Love is eternal because it does not depend on attributes

This is a response to an absolutely fascinating post by a guy named Peter Rollins. You can and should read his original post here:
peterrollins.net/blog/?p=1231

It really got me thinking about some of the foundational aspects of grace and love, so I wanted to post my response on my own blog as a matter of record.

I really enjoyed this. I heard a radio DJ in Vancouver BC read the jacket notes after playing Berlioz's Symphonie Fantastique, talking about his Idee Fixe - that it was about a love so great that it pined eternally and forgave everything. I can't stand Berlioz, but I walked on clouds for days thinking that this is the kind of love God has loved me with. It is ironic that for most of us, the great love of God seems to be a vapor compared to romantic love, whereas romantic love is actually only a shadow or icon of the love of God for us. It is also another reason why in Christ we leave the universe of requirement and enter the universe of grace. Under law we maintain relationship by maintaining the necessary attributes to prevent rejection. Grace goes beyond accepting relationship based on adherence to certain traits, and enters into love based on pure identity. We become His sacred x, his pearl of great price for which He sells all else.

As to the criticism that it seems specious to define love as only that which loves always without defining attributes, this is actually the strongest idea in the piece. If love depends on attributes, it is not love but earned credit. If it does not need attributes but is based entirely on identity, then since nothing can be earned, nothing can be lost, and it becomes eternal. This is why, when Paul lists his huge list of unpardonable offenses in 1Cor 6 (aberrant sexualities and slander and greed and such), he follows immediately with "All things are lawful, but not all things are profitable." The relationship which is defined by admiration of attributes is subject to a perfection of behaviors, but the relationship which is defined by grace is defined by pure love based on direct identity.

Thanks again, loved the ideas in this one.

homosexuals and gossips

This is a response to a list of 'problem' verses that seem to indicate that Paul doesn't really mean it when he talks about grace. My friend Kim Dickson (who is a wonderful Christian woman, and with a beautiful spirit of free dialog and exploration for truth) posted this verse in the midst of a lengthy dialog. It is part of a legitimate question about whether the Bible really does teach grace the way I am describing, and I am glad to explore it. Here is the verse:

"Do not be deceived: Neither the sexually immoral nor idolaters nor adulterers nor male prostitutes nor homosexual offenders nor thieves nor the greedy nor drunkards nor slanderers nor swindlers will inherit the kingdom of God. And that is what some of you were. But you were washed, you were sanctified, you were justified in the name of the Lord Jesus Christ and by the Spirit of our God." 1 Corinthians 6:9-11

The question at hand is, how does the idea that a slanderer or an adulterer (and all those other obviously sinful people) should not inherit the kingdom of God fit with Paul's message in the following verse?

“There is therefore now no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus. For the law of the Spirit of life in Christ Jesus has set you free from the law of sin and of death. For what the Law could not do, weak as it was through the flesh, God did: sending His own Son in the likeness of sinful flesh and as an offering for sin, He condemned sin in the flesh, in order that the requirement of the Law might be fulfilled in us, who do not walk according to the flesh, but according to the Spirit.” Romans 8:1-4, NASB.

If there is therefore no condemnation, if we are free from the law of sin and of death, then how come greedy people and slanderers are not going to heaven? Perhaps Paul is schizophrenic, or crazy, or he just forgot about the grace message when he was writing this other thing. Let's get one thing straight: this is not a Jim McNeely issue, it is a "we haven't quite bothered to understand how Paul's mind works" issue. If we are coming to this trying to prove some doctrine wrong or some other doctrine right, instead of coming in search of actual truth, we will get nowhere. We must come to a unity in interpreting Paul's thought that does not twist scripture to our own ends. Are you willing to listen, to think, to change your mind? Are we all involved in a reckless and ruthless search for the real truth here? Are we going to go on being lazy about this?

If we go with the idea that Paul is not schizophrenic, and that there is a unity of thought to his writings, we need to look at Paul's general message and Paul's intent and circumstance in writing to the Corinthians. In the book of Romans, Paul had never been to Rome, the nerve center of civilization at the time, and he wanted to make sure he outlined a full explanation of the gospel from beginning to end. The Corinthian letters are different; Paul had spent a lot of time with these people, and he was writing a pastoral letter to address some specific and thorny problems. Corinth was a very carnal city and not only were there a lot of temptations there, several within the church tended to succumb to these temptations.

Now, the verse we looked at in Galatians is very useful to solve our problem:

“For you were called to freedom, brethren; only do not turn your freedom into an opportunity for the flesh, but through love serve one another.” Galatians 5:13, NASB.

Like the Galatians, the Corinthian believers are also called to freedom. If someone is a Christian, born of the Spirit and standing in grace, fruit will begin to bud and form such as love and joy and patience and kindness and such.

Under the law, the freedom of grace looks like license to sin. Under grace, sin looks like a really dumb way to spend your freedom. Paul is saying, you can tell when someone is posing, when they really aren't under grace, when they simply do not get it, because they are drawn to the forbidden! Under the law, if you say, you can't have sex with THAT, the fleshly part of you says, wow, that sounds EXCITING! I want to break out of this prison of prim properness and really live! Grace says, go ahead, you are allowed to do anything, do as you wish, you are eternally loved. You come into your right mind and say, REALLY?! Actually, I don't think I want any of that, gross! I'm actually really blessed right now, and sin takes me to places I don't like. I prefer to be happy and honorable and to live with dignity - why not?

This is all too simplistic though, right? It can't work without a threat. There has to be some kind of consequence for sin! Are we preaching some kind of universal salvation? Let's take another look at this same verse, but this time, let's include a tiny bit of context:

“Or do you not know that the unrighteous shall not inherit the kingdom of God? Do not be deceived; neither fornicators, nor idolaters, nor adulterers, nor effeminate, nor homosexuals, nor thieves, nor the covetous, nor drunkards, nor revilers, nor swindlers, shall inherit the kingdom of God. And such were some of you; but you were washed, but you were sanctified, but you were justified in the name of the Lord Jesus Christ, and in the Spirit of our God. All things are lawful for me, but not all things are profitable. All things are lawful for me, but I will not be mastered by anything.” 1 Corinthians 6:9-12, NASB.

Notice that last sentence which I included this time. "ALL THINGS ARE LAWFUL FOR ME!" We don't need to thumb over to some other book or context to see this, it is in the same direct stream of thought as our 'problem' verse! It is the very next verse, nestled in the whole section on how terrible sexual sins are! What are these things that are lawful? What is he saying? The simple context would indicate that he is talking about fornication, idolatry, homosexuality, coveting, drinking to excess, swindling, etc. But didn't he just say that those who do these things should not inherit the kingdom of God? Is Paul crazy? All of the sudden he is saying you can do anything, but you might want to avoid sex with goats because it isn't profitable!

I want to pause here and note something. If your idea of salvation, your idea of what the Christian gospel really is, leads you to chop off this last verse, then you are really really really not getting it. The mindset of grace just looks at things differently. For example, look at a verse like Romans 6:23:

“For the wages of sin is death, but the free gift of God is eternal life in Christ Jesus our Lord.” Romans 6:23, NASB.

If you think, "SEE! Wages of sin is death! We should stop sinning! Wages of sin is death!" You are totally missing it. The law is about earning favor by your behavior, you earn WAGES. Grace says, "SEE! Free gift! Free gift! eternal life!! WOO HOO its FREEEEEEE!!"

Here's another example:

“No one who abides in Him sins; no one who sins has seen Him or knows Him.” 1 John 3:6, NASB.

Under the law, you think, "SEE! stop sinning or you don't abide in Him!" Whereas grace says, "SEE! abide in Him, and sin falls off of you easily! Abide in Him! Know Him! It's great!"

Look again at our problem verse. What is the difference between the swindlers and revilers and fornicators and Christians? Is it primarily that they stopped reviling? NO, we don't have the power to just stop doing these things and the specifics are peripheral anyway. Grace is an umbrella term for a supernatural work of God in a sinner's life. Forgiveness is included in the package. So is washing. Because forgiveness is real, it allows you to see how rotten your sinfulness is, and to actually really want cleansing. This is heart-level change, born of a supernatural work. It includes justification AND sanctification, and it includes the idea that GOD DID SOMETHING in the midst of a troubled soul. There is a supernatural God-initiated change in a person. Law wants to strip the supernatural from the equation. If someone has this supernatural work of forgiveness and cleansing, there is no question it will be obvious in their life. There will be a great joy, and the interest in the things the law forbids will drop off.

So, it is not the specific behaviors themselves which prevent an individual from entering the kingdom of heaven. It is the disbelief in grace, the fascination and love for the forbidden. It is the dependence on self, the lack of the supernatural. It is the heart which seeks earnestly that which is NOT heaven. It is the heart which, led on by the exciting forbiddenness of evil, finds heaven and its freedom boring.

There is an issue of identity going on here. It is not individual behaviors which are at issue, but what you are. There is a difference between having a drink and being a drunkard. That difference has everything to do with your stance on the grace of God. He says, SUCH WERE some of you. We need this leeway because if we are going to minister among real sinners, (like, for example, ME), we are going to need some wiggle room to say they were washed but they still get their feet dirty again sometimes. We need room for people who used to BE drunkards or revilers to have some successes and occasional failures, to have an open door back to success. People whose heart is changed may have minds and life patterns which drag somewhat behind. We need room for some people to have a lot of failure. Legalists are willing to dismiss people for far less than God is. If someone fails once or fails 100 times and they come back, wanting to change, then there is a washed part of them in there that is struggling to show some fruit. Some fields that have particularly good soil may grow some great fruit, but they also grow great weeds; they need more attention, more patience, more work. If we do not have the same cloud of misfits and scoundrels and sinners delighting to hang around us like Jesus did, maybe we are not speaking forth the same message that sounds like beautiful music to their ears. If we don't like hearing about forgiving 70 times 7 PER DAY, we are going to be very uncomfortable with the kind of people God is really interested in.

