Resist the Temptation to Justify Ourselves Through Worldly Compliance

Intro

Have you ever sat down to play a game with someone only to realize you’ve been playing creatively your entire life and they have learned to play exactly by the book?

It’s a great way to ruin a friendship really. People get pretty testy about following their version of rules in a game. We get used to the way we have always played and when that gets challenged it can unnerve us.

If we are that way with silly games, how much more with our rules of life?

Truth

Colossians 2:20–23 ESV

If with Christ you died to the elemental spirits of the world, why, as if you were still alive in the world, do you submit to regulations— “Do not handle, Do not taste, Do not touch” (referring to things that all perish as they are used)—according to human precepts and teachings? These have indeed an appearance of wisdom in promoting self-made religion and asceticism and severity to the body, but they are of no value in stopping the indulgence of the flesh.

The second temptation from this passage is the temptation to take up the world's standard and apply it to ourselves. The world has its own defined set of rules which they want us to believe will lead to the good life. This could be referred to as what is socially acceptable.

The world has its own supposed gospel message. In our days this is a message of unquestioned inclusivity, destructive tolerance, freedom from responsibility, and freedom to reimagine God in the image of humans. To quote Stephen Tyler, it's the "same old story, same of song and dance my friends." Solomon wrote that song first though, when he said "there is nothing new under the sun."

I. Why do we keep going back to Egypt in our hearts? (20)

This is an important question. We are so much like Israel who came before us aren’t we? Like them, we have experienced God’s power (actually even more then them in some ways since the Spirit is in us). We have seen God move. We have learned his word and yet there are moments when we look at the world and think the grass is a little greener over there.

After-all, people seem happy and successful. They seem to be wise and to have it together. They seem kind to at least those who comply with their rules.

But the problem is, its a veneer. It looks real, but it has little substance because the focus is all wrong.

"If you asked twenty good men today what they thought the highest of the virtues, nineteen of them would reply, Unselfishness. But if you asked almost any of the great Christians of old he would have replied, Love." -C.S. Lewis (The Weight of Glory)

The world fails to understand that the heart of life is not that we would be nice by their standards, good world citizens, humanitarians, and get through life without stepping on too many toes. The heart of life is love, but not just any love.

John Piper restates the first answer in the Westminister Catechism in this way, “Man’s chief end is to glorify God by enjoying him forever.”

This is a classical and beautiful way of reminding us that it is the love of God which is the true center of everything. If that is true, anything that distracts us from loving God is our truest enemy. Most fail to see this.

But you and I, through Christ, have been freed from slavery to the world’s God-divorced false wisdom which would take our eyes away from Christ. Through Christ we know that not all so called love is created equal.

Galatians 4:8–9 ESV

Formerly, when you did not know God, you were enslaved to those that by nature are not gods. But now that you have come to know God, or rather to be known by God, how can you turn back again to the weak and worthless elementary principles of the world, whose slaves you want to be once more?

The world’s love is self-centric by nature. It is focused on personal wants, needs, and etc. This is why all of the world’s religions are about self-improvement and self-love through improving.

Such is man's nature, that he is very inactive, any otherwise than he is influenced by some affection, either love or hatred, desire, hope, fear, or some other. These affections we see to be the springs that set men agoing, in all the affairs of life, and engage them in all their pursuits: these are the things that put men forward, and carry them along, in all their worldly business; and especially are men excited and animated by these, in all affairs wherein they are earnestly engaged, and which they pursue with vigour. We see the world of mankind to be exceeding busy and active; and the affections of men are the springs of the motion: take away all love and hatred, all hope and fear, all anger, zeal, and affectionate desire, and the world would be, in a great measure motionless and dead; there would be no such thing as activity amongst mankind, or any earnest pursuit whatsoever. It is affection that engages the covetous man, and him that is greedy of worldly profits, in his pursuits; and it is by the affections, that the ambitious man is put forward in pursuit of worldly glory; and it is the affections also that actuate the voluptuous man, in his pursuit of pleasure and sensual delights: the world continues, from age to age, in a continual commotion and agitation, in a pursuit of these things, but take away all affection, and the spring of all this motion would be gone, and the motion itself would cease. And as in worldly things, worldly affections are very much the spring of men’s motion and action; so in religious matters, the spring of their actions is very much religious affection: he that has doctrinal knowledge and speculation only, without affection, never is engaged in the business of religion. -Jonathan Edwards (Religious Affections)

To the world, relationships are utilitarian and people are only useful to the extent that they make us feel good and happy. That’s why cancel culture is so popular. If someone doesn’t bring you joy you just Marie Kondo them and cut them out of your life. After all, it’s about your personal happiness and satisfaction in the moment.

God’s love is very different. We are told to sacrifice anything in order to achieve our dreams, but God sacrificed himself in order to bring us into his dream.

In God’s kingdom we find that happiness comes not from self-promotion, self-indulgence, or self-improvement. In the kingdom we see that true happiness comes when we are focused outside of ourselves and on Christ, which turns our hearts towards others (see his example).

