Beware of dogs!

Leonard Sweet, in his book The Gospel According to Starbucks (Waterbrook Press, 2007), asks - "Is God a reality to be experienced or a belief to be remembered?" He goes on to point out that the Bible is less a book about how people thought about God than it is a book about how people experienced God. It is not my intent to set doctrine and experience against each other as though one or the other is unimportant. However, we must not allow ourselves to fall into the error of making Christianity a creed only, just a set of rules and/or statements to be memorized. Christ Jesus is not just to be described, He is to be known- experienced as a real Person!

Paul warned that "the Letter kills, but the Spirit gives life." His reference was to the practice of those who took the First Covenant and substituted its rules for the living Experience of the Holy One made possible in Christ Jesus. The glory of Christianity is that God has given His Holy Spirit to live in us, allowing us to know Jesus Christ.
He writes, "Watch out for those dogs, those people who do evil, those mutilators who say you must be circumcised to be saved. For we who worship by the Spirit of God are the ones who are truly circumcised. We rely on what Christ Jesus has done for us. We put no confidence in human effort, though I could have confidence in my own effort if anyone could. Indeed, if others have reason for confidence in their own efforts, I have even more! I was circumcised when I was eight days old. I am a pure-blooded citizen of Israel and a member of the tribe of Benjamin—a real Hebrew if there ever was one! I was a member of the Pharisees, who demand the strictest obedience to the Jewish law. I was so zealous that I harshly persecuted the church. And as for righteousness, I obeyed the law without fault.

I once thought these things were valuable, but now I consider them worthless because of what Christ has done. Yes, everything else is worthless when compared with the infinite value of knowing Christ Jesus my Lord. For his sake I have discarded everything else, counting it all as garbage, so that I could gain Christ and become one with him. I no longer count on my own righteousness through obeying the law; rather, I become righteous through faith in Christ. For God’s way of making us right with himself depends on faith. I want to know Christ and experience the mighty power that raised him from the dead. I want to suffer with him, sharing in his death, so that one way or another I will experience the resurrection from the dead! I don’t mean to say that I have already achieved these things or that I have already reached perfection. But I press on to possess that perfection for which Christ Jesus first possessed me." (Philippians 3:1-12, NLT)

Paul's astonishing claim is that he was a master of doctrine. He even had applied the doctrines nearly flawlessly to his own life and yet he did not know God! Then, he met Christ, through faith, and came to experience the life offered to him by the Spirit. He was writing to the church in Philippi to warn them about certain teachers who wanted to turn the experience of knowing Christ into a set of rules for behavior, substituting puny attempts at self-righteousness with the authentic relationship with the Lord that came through Christ, by faith. With high scorn he says, "Watch out for those dogs!"

Sweet observes that "Authentic Christian experience is not playing praise music on your car radio or placing your body in a pew to listen to a sermon. Authentic Christian experience is the process... of growing into Christ. The world is not impressed that people attend church on Sunday mornings. If anything, such a habit is viewed as a quaint waste of time. But, imagine if every Christian in the world were living as a little Christ." A passionate, transforming experience of the living Christ tantalizes those who live around a living disciple, drawing them towards Christ, causing them to desire to share that experience. Who wants more rules for living? Who wants a holy nag adding to their sense of failure, heaping guilt upon guilt? Few, if any, seek more religion. But, we all crave an experience that gives Life!

Believer, do you simply know about Christ, or do you know Him?
Those who know Him, experience the renewal of the Spirit and are 'becomers' exchanging death for life, filled with the evidence of the Spirit's life. Here's a familiar passage about the fruit of the Spirit, paraphrased in The Message. As you read it, believe.

"But what happens when we live God’s way? He brings gifts into our lives, much the same way that fruit appears in an orchard—things like affection for others, exuberance about life, serenity. We develop a willingness to stick with things, a sense of compassion in the heart, and a conviction that a basic holiness permeates things and people. We find ourselves involved in loyal commitments, not needing to force our way in life, able to marshal and direct our energies wisely.

Legalism is helpless in bringing this about; it only gets in the way. Among those who belong to Christ, everything connected with getting our own way and mindlessly responding to what everyone else calls necessities is killed off for good—crucified.

Since this is the kind of life we have chosen, the life of the Spirit, let us make sure that we do not just hold it as an idea in our heads or a sentiment in our hearts, but work out its implications in every detail of our lives." (Galatians 5:22-25, The Message)