“For I tell you, unless your righteousness goes beyond that of the experts in the law and the Pharisees, you will never enter the kingdom of heaven.” (Matthew 5:20, NET Bible here and following)
Last week, here in Ukraine, this church, along with Ukrainian society in general, celebrated what we call “Trinity Day”, otherwise known throughout the world as Pentecost. Because it’s a notable Orthodox holiday, the whole society “observes” it, one way or another, much like happens with Christmas and Easter.
And now, a week later, how many people out there, in the houses and streets around us, are reflecting further on the significance of last week’s holiday? Very few. Extremely few. And, I suppose, in most people even my commenting on this would summon up the objection: “There was a holiday last week. So? We celebrated it—what more do you want? Does God want us to go on endlessly thinking about a holiday that’s over?”And that is the difference between a “traditionally Christian culture” and a living, personal relationship with Jesus, the Son of God. That is the essence of what we preach in this church. You may forget everything else you ever heard in this church, but please don’t ever forget this: we proclaim, not some holy calendar, not some national religion, not a sanctifying, saving ritual—we proclaim Christ crucified, risen and returning, as the only Way, Truth and Life of God, saving all who receive Him in faith and repentance. Not by works, but freely, as the gift of God’s grace.
Yes, last week was the Day of Pentecost, but today and every day, every moment, the Holy Spirit of God abides in the hearts of God’s children, born spiritually by Christ’s saving power, and communes with them, speaks to them, guides and works through them.
For us, every day is the Day of Pentecost. Because the Holy Spirit abides and moves in our lives every day. In the same way, you could say that every day is Christmas, because Christ is always born in our hearts, in our spirits, by divine grace. Every day is Easter, too, because we live in, and experience, the power of His resurrection—the resurrection of the Redeeming Lamb, Jesus.
Along the way in our spiritual development, contingent upon the way we indeed walk with Him, we peer more and more into the miracle of salvation, ever more deeply desiring to know Him unobstructedly, without hindrance. To know Him Who, in the words of the apostle Paul, “…is the image of the invisible God, the firstborn over all creation, for all things in heaven and on earth were created by him – all things, whether visible or invisible, whether thrones or dominions, whether principalities or powers – all things were created through him and for him. He himself is before all things and all things are held together in him. He is the head of the body, the church, as well as the beginning, the firstborn from among the dead, so that he himself may become first in all things. For God was pleased to have all his fullness dwell in the Son and through him to reconcile all things to himself by making peace through the blood of his cross – through him, whether things on earth or things in heaven.” (Colossians 1:15-20)
This is He about Whom the apostle says that a believer’s entire aim in life is to know Him and even to know “the fellowship of His sufferings.”
Last week I emphasized that the presence and work of the Spirit in us asserts our genuine, authentic “self”, establishes our true worth in God, gives birth to a new interrelationship with God, so that we have no need of a façade or image dreamed up to impress people.
Today I want us to peer more closely into the significance and intrinsic role of the Spirit in our daily experience as children of God.Yes, it all starts on the inside, where God, at the price of His Only-Begotten Son, writes a new law on the believer’s heart:“‘But I will make a new covenant with the whole nation of Israel after I plant them back in the land,’ says the Lord. ‘I will put my law within them and write it on their hearts and minds. I will be their God and they will be my people. People will no longer need to teach their neighbors and relatives to know me. For all of them, from the least important to the most important, will know me,’ says the Lord. ‘For I will forgive their sin and will no longer call to mind the wrong they have done.’” (Jeremiah 31:33-34)
To this new and transcendent dimension of spiritual life, in the knowledge of God, Christ summoned His hearers in the Sermon on the Mount, when He mentioned that ultimate righteousness, the kind that surpasses all the diligent, painstaking, fastidious, Law-parsing “righteousness” of the Pharisees. Yes, surpasses— precisely because it begins on the inside, in living relationship with God, and it expresses, not an attempt to earn God’s approval, but free, spontaneous, unconstrained love toward God, in bursting gratitude for the gift of life in Christ.
It would be a tremendous error to suppose that life in the Spirit is a predictable, stale, impassive state of being that is always consistent with religious custom and traditional expectations, that life in the Spirit must never upset, agitate or anger the world around you. We can’t forget that the Pharisees’ prime accusation against Jesus was that His behavior didn’t conform to their religious-cultural rules.
Yet Jesus was innocent before the Father.
In the works of C.S. Lewis there is a lion, and his name is Aslan. Aslan is an imaginative figure of Christ in Lewis’s stories. This lion Aslan is righteous, kind and loving, but don’t make the mistake of taking him for a house pet that will jump when you say “Jump!” or sit when you say “Sit!” In one of these books a certain character comments, “Aslan is not a tame lion.” And another character responds, “No, but he is good.”
