It is New Year’s Day. Happy New Year everyone! We all know what the coming of the New Year should mean to us all. It’s time to take an inventory of how we lived in 2011 and think through some much needed changes for 2012. In other words, it’s time to make a list of New Year’s resolutions.
Many of our lists will be ambitiously long and they will require us to include a healthy amount of wishful thinking. There is also a good chance that most, if not all, of our lists will include some leftover from 2011.
From losing weight to saving money, many people traditionally associate New Year’s Day with sobering up, not only from the night before, but also from the disappointments and distractions of the previous year. For those who were too busy, it’s time to start enjoying life. For those who were too lazy, it’s time to get organized and motivated.
Now there is nothing wrong with reflecting on the last year and doing a bit of self-analysis to see how we might focus on a few things to improve our lives, but shouldn’t there be something more to the resolutions we make as Christians? Or maybe we should say, shouldn’t there be a little less of us in the resolutions we make?
You see the problem with New Year’s resolutions is that they are essentially self-focussed. We look inward and evaluate what we’re doing right and what we’re doing wrong. Basically what we are doing with New Year’s resolutions is trying to figure out a way we can increase our happiness and self-satisfaction. We reason that if we could only, lose more weight, or lift a few more weights, or put a few more dollars in the savings account, or spend a few more hours organizing ourselves, or get more serious about succeeding at work, or finding a better job, or even spending more time in prayer and reading the Bible, we would be happier and find ourselves on the path to a richer, fuller, more satisfying and more God-pleasing life. Resolutions are “ME” driven. So, while some of these New Year’s goals and wishes might be admirable and worthwhile, the problem is our focus.
A couple of days ago on Twitter, preacher Rick Atchley wisely wrote: “As you make your resolutions, remember: it doesn't matter how accurate you are if you're aiming at the wrong target.”—Rick Atchley
As Christians in the West we have a problem, whether we are talking about New Year’s Resolutions, or just our interest in Spiritual formation and growth, and our problem is that we are often aiming at the wrong target.
Even when it comes to our spirituality, we are often aiming at the wrong target. Preacher Todd Wilken recently said. “Many pulpits across the land consistently preach the Christian and not the Christ.” What he means by his comment is that there is a lot of preaching going on in the church in North America that is “ME” focussed. Instead of glorifying Christ, it focusses on us as followers of Christ. We want church to be practical and helpful. We want tips to living better lives. We want wisdom on how to have better families. We want biblically sound principles on everything from how we should find a mate to how we should have a more satisfying prayer life. We want to be challenged to live an exciting, meaningful, eternity-impacting life, and all of this stuff is good, but ultimately it’s preaching that is off balance and off target if it is always focused on the Christian and not Christ.
We spend way too much time thinking about how we’re doing, if we’re growing, and whether we’re doing it right or not. We spend too much time pondering our spiritual failures and dwelling on our spiritual successes. Somewhere along the way we’ve come to believe that the focus of the Christian faith is the life of the Christian, but it isn’t.
Here is a question I want you to consider. Don’t answer out loud and don’t answer too quickly. True or false: the primary focus of the New Testament is our growth in personal holiness as Christians. When I say primary focus of the New Testament let me make it even easier for you: let’s take the Gospels and Acts out of the equation for a moment. Obviously the purpose of the Gospels is to give us the account of Jesus’ life and ministry and the purpose of Acts is to give us a record of the history of the Early Church and how it grew, so let’s take those books off the table and just consider the rest. True or false: the primary focus of the New Testament is our growth in personal holiness as Christians.
Well, if this statement is true than the Christian faith is a faith focussed on morals. It is a faith that is focussed on righteous performance. It is a faith focussed on both our obligation and our potential to please God through our own achievements. It is a do-good, be-good, feel good faith.
