Beware of the Religious Word Game

Part II

by A.W. Tozer

From his book “Reclaiming Christianity: A Call to Authentic Faith”

Radical Life Change

When religion ceases to be a game and becomes a serious reality, when instead of playing a game he is fighting a war, then the Word of God has come in power and a number of things happen.

New Priorities

He is immediately changed from the external to the internal. Our trouble is externality. Automobile manufacturers keep poor automobile owners on their toes by just changing one little button inside the car so that the fellow has an old button. “This is just a year old, but I’ve got to trade it in.” It is external. If your house isn’t as new and beautiful to the eye as those your friends have you are worried and coveting a house like theirs. It is external.

The Word that comes to us in power changes us from the external to the internal. Our hopes, our interests, everything that we are absorbed with and involved in are internal instead of external. And we see the emptiness of the appearance of things that are formed.

Scriptures tell us that “the Lord seeth not as man seeth; for man looketh on the outward appearance, but the lord looketh on the heart” (1 Samuel 16: 7). And the new man sees the transcendence of things eternal and the descent of things temporal, what belongs to the earth. He sees the inadequacies of everything intellectual while seeing the value of things that are above. He does not have to have an education. He does not have to be cultured; he just has to be born anew. And when the Holy Spirit regenerates him, he sees this. The Holy Spirit shifts his interest into a new sphere – the kingdom of God. The love life shifts from self to God; he is dedicated now to the honor of another. He was once dedicated bitterly to his own honor, but now he is dedicated to the honor of God. And he is changed in this too. He used to desire social approval. He wanted to be approved by the people, and now that has all changed. He desires to be approved by God Almighty.

As long as a man is a natural man, he wants to be popular with the crowd; but when he is born new, he says, “I don’t care so much now about the crowd, but I want to stand approved of God. I want God to say in that day ‘this is my beloved child in whom I am well pleased’; and I can well afford to stand the angry attacks of the people if I can only keep right with God.”

From Ownership to Stewardship

Another change is that his attitude toward earthly goods completely changes. He no longer feels that he is a proprietor, owning anything. He feels that he is a steward who just has something for the time being.

There is a big difference in your life when this change happens. It will not mean that you have any less, but it will mean that you will have a different attitude toward earthly goods. Some christians have a God-complex, they are proprietors, they own the place, give God part of it and feel they have done God service. I suppose they have, but there are other people who are blessed and see it differently. They say, “O God, I am not a proprietor, I am a steward. This is all Thine, and I am serving Thee. And I don’t give Thee an amount that’s mine, I simply give you back what’s Thine, and You let me keep enough to run my family and my business.”

That is not only a different attitude, but it is also the only right attitude. As long as we imagine that we own anything, that thing will curse us. As soon as we know that we own nothing, it is God’s. That is what happens to a man when he becomes a Christian.

A New Moral Code

Another significant change is that a man receives and lives by a new moral code. I grieve over the situation that is loose in the earth these days. Missionaries going out, God bless them, are having to fight not the devil so much as changing standards. In the early days, a man used to go out and when a chief had nine wives, the missionary said, “Get rid of every one but the first.”

Now they talk about culture. “Well, but it is contrary to their culture. We’re trying to impose our culture on them.” A case of downright adultery becomes excused now. The psychologists, psychiatrists, sociologists and professors have made sin cute and unreal, saying, “It is a different culture, that’s all.”

Sodom had a different culture, too. When a stranger came at night, they said, “Where are the men which came in to thee this night? Bring them out unto us, that we may know them” (Genesis 19: 5). The angels of God smote the place and pulled Lot in and said, “we’ll handle these.” Later, fire came down from heaven and burned the whole thing to ashes.

If the gospel does not change a man, transform him and take the evil out of him, then he does not have the gospel in power. The gospel is a transforming power; otherwise you have a name to live and you are dead.

A certain gangster out in California heard about the Billy Graham campaign and decided to go and hear him. He showed an interest in the gospel and even talked to the evangelist. Finally, Mr. Graham said to him, “If you give your heart to Jesus Christ you’re going to have to do some changing.”

He said, “Am I going to have to give up my Jewish religion?”

Billy Graham said, “You are going to have to become a Christian.”

Well, the man pounced out angry and never went back. He was not willing to give up his religion for Christ.

