1. The Root of the Problem: Unbelief
Kenneth J. Collins, Soul Care: Deliverance and Renewal through the Christian Life (1995; First Fruits Press, 2014, Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 3.0 United States), chapter 1, “The Root of the Problem”. Assigned excerpt (selected paragraphs). Scripture quotations in the English are the author’s (NIV). The interpretations are the author’s.
“There are a thousand hacking at the branches of evil to one who is striking at the root” (Henry David Thoreau).
Daily newspapers are a good window on the full range of human behavior; they graphically display humanity’s highest achievements as well as its worse defeats. They can show, for example, how a local community can come together to save a child trapped in an abandoned well, or they can describe in grisly detail the psychology and actions of a serial killer as he stalks his prey.
Unfortunately, one does not have to look to the daily newspapers, to international politics, or to famous people for instances of disturbing human evil. It’s much closer to home than we think. Perhaps every adult alive in America today has either directly experienced the agony of a significant loss or been quite close to someone else who has. How many homes, for instance, have been ravaged by the tornado of alcoholism or drug addiction? How many children have borne the burden of child abuse painfully, fearfully, and silently? And how many marriages have been torn apart by forces that neither husband nor wife clearly understood, but which left in their wake resentment, anger, crippled emotions, and troubled children? Add to these ills the afflictions of poverty, malnutrition, neglect, rage, jealousy, revenge, selfish ambition, lust, and outright hatred, and an almost baffling and overwhelming picture of human evil emerges. But is there, perhaps, a common thread which ties all of this together? Put another way, is there an essence, an irreducible core, to human evil? …
Observe the language in the following text: “When the woman saw that the fruit of the tree was good for food and pleasing to the eye, and also desirable for gaining wisdom, she took some and ate it. She also gave some to her husband, who was with her, and he ate it” (Gen. 3:6). Is the sin of Eve and Adam that they have actually eaten from the tree of knowledge of good and evil, or have they sinned prior to this act? Is their disobedience, in other words, their willful self-assertion, the essence of sin or is it simply the manifestation, the public revealing of a prior act? In a real sense, has not the sin of Adam and Eve occurred much earlier in doubting the goodness of God, in failing to trust the Most High, and in descending to unbelief? Indeed, neither Adam nor Eve could have willfully disobeyed and rebelled, except that they had already separated themselves from God by their own lack of trust, by their own unbelief. Simply put, somewhere between the seduction of temptation and the eating of the fruit, Eve sinned in her heart. From that moment with its breach of trust, God, for Eve, was no longer God, no longer her Lord and Sovereign. Effects, therefore, must not be mistaken for causes.
Though Genesis 3 is a good window on human evil, it would be a mistake for the Christian community to limit its discussion to this text; the New Testament must be explored as well. Emil Brunner, a twentieth-century Swiss theologian, affirmed that the church does not fully appreciate the hideousness of sin and evil until it considers, by way of contrast, the excellency of God’s grace in Jesus Christ. In Romans 5, for instance, the Apostle Paul sets up a comparison between Adam and Christ. …
This contrast, then, suggests that we need to proceed both positively and negatively. Negatively, Adam and Eve depict humanity gone awry, fallen into alienation and unbelief. God is no longer God for them; they have chosen the path of independence. Positively, Jesus Christ demonstrates what a restored humanity will look like in faith and holiness. Thus, ever in a proper relationship with the Father, the God/Man Jesus Christ submitted His will to the One in whom He trusted: “My Father, if it is possible, may this cup be taken from me. Yet not as I will, but as you will” (Matt. 26:39). In fact, there is no one throughout the pages of the Bible, Old Testament or New Testament, who said more about faith and trust (the opposite of unbelief) or who demonstrated its attractiveness better than Jesus Christ. Two passages give the reader a sense of just how Jesus ministered to people and what He saw as their most important need.
On the last and greatest day of the Feast, Jesus stood and said in a loud voice, “If anyone is thirsty, let him come to me and drink. Whoever believes in me, as the Scripture has said, streams of living water will flow from within him” (John 7:37-38).
Jesus said to her [Martha], “I am the resurrection and the life. He who believes in me will live, even though he dies; and whoever lives and believes in me will never die. Do you believe this?” (John 11:25-26)
This, then, is to view the problem positively, to display what humanity, through the bountiful grace of God in Jesus Christ, may become. Adam was alienated from God, isolated in fear, and trapped in unbelief; Jesus Christ, on the other hand, was free in His trust of the Father. If the cure is faith, the disease must be unbelief.
