Passive Love

In contemplating the relationship which God has established with us through His son, I have come to the place where a stern realization is setting in that I must treat those around me differently as a result of God’s love.  There is an aspect of active love, of giving time and resources to help those in need. Of lending an ear to those who hurt. Of preaching truth to the blind and deceived. These are some of the active ways that God calls us to love others. These are hard enough to do, but it is the underlying passivity of the love of God that seems hardest to embrace.

By passivity I mean the idea that God gave to the utmost to prove His love for us. Not just in healing and preaching, but in literally laying down His life. Love is not always about ‘doing’, it is frequently about ‘being’. God sent his Son to earth to live a sinless life and die an agonizing death to release us from our inborn desire to please Him by our own efforts. He took the wind out of our sails. By fulfilling the law through Jesus Christ he subverted the power of sin – he destroyed the greatest leverage the enemy ever had when he nailed the law to the cross and declared righteous all who would believe in Christ. The scary part is he expects no less from us.

How easily offended are we? Think about the rules that you impose on those around you; your spouse, children, coworkers and fellow believers.  What happens when they, knowingly or unknowingly, break the rules? Do you become offended? Do you see that in the establishment of rules and expectations for others you are setting them up for failure? You have prepared yourself to be angry with them. You are a law to them, and are bound by that law to mete out punishment when it is broken.

In the same way that God has overcome the law through grace, we must overcome our propensity to establish boundaries for those around us. If we are to truly love them, as God has loved us, we cannot attach strings. “Do nothing from selfish ambition or conceit, but in humility count others more significant than yourselves.” (Philippians 2:3 ESV) We, like God, are to be liberators, not wardens.

Like all of scripture, this kind of love is paradoxical. The human assumption is that to treat others in this way will lead to mayhem. People will walk all over you. The truth is, some will. Some will strike the other cheek when you turn it to them. Some of us have done or are doing that to God as well. And yet God loves us. So we must love others. The interesting thing is that, for many, the grace you extend will take the wind out of their sails as well. That is what grace does. It sets law-bound captives free.

Of whom in your life are you demanding works to keep your love? Today is the day to begin showing grace.

God Bless

The Real Meaning of Christmas

This time of year I see a lot of stuff flying back and forth on the social media about Santa versus Jesus, Xmas versus Christmas and what Christmas really means. I think I can answer that honestly for the first time in my life this year.

All of my life I have enjoyed the Santa Claus side of Christmas with the lights and trees and family and food. But I was also aware that there was another side to Christmas - the celebration of the birth of a baby in Bethlehem. Wise men, camels, sheep, shepherds, Mary and Joseph - all made of molded plastic with 25-watt light bulbs inside in a crèche crafted from the remnants of a shipping crate on the front lawn. An angel wired to the top with a perpetually ominous glare and golden locks holds a banner that says ‘Noel’. You see, that side of Christmas was always as artificial to me as the other. In some ways, the birth of the savior was no more real to me than the legend of Santa Claus.

This year is different. This year I recognize the great oppression that existed on earth prior to the coming of the baby in swaddling clothes. The debate of Christmas is not between Jesus and Santa Claus, but between law and grace. On Christmas Eve 2,000 plus years ago (whatever date that may have been) the world was held utterly captive to the law. The living Word of God had not yet donned flesh and blood.

The story of Christmas is gospel. We find it in the gospels because the incarnation, the virgin birth, the coming of the Christ as flesh into a world dominated by law is a critical part of God’s radical call of freedom to captives. He was born under the oppression of the law so that he might live in keeping with the law, so fulfilling it on our behalf. He had to suffer under the law to free us from it.

To me the most glorious glimpse of what we celebrate when we celebrate the coming of Christ is found in Galatians 4:4 & 5 –

But when the fullness of time had come, God sent forth his Son, born of woman, born under the law, to redeem those who were under the law, so that we might receive adoption as sons. (Galatians 4:4-5 ESV)

There is no mention whatever of sin, yet even in our Christmas Carols we sing of sin being our oppressor; “long lay the world in sin and error pining, ‘til He appeared and the soul felt it’s worth!” Here Paul tells us what God truly accomplished when he stepped into time and space. He redeemed the world from law. Here is Paul’s description of the world on that Christmas Eve:

But the Scripture imprisoned everything under sin, so that the promise by faith in Jesus Christ might be given to those who believe. Now before faith came, we were held captive under the law, imprisoned until the coming faith would be revealed. (Galatians 3:22-23 ESV)

The gift that God gave us that first Christmas morning was freedom. Yes, freedom from sin; but only as a consequence of freedom from law.  The terrible reign of slavish adherence to law as an attempted means of justification ended. God’s love for mankind was revealed in the first cry of an infant in Bethlehem.  That newborn cry was the proclamation of the gospel!

