[08/31/20]
From earliest years, I have had a tendency to neglect conclusions, and to be satisfied with the data collection. That, I think, is where I am on this topic of defining Christianity. It’s well and good to poke into some of the tensions that have defined the form of this religion, and the mechanisms by which its formation and preservation have been affected. But now comes the task of pulling it all together and arriving at something like an actual definition.
Fine. So, religion in general consists in accepting and adopting a certain worldview. I’m going to start there, without even so much as a conception of god-ness yet involved, because I do believe that even those who hold themselves to be wholly areligious are in fact quite religious about it. Every world view is, at root, a religion. It may be a religion with only one adherent, and him the god of that religion, but that alters not the situation.
If we add the concept of faith as part of our definition, then belief is necessary, and I think, too, some proper conception of a god ought to be necessary. I’m not sure it is, but it should be. I suppose it must be accepted that whatever it is we profess to believe about the world in which we exist, it must represent some degree of faith, if only in our powers of cognition. But faith, at least as Christianity insists it is defined, is the assurance of things hoped for, the conviction of things not seen (Heb 11:1). It cannot consist solely upon what is measured, calculated, present and available for our tactile interaction. That, I think, leaves much of modern, godless religion out. For even if they may concoct some personification by which to speak of their sense of the world, it remains a matter of measurements. Science as god, to take but one form of the problem, or government as god, to take another, leaves no place for things not seen. There can be no unknown allowed, for science deals in facts, and politics in laws and actions, and neither approach really knows how to make allowance for the unknown, let alone the unknowable.
So, let us peal away at religions that at least propose one or more recognizable gods. I shall begin, as I did at the start of this whole effort, by insisting that the very idea of a multiplicity of gods defies the concept of god-ness. To borrow from the old Highlander series, there can be only one. Systems like ancient mythologies of Greece or Rome, or modern-day Hinduism attempt to resolve this by having some form of hierarchy amongst their multiplicity of deities, but it strikes me that what one is left with is merely an alternate humanity further corrupted by further access to power. The gods of Greece and Rome were hardly godly in any proper sense of the word apart from power. There is not particular divinity to be found in their antics. Likewise, it seems to me the myriad gods of the Hindu become matters of fear and doubt, rather than any cause for worship. They are powerful, yes, but capricious and competitive. They are destructive more than preservative in their actions towards man. All in all, it seems a satisfactory and beneficent godhead is improbable at best, impossible in all likelihood, were this the reality of god-ness. We arrive, therefore at the singular god.
Even here, of course, there is competition amongst religions, isn’t there? Even if we reduce to the three main monotheistic religions of Judaism, Christianity, and Islam, to list them in their order of arrival, there is competition despite the shared roots, such as they are. Here, we are down to a God who has in some wise revealed Himself to man. We can find the roots of Islam, even looking at the texts of Torah, but it is not a godly root. It is the rejected branch, if that source is followed. It is the child of the slave woman, the effort of Abraham to take God’s plan into his own hands because by his estimation, God was taking too long to act. But this can hardly be accounted a sound basis for a new religion, however much Islam seeks to build on the idea that the Jews misread the life of Abraham. I have to say, this comes across more like a family squabble over a disputed will than the foundation of any conception of God, but there it is. There is also the conception, at least in recent years, that Islam has its beginnings in a corruption of the Christian Scriptures, but I can’t speak with any real basis on that idea. Leave it aside. I think the very nature of the religion produced, with its emphasis on man, the unreliable offer of paradise, and what has to be said is in practice a culture and promotion of death, does not present a God that can be found worthy of worship. There may be cause for abject fear, but nothing of worthiness. We may as well have stuck with the capricious gods of Greece. At least they were entertaining.
