Transforming Grace

I’ve recently posted on 8 biblical personality types, which describe all people. Narrowing the focus to Christian believers, I believe that 1st Peter provides four categories which define 13 Christian personality types. The four categories are:

1. Faith in Christ (1 Peter 1:7 the tested genuineness of your faith)
2. Affection for Christ (1 Peter 1:8 Though you have not seen him, you love him)
3. Knowledge of Christ (1 Peter 1:10 Concerning this salvation, the prophets who prophesied about the grace that was to be yours searched and inquired carefully)
4. Obedience to Christ (1 Peter 1:22 Having purified your souls by your obedience to the truth)

These four categories, or aspects of Christian life, are distinct yet inter-relate:

The 13 sections of the above diagram can be named and described. The first 8 are simple, the last 5 need some description:

1. The dependent (faith) “I trust in Christ”
2. The romantic (affection) “I love Christ”
3. The academic (knowledge and study) “I know Christ”
4. The worker (obedience) “I serve Christ”
5. The Christ-centred dreamer (faith + affection)
   “I love and trust Christ”
6. The hard-working lover (affection + obedience)
   “I love and serve Christ”
7. The moral student (knowledge + obedience)
   “I know and serve Christ”
8. The clever closet Christian (knowledge + faith)
   “I know and trust Christ”
9. The tender-hearted soldier (faith + affection + obedience)
   “I love, trust and serve Christ but lack deep knowledge of him”
   This person exudes a warmth and unshakable confidence in Christ, they serve him at church and in the world but lack a depth of knowledge which appears naive others. This person needs to spend more time reading, thinking, studying to expand their knowledge of Christ. Many charismatics come across this way.
10. The unsure servant (affection + obedience + knowledge)
    “I love, serve and know Christ but lack confidence in him”
    This person comes across as sincere about Christ and yet is timid and unsure of him. People will ask, “why are you not more confident in Christ?”. This lack of confidence undermines both the pastoral work and evangelism of this person as promises which are not applied personally are unlikely to be applied to others.
11. The cold crusader (obedience + knowledge + faith)
    “I serve, know deeply and trust Christ but lack tenderness and love.”
    This person is strong, moral, trusting but emotionally stunted and therefore blunt. Many conservative evangelical men are like this.
12. The keen but lawless (knowledge + faith + affection)
    “I know Christ deeply, trust him completely and love him passionately but my sinful desires overpower me”
    This person needs self-control but lacks the desire to be obedient because their passions and desires are more pleasing to them than their desire to please God. This sort of person is not necessarily a liberal, but many liberals would fit this box.
13. The complete Christian (knowledge + faith + obedience + affection)
    “I know Christ deeply, trust him completely, love him dearly and overcome my sinful desires.”
    This is where all Christians should aim for. As John Piper says “God is most glorified in us when we are most satisfied in him” by satisfaction I take it he means “fully trusting in Christ with complete knowledge of Christ which results in total obedience to Christ and deep, deep love for Christ and others.”

The startling thing about 1st Peter is the call to be the complete Christian in a hostile world. The question that arises from this for ministers like me is, “in which areas and in what ways am I lacking?” and then we must ask the same question for our congregations.

Benjamin Keach’s The Marrow of True Justification: The biblical doctrine of justification without works was republished last month by Solid Ground Christian Books, with a foreword by one of my favourite authors Joel R. Beeke.

Here’s the introduction to the sermon and the distinction between justifying faith and works:

And thus I come to my Text, Romans 4:5.
But to him that worketh not, but believeth on him that jusfifieth the ungodly, his faith is counted for Righteousness.

To him that worketh not; That is, worketh not, thinking thereby to be justified and saved. Though he may work, i.e. lead a holy and righteous Life; yet he doth it not to merit thereby; nay, though he be wicked, and an ungodly person, and so worketh not, or hath no Moral Righteousness at all; yet if he believeth on him that justfieth the ungodly, his faith is counted or imputed for righteousness; Not as a simple Act, or as it is a quality or habit, or in us, as the Papists teach; ipsa fides, saith Bellarmine, censetur esse Justitia, Faith itself is counted to be a justice, and itself is imputed unto Righteousness; No, nor in respect of the effects or fruits of it; for so it is part of our Sanctification.

