The Gospel in Twenty Questions (14 page)

Jesus said, “Beware of the
leaven of the Pharisees, which is hypocrisy” (Luke 12:1, NKJV). Why do we need
to be on our guard if others are acting like hypocrites? Because those who have
bought into a lie do not always react well to the truth.

The Pharisees
claimed to represent God, but their actions revealed they didn’t know him. Even
when the Son of God came and stood in front of them, they didn’t recognize him.
And when he told them who he really was, they said he was of the devil and
tried to kill him. This happened on numerous occasions, and Jesus typically responded
by walking away. He withdrew, moved on, and stayed alive.
[27]

Then the Pharisees went out and began to
plot with the Herodians how they might kill Jesus. Jesus withdrew with his
disciples to the lake ... (Mark 3:6
–
7a)

If you dare to walk
by grace, you
can expect opposition from
the Pharisees and Herodians. A Pharisee is a religious hypocrite who treats
grace the same way the original Pharisees treated Jesus. He may talk about
grace as though he knows something about it, but when grace is revealed he says
it’s of the devil and then tries to kill it.

The religious
hypocrite likes grace but only in moderation. Proclaim radical grace and he
will chide you for being unbalanced or extreme. He may warn you to steer clear
of what he perceives to be a dangerous teaching. And to him grace is dangerous,
for it undermines everything he’s worked for. It elevates tax-collectors and
sinners to the same exalted status he has attained on his own.

The religious
hypocrite accepts grace in theory, just not in practice. He may be willing to
let the riff-raff into the kingdom, but it irks him when grace throws parties
for prodigals while ignoring his years of faithful service. The hypocrite feels
he must resist radical grace, for it threatens to tear down the walls of
reputation and ministry that separate the elite from the rest.

Some will
say, “Grace is for sinners,” by which they mean grace is
only
for
sinners. Grace is not for them. “We are saved by grace but sanctified through
hard work and discipline.”

Or they will
say, “Grace is an important doctrine,” meaning grace needs to be balanced with
other important doctrines like holiness and submission. “Grace is a good idea,
but you will not experience it unless you first walk in obedience.”

We need to be
wary of lines like these, for they lead to hypocrisy. Those who say such things
treat grace as little more than God’s grease for the gears of your self-effort.
They don’t understand that grace is the whole engine, the gearbox, and
everything else. Apart from grace, we can do nothing. Zip. Nada.

Live
confidently under grace and you can expect trouble from the Pharisee. Resist
his manipulation and he will condemn you in the name of the Lord. He will seek
to skewer you with scriptures and silence you with warnings. He may even try to
assassinate your character. And while he is doing all of this he will be
telling himself that he is doing the Lord’s work and protecting the church.

Jesus said, “Beware
of the leaven of the Pharisees and the leaven of Herod” (Mark 8:15, NKJV). A
Herod is a self-made king who treats grace the same way the original Herod
treated Jesus
—
by trying to kill him (see Matthew 2:13).

The Herods of
the world—the bosses, rulers, and power-brokers—have no time for grace because
their world runs on the principles of
un
grace. These principles are well known: “The early bird
gets the worm.” “No pain, no gain.” “There is no such thing as a free lunch.” “Demand
your rights.” “Get what you pay for.”
[28]

The
leaven of Herod is the belief that success is for the self-made man. Rewards
come to those who earn them, and everyone gets what they deserve.

In
Herod’s world everyone knows their place and everyone has their price. Those at
the bottom work so that those at the top can enjoy the good life. The good news
according to Herod is, “Play by the rules and you may rise from your lowly
station. Work hard, don’t make trouble, and maybe one day you will get a bigger
stake in the game.”

But King
Jesus offers us a better gospel. In his kingdom your worth is not determined by
your productivity, but your Father’s love. King Herod says, “You are mine. You
work for me.” But grace proclaims, “You are a child of the Most High and a
slave of no man.”

