"Blessed is the man whom God corrects; so do not despise the discipline of the Almighty. For he wounds, but he also binds up; he injures, but his hands also heal. ... Then Job replied: 'If only my anguish could be weighed and all my misery be placed on the scales! It would surely outweigh the sand of the seas - no wonder my words have been impetuous.'" (Job 5:17-18, 6:1-3)
We've all suffered wounds from God. We'd prefer never to know pain at His hands, but the Bible gives us no such promise. What we are promised is comforting, but much less relaxing than what we'd like to hear. We want a god who will always give us what we want and will never teach us hard lessons. We want to be conformed to the image of Jesus without the chisel that shapes us. But God's hand, though always good, isn't always easy. He takes us through not only joys and comfort, but also pain. A quick survey of Scripture should be enough to convince us. Just ask Job - or Abraham, Joseph, David, Jeremiah, Daniel, John the Baptist, John the disciple, Peter, Paul, Stephen, or any other character God used. The godly life is joyful but painful.
Or we could just ask our living Lord. That sacred head once wounded has a testimony for us: Those who worship God yet live in this world will be traumatized by the contradictions between the two. Count on it. And it isn't just an unfortunate spiritual dynamic; the God we worship has ordained it. Whether for correction or character, it's from Him.
Is that unsettling? Don't worry; His wounds are never deeper than they must be, and never beyond His ability to heal. In fact, He has promised to heal them. But we must have them if He is to shape us. There's no way we can be like Jesus and yet wear no scars in this world.
Did we think the Christian life was going to be without pain? No. Look at Jesus. Look at His disciples. Look at two thousand years of church history. Or, closer to home, look at the headlines. The crucified Lord has a crucified church. It's the only path to resurrection.
No, the Christian life is by no means without pain. It can't be, not if it's real and if it exists in a hostile world. And not if we're going to be like Jesus. But neither is it without comfort and healing. That's why we can worship the God who wounds as well as the God who restores. He knows what He is doing; He is preparing us for glory.
"No pain, no palm; no thorns, no throne; no gall, no glory; no cross, no crown." - William Penn
Friday, January 28, 2011
Wednesday, January 19, 2011
High Conformity
"Be imitators of God, therefore, as dearly loved children and live a life of love, just as Christ loved us and gave himself up for us as a fragrant offering and sacrifice to God." (Eph. 5:1-2)
A trap of the human conscience is to think that God wants us to be loving, gracious, generous, and all those other good things because He wants us to behave ourselves and get along with each other. That would, in fact, be a wonderful by-product of our spiritual maturity, but it isn't the goal. No, the goal is much deeper than that: It's to be like God.
As creatures designed to reflect His image, we've fallen tragically short of the goal. God's restoration offered in the Cross of Jesus and the gift of His Spirit puts us back on the image-of-God track. God wants us to be loving, gracious, generous, and all those other good things because He is all of those things. Any good father would want to instill his values and his character into his children. And our God is a very good Father. He wants us to be like Him.
That's a different approach to maturity than many of us usually take. We want to fulfill the requirements - at least the minimum - and get by with better-than-average growth. We seek a Christianized form of self-improvement. But God has so much more for us than self-improvement. His greater desire for us is God-conformity. We are being drawn by His Spirit into a new role - from servants to children. Both must comply with the Father's wishes. Only one can really inherit His genes and grow in His character.
Think about this: Have you approached the fruit of the Spirit as items on a list - a list that's primarily about you and your growth? I know I certainly have before. But we must look higher than that. They are aspects of God's character that He is fully intent on having us share. He is relentless in pursuit of His image being found in each of us. He won't diverge from that goal. Neither should we.
God wants us to love because He is love. He wants us to be pure because He is pure. He wants us to forgive because He has forgiven. He wants us to give because He has given. The list could go on. And, in fact, it should. Everything we do should be done with one question in mind: Does this look like my Father?
"...But the greatest of these is love." (1 Cor. 13:13) Nowhere in the New Testament is love defined simply as a common human emotion. Biblical love is much more radical than that. It extends farther than the world's love - to enemies and strangers; and it also goes deeper - to sacrificial offerings of adoration. We love because God adamantly insists that we be like Him. But if human experience isn't the template for biblical love, where do we go to take our cues? Jesus is our example.
