How are the Pharisees doing?
Last night and this morning, I had an opportunity to hear John Ortberg speak at Buckhead Church to a small group leader training and then at church this morning. He was talking about some of the thoughts from his new book "The me I want to be" - and how it relates to how we approach our lives and our transformation into the people that God uniquely created us to be. What's really cool is that at the re:group small group leader training, we all got a copy of the book for ourselves and now I really want to digest it.
There were a lot of thoughts that Ortberg said during those two sessions that are resonating with me, but one that is especially ringing is this thought about grace-based transformation (or sanctification if you're using "churchy" terms to talk about this) and how grace is as much required for us to be transformed into the people God designed us to be as it is to initially rescue us from a life separated from God. And then he talked about the questions we ask to assess "How am I doing spiritually?" and how often we ask questions that if we were to survey a room of people with those questions that we'd find that the people that would be considered "Pharisees" in Jesus' day would come out on top when we conducted a spiritual maturity census.
You know... questions like
- Are you having your quiet time every day?
- How well do you know the Bible?
- How's your church attendance/are you in a good Bible study?
- Are you tithing 10 percent?
Now, there's nothing wrong with any of these things... In fact, these are some great things to include in your life if you are seeking to grow in your relationship with God. However, if you asked a Pharisee about how he (or she) is doing, then they're going to probably look better than most of the rest of us, and yet when Jesus looked into their lives He had nothing good to say.
So... to quote something else John Ortberg said this morning:
"We have to define spiritual growth in such a way that the Pharisees do not win." Because if we look at many of the systems that we adhere to, they almost indefinitely would. Jesus said it this way: "For I tell you that unless your righteousness surpasses that of the Pharisees and the teachers of the law, you will certainly not enter the kingdom of heaven." (Matt. 5:20)
So what was the Pharisees' deal? It was all about what you did do and didn't do. What you participated in and what you abstained from. While it looked internal and talked a pretty good game about the internal, in reality it was all about external works you did to try to gut out righteousness on your own and attempt to be better than the next guy. These guys weren't happy... and trying to keep up with their long list of rules wasn't producing much good fruit out of them. In fact, if you read between the lines when you read the gospels, you would get the impression that they were a pretty miserable (but externally righteous) group of people. They had a system set up that if they followed the rules better than the majority of folks, then they could feel pretty good about themselves, except there's that "how good is good enough?" question so it creates (or can create) this never ending circle of frustration.
As a recovering Pharisee myself, I can tell you from my own story that doesn't produce the kind of life that God describes as the life He wants to give us.
A life that looks like Jesus. Think about what that would look like. Would it look like what we see in most of our churches, singles' Bible study classes, small groups, and ministries in America? Read the gospels and ask yourself if Jesus's life looks like what we see in our churches today. Do you think He was ever stressed out over having to conform to an expansive set of rules?
So - there's got to be a definition of spiritual maturity that does not allow the Pharisees to come out on top. In that assessment, what questions do you think you would ask?
Here are some questions that I ask myself... maybe they're still a little pharisee-ish in nature but I'm a work in progress:
- What has God been showing/teaching me lately?
- Is my personality centered around the fact that Jesus loves me?
- Am I a blessing to other people or am I using them to meet my own needs?
- Are my emotions stirred when I hear God's word or a worship song or am I just going through the motions?
- How big are the external things in my life compared to knowing Christ?
You may have some different questions... but I'm sure that if your spirituality is being evaluated like the Pharisees evaluated theirs, then some of these questions wouldn't make your list. Maybe some would, but I'm not perfect. But the critical thing that rescues us from Pharisee-esque legalism is a realization of our complete dependence on grace for everyday life and our running to that well often. That's what was missing... they thought they would make this thing work through doing the right things. It was never about allowing God to work in their lives to create a new life within them, which made the things that Jesus talked about seem crazy because they are things that we'd never do naturally.
That's what makes grace so amazing. And it's probably why that, if you were to meet someone who was truly living out this life, not perfectly but you could see this joy, peace, etc. radiate from him or her, you would meet someone that was aware that they did not produce it themselves and were completely in awe of the God who took their old broken life and replaced it with something very amazing. And when that happens and we take notice of it in our own lives, it drives us to humility and worship because we know that we got a gift and we couldn't make this happen ourselves.
