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For by grace you have been saved through faith.  And this is not your own doing; it is the gift of God, not a result of works, so that no one may boast.  (Eph 2:8-9)

For I know that nothing good dwells in me (Rm 7:18)

Lord, you are my redemption, my salvation, my hope.  If I lean on myself, I lean on nothing and fall, but if I come to you, I come to a Rock and to a King full of grace to the sinner.  Praise you.

God is a God of grace, and grace is for those who are weak.

A king once ruled a great land. One day the authorities brought to the king a man who had instigated a rebellion. The man confessed his crime and asked the king for mercy, which the king granted despite the fact that the criminal justly should have lost his head. This is grace.

The daughter of wealthy parents enjoyed a life with many pleasures: food, drink, family, and much more. Every good thing she had was something she did not earn or deserve. She had these things because her parents were immensely wealthy and because they loved her. This is grace.

A mother took care of her newborn son. She washed him, changed him, suckled him, dressed him, sang to him, rocked him, burped him, and protected him. She did these things for him because he was helpless to do them himself. This is grace.

All of these earthly examples mimic something of God’s grace. When God forgives sin, He does so because He is a gracious God. When He gives us air to breathe and rain for the crops, He does so because He is a gracious God. When He grants peace to the soul and gives power over a sinful habit, He does so because He is a gracious God. We must understand that God is radically committed to showing kindness to sinners.

But this kindness presupposes that we are actually sinners, and there lies the rub. The grace of God assumes human depravity, and human depravity requires grace if humans are to ever have any real joy. Depravity and grace fit together. Depravity is the diagnosis, grace the cure. And the thing of it is that the only people who ever fully embrace the cure are the ones who fully embrace the diagnosis. Ni To-sheng was right when he said that heaven is for sinners, and hell is for good people.

Morality is the enemy to the knowledge of God. Moral people have problems finding God. Only sinners truly find Him. This is because God operates on the principle of grace, and moral, respectable people have difficulty understanding grace. They miss God because of their “goodness.” Or to put it another way, they are too good for God.

This doctrine of God’s grace is one of the least understood and most abused teachings in the Bible. Some see it as scandalous. “You mean that a serial killer who humbly and truly repents will enter heaven while many of his victims may not?” Yes. That is the scandal of grace. Some reject it outright and say it is unjust. Some twist it to take advantage of it. But most people ignore it. They act as if their spiritual well being depended on their moral goodness. These people think themselves too good for grace, so they shall never experience it. Since they think themselves good enough for God, God shall leave them to their own devices. After all, if you’re good enough for God, you don’t much need His help, do you?

This doctrine of grace cuts against the grain of religion. In one sense, it is too easy. You mean all I have to do is say, “thank you”? In another sense, however, it is harder than religion, for it goes deeper. Grace cuts down pride. If God makes you clean, then you do not make yourself clean. If God provides for your needs, then you are dependent upon Him. If God redeems your soul, then He gives you your worth.

Grace means that you and I have nothing to bring to God except a broken soul. It means that all of our noble thoughts of ourselves are delusions. To embrace grace is to embrace a new way of thinking. The old heart that likes to praise itself must die. This is hard. And this is why religious people often rebel against grace.

Religious practices can be deceptive. Fiona may pray and fast and give to the poor, but she may also take pride in her praying, fasting, and giving to the poor. Many religious people use religion as a replacement for grace. They think they are OK because of what they do. They go to church every Sunday; they read their Bible and take communion; they are nice to their neighbor. They do not understand that their religion is not the cure they need. They do not need more good works. They need God.

This is the great problem. To accept grace requires humility, but most people lack humility. To accept grace requires honesty about our sin, but most people prefer to gloss over their sin.  And from heaven’s perspective, such an attitude is the scandal of morality.

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.

… among whom we all once lived in the passions of our flesh, carrying out the desires of the flesh and the mind, and were by nature children of wrath, like the rest of mankind.  (Eph 2:3)

Father, I sin.  And I sin because my heart is sinful.  Have mercy on me.

