New Thoughts (07/05/17-07/09/17)
Self-Deception (07/06/17)
Given the way I have outlined this study, it would be easy to miss the connection of this passage to what preceded it. We dare not allow that to happen. Remember what leads us to this point. We have factions and divisions in the church. We have pride of accomplishment in the church. We have heinous sin tolerated and brother sinning against brother with impunity. This is a mess! Paul has been issuing correctives one by one, and now comes to a point that should have been so obvious to his readers as to obviate the need to bring it up. “Don’t you know that the unrighteous shall not inherit the kingdom?” Perhaps they figured this didn’t apply to them. After all, if in fact the salvation of God is irrevocable, what impact can our continued sins have on His decision? All is forgiven, right?
Well, yes, that is the pertinent question. Has all been forgiven? You’ve heard the words, but did they apply to you? I will maintain, together with Paul, that indeed those who are the elect remain so by God’s sovereign grace just as they became so by God’s sovereign grace. The problem for many of us is that we assume our election and fail to consider whether there’s any proof of it. As is so often pointed out, if in fact the Spirit is indwelling, which is a necessary precursor for this whole matter of election, the fruit of the Spirit must be growing. If there is no fruit, we must suppose there is no Spirit. “Do not be deceived.”
The message Paul is delivering is designed to humble, and to that degree it is designed to hurt. We need the warning, and we need it often. Don’t cling to a vain hope. It is in our nature. We cannot stand the hopeless situation. We cannot move ourselves to continue where there is not glimmer of hope. Why keep trying when it’s obviously going to prove futile? So, we manufacture hope. We convince ourselves things are not as bad as they seem. We paint the picture differently so that we can bear to look upon it. Nowhere is this more true than in our consideration of our own character. Yes, we are likely our own worst critic. But, our criticisms are fleeting and swiftly forgotten. Further, our criticisms tend to apply only so far as we are measuring against a false standard.
Go back in time. Go back to that point where some dear believer took you aside to let you know that you were a sinner in need of salvation. Chances are good that you responded in much the same fashion as I did. “I’m a good guy.” I’ve done no great crime. I’ve not slept with any man’s wife, murdered any man’s child, plundered any man’s home – at least not recently. Chances are it didn’t even occur to us to put that last qualifier on there at the time. No. We’re adept at whitewashing our past, and even our present in order to live with ourselves. “Do not be deceived.”
Did you think this somehow stopped when you heard the call of Christ? Did you think some magic wand had been waved over you and now all these self-deceptive ways were in the past? Did you even come to recognize that past tendency? You may not have. It would appear that many in Corinth had not done so. They had heard the Truth and accepted the call. But, they had heard only the easy part. They had heard the bit about being saved. They had not necessarily noticed the bit about being changed. They had heard the calling apart. They had not really given much thought to the being sanctified. They heard the privilege, but missed the call of duty.
What happened? Pride swamped humility. Truth got lost in that swamp because they were not constantly returning to Truth. The problem with a swamp is you need deep roots to keep standing in it. As I look out the window of my study here I see the wetlands behind the house. Perhaps damp lands would be more apt. But, as I look out there, I see any number of trees which grew tall for a time, but then simply fell over under their own weight. Why? The roots were insufficient to hold them upright. Other trees appear to thrive, although time may prove that to be self-deception on their part. Their roots run deep. They cling to the Truth, if I may return to my image.
Now, as we consider ourselves, rather than these Corinthians of the dusty past, it becomes harder to see, doesn’t it? These in the past supposed, as Matthew Henry writes, that they could ‘live in sin and yet die in Christ’. Look around! There are plenty today with the same mindset. Oh, I was baptized as a child. I’m safe. Oh, I said the sinner’s prayer once. I’m good to go. Or perhaps this is the hope we cling to for our wayward child. It is a parent’s last thread of hope. Maybe it was enough. Maybe God really did call them. Maybe they’ll return to Him in time. We did. I do not say it’s a false hope, for He is certainly able to rescue them from their sins as He did us. I do, however, say that it is no certain hope. We cannot insist that God choose them. How could we? Are we really going to tell God what His options are? “Do not be deceived!”
This is at the root of this tendency in us to live unchanged. Mr. Henry describes the root issue. We suppose God is like us, and thus flatter ourselves. We, after all, would forgive us, certainly. So, since we’re made in His image, He must forgive us, too, right? Wrong. We are indeed made in His image, but the work has been marred by sin in us, whereas He remains perfect and perfectly holy. He has not changed. He has not decided maybe He can tolerate sin after all. No. Every sin on our part rejects Him. Every day, in every way, we provide God with plentiful cause to reject us. This is our reality. It has not changed substantively just because we have discovered ourselves to be among the elect. What has changed is awareness, and our awareness is a fickle thing. When’s the last time I looked to the Truth?
