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.

Costly Grace

In his book, The Cost of Discipleship, Dietrich Bonhoeffer discusses the difference between costly grace and cheap grace. Our natural inclination is to seek the latter. We want a grace that demands nothing of us. A grace that tells us that there is nothing destructive about our sin and that proper doctrine does not matter. A grace that tells us that Jesus looks a lot like our post-enlightenment selves and requires nothing of us. A grace that lets us define what is true for us and which justifies our recoil at the suggestion that we're actually way off the mark. A grace that says that our forgiveness can be half-hearted while we continue to hold resentment and bitterness in our hearts. A grace that says faith is something we only express for a couple hours on a Sunday morning. This grace leads to self-righteousness and lukewarmness.

The truth is that the grace that Jesus and Paul talk about is much, much better than that. It's a grace that does not leave us where it found us. It's a grace that manifests itself in the unfathomable love that sent Christ to the cross for a broken and selfish humanity. It's a grace that calls us to a deeper commitment and more robust understanding of the God of the universe. It's a grace that cannot be contained and overflows until it characterizes every aspect of our lives. It's a grace that allows us to forgive in supernatural ways and to love those whom we think we have every reason not to. It's a grace that mines the darkest depths of our hearts and shines the light of love there. It's a grace that gently comes alongside us in our doubts and questioning and comforts us in our fears.

Yet we run from this grace because it is costly. It demands everything of us. It's the grace that affords us life yet calls us to die to ourselves (Galatians 2), to carry our crosses daily (Luke 9), and to be marked by the sufferings of Jesus (1 Peter 4). It calls us to a deeper discipleship that will cost us everything we have including our right to ourselves. This is why it is so difficult to accept the grace that cost Christ everything on the cross. We prefer something easy, something that is just good news with no difficulty. Yet that's what makes grace and the Gospel so good. God's love for us is so great that He was willing to go through unimaginable suffering and pain to redeem us and reunite us with Him. Our devotion to Him mirrors His sacrifice.

Let's be clear. The traditional orthodox doctrine of salvation by faith alone is very much the cornerstone of an understanding of costly grace. We do not earn grace or merit God's favor at our personal expense. Jesus paid it all. Paul makes it abundantly clear in Ephesians 2 that our salvation is purely through the grace that Jesus paid for. However, out of a loving response to our gracious and glorious Father, comes the commitment of our entire lives to Him in obedience. Thus, our response to His grace is not one driven by guilt, shame, or obligation but out of our profound thankfulness and love for Him. The heart truly changed by costly grace is the one that sees the depth of its sin and the unspeakable goodness of its Savior. The outpouring of this is the desire to bless the heart of Christ at all costs. May we be a people marked by this costly grace.

Faithful Doubt

"He also said to him, 'I am the Lord, who brought you out of Ur of the Chaldeans to give you this land to take posession of it.' But Abraham said, 'O Sovereign Lord, how can I know that I will gain possession of it?" -Genesis 15:8

In recent years, there has been a shift in some branches of American Christianity that has glorified doubt. Questioning orthodox doctrine and appearing countercultural have become hip and a way to gain social currency. Those who hold to traditional views are seen as closed-minded, narrow, and judgmental while questioning one's beliefs is open-minded and intellectual. We have moved from defining what we are for to defining what we are against. Deep down we know that our faith cannot be "cool" in this culture so we try to make it more palatable and come across as less sure of ourselves. Questioning and insecurity is the new humility.

On the other side of the coin, there are those in the church who are terrified of doubt. The slightest questioning of God or of Scripture is cause for panic or judgment. We believe these people are walking away from their faith and implore them to just read their Bible or pray more and they'll be just fine. Or we scold them and tell them that they do not truly believe or they would not be having these doubts. However, this can actually be crippling for a follower of Christ who is genuinely wrestling with hard things. Life is often much messier than we admit in the Church. Pat answers and trite advice don't get into the circumstance that a person is actually living in and dealing with. There is a difference between healthy and toxic doubt. How can we tell the difference?

In Genesis 15, we see God promise to Abraham that He will make him a great nation and bless him and that his offspring will be abundant. At this point, Abraham is an old man and his wife is well along in years as well. Abraham, understandably, does not understand how these promises could ever take place. He then takes these doubts to God and God patiently reveals the answers to Abraham. It says that Abraham believed God and that God credited this to Abraham as righteousness. However, even after this belief, Abraham has doubts and questions. He asks God how he can be sure of this, as if God's word alone is not good enough for him.

In the New Testament, the apostle Paul recounts this story in Romans 4 to show that salvation comes through faith alone. He says that Abraham is the father of all who believe in God's promise. He says, "...[Abraham] did not waver through unbelief regarding the promise of God, but was strengthened in his faith and gave glory to God, being fully persuaded that God had power to do what he had promised." How can this be? Genesis 15 clearly shows that Abraham had doubts and questions, yet Paul says that he was unwavering in his belief. Why?

