I've been spending some time this past week reflecting on Holy Week. What God keeps bringing back to my mind is the Lord's Supper, the wine and bread, His body and blood.
The human race didn't get very far before we crashed and crashed bad. We were intended for glory. Instead we exchanged the glory God had given us for a life of shame and evil. We were meant to live full and complete lives. Instead we willing let ourselves, our hearts, be literally shattered.
We hear a lot of different theories in today's world about why Christ came. Some say He came to be a good teacher or give us a new way to go about our day to day lives. These reasons, and others like them, are true but incomplete. The main reason Christ came, His central mission, was to put us back together again. He came to rescue us from our fall and the eternal consequences that would follow, He came to release us from the sin we turned to in our brokenness and He came to restore us to the glory we were always meant to have. To put it another way, He came so we could be whole and holy.
That's what the Lord's Supper is all about. With His blood He covers our sins. But it doesn't end with forgiveness. His blood might start as a covering but it is meant to go onto complete transformation. The goal of the atonement is not only to set us right with God, though without that we could not go any further, but to make it so that one day, though not one in this world, we can look back on sin as a half forgotten nightmare.
In the second part of the Lord's Supper, Christ's body is broken so that our hearts can be made whole. After the fall, our hearts became evil and wicked (Jer. 17:9). Christ's being broken turns all that around. Our heart of stone is removed and we are given a heart of flesh (Ezk. 36:26). But like with the atonement this is only the beginning. Our basic nature has been changed but the work of Christ isn't done. He wants to put us back together again so that we can be restored to glory. So that we can be whole.
If you spend some time this weekend reflecting on Christ's death and resurrection, remember that it's about more than just forgiveness. Christ wants to restore you to who you were always meant to be. That's why He came, so that we could be whole and holy before Him. No wonder we've spent 2,000 years calling this good news!
Showing posts with label holiness. Show all posts
Showing posts with label holiness. Show all posts
Friday, April 10, 2009
Monday, February 23, 2009
A Treasured Possession
The LORD has declared this day that you are his people, his treasured possession as he promised, and that you are to keep all his commands.
-Deuteronomy 26:18
-Deuteronomy 26:18
What are we to do with all of God's commandments in the Bible? That is a question the Church has always struggled to answer and though we've come up with answer I believe that most of those answers are anything but satisfactory.
Most Christians come down somewhere between two extremes. The first says, don't worry so much about the dos and don'ts of the Bible. After all, we're under grace. The second says do whatever you have to to obey. Beat yourself into submission if that's what it takes. After all, God said what He said and He meant it.
There's plenty of middle ground, but if we're honest I think most of us would admit we lean towards one or the other of those extremes.
Thank God there's another option! Thank God He intended us, and His commands, for something better!
Take a look again at the verse at the beginning of this post but this time realize the context. God has just finished reviewing His law with His people before they enter the promised land and in this passage specifically He's explaining how important it is that they do what He has told them to do.
And in the midst of that He says to them, "You are mine. My treasured possession." Think about that for a moment. Those words change everything. They turn our whole preconceived notion of morality and God's commandments on its head.
To the first extreme and those who lean in that direction, how can you say don't worry about what God said to do and not to do? You are His treasured possession and He would not see you degraded and destroyed through sin. To the second extreme and those who lean towards it, how can you say we should beat ourselves submission? We are God's treasured possession. Don't we deserve better than that? The purpose of God's law is not to beat us down but to lift us up.
We need to remember that the story of the Gospel, the story God has been telling since the beginning of the world, is a love story. It's the story of God's love for His creation, a Father's love for His children, a Bridegroom's love for His bride. It is our birthright, our purpose, to live as God's treasured possession.
If we could live like that, live knowing who and what we were made for, it would change everything. Maybe then we'd be able to see that we were always meant, and are supposed to approach God's law from a place of life, passion and love.
Tuesday, September 23, 2008
"He Made Virture Accessible"
For the past few weeks I've been reading Les Miserables (a fantastic book, by the way. If you're not up for the entire 1,500 page tome at least see the Liam Neeson adaptation). One of the parts that's stuck in my mind is from the beginning of the novel where Victor Hugo is describing the Bishop of Digne. He's talking about the Bishop's relationship with his people, his generosity and how he inspires others around him to good works. Hugo writes that the Bishop made "virtue accessible" to those around him.
That's exactly what Christ wants to do for us. A while back I wrote about holiness and how mistaken views of holiness lead us to lean either towards legalism or moral relativism. I think that we're in danger of both of those tendencies when we miss what God is doing here. When we see holiness as something far away and inaccessible we'll either tend towards legalism, believing holiness is attainable only for those with an extreme sense of discipline, or towards relativism, beliving holiness is so far away that it would be impossible to ever acheive and a waste of time to try.
I believe this is one of the reasons Jesus didn't discriminate over who He spent time with. He hung out with the rich and the poor. He gave some of His most profound teaching to a socially lofty man in Nicodemus and He chose lowly fishermen to be among His closest friends. He made His virtue accessible to anyone and everyone who was willing to receive it and called all of them into a richer and deeper life than they had ever imagined.
