“Who do you say that I am?”

This is what Jesus asked His disciples. Peter answered “You are the Christ, the Son of God” and Jesus affirmed this answer and told Peter that flesh and blood did not reveal this to him but his heavenly Father. This revelation of who Jesus is the bedrock of genuine Christianity. I felt the need to add the word “genuine” as there is much Christianity that I have encountered that is more cultural. I gave out a survey several years ago at a college campus asking students their thoughts about God, whether they considered themselves Christians and if they considered the Bible to be relevant to their lives. Many considered themselves to be Christian but felt that the Bible wasn’t relevant to them and didn’t believe Jesus was God. I thought, “What makes you a Christian?”

 We are seeing a breakaway from Christian morals at an accelerated rate today, some see this as us becoming more liberated and others see it as “the beginning of the end” for our nation. The Bible states that the moral Law shows us our sinfulness, we are commanded not to do something and we automatically want to do it. Rebellion is revealed more clearly when there are rules that attempt to suppress it. Rebellion by its very essence is to be against something. Rebellion is not the origin of a purpose; it is a response to it. This begs a question: why is rebellion present in our world and what is it ultimately opposing? The problem with even the perfect moral Law (the Ten Commandments) is that it cannot cure rebellion. It almost seems to stimulate it. As we grapple with this we can come to one of two conclusions: there is something wrong with me and I need help outside of rules to help me or there is something wrong with the rules and they need to conform to what is right to me. Another option is not to come a conclusion and ignore the matter altogether.

I think that there are many people who approve of morals and ethics that line up with the Bible. They would agree that people shouldn’t kill or steal from one another or devalue others. What many people have a problem with is labeling these morals as Christian. Biblical morality is not merely goodness for goodness sake it is given to us by a Holy Being who created us for relationship with Him which was supposed to govern how we relate to others. Jesus summed up the entire Law as loving God first and foremost and loving others as ourselves. Most of us are okay with the second part of that but want to remove the first. To love God is to love Him on His terms for who He is. The growing trend is to remove morality from its God-centered foundation under the guise of liberating the individual. It gives the false sense of liberty because there is an absence of accountability to a higher authority.

I sat through a very interesting training about approaching people with a nonjudgmental attitude. This was in the context of assisting disabled individuals and I appreciated the benefit of this training. The Bible tells us not to judge (condemn) others but right after that Jesus instructs us on how to correct someone. Our knee-jerk reaction as people is to condemn the whole person when they say or do something we consider to be wrong. When approaching people to help them I would certainly concur that our faulty judgments must be suspended to help meet a person’s needs. I would call this extending grace, or “unmerited favor,” to someone. Where I parted ways with the teacher of the coarse is when she insisted that morality must never enter the picture as it incites violence.  I would agree but I don’t lay the blame on morality. No doubt there have been many who have oppressed others under the guise of a moral cause but again this reveals more about what is wrong with us.

Somehow we are under the impression that if we can change our ideas or the way we say things that we will attain a sort of enlightenment which will lead to moral living. We simultaneously want to remove morality from its foundation while trying to establish morality that is essentially self-centered. As a whole, we don’t want to take responsibility for the evil in the world as coming from us. One of the realities I have come face to face with repeatedly is that I am no better than people that I could easily judge. I have met people who look horrific on paper because of heinous acts they have committed but when I met them and talked to them I can’t help but see a person with the same problem as me: sin. They acted more outwardly on wrong desires that came from within and, if we’re honest, we all have at some point. Some people’s outward acts of sin have more collateral damage and require more legal involvement. Others get away with what they do and the very thought of it awakens within us a sense of righteousness that demands bad people be punished. Here is the problem; the presence of sin within us is the source of the wrong things we do. If we know in many ways that we are not good inside and yet have a notion of goodness and that wickedness should ultimately be punished – what hope do we ultimately have? I think those of us who are truly honest will have to admit that we’re not entirely good and that evil should be judged as evil that justice demands that evil be punished. Many of us would agree with the concept but we will inevitably differ on the application.

This is one reason why laws or rules will not ultimately solve our problem. Laws come from a law-giver and what God is after is more than behavior-modification or our best attempt to be good. The Law shows us that we aren’t good as God intended. God promised to do something that is entirely outside the scope of human remedy in His New Covenant promise: He promised to forgive our sins and write His Laws on our hearts and minds and that we would come to know Him. This is what I meant t when I said that our help comes from outside the rules but the help from God establishes the purpose or fulfillment of the rules. What we ultimately need is a change from within that we are powerless to enact.

All the striving of the human soul ceases when we turn to Jesus. When we turn to Him, consider Him, pray to Him in recognition of the fact that He came for us we begin to see God as He is. In Him, we receive God’s grace. The need we have to be forgiven of all wrongs in a perfectly just way is met in the person of Jesus. The Bible says we are justified with God through Jesus Christ. The Bible says He was displayed publically as a satisfaction of the punishment we deserved for our sins. In the Old Testament, sacrifices for sins were made inside the temple in the manifest presence of God. What God was displaying with Jesus on the cross was His sacrifice for our sin. 1 John says that this is the expression of His love for us. In His love He met our great need to be redeemed, which is to be restored to our original value.  He gave us value by creating us in His image and when that image was marred through sin He restored it as the representative head of all humanity by being a perfect human and He represented God to us. Jesus is the perfect mediator. This is a mystery to our finite intellect but fills the need we have for what can only be found in God. We were made by Him and for Him. His love did not excuse sin, His love atoned for sin and gave us the opportunity to do away with it in Christ.

I know firsthand what it is to try to follow the rules of the Bible only to find desires within me that find pleasure in what God says is wrong. I justified what was wrong by giving into wisdom that was based on what was “right to me” and it lead to a place of death. Guilt haunted me but God’s grace drew me to Him. I didn’t have to modify my behavior before I started seeking Him but when I found Him I couldn’t ignore Him. I came to find out that He is a Peron who has a personal love for me and I was made for a relationship with Him that fills the eternal, spiritual part of me. How I wish I could give the peace that I have to everyone I know! My actions changed as a result of knowing Him and I found that He is writing His commandments on my heart and mind and they are my path to freedom! Freedom is living in the state for which we were created and we were not made by ourselves and for ourselves! The bondage of living independently from God started with Satan’s lie to the first humans. He lied to them about God’s character and deceived them into thinking that they would be a better version of themselves by disobeying God’s commandments. The worst deception we can have is the one we don’t know we have. The devil’s greatest tactic is masking his work as “good” and what we don’t realize is that when we aren’t serving God we are serving another master.

