Dave White

“…I consider all Your precepts to be right; I hate every false way.”

The theme of hating evil continues to be important in my life.  I am presently living and working at a Christian camp, a blessed place where there is not a lot of evil going on.  However, even here there is sin and worldliness.  But because of the general godliness here, I tend to overlook the wickedness that finds its way into this holy place.  This should not be.

“Righteous are You, O LORD, and righteous are Your rules.”

“The sum of Your word is truth, and every one of Your righteous rules endures forever.”

God is completely good and completely holy.  He cannot stand any sin.  His laws are perfect and deserve to be fully obeyed, not just partially obeyed.  Jesus Christ has given Himself for us, and if we are His, the Spirit of God lives in us.  We must not grieve the Holy Spirit by participating in -or giving approval to- the least bit of sin.  Rather, our character should mirror our Father’s, and we should hate every false way, as He does.

“Turn to me and be gracious to me, as is Your way with those who love Your Name.”

We should hate every false way, but we do not.  And God knows that; that’s why He sent Jesus!  Jesus was the only one who could truly declare all the lofty praises of Psalm 119, from which all the verses in this essay are drawn.  Through Jesus, we are offered the free gift of imputed righteousness and salvation and life eternal.  And God is overjoyed to extend to us His grace.  Such generosity is His “way.”  It is His generous grace that makes it a delight to serve Him and to be like Him by hating what He hates and loving what He loves.

“The earth, O LORD, is full of Your steadfast love; teach me Your statutes!”

“O you who love the LORD, hate evil!”  -Psalm 97:10a

When I read this a few mornings ago, I was taken aback.  I have not been obeying this verse well.  I have tolerated evil.  I have laughed at evil.  I have participated in evil things.  I desperately need a change in attitude towards evil.  Lord, help me to repent!

“God is light, and in Him is no darkness at all.” -1 John 1:5b

The holiness of God sets Him apart from us.  In addition to His power and wisdom, He is completely different from us in that there is no wickedness in Him.  He is good; He is love; and sin is deplorable to Him.  God righteously hates wickedness.  He is wrathful against sin; and His justice is perfect and will be fully measured out upon the wicked.

But I do not have that kind of attitude or nature.  I’ve watched movies, laughed at jokes, listened to conversations, and harbored thoughts that God abhores.  This should not be.  I love the LORD, so I should love what He loves and hate what He hates.  I should be like my Father.  I should hate this evil that I have tolerated.

I have been and am repenting of my lack of hatred towards evil.  I invite you to join me, because “If we confess our sins, He is faithful and just to forgive us our sins and to cleanse us from all unrighteousness.” (1 John 1:9)  Our God is merciful, as well as holy, and He delights in forgiving us and making us more like His Son.  May we submit to His will and allow the Holy Spirit to remake our hearts so that we “Abhor what is evil; hold fast to what is good.” (Rom 12:9b)

Dave White

“I have been crucified with Christ. It is no longer I who live, but Christ who lives in me. And the life I now live in the flesh I live by faith in the Son of God, who loved me and gave Himself for me. I do not nullify the grace of God, for if righteousness were through the law, then Christ died for no purpose.”        - Galatians 2:20-21

The Christian life begins, in a very real way, with death.  Sin kills our relationship with God.  Jesus dies on our behalf for our sin, so that we can be made right with God.  The Christian must die to his or her own flesh, in order to live in Jesus Christ.  But the Christian life does not end with death.  Quite the opposite of our mortal experience, our life with God begins with death and continues and finds fulfillment in life… everlasting and abundant life.

Paul wrote the above passage to the Galatians, who had seemingly forgotten that the Christian life is one of faith and not dependant on our good deeds.  I can empathize with the Galatians, though.  You see, I’ve got the same problem as them.  I sin.  A lot.  And I’m a Christian!  Now, even though I know that I was saved by Jesus (not by myself), I am tempted to “stay saved” by being good.  The problem is, we can never consistently maintain good behavior.  We inevitable end up breaking the rules.  So, then we’re tempted to solve the sin problem by adding more rules, which doesn’t work very well, either.

The solution that Paul articulates for this dilemma is much more difficult than just keeping a bunch of rules.  You must die.  “I have been crucified with Christ.”  The Christian must kill the flesh, which wars against the Spirit of God.  The flesh says, “I am going to save myself.”  The Spirit says, “Trust Me.”  As a Christian, we must kill our stubborn and futile attempts to save ourselves.  We are to place our sacrificed lives in the hands of God, trusting in the work of Jesus the Messiah for our salvation, even when we sin… especially when we sin.

When we are dead, then Christ lives in us.  Our flesh has no more authority.  We will not be pulled down to hell along with our sinful nature, because we have crucified the flesh through Jesus Christ and the power of the Holy Spirit.  We have also been raised with Christ, so that sin and death have no more dominion over us.  We can walk in Jesus’ new life.

I’ve touched on a few things in attempting to articulate this glorious paradox, but I want to leave you with two things.  First, no one is saved or continues to be saved by good deeds alone.  It is solely by the grace of God through one’s faith in Jesus’ finished work on the cross.  Second, I encourage you to live out the first truth by dying to self and to flesh.  Do not try to save yourself, but allow Jesus to save you.  “Live by faith in the Son of God.”

Steve Timmons

SIN! We don’t like to talk about it. We like talking about the love of Jesus more than the presence of sin in our own hearts and lives. We as people do not like looking at our own sin. We avoid it and it makes us feel awkward and exposed. We don’t like being exposed. Christian Science, a religion I grew up in, actually believes that sin is an illusion. Isn’t that crazy?

I think it is, because sin is most definitely NOT an illusion. If you put a child in a room alone with a freshly painted wall with a sign next to it saying, “DO NOT TOUCH! WET PAINT!” I guarantee you that the child will touch that wall.

