Author: Jay Lehman

Living by Faith

It is a prominent theme throughout the New Testament that the Christian life is lived by faith.  One example of that is our current topic; our family resemblance to God.

The Bible teaches that believers are indwelt by the very seed of God.  His Spirit lives inside us.  As such, we have taken on a new nature; a nature prone to righteousness.  Now if righteousness is our new inclination, why do we struggle with sin?  If our family resemblance to God is in our moral character, why is that resemblance, at times, hard to recognize?  The answer to this question is multi-faceted and I have written on various aspects of this many times; Galatians 5 and the War with the Flesh, Temptation Vs Sin, and The Exchanged Life are a few examples for your perusal.  But for today’s post, our focus is on the role that faith plays in this conflict.

Walking by faith is essentially living as if what God says is true, even when our experience stands in contrast to God’s promise.  When my experience does not seem to line up with God’s promise, which am I going to believe?  I am going to believe and trust and rest in God’s promise.  And one of His promises that saturates the New Testament is a life set free from the power of sin.  How do we put this promise into action?

God says that I have a family resemblance to Him in my character.  I don’t always feel this in my sensory perception.  I sometimes feel sinful.  I feel evil.  I feel anger, malice, jealousy, and a host of other sinful passions.  But because the Christian life is lived by faith, God is asking me to confess those passions, push them aside, and cling to the promise of all that became new in me.

This is not just spiritual theory.  Once I take the very real first step of clinging to His promise, I take the next step of living into the promise.  We often put the cart before the horse here.  We try to live the Christian life by our willpower; by beating ourselves up about our performance and committing to trying harder.  Faith is something we see in our distant past when we first believed.

But living, active, daily faith must come first.  When we consistently believe that we actually have a new nature, a new disposition, and a new power, we can fully live into God’s commands.  Living by faith is not license to ignore God’s commands.  It is not thinking we somehow live above God’s commands.  Living by faith is believing that I have the power, by Christ in me, to live the life; to live into all that Christ commands.

I cannot emphasize the practical nature of this faith enough.  My practice when faced with temptation is to literally tell myself that failure is not who I am.  It is not my identity.  It is not my new character of righteousness.  It is not befitting a child of God.

Does this sound too simple?  Do I ever fail?  Yes, we all have our downfalls in our conflict with the flesh, the world, and the devil.  But failure does not have to be our common experience.  And yes, it is that simple.  It is living by faith in God’s promise of a life set free from the power of sin.

Your Family Resemblance to God

“Whoever denies the Son does not have the Father; and the one who confesses the Son has the Father also” (I Jn 2:23).  If you have embraced the gospel message of Jesus Christ, God is now your father.  And if God is your father, you share a family resemblance with Him.  This is not a physical similarity, but a resemblance of character.  You have a moral resemblance to the Father and the Son.

The apostle John spells this out in his first letter found near the end of the New Testament. Let’s review the highlights of this key passage from I John 2:29 to 3:9.  “Since you know that He [God] is righteous, you know that every one also who practices righteousness is born of Him” (I Jn 2:29).  This “since…then” sounds a little backward to our English grammar.  What the apostle is saying is that because God is righteous, it is natural for His children, those “born of Him”, to also practice righteousness.  When we do this, we are showing our family resemblance to God.

“See how great a love the Father has bestowed upon us, that we should be called children of God; and such we are.  For this reason the world does not know us, because it did not know Him.  Beloved, now we are children of God…and every one who has this hope fixed on Him purifies himself, just as He is pure” (I Jn 3:2-3).  Because we are children of God, we are to emulate our Father by purifying ourselves; by living out the new life He has given us.  Just as God is pure in His moral character, we should practice purity in our moral character.

“And you know that He appeared in order to take away sins; and in Him there is no sin.  No one who abides in Him sins; no one who sins has seen Him or knows Him.  Little children, let no one deceive you; the one who practices righteousness is righteous, just as He [God] is righteous; the one who practices sin is of the devil; for the devil has sinned from the beginning.  The Son of God appeared for this purpose, that He might destroy the works of the devil.  No one who is born of God practices sin, because His seed abides in Him; and he cannot sin, because he is born of God” (I Jn 3:5-9).

When “Jesus appeared in order to take away sins”, He not only took away the penalty of our sin, but defeated the power of sin in our lives as well.  One of the “works of the devil” that Christ destroyed was the power of sin.  And the New Testament makes clear, over and over, that the way God accomplished this was to nail our sin nature to the cross with Christ and to raise us with Christ to live a resurrected life; to live into a new nature, Christ’s nature, a divine nature infused with the righteousness of God.

The key word in this passage is practice.  The believer, because of his new identity as God’s child, does not practice sin on a regular basis.  Sin is not our regular habit.  Do Christians commit sins?  Yes, and when we do, we have an advocate in Jesus who forgives our sins.  What these verses emphasize is that sin is not our natural course as a child of God.

