Charging The Brethren - Audio

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Charging The Brethren

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Charging The Brethren

Do you ever think or feel like, “How could God love somebody like me? Somebody who has failed so many times in my Christian life? Somebody who has sinned that sin for the 100th time? Somebody who failed to witness to so and so, and they died? And now they’re probably in hell? How could God really love somebody like me who has had so many blessings, and owns 15 bibles, and knows what to do, and just doesn’t do it enough?”

I want to start with a couple of verses of Scripture, and then deal with why sometimes we might feel that way.

Romans 8:33, “Who will bring a charge against God’s elect? God is the one who justifies; who is the one who condemns?”

We may firmly say, “No one!” And that’s true, ultimately. But make no mistake about it, there is one who tries. And that’s the devil and his fellow evil spirits.

And if we’re honest, we will have to admit that when he starts charging us Christians with our sin and failings, sometimes we allow him to get under our skin, so to speak, and make us feel like he is right, and that God maybe hasn’t justified us, or declared us righteous, or at least is angry with us.

Revelation 12:10, "Then I heard a loud voice in heaven, saying, "Now the salvation, and the power, and the kingdom of our God and the authority of His Christ have come, for the ACCUSER OF OUR BRETHREN has been thrown down, he who accuses them before our God day and night."

Let’s begin by asking a few questions about this Accuser.

1. Who is the accuser of the brethren?

Well, let’s make that very clear by reading Revelation 12:9:

"And the great dragon was thrown down, the serpent of old who is called the devil and Satan, who deceives the whole world."

So clearly this accuser of the brethren is Satan himself.

2. When does he accuse the brethren?

Well, look at verse 10 again: “...he who accuses them before our God day and night."

Can you imagine that? There is really no end to the accusation. Let’s face it, there’s no shortage of sins among us brethren, is there?

I once read of a guy trying to convince someone that they could become sinless. In fact, this guy considered himself to be sinless. Can you believe that? Be honest now, can you honestly imagine someone thinking himself to be sinless?

I’d like to talk to his wife for about 60 seconds, just to see if he’s on the up-and-up. What do you think?

Anyway this guy’s argument went like this: He says to his friend, “Do you think you could go one minute without sinning?”

And his friend said, “I guess so, yeah.”

So he said, “How about 5 minutes?”

“I guess so, yeah.”

“Well, how about half an hour?”

“Well, maybe for a half an hour, yeah.”

“An hour?”

“An hour...mmm...I guess so...that’s just two half-hours.”

“Well, then, if you can go without sinning for an hour, then all you have to do is to do that 24 times and you’ve gone a day. Do that 30 times and you’ve gone a month, and so on. Simple. Then you’d be sinless, like me.”

Now that sounds pretty good, doesn’t it?

I hope you’re not foolish enough to buy into that kind of thinking, though.

We’ve gotta be honest here, friends. That just isn’t going to happen! We are going to sin. Now, I’m not advocating sinning. I’m against it, in case you have any doubts. But I’ve lived quite a few years, and if that man exists who doesn't sin any more, I haven’t met him.

In fact, even if I met him, I wouldn’t believe him, would you? You see, we’ve gotta be honest if we’re going to make any headway in this Accuser of the Brethren stuff.

So when does the Accuser accuse? Day and night. And there’s no shortage of sins he can accuse us of, is there?

3. What exactly does he accuse us of?

Well, certainly he accuses us of our actual individual sins. If we ever find ourselves unable to remember them, he will be happy to remind us. And he will take every opportunity to remind God.

But also, he accuses us of a lack of faith, casting doubt on our relationship to God, or even our very salvation. Creating doubt by his accusations.

We see that in the story of Job. Satan appears before God and doesn’t accuse Job of specific sins, but he says that Job honors God only because Job has it so good. Job is blessed by God. Satan says that if God would allow him to hurt Job, that Job would curse God.

So he accuses us of our specific sins, and he accuses us of our weak faith and standing before God.

But we sure don’t want to leave things there, do we?

It would be a horrible shame to gain insight into the Accuser of the Brethren without seeing what the Lord of the Brethren has done for us.

The Devil's Little Helpers In The Church

Sometimes the continual day and night accusation by Satan is not enough for some Christian brethren, so they join Satan and become brethren accusing the brethren.

Now I’m not talking about biblical correction or admonishing of an unrepentant brother, but that kind of condemnation which is carelessly heaped on other Christians, by laying down the rules, and making Christians think that God will only love them if they measure up to some standard.

