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Why does trying to gain credit with God by keeping the law feel more attractive to us than simply walking with Him, by His Spirit (Galatians 5:16)? Poke around in the hearts of many Christians and I suspect that you will find an unhealthy amount of obligation to observe law. Perhaps less common is a heart that is alive to the love of Christ, desiring and enjoying intimacy with Him.

I don’t know about you but I feel this battle within me to engage in industry for Christ but without intimacy with Him. Of course the industry of serving for Christ is great and a privilege, but if it isn’t overflowing from intimacy with Christ (if the word ‘intimacy’ is a problem for you try ‘a personal relationship’ or ‘a heart united’) then we have a problem. It’s like a person giving their wife flowers on the morning of their 50^th Wedding Anniversary but then going out for the day with his golfing buddies leaving her alone at home. Nice gift, but a token without the relationship. Serving God outside the joy of personal relationship with Him is just weird in the light of that illustration. Yet we lean to this perhaps more than we realise.

I wonder if part of the reason for this is that we want to keep God at arm’s length. Life is less painful that way. In effect we end up saying without realising it ‘I want a God that isn’t hurt by my sin’. Doesn’t it cost you more when a person you have sinned against finds out? If a married person (maybe you’ve been here) looks at online porn in secret they may feel bad, but you can guarantee that guilt is tripled if their spouse walks in the room! When the person we are called to love finds out about our failing we are much more likely to feel the sting of guilt. Shouldn’t this be even more so with the God who fashioned us for relationship with Him and who alone defines relationship? So why is it that we struggle to feel this sting of guilt in the secret place? I think it has everything to do with our keeping God at a distance. I want a God that isn’t hurt by my sin. It’s far less costly to have a God who is distant and who we see as merely disappointed with our sin. But who ever said God is like that?

The Bible tells us that in the beginning God walked in the garden looking for Adam and Eve because He cared where they were (Genesis 3); He was grieved in His heart with man’s sin (Gen 6.5); and He is a judge who feels righteous indignation with sin everyday (Psalm 7.11). In God we see One who weeps fountains of tears over His people (Jeremiah 9.1); Who is in furious jealousy in His married love for His people (Isaiah 54.5-8), and as He walked on earth ‘wept over those who resisted Him (Matt 23.37). This is the God of the New Covenant whose Spirit can be, at times, outraged (Hebrews 10.29) and grieved (Ephesians 4.30).

This is a God who, whether we like it or not, really does care where we place our affections. When they are not found in what He offers us (namely Christ, His beloved Son) then we ultimately find ourselves shunning God himself. Sin is not just the spoken temper or lustful look. It is first a slap in the face of God and a turning from His perfect love.

It’s uncomfortable to think of hurting God’s heart and causing His Holy Spirit to be grieved when we sin – part of sin’s grip is to lead us to think of God in less relational terms. I feel I have too often fallen for this lie and given in to thinking that God is more concerned about us keeping his law rather than staying close to his heart. It’s less painful that way.

But there is great reason for hope! The same heart of the Triune God that grieves over us is the One who became like us to win us back! We are undone without Him so He sent His Son, Jesus, with pure love for us running through His veins. He offered Himself for us at that glorious place of death on a wooden cross. We can know a relationship of adoption into God’s family through Jesus Christ. When we turn to Him the Holy Spirit is poured into our hearts to lead us to Christ and thus we can heartily pursue the ‘industry’ of holiness, righteousness and purity in Him. He made the way and leads us in the way.

We are those who are called to live for Christ by staying close with the person of the Holy Spirit. My flesh wants a God that isn’t hurt by my sin, but what an alternative we are offered! It is more costly to think of the Holy Spirit’s grief and the Lord’s broken heart when we sin, but the gain is far greater. It will lead to warmer intimacy with Him as we find our hearts living in true repentance, not towards a standard, but a Person. In Christ we see the loving gaze of forgiveness and offer of a closer, deeper relationship with him. He will lead us to a life daily sanctified by His Spirit

The post “I want a God that isn’t hurt by my sin” first appeared on Cor Deo.

So what about the true God’s anger and our experience of the storms of life—both metaphorical and tangible? Is most of life best explained by a theology of God’s capricious wrath?

No. God, no matter how he’s portrayed by his critics, does not struggle with anger management issues. Instead the Bible explains God’s wrath by starting with the serpent’s promise in Genesis 3, “You can be like God.”

This bold lie—a claim that replaces God as the single center of reality with a host of alternative centers—was embraced by humanity and instantly distorted every human perception of life.

The distortion is seen in human motives. Adam was made to be other-centered, with God’s love as his ultimate delight. But when the first man embraced the serpent’s premise of being like god it led him to a new self-concerned orientation—to focus on his nakedness and needs. An ambition for autonomy had replaced his prior rest on God’s providential love.

And with the resulting departure of the aggrieved Spirit each of Adam’s offspring now has to be wooed by God. The Spirit is no longer an indwelling companion but now stands outside the soul calling and inviting a response to God’s love and a trust in God is now supernatural. The premise of independence turned human freedom into the ultimate human goal.