So yes, you do have a moral resemblance to God by virtue of your new identity in Christ.  But what about the times we fail?  What about when sin does seem to be our practice?  What about when, quite frankly, we see no family resemblance?  We will answer these questions next time.

Children of Israel, Children of God

“See how great a love the Father has bestowed upon us, that we should be called children of God; and such we are” (I Jn 3:1).  And such we are!  If you have embraced the gospel message of Jesus Christ you are, in fact, a child of God.  Do you know that?  Do you sense that?  Do you feel that?  It is easy to see ourselves as God’s children on a theological or intellectual level, but are we experiencing its impact?  Are we connecting to our identity as God’s child on an emotional or spiritual level?

Following Christ’s ascension, the initial group of Christ-followers were almost exclusively Jewish.  And for these “children of Israel” to now be “children of God” was a radical change in identity.  Throughout the Old Testament, God’s chosen people were known as “the children of Israel.”  The children of who?  Not the children of God, but the children of Israel.  They were known by their earthly father, Jacob, who was renamed Israel in Genesis chapter 32.

In the gospels, the Jewish leaders saw themselves as God’s chosen people, identified by their connection to their forefathers.  In their interactions with Jesus, they identified themselves as children of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob.  But this all changed when Jewish believers went from children of Israel to children of God.

What about us, 2000 years down the line?  We too have become the children of God.  Do we celebrate and rest in this incredible truth?  These are facts, after all, not just opinions. If you are a believer, you are a child of God.  You are adopted with full rights and privileges into the family of God.  God is your Father.  The seed of God dwells inside you.  You now have a family resemblance to God your Father.  Whoa, is that taking things a little too far?  A family resemblance to the God of the Universe?  Can this be true?  We will explore that topic next time.

Your Heavenly Father

Now that I am in the mindset of reading Scripture in light of all that became new when Jesus initiated the New Covenant, the discoveries have been eye-popping.  For example, have you ever thought about what changed in our connection with God as our Father when the arrival, death, and resurrection of Jesus put the New Covenant into action?

In the entire Old Testament, God is referred to as Father seven times.  In the New Testament, God is identified as our Father over 150 times!  And even one of those seven Old Testament references is looking ahead to our New Covenant relationship.  “For a child will be born to us, a son will be given to us; and the government will rest on His shoulders; and His name will be called Wonderful Counselor, Mighty God, Eternal Father, Prince of Peace” (Is 9:6).

Moving to the New Testament, God’s expanded relationship to us as our Father is just one more of the incredible provisions of the New Covenant.  And God, our Father, does not leave us to wonder about what this father – child connection looks like.  Throughout the New Testament, God explains what and how His specific Father attributes play out in our lives.  This explanation is so critical because on an intellectual level it is easy to accept that once we receive Christ, God becomes our Father.  But do we really embrace all that “God is my Father” entails?  Do we, on an emotional and spiritual level, accept and explore and cling to all that being God’s child includes?

For example, do you believe that the seed of the God of the Universe actually lives inside you, His child? (I Jn 3:9).  Do you believe that God is a good Father who trains us for our own benefit? (Heb 12:5-11).  Do you believe that our heavenly Father showers us with good gifts? (Mt 7:9-11, James 1:17).  Do you believe that God, your Father, does not tempt you to sin? (James 1:13-15).

As we begin to grasp the idea that God is our Father, it is easy to evaluate that relationship through the lens of our experience with our earthly father.  We often ascribe attributes to God that we saw – for good or for bad – in our natural father.  But we must, through the power of the Spirit, cast those limitations of our heavenly Father aside.  We must see God for who He truly is – just as He has revealed Himself – through the lens of His Word.

If your childhood experience was with an emotionally distant or stern or angry father, you may have some distance to travel in recognizing all that is good and loving in God, your Father.  May I encourage you?  Ask Him to open your heart to the truth of the Father that we see described in Scripture.  Over the next several posts, we will explore what the Father looks like.  And we will see that God is a good Father who always draws near, never pulls away.  God is not the distant, cold, arms-crossed, frowning Father.  No, God is the holy, compassionate, tender, loving, kind, righteous, warrior Father who is on your side; revealing His glory through His children.

Guilt, Shame, and Speaking Truth to One Another

A few months ago, I had the opportunity to meet Wm Paul Young, author of The Shack.  One of the things he shared with our group really resonated with me because it articulated what I have been trying to say through this blog since day one.  Mr. Young said, “Guilt is I have done something wrong, shame is I am something wrong.”

The first line of his quote is the biblical view of sin.  We are guilty because we have done something wrong.  But to our detriment, the authority figures in our lives often see our sin and make clear to us that “we are something wrong.”  This second line, the shame, is not the biblical view of who we are in Christ.  And the distinction between guilt and shame has tremendous implications for living the Christian life.

