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Brownlow North, at the age of 44, realized his need for the saving work of Christ. He later came up with these six short rules to help younger Christians begin their new life. This series ran weekly on se7enty6ix.com between September and October 2010. You can read each week's entry separately by clicking on the rule number to the right. (Also note the introductory comments.) As always, I hope you find these articles as encouraging and helpful in their reading as I have in their writing. |
01.
Never neglect daily private prayer;
and when you pray, remember that God is present, and that He
hears your prayers. [Heb. 11:6] |
04.
If you are in doubt as to a thing being
right or wrong, go to your room, and kneel down and ask
God’s blessing upon it. [Col. 3:17] If you cannot do this,
it is wrong. [Rom. 14:23] |
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02.
Never neglect daily private Bible-reading and, when you
read, remember that God is speaking to you and that you are
to believe and act upon what He says. I believe all
backsliding begins with the neglect of these two rules.
[John 5:39] |
05.
Never take your Christianity from
Christians, or argue that because such and such people do so
and so, that therefore you may. [2 Cor. 10:12] You are to
ask yourself, how would Christ act in my place? Strive to
follow Him. [John 10:27] |
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03.
Never let a day pass without trying to
do something for Jesus. Every night reflect on what Jesus
has done for you, and then ask yourself, what am I doing for
Him? [Matthew 5:13-16] |
06.
Never believe what you feel, if it
contradicts God’s Word. Ask yourself, can what I feel be
true if God’s Word is true? If
both cannot be true, believe God, and
make your own heart the liar. [Rom. 3:4, 1
John 5:10-11] |
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We’re
going to work our way through the list of Six
Short Rules for Young Christians by Brownlow
North. Before we
do that, I want to make a few statements by way of
introduction:
1. These are rules for
Christians only.
You can attempt to do these things apart from the
power of God’s Spirit, but they will be a burden to
you, not a joy. Self-powered efforts can have the
appearance of success for a time, but they fade
quickly. If you have not come to trust Christ
personally for the forgiveness of your sins, these
rules are not what you need.
2. These are not
rules for how to
become a
Christian.
Scripture is clear that salvation is
“by
grace…through faith” [Eph 2:8-10] in Christ
alone and that
“by works of the law no one will be justified.” [Gal 2:16] You can
do every one of the things on this list and you will
be no better off in terms of right standing before
God than when you began. God has mercifully provided
a way to be saved, but this is not it.
3. These are not
rules for how to
remain a
Christian.
In the same way that we are not saved by keeping
certain rules, neither do we remain saved by keeping
them—as if our eternal salvation were dependent
solely on our own efforts. Calling these things
‘rules’ implies their importance, but does not mean
they are a strict formula for perseverance.
So, if these aren’t rules for how to become or how
to remain a Christian, what good are they?
4. These are some of the
God-appointed means by which He sanctifies us. Sanctification is the
ongoing process, from the moment of conversion to
life’s end, by which God transforms His children
into the image of Christ. God does this is various
ways in each believer’s life, but there are some
ways that He commonly uses to facilitate our growth,
including things like prayer and Scripture. As such,
we must be dedicated to these things and cooperate
with the Spirit’s life-changing power within us as we each
“work out your
own salvation.” [Phil. 2:12]
5. These rules remind us
that God has saved His people for good works.
We were once slaves to sin, but now
we are slaves to God [see Rom 6:20-23]. And while
God is a kind, loving, faithful Master, He is still
our Master. We were created to glorify God, and we
are converted so that we might glorify Him as well.
It is not without reason that the Word reminds us
that we are “created
in Christ Jesus for good works, which God prepared
beforehand, that we should walk in them”
[Eph 2:10] and that Jesus died to
“purify for
Himself
a people for His own
possession who are zealous for good works.”
[Titus 2:14]
6. Following these rules
properly will accomplish much in our lives.
Have you ever heard a Christian wish they had prayed
less or studied the Scripture less
often? And yet we can struggle with consistency
in these areas, the result being that we are
malnourished in growth and clouded in judgment.
Disciplining ourselves to follow these daily rules
(not for the sake of checking them off at the end of
day, but for the sake of knowing Christ more) will
find us better equipped to glorify God, testify to
His greatness, and love others the way He loves us.
