Think Again

I was talking to my brother the other day.  He had just been reading the book of Hebrews and was excited about chapter 11 and the heroes of faith that are listed there in such detail and filled with all sorts of enthusiasm and he wanted me to be able to share in that excitement and talk to him about what I thought.  Well, I couldn't say much because I didn't feel that way.  I read it and it might as well have been in another language.  It was completely incomprehensible to me.  What I really felt when I read it was condemned, because I knew that I was nothing like all those heroes.  But, I had a feeling that that wasn't the message I was supposed to take away although what that message might be I had no idea.  So, I did what any obsessively analytical person would do, I read the whole book, after all, "Context is king."  This particular strategy proved a total failure.  All I could see in Hebrews was my failure, I mean sure it talks a lot about how great Christ is, but what really resonated with me was this,

For it is impossible for those who were once enlightened, and have tasted the heavenly gift, and have become partakers of the Holy Spirit, and have tasted the good word of God and the powers of the age to come, if they fall away, to renew them again to repentance, since they crucify again for themselves the Son of God, and put Him to an open shame.
For the earth which drinks in the rain that often comes upon it, and bears herbs useful for those by whom it is cultivated, receives blessing from God; but if it bears thorns and briers, it is rejected and near to being cursed, whose end is to be burned. Hebrews 6

I saw myself.  There is no doubt that Christ has enlightened me concerning His Word; I have tasted His goodness I know it every time I see my wife and our soon to be born babygirl, I know what it feels like to have His Spirit, to think His thoughts, to love His loves and hate His hates.  And I have absolutely fallen away.  I have been backsliding into my sins since I first gave them up in baptism so long ago.  I am the dog who goes back to his vomit over and over again, except that the dog isn't disgusted by it and I am.  Yet I still go back, I wretch and gag on my own filth even as I wolf it down.  So, it is impossible for me to be renewed to repentance.  That is what I see when I look in Scripture.  It is as plain as day and absolutely wrong.

We have been taught that falling away, "backsliding", apostasy, refers to sinful actions.  That is to say, that as Christians we give up all of our bad behaviors and if we pick them up again then we are screwed.  All of the Shepherds for Hire have tried to mitigate the force of these verses.  They talk about patterns of behavior, the overall trend and characterization of your life and various other garbage.  My only response is to ask, "When we find a place in Scripture that seems strong and full of power should we water it down?  When we get the good wine, even if it kicks like a mule, that the Bridegroom has held back for us, should we water it down and make it into the swill of our daily lives?  I would rather be damned by a Christ who is powerful and sovereign than be lightly chastised by the wuss those guys preach."  So let's not make excuses for ourselves that Scripture never makes for us.  But is that what the writer of Hebrews is talking about?  He doesn't say renew them again to good behavior, but renew them again to the most misunderstood word in Christianity, to repentance.

We are told that repenting means to feel bad about something and to stop doing it.  It is confounded with penance that is doing good things to make up for the bad things that you have done, known more popularly by the Hindu name Karma.  But there is no question that that is not what the word used in the New Testament means.  Our word "repent" is a transliteration of the Greek "metanoia" which simply means, "to change one's mind".(I don't claim to know jack about Greek but literally every single person who does agrees with what I have just written.)  So, what does that do to our understanding of the New Testament?

John came baptizing in the wilderness and preaching a baptism of repentance for the remission of sins. Then all the land of Judea, and those from Jerusalem, went out to him and were all baptized by him in the Jordan River, confessing their sins. Mark 1

 John came telling people that their minds could be transformed such that God would not count them guilty of their sins.  They could literally become new people, that is people with new minds, through the death and resurrection pictured in baptism.  And suddenly, all of the things that they had been too ashamed and scared to tell anybody they were shouting to anybody who would listen, like freemen, just as if they were right with God in spite of all that.  And this newness was not something that applied to their actions, anymore than their bodies were literally drowned to death by John.  It was a newness in the mind, a new way of thinking.  They stopped thinking that they were right, that they were good people, that the religious crap they were doing was pleasing to God.  They stopped thinking that they were justified and wallowed in the fact that they were condemned, because condemnation and failure are what qualifies us for the mercy of God.  They stopped thinking that they were free and good and saw themselves as "sold under sin" and thus they found mercy and forgiveness.

This seems very different, is there somewhere that we can see what this looks like, has someone who had this new mind expressed what was in his new mind?  Good news, I can show you that mind not just in somebody but in an apostle, in fact in YOUR apostle assuming you are a gentile.