Paul tells us what had come into the world that morning:

So then, the law was our guardian until Christ came, in order that we might be justified by faith. But now that faith has come, we are no longer under a guardian, for in Christ Jesus you are all sons of God, through faith. (Galatians 3:24-26 ESV)

The son of God, nursing at Mary’s breast, would allow us all to become sons of God by faith, if we would believe. “And because you are sons, God has sent the Spirit of his Son into our hearts, crying, ‘Abba! Father!’ So you are no longer a slave, but a son, and if a son, then an heir through God. (Galatians 4:6-7 ESV)

So this year Christmas means something wholly different to me. I still enjoy the tree and the lights and the joy of being with family, but the birth of Christ is no longer a plastic nativity set. It is the living breathing son of God who lived and died that I might become the heir of His righteousness. Santa Claus is no threat to that truth. That is something to celebrate!

God Bless 

A Loving Father

Now that we have looked at the two sons of the Parable of the Prodigal Son, we have one character left to look at. The loving father.

The love of the father that is demonstrated in this parable is a kind of love that is seldom seen in is world. It does not judge. It does not lecture. It offers itself to the other without regard for recompense or return. It is, in short, the love that God shows His own children.

Remember that the parable mentions nothing of the prodigal son longing to be with his father. His concern was his stomach. He was so desperate for something to eat that he was willing to go and hire himself out to his father that he might survive. When we analyze his motives deeply enough we realize that they were entirely selfish – he was concerned with self-preservation. Having squandered all that the father had given him, he came to the place where his only possibility for survival was to return to his father’s household.

Place yourself in the father’s shoes for a moment. Your son comes to you, not because he loves you and wants your fellowship, but because he has wasted everything you worked hard to give him. Now what he wants is to live in your household again so that he may benefit again from your kindness. Which of us would accept him without condition? Which of us would not lay down new ground rules? Which of us would run to him and embrace him, dress him in the finest clothes and jewelry and put on a feast in his honor? Be honest.

But this father is different. This father is God. Part of the reason that people have such a hard time accepting the grace of God is, as Brennan Manning puts it in The Ragamuffin Gospel, God’s love seems somewhat embarrassing and undignified. It demands nothing from us. As I said in the post two days ago, as soon as we decide in our hearts to return home He accepts us with joy. It makes no difference that we go for self-preservation rather than with great contrition and sacrifice. He, like the father of the parable, is not interested in our sacrifices and offerings, but in us. If he can have us, that is enough. “For this my son was dead, and is alive again; he was lost, and is found.” (Luke 15:24 ESV)

Jesus was frequently hard toward the religious people of his day, which makes the response of the father to the older son even more interesting. The older son, legalistically working to please the father, feels that he has earned what the younger son has not – the father’s favor. He represents those in bondage to religion; anything that we feel we must do to please God. In the parable, the father does not resent what the older son has done for him, but seems almost to pity him for not having realized that his love was not earned by works, but freely given.  “You are my son. That is why I love you. Why do you work so hard to please me as if I were not already pleased?” In his response I hear the words of Christ echoing from Luke 10:

And she had a sister called Mary, who sat at the Lord's feet and listened to his teaching. But Martha was distracted with much serving. And she went up to him and said, “Lord, do you not care that my sister has left me to serve alone? Tell her then to help me.” But the Lord answered her, “Martha, Martha, you are anxious and troubled about many things, but one thing is necessary. Mary has chosen the good portion, which will not be taken away from her.” (Luke 10:39-42 ESV)

Do you see that Christ is not reprimanding Martha for her ‘doing’, but seemingly expresses pity that she cannot enjoy the wonder of a relationship with him as her sister does? In the same way, the father of the parable desires to have the same relationship with both sons. He does not desire that they ask his forgiveness nor work to please him, but only that they allow him to love them. In that love alone, both are secure.  The prodigal is accepted despite his past and the older son finds rest from his labor.

There are two things that are difficult to comprehend in this parable. One, as we have already said, is the love of God toward us. It is so wonderfully unconditional as to be ridiculous – it is humiliating. If you want to know true humility, allow the God who created the universe to love you in this way and then try to be proud. The second, the harder of the two, is that this is how God expects us to love others. Walk the extra mile. Turn the other cheek. Give them the shirt off your back. Accept the prodigal who abused you just because he is starving and not because he loves you. Set captives free from their bondage to pleasing you.

