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???

Run Otter. Ruuuuuunn!

“33 Who will bring any charge against those whom God has chosen? It is God who justifies. 34 Who then is the one who condemns? No one. Christ Jesus who died—more than that, who was raised to life—is at the right hand of God and is also interceding for us. 35 Who shall separate us from the love of Christ? Shall trouble or hardship or persecution or famine or nakedness or danger or sword? 36 As it is written:

“For your sake we face death all day long;


    we are considered as sheep to be slaughtered.”

37 No, in all these things we are more than conquerors through him who loved us. 38 For I am convinced that neither death nor life, neither angels nor demons, neither the present nor the future, nor any powers, 39 neither height nor depth, nor anything else in all creation, will be able to separate us from the love of God that is in Christ Jesus our Lord.”  (Rom 8)

Close your eyes.  Wait.  No, open them again.  That only works when you can hear me speaking.  Pretend your eyes are closed.  Take a deep breath.  Innnnnn.  Hold it. 

Now sloooooooly let it out.

Focus on Justification.  Do you see it in this verse from Romans?  See how it’s complete?  You believe Jesus died for you.  You believe He rose from the dead and sits on God’s right hand.  It is finished.  Your sins are forgiven.  You will someday sit with Him.  He has promised.  You are His and He will not lose you for anything.  Right here, right now, you stand before the Holy God, Justified through Christ Jesus. 

Let’s do another breath.  Aaaaaaah.  Justification feels goooood!

Okay, pretend to open your eyes.

“3 It is God’s will that you should be sanctified: that you should avoid sexual immorality; 4 that each of you should learn to control your own body in a way that is holy and honorable, 5 not in passionate lust like the pagans, who do not know God; 6 and that in this matter no one should wrong or take advantage of a brother or sister. The Lord will punish all those who commit such sins, as we told you and warned you before. 7 For God did not call us to be impure, but to live a holy life. 8 Therefore, anyone who rejects this instruction does not reject a human being but God, the very God who gives you his Holy Spirit.” (1Thes 4)

Roll up your sleeves.  Dust off your Bible.  Find a soft spot for your knees.  This is Sanctification.  This is work.

Both Justification and Sanctification are accomplished by God’s grace through Jesus.  The power for both come from the Cross.  One however is done.  Your status as a son or daughter of God, a co-heir with Christ, a royal prince of the kingdom, is secured.  You are justified.  Like a trophy on a shelf, JUSTIFIED!  No one can take it from you.  Look at it every morning, noon and night and receive joy and strength for today’s race!

When we confuse Justification for Sanctification, we get legalism.  Our standing with God rises and falls with our performance.  We experience God’s pleasure only based upon our own opinion of how yesterday went.  Instead of falling on God’s grace and mercy when we sin, we fall into despair and despondency.  “Will I ever get it right, Lord?”  There is remorse in bucket loads but not repentance.  Conversely, when we think we’ve been getting it right, we are insufferable:  judgmental, arrogant, without compassion on those struggling with sin.  This is Matthew 7: 21-23.  Instead of experiencing God’s grace through prayer, scripture, repentance and good works, we try to earn grace through these things.  We try to buy joy and peace thereby in reality, robbing ourselves of the fruit of the Spirit.  Legalism is a two inch worm stretching out thinking all it has to do to enter God’s kingdom is be a three inch worm.  God’s cocking his head and saying, “Um, no, you have to be an otter.”  Can you make yourself an otter?  I didn’t think so.  So relax, little worm, believe in Jesus, trust Him.  He’s made you an otter.

Sanctification is the race we run today.  The big one’s done.  Our team, through our champion, has already won.  We’re on the podium with Him.  This race will just determine where we stand upon it.  How big a crown we’ll wear there.  How much glory we bring to our Lord when we throw that crown at his feet and we, who the world sees standing upon that podium, honored, glorified, sanctified by the undisputed, all-powerful, all-glorious King of all Universes, step down and fall on our faces before Him.  We don’t run this race for our glory.  We run this race to have something more to offer to Him when we get there! 