What we often forget in our dealings with our own doubts and our brothers' and sisters' doubts is that doubting and questioning are inevitable. If God is omniscient and omnipotent and we are finite and limited, doesn't it make sense that some of the things He does or tells us don't make sense? The pivotal piece to this is not whether or not we have doubts but what we do with them. The reason Abraham was credited as righteous was because at his core, he knew that he could trust God. Therefore, he took his doubts and questions to God directly. He did not glorify them or live them out. He brought them directly to God because he had the faith to do so. His faith, at his core, was unwavering. He did not know how God was going to do what He promised but he knew that he could find the answers from God Himself. Thus, Abraham's faith and doubt coexisted without being harmful to him in any way. God shows us through this passage that we, as His children, are safe with Him. It is safe to doubt. It is safe to question provided we are taking these doubts and questions to Him.

Compare this to Abraham's behavior in Genesis 12 when he lives out his doubts and lies to Pharaoh about his wife because he does not know how God will protect him in that situation. He does not bring his doubts to God and instead lives them out which has destructive results.

May we as the Church not glorify our doubts or live them out but be affected by the Truth that faith and doubt can reasonably coexist and that dealing with doubt in a healthy manner can be an incredibly fruitful time of growth in the Christian's life. May we say with the father of the demon possessed boy in Mark 9, "I do believe; help me overcome my unbelief!"

Obedient Compassion

At the time of this writing, our church is getting ready for our “Compassion Weekend” where we’ll be going into the surrounding community to minister to those around us through cleaning up parks, ministering to the homeless, etc. We have a desire to be the hands and feet of Christ in our city and to be a light without expecting anything in return.

The toughest part in all of this, in my opinion, is having the right motivation and heart attitude while doing ministry. It is against our human nature to minister to others without expecting something out of it for us. At the very least, whether we admit it or not, we expect to feel good about what we’re doing or for the people we serve to be grateful for what we’re doing. But our ministry needs to be motivated by something and Someone much greater than that. Is our desire to serve able to withstand receiving nothing out of it?

A few days ago Jenn and I went on our weekly grocery store run. When we pulled into the parking lot we saw a man standing on the median holding a cardboard sign that said, “Homeless. Anything will help.” We decided that we would bring the man a sports drink after we went shopping. As we exited the parking lot we pulled up and handed him the drink. He said thank you, the light turned green, and we drove off.

As we pulled onto the highway to head back to our apartment, I felt a tugging on my heart to do more for the man so I asked Jenn if I could drop her off at the apartment and head back to take the man out for pizza. After bringing Jenn home, I turned around and headed back to the store where I found the man, still standing there with his sign. I walked up to him and asked what his name was and where he was staying. He told me that his name was Dave and that he and his girlfriend were living in a tent in the woods behind the store. I then asked if I could take him to get a pizza. He said he didn’t want to leave his girlfriend who was sleeping in the tent because he didn’t have a cell phone. I then offered to go grab one for him and asked if he needed anything else. He said that he wasn’t picky and that he didn’t need anything else.

I called in the order to Pizza Hut and then headed over. On my way I stopped and bought Dave and his girlfriend some basic necessities like deodorant, water, etc. I then went to Pizza Hut, picked up the pizza, and returned to the grocery store. But when I arrived, Dave was not on the median where I left him. I went behind the store to see if I could see his tent but I couldn’t. I then went inside to look for him but he wasn’t there. After driving around the parking lot a couple more times, I decided to leave.

Thoroughly discouraged and frustrated, I got back on the highway and headed home with many questions running through my head. Why did God allow me to go through all that trouble just to have the man leave without receiving what I was going to give him? Weren’t my intentions pure enough for God to honor them? What was the point of God giving me a desire to help someone if the person wasn’t going to be there when I returned?

As I continued to reflect on the situation, I realized how truly self-focused my questions were. God can provide for Dave’s needs without any of my help and He wasn’t surprised that Dave wasn’t there when I returned. In this moment, God was teaching me that He calls His people to obedience, not good feelings or even success. God, through His Scripture, tells us to be obedient to His command to care for those in need. He doesn’t promise that we’ll feel good about what we’re doing or even that what we’re doing will be effective. He just calls us to obey, to honor His commands because we love Him. Pleasing Him should be our only desire. We can’t do this on our own but He has given us the Holy Spirit to mold us and change us so that we are more like Christ in His compassion.

Do we have faith to fail? Does our motivation to serve others come from a desire to be obedient to God’s calling or to get something out of it for ourselves like being able to pat ourselves on the back for helping someone else? Do we measure success by effectiveness or by faithfulness to His call regardless of the outcome? May we be a people that are marked by a desire to be obedient to God’s call, who have a heart for the down and out and the needy, and who have a faith that is completely Christ-aware instead of self-aware.

Repentance

We in the Church love a good testimony. You know, the kind where someone was trapped in a life of addiction, gave their life to Christ, and was pulled out of it and now everything is great. But what about the person that gives their life to Christ then slips back into that sin? What of the Christian who confesses and agonizes over their sin only to return to it the very same day? Have they not truly repented? Are they not sufficiently contrite?

