The Gospel of Love

In the last Relationship Tuesdays, we talked about Love and Sin, specifically how sin can be boiled down to not loving God and not loving others.  And when you really take the moment to think about it that makes perfect sense.  If you loved God, you wouldn’t want to hurt Him, you wouldn’t want to disobey Him, and you would want to cultivate your relationship with Him instead of tearing it apart or substituting it with knowledge or empty religion.  If you really loved others, you wouldn’t want to hurt them, you wouldn’t be selfish, and you would want to help them when they’re in trouble.

And the truth is we’re all in trouble.

We’re in trouble because we are not a loving people.  Humanity is not essentially good, not essentially loving, and we haven’t been since Adam and Eve took the first step of not loving God all those years ago.  Our natural inclination is to not love anyone but ourselves, aka be evil.  Now I’m not saying we don’t have our loving moments, but even our most loving of moments often hold selfish intentions lurking in the background.

But God can’t abide beings that are not purely loving because, as John 4:8 so aptly puts it, God is love.  He can’t watch them suffer without Him as they tear their lives and the lives of others apart, and so He introduced death into the world. 

But God also loved us too much to leave it at that, and so He sent His son into the world: “For God so loved the world that he gave his one and only Son, that whoever believes in him shall not perish but have eternal life.” John 3:16

God loved us enough to send His Son to die and be resurrected, so we too might die to our unloving natures, and He sent His Spirit to empower us so that we could be transformed to a point where those acts of love would not just be what we try to do but what we naturally tend to do.

That’s why John says, “We love because he first loved us.” 1 John 4:19 Notice that the verse doesn’t just say that He loved us first, but also “We love because”.  Conversely if we don’t love, we don’t know God’s love.  Check out the next verse: “If anyone says, "I love God," yet hates his brother, he is a liar. For anyone who does not love his brother, whom he has seen, cannot love God, whom he has not seen.” (1 John 4:20)

But by God’s grace, we can love our brother and we can love God because grace isn’t just forgiveness; it is the favor of God in love that we might love Him, love others, and spend eternity doing so.  If this isn’t the outcome of the grace we think we have, chances are we don’t have it.  Everyday we ought to be increasing in love for God and others.  And that grace, while unmerited, is powerful and effective to accomplish it’s purpose within us. 

You cannot help but love if you truly know God’s love, and I’m not talking about a feeling.  I’m talking about action and attitude here.  Again refer to 1 Corinthians 13 to see what love is and isn’t.  You’ll notice nowhere in the “love list” does it say, “love is a warm fuzzy feeling”.  That warm fuzzy feeling makes people without Jesus do all kinds of unloving things.  Serial killers get the warm fuzzy feeling when they kill people for goodness sake.  Love ought never be defined by a feeling.  It should always be defined by action.

And that is why we can demonstrate the new love within us, given through God’s free grace, by obeying God.  Jesus says, “If you love Me, you will keep My commandments.” John 14:15  Obedience is the ultimate act of love toward God, and it’s obedience with all our heart, soul, and strength.

Which is why our next topic of Relationship Tuesdays will be Obeying God.

Love and Sin

In our Relationship Tuesdays, we just started looking at God’s love, and today we’re going to continue looking at God’s love in relation to sin, and it’s going to be a relatively simple lesson.

1 John 4:18 says, “There is no fear in love; but perfect love casts out fear, because fear involves punishment, and the one who fears is not perfected in love.”

There’s a reason why we don’t have to be afraid of punishment when we abide in God’s perfect love, and the premise for this is summed up in the following verses of 1 John 4:

We love, because He first loved us. If someone says, "I love God," and hates his brother, he is a liar; for the one who does not love his brother whom he has seen, cannot love God whom he has not seen. And this commandment we have from Him, that the one who loves God should love his brother also. 1 John 4:19-21

Paul says we know what sin is because of the law (Romans 7:7), Jesus says that the whole law is summed up in two commandments: love God with all your heart, soul, and strength and love your neighbor as yourself. (Mark 12:30-32)  If love fulfills the law, then anything other than love is sin. 

Perfect love = Not sinning against God or anyone else

If we don’t sin aka love, there’s no punishment.  Thus perfect love casts out fear, because fear involves punishment, and the one who fears is not perfected in love.  If you’re afraid of punishment, it means you’re not living in a loving way in every area of your life. 

