GOD NEVER COMMANDS YOU TO DO SOMETHING THAT HE CANNOT DO! The Humbling Impossibility and the Liberating Possibility of Obedience

 What if I told you that you can become tenderhearted when once you were callous and insensitive. What if I told you that you can stop being dominated by bitterness and anger. What if I told you that it is possible to become a loving person no matter what your background has been.

This statement could be most liberating and encouraging for the hopeless or this could be a really depressing for the self reliant. It may be depressing because you could say that you have tried but it did not work.  God is requiring you to do something that you cannot do .You tried to muster up all the willpower you could find and all the energy you could exert and you have failed. You desire to be these ways but cannot seem to change. The ongoing sin in you stands in the way of your ability to be the way you want to be and do what you want to do.

Fundamentally most of us know that it's because of our sin nature. But others of us believe it's because of our personality, temperament, upbringing, genetics, disposition, environment, and all sorts of determining factors that mitigate our ability to truly live the kind of life that God would have us to live. Our This radically affects our perspective on God and his commandments. Some think that the only virtues God can require of me are the ones that I am good enough to perform. Many people will look at the Commandments of God and because they cannot live up to it will say things like, "nobody's perfect". "God knows I can't do this", "I'm doing the best I can", or deep inside you feel deep guilt and shame at your failure to live the Christian life.

But it can also be most liberating and encouraging as well. This is why, because God never requires us to do something that HE cannot do !!!!!

The Bible assumes that God is the decisive factor in making us what we should be. Only God can make us want what we ought to want and do what we ought to do. With wonderful bluntness the Bible says, “Put away malice and be tenderhearted” (Ephesians 4:31–32). It does not say, “If you can…” Or: “If your parents were tenderhearted to you…” Or: “If you weren’t terribly wronged…” It says, “Be tenderhearted.”

This is wonderfully freeing. It frees us from the terrible fatalism that says change is impossible for me. It frees me from mechanistic views that make my background my destiny.

Imagine if you were in prison and Jesus walked into your cell and said, “Leave this place tonight,” You might be stunned, but if you trusted his goodness and power, you would feel a rush of hope that freedom is possible and you'd walk out the door.

If it is night and the storm is raging and the waves are breaking high over the pier, and the Lord comes to me and says, “Set sail tomorrow morning,” there is a burst of hope in the dark. He is God. He knows what he is doing. His commands are not throw-away words.

His commands always come with freeing, life-changing truth to believe. For example,
And be kind to one another, tenderhearted, forgiving each other, just as God in Christ also has forgiven you. Therefore be imitators of God, as beloved children; and walk in love, just as Christ also loved you, and gave Himself up for us, an offering and a sacrifice to God as a fragrant aroma.

1. God adopted us as his children. We have a new Father and a new family. This breaks the fatalistic forces of our “family-of-origin.” “Do not call anyone on earth your father; for one is your Father, He who is in heaven” (Matthew 23:9)
2. God loves us as his children. We are “loved children.” The command to imitate the love of God does not hang in the air, it comes with power: “Be imitators of God as loved children.” “Love!” is the command and being loved is the power.
3. God has forgiven us in Christ. Be tenderhearted and forgiving just as God in Christ forgave you. What God did is power to change. The command to be tenderhearted has more to do with what God did for you than what your mother did to you. This kind of command means you can change.
4. Christ loved you and gave himself up for you. “Walk in love just as Christ loved you.” The command comes with life-changing truth. “Christ loved you.” At the moment when there is a chance to love and some voice says, “You are not a loving person,” you can say, “Christ’s love for me makes me a new kind of person. His command to love is just as surely possible for me as his promise of love is true for me.”

IIt is not foolishness, it is the gospel, to tell a sinner to do what Christ alone can enable him to do! This is the central mystery of living the Christian life. Christ has died for our sins and risen from the dead. Because of his blood and righteousness we are forgiven and counted righteous by God in Christ (2 Cor. 5:21; Phil. 3:9; Rom. 5:19). Therefore, Christ has become the Yes to all God’s promises (2 Cor. 1:20). Everything promised by the prophets for the new covenant has been purchased for us infallibly by Christ. These new-covenant promises include, “The LORD your God will circumcise your heart . . . so that you will love the LORD your God with all your heart” (Deut. 30:6); and, “I will put my law within them . . . on their hearts” (Jer. 31:33); and, “I will remove the heart of stone from their flesh and give them a heart of flesh” (Ezek.11:19); and, “I will put my Spirit within you, and cause you to walk in my statutes” (Ezek. 36:27). All of these new-covenant promises have been secured for us by Christ who said at the Last Supper, “This cup that is poured out for you is the new covenant in my blood” (Luke 22:20). The blood of Christ obtained for us all the promises of the new covenant. But look again at these promises. What distinguishes them from the old covenant is that they are promises for enablement. They are promises that God will do for us what we cannot do for ourselves. We need a new heart to delight in God. We need the Spirit of God whose fruit is joy in God. We need to have the law written on our heart, not just written on stone, so that when it says, “Love the Lord with all your heart,” the Word itself produces the reality within us.
* What Christ bought for us when he died was not the freedom from having to obey but the enabling power to obey.
* What he bought was not the nullification of our wills as though we didn’t have to obey, but the empowering of our wills because we want to obey.
* What he bought was not the canceling of the commandments but the fulfillment of the commandments.

In other words, we need the gift of love in God to want it and to live it. Left to ourselves, we will not want it and we will not produce it. That’s what Christ bought for us when he died and shed the blood of the new covenant. He bought for us the gift of love in God.

That is half the mystery of the Christian life—the most crucial half. The other half is that we are commanded to do what we cannot; andwe must do it or perish. Our inability does not remove our guilt—it deepens it. We are so bad that we cannot love God. We cannot delight in God above all things. We cannot treasure Christ above money. Our entrenched badness does not make it wrong for God to command us to be good. We ought to delight in God above all things. Therefore it is right for God to command us to delight in God above all things. And if we ever do delight in God, it will be because we have obeyed this command. That is the mystery: We must obey the command to rejoice in the Lord, and we cannot, because of our willful and culpable corruption. Therefore obedience, when it happens, is a gift.

The heretic Pelagius in the fourth century rejected this truth and was shocked and angered when he saw the way St. Augustine prayed in his Confessions. Augustine prayed, “Give me the grace [O Lord] to do as you command, and command me to do what you will! . . . O holy God . . . when your commands are obeyed, it is from you that we receive the power to obey them."

That is a biblical prayer. It corresponds to the mysteries of the Christian life. God gives his commands. Yet, only God can change our hearts so that we delight in them and desire to do them and are able to obey them. In short, we are thrown back on God utterly. The Christian life is all of grace.

Be encourage your reader,
God Will Never Command Us To Do Something That He Can't Do, in you and through you.
"From him and through him and to him are all things.To him be glory forever."
(Romans 11:36)

Praying with you (and St. Augustine), “Lord command what you will and grant what you command!”
Pastor Bill