Tag: grace

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Enjoying a Relationship with God Forever – A Summary of the Christian Faith

What is Christianity all about? Why are people so interested in it? Why do people give their lives for it? Why do more than a billion people follow it? Here is my brief summary of the main points of the Christian faith and its significance.

God
When we talk about the Christian faith, we begin and end with God Himself. Most people of the world believe there is a God, and that is the standpoint from which we begin.

When we think about God, we know that He is far greater than us. He made the earth and the heavens in all their splendor and variety. He made the complexity of our cells and the vast expanse of the universe. He’s far greater than we could imagine.

He is also good. We see this in the beauty of the universe, in the amazing provision this world offers us, and the way we can enjoy so many good things in this world. God has made this world so we can know Him and experience good things.

God is also holy. This means that He is pure in every way. He wants us to be pure. We all have a sense of right and wrong that we did not invent and that we cannot just dismiss. This is our conscience. We all have a sense that right and wrong is not just a preference or something convenient for us. Instead, it comes from our Creator, requires us to do right, and points us to the holiness of God.

Humans
When we think about humans, one thing we know about them is that they are created for God and to connect with God. They can know who God is. Within us all is a sense that we can pray. We also have a sense of God’s commands and that we are to live before Him. We are created to connect with God. Continue reading “Enjoying a Relationship with God Forever – A Summary of the Christian Faith”

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Justification and Sanctification: God’s Gifts to Faith

The goal of grace is to re-engage humanity in service to the glory of God and the life of the human community. To do this, the human pride that seeks to make ourselves or our nations the center of the universe must be shattered. This requires a humble acceptance of God’s verdict and our sinfulness and a reception of His offer of security, love, and forgiveness. This acceptance frees us from the burden of anxiety and so releases us for the adventure of love.

Here we consider this same event from God’s perspective. God offers power and grace, sanctification and justification, as the solution to human pride and misery. From God’s standpoint, the gifts given to faith are justification and sanctification. This is grace shown to man and power working in man. It is forgiveness and transformation, a new status and a new character. God forgives, and He transforms. For Niebuhr, it is important to see that God does both, and that these are two distinct gifts.

Justification
When someone believes in Christ, they achieve a perfect righteousness. However, this righteousness is not theirs internally. It is only theirs by imputation. “The Christ who is apprehended by faith, i.e., to whom the soul is obedient in principle, ‘imputes’ his righteousness to it. It is not an actual possession except ‘by faith’” (The Nature & Destiny of Man, 2.103). “Impute” means to consider, to think, to reckon. God counts the righteousness of Christ as ours, so that God sees us as if we had never sinned nor been a sinner, indeed, as if we had accomplished what Christ Himself did. Continue reading “Justification and Sanctification: God’s Gifts to Faith”

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Destined for Excellence: A Meditation on 2 Peter 1

On June 27, 2015, Dylann Roof entered a Bible study at the historic Emanuel AME Church in Charleston, SC. He participated in the Bible study, even discussing his view of Scripture. As the participants closed in prayer, Dylann Roof took out a gun from his fanny pack and pointed it at 87 year old Susie Jackson. Her nephew, Tywanza Sanders, intervened and was shot first. By the time Roof finished, eight other people had died from multiple gunshot wounds at close range. It was evil, heartbreaking, and shocking.

What was more shocking was the response to Dylann Roof by some of the members of the AME Church. At the bond hearing, Roof had to face the families of the victims. As reported by USA Today:

First up was Nadine Collier, who lost her mother Ethel Lance.

“I forgive you … You took something really precious from me. I will never talk to her ever again, I will never be able to hold her again, but I forgive you and have mercy on your soul,” Collier says while fighting back tears.

Not all the family members could bring themselves to do that, which is completely understandable, but several did.

One who did was Chris Singleton, a minor league baseball player in the Chicago Cubs farm system. His mother was murdered in the Charleston Massacre. He was in the middle of playing a baseball game when he decided to show grace to Dylann Roof.

So far, Dylann Roof does not seem to have been moved by these demonstrations of grace and forgiveness. However, he is not the only one involved. This was a point brought out by Singleton:

“After seeing what happened and the reason why it happened, and after seeing how people could forgive, I truly hope that people will see that it wasn’t just us saying words,” Singleton says. “I know, for a fact, that it was something greater than us, using us to bring our city together.”

The demonstration of grace was a testimony of love to the whole city. It was an amazing act of love that contributed to building a loving community in a way that few other things could.

And here we have God’s plan for building a loving community. What He does is create specific excellent traits or virtues within His people that build the loving community. He transforms them into the type of people who build a loving community. Continue reading “Destined for Excellence: A Meditation on 2 Peter 1”

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Pursuing Excellence

When you think of excellence, who do you think of? Lebron James, Albert Einstein, Muhammed Ali, Thomas Edison, or Ludwig Beethoven? All of these people accomplished great things.

The reality is, though, that most of us won’t be pro basketball players or boxers or famous scientists or compose musical numbers that people will enjoy listening to centuries after our deaths. No matter how hard we work, pray, or think, these things will not happen.

