Deficient Christian Discipleship

Excerpt from the sermon at Grace Community Church on April 8, 2018

"We are always hiding and shaping and deceiving. These things and other things in the Bible are called sin.  And they’re not in keeping with Christ. They’re not in keeping with new life. They don’t express newness, they don’t express love, they are not in keeping with the holiness without which no one will see the Lord. And they’re very real in us and they lurk within us they are to be killed!

Any version of Christian discipleship that does not include putting to death has edited out the mandate of Christ for His people.   Any version of Christian discipleship that does not include DEATH has edited out a mandate of Christ for His people.  Death is a part of our discipleship, and any version of discipleship that removes death is deficient, is dangerous, it is deviant. Because Jesus Christ said if anyone would come after me he must deny himself and take up his cross and follow me!
The events in the past couple of weeks in the world and my conversation with people have led to a series of questions … and they go like this: How can people who profess to be Christians sin so profoundly? How can people who profess to be Christians live in patterns of sin so long? How can people who profess to be Christians commit acts of immorality, adultery, pornography, and sexual abuse? How can people who profess to be Christians harbor and tolerate racism in the heart in the past and the present? How can people who profess to be Christians become so bitter and so angry that marriages end, friendships end, and churches split? These are the questions that have been coming to me over the past few weeks.

And the answers may be multi-layered.  And it would certainly include something like well there’s been bad teaching. But at the core, the answer is Christians have taken on a version of Christian discipleship that is void of the clear call of Jesus Christ to die to certain things.  To kill certain sins that reside in the heart of even those who have been redeemed by His blood. 

If we are not currently putting to death something earthly within us, then we are not following Jesus faithfully and we are not living out the new life.  Because every one of us has indwelling sin, earthly things lurking inside of us, and we must for the sake of the glory of Jesus and the expression of His love from our lives, WE MUST see it, admit it, let it be exposed, repent of it, rejoice in our forgiveness and move on into new life! "

- Scott Patty

Grace Community Church: A New Way to Die