New Creation in Old Flesh (7) - The Law of Grace

Ludicrous Grace
Faith in the grace of God must be the comfort of the Christian. Joy abounds as you understand more and more the depth of your sin and more and more how perfect and loved you are in God's eyes. Despairing for our sin is stupid. We are grieved that we grieve God, but we realize that we are under the law of grace- set free from the law of sin and death.

We are made to enjoy the grace that frees us from guilt. To believe that "Yes, our sin is big" but to realize that it is but a speck of plankton in the endless ocean of God's love, mercy, and forgiveness. We also remember that this mercy and grace is only made possible because a good man died for a guilty man. We find that even as we sin, God uses it for our good as we are ever more grateful to the man on the cross that gives us our perfection. His work on the cross is reason that God smiles on us without a bit of anger or disappointment.

The truth for the Christian is that fear is not our motivator. Of course, reverence for God is called for and leads to joy, but there is no fear of losing God's favor. There is no fear of ever ever ever being punished for our sins (only loving discipline). We now smile to know that Jesus sends us grace upon grace, not only to forgive us but to trust him and sanctify us.

New Heart, meet crazy grace
This grace is the great gamble- when all is lawful, what will one do? The born-again heart simply aims for happiness and this is a formula that anyone who's been to Sunday school knows: Love, Give, Worship, Tell, Meditate on the Word, Get to know Him, Talk to Him. The exhortations you thought boring and pointless to do before remain hard but they give us what we all want- the peace of living life in harmony with what God intended.

We will sin, yes, but take every drop of joy in believing and meditating on the fact that "where sin increased, grace abounded all the more (Rm 5:20)" And always always always remember the words of the great Surgeon- remember his preferred patient:

"Those who are well have no need of a physician, but those who are sick. "Go and learn what this means, 'I desire mercy, and not sacrifice.' For I came not to call the righteous, but sinners.(Matt. 9:12-13)"

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Theology in balance
And there you have it. I have significantly weighted the new birth mostly because it takes longer to explain than grace and more because if most Americans wanted to stay consistent with their theology they would only read this last post avoiding the reality of the need for new birth.

For the Christian, though, who wants a biblical framework for how to view themselves, sin, and the people around them (including the people sitting in church) a balance must be had. We must realize that the new birth is huge, but we must also realize that after the new birth, sin will still happen. However it's wage is no more- its power is gone and we are playing a whole new ballgame (Rom. 8:2). We must balance the need for true conversion with the realization that striving before God is a stupid, joy-stealing thing to do before and after the new birth. Too much emphasis on false converts and hell and overestimating the power of the new birth leads to despair and lack of assurance. Too much emphasis on God's grace (without the reality of the need for being born-again) and underestimating the power of the new birth leads to the church we have today where many sit in pews every week waiting for heaven, realizing only too late that "they never knew Him"!

Balance is called for but both of these truths are sorely needed today as false Christians remain comfortable and true Christians merely preach grace without living in the joy and comfort of it.

Recommended resources

On the New Birth
-Finally Alive by John Piper - New birth, New birth, New birth (far more in depth than I)

-1 John - Why did the disciple write this? "I write these things to you who believe in the name of the Son of God that you may know that you have eternal life.(5:13)"

On grace after conversion
-The Ragamuffin Gospel by Brennan Manning - Read a review of this on my blog (it's right before this New Creation series. This book's a life-changer.)

-True Faced (an .mp3 message) by John Lynch - Let's be honest. The Christian life is tough and anyone with a permasmile needs to get honest or be punched in the face.

