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As my family was winding down for the night, my wife suggested to our three oldest children that they go read books for a few minutes before bedtime. After a few minutes of me and my wife chatting about current world events, I decided to go check on the kids. As I approached our son's bedroom, I could hear him "reading" his book outloud. Knowing that my three-year-old boy couldn't read a stroke of what he was holding in his hand, I inched my way closer to his door to try and make out what he was mumbling to himself. I could hardly contain the chuckles building up within me, but I, in my dada way, held back and was able to listen long enough to hear his closing words as he turned to the final page in the book he was so intently looking at. "And there was Jesus on the cross...The End."
aybe what was circumcision to the Galatians is a particular day of worship to us. Maybe it's a celebration or lack of a celebration to us. Maybe we think a "true" Christian would never allow the temple of the Holy Spirit to be poisoned by eating the wrong foods, drinking the wrong drinks, or by purposely inhaling smoke into the lungs when God wants to use those very same lungs to spread His story around the globe. Such treatment of the body, to us, is "ungodly." Or, perhaps most of us today aren't that extreme. Perhaps we believe a person only becomes less godly by doing something a little more drastic, like stealing a car or burglarizing a house. Or, probably more dangerous than any false doctrine I know of, maybe we simply believe we'll be more godly than the other guy if we spend our Saturday night praying while that "ungodly" spouse sits there, watching the news. Or, because we spend the evening reading the Bible, we are more "godly" than that "so-called brother" who went to Burger-n-Brew with his buddies. Maybe godliness, to us Christians in these end times, should now based on our works and not on the cross. Has our concept of godliness has become our circumcision? "You've fallen from grace, you who are trying to be justified by the Law. Christ has become of no benefit to you."
I froze in my tracks, and, thinking it was the most memorable moment of the day, I quickly tip-toed back to the den to tell my wife of the deep story our son was studying. I never thought much of it right away, but then, suddenly, as if He wanted me to understand something deeper than I was getting out of it, the Lord whispered, in that quiet still voice, into my heart, "And there was Jesus on the cross...The End."
To a three-year-old boy, the gospel is just the way it was meant to be, simple and straight-forward. All my son knew about Jesus was that He died on that cross, and, for whatever reason, it was for him. As we "grow-up," we seem to want to complicate the message, throwing in some doctrine here, a belief there, and maybe a smidgeon of requirement over here. Paul, speaking clearly to the Galatian people, instructed them that to try to be justified by the Law, even in one account, they would be required to keep the entirety of the Law. They would no longer be placing their trust in the cross of Christ, but they would be relying on their own deeds in order to enter into Heaven. He called this falling from grace.
For the Galatians, the one thing they were still required to do under the Law for their salvation was circumcision. A group of "disorganizers," known as the Judaisers, came to town one day and told them this. And they were beginning to believe the lie until Paul sent them a letter, enlightening them with the truth of the Gospel, or Good News. So, do we still believe we need to be circumcised today in order to enter into Heaven? Most Christians I know don't believe such foolishness. Most Christians these days rise above these simplistic obstacles of the early church. Or is it that we've simply replaced one requirement for another?
M
James wrote that he would show us his faith by his works. He never said that he'd show us works by his faith. In other words, because we believe in Jesus, we will be changed from the inside out. Our works will come into existience because of what we believe, but our belief will never come about because of what we are doing. You can stay home and read the Bible every night for the rest of your life, but if you do not believe that Jesus is the entire propitiation for your sin in the first place, you will never believe it by reading it. And if you do not believe that Jesus is the entire propitiation for your sin, the rest is meaningless and will never bring you closer to God. If you don't believe to begin with, like the Pharisees, you will not believe the miracles right before your eyes, like the Pharisees. It is belief and trusting in Jesus alone first, and the rest will follow. Faith doesn't follow proof, but proof follows faith. We always want to tell Jesus that if He would just use us in some miraculous way, our faith would be lifted. As if, perhaps, then, we would believe. But Jesus would have us know that if we believe first, then He will use us in some miraculous way.
When the Apostle Peter leaned over to the crippled man at the Gate Called Beautiful, and said, "In the Name of Jesus of Nazereth, rise and walk," he believed with all of his heart that that crippled man would rise to his feet and walk upon receiving the word from Peter's mouth. And we wonder why family members don't believe us when we tell them the message of the Gospel. We wonder why God never uses us to heal the broken bodied and the broken hearted. We worry about making it to the next paycheck. We take the Gospel, or Good News, right down from the cross of Christ and nail it to our own flesh. We hang ourselves up there as if we are some kind of an offering.
Before we offer ourselves up, we need to understand this one thing. Our own brand of righteousness is as filthy rags to our Creator. We need to comprehend that we can add nothing to the cross that Jesus hung on for our sakes. We cannot fall into the Judaiser's snare and be swept away, believing that our salvation rests in the amount of "godliness" we have "performed" for the week. For it is impossible for us to "perform" true "godliness." All of our true godliness came from the cross of Christ. Your circumcision will gain you nothing. Your own cross will gain you nothing.
In 1 Corinthians 3 and 4, the Bible mentions that the Veil of Moses is taken away only in the Gospel of Christ. Only in the liberty that Jesus has given to us are we able to see clearly the Truth of the Word of God. Until then, we simply don't believe and are constantly seeking out proof, day after day, waiting for Jesus to show us a sign and lift our faith in Him into.........existence.
Am I saying to you now that I believe that you can go out and party all you want to, do whatever you want and, as long as you believe, you'll go to Heaven anyway? What I'm saying is that if you truly believe and trust in Christ for your salvation, you won't do the ungodly thing. It is through your belief in the cross of Christ that your godliness comes. And true godliness will never lead you into temptation, but will deliver you from it. If a true believer momentarily slips up in his Christian walk, and decides to go on a fleshly vacation from the gospel, it does not mean he's fallen away from the love of God. If it does, all Christians are in trouble, because that one little sin you committed this week is just as ungodly in God's eyes as that brother's on the fleshly vacation.
Sin is sin and cannot be found in God's presence. He's the only one who can take sin away. It's not even in our nature to shed the sin from within us. Our only encounter with sinlessness came by way of a cross 2000 years ago. If you were sinless this week, then you just gave your life to Christ this week. That's the only thing that has the power to make us sinless and stand in the presence of God. Don't try to share in His Glory. Live for Him because you want to, not because you think you have to.
So, what are the final words on the last page of your book? Do you turn to the last page and read, "And there I was, getting baptized by total immersion." "And there I was, 'faithfully' reading the Word on a Saturday night." "And there I was, doing all the right things in order to go to Heaven." Or, is it, with child-like faith, understanding the good news through the eyes of a three-year-old, you see Jesus hanging on that cross...with you on His mind...yelling out in His final breath, "It is finished!" and saying to yourself outloud, "And there was Jesus on the cross...The End."?
Thank you for your time, patience, and ears to hear,
Thom Hollis, Idaho Faithweb
P.S.- I Am Saved...Past Tense...Done Deal. If I don't believe that whole-heartedly, then I must be waiting for God to prove it to me...day after day, waiting for Jesus to show me a sign and lift my faith in Him into.........existence.
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