Because keeping a list of disciplines, as good as having disciplines are, cannot ultimately transform our lives. They can only make us more disciplined. While that's a great thing, I'm betting that when we are really honest we ultimately want more than that.
There were a lot of thoughts that Ortberg said during those two sessions that are resonating with me, but one that is especially ringing is this thought about grace-based transformation (or sanctification if you're using "churchy" terms to talk about this) and how grace is as much required for us to be transformed into the people God designed us to be as it is to initially rescue us from a life separated from God. And then he talked about the questions we ask to assess "How am I doing spiritually?" and how often we ask questions that if we were to survey a room of people with those questions that we'd find that the people that would be considered "Pharisees" in Jesus' day would come out on top when we conducted a spiritual maturity census.
You know... questions like
- Are you having your quiet time every day?
- How well do you know the Bible?
- How's your church attendance/are you in a good Bible study?
- Are you tithing 10 percent?
Now, there's nothing wrong with any of these things... In fact, these are some great things to include in your life if you are seeking to grow in your relationship with God. However, if you asked a Pharisee about how he (or she) is doing, then they're going to probably look better than most of the rest of us, and yet when Jesus looked into their lives He had nothing good to say.
So... to quote something else John Ortberg said this morning:
"We have to define spiritual growth in such a way that the Pharisees do not win." Because if we look at many of the systems that we adhere to, they almost indefinitely would. Jesus said it this way: "For I tell you that unless your righteousness surpasses that of the Pharisees and the teachers of the law, you will certainly not enter the kingdom of heaven." (Matt. 5:20)
So what was the Pharisees' deal? It was all about what you did do and didn't do. What you participated in and what you abstained from. While it looked internal and talked a pretty good game about the internal, in reality it was all about external works you did to try to gut out righteousness on your own and attempt to be better than the next guy. These guys weren't happy... and trying to keep up with their long list of rules wasn't producing much good fruit out of them. In fact, if you read between the lines when you read the gospels, you would get the impression that they were a pretty miserable (but externally righteous) group of people. They had a system set up that if they followed the rules better than the majority of folks, then they could feel pretty good about themselves, except there's that "how good is good enough?" question so it creates (or can create) this never ending circle of frustration.
As a recovering Pharisee myself, I can tell you from my own story that doesn't produce the kind of life that God describes as the life He wants to give us.
A life that looks like Jesus. Think about what that would look like. Would it look like what we see in most of our churches, singles' Bible study classes, small groups, and ministries in America? Read the gospels and ask yourself if Jesus's life looks like what we see in our churches today. Do you think He was ever stressed out over having to conform to an expansive set of rules?
So - there's got to be a definition of spiritual maturity that does not allow the Pharisees to come out on top. In that assessment, what questions do you think you would ask?
Here are some questions that I ask myself... maybe they're still a little pharisee-ish in nature but I'm a work in progress:
- What has God been showing/teaching me lately?
- Is my personality centered around the fact that Jesus loves me?
- Am I a blessing to other people or am I using them to meet my own needs?
- Are my emotions stirred when I hear God's word or a worship song or am I just going through the motions?
- How big are the external things in my life compared to knowing Christ?
You may have some different questions... but I'm sure that if your spirituality is being evaluated like the Pharisees evaluated theirs, then some of these questions wouldn't make your list. Maybe some would, but I'm not perfect. But the critical thing that rescues us from Pharisee-esque legalism is a realization of our complete dependence on grace for everyday life and our running to that well often. That's what was missing... they thought they would make this thing work through doing the right things. It was never about allowing God to work in their lives to create a new life within them, which made the things that Jesus talked about seem crazy because they are things that we'd never do naturally.
That's what makes grace so amazing. And it's probably why that, if you were to meet someone who was truly living out this life, not perfectly but you could see this joy, peace, etc. radiate from him or her, you would meet someone that was aware that they did not produce it themselves and were completely in awe of the God who took their old broken life and replaced it with something very amazing. And when that happens and we take notice of it in our own lives, it drives us to humility and worship because we know that we got a gift and we couldn't make this happen ourselves.
Because keeping a list of disciplines, as good as having disciplines are, cannot ultimately transform our lives. They can only make us more disciplined. While that's a great thing, I'm betting that when we are really honest we ultimately want more than that.
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