07/26/22

Doing My Utmost for Surrender and Sanctification

A pastor of the church I attended preached a sermon many years ago on Romans 12:1-2 and he started off by asking a question: “Do you know what the problem with living sacrifices is?” He answered his question with: “They are always trying to crawl off the altar.” I don’t recall the sermon he preached, but I have always remembered the wisdom of these words; particularly as they apply to surrender in 12 Step recovery.

In a previous article in this series, “Surrender and Sanctification Along the Romans Road,” I reflected on how Romans 12:1 (I appeal to you therefore, brothers, by the mercies of God, to present your bodies as a living sacrifice, holy and acceptable to God, which is your spiritual worship) applied to recovery. Here we will pick up the discussion by continuing with Romans 12:2.

Do not be conformed to this world, but be transformed by the renewal of your mind, that by testing you may discern what is the will of God, what is good and acceptable and perfect.

What is this living sacrifice supposed to look like? What form does this spiritual worship, this devotion to God take? There are three things to see in how 12:2 responds to these questions. First, the command is set in the negative. Paul is realistic in recognizing the continued presence of sin in the life of believers. In his commentary on the book of Romans, John Murray said that eight of the Ten Commandments were negative because of sin; and that the first evidence of Christian faith is when we turn from sin. We might add that the living sacrifice of progressive sanctification is a persistent struggle against our sin nature, which repeatedly attempts to crawl off of the altar upon which it was sacrificed. “Sanctification is a process of revolutionary change in that which is the centre of consciousness . . . It is the thought of progression and strikes at the stagnation, complacency, pride of achievement so often characterizing Christians.”

The second thing is the term for ‘world’ here–aiōn, means a unit of time within a particular stage of history. In this sense, it should be understood as a contrast between the present age and the age to come. “This age,” its wisdom and its rulers, will pass away (1Co. 2:6). Its wisdom is foolishness before God (1Co. 1:20; 3:18-19). The age to come is the time of the resurrection at Christ’s return, when he will rule over all things; those who are raised in Christ will be equal to the angels and will never die (Matt. 12:32; Eph. 1:21; Luke 20:34-36).

Murray is helpful in his observation that this age is temporal and transient. “Conformity to this age is to be wrapped up in the things that are temporal, to have all our thought oriented to that which is seen and temporal.” The age to come is eternal. So, Paul gives us a warning here, do not be conformed to the things of this world.

Thirdly, there is a contrast between being conformed to this world/age and being transformed by the renewal of our mind. To fully appreciate what Paul is saying here, we need to look at some of his vocabulary in the original Greek. The term rendered ‘conformed’ is used only one other time in the NT (in 1 Peter. 1:14) and has the sense being conformed to a pattern or mold. The term ‘transformed’ means to metamorphose or change the essential nature of something. Again, the term for renewal is rarely used, found only one other time in the NT, in Titus 3:5.

Paul is attempting to communicate the radical change brought about by this living sacrifice. It is not a conformity or alignment with the Logos, the inherent Reason or “god” of the universe as with Stoic philosophy. We are not to accommodate the things of this world; not even the general revelation of God in creation (Romans 1:19). There is to be a metamorphosis of our essential nature into the image of Christ by the renewal of our minds; a transformation only possible through the action of the Holy Spirit (2 Corinthians 3:18).

The radical transformation required in the life of an addict or alcoholic is often one of the biggest stumbling blocks to their ability to establish and then maintain lifelong abstinence. The things of this ‘age’ include wine with dinner; beer and football games; parties and pot. Separation from the People Places and Things of this addictive age can mean losing a life-long friendship; never going to another rock concert; foregoing a raucous ‘pub crawl’ with friends to celebrate turning twenty-one. It can mean giving up a lucrative career as a nurse anesthetist because you have easy access to your drugs of choice. It can mean separation, and even divorce, from a life-long partner who refuses to give up their own drinking or drug use and follow you into an abstinent-based lifestyle.

It requires changes to the essential nature of how you live your life and look at the world around you.

In the exhortation to be transformed by the renewal of our mind, we see a further application of Romans 6:17, where Paul said that we were to become obedient from the heart to the standard of teaching to which we are committed. Faith without works is dead (James 2:26) was a favorite saying of Bill W. There is a necessary correspondence between what we do and what we believe. The faith we have in Christ is inexorably related to the metamorphosis of our will and lives into the will of God. The preceptive will of God for us, found in God’s law, should be progressively evident in our lives. This is also called progressive sanctification.

Inevitably in our lives, the question arises about which potential option before us is God’s will? Guidelines for many such decisions are clearly indicated in Scripture. Regardless of the allure of another person, do not commit adultery. Despite the enormity of the hurt done to us by another, do not murder. But many others are less readily discernible.

Do I marry this person or not? Do I accept this job or not? Do I comply with seemingly unethical directions from my boss? If God has a good, acceptable, perfect plan for my life, what is it here and now in this immediate situation? What do I decide? How do I respond? Am I reading the situation correctly?

Paul’s answer is to ‘test’ your choice. Make a decision and give it a trial run; formulate a hypothesis and see if your ‘experiment’ confirms or rejects the hypothesis. The testing process will determine if a certain decision is genuinely God’s will. We learn by experience what the will of God is; and in the process of testing, confirm the goodness and perfection of that will.

In the AA Grapevine article, “A Life Without Problems,” a man with twenty-three years of abstinence from alcohol remarked at a meeting that by turning his will and life over to the care of God, he had no problems that day. He readily admitted that hadn’t always been true, having “four marriages, three divorces, nine jobs, fourteen addresses (across four different states), dozens of home groups, and a countless number of meetings” in his twenty-three years since joining A.A. Even into double-digit years of sobriety he clung to his problems, making them his identity. He resisted anyone who might offer a solution and fought “to stay in my comfortable zone of unhappy competence that I had established with my problems.”

