Peter, Patron-Saint of Chickens

I have certainly written before about my various failures as a Christian, but it seems to me that I have left out my biggest one, the sin of all sins. I have never "led someone to Christ". I have always felt that this was very much the ultimate test, and I have certainly looked for openings. I have plotted and schemed. I have asked people some questions that made them feel almost as awkward as they made me feel. But, I have zero fruit. Not only have a failed in a negative sense, by not "sharing my faith", but I have also failed positively, that is I have actually denied Christ, on multiple occasions. Mostly I have done this through cowardice and a desire to fit in(which was a complete failure btw). I am a complete spiritual chicken.

What I can't convey to someone who hasn't been there is the deep and abiding sense of failure that comes from this. "Sharing Christ" is the end all be all of Evangelical existence. I have literally been told that this is the only reason why God doesn't kill Christians as soon as they are spiritually born. Which, to me, always came across as, "You are such a failure that you should be dead." It is actually worse than that though. From the very mouth of Christ comes my complete condemnation,

"Therefore whoever confesses Me before men, him I will also confess before My Father who is in heaven. But whoever denies Me before men, him I will also deny before My Father who is in heaven." Matthew 10

Can it be any worse than that? My destiny is literally in my epicly unreliable hands. There can't be any evasions, any excuses, nothing can mitigate the stark condemnation offered to all who fail to confess Christ. There can be little doubt that Christ will deny me before His Father, just like He did Peter.

Peter said to Him, “Even if all are made to stumble, yet I will not be.” Jesus said to him, “Assuredly, I say to you that today, even this night, before the rooster crows twice, you will deny Me three times.” But he spoke more vehemently, “If I have to die with You, I will not deny You!” Mark 14

The story of Peter's denial of Christ is too well known to need me to go through it in detail. Now, some might say that Peter only denied Christ in a time of great testing and later confessed Christ and that that wiped out his failure. I don't think that that is the way Scripture works but it doesn't matter, because at the end of His career we see the dog returning to his vomit.

Now when Peter had come to Antioch, I withstood him to his face, because he was to be blamed; for before certain men came from James, he would eat with the Gentiles; but when they came, he withdrew and separated himself, fearing those who were of the circumcision. And the rest of the Jews also played the hypocrite with him, so that even Barnabas was carried away with their hypocrisy. But when I saw that they were not straightforward about the truth of the gospel, Galatians 2

Peter was playing the hypocrite and "not being straightforward about the truth of the gospel", exactly what I do. He denied the Gospel, which is the denial of Christ and quite possibly the unforgivable sin, not once but as Paul makes clear, he had a pattern of denial.

Those whom You gave Me I have kept; and none of them is lost except the son of perdition, that the Scripture might be fulfilled. John 17

But, and this is a big but, the words above were unquestionably said about Simon Peter. The New Testament is literally brimming with proof that the "Rock" on which the Church is built was not denied by Christ. Do we try and minimize the force of Christ's words about denying Him? If we are stuck with the notion that everything preached by Christ or His Apostles is the Gospel then the contradiction is unsolvable. But wait, we know that not everything Christ preaches is the Gospel. We know that the Father only interacts with the creation through the Son, the Word. And that means that every time the Law has been declared it came straight from Christ. We know that He does not change, so if He ever preaches the Law, He always preaches the Law.(which also means that if He ever preaches the Gospel, He always preaches the Gospel) The Law and the Gospel then are not sequential phases in God's plan. They can't be if He is eternal and unchanging. What then is the relationship between Law and Gospel? Let's contrast them a little to see.

The Law is the way of Sacrifice. It is the way of trading up, of giving something up to get something better. It is giving up a goat to get God's favor. It is giving up lusting after other women to get my wife's favor. It is giving up the temporal to gain the eternal, giving up the world to gain your soul. It is just good sense. We do this in everything not just spiritual things. The Law is good business, and tons of preachers make a good living off of it. The Law makes sense. The Law works. If you do it you will live. If you do it not, well it won't be good. And this is almost literally what Christ says in Matthew 10. All we have done is replace "works of the Law" with "confessing Christ". The whole structure is the same just a different paint job.

