The Glorious Deeds of Christ

Oh, the depth of the riches and wisdom and knowledge of God! How unsearchable are his judgments and how inscrutable his ways!

Rom 11:33 ESV

I’m a amateur theologian, I enjoy theological discussions as much as the next amateur theologian. However there are times when discussions need to end and worship should begin. Theological discussion is only helpful if it leads to awe-inspired adoration, mind-exulting praise, and heart-searching holiness for our Lord Jesus Christ. God is deep and mysterious and to think that we might ever figure him out goes beyond human pride and self-deception.

Important as it is that we recognize God working in us, I would yet warn against a too-great preoccupation with the thought. It is a sure road to sterile passivity. God will not hold us responsible to understand the mysteries of election, predestination, and the divine sovereignty.

The best and safest way to deal with these truths is to raise our eyes to God and in deepest reverence say, “O Lord, Thou knowest.” Those things belong to the deep and mysterious profound of God’s omniscience. Prying into them may make theologians, but it will never make saints.

A. W. Tozer, The Pursuit of God (Camp Hill, PA: Wingspread, 1982), 64.

Let the man go to the grammar school of faith and repentance before he goes to the university of election and predestination.

John Bradford

Hearing God Through His Word

This is my comfort in my affliction, that your promise gives me life.

Psalm 119:50 ESV

As believers, we enjoy the God’s personal presence through the indwelling work of the Holy Spirit. Therefore, we can and should experience an on-going conversational relationship with God: speaking to God and being spoken to by his Spirit. The normal Christian life is God speaking, directing, and immersing us in his love. In turn, we can respond in delight by honoring his leadership through obedience to his will. This process of being directed, guided, and led by the Holy Spirit in the affairs of everyday life is called hearing God (John 10:25-30). God’s guidance does not usually involve an audible voice, but the Holy Spirit leading through a nudging, gnawing impression in our spirits.

It is important that we get still to wait on God. And it is best that we get alone, preferably with our Bible outspread before us. Then if we will we may draw near to God and begin to hear Him speak to us in our hearts.

I think for the average person the progression will be something like this: First a sound as of a Presence walking in the garden. Then a voice, more intelligible, but still far from clear. Then the happy moment when the Spirit begins to illuminate the Scriptures, and that which had been only a sound, or at best a voice, now becomes an intelligible word, warm and intimate and clear as the word of a dear friend. Then will come life and light, and best of all, ability to see and rest in and embrace Jesus Christ as Savior and Lord and All.

A. W. Tozer, The Pursuit of God: The Human Thrist for the Divine (Harrisburg, Penn.: Christian Publications, 1982), 76.

Judgment and Grace Simultaneously

Peter said to her, “How could you agree to test the Spirit of the Lord? Look! The feet of the men who buried your husband are at the door, and they will carry you out also.”

At that moment she fell down at his feet and died. Then the young men came in and, finding her dead, carried her out and buried her beside her husband. Great fear seized the whole church and all who heard about these events.

Acts 5:9-11 (NIV)

Recently, I was asked an excellent question. In regard to Acts 5:1-11 and the deaths of Ananias and Sapphira: “Why did God judge Ananias and Sapphira so completely when the New Testament period is supposed to be an age of grace?” “Is not judgment an Old Testament characteristic of God?”

First, we need to avoid dividing the various and seemingly contradictorily attributes of God between the Old and New Testaments. The Marcion heresy of the early church taught that the Old Testament God was a god of judgment and wrath, but in the New Testament, Jesus is a god of grace and love. Today, we often fall into the same post-modern trap in our thinking. Some teachers contrast the mean and angry god of the Old Testament with Jesus meek and mild–the friend of all–in the New Testament. Anglican pastor, John Stott notes:

God is not at odds with himself, however much it may appear to us that he is. He is ‘the God of peace’, of inner tranquility not turmoil. True, we find it difficult to hold in our minds simultaneously the images of God as the Judge who must punish evil-doers and of the Lover who must find a way to forgive them. Yet he is both, and at the same time.

John Stott, The Cross of Christ (Downers Grove, IL: InterVarsity, 1986), 131.

The Holy Trinity is the same God in both testaments: a God of love, grace, mercy, judgment, and wrath. Read Jesus’ statements in Mark 13, Matt 23, and the Rev. 1. He is the God of justice, holiness, and righteousness in the New Testament as well as the Old. I am currently reading The Knowledge of the Holy by A.W. Tozer. Tozer comments that God’s attributes are the same in both the Old and New Testaments.

We should banish from our minds forever the common but erroneous notion that justice and judgment characterize the God of Israel, while mercy and grace belong to the Lord of the Church. Actually there is in principle no difference between the Old Testament and the New.

