Credibility 1

In the last article I shared my one-year commitment to pray for our political leaders, America’s pastors, providential circumstances and a positive response to the message of Christ. I asked that others join me in this commitment and share the mission. I want to thank those who e-mailed their promise to pray with me.

We know that everything the Lord allows in the life of His children is intended to produce agathos good. Agathos is good that causes us to grow and God to be glorified. I think the good that God is working now in USA is the awakening of many to their need for Christ. Only God can awaken those who are spiritually dead and only God can enable them to see Christ as their temporal and eternal solution. God will awaken and God will enable, but it is the mission of the church to give the message.

The church has been entrusted with the euaggelion, the “good news” that Jesus died for our sins and rose again to offer eternal life to whosoever would believe. As Christians, it is our mission to proclaim this message to the lost so that they can be saved and live with God forever.
Paul, in his letter to Timothy shares God’s desire with us:
1 Tim 2:4 who (God) desires all men to be saved and to come to the knowledge of the truth.

God has left us here after salvation as Ambassadors for Christ. An ambassador lives in a foreign land, represents his government to another, speaks the message of his king to the people of another land. Christ has entrusted the message of reconciliation to us so that we can share it with the citizens of the devil’s world. Again quoting Paul:

2 Cor 5:18 Now all these things are from God, who reconciled us to Himself through Christ, and gave us the ministry of reconciliation, 19 namely, that God was in Christ reconciling the world to Himself, not counting their trespasses against them, and He has committed to us the word of reconciliation. 20 Therefore, we are ambassadors for Christ, as though God were entreating through us; we beg you on behalf of Christ, be reconciled to God. 21 He made Him who knew no sin to be sin on our behalf, that we might become the righteousness of God in Him.

We have the mission, we have the message and we have the power. What the church of Jesus Christ in the USA does not have is credibility. Our words do not match our actions. We as Christians say the right words, but then we don’t live consistent with what we say. We believe the bible but have not used biblical principles to change our hearts. We still operate with the same values, priorities and strategies that we used as unbelievers. This must change for the church to establish  a credible ministry.

This article will be written in 2 parts. The first part here will build the case for our need to be purified. The second article, coming next will discuss the means that God uses to purify our hearts and minds.

The Need for Purification
The message of an invisible God who will take us to live in a yet to be seen heaven in the next life is difficult for many to swallow. The idea that man needs a savior and that 2000 + years ago Jesus died on the cross and was resurrected to save our souls is also difficult. To those who are spiritually asleep, it sounds at best like make believe and at worst as mental illness. Paul wrote that to those who are spiritually blind, it is foolishness:

1 Corinthians 2:14 But a natural man does not accept the things of the Spirit of God; for they are foolishness to him, and he cannot understand them, because they are spiritually appraised.

The natural man refers to the man who was born spiritually dead (Eph 2:1) and has yet to wake up to the spiritual world. Spiritual death is a state of being separated from God and therefore being unable to understand spiritual ideas. God, who is righteous, cannot compromise Himself by being joined to anyone who is unrighteous. Adam’s sin caused him to become unrighteous and forced God to separate Himself from him and all of his descendants (Rom 5:12). Without God, man’s human faculties are incapable of comprehending spiritual ideas or performing spiritual works (1Cor 2:14). To those born in this state of spiritual death, the gospel message sounds like foolish talk. For man to understand the gospel and believe it for eternal life, God has to intervene and enable him to do so. This enabling is an act of grace that God offers to “whosoever will” and is taught as the convicting ministry of the Holy Spirit. Jesus explained the Spirit’s ministry to the lost to His disciples:

John 16:8 “And He, when He comes, will convict the world concerning sin, and righteousness, and judgment;

The Spirit convinces man of His need for Christ. He performs this ministry through the message of the gospel as given by Christians in the church. Part of this act of grace that awakens the dead to the spiritual world is the evidence from the life of those who bring the message.

Another consequence of Adam’s sin was the corruption of his body, mind and nature. The presence of sin itself has a corrupting force on whatever it touches. Sin violates God’s perfection and when sin is present, it causes death. In addition to Adam’s judicial separation from God, his nature that was designed like God’s own was changed to a selfish nature. Designed to worship and serve God, Adam’s nature became self centered and self-serving. At the same time his nature had been changed, his body also began the natural process of decay that resulted in his death 930 years later.

Allow me to summarize before we proceed. Adam’s sin caused him to become spiritually dead, separated from God and incapable of processing spiritual phenomena. His nature became totally self-serving and his body began to die. Adam’s sin had horrifying results on he, his wife and every one of his children. All of his children even to the present generation are born in the same state.