This is where human anger emerges. Anger is a motivational defect of an upended metaphysic. From Eden onward our true being as creatures—made by God, for God—is denied. And anger is the sense of being violated while trying to achieve the destiny of a god. Or, more to the point, a given bout of anger almost always points to a circumstance where our ambition to be a god isn’t working.

Yet we must say “almost” because there are times when anger is a proper affection.  Paul warned, for instance, “Be angry and do not sin; do not let the sun go down on your anger, and give no opportunity to the devil” (Eph. 4:26-27).

So when and how is anger proper?

We need to turn to the Trinity and to the first creation for our answer. As we probe the events of Eden the dispute between God’s word and the serpent’s word involves even more than a conflict about death and autonomy.

We recall the starting point of the debate as “you shall surely die” versus “you will not surely die.” This featured the nature of life. Jesus later exposed the ultimate issue as a contention about whether a life “born of the flesh” is the same as a life “born of the Spirit.” Life, he made clear, actually consists in God’s participation in the soul by the Spirit. The devil was offering a realm of ongoing animation apart from God’s life: a living death. Jesus exposed this as a false option.

There was another implicit element in this debate. How does God’s life actually exist?

The premise of Genesis chapter one is that God exists as a being-in-communion. He is a God who speaks in a plural voice: “let us make man in our image.” The rest of the Bible presents the substance of this statement as the Father-Son-Spirit reality unfolds over time. He was fully present from the beginning but after the fall his reality needed to be restated and demonstrated.

The serpent in his hubris dismissed this relational reality as he invited Adam to a new vision of deity: to singularity and autonomy as the basis of being. Why this arrangement?  Because he needed to stake out metaphysical space for challenging God. And by positing being-as-a-singularity he could deny any need for dependence. In this scheme every “relationship” is strictly utilitarian and self-serving—a negotiation among gods who, when violated, become angry.

So after Eden the functions of individual thought and action were treated as the basis for being. And in this presumed reality deity is linked to every thinking-choosing creature. Taken in biblical terms this meant that any bond between the true Creator and his creatures is re-envisioned.

But the vision is nonsensical—given that God still sustains the creation—even as the devil redefines life, death, being, and morality on the basis of autonomy. He needs God’s gracious docility to make it work. The serpent, in effect, presumed on grace to dismiss grace. He declared each animated being to be a carrier of deity—the stuff of polytheism—and tried to make it work.

Without ever saying so the devil was and still is the guiding spirit in this presumed realm of autonomy. He was, in other words, still deploying the relational bonds of our creation in God’s relational image to slip into the coaching role once held by the Holy Spirit. As an unholy spirit he thought he could devour all God’s people by simply employing his ultimate Lie to redirect faith away from God while calling people to trust his Lie.

Now, back to anger. In John 3:35-36 God sets out the basis for his own anger. It has everything to do with the Father’s devotion to his Son—the bridegroom of the faithful (cf. 3:29): “The Father loves the Son and has given all things into his hands. Whoever believes in the Son has eternal life; whoever does not obey the Son shall not see life, but the wrath of God remains on him.”

So when is human anger proper? Only in the moments where we have our hearts aligned with God’s heart. When is it improper? Whenever our hearts are aligned with the Lie. That’s the realm of God’s wrath.

As we embrace the triune God, then, let’s allow him to make things right in the end. That means we don’t need to take anger to bed at night because we’ve dismissed the Lie. God is still God.

Sleep well!

The post The Gods are Angry! first appeared on Cor Deo.

“Satan’s first attack upon the human race was his sly effort to destroy Eve’s confidence in the kindness of God.  Unfortunately for her and for us he succeeded too well.  From that day, men have had a false conception of God, and it is exactly this that has cut out from under them the ground of righteousness and driven them to reckless and destructive living.  Nothing twists and deforms the soul more than a low or unworthy conception of God.”

This is so on target.  Every bit of the brokenness we see in the world stems from people with a broken view of God.  This is not only true in the world around us, but also in the church too.  Every bit of the brokenness we see in the church stems from people with a broken view of God.

What is interesting about what Tozer writes here is that he doesn’t say the issue was an attack on Eve’s belief in God’s existence.  It was an attack on her confidence in God’s kindness.  This is so important.  Too often we have allowed our view of faith to be diluted to the level of belief in God’s existence, rather than an essential trust in God’s character.  So, we think, as long as people believe in God then they are more or less on the right page and that is sufficient.  It is not.

One of the great and dangerous assumptions in the church today is that we all know what is meant by the term, God.  Yet for many God is seen to be a distant and power-hungry being whose benevolence toward us is motivated by the arm-twisting kindness of Jesus Christ.  This is a corruption of what the Bible teaches.  For many, God is seen to be essentially demanding and judgmental.  His justice has been separated from his love and now acts as a counter-balance to the softer or warmer features that are presented in Christian preaching.  Again, a corruption.