In the New Testament Scriptures there is a fuller development of redemptive truth, but one God speaks in both dispensations, and what He speaks agrees with what He is. Wherever and whenever God appears to men, He acts like Himself. Whether in the Garden of Eden or the Garden of Gethsemane, God is merciful as well as just. He has always dealt in mercy with mankind and will always deal in justice when His mercy is despised.

Thus He did in antediluvian times; thus when Christ walked among men; thus He is doing today and will continue always to do for no other reason than that He is God.

A.W. Tozer, The Knowledge of the Holy (San Francisco: Harper & Row, 1961), 97.

New Testament scholar, Ben Witherington, The Acts of the Apostles,  comments about Acts 5, “Luke’s [the author of Acts] view is that the God of the Hebrew Scriptures is the same God Jesus and the disciples served, and so one should expect continuity of character and action.”

Second, we often misinterpret John 1:17, “For the law was through Moses: grace and truth came through Jesus Christ.” We commonly think that the verse is pitting grace against law,” The Law is judgment and it was in the Old Testament, it was bad, and needs to be discarded, because in Jesus we now have grace.”

However, the Apostle John was not contrasting grace against law. John believes that the law is good: the Law (Torah) is the promises of God, and Jesus is the fulfillment of those promises. Grace and truth are covenant terms which designate God’s loyalty and faithfulness. John declares that in Jesus, the Lord is fulfilling his promises and covenant commitment found in the Law (Torah).

Third, Ananias and Sapphira’s sin was very grave. Giving was voluntary in the early Church. However, Ananias and Sapphira lied about giving all the proceeds for the sale of their property.They “kept back” (v.2) which in the Greek implies the utmost dishonesty and secrecy. Not only were they lying with conspiratorial intent, but that lying was Satanically inspired (v.3). Satan was using their flesh to corrupt and divide an early church which was just beginning its witness to the world. God’s judgment of their sin had be swift or the early church would lose its witness and unity.

Again, New Testament scholar, Ben Witherington, The Acts of the Apostles, states, “In Luke’s view this couple is guilty of secrecy, collusion, and attempting to lie to the Holy Spirit. What is at stake here is the koinonia of the community which the Spirit indwelt. One act of secrecy and selfishness violates the character of openness and honesty which characterized the earliest community of Jesus’ followers.”

Lesson to today’s church: The God of the New Testament is still concerned about the holiness of his people.

Every Page of the Bible Teaches It

The Lord is good, a stronghold in the day of trouble and He knows those who trust in Him.

Nahum 1:7 NKJV

That God is good is taught or implied on every page of the Bible and must be received as an article of faith as impregnable as the throne of God.

A.W. Tozer, The Knowledge of the Holy (New York, NY: HarperCollins, 1992), 128.

No society resents God like our society. We feel that we are owed a good life free from trouble negated of suffering full of prosperity. If our lives do not meet our expectations, we resent God, and question his goodness. Constantly intellectuals are confirming our offense. We have been mistreated by God and everyone should know our pain. Therefore, we live our lives as victims of the injustices of the Almighty God.

Biblically, God’s goodness is affirmed and glorified. God is gracious in that he reaches out to us in a world scarred and marred by our sin. God is good for he always tells the truth, keep his promises, and loves us with a love that surpasses any human love. God is sovereign, he is wise, and he is loving.

God in his love always wills what is best for us. In His wisdom He always knows what is best, and in His sovereignty He has the power to bring it about.

Jerry Bridges, Trusting G0d Even When Life Hurts (Colorado Springs, CO: NavPress, 2008), 17.

Free Indeed

So if the Son sets you free, you will be free indeed.

John 8:36 NIV

We often sell the gospel short. We don’t believe that God can really change a life: freedom from sin, healing from brokenness, and transformation of character. God loves us as we are, yet God loves enough not to leave us as we are. He can free us and others from the sin that so easily binds us.

For sin’s human captives, God never intends anything less than full deliverance. The Christian message rightly understood means this: The God who by the word of the gospel proclaims men free, by the power of the gospel actually makes them free. To accept less than this is to know the gospel in word only, without its power.

A. W. Tozer, God’s Pursuit of Man (Camp Hill, PA: Wingspread, 1950), 27.

The Command: Be Filled With the Spirit

And do not get drunk with wine, for that is debauchery, but be filled with the Spirit.

Eph. 5:18

How badly do you want the Holy Spirit to work in and through you? How badly do you want his blessing, presence, and power? Do you really want the complete anointing of the Holy Spirit in your life and ministry? If so, yield all to his Lordship: no reserve, no holding back, no secret sins, no self-protection. We complain that God is not blessing us, could it be that our heart is the problem? To have the fullness of the Spirit is to be fully given to God.