Now you can get all sappy and say, well the enemy attacks us and tells we’re not good enough and push the blame onto the serpent just as we’ve always done since the garden, but because I love you, I’m going to tell you the truth: 

That’s a lie. 

Pushing the blame of ungodly fear off onto Satan is an unloving act toward God.  You’re basically saying, “God I don’t think you’re big enough to protect me from the lies of the enemy.  I don’t think this armor you’ve given me is strong enough to deflect those fiery darts.  In fact I think you’re a liar because all those promises you made about the devil fleeing when we resist just aren’t true.”

And yet by giving in to the lies, you’re not resisting, so why would the devil flee?

Do you want to know if you’re loving God and others perfectly?  Read 1 Corinthians 13:4-8, and replace the word Love with your name.  “Stephen is patient, Stephen is kind, Stephen is not jealous, Stephen does not brag, he is not arrogant” . . . I’m already falling short of perfect love, and I’m not even a quarter of the way through it.  I’d wager no one, save Jesus, could read 1 Corinthians 13 this way and not be lying through their teeth.  It’s called a sinful nature.

But there’s good news.  We even call it The Good News, and we’ll talk about it in our next Relationship Tuesdays: The Gospel of Love.

Led Into Temptation

It’s Matthew Monday again, and we’re moving into Matthew 4.  Last week we looked at the Trinity and that rare moment when Father, Son, and Holy Spirit when observable during Jesus’ baptism.  How empowered Jesus must have felt at this moment, with the Holy Spirit’s anointing and the Father’s pronouncement of pleasure in His life.

But then in chapter 4, what happens?

The Spirit leads Jesus out into the wilderness to be tempted by Satan (Matthew 4:1).

Notice that God is not doing the tempting.  In fact in James it says, “Let no one say when he is tempted, "I am being tempted by God"; for God cannot be tempted by evil, and He Himself does not tempt anyone. But each one is tempted when he is carried away and enticed by his own lust. Then when lust has conceived, it gives birth to sin; and when sin is accomplished, it brings forth death.” (James 1:13-15).

But God does allow us to be tempted, and He does put us into positions were the devil will have opportunity to tempt us via our own natures.  I mean if He did it to Jesus why are we any different?

But God also promises that “no temptation has overtaken you but such as is common to man; and God is faithful, who will not allow you to be tempted beyond what you are able, but with the temptation will provide the way of escape also, so that you will be able to endure it” (1 Corinthians 10:13).

Jesus had a way out when it came to His temptation.  He did three things: fasted, prayed, and meditated on the scriptures, and when the devil came calling, Jesus was well-prepared to resist the evil one’s temptations.

So when Jesus teaches us to pray, “lead us not into temptation, but deliver us from the evil one” (Matthew 6:13), He’s speaking from experience.  Experience that says temptation isn’t easy.  “For we do not have a high priest who cannot sympathize with our weaknesses, but One who has been tempted in all things as we are, yet without sin” (Hebrews 4:15), and thus He teaches us to ask for grace in not being tempted in the first place, and freedom from the weakness within us, so we may persevere when Satan employs his pernicious wiles.

And we may have faith in God to answer this prayer because this is His kingdom, in His power, for His glory, forever and ever. Amen

Next week, we'll look at the specific temptations and why it is that these three temptations equate to being "tempted in all things as we are"; it's interesting stuff, and you won't want to miss it.

God's Sorrow

For some reason we often get this idea that God is this stoic, unemotional being, or if we do concede Him some emotions, we think of Him as angry and vengeful or loving and joyful, but what about pained and sorrowful?

Perhaps the most striking example of God’s sorrow can be seen during the time of Noah:  “The LORD saw how great man's wickedness on the earth had become, and that every inclination of the thoughts of his heart was only evil all the time. The LORD was grieved that he had made man on the earth, and his heart was filled with pain.” (Genesis 6:5-6)

“Grief” isn’t a word we use much these days, but the definition for it is “to feel intense sorrow as in when a loved one dies.”   Read the rest of the article in today's Proverbs and Wisdom.

Struggle Against Sin

In today’s Christianese when we have a moral failing, aka sin, in our life, we say that we struggle with that issue. 

