The Gospel In the Gardens

Eden

The story of God's communion with man begins in a garden. His infinite love cannot be contained so the Creator forms a human being in His image out of the dust and breathes into him His breath, His life. A love story planned before time takes shape in the midst of a quiet garden. God's will is done in the mystery and wonder of a man softly taking his first steps. Perhaps God Himself gently assisted the man to his feet, showed him how to walk, and showed him the beauty and peace of the garden that was made just for him out of God's deep compassion and provision. Everything the man needs is present in the garden and God dwells with Him in holy and undisturbed communion. On Earth as it is in Heaven.

God the Creator gives His human creation the task that He has just undertaken-to work and continue the creative process. In the cool of the garden, the man follows the example of his Father to bring beauty and purpose into the world.

But God sees that it is not good for the man to be alone so He finishes His creation with the provision of a partner. The garden is filled with their love and it brings joy to the heart of the Father as it reflects His love. Everything is as He intended. They know God and are fully known. Unashamed in their nakedness, they share space with the Creator of the universe and call him "Abba, Father." Unadulterated access to God and dwelling with Him are the marks of their existence. The Jews call it "Shalom"-the right order of things; everything as it should be. Complete wholeness, peace, rest, and fulfillment.

And yet, God allows His Creation to choose to love Him. He does not force them. They are not automatons responding to a God pulling the strings. Out of His deep love, He allows for them to decide. He is vulnerable and His love is risky.

The human beings He created decide that they want His job. They allow mistrust and pride to invade their paradise. They believe that God is withholding something from them; that He is not enough; that there is something that may be better than their relationship with Him. So they rebel. They trade their holy and perfect communion with God for a deception. The humans fatally damage their relationship with their Creator God and break His heart. He longs to be with them but they tell Him, "Our will be done." Their lives are ripped to shreds by the decision to live against the design and purpose that God lovingly gave them. Harmony with God is destroyed and His beloved leave the garden. Creation groans under the break of this relationship and the ground is cursed. The breaking of the union between God and His Creation starts in the garden and emanates through every molecule of the created order. No longer is there Shalom.

Gethsemane

Thousands of years pass. God has continued to engage with His people but their access to Him has been broken. His holiness, love, and hatred for what harms and, ultimately, destroys His children keep Him from being able to interact with them on the level that He originally designed. The people's sin keep them from Him, though He continues to work through this damaged relationship. God has had His heart broken. He has been wounded.

When someone is wounded or offended by another, there are two possible outcomes that both require a debt to be paid and an absorption of the pain. The first course of action is for the wounded party to
retaliate-to put the pain and wounding back on the original offender. The original offender "pays" for what they've done. The second course of action is for the hurt party to absorb the wound and accept and pay the debt of pain while the other person goes free.  The wounded party does not retaliate which is a great cost to him or herself. This is forgiveness.

Because it is literally impossible for the pain to just be ignored and for the relationship to just continue, true restoration requires forgiveness. Forgiveness is costly and deeply painful for the person doing the forgiving.

It is here that we find the Creator on His knees in another garden. God has put on human flesh to restore the relationship between Himself and His human creation to the state it was intended. But there must be a payment. It is costly. It is excruciating. The weight of all of humanity's rebellion-all the mockery, idolatry, pride-is on the shoulders of Jesus Christ in the Garden of Gethsemane on the night before He will bear the cost and pay the debt that is required for forgiveness.

Jesus is in sheer mental anguish. The Gospel of Luke tells us that Jesus even sweat blood because of the unimaginable stress and agonizing anticipation He was experiencing. In the dark of the garden, Jesus, the holiest of all petitioners, pleads to the Father for this seemingly unbearable cup of suffering to pass from Him. But, unlike the man in the first garden, this Man says "Yet, not my will but Yours be done."

His submission leads Him to a cross where He is hung by nails through His hands and feet. Jesus Christ absorbs the costliest of costs. He pays the greatest of all debts. Rather than retaliate against the evil done to Him and the breaking of the relationship with His creation, God hangs on a cross to give forgiveness and bring restoration. In His death, Jesus Christ willingly accepts the pain of forgiveness. He lays down His life for His beloved. With His final breath, He proclaims that it is finished.

The Garden Tomb

Jesus' body is taken from the cross and laid in a rich man's tomb. The world is unaware of what has just happened. God Himself has entered His creation and taken the penalty of egregious offense and rebellion upon Himself because of His unmeasurable love. But it doesn't end there. There is no joy in a wound that kills. There is no restoration to a relationship and redemption of brokenness without renewal. There must be resurrection.

In another quiet garden outside of His tomb, some of Jesus' closest friends come to bring spices to properly embalm Jesus' body. On a still Sunday morning, still in mourning, His friends arrive to find that the massive stone blocking the tomb has been rolled away. They are greeted by two angels who announce the good news of the Gospel for the very first time to humanity. He. Is. Risen. Just as He said He would. Death could not hold Him down. They are invited to see the place where their Lord was laid to discover it is empty with only His grave clothes remaining.