If the way we read this makes us want to chop off the "All things are lawful" clause, then we are not getting it. If we focus on certain sins in this list, like homosexuality, while ignoring others, like coveteousness or reviling, we are not getting it. It is not the specific behavior, it is the MASTERY over a person that is at issue. We are not looking for specific instances of behavior in order to boot people out, we are looking for clues to the inner master of a person that says, they really may not be one of us. There is a difference between being 'unrighteous' and being under grace but stumbling. Our efforts to help and forgive aren't going to work because they need stronger medicine than a smiling welcome and general acceptance. Grace takes a different shape for them, the Father heart of God has a different plan to truly bring them into the fold in a way that they really belong.

So here is what is going on. There was someone in the Corinthian congregation was actually having sexual relations with his step-mother:

“It is actually reported that there is immorality among you, and immorality of such a kind as does not exist even among the Gentiles, that someone has his father’s wife.” 1 Corinthians 5:1, NASB.

This whole section in 1 Corinthians is really addressing that particular problem. There is some crazy crazy stuff going on, and Paul says, don't think that the response of grace is to smile and coddle him and pretend it isn't happening. Probably the guy isn't really a believer and is playing you all as shills; go ahead and have the freedom and the huevos to boot him out the door. We're under grace - that should be scary to sinners trying to take advantage of us! He is saying, guys, do a little tiny bit of fruit checking, and take some minimal action. Grace doesn't mean you can't do this! This is grace in practice in the real world.

Paul writes a second letter to the same Corinthian believers, about the same guy he told them boot out, imploring them to invite him back into fellowship:

“But I determined this for my own sake, that I would not come to you in sorrow again. For if I cause you sorrow, who then makes me glad but the one whom I made sorrowful? And this is the very thing I wrote you, lest, when I came, I should have sorrow from those who ought to make me rejoice; having confidence in you all, that my joy would be the joy of you all. For out of much affliction and anguish of heart I wrote to you with many tears; not that you should be made sorrowful, but that you might know the love which I have especially for you. But if any has caused sorrow, he has caused sorrow not to me, but in some degree--in order not to say too much--to all of you. Sufficient for such a one is this punishment which was inflicted by the majority, so that on the contrary you should rather forgive and comfort him, lest somehow such a one be overwhelmed by excessive sorrow. Wherefore I urge you to reaffirm your love for him. For to this end also I wrote that I might put you to the test, whether you are obedient in all things. But whom you forgive anything, I forgive also; for indeed what I have forgiven, if I have forgiven anything, I did it for your sakes in the presence of Christ, in order that no advantage be taken of us by Satan; for we are not ignorant of his schemes.” 2 Corinthians 2:1-11, NASB.

In the end, grace dictated tough love, and tough love worked. It wasn't easy, it was scary, and Paul, moved by the Spirit, really cared more than anyone realized for the welfare of the one disciplined. Grace does not mean there is no discipline, no sorrow. However, grace is quick to sieze on success, on hope, it finds the lost coin and has joy in the reconciliation. In fact, we are not the arbiters of grace; we serve a great and deeply loving Father who longs to see these lost ones reconciled back to the joy and felowship of the community of those who walk in His awesome grace. I'm so grateful to be there!

The Prodigal Son 5. The Responsible Son

The story of the prodigal son: http://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?search=Luke%2015:11-32&version=NIV

Sometimes, did you know, other people get blessed instead of you? Sometimes other people much less deserving than you prosper and are honored. Sometimes, God likes to forgive and bless other people to whom you would rather see "justice" meted out. Sometimes God just will not do the right things on the right schedule!

Let's take a look at another parable:


““For the kingdom of heaven is like a landowner who went out early in the morning to hire laborers for his vineyard. “And when he had agreed with the laborers for a denarius for the day, he sent them into his vineyard. “And he went out about the third hour and saw others standing idle in the market place; and to those he said, ‘You too go into the vineyard, and whatever is right I will give you.’ And so they went. “Again he went out about the sixth and the ninth hour, and did the same thing. “And about the eleventh hour he went out, and found others standing; and he *said to them, ‘Why have you been standing here idle all day long?’ “They *said to him, ‘Because no one hired us.’ He *said to them, ‘You too go into the vineyard.’ “And when evening had come, the owner of the vineyard *said to his foreman, ‘Call the laborers and pay them their wages, beginning with the last group to the first.’ “And when those hired about the eleventh hour came, each one received a denarius. “And when those hired first came, they thought that they would receive more; and they also received each one a denarius. “And when they received it, they grumbled at the landowner, saying, ‘These last men have worked only one hour, and you have made them equal to us who have borne the burden and the scorching heat of the day.’ “But he answered and said to one of them, ‘Friend, I am doing you no wrong; did you not agree with me for a denarius? ‘Take what is yours and go your way, but I wish to give to this last man the same as to you. ‘Is it not lawful for me to do what I wish with what is my own? Or is your eye envious because I am generous?’ “Thus the last shall be first, and the first last.”” Matthew 20:1-16, NASB.

The guys hired early in the day are upset because somebody else got blessed, someone less deserving than them. We all have such a sense of exacting justice about what authorities should do for us! Jesus is teaching here, the kingdom of God is about blessing people who don't deserve it; if you don't like that kind of thing, heaven is going to be a very uncomfortable place for you!

The elder brother in the prodigal son story has the same syndrome. He has an exact sense of justice concerning who should be accepted, who should be blessed, and who shouldn't. Doesn't he have a point? If you think about it, the dynamics of this scene are absurd! No one could be more irresponsible than his brother; he took his entire inheritance, and burned through it in perhaps a few months. Then he returns in shame and rags, and his father doesn't even scold him at all! In fact, he celebrates his return! The elder son, solid and faithful, was never celebrated, but here is this fool who is dressed up, and there is the tent full of music and dancing!! They're DANCING!!! Yet here he is, he never left, he never did anything wrong, and yet he was never celebrated, never the center of attention. No one danced, no music was played in celebration for him, for consistently doing the right thing.

Should he sin all the more that grace might increase? Shouldn't he do some dramatic wrong so he can also get a party? What good is the father's answer here - "you are always with me, and everything I have is yours." That's it? It doesn't even feel like anything is different for him after that speech; nothing feels like it is really his, and he is still stuck here with nothing except the responsibility, and no stinking party, not even a goat. He is angry, he gets no reward for his hard-earned responsibility and his brother gets fattened calves and music and dancing for his foolishness. The world is turned around, his father is a fool!

In Numbers, we have the strange story of Balak, who tried to hire Balaam to curse Israel:

“Now God met Balaam, and he said to Him, “I have set up the seven altars, and I have offered up a bull and a ram on each altar.” Then the LORD put a word in Balaam’s mouth and said, “Return to Balak, and you shall speak thus.” So he returned to him, and behold, he was standing beside his burnt offering, he and all the leaders of Moab. And he took up his discourse and said, “From Aram Balak has brought me, Moab’s king from the mountains of the East, ‘Come curse Jacob for me, And come, denounce Israel!’ “How shall I curse, whom God has not cursed? And how can I denounce, whom the LORD has not denounced? “As I see him from the top of the rocks, And I look at him from the hills; Behold, a people who dwells apart, And shall not be reckoned among the nations. “Who can count the dust of Jacob, Or number the fourth part of Israel? Let me die the death of the upright, And let my end be like his!” Then Balak said to Balaam, “What have you done to me? I took you to curse my enemies, but behold, you have actually blessed them!” And he answered and said, “Must I not be careful to speak what the LORD puts in my mouth?”” Numbers 23:4-12, NASB.

If you read the context, here is a group of people who have been forced to wander in the wilderness for many years, whom the ground swallows up, who have been disciplined and punished and who complain bitterly about all of it. Yet, even unknown to them, God defends them against enemies, and calls them blessed! I wonder if the Israelites would agree?! This is the same spirit as the elder brother; they and he do not see that they are blessed, and the blessing they have and will have are not recognized by them, they do not perceive their position and give thanks. Thus, when someone else is blessed, the brother becomes angry, because what he sees is that this person IS blessed while he IS NOT.

What we really see between these two brothers is this: they both resent their father. They deal with that resentment differently - the younger acts out and parties and squanders, and actually leaves. He is brash and foolish. The other, in his resentment and quiet angry responsibility, stays and smolders. Neither likes the way the father handles things, it is just that the older brother is able to maintain a veneer of respectability while the other wears his discontent on his sleeve. The only difference is how they act out or handle their discontent and ingratitude.

Here is the thing to learn from this: can we look on God, our Father's blessing and mercy and grace given to someone else, when we ourselves do not feel celebrated or recognized for the moment, and rejoice? Do we like to see others celebrated? Are we envious when others are noticed, received, forgiven, paraded, honored? Can we walk in the quiet knowledge that we are loved and cherished by our father when that is manifested in a common and undramatic, daily sort of way? We will be very uncomfortable in heaven if we can't dance and enter the celebration with all the angels when the Father bestows blessing and honor and grace on another sinner. Heaven is all about grace, and that means there is going to continue to be a lot of blessing flowing to people who do not appear to deserve it. We can choose either to rejoice and celebrate, or to resent and sulk. The father's will is for all of us to rejoice and dance. Isn't He wonderful?!

