by RobertCummins | Jun 16, 2016 | 24. Holiness
When I asked you on Monday what your first thoughts were when you considered the word holiness, some of you thought of compliance with some legalistic code of behavior. Pentecostal Holiness? Mennonite Holiness? Puritan Holiness? Whoever Holiness. Some sects and denominations have trafficked heavily in this kind of spirituality in an effort to…
possess their own vessels in sanctification and honor, not in lustful passion, for God has called us for the purpose of purity. (And let it be known) he who rejects this is not rejecting man but the God who gives His Holy Spirit to you. (from 1 Thessalonians 4:1-8, parentheses mine)
Our efforts to possess our own vessels in sanctification is more complicated than just identifying everything we think of as unholy about ourselves and then abstaining. What does one do with that unholy thought in the presence of this command? Just edit it out? Many a soul has tried. They have seen that thing within and agreed with the preacher that there is no good in them. In shame and fear of consequence they cap that thought and try to move on to things a bit more lovely and worthy of praise, but the unholy thought persists, driving the haver-of-that-thought to despair and a deeper conviction of their depravity. With this pattern of thinking, one is more apt to create and addict than a saint.
The book of Romans (written 7 years later) may have been very useful to the Thessalonian Holiness Movement in counseling those struggling with their personal sanctification. If all they heard Paul say was, be pure or else, it is doubtful if they made any progress in maintaining their own vessels with honor. Their inconsistency was bound to have puzzled them as they gave themselves wholeheartedly to managing their own sin. Perhaps Paul’s own theology was evolving as he too was personally working out his salvation in fear and trembling.
I find then the principle that evil is present in me, the one who wants to do good. For I joyfully concur with the law of God in the inner man (Dr. Jeckel), but I see a different law in the members of my body (Mr Hyde), waging war against the law of my mind and making me a prisoner of the law of sin which is in my members. Wretched man that I am! Who will set me free from the body of this death? (Romans 7:21-24)
This passage looks like the sweaty kind of revelation a wrestler gets about his opponent when he has once again been pinned to the mat. It seems that in regard to sanctification, Paul had met his match. Interestingly, not once did Paul mention the flesh to the Thessalonians. This makes me think that he gleaned this knowledge as he tried to reform the Mr. Hyde within. I believe Paul’s victory over his flesh was secured as he pieced together a picture of his own dueling natures in light of the prevailing authorities: The Law? Or the Spirit? Paul understood as well as anyone that the Law’s singular contribution to the new life was as a tutor. It could teach, like no other, how futile sanctification is (void of Spirit) in the flesh.
For while we were in the flesh, the sinful passions, which were aroused by the Law, were at work in the members of our body to bear fruit for death. (Romans 7:5)
If we make a vow, take a pledge, make a promise or commit to personal holiness, the Law will step up to the lectern and make her point; “Moral rallies only excite the flesh. They are doomed from the outset. You must walk in the Spirit. Are we now clear?”
But now we have been released from the Law, having died to that by which we were bound, so that we serve in newness of the Spirit and not in oldness of the letter. (Romans 7:6)
Paul had to reckon that his Mr. Hyde (the flesh) had been crucified and that his spirit was resurrected in Christ – raised up with a new nature. A NEW NATURE! From his revelations by the Spirit, through his own experience, and from those he met with, Paul arrived at a victorious theology regarding his inner duel. He reasoned…
So then, on the one hand I myself with my mind am serving the law of God, but on the other, with my flesh the law of sin. Who will set me free from the body of this death? Thanks be to God through Jesus Christ our Lord! (an adaption of Romans 7:24-25)
Paul may have not have fully understood the flesh and the Spirit when he first wrote to the Thessalonians but he did lay a foundation stone that would contribute to a future understanding of being made holy and sanctification…
For this reason we also constantly thank God that when you received the word of God which you heard from us, you accepted it not as the word of men, but for what it really is, the word of God, which also performs its work in you who believe. (1 Thessalonians 2:13)
Once again, Life (which, by nature, includes holiness) is in the Seed. James concurs…
In humility receive the word implanted, which is able to save your souls. (from James 1:21)
I have approached holiness from a vain, naive place that was heavily dependent on my convictions and my will power. This was the best formula I can imagine in creating a yo-yo Christian. I was up on the days when I believed myself to be in compliance. I was down on those days when my performance was lagging. This was futility and striving after the wind. The tutor did her work however. I have come to understand that our Christian lives are nothing less than the Life of Christ. I have been FAR more successful in maintaining my vessel in honor by honoring the spiritual reality of my new nature and reckoning that my flesh has been crucified. After all, the Holy Spirit now indwells us.
