The Gospel in Real Life

Are there people in your life with tendencies toward legalism? Do you sometimes get frustrated with them and lose patience? This short piece by John MacArthur may be very helpful. Here’s a couple of excerpts and the link to the full blog is below:

• Advice. “I would not attack legalism. I would not preach on Christian liberty. I would not assault their consciences either by flaunting liberty on a personal level.”

• First step. “I would suggest that the first way to do that is to move people off the rules they live by on to the person of Jesus Christ, and just preach the glories of Christ. Get in the Gospel and stay there until those people have been liberated from rules to love for Christ, until they have been literally swept away in awe and wonder over their affections for Jesus Christ. Rather than try to instruct them on the biblical disciplines, which again is just another set of rules, let them be lost in wonder, love, and praise over the person of Christ, and you watch those things begin to disappear.”

<<Here’s the link to the whole article.>>

I’ve been thinking about this lately, what it means, how it works and why it’s needed. What did Peter mean when he said that love covers a multitude of sins? Did he mean that if we love others like we’re supposed to, their sins would be forgiven?  No, it can’t mean that because the forgiveness of sins is something only God can grant through repentance and faith in embracing the message of the gospel. Does it mean that we’re supposed to just ignore the sins that we commit against others or that others commit against us? It can’t mean that because Scripture tells us that the sins that we commit against one another need to be confessed and forgiven (Matthew 5:23-25). Does it mean that if we love each other like we’re supposed to, God winks at sin and turns a blind eye to it as though it didn’t exist? That can’t be either because God doesn’t wink at sin. There is a death penalty for sin (Romans 6:23) and the soul that sins will die (Ezekiel 18:4). It can’t mean these things, so it must mean something else.

When Peter wrote the words, “love covers a multitude of sins”, he wrote them in the context of our relationships. Here’s the passage in its fuller context:

The end of all things is at hand; therefore be self-controlled and sober-minded for the sake of your prayers. Above all, keep loving one another earnestly, since love covers a multitude of sins. Show hospitality to one another without grumbling. As each has received a gift, use it to serve one another, as good stewards of God’s varied grace: whoever speaks, as one who speaks oracles of God; whoever serves, as one who serves by the strength that God supplies—in order that in everything God may be glorified through Jesus Christ. To him belong glory and dominion forever and ever. Amen. (1 Peter 4:7-11)

Part of loving one another earnestly means that we are quick to forgive others when they sin against us. “Above all”, Peter said, “keep loving one another earnestly” SINCE or BECAUSE “love covers Read more…

This morning Tim Challies twittered an on-line prayer that he had read, written by pastor Scotty Smith. I took a look at it and ended up staying a long time! These prayers are really encouraging and if you haven’t seen them yet, I recommend them. The one below is from his site and is a prayer about grace that I enjoyed reading.

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For the grace of God that brings salvation has appeared to all men. It teaches us to say “No” to ungodliness and worldly passions, and to live self-controlled, upright and godly lives in this present age, while we wait for the blessed hope—the glorious appearing of our great God and Savior, Jesus Christ, who gave himself for us to redeem us from all wickedness and to purify for himself a people that are his very own, eager to do what is good. Titus 2:11-14

Dear Lord Jesus, if there’s one teacher I want to excel under, if there’s one curriculum I need to master, if there’s one school I want to do well in, it’s the academy of grace. In the past, I have either Read more…

This piece, written by Chad Damewood, is about the Christian response to homosexuality. It was posted on the Praxis Church blog site yesterday. It’s a good balance between truth and compassion.

Check it out [HERE].

This was posted on Facebook today from the Resurgence web site. I appreciated it.

Christians often have a tendency to be arrogant toward people who think differently than we do. But Jesus calls us to another way. – Tim Gaydos

Christian Arrogance from The Resurgence on Vimeo.

This morning I hit Alan Knox’s blog at the Assembling of the Church and read his latest post called, Grace to Live. I think his summary nailed what we are to be about and I want to share it with you. He said,

So, to repeat something that I said earlier: God does not save us by grace so that we must then live according to the law. God saves us by his grace so that we can then live according to his grace. If we trust God for salvation, let’s also trust him to teach us how to live. If someone is not living a godly life, don’t teach them to change their behavior. Instead, point them to God and teach them how to live in his grace. If someone is not demonstrating righteousness and justice toward others, don’t try to change them by forcing them to serve others. Instead, point them to God and teach them how to live in his grace.

This was a good reminder to stay gospel focused in all we do and think and it’s something that the Lord has been teaching me lately. We live in the gospel and we never leave it. If we do, we can quickly get into trouble and become hard and legalistic. It’s sometimes easy to think that the gospel is something we master and then we move on to other things. Instead, we should be reminding one another of the cross because it is grace that brought us into the kingdom and it is grace that teaches us how to live to God’s glory (Galatians 3:3). You can see Alan’s entire blog post [HERE].

In 1978, I was cast as an extra in a made for TV mini-series called Great Stories from the Bible. I think that’s what it was called. If you were a fan of late 70s mini-series, you probably remember the “Shick Sun-Classic” production company that produced a good number of them. That’s the company that did this series and that “discovered” me as I was eating breakfast with my wife in a local restaurant in northern Arizona. That series was a real blockbuster and I’m sure you’ve all heard of it. No? I actually found it on Amazon a couple of years ago, but I couldn’t bring myself to put out the shekels to buy it. I was curious to see what I looked like at that age, dressed up as a pagan with a spear, but not curious enough to buy it. I was in the Walls of Jericho episode and I played one of the pagan soldiers living in Jericho before the walls came-a-tumblin-down. In 1978, I was 23 years old. But I had a beard. I had a real beard. The other extras on the set were kids my age or younger, but they all had fake beards that the makeup crew had to glue onto them every day. Since my facial hair was real (and long), they put me in most of the closeup shots with the stars. They wouldn’t allow me to speak though, because Read more…