For example, my moral failing is gluttony.  I love food—I love gourmet food, and I love junk food.  There are very few dishes I dislike, and even less that I won’t outright eat. When I miss a meal, I get cranky and will bite your head off . . . literally.  That’s how hungry I get.

Needless to say, I’m overweight. 

I’ve tried diets and exercising, and when I first came to Christ, I was winning the battle and lost over 100 pounds.   Then when I got married, I took a job telecommuting to work via the Internet, so I could spend time with my family; my wife almost died during child-birth, so I was left raising an infant by myself while she was in the hospital; and when my wife recovered, her work schedule now frequently leaves me home alone with our son and the fridge. 

At this point the only time thoughts of diet and exercise come up is when my pants get too tight, and I have to go get the next size up.

I can look back and see how I’ve got to this point circumstantially, but the real reason why I’ve got to this point isn’t because of circumstances, it’s because of my own lack of self-control.  I’m losing the struggle against sin.

And I think anyone reading this can identify with me.  We all have areas where we fail; where sin wins the struggle and pulls us to our knees again and again. Lately, the scripture that has been coming to mind when I think about what we call “struggling” is found in Hebrews:

Therefore, since we are surrounded by such a great cloud of witnesses, let us throw off everything that hinders and the sin that so easily entangles, and let us run with perseverance the race marked out for us. 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.

In your struggle against sin, you have not yet resisted to the point of shedding your blood. (Hebrews 12:1-4)

That last verse really says a lot doesn’t it?  When we struggle, are we really resisting when we fall into sin over and over? 

That doesn’t seem like much of a struggle. The great cloud of witnesses “were tortured and refused to be released, so that they might gain a better resurrection. Some faced jeers and flogging, while still others were chained and put in prison. They were stoned; they were sawed in two; they were put to death by the sword. They went about in sheepskins and goatskins, destitute, persecuted and mistreated”—Jesus resisted unto death. (Hebrews 11:35-37)

This is what the Bible defines as “struggling” against sin.  So, are we really struggling if we continue to sin, or are we just sinning?

The more I’ve thought and prayed about this, the less appeal food has had, and I think I’m on the road to victory and real resistance.  Won’t you join me in true resistance of sin in your life even to the point of suffering if that’s what it takes?

Featured Non-Profit

This month a Christian non-profit that is worthy of support is being featured every post until Christmas.  The criteria for being featured are that they bring glory to God, they are financially accountable, and finally they must have a mission that includes one of the following: reach the lost, empower believers, or help those in need in the name of Jesus Christ.

Click here for a complete list.

Today’s featured Non-Profit is the North American Mission Board.

Particularly I would like to focus on the disaster relief element of the NAMB.  If you’ve ever been in a disaster scenario in America or around the world, you’ll no doubt recognize the yellow insignia of the Southern Batist’s Disaster Relief group.  While they have many operations in disaster relief, one of the main things they do is setup feeding units for those without food and clean water. 

My home church has two of these units that can be called into action at any time and feed upwards of 40,000 people a day.  Tell me that’s not awesome.

What’s even more awesome is that they do it all in the name of Jesus Christ and give all glory to God.  They evangelize in word and deed, so that the Lamb of God may receive the reward of His suffering.

If you would like to support the NAMB, you can follow this link.

See the video below for more about what the disaster relief team does:

Touched By an Angell from North American Mission Board on Vimeo.

8 Things We Ought Not Love

We know that we ought to love God with all our heart, soul, and strength (Deuteronomy 6:5), we know that we ought to love our neighbor as ourselves (Leviticus 19:18), and we know that whoever doesn’t love cannot know God because God is love (1 John 4:8).  Yet we continually fall short in terms of loving others.

Why? 

Why can’t we love the way God wants us to?  First it’s because we need God to love through us.  Without Him, we’re incapable of genuine love.  And secondly we give our love away to things we shouldn’t instead of what God wants us to love.

So head over to Proverbs and Wisdom to read this week's article on 8 Things We Ought Not Love.

Featured Non-Profit

This December with every post till Christmas, I'm featuring a non-profit worthy of support.  You can see a complete list here.

Today's featured non-profit is Campus Crusade (CRU). 