The Prodigal Son 4. The Son's Return

The story of the prodigal son: http://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?search=Luke%2015:11-32&version=NIV

Henri Nouwen, in his marvelous little book "The Return of the Prodigal Son: A Meditation on Fathers, Brothers, and Sons", makes the observation that if you look very closely at Rembrandt's painting of the return of the prodigal son, there is something funny about the appearance of the son. Given his circumstances, one would think that his hair would be long and matted, his beard grown out, his shoeless foot blistered and calloused. However, if you look carefully at his face in the picture (larger version here) you notice that his face is more like that of a baby, an infant.

Having gone out from the father, having done everything he thought he wanted to do, having been pressed down with shame and failure, having come to the very end of his options, and even having overcome his fear of condemnation and shame, the son returns to find this beautiful acceptance, this belonging, this welcome from his strong and stable father. There is a rest, a new and quiet contentment, there is finally safety, back in the embrace of his father.

I am reminded of Psalm 131:

“(A Song of Ascents, of David.) O LORD, my heart is not proud, nor my eyes haughty; Nor do I involve myself in great matters, Or in things too difficult for me. Surely I have composed and quieted my soul; Like a weaned child rests against his mother, My soul is like a weaned child within me. O Israel, hope in the LORD From this time forth and forever.” Psalms 131:1-3, NASB.

Despite the critical gaze of his brother and others around, the son's eyes are closed and his thoughts are quieted in the final authority and safety of the father's love. In the picture, the older son stands apart, and above, the father and his brother, looking down with an air of scorn. When we have erred, when we have sinned, many voices real and imaginary would dissuade us of the rightness of the father's embrace. Many voices and critical looks would tell us that we have crossed the line, that we ought not now receive the Father's mercy and love. It is not enough that we tell ourselves this, others remember our mistakes, our shame, others look with disapproval on our return, of our Father's acceptance of us and mercy and tenderness towards us.

Yes, it not just our own conscience which weighs us down - it is the imagined or real disapproval of others that can prevent us from entering into the lavish love and embrace of the Father who loves us and forgives us. We hide and do not return, as much from fear of the elder brother as from fear of the father's condemnation. This fear is justified, as the father does not condemn, but others really do condemn!

Notice however, that in the story, the prodigal son does not need to defend his return to the elder brother - the Father defends him. All he needs is the safety of the father's acceptance and love, and the father's authority over his forgiveness. The other brother can and did challenge the father about whether it was right that the younger son should be so easily and lavishly received back, but it was the father's heart toward the prodigal that was the final word about the situation. We do not need to and cannot defend ourselves against the voices of condemnation; His word is final and His word is gracious and forgiving.

So the fateful and feared moment comes, and the errant son returns with trepidation, and enters the the father's embrace like a babe newly born. Now how quickly the father restores his dignity! Bring the best robe, put it on my son! Put a ring on his finger! Sandals for his feet! Set the feast! How extravagantly and publicly the father establishes his place as his esteemed son, how extravagantly he celebrates his return! How overwhelmed the son must have been! The robe and especially the ring are symbols of stately rank, eminence, and social distinction. The son expects to slink back in shame and be put up as a servant, but beyond merely accepting him back and hiding him away, the father dresses him up in a way that publicly establishes his eminence and importance. The father wants to make sure that everyone knows that his son is back, and that his son has been received with honor and joy!

Behind the prodigal son's back, notice that even there he speaks to defend, to edify, to build up a network of acceptance. The elder son comes to question the honor the returned scoundrel receives, but the father reasons with him. Can we not expect that our Father similarly defends us in secret conversations and against unheard condemnations against us?

And so, we come expecting that our own mistakes will prevent us from receiving the father's provision, and yet Jesus teaches us that beyond our wildest expectations God seeks to quickly and publicly restore our dignity and our eminence, speaks with authority to the voices of condemnation, and is genuinely overjoyed with us! He really does love us, it is in His heart to embrace us, clothe us, establish us as His children, and to defend us. This, according to Jesus, is the Father heart of God towards us!

So, if you have read this, and someone asks you what it was about, I want you to go away with this - remember the image of the prodigal safe and at peace in the father's embrace. Through the stress and turmoil of his own mistakes, his own condemnation, his fears of his father, his fears about his brother and others, his father's acceptance and love are his safe place in the middle of it all. While he was wrong, clothed wrong, in the very midst and bottom of his sins and consequences, while he still smelled of the road and pigs, his father embraced him, and he was safe at rest. Remember this beautiful image.

The Prodigal Son 3. The Prodigal FATHER

The story of the prodigal son: http://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?search=Luke%2015:11-32&version=NIV

The free dictionary defines prodigal this way:

1. recklessly wasteful or extravagant, as in disposing of goods or money
2. lavish in giving or yielding prodigal of compliments

I think we get words like prodigious, product, productive, from the same root. We've heard the term 'prodigal son' so many times associated with sin, with squandering wealth and opportunity, that we equate it more with evil than with extravagance. The real root of the word tends toward the idea of extravagance.

So, let's take a different look at the father in the story. When the son asks for his inheritance, does the father say, "well, I'll give you a week's worth of money to go out and try living on your own." He gives him everything. When the son returns, he doesn't say, "get him inside and give him some of that soup." No, he runs out, he falls on his neck, he calls for rings and robes and sandals and fattened calves and feasts. When the older son complains, he says, "everything I have is yours." This is a man of extravagance; the prodigal son is much like his father. He has added wisdom to his extravagance, but he is not a cheap, stingy, withholding man. This is a man who is generous, who throws parties, who is passionate and unafraid to show it.

More than that, this is a man who loves deeply. He obviously mourns the absence of his son, and is overwhelmed with relief at his return. He is not even trying to be reserved about celebrating his son's return. He spots him coming while he is still a long way off, which means he must have been in the habit of going out and looking. He is therefore obsessive about him, and while for all practical purposes it might seem his son was dead, he did not give up hope.

Shall we expect less extravagance from our Father in heaven? Jesus is teaching us, this is what He is like! It was not enough that He made the whole earth, He made an entire universe which is so vast that the earth is not even a speck of dust in comparison. He made the earth itself drip with opulent life and provision, and made us to be vastly intelligent and mysterious creatures. In fact, Solomon says in Ecclesiastes that He has set eternity our hearts. This is not a stingy God. We can expect extravagance and blessing and quick passionate forgiveness and abundant provision when dealing with Him. We have a rich father who loves to give and who loves to throw big parties and who loves us very very deeply and isn't afraid to show it. What could be better than that?!

The Prodigal Son: 2. The Mindset of the Prodigal

The story of the prodigal son: http://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?search=Luke%2015:11-32&version=NIV

The son who wished the father would die, who only wanted his money, who left and squandered his whole inheritance, at last came to himself. That's what it says, "he came to himself." We tend to think that he squandered everything and then immediately came home, but notice that once he was broke he still did not come home. He still stayed away, he sought employment, any employment, demeaning employment. His estrangement was not merely hedonistic - this is a very important observation! It took more to bring him to himself. It was not until there was famine, and he was starving, that he turned and faced the truth about himself. We cling tenaciously to our mistaken ideas about our lives, our autonomy, our freedom, and it takes a great deal to bring us to a change.

However, there is another factor. We see this in his schemes to return - he fears his father's attitude towards him. He thinks, 'Father, I have sinned against heaven and in your sight, and am no longer worthy to be called your son.’ This was not a sudden or one-time statement; he had on ongoing deep-seated assumption that he could not return to his father because he was no longer worthy to be called his son; we see this in the tenacity of his isolation.This fear was a more powerful motivator than his bankruptcy. Even though the father freely gave him his inheritance, and obviously had a kind and uncontrolling heart, still he feared his condemnation. More than anything, we fear condemnation, we fear the voice of our conscience, and we project this fear onto God. Though He has gone to great lengths to show mercy and grace, though the scriptures are full of it, we imagine Him to be a smiter of the evil, a celestial hater of people such as us. We imagine that He looks down waiting for us to do something wrong so He can judge us. This is perhaps the most tempting and the most harmful and evil graven image we can produce - the harsh and hating God. Just like the son, we imagine many many things about God which prevent us from seeking intimacy with Him until our situation becomes truly unlivable.

So, where his sojourn away from home started out as a hopeful assertion of his freedom and manhood, it sustained itself because of shame and fear. So many times we stay in the place of bad habits, of terrible circumstances, of what amounts to slavery, not just because we are strong-willed, but because we fear to step out of them since we are ashamed of what we have become. And we write that shame onto God's script, we imagine that He is the source of that shame. We imagine that our own self-judgement is our Father's judgement. It is actually the shocking nature of this story that it is NOT the father's judgement.

So our sojourn into self-assertion, our foray into freedom, our squander and failure, becomes not so much a stubborn thing of the will, but a fear of change because of shame. Like Adam and Eve, we hide from God shivering naked under a bush sewing our fig leaves of excuses to cover our guilt and embarrassment. Like them, like the son, we imagine only God's disappointment, His judgment, His anger, His rejection. We become isolated and shut up to pointless and joyless tasks and work to cover our emptiness, our loneliness, our shame. We sieze on every form of law, the more stringent and hopeless and demeaning the better. We think to cover our shame with pointless fig-leaf promises of repentance and humility, when in reality nothing we do can cover us. Fig leaves do not sew well and do not cover well, and neither do the promises and excuses of the prodigal.

