ROMANS 3: 1-8
18 For the wrath of God is revealed from heaven against all ungodliness and wickedness of those who by their wickedness suppress the truth. 19 For what can be known about God is plain to them, because God has shown it to them. 20 Ever since the creation of the world his eternal power and divine nature, invisible though they are, have been understood and seen through the things he has made. So they are without excuse; 21 for though they knew God, they did not honor him as God or give thanks to him, but they became futile in their thinking, and their senseless minds were darkened. 22 Claiming to be wise, they became fools; 23 and they exchanged the glory of the immortal God for images resembling a mortal human being or birds or four-footed animals or reptiles.
24 Therefore God gave them up in the lusts of their hearts to impurity, to the degrading of their bodies among themselves, 25 because they exchanged the truth about God for a lie and worshiped and served the creature rather than the Creator, who is blessed forever! Amen.
God is in control
To begin with the punchline of this sermon, I’ll say God’s goodness shines despite His representatives.
God is big—bigger than we imagine. God is good—far better than we imagine. God is more completely in control than we imagine.
Our text alludes to Psalm 51:4, wherein David repents for his sins with Bathsheba:
Against you, you alone, have I sinned, and done what is evil in your sight, so that you are justified in your sentence and blameless when you pass judgment.
David’s sin did not offend the holiness of humankind, nor of Bathsheba. The offense not against family dignity or even the nation of Israel, although his actions did affect all. Why is his repentance not toward humankind? Because there is no holiness in humanity. None is holy but God. Sin offends God alone, as David knows.
Paul critiques those who claim to be holy through the Law, yet defends the Law they cannot obey. Is the Law invalidated by the sinfulness of its professed practitioners? Paul asks(vv 3-4):
Will their faithlessness nullify the faithfulness of God? By no means! Although everyone is a liar, let God be proved true.
Salvation is accomplished by God. Christ alone fulfilled the righteousness of the Law. Righteousness, holiness, grace, forgiveness—these are solely the products and gifts of a very large and very in-control God. God saves, has saved, is saving, and shall save us.
Grace is God’s free love gift to humanity through Christ.
The Problem: Free
If Grace means God in Christ accomplishes the law, then why should we pay it any attention? If we’re forgiven, why try to be good? It’s a common question for us to ask in response to the very idea of grace. We expect to work for it—it’s our nature to think that way—we expect it all to be much more difficult to attain. Still, we askForgiven? Then Why Try? If God is glorified in forgiving our sins, then why not increase His glory by sinning?
It’s a fair question only if you believe that sin brings happiness—that what we really want and desire above all is to sin. I think too many Christians believe this, which means they don’t really trust in the work of the Holy Spirit.
When someone follows Christ, I believe the affections of her heart are essentially changed. She increasingly experiences her own sin not as pleasure or a good, but rather as a disappointment. The Holy Spirit is the convict-er/convincer of sin, which means the more we walk with Christ, the more our conscience will bug us. The more we live for Christ rather than ourselves, the more the things of this world fail to satisfy our tastes. We become hungry for the very things which please and honor our Lord and lose our taste for that which thwarts Him and His design.
The Plan: Providence
From the beginning it has been the plan of God to rescue, redeem, and save the world from its sin. The plan begins with God calling Israel and saving them from slavery. This is the picture of God’s deliverance of humanity from the bondage of sin. God makes Israel a light to the world. to them He entrusts the salvation project by which the whole world shall be blessed.
Israel fails to represent God. Israel fumbles the light entrusted to them again and again, but God intends to complete His plan His way. Our role is to trust in God’s providence without putting conditions on God.
The duty is ours; the events are God’s
This is a hard message that runs against our need to control things, but we obey regardless of outcomes. We disregard outcomes.
Strictly speaking, we are not Utilitarians. Utilitarianism is a way of ethics based entirely upon outcomes.
For utilitarians, good is nothing more than the product of one’s desires and preferences. It is also known as consequentialism, in which the consequences of one's actions are the sole basis for determining the rightness or wrongness of those actions. This means the end justifies the means.
A positive outcome justifies the methods one employs to reach it, even if they are unethical. So it is perfectly fine to steal if doing so feeds the poor. It’s fine to take a life if doing so results in one’s personal happiness. A good outcome excuses any wrongs committed to attain it.
This is always the formula for radicalization—the stuff of extremism and fanatics.
Extremism/Fanaticism
The nature of most any ideology—and certainly of fanaticism—begins with the oversimplification of reality.
Life is truly complex and complicated, so there is always a temptation to spin reality just enough to make things seem clear and simple. This sounds fine to the extent that we all like to know what’s going on, but we fool ourselves if we ever think we have the whole picture—what we can call the God Perspective. We do not. Thankfully, we know God and so we can trust Him with the results and outcomes. Without faith in God, this is intolerable—this idea of simply serving in good character and trusting God with the outcomes.
Fanatics mean well. They are people with good intentions. They have the end picture in mind and are committed to a specific outcome for society or the world. Fanatics are true believers, by which we mean they believe very strongly in something.
It’s not bad to believe that something is important, but when you make one thing so important that the rest of the world is judged by its lens, then you are a fanatic. There are many causes in the world and most of them have their fanatics (which is not to say that all are fanatical, just some).
