The Grace Awakening

by Charles R Swindoll

  The New English Bible says, "He was in the habit of eating his meals with the Gentiles." That went on until the Jews showed up. And when they did . . . "Oh, no thanks, I never eat ham," lied Peter, hoping to make the Jews smile in approval. The problem was that before James and his Jewish friends arrived, ol' Peter could be heard saying to his Gentile cronies, "Sure, serve it up. Add a little bacon while you're at it. I love the taste!" Hypocrite!

  I like Ralph Keiper's contemporary paraphrase of Paul's strong rebuke:

  "Peter, I smell ham on your breath. You forgot your Certs. There was a time when you wouldn't eat ham as part of your hope of salvation. Then after you trusted Christ, it didn't matter if you ate ham. But now when the no-ham eaters have come from

  Squaring Off Against Legalism

  Jerusalem you have gone back to your kosher ways. But the smell of ham still lingers on your breath. You are most inconsistent. You are compelling Gentile believers to observe Jewish law which can never justify anyone.

  "Peter, by returning to the law, you undercut strength for godly living." 9

  Paul saw through the duplicity and exposed the hypocrisy in Peter. In effect, he scolds, "The very idea, Peter, that you would fake it in front of Jews and then turn around and fake it in front of Gentiles. You're talking freedom, Peter, but you're not living it. Then out of the other side of your mouth, you're talking law, but you don't live that either. Get off the fence, Peter."

  The problem intensified as others saw their leader and modeled his hypocritical lifestyle:

  And the rest of the Jews joined him in hypocrisy, with the result that even Barnabas was carried away by their hypocrisy. But when I saw that they were not straightforward about the truth of the gospel, I said to Cephas in the presence of all, "If you, being a Jew, live like the Gentiles and not like the Jews, how is it that you compel the Gentiles to live like Jews?" (vv. 13-14)

  Why would Paul be so strong? Because people take their cues from their leaders. Sheep follow shepherds. And since legalistic hypocrisy never quietly dies on its own, it must be confronted. Again I remind you, liberty is always worth fighting for.

  I know a man approaching sixty years of age today who is still haunted by the memory of being raised by hypocritical parents. It has taken him most of his adult life to face the full truth that he was emotionally and spiritually abused by their deception. Throughout his childhood his family attended a church where they were taught you shouldn't go to the movies. This was so firmly enforced that in Sunday church services people would be called to come forward to an altar and confess that they had done that or some other "sins." The problem

  Squaring Off Against Legalism

  is, his family usually went to movies on Friday or on Saturday night, always in secret. But they made it very clear that he shouldn't say anything about it. They drilled it into him, "Keep your mouth shut." Here he is, a little boy, being lectured on the way home from the theater, week after week, "Don't tell anybody on Sunday that we did this." Of course, they went to see the film miles away from the church so church folks wouldn't know. Not until recently has the man come to realize how damaging that hypocrisy was to his walk with Christ. Because they were not straightforward about the truth, no one should be surprised he picked up a lifestyle of deception and lying. Only lately, through the help of a fine Christian therapist, has he been able to sort through his confusion.

  You want to mess up the minds of your children? Here's how—guaranteed! Rear them in a legalistic, tight context of external religion, where performance is more important than reality. Fake your faith. Sneak around and pretend your spirituality. Train your children to do the same. Embrace a long list of do's and don'ts publicly but hypocritically practice them privately ... yet never own up to the fact that it's hypocrisy. Act one way but live another. And you can count on it— emotional and spiritual damage will occur. Chances are good their confusion will lead to some sort of addiction in later years.

  By the way, before you're tempted to think that you'll never be guilty of hypocrisy, that you're above that sort of temptation, remember what Paul exposed in this letter to the Gala-tians. A spiritual leader as strong and stable as Peter fell into it. And with him, many others as well, "even Barnabas." Legalism is so subtle, so insidious. I have found that it's especially tempting to those whose temperament tends toward pleasing people, which brings us back to that wonderful verse that frees us, Galatians 1:10:

  For am I now seeking the favor of men, or of God? Or am I striving to please men? If I were still trying to please men, I would not be a bond-servant of Christ.