“Instinctively we try to be like our God, and if He is conceived to be stern and exacting, so will we ourselves be. . . . The truth is that God is the most winsome of all beings and His service one of unspeakable pleasure.  He is all love, and those who trust Him need never know anything but that love.”

Tozer goes on to underline that God is just and never condones sin, but that is not a counter-balancing thought.  It is precisely in the delightful fellowship of God that such undeserved kindness can gladly co-exist with the holy perfection of the fellowship of God.

Whatever concerns we may feel as we look at the church today, or as we look at our own lives, it is not too simplistic to say that these ultimately boil down to one primary issue – our view of God.

It is not enough to believe that God exists, nor is it enough to believe in a set of biblical truths about God.  Christianity invites us into relationship with God where our hearts grow ever more convinced of God’s kindness and love – not just as a concept to believe, or a truth to affirm, but as a reality that is toward us.

“Unfortunately, many Christians cannot get free from their perverted notions of God, and these notions poison their hearts and destroy their inward freedom.  These friends serve God grimly, as the elder brother did, doing what is right without enthusiasm and without joy.”

Tozer finishes his brief blog post with this:

“Some of us are religiously jumpy and self-conscious because we know that God sees our every thought and is acquainted with all our ways. We need not be. God is the sum of all patience and the essence of kindly good will. We please Him most, not by frantically trying to make ourselves good, but by throwing ourselves into His arms with all our imperfections, and believing that He understands everything and loves us still.”

Having an accurate view of what God is like is at the very core of addressing every issue we face in our lives, in our churches and in our world today.  Let’s band together, not in a pompous posse who believe they have the best answer, but as a humble band of brothers and sisters who know what is the right question.  Then let’s search the Scriptures and share the riches with one another.  Coming to know God’s character more is the greatest pursuit we have, and the richest resource we offer.

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This post fits well with Peter’s new book, Foundations: Four Big Questions We Should Be Asking But Typically Don’t (Christian Focus), which is being released next week.  We hope this little book will be a big help to lots of people.

To find out more, or to order, please visit FourBigQuestions.com

(Please help others know about Foundations via twitter – @4BigQs, Instagram – peter.mead, and Facebook – /4BigQs)

The post What is God Like? first appeared on Cor Deo.

In the background of this ‘universal truth’ is the assumption that relationships are primarily contractual. That is, one party promises to provide certain benefits to the other on the basis that certain conditions are met. If either party doesn’t meet these defined conditions, then the contract—I mean “relationship”—is null and void and the deal can then be terminated. Give and take.

Shouldn’t marriage be about unconditional love? Doesn’t our culture yearn for authentic relationships with that foundation?

Well yes and yes but like the bad advice above, there’s a catch – we want to receive unconditional love but we don’t necessarily want to offer it. Because of Genesis 3 we function on the basis that relational covenant is a contract. We’re primarily concerned about what benefits we get and the conditions we need to meet to get what we want. So if someone doesn’t love us unconditionally, or make us happy, we don’t have to meet the conditions we promised.

What’s amazingly sad in all this is that humans actually want to relate to God this way as well.   We take God’s unconditional promises of covenant and turn them into conditional contracts. Think of Genesis 28, where Jacob leaves the land to escape his brother, Esau, and to get a wife who is not from the Canaanites. Before he leaves the land, God visits him in a dream. In the dream God promises Jacob the same promise that was given to his grandfather and father, which is characterized by the words “I will…” God unilaterally promises to bless Jacob, to be with him, and to bring him back to the land. And Jacob’s unbelieving response to God’s word is to turn the unconditional into a condition. “If God will be with me and keep his promises, then the LORD shall be my God.” Did you catch that? Jacob doesn’t believe God’s word but instead tells God that he has to prove it first.

Jacob isn’t the only one. Because of sin we all tend to morph any relationship into a contract with conditions. Often we project our fallenness onto God, expecting ourselves to prove our belief in him so that he might be gracious to us.

Therefore it shouldn’t be a surprise that theological systems do the same thing. For instance, in New England in the 17^th century, Puritans found themselves differing on this very subject. John Cotton emphatically said that we passively receive God’s free grace and promise, but his colleagues said otherwise:

… But to take our first Assurance to arise from the Spirit in an absolute promise only, is not only difficult for us to believe (and therefore desire your grounds) but seems to maintain, as straightening the freeness of God’s Spirit in working and destroying the comfort of many, whom Christ himself doth speak comfort unto, Matthew 5.3. etc. only we add, That God’s free grace may be revealed and received as freely in a conditional (where the Condition is first wrought by Gods free grace and not trust to, as we desire ever to be understood when we mention conditional promises) as in an absolute promise. For it is grace that works the Condition, it is grace that reveals the Condition, it is grace that makes the promise, it is grace that set on the promise; and what danger is there hereby, to a well instructed Christian of going astray from free grace?

Could I be so bold as to answer Cotton’s colleagues with another question? Which God would require a condition (even if graciously provided) in an unconditional promise? Does God really need to be conditioned to be gracious to us?

