Making Sin Abhorrent (part two)
By Jay Wegter
Lucifer’s original sin against God was a kind of wager or bet. He misjudged God and His Word. Satan ‘bet’ that God was not as good as His Word—this mighty angel speculated that every word of God was not backed up by the Almighty’s attributes—Lucifer doubted that God staked His reputation on the unbreakability of His immutable Word. Lucifer imagined that God makes exceptions and that His most severe threats were idle threats. Satan threw down the gauntlet at the feet of God and dared God to fulfill His Word against him, the mighty angel who was the first among His creatures, (Heb., Lucifer, “the shining one”), His anointed cherub (Ez 28:14).
What was central to Satan’s own self-deception was a woefully inadequate estimation of what God’s Word really is. God is one with His Word because God’s Word is inseparable from His own character and perfect plan; it is His attributes and His wisdom committed to language. His Word upholds reality every moment; therefore there is nothing about it that is abstract, contingent, or variable (Is 42:9; 46:8-11; 55:11). His Word is forever settled in heaven (Ps 119:89). God and His Word are one because the Lord has elevated His Word together with His Name (Ps 138:2).
Lucifer’s rebellious miscalculation will cause him to be cast into the lake of fire forever. The first of all the mighty angels refused to tremble at God’s Word. What evangelicals seldom think about is this: apart from sovereign grace, every descendent of Adam is locked into the devil’s wager. For, all of the descendents of Adam have thrown down the gauntlet at the feet of God—they too have dared God to fulfill His Word over their dead bodies and send them to hell. They too (apart from redemption) have entered into a wager in which they are betting their eternal souls that God is not as good as His Word; that He will not fulfill His Word against them.
What has been a man’s relationship to the Word of God? For the most part mankind does not understand the purpose of human history—that at its consummation, it will prove to be the public record of the honoring and the dishonoring of God and the revelation of what happens to each person as a result. Do we really understand that God has determined to publicly destroy human wisdom (and all of its subscribers and proponents) by means of the cross of Christ (1 Cor 1:21)? The consummation of human history will be a mighty revelation of God’s holy perfections; for it will prove absolutely that God is wise, righteous and loving; and that He is as good as His threats and His promises. The rational holy universe* will rejoice at God’s final dealings as He ties up every loose end and confines and punishes all evil forever (*by ‘rational holy universe’ we mean the innumerable holy angels).
When we think of this battle of the ages between the word of man and the Word of God, certain accounts in Scripture capture the very essence of this history-long altercation. Jeremiah chapter 44 is a kind of moral microcosm of human history because in this chapter the battle of the ages reaches a boiling point which powerfully illustrates the source of the conflict between man and God. Sinners engaged in this battle have told themselves that God does not see—that God will not see their latter end—that God will not clear His Name at their expense—that God is not a God of comprehensive retribution (Ps 10:13; Amos 9:10; Matt 5:22-32ff.).
This attitude in a person, born of sinful satanic pride, leads a man to imagine that he has the ability to carry out his own word and that it is God’s Word that will fall to the ground unfulfilled. How tragic this deception is; for God has determined to make an object lesson, or example out of individuals who stubbornly cling to this evil posture of heart (Jer 44:17, 26-29ff.). Ken Ham got it right when he said that the Bible is the most dangerous book in the world because it is possible to destroy yourself by willfully mishandling it (2 Pet 3:16).
The prophet Ezekiel further develops this theme of God vindicating and clearing His great Name in the destruction of sinners. For the book of Ezekiel is the book of God vindicating His Name over the dead bodies of rebellious reprobates. For, scores of times the following phrase appears in the book of Ezekiel, “then they will know that I am the Lord”—but what a way to find out—as the object of His eternal wrath and contempt (Ez 5:7-17)!