After the meeting, he was asked how he did it. The answer he gave was that the Third Step swept them away. “I turned my will and my life over to the care of God, as I understand him (or don’t understand him, her, it or them). Now I have only one task, laid out in AA’s Eleventh Step: ‘praying only for knowledge of His will for us and the power to carry that out.’” Even if there was only “the Random God of the Cosmic Dice Game,” that “god” would get better results than what he had achieved through self-will.

Quoting the closing words to Bill Wilson’s Step Three essay in Twelve Steps and Twelve Traditions, he said that to turn your will and life over to the care of God, “we can pause, ask for quiet, and in the stillness simply say [the Serenity Prayer], ‘God grant me the serenity to accept the things I cannot change, courage to change the things I can, and wisdom to know the difference.’” In this moment, regardless of what happened before or what may happen tomorrow, what is the very best thing you can possibly do right now? Either do God’s will forcefully or be willing to be proved wrong–even if it means experiencing temporarily painful consequences. “Do what you think is God’s will at each particular moment, and you will have no problems. At least, that’s the best I can explain it today.”

Although you don’t see this mentioned in A.A. approved literature, AAs and its founders read the Oswald Chambers devotional My Utmost for His Highest in the early pre-Big Book years. Early Akron A.A. meetings opened with prayer and a reading from the Bible or a devotional such as My Utmost for His Highest. Dr. Bob, his wife Anne, Bill W. and his wife Lois used it. Chambers regularly returned to the topic of surrender and being a living sacrifice in his devotional comments. Here are a few selections.

It is of no value to God to give Him your life for death. He wants you to be a “living sacrifice,” to let Him have all your powers that have been saved and sanctified through Jesus. This is the thing that is acceptable to God. (January 8^th)

The natural must be turned into the spiritual by sacrifice, otherwise a tremendous divorce will be produced in the natural life . . . The only way we can offer a spiritual sacrifice to God is by presenting our bodies a living sacrifice. (December 10^th)

Surrender is not the surrender of the external life, but of the Will; when that is done, all is done. There are very few crises in life; the great crisis is the surrender of the will. God never crushes a man’s will into surrender, He never beseeches him, He waits until the man yields up his will to Him. That battle never needs to be re-fought. (September 13^th)

Notice the parallel themes to the following exhortation by Bill W. in his final words to chapter eleven of the Big Book, “A Vision for You”: “Abandon yourself to God as You understand God. Admit your faults to Him and to your fellows. Clear away the wreckage of your past. Give freely of what you find and join us.”

If you’re interested, more articles from this series can be found under the link for “The Romans Road of Recovery.” “A Common Spiritual Path” (01) and “The Romans Road of Recovery” (02) will introduce this series of articles. If you began by reading one that came from the middle or the end of the series, try reading them before reading others. Follow the numerical listing of the articles (i.e., 01, 02, or 1st, 2nd, etc.), if you want to read them in the order they were originally intended. This article is the 15th in the series. Enjoy.

11/27/18

I Must Have Another Drink!

If we suppress the “fundamental idea of God” that lies within us, then God gives us up to the lusts of our heart. There is war between the flesh and the spirit; we don’t do what we want to do; our lives become unmanageable. We are powerless over sin—and if that powerlessness involves mind-altering substances, alcohol or drugs becomes our god. As Paul quotes in a flurry of verses beginning at Romans 3:10: “as it is written: None is righteous, no, not one; no one understands; no one seeks for God. All have turned aside; together they have become worthless; no one does good, not even one. “All have sinned and fallen short of the glory of God.” (Romans 3:23)

Although we are powerless over sin, God has provided a way out through faith in Jesus Christ. And this righteousness is available for all who believe. In his commentary on Romans, John Murray said: “There is no discrimination among believers—the righteousness of God comes upon them all without distinction.” The Old Testament itself (the Law and the Prophets) bears witness to this. In fact, it can be shown that God had this plan for salvation in mind even before the sin of Adam and Eve.

But now the righteousness of God has been manifested apart from the law, although the Law and the Prophets bear witness to it— the righteousness of God through faith in Jesus Christ for all who believe. For there is no distinction: for all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God, and are justified by his grace as a gift, through the redemption that is in Christ Jesus, . . . (Romans 3:21-24)

The root meaning of the Greek word for redemption is to deliver by paying a price. So our deliverance from sin through Jesus Christ is more like a ransom than liberation. We were bought at a price and not simply liberated from the concentration camp of sin and death. So there is a contrast here between the freely given gift of grace and the costliness of the ransom paid by Christ to release us.

Not only have all sinned and fallen short of the glory of God, but all are justified by grace, free of charge, through the redemption in Christ Jesus. “By his grace as a gift” emphasizes the unmerited nature of God’s justification and is the solution to the conclusion of verse 3:20, namely that “by works of the law no human being will be justified.” Nothing we do, not even what we possess as creatures made in His image, can predispose God to cause us to be free from sin and in right relationship with Him. Yet He gives it freely as a gift.

. . . whom God put forward as a propitiation by his blood, to be received by faith. This was to show God’s righteousness, because in his divine forbearance he had passed over former sins. It was to show his righteousness at the present time, so that he might be just and the justifier of the one who has faith in Jesus. (Romans 3:25-26)

Here the gospel and mere recovery take different paths, because of the significance of Christ for salvation. Both the gospel and recovery can acknowledge the powerlessness we have over sin (addiction), but Paul asserts that our release from sin was at the cost of Jesus’ death as an atoning sacrifice. In mere recovery there is no redeeming sacrifice; no ransom paid for the release from addiction. Faith in God to deliver from addiction leads to a liberation from addiction, but not to the redemption that is in Christ Jesus.