Father, by your grace and mercy we have become a holy people and a royal priesthood. May this secret and its implication somehow leak out. May it dawn upon us who we actually are as Jesus’ younger brothers and sisters and as a new race of people. Amen.
by RobertCummins | Jun 15, 2016 | 24. Holiness
And although you were formerly alienated and hostile in mind, engaged in evil deeds, yet He has now reconciled you in His fleshly body through death, in order to present you before Him holy and blameless and beyond reproach – if indeed you continue in the faith firmly established and steadfast, and not moved away from the hope of the gospel that you have heard, which was proclaimed in all creation under heaven, and of which I, Paul, was made a minister. (Colossians 1:21-23)
Do any of the following words or phrases describe the way you feel about your relationship with God? Merely accepted? Tolerated? Not quite there? Trying hard? Often discouraged? Feel like an imposter? Let’s review some of the things Paul told the Colossians who had been making great headway on the main highway but who were now in the ditch, stuck in some errant thoughts about their God. Let me begin by encouraging you that God is even more faithful than AAA when we are stuck. His hand is always outstretched to those asking to be lifted out of the muck.
While our heresy may not be the same as the Colossians, if we are trying hard to be a good Christian we are in the muck. We will be spinning our wheels with thoughts that keep us alienated and even hostile in mind to the grace of God. Feeling merely tolerated and trying harder is deep muck. I’m speaking as one who knows this ditch. The tow line is always the Word and the Spirit. What do they have to say?
He has now reconciled you in His fleshly body through death, in order to present you before Him holy and blameless and beyond reproach. (Colossians 1:22)
Paul is speaking to stuck Colossians. Do you hear anything about the Colossian’s contribution to their own rescue? Do your hear anything about their efforts? No, because other than asking for help, the effort (if you can even call it that) is all God’s. In fact, they went into the ditch while trying to stay out of it. They had been adding things to the simple gospel. Their vehicle lurched off the road when they began approaching God with human effort in order to sustain their holiness.
I am not unfamiliar with discouragement. I’ve been in both the south-bound and the north-bound ditches. Let me tell you first about the south bound. I grew up in a cold-Baptist turned lukewarm-Presbyterian-home. In my organ-thundering church, I was sprinkla-tized as an infant and run through the Communicant Class at 13. (None of this was voluntary.) Even though I received a presentation Bible and a certificate declaring my good standing with the church and (God?) nothing had sprouted. No fruit was produced. If I ever write a chronological account of my life, I will title the period from ages 13 to 23 as “The Decade of Alienation and Hostility.”
The following story will give you an idea of my unborn-again spirituality. I recall a mini-revival my first year at OSU. It began because I felt mini-regret for attending the Campus Crusade song service while drunk as a sailer on leave. Myself and a friend sang with unholy gusto and, as I recall, with raised (mocking) hands. That evening (yes, I had been drinking early) I proclaimed to my roommate. “We need to be better Christians.” From his Baptist-backslidden heart, he was compelled to say, “Amen!”
The next day, I glued all the drawers shut in his desk. I also stole his fetal pig for his biology class, did my own dissection, and distributed its parts strategically among his belongings. The abdominal parts went into his radio (which I had disassembled). The tail went into his toothpaste. When he brushed his teeth the next day, my sins were exposed. He was not nearly as impressed with my creativity as I was. My point? I had no clue who God was. I was buried to the axle in the south-bound ditch where I was to stay for another 5 years. I am confessing to misdemeanors here. There were plenty of felonies to come. I was headed deep into the domain of darkness. I had not been born again, no matter what the certificate said.
Whatever seed the shepherds had sown had not taken root. To this date, I don’t know if it was an issue of bad seed or a bad heart (maybe both?). My thought life was accelerating rapidly from alienation to outright hostility. I was now whole-heartedly pursuing evil deeds. In a very real sense the prodigal had taken his inheritance and was squandering it in a debauched lifestyle. I was south-bound and down.