I am grieved at my core at the thought that God has expressed such a great love for us and we have the ability to dismiss it so easily. But I have hope and I pray that God continues to awaken people the way He awakened me and many others. Not to just the reality of sin but to the reality of His marvelous love and grace. The blood He spilled on the cross gives us entry to be filled with the eternal riches of the knowledge of who He is. He gives us His very life and I cannot express in words what a precious treasure that is. The psalmist said in Psalm 94, “Satisfy us in the morning with Your steadfast love, that we may rejoice and be glad all our days.” True satisfaction comes from His eternal love and the cross makes it possible for us to reconciled back to Him.

Departing from morality is only a symptom that we are departing from seeing the necessity of being rightly related to God. What I believe we need to see in and out of the church is not merely what is morally right or wrong but what draws us closer to God and what does not. My life isn’t primarily about right versus wrong: it’s about knowing God personally. It’s about knowing who Jesus is and who I am as a result of living in relationship with Him. I am fascinated by Him, He forsook everything to redeem me and make me His own when I wanted nothing to do with Him. I rebelled against Him and He loved me, He brought me under His reign in His gentleness and brought me to the place of being able to make a conscious decision to give Him my heart. A heart that He made and yet He laid His life down so that I could choose Him. No one has ever loved me that way and loving Him means trusting Him and loving others the way He does, which is what happens when His life is in me. This is why He not only died but rose again – so that we might live a different existence altogether. This is what it means to be born again. Knowing Jesus for who He is and following Him even with all of my flaws is what it means to me to be a Christian.

Who do you say that He is?

A Life of Worship

A Life of Worship

“The people stood far off, while Moses drew near to the thick darkness where God was. And the LORD said to Moses, “Thus you shall say to the people of Israel: ‘You have seen for yourselves that I have talked with you from heaven. You shall not make gods of silver to be with me, nor shall you make for yourselves gods of gold.  An altar of earth you shall make for me and sacrifice on it your burnt offerings and your peace offerings, your sheep and your oxen. In every place where I cause my name to be remembered I will come to you and bless you.  If you make me an altar of stone, you shall not build it of hewn stones, for if you wield your tool on it you profane it. And you shall not go up by steps to my altar, that your nakedness be not exposed on it.’” (Exodus 20:21-26, ESV)

Recently I prayed to God about my worship and asked Him to renew my understanding of what it means to worship Him with my whole life, not merely through music. Musical worship is Biblical but can only be the expression of something that comes from the eternal depths that God placed in the heart of every person. What I seek to guard against in my life is singing songs about worship while not seeking to bring my life into harmony with God for the purpose of worship.

Exodus 20:21-26 details some of the first instructions that God gave to Israel in regard to worship. God delivered these people from Egypt for the purpose of being His inheritance. The psalms say that no other nation was given the privileges that Israel was given in God revealing Himself to them and giving them His laws to walk in so that they might know His ways. They were saved by God’s gracious intervention in Egypt not because they merited being saved but because He remembered the covenant He made with their forefathers. After God delivered them from their oppression He led them into the wilderness to show them the purpose for which they were delivered. He also came down in His manifest presence to dwell with them: “Do not fear, for God has come to test you, that the fear of Him may be before you, that you may not sin” (Exodus 20:20).  God was revealing His holiness and their sinfulness and showing them He desired to dwell with them without compromising His holiness.

The first thing that God addresses is the tendency in people to fashion for ourselves false gods. Making an idol takes the mystery away from God and ceases to acknowledge His distinct glory as God. Dietrich Bonheffer once said “A god who allowed us to prove his existence would be an idol.” We can point to the evidence of God’s existence but to truly know Him we must come to Him and allow Him to reveal Himself to us and believe that He desires to do so. That is the crux of the Bible and it’s why we cannot interpret the Bible without the Holy Spirit. The Bible is not primarily about applying things to our lives – it is about revealing the person of God in Jesus Christ in all of His beautiful, majestic glory.  God made it clear that He also has good intentions for His people: “In every place where I cause My name to be remembered I will come to you and bless you.”

What also stood out to me was what God said in regard to the altar and the way to approach the altar of worship: “you shall not build it of hewn (human-carved) stones, for if you wield your tool on it you profane it. And you shall not go up by steps to my altar, that your nakedness be not exposed on it.” They had to use stones that weren’t shaped by their craftsmanship and they couldn’t approach by steps. Steps would imply that it is something they made to approach God. The theme of being naked runs throughout the Bible and is synonymous with exposing sin. Adam and Eve covered their bodies because of the sense of being unclean within. Jesus spoke to the church of Leaodicia to come to Him for white garments so that the shame of their nakedness would not be revealed. The danger of the church is they didn’t know that they were naked and in need of being clothed in the righteousness of Jesus. We cannot approach God without His provided way of approaching Him through Jesus Christ. Works done in self-righteousness in relation to God are the equivalent of being a white-washed tomb. We clean the outside to hide the death inside. God is saying to His people “you cannot approach me this way. Your sin will be exposed and you will die.”

In the Old Testament, laws were given to punish disobedience and create order and blessings were associated with obedience. In this day and age we tend to look at some of the penalties of transgressing the laws under the Old Covenant as severe but Hebrews states: “Anyone who has set aside the law of Moses dies without mercy on the evidence of two or three witnesses.  How much worse punishment, do you think, will be deserved by the one who has trampled underfoot the Son of God, and has profaned the blood of the covenant by which he was sanctified, and has outraged the Spirit of grace?” (Hebrews 10:28-29). The Old Covenant was pointing to a greater reality that has been established in the New Covenant. The Old Covenant provided a way for God’s people to live in light of their national salvation and be spared God’s judgments and the New Covenant provides a way for all of us to live in light of God’s complete salvation from God’s final judgment. Knowing what we have been saved from and saved for is at the heart of why we give thanks and praise to God as “saved” individuals.

