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The Lazy Man’s Guide to Salvation
Presenter: Larry Kirkpatrick
Location: Internet
Delivery: 2007-04-14 18:45Z
Publication: GreatControversy.org 2007-04-14 22:45Z
Type: Sermon
URL: http://www.greatcontroversy.org/gco/ser/kir-lazy.php
How many lazy people will be found in heaven and the new earth? None, of course. When are our characters formed? Now, during this life. What determines whether we are lazy or not? Our character. Therefore, when must our character change in order for us to experience salvation? The correct answer, is now.
Someone will say that we are blending two very different things here speaking of character on the one hand and salvation on the other. Jesus died for us, we did not. He made atonement, we can never on our own atone. His character stands in place of ours and we have no independent righteousness separate from Him that we can add to the mixture. To add our own righteousness to that of Christ would pollute and dilute it.
To all these but one we will agree. We do believe that character and salvation are irrevocably linked. No good man will be lost. No bad man will be saved. Life and connection with Christ are given us that He might lead us to choosing goodness.
No, we do not save ourselves, or make atonement by good works, or add any of our righteousness to Christ’s. But the love of God constrains us, changes us, draws us, provokes. And that provocation does not merely pray with one hand while choking someone with the other. Lip service is not what Jesus bled for at the cross. Let’s look at this.
Constraining, Drawing, Provoking
The love of Christ constraineth us; because we thus judge, that if one died for all, then were all dead: And that He died for all, that they which live should not henceforth live unto themselves, but unto Him which died for them, and rose again (2 Corinthians 5:14, 15).
Jesus died for all because all have chosen to sin and with the choice of rebellion comes penalty. All were dead, not because born with a disordered kind of humanity, but because they chose to align themselves to its tendencies to self indulgence. Their course of action brought with it dramatic psychological and spiritual liabilities.
Consider these insights from Ellen White’s book Education, pp. 28, 29: “Sin not only shuts us away from God, but destroys in the human soul both the desire and capacity for knowing Him. All this work of evil it is Christ’s mission to undo. The faculties of the soul, paralyzed by sin, the darkened mind, the perverted will, He has power to invigorate and restore.” To sin is to engage in a process of self-destruction, act by act. It is lazy.
Again, notice this from Steps to Christ, p. 15, “Through transgression the sons of man become the subjects of Satan. Through faith in the atoning sacrifice of Christ the sons of Adam may become the sons of God.” Through transgression each chooses, each aligns, each becomes a subject of Satan. Again it is through faith-empowered choice that each may become a son of God.
If Jesus died for all, and all were dead, “He died for all,” says our text, “that they which live should not henceforth live unto themselves, but unto Him which died for them, and rose again.” He died that we who had become subjects of Satan might live unto Jesus. He died that He might undo these impacts of sin. Do we then have faith in His atoning sacrifice—enough faith to take Him seriously and act on it?
Consider John 12:32:
I, if I be lifted up from the earth, will draw all men unto Me.
Jesus’ death on the cross contains for us a great hope. It is not a hope for only one group, but for all. The consequence of His death on the cross is that He draws “all men” to Himself. He is working for the restoration of all, diligent and lazy alike.
Notice that Jesus draws all men, not generally toward religion, not so that some are drawn to Protestantism, some to Catholicism, some to Buddhism, some to Islam, and some to Hare Krishna, but that all are drawn, He says, “unto Me.” Jesus is drawing all to where His revealed faith stands at this moment in time. That means that they all being drawn toward the Third Angel’s Message and all its parts—the seventh-day Sabbath, the Investigative Judgment, the Spirit of Prophecy writings, the development of a final generation that have experienced victory over their own wayward inclinations. These He shows standing with Him on Mount Zion in the very end (Revelation 14:1, 5).
If one is born into Buddhist influences, God works to draw that person away from them and toward Himself. If a person is born into Adventist influences, He works to draw Him away from the special deceptions Satan has planned for the remnant. Remember, everyone and every religion and message stands in a relation of proximity to Jesus. Some are closer to Him, some farther away. Some of His honest-hearted children, says He, are still in Babylon (false religion) almost to the very end. These He calls out of error and into closer proximity to Himself.