The prodigal thinks it will please his father, it will smooth things a bit, if he says that he is no longer worthy to be his son. How enormously he misunderstands his father's heart towards him! This is almost the most insulting thing he could throw at the father, to denigrate and belittle the father's powerful feelings towards him. When we think in a way that projects harsh loveless judgment onto God, we miss the mark so badly. The things we think will please God are often nothing more than fig leaves which cannot be sewn and will quickly rot away. It is not that he hates fig leaves or despises our efforts, it is that He loves us in a direct and powerful way that does not need such excuses or efforts.

In closing, I want to observe that the prodigal son's motivations were atrocious and infantile. He left with selfish and rotten motives, he came to himself with the same selfish and rotten motives, and he stepped over his shame and returned home because of desperate and selfish motives. He still did not want to be his father's son, even when he returned! His heart was wrong wrong wrong from beginning to end. In returning the way he did, it was a terrible misunderstanding of his father's feelings towards him to think that the same father who would not withhold his inheritance would so easily disown him. When we come into bad circumstances and make resolutions and promises to God, it is not from right motives! We do so because we project lovelessness and harshness onto God, as if that is the only way He will take us back, as if He has no actual love for us! But, the father said nothing of this, cared nothing for this, didn't even listen to the promises and excuses. He doesn't care that our motives are wrong! He will take us back, with joy, without a single thought of our selfish excuses and motivations and ridiculous wrong conceptions about the way He sees us. Of course our motives are wrong, they will only get set right by being with Him; how else could this work? He loves us. That is the point of all this! He pines for us, He longs for us, He constantly thinks of us, He wants us back in His arms so bad! WHATEVER brings us back to Him, He accepts us! Stop thinking that the prodigal had to go through all of this to come to the end of himself so he could get right motives and then return. He never had right motives. It is too great a burden to tell people that God will take them back once they have suffered enough and have learned right motives. No one has right motives. The right motive is that He loves us, and we never return to Him truly believing this. His love for us does not reside in our motives or our faith. HE loves us. Despite our pointless efforts, despite our stubborn and powerful shame, despite our promises that we can't fulfill and our false and ridiculous humility, He takes us back, He will in time straighten us out, He loves us greatly. The prodigal returns knowing none of this, and as we each stand now, we are yet in the prodigal's shoes. We do not know how much He pines for us, how much He loves us, we come making ridiculous excuses and with pointless puerile plans that will be swept away by a great and grand love.

If this all doesn't get us weeping and crying then what does it take? What a beautiful faith we have as Christians, what an exquisite thing all of this is to believe!

The Prodigal Son: 1. The Father who Doesn't Control

I've been waiting eagerly to get to the parable of the prodigal son, as it is the richest and most profound teaching about the father heart of God in all of scripture. Everything up to this point has been leading to this teaching. Let's start by reading it:

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Then He said: “A certain man had two sons. “And the younger of them said to his father, ‘Father, give me the portion of goods that falls to me.’ So he divided to them his livelihood. “And not many days after, the younger son gathered all together, journeyed to a far country, and there wasted his possessions with prodigal living. “But when he had spent all, there arose a severe famine in that land, and he began to be in want. “Then he went and joined himself to a citizen of that country, and he sent him into his fields to feed swine. “And he would gladly have filled his stomach with the pods that the swine ate, and no one gave him anything.

“But when he came to himself, he said, ‘How many of my father’s hired servants have bread enough and to spare, and I perish with hunger! ‘I will arise and go to my father, and will say to him, “Father, I have sinned against heaven and before you, “and I am no longer worthy to be called your son. Make me like one of your hired servants.”’ “And he arose and came to his father.

But when he was still a great way off, his father saw him and had compassion, and ran and fell on his neck and kissed him. “And the son said to him, ‘Father, I have sinned against heaven and in your sight, and am no longer worthy to be called your son.’ “But the father said to his servants, ‘Bring out the best robe and put it on him, and put a ring on his hand and sandals on his feet. ‘And bring the fatted calf here and kill it, and let us eat and be merry; ‘for this my son was dead and is alive again; he was lost and is found.’ And they began to be merry.

“Now his older son was in the field. And as he came and drew near to the house, he heard music and dancing. “So he called one of the servants and asked what these things meant. “And he said to him, ‘Your brother has come, and because he has received him safe and sound, your father has killed the fatted calf.’ “But he was angry and would not go in. Therefore his father came out and pleaded with him. “So he answered and said to his father, ‘Lo, these many years I have been serving you; I never transgressed your commandment at any time; and yet you never gave me a young goat, that I might make merry with my friends. ‘But as soon as this son of yours came, who has devoured your livelihood with harlots, you killed the fatted calf for him.’ “And he said to him, ‘Son, you are always with me, and all that I have is yours. ‘It was right that we should make merry and be glad, for your brother was dead and is alive again, and was lost and is found.’” Luke 15:11-32, NKJV.
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First let's set the stage. We have a man who is a father, with two sons. He seems to be fairly well off, a landowner with enough inheritance in the balance to make at least one of the sons obsess over it. When a father has some wealth, the children inherit that wealth when he dies. What this son is saying, is that he is tired of waiting around for the father to die, give me my portion now! It could not be a more stark example of raw greed and selfishness. What he is really saying is, I don't care one whit about YOU, I want your MONEY!

Now, here is the amazing thing - the father actually gives it to him! He doesn't take offense, he actually complies! What you would expect him to say is something like this: "You rude and impudent little rodent, do you realize how hard I've worked to get to this point? How dare you ask this!" Instead, he gives him his portion. What could have been going through his head? He could see that his son was eaten up by a lust to get out of there, to see the world, to make his way. He could see that he could not be content staying where he was. This father was not going to try to exercise a level of control that would make his son a slave, like a man in prison. He would let him go, and because he had a very great love for the son, he did not take offense.

God does not withdraw His giftings from us even though He knows we will misuse them! Talent, provision, etc. The richest and possibly most exciting time of this son's life was when he was walking off away from his father, loaded with his inheritance, full of confidence in his own abilities, ready to take on the world. It is a very important component in the way God works - he is not controlling, not manipulative, He does not withdraw blessing. This is a very peculiar and strange aspect of the story.

Now, the son was gone a long time. He did not leave for a minute or two, he left for a long enough time that he burned through his entire inheritance with loose living. Given provision with no wisdom, he squandered it all. He was gone long enough, and the father knew him well enough, that he figured he was all but dead; he had given up hope. We see this in his statement, "for this my son was dead and is alive again." He had truly, genuinely, definitively left the fold. I think this is a point we all know in our conscience - we have been blessed, and are gifted, and have been given much, and we have squandered it away on pleasures and comforts and our lives and times are empty and fruitless. We take what our Father in heaven has given us and use it for our pleasures and comforts and idleness, and eventually we regret the shape our life takes. He does not withdraw His blessing and we think this is the stamp of His approval, and even though we misinterpret it still He remains firm in not attempting to control us.

Here is a key to the father heart of God: He is determined to let us freely choose Him. He does not manipulate, he does not trick us into righteousness. He does not withhold blessings or close and open doors to force us down the right path. He is very determined to allow us our freedom. He lets us make our own mistakes, even profound mistakes, he does not hold us back against our own hot desires. Just as Satan tempts us, and is more interested in our inward desire, so also God, in a benevolent way, is interested in our desire. If we come to Him, if we remain with Him, if we return to Him, He wants it only to be with our true heart. He is determined that we come to Him such that all other options have been found wanting - we only want to be in His house. If we are not truly thus, He does not want to prevent us from making our own way. To Him, the crying prodigal returning broke and starved and naked is far more preferable to a rich son held hostage and shut up to an unwanted blessing. We are never held hostage, never tricked into the kingdom. He is the Father who doesn't control.

The God who Loses Things

Reading Jesus' parables, it seems God is always losing things!

“Now all the tax-gatherers and the sinners were coming near Him to listen to Him. And both the Pharisees and the scribes began to grumble, saying, “This man receives sinners and eats with them.” And He told them this parable, saying, “What man among you, if he has a hundred sheep and has lost one of them, does not leave the ninety-nine in the open pasture, and go after the one which is lost, until he finds it? “And when he has found it, he lays it on his shoulders, rejoicing. “And when he comes home, he calls together his friends and his neighbors, saying to them, ‘Rejoice with me, for I have found my sheep which was lost!’ “I tell you that in the same way, there will be more joy in heaven over one sinner who repents, than over ninety-nine righteous persons who need no repentance. “Or what woman, if she has ten silver coins and loses one coin, does not light a lamp and sweep the house and search carefully until she finds it? “And when she has found it, she calls together her friends and neighbors, saying, ‘Rejoice with me, for I have found the coin which I had lost!’ “In the same way, I tell you, there is joy in the presence of the angels of God over one sinner who repents.”” Luke 15:1-10, NASB.

I am fond of saying that God is not co-dependent, nor is He some kind of control freak. He certainly has the power to control, but it seems to be quite important to Him that He play hands-off. He lets us choose our own way, even if it means making terrible mistakes, big mistakes. However, Jesus seemed to like these makers of mistakes, these sinners, and they seemed to like Him. There was some fondness going on here which offended the established religious legalists. They grumbled! For God's sake, He is EATING with them!