So, we’re down to two, and here, of course, Christianity presents a religion that proposes to have fulfilled the Jewish faith and supplanted it. No, supplanted is the wrong term. Observing the ministry of Jesus, we do not in fact find a supplanting, but something of a Reformation. It is a stripping away of the accretions of Pharisaical opinionating, and the power politics of the Sadducees, to restore things to what God had Himself decreed from the outset. If we are to remain in the place of recognizing the sovereignty of God as supreme, all-powerful, and all-knowing, Creator and Sustainer of all, then in some way, I think we have to discover that His stated purpose to see Jerusalem destroyed, the temple ruined, and the elect of God departed from that place is a pretty blunt statement as to the condition of the Jewish religion at that juncture. I do not count the Jews out as concerns find themselves among the elect, nor the Muslim, nor the Hindu for all that matter. God will choose whom He will choose. But as a system of religion, to continue even two thousand years later, to reject the Messiah of God’s choosing is to reject God.
But perhaps I am slightly ahead of myself. Religion, is a framework of beliefs, and in particular, a framework of beliefs about God and his interactions with mankind. Honestly, if God had no interactions with mankind, I don’t know why we should care much about Him one way or the other. We are not terribly inclined to concern ourselves with matters that don’t impinge upon our life in any way. It might make for an interesting philosophical exercise to poke into questions of how humanity came into being, but it really wouldn’t matter much. We are, and that’s that. But mankind, however much he may deny or distort it, has a moral fabric to his being. It’s there, and to pretend it’s not requires such twistings of thought as leave a twisting of the individual into forms no longer recognizably human. Such a moral being must, I think, find cause to wonder why. Why are we? Wherefore have we this idea of right and wrong, and who’s to say if our ideas about the subject are any more valid than anyone else’s? You know, that’s one of the primary complaints against religion in general. If it’s all manmade attempts at explaining existence, then it’s all equally suspect.
But Christian religion, and most religions, I suppose at some level, insist they are not manmade attempts. I think in some cases that claim is pretty readily discounted, and the flawed results produced by those religions decries any claims of divine sourcing. A god who is not consistent is no god. But religion sets forth a worldview, and in general, sets forth a worldview adhered to by some grouping of individual believers. For it to be a religion, one must suppose there is agreement amongst its adherents. That, as it turns out, is a bit optimistic, at least if one looks to the entire fabric of beliefs. Thus we have efforts like this to lay out what it is some individual believes.
[09/01/20]
So, religion in general is an agreed-upon definition of worldview, setting forth that view as in some way representative of some god. Some religions have arisen as simple attempts to make sense of life and of natural phenomena, and I suppose we could even posit that those who move from science to scientism are doing little different. Some have sought to discover safety in religion by positing powerful protector-gods. Others have, it seems, sought to diminish the relative worth of man by positing gods who are not only powerful, but not terribly well-disposed towards humanity. Several – all, I should suppose – consider their holy texts to be divinely inspired, however that inspiration may have worked. For the Moslem, it was Mohammed who translated divine inspiration into texts, although for many outside the Muslim faith, those texts would certainly appear to present a self-contradicting picture, and that picture in itself to present a rather violent and capricious god. I’m sure that the same is said of the Christian God and the Christian Bible. But there remains the overarching narrative of Scripture, which in the case of the Bible insists on holiness, however flawed the practices of those individuals who have shaped the course of Christianity along the way.
I stress this matter of an agreed-upon definition because it is so critical. It helps us to understand just why it is the early church dealt in creeds and councils. There was difficulty in arriving at one, unified set of definitions for what Christianity believed and what Christianity required in practice. But there was fast and firm agreement on this: Scripture itself, the rule upon which the Church must be built, was not the mere fabrication of man, although fabricated by man. Paul’s words were by Paul’s choosing, but then, Paul’s choosing was informed by the Holy Spirit. We speak of the Bible as God’s Word because we truly discover it to be just that: God’s expression of Himself to man; God stooping down to be comprehensible at our level. They are the work of many hands across many long generations, and yet one discovers this incredible cohesion of thought and message transcending the individual efforts. Truth, being True, unfolds in harmonious unity of expression.
