Rescued

Rescued! #10 10-25–18

Have you ever been rescued from a perilous situation? Some of us have and it definitely can be a life defining moment for us. Personally, I have had a few opportunities to do the rescuing and I know how rewarding an event like that can be. Even so, there was a time in my own life when I needed a rescue and I didn't quite realize it. My spiritual life was in shambles and I seriously doubted weather I was even a Christian at all.

My first rescue opportunity involved a young boy. I was in attendance at a birthday party for by best friend. I was ten. It was a pool party and we were all having a blast. Soon we were called out of the pool and into the house for gifts and cake. Feeling a bit chilly, I made my way back to the pool to retrieve my t-shirt. And to my shock, I saw a young boy just a few years younger than myself floating in the pool. His arms were stretched out wide, his eyes closed and his cheeks puckered up full of air. He was completely still just floating there with only the hair on the top of his head above the water and his feet just inches from touching the bottom.

I was driven to act, yet at the same moment I wondered why he had given up trying to save himself. I immediately rushed to him and lifted him above the water. He inhaled a big gasp of air and grabbed hold of me. I pulled him to the steps and we both climbed out of the pool. He thanked me with a big sigh of relief, and the two of us returned the party’s festivities.

Similarly, I was involved in another situation where I was able to save my cat from an almost tragic event. I once had a little kitten that was the most playful thing ever. One day she was playing on top of our living room end table. It was recently polished with furniture polish and she was having the time of her life slipping and sliding about. She was swatting and leaping at the cord that hung down from the mini blind. And sure enough within minutes she had slipped and fell off the table. As she was falling suddenly out of nowhere she stopped mid-air with a sudden jerk. When she fell off the table she was entangled in the cord and about halfway down in her fall the cord had tightened around her neck and caught her mid-flight. She struggled violently thrashing about back-and-forth trying to free herself from the self-inflicted noose that had wrapped itself around her neck.

From across the room, I witnessed the event unfold and quickly ran to her rescue. I thought to myself and wondered if she was going to be able to free herself, all the while knowing full well that I would reach her and free her at any second. But to my amazement she suddenly stopped thrashing about and went limp. She remained still as dead air. As she hung there completely limp eyes open wide staring right at me, she had completely given up. Her eyes were locked on me and she did not budge. She was just motionless hanging there in a helpless state. I can only imagine what was going on in her mind. What was she thinking? Once again I pondered, had she given in to deaths grip and resigned in her struggle to stay alive or was she hoping for some kind of a rescue to come from outside of herself. I didn't know. As I reached her, I grabbed her and lifted her up and removed the cord from around her neck. I set her back down on the ground and she instantly darted off continuing to play as though nothing had ever happened.

My becoming a Christian had followed the typical pattern as is often prescribed in Evangelical circles today. I was a young boy, not yet a teenager and a message of salvation was shared with me that went something like this. I was told that I was a sinner and that my sin had separated me from God. I needed to repent and invite Jesus Christ into my heart, make Him the Lord of my life and vow to not live for myself anymore. And so I did. I was genuinely excited as my new found life in Christ was off and running.

Things seemed to go pretty well for several years and in time all the trouble had begun. I heard messages that called me as a believer to examine and question my sincerity in the faith. These same questions kept popping up in sermons and at Bible studies: “Had I given every part of my heart or every area of my life completely over to Christ?” “What was I holding onto?” “Was there sin still in my life that I would not let go of?” “Was I fully committed to Christ?” I was encouraged to examine myself daily and employ a variety of spiritual disciplines to assure myself that I was genuinely in the faith. I was counseled into a more a devout prayer life, witnessing and calling on more people to invite Christ into their lives, prolonged quiet times and the daily reading of the Scriptures along with a stronger resolve to obey God’s Word. All fine goals, yet I continued to wonder if I was doing enough and if all my efforts were truly earnest.

All along I thought that it was me who was the catalyst that brought about my salvation. It was my decision to accept Jesus Christ as my Lord and Savior. Never realizing that at the moment I had accepted Christ, God had already completed the work. Behind the scenes and unaware to me Christ was at work instilling faith and turning me from myself and sin and toward Himself in belief. You see God was at work rescuing me from myself, from the delusion that Salvation came by way of choice on my part, rather than by a total rescue on His part. “Now to the one who works, wages are not credited as a gift but as an obligation. However, to the one who does not work but trusts God who justifies the ungodly, their faith is credited as righteousness.” Romans 4:4-5 Subsequently my life as a Christian was lived out in light of my decision. And since it was my decision that brought me into the faith, then it would be my continued decisions and efforts that would keep me in the faith. I was subjected to a performance based salvation that was up to me live a life worthy of being Christian.

