How Undserved Grace Empowers Obedience

It seems that God is really wanting me to understand His grace as it relates to obedience. Over the last six months, I've had numerous conversations and have read countless blogs and books that have centered on this subject. I've also had many conversations lately about the right way for a preacher of God's Word to correctly communicate this to his congregation. But that's another subject altogether and won't get into that right now.

The question at hand is "How does the pursuit of personal holiness and God's grace relate?" How do we know that we aren't being legalistic? How do we know that we aren't being licentious? How do we know that we are pursuing holiness in a way that honors God and is motivated by the gospel?

Dane Ortlund, over at the Gospel Coalition blog, responds to a recent article in Christianity Today. For context, I encourage you to read the whole post, even if it's just to get an wonderful example of how to lovingly disagree with someone through the internet. But, for the sake of brevity, I just wanted to include a few paragraphs where I believe Dane provides excellent insight into the subject of gospel-centered obedience.

He is basically responding to the question, "How are radical obedience and personal holiness to be encouraged?" Here is his answer:

One way is to balance gospel grace with exhortations to holiness, as if both need equal air time lest we fall into legalism on one side (neglecting grace) or antinomianism on the other (neglecting holiness).

The other way, which I believe is the right and biblical way, is so to startle this restraint-free culture with the gospel of free justification that the functional justifications of human approval, moral performance, sexual indulgence, or big bank accounts begin to lose their vice-like grip on human hearts and their emptiness is exposed in all its fraudulence. It sounds backward, but the path to holiness is through (not beyond) the grace of the gospel, because only undeserved grace can truly melt and transform the heart. The solution to restraint-free immorality is not morality. The solution to immorality is the free grace of God—grace so free that it will be (mis)heard by some as a license to sin with impunity. The route by which the New Testament exhorts radical obedience is not by tempering grace but by driving it home all the more deeply.

Let’s pursue holiness. (Without it we won’t see God: Matt 5:8; Heb 12:14.) And let’s pursue it centrally through enjoying the gospel, the same gospel that got us in and the same gospel that liberates us afresh each day (1 Cor 15:1–2; Gal 2:14; Col 1:23; 2:6). As G. C. Berkouwer wisely remarked, “The heart of sanctification is the life which feeds on justification.”

Gospel-motivated Obedience

Tullian Tchividjian:

"So, it’s a mistake to identify the “two cliffs” as being legalism and lawlessness. The one “cliff” is legalism but it comes in two forms—what some call license is just another form of legalism. And if people outside the church are guilty of “break the rules” legalism, many people inside the church are still guilty of “keep the rules” legalism.

This is super important because the biggest lie about grace that Satan wants the church to buy is the idea that grace is dangerous and therefore needs to be “kept it in check.” By believing this we not only prove we don’t understand grace, but we violate gospel advancement in our lives and in the church. A “yes, grace…but” disposition is the kind of fearful posture that keeps moralism swirling around in our hearts and in the church.

I understand the fear of grace. As a pastor, one of my responsibilities is to disciple people into a deeper understanding of obedience—teaching them to say “no” to the things God hates and “yes” to the things God loves. But all too often I have (wrongly) concluded that the only way to keep licentious people in line is to give them more rules. The fact is, however, that the only way licentious people start to obey is when they get a taste of God’s radical unconditional acceptance of sinners.

The irony of gospel-based sanctification is that those who end up obeying more are those who increasingly realize that their standing with God is not based on their obedience, but Christ’s.

The people who actually end up performing better are those who understand that their relationship with God doesn’t depend on their performance for Jesus, but Jesus’ performance for us.

People need to hear less about what we need to do for God and more about all that God has already done for us, because imperatives minus indicatives equal impossibilities. If you’re a preacher and you’re assuming that people understand the radical nature of gospel indicatives, so your ministry is focused primarily on gospel imperatives, you’re making a huge mistake. A huge mistake!

Long-term, sustained, gospel-motivated obedience can only come from faith in what Jesus has already done, not fear of what we must do. To paraphrase Ray Ortlund, any obedience not grounded in or motivated by the gospel is unsustainable. No matter how hard you try, how “radical” you get, any engine smaller than the gospel that you’re depending on for power to obey will conk out in due time.

So let’s take it up a notch. Don’t be afraid to preach the radical nature of the gospel of grace. For, as the late Dr. Martyn Lloyd-Jones once said, “If your preaching of the gospel doesn’t provoke the charge from some of antinomianism, you’re not preaching the gospel.”

(via)

Presuming upon "Open Doors"

There is a recent news story about a young guy who works with the railroad being called by the New York Jets to play in some upcoming games. His salary would be ten times what he is currently making. But, he decided not to play. Why the heck not??

The author of this blog gives some great insight into the decision. At one point he says:

We live in a day-and-age when even Christians presume that every open door is a door opened by God. If it’s ‘good’ it must be from God...but that’s pragmatism at best.

I thought that was very convicting. It's easy to think that way, that every good and comfortable thing must be an open door from God. If your job sucks then God must want you to get a new one, right? Well, maybe not.

The blogger then cites a very applicable passage in Hebrews 11:

By faith Moses, when he was grown up, refused to be called the son of Pharoah's daughter, choosing rather to be mistreated with the people of God than to enjoy the fleeting pleasures of sin. He considered the reproach of Christ greater wealth than all the treasures of Egypt, for he was looking to the reward.

Comfort, financial or otherwise, does not always equal God's desire/will for our lives. His main desire for us is to know and treasure Him above everything else. And I would submit the more comfort and financial stability we have in our lives, or the more we chase certain dreams, the harder it is to do that. Just a thought.

Go here to read the whole story.

