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Christians must discover contentment the old-fashioned way: We must learn it.
…It is commanded of us, but, paradoxically, it is created in us, not done by us. It is not the product of a series of actions, but of a renewed and transformed character.
…This seems a difficult principle for Christians today to grasp. Clear directives for Christian living are essential for us. But, sadly, much of the heavily pragmatic teaching in evangelicalism places such a premium on external doing and acheiving that character development is set at a discount. We live in the most pragmatic society on earth (if anyone can ‘do it,’ we can). It is painful to pride to discover that the Christian life is not rooted in what we can do, but in what we need done to us. -Sinclair Ferguson, In Christ Alone
The Christian life is anything but an exercise in self-will. The gospel message is the quintessential anti self-help message—a message that says we haven’t, we can’t, and we never will. We are powerless to save ourselves. And get this, we are unable to change ourselves.
We offer zilch.
Salvation is of the Lord. (-Jonah 2:9b, ESV)
A cruel reality for many of us is this: God helps those who can’t help themselves—a tough pill to swallow for us self-assured American believers who’ll beat ourselves to a pulp before we let anyone save us. But unless we can somehow, by the grace of God, let go of our efforts to save ourselves, we never were saved to begin with. How we need help!
As Ferguson reminds us, The Christian life is not rooted in what we can do, but in what we need done to us.
Helping ourselves isn’t even an option.
We need something we can’t provide.
Most of [us] think it’s very important that people think [we're] mature, pure and spiritual. I would suggest it’s far more important [we're] not. We’re so worried that our Christian witness will be hurt by our lack of obedience. That’s not true. Our witness will be hurt by a pretense of obedience. I don’t think I ever met a person who found Christ because a Christian was pure and righteous. More often it makes them think this thing is only for good people. As I understand it, we are only beggars who have found bread, pointing other beggars to the place where we found it. Disobedience hardly ever turns people from Christ. Dishonesty does.
-Steve Brown
We can’t liberate oursleves very well so what gives us the crazy notion that we can liberate another human being?
Faith in ourselves, the church, a patron saint, a creed, our prayers, or even an angel of heaven isn’t the freedom God gives—but rather it is the bondage of religion. Any other recipe for immediate rescue or road to heaven other than the One prescribed by God himself is destined to lead to death in every sense. Am I saying to my Catholic friends that you cannot find salvation in the sacraments, being Confirmed, giving up pizza for Lent or frequenting the confessional booth? Yes, I am. Am I suggesting to my reformed friends that we don’t place our hope in being dedicated as an infant, memorizing the Holy Scriptures or even being water baptized? Yes, I am.
These may be good, and even things our Lord Jesus commands—but to place our hope in our obedience is to negate our hope in the Cross. We must not forget the thief on the Cross who had not a minute to do anything but repent and believe. And Jesus wasn’t kidding around when he assured the scoundrel that he’d be in Paradise with him that very day.
You may ask—How do you know religion is worthless in saving anyone, Ken? I am aware that answering a question with a question is not proper or preferred in some circles but it’s appropriate to ask—Who has religion saved? Who has it delivered from the claws of sin and the faster than fast coming Judgement in which those who are not found in Christ will be thrown into the everlasting lake of fire?
Don’t put your life in the hands of experts
who know nothing of life, of salvation life.
Mere humans don’t have what it takes;
when they die, their projects die with them…
God frees prisoners—
he gives sight to the blind,
he lifts up the fallen… (Psalm 146:3-4, v8, The Message Bible)
Jesus is our only liberator.
Let me give you a principle: When Satan is going to deceive a believer, he first makes it religious. There are a lot of Christians who think that because someone quotes Bible verses and looks religious, it’s of God. That’s not true. The truth is that the most spiritual person you know probably isn’t and the least spiritual person could be a servant of God… sent to get you to be a little less religious. I hate religion and God does too. Religion is our effort to please God and find him. The Christian faith is God’s effort to get to us and tell us that, because of his Son, he is already pleased. The only people who made Jesus angry were not the winebibbers, the prostitutes and sinners. He was angry at the religious folks…
-Steve Brown
A question I have heard over the years goes something along the lines of Did Jesus come to introduce a new religion? The answer isn’t as tough as we might think.
The old adage If it ain’t broke don’t fix it couldn’t be more appropriate when it comes to religion. There are a good number of folks who are indifferent to religion and others who vehemently hate it. And then there who those so unfortunate to be addicted to it’s lure and happy within it’s confines and spell—these are the very kinds of folks who hung Jesus on the Cross (seeing that Jesus wasn’t an advocate for their religion).
Religion isn’t only broken—it’s condemned and never will be fixed.
Whatever your affection or disdain for religion—the truth is, religion has been broken from it’s inception. We make a mistake of mass calculations by assuming that Jesus came to reform or modify—replace—add to—or even offer an alternative to religion. He did nothing of the sort.
