Abiding in Jesus, Living in Him (13)

 

  

“Who can discern his errors? Acquit me of hidden faults. Also keep back Your servant from presumptuous sins; let them not rule over me; then I will be blameless, and I shall be acquitted of great transgression. Let the words of my mouth and the meditation of my heart be acceptable in Your sight, O Yahweh, my rock and my Redeemer.” (Psalm 19:12 – 14).

 

When the Word of God is the fabric of our life in Jesus Christ, the Holy Spirit through the Word will reveal sin within us as well as transform us into the image of Jesus. The Holy Spirit will also reveal things in our lives that are not sin, but that are weights and hinderances that we need to deal with. Let’s remember that pruning does not only deal with dead and diseased plant material, it also cuts away healthy plant material that does not conform to the desired image and growth of the plant, and which may indeed lead to disease in the future. The problem with many professing Christians is not sin, it is good – for the good is the enemy of the better and the better is the enemy of the best.

 

Also, let’s not forget that Creation can reveal sin within us – my dog’s innocence convicts me of my selfishness. The birds and their songs convict me of my lack of trust in my heavenly Father.

 

After the psalmist mediates on Creation and God’s Word he asks, “Who can discern his errors?” Now here is a baseline question that is critical to the Christian life – because our answer to this can determine the trajectory of our lives in Christ. And let me acknowledge that there are at least two lines of thought on the answer. The core issue is whether the tree can prune itself or whether it needs a Master Gardener to prune it and shape it.

 

I recently read a book by a brother in Christ whom I deeply respect, I love the body of his writing and think the Church needs what he has to say. Yet in this book, his most recent, I sense that he has moved away from his organic approach to growth in Christ and into a motif of disciplines that rely more on the efforts of man than the Spirit of God – I hope this is a temporary distraction. In the book our dear brother insists that self-examination is critical and essential to the Christian life. I strongly disagree with this statement, especially in its context of the self-disciplines contained in the book.

 

Disciplines of self-examination tend to make us self-focused rather than centered on Christ and others – do we forget that we are called to lose our lives for Jesus Christ and the Gospel? Self-examination assumes that we have the ability to identify sin and imperfections in our lives, that we can understand the inner workings of our ourselves – and this simply isn’t true. Self-examination also distracts us from the perfect work of Jesus Christ and of our completion in Him. We are called to focus on Jesus and not on ourselves, we are called to seek the good of others and not our own good.

 

Self-examination leads us into a never-ending Gnostic labyrinth from which there is no return.

 

We do not grow into the image of Jesus Christ as we focus on ourselves, we are transformed into His image as we behold Him and confess our completeness in Him – as a dear friend has said to me for decades, “We are becoming who we are in Christ.” (Col. 2:10; Heb. 10:10, 14; 1 Jn. 3:1 – 3; 2 Cor. 3:17 – 18).

 

We first “sit in the heavenlies in Christ” so that we may “walk out our lives” in Him – this is the structure of Ephesians (Eph. 1:3; 2:6; 4:1) – we do not walk that we may ascend into the heavenlies, for Christ has already placed us in the heavenlies in Himself and in His perfect work. We will never be any more complete than we already are – the manifestation of that completeness is working itself out in our daily lives in Christ – but we can do nothing in ourselves, we abide in Christ, we rest in Christ – ceasing from our own works (John 15:4 – 5; Heb. 4:10). It is God who is working in us, doing His will and pleasure (Phi. 2:12 – 13).

 

It is when we are engaged in the Word of God, and the Word of God is working deep within us, even piercing to the soul and spirit – that the “thoughts and intentions of our hearts” are revealed (Heb. 4:12) – and this leads us and keeps us in the “rest of God” that we see in Hebrews 4:10, as we trust in our Great High Priest of Hebrews 4:13 – 16.

 

As the Word of God (Ps. 19:7 – 11) works within the psalmist he realizes that without God’s Word that he would never see his errors, his sins, and the toxic hidden things within him. And friends, even if we think we know our sins, until those sins are placed under the light of the Holy Spirit we really don’t know what we think we know – for the illumination of sin is devastating – claiming and confessing cleansing and forgiveness is wonderful for sure, but talking about sin, as we so lightly do in many church circles, is no parlor game.

 

Since the psalmist knows that he can’t discern his errors, he prays for God’s protection and deliverance – and of course in Christ all is forgiven, all is forgiven (Romans 5:1 – 11; 2 Cor. 5:21).

 

Here is our assurance in Jesus, we experience continual cleansing in our koinonia in Him, “…the blood of Jesus His Son cleanses us from all sin” (1 Jn. 1:7). When individual sins occur, when they are shown to us by the Holy Spirit, then we confess them and “He is faithful and righteous to forgive us our sins and to cleanse us from all unrighteousness” (1 Jn. 1:9 – 2:2).  

 

More than anything, the working of the Holy Spirit and the pruning of our kind heavenly Father is less about what we do and more about who we are…about our character, about the real me and the real you, for our Father’s desire is that we bear the image of His Firstborn Son (Rom. 8:29). This in turn leads us to another dimension of pruning, our Father’s loving discipline, which we will ponder in a forthcoming reflection.

 

Our heavenly Vinedresser prunes us through a sacramental relationship with Creation and with His Word – life in Christ is holistic, it is a relationship – and the Trinity speaks to us through, and in, all of life…and all of life is to be in Jesus Christ.

 

[A note on self-examination: In Galatians 6:1 - 4 Paul writes that each one should “look to yourself” and that each one must examine his own work. This passage is framed in the context of Galatians, with the question, “Having begun in the Spirit, are you now being perfected by the flesh?” (3:3), and with a continual emphasis on life in the Spirit and our sonship in Christ. Therefore, it ought to be understood that we need the enabling grace of God and the Holy Spirit to truly see ourselves and to examine our works.

 

In 1 Corinthians 11:28, in speaking of the Lord’s Table, Paul writes that, “a man must examine himself.” Once again, when we consider the context of this statement, we find that we can only do this with the grace of God and in our Lord Jesus Christ, we must look to the Holy Spirit to enable our self-examination. Jesus Christ is our wisdom (1 Cor. 1:30) and the Spirit of God must reveal the wisdom of God and knowledge of God to us (1 Cor. 2:6 – 16).

 

The Scriptures do not teach a preoccupation with ourselves; they teach that we give our lives to Jesus (Mark 8:34 – 38) and that He is the center of our lives. They also teach that just as Jesus laid His life down for us, that we are to lay our lives down for our brethren (1 John 3:16). We have no time or warrant to keep looking to ourselves.]