DOES LACK OF FORCE EQUAL PASSIVENESS?

God loved the world so much that he gave his only Son, that everyone who has faith in him may not die but have eternal life.  John 3:16, N.E.B.


Americans no longer call state prisons penitentiaries; they are "correctional institutions."  This reflects a move away from the idea of strict retribution, toward the concept of rehabilitation.  In the past, criminals were to be punished.  Period.  This was in service of society: a fearsome warning to dissuade other potential offenders from a similar course of action.  It seldom worked.  Once released, the ex-convicts were often more a threat to society than they were when first incarcerated.

Something had to be done.  And so the concept of rehabilitation came into being.  The goal is to bring restoration to the offenders so that they are able to integrate acceptably back into their respective communities.  Because this ideal is not always reached, some people cry out against what they call the passivity of law-enforcement officials.

In a similar way, some Christians cry out against the concept of a God who chooses not to deal forcefully with injustice--a God who would rather educate and restore the sinner than to inflict pain upon him for his bad behavior.  They fear that anything less than just retribution leads to chaos and anarchy.  The understanding that God's justice fits not only the crime but also the criminal is lost under a barrage of text quoting and the solemn warning: "You're making God out to be too passive!"

To the contrary, God is anything but passive!  In Eden He arrested the destruction of the human race by putting into effect a plan by which fallen man could be not only rescued but rehabilitated and restored.  His is not a posture of weakness but of confidence in better methods.  It is, in fact, a posture of impregnable strength!  Only an insecure ruler needs to resort to force.  By giving His Son, God demonstrated that He is capable not only of controlling the sin crisis but of resolving it.

If we obey God because we believe He will kill us if we don't, our loyalty to Him is tainted with suppressed rebellion.  If, however, we understand that God is offering us the option to be integrated back into reality so as to avoid certain disaster, our hearts will be filled with wonder and love that He has gone to such great lengths to provide us that expensive remedy.

GETTING LOST TO GET SAVED

Whoever cares for his own safety is lost; but if a man will let himself be lost for my sake and for the Gospel, that man is safe.  Mark 8:35, N.E.B.


Ever since Eden we've thought that we have the ideas on how to take care of ourselves, how to meet our needs, how to reach our goals.  In many cases we are convinced that we can take better care of ourselves than even God can.  For example, the lonesome teenager who longs to be loved may seek for it in illicit sexual relationships rather than wait for God's longer, slower, but more satisfying methods to accomplish the goal.

A young business executive seeks for professional success and security--certainly worthy goals in themselves.  But if, in his haste to get there, he compromises his health, integrity, and relationships, the goals are no longer worthy of him.  When Jesus was being tempted in the wilderness, nothing was wrong with His waiting to be fed, to be sustained by His Father, or to be victorious in His mission to win the earth back from Satan.  What was wrong with each of the temptations was that they involved shortcuts to the goal, do-it-yourself methods apart from the Father's wise perception of what was necessary.

Virtually every sinful thing that we do has an understandable motive behind it: we are acting to fulfill a legitimate need.  We need love, enjoyment, successes, security, sexual release, food and shelter, and freedom from pain.  The thing that makes our sinful act so wrong is not the need itself but the fact that we have gone about meeting it by our methods rather than God's.

A 26-year-old woman, fearful that she was about to become an "old maid," was seriously dating a non-Christian.  He was eager to enter matrimony, but she was sufficiently apprehensive that she came for advice.  She was terrified at my suggestion that she break off the relationship because it appeared she would never have her need for companionship met.  After much anguish she cast her full confidence in God and broke up with the suitor.  A short time later she met and happily married a fine man of her own faith.

Real victory over sin, then, means coming to have such a practical confidence in God's ability to meet our needs that we will not be prone to meet them on our terms.  "Lost" in Him, we are safe.

THE TRUTH ABOUT SELFLESSNESS

He it is who sacrificed himself for us, to set us free from all wickedness and to make us a pure people marked out for his own, eager to do good.  Titus 2:14, N.E.B.


She was pretty, intelligent, and poised; the young man with her was arrogant and sloppy.  As I watched them move through the cafeteria line, I wondered what she saw in him.  Later I began to wonder if there was something about herself she didn't see.

A low self-image tends to perpetuate unfortunate circumstances that seem to verify that individual's evaluation of himself.  Tragically, we Christians often succumb to the same thing!  One wonders what it is we do not see in God that allows us to have such a low opinion of our potential.

We often say, "Nobody's perfect!"  What we mean is that we have failed to reach a certain standard of behavior.  Furthermore, many are convinced that no one can.  "Only Christ could," they say.  "He was, after all, our Substitute.  Even God knew we couldn't!"  Such thinking precludes success.

What we must understand is the difference between salvation and restoration.  It is absolutely true that we can never merit salvation.  But in areas of Christian growth we are not talking about salvation!  We are talking about God's adequacy to fulfill our needs.  Take selflessness, for example.

