Struggling with Moralism and Legalism

by Susan Sampson

I had to share this excerpt from one of the recent eMoments because it was so powerful!

Laurie quoted a passage from an article by J.I. Packer called “The Heart of the Gospel” which is in the book “In My Place Condemned He Stood: Celebrating the Glory of the Atonement.” He writes,

“The measure of God’s holy love for us is that ‘while we were still sinners, Christ died for us’ and that ‘he….did not spare his own Son but gave him up for us all” (Rom. 5:8). Evidently there was no alternative to paying that price if we were to be saved, so the Son at the Father’s behest, ‘through the eternal Spirit’ paid it. Thus God ‘set aside’ the record of debt that stood against us….nailing it to the cross’ (Col. 2:14). Had we been among the watchers at Calvary, we should have seen nailed to the cross Pilate’s notice of Jesus’ alleged crime. But if by faith we look back to Calvary from where we now are, what we see is the list of our own unpaid debts of obedience to God, for which Christ paid the penalty in our place…”

Jerry Bridges is an author and theologian who talks about “preaching the gospel to ourselves.” So…rather than waking up and being consumed by my to-do list, this is the list I should look to and thank the Lord for what He has done for me!!

As I was reading through Ephesians 4 yesterday, I read one of the study notes which explains the format of Paul’s letters – “in which doctrinal truths are stated first, then application to life is built on that doctrine. The exhortations of scripture become empty moralism without this gospel foundation.”

When we are being ministered to by the Gospel, it is like having your extreme thirst quenched with a cup of ice water! But when we forget the truths of Ephesians Chapters 1-3 or don’t take them to heart and believe them by faith and only focus on the exhortations we start thinking wrongly.

Suddenly we might start thinking we must teach our children Chinese, Portuguese and Latin; spend our next 4 summers in Madagascar; throw away everything we own; stop wearing make up and shaving our legs; make our children floss twice a day; make them be perfect; make us be perfect; make our husbands perfect; hide all our sins; and don’t let anyone know what’s really going on behind our perfectly made up faces!!!!

And we wonder why there is exhaustion, depression, confusion and hopelessness!!

Moralism is not the Gospel! It is anti-gospel.

Christ came to set us free! He obeyed the law perfectly in our place! He knew we couldn’t ever obey the law perfectly! He knew we needed to be saved. He came to seek and save the lost! He came to rescue sinners, to dine with sinners, to make sinners His brothers and sisters, His co-heirs!!!

The Bible says that the wages of sin is death. It says that ALL have sinned and fallen short of the glory of God. Therefore, we ALL (and this includes all the “perfect” people you know and see)…we ALL deserve the death penalty. Eternal damnation in hell. Separated forever from God and all that is good. Unimaginable suffering that will not ever end.

This is what Jesus saved us from!!!!

This is why we can call Him Savior!!!

This is what we cannot save ourselves from!!!!

This is precisely why we need a Savior, a Rescuer!

That is why the Gospel is such good news!!

Mercy can be defined as not getting something you deserve. Christ has given us mercy. Grace can be defined as getting something you don’t deserve. God has not only declared us not guilty, keeping us from getting the death penalty we all deserve, but set us free and gave us eternal salvation and the gift of the Holy Spirit! Himself!!! His power, His love, His mind, His heart! And so much more!

We are now one with Christ. A part of His very body. Saved, sealed, delivered.

If any of you are struggling like I am to recover from moralism and legalism, let us continue to confess our unbelief of the gospel to our Blessed Redeemer. Let us preach the gospel to ourselves everyday and take these truths to our hearts, believing them by faith! Let us continue to ask Him to pour out His amazing grace. Grace that saves. Grace that heals. Grace that washes us clean and sets us free.

“For this reason I bow my knees before the Father, from whom every family in heaven and on earth is named, that according to the riches of his glory he may grant you to be strengthened with power through his Spirit in your inner being, so that Christ may dwell in your hearts through faith – that you, being rooted and grounded in love, may have strength to comprehend with all the saints what is the breadth and length and height and depth, and to know the love of Christ that surpasses knowledge that you may be filled with all the fullness of God” (Eph. 3:14-19).

