“Strengthened in the Faith: Part II”

Selected Scriptures

             The need for true spiritual maturity in the church today is as great as it has ever been.  Believers all across the world need to be strengthened in the faith.  This is true particularly in light of the fact that many churches are substituting a sort of superficial spirituality for the real thing.  The last few decades have seen the church growth movement sweep across the land.  Seminars, conferences, books, programs, and even special organizations have been devoted almost exclusively to propagating principles and methods for church growth.  Some have been helpful, but many have missed the point altogether.  The great push has been for an increase in attendance, an exponential growth in church membership rolls. 

            And what new pastor wouldn’t like to see the numbers in his church go up tenfold shortly after his arrival?  It becomes a sort of “build your own empire” mentality with each pastor vying for the place of supremacy: “My church is bigger than your church,” they think, with all the juvenile maturity of little boy who says, “My big brother could beat up your big brother!”  And the sad reality to all of this is that the people get lost in all the frenzy for growth for the sake of growth.  There is a push for momentum that snowballs into something that is big—a mega-church that is filled with thousands of people who may or may not know Christ as their Savior.  And those who do know Christ are often left as baby Christians never to go beyond a diet of milk, because their church is constantly seeking to attract the lost rather than to edify the saved. 

            This has often been called the “seeker sensitive” movement.  I would rather call it the “seeker driven” movement, because it reflects a philosophy of ministry that is driven by the effort to attract nonbelievers into the fellowship of the church.  Now that sounds good, right?  As Christians we ought to be attracting nonbelievers; we should be longing to see people come to salvation.  But here’s the problem: the seeker driven movement is using the Sunday morning service as the primary means toward that end.  The service is designed around the idea of trying to get the un-churched into church.  Anything that might offend the nonbeliever is strategically avoided.  The effort in crafting the service is carefully aimed at creating an environment in which the pagan is comfortable and feels “at home.”  So the music, in terms of style, has to sound just like what that person would listen to on the radio on his way to work.  What is supposed to be an aid in allowing the people of God to express their grateful praise to God becomes more of a rock concert fostering the performer-audience mentality.  And everything is casual; it’s Starbuck’s Coffee on the one end and McDonald’s Express on the other.

            The preaching can’t be biblical exposition because the Bible too often talks about the wrath of God; it too often speaks of hell and judgment and condemnation; it’s too strong!  The preaching has got to be watered down, and really all but a few minutes of it needs to be replaced by drama, video productions and individual musical performances all so that the nonbeliever can feel at home, comfortable and even sufficiently entertained so as to desire to return the next week.  It’s like the church is just reaching out to the world and saying, “See, we can look just like you!  Our music sounds just like your music; what’s fun for you is fun for us; we’re cool too!  We’re not like what you thought the church was, with all that cold and austere concern for holiness and righteousness, and that message of a Savior who shed His blood to rescue sinners from a Christ-less eternity in the fires of hell.  We’re just a wonderful place for food, fun, fellowship, and entertainment, and we really, really, really, really want you to be part of our church so that . . . . . . we can be bigger.”

            Against the backdrop of this huge movement is the timeless statement of the apostle Paul in 1 Corinthians 14: “When you assemble . . . Let all things be done for edification” (v. 26).  When the church assembles, it is the gathering of the saints; it is the redeemed; it is the people of God; it is the coming together of true believers to worship the God who has saved them.  And a significant part of that worship consists of edification, the building up of true believers.  When we come together on Sunday mornings in particular, we come to worship God and to see to it that God’s people are brought to greater levels of spiritual maturity, to see that they are strengthened in the faith.  That is the desperate need of the church at this critical juncture in history.

            Many times as I went through my training and preparation for ministry, I had to ask myself, “Why stay in America; why stay in the land which has thousands of churches?”  I mean when there are countries where you can drive for miles without seeing one evangelical church, why stay in a country that is filled with them?  Well, I’ve answered that question many times over in my mind.  I’ll tell you why: it’s because the church in America is dying!  There are thousands of churches, but in those churches there is a mass exodus from a philosophy of ministry that is driven by biblical principles.  We are hot on the heals of Europe in terms of becoming a post-Christian secular nation.  Europe, the seedbed of the great Protestant Reformation, the heart of the dawning of a light brighter than the church had seen since the days of the Apostles; what is it now?  Many countries in Europe, like Spain where our own missionaries, the Wells family, are serving, have a population that is less than one percent evangelical.  That is staggering!  How did it happen?  

