Legalism Recovery Act

Unlike our government is doing with banks, car companies, etc. I can't take over the book stores and make them sell my books at a lower cost, but I can offer my own version of a Recovery Act. So many are trapped in legalism and feel like they're approaching spiritual bankruptcy. They just can't seem to find a way out. So this is my version of a bailout plan!

Of course, I hope you know I'm joking. The truth is, though, that we're all having a tough time financially right now so I've decided to mark down the cost of all my books considerably more than I normally sell them.

This would be a good time to buy books for friends that you've wanted to understand the message. Also, be sure to note Lori Zenker's children's book, Promiseland. This is practically a giveaway price for a book like this. We heard just this week from somebody whose church is using that book in their children's Sunday School Department and he talked about how much they had enjoyed using it. Lori is the wife of Mike Zenker, our Grace Walk Canada National Director. She did a great job with this one.

Check it all out: www.gracewalkresources.com

The Problem With Rededication

Perhaps more than any other challenge I gave people during my years of legalistic teaching in the church was that they should rededicate themselves to Christ. I believed that the need we all have is to try harder, to be more sincere and more zealous in our efforts to live for Jesus Christ. I rededicated myself until I felt worn out from it at times.

Rededication isn’t the grace way. The real answer to a sense of need in our walk with God isn’t to promise Him that we’ll try harder. That’s true even though we may ask for His help when we rededicate ourselves. Although many are sincere in rededicating themselves to Christ, it’s a wrong approach to the desire to be more consistent in our commitment to Him.

The problem with rededicating ourselves to Christ is self, which is really just another word for the self-sufficiency of the flesh. The essence of religious flesh, as strange as it might seem, is our attempt at trying to live the Christian life. That is what actually prevents us from living the Christian life. In fact, the harder we try, the greater the likelihood that we won’t succeed because victory in the Christian life doesn’t come by trying. It comes by trusting.

Self-determination, self-discipline, self-sufficiency – those are what stand in the way. Jesus is the way to victory in your grace walk. He said, “If any man will come after me, let him deny himself, take up his cross and follow me.” Note His words in that statement. What did He say we are to do in regard to our self-life? Dedicate ourselves to Him? No, He said that we are to deny self.

Rededicating ourselves to try harder, then, isn’t the answer. It doesn’t matter how sincere we might be. It simply won’t work. The answer is to trust Him. That’s the only cure for an unstable, up and down sort of spiritual experience.

You won’t ever live a victorious Christian life by rededicating yourself to God, and telling him you’re going to try harder to do a better job. Instead, we must come to the end of ourselves - our self-life. We need to say, “Lord, it’s not just hard for me to live a life that honors you, it is impossible for me to do it. So I will stop trying and just trust you. You are my life, now Lord Jesus, live your life through me.”

We didn't become a Christian by revving up our religious rpm's and trying to make progress toward entering God's kingdom by what we did. Instead, we came to the place where we realized there was nothing we could do to get into a right standing with God. Nothing has changed in that regard now that you are a Christian.

In the same way, now we are to simply acknowledge that, no matter how hard we might try, there is actually nothing we can do to make ourselves stronger. Just like when we were saved, we have to come to Him in faith and total dependence that He will be the One who does what needs to be done; and He will.

The Apostle Paul said, "As you have entered the Lord Jesus Christ, so walk in Him." We continue the walk in the same way we started it -- by grace through faith. The answer to a sense that we are weak in our commitment to Him is to trust in His grace and know that He is committed to us. The one who has begun a good work in you will finish what He has started. Just trust Him, knowing it's not up to you and how hard you try. Faith is the key. That's all it takes.

(This blog is an excerpt from the 101 Lies Taught In Church manuscript I'm working on now.)

A Schizophrenic God?

I grew up with a belief that I now think may border on, if not be, outright heresy. My view of God was skewed at best and totally anti-biblical at worst. The issue revolved around the character of the Godhead. Somehow I developed a mentality that left me seeing God the Father as an angry God whose justice and holiness were screaming for my destruction. He hated sin and since that happened to be the thing I did best, I was in big trouble. I was indeed a sinner in the hand of an angry God. I basically felt like He had one last nerve and I was about to get on it. I envisioned God the Father as watching me carefully, scrutinizing everything I did and not happy about what He saw most of the time.

Then there was Jesus. In my mind, He loved me and didn't want to see me get the brunt of God's anger. That's why He came to earth - to live perfectly and then go to the cross to take the beating that would have been mine. On the one hand, I had always been taught that God loved me and that was why He sent Jesus. On the other, I believed that God callously stood there and watched His own Son die an agonizing death that should have been mine. Somehow it didn't add up to me. God loves Jesus. God loves me. So He torments Jesus so He won't have to torment me???? Umm...so does He love me more than He loved Jesus? Is He schizophrenic with some kind of split personality? I knew I'd been told that He loved me but it didn't make sense. Something's not right here...but after awhile you just learn not to question.

I realize now that the weakness in my understanding came fairly close to what's called a tritheistic heresy. Tritheism teaches that there are three distinct Gods who form a triad. It focuses on the "three" but ignores the "three in one" aspect of the Trinity.

Here's the bottom line: The whole Trinity feel and have always felt the same about you and me. It's not a good-cop/bad-cop scenario in heaven where Jesus keeps God the Father calmed down about us by constantly reminding Him of the scars on His hands. The work on the cross was the work of the entire Trinity - not just the Son.

"God was in Christ, reconciling the world unto Himself" wrote the Apostle Paul. He wasn't sitting up in heaven, disconnected from the work of the cross. The incarnation of Emmanuel is the eternal reminder of "God with us." Within the humanity of God the Son, the divine love of God the Father was shown by the power of God the Spirit. Like many aspects of Deity, it is a mystery to man how it could all fit together. The point is that we don't have a divided Trinity in which One is constantly on edge about our behavior while the Other keeps Him calmed down.