Now, in these last sentences, I want to emphasize in the bold scrawls of my personal handwriting the immense importance of what I have written to you. These people who are attempting to force the ways of circumcision on you have only one motive: They want an easy way to look good before others, lacking the courage to live by a faith that shares Christ’s suffering and death. All their talk about the law is gas. They themselves don’t keep the law! And they are highly selective in the laws they do observe. They only want you to be circumcised so they can boast of their success in recruiting you to their side. That is contemptible! (Galatians 6:11-13, The Message Bible)
God sent us Jesus to introduce himself whereas religion gives us hell.
Upon a life I did not live, upon a death I did not die; another’s life, another’s death, I stake my whole eternity.
Jesus is who we run to when we escape the clutches of religion.
I have some Christian brothers I will call them—who share my faith in Jesus and just happen to be very dear to my heart. I have written about these guys a time or two in days gone by. These are the same guys who hugged me when the one person I loved most in this life walked away from a lifetime together—and more painfully, from me—never to return.
These guys are true-blue guys. And what I mean by that is simply this: They are sports-minded, red-blooded, beer-drinking, and girl-liking guys (several are married mind you—so they would be one-girl-liking guys). I know I said they were Christian brothers—and to tell you the truth (I do write about Christian spirituality—you wouldn’t expect me to lie), I’m not so sure if I have ever met too many men over the course of my adult life that I have enjoyed the company of more than these guys. The group was born out of (at least in part) a shared discontentment with religion—it’s limitations, trappings, and barriers in regards to meaningful relationships. Religion can be very isolating and some of you reading this know very well what I am talking about. The group’s rise and success in large measure has been in simply responding to those recovering from the damaging effects of religion and a dire need for true community.
What I took away from my time with these guys was real—a new appreciation for the freedom Jesus came to bring us in his coming to earth two-thousand years ago.
I do have reason for pause however—my concern is that my friends don’t get so caught up in their new found comradeship and shared authenticity, humility, and anti-religious sentiment—that they leave Jesus in the dust in the process of their rebelling against toxic religion and in turn forget the very freedom they celebrated to begin with. We must never forget that true freedom begins at the foot of the Cross and that any lasting freedom must remain there to continue—to forget Jesus would be to abandon the very freedom of God.
To see Jesus is to look freedom in the face—in all it’s fullness.
There were some Greeks in town who had come up to worship at the Feast. They approached Philip, who was from Bethsaida in Galilee: ‘Sir, we want to see Jesus. Can you help us?’ (John 12:20-21, The Message Bible)
Do you want to see Jesus?
You can—he’s not hiding from you.
Freedom is transformative.
-President George W. Bush, May 1st, 2008 (Celebration of Asian Pacific American Heritage Month)
No matter your political persuasion—or non-persuasion—there is no arguing the effects that freedom can have on a country (of course it’s not so smooth at times or unopposed as we are seeing in other parts of the world—and then there are the blatant abuses of freedom here at home that may very well prove to be the undoing of our great democracy). More specifically though—I’d like to look at the impact that freedom can have on one solitary human heart.
Like the slave girl that Lincoln purchased (see previous post) and her subsequent decision to stay with him after learning she was free to go where ever she pleased—freedom is a liberating and moving force. Freedom has the power to transform a life like no other power on earth. Just ask a prisoner upon their release from prison.
God loves us with a love that sets us free.
15-16 We Jews know that we have no advantage of birth over ‘non-Jewish sinners.’ We know very well that we are not set right with God by rule-keeping but only through personal faith in Jesus Christ. How do we know? We tried it—and we had the best system of rules the world has ever seen! Convinced that no human being can please God by self-improvement, we believed in Jesus as the Messiah so that we might be set right before God by trusting in the Messiah, not by trying to be good. (Galatians 2:15-16, The Message Bible)
Some of us are up to our eyebrows in legalism—so caught up in the snares of rule-keeping that we don’t even bat an eyelash at it’s death-hold on us anymore.
The religion God promotes is never about rigid rules but it’s always about transforming freedom.
Sin will always keep you longer than you wanted to stay, make you pay more than you ever wanted to pay, and take you further than you ever intended to go.
-My friend Blaine Bartel
A few years ago I ran across a story that still moves me every time I read it. The story is re-counted in Steve Brown’s riveting book, A Scandalous Freedom.
Abraham Lincoln went to a slave market. There he noted a young, beautiful African-American woman being auctioned off to the highest offer. He bid on her and won. He could see the anger in the young woman’s eyes and could imagine what she was thinking, ’another white man will buy me, use me, and then discard me’.
As Lincoln walked off with his ‘property’, he turned to the woman and said, ‘You’re free’. ‘Yeah. What does that mean?’ she replied. ‘It means that you’re free.’ ‘Does it mean I can say whatever I want to say?’ ‘Yes,’ replied Lincoln, smiling, ‘it means you can say whatever you want to say.’ ‘Does it mean,’ she asked incredulously, ‘that I can be whatever I want to be?’ ‘Yes, you can be whatever you want to be.’ ‘Does it mean,’ the young woman said hesitantly, ‘that I can go wherever I want to go?’ ‘Yes, it means you are free and you can go wherever you want to go.’