And our God, however good and kind and holy and loving, is not “tame”, and He doesn’t jump to entertain us. He doesn’t bow to our whims; rather, He enjoins us to implement His holy intentions—in simple terms: to do what he says! He requires us to attend to His indwelling presence in the Holy Spirit, Who is the deposit of our everlasting inheritance in Christ.No, He is not tame. “Our God is indeed a devouring fire.” (Hebrews 12:29) In fact, He takes us by surprise, suddenly overturning our accustomed categories and concepts, views and habits, banishing everything that fails to accord with His Law of Love.
Acts 4:8-22: Peter, filled with the Holy Spirit, replied, “Rulers of the people and elders, if we are being examined today for a good deed done to a sick man – by what means this man was healed – let it be known to all of you and to all the people of Israel that by the name of Jesus Christ the Nazarene whom you crucified, whom God raised from the dead, this man stands before you healthy. This Jesus is the stone that was rejected by you, the builders, that has become the cornerstone. And there is salvation in no one else, for there is no other name under heaven given among people by which we must be saved.”When they saw the boldness of Peter and John, and discovered that they were uneducated and ordinary men, they were amazed and recognized these men had been with Jesus. And because they saw the man who had been healed standing with them, they had nothing to say against this. But when they had ordered them to go outside the council, they began to confer with one another, saying, “What should we do with these men? For it is plain to all who live in Jerusalem that a notable miraculous sign has come about through them, and we cannot deny it. But to keep this matter from spreading any further among the people, let us warn them to speak no more to anyone in this name.” And they called them in and ordered them not to speak or teach at all in the name of Jesus. But Peter and John replied, “Whether it is right before God to obey you rather than God, you decide, for it is impossible for us not to speak about what we have seen and heard.” After threatening them further, they released them, for they could not find how to punish them on account of the people, because they were all praising God for what had happened. For the man, on whom this miraculous sign of healing had been performed, was over forty years old.
To obey man or God? That’s the choice that lay before Peter and John that day, and, filled with the Spirit, they chose right.
I think we are sometimes fearful of admitting to ourselves, admitting into our consciousness, just how free we are in Christ, because such freedom actually represents the highest responsibility—and the strictest law, the law of the Spirit. It demands of us constant devotion and attention to the very Lawgiver Who lives in our hearts, in the Holy Spirit. That’s why the Scriptures call this life in Christ the highest calling.
I think we all know the following passage very well, maybe by heart:
“But the fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, and self-control. Against such things there is no law. Now those who belong to Christ have crucified the flesh with its passions and desires. If we live by the Spirit, let us also behave in accordance with the Spirit.” (Galatians 5:22-25)
In spite of our Sunday School room posters illustrating this passage as “The Fruits of the Spirit”, with apples and oranges and bananas serving to help the children memorize them, take note that in actuality Paul never says these are the fruits of the Spirit. The apostle isn’t trying to give us an exhaustive list of all the ways God’s Spirit manifests in our lives. No, he adduces these qualities as the Spirit’s “fruit”, in the singular. Paul is characterizing a life in which God’s Spirit enjoys range and scope to express Himself. In a life like that we may expect to perceive God’s Spirit coming through in a multifaceted demonstration of God’s perfect character.
And here’s the thing: against that sort of life, there is no law! Because a life like that is the realization of God’s law! A life like that has transcended all law, except for the living law of Love. That’s why Christ called such a life a “righteousness” that transcended even the righteousness of the Pharisees.
This is supreme Christian freedom and responsibility.
Elsewhere in his letter to the Galatian Christians, Paul writes: “Carry one another’s burdens, and in this way you will fulfill the law of Christ,” (6:2) and “For the whole law can be summed up in a single commandment, namely, ‘You must love your neighbor as yourself.’” (5:14)
The Lord Jesus said, “In everything, treat others as you would want them to treat you, for this fulfills the law and the prophets.” (Matt. 7:12)
And the apostle James tells us, “But the one who peers into the perfect law of liberty and fixes his attention there, and does not become a forgetful listener but one who lives it out – he will be blessed in what he does,” (1:25) and “But if you fulfill the royal law as expressed in this scripture, ‘You shall love your neighbor as yourself,’ you are doing well,” (2:8) and, “Speak and act as those who will be judged by a law that gives freedom” (2:12).
This is that new law, the new principle of the inwardly abiding Spirit of God Who gives birth to a new motive within us, one that reflects the very heart of the eternal Creator.
This is that law that surpasses the righteousness of the Pharisees, because it flows from vital union with the Spirit of the Lawgiver, from essential connection with His very heart.
