A Sip
Salutations my fine feathered readers, I‘ve been stewing this blog over in my mind for months now as it is quite a controversial topic. That said, all the good Biblical topics usually are. It is ultimately a topic which is in dire need of being taught in churches as the heretical Pelagianism and Semi-Pelagianism creeps in. But do not worry if you don’t understand what that means, I will explain it later. So without further ado, let the juices flow!
Spring Time!
For those of my Australian readers, you will probably know who I am talking about when I say ‘The Chaser‘s War on Everything’. For those of you who do not know what I am talking about, they were a group of Australian comedians, pranksters, satirists and all around larrikins who had their own television show on the ABC from 2006 to 2009. What they are most famous for, however, were their numerous controversial stunts they caused such as the whole APEC catastrophe. One such controversy that I remember watching was a short song Andrew Hanson sung called, ‘The Eulogy Song’. Before I continue, just in case any of you Christians out there think the Chaser’s are too inappropriate to watch, I respond that I watched them "before I was saved". That’s my story and I’m sticking to it.
Anyway, in this song, Hanson parodied the strange occurrence that happens when someone dies. Hanson said he was inspired by the recent death of his alcoholic, selfish and dull grandfather who, once buried six feet under, was miraculously remembered as "a good man". Hanson then proceeds to list several modern celebrity examples such as Kerry Packer, Steve Irwin and Princess Diana who lived notorious lives whom are later described as "good people" once they are deceased. Now, granted the manner he went about satirising this rose-coloured post-mortem appraisal was in sometimes bad taste (I mean ,these people still have families who loved their respective dead ones), I think the Chaser had a point. However, I would take their observation one step further. It is not only in the afterlife that people openly proclaim others "a good person", but throughout life on earth in general.
If I asked now to list any number of people that you consider "good people", I’m sure you would not find a shortage of people to name. And I so would I. However, I think this is one of the great tensions between Christian Theology and Secular philosophy - just who is a "good person". By secular standards, you are generally considered a "good person" if you do not rape, murder, steal or harm others and have an altogether ‘nice’ demeanour. And what often happens is we proclaim people to be "good" compared to others in society. In other words, "at least he or she is not as bad as so-and-so." I call this comparative morality. Is it any wonder then that the title of "good person" is thrown around without much thought. By the World’s standards, the majority of the human race is "good". However, Jesus has quite a different answer to the question of, ‘who is good?’:
A certain ruler asked him, "Good teacher, what must I do to inherit eternal life?" "Why do you call me good?" Jesus answered. "No one is good -except God alone." (Lk 18:18-19)
Now, before I move onto the issue of goodness, I must first take some time to address an obvious problem some of you will have with this verse, just as I did when I first read it. Some of you will read this verse and think Jesus is denying His divinity. But notice, Jesus was not saying, "How dare you call me good!" Nor was He saying, "I am not good and nor am I God." No, what Jesus is doing is challenging this ruler as to what his definition of good is. Jesus is challenging him as to whether, like most people in society today, the young ruler just tosses the term around without thinking about what it actually means. In doing so, Jesus then defines what good really is and challenges the ruler to syllogistically make the link and to hence recognise who he is in the presence of - the very living God Himself in the flesh.
So in this verse, though rather short, Jesus makes a very profound and important definition. Jesus tells us that no one is good except God. In doing so, He implies that God Himself is the very definition of good. He is the standard. Now it is useful to note that the Greek word for ‘good’ used here in both circumstances is ‘agathos’ which means meeting a high standard of merit and worth. Good does not only have a moral facet (as ‘merit’ denotes) but also has a facet of value. In other words, not only God is both morally upright all the time but is of intrinsic worth. Is it any wonder then why Jesus implies no man is good? It is because the standard is perfect and Godly, a standard which each of us fails to meet as a result of the Fall. No man is naturally and solely good because he is a totally depraved sinner. Which brings us to the famous 5th century Augustinian-Pelagian debate.