If your message, your hope, your belief, your soapbox, doesn't belie a fondness for real people despite their apparent lack of religious reputation, and if people of a non-religious or not so obviously moral persuasion don't seem to want to hang around with you, you might actually be on the wrong side of Jesus' persuasions on this. He likes people. Notice that it was not Jesus who called anyone a 'sinner' here; he saw lost coins and lost sheep. These are things of value which have been misplaced. It is the religious establishment which brands them 'sinners'. Where the religious people see scandal and seek separation, He sees value and seeks restoration.

I am glad, because I count myself a sinner. I am the lost sheep who wanders. I am hoping He is the kind of God who persists in seeing my value, who rejoices to find me, who goes to battle for my worth against the religious who seek my condemnation. If I am anything beyond that, I seek to be His physician's assistant, to be part of the rabble hanging around Him that they grumble about.

His liberality with giving us freedom and autonomy may lead to a lot of us getting lost, but His desire and longing is to find us, to celebrate us, to restore our place and establish our worth. Contrary to the fears of our conscience, He does not focus on the errors we make, the trouble we are, the shame we bear. He focuses on our intrinsic worth, on our restoration. He truly and always loves us.

I am the one who is forever and always loved by God. The creator and king of the universe likes me. It is all going to be OK; I may be a bit lost in the woods from time to time but He knows how to restore me, He wants to restore me, He sees that I am missing and by His initiative and power He seeks me. I am resting in His love and power, and in His knowledge that despite my anonymity and poverty He sees my worth. I am real because I am loved by the only One who matters.

The Father Heart of God

Thoughts on this started to come to me after watching "Everything's Fine" with Robert De Niro.

http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0780511/

In it a widowed father tries to set up a reunion with his grown children, who all cancel. He longs for his children to come and eat together at his table, but it turns out one by one that none of them can make it. Each of them are in the midst of problems that they would rather hide from him, fearing his reaction, his disappointment, or that he is emotionally fragile and would be too hurt to know these difficult things. Then he travels across the country to go see them. We see that it is the natural and powerful bent of a father to long for his children, to worry over their happiness, to accept them as they are with all of their problems and mistakes and to simply want to be with them.

Even terrible fathers know the weight of this love in the power of their regret. It is the greatest weight of the conscience, this beautiful burden of love. The father in this movie does not care so much that the disappointments and problems his children face are disappointing to him, but that the fear they produce in his children removes the intimacy of their relationship. As a younger father he did not understand this, but as an older father he sees it all much more clearly.

We can believe that these aspects of the heart of an earthly father are only faint shadows of the way our Father God in heaven feels towards us. Oh, He longs for us! He does greatly love us! This is the thing that rules-based religion misses. He worries over our relationship with each other, He longs to accept us, He longs to help us. He worries that He is too controlling, not controlling enough, and it is all based in an incredibly strong and pure love for us, for our ultimate welfare. He forgives so quickly, so easily, He so quickly accepts and restores dignity and provision. He so selflessly accepts His own indignities for the the sake of His children. He greatly longs for us, greatly loves.

More about moral and aesthetic good

I want to start by recapping the last post's argument about this. I have to say that this is an important and seminal thought for me. In human experience we have a problem in that the idea of moral and desirable good are split - we are often wanting what we know is wrong, and rather despise what is right. It is almost laughable to say that you love the moral way of living. In fact, a lot of movies show a kind of 'coming out' moment when the protagonist casts off the fear of traditional ideas of the good and embraces their true desire. This is not a recent thing, not a political thing, not an American problem. It is universal and true for all of humanity, from Eve and the serpent on. God is working to bring us back to a place where what we honestly want coincides with what is right.

I want to expand on something I only hinted at last time. If this is so, this is the work of God, then why am I still struggling. Surely I'm missing something, I've gone too far with this idea. It can't be right! What about these kinds of verses, you can't just throw them out:

“Then Jesus said to His disciples, “If anyone wishes to come after Me, let him deny himself, and take up his cross, and follow Me.” Matthew 16:24, NASB.

“For the flesh sets its desire against the Spirit, and the Spirit against the flesh; for these are in opposition to one another, so that you may not do the things that you please.” Galatians 5:17, NASB.

This fairly well disproves my last post doesn't it? Righteousness, holiness, godliness, is not about getting what you want, it is about DENYING yourself what you want! Perhaps, but perhaps we should look at these passages a little closer.

Jesus says, "if anyone WISHES to come after me." We have a wish, a desire, to come after Jesus. In context, there has just been another debacle with the pharisees, but Jesus has taken the disciples off by themselves, and has asked them, "who do people say that I am?" Then He says, who do YOU say that I am, and Peter says, the Christ. It is at this time, this first time, that He begins to explain that He will die and be resurrected. Peter is alarmed, and takes Jesus aside to rebuke Him. This is the context - Peter, the one who first proclaimed Him to be the Christ, the Son of God, rebukes Jesus about all of this talk about suffering many things and dying. Jesus is replying to this.

What does He say? He says, you want me to stop talking about suffering and dying? Actually, not only will I suffer, but all who wish to follow me will suffer. You have found this great treasure - the Messiah, the son of God, has come! You wish to follow. You must go and sell all you have to get this treasure - but you don't know how much you must sell, just as you do not know the extent of the incredible value of the treasure you have stumbled upon. You must sell your very self, deny your very self, if you wish to obtain this great thing. I am going to suffer, and if you follow Me, you will have to learn this. The writer of Hebrews put this all in perspective:

“Let us fix our eyes on Jesus, the author and perfecter of our faith, who for the joy set before him endured the cross, scorning its shame, and sat down at the right hand of the throne of God. Consider him who endured such opposition from sinful men, so that you will not grow weary and lose heart.” Hebrews 12:2, 3, NIV.

He did it for the joy set before Him, a joy which was not taken away. The point of all of this isn't suffering, it isn't the cross itself, it is the difficult passage to joy. Have you ever thought, if the Father so loved Jesus, why did He make His son suffer so? Why the cross? Even Jesus says,

“About the ninth hour Jesus cried out in a loud voice, “Eloi, Eloi, lama sabachthani?” --which means, “My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?”” Matthew 27:46, NIV.

Perhaps it is the exact same formula as the garden. In the garden, there is one thing which is forbidden; every tree is OK, except the one, and yet Adam chose the one. Here is Jesus, and God is basically saying, we are going to up the ante so your success is all the more dramatic. Everything, all human experience, has now become the forbidden; that is the ultimate end of the law. I am narrowing what I require, the law, to even being alive. For Adam, the whole world was OK except for the one tree, and yet he chose poorly. For Jesus, the tables turned, and the whole world was off limits except for death, and still He chose correctly. Jesus fulfilled the law in the most ultimate sense, in that He obeyed an edict which was absolutely against any normal human desire, and still obeyed that imposition upon His desire.

Moral good and desirable good

I want to delve into something today that may at first seem like nit-picky hair-splitting semantics. I think that if you will persevere and read to the end you will find that it is most profound and is deeply foundational to our idea of grace and the real motivation for living the Christian life.

In Genesis 2 and 3, we find these verses:

“And the LORD God commanded the man, “You are free to eat from any tree in the garden; but you must not eat from the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, for when you eat of it you will surely die.”” Genesis 2:16, 17, NIV.

“When the woman saw that the fruit of the tree was good for food and pleasing to the eye, and also desirable for gaining wisdom, she took some and ate it. She also gave some to her husband, who was with her, and he ate it.” Genesis 3:6, NIV.

We have here the first time the idea of 'good' was divided. What do I mean by this? If someone says, "I'm being a good girl," they mean they are not cheating on their diet or overspending or smoking or such. It is a moral good - they are denying themselves something they like in order to do the right thing, and thus they are 'good'. On the other hand, if they go ahead and have that hot fudge sundae, they aren't being a 'good girl', but they might say, "MMMMM, this sundae sure is GOOD!" That is what I mean by the two meanings of the word 'good' - there is a moral idea of the good, and an aesthetic idea of the good.

In the beginning, Adam and Eve were free to eat any from tree. All that was pleasurable was also all that was good. The one forbidden fruit was also the one undesirable fruit. It wasn't until the serpent started speaking to Eve about it that she first realized that the forbidden could be desirable; before that point all that was permitted was also all that was desirable, and all that was forbidden was undesirable. This is the state God intended us to live in.

Now we live in a world where it is alien to even the most holy person that the moral good could actually be the clearly desirable thing; even in the mind of the righteous person, the moral good is set against the aesthetic good. Pleasure is universally wrapped up and intertwined with the forbidden. From food and eating to addictive behaviors to sexuality, our desires are constantly drawn to the forbidden. I believe that for many, the steam goes out of the marriage relationship because their sexuality was based on the fiery desire of the soul for the forbidden, and once in marriage sex was acceptable or even mandated, it became more of a duty. This is pure speculation and certainly the reality is always more complex, but this identification of the desire with the forbidden is a real factor.

And so we live in a world where we are constantly and always confronted with the call of the forbidden to our desire - it is the voice of the serpent everywhere, calling to our fallen nature, reasoning with us about the desirability of sin. Temptation has its power because it draws on this very truth; Satan is interested much more in our desire, than in our health or our finances.

In the original intent of God, there did not need to be a division between the 'will' and the 'desire'; the will sees what is right and gathers strength to do the right thing even though the desire is set against it. In the garden, prior to the fall, this was not necessary.