The Father, Son and Spirit adore you. He lives in you and is with you in every circumstance of life. Divine life is being played out through our humanity every day - in our work, our homes, our play. The Triune God of all things loves you passionately. There's no danger of anger toward you. It's all good because He is all good.

For years, this viewpoint would have made me nervous and filled me with a myriad of "Yeah, but what about ...." questions. I still have unanswered questions today, but one thing I don't question is that we are loved -- more loved than we could ever imagine and nothing or nobody can ever change that.

Just A Reminder...

I post "Sunday Preaching" on my home page at www.gracewalk.org every week. I leave the video up on the site all week. Today's topic is "The Lost Sons" from Luke 15. I hope you'll check it out and help me spread the word about these sermons I post online every week.

Thanks to all those around the world who have emailed to let me know you're watching. Canada, Norway, Africa, Ireland, Vietnam, Israel, England, Greece, the Philippines, Germany, and others that don't come to mind right now - I'm glad you're on board with us in spreading the growing grace revolution! (If I didn't mention your country, list it in the comments section below this post.)

Let those in your email address book know by sending a note to them and giving them the link for gracewalk.org. We want the world to hear the gospel of grace!

A Day In The Life...

I regularly receive many emails from people whose lives are being transformed by God's grace. People often ask me, "Do you get negative mail too?" I do and, though they aren't as many in number as the positive ones, they do come regularly. I decided to post this one just so fellow grace-walkers can see the kind of opposition to God's grace that exists even among other believers. Beneath his note is my response. Some may think it's too harsh, but I typically respond in a similar way as a person writes. If they're gentle, I assume they respond to gentleness. If they are direct, I assume they will only understand a direct answer. I've deleted the name of the sender for obvious reasons.


Subject: "Shame, A Silly Game".

Dear Bro. McVey,

Grace so amazing, Grace so Divine, demands my soul, my life my all. Grace twisted demands to be rebutted. I just finished reading your article entitled "Shame, A Silly Game". How you could twist God's Amazing Grace as you did in this article is also AMAZING.

You stated,Jesus came to free us from the dark legacy of shame and embarrassment left to us by Adam. Thanks to Him, there is no condemnation toward us – none. We may feel shame at times, but it’s only an illusion. “Even if our hearts condemn us, God is greater than our hearts, and He knows everything” (1John 3:20). He knows that we are totally forgiven.


Wonderful truth to this point, but then [you write] --The shame-game is over – finished. It’s a silly game we don’t ever have to play again. Once and for all, we can stop fearing some scary god-of-our-own-making who looks at us with disappointment or irritation. It’s an infantile fantasy. There is no divine boogey-man under the cosmic bed of your existence who is going to come out and get you.

We’re all naked, but that’s okay with God. He loves you just like you are. You don’t have to change. You don’t have to be afraid. You don’t have to hide. And you certainly don’t have to be ashamed. Your Father loves and adores you just the way you are. So come out, come out, wherever you are. Somebody is waiting to give you a Hug. He longs to laugh with you. He wants you to feel His embrace and revel in His acceptance for all eternity. Leave shame alone. We belong in the conscious awareness of our permanent place in our Father’s embrace.

Is this the same message Paul preached when he told of how God judged with immediate physical death the sin of his children Annanais and his wife in Acts 5? The Scripture says that great fear came upon all the church. Was that fear caused just by imagination? Paul said in another place, Them that sin, rebuke before all, that others also may fear. Did Paul not understand grace? He told the Roman believers to fear the authorities, because they bear not the sword in vain.

Thank God, through faith in Christ, I am accepted. However, if I sin as a child of God, I should fear because whom the Lord loveth he chasteneth, and scourgeth every son whom he receiveth. Shame and fear are without a doubt God caused at times, and rightfully so.

Thank God for His grace, but grace never excuses sin. The law of God and the grace of God both hate sin. The law condemns the sinner. Grace condemed the sinners substitute. Grace cost us nothing but it cost God His Son.

Without both sides of the truth it becomes a lie.

A brother In Christ,
MB

M, my brother,

You have missed the whole point. There is no condemnation to those who are in Christ Jesus. We ARE accepted in the Beloved. Shame is not the work of the Holy Spirit. He lovingly convinces (convicts) us of the love of our Father and creates within us a desire to live in a way that honors Him. THAT is our very nature as believers.

Why would you assume that the death of Ananias & Saphira was an expression of God's anger? Why would you not assume that a loving Father chose to spare them and His church from further harm by taking them home immediately? And you need to study the word "fear." Yes, we are to fear the Lord, but surely you as a child of God don't think we are to recoil from Him in horror, do you? Fear, in the biblical sense, is awe - wonder - such respect that it causes a trembling in the presence of His greatness. It doesn't mean that we cower in the presence of a short-tempered god who is ready to zap us if we mess up. If that were the case, both you and I would have been killed by God a long time ago. Or do you disagree?

I never even hinted that "chastening" isn't a part of our Father's ways, but that itself is an expression of love - not the knee-jerk reaction of the short-tempered god you seem to imagine Him as being. I never minimized sin, but truthfully, your viewpoint seems to minimize the value of the finished work of Christ to me. Did Jesus really "pay it all" or not? I believe that He did and that now we can rest in our Father's loving acceptance. THAT becomes the catalyst for transformation in our behavior, not some shaky fear that He is ready to drop the bomb on us because of our behavior.

Thanks for your thoughts. Please accept my plainspoken response to be intended in the same spirit in which you wrote you email. We are simply two brothers who see this in very different ways.

As you believe about me, I see your concept of "grace" as weak, twisted and so far beyond what Scripture teaches that I imagine it would cause the Apostle Paul to shudder in horror.