The creeds of the Church sought to encapsulate this majestic scope of revelation in terms easily committed to memory and easily employed in the assessing of such new information as might come one’s way. To discern false doctrines does not, in the end, depend on lengthy years of preparatory study. It doesn’t even entirely rest on strong familiarity with the text of Scripture, although that is certainly to be desired and encouraged. The creeds do not insist on daily devotions spent reading the texts of Scripture in whatever stage of development may have applied. For a large part of that early church community, this would not really have been a possibility anyway. What was important was to know the fundamentals, as much as that idea of fundamentals came under fire in later centuries. God is a Triune entity, a single and singular being, not created but eternal and unchanging. He is One, and yet He is three in Persons, that most awkward phrasing that seeks to express the inexpressible. Father, Son, and Holy Spirit are individual as to their Person and yet One as to their being, their essence. There is no least division or distinction to be had in their glory. All are, as One, worthy of worship. All are, as One, omnipotent, omniscient, all-wise God, and the universe is His workmanship in all its varied components, man having been given chief place amongst the creatures with which He chose to populate that which He had created.
This, it must be noted, includes in its scope those angelic beings which seem to be venerated out of due proportion by many and sundry along the course of Church history. Man, we are told, was made for a time a little bit lower than the angels. But the implication inherent in what we are told is that this is a temporary relationship. Part of that worldview to which the Christian subscribes, and a most significant part, is that there comes the resurrection, and with the resurrection a change of body, fitting it for eternity. With John, we confess that we don’t really know yet what we shall be, only that when we see our Christ as He truly is, we shall of necessity have been made like Him.
The Christian religion specifically, then, takes this Bible, this carefully written, curated and preserved presentation of God by God to God’s people, as our full and final authority. Here is where we must turn to resolve our differing views. Here is where we must turn to understand God, to understand ourselves, to correct our wayward thoughts and to guide our principled lives. For all that society around us insists we view all other religions as equally valid, we cannot. Nor, I suspect, can those other religions account the Christian religion equally valid. It is, I should think, the nature of religion to be exclusive. One might posit Hinduism as an exception, but not in reality. It maintains its exclusivity by demoting the gods of other religions even as it attempts to absorb those gods into its own pantheon. But that’s not so very different from the practices of the Canaanites and Hivites and so on from the earliest of days. We conquer you, we get to add your gods to our gods. That’s not all religions equal. That’s my god beat your god, and now he must serve me.
[09/02/20]
Thus far, while we accept, and indeed, insist that this religion of ours is a true expression of God by God, we are yet very much in the realm of ideas. There is a reason why religion and philosophy have historically been closely connected pursuits. Both seek to understand. Both seek knowledge and wisdom of the highest sort, hoping to explain why we exist, how it is that we have such a universal concept of right and wrong, what it means for a man to live well, and in some form or another, how a man is to be righteous. But if it remains theories and truth statements and worldviews, it is not yet truly a religion.
Religion has gotten to have something of a bad name for itself in recent years, at least in some corners. Outside the world of religion, this is somewhat understandable, for we represent a competing worldview, a competing way of life, and one that is so bold as to claim not merely superiority, but exclusivity as to the Truth. The unbeliever, who must insist our concept of Truth is invalid in order to maintain his course, is of course going to find religion offensive, for it declares him sinful and destined for hell, and nobody, however cavalier, is likely to take kindly to such a portent as to their future.
But it has taken a beating within the confines of the Church as well. In certain denominations, religion may as well be a four-letter word, never to be spoken in polite company. But this is largely because such denominations have a significant misunderstanding of just what religion is, or even doctrine, for that matter, which is the portion of religion they find so restricting. They equate religion with the dead letter of the Law of which Paul speaks, and therefore reject anything that speaks of doctrine or exegesis or any other such disciplined approach to the text of Scripture as operating against the freedom of the Spirit. Sadly, it seems that what they deem the freedom of the Spirit is often nothing more than the willfulness of man or the unbound pursuit of imagination.