‘Then,’ said the woman with tears welling up in her eyes, ‘I think I’ll go with you.’
Brown continues…
That is what God has done for us. It is what the Christian faith is all about. We have been bought with a price, the price of God’s own Son. We now have a new master, one who, once he paid the price, set us free.
Do you realize that you are free? Jesus never twists our arm—and he never does a hard-sell on us. He simply sets us free and lets us decide what we will do with that freedom. The question each of us must answer is: Will we turn and walk away—or will we, like the slave girl—follow him?
36 So if the Son sets you free, you will be free indeed. (John 8:36, ESV)
Every man must do two things alone; he must do his own believing and his own dying.
-Martin Luther
There is no salvation by osmosis.
We can’t bank on our spouses relationship with Jesus—and the same applies to our mom or anyone else for that matter. We may have the best pastor in our city—he can’t believe for us. God makes no provision for riding right on into heaven on someone else’s coattails. We must trust Christ for ourselves. The only coattails that can bring each one of us into right-standing with God are those of Jesus Christ and him crucified. It is the greatest miracle of all—a personal relationship with God through Jesus Christ his only Son—is by far unsurpassable.
Nicodemus, the secret seeker I will call him (he did come at night to speak to Jesus after all)—came to Jesus to find out more about the spiritual teachings of Jesus. Jesus didn’t waste any time with the prestigious and religious man.
3 Jesus answered him, ‘Truly, truly, I say to you, unless one is born again he cannot see the kingdom of God.’ 4 Nicodemus said to him, “How can a man be born when he is old? Can he enter a second time into his mother’s womb and be born?” 5 Jesus answered, ‘Truly, truly, I say to you, unless one is born of water and the Spirit, he cannot enter the kingdom of God.’ (John 3:3-5, ESV)
Notice that Jesus didn’t inform him that one of his contemporaries could stand in proxy for him.
You must be born again.
The guy you sit next to at work can’t pass his relationship with God over to you like he might his sandwich he offers to share with you. Sitting in a garage won’t make you a car. Hanging out in the locker room of your favorite NFL football team won’t make you a professional football star.
The prophet Ezekiel faced a people caught up with the notion that somehow they wouldn’t personally be held accountable for their own sin. They were tossing around a saying quite regularly along the lines that suggested that sons somehow were not responsible for their own sins because of their fathers sins. God wasn’t going to have any of it any longer—he instructed Ezekiel to warn the people—”As sure as I’m the living God, you’re not going to repeat this saying in Israel any longer. Every soul—man, woman, child—belongs to me, parent and child alike. You die for your own sin, not another’s (The Message Bible).”
We will each stand by our lonesome before the judgement seat of Christ and we won’t be given the opportunity to blame our fathers for our own dis-belief when it came to Jesus Christ.
No one else can have faith in Jesus for you—you must have a personal relationship with Jesus for yourself.
Anything that one imagines of God apart from Christ is only useless thinking and vain idolatry.
-Martin Luther
As we discussed yesterday—Jesus is the Savior, not the judge, for those who trust in him alone. And yes—the news is most terrible for those who don’t.
If you have ever been married you understand the need for exclusivity. Most marriages that are more than simple arrangements won’t last if not. The vast majority of husbands don’t want their wives having a pool boy and the same applies to wives—they won’t tolerate a mistress. If you want your marriage to last—let alone enjoy a good one—there’s only room for one.
I recently watched the film Fracture which featured Anthony Hopkins (a favorite of mine). Hopkins plays a husband who catches his wife in an affair only to have her lie to his face about it—he then murders her in cold blood and ends up framing her lover who just so happens to be the detective who arrives on the crime scene. You’ll have to watch the movie to find out how it turns out.
Some things don’t leave room for two.
The exclusivity presented in the Gospel and the subsequent Epistles of Paul and others goes directly against the grain of modern thought—that thought which runs rampant and says there are many paths to God. There is no tolerance within the Scriptures—or biblical Christianity I’d say—for any such notions of plurality when it comes to salvation. When it comes to Who we must get to heaven by trusting solely we can’t have Buddha and Jesus—or even Jesus and Mary for that matter.
You don’t have to go any further than the most popular television personality on the planet to get a dose of what I am talking about. Oprah shares her views openly:
One of the biggest mistakes humans can make is to believe there is only one way. Actually, there are many diverse paths leading to what you call God.
He says I am the way–not one of several diverse paths.
11 ‘This Jesus is the stone that was rejected by you, the builders, which has become the cornerstone. 12 And there is salvation in no one else, for there is no other name under heaven given among men by which we must be saved.’ (Acts 4:11-12, ESV)
The gate remains narrow—It’s Jesus plus no one.