Their answer does seem to attempt to ease the tension of a God who’s a walking contradiction. You know: a God who’s one thing BUT also another, as if God has attributes that are seemingly in conflict, but are both true of him. Like the response to the 11th question of the Heidelberg Catechism, “God is indeed merciful, but also just….”

This tension does not reflect the Triune nature of God who exists in mutual relationship. The reality is that God is love and greatly delights in himself – He is a Father loving his Son, and the Son loving his Father, by their Spirit. Therefore all his actions such as creation, redemption, judgment, etc. reflect his loving Triune nature.

The walking contradiction attempts to make biblical the Stoic notion that God is primarily the “Contract God” who can only relate in a conditional contract, or as a Lawgiver. For instance, you’ll find people seeing the prayer of John 17 as a God who relates to himself in a contractual deal. So the church is understood to be the reward for Jesus’ obedience to his Father so that Jesus can have a people to rule over. This is very different than seeing the loving Son going to win a people for his Father so that they may participate in the Family of God.

I think the only one who comes to that conclusion has a God who is a “give and take” God, or a contract God, rather than a covenant God. The whole story of God isn’t give and take; it’s rather a story of the Generous Giver. It’s about the One who pursues his people with “all his heart and all his soul” (Jer. 32:41). It’s about the Father who has given us his only Son that we might be his people and He our God. It’s about the Father who has given all that’s his to his Son, so that the Son may give all that he has to his bride.

Bottom line: the Bible isn’t the story of an a-relational God who cannot relate without a condition. He doesn’t require us to clean ourselves up so that we can then be united to Christ. Rather, we are united to Christ who makes us clean. Or in other words, a pauper isn’t required to make herself a princess that she might marry the prince, but rather the prince marries the pauper, which makes her a princess. It’s all about unconditional relationship and promise as the basis for covenant, not a conditional contract.

The post Conditioned God first appeared on Cor Deo.

After 11 chapters of burdens against the nations, Isaiah 24 describes final judgment of the nations. It feels like a heavy chapter. After humanity has poured all its energy into a pseudo-version of life with God omitted, God pulls the plug.

I remember one of my teachers at seminary describing this in terms of the day after the fair leaves town. There was noise and music and lights and laughter and smells and tastes and the fair was an amazing illusion of real life, but it wasn’t real. It was virtual reality, but cold hard reality hits home when the field is empty, desolate and covered in litter the next day.

Ever since Adam and Eve were expelled from the Garden, humanity has been trying to concoct a virtual reality to fill the emptiness of life without God. Entertainment. Distraction. Candy floss and Coke. Emptiness.

Isaiah 24 describes how God will pull the plug and finish the farce. Putting it in terms of the fair closing down could make God sound like a killjoy, but far from it. In the midst of the judgment, Isaiah hears the sound of singing wafting in from a distance. What could people possibly have to sing about in the face of judgment?

The next three chapters are full of song. There’s the song of the vineyard in chapter 27, the song of the secure city in chapter 26, and in chapter 25, Isaiah takes us to the banquet hall. From verses 6-8 he gives us a taste of that feast to come. Instead of candy floss and Coke there is aged wine and marrow-filled meat . . . this is royal feasting in place of the dissatisfying emptiness of fairground food.

Instead of living a pseudo-life in perpetual denial about the impending death that faces everyone, God will swallow up death forever. What a thought! In Isaiah 5, death is described as having a voracious appetite . . . it just keeps on eating – war, terrorism, Ebola, old age, malnutrition, cancer, malaria, violence. All of humanity from the richest to the poorest are equals before the insatiable appetite of death. But God will swallow up death forever!

As well as feasting instead of emptiness and life in place of death, there is one more touching detail to note. Literally touching. He will wipe away tears from all faces. How many fairground visits end in tears? Children distraught at impending bedtimes, teens disappointed at empty relational hopes, even gamblers regretting empty wallets. The pseudo-life of this world leaves us all in tears, but not the life God intends to restore.

Here’s the thing, though: surely God is powerful enough to be able to click his fingers and all tears would be gone. Let there be light, boom, job done. If God can create the heavens and the earth with the power of his word, why does He bother to actually wipe tears from faces?

Perhaps He doesn’t. It may be a figure of speech, but I suspect it goes further than that. After all, the kind of God who would actually reach out and gently remove the tear from our cheeks is probably the same kind of God who would actually reach out and taste death in order to conquer and swallow it. Couldn’t God simply defeat death by an act of His power? He is in charge, after all. He could say the word and guilt could be gone, sin extinguished, death defeated, even heaven filled. But instead this God chooses to come to “this mountain” of Jerusalem and enter into death in order to defeat it fully.

It seems like God’s great goal is not simply to show off His super strength and crush the challenge that sin has posed. Rather, He steps in to our world so that His victory over death, just like His victory over tears, is a heart-winning victory. Hypothetically God could fill heaven by some sort of benevolent omnipotence. Instead he does it through humility and apparent weakness. Why? Because God’s ultimate goal doesn’t seem to be to show off His power, but to give away His love.

