The Love ... and Holiness of the Father

As a young Christian, I had questions about the meaning and purpose of the Old Testament. Now I realize that my questions were really about the way I heard the Old Testament being used. I have determined I enjoy the Old Testament even as I hear many of my contemporary Christian brethren questioning  its meaning and purpose. The problem, of course, is that God appears angry and vindictive to them in the Old as compared to loving and compassionate in the New Testament. The solution to reconciling these is to realize that as Christians, we read and live in the meaning of the New Testament. The Old gives insight and understanding into deeper truth, but none of these insights cancel or alter the New Testament reality.

Do not read the OT as if it was intended as the source of commands in the spiritual walk with God. One and two hundred years ago, the OT and specifically the Ten Commandments were regularly held up as commands for the Christian here in America. So much so, that a legalism persisted in the church which on multiple levels permeated and shaped the social order. I believe this has brought much harm to the gospel message and has often skewed understanding faith for individuals, whole families, and the church at large.

In making the above assertion, I do not suggest that God is not a holy God, nor that “holiness” should be abandoned as a goal of being a believer in the Living Christ. In fact, His holiness is the point of this post.

There is certainly a place for reading and understanding the OT. It is wise to read it. However, we do not live by it, and that is where many go astray. The OT is often used as a proof text for perspectives or actions. Is it wrong to do so? That depends, I would say, on what one is trying to prove!

1 Corinthians 10: 6-11 reads, “6 Now these things happened as examples for us, so that we would not crave evil things as they also craved. 7 Do not be idolaters, as some of them were; as it is written, "THE PEOPLE SAT DOWN TO EAT AND DRINK, AND STOOD UP TO PLAY." 8 Nor let us act immorally, as some of them did, and twenty-three thousand fell in one day. 9 Nor let us try the Lord, as some of them did, and were destroyed by the serpents. 10 Nor grumble, as some of them did, and were destroyed by the destroyer. 11 Now these things happened to them as an example, and they were written for our instruction, upon whom the ends of the ages have come.”

Paul has used examples of idolatry, immorality, presumption and complaining to illustrate specifically what those actions look like and to remind the readers of God’s attitude to those behaviors. He does so to warn us about acting on our cravings, but He never states, “Beware, the Lord will do the same to you!” The OT does show God enacting punishments on men, both the children of Israel and their enemies. However, the NT does not give any reason to believe that God so acts under the new covenant of faith. Rather, it specifically says something different. We live under the Truth of Jesus as revealed by Him when He walked on the earth. We know of the atonement through the crucifixion (an understanding developed using the OT example of sacrifice in the altar), and we have been renewed to spiritual birth and life based upon and revealed by faith in the resurrection of our Lord. 

In John 3: 17 we read, “For God did not send the Son into the world to judge the world, but that the world might be saved through Him.”  And in John 12: 47 & 48, "If anyone hears My sayings and does not keep them, I do not judge him; for I did not come to judge the world, but to save the world. 48 He who rejects Me and does not receive My sayings, has one who judges him; the word I spoke is what will judge him at the last day.”

I believe God’s loving-kindness and compassion is the basis for the coming of His Son. In the OT, we see examples of His position on the sin nature and human behaviors of depravity and hatefulness. However, we live by and trust in the NT revelation of God’s plan of redemption, which is offered to all of humanity. Based on what Jesus taught, judgment is that comparison between our choices and actions held up against the words Jesus brought to us. 

I think post-modern Christianity wants to focus wholly on the feel-good aspect of God's love. His love is unlimited, wondrous, and beyond all that we might think or imagine, of course! Yet, if we limit the character of God to simply His great love, we not only do Him an injustice, we fool ourselves based on our own limited desire to have God be as we imagine Him. To wholly focus on God's love can begin to deny His Holiness, and that is a serious error! Love which offers us grace to enter into His presence--when we are depraved and base beyond what we will admit--was never intended to blind us from the fullness of His holy character. Rather, that love and grace enables us to embrace something totally foreign to our fallen natures, the Divine Nature -- pure and just beyond all that we can think of or imagine, as well!

Read the OT and do not be put off by the actions of the Lord there. Neither embrace it for the law it records! Consider it carefully, looking for the way in which it reveals the heart of God and foreshadows the life of Jesus and His teachings. Where it clearly is a history of the law of God ruling over people, their failure to respond, and the Lord addressing their failure, read and learn. However, it is not our mandate or the way the Lord responds to us.  Always recognize the new covenant of faith in the crucified and resurrected Jesus as a spiritual paradigm that began with God’s response to the faith of Abraham. 

That paradigm counted righteousness based on a condition of faith in Abrahan, and so now it is counted the same towards us. It is a paradigm developed across time, and the paradigm went through the Law period producing the OT record.  This record of the period of law is used to help us see and understand the fullness of what the Lord has done for us. Under the law, the Lord sanctioned actions  motivated by an intent to reveal the wonder of His justice, yes, and this justice intended to lift us into His holiness. All for the purpose of having us be able to receive His love. The OT is a blessing that brings to full light the wonder of the life in the spirit which is the fulfillment of the covenant given to Abraham. A fulfillment of that promise is now upon us living at the end of the age of man. We live by faith in Jesus and in Him we move and have our being.We live in His love, and the wonder of His holiness and justice, as well.