I have come into the world as light, so that whoever believes in me may not remain in darkness. If anyone hears my words and does not keep them, I do not judge him; for I did not come to judge the world but to save the world. The one who rejects me and does not receive my words has a judge; the word that I have spoken will judge him on the last day. -Jesus Christ (John 12:46-48, ESV)
Jesus didn’t come to condemn the world—it’s already condemned.
We can remain right where we always have been—in darkness—or we can come to Jesus. It gets no plainer than that. I remember coming to Jesus the first time. And now it is a way of life.
I can’t count the times he came to me.
That Jesus didn’t come to point fingers at all of us sinners may not sound like news, but it is. It’s news that needs repeating over and over and over again. We can be sure that to present Jesus as the one who will forgive us no matter what—even if we fail to trust him—is not to present Jesus at all. But presenting Jesus as the grand condemner as the soap-box preachers do—as some sort of hell-bent nut intent on sending as many people to hell as possible—isn’t the Jesus of the Bible either. But the good news will never change no matter who attempts to re-write it—Jesus came to save sinners and to somehow make saints out of them—not to throw stones at them. John 3:16 could easily be the most recited verse in the Bible—but the verse that follows is as good as any in the Holy Scriptures.
For God did not send his Son into the world to condemn the world, but in order that the world might be saved through him. (John 3:17, ESV)
He came to save those who would simply trust him enough to come to him.
Period.
For those of us who wish to put Jesus into a box and somehow fit him into the small ideas we have about him—we need to think again.
God is willing to go to the length of suffering and dying to enter into fellowship with man. There is a misunderstanding of the Christian doctrine of atonement that goes something like this: God is an angry God, angry at men because men have sinned, and he decides to condemn mankind; but Christ intercedes for man, and God’s vengeance is sated by punishing Christ instead. Although this is a travesty of the Christian position it has unfortunately been too often suggested by interpreters of the atonement as well as by their critics.
-Robert McAfee Brown, P. T. Forsyth: Prophet For Today
There is a common misconception I find that many young people—and some of us aged folks—hold on to. It is the notion that God is up in heaven storming mad and just itching to do something about it (as if he couldn’t if he wanted to). It’s the assertion that somehow Jesus’ visit to earth was an afterthought (a sort of plan b), or that it was God’s attempt to somehow mop up his mess—mankind that is.
Brown continues:
But Forsyth, who said, “The doctrine of grace and the doctrine of the atonement are identical,” the true interpretation is that the atonement flows from grace, it does not “procure” grace. This extremely important insight means that our reading of the atonement is more like this: Because God loves men, he suffers on their behalf, bears himself the weight of their wrongdoing, and this restores fellowship, or reconciles. Grace is not something Christ earned for us from God; grace is rather something God gave us in Christ. “Do not say: ‘God is love. Why atone?’ Say: ‘God has atoned. What love!’
I don’t often repeat the same exact words in a blog entry mind you (on purpose anyways)—but these bear repeating… “Because God loves men, he suffers on their behalf, bears himself the weight of their wrongdoing, and this restores fellowship, or reconciles. Grace is not something Christ earned for us from God; grace is rather something God gave us in Christ.”
What we must not do is think that God the Father and Jesus his Son are at odds with one another—they weren’t—they aren’t—and they won’t be. They are one in the same and God the Father was the one who sent his Son Jesus here in the first place and all because he—just like his Son—loved us.
16 Now may our Lord Jesus Christ himself, and God our Father, who loved us and gave us eternal comfort and good hope through grace, 17 comfort your hearts and establish them in every good work and word. (2 Thessalonians 2:16-17, ESV)
Just as I am, poor, wretched, blind;
Sight, riches, healing of the mind,
Yea, all I need in Thee to find,
O Lamb of God, I come, I come.
-Lyrics from hymn—Just as I Am (Charlotte Elliott)
We never come to Jesus with our shirt pressed and our shoes shined. We are more like an unkept and destitute beggar when we finally call out to Jesus. Very few of us ever come before we have tasted the pleasures of sin for a season. It takes looking—and unsuccessfully—for salvation in things, power, money, and people we look up to before we are resigned to surrender.
And when we do—the relief is unspeakable.
15 The saying is trustworthy and deserving of full acceptance, that Christ Jesus came into the world to save sinners… (1 Timothy 1:15a, ESV)
If you ever attended a Billy Graham Crusade or have seen one on television—you have no doubt heard the hymn—Just as I Am. For every television tele-evangelist phony, Billy Graham has served as proof year after year that men of God do exist and that not every popular preacher has to sell snake oil, have goofy hair, make pitiful appeals for cash, have a corny smile, worhip a positive attitude, or have a Jesus-less message.