It is unfashionable today to affirm that in any specific way God is for one message or group and against a given message or group. Through a long process it has been attempted to condition us to abhor clarity. We are accustomed to the fog of group-think, political correctness, and the tyranny of prejudice. Clear-eyed conviction of any sort is seen as hopelessly parochial (unless it serves the currently featured group-think, in which case it is seen as virtuous, if only fleetingly).
Lazy minds combine with lazy hearts, and even our own people consent to the shrink-ray treatment. Global warming or the anti-fur-coat movement are seen as being more important than the message that we now live in the time of the Investigative Judgment, that this is the sealing time, that our characters are being formed for eternity, that Jesus offers us transformation of life now. Some theologians among us, after removal of anything apocalyptic in our message, begin to seek for some timid little way that Adventists can make a “contribution” to Christianity at large.
One who knows the Third Angel’s Message will begin to undersand that it is just another manifestation of laziness when we accept the common story that all religious messages are more or less of the same almost complete unimportance. To seek to discover an Adventist “contribution” to Christianity is to accept the validity of the larger mass of popular religion, to deny the Second Angel’s Message, and to deride God’s call to holiness for our hour. Lazy Adventists will be lost with all the other lazy people who settled for a religion of compromise with sin.
Commenting on the rich young ruler, Ellen White says, “He wanted eternal life, but he would not receive into the soul that unselfish love which alone is life...” (Christ’s Object Lessons, p. 393). We are in need of a dramatic change and the clock is ticking. Now is the time. Tomorrow is uncertain. We must cleave to God today. We must eschew spiritual laziness today. There is a fountain of life, but it costs us our selfishness.
Reception
We now turn to the business of active transformation, sampling some texts in its support. But first, a further moment with White’s statement. The rich young ruler wanted eternal life. He wanted the benefits of salvation. But there as something he would not receive. God wanted to give it, but he would not accept it. That is, he willfully chose to resist. God sent it, but the rich young ruler blocked it, refused its entry. What was it? “That unselfish love which alone is life.”
Notice, it had to be brought into him from outside. Somewhere previously along the way, he had chosen to sin, to align himself with the tendencies toward selfishness endemic to his nature. He, like us, had come short of the glory of God; he had chosen rebellion to right. We all begin this process. But God is drawing us. When we become aware of this process, we resist it, at least initially. But such resistance is the rejection of a principle from beyond ourselves, outside of ourselves, the love sent from God (Romans 5:5). It was surrendered through sinning, and God must restore it in us again.
After the rebellion in Eden, no enmity remained between man and Satan. This enmity Christ must implant afresh into the soul. Converting grace and renewing power are needed, but these come with unselfish love, and its introduction creates conflict. In one’s previous experience there had been a kind of superficial peace, a resignation to bondage, expectation only for the life of half-conquest. But Jesus enables man to resist the tyranny of self and of Satan. Our God imparts strength. Bent passions that have ruled internally, are conquered. To watch such a life is to see the operation of a principle from beyond.
Our God calls us to activity. Recall some less-commonly considered New Testament texts. Look at 1 Corinthians 15:31:
I die daily.
There are some distracting points in this passage, but you can get it if you look closely. Paul is connecting Christ’s death with His (and our) resurrections. He asks the reader why would he, Paul, subject himself unnecessarily to the dangers of a believer? In verse 30 he points out that he stands “in jeopardy every hour,” and in 32 that he “fought with beasts at Ephesus.” Why bother, he asks, if actually there is no hope of resurrection through Christ? In 33 and 34 he pleads for the believer to uphold a present moral life:
Be not deceived: evil communications corrupt good manners. Awake to righteousness, and sin not.
How does Paul endure rigorous experiences? By dying daily. By denying self daily. Self would say, I am out of here. Self would ask, Who needs this? But when we give ourselves to our Father through Jesus, the lazy line is defeated. Instead of fleeing danger or change like any other unconverted person, we acquire control of the situation. We stop in our tracks and face up to our imminent acts of evil. That which we are at the edge of premeditating is forsaken before we cross the line. A victory is won in God’s kingdom.