This idea of a costly ransom is further asserted in referring to Christ Jesus as a propitiation in verse 25. The Greek word used here is only found one other time in Scripture, in Hebrews 9:5 where it refers to the mercy seat, the covering over the Ark of the Covenant. On the Day of Atonement, Yom Kippur in modern Jewish worship, the high priest would enter into the Holy of Holies and sprinkle the mercy seat with the blood of a sacrifice to make atonement for the sins of all the people (Leviticus 16). The sprinkling of blood over the mantle of the homes of the Israelites was also done so that the angel of death would “pass over” their homes as it brought judgment to Egypt (Ex. 12:1-20). The Passover meal celebrates this deliverance.

So Paul is presenting Jesus Christ as the redeeming sacrifice that takes away the sins of all who believe in him. Our sins are atoned for because of the blood of his sacrifice.

Paul has been unpacking several phrases in these last few verses; and he does so again in verse 3:26. The righteousness of God in verse 21 is noted to be the righteousness of God through faith in Jesus Christ in verse 22. The redemption (ransom) in Christ Jesus noted in verse 24 was specified to be a result of our willingness to believe that he was the true expiatory sacrifice (verse 25). Not only was this to show the righteousness of God because He passed over our former sins (verse 25), but that God did so at this present time, in Christ Jesus (verse 26), because there was no other way. In Jesus Christ alone do we receive forgiveness of our sins and justification from God. Jesus himself was not only righteous, but also the one who declares that all who have faith in him are righteous themselves.

Notice the similarity between the powerlessness over sin noted above and how Bill W. described the powerlessness over alcoholism faced by the alcoholic in the “Step One” essay of Twelve Steps and Twelve Traditions: “Every natural instinct cries out against the idea of personal powerlessness. It is truly awful to admit that . . . we have warped our minds into such an obsession [for destructive drinking] that only an act of Providence can remove it from us.”

In Twelve Step recovery there is a saying that once you are powerless over addiction, continued drug and alcohol use will ultimately lead to jail, institutions, or death. There is no hope for an addict or alcoholic who remains in an active addiction. Ultimately, they will die in their addiction. Some sociologists even liken addiction to indirect suicide. But sometimes, the suicidal impulse is more direct. Here is a quote from “An Inner Truth,” from the AA Grapevine:

One night, I decided that I couldn’t live with alcohol anymore–but I couldn’t live without it. So, I devised a fail-proof plan to take my life. I took a vacuum hose and connected it to the exhaust of my truck, taped and sealed the windows, started the truck, finished my fifth (I wouldn’t want to leave any behind), and prepared to die. I awakened the next morning in my truck, very sick, with an empty fifth, and very much alive. I looked at the gas gauge and there was still a quarter tank of gas left. The key was in the “on” position and the fail-proof plan had failed. The truck died during the night, and I didn’t. Somehow, a few months later, I ended up at an AA meeting sitting across the table from a man who had attempted suicide with a shotgun and blown his face off. He looked across the table at me and said, “Welcome,” and then, “Boy, you look like crap.” Coming from a man without a nose and a lot of facial damage, this statement stuck in my mind.

Proverbs 23:29-35 captures the clear cycle of unmanageability in alcoholism. It explicitly describes the spiral of progressive sin in alcoholism:

Who has woe? Who has sorrow? Who has strife? Who has complaining? Who has wounds without cause? Who has redness of eyes? Those who tarry long over wine; those who go to try mixed wine. Do not look at wine when it is red, when it sparkles in the cup and goes down smoothly. In the end it bites like a serpent and stings like an adder. Your eyes will see strange things, and your heart utter perverse things. You will be like one who lies down in the midst of the sea, like one who lies on the top of a mast. They struck me, you will say, but I was not hurt; they beat me, but I did not feel it. When shall I awake? I must have another drink.

In My Utmost for His Highest (which was used by early members of A.A), Oswald Chambers noted there is something in human nature that laughs in the face of every ideal you have. “If you refuse to agree with the fact that there is vice and self-seeking, something downright spiteful and wrong in human beings, instead of reconciling yourself to it when it strikes your life, you will compromise with it and say it is of no use to battle against it.” So it’s not just that we do wrong things—that we sin, drink or use drugs—but that there is something in human nature that is opposed to our ideals.

There is something within us that seeks to resist the good we want to do. Sinful behavior is an expression of a sinful heart (cf. Mark. 7:20-23; Proverbs. 4:23; 23:7). John Calvin said in The Institutes of the Christian Religion, “The human mind is, so to speak, a perpetual forge of idols.” We dare to imagine a god suited to our own understanding and substitute “vanity and an empty phantom” for the true God. The god whom we have thus conceived inwardly, we then attempt to embody outwardly.

Oswald Chambers said if we repeatedly run after self-serving desires, eventually they become our gods. For the addict and the alcoholic, their drugged state becomes their god. Sin in this sense is wrong being, not wrong doing. It is deliberate, emphatic independence of God:

The revelation of the Bible is not that Jesus Christ took upon Himself our fleshly sins, but that He took upon Himself the heredity of sin which no man can touch. God made His own Son to be sin that He might make the sinner a saint. All through the Bible it is revealed that Our Lord bore the sin of the world by identification, not by sympathy. He deliberately took upon His own shoulders, and bore in His own Person, the whole massed sin of the human race—“He hath made Him to be sin for us, who knew no sin,” and by so doing He put the whole human race on the basis of Redemption. Jesus Christ rehabilitated the human race; He put it back to where God designed it to be, and anyone can enter into union with God on the ground of what Our Lord has done on the Cross.

Remember that in his divine forbearance, God passes over our former sins—even those we don’t remember doing while in a blackout. This shows His righteousness, for He is the justifier of those who have faith in Jesus (Romans 3:25-26).

If you’re interested, more articles from this series can be found under the link for “The Romans Road of Recovery.” “A Common Spiritual Path” (01) and “The Romans Road of Recovery” (02) will introduce this series of articles. If you began by reading one that came from the middle or the end of the series, try reading them before reading others. Follow the numerical listing of the articles (i.e., 01, 02, etc.), if you want to read them in the order they were originally intended. This article is (06) in the series. Enjoy.