The former slave trader John Newton and mentor to William Wiberforce came to Jesus just as he was. Newton was a terrible sinner and a man with unclean hands—a life defined by abuse and filth (you don’t have to trust me—he tells on himself in his own writings). After a miraculous conversion, Newton went on to write the most widely sung hymn of all-time—Amazing Grace. Newton lived to be eighty-two years old and mantained an active ministry until he was laid up by failing health the last two years of his life.
Newton—unshaken in his faith before his death—told his friends:
My memory is nearly gone; but I remember two things; That I am a great sinner, and that Christ is a great Saviour.
If John Newton could come as he was—there’s no sin too great and no person too bad to simply come, and come just as we are.
Jesus hasn’t turned anyone away yet and he’s not looking to start.
Christ, however, declares here: ‘Let it be your one concern to come to Me and to have the grace to hold, to believe, and to be sure in your heart that I was sent into the world for your sake, that I carried out the will of My Father and was sacrificed for your atonement, righteousness, sanctification, and redemption, and bore all punishment for you. If you believe this, do not fear. I do not want to be your judge, executioner, or jailer, but your Savior and Mediator, yes, your kind, loving Brother and good Friend. But you must abandon your work-righteousness and remain with Me in firm faith.’
– Martin Luther, Luther’s Works, Vol. 23: Sermons on the Gospel of St. John: Chapters 6-8
We can have our cake and eat it too when it comes to some things. When it comes to the salvation of our souls—it’s one way or no way. You can’t cling to Jesus and to your good works. One will save you while the other will see to it that you are lost.
Jesus won’t be a part of any equation—he is the equation or he acts as the gavel. And it’s not only our good works we can’t trust—it’s the good works of any one we might assume one-ups us in the good works department (or two-ups us for that matter). For some of us to find someone else to trust in besides ourselves it might not be too tall of an order, for others, well—I hope you see the light. I realize that to say that Jesus is in a class of his own may not sit well with my friends who’d like to seat Buddha—Mohamand—Joseph Smith—or the Jonas Brothers on the same platform with Jesus. While Jesus will stoop down and wash the feet of his followers, make no mistake—Jesus doesn’t share a platform with anyone. Being politically correct never was Jesus’ strong-suit. The day is coming when Mary—Moses—Pope-whoever—and Mahatma Gandhi will all kneel before Jesus.
16 ‘For God so loved the world, that he gave his only Son, that whoever believes in him should not perish but have eternal life. (John 3:16, ESV)
We read that and we can think I have that down. But like the item we are looking for on the shelf and cannot see because we are almost on top of it (which just so happens to be staring us square smack-dab between the eyes)—we need only step back and look at the verse from a healthy distance to see it as it is. It might be quoted so much for a reason. The simplicity of the gospel message is so simple we feel some insatiable desire to complicate it. God said we must believe in Jesus—of course the belief that results in salvation takes on the form of more than mere agreement. I’m not going to expound on dead faith (the same kind that Satan himself has and will condemn us) or living faith (the kind that only Jesus can author and serves to save us) here in this entry—but there is a world of difference. But what I want to point out here is that God makes no provision for trusting ourselves one iota for our own salvation—or anyone else for that matter.
God doesn’t give us three curtains to pick behind when it comes to our eternal destiny. There is no secret about who or what it is that God has selected to provide rescue from the entire weight of our sin. He didn’t let his Son be crucified in some remote location for no one to see, rather—he set him on the top of a hill so all would witness. Don’t you think if God intended for us to trust anyone or anything other than Jesus for our salvation he would have told us? Jesus is the only Savior we need—all others we must detest.
And that includes every last effort on our part to save ourselves.
Jesus is the curtain, the stage, and the entire play.
There is one case of death-bed repentance recorded, that of the penitent thief, that none should despair; and only one, that none should presume.
-Augustine
Presuming we can deal with Jesus some other day is something that we do. Admit it or not—we have done it.
And we still presume that Jesus can wait.
Jesus comes and presents us with himself—plain and simple—in his majesty and splendor. He can be dramatic, but more often than not he’s almost subtle about it. Unlike us, he’s not pushy or overbearing. While we can be sure he is strong—he is gentle in his approach. And he doesn’t make us come—although, he does have his ways to help make us willing. It’s a rather stark contrast between Jesus and our other choices you know. I will confess that I deal with this daily—so if you were looking for company—you have it. If you were looking for good company—don’t push it.
You see, Jesus always calls us to follow him today rather than putting him off until a rainy day. I think we presume that following Jesus means joining the local convent or taking an oath of celibacy—and I suppose it could. But I think often times we make following Jesus—not easier—but much more complicated than it actually is.
Buechner writes in Beyond Words,
For the best to happen, the worst must stop happening—the worst we are, the worst we do. But maybe it isn’t as difficult as it sounds. It was a hardened criminal within minutes of death, after all, who said only, ‘Jesus, remember me,’ and that turned out to be enough. ‘This day you will be with me in paradise’ was the answer he just managed to hear.
The unrepentant thief missed Jesus entirely while the believing one realized the urgency in today—he knew he couldn’t presume he had tomorrow.