Our family is in a hectic life stage. Most days we have five people who have to be in five different locations at the same time. We just got a third car to help with the craziness, but even so, we still have to have a family meeting most nights in order to sort out who gets which car and who drops off whom the next day. These meetings are an interesting dynamic to watch. I notice that my insides want a car for myself and sometimes I’m fighting for it.

I work out of the home, and sometimes my kids or wife come back to my office to discuss some issue or ask me to settle a dispute they have. I love my kids, but when I’m focused on my work, the last thing I want is to enter into a dispute between high school students over who gets the computer. Too often when they come, I put them off and quickly send them out. I have other things to do, you know.

I struggle with letting go of money and possessions. I too often want to argue just to show that I am right. I have been slow to stand for righteousness because I have been afraid of what others might think. I could go on.

I share these things about myself to illustrate my own heart. If I am going to talk about sin, I must begin with myself. That’s how God wants it. I’m willing to guess, however, that my petty, demanding attitudes, my greeds, my lusts, my fears — that none of this surprises you. If the truth be known, you know many people like me. In fact, if you’re honest with yourself, my description probably hits a little too close to home. Maybe your issues are different from mine, but you have your issues and I have mine.

Now, each of these issues is an example of what Scripture calls sin, and the heart I have described for you — my own heart — illustrates the central doctrine of depravity. As followers of Jesus, we know not only that we sin but also that, apart from Christ, we are slaves to sin. We sin by nature. We can’t overcome it. Our wiring has gone bad.

This teaching can be a tough pill to swallow, for I do not particularly enjoy thinking of myself as inherently evil, and yet, when I take an honest look at my heart, I must confess it is so. Apart from Christ, my heart is selfish. The doctrine of depravity describes me perfectly.

When I look at history, I find that the doctrine of depravity is illustrated a million times over. It begins with the earliest written records and continues without break right up to this morning’s news.

When I look at a baby, I see someone entirely focused on self. Feed me. Change me. Burp me. Me. Me. Me. I’m not sure we get any more innocent than a newborn, but I am certain that that “innocent” newborn is not so innocent as we think.

When I look at a small boy, I find that he does not naturally share his toys. The default words of choice for a two-year-old are “mine” and “no.” Human beings have a bent toward sin. As a pig runs to the mud so do we run to our selfish desires, and we are born that way. We do not have to learn it.

Men involved in pornography are enslaved to sin. Women who give more thought to their clothing than to their character are enslaved to sin. The man with a temper and the woman who manipulates are enslaved to sin. We do all these things and more without even thinking about them. They just come naturally.

Depravity is central to the Scriptural teaching about the human condition, but it is often misunderstood. Let’s try to clear up some misunderstandings.

First, depravity does not mean that everyone struggles with exactly the same sins. I am not you. Some sins certainly are rather common, like lust or greed, but other sins like excessive fear or anger, may be tied more to our personalities.

Second, depravity does not negate the influence of culture. Every culture encourages sin of some sort. My own culture rather blatantly promotes sexual sin and individualistic pride, among other things. Sometimes people use this fact to mitigate depravity. They say that the real culprit is not us but the society we live in. We sin because we were taught to sin, not because we were born that way.

This will not do. The presence of sinful influences in our cultures does not negate the presence of sin in our hearts. We are sinful people and we live in sinful cultures. Our cultures are nothing more than the collective values, beliefs and practices of a group of people. Cultures do not pop into existence willy nilly. People create them. And when people create them, they create them to fit their values, beliefs and practices. Sinful cultures exist because sinful people exist. The existence of sinful cultures does not mitigate depravity. If anything, it almost proves it.

Third, depravity does not absolve us of our responsibility. Sometimes people ask “Do we sin because we choose to sin? Or do we sin because we are wired to sin?” The answer is “yes.” When we sin, we have fully chosen it, and we have fully chosen it because it reflects our natural state. People make choices in accordance with their nature. Did you eat that fudge because you chose to? Or because you naturally like chocolate? Those aren’t mutually exclusive options.