They are quick to condemn, slow to encourage.

They are quick to build guilt, slow to build a bridge of grace.

They are quick to jump on a mistake, slow to put their arm around a brother, and gently restore.

In other words, quick to accuse and criticize, slow to understand and teach.

Let me say this. Satan doesn’t need these little helpers. He has enough helpers already. They abound, and they are teachers, believe it or not. And what they teach, the Bible calls doctrine...doctrines of demons.

O.K., so is there any good news here, in view of this accusation going on day and night?

Absolutely!

In fact, there is so much good news, it’s literally hard to know where to begin. So let’s begin at the very beginning...Genesis. Way back then, God promised that Satan would bruise the heel of the Messiah to come, referring to the Cross...but that the Messiah would crush the head of Satan, ultimately destroying him.

As the great hymn “A Mighty Fortress Is Our God” puts it, “Lo, his doom is sure.”

But what about in the meantime?

1. Our sins are forgiven…past, present and future.

We don’t want to be so silly as to say that sin is “OK”, but we honor God by believing His word, and His word tells us that our sins ARE – past tense – forgiven.

Let’s not take this lightly.

Let’s resist the temptation to think, “Yeah, yeah, I know that already.”

But let’s meditate on the wonder of that truth. They are forgiven. All of them. All that will ever be. This is part of what Jesus meant when He said on the cross, “It is finished.” Paid in full. Forgiven.

Satan can accuse all he wants, and his accusation may even be true, but what of it? The sins are forgiven!

2. We’ve been declared righteous.

That’s the bible word "justified". And Jesus became sin for us, so that we might be made the righteousness of God in Christ.

Satan can say, “You are unrighteous. Who are you kidding? Look what you did. You call that righteous? You fool! You aren’t good enough to earn righteousness!”

And of course, he’s right on that last count. We’re not good enough to earn righteousness. And so it’s been given to us as a free gift, the gift of God’s own righteousness, through our precious Lord Jesus Christ.

3. We Have An Advocate

1 John 2:1 says, “My little children, I am writing these things to you that you may not sin. And if anyone sins, we have an Advocate with the Father, Jesus Christ the righteous.”

Satan approaches the bench and says, “Your honor…this Christian has sinned and here’s the list of his offenses. Now I demand justice. You call yourself a just God…bring justice on this one who has done these offenses.”

Ah, but our Defense Attorney (that’s the concept of this Advocate), our Defense Attorney is also our Propitiation, taking the wrath of God on Himself, in our place.

Our Defense Attorney is also our Sacrifice Lamb, slain before the foundation of the world.

Our Defense Attorney is the one who cried “Eli, Eli Lama Sabachtani! My God, my God why have you forsaken me?” And at the end of that terrible ordeal our Defense Attorney is the one who cried, “Tetelestai, it is finished.”

And although He gave up His spirit on that cross, He rose again from the dead, and is now at the right hand of the Father, the Judge, as our Defender, our Defense Attorney.

And when Satan accuses us at the bench of the great Judge, and demands justice, our Defense Attorney, the Alpha and Omega, the Son of God, our Advocate, speaks up, ”Your honor, Abba, Father...those sins have already been judged. They are paid for, your honor, Abba, Dad. I paid for them on that cruel, but awe-inspiring day."

And our Advocate asks the Judge, His Father, for a dismissal.

And the Judge...our Defense Attorney’s Father...our Father, slams down his gavel and says, “Case dismissed! The defendant may draw near with confidence to the throne of grace, to receive mercy and find grace to help in time of need.” (That’s Hebrews 4:16)

And the Accuser of the Brethren loses another case. In fact, he never had a case to begin with.

And lo, his doom is sure.

So who will bring a charge against God’s elect? The answer really is “No one.” For it is God who justifies. It is God who has declared us righteous. Praise His name.

Stumble It!

The Undermining of God’s Gift Of Righteousness

This week's audio message:

The Undermining of God's Gift of Righteousness

Grace For Life audio archives are here.

Stumble It!

The Undermining of God’s Gift Of Righteousness

N.T. Wright

How A New Kind of Legalist Is Attempting To Bring The Church To "Works" Salvation

The Roman Catholic Church held an almost monopolistic grip on the hearts of millions of people for hundreds of years.

Through the Dark Ages and Middle Ages, the awful legalistic system of "salvation by works" nearly choked out the light of the Gospel of the Grace of our Lord Jesus Christ. Only small pockets of true believers in Christ escaped the dark heavy blanket of Roman Catholicism.

