PRAYER OF CONSECRATION
Wake up, sleeper, rise from the dead, and Christ will shine on you.
Jesus, I belong to you.
I lift up my heart to you.
I set my mind on you.
I fix my eyes on you.
I offer my body as a holy and living sacrifice to you.
Jesus, We belong to you.
Praying in the name of the Father, and the Son, and the Holy Spirit, amen.
Romans 10:1–4 (NIV)
Brothers and sisters, my heart’s desire and prayer to God for the Israelites is that they may be saved. For I can testify about them that they are zealous for God, but their zeal is not based on knowledge. Since they did not know the righteousness of God and sought to establish their own, they did not submit to God’s righteousness. Christ is the culmination of the law so that there may be righteousness for everyone who believes.
CONSIDER THIS
There are three words you don’t want to hear together and you certainly don’t want to hear them spoken of you. Those words are:
Zeal without knowledge.
There is a way of doing the work of God that actually destroys the work of God. That way is called “zeal without knowledge.”
It is a way of working for God instead of working with, in, and through Jesus by the power of the Spirit. You believe every word of the Bible, do your dead-level best to do what it says, support all of God’s causes, take bold stands for Jesus, earn perfect attendance Sunday school pins and all sorts of other spiritual merit badges, put Jesus bumper stickers on your car, wear the t-shirts, and basically tick all the religious boxes. And all of this is done in the name of Jesus and yet it gives Jesus a bad name. How?
Because it is without knowledge. This word knowledge is not what we may think. It is not knowledge as in knowing a lot of stuff about God. This word knowledge (epignosis in the Greek), means something more like “contact knowledge.” It is knowledge gained through relationship. Yes, it means “knowing.” It means knowing someone rather than knowing about someone.1
To say a person is infected with zeal without knowledge is to say they are a person who needs to be in control. This is what Paul is saying about the Jews here. Paul knew them because he was them. This is why sin does not originate from immorality but insecurity. People who need to be in control are insecure people. We know them because we are them.
This is what is behind works-based righteousness: not diligence but insecurity; not the surrendered-ness of faith in God but fear that creates the need to be in control of everything and God while being seen as acting in the name of God. This is the nature of zeal without knowledge. And if you know anything about Paul’s track record you know it is deadly.
The people who carry “zeal without knowledge” will put the mission of God over the people and would-be people of God all day long. They will believe they are loving God as they crucify people and all in the name of Jesus. They will sacrifice family and friendships for the cause and consider that they have a higher calling than all that. It is actually one of the most diabolical evils in life.
Zeal is not bad. It can be a very good quality. Knowledge, in the sense of knowing God, is infinitely better. Zeal for God without intimately knowing God is the worst. Zeal for God issuing forth from the intimate knowledge of God leads to the most beautiful thing in the world: Faith moving in love.
Permit me the rare word of radical candor here today. If you think you may be even remotely infected with zeal without knowledge, get to the floor as fast as you can and repent with a prayer something like this:
Lord Jesus Christ, Son of God, have mercy on me a sinner.
Why such a grave tone today? Here’s why. In the very words of Jesus . . .
Many will say to me on that day, ‘Lord, Lord, did we not prophesy in your name and in your name drive out demons and in your name perform many miracles?’ Then I will tell them plainly, ‘I never knew you. Away from me, you evildoers!’ (Matt. 7:22).
Zeal without knowledge. Yep. That’s what he’s talking about.
THE PRAYER
Abba Father! We come before you with open hearts, asking you to search us and know us. Would you ferret out our need to be in control and expose it as sin to us? Our controlling nature defies faith and destroys love. It kills relationships, destroys churches, and paralyzes the movement of your kingdom. We renounce our need to control and we confess it as the source of our self-righteousness and our deceived plot to save ourselves. Yes, Jesus, this is as old as time and as current as this moment. Have mercy on us, Lord Jesus. Have mercy on us. Cleanse us Holy Spirit and renew a right spirit in us. Praying in Jesus’s name, amen.
THE QUESTION
Are you or do you tend to be a controlling person?
THE HYMN
Since I’ll be on the road this week on a family vacation, I’ll be calling audibles for our hymns. Today let’s sing, “Create in me a Clean Heart.”
Create in me a clean heart, oh God
And renew a right spirit within me
Create in me a clean heart, oh God
And renew a right spirit within me
Cast me not away from Thy presence, oh Lord
And take not Thy holy spirit from me
Restore unto me the joy of Thy salvation
And renew a right spirit within me
For the Awakening,
J. D. Walt
NOTES FOR FURTHER REFLECTION
- This brings us back around in an interesting way to the garden of Eden and the Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil. There is a way of gaining knowledge about God and life outside of knowing God. This knowledge does not come as a gift by revelation but by striving after it. It’s another reason why I believe God did not want his image-bearers to eat fruit from that tree. He wanted us to gain our knowledge about God and life from a relationship with God, which is life. It still holds. Remember the NIDS and the SIDS (never-in-doubts and seldom-in-doubts) from last week? These folks crave a certainty about God and life for the sake of feeling in control. They seek after knowledge about God outside of the knowing of God in relationship. It’s fascinating how in Ephesians 3 Paul will pray for us to “know” the love of Jesus that transcends knowledge in order that we may be filled to the measure of all the fullness of God.” This notion of knowing beyond knowledge is all over the New Testament. Earlier in Ephesians Paul put it this way: “I keep asking that the God of our Lord Jesus Christ, the glorious Father, may give you the Spirit of wisdom and revelation, so that you may know him better.” (Eph. 1:17)
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2 Responses
Are you or do you tend to be a controlling person? This question goes right for jugular doesn’t it? Yes, of course! Not that it’s an excuse, but isn’t this trait the manifestation of Original Sin? Is this not one of the primary reasons that Holy Spirit was sent into the world, to convince the world of this Sin? Thank you, JD for this timely reminder.
The most dangerous condition in the world is to think that you have life and God figured out. You don’t and you won’t! If you did you wouldn’t need Jesus. (Eating from the tree of the knowledge of good and evil is deeply deceptive because it makes us think that we are smart enough to control and manage our life with nothing more than our limited human brain and fallible information processing.)
However, the more relational, personal, interactive, intimate, and heart-piercing our direct knowledge of God, the more we rely on the living Jesus to work with, in and through us by the power and presence of God’s Spirit. We learn to daily rely on the risen Jesus to personally direct us and empower us from within instead of relying on our own plans, desires, programs, and effort. We have an inner zeal that is Spirit-prompted and real, not created and carried by human hype, pride, and insecurity.
Instead of striving to understand and program life according to your smorgasbord of desires, surrender all to Jesus. Holding on to what you think gives you control will never make you whole. Letting go and letting God will!