Repentance

I was encouraged to live a life of daily repentance. Repentance as I was taught was the spiritual practice of me changing my iniquitous behavior, which could be accomplished by abstaining from the desires of the flesh, turning from my sin, fleeing from the devil, and resisting the temptations of this world. It was about me making a l80 degree turn from sinning to not sinning, from disobedience to obedience. In essence it was about me purging sin out of my life in total obedience to God. Again, all well intentioned objectives, but over the years I was beginning to feel the burn.

Repentance was my work of changing myself and over time and it had taken its toll on me. You see, I was constantly examining my life and looking inward to see if I had truly repented, resisted sin enough and had completely given my life over to God. It was a tumultuous and trying time in my life as a Christian. Soon, it began to chip away at my confidence and my assurance in the Christian faith. I had realized that I just couldn't keep up. My being a Christian, my salvation, was in doubt. I would often ask myself, “Was I even a Christian at all?”

Over the next several years, this doubt led me to be re-baptized several times, participate in multiple re-dedications, and make many sincere commitments determined to try even harder. All of which seemed to have short lived effects, and I was given into a faith of despair. “Surely, I was not a Christian!” I thought to myself. “How could God be pleased with my constant shortcomings and failure.” I became less and less interested in Christianity, for it just seemed to difficult to carry on. I was on my way out because I was suffocating in my own disappointment. But, by the grace of God good news had come just at the right time. The good news for me came with the realization that salvation was not my work, rather the work of God. And my assurance in the faith was not dependent upon my performance, not what I was doing, rather it rests upon what Christ did for me and continues to do daily in my life.

Here is what I have since learned and what has completely turned my life in the faith around. In respect to our salvation, our initial entry into the Christian faith or what is also known as conversion or repentance among other terms illumination, regeneration, rebirth, quickening, and making alive, we are entirely passive simply in a state of helplessness. Much like hanging in mid-air with a noose around our neck incapable of freeing ourselves from its deadly grip, or drowning just beneath the surface of the water unable to push ourselves up for a breath of air. Because of sin’s grip and its sure sentence upon us, we are bound to a state of utter despair, and our only hope is for a total rescue. We need someone to reach in from outside of ourselves and release us from deaths grip, the consequence for sin, and pull us back life. That's how repentance works. It's a unilateral rescue on God's part. We do not repent ourselves, rather God repents us. It's not an action on our part, nor is it a joint venture between God and us. It is a complete deliverance, liberating us from death and restoring us to newness of life. It is the work of God alone in Christ alone graciously redeeming us from the clutches of death and giving us life, even life eternal.

“to open their eyes and turn them from darkness to light, and from the power of Satan to God” Acts 26:18

“For you have been born again, not of perishable seed, but of imperishable, through the living and enduring word of God.” 1Peter 1:23

“God made you alive with Christ. He forgave us all our sins” Colossians 2:13

“God, who is rich in mercy, made us alive with Christ even when we were dead in transgressions—it is by grace you have been saved. Ephesians 2:4-5

“I will give them a heart to know me, that I am the Lord.” Jeremiah 24:7

“For he chose us in him” Ephesians 1:4

The word for repentance is “metanoia”, which means “a change of mind”.It is not behavioral. Rather it's cognitive, of the mind. It is a new way of thinking about ourselves and sin, and God and salvation, “Do not conform to the pattern of this world, but be transformed by the renewing of your mind.” Romans 12:2“But we have the mind of Christ.” 2 Corinthians 2:16 It's a reorientation of the mind from I don't believe this to I now do believe this is true of me and for me. When a person has come to believe that he cannot make a change in regards to his sinfulness, and that Salvation comes alone by way of Christ he has had a change of mind. He has repented. And yes of coarse our behavior will change, but that is solely the work of God daily turning us away from ourselves and sin and toward Himself in faith.

Repentance - narrow and wide sense

Caveat, know this that in the Scriptures repentance is used a couple of different ways. Properly speaking repentance must include both contrition and faith. Repentance, narrowly speaking addresses contrition alone, a turning from self and sin. For example in Mark 1:15“Repent and believe the good news!”, “repent” here is used to mean contrition alone because it is followed with “and believe” which addresses faith.

