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TRYING TO BE IMPERFECT #10
ELECTION RECOUNTS
Back on Tuesday we got out our proverbial ten-foot
pole and took a very cautious look back at the Year 2000 presidential
election here in the United States. Little did America know on November
7, as it went to the polls, that “dimples” and “chads” would become the
new dirty words in American politics.
Probably the aspect of this nightmarish Florida experience that frustrated
U.S. citizens the most was the fact that rules seemed to change . . .
and change . . . and change. We’re used to the idea that sometime on that
same Tuesday night we’ll know who the next president will be. Bush or
Gore. One person will get more votes than the other, there’s a concession
speech, a victory speech, an Inauguration Day, a hand on the Bible . .
. and we get on with life until the next election cycle.
But two years ago last November John Q. Citizen began to hear for the
first time about the Electoral College. A person could get 300,000 more
votes than his opponent and still lose — if he didn’t get the necessary
270 electoral votes. A county could count its votes, and then have to
recount them. By machine. Then by hand. A canvassing board could then
look at rejected computer ballots and try to ascertain “voter intent”
by looking at those “chads” or the dimples in those chads. If you got
butterflies in your stomach over the fact that you might have accidentally
voted for Pat Buchanan, you could ask for a revote. Again, people on both
sides of the CNN barricades were angry over the fact that rules seemed
to change in the last two minutes of this Super Bowl political football
game.
As we close up shop here in this two-week radio series, TRYING TO BE IMPERFECT,
we find ourselves looking at somewhat the same scenario. It’s good news,
we find, that our failures don’t disqualify us for heaven. Of course,
that’s the Christian gospel, pure and simple. What Jesus does for us on
the Cross washes away our sins and offers us the incredible gift known
as justification. Which I like to say isn’t forgiveness – it’s SUPER-forgiveness.
It’s as though we never sinned! What’s more, our subsequent goodness —
which is a result of our gratitude over having been saved — is never the
BASIS of our eternal life. If we get to heaven, and WHEN we get to heaven,
it will be because of Jesus.
Even so, it’s a good thing to AIM for goodness. To strive for perfection.
That’s really the implication of our title; no grateful Christian would
then go out of the voting booth and say with a casual shrug: “Since it
doesn’t matter, I guess I’ll try for IMperfection.”
There are some wonderful Bible verses on this topic, and we didn’t yet
get to Ephesians 5:25-28:
“Christ loved the church and gave Himself up for her
to make her holy, cleansing her by the washing with water through the
Word, and to present her to Himself as a radiant church, without stain
or wrinkle or ANY other blemish, but HOLY and BLAMELESS.”
We mentioned the other day that there actually is a
certain kind of sinning that a Christian in these last days is going to
overcome. In his wonderful book, The Nature of Christ, Dr. Roy Adams helps
us understand a Greek word: pesha’. It gives the idea of “rebellion”;
the angry shaking of a fist at God. And certainly in those terms, a saved
Christian would actually need to be “perfect.” Here’s what Adams writes
about that:
“If we are talking about sin as pesha’ (departure from
God, rebellion, defiance, willful transgression), then it is quite obvious
that true Christians should have put such practices and attitudes behind
them. . . . With them, all transgressions, all revolt against God, all
willful defiance of His rule have ceased. With them, rebellion will not
arise the second time. They are, as some say, safe to save.”
That’s an interesting category to be in, isn’t it?
Friend, are you and I that way: “safe to save”?
But now we move to the dimples and chads, to the changed rules during
the two-minute drill of the Super Bowl. Does the Word of God teach that,
even though grace has been the saving agent for 6,000 years, right at
the end of time there will be one final generation of Christians who actually
attain total perfection and a state of sinlessness? And get saved THAT
way? Even though King David was a forgiven sinner, and Peter, and Paul,
and Martin Luther, and Billy Graham . . . will there be a rule change
so that those who actually live to see Jesus coming in the clouds will
get all the way up to complete perfection?