Truth will humble us. Truth may very well humiliate us, which is not a terribly different thing, is it? Like Truth itself, the underlying act doesn’t change. It’s our perception of the act and our response to the act that shifts and varies. What happens when you find yourself humiliated? Do you rise up against it in anger? Or, do you allow yourself to be humbled, so as to be brought to repentance and then to restoration? I’m going to venture to say that your reaction is no more consistent than my own. I’m going to venture to suggest that the initial response is likely that of the flesh rising up, as we like to call it. Anger swells. Pride demands redress. But, Truth continues to speak to conscience, and pride must deflate, the anger subside, and dawning realization take hold. We are humbled. We know again the need for repentance, and we come before our God on our figurative knees. Lord, against You and You only have I sinned. I pray Thee, forgive me. Teach me more fully Your ways that I may walk before You as I ought.
The Truth is, for the elect at least, that God did not reject you. He disciplined you as the rebellious child you are. He pointed out your issues and offered to work them out together with you. He likely had to keep at it a bit before you proved willing to do so. But, God is patient. We might even account Him annoyingly patient at times. But, His patience is our salvation.
In the meantime, let us hear Paul’s warning and take it to heart. “Do not be deceived.” As Matthew Henry reminds us, “We cannot hope to sow to the flesh and yet reap everlasting life.” As we proceed further into this passage, it is a good opportunity to ask yourself, “what am I sowing?” Better still, ask that the Holy Spirit, sent to be your Advocate and Tutor in this resurrection life, would reveal to you where you have been sowing to the flesh, and strengthen you to turn away from that act once for all, to begin sowing to eternal life instead. Then ask again tomorrow. Rest assured, you will find sufficient to work on to keep you occupied so long as there is a tomorrow.
The Crime (07/07/17)
Something strikes me, this morning, as I look at this list of sins which prevent one from inheriting the kingdom. It is not something I recall seeing before, nor something I have seen mentioned in any of the commentaries, but it is striking. To be sure, we can break Paul’s list down to some degree, by the nature of the sins described. There’s the initial grouping of sexual sins, then homosexual sins, and then thievery. One might suppose that his readers, like ourselves, would consider that we are clear of any such pursuits. Yes, these won’t inherit. Quite right, Paul. But, then we hit the second half: Coveters, drunkards, revilers, and swindlers. Suddenly, we’re brought up short. Wait a minute! Just because we want what our neighbors have, we’re out? Just because we enjoy a beer or two, we’re out? Seriously? Paul, are you going to tell me that just because I left a negative review on somebody’s web-page, I’m out? Well, yes. Yes, he is going to tell you that, but only because Jesus already did.
My point is simply this: Paul’s approach leads us to condemn ourselves in the second half by our approval of the first half. If we concur with his assessment of that first batch, we require ourselves to concur with his assessment of the last.
Now, I’ll accept that in the case of Corinth, there were apparently a number who would find themselves mentioned in the first grouping. It’s shocking to us, but then we have to recall what we’ve already been dragged through with this group. In a church that could manage to approve a man taking his father’s ex-wife to himself, even if it was only the tacit approval of ignoring the situation, we can expect that other sins of like nature were to be found. In a church that apparently hadn’t clued in that continuing to frequent the temple of Aphrodite was entirely incompatible with God’s claim to exclusive worship, let alone the sorts of behaviors promoted down at that temple! Well, yes, expect that you had fornicators, effeminates, and homosexuals in attendance.
Expect the same today. Expect that those respectable citizens sitting in the pews have a number of sinful proclivities. We have, I think, a tendency to simply assume that every last person who takes the time to attend of a Sunday must therefore be amongst the elect. We tend to assume that amongst the elect, there clearly cannot be any persistent sin, certainly nothing that approaches the magnitude of those sins found early in the list. We tend to assume incorrectly. The data shows something different. The data shows that issues of adultery and fornication are just as prevalent in the church as out. We can reasonably expect that issues of sexual deviancy are likewise just as prevalent in the church as out. The distinction we may draw between Corinth and the modern day, so far as the church is concerned, is not in the proclivities to be found amongst the ranks. If there is distinction, it is likely in the willingness to let such proclivities be publicly known. We’ve learned, I suppose, but we’ve learned the wrong lesson. Rather than learning the point Paul is making, we’ve learned to put a better public face on our behaviors, to keep such matters under wraps. Indeed, we are likely more bothered by such things being brought to light and requiring us to deal with them than we are with knowing they are happening out of sight.
