Month: January 2018

“The words I have spoken to you are Spirit and they are life,” (Jn 6:63)

God’s story came to earth twice. First it came through real events. Then it came through the pen.  Because the events cannot be repeated, God has granted future generations access to the story through the Bible. The Bible is the record of God’s story. Originally, the Bible was grounded in the story, but for us today you might say that the story is grounded in the Bible, for today, we cannot get at the story except through Scripture. Because the Scriptures give God’s message to the human race, our attitude toward them says much about our relationship with God. If I say I trust my wife but disbelieve half of what she says, who am I kidding? Yet some people do this very thing. They say they follow God, but they won’t believe what Scripture says.

Those who love God love the Bible. This love for Scripture is one of the most basic characteristics of a follower of Jesus. God’s people hunger for God’s truth. They desire His words more than their necessary food (Job 23:12), more than gold (Ps 19:10), and the Bible is sweeter to them than honey (Ps 19:10). They want to know God’s story and message. But they want more. They want God’s heart and Spirit and not just His words, and they understand that they cannot have a heart for God if they do not care about His words.

This fact should make us wary of those who say, “I would rather have Jesus than the Bible.” To some they sound noble, but if their attitude keeps them from knowing the Bible, then it also keeps them from knowing Jesus. The purpose of the Bible is to point to Jesus. It is our main source of information about Him. If you truly want Jesus, I’m afraid you shall have to travel the Bible to get Him. There is no other way.

Now the Bible is more than words. “The words I have spoken to you are Spirit and they are life,” Jesus said (Jn 6:63). Human intellect alone cannot understand the Spirit. “No one knows the thoughts of God except the Spirit of God” (I Cor 2:11). Spiritual words must be understood through spiritual means. “The man without the Spirit does not accept the things that come from the Spirit of God, for they are foolishness to him, and he cannot accept them, because they are spiritually discerned” (I Cor 2:14). The Holy Spirit is the key to understanding Scripture. Human intellect can grasp facts and doctrines, but without the Spirit, it can never grasp the significance of those doctrines.

It is like this. A woman browses at a garage sale. She comes to a table selling a mixture of items — knives, jewels, old trinkets. A coin catches her eye. She picks it up to look at it. On the front is a woman seated. A banner is in her left hand and a small shield in her right. The shield has the word “Liberty” written on it. Stars encircle the coin, and at the bottom the date reads 1870. On the back is an eagle with a striped shield on its chest and arrows in its talons. Above the eagle around the circumference are the words “United States of America.” Below the eagle is a small letter “s.” Below the letter are the words “One Dol.” The price on the coin reads $200. The woman puts the coin back on the table and moves on. She has read the coin, seen what it looks like and can describe it accurately. What she does not understand, however, is that the coin she held is worth nearly a million dollars. She knows certain facts about the coin, but she does not understand their significance. Consequently, she does not understand the coin.

Many people know the Bible as that woman knows the coin. They are ever seeing but never perceiving. Only the Holy Spirit can give understanding, for the words themselves are spirit.

“Daughter, your faith has made you well… (Mk 5:34)

… that they may receive forgiveness of sins and a place among those who are sanctified by faith in me.  (Acts 26:18)

… we know that a person is not justified by works of the law but through faith in Jesus Christ …  (Gal 2:16)

 If I go to Walmart to buy a shirt and slap down a twenty-dollar bill, the cashier will make change, hand me a receipt, and I will walk out with a shirt. I will have just traded a piece of paper for a shirt. We are so used to the concept of money that the transaction doesn’t seem strange at all. In terms of real value, however, the actual paper and ink that make up the twenty are probably worth a few pennies at most, and yet I just traded them for a fifteen-dollar shirt. The reason I can do this is that the power of a twenty does not lie in the paper and ink. It lies instead in the government that backs it.

Faith is something like this. God says that we can, so to speak, trade faith for forgiveness, faith for righteousness, faith for joy and peace. He says that if we will believe, He will change us and make us more loving and humble. We can trade something that is meager and weak on our own and receive in exchange the riches of God. We can give something the size of a mustard seed and receive for it a full tree with fruit that produces many more trees. Faith is our piece of paper that God backs, and the power of faith does not lie in faith itself but in the God who backs it.

Faith is the currency of heaven, and God has made it so because He is merciful. This emphasis on faith makes Christianity unique. You see, the reality is that almost every religion on earth makes your deeds the currency of heaven. In most religions you earn your way to heaven by being “good enough.” You deny yourself, you fast, you treat people kindly, you pray your prayers, you give to the poor, you perform some rituals, whatever. In the end, your works buy you heaven or nirvana or righteousness. Everything depends on how good you are.