Five years later, after flunking out of college, being thrown in jail a few times and wrecking a few cars (and lives?) I found myself buried in darkness. I was a radical failure. I was a profound looser. I hated myself and others for what my life had become. I tried hard labor which would atone (in the Cummins family religion) for sin. I also tried on pop-phycology and transcendental meditation. The world did not have any salve available for my wound. I did not just feel lost and lonely; I knew I was being held prisoner. Something dark had its its clutches in me. It was pulling me downward. I knew it intended to kill me. In my despair, I had reconciled myself to this fate. Only the detail’s of my demise were left to be worked out. Yet, in muck, up to my eyeballs, I asked Jesus to rescue me. Effortlessly, he popped me out of the ditch.
He rescued me from the domain of darkness, and transferred me to the kingdom of His beloved Son. (adapted from Colossians 1:13)
I was on the main highway. Whew!!!! OMG!!!! I had no clue what Light and Life actually looked like. It was brilliant!!! I had been born again. I reasoned, “I cannot go back into darkness. I must do whatever it takes to stay out of that south bound ditch!!!” I want to live a life that is pleasing to God! I must choose a lifestyle that embodies my gratitude (and keeps me out of the ditch). This must be my call into ministry.” And, deep in my heart, I also thought, “Is it my imagination, or do I hate myself far less than I used to?”
Did you hear the error in my reasoning? It was the “I must do ” clause. In my zeal, the seeds of human effort were already present for life as an elder brother, who would get stuck on more than one occasion in the north bound ditch of religion. As the parable tells us; elder brothers can be just as alienated and hostile in mind as a prodigal can, perhaps even worse, because they believe they have been snubbed. The elder brother’s ditch is deeper because they don’t even believe they are stuck.
Do you feel accepted? Tolerated? Not quite there? Trying hard? Often discouraged? Feel like an imposter? I began with these questions because they are elder brother symptoms of which I am intimately familiar. These are the heart cries of those in the north-bound ditch. They usually have to get muck deep in their engine before they cry out because of the perks of religion. The religious crowd will applaud them as they exhaust themselves (hopefully, for God’s sake) in the myriad wheel spinning missions of the local Shepherd and his staff.
These expenditures of spiritual energy are an affront to the grace of God. The man in the southbound ditch is alienated from God because he never knew him. He had never received the grace of God. The person in the northbound ditch has received the grace of God and then squandered it in his efforts to be a good and acceptable child. Paul would ask,
Were you placed up on the main highway by your own efforts? Did you ever get yourself out of a ditch by downshifting and giving it more gas? How do you plan on completing this journey from down there? (thoughts inspired by Galatians 3)
Having been popped out of the ditch of Pharisaic zeal, Paul has weighed in with apostolic authority. How well he understood our plight! To those in the southbound ditch, who have never tasted of God’s grace and to those who have tasted and have spit it out, he says…
I have been crucified with Christ; and it is no longer I who live, but Christ lives in me; and the life which I now live in the flesh I live by faith in the Son of God, who loved me and gave Himself up for me. I do not nullify the grace of God, for if righteousness comes through the Law, then Christ died needlessly. (Galatians 2:20-21)
The Law happened to be the ditch where Paul was spinning his wheels. Every man has his own ditches. There must come a time and place where we acknowledge our heart’s plight and ask for the only true help available to us. If you feel like a step child to God; if you know you have not been born-again; if you feel like a discouraged imposter, reach up. Jesus eagerly waits to get us up on the main highway, where the life of Christ is our energy. Resting then in His efforts, and the Gift of His Life, we can then pray and proclaim with Paul…
Now to You Father who are able to keep me out of the ditches, and have made me to stand in the presence of Your glory blameless with great joy, to You my only God our Savior, through Jesus Christ my Lord, be glory, majesty, dominion and authority, before all time and now and forever. Amen. (adapted from Jude 24)
If any of you want to talk to me in greater depth about your experience or mine, I’m available.
by RobertCummins | Jun 14, 2016 | 24. Holiness
For as the earth brings forth its sprouts, and as a garden causes the things sown in it to spring up, so the Lord God will cause righteousness and praise to spring up before all the nations. (Isaiah 61:10)
Life is in the Seed. Unless the Lord is the Seed, they labor in vain who tend the garden. On earth our hearts are this garden. If the Seed has been planted and has taken root we have become children of God. If the Seed has not taken root, we are not His children. Children begin with the Seed. If we are to be holy as God is holy, our success rests in this reality and no other. We resemble our parents because we came from their seed. So, to do our part as stewards of our own hearts, we must realize when God tells us to be holy we must first realize that we are holy – even if this holiness is embryonic.