We do not know how things progressed in this family. We don’t know if the prodigal continued to abuse his father’s kindness or if his brother continued to work to gain approval that was already his. That’s not the point. God extends his peculiar kind of love to us regardless of how we reciprocate. But in receiving that peculiar love we find the only thing that gives us enough security to be able to give it back and out. That’s the point.

God Bless

The Jealous Brother

Yesterday I wrote about the prodigal son, the younger of two brothers who deserted his family for a lifestyle of sin for a season.  Upon his return home, his father celebrated as if he had been brought from death to life. Today we will take a look at the prodigal’s older brother.

This is a respectable, dedicated young man. As his brother was out spending his inheritance on his lusts, this young man stayed at home and worked the farm for his father. This day, as he returns from his work, he hears the sounds of celebration:

Now his older son was in the field, and as he came and drew near to the house, he heard music and dancing. And he called one of the servants and asked what these things meant. And he said to him, “Your brother has come, and your father has killed the fattened calf, because he has received him back safe and sound.” (Luke 15:25-27 ESV)

Of course the older brother was elated at this news. Not. He was angry that his snot-nosed little sinner of a brother was being so warmly welcomed back to the household. How could his father treat this vagabond as if he had been with them, worked beside them, all the time?

His father came out and entreated him, but he answered his father, “Look, these many years I have served you, and I never disobeyed your command, yet you never gave me a young goat, that I might celebrate with my friends. But when this son of yours came, who has devoured your property with prostitutes, you killed the fattened calf for him!” (Luke 15:28-30 ESV)

Why is he angry? He is not really angry with his brother. He is angry with his father. He is angry because one who has not worked to earn the graces of his father is extended more grace than he, the faithful, dependable one. “I have toed the line. I have sweated and toiled and been through miserable hot days and long cold nights for you and this is the thanks I get. You treat this son of yours as if he were my equal!”

I can picture the father looking upon him sadly, with compassion:

And he said to him, “Son, you are always with me, and all that is mine is yours. It was fitting to celebrate and be glad, for this your brother was dead, and is alive; he was lost, and is found.” (Luke 15:31-32 ESV)

He says, “Look son, all that is mine is yours also. You need not work for it. It has been yours all along. I don’t give it to you because of your work for me, but because you are my son! Your brother is my son as well, and I will celebrate that he has come home now and we are together.”

So shall those with one foot in the law always view those who understand the embarrassing love and grace of the Father. There will always be jealousy where there is perceived inequity. All that God gives he gives not as ‘wages’, but as a gift. Receive it and join the celebration!

The Prodigal

I love the Parable of the Sower because it has so much to tell us about the gospel. But I am beginning to love the Parable of the Prodigal Son as much because it has so much to tell us about ourselves and God’s love for us.

I have been the younger son, the older son, and hope someday to model the father of the parable. The younger son leaves the father’s house and goes out into the world, squandering everything the father has given him. I have done that. He comes to a very low place in his life where he envies the pigs he is tending because they eat better than he does. I have done that. One day he comes to his senses and decides to go home to Dad:

“But when he came to himself, he said, ‘How many of my father's hired servants have more than enough bread, but I perish here with hunger!” (Luke 15:17 ESV)

So he does what we all do when we decide we have had enough of sin; he rehearses a little speech to present to his father:

“I will arise and go to my father, and I will say to him, ‘Father, I have sinned against heaven and before you. I am no longer worthy to be called your son. Treat me as one of your hired servants.’” (Luke 15:18-19 ESV)

He wants to impress upon his father how bad he feels for having mistreated his grace. He looks for just the right words that will admit him back into his father’s graces. He assumes that his father will be angry with him for his poor choices. I can imagine that he repeated this little speech of contrition all the way home. He did not, however, ever get the chance to finish it:

And he arose and came to his father. But while he was still a long way off, his father saw him and felt compassion, and ran and embraced him and kissed him. And the son said to him, ‘Father, I have sinned against heaven and before you. I am no longer worthy to be called your son.’ But the father said to his servants, ‘Bring quickly the best robe, and put it on him, and put a ring on his hand, and shoes on his feet. And bring the fattened calf and kill it, and let us eat and celebrate. (Luke 15:20-23 ESV)

Do you see the great love of the father for his son? He does not care what the young man has done with what was given him. He does not care that the young man is contrite. He does not even hear what the young man has to say to him. The only thing that matters is that the young man is home:

“For this my son was dead, and is alive again; he was lost, and is found.” And they began to celebrate. (Luke 15:24 ESV)

I don’t think that our heavenly father ever waits for us to finish our carefully crafted speeches of repentance to him. The minute we, in our hearts, arise to go to our father all is done. That is brokenness. Brokenness is never in what we say, but in the moment when we finally arise to head home. We want so much to say the things that will comfort us and assuage our consciences. But before we can even finish what we want to say, the Father has already embraced us and is rejoicing! We then have the choice to rejoice with him or keep on talking to ourselves about our sorrow. Brothers and sisters, choose the celebration!

