For quite some time now I have been struggling to start writing something. Firstly because the Lord has opened my eyes more and more towards my own sin and I see the complete unworthiness of me to be giving anyone advice or asking someone to hear what I have to say. And so often the verse of Romans 2:21 jumps up at me whenever I am sitting ready with my laptop, “Well then, if you teach others, why don’t you teach yourself?”. Because, for the past months by the grace of God I have read and listened to the Word of GOD more often, whereby Jesus has taught me many things, but through all of it I have kept myself so busy that I did not allow Him to truly teach me so that the new knowledge can be internalised and put into the bigger picture. And I think that is why I struggled to write a post. Because I spent a lot of time with His word, but it was made up of short bouts and I never spent long enough quality time with the Lord for Him to truly instruct me on the knowledge that He gave me through His Word, the Bible.
And it is not that I willfully neglected to spend more time with Him, for this negligence of God or in other words sin, goes much much deeper than just our physical actions and choices. “I do not understand what I do. For what I want to do I do not do, but what I hate I do.” [Romans 7:15].
Our negligence of God, or sin, starts with the corruption of our hearts. Not one of us is born onto the narrow path, none of us just passed through the narrow gate upon our entrance into this world. (Matthew 7:13-14 “Enter by the narrow gate. For the gate is wide and the way is easy that leads to destruction, and those who enter by it are many. For the gate is narrow and the way is hard that leads to life, and those who find it are few.”) In fact, all of us because of Adam are born onto the wide road, the road that leads to eternal damnation without God. Because we are born sinners and “As it is written: There is no one righteous, not even one; there is no one who understands; there is no one who seeks God. All have turned away, they have together become worthless; there is no one who does good, not even one.” [Romans 3:10-12]
The narrow gate has to be found, yet only by God’s intervention can the gate be found and under His grace can the path be trodden. No man can therefore boast about his faith, for if it is true, he will know that it is all from God. And he will more and more feel his unworthiness to have received the gift of faith. “For by grace you have been saved through faith. And this is not your own doing; it is the gift of God, not a result of works, so that no one may boast.” [Ephesians 2:8-9]
Please let these words crack open your shell of a heart, and may you see the grotesque nature of yourself. When you truly believe, the Holy Spirit resides in you and opens your eyes evermore to the corruptness of your soul. “For all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God.” [Romans 3:23] You begin to see how little you love, and how often you sin. And sin transforms and rewrites itself in BOLD CAPITAL letters in the dictionary of your soul, for day by day the sin that is in you, hurts you more and more when you look at it in relation to GOD’s holiness that then also rsides in you.
And nothing that we can do can fix us, can make us feel better. Nothing we do can rid us of the stench of our old self that is still tied to us. For it died when GOD saved us and gave the spirit unto us. And like anything dead, the smell worsens every day, and so also does the new knowledge received from the Holy Spirit open our nostrils to the stench of our own lives. And it is horrible.
For every good thing in this world, that others do and that we do, is empty and bad if we do not love God the Father, Jesus Christ the Son, and the Holy Spirit with all our heart and mind and body as well as love our neighbour as we love ourself and believe that we are saved only because of Jesus’ love. Every religious tradition is useless if our hearts are not right with God. We cannot say that we are Christian because we were baptised, attend church, that we were raised in a Christian home, that we listen to gospel music or live a moral life filled with charity and good deeds. Because the Bible says that a true Christian is not someone who merely obeys the law, but rather that it is someone that has had a change of heart produced by the Spirit. [From Rom2:28-29]
A person with a changed heart seeks praise not from people but seeks praise from God. [From Rom2:29] You are a Christian because your heart is right with God, in that it has changed and is continued to be changed by the work of the Spirit and that you now live conscious in every moment that without the blood of Christ, you are no better than Judas or the worst person you can think of. Before the eyes of God, without Christ, all of us are equally unworthy to enter His kingdom. And we can only look to Christ.
You are a Christian when you seek praise from God and not from people anymore and seek praise firstly through legitimate heartfelt repentance for your failure to obey God’s commands, and secondly by working for God by allowing yourself to be led by the Spirit. “For those who are led by the Spirit of God are the children of God.” [Romans 8:14] For who receives praise who does not work. Will a slave owner praise their slave if they do not do the work that had been given them? Take note that these works are not things we do to justify ourselves before God, it is a response initiated and maintained by the Holy Spirit, a desire that arises in our hearts because of Jesus who was crucified on the cross for us.
How then does a Christian’s heart perceive itself before GOD? Merely as soil. “When the ground soaks up the falling rain and bears a good crop for the farmer, it has God’s blessing. But if a field bears thorns and thistles, it is useless. The farmer will soon condemn that field and burn it” [Hebrews 6:7-8]. The ground cannot decide what grows in it. Therefore, the rain that waters the soil is grace and the preparation of the soil is also the work of GOD. And the soil can take no credit for the beautiful crop standing tall, when it was the Farmer that had made sure that the ground is fertile, and without the seed of thorns and thistles. Nonetheless, the Farmer gets praise when the soil firmly holds his work, for it is a representation of the Farmer’s labour.
