Where’s the Beef?

 

  Do you remember a popular television commercial of some years ago that featured an older woman looking at a hamburger?  With an expression of bewilderment on her face, she asked the server in the fast-food restaurant, “Where’s the Beef”?  Her predicament is somewhat analogous to the feelings of persons who look for the substance of holiness in the lives of Christians today.  Where the beef of holiness?  Where’s that thing that makes Christians different from non-Christians?  Where is the Christ-likeness?  That ingredient of Christian experience that John Wesley described as religion itself.  Where’s the beef of Christianity?  Where is that similarity to the spirit and mind of Christ?

 

  Look at what poll after poll; study after study, says about the conduct of those who call themselves Christian compared with those who do not.  The divorce rate is reported to be slightly higher among those who call themselves Christian.  Of course, not everyone who calls himself a Christian actually is.

 

  The Holy Spirit inspired the writer of the gospel of Jesus according to Matthew to preserve these words of Jesus from His Sermon on the Mount: 7:19-23 “Every tree that does not bear good fruit is cut down and thrown into the fire.  Therefore by their fruits you will know them.  Not everyone who says to me ‘Lord, Lord,’ shall enter the kingdom of heaven, but he who does the will of My Father in heaven.  Many will say to Me in that day, ‘Lord, Lord,’ have we not prophesied in your name, cast out demons in Your name, and done many wonders in Your name?

And then I will declare to them, ‘I never knew you; depart from Me, you who practice lawlessness!’”

 

  The Calvinistic claim “I sin every day in thought, word, and deed; can’t help it – that’s just the way it is” sounds very much like standing on sand.  Where’s the Beef of Christianity?  Most of the Christ followers stuck in that rut don’t intend to justify their carnality they just haven’t been shown the considerably more firm footing of Holy Spirit empowered heart holiness.   It is a footing that allows us to stand firm and reflect Christ-likeness so that others will say “there it is!  That thing that makes Christians different from non-Christians.”

 

Sin is spoken of in the Bible as filthiness or defilement of the body, mind, or spirit.  Purity in Religion must mean, therefore, the absence of such filthy things as drunkeness, gluttony, dishonesty, cheating, falsehood, pride, malice, bad tempers, selfishness, unbelief, disobedience, or the like.  In short, to be pure in soul, signifies deliverance from all and everything which the Lord shows you to be opposed to His Holy Will.  It means that you not only possess the ability to live the kind of life that He desires, but that you actually do live it.

 

Holiness Possible

  The Church of The Nazarene believes in holiness.  Holiness is our distinguishing tenet.  That’s what we are all about – perfect love, Christian perfection, being filled with the Spirit, entire sanctification. The Church of The Nazarene is not a generic church.  We are not all things to all people.  We believe that God teaches that regeneration is the work of God’s grace, preceded by repentance and obtained by faith.  We also believe regeneration is to be followed by another work of grace – entire sanctification, that act of God that frees believers from original sin and brings them into a state of complete commitment to God.  Entire sanctification is provided by the blood of Jesus and wrought by the Holy Spirit to this experience the Holy Spirit bears witness.

 

Sanctification begins when a person is justified by faith, converted, and progresses as a believer who grows in God’s grace and conforms more and more in obedience to Christ.  Believers are entirely sanctified when they are filled with the Holy Spirit, cleansing them from a sinful nature.  This experience is available to the seeking Christian.

 

We must not allow the failures of others to persuade us that holiness is impossible.  We must not justify our own uncleanness of heart and become callused in sin.  We must not settle for an experience and a lifestyle that is less than holy.  When this happens we begin to blame others for our moral failures, or we blame environments and situations.  All the while we continue to be jealous, manipulative, proud, dominating, unkind, critical, and self-serving.  All the while those who don’t have time for church continue to say “Where’s the Beef?”  They are pleading for us to be the salt and light which Christ called us to be.

 

  J. B. Chapman said, “I got saved so I could get sanctified.”  Phineas Bresee said, “A sanctified life is a delight to Jesus, a joy to the soul, a benediction to the home, a power in the church, a terror to sin, and a continual disappointment to the devil.”

 

Eph 2:8-10

    For by grace you have been saved through faith; and that not of yourselves, it is the gift of God; not as a result of works, that no one should boast.

    For we are His workmanship, created in Christ Jesus for good works, which God prepared beforehand, that we should walk in them.  (NAS)

 

Matt 7:19-23

            “Every tree that does not bear good fruit is cut down and thrown into the fire.

            “So then, you will know them by their fruits.

            “Not everyone who says to Me, ‘Lord, Lord,’ will enter the kingdom of heaven; but he who does the will of My Father who is in heaven.

            “Many will say to Me on that day, ‘Lord, Lord, did we not prophesy in Your name, and in Your name cast out demons, and in Your name perform many miracles?’

            “And then I will declare to them, ‘I never knew you; depart from Me, you who practice lawlessness.’  (NAS)

 <pastorwardclinton.com>