Lots of books have been written on the North American Church in recent years that suggest that the average person, and in particular, the youth that attend church, believe just that. Many Christians today have been taught that being a Christian is about doing good and being good and feeling good. Church in our part of the world is Christian focussed. What this basically means is that the gospel has been removed from Christianity. It means is that the Christian Faith is about performance—not relationship.
The fact of the matter is that the primary focus of the New Testament is not on our growth in personal holiness as Christians. The focus of the New Testament is found solely on the person, the saving work, and the Lordship of Jesus Christ. The point of the New Testament is for us to fully realize that we cannot please God outside of claiming the righteousness that comes from being in relationship with Christ. The point of the New Testament is Christ, period.
The writer of Hebrews puts our quest for spiritual growth in the proper Christ-centered context. He writes, “Let us fix our eyes on Jesus, the author and perfecter of our faith, who for the joy set before him endured the cross, scorning its shame, and sat down at the right hand of the throne of God.” (Hebrews 12:2)
Jesus is the author and perfecter of our faith. What does that mean? Well, what does an author do? An author creates a story. Jesus is the creator of our spiritual story. What does it mean that Jesus is the perfector of our faith? It means that the author has ensured that our story will have a happy ending as long as we stick with Him. Jesus is the creator, sustainer and perfector of our faith.
In this passage of Hebrews, the context is a metaphor of the Christian life as a race. To fix our eyes on Jesus is to fix our eyes on the finish line. In other words, the point of the Christian life is to keep our focus on the One who is both the originator and completer of our faith. Our focus must be on Christ—not ourselves.
This is so important for us to understand. Any version of “the gospel” that encourages you to primarily think about yourself is detrimental to your faith-whether it’s thinking of your failures or your successes, your good works or bad, your strengths or your weaknesses, your obedience or your disobedience. And yet, how much of our time is spent evaluating our spiritual performance?
Now some of you are probably wondering—what about when Paul talks about “examining ourselves”? Doesn’t the existence of this passage point to the fact that examining ourselves has spiritual value? Yes, it’s true, there is a place for self-evaluation, but let’s look at the passage in 2 Corinthians and see if we can get a handle on it.
Paul writes to the church in Corinth: “Examine yourselves to see whether you are in the faith; test yourselves. Do you not realize that Christ Jesus is in you--unless, of course, you fail the test?” (2 Corinthians 13:5)
Most of you know that the church in Corinth was challenging to say the least. They gave Paul a wild ride—that’s for sure. The church was plagued with pride and arrogance and bitterness and fighting and division. The Christians in Corinth gave Paul fits. They even question Paul’s authority, but an interesting point is that Paul never questions their faith. It may seem like he is in this passage because he opens up the idea of them failing the test. But notice that he isn’t the one who is administering the test. The Corinthians are challenged to examine and test themselves. Also, the construction of the Greek suggests that Paul is confident that they will pass their test.
But what I want you to see here is what Paul is asking them to examine. He is asking them to examine themselves to see if they are in the faith—but ultimately he gives us the bottom-line focus of what he wants them to examine. He says, “Do you not realize that Christ is in you?” In other words, for Paul, the goal of self-examination is not for me to evaluate how strong, or how weak, or how worthy, or how righteous I am. The goal of my self-examination is to remind myself that Christ is in me. Paul’s idea of self-examination isn’t about grading our performance it’s about making sure that I see my reality in connection with Christ’s presence in my life. To put it another way, my self-examination goal should be to rediscover my unworthiness and Christ’s worthiness; my weakness and Christ’s strength; my deficiency and Christ’s sufficiency. My self-examination should end in Christ exaltation!
Let’s look at Paul for a moment. I think we can all agree that Paul seemed to have a handle on what it meant to follow Christ. Here is the conclusion of Paul’s self-evaluation.
