Don’t Get Mixed Up
Don’t Get Mixed Up
There is a lot of noise and confusion in the world and if we are not careful the same thing can be true for us in the Church. But Father is not a God of confusion. (1 Corinthians 14:33) I want to encourage you to be watchful, alert, and aware of the schemes of the enemy—especially in the area of the wonderful relationship you share with our lovely Lord Jesus.
Everything in this world presses us to focus on our actions, our behavior. Judgements are made about the actions of everyone from preachers, politicians, and parents, to principals, pupils, and police. Consequently, it is easy—almost natural—for us to approach our relationship with Father from this earthy perspective.
If we aren’t watching, we can begin to think that Father will turn away from us in disgust if we fail to behave. If we aren’t vigilant, the enemy can insinuate that living up to a moral standard is required if we are to see blessing. He even uses scripture to prove his accusations, just as he did when he tempted Jesus two millennia ago.
This all comes down to a lack of purity. I’m not talking about behavioral purity. The purity I have in mind is purity about our relationship with Father. I’m talking about the purity of our theology and doctrine, but more than that, I’m talking about something far more practical. I’m talking about purity in our perception of God and how we relate to Him moment by moment. I’m talking about purity in our view of how He sees us in our best moments and in our worst.
Father loves purity. In Leviticus 19:19 He told the Israelites, “Do not crossbreed two different kinds of your livestock, sow your fields with two kinds of seed, or put on a garment made of two kinds of material.” (CSB)
He expounded on this a bit in Deuteronomy 22:9–11. There He said, “Do not plant your vineyard with two types of seed; otherwise, the entire harvest, both the crop you plant and the produce of the vineyard, will be defiled. Do not plow with an ox and a donkey together. Do not wear clothes made of both wool and linen.” (CSB)
Jesus put it another way inn Matthew 9:16–17 where we find this, “No one patches an old garment with unshrunk cloth, because the patch pulls away from the garment and makes the tear worse. And no one puts new wine into old wineskins. Otherwise, the skins burst, the wine spills out, and the skins are ruined. No, they put new wine into fresh wineskins, and both are preserved.” (CSB)
John Frone, the pastor at a church we were part of years ago spent a lot of time talking about this. He was the first to open my eyes to our tendency to mix together some aspects of the rules, rites, and rituals of institutional religion with the purity and simplicity of God’s grace.
I remember John telling us that the law was insidious and sneaky. That we had to be on our guard and vigilant because it was subtly inserting itself into our lives while we weren’t looking. For a while, I thought he was overstating his case, but as I more closely observed my own thoughts and emotions, I began to see what he was driving at.
In the system into which God placed the first people, all they had to do was live in day-to-day relationship with Him. He set them up with a beautiful and bountiful environment. He spent time walking with them in the cool of the day. This is His perfect design for us. We are designed to receive from Him and to trust Him to provide everything we need.
To have a relationship with us that was loving, real, based on trust, and not coerced in any way, Father knew that we would need the freedom to choose to love Him or to reject Him. No other system could result in a genuine love relationship.
Consequently, many of us choose not to trust God. The Israelites exemplify this in scripture. Father frees them from bondage and sets them on the path to the land of abundance, blessing, and peace. Nevertheless, they decide that they could live righteously if they had rules to help them. God gave them rules, but because these rules codified perfection, no one could keep them all.
We tend to be a lot like that. We want to know how. We want guidelines. The problem with guidelines is that all they do is point out where we fail. Guidelines, rules, and laws cannot make us live right. And laws are strict. If we break any single law, we become a lawbreaker.
James 2:10 makes this clear in no uncertain terms. It says, “For whoever keeps the entire law, and yet stumbles at one point, is guilty of breaking it all.” (CSB) This is true because the law is a unit. It’s an all or nothing proposition as we read in Galatians 3:10
“For all who rely on the works of the law are under a curse, because it is written, ‘Everyone who does not do everything written in the book of the law is cursed.’” (CSB)
Father knew this was going to happen. He knew we were unable to make ourselves righteous and that we would fail to hit the mark set by His standard of perfection. He didn’t set that standard arbitrarily. The standard of perfection is required because He is perfect so nothing imperfect is compatible with Him. Our imperfection separated us from Him because if we were joined with Him, we would cease to exist. This is what the Bible means when it says that we were dead in our sins.
Father’s solution was to send Jesus to do the work necessary to make us righteous. Being righteous we became compatible with Him and could enjoy that dependent and loving relationship for which He created us. Our role, like that of the first people back in the Garden of Eden, became to receive from Him and to trust Him to provide everything we need.
Even in this beautiful state, because we live in the valley of the shadow of death, it is easy for us to become distracted and fall back on old habits or live the way the world says we “should” live.
But this is not the way. Remember those passages we saw earlier about mixing seeds, types of cloth, and putting new wine in old skins? These point us to the purity that is so important to peacefully enjoying life in Christ.