I’m sure many people are familiar with the Myers-Briggs personality type indicator. The bible provides three criteria for profiling people. These criteria are:

1. Salvation by faith in Christ alone
2. God’s law
3. Wisdom

People can possess any combination of these three criteria and we are only complete as created human beings when we possess all three.

Salvation is by God’s grace through faith alone in the completed work of Christ on the cross. Nothing can be added or taken away from what Christ has done to turn away God’s wrath from sinners.

God’s Law is a blessing to those who meditate on it and make it their delight (Psalm 1:1-2). The law instructs people on how we should and should not live and draws people to Christ as Saviour when we fail to match its requirements.

Wisdom is the God given ability (common grace) to receive, discern and understand the structure, order and purpose of God’s world and to act appropriately in within it.

Now, the types of people who occupy each section of the venn diagram.

1. Saved by faith – the immature Christian. This sort of person has got saved out of a messy background. Loads of faith in Christ and yet no conscious obedience to the law or wisdom. The bible describes people like this, they were called the Corinthians (1 Corinthians 5:1).

2. Then there’s the legalists. Cold, formal, godless moralists. This sort of person is like the self-righteous brothers on Harry Enfield…”then I said NO!”

3. Capable hedonists are generally wise, they are socially well adjusted, get on well with people but have no idea about Christ and little desire to obey God’s law. They do well at work, have a good social network are respectable and well behaved when necessary but blow out at weekends.

4. Moving in to the overlapping sections of the diagram, cross salvation with the law and you get fundamentalists. They’ve got salvation and the law but no wisdom. Soap box fire and brimstone preachers and monks come to mind, but they can be more subtly disengaged from the world by being immersed in Christian sub-culture.

5. Then there’s salvation (or talk of it) and wisdom and you have the liberal. Christians who think deeply about the way the world works but are uncomfortable talking about the law, especially when it comes to sex.

6. The wise moralist is the person you’d want as a good neighbour. Easy to get along with and who would never dream of doing anything to upset his neighbours. No loud music at night or bonfires when you’ve got your washing out. The sort of person who’d run a neighbourhood watch scheme and everyone would feel safe. But God and Christ are no-where on the radar screen.

7. Then, last of all, the complete person, saved by faith in Christ alone. They are sorted with God and look forward to eternity. They know the law and seek to live it to the best of their ability. And, as they are soaked in God’s wisdom, they relate well to everyone they meet.

8. There’s one person missing. The fool. No fear of God, no wisdom and no law. A dangerous nuisance in society.

All types of people in the blue circle and possibly the orange circle will be members of church. Tracing my life I have moved from 3 (capable hedonist) to 1 (immature Christian). I then with good teaching I grew towards 7 (complete person) until sometime in Asia I was diverted to a mixed 4 (neonomian) where salvation and law got confused. I’ve managed to separate the two and am beginning to get wisdom so, by grace, should be moving toward 7 again, though I know I’ll never be complete this side of glory. As a minister, the question is, how should God’s word be ministered and applied to each personality type?

I’ve just finished John Piper’s book The Future of Justification (A response to N.T. Wright). Piper’s passionate pastoral reasons for keeping justification by faith alone central to Christian life and ministry state what I discovered the hard way and have tried to articulate on this blog at various times; if our works of love compete with Christ in our hearts and minds as the basis of our acceptance before God we rob the cross of its power to produce good works in our lives. Here’s Piper in his own words:

WHY THIS BOOK?
My ultimate reason for writing this book is to avert the double tragedy that will come where the obedience of Christ, imputed to us through faith alone, is denied or obscured. Inevitably, in the wake of that denial, our own works—the fruit of the Holy Spirit—begin to take on a function that contradicts the very reason these good works exist. They exist to display the beauty and worth of Christ whose sacrifice and obedience (counted as ours through faith alone) are the only and all-sufficient security of the fact that God is completely for us. That’s the first tragedy: In our desire to elevate the importance of the beautiful works of love, we begin to nullify the very beauty of Christ and his work that they were designed to display.

