"No Fences: Pharisees, Philosophers, Legalists, and Jesus" Chapter 1

Chapter 1: We’re Safe; Now What?

"Never give in to that sin and temptation that's lurking in the shadows, but keep constantly striving toward that burning beacon on the distant horizon."

Momma Dooright

"Flock, I just want to say a few words about them discotheques...people's in there drankin', people's in there smokin', people's in there dancin'...they get out there in the middle of the floor in a big pile, and just gyrate around like a bunch of wild heathens. I tell you what, them discotheques ain't nothin' but a regular Sodom and Gomorrah. Virgil, where are you going?"

Thurman Dooright

"I'm going to one of them discotheques!”

Virgil Dooright

There are people who judge the quality of a sermon by how guilty it makes them feel. They are motivated to do things for Christ with fear of underperforming and doing badly at the Last Judgment. They can quote venerable Christian authors better than they can quote parts of the Bible.

“A religion that costs nothing is worth nothing. A cheap Christianity, without a cross, will prove in the end a useless Christianity, without a crown.”

J.C. Ryle

Ouch. Getting crucified hurts. Wouldn't you like to skip ahead past all the unpleasant stuff and enjoy life as a citizen of Heaven? Let's investigate what the Bible actually says:

I have been crucified with Christ and I no longer live, but Christ lives in me. The life I now live in the body, I live by faith in the Son of God, who loved me and gave Himself for me. (Galatians 2:20)   

That's right, Christian. Many people know Christ died for you, but it's easy to forget that YOU already died, that you have been cleansed, and that you are an eternal being already (See also Colossians 2:12 and Ephesians 2:5). That thought alone will make you more patient in traffic. People struggle with keeping Christ first in their lives, but Christ is your life (Colossians 3:4). You are not living for Him as much as you are living from Him. Anyone telling you to “die to self” has forgotten that the Bible says we died with Him. You “denied yourself” by disavowing your own self-righteousness, you took up your cross, and you followed Him to the place of execution. If someone objects by referencing the half of the old Luke 9:23 manuscripts that say to take up the cross “daily”, then think of the condemned people carrying crosses who were mocked and shamed all the way to their deaths. As a Christian, you are hated by much of humanity, and you endure attacks from the Enemy/Accuser/Satan that are not a problem for the lost. Are you publicly acknowledging Him, come what may? Then, you are carrying your cross.   

That's not just one idea out of context. The Old Testament required two witnesses for a conviction, so please forgive me for sometimes providing multiple verses to support points if I seem redundant. Romans 6 has more about our co-crucifixion with Him:

What shall we say, then? Shall we go on sinning so that grace may increase? By no means! We are those who have died to sin; how can we live in it any longer? (Romans 6:1-2)  

Notice that Paul didn't say that the reason to avoid sin was loss of salvation or making Father mad. He already forgave us because of Jesus' finished work on the Cross. Please read Hebrews 10:14 frequently: "For by one sacrifice He has made perfect forever those who are being made holy." Read that one more time for good measure. Yes, He said we are now perfect. Yes, He said forever. If we could mess this up or lose it, we wouldn’t be perfect forever. Colossians 1:22 also says: "But now He has reconciled you by Christ’s physical body through death to present you holy in His sight, without blemish and free from accusation". He will never accuse you. 

Going back to Romans 6:

Or don’t you know that all of us who were baptized into Christ Jesus were baptized into His death? We were therefore buried with Him through baptism into death in order that, just as Christ was raised from the dead through the glory of the Father, we too may live a new life. For if we have been united with Him in a death like His, we will certainly also be united with Him in a resurrection like His. For we know that our old self was crucified with Him so that the body ruled by Sin might be done away with, that we should no longer be slaves to Sin — because anyone who has died has been set free from Sin. Now if we died with Christ, we believe that we will also live with Him. For we know that since Christ was raised from the dead, He cannot die again; death no longer has mastery over Him. The death He died, He died to sin once for all; but the life He lives, He lives to God. In the same way, count yourselves dead to Sin but alive to God in Christ Jesus. Therefore do not let Sin reign in your mortal body so that you obey its evil desires. Do not offer any part of yourself to Sin as an instrument of wickedness, but rather offer yourselves to God as those who have been brought from death to life; and offer every part of yourself to Him as an instrument of righteousness. For Sin shall no longer be your master, because you are not under the law, but under grace. (Romans 6:3-14)

Again, the evil desires don't belong to Christians, they belong to Sin. Not all of your thoughts are your own. Your enemy can feed you any bad idea any time, try to convince you that you thought of it, and then proceed to accuse you of being a bad Christian for having thought it. We walk by faith and not by sight. Remember, "perfect, forever, reconciled, holy, without blemish, free from accusation, etc." If what “you” seem to be thinking is out of character for a saint, then dismiss it. It’s not from you.