But, while the sexual sins head the list, and rightly so, I don’t feel the need to expend a lot of time on that matter in this instance. We understand that these sins rank high because God has a high and holy intention for marriage, and such sins violate what should be a living parable of God and Church. He causes man and woman to be wed and made one flesh that they may live out the mystery of Christ and His Church. To violate that relationship is, then, a high crime against heaven, and should be accounted such. And yet, we make it easier and easier to commit that crime, don’t we? And we think less and less of it as time passes and the corruptions of the world around us increase. We have become acclimated to perversity, and we need the same system shock that Corinth was in need of. Sexual sins should shock. They don’t. Not to the degree they once did.
So be it. Let us feel the shock of verse 10. Barnes took notice of it back there in his day, and we still can, if we will begin to look at ourselves with open eyes. “It is remarkable that the apostle always ranks ‘the covetous’ with the most abandoned classes of people.” Indeed! It is remarkable that when God laid out His terms of covenant, the commandment, “Thou shalt not covet,” obtained the ultimate position. It is the bookend to match, “Thou shalt have no other god besides Me.” There is the summation of the Law. There is love God and love neighbor. The rest of it is really commentary, isn’t it? And there, in those two summary commandments to have no other God and to want no other’s possessions, we find ourselves fully convicted, for we fail of both, and we fail of both constantly.
But, let’s understand that as bad as this news is, it’s only the beginning. Matthew Henry brings out the true depths of our pit of desperation. Every deliberate, unrepented sin, he insists, shuts one out of heaven’s kingdom. Every one. To be guilty of even one is to draw the penalty for all. You may discount the sin as minor. The penalty remains the same. You have sinned against eternal God. The penalty is eternal death. Honestly, we should be driven to our knees by the time we’ve been awake even one hour. If we were to remain conscious of the Holy God of heaven who sees us every moment of the day, who knows our every thought, we should never get off our knees!
Yet, here we are, tossing off empty words of repentance. Oh, Lord. I’m sorry I got caught. I’m sorry I’m about to do that again. Forgive me, please, in about an hour. We make light of it, but honestly, this is how our corrupted thoughts travel. We want our sin first, and forgiveness later. That’s not repentance. That’s at best an attempt to barter with God. That is – to go back to yesterday’s comments – an attempt to treat God like He’s one of us, one of the guys. It’s an attempt, no doubt instigated by our enemy, or at least encouraged by him (not that we need much encouraging), to make God our servant.
Meanwhile, as Barnes reminds us, we have the clear commandment of Scripture. While we revel in the great good news that our salvation and our justification are accomplished ends, made possible by Christ, and made certain in Christ, there remains this active duty on our part. “Pursue peace with all men,” writes the author of Hebrews. Then he adds something that should make us shiver; a second pursuit to which we must apply ourselves. “And pursue that sanctification without which no one will see the Lord” (Heb 12:14). What? I thought Jesus did it all! I thought this was a done deal, and I could just ride it out until the end comes. No. Faith is active. Sanctification is an effort to which we must apply ourselves. Yes, God does the work and does so in a fashion that renders us willing and able to join Him in that work. But, if we will not, what does it say of us? It says that God is not there, willing within us. It says, then, that we are not of the elect after all, whatever we have been telling ourselves.
Pursue peace and sanctification. Do so with fear and trembling, as Paul reminds us in Philippians 2:12. Why with fear and trembling, Paul? If it’s by faith alone in Christ alone and by grace alone, why? I think Mr. Henry just gave us the answer. Do so in fear and trembling, recognizing that any deliberate, unrepented sin shuts you out of heaven’s kingdom. Seek to die with your slate clean. Trust God, but recognize that He is in fact holy. He is in fact perfect, and demands perfection. I will assure you of this: God will not honor that house which welcomes the continued participation in such sins as Paul has enumerated here. The church of the coveter will not be accounted amongst the elect.
The Answer (07/07/17)
Well, that’s great news, isn’t it? Thus far the picture’s pretty hopeless. The list of disqualifying behaviors has us all caught out, and if we think we’re still safe, consider how Jesus taught the Law. Actions alone are not the measure. How’s the thought life? Oh, dear. We may not be so sinfully bold as to take action on those thoughts, but we’re sure willing to think them, even meditate on them! No more! God in His mercy has looked upon our situation and seen how hopelessly hapless we are. We cannot help but sin because it is our nature. The corruption of the Fall has so infused us that we can’t even manage to take notice of the filth we’re rolling in. We’re too busy having a good time. So, He has provided the answer. Indeed, for all that we like to say that God is a gentleman who would never force Himself on anybody, the truth of the matter is that if He did not do so, nobody would be saved. We need Him to take the first step with us. We need Him to continue to take every step thereafter with us.