I believe the easiest thing to lose sight of in worship is God Himself. The only way I know to remedy this is to fix my mind on who God has revealed Himself to be in the Bible. In Colossians, Paul magnifies the person of Jesus in declaring that He is the source of all created things, pre-eminent in all things, the image of the invisible God (1:15-20). In Him are the treasures of the knowledge of God (2:3). Rather than skipping past that to the “application” part of the letter (i.e. the part that applies to me). I realized the Holy Spirit wanted me to stop and behold Jesus and just worship Him for who He is. There is no one like Him who is the very expression of God. I was made to be fascinated and enamored with His glory. Secondly, we are to praise Him for His wonderful work of salvation in which He revealed the Father’s desire to deliver us from darkness to be His own precious possession. In Him we have redemption – we are redeemed from every lawless deed to be able to serve Him. In Him we have eternal value and our works are precious to Him. I have experienced first-hand that when I worship God this way that I often don’t feel different immediately but over time my emotions come more in alignment with God, I become more enamored with Him and less enamored with lesser things.

In light of this great salvation, Colossians states that taking in God’s word and everything we do in this life can be an act of worship: “Let the word of Christ dwell in you richly, teaching and admonishing one another in all wisdom, singing psalms and hymns and spiritual songs, with thankfulness in your hearts to God. And whatever you do, in word or deed, do everything in the name of the Lord Jesus, giving thanks to God the Father through Him” (3:16-17). In Christ, we have the privilege of being able to put to death the works that don’t glorify God and which all amount to idolatry (3:5). We can by faith appropriate an inward righteousness, a new nature that “is being renewed in knowledge after the image of its creator” (3:10). In Christ we have more than behavior modification – we have spiritual life within us through Jesus by which we can know God and find pleasure in doing what we were divinely designed to do: worship.

Bread Of Life

Bread of Life  

   

I was reading John 6 recently during a time when I was struggling to see how God would provide for the needs of my household. When I have a need, I look at it is an opportunity to trust in God and learn something about Him. I have come to learn that the satisfaction of my perceived needs is not primarily what God is after in the midst of a trial. At our core, we are spiritual beings who have spiritual needs. Our spiritual nature is that in us which was designed to relate to God personally. He has set “eternity in our hearts” Ecclesiastes tells us.  When we don’t realize our need for God Himself, we begin to live on a lower level of existence - becoming enslaved to the pursuit of satisfying lesser, temporal needs. God is concerned with our temporary needs but He calls us to seek Him for something much greater than food and clothing: His kingdom and His righteousness. Jesus said in the Sermon on the Mount that we are not to allow the worry of having enough food and clothing to eclipse the pursuit of God Himself (His righteousness) and the expression of His dominion in our lives (His kingdom). There is a propensity in us to self-preserve and secure our comfort through money and it seems perfectly justifiable in the world’s eyes. When we are in need it is easy in this culture to revert to this vain pursuit. If we give ourselves over to this over and over again something disastrous happens, we can become affluent outwardly and yet be spiritually bankrupt. It is possible to be a Christian and be influenced by the world’s notion of being prosperous.

In John 6, Jesus fed multitudes miraculously with the multiplication of bread and fish. The crowds ate and declared that Jesus was truly a prophet. Their response was so strong that Jesus had to remove Himself from the situation or else they would make Him king “by force” the Scripture says (6:14-15). God’s plan for Jesus being King is not according to man’s ideas or ability. No sooner did the crowds find out that Jesus left the next day did they come to where He was. Jesus addressed them and tried to get them to see that the miracle of provision wasn’t merely to feed their physical appetite: it was to awaken them for their need for Him and to show them that God wanted to meet that need (6:25-34). John’s Gospel is filled with one sign and wonder after another in which Jesus met people’s needs so that they might place their trust in Him.

What God challenged me on in is this: would I be like the crowd or like one of His disciples? Jesus explained in a spiritually literal way that His body and blood was to be given so that we could have life. Jesus’s body was broken and blood spilled out for a very real, eternal need that we have and often don’t realize that we have. Jesus said, “that everyone who looks on the Son and believes in Him should have eternal life” (John 6:40). The word “look” in the original Greek does not refer to merely seeing with the natural eye but perceiving or contemplation of the mind. It refers to who we believe Jesus to be. For an unbeliever, there has to be an initial recognition of a need that can only be met in Jesus. They may not be able to verbalize the need and, in His compassion, God will meet them in their circumstances through natural needs to lead to trusting in Him for eternal life. For the believer, the challenge is to keep a steady gaze or perception of Jesus. What I felt challenged in is do I seek Jesus for His providential blessings as the crowds did? They praised Him when He met their natural need for food but they left when He diagnosed their eternal need. Jesus was offering them something that would satisfy their eternal needs and they forsook the offer! When Jesus asked His disciples if they too would leave their response was “Lord, to whom shall we go? You have the words of eternal life, and we have believed, and have come to know, that you are the Holy One of God” (John 6:69). What separates a disciple from a member of the crowd is a confession of who Jesus is based on having tasted of Him through His word.

I was challenged as to whether I would seek for the “bread from heaven” that Jesus spoke of. Jesus said to labor for it not because we have to earn it per se but because it is promised to those who will seek Him for it. Jesus promised that anyone who comes to Him He will in no way cast out. This is a glorious promise to the person who realizes that they are a sinner and their ongoing need is to be in union with the One who saves us by His life. This speaks of His finished work on the cross and our experience of trusting in Him on this side of eternity. Not only does He meet our needs but He meets them according to His riches and glory. He meets our needs in a way that will result in Him being glorified in our lives. Psalm 50:15 testifies to this: "call upon me in the day of trouble; I will deliver you, and you shall glorify Me.” The question is: are we primarily seeking Him or the satisfaction of our need?