2. The Detour of Moralism
Kenneth J. Collins, Soul Care: Deliverance and Renewal through the Christian Life (1995; First Fruits Press, 2014, Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 3.0 United States), chapter 5, “The Delusions of the Self: False Hope and Bad Faith”. Assigned excerpt (selected paragraphs). Scripture quotations in the English are the author’s (NIV). The interpretations are the author’s.
There are all too many men and women today who know quite clearly that they are in the grip of evil — and even how and why they got there — and yet they can find no release. Commenting on a similar dynamic in the first century the Apostle Paul writes: “For I have the desire to do what is good, but I cannot carry it out. For what I do is not the good I want to do; no, the evil I do not want to do — this I keep on doing” (Rom. 7:18-19).
The problem of the soul, in other words, is not at its essence a lack of knowledge — though knowledge is, after all, important and helpful — but the human will which has been corrupted and enslaved. But just how does one change the will, especially when it is divided, that is, when one part of the will wants to reform, but another part doesn’t? Put another way, how does one will to change one’s will? This question must eventually be addressed by every form of counseling, both secular and religious. …
During the Enlightenment of the eighteenth century, Immanuel Kant called for humanity’s release from a self-imposed slavery, that is, from “man’s inability to make use of his understanding without direction from another.” “Sapere Aude!” or “dare to reason” was the rallying cry of the age. However, in this clarion call for change there was not only an emphasis on human independence which emerged out of the self-sufficiency of reason, but also a discounting of the transcendent or the supernatural. Humanity, not God, was to be the principal agent here, and appeals to the Holy Spirit were quietly put aside. …
Accordingly, for this eighteenth-century philosopher men and women are not so much in a dependent relation to a Holy God through faith as they are in relation to a moral order which they can know through the use of their own reason. Moreover, for Kant, as with many other thinkers of this period, since people can know the moral order, they are in turn obligated to fulfill its demands. Here the emphasis is on commitment and duty. The “horizontal” dimension of human relations has apparently edged out “the vertical” dimension of the power and favor of God; self-effort has replaced divine grace. Consequently, in his book Religion within the Limits of Reason Alone Kant writes: “True religion is to consist not in the knowing or considering what God does or has done for our salvation, but in what we must do to become worthy of it.” Religion’s role, then, is a largely subservient one: it is to inculcate and support ethics. It does not lead to anything (or anyone) higher than human effort. Though the interrelation between religion and ethics is by no means denied, there is a sense in which religion, in the best sense of the word, goes far beyond ethics in its emphasis on spirituality and devotion to God. … One cannot grow spiritually simply by focusing on ethics. Transcendence — that is, getting beyond and outside oneself through the worship of God — is also necessary.
Ultimately, Kant’s thought has not only had a significant impact on those thinkers who looked with disfavor on the Middle Ages, especially in terms of its spirituality and supposed superstition, but also on many leaders in the modern church. … More to the point, when this influence is translated into contemporary pulpits it usually takes the form of some sort of moralism or admonition to virtue: live a good life, be a good citizen, help your neighbor, give to a charity. And though this preaching is very clear on what we should do, and this is truly praiseworthy, it is less clear in terms of how we shall ever bring it about. Thus, if the Christian religion is reduced by being made subservient to ethics, if Christ merely becomes, in the words of Rousseau, “the teacher and pattern of pure and lofty morality,” a mere prophet, then men and women will inevitably be thrown back on their own resources as they struggle to imitate Christ and to fulfill His high moral demands. But will the efforts of those who have encountered radical evil ever be enough to liberate them? Saint Cyprian said it well, “No one is safe by his own strength, but he is safe by the grace and mercy of God.”
Moralism, then, whether in a secular or religious form, virtually leaves the kingdom of self intact as it directs the self to realize the good by using its own reason and abilities. A relationship to laws, principles, and abstractions has been substituted for a relationship to Christ. The divine/human relation, in other words, has been replaced by a human/legal one. Thus, if there is any advance toward the good, it must be accomplished by the “I” which has been left very much at the center of things. This characteristic, coupled with an enduring optimism about the goodness of human nature, makes all moralism, whether on the personal or social level, look naive. But what if the problem is actually within oneself, with a divided and corrupted will as suggested earlier? How, then, will people ever realize the ethical ideal? Part of the self wants to achieve the ideal; the other part wants to be free of it. In short, moralism, reliance on human ability, repeatedly underestimates both the potency and resiliency of evil in human lives. It relies on self-effort where self-effort will no longer work.
