Last week, as part of our sermon, we looked at these two words. There are only 2 letters different between them but their meaning couldn’t be more different or significant. The implications of the difference is quite simply ‘Mind Blowing’!

We are talking here about how we receive Christ’s righteousness.

Is His righteousness imparted or imputed to us?

IMPARTED – this is what teachers attempt to do everyday. They try to get some of their knowledge into the children’s heads. This is an inherently slow process and the results are limited. What tends to happen is that a small amount of the teachers knowledge is imparted. Adding to the child’s existing knowledge.

There is a danger that we think Jesus adds some of His righteousness to us in this way.

So we might think to ourselves ‘I’m essentially a sinner with a bit of Christ’s goodness added on’

This is not what the Bible teaches.

IMPUTED – this means I have the total and complete, fully formed, all-in-one-go righteousness of God at the moment I believe in Jesus. If teachers could do this at school the lessons would be very short indeed.

It’s not that I have had a little bit of righteousness added to my sinfulness, rather he has taken my sinfulness away and replaced it with His righteousness, completely and forever.

So I am no longer a sinner but a saint!!

This is grace and it changes everything.

Ephesians 6 v 10-20

Paul teaches us, as he has in many other places, that the christian life is a battle. The moment a person receives Christ they are pitched into the battle of their lives.

So much contemporary christian teaching not only leaves this out but actually teaches something quite different. If many modern preachers are to be believed becoming a christian is like winning the lottery, all your dreams will now come true!! You’ll be rich and comfortable, successful and popular!!

This was clearly not the case for those early disciples, the first to follow Jesus. In fact their experience was much more as Paul is now describing. Andrew and Peter were first to be called by Jesus.

Their battle started immediately, the cost of following Jesus was high. For them it meant…

1.Leaving family traditions.
2.Leaving financial security.
3.Leaving their family business.
4.Leaving home.
5.Leaving everything that was familiar.
6.Attracting attention of authorities.
7.Being confronted with their own shortcomings.
8.Spending long periods of time not really sure what was happening.
9.Seeing friends mistreated and killed.
10.Crossing impossible cultural boundaries.
11.Being imprisoned.
12.Both killed on crosses.

It is safe to deduce that this is a model for all who would follow in their footsteps, and so it has been down the centuries.

Next time we will begin to look at the armor and equipment God has given us to fight and win.

TOAM BRIGHTON 2009

Once again ‘Together on a Mission’ was outstanding! Personally very moved to hear what God is doing around the world. One story that was both inspirational and amazing:

A young girl from Lesotho (Lesotho is one of the poorest nations on earth) who most had ignored was saved and began to feel called to serve God in the UK. She pursued this impression from God and trained as a nurse. As her wages improved she started sending money back to the church in Clarens. When she returned home for holidays she would consistently serve in the church.

She noticed the community in Lesotho had serious transportation problems, even for simple things like getting their weekly shopping so, even though she earned relatively little she has bought a 40 seater bus from Japan (via the internet) and had it exported to Lesotho where it will be used by both church and community.

This is empowerment of the poor!!

So many, many amazing and wonderful stories of God’s love and power. We really can do more together than we can apart.

More soon

Tim Keller’s excellent new book ‘The Prodigal God’ is, and I don’t say this lightly, probably the best book I have read this year. He looks at the parable of the lost son and considers that both sons in the story were equally lost. The younger lost, in the traditional sense, the older son lost in the religious, Pharisaical sense.

Note that it was the older brother that didn’t appear at the feast at the end of the story..

Buy the book, give it as a gift, read it yourself.

buy it here

What is the essence of Pharisee-ism?

Jesus disgust at the Pharisees is universally apparent, never more so than in Matthew 23

13“Woe to you, teachers of the law and Pharisees, you hypocrites! You shut the kingdom of heaven in men’s faces. You yourselves do not enter, nor will you let those enter who are trying to.^[c]

15“Woe to you, teachers of the law and Pharisees, you hypocrites! You travel over land and sea to win a single convert, and when he becomes one, you make him twice as much a son of hell as you are.

