Throwing my Baggage Under the Bus

In my last post, I described my experience of spiritual and theological confusion regarding the issue of justification and how I may come to have righteousness and a clear conscience in the sight of God. What I wrote was essentially the form of the ideas when I was teaching on them five years ago. After I posted it, I realized it was incomplete in a few areas, and in a few others I misspoke, and I'd like to tie up the loose ends and correct myself.

Rescuing or taunting? I can't decide either

First, I realized that I threw a few parties under the bus when I said that they compounded my struggle. Lest I suggest that I have nothing good to say about my alma mater, Baptists, and Catholics, let me clarify. First, I admit that what tainted my interaction with these forms of the faith and their adherents was my own insecurity and guilty conscience. Many of my peers in Bible College had a very enriching spiritual experience. Though my experience was overshadowed by a sense of doubt and guilt, my education equipped me with a knowledge of Scripture that has benefited me immeasurably. I stumbled at the way that the "victorious life" and world evangelism were so emphasized that Christ himself seemed to be a means to those ends, but it was probably my guilty, prideful fear that caused me to perceive things that way. The same goes for my interactions with parents while I was teaching. I was at fault in some of my teaching, not sensitive enough to doctrinal differences, and overly sensitive when criticized. But I confess I really enjoyed rocking the Christian school boat by questioning the motive of "see you at the pole," quoting the apostles' creed, talking about predestination (it's kinda in the Bible, no?), acknowledging that some devout Christians believe in evolution, and giving attention to Mr. lightning rod himself, Martin Luther. But I have a hunch that if "God in the form of this angry young man" showed up showed up in an American Christian school environment, he'd cause more than a little controversy.

Soren Kierkegaard

Second, I got a little carried away with the exegesis of texts and failed to reason adequately from my insights to my main point that justifying faith and its immediate effect of a clean conscience is the only foundation for good works, holiness, and the justification of proven righteousness. I assumed this was clear by demonstrating that what Abraham believed to perform the radical act of obedience in sacrificing Isaac was the same thing he believed (and more importantly, we believe) in order to be justified, declared righteous and forgiven. That connection was a Copernican revolution in my understanding of sanctification. What I thought before seeing this was that sanctification (as Protestant theology calls the justification of practically proven righteousness) was the means to prove to myself that I was justified, based on a reading of 2 Peter 1:10 that ignored 2 Pet 1:9, a misunderstanding of certain parts of Hebrews, and a failure to read Jesus' demands for discipleship in the gospels in light of the cross. The result was that I sought assurance of salvation by sanctification, which inevitably degenerated into the pursuit of justification by means of sanctification, or justification by works. But Abraham obeyed by faith in the same promise by which he was declared righteous to begin with, not by self-conscious effort to prove to himself that God had made that promise and he had believed it. So the quintessential act of sacrificial obedience, an act so radical that Kierkegaard called it a leap of faith into the absurd, was not the scary arbitrary demand of a harsh God that I once thought, but rather accorded with justification by grace through faith. I thought sanctification was the path to justification, or at least to the assurance of justification; in fact the opposite is true. Unless I can rest in Christ and his righteousness, I will never progress in love.

Third, I failed to explain practically why good works must flow out of a clean conscience before God. The simplest answer to this question is that if we believe our works are saving us, we aren't doing them for others or for God, but for ourselves. I'm not the first one to say these things. Martin Luther writes in his Treatise on Good Works, section ix, "Now this is the work of the First Commandment, which commands: 'Thou shalt have no other gods,' which means: 'Since I alone am God, thou shalt place all thy confidence, trust and faith on Me alone, and on no one else.'" In essence, he says that justification by faith is implied in the first commandment. He continues:

And this faith, faithfulness, confidence deep in the heart, is the true fulfilling of the First Commandment; without this there is no other work that is able to satisfy this Commandment... Compared with this, other works are just as if the other Commandments were without the First, and there were no God...