Campus Crusade for Christ was founded in 1951 by Bill and Vonette Bright on the campus of UCLA, and they now have a presence in 191 countries around the world.  The organization is quite well known for helping to fulfill the Great Commission in the power of the Holy Spirit by winning people to faith in Jesus Christ, building them in their faith and sending them to win and build others; and helping the Body of Christ do evangelism and discipleship.  

Their main focus is college campuses, and much like many other Christian groups, they ask their workers to raise a team to support them in prayer and finances.  And while the organization is quite large, often times the workers struggle to maintain support, particularly in hard economic times.  

I propose two options for supporting this amazing ministry.  Find out who your local CRU workers are and support them both financially and with your prayers.  You can search for local workers via this link.  

Another option is to support some good friends of mine: Aaron and Jenn Halvorsen.  They work with CRU in Boston on the campuses of MIT and Emerson College: two of the nation's leading technical and liberal arts colleges.  They are quite literally reaching the future leaders of our nation and can use your support. You can visit their website for more information on the work they are doing in the name of Jesus Christ:

www.aaronandjenn.com

Were Jesus’ Prayers Answered: Eternal Life

Part 5 of a 5 Part Series

I was given the opportunity to teach the college group at our church once again this Sunday, and our topic of discussion was based on Romans 6:23.  If you grew up in church, this ought to be a familiar verse.  It says, “For the wages of sin is death, but the free gift of God is eternal life in Christ Jesus our Lord.”  This verse ties in very well to my discussion here on the blog about whether Jesus’ prayers in John 17 were answered or not, as you’ll see later in the post. 

I think there are two questions that ought to be addressed in understanding this verse.  1.  What is Sin?  2. What is eternal life?

Awhile back I wrote a post entitled: What is Sin?  I address the sin question in depth there, and I encourage you to read it if you want a more lengthy study, but sin basically boils down to anything that is not loving God with all your heart, soul, and strength, and anything not loving your neighbor as yourself.  If you do anything, and I stress anything, outside of these two areas, it’s sin.  You’ve fallen short.  You’ve earned death, and you’ll not find one person on Earth outside of Jesus Christ who can say they’ve lived that life.

So what’s eternal life?

It seems like such a self-evident answer.  Living forever, right?  In Jesus’ prayer in John 17, He begins by praying this: “Jesus spoke these things; and lifting up His eyes to heaven, He said, "Father, the hour has come; glorify Your Son, that the Son may glorify You, even as You gave Him authority over all flesh, that to all whom You have given Him, He may give eternal life.”  Again, there’s that idea of the gift of God being eternal life.

And yet we all die.  Do we have eternal life or not?  Is it just in the resurrection that we live forever, or did God answer Jesus’ prayer when He prayed it? And C.S. Lewis once said, “You have never met a mere mortal.”  Everyone technically lives forever; the concern is usually location.

But to really answer this question of “what is eternal life”, we have to look at verse 3, where Jesus defines in very specific terms what eternal life is: “This is eternal life, that they may know You, the only true God, and Jesus Christ whom You have sent.”

Eternal life is knowing the One True God.

So, let me put Romans 6:23 in perspective for you: Sin is not loving God with everything you have, and the wages of this is death.  But the gift of God is that He forgave you for not loving Him, He paid the wages of sin at the cross, and because of His great love for you, He has made a way for you to know and love Him again through Jesus Christ; this is eternal life.

Eternal life doesn’t start when you physically die; it starts when you come to know God.  And when you know Him, He empowers you to love Him with everything you’ve got (aka stop sinning).  It’s the beautiful circle of grace freely given by God to all who call on His name and believe. Amen.

Were Jesus' Prayers Answered: Sanctification

Part 3 in a 5 Part Series

In this series, we’ve been looking at Jesus’ prayer in John 17 and whether certain parts of it were answered because it doesn’t really seem like they were, or at least not in the ways we imagine they ought to be.  Isn’t that always the case?

In this post I want to look at verses 17-19: “Sanctify them in the truth; Your word is truth. As You sent Me into the world, I also have sent them into the world. For their sakes I sanctify Myself, that they themselves also may be sanctified in truth.”

I once heard a pastor tell a story that went something like this, “Every morning I get up and shower and shave, then I have a cup of Sanka coffee, and my wife toasts some cinnamon raisin bread.  I don’t care much for raisins, so I spend a few moments poking them out of my toast before slathering on some butter and eating my breakfast.  I guess you could say that I’m shaved, sankafied, and filled with the holy toast.”

