul knows it is a sinner. The only balm for it is the blood of the Lamb.  

Saved by Grace or Works?

Raised Because of Our Justification

Totally Depraved

One need not look very closely at the cold, hard hearts of many of the unsaved to understand depravity. But what of the sweet little grandmother who would never hurt a fly? Is she depraved? What about the great statesmen who have worked all their lives for the betterment of mankind? Are they depraved? What of the kindly country doctor who heals and receives a chicken or a mess of greens for his pay? Surely he is selfless and good.

What is seen on the outside is not necessarily a reflection of what is on the inside. If you could crawl into the heads of anyone and everyone, you would find sin. You would find impatience, resentments, tiny acts of rebellion, and every form of lust and desire. Even the most saintly Christian is as depraved today as he was before he was saved, though few will admit it. Paul did (Rom 7:15-25; 1 Tim 1:15). We are depraved, but saved!

The Passion of the Christ

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