The Good Life With A Capital "L"

 "Thus says the LORD:  'Stand by the roads, and look; and ask for the ancient paths, where the good way is; and walk in it, and find rest for your souls..." (Jer. 6:16, ESV). 
"... And do not be grieved, for the joy of the LORD is your strength"  (Neh. 8:10, ESV).  
"When he came and saw the grace of God, he was glad..." (Acts 11:23, ESV). 
"I will run the way of thy commandments, when thou shalt enlarge my heart" (Ps. 119:32, KJV).  [Emphasis added.]

Many long for the so-called American dream, thinking of success--a materialistic lifestyle.  Mother Teresa of Calcutta, now canonized, said that we are not "called to success, but to faithfulness."  God doesn't demand achievements, but obedience! Not our success; He wants us! Ethics is the study of how one goes about the good life--living as we ought, right living.  "If God does not exist, all things are permissible,' according to Dostoevsky.  Plato said that if he were to know how to live, he must know what God is like.

There can be no ethics without absolute truth, and no final arbiter of truth without God.  We all pursue the good life to some degree by chasing fantasies and dreams, but only in Christ can we find it:  "I am come that they may have life, and have it more abundantly"  (cf. John 10:10).  God's command: "Be fruitful and multiply."  We are "restless" till we find "rest in God" (Saint Augustine).  We don't want to just exist, but to live! Alive in Christ!

God cares a lot about right and wrong and has given each of us a conscience as a moral compass and fabric to know His law (cf. Rom. 2:15).  Everyone knows it, though we flaunt it.  No one has obeyed or listened to his conscience in toto, though Jiminy Cricket said, "Always let your conscience be your guide," and Martin Luther said, "To go against conscience is neither right nor safe," when asked to recant or burn at the Diet of Worms.  The resultant good life is composed of orthodoxy or right belief, and orthopraxy, or right [faith into] action.

The good life is something inside you, it's a spirit that you attain in finding fulfillment and meaning or purpose is life.  If you don't have a worldview you will never put things in perspective, though.  Religion can change you, and in fact, some may say that you got religion!  But Christ transforms from the inside out, He doesn't just reform you like a recovering alcoholic. It's not walking on Cloud Nine, or always being "spiritual" either.  We are given new life in Christ and a fresh start with a clean slate, and we don't have to look back!  The proof of the pudding is in the eating:  "Taste and see that the LORD is good..." (cf. Psalm 34:8). Peter said:  "[I]f indeed you have tasted that the Lord is good"  (1 Pet. 2:3, ESV).  "... God] delights in the welfare of his servant!" (Ps. 35:27, ESV).

The reason people follow some of the world's religions is that they work (this is pragmatism)!  Yes, but whether something works is not the test of truth.  Christianity isn't true because it works, but it works because it's true.  Yoga, TM, and meditation work if you believe in them, but this is what the world and the devil have to offer as cheap parodies of the real thing.  They are a sham and their effects are deceptive, for the devil can appear as an angel of light and bring about great wisdom (like Buddha's Eightfold Path).  He thought of the Four Nobel Truths, but you cannot get saved nor save yourself, no matter how many noble truths you dream up for enlightenment.

The goal in life is to know Jesus in fellowship, serving Him for fulfillment.  There is a great intrinsic reward in knowing divine wisdom, which is superior to religion.  We are set free in Christ as believers from our sin but don't have permission to live in the flesh, but the power to live in the Spirit.  Pascal said: "There is a God-shaped vacuum in every heart."

The Lord promises to take care of all our needs (cf. Phil. 4:19), that we will never be in want (cf. Psalm 23:1), and that He will "withhold no good thing from him walks uprightly" (cf. Psalm 84:11). He gives us richly all things to enjoy (cf. 1 Tim. 6:17) and gives us the ability to transcend materialism and "possess our possessions" (cf. Obadiah 17).   John prays:  "Dear friend, I pray that you may prosper in every way and be in good health, just as your soul prospers" (3 Jn. 2, HCSB).  There is not a "prosperity theology" whereby we are promised material blessings consequential to our faith, but God promises to bless us in all our endeavors if they are the Lord's work done in His name.  Even our work, food, and drink are the blessing of God (cf. Eccl. 3:13).