Repentance is often put forth (whether purposely or not) as an event, rather than a process. In some circumstances it truly is a one-time event in someone's life where they cease a certain sin immediately. But more often, it is not. We are sometimes told that if we do not stop falling into a certain sin then we are not repenting. This leads to overwhelming guilt and shame, even in a loving Christian community.

But the repentance that we see Jesus call for is not characterized by an immediate, perfect cessation of sin but of a hate of our sin and a process of change, called sanctification, by the Holy Spirit. Paul, in Romans 4, declares that we are made righteous before God because of the blood of Christ shed for us on the cross. The moment we receive salvation, we are justified before God. This is a one-time, once for all moment. Sanctification, on the other hand, is loving, molding process that the Holy Spirit undertakes to make us more like Christ. When we are justified, we do not stop sinning. However, our lives are no longer characterized by sin. Repentance finds sanctification as its context. The Holy Spirit works in our lives to make us more like Christ but it is a lifelong process. We are not made perfectly holy the moment we receive salvation.

Jesus was notorious among the Pharisees for spending time with "sinners." One of his most poignant and revealing statements to them (and us) comes in Mark 2:17 when He says, "It is not the healthy who need a doctor, but the sick. I have not come to call the righteous, but sinners." Thus, the Church is intended to be a hospital for the sick. It is a group of people who don't have it all together. A group of people who consistently fall into the same sin over and over again but who hate their sin and genuinely want to move past it for the glory of God.

(As a side note, the analogy of the Church as a hospital for the sick also entails diagnosing sin in all its forms and calling it what it is according to Scripture. Christ did not gloss over people's sins or say they were not that big of a deal. He had to die for them. Our sin is serious. Hospitals do not amass a large amount of sick people and have them just fester in their illnesses. The goal of a hospital, and the Church by the power of the Holy Spirit, is to treat these diseases with the aim of the sick getting better.)

If you've ever been involved in an accountability group with other believers, you know it is a very frustrating thing to be involved in. The same struggles and sins continue to pop up. A follower of Christ may do really well with something they are wrestling with one week only to fall back into it the next. I've seen discouragement and have been very discouraged myself. When we view repentance as a one time deal and any relapse as a mighty failure, discouragement and crushing guilt are often the result. But this is not how Christ intended it. Repentance is the acknowledgement, confession, and renouncing of sin and the determination to turn from it with the help of the Holy Spirit. It is a process and a journey, one that takes time but yields change if we yield to Christ and do not rely on our own strength.

Loving God For Who He Is, Not What He Gives

A paraphrase of an illustration by Tim Keller:
Imagine that you have some family money and someone comes along and asks you to marry him or her. But after the wedding and some time into the marriage, that person comes to realize that he or she can't get his or her hands on that family money and they leave you. How do you feel? Violated? Used? Just a means to an end? An object? Do you feel like you weren't loved for who you were in yourself? Do you realize that almost all of us relate to God like that? How do you think He feels? We've all met people who have said something like, "Oh I used to believe in God and I used to go to church and try to serve God but He didn't come through for me. I asked Him for things and He let me down and my life didn't go the way I thought it would. In other words, God has this incredible blessing bank account somewhere and I know it's there but He would never let me get my hands on it and I didn't actually want God, I just wanted His blessings. And when I didn't get the blessings, I was out of there." Do you see? You married God for His money. 

What are we basing our faith and love of God on? Do we trust and love God because our circumstances are going according to plan and our lives are the way we would have them be? If so, at the first sign of turmoil, tribulation, and confusion, our first response will be to accuse God or worse, abandon our belief in Him.


Do we trust and love God because we have positive experiences when we worship and we love the emotional high that sometimes comes from being close to Him? If so, the inevitable dry times in our walk with Him when we do not hear from Him may cause us to believe that He has abandoned us or even that He does not exist.

Do we trust God because we have solid intellectual reasons for His existence and involvement in our lives? If so, a carefully constructed attack that seems to contradict those reasons might leave us feeling helpless and shaken.

Do we trust and love God because He gives us what we ask for and blesses us with peace and joy? If so, when those blessings are taken from us, we may blame God and walk away from Him.

There is a very real temptation to build our faith in God on the blessings that He gives. This faith is weak and easily accosted. How it must pain God when our love for Him is a response to the things we get from Him, rather than loving Him for Who He is.  It is easy to love the gifts rather than the Giver. But a mature and unshakable faith is built on the solid rock, Who is Jesus Christ Himself. Our love for Him is the simple, humble response to His unfathomable, self-giving love for us. True faith is not built on blessings and circumstances but on the immovable foundation of Jesus Christ. May we love Him for Who He Is, not what He gives us.

In Truth and In Love

It seems that when most people outside of the church hear the word "Christian," they associate it with people who are judgmental, rigid, condescending, and exclusive. To be fair, this notion does not come from nowhere. It is not simply made up and plastered onto people they already don't like. Those in the Church do not have the best track record when it comes to loving those they disagree with.