When you embraced the gospel message of Jesus Christ, you were infused with the righteousness of Christ (II Cor 5:21).  And this infusion is not only to justify us; put us in right standing with God, but also to sanctify us; empower us to live the Christian life.  You now have the power of Christ living in you by the person of the Holy Spirit and your birthright is to experience victory over sin.

But in this life, that victory is not 100%.  Believers still sin.  And when we do, we have an advocate, Jesus Christ, who intercedes with forgiveness (I Jn 2:1).  And although we believe this with our intellect – the facts about Jesus, our advocate, and forgiveness – we often set them aside in practice and treat people as if their sin is in fact who they really are.  Remember, guilt is I have done something wrong, shame is I am something wrong.

In our speech with one another, have we fallen into the trap of shame-based accusation?  In our Bible teaching, do we lecture folks as if they are something wrong rather than having done something wrong?  If you think about it, there is a lot of Bible teaching today that is shame-based.  And it starts with the use of the word “sinners” applied to believers.  The use of that word skips over the biblical idea that we are guilty because we have done something wrong and goes straight to the unbiblical position that you are guilty because you are something wrong.  You sin because sinner is who you are.  This is not the message of the New Testament.  This is not the truth of Scripture.

Did you know that nowhere in the New Testament are believers referred to as “sinners”?  Think about the verses you know that use that term.  One of the most famous is, “But God demonstrates His own love toward us, in that while we were yet sinners (a reference to life before Christ), Christ died for us” (Rom 5:8).  And so it goes throughout the New Testament.

The only place that even comes close to calling us sinners is I Timothy chapter one.  Here the apostle Paul writes “It is a trustworthy statement, deserving full acceptance, that Christ Jesus came into the world to save sinners (again a reference to the lost), among whom I am foremost of all” (I Tim 1:15).  The present tense “I am” is often interpreted to suggest that Paul currently sees himself as “foremost of sinners”.

But when we read and understand the context, this is clearly not the case.  Paul is saying that Jesus Christ came into the world to save sinners; of which I, Paul, am exhibit A.  I was the worst.  Just a few verses above, Paul introduced this passage with a summary of why he considered himself exhibit A.  “I was formerly a blasphemer and a persecutor and a violent aggressor” (I Tim 1:13).  Notice the use of the word “formerly”.  Paul’s chief of sinners reference is a reference to his past, not his present condition.  Paul is essentially saying that because this is what Christ does – rescue sinners – he did it for even me, the worst on the list.  And not only did he rescue me, but He went so far as to now place me, a former #1 sinner, into service (I Tim 1:12).  (See this Chief of Sinners post for a more thorough verse-by-verse interpretation.)

Please, please, please hear me on this.  This is gospel truth.  You are not a sinner in the biblical use of the word.  You are a saint.  Do believers sin?  Yes, we do.  We still struggle with our enemies of the world, the flesh, and the devil.  And when we sin, we are truly guilty.  But the New Testament makes a clear and very important distinction between guilt and identity.  Our guilt has been taken care of at the cross, and our identity is that sin is no longer our default mode.  Sin does not define who we are.  Sinner is not our identity.  We are the children of God with the seed of God living inside (I Jn 3:9).  And God’s seed – this is who you are – are not identified in this way.

An example of how important this guilt vs shame distinction is can be seen in our parenting experience.  When we discipline our children, we want to make clear that they have done something wrong.  We want to clearly explain what they are guilty of.  But we also go to great pains to help our children understand that this mistake is not their identity.  We never want to imply, “You are something wrong”.  If we do, it places our child in a “condemned” status that is unhealthy and can be difficult to repair.  And the same thing happens to believers that are constantly told they are something wrong.

Not only is it wrong and demeaning to say to a child “You are something wrong”, but we also know that children live into the expectations we put on them.  And the Christian life is the same.  As we grow in the path of sanctification, we can choose to live into the righteous expectations that the New Testament describes as our true identity.  And we can learn to reject and not live into the sinner description that is often held over our heads.

I think that this is one of the reasons why so many folks are disillusioned with the Christian church’s message.  I am not sure they would put it in these exact words.  But I have heard enough of their stories to conclude that they are tired of shame-based teaching.  They are tired of being told they are bad people.  They are tired of being told that the mistakes they make are the inevitable result of who they really are as sinners.  And the sad thing is that this tired message of shame is not the biblical view of who we are in Christ.  God’s intention is for us to walk in truth.

This shame emphasis is not only detrimental to believers, but casts a pall on our message to the outside world.  Who wants to sign up for a message of shame?  But shame is not what Christ offers.  Jesus Christ is calling out to a lost world with a beautiful offer of love, acceptance, and forgiveness.  Christ offers a life set free from guilt and shame and the overwhelming power of sin.  Does this mean we are watering down the message in any way?  No, we preach faith in Christ as the only way.  But it is a beautiful way, a hopeful path forward that calls the lost to repentance and freedom in Christ.