A Disciple of Jesus Will Never Get Offended by Zac Poonen

"But I can only warn you. Nobody can change you from being a lover of Self if you do not want to be freed from it yourself!"

Overall the sentiment in this article is solid, but the foundation is legal, graceless (grace meaning that which empowers, not the carnal form that merely ignores), and built upon the sand of self effort.

I shook my head at that last statement, and overall double standard in this article.

That quote would be humourous if our led astray brother was not so deadly serious about it. Most likely someone left his movement, or was offended at the heavy handed church government they employ, and this was a response.

Self cannot will its own death. Self trying to crucify itself is sort of like trying to drown yourself in the bath tub, it's absolutely impossible. Peter was able to walk on water only because He bid the Lord to call him in out of boat, but the empowerment to actually do it came only when Jesus bid Him leave the boat. The emphasis is on the grace that issues the call, and the issuer of the call; Poonen would have a man simply try and do it, through what? Discipline?

This article is reminiscent of William Laws serious call. Most people don't realize that later in Laws life he admitted to being unregenerate while writing that book. This article is like that book, death by the letter. Both Law and Poonen would have men crucify themselves by their own pious self will and sink into the depths of Romans 7, and unless Poonen issues a part 2 of this article and explains how this death takes place, his people and those who take this rhetoric seriously will remain in Romans 7, and never experience the glorious freedom of Romans 8.

Jesus calls a man to die to self because it is the cross of Christ that puts the called ones self life to death. In other words, as men we preach Christ, as it is in Jesus crucifixion that we find our old man, our self, is crucified. The Holy Spirit leads a man into the depths of that truth, and the practical nature of it for each individual, not some legalistic preacher telling men to utilize self to die to self.

This article is the age old error of most of the holiness movements. They degenerate into self effort and flesh, and utilize heavy handed church discipline and shame to keep members in line. They need to preach Jesus and His cross, and then men will truly see their own helplessness, sinfulness, and Jesus will issue the call to them to deny themselves, take up their cross and follow Him.

The irony is this type of belief leads to the exact opposite of its goal. It will drive you deeper into sin, deeper into hard hearted legalism, and in that, away from the Lord you seek to follow (see Romans 7). True holiness is born from Jesus calling a man to follow Him, empowering Him to do so by His indwelling, and teaching a man the truths of everything needed being accomplished on Calvary, 2000 years ago. This includes our old man's crucifixion. Because Jesus is risen and ascended, we can have Jesus Himself formed in us by the Holy Spirit, and through that indwelling, through that empowerment, and by virtue of our simple abiding by faith, live in holiness and forget we even exist. Unconscious holiness is the only true holiness; if your constantly examine yourself, your self is still very much in control, trust me.

Jesus is alive, and because of this, we can die, and in resurrection believe, and never die (ponder the story of Lazarus).

ES, we do have to make decisions (led by the Spirit and Truth) that lead to self death. We do have to make decisions and take action that will rely on God's strength and power to die to self. We do have to offer to God our lives as worship which is a matter of our will and prayers being surrendered to His. We do have to make every effort to increase in sacrificial love and godliness. We do have to commit to, practice and make progress in speech, conduct, faith, love and purity. We do have to lay down our life. These are commanded. And, as you would agree I think, these commands are obeyed because we have "already been given" every promise and His divine power that we need to do so.

This is a very good and important post by Zac Poonan !
He talks about a "A Disciple of Jesus..." - that means a lifelong learner and follower of Jesus
That's a process of learning, growing, trusting, sanctification.

"Because in the last days there is going to be very little preaching about the cross and death to Self-life."
This goes together. Biblical Gospel preaching should give us a deeper and deeper understanding who Christ is and what He has accomplished.
This should lead us out of the "Wilderness", or out of Rom. 7. so that we can say more and more; "not I, but CHRIST..."

Preaching of the cross "is almost unheard of in most churches today, and never heard of on Christian television."
It is now more about -ism, and -ology, or the gifts etc. and not anymore about the glorious Gospel of our Lord and Saviour.

Markus

Amen Brother Markus,

You and others will certainly enjoy and be encouraged by the recent international conference of CTMI and the messages of Miki Hardy of Mauritius, especially this message of Christ, the Gospel, the building of the church and the cross filled life of the Christian spoken during day 1 of the conference. Start at the 1 hour 15 minute mark. If I don't link it right, look up CTMI Conference Internationale October 2023, Jour (day) 1.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CNEbZQe5XHc

Robert,

The issue I take, and I believe God takes, with the viewpoint being promoted by Poonen in that article, is simply that when a man comes to Jesus, he must first realize he has absolutely no power to even change his will.