Humor aside, a lot of times the word “sanctification” is used to describe the process by which we are continually conformed into the image of Christ.  We sin less and less until we die, and then when we see Him face-to-face, we become fully sanctified and don’t sin anymore. If this is what sanctification is, why does Jesus say, “for their sakes I sanctify Myself”?

Why would Jesus, the One who never sinned, need to be sanctified if sanctification is a process of perfecting the saints?  Wouldn’t He already have been sanctified?  Also why would He pray that the Father sanctify us in the Truth of His word as we’re sent into the world if our finished sanctification only comes at death?

 A little digging shows that the word sanctification is never used in this context, at least not that I can find.  In fact the word is really just the verb form of holy, which means “to be set apart for God’s work.”  In that context, Jesus’ sanctification of Himself through obedience even to death on the cross makes perfect sense.  Our complete sanctification as saints through belief in Christ makes complete sense; we are set apart for God’s work:

“For the grace of God has appeared, bringing salvation to all men, instructing us to deny ungodliness and worldly desires and to live sensibly, righteously and godly in the present age, looking for the blessed hope and the appearing of the glory of our great God and Savior, Christ Jesus, who gave Himself for us to redeem us from every lawless deed, and to purify for Himself a people for His own possession, zealous for good deeds. (Titus 2:11-15)

When we sin as believers, we are not showing that our sanctification is incomplete; boo hoo for us; rather we are quite literally dragging the holiness of God through the mud.  His Truth has set us free, His Truth has sanctified us, and His Son Sanctified Himself and us through the cross.  Sin is not a bad habit that sneaks up on us; it’s a slap in the face to God Himself. 

Why do you think Paul says, “Do you not know that your body is a temple of the Holy Spirit who is in you, whom you have from God, and that you are not your own?

For you have been bought with a price: therefore glorify God in your body” (1 Corinthians 6:18-20).

Jesus’ prayer was answered just as He prayed, not as a process.  Sin ought to be viewed more seriously than a process of sanctification allows for.  If we are sanctified, our response to sin can’t be, “oh well someday I’ll stop even if it’s in eternity.”  We must strive to protect the holiness of God within us that Christ’s sanctification made possible.  Flee from sin, and repent with tears when it catches you unawares, but don’t be flippant about God’s holiness.

Next in the series: Joy

What is Sin?

Have you ever asked this question?  If you have, you’ve probably gotten a lot of cryptic responses like “sin is ‘missing the mark’”, “sin is disobeying God”, “sin is all the bad things we do”, etc.  

While these answers are not wrong, I never felt like they adequately explained it.  So, I set out to find a solid answer for the question of what sin is. What’s the mark we’re missing?  What’s God want us to do that we’re not? How do we know what bad things are?

I somewhat foolishly started in Romans, where Paul complicates the matter even more with phrases like “What shall we say then? Is the Law sin? May it never be! On the contrary, I would not have come to know sin except through the Law; for I would not have known about coveting if the Law had not said, "YOU SHALL NOT COVET."  (Romans 7:7) 

So, is sin breaking the Old Testament Law?  Jewish leaders spend years going over the Law and still can’t completely agree on everything in it and how it applies today.  And then there’s the whole “I do what I do not want to do, hoo do, di di do” tongue twister Paul lays out at the end of that chapter.  Yikes!

Bedraggled by the torrent of rhetoric that is Romans, I walked away even more bogged down by the question of sin.

Finally acknowledging that I couldn’t grasp it on my own, I prayed for help.  As I prayed, I looked up and saw the picture hanging above our front door.  It’s just a piece of paper we printed on our home computer with a couple of verses on it:

Hear, O Israel! The LORD is our God, the LORD is one! You shall love the LORD your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your might. (Deuteronomy 6:4-5)

You shall not take vengeance, nor bear any grudge against the sons of your people, but you shall love your neighbor as yourself; I am the LORD. (Leviticus 19:18)

On these two commandments depend the whole Law and the prophets (Matthew 22:40)

And it clicked.  If the law points out what sin is, and all the law and the prophets hang on these two commandments, then sin at its base is not following these two commandments.