  Squaring Off Against Legalism SPECIFYING FOUR STRONG STRATEGIES

  Killers cannot be mildly ignored or kindly tolerated. You can no more allow legalism to continue than you could permit a rattlesnake to slip into your house and hide. Before long, somebody is going to get hurt. So then, since liberty is worth fighting for, how do we do it? Where can our personal grace awakening begin? I can think of four strong strategies:

  1. Keep standing firm in your freedom. I'm reminded of what Paul wrote in Galatians 5:1: "It was for freedom that Christ set us free; therefore keep standing firm and do not be subject again to a yoke of slavery." Stand your ground. Ask the Lord to give you courage.

  2. Stop seeking the favor of everyone. This may be a stubborn habit to break, but it is really worth all the effort you can muster. If you're in a group where you feel you are being coerced to do certain things that are against your conscience or you're being pressured to stop doing things that you see no problem with, get out of the group! You're unwise to stay in situations where your conscience tells you it is not right. That is nothing more than serving men, not God. I don't care how spiritual sounding it may be, stop seeking the favor of everybody.

  3. Start refusing to submit to bondage. Call it what it is: slavery. It's trying to be "spiritual" by performance. Think of how delightful it would be to get rid of all the anxiety that comes with the bondage to which you have submitted yourself; think how clean you could feel by being real again, or perhaps real for the first time in your adult life.

  4. Continue being straightforward about the truth. That means live honestly. If you don't agree, say so kindly but firmly. If you are the only one, be true to yourself and stand alone. When you blow it, say, "I blew it." If you don't know, admit the truth. It's okay not to know. And the next time your kids spot hypocrisy, even though you may feel embarrassed, agree with them, "You know what, kids? You're right. I was a

  Squaring Off Against Legalism

  first-class hypocrite. What you saw and pointed out is exactly right." Tell them that. It may sound embarrassing to you now, but they will admire and respect your admission. And they won't grow up damaged. Best of all, they will learn to model the same kind of vulnerability and honesty, even if you are in vocational Christian work . . . especially if you're in vocational Christian work. Nobody expects perfection, but they do and they should expect honesty.

  We need affirmation and encouragement to be all we're meant to be and because so many are rather delicate within, they need those who are strong to assist them in their fight for liberty. And so, if for no other reason, liberty is worth fighting for so others can breathe freely.

  Paul Tournier writes of this in Guilt and Grace:

  . . . in all fields, even those of culture and art, other people's judgment exercises a paralyzing effect. Fear of criticism kills spontaneity; it prevents men from showing themselves and expressing themselves freely, as they are. Much courage is needed to paint a picture, to write a book, to erect a building designed along new architectural lines, or to formulate an independent opinion or an original idea. 10

  If fighting for liberty sounds too aggressive to you, perhaps too selfish, then think of it as fighting so others can be set free—so others can be awakened to the joys and privileges of personal freedom. Those who do that on real battlefields are called patriots or heroes. With all my heart, I believe those who square off against legalism should be
considered the same.

  6

  Emancipated? Then Live Like It!

  *

  I

  have never witnessed slavery. Not in raw reality. I have read about it, and I have seen films, plays, and television docu-dramas where slavery was portrayed in all its cruelty, but I have never seen it firsthand. I'm glad I haven't. I know of nothing more unjust or ugly. As an American I find it amazing—perhaps a better word is confusing —to think that my forefathers were willing to fight for their own freedom and win our country's independence, yet turn around and enslave others without the slightest hesitation. The triangles of such twisted logic are not mentally congruent—free citizens owning slaves.

