You get three free sins. Let me tell you why.

Steve Brown:
You get three free sins. Let me tell you why, on Key Life.

Matthew Porter:
Welcome to Key Life. I’m Matthew, executive producer for the program, and our host is author and seminary professor Steve Brown. The church has suffered under do more, try harder religion for too long, and Key Life is here to proclaim that Jesus sets the captives free.

Steve Brown:
Thank you Matthew. We’re talking about the Holy Spirit, the doctrine of the Holy Spirit. And we’re talking about in particular the Holy Spirit and the Holy Spirit’s part in our sin. And we’ve seen that the Holy Spirit reminds us and shows us and convicts us of our sin. Let me tell you something. This is of confession. People always say, well, I know I sinned, but I didn’t mean to. Or I know that I sinned, but it kind of snuck up on me, and I was as surprised as everybody else. Or I know I sinned, but I’m not a sinner, I’m a good person. Let me tell you, that’s nonsense. And let me tell you my experience. My experience is that almost all of my sin is first degree. In other words, I have acted in a volitional way, intentional way, knowing that what I was doing was wrong. I’m not proud of that. I don’t like it. And when the wind dies down and the stuff is like dirt in my hands, I just want to die. And I want to say to God, don’t look at me that way. I’m so sorry. I’m ashamed of being seen by my friends. And I’m ashamed of being seen by you. And God always says, and that was the second point, child, come here. The problem was you were looking at yourself and you weren’t looking at me. Trust me. Come to me and I’ll forgive you every time. You haven’t surprised me. I knew about you. And I knew your name, and I knew your life long before you were ever born. And I knew that you, and I knew that you would be exactly where you are right now. Now, look at me, child. Quit looking at yourself. And get out of the dirt because it’s not falling there that’s the great problem. The great problem is when you stay there. And so, that’s what we’ve done. We’ve seen how the Holy Spirit reminds us of all those things, convicts us of sin, and then says, run to Jesus and don’t do it tomorrow, do it right now. I have a friend who is gay. His name is, his last name is Morrison. And we’ve been friends for a hundred years. He is celibate, and he’s walking it. Even wrote a book about it, and I think he’s something else. I really do think that he is something else. But the thing that he talks about is how God convicted. When we first started writing, I’d said something about the lifestyle of gay and lesbian people. Not in an uncaring or uncompassionate way on the broadcast. And he wrote me an angry letter. Now, I get a lot of angry letters. You need to know that. And generally, I ignore them, especially those that aren’t signed. Sometimes I say you may be right, but you’re probably wrong, sincerely, Steve. But rarely, but sometimes, I answer the letters in detail. And when I wrote him back, I said to him, I’m so sorry, I didn’t mean to offend you. I haven’t walked your road, and I haven’t struggled the way you’ve struggled. And I haven’t been where you’ve been. But I can’t change what the Bible says, because the Bible is absolute truth. I can’t change it about my sin, and I’ve got a lot of it, and I can’t change it about your sin. But the difference between you and me is that you burn the bridge to Jesus, by saying that you’re not a sinner, you never get hugged. You’re never forgiven. You never are free from the guilt that you, well, at any rate, it was that kind of letter. And he wrote me a different kind of letter when he wrote back. And one of the things that he said, yes, you’re right. And he said, I want you to know that I know that I’ve got to change. And I’m going to, but I can’t do it quickly. And he did. He was kicked out of a gay and lesbian organization because he wouldn’t march in a certain march. A lot of his old friends turned their backs on him. But he laughs and dances in the presence of God the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit. What happened to him, I’ll tell you, had nothing to do with me, except I just spoke truth. I’ll tell you what happened to him is what happened to you. And it’s the same thing that happened to me. We were reminded who we are, we were shown our sin, and we were sent to Jesus, who forgives us. But he not only forgives us, and that’s another point that I don’t have time to get to today, but we’ll talk about it a little bit more tomorrow. The Holy Spirit’s job description is not only to convict and to remind us who we are, the Holy Spirit’s job description is to make us better. And so, tomorrow I’m going to tell you how I became a spiritual giant. If you believe that you’ll believe anything. But listen to me, and this is true. I really am better. You think about that. Amen.