The Wisdom of Christopher Hitchens

Author and renowned Atheist Christopher Hitchens died last Thursday. He was outspoken against God and the gospel, finding the entire idea of substitutionary atonement completely repulsive.

I was listening to the NPR news piece about his life and death while driving last evening and heard several things that fascinated me about the man. One was his recount of what it was that first turned him away from belief in God. A teacher at his school when he was nine years old, according to Hitchens, explained that God had made the grass and leaves green as a gift to mankind. He told C-SPAN:

"She says, 'This is an excellent thing and proof of the glory of God, because he could have made vegetation orange or red, something that would clash with our eyes, whereas green is the most restful color for our eyes!' And I sat there in my little corduroy shorts, and I thought, that's absolute nonsense."

Strike one for apologetics. This is the best reason for not using apologetics in trying to convince people of the existence of God. As a former Atheist, I can tell you that no intellectual argument, regardless of how sound it may seem to the mind of the believer, is going to truly convince people of the existence of God. If it were able to intellectually convince them of the existence of God, it still cannot lead them to redemption – only the gospel can do that. And from experience I can tell you that the scriptural gospel can penetrate even the hardened heart of the intellectual. Only the gospel can do that.

Interestingly, Hitchens intrinsically understood some of scripture’s great presuppositions. In 2007, he compared what he called “this supposed God” to the North Korean dictatorship - "an absolutely impermeable dictatorship that couldn't even be criticized, let alone overthrown, that went on forever, that supervised and invigilated your every waking moment and would not stop torturing you even after you were dead. To wish this to be true is to wish to be a slave."

Compare that to the language of Paul in Galatians 3 and Hitchens was three-quarters of the way there: “Now before faith came, we were held captive under the law, imprisoned until the coming faith would be revealed.” (Galatians 3:23 ESV) Hitchens had recognized a truth that many Christians still have not dealt with; God has enslaved the world under His law. I am sure that Hitchens heard many times over how much God loved him, but intellectually it was impossible to get past that fact that God, when approached on the basis of law (the only basis he could understand) is an impossible task-master. Intellectuals tend to recognize this and avoid God specifically because of it, where your run-of-the-mill believer finds the idea of slavery preposterous. The mushy love of God we frequently preach has none of the audaciousness of biblical grace that destroyed the dictatorship of law and fear.

He recognized one other thing that many Christians fail to realize – that Christianity is not moral. Not that it is immoral, but it might be more accurate to describe it a supramoral; above morality. Late in his life, as he battled cancer, he said this: "Under no persuasion could I be made to believe that a human sacrifice several thousand years ago vicariously redeems me from sin. Nothing could persuade me that that was true — or moral, by the way. It's white noise to me." He was correct. There is nothing moral (morality being man’s sense of right and fair) about the substitutionary death of Christ. It is preposterous from a human standpoint. And that is the very thing that makes it so amazing. When we moralize the gospel, we strip it of amazing.

I am sorry that Hitchens had to die lost (if he did). He was a man of incredible intellect and courage. But he leaves lessons that we may use to consider how we should reach people like him for the gospel. I am sure that he was very hardened toward the gospel and would never have allowed anyone to get very far into it without shutting them down. Still, I can’t help wondering what might have happened if the teacher who had soft-peddled apologetics to his class had instead introduced them to Paul’s gospel? What could a man with his gifts have done for the Kingdom?

God Bless

The Benefits of Grace

As I look back over my posts, I sometimes think they are very negative. Seems as if I am always complaining about something. I always try to end on an up note, but today I want to start on an up note.

God’s ridiculously extravagant grace has many, many benefits. In fact, the benefits of grace are all the things that we seek to accomplish ourselves in vain, even as Christians. I thought I might run down a list of a few things that are substantially changed when we enter into a relationship with God that does not take our performance into account.  Here goes:

Guilt

Think for a moment about Adam and Eve, who used to walk through Eden with God, completely naked. Without shame. What was the first thing they did after they had sinned? Hid themselves because of guilt and shame.  Romans 8:1 states: “There is therefore now no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus.” Once we accept the fullness of what Christ has done, we once again stand naked before God without shame.