New Creation in Old Flesh (6) - Sin after the new birth

The Perfect Doctrine has its Weaknesses
The spiritual giant, John Wesley, thought that for the Christian, perfection was possible in this life. On a careful study of the bible and our experience, however, we know that this is not the case. It is with Piper that I resonate:

“The longer I live the less optimistic I am that I will end without sin and the more grateful I become for the blood of Christ imputed to me. As I grow older I do not feel myself becoming gloriously holy but I find myself feeling great love for the gospel.” - John Piper

As my holiness trods along with all of its mess-ups and backtracks, more and more I realize sin that I've lived with my whole life and never realized. While my sin doesn't keep ratcheting up, my awareness of my sin grows. As I grow, I am more and more thankful for a perfection that is outside myself that I can't mess up. In short, sin in a born-again believer's life is real.

The Penitent Heart
What shall we say then? Should we retract all that we said about the fruit and spiritual practices? By no means! God judges the heart.

"The mark of the Christian is not perfection, but the fight of faith showing itself in imperfect love by the power of the Spirit and in the joyful confidence that God justifies the ungodly." - John Pipebomb

How do you feel about your sin? Do you view it as a simple bad habit that should maybe go? Do you minimize or rationalize? OR do you wage war going as far as gouging out your eye? (Matt. 18:9 - figurative, but shows attitude towards sin). Do you get on your knees in helplessness pleading to a sovereign God to set you free? Do you hate your sin? This is the attitude of the regenerated heart, a heart that is soft to God and correction.

Sin Yet Remains
However, though the new heart is inclined to hate sin, the reality is that sin will happen. Sin itself is not evidence against the new birth. 1 Kings assures us that "there is no man who does not sin (8:46)". Jesus, in laying down a pattern to pray, tells us to pray "forgive us our sins as we forgive those who trespass against us..."

Even from the two most challenging books in the whole Bible we are affirmed that one will not be perfect after being born again. "For we all stumble in many ways(James 3:2) ", James writes.

In 1 John, while John says some crazy things like "No one who abides in him keeps on sinning (3:6)" and "Whoever makes a practice of sinning is of the devil(3:8)", he also writes plainly that "If we say we have no sin, we deceive ourselves, and the truth is not in us. (1:8)"

Finally, as if that wasn't enough, we see Paul, yes the Paul that wrote the Bible, still struggling with the sin that plagues him.

19 For I do not do the good I want, but the evil I do not want is what I keep on doing. 24 Wretched man that I am! Who will deliver me from this body of death? 25 Thanks be to God through Jesus Christ our Lord!" (Romans 7:19,24-25)

New Creation in Old Flesh (5) - What this means

Two Camps
What does all this mean? Well, it simply means that while many topics within Christianity are gray areas (though we sometimes make them black and white), one cannot be. The new birth says there are two kinds of people: People who are still dead and people who have been made alive. There is no spectrum of goodness or badness that really means anything in regards to whether someone "will see the kingdom of God". The ultimate question is NOT Catholic or Protestant, Emergent or Reformed, Lutheran or Presbyterian, Religious or Non-religious, even Good theology or Bad theology.

The only question of eternal significance to you or me is simply, Dead or Alive?

A person's religion, denomination, righteousness, holiness, doctrine, "niceness", thoughts, feelings, and actions, come in a distant second to the question: "Has he/she been born again". Of course we know that there is usually a corellation between the new birth and things like holiness and sound theology but we also know that a person check off both of those things without ever having experienced God in a saving way.

No middle ground
Someone either is saved, going to heaven, bearing fruit, ALIVE to passionate about the things of God, with a penitent heart that hates sin. Or... they do not. I can't emphasize enough that it's not about being a "good Christian" as opposed to a "pretty good Christian"- that doesn't matter compared to this. Are you born again or not? Are the people around you born again or not? I don't care what anyone says about what they believe (Remember Matthew 7?) Are they born again? If you want to know about the tree look at the fruit. If I want to see what a person believes, I ignore what they say. I watch their lives.

This one issue that is the new birth cannot be a scale. It is binary. 1 or 0. Off or on. Black or white. Alive or dead. Heaven or Hell. Do you want to know where you stand with God? Whether you are a vessel of mercy or a vessel of wrath? You need only ask one question.

Have I been born again?