This is the Parable of the Talents in Matthew twenty-five.  This is why God is so displeased with the last servant who went and buried his.  This selfish servant said, “Good enough is good enough.  I’ll be happy just being justified.  Sanctification is too much work.  I’m in, that’s all that matters.”  This servant is all about this servant.  He does not love his Lord.  Jesus’ sacrifice is about him.  It does not move him toward Jesus.  Toward love.  The Master remarks there isn’t even a trace of baseline gratitude and obviously therefore no justification either and kicks this jerk to the curb.

When we confuse Sanctification for Justification, we get synchrotism.  Our standing with God cannot change no matter what we do now.  It’s all grace, baby.  Freedom.  So we live however we please.  We’re otters living in the mud instead of in the Living Water.  Instead of bringing glory to our Father, we bring shame.  We abuse our freedom to bring pleasure to ourselves.  We live for ourselves.  We justify ourselves and our own actions.  “Hey, this is how God made me.  Take it or leave it.”  There is no repentance, because very little we do is “wrong.”  How could it be?  I’m a justified child of God.  Obedience and submission are not paths to love; they are dirty words.  Spirituality is supreme.  If it feels good, do it.  Synchrotism is an arranged marriage where the bride-to-be has decided her beau is lucky to be getting “all dis!”  She then takes “all dis!” and sells it on the street corner to buy herself a new Lexus.

We cannot confuse the two; legalism is not love for“21 I do not set aside the grace of God, for if righteousness could be gained through the law, Christ died for nothing!” (Gal 3)  Nor is self-justification,  “26 If we deliberately keep on sinning after we have received the knowledge of the truth, no sacrifice for sins is left, 27 but only a fearful expectation of judgment and of raging fire that will consume the enemies of God.” (Heb 10)  Both trample on the Son of God.  Both treat, as Hebrews says, “as an unholy thing the blood of the covenant that sanctified them, and [insult] the Spirit of grace”!  That’s not love!  We’ve been called to something so much better, invited by Love, justified by love, into Love so “let us throw off everything that hinders and the sin that so easily entangles. And let us run with perseverance the race marked out for us, 2 fixing our eyes on Jesus, the pioneer (justifier) and perfecter (sanctifier) of faith. For the joy set before him he endured the cross, scorning its shame, and sat down at the right hand of the throne of God. 3 Consider him who endured such opposition from sinners, so that you will not grow weary and lose heart.” (Heb 12)

Run Otter!  Ruuuuuuun!

Work it, Baby!

“34 I will bless the Lord at all times;


    his praise shall continually be in my mouth.

2 My soul makes its boast in the Lord;


    let the humble hear and be glad.

3 Oh, magnify the Lord with me,


    and let us exalt his name together!

4 I sought the Lord, and he answered me


    and delivered me from all my fears.

5 Those who look to him are radiant,


    and their faces shall never be ashamed.” (Ps 34)

It is my fear one could read the last few posts and think I preach a gospel of works.  All my emphasis on action and what we do could be misconstrued.  If Jesus’ had and has his words twisted and confused so easily by so many, I certainly will not be immune.  But let the fault not be one of not having worked hard enough to clear up this issue of works.  Come, there is work to do.

“6 Go to the ant, O sluggard;


    consider her ways, and be wise.

7 Without having any chief,


    officer, or ruler,

8 she prepares her bread in summer


    and gathers her food in harvest.

9 How long will you lie there, O sluggard?


    When will you arise from your sleep?

10 A little sleep, a little slumber,
    

a little folding of the hands to rest,

11 and poverty will come upon you like a robber,


    and want like an armed man.” (Prov 6)

From the time God put Adam in the Garden he gave him something to do.  Something Adam must obey.  It is fairly obvious God is a God of action and those who follow him must likewise be on the move.  Rest is a gift given in cycles of seven.  Six parts work, one part rest.  Peace is found in our labor.  How can that be?  God is in our labor…

“12 O Lord, you will ordain peace for us,


    for you have indeed done for us all our works.” (Is 26)

If there is one thing God has labored in me and through me to help us see it is this: God is love and love is perfect submission and communion to the other.  The expression, “I don’t know where I stop and you begin,” comes close.  The fact is: there is no stop!  We’re moving towards Him, He’s moving towards us, we are in Him, He is in us!  He is drawing us into His Oneness!  This is what all our action, all our labor, all our works are towards!