This is the Spirit’s appointment and work in our experience as children of the Living God.
Last week, here in Ukraine, this church, along with Ukrainian society in general, celebrated what we call “Trinity Day”, otherwise known throughout the world as Pentecost. Because it’s a notable Orthodox holiday, the whole society “observes” it, one way or another, much like happens with Christmas and Easter.
And now, a week later, how many people out there, in the houses and streets around us, are reflecting further on the significance of last week’s holiday? Very few. Extremely few. And, I suppose, in most people even my commenting on this would summon up the objection: “There was a holiday last week. So? We celebrated it—what more do you want? Does God want us to go on endlessly thinking about a holiday that’s over?”And that is the difference between a “traditionally Christian culture” and a living, personal relationship with Jesus, the Son of God. That is the essence of what we preach in this church. You may forget everything else you ever heard in this church, but please don’t ever forget this: we proclaim, not some holy calendar, not some national religion, not a sanctifying, saving ritual—we proclaim Christ crucified, risen and returning, as the only Way, Truth and Life of God, saving all who receive Him in faith and repentance. Not by works, but freely, as the gift of God’s grace.
Yes, last week was the Day of Pentecost, but today and every day, every moment, the Holy Spirit of God abides in the hearts of God’s children, born spiritually by Christ’s saving power, and communes with them, speaks to them, guides and works through them.
For us, every day is the Day of Pentecost. Because the Holy Spirit abides and moves in our lives every day. In the same way, you could say that every day is Christmas, because Christ is always born in our hearts, in our spirits, by divine grace. Every day is Easter, too, because we live in, and experience, the power of His resurrection—the resurrection of the Redeeming Lamb, Jesus.
Along the way in our spiritual development, contingent upon the way we indeed walk with Him, we peer more and more into the miracle of salvation, ever more deeply desiring to know Him unobstructedly, without hindrance. To know Him Who, in the words of the apostle Paul, “…is the image of the invisible God, the firstborn over all creation, for all things in heaven and on earth were created by him – all things, whether visible or invisible, whether thrones or dominions, whether principalities or powers – all things were created through him and for him. He himself is before all things and all things are held together in him. He is the head of the body, the church, as well as the beginning, the firstborn from among the dead, so that he himself may become first in all things. For God was pleased to have all his fullness dwell in the Son and through him to reconcile all things to himself by making peace through the blood of his cross – through him, whether things on earth or things in heaven.” (Colossians 1:15-20)
This is He about Whom the apostle says that a believer’s entire aim in life is to know Him and even to know “the fellowship of His sufferings.”
Last week I emphasized that the presence and work of the Spirit in us asserts our genuine, authentic “self”, establishes our true worth in God, gives birth to a new interrelationship with God, so that we have no need of a façade or image dreamed up to impress people.
Today I want us to peer more closely into the significance and intrinsic role of the Spirit in our daily experience as children of God.Yes, it all starts on the inside, where God, at the price of His Only-Begotten Son, writes a new law on the believer’s heart:“‘But I will make a new covenant with the whole nation of Israel after I plant them back in the land,’ says the Lord. ‘I will put my law within them and write it on their hearts and minds. I will be their God and they will be my people. People will no longer need to teach their neighbors and relatives to know me. For all of them, from the least important to the most important, will know me,’ says the Lord. ‘For I will forgive their sin and will no longer call to mind the wrong they have done.’” (Jeremiah 31:33-34)
To this new and transcendent dimension of spiritual life, in the knowledge of God, Christ summoned His hearers in the Sermon on the Mount, when He mentioned that ultimate righteousness, the kind that surpasses all the diligent, painstaking, fastidious, Law-parsing “righteousness” of the Pharisees. Yes, surpasses— precisely because it begins on the inside, in living relationship with God, and it expresses, not an attempt to earn God’s approval, but free, spontaneous, unconstrained love toward God, in bursting gratitude for the gift of life in Christ.
It would be a tremendous error to suppose that life in the Spirit is a predictable, stale, impassive state of being that is always consistent with religious custom and traditional expectations, that life in the Spirit must never upset, agitate or anger the world around you. We can’t forget that the Pharisees’ prime accusation against Jesus was that His behavior didn’t conform to their religious-cultural rules.
Yet Jesus was innocent before the Father.
In the works of C.S. Lewis there is a lion, and his name is Aslan. Aslan is an imaginative figure of Christ in Lewis’s stories. This lion Aslan is righteous, kind and loving, but don’t make the mistake of taking him for a house pet that will jump when you say “Jump!” or sit when you say “Sit!” In one of these books a certain character comments, “Aslan is not a tame lion.” And another character responds, “No, but he is good.”