Blessings,
Steve McVey

A Two Year Old "Sees Grace"

This is one of the sweetest things I've seen...

Change Your Underwear

The Bible really gets down to the nitty-gritty of life in some passages. For instance, did you know that in the Old Testament, God told the priests what kind of underwear they were to wear? No, not boxers or briefs. Here's what He told them:

You shall make for them linen breeches to cover their bare flesh; they shall reach from the loins even to the thighs. They shall be on Aaron and on his sons when they enter the tent of meeting, or when they approach the altar to minister in the holy place, so that they do not incur guilt and die. It shall be a statute forever to him and to his descendants after him. Exodus 28:42-43

Aaron and his sons were required to wear linen breeches as they ministered in the holy place or else they would die. Why is God so strict about what these priests wore as they ministered? It's because of the typology depicted in these matters.

In the OT, there were often literal events which portray NT truths. For instance, we know Jesus said that Jonah being in the whale for three days pointed toward His own resurrection which would also come after three days. We know that the serpent lifted up in the wilderness was a picture of salvation through the cross.

The detailed description of the garments of the priests in the Old Testament give us a picture of what it means to be in Christ. Apart from Him we would be spiritually naked, with no hope of clothing ourselves. The Bible teaches, though, that we are clothed with Christ. (See Galatians 3:27)

What does the Bible tell us about this underwear? It is deeply personal. Nobody sees your underwear but you. The very mention of your underwear is a private, intimate matter. The "breeches" refer to what you are in the secret place of your own life. Your true identity is determined by what you are at the deepest place of your life. You may have on dirty pants and shirt, but because of Him your underwear is clean!

The key to living the life we've been created to live is to act outwardly like who He has made us to be inwardly. At the core of your being you are righteous because of the finished work of Jesus Christ. Even when we don't act or look like, that doesn't change the reality of who we are.

Then there's the fabric the underwear is made from. The Bible is specific about that too. It is linen. Why did God care what kind of material was used in making these underwear? Leviticus 16:4 says,

He shall put on the holy linen tunic and the linen undergarments shall be next to his body and he shall be girded with the linen sash, and attired with the linen turban (these are the holy garments). Then he shall bath his body and put them on.

Why linen? Ezekiel answers: Linen turbans shall be on their heads and linen undergarments shall be on their loins; they shall not gird themselves with anything which makes them sweat. (Ezek 44:18)

God's plan is that His children/priests never sweat. Does the priest serve? Does he work? Yes! The grace walk isn't a passive lifestyle, but it is one in which we don't break a sweat. Why? Because we don't depend on our own strength to do the work we're called to do. We depend on the power of the indwelling Christ.

The priests wore white underwear to show that we are clean to the core. His underwear was linen to show that we don't serve in the energy of our own strength. So if religion has you worn you down and caused you to feel like you're a hypocrite, stop trusting yourself and depend on Christ and Him alone. In other words, change your underwear and everything will be alright.

(Taken from Steve McVey's series entitled Garments of Grace. Available at www.gracewalkresources.com)

Putting Out A Fleece

When we fail to trust the indwelling Christ to bring God’s will to pass in our lives, we end up doing other things to try to find God’s will. One of those things is what is widely known as “putting out a fleece.” The idea comes from the Old Testament story of Gideon.

In Judges 6, the story is told of how Gideon sought to know God’s will. The Lord had called Gideon to deliver Israel from her enemies, but he was afraid. Because of his small stature and physical weakness, he doubted what he had heard God say to him. Maybe he had misunderstood. He wanted to be sure beyond all doubt that God wanted him to be Israel’s leader, so he devised a test. Gideon prayed,

If You will deliver Israel through me, as You have spoken, behold, I will place a fleece of wool on the threshing floor. If there is dew on the fleece only, and it is dry on all the ground, then I will know that You will deliver Israel through me, as You have spoken.” And it was so. When he arose early the next morning and squeezed the fleece, he drained the dew from the fleece, a bowl full of water. Then Gideon said to God, ‘Do not let Your anger burn against me that I may speak once more; please let me make a test once more with the fleece, let it now be dry only on the fleece, and let there be dew on all the ground.’ God did so that night; for it was dry only on the fleece, and dew was on all the ground. Judges 6:36-40

By putting out the fleece before the Lord, Gideon saw God’s will affirmed to him. Don’t think, however, that the action of Gideon is intended to be an example for you to follow. The Bible makes it clear that when Gideon laid the fleece before the Lord, it was not an action of faith; it was actually an expression of faithlessness on his part! It was an expression of doubt in God’s word and fear about his circumstances.

Note again what he says in verse thirty-seven: If there is dew on the fleece only, and it is dry on all the ground, then I will know that You will deliver Israel through me, as You have spoken. Gideon wasn’t trying to know God’s will with this fleece. God had already spoken and Gideon admits knowing that by what he said in this verse. His problem wasn’t that he didn’t know what to do. His problem was that he doubted whether or not God really meant what He has said. Gideon’s fleece was an expression of doubt, not faith!

God had already spoken on this issue. He had already made His will clear to Gideon, but he didn’t believe Him. Make no mistake about it. Gideon’s use of the fleece was an act of unbelief, an act of doubt. It was not an expression of faith. God, being the God of grace He is, responded to Gideon’s request. But don’t think for a minute that his actions should be a template for how we behave when it comes to knowing God’s will.

Before we are too hard on him, however, let us remember that, unlike New Testament believers, Gideon did not possess the indwelling Holy Spirit. He may, from our human perspective, have had an understandable excuse. We do not. We live in the New Testament, not the Old. This new covenant, of which you are a beneficiary, puts you in a much, much better place than Gideon.

