Post date: Jul 16, 2014 3:43:12 PM
I never thought that I would be writing this from personal experience, but such is the nature of the Christian’s walk with Christ that he is a tool in the Maker’s hands, and he therefore does what he is made to do.
There will be a great deal of people who will hate that I write this and many of those will hate me for having written it and it will very possibly cost me a great deal and, I fear, I have already lost a friend because of my stance.
It is, in fact, a not surprising irony that, because of my stance, I am being attacked from all sides—from those who claim Christ as well as from those who revile Him in a more open and honest manner, refusing to dip bread with the One that they hate.
I can deal with those who openly hate. They’re just doing what is natural for them to do. More difficult is dealing with those who break bread with you, claiming to be your brother yet refusing to hear sound teaching and talking over you when you seek to guide.
The nature of sin is that it will eventually reveal itself. You should not be shocked when that time comes, but be watching and watchful to detect the warning flags waving in the field of your spirit, and pay close attention when they come.
It can be a very sensitive situation, and perhaps a very volatile one. Every action and every word becomes extraordinarily important, because eternity is hanging in the balance. As Thomas Paine wrote so long ago, “These are the times that try men’s souls”.
It is a heartbreaking time when you have to sit with that one that you treasure and you have to say or write to them those words that you never wanted to cross your lips or your page.
We are both sinners in a lost world, but Christ has His hand on me to walk with Him, so I cannot support such a choice that walks with the world instead of with Christ.
You are my friend, though. I will not close that door. If you need to talk, I’ll be here.
I am not confused. You have never been open to truly listening and hearing when I wanted to speak with you of walking with Christ, but have always been defensive about it. Now I know why. If you, now, want to quote Scripture to me, that's fine, but do be accurate about doing so.
There is no where in Scripture where Christ abrogated any part of the moral law found in the Pentateuch and the Prophets. Rather, He says that He has not come to do away with the Law, but to fulfill it. In other words, to live in obedience to it on our behalf because we are not able to do so for ourselves, in order that His sacrifice, made in His blood on our behalf, would be effective, the sinless sacrificed for the sinner, who can never fully pay the penalty for his sin.
I have never suffered the temptation that you deal with, but I am as far from a paragon as anyone could ever be, and do not claim differently, though those who do not know God are always trying to fasten that claim to me.
I do not walk with Christ because I am somehow better than you, but because Christ’s hand is upon me and surrounds me to keep me with Him. Therefore, when the Father looks on me, He sees, not me, but Christ, and His pure and holy sacrifice on my behalf.
Long ago, I began to stop justifying my sin to anyone, and as I have progressively stopped justifying it He has progressively removed it from me. Am I, therefore, without temptation? Of course not. If I were, then the Scripture would be a liar when it declares, “If you claim you have no sin, you are a liar and the truth is not in you.”
Such is the curse of sin, that in the entire history of the world, among those biologically sired by a biological father there is no one who has not been born with sin thriving and burgeoning within them. It is sin that has done this. Even Mary cried out about “God, my Savior”, thus, herself declaring that she, too, had sin, because without sin, God could never be her Savior and, thus, Scripture would be a liar to have her voice such a claim if it were not true. The claim that “God made me this way” is an unscriptural and irrelevant dodge.
I am not better than you; I am as Yehoshua, the high priest, my filthy rags removed in favor of the garments of deliverance.
I am not guilty of the judgment that you try to ascribe to me, but it is your own defensiveness of your sin that makes you feel condemned by my stance for Christ when it is Christ who would set you free of your sin.
I do not relish writing these words. I do not relish putting them in this article. I do not relish any part of this. A friend has strode pridefully and confidently to the precipice and threatens to dive headlong into his own perdition, and I can do naught but watch and weep, “Oh, Jerusalem! Jerusalem! How often I would have gathered your children even as a hen gathers her chicks, but you would not!”
Now is the heartbreak time. Now is the weeping time. Now is hope extinguished from that life. Now is condemnation wrought by thine own hand. Now do the fires of Gehenna swell and take their victim into hell. Now my tears never run dry as another dives into the night. Where is victory? Where is Light? Where the life in Jesus Christ? Where, salvation, do you dwell?
It need not end this way.
Who would have ever thought that I, of all people, would come, late, to Christ after the life I had lived and the wickedness I had pursued, that I would give my life over to salvation? Would anyone? Truly? Would anyone?
I was the very picture of profligate, seeking only pleasure while arrogantly claiming wisdom and knowledge that I did not have and not truly caring for anyone until that day that Christ granted me a true friend who held and sheltered my heart until that day—that day that Christ granted me salvation by His grace and by His blood spent upon Calvary for me.
Pursuing all pleasure and sampling all pleasure, at whomever’s cost but my own, I was the wanton, wayward, rebellious soul who sought pleasure to cover pain rather than salvation to heal that pain. How many lives were torn and tattered and shattered by that wicked, evil man?
How many?
Were they all to come forward apiece it would not surprise me to find it a throng beyond numbering, such was the blind evil and wickedness and soul thievery of this wicked and awful man. Ever shall I suffer the ignominy of that man. Until eternity dawns upon me I shall suffer it, for until eternity will I ever remember the filth and wickedness and rebellion and suffering of what I did.
Tell me not that Christ does not heal!
Tell me not that He does not cleanse and purify and seal, for I have lived it and stand before you all, a testament to the transforming grace of the salvation power of the merciful Love of the unfathomable depths of the unearnable gift that is the faith that is granted, and not worked up, by the overwhelming self-sacrificial presence of the true knowledge of the true and faithful Christ having graciously invaded the conscience of the sinner with the power of His peace.
I have lived it, and stand before you in the true knowledge of the unfathomable peace of Jesus Christ. Tell me not that it does not occur, for I know it does.
What is it that Paul referred to himself as? Was it not αμαρτωλους σωσαι ων πρωτος ειμι εγω (sinners to save, whose chief am I)? Given my history, how am I different? And yet, Christ saved me.
Tell me not that He cannot save the one over whom you weep and mourn. While there is breath there is time for the glory of God to be manifested within the soul of that one for whom your soul cries out to and beseeches God.
Therefore, cry out. Display the Love of which you profess. Who knows, but that Christ may be merciful to you and grant what you seek, if you do indeed truly seek it?
There was a time, when I was walking, alone with the Lord, and I asked Him, “I know that many must have been praying for me, but which was it? Whose prayer was it that broke that camel’s back and moved You to save me?”
Do you know He answered? Immediately?
If I had the photograph I would include it, but I do not. Their image, though, is stamped indelibly upon my spirit, as He placed that image in my mind that very moment I asked.
The image was not of the person I wanted to see there or then, but it was the one who cared enough for me to risk their very heart and soul in prayer for me.
Do you care so much? Will you risk everything for the one for whom you profess to Love in Christ Jesus?
Or will you simply make a public show of them while loudly waving your arms and flapping about like an alarmed drake and crying out, “Oh, woe is me! It’s the heartbreak time”?