If we have an understanding of holiness as a mere moral attribute, there will a compulsion to go out and do what we think are holy things. To be sure, there is doing in tending our garden but if the doing is without respect to the Seed, we will develop as mere human (religious) doings with mere human fruit as opposed to any God-birthed fruit that would spring up, causing righteousness and praise to blossom before the nations.
I will rejoice greatly in the Lord, my soul will exult in my God; for He has clothed me with garments of salvation, He has wrapped me with a robe of righteousness, as a bridegroom decks himself with a garland, and as a bride adorns herself with her jewels. (Isaiah 61:10)
Isaiah’s mixed metaphors don’t need to throw us. We can get from the garden to the wardrobe with a little effort. Assuming Adam and Eve were adorned in God’s finest before they donned their first animal skins, we can assume God is speaking (through Isaiah) of something internal as opposed to external, something spiritual as opposed to material when he is referring to our garments.
When Christ lives in the garden of our hearts, there are always wardrobe upgrades. As we live with Christ as our life, we will find ourselves rejoicing and exulting in our Lord; for we will be like Adam and Eve. We will have nothing but Christ as our clothing, nothing to explain our lives but Jesus. When we are at rest in the understanding that Christ is our life, we adorn ourselves with our finest jewel – Christ alone. He (exclusively) is our hope of glory.
Father, teach us to do our part well as stewards of Your Life in us. May the mystery of Your Seed grow and escape the boundaries of our gardens, bearing fruit that is available to those You have placed near to us. May we truly be holy as You are holy. Amen.
by RobertCummins | Jun 13, 2016 | 24. Holiness
In the year of King Uzziah’s death I saw the Lord sitting on a throne, lofty and exalted, with the train of His robe filling the temple. Seraphim stood above Him, each having six wings: with two he covered his face, and with two he covered his feet, and with two he flew.
And one called out to another and said, “Holy, Holy, Holy, is the Lord of hosts, the whole earth is full of His glory.” And the foundations of the thresholds trembled at the voice of him who called out, while the temple was filling with smoke. Then I said, “Woe is me, for I am ruined! Because I am a man of unclean lips, and I live among a people of unclean lips; for my eyes have seen the King, the Lord of hosts.” Then one of the seraphim flew to me with a burning coal in his hand, which he had taken from the altar with tongs. He touched my mouth with it and said, “Behold, this has touched your lips; and your iniquity is taken away and your sin is forgiven.”
Then I heard the voice of the Lord, saying, “Whom shall I send, and who will go for Us?” Then I said, “Here am I. Send me!” (Isaiah 6:1-8)
What is the first thought that comes to your mind when you think of holiness? In light of our warfare and our cultural setting, I believe we are on the most solid ground, approaching this theme with questions as opposed to opinions. And, I am sure we are on the safest ground, approaching this theme, honoring God’s Word as opposed to our culturally-tinted impressions. There are some Blue Book themes I have written on and rewritten four years in a row but I have never written a word about holiness. I don’t know if I was fishing four years in a row (which is not impossible) or whether I was just flat out intimidated. I haven’t reviewed my journal, but I think the latter is the case.
My first wrestlings with this word occurred thirty eight years ago when Jerry (Navigator) Bridges released The Pursuit of Holiness. I ate it up! My impression was that Jerry was a reincarnated Puritan prophet readdressing the overlooked command;
“Be ye holy; for I am holy.” (1 Peter 1:16)
He had hit on it! The only thing missing in the western church was “the pursuit of.” I could do “pursuit.” I had mixed-Navigator blood pumping through my young and naive heart. My spirit is blushing as I recall the ignorance and arrogance. Holiness? I had no clue.
