This is a message I taught 12 years ago. I just came across it again and thought it was worth reposting. It is a hard teaching: solid meat for the believer. Its teaching is intended to challenge and exhort. I pray it helps someone here today.
____________
Failure to thrive. It’s a medical term that refers to a child who despite the provision supplied to it fails to grow properly. It can be brought about by a lack in the child’s environment and care, it is true; but more likely it is caused by some lack in the child itself. Children who fail to thrive first of all fail to grow. Their development is poor and cause for concern. Their primary symptoms are excessive crying, excessive sleepiness, and irritability. And without proper intervention, the child will never develop properly into the adult he or she was meant to be.
But failure to thrive is not exclusively a medical concern. It is also a spiritual one. Matthew 13:3-8 records the parable of the sower and the seed. The sower is God; the seed, the gospel. Not all of the seed fell on good soil. Some fell on the road right-of-way and was snatched by the birds; some fell on rocky places and had no place for their roots to grow; and some fell on weedy and thorny ground and had their life squeezed out. In each case there was a failure to thrive.
Failure to thrive in the medical world does not always mean death. It often means stunted growth, and permanent mental and emotional damage that cannot be repaired. So, too, in the spiritual world. And the evidence of it in Christians is also excessive crying (complaining about everything and every one), lethargy (spiritual laziness, no effort to persevere), and irritability, (an abrasive, unloving and severe attitude with all who displease them or in some way provoke their ire.)
The problem, other than one of an ill-prepared heart, is ill-equipped teachers. The concept of the gift of salvation is ill-conceived and its purpose misunderstood. So let us begin with preparing the ground for the seed of this message to take root.
The purpose of Christ at Calvary was three-fold:
There is a saying: "Grace is not free, it cost Christ everything." Yes it did. And it will cost us everything, too.
“What?” you say. “Christ paid the price so that I do not have to.” Yes, but you are thinking only of salvation as acquittal. It is much more. To believe in Christ means acceptance of all that He did and all that He desires. As Andrew Murray observes , “With some, salvation is nothing more than the remission of punishment. They think only of acquittal; they know not that it implies acceptance, complete restoration to the favor—to the heart and home—of the Father. They are content with pardon as the escape from great danger. Of the surrender to, and of the life abiding in the love of the One who pardoned them, they know little.“
But salvation, by Biblical definition, implies a new birth (John 3:3,7; 1 Peter 1:3), a new creation (2 Corinthians 5:17; Galatians 6:15.) And if we are NEW, then we are CHANGED. That is why I teach that if there is no change there is no salvation.
Now please do not misunderstand. I am not saying that a person is instantly changed into an angelic saint. I am saying that there is a new attitude within, a desire to please God. After all, the New Covenant means nothing less than that God’s laws are now written IN our renewed minds and ON our new hearts. (Jeremiah 31:33) If you claim Christ but find no new desire within to please Him, find no cause for a change of behavior, then, my friend, I would in all sincerity and seriousness suggest that you are in serious trouble and need to reconsider whether you have indeed been born again.
Again, I am not speaking of the absence of success in living for Christ—the product of trying and failing—I am speaking of the absence of a real desire to try. If you have been born again, God has placed within you His laws and the very real desire to please Him. Absent that, there has been no rebirth … and, thus, no salvation.
But many Christians who live carnal lives (yet are still saved) do so because they confuse freedom from any sinful tendencies with the freedom from actually sinning, despite the presence of those innate sinful tendencies. Thus these people level the wonderful promise of purity of heart down to the ordinary experience of the ordinary Christian. As Murray says, “No wonder, then, that the crowning promise of God, “they shall teach no more every man his neighbour, and every man his brother, saying, ‘Know the LORD’: for they shall all know me,” (Jeremiah 31:34; Hebrews 8:11), with its direct teaching of the Holy Spirit and its direct fellowship with God through the Spirit, is neither valued nor claimed. Instead the entrance through the rent veil into the Holy of Holies and the very Presence of God is postponed to the next world.”