Jesus was able to do this because He saw who these people truly are. Beneath all of their sin and pain and woundedness He saw their true selves, their hearts, the people God had in mind before the foundations of the world. He saw it and He called it out. Virtue to Jesus was not something distant and inaccessible. It was and is Him calling His people back to Eden. It's His forgiveness and grace for sin. It's His healing and restoration for our wounds. It's His life that He always meant for us to live.
When we strip away the idea of God being an annoyed father who cannot stand to look at us until we shape up (legalism) or an easy going, distracted father who doesn't care what we do one way or the other (relativism) it's amazing what He can begin to accomplish in our lives. What takes those mistaken views of God is loving, available, passionate Father who is intimately involved in our restoring our lives to what they were always meant to be. God has made virture accessible to us. Now He is waiting for us to make ourselves accessible to Him.
That's exactly what Christ wants to do for us. A while back I wrote about holiness and how mistaken views of holiness lead us to lean either towards legalism or moral relativism. I think that we're in danger of both of those tendencies when we miss what God is doing here. When we see holiness as something far away and inaccessible we'll either tend towards legalism, believing holiness is attainable only for those with an extreme sense of discipline, or towards relativism, beliving holiness is so far away that it would be impossible to ever acheive and a waste of time to try.
I believe this is one of the reasons Jesus didn't discriminate over who He spent time with. He hung out with the rich and the poor. He gave some of His most profound teaching to a socially lofty man in Nicodemus and He chose lowly fishermen to be among His closest friends. He made His virtue accessible to anyone and everyone who was willing to receive it and called all of them into a richer and deeper life than they had ever imagined.
Jesus was able to do this because He saw who these people truly are. Beneath all of their sin and pain and woundedness He saw their true selves, their hearts, the people God had in mind before the foundations of the world. He saw it and He called it out. Virtue to Jesus was not something distant and inaccessible. It was and is Him calling His people back to Eden. It's His forgiveness and grace for sin. It's His healing and restoration for our wounds. It's His life that He always meant for us to live.
When we strip away the idea of God being an annoyed father who cannot stand to look at us until we shape up (legalism) or an easy going, distracted father who doesn't care what we do one way or the other (relativism) it's amazing what He can begin to accomplish in our lives. What takes those mistaken views of God is loving, available, passionate Father who is intimately involved in our restoring our lives to what they were always meant to be. God has made virture accessible to us. Now He is waiting for us to make ourselves accessible to Him.
Monday, August 4, 2008
Moving Beyond Just Trying Harder
A couple of posts ago, I wrote about finding joy in holiness. As I've continued to think about that issue, I've come to see that one of the ways the devil has deceived the Church in that pursuit is by convincing us that the only way to gain real holiness is by simply trying harder. On the surface it sounds right, godly even. After all, spiritual discipline is an essential and important part of the Christian walk. Furthermore, when I read about how Jesus described walking with Him there is nothing easy about it. Every believer can share countless examples of life with Jesus requiring serious work and effort. Therefore, it seems perfectly logically that, when we're met with difficulties in our pursuit of genuine holiness we should simply try harder, keep striving, bear down and hope for breakthrough.
But the problem is, it doesn't work. Take a look at your own walk. Have you noticed that it seems the more you attempt to beat yourself into submission on a certain issue the more you seem to struggle with it? That sort of striving is worse than a dead end, it is a road that leads off the edge of a cliff. Our hearts can not endure a lifetime of that self abuse. They were never meant to.
In my previous post on holiness, I talked about the two wrongheaded ways we tend to approach pursuing holiness: legalism or moral relativism. If we approach the pursuit of holiness determined to beat ourselves into shape, to simply "try harder" until we see results, it's not hard to see how we wind up leaning in one of those two directions. Those who tend toward legalism have made the agreement that all it will take is bearing down a little more, being a little harsher on ourselves, and that somehow breakthrough will happen. Those who tend toward relativism see how brutal the legalist is with himself and decide they want no part in it, so they chuck the law out the window. Thus in many ways the legalist and the relativist are two sides of the same coin. They have each bought into the same lie, the only difference being that one lives enslaved to it and the other is terrified of finding himself in that same bondage.
The reason the "just try harder" approach doesn't work is because it drives deeper inside ourselves. On the outside it may look godly but it is the ultimate expression of humanism. It is the belief that transformation is not available from God but from ourselves. Jesus's death may be a free ticket into Heaven but beyond that "just try harder" denies the need for a savior. It lives under the belief that all the power of personal transformation is summed up in will power: that we as humans can force ourselves to become the new creation.
Perhaps worse, this approach denies the love of God. Instead of running to the arms of the Father in all of our shame and sinfulness so that He may turn our filthy rags to robes of righteousness, "just try harder" would have us perfect ourselves before we even think of approaching the Father. In Unspoken Sermons, George MacDonald writes about this very issue:
But what about spiritual discipline and the genuine hard work of following Christ? Am I suggesting we abandon those parts of the Christian life in favor sitting back doing nothing well we wait on God's transforming power? Absolutely not! The pursuit of holiness is exactly that: a pursuit. It takes work on our part but it is work done at the guidance and direction of Christ. The Christian life is neither us leaving everything to God while we sit back and make no effort (spiritual laziness) nor trying to do everything on our own apart from God (just try harder). It is God inviting us into an adventure, an intimate relationship, a holy partnership. The problem with "just try harder" is not that it requires hard work. It is that it demands we do the hard work apart from God.
