The Chief of Sinners

The apostle of grace called himself the “chief of sinners” (1 Tim 1:15) and ever since then Christians have been confused about their identity. They say things like “I’m a sinner saved by grace” even though the Bible declares they are a saint (Eph 1:1, Php 1:1).

So what are you? A saint or a sinner or a bit of both?

“Look at my messed up behavior. I’m not perfect. I’m obviously still a sinner.”

That’s not true! Stop speaking lies over yourself. The Bible declares that in Christ you are a new creation (2 Cor 5:17). Not an improved person, but a totally new kind of person.

“But if I call myself a saint, it will fill me with pride denying me access to the very grace I need.”

God gives grace to the humble, not the dishonest. True humility comes from agreeing with God and what he says about you, and he calls you his beloved child. In Christ, you are a sinner no more.

So why did Paul call himself the chief of sinners?

Here is the passage in context:

v12 And I thank Christ Jesus our Lord who has enabled me, because he counted me faithful, putting me into the ministry,
v13 although I was formerly a blasphemer, a persecutor, and an insolent man; but I obtained mercy because I did it ignorantly in unbelief.
v14 And the grace of our Lord was exceedingly abundant, with faith and love which are in Christ Jesus.
v15 This is a faithful saying and worthy of all acceptance, that Christ Jesus came into the world to save sinners, of whom I am chief.
v16 However, for this reason I obtained mercy, that in me first Jesus Christ might show all longsuffering, as a pattern to those who are going to believe on him for everlasting life. (1 Tim 1:12-16, NKJV)

Was the apostle Paul a confused saint? Did he see himself as a sinner? Not at all. Indeed, he draws a sharp line between his present and past identities.

Paul’s past:

• I was a blasphemer (v13)
• I was a persecutor (v13)
• I was an insolent or violent man (v13)

Paul’s present:

• Jesus enabled (or empowered) me (v12)
• Jesus counted me faithful (v12)
• Jesus put me into ministry (v12)

Paul had been a terrible sinner but something amazing happened:

• I found mercy (v13)
• the grace of our Lord was poured out on me exceedingly abundant (v13)
• it was accompanied by the faith and love that is in Christ Jesus (v14)

Clearly there was a dramatic change in Paul’s life. So why does he refer to himself as the chief or foremost sinner? He does it so that you might be encouraged!

Why was I shown mercy and grace? Because Christ wanted to make an example of me, the worst of the worst, so that you would know his patience and kindness is greater than your worst. (My paraphrase of verses 15-16)

Paul is saying the same thing here that he says in Romans 5:20. Where sin abounds, God’s grace superabounds. His grace is greater than your sin!

Grace > sin

Someone wearing sin lenses will read v.15 in isolation and conclude that Paul was sin-conscious, but someone wearing grace lenses will read the whole passage and understand that Paul is not boasting about his former badness but God’s great goodness.

Do you see? If God can pour out his abundant grace on this man who was the foremost of sinners, then he can pour out his grace on you! Believe it!

You may say, “I’m not convinced. Paul said ‘I am the chief of sinners,’ not I used to be.”

Don’t be afraid to use your brain. Once Paul was born again he was no longer the worst sinner in the Roman Empire. Read your Bible and you will see that he after he met Jesus he stopped blaspheming and persecuting Christians. His was a most dramatic transformation!

“So why does he say ‘I am the chief sinner’?”

For the same reason Muhammad Ali says “I am the greatest!” The fact is, Muhammad Ali isn’t the greatest boxer, but he once was and he has kept the title. If you were to ask him, “Who is the greatest boxer of all time,” he would not say, “I was” but “I am!”

It’s the same with Paul.

When he says, “I am the chief of sinners,” he’s alluding to an evil title he earned as a blasphemer and persecutor of Christians. He is not saying “I still blaspheme and persecute Christians.” He’s saying, “If God can pour out his abundant grace on me, the worst of the worst, he can surely pour out his grace on you!”

But God was merciful to me in order that Christ Jesus might show his full patience in dealing with me, the worst of sinners, as an example for all those who would later believe in him and receive eternal life. (1 Tim 1:16, GNB)

Paul writes to encourage you. If you are discouraged after reading this – if you believe you are still a sinner despite God’s great grace towards you – you’ve missed his heart. You’re more focused on what you’ve done than the greater thing God has done. You need to repent, believe in him, and receive his abundant life.

The moment Paul became a Christian, he stopped being the chief of sinners. Ditto for you. No matter what you’ve done, the moment you were placed into Christ you became just as righteous and holy as he is (1 John 4:17).