An April, 2007 article in the Los Angeles Times reads, “Bell tolls for Germany’s churches: Many are being shut or converted to other uses as congregations shrink.”  It shows a picture of a filmmaker, Juliane Beer, who bought an empty church for $10,000.  “Jesus is gone,” she said.  “I’d like to turn it into a studio for artists.”  Germany, that very land were the spark of the Reformation was ignited when a young Martin Luther nailed his “Ninety-five Theses” to a church door in Wittenberg, is a place where today the truly evangelical church is all but non-existent.  Under the heading, “Secular Conversions,” the article says, “Churches have been re-invented as restaurants, coffee houses, clubs, apartments and music halls.”  Even the Roman Catholic Church is expected “to stop services in 700 of its . . . churches by 2015.” 

The true church is all but dead in Germany, and most of Europe for that matter, because somewhere along the line it began to fail to fulfill its responsibility to edify its people.  It stopped strengthening people in the faith.  And where Martin Luther once proclaimed, “Sola Scriptura” (Scripture Alone), the German theologians and higher critics of the late nineteenth century waged the greatest attack on Scripture in the history of the church.  The inerrancy, infallibility, authority, clarity, and sufficiency of Scripture were utterly jettisoned from the mainline Protestant churches in Germany.  The most significant means by which God establishes His people in the faith—the word of God—was rejected, tossed on the pile with other ancient books considered as nothing more than the product of fallible men.  And when that happened in Germany, the church died!   

            All of this is happening in America before our very eyes.  If its not liberal theology attacking the inerrancy of Scripture in the universities and seminaries, it’s the “seeker sensitive” movement in mainline evangelical churches and their efforts to water down the truth of the Word of God so as to pander to the tastes of our pagan culture.  And now it’s the “emergent church,” a movement that is not just pandering to our culture, but actually embracing the culture and calling the very clarity of the Word of God into question.  It’s the emperors’ new clothes.  It’s nothing more than theological liberalism with a new suit.  It is an attack on the clarity of Scripture.  “You can’t know what it says,” they say.  “How dare you claim to have the correct interpretation of Scripture!  That’s so arrogant!”  So preaching is out and “conversations” are in.  But if you can’t know what the Bible says, then you can’t do what it says.  And if you can’t know what it says, there’s no point in studying it or even reading it for that matter.  And if you take the Bible, you’ve got nothing left.  The church becomes nothing more than a social organization with no foundation and no real direction doomed to die the death of the church in Europe.  It’s people are left as spiritual infants without the meat they so desperately need to grow.  And the only way to stem the tide is for the church to turn back to its mandate to strengthen and establish its own in the faith.   

            We have, of course, been going through the book of 1 Thessalonians, and it was there last week that we began to expand on Paul’s great concern for the condition of the Thessalonians’ faith.  The beating passion of his pastoral heart was to see them come to greater and greater levels of spiritual maturity.  We see this repeated emphasis all the way to the end of chapter three, and even as we move into chapter four we see Paul essentially saying, “You are doing great, but excel still more!  I mean lean forward into the wind, grab hold of Christ, don’t look back, and don’t be satisfied with where you’re at in terms of spiritual maturity, but press on and grow!”  You go to the end of chapter five and in verse 23 he says, “Now may the God of peace Himself sanctify you entirely; and may your spirit and soul and body be preserved complete, without blame at the coming of our Lord Jesus Christ.”  Paul’s desire was that the Thessalonians would continue to grow in their faith all the way until the point when they would be brought to perfection in the presence of Christ at His coming.  So when in chapter three after he had been separated from them and was concerned about their spiritual condition, he sent Timothy as verse two says, “to strengthen and encourage you as to your faith.” 

            So we took this opportunity last week to begin a series entitled, “Strengthened in the Faith.”  We began by asking the question, “What does it mean to be strengthened in the faith?”  Today we will move to the second question, “How can we be strengthened in the faith?” 

How Can We Be Strengthened in the Faith? 

            This is to ask, “How can we be brought to a greater level of spiritual maturity; how can we become more like our Savior?”  And I hope that nobody is checking out at this point.  I hope you’re not thinking, “This doesn’t apply to me.  I mean, I might need a little tweaking here or there, but I’m pretty much just like Jesus.”  We all need to grow, and because the goal is likeness to Christ, I know that there is plenty of room for everyone to advance in this area. 

            So how do we do it?  How can we see that this is happening in our midst?  Well, we’ve got to understand what we’re talking about.  We sought to describe last week what it means to be strengthened in the faith, what the spiritually mature person looks like, but now we are focusing more on the process.  That process really comes more broadly under the biblical doctrine of sanctification, and I’m going to use that word (sanctification) because it is one with which we should all be familiar.  Sanctification is the process by which we are becoming more and more like Christ.  The verb sanctify (hagiazo in the Greek) means to make holy, to set apart from things profane and dedicate to God, to consecrate.  To grow in holiness is to become less and less like the world and more and more like our Savior.  That is the ongoing process of sanctification in the life of a true believer. 

