I Sense there is a certain energy, a certain dynamism, which is some times missing in our spiritual lives
We read of the possibility of “all joy and peace through believing,” of living a truly dynamic spiritual life, of the matchless devotion of Paul — and we may see a great gap between these high ideals and our own spiritual experience If we are in isolation or meeting with very small numbers of believers, we may have a sense of boredom, of comfortable numbness which enables us to go on living at our present spiritual level without growing any stronger We may live ma large ecclesia which preoccupies us with administrative duties or leaves us free to let others do all the work while we are Sunday only participants Why don’t we experience the dynamism which we should? What are we missing?
Feeling the seriousness of sin
One of the fundamental reasons, it seems to me, is that we fail to appreciate the seriousness of sin, we fail to know and feel any utter desperation Because of this, we fail to appreciate the depth and length and height of the love of God in Christ, we don’t come to really know the height of the excellence of the grace of the Father and His Son, we fail to appreciate the wonder and yet the terror of the cross, we read the account of the crucifixion, or Paul’s expositions of the atonement, and somehow they fail to move us any more And most crucially, we are left with what I would call the problem of a true humility We appreciate the need for a thorough-going humility and yet somehow there seems nothing we can consciously do to acquire it We are happy to continue as we are, rather than experience any fire of devotion to God, any flame of praise springing up deep within us, as a result of realizing the urgency of our position and that great salvation which has been brought to us.
We all too often come to the end of a day feeling that we have at worst been only little sinners We sin, yes, we admit it, on an almost abstract level But life simply goes too fast to stop and consider that we used a vile word or showed indifference rather than a true love.
So the days slip by, nothing pulls us up in our tracks, we read and mentally make a few notes, we hear our Bible studies, we attend, and reflect a very little, we break bread, and hold our attention for a few uncomfortable minutes on the cross and our redemption and our response and, yes, our failings and then off we go, back to another week of the same Serious self-examination just isn’t on our agenda As the days, the months, the years slip by, we become self-righteous, critical of others without an awareness that we ourselves are living by grace, lacking that true humility which is vital for our salvation — a sense of haziness descends, as the terror of sin recedes in our perception.
Things which earlier pricked our conscience gradually become a part of life, both individually and collectively The self-anesthesia of sin is part of that downward spiral of spirituality of which our nature is so capable We come to see humility as something altogether abstract, something which is necessary, and yet the real thing becomes somehow distanced from us.
Some facts about sin
There are three aspects of Bible teaching concerning sin which, if meditated upon, should help us, lead us on toward a sense of true desperation with ourselves followed by the right response we fain would have
- Sin is serious This is one of the most recurrent themes in the Bible Yet with the characteristic blindness of human nature, it is one which fails to register with us as it should “Just” one sin m Eden led to death — and so much more than death As we daily read, almost every chapter hammers home the same point God sees sin as far more shock-mg than we do Consider these almost random points.
- Even with very sinful men, their continual sins still register m the feelings of God The way God progressively senses the weight of accumulated sin is reflected in His description of the Amorites’ iniquity filling up (Gen 15 16), or Israel marrying Gentiles “to Increase the trespass of Israel” (Ezra 10:10) God sees some wicked men as more wicked than others, for He is sensitive to every one of their sins (e g II Kgs 17:2) “For three transgressions of and for four” of Israel or the Gentiles, God would still punish Jew and Gentile alike (Amos 1,2) — t e He still feels the fourth sin, He doesn’t become insensitive after the third sin And this doesn’t only apply to His people, but to all sin, committed by anyone, anywhere Thus Herod “added yet this above all” when he imprisoned John after also sinning with another man’s wife (Lk 3:20)
- We have an uncanny ability to become numb to sin the more we see or do it But not so Almighty, all-righteous God “The Lord hath sworn by the excellency of Jacob (i e Himself, so important is this), surely I will never forget any of their works” (Amos 8 7) “They consider not in their hearts that I remember all their wickedness” (Hos 7:2)
- The servant hopelessly, desperately in debt to his lord is a picture of the believer’s debt to God (Matt 18 25) The lord didn’t say, “Well, don’t worry about it, I’ve got plenty, just forget it” He reckoned up the exact debt, calculated it, with the servant progressively panic-stricken as the full figure registered and “his lord commanded him to be sold, and his wife, and children, and all that he had, and payment to be made” Only then — and this is a crucial feature of the story — “the servant therefore fell down, and besought him, saying, Lord, have patience with me, and I will pay thee all” And only then, “the lord of that servant was moved with compassion, and loosed him” This is not to say that the Lord is a hard man But His frank forgiveness is not lightly given.