Back in the early years of my own denomination’s formation — which just
goes back to the mid-1800s — an Adventist theologian named Albion Fox
Ballenger began to study this issue: perfection for a final generation.
He read verses like we find in Revelation 12:
“They [the last-day saints] overcame [the Accuser,
Satan] by the blood of the lamb, and by the word of their testimony.”
Then just one page over in chapter 14, he began to
focus on this verse:
“No one could learn the song except the 144,000 who had been redeemed
from the earth. These are those who did not defile themselves with women,
for they kept themselves pure. They follow the Lamb wherever He goes.
They were purchased from among men and offered as firstfruits to God and
the Lamb. No lie was found in their mouths; they are blameless.”’
Well, friend, those are powerful verses. I would surely
love to be in that number, and to be a person who follows Jesus with total
devotion. But this Pastor Ballenger went on, in the year 1899, to make
this statement:
“We cannot have apostolic power in the church until
we have apostolic purity.” I could agree with that. Then he added this:
“Righteousness by faith was given us of God to stop our sinning.” I could
agree with that too. But now this last challenge: “Let no man say he has
received righteousness by faith UNTIL he has stopped sinning.”
And others of our early pioneers began to suggest that
a final generation would achieve perfection. “Moral perfection is required
of all,” one wrote. Another great preacher, who wrote and traveled and
evangelized extensively a few decades later, wrote this:
“But will any ever reach that stage [of absolute perfection]?
We believe so.”
Just a few years ago, in 1993, a devotee of this doctrine
made the following statement:
“By [Christ’s] perfect obedience to the law, He would open the way for
fallen man to be redeemed by following His example in PERFECT lawkeeping
by the power of the Holy Spirit working successfully in the life to keep
man from sin.”
Now friend, we’ve said it and said it — Christ is indeed
our Example. And the Holy Spirit is available to help us not sin. But
we are most certainly NOT redeemed by perfect lawkeeping; we’re redeemed
because the perfect Jesus shed His blood on Calvary. That was the Rule,
the Plan, back in Eden. It was the Plan the day Christ died. And it’s
the Plan today.
Here’s another danger. Linked to this teaching about a final perfect generation
there came to be a corollary concept that only a final perfect generation
could somehow prove that God’s government was just, that God’s law was
fair and holy, and that people could really live in obedience to that
law, despite the accusations of Satan. “The honor of God,” one leader
suggested, “is involved in the perfection of the character of His people.”
And actually, in a way this is true. The Bible itself says that in our
obedience we should give all glory to God. But what you cannot find in
the pages of Scripture is any suggestion that the government of God can
only be vindicated BY people like you and me achieving the same thing
that Jesus, the sinless Lamb, accomplished. Of proving what He ALREADY
proved.
I’m thankful for the quiet Bible truth found in this book, though, entitled,
appropriately enough, How Long, O Lord? Author Ralph Neall answers the
question this way:
“When does ‘final purification’ happen? Does it mean
that the final generation of believers achieves an experience beyond that
of all preceding ones? Here is another question that we must answer carefully,
lest we fall into the error of setting forth a different way of salvation
for the last generation than for others. Some have said that the righteousness
that prepares a man to DIE is by no means sufficient to prepare him for
TRANSLATION, but Paul told us” — now mark these words, friend — “there
is ‘one Lord, one faith, one baptism.’ Every person indeed has his own
unique experience with the Lord, but only one perfect righteousness entitles
him to heaven: the righteousness of CHRIST imparted to him by faith. The
last generation will receive ‘divine approval’ and be ‘well attested by
their faith,’ just like the saints of all past ages.”
Friend, there’s a voter guide in your house entitled
Hebrews 11. Every great Bible hero was saved by just one method: faith
in Christ. That’s always BEEN the way; that always WILL BE the way. For
the first generation, the last generation, and — praise God — for OUR
generation. That’s one election result nobody can overturn.
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