All this is to the glory of his grace and love!

- Paul Ellis

Misunderstood Comings of Jesus

Strangely enough the Jewish people, though waiting and longing for their Messiah to come, had entirely the wrong concept regarding His coming. They portrayed a very selfish, narrow-minded and elitist attitude in that they were looking for the Messiah to come to DESTROY all THEIR ENEMIES and set up His kingdom on earth, where they would live in peace and safety as God's chosen people. They had no idea of the Gospel concept that Jesus would establish for all people's of the earth...nor did they accept such a concept after His coming, even though He taught such.

Just as the Jewish people had the wrong concept of the Messiah's first coming...scripture supports...that most believers today have the wrong concept regarding His second coming. They also are preaching and teaching the wrong concept of the Good News Gospel that Jesus came to establish. The narrow-mindedness, selfishness and elitist attitude of the Jews regarding His first coming characterizes "most Christians" as is evident by the gospel they preach, and their teaching they teach regarding Jesus' second coming.

Christians today have the same concept of Christ second coming as the Jews did about His first coming.  Their philosophy is: “At His second coming He will rapture all of His good people to heaven, then pour out His judgments and wrath on His "sinner enemies" and after putting them through untold torture He will assign all of His "sinner enemies" to the torture chamber of hell fire will they will suffer and be tortured for eternity.  He then, will set up His kingdom in Jerusalem on the earth, and the religious nation will rule and reign as kings and priests and will live happily ever after.”  Really now, does a loving God have such a sadistic, egoistical, perverted and hateful attitude toward those you consider sinners!

To the people that believe this belief, I say, God did not comply to the Jewish nation's concept regarding His first coming...neither, according to the revelation that Jesus gives us of His loving Father...will God comply to the religious nation's concept regarding His second coming.

God's judgments are just and righteous, not retributive and hateful. "With my soul have I desired thee in the night; yea, with my spirit within me will I seek thee early: for when thy judgments are in the earth, the inhabitants of the world will learn righteousness" (Isa. 26:9). "Arise, O God, judge the earth: for thou shalt inherit all nations" (Ps. 82:8).

These verses are clear that the judgment of God is a thing to be desired. When God judges the earth, the people will learn righteousness and then God shall inherit all nations. God sends His judgments for correction, to teach people His righteous ways.

The writer of Hebrews tells us that the gospel of the New Covenant far transcends the Gospel  of the Old Covenant. The Gospel of Grace far surpasses the message of the Law Gospel in that in the Gospel of Grace is the power to deliver people and to cause them to walk in the character and nature of God. That is why God judges us. His judgment is for correction to cause us to turn back to Him as our source of life.

If God simply wanted to destroy all of His "sinner enemies" and only keep people that loved Him, He could have done that without having to go to the cross, and BILLIONS of people would have been spared eternity in hell fire.  He said, “I can call ten thousand angels to come to my defense.  You could never put me on the cross if I didn’t want to go there.” If you asked every soul that you think is going to hell if they preferred not being born to spending eternal punishment in the torture chambers of hell fire, I am sure they would choose not being born. Would not that be more compassionate and loving of a loving God? 

Therefore is it not wise to question, if the religious Gospel that is preached and believed by the majority of people today, really is the Good News Gospel that Jesus established, or is it the deceptive gospel of the antichrist?

- Glenn Regular

The Spiritual Value of Doing Nothing

It is only when we cease from our striving and rest in the unconditional love of Christ that our soul begins to be nourished and restored. It is only then that we can experience a worth that attaches to our being and not simply our doing. It is only as we experience God’s acceptance of us as we are that genuine growth “from the inside out” can begin to occur in our lives. Just as a person who is physically wounded, sick, or hungry needs rest and nourishment to be healed and restored, so too a person who is spiritually wounded, sick, or hungry (which to some extent includes all of us!) needs rest in order to be made well.

All sin in our life is in one way or another a symptom of our being spiritually wounded, sick, or hungry. To the extent that we live in the flesh, we are deceived and cut off from our true source of life and live in a spiritually wounded, sick, or hungry state. Our own efforts to make ourselves better will be of no help. Far from breaking the deception of the flesh that plagues us, our own efforts to make ourselves whole only reinforce this deception.

Our works themselves can become another idolatrous source of life. Far from feeding us, they make us only more hungry. Far from restoring us, they make us only more tired. Our works may, of course, succeed in producing the appearance of wholeness. But until the inner deception of the flesh is broken, the inner self will be wounded, sick, and hungry.