So, hopefully I’ve made it clear that this list of
rules isn’t something we do in order to make
ourselves right before God (that is humanly
impossible) and that this list of rules isn’t
something we do in order to merit God’s continued
grace and mercy (still humanly impossible). And yet, those who are in Christ are not their own—we belong to Him. He has redeemed us, but that isn’t the end of the story. He is molding and shaping us into the image of Christ, and He does so by use of certain means, including the things on this list, which we will discuss in more detail in the weeks to come. posted September 1, 2010 |
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Prayer, in essence, is communication with God.
Through Christ’s work and the Spirit’s presence,
believers enjoy access directly to the Father
through prayer. But this is something only those in
Christ can participate in. As Lloyd-Jones puts it: “There is nothing which is so utterly contrary
to the whole teaching of the Bible as the assumption
that anyone, and at any time, without any conditions
whatsoever, may approach God in prayer.” (1)
Because of the separation from God as a result of
sin, He can only be approached through a mediator.
In the Old Covenant, these were priests and
prophets, but in the New Covenant
“there is one mediator between God and men,
the man Christ Jesus,”
[1 Tim. 2:5] and it is only through Him that we can
commune with God.
“Prayer, in other words, is not, and
never has been since Adam sinned, a direct hotline
to heaven,” says Goldsworthy. “It is always a
mediated thing; there has to be a fitting go-between
if we are to communicate with God. Those who reject
the Mediator reject prayer as it is intended to be.”
(2) Or as the author of Hebrews has said:
“whoever would draw near to God must
believe that He exists.”
[Heb. 11:6]
Prayer, then, is a privilege bestowed upon those who
have been saved by grace through faith in Christ. As
such, it is not to be neglected or merely performed
ritualistically, but it is to be entered into
faithfully and gratefully. The point is not
primarily about the words we say, but about the
attitude of humility and submission that we come to
God with. There are times when none of us know how
to pray, but when
“we
do not know what to pray for as we ought…the Spirit
Himself intercedes for us.” [Rom. 8:26]
But what about days when we don’t
feel like
praying? It is a subtle, yet dangerous trap to allow
our emotions to determine the way we come to God in
prayer. “How dare you approach the mercy-seat of God
on the basis of what kind of day you had, as if that
were the basis for our entrance into the presence of
the sovereign and holy God?,” asks Carson. “This is
works theology. It has nothing to do with grace and
the exclusive sufficiency of Christ. Nothing.” (3)
In other words, basing prayer on
us rather
than on Christ
is insulting to God and belies ingratitude for
Christ’s role as Mediator.
We must not relegate prayer to the times
and manners of our convenience, but must see it more
and more as an inestimable privilege given by God to
His children. God hears the prayers of His people
who cry out to Him in humility and faith. He has
designed prayer as a means by which we come to know
Him more and grow in the image of Christ. Therefore,
“let us then
with confidence draw near to the throne of grace,
that we may receive mercy and find grace to help in
time of need.” [Heb. 4:16]
______________________
(1) D. Martyn Lloyd-Jones,
Why Does God
Allow War?, 25 posted September 8, 2010 |
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The Word of God, according to Hebrews, is
“living and
active, sharper than any two-edged sword, piercing
to the division of soul and of spirit, of joints and
of marrow, and discerning the thoughts and
intentions of the heart.” [Heb. 4:12] This
means, among other things, that when we examine it,
it is also examining us. It is a mirror that God
uses to reflect the quality of our own lives back to
us.
This is why it is paramount to not only hear the
Word, but to obey it. As James so aptly pointed out
to his readers,
“be doers of
the word, and not hearers only, deceiving
yourselves.” [James 1:22] In other words, we are
actually lying to ourselves if we think we can
simply hear (or read) God’s Word and receive its
full benefit without doing anything with what we
have learned.