And there is a sense in which you can group almost all of the commands in Scripture under this doctrine, right?  I mean the summary of most biblical exhortations is essentially, “Stop living sinfully and start living righteously; forsake the ways of the world and follow the ways of God.”  1 Peter 1.14-15 says it like this: “As obedient children, do not be conformed to the former lusts which were yours in your ignorance, but like the Holy One who called you, be holy yourselves also in all your behavior.”  You can basically take every biblical command and put it under that kind of a statement.  Take the whole Law of Moses, all 613 commandments as it was repeated to the Israelites in the plains of Moab on the verge of their entrance into the Promised Land, and you could state it like this: “Don’t be like the nations I am driving out before you; be holy as I the LORD your God am holy.”

            That in a nutshell is what the Bible is saying to us, and it makes sense when we understand it in light of the original purpose for which God created us.  Go back to Genesis and you find God saying, “Let Us make man in Our image, according to Our likeness . . . God created man in His own image, in the image of God He created him; male and female He created them” (Gen 1.26-27).  God made us to be like Him for His glory.  John Stott observes:

If we had to sum it up in a single brief sentence what life is all about, why Jesus Christ came into this world to live and die and rise, and what God is up to in the long-drawn-out historical process both B.C. and A.D., it would be difficult to find a more succinct explanation than this: God is making human beings more human by making them more like Christ.  For God created us in his own image in the first place, which we then spoiled and skewed by our disobedience.  Now he is busy restoring it.  And he is doing it by making us like Christ, since Christ is both perfect man and perfect God (Colossians 1:15; 2 Corinthians 4:4).[1]   

To become more and more like Christ is the goal of our lives.  Romans 8.29 says, “Those whom He foreknew, He also predestined to become conformed to the image of His Son.”  As believers we are to “put on the new self, which in the likeness of God has been created in righteousness and holiness of the truth” (Eph 4.24).  Colossians 3.20 says that this “new self” is being renewed “according to the image of the One who created him.”  2 Corinthians 3.18 says, “But we all, with unveiled face, beholding as in a mirror the glory of the Lord, are being transformed into the same image from glory to glory, just as from the Lord, the Spirit.”  When Christ returns, 1 John 3.2 tells us, “We know that when He appears, we will be like Him, because we will see Him just as he is.”  Though we strive all this life to become more like Him, that will be realized in its fullness when we are glorified in His presence (cf. Phil 3.20-21). 

            So how do we become like Christ; how are we to be sanctified?  In Scripture, so often we read the simple command, “You shall be holy, for I the LORD your God am holy” (Lev 19.2).  The responsibility for personal holiness seems so often to rest on us.  It is our duty to be holy; it is our work to become more like Christ.  The wealth of biblical commands makes that obvious, and we will look at all the means God has given us toward that end.  But I want you to know first of all that it is by the Spirit of God that we are to be strengthened in the faith. 

I. By the Spirit of God 

            In the midst of all the times in Leviticus in which God says, “You shall be holy, for I the LORD your God am holy,” we find this gem of a statement: “You shall keep My statutes and practice them; I am the LORD who sanctifies you” (Lev 20.8).  This simple statement captures the essence of sanctification in Scripture.  It is our responsibility, but it is equally true that it is a work of God.  The command is given—“You shall keep My statutes and practice them”—but the truth which under girds it follows: “I am the LORD who sanctifies you.”  God is the one who sets us apart, who makes us holy, and who brings about true spiritual growth in our lives.  If we miss this, we miss the whole thing.  Every human effort to become like Christ will end in utter failure apart from the work of God on the inside.

            Spiritual transformation is by definition a work of God, and all the injunctions in Scripture for us to be holy, to become more like Christ, assume that reality.  If you’re not saved, if the Spirit of God does not dwell in you, if God is not doing a work on your inner person, listen, you will never become like Jesus Christ.  Every moralistic religion in the world has seen the utter failure of man apart from the invigorating power of the Spirit of God.  Buddhism, Taoism, Hinduism, Islam—they all have noble ideals but are totally void of the power to achieve them. That’s why the apostle Paul prayed for the Thessalonians, “Now may the God of peace Himself sanctify you entirely” (1 Thess 5.23).   God is the agent of sanctification.  He’s got to be the One doing it on the inside.

