Happy Mother's Day! We're so glad you have come with your family. We've been talking this Spring about what it means to be “Soul Strong.” We've been learning that being “Soul Strong” isn't achieved by digging deeper with or in human spirit. Soul Strength is something we receive from God's Holy Spirit. So, in Ephesians 6:10, Paul invites us, “Finally, be strengthened by the Lord and by his vast strength.”
This past month we moved mom into Assisted Living. Overall, she is perfectly healthy, but her memory has been steadily failing. This progressive Mild Cognitive Impairment--Dementia--Alzheimer’s Disease erases just a little more, every day, stealing away your loved one. It was becoming impossible to provide everything she needs, around the clock. If you know, you know. Safety, supervision, brain-healthy diet, daily social stimulation, activity, exercise, help with about anything. It's kind of like child-rearing in reverse. When you raise a child they steadily become more independent, responsible, sharp. But not with this.
My brother Mike and I have been cleaning her house—and mom kept records of everything. This week I stumbled across the massive Train Accident file. When I was a youngster, our family was driving home from the store (like we did every week) when suddenly we were struck by a speeding locomotive! I was reading a transcript of the court case. The crossing was overgrown with so much brush, you'd have to walk onto the track and stare down the railway to see if a train was coming. The warning lights at that intersection were broken. The engineer was speeding, and we were in a line of cars. A few seconds slower or faster we would have all been crushed.
In the accident, my dad's entire chest was crushed by the steering wheel. He wasn't moving. The engine of our station wagon got shoved against mom, breaking vertebrae in her back. I blacked out. Scenes from the accident flash in my memory, like a vague dream. But in the court, mom testified how she was fully conscious the whole time, and how despite her severe injury, finding strength to pull all us children out of the car! Both mom and dad always gave glory to God. It was the Lord who gave them strength not just in that moment, on that day, but for the year of recovery afterwards!
Whether it’s being run over by a locomotive, or going into Assisted Living, mom's every confidence has been, “The Lord is with me. The Lord will help me.” Even now, in whatever happens, I overhear her saying that prayer. The disease has stolen a lot, but it hasn't yet stolen her faith in God's vast strength.
A few weeks ago, we talked about the power of Truth to make us soul strong. In Ephesians 6:14a Paul says, “Stand, therefore, with truth like a belt around your waist…” When difficulty comes, we so quickly lose sight of God’s power and love. We so quickly forget that God's is powerful to snatch us from the clutches of Satan and his schemes. And God is good. He is a loving Father. We're his children—there isn't anything he wouldn't freely give up to save us. For God so loved the world he gave his one and only son that whoever believes in him shall not perish but have eternal life. I believe all truth puts us in a place of strength—even inconvenient or scary truths. But of all truths, the truth of God, the truth of his love for us and this world, advantages us.
Now right along with truth, in Ephesians 6:14 Paul adds, “Stand, therefore, with truth like a belt around your waist, [and] righteousness like armor on your chest.” There isn't probably anyone who had a more lofty view of righteousness in the Bible than the Apostle Paul. For Moses, the highest view of righteousness was to point to the Holiness of God. In the Law and Prophets God has always thundered, “Be Holy for I am Holy.” The Law and the Prophets were a way Moses and Prophets sought to translate God's holiness into practical, every day laws and principles.
But in the fullness of time, along came Christ Jesus, God incarnate, God in the flesh. Jesus came full of grace and truth. Jesus brought perfect righteousness and justice. He was the image of the invisible God, the word become flesh, the exact representation of God in human or bodily form. In the gospels, Peter, realizing Christ's holiness and power pleads for Jesus, “Go away from me I'm a sinful man.” And I think this was Paul's sentiment.
In Philippians 3 Paul reflects on Christ's righteousness. First of all, he renounces any confidence he possesses in his own righteousness. In regard to the Law of God, when Paul measured himself against the most elite Jewish brethren, Paul regarded himself as spiritually zealous, morally blameless, and legally righteous as any other. But when Paul compared his own righteousness to that of Christ's pure, perfect, and holy righteousness he melted.
In Philippians 3:8-10 he writes, “I also consider everything to be a loss in view of the surpassing value of knowing Christ Jesus my Lord. Because of him I have suffered the loss of all things and consider them as dung, so that I may gain Christ 9 and be found in him, not having a righteousness of my own from the law, but one that is through faith in Christ—the righteousness from God based on faith. 10 My goal is to know him and the power of his resurrection and the fellowship of his sufferings, being conformed to his death, 11 assuming that I will somehow reach the resurrection from among the dead.”
There is such profound consistency in Paul's letters. Where does strength come from? Not from within but from knowing Jesus, in his vast resurrection power. Where does truth come from? Not from within, but in the all surpassing value of knowing Jesus. And where doesn't righteousness come from? Well, it’s not that you can't find a degree of strength, truth, and righteousness within. Clearly, we can. But the greatest measure of righteousness is found not within, but from Christ. Elsewhere Paul uses the language of being clothed in Christ, clothed in power, clothed in truth, clothed in righteousness. The essence of being Soul Strong is putting on our Sunday best, or even our personal best, but putting on God's best… putting on Christ himself!
There is not a breastplate with which to armor yourself more superior than that of Christ's righteousness. In death, you don't want to be found only with a righteousness of your own. You want to be found having trusted Christ's breastplate of righteousness. In his masterful treatise to the Romans, also Galatians, Paul time and again extols the righteousness of Christ.
Romans 3:22-26 Paul writes, “21 But now, apart from the law, the righteousness of God has been revealed, attested by the Law and the Prophets. 22 The righteousness of God is through faith in Jesus Christ to all who believe, since there is no distinction. 23 For all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God; 24 they are justified freely by his grace through the redemption that is in Christ Jesus. 25 God presented him as the mercy seat by his blood, through faith, to demonstrate his righteousness, because in his restraint God passed over the sins previously committed. 26 God presented him to demonstrate his righteousness at the present time, so that he would be just and justify the one who has faith in Jesus.”
So, for reemphasis: Paul's high view of righteousness is that no one, and nothing, surpasses the righteousness, holiness, and perfection of Christ. When you die, you will be judged by God, on the basis of whose righteousness you most trusted. You don't want to be found having trusted your own leaky righteousness. You want to be found shielded, clothed, fully trusting Christ's breastplate of righteousness. If you are looking for a ticket into heaven, its Christ's righteousness.
Now the Christian doesn't hold a high view of Christ's righteousness in a vacuum. The spiritual man doesn't just want to be “covered" in Christ’s righteousness, but to become righteous through and through. The “weakness” of Christianity is that you have people perfectly content to be covered in Christ's righteousness by faith, but with little or no ambition to be holy as God is holy. No ambition to be perfect as our heavenly father is perfect. No ambition to be imitators of God. No ambition to put on the Divine Nature, to walk in the presence and sanctifying power of the Holy Spirit.
Another way to think about this is to simply say, in Scripture righteousness isn't an either-or proposition. Righteousness is either Christ's righteousness or my righteousness. Christ’s righteousness or no righteousness at all.
No, it’s best to think of righteousness as a both-and proposition. We absolutely need to be shielded, clothed, protected by Christ's breastplate of righteousness. But God desires truth and righteousness in our innermost being. Not either-or but both-and. The strongest soul isn't the soul that asks, “Should I go on sinning so that grace may increase? Should I go on sinning because I have my insurance (Christ righteousness) card?” The strongest soul is that soul that says, “Follow my example as I follow Christ. Be holy as God is Holy. Be imitators of God. Be perfect as the heavenly father is perfect.”
POSITION
CONDITION