Jesus loved us and gave Himself as an offering. He considered His own human feelings of no account; a higher consideration than self took Him to the Cross. He defined love for His disciples as laying down one's life for a friend, and He gave them an object lesson they would never forget. The visual illustration of this kind of love sticks with us as well. It's the example Paul gives to the Ephesians: We are to love in the same way that Christ loved us. Paul wrote to the Romans of the call to be a living sacrifice. Using Jesus as our model is a reiteration of the same theme.
Think of Jesus' kind of love: He embraced cheaters and prostitutes. He touched lepers and dead people. He was sometimes very tender and sometimes very harsh. He always told the truth, even when it hurt. He loved sinners but hated sin. He let people self-destruct - Pharisees, insincere seekers, Peter in his denial - never compromising principles for the sake of sentiment. He was incredibly patient with hardheaded disciples. And He bled.
Does that description of Jesus' love reflect the kind of love we show each other in the church and in the world? Probably not. We have a long way to go. But there's no way we can worship this God without a desire to be like Him - especially in His love.
Paul frequently makes Jesus our prime example. So much for attainable goals! But a God worth worshiping would never settle for mediocrity anyway. We must press on. His love compels us.
"We are shaped and fashioned by what we love." - Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
"He who is filled with love is filled with God Himself." - Augustine
A trap of the human conscience is to think that God wants us to be loving, gracious, generous, and all those other good things because He wants us to behave ourselves and get along with each other. That would, in fact, be a wonderful by-product of our spiritual maturity, but it isn't the goal. No, the goal is much deeper than that: It's to be like God.
As creatures designed to reflect His image, we've fallen tragically short of the goal. God's restoration offered in the Cross of Jesus and the gift of His Spirit puts us back on the image-of-God track. God wants us to be loving, gracious, generous, and all those other good things because He is all of those things. Any good father would want to instill his values and his character into his children. And our God is a very good Father. He wants us to be like Him.
That's a different approach to maturity than many of us usually take. We want to fulfill the requirements - at least the minimum - and get by with better-than-average growth. We seek a Christianized form of self-improvement. But God has so much more for us than self-improvement. His greater desire for us is God-conformity. We are being drawn by His Spirit into a new role - from servants to children. Both must comply with the Father's wishes. Only one can really inherit His genes and grow in His character.
Think about this: Have you approached the fruit of the Spirit as items on a list - a list that's primarily about you and your growth? I know I certainly have before. But we must look higher than that. They are aspects of God's character that He is fully intent on having us share. He is relentless in pursuit of His image being found in each of us. He won't diverge from that goal. Neither should we.
God wants us to love because He is love. He wants us to be pure because He is pure. He wants us to forgive because He has forgiven. He wants us to give because He has given. The list could go on. And, in fact, it should. Everything we do should be done with one question in mind: Does this look like my Father?
"...But the greatest of these is love." (1 Cor. 13:13) Nowhere in the New Testament is love defined simply as a common human emotion. Biblical love is much more radical than that. It extends farther than the world's love - to enemies and strangers; and it also goes deeper - to sacrificial offerings of adoration. We love because God adamantly insists that we be like Him. But if human experience isn't the template for biblical love, where do we go to take our cues? Jesus is our example.
Jesus loved us and gave Himself as an offering. He considered His own human feelings of no account; a higher consideration than self took Him to the Cross. He defined love for His disciples as laying down one's life for a friend, and He gave them an object lesson they would never forget. The visual illustration of this kind of love sticks with us as well. It's the example Paul gives to the Ephesians: We are to love in the same way that Christ loved us. Paul wrote to the Romans of the call to be a living sacrifice. Using Jesus as our model is a reiteration of the same theme.
Think of Jesus' kind of love: He embraced cheaters and prostitutes. He touched lepers and dead people. He was sometimes very tender and sometimes very harsh. He always told the truth, even when it hurt. He loved sinners but hated sin. He let people self-destruct - Pharisees, insincere seekers, Peter in his denial - never compromising principles for the sake of sentiment. He was incredibly patient with hardheaded disciples. And He bled.
Does that description of Jesus' love reflect the kind of love we show each other in the church and in the world? Probably not. We have a long way to go. But there's no way we can worship this God without a desire to be like Him - especially in His love.
Paul frequently makes Jesus our prime example. So much for attainable goals! But a God worth worshiping would never settle for mediocrity anyway. We must press on. His love compels us.