Imagine that God intends to restore us, to heal this terrible wound, this gaping division in our inner souls. Imagine that God wants to remove this need for something called the 'will', this necessity to constantly go against what we want, to constantly do what we do not want, because it is moral. Imagine that God wants to refashion us somehow so that our real desire does not run against what is right. What, eventually, would this healing look like? What kind of world would that be? What would the kingdom of God look like if it really did come to earth? It would look like GRACE! That's right, unbelievably, the impossible dream of living an idyllic existence in which the desire and the will are in perfect peace and harmony within us, where the moral good and the aesthetic good are one and same, is the world He wants us to enter RIGHT NOW. The main characteristic of the new person we become in Christ is this, that this rift between moral good and desirable good, is removed. Our true self, the newly born person we are, does not have this division.

It bears saying that this really is what the law is - it presses notions of right and wrong on the unwilling person, set against their desire. It insists on the moral good, even though the inner desire is for the forbidden. This is the exact beating heart of what is variously called 'legalism', 'pharasaism', etc. Of course no one would ever come right out and say, "Oh, yes, I'm very legalistic, I'm a total pharisee!" I've talked to people who are as legalistic as you can get and they don't think they are legalistic. However, in that they insist on imposing moral codes that are inconsistent with the inward desire, and set the inner man into this division of moral vs. aesthetic good, and think that this division is what true faith really is, they are legalists. This division of moral good from desirable good and the emphasis on morals over desire is what makes religion seem so colorless and lifeless. The aim of Christ is not to emphasize an even more stringent or better moral code, it is to bring the good of morals and the good of desire into a unity within us. He preaches a stringent moral code to fish out that division, to diagnose us as sick, to bring us to a place of healing and transformation.

Someone whose mind is still set in the divided universe, the universe where the good is divided, where moral good is set against desirable good, looks at the offer of grace, and says, "You mean now I can just do ANYTHING? I can just sin and sin and sin that grace might increase?" It must look like this, because what God is really offering is not merely release from guilt, but a healing of this division. This is His ultimate goal, to take us back to the garden, where what is desirable coincides with what is right. The healing He seeks for us, is not just to have the freedom to sin without consequence, but to have the freedom from our true inner desire to actually want what is right. He wants what is morally good to become what is aesthetically good, in our true inner selves.

If you are thinking clearly about this, your mind is fairly screaming an objection. "Hey - are you saying we become sinless? We're not sinless now! We don't just become Christians and then lose all desire for sin! What the heck?!" In fact, when you think about things clearly in your normal right mind, and ask these kinds of questions, you end up going through Paul's reasoning in Romans almost point for point. Romans 7 only makes sense really when you can say, "Hey! I thought i was this new creature, dead to sin! Why do I still sin? What is GOING ON around here?" This is the context of Romans 8, there is therefore now NO CONDEMNATION for those who are IN CHRIST JESUS. Our true self is born of the spirit, but our MIND does not always go along! So, the mind set on the flesh, the mind which reverts back to imposing law on the unwilling human desire, must fail. The mind set on the spirit, the new man, does the things of the law instinctively. This is the short answer.

The parables Jesus taught us about the kindgom of God are all about desire and passion. The man finds the treasure, and FROM JOY over it, sells and makes his sacrifices. Moral good without desire is still desire for evil that is thwarted. In a way sinners who do what they want are much happier than religious moral people who do what is right but never do what they want. Real healing, real grace, real power for living, comes when we change over to the universe of grace. To those on the outside, it looks like the freedom to sin, because their desire is still wrapped up in the forbidden. But to those who enter grace, the hope is that the power of the desirability of the forbidden begins to die off, and we begin to learn to live with a true passion, a true desire, for the living God. Thus the division in us, the two goods, begins to unite, and we start to learn what it is to live with a single mind and a whole heart without shame or remorse.

A modern person reads the sermon on the mount

We're still looking at the sermon on the mount. Read it here:

www.biblegateway.com/passage/?search=matthew%205-7&version=NIV

Let's think about this from the perspective of a modern reader. Here is what might really go through someone's head when they read this. "Poor in spirit ... not sure what he means. Mourn ... hope that never happens! Meek ... I hate those meek Jesus songs. Skipping ... skipping ... some day I might try to figure this stuff out. Ewwww, here's the good part! Salt and light ... yes! I'm a lamp on a hill, yes! Fulfilling the law, ta da ta da ta da ... OK, here we go. Angry = murder. That's right, except when I got angry at Jane it was justified, she was so wrong. Jesus got angry sometimes, right? Looking = adultery; come on Jesus! As if! Divorce - I'm in, but this is pretty stringent. Oaths - what....? Love your enemies - enemies? I don't have any enemies, this is probably no big deal though. skipping, skipping, skipping, to the guy who builds on the rock vs the sand. WOW, I should go back and read this better some day!"

The point is, we internally explain all of this away, skip the parts we don't understand, escape all possible conviction, and then the first part about the poor in spirit makes no sense whatsoever. So we think our fuzzy and anemic understanding of the law is what grace is. We imagine that God just sort of glosses over our sins and shallow minds the same way that we operate. On the contrary, grace presses the law home in a big way, and shows our poverty of spirit, our lack of righteousness, and produces a true hunger for holiness and transformation.

Does this mean I am coming in the back door with condemnation and law? Am I saying, 'you have to get really good and convicted and feel really awful about yourself before you can enter God's good graces? In a way, I suppose I am kind of saying that, but what I'm really saying is, what use are mercy and grace if you think you don't need them? What good is the law at pointing you to grace if you end up explaining it all away and you have no need of supernatural virtue, of the leading of the Spirit? Can you really get the awesome benefit from Jesus' teaching if you don't really bother at all with His actual meaning? We reduce grace from real glorious release and freedom to the milk-toast idea that He just glosses over our minor problems and doesn't care, leaving us essentially untransformed and stuck in our ways. This isn't actually grace at all, it is a very sad watered down and weak-kneed pharisaism which says, "I'm basically OK, so why would God be unhappy with me?" On the contrary, He cares, little things matter a lot, the state of the heart is the true issue, and in looking at things this way we have release into a tremendous level of grace. This opens the door to a world of moral virtue that goes extremely deep, and gives us a chance to try and fail in order that we might try and succeed.

Put another way, our relationship with Jesus is likened to a romance, He is like the bride and the church is like the groom. It is about passion, about desire, about longing. Fuzzy barely alive passionless numb readings of this text don't really fit with that idea do they? The bride always seeks in every way to beautify herself as her wedding approaches, because of her passion for her husband, her lover. A woman is always at her most radiant on her wedding day. We read this passage, and we see what He who loves us really likes in a bride. And from love, from passion, from desire, we see how far we are from this high mark, and we seek grace freely to make ourselves like this:

“And everyone who has this hope fixed on Him purifies himself, just as He is pure.” 1 John 3:3, NASB.

Grace doesn't say, all is forgiven, so now I can sin! Grace says, all is forgiven, I want to be better! I WANT it!

sermon on the mount

I want to turn aside and take a look at Jesus' famous teaching known to us as the sermon on the mount. It is one of the most penetrating explanations of God's laws and ways ever given. I want to examine exactly what it says, and see how it fits with Paul's teachings about the law and justification by faith and grace. We'll start by refreshing ourselves about what the general message of the sermon on the mount is.

This teaching occurs in Matthew 5 through 7, which you might want to pause and go read real quick. Here's a link:

www.biblegateway.com/passage/?search=matthew%205-7&version=NIV

You gotta love the internet!

For our sake, here is the basic outline of Jesus' teaching:

1. Blessed are the poor
2. Salt and Light
3. Jesus came to fulfill all of the law
4. Law explained to deep inner motivations on various points
1. You've heard it said, but...
   1. murder
   2. adultery
   3. divorce
   4. oaths
   5. eye for and eye
   6. love your enemy
2. practicing righteousness to be noticed
   1. giving to the needy
   2. prayer
   3. fasting
   4. treasure
3. worry
   1. worry about self (food and clothing)
   2. worry about others (do not judge)
   3. worry about God (seek, and find; not withheld or given strange things)
5. Do it or die
   1. narrow path
   2. tree and its fruit
   3. wise and foolish builder

Not only is that a nice outline, but a test of my HTML ordered list skills! Notice that at the end of the "you've heard it said, but I say..." section, we get the stinger:

““Therefore you are to be perfect, as your heavenly Father is perfect.” Matthew 5:48, NASB.

So let's suppose you are a Jew back in the day, and you are curious and devout, so you wander up to hear what this fellow is saying. Here is what might go through your head as you listen to Jesus teach. "He is saying some very strange things about the value of being poor and unrighteous! Well, that's not me! I've always pretty much kept the law. This isn't the law, this is some strange blasphemous new teaching - I'm leaving. He says that he came to fulfill the law - hey, this sounds good, let's listen a little further. Anger = murder: OUCH! That's true. Looking = adultery: OUCH! That's true too! On he goes, this is incredibly convicting. I'm supposed to be perfect? THAT level of perfect? I'm starting to feel pretty poor. He's right, if I don't do this, like this, to this level, I'm sunk, it is all a sham. How am I going to do this? I need to hear more, much more."

So what has Jesus done here? He has taken people who believe in a shallow veneer of righteousness according to the law, who believe they are not in need of help, and pressed the law to apply to their deep inner motivations and secret thoughts. By the end of the message they come to realize that they are indeed poor in spirit. Just like Paul teaches, He uses the law to show them their need, to move them from their complacency to a place of hunger and thirst for righteousness, to a realization of their need for grace and mercy. He doesn't any more expect that those people were going to hear that message once and immediately walk out and start perfectly doing all of it than I am going to raise a garden on Saturn. He is whetting their appetite for grace!

