A Lesson In Humility - Proverbs 22:4

In the pride of his face the wicked does not seek him; all his thoughts are, “There is no God.”- Proverbs 22:4

    Humility gets a bad rap these days. Most people are convinced that a humble spirit indicates weakness and has no place in the pride of the American spirit. Let’s see now; how is that ‘pride’ working for us? “I will punish the world for its evil, and the wicked for their iniquity; I will put an end to the pomp of the arrogant, and lay low the pompous pride of the ruthless.” - Isaiah 13:11.
    Whether a celebrity, an athlete, or politician, leader, or any public figure, pride, like a raging flood, sweeps them away. I will not mention a single name here. I leave that to you to recall those in recent years who have stumbled greatly and fallen from the public grace. The names are too many. “Your glory, O Israel, is slain on your high places! How the mighty have fallen!” - 2 Samuel 1:19.
    Why is pride so dangerous compared to a humble heart? The answer lies in its base hubris. We do, in fact, think we are ‘all that.’ In doing so we often fail to read the signs laid out before us. We disdainfully overlook the facts that serve as warnings for our pomposity. We are caught over-reaching, overestimating, and over-emphasizing our place in the world. We do so when we overreact to perceived injustices or trespasses upon our imagined sovereignty.
    President Franklin Roosevelt once said, “Never underestimate a man who overestimates himself.” We would do well to adhere to this nugget of wisdom. “Therefore let anyone who thinks that he stands take heed lest he fall.” - 1 Corinthians 10:12.
    We see how damaging the self-inflation of undue pride can be but how is humility any better? There are three immediate advantages to humility in the human heart. First, adopting a humble spirit is to adopt a heart like Christ’s. “And being found in human form, he humbled himself by becoming obedient to the point of death, even death on a cross.” - Philippians 2:8.
Secondly, it is the foundation of peace among men. “Do nothing from selfish ambition or conceit, but in humility count others more significant than yourselves. Let each of you look not only to his own interests, but also to the interests of others.” - Philippians 2:3-4. And, thirdly, God has promised good things to those of humble spirit. “But he gives more grace. Therefore it says, ‘God opposes the proud but gives grace to the humble. Submit yourselves therefore to God.’. . . Humble yourselves before the Lord, and he will exalt you.”  - James 4:6, 10.
    In our efforts to adopt a spirit of Godly humility we are at odds with our innate human spirit. They are polar opposites. The things of God are higher than the things of man. And though we cannot sense it or see it, that doesn’t mean we cannot grasp for it. A man or woman blessed and imbued with God’s holy grace is only limited by their human frailty. To get beyond our weakness, we must engage in fervent prayer. No one dares suggest that taking on a humility that God loves and rewards is easy. If it was easy anyone could do it and we know that simply isn’t true. Prayer - Godly, reverent prayer, is the key to all of God’s gracious gifts. “And this is the confidence that we have toward him, that if we ask anything according to his will he hears us.” - 1 John 5:14.
    No matter what the world, the flesh, the devil or human pride suggests, there is a God and that God is the Creator and Sustainer of the universe. Let His hand be a helping guide to us in all seasons less it be a disciplining response to our pride-fed arrogance.

Guilty of One, Guilty Of All - James 2:10

   
 For whoever keeps the whole law and yet stumbles at just one point is guilty of breaking all of it.- James 2:10