- Romans 5 17,21 draws a parallel between Adam’s sin and ours — his tragedy, his desperation He looked at his body, at his wife, with new vision, his wide eyes wandered in tragedy around the garden All who fall are in that position, eagerly reaching out to the clothing of the slain lamb
- After his sin with Bathsheba, David was a desperate man What he had done could not be undone, nor could it be forgiven through sacrifice No amount of re-interpretation of the texts could get round it Having been confronted by his desperation for nine months, he found a miraculous forgiveness And he uttered a soliloquy “Blessed is he (himself — David) whose transgression is forgiven” (Psa 32 1) Romans 4 6,7 slightly changes this, with the preface that these words describe “the blessedness of (any) man” who finds true forgiveness “Blessed are they whose iniquities [plural] are forgiven” The point is plain David’s desperation is that of everyone redeemed m Christ Through his experience, David came to know what he calls “truth in the inward parts” (Psa. 51:6). According to Paul’s use of the Bathsheba incident, David’s learning curve must be ours. There are other links which show that David’s sin, desperation and restoration are typical of the experience of all God’s true people (e.g. Psa. 51:7 = Isa. 1:18).
- Because of God’s abhorrence of sin, sins of ignorance were still counted as offences against God, requiring atonement. This should really humble us — if we are sensitive to this fact. It therefore follows that we should lift up our voice for understanding of God’s ways, for ignorant sin is still sin to Him — even though His judgment of us may possibly take into account our level of appreciation.
- Sins of omission are counted as seriously as sins of commission.
- Onan omitted to raise up seed to his brother, and was slain (Gen. 38:10).
- To omit to hate evil is the same as to commit it (Psa. 36:4).
- We have a debt to preach to the world; we are debtors, and yet this isn’t how we often see it (Rom. 1:14).
- To him who knows to do good but does it not, this omission is counted as sin (James 4:17 — written in the context of brethren omitting to help each other).
Our desperation
Those who are thankfully redeemed in Christ are described as having been blind, starving prisoners, bound in the darkness, awaiting execution (Psa. 107:14; Is. 42:7; 49:9; 61:1; Zech. 9:11). This is the extent of our desperation.
When we come to the New Testament, the gospel records are full of encounters between the Lord and people in desperate need. The frantic begging of the blind for sight, the leper falling on his face and beseeching, another leper lifting up his weakened voice in desperation, the paralytic desperately hopeful there was some truth in the legend that an angel stirred up the water — these incidents fill the gospels. There were doubtless many “normal,” less highly charged encounters between the Lord and human beings, but these are somehow de-emphasized. We are surely invited to see in the Lord’s encounters with the desperate some prototype of His dealings with us. For they were types of us. And yet we must learn our desperation, as Jacob had to learn his and Samson his.
For those who were baptized after learning the gospel as part of their parental upbringing, it is hard to feel our desperation. This explains why the poorer nations of the earth are now more responsive to the gospel than the richer; and why even among the richer nations, it is the desperate types, those who know their need, who respond. And it explains why those born into the ecclesia must come to know the desperation of their need, too.
If we realize all this, we will respond —mightily. I don’t need to list the ways of dedication, for you know, deep within you, how you ought to live: the readings you should read, the money you should quietly give, the phone call you should place, the witness you should make, the habits you should form and those you should break.
“If we would judge ourselves”
These thoughts come to a climax in Paul’s comments concerning the breaking of bread He urges us to thorough self-examination We eat and drink either blessing and acceptance or damnation (1 Cor 10 16, 11 29).
When they came together as the ecclesia before the symbols of the Lord Jesus (I Cor 1117-20,33), they were coming together before Him as it were in judgment There was the risk that when they came together before the emblems, they would come together unto condemnation (I Cor 11 34) We must discern the body of the Lord Jesus, and discern ourselves (I Cor 11 29,31) The extent of our discernment and analysis of him will be the extent of our own very personal self-analysis, hence the connection between the breaking of bread and self-examination And if in that self-understanding we come to judge/condemn ourselves, we will not be condemned.
If we realize our utter spiritual desperation, our worthiness of rejection, our betrayals of our Lord’s love, if we condemn ourselves m our own judgment, then we will not have to be condemned when the Lord comes Yet if we don’t do this, Paul says, then we are drinking condemnation to ourselves at the last day It’s a powerful, terrifying argument Such must be — not ought to be — our level of self-analysis and knowledge of our desperation.
If we so know our desperation now, we will not be condemned Knowing and feeling our desperation is the key to so many Christadelphian problems monotony and boredom m spiritual life, problems with our partner, with our ecclesia, pride, a critical, ungrateful spirit, a lack of heartfelt praise, a holding back m witnessing In deep seated humility, we can wait with unfeigned faith for the day of acceptance to dawn, serving with a true love, not interested in feuding with our brethren and instead witnessing to God’s grace with an insistent urgency.
The Origin of the Organic World – Part One