Faith comes by hearing? ... or heeding?

On Sunday, I heard a sermon preached on Acts chapter 13.  It was titled "Heed the Message of This Salvation!", along with the following summary:

"The message of the gospel presents each one of us with a choice – will we embrace God’s salvation in Jesus for eternal life, or will we reject that salvation and be rejected ourselves?"

Now listen to what the preacher had to say as he expounded on verse 48 of Acts 13:


Audio: 50 sec.

"And it says, 'as many as them were appointed to eternal life, believed.' "  There's abolutely no getting around this statment.  God is the one who appointed them to eternal life.  And in consequence, they believed.  Had He not appointed them, they would not have believed.  God determined, God took the initiative, God brought the gospel to them, and they responded in faith.  Notice how there's absolutely no tension for Luke between divine election, and human responsibility.  The unbelievers are utterly responsible for their scoffing unbelief.  They have judged themselves unworthy of eternal life.  And yet those who have believed do so because they have been appointed to that same eternal life, by God."

Here is a question. Is there, for you, a tension regarding our "choice"?  The preacher puts forth that there is no tension "between divine election, and human responsibility". The bible is pretty clear about this with regard to our guilt. But what about in regard to the role of our "choice"? I invite you to an exercise in discernment as you listen to snippets from another sermon I listened to on Sunday.  Do they compound the tension?  Do they relieve the tension?

As always, the purpose of these posts are to catch a glimpse of "the subtle wonders of the good news".


Audio: 3m:31s

You've probably noticed these days, that everybody seems to think they have to do something to be a christian.

And this gets us into the real issue here with Nicodemus.

And so he says to Nicodemus, "well, you know, it's sort of like the wind blowing, Nicodemus".  Isn't that frustrating?  Really, that's just frustrating, isn't it?  If there's any place in the gospels, where it would have been the moment for Jesus to have said, "Here's how you get in, Nicodemus ... you accept me as your saviour."  He didn't do that.  Because after all Nicodemus, even when it comes down to this final and important relationship between God and you, you are not in charge.  You have nothing to say.  And that really offends us.

And that's why it's just so tempting to say there's only one thing you have to do.  Just one little thing.  God's done everything else, 99.9%.  Everything, but that one little thing now ... you have to do to close the deal.

...But if there's even a little bit left for you or I to do, then as Paul was to say ... Christ is of no benefit.

...Now Luther called it a myth.  The myth of free will.  Because he understood quite properly that to claim to have a choice before God is blasphemy.  It is acquiring unto yourself an attribute that belongs to God alone...freedom. Only God is free.  So to suggest to sinners that they have something within them that is able to flip a switch in heaven, to make God respond to them ... well Luther said again ... it's the worst form of blasphemy.

There was a free will decision made all right.  And it was God's free will to choose me as His child.  And I will stand on that promise, and that choice, rather than my own.  Because I know what my choices are all about and so do you.  If you make some decision for Christ because you're afraid of going to hell ... what kind of decision is that, for example?  That's about you ... fear ... self concern.  But to make choices in life based on the promises of God for you, that came to you before you could understand, before you could say anything.  To build a life on that kind of foundation, is to build on the foundation that no one else can lay, and that is Jesus himself.  And His promises to you, and for you.

You see, that leaves us with nothing to say and nowhere to go and nothing to do, and that's exactly what makes it so uncomfortable, this gospel business.  It enters us into a new reality called grace. It's not a seemless movement from the world I'm putting together for myself out there, into the church, and back again.  I'm now confronted with something that stops my mouth, that shuts me up, that kills my action, and says ... "Receive" ... what you and the world could never buy, the gracious forgiveness of your sins, the un-merited mercy of God in Jesus Christ.  Amen.

Your sin must be first and foremost ...

Your sin must be first and foremost ...  pardoned.

No sin can be crucified in heart or life, unless it is first pardoned in conscience.  If it not be mortified [put to death] in its guilt, it cannot be subdued in its power.

--Robert Haldane
Commentary on Romans

In acquiescence, this alone is my liberty

You are dead. In and with Christ you are habitually, constantly, dead. You are dead, and this very death is, in truth, your life.

For who shall slay you now, seeing you are dead already? He who is already and always dead, what fear can he have of any farther death? Does the law again point against me the thunders of its deadly threatenings of wrath? I am dead, and against the dead no charge can be brought. I am dead, and over the dead no enemy has power. I am dead, and to the dead there is no more fear of death.