II. What’s up with the world’s rules?

Paul refers to human conventions as "do not handle, do not taste, do not touch." The content filling out these generalizations changes throughout the generations with the ebb and flow of culture, but their context is the same.

Everyday we are given lists of things that we must do or must not do in order to be a good human in the world's eyes. If we don't meet their standard we run the risk of being cancelled or at the very least ostracized.

When people tell me that I have to do a particular set of things to be a good human, I ask by whose standard? Who gets to define what it is to be a good human?

“First there is the question of which life is the good life. What is genuinely in my interest, and how may I enter true well-being? Of course we already know that life in the life of God will be the good life, and Jesus’ continual reassertion of the direct availability of the kingdom always kept that basic truth before his students and his hearers.  But exactly who is and who is not assured of such a life was a subject of much confusion in his day, as it is today.” -Dallas Willard (The Divine Conspiracy)

Since Eden, we have been ignoring God and attempting to forge our own path. That includes cultural prescriptions which society claims will make a better world but rather than actually improving the world, these just submerge us further under the waters of our own narcissistic worldview we have built for ourselves.

Cain is one of the earliest examples of this. We love to define for God how we will worship him, right? We like to form God into our image, loving the god we build in our minds rather than the true God.

The world is also okay with us claiming Christ, so long as we also hold fast to their cultural regulations. Yet again, Jesus plus something equals nothing. We have been set free from the need to prove ourselves since we have been proven in Christ. Through Christ, our outer man has been crucified so that our inner, spiritual man can live.

III. Why do human precepts fail? (23)

The short, quick answer is because it is self-focused rather than Christ-focused. The best we can hope to do apart from Christ is be as good a broken person as we can be.

But in Christ, we can be a new human altogether.

Through the fall Adam and Eve acquired a hard outer shell which cut their true spiritual nature off and established a new reality in which they lived a life disconnected from God. Since God is our true source of life, this has been absolutely detrimental to humanity.

We once naturally lived by grace rather than by self-justification. In those days, self-justification seemed silly and grace was all that made sense.

But now that we have cut ourselves off from God and therefore the grace empowered life, all we have is human striving and self-justification. We cannot on our own see past this. If any of us sees the reality of light which has been hidden under the shadows of sin it can only be a miracle.

Remember, faith is a spiritual gift which can only be dispensed by the Holy Spirit.

So then, to be set free from the elemental spirits of this world and restored to the leadership of the Holy Spirit is a miracle work of Christ. No man can conjure this up nor can we earn it.

So then Paul's question remains for us to answer. If Christ has set us free from our old and broken mindset and restored our life in the Father, why in the world would we ever go back and submit ourselves to the world's standards again?

The world thinks that by self-help strategies, and cultural obedience, we can evolve and make ourselves better. This is bogus. It will never happen. Show me any evidence that the world is improving through these human efforts.

C.S. Lewis pointed out in Mere Christianity, that if the humanists were correct, the 20th century should have been the most peaceful, glorious, and utopian century ever. Yet it was filled with wars, genocides by so called civilized nations, the triumph of fascism and cruel communism, and marked by continued poverty and self-indulgence in the west.

We have accomplished little to nothing with all of our efforts. Indeed, the situation is more hopeless and dire than most of us want to admit.

Human effort looks good to others, but in the end it will do nothing to free us from our brokenness. Only Christ can do that. So for those of us who have Christ, why would we ever go back to a broken system that never worked anyway? What will it get us? Acceptance? Notoriety? Likes on Twitter and Instagram? Sure, but as Jesus said "what does it benefit a man to gain the whole world yet lose his soul?"

Paul gives it to us straight about what following the world’s ways can do for us.

Romans 5:12 ESV

Therefore, just as sin came into the world through one man, and death through sin, and so death spread to all men because all sinned—

The world's way does not work. It has never worked. It can reshape us on the outside, but can never fix what is fundamentally broken on the inside of us. We are cut off from our true source of happiness because of sin.

On the contrary, Christ's way has never failed. Even when we killed Christ, he rose and somehow God became even greater than he was before. I will never understand that or how it is even possible, but scripture declares it to be true. Christ can go nowhere but up even when it looks like he is going down. If we are in Christ, then the same is true for us.

1 Corinthians 15:22 ESV

For as in Adam all die, so also in Christ shall all be made alive.

Romans 5:20–21 ESV

Now the law came in to increase the trespass, but where sin increased, grace abounded all the more, so that, as sin reigned in death, grace also might reign through righteousness leading to eternal life through Jesus Christ our Lord.

Here's the deal; when people try to force us to conform, and try to pressure us to live according to their narrative rather than Christ's we can confidently tell them that we aren't playing their game anymore. We aren't even at the same game table anymore. It's like they are playing Uno while we are playing dominoes. Our entire script has changed in Christ. We have new goals and a brand new perspective on what it means to be human.

Romans 12:2 ESV

Do not be conformed to this world, but be transformed by the renewal of your mind, that by testing you may discern what is the will of God, what is good and acceptable and perfect.

So let us go with Christ at the expense of the world rather than going with the world at the expense of Christ. No gain we might receive from the world is worth even a 10th of a penny of what we receive in walking with Christ. We have all that we ever needed in Him.