Fighting the Good Fight, or Just Believing?

About forty years ago I was at a low place emotionally. The psychiatrist at the University of Rochester diagnosed the depression as "graduate anxiety." I was working on the degree Doctor of Education.

One night as I was laying in bed a spirit (or the Lord) came to me. He said to me, "I love to fight." From that moment I began to recover. It took me a few years to recover completely from anxiety, but I finally did.

About ten years ago I was on my prayer walk. I said to the Lord, "Why don’t Christian people fight instead of complaining and feeling sorry for themselves?"

The Lord lifted the fighting spirit from me for a few moments. Then I realized that the willingness to fight is a gift from the Lord.

You know, a considerable part of the Old Testament has to do with war. Many of the Psalms, for example. The New Testament exhorts us to endure hardship as good soldiers of Christ. I am not hearing much about fighting, in the preaching of today, are you? Rather, the emphasis is on how wonderful and ordinarily pleasant everything will be, if we will only "accept Christ." I have not found everything to be pleasant since I accepted Christ. Have you? Wonderful, but very challenging. Pleasant, no!

The Book of Revelation tells us that the rewards we normally associate with being a Christian are reserved for the "overcomers." Like ruling with Christ, or walking in white as a member of the royal priesthood, for example. The term "overcome" implies victory over some sort of opposition. The Book of Revelation was written to Christians, wasn’t it? So "to overcome" means more than "accepting Christ."

Has it been true with you, as it has with me, that every day (I have been a Christian for 64 years) we are faced with the decision to resist our sinful nature, or with other sorts of challenges to our abiding in Christ, and we have to choose whether to do what is right or to do what is pleasing to us. Often these are not the same; and it is at this point that the godly remnant are distinguished from so many church-attendees.

Am I the only one with whom such a daily battle takes place? I don’t think so, after reading the testimony of other Christians.

So what does it mean "to overcome"? It means to be able to look up to the Lord Jesus at every moment of the day and night and know we have done what He has required of us.

I understand numerous Christians live under perpetual condemnation, having been taught that "no one is perfect." If they dare consider their own actions they realize their behaviour is questionable at best. But they have been taught "grace," "grace," "grace." And so they throw off any questions they have about their actions and trust that the "grace teaching" is of God and they will go to Heaven and live forever in a mansion, even though their behaviour has not been in accordance with the standard set by the New Testament.

They never have denied themselves, taken up their personal cross, and followed the Lord Jesus into the battle against the great lie the world system is. Some while back a student at a Bible college told me that a lady had mentioned to the teacher that she felt guilty about a certain action. The teacher responded by saying that God saw her through Christ so she could not possibly be condemned or guilty.

In another instance, a student at a different Bible college told me that when in their study they came to Second Corinthians 5:10, about the Judgment Seat of Christ, the professor comforted them by saying they had no need to worry, this verse does not apply to them.

The student recounting this incident to me said you could feel a wave of relief go through the class, all of whom were studying for the ministry. These two incidents actually took place. The two Bible colleges are part of a large Pentecostal denomination.

Can you see how Satan has disarmed God’s potential warriors? They have no need to fight. There is no battle. Christ has done it all. We abide in Christ by doing nothing but believing we are abiding in Christ.

When I was younger, and this horrible travesty of the new covenant became clear to me, I was not pleasant to listen to. I yelled and ranted, thinking that my listeners were deliberately being blind to what the Bible said.

Actually they weren’t. They merely were believing what they had been taught. The result of the disarming of the believers, due to the preaching of "easy believability," is that much sin is being practiced in the United States. As long as our culture seemed to proceed relatively intact, the Christian people continued to live their comfortable life, listening to the late-night comedians utter their blasphemies. We have asked for Tash, and Tash has come, as Lewis said in The Last Battle.

Now we have a President and a Congress who appear to be moving our nation away from our traditional values. Slowly but surely the American people are awakening to the fact that our way of life is being threatened.

I am not certain there is enough grief over the major sin, which is abortion. The concern has to do with our economic system and our "rights" to privacy and self-determination. These are not important to God. But abortion is important enough to remove the United States of America from its role as a major power down to the place of a third-rate power, while the leadership of the world moves to the East.