4 Show me, O LORD, my life’s end
and the number of my days;
let me know how fleeting is my life. (Psalm 39:4, ESV)
Teach us Lord—to presume not that our days are not somehow numbered.
Whatever your heart clings to and confides in, that is really your God.
-Martin Luther
I pledge allegiance to Jesus Christ.
It’s always bothered me to pledge allegiance to a country that can neither save my soul or secure my future. While I’m an American, in no way do I consider God and country in the same ball park. Hey, I’m all for baseball, hot dogs, and apple pie—although I do prefer a nice import to a Chevrolet (go figure—I was born and raised in the Motor City).
America is the land of the free but she didn’t die an innocent death at the hands of sinners on my behalf so that I could be forgiven an ocean liner full of sins. I could be living in a poorer than poor remote third world country and Jesus would still be the Savior of mankind—America or no America.
25 Now great crowds accompanied him, and he turned and said to them, 26 ‘If anyone comes to me and does not hate his own father and mother and wife and children and brothers and sisters, yes, and even his own life, he cannot be my disciple. 27 Whoever does not bear his own cross and come after me cannot be my disciple…’ (Luke 14:25-27, ESV)
Wow. Pretty tough talk there. Jesus wasn’t fooling around and after considering the rest of what he taught—you might get the idea he is delusional without a further look into what he was really saying here. What Jesus isn’t advocating or sanctioning is—hate for ones’ family (let alone anyone else). We know that by the whole of what he teaches elsewhere. Bear in mind, this is the same Jesus who taught his followers to not only love their neighbors but to love their enemies—to not only turn the other cheek but to offer your abuser the shirt off your back. He wouldn’t possibly then turn around and shoot out the other side of his mouth Oh, and while your at it—hate your families.
No—Jesus is saying nothing of the sort. What Jesus is saying is this: Nothing and no one should compete for our allegiance to him—not our jobs—not our money—not our pleasures—not our passions (such as writing or our yoga class)—not our country—not even our families.
In comparison to him—we should hate all others.
…Indeed if we consider the unblushing promise of reward and the staggering nature of the rewards promised in the Gospels, it would seem that our Lord finds our desires not too strong, but too weak. We are half-hearted creatures, fooling about with drink and sex and ambition when infinite joy is offered us, like an ignorant child who wants to go on making mud pies in a slum because he cannot imagine what is meant by the offer of a holiday at the sea. We are far too easily pleased.
-C.S. Lewis (The Weight of Glory)
There is a tendency I find myself falling prey to on occasion. It is the temptation to succumb to the misguided and hell-derived notion that I have to wait until the sun comes out again to enjoy my life—that I have to be miserable until I somehow miraculously get a set of six-pack-abs by doing a few piddly push-ups a day (too much pasta for that to happen)—that I must settle for mediocre living (at the very best) until I can afford to get my bad tooth fixed—or that I can’t find satisfaction in simply trusting Jesus with all of my worries and tomorrows until I have all the answers lined up in some sort of neat little row.
Waiting until I’m a perfect writer to share my gift with a stranger in need of water who is desperately thirsty is one sure-fire way to guarantee I’ll never begin at all.
Jesus never said he came to bring us a full life when we got it all together—not until we straightened out our sorry living or cleaned up our sloppy act. He never hinted that some of us would be the unlucky ones or fall into the category of those less fortunate. He didn’t spell out a secret code that only a handful of spiritually-minded intellectuals would be so smart to figure out that would simultaneously result in their being the ones to live a fairy-tale life riding off into the sunset with a trailer filled with gold hitched to their buggy—arm and arm with their trophy wife (or Mr. Wonderful for that matter)—while the rest of us were subjected to staying at home as we mopped the floors, changed the diapers, and did the dishes.
No—he didn’t say anything of the sort.
10 The thief comes only to steal and kill and destroy. I came that they may have life and have it abundantly. (John 10:10, ESV)
Jesus was referring to those who know him in the context of the conversation he was having when he spoke those powerful words of life—not those who don’t know him. The million dollar question always is—do you? Because if you do know him, he never had anything less in mind for you.
One word to the wise though—you can’t find that life anywhere else but in Jesus.
And don’t fall victim to the seductive temptation that says you can.
Everyone needs compassion
A love that’s never failing
Let mercy fall on me
Everyone needs forgiveness
A kindness of a Savior
The hope of nations
-Lyrics by Hillsong Australia
People don’t long for religion. They don’t desire rules. They don’t hunger for dogma. And they don’t want to be told who to vote for in the Election this fall.
Jesus isn’t merely the hope of America—he remains the hope of mankind. You can have your preferences or even your convictions—although I’d argue we value much too much that which God doesn’t value and value much too little that which he does. It’s all fine and good if I like green and you like blue. Maybe you like loud music and I like it soft. It’s no matter if you prefer sherbet over ice cream. For all it matters you might like liver, spinach, sushi, and sardines.