Paul prayed for the saints in Ephesus and the Holy Spirit extended it to the entire Church, including us, that "the eyes of your understanding [be] enlightened; that ye may know what is the hope of his calling, and what the riches of the glory of his inheritance in the saints, And what is the exceeding greatness of his power to us-ward who believe, according to the working of his mighty power, Which he wrought in Christ, when he raised him from the dead, and set him at his own right hand in the heavenly places, Far above all principality, and power, and might, and dominion, and every name that is named, not only in this world, but also in that which is to come: And hath put all things under his feet, and gave him to be the head over all things to the church, Which is his body, the fullness of him that filleth all in all." (Ephesians 1:18-23)
We are intimately connected to Christ. We are part of His body and He is the head. Not just the chief of us, but the head on the body of which we are part. We view Christ as "up there", but He is also "down here" and we are intimately connected to Him. Everything in us affects Him, and everything in Him is intended to affect us. Yet we too often prevent that. We view grace as free, when as we said, it cost Christ everything. What we fail to understand is that it will cost US everything as well.
"Oh, but are we now preaching works, brother?" No my friends we are preaching obedience. "But is obedience not a work?" Well the Calvinists would have it so. Just as they would say that your decision to accept Christ is a work and therefore you can have no choice in accepting Him. This, of course, makes utter nonsense of the gospel. It makes utter nonsense of the need for a man to believe and to accept. It makes utter nonsense of God's statement that He is not willing that any be lost. It makes utter nonsense of His invitation that "whosoever will may come." It makes utter nonsense of His Word that tells us that "this is the condemnation, that light is come into the world, and men loved darkness rather than light, because their deeds were evil." For if men have not the ability to choose between light and darkness there can be no just condemnation.
If desiring to live our lives in obedience to God is a work, then accepting Christ in obedience to His Word is also a work. But no, obedience is not a work but a response ... the answer of a good conscience. It is, indeed, our reasonable service. We do not make ourselves righteous in status, but we present ourselves to Him daily that HE might makes us righteous in deed.
Too many confuse our imputed judicial righteousness with God’s expectation that we should enter a life of practical righteousness. They think the former eliminates the latter. But what Christ has imputed to us is so that we might enter the life that permits us increasingly to practice the righteousness He desires.
There are two types of righteousness in the Bible, that which God imputes and that which God gives. And, no, those are not the same. The first is found in 2 Corinthians 5:21—
“For He (God) hath made Him (Christ) to be sin for us, Who knew no sin; that we might be made the righteousness of God in Him.”
This is imputed righteousness. WE have done nothing to earn it; it is a judicial decision and is given on our behalf at the very point when we enter into Christ by faith in His finished work. It is grace supreme— us receiving what we do not deserve. It is the other side of mercy— us not receiving what we DO deserve.
But while imputed righteousness opens the way to Heaven for us, it is not the righteousness in which God intends us to live. He instructs us in this in 1 Peter 2:24—
“[Christ] His own self bare our sins in His own body on the tree, that we, being dead to sins, should live unto righteousness ….”
Here we have not just the description of WHAT Christ did, but WHY He did it. In dying He made it possible for us to be reborn, to be given a new life that was not only free from the penalty of sin but had the potential to become increasingly free from the power of sin. It says plainly that He died so that we SHOULD LIVE unto righteousness. The Greek here is δικαιοσύνῃ ζήσωμεν (dikaiosune zesomen), literally “to—that is to say, ‘for the purpose of’—righteousness we might live.” It expresses a strong potential. This is Christ’s desire— not that we would merely rest in the judicial security of His sacrifice, but in the practical service of His will.
A little earlier I made reference to “reasonable service.” That is a phrase from the opening verse of the twelfth chapter of Romans. The entire verse reads—
“I beseech you therefore, brethren, by the mercies of God, that ye present your bodies a living sacrifice, holy, acceptable unto God, which is your reasonable service.” (Romans 12:1)
What does it say is our “reasonable service”? In other words, our “due responsibility? It is “to present our bodies as a living sacrifice, holy and acceptable to God.” The word “body” means “physical body”, which might seem strange but since our bodies are what all service is offered through since only the body can act, and it does so through the direction of our mind, the term figuratively refers to “our whole being”; the word “present” means “to offer”; the word “holy” means not just “pure” but “set apart”; and the word “acceptable” is an accounting term which means “reckoned right”. So we are to actively, each day, offer our bodies—indeed our entire being—as something set apart to and for God alone, which is the proper and right way to reckon ourselves.