One of the reasons for this is the lack of love when engaging with those who do not hold the same beliefs. We are quick to point out where those who disagree with us are wrong without understanding the full ramifications of doing this. Speaking the truth without love gets us nowhere. I have never heard of someone who didn't believe the Gospel suddenly turning their life around because someone else gave them a rock solid proof for something they believed. In the name of "defending the faith," much damage is done to those who do not believe. Scroll through the comments on almost any YouTube video and you'll eventually find an argument about Christianity with Christians throwing verses and proofs at those who don't believe in a very unloving manner. This is fruitless and counterproductive. These Christians are probably well-meaning but in the end, it turns people off. Even as a fellow Christian, I am embarrassed to read some of the things that are being said. I almost want to apologize for them.

This is why Paul emphasizes in Ephesians 4 that it is not enough to speak the truth. It must be said in love or you are better off not saying it at all. Love does not engage in conversation simply to win an argument or to justify its own beliefs but it puts the other person ahead of itself, keeping in mind that the person you are conversing with may have been through much pain because of "religion" and therefore wants nothing to do with it.

People were not drawn to Jesus because He gave bullet proof arguments for everything He was teaching. They were drawn to Him because of His love and humility. It is easy to get caught up in the apologetics side of faith and to believe that it is up to us to bring people to Christ. If that were the case, we would be weighed down with an incredible burden and responsibility. We do not bring people to Christ. The Holy Spirit draws people to Himself and often uses us as the tool. But to believe that we are responsible for other people's salvation can lead to unloving arguments in an attempt to win people over.

Christian faith as Jesus taught it does not make us arrogant because we have the truth and everyone else needs to figure it out too. Quite the opposite. One of the greatest signs of a change in our hearts because of Christ is the replacement of pride with humility. This leads us not to be exclusive but to love those who desperately need Christ because we know that we have done nothing to deserve Him. Christianity in its truest form should lead to tolerance and acceptance, but not in the "do whatever feels right for you/believe whatever you want" sense. It is tolerance that stands for truth and does not compromise but that lives in the midst of and loves those who do not yet know the truth.

Finally, it should be noted that this post is not at all advocating spotty doctrinal stances or being sketchy on important truths of the Christian faith. Speaking the truth in love does not mean apologizing for what Scripture says or compromising on various points just to avoid conflict. While I have been highlighting the importance of loving discourse, it is not at all loving to not speak the truth to those who need to hear it. We must be loving but we must also not be afraid of speaking the truth. The problem is not whether or not to speak the truth, it is how to speak it. When the rich man went away sad because of what Jesus told Him in Matthew 19, Jesus didn't chase him down or apologize for being too harsh. Jesus never apologized for the truth (He characterized Himself AS the Truth). However, He also never spoke it in an arrogant or judgmental way either.

May we learn to not fear speaking the truth or apologize for it but do so in a humble, loving, nonjudgmental way, extending the love of Christ to others knowing that we did nothing to deserve it.

Grace

"I became a servant of this gospel by the gift of God's grace given me through the working of His power. Although I am less than the least of all God's people, this grace was given me: to preach to the Gentiles the unsearchable riches of Christ, and to make plain to everyone the administration of this mystery, which for ages past was kept hidden in God, Who created all things." -Ephesians 3:7-9

How we view God's grace plays a monumental role in what our churches look like and how they function. Whether we realize it or not, we have an ingrained idea of what grace means for us and what its purpose is. Most of us would agree that grace is an undeserved gift from God that we receive because of the blood of Christ and our faith in Him. From there, the paths diverge greatly and they impact how we see the church.

The first way of viewing grace is seeing it simply as a gift of God that we receive and hold onto. When we confess with our mouths that Jesus is Lord and believe in our hearts that God raised Him from the dead, we receive salvation (Romans 10:9). This is all good and true but the first view of grace ends there. When we see grace as something we receive, it becomes about us. We see ourselves as the recipient of a fantastic gift, which we hang onto. Church is then a place to hang out with other people who received the gift where we praise God that we're going to heaven someday and it ends there. Grace and God's gifts are simply for us to enjoy and feel good about.

The second way of viewing grace is, as Paul says, something we receive and then pass onto others. Paul says that God's grace was given to Him but it doesn't end there. The grace he received is for someone else. It comes with direction and purpose. Why did Paul receive grace from God? To preach to the Gentiles and to make known the mysteries of God which are revealed in Christ. The astonishing truth is that God's grace was not just for Paul, it was for Paul to pass along to those he was ministering to. The grace of God cannot be contained because it comes from the overflow of Who God is. God's grace is so wide and deep and long that we could never use it up or ask too much of Him (Ephesians 3:20) It is not meant to be hoarded. Grace is given to us so that we might give it to others.

When we see grace as simply a gift for us, we become self-focused. We gladly receive God's grace, then are unwilling to extend it to others. This causes us to become resentful, judgmental, unaccepting, and secluded. We start seeing forgiveness as simply accepting an apology while continuing to harbor bitterness and anger in our hearts. We see other people as not deserving grace because of how much they've wronged us. We become the unmerciful servant in Matthew 18 who is unwilling to forgive the debt of a man who owed him a day's wages when he was forgiven a debt of 18 year's wages by his master. When we freely receive but don't freely give, the poor and needy become unimportant and this life is seen simply as a holding pattern before heaven.

