“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?