Christ was a totally selfless person.  Now, do we conclude that because we cannot be selfless enough to atone for our sins that selflessness is beyond us?  Our text today says that by His sacrifice Christ "set us free from all wickedness."  Selfishness is our attempt to grasp after completeness apart from God.  In Christ we are once again at one with God (at-one-ment).  Consequently, there is no more need to be self-serving.  All our needs are met.

It is time we stopped confusing character development with merit!  God knew that as long as we felt unworthy of His company we would continue to live lives that denied us His friendship.  Therefore, He redeemed us, and by doing so He enabled us to begin to take hold of "the full wealth of his splendor upon vessels [us!] which were objects of mercy, and which from the first had been prepared for this splendor" (Rom. 9:23, N.E.B.).

Let us be "eager to do good"--not to win Him, but to reveal Him to others that they, too, might learn of their completeness in Him!

​IS GOD PUNITIVE?

In love there can be no fear, but fear is driven out by perfect love: because to fear is to expect punishment, and anyone who is afraid is still imperfect in love.  1 John 4:18, Jerusalem.

More than sixty times in the Bible we read about God punishing people for their iniquities, and then in one verse John says that people who are afraid of punishment are imperfect!  Whom are we supposed to believe?  What's the real truth about punishment?  Is God punitive?

We're dealing here with two different understandings of "punishment."  In one sense of the word, punishment means the inflicting of pain on someone because of wrong behavior.  We envision someone in a position of power or authority (such as a parent, policeman, or teacher), whose job is to monitor the behavior of others.  And so he spanks, levies fines, or makes the offender stand in the corner.

This usage sometimes also curries flavoring of retaliation, emotional vengeance, or getting even.  It reveals the assumption that the wrong act will not have inherent consequences that are so very bad and so some sort of pain must be invented and artificially supplied.  This is to make sure that the person being punished will fear the lawgiver and thus be more obedient.  Some folks simply can't think of a better way to get people to obey than to scare them into submission.

But not so with our God!  He has better reasons for us to obey than to fear His wrath.  His law presents such vital realities of living that He does not need to "throw His wounded ego on the line" in defense of it.  And He is so confident of His ability to instruct us that He wants us referencing to the truthfulness of His ways rather than to the fear of His negative emotions.

Punishment, however, does have a proper function.  We are not always quick to grasp how hurtful it is to depart from His ways; and--lest we begin to live in a fantasy--He mercifully brings us face-to-face with the tragedy of our foolishness.  Also the destructive effects of a sinful pattern often are not immediately evident.  Rather than let us become locked into crushing patterns, He warns us with a sampling of the pain to come.  Surely this is what those Old Testament authors meant when they spoke of God's punishment

BEYOND VICTORY

"We have been treated like sheep for slaughter"--and yet, in spite of all, overwhelming victory is ours through him who loved us.  Rom. 8:37, N.E.B.

I remember listening to the radio the day the American hostages came home from Iran in January of 1981.  The waiting crowd broke into cheers when the men and women stepped through the door of their plane.  A huge bubble of camaraderie rose inside my chest, and I found myself cheering with them, celebrating the victory of those returning captives over defeating circumstances.

How good it is to witness human victory in a world terribly twisted with unfair wars and famine!  There is so much senseless suffering and loss, so many injustices.  At times one is almost compelled to wonder, Is it worth it all?  Will the final triumph over evil ever make all that we've gone through here on earth worthwhile?  Unless we understand the true nature of the victory God intends for us, we may lose heart.

Victory in itself is not enough.  A returning prisoner of war has to be institutionalized for permanent mental disorientation can bring more agony to his family than when he was thought to be missing action.  At least then they had hope.  Likewise, God knows that it is not enough for us to be "saved."  It is not enough for there to be no more sorrow or crying, wonderful as that is.  It is not enough for us to walk on streets of gold and live in mansions.  It is not even enough that we live eternally.

And so God assures us "overwhelming victory."  This implies something beyond victory.  God not only desires to deliver us from the perils and destruction of this life, but He wants us to live eternally with Him as His sons and daughters.  He wants us to know Him well enough to call Him "Abba! Father!" the affectionate equivalent of "Dad" or "Daddy" (see Rom. 8:14-16, N.E.B.).  He has "ordained that [we] should be shaped to the likeness of his Son, that [Jesus] might be the eldest among the large family of brothers" (verse 29, N.E.B.).

Jesus knew the Father and was one with Him.  In John 17 He prayed that we might share that knowledge and oneness.  He said, "I made thy name known to them...so that the love thou hadst for me may be in them" (verse 26, N.E.B.).  This is our overwhelming victory: to know God and be one with Him throughout eternity!