Repentance as it is used in a wide or proper sense embraces both contrition and faith together, a being turned away from our sin and self efforts together with being turned toward God in faith. It is being turned a full 180 degrees from unbelief to faith (belief), away from something (self and sin) and toward something else (Christ). Contrition and faith together bring about full repentance. Acts 11:16, “So then, even to Gentiles God has granted repentance that leads to life.” Here “repentance” is used in its wider or proper sense. It includes both contrition and faith together. In order to have a clear understanding of repentance we must be aware of its context within Scripture.

In repentance, if all we hear is contrition, apart from faith, then we are short changed. Contrition apart from faith is nothing more than a worldly remorse where we find ourselves busily getting our act together and attempting to rid ourselves of certain vices and sins. Contrition alone will only lead us to guilt and despair because it leaves out faith in Christ. “And without faith it is impossible to please God” says the writer in Hebrews 11:6. Contrition alone cannot lead to life because it fails to include faith and bring everything together under Christ.

On the other hand, if all we hear is faith, apart from contrition, then it is a false kind of faith. Speaking about faith in Christ without (contrition) the terrors of the Law that declare us a sinner before God deserving Hell and damnation is a faith that does what? God creates and imparts a faith that trusts in Him as the one who rescues us from sin, death, the devil, and even the Law. We must first have a clear understanding of our sinfulness, convinced of our sin, before faith can do the work of forgiving us of our sins and restoring us to newness of life.

Repentance is both Contrition and Faith

Repentance being two-fold in nature, contrition and faith, is generated by the work of both the Law and the Gospel. The Law alone works contrition and the Gospel alone works faith. God is the one working repentance in our lives through the power of the Holy Spirit. He works contrition by way of the Law and He works faith by way of the Gospel.

Contritionis the work of the Law alone. (The Law as written in the Bible in the Ten Commandments and restated in the New Testament, also written upon our hearts.) Contrition is a godly heart felt sorrow and anguish over our sin and a complete and utter despair in our own attempts to save ourselves from our sin. This is solely the work of the Law. It is a terror felt in us when we understand what God requires of us under the Law, and realize that His demands far outweigh our abilities to perform them. Thus we are driven into a state hopelessness and despair.

Faithis the work of the Gospel. “that Christ died for our sins according to the Scriptures, that he was buried, that he was raised on the third day according to the Scriptures.” 1 Corinthians 15:4-5(The Gospel found alone in Scripture as the revealed Word of God and delivered to us in both Word and Sacrament.) Faith is the gift from God given to us through the Word of God by the work of the Holy Spirit. It grabs hold of what God has promised us. It is a trust in God, a belief in what He has promised us in His Word in Christ, specifically the forgiveness of sins, eternal life and salvation, is true for you and me personally. It's a reorientation of the mind from I can’t believe to I now can believe that Christ’s death is sufficient to save me, sanctify me, remove my guilt, and forgive my sin even my sin of seeking to justify and sanctify myself. Faith now comforts and calms the terrified and condemned sinner and moves him from despair to hope.

The Christian is both Sinner and Saint

Coupled with the understanding of repentance in how God works contrition and faith in our lives is the reality of the Christian as being simultaneously both sinner and saint. The Law condemns me a sinner deserving God’s eternal wrath and damnation. I am sinful to the core and I cannot make amends on my own accord. The Gospel declares me a saint now bearing the righteousness and holiness earned by Christ. My sins are now dealt with and forgiven in Christ. Thus, I am a SinnerSaint living under both the Law and the Gospel. Yes, I remain a very real sinner and I will die with this rebellious and sinful condition. Yet, at the same time I am also grafted into Christ adopted as His child bearing His holiness. This is the Christian life, a life lived in tension between two natures. Paul so eloquently demonstrates this paradoxical life of the Christian as SinnerSaint. “So I find this law at work: Although I want to do good, evil is right there with me. For in my inner being I delight in God’s law; but I see another law at work in me, waging war against the law of my mind and making me a prisoner of the law of sin at work within me. What a wretched man I am! Who will rescue me from this body that is subject to death? Thanks be to God, who delivers me through Jesus Christ our Lord!” Romans 7:21-23