We have Christ, alive, and living in us, with His presence and power available to us. And yet, many believers today still say they use a “fleece” to determine God’s will. This is not only an expression of unbelief and doubt, but can sometimes be so far removed from biblical faith that is borders on downright superstition.

This may be contrary to what you have believed, or have heard, but Gideon’s story proves my point and I stand by it. We don’t need to use a “fleece” to determine God’s will in the New Testament age. We have the Holy Spirit.

When I taught this at a church retreat one weekend, Sharon made a beeline straight to me after the session had ended. “I’m having a problem with what you said about putting out a fleece,” she said. “I’ve put out fleeces to the Lord many times and He has often made His will clear to me in that way.”

“Good, I believe you,” I reply. “That just shows that God is a merciful and gracious God, and that He worked in spite of your expression of ‘faith,’ as you have understood it in the past. It’s very clear in the passage about Gideon that when it put out a fleece, it wasn’t faith that caused him to do it. It was doubt.”

“So are you saying I shouldn’t do that anymore?” Sharon asked.
“What I’m saying is that you have the Holy Spirit living inside you. It isn’t necessary for you to look for some sort of external sign to know God’s will when, all the while, the eternal Spirit of God is living in you and is ready and able to make God’s will known to you.”

While God is amazingly patient and merciful to us in our weakness and ignorance, we need to move beyond this kindergarten method of trying to determine His will. In Christ, God has lifted us to possibilities unimaginably greater!

We have no valid excuses. We have the Holy Spirit living inside of us! So why would we not learn to trust God instead of trusting in a “fleece”? We have an advantage Old Testament believers couldn’t imagine. According to 1 Corinthians 2:16, “we have the mind of Christ”!

As God’s child, you have divine ability to see life through the eyes of faith, allowing Christ to see and live and work and love through you. You are a conduit of His life into this world. The One who controls it all, lives in and through you. Let that be a truth that stirs your faith.

Don’t worry about missing God’s will. Go ahead and act in faith, believing that He wants you to grow in this area. The Apostle Paul once said, “When I was child, I used to speak like a child, think like a child, reason like a child; when I became a man, I did away with childish things” (1 Corinthians 13:11). There’s nothing wrong with being a child, but the idea of remaining a child is abnormal. The time has come to act in maturity in regard to discovering and doing God’s will in your life. If you’ll step out in faith, you’ll see that He will faithfully guide you and see to it that you reach the destination He has in mind for you.

Trusting in His indwelling Spirit is much better than putting out shallow fleeces that can often be interpreted in any way you choose to interpret them. You are God’s child. He loves you and wants to speak to you and teach you to follow His leadership in a spiritually mature way. He wants you to enjoy the benefits of the New Covenant, through which He has promised to never leave or forsake you but to lead you into all truth.

It’s time to see yourself as His child and rise above the kindergarten level of Old Testament living. A new day has come. It’s a day when Christ lives inside you and guides you into the Father’s perfect will for your life.

(This article is an excerpt from my new book, Walking In the Will of God, and can be bought at www.gracewalkresources.com)

Are Grace Walkers Anti-Church?

Speaking out against the dead religion that exists in the modern church world lends itself to misunderstanding and criticism. When a person is in a rules-focused, performance-based, man-centered, self-serving institutional church that is more interested in using than in building up people, could anybody call that an authentic New Testament congregation? The fact is that it is a counterfeit, a caricature of the true church of Jesus Christ.

Sadly, that's the kind of congregation where some people have spent their lives. They've only seen manipulative, guilt-based, religious church life and think that's normal. They don't know any other way. So along comes those who teach grace, speaking against dead religion with all of its subtle and sometimes not-so-subtle perversions of what God's church really is and the lifelong legalistic church-attending victim of the counterfeit church thinks the grace walkers are speaking against God's church. After all, to them it sounds just like their church.

The things spoken against describe their congregation to a tee so, to them, you must be against the church. It's next to impossible not to be misunderstood at times. Without speaking plainly and pointedly, people don't get the point. Speak plainly and pointedly and they think you're being ungracious.

The Apostle Paul ran into the same problem. When he plainly taught that all our sins are already covered by God's grace, some accused him of being soft on sin. They said he was teaching that sin didn't matter. (I've heard that one before too.) Paul mentioned it in Romans 3:8: "And why not say (as we are slanderously reported and as some claim that we say), 'Let us do evil that good may come?'"

Paul's accusers either heard him wrongly or else were simply trying to discredit him with their commentary on what he taught and believed. It's a hard situation, even if you're the Apostle Paul. Try to be nice in how you say it and they won't get the point. Say it plainly and run the risk of being misunderstood. What's a man to do?

So - back to the church. Are grace-walkers against the church? I've been accused of sounding at times like I'm against the church. Nothing could be further from the truth. I love the church. The Bible says that "Christ loved the church and gave Himself for it." Why would anybody who understands God's grace not love the church?

What I don't love is the religious garbage that has been dumped into the church by the enemy of our souls. Satan has infiltrated the church through legalism more than any sin you could imagine. And I hate what I constantly see because of that.

I think of the girl I met who had recently tried to commit suicide because her church had shamed her to the point she had come to feel that she could never be a good Christian.

I think of the pastor whose Bible school expelled him in his senior year during the week of final exams because his wife left him for another man. The school's response was, "If you can't govern your own home, how could you ever lead the house of God?"

I think of the lady who, this very week that I write this, was shamed by her Sunday School teacher for sitting at the table with a gay man who had come to the church for a luncheon. "He'll think you're condoning his lifestyle," she was told.

The list could go on and on. To see this kind of abuse happening in the religious world of the modern church stirs me deeply. It angers me and I don't think there's anything wrong with that. Yes, I love the church but I am filled with contempt for the legalistic abuses I hear about and see going on somewhere in the church world almost every week of my life.