I am grateful for the privilege of all God has for us beyond judgment, however He chooses to do it. But I really am blown away by the approach He has taken . . . an approach that speaks of empathy, tenderness and care. The kind of God who would actually reach out and wipe the tears from our cheeks is the kind of God who would stand with us and weep at a funeral, and the kind of God who would ultimately swallow death by defeating it from within.

The end of the story is not judgment to wipe out all fun from the face of the earth. It is judgment to take away the pseudo-life that distracts us from the real life God gives. The end of the story is not emptiness, but royal feasting. The end of the story is not death, but death swallowed and life given. The end of the story is not tears, but divine comfort – the kind of divine comfort that only a self-giving God who was delighted to draw close to us could ever offer.

The post Why would God Wipe Tears? first appeared on Cor Deo.

In Christianity at least three ways of determining righteousness have been promoted: an applied measure, a legal measure, and a relational measure. Applied righteousness is easy: any conduct that satisfies God’s demands makes a person righteous. Legal righteousness is broader: if a person has been judged guilty for his sins God is free to offer a reprieve by dismissing the legal charges against him.

Martin Luther, for instance, used this understanding when he spoke of Christians having an “alien righteousness” through faith in Christ. In his view a given believer is granted the full moral standing of the Son—absolute righteousness—through faith, even though the believer’s conduct still falls well short of Christ’s applied righteousness. In other words a person’s applied righteousness isn’t critical; the Father’s forgiveness in Christ through faith is what counts.

This debate was central to the 16th century Protestant Reformation as the Roman Church dismissed Luther’s claim and insisted that Christians must work to achieve actual righteousness through a “faith formed by love”. And the Roman version of love was will-based—a function of self-determined obedience—rather than an affective love. Spirituality, then, grows as a responsibility of the seeker rather than as a response to God’s love. God, in their view, is a righteous judge who demands that his followers rise to his ethical standards. Conduct that falls short remains under God’s righteous wrath.

Luther, on the other hand, believed that God is a lover who draws us into the affective bond of the Father and the Son. Love, in turn, is a shared delight and response to a loving God by his beloved ones. And the devotion of love—our faith—is what changes us to be more and more like the Son in our daily conduct. Our hearts follow after the heart of the one we love.

With that historical sketch in mind I was struck with Paul’s discussion of sin in Romans 3. There the relational righteousness of God comes into focus. The chapter famously declares that all humanity is morally broken: “None is righteous, no, not even one; no one understands; not one seeks for God” (verses 10-11). So human righteousness, by this measure, is nonsense and pretense. No one, apart from Christ, ever achieves actual righteousness.

What catches our attention in the following verses is Paul’s resolution of the problem: of “how the righteousness of God has been manifested apart from the law, although the Law and the Prophets bear witness to it—the righteousness of God through faith in Jesus Christ for all who believe.”

What’s striking is how Paul set out the problem of sin in the earlier verses of the chapter: he began by framing sin as a problem of faithlessness in verse 3—“What if some were unfaithful? Does their faithlessness nullify the faithfulness of God? By no means!” Next, in a restatement in verse 5, Paul set out the same concern but with a new term in place of faith-concerns. “But if our unrighteousness serves to show the righteousness of God, what shall we say? That God is unrighteous to inflict wrath on us? . . . . By no means!” The two expressions are parallel so that unrighteousness is aligned with faithlessness.

Faithfulness and faithlessness are terms that press us towards a relational rather than a legal focus, but the two are coordinate concerns. Think, for instance, of the refrain that comes with so many broken marriages—“The spouse was unfaithful.” In such cases God’s law is certainly broken but the deeper issue is the violation of love.

And that refrain, as it relates to God and his people, jumps off the pages of the Old Testament in any rapid reading of the Bible. Jeremiah, for instance, treats it as a central theme in his warnings to Judah: “You have played the whore with many lovers; and would you return to me? declares the LORD. . . . She saw that for all the adulteries of that faithless one, Israel, I had sent her away with a decree of divorce. Yet her treacherous sister Judah did not fear, but she too went and played the whore” (Jer. 3:1 & 8).

The contrast between the faithful husband-who-is-God and his faithless bride, Israel, is played out again and again in the Old Testament. Hosea’s marriage to faithless Gomer is the vivid picture of God’s anguish over his faithless creation.

In this book the prophet goes beyond Israel to address the faithlessness of humanity as a whole: “But like Adam they transgressed the covenant; there they dealt faithlessly with me” (Hosea 6:7). But God persistently refuses to give his bridal people away to their predilection for evil and promises to draw back at least some to himself: “And I will put the fear of me in their hearts, that they may not turn from me. I will rejoice in doing them good, and I will plant them in this land in faithfulness, with all my heart and all my soul” (Jer. 32:40-41).

