One of the most tragic things we are seeing today is the all-to-common display of being religious without God. I wrote about Christian Atheists several years ago, and I emphasized the issue of letting God be our Savior, but we do everything else as though God does not exist; we do not consult Him or even let Him have some input. That is not how the Christian life is to be lived. The Christian life is meant to be a process of sanctification – of growing closer to Christ and more in holiness. While we have a role to play in this process, this blog post is more about how God builds His saints, which is His side of the sanctification process.
Paul describes each of us, the believer individually and collectively, as the temple of the Holy Spirit. We are supposed to be those in whom God dwells. The fact that we are the temple of the Holy Spirit should make us understand the image of the physical temple that Solomon built. The stones for the temple, dug from the quarry, were cut and carved at the quarry so that no human made cutting tool would be seen or heard on the actual temple site. Obviously for the temple itself, stones had to be cut and carved for the pillars, walls, roof, etc., but God would not allow anyone to do such cutting on site. All the cutting had to be done at the quarry and then the stones transported to the temple site. Think about that. Think about the engineering genius it took to do that. No army of modern architects could do that today!
Whenever Israel built altars for spontaneous worship, with the exception of the Altar of the Tabernacle/Temple, these altars were to be constructed with uncut stones. No human tool was to be used on those altars for cutting the stones or even for making mortar to hold the stones together. I remember seeing the artistic depictions of the heroes of the Old Testaments worshiping at their altars, and they look like a mason put them all together: smooth, neatly stacked, and mortared like a rock wall. That’s actually not what the command describes for how to build altars. Instead, they are supposed to be built with mere naturally formed rocks.
I picture Jesus thinking of this as He wrapped up the Sermon on the Mount: how we are to build upon rock instead of sand. Sand is merely rock that has been broken down and ground to powder and fine grains. The issue of building upon rock is that it is solid and doesn’t move, nor does it bend or conform to our desires. We have to build in accordance to the rock, not make the rock conform to our dream building. That is what happens when we build with sand. Sand is easy to mold and easy to shape. But it also easily erodes away. It is easy to remove, and anything built upon sand will collapse when the wrong storm hits.
When God builds His saints, He does not want input from them on how to do what He is doing. He is the potter; we are the clay. He is the builder; we are the stones. He does not use human “tools” or human “designs” to build. He uses His tools and His designs. Our job is to submit to His design. As God deals with and removes the sin, the dross, the impurities, and all that junk that will only weaken the pure material, it is going to hurt, but it will be extremely worth it. God is building a temple for Himself, and He is using us believers as the stones for it.
But one thing God will not use as a building material is chocolate. C.T. Studd wrote one of the most sensational essays I know of about the Christian life, called The Chocolate Soldier. I cannot recommend reading this enough. Studd writes how chocolate is wonderfully sweet, lovely, and desirable to eat, but it makes for a terrible building material when strength is needed. The Christian is not to be a softy that goes weak and wobbly in times of heat. Heat is only to cure us and make us stronger. Studd gives multiple Biblical examples of those who were made of chocolate and those who were made of the Godly stuff.
Today, most of Christendom wants us to be chocolate. They want us to be sweet, unoffensive, kind, easy to get along with, and easy to mold and shape. Instead, we need to be solid, firm, unwavering, and unyielding in our pursuit of Christ. The supposed 11th Commandment of “Thou shalt be nice” does not come at the expense of the other Ten, as many proclaim by practice or words. I’m not saying we should not be kind and loving, but I do see over and over again that people will attack our position as being “unkind” and “unloving” when in reality, what they really mean is, “You are not letting me live my life as I want.” God does not build His saints with such soft character. He knows what He wants each person to be doing and what they will face, so He is going to do what needs to be done to get them ready for it. The coach of a sport, who understands what the game or competition is going to be like, prepares his athletes to be able to play the game at full strength for the duration. Why should we expect God to do differently?
But God is not going to cater His training and His building to our whims and desires. Instead, He creates the job and purpose for us based on the character and drives that He put in us. God needed someone who would have such great zeal for the Gospel that absolutely nothing would faze him or slow him down, so he created a man for that job: Paul. Every time God used a man (or woman), He used that man as He designed him. He did not allow man’s molding of another to play a factor. Understand that God is not the only designer of a man; so is the world. And the world will always seek to conform man to its image, just as God created man in His image. God has His own tools to make the stones for His temple; the world has its own tools. God does not want any of man’s tools, any of the world’s tools, used on the stones for His temple. He will not let sinful man corrupt His creations.
Does that mean we have to be perfect for God to use us? Yes and no. Yes, in that God’s standards are perfection and that He will bring us into a point of perfection. No, in that it is not dependent upon us to be perfect. We have only two obligations: to believe and obey. There is a story of a man who used two pots to carry water to water the king’s plants. But one pot leaked through a crack. The man would use the full jar to water the plants and only half the water of the cracked pot was used. The cracked pot asked the man why he kept using him when he leaked and could not be used to fully water the king’s plants. The man said he knew of the pot’s crack and always carried him on the same side of the path, where he had planted seeds. That cracked pot had been watering the path all along. God knows our strengths and our weaknesses, and He uses them to build precisely how we will be maximally useful for His kingdom and His purposes. God builds His way, and He has chosen us to be part of His construction. Let us worship Him for such a privilege.
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