Let’s pause, as the Corinthians must have, upon hearing Paul’s transition. “And such were you.” As at least one commentary has pointed out, the ‘some’ part of this is not really intended to imply that some of the church members had managed to live free of all these sins. No. Every last one was guilty of at least some, and some were no doubt guilty of most, if not all. Calvin sums it up for us. “No one is altogether free from these vices, until he has been renewed by the Spirit.” No one.
Set this back in the Corinthian context, before we move forward. Here was a church absolutely convinced of its spiritual superiority. We may not agree who is the best teacher, but we assuredly have the best teachers! We’ve got teachers that outshine the apostles. We’ve got the gifts to prove it. We’ve got words of knowledge coming out every week. We’ve got wisdom that would stun Plato. We’ve got it all. We are one happening Church, Paul. Don’t bother trying to correct us, we should be correcting you! But, now they’ve been hit smack in the face with the list of their own actions. “Such were you.” The sad news that is evident in the need for this letter is that this was by no means entirely in the past tense for them. Paul could just as correctly said, “Such are you.” Oh, yes, there were many who had made progress, but there were clearly at least as many who were doing better at regress.
Let’s bring this into the present. We have those today who were raised in the church. In many cases, they are convinced that they were spared from sinning like this. They were spared. There is no doubt about that. But they were not spared sinful proclivities entirely. They may have been granted not to experience the full scope of those proclivities, may have been prevented from acting upon their thoughts. But, so, too, were many who came late to the church. The message of Scripture is plain. “No one is righteous.” But, here’s the great good news: The blood of Christ has procured our cleansing. The blood of Christ has answered for our crimes. The blood of Christ has obtained for us the inheritance our actions precluded. But, there are some things we should understand in this. As Table Talk pointed out in yesterday’s devotional, “The power of sin is broken but not eradicated at our conversion, so even believers can find the law inciting them to sin when they are walking according to the flesh and not according to the Spirit.” The work is on-going.
Calvin makes another point in keeping with Paul’s design here. While all of the positive answer given is to be found in Christ, it will be found to no avail unless the influence of the Holy Spirit makes us partakers of the benefits of Christ. This gets to the order of the work done in us, which I will consider in its place, but for now, hear the declaration. “Christ, then, is the source of all blessings to us; from him we obtain all things; but Christ himself, with all his blessings, is communicated to us by the Spirit.” To be sure, we receive Christ by faith, but here we hit one of the more sinful conceits of the modern church. Much of the church is now convinced that faith is something we must work up on our own, but that would make it a work, and faith stands wholly opposed to works in this matter of salvation. No, by faith we receive Christ, but we must recognize that the Holy Spirit is the author of faith, as Calvin points out. I would add that He is the imparter of that faith as well. By faith we are saved, and that not of ourselves; it is a gift of God – not some result of works - that no man should boast (Eph 2:8-9).
Barnes has pointed out what a marvelous summary we have of the issue of redemption in these verses, and I’ll get to that as well in due time. But, right now, I want to focus our attention on that transitional statement in verse 11, because this is our story condensed to a simple statement. “Such you were, but now you are.” We have the laundry list of our crimes to bring us to humbling realization of our entire lack of worth. Such you were. But, we are not left there. To be left there would be to be left in utter despair. No! “But you are!” Actually, it’s still put in the past tense, which is a marvel all of its own. This has already changed. You were washed (or you permitted yourself to be – the one step in which we are given a hand in this list), you were sanctified, you were justified. Look at that! You were! It’s established. Here is your answer: By the authorization of Christ Jesus, you have had benefit of His work on your behalf, imparted and implanted by the agency of the Holy Spirit whom Jesus caused to be sent to us as our Advocate and Teacher.
Are you indeed a Christian? Are you indeed among the elect? Then, this is your story. You were like that, but this has been done. You have been made justified and sanctified once for all. You have been washed, and set upon the course of further sanctification. It is this which you must now set yourself to pursue, and in that pursuit, you need to be aware that your sin nature, while no longer in uncontested control of your actions, remains a lurking menace awaiting any opportunity to reassert itself. It’s not going down easy. If I might be permitted to inject a probably wholly inappropriate snippet of Mingus in here, “Stand fast, young mule. Stand fast.” Now you are that. Now you are a new creation. Live it.