Here’s the point: we will do well to reflect on God’s real “heart” and “soul” desire for us to have a love relationship with him that is sound. We aren’t meant to give our hearts away to the love of success, wealth, security, and the like—to self-love—but to be wholly devoted to Christ. This is what we were made for. And this is what ultimately defines righteousness rather than mere law-keeping. Laws only confront broken relationships; they don’t build faithful hearts. Luther was right in his emphasis on God’s role in restoring us. We won’t ever do it on our own.

So faithfulness and righteousness is the fruit of love. The gospel is God’s call for us to turn back to him, to hear his expressions of faithful love. That alone will stir us to love him in return—both wholly and faithfully.

The post Righteous? first appeared on Cor Deo.

Dionysius, the self-professed convert of Paul, has helped shape one point of view. The true Dionysius, noted in Acts 17:34, isn’t known to us beyond his cameo Bible reference.  But a much later figure who borrowed the name and identity of Dionysius is critical to the question.  He was able to offer a version of God that still has broad credibility by using his ‘borrowed’ affiliation with Paul to speak with New-Testament-like authority.

Today this figure is known as Pseudo-Dionysius.  He was, in fact, a 6^th century philosopher who did much to import Neo-Platonism into Christianity.  His actual inspiration wasn’t Paul but Proclus (410-485) who relied, in turn, on Plotinus (205-270)—both of whom were not Christians.

This is tedious stuff for non-historians, I’m sure, but the question of what God is like is important.  And Pseudo-Dionysius plays a larger role in our modern conception of God than most of us know.  This, in turn, calls for a bit of patient curiosity, so please track with me as we note three other important figures.

A Greek Orthodox leader in the 7^th century, Maximus the Confessor (580-662), was quickly convinced that Pseudo-Dionysius was the actual New Testament convert of Paul.  He, in turn, did much to shape today’s Orthodox liturgy—of worship-as-ascent—based on what he took from Pseudo-Dionysius.

Another convert was the Brit, Johannes Scotus Eriugena (c.815-c.877), who carried Dionysian views into Latin-speaking realms.  His efforts helped develop Roman Catholic mysticism that, like Orthodoxy had already done, followed the Dionysian call to a three-step ascent into God.  This was the pathway of purgation, illumination, and union: an approach to spirituality that is gaining momentum today.

A third major convert to Ps. Dionysius calls for special notice: Thomas Aquinas (1225-1274).  Aquinas is important because he offered the most elaborate and compelling blend of Greek classical theology/philosophy—with Aristotle as a guiding light—and medieval Christian faith.

A number of recent scholars—promoters of Post-Reformation Protestant Scholasticism—have shown that today’s Reformed theology is a slightly enhanced reprise of what Thomas once taught.  And they’re right.  For many—but not all—in the Reformed tradition today it’s as if the early Reformation never occurred.  Thomistic themes still reign in defining faith.

To be clear, the evidence is compelling that Martin Luther and John Calvin were repelled by the Thomistic package and meant to overthrow it—and many Puritans, including Richard Sibbes, agreed with these reformers—but that’s another story.

What we want to note here is that Thomas relied heavily on Aristotle for his methodology and his ethical framing of salvation, but many of his most significant assumptions about who God is came from Pseudo-Dionysius.  A formal historical study by Fran O’Rourke, Pseudo-Dionysius and the Metaphysics of Aquinas, charts this.

For the sake of space let’s take up just one feature: the question of where our assumptions about God begin.  Where did Aquinas start—as do many Christians today—in thinking about God?  He followed Ps. Dionysius by portraying God as utterly different from the creation. So much so that God is ultimately beyond reach.  Here is Aquinas speaking in the Summa Contra Gentiles (as offered in O’Rourke, 54-55):

“. . . he [God] is super-eminent over other things and set apart from all.  And this is the ultimate and most perfect limit of our knowledge in this life, as Dionysius says in the Mystical Theology, ‘We are united with God as the unknown.’  Indeed, this is the situation, for, while we know of God what he is not, what he is remains wholly unknown.”

Aquinas, with Dionysius, adopts an incommensurability of knowing: a complete resignation about ever knowing God as he really is.  Instead we are left knowing him only “through his effects” as the One who causes all that is, but exists outside all that is.

What kind of God emerges from this starting point?  One very different from the God who offers himself in the Bible!

Let’s spurn philosophical speculations about the nature of being and essential divinity for a moment and ask what God reveals about himself at the beginning of Scriptures.  If we allow God the privilege of disclosing whatever he/she/it may want to disclose of [him]self we find a startling reality: “Us”.

As in the one God saying in Genesis 1, “Let us make man in our image, after our likeness.” And then, “So God created man in his own image, in the image of God he created him; male and female he created them.”

What we can start with is a single God who exists in a wondrous communion as “Us” and that this “Us” generated another “us”—that is, humanity, including the readers of the Bible.  And the fact that God birthed us out of his own communion tells us of his priority to engage us in some sort of commensurate bond of knowing and sharing.  And his name is Jesus who now reveals his Father by the ministry of his Spirit.

