FLESHLY ATTEMPTS
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Dealing With Sin by Self-effort
Throughout this study we have attempted to maintain the tensioned balance of the dialectic between the victory of Christ and His sufficiency as Lord in conjunction with the ongoing “saving life” of the Savior as He continues to deal with the sin-patterns of our lives as Christians.
We will now address
what happens when the dialectic is not maintained, when the dynamic sufficiency of Christ’s life is denied or minimized, and the issue of sin in the Christian’s life is over- emphasized, particularly by self-determined attempts to deal with sin by self-effort. (cf. Left column of the chart – Addendum A)
Failing to understand that Christ alone can overcome sin, religionists concoct myriad self-actuated efforts to attempt to deal with sin and effect right behavior. The foundation of such performance-based effort to please and appease God is the fallacy of an alleged “independent self” capable of self-generated Christian ability and activity.
It would be impossible to
enumerate all of the religious methods that have been proposed to negate one’s misrepresentations of sinfulness and actuate one’s own perfection. A brief list of some broad categories of religious self-effort will have to suffice.
Activism
Many Christians are unaware that mottoes like, “Do your best and God will do the rest,” and “God helps those who help themselves,” are not in the Bible, and are in fact contrary to biblical instruction. God is not willing to serve as a “helper” who provides divine assistance for our self-improvement. He is not a “power booster” to enhance our self-empowerment.
The Creator God designed the human
creature in such a way that it requires His presence and His action in man for man to function as He intended. God doesn’t need any “help” in doing what only He can do in our lives, but that is not to deny that He respects our freedom of choice to be receptive in faith to His action.
Contemporary evangelical humanism seeks to make Christianity into a Christianized “self-help program.” Constant encouragements to self- improvement are proposed. A popular theme of late was the question posed, “What Would Jesus Do?” (WWJD).
The premise behind the question
was that a Christian should attempt to ascertain what Jesus would do in any given situation, and then “just do it” in the self-action of imitating Jesus.
The Christian life is not a self-generated “parroting” or “aping” of Jesus’ example; it is not the imitation of Jesus, but the inhabitation of Jesus that allows for the manifestation of Jesus – “the life of Jesus manifested in our mortal bodies” (II Cor. 4:11).
Christians are often
admonished to “try to rid themselves of sin,” to “try to overcome the flesh,” but that is a losing battle if there ever was one. The self- patterns will not be overcome by self-effort. On the other hand, we are told to “try to be better, try to be holy, try to be perfect.” This is an “Avis Rent-a-Car” theology, with the motto, “We try harder.” God must find all of our trying very trying!
The objective is not to strive to be “like Jesus” in order to arrive at “Christlikeness.” The objective is to allow Jesus to live out His character and life in our behavior.
The activism of religious disciplines
has long been a means by which Christians have sought to thwart their sinfulness and perfect themselves. These include religious orders, vows, penances, indulgences, asceticism, monasticism, etc. Various methods of prayer, fasting, meditation, Bible reading and memorization, church attendance, and sacramental “means of grace” have also been advised. These disciplined activities can be advantageous in focusing our attention on the Lord, but only the living Lord Jesus can overcome our sin and energize divine character in our lives.
Next:
Moralism...
Dr. James Fowler | IOM Staff Writer
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