 |
 |
 |
 |
|
 |
||||
How's Your Aim |
|||
Part 3 |
|||
|
by Ralph I. Tilley
|
|||
|
Part 1 in Review: A Too-Low Aim In part one of this series I addressed a pervasive doctrinal and ethical flaw in the teaching and living of far too many Bible teachers and Christians. This teaching says in effect that . . . • Christians should expect to live a defeated, failing, sinning life. • God’s exhortations to holy living are simply an impossible ideal: something to shoot for but impossible to hit. • Man’s ability to please God was so irreversibly affected by his fall in the Garden, that despite the provisions of the work of Christ on the Cross, His present intercessions for the Church, and the indwelling Holy Spirit, no person can—or should be expected to—live a life of spiritual victory in Christ. • That the highest level of Christian experience to be realized in this life is depicted in Romans 7. Part 2 in Review: A Too-High Aim In part two I suggested that some Christians are burdened with having too high an aim in their personal, spiritual pilgrimage: they live with unrealistic expectations. A few of these I pointed out are as follows . . . • Some Christians unrealistically expect that the “flesh” can be eradicated from their spiritual nature. • Some Christians unrealistically expect God to remove temptation from them. • Some Christians unrealistically expect God to make choices for them which He requires them to make. • Some Christians unrealistically expect God to accomplish a desired end without their supplying the means. • Some Christians unrealistically expect the Christian life to be free from hardships. • Some Christians unrealistically expect they will never sin. God’s Target The target our Father-God places before the regenerated Christian to aim for in all his conduct is the target of agape love—divine love. This love is more than a feeling, more than emotion, it is the sacrificial, selfless devotion of the Christian reciprocating in worship and service the very divine love which God Himself has “poured out within our hearts through the Holy Spirit who was given to us.”(1) While walking among humankind some two thousand years ago, our Lord never left us any room for doubt as to what the disciple’s primary goal should be in all of life’s relationships: “You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, and with all your soul, and with all your mind.... You shall love your neighbor as yourself.”(2) The Apostle Paul while teaching his converts under the divine inspiration of the Holy Spirit, concurred with the Lord Jesus Christ when he wrote: “Love ... is the fulfillment of the law.”(3) Furthermore, he wrote that in all of our pursuits in life we should make certain that above and beyond every other legitimate pursuit the Christian should “pursue love.”(4) Moreover, so the twenty-first century Christian would be given a comprehensive overview as to what this agape love really looks like, the New Testament, from Christ’s Sermon on the Mount to the book of Revelation, provides us with both examples and descriptions. One of these selections is found in the so-called Love Chapter: “Love is patient, love is kind and is not jealous; love does not brag and is not arrogant, does not act unbecomingly; it does not seek its own, is not provoked, does not take into account a wrong suffered, does not rejoice in unrighteousness, but rejoices with the truth; bears all things, believes all things, hopes all things, endures all things. Love never fails ...”(5) But God not only leaves us with commandments, exhortations and descriptions of divine love; His very own love was flawlessly and perfectly revealed in the person, life, ministry and death of His Son, the Lord Jesus Christ. If one wishes to discover what our Father-God means by agape love, then all he has to do is look with Spirit-opened eyes upon His Son, as given to us in His written revelation—the Word of God. Christ was God’s love incarnated, the divine love of God clothed in human flesh. And this love of God reached its ultimate revelation in the Son’s voluntary, substitutionary atoning death on Calvary’s cross. For Christ, “though he was in the form of God, did not count equality with God a thing to be grasped, but made himself nothing, taking the form of a servant, being born in the likeness of men. And being found in human form, he humbled himself by becoming obedient to the point of death, even the death on a cross.”(6) Therefore, when we Christians are exhorted in the Holy Scriptures to “pursue love,” it is the highest of callings. It is a call to live our lives with the same attitudes and moral actions and reactions, that characterized the life of the Lord Jesus Christ. All earnest, evangelical Christians I’m sure agree on what has just been said: that agape love has been established as the target by our Heavenly Father for all Christian conduct. Now what is our instinctive reaction to this? I know what mine is. To echo the words of the apostle responding in another context, “And who is adequate for these things?”(7) But then he immediately follows by informing his readers that though he himself is inadequate, God is adequate: “Such confidence we have through Christ toward God. Not that we are adequate in ourselves ... but our adequacy is from God, who also made us adequate as servants of a new covenant, not of the letter but of the Spirit; for the letter kills, but the Spirit gives life.”(8) This brings us to our next consideration. Does God Expect us to Hit the Target? If God has established agape love as the target every Christian is to aim for in thought, word and deed, does our Father-God actually expect His children to consistently hit this target? (Now this is where some of you will jump off the proverbial wagon. But stay with me and hear me out—we may not be all that far apart.) First, I will answer my question with a question: What kind of God would our Father in Heaven be if He insisted that His children strive to reach unattainable expectations? Would a reasonable earthly father make impossible demands from his children? Of course not! Do we actually believe that out Heavenly Father is telling His children in His sacred Word to, “Hit the mark of divine love! Hit the mark of divine love!”