The Gospel on the other hand is foolish. It is the way of trading down, of giving something up to get something worth far less. It is giving up the God on the Cross, the only God worth worshipping, for my white trash ass. It is giving up the Eternal to gain what? An opportunity to pour out grace on garbage. Pretty exciting stuff. It doesn't make any sense at all. There has never been a business run on grace. Free is just a word used to make a sale. If you really start giving things away you will be shutting up shop in short order. And every one who has ever preached it has been a joke, a clown, a fool, generally a poor fool-the worst kind, and if he preached it very much it cost him everything he had. You can't live by the Gospel. It is only for those who are already doomed. It is for the Unfaithful Steward who has already lost his job so he figures he might as well go out in style, gracious style. The whole Law can be summed up by saying that Peter denied Christ. The whole Gospel can be summed up by saying that Christ didn't deny Peter. Law and Gospel then live side by side, especially in our heads. The one condemns us for our actions, the other blesses us because of Christ's actions. So we finally have some Good News that is actually good.

Jesus, Friend of Sinners

Why I am not a Christian

One of the great excitements of growing up in a Baptist church was the occasional visits from missionaries.  We thought they were super-Christians, and they thought so too.  I remember this one lady, who is pretty typical of the whole group, telling us about the fantastic sacrifices that she and her family made for Christ, and how they didn't care about these sacrifices at all, and what a bunch of materialistic jerks all non-missionary American Christians were.  Christianity to me is a constant attempt to get to the next level.  If you aren't getting closer to God, more like Christ, making progress on your "faith journey" you aren't really a Christian.

I am not really a Christian.  That is not exaggeration, not my natural melancholy, not humility(real or false), it is the very Word of God.

If we say that we have fellowship with Him, and walk in darkness, we lie and do not practice the truth.  1 John 1:6

Do I walk in darkness?  I am unforgiving, addicted to pornography, prone to thoughts of suicide, a huge jackass, not a very good husband.  I have wasted the amazing gifts that God has given me.  At least I am not claiming to have anything in common with(which is the meaning of koinonia translated here as have fellowship) God.  Christianity has come up with all of these caveats, these conditions, that blunt the force of John's attack on our religion.  "Well everybody fails sometimes, but it is the pattern of your life.  What characterizes the way you live?"  Stuff like that.  If I have learned anything about Scripture it is that it is not interested in gradual, progressive patterns of behavior.  It is a book of Black and White, Yes and No, Life and Death.  And I just don't think that we can read our own perfectionist bull into John's letter.  Of course, even if it is about a "pattern of life" or whatever, I fail at that just as absolutely.  I can't refute the voice I hear accusing me when I read these words, but John can...

Whoever confesses that Jesus is the Son of God, God abides in him, and he in God. 1 John 4:15

Whoever abides in Him does not sin. Whoever sins has neither seen Him nor known Him.1 John 3:6

Whoever has been born of God does not sin, for His seed remains in him; and he cannot sin, because he has been born of God. 1 John 3:9

John's grace is as unconditional as his law.  If I sin at all I am a sinner.  If I confess Christ at all I am not a sinner.  It is just a question of which trumps which.  Do we prefer the condemning voice within us, energized by our senses, experience, and worldview?  Or do we prefer the gracious Word of God who did not come to condemn but to save?(Whichever we prefer the truth remains the same.  Mercy triumphs over judgment.)

He who says, “I know Him,” and does not keep His commandments, is a liar, and the truth is not in him. 1 John 2:4

Whoever does not practice righteousness is not of God, nor is he who does not love his brother. 1 John 3:10

 If someone says, “I love God,” and hates his brother, he is a liar; for he who does not love his brother whom he has seen, how can he love God whom he has not seen? And this commandment we have from Him: that he who loves God must love his brother also. 1 John 4:20-21

 I don't keep any of His commandments.  I don't try to.  I don't want to.  If I wanted to keep them I would.  I don't love anybody.  I can neglect and ignore pretty much anybody without it upsetting me even slightly.  But, what if how well or poorly I do these things isn't so simple?  Although I have not done any of these things by my actions, my Substitute, my Advocate has done them all in my name.  To insist on adding my works to Christ's is nothing other than requiring one who has been clothed in Christ's royal robe to wear a fig leaf on top of it.  "Sure you are covered by Christ's righteousness but you are really still naked unless you have your own clothes."  If I am wearing clothes I am not naked.  Again, Black and White issue.  To say anything else is to deny the reality of the atonement, which is the very center of denying Christ.