I know of one sect which would, by all appearances, prefer to follow Albert Einstein because of his ostensible paean to imagination than to be bound in conscience by the Word of God as we have it in the Bible. This has led to developments which would be hard to see as anything other than outright heresy, as they propose a new system of church governance that throws off the biblical depiction of church offices and guidance. One could argue, I suppose, that they are doing little more than substituting new words for old definitions, but it’s still an undermining, intentional departure from the Bible as the rule of faith, and as such, is an intentional departure from the faith. I don’t say that all those who are taken in by such teaching are intentionally, consciously choosing to abandon Christianity, but I do see it as the end result, and certainly the intent of those who promulgate the ideas in the first place. That is assuming they have any real spiritual interest at all, and are not, as so many a charlatan before them, just looking for easy money.
But religion, properly understood, is not merely a philosophical exercise, or the pursuit of knowledge for the sake of knowledge. Far from it! Rather, for those who would be Spirit-led, I think the question should have to be how, if one desires to be led by the Spirit, one can so readily set aside or lightly regard the revealed religion He has shepherded into existence. If one has so high a regard for this Holy Spirit, and insists on living a life guided by Him, on what basis do you disregard His handbook for life? On what basis do you so readily dismiss those who in past ages have been diligent to hear and to convey to God’s people just what it is He has had to say in this revelation of His?
As to those who continue to uphold the Scriptures as truly God’s Word, truly revealed by the God of Truth, religion asks a further question, famously put into words by Francis Schaeffer many years ago: “How Shall We Then Live?” Every worldview must surely suggest a way of life, and may even insist upon the adoption of certain habits of living. If it does not, then it really is not so much a worldview as a bit of mental exercise. It is of no more impact than solving the daily crossword. It may sharpen the intellect a bit, but it changes nothing. Worldview may more generally be found to reflect preceding habit, to be composed of the influences of prior experience. That is to say, we filter our perceptions of the present by the history of our past, and that is almost certainly true of our day to day experience. We interpret events based on our body of knowledge, and our body of knowledge is more a matter of what we have lived than what we have been taught, although sound teaching may aid in seeding that body well and in shaping how we have lived up to that point. There is a reason that Western education, for many long centuries, focused on exposing the students to the classics of Western thought. Wisdom seeks not to discover the novel new perspective, but to build upon the wisdom of its forebears.
Here, religion shares in common with other worldviews, in that it, too, builds upon the wisdom of its forebears. Concerning the Christian religion, we see that what is taught by the New Testament builds upon what was taught in the Old. It does not tear down, it restores. Of course, in considering the text of Scripture, we are considering God’s own revelation, so it may not be the best example to make my point. We would rather expect, and should really insist that His revelation is consistent to itself, as He is consistent to Himself.
Where I am leading is into the place of extra-biblical developments of doctrine and guiding of beliefs. I am back to the work of councils, and of those we deem the fathers of Christian religion. These do not hold the standing of the Apostles, nor would they have claimed to do so. Indeed, I am confident that they would have rejected any such appeal as vehemently as the Apostles rejected attempts to raise them to the stature of angels or gods. To accept such exaltation would be to demean the stature of such beings. It may have been more obvious that accepting worship was something forbidden any but God, but really, to allow oneself the title of apostle, with understanding that such a title implies authority and inspiration equal to that of those men directly appointed by Christ to explain and to be His eye-witnesses, is in fact accepting just such exaltation. It not only demeans the worth of those true Apostles, but of the Christ who appointed them, for it wrests from His hands the appointing authority, and usurps His right rule over His Church.
But the writings we have from these early fathers are of value. The results of those early councils are of significance to the defining of the Christian religion. The various theological debates and the theologians who pursued them are meaningful and worthy of consideration. They are simply not binding upon the conscience and practice of the believer in the way that Scripture is. Tradition has value, if used rightly. When it becomes dogma, we have trouble.