Fourth, depravity does not legitimize sin. People are born with sin tendencies, but the sin is still sin. You can’t say, “I was born that way” and use it as an excuse. Let me illustrate. People born with higher levels of testosterone tend to be more violent, but their DNA doesn’t excuse their violence. Violence is sin, even if you were born that way. Alcoholism seems to have a biochemical base. People are born with a higher susceptibility to alcohol addiction, but their birth doesn’t excuse their alcoholism. Alcoholism is sin, even if you were born that way. A hot temper, gluttony, gambling, lust, and homosexuality appear to have physiological influences. But the influences do not excuse the sin. In fact, I would not be surprised if all sin had some sort of “I was born that way” element. We are so sinful that it is in our DNA. This is depravity.

Fifth, depravity does not mean that people never do nice things. People can still help their neighbors, give to the poor, and clean up their school. Parents still love their children and employers can try to be fair. We are still created in the image of God. That image entails many different things, but one of those things is that we often want to do what is right. The problem, however, is that the image is tainted. Often when we help our neighbors, we are looking for a favor in return. I’ll scratch your back, you scratch mine. Often when we give to the poor, we want to be noticed. “My, what a sweet girl Shanna is.” Sometimes we give to the church in order to ease our consciences. Kevin dishonors his parents, but if he gives some money, perhaps he can feel better about himself. Sometimes a man will volunteer to clean up the city park because a girl he likes is going to be there. And the girl may be there because her friends are there. And the friends may be there because it is required for a class. Often we do the right thing grudgingly. We obey laws because we’re afraid we’ll be caught. On we could go. I mention these examples not to deny real kindness, but to be realistic about life. In God’s sight, an action is more than an action. Much of what we would call kindness, He would call duplicity. Genuine kindness is much rarer than we think.

 

Now up to this point, I have tried to describe mostly what depravity is and is not. It is now time to talk about its spiritual consequences.

Depravity blinds us. Most people understand that alcoholics often suffer from denial. So do workaholics and men addicted to pornography. It is easier to see the selfishness in your neighbor than in yourself. When you try to tell a manipulative woman about her manipulation, nine times out of ten, she will have no idea what you are talking about. Arrogant people do not generally consider themselves arrogant, and bitter people are usually justified in their own minds. I remember talking to a man who had turned his job into his god. I might as well have been talking to a brick. No doubt, you have had similar experiences. People do not want to see their sin. Sometimes you and I see their sin quite plainly, but most of the time, they think we’re wacked out.

This fact should sober us, for what happens when the shoe is on the other foot? I wonder how often we behave just like these other people. We see their sin just fine, but when it comes to our own sin, are we any better than they? This is a crucial question because when we stand before God, He is not going to be interested in how well we spotted Sally’s snootiness. I’m afraid we’ll have our hands full with our own sin. The subject of sin must get personal. We are more sinful than we know. One of the symptoms of depravity is spiritual blindness. The closer we get to God, the more we see our sin.

My mentor was a man named Mr. Tok. He was ninety-seven when he died, and he and I would talk on the phone several times a year. At the end of his life, His mind was as sharp as it had ever been, and the love of God shone from him, and yet he still talked frequently about his own sinful nature, even after walking with God for more than 70 years. The closer he got to God, the clearer his own sin became. When we see people who genuinely confess their sin, we see humility and honesty. God likes that. He doesn’t care much for the crowds who think themselves decent enough. He sees through our guises straight to the heart.

Depravity makes us filthy before God and brings His anger. Our good deeds are dirty rags to God (Is 64:6). Jesus would not entrust himself to people, for He knew what was in their hearts. (Jn 2:24-5) Here is how He describes us. “What comes out of a man is what makes him unclean. For from within, out of men’s hearts, come evil thoughts, sexual immorality, theft, murder, adultery, greed, malice, deceit, lewdness, envy, slander, arrogance and folly. All these evils come from inside and make a man unclean.” (Mk 7: 20-23)

Depravity brings God’s anger. God does not laugh off our sin and say, “Oh well. Boys will be boys.” Our sin is quite offensive to Him, for we defile perhaps His most beautiful creation — ourselves.