Then around 500 years ago came what we call the Reformation.

Men like Luther and Zwingli and Calvin and Knox, imperfect men, but intense students of the Scriptures, rose up and shined the light of the Gospel into the darkness of European Catholicism.

These brave men brought an end to the monopoly of the Popes. They boldly proclaimed that salvation was...

By grace alone, not by merit;

By faith alone, not by works;

By faith in Christ alone, not in sacraments;

under the final authority of the Word of God alone, not the unscriptural teachings of the Bishop of Rome.

The Central Point of the Reformation

The central point of the Reformation is what we call Justification by Faith. Don’t let the fancy phrase throw you. This is merely the sublime and simple truth that when we believe in Jesus Christ we are “justified” or “declared righteous” by God.

This means that we are fully in right standing with God, our sins forgiven and no longer held against us.

This is accomplished because God judged our sins in Christ on the Cross, and gave us the “gift of righteousness” (Romans 5:17) by imputing the righteousness of Christ to us, when we believe in Christ.

As 2 Corinthians 5:21 puts it, “He made Him who knew no sin to be sin on our behalf, so that we might become the righteousness of God in Him.”

Romans Chapter 5:1,2 gives us the result of this wonderful act of the Lord:

“Therefore having been justified by faith, we have peace with God through our Lord Jesus Christ, through whom also we have obtained our introduction by faith into this grace in which we stand; and we exult in hope of the glory of God.”

The Permanence of Justification

When we are justified, declared righteous by God, it is forever. It is permanent. And it occurs at the moment when we believe on the Lord Jesus Christ, when we believe the Gospel.

The “gift of righteousness” can never be taken away, because it is part of a "package deal", to put it crudely. This righteousness is given to us by grace through faith, and that is “not of yourselves” and “not of works” (Ephesians 2:8,9).

Even the very faith by which we believe in Jesus Christ is a gift given by God through the New Birth, regeneration.

This “imputed righteousness” contrasts starkly with the unbiblical Roman Catholic teaching that one is actually “made righteous” (“infused righteousness”) through the Sacraments like Baptism, and the Eucharistic Mass, and through meritorious good works.

And this false teaching goes on to say that this so-called righteousness sort of “leaks out” through sinning, or neglecting the Sacraments, and therefore can be lost, which damns the soul of the one who fails to maintain his “righteousness” by his works and attendance to the sacraments.

Let me put it another way. True biblical justification is when we are declared righteous by God when we believe in Jesus, and that puts us in right standing with God forever, all of our sins paid for and forgiven, past sins, and future sins.

The false teaching of Roman Catholicism says that through the Sacraments, like Baptism, and the sacrifice of the Mass, we are actually "made righteous" in our whole being, but not permanently. We must keep doing good works and going to the Mother Church for the Sacraments, or we will end up in Hell.

And the key word here is "works". This is legalism at it’s worst, and any thinking person who believes in this system will always live in fear, if they’re not doing their good works too well, or missing the sacraments.

Or they will be self-righteous and smug because they follow certain rules and rituals, at least better than the next guy.

In Come the Neo-Legalists

The Reformation did not, of course, abolish Roman Catholicism. This organization of works salvation has continued these many years, and still thrives today.

But until recently one could more or less count on Protestant, non-Catholic, Bible teachers to uphold Justification by Faith Alone. One could more or less count on Protestant Bible teachers to oppose the so-called Justification of Rome, where grace and works are mixed, making it “no longer grace” (Romans 11:6).

But back in the 1960’s and 1970’s there was a professor at Westminster Seminary named Norman Shepherd. In 1975 some of his former students were being questioned by committees for ordination, to be ordained to the Christian ministry, and when the question “How is a sinner justified?” was asked, these students of Shepherd answered, “By faith and works.” The questioners were shocked, and began digging in to why these students answered that way, and they traced their answers back to their professor, Norman Shepherd.

Shepherd was allowed to teach for six more years, which was a disgrace in itself. He should have been immediately thrown out. After all, this is the Gospel we’re tampering with here.

Shepherd was finally released in 1981, the dung having hit the fan hard enough. Even then, though, several professors who then agreed with Shepherd were allowed to remain, teaching hundreds of students who spread the cancer of this heresy yet today.

The big foot of undermining Justification by Faith had been stuck in the door, and the result has mushroomed into several full-blown ministries and movements, some directly from Westminster, and some relatively independent.

Allow me to name some names and then I will attempt to capsulize the kernel of the heresy.

