And by that will, we have been made holy through the sacrifice of the body of Jesus Christ once for all.
— Hebrews 10:10
In a friendly conversation with a Catholic priest I learned from the lips of this appointed spokesman of the Roman Church the philosophy of the Mass. He started with the blood offering of Abel and traced the practice of propitiatory sacrifice down through the Scriptures to the cross. "There must always be a sacrifice," he said, "and in the Mass the sacrifice is repeated each time the bread and wine are consecrated on the altar.
At each celebration of the Mass the sacrifice of Christ is repeated." If the Mass rests upon the notion of the perpetual sacrifice then its foundation is only sand, for the New Testament is very clear that Christ's sacrifice is a once-for-all act and can never be repeated. Whatever tradition and dogma may say, thus saith the Lord. And by that will, we have been made holy through the sacrifice of the body of Jesus Christ once for all. Day after day every priest stands and performs his religious duties; again and again he offers the same sacrifices, which can never take away sins. But when this priest had offered for all time one sacrifice for sins, he sat down at the right hand of God (Hebrews 10:10-12). And if that is not plain enough the inspired writer further says, "Because by one sacrifice he has made perfect forever those who are being made holy" (verse 14); and, "where these have been forgiven, there is no longer any sacrifice for sin" (verse 18).
thought
Christ has made the sin sacrifice no one else could ever offer. By His death our sin-debt is fully and eternally paid. Amazing love and amazing grace!
prayer
Beyond my comprehension, Father, is Christ's death for me. And because of His unique sacrifice, sin's power over me is broken. May I so live..
You are the light of the world. . . .
— Matthew 5:14a
Once the prophet, the apostle, the reformer, saw a vision or heard a voice, or in later times had an encounter with God through the holy Scriptures and went out firm and sure to declare the Word of the Lord. Now we watch the world to get our next cue and when we have been tipped off as to what our latest "burden of the Word of the LORD" (Zechariah 12:1, KJV) shall be, we rush out and breathlessly declare the expected message as if we had been with Moses on Mount Sinai. It takes a war, an election, race tensions or an outbreak of juvenile crime to afford subject matter for our modern prophets. . . .
The world always moves first and the church comes meekly after, trying pitifully to look and sound like her model and at the same time maintain a weak religious testimony by inserting a dutiful commercial now and then to the effect that everybody ought to accept Jesus and be born again. Secularized fundamentalism is a horrible thing, a very horrible thing, much worse in my opinion than honest modernism or outright atheism. It is all a kind of heart heterodoxy existing along with creedal orthodoxy. Its true master may be discovered by noting whom it admires and imitates. The test is, Whom do these Christians want to be like? Who excites them and makes their eyes shine with pleasure? Whom go they forth to see? Whose techniques do they borrow? Never the meek soul, never the godly saint, never the self-effacing, cross-carrying follower of Jesus. Always the big wheel, the celebrity, the star, the VIP ? provided of course that these persons have given a "testimony" in favor of Christ somewhere in the midst of the fleshly, vain world of artificial lights and synthetic sounds which they inhabit.
The sad thing about all this is its effect upon a new generation of Christians. Whole companies of young people are growing up who have known nothing else but the degenerate brand of Christianity now passing for the religion of Christ. They are the innocent victims of a condition which they did not help to create. Not they but a spiritually emasculated leadership must answer for their plight. What is the remedy? It is simple. A radical return to New Testament Christianity both in message and in method. A bold repudiation of the world and a taking up of the cross. Such a return on any wide scale will mean a reformation of vast proportion. Some that are now high will be brought low and many of the humble will be exalted. It will mean a moral revolution. How many are willing to pay the price?
thought
In our desire to win the world there is the danger of becoming like it. What would the ministry of Paul, Peter, John the Baptist, Christ Himself be like in our context today? Worship service emcees, highly contemporary music, a parade of celebrities, sermonettes addressing felt needs or self-crucifixion and cross-bearing?
prayer
In this world give me discernment, Lord, as to how to reach out to people in Spirit-anointed mini
A great deal can be learned about people by observing whom and what they imitate.
The weak, for instance, imitate the strong; never the reverse.
The poor imitate the rich.
The self-assured are imitated by the timid and uncertain, the genuine is imitated by the counterfeit, and people all tend to imitate what they admire.
By this definition power today lies with the world, not with the church, for it is the world that initiates and the church that imitates what she has initiated. By this definition the church admires the world. The church is uncertain and looks to the world for assurance. A weak church is aping a strong world to the amusement of intelligent sinners and to her own everlasting shame.
Should any reader be inclined to dispute these conclusions, I ask him to take a look around.
Look into almost any evangelical publication, browse through our bookstores, attend our youth gatherings, drop in on one of our summer conferences or glance at the church page of any of our big city newspapers.
The page that looks most like the theatrical page is the one devoted to the churches, usually appearing on Saturday. And the similarity is not accidental, but organic.
This servile imitation of the world is for the most part practiced by those churches that claim for themselves a superior degree of spirituality and boldly declare their adherence to the letter of the Word.