As Paul says of his fellow Israelites who don't believe in Christ, "they did not submit to God's righteousness" (Romans 10:3), so Luther equates failure to believe in Christ for justification with idolatry and its fruits:

Section X: Now you see for yourself that all those who do not at all times trust God and not in all their works or sufferings, life and death, trust in His favor, grace and good-will, but seek His favor in other things or in themselves, do not keep this Commandment, and practise real idolatry, even if they were to do the works of all the other Commandments, and in addition had all the prayers, fasting, obedience, patience, chastity, and innocence of all the saints combined. For the chief work is not present, without which all the others are nothing but mere sham, show and pretence, with nothing back of them; against which Christ warns us, Matthew vii: "Beware of false prophets, which come to you in sheep's clothing." Such are all who wish with their many good works, as they say, to make God favorable to themselves, and to buy God's grace from Him, as if He were a huckster or a day-laborer, unwilling to give His grace and favor for nothing. These are the most perverse people on earth, who will hardly or never be converted to the right way. Such too are all who in adversity run hither and thither, and look for counsel and help everywhere except from God, from Whom they are most urgently commanded to seek it; whom the Prophet Isaiah reproves thus, Isaiah ix: "The mad people turneth not to Him that smiteth them"; that is, God smote them and sent them sufferings and all kinds of adversity, that they should run to Him and trust Him. But they run away from Him to men, now to Egypt, now to Assyria, perchance also to the devil; and of such idolatry much is written in the same Prophet and in the Books of the Kings. This is also the way of all holy hypocrites when they are in trouble: they do not run to God, but flee from Him, and only think of how they may get rid of their trouble through their own efforts or through human help, and yet they consider themselves and let others consider them pious people.

Wow. I didn't realize that Martin Luther was taking notes on me while I was in college. That fits my experience to a tee.

A generation later, the Belgic Confession stated the same truth in article 24:

Parlez-Vous Francais?

We believe that this true faith being wrought in man by the hearing of the Word of God, and the operation of the Holy Ghost, doth regenerate and make him a new man, causing him to live a new life, and freeing him from the bondage of sin. Therefore it is so far from being true, that this justifying faith makes men remiss in a pious and holy life, that on the contrary without it they would never do anything out of love to God, but only out of self-love or fear of damnation. Therefore it is impossible that this holy faith can be unfruitful in man: for we do not speak of a vain faith, but of such a faith, which is called in Scripture, a faith that worketh by love, which excites man to the practice of those works, which God has commanded in his Word.

That's strong. It strikes me that this theory of good works presupposes the Christian doctrines of the sinfulness of humanity, our need of salvation, and that God will judge the world. I suspect, however, that the principle applies no matter one's worldview, that without the security of grace, good deeds are acts of selfishness, but that calls for further thought. For now, fast forward three centuries to when Charles Spurgeon told the story of "The King and the Carrot:"

What a jolly looking fellow Charles was

Once upon a time there was a king who ruled over everything in a land. One day there was a gardener who grew an enormous carrot. He took it to his king and said, “My lord, this is the greatest carrot I’ve ever grown or ever will grow; therefore, I want to present it to you as a token of my love and respect for you.” The king was touched and discerned the man’s heart, so as he turned to go, the king said, “Wait! You are clearly a good steward of the earth. I want to give a plot of land to you freely as a gift, so you can garden it all.” The gardener was amazed and delighted and went home rejoicing. But there was a nobleman at the king’s court who overheard all this, and he said, “My! If that is what you get for a carrot, what if you gave the king something better?” The next day the nobleman came before the king, and he was leading a handsome black stallion. He bowed low and said, “My lord, I breed horses, and this is the greatest horse I’ve ever bred or ever will; therefore, I want to present it to you as a token of my love and respect for you.” But the king discerned his heart and said, “Thank you,” and took the horse and simply dismissed him. The nobleman was perplexed, so the king said, “Let me explain. That gardener was giving me the carrot, but you were giving yourself the horse.”

Greg Salazar summarizes well: "You cannot barter with grace. Grace says, 'you don’t deserve anything and yet I am giving you everything.' The one who understands this will be like this farmer graciously giving the King everything. This is the true fruit of a tree planted in God’s vineyard."