Galatians 5:3–4 warns, “Again I testify to every man who gets himself circumcised that he is obligated to do the entire law. You who are trying to be justified by the law are alienated from Christ; you have fallen from grace.” (CSB)
Mixing a touch of self-effort, a little legalistic performance, or just a sprinkle of obligatory service with the grace of God messes up the entire thing. We lose the rest, peace, and contentment of simply trusting Father, and we diminish the lasting fruit we bear, along with the joy and blessing it yields.
We don’t have to live like that. We can remember that Father has set up a system that works with no work from us. We can turn our focus from futilely trying to impress God and others with our performance to Jesus and His incredible work on our behalf.
Hebrews 10:1–4
1 Since the law has only a shadow of the good things to come, and not the reality itself of those things, it can never perfect the worshipers by the same sacrifices they continually offer year after year.
2 Otherwise, wouldn’t they have stopped being offered, since the worshipers, purified once and for all, would no longer have any consciousness of sins?
3 But in the sacrifices there is a reminder of sins year after year.
4 For it is impossible for the blood of bulls and goats to take away sins. (CSB)
In this chapter of Hebrews, we find that Jesus took care of our sin, our imperfection, our failure to hit the mark, our inability to live up to the perfect standard of God.
In verse two we see an incredible statement There we are told that if the Hebrews had been purified once for all they would no longer have had any consciousness of sins. The reason they were still conscious of their sins was that the sacrifices were being given every year and reminding them of their sins.
The work Jesus did was far better. Not only did He take away our sins, but His one-time work was effective for all time. Once for all. Consequently, we no longer need to worry about sins. 2 Corinthians 5:19 tells us that because of what Jesus did God was not counting our sins against us. In 1 Corinthians 13 we read that love keeps no record of wrongs. In several places, including Hebrews 8:12 we are told that God promised not to remember our sins.
Hebrews 10:10, 12, and 14 underscore and bolster this truth. Here is what they tell us:
10 By this will, we have been sanctified through the offering of the body of Jesus Christ once for all time.
Hebrews 10:12
12But this man, after offering one sacrifice for sins forever, sat down at the right hand of God.
Hebrews 10:14
14For by one offering he has perfected forever those who are sanctified. (CSB)
What can we possibly hope to add to this wonderful truth?
Jesus has made one sacrifice for sins for all time.
Jesus has taken our sins away.
Jesus has sanctified us (made us holy, set us apart).
Jesus has perfected us.
Jesus has done all of this, and He did it once for all time.
So complete was His work that He sat down at the right hand of God the Father. Indeed Hebrews 10:18 caps these thoughts by telling us, “Now where there is forgiveness of these, there is no longer an offering for sin.” (CSB)
Saints, there is nothing we can do to cause Father will turn away from us in disgust. If we fail to behave in godly ways, He doesn’t bring calamity to teach us a lesson. If we don’t live up to a moral standard, blessing is not withheld.
Ephesians 2:8–9 tells us that we, “are saved by grace through faith, and this is not from yourselves; it is God’s gift—not from works, so that no one can boast. (CSB) We all know this, and most of us do not struggle with it.
Some who have gone before us did struggle with what happens after salvation, however. In Galatians 3:2–3 the Apostle Paul heard that people in the church were falling prey to the temptation to add something to the work that Jesus finished at the cross. Here’s what he said to them, “I only want to learn this from you: Did you receive the Spirit by the works of the law or by believing what you heard? Are you so foolish? After beginning by the Spirit, are you now finishing by the flesh?” (CSB)
This speaks loudly to us today.
We cannot mix a little rule keeping with depending on Holy Spirit in us.
We cannot mix a little performance with trust in Father’s love for us.
We cannot mix a little Old Testament religion with New Covenant freedom.
We cannot mix a little striving to please God with the rest and peace Jesus has given us.
Please do not misunderstand me. I am not saying that godly behavior has no value. On the contrary, the grace of God teaches us otherwise, and Holy Spirit within us is continually bringing our desires more in line with Father’s desires and prompting us to live lives characterized by godliness.
I am not saying that sin is not sin. The most basic meaning of the word translated sin in the Bible is to miss the mark. The mark is perfection. Apart from Jesus we all miss the mark.
Because sin is in this fallen world, everything around us indicates that we should live by our senses. Our senses tell us that short-term things that feel good for a moment are the key to happiness, joy, and a fulfilling life. That's the earthy, or worldly, way to live.
Scripture talks about this as "fleshly desires", or "the lusts of the flesh" and these desires are not limited to the things we think of as being evil. If we are performing laudable activities so people will think more highly of us that misses the mark. But which of us always acts out of pure motives?
The earthy way of reacting to what life throws at us by doing what satisfies our senses
may feel good for a moment, but sin is not good for us. It's destructive to our relationships, it hurts us and others, it causes illness and results in mental anguish.
Father wants better for us.
We are no longer in bondage to the power of sin. This is a statement of fact. It is not something to strive for or attain. It is our current condition. Our role is one of complete dependence on God. Our role is to receive from Him and then out of that overwhelming supply live lives of love.
Let’s not mix any law keeping with the grace of God. Let’s just trust Him like little children and allow Holy Spirit to guide us into the truth and reshape our desires to be like Father’s.
