From Canada

I spoke three times yesterday at Niagara Celebration Church and Toronto Celebration Church. It’s always a pleasure to speak in places where the congregations are already grounded in the truths of grace and identity.

I spoke on the topics “The Greatest Sin of the Modern Church: Self Righteousness” and “It’s Been Jesus All The Way.” The first message was the seed for the blog article below:

Decadent Sins of Dedicated Saints

For years I lived a lifestyle of decadent sin. I was a pastor who could not find freedom from my sin. I didn’t want to be free. In fact, I didn’t even know I was living deep in sin. What did my lifestyle look like then?

I would arise early, very early in the morning to read my Bible. I believed that the earlier I got into the Bible, the more pleased God would be with me and the more I would be blessed. “Early will I seek thee” was the verse I would think of at times when I was up at five in the morning, pouring over the Scriptures.

Sometimes I would pray for extended periods of time. Once I went into my office to pray on Sunday night and didn’t come out until Wednesday afternoon. I wanted “power from on high” the way I’d read that people like Charles Finney and E.M. Bounds had known because of their great prayer lives. I just knew that if I “paid the price” in prayer I could have the same power.

I would evangelize anything that moved. Being a soul-winner was what I lived for. One time I decided that I wouldn’t eat until I led somebody to Christ. After three days, I got a young boy on a bike at the park to pray “the sinner’s prayer.” I knew God had to be pleased with me when He saw my commitment to witnessing for Him.

Hideous. Vile. Enslaving. Sad. Those are the adjectives that would describe that lifestyle of sin in which I was trapped. Religious sins can be the most addictive and the most destructive.

Does this description of my sinful lifestyle surprise you? You may disagree or you may be confused and wonder, “What’s he saying? I don’t understand. Is he saying that his sins were reading the Bible, praying and witnessing to others?” Yes, that’s exactly what I’m saying and here’s why: It wasn’t what I was doing that caused it to be sin. It was why I was doing it. I did these things to become more holy, to make spiritual progress, to see God’s blessings in my life.

To do anything in an attempt to make ourselves more holy or to earn God’s blessings is a sin because it denies the finished work of Jesus on the cross. The fact is that God blesses us because of what Christ has done on our behalf, not because of anything we do. We all get that when it comes to salvation, so why do we so easily miss it when it comes to sanctification?

Every blessing you have in life is because of His grace, not your works. Remember, I said that I thought if I paid the price, I would be blessed and make spiritual progress. That is not why we are blessed. We are blessed because Jesus has already paid the price! We can’t earn anything from God and don’t need to because Jesus has already done everything necessary and we’ve been given everything we need. (See Ephesians 1:3, Romans 1:30, Romans 5:17)

So, my religious activities were sin because they reflected my belief that the finished work of Christ was not enough for my sanctification and that I had to add something to what He did in order to become more holy or to be blessed. The Bible says, “Whatever is not of faith is sin.” That’s true even if it’s reading the Bible, praying or evangelizing. When we don’t do those things as an outflow of faith in Christ, but because we’re trying to earn merits with Him, we’re sinning. That kind of self-effort can only produce one thing: self-righteousness The righteousness of God comes to us apart from the works of the Law. The Apostle Paul said that it is not to him that works, but to the one that believes.

Do you see the point? What I was doing was wrong because of why I was doing it. Anything we do to earn something from God insults what Jesus did on the cross because what He did is enough and if we deny that by our actions, what else can it be called than “sin?” Sin is missing the mark and we never miss it more than we’re trying to work our way into something (righteousness) that He has already provided as a free gift.

Self-righteousness doesn’t always look smug and condescending toward others. It exists anytime we rely on self-effort to become righteous. Sometimes that can look spiritual to other people or even to ourselves. That’s why self-righteousness is such an insidious sin. It’s stealth in the modern church and only God’s Spirit can reveal it to us in our own lives.

May the Holy Spirit deliver us from self-righteousness that we try to achieve by what we do and cause us to understand Christ’s righteousness, that can never be achieved but can only be received by faith.

. . . I’m in the Toronto airport as I write this, about to leave for Winnipeg where I’ll record five TV programs tomorrow. Thanks for checking in on my blog today.