But God calls us to something far bigger than ourselves. Salvation in Christ is just the starting point of receiving God's grace. He gives us His grace so that we will then share it with others. Grace means reaching out to those in need, accepting without judgment into the church those who are lost and seeking, truly forgiving without fear of being wronged again because we are eternally forgiven by God. The pouring out of grace allows us to act as a pipeline through which God achieves His purposes and blesses the world. It allows us to constantly be full of God's grace and goodness while passing it on to others.

How we view grace radically shapes our churches. Will we hoard it and turn Sunday mornings into an hour of feeling good about what we received from God while doing nothing for others? Or will we freely give it to all, gathering as a missional community of broken people who deserve nothing, yet have everything in Christ?

One Body

"Be completely humble and gentle; be patient, bearing with one another in love. Make every effort to keep the unity of the Spirit through the bond of peace. There is one body and one Spirit-just as you were called to one hope when you were called-one Lord, one faith, one baptism; one God and Father of all, who is over all and through all and in all." -Ephesians 4:2-6

"The body is a unit, though it is made up of many parts; and though all its parts are many, they form one body. So it is with Christ. For we were all baptized by one Spirit into one body-whether Jews or Greeks, slave or free-and we were all given the one Spirit to drink." -1 Corinthians 12:12-13

Before I go any further with this blog, it's important to acknowledge that it is incredibly easy to criticize and critique our brothers and sisters in the Church. The line between encouragement/exhortation and judgment/criticism is very easily blurred, especially with the ease with which modern technology allows us to share ideas and opinions. What starts as a genuine desire to correct easily turns into an attack to prove one's correctness. Now, I am not at all saying that we should not correct each other or hold each other accountable. These are very good, essential qualities of a healthy Church. What I am saying is that it is becoming more and more common to see brothers and sisters in Christ taking shots at each other. Instead of confronting false doctrine or incorrect actions in love and gentleness, we often demonize the other person or group. This can also lead to a widespread denunciation of the Christian Church as a whole for some perceived error. In my experience, it has been incredibly rare to hear someone talk about how they love the Church and are thankful to be a part of it. The closest it usually gets is someone saying they love the particular church they attend.

Let me reiterate that I think that one of the Church's main functions is to help those who are a part of it to grow. This often means correction, confrontation, and accountability. These very good functions, however, are often twisted to become attacking, gossip, and bitterness. How does this happen?

Throughout the book of Ephesians, Paul's language is heavily Trinitarian. He emphasizes the vital role of the  Holy Spirit in causing unity among believers in Christ. We are not made to be at odds with each other. In fact, when we receive the Spirit through the "one faith," we are bound together by the "bond of peace." Paul explains earlier in Ephesians 2 that Christ Himself is our peace. In some mysterious, unfathomable way, God becomes our peace and our unity because of Christ through His Spirit. We are made into one body and share in common the Spirit of the Most High God. This body is the Church, of which Christ is the head. He loves His church and gave Himself up for her. How then could there ever be a lack of unity in a body which Christ Himself holds together?

Because of our sinful nature, we are sometimes taken over by our desire to have our way and to be correct. This led the apostle Paul to exhort his readers to be humble and gentle, to correct those in error but to bear with them in love. This takes effort and is difficult but is important if we are to honor Christ as His body. The body is a unit. We are each an individual part of the body but we contribute to the whole. When we criticize, judge, lack grace, and demean each other, we are hurting ourselves.

Of course there are and always will be exceptions to all of these (and I am limited to an American perspective) but it is worth encouraging one another:

I love the Church for caring about sound doctrine and being committed to seeking and learning God's perfect Truth and how we ought to live to glorify Him.
I love the Church for caring for the orphan and the widow and those in need.
I love the Church for acting justly, loving mercy, and walking humbly with God.
I love the Church in parts of the world that are hostile to them for their patient suffering and example of hope in the midst of extreme trials.
I love the Church for being missional and taking the hope of Christ to the lost and broken.
I love the Church for being able to admit its flaws and mistakes and for its willingness to grow in love and unity.

May we, as the Church, be marked by the unity of the Spirit through the bond of peace, Who is Christ Himself and bear with one another in love and grace. 

The Holiness of God

 Just as he who called you is holy, so be holy in all you do; for it is written: "Be holy, because I am holy." -1 Peter 1:15-16

Holy is the way God is. To be holy he does not conform to a standard. He is that standard. He is absolutely holy with an infinite, incomprehensible fullness of purity that is incapable of being other than it is. Because he is holy, all his attributes are holy; that is, whatever we think of as belonging to God must be thought of as holy. -A.W. Tozer

When examined at their deepest level, every doctrine comes back to the holiness of God. It is vitally important to grasping justification, sanctification, redemption, grace, etc. Without a robust and thorough understanding of the holiness of God, little of who He is, what He does, and what He requires makes sense. God is separate, set apart, and distinct from everything in His creation. This also involves His perfectly pure moral standard. He is good because He is holy. He is perfectly just because He is holy. All of these things come back to His holiness. When Isaiah is faced with God's holiness and glory in chapter 6, he is forced to measure himself against that perfect standard and realizes that he is filthy. He even thinks he will be ruined because of his imperfection in the presence of a holy God.

