Adulterers!

I have committed the cardinal sin of blog writing by titling my post for today as a shout of accusation to my readers. That's not how to win friends and influence people, apparently, but hey, it grabbed your attention to read what I said so you could like, scoff at me or something.

Our text for today is James 4. My message is simple. We must be of one mind and one focus upon God and not look outside of God for our satisfaction. Let's look at James 4:1-8,

"From whence come wars and fightings among you? come they not hence, even of your lusts that war in your members? Ye lust, and have not: ye kill, and desire to have, and cannot obtain: ye fight and war, yet ye have not, because ye ask not. Ye ask, and receive not, because ye ask amiss, that ye may consume it upon your lusts. Ye adulterers and adulteresses, know ye not that the friendship of the world is enmity with God? whosoever therefore will be a friend of the world is the enemy of God. Do ye think that the scripture saith in vain, The spirit that dwelleth in us lusteth to envy? But he giveth more grace. Wherefore he saith, God resisteth the proud, but giveth grace unto the humble. Submit yourselves therefore to God. Resist the devil, and he will flee from you. Draw nigh to God, and he will draw nigh to you. Cleanse your hands, ye sinners; and purify your hearts, ye double minded."

According to what we see in these particular verses, any division or argument within the church come from us seeking our own lusts and seeking satisfaction from places absent from God. Instead of that response, we need to show our humility by submitting fully to God and allowing Him to bring us closer to Himself.

(Now of course we hear a lot of these verses taken out of context to prove various parts of agendas that people are trying to scripturalize, but I am not going to be discussing that until this Monday.)

That summary is great, but it seems a bit pie in the sky. Perhaps, we should bring this down to more practical understanding. As such, I reserve the right to (without divorcing any of the verses from their context) focus in on a portion of them for communication purposes.

You are not feeling content with yourself and the way you live your life. You read your Bible and you serve in your church from time to time, yet you don't feel as if the Lord is satisfied with the way you are living your life. Your prayers aren't being answered if you are even praying at all.

Feeling as if your best efforts mean absolutely nothing, you lose all hope and think that maybe you should just give up on God, and just live the typical apathetic Christian life. If what you're doing isn't pleasing to God, you mise well stop wasting your time on it and find happiness somewhere else.

Naturally, you're not going to find anything to make you happy. Whether you remain in your casual service to the Lord, or you become apathetic, you will find the same thing - your life doesn't seem to have much value.

Now the all important question - why? Because your friendship with the world, your friendship with that which the Lord has saved you from, namely your own natural sin nature, is causing you enmity with God. That explains then the root of all your problems.

The Bible in this passage would use the term adulterers to describe this particular allegation. The concept of adultery is a simple one. Without being crass, adultery is when a marriage is tainted by divided loyalty manifested in a physical form.

When we became in Christ, we became the Bride of Christ. We had a loyalty to Him for what He had done for us, what He is doing for us, and what He will do for us in the future. Yet when we hold onto our own will and volitions, when we hold onto our own fleshly sin nature, when we hold onto to our friendship with the world, we are dividing our loyalty away from God, and our actions in the physical world begin to taint the marriage of the church and Christ. (Just for the record, it would be impossible for the marriage to be cancelled, so don't worry there.)

The obvious solution then is to become completely loyal to God, which is incredibly easy to put into practice, right?

Yeah, not really, which is why James 4 explains to us this following step-by-step process in verses 6-8,

"But he giveth more grace. Wherefore he saith, God resisteth the proud, but giveth grace unto the humble. Submit yourselves therefore to God. Resist the devil, and he will flee from you. Draw nigh to God, and he will draw nigh to you. Cleanse your hands, ye sinners; and purify your hearts, ye double minded."

The solution that I want to tell to you today is simply this - exercise true humility. By seeking God's will and God's strength in our lives, rather than trying to do OUR best to serve the Lord, we'll be able to come to truly have the proper loyalty to God.

We must get to the point where my shout of accusation in the title does not describe our attitude toward the Lord. We can do this by resting within His strength, by submitting to Him alone, and by seeking Him completely.

What does it Matter? Life's Not Fair

Trials and persecution. I wrote a series about this facet of our lives. One of the things I stressed was that it would happen to anyone whether that person lived a good life or not. Indeed we all know that life's just not fair.

But how often have we heard (at least on the television) people use that expression as an excuse to justify their injustices towards others? Apparently since life is full of suffering already, it doesn't matter if we should add more suffering into the mix.

So here's a radical life principle - just because suffering is bound to come to the believer, doesn't mean it should come from within the church. The Bible uses the imagery of a family to describe a church quite often. Now I would at least hope that within your own family, you would not be willing to add to the suffering simply because they're going to suffer anyway.