Praying for All of You in Christ

Receive the blessings of these words from 1 Corinthians.    Grace to you and peace from God our Father and the Lord Jesus Christ.   I thank my God always concerning you for the grace of God which was given you in Christ Jesus,   that in everything you were enriched in Him, in all speech and all knowledge,   even as the testimony concerning Christ was confirmed in you,   so that you are not lacking in any gift, awaiting eagerly the revelation of our Lord Jesus Christ,   who will also confirm you to the end, blameless in the day of our Lord Jesus Christ. 

Yes or No? Our Binary Code.

Ever noticed how much of the spiritual life boils down to the tension between yes or no?

There are two ways to walk through any moment in life: down the path -- up the same, faithful -- not, smile -- frown, anxious -- calm, loving or not, and so it goes. Kind of like the binary language of a computer, I guess. Which way will the neuron be flipped when we make a decision that produces a course of action?

Easily, Christians reading this will jump to the high mark, of Jesus or of the world? True enough, but how many have determined that strict legalism is the way of Jesus and not the way of the world?

John warns us in 1 John 1: 1-5
This is the message we have heard from Him and announce to you, that God is Light, and in Him there is no darkness at all. (Light or dark?)  If we say that we have fellowship with Him and yet walk in the darkness, we lie and do not practice the truth;  but if we walk in the Light as He Himself is in the Light, we have fellowship with one another, and the blood of Jesus His Son cleanses us from all sin.   If we say that we have no sin, we are deceiving ourselves and the truth is not in us.   If we confess our sins, He is faithful and righteous to forgive us our sins and to cleanse us from all unrighteousness.   If we say that we have not sinned, we make Him a liar and His word is not in us.
This part of John's first letter moves forward until in chapter 3:6 we read,

No one who abides in Him sins; no one who sins has seen Him or knows Him.  Practically and spiritually the only question for living a faithful life becomes,  "Am I abiding in the Spirit of Christ ... yes or no?". 

Weeks have passed...

I haven't had time to think and write here.

Soon, maybe.

Too busy?

Sometimes in life it's easy to be overwhelmed and hard to keep up. (1) If that's real, so be it; navigate the rapids.  (2) The enemy's trap for the soul: If I pick up the busyness, I agree that complication is needed; it will "profit" me. It is a choice: simple or complicated? Be aware, Soul, motivations to choose spring from the spirit of Christ or the fallen nature. (3) Being overwhelmed is the consequence of not shouldering responsibility.

The Lord Arm Throws Jacob to the Mat!!

Every fall, the profession of teaching does something many professions don’t do often enough. Each teacher has the opportunity to start afresh, apply new approaches, new ideas and hopefully, improve his or her effectiveness.

Better than the above is the promise of the Father:

The LORD'S lovingkindnesses indeed never cease, for His compassions never fail. 23 They are new every morning; Great is Your faithfulness.  Lamentations 3: 22-23

The love and faithfulness of the Lord are at the center of walking with Him. Believers will hear a wonderful promise from the Old Testament such as this one, then the reality of life and its disappointments cause some folks to doubt or even reject the truth of God’s existence. Recently I had the opportunity to offer encouragement regarding the faithfulness of God to both a man in his seventies and a man in his early thirties. The former simply asked me if I ever doubted God’s existence, as he revealed such thoughts after a lifetime of church-going. The latter was raised in a Christian home and attended Christian school. He has maintained his faith all of his life, including notable faithfulness in what we call the disciplines of faith.  My young friend is frustrated by what he sees as a lack of God answering prayer. All of us face one or more times of examining what we think we believe about God compared with how He appears to work in our individual life.

Scrutinizing one’s faith is varied in depth and outcome depending on individuals, but all believers will experience this  as part of the faith walk. It is a “wrestling” we must each do with the Lord. (Remember the Old Testament story of Jacob wrestling with God? Genesis 32) Though believers have received the Holy Spirit, there is a life-long quest for deeper knowledge of the Lord from the moment of decision to accept the redemption of Christ. Within the believer, there is a mixture of motivations for that pursuit. It is fairly common to seek after God for what one perceives God can provide, while He seeks that a person know Him for Himself. Don’t we all prefer our friends to accept us for whom we are and simply enjoy our company rather than seek to be with us for what we have to offer them? Sifting our motivations down to only pure ones can be a root of the wrestling match. There are other issues symbolic in Jacob’s wrestling with the Lord, but the outcome of the story is why I bring it up here. When Jacob remained committed to the wrestling through the night and prevailed against God (there’s something to ponder!!), Jacob asked for a blessing; and the Lord renamed Jacob Israel. He became the father of the twelve tribes, the entire nation of God’s chosen, the group of humans in which we as gentiles have been adopted. The point: we must each wrestle in the relationship with God before we enter the path of our full blessing and destiny of our being in Him.