Christians often see the redemption and salvation through the death and resurrection of Christ as the most important and essential doctrine of our faith. However, God's redemption and salvation don't make sense apart from the context of God's holiness. There is something that we had to be saved from, namely our own sin. There was a desperate need to be redeemed by the blood of Christ because the result of our sin is the wrath of God.

Something that is common to hear from skeptics is, "How could a good God be also full of wrath? That doesn't sound loving or good to me." Without knowledge of God's holiness, this question is certainly reasonable. However, keeping in mind that God is holy and perfect, how could He NOT punish sin? If God did not abhor sin and did not desire to banish it from His presence, He would not be good. God's wrath is the manifestation of His holiness. He cannot look on sin and accept it. Otherwise, He would not be good and just. Imagine that a judge presided over a case where there was overwhelming evidence to convict the suspect of a murder that had been committed. We would be outraged if the judge let the man go free without punishment. We would not say he was a good and just judge. God's justice and wrath is evidence of His perfect goodness and holiness. He cannot allow sin. He would not be holy if He did.

Now, the truly unfathomable mystery of God's holiness is that it led Him to engineer a plan that would be the greatest injustice in the history of His creation. He came to Earth as a perfect man, retaining all of His holiness, and bore the wrath that was meant for our sin. He was perfectly innocent, deserving none of the penalty. Yet, He took it because He loved us and wanted to take away that sin so that He might make us holy through the blood of Christ. He was tempted in every way, just as we are, yet did not sin. Even so, He was pierced for our transgressions and crushed for our iniquities. Without an appreciation for the holiness of God, the cross doesn't make sense. God's holiness keeps Him from tolerating sin but it also is the source of His unconquerable love which conquered the grave for us, if we accept the blood of Christ to cover our sins. 

From a sinful human perspective, God's command to be holy as He is holy is impossible. In our natural, sinful state, we can only exclaim that we are men of unclean lips and deserve ruin. But through the holiness afforded to us by Christ through His perfect, holy sacrifice, we can be holy as He is holy. No wonder the Gospel is called Good News.

Abiding in Christ

"Remain in me, and I will remain in you. No branch can bear fruit by itself; it must remain in the vine. Neither can you bear fruit unless you remain in me. I am the vine; you are the branches. If a man remains in me and I in him, he will bear much fruit; apart from me you can do nothing." -Jesus in John 15:4-5. 

We sometimes begin our church services, prayer meetings, and worship events asking God to make us feel His presence in the midst of us. Often what we mean by this is that we want God to provide us with a positive emotional experience that will give us concrete evidence that He has been with us and that He has blessed us. We love the warm, fuzzy "mountain top" experiences we sometimes feel during worship and continue to pray for them to occur. It is easy to feel that God has not shown up or has not blessed us if we feel no emotional or easily perceivable change in us. Discouragement sets in and we feel that we have wasted our time. "Why hasn't God spoken to me after all this praying and seeking?" we ask. We pray for peace and receive none. We pray for direction in a specific area and receive none. We conclude that God has not spoken and He has not met with us.

But abiding in the presence and glory of Christ is far more than a positive emotional experience. It is more than receiving peace or clear direction when we pray. It is more than a perceived satisfaction that we have been in the presence of God. None of these things are wrong in and of themselves but they can become idols if we seek them above God Himself. They are not indicators of abiding in Christ.

Paul commands us in 1 Thessalonians 5 to pray without ceasing. At first glance, this is an absurd suggestion. We have thousands of thoughts every day that are completely unrelated to God. But what he is getting at is the idea of continuously putting the Lord before us and trusting in the reality of His presence in all circumstances. Through the power of His Spirit, God continues to sanctify us and make us more Christ-aware everyday until it is no longer a conscious effort to remain in Him. God wants to break us free from our emotionalism so that our trust and our focus is solely on Him. If we are not abiding in Christ, we can do nothing. He is the source of our joy, strength, and hope. He is the rock of our salvation which can never be moved. He is calling us out of our simple emotional ideas about God's presence into the glorious truth of His constant willingness to abide with us, regardless of the circumstance.

Rather than praying that God would be present with us, we should ask Him to change us and speak to us because of His constant presence. We should ask Him to teach us how to abide in Him and to show us that His answers do not always come through a positive emotion or a clear direction which allows us peace but through the communion of our spirits with His and the changing of our hearts, whether we consciously perceive it or not. Often, we are not made aware of the most profound changes that God's presence makes in us until God reveals it to us. This is not instantaneous and we should not expect it to be. Let us take comfort in the fact that if we ask God with humble hearts to speak to us and to abide with us, He always will, whether our limited understanding grasps it at the time or not.

