by Jacob Ninan
People are very busy, and there are many many things we need to get done. There are things that come with a deadline, and then other things get postponed. For example, workplace pressures drive us and then it ends up many times with our neglecting our family life. Another common area of neglect is our personal study of the Bible. Many Christians follow a 'quiet time' which is allotted to reading the Bible and praying. But it happens that many times this turns into a mere routine and the personal connection one used to have with the Lord gets replaced by rituals such as going through a daily reading book. But God has given us this great and wonderful book called the Bible which is meant to give us spiritual food for our daily growth. The Bible looks at many different aspects of life, tells us what God is like, what He has planned for us and what He wants us to do. But it is sad that due to all the pressures of life, people tend to know only what the pastor tells them. Not all pastors are teachers, and many times the teaching that people get from their church tends to be incomplete, imbalanced and focused on what the pastor likes as a person. Today I would like to look at our need to be balanced in our spiritual life. We seem to have a natural tendency to go to one extreme or another and get stuck there. Some of us realise that we are stuck in one extreme position, and then we swing to the opposite extreme. This swinging must show us that there is a position of balance we need to be at. And then we must seek to move towards that balance in order to avoid getting stuck at extreme positions or swinging from one extreme to another. Let us look at a few common extremes. But also remember, we must be alert to find other extreme positions in our life too as we move on.
Forgiveness vs. holy living
Receiving forgiveness as a free gift from God is an exceptionally huge milestone for us. We were dead in sin, separated from God, making our own plans, doing whatever we liked, and trying our best only to avoid getting caught. Depending on several factors such as our family upbringing and our personality, our particular sins may have been common place sins people do not even consider as sins, or they could have been any of those big ones that everyone will call out as sins. But what we need to realise is that irrespective of whether we have done gross sins or not, before we came to Christ every single one of us was essentially living for ourselves. That is not what the Creator has designed man for. Before Adam and Eve sinned, their life was one of total trust in God and dependence on God and everything was perfectly fine. What they actually did when they sinned was to choose to live on their own, with their own knowledge of good and evil, and independent from God. When Satan told Eve that they could become like God, it was this independence like God that he meant. So living independent from God is the real essence of sin, especially since it was God who created us, who owned us and who made plans and provisions for us. This sin is what the Bible refers to as "even though they knew God, they did not honor Him as God" (Rom.1:21). We need to understand our relationship with God in such a way that we can take an appropriate position before Him. As a result of this independent living as well as acts of disobedience, we are all guilty before God, even those who have had 'decent' lives and never done any of the gross sins.So, to be forgiven by God, and to be accepted as His children is huge. A problem comes if we think that this is all there is to salvation, and that when we die, a place is reserved for us in heaven. No. Jesus came to save us from sin and not just to forgive us. Forgiveness will save us from the guilt of sin, but if we go on sinning after that, we are not getting saved from the power of sin. When God gives us grace, sin is not to continue to rule over us (Rom.6:14). But many Christians do not understand this because many preachers stop at proclaiming forgiveness. God expects us to grow up from the state of having been forgiven to having victory over sin and becoming like Him in character.
This will not happen automatically after we are born again. It can happen only as we choose God over our own will whenever we are tempted (Lk.9:23). When we get born again, God changes our mind from being dead in sin, to becoming dead to sin and alive towards God. With this new mind, we must learn to actually choose to do the will of God whenever our own will wants to go after pleasure of our own.
The fight for balance in this area is aimed at being sure of God's forgiveness completely on one hand, and at the same time working out our salvation in a practical way through His help (Php.2:12,13). As we seek to work out our salvation, we will keep coming across our sins, mistakes and failures. Victory is a dynamic experience where there can be increasing depth and width of victory in different areas of life, interspersed with slip-ups and failures that can lead to discouragement and loss of hope. This is where it has to be balanced with the assurance that God has forgiven and accepted us, He will never forsake us and He will not hold our past sins against us (Heb.8:12). If we look at ourselves and our sins in a way that turns our eyes away from our loving Father, we will lose balance. Remember how Peter began to sink in the water when he turned his look away from Jesus to the waves.
On the other hand, there can be times when we are tempted to take our forgiveness for granted and allow ourselves a little bit of laxity with enjoying the pleasures of sin. That will also throw us out of balance and take us on the very slippery path of backsliding. We need to learn how to keep both sides together, the love of God towards us and dealing honestly with our sins and sinfulness, and walk safely along the narrow path.