12/27/16

Exceptional in Ordinary Things

When reading a devotional based upon the writings of Puritan authors, I was struck by a quote attributed to the Puritan minister, Edmund Calamy. I then discovered the quoted work, Evidence for Heaven, was actually written in 1657 by an anonymous ‘gentlewoman’ woman in his congregation. She was anonymous by request. But her work received the unreserved endorsement of Calamy, who said: “I hope no man will condemn this Book, because written by a Woman but rather admire the goodnesse, love, and power of God, who is able to do such great things, by such weak instruments.” Although it sounds sexist to a modern reader some 360 years after it was written, nevertheless, Calamy thought enough about this work to see that it was published.

This piqued my interest in Evidence for Heaven, so I wrote several articles reflecting what the anonymous author had said in it. Then I stumbled across another female Puritan author, Sarah Fiske. Her only literary work, A Confession of Faith: Or, a Summary of Divinity, was originally a confession of her faith, which she submitted upon her admission into full membership of the Church of Braintree, Massachusetts. A Confession was published posthumously, twelve years after her death on December 2, 1692.

Wendy Martin and Sharone Williams noted in The Routledge Introduction to American Women Writers that most spiritual autobiographies were intended only for the edification of a small group, such as a family or church community. The faithful were expected to be able to demonstrate their awareness of the basics of orthodox belief; and occasionally those texts were published in the hopes of both drawing readers to booksellers, and converts to Christ. A small number of these accounts were written by women. Forbidden to speak or teach in most churches of the time, mothers were considered the first instructors of their children in the faith, particularly in Puritan communities, according to Martin and Williams.

The ability to articulate principles of faith and to relate personal spiritual experiences was thus paradoxically entwined with motherhood, the most sacred of feminine responsibilities. Within a fairly rigid set of boundaries, then, both privately circulated and published religious writing was an arena in which seventh-century women were able to find their voices.

Reflecting on her Confession within the context of the time and culture she lived in, I see also how Sarah’s life speaks loudly about how we all are truly instruments in the hand of a Redeemer God who truly cares for us and guides us.

Sarah Symmes was born in 1652 to a respected justice of the peace in Charleston Massachusetts, William Symmes. Her mother, who was also named Sarah, died when baby Sarah was only a year old. Given the death of her mother when Sarah was one, perhaps she was an only child. Her grandfather, Zachariah Symmes, was a noted New England minister. At the age of nineteen she married the Harvard graduate, Moses Fiske. Remember this was Harvard of 1672, not 2016. Moses was himself the son of a clergyman who immigrated to the colonies from Suffolk, England. He was ten years older than Sarah. They had fourteen children together; only eight of which survived childhood. Three of her daughters married ministers and one son was himself a minister.

Sarah’s death at the age of 40 came at the end of a year that saw her give birth to two children: Ruth who lived about two and a half months (March 24, 1692 to June 6, 1692); and Edward, who only lived five days (October 20, 1692 to October 25, 1692). Moses remarried in January of 1701. He was the minister of the church at Braintree from 1672 until the time of his death in August of 1708. He was succeeded in the ministry at the church in Braintree, now known as Quincy, by the Reverend Joseph Marsh, who married Anne, the daughter of Moses and Sarah. This information appeared in The Symmes Memorial a Biograqphical Sketch of Rev. Zechariah Symmes, by J.A. Vinton.

When Sarah became a full member of her husband’s church and submitted what would become known as A Confession of Faith, she was a 25 year-old mother of two girls, Mary, aged 4 and Sarah aged 3. She had lost a third daughter, Martha at 3 days of age two years before. And she was either pregnant or caring for the newborn Anna, who would die at 10 months of age in June of 1678. The Encyclopedia of American Literature said A Confession moved logically and steadily though theological subjects not considered to be typical or even appropriate for a 17^th century woman’s spiritual biography. Her command of language, grammar and style suggested: “She received a solid education despite the rural environment, modest circumstances, and gender.”

Benjamin Elliot, who published Fiske’s A Confession, thought it would be helpful to children and young ones who could “gather the Fragrant Flowers of Divine Knowledge” of the main articles of their creed discussed therein. What seems to have been missed is how Elliot saw the echoes the Westminster Confession of Faith and its Larger and Shorter Catechisms in Sarah’s Confession. These would have been the Creed and Catechisms that she likely affirmed in her church membership; and seems to have studied before writing her personal Confession. The parallels affirm and do not detract from the above comment on her solid education. Here are a few examples. Sarah’s opening article is:

I Believe, That the Holy Scriptures, the Books of the Old & the New Testament, Penned by the Prophets & Apostles, are the Infallible Word of God, the Subject of true Divinity; That only Rule of Faith & Manners, teaching what man ought to Believe concerning God, and what Duty God requires of man.

The Westminster Confession of Faith affirms that the Old and New Testaments are the infallible truth and Word of God. Question 5 of the Larger Catechism asks what the Scriptures principally teach; then answers: “The scriptures principally teach, what man is to believe concerning God, and what duty God requires of man.”

Sarah affirms that God is pure, powerful, eternal, unchangeable being. He is independent, incomprehensible, invisible. The Westminster Confession and Larger Catechism agree that God is eternal, all-sufficient, unchangeable, incomprehensible, invisible. They affirm with Sarah that there is but one God in three Persons in the Godhead: Father, Son and Holy Ghost.

Sarah said she believed the decrees of God were His determinate purpose in all things, according to the counsel of His will. And God executes his decrees in the works of creation and providence. The Larger Catechism said God’s decrees are “the free and holy acts of the counsel of his will, whereby, he hath, for his own glory, unchangeably foreordained whatsoever comes to pass in time.” And he executes his decrees “in the works of creation and providence.” The parallels move on through Jesus Christ as Redeemer, union with Christ, faith, repentance, justification, adoption, sanctification, saving faith, baptism, communion and more.