1) ORIGINAL SIN
I will touch again on this debate in more detail in my blog, ‘Un-Free Willy’, but for now, I will focus on one of the main tenets of this debate, the doctrine of original sin. On the one hand, Pelagius argued that the Fall of man when Adam and Eve sinned had no effect on subsequent humans other than to provide a bad example. But according to Pelagius, man could still choose whether to do good or evil without any divine aid. In other words, man was inherently good apart from God. The great theologian St Augustine argued the contrary. Not only did the Fall effect man, but every man ‘really’ sinned when Adam sinned who was the Covenant Head of the human race. As a result, Adam’s sinfulness was transmitted to each subsequent generation.
How this happens is still widely debated. Augustine theorised that it was due to the concupiscence (lustfulness and sin) that a person is reproduced through, a view held by the Reformers. Others argue it is genetic. Nonetheless, I think John Piper says it well when he commented that if he had to try and think how sin came into the world, his mind would explode. Whatever the way it is transmitted is, the fact remains it just is transmitted. And as a result, man is inherently sinful so that every facet of his nature and being is held captive by sin. This then raises questions of free will, which as I said before, I will go into in my next blog. In case you were wondering which view is the correct view (and the one I hold), the Catholic Church at the time ruled that Pelagianism was a heresy, especially in the Second Council of Orange in 529 and affirmed Augustinianism. Man is by nature a sinner, a rebel against God and inherently evil. The Apostle Paul teaches this best in my favourite Pauline letter, the Epistle to the Romans 3:9-12:
We have already made the charge that Jews and Gentiles alike are all under sin. As it is written: "There is no one righteous, not even one; there is no one who understands, no one who seeks God. All have turned away, they have together become worthless; there is no one who does good, not even one."
Paul accurately links goodness with righteousness here. Not only is no human on this earth good, but they have no right standing with God. Paul earlier says:
There is no difference [between Jew or Gentile], for all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God… (Ro 3:22-23)
Paul makes it clear that not only are all men ‘bad’ (as John Piper would say) but they all sin. It is interesting to note here that the Greek word used for ‘fall short of’ is the word ‘usterountai’ which means to be constantly falling short of something. It is in the present continuing tense. In other words, the human race not only sins in the past, but is presently continuing to sin. We can do nothing else but sin and rebel against God. For what is sin but not meeting God’s standards which are holiness, righteousness and perfection. None of us can meet those standards on our own. We are all imperfect and inherently evil. As Paul further says of himself, "I know that nothing good lives in me, that is, in my sinful nature." (Ro 7:18a)
2) WHO IS OUR FATHER?
But let‘s see what Jesus says on the matter, and believe you me, He has quite a bit to say on the matter. I mean, He did come to save us all from it and all. In John 8, Jesus is arguing with the hypocritical Jews whom He was speaking to. A group of them did not believe in Jesus who told them to follow Him to be saved. These Jews rejected the Christ and claimed justification and salvation through their lineage of Abraham as their father. They claimed that God was their father because of their birthright. But Jesus rebukes them and says something which still makes me shiver:
"If God were your Father, you would love me, for I came from God and now am here. I have not come on my own; but he sent me. Why is my language not clear to you? Because you are unable to hear what I say. You belong to your father, the devil, and you want to carry out your father's desire. He was a murderer from the beginning, not holding to the truth, for there is no truth in him. When he lies, he speaks his native language, for he is a liar and the father of lies. Yet because I tell the truth, you do not believe me! Can any of you prove me guilty of sin? If I am telling the truth, why don't you believe me? He who belongs to God hears what God says. The reason you do not hear is that you do not belong to God." (Jn 8:42-47)
Jesus makes two very profound and scary points. The first is that those who do not believe in Him are children of Satan not God because they sin like him. Secondly, the Jews could not believe in Him because they were spiritually blind. What we get from this, building upon what we discussed in the earlier section that we are born into captivity to Satan. We naturally do his bidding, his will. How much does this contrast with the World’s view that we are all children of God! Jesus knocks this view down and says, "No, only those who believe in me are children of God! If you do not, you are a child of Satan and you will share in his fate - the Lake of Fire."
3) HOW CAN WE BECOME GOOD?