The other tragedy that I pray we can avert is the undermining of the very thing that makes the works of love possible. What makes radical, risk-taking, sacrificial, Christ-exalting works of love possible is the fact that Christ’s perfect obedience (counted as our righteousness) and Christ’s perfect sacrifice (counted as our punishment) secured completely the glorious reality that God is for us as an omnipotent Father who works all things together for our everlasting joy in him. If we begin to deny or minimize the importance of the obedience of Christ, imputed to us through faith alone, our own works will begin to assume the role that should have been Christ’s. As that happens, over time (perhaps generations), the works of love themselves will be severed from their root in the Christ-secured assurance that God is totally for us. In this way, for the sake of exalting the importance of love, we will undermine the very thing that makes them possible.

Yet the freedom and courage to love is what the world desperately needs to see in the church and from the church. The world does not need to see strident, triumphalistic evangelicals laying claim to their rights. The world needs to see the radical, risk-taking, Christ sacrifice of humble love that makes us willing to lay down our lives for the good of others, without the demand of reward on this earth. For the sake of this display of the glory of Christ, I plead for our allegiance to a robust, biblical, historic vision of Christ whose obedience is counted as ours through faith alone.

A 27-year old father of two, Luke Harris, was shot dead last week in a pub in Wolverhampton. The first comment posted on the local newspaper, the Express and Star, webapage was:

# Karl said: Mar 15th, 2008 at 11:33 am

This doesn’t surprise me one bit! The whole of Whitmore Reans is a lawless area to say the least. And it’s just been worse over the years.

The problem is obvious to Karl and it should be obvious to most people, some areas of our cities are now lawless. Various government policies seek to address the issue:

1. Community development officers on 18 month contracts, which is barely enough time to get to know the names of streets let alone people.
2. Police community support officers are placed on the beat few hours a day.
3. Schools are given a key role in moral education.
4. There’s spending on regeneration as houses, schools and streets are tarted up.
5. Volunteer sector groups are given government funding as long as the group is not faith based.

And yet our inner city areas continue to grow more lawless.

How are inner city communities going to find their way out of lawlessness? The answer is not education, community development, more police or regeneration. It is not moralism or better enforcement through the fear of being caught and given a harsh sentence. The answer to the lawlessness of inner cities in the gospel of Christ and there are two particular aspects which apply:

1. if you are led by the Spirit, you are not under the law. (Galatians 5:18 )
2. Jesus Christ, gave himself for us to redeem us from all lawlessness (Titus 2:13-14)

Communities become lawless as a result of seeking to escape from the individual and collective condemnation, shame and guilt induced by failure to keep the law. But with no law there can be no guilt so the law gradually erodes and a community becomes shameless.

God’s way of releasing us from the guilt, shame and condemnation of moral failure is not by abolishing the law but through faith in Christ crucified for sin, which is the breaking of the law. Christ’s death purifies our guilty conscience not so that we can go on being lawless but so that we can uphold the law. This is God’s purpose in saving us (Titus 3:8).

The only question is, who will take the gospel into lawless communities? Christians need to live in the inner city, plant churches as they share their lives as well as the gospel (Titus 1:5) in places filled with liars, evil brutes and lazy gluttons (Titus 1:12).

Inner city lawlessness is not due to government failure. The government is doing what it can. A lawless society is a symptom of the failure of the church to proclaim the gospel and the law. We should not expect the government to make up for ecclesiastical failure.

The table bellow lists 25 of the benefits of faith union with Christ. These benefits are what Christ won for his people on the cross and are what make bad trees into good trees. The gospel produces good trees which in turn produce good works, so the Christian believer must focus on the good news, the benefits of faith union with Christ, if good works are to follow. Thomas Watson gives advice on how to dwell on the benefits of the cross.

Thomas Watson writes in his exposition of the Beatitudes

There are many truths swim in the brain, which do not sink into the heart, and those do us no good. Chew the cud. Let a Christian think seriously with himself, there is a blessedness feasible and I am capable of enjoying it, if I do not lay bars in the way and block up my own happiness. Though I see within nothing but guilt, and without nothing but curses, yet there is a blessedness to be had, and to be had for me too in the use of means.

I have previously posted on the distinction between the gospel and law where the gospel defines our status before God.