Sarah’s life was unremarkable within the context of her time. Possibly raised as an only child, she was thoroughly educated in the teaching of “the Fragrant Flowers of Divine Knowledge” of the Westminster Confession of Faith and its Catechisms, the creeds of her faith. She was married at the age of nineteen to a popular minister, who would serve his congregation over 30 years. She had a clear talent as a writer, ably communicating the faith she had been taught and believed in with her whole heart. Along with her husband, Moses, she seems to have passed that faith on to her children.

As a twenty something mother of three girls under the age of 4, she was able to put together a coherent, logical expression of her faith—without computers to record and edit her thoughts or DVDs to distract her young daughters as she tried to write. Too soon, she died at the age of 40. This happened within three months of what seems to have been the premature birth of her 14^th child. No information is available on the cause of her death, but we can speculate that fourteen births in seventeen years was a contributing factor to whatever health’s problems led to her death. Yet in the midst of being a pastor’s wife and mother to eight children, she was able to write a Confession of her faith so clear and concise, that a publisher would print it twelve years after her death.

A Confession of Faith: Or, a Summary of Divinity may be an illustration of orthodoxy and radicalism in women’s religious writings of the 17^th century, as Martin and Williams state. But I think it is a more powerful example of how God inhabits the ordinary lives of believers. Sarah Fiske’s life was an example of being exceptional in ordinary things. Oswald Chambers said the following in his classic devotional, My Utmost for His Highest:

We do not need the grace of God to stand crises, human nature and pride are sufficient, we can face the strain magnificently; but it does require the supernatural grace of God to live twenty-four hours in every day as a saint, to go through drudgery as a disciple, to live an ordinary, unobserved, ignored existence as a disciple of Jesus. It is inbred in us that we have to do exceptional things for God; but we have not. We have to be exceptional in the ordinary things, to be holy in mean streets, among mean people, and this is not learned in five minutes.

08/16/16

Gaining in Humility

Matthew 5:38-40 in the Sermon on the Mount addresses the very human impulse to get even when someone does harm to you. Jesus succinctly says here, “Don’t do it!” The initial phrase, “an eye for an eye”, has become a justification in our time for getting even with the person who has done something against us. There is an Old Testament principle of reciprocity behind the phrase. When judging injury done to another, if there is harm, pay life for life, eye for eye, tooth for tooth, hand for hand (Exodus 21:23-25). There is a similar call in Leviticus 24:20 when someone injures their neighbor: whatever injury he has given a person shall be given to him.”

Sometimes called the “law of retribution” or lex talionis, this was a legal principle stating that punishment for wrongdoing should not exceed the crime. What’s more, as Exodus 21:22 indicated, judges and not the aggrieved person decided how to apply the principle in any specific case. Jesus clearly says: “Do not resist the one who is evil” (Matthew 5:39). It seems the message here is: “Don’t take the law into your own hands!”

In his commentary on Matthew, Leon Morris readily acknowledged how easily a desire for revenge rises up within us. “We have a natural tendency to retaliate when anyone harms us (or even when the harm is in our imagination!).” But Jesus challenges us to not seek to settle scores; to not hit back when someone hits us. This is again the message in 5:39: “To be the victim of some form of evil does not give us the right to hit back.” Even if someone were to legally deprive you of your tunic, don’t resist. Rather, give him your cloak as well.

Again there is an allusion to an Old Testament regulation in Exodus 22: 26-27 and Deuteronomy 24:12-13. If a neighbor’s cloak was taken in pledge for a loan, you should return it to him before evening, so he has something to sleep in. “A person had an inalienable right to his cloak; it could not be taken away from him permanently. Its voluntary surrender is thus significant.” Craig Blomberg said that in modern context, “coat” and “shirt” are parallels to “cloak” and “tunic” respectively. So the message is to go further than just giving up the shirt off your back.

As if this wasn’t enough, Jesus then said if you were forced to go one mile, go two. Here the reference is to the practice of “impressment,” which allowed a Roman soldier to conscript someone to carry his equipment or some other burden for one Roman mile. This was a legal and customary practice dating back to the time of the Persian government postal service. Both people and animals could be called upon without notice for temporary service. Again there is an echo of a modern saying, that of going the second or extra mile.

John Nolland noted in his commentary on Matthew how this practice could easily be abused by the Romans and resented by the Jews. “Hostility to Roman rule would make such impressment yet more distasteful.” Jesus said the proper response is generous and ungrudging compliance. It seems Jesus intensifies his point by giving a series of admonitions that could be rendered today as: Don’t take the law into your own hands! Don’t just give up the shirt off your back; give up your coat as well. Go beyond what is required of you; go that second mile.

One of the early daily meditation books used in Alcoholics Anonymous was the classic Christian devotional by Oswald Chambers, My Utmost for Your Highest. On July 14^th, Chambers reflected on this passage, saying the teaching of the Sermon on the Mount is not to do your duty. Rather it is do what is not your duty. Don’t insist on your rights. Be humble. “Never look for right in the other man, but never cease to be right yourself. We are always looking for justice; the teaching of the Sermon on the Mount is—Never look for justice, but never cease to give it.”

Here we touch on what Bill W. said was the number one offender, destroying more alcoholics than anything else—resentment. In each and every situation Jesus gave in Matthew 5:38-41, resentment for the injury, insult and injustice that occurred would be expected. Jesus is saying, “Don’t go there.” Oswald Chambers says: Don’t look for justice, but never stop giving it to others. In his essay on Step Four, Bill W. said we need to learn that something has to be done about our vengeful resentments, self-pity, and unwarranted pride.

We had to see that when we harbored grudges and planned revenge for such defeats, we were really beating ourselves with the club of anger we had intended to use on others. We learned that if we were seriously disturbed, our FIRST need was to quiet that disturbance, regardless of who or what we thought caused it. . . . Where other people were concerned, we had to drop the word “blame” from our speech and thought.

After the first two or three attempts, the way ahead begins to look easier. “For we had started to get perspective on ourselves, which is another way of saying that we were gaining in humility.”