In bewilderment, all but one of the friends leave the Garden. But Mary Magdalene stays behind, weeping. She is confused and frightened, believing that maybe this isn't actually true; that perhaps someone has stolen the body.

A man's voice from behind her asks, "Why are you weeping?" Mary, believing that it is the keeper of the garden tomb, says that if he has taken Jesus' body to tell her and she will take it away. The Gardener--the One Who planted the original garden with all of its beauty, rest, and peace; the Gardener Who was wounded and rebelled against; the Gardener Who took upon Himself all of the guilt, pain, and shame of all of humanity's sin; the Gardener Who conquered death, was resurrected, and invites His children back into a restored relationship and abundant life--simply says in a gentle, loving, and reassuring voice, "Mary."

The Garden-City, New Jerusalem

After His resurrection, Jesus appears to His disciples multiple times. Before His ascension to heaven, He calls them to Himself and instructs them to go into all the world and proclaim the restoration of His kingdom to all people. Jesus invites those who repent of their sin and the ways they have damaged their relationship with God into His restorative, creative, and redemptive work in the world. His resurrection inaugurates His kingdom into this world. Just as the sin of the man in the garden affected every part of creation, so Christ's sacrifice and restoration begins to reverse the process and bring beauty and peace back to the world He created. A beachhead has been established and Jesus calls His people into His service to advance His kingdom, not through force or violence but through service, love, and justice. Those who are found in Jesus are part of His kingdom building work. Here. Now. His disciples are not in a holding pattern waiting for heaven. Heaven has broken into this world and God's people are tasked with the responsibility of ushering it in on this planet. Here. Now. The smallest acts on behalf of the Kingdom stretch into eternity. What God's people do now matters. They are His co-laborers in joyful redemption.

At the end of Scripture we are given a picture of a new garden that is to come. The perfect restoration of the created order is achieved and heaven is brought down and joined with the Earth. The Earth is restored to the way it was intended. God's dwelling is again with His people and it will never end. They are His people and He is their God. He exclaims, "See! I am making all things new!" There is no more pain, no more tears, no more brokenness or shame, no more rebellion or emptiness, no more fear or despair. Eden is recovered and blossoms into a beautiful garden-city, the New Jerusalem. God's people are again charged to work the garden and continue in an eternal perfectly satisfying and intimate relationship with Him. This is the hope and joy of the resurrection. God, through Jesus, invites us back to His garden.

Guilt, Moralism, and Change

As a counselor, I'm fascinated with the concept of change. I've attended seminars and trainings and conferences on how to get people to change. Change is often examined through the lenses of cognition or behavior, biology or environment, values or utility. A psychological approach is helpful but it only scratches the surface of the deeply spiritual entities that human beings are. As such, we fall short of a full understanding of true heart change when it stays at the psychological level.

Unfortunately, a significant amount of preaching, teaching, and discipling operates under flawed psychological assumptions that go something like: If I show you how bad you're being or how you're not doing what you're supposed to be doing, you will feel guilty and change your behaviors. You'll see how misguided, lazy, and rebellious you've been and turn things around. Biblical principles and exhortations are juxtaposed with our failings to produce cognitive dissonance in a way that is intended to inspire change of behaviors. And for the most part, it sort of works. We show up at church, get a spanking about how we're not living like we should, and head home wanting to make changes. We call it being convicted when really it's just us feeling bad about ourselves.

The problem is this does not produce lasting, heart-level change. Why? Because its philosophical underpinning is that human beings are simply performers of behavior. It reasons that if we can change the behavior, we can change the person. However, it simply plays on the very thing it is trying to fight against, namely, self-centeredness. Tim Keller puts it like this (my paraphrase): the reason that people don't get involved in ministries or don't serve others or don't act as they should is because human beings are, inherently, self-centered creatures. We are prideful and self-absorbed and don't always feel compelled to live in accordance with our stated beliefs. But the answer to this is not guilting people into something precisely because it plays on this exact same self-centeredness and self-absorption. When you simply tell someone to stop being lazy or stop lusting or stop being greedy, you are merely producing feelings of guilt and shame. To assuage these feelings, the average person will stop the behavior that is producing this guilt to feel better about him or herself. But really, this is just because of the same self-centeredness and self-absorption that causes the behavior in the first place. We all do it. The guilt makes us feel bad so we try to make it go away. However, true heart change is not produced and we eventually return to the same behavior patterns.

The reason for this is because, at its root, this type of thinking, teaching, and preaching has as its highest goal changes in behavior rather than changes in heart and posture toward God. It focuses on what not to do, rather than what to do and the reasoning behind it. Dallas Willard says this is analogous to giving someone directions to New York City by telling them how not to get to Chicago or Miami. This is silliness and yet this is often how we try to motivate people to change. Pointing people to Christ to be transformed by his love and power turns into a list of don'ts. Don't lust. Don't be greedy. Don't be lazy. Willard calls this the "Gospel of sin management."

The danger here, of course, is the antinomian trap of thinking that the law is bad and not worth considering. The apostle Paul adamantly disagrees with this. The answer to moralism is not being libertine. Paul states that the law is wonderful and shows us how to live. But the law is powerless to transform us. That is the difference. Without the law we would not know our failings. Without Christ we would not be freed from them.