So I speak against it and I will continue to speak against it. I know there are well meaning people who think that grace requires we just "make nice" with everybody, but I don't agree. Grace motivates us to act in the most loving way and sometimes acting that way may come across as harsh, though its intent is to save a life.

I'm not anti-church nor are any grace-walkers I know, but I am against the cancer that is destroying the church. There is a world of believers who are being beaten up and spiritually abused every week by sanctimonious godzis who believe their role is to condemn then control everybody with whom they have influence. It's wrong. Whether it's a Bible College Dean, a pastor, a Sunday School teacher, or whomever -- it's wrong. And what's more wrong is for those who understand the true grace and love of the Lord Jesus Christ to idly sit by without saying a word or doing a thing while the children of God are being abused.

If you're in an authentic grace-based, Christ-centered congregation, then thank God for it, but know this: Many aren't - and they need to be helped.

Lies Taught In Church Every Sunday

From the manuscript I'm working on now - "52 Lies Taught In Church Every Sunday" Taken from my online video series called "101 Lies Taught In Church Every Sunday." (That's too many for one book.)

Lie #14: Our Sins are Under the Blood of Jesus

Just like there are trite statements in all cultures that sound true on the surface, but don’t necessarily convey the truth, so it is in the church world. We’ve heard some things said in church that have been stated so often and sound so logical that we believe they must be true. This is one of those statements. Take a close look at that statement: Your sins are under the blood of Jesus. What could possibly be wrong with that affirmation?

The answer is directly related to understanding a major difference between the old and new covenant. You may remember how the high priests in the Old Testament would annually offer sacrificial animals for the sins of the people. When the blood of those animals was poured on the mercy seat, the sins of the people would be “under the blood” and God would overlook their sins for another year.

However, things have changed with the coming of the new covenant. The book of Hebrews teaches that Jesus was an infinitely better sacrifice than those offered in the Old Testament. In fact, He was the perfect sacrifice. When He offered Himself for our sins, His shed blood didn’t just cover our sins. By His sacrifice, our sins were taken away.

Hebrews 9: 26 says that, “At the consummation of the ages Jesus has been manifested to put away sin by the sacrifice of himself.” The words “put away” are one word in the Greek language, which means “to disannul, to do away with, to completely destroy.” Jesus didn’t come to cover your sins. He came to take your sin away and that’s exactly what He did.

1 John 3:5 says, “You know that he appeared in order to take away sins.” Remember the scene when Jesus showed up at the Jordan River where John the Baptist was baptizing? John said, “Look! It’s the lamb of God who takes away the sins of the world!” That old covenant prophet, John, understood better than many Christians today that Jesus came to do something different than previous priests had done. He didn’t come to hide away our sins from God’s sight by putting them under the blood of a sacrifice. He came to do away with them completely.

So it’s actually great news to know that your sins are not under the blood of Christ. His blood doesn't cover them. The blood of Jesus Christ has taken your sins away! Some have said that the doctrine of justification is the teaching that because of Christ’s finished work, it is just-if-I never sinned. That makes good sense. In the eyes of your heavenly Father, you have an unblemished record. He isn’t overlooking anything. He has rewritten your history by taking away the sins of your past and giving you the history of Christ Himself.

Believing the lie that your sins are under the blood of Christ doesn’t honor the finished work of Jesus. Ironically enough, it actually diminishes His sacrifice. What He did is much greater than most Christians have understood. He doesn’t condemn us for our sins now because there are no sins to condemn. The cross has obliterated them!
Your sins have been blotted out and you have been made to become the righteousness of God in Christ. You don’t ever need to be bogged down with a preoccupation about sins again. Instead, you can now walk in the confidence of knowing that your life isn’t defined by sin anymore, but by the righteousness of the Christ who has become your very life.

So, though it sounds good, to say that our sins are under the blood of Jesus Christ is a lie. The Bible says our sins have been taken away from us, forever, by the finished work of Christ at the cross

Spiritual Anointing

The concept of spiritual anointing has become a clouded, confusing issue in some circles of the modern church. Some evangelicals almost recoil from the very word because of abuses they have seen in this area. In reality, it’s not a complicated matter.

The act of anointing someone in the Bible was a bestowal of divine appointment and empowerment. In the Old Testament, Aaron was anointed when he became a priest. (See Leviticus 8:12) When David was set aside to be king, Samuel the priest anointed him. (See 1 Samuel 16:13) There are numerous times in Scripture when people were anointed with oil as an expression of the reality of God’s Spirit resting upon them for a particular purpose.

When God anoints people, He gives to them the abilities they need to accomplish the work He has for them to do. He imparts a capability that equips them to do more than they could ever do on their own. He chooses them and infuses them with His potential.

There is a beautiful picture of how God anoints those He chooses in Psalms 133. The text describes the scene when Aaron was anointed. Comparing the goodness of unity among God’s people with the time Aaron was anointed, the psalmist wrote:

Behold, how good and how pleasant it is for brothers to dwell together in unity! It is like the precious oil upon the head, Coming down upon the beard, even Aaron’s beard, Coming down the edge of His robes (Psalm 133:1-2).

The imagery in this text is graphic. When Aaron was anointed, they didn’t just put a little dab of oil on his forehead. Instead, they poured it on top of his head in such excess that it ran down his head, soaked his beard until it dripped off his beard onto his robe. Then the oil ran down his robe all the way to the edge. This was a man who was drenched in oil.

Would you like for God to pour out ability infused with divine power on you in the way they poured out the oil on Aaron? Can you imagine what you could accomplish in your lifetime if He chose to do that? Isaiah said, “the Lord has anointed me,” but does that include you? It does.