  It took a civil war to break that yoke. It called for a courageous, clear-thinking president to stand in the gap ... to be misunderstood and maligned and ultimately killed for a cause that was, to him, not only worth fighting for but worth dying for.

  At Abraham Lincoln's second inaugural in 1865, only weeks before he was assassinated, he spoke of how both parties "deprecated war," and yet a war had come. He continued:

  Neither party expected for the war, the magnitude, or the duration, which it has already attained. . . . Each looked for an easier triumph. . . . Both read from the same Bible, and pray to the same God, and each invokes His aid against the other. 1

  Emancipated? Then Live Like It!

  At that point the reelected sixteenth president's voice broke, his feelings showing through. And he spoke of how strange it was "that any men should dare to ask a just God's assistance in wringing their bread from the sweat of other men's faces." 2

  Ultimately, with the adoption of the thirteenth amendment of the United States Constitution, slavery was legally abolished. It was then that black slaves all across America were officially set free. Long before that, however, and even before his second inaugural address, the president had stated his anti-slavery convictions in a proclamation that won him no favor in the South. It was on New Year's Day 1863 when the Emancipation Proclamation was publicly stated, but it was not until December 18, 1865, that the Constitution made those convictions official. Though dead by then, Lincoln still spoke. At last his dream was realized. The word swept across Capitol Hill and down into the valleys of Virginia and the back roads of the Carolinas and even deeper into the plantations of Georgia, Alabama, Mississippi, and Louisiana. Headlines on newspapers in virtually every state trumpeted the same message: "Slavery Legally Abolished."

  And yet, something happened that many would have never expected. The vast majority of the slaves in the South who were legally freed continued to live on as slaves. Most of them went right on living as though nothing had happened. Though free, the Blacks lived virtually unchanged lives throughout the Reconstruction Period.

  Shelby Foote, in his monumental, three-volume work on The Civil War, verifies this surprising anomaly.

  ... the Negro—locked in a caste system of "race etiquette" as rigid as any he had known in formal bondage . . . every slave could repeat with equal validity, what an Alabama slave had said in 1864 when asked what he thought of the Great Emancipator whose proclamation went into effect that year. "I don't know nothing bout Abraham Lincoln," he replied, "cep they say he sot us free. And I don't know nothing bout that neither." 3

  Emancipated? Then Live Like It!

  I call that tragic. A war had been fought. A president had been assassinated. An amendment to the Constitution had now been signed into law. Once-enslaved men, women, and children were now legally emancipated. Yet amazingly, many continued living in fear and squalor. In a context of hard-earned freedom, slaves chose to remain as slaves. Cruel and brutal though many of their owners were, black men and women chose to keep serving the same old master until they died. There were a few brave exceptions, but in many parts of the country you'd never have known that slavery had been officially abolished and that they had been emancipated. That's the way the plantation owners wanted it. They maintained the age-old philosophy, "Keep 'em ignorant and you keep 'em in the field."

  Now if you think that is tragic, I can tell you one far worse. It has to do with Christians living today as slaves. Even though our Great Emancipator, Christ the Lord, paid the ultimate price to overthrow slavery once for all, most Christians act as though they're still held in bondage. In fact, strange as it is, most seem to prefer the security of slavery to the risks of liberty. And our slave master, Satan, loves it so. He is delighted that so many have bought into that lie and live under the dark shadow of such ignorance. He sits like the proverbial fat cat, grinning, "Great! Go right on livin' like a slave!" even though he knows we have been liberated from his control. More than most in God's family, the adversary knows we are free, but he hates it. So he does everything in his power to keep us pinned down in shame, guilt, ignorance, and intimidation.

  REVIEWING SOME BASIC THOUGHTS ON SLAVERY

  Though some are well-informed about these facts I want to mention regarding slavery in the spiritual realm, most aren't. Therefore, I believe a brief review of some basics is necessary. Let's begin in the "emancipation letter" of Romans.