Does this negate any of what He is saying, am I teaching that we ought not to worry about doing these things? Of course not. That is the same old question, should we sin all the more that grace might increase? NO! The spirit-led life looks like this. It knows the reality of God's presence, and thus prays in secret, in fact does all things in secret, because the secret mind/heart is the always present reality in which the living God works. It gives anxiety to the Father who loves us. It looks past the present sins of others and blesses always. We can always look back at this teaching, and measure ourselves, and find new and fresh need for grace. However, the tree must be drinking in the soil of grace to bear this fruit. The narrow way is not the self-motivated natural fleshly minded righteousness. No one is perfect and we all know it. We are the blessed poor, who are merciful, who know mercy, who hunger from our inner soul for righteousness, and who ask the Father for the bread of life, and receive it. The sermon on the mount is all about pointing us to grace.

Now, you have to ask yourself, which would you rather believe? That the "true gospel of Jesus" is a supremely harsh interpretation of the most difficult parts of this teaching, and that we should just ignore or throw out all of that 'poor in spirit' junk at the beginning? Also, throw out Paul's writings because those aren't the 'true gospel'? OR, would you rather believe that Jesus's whole message hangs together as a unity, that He presses the law home to show you that you ARE poor in spirit, and that this all fits perfectly with the further teachings down the road about the prodigal son and the lost sheep and His desire for mercy and compassion? Would you rather read this in a way that harmonizes perfectly with the writings of Paul, or set them against Paul's thought and divide the Scripture? Which sounds like a more truthful and scripture-honoring way to look at this?

At the end of the passage, Jesus wraps it all up like this:

““Therefore everyone who hears these words of mine and puts them into practice is like a wise man who built his house on the rock. The rain came down, the streams rose, and the winds blew and beat against that house; yet it did not fall, because it had its foundation on the rock. But everyone who hears these words of mine and does not put them into practice is like a foolish man who built his house on sand. The rain came down, the streams rose, and the winds blew and beat against that house, and it fell with a great crash.”” Matthew 7:24-27, NIV.

Which words exactly is He talking about? All of them! That's right, not just the ones about not lusting and not praying in public. The ones about being poor in spirit, about being unrighteous and weak but wanting badly to be better. He means the baffling words at the beginning that we usually skip over as well as the obvious convicting ones in the middle. If you can only hear the middle words, the obviously convicting word, how can you be said to have a right foundation? The people who skip to the middle section without seriously hearing the beginning are building a house on the sand! Hearing Jesus' words and doing them means hearing them ALL, and the beginning part, the meek and mild poor in spirit part, is the real game changer! He is saying you can go ahead and come out and admit that you can't do this, you don't know where to start, inside you are all full of rottenness. THAT is the right foundation!

You know what is so wonderful about this? It is honest, and it is doable. I look at the tax gatherer who can barely pray, but can only beat his chest and beg mercy and admit his sin, and I say, yes, I can do that. That is easy. I can be honest. God does not require anything of us that we can't do. He presses the law to a degree that screams, you can't do this, you may think you can do this, but you cannot do this. The real hearers and doers of His words are the ones who remember the perspective that the poor in spirit inherit the kingdom. It isn't the guilty and rotten pretenders who enter the kingdom, it is the forgiven. It is not the one who pretends not to look, not to be angry, not to worry, not the one who makes foolish promises to change, but the one who says, "Oh, that is true! I am that man, if there is no mercy I am ruined!" Seek and you shall find!

When you look at the scriptures through the eyes of grace as taught by Paul in Romans and Galatians and such, it all begins to come clear. More than that, we see the picture emerge that there is no question that we have come to a God who is the Father of mercy, who always loves, who knows how to break up our fallow ground and really come to a place of change and true inward transformation, because He truly cares for us. Why wouldn't anyone want to believe all of that?

I believe all of that. I find it easy to believe it. Jesus is teaching that very thing in the sermon on the mount, clearly.

I advocate evil

Yes, you read the title right. After lots of dialog with people about God's grace and forgiveness, who ask, "are you saying people can just SIN," and, "what about hell and damnation?!" and such, I've decided to come out and admit it - I advocate evil. Since I believe in grace and mercy, that means that I want everyone to sin more and more and more. If someone is a Christian, that gives them license to do all kinds of evil and harm. Forgiveness means you get to do anything you want, ever. Wife beating is just cool. Wild orgies. Genocide. Pornography and alcoholism are the bomb. Christ died for us so we could go on sinning and sinning and sinning.

Since that is what people seem to be afraid that I am saying, I thought it would be helpful to lay the cards out on the table, there is no use beating around the bush. Let's reason about it from there.

Let's take our friend the serial adulterer. I'm not sure, but it is possible that the swinging free-sex lifestyle is not exactly the happiest and best life. Maybe our friend's insatiable appetite for lasciviousness is not always the best and most joyous thing. I'm sure he doesn't list his skills for secret sex on his business card, nor blog extensively about his experiences and send letters home to his proud mother about how his life of forbidden intimacy is coming along. Maybe he is sick of the shame and secrecy and rottenness of the consequences of his appetites. Maybe he is tired of taking such a powerful and beautiful part of his life and making it cheap and tawdry and shameful. Maybe he would actually like to entertain the idea of change, maybe he WANTS to change, but is so stuck in destructive patterns that he doesn't really know how, he feels that his life is over if he confesses and loses the comfort of it if he stops.

If I come along to our friend, and say, you are certainly going to hell for your deeds, how dare you go one cheating on your wife with other people's wives! You can't say you love God without having a transformed life! What might be the result? He might think, well, God already hates me, and this certainly reinforces my fears, and everyone else hates me too, and I even hate myself, but when I am with a woman she accepts me for a time and my troubles melt away. Why not go on with my caprine ways? Sometimes I feel bad afterwards, but hey, I feel bad all the time anyway. What does God offer but condemnation and the promise of hell? At least let me have my fun on the way to hell, it isn't going to change anyway.

If, on the other hand, I come along to our friend, and say, despite your ridiculously evil lifestyle, God loves you deeply, and has a vision for the true strength and purpose of your life. You have fallen short of God's glory, but He will forgive you forever and will work with you to help to dislodge this nasty pattern of desire in your life, and forge a new heart in you which loves honorable good things. There is real mercy, lasting mercy, mercy for your past and mercy for your future. There is mercy for what you actually need mercy for, forgiveness for your actual specific guilt! If you screw up and mess with a woman again (because you have years of this ingrained in you) God will still forgive. He wants to walk you out of this for the long haul. I am only His humble helper, but the Holy Spirit can touch your very soul with a supernatural power and change you. He sees past your behavior and loves YOU, as YOU, and wants to move past a focus only on your failures, to speak to you about what your life might look like if you had a chance to WIN! Not just in terms of stopping your addictive behavior, but of going on to a much much better way of life, full of joy and peace and contentment and rich spirituality.

Which approach might bring our friend the serial adulterer more surely out of his terrible ways? Which might lead him more surely to repentance? The harsh promise of the fear of hell and condemnation, or real lasting forgiveness and mercy, EVEN IF HE CAN'T PROMISE TO CHANGE? And, this isn't just true for serial adulterers. It is true for every sinner, the obvious ones and the religious white-washed ones. What if God really actually loves us, and seeks our best? What if God longs to extend kindness, to forgive, and to offer a path to heartfelt genuine righteousness that will not be revoked? I believe that He is always the Father who longs for His beloved prodigal to return, for things small and things great. Grace means the path is always clear and the door is always open to righteousness, help and power are always available to get up and try again. That is what it means. Love always trumps judgement. The transformed life might be a long time coming, but the love of God for us is real and present now. Transformation is a fruit that follows, and everyone wants it. Grace doesn't negate that, it opens the door to it. But if grace demands transformation, it is no longer grace. Grace says I forgive, I love, come to Me, I accept you, I will not stop seeking your best at all times. God is love and love always wins for everyone. Undeserved kindness transforms.

Modern Myths

Someone posted this quote recently, and the conversation was relevant so I am posting it here.

"It is a modern myth that you can know and love Him and not have a transformed life by Him."

I am posting some of my own responses:
===========
It is much more of a modern myth that the goal is transformation instead of knowing and loving. 'In this is love, not that we love God, but that God loved us' - 1John 4:10

===========
To this came the response:

Biggest myth: That knowing and loving are separate from the transformation.

"This is love for God - That we obey his commands"
I John 5:3

=and=
Uh, we... don't... ever... attain perfection... in knowing/loving/transformation.

But if we're following, shouldn't we be continually getting better at it? I'm not not one to see k/l/t as some binary ("either/or") thing. This Romans text seems to show it more as a process, yes?
===========
Here is my response:

I think the engine, the animus, the dunamis, to the Christian life is wholly other than trying to continually 'get better.' It starts with finding our treasure, hidden in the field, and then FROM JOY OVER IT (Mt 13:44) making sacrifices and life changes. It starts with saying, yes, morally, I am a miserable mess, I need rescue. It continues (read Galatians) by grace. Always there is the struggle with sin (Rom 7) but always there is no condemnation (Rom 8:1) and always there is the open door to walk by the Spirit (first half of Rom 8). Nothing, not even sin, can keep us from the love of Christ (rest of Rom 8).