By neglecting God’s transcendence, holiness, wrath, and justice, Evangelicalism has stripped God of the great things about Him that are designed to make us tremble (Is 66:1-2). Therefore many in our churches today do not think about the fact that the sight of God will be unbearable for the reprobate who would gladly prefer annihilation to exposure. When the Day of the Lord begins the whole creation will be a tool in God’s hands to evict the impenitent sinner. Every plague, disaster, war, pestilence, and judgment in the book of Revelation will collectively serve as a kind of eviction notice—God is withdrawing the ‘welcome mat’—sinners are going to lose their earthly home forever. The ‘hospitality’ of planet earth, born of common grace is going to be violently removed during the Tribulation period.
All stumbling blocks must be removed before the coming Kingdom can be installed (Matt 13:41). It is repent, OR you will be evicted from the planet—repent, or you will be evicted from your body and be damned (Rom 2:1-12). The urgency factor must again enter our preaching. We do not know what it is like to be confronted with our self-existent holy Creator. We cannot imagine what it is to have no standing before Him. We have given little time to consider what it means to have not a single square foot to stand upon in the entire creation—to be swept from the creation as some unclean thing that defiles its surroundings (Rev 6:12-17; 20:11ff.). God has a comprehensive record in heaven which will show what we have served on earth. All service of sin will be shown to be idolatry and lawlessness (Col 3:5).
God hates all forms of idolatry. He hates idolatry because of what it does to His Name and what it does to us, His image bearers. The first four iterations of the Ten Commandments are designed to guard against idolatry. Man was created for the love and adoration of God his Creator. At the heart of idolatry is self-love and self-worship (2 Tim 3:1-5). By contrast the godly man loves God instead of worshipping and serving the creature and the creation (Rom 1:18-23). Idolaters usurp the role of God by living as if their minds project reality onto the screen of life (again we see the theme of men placing their words above God’s Word).
Idolaters are fugitives under God’s moral government (Gal 3:22). They trample God’s law and challenge His absolute right to rule over them. They live with their backs to God—living as enemies of God in their minds (Col 1:21). As Bible believing Christians we must understand that idolatry tells a multitude of lies about God. It is an attempt to bring integration to our beings around something finite— something created. Idolatry in religion lies about a relationship with the divine—that it can be built around will worship (man choosing how he will practice religion)—that man can obligate God by what he can do religiously and morally. Paul clearly refutes this erroneous notion in Acts 17:24-25 (“God is not served by human hands”).
God hates religious idolatry because it equates God with something in His creation. God hates the idolatry of immoral behavior because it is lawlessness and the love of sin (1 Jn 3:4; Col 3:5). Idolatry degrades a man; enslaves a man; damages the image of God in man; exchanges the glory of the Godhead for something within the creation itself (Rom 1:23-25). Idolatry promises freedom and fulfillment; but can only deliver disappointment and degradation and servitude (2 Pet 2:18-19).
The idolater makes his own needs sovereign—then tries to fulfill those needs by sinning. He incurs more and more guilt by doing so. What sinners fail to understand is that in God’s universe, sin is its own punishment. In other words, since this universe exists as a stage for God’s moral majesty, the moral laws which are part of creation are just as real as gravity or any other physical law. Therefore, our holy Sovereign energizes the laws of moral cause and effect—of crime and punishment. Sinners break themselves in their breaking of God’s laws.
An idol is a false integration point. In other words it promises to make us whole and more alive; but it delivers the opposite: death and fragmentation. One of the most recent ads for a new Las Vegas hotel says, “Just the right amount of wrong.” And, an ad for Las Vegas which has been running for several years reads, “What happens here, Stays here.” This ad shows a bit of demonic marketing genius; for business increased significantly as a result of this worldly false promise. But, there is an immense problem: in God’s universe, there is no such thing as a moral holiday. Sin pays the guaranteed wages of death, separation, torment, and wrath.
God does not have to think up punishments for sin. Creatures made in the image of a holy God have the moral mark of God upon them. That moral mark is called the conscience. On the last day, the conscience will be fully activated by God’s wrath in eternal perdition. On judgment day the possibility of overriding the conscience will be forever gone. On that day, a man’s conscience, God’s law, and God’s verdict will be united in perfect agreement. And then (as God’s wrath ignites it) the lost man’s conscience will rise up to its full stature and take its eternal revenge against its ungrateful host.