Religion doesn't ask you to sacrifice yourself and doesn't talk in terms of lost and saved, but Christ came to save those who are lost and to deny ourselves, take up our cross, and follow Him--a high cost for discipleship; not cheap grace or easy-believism.  But it costs more to reject Him. Christ alone diagnoses our problem as our sin nature and gave us the power to overcome it.  Jesus never made salvation easy, but well-nigh impossible--what He wants is you!  But the reward is worth it.

Isn't it more rewarding to live your life knowing without a doubt that you're headed to heaven?  No religion can duplicate this assurance of salvation, because, in a works religion, you never know.  In Christianity, you aren't saved by works, but by grace, a word foreign to religion.  Religion is defined as a way to gain the approbation of God by works, then, without grace.

Only Christianity offers the thrill of a lifetime and the joy of knowing God (cf. John 17:3) because we believe He is a personal, immanent, and approachable, and loves us (cf. 1 John 4:8). We were designed to know and love God while walking in fellowship, the Bible is our Owner's Manual and God knows best how to give us the good life--being fulfilled.  The eternal life we receive isn't just in longevity but in quality!

As Jesus said, "Now this is eternal life:  that they may know you, the only true God, and Jesus Christ, whom you have sent" (John 17:3, NIV).  Knowing God is part of the package and is the most rewarding of any relationship.  Paul considered everything he had "that was to his profit" as "rubbish," compared to knowing Christ (cf. Phil. 3:7-10).  Soli Deo Gloria!  Hallelujah!   Amen!

He That Is Spiritual

Lewis Sperry Chafer, founder and first chancellor of Dallas Theological Seminary (the largest Protestant seminary on earth) wrote a book in 1918, He That Is Spiritual, to delineate the so-called carnal Christian as contrasted with the so-called spiritual ones.  An unbeliever was called the natural man.  This dichotomy of believers is unbiblical and misleading.  Any Christian can become carnal by sin, and all he needs to do is to confess it per 1 John 1:9--carnality is no perpetual or permanent state.  We all live in a state of perpetual and progressive confession and repentance--the unrepentant person is not saved. John says that a Christian doesn't continue in sin, and this means he makes it his way of life, though he may live a defeated life, there is some life to his faith or it is dead faith producing no works, which cannot save.

The whole purpose of faith is to produce the workmanship of God, foreordained by God, that we should walk in it (cf. Eph. 2:10).  Spiritual believers are not those who go overboard or are fanatical or so-called Jesus freaks, but those who walk with God in the Spirit.  They are realizing their potential of the fruit of the Spirit, and of knowing the Lord.  The Christian life that is spiritual is one that enjoys fellowship with God and other believers.  All believers are exhorted to read the Bible, witness, and pray; not just the clergy.

The spiritual man has relinquished ownership and throne of his life to Christ, he has surrendered to the Lordship of Christ, and he lives the substituted or exchanged life with Christ living through him.  "I have been crucified with Christ and I no longer live, but Christ lives in me.  The life I live in the body I live by faith in the Son of God, who loved me and gave himself for me" (cf. Gal. 2:20).  This can only be accomplished by a believer in sync with God's will, and willing to follow Jesus wherever he may lead. The spiritual man has learned the secret of "inhabitation," as opposed to "imitation."

The obedient Christian does these things and the only test of faith is obedience. A. W. Tozer, in I Call it Heresy!, says:  "The Lord will not save those whom He cannot command.  He will not divide His offices.  You cannot believe in a half-Christ.  We take Him for what He is --the anointed Saviour and Lord...."   We see our faith in action by our good works according to James.  Paul would say we see our good works by our faith.  They go hand in hand. In other words:  As Lutheran martyr, preacher, and theologian Dietrich Bonhoeffer said, "Only he who believes is obedient, only he who is obedient believes."  (Note that it was by faith that Abraham obeyed, as written in Heb. 11:8.)   The ultimate result is the fruit of a changed life, not an ascetic or mystic one that parades or charades as spiritual.