In fact, neither the old-line ritualistic churches nor those that are openly modernistic have been as guilty of such flagrant world-worship as the gospel churches have.
Verse
You became imitators of us and of the Lord; in spite of severe suffering, you welcomed the message with the joy given by the Holy Spirit.
— First Thessalonians 1:6
thought
The challenge is to be lights to the world not mirrors reflecting it. Perhaps part of the problem lies in our emphasis on congregational growth in numbers rather than in Christlike living.
prayer
Lord, may I be not a world imitator, but of those who model You in life and ministry even at great personal cost.verse
https://cmalliance.org/devotionals/tozer/
At the risk of shocking some tender-minded persons, I venture to list here a few words and phrases that to millions of evangelical Christians have no longer an identifiable content and are used merely as religious sounds without any relation to reality.
They have meaning, and they are good and sacred words, but they have no meaning as used by the speaker and as heard by the listener in the average religious gathering.
Here they are: victory, heart and life, all out for God, to the glory of God, receive a blessing, conviction, faith, revival, consecration, the fullness of God, by the grace of God, on fire for God, born again, filled with the Spirit, hallelujah, accept Christ, the will of God, joy and peace, following the Lord and there are scores of others.
We have reared a temple of religious words comfortably disassociated from reality.
And we will soon stand before that just and gentle Monarch who told us that we should give an account of every idle word.
God have mercy on us.
verse
Much dreaming and many words are meaningless. Therefore stand in awe of God.
— Ecclesiastes 5:7
thought
Do you find yourself hiding behind phrases and terms which sound spiritual but for you are empty of reality? Let's practice the presence of God and stand in awe of Him. Then all forms of religious pretense we will cast aside.
prayer
Expose to me, Father, those meaningless words I use. I want to know You and be real in life and word.
https://cmalliance.org/devotionals/tozer/
Now, while we cannot project ourselves backward through time and walk again in Galilee with Christ and His disciples,
we can by faith actually experience "the substance of things hoped for";
we can have every sufficient "evidence of things not seen" (Hebrews 11:1, KJV);
we can taste "the powers of the coming age" (6:5);
we can "know" and "comprehend";
we can have the inner witness, the spiritual illumination that brings out the typography of the kingdom of God as clearly as any earthly landscape is revealed by the rising sun.
Then every word will be like a sharp, clear shadow thrown by the objects on the terrain, not to stand in place of reality, but to outline it and set it in relief.
A word is valid only when it refers to some reality in the mind of the user.
It must submit to definition as used by the speaker. Its dictionary meaning cannot save it from semantic fraud.
It must have a real meaning in its limited context at a given time.
By this test an alarmingly great amount of our religious talk is phonetic breath, no more.
verse
For we know, brothers loved by God, that he has chosen you, because our gospel came to you not simply with words, but also with power, with the Holy Spirit and with deep conviction. . . .
— First Thessalonians 1:4-5
thought
There is "religious talk" and there are words of truth validated by power, the Holy Spirit and deep conviction. Such words penetrate the heart, assuring us that God speaks through His servant who himself has been radically changed.
prayer
Deliver me, Lord, from spouting religious talk. May I speak of whom and what I know from the vantage of personal encounter.
https://cmalliance.org/devotionals/tozer/
Religious people are psychologically conditioned to the trite phrase and the hackneyed expression.
True, the stereotyped pattern varies slightly between different groups, but there would seem to be no reason why a clever speaker could not preach tonight to Calvinists, tomorrow to Arminians, the next day to Pentecostals, the next to Holiness people, and successively to Separatists and Adventists, and preach acceptably to each one by the simple expedient of finding out what they were conditioned to expect and giving it to them.
A clever man could do this, I say, but an honest man would not.
And the reason the clever man could do it is that the ability to create a specific pattern of words is all that is demanded of the speaker. That he may be talking about something he has never experienced to people who do not understand him seems not to occur to anyone. The reassuring drone of safe and familiar religious phrases is enough to give the listeners an enjoyable sense of well-being. The absence of reality is not even noticed.
A Christian is among other things a witness, and as such he speaks of those things which he has personally experienced.
The Bible was, for the most part, written by men who saw and heard certain great realities and reported on them. "I saw" and "I heard" are familiar Old Testament expressions, and the New Testament literally pulsates with life and experience.
John's vivid words are a sample: That which was from the beginning, which we have heard, which we have seen with our eyes, which we have looked at and our hands have touched this we proclaim concerning the Word of life.
The life appeared; we have seen it and testify to it, and we proclaim to you the eternal life, which was with the Father and has appeared to us.
We proclaim to you what we have seen and heard (1 John 1:1-3).
verse
For the time will come when men will not put up with sound doctrine. Instead, to suit their own desires, they will gather around them a great number of teachers to say what their itching ears want to hear.