To understand what sin is in this moral universe is to begin to comprehend that sin carries with it a curse. This is why sin is spiritual insanity—symbolic suicide. To keep sowing thorns in this moral universe governed by an absolutely holy God means that a day of harvest is coming. And when that day comes, each person will harvest more, and will harvest longer than they could have possibly have imagined. To sow thorns is to ultimately lie down in thorns and be pierced by them forever. To refuse to repent is to constantly be fashioning chains that will hold a person in a claustrophobic, suffocating grip of radical crushing solitary confinement. Romans 2:8-9 describes the torment awaiting the impenitent. 8 “But to those who are selfishly ambitious and do not obey the truth, but obey unrighteousness, wrath and indignation. 9 There will be tribulation and distress for every soul of man who does evil, of the Jew first and also of the Greek.” ¹
The impenitent will experience anguish, torturing confinement—crushing suffering. Sin not repented of will fill the conscience with the activities of a busy voracious unstoppable toothed creature (a gnawing worm) which will continually consume (without destroying) the soul (Mk 9:48). J. I. Packer captures the chilling action of eternal divine wrath in the following words, “A bad conscience is the most universal experience—and the most wretched. No outward change relieves it; you carry it with you all your waking hours. The more conscientious you are, the more your knowledge of having failed others, and God too, will haunt you. Without forgiveness you will have no peace. A bad conscience delivering at full strength, tearing your to bits in the name of God, is hell indeed, both here and hereafter.”²
The wrath of God unleashed in the conscience as a consuming force fragmenting the soul into pieces is a terrifying image. We evangelicals are often embarrassed to own a God whose holiness energizes these eternal judgments. We tend to make excuses for God because He does not apologize for the cruel destruction which awaits impenitent sinners. Our understanding of the pernicious nature of sin is deficient. This is the case because we do not grasp what it means to be created in God’s image. To be an image-bearer of the God of the universe is to be vested with an immense responsibility—this is why selling one’s self to serve sin is so wicked.
Sin is parasitic—it seeks a willing host who will embrace its agenda and offer the faculties and members of the body and soul for its purposes. Sin has a goal—it acts like some shrewd predator bent on obliterating its host—it is not content until it has practically wiped out the image of God in the second death—and even then it is not content. In everlasting perdition sin is cumulative—over the millennia, lost sinners in agony will lose every speck of meaningful connection and remembered well-being and, as the soul continues to come apart—the fragmentation will issue forth in a gnashing stream of madness.
1 New American Standard Bible : 1995 update. 1995 (Ro 2:8–9). LaHabra, CA: The Lockman Foundation. 2 J. I. Packer, I want to be a Christian, Wheaton, IL: Tyndale Publishing, 1977, pp. 90-91.
Societies which reject God carry the seeds of their own inevitable implosion. Man cannot bear the incredible weight of being his own meaning, value, and significance. Our value is inseparable from being image-bearers of the God almighty. Man’s creational identity is inseparable from the reality that God requires moral perfection from us His creatures. Our glory and honor is tied so closely to our cultural calling to know, worship, and serve God and reflect and seek His glory in all we do. The wisdom of the world hates the cross of Christ because the cross is a monument to the world that man deserves to die and be cut off from God. Therefore, those who reject the cross are rejecting God as the rightful Judge and Governor of the universe. Consequently, those who subscribe to the world’s wisdom (as opposed to the wisdom of the cross) will lose their glory forever (1 Cor 2:6-9).
There is a glory-honor-authority hierarchy which flows down from God, Ruler over all (1 Cor 11:3). God must be at the top. Order in society (justice, truth, authority, honor, morality, mercy) comes from His laws. When a society that has known the ways of God (e.g. ancient Israel) abandons the laws of God and moves into wholesale idolatry; there is a necessary set of consequences which will unfold. In this moral universe God takes credit for energizing the forces of judgment. The order in a society that has known God is based upon the laws in His Word. Once those laws are replaced with idolatry (and the attributes of those idols); then God sends a spirit of distortion (Is 19:14-16; 24:1-6).