And why are we to do this? Because, as we saw in 1 Peter 2:24, it is the purpose for which Christ died; and secondly because of, as it says here in this Romans verse, “the mercies of God.” The Greek here signifies that it is by God’s mercy that we live and by His mercy we are able to do that which He has willed. And that is the purpose of the new birth in which God’s laws “are written in our minds and on our hearts” and also the purpose of the Holy Spirit who lives in us to bring us to actual righteousness (Ephesians 5:9).
If this not be so, then there is no meaning to the following definitive instruction to Timothy (and hence to us): “But thou, O man of God, flee these things (bad doctrine, desire for riches, an unhealthy interest in controversies and quarrels about words that result in envy, strife, malicious talk, evil suspicions); and follow after righteousness, godliness, faith, love, patience, meekness.” (1 Timothy 6:11)
But if we are so instructed, how can we accomplish this? Certainly not through self effort, else the flesh could conquer the flesh! No, it is only through the Holy Spirit that we can conquer that old nature. It is the Holy Spirit in us who gives us the power to lay down our lives daily. It is the Holy Spirit in us who gives us the power to allow our flesh, our old nature, to be put to death. And thus it must be by the Holy Spirit that we attempt it. (Romans 8:13)
And how can we do that if our Christian experience consists solely of faith in the pardon for sin and hope for the presence of God in the next life? No, if we so think and walk we indeed will experience a failure to thrive!
We must have created in us the purity of heart. And this comes by a daily death, a daily dying to self and the consequent dying to sins. We are— in judicial statement and will—dead to sin through our genuine acceptance of the sacrifice of Jesus Christ at Calvary; but we, too, must through our genuine acceptance of the will of the Holy Spirit within us become dead to sins. As we read in 1 Peter 2:24: “[Christ] himself bore our sins in his body on the tree, so that we might die to sins and live for righteousness” as it is so well expressed in the NIV. Sins, not sin. Sin was dealt with on the Cross; and that has made it possible for our sins to be dealt with continually and progressively as we surrender to God daily. Indeed, that is the process of sanctification, a progressive experience that will last our entire lives. And if your experience of this purifying within is no further advanced today than it was a few years ago, then you have indeed experienced a failure to thrive.
If so, what a tragedy!
You see, Jesus has opened up the way to the Father. Not some mystical, far-off concept, but literally has made it possible to enter, here on this earth, into the Presence of God and fellowship with the Father.
The path to that presence is the path of purity. And the only process by which that can be realized is by the Holy Spirit working in you both to will and to do of His good pleasure. (Philippians 2:13). But God will not force you to enter into His presence any more than He will force a man to enter into His salvation. It has to be a choice. As Paul says, “Reckon ye … yourselves to be dead to sin.” (Romans 6:11) Reckon yourself … consider yourself … count yourself … as dead to sin, but alive to God in and through Jesus Christ, our Lord.” (And there in the word “Lord” is an entire topic that relates to this most distinctly and directly but for which we do not have time here.)
So, dearly beloved of God—you for whom He sent His only begotten Son to die—why hold back? Why be content with a mere escape from the penalty of your sin and the promise of a better day in eternity? God called you for fellowship here and now. If you want to enter into the fullness of the life He has for you here and now, then determine in your hearts—"reckon ye yourselves” as Scripture puts it— to be dead to sin and alive unto Christ. Seek the righteousness that is in and through Christ, daily surrender in the constant faith that He WILL change you more and more into the image of His Son as you more and more desire to be found in that image.
THIS is the fullness of the life in Christ. What falls short of that is evidence of a failure to thrive. And those who fail to thrive run the risk of failing to survive. In other words, the life of God never really took root in them. They said words with their minds and their mouths, but their heart was still far from God.
These words may be hard, but—as the writer of Hebrews assured his readers— “Beloved, we are persuaded better things of you, and things that accompany salvation, though we thus speak.”