Sin is not loving God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your might.  Sin is not loving your neighbor as yourself.  So simple: no one answers questions quite like Jesus does.

Bombus The Bumblebee

By Elsie Larson

Bombus the Bumblebee tells the story of Bombus, the first bumblebee.  The story begins shortly after creation with Bombus busily buzzing between flowers lapping up nectar.  The honeybees are slightly perturbed by Bombus bumping into them and beating them to the best flowers.  Devising a plan to get Bombus to stop, they tell him that he’s just too bulky to be flying and that he would be better suited to being on the ground crawling. 

Bombus looks at all the other flying bugs and decides that perhaps they’re right, so he stops flying and starts crawling.  Then God shows up and corrects Bombus’ bad attitude.  He says, “what did I tell you to do?  Fly!  So fly.” The book concludes with some facts about bumblebees, most notably that their wings should not be able to support their bodies in flight, yet they do.  There are also some bumblebee activities for children in the back.

Overall, I thought the book was a fun read.  My two-year old son liked it too.

My biggest critique of Bombus the Bumblebee would be the assignment of sinful human characteristics to Bombus and the honeybees in a pre-Fall garden.  I don’t know that children will care about this theological deviation, but it still bothered me as an adult reading the story to my son.  That’s not to say the lessons taught by Bombus and the honeybees aren’t good ones to learn; I just don’t think the pre-fall garden of Eden was an appropriate setting to show issues like selfishness, greed, lying, deception, and disobedience.

If you can look beyond that aspect, I recommend the book.  If you can’t, skip it.

A copy of this book was received for review from the publisher.  All opinions are my own.

What If Adam Hadn't Sinned?

"What if’s” are useless questions.  The past is over.  It cannot be undone only remembered, judged, celebrated, forgiven, or forgotten.  The past is nothing but a place of learned lessons or ignored warnings.  The future is not much different.  James says, “you do not know what your life will be like tomorrow. You are just a vapor that appears for a little while and then vanishes away” (James 4:14). 

There is no point in thinking about “what if’s” or “what then’s”, only "what now’s."

And while I firmly believe that this is the case, the other night I had a dream that was interesting and worth discussion regarding a “what if” scenario, particularly what if Adam hadn’t sinned. 

It’s not a topic that I wonder much about because I’m also a firm believer that Jesus was chosen before the creation of the world to save us from our sin (1 Peter 1:20).  And I don’t think God was at all surprised by His creations’ actions in the garden.  All that said, in the dream I was explaining to my wife what our place in the world would be like if Adam hadn’t sinned. 

I said:

Some people have this misguided notion that if Adam hadn’t sinned; we’d all be rulers and have absolute authority over the Earth.  But that’s not true.  God would be the ruler of Earth, and Adam would be His appointed delegate of authority over the Earth.  He’d be King Adam.  We would be at best delegated small areas of authority under the thousands of our forefathers still alive on the Earth, maybe a section as small as our own households and nothing else. 

This scenario is much the same as our authority in Jesus Christ.  God rules.  He gave Christ authority.  And Christ makes us delegates on Earth of His rule.  Some He puts in higher positions than others.  Others He puts in smaller areas, maybe just their own households.  Many of those who envision themselves as powerful rulers in a ‘what if’ Earth without sin also tend to imagine themselves as powerful rulers in this world because they believe in Jesus.

But we’re not powerful rulers.  We’re weak servants.  From the beginning we’ve been weak servants, servants delegated authority from on High.  Any power we have is ultimately God’s power handed down to us.  Jesus says, “I am the vine, you are the branches; he who abides in Me and I in him, he bears much fruit, for apart from Me you can do nothing” (John 15:5). 

And since it’s not our power, we can’t just go around doing whatever we want with it.  Jesus didn’t.  He said, "Truly, truly, I say to you, the Son can do nothing of Himself, unless it is something He sees the Father doing; for whatever the Father does, these things the Son also does in like manner. For the Father loves the Son, and shows Him all things that He Himself is doing; and the Father will show Him greater works than these, so that you will marvel” (John 5:19-20).

If Jesus never did anything without the Father showing Him first, should we?  More to the point should we do anything in the name of Father, Son, and Spirit without really praying for understanding in what God would have us do?