For we know that the law is spiritual, but I am carnal, sold under sin. For what I am doing, I do not understand. For what I will to do, that I do not practice; but what I hate, that I do. If, then, I do what I will not to do, I agree with the law that it is good. But now, it is no longer I who do it, but sin that dwells in me. For I know that in me (that is, in my flesh) nothing good dwells; for to will is present with me, but how to perform what is good I do not find. For the good that I will to do, I do not do; but the evil I will not to do, that I practice. Now if I do what I will not to do, it is no longer I who do it, but sin that dwells in me.
I find then a law, that evil is present with me, the one who wills to do good. For I delight in the law of God according to the inward man. But I see another law in my members, warring against the law of my mind, and bringing me into captivity to the law of sin which is in my members. O wretched man that I am! Who will deliver me from this body of death? I thank God—through Jesus Christ our Lord!
So then, with the mind I myself serve the law of God, but with the flesh the law of sin. Romans 7

This is not some average example.  This is the goal, the target, this is where our Apostle, our foundation, our Father in Christ found himself at his absolute greatest, for did anyone ever get closer to Christ than Paul did when he penned his letter to the Romans?  Just a few comments on what he has made so clear.  First "carnal" has nothing to do with your mind.  It is literally meat, the meatsuit you are walking around in.  It simply means physically descended from Adam and an heir of his sin.  Paul's actions haven't changed, they are still sinful, "sold under sin", and I have no doubt that the jews accused him of "backsliding".  Second, when he says that nothing good dwells in his flesh, this is kind of an obvious point but his mind and his heart dwell in his flesh.  His new mind hasn't convinced him that his mind and heart are good.  Far from it, his new mind agrees wholeheartedly with the law that it and all of him are bad.  It knows that only one is good and that he is not that one.  And for all of our "pattern of behavior" preaching friends look carefully at that word "practice" in verse 15.  The evil that I will not to do I practice.  Evil is Paul's pattern of behavior at the very moment when he is inspired by the Spirit of God.

Now that is all very nice but what does it have to do with Hebrews 6 and my apostasy?  Let's go to the top of Romans 7 for a second.

For when we were in the flesh, the sinful passions which were aroused by the law were at work in our members to bear fruit to death. verse 5

What sinful passions are aroused by the law?  The things that we usually think of as sin, aren't unconnected to the Law, but it is only an accidental connection.  I think that he is talking about something more direct, something stemming from the very nature of the Law.  What does the law do? Well the Law shows us all of the good reasons that God has to be angry with us, and makes us want to fix that.  It makes us want to justify ourselves.  The Law is the mother of religion, and the religious passion is the primary sinful passion.  Our theological gymnastics and our great sacrifices and feats of righteousness are filthy in the sight of God.  Our offerings and our sacred gatherings make Him nauseous.  What we mainly need to think again about is the idea that our religion is worth something other than as a joke.  He desires mercy but our religious sacrifices are getting in the way.  And that brings us back to where we started.

For the earth which drinks in the rain that often comes upon it, and bears herbs useful for those by whom it is cultivated, receives blessing from God; but if it bears thorns and briers, it is rejected and near to being cursed, whose end is to be burned. Hebrews 6

This is how the author explains the words that we found so condemning.  How does his metaphor work?  The earth is us obviously.  What is the rain?  It is the Gospel, not some word telling us to do right or else, but the word that God forgives sinners.  The "useful herbs" of the Gospel are the new mind, the joyful acceptance of our own damnation because it brings to us the mercy of God, the knowledge that He will not count our sins against us which frees us to confess.  So then, We drink in the Gospel that comes to us, and it creates in us a new mind, a mind that feels its own evil but also its justification in Christ.  Then what are thorns and briars which keep us from God?  Self-righteousness.  The religion that teaches us that we have gotten it right, that we used to be in trouble but have since cleaned up our act.  The belief that our sins are in the past and that in front of us is victory and "sanctification".  This is the religion of the Pharisees and I think that that makes it plain enough how it crucifies Christ again, the same way it crucified Him the first time.

So, what you need to not "fall away" from, is the forgiveness of sins and the confession that you are still not good but that "all are confined under sin that He might have mercy on all".  Our idea of salvation is that we are good enough, we do the right thing even if it is as simple as believing or trusting, and that God looks at us and declares us good.  His idea of salvation is to condemn us utterly and then forgive sins freely.  Think your religion is worth something to God?  Think again.