— 2 Timothy 4:3
thought
Itching ears are tuned to hear what they want to hear. Our inclination is to so accommodate them. But words God uses to speak to and change people through us are those words of truth that we ourselves have personally proved to be true.
prayer
I confess, Lord, that at times I want to hear only soothing, assuring words. But Your Word through those who are living it, forces me to see who I am and who You want me to be.
https://cmalliance.org/devotionals/tozer/
We Christians owe it to ourselves and to the human race to be above all persons, candid, downright and completely transparent.
We must have no truck with fancy, but see to it that our religious talk hugs the facts as tightly as a glove and that our words always have some reality corresponding to them.
Over the years I have been disturbed more than a little by the vague unreality of much that I hear among religious people. This is not a charge of insincerity. I have no doubt of the sincerity of most religious persons. It is the lack of reality that disturbs me.
Indeed the gravity of the situation is increased by the very earnestness with which many persons are occupied with unreality.
Religion stands at the top as being among all fields of human interest the one most addicted to words. Nowhere else are there so many words and so few deeds to support them.
There is something about a religious gathering, and particularly about a church building, that produces in the worshiper a state of pleasant languor and suspends his critical faculties for the duration of the service.
The average Christian goes to church expecting to hear certain words and phrases and the average preacher knows what they are. It does not matter too much in what order they occur, and if they should be spoken with a considerable degree of enthusiasm, so much the better; only let them be familiar and harmless.
Nothing more is required or expected.
verse
Let no one deceive you with empty words, for because of such things God's wrath comes on those who are disobedient. Therefore do not be partners with them.
— Ephesians 5:6
thought
There are words full of meaning, expressing the heart. And there are empty words by which we may deceive ourselves and others. By empty words we may "talk the talk" while not "walking the walk."
prayer
Father, I cannot control the words of others but I am responsible for my own. Give me increased sensitivity to the use of words that fail to express spiritual reality.
https://cmalliance.org/devotionals/tozer/
When we are first converted, especially if we come from a non-Christian background, we are likely to be almost too naive for our own good.
The wondrous experience through which we have just passed, or perhaps I should say into which we have entered, has predisposed us to believe in everybody.
Our trust in other Christians is likely to be boundless.
That there could be hypocrites, double-minded professors, religious pretenders, carnal camp followers, never once enters our minds.
The result is that our first encounter with a worldly church member comes as a frightful shock to our sensitive minds. Some never recover from this shattering of their confidence. They become religious cripples. Their growth is stunted and their usefulness destroyed, or at the least greatly hindered from that moment on.
That I speak truly here may be proved by everyday experience; but there is a more sure word of Scripture: "But if anyone causes one of these little ones who believe in me to sin [shall offend any one of these, KJV] it would be better for him to have a large millstone hung around his neck and to be drowned in the depths of the sea" (Matthew 18:6).
When we learn that the word offend actually means cause to stumble or to sin, we know how serious the whole thing is.
Better to die than to imperil the faith of a weak disciple. Christ's words may mean more than that, but they can hardly mean less.
verse
Jesus said to his disciples: 'Things that cause people to sin are bound to come, but woe to that person through whom they come.'
— Luke 17:1
thought
It is tragic when we ourselves stumble. It is far more grievous for us to cause others to stumble. To avoid causing others to stumble is itself strong incentive to walk by the Spirit.
prayer
O Lord, may I be an encouragement to others in their walk with You and not a cause for stumbling. In Jesus' name.
https://cmalliance.org/devotionals/tozer/
The newborn Christian finds himself alive with a sweet, enjoyable kind of life that he accepts naively, almost unconsciously.
To him everything is simple and immediate. He knows no intermediary. Christ is to him on an infinitely higher level what its mother is to a baby warmth, nourishment, protection, rest and an object of satisfying affection.
Right here is where the wrong kind of Bible teacher can do his damage.
The first thing he does is to destroy the new Christian's simplicity.
He introduces something between the Christian and Christ. He makes him Biblo-centric instead of Christo-centric. (And there is a difference, let no one deceive you.)
The Spirit-anointed Bible teacher will so teach the Word as to keep it transparent, so as to allow it to be what it always should be, a kind of burning bush which God indwells and out of which He shines in awesome splendor.
The beholder sees the bush, it is true, but the object of his interest is the Presence, not the bush.
The wrong kind of teacher gets so technical about the bush that the fire dims down and the light ceases to fall on the Christian's face. That is what the gentle cynic meant when he said "before he has met too many Bible teachers."
As for "too many church members" spoiling the new Christian's happiness, it is the result of disillusionment pure and simple.
verse
Then we will no longer be infants, tossed back and forth by the waves, and blown here and there by every wind of teaching and by the cunning and craftiness of men in their deceitful scheming.
— Ephesians 4:14
thought
There are those "teachers" who parade their "wisdom" and scholarship intent on attracting those taught to themselves and their "great knowledge." Then, there are those Spirit-filled teachers who point us to Christ and show us how to study the Word for ourselves.
prayer
Thank You, Lord, for those teachers who have labored to teach me to study Your Word and discern Your voice speaking through it.
https://cmalliance.org/devotionals/tozer/