The Naked Gospel: Truth You May Never Hear in Church (13 page)

G
RADUATE SCHOOLS FEATURE FACULTY MEMBERS OF ALL KINDS
. I’
LL
never forget my first semester when I met two gifted professors who each treated students very differently. One professor was stern and strict. As he walked the halls, the passers-by would tighten up. He was intimidating in his tone and condescending in his speech. The other professor treated his students as colleagues. He was friendly, full of energy, and encouraging toward those around him. He looked for opportunities to help his students succeed. Rather than pointing out their failures, he had a future-oriented focus: What would his students need to succeed? Would they be ready for placement in top-notch research institutions? He was interested in training them for what was ahead.

Both professors were well respected in their field. But they went about their daily interactions with students in starkly different ways. As students got to know both professors, you can imagine what happened. They were drawn to one and repelled by the other. I still remember the day we were required to select academic advisers to mentor us. Numerous students flocked to the kind professor. Very few, if any, wanted advising from the condescending professor.

The Holy Spirit is our mentor. But what type of mentor is he? What is his approach and how does he interact with us?

The book of Hebrews tells us that God (the Father) doesn’t remember our sins anymore (Hebrews 8:12). Then the author reiterates the same point, declaring that
the Holy Spirit
doesn’t remember our sins either (Hebrews 10:17). Why mention this point twice?

Sometimes we separate God’s act of love on the cross from the Holy Spirit’s perspective on sins. This subtly implies that God and the Holy Spirit are not on the same page. It’s amazing that we can imagine ourselves to be at peace with God the Father, but then we think that the Holy Spirit is making us feel guilty and distant as punishment for our sins. Many Christians call this feeling the
conviction
of the Holy Spirit.

How can we use the term
conviction
for Christians? In one breath, we admit that God has forgotten our sins. We say he doesn’t take them into account. We may even agree with the writer of Hebrews that the Holy Spirit himself has forgotten our sins. But in the next breath, we announce firmly that the Holy Spirit
convicts
us of our sins.

To unravel this apparent contradiction, let’s look at the meaning of the term
convict.

Convict
means “to find guilty.” Within a judicial system, conviction is followed by sentencing and then punishment. Inside the word
conviction
is the term we usually reserve for a person who is incarcerated—a
convict.
So should the verb
convict
be used to describe interaction between the Holy Spirit and children of God? Probably not.

The root
convict-
only appears eight times in the Bible. And not one of those appearances has anything to do with the daily life of the believer! The gospel of John contains the only passage that joins
Holy Spirit
and
convict:

I [Jesus] tell you the truth, it is to your advantage that I go away; for if I do not go away, the Helper [Holy Spirit] will not come to you; but if I go, I will send Him to you. And He, when He comes, will
convict the world
concerning sin and righteousness and judgment; concerning sin,
because they do not believe in Me.

J
OHN
16:7-9 NASB, italics added

So who’s being convicted here? It’s the world, characterized as
people who do not believe
in Jesus. Jesus is not talking about Christians who already believe in him! In this and all other relevant passages, context makes it clear that the term
convict
is exclusively reserved for unbelievers.

If it’s inaccurate to speak of the Holy Spirit as convicting believers, then what can we expect from him regarding our behavior? The epistles clearly describe how the Holy Spirit operates in the lives of believers. He’s our Counselor, our Helper, our Comforter, our Advocate—and the one who guides us into all the truth (John 16:13). He prays on our behalf (Romans 8:26). And he testifies to us concerning our identity as children of God (Romans 8:16).

But how does our behavior improve? By these very means! How can we not believe that the counsel of the Holy Spirit is sufficient to bring about genuine change in our lives? Rather than dredging up the past, the Holy Spirit trains us for the future. Rather than treating us as convicts, he recognizes us as holy saints. When sinful behaviors occur in our lives, he reminds us of Jesus’ work on the cross. We need to know that we’re pure and made for good
deeds, not sins. The world is certainly
not
going to teach us that!

The work of the Holy Spirit doesn’t find a parallel in this world. We can’t look to any other relationship as an example of his counsel and guidance. Why not? Because no human mentor can maintain a mind-set of total forgiveness, esteem us as perfect people, and simultaneously coach us regarding attitudes and actions.

Is this just splitting hairs? Not at all. Too many Christians succumb to the Accuser while wrongly attributing these attacks to the
conviction
of the Holy Spirit. There’s no better tactic for Satan than to first tempt us and then flood us with guilt by masquerading as the Holy Spirit. Sometimes we even entertain guilt just for having the thought pass through our minds!

God has forgotten our sins. Shouldn’t we? When our view of God is off-kilter or our understanding of Christ’s work is incomplete, it’s natural that our sense of what the Holy Spirit is doing will likewise be askew.

We’ve got a clean slate. The Holy Spirit is in our corner. He’ll
never
leave us. And he is an effective coach.

S
O THERE YOU ARE, AND ALL OF YOUR FRIENDS ARE WATCHING
as every mean, petty, and selfish act you’ve ever done is projected on the big heavenly movie screen. As soon as the movie is over, you’re really gonna get it. But maybe the most embarrassing part is how long the film seems to be lasting! “Could we maybe pause for an intermission or something?” you ask. But no one laughs, because many are just too horrified. And others are too busy worrying that the next feature might be their own blockbuster film.