When writing to Timothy, Paul explains how God uses
His Word in our lives:
“All Scripture
is breathed out by God and profitable for teaching,
for reproof, for correction, and for training in
righteousness, that the man of God may be competent,
equipped for every good work.” [2 Tim. 3:16-17] The Word, literally breathed out by
God, is one of the primary means that He uses to
sanctify His children, transforming them more and
more into the image of Christ. It is used to teach
us, to correct us, and to train us. This is why
Jesus says in His prayer to the Father:
“sanctify them
in the truth; Your Word is truth.” [John 17:17]
So daily Scripture reading is essential because God
sanctifies His people through it. “The Holy Spirit
normally speaks to us through the Word,” says
Lloyd-Jones. “He takes His own Word, He illumines
it, and takes our minds and enlightens them, and we
are thus made receptive to the Word. Through such a
process we are able to check all the experiences
that we may have, so that we may be sure that we are
not being led astray or deluded. It is not right,
therefore, to speak of the Spirit
or the Word, but rather of the Spirit
and the Word, and especially the Spirit
through the Word.” (1)
The key, of course, is not just to read the Bible
quickly each morning and check it off a list of
things to do that day. Our goal should be that of
David, who told God that he desired to
“meditate on Your precepts and fix my eyes on Your ways. I will delight
in Your statutes; I will not forget Your Word.”
[Psalm 119:15-16] The point isn’t mere reading or
rote memorization, but hearing God’s Word and doing
what it says. The point is to make use of Scripture,
as Paul reminds us:
“In all
circumstances take up the shield of faith, with
which you can extinguish all the flaming darts of
the evil one; and take the helmet of salvation, and
the sword of the Spirit, which is the Word of God.”
[Eph. 6:16-17]
“You could own a Bible warehouse and still not have
the sword of the Spirit,” says MacArthur. “Having
the sword of the Spirit is not owning a Bible, but
knowing the specific principle in the Bible that
applies to the specific point of temptation. The
only way Christians will know victory in the
Christian life is to know the principles of the Word
of God so they can apply them to the specific points
where Satan, the world, and the flesh attack.” (2) ______________________
(1) D. Martyn Lloyd-Jones,
Authority, 63 posted September 15, 2010 |
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As we mentioned in the introduction to this series,
don’t let the idea of ‘doing things for Jesus’ imply
some kind of works-based salvation. We don’t do
things for Jesus as a way of earning His love or
meriting His salvation. We also don’t do things for
Jesus as a way to appease God so that He won’t take
our salvation away. No, we do things for Jesus out
of humble gratitude for what He has already done for
us. It is our response to Him.
“Obedience to the law was not to be the means to a
relationship with God but was the desired response
to that relationship,” explains Rooker. “It was the
great deliverance of the exodus that served as the
foundation for the Lord’s right to expect obedience
to His commands. Similarly, in the New Testament,
the responsibilities of Christians are based on
redemption provided by Christ’s atonement.” (1)
That’s why we start by reflecting on what Jesus has
done for us. As Christians, we will certainly learn
more than the Gospel, but we will never outgrow the
Gospel. There is never a point in our Christian walk
when we don’t need to be reminded of what Christ
accomplished on our behalf—even at great personal
cost to Himself.
“You were
ransomed… not with perishable things such as silver
or gold, but with the precious blood of Christ, like
that of a lamb without blemish or spot.” [1 Pet.
1:18-19] Piper sums it up this way:
“The perfection we do not have, Jesus provided. The
judgment we do not want, Jesus bore.” (2)
Each and every day,
North reminds us, we must reflect on what Christ has
done for us.
Flowing from a heart and
mind daily centered on the Gospel will be a life
marked by submission to God’s will and obedience to
His Word. “If
you love me,” Jesus claimed,
“you will keep my commandments.” [John 14:15]
This obedience serves two purposes. First, it is a
means by which God allows us to know Him more and a
means by which we can have assurance that He is at
work within us. “Increasing levels of obedience display the
outward evidence of authentic union with Christ,”
says Bridges. (3)
Obedience deepens our trust in Him.
Second, our lives of obedience are also a means by
which God attracts unbelievers to Himself. This is
one of the principles that Jesus explained to His disciples:
“You are the salt of the earth, but if salt has lost its taste, how
shall its saltiness be restored? It is no longer
good for anything except to be thrown out and
trampled under people's feet. You are the light of
the world. A city set on a hill cannot be hidden.
Nor do people light a lamp and put it under a
basket, but on a stand, and it gives light to all in
the house. In the same way, let your light shine
before others, so that they may see your good works
and give glory to your Father who is in heaven.”
[Matt. 5:13-16]
Believer, what are you doing for Jesus? Are you obeying His
Word? Are you expressing sincere gratitude for what
He has done on your behalf? Do not let this day pass
without seeking to obey Christ, honoring Him for who
He is and what He has done, and shining His light
that others may see the truth of the Gospel.