We are, I think, richly blessed with the historical record of the development of Christianity. It may seem a dry subject and a purely intellectual pursuit to consider, but it need not be so. To read these great minds of old, and to follow their thoughts as they seek to lay out what this religion is, and how it must shape our way of living, is to be challenged to think things through ourselves. It is one thing, and a wrong thing, to read through something like Calvin’s Institutes and take it as an unquestionable guide to faith and belief. It is quite another to reject it as no more significant than, say, a Far Side cartoon collection. These things, like Scripture, have been written for our benefit, but we cannot benefit from what we will not read and consider. We may do so and conclude that there are points upon which we disagree. I should think it rather surprising if we did not do so. But to disagree out of hand, or simply because what we read departs from something which we read somewhere else is not thinking it through, and is not benefiting from the work of those who have preceded us.
We speak of Christianity as a catholic faith, uniting not only disparate populations and cultures in one common body of beliefs, but also uniting across time to generations that have preceded us, and to those generations which shall follow. These extra-biblical texts, where they reflect the careful thought and understanding of particularly wise believers, are of huge value to the present-day believer who would himself choose to think carefully on the significance of what God has caused to be written in Scripture. They do not seek to supplant, but to explain.
I would have to say that, having read Calvin’s Institutes, it presented to me perhaps the most cohesive understanding of Christian faith in its various doctrines and practices that I have encountered. Now, it could be that this is my view simply because it’s the only such exhaustive treatment of the matter that I have spent time with, but I would say as well that this perspective was significantly bolstered by my experience when studying the book of Romans. That text is so richly involved in how every sector of Christianity understands itself that it is a revealing exercise to read through the arguments of these various denominations as to how they find their beliefs expressed in that text. Now, I may find nuggets of truth in any of their writings, but I found one that, to my thinking, presented a solid, cohesive understanding of the doctrines put forth in that text. And I have to say that at the time, much of that understanding was at odds with what I thought to be true at the outset.
Here, I think, is the prime value of having the works of these men of faith from previous generations. For one, I think they tended to be better trained to think than we are, by and large, in the present day. And they were particularly careful as to their writing, as they must be, given the truly life and death nature of expressing those beliefs when deviation from the tenets of the Holy Roman Empire could entail a death sentence.
[09/03/20]
There is a point I have been approaching for the last day or two which, for whatever reason, continues to wait in the wings as I pursue other thoughts. It is well that I should turn to that point now. Religion, whatever its shape, cannot remain mere opinion or an exercise of the thought life alone. It must lead to actual practice. In theological terms, orthodoxy must be accompanied by orthopraxy – right knowledge leading to right practice.
This, as it must, describes an ideal, a goal, far more than it describes day to day reality. I do not say as it should, but it is as it must be, for we are, for all our religious pursuits and high ideals, a fallen people. We are redeemed, we Christians, but we are far from perfected. The realization that ideals and realities are so often at some distance from one another is a thing that has been weaponized in recent decades, as if one could truly insist that a person must consistently live up to his ideals or be found beneath contempt. With such a standard of proof, however, all must be found beneath contempt, or else the ideals held up for view are so poor as to hardly be accounted ideals at all.
Religion, whatever its flavor, must somehow address this. There must be some ideal towards which its adherents are to seek to conform themselves, and some recourse provided to address the inevitable shortcomings. Various means have been attempted. There are those who put forward the idea of a continuing series of reincarnations until one finally gets it right. That, given the universal record of failure, seems to me a rather hopeless system. There are those who put forward the idea that if we do well enough, or do enough good to outweigh the evil we have done, that will get us across the line to Paradise. In the case of Judaism, it has historically led to movements such as that of the Pharisees with their system of works, requiring – or at least appearing to require – even more attention to one’s behavior than the Mosaic Law truly demands. As Jesus observed, however, the end result was to lift up these man-made rules as the real ones and to demote Mosaic Law, God’s Law, where it conflicted. In the case of Islam, it leaves the poor believer struggling hard to figure out which of the conflicting demands of his religion are to be heeded today, and even if he does his uttermost to comply with whatever it is he finds to be the rule, there’s still a question of how his god is feeling that day. Maybe it’s enough, maybe it isn’t.