Some may say, “Well, tell him no, he doesn’t have to change anything, just believe on Christ.” Thank God, Billy did not do that. He lost a friend and made an enemy, but he kept his own garment clean on the thing.

A man who has really been born anew lives by a new moral code. He does not go to the psychiatrists, the psychologists, the sociologists or the anthropologists and say, “What do you think of the Sermon on the Mount?”

A Greek philosopher gathered around him a group of young men who believed in that philosopher completely. If he said something, it was so. No further discussion was needed. I never knew the philosopher I trusted that much, but I know a man I trust that much. “The angel…said unto her, The Holy Ghost shall come upon thee, and the power of the Highest shall overshadow thee: therefore also that holy thing which shall be born of thee shall be called the Son of God” (Luke 1: 35).

I can trust Him. My moral code is Christ. Jesus said, “You’ve heard it said so and so, but I say unto you…” He said it, and that is our moral code. You do not go to the philosopher to find out what Schopenhauer thought about it. I do not even care what Plato thought about it. Jesus Christ is the one who saves me. He is the one who transforms me. He is the one who stands with bleeding hands, pleading for me. He is the one who shall raise me from the dead. He is the one who shall stand as my advocate above, as my Savior by the throne of love.

The man who is a Christian does not ask someone else, “Did Jesus Christ say that? Well, then, I’m going to obey it.” In all things, he acts upon and lives it not in his public life only, but in his total life, in private as well as public. At any cost to himself he will follow Jesus Christ and carry his cross if he is truly born anew, regardless of the cost of property or cost in pain or even the cost of his life itself.

There is a danger of our falling short here. There are millions who have a name to live, but they are dead. You say they are liberals. No, liberals do not have any name to live. They do not pretend to live. They say, “I do not believe in that stuff. I believe that you only must be good and fan the fires within you and love your brother; be nice and you will be all right.”

I’m not talking about liberals, I am talking about people who are supposed to be Christians and who have received the gospel but received it in word only. It has never come in power because it has none of the fruits of power about it.

Nobody thinks this could be true of himself. It will pay us to do some heart searching in this terrible hour. The only safe thing to do is to surrender to the power of the gospel. Surrender to the words of Jesus christ for your life – at home, in your business life, your property life, your private life, your personal life, your secret life. Surrender all and do not let any area of your life, even if it’s only as big as a postage stamp, belong to the devil. Give everything to Jesus Christ…everything.

You say, “It’ll cost me my job.” All right, God will find another job for you. “I have been young, and now I am old; yet I have not seen the righteous forsaken, nor his seed begging bread” (Psalm 37: 25). Someone will also say, “But I’ll get stuck in jail if I follow the Lord.” All right, go to jail and sing as Paul and Silas did. “I’ll lose my property.” All right, lose your property. It is better to live in a rented house and a poor one at that, than have a mansion on the avenue with questions and uncertainties and moral spots all over it. Far better to come clean and get right, pay up confess up, than go along and cover up,, having a name to live while being dead.

Remember, the Word can come without power and leave us with a name to live while being dead. But the Word can come with power to transform, change and regenerate, making the old things new and making us examples to the world. Which do you want?

And Can It Be That I Should Gain

By Charles Wesley (1707 – 1788)

And can it be that I should gain

an interest in the Savior’s blood!

Died He for me? who caused His pain?

For me? who Him to death pursued?

Amazing love! How can it be

that thou, my God, shouldst die for me?

‘Tis mystery all: The Immortal dies!

Who can explore His strange design?

In vain the first born seraph tries

to sound the depths of love divine!

‘Tis mercy all! Let earth adore;

Let angel minds inquire no more.

He left His Father’s throne above

(so free, so infinite His grace!),

emptied Himself of all but love,

and bled for Adam’s helpless race.

‘Tis mercy all, immense and free,

for, O my God, it found out me!

Long my imprisoned spirit lay,

fast bound in sin and nature’s night;

thine eye diffused a quickening ray;

I woke, the dungeon flamed with light;

my chains fell off, my heart was free,

I rose, went forth, and followed Thee.

No condemnation now I dread;

Jesus, and all in Him, is mine;

alive in Him, my living Head,

and clothed in righteousness divine,

bold I approach th’ eternal throne,

and claim the crown, through Christ my own.

Chorus

Amazing love! How can it be

that Thou, my God, shouldst die for me?