This is part of a series of reflections dedicated to the memory of Audrey Conn, whose questions reminded me of my intention to look at the various ways the Sermon on the Mount applies to Alcoholics Anonymous and recovery. If you’re interested in more, look under the category link “Sermon on the Mount.”

04/10/15

The Discipline of Relationship

Oswald Chambers spent a good bit of his time in My Utmost for His Highest teaching and reflecting on the believer’s relationship with God. He said a personal relationship with Christ, not public usefulness, was the central element of concern in his teaching. The “whole strength” of his Bible Training College was that “here you are put into soak before God” (October 19th). So I’d like to look at some of the advice he had for maintaining and developing our relationship with God.

The first thing to recognize is how sin itself is a fundamental relationship. The Christian religion, Chambers said, bases everything on understanding sin as wrong being, not wrong doing. It is “deliberate and emphatic independence of God.” Other religions deal with sins; the Bible alone deals with sin. He noted that the first thing Christ faced in the individual was the heredity of sin. “And it is because we have ignored this in our presentation of the Gospel that the message of the gospel has lost its sting and its blasting power” (October 7th).

The lure of independence from God is as old as the Garden of Eden. Then it was desire to be “like God” in knowing good and evil. It was the gleam of this “fruit” from the tree in the midst of the garden that caught their eye and led Adam and Eve to disobey God. They saw and coveted the potential to be independent judges of the world around them. So they took and ate. The first thing they “knew” was that they were naked and afraid.

This knowledge, not their physical nakedness, was the reason for their fear. Before eating the fruit, they were “both naked and not ashamed” (Genesis 2:25). They realized that eating of the fruit independent of the command of God had altered both their very being and their relationship with God. Independence from God meant the loss of relationship with God. Created in the image of God, Adam and Eve could not but feel that kinship in the presence of God. But their rebellion changed them and altered their ability to experience that kinship. So now in the presence of God they were ashamed because they knew they were different and the former relationship with Him was gone.

The lost relationship was the reason God sent his Son. The death and resurrection of Christ “tore the veil” of separation with God. Chambers commented that the cross of Christ was a “superb triumph,” shaking the very foundations of hell. “There is nothing more certain in Time or Eternity than what Jesus Christ did on the Cross: He switched the whole of the human race back into a right relationship with God” (April 6th). The cross is the gateway into His life. “His Resurrection means that He has power now to convey His life to me. When I am born again from above, I receive from the risen Lord His very life.”

Oswald Chambers

When Our Lord rose from the dead, He rose to an absolutely new life, to a life He did not live before He was incarnate. He rose to a life that had never been before; and His resurrection means for us that we are raised to His risen life, not to our old life. One day we shall have a body like unto His glorious body, but we can know now the efficacy of His resurrection and walk in newness of life. “I would know Him in the power of His resurrection.” (April 8th)

In Christ, relationship is restored. Intimacy with God is again possible. The imagery in Psalm 131:2 uses a mother and child to describe this closeness: “I have calmed and quieted my soul, like a weaned child with its mother; like a weaned child is my soul within me.” Chambers said that a child’s consciousness is so “mother-haunted,” that even though the child is not thinking about its mother, when a calamity arises, the relationship it wants is with its mother. “So we are to live and move and have our being in God, to look at everything in relation to God, because the abiding consciousness of God pushes itself to the front all the time” (June 2nd).

So we must guard against allowing anything to injure our restored relationship with God. And if something does injure it, we have to take the time to make it right. “The main thing about Christianity is not the work we do, but the relationship we maintain.” This is all that God asks us to look after (August 4th). Because of what Christ did on the cross, “Nothing is easier than getting into a right relationship with God except when it is not God Whom you want but only what He gives” (April 27th).

The golden rule for our lives is to keep it open towards God. “The rush of other things always tends to obscure this concentration on God.” The outstanding characteristic of our life as a Christian should be an unveiled frankness before God, so that our life becomes a mirror for the life of others. Chambers cautioned to be aware of anything that could befoul that mirror. He said it would almost always be a good thing that wasn’t the best. We should never be hurried out of the relationship of abiding in Him. “The severest discipline of a Christian’s life is to learn how to keep ‘beholding as in a glass the glory of the Lord’” (January 23rd).

02/27/15

Surprised by My Utmost

Joe was an enthusiastic kind of guy. When he found something he liked, he wanted his friends to like it or try it. He’s the guy who convinced me to try rock climbing (Don’t Ever Give Up). So when he started talking about how great a devotional My Utmost for His Highest was, I took his endorsement with a grain of salt … at first. When other people who tried it started saying how much they liked it, I tried it. Oswald Chambers has been a regular part of my devotional life since then.

I still have my original copy. The binding split years ago, so I taped it with blue electric tape. It is full of notes, underlined and starred passages and a few coffee-stains. Inside is a crisp $2 bill from the Bank of Jamaica—a souvenir from a short-term missions trip to Jamaica—that I used for a bookmark. These days I’ve gone digital, with “OC” coming up daily when I open my Logos Bible software program as I drink my morning coffee. I’ve been posting selections from three different devotionals on my facebook page for a number of years now, but My Utmost always seems to be the one most quoted.

There is a short comment in my hardbound copy for the January 18th devotion, “began.” On that day I made a note summarizing what stood out to me, “be devoted to the Lord, not to service.” I had underlined the following paragraph:

Beware of anything that competes with loyalty to Jesus Christ. The greatest competitor of devotion to Jesus is service for Him. It is easier to serve than to be drunk to the dregs. The one aim of the call of God is the satisfaction of God, not a call to do something for Him. We are not sent to battle for God, but to be used by God in His battlings. Are we being more devoted to service than to Jesus Christ?

I can’t say I have always been more devoted to Christ than to service, but at least once each year Oswald asks me if I am. Actually, he does this repeatedly throughout the year. March 29th is one of those times. My page note said: “Be ready for the coming of our Lord more than to do service.” Within the devotional for that day, Chambers had said: “It is not service that matters, but intense spiritual reality, expecting Jesus Christ at every turn.”

