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7 Healthy Habits, Part 1

Published February 22, 2016 Uncategorized Leave a Comment
Tags: 7, 7 Habits, dying to self, Healthy Habits, old self, petition, Prayer, supplication

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Men’s natures are alike; it is their habits that separate them.

So wrote Confucius in his “Analects.” And as far as he goes, he’s right. People are people wherever you go, only the faces and names change. But Christians are supposed to be different; our natures are different; our sinful nature has been replaced with Christ’s nature.

For we know that our old self was crucified with him so that the body ruled by sin might be done away with, that we should no longer be slaves to sin—because anyone who has died has been set free from sin. (Romans 6:6, 7 TLB)

Given the truthfulness of what Paul wrote doesn’t automatically do away with the truthfulness of Confucius. Even though Christians been “set free from sin” because our “old selves” have been done away with, we still have a responsibility to live like people to whom this happened. God, through the work of His Son, has radically changed our natures, but our behavior – how we live our lives – is up to us to bring into line with what God has done. God won’t change our behavior; He graciously leaves that up to us. But, it’s not easy to change our behavior because so much of it is based on habits adopted long ago. Fortunately, the Bible can help us out. Living lives that glorify Christ means developing new habits to replace old habits. Let’s take a look at some new habits every Christian needs to adopt in the coming year.

Trust Christ, Galatians 2:20

I have been crucified with Christ: and I myself no longer live, but Christ lives in me. And the real life I now have within this body is a result of my trusting in the Son of God, who loved me and gave himself for me. (TLB)

This verse is a statement of fact; a fact that is true of every single believer, not just the apostle Paul. What he is getting at here is not living “the crucified life,” whatever you think that may mean. It does not suggest that Christians should seek to “crucify themselves.” It’s written in the past tense, meaning Paul and all believers have already been crucified with (or in) Christ. Our crucifixion is an accomplished fact; it was something that took place at a specific point in time. It happened to us when it happened to Christ.

But what exactly does Paul mean when he wrote, “I have been crucified with Christ?” In the simplest of terms, Paul is referring to his old, inner self being dying with Christ on the Cross. When Jesus died on the Cross, our hopeless, helpless, sin-depraved natures died with Him. It’s a curious way of thinking and the modern mind that views history in a linear fashion has problems grasping the idea that 2,000 years ago something happened to people not yet born. But remember, time is man’s invention, and God exists outside of it. He doesn’t occupy our space and isn’t bound by our naïve concepts of things like time.

It takes faith – trust – to believe that our sinful nature is, in fact dead. Can it be proven? Of course not! That’s why Paul wrote about trusting in the Son of God’s work on the Cross done on your behalf. You have to trust what you can’t prove.

When you confess Christ as your Lord and Savior, God views you as having died with Him on the Cross. Your sinful nature, and in fact all your sins and your guilt, were mystically attached to Christ so that when He died to this sinful world, so did you. This sinful world no longer has a claim on you any more than it did on Jesus. To prove the world had no hold on Him, Jesus rose from the dead, proving that He was no longer subject to the natural world. Neither are you, at least as far as sin is concerned.

But, you don’t stay dead. The counterpart of death with Christ is living a new life in Him – or as Paul put it, “I’m dead, but now Christ lives in me.” The Christian life is now like this:

So, my brothers and sisters, you also died to the law through the body of Christ, that you might belong to another, to him who was raised from the dead, in order that we might bear fruit for God. For when we were in the realm of the flesh, the sinful passions aroused by the law were at work in us, so that we bore fruit for death. But now, by dying to what once bound us, we have been released from the law so that we serve in the new way of the Spirit, and not in the old way of the written code. (Romans 7:4 – 6 NIV)

Of course, he’s writing to converted Jews, convincing them that the new life in Christ set them free from the burden of having to live by all those religious regulations. As far as we’re concerned, we’ve been set free from sin’s grasp on us so that now we can live for Christ; we can live lives inspired by Him. Our lives will now “bear fruit for God.” Here’s the kicker though. We actually have to trust that what happened to us 2,000 years ago did actually happen to us. We have to develop the habit of continually trusting in Christ. We do this by reading His Word; by filling our minds with the facts of His finished work on the Cross. We develop the habit of trust in Christ by living for Him, or perhaps more accurately letting Him live through us. The more we change our habitual ways of thinking and living, the greater of habit of trust will become.

