More Thoughts From Romans - Day 1

   Through him we received grace and apostleship to call all the Gentiles to the obedience that comes from faith for his name’s sake. For in the gospel the righteousness of God is revealed—a righteousness that is by faith from first to last, just as it is written: “The righteous will live by faith.”    Romans 1:5,17

             

                   The difference between Christianity and every other religion in the world could be summed up in this - Christianity says you don't get to God by being good. As a doctor, I like to think of Christianity as the doctor with a bad diagnosis. Christianity is the doctor who comes in after a battery of tests and says, "there is nothing you can do to fix your disease; you need to surrender to the knife and let us cut it out or you will die." Every other religion/doctor tells you to exercise more, eat healthy, take vitamins, lose weight, quit smoking - you can fix yourself. Christianity says you are too messed up to fix yourself. I'm reminded of my bus boy job as a teenager working at the Ponderosa Steak House. I was a super hard worker bussing and cleaning tables and when the manager called me in to his office one night, I was sure it was to give me praise! Instead he told me that a customer had complained because I was cleaning tables with a dirty rag. I guess all the steak grease had accumulated on my rag that I was failing to change out enough, and all my scrubbing of tables was only making them greasier! Christianity says that we are dirty rags and all our efforts , no matter how hard we try, are not making us clean before God.

                 So then, where do good deeds fit in to Christianity? Paul says in Romans that we are declared righteous - in right standing with God, rightly related to God - through faith. It is through believing and basing your life on the fact (surrendering to the Doctor's knife) that you can't be good enough to get to God but God sent His Son, Jesus, to be good and sinless in your place and accepting His righteousness on your behalf. He died and through His blood washed away my sins and buried them in the ground and came alive to give me a new clean forgiven life with a robe of righteousness on where I can stand before God, clean. No more dirty rags!

               So then, where do good deeds fit in to Christianity? Paul says in verse 5 that he is calling people to obedience or good deeds. I see it like this; if you truly have by faith been forgiven, cleansed, declared righteous, "born again", "saved" ... your life will change. You will start acting like Christ because He has put His Holy Spirit inside of you. Paul didn't come to form a forest full of trees in Rome but an orchard producing fruit in Rome. A changed life of good obedient deeds is the evidence that true conversion has taken place.

               Imagine a couple getting married but after the ceremony nothing changes. They retain their same names, don't move in together, don't wear rings, continue to date other people, spend all their time vacationing and hanging out with their friends ... you would question their marriage! If you would ask them, they would name the time and place they got married and might even tear up at the sentimentality of that special day and even produce their marriage certificate, but unless their lives changed after that day, you would have to question the validity of that marriage.

                 So that's where good deeds come in. God has given us His word to declare to us, among many other things, a "right" way of living. If our lives are not following that pattern of behavior then we have to ask ourself have we really by faith recieved the righteousness of God? If we are Christians our deeds need to show it!

I delight greatly in the Lord;
    my soul rejoices in my God.
For he has clothed me with garments of salvation
    and arrayed me in a robe of his righteousness,
as a bridegroom adorns his head like a priest,
    and as a bride adorns herself with her jewels.
11 For as the soil makes the sprout come up
    and a garden causes seeds to grow,
so the Sovereign Lord will make righteousness
    and praise spring up before all nations.  Isa. 61:10,11

Making "Your" Faith Your Own

 13 When Jesus came to the region of Caesarea Philippi, he asked his disciples, “Who do people say the Son of Man is?”14 They replied, “Some say John the Baptist; others say Elijah; and still others, Jeremiah or one of the prophets.”15 “But what about you?” he asked. “Who do you say I am?”16 Simon Peter answered, “You are the Messiah, the Son of the living God.”...

 you do not have in mind the concerns of God, but merely human concerns.”24 Then Jesus said to his disciples, “Whoever wants to be my disciple must deny themselves and take up their cross and follow me. 25 For whoever wants to save their life[f] will lose it, but whoever loses their life for me will find it. 26 What good will it be for someone to gain the whole world, yet forfeit their soul? Or what can anyone give in exchange for their soul? 27 For the Son of Man is going to come in his Father’s glory with his angels, and then he will reward each person according to what they have done.  Matthew 16

                  Growing up in a Christian home or for that matter in a church environment where you are raised going to Sunday School and eventually Youth Groups throughout your formative years, at some point in your life you are going to need to answer the question Jesus asked - "But who do YOU say that I am?" Like the demoniac said to the sons of Sceva, (paraphrased) "I know who your parents are, I know your Youth Group leader, but who are YOU?" Or like the 5 bridesmaids who weren't let into the wedding feast because they were trying to enter in on someone else's oil, the man at the gate said, "Where is YOUR oil?"