I may be wrong, but my guess is the friend of mine in his seventies avoided the deep things of God in the first place while following a social tradition he called faith; as he approaches the end of his life, such wrestling has begun. Never too late!

Another reason people experience a discrepancy between what they believe and expect from the Lord compared with what they actually find is incorrect or incomplete instruction embedded in traditions which are built around believing in the Lord. My young friend is overwhelmed with a sense that God isn’t Who He says He is.  The actual fallacy is that God isn’t exactly Who man has said He is.

Why does our Father engage us in wrestling? Maybe in reevaluating our faith, something impure in us wants to reject God and begins looking for “relief”. Or, the opposite is true. Something within is hungering and thirsting for more of godliness. The Father confronts the believer and ordains the wrestling as a means of revealing these inner motivations to him or her. The believer gains spiritual insight or rejects its revelations. For the one who determines to go on with the Lord, the wrestling has served the development of spiritual trust. Deeper trust in the Lord is a vital and blessed state. So, the wrestling is good for the believer. 

Some wrestle and shrink back from faith, even reject it. Some move forward into greater spiritual knowledge of God. The heart must be challenged; it needs to be weighed and known…by the individual. The Father already knows. Wrestling with Him helps us believers know ourselves.

Are you on your back spiritually, wondering what's going on? It may be your hunger for our Father and Lord has motivated Him to answer your maturity with a challenge toward growth in the area of trust. You currently feel thrown to the mat as you wrestle with Him. Every morning He greets you with fresh love and compassion, encouraging you to prevail against His challenge!

"Blessed are those who hunger and thirst for righteousness, for they shall be satisfied,” Jesus as recorded in Matthew 5:6

Growth in the Spirit

At various junctions of life as a Christian, we may realize we have been living as an unlearned, uncommitted or unfaithful Christian. Such realization can seem painful. (So much so, that we may have been intentionally trying to avoid thinking about our short-comings!) However, when the Spirit of God determines to grace us with spiritual understanding of the magnitude of our failure, we submit to gain peace in our conscience, or because we hunger and thirst for righteousness.

If the conviction comes on us and we recognize such is the result of lack of commitment or even unfaithful acts, then repentance is called for, no doubt. However, sometimes our behavior fails the glory of God as a function of being unlearned in spiritual knowledge. Being unlearned of spirit knowledge leaves us to be mastered too often in things of the flesh. We have not lost our salvation, but quarrels, strife, and discord remain part of our walk experience.    ( 1 Cor. 3)

Recently in posts and in the comments to these posts, I have addressed the difference between reliance on the Father's resource and walking in our responsibility to pursue living in His Kingdom. I think the following selection of scripture speaks about this difference. The whole selection might be described as instruction on spiritual growth. Notice the role played by the provision of the Lord. From the basis of knowledge of the Lord, grace and peace have been multiplied to us. Further His divine power grants us all we need for life and godliness. From His glory and excellence flow His promises SO THAT we become partakers of the divine nature. Then begins the development of character traits wherein we are acting responsibly to grow in that nature ourselves. Interestingly, this process ends with increased love and love is the basis of the two great commandments (Matthew 22:36-40) which fulfill the entire law.

Notice also, Peter states that in the diligent practice of this development to know increased love, we will never stumble. Sounds a bit like Peter believes there is a state for the believer of never sinning. Which doesn't suggest the believer is incapable of sin, but rather, that the walk with Christ includes times of living without stumbling into sin. Reflect on the 2 Peter 1:1-10, and share your thoughts on God's resource versus our responsibility.


2 Peter 1:1-10
1 Simon Peter, a bond-servant and apostle of Jesus Christ, To those who have received a faith of the same kind as ours, by the righteousness of our God and Savior, Jesus Christ. 2 Grace and peace be multiplied to you in the knowledge of God and of Jesus our Lord; 3 seeing that His divine power has granted to us everything pertaining to life and godliness, through the true knowledge of Him who called us by His own glory and excellence. 4 For by these He has granted to us His precious and magnificent promises, so that by them you may become partakers of the divine nature, having escaped the corruption that is in the world by lust. 5 Now for this very reason also, applying all diligence, in your faith supply moral excellence, and in your moral excellence, knowledge, 6 and in your knowledge, self-control, and in your self-control, perseverance, and in your perseverance, godliness, 7 and in your godliness, brotherly kindness, and in your brotherly kindness, love. 8 For if these qualities are yours and are increasing, they render you neither useless nor unfruitful in the true knowledge of our Lord Jesus Christ. 9 For he who lacks these qualities is blind or short-sighted, having forgotten his purification from his former sins. 10 Therefore, brethren, be all the more diligent to make certain about His calling and choosing you; for as long as you practice these things, you will never stumble.