"We are shaped and fashioned by what we love." - Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
"He who is filled with love is filled with God Himself." - Augustine
Saturday, January 8, 2011
Nonconformity
"For though we live in the world, we do not wage war as the world does. The weapons we fight with are not the weapons of the world. On the contrary, they have divine power to demolish strongholds." (2 Cor. 10:3-4)
Imagine a culture in which there is no word to describe deception. No lie has ever been told and no one has even considered deviating from the truth. This culture has such clear lines of authority that it would occur to no one to assert his own rights - or violate another's. It has a complete absence of conflict, a perfectly united fellowship, and a plan that everyone single-mindedly pursues. There's no discord there, only harmony. It's the utopia that human beings have instinctively envisioned, yet never achieved.
Such was the culture of heaven before Satan fell like lightning from his high estate. As far as we can tell from Scripture, Lucifer's rebellion was an isolated incident. It drew many followers - one-third of heaven's hosts, according to many interpretations of Revelation 12:4 - but was not in any way typical of the remainder of heaven's inhabitants. No, heaven's culture was perfect. Who - except for a being as prideful as Satan - would have wanted to mess it up?
We can't relate to a society in which evil is foreign. We're not nearly innocent enough for that. We've grown up with sin all around us, showing up in violence, bitterness and anger, lust and greed, and all sorts of idolatries. But in the enormous span of cosmic history, our earth has gone tragically wrong for only a well-defined moment - a brief sliver of eternity. What we've accepted as normal is drastically abnormal. God's eternal kingdom will not accept any elements of rebellion. Regardless of how comfortable we've been in the past with the human rebellion, we need to be terribly uncomfortable with it now. We have to change.
Our worship of God is to involve a radical transformation to His culture - a society in which all disobedience is a horrifying thought. No lying, no lust, no discord, no rebellion. Our minds must fit the eternal patterns of heaven, not the momentary aberrations of earth. We are citizens of a very different kingdom than we've ever known. The ways of this world hold nothing for us anymore. Our conformity is over. Transformation must begin.
"Measure your growth in grace by your sensitiveness to sin." - Oswald Chambers
Imagine a culture in which there is no word to describe deception. No lie has ever been told and no one has even considered deviating from the truth. This culture has such clear lines of authority that it would occur to no one to assert his own rights - or violate another's. It has a complete absence of conflict, a perfectly united fellowship, and a plan that everyone single-mindedly pursues. There's no discord there, only harmony. It's the utopia that human beings have instinctively envisioned, yet never achieved.
Such was the culture of heaven before Satan fell like lightning from his high estate. As far as we can tell from Scripture, Lucifer's rebellion was an isolated incident. It drew many followers - one-third of heaven's hosts, according to many interpretations of Revelation 12:4 - but was not in any way typical of the remainder of heaven's inhabitants. No, heaven's culture was perfect. Who - except for a being as prideful as Satan - would have wanted to mess it up?
We can't relate to a society in which evil is foreign. We're not nearly innocent enough for that. We've grown up with sin all around us, showing up in violence, bitterness and anger, lust and greed, and all sorts of idolatries. But in the enormous span of cosmic history, our earth has gone tragically wrong for only a well-defined moment - a brief sliver of eternity. What we've accepted as normal is drastically abnormal. God's eternal kingdom will not accept any elements of rebellion. Regardless of how comfortable we've been in the past with the human rebellion, we need to be terribly uncomfortable with it now. We have to change.
Our worship of God is to involve a radical transformation to His culture - a society in which all disobedience is a horrifying thought. No lying, no lust, no discord, no rebellion. Our minds must fit the eternal patterns of heaven, not the momentary aberrations of earth. We are citizens of a very different kingdom than we've ever known. The ways of this world hold nothing for us anymore. Our conformity is over. Transformation must begin.
"Measure your growth in grace by your sensitiveness to sin." - Oswald Chambers
Wednesday, January 5, 2011
A Living Sacrifice
"Therefore, I urge you, brothers, in view of God's mercy, to offer your bodies as living sacrifices, holy and pleasing to God - this is your spiritual act of worship. Do not conform any longer to the pattern of this world, but be transformed by the renewing of your mind." (Rom. 12:1-2)
Since the days of the Exodus, wherever a tabernacle or temple stood, faithful Jews would bring the best of their flocks and herds to a priest standing at the altar of God. It was an act of devotion, a commandment handed down by God Himself. There were various reasons for the command: The offering would, at times, serve as a symbol of sin and its ugly consequences; as a sacrifice of gratitude, acknowledging that every good gift comes from God; or as an act of devotion and worship, a gift from a loving heart. Regardless of the reason, the origin of the sacrifice was always God - human beings clearly never created a ram or a bull - and the sacrifice was always a reminder of the horrible gap between the Creator and the created.
