Month: November 2017

But if anyone does sin, we have an advocate with the Father, Jesus Christ the righteous.  (I Jn 2:1)

Lord, concerning the law, I am guilty as charged, yet I plead the blood of Christ and lean on your Son as my advocate, and through Him claim your mercy and forgiveness.  Hallelujah!

When a man breaks the law, he needs help, for he must stand before the judge, who will give sentence. When that time comes, the accused does not want to stand alone before the judge. Instead, he needs someone to represent him — someone who knows the law and the judge and who can be an advocate on his behalf. In the American justice system, that person would be a defense attorney.

Ancient Israel had something like this, although the system was different. When the Jewish people violated God’s law, the priest served as their representative before God. The priest was the intermediary between the people and their judge. The priest made atonement for sin on behalf of the people. He killed the bull or the goat or the lamb and poured out its blood. The purpose of this was to pay for the sin of the one who brought the animal. The lamb, and not the man, absorbed the wrath of God.

Obviously, the system of killing a lamb or a goat was symbolic, for the blood of goats and lambs cannot truly remove something so deep as sin. But this system was a symbol that God instituted and honored while it was in place. God wanted His people to see the plain connection between the shedding of blood and the cleansing from sin. The power of the sacrificial lamb lay not in the animal itself but in the ultimate sacrifice that it foreshadowed, for when the time was right, God sent His Son to shed His blood on the Cross. In doing so, Jesus was the great Lamb of God who took away the sins of the world by virtue of His blood. The blood of a lamb may have no real power in itself, but the blood of the eternal Son of God is another matter.

Thus, Jesus’ death was the atonement for sin on behalf of the people. He absorbed the wrath of God so that we would not. He is both the eternal sacrifice that atones for our sin and our intermediary before the Father. He is our great High Priest, the one who represents us before the throne of God above. And He is holy.

The follower of Jesus may stand before God with confidence because he is clean. The sin is gone. The follower of Jesus may stand before God with confidence because he is not alone, and his great defender is none other than the Son of God Himself. In this, Christianity differs significantly from other religions. For example, in Islam and nonChristian varieties of Judaism, all people will appear before the high and holy judge. But they will stand alone. The person in Christ, however, is never alone. We always have a holy and loving Advocate, who knows the Father intimately and intercedes on our behalf. This is reason for joy.  Hallelujah!

For whoever keeps the whole law but fails in one point has become accountable for all of it. (James 2:10)

Lord, I cannot keep the law.  I can’t.  On the outside I may look good, but I still violate your commands.  Have mercy on me.

Kendall was driving down Oak Street one afternoon when he saw flashing lights in his rear view mirror. He pulled over to let the police car pass, but the lights pulled behind him and parked.

“Oh great!” Kendall thought, and he began to wonder what he had done wrong. He knew he had not been speeding, and there had been no stop signs or lights to run.

The officer walked up to Kendall’s window and asked him, “Do you know why I pulled you over?”

“No sir,” Kendall said.

“You were going forty in a school zone. The speed limit back there is twenty between 2 and 3pm.”

“Officer, I’m sorry. I didn’t know. I’m really a safe driver. I conscientiously try to keep all of the laws of the road. This is not normal for me.”

“I need to see your license and insurance.”

The policeman then took the documents and walked back to his car, where he stayed for about ten minutes. When he returned to Kendall’s window, he handed Kendall a speeding ticket for $250.

Now let’s assume Kendall was telling the truth when he said he was a safe driver who conscientiously tried to keep all the laws of the road. And let’s assume that the policeman found a squeaky clean driving record when he looked up Kendall’s name in his database.

Was the ticket just?

Of course, everyone knows that it was. We may debate whether the policeman should have shown Kendall some mercy, but we cannot legitimately argue that he was being unjust. Based on the law, Kendall fully deserved what he got. That is how law works. Law commands certain behaviors and stipulates punishments for violations of those behaviors. When we violate the law, we cannot say, “Most of the time I keep it,” for punishments do not deal with those times we keep it but with that one time we violated it. My good driving on Tuesday will not get me out of the ticket I received on Friday.

This phenomenon is true of perhaps every law that has ever been. When people murder, it is generally a rare behavior for them. They cannot defend their murder by saying “for 60 years I never killed anyone.” The question at hand is not “How did you behave the past 60 years?” The question is “How did you behave on the night of July 19^th, 2014?” That is how law works.