This is my safety. This alone is my liberty... to be always, in myself, dead. It is only as one dead that I am freed from sin, from its terrors, its temptations, its triumphs; and the more I die with Christ, entering into the meaning of his cross, reckoning myself to be condemned with him, the more am I able to defy every attempt to subject me anew, in any other way, to condemnation.

To every challenge at any time which would require me now to answer for myself as a criminal or as a rebel doomed to death, my reply is that I am dead already. Or rather, it is Christ’s reply for me. “He is dead in me. My death is his.” And I, believing through grace, acquiesce: “Yes; Lord, I am dead in thee. I live no more myself. It is thou who art my life. I live; yet not I: thou livest in me.

--Robert S. Candlish
Sermon, "Death and Life with Christ"

Patients don't serve their physicians

What is God looking for in the world? Assistants? No. The gospel is not a "help wanted" ad. Neither is the call to Christian service.

God is not looking for people to work for him. But isn't there something we can give to God that won't belittle him to the status of beneficiary?

Yes. Our anxieties.

It's a command: "Cast all your anxieties on him" (1 Peter 5:7). God will gladly receive anything from us that shows our dependence and his all-sufficiency.

Christianity is fundamentally convalescence. Patients do not serve their physicians. They trust them for good prescriptions. The Sermon on the Mount is our Doctor's medical advice, not our Employer's job description.

Our very lives hang on not working for God. "To one who works, his wages are not reckoned as a gift but as his due. And to one who does not work but trusts him who justifies the ungodly, his faith is reckoned as righteousness" (Romans 4:4–5).

Workmen get no gifts. They get their due. If we would have the gift of justification, we dare not work. God is the workman in this affair. And what he gets is the glory of being the benefactor of grace, not the beneficiary of service.

-- John Piper

Part 2: Do we know what repentance is?

Audio: 1m:12s

That's what repentance is ... It's recognizing [that] my righteousness can't fix this, only the grace of God can.

We too often are like the rich young ruler. I think the way that I'm going to repent to God is that I'm going to make it up to Him. Like the young man I'll get down on my knee. I'll pray more, I'll pray longer. I'll feel badder, longer ... surely God will appreciate it then. That's not repentance.

Repentance is not the substitution of one category of works for another category of works. Repentance is an emptying of self, saying, "Lord, I can't make this right." It is not so much a doing as a depending.

We make a mistake sometimes about talking about repentance as a turning from evil to a turning to good, as though the repentance itself is walking in a different path. Repentance is turning to God, but repentance is not just doing good. God calls to us to recognize the reality of the cross and the goodness of the blood and says, "I have made you well." If God has made me well, then He has made me glad.

-- Bryan Chapell

Do we know what repentance is?

Video ( < 1 minute )

And the result of this is, in fact, the purity of faith ... faith that has nothing to do but believe. Faith that has nothing to do but cling to Jesus. 

I preached this last Sunday about Peter's confession ... "Lord to whom shall we go? You have the words of eternal life." That at the end of the day the christian life is having nothing, sacrificing nothing, and bringing nothing. But falling at Jesus' cross and saying, "Lord I have nothing to give you. You have to do it all."

And somebody asked me after the service ... someone (a dear woman) said, "but we must have repentance, right?"  And didn't know even what to say. How can I fall at the cross and say, "Lord I have nothing to give you", and not have repentance? Who without repentance is going to do that?

I just don't even know that we know what repentance is. The purity of faith is the belief that I have nothing to give ... and that IS repentance. I'm not repentant if I come, saying, "Thank God I'm not like other men." [Rather,] It's the tax collector who sat in the back and beat his breast because he knew he wasn't worthy to stand in the sight of Jesus.

- Pastor Jonathan Fisk

What we need to be convinced of

Audio: < 2 min.

Why do we have this passage? In order to enable us to see that the wounds of Christ reveal the nature of what must fill them ... My sin, and your sin, and every child of God for whom the Son of God died.

We don't like being in this place. Where in humility we have to confess that it was for me my savior died. But this place of humility, where we do not want to be, where we resist being, is the very place where we are most blessed by God. For when we can in our hearts say it was for me my savior died. My sin nailed Him there. It's my sins that filled His wounds. When we can say that, then we recognize this... My sin He took, and I need to know that.