I was recently at a discipleship conference in Boston and one of the speakers was giving an illustration of a moralistic behavior change view of the Gospel. He likened it to the newspaper swat (lovingly, of course, but a swat nonethless) he gives his dog when it poops in the house. The dog learns that if he performs that behavior (or does not perform the behavior of pooping outside), he's going to get swatted. Therefore, he performs the desired behavior not because he wants to honor his master or because he understand the purposes behind it but because he wants to avoid getting swatted. How often is our presentation of the Gospel and the transformative work of Christ like that?

Instead, true heart change (and resulting behavior change) is caused by the power and grace of Jesus Christ as we look to Him. Not because we want to get everything right or just avoid sin for avoiding sin's sake but because we desire to honor Him and love Him for what He has done. Until we truly see the generosity with which Christ has lavished His grace on us by emptying Himself to become like us and live among us, we will not be generous with our time and money, no matter how bad someone makes us feel. Until we truly see the love which Christ poured out for us on the cross, we will not be humble, forgiving, and gracious with those that offend us. This is a lifelong process of looking toward and becoming the people Christ intends us to be, not avoiding what He doesn't want us to be. How could guilt possibly achieve that in us?

I love Paul's discussion of moral behavior in the book of Colossians because he tells the Colossian church what is sin and how not to live but then immediately tells them how to live instead. Sin must be called what it is but it can never stay there. Thus, we see an encouragement to live in unity rather than strife and bitterness; anger and malice are replaced by compassion and humility. Christ has called us to something greater and more profound than simply avoiding sin. While an understanding of sin is important, the story has never been about that. Our story is about being transformed and recreated into the likeness of Christ. That can never happen simply by trying to avoid sin.

Why the Church Needs Grace

During the last few weeks and months I've had some challenging conversations with many friends and family in the context of planting a church in downtown Rochester, NH. Some feel alienated by the Church, some are confused, some are seeking and hopeful, and some are just downright hurt. My generation is by and large skeptical of the Church at best and repulsed by it at worst. I have friends who grew up in the Church and have walked away because of the things they've encountered. Their view of Jesus does not square with what they see and so they find it easier and less painful to simply part ways with the institutional church. To be honest, I can't entirely blame them.

I will admit that it is much, much easier to point fingers and find faults rather than committing to a community despite the flaws. However, the sentiment many people feel with regard to the Church has validity and can't be ignored. Many have seen a dogmatic, rigid, moralistic, legalistic church that values being right over being gracious. They have been beaten over the head with Scripture to prove a point instead of being comforted and challenged by it. They have been told that to be a Christian means you have to leave your science behind. They have been told that they must subscribe to certain political viewpoints or they aren't truly Christians. They've been made to feel that they're not "good enough." They have been confronted with a purely black and white paradigm that leaves no room for nuance, interpretation, or grace.

Now, let me be clear. I am in no way advocating that we cease striving to ascertain Truth or that there is nothing that we can be certain about. Quite the opposite. I believe that we cannot be truly humble or gracious unless we are secure in Christ. The answer, of course, does not lie in an "anything goes, believe what you want" approach. However, sometimes security means trusting Christ and being comfortable saying that we don't have everything figured out. It is easy to lose sight of the very basic truths of the Gospel while fighting to assert our particular interpretation of Scripture and this unnecessarily alienates the very people who need to see Christ the most.

None of us have our acts together. It is damaging to people when we act like we do. The very foundation of the Gospel is that every one of us is desperately sinful but that we are infinitely loved so that God put on flesh and died for us to make us one with Him again. Church becomes a moralistic and legalistic place when we give lip service to this doctrine while living as if we've got everything figured out. Church becomes rigid and harsh when we act like we don't, even now, desperately need the grace of Jesus. It becomes like this when grace is merely part of our theology and doesn't invade our hearts so that everything we do and say is marked by it. To truly meet needs in the name of Jesus, the Gospel of grace must so permeate our hearts that we have the humility to acknowledge that we do not have all the answers and we are on a messy and difficult journey together. But in this, we find our hope and peace through Jesus Christ because He has inaugurated His kingdom on this Earth because of His sacrifice. He invites us to join with Him to advance it not through conquest and force but through love and humble service.

To my alienated, hurt, seeking, confused friends and family:
The church is a broken and messy place. None of us have our acts together. If we say we do, we're lying or we really just don't understand what Jesus taught. Yes, we're hypocrites a lot of the time. Please be patient with us. To be honest, our rigidity and legalism often comes from fear. It may not make sense to some of you, but many of us feel that we are under attack and we have to fight to assert ourselves. A lot of us feel that, as Christians, our voices are being silenced in the public square and that we have to come across as strong and sure of ourselves to survive. We are often wounded, too. This carries over into matters of doctrine and church function. Most of us though, underneath all of the mess and junk, genuinely long to be like Jesus and show His love in tangible ways. We long to see people changed by the love of Jesus. We long to meet physical, spiritual, and emotional needs (and not just so you'll come to our services) and reach the marginalized, forgotten, and broken. And we need grace and patience too.