Are you sure you want to be filled with a Spirit who, though He is like Jesus in His gentleness and love, will nevertheless demand to be Lord of your life? Are you willing to let your personality to be taken over by another, even if that other be the Spirit of God Himself?

If the Spirit takes charge of your life He will expect unquestioning obedience in everything. He will not tolerate in you the self-sins even though they are permitted and excused by most Christians. By the self-sins I mean self-love, self-pity, self- seeking, self-confidence, self-righteousness, self-aggrandizement, self-defense. You will find the Spirit to be in sharp opposition to the easy ways of the world and of the mixed multitude within the precincts of religion. He will be jealous over you for good.

A. W. Tozer, God’s Pursuit of Man (Camp Hill, PA: Wingspread, 1950), 131.

Not Merely External

As for me, may I never boast about anything except the cross of our Lord Jesus Christ. Because of that cross, my interest in this world has been crucified, and the world’s interest in me has also died.

Gal. 6:14 NLT

Worldliness is being in love with the things of this life as opposed to the trust and affection for our Savior. The spirit of the world is embodied in the love of money, hunger for unbridled sex, and thirst for power. A worldly attitude is an arrogance that takes pride in our accomplishments, status, and rank over and above the majesty and glory of God.

Worldliness is any passion, craving, or hunger for the pleasures of sin while simultaneously desiring to receive the approval of others for our poor choices. Worldliness uses and misuses people for personal satisfaction, political influence, and fleshly pleasure. Worldliness is an organized scheme of humankind that uses our flesh (i.e., sin nature) to draw us away from an intimate relationship with God. Worldliness is a heart attitude intrinsic to being born in Adam and living in a fallen world. The solution to breaking the world’s all-pervasive grip on our lives is the Cross of Christ ( 1 John 2:15-17, Gal. 6:14).

The Christian is called to separation from the world, but we must be sure we know what we mean (or more important, what God means) by the world. We are likely to make it mean something external only and thus miss its real meaning. The theater, cards, liquor, gambling—these are not the world; they are merely an external manifestation of the world. Our warfare is not against merely an external manifestation of the world. Our warfare is not against mere worldly ways, but against the spirit of the world.

For man, whether he is saved or lost, is essentially spirit. The world, in the New Testament meaning of the word, is simply unregenerate human nature wherever it is found, whether in a tavern or in a church. Whatever springs out of, is built upon or receives support from fallen human nature is the world, whether it is morally base or morally respectable.

A. W. Tozer, God’s Pursuit of Man (Camp Hill, PA: Windspread, 1950), 124.

Are You of the Fire?

For our God is a consuming fire.

Heb. 12:29

Our God is mysterious, holy, and wholly other. Therefore, we have limits in our ability to comprehend the characteristics of his nature and attributes (Isa. 55:8-9). To assist us, the Lord uses human nature (i.e., anthropomorphism), qualities of creation, and ideas (i.e., personification) to describe what he is like.

By example, the Bible describes the Lord as fire (Heb. 12:29). As fire, the Lord spoke from the burning bush (Ex. 3:22); he dwelt above the Israelites as they traveled and camped in the Sinai (Ex. 13:22); he resided in the Holy of Holies as fire between the wings of the cherubim (Ezek. 10:2), and he revealed himself to the prophet Ezekiel as “a great cloud with raging fire engulfing itself” (Ezek. 1:4).

In keeping with God’s own revelation in the Old Testament, the Holy Spirit visits the apostles on the Day of Pentecost as fire. “Then, what looked like flames or tongues of fire appeared and settled on each of them” (Acts 2:3 NLT).

The God who had appeared to them as fire throughout all their long history was now dwelling in them as fire. He had moved from without to the interior of their lives. The Shekinah that had once blazed over the mercy seat now blazed on their foreheads as an external emblem of the fire that had invaded their natures. This was Deity giving Himself to ransomed men. The flame was the seal of a new union. They were now men and women of the Fire (pg. 100).

The exterior God of fire had moved into believer’s hearts bringing “the hope of glory” (Col. 1:27) to live within them, operating through them, and manifesting himself on them. This fire brings about a new union between God and humankind transforming believers into a people of the flame: passionate lovers of our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ. Because of Christ finished work on the Cross, Divine Life has entered our hearts granting us new intimacy with God, enabling grace to live the Christian life, and power for witness to the world.

On the first day of Pentecost He returned, not this time to be with them externally—clothed that sinless humanity that God had prepared for Him, being conceived of the Holy Spirit in the womb of Mary—but now to be in them imparting to them His own divine nature , clothing Himself with their humanity, . . . .

[Ian Thomas, The Saving Life of Christ/The Mystery of Godliness (Grand Rapids, MI: Zondervan, 1961), 17.]