Now of course, I'm sure few Christians would either decide to intentionally hurt others in order to advance their own selfish desires or to push others down to build themselves up. But it seems all too easy from my experience to do so unintentionally. In my life, it comes as a complete desire to be right, causing me to unfortunately pummel straight through any conflicting theory and its owner.

But it can come in other ways too. You see, we can attack each other selfishly without even necessarily knowing we are doing anything wrong. Thus, we must take time to evaluate our behaviour to see how we would be feeling if we were in the opposite position.

Now of course there are situations in which we just can't help but hurt somebody else. Our obligations to ourselves, to our family, or to the Lord force us to act in a way that is sure to cause emotional agony for someone else. In these situations, the only thing you can do is try to be as direct and delicate as possible.

Hurt feelings might not seem like a significant issue, but this phenomena is not limited to hurt feelings. Indeed we are discussing a number of areas where people can so easily hurt others, but the truth is, we won't do much good fighting the enemy, if we are instead fighting each other.

We will be able to do more to protect ourselves as a unified force than every man for himself. Take for instance, during the time of Esther, when the Jews had to fight for their lives. Naturally, the Lord protected them, as He would us today. But they still had to prepare to fight.

Each man did not protect his own family of his own might either. Rather, the Jews came together to fight as a unit. Esther 9:2 proclaims,

"The Jews gathered themselves together in their cities throughout all the provinces of the king Ahasuerus, to lay hand on such as sought their hurt: and no man could withstand them; for the fear of them fell upon all people."

Look at how effective unity can be. But then we all know that it is not easy to work with someone who manipulated his way into a position that you think you deserve (I know not really Christian behavior on either side there). Nor is it easy to work with someone that you know you have unnecessarily hurt at some point in your life.

So with that, I ask simply, let's strive to not cause suffering to other members of the family of God, but instead to do the exact opposite. As the Bible commands in Philippians 2:1-4,

"If there be therefore any consolation in Christ, if any comfort of love, if any fellowship of the Spirit, if any bowels and mercies, Fulfil ye my joy, that ye be likeminded, having the same love, being of one accord, of one mind. Let nothing be done through strife or vainglory; but in lowliness of mind let each esteem other better than themselves. Look not every man on his own things, but every man also on the things of others."

Extra-Morality 5: Proper Focus

Throughout this series, we have been learning about extramoral concerns. Because I really feel like this issue is controversial, I have made it a point to explain myself in almost every single post in the series so that hopefully one of my explanations will click with my readers.

Today is no different. I once again want to use another way of teaching to describe what I mean by extra-moral standards. These standards are placed by Christians as tools to fight against their possible corruption. We place them in our lives because we fear that violating these standards could dampen our relationship with the Lord or with others.

But just as there are no set textbooks that always have to be used to teach math, science or other subject, there are no set tools or standards to dictate how we decide to avoid sin. As such, we should expect differing standards from Christian to Christian.

Last week, we simply saw that we should respect other Christians regardless of their choice of extra-moral concerns. We learned that it would be wrong for us to tempt our brothers to err by their stricter standards. Because although having lenient standards is not sin, it is sinful to err by the standard you have prayerfully put in your life. As such, general consideration would allow for us not to put a stumblingblock in the path of our fellow Christians.

I would like to argue further today that instead of focusing on the standards on TV, music, books and dancing we use as tools in our Christian lives, when we interact with other Christians we should focus on righteousness, peace, and joy. We should become like-minded in our goal to spread the Gospel. That should be our focus, not anything else.

This answer is of course found in Romans 14. More specifically, verses 17-19, where it says,

"For the kingdom of God is not meat and drink; but righteousness, and peace, and joy in the Holy Ghost. For he that in these things serveth Christ is acceptable to God, and approved of men. Let us therefore follow after the things which make for peace, and things wherewith one may edify another."

The kingdom of God is not meat and drink. It is not shall we say it, dancing, entertainment choices and so on. There is a higher focus that all Christians aspire to, that is obedience to the Lord, righteousness, peace, and joy. When we are together, we should just focus on these areas wherewith we may edify one another.

Perhaps, Romans 15:5-7 explain it better,

"Now the God of patience and consolation grant you to be likeminded one toward another according to Christ Jesus: That ye may with one mind and one mouth glorify God, even the Father of our Lord Jesus Christ. Wherefore receive ye one another, as Christ also received us to the glory of God."

You see, we Christians have bigger fish to fry than arguing over whether it is acceptable to dance. We are called to glorify God, but we may have difficulty fulfilling that purpose if we don't stand like-minded, if we divide ourselves by arguing over virtually nothing. Let us then follow after the things which make for peace and glorify God together.