I Fail But God Does Not

“God is indeed good to Israel, to the pure in heart. but as for me, my feet almost slipped; my steps nearly went astray. For I envied the arrogant; I saw the prosperity of the wicked” (Psalm 73:1-4).

“Did I purify my heart and wash my hands in innocence for nothing? For I am afflicted all day long and punished every morning. If I had decided to say these things aloud, I would have betrayed Your people. When I tried to understand all this, it seemed hopeless until I entered God’s sanctuary” (Psalm 73:13-17).

“When I became embittered and my innermost being was wounded, I was stupid and didn’t understand; I was an unthinking animal toward You. Yet I am always with You; You hold my right hand. You guide me with Your counsel, and afterward You will take me up in glory. Who do I have in heaven but You? And I desire nothing on earth but You” (Psalm 73:21-25).

“My flesh and my heart may fail, but God is the strength of my heart, my portion forever. Those far from You will certainly perish; You destroy all who are unfaithful to You. But as for me, God’s presence is my good. I have made the Lord God my refuge, so I can tell about all You do” (Psalm 73:26-28).

The longer I walk with Jesus, the weaker I become in myself. The longer I walk with Him, the more glorious and strong He becomes to me. I have said many times that the Bible is the most honest document I have ever read. I believe it to be the inspired Word of God and I believe it is infallible because it is inspired by and it revolves around an infallible Person. The Bible shows us the truth about God and ourselves and those who wrote the Bible did so through the illumination of the Holy Spirit. He is God and He reveals God to our spirit and, in doing so, also shows what the absence of God looks like in the human condition. Sin isn’t just poor morality it is the utterly depraved absence of God in humans. Apart from Christ we are fallen, this implies that we were made with a specific design that we, the entire human race, have fallen from. Ecclesiastes 7:29 says this: “I have discovered that God made people upright, but they pursued many schemes.”

When man fell in disobedience to God, he aligned himself with the enemy of God and so took on an image that at its core is self-glorifying and anti-God. Envy, jealousy, murder, lust are all the product of idolatry and Jesus said all of these proceed from the human heart. He sees sin in us even before it is conceived in our actions. All of these sinful tendencies are against God and His purposes. People speak of evil in “the world” or in “society” when we want to speak of it as a principal with which we are not associated. I do believe evil has a source and it entered the human heart by agreement with a lie. I can understand someone not believing in the devil if that person doesn’t buy into the Bible. We live in a humanistic society that believes largely in the theory of people being inherently good and that we just need better ideas to reach our potential and reform the bad parts of society. But there is no sound explanation for why people do and think evil things in humanism. There are answers to these dilemmas that I have heard and they have some plausibility: mental health conditions, patterns of abuse, etc. I get that. I am exposed to that daily in the field I work in and I’m all for helping people but the root cause of why such conditions in people even exist remains unanswered. The best of us know how to restrain bad instincts but we cannot deny that we have tendencies that are wrong.

There is another question that I have never had answered outside of the Bible: why do people die? The best we can do is detect the causes of death and decay in our bodies but we cannot ultimately escape death. One day, we’re all going to die. The human remedies we have are great for enjoying the quality of life we live but they are temporary.  Everywhere we look in nature we see things that are temporary. They are beautiful in some seasons but everything we behold in nature has a beginning and an end. God told Adam after he sinned in disobeying God that the ground was going to be cursed for Adam’s sake. I believe nature points to a beautiful Creator and its imperfections are there to remind us that things are NOT as they should be. Some blame pollution or climate change and I’m all for taking care of resources but I think anyone would agree that nature with all of its destructive “natural disasters” hasn’t ever been entirely stable.

We live in a fallen state of being in a fallen world.

Why?

Man, seduced by a real devil, decided to reject God and choose for himself what is right and wrong. God told Adam not to eat from the tree of the knowledge of good and evil (never mind that He commanded Adam TO eat from every other tree and enjoy the entire pre-fallen creation). Man was not intended to know evil. When I say “know” I mean he came to experience the absence of God by rejecting God with the free will that God gave him. God told Adam that he would surely die if he ate from that one tree. But He gave Adam everything else to enjoy and cultivate in loving relationship with Himself. The purpose for man’s existence, Biblically speaking, is for us to know His love with our whole beings and glorify Him by loving Him back. God created an environment in which humans could live out their ordained purposes with gladness. Humans cannot rid ourselves of the desire for the ideal for which we were created. But we cannot be reconciled to that ideal without being reconciled to God Himself.

The primary problem that we have isn’t bad morality or decaying bodies – those are indicators. Jesus said He came into this world to save because we needed saving. He didn’t cleanse the whole world of death and decay and teach us better morals. He came and He suffered judgment as a perfect human being. Our primary problem is that we are under judgment. All of the evil in the world and the decay will be purged. God is not limited and His plans will stand. There will be a new heavens and a new earth in which righteousness dwells, the Bible tells us. God’s primary agenda however is to restore what He purposed before the foundations of this world and that is to have relationship with human beings. He did only what He could do: the Creator entered creation to suffer and die and rise again. As our mediator, He restored us to our original position in God as His Beloved. The Bible says that those are “in Adam” will die and those who are “in Christ” will live. Those who put their hope in Jesus Himself will live. They will live with a quality of life that Jesus called “eternal life” and that He defined as “knowing the One True God and the One whom He has sent” (John 17:3).  Remember that I said that when man fell, he experienced evil and death. Those who are in Christ are “new creations” in Him and they experience what true goodness is – the presence of God inside of them.

There are feelings associated with this such as peace and joy. Any peace and joy in this world is as temporal as the shifting seasons but peace with God is eternal. It’s the assurance that we are what God desires us to be because He took our sin and judged it at the cross. When Jesus took the abhorrent suffering of the cross, He was standing in the gap for the enemies of God – us. God in His love satisfied His justice on our behalf so that He could make us complete. He didn’t just pay for our sinful deeds but His death showed me that I could die and truly live. I know that sounds weird but we are either in one of two states of existence: dead in sin or alive to God. You can’t be both.  In order to be restored to what God intended, we have to die and this evidenced by renouncing not only sinful deeds but our sinful self and that we cannot do without God’s help. We cannot die to sin any more than we can give ourselves life. Dying and being risen spiritually is what the miracle of becoming a child of God is. Christ’s death to sin becomes our death and His very life becomes our life – it is the very essence of being united to someone and that is only experienced with God through Christ. This is what the sacrament of baptism traditionally meant – going beneath the water and coming out is to be public display of an inward spiritual reality called resurrection.