G. C. Berkouwer writes in Faith and Sanctification,

It is well to note that the Reformed Confessions never teach that believers, having gone through the gate of justification, now enter upon a new territory where they must, without outside help, take their sanctification in hand. It is not true that sanctification simply succeeds justification... Hence there is never a stretch along the way of salvation where justification drops out of sight. (77)

Berkouwer looking somewhat annoyed

Genuine sanctification--let it be repeated--stands or falls with this continued orientation toward justification and the remission of sins. (78)

The believer's constant "commerce" with the forgiveness of sins and his continued dependence on it must--both in pastoral counseling and in dogmatic analysis--be laid bare, emphasized, and kept in sight. Only thus can we keep at bay the spectre of haughtiness--"as if we had made ourselves to differ."
    The dangers that beset us in our reflection on the work of the Holy Spirit (here he refers to a view of the Holy Spirit's work that divorces it from justification by grace, so that the grace of the Spirit is "placed in physical, instead of ethical, antithesis to nature. The ethical contrast of sin and grace yields to that of nature and super-nature" [82]) cannot simply be evaded by means of a theological technique. It is very well possible to speak about the Spirit's operations and still think of man only in his sinful self-containment. There is no rational technique that affords a priori insurance against anthropocentrism, nomism, and pharisaism. The only insurance known is an exultant faith which thrives on God alone and "forgets not all his benefits." (84)

This reminds me how I once viewed the Pauline teaching to "walk in the Spirit." Pardon me while I engage in a little nostalgic introspection. "For if you live according to the flesh you will die, but if by the Spirit you put to death the deeds of the body, you will live" (Romans 8:13). In 1998 I read in John Piper's Future Grace that this refers to eternal death and eternal life (he probably said more than that, but in my fearful selfishness it's all I heard) and thought "I must lack assurance because I'm not walking by the Spirit; I'd better be more careful to do that. But what does that mean? Do I follow these impulses and "promptings" of conscience to do things I don't want to do? Is that obedience? I feel compelled to go and "witness" to people on the street, and I've done so, but still feel doubtful and guilty. Maybe it's because I've not shared the whole gospel. Maybe it's because I've only spoken to people I already know or only when I'm with other people in my church's visitation training, and that doesn't take a real leap of faith, and I need to just bust out a sermon in the middle of Wal-Mart like Peter in Acts. Yeah, that's what I need to do. If I pray enough beforehand, and just take the first step, the Spirit will come on me with power and maybe I'll even speak in tongues." It didn't happen. I felt condemned. It sounds so silly now, but it was no laughing matter. The devil had mixed my hyper-sensitivity, an educational environment charged with expectancy of transformation and spiritual power for ministry, a world-evangelization centered hermeneutic and spirituality, a decisionist understanding of faith in the gospel, thrown in a few twisted Bible verses for good measure, and served me up a lethal brew of law posing as gospel. And I drank it down to the dregs year after year.

I was at fault in many ways; though I sometimes spoke to mentors about this, I was never fully open with all my thoughts. I was too proud to admit how much I was struggling. But no one wanted to hear it, not even close friends, not to mention pastors or professors. I certainly wasn't confident enough to be persistent with them, and wasn't the picture of promise and potential that spiritual leaders usually choose for discipleship relationships. I wonder if this isn't an unavoidable symptom of contemporary evangelical activist fascination with success and numbers, so that most spiritual leaders are so determined to bring justice to the nations that they don't notice the bruised reeds and faintly burning wicks right in front of them (Isaiah 42:1-3). I also wonder if my alma mater, with its core values of the authority of Scripture, victorious Christian living, and world evangelization, doesn't make Christ himself subservient to these emphases. The people Jesus rebuked were all about the Bible (Jn 5:39), victorious living (Luke 18:11-12), and making converts (Matt 23:15), but they missed Jesus. I was known by some who knew me superficially in those days as a CIU poster child; indeed I was impressed with these three values, but in all honesty I was more impressed with them than I was with Jesus and his gospel. Why is this? I think part of the problem is that victorious life teaching does not view "constant commerce with the forgiveness of sins" as the foundation of holy living. In practice, if not in explicit doctrine, it communicates that we "move on" from that to greater things.

If my interpretation of the "victorious life" of Abraham in my last post was correct, this couldn't be further from the truth. I'm so grateful that about the same time I saw this in Scripture, I began to be exposed to the teaching of Tim Keller, from whom I learned of the sources I quoted above (no, I have not read those works of my own initiative). His teaching refreshed me, and continues to do so, because he preaches Christ from all of Scripture, so that what impresses me most from the word isn't the authority of the particular text, nor the moral demands it rightly places on me, nor the call and need to proclaim it to the world, but Jesus himself, whose face is the ultimate power of transformation (2 Cor 3:18). His sermon "Inside-Out Living" on Luke 18:9-14 has been particularly meaningful to me, and if you listen, I think you'll see why and appreciate it too.