What the soul needs more than anything else in this hungry, weary, and wounded state is rest. The primary way the deception of the flesh is broken is by resting in the truth. The primary way the hunger of our soul is satisfied is by feasting on the spiritual food it was created to enjoy. The primary way the sickness of the soul is cured is by resting in the health and life of its Creator. We grow healthy as we rest, in the midst of all our sickness and wounds, in the unconditional love and acceptance of Christ.

The first thing that is necessary if one is to rest fruitfully in Christ is to set aside some time to do nothing. There is a time for intercessory prayer, but this is not it. There is a time for Bible reading and devotions, but this is not it. There is a time for working at changing ourselves, for new beginnings and for making new commitments to God, but again this is not such a time. This is to be a time for complete rest, a time for doing nothing.

The only goal of this time is for you to just be you, with all your imperfections, and to let Christ just be Christ in all his perfection. It is a time to just rest in truth: the truth of who you are and the truth of who God is. And both are found in Jesus, who is fully God and fully human.

—Adapted from Seeing is Believing, pages 104-105

Justification - Imputation of Christ's Righteousness

Justification is a legal declaration by God that we are righteous.  It involves God forgiving our sins and at the same time imputing the righteousness of Christ unto us. Imputation of Christ righteousness is illustrated in Romans  4:3 (KJV):

'For what saith the scripture? Abraham believed God, and it was counted unto him for righteousness.'

This is further explained by Paul in Romans 4:4-5 (KJV):

' 4  Now to him that worketh is the reward not reckoned of grace, but of debt. :5  But to him that worketh not, but believeth on him that justifieth the ungodly, his faith is counted for righteousness.'

Justification is a completed of work of God and it is instantaneous.Galatians 2:16 further adds:
 
 'Knowing that a man is not justified by the works of the law, but by the faith of Jesus Christ, even we have believed in Jesus Christ, that we might be justified by the faith of Christ, and not by the works of the law: for by the works of the law shall no flesh be justified.'

It means that justification is by the faith of Christ alone (not our effort in conjuring up faith). Justification is on the merit of His work on our behalf, and hence, our own work is disqualified.

Rejoice.

Guest Post: Is Hell the Center of our Faith?

My husband Andy and I had been living in the slums of North India for over a year by the time we returned to one of our sending churches for a visit. We met with the church staff to talk about what we were doing: learning language, listening to people’s stories, eating together, celebrating holidays, birthdays and weddings, and attending funerals.

A few days later, the pastor called us back for a second meeting with just a few staff members to “talk theology.” He asked us again about our work. We explained again how we had been counseling both victims and abusers in situations of domestic violence, advocating for our friends at crowded government hospitals, and helping families open bank accounts to save for medical care and education for their kids.

The pastor nodded his head, but he seemed to be waiting for us to get to the point. “What does Jesus have to do with all this?” he finally asked, furrowing his brow and fixing us with a concerned look.
His question caught us off guard. “Well, Jesus is in all of it,” we explained. His teachings about enemy love and forgiveness were the whole reason we believed that compassion could put an end to cycles of violence. It was his vision of the Kingdom of God which led us to protect vulnerable people from abuse, and to help everyone to see themselves and one another as people worthy of dignity and love.

The church staff looked uncomfortable and confused. “Are you there to preach the gospel, or to perform works of mercy?” one of them asked.
“We don’t see the message of Jesus and the love of Jesus as things that can be separated out from one another,” we replied. “In fact, when Jesus publically announces his mission for the first time, he quotes from Isaiah: ‘The Spirit of the Lord is on me, because he has anointed me to preach good news to the poor. He has sent me to proclaim freedom for the prisoners and recovery of sight for the blind, to release the oppressed, to proclaim the year of the Lord’s favor.’”

“But are you telling your neighbors about Jesus?” the pastor wanted to know.
“We’re having spiritual conversations with our neighbors all the time, hearing what they believe and explaining what we believe.” We described how we often prayed with our neighbors in situations of illness, conflict, or danger, and had even read part of the Sermon on the Mount with a neighbor.
That wasn’t what he meant. Were we leading them to pray the sinner’s prayer? They were Muslims, after all, so didn’t we believe that all of them were condemned to hell unless they made a “profession of faith” and “prayed to receive Jesus into their hearts”?

What does it mean to profess faith?” we asked. If people began to live like Jesus, practicing enemy love and forgiveness, caring for one another, and experiencing God’s unconditional love, was this not a profession that they believed the Good News of the Kingdom?
As for our neighbors’ eternal destinies, only God knows what is in the human heart, so we couldn’t know for sure who was “in” or “out,” but we had hope that God could draw our Muslim neighbors to Himself—even if they never took on the Christian label.