Rather, think of our new reality (Colossians 3:2). Christ is alive! No matter what else you have going on in your life, that is happy news. Remember singing "Joy to the World'' as a child around Christmas time? "He rules the world with truth and grace"? You are united with Him. WE rule the world (although the devil is still claiming squatter’s rights per 2 Corinthians 4:4 and 1 John 5:19).  

Let's look at Ephesians 2:  

And God raised us up with Christ, and seated us with Him in the heavenly realms in Christ Jesus, in order that in the coming ages He might show the incomparable riches of His grace, expressed in His kindness to us in Christ Jesus. For it is by grace you have been saved, through faith—and this is not from yourselves, it is the gift of God — not by works, so that no one can boast. For we are God’s handiwork, created in Christ Jesus to do good works, which God prepared in advance for us to do. (Ephesians 2:6-10) 

The good works are part of the "life and life abundantly" (John 10:10) that He came to bring us. The Old Covenant is set aside (Hebrews 8:13), so the New Testament contains new instructions. The two big commands Jesus gave us for life on this side of the Cross are Believe (John 6:28-29) and Love (John 13:34-35) Jesus is Lord; believe it and say it (Romans 10:9-13). He loves us, and we love Him, so we love those that He loves. These new “laws” written on our hearts (not to be confused with the Law of Moses) are spelled out in the Gospels (like in John 6:29 and John 13:34) and in the Epistles (John says 1 John 3:23; 1 John 4:12; 1 John 4:15; 1 John 5:1; etc.; Paul agrees in Colossians 1:4; 1 Thessalonians 1:3; 1 Timothy 1:4-5; 1 Timothy 1:14; 2 Timothy 1:13; Philemon 5, etc.; Peter agrees in 1 Peter 1:21-22.)   

In John 13, Jesus used foot-washing (a menial task fit for servants) to demonstrate to the apostles how they were to love each other as He had loved them. At that point in His ministry, He hadn’t died for us yet. He didn’t wash every foot every day. This means that we basically just help each other out. This could mean consolidating the trash cans so the janitor's job is easier. It could mean supporting a ministry serving those in the greatest need (like persecuted fellow Christians or the sick, the suffering, the starving, and especially those still lacking the Bread of Life) financially. You don't have to live on gruel and pick up double shifts to do this. Remember that even a cup of water is rewarded, we give "not reluctantly or under compulsion, for God loves a cheerful giver" (2 Corinthians 9:7), and that a boy’s lunch was a fine donation when Jesus fed multitudes (John 6:9). He still multiplies our gifts (Hebrews 13:8).  

You may have had a favorite stuffed toy as a child. It may have always smiled and been relentlessly cheerful despite how it was treated or what was going on in the world. Was it radically accepting of the harsh realities of life, grinning madly at the world through a perspective espoused by Nietzsche or the cannibalistic Aghori (that live among tombs like the Gerasene demoniac)? Had it been driven crazy already by this world, pulled toward the insanity around us like gravity? No, the plushie was cheerful and unconditionally supportive for the purpose of comforting you. Was it lying? No, the deeper truth is that it was just being the way it was made. Their smiles are genuine because they could be no other way than how their maker intended. This is true of us as well. We “new creations'' in Christ are naturally loving, joyful, peaceful, patient, kind, benevolent, loyal, good, and stable; we can be very comforting to others when we learn to stop thinking that God is keeping score with us, get over ourselves, and listen. Some children play that the plushies are their babies. It is a much bigger leap for the God of the universe to call me His son than for one of His creatures to adopt their stuffed friend. You are the light of the world, reflecting Him, and maybe the teddy bear of the world too.  