This is a fascinating and disturbing concept because our own nation has begun to enter the spirit of distortion phase of judgment at the hand of God. In this kind of judgment, the very fabric that holds a society together begins to unravel. Order is from God—disorder and every evil thing come from replacing God with idols. In the social distortion which ensues when God sends a spirit of distortion, those normally honored are dishonored and raged against—‘women and children become the oppressors’ (Is 3:11-12). Fathers and leaders who have abandoned God should not be surprised when their honor disappears. God’s temporal wrath is unleashed and He begins to allow that society to implode. When God abandons a nation, moral restraint disappears. The collective intellect of the culture throws off God’s moral absolutes. God gives men over to a depraved mind (Rom 1:28ff.).³
How we must cultivate a deep humility before God. We must regularly bring ourselves low—for He holds in His hands our life breath; our ways; our faithfulness; our spiritual illumination; our sustenance; our destiny. He holds even our own devotion and consecration to Him. Thus, the Psalmist may accurately pray to God to keep him from straying (Ps 51:10-13).
In our Western societies, approximately one hundred years of psychology have left a destructive legacy: the culture of self. Sinners already live as if they are independent of their Creator; but psychology has added an additional dimension—personal emotional needs are now considered sovereign, even sacred. The sacred self is the new ‘holy of holies’. Nothing must be allowed to violate the comfort and composure of the sacred self—not even the God of the universe! The love of self refuses to bow to any other sovereign (2 Tim 3:1-2ff.). In this expression of sin, the flesh sets the standard for a person’s behavior. The natural man refuses to bow to Christ, our Great High Priest and man in glory (Heb 2:9; Phil 2:9-11). The unregenerate person is holding out for independence; he will not be ruled by God’s truth, holiness, and love in Christ, God’s appointed King (Ps 2:1-6).
Not long ago I saw a bumper sticker which said, “There are no rules; just follow your heart.” Now what is disturbing is that this slogan resonates with so many young persons in the rising generation. They read it and assume it is a fair representation of life as it is and a good definition of personal freedom. Yet, this saying is just as much open rebellion against God as demonic sorcery. Mankind must be ruled— we are created to serve (Rom 6:12-23). We are bounded creatures—fenced in by God’s good and wise laws. There is no such thing as master-less freedom—Satan tried it, and the lake of fire has been prepared
3 John MacArthur, “When God abandons a Nation,” The Master’s College Chapel, Nov. 10, 2010.
for him and his angels and for all who follow him. And, in terms of social order we see this inescapable reality as well: we will ultimately either be ruled by the Bible or the bayonet.
We must preach the all-pervasive reality of God’s moral government when we preach the gospel. In our post-Christian society, reality is assumed to be greater than God. Secular humanism has imbued the education system with the satanic notion that modern science possesses the best and most authoritative explanation of man’s existence. Therefore when our hearers listen to our gospel message they commonly assume that God is but a category confined to religion. Our secular hearers imagine that there is a reality greater than God. And, that if the God of the Bible exists, then He is but a component of reality. Our preaching (like Paul on Mars Hill) must blast our listeners out of their assumed pantheism.
Therefore when we preach the good news, we ought to begin with God as Creator—for this is what Paul did whenever he addressed a biblically illiterate audience. The doctrine of creation anchors man’s accountability to his Maker. The doctrine of creation proclaims that the Triune God of the universe knows Himself; then makes a universe out of nothing. This means that reality: the cosmos and man and man’s place in the cosmos come from one mind—the mind of God almighty. The reason this is so significant in our postmodern world is because in public education we have been taught that this is a closed universe in which God (if He exists) is but one of the parts. Nothing could be further from the truth. This is an open universe in that it is acted upon from the outside. Our transcendent God created it; owns it; upholds it; rules it; defines it; judges it; and will ultimately restore it.