I started this by stating that the more I walk with Jesus, the weaker I see myself and the stronger I see Him. The psalmist recognized this principal when he saw that his own heart and strength fail but God is the strength of his life and his portion forever. The psalmist wrestled with what isn’t right in this world and what wasn’t right in himself – until he entered the sanctuary of God. Until he was reminded that everything is from God and for God – nothing is outside of God’s ultimate, final authority. The psalmist withheld saying what vexed him because he knew it would injure others but he wrestled transparently with God until his perspective was renewed. Then he realized that God Himself was his goodness and that all truly desired was to be found in God.

The portion of those who trust in God is His presence. Those who trust in Christ can have and be satisfied with eternal life here and now. Wrestling with what we see in this world and the temptations from our depraved nature and the spiritual oppression of the devil is a part of living in faith. The apostle Paul cited weakness, needs, pressures, insults – insert everything else that a believer deals with in living against the current of this fallen world – as the very platform through which he experienced the sufficiency of God’s grace and learned to be strong in Christ. We are meant to experience His sufficient grace not just for own sakes but because as we genuinely experience God’s grace we are better purveyors of it. The psalmist said, “I have made the Lord God my refuge, so I can tell about all You do.” What God does in our lives when we trust in Him is meant to be told to other people because it is proof that God Himself is the answer to the real problem that we have. 

Mourning and Comfort

“We look at life through the eyes of reason and say that if a person will control his instincts, and educate himself, he can produce a life that will slowly evolve into the life of God. But as we continue on through life, we find the presence of something which we have not yet taken into account, namely, sin— and it upsets all of our thinking and our plans. Sin has made the foundation of our thinking unpredictable, uncontrollable, and irrational.

We have to recognize that sin is a fact of life, not just a shortcoming. Sin is blatant mutiny against God, and either sin or God must die in my life. The New Testament brings us right down to this one issue— if sin rules in me, God’s life in me will be killed; if God rules in me, sin in me will be killed. There is nothing more fundamental than that.” (Oswald Chambers, My Utmost For His Highest)

“Because of Your name, Yahweh, let me live. In Your righteousness deliver me from trouble, and in Your faithful love destroy my enemies.” (Psalm 143:11b-12a HCSB)

“Those who mourn are blessed, for they will be comforted.” (Matthew 5:4 HCSB)

I don’t necessarily agree with the wording that Oswald Chambers uses in the quote above. God Himself doesn’t perish ultimately but I understand the concept that he is putting forth: if we live in sin – we will die. Either God lives in us or we must die. Christ wasn’t defeated by sin in His death on the cross – He was crushed for our sin. There was an hour of darkness because He had to suffer the full brunt of God’s judgment and taste death but this was so that death might be swallowed up in life. There is no room for self-confidence in Christ. How can I defeat my enemies? The psalmist cried out rightly when he said “In Your faithful love destroy (or “silence”) my enemies.”

There will be a day when all of God’s enemies will be cut off.  Jesus has already overcome this world and the enemies that keep us in opposition to God Himself – sin and death. The Law – which is holy, righteous and good – is the avenue through which sin seems to derive its strength over me. Another way to put that is that the Law shows sin’s dominion over me. The more I try to do good, the more I see my inability to be good. It reveals my rebellion against God and my captivity to that fallen nature. God’s wrath seems harsh until we see sin for what it is: “blatant mutiny against God.” Every bad thing we attribute to God’s nature is really what is in us. We see Him through the leans of fallen people. Part of the depravity of our condition is that our mind cannot be subjected to Him; it automatically puts Him in the wrong and us in the right. We put Him on trial and assume He must answer to our standards. In this way, our minds are veiled by self-righteousness (meaning: “I am right in my own way”) to our sin and to God’s beautiful glory in Christ. This veil must be torn; the nice exterior must be broken down like a wall that is concealing mold behind it. A.W. Tozer said this regarding Christ: "He came to save us from our own moral and spiritual disorders - but it must also be said He came to deliver us from our own remedies" (Tragedy in the Church: The Missing Gifts).

Sin is death and leads us to death’s ultimate fulfillment: being separated from God forever. True life was never meant to be temporary and yet we substitute temporary things for the life that we are meant to intimately have in God. These things cam numb us to the effects of sin much like a drug addict has yet to face the reality of their wrecked life. God has to detox us at times, allow us to cease to feel the natural pleasures that can be stimulated by sin, the Bible says that sin actually does have pleasure “for a season.” Once that season has run its course we are left with its affects:  shame, guilt, fear, etc.

We must mourn over sin if we are to experience the corresponding promise of finding comfort in God. This isn’t merely a contrived, outward display of emotion (it will involve emotions). Many cry and display strong emotion out of regret and self-pity but this blessed mourning is different. The blessed state of mourning that Christ spoke of is a state of being in which we begin to see things for what they truly are. It means we are starting to see starting to see darkness for what it is and light for what it is. Eternity is in the heart of every person and when we see the eternal darkness in us, it’s actually the beginning of becoming enlightened. When we recognize that darkness exists in us apart from God and light (all that is good) is in God alone then we begin to understand how we can only approach God through Christ.

Christ’s death and punishment was ours and His death was devastating. He knew no sin became sin for us. Sin is a devastating reality for which there is no man-made remedy. Sin has positioned us to be God’s enemies and the only answer to that dilemma is reconciliation on His terms. The Gospel in a nutshell tells that we are wrong – wrong in who we are, sprung off what from what God intended us to be. God is right – He is the standard of all that is good. He doesn’t have a set of standards or some moral code that some other higher authority set in place for Him to measure up to. He has no advisors or counselors – He IS the standard. He IS good. He IS holy. He is also love. All that He does He does to accomplish His purposes of holiness, love and righteousness.