My starting place and my continuing animus is that I am the one who is loved by the Father, greatly greatly loved. Sin and righteousness cannot change that or increase it. Our works are a gift (Eph 2:8-10), or fruit. As Christians we have left the universe of earning favor, of criticism and judgement. It is living in the light of that favor, that joy, that great great happiness, that the power to work works comes to us, that our life becomes transformed.

Focusing on the transformed life instead of focusing on knowing Him and knowing that He first loves me, is like the guy going and selling all he has as a discipline, and then hoping he stumbles on a treasure. It simply doesn't work that way, it is all a sham, all a white-washed tomb. If our works aren't coming from joy over it, they are dead ones.

Further, don't argue with ME about it, I am nothing and I am completely stubborn in my insistence on grace and mercy and the sufficiency of Christ's blood for me every day. Look at yourself, to see if you are living under grace, if you have found your treasure hidden, if you have a constant sense of the Father's fondness for you. It is His kindness that leads us to repentance.
=========
Now, some other thoughts about all of this...

Here is where I see so many getting so lost in a depressing colorless lifeless pursuit of morals and a Christian version of pharisaism. It comes through very subtle back door deceptions, very well-meaning fervor. We have an emphasis on a "transformed life", and even on "knowing and loving God", which are sort of pitted against each other. You can't do the one unless you do both. The truth is you can't do either one, they are both impossible and onerous tasks. The Christian walk is characterized as looking at Christianized versions of laws and edicts, such as 'being in the word', 'praying more', not masturbating, not skipping church, doing youth ministry so you can inflict 'youth' with your same disease, or whatever, and gradually 'getting better' at it all. I personally cannot get fired up about a spirituality that is only about looking at how well I conform to such things, frankly it is boring and bereft of life. The focus is on a transformed life, whereas I think the focus should be on God's love for me, God's spirit leading us, and on TRUTH! Does this mean I advocate masturbation and prayerlessness? Of course not; I feel like I am continually circling around romans 3-8, with special emphasis over and over on Romans 6:1. But really, however cleverly and poetically you put it, such as "A transformed life ... " ta da ta da ta da, if your message really boils down to, stop masturbating and pray more, how do you expect people to really get fired up about it? Pray to who? Some fairy tale invisible entity who hates me, who won't let me love Him unless my life is 'transformed', which means actually that you intend to trick me into joyless colorless 'holiness' by getting me to fear His wrath and retribution?

Furthermore, here is what will happen in the inevitable dialog. "No - of course that's not what I mean!" "What do you mean then?" "I mean you should have a transformed life." "How do you know?" "Well, ... ." "Oh, well, isn't that what I was saying?" And on and on and on down the rabbit hole it goes. Of course no Christian will own up to being a legalistic pharisee, but until they are willing to say that it is faith in the blood of Christ + NOTHING ELSE that justifies us, until that translates into complete genuine freedom, until it finds a place for holiness as a fruit of being first loved by Him, until they advocate scandalous grace like Jesus and Paul and John, they ARE a legalistic pharisee. If you aren't getting romans 6:1 ("shall we then sin all the more that grace might increase??") put to you over and over and over by religious zealots, until you are experiencing some real persecution by the same kinds of people that persecuted Jesus, you have to wonder if you are really following in His shoes and preaching the same outstanding and delicious message that He did!

I am certain I am stepping on all kinds of toes here, so I apologize in advance, but I hope and pray that the beautiful truth that the Holy Spirit is trying to get across to the dear person who stumbles across this will come forth.

Discipline and grace Pt. 2

Yesterday I posted some things about discipline and grace and it set me to thinking about it a lot more. Here are some more thoughts.

1. Grace vs. Discipline. If we are asked BY GOD to suffer in the flesh, to 'arm ourselves with the same purpose (1Peter 4:1)', how does that jive with the operations of a God of love and grace? Are we allowing bondage and servitude and legalism in the back door through teachings on discipline? Before you go on with this, I want you to pause and let yourself really inwardly ask this question, to honestly consider it. You might pray, "Lord, if it is true that You LOVE me and have mercy and grace so strongly for me, WHY all this talk about discipline and such? Why do You make it so hard?" It is important that you truly own up to your own doubts and internal fears and anger about this, you can't just go day by day reading trite theories about things. There is certainly a danger in teachings about God's discipline, in that it leads to a wrong fear and a subtle underlying disbelief in His love and mercy and grace. Some people become very dejected in their faith and are constantly expecting to be punished and disciplined all the time, and expect that most of God's dealings with them are going to be harsh and disciplinary. Let's look at the most famous text for this subject:
   
   “You have not yet resisted to the point of shedding blood in your striving against sin; and you have forgotten the exhortation which is addressed to you as sons, “MY SON, DO NOT REGARD LIGHTLY THE DISCIPLINE OF THE LORD, NOR FAINT WHEN YOU ARE REPROVED BY HIM; FOR THOSE WHOM THE LORD LOVES HE DISCIPLINES, AND HE SCOURGES EVERY SON WHOM HE RECEIVES.” It is for discipline that you endure; God deals with you as with sons; for what son is there whom his father does not discipline? But if you are without discipline, of which all have become partakers, then you are illegitimate children and not sons. Furthermore, we had earthly fathers to discipline us, and we respected them; shall we not much rather be subject to the Father of spirits, and live? For they disciplined us for a short time as seemed best to them, but He disciplines us for our good, that we may share His holiness. All discipline for the moment seems not to be joyful, but sorrowful; yet to those who have been trained by it, afterwards it yields the peaceful fruit of righteousness. Therefore, strengthen the hands that are weak and the knees that are feeble, and make straight paths for your feet, so that the limb which is lame may not be put out of joint, but rather be healed.” Hebrews 12:4-13, NASB.
   
   One of my sons sometimes has a bit of trouble keeping current with his school work. Recently when I called him to task, and grounded him from a number of things, he got very upset and wanted to know why I was "going Nazi" on him about it. He later went on to say that he feels that he can't talk to me about anything any more, and he feels that I am always angry with him. From my perspective, I love him, I didn't even raise my voice, and I seek nothing except success and healing for him. We have a tendency to overplay the harshness of our discipline, don't we? If God presses through our conscience or something that we have an area needing correction, we are likely to view all of His kindnesses through that lens, because it speaks most loudly. However, this discipline is far from the final message God has for us. There is a very big difference between punishment and discipline. Discipline sees weakness and failure and brings whatever measures to bear to bring strength and healing. It has nothing to do with justice or moral wrong-doing. Punishment has more to do with facing the consequences for moral wrong-doing. Here we are talking about discipline, not punishment. In the end, discipline is meant to be joyful, but not in the moment of pain.
   
   In fact, the discipline of God is the surest sign of His grace. He means to keep with us, to lead us on, to take us to a point of blessing and peace, even when we ourselves resist. He is more committed to our good fortune than we ourselves are! Isn't it true that our closest friends, the friends we trust most and have known the longest, are the ones that tell us the things we really need to hear? God is not less than our closest friends. Grace means God really means to bless us, to keep with us, to bring us to a place of true and lasting joy. Discipline is one means to this end, but it is not His whole voice nor is it by any means the only thing He has to say. It is an occasional season of revelation to us when we are having trouble hearing more reasonable voices.
   
   
2. Kinds of discipline. This is a point of clarifying terms, because we tend to use the word 'discipline' in two ways. There is self-discipline, or the ordered and focused life that is effectual in its purposes. The disciplined life says yes to the right things, even when it is hard, and no to the right things, even when it is hard. The disciplined life knows its callings, gifting, and strengths, and forsakes other interests in order to excel in them. The disciplined life lets others win at their callings, lets other excel, and focuses on its own complementary success. The second kind of discipline is God's discipline, or rather the discipline of another imposed upon an otherwise undisciplined person. In both cases discipline means the same thing - the focus on a higher goal through sometimes difficult means. If one does not or cannot discipline themselves, bring themselves to a place of order, to a place of focus and success, another must do so. It is the same idea, but its source is either self, or another person, or God.
   
   “I will instruct you and teach you in the way which you should go; I will counsel you with My eye upon you. Do not be as the horse or as the mule which have no understanding, Whose trappings include bit and bridle to hold them in check, Otherwise they will not come near to you.” Psalms 32:8, 9, NASB.
   
   
3. Group discipline. Discipline in a group is even harder, and even more rewarding. Whether it is a family, or the workplace, or a church or parachurch group, it can only come to fruition if there is a common vision, and a strong gift of leadership and administration is present. Even with these, there is another element to discipline within a group that is most difficult. The members must agree to submit to the authority of the leadership and the administration of the group's vision and efforts; they must 'believe' in the vision. Just as a little fly ruins the whole ointment (“Dead flies make a perfumer’s oil stink, so a little foolishness is weightier than wisdom and honor.” Ecclesiastes 10:1, NASB), so one undisciplined member of the group can ruin the whole effort. Each member must be individually disciplined to achieve the goals of the whole. The leadership must be ready to expect resistance and lack of discipline, but most people truly welcome the success and order and sense of belonging to a fruitful endeavor which is larger than themselves. Many times the reason the group falls into disorder and lacks success is because the vision is uncompelling, the leadership is weak, and the affairs of the group are not administered well. Other times it is because one or more undisciplined members are not brought to discipline or expelled (“Drive out the scoffer, and contention will go out, Even strife and dishonor will cease.” Proverbs 22:10, NASB.)