Sin

When we come under God’s unending grace, we are freed from the law. That freedom from the law ends the dominance of sin in our lives. “For sin will have no dominion over you, since you are not under law but under grace.” (Romans 6:14 ESV) Not that sin isn’t still alive in our flesh, but it can no longer dominate us.

Evangelism

The message that sets us free is the gospel – the announcement of God’s grace. Once we understand the depth of that freedom we will never again look at evangelism in the same way. It will not be a ‘have to’, but a passion to see captives set free from their bondage to the law and sin. There is no need for methods because it is natural for us to want to share that which has brought us great joy.

Worship

This calls back to guilt. When we are under the guilt of the law, even the smallest bit, we can never worship God freely.  When we are become sons of God, we worship naturally in all that we do. Christ said that the true worshippers would worship in Spirit and truth. We too often worship under an obligation to law and so with falsehood.

Charity

Once any kind of slavish activity is removed from our lives, we no longer feel the need to place a cap on our charity. We can be hilariously charitable, even as God has been toward us.

Love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, etc.

The fruit of the Spirit. I’ve heard people say that you should never pray for patience, and they are correct. Neither should we pray for the other fruit of the Spirit if we do not live under the full and free grace of God, because they will not come. Grace is the power the releases God’s work in our lives.

Understanding

Like every good thing in our lives, our knowledge of God is a gift. Once grace is embraced in our lives, our minds are open to receive the alien knowledge that is imputed along with alien righteousness. By alien I mean unnatural or supernatural. This knowledge comes through the Holy Spirit, the anointing of Christ, who works to renew our minds. The more we understand grace, the greater our capacity to understand grace will become. If we close ourselves off to grace, our understanding becomes dim. You may know when the Spirit is working when the scripture starts to ‘meld’ together in your mind in larger and larger pieces until it all becomes one glorious story of grace and redemption.

Relationships

Eventually, as God intends, all of this begins to work out in the relationships you have with those around you. “Love does no wrong to a neighbor; therefore love is the fulfilling of the law.” (Romans 13:10 ESV) As the free and extravagant love that we have gratefully received from God in our lives begins to work itself out, we will truly fulfill the law in our love for others. It can be a torturous process, because it will mean your having to accept others as God has accepted you – unconditionally.  It all begins with the understanding that God has, in Christ, accepted you without condition.

And the list goes on and on. There is not one part of life that is not improved by the acceptance of God’s overwhelming grace. Sometimes that means that you will have great patience in dealing with trials. Sometimes it means you will have great joy in the midst of heartache. It does not mean that God works everything out to your satisfaction, but that you become satisfied by God’s gift of grace to the point that you no longer look to circumstances or things or people for your satisfaction. You simply need to recognize that God’s abundant, liberating, completely unconditional, never-ending, undomesticated grace is way more than sufficient for you!

God Bless

The Myth of Mortification

I was reading Tim Challies’ blog yesterday and he has been reading and summarizing John Owens’ book ‘Overcoming Sin and Temptation’. It is a treatise on the mortification of sin in the life of a believer; in layman’s terms, the process by which the believer ‘kills’ the sin in his life. Relative to my understanding of scripture it seems to be a work of fiction.

I admit that I tried to read this work by Owens, and found it very difficult reading. First of all, it is an incredibly dense book; very heavy reading. Secondly, at the time I picked it up I was wrestling with the Romans 7 teaching of Paul and how all that played out in the life of the believer. I was coming to terms with the fact that sin is not something we choose, but something that lives within us and wars against the regenerated mind. Had I continued to read and subscribe to Owens’ idea that the believer has to work to kill off the sin in his life, I would never have come to the conclusion, as does Paul, that sin remains within the flesh of the believer and cannot be vanquished by any means of our own. Concentrating on the war with sin quite simply leads to more sin.

The more I come to know the scripture, the more I understand that anything we see being manifested outwardly in ourselves is really no more than a symptom of an inward condition (hmm… I seem to remember reading something similar to that somewhere – perhaps the gospels). Sin is a symptom of a struggle against the law. Holiness is a symptom of the surrender to grace. To suppress sin in our lives is to apply a topical treatment that may or may not treat the symptom but will not treat the underlying condition. To attempt to establish our own holiness is to clean the outside of the dish, but leave the inside filthy. What are we to do?