The spiritual man is appraised of no one, because of the wisdom of God and, if we have the Spirit, we are spiritual.  The natural man cannot comprehend spiritual truth, for Satan has blinded his eyes.  We need the eyes of our hearts opened to see spiritual truths.  Some believers are more mature in the faith and know the Lord better, but all of them are spiritual.   There's no class system or caste system in Christianity, we are all brethren and one in Christ.   We should not idolize our fellow believers, even if they seem to be spiritual giants.  We should never try to give the impression we are more "spiritual" than other believers or have a holier-than-thou in attitude. By the same token, we shouldn't be intimidated by others and develop an inferiority complex.  Christ's church has no spiritual elite or privileged class, for God is no respecter of persons and shows no partiality (cf. Acts 10:34, Rom. 2:11).

We all have different gifts and we don't have anything the Lord has not given us (cf. 1 Cor. 4:7).  It is the Spirit that matters, not the gift that makes us spiritual.  In exercising one's gift, what matters is the spirit that he uses it in. Believers have no excuse not to understand Scripture, pray, and witness and should enjoy the fruits of fellowship and worship in the body, because they have the illuminating ministry of the Spirit.

We are all works in progress and improving from faith to faith (cf. Rom. 1:17); no one can claim to have "arrived" or to have met the goal and won the prize (cf. Phil. 3:13-14).  We are in the process of maturing in Christ, but it is the direction we are going that counts and is the test, while perfection is the standard (cf. Matt. 5:48).  We must bear fruit as proof of our faith, or it is bogus--no fruit means no faith, and ergo no salvation.  (Jesus said we shall know them by their fruits in Matt. 7:16.)  We can only find meaning, purpose, and fulfillment ultimately in Christ:  "There is a God-shaped blank, and only God can fill it." (old axiom).   Soli Deo Gloria!  

Intimacy With The Almighty

"Worry about nothing; pray about anything; thank about everything!"  (paraphrase of Phil. 4:6-7).
"Before they call I will answer; while they are yet speaking I will hear" (Isa. 65:24, ESV).
"Call to me and I will answer you, and will tell you great and hidden things that you have not known"  (Jer. 33:3, ESV).

Have you ever yearned to have genuine communion with the Father--the real thing, because this is where the action is and is the acid test of your faith in action?  We must all personally enroll in the school of prayer and individually enter the throne room of God, get entree into His presence, and another surreal dimension: "For through Him [Chriist] we have access to the Father by one Spirit," (cf. Eph. 2:18).   There is proper protocol for doing this: we boldly approach the throne of grace (cf. Heb. 4:16) in the name of the Son (John 14:14), in the power of the Spirit (Jude 20, Eph. 6:18), and addressed to the Father (Matt. 5:9; this is the biblical paradigm).  It is good to "enter His gates with thanksgiving, and His courts with joy" (cf. Psalm 100:4).  We all have an innate potential to realize our work in Christ.  "God is with us":  "He is there, and He is not silent!"  (Francis Schaeffer).

God has ordained that prayer be the means to the ends, and both the efficacy of prayer and the sovereignty of God are equally taught in the Word.  Only when we are so vulnerable do we bear our soul to God are we ushered into His presence.  We must have no unconfessed sin that is an impediment (cf. Psalm 66:18).  The way to avoid this is to keep short accounts of our sins and confess them immediately (cf. 1 John 1:9).  We all should be honest with God in our own prayer closet and get personal because nothing is too trivial nor too big for Him to handle; everything's small to Him!