When looking through historical biography of brethren who were given the ability to articulate their deeper experiences with Jesus, we see one common thread throughout every encounter: they all came to a place where they realized, in glaring and explicit fashion, that their own will was infact the biggest roadblock to what deeper life movements call "absolute surrender". They hear the call of Jesus to follow, but realized at some point, it is "God who works in us both to will, and to do".

This may seem like straining gnats, but the Lord has been speaking to me on these issues exactly for some time now (as you can see by my articles in my devotional thoughts thread). The issue here is the issue between salvation and damnation.

A man may hear the call of Jesus to follow, and be like Peter; who needed only the sensational nature of the pathos surrounding who Jesus was, and what He was doing to follow. Peter was Johnny on the spot everytime he needed to be, and in his fleshly zeal proved he was in no place to follow, one thing still remained, his zeal had to die. Jesus knew this, and offered Peter warning and gave a rooster the role of evangelist to the man who be tasked to carry the gospel to the Jews.

Peter is an object lesson of what most people experience if they are truly called by the living Christ to follow. They, out of novelty and zeal, follow zealously and inevitably find themselves either deep in a performance based relationship to God, or a fake and novel life of complete sin, trusting in a false justification that forgives their sin, and yet they never find themselves broken from the immediacy of their life in the world, their life of sin, and they remain wholly unchanged and resting in the carnal understanding of a grace that simply overlooks their worldliness and sin. The cross of Jesus is wholly a mystery, because the salvation of Jesus has been emphasized as an addition to their lives, either in picking up the slack where their personal holiness falls short, or allowing them to live in whatever manner they wish, because God forgives all sin.

The cross of Christ is the cross we see lacking in modern preaching. If the cross of Jesus was adequately preached, and men were pointed to the living Jesus, He would Himself issue the call to them to "deny themselves, take up their cross" and follow Him. Largely, in this day and age, the Christ that is preached in pulpits throughout the world remains dead in a tomb, and is preached as if He were a martyr that is an example to follow, or a means by which God can simply forgive men their frailties and mistakes, while allowing them to remain entirely taken up by their lives in this present world, and justify it as justification. It's either do your best and God will take care of the rest; or do nothing at all because Jesus died to do it all. These messages prevail because we have failed to preach a living Jesus to a dead world, a Jesus that still to this day calls men to follow Him, and does so through His church, by the Holy Spirit, and will Himself draw men to salvation.

If we preached the Christ of the Bible to men, and pointed them to He Himself, not some theology or dogma that we can simply use as a formula to invoke forgiveness and as a method to make us seem holy, what a difference we would see. The fact is, to many people Jesus is dead, having died on the cross to procure forgiveness and offer us an example. This, I dare say, is the sole reason our world remains in death; the Jesus most men preach remains in death.

If men were to encounter the living Christ, they would hear the clarion call to follow Him themselves, from the one who bids them follow. Because men are pointed to piety, consecration, and doctrines of men, we see a world so confused and baffled by the plethora of division and variances in preaching that they simply denounce the validity of it all, and Jesus is rejected by the masses because the teaching is something other than what we are commanded to preach.

Anyway, I could write a book on this topic and end up being so long winded everyone in this forum would fall to their deaths from the windows.

Suffice it say, we have failed to preach the living Christ, and all the world has heard is the dead letter - whether in pious self reform, or fanatical forgiveness that leaves men exactly as they are.

Zac Poonen would have men follow him and go to his church; the preacher of the gospel bids men follow Jesus, seek Him and receive the call to follow from Jesus Himself, and then follow the living Lord in whatever way that looks for the individual who heard and obeyed the call.

This is the difference between preaching Christ and teaching the Bible. One leads men to the living God, the other to our specific form of what it looks like.

One is life, the other death.

Thanks ES.

I work in cultures that are pure rules and doing. I get your point and the need to ensure the Spirit is revealing His will, empowering and causing to persevere so that it is the life of Jesus being lived. When I return to the US, I often find people making little to know effort to grow in Christlikeness assuming it "just happens” or all I need to do is "rest” or "abide”. That is what I was speaking to.