I love the blind guy in John 9. In the middle of a crowd of chickens – including his parents – he cares about the truth and doesn’t give a rip what might happen to him. It’s so refreshing to see Him state it so clearly and simply for all the hedging religious people:
God doesn’t listen to sinners; he listens to people who respect Him and do what He wants. Since the beginning of the world, nobody’s ever heard of giving sight to somebody born blind. If this man weren’t from God, He wouldn’t be able to do a thing.
It’s a little trickier to understand the connections Jesus makes between working on the Sabbath and spiritual blindness/light:
He is blind so that God’s power might be seen at work in him. As long as it is day, we must keep on doing the work of Him who sent me; night is coming when no one can work. While I am in the world, I am the light of the world.
I confess I don’t get all of this. The reason he’s blind is so that the “works of God might be displayed in him” (ESV) or “God’s power might be seen at work in him” (GNT). So it looks like there might be some word-play between the man getting sight and God’s work being displayed/seen. As well as the correlation between this being done on the Sabbath and the idea that God wants to display His works.
But when Jesus says that “night is coming, when no one can work” – is He just using nightfall as an illustration that, just like when night comes and no one can work – in a similar way when He leaves the planet, He cannot work? And therefore He needs to be busy now, even on the Sabbath? Surely He’s not saying that there will come a time when literally no one can work – that would be stretching the illustration too far, right?
At any rate, it scares and enamors me just how controversial Jesus is among religious people like me. Like Adam said at the Quiz Meet, the religious establishment in this country – in many ways the modern-day Pharisees – are conservative Christians. We are the ones careful to play by the rules, careful to look good. We are so careful not to offend. We’re not usually concerned about whether we might lead others to sin (what Romans 14 is actually about), instead we’re concerned about whether we might offend them (two very different things).
But Jesus, not Him! He’s purposefully offending people left and right — but not for the sake of shock value. Rather, He’s driven by a passion for God’s glory. Like earlier in John, “passion for Your house consumes Me”. I love what Mark Driscoll says: “we need to call sinners to repent of their sin and we need to call religious people to repent of their religion.”
Man, I want to be more like Jesus and less like the Pharisees. The scene here in John 9 is so ripe with human depravity it’s chilling (and would make a good plot for a sci-fi messianic fiction like Dune or the Matrix): when “the One” finally does come, the religious communities who’ve been waiting for Him hate Him so much they excommunicate anyone who believes in Him.
God:
I will send my beloved Son, perhaps they will respect Him.
Us:
This is the heir. Let’s kill him and take the inheritance.
Do we really say “This is the heir. Let’s kill him and take the inheritance”? Wouldn’t that make us bound for hell like the Pharisees who weren’t believers, but in fact unbelievers?
Yep, that was us. You’re absolutely right, that did make us hell-bound, along with our brother-Pharisees.
Since then, our destination has changed, but wickedness that runs through our veins – our flesh that bought us that ticket to hell – hasn’t left us.
Yes, we can walk in Christ – but that’s His righteousness, not ours. And when we’re not walking in Him, when we walk on our own – in our flesh – we’re just as nasty as before. Actually worse – it may be more subtle, but its also more evil because we’re sinning in spite of our experience of God’s glory and grace.
Its not until glorification that we lose the common depravity of humanity. True, we have been regenerated – we’re new creatures, after a new birth and God has sparked life in our souls. But the result is that we hate the monsters we are when we’re not walking in Christ, that we no longer want to be monsters, that we can’t wait to shed our monster skin – not that we are better monsters.
True, there’s lots of lifestyle changes and cultural changes, things we did before that we wouldn’t dream of doing now, but that’s all external stuff, the common trade of pharisees. It sure *looks* like we’ve cleaned up our act, but a look at the heart – again, when we’re not walking in Christ – reveals subtler, even more wicked sins, particularly in light of the grace we’ve experienced.
The closer we get to the blazing light of Christ, the blacker our sin is – both in contrast to His perfection and in the fact that, in spite of such experience of His glory and grace, we decided to grab at sin.
I *love* Lecrae’s hip-hop song, “Live Free” about sin: “sin is so bad it’s a liar, it says we’re on the throne tells God to retire, it says He ain’t enough and it says we want more, it says He ain’t Just and it says He ain’t Lord. Sin is the laugh at his power, the rape of his mercy, the mock of his patience – it says He ain’t worthy.”
