I
remember when I first started attending my church (1991), I would hear from the
pulpit about how misinformed Christians incorrectly “kept short accounts,” and
I’d think to myself, “What is that?”
“It’s
likely that most anyone who’s been a follower of Christ for any length of time
has heard the phrase ‘keep short accounts’ at least once along the way, but
what does it mean?” writes an internet blogger with the site My Beloved is Mine. “In general, it
means that when we sin, we should quickly make every effort to get alone with
God, ask His forgiveness, and receive His cleansing with thankfulness . . .
Living daily with a clean conscience is far more peaceful to the Christian than
living with the black cloud of conviction hanging overhead.”
The
verse used to defend this awful, wholly unscriptural approach to Christian living is I John
1:9: [9] If we confess our sins, he is
faithful and just to forgive us our sins, and to cleanse us from all
unrighteousness.
Jordan
explains, “No. 1, that verse has nothing to do with the Body of Christ and No.
2, it has nothing to do with what people say it has to do with. The verse is
about how those (little flock) Believers are going to get into the fellowship
to start with and it’s not any ongoing kind of a thing.
“Israel’s
program under the law was a short accounts system where when they sinned, the
fellowship between them and God was broken and, in order to restore that
communion with God, they had to offer a sacrifice.
“That’s
what the whole sacrificial system in the Old Testament was about. All of those
sacrifices listed in Leviticus--they were not designed to save those people.
Those people already were the children of God.
“The
sacrifices were for Israel to maintain that status of covenant relationship
with God, rather than to be cut off from God. They had the law to say ‘thou
shalt do this’ and ‘thou shalt not do that,’ and if you see the neighbor’s ox
is in a ditch you’re to stop and get him out, but if you’re in a hurry to get
where you got to go and don’t stop, now you’ve sinned and what do you do?
“To
keep a short account system, you go down and confess your sin and offer the
proscribed sacrifice to make restoration so you can keep the covenant
relationship going.”
*****
A
quote from a famous 19th century British philosopher says, “To live completely, wholly,
every day as if it were a new loveliness, there must be a dying to everything
of yesterday, otherwise you live mechanically, and a mechanical mind can never
know what love is or what freedom is.”
In my mind
this is what Paul is talking about when he advises to “be transformed by the
renewing of your mind.”
Jordan says, “When you realize who you
are and how you're set apart unto Christ--acceptable to God, accepted in the
Beloved--is there anything any more logical or reasonable than just to say, ‘Here
I am, Lord! Just let who you’ve already made me in Christ do it!'
“The first time I was in the
Philippines, I heard a song Filipinos sing that I never knew about. Very seldom
do people sing a hymn I haven’t heard the words to but I had never heard
this one: ‘The mercies of God, what
a theme for my song. Oh I never could number them more. They’re more than the
stars in the heavenly dome or the sand of the wave-beaten shore. For mercies so
great what return can I make? For mercies so constant and sure, I’ll love Him,
l’ll serve Him with all that I have as long as my life shall endure.’
“What other response could you have
when you really see His love for you in Christ? We love Him because He first
loved us. Not because He said, ‘If you don’t, I’ll damn you!’ We love Him
because He made it possible for us to love Him by transforming us and making us
His!”
(new article tomorrow)
No comments:
Post a Comment