The faith of Jesus, however, says that you are not good enough for God and that you’d better stop pretending you are. The faith of Jesus says that God’s standard for righteousness is much higher than what you can do. If God, thus, is to grant us joy and peace on the basis of our deeds, then you and I are in big trouble because the best of us, on our own, fall horribly short of God’s demands. In this sense, the faith of Jesus has a much higher view of God than all other religions. You and I can’t be good enough for Him. He is holy.

When God, however, says that He will count your faith in Christ as righteousness, He is being realistic. He is like a dad whose three-year-old daughter just broke a ten-thousand-dollar vase sitting on the mantel. He knows she cannot repay the debt by working, so he pays it and asks of her something more reasonable — to trust him and repent. He does this because He loves her. Her relationship with him is, thus, based more on her trust than on her ability to work her way into his favor.

Now if faith is the currency of heaven, then the object of faith is important. That twenty-dollar bill can’t look any way you want. It must be a genuine twenty minted by the backing authority. This is why faith cannot be in anything you wish. Faith must stand upon truth or it loses its authority. Thus, while faith does entail a childlike trust from the heart, it may never be divorced from reality. Faith makes truth statements, and those truth statements must reflect reality or faith is counterfeit. This gets at what the New Testament calls belief, and we’ll talk more about that in the next blog.

Or do you presume on the riches of his kindness and forbearance and patience, not knowing that God’s kindness is meant to lead you to repentance?  (Rom 2:4)

Lord, you desire repentance when I sin.  Grant me such a heart, and don’t let me excuse my sin or take advantage of your kindness.

I once worked as a substance abuse counselor for the Salvation Army, which provided drug and alcohol rehabilitation for the homeless. We gave homeless men a warm bed, three meals a day, and a job and required them to stay clean and attend counseling during their time in the program. I saw a lot of men come through, and for every man who legitimately wanted to change there were nine who wanted nothing more than a free bed and food.

Some would come into the program when the weather got cold and then leave in the spring. Some would hop from city to city — three months in San Antonio, two months in Austin, two months in New Orleans. Some would manage to get their hands on some crack or a six-pack while in the midst of the program. Of course, the Salvation Army was not blind to these facts, and we would occasionally kick a man out of the program or refuse readmittance to a repeat violator. Nonetheless, most of the men in the program knew how to play the game, and most took advantage of the system in one way or another. In essence, someone was willing to show these men some kindness, but most abused that kindness for their own ends.

We understand this. We see it all the time. We see it in the welfare system. We see it when children ask parents to cosign for a loan. We see it when nations play a game in order to get military help or financial aid. Abusing someone’s kindness is not restricted to the homeless. It’s a human thing. You’ve done it, and so have I.

But kindness always has a purpose. The Salvation Army did not show kindness to alcoholics so that they could turn around and keep drinking. Instead, the kindness was meant to help them change.

God’s kindness is this way too. His kindness is meant “to lead us to repentance” (Rom 2:4). We humans, however, have an uncanny ability to twist the kindness of God to our own ends. We abuse His grace. God shows us His grace because He knows it is the only way we can be free from the sin that binds us, but we turn it into an excuse for further sin. This is W.H. Auden saying, “I like committing crimes. God likes forgiving them. Really the world is admirably arranged.” This is Bonhoeffer’s “cheap grace.” This is the woman who gives herself license to sin because she is “not under law but under grace.” This is phony. Many who claim the name of Jesus have been phony for too long. They say they are His, but they won’t turn from their ways. They like the Jesus who is gentle and mild because they can have all the benefits of religion without any of the cost. They can eat up His kindness but never repent.

They may fool themselves, but they do not fool God. They show contempt for His kindness. They trample His grace under the feet of their desires. They are more interested in themselves than they are in the glory of God, and their religion is a game. They are taking advantage of the system, except, in the end, God will require of them an account for their duplicity.

Grace most benefits those whose hearts are genuine just as the warm bed and food most benefited those men who sincerely wanted to change. Grace is a marvelous thing. Without it we are “dead in our trespasses and sins” (Eph 2:1). It is our lifeline to God. But God does not lavish us with grace in order for us to continue to live as we please. God is after something real in our lives, something much grander than mere forgiveness. He wants to transform us.  If that is not what we want, then we should stop playing games and admit that we do not belong to God.  Better to be honest than to try and fool everyone and end up fooling ourselves.