Pure Church

"How do we know God loves us?" Have you ever been asked that question? Ever asked that question yourself?

The NY Times published a couple days ago a story called "Believers Invest in the Gospel of Getting Rich." (Now doesn't that just about sum up everything you don't want teach to a perishing world?) The article covers the Copeland's recent meeting of 9,000 strong, gathered to learn from and participate in the heretical ministry of the Copelands.

Prosperity theology is a False Gospel. Its message is unbiblical and its promises fail. God never assures his people of material abundance or physical health. Instead, Christians are promised the riches of Christ, the gift of eternal life, and the assurance of glory in the eternal presence of the living God.

In the end, the biggest problem with prosperity theology is not that it promises too much, but that it promises far too little. The Gospel of Jesus Christ offers salvation from sin, not a platform for earthly prosperity. While we should seek to understand what drives so many into this movement, we must never for a moment fail to see its message for what it is -- a false and failed gospel.

"For we are the aroma of Christ to God among those who are being saved and among those who are perishing, to one a fragrance from death to death, to the other a fragrance from life to life. Who is sufficient for these things?" (2 Cor. 15-16)

"Such is the confidence that we have through Christ toward God. Not that we are sufficient in ourselves to claim anything as coming from us, but our sufficiency is from God" (2 Cor. 3:4-5).

Self-sufficiency in the ministry kills the ministry. Self-sufficiency is antithetical to the ministry.

Consider what the minister in his preaching reveals: "the aroma of Christ." Consider how the minister appeals to the two classes of men: either as life to those being saved or death to those perishing. How can we be so sufficient as to represent to any single person (much less men in general) these great eternal outcomes dependent upon how Christ "smells"? Who is sufficient for being "the aroma of Christ"?

Self-sufficiency creeps in through two doors.

First, the screen door of pride flings wide open to the self-sufficient. The man who thinks that the work of ministry is accomplished in his own strength, wisdom, and talent dons the dunce cap of pride--serious pride. We can come to believe that all really does depend upon us. We can come to think that anything depends upon us. Our estimation of ourselves and our abilities may be too high. And so we're driven to self-sufficiency by our preoccupation with what we do. We may attempt the work of the ministry with no dependence upon God. Proud self-sufficiency.

Second, the door of laziness opens just as easily to the knock of self-sufficiency. This is the man with so little ambition that everything lies within his grasp. He doesn't attempt great things for God, so he has no reason to depend upon God. He doesn't conceive of a spiritual world with fruit in vineyards too plentiful for his tilling, so the easy and mundane become "enough" for him. His estimation of the task is too small. So, a lazy man finds in his own laziness a comfortable self-sufficiency. He's aiming to do nothing, so he needs nothing. The glory of God gets packed away in tidy phrases for a sedentary life: "don't take on too much;" "you're just one man;" "we can only do so much;" "I'll do it tomorrow."

Of course, those phrases have their place and offer wisdom for the proud man who knows no limits--but not for the lazy. But in either case, the vital thing in the ministry is that all our labors be wholly dependent upon the power of God and not ourselves. Our confidence must be through Christ toward God. Nothing comes from us. Our sufficiency comes from God.

Such dependence upon God as our sufficiency allows us to be radically ambitious for the glory of God. We may be diligent, crucifying laziness, working harder than others because the sufficiency for such zeal comes from God. Confidence in and dependence upon God gives life to gospel ministry and destroys the sin of proud self-sufficiency. We may choose something larger than ourselves and depend upon God as we labor for it, and discover the all-sufficient grace and power of God.

God talk is an incredibly delusional activity.

The number of people who say they "believe in God" but who do not believe in Jesus is alarmingly high, especially in regions of the world that are culturally/nominally Christian. The sentiment is nearly everywhere.

"I believe in God. I say my prayers each morning and each night."

Or, "I believe in God. I know He has seen me through a lot of struggles."

Or, "I believe in God. And I don't play with Him."