“But whatever was to my profit I now consider loss for the sake of Christ. 8 What is more, I consider everything a loss compared to the surpassing greatness of knowing Christ Jesus my Lord, for whose sake I have lost all things. I consider them rubbish, that I may gain Christ 9 and be found in him, not having a righteousness of my own that comes from the law, but that which is through faith in Christ--the righteousness that comes from God and is by faith.” (Philippians 3:7-9)
Paul, speaking about his former life of keeping the Law, evaluates it as rubbish. Paul says, “All my focus, all my energy, all my pursuit of personal righteousness, all my spiritual New Year’s resolutions were worthless. Why?—because they didn’t lead me to Christ.” More to the point, they didn’t help him come to the surpassing greatness of knowing Christ. Notice what Paul now values—a righteousness that is not his own. It is a righteous that comes from God and is by faith in Christ.
That is the kind of righteousness that Paul wants us to pursue— he wants us to pursue a righteousness that is not our own. He wants us to focus on the righteousness that comes from Christ, because the chief end of the Christian faith is to experience the surpassing greatness of knowing Christ. It’s all about Christ.
Do you really want to know what the goal of our self-evaluation should be as Christians? It should be to have the same level of Me focus as Paul when he declared in the book of Galatians: “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.” (Galatians 2:20)
Paul’s goal was to completely focus his life on Christ. Now, here is where it gets interesting. What does a live lived like this look like? When we think the goal of the Christian faith is growth in personal holiness, then we start to think that Christian maturity is the same as Christian purity, but it isn’t. The more we grow in our relationship with Christ, the more we grow in our need for, and our appreciation of Christ.
But Paul, nearing the end of his life, has this evaluation of himself: “But for that very reason I was shown mercy so that in me, the worst of sinners, Christ Jesus might display his unlimited patience as an example for those who would believe on him and receive eternal life.” (1 Timothy 1:16)
Notice that Paul doesn’t say that he was the worst of sinners. The title ‘worst of sinners’ was a current title for him. In fact, the point of him making this confession was to encourage us! Paul was saying, “If God, in His grace and mercy, has enough patience for me, I can guarantee that He has enough patience for you as well.”
Paul, in his maturity as a Christian, only becomes more aware of his sinfulness, and as he does, he also become more thankful for Christ. That is how grace works. Only grace allows us the freedom to see ourselves as we truly are. The more we understand that we live under a state of grace, the more we allow God to expand His work in our lives and the humbler we become.
The reality of grace is actually the opposite of what many think in the church. One of the greatest lies that Satan throws to the church is that grace needs to be feared because grace is dangerous. Grace will be abused. We have this sense that grace has to always be balanced by the Law, and we think to ourselves, “Yes I know we are saved by grace through faith, but . . . let’s not go too far into the dangerous waters of grace.
But this idea that grace must be balanced by the Law, or our personal responsibility to live a godly life, otherwise the church will get all weird and wanton is wrong, wrong, wrong.
You remember the parable of the Prodigal Son in Luke 15. As I have said so many times before, it would be better if we called in the parable of the Gracious Father. When you look at that parable there is symmetry in it that most miss, you see both sons are prodigals. Both sons lack a relationship with the father. Both sons are attempting to live life on their own terms. Both are stubborn and legalistic. The one son who runs away is a legalist in the sense that he is convinced that he has a better law than that of the Father. He has a better way to live and his way to live is to create his own law by doing anything and everything he wants. Meanwhile the other brother is still living at home, but he is living according to his own righteousness. He believes that he is so good at keep His father’s law that He is actually entitled to more than the father is giving him. He feels cheated by his father.
Neither son was experiencing a loving relationship with the Father, but then the one son returns home because of his great need. The Son comes back, expecting nothing, but He is given everything. He is welcomed home with open arms. He has gone from the legalism of thinking he knew better to a life of surrender to the father’s love. And even though he doesn’t deserve it, he is completely reinstated into the family and there is a great celebration—a celebration that the older brother refuses to be a part of because he feels slighted by the Father. We are left to wonder if he will join in the party or not.