WHY GOD REQUIRES FAITH

As it is written, "He who through faith is righteous shall live."  Rom. 1:17, R.S.V.

"Did you know that modern medical science is destroying faith?"  The man's question was absolutely serious, so when he saw the puzzled look on my face, he tried to explain.  "God revealed to us many principles of health in the Bible," he said.  "And we've just had to take them on faith.  But now the scientists are proving them all to be true, and pretty soon, we won't have any more need for faith."

"Does this mean," I asked, "that the less we know about a subject, the more faith we can have?"  "Yes," he replied hesitantly.  "Then those who know the least about Jesus can have the most faith in Him?"  He looked perplexed.  "That doesn't sound quite right, does it?" he responded.

What we understand faith to be certainly shapes our picture of why God requires it.  If faith is a "blind leap in the dark," then God requires us to be superstitious.  He rewards us for our gullibility.

Or if faith is merely assent to the meritorious value of Christ's life and death outside of oneself, then faith becomes our legal entitlement to forgiveness.  It becomes the means by which God is entitled to change toward us.

But what if we view faith to be an informed, trusting friendship with the Lover of our souls?  What if it means the reuniting of God's creatures in a loving bond with their Creator, the restoring of the kind of intimate fellowship that Adam and Eve enjoyed with their Father in Eden?  Then God requires faith because nothing else can heal the essential sin problem--the alienation between God and man.

Faith is the response of our hearts to God's gracious appeals for our fellowship with Him.  It is the healing relationship with the One who is the source of all life, health, and happiness.  Faith restores us to our rightful state, to the condition in which we were created to live: union with our Creator.

Faith does not change God toward us; it changes us toward God.  It does not coax Him to forgive us; it is our response to the discovery that He is a forgiver.  Faith does not appease God's wrath toward sinners; it heals the sinner's hostility toward God.  No wonder, then, that Paul could repeat that great scriptural theme: "He who through faith is righteous shall live"!  For faith is connection with the Life-giver.

THE SUCIDE OF SEPARATION

Then Jesus cried with a loud voice, "My God, my God, why did you forsake me?"  Matt. 27:46, Phillips.

Thousands of people die every year in traffic accidents.  Though the auto makers install seat belts in every new car, many people will die anyway, simply because they did not use the belts.  They felt no need to "buckle up," because they never identified with the possibility of being in an accident themselves.  Unfortunately, they did not live to benefit from learning that devastating possibility.

Ever since Eden, people have believed that they have life independent from God.  The theory of evolution is simply an elaborate explanation to that effect.  And the daily existence of atheists and churchgoers alike seems to substantiate such thinking.  To find out that God is our only life source may be like discovering too late that we are not immune to traffic accidents.

Man should have perished in Eden.  But God wasn't looking for statistics to prove Himself right.  He desired that we might live!  So He devised a plan whereby we could see what happens to us  when we are separated from God yet live to benefit from the lesson.  Incredibly, God would become one of us (2 Cor. 5:21)!  By beholding Jesus, our substitute, we would discover that sin--separation from God--kills!

Men did not kill the Son of God.  He hung upon a crude cross but He died because He experienced the consequences of sin for us.  He cried out, "My God, my God, why did you forsake [leave] me?"  However, He died knowing that He had accomplished what was needed.  For He cried again with a loud voice, "It is finished!" (John 19:30, Phillips).

May I suggest that God did not kill Jesus, either?  He simply allowed Jesus to bear the results of man's choice when he withdrew from God.  As this happened Jesus cried out, and moments later He was dead.  In the sacrificial services the sinner who brought a lamb offering killed it himself.  The priest only caught the blood.  The staggering truth is, man ultimately kills himself!

God pleads with us to come to our senses.  "As I live, says the Lord God, I have no pleasure in the death of the wicked, but that the wicked turn from his way and live; turn back, turn back from your evil ways; for why will you die?" (Eze. 33:11, R.S.V.).

DOES GOD USE DISAPPOINTMENT?

Love your enemies, and do good, and lend, expecting nothing in return;...and you will be sons of the Most High; for he is kind to the ungrateful and the selfish.  Luke 6:35, R.S.V.

Parents are always looking for an available arsenal of methods to use to get their children to obey.  If you are a parent, you probably recognize most of the methods: coaxing, stern commanding, sweet enticing, lengthy sermonizing.  Sometimes in sheer desperation we resort to badgering and belittling.  I can remember the time I looked coldly at my daughter (following what I considered to be a major infraction) and said, "Julie, after all I've done for you, I am so disappointed in you!"

I was even more disappointed when it didn't lead her to immediate repentance and transformation.  But later, when our feelings had calmed, she told me how she felt when I said that.  She described the feelings of crushing hopelessness, rejection, loss of self-esteem, and of impossible indebtedness.  And--as usual--I found myself reviewing my methods of parenting as well as my understanding of God.