It doesn’t matter.
People need a Savior and our culture isn’t about to deliver them one. The world hasn’t delivered on it’s hollow sham promises to provide a quasi savior yet and it’s not about to.
No other savior will do. Do you believe that? The Scriptures couldn’t be any clearer. When we will stop trying to convert people to our way of thinking or our way of doing things? If there is room for James Dobson and Bono within the ranks of our members what makes us think this movement that never ceases—despite man’s best efforts to kill it—is about personalities?
It’s never been about my ideas, your ideas, or Barack Obama’s ideas. Truth be told—we have passed out plenty of opinions to date.
22 And have mercy on those who doubt; 23 save others by snatching them out of the fire; to others show mercy with fear, hating even the garment stained by the flesh.
24 Now to him who is able to keep you from stumbling and to present you blameless before the presence of his glory with great joy, 25 to the only God, our Savior, through Jesus Christ our Lord, be glory, majesty, dominion, and authority, before all time and now and forever. Amen. (Jude 1:22-25, ESV)
It’s all about Jesus—and it’s about time we start acting like it.
…my faithful request and admonition is that you join our company and associate with us, who are real, great and hard-boiled sinners. You must not, by no means, make Christ to seem paltry and trifling to us, as though He could be our helper only when we want to be rid of imaginary, nominal and childish sins. No! No! That would not be good for us. He must rather be a Savior and Redeemer from real, great, grievous and damnable transgressions and iniquities, yea, and from the very greatest and most shocking sins; to be brief, from all sins added together in a grand total… Dr. Staupitz [Luther's mentor] comforted me on a certain occasion when I was in the same hospital and suffering the same affliction as you, by addressing me thus; Aha! you want to be a painted [meaning having a good external appearance] sinner, and accordingly, expect to have in Christ a painted savior. You will have to get used to the belief that Christ is a real Savior and you a real sinner. For God is neither jesting nor dealing in imaginary affairs, but He was greatly and most assuredly in earnest when He sent His own Son into the world and sacrificed Him for our sakes.
-Martin Luther, (in a letter to his dear contemporary George Spalatin after learning of counsel Spalatin had given someone which proved to be sinful advice—which Spalatin was then heart-broken over).
The above account reminds me of a story former Presidential (Nixon) aide Chuck Colson shares (who now heads Prison Fellowship—which reaches inmates and their families across the globe in 112 countries with the Gospel of Jesus Christ). Colson re-counts of a man approaching him after he had finished up a speech. The man was considerably offended by Colson’s portrait of each of us as sinners as Colson tells it and decided he’d take Colson to task. Colson heard the man out and responded, “I have more in common with Adolf Hitler than Jesus.”
We need pardon no less than Hitler needed it.
King David understood this—he prayed to the Lord after his adultery covered up by a carefully executed murder:
1 Have mercy on me, O God, according to your steadfast love; according to your abundant mercy blot out my transgressions. 2 Wash me thoroughly from my iniquity, and cleanse me from my sin!
3For I know my transgressions, and my sin is ever before me. (Psalm 51:1-3, ESV)
If God forgives any of our sins he forgives the worst of them. Jesus wasn’t given up as the peace child on account of our trivial or minor offenses—no—it was for our real offenses. Trivial sin is our idea—each and every sin is serious and grave business with God. If you took your smallest infraction it would have been quite enough to require the payment of God’s very own Son.
In other words—there are no misdemeanors with God—only felonies.
Is the prayer of your heart as David’s was?
Wash me thoroughly from my iniquity, and cleanse me from my sin!
The effort to repay God, in the ordinary way we pay creditors, would nullify grace and turn it into a business transaction. If we see acts of obedience as installment payments, we make grace into a mortgage… Let us not say that grace creates debts; let us say that grace pays debts.
-John Piper (Future Grace)
Okay—are we done demanding God be fair yet?
John Piper calls it the debtor’s ethic and makes a powerful case for approaching God and his loving-kindness altogether differently than many of us have been taught. One of the traps of feeling like we deserve something so undeserved as forgiveness is the subsequent feelings of being somehow entitled to favorite pet sins as a sort of consolation for our good time—it’s a God will understand mentality which never fails to result in our engaging in a lifestyle or activities that don’t serve God, ourselves, or others well.
When we approach God’s forgiveness or any of the benefits of his grace and mercy with an approach of anything other than a gift—we slip into approaching God as some big cosmic scale up in the sky and we somehow justify our giving him anything less than all of us (or worse yet—a measly 10%). We are his, and everything we have was given to us by him if we remember rightly (aren’t we stewards rather than owners?). We reason that it is plenty for us to give God six of the seven days within our week—I should get at least one day to have my time the reasoning goes. A heart set free by true forgiveness says What mercy God has given me!—is there any sacrifice too great for me to give back to him?
Do you see the distinct difference?