Before the foundations of the world God chose us in Christ to be holy and blameless before Him in love, Ephesians tells us. This eternal purpose has been upheld and has been accomplished in Christ. How? Jesus had to overcome the obstacles that hindered these purposes. He had to be innocent, completely sinless so that He could be a perfect sacrifice for the human race. He had to become sin – taking the full expression of punishment as though He were an enemy of God. He had to die – death would have had dominion over us through sin. God showed that nothing has dominion over His predetermined purposes, His love prevailed. In the devastating act of the crucifixion Jesus seemed to be totally defeated. Payment was made for our sin by God so that we could have life in Him again. We must come to terms with our state of total defeat and know that Jesus took on that condition to remove it by rising from the dead; He rose to publicly display the defeat of sin and death. Not only that, but we have life presently in Him.

By “life” I don’t merely mean the most sensational experiences of human existence. No, I mean having God Himself inside of us. The eternal place once dominated by darkness now under the dominion of light. That condition that caused such deep mourning and yearning now filled with life and love. “Those who mourn are blessed, for they shall be comforted”. Jesus wasn’t saying “you must start mourning if I am going to comfort you.” He was saying that this kind of mourning is a blessed state of seeing life and death for what they are. Death isn’t merely the cessation of our vitals and physical existence – death is being separated from God, a position He never desired for mankind but became a reality for us when man sinned and embraced darkness and rebellion towards God. Life is being united with God, in Christ we are joined back to Him. We are restored to the closest relationship that we were meant for; the closest picture is that of a man and woman becoming one in marriage.

With the debt of our sin paid, we are free to love and serve and when we fulfill this design we are walking in true liberty. The world has distorted the beauty of servanthood with its notions of self-centeredness.  You can’t love without service and you can’t serve without love. God Himself is a Servant, the cross is His greatest act of service towards mankind. How humble He is to have descended from unapproachable light to human flesh! He took on our weaknesses and experienced the temptation of sin. I would say that He experienced more temptation than any other person. You don’t experience the battle of temptation until you really start trying to resist it. Somehow the notion has infiltrated the church that someone has a “good testimony” by having experienced great outward expressions of sin. There is tendency to elevate such testimonies (great as they are) and hold up certain people as “more relatable” to a non-Christian. This is probably a response to some of the holiness movements that emphasized outward goodness, which inevitably led to being judgmental. One extreme doesn’t answer another – Jesus never sinned and yet no one can sympathize more with our weaknesses as sinners better than Him. Those who experience blessed mourning and comfort in Christ are those who understand how to relate to people regardless of what they’ve done and extend grace to them.

We are also in the habit in the church at times of wanting to cram theological truths into people and expect them to come a saving knowledge of Jesus. These truths must be ours through personal identification if they are to impact others. This takes time so that maturity can have its perfect way in us. It means going through trials and learning how to overcome by grace through faith in Christ. Paul said this in 2 Corinthians: “Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, the Father of mercies and God of all comfort, who comforts us in all our afflictions so that we will be able to comfort those who are in any affliction with the comfort with which we are comforted by God. For just as the sufferings of Christ are ours in abundance, so also our comfort is abundant through Christ” (2 Corinthians 2:3-5). What gives substance to my existence and meaning to my experiences – whether they are joyful or painful – is knowing Christ and being availed to His purposes. To identify with His suffering and be comforted by the same grace that He relied on and freely bestows to me, so that I might be sympathetic to the eternal needs of others and be a purveyor of grace.

The church’s mission is that of reconciliation – to demonstrate God’s reconciliation in Christ in action and word. True divine love is also supernatural – it is God expressing Himself through His people so that others come to know the love He has for them. May God help us in this by His Spirit. Without the Holy Spirit it is impossible, He is just as much God as the Father and the Son. How much do we need Him to be and do what God desires. Let us not forget that God desires mercy over judgment. The world is already condemned and Jesus came to save, He came so that God’s desire might be accomplished for any who place their trust in Him. God did not make us like plants that are just dependent but have no power to choose. We must choose dependence on Him. We must choose to die to sin through faith in Christ’s death and embrace life by faith in His resurrection. He is the One from whom are all things and for whom are all things.

For the one considers themselves a Christian in this culture, this means we must have to forsake the cultural notion that we can be self-sufficient and be a Christian. He must be our source by choice if we are to be powerful, loving witnesses of Him. We must know by experience and not just theory that His love is better than the intoxicating wine of this world. Death to self, service is the path to joyful intimacy – not seeking security through comfort and the pursuit of things outside of God.

For the one who does not consider themselves a Christian but sees any part of this as putting words to what you are experiencing inside, go to Jesus yourself and ask Him to reveal Himself to you. When I first heard some of this, someone told me to even just say “sign me up, God, show me if this is true.” That was all the faith I had in that moment. You may grieve more before you find the comfort found in Christ. Grief is a part of dying to self if we would have Christ living in us. I had to actually pray that I would feel what was right and wrong in my life at one point because I had become so numb to everything. When I finally wept, I knew it was a good thing and I have never experienced the comfort I did when I surrendered my life to Christ. The One who diagnoses our festering wounds and peals back our man-made, temporary Band-Aid solutions is the One who brings true healing and wholeness. He is compassion. He is love. There is no greater love than Christ laying down His life for us when we were His enemies. He is love and we cannot know love for all that it is until His love has prevailed over our rebellion. His grace opens our eyes to what the world and the devil would have us be blind to. But the world and the devil cannot stop us from choosing. Whoever believes in Him will not ultimately perish apart from Him. Whoever – there is no distinction or qualifications that need to be met. He has mercy without distinction because He has met all the qualifications.