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Excerpt from The Hole in Our Holiness

Thistlebend Quiet eMoment

by Laurie Aker

Hello Again from My Reading Retreat

Today’s book is:
The Hole in Our Holiness
by Kevin DeYoung

Excerpt from Chapter One.
I absolutely, positively, LOVE, LOVE,
LOVE this book. I think it is one of
the most important books written in the past decade.
Kevin has spoken the truth in love to the church
with much grace, wisdom, and humor.

“I’ve never understood the attraction of camping.
Although I have plenty of friends and relatives who are avid campers, it’s
always seemed strange to me that someone would work hard
all year so they can go live outside for a week.
I get the togetherness stuff, but why do it in tents with
community toilet? As an adventure, I sort of understand camping.
You strap a pack on your back and go hike God’s creation. Cool. But
packing up the van like Noah’s ark and driving to a mosquito
infested campground where you reconstitute an inconvenient
version of you kitchen and you bedroom just doesn’t make sense. Who
decided that vacation should be like normal life, only harder?
Every year our church advertises “family camp.”
Every year my wife wants to go, and every year we surprising
end up in some other state during our churches allotted week.
As best I can tell, the appeal of family camp, is that the kids,
unbothered by parental involvement, run around free and dirty
sun up to sun down-a sort of Lord of the Flies for little
Michiganders. But as appealing as it sounds to have absentee
offspring and downtime with my friends, there must be a cleaner,
less humid way to export the children for a week (isn’t
that what VBS is for?). And even if the kids have a great time,
the weather holds up, no one needs stitches, and the seventeenth hot dog
tastes as good as the first, it will still be difficult to get all the
sand out of my books.

I know there are a lot of die hard campers in the world.
I don’t fault you for your hobby. It’s just not my thing. I didn’t grow
up camping. My family wasn’t what you’d call ‘outdoorsy.’
We weren’t against the outdoors or anything. We often saw it through
our windows and walked through it on our way to stores.
But we never once went camping. We don’t own a tent, an RV,
or Fifth Wheel. No one hunted. No one fished. Even our
grill was inside (seriously, a Jenn-Air; look it up).

I’ve been largely ignorant of camping my whole life.
And I’m ok with that. It’s one more thing I don’t need to worry
about in life. Camping may be great for other people, but I’m
content to never talk about it, never think about it, and never do it.
Knock yourself out with the cooler and collapsible chairs,
but camping is not required of me and I’m fine without it.

Is it possible you look at personal holiness like I look at camping?
It’s fine for other people. You sort of respect those who make
their lives harder than they have to be. But it’s not really
your thing. You didn’t grow up with a concern for holiness.
It wasn’t something you talked about. It wasn’t what your family
prayed about or your church emphasized. So, to this day,
it’s not your passion. The pursuit of holiness feels like one
more thing to worry about in your already impossible life.
Sure, it would be great to be a better person, and you do hope
to avoid the really big sins. But you figure, since we’re saved
by grace, holiness is not required of you, and frankly, your
life seems fine without it. The hole in our holiness is
that we don’t really care much about it. Passionate
exhortation to pursue gospel-driven holiness is barely
heard in most of our churches. It’s not that we don’t
talk about sin or encourage decent behavior. Too many
sermons are basically self-help seminars on becoming
a better you. That’s moralism, and it’s not helpful. Any
gospel which says only what you must do and never
announces what Christ has done is no gospel at all. So I’m
not talking about getting beat up every Sunday for
watching SportsCenter and driving an SUV. I’m talking
about the failure of Christians, especially younger generations
and especially those most disdainful of ‘religion’ and
‘legalism,’ to take seriously one of the great
aims of our redemption and one of the required evidences
for eternal life-our holiness. J. C. Ryle, a nineteenth-century
Bishop of Liverpool, was right: ‘We must be
holy, because this is one grand end and purpose for
which Christ came into the world. . . . Jesus is a complete
Saviour. He does not merely take away the guilt of a believer’s
sin, he does more-he breaks its power (1 Pet. 1:2; Rom. 8:29;
Eph. 1:4; 2 Tim. 1:9; Heb. 12:10).'” 1

PRAYER

Heavenly Father,
We want to want be holy, because you are holy.
Help us be passionate about what you are passionate about.
Holiness is one of the great and grand purposes for
which Christ came into the world. Jesus has broken the power
of sin and has given us power over it.
Have mercy on us Lord.
Please forgive us for our apathy.
Fill us with your Spirit.
Lead us in the paths of righteousness for Your name’s sake.
May we live in such a way so as to proclaim
the gospel of Jesus Christ with our lips and our lives!