Acceptance vs. judging oneself
"If we judged ourselves rightly, we would not be judged" (1Cor.11:31). This verse comes in the context of examining ourselves before we participate in the holy communion. But judging ourselves must become a part of our every day life, where we sit as judges to examine our own life, to see how we are walking with Jesus doing His will, and where we are failing. It is important to be aware of where we are failing, in order to seek God for help to overcome in those areas.Invariably, when we judge ourselves, we see bad things about ourselves, not only in the things we do, but also in our very nature. That is certainly not pleasant. Therefore some people avoid judging themselves, trying to prevent having to face this unpleasant view of themselves. Some others have convinced themselves doctrinally that it is wrong to do anything about their salvation, because, in their view, it would amount to going back under the Law! Some preachers emphasise what we are 'in Christ', making everyone feel good about themselves, and at the same time avoiding negative thoughts about themselves! But judging ourselves and facing unpleasant facts about us is a necessary step in the process of working out our salvation when God is working in us.
Here we see the need for balance between knowing that we have been completely accepted by God and, at the same time, with looking at the real situation in our life in comparison to the life of Christ. It cannot be just one or the other. When we see the wretched men and women we actually are when compared to Christ, what keeps us from giving up the battle and giving in to despair is the knowledge of how God has accepted us in love.
Grace means that God does not accept us based on our past performance or spiritual achievement, but on the basis of undeserved mercy God has chosen to show us (Eph.2:8,9). In fact, in addition to washing away our sins by the blood of Jesus Christ and making us white like snow in the sight of God, He has also clothed us with the righteousness of Christ (Isa.1:18;61:10). This is our wedding dress that covers the reality of our spiritual nakedness when God looks at us, unlike the man in the parable of Jesus who tried to manage with his own clothes (righteousness) (Matt.22:11). He has also given us the privilege to confess our sins and receive forgiveness whenever we realise we have fallen (1Jn.2:1).
We must see the need for this balance, and we must counter the pull towards any extreme by balancing it out with the other side of the truth.
What God has promised vs. what we have received
"For those whom He foreknew, He also predestined to become conformed to the image of His Son, so that He would be the firstborn among many brethren;" (Rom.8:29). Just look at God's promise about what He will do for us – that we can become like His Son Jesus Christ. This is just one of all the many promises He has laid out in the Bible. But just think of it. Are we actually becoming like Jesus? How much have we become like Jesus after we came at first to Him?The mistake many people make in this connection is to read the promises of God, claim them, and wait in expectation for God to fulfil them for them. Some others force themselves to believe that they have already been fulfilled. But it is possible that even though there are promises of God, we can still miss receiving them (Heb.4:1). This is because many promises of God are conditional, and depend on how we fulfil those conditions. For example, God promises us that sin shall not rule over us because we are under grace, but it will not become real in our life unless we deal with temptations in the right way (Rom.6:12-14). If we don't meet the conditions, we will not receive what is promised. Can we now understand why many people are becoming discouraged thinking that God's promises are not being fulfilled?
So, while we are looking at the promises of God, what do we have to do if we don't want to lose balance? Let us examine our life to see if the promises are being fulfilled in our life, and if not, see what conditions we ought to fulfil for those promises. Let us not blame God for unfulfilled promises or unanswered prayers. There is never a mistake on God's part. We can be sure of that. But there may be lacks from our side.
Grace vs. working out salvation
Grace from God to us is a favour He shows towards us which we don't deserve. For example, we know that we have all sinned against God and that what we deserve from Him is punishment. But what He offers us are forgiveness and acceptance, which we don't deserve. God is able to offer forgiveness freely because the punishment for our sins has already been taken by our Saviour Jesus Christ. So, all we have to get forgiveness from God is to receive it as a free gift of grace from God. There is no merit we can present to Him in exchange, and therefore there is nothing for us to boast about (Eph.2:8,9).But some people have an exaggerated idea about grace. They imagine that if salvation has to be by the grace of God, there must be nothing for us to do. Some of these people consider even the act of receiving the free gift from God as a work of man, and say that it must be God who makes man to receive it by divine intervention in a man's life. No. God is offering us a free, undeserved gift, and all we do is to receive it. There is no achievement on our side, and the glory goes entirely to God.