God bridged that gap with His ultimate sacrifice, of course - the body of Jesus on an altar made of Roman lumber. The wages of sin were paid in full. There are no more guilt offerings. All that was left for us to do is to place our lives in Him. Never before had such a gift been given, and never since. Those who accept it have no sin to work off, no condemnation to dread. We're left standing with nothing but our gratitude.
There is, however, an appropriate response. It has nothing to do with merit or guilt, but only with the thankfulness that should naturally flow from a redeemed heart. It is our spiritual act of worship.
The response is for us to walk to that tabernacle or temple as the Israelites did in days of old, approach the Priest, and hand Him the sacrifice that we brought out of our gratitude: ourselves. We are to envision our Priest doing His duty by taking the sacrifice, placing it on the altar of God, and accepting it in His name. But unlike the old sacrifices, this sacrifice still lives. It lives a dedicated life, an altar life. It now belongs to the Priest. We are in His hands.
But what does it mean to lay our lives on God's altar? Imagine a scene from the movies: In some distant tribal culture, one man saves another's life. According to custom, the saved now belongs to the savior. And why not? If not for the rescuer, the rescued one would be dead. His life rightfully belongs to the one who preserved it. He might as well spend the rest of his days for the one who actually gave him the rest of his days.
So it is with Jesus and His sheep. We were lost and, for all practical purposes, dead. That's not our preferred assessment of ourselves, but it's what the Bible says. Without Jesus, we'd be forever lost and lifeless. But He rescued us. And in His culture, we now belong to Him. We are to live out the rest of our days - the days He mercifully gave us - for Him.
That's what being a living sacrifice is all about. It means that when Jesus tells us to turn the other cheek, we don't have the right to say, "No, not this time." When Jesus tells us to give all we have - our time, our talents, our money, or even our deepest desires - to some aspect of His work, we don't have the authority to decline. We are not our own; we have no claim on our own lives. We were bought with a precious, heavy price. We were saved for the One who saved us.
Just as Jesus laid Himself on God's altar for our sin, we are to lay ourselves on that altar for His righteousness. We don't earn His righteousness, of course. But practically, God puts it into us - He works it into our spirits - to the extent that we lay down our tainted lives in exchange for His resurrected one.
The implications of that relationship are astounding. Radical. Relentless. It was an "everything" purchase for a "forever" promise. Living sacrifices don't live for themselves. They live for Another. That's their service of worship.
Since the days of the Exodus, wherever a tabernacle or temple stood, faithful Jews would bring the best of their flocks and herds to a priest standing at the altar of God. It was an act of devotion, a commandment handed down by God Himself. There were various reasons for the command: The offering would, at times, serve as a symbol of sin and its ugly consequences; as a sacrifice of gratitude, acknowledging that every good gift comes from God; or as an act of devotion and worship, a gift from a loving heart. Regardless of the reason, the origin of the sacrifice was always God - human beings clearly never created a ram or a bull - and the sacrifice was always a reminder of the horrible gap between the Creator and the created.
God bridged that gap with His ultimate sacrifice, of course - the body of Jesus on an altar made of Roman lumber. The wages of sin were paid in full. There are no more guilt offerings. All that was left for us to do is to place our lives in Him. Never before had such a gift been given, and never since. Those who accept it have no sin to work off, no condemnation to dread. We're left standing with nothing but our gratitude.
There is, however, an appropriate response. It has nothing to do with merit or guilt, but only with the thankfulness that should naturally flow from a redeemed heart. It is our spiritual act of worship.
The response is for us to walk to that tabernacle or temple as the Israelites did in days of old, approach the Priest, and hand Him the sacrifice that we brought out of our gratitude: ourselves. We are to envision our Priest doing His duty by taking the sacrifice, placing it on the altar of God, and accepting it in His name. But unlike the old sacrifices, this sacrifice still lives. It lives a dedicated life, an altar life. It now belongs to the Priest. We are in His hands.
But what does it mean to lay our lives on God's altar? Imagine a scene from the movies: In some distant tribal culture, one man saves another's life. According to custom, the saved now belongs to the savior. And why not? If not for the rescuer, the rescued one would be dead. His life rightfully belongs to the one who preserved it. He might as well spend the rest of his days for the one who actually gave him the rest of his days.