This is a moral universe because the Creator and Ruler of the cosmos is righteous and holy. The secularists have filled mass culture with the false idea that the church is restricting freedoms by imposing an arbitrary standard of morality upon society. Such secular lies fall away when one understands that human dignity and freedom are inseparably joined to God’s moral laws. God’s commandments are good and wise and loving—these laws protect our humanness and guard our freedoms. We are bounded creatures—wisely kept by God’s moral boundaries (Prov 19:23). God’s moral commandments comprise a transcendent moral order which permeates creation (Ps 19:7-14). God is omnipresent and so are His moral laws. The laws of God are His character in code. As such they apply to all persons in all places at all times. This truth is the foundation for the fear of God. Sin produces guilt because this is a moral universe.
All crime is ultimately against heaven—crime issues forth in punishment because God is a God of retribution and justice. He would be unrighteous is He left sin unpunished. These truths are foundational, yet they have been lost in our post-Christian apostate culture.
The unbelieving sinner lives like the proverbial ostrich with its head buried in the sand so that it hides from its view the imminent threat above ground. The unbeliever denies that he is a fugitive under God’s moral government. He denies that an inescapable day of reckoning is coming. He denies that sin pays a guaranteed wage of death and hell. He denies that God’s wrath is perfect righteousness reacting to unrighteousness. Sin is the most insidious of all diseases because it so effectively hides the nature of the ailment from the sinner. Sin hides the following things from the perception of the transgressor: its defilement; its bondage; its consequences; and its terminal nature.
It is exceedingly difficult to convince a postmodern person (steeped in moral relativism) of the seriousness of sin. But we must attempt to do so. For sinners are only saved by Christ through the powerful working of the Word and the Spirit. The natural man’s sentiment and heart disposition (under sin’s deception) is captured by the Psalmist, “He has said to himself, ‘Thou wilt not require it’” (Ps 10:13). In other words, the impenitent person is bribing his conscience by denying the immutable principle of sowing and reaping—by denying the reality of divine retribution. Puritan theologians describe a person possessing this wicked thought as, someone who thinks and acts as if they have an
unconquerable soul.
The unbeliever’s conscience must be reached or he will never abandon himself to Christ in faith. The conscience is God’s moral mark on the nature of man. The conscience is filled with ethical activities of evaluation—for it continually generates verdicts concerning all of a man’s moral behavior. It either condemns or excuses a man in all of his ethical choices (Rom 2:14-16). As such, the conscience is like an annex of God’s final courtroom; for a man’s conscience continually generates verdicts and subpoenas. We must keep this in mind, for when the unbeliever hears the Word preached he finds that God’s Word is revealing the secrets of the heart. The Word finds all of the defiled areas of conscience and brings them to light. Therefore we must preach with this spiritual reality in view. For the Holy Spirit will call and quicken ONLY those He has convicted of sin, and judgment, and righteousness (Jn 16:8-11).
For those who do not repent, the conscience will become the chief instrument of torment. On judgment day, the sinner’s conscience (for the first time in his life) will be in perfect agreement with God’s law, God’s books, and God’s verdict of condemnation. The possibility of overriding the conscience will be gone forever the moment God introduces the tiniest spark of His wrath. Then, in eternal perdition, the conscience will rise up to its full stature and begin to take its eternal revenge upon its ungrateful host.
Our gospel proclamation must reach the conscience of a man until he feels the hot displeasure of God against his sins—only when he begins to be crushed over his sins will he be desperate enough to flee to Christ. When the Spirit does His gracious work of conviction, He convinces a man that he is liable to divine judgment and is exposed to the eternal wrath of God—this is an indispensable part of God’s grace.
The Spirit begins by first convincing a man that he is a transgressor under God’s moral government. Next the Spirit shows the man that he has accumulated a mountain of guilt and debt to the requirements of God’s holy law. Under the Spirit’s convicting power, the sinner concludes that his sins are an offense to God and his eternal soul is in grave danger. The sinner’s conscience must be brought to a point at which he agrees that God’s laws are righteous and just AND that God’s threatened penalty for sin is righteous and just.
Only when the sinner is willing to agree with God concerning the wages of sin (that the sinner deserves eternal perdition) is that man ready for the final stage of conviction. In the last stage of conviction, the Spirit convinces the sinner that he is unable to lessen his penalty or to work off his guilt or to contribute anything to his needed salvation—he literally is a slave to sin. Only sovereign mercy can save him.