May God bless you in the receiving of His Word and the acknowledging of His will for you
____________
Failure to thrive. It’s a medical term that refers to a child who despite the provision supplied to it fails to grow properly. It can be brought about by a lack in the child’s environment and care, it is true; but more likely it is caused by some lack in the child itself. Children who fail to thrive first of all fail to grow. Their development is poor and cause for concern. Their primary symptoms are excessive crying, excessive sleepiness, and irritability. And without proper intervention, the child will never develop properly into the adult he or she was meant to be.
But failure to thrive is not exclusively a medical concern. It is also a spiritual one. Matthew 13:3-8 records the parable of the sower and the seed. The sower is God; the seed, the gospel. Not all of the seed fell on good soil. Some fell on the road right-of-way and was snatched by the birds; some fell on rocky places and had no place for their roots to grow; and some fell on weedy and thorny ground and had their life squeezed out. In each case there was a failure to thrive.
Failure to thrive in the medical world does not always mean death. It often means stunted growth, and permanent mental and emotional damage that cannot be repaired. So, too, in the spiritual world. And the evidence of it in Christians is also excessive crying (complaining about everything and every one), lethargy (spiritual laziness, no effort to persevere), and irritability, (an abrasive, unloving and severe attitude with all who displease them or in some way provoke their ire.)
The problem, other than one of an ill-prepared heart, is ill-equipped teachers. The concept of the gift of salvation is ill-conceived and its purpose misunderstood. So let us begin with preparing the ground for the seed of this message to take root.
The purpose of Christ at Calvary was three-fold:
- To pay the price we could not pay (Mark 10:26-27)
- To produce the thing we could not possess (Romans 7:14-15, 19-20; 1 Thessalonians 3:13)
- And to provide the position we could not procure. (Ephesians 2:6)
- Pardon from sin
- Purity of heart
- And the presence of God.
There is a saying: "Grace is not free, it cost Christ everything." Yes it did. And it will cost us everything, too.
“What?” you say. “Christ paid the price so that I do not have to.” Yes, but you are thinking only of salvation as acquittal. It is much more. To believe in Christ means acceptance of all that He did and all that He desires. As Andrew Murray observes , “With some, salvation is nothing more than the remission of punishment. They think only of acquittal; they know not that it implies acceptance, complete restoration to the favor—to the heart and home—of the Father. They are content with pardon as the escape from great danger. Of the surrender to, and of the life abiding in the love of the One who pardoned them, they know little.“
But salvation, by Biblical definition, implies a new birth (John 3:3,7; 1 Peter 1:3), a new creation (2 Corinthians 5:17; Galatians 6:15.) And if we are NEW, then we are CHANGED. That is why I teach that if there is no change there is no salvation.
Now please do not misunderstand. I am not saying that a person is instantly changed into an angelic saint. I am saying that there is a new attitude within, a desire to please God. After all, the New Covenant means nothing less than that God’s laws are now written IN our renewed minds and ON our new hearts. (Jeremiah 31:33) If you claim Christ but find no new desire within to please Him, find no cause for a change of behavior, then, my friend, I would in all sincerity and seriousness suggest that you are in serious trouble and need to reconsider whether you have indeed been born again.
Again, I am not speaking of the absence of success in living for Christ—the product of trying and failing—I am speaking of the absence of a real desire to try. If you have been born again, God has placed within you His laws and the very real desire to please Him. Absent that, there has been no rebirth … and, thus, no salvation.
But many Christians who live carnal lives (yet are still saved) do so because they confuse freedom from any sinful tendencies with the freedom from actually sinning, despite the presence of those innate sinful tendencies. Thus these people level the wonderful promise of purity of heart down to the ordinary experience of the ordinary Christian. As Murray says, “No wonder, then, that the crowning promise of God, “they shall teach no more every man his neighbour, and every man his brother, saying, ‘Know the LORD’: for they shall all know me,” (Jeremiah 31:34; Hebrews 8:11), with its direct teaching of the Holy Spirit and its direct fellowship with God through the Spirit, is neither valued nor claimed. Instead the entrance through the rent veil into the Holy of Holies and the very Presence of God is postponed to the next world.”