We should take the example of the disciples who "devoted themselves to prayer and the ministry of the Word (cf. Acts 6:4).   Keep oriented:  The purpose of prayer is prayer, we don't get our will done in heaven, but God's will done on earth.  We ask God for what He's already disposed to do!  And prayer doesn't change God, it changes us--a successful prayer is when you are in sync with God's will (cf. 1 John 5:14).

We don't need any necessitated or dictated posture, but our attitude is important.  We shouldn't get too comfortable, cozy, disrespectful, perfunctory, or automatic.  A good prayer is always reverent, humble, and sincere, not ever flippant or casual--but not too formal either--God wants us to speak in everyday talk, in plainspoken words from a needy heart, open mind, and willing spirit.  We are created in God's image with the unique ability to communicate with our Maker.

Sometimes we may be unwilling to pray or do God's will; we should then pray for God to make us willing, which He can (cf. Phil. 2:13; Psalm 51:12; Col. 129: Heb. 13:21).  All prayer should end in relinquishment: Thy will be done.  Amen!  This was the motto of Jesus' life!  This is no cop-out, nor excuse to cover our tracks if God doesn't answer the way we want, but Jesus said he would answer all prayer in His name and according to His will (cf. John 14:14; 1 John 5:14).

It is said, "It is better to have a heart without words than words without a heart."  The problem with us is that we cannot pray as we ought and the Holy Spirit must make intercession for us and pray on our behalf in words too deep for us to utter (cf. Rom. 8:26).  Caveat:  The greatest obstacle to God's will is our will!  We must progressively and constantly surrender to the lordship of Christ, and renew it constantly to stay close to the Lord and walk in the Spirit.  We should never get ahead of ourselves, but pray for our provisions daily, and walk with the Lord one day at a time (cf. Psalm 118:24; Prov. 27:1), as we are revealed the will of God one day at a time.   Soli Deo Gloria!   

Uniqueness Of Christian Faith

Jesus "was declared to be the Son of God in power according to the Spirit of holiness by his resurrection from the dead..."  (cf. Rom. 1:4, ESV).  By this, " he has given assurance to all by raising him from the dead" (cf. Acts 17:31, ESV).  Paul goes on to say that, if Christ is not risen "our faith is futile and we are still in our sins" (cf. 1 Cor. 15:17, ESV).  We will see history as His story and Christianity as God entering history on our behalf--it's not just a story, but something that happened in real time.  H. G. Wells, in Outline of History, wrote that "Jesus of Nazareth was easily the most dominant figure in history."   Note that Christianity is the only religion based on history and evidence. No one can disbelieve for lack of evidence; there's plenty of it for the sincere and open-minded.

We are, of all people, "most to be pitied" if Christ is not risen (cf. 1 Cor. 15:19, ESV).  Why?  What sets our faith above others is the certainty of our salvation and that it's a done deal, finished on the cross and that the Father accepted Jesus, showing it by raising Him from the dead, which guarantees we will be too--a sure thing!   Because Jesus wasn't just resuscitated or revived, but resurrected into a resurrection body that is incorruptible.  Jesus predicted His resurrection, and the Pharisees knew this, though the disciples hadn't caught on, and would've been a false prophet had he not been resurrected.  His Word is trustworthy; if we can trust Him in this, we can trust Him in everything.

He didn't just get revived from the dead, but overcame it and defeated death itself, breaking its sting and power.   "... 'Death is swallowed up in victory.'  'O death, where is your victory?  O death, where is your sting?'"  (1 Cor. 15:54, 55, ESV).  Death has no hold on us and is now only a door to pass through to glory.  We, too, can get revived in the same Spirit of Christ.   Only in our faith is their hope realized that has a sure foundation and reason for hope.  He's in the business of changing lives and giving them purpose, not giving us rules, and that power of the resurrection is still available for us to use.  He didn't come to make bad men good, but dead men alive!  Alive in Christ, that is.