    Probably the most oft-repeated objection to believing in God that I hear is the opinion that He is a deliberately cruel and harsh God if He insists that His definition of sin must be ours. Notice that the objection isn’t based on the supremacy of God’s moral position. You understand, after all, that He is God and we’re not? It is based upon our personal choices and attitudes toward what should or should not be a sin. We have decided against traditional Christian moral values in favor of our desires and predilections and chosen things long considered to be sinful, to be the new paradigm of right behavior. “Woe to those who call evil good and good evil, who put darkness for light and light for darkness, who put bitter for sweet and sweet for bitter.” - Isaiah 5:20.
    As we can see, this practice isn’t anything new. We’ve been doing this since time began. Those who adhere to this convoluted sense of ethics seldom refer to it as ‘morality’. I believe the reason they avoid the word is that they inherently know the things they think, say, and do are not moral by any stretch. So their immediate counter in nearly every confrontation is that no one has the right to tell them what is right and what is wrong. You’ve heard it yourself: “What’s right for you may not be what’s right for me.” The attitude has long been the subject of judgment calls. “In those days Israel had no king; everyone did as they saw fit.” - Judges 21:25. You can see how this could quickly lead to ill-advised thinking and behavior. Shame has forever been as crucial a warning sign in our lives as has been pain. They are both words describing a feeling that something is wrong. Shame comes from an emotionally sick and damaged heart; pain comes from a physically sick or damaged body. Both should be heeded to prevent further harm.
    “It’s not that we shouldn’t have a somewhat stable standard for moral behavior,” they say; “but it must be a ‘floating standard,’ rather than one that is rigidly defined and maintained. It must be a standard that can ‘evolve’ with circumstances.” That is not God’s plan. “You are to have the same law for the foreigner and the native-born. I am the Lord your God.’” - Leviticus 24:22. While this particular passage was directed more toward unequally apportioned justice, it serves well to show the law should be recognized the same way by everyone. What is right for me IS right for you; the inverse is true as well.
    How many times have we heard the adage - “If it’s right, it’s right even if no one does it and if it’s wrong, it’s wrong even if everyone does it.” We just can’t have conflicting ideas about right and wrong when we have a clear-cut and long time set of moral values that are so easily identifiable. Even if your sin has become the “in-sin” for the times and the culture, it is still sin! Popular culture is the last thing we want to rely upon to represent the moral compass of our lives! By God’s standard, if it wasn’t acceptable behavior yesterday, it isn’t acceptable behavior today, and it will not be acceptable behavior tomorrow. God’s laws are as unchanging as He is - “The grass withers, the flower fades, but the word of our God will stand forever.” - Isaiah 40:8.
    When a rare occasion takes place and the idea of a defined standard for behavior is recognized, the excuse for sinning then is deftly deflected as an acceptable gaffe. “It was only once. It’s my only weakness. After all, I behave in every other way.” It the tired old excuse - “Basically, I’m a pretty good person.” But as the title passage states - even if we keep all the laws except for one, we are still guilty of breaking the law. Our sin is still with us and we are without excuse. This is why it is essential that we understand our thoughts, words, and works can never help us gain salvation. All they have the power to do is further emphasize our guilt as sinners. And suggesting that God is somehow the villain in all this is not only sinful in its self but slavishly evil. Mankind’s evil is the antithesis of God’s holiness. And we dare to opine that we can determine for ourselves what is sin and what is not?
    The only way to maintain such an erroneous belief is to deny the sovereignty of God, His Word, and His very being. This is the very essence of the “unforgivable sin,” the calloused and shameless failure to repent of our sins. Rest assured; this is not the position we want to be in on Judgment Day. “For we must all appear before the judgment seat of Christ, so that each one may receive what is due for what he has done in the body, whether good or evil.” - 2 Corinthians 5:10. What each of us believes will be what each of us receives.

Tetelestai: It Is Finished - John 19:30

  
When Jesus had received the sour wine, he said, “It is finished,” and he bowed his head and gave up his spirit. - John 19:30

    Whenever I hear talk of good works leading to salvation I cannot help but recall the final words of Jesus on the cross. When He said, “It is finished,” He was referring to all the work that He had come to do in the name of God. He was talking about fulfilling all the Old Testament prophecies about Himself. He was talking about conquering sin and death itself! “For if, because of one man's trespass, death reigned through that one man, much more will those who receive the abundance of grace and the free gift of righteousness reign in life through the one man Jesus Christ. Therefore, as one trespass led to condemnation for all men, so one act of righteousness leads to justification and life for all men. For as by the one man's disobedience the many were made sinners, so by the one man's obedience the many will be made righteous.” - Romans 5:17-19.
    Why do thoughts of good works bring me recollections of Jesus’ last words? Because with those words, ‘It is finished,’ or‘ consummatum est,’ in Latin, Christ revealed to us that, as Calvin states, “All of salvation is contained in Him.” The Genevan reformer went on to say that all other sacrifices are now moot, all that was necessary to be done has been done through Christ, and His death upon the cross gives the Christian ‘peace and tranquility of conscience. In other words; nothing else needs to be done to affect our eternal salvation except for us to put all our uncompromising faith in Christ. “Yet we know that a person is not justified by works of the law but through faith in Jesus Christ, so we also have believed in Christ Jesus, in order to be justified by faith in Christ and not by works of the law, because by works of the law no one will be justified.” - Galatians 2:16.
    It is finished! We need to add nothing to the sacrificial and atoning death of Christ Jesus. Nothing. No weekly tithing, no good works, no draconian fasts or personal sacrifices, and no bizarre syncretic rituals, nothing. Jesus has done it all and it is finished. Now are tithing and good works sinful in this respect? No, they are marks of a Christian’s faith, the fruit of true saving faith, but not the cause of that faith. “But someone will say, ‘You have faith and I have works.’ Show me your faith apart from your works, and I will show you my faith by my works.” - James 2:18.
    In a real sense, Christ’s death upon the cross is the greatest gift God has ever bestowed upon us. It is the primary reason Jesus came into the world as a man; to save mankind from its sins. “She will bear a son, and you shall call his name Jesus, for he will save his people from their sins.” - Matthew 1:21.
    Scripture is constantly referring to sin as death. Mortality was not part of God’s original plan for mankind in the sense that had Adam and Eve not sinned in the Garden of Eden, they would have lived forever. The original Covenant of Works was not something that mankind was able to adhere to. Adam failed and in so doing cursed his progeny for all time. Works righteousness has never been a human strength, so someone had to fulfill God’s plan for obedience to His decrees. It was Jesus Who did so. “And being found in human form, he humbled himself by becoming obedient to the point of death, even death on a cross.” - Philippians 2:8. Christ did it, for all of us and because He did we now have our salvation assured through Him and not through any good works of our own.
    It is the human inability to wrap our heads around this theological doctrine that frustrates us. We feel that somehow we must be able to affect our eternal salvation. We cannot. There seems as though there is something we must be able to do. There isn’t. Only Jesus could do it upon completing His task on earth and fulfilling all the prophecies concerning Him. We must learn to trust the word of God Himself; when He says “it is finished,” it is truly finished. Celebrate it! Through Jesus Christ alone -  it is finished.