Pioneering writers include E.P. Sanders, N.T. Wright, Steve Schlissel, Steve Wilkins, Douglas Wilson, and Peter Leithart.

They have been joined by a multitude of Pastors, bloggers and other writers, and teachers in Seminaries. Many in the Emerging/Emergent Church movement have gravitated toward these men, particularly toward N.T. Wright. And they have infiltrated otherwise orthodox places, including major denominations and seminaries, as well as theological magazines and websites.

Now some of you may say, “Oh you shouldn’t name names. That’s ungracious of you, Terry.”

Friends, this is too important. Those of you who know me know that I much prefer just teaching the wonderful grace of God, both for initial salvation, and for our ongoing lives. It’s all of grace, and that’s my passion. But when teachers and pastors and writers trample on that grace with a convoluted system of works salvation, we need to know about it.

They operate under names and ministries you may have heard:

Shepherdism, named after Norman Shepherd;

Auburn Avenue Theology, named after a church in Louisiana called Auburn Avenue Presbyterian Church;

Federal Vision;

The New Perspective on Paul, or NPP.

This last term is often associated with N.T. Wright, who has become practically a rock star among his followers. An engaging man, a Bishop in the Anglican Church of England, he is a scholar and writes books faster than most people can read them. But he writes for the masses, the common man, so to speak, and so has become more popular than some of the more stuffy academics. And this has made him all the more dangerous in spreading this New Legalism.

What They Have In Common

I won’t pretend the issues and sub-doctrines are not varied and even complicated, but they have one important thing in common -- a rejection of the biblical Justification by Faith.

Like most false teachers, their terminology is often the same as orthodox terminology. But the expression of their error can mostly be bunched under an important term: Covenant Nomism (sometimes called Covenantal Nomism). “Nomism” refers to “Law”.

Although their implementation of the doctrine varies (for example, some teach that one enters the “covenant” through water baptism, others through so-called “faith alone”), the basics are as follows:

1. One enters into a “covenant” of the “people of God”, through “faith” and/or baptism. This is a real covenant which makes one a real Christian, they say, as one follows Jesus as Lord.

2. Once in the “covenant” of the family of God, it is now one’s responsibility to stay in the covenant, and follow Jesus as Lord all the days of one’s life...or else! (more on the “or else” in just a moment). This is blatant Legalism.

3. IF one remains in the “covenant”, by assembling together and obeying the Law sufficiently, THEN, at the end of one’s life, or the end of the age, one will be “Justified”, or “declared righteous” on the basis of their life and works! Did you get that? They’re not justified by faith at the time they believe. They are justified at the end of their life, or the end of time, based on their works.

4. Here’s the “or else”: If one departs from sufficient obedience to the Law, or (in some cases) stops fellowshiping in the local assembly, they are deemed “out of the covenant”, and will never be “justified”, even though they truly believed on the Lord Jesus Christ, and were in His “covenant” and were true Christians. Their works, or lack of them, have ultimately damned them.

What Can Be Done?

Admittedly, this is an extremely brief introduction to Neo-Legalism, or Covenant Nomism.

The men teaching these things are not ignorant, and they’re not stupid. They are biblically classic false teachers.

What would I recommend?

1. I don’t recommend studying these men, except by the most discerning and biblically knowledgeable. Too many have been swayed by their false doctrines.

2. I do recommend studying the biblical doctrine of Justification by Faith, just as the FBI reputedly studies real money, in order to quickly identify the counterfeit.

There are many good books on the subject. A thorough classic is by James Buchanan, The Doctrine of Justification. Another good one, perhaps easier to read, is James White’s The God Who Justifies.

An excellent sermon by Charles Spurgeon can be read at:
http://www.spurgeon.org/sermons/3392.htm

Scriptural support for Justification by Faith can be found at:
http://www.carm.org/doctrine/justification_verses.htm

3. If you accept true biblical Justification by Faith, have the courage to say so. And don’t be afraid to mention names. Too many Protestant believers and teachers have been returning to Roman Catholicism. While for some there may be an inherent attraction to the ancient religious trappings of Romanism, in many cases it’s simply an abandonment of the great truth that God justifies us, declares us righteous, forever, when we believe in His Son, the Lord Jesus Christ. Having given an inch to the Legalism of salvation by works, they go the whole yard back into the darkness of Roman Catholicism.

Remember, the biblical truth is, we are declared righteous by faith, as a free gift, when we believe on the Lord Jesus Christ. To Him be all the glory.

Stumble It!