Continue to Extra-Morality 6: Faith

Extra-Morality 4: Stumblingblock in the Way

We have thus far in this series seen a few reasons why we should not condemn someone because of their choices on extra-moral concerns. However, simply not condemning is hardly the easiest lesson to apply in our everyday lives as it is rather vague and abstract.

Starting today, we will be seeing in more detail what this course of action entails by seeing what the Lord would have us do. And yes, the information for how we should live our lives also comes from Romans 14.

Let us remember simply that we have come to the conclusion that there are some issues that are not moral or immoral, but are simply issues where each Christian has to decide for himself where he stands. The Lord gives strong evidence in Romans 14 that he doesn't care what decision is made, so long as it is made by faith.

So then in these situations (like dancing, cultural entertainment, and modesty), there will be different beliefs among Christians about what is acceptable and what is not. Baptists may think that dancing is entirely forbidden; Presbyterians may find that dancing is entirely permissible. The same can be said on other issues of extra-moral concerns. So how exactly are we supposed to work as a unified body of Christ in this manner?

I suppose some would say it is possible for us to simply each break apart into separate denominations and keep our different beliefs on extramoral concerns separate. But this is simply not a good idea.

In the first place, choosing a denomination should be based on something more consequential than these issues. We have different denominations so that we can regularly meet with people who think similarly on issues like predestination, baptism, and other doctrinal issues, and not because the atmosphere of extra-moral choices make us comfortable.

Additionally though, you will be hard-pressed to find a group of people who agree exactly as you do on these issues in the first place. Different people are bound to make different decisions even within the same family, or same denomination.

For instance, I am a Baptist. As such, I should completely condemn dancing and never, ever participate (this is what the stereotype says anyway). Yet this very night, I am greatly looking forward to square dancing. Most in my church would probably look down on such actions as ungodly. But I find it to just be another way of fellowship with other believers.

But even if it were feasible to break into denominations because of extra-moral concerns, it would not solve the problem of divisions. We shouldn't just completely isolate ourselves into different denominations. Now don't get me wrong, there is nothing wrong with breaking into different denominations for regular church services, but there is also nothing wrong with fellowshipping and serving with those from different denominations from time to time.  The Lord doesn't change whether He loves you based on your denomination, so why would we never interact with those we disagree with on any issue?

So we know that we will have to interact with Christians with differing extra-moral concerns on a normal basis. How exactly should we behave? It really comes down to respecting opposing viewpoints. Maybe someone won't watch Doctor Who while you absolutely can't get enough. There is nothing wrong with either position (as long as it was made by faith), so what are you to do?

Romans 14:13-16 provides us with our answer,

"Let us not therefore judge one another any more: but judge this rather, that no man put a stumblingblock or an occasion to fall in his brother's way. I know, and am persuaded by the Lord Jesus, that there is nothing unclean of itself: but to him that esteemeth any thing to be unclean, to him it is unclean. But if thy brother be grieved with thy meat, now walkest thou not charitably. Destroy not him with thy meat, for whom Christ died. Let not then your good be evil spoken of."

Here Paul continues with his example of meat he started early in the chapter. Remember, if someone decides to avoid certain areas by faith, then it becomes a sin for him to do such things.

In this example, when someone has decided the Lord doesn't want them to eat meat, then it would be a sin for them to eat meat. In this verse, you are being admonished against tempting your brother with meat that you can eat without guilt that he cannot.

Back to our more modern example, if someone believes that watching Doctor Who would be problematic in their relationship with the Lord, then by all means don't discuss the show in front of him. Don't consistently tell him how amazing the show is, how much he's missing out. Be considerate of his position and don't tempt him to compromise his convictions! Just because they don't line with yours doesn't change his right to have them.

The same can be said for every issue of extra-moral concerns. We must not put a stumblingblock in the way of our brothers with stricter extra-moral concerns then we have. We must not tempt them into erring by discussing or doing those things in their presence.

It's just like how we wouldn't turn on a movie in the presence of a friend who is not allowed to watch it. We simply should not make it difficult for other Christians to stay committed to the Lord.

But those who have stricter extra-moral concerns have a duty as well. It can be so easy to fall into the trap that because you have these stricter beliefs that you are better than your friends. This pride though is sinful. You cannot think that your extra-moral standards make you better than another. They don't. Do not speak evil of the good of your fellow Christians because their extra-moral standards are more lenient.

Both of these duties will naturally follow from mutual respect. Even if you can't come to respect the extra-moral choices of another, learn to respect him as a person, as a servant of the Lord. When you do so, you should find yourself condemning his choices less and less.

Continue to Extra-Morality 5: Proper Focus