I'm glad for all of these statements, and they contain some important truths. For example, God is not to be toyed with. He isn't a teddy bear. He is to be reverenced and loved and worshipped in awe. And God does make His rain to fall on the just and the unjust alike. His common grace toward creation means that a whole bunch of people who do not know Him experience His goodness in myriad ways, including deliverance in struggle. These things can be affirmed, and should be.

But we dare not stop there! This kind of belief in God is hardly any different from James' famous assessment: "You believe there is one God. Good! Even the demons believe that--and shudder" (James 2:19).

The reality: it is impossible to believe in God in any saving way and not come to Him through faith in Jesus. The unavoidable Person in all creation is Jesus Christ, the Son of God.

We do not have God the Father apart from God the Son. "No one knows the Father except the Son and those to whom the Son chooses to reveal Him" (Matt. 11:27). Or Jesus' extraordinary words in John 14:6-7a: "I am the way and the truth and the life. No one comes to the Father except through me. If you really knew me, you would know my Father as well."

Appeals to 'believing in God' without believing in the Son are empty idolatries, demon-like faith often without the shuddering. So much God talk allows the veneer of religiosity and faith, but denies the power by denying the Son. And that self-deception is eternally dangerous.

Of course, the opposite problem exists as well. There are those who love Jesus meek and mild but who deny the Father, at least any biblical understanding of the Father. But Matthew 11:27 speaks to them as well: "No one knows the Son except the Father...." Or, John 10:30, "I and the Father are one." And John 14:9, "Anyone who has seen me has seen the Father."

The Father and the Son come together. You can not have one and not the other. Either you have the Father with and through the Son, or you have nothing. Vague God talk obscures this critical reality.

How often does our trust in the Lord look like this?

How would you define "faith"? How would you know faith when you see it?

Though I think many people could give some general definition of faith, I think it remains a misty concept for many others. It's an intangible. Most folks think you either have it or you don't. Even though we may talk of little faith or great faith, do you feel that sometimes "little faith" is simply a nice pseudonym for "no faith in reality"?

Sometimes life is harder than steel. Sometimes life mangles and twists us like so many guard rails smashed by speeding, out-of-control vehicles. And in those times of hardship, we discover what faith is and whether we have it.

I'm convinced that perhaps the greatest example of genuine faith in American Christian history is the example left by African Americans who love the Lord. The situation most African-Americans live in now was the stuff of dreams just 50 years ago. Recede further into the history, past Jim Crow, past Reconstruction, past the abolitionist movement, on back to Jamestown and you find a people dragged into "history as terror" or "daemonic dread" as one author put it. He asked, "Who do you pray to in the bowels of a slave ship?"

It's a good question.

In time, many Africans sold as chattel in the New World prayed to the One True God through Jesus Christ His Son and entered into eternal life. Howard Thurman, a famed theologically liberal African-American pastor and educator, had it right when he pointed out that the greatest irony of American history was that the slaves should pray to the master's God.

But that irony is why the African-American church's legacy of genuine, biblical, God-centered faith is so rich and necessary to recover and esteem. Read slave conversion testimonies in a work like Clifton Johnson's God Struck Me Dead, or the poetry of Phillis Wheatly, and all you find is soul-deep, God-longing faith in the face of life as hard as steel, as stinging as the lash, as cruel as pregnant bellies ripped open, as horrendous as black bodies burned and swinging from trees, as tragic as young men hobbled and amputated, as wrenching families split and wives raped.

How do you survive such an existence? How do you survive such an existence without checking out of reality? How do you survive such an existence without checking out of reality while knowing that "trouble won't last always"? How do you survive such an existence without checking out of reality while knowing that "trouble won't last always" and simultaneously working for a better day? How do you endure such an existence without exploding in hate toward others? How do you endure such an existence and make any sense of "love your enemies"? How do you endure such an existence and sing and dance and love and create and laugh?