Consider: Who and what groups tend to believe that the ends justify the means? Violence is okay as long as it leads to justice? Stealing is okay if it feeds the poor? Adultery is okay as long as it is between two, consenting adults and doesn’t hurt anybody?
A cause becomes fanaticism wherever that cause or movement justifies excessive behavior—usually violence.
I saw an interview with a member of the so-called Antifa (or Anti-fascist movement) who put it quite plainly. He said, “The only people who move the needle are those who push much harder than is reasonable.”
You may have heard activists echo a similar sentiment. “You must push to the extreme just to get people to go to the middle” —kind of thing. The ends—getting people moved to the place you want them—justifies the means: irrationally extreme attitudes and actions.
Fanatics reduce the complexity of the world to a manageable size. They fuel their passion by elevating one key virtue—call it equality, or peace, or saving the environment(all good enough things in and of themselves)—but they expect that one good thing to answer for the whole. They take one virtue and stretch it out, demanding that its limited virtue stretch out to overshadow everything in the world, so that it all fits into that manageable scheme, that lens.
Fanaticism reduces the world to a formula simple enough to get a handle on and to thereafter stay passionately angry about.Those passions always drive violence in the long run.
For Christians, the center is not a better world, but God’s glorification.
Q: “But if it does the Kingdom good, then why not risk the radicalism?”
A: Because we are not God, and the Kingdom is not utilitarian.
We don’t measure righteousness by results. We don’t hold God to any particular outcomes. Never. None.
Prayer Power Prob
I knew a teacher and writer at Fuller Seminary, whom I interviewed for the radio some years ago. He had a bunch of books and articles—some wonderful but others that I found atrocious. He was fond of talking about “Effective Prayer” and wrote a book or two on it.
Get that—effective prayer—as in “Yes, you pray, but are your prayers effective?” In other words: Are you getting out of God what you want and/or expect? Hogwash! Talk about reducing the glory of God to a divine vending machine, this is it. Prayer for the ambitious, the successful, the motivated, and those with a crystal clear vision of what they expect God to do for them. It is crassly utilitarian—measuring the value of prayer by its results. Heresy in my ears.
We are not taught to pray that way.
Yes, we are taught to pray often—even repeatedly—for things God already knows we want and need. Yes, we are to pour out the longings of our hearts to God without too much editing or reservation, for the blessing of prayer is always in the relationship itself. It is a tremendous blessing to know that God listens and hears us—that we have access to His ear—is truly amazing. We should never tire of the privilege, and we never ought dare try to put prayer into a test tube or think of it as a tool we use to exploit God’s power.
No, we begin every true prayer when we say, “Thy kingdom come,Thy will be done, Thy name be glorified.” And like Christ ins Gethsemane, as we pour out our requests and petitions without reservation—yes, we can unload blood, sweat, and tears—but we finish as our Master did, praying, “yet not my will, but Yours.” This is a far cry from effective prayer. It is obedient prayer with no presumption of outcomes whatsoever.
•We do not pray to get results; we pray out of love for God.
•We pray because we are privileged with access to Him.
•We pray so that He may shape us.
•We pray because we have a living relationship with Him.
HOW, not the otherWs
Because we are not utilitarians, we pray without regard to outcomes or results. How is more important than Who, What, Where, or Why. I’m so surprised that many Christians and theologians find this idea objectionable, but for many, the felt need of serving results outweighs all else.
It is possible to obey the Law only to advance oneself. That’s the New Testament beef with legalism. If we use religion as a strategy for self-preservation, that’s not faith, that’s just religion in the service of self-interest.
You may seek special outcomes in God’s name, but in fact it may be serving your own interests. We should seek self-awareness in this matter.
Jesus said one can gain the world but lose his soul. So much for outcome-based faith or prayer.
What of Activism?
So what, then? Are we to just be passive and indifferent? To things that don’t really matter, yes, but we remember that the promises of Christ’s salvation—His triumph over death, Hell, and sin—have been entrusted to us. We bear His light in order that it be shared with the whole world. Our walk—and the manner of our walking—constitute the greater part of our witness. We have been entrusted with the message of God’s salvation, and we make our way forward as one of obedience more than the pursuit of particular results.
Because we are entrusted, we have real responsibilities. As to what matters—where we see evil triumphing, we respond with righteousness. We give ourselves to being salt and light in the world, seeking what is right and good, and we do so humbly and gently. With patience and persistence.
Christ has come and initiated the reign of God. All governments and politics are merely provisional—temporary at best.
The Son will return. We are preparing the way.
Christian Soldiers
It has been said that the era of the Church—of Christianity itself—is like the difference between D-Day and V-Day.
Historians tell us that WWII was “won” on D-Day after the allies successfully stormed Normandy, but V-Day—total victory—required the true end of war.
We are between D-Day and V-Day, on our way from Omaha beach toward Berlin. We are not fighting a war so much as advancing the good news that the war has already been won. Every step toward Berlin is ground covered for the good news. What we find once we arrive is not for us to say; it is simply for us to walk there in good form, trusting and loving the Lord with every step.
How we walk is our witness, and we feel content to leave our fate in that pair of scarred hands which effect our salvation. †