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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.

Where’s the middle ground in all this? Where’s the grey area? Only in our rationalizations that make us believe that “I’m a good person if I do [fill in the blank]” do you find the “moderate middle.” In other words the grey area is really just rationalization of sin.

Now while it’s clear that we’re either sons of darkness or sons of light, there’s a great subtle complexity to this black and white reality we find in the Gospel. That is, once we see and are captured by the love of God revealed in his Son on the cross and poured into our hearts by His Spirit, we enter into the now-but-not-yet tension.  We still reside in the brokenness of this flesh and the realm ruled by the prince of this world, yet we are alive eternally to the Father-Son-Spirit God (Romans 8).   And the truth is, in this place we find ourselves in, we can easily fall back into the ways of the flesh rather than follow the ways of the Spirit.

I might be tempted to go into all the ways we can equip ourselves to conquer our sinful hearts, the things we must do to become fruitful, godly people.  But isn’t that just the way of the flesh not of the Spirit? It’s the way of fear and mistrust to come up with ways of self-improvement; it’s not the way of faith and trust in God to make us good soil that produces good fruit.

When we read or hear someone preach of the Spirit’s fruit (Gal. 5) or the parable of the sower (Mark 4; Luke 8) we automatically think, “I am not good soil”, or, “There isn’t enough good fruit in my life”, and then proceed to plan a way to make ourselves just that.  But again this is the way of the flesh; it’s the way of fear, not faith.

I think, no wait, I know that until we grasp the battle in our hearts in every moment to either live by fear or by faith we’ll never be truly be free in the way Christ came to set us free (Gal. 5:1).  Once we grasp in true absolute humility and helplessness that “I cannot make myself good, improve my life for God to like me more, I am not in control of my life” – only then are we free. Not until we come to the end of ourselves can we see with our eyes, hear with our ears, and feel with our hearts the words of Jesus.  Without this helplessness, we’re still bound by the fear of our flesh and love of darkness.

Where am I going with this?

Well in the last few months in my life many significant things have been taken from me, things I didn’t think would happen (unless I messed up big time, hear the fear of flesh?).  But as of a couple weeks ago something happened completely out of my control.  The United Kingdom Visa & Immigration office determined that my missionary organization did not meet the requirements to continue to sponsor work visas. This is very disruptive to say the least! And my family is feeling it as we face saying goodbye to our home and friends.

Now, as we wait, the temptation is to take our eyes off Jesus and to look to ourselves.  It’s a little easier keeping our eyes on Jesus in this sense, we have absolutely no responsibility nor control in this decision by the UKVI.  Yet we are still tempted, motivated by fear, to look to ourselves for the rescue, which leads to anxiety and forgetfulness.   Once you are captured by these motivations it easily leads to all kinds of destructive outcomes: broken relationships, depression, unwise decision that abandon God, etc.

But in a circumstance like this there’s a great opportunity for thankfulness, yes thankfulness (1 Thess. 5:18).  In our helplessness we have the incredible clarity to say to God,  “I’m not God, you’re God, and I’m happy with this arrangement.” As we fear the Lord like this in our hearts we see Jesus.  We see him as a delight to our hearts, therefore the source of our purpose, life, and help. When the eyes of our hearts are captured by him we’re guaranteed to have joy and abound in thanksgiving no matter what.

This is where passages that I’ve taught, memorized, and meditated on come to life.  For instance Romans 5:1-5, it has always been foreign to think of rejoicing in my suffering, but in the midst of a helpless situation and looking to Jesus I can truly rejoice that I have him.   A joy in suffering which leads to endurance, then to character, and then to hope, which will never disappoint.  It’s not on me to do this in a period of suffering, but it’s merely a humble response to God offering his love to my heart by the Spirit.

In all circumstances the way of fear or the way of faith, death or life, evil or good, are placed before us and our choice always reveals our greatest affections: self or Christ.

It’s black and white.

Let me leave you with this thought, a thought that I’ve been blessed with as I’ve wrestled to keep my eyes on Jesus.  How will I face the day of my death? If I fight and claw for my home, my friends, my ministry, my security and stability with fear and anxiety, then what will I be like when I face the most pinnacle moment of faith: looking death in the face?  Will I fight for the last moments of life that I have no chance of keeping, or will I look to Jesus?   I want to live free of Satan’s last grip on my life and peacefully join Jesus in the next life free from this wretched flesh.  So here’s to a life of holding onto everything loosely but holding onto the one I love with all my strength, which he powerfully works in me.

