Stopping the Swinging Pendulum

John Piper says “there are many professing Christians who have a view of salvation that... nullifies the threats of the Bible.”

I’ve been meditating on this in light of my own views of Christ, His Church, the world... and I think he’s right, especially here in America.

We love our freedom. We want to be able to do what we want, when we want, with whomever we want, with no repercussion. We want to be accepted for who we are, no matter the vice. Then, after to coming to know the Bible a little bit, and grasping a taste that God is loving, forgiving, and gracious, we take every evil thing inside us for granted. We dismiss, way into the back of our minds, the equally important qualities of God that are just and full of wrath, that our sin separates us from Him.

And so the pendulum swings...

But the opposite is also true. There are those that tend to emphasize God’s wrath and His being the Ultimate Judge to the point that His love and grace are essentially a footnote. So in these cases, we attempt to come up with rules and guidelines to how we approach our “faith”. God says so... so do it. If you’re outside of that, then you’re already condemned to hell.

You could make a enormously long list of things written simply in the Bible alone that God says not to do. You could extend that list by adding on the things He says TO do. After that, rank these things in terms of human importance. Then draw a horizontal list through your line. Place it where the things of most importance condemn a man if he violates them, and those with lesser importance do not. Must with understanding of this would agree that violation of any part of God’s word is sin, which condemns.

And so the pendulum swings...

If God is completely just / full of wrath, yet completely loving / full of grace, how do we know how to follow the Bible’s teachings? If everything he says “do” or “don’t do” has the power to condemn, yet He’s willing and ready to forgive us of any / all sin (He already sent Christ), what do I do with the list?

The pendulum needs to stop swinging, and we need to rest in the middle. We need to understand God is all of the scary stuff and all of the not-scary stuff, all at the same time. He’s given us ways to live, but which we should obey. We should fight as a warrior in battle against disobedience, but understand that He’s there as a patient and loving father, ready to help us back up to try again, with grace.

The bar is high. James 4 says if you know the good you ought to do, yet don’t do it... THAT’S sin. That list we came up with... those are just some good things we ought to do. There are so many others that aren’t written down (e.g., the Bible doesn’t say “don’t cut somebody off on the highway during rush hour”) - but we ought to do those. The bar is TOO high.

So let’s stop making rules we need to follow to reach heaven - that’s up to God. Follow Him. And let’s stop using His grace and / or our salvation as a means to justify our sin. Let’s rest in the middle. Let’s follow God out of faith in His ultimate sovereignty.