So why am I saying all this about law? I am saying it because God has made laws, and when we violate God’s laws, most of us still consider ourselves pretty good folks who generally keep God’s laws. Do we keep all of God’s laws all of the time? If we’re honest, we have to say “No,” but we don’t consider that fact to be so bad because we think we usually try to follow God’s law. In this respect, we are Kendall. And after all, God wouldn’t punish us for violating his law only once when we actually keep it 1,000 other times, would he? This is how many people think.

The problem is that such thinking does not reflect how law actually works, and we all know it. If we obey a law 1,000 times and disobey it the 1,001^st, we are subject to its punishment. And if we obey 1,000 different laws but disobey the 1001^st, we are subject to its punishment. This is justice, it is normal, and we all know it. But somehow we don’t think this way when we deal with God’s laws.

My point is this. We all have a just punishment that is due us for violating God’s laws. God said, “Do not lie,” but we have lied. God said, “Do not commit adultery” and then said that lust is nothing more than adultery in the heart. But we have lusted. God said, “Do not covet your neighbor’s things,” but we have coveted our neighbor’s things. At different times each one of us has been greedy or selfish. We have treated something that is not God as if it were. We have said cruel things to others or have failed to speak when we should have stood for what is right. All these actions, thoughts, or attitudes are violations of God’s law. Now we may not have done all of these things all of the time, but we need only to have done one of these things once to incur the just punishment of the law. That is how law works. The truth of the matter, however, is that we have likely violated all of these laws (and more) many times. In other words, we are repeat offenders.

Therefore, based on the law, you and I deserve the full consequences for violating God’s law. Those consequences are more serious than we think. We are not violating the commands of a human government but the words of a holy God. These laws have eternal consequences because they deal with an eternal kingdom. The moral laws of God stipulate the behavior and character God expects for the kingdom of God. To violate these laws is to disqualify ourselves from the kingdom of God. When we lie, lust or covet possessions or power, when we manipulate to get our way, we bring upon our souls a deep stain that cannot live where holiness dwells. God says that our sins have separated us from Him (Is 59:2). Sin and holiness do not belong together. Thus, the normal consequence of violating God’s law is eternity without God. The very purpose for which we were made is gone. We are without hope and without God in this world. Those consequences are completely just, for we have broken God’s law, and that is how law works.   All of us shall stand before the Great Judge and be tried for our deeds, for our thoughts, and for the attitudes of our hearts. And the one thing we can never, ever say is, “I’m usually a pretty good person.” That will get us nowhere.

… to the purified, you show yourself pure, but to the crooked you make yourself seem tortuous.  (Ps 18:26)

This blog is a continuation of last week’s introduction to the doctrine of depravity.

To some people, the Christian doctrine of depravity smells rotten. They want God to be good and loving, and they think God must be a tyrant if He condemns people for sin they cannot escape. To them God loses the right to judge if people are born sinful. It makes no sense to them for us to be objects of God’s wrath by nature (Eph 2:3). If we naturally sin, then why blame us for being what we naturally are?

Do I wrestle with this question? Yes. And yet no. I mean … I don’t pretend to fully understand it, but some things I do understand, and I’m OK saying, “I know this much, but I don’t know everything.” Science takes this approach all the time. The raw data in science is almost always messy. Research may yield a block of data that seems to fit well together, but then there is this other data, and the scientist says, “Well. . .What do we do with that?” The good scientists do not kick out data because they have difficulty putting it together. They have to work with reality and not with the scenario they would like to have. They cannot change the data to make it easy to deal with, and neither can I change depravity to make things easy to understand.

For me, my own heart is part of the raw data. When I am honest with myself, I have to admit that my heart is sinful. I see in myself a heart focused on me. I don’t like it, but there it is. My own depravity is as obvious to me as the law of gravity. I look at history, and I see an unmitigated stream of greed, cruelty and brutality. I look at my own culture, and I see the glorification of self-centered indulgence. I see depravity in my wife, in my friends, in my parents, in my children, in my neighbors and in my church. I see it in my government, in Hollywood, in the music industry, in corporate America, in the education system, and in the military.  I then look in the Scriptures, and I see it there, too. Everywhere I look, I see my own heart confirmed. Any attempt to deny depravity comes across to me as somewhat naïve. Depravity is not a quaint theory that needs to be proven. It is an obvious fact that I must build around. I believe in depravity because I have eyes.

