At the church where I serve we have been spending
our time together looking at what we believe as a church as it is contained in
the doctrinal statement of our church. This week, I would like for us to look
at the eighth statement that comprises our doctrinal statement as a church.
This eighth statement addresses what we believe as a church about what is
referred to is church mumbo jumbo talk as “Christian living”.
This statement summarizes the answer to the question
“How are we supposed to live as followers of Jesus? What should drive how we
live out our lives as followers of Jesus here on earth?" So let’s look at
this eighth statement of our doctrinal statement together:
We believe that God’s justifying grace
must not be separated from His sanctifying power and purpose. God commands us
to love Him supremely and others sacrificially, and to live out our faith with
care for one another, compassion toward the poor and justice for the oppressed.
With God’s Word, the Spirit’s power, and fervent prayer in Christ’s name, we
are to combat the spiritual forces of evil. In obedience to Christ’s
commission, we are to make disciples among all people, always bearing witness
to the gospel in word and deed.
Now as we have talked about
throughout this series, to fully understand what is being communicated in this
statement, we first need to understand what all the church mumbo jumbo talk
words in this statement mean. So, as we have done throughout this series, I
would like for us to break down this statement into parts so that we can come
to a better understanding of what is being said here.
First, let’s take a minute and
unpack the phrase “We believe that God’s justifying grace must not be separated
from His sanctifying power and purpose.” God’s justifying grace refers to God’s
transformational intervention and activity in the world which results in a
person being declared “not guilty” of having a problem with God as a result of their
selfishness and rebellion. As we talked about earlier in this series, we are
declared righteous, or made right with God, and declared not guilty of having a
problem with God as a result of Jesus willingness to allow Himself to be
treated as though He lived our selfish and sinful life so God the Father could
treat us as though we lived Jesus perfect life.
Thus God’s justifying grace results
in a person entering into the eternal relationship with God that they were
created for. By contrast, the phrase sanctifying power refers to the process of
sanctification. Now sanctification is the church mumbo jumbo talk word for the
process where a follower of Jesus is becoming more and more like Jesus in
character and conduct. This process of
sanctification, or becoming more like Jesus in our character and conduct, is
both positional and progressive in nature.
Positionally, we are sanctified, or
set apart to be in relationship with Jesus and live like Jesus, at the moment that
we become followers of Jesus. In addition, as we continue to grow in our
personal relationship with Jesus, we experience the progressive aspect of
sanctification over time as we become increasingly like Jesus.
And because of that reality, justification
and sanctification are not separate in time, as God transformational activity
in our lives that results in us being declared not guilty of having a problem
with God also brings us into a relationship with Jesus that results in us
becoming more like Jesus as we live a life that loves and serves Jesus and
others.
Thus, while justification and
sanctification may be thought of as separate theological processes or concepts,
they are not separate experiences. You see, God’s transformational activity in
our lives, not only rescues us from our rebellion so that we can experience
forgiveness and the relationship with God that we were created for. In
addition, God’s transformational activity in our lives results in us living
lives that increasingly reveal and reflect Jesus. We see this reality most
clearly in a section of a letter that the Apostle Paul wrote to early followers
of Jesus at the church of Ephesus. In Ephesians 2:8-10, we see the Apostle Paul
say the following:
For by grace
you have been saved through faith; and that not of yourselves, it is the gift of God; not as a
result of works, so that no one may boast. For we are His workmanship, created
in Christ Jesus for good works, which God prepared beforehand so that we would
walk in them.
Now if you grew up in church or have spent any time in
church, you are probably at least somewhat familiar with these verses. But what
if we were to communicate these verses without the church mumbo jumbo talk
words? What would these verses sound like?
If Paul was writing these verses in the language we use
in our culture today, these verses would sound something like this: “You see, God
demonstrates the abundance of His kindness and generosity toward you as a
follower of Jesus in that you have been rescued as a result of His
transformational activity through Jesus. Your rescue is the result of God’s
transformational intervention and activity and not your performance. Your
rescue is a gift from God and was not earned as a result of what you have done
for God. So there is no reason for you to brag about why you have done. Instead
your rescue should result in you bragging about God”.
Notice
that Paul does not say that you have been saved by your faith. Instead Paul
states that you have been saved through faith. In other words, faith is not a
work that we do for God. Instead faith is placing our confident trust in what
God has done for us through Jesus life, death, and resurrection.
As
followers of Jesus, we are
rescued from our selfishness and rebellion not because we brought anything to
the table. Instead, we are rescued from our selfishness and rebellion because
of God’s transformational intervention and activity in the world through His
Son Jesus. So there is no basis for a follower of Jesus to brag about what they
have done for God. The only basis for bragging is in what God has done.
Now so often, we as followers of Jesus tend to stop at
verse 9. However, Paul is not done. Instead, in
Ephesians 2:10, we see the Apostle Paul reveal for us the reality that as
followers of Jesus, we have been created by God and rescued by God through Jesus for a lifetime of activity
for Jesus, which God prepared before we created so that we would live our lives
for Jesus.
You see, while good works do not result in
salvation, the good works that flow from God’s transformational activity in our
lives provide the proof of salvation. We were rescued by God so that we would live our
lives in a way that is engaging in God’s kingdom mission to be the vehicle that
He uses to reveal His Son Jesus to others.
Now a
natural question that arises here is “Well how exactly do we know what those
good works are that God has prepared beforehand for us to be doing?” That’s a
great question, which leads us to the second sentence of the doctrinal
statement, which states “God
commands us to love Him supremely and others sacrificially, and to live out our
faith with care for one another, compassion toward the poor and justice for the
oppressed.”
We see Jesus Himself provide the
answer to this question in an answer to a similar question that He was asked in
a section of Jesus life that is recorded for us in the Bible called the gospel
of Matthew. Let’s discover this answer together, beginning in Matthew 22:34:
But when the
Pharisees heard that Jesus had silenced the Sadducees, they gathered themselves
together. One of them, a lawyer, asked Him a question, testing Him, "Teacher, which is the great
commandment in the Law?"
To understand what is happening in this story, we need to
understand the context in which this conversation is taking place. The Jewish
religious leaders of the day, seeing Jesus as a threat to their power and
positions, began to question Jesus and His authority in an attempt to undermine
His growing influence. One group of religious leaders, the Pharisee’s,
attempted to trap Jesus with a question about paying taxes to Caesar.
When Jesus avoided their trap of offending either the
crowds or the Roman authorities, the Sadducees, the other leading Jewish religious
group of the day, took their shot at discrediting Jesus and His authority with
a theological question about His doctrinal position on the resurrection.
However, the religious leaders plan to discredit Jesus was backfiring, as the
growing crowds were amazed at Jesus teaching.
As the crowds continued to gather and grow in the temple,
an expert in the Law approached Jesus to test Him with the question “Which is
the greatest commandment in the Law?” This expert in the Law, a scribe, in
essence asked Jesus “What’s most important” from God’s perspective?
Tomorrow, we will look at Jesus answer his question…
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