August 30th didn’t have a page note, but I had starred and underlined this passage:

When once you are rightly related to God by salvation and sanctification, remember that wherever you are, you are put there by God; and by the reaction of your life on the circumstances around you, you will fulfill God’s purpose, as long as you keep in the light as God is in the light.

There’s more, but I’ll stop with the quotes here. Get a personal copy and see if what Joe told me so many years ago is true for you: “It’s as if day after day, Chambers is hitting me right between the eyes with something I needed to hear.”

Oswald Chambers was born in Aberdeen Scotland on July 24th, 1874 and he died on November 15th, 1917 at the age of 43. While at the University of Edinburgh, he felt called to the ministry and went to Dunoon College, a small theological training school near Glasgow. He traveled for a couple of years in 1906 and 1907, teaching for a semester in Cincinnati and working in Japan with Charles Cowan, a co-founder of the Oriental Missionary Society. While in America he met Gertrude Hobbs, who he married in May of 1910. “Biddy,” as Chambers called his wife, could take shorthand at 250 words per minute. It was this skill that eventually contributed to her transcribing and typing his sermons and lessons into written form after his death.

In 1911, Chambers founded the Bible Training College in London, where he taught until 1915, one year after the outbreak of World War I. He suspended the operation of the school and went to Zeitoun Egypt, where he was a YMCA chaplain to Australian and New Zealand troops. But the relatively short time at his school had a big impact. “Between 1911 and 1915, 106 resident students attended the Bible Training College, and by July 1915, forty were serving as missionaries.”

In Egypt, he decided to stop the usual concerts and movies provided by the YMCA for the troops as a social alternative to the brothels of Cairo. He gave Bible classes instead. Skeptics predicted an “exodus” of soldiers from the facilities, but his wooden-framed “hut” became packed with soldiers listening to messages like “What is the Good of Prayer?” When confronted by a soldier who said he couldn’t stand religious people, Chambers replied, “Neither can I.”

He was stricken with appendicitis on October 17th, 1917, but resisted going to a hospital. He was reluctant to take a bed that was needed for the troops being massed for a long-expected battle. His delayed treatment led to needing an emergency appendectomy on October 29th. He died on November 15th from a hemorrhage in his lungs. He was buried in Cairo with full military honors.

For the remainder of her life, Biddy Chambers transcribed and published books and articles from the notes she took during their time at the Bible College and while with the YMCA in Zeitoun. My Utmost for His Highest was first published in 1927. In the foreword, she wrote:

It is because it is felt that the author is one to whose teaching men will return, that this book has been prepared, and it is sent out with the prayer that day by day the messages may continue to bring the quickening life and inspiration of the Holy Spirit.

For me, and many others her prayer was answered.

Parallel to the discipling I received from Oswald Chambers over the years has been my counseling with people struggling with drug and alcohol problems. To my surprise, when I began doing research for my dissertation on the spiritual and religious distinction in Alcoholics Anonymous and the Twelve Steps, I discovered that early A.A. used My Utmost for His Highest. According to Dick B., a Christian and A.A. historian, My Utmost was used by early A.A. members—a custom they borrowed from the Oxford Group. Actually, I guess I shouldn’t have been that surprised. This also was an answer to Biddy’s prayer.

01/23/15

On the Road to True Repentance

kevron2001 / 123RF Stock Photo

Repentance always brings a man to this point: ‘I have sinned.’ The surest sign that God is at work is when a man says that and means it. Anything less than this is remorse for having made blunders, the reflex action of disgust at himself. (My Utmost for His Highest, December 7th)

This short quote from Oswald Chambers has been a personal favorite of mine for a number of years. Mostly, because I need to be reminded of it’s truth. But also because it captures the reality that true repentance demands more than a simple verbal response. To use a well-known recovery saying, you have to walk your talk. Getting a clear sense of what true repentance looks like and feels like is foundational for personal spiritual growth; and it is crucial when discipling and counseling others.

I’ve looked at Thomas Watson’s sense of “Counterfeit Repentance” in his work, The Doctrine of Repentance. Now I want to reflect on what he says about true repentance. According to Watson, “Repentance is a grace of God’s Spirit whereby a sinner is inwardly humbled and visibly reformed.” He proposed a recipe with six special ingredients for true repentance: 1. Sight of sin; 2. Sorrow for sin; 3. Confession of sin; 4. Shame for sin; 5. Hatred for sin; and 6. Turning from sin. “If any one of these is left out, repentance loses its virtue.” For now, we’ll look at the first two ingredients.

The Sight of Sin

Watson said the person must first recognize and consider what her sin is, and know the plague of her heart, before she can be duly humbled by it. Just as the first thing that God created was light, the first thing in a penitent is illumination. She must see her sin. “For at one time you were darkness, but now you are light in the Lord. Walk as children of the light” (Ephesians 5:8).

“Where there is no sight of sin, there can be no repentance.” People are blinded by ignorance and self-love. Therefore they do not see what deformed souls they have. They see faults in others, but none in themselves. They don’t know their own heart, and don’t realize what a hell they carry around with them. “They do not see any evil in [their] sin.”

The Sorrow for Sin

There is a multi-facetted sense to sorrow for sin in true repentance. Watson suggests five aspects to true, repentant sorrow.