However, the door to an excellence that is greater than anything these men accomplished is wide open to everyone. That is the excellence of reflecting the glory of God!

How do we do this? We do it through virtue. Virtue is an excellent trait that shows the nobility and glory of humans and reflects the glory of God.

Humans were created in the image of God to reflect the glory of God, but this glory is diminished by original and actual sin. Corruption rather than virtue more often characterizes the human race. The goal of the Christian faith is to restore human beings to their original glory, excellence, and virtue.

What does this look like? The Apostle Peter provides us a beautiful description in his opening exhortation in 2 Peter 1:3-11. He begins by telling us that we now have everything we need for a godly life. How? Through God’s own virtue (same word as virtue in the Greek, v. 3). It is His own excellence that provides for us what we need to live a godly life.

When we think of a godly life, it is important that we think not merely of doing the right things or not doing the wrong things. It is about who we are. It is about characteristics that are excellent and noble that reflect the glory of God, participating, as it were, in the divine nature (see 2 Pet. 1:4).

After laying that groundwork, Peter explains what those characteristics are. He says, “For this very reason, make every effort, be totally zealous, to add to your faith virtue and to virtue knowledge and to knowledge self-control and to self-control endurance and to endurance godliness and to godliness brotherly love and to brotherly love, a love that reflects God’s love for lost sinners (agape love).”

This list does not exhaust the excellent character traits that reflect the glory of God, but they provide a helpful overview.

When we think of these characteristics, it is easy for us to miss that they are all about joy and happiness. When we think of God, we should see Him as being eternally content and happy. He has everything He needs for total and perfect happiness. He is the One who is creative and delights in making things. He is so full of goodness that His goodness cannot but overflow.

That’s the excellence that we should pursue. We should seek to be happy and joyful people because we are filled with the sufficiency of God. We delight in the good that God is and the good that He creates. We are filled with joy because we expect good things from Him, and so we don’t need to desire things that are not good or reasonable for us (self-control). Like God, we move out of this sufficiency to create and to love, even the most unlovable.

That is the glory that is available to each and every human being and that God offers to us as a gift.

If it is so available, why do we not see more people who reflect that glory? Because it involves serious effort. It takes zeal. We have to work at it. This does not mean simply trying harder. It means enlightening our minds through the means of grace, engaging prayerfully in the world with a new mindset, and enlisting folk to help us and serve as examples.

At the same time, it’s not an effort that is beyond normal human reach. It is available to us. His divine power has given us everything we need for a godly life. The burden and yoke of Jesus is a light one that actually gives us rest and gives us an excellence that reflects the transcendent glory of God. The power, promises, and presence of God are always available. We can become people of virtue, people whose character reflects the glory of God.

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The Glory of the Law

What is the best way for humans to live? How can we be truly happy?

People may not discuss these questions explicitly, but all around us, people give answers to those questions. They tell us that we will be happy if we have a full head of hair, white teeth, big homes, and new cars. That is the good life. That is real living. Commercials present this vision of the good life to us a thousand times every day.

People also have strong opinions about the right way for people to live. John Ortberg explains (here) that people talk about it every day. Just listen to their conversations. People have so many complaints about what other people have done to them. They believe that others haven’t lived how they were supposed to live. However, it’s clear from their own lives that they haven’t lived according to the human ideal either!

So, how should we live? What will give us true happiness?

What if God came down from heaven and told us exactly how to live to be truly human and happy?

Well, that’s what He’s done. The book of Exodus describes God coming down to Mount Sinai. There, He spoke audibly to the entire people of Israel. They heard God’s voice. There, He told them how to live. He gave the Ten Commandments.

What do you think of when you hear the word “law”? It’s easy to get a negative view of it. Many Christians speak of the law in a negative way.

This is in part based on some of the ways the Bible speaks. The Bible recognizes that the law can tell us what to do, but the law can’t help us when we have broken the law or give us power to fulfill the law. Only God can do that.

We must be very clear, however, that the law is not the problem. We are the problem. As the Apostle Paul said: “So then, the law is holy, and the commandment is holy, righteous and good. . . but I am unspiritual, sold as a slave to sin” (Rom. 7:12, 14).

When we think of the law, we should not have a negative reaction. We should think like the Psalmist: “Oh how I love Thy law, it is my meditation all day long!” (Psalm 119:97).

When we think of the law, we should think of glory. It is a glorious thing that God has spoken to us and told us exactly and clearly how to live. It is a wondrous thing that God has given us His commandments.

The Apostle Paul says that though the law condemns us, this does not mean that the law is not glorious. Instead, we should think this way: “If the ministry that brought condemnation was glorious, how much more glorious is the ministry that brings righteousness!” (2 Cor. 3:9).

The opinions of people and the message of the world present a way of living that will disappoint us and not lead us to the happiness we desire. Praise God that He has revealed to us the right way to live and be happy! Praise God that He has given us His commandments! Praise Him even more that He offer us His Spirit, who enables us to obey His commandments.

So, let it be our prayer: “Thy will be done on earth as it is in heaven” and “command what you want, O Lord, and give what you command!”

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