Much has been said in the modern church about spiritual anointing. I’ve often had people tell me that they would pray that I might be anointed as I have spoken in their churches. I’ve seen preachers on TV offering special “anointing oil” for a small donation. I’ve had people ask me to pray for them to be anointed.

Isaiah’s words provide some news you will be glad to hear. The news is this: You already have the anointing of God. That’s right, you already possess divine capabilities. How can we know this? It’s because of something Jesus said.

Luke 4:16-22 records an incident in the life of Jesus which is particularly relevant to this matter of anointing. The text tells that one day when Jesus went to Nazareth, He went into the temple on the Sabbath. Somebody handed him the book of Isaiah and He stood up to read. The place where he read was from Isaiah 61, the very text we are examining.

Jesus read the text, closed the book, gave it back to the attendant and sat down. Every eye was fixed on Him. What would He say? Would He tell them how they, too, might experience the promises of this Old Testament passage? Might they be able to receive the anointing of which Isaiah spoke?

Jesus said to them, Today this Scripture has been fulfilled in your hearing.” As He continued to speak, the people were spellbound by His words. They were in awe “at the gracious words which were falling from His lips (Luke 4:22).

When Jesus said that the Scripture in Isaiah had been fulfilled that very day, He was revealing that He is the personification of the anointing of God. The anointing has come to us in the person of the Anointed One! Because Jesus Christ lives inside you, you have everything you need to do anything that God has planned for you to do!

Paul wrote that, “In [Christ] all the fullness of Deity dwells in bodily form, and in Him you have been made complete” (Colossians 2:9-10). If Jesus Christ lives in you, everything you need to succeed in life resides within you. You have need of nothing else.

God’s grace within you is the anointing you need to accomplish everything He has planned for you. Grace equals enablement – miraculous, supernatural, God-given, enablement. That sets you apart from others whose dreams depend on their own ability. The early church grasped this fact and accomplished miraculous results. The same is possible for you. John reminds us, “But you have an anointing from the Holy One” (1 John 2:20). Notice that he doesn’t say you still need it, but that you have it. He further notes, “As for you, the anointing which you received from Him abides in you” (2:27). The word “abide” here means “to continue to be present and not depart.”

In Jesus Christ, you already have all you need to have to do all that you need to do to accomplish God’s plan for your life. Do you understand your ability? Like the anointing of Aaron, you haven’t been given a small dab of ability. It just isn’t God’s nature to give sparingly. When He gives, He really pours it on! You are drenched in divine ability to do all that He has planned for you to do. A spiritual anointing isn't an experience we have. It's a person named Jesus Christ and, because you have Him, you have everything you need.

The Subtle Danger of Legalism

Judaizers – it has an ominous tone to it, don’t you think? I can almost hear the theme from Jaws in the background as I write. Who are the Judaizers and what do they have to do with you?

They were the legalists of Paul’s day. They are the ones who came to the grace walking Christians at Galatia with a new slant on things. Their focus was all about behavior, about doing the “right things” that they contended were necessary to move forward in the Christian life.

Their’s was a sinister and subtle plot against the church. The truth is that Christianity is Jesus. Nothing more, nothing less. Being a “good Christian” doesn’t revolved around a list of do’s and don’ts. Being a good Christian means understanding that Jesus Christ is our life and allowing him to live through us. The gospel, then, is a person named Jesus not a performance. It’s a relationship, not a list of rules.

These Judaizers were sneaky. Their message came to the Galatians sounding something like this: “You’ve trusted Jesus Christ? Good for you! That is so important, but now you want to be a good Christian, don’t you? Hmm? Sure, you do. Well, the way you become a good Christian is to follow this list of rules that we want to give you – it’s God’s Law and you have to keep these rules in order to really grow and move forward. Now that you’re saved you’ll want to get started right so we’re going to tell you the things you need to do in order to become a really strong and good Christian.”
Like Paul, I find myself wanting to shout back through history into the Galatian church, “Watch out! Run! They’re trying to fool you! Don’t fall for it!”

That’s why Paul wrote the book of Galatians. He is shouting to them, “No! A thousand times no! Christianity is not about rules! Christianity is about a person named Jesus. He is the only source and subject of the gospel. As you live out of your union with Him, your behavior will take are of itself. Don’t be deceived!”

This same scenario, played out nearly two thousand years ago happens in churches all over the world today. People come to Christ. They love Him and live for Him as naturally as they breath. Then the religious mafia comes along and they are hit with legalism.

“You must read your Bible,” they are told, “every day!” “You should tell your friends about Christ,” they hear. “You ought to pray,” they are commanded, as if they aren’t already doing that.

Little by little, the new Christian finds that the actions which, until now, have been normal expressions of who he is becomes religious obligations, responsibilities that take on a different life than they have had until now. Actually, to be exact, they don’t take on a different life. Instead they begin to smell of death.

The new Christian who has all along been glorifying Christ through his behavior without even thinking about his behavior now stops focusing on Christ and starts focusing on his behavior. The face of Jesus fades into the background and a list of religious rules emerge as the focal point of the new Christian’s life, at which point the modern-day-Judaizers smugly pat each other on the back on move on in search of another victim.
In their wake they leave a mass of sincere believers who are now trying to achieve something they can never achieve – victorious Christian living. Victory in Christ can only be received by faith. It cannot, now or ever, be achieved by following the rules of legalistic lunacy.

Paul went after legalism with a vengeance. Listen to the strength of his words: “I am amazed that you are so quickly deserting him who called you by the grace of Christ for a different gospel” (Galatians 1:6).

He didn’t see this matter of legalism as an honest difference of opinion between Christians. It wasn’t “a matter of semantics,” as some have suggested at times. He told them that they were deserting Christ if they followed the way of legalism. Make no mistake about it – when our lives are more grounded in religious rules of behavior than in an intimate relationship to Christ, we have abandoned Him.