3. Justification: Righteousness Received by Faith
Kenneth J. Collins, Soul Care: Deliverance and Renewal through the Christian Life (1995; First Fruits Press, 2014, Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 3.0 United States), chapter 6, “The Kingdom of God: The Cross of Christ and the Gift of Faith”. Assigned excerpt. Scripture quotations in the English are the author’s (NIV). The interpretations are the author’s.
Since the righteous wrath of God has been placated by the sacrifice of Jesus Christ and since the integrity of the moral order has been upheld by the offering of the Son, the way is now clear to forgive people of their past sins and offenses against the Most High and to cleanse them from the pollution of sin and guilt. This act of God, based upon the atonement of Jesus Christ in declaring sinners to be just, is called justification and there is no proper Christian life without it. In his epistles, Paul is insistent that the way to justification, the way to being declared righteous by God, is not by self-effort, not by an attempt to obey the law of God perfectly, but is received by grace through faith, a faith which trusts in Jesus Christ and which is united with his atoning benefit. The apostle explains: “Know that a man is not justified by observing the law but by faith in Jesus Christ. So we, too, have put our faith in Christ Jesus that we may be justified by faith in Christ and not by observing the law, because by observing the law no one will be justified” (Gal. 2:16). Indeed, so emphatic was the Apostle Paul on this point that elsewhere he writes, “Clearly no one is justified before God by the law, because, ‘The righteous will live by faith’” (Gal. 3:11).
Centuries later, during the Reformation, Martin Luther underscored that justification is by faith alone, sola fide, apart from works of the law. In his Lectures on Romans (1515), for example, he explores the “righteousness of men” and then, interestingly enough, distinguishes it from what is deemed righteousness in the sight of God, coram Deo. Luther explains: “Human teachings reveal the righteousness of men, i.e., they teach who is righteous and how a man can be and become righteous before himself and his fellow men. But only the gospel reveals the righteousness of God.”
This path to justification which both the Apostle Paul and Martin Luther have described is, no doubt, offensive and troubling to those who remain intent on justifying themselves through their good works, charitable deeds, belief in ideology, or through some other form of self-effort. In fact, this all-too-human approach toward justification, misguided as it is, constitutes the last attempt of the kingdom of self to maintain its power and rule. If the self can no longer live with the problem of sin and guilt, then it, itself, will solve this problem — and on its own terms. In this context, then, the sinful self arrogantly pretends that it is a master, not a servant, that it, not God, can reestablish the relationship that has been destroyed by sin.
But this effort, as noble at times as it may seem, is futile for two key reasons. First of all, the way of the cross, God’s gracious offer of redemption in Jesus Christ, reveals that humanity must approach God with nothing in its hands, and must, therefore, humbly receive His gracious offer of salvation in Jesus Christ, the One who comes to us and bridges the distance between God and humanity in love. Second, the attempt at self-justification, the vain hope that humanity can make itself righteous, not only fails to consider that it is God, after all, who justifies (“Who will bring any charge against those whom God has chosen? It is God who justifies”; Rom. 8:33), but it also fails to note that the Almighty justifies not the righteous, not those who clean themselves up, so to speak, but sinners as Paul clearly states, “However, to the man who does not work but trusts God who justifies the wicked, his faith is credited as righteousness” (Rom. 4:5).
Justification, then, is not a matter of humanity making itself fit and worthy to receive the forgiveness of God, as Kant had intimated in his book, Religion within the Limits of Reason Alone, but of humanity despairing of all self-effort and receiving God’s gracious offer of salvation in Jesus Christ. Again, it is not a matter of reform, but of revolution, not a matter of self-help or actualization, but of facing away from the self and toward God. The difference is significant. Given the nature of human sin with its unbelief, pride, and rebellion, it actually makes eminent sense that the way back to peace with God has to be by faith, a faith which humbles us, gets us outside ourselves and our sinful self-will, and directs us to God’s saving activity in Jesus Christ. The source of forgiveness and justification, then, is not within ourselves, but is beyond us. It is, as Luther said, an “alien righteousness,” external to us. It is found at the cross. “Since we have now been justified by his blood,” the Apostle Paul writes, “how much more shall we be saved from God’s wrath through him!” (Rom. 5:9)
Moreover, Leon Morris in his work, The Apostolic Preaching of the Cross, expresses this important truth well: “The man who believes in Christ the propitiation — who stakes his whole being on sin-bearing love as the last reality in the universe — is not fictitiously regarded as right with God; he is actually right with God, and God treats him as such.” Again, the way to the forgiveness of sins is not direct, as we had once supposed, but indirect; we must have faith in the mediator between God and humanity, Jesus Christ.