Yesterday, Today, Forever

Jesus Christ is the same yesterday, today, and forever. -Hebrews 13:8

At the core of every sin is the belief (whether recognized consciously or not) that we are better suited to direct the steps of our lives than God is. We build and base our lives on the shaky foundations of material possessions, emotions, circumstances, ideology, and even relationships. There is a great temptation to establish ourselves in relation to anything that is not God, thereby making them gods. We have been created with needs that can only be fully satisfied by the Creator, yet we fill these longings with things that cannot sustain fulfillment. In our prideful attempts to assert ourselves as masters of our own lives, we find ourselves empty and mastered by the things we thought would bring us satisfaction. We want a solid foundation but we don't want to give up our right to ourselves. There is something within us that sees submission to God as repugnant, yet we are willing to serve countless other things because we get to choose what they are, even though they can never gratify us.

Yet Christ, through His death and resurrection, has provided freedom from this sinful nature and desperate striving to establish ourselves apart from Him. This is not to say that we cease sinning and do not face daily battles once we receive Him, but those who are being made perfect in Christ are no longer characterized by this tension.

Some of the strongest anxiety felt by human beings is caused by change and uncertainty. When we build our lives on anything other than God, we will undoubtedly be at the mercy of those things as they shift and change and disappoint. However, one of the great blessings afforded to us by the Cross of Christ is the unshakable, unmovable foundation of Jesus, upon Whom we can safely and securely base our lives. In Him, our deepest needs are met fully and we are at His mercy which is new every morning. Jesus Christ will never change and His love and security are more faithful than the sun rising. This great truth is repulsive to our sinful nature but profound joy to that which is being made new in Him.

Health, Wealth, and Suffering

Sermon

The preacher spoke of
Healthy, wealthy, and happy,

And I couldn’t keep my mind
From wandering down
The road marked with suffering,
To crosses, camels
And the eye of a needle

As he explained that faith
Was a bank account
In which the smart investor
Accrues interest
On his deposits. 

-John Mirisola

At the very heart of the message of Christ is the lavish, insane, prodigal love of God. It is a love that held Him to the cross when it should have been us. It is a love that gives us everything we need if we are found in Christ. God desires to bless us richly. Paul tells us in Romans that we are heirs of God and co-heirs with Christ. He has given us the Spirit of sonship and all the riches of His kingdom are ours in Christ.

It is good to remind ourselves of this and to live in this power and grace that was afforded to us by Christ. It is good to expect the best from God and to entrust ourselves to Him.

Though we are wise to joyfully anticipate God's provision and blessings, there is a great danger in overemphasizing God's blessings as we expect them. Sometimes we have very different ideas of what it means to be blessed by God than what God intends. There has been a strong movement in America that has spread to Africa and Asia that teaches that our faith in God is directly correlated to material blessings. A crude mixture of the American dream and a dumbed down version of the Gospel, it gains followers through promises of health, wealth, and prosperity. God is a Santa Claus who will give us anything we want if we just have enough faith (and donate to the preacher bringing the message).

I'm not saying that God never provides material blessings or that it is wrong to have money. What I am saying is that God is far more concerned with who we are as His followers than He is with our comfort or what possessions we have. What if His blessings come through overwhelming tribulation that push us straight to His arms and force us to realize our dependency on Him? What if Jesus, Paul, Peter, James, and the author of Hebrews are serious when they tell us that we will face trials, hardship, persecution and difficulties in this world? What if the mystery of grace reaches much deeper than superficial possessions and temporary comfort? What if joy is not merely happiness but a consistent abiding in Christ through every circumstance? What if peace is more than an emotional, psychological state but a constant reassurance of God's presence in all things?

What makes the health and wealth gospel so heinous is it takes the incredible story of Christ's redemption and makes it all about us and what we can get out of it. It is a hollow, selfish, consumerist approach to the Most High God. But there is value in pain and suffering. There is joy in serving "the least of these." There is hope in learning how to be content in all circumstances. We are to be marked by the suffering of Christ. If we are His followers, we must serve and love as He served and loved, not seek comfort for ourselves. O that we would seek to serve Christ and bring Him glory at all costs, considering everything else rubbish for His sake; that we would find ourselves in Him, not in our comfort and possessions; that we would know Him and the power of His resurrection and the fellowship of sharing in His sufferings.

