Purity... Part 3
Here we go again...
I've hit on some of the issues surrounding purity, and touched on some of the Scriptural truths that we would rather live without, but today we're going to get a bit hardcore in our exegesis (reading what Scripture says, versus eisegesis where we make it say what we want it to say) as we go to the heart of the matter.
Some would tell you that being pure is part of our duty as Christians, to which I would agree, partly. The truth is, we need to live life with purity for a LOT more reasons than some "duty." The thing is, to call oneself a Christian literally means "someone who is like Christ or "a little Christ" (think Spanish: adding "ita/ito" to the end off a word makes it "little"). But so many of us don't take that name very seriously, which is why we hit on Christian Atheism Monday! The hard-to-swallow fact of the matter is that we may well be the only Jesus someone sees, which can bee quite frightening.
As a minister relates in his book (which I highly recommend, called Buck Naked Faith) he led a large ministry to college students and was looked at as a solid Christian. However, that was only one part of his life, the other involved him clubbing 1.5 hours away from campus in hopes to "hook up" with eligible ladies until one night. He hooked up with a lady and after "doing the deed," he couldn't figure out why she was crying, until she said, "I thought you were different." Those words made him remember who she was: she had come to their college ministry that week for the first time! In other words, he had just shown her that Jesus was just as much a womanizing jerk as the other guys out there who simply wanted to get into her pants. Ouch!
That kind of "purity" makes people label the Church as "full of hypocrites," which is, sadly, true. Some would say, "I'm not perfect, just forgiven." Which is 100% true, we will not be perfect, but that doesn't excuse us from trying! Remember Ephesians yesterday, "not even a hint." If that's God's standard, why should we think something else is okay? I mean, seriously, what gives us the gall to think we have better ideas than the one who made us?
This is only part of the fallout from an issue that's been plaguing the church for centuries. In the 1930's, Dietrich Bonhoeffer wrote about the essence of grace in a book called The Cost of Discipleship.. In it he details grace (and our view of it) and its cost versus the way we live it out. The hard part to swallow is his scathing review of "cheap grace." Cheap grace is what we give ourselves: forgiveness of sins without any real change, salvation without losing one's life, permission to live life as we desire out of "freedom." The thing he points pack to is that grace cost God dearly, as in His only Son, so how can it be cheap to us? Is it free? Yes, but grace is costly because it costs us our lives to gain new life. We neglect that part, except in baptism ritual where we mention, "Buried with Him in death and raised to walk in newness of life." Sometimes we even speak of "carrying our cross" in terms of something we have to deal with or something we need to do, but to the people Jesus spoke the words to it had no such meaning! To them, it meant dying, physically, when Jesus said it. But, to make our lives easier, we dumb down the call of Christ, cheapening grace into something that has no value or worth.
This is what happens when churches neglect to mention sin or condone un-biblical behavior. Like one church I know that thinks "everyone needs to express the love and grace of Jesus Christ in a way that is true to themselves" as an excuse for homosexual behavior and will never mention sin. If there was no sin, there was no need for a savior! Thus, what cost God His Son must cost us something, which as Jesus said, is our very lives. However, when we lay down our life for him we gain the only true life. This is one of the paradoxical aspects of Christian life: death is the only way to gain life. When we die to our selfish desires and sinful whims, we can live purely. However, most of us keep a chunk back for a "rainy day" and keep that portion for ourselves. As Baptists joke, the last part of anyone to be baptized is their wallet (meaning that most of us keep back our financial lives apart from God as long as possible) but so often it's some secret sin that we hang on to. Maybe it's the porn you look at "when no one's watching" or the things you do Friday night in the backseat of a car or the things you say when you're with a certain group of people or maybe it's something else entirely, regardless it is something that will keep us from intimacy with God.
Because as we read in Leviticus yesterday, we are to be pure and holy because God is holy. If God is holy, it means He cannot associate with someone who is not holy. So it follows that as we chase our secret sin we separate ourselves from God. Thus, despite God loving us immensely we alienate Him in so many ways by not living life anywhere near (or even trying to in many cases) the way He asks us to...
Does this mean we're not a Christian if we can't beat some sin? No, but the issue boils down to this: are you actively trying to live God's way? Do you actually desire change or is it a show for yourself? Because, believe it or not, God wants you to be completely free from the chains of sin, not temporarily free! The question is, do we really want to be free from our "pet" sin? Often the answer is no so we return to living a defeated life chained to sin. But, my prayer and earnest desire is that we live as those who have been freed from sin, "shining as stars in a wicked and depraved generation."
So, what does your lifestyle say about you right now? Are you like a star shining in the darkness or have you decided that the darkness has it right and extinguished your light? To put it another way, when people look at your life (all of it: private, public, and anything else!) what kind of Jesus do they see? Is Jesus no better than a horn-dog trying to get into someone's pants or is He the loving Son of God who died so that we could live? The answer to that question is tough, because we might not want to see it, but it is one of the most important questions we can answer...