______________________
(1) Mark Rooker,
The Ten Commandments, 178 posted September 22, 2010 |
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“And whatever you do, in
word or deed, do everything in the name of the Lord
Jesus, giving thanks to God the Father through Him.”
[Col. 3:17] These are the words that define and
dictate the Christian’s life—we were
created
for the glory of God, and we were
converted
by Christ for the glory of God as well. All we do
must be in His name.
“The will of God for your life is pretty
straightforward,” explains DeYoung. “Be holy like
Jesus, by the power of the Spirit, for the glory of
God.” (1) While the particulars may vary from person
to person, we must begin by submitting to the
overriding principle of glorifying God by doing all
things in His name. If we fail to understand this,
we will never understand the specifics of God’s will
for our lives, nor will we be prepared to trust God
when those specifics make no sense to us.
Living by this key principle means that believers
are constantly making decisions about what is
honoring to God and what isn’t. We must evaluate
each choice according to Scripture and discern. Many
times, this is an easy task, since God is not
glorified by sin. We can firmly rule out anything
that He speaks against in His Word: love of money,
lying, hatred toward others, filthy talk, lust, an
unforgiving spirit, and so on.
As Challies points out: “When wrestling with issues
that appear gray, it is important to begin with what
the Bible makes clear. Far too often we begin with
what is obscure and work backwards to what is clear
so that the exception disproves the rule. As
Christians we must begin with what God has made
clear in his Word.” (2) We must consider any command
God has given—whether to put on certain things or to
flee from others—as His standing orders.
“Holiness begins in our minds with a present-tense,
total commitment and works outward to our actions,”
Beeke reminds us. “That is why we ought to jealously
guard what we allow to enter our minds. The material
we read, the music we listen to, and the
conversations we have all affect our minds and ought
to be judged.” (3)
Additional challenges come when we are presented
with choices that perhaps are not inherently sinful.
These might include things like where to apply for
work, what school to attend, or what to have for
dinner. We may find ourselves having to choose
between several relatively ‘good’ options. This is
where Chambers cautions us to avoid “good choices
that are not quite good enough. The good is always
the enemy of the best.” (4) The best is that which
will most glorify God, even if it requires us to
give up something we have the ‘right’ to do (see
Paul’s explanation of this concept in 1 Cor.
10:23-33).
To discover the best, North encourages us to seek
God’s approval
before making any decision. As sinners, we are
prone to take action first and
only then
ask God’s blessing on it. Or, perhaps we speak of
seeking God’s approval—but we only seek His approval
of our
plans and our
intentions. This is not the way we are to approach
God. Instead of presenting God with our desires and
asking His blessing, we must lay down our lives
before Him as a blank page, asking Him to fill it in
at His discretion and promising obedience to His
perfect will, knowing that He is “Faithful and True”
[Rev. 19:11].
_____________________
(1)
Kevin DeYoung,
Just Do Something, 62 posted September 26, 2010 |
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When it comes to justifying our own actions, there are two ideas that seem to form the backbones of most arguments: it is contemporarily acceptable (other professing Christians are doing it) or it is traditionally established (it has been done that way for years). Both are poor reasons and, it should be noted, thoroughly invalid excuses for justifying any action.
While either may be true, they is not—in and of
themselves—legitimate reasons for going ahead with
any particular action. This is true regardless of
whether the practice in question is believed to be
blatantly wicked, socially accepted, or even
religiously endorsed.
We must also guard against this idea of simply doing
what others do when it comes to tradition. Heritage
is a valuable thing, and many of the practices of
our spiritual forefathers remain good and right to
continue. But, as Lloyd-Jones points out:
“Traditions may be good, but when they become
traditionalism, they are bad. We should not be
concerned primarily with merely maintaining some
recognized position or continuing in some particular
tradition. That is not our object.” (1) In most cases, however, the issue doesn’t concern tradition as much as it concerns modern-day acceptance. We look to others, or to the culture around us, to determine what is permissible for us to do. However, our standard of conduct and holiness is not other people—even godly people. This is why Paul told the Corinthians to “be imitators of me” but only “as I am of Christ.” [1 Cor. 11:1]
If Paul were to deviate from the character of
Christ, he should not longer be imitated—it is only
as he imitates Christ that he is to be followed. In
a later letter to that same church, he makes this
point clearer:
“when they measure themselves by one another and
compare themselves with one another, they are
without understanding.” [2 Cor. 10:12]
We can always find other people to compare ourselves
favorably to, for we are all too willing to overlook
or minimize our own sinfulness and to emphasize that
of others. In so doing, we feed the
self-justification that runs rampant in our prideful
hearts. As long as we see ourselves as equal to (or
better than) other Christians, we think, we are
fine. That kind of thinking is what Scripture calls
foolish and without understanding.
