A Guide to Spiritual Growth
By
Gary Ray Branscome
Since I am dealing with a broad topic that
has no
universally accepted terminology, let me begin by explaining my terms
and what
I see as a problem. First of all, I believe the life of a Christian
should be a
life of piety in the Biblical sense of the word. We should all want to
live “a
quiet and peaceable life in all godliness and honesty” (1Timothy 2:2).
However,
because the heart of man is “deceitful above all things, and
desperately
wicked,” piety is easily perverted, the Pharisees being one obvious
example of
such perversion (Jeremiah 17:9).
Now, I am sure that the Pharisees
would not agree. After all, they prided themselves in their strictness
(Acts
26:5). Therefore, let us begin by looking at what they really believed,
and why
Christ condemned them. Our first clue is found in the words, “You
Pharisees
clean the outside of the cup and platter; but inside you are full of
robbery
and wickedness” (Luke
Since I believe that we have a lot of people
like that
today, let’s look a bit closer at what they believed. The words, “you
have made
the commandment of God of no effect by your tradition,” give us our
next clue
(Matthew 15:6). They were rationalizing sin! To rationalize sin is to
find some
excuse for it in order to ease one’s conscience. And, this was not just
a small
problem it was their main approach to Bible interpretation. I did not
realize
this until I had a language teacher who had studied to be a rabbi. He told me that the
Pharisees decided that no one could keep the Law if it was interpreted
in the
strictest sense, so they decided that the most lenient interpretation
was all
God required. And, the rabbis they acclaimed most highly were those who
were
most adept at finding “loopholes” in the Law. But, as Jesus pointed
out, by
explaining away commandments that were intended to show them their sin
and need
of God’s mercy, they made the Word of God “of no effect” (Matthew 15:6)
[See
also Luke 11:46, Matthew 12:7.] Therefore, even though they thought of
themselves as pious, and made a big show of being pious, they were
really
watering down the law in order to convince themselves that they were
righteous.
Yet, by so doing they were only deceiving themselves (John
Because the self deception that blinds
us to our own sins is a stumbling block that hinders us in seeing our
need for
forgiveness in Christ, once we come to faith in Christ we should want
to remove
that stumbling block by identifying our sins. However, as I just
pointed out,
we are only deceiving ourselves if we excuse or justify those sins.
Therefore, instead
of excusing them we should humbly confess them to God, acknowledging
our need
for forgiveness (1John 1:9). And, having acknowledged that need we
should take
comfort in God’s promise of forgiveness in Christ (1John 1:7).
Nevertheless, because of our carnal
nature, and because we may have rationalized those same sins in the
past, we do
not always feel sorry for our sins. On the contrary, we may feel no
remorse at
all. Therefore, it is important to realize that this lack of remorse is
itself
sin. It is sin because it is the product of a sinful heart (Jeremiah
17:9, Isaiah
64:6, 1John
Part of training the conscience
involves learning what the Bible says about sin. However, just learning
the
names of various sins is no guarantee that we understand them, or are
able to
recognize them. For example: I grew up hearing pride denounced as a sin
of the
Pharisees. But, it was not until I was grown that I actually understood
what
pride is. Up until that time I thought of pride as arrogance, rather
than self
righteousness. In addition, we may find the old names for certain sins
totally
incomprehensible — names such as, lasciviousness, variance, emulations,
reveling,
and so forth.
Another problem that sometimes arises
is false guilt, or false humility. While this may be seen as just
another
aspect of the deceitfulness of the human heart, we need to be careful
so that
we do not wind up justifying sin. On one hand someone may feel false
guilt over
something trivial, like forgetting to send a birthday card, while on
the other
hand false guilt or false humility may itself be a satanic deception.
For
example: A pastor who refuses to condemn the sin of homosexuality
because he
feels that it would be unloving to do so. We know that that sort of
false guilt
is satanic because it contradicts the plain teaching of Scripture.
Moreover, as
Christians we have a responsibility to warn the unrepentant of their
need to
repent, and it would be pure hatred for them on our part if we instead
give
them a false assurance of salvation (1Corinthians 5:1-5, Hebrews
Having trained our conscience to
recognize sin, we need to have a tender
conscience before God. And, that involves simply putting what I
have said
so far into practice. We should never rationalize sin, but should flee
from it.
Like Joseph — who when tempted by Potiphar’s wife said, “How then can I
do this
great wickedness, and sin against God?” — those who have a tender
conscience
before God will do what is right at all times, even if no one would
ever know,
because they would know and God would know (Genesis 39:9).
Once a Christian reaches this point in
his spiritual growth, his life is not a matter of keeping certain
rules, but of
walking in a clean conscience before God. I am not saying that he will
break
the rules, for his conscience would not let him do that. What I am
saying is
that once God has blessed his efforts at training his conscience, the
Law of
God is written on his heart (Isaiah 51:7, Jeremiah 31:33, Romans
6:1-14).
Having said this I need to make it
clear that as long as a believer thinks that his own efforts at
resisting sin
make him righteous, or even partially righteous, [although there is no
such
thing as partial righteousness James 2:10] he will not be able to
understand
the freedom we have in Christ. And, the reason he will not be able to
understand is because he will see freedom from the law as freedom from
righteousness instead of freedom from sin (Romans 7:4, Galatians
The law makes us sinners, not
righteous men. It makes us sinners because it condemns us. It has
sentenced us
all to hell! Therefore, freedom from the law is freedom from
condemnation, not
freedom from righteousness. In short, we have all received a pardon.
And,
having been delivered from condemnation, only a fool would place
himself back
under condemnation by using his freedom as an excuse to sin (Hebrews
However, I have encountered believers
who, in the name of following the law, excuse such things as vulgar
language by
saying, “I’m not cussing”. Nevertheless, those who rightly understand
the
freedom we have in Christ will not use such language, or do any thing
that might
lead unbelievers to think that we do not “practice what we preach,” or
in any
way bring dishonor to Christ. On the contrary, Christ has called us to
a higher
standard, and on the basis of that standard we strive for what is good
and high
and pure while avoiding anything that is associated with
unrighteousness (James
1:21, Philippians 4:8, Ephesians 4:29).
False Piety
One of the biggest problems in
American churches is false piety. In saying that, I realize that there
are
bigger problems, such as blatant unbelief and immorality. However, I
believe
that one reason conservative Christians are not making more of a
difference in
our society lies in works righteousness. I am talking about Christians
who want
to motivate themselves to do right by telling themselves that God is
pleased
with them and will bless them because of their efforts rather than
because of
what Christ did on the cross (Romans 9:30-33). In truth, as long as
they
believe that God will bless them because of what they do, they are
trusting in
what they do to bring them God’s grace instead of trusting in Christ.
And, as
long as they trust in what they do, they will not have the Holy
Spirit’s help
in resisting sin (Galatians
Conclusion
All that I have said can be summed up
in the meaning of the phrase, “a tender conscience before God”. On one
hand, we
should all be able to say with Paul, “I know that nothing good dwells
in me
(that is, in my flesh,)” while on the other hand we should all firmly
believe
that because our sins have been washed away by the blood of Christ God
sees no fault
in us (Romans 7:18, 1John 1:7, Romans 10:4, 1John 3:21).