Can't buy me love

“17 And as he was setting out on his way, one individual ran up and knelt down before him and asked him, “Good Teacher, what must I do so that I will inherit eternal life?” (Mark 10)

Why did God accept Abel’s sacrifice and not Cain’s?  It’s always bothered me.  Oh, I’ve heard explanations but none of them sufficed.  None of them truly explained it in my mind.  Both are worshiping God yet God looks with favor on Abel and Cain gets the hand.  Whassup witdat?  Can we worship God wrong?  How will I know if I’m doing it?  Seems like a pretty important question, doesn’t it?

It almost sounds like the essence of the rich young ruler’s question in the above passage from Mark.  I’m doing this, this and this, what more do I lack?  Maybe he asks because he’s read Genesis four and he wants to make sure he’s doing it right.  Maybe he has done these things and he still feels that nagging loss.  The incompleteness that creeps in at the end of a day of business in the form of a question, “I worked so hard today but what did I accomplish?  I was so good, but was I good enough?”  Maybe, what he really longed to hear was Jesus say, “Dude!  You’re golden!  God told me to tell you, good on ya, keep on keepin’ on!”

Jesus doesn’t say, “Good on ya,” partly, I’m sure, because Jesus is not Australian.  But also partly because it was not good on him and it was not good for him. 

I write a lot about what we are to do, what we Christians, we followers of Christ, we the Bride of Christ are to do.  Lately, where it concerns evangelism: who gets into the Kingdom, who inherits eternal life and who does not.  Why should we tell folk?  How should we tell folk?  If no one can come unless they are called and God gives a measure of proof to all and faith is a gift, why should we talk about Jesus at all?  And here’s the crux of what I have to say…

If you’re asking the question, “Why should we talk about Jesus?” you shouldn’t.  In fact, please don’t.  Because you don’t know him.

Why didn’t God accept Cain’s offering?  I don’t think it was because it was grain and produce.  God told the Israelites to make all kinds of grain and produce offerings.  Why did Jesus tell the rich, young ruler to give all he owned to the poor?  He didn’t tell Nicodemus or Zaccheus to impoverish themselves.  Abraham, Isaac, Jacob, Job, David, Solomon, were all actually blessed with riches.  God’s not anti-wealth.  So what’s the deal?  Why did Jesus in Luke nine tell the guys, “Let the dead bury their own dead,” “Foxes have dens and birds have nests but the Son of Man has nowhere to lay his head,” and “He who puts his hands to the plow and looks back is not worthy of me.”?  Why is it whenever people seem most enthusiastic about Jesus and his new movement, he says something calculated to skeeve them out and make them angry, upset or confused?  Why did God put the Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil in the Garden?  Why did God not tell Job what it was all about?  Why do we suffer and God seems strangely silent?  Why am I asking so many questions and not giving any answers?  Why am I not going to stop?

Why wouldn’t you pay for a husband?  Why do we not knock women on the head and drag them to our caves to be our wives?  Why is it we could not be satisfied with a Stepford Wife?  Why isn’t wine better than a man?  Many jokes come to mind but the answer is only one question away…

Why isn’t God pleased with religion?

Love.

Love is a relationship.  Love is total submission to the other for the good of the other!  The Father loves the Son, the Son loves the Father.  God loves you and what’s best for you is to be drawn into the relationship He has within Himself!  It’s what He made you for!  It’s what you’re searching for when you acquire things, when you long for love, when you work, when you seek health!  Nothing else will satisfy.  Not even religion.  Why?  Because religion is love of the self.   Cain’s sacrifice wasn’t for God.  It wasn’t from love.  It was to get something from God.  The rich young ruler wasn’t keeping the commandments because he loved others; it was because he loved himself.  He wanted righteousness, rightness for himself.  To put God in his debt.

“Good Teacher,” he says, you who have achieved enlightenment.  Show me how to get where you are.  To make myself like the Most High!  “I am good,” is only one letter away from, “I am god!”  Spiritually, it’s the same thing. “Why do you call me good? No one is good except God alone.”   And there is only one God in heaven and earth. Why did God not accept Cain’s offering?  Why did the rich man go away sad?  Why do self-righteous people go to hell? 

Because they take the Bread of Life and the Wine of the Covenant that the Father offers them, the marriage proposal he gives to the World, the offer of eternal love, life and joy in Him, they slap them from Jesus’ outstretched, nail scarred hands and say through clenched teeth, “I don’t want pity from you!  I want to BE YOU!”  And God sadly, lets them go their way, to a place where they are god alone.  You think the world is bad now, imagine a place without any mitigating limits on people’s selfishness, without any blessings from God at all.  Total separation from everything good.  Imagine what they’ll be like when they realize how much of what they loved was a blessing from God they didn’t deserve.  Rage.  Furious, impotent, all consuming rage and despair.  Fire unquenched and worms which never die.  That’s hell.

Now imagine being drawn into the most loving relationship there ever was, ever is and ever will be.  True love.  Not transactional, not based on the worth of the loved but on the worth of the lover!  “6 For in this way God loved the world, so that he gave his one and only Son, in order that everyone who believes in him will not perish, but will have eternal life.” (John 3)  Why won’t you perish?  Because you have Jesus!  Jesus IS LIFE!  He is bread!  He is water!  He is Love!  You can’t come to the Father except through him because he is the Way to the Father!  He’s not being exclusive!  He’s being honest!  The Father loves Jesus, Jesus is the only one who can stand in God’s presence because Jesus. Is. God!  Even the angels hide their faces from God!  But He loved us so much he came to us and died for us!  And when he took our sin, our unworthiness, our unrighteousness on himself, he gave us HIS WORTH, HIS RIGHTEOUSNESS, his status as the SON OF GOD!  The best pagan is worshiping what they do not know!  It is easier for a camel to go through the eye of a needle than a man to enter the kingdom of God.  But Jesus!  Nothing is impossible with God.  They are trying to get to God and we know God Immanuel, God has come and is trying to get to us! 

Why would you tell someone about Jesus?  Why wouldn’t you???