The Heart of God

I was revisiting today the parable of the talents that Jesus tells in Matthew 25. As you know if you've read the passage, the basic idea of the story is a master, representing God, gives money to three of his servants. Two of his servants spend it wisely and use it to make more money, earning them praise. The third does nothing earning him his master's anger.

The typical interpretation of this passage is that it is instructing us to use wisely what God has given us. But what struck me today was what the third servant, the unfaithful one, says when questioned by the master. Starting in verse 24:

Then the servant with the one bag of silver came and said, "Master, I knew you were a harsh man, harvesting crops you didn’t plant and gathering crops you didn’t cultivate. I was afraid I would lose your money, so I hid it in the earth. Look, here is your money back."

"I knew you were a harsh man." This line more than anything else shows what went wrong with the third servant. If the master in the story truly represents God then what the third servant says about him is completely untrue. God is not cruel and unkind, but loving and generous. Yes, He certainly is fierce and has every capacity to act harsh when He needs to but those are not the truest things about Him, especially not to those, like the servant, who He calls His own.

The servant in the parable no doubt has reasons for why he believes what he believes but he's missed the larger truth. More importantly, he's missed his master's heart for him. The master wants to make him more than a servant. He wants to give him more responsibility so that he can one day be a partner and a friend, just as does for the two faithful servants. But the servant cannot or will not see this. He's been sold on a lie and has missed the heart of his master.

I believe that more than anything the enemy is trying every day to sell us on the same lie. He may not be trying to convince you that God is harsh and angry. Maybe he's trying to tell you God is indifferent and never becomes angry. Maybe he's convincing you that God's love is entirely conditional. Whatever the lie is, the goal is the same: to get us to miss the heart of God.

God's heart is for us. As David reminds us in the Psalms, we are fearfully and wonderfully made. As Paul says in Ephesians, God had us in mind before the creation of the world. Our sin has caused to fall far from that wonderful creation, from who God had in mind since before time began. God's heart is all about getting us back to who we were always meant to be. Anytime He is harsh or disciplines us, it is towards this goal. Every blessing, every showing of love, is to bring us back to a deeper intimacy with Him. God's heart is about restoring us to be His children, His friends, the Bride of Christ.

Keep that central in your heart and the enemy's lies won't have a chance.

The Gospel Plus Nothing

One of the biggest and most effective attacks the enemy has use against The Gospel throughout church history has been convincing us to take the pure message of The Gospel and add to it.

This attack is no less effective today than it has been for the last 2,000 years. To name just a few that are prominent these days we have The Gospel + social change, The Gospel + morality and good behavior, The Gospel + ritual and religious ceremony, The Gospel + sound doctrine, The Gospel + authenticity. I could go on and on.

Now, I'm not diminishing any of those things. Several of them are essential parts of the Christian walk. Of course we want to make an impact on society and help those around us. Of course we want to encourage right behavior and Christian morality. Of course there is value in Christian rituals such as communion. Of course we want sound doctrine and an authentic approach to our faith and our lives. They're all important, which is why this trap is so effective

However, for as important as all of those issues are they are not The Gospel. The Gospel is Christ bringing us life and life to the full. It is the seeking and salvation of what was lost. It is our rescue from damnation and the promise of Heaven. It is freedom from our sin and our heart of stone being replaced with a heart of flesh. It is healing for the brokenhearted and our transformation into a new creation. It is life flowing fully and richly from the heart.

It is precisely because those other things are so important that The Gospel must be kept central. When we take The Gospel + morality we wind up with a legalism that does little to actually change sinful behavior and brings none of the life Christ promised. When we tack on ritual and religion we get an empty shell of faith where we go through the motions but lack any fire or passion of true faith.

But when The Gospel is central and we live from the heart then we find true transformation and reach a level of holiness unavailable to even the most strident legalist. We find true joy in religion and ritual as they become one more way to express love and intimacy with God.

We all have issues that we care about. It's part of how God created us so that the Body of Christ would work as it was meant to. But when we make those issues central instead of living from the heart, the Body of Christ becomes shattered. Instead of one Church with many functions we have many Gospel +_____ churches, each with one function.

I say this even about issues close to my heart such as truth, sound doctrine and the right to life of the unborn. I care passionately about each of those but they cannot take the place of The Gospel as being central. Doing so not only diminishes Christ's message but it prevents those issues I care about from becoming part of the fuller, complete Body of Christ.

We've all got our own list of issues and if we're honest we'll admit we all have a tendency to want to make the items on our list central. Let's not. Let's take a stand and say that we as a body of believers will accept only The Gospel plus nothing. Only then can we truly see the Body of Christ begin to work and those issues so dear to our hearts begin to be advanced as part of the Kingdom of Heaven.