Praying to God, Philippians 4:6

Do not be anxious about anything, but in every situation, by prayer and petition, with thanksgiving, present your requests to God. (NIV)

Actually, this verse presents us with a double whammy: we are to (1) pray to God, and (2) not be anxious about anything. Just try telling any mother not to worry about their children and see what kind of reaction you get. For a lot of people, not just mothers, worrying is seen as a virtue. To not worry about something is seen by them as being irresponsible. But the Bible makes it plain: Christians are not to be anxious about anything. That’s an absolute statement. It’s not that we shouldn’t be concerned about important things, but we should never be anxious about them. That’s hard to do. We live in a very negative culture at the moment that encourages us to worry about everything. From the dopey, “If you see something, say something” admonition to the obsession people have with flu shots, suspicious neighbors, and germs, the modern American can find all kinds of things to be anxious about! Fortunately for us, the Bible gives us the secret to living a worry-free life: replace anxiety with prayer. Replace one habit with another one.

Habitual prayer is important. Don’t ever wait to feel “moved” to pray! Develop the habit of praying and pretty soon it will be as natural to you as breathing. But you must make it a habit. Don’t find time for it, make time for it. But for Paul, prayer wasn’t quite enough; he added “and petition.” That’s a new word for the old fashioned idea of “supplication.” But what does it mean? Prayer is general idea, but it’s far more than just “talking to God,” as some people think. Praying to God is based on God’s promises to believers; it’s a form of worship and devotion. Petition is a special kind of prayer made during times of stress or need and it appeals to God’s mercy. John Knight made this observation –

One prays for forgiveness – and it is given; he supplicates for the recovery of his child – that is mercy which exceeds the bounds of grace.

These things, prayer and petition or supplication, need to be practiced habitually. They shouldn’t be haphazard or occasional things we do when we feel like it or think of it. But Paul carries this a little further. He tells us that we should present our requests “to God.” That’s not just telling Him what you need. The Greek is pros ton theon, which is better rendered, “in God’s presence.” This refers to God’s continual presence; He’s always there, listening, watching, waiting for you to talk to Him. Despite how some Christians pray, we don’t “go into God’s presence,” for He is always with us, whether anybody else is or not or whether we feel Him or not. It’s an objective fact of the faith: God’s abiding presence. We need to habitually pray and petition God with that attitude of mind – we are in the presence of the mighty God. With that understanding, how can we possibly be anxious? How can we doubt His hearing us?

When other people around us – friends and family even – don’t seem to understand us or seem unable to help us, we can depend on God. In fact, if we take Paul at his word – and we should – God is the first Person we should turn to, not the Person of last resort. There’s a tremendous promise attached to the habit of prayer:

And the peace of God, which transcends all understanding, will guard your hearts and your minds in Christ Jesus. (Philippians 4:7 NIV)

A lot of us want that “peace which transcends all understanding” without doing anything to get it! We get it when we practice habitual prayer – the kind of praying Paul wrote about.

Remain in Christ, John 15:4

Remain in me, as I also 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. (John 15:4 NIV)

This may seem like an obvious habit to develop. What Christian would not want to remain in Christ? Apparently there are many Christians who have little or no interest in remaining in Christ because so many Christians live barren lives. If you want to be a productive Christian, then remaining “in Christ” is essential. Jesus declared that He was the “true vine,” God was the great gardener, and the believer is a branch. Of course, all this is symbolism which represents a couple of aspects of the Christian life:

(1) Christians who produce fruit – those who live lives that are pleasing to God and marked by living in accordance to His will – are like healthy branches.
(2) Christians who don’t live like that are like branches that are barren and brittle.

How does a Christian become like a healthy branch? By remaining in Christ. Essentially, man is unable to do anything to please God apart from a relationship with Jesus Christ. Unless you are consciously living in Christ, nothing “good” you do is of any value to God in terms of eternity. Heavenly fruit-producing happens only when a believer is in good stead with His God – when he remains firmly grafted in the Vine, who is Jesus Christ.
So there are really two things happening here. First, Christians are supposed to be producing good fruit in God’s sight, and the only way they can do that is to be in a healthy relationship with Jesus Christ. But there are many people who think they are in that kind of relationship who are, in fact, not all. Their lives, in God’s sight and very often in the sight of other believers, are spiritually barren – essentially worthless. It’s Jesus that makes all the difference in the world. You see, a good deed done without Jesus is just a good deed that may benefit the recipient of that good deed. But that same good deed done in the Name of Jesus has a spiritual dimension behind it. It benefits the recipient more than you can notice with your natural eyes. It also benefits the Kingdom of God in ways you can’t imagine.

Christians anchored in Jesus are an unstoppable force for the Kingdom in this dark world. But we must remain in Him. Remaining in Him doesn’t just happen. It’s a relationship, and every relationship needs to be cultivated; it needs to be worked on. As Christians, we need to pay attention to how the most important relationship in our lives is doing. We can’t afford to be lazy about it; we should never take it for granted. Remaining in Jesus is habit we have to work on constantly. It’s the third healthy habit for Christians to adopt.

HOLINESS AND FREEDOM FROM SIN

Published December 5, 2011 Uncategorized 1 Comment
Tags: baptism, curicified with Christ, Holiness, Old Man, old self, Romans

If you misunderstand God's grace, you'll end up like this guy, Rasputin, the Mad Monk!