The concept of final judgment seems to contradict total forgiveness, and the idea of all our sins being projected on a movie screen for review by Almighty God fills us with insecurity. So how can we reconcile the scriptural certainty of a “great white throne” judgment (Revelation 20:11) with our once-for-all forgiveness?
^*

The events surrounding the great white throne are recounted in Revelation 20 and 21. Revelation 20:11-15 informs us that God calls “the dead” to his throne for judgment—those who are pulled up from the sea, death, and Hades. They are judged
according to their deeds and then hurled into the lake of fire. There’s one criterion that dooms them: their names aren’t written in the book of life.

Chapter 21 then addresses the church. Here God calls believers his “bride” and says there’ll be no sorrow for us in heaven. So we see a clear distinction made between the dead pulled up from hell in chapter 20 and Christ’s precious bride in chapter 21. The bottom line is that Christians won’t be put on trial and judged, since we believe in the Lord Jesus Christ and our names are written in the book of life.

One eye-opening statement concerning our perfect standing before the Judge is made by Jesus himself:
“He who believes in [Jesus] is not judged;
he who does not believe has been judged already, because he has not believed in the name of the only begotten Son of God” (John 3:18 NASB, italics added).

Despite the clarity of God’s Word, I’ve heard some use the final judgment to instill what they term “godly fear” in believers. I’ve even heard some say that they determine the quality of a sermon by how guilty they feel afterward! Taken out of context, the great white throne judgment can seriously damage our sense of assurance.

Picture an assembly line at the Ford Motor Company. It’s your first real job, and you and a coworker are busily assembling fuel injectors intended for the Ford Mustang. The first week on the job, the conveyor belt seemed to move so quickly, but now you’re getting used to it. Now that weeks and months have passed, building fuel injectors feels like second nature.

Of course, you’ve made your share of mistakes, and farther down
the assembly line the product of your errors have been discarded, melted down, and recast for future use. But as time passes, you learn to make fewer and fewer errors, and the process begins to feel somewhat natural. In fact, you sometimes find yourself assembling dozens of injectors without even realizing the time is passing!

Understandably, Ford is interested in quality work. So an inspector comes by to assess your team’s work and carefully take note of the waste product as well as the number of fully functioning injectors you’ve assembled. Sure, some of your coworkers get a bit nervous when the inspector is around, but you’ve got an ace in the hole. You live with the inspector! He’s still “Dad” to you. And he has always sought to teach you the tricks of the trade, ever since you were little and would tag along with “Daddy” at work.

Observe that you and your coworkers aren’t on the conveyor belt. Neither your dad nor Ford Motor Company has any interest in judging you as a person! Only the
product
of your work—whether of high quality or not—is on the belt. Similarly, Jesus informs us that those who believe in him are
not
judged. But our works are tested, assessed, or appraised as they proceed down the conveyor belt toward God’s collection of his Son’s accomplishments. Paul speaks of our works being tested to see if they’ll endure:

No one can lay any
foundation
other than the one already laid, which is
Jesus Christ.
If anyone builds on this foundation using gold, silver, costly stones, wood, hay or straw, their work will be shown for what it is, because the Day will bring it to light. It will be revealed with fire, and the fire will
test the quality of each person’s work.

1 C
ORINTHIANS
3:11-13, italics added

The principle is simple: Anything built on Christ will stand
the test of time; anything done in fleshly effort will not. But
you
are never on trial.
You
are not on the conveyor belt.

This is a crucial distinction to make, since many Christians aren’t clear on it. God has divorced who we are from what we’ve done, so that our destiny and standing are
not
in question. At the same time, the Father wants to showcase all that his Son has accomplished. And there’ll be a grand celebration at the end of time as we know it.

“OK, so maybe we ourselves are not going to be judged, but I still want to earn tons of rewards in heaven!” Quite often I’ll hear a statement like this after teaching on our freedom from God’s judgment.

As humans, we always seem to be looking for a punishment-or reward-based motivation to keep our behavior on track. While we’re more apt to dismiss a blatant guilt motivation, the picture often painted is that God will be doling out mansions of various sizes and other merit-based awards when we hit heaven. Christians have commonly used the term
rewards
to refer to extra square footage or certificates redeemable for crowns and jewels in heaven’s gift shop.

In reality, the term
rewards
does not appear anywhere in the New Testament. The apostle Paul speaks of a “reward” (singular, not plural) or a “prize” in the context of running a race and reaching the end. But Paul also notes that everything else is like garbage next to knowing Christ Jesus (Philippians 3:8). Given this truth, do we really believe that God will be awarding larger homes and nicer jewelry to those who depended on Jesus more?

God doesn’t want us to think and act in certain ways because we’re seeking to accumulate heavenly merchandise. Just as Paul was willing to lose all things for the sake of knowing Christ, we too should make it our agenda to know him. For more wealth in heaven? No, we want to know him simply because it’s the greatest thing going on planet Earth.

But doesn’t Jesus himself tell us to store up treasures in heaven (Matthew 6:20)? Yes, but treasures aren’t rewards. People
discover
treasures. They don’t earn them. Once a treasure is discovered, it can be abandoned or it can be stored somewhere.

When God tells us we can store up treasures in heaven, he’s asking us to consider our daily choices and their outcomes. Some choices end in a worthless product that is later burned up like wood, hay, or straw. Other choices endure for eternity since they are expressions of Jesus Christ.

Essentially, God is posing the following questions: Given who you are and what you know, what will you invest in? Will you store up attitudes and actions that endure forever, or will you pursue dead works that end up being burned?

The choice is ours.