Turning to Christianity, the rule of God’s Law remains intact. Here is your standard, and it is unyielding and unchanging. Love God. Love your neighbor. We would add that as simple as that sounds, the plain facts on the ground make it quite clear that to truly implement this Law is utterly beyond our capacity. Indeed, we insist that it has been beyond our capacity since conception, let alone birth. David recognized it in his own case, but what he recognized is truly universal in application. “Behold, I was brought forth in iniquity, and in sin my mother conceived me” (Ps 51:5). Recognizing sin as being offense against the law of eternal, perfectly holy God, and recognizing that the due penalty for sin is, without exception, death, we learn that our situation is truly hopeless. That is, it is hopeless to the degree that it continues to rest on our own attempts at being righteous.
This needs understanding. Our efforts will never measure up, and even if it were possible that they would, there would remain the preceding debt of sin. That debt is forever beyond us to repay. “For the wages of sin is death” (Ro 6:23a). Is it any wonder that those who caught so much as a glimpse of God saw it as their death sentence? Think of Isaiah. Given the inestimable privilege of seeing himself in heaven, something many a believer supposes he would be thrilled to pieces to experience, Isaiah’s response ought to be a stark reminder of the reality. “Woe is me, I am ruined! Because I am a man of unclean lips, and I live among a people of unclean lips; for my eyes have seen the King, the LORD of hosts” (Isa 6:5). I am a sinner, and I am seeing the Judge. There can be only one outcome.
We see it again with Peter. Confronted with the evidence of Christ’s divine nature, his reaction is much the same. “Depart from me, for I am a sinful man, O Lord!” (Lk 5:8). This is recognition of reality. God is holy. I am sinful. However good a life I have tried to lead, the reality is that I have sinned, and that, more than likely, is a recent event, not some distant memory. A look at God’s Law in its broad application as opposed to its narrow wording must leave us aware of failure. However hard we try, there will always be failures with which to contend. And yet, we cannot simply give up on trying.
Here is where Christian religion becomes a thing most shockingly different. It doesn’t, as some might suppose, lead us to simply live as we please and assume God will forgive us. That is no god which would thus defer to our predilections. But, it does present us with the solution to our problem. We cannot make ourselves holy. We cannot find it in ourselves to comply with the demands of the Law, and as I said, even if we could it’s already too late. Prior sin can’t be worked off by accumulation of good deeds. The wages of sin remain. We need the other half of Paul’s equation in Romans 6:23: “But the free gift of God is eternal life in Christ Jesus our Lord.”
This is the critical matter for Christian religion. Jesus, the Son of God, the Second Person of the Trinity, came down to dwell among us, a man born of woman, God tabernacling with His people, even as He had promised. He, unlike the rest of us, was not conceived in sin and brought forth in iniquity. It is interesting, I think, that this sinless birth was cast as sinful by those who had some idea of the circumstances. You see it in the goading questions of the Pharisees and the locals. “Isn’t that Mary’s son?” In a patriarchal society such as ancient Israel, it should be considered telling that nobody spoke of Him as Joseph’s son. Joseph may have given Him his name and such legitimacy as was his to confer, but they struck upon a truth. He was Mary’s son. Where they erred was in supposing a natural-born father. They supposed Him the child of adultery and were thus the more offended when He confronted them with real holiness.
This Jesus, born of the Spirit, taking upon Himself a real human nature, all the while remaining wholly divine, did in fact live a sinless life, did in fact uphold the Law in all its particulars and requirements. In every regard, He heeded the Law and met its demands to perfection. When John the Baptist sought to give Him a pass on baptism, given His holiness, He would not accede. “Permit it at this time; for in this way it is fitting for us to fulfill all righteousness” (Mt 3:15). Later, He would inform His listeners, “Do not think that I came to abolish the Law or the Prophets; I did not come to abolish, but to fulfill” (Mt 5:17). The rules haven’t change, nor can they; for they reflect the essential character of unchanging God. What changed was that One had come who, as a human being, fully complied with that Law; a feat achieved by no other before or since, nor could it be. Adam’s failure, while he remains wholly complicit, was not a fluke or an unexpected result. It was as inevitable as our own. But Jesus, in that He died a criminal’s death while guilty of no crime against man or God, (and to be clear, every death is a criminal’s death, but His was a particularly atrocious form of civil punishment), satisfied all righteousness.