We are a work of art that puts to shame the Sistine Chapel or the Mona Lisa. We are created to be sons and daughters of the Most High. When we sin, it is like spraying graffiti all over the ceiling of the Sistine Chapel. It is like taking a knife and slashing the Mona Lisa to shreds. It is like raping a daughter so that she can no longer relate properly to her father. We do these things to ourselves, and God is rightly offended by it. We have with our sin destroyed an unspeakably beautiful and valuable thing.

Anger and value go together. Suppose I intentionally step on your plastic toy car. You may be rightfully upset with me, but you’ll get over it. Now suppose I intentionally slash the tires of your Mercedes and pour sand in the radiator so that the engine burns up. You are now quite ticked with me. If I then beat your son until he is bound to a wheelchair, your anger knows no bounds.

The extent of your anger depends on how much you value what I destroy. God is unspeakably angry with us because we have destroyed something of unspeakable worth. The wrath of God is an expression of the great worth of a human soul. People who think that God displays no wrath imply that the defilement of a human soul is no big deal. “Why should God get all torqued out over that?” They may say that they have a high view of the human race, but they have a much lower view than God does.

The follower of Jesus sees the human soul as more valuable than any other earthly thing, but the follower of Jesus also sees the human soul as dirtier and more debased than any other earthly thing. We are the most valuable creation, but we are corrupted. This is why our sin is such a great tragedy. To be realistic, we must see both of these truths, not just one of them.

Our depravity rightly brings God’s wrath, but it also highlights God’s mercy. When jewelers show off diamonds, they often do so on a black velvet background. The darker the background, the more the diamond shines. Our depravity is the background that highlights God’s mercy. The darker we are, the greater He shines. The forgiveness of God is deeper than my sin. When I see how deeply broken I am, I marvel at how wonderfully merciful He is. Too many church people do not know how glorious God is because they do not see how weak and ugly they are. They deny their depravity, and in doing so, they miss the glory of God. They are too strong for that. Those who have been forgiven much, love much, but those who have been forgiven little, love little.

 

But one thing I do: forgetting what lies behind and straining forward to what lies ahead, I press on toward the goal for the prize of the upward call of God in Christ Jesus.  (Ph 3:13-14)

Father, Please do not let me by so distracted by earthly pleasures that I fail to pursue you.  And please do not let me use your grace as an excuse to cease pursuing you.  I want you.  And I want you even if that means difficulty. 

Claude would not study. He would watch TV. He would stay up late at night and drink. He would sleep in during the day and skip class. But he would not do any work. For Claude, college life centered on having fun, and he did what he could to have his share of fun. I don’t even know what his major was, but I know this. He didn’t learn much about it. Claude lasted one year before he had to drop out.

When it comes to knowing God, this world is full of Claudes. We will spend all day studying chemistry and engineering or working a full time job. We will watch movies, surf social media, or listen to Spotify. We will go to basketball games, plays or concerts. But we will not work at knowing God.

Knowing God is hard work, and many people know little of God because they do not want to put in the commitment. You understand the principle. The athlete who never trains, never improves. No pain, no gain, we say. So it is with God.

Please don’t misunderstand. I’m not saying that our righteousness with God depends upon our work. Our righteousness is a matter of grace. Our effort does not earn us a place in heaven. Only our faith in the work of Christ can do that. But if we have real faith, we want to know God, and if we are to know God, we shall have to give Him our time and make Him a priority. It’s like a marriage. Imagine a husband and wife who lived separate lives and then complained that they didn’t really know one another. Kind of silly, isn’t it? You see, the business of marriage requires work. And commitment. And Scripture says that marriage is a picture of Christ and the church (Eph 5:32).

Listen. One of the biggest reasons why people do not know God is that they do not want to invest their life in knowing God. Our spiritual laziness limits what we can know. We do not want to work in the Scriptures, so we content ourselves with Scripture sound bites. We do not exert our souls in real prayer but content ourselves with the forms of prayer. We fall short of obedience because it can be strenuous.