By the end Romans 5, Paul has concluded the main points of his teaching. All human beings stand condemned before God as sinners—rebels against Him. That same God, however, has intervened on behalf of all those sinners by providing acquittal and forgiveness through the substitutionary death of Jesus His Son, Jesus Christ. What’s awesome about this acquittal is that it comes to sinners initially irrespective of our lack of moral values and sinfulness. Acceptance by God is based solely on our faith in the finished work of Jesus Christ.

As if that weren’t enough, our continuing standing before God—our salvation—does not depend on anything good thing we do, but on God’s amazing grace. Paul even goes so far to state that as sin increases, grace increases even more.

1. Paul and a mad monk

Without a doubt, all that sounds good; maybe too good to be true. No wonder God’s grace is so abused! Paul foresaw the potential that for some believers, God’s grace and forgiveness could lead to a kind of spiritual laziness. Such was the case with a monk; a man of God who confused the gospel of grace with a form of “antinomianism,” a perversion of doctrine that encourages the casting off of all moral restraint so as to experience more and more of God’s grace and forgiveness. This monk, because of his misunderstanding of grace, became a chief contributor to the Bolshevik Revolution in Russia in 1917.

His name was Grigory Yefimovich Novykh (1972—1916). He was born into a poor, peasant family in a desolate region of Siberia, Russia. Until his religious conversion around 18, young Grigory became known as “Rasputin,” a Russian word for “debauched one,” because of his immoral lifestyle. After his conversion, however, he found himself at a monastery, which was part of Flagellants sect. Thanks to Rasputin’s ungodly influence, their sect became perverted—leaving the teachings of Scripture and embracing absolute antinomianism. The monks believed that one drew closest to God through sexual escapades and prolonged partying.

Eventually Rasputin left the monastery, traveling thousands of miles through Europe and much of the Middle East, finally lighting in Jerusalem. It was there that the “mad monk” solidified his reputation as a holy mystic with supernatural healing and prophetic powers, and in 1903, Rasputin was welcomed by church leaders and by politicians into the highest political circles in the land in spite of the fact that he hadn’t bathed in years.

Emperor Nicholas II and his wife Alexandra were completely taken in by the charismatic Rasputin, largely due to a supposed miracle wrought by the monk which saved their young son and heir to the throne, Alexey. This event endeared Rasputin to the royal family and gave him extraordinary influence with them. Within the royal court, Rasputin was viewed as a humble, gifted monk, sent by God. But outside the court, he lived up to his nickname wholeheartedly.

In spite of persistent rumors that Rasputin was having an affair with Alexandra, he was placed in charge of Russia’s internal affairs when Nicholas II left St. Petersburg to command Russian troops when World War I broke out. The “mad monk’s” influence proved to be so disastrous, that a group of conservatives, some related to Nicholas II, met to plot the assassination of Rasputin, ending his evil influence over the nation. They accomplished this in December of 1916, but it was too late to save the political structure of Russia. The Bolsheviks seized the opportunity of national discontent and their revolution broke out in 1917. Russia became as godless as the Emperor’s closest adviser.

Misunderstanding the nature of God’s grace can lead to all kinds of problems, which Paul refutes in Romans 6.

2. An answer to two questions, vs. 1—4

With the beginning of chapter 6, Paul picks up a line of thought he began back in 5:20—

The law was added so that the trespass might increase. But where sin increased, grace increased all the more…

We can imagine how some might interpret a statement like that! As if to head off any misunderstanding of what he was teaching, Paul asks the obvious question:

What shall we say, then? Shall we go on sinning so that grace may increase? (vs. 1)

This, of course, was the fatal flaw in Rasputin’s thinking. It’s a good question to ask, though, because it explains a fundamental truth about grace that isn’t always obvious. To answer the question, Paul exclaimed using a favorite Greek phrase of every student of that language: me genoito. The reason we all like me genoito is because it can mean so many different things:

Not at all!
Certainly not!
By no means!
Never!
Absolutely not!
May I never!

The sense of me genoito is obvious: “No way!” There is no way that Paul means to say that the more you sin, the better it is. After getting their attention, Paul warns the Roman church:

By no means! We died to sin; how can we live in it any longer? (vs. 2)

The two tenses of the verbs in verse 2 are important to note:

We died to sin. “Died” is in the aorist tense, indicating a past, completed action.
How can we live in it any longer? “Live” is in the future tense, suggesting an ongoing, habitual action.

The NIV’s translation here is, perhaps not the best. Eugene Peterson paraphrased verse 2 in a way that brings out the tenses using a clever word-picture:

If we’ve left the country where sin is sovereign, how can we still live in our old house there? Or didn’t you realize we packed up and left there for good?