Now if I have any sense of justice, I must conclude that God punishes sin. People cannot do as they please and enjoy impunity, even if what they please comes quite naturally.

Some time ago, we came home to find trash scattered all over our living room and kitchen. Our dog Gage had gotten into the trashcan and had himself a little field day. When I saw what he had done, I stuck his nose in the trashcan, smacked him on the nose and said harshly, “No!” Obviously, I was trying to train him. Let’s suppose, however, that Gage does not heed my training. Let’s say that he gets into the trash constantly, chews up our couch pillows and uses the carpet for his personal toilet. Let’s say we let him outside and he keeps barking at night, and then a neighbor stops by and he bites the neighbor. Let’s say we keep training him, but he persists in his ways. If we then get rid of him, no one will question our justice. We are not being cruel. We are being realistic.

Something like this is going on between God and us. Sin and holiness do not mix. We have much less right to dwell with God than Gage has to dwell in my home. We may be wired to sin just as Gage may be wired to bark at the opossums at night. The fact that our behavior is natural does not mean we have a right to dwell with God. This is not cruel or unjust. It is simply realistic. We behave like humans; dogs behave like dogs.  In both cases, the behavior is in our nature.

The natural question then seems to be why God would create such a system as this. Why make humans in such a way that they sin by nature and then punish them for that sin? In the beginning, of course, that is not what God did. He created a sinless world with sinless people and gave them a choice. They chose to sin, and once sin entered the equation, God was no longer starting from scratch. Instead, He was dealing with the realities on the ground. The system we have is a corruption of the system God made, and God did not do the corrupting. We did. Nonetheless, after we freely chose to sin, God allowed that sin to make its home in us. He was not being unjust, for sin was the very thing we chose. God simply tied us to our choice a little more deeply than we might like. He was not being unjust. He was giving us what we chose.

But I believe that God’s allowing our sin to rest in our hearts has another purpose as well. Scripture is quite clear about a principle of judgment. To whom much is given, much shall be expected (Lk 12:48). Jesus said that the wicked cities of Tyre, Sidon, and Sodom would be better off in the judgment than the Jewish towns of Chorazin and Capernaum (Mt 11: 20-24). All of these cities rejected God, but Chorazin and Capernaum were given so much more, and they shall be held accountable for what they saw.

This seems to indicate that the judgment contains degrees of severity, and that the severity of judgment we receive depends on what we do with the knowledge and abilities we have. Dante’s levels of hell are not in the Bible, but the idea that inspired them is.

The less ability we humans have, the more mercy God can justly show us when we fall. Hell will be an awful place for all who dwell there, but it will be more awful for some than for others. The more we are given, the more severe our judgment will be when we fall. That is why Dante has popes in his deepest levels of hell.

God’s mercy exists even in His judgment. Many people will certainly experience the reality of hell, but the hell they will experience is nothing compared to what it would be if they were more “noble.” The people who want the human race to be “good” do not know what they are asking for. What they are asking for is a more severe judgment when they sin. And they would certainly sin. God already had made an innocent couple and placed them in a sinless environment, and that couple had rebelled. What makes us think that we would have improved upon that example now that our environment is tainted and our parents are sinful?  In the end, our spiritual weakness is to our advantage.

The irony of this is that the very principle people appeal to in order to criticize depravity —  God should show more mercy to the helpless — is the very principle God uses by allowing depravity to overtake us. It’s just that the situation looks different from another angle. It’s as if the critic has wielded a board to beat God with, but God has snatched the board and used it to build a house.

This has been brief. I am not giving a philosophical treatise, nor am I trying to answer every question. I don’t believe I can. I know that I have raised new questions in your mind, and I’ve not answered them. That’s OK. What I am trying to do is show that there is more than one way to think through these issues, and that the reality is more complex than we sometimes wish to admit.

Ultimately, however, the issue of depravity is not a philosophical question but a personal one. You are either naturally drawn to sin or you are not. You either naturally exhibit sinful attitudes or you do not. If you look at your own heart and find that it is often drawn to sin, any debate about depravity comes across as rather shallow.   If you truly see such a heart in yourself, then the real question is not “Am I a helpless sinner?” That is obvious. The real question is “What can be done about it?”

If, however, you look at yourself and you find no sin, then Jesus has nothing to offer you. You can stop reading these blogs. Nothing else I say will make any sense. Jesus came for the sick, not for those who think they are well.