The Inheritance (07/08/17)
Having considered the enormity of our crimes against heaven, and the marvel that instead of punishing us, God has instead rescued us and paid the due penalty Himself, in the person of His Son, we arrive at something more marvelous yet. We shall inherit the kingdom of God. No, actually what Paul says here as that those who persist in their sinful behaviors, regardless the claim they may make to faith, will not inherit. But, the corollary is there: Those who are washed, sanctified, and justified shall. In fact, as Paul makes clearer in other letters, they already have! We already have! Read it for yourself. We have obtained [have obtained. Done deal.] an inheritance, having been predestined according to His purpose who works all things after the counsel of His will (Eph 1:11). It’s done, and oh, by the way, it’s done by Him. God works all things after the counsel of His will. You are amongst those things He works, and His predestination is the determination of His will.
Now, as powerful as that is, it may not be enough to assure you of your standing, particularly in those periods where sin seems to have regained the upper hand in your life. So, we have this added. The Holy Spirit is given as a pledge of our inheritance (Eph 1:14a). He is not our inheritance, but He is a reassurance that we have in fact inherited. Whatever our current failure, it is not unrecoverable. The Holy Spirit remains. He continues to counsel, to remind, to encourage, to rebuke where necessary, to bring about that process of sanctification that is preparing us for entry into the fullness of that inheritance. He is given, Paul says, “with a view to the redemption of God’s own possession to the praise of His glory” (Eph 1:14b). Here, too, is meat worth chewing on for awhile. He is given to redeem God’s own possession. That’s you and me. We belong to God. He’s not terribly inclined to lose us. He is given to redeem us. Didn’t Christ do that? Yes. And He sent the Spirit to apply the boundless efficacy of His shed blood to our specific case. Understand, then, that the efficacy of Christ’s atonement is limitless, but the application is strictly limited by God’s predestination of the elect. Finally, The Spirit is sent to bring praise to God’s glory. That being the case, dear Corinthians, dear Americans, He was not sent to bring praise to you. Redemption, yes, but not praise.
Here’s another grand bit of news for us, in two parts. First, we must understand that we haven’t arrived at this marvelous place because we’ve been successful in setting all that junk of sin behind us. It’s actually quite the opposite. To the degree we have set that junk behind us, it is because we have been washed, sanctified and justified. It’s not the cause, it’s the effect. Look again at the specifications of verse 11. You were, you were, and you were. All three components of the preparation for inheritance are accomplished fact. It has been done already. As noted before, apart from washing, and in part even that, these things were accomplished for you, not by you. God does it, in the Person of the Spirit, because He decided back at the outset of creation to do so.
So, here’s part two. What’s done remains done. I had cause to offer my daughter a bit of counsel and encouragement a week or two back. She was down on herself because the business of life had prevented her from getting up to our place to take care of some stuff that needed to be done. Well, that occasion had already passed. There’s no going back for a retry. What’s done remains done. What we can do is turn an eye upon the list of things we need to do now, pick one, and get after it. Then, we can get to the next, and so on, not in such a fashion as leaves us overwhelmed with the never ending stream of work, but taking time to breathe between events, to enjoy life even in the midst of working through its demands. We do not ignore the past and pretend it never happened, no. But, recognizing that we can’t change it, we repent and move on.
With us, that’s something of a mixed blessing. We can’t erase the past, and for the most part we can’t correct it. We can make amends to some degree, but that’s about it. Now, applied to God, the first thing we notice is there’s nothing for which to make amends. God doesn’t sin or err, therefore there’s no cause for regret on His part, and ought to be no cause for complaint on ours. But, more to our point, after that diversion, where God is the one doing it, we are all the more assured that what is done remains done, because He does things perfectly, and He does not change. He is not a man that He should change His mind (Nu 23:19). “Has He said it, and will He not do it? Has He spoken, and will He not make it good?” He has spoken it, and indeed, His word will not fail to accomplish all His purpose (Isa 55:11).
There is the surety of your inheritance. It has come your way in spite of your past. It remains yours in spite of your failures. Your past may continue to leak into the present, but you have the Holy Spirit of the Living God indwelling you, occupying the sanctuary of your soul, and He’s not inclined to allow that temple to be desecrated. He’s keeping most careful watch over you, for you are one of the Lord’s sheep, and God quite simply does not lose His sheep.
And yet, for all that certainty, we are called to keep careful watch, to beware becoming presumptuous as concerns the grace that has been given us. Your inheritance is certain, but so is this: If in fact you are an heir and the Spirit of God is within you, His fruit will be in evidence in your thought life and your actions. Those actions don’t earn your good standing with Him, but they do offer evidence of it. They are the inevitable outflow of His presence, and if they are not in evidence, we must conclude that He is not in residence. So, those fruits, dear believer, come as much for your assurance as for any other cause.