And our God, however good and kind and holy and loving, is not “tame”, and He doesn’t jump to entertain us. He doesn’t bow to our whims; rather, He enjoins us to implement His holy intentions—in simple terms: to do what he says! He requires us to attend to His indwelling presence in the Holy Spirit, Who is the deposit of our everlasting inheritance in Christ.No, He is not tame. “Our God is indeed a devouring fire.” (Hebrews 12:29) In fact, He takes us by surprise, suddenly overturning our accustomed categories and concepts, views and habits, banishing everything that fails to accord with His Law of Love.
Acts 4:8-22: Peter, filled with the Holy Spirit, replied, “Rulers of the people and elders, if we are being examined today for a good deed done to a sick man – by what means this man was healed – let it be known to all of you and to all the people of Israel that by the name of Jesus Christ the Nazarene whom you crucified, whom God raised from the dead, this man stands before you healthy. This Jesus is the stone that was rejected by you, the builders, that has become the cornerstone. And there is salvation in no one else, for there is no other name under heaven given among people by which we must be saved.”When they saw the boldness of Peter and John, and discovered that they were uneducated and ordinary men, they were amazed and recognized these men had been with Jesus. And because they saw the man who had been healed standing with them, they had nothing to say against this. But when they had ordered them to go outside the council, they began to confer with one another, saying, “What should we do with these men? For it is plain to all who live in Jerusalem that a notable miraculous sign has come about through them, and we cannot deny it. But to keep this matter from spreading any further among the people, let us warn them to speak no more to anyone in this name.” And they called them in and ordered them not to speak or teach at all in the name of Jesus. But Peter and John replied, “Whether it is right before God to obey you rather than God, you decide, for it is impossible for us not to speak about what we have seen and heard.” After threatening them further, they released them, for they could not find how to punish them on account of the people, because they were all praising God for what had happened. For the man, on whom this miraculous sign of healing had been performed, was over forty years old.
To obey man or God? That’s the choice that lay before Peter and John that day, and, filled with the Spirit, they chose right.
I think we are sometimes fearful of admitting to ourselves, admitting into our consciousness, just how free we are in Christ, because such freedom actually represents the highest responsibility—and the strictest law, the law of the Spirit. It demands of us constant devotion and attention to the very Lawgiver Who lives in our hearts, in the Holy Spirit. That’s why the Scriptures call this life in Christ the highest calling.
I think we all know the following passage very well, maybe by heart:
“But the fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, and self-control. Against such things there is no law. Now those who belong to Christ have crucified the flesh with its passions and desires. If we live by the Spirit, let us also behave in accordance with the Spirit.” (Galatians 5:22-25)
In spite of our Sunday School room posters illustrating this passage as “The Fruits of the Spirit”, with apples and oranges and bananas serving to help the children memorize them, take note that in actuality Paul never says these are the fruits of the Spirit. The apostle isn’t trying to give us an exhaustive list of all the ways God’s Spirit manifests in our lives. No, he adduces these qualities as the Spirit’s “fruit”, in the singular. Paul is characterizing a life in which God’s Spirit enjoys range and scope to express Himself. In a life like that we may expect to perceive God’s Spirit coming through in a multifaceted demonstration of God’s perfect character.
And here’s the thing: against that sort of life, there is no law! Because a life like that is the realization of God’s law! A life like that has transcended all law, except for the living law of Love. That’s why Christ called such a life a “righteousness” that transcended even the righteousness of the Pharisees.
This is supreme Christian freedom and responsibility.
Elsewhere in his letter to the Galatian Christians, Paul writes: “Carry one another’s burdens, and in this way you will fulfill the law of Christ,” (6:2) and “For the whole law can be summed up in a single commandment, namely, ‘You must love your neighbor as yourself.’” (5:14)
The Lord Jesus said, “In everything, treat others as you would want them to treat you, for this fulfills the law and the prophets.” (Matt. 7:12)
And the apostle James tells us, “But the one who peers into the perfect law of liberty and fixes his attention there, and does not become a forgetful listener but one who lives it out – he will be blessed in what he does,” (1:25) and “But if you fulfill the royal law as expressed in this scripture, ‘You shall love your neighbor as yourself,’ you are doing well,” (2:8) and, “Speak and act as those who will be judged by a law that gives freedom” (2:12).
This is that new law, the new principle of the inwardly abiding Spirit of God Who gives birth to a new motive within us, one that reflects the very heart of the eternal Creator.
This is that law that surpasses the righteousness of the Pharisees, because it flows from vital union with the Spirit of the Lawgiver, from essential connection with His very heart.
This is the Spirit’s appointment and work in our experience as children of the Living God.
