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.