If such destruction does not begin to occur within twenty-five years, I am a false prophet.

The battle to preserve the American way of life could not be won by political action, or even by civil war. It is a spiritual problem. It could be won only by a massive return to godly behaviour on the part of the Christian people. Such a return will not take place as long as our Christian leaders maintain that we are saved by belief in forgiveness (grace) alone and our behavior is secondary, if not inconsequential, in importance.

Since I do not believe the leaders are going to change their message, I am pressing as close to Jesus as I can get and am encouraging all who listen to me to do the same. I don’t think we can save our country, but we can save ourselves and our loved ones if we will seek Christ at all times, day and night.

Do you remember how God took care of Jeremiah when the people of Israel were being carried off to Babylon and their nation ruined? God can save an individual in the midst of chaos.

In the evening I explained how the plan of salvation actually works, that is, that which has taken the place of the Law of Moses.

Under the Law of Moses, the believer attained to righteousness by observing to do all that the Law stipulated. These observances were increased by the Jewish interpretations of the Law.

Then "grace and Truth" appeared. But I fear the grace and Truth have been misunderstood and misapplied.

The widespread belief, at least in America, is that we now are free from the Law of Moses, but mercy and forgiveness have taken the place of the Law. Also that the freely given righteousness insures that we will enter Heaven when we die and live forever in a mansion. There we will be praising God for eternity. So now we have an unscriptural plan of salvation and an unscriptural salvation (eternal existence in a mansion in the spirit world).

Let me discuss these two elements: the plan, and then the result of the plan, or, we might say, the actual goal of salvation.

We know that presenting the plan as an eternal forgiveness that operates independently of our behaviour is incorrect, because in several passages the Apostle Paul tells us that if we continue to obey our sinful nature we will not inherit the Kingdom of God. In the Day of Resurrection we will experience corruption. Also, the Lord Jesus told us plainly, in the last chapter of the Bible, that He is going to reward each of us according to our works. Thus we have an unscriptural plan.

But what then is the covenant, the plan that replaces the Law of Moses? The plan is as follows:

At one time we too were foolish, disobedient, deceived and enslaved by all kinds of passions and pleasures. We lived in malice and envy, being hated and hating one another. But when the kindness and love of God our Saviour appeared, he saved us, not because of righteous things we had done, but because of his mercy. He saved us through the washing of rebirth and renewal by the Holy Spirit, whom he poured out on us generously through Jesus Christ our Saviour, so that, having been justified by his grace, we might become heirs having the hope of eternal life. This is a trustworthy saying. And I want you to stress these things, so that those who have trusted in God may be careful to devote themselves to doing what is good. These things are excellent and profitable for everyone. (Titus 3:3-8)

Please note that the passage above does away with the current preaching. What plan replaces the Law of Moses?

"The washing of rebirth and renewal by the Holy Spirit."

As the new birth develops in us our old sinful nature is washed away. Christ is formed in us. The Holy Spirit continually is renewing us in the Life of Christ. These mercies were not available under the Law of Moses. It is a new covenant. This is transformation, not just forgiveness.

Our unscriptural goal is eternal existence in a mansion in the spirit world. What, then, is the scriptural goal?

There are two dimensions of the scriptural goal. The first dimension is our complete transformation into the image of God, and then the likeness of God. Change into the image of God means that we behave as God behaves. Change into the likeness of God means we look like God. The change in likeness depends on the change in image. The change in image begins now. But both will require untold ages to accomplish.

The second dimension of the scriptural goal is what the Book of Hebrews terms the "rest of God." The rest of God is our eternal Sabbath. As we enter the rest of God we begin to think as God is thinking; speak as God is speaking; act as God is acting. We are at perfect rest in the very centre of God’s Person. We always do His will by nature and delight in it, just as our Lord Jesus does.

I have no idea how long it will take for Christian thinking to change from the forgiveness–mansion mindset to the transformation– "rest of God" mindset. But until it does, the churches will continue to be filled with believers who are living in the sinful, adamic nature, pursuing their independent life according to their own plans and ambitions.