Matthew Porter:
Three free sins? Sounds good to me. Thank you Steve. Our study of the person of the Holy Spirit continues tomorrow. Do hope you’ll join us again for that. And speaking of the Holy Spirit, I’m reminded of a conversation we had recently with author Michael Reeves. We spoke with him on Steve Brown Etc. about his classic book called Delighting in the Trinity: An Introduction to the Christian Faith. If you think you’ve heard everything there is to hear about the Trinity, you might want to check this out. And you can, right now, as a matter of fact.

Steve Brown:
Michael, we do teach here at Key Life that God is love and He’s not mad at His people, and you can delight in Him, and we laugh a lot, but very rarely is that connected with the idea or the doctrine or the truth of the Trinity. You say that’s front and center. That’s the reason, or one of the significant reasons, we can talk about God’s love.

Michael Reeves: Absolutely. The truth is, God is love because God is Trinity. And I think the reason people don’t see that is they think, Look, there’s the God I know and love, and Trinity, that’s the thing for those pasty faced and socially disastrous theologians in the ivy covered seminaries. I mean, you know how it is in a discipleship group, when young Christian asks, can you just talk about the Trinity with me? You’ll get a couple of normal responses. One will be, someone will give a holy roll of the eyes. And say, ah, the Trinity, oh, the mystery, we’re not meant to understand such things. And so, the poor young Christian’s left thinking, Oh, what’s this got to do with me then? Or, you’re told, you know, I’ve got a really helpful illustration here. God’s like, a leaf with three bits sticking out of it, or my favourite, God’s like H2O, but actually my real favorite, God is like an egg, he’s, he’s a shell, a white, and a yolk, three things and yet they’re one thing. And you think, yeah, I’m really going to worship a God because he’s an egg. What I wanted to show people is, look, Christians don’t believe in a trinity because they sense his similarity to streaky bacon, three headed giants, H2O. Christians believe in Trinity because of Jesus Christ. John said he wrote his gospel, John 20:31.

So that you may believe that Jesus is the Christ, the Son of God, and that by believing you may have life in his name.

In other words, when you go through Jesus, the God you get to know, he is the Son, he’s revealing to you a Father. And that puts us onto the really big question, what sort of God do we see in Jesus? A totally different sort of God to the God we imagine every day, before anything else, in eternity, before he created anything, this God is, well let me put it this way, a cliffhanger. People sometimes ask, what was God doing before he created the world? And a pompous theologian’s answer is he was creating hell for those cheeky enough to ask such questions. But Jesus tells us in John 17:24, he says.

Father, you loved me before the foundation of the world.

That’s the sort of God we’re talking about. Eternally, a Father characterized by his nature is to love his Son. And therefore, you have a God who God is love. If you have a single person god, just sitting on his throne all by himself, that’s not a God who is eternally loving. And that’s the sort of problem you have in a religion like Islam, where you might want to talk about Allah as loving, but eternally he hasn’t been loving. It’s not part of his nature. And so, it is for every single person God. You can only say God is love of this one, a Father eternally loving his Son as he pours out his Spirit on him.

Matthew Porter:
Listen, if you enjoyed that, you’re going to love that entire conversation. So, call us right now at 1-800-KEY-LIFE that’s 1-800-539-5433. And we’ll send you that entire conversation on CD for free. You can also e-mail [email protected] to ask for that CD. Or to mail your request, go to Keylife.org/contact to find our mailing addresses. Again, just ask for the free CD featuring Michael Reeves. And finally, if you value the work of Key Life, would you join us in that work through your financial support? You can charge a gift on your credit card or include a gift in your envelope. Or you can now give safely and securely through text. Just pick up your phone right now and text Key Life to 28950 that’s Key Life, one word or two. It doesn’t matter. Just text that to 28950, then follow the instructions. Key Life is a member of ECFA in the States and CCCC in Canada. And we are a listener supported production of Key Life Network.