The act of receiving this free gift includes recognising and confessing our sins, deciding to turn away from our old sinful life, and submitting to Jesus as the One whose death has provided us this salvation. This is a change of heart from our side about God and sin. It is a natural response from people who recognise their sin and turn to the Saviour. These are not works we do to earn merit before God.
Receiving forgiveness for our sins is but the entry into a life of following Jesus. As we follow Jesus, we need to overcome the temptations that will come our way every day (Lk.9:23). God is trying to help us through the work of the Holy Spirit inside us, and then we have to obey the promptings of the Holy Spirit and actually do the will of God in practical ways. God empowers us, and we work it out in the daily situations of our life (Php.2:12,13). We cannot work for our salvation, as some people misunderstand, but we are only to carry out what the Holy Spirit empowers us to do. Here again we see the balance.
Some people make the mistake of expecting God to do everything from His side, while neglecting their responsibility to respond to Him from their side. Some others go to the opposite extreme, trying to save themselves without depending on God. I hope it is clear now how to keep our balance here, depending on God's power and wisdom and then doing what He tells us to do.
Forgiven vs. forgiving others
Sad to say, many people who imagine they have become Christians or believers do not seem to recognise the tremendous value of the forgiveness God offers us. They treat it as if it is so easy to get, not remembering that it cost God the sacrifice of His Son! They seem to take for granted that a loving God will forgive. Some even seem to feel entitled to it. They think that they have not done any gross sins like others, and that it would be unfair of God to forgive those gross sinners and then deny them forgiveness. Actually, those who think like that do not understand what God thinks about sin and how they appear in His presence.Sin is deeper than disobedience to God. Adam and Eve certainly disobeyed God by eating the forbidden fruit. But, by choosing to eat from the tree of knowledge of good and evil, the implication was that they wanted to become independent people, like God, and then be free to make their own decisions apart from God. Choosing to be independent of God was the essence of sin. Rom.1:21 talks about people knowing about God but then not honouring Him as God. "For even though they knew God, they did not honor Him as God or give thanks, but they became futile in their speculations, and their foolish heart was darkened." All of us are guilty of this in one sense. We have all lived doing what we liked, independent of God, even though some of us have not committed gross sins like murder or adultery. So, when we come before God, we are all guilty.
"Behold, the LORD's hand is not so short That it cannot save; Nor is His ear so dull That it cannot hear. But your iniquities have made a separation between you and your God, And your sins have hidden His face from you so that He does not hear" (Isa.59:1,2). God is the perfection of holiness, and He cannot receive sinners into His presence. The huge chasm between the holy God and us sinners has to be bridged before we can get near to God. That is what Jesus accomplished for us. He shed His innocent blood as a perfect atonement for sinners (1Pet.1:18,19). It is only this blood, which we can plead by faith, that can cleanse us from our sins and provide us access before God. Remember, when the blood of Jesus was shed from the cross and He died, the veil in the Temple that prohibited people from entering the Most Holy Place was torn down by God, signalling that now it is possible to approach God through the blood of Jesus.
We can see that this is an act of grace from God's side, something that we totally do not deserve. This is something we need to keep in mind when someone sins against us. Our feelings may tell us that he should not be forgiven because he does not deserve to be forgiven! How is it that we want forgiveness even when we don't deserve it, but we stand strongly for justice when it comes to someone else? Now we can understand why God will not forgive someone who will not forgive another person (Matt.6:14,15). If we find it difficult to forgive others, we must realise that we have not understood the way God has forgiven us.
Free from the Law vs. obeying God
What does it mean when the Bible says we have been freed from the Law? Certainly it is not that now we don't have any law to follow. The law that God gave Israel through Moses has now been overtaken by a law of the Spirit of God (Rom.8:2). The law of Moses pertained to external behaviour, and it served also as the criminal law for Israel as a nation. Under the new covenant that Jesus brought, the Holy Spirit now brings us under a higher law, the one that agrees with God's heart (Ezek.36:26,27). This is called the law of life, or in other words, the law that can lead us to life, the life of Christ. So when it says we are free from the Law, it is not that we are let loose to follow our own desires as if there is no more law over us. If we now live ignoring the promptings from the Holy Spirit, we can still end up with spiritual death (Rom.8:13). Unfortunately, there are some people who claim that whatever they do now is covered by the blood of Jesus, and there is now no law that condemns them.What it means to be freed from the law is that keeping a law as a means of qualifying for God's acceptance is done away with. Almost all religions of the world have that in common, seeking to become pleasing to God through following some kind of laws or practices. Many people who assume they are Christians because they follow Christ externally follow 'Christian' rules and rituals hoping to become acceptable to God. The problem with this approach is that however much someone follows these rules, there will always be something lacking in their life in relation to God, and therefore, in effect, they can never be acceptable to God in this way. So then they hope that God will consider their overall performance where their good outweighs their bad and accept them in the end. But God cannot accept any offering that has any blemish.