—knowing all the while that there is no way in this life that it is possible to hit the mark of divine love? If that is indeed what God is telling His children to do, knowing that it is clearly impossible for them to succeed, then such a god is totally cruel and contrary to the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ who is presented to us in His holy Word. No, God nowhere commands His children to behave in a particular way that is impossible for them. Every command of Christ, every ethical imperative in Scripture which has a universal application for all people in all cultures for all time, can be done by the empowering grace of God operating without hindrance in the believer’s life. This brings us to our next point. The Power Behind our Aim Here’s the crux of the entire matter: All of God’s commands are accompanied by His amazing, empowering grace to carry them out! He who has an ear to hear, let him hear what the Spirit is saying to the Church on this matter. The truth of the matter is that God does not expect any Christian to hit the target of divine love on his own. It can’t be done in one’s own strength; God knows that. This is why Jesus went away to the Father and subsequently on the Day of Pentecost poured out His Spirit on the Church. Pre-Pentecost Simon Peter could never have preached with power and courage before a gainsaying crowd like he did on the Day of Pentecost. But he did so on that day because his heart had been purified and filled by the blessed fiery Holy Spirit.(9) From the Day of Pentecost on he was a transformed, Spirit-empower-ed disciple of the Lord Jesus Christ. This is the crying need of the Church. Some of us have accepted a sub-normal level of Christian living for so long that we believe it to be the normal Christian life. True Christianity is supernatural living. It’s a walk in the power of the Spirit. It’s a Spirit-controlled life, a resurrected life, a Spirit-filled life. Friend, have you experienced the personal, poured-out Spirit in your own heart? Or are you defending your defeated Christian life by taking refuge in Romans 7? Do you argue that the best God has for the Christian in this life is no better than your former unregenerate life? Is it your experience that you have been delivered from outward sin but do not enjoy consistent victory over inward sin? Or, are you even enjoying consistent victory over outward sin? To use the words of the late Catherine Marshall, I would recommend that God has “Something More” for you. Marshall was the devout wife of the late U.S. Senate Chaplain, Peter Marshall. She became so dissatisfied with her sterile and impotent level of Christian living, that her heart craved for something more. She found it in experiencing the cleansing, sanctifying, filling ministries of the Holy Spirit.(10) You have been to Calvary—have you been to Pentecost? God does not want any of His children to live a dissatisfied, defeated Christian life. Hear again the words of our Lord, “I came that they may have life, and have it more abundantly.”(11) You say you have life, eternal life? Wonderful! What about “abundant life”? Yes, the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, is fully capable of enabling a fully surrendered, consecrated vessel to love Him with all the heart, soul, mind and strength. But all we have said would be incomplete without one caveat. Flawed Vessels Now this is where some others will jump off our proverbial wagon. After having said all the above, in order to be true to the Scriptures and true to Christian experience, we must add one essential component to our thesis. Even though the fully surrendered, consecrated believer has received the poured-out fullness of the Holy Spirit in his own heart, this in no wise is a guarantee that he will always walk in the Spirit’s fullness, neither always love as he should. We are exhorted by the apostle in Ephesians 5:18 to “always allow yourselves to be filled with the Spirit.”(12) But let’s be honest here: Who among us will stand up and testify that he or she has absolutely, perfectly allowed the Holy Spirit to empower him and her to always love as Jesus loved, to always love as 1 Corinthians 13 exhorts us to love? But this is where 1 John 2:1 comes in: “My little children, I am writing these things to you so that you may not miss the target of agape love even one time. And if anyone does miss the target of agape love, we have an Advocate with the Father, Jesus Christ the righteous one.”(13) According to the entire thrust of Scripture, sin should be an exception in the Christian’s life, not the rule. If it is the rule then we’re living in I John 3 instead of in Romans 8. Only the Holy Spirit can open our eyes as to what our real state is. And He can only help honest seekers. If we are always justifying our failures by taking refuge in Romans 7, I would simply suggest that the Lord Jesus has something more for you. In Summary • Our loving Heavenly Father expects His children to always aim at the target of love. • The Christian who lives in full surrender to the Lord Jesus Christ and is walking in the fullness of the Holy Spirit will consistently aim at the target of agape love. • When the believer fails to walk in the fullness of the Spirit, his aim will be wide of the target of love. • When the believer fails to act in agape love, he should not despair but flee to his Advocate for forgiveness and cleansing. • The disciple of Christ should daily seek to allow himself to be filled with the Holy Spirit. • The believer cannot live a life of agape love in his own strength. For Jesus said, “apart from Me you can do nothing.”(14) “Now to Him who is able to do far more abundantly beyond all that we ask or think, according to the power that works within us, to Him be glory in the church ...”(15) – Soli Deo Gloria – Scripture quotations are taken from the New American Standard Bible except as indicated. 1. Romans 5:5 |
|||
|
|
|