Once the sinner has been brought to the end of self—that is the end of self-righteousness and self-help—then the Spirit is desirous of showing that man Christ’s willingness to save him. By the Spirit’s irresistible calling power, the quickened sinner is enabled to close with Christ (that is to savingly believe). This author finds it insipid that preachers attempt to peddle or sell the benefits of Christ—and then persuade sinners, “why not do it today?”—as if Christ is waiting for these thoughtful ‘consumers’ to finally come to their senses and complete some sort of religious transaction. That is not biblical salvation.
The sinner who has been fully convicted by the Spirit and called by His power will not refuse Christ—he will not wish to reject Christ—he will fall at the feet of Christ—seeking His mercy and owning Him as Savior and rightful Lord of the cosmos (Phil 2:9-11). Like the manslayer in the OT fleeing to a city of refuge from the avenger (the avenging relative of the deceased), the convicted sinner knows that the justice of God is the ‘avenger’ of God’s trampled honor. The sinner truly convicted by the Spirit will not need to be cajoled—he will gladly flee to Christ, the ‘city of refuge’(Heb 6:18-20).
Christ’s death for the ungodly is the basis for our justification (Rom 5:6–8). One of the most glorious truths which ever will cross the mind of man is this. “… When we were yet without strength [in other words, when we still were unsaved and helpless] in due time Christ died for the ungodly” (5:6). Notice that the death of Christ for the ungodly now becomes a reoccurring theme in this passage. It is found again in verse 8. “But God demonstrates His own love toward us, in that while we were still sinners, Christ died for us.” We were sinners, undone and without hope before a holy God. Yet the love of God and His desire to satisfy the demand of His own righteousness without destroying those whom He loved, brought forth the free and gracious provision of a means of redemption for us. We had no cause for hope that God would help us out of our impossible predicament, “For scarcely for a righteous man will one die; yet perhaps for a good man someone would even dare to die” (5:7).
But Someone did die! And it was not another sinner whose death would have made no difference in resolving our sin problem and its death sentence. It was One Who was spotless, “Who knew no sin …” (2 Cor. 5:21), “Who was without sin” (Heb. 4:15) … In Psalm 41 He says of Himself through the pen of His human ancestor, David, while awaiting His own resurrection: “As for me, You will uphold me in My integrity, and will set me before your face forever” (Psa. 41:12). The word translated “integrity” here is the word which was used of the Passover lamb which had to be spotless and perfect in every way before it could be sacrificed on Passover night (cf. Ex 12:5–6). And it was God’s spotless lamb, the Lord Jesus, who died in our place long ago. “God commended His love toward us in that while we were yet sinners, Christ died for us” (5:8).
The deliverance from wrath that justification brings is through Christ (5:9). The wrath which we deserved as sinners before a holy God now is resolved through the death of Christ. Paul says: “Much more then, having now been justified by His blood, we shall be saved from wrath through Him.” It is clear that justification, or being counted righteous in God’s holy court of law, is a present possession since the event already has taken place at the moment of salvation. He says: “… having now been justified by His blood ….” But it also is clear that this event which is past for the believer also brings results which still are future. “… We shall be saved from wrath through Him.”
The question of the believing sinner’s eternal destiny forever has been settled. The believer does not have to wait for the judgment seat of Christ or for the great white throne to find out if God’s wrath yet awaits him. He need never fear that at someday in the future he still will face the wrath of God. In the justification which Christ obtained, which He paid for with His own blood, God forever assures us of the fact that “ … we shall be saved from wrath through Him” (Rom 5:10).