I use the following table of truths to meditate on my status. As I meditate I find my affections and desires correspondingly increase. Jesus said ‘If you love me, you will obey what I command’ (John 14v15). Focusing on the nature of the gift of grace increases our love for the giver and so our desire to obey what he commands. What is the gift of grace? It is all the benefits secured by Christ on the cross for his people. Some of these benefits are listed in the table below.

Give it a go. Take one gospel truth at a time and take your time. Don’t put bars in the way and block up your own happiness. The proof is in chewing the cud. Do it frequently.
.

My last post quoted Spurgeon on the false teaching of alloyed gospel and law (mixed grace and works). The question is, if the two should not be mixed then how do we keep them separate yet together?

Francis Turretin makes an important distinction between the status and the purpose or desire of the believer. In his Institutes of Elenctic Theology Topic 17 Question 3 he asks “Are good works necessary for salvation?” He answers by stating that the believer’s status is due to the merit, causality and efficiency of salvation, which are all actions by God to man. God causes sinners to be merited in his eyes with a new status. The believing Christian can say “I am saved by God”. This is the work of God alone (efficiency). Turretin goes on with respect to the believer’s purpose or desire:

the question [are good works necessary for salvation] concerns the necessity of means, of presence and of connection or order - are they [good works] required as the means and way for possessing salvation? This we hold.
…This can be demonstrated more clearly from the nature of the thing and the state and condition of man, whether we look to the covenant of grace entered into with him and attend to the doctrine of the gospel which he professes; or to the state of grace in which he is placed; or to the benefits which depend on it, past as well as present and future. All these draw after them the absolute necessity of good works.
…all the benefits of God tend to this, whether regarded as to the past in eternal election or as to the present in grace, or as to the future in glory. For all these are destined to or conferred upon us for no other reason than to promote the work of sanctification. On this account, good works are set forth to us as the effects of eternal election (Eph 1:4); the fruit and the seal of present grace (2 Tim 2:19; 2 Cor 1:21-22; Jn 15:4; Gal 5:22); and the “seeds” or “firstfruits” and earnests of future glory (Gal 6:7-8; Eph 1:14; Rom 8:23).

Turretin is not here encouraging us to assess our good works and try harder if we are not producing any. Instead, he argues that if a man finds himself hating his sin and believing in Christ for salvation then he must consider his new status as one elected by God, under grace, forgiven and heading to glory. As he considers this then good works will follow as the obvious effects, fruit or purpose of salvation. Good works are like melt waters. When the spring sun returns to warm the slopes of Ben Law on the north shore of Loch Tay the melt waters from the winter’s snow can do nothing except flow down into the crystal clear loch. So it is with good works. When the warmth of the gospel melts the heart of the sinner the desire and ability to do good works will follow. All Christians need the constant flow of gospel warmth to keep the heart soft. If we take our eyes off Christ on the cross and focus instead on our works, good works will not take long to dry up as the heart freezes over once again.

I need to come clean. “Transforming Grace” is not an original title. This might be the only blog of that name but I borrowed the title from Jerry Bridges book Transforming Grace: Living Confidently in God’s Unfailing Love. I was given the book by friends in Malaysia around ten years ago and have only read it recently. I wish I’d read it then! It would have, perhaps, saved me a number of years struggling with unrecognised neonomianism (where acceptance by God is based on a mixture of grace and works).

In his opening chapter The Performance Treadmill Bridges explains what happens to Christians who are practical neonomians:

All true Christians readily agree that justification is by grace through faith in Christ. And if we stop to think about it, we agree that glorification is also solely by God’s grace. Jesus purchased for us not only forgiveness of sins (justification) but also eternal life (glorification). But sanctification-the entire Christian experience between justification and glorification- is another story. At best, Christian life is viewed as a mixture of personal performance and God’s grace. It is not that we have consciously sorted it all out in our minds and have concluded that our relationship with God, for example, is based on 50 percent performance and 50 percent grace. Rather it is a subconscious assumption arising from our own innate legalism-reinforced and fueled by the Christian culture we live in…The principal thesis of this book, however, and the truth I hope to demonstrate is that…the entire Christian life from start to completion is lived on the basis of God’s grace to us through Christ.

That introductory paragraph will also determine much of the content of this blog. I aim to post quotations which do two things:

1. Transform and increase my grasp and knowledge of God’s grace in Christ

2. Transform me as a result