Sanctification, while it remains wholly dependent upon God for progress, remains a cooperative effort. We take active part in it alongside our loving Father. We are in process. We are being set apart from the world to be accounted among the saints, and we are doing our best to set ourselves apart. This does not, as we have already seen in the course of these studies, require us to completely remove ourselves from all worldly contact and endeavor. It does require us to approach them with an eye to our inheritance and to the One who has bought us out of our slavery to worldly sin. We are set apart, even as we stand amidst.
This leaves us in what would be a precarious place if we were on our own. The pull of the world, as any one of us can attest, is strong. Fortunately, the pull of heaven is strong as well. We are given reason to remember. We are given our past that we may look upon it and recognize our progress. We are given our present that we may remain strong, that we may demonstrate our progress. Again, that demonstration is for our own benefit. God already knows what He has accomplished in us, but we have our doubts, don’t we?
So, we work at this business of sanctification, and we more than likely despair of making any headway. We feel like we have changed so little as we go through our days. I can look back across fifteen and more years of these studies and see things I was dealing with at the outset that I’m still dealing with today. I have little doubt that in some cases, I’ll still be dealing with them when the final curtain draws to a close. But, there’s this: Things have changed, and for the better. It may not seem like much, but it’s there. “Such were you, but now…” And, having seen the change, I have to ask, who would want to go back?
Who would? And yet, we see those who do. How can this be? Have they lost sight of what’s at stake? I’ll just echo Barnes’ sentiments here. What other loss could compare to losing heaven? What, pray tell, could be worth trading that in? What’s the alternative? There is only one: Inheriting hell. There is, as Barnes says, a tremendous curse worth every effort to avoid. And yet, they flock to inherit it. And yet, we who know better find ourselves turning longing eyes in that direction until our better senses reassert themselves under the Spirit’s prodding.
Now, as concerns this inheritance, there are a lot of folks out there who are delusional. They are sure they shall inherit in spite of their total disregard for God and godliness. The number of so-called churches that dot the landscape, promising hope but delivering vanity and wind, testify to this situation. Would that in every such place, the message of Truth would come to the pulpit! Let it start with our friend Barnes. “O how anxious should all be that they be not deceived, that while they HOPE for life they do not sink down to everlasting death!” That’s the story for them right now. No doubt, we could all of us list off churches in our area in which everybody from the ‘minister’ on down is in this dire situation of thinking they have hope while in fact they are sinking into everlasting death at an alarming rate.
But, here’s a warning shot across our own bow. Recognize that Paul writes this very same warning to Corinth, even while accounting them dear brothers and among the redeemed. Such were you, but now you are something else. And yet, as his admonitions demonstrate, some among them still were. The warning to the True Church has been clear: Don’t give false hope. If the so-called brother continues in sin, don’t give him the false hope of acceptance. Give him the true hope of a call to repentance. If he hears and responds, you have gained your brother. If he does not, let him be as a tax-gatherer to you, another part of the mission field. By his choices he declares himself not of the family of Christ. By his choices, Christ declares him not of His family. Act accordingly.
The record for Corinth is at once encouraging and depressing. We can look upon the many corrections that needed to be made and despair. If this church, so close to the outset and so personally tended by the Apostle, could screw up this badly, what hope is there for us so many centuries out? But, then, we can turn to 2 Corinthians and see cause for hope. Things had changed. The Apostle’s words had been received and acted upon, and things were looking up. God was still in it. If this were the end of our knowledge of that church, we should probably be dancing with the angels, rejoicing to see the work preserved. But, it’s not the end. Go forward a few short decades, and we find Clement writing to this beleaguered church in his own turn. The sad part is that his letter echoes almost every correction Paul has made in this letter.
It’s a sad reality for us that, as is often pointed out, it takes but one generation for a steadfast, biblically founded church to become a temple of falsehood. We have plentiful evidence of that up here in New England. The history of the church in this region has been just that. In our own day, we are perhaps in greater danger of losing the Truth than ever, in spite of having greater access to it. Santayana is credited with saying that those who fail to learn from history are doomed to repeat it. Nowhere is that more true than in the realm of faith and truth. The devil does not simply run away for good because he was resisted once. No, he awaits an opportune time, and circles back around. He has a pocketful of particularly effective lies; what we term heresies. He knows, too, that our collective memory is short, and our concern for history, particularly church history, is minimal. So, he doesn’t need to come up with newer, cleverer lies. He just recycles the old ones, because everything old becomes new again as we forget. And, if the Truth is much easier to access in our day, so, too, are the lies. “O how anxious should all be that they be not deceived, that while they HOPE for life they do not sink down to everlasting death!”