In my pea-sized perspective, I had the impression that holiness was a moral quality driven by the the prohibitive (mostly Old Testament) commands. My response; “Yes, we needed old time religion! We needed more “Jonathan Edwards” fear of God, lest our unholiness be our undoing!” I was on fire, “Yes, God, let’s do this so that men not end up in your angry hands.” My spirit is blushing scarlet. Holiness? If I had a clue, it was minuscule.
I honestly do not recall if Jerry Bridges made this point or not but God has made the point directly to me over the years: holiness has much more to do with being than it does with pursuing. In fact, the word pursuit, if misunderstood (as I had misunderstood it) would be counterproductive in fulfilling the apostolic command;
“Be ye holy; for I am holy.” (1 Peter 1:16)
Regardless of our impressions of holiness, we cannot side step it. We must come to grips with its meaning. So, instead of depending on “the pursuit of” I suggest we start with the more scriptural “Ye being” aspect. Being is the big word that will lead our hearts to the right place regarding holiness. And, it should be said that holiness is not (first) a moral idea. It includes morality, but it is an eternally larger idea.
Woe is me, for I am ruined! Because I am a man of unclean lips, and I live among a people of unclean lips; for my eyes have seen the King, the Lord of hosts. (Isaiah 6:5)
When Isaiah spontaneously reacted to God’s presence with these words, his woes were not just driven by his personal moral vacuum. That went without saying. What brought this great prophet’s heart to its knees was the “otherness” of God. “What manner of being is this before me!!??” This being utterly, incomprehensibly transcended anything that had ever breached this prophet’s imagination. He was undone. This being tripped the breaker to Isaiah’s previous grasp of Yahweh. Yet we are to be like him. How can this be?
How does an embreo ultimately become like its parents? It becomes like them because they are similar in nature. In the embryonic stage it is only detectable by DNA sampling. But over time, they become unmistakably related because Life is in the Seed. The embryo does not ultimately resemble the parent because it pursued this attribute. It is transformed into its parent’s image because, in its being, it shares the same DNA. Honoring our new natures (or beings) in Christ, will take us further than pursuing holiness as some kind of turbo charged attribute of character. True holiness will take care of any character issues via our new natures.
Much Christian energy is invested pursuing things, including holiness. What if the energy that is expended by us mere-sinners-saved-by-grace on sin management were reinvested into gaining a deeper understanding of our new natures in Christ? What if we became proficient stewards of that talent? Perhaps we are short of holiness because we have not believed holiness is actually native to us, as new beings in Christ. We are a new race of men in Christ; Jesus is our elder brother; We are children of God by virtue of the new Life that is in us. This inventory forces me to rethink holiness. It enables me to see the plausible nature of this seemingly impossible command;
Be holy as God is holy.
Father, give us eyes to see ourselves in the greater light – that of ourselves as new creations – a new race of like beings with Your Son. However embryonic our new natures may appear, may we entrust ourselves to Your nature in us. Help us to see that we were once ruined but now we are rescued. May we see that not only have our sinful deeds been forgiven but our sinful natures have been buried and are raised up by the resurrection power of Christ in us. Amen.
by RobertCummins | Jun 12, 2016 | 23. The Breath Of God
Then he came there to a cave and lodged there; and behold, the word of the Lord came to him, and He said to him, “What are you doing here, Elijah?” He said, “I have been very zealous for the Lord, the God of hosts; for the sons of Israel have forsaken Your covenant, torn down Your altars and killed Your prophets with the sword. And I alone am left; and they seek my life, to take it away.”
So He said, “Go forth and stand on the mountain before the Lord.” And behold, the Lord was passing by! And a great and strong wind was rending the mountains and breaking in pieces the rocks before the Lord; but the Lord was not in the wind. And after the wind an earthquake, but the Lord was not in the earthquake. After the earthquake a fire, but the Lord was not in the fire; and after the fire a sound of a gentle blowing. When Elijah heard it, he wrapped his face in his mantle and went out and stood in the entrance of the cave. And behold, a voice came to him and said, “What are you doing here, Elijah?” (1 Kings 19:9-13)
Dear Gracyn,
Our scripture passage has stirred some memories. In 1976 the Wind was blowing and I got caught up in it. What this Wind had stirred up has been labelled; the Jesus Movement. In this season I became very zealous for the Lord. Thousands of people, like me, moved from unbelief or nominalism to faith sufficient to alter their entire orientation to life. This great and strong Wind was rending the mountain of religion. It was breaking it in pieces. No one can adequately explain this season without pointing to the Breath of God. This Wind subsided but many of us pressed on with all the zeal we had accumulated in order to sustain the supernatural thing we had been caught up in.