"Just try harder" exists in a place of nervous anxiety forever wondering if we've now done enough, if we're now good enough, to please God. The genuine pusuit of holiness exists in the knowledge that while we still struggle with sin, God sees as we will be through the power of the Cross. It recognizes that while we have to daily put off the old man, we have been given the heart of flesh and that we are free from our sins. "Just try harder" is a burden and one too great for us to bear. The pursuit of genuine holiness is an invitation to life and freedom and a promise that someday our sin will be long forgotten.
A good way to tell which method you are living out of is to examine the fruit in your own life. Is how you're handling your sin producing shame, guilt and condemnation? If so, that's not from God. There is no condemnation in Christ. None! Real holiness will never deny sin but it will produce genuine repentence, intimacy with God and a changed life.
I believe that moving away from "just try harder" is a daily struggle. Like so many of the enemy's lies it is very close to the truth. But it's fruit is the exact opposite of genuine holiness and transformation. "Just try harder" will forever leave us stuck in the mess of our sin. God's holiness calls us out of our sin and into real freedom. I pray we will have the courage to follow that call.
But the problem is, it doesn't work. Take a look at your own walk. Have you noticed that it seems the more you attempt to beat yourself into submission on a certain issue the more you seem to struggle with it? That sort of striving is worse than a dead end, it is a road that leads off the edge of a cliff. Our hearts can not endure a lifetime of that self abuse. They were never meant to.
In my previous post on holiness, I talked about the two wrongheaded ways we tend to approach pursuing holiness: legalism or moral relativism. If we approach the pursuit of holiness determined to beat ourselves into shape, to simply "try harder" until we see results, it's not hard to see how we wind up leaning in one of those two directions. Those who tend toward legalism have made the agreement that all it will take is bearing down a little more, being a little harsher on ourselves, and that somehow breakthrough will happen. Those who tend toward relativism see how brutal the legalist is with himself and decide they want no part in it, so they chuck the law out the window. Thus in many ways the legalist and the relativist are two sides of the same coin. They have each bought into the same lie, the only difference being that one lives enslaved to it and the other is terrified of finding himself in that same bondage.
The reason the "just try harder" approach doesn't work is because it drives deeper inside ourselves. On the outside it may look godly but it is the ultimate expression of humanism. It is the belief that transformation is not available from God but from ourselves. Jesus's death may be a free ticket into Heaven but beyond that "just try harder" denies the need for a savior. It lives under the belief that all the power of personal transformation is summed up in will power: that we as humans can force ourselves to become the new creation.
Perhaps worse, this approach denies the love of God. Instead of running to the arms of the Father in all of our shame and sinfulness so that He may turn our filthy rags to robes of righteousness, "just try harder" would have us perfect ourselves before we even think of approaching the Father. In Unspoken Sermons, George MacDonald writes about this very issue:
"How the earthly father would love a child who would creep into his room with angry, troubled face, and sit down at his feet, saying when asked what he wanted: "I feel so naughty, papa, and I want to get good"! Would he say to his child: "How dare you! Go away, and be good, and then come to me?" And shall we dare to think God would send us away if we came thus, and would not be pleased that we came, even if we were angry as Jonah? "
But what about spiritual discipline and the genuine hard work of following Christ? Am I suggesting we abandon those parts of the Christian life in favor sitting back doing nothing well we wait on God's transforming power? Absolutely not! The pursuit of holiness is exactly that: a pursuit. It takes work on our part but it is work done at the guidance and direction of Christ. The Christian life is neither us leaving everything to God while we sit back and make no effort (spiritual laziness) nor trying to do everything on our own apart from God (just try harder). It is God inviting us into an adventure, an intimate relationship, a holy partnership. The problem with "just try harder" is not that it requires hard work. It is that it demands we do the hard work apart from God.
"Just try harder" exists in a place of nervous anxiety forever wondering if we've now done enough, if we're now good enough, to please God. The genuine pusuit of holiness exists in the knowledge that while we still struggle with sin, God sees as we will be through the power of the Cross. It recognizes that while we have to daily put off the old man, we have been given the heart of flesh and that we are free from our sins. "Just try harder" is a burden and one too great for us to bear. The pursuit of genuine holiness is an invitation to life and freedom and a promise that someday our sin will be long forgotten.
A good way to tell which method you are living out of is to examine the fruit in your own life. Is how you're handling your sin producing shame, guilt and condemnation? If so, that's not from God. There is no condemnation in Christ. None! Real holiness will never deny sin but it will produce genuine repentence, intimacy with God and a changed life.
I believe that moving away from "just try harder" is a daily struggle. Like so many of the enemy's lies it is very close to the truth. But it's fruit is the exact opposite of genuine holiness and transformation. "Just try harder" will forever leave us stuck in the mess of our sin. God's holiness calls us out of our sin and into real freedom. I pray we will have the courage to follow that call.
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