Daily death to self is the only thing that makes possible daily resurrection with Christ. We are risen—daily—with Him in newness of life (Romans 6:4)—if, that is, we first have been crucified with Him (Romans 6:6). Remember, if sleep is a figure of death, then rising in the morning is figure of the resurrection. As we rise daily we have our first hint about what God wants to do. He desires to help us live the resurrected life this day. But the new man is only possible while the old is kept buried.
Another guiding thought for the lazy person who would like to be saved is found in this statement by Paul.
Every man that striveth for the mastery is temperate in all things. Now they do it to obtain a corruptible crown; but we an incorruptible. I therefore so run, not as uncertainly; so fight I, not as one that beateth the air: But I keep under my body, and bring it into subjection: lest that by any means, when I have preached to others, I myself should be a castaway (1 Corinthians 9:25-27).
For goals much less significant than eternal life, people will exercise self-control. They will forsake laziness. Paul says he runs the race, yes, but not uncertainly. Salvation is not a prize for one winner, or a gold, silver, and bronze medalist only. Salvation is for every person willing to follow Christ. So no, Paul does not run uncertainly.
See, by the way, that Paul envisions the process of Christianity as running and not walking, as a race and not as aimless standing around. There is a competition in this, a battle. Predispositions I was born with, propensities I have cultivated, the “old man” as Paul names this gnarled growth across our years, are put away for the new life in Christ.
Paul speaks of what? “Striving for the mastery.” He speaks of fighting. It is not karaoke. It is not lip-synch. Someone was heard to complain of Ellen White’s affirmation that Christianity “is a battle and a march” (Thoughts From the Mount of Blessing, p. 141). And yet, it is no less pointed than Paul’s affirmation, “so fight I.”
The fight is described. Paul says that he keeps his body under, he brings it into subjection. He is not talking about some kind of dualism where the mind is separate from the body. They are intimately connected, but our Creator designed us such that reason and spirituality would be ascendant. Yet, if we follow the low road, how little there is of this dying daily and keeping our bodies under. Yes, many preach that these are desirable changes we should incorporate into our behavior, but they refuse that all who would be saved at last in God’s kingdom will be living out this behavior.
Keep in mind that the self-denial behavior commanded in these texts does not contribute merit toward our salvation. Neither is it accurate to speak of it is being only the fruit or consequence of having been saved. Salvation is a process, that is, transformation is a process. Neither all in the past nor all in the future, in a very real sense it is now, in the present. Really, when else would it be? As we live with Christ in us, we are living in Christ. As we die daily we resurrect daily. As we keep self under we keep the Holy Spirit over. Neither mindless activity nor mindless passivity will vindicate what Jesus seeks to do through us. But mindful living in the Spirit will be productive of godliness that changes what we are, leading others toward the holiness for which they are longing.
In the gospel of John and third chapter Jesus tells us that we must be “born again.” But the most accurate translation actually is that we must be born “from above.” The point emphasized is the necessity of our cooperating with the Source. It is true that we need a spiritual transformation. It is true that the change is impossible without divine help. But the change is also impossible without our consent and reception! We must do more than say we will receive the work God wants to do in us; we must act, we must spend what He has given and then draw strongly on the next draft provided.
Being born from above means we must have our rain barrels out and uncovered, ready for the heavenly showers. Remember, before the disobedience of Adam and Eve, the earth was watered by a mist that came up from the ground; after their Fall, it was watered by rain pouring down out of the skies. Man’s nature was changed. Before he fell God had made him so that he could form a righteous character by his own obedience (See Steps to Christ, p. 62). Afterwards, our obedience is a disconnected obedience. Adam’s obedience from the beginning rose from his natural connection to God. God could accept it. But an obedience rising from a heart that has aligned itself even once with rebellion will be tainted and unacceptable unless the channels of the heart are cleansed.
How are the channels to be cleansed? “Man’s obedience can be made perfect only by the incense of Christ’s righteousness, which fills with divine fragrance every act of obedience. The part of the Christian is to persevere in overcoming every fault (Ellen G. White, Acts of the Apostles, p. 532). We must be in connection with Christ at all times in order that His righteousness may fill our every act of obedience. See, we have to will the act and He has to provide the incense, the righteousness. The goal is a purified heart in the believer.