Let’s understand what the gospel is not and what it is. The gospel is not a message which tells you that you have to trust Jesus Christ and then live according to certain rules. That is not good news. The gospel is that Jesus Christ has come to give himself to you, to express his love to you, and to express his life and his love through you.

When Jesus is expressing his life through us, there is where real quality of living comes. But if you’re staring at a list of rules that dictate behavior, you are missing intimacy with Jesus Christ because you can’t be looking at a list of rules and staring in the face of Jesus at the same time.

Since understanding that Christ is life, I have come to discover that those things that used to be rules to me were never meant to be viewed that way. I do those very things now, not because I have to, but because it is the desire of my heart to do them. As long as I focused on rules, I stunted my own spiritual growth.

Did you do anything to get saved other than to receive his life? Was it anything other than the grace of God that caused you to enter into salvation? Well here’s what the Scriptures say: “As you have received the Lord Jesus Christ, so walk ye in him.” You see, you simply received salvation through God’s grace. You trusted. You just believed, and that was it. You believed what God said, and you were saved.

The Bible teaches that in order to move forward in the Christian life you just need to do the same thing. Just believe what God says about his life in you; understand who you are and trust in him and him alone; don’t start focusing on a bunch of rules. You say, “Oh, but I’m scared about how I’m going to live if I don’t focus on the rules.” Well, you don’t have to be afraid of that. Don’t insult the Holy Spirit of God who is in you! When you focus on Jesus Christ I promise you, He will not fail you. He won’t fail you. As you focus on him and fall in love with him, he will express his life through you. Enjoying Jesus Christ, that is really living.

Ruthless Religion

I am sometimes asked why I so often speak against religion. The answer is easy: it's because of what religion does to people. It binds them up in a world of needless guilt and condemnation. The World Book Dictionary says that, "The word "religion" comes from the Latin word "religio" which has a meaning influenced by the verb "religare"- to bind, in the sense of "place an obligation on."

So the word "religion" means to bind people to a duty they must fulfill. It is always associated with an attempt to make ourselves acceptable to God. Some religious cultures have demanded that people offer their children as sacrifices to their gods. Some are less demanding and simply insist that followers get on their knees, face a certain direction and pray seven times a day. The one I'm most familiar with insists that to really be "in fellowship" with God, followers must do their daily Bible reading and have a quiet time - not to mention going to church, tithing, witnessing, ad nauseum.

The fact is that it makes little difference what the demands are, religion is a bankrupt attempt at trying to score brownie points with Somebody who isn't impressed in the slightest with our fanatical foolishness and, ironically, wishes we would stop this nonsense.

Jesus Christ came to set us right with God and contrary, to the way many Christians think and act, He did just that. His mission here on earth wasn't a failure but was a complete success. The Father's work, carried out through the Son by the power of the Spirit has given us an A-plus in God's book. No,wait. That's not true. To be exact, it caused Him to just throw away the grade book altogether. School's out for the summer and summer will never end.

He didn't start the ball toward Divine acceptance rolling and then leave it up to us to carry it the rest of the way by our religious disciplines. "It is finished" was His verdict on the matter. Shortly afterward, He went back to heaven and sat down by the right hand of the Father. He didn't sit down because He was tired from fulfilling His mission, but because there's nothing left to do.

"But what about our responsibilty?" the anxious legalistic mind cries out. I do grow weary in ministry of trying to reassure the legalist that grace doesn't lead to passivity. The bottom line is that it is precisely because of grace that we are response-able (responsible) and have the desire to honor our Father by our actions. Grace won't make a person lazy. Legalism, on the other hand, will destroy everything good that is the birthright of every grace walker.

So I speak against religion because I haven't met one yet that acknowledged there's nothing we have to do because it's already been done. Religion demands dedication to duty. Grace glorifies the One who has already done all things well.

Happy Birthday to my wife, Melanie

Anybody who has ever heard me speak knows the story. I was 16. She was 15. I'd never even been on a date, but knew this was it. And it was. Married at 19 and 18. Almost 37 years, four adult children and three grandchildren later, I still know she was the best gift God has ever given me in this world. Almost forty years of loving her and it only gets better with the passing of time. I'd always looked forward to growing older with her and my hopes have exceeded anything I would have imagined. Happy Birthday, my love. You really are a precious treasure and I want the world to know it.

What I'm Reading Right Now

Worship, Community and the Triune God of Grace
This book does a good job in showing the theological and practical implications of our participation in the communion of the Trinity. I've been studying the topic of Trinitarian theology a lot lately and am intrigued by this approach to soteriology. James Torrence taught systematic theology at the University of Aberdeen in Scotland, but does a good job here in making a complex subject accessible to the average reader.

Honey, Let's Get A Boat
I love being around or on the water and have always enjoyed reading travelogues, so this book was a no-brainer for me to buy. It's the story of Ron and Eva Stob, who one day bought a boat and just walked away from it all to spend a year traveling 6300 miles by water around "the great loop," a waterway that circles the whole eastern side of North America. These folks have done what many of us have fantasized doing and make it easy to vicariously live through their experience for a little while.

Journey Into Intimacy

Within the next month or so, I plan to release another workbook, similar to The Grace Walk Experience. It is an eight week study, divided into five daily studies. A video series will be available to use with the book. The book is a compilation of material from A Divine Invitation, The Godward Gaze and new content I wrote for this book. I hope it will be a good resource for small groups. Learning how to experience a conscious sense of intimacy with God is one of the greatest needs among Christians. I hope this book will help. The following is an excerpt from the book:

Do You Think Like A Legalist or a Grace-Walker?