And then I woke up and started telling my wife my dream in real life, and she peered at me with half-mast eyelids and said, “I’m going to need coffee before any deep theological conversations, dear," which is how most of our mornings start . . .

Gravity

It's been a long time since God has spoken to me in my dreams, but last night, I had a dream in which I saw many of the action movies I have watched replayed in high speed: Rambo, James Bond, Arnold Schwarzenegger, Clint Eastwood, Jason Stratham, Jet Li, etc. flipping, fighting, shooting.

And God said, "Why do they call these sinful men heroes?"

"I don't know, why?"

And rather than answer my question, He said the most profound statement I've ever heard, well at least since the last time He spoke to me. It's still rattling in my brain with all its implications. He said, "Your sin is like gravity; it keeps you tied to the Earth."

I woke pondering repentantly. Sin is like gravity. It makes you fall. It keep you tied to Earthly things rather than eternal things. The only way to overcome gravity is with a force external to ourselves. It's impossible for us to do it on our own. And Jesus who never sinned ascended to heaven from the Mount of Olives--just up and floated away.

My explanations do little to bring justice to the profundity of the statement, so I'll just leave it as He said it:

Your sin is like gravity; it keeps you tied to the Earth.

God's Discipline

In Job 33, young Elihu is weighing in on the conversation between Job and his three friends. While Job has been defending his own righteousness from his three accusing friends, and his friends have been trying to find fault in him, Elihu defends God against the accusations on both sides, and when God speaks to Job, He speaks in a continuation of Elihu’s words.

In chapter 33 specifically, Elihu talks about God’s discipline, which in his description is sometimes kind and gentle like a warning in a dream or a vision, but most of the examples that Elihu lists are not so pleasant: sickness, pain, terror, etc. And God uses all of these to turn us away from destruction.

And then in verse 26, Elihu says that if a man turns from the path of destruction, “He prays to God and finds favor with him; he sees God's face and shouts for joy; he is restored by God to his righteous state. Then he comes to men and says, 'I sinned, and perverted what was right, but I did not get what I deserved.’”

While reading this chapter, I was reminded of Hebrews 12:4-11:

4. In your struggle against sin, you have not yet resisted to the point of shedding your blood. 5. And you have forgotten that word of encouragement that addresses you as sons: "My son, do not make light of the Lord's discipline, and do not lose heart when he rebukes you, 6. because the Lord disciplines those he loves, and he punishes everyone he accepts as a son.” 7. Endure hardship as discipline; God is treating you as sons. For what son is not disciplined by his father? 8. If you are not disciplined (and everyone undergoes discipline), then you are illegitimate children and not true sons. 9. Moreover, we have all had human fathers who disciplined us and we respected them for it. How much more should we submit to the Father of our spirits and live. 10. Our fathers disciplined us for a little while as they thought best; but God disciplines us for our good, that we may share in his holiness. 11. No discipline seems pleasant at the time, but painful. Later on, however, it produces a harvest of righteousness and peace for those who have been trained by it.

Most of the times when these verses are quoted, verse 4 is left out, but when was the last time our struggle against sin resulted in us having our blood shed? I can honestly say I’ve never struggled against sin that much in my Christian walk. In fact, I can’t say that I would right now if the option was presented.

I’m not talking about forsaking Christ under duress; I’d like to think I could be brave and die a martyr’s death in that situation; rather I mean giving up little sins under duress. For example if someone said “watch this movie with violence and sex in it or I’ll kill you,” I’d watch the movie. No question. If someone hijacked my car and said “drive 5 miles over the speed limit or I’ll cut your fingers off,” you could bet I would. Why would I? Well, I do those things anyway, and I don’t struggle against them without the threat of violence. And I don’t think anyone reading this can point an accusing finger when it comes to the little sins either.

But if sin is sin, how is denying Christ in these little sins any different than pointedly denying Christ in a moment of duress? And if we are engaging in these little sins so readily without even the threat of bloodshed, how can we hope to avoid the discipline of God in our lives or call it anything less?

I pray that we, and by “we”, I mostly mean “I”, can accept God’s discipline and turn from our ways quickly not for God’s sake but for our sakes and for the sakes of those we come into contact with since as Elihu so succinctly puts it: “If you sin, how does that affect him? If your sins are many, what does that do to him? If you are righteous, what do you give to him, or what does he receive from your hand? Your wickedness affects only a man like yourself, and your righteousness only the sons of men.” (Job 35:6-8).