So why do we worry about what to do at all? The New Testament tells us that Christ is the end of the Law for believers and that being under Law encourages sinning, yet it then gives us many behavioral instructions. Yes, that seems contradictory. However, Israel as a priestly kingdom (Exodus 19:6) was given the Law of Moses for a specific purpose (Romans 3:19): to demonstrate everyone’s need for grace (Romans 3:20). There are still behaviors that God considers sinful among groups of people that were not under the Law of Moses, and we can see violations of those universal principles for humanity being punished before the Law of Moses was given. Additionally, the situation then is like the situation now. You can tell someone they have a new heart that wants what God wants (and doesn't want what He doesn't want), they have a new human spirit, and they have the Holy Spirit living within them guiding them to everything they need to know. You can tell them that Romans 14:4, Hebrews 13:20-21, Philippians 1:6, Philippians 2:13, and Jude 24 reiterate that Jesus was telling the truth in John 15 that much fruit for God will be grown from those united with Him (which He prayed for you to be in John 17, and His prayers definitely got answered). It's an oversimplification to think of yourself as a happy little sock puppet once you've trusted Christ to live through you; it's Him and you in union forever (John 17:23). You, as your new self, are not an obstacle to God. Paul in Galatians 5:22-23 tells us that the Gardener is growing love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, and self-control in us right now. A branch on the Vine doesn't sit there all day stressing out about making more and bigger fruit. You can tell believers that sinning will never satisfy them (Galatians 5:17), that they are allergic to sinning and addicted to righteousness (Romans 6:18), and that the behavioral instructions are a description of the only lifestyle that will make sense as a new creation in Christ, or as 2 Timothy 2:19 states:  

Nevertheless, God’s solid foundation stands firm, sealed with this inscription: “The Lord knows those who are his,” and, “Everyone who confesses the name of the Lord must turn away from wickedness.”  

That “must” is a promise, not a threat. Believers are saints, and eventually all of their conduct will match their new identities. Even knowing this, inevitably, a brother in Christ will raise his hand and (worriedly or impishly) ask, "How much wickedness?" That notion comes from a lack of understanding of whether sinning is fun (it's not) but also a lack of understanding of what things are actually sinful. Words are buckets we put meaning into, and their meanings drift over time. Much of our New Testament consists of English translations of Greek letters to former pagans, whose wild lifestyles most of us no longer understand, written by a reformed Pharisee, whose Hebrew Scriptures were also written in a context that most of us no longer understand. The Pharisees tried very hard to be holy; their name means “set apart”. Rather than leaving the world to form a separate community like the Essenes, the later celibate “desert fathers”, or monks (celibacy kept inheritance issues about Church property simple), the Pharisees set themselves apart within Hellenized Jewish society with their scrupulousness. The Pharisees cared so much about pleasing God that they invented extra rules to "put a fence" around the actual rules to make sure they didn't get too close to messing up. There seems to be something admirable in that. Then again, 2 of the 613 parts of the Law of Moses say “don’t add to or subtract from the Law” (Deuteronomy 4:2, Deuteronomy 12:32), so when some of them got very judgmental about fellow worshipers of God that didn't fit their mold, Jesus didn't like that very much at all, to make a huge understatement. 

A fun game to play with popular Bible commentaries is "What New Testament Verse Says the Opposite of What This Says". For example, let’s look at Psalm 80:3,7,19: "Turn us again to yourself, O God, Make your face shine down upon us. Only then will we be saved." One of the writers of the bestselling NLT Study Bible notes looks at this appeal to God for the help that only He can give us and focuses the reader right back onto their own works again instead, saying: "Before God can turn us to himself, we must turn away from sin. Repentance involves humbling ourselves and turning to God to receive his forgiveness. As we turn to God, he helps us see ourselves, including our sin, more clearly. Then, as we see our sin, we must repeat the process of repentance. Only then can we constantly be restored to fellowship with God." That line of thinking condemns everyone to Hell. We all stumble in many ways (James 3:2), no one’s memory or legal pad is good enough to catch all their sins, and obedience to God is an all-or-nothing proposition (James 2:10). God doesn’t forgive based on apologies; He accepts blood (Hebrews 9:22). We already had turn-or-burn behavior improvement under the Old Covenant (Ezekiel 18 is a fine explanation) all the way up to John the Baptist; Jesus is better. John 12:32 says Jesus draws all men to himself; that other commentator tries to limit Him. The New Covenant is based on Jesus’ obedience (2 Corinthians 5:21), the once-for-all forgiveness earned by His sacrifice (Hebrews 10:1-18), and His indestructible life (Hebrews 7:25), not our efforts and hopes that God grades on a curve. If you’ve given up any notion of entitlement based on your own righteousness and asked Him to save you, He has, and you shouldn’t worry about “falling out of fellowship” with the Savior you share a Spirit with (1 Corinthians 6:17), that lives in you, and is united with you (John 17:23). Colossians 2:13-15 says you’re already forgiven, and the records where your sins would be recorded are destroyed. It is living in the reality of your perfect cleansing (Hebrews 10:14) that makes sinning undesirable anymore (2 Peter 1:9). Turning from sin is a natural consequence of turning to Him and realizing that He has made you new.  