The satisfaction of judgment brought by Christ’s death in our place saves us from the wrath of God (5:10a). Ah, here is one of the many results of the death of Christ. “But God commended His love toward us in that, while we were yet sinners, Christ died for us.” We are saved from wrath through Him. And surely the sinner must come to recognize that, in his fallen state, he fully deserves the wrath of God. But an essential part of the gospel presentation should include the fact that, because Christ’s death took upon Himself the wrath of God which we deserved, it now is no longer is due us. The enmity of which Romans 8:6–8 speaks is gone because “… you are not in the flesh but in the Spirit, if indeed the Spirit of God dwells in you. Now if anyone does not have the Spirit of Christ, he is not His” (Rom. 8:9–10).⁴
CONCLUSION:
To be converted is to marvel at the fact that the only begotten Son of God came to earth to enter the ‘cog-works’ of God’s unbending justice—to enter those cog-works to be crushed for us (Is 53:5-9). The believing sinner is overwhelmed with the reality of Christ in the sinner’s place providing the obedience to God’s law that we could not supply—and bearing the penalty of death and divine wrath that we could not endure nor satisfy in our own persons. Therefore it is impossible to gain Christ (as Savior) and not be conquered by His love—love that caused Him to be willing to be the curse for us so we could
4 Northrup, B. E. (1997). True evangelism: Paul's presentation of the first five steps of the soul-winner in Romans.
go free and be adopted by God (2 Cor 5:14-15; Gal 3:10-14). The truly converted person WILL find his highest calling to give himself back to God as his entire life goal and direction.
There is no life direction change until the cross of Christ is applied to the individual—in essence slaying the sinner’s imagined sovereignty. The cross subdues our will to Christ. The cross severs us from the world—crucifies us to the world and the world to us (Gal 6:14). Salvation is the most radical kingdom transfer one may conceive (Col 1:12-14). Our entire perspective on source is changed— we find our all in the Lord (2 Pet 1:1-4).
The cross of Christ produces a saving knowledge of the Holy One (Jn 17:3). This saving knowledge cannot fail to issue forth in ongoing repentance, worship, mortification of sin, service, consecration, and overflowing gratitude. To truly know God is light years apart from a mere profession of faith. In the saving knowledge of God there is a vital relationship given. In this relationship the Holy Spirit builds in the believer a sensitivity to the Father (2 Cor 7:1). We learn what invokes His anger— how unbelief and self-will offend Him. We know what pleases Him—what brings His approval. This is a real relationship which has a language of love. The true believer is highly sensitive to this language of love. As a result he refuses to objectify his Christianity. He will not settle into a manageable, outward form of religion. Saving grace is relational from top to bottom. We live out our sonship by loyalty to the Father (2 Cor 6:14-18; 7:1).
The man of God dares to draw near because he is clothed in the righteousness of Christ. His boldness to enter the presence of God is grounded solely in the free and confident access purchased by Christ (Eph 2:18). He walks with God as with the One who has eyes as a flame of fire (Rev 1:14-18). He knows that God’s relationship with him is one of invasive holiness (Heb 4:12). He walks and communes with Christ Himself—the One who passes among the lamp stands of the churches—examining their works and ways and walk with Him. The true believer makes all these connections—this is anything but an abstract, theoretical Christianity. To walk with God is to be ever aware that we are thinking, speaking, desiring, moving, deciding under the penetrating gaze of His holiness (1 Jn 1:7). The man of God is therefore willing to be searched by God (Ps 139:23-24; Heb 4:12). He welcomes the Lord’s rearranging work in his life. He wants to live by faith. He rejects the arrogant empiricism of the day which attempts to cope with life by bare sense, sight, and unaided reason (unaided by submission the Holy Scriptures).
The man who walks with his God continually meditates on the great truths of God in Christ. This spiritual man knows that nothing in the Christian life is to be held in a theoretical fashion. Therefore he makes it his habit to hold fast and to further develop a vision of Christ; a vision of the glory to come; and a vision of the holiness of God. The man of God frequently checks himself to see what it is in the Word of God that he that he has not been believing. He makes countless course corrections. He grows spiritually in an aggressive manner (taking heaven by storm). He the Lord’s steward—he is a man of principle who builds with Christ. He longs to assume the privilege of edifying the members of the body and fulfilling his role in the kingdom. He is a faithful man—he knows that this faithfulness only comes by taking up his cross daily. He counts it all joy if God lets him help even one saint stay vertically aligned (established in the faith and walking in fellowship with the Lord—Colossians 2:6-7).