The rich and
powerful are opposed to grace because it threatens to empty
the slave markets on which their empires are built. “Grace is bad business,”
they say. “We have to stop this thing before it spreads.” It was this
grace-killing mindset that Paul encountered in Ephesus.

In
many of the towns he visited, Paul was met with religious opposition, but
Ephesus was different. In Ephesus it was the merchants and craftsmen who
opposed his gospel (see Acts 19). They were worried about their trade in idols.
To protect their business interests they instigated a riot and seized two of
Paul’s traveling companions.

As
demonstrated in Ephesus, Herod cannot tolerate grace because it weakens his
hold over others. For Herod to remain on the throne, he has to keep you under
his thumb. His dog-eat-dog world requires a steady supply of fresh dogs.
Consequently, the Herods in your life
—
your employers and those with power and
prestige
—
will never encourage you in your grace journey. They will
pressure you to perform, climb the ladder, and stay in their game.

Follow
after grace and you may find yourself in a tug of war between two kings. King
Jesus will be gently drawing you towards ever-increasing freedom, while King
Herod will seek to keep you bound with cords of stress, ambition, and
insecurity.

A
pattern I have often seen is this: Someone hears the gospel of grace and gets a
whiff of the free air of heaven. They may have been beaten down by debt and
circumstance, but when grace comes along they respond with joy. “Thank God
almighty, I am free at last.” But before they are out of the prison door,
something happens in their job and they are sucked right back down under the
weight of manmade expectations. New cares and worries emerge to keep the gospel
from bearing fruit in their lives. They get seduced from the truth of Jesus by
Herod’s lies.

Live for
grace and you will find yourself in conflict with modern-day Pharisees and
Herods. They are not your enemy, but since the principles they stand on are
fundamentally opposed to grace, they will create trouble for you. The
temptation will be to respond in the flesh, but doing so will only lead to more
trouble. A wiser response may be to withdraw like Jesus or walk away like Paul.

Life is too
short to live in reaction to the angry opposition of grace-haters. Sheep and
wolves never get along. So “be as shrewd as snakes and as innocent as doves”
(Matthew 10:16).

Our world is marred by
violence, greed, and all the fruits of sin. What this world desperately needs
is a revelation of Jesus and his peaceable kingdom. But how do we live at peace
in a world of hostile Herods and Pharisees?

Jesus said,
“When you go someplace to reveal the good news of heaven, let your peace rest
on that place” (see Matthew 10:12). This seems an odd thing to say, but it
makes perfect sense if you grew up watching
Star Trek
. In the
Star
Trek
universe, visitors from faraway places would arrive with unknown
intentions. If they said, “We come in peace,” you knew all would be well. Their
intentions were peaceable.

That’s how it
is with us. Wherever we go, we go in peace. We don’t come swinging swords or
firing photon torpedoes. We have no interest in picking sides or partisan
politics. Instead, we are presenting a radical alternative to anything this
world offers, namely, a message of hope from another kingdom.

If it is possible, as far as it depends on you, live
at peace with everyone. (Romans 12:18)

For too long Christianity has
been associated with the unfortunate image of the bloodied crusader. But the
true sons of God are peacemakers (Matthew 5:9). Our aim is to live at peace
with everyone. When that’s not possible, then it may be time to move on, change
the subject, change the conversation, perhaps even change towns (see Matthew
10:14).

I
occasionally get messages like this:

Paul, I’ve come to realize that God really loves me
and he’s forgiven all my sins. I was so excited to share this at church, but
the pastor stood up afterwards and shot me down. He said I was presenting an
unbalanced version of grace. Later he sent me a message saying I wasn’t to speak
about grace again. What’s going on?

What’s going on is a wedge of
truth is beginning to divide “father from son and mother from daughter.” It’s
not pleasant, but it happens. Those who have seen grace can’t unsee it, and
those who haven’t can’t relate.

What can you
do in such a situation? You have two options: Stop talking about grace or start
a new conversation someplace else. The temptation will be to engage in debate,
but little good will come of it. A wiser approach is to ask the Holy Spirit,
“How can I reveal the peace of heaven in this situation?” This is what
distinguishes the sons of God from others—we make peace where they make war.