PS: I know this doesn’t sound like it agrees with the concept of “progressive sanctification” (which I don’t think is a necessarily beneficial perspective), but it actually agrees. Progressive sanctification says that we continue to grow in holiness (with lots of little ups and downs along the way) – what I’m saying is that while we may commit the same sins less frequently or we might not sin “as badly” as before, those sins are actually far worse in light of the grace and mercy we’ve experienced. This is in accordance with what J.C. Ryle writes about in Holiness (on Amazon), Sanctification part 1.9:
“what I say is proved by the experience of all the most eminent servants of Christ that have ever lived. The full proof is to be seen in their journals, their autobiographies and their lives. Believing all this, I shall never hesitate to tell people that inward conflict is no proof that a man is not holy, and that they must not think they are not sanctified because they do not feel entirely free from inward struggle. Such freedom we shall doubtless have in heaven, but we shall never enjoy it in this world. The heart of the best Christian, even at his best, is a field occupied by two rival camps, and the “company of two armies” (Song 6:13). Let the words of the thirteenth and fifteenth Articles be well considered by all churchmen: “The infection of nature does remain in them that are regenerated. Although baptized and born again in Christ, we offend in many things; and if we say that we have no sin, we deceive ourselves, and the truth is not in us.”
Mostly agreed, except:
“True, there’s lots of lifestyle changes and cultural changes, things we did before that we wouldn’t dream of doing now, but that’s all external stuff, the common trade of pharisees.”
Wrong. If the change is only external, we are still bound for hell. The external change should be an indication of an internal change. Of course we can deceive others and even ourselves, but truly saved people change their behavior because their heart has changed.
The very fact that there is an internal struggle between our old man and the new man removes us from the category of a Pharisee and into the category of the tax collector who begged, “God, be merciful to me, a sinner!”
A Pharisee (in the pajorative sense that we are speaking of) is an unsaved unjustified sinner bound for hell. No true believer can be compared to a pharisee unless you question his salvation.
Tonight I’ll post a fuller response on my blog to the idea that conservative Christians are the Pharisees.
On my best days, on those all-too-rare occasions when I really recognize my sin for what it is and see the pain my Savior endured to pay for it, then I cry out in grief and repentance as the tax collector.
But all too often – sadly, perhaps the majority of the time – I find myself walking in the sandals of a Pharisee. Smug, self-righteous, not agonizing over my sin, but thinking I’m ok and its other people who have the problems.
When I’m not walking in the Spirit, I act like Simon, the pharisee, not like the “sinner” woman who invades his house (Luke 7).
If Jesus came into my church – but by a different name and appearance, so I didn’t recognize Him, and he started busting up tables, tearing down our beautiful Christmas tree, hanging out at the local bar, breaking the Sabbath and all my pet traditions, would I follow Him? In my flesh, I wouldn’t. Only when I’m walking in submission to the Spirit would I even associate with Him.
We are just as much in need of grace now as we were when first saved – probably more so.
“the external change should be an indication of an internal change” – true, but that internal change is the desire and ability to walk in Christ’s righteousness, not our own. He gets the credit, not us, when we do anything genuinely righteous. Its not our power, its His, through the Spirit.
Our righteousness is – and I think always will be, even in heaven – a product of our communion with Christ and union with Him. It is not something we can maintain separate from Him. What Jesus said to the rich young ruler is still true today: “only God is good”.
Even as Christians, when walking in our flesh, we may not deny Christ in words, but we often deny Him by our actions. As I hear about genuine, born-again pastors and Christian leaders falling into major sin like adultery that rips apart their families and destroys what they’ve worked for a lifetime to build, I shudder as I realize that I am capable of the same. And so I work hard to build walls and safeguards to add accountability and protect myself from temptation and I’m scared to death of anything that seems like it could remotely lead in that direction. But, safeguards down, I am just as capable as the pastoral failure stories that make the New York Times headlines.
The difference with the genuine believer is that we will always come back. We will always repent. Because the Spirit in us, convicting our consciences, driving us insane if we don’t.
Another great quote from J.C. Ryle’s book Holiness (from his Introduction):
“But as to an absolute literal perfection, the most eminent saints of God in every age have always been the very last to lay claim to it! On the contrary they have always had the deepest sense of their own utter unworthiness and imperfection. The more spiritual light they have enjoyed the more they have seen their own countless defects and shortcomings. The more grace they have had the more they have been “clothed with humility.” ( 1 Peter 5:5.)”
The great thing is that we agree on what is really important, which is the meat of what you’re saying. Hopefully my blog post tonight will explain where I get hung up on a couple of the things you said (I hope I get to it tonight).
Perhaps it will end up being a trivial difference; compared to the amount we agree on, it definitely is. But I think it’s worth pushing our minds to be more precise
Thanks, that’s encouraging! BTW, I don’t think I’m 100% dialed on all this stuff, I’m working through some of my thinking on Walking in the Spirit with one of our pastors…
Ok, it went up late last night. http://truthstands.blogspot.com