So this then begs the question - how can any of us become good. The answer is given by Jesus in one of His famous parables (and one of my personal favourites):
"I am the true vine, and my Father is the gardener. He cuts off every branch in me that bears no fruit, while every branch that does bear fruit he prunes so that it will be even more fruitful. You are already clean because of the word I have spoken to you. Remain in me, and I will remain in you. No branch can bear fruit by itself; it must remain in the vine. Neither can you bear fruit unless you remain in me. I am the vine; you are the branches. If a man remains in me and I in him, he will bear much fruit; apart from me you can do nothing. If anyone does not remain in me, he is like a branch that is thrown away and withers; such branches are picked up, thrown into the fire and burned. If you remain in me and my words remain in you, ask whatever you wish, and it will be given you. This is to my Father's glory, that you bear much fruit, showing yourselves to be my disciples." (Jn 15:1-8)
Jesus tells us that only those whom are in Him will bear good fruit. As He said earlier, "None is good but God", and God is the vine. He is the standard. He IS good. So how do we become good then? Well there are two options - we either become God, or we become OF God. Now, man has been trying to do the former option since the Garden of Eden and quite frankly, it’s never going to happen. That leaves only the latter option - we must become of God. Only those things which are of God are good. If it is not of God, then it is bad and thrown into the Fire to be destroyed.
Now if you remember correctly, in my last blog on mercy, I said that only those whom show ‘true’ mercy will be saved. This applies to any action. God does not only look at the action, but He also looks at the heart that does the action. Donald Trump may give millions of dollars to charity to help orphanages which is a good action, but the heart that does that good action is not good. The intention by Trump is probably to exalt himself and get media attention. In other words, unless the heart and intention of an action is also good, the action as a whole is unrighteous before God. As Isaiah 64:6 says:
All of us have become like one who is unclean, and all our righteous acts are like filthy rags; we all shrivel up like a leaf, and like the wind our sins sweep us away.
The filthy rags used here are actually dirty tampons. That’s how filthy any of our supposed good acts are to God - dirty tampons! A good fruit or action is one which comes from the Vine, the Christ. Only those in the Vine can bear good fruit because their hearts belong to God. Just as the same sap flows through the vine and its branches, so the same Spirit flows through Christ and His believers. God gives us His Spirit and being Good, it dwells in us and we can therefore now have something good and of worth in us, though it comes from outside of us. And through this Spirit, it transforms our hearts and turns them unto God and brands them as belonging eternally to Him. He makes our hearts good. Remember what I said earlier, only things of God are good and therefore when we do an action, not only must it glorify our Father, but we must have a heart which intends it to. This is a rather simple way of putting it, but it does show the basic idea. We must be of God to be declared good in His eyes.
So then, how do we become of God? Paul extrapolates on this in Romans 3:21-26:
But now a righteousness from God, apart from law, has been made known, to which the Law and the Prophets testify. This righteousness from God comes through faith in Jesus Christ to all who believe. There is no difference, for all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God, and are justified freely by his grace through the redemption that came by Christ Jesus. God presented him as a sacrifice of atonement, through faith in his blood. He did this to demonstrate his justice, because in his forbearance he had left the sins committed beforehand unpunished - he did it to demonstrate his justice at the present time, so as to be just and the one who justifies those who have faith in Jesus.
Simply, this is the Gospel. Repent of your sinfulness and put your faith in Christ. Christ was the only person to ever walk on this earth who was perfect and good because He was God incarnate. Therefore, when we have faith in Him; when we believe what He says; when we obey what He says; and when we love and cherish Him, God saves us and makes us His own. We as Christians are owned by Him, bought by the precious blood of Christ. We are slaves to Him. And what eternally grateful and loving slaves we should be for such an act! His righteousness is imputed to us instead of Adam’s sinfulness. Paul explains this further in Romans 5:18-19:
Consequently, just as the result of one trespass was condemnation for all men, so also the result of one act of righteousness was justification that brings life for all men. For just as through the disobedience of the one man the many were made sinners, so also through the obedience of the one man the many will be made righteous.
This is called the beautiful truth of Justification by Faith Alone that Martin Luther recovered. We are declared righteous before God not because of what we have done, but because of what He has already done on the Cross. The cloak of Christ’s perfect righteousness is draped around our shoulders and our sinful punishment is placed on Him as our atonement. Through His Sovereign Grace, we are saved so we cannot boast. Salvation is of the Lord. Amen!
4) ARE CHRISTIANS STILL SINNERS?