Does God manipulate us with goodness?  Does He say, "After all I've done for you, what are you going to do for Me?"  What does it mean to "expect nothing in return"?  For us to expect favor, and then feel disappointed if the favor is not returned.  Then that disappointment is often used (through subtle comments, glances of the eye, or sullen moods) to make sure that, next time, the favor is returned.

If one is not grateful for all the good things we do, then, in human terms, the kindnesses stop, for they were done to induce gratefulness.  But if Jesus called us to come up higher than this, wouldn't we expect His Father not to stoop to such methods?

Our Father does good because He is good, not as a means of leverage upon us.  He keeps on being kind, even to the ungrateful, because His kindness was not a conditional kindness in the first place.  Even His acts of discipline are expressions of kindness, for He wants His friends to live within the boundaries of reality.

God's great kindness to us is intended to inspire us rather than to control us, to heal us rather than to crush us with impossible indebtedness.  Unconditional love draws us into wholeness; conditional love drives us to despair.

SOGGY-CAKE FAITH

Let us fix our eyes on Jesus, the author and perfecter of our faith.  Heb. 12:2, N.I.V.

Few things are more unpalatable than cake that is not thoroughly cooked.  Though tempting-looking on the outside, the inner sogginess can gag you.  No amount of frosting will suffice; one bite and the rest is for the dog (if even he'll eat it!).

At one point in Israelite history God referred to Ephraim as "a cake half-baked" (Hosea 7:8, N.E.B.).  In verses 13 and 14 He says, "I long to deliver them, but they tell lies about me.  There is no sincerity in their cry to me; for all their howling...they are turning away from me."

Insincerity.  Can it be cured?  It depends, of course, on the root cause.  Some insincerity stems from having been backed into a corner with a decision that one isn't ready to make.  In that case the only remedy is to be allowed to remake the decision while being given sufficient information to do so.  Of course, if a person thinks he already knows enough, the problem becomes immensely complicated.  Such was the case with Israel.

God saw that the root cause of the problem was Israel's lack of faith in Him.  That was the source of their "lies" about Him.  In chapter 14:4, He outlines His plan for their restoration: "I will heal their faithlessness; I will love them freely" (R.S.V.).  They were only half convinced about God's goodness.  He would love them to wholeness.  But first He would have to persuade them that though "they cry to me for help: 'We know thee, God of Israel,' " they were, in fact "utterly loathsome" (chap. 8:2, 3, N.E.B.).  Like soggy cake.

God's methodology hasn't changed.  He desires to love us to wholeness, too.  So He gave us Jesus.  In Jesus we see the Father's love in action; we see forgiveness, acceptance, salvation.  Faith springs up in our hearts.  We believe!  But this is only the beginning.  If we stop there, however wonderful the experience, we will end up living in a half-truth.  And only half the truth about God can be as harmful as an outright lie.

The answer to this potential dilemma is found in Hebrews 12:2--we need to keep our "eyes fixed on Jesus" (N.E.B.)!  Because our understanding of who God is not only began in Jesus; it will also be made complete as we behold the whole truth in Him.

HE HEALED ALL TEN

At this Jesus said, "Were not all ten cleansed?  The other nine, where are they?"  Luke 17:17, N.E.B.

It is very hard for us fully to understand what it meant to be a leper in the time of Christ.  Today leprosy is a disease that can mostly be avoided; if contracted, it can be somewhat successfully treated.  But then it was more than a dreaded fatal disease, more than an awful malady that shattered every cherished human contact.  Most horribly, leprosy was firmly held to be the judgment of God, His public punishment for sin, the mark of His sure rejection.

Then Jesus came, full of truth about His Father.  He longed to show people that His Father does not inflict diseases as punishment for sin.  He wanted them to know that all sinners will find forgiveness when they come home to the Father.  Were He ever to walk past a leper without healing him, He would be confirming the people's fear that God will not forgive grievous sinners.  No wonder the Scriptures indicate that Jesus healed every leper He encountered.

He even healed ten of them at once, there on the borderlands of Galilee.  Ten filthy, isolated, begging men--He made them whole and clean, acceptable to their families, publicly innocent.  But only one sensed that his healing, though incredible, was not as important as the Healer.  And he came back to worship at Jesus' feet.

The last we see of the other nine is their backs, for their eyes are fixed on their freshly made skin as they scamper off to enjoy the benefits.  The gift became the end in itself, and they had no time for the Giver!  But Jesus didn't "curse" them by making the leprosy return.

Even in this disappointing outcome Jesus was remaining true to His Father.  Though forgiveness is freely offered to all, only those who come back and fall at the feet of the Forgiver have entered into life.  The others do not have their forgiveness canceled.  But that does not matter.  They are lost just the same, not because they are unforgiven but because they indulge the gift, ignoring the Forgiver!