Legalism will cause us to stay focused on sins, but grace will enable us to redirect our focus away from our sins, past or present and place our full attention on Jesus Christ, who alone can cause us to say no to temptation. Make no mistake about it, when we are more absorbed in the consciousness of our sins than we are our forgiveness, we have become trapped in legalism.

I want to prove that statement to you from the book of Hebrews. In Hebrews 9, the Bible compares the Old Covenant of the Law (legalism) with the new covenant of grace, as each relates to the matter of sin. The emphasis there is on how much better the New Covenant (Testament) is than the Old Covenant (Testament). One major aspect of the difference between the two has to do with how sins are regarded under each covenant. Note how sins were dealt with under the Old Covenant:

“…the priests are continually entering the outer tabernacle performing the divine worship, but into the second, only the high priest enters once a year, not without taking blood, which he offers for himself and for the sins of the people committed in ignorance” (9:6-7.

How often did the priest have to go into the temple and offer sacrifices to deal with the matter of sins?

Verse 9 says, “Accordingly both gifts and sacrifices are offered which cannot make the worshiper perfect in conscience.” The New Living Translation says it this way: For the gifts and sacrifices that the priests offer are not able to cleanse the consciences of the people who bring them.”

After the priests offered the sacrifices, did it cause the people who had sinned to have a clean conscience?

It is important to understand that the sacrifices under the Old Covenant didn’t take away people’s sins. It only covered them. Every year the high priest would have to go into the Holy of Holies to repeat the process, pushing everybody’s sins forward in anticipation of the coming of Christ.

Read this passage in Hebrews 10:1-3, as translated in the New Living Translation:

“The old system in the law of Moses was only a shadow of the things to come, not the reality of the good things Christ has done for us. The sacrifices under the old system were repeated again and again, year after year, but they were never able to provide perfect cleansing for those who came to worship. If they could have provided perfect cleansing, the sacrifices would have stopped, for the worshipers would have been purified once for all time, and their feelings of guilt would have disappeared. But just the opposite happened. Those yearly sacrifices reminded them of their sins year after year.”

Why did the feelings of guilt the people had about their past sins not disappear? It is because the sacrifice was not perfect. It was a band-aid job to cover their sins another year while they waited for the Great Physician to show up on planet earth. The sacrifices only covered the sins, it didn’t take away them away. The people might have been okay for another year, but they knew what was “beneath the band-aid” and their consciences still bothered them about it.

What did the yearly sacrifices remind the people of every year? What happened inside them as a result of that reminder? What a wonderful day when Jesus Christ showed up here on earth! He came to take care of this whole sin issue, once and for all!

“Under the Old Covenant, the priest stands before the altar day after day,offering sacrifices that can never take away sins. But our High Priest offered Himself to God as one sacrifice for sins, good for all time. Then he sat down at the place of highest honor at God’s right hand” (Hebrews 10:11-12 NLT).

The Old Covenant priest stood before the altar day by day, trying to offer enough sacrifices to take away sins. His role is comparable to being given a mop and told to go mop up the incoming tide at the beach. But Jesus didn’t stand there, day after day, fighting a losing battle. He came. He offered Himself to God as a sacrifice for our sins and He sat down.

Job completed. Done. Finished…forever. The sacrifices only covered the sins, it didn’t take away them away. One of the last things Jesus said on the cross was “It is finished!” The root of the word comes from the Greek word teleo, which means: to bring to a close, to finish, to end, passed, finished, to perform a last act which completes a process” (Strong’s Concordance, Strong’s Number 5055).

Why did Jesus go to the cross? To settle the matter of the debt we owe for our sins. When He said, “It is finished – passed – a closed matter,” to what was He referring?

Paul said in Colossians 2:14, He canceled the record that contained the charges against us. He took it and destroyed it by nailing it to Christ’s cross. (NLT) The question you have to answer is, do you believe that Jesus Christ fully and completely dealt with every sin you would commit or not? Did He succeed or was He mistaken when He said, “It is finished?”

If He intended that we should still wallow in guilt about our sins, then it wasn’t totally finished, was it? Under the old covenant, the work of the high priest was never finished. There was the ongoing need to go back into the holy of holies and offer up the sacrifice again and again. Hebrews 10:3 said that if what the priest did at the altar on behalf of the people had finished the job “their feelings of guilt would have disappeared.”

When Jesus came, He finished dealing with our sins. Look up Hebrews 1:3 in your own Bible. Fill in the blanks:

When He had made purification of sins, He _____ at the right hand of the Majesty on high. Why did He do that? Do you believe that Jesus Christ fully and completely dealt with every sin you would commit or not?

Hebrews 10:12 says,“having offered one sacrifice for sins for all time, he sat down at the right hand of God." Why? Because there was nothing left to do regarding our sins. He dealt with our guilt and then sat down. Under the old covenant of law, there could be no guilt-free conscience, but you don’t live under that covenant. Jesus Christ did what the animal sacrifices of the Old Testament could never do – He took your sins away. The blood of Christ doesn’t cover them. They have been removed and you have been justified. You may remember the meaning of that word as being Just-if-I never sinned! You have a clean slate in heaven now! (Remember Colossians 2:14?) So, if you have a clean record in heaven, there is no reason at all for you not to have a clean conscience on earth.

Your conscience may bother you over past sins, but John said that if your heart condemns you, remember that God is greater than your heart and He knows all things.(See 1 John 3:20) He knows that your sins have been totally forgiven. Do you know that? Do you believe it?

John goes on to say that if you live your life without feeling condemned by a guilty conscience, it will give you tremendous confidence in your grace walk. (See 1 John 3:21) A guilty conscience is seriously debilitating to your Christian walk, but a clean conscience sets you free to live boldly!

As you end today’s study, review the verses you have read and apply them to your own life. Then pray and that your heavenly Father that Jesus finished what He came to do and that your sins really are gone, no matter how you might have felt about it in the past.