Chronicles of Diversity

Wear your cap
15 November 2006; Volume 8, Issue 34

PDF link: http://www.wondersprings.com/2006pdffiles/wearcap11-15-6.pdf

As we continue this informal series on freedom, I must ask this question, “Are you wearing your cap today?”

I would venture to say that a few of you wear some kind of head covering on a consistent basis, most of you do not. My goal for this article is for you to wear your cap all the time. Sleep with it, wear it to work, around the house, when you eat. In short, never take off your cap.

After reading the statements and hearing some of the background behind the actual fall of Ted Haggard, the former Pastor and the head of the National Association of Evangelicals, to alleged drug and homosexual activities, it is apparent that he never did wear his cap. Furthermore, it again seems apparent that he didn’t believe that his cap even exists.

If this is true for such an important dude, I would venture to say that most of the leaders of American evangelicalism don’t know that a cap exists either. If they do not wear a cap or even know of it’s existence how can any Christian know about the cap, much less know where to find one, and then even know how to put it on.

I doubt George W. Bush wears his cap either. Nor do most evangelical Christians that ran for political office. That is probably why they lost, maybe why they got into politics in the first place. Not wearing your cap is probably why the Christian right has lost its political influence, and some would say that is a good thing. Some will decry that this will be the end of America as we know it today. Many liberals will say that is a good thing, because they have a full agenda and they are willing and perhaps able to force you to wear a cap of government planning, with a following loss of personal freedom, that will eventually be the demise of all of America’s republican principles.

Wear your cap!

Your cap is the source of your true freedom. It is the only cap of hope for the American nation, and for all freedom loving people around the world. Wearing your cap is an imperative statement. But what is this indicative cap and how can you buy one?

As we have described your cap in this brief introduction, it must be pretty expensive, probably more than the credit limit on your MasterCard. Could it be that your cap is priceless? Absolutely! I would also venture to say that your cap, made just for you, is probably the most rare cap in all the world, even with so many cheap imitations on the market.

Some of you are now beginning to think that I am not talking about a real cap, but some type of acrostic cap. True, this cap is an acrostic, but that in no way changes it’s reality. You need to wear this CAP cap all the time. Once you put it on, never, ever take it off.

So what is this acrostic cap? Calvinist’s call it “Guilt, Grace, & Gratitude” but as such, that sure doesn’t make a cap you can wear, just a bunch of “Gs” stated in some Calvinistic understanding. Isn’t it obvious? I doubt that it is for Calvinists either, but over time the essence sort of sinks into your dense skull.

As a consequence out of those Christian groups and denominations that try to trace their roots back to the Reformation, I have only heard it discussed by the leadership circles of the conservative Reformed and Presbyterians. But again it is hard to know how broad the application is within their churches. From my brief internet research it doesn’t seem to be understood in practical terms by either conservative Lutherans, or the more Calvinistic Baptists. Among the nondenominational Reformational type, again beyond the skull thinking concept of guilt, grace & gratitude, I doubt this indicative cap has much broad wearing either. Once I give you the acrostic however, the light bulb will probably go on in most of their skulls, and they will embrace wearing their CAP cap.

Therefore, for most evangelicals even when I spell it out, they will still have problems with their cap, because they have been completely indoctrinated in looking at Christianity in a different internal light. The sad thing is that this cap conversion will be even more difficult for them than for Roman Catholics. If wearing the cap were easy for evangelicals to comprehend, the darkness that Ted Haggard discussed would not have been the debilitating problem that it has turned out to be, in his life personally, nor in the many who will become disillusioned by his so called hypocrisy.

Your priceless cap is the acrostic:

C = Condemnation
A = Adoption
P = Praise

C = Condemnation

God’s Law, both the specific law of the Bible and the common natural law are condemning. They demand complete perfection in everything we do. In the Bible, the New Testament Sermon on the Mount in Matthew Chapter 5 and following, truly puts all of God’s Law in context. To save yourself by your actions demands God’s perfection in our thoughts as well as our deeds.

As we have noted for the last few weeks, common grace is at work throughout the world. This is especially true in America, there are a lot of people trying to do good things. But does that truly make the people good, or does it just cause them to become more inherently evil, adding self righteousness to their complete disregard for anything but themselves, that developing into narcissism?

Mankind was created to be community dwellers. But there is a line where these communities become the home of pride, arrogance, and self righteousness, and eventually blatant open sin, not only against God’s Law but also the specifics of human common law. This many times is hidden in the context of some suppressed freedom, when in actuality it demands special rights from the Godly established state and rulers, forcing all into cohabitation with evil.

As communities grow larger, they naturally tend to become Babylonian in the Biblical sense. In the context of our personal lives, the push to force people from the land to make a living in the city can not be viewed in any other sense but to make Augustine’s, City of Man the ultimate source of everything this world has to offer. So instead of building an New Jerusalem, we have instead moved our target a few miles to Sodom and Gomorra.

Roman’s Chapter 8:1; There is therefore now no condemnation to those who are in Christ Jesus, who do not walk according to the flesh, but according to the Spirit.

Here we see in one brief statement both the stated indicative to those who are in Christ Jesus, and the imperative to not walk according to the flesh, but according to the Spirit. As we have stated frequently elsewhere the imperatives are impossible to keep without truly understanding the indicative which precedes it.

So how do you know that you are truly in Christ Jesus and not walking according to the flesh, but according to the Spirit? Simply by your freedom from condemnation, from knowing you have absolutely no merit to fulfill any of God’s Law and must rest completely on the cross of Christ. This is historic Protestant Christian doctrine.