Lord, in your justice, remember mercy.

What Was Satan's Sin in the Garden?

I've heard a lot of sermons on Satan's lie in the garden. Some say it's the "Did God really say?" line, but that's not really an untruth; some say it's the "you will not surely die" line, but in context that isn't an untruth either, not even the spiritual death Adam and Eve experienced; and some say it's the "you will be like God" line, but again in context, that's not untrue either.

This question has plagued me for a while, and because it plagues me, I will plague you with it too.

Let's recap the highlights of the story first:

God:

Gen 2:16

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."

Satan:

Gen 3:1

Now the serpent was more crafty than any of the wild animals the Lord God had made. He said to the woman, "Did God really say, 'You must not eat from any tree in the garden'?"

Woman:

Gen 3:2

The woman said to the serpent, "We may eat fruit from the trees in the garden, but God did say, 'You must not eat fruit from the tree that is in the middle of the garden, and you must not touch it, or you will die.' "

Satan:

Gen 3:4

"You will not surely die," the serpent said to the woman. "For God knows that when you eat of it your eyes will be opened, and you will be like God, knowing good and evil."

God says to eat of any tree except the tree of knowledge of good and evil (TKG&E), and Satan does not question if God said to eat of the TKG&E; he questions whether they could "eat of any tree". Remember; God said, "you are free to eat from any tree," except one.

Eve acknowledges God's restriction in her reply but adds something: "and you must not touch it". God did not give this command. He only forbade eating it. Was she given this command secondhand from Adam? God does give the command before he removes Adam's rib and forms the woman. Was this something Adam added? "Don't touch that tree in the middle of the garden, lest you die."

Now this is where Satan's craftiness come to light in the context of scripture. Eve says, "if we touch the fruit, we will die."

Satan answers "you will not surely die."

God never said they couldn't touch the fruit, just that they couldn't eat it, so of course Eve wouldn't die by touching it. Even if this statement was referring to eating the fruit, the command was given to Adam not Eve, their eyes were not "opened" until Adam ate, and when God begins the questioning, he turns to Adam first. "Did you eat the fruit?" Adam does not respond with "yes, but so did Eve," instead he responds with "the woman you gave me tricked me," which is what God curses her for. And the Bible says,

Rom 5:12

Therefore, just as sin entered the world through one man, and death through sin, and in this way death came to all men, because all sinned-

However, Adam's sin does affect her, since they are one flesh.

Here's the part that really bugs me:

Next Satan says, "For God knows that when you eat of it your eyes will be opened, and you will be like God, knowing good and evil."

That part seems like a lie except for these verses:

Gen 3:7

Then the eyes of both of them were opened,

Gen 3:22

And the Lord God said, "The man has now become like one of us, knowing good and evil. He must not be allowed to reach out his hand and take also from the tree of life and eat, and live forever."

Nobody ever talks about the fact that God corroborates Satan's statement. "Man has become like one of us, knowing good and evil." Before this moment, Adam and Eve had no idea what evil was, but equally important, they had no idea what good was either. How could they understand good having never experienced evil? God did know the difference, so when they experienced evil (rebellion against God), they did in fact become like Him at least in terms of knowing what good and evil were. It would have been better for us all had they not, but they did.

All that aside, this was again not a lie on Satan's part.

So, did Satan lie or was his sin in the garden simply causing others to disobey God; he did lead a third of heaven to do the same?

Jesus calls Satan the father of lies, so lying is definitely in his character. Every lie that is told comes from him. I just don't see it displayed in this story, which leads to a couple of important lessons:

If someone tells you something that is "technically" true, but it leads to sin against God, beware. Also if God tells you to do or don't do something, do not automatically assume that it applies to everyone else as well. What would have happened if Adam hadn't told Eve not to touch the tree in the middle of the garden? What would have happened if he hadn't assumed that since she ate it and nothing happened, he could too? And finally, if you lead someone else to sin, do not expect God to be lenient on you just because you didn't "necessarily" do the crime:

Luk 17:2

It would be better for him to be thrown into the sea with a millstone tied around his neck than for him to cause one of these little ones to sin.

Feel free to comment.