Only by believing that God is good, that He controls all events, that His justice will prevail, that vengeance belongs to Him, that He hears the cry of the oppressed, that social standing is no proxy for God's love, that life in His image is infused with dignity even when others don't think you're human. Only by believing those things and trusting God himself do you survive such atrocities, and not only survive but thrive and contribute.

It was faith in God through Jesus that sustained the African-American church. I sometimes think we don't know how to trust God deeply because we've not suffered deeply. In fact, God thinks that of us. That's why suffering is such a central part of the Christian experience. It breeds trust in God and distinguishes genuine faith its superficial counterparts.

So where does a rich and largely suffering-free generation like ours look for instruction in persevering faith? We have to look to those who have suffered horrifically yet trusted God implicitly. Modern examples exist. But as the U.S. celebrates African-American history month, the domestic parable so glaring and glorious is that of the African-American church which by faith endured bombings, lynchings, cross burnings, sharecropping, Jim Crow, Bull Connor, the Ku Klux Klan, chattel slavery, disenfranchisement, Black Codes, auctions, marches, sit ins, ghettos in the north, plantations in the south with no visible means of support, only a sometimes quiet, sometimes singing, sometimes mourning, sometimes active, sometimes ridiculed, sometimes shut out, sometimes demonstrating, all the time preaching faith in God.

If Hebrews 11 were still being written today, the chapter would be twice as long for its inclusion of now forgotten black faces that would have to be included for their heroic faith in God. What did Moses have on Harriet Tuman, Abraham on Jupiter Hammond, Gideon on Nat Turner, Isaac on Denmark Vesey, or Sampson on George Liele? Nothing.

At her finest, the African-American church offers the most compelling example of centuries-long persecution-triumphing trust in God. May we learn from her and live like her.

C.J. Mahaney includes this excerpt from an article on why Christmas is disturbing. Read the entire post here.

Here's the excerpt:

Many people who otherwise ignore God and the church have some religious feeling, or feel they ought to, at this time of the year. So they make their way to a church service or Christmas program. And when they go, they come away feeling vaguely warmed or at least better for having gone, but not disturbed.

Why aren’t people disturbed by Christmas? One reason is our tendency to sanitize the birth narratives. We romanticize the story of Mary and Joseph rather than deal with the painful dilemma they faced when the Lord chose Mary to be the virgin who would conceive her child by the power of the Holy Spirit. We beautify the birth scene, not coming to terms with the stench of the stable, the poverty of the parents, the hostility of Herod. Don’t miss my point. There is something truly comforting and warming about the Christmas story, but it comes from understanding the reality, not from denying it.

Most of us also have not come to terms with the baby in the manger. We sing, “Glory to the newborn King.” But do we truly recognize that the baby lying in the manger is appointed by God to be the King, to be either the Savior or Judge of all people? He is a most threatening person.

Malachi foresaw his coming and said, “But who can endure the day of his coming? Who can stand when he appears? For he is like a refiner’s fire or a launderer’s soap.” As long as we can keep him in the manger, and feel the sentimental feelings we have for babies, Jesus doesn’t disturb us. But once we understand that his coming means for every one of us either salvation or condemnation, he disturbs us deeply.

What should be just as disturbing is the awful work Christ had to do to accomplish the salvation of his people. Yet his very name, Jesus, testifies to us of that work.

That baby was born so that “he who had no sin” would become “sin for us, so that in him we might become the righteousness of God.” The baby’s destiny from the moment of his conception was hell—hell in the place of sinners. When I look into the manger, I come away shaken as I realize again that he was born to pay the unbearable penalty for my sins.

That’s the message of Christmas: God reconciled the world to himself through Christ, man’s sin has alienated him from God, and man’s reconciliation with God is possible only through faith in Christ…Christmas is disturbing.

And the conclusion:

Only those who have been profoundly disturbed to the point of deep repentance are able to receive the tidings of comfort, peace, and joy that Christmas proclaims.