How often we leave aside strong texts like those we have just focused on and will prefer instead to take a Romans 6:11 that says, “Reckon ye also yourselves to be dead indeed unto sin, but alive unto God through Jesus Christ our Lord,” but leave out the very next verses which add, “Let not sin therefore reign in your mortal body, that ye should obey it in the lusts thereof. Neither yield ye your members as instruments of unrighteousness unto sin: but yield yourselves unto God, as those that are alive from the dead, and your members as instruments of righteousness unto God.”
While some are insisting that sin must reign, even cannot help but reign in your mortal body, the body you have now, the Holy Spirit urges the opposite. We are not only to pretend or imagine that we are dead unto sin, but know by experience. God’s Word is ready to speak to us if we are ready to hear.
Oh friends, we are engaged in the peril and responsibility of existence. Peril because eternal life so easily is bartered away; responsibility because we are made in God’s image as moral beings. We are pilgrims on a journey, not tourists. We are travelers, not bombers. God is building something but only in cooperation with us. It is always easier to blow something up, to destroy, than to build, to hone a character after the similitude of our Lord Jesus.
The Mountain Climbing Illustration
We are not going down; we are going up. Think about the task of climbing a mountain. Let’s, looking down from directly above, overlay it with a 3 by 3 grid of 9 squares. The peak of the mountain is found in the center square, but the eight surrounding squares all offer various approaches toward the top. The farther away you are from the peak, the more options there are for climbing. You can approach from the South square or the West square or the Northwest square or any of the other five squares. In all the territory represented by those squares there will be some very difficult approaches, and other, much less demanding ascents. But as you approach your goal to climb to the very mountaintop, your number of options sharply declines. The most difficult part of the climb is in the one square in the center of the grid and the paths to the top become fewer the closer you come to the summit. So with spiritual matters.
In the earlier stages of Christian growth the way may not be so difficult. There is more padding on the ground. You fall, you may benefit from landing on a flexible bush rather than an immovable boulder. But further up the slope you are above the level where trees and bushes grow. You need ropes and pitons and sunblock. You are in the open. You are exposed more directly to wind, rockfalls, and other dangers. As we advance in our Christian walk, superficial understandings of salvation come up against the necessity that we grow. The last few hundred feet to the top are often the steepest. A lazy person may start out on the climb, but if the expectations and habits he has formed cannot take him the last five hundred feet, he may fail.
The lazy man needs a serious guide to salvation. He cannot afford to rest in the understandings of others, but he must study for himself. He cannot afford to expect the pathway to be easy. It is hard. But we have a great Mountaineer with us. Jesus knows the mountain; Jesus knows the chutes to avoid, crevasses to go around. We need to be roped up with Him. Then we are safe. He does not come in a helicopter to take us to our destination; we would not be changed. He comes to our trail, our mountain, and He offers His hand even as He knows that for us to grow we must die daily, keep our bodies under, keep His Holy Spirit over. And when we, in His company, have climbed Mount Zion, He will receive all our praise, all the glory.
Conclusion
Here is the bottom line. God desires to transform—save—if you will, every human being. But not every human being desires to be transformed; not every human being is willing to be changed. Many are forsaking the very morality for which they were designed. We are a race of shortcut-seekers. But God offers no shortcut. Satan says that even Jesus cannot take us to the top of the mountain. Jesus says He can.
How many lazy people will be found in heaven and the new earth? None. When are our characters formed? Now, during this life. What determines whether we are lazy or not? Our character. Therefore, our character needs to be changed now. To make that happen we must have a vigorous expectation that God is at work, and that He wants to use me, change me now, and that my active cooperation is crucial!
Who will you believe? It is much lazier to think that it can’t be done, than to exercise faith even as a mustard seed and trust in Christ to do it even when we feel unsure of our progress. One of the most primitive lessons in faith is to take God at His Word. And one of those words urges us to be “confident of this very thing, that He which hath begun a good work in you will perform it until the day of Jesus Christ” (Philippians 1:6). GCO
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