The forgiveness we receive in Christ is a net result of the liberating grace of God. Grace is all gift—no re-payment necessary. And so it is with forgiveness since it is one of the fruits of grace after all.
1 What then shall we say was gained by Abraham, our forefather according to the flesh? 2 For if Abraham was justified by works, he has something to boast about, but not before God. 3 For what does the Scripture say? ‘Abraham believed God, and it was counted to him as righteousness.’ 4 Now to the one who works, his wages are not counted as a gift but as his due. 5 And to the one who does not work but believes in him who justifies the ungodly, his faith is counted as righteousness, 6 just as David also speaks of the blessing of the one to whom God counts righteousness apart from works: 7 ‘Blessed are those whose lawless deeds are forgiven, and whose sins are covered; 8 blessed is the man against whom the Lord will not count his sin.’ (Romans 4:1-8, ESV)
Do we live in this kind of faith—a belief that we haven’t earned an ounce of the forgiveness that Jesus provided for us through his sinless life and by sacrificing his very life in our place?
Giving back to God is the response of a heart set free—paying him back isn’t.
Like it or not—we are debt free.
Your sins are erased
And they are no more
They’re out on the ocean floor… ~Ocean Floor, Audio Adrenaline
The harsh charges have been read: High Crimes Against Heaven. The incriminating evidence has been plainly and painfully presented against you. The many witnesses have marched forward. The clear argument has passionately been made—the prosecution has spoken. The defense has rested as it never got started—you didn’t have a prayer. The jury has deliberated and rendered a verdict.
Eternal Sentence—with no possibility of parole.
You didn’t stand a snowballs chance in Gehenna.
13And you, who were dead in your trespasses and the uncircumcision of your flesh, God made alive together with him, having forgiven us all our trespasses, 14 by canceling the record of debt that stood against us with its legal demands. This he set aside, nailing it to the cross. 15He disarmed the rulers and authorities and put them to open shame, by triumphing over them in him (Colossians 2:13-15, ESV).
Jesus didn’t suffer and die with plans to forgive some of your sins. He didn’t hang on a cross out in the scorching afternoon sun with crusted blood clinging on to every inch of his body in hopes to forgive most of your sins. He didn’t withstand the ultimate humiliation and mockery so that every sin you have ever committed and will ever commit—except for your worst one—would be forgiven.
He paid for all of them.
Your case is closed—never to be re-opened.
This evil is planted in all human hearts by nature: If God were willing to sell His grace, we would accept it more quickly and gladly than when He offers it for nothing. ~Martin Luther
So if forgiveness is free and subsequently can’t be purchased for any price—just who is it that gets the gift of forgiveness? Do the worthy receive forgiveness? Certainly not—there’s none of those. And if there were what would they need forgiveness for? Forgiveness is for sinners. That must mean it’s the unworthy who get forgiven. In many cases it is those most unworthy who get to go free with Jesus after all (a clumsy reading of the New Testament would suffice in making that case). So, yes, the unworthy recieve forgiveness. But does everyone who is unworthy get forgiven? That would mean we all get pardoned. If that is the case, can we all just be extra bad and bank on being forgiven—right? Not hardly.
If you can be squeaky clean and still not be forgiven don’t think for a mili-second that you can be bad to the bone and slide by (let me add that the Bible teaches that we are all “bad” in and of ourselves contrary to what 99% of us think about ourselves). I may be one of a small number re-stating what the Bible says on this but it’s not going to stop me from saying it—God alone is good and any goodness we possess is from him. End of story.
Just because you desperately need forgiveness doesn’t guarantee your receiving it. I may need a new liver but just the fact that I need one doesn’t secure my recieving one. The bible makes it clear that not all come to a saving knowledge of Jesus—not everyone has their sins forgiven. We will be spared the eternal penalty for our sin—because we have been forgiven. Basic I know—but it bears repeating. This all goes back to the fact that we are forgiven and get to go to heaven based on nothing we did (i.e. the thief on the cross with his mountain of sin the size of Mt. Everest being fully forgiven).
It all comes down to getting what we don’t deserve, not who sins less. Not fair! we protest. Re-consider before you jump off that cliff.
8 The LORD is merciful and gracious, slow to anger and abounding in steadfast love. 9 He will not always chide, nor will he keep his anger forever. 10 He does not deal with us according to our sins, nor repay us according to our iniquities. 11 For as high as the heavens are above the earth, so great is his steadfast love toward those who fear him; 12 as far as the east is from the west, so far does he remove our transgressions from us. ~Psalm 103:8-12, ESV
Just imagine for one brief moment what you’d get if God were fair. God doesn’t forgive us because he’s fair, he forgives us because he is full of grace. If God were fair we’d all have a one way bus ticket to an eternal lake of fire. The bible teaches that God is just, it doesn’t make a case for his fairness. Are you scratching your head asking questions? That might be a good thing if it’s not dandruff.
We haven’t been forgiven by God because the world owes us or because God is fair or because we deserve it.
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