This divine flame burns within us developing a hunger for holiness and passion for Jesus. This renewed spiritual hunger makes us a people of the burning heart: wholly sold out for his glory. The Holy Spirit’s internal fire actively enables each of us to do ministry by equipping all of us in the gifts of the Spirit. The indwelling flame melts our hearts producing yielded wills ready to do the will of our Lord. “The mark of the fire was the sign of divinity; they who received it were forever a peculiar people, sons and daughters of the Flame” (pg. 101).

God’s fire overcomes blackness defeating all the powers of the evil one. His fire purifies bringing all selfishness to the surface. Fire destroys thereby burning away all sin.

Deity indwelling men! . . . Man, who moved out of the heart of God by sin, now moves back into the heart of God by redemption. God, who moved out of the heart of man because of sin, now enters again His ancient dwelling to drive out His enemies and once more make the place of His feet glorious (pg. 100).

Quotes not otherwise cited are from A. W. Tozer, God’s Pursuit of Man (Camp Hill, PA: Wingspread, 1950).

The Holy Spirit Changes Us

He washed away our sins, giving us a new birth and new life through the Holy Spirit. He generously poured out the Spirit upon us through Jesus Christ our Savior.

Titus 3:5-6 NLT

Our theme for the week is change by the power of the Cross and through the person of the Holy Spirit. Our last post focused on the Holy Spirit for he is the only real and true change agent. Why? The Holy Spirit can transform us because he can enter our hearts, convict us of our sins, cleanse us from our transgressions, and empower us to live holy lives (Rom. 8:3-4). Only the Holy Spirit can penetrate into the depths of our being, know our secret struggles, and supernaturally save, deliver, and heal. The Holy Spirit knows the mind of God, he knows our need, and he has the power and capacity to remake us (Rom. 8:26-27).

How shall we think of the Spirit? The Bible and Christian theology agree to teach that He is a Person, endowed with every quality of personality, such as emotion, intellect and will. He knows, He wills, He loves; He feels affection, antipathy and compassion. He thinks, sees, hears and speaks and performs any act of which personality is capable.

One quality belonging to the Holy Spirit, of great interest and importance to every seeking heart, is penetrability. He can penetrate mind; He can penetrate another spirit, such as the human spirit. He can achieve complete penetration of and actual intermingling with the human spirit. He can invade the human heart and make room for Himself without expelling anything essentially human. The integrity of the human personality remains unimpaired. Only moral evil is forced to withdraw.

A. W. Tozer, God’s Pursuit of Man [formerly The Divine Conquest] (Camp Hill, PA: Wingspread, 1950), 65.

The Two Crosses

But far be it from me to boast except in the cross of our Lord Jesus Christ, by which the world has been crucified to me, and I to the world.

Gal. 6:14

I love the writings of A. W. Tozer. When you first pick-up Tozer, he reads like an old curmudgeon. He seemingly dislikes everything about post-World War Two Evangelicalism. However when you read carefully and thoughtfully, you find a profound love for the church and insight into the power of the gospel that many writers miss.

Tozer was a modern day mystic: a mystic in the most positive sense of the word. A mystic sees and experiences a real spiritual world beyond the world of sense (Eph. 6:10). Mystics seek to please God rather than the crowd. They cultivate a close fellowship with God, sensing his presence everywhere. Also, mystics relate their experiences to the practical things of life. Mystics sit at the foot of the Cross.

Tozer examines the difference between Christ’s work on the Cross, the old Cross, and today’s worldly compromised Christianity, the new Cross. His quote is worth reading several times.

The loss, the rejection, the shame, belong both to Christ and to all who in very truth are His. The cross that saves them also slays them, and anything short of this is a pseudo-faith and not true faith at all. But what are we to say when the great majority of our evangelical leaders walk not as crucified men but as those who accept the world at its own value—rejecting only its grosser elements? How can we face Him who was crucified and slain when we see His followers accepted and praised?  Yet they preach the cross and protest loudly that they are true believers. Are there then two crosses? And did Paul mean one thing and they another? I fear that it is so, that there are two crosses, the old cross and the new.

. . . But if I see aright, the cross of popular evangelicalism is not the cross of the New Testament. It is, rather, a new bright ornament upon the bosom of self-assured and carnal Christianity whose hands are indeed the hands of Abel, but whose voice is the voice of Cain. The old cross slew men; the new cross entertains them. The old cross condemned; the new cross amuses. The old cross destroyed confidence in the flesh; the new cross encourages it. The old cross brought tears and blood; the new cross brings laughter. The flesh, smiling and confident, preaches and sings about the cross; before the cross it bows and toward the cross it points with carefully staged histrionics—but upon that cross it will not die, and the reproach of that cross it stubbornly refuses to bear.

A. W. Tozer, God’s Pursuit of Man (Camp Hill, PA: Wingspread, 1950), 53.