When we see this, we come to realise the hopelessness of following in this way, and also recognise that we are actually standing outside from God facing His justice, wrath and impending punishment. It is then that we are glad there is a way God offers to us that will accept us entirely, cancelling out what we deserve in terms of punishment and justifying us in His sight just as if we had never actually sinned. God accepts us when we choose to have faith in Jesus as our Saviour, even without our having kept the Law (Rom.4:5). That is the good news of the Gospel. It is those who submit to this truth about themselves and receive this salvation from God as an undeserved free gift from God who are born again.
There is another way also by which we are freed from the Law. Jesus described, for example, how looking at a woman desiring her in our heart is adultery in our heart even if there is no physical act. When we come into the realm of the law of the Spirit of life in Christ Jesus, our life battles shift from focus on the external acts to what goes on inside us. When that happens, and we become careful in keeping our heart pure, our external actions will automatically become pure. Then the external laws become irrelevant to us. They no longer apply to us. We are, in a way, free from that law.
At the same time, we cannot say we don't have any law. We are under a new law with stricter demands to follow a higher standard. When we listen to the Holy Spirit, hear His warnings and corrections moment by moment, and submit to Him, then we can see that we are following the true law of God (Rom.8:14).
Loving others vs. standing for truth
When we love God, the result is that we start obeying Him. If we merely imagine we love God, we can detect that by observing how serious we are about obeying Him (Jn.14:21). Another thing we notice is that we begin to love other people and to care for them (1Jn.3:14,17).The world recognises love between people who want to get married and have children. But as we make progress towards becoming like God and becoming godly in our character, our love towards others moves away from looking out for our own interests towards caring for others and serving them. This care for others shows itself in various forms, according to our different callings and the circumstances we are placed in. Even worldly people appreciate the physical and social care that Christians show others. But at the same time, as we grow in understanding, we also realise that our desire for their eternal welfare is more important and crucial than what we can do for their earthly life.
It also happens that when we love God with all our heart, He becomes the most important part of our life, and everyone and everything else become secondary. We want to see Him honoured and glorified, and we want His will to be done and His kingdom established. This leads many times to a clash between what God wants and what people want. If we stand with God, sometimes people will see this as moving away from our love for them. In such people's understanding, if we love them, we will stand with them, take care of them, and protect them even when they do wrong. Children think that their parents hate them when they get corrected, and society says Christians are judgmental and without love when they warn people about immorality.
But that is a part of our being the salt and light of this world. If we keep quiet about the things that are going wrong, the world will only become darker and we ourselves will become irrelevant as God's witnesses (Matt.5:13).
Evangelism vs. discipleship
We hear frequently that it is the primary duty of every Christian to share the Gospel with other people and bring them to Christ. There is a flaw here. First of all, not all are called to be evangelists because that is just one among many ministries that are entrusted individually to different people. To go out to the ends of the earth and preach the Gospel is a command to the church as a whole and not all individual members of the church. What is expected from all believers is to bear witness to other people around them (Acts.1:8). Secondly, having brought people to Christ through evangelism, the duty of the church is to help them grow as disciples of Jesus and become more and more like Christ. God's ultimate goal through the Gospel and the church is to take people towards maturity in Christ (Eph.4:13). Imagine a church full of new converts who are not being discipled, leading to schisms, quarrels, divisions and sins of all types. That seems to develop rather quickly, doesn't it? One reason could be the over-emphasis on evangelism and the neglect of discipleship.Conclusion
I hope we see how important balance is in our life. We have looked at a few important areas in the life of Christians, but you can see that there are many more areas that need to be addressed in order to bring about balance. I hope we will keep ourselves open to the Holy Spirit as He seeks to teach us.