The Christian life is a struggle that was initiated in our baptism when the Old Man (sinner) in the flesh was droned and the New Man (saint) in Christ was raised to life. This struggle continues as the Old Man seeks to resurface up out of the waters of Baptism where he was once snuffed out. He seeks to reap havoc in our lives in his resistance and rebellion to God’s will. He does not die easily, but must be daily drowned or killed off as the Law rats him out. The New Man, on the other hand, has no need for the Law as he is by the Gospel made holy through faith in Christ. He, the New Man, is freed from the curse of the Law in its threats, its coercion, and its condemnation and now desires the things of God. He is redeemed, restored, forgiven, and free to joyfully serve God unto good works. “For we are God’s handiwork, created in Christ Jesus to do good works, which God prepared in advance for us to do.” Ephesians 2:10

Ultimately repentance (contrition) drives the sinner to despair in himself because Law declares him guilty and demands works from him that he cannot do. He says, “I cannot do this harsh and commanding Law. I hate what it requires of me!” Yet, repentance (faith) comforts the saint with the words of the Gospel and announces that he is innocent. He now says, “I trust Christ and I receive the forgiveness of my sins” He now can joyfully serve God by faith and his neighbor by love without works worked under the Law. The Christian life is one of daily repentance. We live our lives with a constant knowledge, a sorrow and anguish over our sins. Yet, we joyfully trust in God’s grace and mercy for He has forgiven us our sins.

May you hear the Law as God’s perfect will judging and declaring you guilty of your sin and revealing your helplessness to resolve it. And subsequently may you hear the promise of the Gospel declaring you forgiven and now free in Christ to love and serve both God and your neighbor.

God Works Repentance

Now initiated into Christianity (in Baptism) through the work of the Holy Spirit and by faith we are called to a continued life of daily repentance, and the pattern is still the same. God is still doing the work. He is repenting us. He continues to turn us away from our sin and our own feeble attempts to resolve it on our own and turn us to trust in Christ who has already completed the work. Christ lived the sinless life and completely obeyed and fulfilled the Law. He then voluntarily went to the cross was crucified and died. He was buried and rose on the third day. All the sins of the entire world were consumed into His death and we now have the forgiveness of our sins. A righteousness that satisfies God’s demands under the Law was won on the cross in the death of Jesus. That very same righteousness is now draped over us like a well worn garment. Daily we are seen as righteous in God’s eyes on account on Christ’s work not our own. “God made him who had no sin to be sin for us, so that in him we might become the righteousness of God.”2 Corinthians 5:21

There is a difference between the essence of something and its result or outcome, or what it produces. The essence of repentance is the act of God turning us from ourselves and sin and turning us toward Himself and declaring us holy, righteous, and sinless on account of His son, Jesus Christ. The outcome is the fruit of repentance, that which God is working out daily in our lives. When we focus on the fruit, the results, we tend view it as something that we are doing to gain or earn something such as righteousness, holiness, or God’s favor. Rather, when we view repentance as the work of God declaring us as something new in Christ, then we can trust that it is something that is already true of us. You are holy! You are righteous! You are justified! You are sanctified! You are forgiven! This is what you already are in Christ, now go be that! As we partake in the hearing of His Word and participate in the Sacrament of Baptism, Communion, and Absolution God is at work by the power of the Holy Spirit through the Word of the Gospel transforming our lives.

Our assurance in the faith is not predicated upon how much improvement we are making or how much better we are getting, rather it is based upon the sufficiency of Christ’s work of suffering and dying, then rising on the third day and delivering to us His promised gifts. It is an understanding that we are turned 180 degrees, turned by God from sin and our own self efforts to save ourselves from sin to being turned towards God in Faith. Now trusting in His work that it is sufficient to save us and keep us in the faith.

Living under both the Law and the Gospel

What I was sitting under was a heavy dose of the Law taught as a moral guide for my life and I was hearing little to no comfort from the Gospel. I heard the Law as something that I was able to do and when I couldn’t do it there was no remedy to be found. The only understanding of the Law I had was, this is what I was now suppose to be doing in obedience to God’s will. The Law was used to prompt me to get busy and do it. And when I wasn’t, I was again redirected to examine my self and relinquish those troubled areas of my life over to God, and try even harder. Rather than letting the Law expose my sinfulness and reveal to me that I could not keep it, I was regularly prompted to reexamine my heart. The more I looked within, I seemed to be troubled all the more because all I found was more sin, and encountered even more despair.