Here is my prayer: God, open our eyes that we would see. Let our hearts comprehend the love that You have for us so that we might be purged of every form of rebellion against You inside of us that leads to death. Sober us from the things in this world that distort our perceptions and numb us to real pain and comfort. Awaken us to love and fill every need that we have. Let us recognize the blessedness of godly sorrow that leads to genuine intimacy and union with You. Let us be genuine and transparent with You. Help us because You know our hearts better than we do and let us see how beautiful Your heart is. Forgive us for accusing You, for accusing Your character and not trusting You. Forgive us for blaming You for what is wrong in this world instead of taking responsibility for our sin against You, confessing it and receiving Your forgiveness and grace. You are love and You are eager to forgive – help us, Your people, to love and to be eager to forgive. Forgive us for judging and blaming other people instead of considering our own spiritual state before You. Let us receive Your mercy and walk in it. Thank You for loving us with an everlasting love and forgive us for accusing You of being evil when all You did was what was needed for us to be saved. Forgive us for seeking completion outside of You and embracing worldly, man-centered wisdom instead of the wisdom in Christ. The Gospel is beautiful and powerful, let us return to it and live in the power of it by Your Holy Spirit. Come and fill us and let us love as You love and let divisions in the church be overcome by humility and love – that can only be done with the help of Your Spirit. In that unity, the unity that You prayed for, Jesus, may the Father command an unprecedented blessing that will affect communities in every nation and let it result in people before Your throne from every tribe, nation and tongue praising You for unfailing love and mercy. In Jesus’ name I pray and thank You that You are able to do above and beyond all that we can ask, think or imagine according to the power that is at work in Your church. Amen and amen.

God Is Love

“The one who does not love does not know God, for God is love. By this the love of God was manifested in us, that God has sent His only begotten Son into the world so that we might live through Him. In this is love, not that we loved God, but that He loved us and sent His Son to be the propitiation for our sins” (1 John 4:8-10).



I remember when I was asked by a coworker “so, who or what is God?” The job I had at the time was very physically intense. I was in the middle of unloading boxes out of a 55 foot long trailer when he decided to walk up to me and ask me this. I was thinking about the boxes, how many of them there were, and how fast I could get them unloaded.  My brain was like an assembly line:  pick up box, place long-ways on the conveyer belt, put bigger boxes on a different conveyer belt and then repeat for 3 hours. In the middle of that I was asked one of the most profound questions ever uttered. He knew I was a Christian and I knew it was a leading question. I stood and looked at him with a dumbfounded look on my face like I was trying to solve an impossible math problem. A million things rushed into my brain but nothing came out of my mouth. It was like a crowd of people trying to evacuate a building through a single doorway all at once. Finally, I stammered “God is…love.” He helped me pick up a few of the boxes that I was unloading and didn’t say anything else and he left a few moments later. I knew that I told him was true but I also knew that I what I said was open to interpretation.  Take words out of the context in which they were spoken and they can take on a different meaning. Politicians do it all the time to one another.
  

I believe what 1 John tells us, that “God is love.” To me, that means God defines what love is and without God there is no love. I believe that God desires the best for His creation and all that He has designed is best understood in the context of knowing His love for us. The Bible says that all things were created through Jesus, for Jesus, that all things consist in Him and all things are being reconciled through Him. For creation to operate according to God’s highest and best it must consist in Christ.



Sin is what separates us from God. I don’t mean this in the sense of a separation of physical distance but one of association. I can be in the same room with someone and not associate with them. In fact, I can be in the same room with a good friend and if there is unresolved conflict between me and that person I might say that I “feel distant.” In that moment, because of our unresolved conflict me and that friend will not feel closely associated with one another. There is animosity that makes us opposed to one another. We often don’t ask ourselves why animosity even exists. One could say that one party is right and one is wrong but this isn’t always the case with people– there is something in us that works against being closely associated even with people that we want to be. I haven’t met anyone that wants to get divorced on the day of their wedding. We have all the intentions of loving someone, we long to be loved by them but there will come a day when the husband and wife will realize they don’t define love the exact same way and will find themselves “at odds” with one another. What the couple does from there to grow in love is another subject in itself. The point is that we’re relational beings but the person who is truly honest with him or herself will admit that there are tendencies in them that revolt against being rightly related to people.



The worst problem we can have is one that we don’t know that we have. If you don’t know that you have cancer, than a cure for cancer won’t mean much to you. You may find some joy in knowing that other people who have cancer have a cure but it won’t be something you are personally grateful for. I find this is the attitude some have in regard to sin and the need to be forgiven by God. “If we say that we have no sin, we are deceiving ourselves and the truth is not in us. If we confess our sins, He is faithful and righteous to forgive us our sins and to cleanse us from all unrighteousness. If we say that we have not sinned, we make Him a liar and His word is not in us” (1 John 1:8-10). I can understand people saying that they don’t buy that (there was a time when I didn’t). That’s a choice and we all have the choice to believe what we want, it doesn’t mean some of the things we choose not to believe aren’t true it just means we choose not to believe them. What John is saying here is that if we don’t acknowledge the problem of sin than we can’t understand and appropriate the cure through trusting in Jesus.



Here is a part of the above verse out of 1 John in a different translation: “Love consists in this: not that we loved God, but that He loved us and sent His Son to be the propitiation for our sins” (4:10, HCSB). The word propitiation refers to an act by which appease someone that we have wronged. The perfect expression of love exists in the fact that God provided His Son to appease what our sin demanded – judgment. We are naturally at odds with God but the difference between our dispute with Him and a dispute between another person is that one party is right and the other is wrong. We’re wrong and He is right. As people we all have notions of being owed something to right a wrong. We might feel someone “owes us an apology” for something they did wrong. We want people to answer to our sense of fairness and justice. If God were only just our rebellion against Him would necessitate perfect punishment. God doesn’t appeal to some standard of justice outside of Himself – He IS the essence of justness. He defines justice and so if He is love than His love must be expressed justly.