This Is Real Love - Mark 10:21-22

And Jesus, looking at him, loved him, and said to him, “You lack one thing: go, sell all that you have and give to the poor, and you will have treasure in heaven; and come, follow me.” Disheartened by the saying, he went away sorrowful, for he had great possessions. - Mark 10:21-22

    The account of the young ruler illustrates one of the most common contemporary problems of coming to Christ in the modern world. As we recall, the young man, who was very wealthy by all accounts, asked Jesus what he must do to gain eternal life. Jesus responded - “You know the commandments: ‘Do not murder, Do not commit adultery, Do not steal, Do not bear false witness, Do not defraud, Honor your father and mother.’” - Mark 10:19. Clearly, Christ was referring to keeping the Ten Commandments because this young man asked Him ‘what must I do?’ The erroneous idea that we can somehow ‘work or way’ into heaven has been with us even from time before Jesus. It is indeed the basis for every religion other than Christianity. So He put the ball in the young man’s court. As expected, the young man told Christ that he had kept all the Commandments since his youth. The young man may have been most civil in his dealings with others; however, we know that to follow all the Commandments to the letter of the law is impossible. No one is able to keep the whole law. “For whoever keeps the whole law but fails in one point has become guilty of all of it.” - James 2:10.  Jesus knew it as well. Expecting this response, Jesus then lowered the boom as we read in our title passage.
    This was an extraordinary command, even from Jesus, as far as the young man was concerned. “I have followed every rule,” he thought, “and still it is not enough? Well, I’ll not give away all to follow Him.” He was so distressed by Christ’s words that he simply turned in his consternation and walked away. Many of us believe we’re ‘basically good human beings’ and that God will grade us on a curve. Here’s the bad news: we aren’t and He won’t!   
    Still, today many ask the question, “Why did Jesus answer the man this way, knowing that he would never be able to comply with the command to simply give everything away and follow Him.” To paraphrase it another way, many today question the command with the same disheartened attitude. Some even with a bitter and calcified arrogance. “Why should I give up everything I’ve achieved and obtained to follow Christ.?” The answer to that question if rife within the Holy Scripture but I will reference just one. “For what does it profit a man to gain the whole world and forfeit his soul?” - Mark 8:36. We are, after all, talking about trading off a worldly disposition for one of eternal significance.
    So why did Jesus respond to the young ruler’s question the way He did? Love. Which of us would calmly sit by as someone we loved was going to deliberately place his or her hand into a fire? Who would stand back and watch as someone we loved runs into a bustling traffic-jammed roadway? Which of us would dispassionately sit by while our loved one chose a lifestyle of chemical addiction and not say a word?
    When our approach is stern or heavy-handed, it is not because we are hateful or are being malicious; it is because love demands we take a strident and solid stand. Love simply doesn’t encourage or advocate for wrong or dangerous behavior. Love is intolerant of accepting a loved one’s unsound and spurious behavior. Love demands we speak out against error in such thinking and action.  Just as Jesus gave the young man an ultimatum, love demands we do the same for anyone perilously close to perdition.
    We can just as easily overlook or ignore the mistakes and deliberate errors of someone we care for. And some of them would prefer that we did. “Stay out of my road,” they will say. But love, true and effectual Christian love, challenges us to step into that roadway and speak the truth that they do not want to hear. “Give away all the worldliness that is in your heart, turn to Jesus, and you will have treasure in heaven.” Speak these words boldly for this is real love.