religiousaffections

Again from Mr. Wilhoit’s Spiritual Formation as if the Church Mattered:

The question I left you with at the end of the last entry - What does it look like to believe in and respond more and more to gospel truth as a means of fighting temptation in your life?  What I am getting at is the fact that Wilhoit is helping us to change our ideas about resisting temptation to sin.  At least he is doing so for me.  Instead of recognizing temptation and moving forward in my own power with hopes of resisting (even if I do offer up a small prayer for help), Wilhoit suggests that we recall the truths of the gospel in the face of temptation.  In short, he is suggesting that we remember who and whose we are when temptation knocks at our door.

The gospel calls us to discipleship and contains the power to enable us to follow Christ.  The complementary action to proclaiming the gospel is that of confronting the false gospels and idols, which are always present in our lives.  In Galatians we see an example of this.  Peter and the apostles had insisted that Gentiles Christians adopt Jewish cultural forms in order to “real” Christians.  In essence, the Jewish Christians were maintaining their attitudes of racial superiority and as a result, evangelism, worship and fellowship in the church of Galatia suffered.

Paul confronts Peter and the apostles about it, calling them to repentance.  But when Paul rebuked Peter, he did not say, “Your attitude of racial superiority is immoral” (though this was true).  Rather, he said, “They were not acting consistently with the truth of the gospel” (Gal. 2:14).  Application of gospel truth to this situation of temptation and sin: The gospel was not growing and bearing fruit in the church because in this area they had not understood God’s grace in all its truth.  The gospel of grace should end the self-justifying behavior of cultural pride, a form of works righteousness in which the human heart seeks to use cultural differences as measurements of personal worth.  Paul applied the gospel, and the result was a renewal, a great leap forward for the church.

Here we see a stunning example of applying one of many gospel truths in the face of sin and temptation.  We are made children of God because of his grace (us getting what we do not deserve and cannot earn).  Therefore, it was useless for the apostles and it is useless for us to compare ourselves with people of different cultures, persuasions, or preferences and putting them down as a means of making ourselves appear superior.  For the gospel truth teaches that God alone is superior and we are who we are only because of grace.  All of our spiritual problems come from a failure to apply the gospel.  This example alone cut me to the heart and changed the way I think about others. 

Philippians 2:3 comes to mind - “Do nothing from selfishness or conceit, but in humility count others more significant than yourselves.”  This encouragement from Paul is rooted in the gospel truth found in Phil. 2:5-6.  That Jesus, though he was God, did not consider equality with God something to hold onto.  Instead he put on humility and came to rescue us.  Believe this gospel truth today and put humility the way Paul describes in Phi 2:3-8.  Applying the gospel in this way - putting on radical humility - we slay a host of sins.