4. Reading the Scriptures
Kenneth J. Collins, Soul Care: Deliverance and Renewal through the Christian Life (1995; First Fruits Press, 2014, Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 3.0 United States), chapter 7, “Abiding in the Kingdom of God: The Disciplines of the Liberated Life, Part I”. Assigned excerpt (selected paragraphs). The interpretations are the author’s.
Personal, corporate, and public disciplines constitute the major activities of the Christian life. In particular, the personal disciplines, the major concern of this chapter, are characterized by diverse activities which, although they also take place within the context of the church, are often practiced by individuals alone. Put another way, reading the Scriptures, practicing devotional reading, praying and fasting, practices which make up the personal disciplines, often occur in the privacy of our homes, in our “prayer closet,” or in the silence of our hearts. Moreover, these disciplines not only orient us toward God in a rich and personal way, and thereby develop the divine/human relationship, but they also prepare us to participate in the larger community of faith (corporate disciplines) and the world (public disciplines).
It was Karl Barth, in one of his earlier theological essays, who talked about “the strange new world within the Bible.” Part of that strangeness which this leading Swiss theologian found in the Scriptures has to do, no doubt, with the “otherness” of God and His kingdom: that is, God’s ways, as we’ve noted earlier, are not as our ways, and the kingdom of heaven — to use my own idiom — is so unlike the kingdom of self. It makes eminent sense, then, for those who are just embarking on the Christian life, as well as for those who are more spiritually mature, to read the Bible on a regular basis, to enter into that strange new world, and to identify not with self-interest but with the Word of God. …
Great care and earnestness, then, is called for here, a balance of reason and faith, an intellectual knowledge of the Scriptures on the one hand as well as greater personal and existential depth on the other. Since the Christian community throughout the ages has affirmed that the Bible is the Word of God, an expression of the Almighty’s most holy will, it is vitally important for us not only to read the Scriptures in their entirety, but also to study them in considerable depth. Three approaches are particularly helpful here.
First of all, we should set up a daily reading program which will take us through the entire Bible, the Old Testament and the New, in about a year. After this, the cycle can be repeated with an eye to the improvement of the grace already received. Indeed, because the Scriptures are so rich in meaning, and also because we, ourselves, will grow from year to year, our reading of the Bible should never become stale but always remain fresh.
Second, when we read the Scriptures, we must not only master the elements of the story and the details of the historical record, keeping our Jehoiakims distinguished from our Jehoiachins, but we must also discern the larger moral and spiritual truths which are communicated by means of these historical accounts as an important step in our reading strategy. Here a good commentary on the Bible can be very useful in drawing out the truths of the text which we would have otherwise missed. But since commentaries often represent a particular viewpoint — whether it be Lutheran, Reformed, or Methodist — it is perhaps best to consult several different commentaries whose differences in interpretation will then force us to go back to the text in order to grapple with its meaning. Indeed, commentaries, though helpful, should never be a substitute for our own wrestling with the Scriptures.
The third and perhaps most important aspect of our reading of the Bible, and one which is often neglected in seminary and graduate courses, is the task of applying the truths which we have learned from our study of the Word of God to our lives and then to our communities. This practical application of the Bible means that we will not simply come to know its truths cognitively or intellectually, but that we will also endeavor, through the grace of God, to have these truths become a part of our person, a part of our lives and our communities with transforming power. Sadly, due to our intellectual cultural heritage, we are so accustomed to thinking of the word “truth” as a noun, as a thing, or as a fact, when the larger truths of the Bible are best understood as action words and relations. Put another way, we live out the truths of the Bible; we participate in their reality; and our lives, then, become one of the many testaments to their being. Indeed, God is not a thing at all, as we had once supposed, an object which we can manipulate or control; instead, the essence, the very being, of God is one of relation: Father, Son, and Holy Spirit in eternal love — a love which reaches out to us and invites us to enjoy a much higher kind of life, a life which engages all aspects of our being.
5. Prayer: Faith Reaching Out to God
Kenneth J. Collins, Soul Care: Deliverance and Renewal through the Christian Life (1995; First Fruits Press, 2014, Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 3.0 United States), chapter 7, “Abiding in the Kingdom of God: The Disciplines of the Liberated Life, Part I”. Assigned excerpt (selected paragraphs). Scripture quotations in the English are the author’s (NIV). The interpretations are the author’s.