Whoever believes that Jesus is the Christ is born of God, and everyone who loves Him who begot also loves him who is begotten of Him. 1 John 5:1
Who is he who overcomes the world, but he who believes that Jesus is the Son of God?1 John 5:5

To believe in Christ doesn't simply mean to believe that there is some guy named Jesus, and it doesn't mean "having a personal relationship"(whatever the hell that means anyway).  It means believing His Gospel, believing that you will be judged by His righteousness not your own sin.  I have failed every test and will continue to do so.  But He didn't pass them for Himself.  He passed them for me.  He wrote my name at the top of His test.  He calls me by His own name.

The idea of us having a righteousness of action to add to the righteousness He credits us with by grace is simply the idea of going beyond faith, the old idea of Gnosticism, against whom John was probably writing.  It is really as simple as do we believe our hearts, our inner light, our inherent goodness, which can only condemn us; or do we believe God who forgives us?

And by this we know that we are of the truth, and shall assure our hearts before Him. For if our heart condemns us, God is greater than our heart, and knows all things. 1 John 3:20

Apostasy

I remember a story I was told as a teenager.  Our youth group leader had been to a church nearby and he shared it from a pastor he had heard there.  Anyway, the story goes that this pastor was in the grocery store checkout line and the fellow in front of him gets ready to pay but instead of using cash or a check or a card he swipes his hand over the scanner and it comes up that he doesn't owe anything.  The pastor took this to mean that the man had the Mark of the Beast in his hand.  Now I heard the story secondhand and have always assumed that this pastor was pretty advanced in years.  It seems like the confusion and fear of senility to me, but in the culture I was raised in there was this undercurrent of terror about the End Times.  There were Signs of the Times everywhere.  The decline in morals was a sign that it was like it was in the days of Noah and that judgment was coming.  All of the signs were kind of clustered around Apostasy.

I first began to suspect that I am an apostate about age 14.  I thought about having sex constantly.  Now Christians are supposed to have this supernatural ability to resist temptation, to avoid sin, which I have never had.  I was terrified because to admit that I am constantly in sin, that every time I am tempted I fall, seemed to cut me off from all hope.  Moral reformation, me getting better, was the only reliable way to know that I was saved.  And although I couldn't admit it to myself, I could never shake the feeling that I was getting worse not better.    I didn't know that as long as my salvation depended in any way on me that it was a lost cause.  I didn't know then about Martin Luther and Monergism.

Luther's great protest against Romanism was against legalism and works-righteousness, against a church who had, almost professedly, used its tradition to make the Word of God of no effect.  The problem with Romanism is that they have added to Christ's finished work.  They have added to His Word tradition.  They have added to His prophetic office an infallible oracle in the Vatican.  They have added to His priestly office a legion of intercessors headed up by a substantially divine Queen of Heaven.  But my purpose is not to show the all too obvious sins of our brothers, but to convict our self-righteous asses of the same sins.

The Reformers accused the bishops of their day of inappropriately bringing money into the church, of the buying and selling of positions in the church, and of making themselves rich at the expense of God's people.  Can Evangelicalism with its pastors with private jets, Kenneth Copeland approaching billionaire status, living in church owned and paid for mansions, bring this charge today with a straight face?

They have justification by faith and works working together.  We have justification by faith alone with the indispensable addition of works, which we ludicrously call sanctification.  But if we consider the whole of salvation, rather than trying to slice it up like a bunch of lawyers, they have salvation by faith plus works and so do we.  If you have to split hairs to show how things are different then they are only different by a hair's thickness.  The buying and selling of indulgences is actually more spiritual than the Gospel of Success we have bought into.  So on their worst excess, the one that triggered the whole Reformation, they are actually doing better than we are.