  Emancipated? Then Live Like It!

  ... as it is written,

  "There is none righteous, not even one;

  There is none who understands,

  There is none who seeks for God;

  All have turned aside, together they have become useless;

  There is none who does good,

  There is not even one."

  "Their throat is an open grave,

  With their tongues they keep deceiving,"

  "The poison of asps is under their lips;"

  "Whose mouth is full of cursing and bitterness;"

  "Their feet are swift to shed blood,

  Destruction and misery are in their paths,

  And the path of peace have they not known."

  "There is no fear of God before their eyes."

  Now we know that whatever the Law says, it speaks to those who are under the Law, that every mouth may be closed, and all the world may become accountable to God; because by the works of the Law no flesh will be justified in His sight; for through the Law comes the knowledge of sin. (Rom. 3:10-20)

  I find in Romans at least three analogies regarding slavery. The first analogy is grim: All of us were born in bondage to sin. You wonder how bad our slavery really was in our unsaved condition? Look back over those words and observe for yourself:

  • No one righteous

  • No spiritual understanding

  • No worthwhile achievements before God

  • No purity, no innocence, no peace, no hope

  On top of all that, we had no escape ... we were unable to change our enslavement to sin. In that unsaved condition the lost person truly knows nothing about liberty.

  Emancipated? Then Live Like It!

  The second analogy is glorious: A day came when Christ set us free. There came a day when an eternal Emancipation Proclamation was made known throughout the heavens and all the way to the pit of hell—"the sinner is officially set free!" It is the announcement that originated from Christ's empty tomb on that first Easter, the day our Great Emancipator, Christ, set us free. Doctrinally, the word is redemption. He redeemed us.

  But now apart from the Law the righteousness of God has been manifested, being witnessed by the Law and the Prophets, even the righteousness of God through faith in Jesus Christ for all those who believe; for there is no distinction. (Rom. 3:21-22)

  I love those last two words—"no distinction." To qualify for freedom, you don't have to be born in a certain country. You don't have to speak a certain language. Your skin doesn't have to be a certain color. You don't have to be educated or cultured or make a certain amount of money or fulfill some list of requirements. There is absolutely no distinction. Why? Because we were all slaves, slaves of our master and slaves of sin. "For all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God" (v. 23). Therefore, all sinners are "savable," if I may use that word. How? "Being jus
tified as a gift by His grace through the redemption which is in Christ Jesus" (v. 24).

  Let me explain this in nontechnical terms, staying with our word picture of slavery. Christ came on the scene and He saw every one of us on the slave block—lost, miserable, spiritually useless, and unable to change ourselves or escape from the bondage of our master. Moved by compassion and prompted by love, He, in grace, paid the price to free us. The price was His death. By doing so, He said to every one of us, in effect, "You don't have to live under your former master any longer. You're free. You're free to serve Me for the rest of your life."

  Before Christ came into our lives, we were hopelessly lost in our lust, helpless to restrain our profanity, our glandular drives, our insatiable greed, our continual selfishness, or our

  Emancipated? Then Live Like It!

  compulsions either to please people or to control and manipulate others. While some of those things may have brought us feelings of pleasure and periodic satisfaction, our inability to control them was not without its complications. We were slaves! We were chained to the slave block, and we had to serve the old master. There was insufficient strength within us to live any other way. By "redeeming" us, Jesus set us free. When God raised Jesus from the dead (the crucial act of triumph over Satan), He said, in effect, "No one else need ever live as a victim of sin. All who believe in Jesus Christ, My Son, will have everlasting life and will have the power to live in Me." How could it be that wicked slaves could be given such standing before God? We're back to our favorite word: grace. To use terms everyone can understand, President Grace legally freed us from our lifelong master Sin and his wife Shame. Theoretically, we were freed when we believed in Christ, but practically speaking, our plantation owners do everything in their power to keep us ignorant, afraid, and thinking like a slave.