To underscore the necessity of prayer, let’s think about it in comparison to that great American obsession, dieting. One of the well-kept secrets about most of the popular diets on the market today is that they don’t work. The cycle is fairly typical: people go on these diets for a period of time, they lose weight, go off the diet, and then gain back all the weight they lost — and then some. … The key to success, then, is to change our attitude, that is, to alter our eating habits not for a couple of weeks but for life. Soon the new way of eating will not seem like a diet at all; it will become our normal eating pattern, and as such, it will satisfy.
In a similar fashion, if the freedom of the kingdom of God is to be continually enjoyed, if we do not wish to fall back into the kingdom of self with its old sinful patterns and behaviors, then a change in attitude, practices, and habits will be required. In particular, we must develop and maintain spiritual disciplines, especially the practice of prayer, which will then become a part of a new pattern of life — a pattern which will never end. Accordingly, one does not embark upon the Christian life thinking that all that is required is conversion and a few good intentions, for there is, after all, a life yet to be lived. Unfortunately, some Christians treat conversion like dieters treat their diets; it’s all over after a few weeks. But since some of the newly awakened fail to develop a pattern of life which is open to the ongoing reception of the grace of God, they are courting spiritual disaster, and they may quickly slip back into their old sinful ways.
To be sure, when one reads the biographies of some of the most godly leaders in the church, … a common factor quickly emerges: they were all men and women of prayer. They knew, if our modern age has forgotten it, that prayer is a remarkable vehicle for communion with God. It is a medium through which we not only reveal the deepest recesses of our hearts to God, in all honesty and humility, but through which the Most High is also graciously manifested to us. Beyond this, the Holy Spirit, present in prayer, fortifies us and enables us to live the life to which we are called. We never have to live merely out of our own strength again. Prayer connects us with the Almighty: His power becomes our power; His grace becomes our grace.
With all these positive aspects of prayer, it is truly a wonder why more Christians do not pray on a regular basis. Personal and family devotions have fallen by the wayside for some, and corporate prayer on Sunday mornings seems to be about as far as it goes for many Christians — unless, of course, some crisis erupts. But what is prayer, but the enactment, the actualization of faith. Prayer is faith reaching out beyond itself to trust and love the Holy One. Prayer is faith moving beyond temporal things to grasp the eternal. … Consequently, a Christian who never or seldom prays is like a husband who says that he loves his wife, but never wishes to speak with her.
First of all, when we embark on our spiritual journey many of us quite simply do not know how to pray. Although we can recite the Lord’s Prayer, and even reflect on the words for awhile, we quickly become bored; we feel that nothing is happening. The difficulty here, and it is a common one, is that we are attempting to make prayer merely a mental exercise. … In order for prayer to be deeply satisfying, a true encounter with God, we must learn to pray not merely with our intellect, but with our whole being: heart, emotions, imagination, and mind. …
Sometimes we have difficulty praying because we hold on to the very things which alienate us from God. For instance, how can we expect to cultivate a significant relationship with our Heavenly Father if our hearts are embittered, hardened by a lack of forgiveness toward our neighbor? … In a similar fashion, the refusal to let go of deliberate sin will also cloud our prayer life. Indeed, if our conscience continually speaks judgment against us, if it accuses and convicts us, if it fosters anxiety, we certainly will not want to be in the presence of God. Simply put, guilt and shame will bar the way.
As we pray, the soul usually goes through five phases: confession, adoration, intercession, petition, and thanksgiving. And though some authors place the practice of adoration first, it makes much more sense that the first thing we should do in the presence of God is to humble ourselves and confess our shortcomings. It is only then that we may proceed to adoration in the proper spirit. Continuing this line of thought, after giving due honor and praise to God, we should, of course, be mindful of others: of our friends and acquaintances who are suffering or are in need. Indeed, only when we have considered the needs of others, through intercessory prayer, may we then bring our own concerns to God in the form of petitions. And finally, we should give thanks to God for past prayer answered, the graces presently enjoyed, as well as for our hope in Jesus Christ. …
When Jesus prayed in the Garden of Gethsemane, shortly before His crucifixion and death, notice that there were two aspects to His prayer. Knowing the suffering which lay ahead, Jesus prayed for another way, if it were possible: “Father, if you are willing, take this cup from me” (Luke 22:42). On the other hand, Jesus also prayed not that His own will be done but that of the Father: “yet not my will, but yours be done” (Luke 22:42). Like Jesus, then, we too may bring all our petitions before the Father who loves and cares for us, and we are free, of course, to wrestle in prayer to attain the desires of our heart. However, when we pray, we should also, as Jesus did, place all our petitions under the greater providence, care, and will of God.