This ambiguity didn’t sit well with the pastor. His line of inquiry narrowed to a single question: “Five years from now, if everyone in your slum community were living like Gandhi, would you be happy with that?”
“If everyone was practicing nonviolence, sharing their resources with one another, forgiving their enemies, and seeking justice together as a community? Yeah, that would indicate some serious spiritual progress!” How many churches could claim to be living such Christ-like lives?

Our answer confirmed to the pastor that there was not enough money in the church’s budget for a ministry as “unfocused” as ours. One of the staff members looked at us apologetically and explained, “We understand that you need to focus on stuff like clean water in your context, because people are poor. But people in our congregation already have their basic needs met, so we need to focus on something else.”

It seemed that there in that affluent suburb, neither hell nor poverty were personal issues for most Christians—the majority of the people they knew believed in Jesus and were financially secure, so they were basically safe, in this life and the next. But our friends in the slum were experiencing hell on earth already. It was friendship with them which had led us to grapple with the mystery of how a loving God would ultimately reconcile justice with mercy.

The church staff, like many evangelical Christians, acted out of a belief that hell is the central problem for human beings, and that efforts to alleviate temporal suffering are a waste of time, or even a dangerous distraction from the Church’s mission of spiritual rescue through right belief.
This underlying understanding of salvation as rescue from the wrath of God—to put it bluntly, of Jesus saving us from God—leads to the idea that following Jesus is primarily about escaping punishment. Yet the New Testament tells us that perfect love casts out fear, and I believe the opposite is also true. I wonder whether a person can authentically respond to God in love as long as they are terrified that refusing Him will land them in hell.

Tragically, this hell-centered theology not only misunderstands or disregards much of Jesus’ life and teachings—it also prevents Christians from fighting for justice, working for peace, or caring for the vulnerable people on the margins of our society. Yet not only do the poor suffer when the Church remains aloof from their plight. Wealthy Christians themselves miss out on powerful relationships that could personally transform them, bringing them closer to Jesus and into deeper awareness of their own spiritual poverty and brokenness.

The wealthy and the poor need one another. We are called into community, and there is no way to follow Jesus without concerning ourselves with the well-being of our fellow human beings. I pray that together, we will choose to live into this kind of life-giving faith that is based in love and hope rather than fear and judgment.

Trudy Smith originally hails from Texas, but has recently made her home in Vancouver, BC with her Canadian husband, Andy. She blogs at trudydsmith.com and is currently writing a memoir about the two and a half years she lived in an Indian slum.

The Ultimate Criteria for Theology

Theology is thinking (logos) about God (theos). It is a good and necessary discipline, but only so long as it is centered on Christ. All of our speculation and debate about such things as God’s character, power, and glory must be done with our focus on Jesus Christ—more specifically, on the decisive act by which he reveals God and redeems humanity, his death on the cross.
The definitive thing to be said about God’s character is found here: God dies for sinners on a God-forsaken cross.

The definitive thing to be said about God’s power is found here: God allows himself to be crucified on a cross for sinners.  

The definitive thing to be said about God’s glory is found here: God dies a horrifying, God-forsaken death upon the cross.

God’s character, power and glory are decisively revealed on the cross. Though it is “foolishness” to the natural mind, the cross is the power and wisdom of God to all who believe (1 Cor 1:18f). If we entertain concepts of God’s character, power, and glory that are inconsistent with what is revealed here, our thoughts are outside of Jesus Christ. Every thought about God, every mental picture we entertain about God, every single emotion that is “raised up against the knowledge of God” must be taken “captive to obey Christ” (2 Cor 10:5).

The true God revealed in Jesus Christ is not at all what the natural mind would expect—it is “foolishness”—for our natural expectations are influenced by our experiences in a fallen world that is permeated with the foundational lie of the serpent. We create a god of our own designs by magnifying our own fallen conceptions of character, power, and glory. Consequently, sometimes God’s character, power, and glory are presented in ways that don’t even resemble Jesus Christ, even within the Christian tradition. For instance, we often project onto the screen of heaven a cosmic Caesar, controlling the world through coercive power and intimidation rather than accepting God’s definition of himself in the crucified Jesus Christ. Such mental chimeras may inspire fear, but they do not transform us to become outrageous lovers.