American evangelicalism, truly does not believe in any doctrine, instead it believes that walking in the Spirit is the way to over come the condemnation of the Law of God.

Does that work? Does it work to change the indicatives to imperatives, to change the total structure of God’s inspired word?

Just ask Ted Haggard today. What he told you last month doesn’t apply. The problem with the reality of just this one little Romans sentence has the ability to completely overturn the entire structure of evangelicalism as it exists throughout the world, if evangelicals would just put on their cap.

Being close, as they say, counts only in horse shoes and hand grenades. Being near doesn’t fulfill the total requirement of holiness required by God’s law. You may struggle with this deep secret, while living a lie for most of your life, but ultimately, when your life is over you must fully face the fact that you have either trusted God for your salvation, or you have trusted yourself. Ninety nine and 44/100 percent pure as the old Ivory soap commercial used to state, doesn’t get you into heaven. The doctrine of truly being in Christ Jesus does.

In this light American Evangelicalism flunks the course, because it seeks through piety to claim merit in your work toward your salvation. That works lie is not a short coming, that lie is an eternally deadly sin, where you remake reality into your own desired outcome.

A = Adoption

Those who think the imperatives of Romans 8:1 are really indicatives that they can live by, find their adoption to be sons and daughters of the living God impossible to understand. Again because ultimately they believe that indicative portions of scripture must be interpreted as imperatives also.

The work of Jesus Christ can be summarized as follows:

God’s law demands the absolute perfection of holiness. Man is completely incompetent to meet the requirements to fulfill that holiness. Jesus of Nazareth was born into humanity while being still fully God, to become the perfect sinless blood sacrifice that God’s law requires for your justification. Jesus bodily death is that atoning, or better yet propitiatory sacrifice. Propitiation meaning not only did Christ’s death fulfill the requirements of God’s holy law, his death was also legally done in my stead, yours also. As such, it was accepted by God the Father.

When your whole life is focused on trying to walk in the imperative Spirit, it is very difficult to understand the indicative doctrine of propitiation, because it does require as is commonly called, not only head knowledge, but also head wisdom. Furthermore not only does this require an initial understanding of what it means, it requires continual, and I did say continual, reinforcement. Like reinforcement minute by minute.

If that was not difficult enough to contemplate — it is much, much easier to stumble along wishfully believing you are walking in the Spirit — then the Bible clearly states that all this blood and guts sacrificial stuff was done, not so that you can have a heart relationship with Jesus, but it was done so that you would be actually adopted by God to be one of His children. This is a legal and binding covenant made by God with all who believe by faith in this sacrifice.

This is the fulfillment of the covenant given to Abraham, and is also the fulfillment of the law tangibly given through Moses. As fulfilled law, Jesus’ sacrifice on the cross is also the legal basis for my adoption unconditionally as an eternal personality, fully capable of works and power now limited by our willingness to learn of God, by His plan for our life alone and not our determinate planning. His plan for our life is much more rewarding than our own, but few ever venture into that land we perceive to be completely indeterminate.

Man, and woman, that is a very powerful, mind blowing indicative, if you look it as such.

To which you would normally say, “That’s alright, I want to follow God the way I understand, as I try my best to walk in the Spirit. That is my fate.

This of course is absolute blasphemy and the ultimate form of idolatry. Therefore, no matter how hard you try to overcome your condemnation under God’s law by our personal effort, you will never, ever, succeed.

However, to those who make a conscious decision not to follow Jesus by our sinful heart, or as our spirit sometimes leads us, but to meditate continually upon our own unworthy state to become a child of God and joint heir with Christ of eternity, to them God gives the power of Praise.

P = Praise

This completes your CAP. What Calvinists call guilt, grace and gratitude, is really your cap of condemnation, adoption, and praise! It is probably best described in the words of Psalm 117:

Praise the LORD, all you Gentiles!
Laud Him, all you peoples!
For His merciful kindness is great toward us,
And the truth of the LORD endures forever.

Praise the LORD!

At the time it was written, the shortest chapter in the Bible is also probably it’s greatest prophetic imperative. Today that prophesy has been fulfilled in our adoption as Gentiles into God’s family and joint heirs with Jesus Christ.

It is in that imperative statement where there rests a completely rotten to the core sinner, deserving only eternity separated from God and His mercies, and at the same time a perfected positionally sanctified saint.

In other words the power that American evangelicalism so hungrily seeks, and we so want to merit, does not come through personal piety as good as that might sound. The power comes from wearing your cap as simplistic as that concept really proclaims in context.

This Old Testament imperative is also found in the New Testament in Roman’s 15:7-11, which follows the discussion of the abuse of piety in the community sense, beginning in Chapter 14. Verse 12 gives another parallel passage from Isaiah 11:1,10, but perhaps the summation of this little acrostic of your cap, can be found in verse 13 in the doxology, or the closing praise of all of the powerful unified cap wearing Christian life:

Now may the God of hope fill you with all joy and peace in believing, that you may abound in hope by the power of the Holy Spirit.

May that be true in your life, today, tomorrow, and forever, for it is that hope of overcoming our current sinful desires through Jesus Christ alone, that brings unity, to both our heart and mind, body and soul. All it requires is wearing an indicative cap, so that the imperatives become possible, and you can thereby rise above all condemnation as part of God’s eternal family.

Praise the LORD!

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