The NIV of 1984 leaves out a very important word that the NIV of 2010 has included:

We died to sin; how can we live in it any longer? NIV, 1984

We are those who have died to sin; how can we live in it any longer? NIV, 2010

It’s a minor point, but an important one. The word left out in the older NIV is a specialized Greek form of “who.” The sense of the phrase is this: We who are true believers, we have died. The suggestion is that there may be those who call themselves Christians or who are at best nominal Christians who have not died to sin. The fact is, to be a true Christian means to have died to sin. Therefore, it is a moral contradiction for a Christian to remain living in sin, when he has, supposedly, died to it.

But, what does it mean to have died to sin? To answer this question, Paul uses the example of the believer’s baptism:

Or don’t you know that all of us who were baptized into Christ Jesus were baptized into his death? We were therefore buried with him through baptism into death in order that, just as Christ was raised from the dead through the glory of the Father, we too may live a new life. (vs. 3, 4)

Here is Paul’s theology of water baptism, for this is the baptism to which he is referring. Notice he begins with “don’t you know.” The idea he is conveying is that it was the norm for Christians to be baptized in water; it was something each and every member of the Roman church would be familiar with because they would have experienced it firsthand. For the Christian, water baptism is not an optional experience.

The ordinance of water baptism, though not spiritually efficacious in any way, demonstrates outwardly in dramatic fashion an inward truth. To be baptized into the name of Christ means to be baptized, or placed, into union with Christ. It means to be dedicated to Him, and it means to participate in all that Christ is and has done.

To be baptized into Christ also means to be “baptized into his death.” When Christ died, He died to sin. His death literally cut Him off from all further contact with sin. Our water baptism demonstrates that we, like Jesus, have been cut off from sin. What that means precisely is covered in the next verses.

3. Killing my old man, vs. 5, 6

If we have been united with him like this in his death, we will certainly also be united with him in his resurrection. (vs. 5)

The phrase “united with him” comes from the Greek symphutoi, which means literally, “grown together.” The sense of the word is that of “grafting,” as in a tree graft, or a “vital joining together” or “fusing.” The believer has been “glued” to Jesus; our identification with Him is that complete.

Paul is still using the water baptism metaphor to illustrate a spiritual truth. Clearly, the believer didn’t die when Christ died, nor does he die at his baptism. He also won’t rise from the dead in the future the way Christ was resurrected. Paul’s point in verse 5 is actually must simpler than most people think. Water baptism is designed to show to the whole world that a change has occurred within the believer that is as radical as Jesus’ death and resurrection.

For we know that our old self was crucified with him so that the body of sin might be done away with, that we should no longer be slaves to sin… (vs. 6)

Believers have been freed from sin because they have been crucified with Christ; that is, just as Christ severed all contact with sin when He died, so sin’s constant contact with us has been severed. Only one thing can free a man from the temptation to sin: death. The highway of sin leads to one destination: death. The only way to get off that highway is to die before reaching the end of it. Now, obviously, believers haven’t really died; we’re all very much alive. What is verse 6 teaching? What is “our old self?” All those who have identified with the death and resurrection of Christ—believers, “glued to Him”—still have the potential to sin, but no longer the obligation to sin. Identification with Christ through faith, demonstrated by water baptism, does nothing to free one from the possibility of sinning, but it does free one from having to sin.

If we look at what Paul is saying in verse 6, his point become crystal clear:

Our old self was crucified with Christ. Again, Paul is not saying a believer is given the ability to never sin, but the ability to say NO to sin.
The body of sin has been done away with. This refers to our tendency to sin. Obviously, this tendency has not been eradicated. The Greek word translated “done away with” is katargeo, which is a broad word that means anything from “abolish” to “render powerless” and everything in between. Kata means “according to” argeo means “to be idle,” the cessation of work or activity. But since that tendency was not eradicated, what happened to it? We know that we still have the tendency to sin, and even Paul did, because in verse 13 he encouraged the Roman Christians not to sin! The tendency to sin has not been eradicated, but it has been rendered powerless as we walk in God’s power.
We are no longer slaves to sin. This is how our “body of sin” as been rendered powerless. While old habits are hard to break, it is possible to NOT sin because believers are no longer bound to sin. We have total freedom to turn around and walk away from the temptation to sin.

What does it mean to be “freed from sin?” This is the tie which binds the first five chapters of Romans together. The Greek word is dikaio, one of Paul’s favorite words, which means “to justify”or “to pronounce righteous.” We have been “freed” or “justified” from our sins. We have been declared righteous in spite of our sins. Believers have been set free because the price for our sins has been paid for any Another. We have been provided with an off ramp on the highway to death because One went on ahead of us, making a way off the road that leads to death.

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Posts Tagged 'old self'

7 Healthy Habits, Part 1

HOLINESS AND FREEDOM FROM SIN

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