The song goes, "Because He lives, I can face tomorrow."  What hope does a dead man like Buddha give you that he has discovered the key to the afterlife?  Confucius said that we know so little about this life, how can we know about the next one?  Jesus promised to prepare a place for us (cf. John 14:1) and that He will come again to receive us unto Himself.  Jesus gives us real evidence that there is a life after death and that we can find the way through Him.  Muhammad and Buddha are in their graves, but Jesus' grave is empty, and if they did find a body or any of His bones, then Christianity would be destroyed in its basis for faith.

Christianity is more than a system of ethics, a philosophy, even a worldview, or a creed, it's a growing fellowship and relationship with Jesus.  Jesus isn't just the perfect moral example for us to emulate and find the so-called good life:  We don't need a code to live by or a wise saying to confess, we need a Savior!  Only Christianity correctly diagnoses our problem and dilemma as sin, not ignorance as some religions do. And we can experience Him today subjectively in our hearts, as well as know objectively from the evidence in Scripture.  The resurrection is objective historical fact, but just believing He rose is history, but believing He rose for you is salvation.  We must personalize our faith and experience Him.  Christianity is a historical religion or it is nothing--if you disprove it historically, it would fall apart.

Other faiths do not employ history and are myths, fables, rules, ethics, or even just wise sayings.  Story faith is just believing it happened, but saving faith means you love the Lord and desire to follow Him in obedience  (cf. Rom. 16:26).  Other faiths don't demand self-sacrifice or cost anything to give up, but Christ demands obedience to His will, but it's worth it.  We don't present a way of life, such as a code to live by like the Sermon on the Mount--seeing this as the essence of the faith--nor even a creed to believe, but a person to know!  You can be convinced of all the facts and say, "Well, He's God alright!"  But you must make it part of you, desiring to live it out.

Christ wasn't just a man dying for a good cause, an unwilling martyr, a man who was getting his karma or what He deserved, a deluded madman, a deceived liar, nor a good teacher, He was who He said He was:  The living Son of God, and that is He is equal to the Father and the only way to get access to Him.  If Jesus wasn't who He said He was He would be not worth paying attention to, nor worth the time to study.  But His life was in sync with His teachings and there was no discrepancy.

If He had been a liar or deluded, wouldn't the disciples had figured it out after three years of close contact, since familiarity normally breeds contempt, but not in this case.  The disciple worshiped Him and He didn't stop them, He knew who He was, and was, of all things, a man on a mission--to die for us and be raised from the dead.  Paul staked His faith in this fact: if He is not raised, our faith is futile.

We don't need religion or a self-improvement course: religion is lifting yourself up by your own bootstraps and is a do-it-yourself proposition, what we need is salvation because our problem is sin and we need forgiveness--only a Savior could be the answer to our dilemma; not a philosopher, nor educator, nor scientist, nor teacher, nor conqueror. Christians aren't rule-obsessed but walk and live by faith and in the Spirit.  The Jews were looking for freedom from Rome and a military messiah, but Jesus isn't the Messiah of conventional wisdom, but one who sets us free form our sins (cf. Jn. 8:36)  and gives us a sure hope.

Only in Christ can we be sure of our salvation and know that we are going to heaven. It is the dying Jesus that saves us from sin, the living Jesus that gives us victory, and the coming Jesus that will glorify us.   We are saved from the penalty of sin by the crucified Savior, from the power of sin by the living Savior, and from the presence of sin by the coming Savior. Christianity is based on the Gibraltar of the resurrection miracle and this is either the greatest hoax ever perpetrated on man in history, or it's the most wonderful and important fact of history!  But "the resurrection is arguably the most attested fact of antiquity" (according to D. James Kennedy), and the biggest proof is changed lives (cf. 2 Cor. 5:17)--religion doesn't make you a new person from the inside out!

Christ is the focal point of the faith; you can remove Muhammad from Islam or Buddha from Buddhism and the religion is still intact--not so with Christ, who will never be surpassed nor equaled.  Christ wasn't self-effacing, but self-advancing; He made Himself the center of His teaching, and said He and the Father were one!   The power of the resurrection of Christ is available and alone transforms, not just reforms.   Soli Deo Gloria!