Every human being is born incapable of perceiving spiritual phenomena. Before we are saved, the gospel sounds foolish to everyone. In order for God to wake us up, the lives of the messengers must demonstrate the reality of the message. It is necessary for the Christian to live like a Christian to establish credibility. Paul speaks about his commitment to demonstrate the reality of his relationship with God:

2 Corinthians 6:3 We put no stumbling block in anyone’s path, so that our ministry will not be discredited. 4 Rather, as servants of God we commend ourselves in every way: in great endurance; in troubles, hardships and distresses;

He does nothing that might cause anyone to be tempted to sin so that his ministry won’t be discredited. Instead he commends himself or demonstrates his Christian character in any and every type of adversity. His purpose is so that others can see the reality of Christ in his life hoping that they will be motivated to seek Christ for themselves.

In the upper room before they left for the garden of Gethsemane for the last time in His first incarnation, Jesus explained that the unity of the church would bring credibility to the message of His sacrifice and God’s love for mankind.

John 17:20-23 “My prayer is not for them alone. I pray also for those who will believe in me through their message, 21 that all of them may be one, Father, just as you are in me and I am in you. May they also be in us so that the world may believe that you have sent me. 22 I have given them the glory that you gave me, that they may be one as we are one: 23 I in them and you in me. May they be brought to complete unity to let the world know that you sent me and have loved them even as you have loved me.

If reading these verses, which reveal God’s intentions, doesn’t make us weep for the church with its 20,800 denominations, then we have become numb to reality. Unity? The church in the 21st century is anything but unified. If credibility is established by unity, then it is no wonder that the world sees us as hypocrites.

Lost people are born separated from God and unable to make sense of the gospel message. It sounds foolish to them. When they see Christians fail to live out the gospel they preach, these Christians look like hypocrites. The lost have a difficult time hearing the message from a person who looks like a hypocrite. Now, I believe that most Christians know this and would like to live a life that is more consistent with the message. I believe that every one who is truly born again has a desire to live out their lives in a way that honors Christ. The problem is that it looks like it should be easy but it really isn’t. From the outside the Christian life looks like no more than a system of rules that one can just adopt and perform at will. The world’s view of Christianity as I discussed in an earlier article is simply doing more good deeds than bad deeds. If living for Christ were really that simple, then it would be easy.

The real issue here is that the Christian life is far more than rules that man can follow at will. Christianity is a total exchange of beliefs/behaviors from our original selfish ideas to the belief system of God. For us to give up our old beliefs and embrace the ideas of God, we must go through a growth process that can only be accomplished by learning the word of God and using the power of God. The real Christian life is a little more complicated than adopting a new set of morality and rules – just a little!

Our old beliefs, attitudes and behaviors have to be purged through this growth process. As we choose to reject our old ways through the power of the Spirit, He purifies us from our selfish, sinful beliefs and behaviors. Only when we have been purged from our lies are we able to embrace to truths that Jesus believed and used to live His life. It is by using these truths as our own belief system that we are able to express the character of Christ through our lives. In Gal 4:19 Paul calls this process “Christ being formed in us”. He describes the process in Eph 4:22-24:

Eph 4:22-24 You were taught, with regard to your former way of life, to put off your old self, which is being corrupted by its deceitful desires; 23 to be made new in the attitude of your minds; 24 and to put on the new self, created to be like God in righteousness and holiness from the truth.

In summary, the Christian church in the US has little or no credibility because:

1. Those to whom we must give the message are separated from God and His power.
2. Without God’s power they are unable to understand the gospel message.
3. Without God’s power to reveal the truth of the gospel, the message sounds like foolish talk to the unbeliever.
4. Those who give the gospel message have not understood the growth process that God uses to transform them into the image of Christ – their churches have not taught them.
5. Those Christians who have not been transformed are trying to live the Christian life using the strength of their human will – their churches encourage this behavior with Christian programism.
6. Those still living by the power of human will are still living under their old selfish beliefs and behaviors – living like they did before they were saved.
7. Those trying to live the Christian life in the flesh with their old ideas look like hypocrites to the ones to whom they are giving the message.
8. We hypocrites in the church have destroyed the church’s credibility.

The Solution:

1. Believers in the church must be purged of their old beliefs and behaviors.
2. These believers can then embrace the beliefs and behaviors of Christ.
3. When believers have been transformed into the image of Christ, the character of Christ can be expressed through them.
4. Christ formed in us allows us to love unconditionally and give in grace like Christ.
5. Only under these conditions can a believer live consistent with the gospel message and establish credibility with the lost world.

I close this article with Paul’s admonition to the Colossian church

Col 3:9-10  Stop pretending with each other, since you have taken off your old self with its practices 10 and have put on the new self, which is being renewed in knowledge in the image of its Creator.

The next article on credibility will discuss the method God uses to purify the Christian heart.