Absolutely, the Law does demonstrate God’s righteous immutable will and how we are to conduct ourselves in this life in our thoughts, words, and deeds so that we may be pleasing and acceptable to God. Yet, its purpose is not to make us better people before Him, simply because it can’t. The Law is powerless to change the human heart. It’s job first and foremost is to reveal sin and point us to the Gospel where we find the one who comforts and saves us from sin, Christ. The primary purpose or function of the Law is to reveal and expose our sin. It as well has an amplifying effect. The more the Law is heard, the more our sin is brought out into the light. Thus, we can see all the more that we cant keep it no matter how hard we try or what spiritual disciplines we put into practice. Rather than leading us to gain victory over or conquering our sin by meeting its demands, the Law has quite the opposite effect upon us. It reveals the depths of our sin and our total inability to resolve it by works of the Law. The Law says that we are in a heap of trouble and we need to look elsewhere for a solution. That elsewhere is Christ.

Yes, we must hear the Law in its full rigor that we would become thoroughly aware of the extent and depth of our sin. And yes, we must first be convicted of our sinfulness and guilt. We must know the full terror of the Law and our impending spiritual death, before we can truly understand what our need is. Our need is a total rescue that must come from outside us. It comes in the soothing words of the Gospel. Your guilt, shame, and death sentence have all been swallowed up in Christ. You are forgiven your sins in Christ crucified and risen for you! The terrified sinner can now relax and rejoice in the freedom and life that the Gospel has given him. All our efforts, striving, meriting, disappointments, weakness, and inadequacies are remedied by the all sufficient work of Christ the sinless law keeper. He has done the work on our behalf. And we can now, forgiven and free from the bondage of the Law and sin, rest in Him and refocus our attention away from our own self improvement and self efforts and immerse ourselves in a love for for God and a love for our neighbor.

Again, we must be careful and understand that the Gospel is not something the is happening in us although it does produce change in us. The Gospel is completely outside of us. It is external and is found alone in the Scriptures. It is the good news of what Christ did on the cross in dying and then rising on the third day for the sins of the World, even our sins personally. As well, the Gospel is not an enabling force that helps me to do things, such as giving me the ability to better keep the Law. Again, that only causes me to look inward as opposed to looking outward to Christ. Rather the Gospel declares to me that everything is already done in Christ. The Gospel creates faith in me, the faith to believe that what Christ has done is sufficient.

Living a life under the Law viewed primarily as our moral guide will only produce hopelessness and despair in the life of the Christian. As we meddle within and apply new recipes and techniques in attempts to work the sin out of our lives we lose sight of Christ and His work. It is our natural response as human beings to try and resolve our own problems, rightfully so the do-it-yourselfer in all of us. The problem with this is that it holds us in a constant state of guilt and despair because sin remains an ever present reality in our lives. The Law is not the medicine for our disease of sin. Rather, it is like the doctor who performs the diagnoses and reveals the sin in our lives. The Gospel is the medicine that provides the cure, the forgiveness of all sin. This needs to be heard regularly (daily) because we have such a hard time believing it. We do not need new lists of principles and newly concocted methods on how to use the Law to purge the sin out of our lives. It simply doesn't work like that. The Law may extinguish some external behaviors for a while, but it can do nothing to to renovate the human heart.

The Law is good and useful, but it cannot save us or motivate us to do good works. The Gospel alone is our salvation and motivation to do good works. “We love because He first loved us.”1 John 4:19. The Gospel moves us in faith by the work of the Holy Spirit to want to: serve Him, do His will, live for Him, and abound in good works. It is the joyful response of the child of God who has been freed from the bondage of sin, guilt, fear, and the condemnation of the Law. Christ’s death and shed blood was the price paid for our freedom.

Wrap Up

Such powerful teachings that I have discovered over the years that have completely changed my life. For me, hearing a proper teaching of Law and Gospel was the first time in my life that I got a clear answer on how to deal with my sin and guilt, and it was liberating. Secondly, understanding the nature of the Christian as being both Sinner and Saint both at the same time allowed me to breath a sigh of relief. It was not up to me to extinguish the sinner! Thirdly, the joy and comfort of coming to the realization that repentance was God’s work not mine. He lifted the workload off my shoulders and turned me to trust in Him rather than trusting in myself. Returning me and restoring me to a salvation of grace and faith away from a salvation of my works and my performance. “Come to me, all you who are weary and burdened, and I will give you rest. Take my yoke upon you and learn from me, for I am gentle and humble in heart, and you will find rest for your souls. For my yoke is easy and my burden is light.” Matthew 11:28-30 And finally, the answer to my troubled faith ultimately came when I stopped looking within to be Christian and began to look outside of myself to Christ crucified and risen for my salvation and the forgiveness of my sins. It was here where the hand of God reached in and rescued me from a life of guilt and despair and gave me peace.

Believe it!