They have transubstantiation, the belief that in the Eucharist the only thing on the table is the Body and Blood and it only LOOKS like there is bread and wine.  Our great advance on this is to teach that there is only really bread and wine on the table but it kinda reminds us of the Body and Blood of Christ.  I don't believe that any creature understands the mode of Christ's presence in the sacraments.  How the bread and wine is the Body and Blood of Christ is as mysterious as how God is Father and Son and Holy Spirit without confounding the persons or dividing the essence.  But if transubstantiation is out then I throw out with it any doctrine that refuses to admit the real presence of the bread and wine and the real presence of the Body and Blood.

Luther teaches the real presence of Christ's body and blood in, with, and under the elements, the oral manducation by unworthy as well as worthy communicants, and the ubiquity of Christ's body; while Zwingli and Calvin, carefully distinguishing the sacramental sign from the sacramental grace, teach—the one only a symbolical, the other a spiritual real, presence and fruition for believers alone. The Romish doctrine of transubstantiation is equally characteristic of the magical supernaturalism and asceticism of Romanism, which realizes the divine only by a miraculous annihilation of the natural elements. Lutheranism sees the supernatural in the natural, Calvinism above the natural, Romanism without the natural.  Philip Schaff Creeds of Christendom

(To which I would add modern Evangelicalism which sees the natural without the supernatural.)

 The history of the Christian Church is the best refutation of progressive sanctification that there ever could be.  I prove that we are not getting better individually by the fact that we are not getting better corporately.  The lesser, the individual's sanctification, is included in the greater, the church's sanctification.  It would be a great goal for the church to simply catch up to Luther, to advance to the position we occupied 500 years ago.  Sadly, we would probably not be any worse off with the Romanism of Trent than we are with our bastardized Evangelicalism.  The two are both equivalent to Judaism.

 This only I want to learn from you: Did you receive the Spirit by the works of the law, or by the hearing of faith?  Are you so foolish? Having begun in the Spirit, are you now being made perfect by the flesh?  Have you suffered so many things in vain—if indeed it was in vain? Therefore He who supplies the Spirit to you and works miracles among you, does He do it by the works of the law, or by the hearing of faith?— just as Abraham “believed God, and it was accounted to him for righteousness.”  Therefore know that only those who are of faith are sons of Abraham.  And the Scripture, foreseeing that God would justify the Gentiles by faith, preached the gospel to Abraham beforehand,saying, “In you all the nations shall be blessed.”  So then those who are of faith are blessed with believing Abraham.For as many as are of the works of the law are under the curse; for it is written, “Cursed is everyone who does not continue in all things which are written in the book of the law, to do them.”  But that no one is justified by the law in the sight of God is evident, for “the just shall live by faith.”  Yet the law is not of faith, but “the man who does them shall live by them.”

Christ has redeemed us from the curse of the law, having become a curse for us (for it is written, “Cursed is everyone who hangs on a tree”), that the blessing of Abraham might come upon the Gentiles in Christ Jesus, that we might receive the promise of the Spirit through faith. -Galatians 3

You can't do works by faith.  It is impossible.  "The law is not of faith, but 'the man who does them shall live by them'"  Faith can't keep a single commandment.

But the Scripture has confined all under sin, that the promise by faith in Jesus Christ might be given to those who believe. But before faith came, we were kept under guard by the law, kept for the faith which would afterward be revealed. Therefore the law was our tutor to bring us to Christ, that we might be justified by faith. But after faith has come, we are no longer under a tutor.

We are all apostates.  We have all gone back from the Gospel.  But by naming us all failures He makes us all objects for His pity, and His pity is truly great.  The Law exists to bring men to Christ, once that has been done it has no more use whatsoever.  

But the discipline of law creates a desire which it can not satisfy, and points beyond itself, to independence and self-government: the law is a schoolmaster to lead men to the freedom of the Gospel.  -Philip Schaff 

The Gospel is for Apostates.
There You Go(plus lyrics)