Sin is real. It’s in you, and it’s in me. It’s been in us ever since Adam and Eve deliberately disobeyed God by eating fruit from a tree. Some people call that a fairy tale, and I’m not going to lie, in a way it sounds like it. However the more I look at myself and my sin, the more I see the reality of what Adam did on that tree.

What’s crazy about sin and how it affects us is that we not only do terrible things, but we encourage other people to do terrible things too. It’s in our nature to make other people stumble. In Isaiah 53:6 it says, “We all like sheep have gone astray, we have turned every one to his own way.” Also in Romans 1:32, Paul says about us, “They know God’s decree that those who practice such things deserve to die, they not only do them but give approval to those who practice them.” Remember though, when Paul says “they” in this verse, he is not discounting himself or looking at himself as being less sinful than them. The rest of his letter to the Romans makes that clear.

Now, you probably read in that Romans verse that “those who practice such things deserve to die.” It sounds extreme, right? We deserve death? Why? What did we do?

It’s funny that we say death is an extreme punishment for doing wrong against God, but, at the same time, we love seeing justice and seeing people get what they deserve for the crimes they’ve committed. Someone does wrong against us and we demand that justice be served against them. We watch Law & Order, see the bad guy go down and we love it.  However as soon as the justice card is flipped on us, we get defensive and say that it’s too extreme. That is a flaw in our logic and it is a result of our sin.

So we’re all sinners. It’s in our nature and we’re born right into it. God is perfect and despises sin, so by default God should despise us. Is there a solution? Are we just left to rot in the filth of our own immorality?

No! The second part of that verse in Isaiah 53:6 says this: “…and the LORD has laid on Him the iniquity of us all.” Who is this “Him”? It’s Jesus Christ! God sent His only Son on a rescue mission to save our souls. So God should despise us, but in reality God loves us deeply and desires to restore us not only from our own sin, but also to Himself. The perfect God of the universe actually wants a relationship with us, the sinful people. So He sent Jesus to live a sinless life and die a brutal death on a cross, bearing not only the physical pain of His execution, but more importantly the spiritual pain of the wrath of God of the justice that we deserve.

So what should we do? I’ll close with the chorus of a favorite hymn:

“Turn your eyes upon Jesus,

Look full in His wonderful face.

And the things of earth will grow strangely dim,

In the light of His glory and grace.”

God bless,

Steve

Dave White

In our history, and in the history of any great event, the patriots and founders often spoke of the “Cause” to remind each other of what they were fighting for.  In our American situation, the Cause was seeking liberty from tyranny.  So, what is our Cause, as followers of Jesus?

For the Christian, our Cause is the Gospel.  (“Gospel” is a tricked-out word that means “good news” [but not just any good news, the Good News].)  The Gospel is incredibly simple and, at the same time, immeasurably deep.  The Gospel motivates us and makes our work more effective by the power of its message.

God Almighty is holy, eternal, sovereign, and good.  Out of His magnificent character and power, He created us to glorify and delight in Him.  But we have all rebelled against His good orders to honor and enjoy Him.  We have all sinned.  There are deadly consequences of sin: temporal pain and eternal judgment.  But Jesus, the Anointed Savior, came to us, in fullness of deity.  He bought us reconciliation to the Father through His sinless life, substitutionary sacrifice, and victorious resurrection and ascension!  If we will repent and believe in God’s work through Jesus, we can be liberated from the slavery of sin.  Through the active work of the Holy Spirit, we get to live an abundant life now and an eternal life to come!

That is the Gospel!  That is the Good News!  That is our Cause and Constitution.  We rejoice in the grace of God, poured out on us by Jesus’ work and washing us clean by the regeneration and renewal of the Holy Spirit!  Volumes have been written and will be written flowing from the joy of this Good News.  I hope that you are able to join with the throngs of worshipers rejoicing in what God has done!

Dave White

Well, not really. Anyways…

I had a wonderful time early this month spending time with great friends out of state. I did a lot of driving, and, by the time I returned home, my car was filthy. So, Thursday evening after work, I took my car through the wash. I even splurged and got the $8 wash with the special foam and dry. I felt pretty good about myself as I drove home in my shiny car.

On Friday, I awoke to snowfall, and I drove to work through the snow. By the time I got to work… my car was filthy again. Far better than being grumpy about this, God used this to remind me of His forgiveness. Through the blood of Jesus, we are washed clean of our sins. Though we sin again and again, the Father welcomes us back into His arms and washes us clean through the regeneration and renewal of the Holy Spirit.

Thesis #1 of Martin Luther’s 95 theses was this: “When our Lord and Master, Jesus Christ, said “Repent”, He called for the entire life of believers to be one of repentance.”

It’s shameful how often I cover myself with filthy sin, but God’s love and grace is greater than my tendency toward depravity. More than I dislike the dirt on my car, God hates our sin. He is good and cannot stand evil. Nevertheless, far more than I enjoy my ’95 Oldsmobile Cutlass Supreme, God delights in, rejoices over, and adores His children!

My car gets dirty again and again, and I need to keep washing it. Our lives get mucked up again and again, and we need to continue repenting of our sins before God- turning from our wrong deeds, words, thoughts, and feelings and turning to Jesus, who washes us clean again and again by His Spirit.

“For we ourselves were once foolish, disobedient, led astray, slaves to various passions and pleasures, passing our days in malice and envy, hated by others and hating one another. But when the goodness and loving kindness of God our Savior appeared, He saved us, not because of works done by us in righteousness, but according to His own mercy, by the washing of regeneration and renewal of the Holy Spirit, whom He poured out on us richly through Jesus Christ our Savior, so that being justified by His grace we might become heirs according to the hope of eternal life.” – Titus 3:3-7