This sorrow is not superficial. It is a holy agony whose purpose is to make Christ precious; to drive out sin; and to make way for solid comfort. Remember that not all sorrow is evidence of true repentance. “There is as much difference between true and false sorrow as between water in the spring, which is sweet, and water in the sea, which is briny.”
Godly sorrow is inward. It goes deep, like a vein that bleeds inwardly. Its grief is for heart-sins that never blossom into action. “A wicked man may be troubled by scandalous sins; a real convert laments heart-sins.”
Godly sorrow is sincere—it sorrows for the offense rather than the punishment. Here lies the heart of counterfeit repentance. “Hypocrites grieve only for the bitter consequence of sin.”
Godly sorrow is intermixed with faith. “Just as our sin is ever before us, so God’s promise must ever be before us.” Sorrow apart from faith is the sorrow of despair, not the sorrow of repentance.
Godly sorrow is sometimes joined with restitution. If you are able, you should recompense the person with whom you had fraudulent dealings. If you are not able to repay what you have taken, promise full satisfaction to the wronged party if the Lord makes you able.

So it is necessary to recognize and be sorrowful for sin in true repentance. Repentance requires that we die to self. We must see that we are not just a bit off track, but that we are utterly lost. The first step is to recognize and correct this misdirection, according to C.S. Lewis. “If you are on the wrong road, progress means doing an about-turn and walking back to the right road.”

Lewis also noted that we are not just imperfect creatures in need of improvement—we are rebels who must surrender our arms. This laying down of arms, this surrender—saying we are sorry and admitting that we were heading in the wrong direction—is repentance.

Now repentance is no fun at all. It is something much harder than merely eating humble pie. It means unlearning all the self-conceit and self-will that we have been training ourselves into for thousands of years. It means killing part of yourself, undergoing a kind of death. (C.S. Lewis, Mere Christianity)

After making an about-turn and beginning to walk back to the right road, the repentant person will need to stay alert for the return of their self-conceit and self-will. And when they see it—work to avoid it at all costs. When you see this process at work, you know you’re on the road to true repentance.

11/7/14

Abandon Yourself to God

© Bonciutoma | Dreamstime.com - Walk To The Cross Photo — © Bonciutoma | Dreamstime.com – Walk To The Cross Photo

I remember hearing a sermon once on Romans 12:1, “I appeal to you therefore, brothers, by the mercies of God, to present your bodies as a living sacrifice, holy and acceptable to God, which is your spiritual worship.” The minister, George Stockhowe, said the problem with living sacrifices was that they are always trying to crawl off of the altar.

Several commentators have noted that the phrase, “the mercies of God,” in verse 12:1 is a succinct summary of what Paul has said up to this point in the epistle to the Romans. C. K. Barrett said that the proper response “is not to speculate upon the eternal decrees, or one’s own place in the scheme of salvation, but to be obedient.” And the sacrifice is to be a living one. F. F. Bruce commented that the sacrifices of the New Testament did not consist of taking the life of others, “but in giving one’s own.”

The phrase “spiritual worship” can get scholars going because the Greek word used here for spiritual, logikos, only appears one other time in the New Testament (1 Pet. 2:2). Sifting through the various perspectives, I’d suggest we see Paul as saying that our living sacrifice is “your [true] spiritual worship.” So while there can be a variety of things that we do as “spiritual worship,” being a living sacrifice is real, true spiritual worship.

Oswald Chambers regularly addressed the topic of surrender and being a living sacrifice in his devotional classic, My Utmost for His Highest. Here are a few selections:

“It is of no value to God to give Him your life for death. He wants you to be a ‘living sacrifice,’ to let Him have all your powers that have been saved and sanctified through Jesus. This is the thing that is acceptable to God. . . . In sanctification, the regenerated soul deliberately gives up his right to himself to Jesus Christ. . . . If we do not sacrifice the natural to the spiritual, the natural life will mock at the life of the Son of God in us and produce a continual swither. . . . The only way we can offer a spiritual sacrifice to God is by presenting our bodies a living sacrifice. . . . This is always the result of an undisciplined spiritual nature. We go wrong because we stubbornly refuse to discipline ourselves, physically, morally or mentally. . . . Surrender is not the surrender of the external life, but of the Will; when that is done, all is done. There are very few crises in life; the great crisis is the surrender of the will. God never crushes a man’s will into surrender, He never beseeches him, He waits until the man yields up his will to Him. That battle never needs to be re-fought. . . . After surrender—what? The whole of life after surrender is an aspiration for unbroken communion with God. ” (My Utmost for His Highest, January 8, January 10; December 10; September 13)

There is a clear parallel here to the surrender thinking in recovery, as in these slogans: “I can’t, God can, I think I’ll let Him;” or: “I can’t handle this one God; please take over.” It’s also present in the Third Step: “Made a decision to turn our will and our lives over to the care of God as we understood Him.”

Although you won’t see this mentioned in A.A. literature, early AAs and its founders read My Utmost for His Highest in the early pre-Big Book years. Dick B., an historian on A.A., reported that early Akron A.A. meetings opened with prayer and a reading from the Bible or a devotional such as My Utmost for His Highest. Dr. Bob, his wife Anne, Bill W. and his wife Lois used the devotional. Dr. Bob and Anne used it on a daily basis. Lois mentioned in a notebook she kept between December 1934 and August 1937 that she really saw herself in the reading for July 22nd.

In his July 22nd reflection on Sanctification, Oswald Chambers commented there was a battle royal before sanctification; there was always something that resented the demands of Jesus Christ. Quoting Luke 14:26 on the cost of discipleship, Chambers noted that the struggle began as soon as the Spirit of God began to show us what sanctification meant–to hand our “simple naked self over to God”:

Am I willing to reduce myself simply to ‘me,’ determinedly to strip myself of all my friends think of me, of all I think of myself, and to hand that simple naked self over to God? Immediately I am, He will sanctify me wholly, and my life will be free from earnestness in connection with everything but God. (My Utmost for His Highest, July 22nd)

Finally, in the closing exhortation of the chapter, “A Vision for You,” from the Big Book, Alcoholics Anonymous, Bill W. said: “Abandon yourself to God as You understand God. Admit your faults to Him and to your fellows. Clear away the wreckage of your past. Give freely of what you find and join us.” And remember: living sacrifices will try to crawl off of the altar.

Faith Seeking Understanding

Charles Sigler, D.Phil.

Tag: My Utmost for His Highest