Perfecting the Perfect

Paul Anderson-Walsh, in his book The Bonsai Conspiracy emphasizes the difference between the progressive rectification of our behavior and the progressive recognition of our identity in Christ:

". . . What we do does not determine who we are but who we are determines what we do. Nonetheless, this is an acute dilemma for many Christians and all the more so because the concept of sanctification is seen to concern rectification of behaviour in order to conform behaviour into our (or our 'church''s) perception of what God wants it to be like. However, I want to emphatically say that sanctification is not progressive rectification of our behaviour; it is a progressive recognition of our identity.

"Moreover, it is submitted that the basis of the satanic confidence trick is to convince you that there is something you can do to be who you already are and this the devil is able to do because he has already convinced us that we are who we are not or, if you prefer, that we are not who we are. It is this ploy which he so successfully employed on Eve in the Garden of Eden, convincing her that if she ate the fruit, she would be more like God. And it is the very same deception which Christendom is still falling for (no pun intended) six thousand years later.

". . . God does not want recommitted Christians. He wants dead Christians. A dead person does not have any needs and that is the point. This is why we, as Christians, need to fail at Christianity when all else fails us, especially when I fail me and become totally helpless to do anything about it. It is only then that I am ready. We cannot fully know the power of the resurrection [Phil. 3:10] until we fully know what it means to be dead. Then, the Spirit finishes His refining work by baptising us in His fiery furnace of affliction. We are conditioned to know the inner revelation of His resurrection in and as us which is 'Christ who is [our] life' [Col. 3:4].

". . . Much of the trouble of our modern day discipleship is that it is pre-occupied with sin and sinning but, of course, true discipleship concerns itself with the invasion of Life, not the intrusion of sin.

". . . It is imperative . . . that we fail and fail spectacularly in our attempts to live the Christian life.

"Failure and disillusionment create in us a 'godly grief [which produces] a repentance that [in turn] leads to salvation without regret' [2 Cor. 7:10]. Once persuaded of our total inadequacy, we are ready to be introduced to the Person who is our adequacy and infinite supply.

". . . The question asked in [Job's] extraordinary tale is not 'Why do the righteous suffer?' but 'Why do the righteous serve God?'

"What was the cynical answer of the father of the independent separated self (i.e., satan) to the question, 'Does Job fear God for no reason?' [Job 1:9]? 'Job fears You,' argued satan, 'because You bless him. In other words, Job serves You because there is something in it for him. Remove the blessing and he will curse You and embrace the self-life.'

"What follows are forty-two agonising chapters where Job saw the loss of all things. Moreover, Job had to endure the maddening self-righteousness of his 'comforters' which finally incited him to demand an audience with God to question His integrity in His dealing with him. The story finally culminates in Job's coming to Union. 'I heard of You by the hearing of the ear, but now my eyes see You; therefore I despise myself.' [Job 42:5-6]

"Herein lies the key to God's dealings with us. We must draw back from our tendency to see evil and the devil's purposes advancing against us. The devil is God's devil--he can only accomplish God's purposes [Gen. 50:20]. Seeing God in our circumstances requires an ability to see through our circumstances. We must become fixed in the conviction that 'all things work together for good' for those who love God [Rom. 8:28]. Therefore, all things must include demonic activity. God is able to use the devil to assist Him in His sub-contracted hands for conforming us into God's image and likeness [Rom. 8:29].

". . . To the self-righteous, what follows will almost inevitably seem virtually blasphemous. However, we maintain that the Lord God gave us the Law not in order for us to keep it (and live and not die) but in order that we would fail miserably to keep it and see ourselves as dead and find Life. The purpose of the Law is to help the self-reliant Man recognise the need of Christ.

"Thus, the Law has an application in the lives of both the unrighteous and the self-righteous but never the Christ-righteous. The law was a tutor to lead us to Christ [Gal. 3:24]. It is apparent from the writings of the Apostle Paul that the Law is only for the self-reliant man, whether of the unrighteous or self-righteous variety (see Rom. 3:19; Rom. 4:15; Rom. 5:13; 1 Tim. 1:8-10).

"It is ironic that the 'separationists' view the Law (or worse still, the Sermon on the Mount) as a credit-score in the eyes of God. They believe that adherence to the Law will make them a right person. It does not.

"In addition, the stated purpose of the Law is, in fact, precisely the opposite--the Law was designed to expose us as wrong persons by bringing to our consciousness the knowledge of sin (see Rom. 3:20; Rom. 5:20; Rom. 7:7; Gal. 3:23-24).

"It is sufficient for the moment to say that God did not give us the Law because He thought we could keep it. He neither needed us to nor expected us to do so. On the contrary, He knew we would not keep it because He knew we could not do so. Moreover, far from preventing Man from sinning, the Law actually incites him to sin [Rom. 7:8-9], creating in him a desperation where he demands, 'Can it be that the good that I want (and have vowed) to do, I cannot do but the very thing that I disdain the unrighteous man for doing, this I also do?'

"Through a tumultuous struggle, he comes at length to the end of himself, broken and defeated. There is no place else for him to go. 'O, wretched man that I am! Who (not 'what' since he has exhausted all the what's and how-to's) can save me?' Then, the great cloud burst of assurance comes--'There is therefore no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus. For the law of the Spirit of Life has set you free in Christ Jesus from the law of sin and death. For God has done what the Law, weakened by our flesh, could not do.'

"The purpose of the Law was to reveal God's standard of holiness, not ours, and to expose to us our total need of Him.

"'For through the law I died to the law, so that I might live to God' (Gal. 2:19)."