When we become aware of our moral bankruptcy before God we can shrink away and point an accusatory finger at circumstances, people or even God Himself. In Luke 23, we see two thieves being crucified with Jesus: one hurled accusations at Him with his dying breath and the other recognized his own guilt and appealed to Jesus’s mercy. We can also ignore the issue altogether and immerse ourselves in ideas and beliefs that make it convenient to forget that silly conscience of ours. After all, all we need is love and if I want to define love apart from God than love will essentially rotate around me. But I believe love that the Bible expresses is more beautiful than anything I could ever conceive. I first experienced it and comprehended it when I realized that I wanted to rule my own life and that I was living in opposition to God. I wanted to shrink away but I also wanted to draw near at the same time. I found my biggest problem in the Bible and the solution to my problem in the same place. In the presence of God, I felt my sinfulness but I also found the answer, which is mercy. In that one mysterious act on the cross, the justice of God was satisfied in Christ’s sacrifice so that I could receive mercy freely – not based on what I could offer Him. My sin was not condoned at the cross it was atoned for and when I saw sin for what it is I was relieved to know that it was done away with. God loved me when I was his enemy – that is perfect love. I came to know the love that only God has for me, not just intellectual assent but an intimate knowing that is different from anything else I have ever known or experienced. I came to know that God truly is love.

Courage

Definition: the quality of mind or spirit that enables a person to face difficulty, danger, pain, etc., without fear; bravery.

I remember when I was an adolescent struggling to find my identity. I never want to relive those years. People would say, “These are the best years of your life, Bryan!” I’m now 32 years old and I can honestly say those were NOT the best years of my life. Don’t get me wrong, I had a lot of fun and had some good times but I was terribly insecure. I was afraid and I wanted to show everyone that I was brave. I admired the kids who got into fights all the time because they seemed so unafraid. I admired people who seemed proficient in violence and I thought “if I could be like that, then I won’t be afraid.” I embraced forms of self-discipline as a means of empowerment and eventually became very involved in martial arts. I joined a club in college and would spar with people, get bruised and banged up, do push-ups on my knuckles and spend hours in the gym trying to get stronger. One time a friend of mine in college who I worked out with said “if Bryan had one left day to live on earth, he would spend at least half of that day getting better at Karate.” I took pride in that back in those days. I wanted to be the most disciplined person that all my friends knew. Now, I derive confidence and courage in a much different way.

This isn’t an ethical slam on martial arts or exercise – the problem was how I approached these things. I enjoy martial arts and exercise to a healthier degree nowadays. You see, I didn’t have any more courage inside despite being more disciplined and impressive to some people. People can do reckless things and jeopardize themselves and, according the definition that I pasted above, still somewhat fulfill the definition of courage. People put themselves at risk and face dangers all the time for the sake of their convictions - but does that mean they are brave? No, some would argue. People who put themselves at risk for the sake of an ignoble purpose are actually very much afraid and are driven by fear.  So, taking risks isn’t necessarily courageous in and of itself.

I thought about courage this week in regard to Jesus’s disciple, Peter. People who are remotely familiar with the Gospels know Peter for denying Jesus when asked if he was one of His followers. What’s interesting is that just hours before Peter emphatically denied the Lord to a servant girl, he was prepared to fight for him against Roman guards. I mean, Peter drew a sword and actually cut off a guard’s ear. That takes some guts, doesn’t it? I shudder when I am stopped for a speeding ticket and here is Peter standing up to Roman guards. Shortly before being arrested Jesus predicted that Peter would deny him three times and Peter couldn’t believe it. I think Peter honestly believed that he wouldn’t fail Jesus at the moment of testing. Peter was willing to fight against his enemies but was he ready to truly lay down his life? He was willing to do something reckless but was he brave?

Jesus told his disciples that in order to follow Him they would need to deny themselves, pick up their cross daily and follow Him. One of the many striking things to me about His statement is that He told them to do this before He went to the cross Himself for the sin of mankind. What a strange statement this must have been to the disciples. It’s evident that Peter didn’t understand this when those Roman guards came to take Jesus. Peter watched as Jesus embraced humiliation and suffering, crying out for forgiveness on behalf of those putting Him to death. Jesus also cried out that He was forsaken and there was a moment that the Bible says He actually “tasted death.” That is what the Bible calls a mystery. I will forever be confounded by the love that God expressed in the act of giving Himself up for me, but I comprehend this love personally because I recognize my own need for that love.

Getting back to Peter, Jesus later found Peter fishing after His resurrection from the dead and predicted a death that Peter would die. There would be a day that Peter would die for Jesus. There would be a day that Peter would love Jesus more than his own life. What Peter needed was to be broken of his own notions of devotion and bravery. Peter needed to learn by example what greatness in God’s sight really was. Jesus didn’t rebuke His disciples for wanting to be great; He simply told them and showed them what is truly great. Being great in God’s sight means putting God’s will above ours and putting others before ourselves. It means following what Jesus said even when it means people won’t understand it and even hate it – you may even get killed for it. I don’t know anything that takes as much courage as that.

I remember when I recognized that despite all that I did that was praiseworthy to other people, that I did not know the love of God. I was ashamed of an addiction to pornography and no amount of self-discipline could rid me of it. I was scared of facing what I saw inside myself. I remember when I heard someone talk about being in the kingdom of God through Christ and there was a part of me that was angry and offended but a part of me knew I was angry because it was true and it meant facing things that I didn’t want to face. I also remember feeling a sense that God was helping to see those things so that I could understand what He revealed in that one mysterious act on the cross. He revealed His love for me. If I could take what I experienced and give it to everyone I know, I would. No one loved me when I was both helpless AND their enemy. My addiction to pornography was broken that night. I’m not perfect and I am still tempted to lust just like anyone else but I had a strength that I didn’t have before and, by the grace of God, I never got entangled in that addiction again. I found courage and victory over the enemies that I could not defeat on my own through utter dependence on God.

Jesus isn’t just one religious teach among many to me (I don’t believe He left us with that option). I actually believe what the Bible says about Him: that He is the absolute source of all creation and the very expression of who God is and He became perfectly human to show us God and so that we might see what the highest revelation of man is. I believe that in order to be what God has truly destined me to be is to find myself in Him. To find courage as God defines it is to find it in Christ. It’s liberating to me that I don’t have to have what God desires from me in and of myself – I can go to Him time and time again and find what I need. I can shed what God never intended me to be and embrace who He made be to be. This is what it means to me to deny myself, pick up my cross and follow Him. There is nothing that will cost more but it will be infinitely more rewarding and fulfilling and it takes the courage that only God can provide.