Paul prayed for the saints in Ephesus and the Holy Spirit extended it to the entire Church, including us, that "the eyes of your understanding [be] enlightened; that ye may know what is the hope of his calling, and what the riches of the glory of his inheritance in the saints, And what is the exceeding greatness of his power to us-ward who believe, according to the working of his mighty power, Which he wrought in Christ, when he raised him from the dead, and set him at his own right hand in the heavenly places, Far above all principality, and power, and might, and dominion, and every name that is named, not only in this world, but also in that which is to come: And hath put all things under his feet, and gave him to be the head over all things to the church, Which is his body, the fullness of him that filleth all in all." (Ephesians 1:18-23)
We are intimately connected to Christ. We are part of His body and He is the head. Not just the chief of us, but the head on the body of which we are part. We view Christ as "up there", but He is also "down here" and we are intimately connected to Him. Everything in us affects Him, and everything in Him is intended to affect us. Yet we too often prevent that. We view grace as free, when as we said, it cost Christ everything. What we fail to understand is that it will cost US everything as well.
"Oh, but are we now preaching works, brother?" No my friends we are preaching obedience. "But is obedience not a work?" Well the Calvinists would have it so. Just as they would say that your decision to accept Christ is a work and therefore you can have no choice in accepting Him. This, of course, makes utter nonsense of the gospel. It makes utter nonsense of the need for a man to believe and to accept. It makes utter nonsense of God's statement that He is not willing that any be lost. It makes utter nonsense of His invitation that "whosoever will may come." It makes utter nonsense of His Word that tells us that "this is the condemnation, that light is come into the world, and men loved darkness rather than light, because their deeds were evil." For if men have not the ability to choose between light and darkness there can be no just condemnation.
If desiring to live our lives in obedience to God is a work, then accepting Christ in obedience to His Word is also a work. But no, obedience is not a work but a response ... the answer of a good conscience. It is, indeed, our reasonable service. We do not make ourselves righteous in status, but we present ourselves to Him daily that HE might makes us righteous in deed.
Too many confuse our imputed judicial righteousness with God’s expectation that we should enter a life of practical righteousness. They think the former eliminates the latter. But what Christ has imputed to us is so that we might enter the life that permits us increasingly to practice the righteousness He desires.
There are two types of righteousness in the Bible, that which God imputes and that which God gives. And, no, those are not the same. The first is found in 2 Corinthians 5:21—
“For He (God) hath made Him (Christ) to be sin for us, Who knew no sin; that we might be made the righteousness of God in Him.”
This is imputed righteousness. WE have done nothing to earn it; it is a judicial decision and is given on our behalf at the very point when we enter into Christ by faith in His finished work. It is grace supreme— us receiving what we do not deserve. It is the other side of mercy— us not receiving what we DO deserve.
But while imputed righteousness opens the way to Heaven for us, it is not the righteousness in which God intends us to live. He instructs us in this in 1 Peter 2:24—
“[Christ] His own self bare our sins in His own body on the tree, that we, being dead to sins, should live unto righteousness ….”
Here we have not just the description of WHAT Christ did, but WHY He did it. In dying He made it possible for us to be reborn, to be given a new life that was not only free from the penalty of sin but had the potential to become increasingly free from the power of sin. It says plainly that He died so that we SHOULD LIVE unto righteousness. The Greek here is δικαιοσύνῃ ζήσωμεν (dikaiosune zesomen), literally “to—that is to say, ‘for the purpose of’—righteousness we might live.” It expresses a strong potential. This is Christ’s desire— not that we would merely rest in the judicial security of His sacrifice, but in the practical service of His will.
A little earlier I made reference to “reasonable service.” That is a phrase from the opening verse of the twelfth chapter of Romans. The entire verse reads—
“I beseech you therefore, brethren, by the mercies of God, that ye present your bodies a living sacrifice, holy, acceptable unto God, which is your reasonable service.” (Romans 12:1)
What does it say is our “reasonable service”? In other words, our “due responsibility? It is “to present our bodies as a living sacrifice, holy and acceptable to God.” The word “body” means “physical body”, which might seem strange but since our bodies are what all service is offered through since only the body can act, and it does so through the direction of our mind, the term figuratively refers to “our whole being”; the word “present” means “to offer”; the word “holy” means not just “pure” but “set apart”; and the word “acceptable” is an accounting term which means “reckoned right”. So we are to actively, each day, offer our bodies—indeed our entire being—as something set apart to and for God alone, which is the proper and right way to reckon ourselves.