There’s much more to say, of course, but let’s be sure we start where we’re meant to start.  With a God whom the Elder disciple was speaking of when he twice said in 1 John 4 that, “God is love.”  This love is the bond in the originating Us who now shares it with any of us who receive his love and respond.

If only Thomas had started with the Son—who offers real Love as an ultimate starting point—in place of Ps. Dionysian and Neo-Platonic speculations about the unknowable One, many might have a more satisfying and winsome faith today.

Thankfully it’s not too late to reconsider: to enjoy the God who is known as a Triune Us and who tells us he loves us.

The post Where Should We Start? first appeared on Cor Deo.

Seven centuries before Christ, Judah was facing disaster.  King Hezekiah had welcomed envoys from a little city-state to his little nation and had tried to make his little nation look big to them.  But he left God out of the treasury tour.  So Isaiah informed him that that little city-state would become a major force in global affairs and little Judah would be carried away into exile by them.

Hezekiah didn’t seem to care, because it would happen after his own lifetime.  But those with a heart would have cared deeply.  This was disastrous news: away from the land of blessing, away from the place of promise, away from the temple, etc.  Devastating news.

Immediately God followed up with the wonderful comfort of chapter 40.  Like a good parent administering major discipline, God immediately leaned in and offered loving comfort.  Their sins were paid for, the return from exile was already being predicted, every eye would see the glory of God’s loving delivery of His people, indeed, His Word could be trusted above everything else in creation.

Then comes verse 9.  The capital of the nation, Jerusalem, that should be reeling in shock at the coming disaster, will one day puff out its chest, stand tall and declare to all the cities around, “Behold your God!”  The exilic return will ultimately result in God Himself reigning as shepherd-king from that very city.  This was a powerful image of hope, and also a powerful instruction literarily as the message of comfort develops.

In this time of challenge and change, God’s people should fix their eyes on God Himself.

What follows for the rest of the chapter is largely focused on the greatness of God.  Twice, the text asks whom or what can God be compared with?  The incomparably great God of Isaiah 40 is the creator who rules, He is awesome in scope and in power.

First, He is greater than the nations (vv12-17).  God created the globe that the nations sit on, for even the great oceans are held in the palm of His hand and the great mountains are like dust on a scale.  Consequently the great nations are like a drop from a bucket.

Second, He is greater than the gods of the nations (vv18-20).  God can’t be compared to an idol, that is ridiculous.  A human makes the idol and then has to make sure it doesn’t fall over.  No comparison.

Third, God is greater than the most powerful people of the nations (vv21-26).  This is where the text feels most relevant to me.  I don’t lie awake pondering geo-politics and the strength of man-made gods.  If I do lie awake, then powerful people in my sphere are often key figures . . . an influential person in the family, or at work, or in the church.  But from God’s perspective, even the most powerful prince on the planet is nothing more than a little grasshopper, or even a blade of grass that sprouts and then is blown away.  Thus, from our perspective down here, how great is the God out there beyond the thousands of stars we can see who put them all there and calls them each by name?

The greatness of God is awe-inspiring!  Ponder the great oceans, the great mountains, the great starry hosts of the cosmos, and our God is greater, He is stronger, He is higher than any other.  No question.  But also, I think, no comfort.

In fact, it is not just me.  The prophet spotted the problem for the original hearers.  In verse 27 it is clear that Isaiah is not just portraying the greatness of God as a comfort to the people.  He makes a key link.  Their circumstances, like ours, caused them to doubt God’s care and attention.  After all, if the princes are like grasshoppers, what about little me?  God has a cosmos to look after, why would I matter to Him?

Why?  Because this is the LORD.  Yahweh, the God who makes promises and keeps them, the God who puts Himself into covenant with people and declares “I will be their God and they will be my people!”

This God created everything and yet is not tired.  He is strong and His strength is given to those who have no more strength.  It isn’t the super-human abilities of the elite soldier or hand-picked athlete that measure ultimate strength, it is the self-giving of the strong God who gives Himself to those that wait on Him.

In times of challenge and change, we should fix their eyes on what?  God’s greatness?  No, better than that, we should fix our eyes on the graciousness of God’s greatness!

This is so important that Isaiah doesn’t just end the passage by focusing our thoughts there.  He begins the passage that way, too.  Back in verses 10 and 11, before launching into the stunning portrait of God’s supreme power, we are given a heart-stirring glimpse of God’s heart.  The most powerful, bulging muscle, ruling arm is described in verse 10. Yet this arm has the fruit of His labour with him, the people He cares for as a shepherd are right there. Isaiah gets explicit: He gathers His people like lambs, He carries them close to His beating heart, He gently leads those frail ones who have just birthed their young.  What a picture of God’s tender strength!

There is no comfort in a weak shepherd.  Neither is their comfort in a powerful despotic shepherd.  The comfort comes from the graciousness of God’s greatness.

Let me encourage you, as I encourage myself: in challenging times of change, let’s fix our eyes on the graciousness of God’s greatness.