Active Faith (07/08/17)
I have remained largely focused on the passive nature of the grace given us. “You were sanctified. You were justified.” It is never, ever laid out as, “You sanctified yourself. You justified yourself.” No. It is ever and always a matter that has been done to and for us. In many of our translations, washing looks the same, doesn’t it? The NASB makes no distinction, for example. “You were washed.” But, in reality, that one is in the Middle Voice. Wycliffe advises that it is the ‘permissive middle voice’, such that we might better translate it, “You allowed yourself to be washed.”
In fairness, I must acknowledge that when I came through this passage previously, I considered that possibility and rejected it, concluding that this was more of a deponent middle voice situation. I retract that. The permissive middle makes more sense. We see it in the symbolic act of baptism. You don’t baptize yourself, certainly. Neither is baptism something done to you without any input from you on the matter. You permit it to be done, in fact, you request that it be done. This is an entirely necessary component of baptism, and may well be one of the stronger arguments against the paedobaptistic view of the matter. An infant can have no say in the matter, and I’m simply not convinced that the parents’ say is a fit substitute. I get the concept of this reflecting the circumcision of the Old Covenant, but I don’t see it as a good fit. Here, the middle voice seems to preclude such a connection. The 8-day old baby did not allow itself to be circumcised. The infant believer cannot allow itself to be baptized. But, that’s the implication of this statement. You did allow yourself to be washed. You requested it be done to you.
Beyond the implications for baptism, there is this, which the Wycliffe commenters stress. The permissive middle voice used here makes clear that faith does in fact have an active side. Faith is not passive. Neither, I will insist is it purely active, as voices are considered. Faith is not something you can work up in yourself. You can work up something that you may call faith, but it’s more properly nothing more than enthusiasm. But, faith doesn’t simply sit idle. It’s not all receiving. Faith consists in conscious decision, conscious concurrence with God’s direction.
One of the first passages I ever felt the desire to highlight in my Bible (I cannot tell you how wrong such activities feel to me!) was Proverbs 16:9. “The mind of man plans his way, but the LORD directs his steps.” Where, you might ask, is faith in this? I see predestination, in that the clear implication here is that God will cheerfully overrule my plans as He sees fit, and praise God for it! But, where’s faith? I’ll tell you. Faith is there when the mind of man, as he plans his way, seeks to pursue the course the LORD directs. Faith is there when the man sets his desires upon so planning and so doing that the LORD will find no great need to take corrective action. Faith seeks to work together with God, to seek His counsel beforehand rather than His able assistance afterwards, when all our plans have turned to rubbish. Faith looks to walk humbly with God, seeking His counsel, heeding His counsel, and doing His will together with Him, always mindful that it shall be done no other way than with Him. Faith is a Middle Voice action. It cannot work without us. It will not work without Him, and it assuredly won’t work against Him.
Is the Order Significant? (07/09/17)
Much is made by our various commentaries as to the significance in Paul’s ordering of terms in verse 11. Now, I will accept that very often there is indeed significance in the order of these lists, when terms start piling up. But, the significance can vary. The order may be temporal, indicating the sequence in which events occur. The order may be one of importance or priority, running either from the most significant to the least, or running from the least significant to a culminating most. Where I think a lot of our commentaries get tangled up is that they assume a temporal ordering is in view. Clarke, for example, goes to great lengths to try and show how this is temporally correct, but his efforts are rather labored in my view. There simply is nothing about this passage that requires us to view the matter temporally. If anything, I could readily argue that they are temporally reversed.
This leads me to question whether Paul is in fact making use of a chiliastic approach. In such an approach, we have a bit of Hebraic poesy, arranging the points in something of a symmetrical diagram. That is to say, if we would have things temporally, we are moving from present back to beginning of renewal as he lists the events of conversion, but then moving forward again as we begin in the authorizing word of Christ and proceed to the work of the Spirit sent at His behest. If Christ had not accomplished the work of redemption, after all, the Spirit would have nothing to apply to the elect. There would be no point in His coming to us.
Whether or not there is an intended symmetry here, there is certainly a balance. As to washing, sanctification, and justification, whatever we may say as to the order, we can say this much: The three must all be found together, or they are not found at all. You cannot be justified except sanctification transpires, and cleansing from sin accompanies. You cannot be cleansed of your sins apart from justification. You certainly shall not find yourself sanctified and set apart for God’s exclusive use unless you have been both justified and washed. The same balance is found in the mention of Christ and the Spirit, and I would suggest we can include in that balance the unmentioned participation of the Father in this process.