(via)

Letting the Gospel Daily Transform Us

In my RTS class right now, we're looking at sanctification by grace through faith. Tonight as we walked through different passages, my heart was filled with joy seeing the wonder of the gospel afresh. God requires perfect obedience. I can't perfectly obey the law, though I often act like I can. Christ came and PERFECTLY obeyed the law. Think about that. As a baby. As a toddler. As a teenager. And as the most unjust crime in the history of the world was being perpetrated against him, there was no sin in Him. And not only am I forgiven for what I've done, for some reason I get the righteousness that Christ performed in His life. That doesn't make sense. And the affections of my heart are stirred again as I type wondering why God would ever do such a thing. It doesn't make sense. I do not deserve it. And that compels me to love God.

Through the couple books we're reading on the subject of sanctification and through the lectures, I see God revealing areas in my heart that are still wanting to believe that becoming holy is up to me and that God's approval of me is based on what I do or don't do. When people ask how I'm doing in my walk with God, I want to think about the spiritual disciplines of my life. How's my quiet time? My Scripture memory? My prayer life? Sure these can be indicators of some things, but I should really always think about how am doing at living in light of the gospel. The fact that I'm wicked, yet forgiven and loved. The fact that I have been adopted as a co-heir with Christ and am now a son, not a slave. Grace is training me to renounce ungodliness (Titus 2:12), not the law. And that is so freeing.

The professor shared a quote tonight that I thought was really helpful regarding all of this. It comes from a book called Dynamics of Spiritual Life by Richard Lovelace:

"Only a fraction of the present body of professing Christians are solidly appropriating the justifying work of Christ in their lives. Many have so light an apprehension of God’s holiness and of the extent and guilt of their sin that consciously they see little need for justification, although below the surface of their lives they are deeply guilt-ridden and insecure. Many others have a theoretical commitment to this doctrine, but in their day-to-day existence they rely on their sanctification for justification, in the Augustinian manner, drawing their assurance of acceptance with God from their sincerity, their past experience of conversion, their recent religious performance or the relative infrequency of their conscious, willful disobedience.

Few know enough to start each day with a thoroughgoing stand upon Luther’s platform: you are accepted, looking outward in faith and claiming the wholly alien righteousness of Christ as the only ground for acceptance, relaxing in that quality of trust which will produce increasing sanctification as faith is active in love and gratitude. In order for a pure and lasting work of spiritual renewal to take place within the church, multitudes within it must be led to build their lives on this foundation. This means that they must be conducted into the light of a full conscious awareness of God’s holiness, the depth of their sin and the sufficiency of the atoning work of Christ for their acceptance with God, not just at the outset of their Christian lives but in every succeeding day."

The gospel produces sustained obedience

Tullian Tchividjian:

When John (or Jesus) talks about keeping God’s commands as a way to know whether you love Jesus or not, he’s not using the law as a way to motivate. He’s simply stating a fact. Those who love God will keep on keeping his commands. The question is how do we keep God’s commands? What sustains a long obedience in the same direction? Where does the power come from to do what God commands? As every parent and teacher knows, behavioral compliance to rules without heart change will be shallow and short-lived. But shallow and short-lived is not what God wants (that’s not what it means to “keep God’s commands.”). God wants a sustained obedience from the heart. How is that possible? Long-term, sustained, gospel-motivated obedience can only come from faith in what Jesus has already done, not fear of what we must do. To paraphrase Ray Ortlund, any obedience not grounded in or motivated by the gospel is unsustainable.

(from an interview with JT)

We must come...but we can't

God commands us to do things that we have no ability to do. For instance, this happens in salvation.

John Duncan was a minister in the Free Church of Scotland and a missionary to the Jews in Hungary. John Piper quotes John Duncan here:

"As long as I am told that I must come to God, and that I can come, I am left to suppose that some good thing, or some power of good remains in me, and I arrogate to myself that which belongs to Jehovah. The creature is exalted, and God is robbed of His glory.

If, on the other hand, I am told that I cannot come to God, but not also that I must come, I am left to rest contented at a distance from God, I am not responsible for my rebellion, and God Jehovah is not my God.

But if we preach that sinners can't come, and yet must come, then is the honour of God vindicated, and the sinner is shut up. Man must be so shut up that he must come to Christ, and yet know that he cannot. He must come to Christ, or he will look to another, when there is no other to whom he may come; he cannot come, or he will look to himself.

This is the gospel vice, to shut up men to the faith. Some grasp at one limb of the vice and some at the other, leaving the sinner open - but when a man is shut up that he must and cannot, he is shut up to the faith - shut up to the faith, and then would he be shut up in the faith. God is declared to be Jehovah, and the sinner is made willing to be saved by Him, in His own way, as sovereign in His grace."

On the Spot Obedience

I've been reading The Spirit of the Disciplines by Dallas Willard. It's really good stuff so far. He's addressed some things recently that I have been thinking about. It's an idea similar to what he talks about in Divine Conspiracy, thought put in a slightly different way. It's basically that idea that we sometimes seek Christlikeness by asking the question "What Would Jesus Do?" in this particular situation. Willard says that there is a flaw in this thinking. He says:

"the idea conveyed is an absolutely fatal one--that to follow [Christ] simply means to try to behave as He did when He was 'on the spot,' under pressure or persecution or in the spotlight. There is a realization that what He did is such cases was...the natural outflow of the life he lived when not on the spot."

And he says a couple of paragraphs earlier:

"We cannot behave 'on the spot' as He did and taught if in the rest of our time we live as everybody else does...Jesus never expected us simply to turn the other cheek, go the second mile, bless those who persecute us, give unto them that ask, and so forth. These responses, generally and rightly understood to be characteristic of Christlikeness, were set forth by Him as illustrative of what might be expected of a new kind of person."