So I’m learning and here’s my invitation to all believers: look to Jesus and live!

The post Life: It’s Black & White first appeared on Cor Deo.

God created humanity and soon saw them corrupted by sin. It was not gradual. We read of the fall into sin in Genesis chapter 3. As soon as sin entered the story we see Adam and Eve hiding and protecting themselves, and when confronted they continued that pattern by blaming each other, and for Adam, even blaming God for what had happened.

In the next chapter we read of one of their sons murdering his brother. Sin’s influence was immediate, and it was devastating to humanity. We were created for loving fellowship with God and with each other. But God watched as humanity spread like cancer across the globe, destructively devouring every opportunity to love in an insatiable quest for self-promotion. The loving God created a world quickly filled with hate.

Why didn’t God reboot?

It is not that God didn’t have the power to reboot. He spoke everything into existence by the power of his word, so he could just as easily wipe and begin again. He did wipe the planet with the flood, and yet saved sinners through that to continue the same race that had pushed the boundaries of sin in the first place.

It is not that God wasn’t concerned about sin. He hates sin and its devastating effects on his creation. He hates death in all its forms – physical and spiritual.

So why didn’t he reboot creation, and especially humanity?

The two biggest questions we can ever face are central to understanding this question. First, which god is God, or, what is God like? Second, what does it mean to be made in his image, or, what is a human?

If we were to tour the god options on planet earth we would find an amazing consistency. Most of the god options on display are gods defined by their power or desire for control. In many ways they tend to be, as Feuerbach put it, “projection of our own ego onto the clouds.” That is, the gods of the humans tend to be bigger and better versions of humanity – specifically, fallen humanity. Since our life in a fallen world is marked by self-promotion and the desire to control our circumstances and our rivals, so the same must be true of God (or so we tend to think).

Yet the God of the Bible continues to surprise us if we are looking for a fallen and competitive human magnified into divinity. Instead we find a God who is other-focused, a God who gives and gives. He is a God who is prepared to give not only of his abundance, but of himself.

That is all good, but why didn’t God reboot a fallen and rebellious creation?

First, because God knew that humanity created in his image would always explore the realm of not loving God. Since true love can never be forced, the exploration of the forbidden fruit would always have a certain strange attraction to creatures made with creative and inquisitive natures. So God could reboot, but then it would all happen again. But this doesn’t mean that God was somehow stuck with a badly designed creation that was fatally flawed forever.

The second, and main, reason that God didn’t reboot is because he already had a plan. Before the foundation of the world God knew what it would take to have a world inhabited by creatures joining in the loving fellowship of the Trinity. He knew it would take more than an impressive creation.

God is God and we are not. That truth was challenged by the lie of the serpent in the garden. Humanity was offered a rival god-like status and we grabbed it with one bite. God was saddened, but not surprised. He had a plan.

God’s right to be God and to rule according to his nature has been challenged for thousands of years. Perhaps the greatest challenge is humanity’s counterfeit god-complex by which we act as if we are gods. We play god when we corrupt God’s loving creation into a self-loving and self-serving realm. Then without thinking we project a power-hungry, glory-grabbing, self-serving mindset onto the clouds and say that God is just like us.

With billions of people living the lie, surely God is outvoted and his great plan is defeated? Surely hell laughs in derision? Actually, no. God is God and we are not. God is like God and not like the fallen us. God remains loving and giving and generous and kind. And most astonishingly, God doesn’t need to reboot in order to fix the fallenness of humanity.

In the Gospel we discover that God had a plan. We can explore the darkest recesses of rebellion and hatred toward God. We can live the lie with the resources of the world at our disposal. But we can never turn the lie into truth. God is God, we are not, and His intention still holds true. God will have a creation filled with humans who feely love Him and each other, sharing in the eternal delight of Trinitarian fellowship.

Before the foundation of the world God had planned to give of himself for our sake. He planned to send His Son to die in our place and so startle us with the entirely different character of God that he would win our hearts from the apparently unbreakable power of self-love. When Jesus died on the cross he paid the penalty for our sin, but more than that, he revealed the true glory of the true God, and so is drawing sinful self-absorbed mini-gods back into fellowship with the true God. God will share his glory with no other god-rival, but he will share the glory of his love with us who are his!

