Knowing Things

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Grace is amazing! Magnificent. Phenomenal. Jay Kesler observed, “Only God would try this on us.”

Indeed! Who else would redeem those irretrievably useless to Him and then declare them pearls of great price, justified, sanctified, forgiven, and accepted? Will we ever understand the grace of God extended to us via Christ? How is it possible that the finite can understand the infinite or the ones included understand the One who took them in?

Should you contemplate the grace of God? You bet.

But don’t stop with celebration. In your contemplation and celebration, you must aspire to apply grace in your earthly life. This Spirit-led work is where you discover God’s mercy: Jesus Christ.

There is tension between what you believe and what you do. Theologically, it is challenging to integrate salvation in Christ through faith alone with James’ statement, “…faith without works is useless” (2:20b). It is apparent that Romans, Galatians, and Hebrews fit together like fingers in a glove. The Book of James? Not so much.

Once Martin Luther comprehended “the just, shall live, by faith” (cf. Rm. 1:17), he advocated for the Book of James to be removed from the canon of Scripture. If salvation is through Christ alone, by faith alone, then how could James be divinely inspired in his advocacy that performance is integral to salvation? “You see that a man is justified by works, and not by faith alone,” James writes (cf. 2:24), indicting himself in Luther’s mind.

In time, Martin changed his opinion, but integrating the high theology of grace with the grinding necessity for God’s mercy in life’s crucible of tenuous performance is not readily apparent. However, the labor to apply grace and experience God’s mercy is essential if you hope to convert what you know of grace into a working, accessible understanding of mercy.

Several biblical authors seek to address a first century movement called Gnosticism (pronounced: nos’-te-sism). The Christian Gnostics—there were other types of Gnostics—were so devoted to the message of grace that they emphasized the spiritual at the expense, often to the exclusion of, the physical. For the Gnostics, as long as you had spiritual belief, what you did was impertinent (aka, license).

The Christian Gnostics believed that what they knew spiritually was all they needed to focus upon. How they lived was either irrelevant or someone else’s problem.

Late in the first century, led by the apologist Irenaeus, Gnosticism was declared a heresy.

Yet, Gnosticism persists, and as it was in the first century, its doctrine is detrimental to your life as a Christian. Knowledge of grace without application means you miscarry the mercy of God. Since the mercy of God is the active engagement of Christ in your life, miscarriage of mercy is problematic.

The church has long considered each of these heresies.

There is great emphasis, especially among those teaching about grace, to list all that is true of you as a Believer. It is said that knowing the truth of grace will transform your life. However, while knowing grace reconciles you to God, knowing what is true in heaven and not making application to daily life is a form of death and isolation, states James (cf. 2:17). Meaning: You can know grace, but unless the indwelling mercy of God in Christ permeates your life, grace does you no earthly good. Practically, this means you are alone.  

James writes about spiritual knowledge without application. He calls this “faith without works” and deems this belief “useless.” Driving home his point, if you fail to understand that your spiritual knowledge is worthless without personal application, then you are a “foolish fellow” (cf. 2:19-20).

James is bucking up, throwing down a spiritual gauntlet! He’s in your face.

Without daily devotion to applied grace, the attainments of Christ are irrelevant. This means that as far as your earthly existence is concerned, you’re isolated, on your own until you get to heaven. Do you see the problem?

So what does this modern Gnosticism look like?

Example: You’ve heard the saying, “He’s so spiritually minded he’s of no earthly good.”

Example: I read recently, “Awareness of sin is evil.”

Example: “There’s no such thing as a Believer living in sin.”

Example: “Rest. I already took care of it.”

Example: “God is not at all interested in you learning to do better at the Christian life.”

Example: “Christianity is not do or don’t. It is done.”

To be fair, I think I understand what each of these quotes is attempting to convey, but missing or dismissed from each is the necessity for earthly application. Each quote espouses to know something spiritual. Yet each is divorced from what to do with what you know.

A form of Gnosticism is among us and the predictable outcomes of this philosophy are evident. While calling it the message of grace, folks are embracing perfectionism, pacifism, and universalism. But like Gnosticism, the church has long considered each of these heresies.

So what’s the appeal of Gnosticism and why are those focused on the message of grace especially susceptible to its allure?

I believe it’s primarily out of fear of legalism.

What is legalism? The belief that something you do, or fail to do, can affect the standing you have with God through Jesus Christ.

Their spirituality wasn’t applied.

In other words, legalism implies that the complete and finished work of Christ is actually incomplete, unfinished, and dependent on your performance versus the work of Christ alone.

Legalism is a terrible message to insert within true Christianity. The angriest book in the Bible is Galatians. What’s the author incensed about? Legalism! The idea that the work of Christ can be amended by human effort.

Thus, it appears the message of grace is in opposition to guidance on performance.

Is this the case?

Clearly, performance-based acceptance with God is bad theology, but does this mean teaching regarding performance is legalistic? Is instruction about performance, evaluation of performance, and correction of performance inappropriate, unbiblical, or counter to grace?

Grace is magnificent! But focus on the message of grace to the exclusion of its application to your earthly life and you will discover what James warned about: “Faith without works is useless.”

What does James mean?