            Listen, if this weren’t true, I would have given up a long time ago.  You would have to go into my office a drag me out from under my desk where you would find me in the fetal position reciting the Greek alphabet!  If you’ve ever tried in your own strength to achieve the perfect moral standards of God, you’ve come closer to insanity than ever before.  Some of the most outwardly moral people in our society live secret lives of hidden and disgraceful wickedness.  That’s because they don’t have the Spirit of God doing a real and vital work on the inside.  They create an outward façade of righteousness that is driven more by the fear of man than by the fear of God.  The pursuit of morality and virtue apart from the Spirit of God is nothing more than dead legalism that will result in total failure.  Sanctification is a work of God. 

            I want to show you this from Scripture.  Turn with me to Ephesians chapter four.  In verse one of this chapter Paul gives a command: “I, the prisoner of the Lord, implore you to walk in a manner worthy of the calling with which you have been called.”  Then he unloads with a plethora of virtues that should show up in our lives: “with all humility and gentleness, with patience, showing tolerance for one another in love . . .” (v. 2).  These are commands.  This is the way we should live, and would you agree that these virtues paint the picture of a spiritually mature individual?  Paul is essentially telling us here to be holy, to be sanctified, to be spiritually mature, right?  So the responsibility is ours, but listen, you can’t miss the greater context of this letter written to the Ephesians.  The command given here in verse one is preceded by a very important preposition—“Therefore.”  This looks back to all that Paul has written in chapters one through three.  It assumes an understanding of everything that he has said.  And don’t miss this: what he has said in the first half of the book is a statement of reality concerning who we are as believers.  It talks about our position in Christ; it talks about the power that He has given us to live the life to which He is now calling us. 

            In chapter one Paul says, “He chose us in Him before the foundation of the world, that we would be holy and blameless before Him” (v. 4).  God chose to set His saving affection upon us long before we were ever born.  Why?  “That we would be holy and blameless before Him;” that’s the goal—our sanctification.  And this chapter is all about God’s sovereign and gracious work in bringing us to salvation.  In verse 13 it says, “In Him, you also, after listening to the message of truth, the gospel of your salvation—having also believed, you were sealed in Him with the Holy Spirit of promise, who is given as a pledge of our inheritance, with a view to the redemption of God’s own possession, to the praise of His glory.”  Now we could spend a month talking about these truths!  Those who have come to God through faith in Christ have been given the Holy Spirit, “who is given as a pledge of our inheritance.”  He’s like a down payment, a guarantee of our future inheritance, a guarantee of the fact that we will be in the presence of God for eternity.  Salvation from start to finish is a work of God, a guaranteed success, and what Paul is telling us here is that we have everything we need in God—He “has blessed us with every spiritual blessing in the heavenly places in Christ” (v. 3).  We have all that we need to do what God has called us to do, and in verses 15-23 Paul essentially prays that we will know this.  He prays “that the God of our Lord Jesus Christ, the Father of glory, may give to you a spirit of wisdom and of revelation in the knowledge of Him.  I pray that the eyes of your heart may be enlightened, so that you will know what is the hope of His calling, what are the riches of the glory of His inheritance in the saints, and what is the surpassing greatness of His power toward us who believe.”   

            We’ve got the hope, we’ve got the inheritance, and we’ve got the power to do what God is calling us to do.  In chapter four Paul is basically telling us to be sanctified, to be holy, to become spiritually mature, but here he is first telling us that God has put the resources in our spiritual bank that are needed to make this a reality.  So he prays in chapter three, “For this reason I bow my knees before the Father, from whom every family in heaven and on earth derives its name, that He would grant you, according to the riches of His glory, to be strengthened with power” (vv. 14-16a).  Where’s that power going to come from?  “Through His Spirit in the inner man” (v. 16b).  Why does Paul pray that we will be strengthened with such power?  “So that Christ may dwell in your hearts through faith; and that you, being rooted and grounded in love, may be able to comprehend with all the saints what is the breadth and length and height and depth, and to know the love of Christ which surpasses knowledge, that you may be filled up to all the fullness of God” (vv. 17-29)

            Now that is a description of spiritual maturity; that’s what it is to be strengthened in the faith—to “be filled up to all the fullness of God.”  And how is that going to happen?  It is going to happen when we “are strengthened with power through His Spirit in the inner man.”  Sanctification is a work of the Spirit of God and that is why Paul prays for God to be doing that work in the Ephesians.  