16“Woe to you, blind guides! You say, ‘If anyone swears by the temple, it means nothing; but if anyone swears by the gold of the temple, he is bound by his oath.’ 17You blind fools! Which is greater: the gold, or the temple that makes the gold sacred? 18You also say, ‘If anyone swears by the altar, it means nothing; but if anyone swears by the gift on it, he is bound by his oath.’ 19You blind men! Which is greater: the gift, or the altar that makes the gift sacred? 20Therefore, he who swears by the altar swears by it and by everything on it. 21And he who swears by the temple swears by it and by the one who dwells in it. 22And he who swears by heaven swears by God’s throne and by the one who sits on it.

23“Woe to you, teachers of the law and Pharisees, you hypocrites! You give a tenth of your spices—mint, dill and cummin. But you have neglected the more important matters of the law—justice, mercy and faithfulness. You should have practiced the latter, without neglecting the former. 24You blind guides! You strain out a gnat but swallow a camel.

25“Woe to you, teachers of the law and Pharisees, you hypocrites! You clean the outside of the cup and dish, but inside they are full of greed and self-indulgence. 26Blind Pharisee! First clean the inside of the cup and dish, and then the outside also will be clean.

27“Woe to you, teachers of the law and Pharisees, you hypocrites! You are like whitewashed tombs, which look beautiful on the outside but on the inside are full of dead men’s bones and everything unclean. 28In the same way, on the outside you appear to people as righteous but on the inside you are full of hypocrisy and wickedness.

29“Woe to you, teachers of the law and Pharisees, you hypocrites! You build tombs for the prophets and decorate the graves of the righteous. 30And you say, ‘If we had lived in the days of our forefathers, we would not have taken part with them in shedding the blood of the prophets.’ 31So you testify against yourselves that you are the descendants of those who murdered the prophets. 32Fill up, then, the measure of the sin of your forefathers!

33“You snakes! You brood of vipers! How will you escape being condemned to hell? 34Therefore I am sending you prophets and wise men and teachers. Some of them you will kill and crucify; others you will flog in your synagogues and pursue from town to town. 35And so upon you will come all the righteous blood that has been shed on earth, from the blood of righteous Abel to the blood of Zechariah son of Berekiah, whom you murdered between the temple and the altar. 36I tell you the truth, all this will come upon this generation.

Matthew 23 13-36

Jack Crabtree makes this excellent comment:

The problem with Phariseeism was that it was based on a completely false self-concept. The Pharisees did not grasp that they were morally unworthy, that they were shameful, blameworthy creatures. And they certainly did not understand that they could do nothing to make themselves morally worthy before God. They were clueless with respect to their own guilt and real shame; blind to the evil ingrained in their very beings; ignorant of their real motives, the real passions that drove their lives and choices. In short, they were desperately self-deceived. They were enemies of God who—out of a perverse sort of blind sincerity—promoted themselves as the friends of God.

The answer to my question then is PRIDE. The oldest enemy, that corrupt sense of self that blinds to the truth and seeks to crush others to it’s demonic will.

Pride, while pretending all is well within, actually masks a tomb full of dead men’s bones. Motives are unchanged, indeed hellish. The proud seek to climb on the failure of others crushing them without hope of redemption, finally reaching the foul summit the flag of self-satisfaction/gratification can be planted.

No wonder Jesus warned of the yeast of this attitude!

Hope comes in the glorious gospel of Jesus. With this gospel I am reminded that I am in desperate need of a savior and as this dreadful realization hits so does the magnificent truth that a savior is provided. So I live in relation to others not as a grovelling sinner but as a forgiven son, aware both of my need for and the provision of JESUS!!

Lex is an evangelist and elder at Jubilee Community Church in Cape Town, South Africa. He speaks widely amongst our family of churches in Newfrontiers as well as leading the Front Edge initiatives, around the world.

He is writing here under the sub-heading ‘highlights from church history’ and not only is he very well researched but you’ll finish reading encouraged to share your faith, preach the gospel and change the world.

The name ‘the naked preacher’, obviously not a literal description, was chosen because while in Cape Town I preached and cooked breakfast at the same time. The very simple message being ‘you are what you eat’. While practicing the comment was made that the whole experience was fairly Jamie Oliver-esque. Taking this to heart and being that the auditorium was pretty substantial we arranged that I would arrive on stage riding a moped.

Maybe not the most theologically stimulating sermon in history but probably one of my most memorable, anyway the name has, it would seem, stuck.

Nice moped