Challies quotes Owens on sin: “It is a cloud, a thick cloud, that spreads itself over the face of the soul, and intercepts all the beams of God’s love and favor. It takes away all sense of the privilege of our adoption; and if the soul begins to gather up thoughts of consolation, sin quickly scatters them.” What a hopeless mess! In other words, our ability to have God’s love and favor is dependent on our exercising the sin from our lives, else sin prevents them from reaching us. What this idea finally leads to is this; my relationship with God is completely dependent on me. I might as well once again be under the crushing hand of the law. In essence, the one who tries to deal with sin as Owens suggests is still under the crush of law. Owens’ Christ died in vain.

How sad that I know many people who have ventured so far into the area of grace and have been blocked from entering into true freedom because of this kind of teaching. There is so much fear of licentiousness that they cannot accept the full and free grace of God. Anyone using the grace of God as an excuse or license to sin does not know the first thing about grace. Grace, which is a free gift, includes such things as true holiness (separation from sin), righteousness and the God-given ability to bear the fruit of the Spirit. If you are afraid to preach the freedom that is ours in Christ, consider this: Is someone who masquerades under grace as an excuse to sin more condemned than someone who masquerades as a holy person under law? Perhaps, but sin is sin. And either way, it is faking it.

It is by entering into the rest of God, which Christ secured for us at Calvary, that sin is mortified within us. Again, the work that God requires is that we believe in the one whom He sent (John 6:29). Any artificial work of ‘mortification of sin’ is fantasy. I guarantee that it will lead to more subjection under the law, which in turn will lead to more sin. Don’t waste precious time trying to secure for yourself what Christ has already secured on your behalf.

God Bless

The Institutional Gospel

In my book, The Gospel Truth, I have done an extensive exploration of what the gospel is and is not. In summary, the gospel is an announcement of freedom to helpless captives, not a life enhancement program. One of the ideas that I find in the church that appears to run contrary to the truth of the gospel is that people are better off if they are in church than not. Really?

I think I could call this the ‘institutionalized’ gospel. It builds around the idea that the gospel is somehow a lifestyle choice. It grades completely on outward behavior, determining that someone who comes to church every time the doors are open, does not smoke and does not chew and does not run with those who do is better off than the run-of-the-mill sinner in the street. Get them in the door, get them cleaned up, and hope they get saved (if you are not already assuming that cleaned up = saved).

The church where a majority of the members accept this kind of idea is in all likelihood not preaching a scriptural gospel. Scripture teaches that the church is a gathering of individuals who have been saved by placing faith in Jesus Christ after hearing the radical call of the gospel. The institutionalized gospel says that the church is a place where people can come and learn about Jesus. They can learn how to live a life that is pleasing to God, the absolute antithesis of what the gospel actually states. As I said in the book, the gospel is a clear call; you cannot please God by your own works or behavior, but only by faith in Jesus Christ. It demands a decision - believe or not. You will never see in the scripture where people were snuck in the back door of the church hoping that it would ‘make a big difference’ in their lives. That idea is heresy. And it plays games with people’s souls.

The institutionalized gospel has the effect of making us look down upon people whose lifestyles we do not approve of. As long as people attend church and are not buying beer at the liquor store or engaging in homosexual behavior or (insert your pet peeve here) they meet our approval – all others we look down on (if we are honest with ourselves). Try and sell that idea to Jesus of Nazareth, who avoided religious zealots like the plague. We think that being imitators of Jesus means being straight-laced and appearing holy. We forget that Jesus was first and foremost the true friend of sinners. He loved them. Really – he loved them. Enough to become a ransom for them. You know; the ransom for sinners that we seldom talk about because we are too busy teaching people how to lead sanctified lives.

It goes deeper still. In an effort to attract people into the church so they can hear the ‘gospel’ (the way they ought to live to please God) we become ‘seeker sensitive’. We build our services and programs around a false concept of lifestyle enhancement. We never state anything in black and white terms, but in very inoffensive and neutral shades of grey. Every sermon is ‘Five ways to do what God wants you to do’. And every Monday people go into the workplace and practice the five ways (if any of the sermon sunk in) realize they don’t work and give up by Tuesday. Heaven forbid they should ever hear the offense of the cross, a message so ridiculously daring and liberating that it might make an actual impact on their lives and they might in turn make an impact on their co-workers.

With that we get to the upside-down church. The people, so confused and frustrated by their own spiritual drought, cannot make an impact on their world. The leadership takes over and becomes over-involved with the community in an effort to make up for the fact that the members seem unwilling to do it. Everyone begins to resent everyone else. The membership will not get involved in the community if they think the leadership has it handled. The leadership thinks the membership is just plain lazy and ignorant of what ‘God wants them to be doing’. The cycle degrades into more badgering from the top down and more resentment from the bottom up. No one ever hears the gospel. The institutionalized gospel has created institutionalized sin; we become the Pharisees. As in whitewashed tombs. By the way, the die-hard sinners around us who know they are sinners can recognize this even though we are blind to it. We wonder why they are not flocking in in droves to avail themselves of our fabulous programs.