To some who were confident of their own righteousness and looked down on everybody else, Jesus told this parable: "Two men went up to the temple to pray, one a Pharisee and the other a tax collector. The Pharisee stood up and prayed about himself: ‘God, I thank you that I am not like other men -robbers, evildoers, adulterers - or even like this tax collector. I fast twice a week and give a tenth of all I get.’ But the tax collector stood at a distance. He would not even look up to heaven, but beat his breast and said, ‘God, have mercy on me, a sinner.’ I tell you that this man, rather than the other, went home justified before God. For everyone who exalts himself will be humbled, and he who humbles himself will be exalted." (Lk 18:9-14)
Isn’t it interesting to note that the Pharisee in this story was guilty of what I earlier called comparative morality. He thought himself righteous because he thought he wasn’t as bad as everyone else. But Jesus rebukes this man. It is not he who will be declared righteous, the one who claims to have no sin in him, but rather the humble sinner who cannot even look God in the proverbial face because of his sin. He is the one who will be saved by Grace. It is not the one who compares himself to man, but the one who compares himself to God that is saved. This is how we should come to worship of the living God, with humility, gratitude and wretchedness.
But do we stay sinners when we are saved? I think the Apostle John answers this in his First Epistle 1:8-10:
If we claim to be without sin, we deceive ourselves and the truth is not in us. If we confess our sins, he is faithful and just and will forgive us our sins and purify us from all unrighteousness. If we claim we have not sinned, we make him out to be a liar and his word has no place in our lives.
Yes, we as Christians are still sinners. The Apostle Paul, arguably the greatest of all Christians, frequently expressed in his letters his own internal struggle with the Old Man in him. For whatever reason (although I do have a theory which I will talk about in a later blog), God has chosen to leave sin in us for now. He has left the thorn in our sides and so we must continually repent and ask God for forgiveness. As Martin Luther commented, the Christian’s life is one of continual repentance. Everyday we should be repenting. It’s not a one-off vaccination shot we take to get saved, then never do it again. No, O ye Christian, it is something which should mark your life repeatedly and commonly. And as John says, if you delude yourself into thinking you are not a sinner Christian, you do not have the truth in you. In fact, this suggests those who do not acknowledge and repent of their sin do not have the Spirit of Truth in them - scary, eh!
That said, we are being sanctified. Whilst still sinners, we are being perfected by the inner workings of the Holy Spirit. The Spirit of Christ is constantly transforming us from within and we must not think that sin is alright. As a Christian grows, they will not become completely sinless (for this shall be completed at Judgment Day at His return), but rather we sin less. But alas, this is more on the topic of sanctification. I will go into this in a blog at a later date, I’m sure of it.
So back to sin. These two characters in Luke 18 really represent two kinds of people in the world. Both are sinners, just one did not realise it. The other knows very well that they are a sinner. And so, there are those in the world who do not think they are sinners, or what I call ignorant sinners. And there are those who know full well they are sinners. You don’t need to convince them that they are sinners, they know it all too well. And if any of us would take of our masks of "niceness" and look deep down inside our hearts, we will all see how utterly evil and sinful we truly are. Often, if I stop and contemplate what I say or think about sometimes in my head, I am scared. As Malcolm Muggeridge once brilliantly said, "The depravity of man is at once the most unpopular of the Christian doctrines and yet the most empirically verifiable."
I liken it to an asymptomatic disease. Everyone has it, but only some know. The others are ignorant to it. So, part of the Gospel proclamation is diagnosing people and revealing to them that they have this disease - sin. Because you can only be cured once you know what you’re being cured of. You can only be saved once you know what you are being saved from. And the cure we in the Faith have is Jesus. And so I leave you with this question:
Are you an ignorant sinner or an aware sinner? Because either way, you’re a sinner. And so am I.
Waves
Wow, these blogs just keep getting bigger and bigger. I hope that’s a good thing. Well, that was surprisingly a Gospel-driven blog. I hadn’t anticipated that, but I’m glad I did proclaim the Gospel nonetheless. As Charles Spurgeon once said, "A sermon without Christ as its beginning, middle, and end is a mistake in conception and a crime in execution." Anyway, I will be touching upon the doctrine of total depravity again soon in my next blog, but this time with an emphasis on free will and unconditional election. So until next time, put that in your cloud and rain it (Jude 12).
Christus Regnat,
MAXi
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