Bible Study Incongruities in Christian Living.

[Tenchi]

Titus 1:15-16
15 To the pure, all things are pure, but to the defiled and unbelieving,
nothing is pure; but both their minds and their consciences are defiled.
16 They profess to know God, but they deny him by their works.
They are detestable, disobedient, unfit for any good work.

​

As God, the Holy Spirit, has continued to work in my life and conform me more and more to the image of Christ (Romans 8:29), increasingly I've grown aware of the presence of...incongruities in my life that were badly hindering fellowship with God. Attitudes, thinking and conduct that kept me from experiencing God fully and pleasing Him properly have, by the work of the Holy Spirit, been exposed and removed, one by one, and as they have been, God has come ever-more into focus. In consequence of this clarity, greater enjoyment of God has occurred, the two things - seeing God as He really is and fellowship with Him - inextricably bound together, the former the necessary predicate to that latter.

For a long time, though, I worshipped a God who didn't actually exist, a "God" who mirrored myself, really. This "God,"allowed a great deal of compromise spiritually and morally in my life; He was, I believed, okay with various "idols" of thought, and deed; He winked at my mixing the World in with my "Christian' living; He would accept my "worship" on Sunday morning from a life that largely ignored Him the rest of the week. I was in a process, after all, wasn't I? God would understand that I couldn't change all at once and that there would be areas of rather glaring hypocrisy in my life, as a result. "God isn't finished with me, yet," was my excuse for a life of sometimes pretty serious compromise.

What helped me in this compromised spiritual condition was the fact that I wasn't the only one who was in such a life. All around me, my fellow Christians were doing the same, making God their mirror rather than their Master. And, like me, their lives showed it in an "experience" of God that was...tepid, to say the least, and compensating for this fact with "spiritual" sensuality, high emotion, and religious activity, or settling into a bland, flat, spiritual status quo that was superficially "obedient" to God, externally "Christian" in a way that checked all the boxes of "Christian living," but was devoid of the joy, peace, love, holiness and truth of genuine fellowship with God. Like me, the thinking among these believers is that such living is okay with God; He understands; He "remembers we are dust"; He knows we are none of us perfect and so accepts our sin as unavoidable in His relations with us.

Out of this sort of "Christian" living, God has moved me more and more, and as He has, I've grown increasingly sensitive to the many incongruities of Christian living that are all around me. I've not arrived, of course, at anything like moral and spiritual perfection myself, but I'm not as I once was and, by God's grace, will be able to claim this to an ever-greater degree as the days and years pass. This divine transformation of me, however, has caused some...awkward moments for me, as I've ceased to participate in the spiritual incongruities of my past.

One recent example of what this has meant for me, and how incredible the blindness can be to the incongruity of believing one can walk with God in the midst of a spiritually and morally compromised life, was in the conduct of a group of Elders with which I was involved (as a fellow Elder). I had served as an Elder with this group of men for a decade and through that time had observed their persistent neglect of some of the responsibilities unique to being an Elder. Few of the men actually taught regularly in the church; they did not encourage evangelism in the church, working to aid the members of the church to evangelize; they did not "make disciples," teaching immature believers to walk in joyful, life-changing fellowship with God; they didn't guard the "flock" against false doctrine, or from the damaging effects of "leaven" in the lives of individual members; they allowed corporate prayer to languish, year after year. As a result, the church over which they had leadership was in serious decline.

Many times over the span of years, I remonstrated with the Elders, from Scripture reminding them of their God-given responsibilities and urging them to properly fulfill those responsibilities. At times, there were sober (even tearful) acknowledgements of neglect of these responsibilities by some of the Elders and weak attempts to course-correct. But, inevitably, the long-held status quo would assert itself and the neglectful conduct of the Elders would resume.

Most awfully, the Elders seemed to believe that, despite their persistent defaulting on their responsibilities as Elders, things between them and God were, basically, still all right. That there was profound incongruity between their sinful neglect of their duties as Elders and their belief that they could still properly serve God as Elders in the church appeared to trouble them little, if at all. And sinful their neglect was. They knew to do good and simply refused - for years - to do it. The apostle James called this sort of thing SIN:

James 4:17
17 So whoever knows the right thing to do and fails to do it, for him it is sin.

Continued below.

 

[Tenchi]

When I drew this fact to the attention of the Elders, they were unable to accept that this was what had been true of them for at least a decade. They were just "dropping the ball" as leaders, not sinning. And they couldn't be expected to "turn the ship around" on a dime, could they? The status quo had a lot of momentum; it would require years to slow and redirect (would they use this convenient logic with any other sin, like adultery, or rape, or lying?). And who was I to issue ultimatums to them, anyway (it didn't matter that the ultimatums were actually God's, not mine)? What's more, the Elders didn't feel like there was anything wrong between themselves and God. God even seemed to be answering their prayers and doing good things in, and through, them (at least, this is how they framed things in their own minds). So, then, whatever the apostle James said, the Elders not doing the good they knew to do for years, just couldn't be sin.

If it actually was sin of which the Elders were guilty, well, it would mean God had had His fingers in His ears for years as they had prayed to Him, and had served Him in the church, and taught His truth (Psalms 66:18; Isaiah 59:2; 1 Peter 3:12). Surely, this was impossible. They would feel that this was so, wouldn't they? They would see His opposition to their sinful leadership, wouldn't they?