Matthew Henry demonstrates the balance, noting that none are cleansed of guilt through Christ but those sanctified by the Spirit. As I believe I have said already, the efficacy of Christ’s work is infinite, but the application is restricted. It’s the same picture. Now, let us see it in reverse, to sense the balance of it. All who are made righteous in Christ, Mr. Henry continues, are made holy through the Spirit; and all – here is our Father’s part – by the grace of God. It is a beautiful picture of cooperative balance in the work. It is a picture painted over and over again throughout the pages of Scripture. Father determines, Son obtains, Spirit applies. From the first moments of Creation right on through to the final denouement of Revelation, this cooperative, harmonious, unified, balanced work of the Trinity proceeds. Surely we must acknowledge that the power of God knows no bounds. The only limits we can set upon His power are the limits of His own will, and that is exactly the point!
You were washed. You acceded to this, but frankly, your choice wouldn’t matter in the least if God had not made His choice. You were sanctified. You were justified. God set the bounds, and determined that you are within bounds. Here is the whole of your hope. God chose you. If you care to see a temporal order in things, there’s step one. Without that first move on the part of God, nothing at all follows.
Barnes has the following to say as to order. “People are justified when they believe, and when the work of sanctification commences in the soul.” I might argue the first bit, and suggest that people believe when they are justified. But, I’m not put off by this statement of the sequence. The two events are so nearly simultaneous that it would be difficult to ascertain which came first. Functionally, though, I maintain that the first step is God’s to take. He justifies. He dispatches the Holy Spirit to take up His place in our hearts and deliver unto us the gracious gift of faith to believe. After all, the whole thing is pretty unbelievable, and twenty-odd years on I frankly find it more so than I did at the start. God loves me? God chose me? I cannot for the life of me imagine why. I can, for the life in Him, be exceedingly thankful that He did.
The Wycliffe commentary offers another perspective on the ordering of events here, and insists quite correctly that Paul isn’t laying out a temporal order, but rather describing ‘positional truth’. What does that mean? It means, “Here is the truth about your current standing, believer.” These things have transpired. These are done deals. These are established fact, achieved in the past and now unchangeable, as God is unchangeable. Seeing this, the reason for the order may be made clear by this. “Justified stands last, as a fitting climax to the argument about seeking justice before the unjust.” You see, Paul has not abandoned his argument. He is setting the exclamation point at the end. This his who you are in Christ. How, then, can you be doing the sorts of things you’re doing? How can you condone it when your brother does?
Stated differently, this marvelous picture of what God has done for you must make clear that you are a man under obligation. You have been bought with a price, as Paul will very shortly be reminding them – twice actually (1Co 6:20, 1Co 7:23). You are not your own. You are, by God’s choice and God’s action, a temple of the Holy Spirit, a temple of the Living God. The result MUST be an obligation – an obligation to live a holy life and to forsake sin in every form. No, I don’t expect we shall succeed entirely to satisfy this obligation any more than we succeed in heeding the Law of the covenant. To succeed would be to transcend our need for Christ, and our need for Christ shall never be transcended. But, it is the unchanging and unchangeable goal of our duty.
I think it best to simply replay the notes I took from Barnes here. He has provided such a lovely summary of what is set before us in verse 11 that I don’t suppose I could improve upon it. As he describe it, we have in this verse ‘a most emphatic’ statement on the topic of redemption. “By this single passage a man may obtain all the essential knowledge of the plan of salvation.” I’ll just interject, if you’re looking for a starting point to evangelize, I would have to suppose one could do worse than starting here – not necessarily with the verse itself, but with the map that Barnes provides based on what Paul says. You’ll want to do some homework to provide further backup, I suspect, but what a beautiful picture we have in this. I return to Barnes now.
- Man is by nature a miserable, polluted sinner devoid of merit and hope.
- He is renewed by the Spirit and washed by baptism.
- “He is justified, pardoned and accepted as righteous through the merits of the Lord Jesus alone.”
- He is made holy, becoming sanctified and fit for heaven.
- All of this is done by the Holy Spirit.
- The result must be an obligation to live a holy life, forsaking sin in every form.
Is there significance in the order? Oh, indeed! We begin miserable, God in His mercy intervenes, and we find ourselves being made fit for heaven. God moves and we win. How thoroughly, utterly marvelous is our Lord!