Maybe the book of John can shed some light on how we then ought to live as children of God, who has accepted the gift of faith with gratitude and humility before God; whose heart has been changed by GOD’s Holy Spirit. “I am the true grapevine, and my Father is the gardener. He cuts off every branch of mine that doesn’t produce fruit, and he prunes the branches that do bear fruit so they will produce even more.” [John 15:1-2] So what is the fruit then? For if a branch that is cut off from God can still do good works and by worldly standards be a good and moral human being, it surely cannot be the important fruit that Jesus is telling His disciples about. Because the Bible clearly states that “a branch cannot produce fruit if it is severed from the vine, and you cannot be fruitful unless you remain in me.” [John 15:4]
Good deeds therefore do not make us a good person or acceptable to GOD. A person who does not pursue and believe in Jesus as their only hope can do all the good in the world and in the end, he or she will be deemed unfit to enter the kingdom of Heaven just as the worst person you can think of who does not believe in Jesus Christ. Because without God, our hearts are hard. Take note that the hardness of our hearts does not prevent us from doing “good” things here on earth, once again it goes much deeper than just the physical. “Not everyone who says to me, ‘Lord, Lord,’ will enter the kingdom of heaven, but the one who does the will of my Father who is in heaven. On that day many will say to me, ‘Lord, Lord, did we not prophesy in your name, and cast out demons in your name, and do many mighty works in your name?’ And then will I declare to them, ‘I never knew you; depart from me, you workers of lawlessness.” [Matthew 7:21-23]
The fruit that is spoken of in John 15 can only be Love. But wait… Am I saying that every person who is not a true Christian does not know what Love is, or cannot Love? Yes, indeed. For what everyone whose heart has not been completely renovated by the work of the Holy Spirit believes to be is love, is merely idolatry. And many professing Christians sadly also do not know love, for their soil is littered with the seed of every kind of thorn and thistle: the things of this world. “Now the works of the flesh are obvious… drunkenness, carousing, and things like these. I am warning you, as I warned you before: those who do such things will not inherit the kingdom of God.” [Galatians 5:19-21]
Just a quick insert to give some more clarity on the above verse. /// Some people may argue that Jesus spent time with sinners, partying and even made sure that there was enough wine at a wedding where, by that time, there surely would have been a lot of people who had already had enough. But while Jesus might have spent a lot of time among sinners it was not to show that this lifestyle is acceptable nor because he wanted to do the same things as the people of the world did. Jesus answered them, “It is not the healthy who need a doctor, but the sick. I have not come to call the righteous, but sinners to repentance.” [Luke 5:31-33] He spent time with sinners to lead them to repentance. This is also applicable to all of us, for Jesus is surrounded with sin in our hearts as he was surrounded by sinners all those years ago, but just as He opened their eyes to see that they have to repent, so He also does in us. For He does not enjoy being around sin, not when He was on Earth as a human and not as His Spirit within you. ///
I say it is idolatry because we often think of love as having exclusiveness. We ”love” this person and we “love” doing that and so on. It is an affection directed at someone or something. But when by Grace we perceive that it is the Farmer's hard work that is the reason for the crop’s roots we so tightly hold, we no longer have a preference as to whom or what may eat from it. Because all that matters to us anymore is that the farmer continues to work in us. God fosters in us a total dependence on Him and a realisation that without Him we are but dust that gets washed away with the first downpour.
But the Bible makes it sound so easy to follow God. Yet very few of us, I think, truly get it right. Running for me has become joyful, a part of my lifestyle and something that I look forward to doing every day, for another person it is a chore or something that they must force themself to do. And in the same while, I can find great joy in running the most challenging routes whereas another person won’t be able to even walk the route or think of doing it.
This is because I have learnt to appreciate exercise and the value it brings into my life. The important thing is that I have conditioned my body so that I can enjoy these great blessings from God found in His creation. But it takes great discipline depending on the level at which you want to run. I do not want to take this analogy further for we are prone to often take a story and apply it to a range of things that it was never perhaps meant to teach us about, but I want you to consider it when reading the following verse. “Have nothing to do with irreverent, silly myths. Rather train yourself for godliness; for while bodily training is of some value, godliness is of value in every way, as it holds promise for the present life and also for the life to come.” [1 Timothy 4:7-8]
If we can have such discipline in our lives to condition ourselves to gain the maximum benefit from something like exercise, work, a hobby or even relationships, should we then not also condition our bodies to walk down the Via Dolorosa with our cross? We should be athletes in our pursuit to please God. How much importance do we place on conditioning ourselves to be a true follower of Christ? Because conditioning (another term for specific exercise) is clearly important for one to succeed at something.
But here is the catch. The verse compares exercise to godliness. But unlike exercise which you can turn into a habit, godliness is completely dependent on God’s work in you, and you cannot train godliness without Him initiating the will in you to please Him. For habits, even Bible reading does not conform you to Christ, but the work of God through these habits can produce a change in you. And a change it must bring, for “All of us, even though we know God's law, breaks it and dishonours God. And even cause unbelievers to blaspheme the name of God because of our hypocrisy.” [From Rom2:23-24]
The change, however, is not always directly manifested in our actions for we are weak and sinful by nature. But the change is in our hearts, which causes us to know our sinful nature and with remorse makes us seek forgiveness with every breath for our failure to please God and for our sin against Him. We at first become despondent and we come to know that we are totally undeserving of being in this position under God’s grace. And through this sadness, He makes us truthfully ask Him to give us strength the next time that we are tempted to sin. And lastly, He makes our belief in Him concrete, for believing that God is sovereign is part of His instruction.
This is truly a curse in the eyes of the world, for all that they see is sorrow. But a true believer in Christ will begin to understand otherwise. For as we perceive ourselves as dust before the splendour of the King, the earth would label that inward despondency as depression. Yet in this great inward sadness towards oneself, a Christian is given by God the greatest and only true and lasting Joy. A true relationship with God and His promise that only in Him there is refuge from corrupting sin and death. A joy found in Him which overrules all sadness found in us.
Me about 2km in to 2023's Om die Dam 25km trail race at Franschoek. This was my last race for 2023.