The answer to all of this is the answer to everything else; good news. To wit:

And you, who were dead in your trespasses and the uncircumcision of your flesh, God made alive together with him, having forgiven us all our trespasses, by canceling the record of debt that stood against us with its legal demands. This he set aside, nailing it to the cross.

(Colossians 2:13-14 ESV)

Let it never be said of us that we resurrected those legal demands which God set aside and at great cost nailed to the cross. Let us be the ones who do not look upon the outward appearance of a person to determine his spiritual condition. Let us be first and foremost concerned with the souls of men and not their lifestyles. Let us live according to the knowledge that the gospel brings, not some fanciful ‘gospel lifestyle’. There must be a call to crush the spirit of the Pharisee out of our churches, and the only thing that can do that (in its own audacious but peaceful way) is the gospel of Jesus Christ. In this season when we celebrate the advent, let us remember that ‘weak and worthless elementary principles’ held the whole world captive on the day the Messiah was born in a stable in Bethlehem (Galatians 4 & 5). That baby came to change all of that. Let us be the ones who truly live according to that change.

God Bless

Seeing is (Not) Believing

When all the people of Israel saw the fire come down and the glory of the LORD on the temple, they bowed down with their faces to the ground on the pavement and worshiped and gave thanks to the LORD, saying, “For he is good, for his steadfast love endures forever.”

(2 Chronicles 7:3 ESV)

What’s in your worship? From time to time we have to stop and take account of what we are actually worshipping in our lives. Do I worship the true and living God or something else? Am I focused on the person of Jesus Christ or some other thing? Some idolatry is obvious; greed, covetousness, carnal lust and infatuation with the things of this world are clear-cut idolatry. But the Christian who begins to go deeper in his faith will uncover other more nefarious types of idolatry. Here are a few ‘sinking sand’ pits I have to watch out for.

Sinking Sand #1: My Holiness

We can become so focused on our own walk, our own ‘fitness’ for the Kingdom that our Christianity becomes an idol. We begin to base our standing with God on how ‘Christiany’ we are becoming. On a day when I feel particularly pious, I will feel very close to God. If I fall into sin, I feel far away. 

My performance is a very poor indicator of my relationship to God because I am intrinsically flawed. If we have been Christians for a long time, we can become detached from the reality of our sinful nature and that detachment can lead us to the illusion that we are above that sinful nature. We begin to become dependent on our own personal holiness instead of God. And because we use personal holiness as a barometer of our relationship with God, we feel that that relationship is in a state of ebb and flow that does not truly exist.

Sinking Sand #2: My Doctrine

We can base our relationship with God on the soundness of our doctrine. This has the effect of cementing certain doctrines in place, making our attitude one of “we will not be, we will not be moved”.  Doctrine is a good thing, but is still a human thing. Scripture is often far more other-worldly than our minds are able to conceive, so good doctrine should be in a continual state of flux. We should never build walls around scripture – it must be free to speak as it will into our lives and the lives of others.

Because doctrine is a continuously unfolding thing, I must be careful not to base my relationship to God on it in too strict terms. If I do, I will not remain flexible enough to accept changes in my thinking as I grow in the knowledge of God and I will put God in a box.

Sinking Sand #3: ‘My’ Fruit

Yep. We can become infatuated with fruit-bearing. Bearing the fruit of the Spirit is a wonderful thing, but if we begin to keep records and push to produce more, we have wandered off track. From there it’s a short step to “God owes me”.

The instant that fruit becomes the focus of our lives, it ceases to be fruit. Fruit of the Spirit is, by definition, a by-product of a relationship with God. If it becomes the focus then it is no longer fruit but works.

The True Glory

There is one thing that all idols have in common; they have no constancy. My holiness wanes and surges. My doctrine changes and grows. My works can bring pride or burnout. If we are like the Israelites and wait for the visible glory of God to appear in the temple before we worship Him, we are not worshipping Him at all, but his manifestation.

There is a way to truly detect if I am in right relationship to God. Ask yourself this question, “Can I be shaken from this place?” When flood waters come, will they be able to knock you from your foundation? If your foundation is your holiness, sin will knock you down. If your foundation is doctrine, truth will knock you down. If your foundation is fruit, inability will knock you down. All of these and more are merely sinking sand.