               I grew up in a Godly home and asked Jesus into my heart at the age of 5 mainly because I didn't want to go to hell someday or at that age what really scared me was to be left alone when my family raptured. (Home Alone had not yet been released) As I grew into the later high school years and college years where so many kids fall away, Jesus was asking me the question, "Who do YOU say that I am? There are 2 ways out there - the things of God and the things of man. Are you willing to deny self and follow Me or live for self and follow the things of man?" This is what He was asking the disciples, specifically Peter, and this is what He was asking me and this is what He asks everyone who has been immersed in Christianity - is this Your faith or is it someone elses? It's time to decide.

                For me, going to a "Christian" college, it first manifested itself on a Sunday morning. Do I sleep in (go to the church of Reverend Sheets), or get up and go to church? No one would know, others are sleeping in, where should I go, how do I get there...? I know that sounds like a religious activity and no big internal change, but it represented the question, "Who do YOU say that I am?" I needed to decide is this my faith or my parents? For others it might be do I go to that party and drink alcohol or do I date non-christians? There comes a time when we all have to answer that question, "Who do YOU say that I am?", and the answer to that will determine our eternal destiny.

          

Diagnostic Questions

 

    In medicine we are taught diagnostic questions. They are questions we ask patients that lead us to the right diagnosis of their illness. Sometimes you will hear patients complain, "He didn't even examine me; he just wrote me a prescription!" Not that I condone that but in the age of Covid 19 where doctors stand outside the door and talk to you, I can see it happening increasingly. The fact is, at least 90% of the time we know what the problem is just from these diagnostic questions before examining, taking x-rays or drawing blood.

     Some examples are if someone complains of right lower quadrant pain, you could ask, "If I brought you a cheeseburger right now could you eat it?", and they answered "yes", they don't have appendicitis. If it is a woman with an early pregnancy who is bleeding and hurting in one side and you ask, "Does it feel like if you had a bowel movement the pain would go away?", and they answer, "Yes but I tried and it doesn't.", they have a tubal pregnancy. If someone has right upper quadrant pain and you ask, "Does it hurt worse when you eat fried food"?, and they answer "yes", they probably have gall stones. If someone comes in with more than 3 complaints and you ask, "Does your hair hurt?", and they answer "Yes", they have nothing physically wrong with them.

      In an age of spiritual deception, especially in the non-persecuted church, it becomes increasingly difficult to tell true believers from non-believers. Jesus warned us that would be the case 2000 years ago when He talked about wheat and tares in the church and you could make an argument that it isn't up to us to be the "spiritual Gestapo" looking for infiltrators in our midst; that is God's job who knows the heart - just make sure of our own heart. That is probably closer to the truth than what I am going to propose but there are occasions when we are speaking to people on a one on one basis or preaching to a group where I feel it is important for people to examine themselves and see if they are truly believers and this is where spiritual diagnostic questions come in handy.

     One such question is given to us by Evangelism Explosion and it is, "When you stand before the Lord someday and He says, 'Why should I let you enter into my kingdom?', what would your answer be?" If the answer is anything along the lines of, "I'm a good person" or works oriented, then they probably aren't a true believer because the first step to entering the Kingdom of God is to admit you aren't good enough.

    I've been pondering a second question lately and that question is, "What is your goal in life?" According to the Holy Spirit inspired words of Paul in Gal.2:20 and Col. 3:1-3, a believer no longer lives for him(her)self but their life is over and they live in and for Christ. In 2Cor. 5:9 Paul says his goal is to please Christ. Jesus says in John 15:16 that we are to "bear fruit" which is the manifestation of Christ in us. Therefore if one's goal in life has nothing to do with pleasing Christ, in some way, the diagnostic question would reveal that they are spiritually lost. 

     Maybe they just didn't have time to ponder the answers and if you questioned them they would say, "Yes, that's what i meant, I know that." Then why didn't they say that? Out of the overflow of the heart the mouth speaks. Like I said, it isn't mine to judge, God knows the heart. If you, however, have asked yourself these questions and answered wrongly - reassess whose you are.