And why are we to do this? Because, as we saw in 1 Peter 2:24, it is the purpose for which Christ died; and secondly because of, as it says here in this Romans verse, “the mercies of God.” The Greek here signifies that it is by God’s mercy that we live and by His mercy we are able to do that which He has willed. And that is the purpose of the new birth in which God’s laws “are written in our minds and on our hearts” and also the purpose of the Holy Spirit who lives in us to bring us to actual righteousness (Ephesians 5:9).
If this not be so, then there is no meaning to the following definitive instruction to Timothy (and hence to us): “But thou, O man of God, flee these things (bad doctrine, desire for riches, an unhealthy interest in controversies and quarrels about words that result in envy, strife, malicious talk, evil suspicions); and follow after righteousness, godliness, faith, love, patience, meekness.” (1 Timothy 6:11)
But if we are so instructed, how can we accomplish this? Certainly not through self effort, else the flesh could conquer the flesh! No, it is only through the Holy Spirit that we can conquer that old nature. It is the Holy Spirit in us who gives us the power to lay down our lives daily. It is the Holy Spirit in us who gives us the power to allow our flesh, our old nature, to be put to death. And thus it must be by the Holy Spirit that we attempt it. (Romans 8:13)
And how can we do that if our Christian experience consists solely of faith in the pardon for sin and hope for the presence of God in the next life? No, if we so think and walk we indeed will experience a failure to thrive!
We must have created in us the purity of heart. And this comes by a daily death, a daily dying to self and the consequent dying to sins. We are— in judicial statement and will—dead to sin through our genuine acceptance of the sacrifice of Jesus Christ at Calvary; but we, too, must through our genuine acceptance of the will of the Holy Spirit within us become dead to sins. As we read in 1 Peter 2:24: “[Christ] himself bore our sins in his body on the tree, so that we might die to sins and live for righteousness” as it is so well expressed in the NIV. Sins, not sin. Sin was dealt with on the Cross; and that has made it possible for our sins to be dealt with continually and progressively as we surrender to God daily. Indeed, that is the process of sanctification, a progressive experience that will last our entire lives. And if your experience of this purifying within is no further advanced today than it was a few years ago, then you have indeed experienced a failure to thrive.
If so, what a tragedy!
You see, Jesus has opened up the way to the Father. Not some mystical, far-off concept, but literally has made it possible to enter, here on this earth, into the Presence of God and fellowship with the Father.
The path to that presence is the path of purity. And the only process by which that can be realized is by the Holy Spirit working in you both to will and to do of His good pleasure. (Philippians 2:13). But God will not force you to enter into His presence any more than He will force a man to enter into His salvation. It has to be a choice. As Paul says, “Reckon ye … yourselves to be dead to sin.” (Romans 6:11) Reckon yourself … consider yourself … count yourself … as dead to sin, but alive to God in and through Jesus Christ, our Lord.” (And there in the word “Lord” is an entire topic that relates to this most distinctly and directly but for which we do not have time here.)
So, dearly beloved of God—you for whom He sent His only begotten Son to die—why hold back? Why be content with a mere escape from the penalty of your sin and the promise of a better day in eternity? God called you for fellowship here and now. If you want to enter into the fullness of the life He has for you here and now, then determine in your hearts—"reckon ye yourselves” as Scripture puts it— to be dead to sin and alive unto Christ. Seek the righteousness that is in and through Christ, daily surrender in the constant faith that He WILL change you more and more into the image of His Son as you more and more desire to be found in that image.
THIS is the fullness of the life in Christ. What falls short of that is evidence of a failure to thrive. And those who fail to thrive run the risk of failing to survive. In other words, the life of God never really took root in them. They said words with their minds and their mouths, but their heart was still far from God.
These words may be hard, but—as the writer of Hebrews assured his readers— “Beloved, we are persuaded better things of you, and things that accompany salvation, though we thus speak.”
May God bless you in the receiving of His Word and the acknowledging of His will for you