It is in the nature of being human to grow used to, and even comfortable in, bad conditions, especially if they develop gradually. And the human conscience can grow calloused, inured to sin that would once have provoked it sharply, even becoming seared and thus entirely non-functioning (1 Timothy 4:2; Romans 1:18-32; Hebrews 3:13). And the convicting voice of the Holy Spirit can be quenched and the Spirit grieved (1 Thessalonians 5:19; Ephesians 4:30), falling silent in the life of the believer who persists in sin. It is possible, then, to think that one is not guilty of sin because one has no prick of conscience, or doesn't endure the convicting of the Spirit about their thinking and conduct (though it is clearly condemned in Scripture as sin). This is why God's word is so vital; it gives the last word on what the truth of our lives really is. If it defines our thinking and conduct as sin, it is sin, whatever we might, or might not, feel about it.

How, often, too, Christians ascribe to God the things they think are positives in their lives - affluence, good health, religious activity. By this means, they deceive themselves into thinking that these "positives" are indicators that God is pleased with them and so they ought to continue along the line they're in, however infected by the flesh and sin it might be. Of course, the very wicked are among the wealthiest, most affluent people on the planet. A hard-working atheist can enjoy both career and financial success. A health-conscious Satanist can have a life largely free of disease. So, none of these sorts of "positives" are actually proof of God being pleased with one's life, even if one claims to be one of His children.

And, of course, religious activity is no sure sign of spiritual health, either. Just consider the church at Sardis that had a name for being "active" but was, in reality, almost dead spiritually (Revelation 3:1-6). Consider the Pharisees, who were professionally religious, but whose hearts, Jesus said, were far from God (Matthew 15:7-8). Consider the people of Matthew 7:21-23, who were very active in ministry to others, preaching, and exorcising demons, and performing miracles - all in the name of Jesus - but who were cast out of God's kingdom as strangers to Christ. No, it isn't religious activity, "spiritual ministry," that establishes one is walking well with God.

In the case of the Elders, the church over which they should have had far better oversight showed many effects of being led by sinful men. The congregation had dwindled in number to less than half of what it had been only two decades ago. Bankruptcy had only been staved off by a couple of large, monetary bequeathments to the church by life-long - but now deceased - members, the main financial givers to the church reduced to a handful. Regularly, worship-leading was being done by people in whose lives much spiritual compromise was evident, the resulting "worship" being a stench in God's nostrils. Except within biological families, no new converts had been "birthed" into the church in at least a decade by any of the members of the church. Much spiritual confusion exists among the laity of the church and a great deal of spiritual apathy is apparent in the congregation, as a result. "Leaven" and false doctrine both plague the church but have been left perennially unaddressed by the Elders. Corporate prayer has been almost completely ignored by the church congregation for more than a decade. And so on.

Despite all of these signs of spiritual decay within the church the Elders are "leading," they have refused to admit that their longstanding neglect of their responsibilities is actually sin. And so, they've refused to change, preserving the status quo that has formed under their leadership, instead - the deep and obvious incongruities between the declarations of God's word and their living notwithstanding.

I've encountered smaller instances of this same stuff in the lives of individual believers I've discipled. In fact, just the other day, a young man I've been chatting with over coffee (he has hot chocolate), who has told me he thinks God is calling him to the pastorate and who tells me he much enjoys writing devotionals, described to me a deeply vile movie he went to the theater and watched with a friend. Now, he did admit to some...discomfort with the content of the movie - it was overflowing with the foulest of language, gross violence and sin - but not enough to exit the theater. He watched the whole awful thing. More horribly, though, he didn't see that there was a huge disconnect between his "call" by God to the pastorate and his horrendous choice of movie!

A few weeks ago, I had another young fellow tell me he had tried to live the submitted life but it hadn't worked. God hadn't "responded." But when I probed into the content of this guy's life, it was filled with rebellion and unconfessed sin. Somehow, though, he had come to believe he could expect from God a life-changing experience when he had no intention of yielding up all of his life to God. This young fellow thought he could expect God to answer his prayer for transformation while maintaining sinful autonomy from Him, the incongruity of this thinking no incongruity at all!

So, what about you? Are you thinking that there is compromise God will make with your self-will and sin, fellowshiping with you despite your rebellion and wickedness, and using you as His servant in the world? Are you a friend of the World while thinking you've got a good thing going on with God? He denies such a thing is possible in His word (James 4:4; 1 John 2:15). Are you yielding to the impulses of your flesh, overeating, or addicted to porn, or gambling, or drugs, social media or gaming, believing as you do that you can still walk well with God, even singing songs of praise to Him on Sunday mornings that He accepts? He denies such a thing is possible in His word (Romans 8:6-8; Isaiah 65:2-5; 1 Peter 3:12; Galatians 6:7-8). Do you yield up ground in your life to the devil every day as you imbibe his philosophes, values and stories online, and on t.v., and in the books you read, and through the godless company you keep, thinking that you can have something real and positive with God at the same time? God denies such a thing is possible in His word (2 Corinthians 6:14-18; Ephesians 5:1-13). But, oh, how quick we are to believe otherwise and to mix dark with light in our lives and imagine we can still have something good with God! Not so, brothers and sisters, not so.

Isaiah 55:6-7
6 Seek the LORD while He may be found; Call upon Him while He is near.
7 Let the wicked forsake his way And the unrighteous man his thoughts; And let him return to the LORD, And He will have compassion on him, And to our God, For He will abundantly pardon.

James 4:8-10
8 Draw near to God and He will draw near to you. Cleanse your hands, you sinners; and purify your hearts, you double-minded.
9 Be miserable and mourn and weep; let your laughter be turned into mourning and your joy to gloom.
10 Humble yourselves in the presence of the Lord, and He will exalt you.