His death was not due to His own sin, but due to those of all mankind, past, present, and future. Here was the solution for our problem; a solution provided by God in and of Himself. Was this not the promise from of old? “Surely I will uphold you with My righteous right hand” (Isa 41:10d). And add to that the favorite verse of the Apostles and Jesus alike. “The LORD says to my Lord: ‘Sit at My right hand, until I make Thine enemies a footstool for Thy feet’” (Ps 110:1). Now, hear the dying vision of Stephen, who gazed intently into heaven and saw the glory of God, and Jesus standing at the right hand of God: “Behold! I see the heavens opened up and the Son of Man standing at the right hand of God!” (Ac 7:55-56). Here was the result of that sinless death. It was the accepted payment for sin, and that acceptance was shown in the resurrection of Jesus from the grave, and even more so, by His ascension into heaven, where He sits at God’s mighty right hand.
Here was the answer baked into Creation from the very beginning. Man would fail. He would sin, and sin incessantly and egregiously. He would, however much he might come to his senses and repent, find repentance – real repentance – beyond him. He would remain under the penalty of death, and without hope of reprieve; except that hope be found in the Christ of God’s provision. This was not some new thing conceived of by the Apostles. It was announced from the first days of the Fall, when Adam and Eve were mercifully evicted from Eden, lest they become immortalized in their sinful state. They needed a Christ, and a Christ was provided. They were not turned out in hopelessness, but in hope. One would come of her line, her seed, and He would crush the head of Satan, though Satan would manage to inflict wounds of his own (Ge 3:15). There was a promise of solution from the moment of failure. But the righteous must hold to it by faith.
So, coming back to this matter of personal practice, we are not given to become passive, or to presume upon God’s grace. Paul put paid to that idea. “Far be it from me!” “What shall we say then? Are we to continue in sin that grace might increase? May it never be! How shall we who died to sin still live in it?” (Ro 6:1-2) You see, for the Christian, the answer is not in our own perfect record, for Christianity is reality-based, and recognizes the impossibility of salvation by any such course. Rather, the answer is in Christ, our Righteousness. It does not alleviate us from the need to do our uttermost to live a righteous life, but it does alleviate us from the hopeless situation of knowing ourselves already under the penalty of sin. It removes the need to comply as if our life depends on it, and rather grants us to seek to comply for the sheer love of God. He has rescued us and compliance to His law is now simply an expression of our desire to please Him, not our need to appease Him.
This, to the best of my knowledge, is a concept completely unique to the Christian religion. We continue to do our best to live according to the tenets of our faith, but we don’t rest our hope on our compliance. We rest our hope on Christ and on Christ alone, knowing that His perfect life of perfect obedience has put paid to our sins. We seek, as a dear brother from my younger days was ever so cognizant, to avoid adding to His burden by our continued accumulating of sins. We desire to please Him, and to avoid doing aught that would add to His sorrows. But we also recognize that even in this redeemed state, we will fail His perfect Law, for we remain imperfect beings.
[09/04/20]
This, if we are reasonably self-aware, provides us an impetus for mercy and humility when we deal with others. What it will not do is leave us to live passively, accepting that Jesus has done it all on our behalf and supposing on that basis that we can now do as we please. What this religion depicts to us is not a happy elimination of responsibility, but rather a change of heart, a change of mind, a change of thought and practice. We seek to live up to the ideal Law of God, even knowing we must fall short. We do so not because we fear our lives depend on our success, but because we know it doesn’t. Our lives have already been secured in Christ by the Father through the Spirit. The outcome is certain. What remains is the process of arriving. What remains is to seek in all our ways to please this One Who has rescued us. It is a matter of honoring and bringing joy to God, rather than a matter of fearfully seeking to avoid His wrath. This, I see, transitions me rather well into the next part of this exercise: Defining Christian.