The only hope we have of getting out of this fallen condition and walking in the ecstatic love of the triune God is to resolve that God’s revelation in Christ is true, however much it may contradict our fallen, worldly expectations. When the deceptive veil over our mind is removed and we see the glory of God shining in the face of Jesus Christ and when we fix our eyes on Jesus, we find a picture of God that could not possibly be more loving and beautiful. For here we find God going to the greatest extreme possible—suffering a God-forsaken, hellish death at the hands of the very creatures for whom he was dying! This is the greatest expression of love imaginable, and it alone reveals the truth about who the eternal, triune God is. God is this kind of love.

This is the ultimate criteria for all theology. Any other estimation of God will block not only our ability to think rightly about God, but also to love like God loves.

—Adapted from Repenting of Religion, pages 132-133  - Greg Boyd

The Call to a Cruciform Life

Jesus repeatedly taught that following him meant that one had to be willing to “pick up their cross daily and follow [him]” (Lk 9:23; 14:27). Picking up our cross is the centerpiece of following Jesus because this was the centerpiece of what Jesus was all about. The thematic centrality of the cross is also illustrated in Jesus’ teaching that to be considered a “child of your Father in heaven,” one has to be willing to refuse to retaliate and instead “love your enemies and pray for those who persecute you” (Mt 5:44-5, cf., 38; Lk 6:27-35), for this is precisely the example that Jesus set when he refused to use his power to defend himself, choosing instead to die for his enemies rather than to crush them (Mt 26:51-3).

Along the same line, the cross is the thematic center of all of Jesus’ teachings that speak of the need for people to lose their life in order to find it (Mt 10:39; 16:25) and that associate greatness with humility, innocence and serving others (e.g., Mt 16:11-4; 23:11-2; Lk 18:15-7). In addition, Jesus takes the common understanding of power and turns it on its head by associating it with a willingness to sacrificially serve others (e.g., Mt 20:20-8).

The cross was not merely something God did for us; it was also an example God calls disciples to follow. It is thus significant that after defining the kind of love that characterizes God by pointing us to Jesus’ death on the cross, John immediately goes on to add: “And we ought to lay down our lives for one another“ (1 Jn 3:16, emphasis added). This and a number of similar passages make it evident that God’s will is for the cruciform love that defines his own, eternal, triune nature to transform us and flow through us to others. 

In yesterday’s post, I briefly introduced Augustine’s subjective definition of love that enabled him, and multitudes of others that followed him, to claim that for God as well as God’s people, loving enemies does not necessarily rule out torturing and killing them. This definition is explicitly ruled out by the teachings of Jesus and Paul. Jesus commanded us not merely to love our enemies as an inner disposition, but to express this love by how we actually treat them. The love that Jesus teaches and models is both active and nonviolent.

We are specifically instructed to “bless,” “pray for,” “do good” to, “be merciful” toward, and to “lend to” our enemies “without expecting to get anything back” (Mt 5:44-45, Lk 6:28-29, 35). These are not inner dispositions: they are concrete behaviors! So too, we are taught to disobey the OT’s command to exact just retribution and to instead “not resist (antistemi) an evil doer” and to turn the other check when struck (Mt 5:38-9). These are obviously not merely instructions about how we should think or feel in response to enemies: they are instructions on how we are to actually behave in response to the hostile behavior of enemies!

The same holds true when Paul instructs us to “[b]less”—“not curse”—those who persecute us (Rom 12:14), and to never “repay evil for evil” (Rom 12:17). Specific behaviors are also implied when Paul instructs us to never “exact revenge” (12:19), but to instead “overcome evil with good” (12:21) by feeding enemies when they’re hungry and offering them something to drink when they are thirsty, for example (Rom 12:20). All of these passages expose the artificiality of Augustine’s fateful attempt to divorce the love we are commanded to live in from the commitment to non-violence that is entailed by this love.

There is not one exception clause to any of the NT’s instructions about loving enemies and, therefore, the refusal to resort to violence in response to them. To the contrary, the unqualified way Jesus speaks about enemies makes it clear that it includes every possible enemy who is threatening us for any possible reason. Moreover, far from allowing for “justified” exceptions, Jesus explicitly rules out any possible exceptions when he emphasized in as strong as terms as possible that his followers were to love indiscriminately—the way God loves and blesses the just and unjust by causing his sun to shine and his rain to fall on everyone, without any regard to whether the people we are called to love deserve it or not (Mt 5:45; Lk 6:35). The sun and rain do not pick and choose whom they will and will not fall on. Rather, the sun shines and the rain falls simply because it’s the sun’s nature to shine and it’s the nature of rain to fall.

- Greg Boyd