Now ask yourself, is grace dangerous? Does it lead to more sin? Must it be balanced with a call to personal righteousness and good works? Well who is left outside of the party? Which son has the relationship with the Father? Who better appreciates the Father? Who is living in the presence of the Father?
This parable tells us that the greatest danger we face as Christians is religious legalism because the prodigal was restored but the older brother was left outside in his own judgemental self-righteousness. Here is the paradox of grace. Grace allows us to see the Father as He truly is. By realizing that we are sinners who have no other option but to cry out for the mercy God extends to us through Christ, we see God as He truly is. God is the One who was always looking for us to come back home. God is the One who runs to us and embraces us and welcomes us back into the family. God holds nothing back. But, the religious legalist continues to have a false idea of God. God is the One who is unfair and uncaring and inappreciative. God expects too much. Grace allows us to see God as He truly is and grace allows us to see ourselves as we truly are, because we don’t have to hide, or rationalize, or be afraid.
Here is another question for you: what are the greatest temptations we face? They are the sins that were first committed by Adam and Eve, are they not? Pride, self-sufficiency, self-importance, independence, these are the most powerful forms of rebellion. If that is the case, then a faith that continues to point us to an achievable holiness is actually a faith that is tempting us in our area of greatest weakness! Pour that on your Rice Crispies and see if they pop!
More than that, consider the results of living self-righteous lives. We begin to judge others and we become critical and controlling. So it isn’t hard to see that a faith based on us trying harder and being better and achieving more and sinning less is actually pushing us away from God and making us worldly in the worst way.
Soon we become not only unchristlike in our approach to spirituality, but also in our attitude to those we are called to share the gospel. All of a sudden we become Pharisees that separate ourselves from all the sinners, instead of showing them God’s love through Christ.
But the worst fallout of a life that thinks grace is dangerous is that it focuses on the wrong target.
I want to close with one of the greatest passages that Paul has given us. Many think that it may very well have been a hymn in the Early Church. In this hymn Paul is trying to express the greatness of Christ, because Paul knows that if understand that Christ is all we need, then we have the proper foundation for living in Christ.
Paul begins describing Christ with these words: He is the image of the invisible God, the firstborn over all creation. 16 For by him all things were created: things in heaven and on earth, visible and invisible, whether thrones or powers or rulers or authorities; all things were created by him and for him. 17 He is before all things, and in him all things hold together. 18 And he is the head of the body, the church; he is the beginning and the firstborn from among the dead, so that in everything he might have the supremacy. 19 For God was pleased to have all his fullness dwell in him, 20 and through him to reconcile to himself all things, whether things on earth or things in heaven, by making peace through his blood, shed on the cross. (Colossians 1:15-20)
If you are looking for a passage of Scripture to memorize and meditate on this would be the one to pick. The context of the Colossian church is that they had become a congregation who had added to the gospel. It was Jesus plus something else. It was grace plus works and how does Paul combat such error? He does it by shinning a light on the greatness of Christ.
Paul is making sure that we understand that the supremacy of Christ is sufficient. He is God. Everything was created for Him and by Him. He holds all things together. If Christ holds all things together, then how smart is it to try and hold our lives together in our own strength? To not focus our lives on Christ is to reject the only source of order and unity there really is.
More than that, we are told that, through Christ, God is reconciling all things to Himself. Everything that exists will be reconciled to God through Christ—whether things on earth or things in heaven. Everything is reconciled by the peace that Jesus’ blood shed on the cross obtained for us. Christ is sufficient. Jesus did it all.
Our faith isn’t based on doing good and being good. It is based on abandoning ourselves to a life of grace. It is based on a life that sees Christ as the answer for all things. It is a life that grows in dependence. It is a life that allows grace to kick open every door in our lives because we know that we don’t have to be afraid of what God will find.
This year instead of resolving to be better, resolve to grow in your trust of what Christ has already done. Happy New Year everyone!