            A significant part of spiritual growth has to do with killing sin in our lives.  The more effectively we are weeding sinful thinking and actions out of our lives, the more efficiently we will be growing in likeness to Christ.  So how can we eliminate sin in our lives?  Well, there’s what could be called a self-dependent or short sighted approach.  That is just an individual by an act of his own will saying, “Alright, I’m going to quit sinning!”  I remember one of my professors at Bible school describing it like this: let’s say you’re having a real problem with thinking about pink elephants.  And you get up in the morning with a sort of scowl on your face and you say, “Alright, that’s it!  I am not going to think about pink elephants today; I’m not going to think about pink elephants; I am not going to think about pink elephants today!”  And what do you do?  You spend the whole day thinking about how you are not going to think about pink elephants, and you fail from the outset. 

            There’s another approach, and it’s given to us in Romans chapter eight.  Paul says, “So then, brethren, we are under obligation, not to the flesh, to live according to the flesh—for if you are living according to the flesh, you must die; but if by the Spirit you are putting to death the deeds of the body, you will live” (vv. 12-13).  How can we kill sin in our lives; how can we put to death the sinful deeds of the body?  Paul tells us right here: “by the Spirit.”  It is only by the power of the Spirit of God working on the inside that we will be able to overcome sin in our lives.  That is the key—it’s by the Spirit! 

            And notice here too that verse 14 talks about those who are “being led by the Spirit of God.”  Now turn to Galatians chapter five.  Here in verse 16 Paul says, “But I say, walk by the Spirit and you will not carry out the desire of the flesh.”  Now he’s talking about walking by the Spirit.  In Romans eight he was talking about being led by the Spirit.  It’s a similar idea.  Here the verb is peripateo.  It means literally to go, walk, travel, and so carries the metaphorical idea, to live.  It’s talking about your walk through life.  The way you live your life should be distinctively characterized as “by the Spirit.”  The idea is by the power of the Spirit.  “‘Not by might nor by power, but by My Spirit,’ says the LORD of hosts” (Zech 4.6).  The idea is that we are to live our lives not by means of our own strength or power, but by the power of the Spirit of God.  And if you live like that, Galatians 5.16 tells us, “You will not carry out the desire of the flesh.”  What is that desire?  It’s the desire that finds its fruition in “the deeds of the flesh.”  What are those deeds?  Look at verse 19:  “Now the deeds of the flesh are evident, which are: immorality, impurity, sensuality, idolatry, sorcery, enmities, strife, jealousy, outbursts of anger, disputes, dissensions, factions, envying, drunkenness, carousing, and things like these.”  This is all the sin that we are seeking to do away with in our lives so that we can become more like Christ. 

            How do you do that?  Walk by the Spirit, because look at what the fruit of the Spirit is: “Love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, self-control” (v. 22).  Do you want a picture of what it is to be spiritually mature?  This is it!  These are the virtues and character qualities that show up in the life of someone who is strengthened in the faith.  And as we have been saying—you cannot miss this—this is the fruit of the Spirit.  It doesn’t come from you!  It’s not the fruit of your flesh; it’s not fruit coming from your own strength or from an act of your own will.  The spiritually mature person is the one who is walking in, filled by, and led by the Spirit of God so that the fruit of the Spirit is produced in his life—a fruit that is decidedly sourced in God. 

            Now I once preached a sermon entitled, “Application.”  That’s it; that was the title of my sermon.  Some preaching professors will tell you that a good sermon should be fifty percent explanation and fifty percent application.  They say that you’ve got to spend a significant amount of time telling people, “This is how you should apply this truth to your life.”  But listen, there is a sense in which the application portion of every message is the same.  When the Bible says, “Be devoted to one another in brotherly love; give preference to one another in honor; don’t lag behind in diligence; be fervent in spirit; serve the Lord; rejoice in hope; persevere in tribulation; be devoted to prayer; contribute to the needs of the saints; practice hospitality.  Bless those who persecute you; rejoice with those who rejoice; weep with those who weep” (paraphrase of portions of Romans 12.10-15), how are you going to obey those commands?  What’s the application?  How are you going to apply that?  Well, you can get up in the morning and try real hard to do what does not come naturally to those who are by nature prone to do evil.  Or, you can walk by the Spirit so that God Himself is producing the fruit of the Spirit in your life so that in every circumstance and in ever situation throughout the day you are responding and living in love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, and self-control.  Listen, if you are doing that, if God is producing that kind of fruit in your life, then you will be applying all of the teaching of Scripture, obeying all of the commands of the Bible, and therefore living as one who is truly spiritually mature. 

            That is our aim; that is our goal; that is where we want to be!  So that leaves us with one simple question: what does it mean to be led by, filled by and walking by the Spirit of God?  How can that become a reality in our lives?  You need to come next week, because we are going to dig into Scripture and find the answer to that vital question.