The serpent, and every human, and all the forces of hell have given everything to defeat God’s great plan for creation. We have all failed. One day everyone will know they have failed. One day every knee will bow. And in that day they will look on the bride of Christ in amazement. God planned to bring a vast number of humans into the loving fellowship of the Trinity. And that is exactly what he is doing!

God did not need to reboot creation. God had a plan that was not dependent on original creation, but on his great plan of redemption. God had a better plan.

The post Why Didn’t God Reboot? first appeared on Cor Deo.

Typically we think that the solution to two extreme views will be a blending of the two. So in this case, is sanctification best understood as a cooperative effort where God does his bit, and I do my bit? I don’t think that will help us. Our flesh will corrupt that model. Instead, let’s ponder the big biblical framework for sanctification.

Marriage.

The Sin Problem – Let’s back up a bit. We have to grasp the depth of the problem before we can fathom the wonder of the solution. The core of the sin problem is not bad behavior or faulty thinking or a weakened will. The core of the sin problem is the lie that we can be “like God” – that is, like the false god who made the original offer. We believe that we can be autonomous and it is that self-orientation which drives and corrupts everything about us.

Our inclination to autonomy can show itself in two ways. Some will lean toward licentiousness, casting off all restraint and living like the world. Others will lean toward asceticism and legalistic self-made righteousness, and also living like the world. Worldliness is not just one end of that spectrum. Worldliness is always shot through with the DNA of autonomy.

But God – We were dead in our sin, but God. We were living as dead folks in the realm of death, but God. God sent his Son to die for us, in our place, winning our hearts by pouring out his love into our hearts by the Spirit, and thus uniting us to Christ in a marital union. We are now one Spirit with Christ our bridegroom. We died with Christ. Our life is hidden with Christ. In Christ. Christ in me. Union. Marriage.

When we start to see how much marital union language there is in Scripture, it should start to purge us of the contractual approach we function with in this world so much – i.e. obey stipulations for the sake of gaining reward. But it is not easy to shake this idea, for our flesh will always pull us back in the direction of autonomy.

The danger of autonomy – So how do we see sanctification? In the context of a marital union the groom washes his bride by the washing with the water of the Word, that she should be holy and blameless before him, without spot or wrinkle. So he is proactive and at work in the bride to cleanse and transform her by the Spirit through whom the union exists.

As we read the epistles of Paul, for example, we can start to spot the union language that creates the ethos for the instructive elements . With Christ. In him. Christ in you. This is key to avoiding the danger of our autonomous impulses.

So on the one hand, we have to beware of the danger of autonomy. A healthy marriage is not marked by autonomous action. A healthy marriage is not two individuals doing their own thing, in their own way, by their own strength, with a mere tip of the hat to a status of unity.

The opposite danger – This raises an issue though: if it is not about our self-moved effort, are we saying we are therefore totally passive? Some go that way. It is all of God, and what I do doesn’t matter because it is “all of God.” This can lead to either licentious living – a marriage marked by the bride going off after other lovers. Or it can lead to mere passivity – a marriage marked by the bride being totally unengaged in life.

Again, we need to bring to the fore the reality of our marital union with Christ. In being united to him we do not become puppets. Not autonomy, nor automatons. Christ doesn’t desire to be married to a mannequin.

Thus we have language of union to counter our tendency to self-made righteousness. And we have instruction and direction to counter the possibility of puppet-ness.

Is the bride engaged in life, active and alive? Never more so! Biblical sanctification anticipates an active engagement from us. And in the context of a fleshly inclination that has always dominated us, there is need for clarification of what it means to walk in a manner worthy of the spouse who has captured and won our hearts. But that instruction must never be corrupted into a self-driven autonomous obedience for the sake of reward . . . there is nothing of marital union in that thinking.

Two Ugly Wives – Some churches are characterized by an autonomous self-driven effort, a legalism and rule-based obedience for the sake of reward. Some churches are characterized by an unengaged laxity, a sinful sloppiness that treats the desires of the bridegroom as effectively irrelevant to the life of the bride. Both are ugly. The dutiful wife who works hard but is totally self-absorbed in her diligence to be seen as a good performer of wifely duties, and also the straying wife who cares little for what her husband desires and plays the harlot with other lovers, are both broken images of marriage.

The Glorious Bride – The biblical image of Christ’s sanctified bride is so glorious. She is captivated by Him, beautified by His love, actively engaged in a dynamic communion with him and living moment by moment for him, her gaze firmly fixed on the one who loved her first.

The post Holy and Blameless Before Him first appeared on Cor Deo.