I've hit on some of the issues surrounding purity, and touched on some of the Scriptural truths that we would rather live without, but today we're going to get a bit hardcore in our exegesis (reading what Scripture says, versus eisegesis where we make it say what we want it to say) as we go to the heart of the matter.
Some would tell you that being pure is part of our duty as Christians, to which I would agree, partly. The truth is, we need to live life with purity for a LOT more reasons than some "duty." The thing is, to call oneself a Christian literally means "someone who is like Christ or "a little Christ" (think Spanish: adding "ita/ito" to the end off a word makes it "little"). But so many of us don't take that name very seriously, which is why we hit on Christian Atheism Monday! The hard-to-swallow fact of the matter is that we may well be the only Jesus someone sees, which can bee quite frightening.
As a minister relates in his book (which I highly recommend, called Buck Naked Faith) he led a large ministry to college students and was looked at as a solid Christian. However, that was only one part of his life, the other involved him clubbing 1.5 hours away from campus in hopes to "hook up" with eligible ladies until one night. He hooked up with a lady and after "doing the deed," he couldn't figure out why she was crying, until she said, "I thought you were different." Those words made him remember who she was: she had come to their college ministry that week for the first time! In other words, he had just shown her that Jesus was just as much a womanizing jerk as the other guys out there who simply wanted to get into her pants. Ouch!
That kind of "purity" makes people label the Church as "full of hypocrites," which is, sadly, true. Some would say, "I'm not perfect, just forgiven." Which is 100% true, we will not be perfect, but that doesn't excuse us from trying! Remember Ephesians yesterday, "not even a hint." If that's God's standard, why should we think something else is okay? I mean, seriously, what gives us the gall to think we have better ideas than the one who made us?
This is only part of the fallout from an issue that's been plaguing the church for centuries. In the 1930's, Dietrich Bonhoeffer wrote about the essence of grace in a book called The Cost of Discipleship.. In it he details grace (and our view of it) and its cost versus the way we live it out. The hard part to swallow is his scathing review of "cheap grace." Cheap grace is what we give ourselves: forgiveness of sins without any real change, salvation without losing one's life, permission to live life as we desire out of "freedom." The thing he points pack to is that grace cost God dearly, as in His only Son, so how can it be cheap to us? Is it free? Yes, but grace is costly because it costs us our lives to gain new life. We neglect that part, except in baptism ritual where we mention, "Buried with Him in death and raised to walk in newness of life." Sometimes we even speak of "carrying our cross" in terms of something we have to deal with or something we need to do, but to the people Jesus spoke the words to it had no such meaning! To them, it meant dying, physically, when Jesus said it. But, to make our lives easier, we dumb down the call of Christ, cheapening grace into something that has no value or worth.
This is what happens when churches neglect to mention sin or condone un-biblical behavior. Like one church I know that thinks "everyone needs to express the love and grace of Jesus Christ in a way that is true to themselves" as an excuse for homosexual behavior and will never mention sin. If there was no sin, there was no need for a savior! Thus, what cost God His Son must cost us something, which as Jesus said, is our very lives. However, when we lay down our life for him we gain the only true life. This is one of the paradoxical aspects of Christian life: death is the only way to gain life. When we die to our selfish desires and sinful whims, we can live purely. However, most of us keep a chunk back for a "rainy day" and keep that portion for ourselves. As Baptists joke, the last part of anyone to be baptized is their wallet (meaning that most of us keep back our financial lives apart from God as long as possible) but so often it's some secret sin that we hang on to. Maybe it's the porn you look at "when no one's watching" or the things you do Friday night in the backseat of a car or the things you say when you're with a certain group of people or maybe it's something else entirely, regardless it is something that will keep us from intimacy with God.
Because as we read in Leviticus yesterday, we are to be pure and holy because God is holy. If God is holy, it means He cannot associate with someone who is not holy. So it follows that as we chase our secret sin we separate ourselves from God. Thus, despite God loving us immensely we alienate Him in so many ways by not living life anywhere near (or even trying to in many cases) the way He asks us to...
Does this mean we're not a Christian if we can't beat some sin? No, but the issue boils down to this: are you actively trying to live God's way? Do you actually desire change or is it a show for yourself? Because, believe it or not, God wants you to be completely free from the chains of sin, not temporarily free! The question is, do we really want to be free from our "pet" sin? Often the answer is no so we return to living a defeated life chained to sin. But, my prayer and earnest desire is that we live as those who have been freed from sin, "shining as stars in a wicked and depraved generation."
So, what does your lifestyle say about you right now? Are you like a star shining in the darkness or have you decided that the darkness has it right and extinguished your light? To put it another way, when people look at your life (all of it: private, public, and anything else!) what kind of Jesus do they see? Is Jesus no better than a horn-dog trying to get into someone's pants or is He the loving Son of God who died so that we could live? The answer to that question is tough, because we might not want to see it, but it is one of the most important questions we can answer...
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