“God has not given us the authority to establish
values for different sins,” Bridges reminds us. “The
Bible speaks not of God’s laws, as if many of them,
but of God’s law as a single whole.” (2) While we
might feel better about ourselves because we are
able to resist temptation in certain areas,
“whoever keeps
the whole law but fails in one point has become
accountable for all of it.” [James 2:10]
In order to gauge our lives by the proper standard,
we turn to Christ. The right question to ask is not
so much “What would Jesus do?” as if He were to be
suddenly placed in your situation, but “What would
Jesus have me do?” in the circumstances and choices
that surround me. “Desire is at the helm of our
lives,” says Chester. “It determines our behavior.
We always do
what we want to do. The question is, which of
our desires is strongest at any given moment?” (3)
Do we desire to satisfy ourselves or to glorify God?
Those who belong to Him should find the desire to
please and serve Him growing as they mature in the
faith. It’s the process of shutting out the
distracting voices of the flesh, the world, and the
devil, and listening only to our Lord and Master.
“My sheep hear
my voice, and I know them, and they follow me.”
[John 10:27]
_____________________
(1)
D. Martyn Lloyd-Jones,
What Is An
Evangelical?, 34 posted October 6, 2010 |
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Feelings run strong within us. Our emotions are part
of who we are, created by God, meant to be
experienced and felt. We must take care not to
suppress or ignore our emotions, but an equally
potent danger is to let them have full reign over
our lives. Feelings are notoriously unreliable and,
taken by themselves, can be deceiving.
“My feelings are not God,” explains Piper. “God is
God. My feelings do not define truth. God’s word
defines truth.” (1) We must learn to trust God and
the promises He has made in His Word. When darkness
threatens to overwhelm us, when circumstances seem
to conspire against us, when we sense the icy
tendrils of despair entangling our mind—when these
things happen (and they
do happen)
we must look beyond them to that which is true.
In other words, God’s children must learn to focus
on the truth that runs deeper than our feelings. Our
feelings are powerful. Many times, they are indeed
the loudest voice—but they do not have the final
say. There is a truth that God has planted deep
within us; a hope that provides an anchor for the
soul (see Heb. 6:19). We must remind ourselves, over
and over again, that it is God’s truth—not whatever
we may be feeling—that accurately reflects reality.
“Feelings represent God falsely,” states Fraser, “It
is to feelings and imaginations that God thus
appears [strange and cross, unlike a Father], not to
faith. We should take other interpreters than
feelings.” (2) When we experience devastating
heartache or disappointment, we can feel as if God
does not love us. When we are betrayed by a close
friend, we can feel as if God Himself has abandoned
us. But in these moments, we must remember what Paul
said to the church in Rome:
“What if some were unfaithful? Does their faithlessness nullify the
faithfulness of God? By no means! Let God be true
though every one were a liar…” [Rom. 3:3-4]
As Murray says: “One of the most difficult things to
do when the road is rough or when the billows are
passing over us is to feel that God still loves us.
It is the last thing we can accept. But we are not
called to feel; we are called to believe.” (2)
Here’s how this works: when we begin to feel that
God cannot or does not love us, we look to His Word
and see this statement:
“God shows His
love for us in that while we were still sinners,
Christ died for us.” [Rom. 5:8] So we see that
God’s love is evident in the death of Christ on my
behalf. At this point, I have to choose whether to
believe my feelings or God’s Word. If both cannot be
true, North says, believe God and make your own
heart the liar. In closing, let us consider the truth of God’s Word concerning His Son and the life that He offers freely to all: “Whoever does not believe God has made Him a liar, because he has not believed in the testimony that God has borne concerning His Son. And this is the testimony, that God gave us eternal life, and this life is in His Son. Whoever has the Son has life; whoever does not have the Son of God does not have life.” [1 John 5:10-12]
_____________________
(1)
John Piper,
Finally Alive,
165 posted October 13, 2010 |