People call and write ministries with questions that are variations of "Please, just tell me what to do!" This book is not a complete guide to that (Romans 12 is a great start), but this is an attempt at alleviating the anxieties of the questioners. Trusting Christ to produce His life within you (as a “walk” not a “work”—behaving because it makes sense given how you’re wired now, not to “earn” salvation) while reckoning yourself dead to Sin and alive to God are great, but knowing what thoughts come from Sin and what thoughts are your own require knowledge of what is sinful, and thought-screening becomes a work in itself. Paul in 2 Timothy 3:16-17 would have us consult Scripture, so let us do exactly that since our consciences can be programmed by anything, godly or not. Since I intend to stick to the Bible in as original a context as we can achieve in this century, I expect downvotes from the same legalists that accused Paul of preaching a license to sin and from the "anything goes" crowd that uses Paul as a license to sin. To avoid a cult of personality and to speak freely of matters shared in confidence, I intend to release this book anonymously. The hucksters that Paul warned us about, the ones in it for the money, the ones that sell behavior books, the ones with "donate" tabs on their sites, etc., probably won't like this book. I intend to make it available for free.  

If I get hit by a bus before I write all of this, or if you do before you finish reading it, know up front that if you are a believer in Christ, your behavior is not your primary concern. As in Jesus' day, the Accuser wants us focused on our behavior and not on our Savior. If Satan cannot prevent your salvation, he will settle for keeping you in full-time ministry to yourself to keep you from helping anyone else. In general, the crowd that reads Christian books could worry a lot less and radiate more joy. Who knows? Someone else might notice it and give you a chance to share the Good News of Jesus. Whether we know it or not, most of Western culture’s values and mores were derived from Judaism and Christianity; the worst thing about many people nowadays within driving distance of me is that they don't believe in Jesus (John 16:9), and that's an easy fix. Billy Graham's “big tent” “easy believe-ism” is great; we can work on the rest later. If people wait until they are “ready” to be saved, they will never come at all. I speak of “cheap grace” you say? No, it cost Jesus everything, and for us it is free; it is cheap for no one. He will never leave us, He will never forsake us, no created thing can snatch us from His hand, and we as created things cannot crawl out of it, either. We did nothing to merit our salvation, and we can do nothing to mess it up. When Paul frets over the possibility of being “disqualified” in 1 Corinthians 9:27, he means in ministry. He avoided messing up his witness. 1 Corinthians 10:33 clarifies this. Paul was not trying to negate any of Jesus’ promises of eternal security in John 6. Jesus drew large crowds and was a popular dinner guest. Creepy and angry guys are not popular with children as a rule (Matthew 19:13-15). Would He have gotten so many party invitations if He acted like King Nahash the Eye-Poker of Ammon (1 Sam 11)? He didn’t take out eyes and chop off hands; He healed people wherever He went. The eye and hand rhetoric in the Sermon on the Mount is about the impossibly high standard of the Law, and it is a part of the same cultural hyperbole that He employed when He spoke of walking around with a wooden beam in your eye. He forgave His own killers, namely us (Isaiah 53:5, Luke 23:34). He protected his own disciples when they were caught violating the Sabbath, and He protected a woman caught in the act of adultery. Jesus lives forever to intercede for us (Hebrews 7:25); we are protected by the power of his indestructible life. God accepts Christ’s blood (2 Corinthians 5:17-21, Hebrews 9:22), and Christ is not dying over and over again (Hebrews 9:25-28). He finished the job completely. You’re not being forgiven little by little or sin by sin; Christians are totally forgiven people.

Let us begin in prayer:  

Let the words of my mouth, and the meditation of my heart, be acceptable in thy sight, oh Lord, my strength, and my redeemer. Gracious heavenly Father, because You are our light, and our salvation, we have no need to be afraid. We thank You for not giving us a spirit of fear, but a spirit of power and of love. Father, we thank You for holding us in the palm of Your hand securely, never to be snatched away or to wander off again. Thank You for filling us with the power of Your love, and for casting out all fear. In the name of Jesus, Amen.

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