Love Wins

"Then Jesus went through the towns and villages, teaching as He made His way to Jerusalem. Someone asked Him, "Lord, are only a few people going to be saved?" He said to them, "Make every effort to enter through the narrow door, because many, I tell you, will try to enter and will not be able to. Once the owner of the house gets up and closes the door, you will stand outside knocking and pleading, 'Sir, open the door for us.' But He will answer, 'I don't know you or where you come from.' Then you will say, 'We ate and drank with You, and You taught in our streets.' But He will reply, 'I don't know you or where you come from. Away from me all you evildoers!' There will be weeping and gnashing of teeth, when you see Abraham, Isaac and Jacob, and all the prophets in the kingdom of God, but you yourselves thrown out..." -Luke 13: 22-28

This past spring, a megachurch pastor from Grand Rapids, MI drew lots of attention and criticism for his views on salvation, heaven, and "the fate of every person who ever lived" when he put out a book that lays the foundations for a more mainstream version of a fringe doctrine called Christian universalism. Rob Bell understands that the term "universalist" has a less than favorable connotation in the majority of evangelical circles (he hates labels anyway; they ruin the surprise) and, of course, says that he is not one. Love Wins is more an emotionally-driven opinion piece than a theological treatise but many people have found its argumentation compelling and convincing. Rather than laying out a solid Biblical argument for his defense of the doctrine, Rob Bell asks a slew of rhetorical questions such as "Are only a few people really going to be saved and billions will perish?" and "Could a good God really send people to hell?" or "If God really desires that all be saved, doesn't God get what God wants?" A potential alternative definition to the Greek word for "eternal" and some unanswered (but really they are answered indirectly) rhetorical questions later, we have a book that espouses the idea that eventually everyone who ever lived will be saved and go to heaven because God's love always wins regardless of whether we accept it in this life or not.

It's interesting that Rob Bell asks a question rhetorically that is repeated genuinely almost verbatim by a man in the Gospel of Luke (see above). However, instead of discussing how Jesus answers the question, Bell provides his own answer using some sketchy theology and selective discussion of Scriptures on the topic of salvation. The flaws in this approach should be obvious. God in human form answers a real question from a real person and it's not worth mentioning in a book that asks the same question? It's hard to understand why.

Without a thorough understanding of human depravity and the far reaching effects of sin and the fall, it would seem pretty unfair for God to "send" people to hell. But Rob Bell never once mentions the effects of sin on our relationship with God in his book. He talks only of how sin is what we humans do to each other. There's nothing in the book about our rebellious nature which leads to a broken relationship with our Creator, nothing about the justice and holiness of a perfect God Who cannot look on sin. There's nothing about the wages of sin being death or the desperate need for a perfect Savior Who emptied Himself and was pierced for our transgressions and crushed for our iniquities. We deserve death and the wrath of God for our blatant wickedness but He provided a way to reconciliation through the blood of Christ on the cross. We may choose this path of reconciliation and receive salvation or we may choose to continue to have it our way which leads right to hell. Nobody is being "sent" anywhere. With this understanding, the concept of heaven and hell don't seem so unfair, judgmental, and narrow after all.

Love does not win when what we do and believe do not matter. Love does not win when God's unfathomable sacrifice is a convenient catch-all to get into heaven whether you choose it or not. Love does not win when repentance doesn't really matter in the long run and when the sheep and the goats really aren't that much different after all. Love wins because a perfect, just, and loving God Who cannot look on our sin decided to take our punishment so that we may be reconciled back to Him. His sacrifice matters and so does our acceptance of it.

Beware of Blaming God

"Fear not, for I have redeemed you; I have summoned you by name; you are Mine. When you pass through the waters, I will be with you; and when you pass through the rivers, they will not sweep over you. When you walk through the fire, you will not be burned; the flames will not set you ablaze. For I am the Lord, your God, the Holy One of Israel, your Savior..." -Isaiah 43

When we face trials, difficulties, and pain, we often have as our reaction an accusatory posture toward God. Surely He has abandoned me to deal with this on my own and forgotten what I need, we say. In the fieriest moment of trial, it is easy to feel so overwhelmed that it seems absolutely plausible that God does not love us enough to intervene, that He is not powerful enough to intervene, or even that He does not exist. When dark doubts like these assail us, we often feel justified in accusing God. We tell God that we know better than Him, that we know our needs better than He does. Even at our lowest points, our pride finds a way to emerge and rebuke the King of the universe.

When we are blinded by pain and difficulty, it can seem that there is no way out, that it will never improve. We lose perspective. Yet God holds true to His promises whether we believe them at the time or not. He is the Author of reality and our flawed, emotion-colored perceptions cannot do a thing to change that. There is rarely an immediate answer to our question of why but we need not be without Someone to cling to. To those who love Him, God promises that He will be ever-present in the fiery trials of life.

To carry us and to be with us in the middle of the fire, God has to feel the flames Himself. There is no other way. When we feel the pain of the fire, so does He. When we suffer, so does He. But by His unfathomable love, He carries us because the flames make us stronger if we face them with Him. James 1 says that the testing of our faith produces perseverance which, in turn, makes us mature in Christ.

When facing overwhelming tribulation, do not blame God as if He has abandoned you without a way out. In so doing, we cause God even more pain. God does not promise to spare us of trials, but He does promise to go with us through them and to bring us through them victoriously if we rely on Him and submit to Him. Consider it pure joy.

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I'm not a huge fan of blogs but I figured I'd share some thoughts I have as they come up. What will follow won't be about me. I should start by saying that I'm 22 years old and by no means have experienced much in life or have gained much wisdom. However, I pray that you are encouraged by the words here and if no one ends up reading this, it'll be fun to look back through the magic of the interwebs on what God has been teaching me. Feel free to comment.

-Jared