So it is with Jesus and His sheep. We were lost and, for all practical purposes, dead. That's not our preferred assessment of ourselves, but it's what the Bible says. Without Jesus, we'd be forever lost and lifeless. But He rescued us. And in His culture, we now belong to Him. We are to live out the rest of our days - the days He mercifully gave us - for Him.
That's what being a living sacrifice is all about. It means that when Jesus tells us to turn the other cheek, we don't have the right to say, "No, not this time." When Jesus tells us to give all we have - our time, our talents, our money, or even our deepest desires - to some aspect of His work, we don't have the authority to decline. We are not our own; we have no claim on our own lives. We were bought with a precious, heavy price. We were saved for the One who saved us.
Just as Jesus laid Himself on God's altar for our sin, we are to lay ourselves on that altar for His righteousness. We don't earn His righteousness, of course. But practically, God puts it into us - He works it into our spirits - to the extent that we lay down our tainted lives in exchange for His resurrected one.
The implications of that relationship are astounding. Radical. Relentless. It was an "everything" purchase for a "forever" promise. Living sacrifices don't live for themselves. They live for Another. That's their service of worship.
Sunday, January 2, 2011
In Spirit and Truth
"Yet a time is coming and has now come when the true worshipers will worship the Father in spirit and truth, for they are the kind of worshipers the Father seeks. God is spirit, and his worshipers must worship in spirit and in truth." (John 4:23-24)
We are worshiping creatures by nature. It's why we were made. A glance around our world reveals a panorama of worship. Our culture alone includes an abundance of styles, a plethora of deities, a multitude of definitions, and myriad motives.
Considering the central role of worship in the life of a human being - it is our entire reason for being, as well as the eternal activity of the saints in heaven, according to the Word - we might do well to consider what God wants it to be like. Does He prefer informal or formal? Ritualistic or spontaneous? Noisy or quiet? Dignified or recklessly passionate? Nearly everyone has an opinion on these alternatives, but they aren't really the heart of the issue. What God desires most has less to do with how we express our worship than with the spirit behind it. In our adoration of our Creator, God seeks inspiration and integrity, sincerity and a spirit of sacrifice. He wants our outward expression to match our inward attitudes. He wants us not to worship ignorantly, but to know who He is. He wants it to be real.
That's hard for us. We fall into error so easily: We're either too emotional or not emotional enough, too rigid or too unstructured, too self-conscious or not self-aware enough. Most of all, we're apt to turn a worshipful heart into a routine behavior in the blink of an eye. What was sincere devotion yesterday is a performance for God's approval today. What was once an act of passion is now an act of obligation. Our hearts can grow cold faster than we ever thought.
We should consider what our worship is like. Is it a Sunday ritual or a frenzied emotion that we can put on and take off? Is it limited to one style of music or a particular church? Most important, is it more than skin-deep?
God seeks those whose worship emanates from deep within. He desires legitimate praise and integrity between heart and mouth. He wants to be the One we treasure most. Most of all, He wants you. All of you.
We are worshiping creatures by nature. It's why we were made. A glance around our world reveals a panorama of worship. Our culture alone includes an abundance of styles, a plethora of deities, a multitude of definitions, and myriad motives.
Considering the central role of worship in the life of a human being - it is our entire reason for being, as well as the eternal activity of the saints in heaven, according to the Word - we might do well to consider what God wants it to be like. Does He prefer informal or formal? Ritualistic or spontaneous? Noisy or quiet? Dignified or recklessly passionate? Nearly everyone has an opinion on these alternatives, but they aren't really the heart of the issue. What God desires most has less to do with how we express our worship than with the spirit behind it. In our adoration of our Creator, God seeks inspiration and integrity, sincerity and a spirit of sacrifice. He wants our outward expression to match our inward attitudes. He wants us not to worship ignorantly, but to know who He is. He wants it to be real.
That's hard for us. We fall into error so easily: We're either too emotional or not emotional enough, too rigid or too unstructured, too self-conscious or not self-aware enough. Most of all, we're apt to turn a worshipful heart into a routine behavior in the blink of an eye. What was sincere devotion yesterday is a performance for God's approval today. What was once an act of passion is now an act of obligation. Our hearts can grow cold faster than we ever thought.
We should consider what our worship is like. Is it a Sunday ritual or a frenzied emotion that we can put on and take off? Is it limited to one style of music or a particular church? Most important, is it more than skin-deep?
God seeks those whose worship emanates from deep within. He desires legitimate praise and integrity between heart and mouth. He wants to be the One we treasure most. Most of all, He wants you. All of you.
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