In His hands for His glory,
Laurie

1 Kevin DeYoung. (Wheaton: Crossway, 2012).

________________________

—A Thistlebend Ministries eMoment devotion.
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In His Strength

by Susan Sampson

Are you tired? I get tired so easily. On Day 2 Laurie asked the question, “Do you think you might be trying to do things in your own strength?” Yes Lord! Yes! I have been doing things in my own strength!! Ephesians 6:10 tells us, “Finally, be strong in the Lord and in the strength of his might.” I had to ask the Lord, “what does this mean? And, “how do I do that?” How do I turn from doing things in my own strength to being strong in the Lord?

In verse 11 he begins to show us how. “Put on the whole armor of God, that you may be able to stand against the schemes of the devil.” He then describes for us in detail the pieces of our armor that we are to use by faith. And Paul concludes with an exhortation to be praying at all times in the Spirit.

He makes it very clear that we are fighting a war every day and we must be equipped in order to fight. The enemy is doing everything he can to keep us from fighting, to keep us from standing, and to keep us from the Lord.

There is also another enemy who fights against us, one who dwells within each one of us. The sin of pride. Charles Spurgeon’s Evening devotion from August 2 was very eye opening to me. It was on Ruth 2:17, “So she gleaned in the field until evening.” He writes, “Proud minds criticize and object, but humble minds glean and receive and benefit. A lowly heart is the key to profitably hearing the Gospel. The soul saving word is not received except with meekness. A stiff back makes for a bad gleaner. Pride is a vile robber and must not be tolerated for a moment.”

In so many ways it is my pride that keeps me doing things in my own strength, in my own way. I saw it again this morning. On Day 5 Laurie asked us “What adjustments do you need to make in your prayer life?” One of my adjustments was getting back to picking certain days to pray for others. This morning I began to pray for the ministry using Ephesians 3:14-21. It begins “For this reason I bow my knees before the Father….” Well, I was sitting in my chair when I began and was moved to kneel as I read these words. So I did. But then I heard my husband coming and could immediately feel my flesh tense up. I was embarrassed. I honestly wanted to hide. I wanted to get up. I didn’t want him to see me. When my family is home I must confess I don’t typically pray on my knees because I am embarrassed for them to see me. Again, this is all pride.

I continued to pray and he came in and asked me what I was doing. I looked up and explained I was praying for the ministry through Ephesians and showed him the verse. He left the room and I continued, still feeling so incredibly awkward & struggling even to concentrate. Within another minute he came back and leaned down closely to me and whispered sweetly and said, “by the grace and glory of God you are such a godly woman.” Tears flooded my eyes as I thanked the Lord. I thanked Him because my husband and I both know that apart from Christ I am an ungodly woman. Praise be to the Lord – “For while we were still weak, at the right time Christ died for the ungodly” (Rom. 5:6).

Because of Christ’s sacrificial death, we have been brought to life. His shed blood has paid the debt we owe. The old has gone and the new has come! Christ in us, the hope of glory!!!!

“And you were dead in the trespasses and sins in which you once walked, following the course of this world, following the prince of the power of the air, the spirit that is now at work in the sons of disobedience—among whom we all once lived in the passions of our flesh, carrying out the desires of the body and the mind, and were by nature children of wrath, like the rest of mankind” (Eph. 2:1-3).

“BUT GOD, being rich in mercy, because of the great love with which he loved us, even when we were dead in our trespasses, made us alive together with Christ – by grace you have been saved – and raised us up with him and seated us with him in the heavenly places in Christ Jesus, so that in the coming ages he might show the immeasurable riches of his grace in kindness toward us in Christ Jesus” (Eph. 2:4-6).

Later in the morning I was tempted to worry about some of the things I had prayed about earlier. But then I remembered that I had given it to the Lord. He is all powerful. He is the One who is strong. He is our burden bearer. He is fully trustworthy. He is faithful. Humbly placing my faith in Christ alone, I can “be strong in the Lord and in the strength of his might” (Eph. 6:10).

So we continue the WAR in His strength and by His grace through faith for His glory.

W alking wisely in wisdom, knowledge, and understanding
A dorning and arming ourselves with who we are in Christ
R emembering His banner over us is LOVE, and so walking in that love

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