         Check it.  From the moment we rise we are doing.  We will be doing something always.  Life is movement.  Life is change.  Life is action.  The work of salvation, the job of redemption, the paying of the debt, It is Finished!  Yes!  Praise God!  Hallelujah!  Glory Be!  Everything necessary has been accomplished.  By Christ’s blood, Christ’s sacrifice, Christ’s work, we are saved!  We receive (passive action) this.  We believe (action) this.  We have faith (action with helper) in this.  We share (action) in his glory!  We ARE (state of being, reception of title, state of grace, first non-action) sons and daughters of God!

Alarm clock goes off, new day begins, son and daughter of God rise… What? Do? We? Do? 

See.  Not so easy, is it?  Imagine how the first Jewish converts felt.  Yesterday they had the Law.  Yesterday they knew exactly what was expected of them every minute of every day.  And when they failed, they knew exactly how many sheep, goats, cattle and birds were required to pay the debt.  Today, they wake up free…yippee!  Frolic like ya got no sense!  We’re free!  We’re free!  We’re.. free… to.. do what?  If they sin now, if they fail.. can they fail?  How can we fail if we don’t know what we’re to do?  How can we fail free grace?  How can we fail love?  Should we keep going to work?  Should we keep living with someone who is not free?  No wonder they sold everything and moved into communes together.  No wonder they thought Jesus was coming to get them any day.  Living here in this mess as free people doesn’t make much sense!  Why does God free us, save us, clean us, heal us and then… not take us home?

Because we still have something to do!  God created the earth and everything in it but he did not finish it…on purpose!  He invites us into His work to work alongside Him.  God comes and initiates His kingdom and he does not finish it on purpose!  He invites us to work towards its completion alongside him!  By His love, He makes us His people, then He invites us into love by submitting our wills to His and obeying His commands.  Love God with all your heart, mind and strength.  Love each other as He has loved us.  And how did He love us?  By total submission to the Father and becoming totally servile to us!  “14 What good is it, my brothers, if someone says he has faith but does not have works? Can that faith save him? 15 If a brother or sister is poorly clothed and lacking in daily food, 16 and one of you says to them, “Go in peace, be warmed and filled,” without giving them the things needed for the body, what good is that? 17 So also faith by itself, if it does not have works, is dead.

18 But someone will say, “You have faith and I have works.” Show me your faith apart from your works, and I will show you my faith by my works.” (James 2)  Saint Jimmy is calling us out!   Works do not save, works are evidence we HAVE been saved!  Evidence the Spirit is in us!  Evidence we are seeking God’s face, radiating and reflecting His Light!  We seek someone to love because we love God who loves us and as Jesus told us, “‘Truly, I say to you, as you did it to one of the least of these my brothers, you did it to me.’” (Matt 25)  In Luke 7 Jesus said the sinful woman loved much because she was forgiven much… or wait, did he say, she loves much so she is forgiven much?  It can be translated either way.  Is this on purpose?  Forgive and you will be forgiven.  While we were yet sinners Christ died for us.  God is frequently not one or the other; He’s simultaneously both as you would assume an omnipresent, omnipotent God would be.  If Jesus is sitting on the right hand of God in Heaven and the Spirit is in us and they are in perfect communion then we are already being drawn into this.  We won’t be able to stop it!  Why would we want to?

So the alarm clock goes off and son and daughter of God’s feet hit our fuzzy, bunny slippers.  We cock our heads and listen.  We place our hands on our chests.  Spirit?  Jesus?  You in there?   O, he’s in there, you may not feel Him flowing through you, Obi Wan, but He’s there.  Acknowledge it!  Own it!  I’m told feeling follows action.  So say to Him, ““Do all that is in your heart. Do as you wish. Behold, I am with you heart and soul.” (1Sam 14)

“33 And he answered them, “Who are my mother and my brothers?” 34 And looking about at those who sat around him, he said, “Here are my mother and my brothers! 35 For whoever does the will of God, he is my brother and sister and mother.”” (Mark 3)