I think sometimes people believe it is the role of a preacher to help people be convinced that their sin needs forgiveness. I actually don't think that's the case. I don't think those in whom the Holy Spirit is working need to be convinced that they are guilty. We know that. We need to be convinced that the wounds of Christ were made for our sin to fit there. So that the guilt we have is not upon us, but as we turn to Christ in faith, our sin is on Him so that we could be free of it now and forever.

--Bryan Chapell
From his sermon on April 13, 2014: "I Am King, You Say" (John 18:37)

The only way to rid yourself of sin

Audio: about 2 min.

'But sin cannot be known in relation only to the law. It must be placed in relation to the crucifixion of Jesus Christ.'

What he means by that is ... it's not enough to simply say that the law convicts of sin. You have to move to the next step and say, "Christ has become your sin." It's not that you are going to be working on your sin, to finally rid yourself of your sin. Your sin has been completely accounted for until the day you die.  "Upon Him was heaped the chastisement of us all. Surely He has born our griefs and carried our sorrows." That's what that means. "He became sin who knew no sin."

You have to think of Jesus as a sinner, the biggest sinner of all time, the sinner beyond all sinners ... Not a pretend sinner, not a fake sinner, not a sinner who just kind of went through the motions in order to fulfill some kind of divine formula.  But who became sin, and the wrath of God was poured out on Him on the cross, and He allowed the devil to take Him right down into the grave. That's how serious it is. That's how devastating sin is, how utterly beyond us it is.

But you see, if that picture of urgency is not present ... A world in the control of evil, a creature desperate to flee from God at every possible turn, and then a God who takes this muck of a world and covers Himself with it for our sakes ... If that isn't painted in clear terms, then this is just religion ... we do a little bit, God does a little bit, and everybody comes out good in the end.

(And that's what you want. That's what I want.)

--Pastor Mark Anderson

I have good news for YOU. Period.

Sometimes even our popular christian leaders get it wrong.

It's rare that I post a negative example.  I only do so when the example illuminates, and strikes to the heart of,  "the subtle wonders of the Good News".

"But God shows his love for us in that while we were still sinners, Christ died for us."
(Romans 5:8)

Luther: "The cross alone is our theology"

The cross is, in the first instance, God's attack on human sin. As an attack, it reveals that the real seat of sin is not in the flesh but in our spiritual aspirations, in our "theology of glory". Thus, the theology of the cross is an offensive theology. Unlike other theologies it attacks what we usually consider the best in our religion.

The most common overarching story we tell about ourselves is what we will call the glory story: We came from glory and are bound for glory. Of course, in between we seem somehow to have gotten derailed, but that is only a temporary inconvenience to be fixed by proper religious effort. What we need is to get back on "the glory road". The story is told in countless variations. Usually the subject of the story is "the soul." The basic scheme is what Paul Ricoeur has called "the myth of the exiled soul." The soul is exiled from its home, and its true destiny is to return.

Indeed, so seductive has the exiled soul myth been throughout history that the biblical story itself has been taken into captivity by it. The biblical story of the fall has tended to become a variation on the theme of the exiled soul. Adam, originally pure in soul, either by nature or by the added gift of grace, was tempted by baser lusts and "fell", losing grace and drawing all his progeny with him into a "mass of perdition." Reparation must be made, grace restored, and purging carried out so that a return to glory is possible. The cross, of course, can be quite neatly assimilated into the story as the reparation that makes the return possible. And there we have a tightly woven theology of glory!

One of the difficulties in the attempt to set the theology of the cross apart from the theology of glory is that the differences between the two are often very subtle. The theology of the cross arises out of the realization that it is simply disastrous to dissolve the cross in the story of glory. Jesus was crucified "outside the camp," not in the temple. The cross insists on being its own story. It does not allow us to stand by and watch. It does not ask us to probe endlessly for a meaning behind or above everything that would finally awaken, enlighten, and attract the exiled, slumbering soul. The cross draws us into itself so that we become participants in the story. Just as Jesus was crucified, so we also are crucified with him. The cross makes us part of its story. The cross becomes our story. That is what it means to say, as Luther did, "The cross alone is our theology."

-- Gerhard Forde
selected from his book:
On Being a Theologian of the Cross,  (Reflections on Luther's Heidelberg Disputation, 1518)