He means that you can know spiritual things and have faith, but if you fail to apply the things you know, they do you no earthly good; your faith is irrelevant. Thus, you can know God is good, but until you understand His goodness in trial and temptation, your knowledge is useless to daily living. You can know the Spirit indwells you, but until you understand how to implement His resourcefulness to you during life’s demands, the indwelling Spirit is only something you know about. You can know the passage declaring “I will never leave you or forsake you,” but until you understand the presence of Jesus in the furnace of injustice, you only have a memory verse.

A key aspect of Scripture is its instruction in applied godliness. Yes, you are declared godly because you are in Christ, but how godliness looks and acts is integral to your life in Christ.

The New Testament contains approximately 1500 passages specifying intended, imperative performance: “As a new person in Christ, it is imperative that you do this, exhibit that behavior, implement this practice. It is God’s intent that you perform in this manner because doing so is essential to your wellbeing.”

Is it possible to practice the imperative counsel of Scripture and be legalistic? Sure. But just because it’s possible to misuse biblically specified performance doesn’t mean the performance is legalistic. The problem isn’t the performance itself, it’s the underlying motive for performing.

The Bible tells you to do many things: study, go, think, trust, pray, labor, train, repent, confess, practice, fast, serve, rest, sacrifice. These spiritual behaviors, when practiced as prescribed by Scripture, inform you of grace’s magnificence while guiding your application, practice, progress, and earthly realization of Christ living in and through you. This daily dance with mercy is the life of Christ in and through you.

How do you convert knowledge to understanding?

In grace, you have shown up at the occasion of life dressed in your tux. In mercy, you dance the dance of life while dressed in your tux and sweating the occasion.

Work out what you know against the awareness of your earthly need until you gain enough clarity through practice to understand what to do with what you know. Once your understanding becomes a Spirit-empowered proficiency, then your knowledge is converted into accessible power.

When God determined to live through you, He knew grace alone would be insufficient for each day’s demands. He knew you also required His daily mercy. In grace, God solved His problem with you. In mercy, He resolves your walk with Him.

Spiritual performance is essential to spiritual belief.

What you know spiritually is useless without spiritual behavior to go along with it. Romans 1:17 and James 2:24 are not in conflict as Martin Luther initially feared. Rather, James is elaborating on the imperative necessity: Romans 1:17 does you no earthly good unless you apply it!

Without earthly application, the indwelling life of Christ lacks context. What you know is useless and what you do is impertinent.

Integrating spiritual truth into earthly existence requires work and work can seem to be in conflict with grace. Work is hard. Work requires practice, and failure, and evaluation, and measurement, and correction. Work is a discipline. Work is a regular confession of falling short, learning, relenting, repenting, and starting over.

Work is entering the arena of life and wondering if you have what it takes. Work is doubt, and fear of failure, and struggling to acquire gain of function.

Work has angst.

Work requires active engagement and necessitates rigorous practice.

To gain God’s favor? No!

Rather, to gain personal, applicable understanding of Christ’s integral, essential initiative in your everyday life.

So, Christ who is your life, as your life, living in you, and through you. Life itself. Himself. This life-work is the Spirit-empowered life pulsing in each day’s moments. The Christ life is attitudinal. It is dispositional. It is the desperation prayer, the morning dedication, the reliance that with relinquishment of your ingenuity and resolve, Christ will life-out Himself, otherwise known as, the mercy of God.

Still, work seems like the opposite of resting in Christ.

If true, then work should be dismissed as legalism.

But if this is the case, then why are you instructed to “work out your salvation with fear and trembling” (cf. Phil. 2:12). Why are you given 1500 passages specifying behaviors crucial to your wellbeing as a Believer and told emphatically to perform them?

It seems clear: The problem isn’t work.

Therefore, the issue must be the motive with which you approach the intended work. Is work something you do for God (legalism) or is work the life of Christ exhibited through you as you do the hard, intentional work of living the Spirit-engaged life?

Gnostics knew things, but they didn’t understand Christ as their life; their spirituality wasn’t applied. In an effort to avoid legalism they lapsed into license and further heresy.

The Gnostics knew things about God, but they and their sects were deemed heretical because their spiritual beliefs prevented them from converting what they knew about God into a viscerally understood, personally relevant, mercifully engaged, and ever-present, Spirit-led application of life in Christ.

Life, ebbing and flowing. Life in Christ.

What you know must be infused into and reflected in what you do. If it is not, the spiritual things you know are of no earthly use.

If all you know of Christ is grace, and salvation, and justification then Christ as the mercy of God infused into each day’s issues is absent. This makes grace useless, dead, inert. Jesus is irrelevant.

Christ must never be so!

Jesus didn’t come just to make you a new person. He came to forge into you a proficient capability and capacity for how faith in Him works. As this spiritual proficiency develops it becomes possible for you to understand Christ as life, not just through belief, but through faith’s application of Him. Until this transpires, your faith remains so heavenly bounded that it is of no earthly use.

Thus, what Gnostics misunderstand and Martin Luther realized is that the just, shall live, by faith, and the life of faith manifests itself in actions that may be prescribed. Christ isn’t only the grace of forgiveness and life in heaven, a new place, a fine meal, and a seat at the table. He is the throbbing pulse of life today, demonstrated, exemplified, and realized within the tension of daily performance, rigor, endurance, perseverance, and trust” (cf. Rom. 1:17, Jm. 2:14-26, Phil. 2:12-16).

Anything less is useless because Christ is rendered irrelevant and the indwelling Spirit inconsequential.