Curl up with Isaiah 40 and pray that you might feel the beating heart of God as He carries you, and perhaps even the nail-pierced hands of the shepherd who became a lamb led to the slaughter to pay for our sins and make us His.  If you start in Isaiah 40, read it closely, and then keep going, I suspect you will find comfort in God’s greatness, after all.  The graciousness of God’s greatness.

The post Not Comforted by God’s greatness? first appeared on Cor Deo.

Yet Christmas is also a time to remember the loss of loved ones. It’s a time to miss family traditions no longer possible because of long distance. It’s a time to think about all that I could have done better in the past year.

So at moments, I’m filled with great joy of all that is before me.  But then at times feel the pain of what once was, what could be, and what I hope is better in the year to come. For much of the time when I’m in these moments, I’ve forgotten.  I’m not remembering.

Wait, how can you forget while remembering what once was?  Well, much of what I’m “remembering” is clouded and weighed down by my desire to change and control my current circumstances.  I unconsciously think that I know what would be best for me now.  I’ve forgotten that God is with me, that God’s plans for me and my family are far better than I could determine for myself. I’ve forgotten God’s promises that he’s kept in the past.  I’ve forgotten all the promises I’m anticipating that he will fulfill.  I’ve forgotten that I’m not God, and that I desperately want God to be God.

This doesn’t mean I can’t think of and miss my grandmother who died on Christmas day five years ago. It doesn’t mean I shouldn’t think of the mistakes I’ve made this year and want to change in the next.  But what it means is that faith in God’s presence, plan, and promises, regardless of life’s circumstances, should always blanket all my thoughts and actions. When the eyes of my heart are focused on these truths then it’s possible to rejoice always and be thankful in every circumstance, even in the situations that are painful and full of tears.

So what am I saying?

First, I’m saying there are two ways to remember: (1) we remember things wrongly when formulated on the foundation of wanting to be God, which is motived by our dissatisfaction with God; or (2) we remember rightly on the sure foundation that God is God and he is good.

Second, therefore, to remember properly is essential, not for just “surviving” the next go around of holidays with a good attitude but for living life between the now-and-not-yet.  To remember and not to forget is paramount to living by faith, to trust God’s word, to rejoice in all circumstances, to defeat the enemy’s lies, to persevere, and to be the person God has made you to be.

Forgetful Remembrance: When the Israelites were brought out of Egypt by the outstretched arm of the Lord it was an event to remember.  The Passover broke the stubbornness of Pharaoh long enough for a couple million people to flee Egypt.  It convinced the Egyptians to give them their silver, gold, and clothing.  And everything God did was motivated by compassion for his people, who groaned under the harsh slavery of Pharaoh.

Sadly this huge event was quickly forgotten. Many times, even in the context of miracles, out of fear or dissatisfaction with God’s provision Israel questions his goodness.  In these moments they forget crossing the Red Sea on dry ground, but remember “the good old days” in Egypt.  They remember when they had water to drink and the “fish we ate in Egypt that cost nothing, the cucumbers, the melons … but now there is nothing at all but this manna to look at.” (Num. 11)  In other words, God’s provision is rubbish and Pharaoh’s provision was delicious. They in their hardheartedness forget their good God’s care in order to remember the “good food” of their former Despot.

If in moments of despair we forget who God is and what he has done for us, and only remember and ponder how things should be, we’re no different than the immature Israelites. They, in the context of God’s tangible care for them, begin to grumble in their tents “because the LORD hates us he has brought us out of the land of Egypt…”  (Deut. 1:27) Which again, forgets the truth that God “heard their cry for rescue from slavery,” that “God saw the people of Israel–and God knew.” (Ex. 2:23-25)

Remembering through Thanksgiving:  In difficult situations and moments of despair our God doesn’t expect us to do the impossible and volitionally stop feeling sorrow.  Rather we are called to remember something far greater.

Moses, in his farewell sermon, repeatedly called Israel to remember their rescue. By remembering that Yahweh had set his love on them, Moses explained, they would walk with him, keep his instructions, receive incredible blessing, and remain in the land.   To remember that God is with us allows us to boldly walk where he wants us to go, even in a land inhabited by powerful giants.

And Moses’ plea is no different than Paul’s in his letter to the Philippians.  To rejoice in every circumstance, to stand firm in all situations, is to remember all that God has done by being thankful for what he has done.  Remembering through thanksgiving can protect us from bitterness and depression, especially when you are living in or reliving your greatest fears and pain.

What sorrow or pain could be greater than the preposterous reality that the Father of the universe loves us even as he loves his eternal Son? What could be greater than Jesus, the Son of God, considering you and me more significant than himself?  So much so that he died on the cross for us when we hated him?  This God will never leave you nor forsake you, no matter what you’ve done or how you feel. This God will provide for your every need and knows your needs better than you do.

What a God to remember! What a great God to cling to more in the coming year and the next season of holidays!

The post Do Not Forget! first appeared on Cor Deo.