To recap,
“Endure to the end and be saved” is not the bad news of conditional salvation.
Jesus is simply saying you cannot fulfill the Great Commission if you’re dead
or otherwise silenced. If you are being persecuted for preaching the gospel in
Lystra, move to Derbe. “When you are persecuted in one place, flee to another”
(Matthew 10:23).

The gospel of
peace is not proclaimed by waging religious wars. No one ever got saved through
an argument. The last thing an angry and violent world needs is angry and
violent Christians. What this world desperately needs is a revelation of the
Prince of peace by those who have embraced his gospel of peace.

As the communion plate came
closer and closer, I was filled with terror. Condemnation was just minutes
away. Why was I afraid? I had unresolved sin in my life. I was ten years old
and I had argued with my sister before church. I knew those who took communion
in an unworthy manner risked judgment, possibly even death, for the Bible told
me so:

So then, whoever eats the bread or drinks the cup of
the Lord in an unworthy manner will be guilty of sinning against the body and
blood of the Lord … Those who eat and drink without discerning the body of
Christ eat and drink judgment on themselves. That is why many among you are
weak and sick, and a number of you have fallen asleep. (1 Corinthians 11:27–30)

Thankfully, I was wrong.

The passage
above must be one of the most misunderstood passages in the Bible. It is
regularly used to deny communion to those who need it and it is frightening to
ten-year-olds. But as we will see, it is one of the most liberating scriptures
in the Bible.

The Lord Jesus, on the night he was betrayed, took
bread, and when he had given thanks, he broke it and said, “This is my body,
which is for you; do this in remembrance of me.” In the same way, after supper
he took the cup, saying, “This cup is the new covenant in my blood; do this,
whenever you drink it, in remembrance of me.” (1 Corinthians 11:23b–25)

Communion is pretty simple. It’s
just bread and wine, or flatbread and grape juice, or whatever you have on
hand. The significance of communion—or the Lord’s Supper or the Eucharist or
the breaking of bread or whatever you prefer to call it—is not what you eat and
drink, but why you do it. Jesus said, “Do this in remembrance of me.” Communion
is about him, not us. If you are focused on yourself during communion, you’re
doing it wrong. Communion is not a time for examining yourself for sin. It’s a
time for remembering Jesus.

But what
aspect of Jesus are we to remember? Paul tells us:

For whenever you eat this bread and drink this cup,
you proclaim the Lord’s death until he comes. (1 Corinthians 11:26)

Jesus did many good things, but
ultimately he came to die so that we might live. We proclaim, not mourn, the
Lord’s death by giving thanks. Indeed, this is what the word
Eucharist
literally
means; giving thanks. Communion is not a time for confessing sins, but for saying,
“Thank you, Jesus.”
[29]

What is the
significance of the bread? It represents Jesus, the bread of life that came
down from heaven to give life to the world (John 6:48, 51). Eating the
communion bread is an opportunity to say, “Thank you, Lord, for your body that
was pierced and broken so that I might truly live.”

What is the
significance of the cup? The cup represents the most precious commodity in the
universe, namely the blood of Jesus that underwrites the new covenant:

Then he took a cup, and when he had given thanks, he gave
it to them, saying, “Drink from it, all of you. This is my blood of the
covenant, which is poured out for many for the forgiveness of sins.” (Matthew
26:27–28)

Drinking from the communion cup
is an opportunity to say, “Thank you, Lord, for your blood that cleanses me
from all sin and makes me white as snow.”

Without the
blood, the gospel is no gospel and the cross is nothing more than two beams of
wood. As the hymnist Robert Lowry wrote, we stand on “nothing but the blood of
Jesus.” Our cleansing, our wholeness, our pardon, our hope, our peace, our
righteousness, our overcoming are all possible because Jesus bled and died.
This is what we remember when we take communion. This is the good news in a
cup!