But when you get below all of this to the God from whom it flows, you will find solid rock. When you become founded on that which is not manifest in this world, nothing in this manifested world will be able to knock you down. You will be holy because your foundation is holy, even though the structure above may be flawed. You will accept truth because your foundation is truth, even if you have to completely remodel the house. You will bear fruit because your foundation is the root, not because you want to impress God and others with how nice your house is.

Martin Luther once said, “God in incomprehensible and invisible. Therefore, what may be seen and comprehended, that is not God”. If we build our lives on what we see and comprehend, even if what we see and comprehend is the glory of God, we are not in relationship with God himself. We are idolizing His manifestation.

True relationship with God begins with the fact that He loved you, not that you loved Him, were holy, subscribed to sound doctrine or bore magnificent fruit. He never changes. He established a day in history on which he abolished sin and death and fulfilled His own requirements for righteousness through Jesus Christ. God, who is unconstrained by time and space, chose to act a particular hour in a particular place on behalf of all mankind.  Why? So we could base our relationship with him upon fact if we would only believe; even those of us who have never seen Him. Not seeing is truly believing.

God Bless

War

What shall we say then? Are we to continue in sin that grace may abound? By no means! How can we who died to sin still live in it?

(Romans 6:1-2 ESV)

There is an ongoing battle in this world against an undead foe. That foe is sin. As a Christian, I invested many years of my life engaged in a constant conversation with sin. A give and take relationship. It consumed me to the point where I could think of nothing else but the battle. A barrage of scripture memorization here. An amphibious accountability assault there. Boom, boom! War all around me!

During that time, I was looking to get just the tiniest foothold of control in my life. If I could just establish a beachhead, I thought, I could begin to drive the enemy back bit by bit. Sometimes I did get that beachhead and make advance against the enemy, but time and again I was repulsed and forced back into the sea. The prospects for victory looked bleak indeed.

But my enemy was fighting on borrowed time. Like the German army toward the end of the second world war, he could still put up a pretty impressive fight at the front but his ability to make war, to win the war, was already broken at home. Though the soldier on the beach at Anzio might not know it in the midst of a heated skirmish, the enemy he fought was already a defeated foe. If he had the advantage of the bigger picture, the overall trend of the war, he would realize that his side had already won. Down in the trenches, though, where the bullets are whizzing around you and your buddies are dying (think 'Private Ryan') its hard to reconcile that.

God wants us to have the bigger picture. That bigger picture is the gospel; the message of the cross. We are not to be mired in the trenches of our life fighting for each square inch, but reveling in the victory that was won at Calvary. I would be willing to bet that almost each of us who have been saved, at an early stage in our Christian life, felt that victory clearly. For a time we were lifted above the battlefield and witnessed the trend of the war - victory! And then we were told to stop day-dreaming and get back in the trenches, which we dutifully did (what we erroneously refer to as 'discipleship').

That victory is won, Christian. The truth is that we are no longer in the trenches locked in mortal combat with the law and sin. Christ has set us free from that. Completely free. The devil would love to have us continue to focus on the battles because our victories are short-lived and out defeats are many and extremely discouraging. Take a moment and put down your weapon and listen to the announcement from headquarters; "Now hear this - you are no longer under bondage to the law and to sin. Lift up your heads and see that the enemy is defeated! Victory is yours!"

Freedom. Grace. Forgiveness. Acceptance. All of these are ours in Christ. God himself has disarmed us by one act of love. Why has he disarmed us? Because we are not to fight any longer. We are to set down our weapons and hear things we have not heard in a long, long time; birds singing, rain, the surf on the beachhead. Things that remind us of our freedom. Rest.

Here is the battle you really face. Everything in you (and your enemy) says that if you lay down your weapon, you will die. And indeed you will. You will die to the law and sin. The battle will still rage around you, but you will no longer be participants, but "strangers and exiles on the earth." (Hebrews 11:13 ESV) That is what is meant by being dead to sin. Your reason will tell you that to ignore the law will lead to lawlessness. Human reasoning has always thought that, which is why Paul has to so often defend his position that salvation and sanctification are by grace alone through faith alone apart from works. The catch to living apart from the law is understanding that to do so means you have died to sin. "For apart from the law, sin lies dead." (Romans 7:8 ESV) Don't let the enemy convince you otherwise.

Are you tired of the fight? Lift up your head and hear the announcement Jesus came to give: "He has sent me to proclaim liberty to the captives and recovering of sight to the blind, to set at liberty those who are oppressed..." (Luke 4:18 ESV) As the German army used to say to captured POW's, "For you, the war is over."

God Bless