In this Wind, we learned how to worship the Lord with stringed instruments and drums and even dance. We practiced ways to share our faith with others. We became students of the Bible. The Wind seemed to break us into smaller groups and emphasize transparency. The group we belonged to was known as Insight Ministries and we practiced this lifestyle near college campuses in America and in Europe. We thought of ourselves as a discipleship ministry.
When we felt a shift in the Wind in 1985, most everyone (maybe 100 folks) returned to Tulsa. With the Tulsa-based folks and our kids, we numbered between 150 and 175. The wind had carried us into community which, unbeknownst to most of us, we had already been experiencing to some degree in our small campus-oriented groups. When we returned to Tulsa, we leaned into this notion of community with even more intentionality.
Our group, which became Ahaha Community Fellowship enjoyed an extraordinary amount of sharing. We were uniquely dependent on God through each other. This is how the book of Acts read to us. We wanted to mirror that first century church as best we could. Why else would God have even created us? With some shrinkage, this group survived until 1997. The last meeting of Ahaha Community Fellowship was in 1997 (I think). For myself and many others, we had tasted some unique things of God in the Ahava community. We had experienced some of the gifts of the Holy Spirit and had shared life in close proximity. You might ask, “If Ahava was such a grand experience, why did you leave?” I could say that the wind blew us in a new direction (and I believe this would be honest) but it actually took some significant earthquakes and some fire to finally dislodge us.
Your Aunt Krissa was about your age (seven) when we moved from Tulsa to Enid. Kelli was 10 and Daniel was not quite two years old when we moved. We did our best to connect with the believers in my birth-city but we were in for another shockwave when we engaged in a local charismatic church. They were barren of community (as we had come to know it) and the charismatic streams that flowed into this church were different than what we had known. Without condemning the good people of this tribe, it felt to us as though we had left Canaan and returned to Ur. Even though we had many friends in this congregation, I was longing for more. I could not conceive how life (as I had come to understand it) could be birthed in this setting but the wind began to blow once again.
The Lord had apparently passed by the Toronto Vineyard Church and breathed upon it. They were calling this fresh wind the Toronto Blessing. Our Tulsa friends were giving us first hand account that a strong wind had begun to blow. I did my best to position myself (and the Enid church where I was an elder) in a direct path with this wind. My expectations were super high. Unfortunately, if new life was to have been birthed from this “blessing,” it was a miscarriage.
When the Toronto winds failed to make much of an impact on our local church (or me) my co-leaders adopted a wind blowing from Colorado Springs through Peter Wagner, down through Chuck Pierce and eventually through John Benefield. I would call this the Apostolic Prophetic wind. While this wind was encouraging to others, it just spun me in circles. It was as though the Lord said to me, “Rob, what are you doing here?” I had to answer, “Lord, I’m driving leaders crazy and they are reciprocating.”
I did not know where to go or what to do. I more or less wrapped my face in my mantle and found the entrance to a cave. It happened to be the Grace World Outreach Prayer Room. In that space I screamed, I cried and I laughed until I healed, to some degree. For 2 or 3 years I stood alone in this cave and waited for the wind to blow. After my earthquakes and the fires I eventually heard the sound of a gentle wind blowing. When the Lord asks me today, “Rob what are you doing here?” I respond, “Lord, I only know that I am caught up in a mystery which involves your Life. My life (in Your Son) is now sufficient wind for me. For what its worth, I will record what I observe, giving an account of the hope that is in me.”
My prayer for you and the other grand kiddos is that you will be caught up in the fullest gospel there is – the one that includes the Breath of God. Many groups bar the front door so that this Wind cannot enter. The Holy Spirit is generally very compliant. He seldom bothers people who are not interested in Him. However, I pray that you will be a part of body of believers who worship the Lord in spirit and truth. Just as God is your Father and Jesus is your Lord, I pray that the Holy Spirit will become your Friend and Counselor.
Love,
Pop