If we are to learn of God we must commit to the Scriptures. The Bible is our primary source of information about God. If we ignore it, we will not know God. Many people who have never read the Bible think they know what it says. Or what it should say. And many who would call themselves Christians give the Bible just a cursory look. To learn from the Scriptures demands an open heart, diligence, discipline, persistence and a willingness to obey. As we work at understanding God’s truth, God rewards us; but if we take it easy in learning the Bible, God will take it easy in revealing Himself to us. Students of any book get out of it what they put into it. The Bible is no different. Many know little of God because they will not do the work of seeking Him in the Scriptures.

If we are to learn of God, we must pray with faith and urgency. Prayer is not a form letter. We must compose our communication fresh each time, even if we are praying for the same request for fifty years. Too many grind out form letters and think they are praying, but form letter praying does not teach us how to talk to God. Real prayer exerts great spiritual energy and is among the hardest work a soul can do. It requires the soul to focus and to do so sometimes amidst great spiritual opposition and distraction. Many never learn real prayer because form praying is so much easier. It gives all the packaging of prayer without the essence. We do not pray real prayers because often we are spiritually too lazy. We do not learn to listen to God because it takes work to be still. We do not learn to talk to God because we replace real talk with a list. We do not see the inner secrets and deep joys of God because we do not want to invest the energy to get close. Intimacy requires sacrifice.

If we are to learn of God, we must take obedience seriously. Obedience is not easy. When Jesus obeyed, He had nails driven through His hands and feet. God will ask you to do things you do not want to do. When He does, your response will take you in one of two directions on the path of knowing Him. You will go backward or forward. Many know little of God because they keep going backward when it is time to apply. They want to stay in the classroom and never go to the field. They want it easy, and because they want it easy, they limit what they can know.

God has given us abilities to know Him, but those abilities need to be used. If we choose not to pursue God, we will not know Him. If we choose to pursue Him half-heartedly, we will know Him half-heartedly. He who seeks finds. No one learns computer programming by watching football. What makes us think we will learn of God when we invest our time and efforts in other pursuits? Would you like to know God? Pursue Him. One of the great problems we have in knowing God is that we will not work at pursuing Him. We have these wonderful inherent capacities for discerning God but never use them for that end. It is like trying to pick up a radio station without turning on the radio. We are sometimes silly people.

Everyone then who hears these words of mine and does them will be like a wise man who built his house on the rock.  (Mt 7:24)

Father, I ask that your Spirit would take your words and press them into my heart so that I live faith and do your will.  I ask that I would live out your heart in my life.

When I taught, I had to attend a certain number of professional development classes each year. I remember one such class in which a man with a Phd and a nice theory about education was instructing us on how to conduct discipline within our class. The problem was that he did not understand what it was like to teach a real class. He had great book knowledge but no practical experience. Have you ever met someone like that? They know the book, but they don’t know life.

Many people are that way when it comes to the Bible. They are correct but shallow. God does not desire that situation for your soul. He wants His truth to soak deep into the ground of your soul, and that soaking will never happen until you begin to live the Bible. It is not enough to know it. The truth of God must affect where your feet walk, what your hands do, where your money goes, how you use your time, and more. For God’s Word to do those things, it must penetrate our insides.

God is committed to depth in our souls. He requires us to put flesh to our knowledge. The flesh reinforces the learning. Sometimes it spawns it. The man who operates a machine understands the job better than the one who has merely read the manual. The woman who has worked as a nurse for years understands nursing better than the one who has merely read the textbooks. So it is with God. The disciple who has applied the Scripture understands God far better than the one who has merely read it. God is insistent about our taking His truths and living them. Often He addresses many of our questions through life. He wants us to know Himself and His promises through and through, and such knowledge comes more by living than by study.

God does not want us merely to know that He loves us. He wants us to turn to Him when we are down. Then we know His love more deeply. He does not want us merely to know that we ought to tell the truth. He wants us to be truthful when it hurts. Then we understand His command more deeply. He does not want us merely to understand the metaphor of dying to self. He wants us to give up to Him our greatest treasures, to be willing to deny ourselves a mate or the career we always wanted. Then we know the depths of what the metaphor is talking about. He does not want us merely to know He has sacrificed His life for us. He wants us in turn to sacrifice our lives for Him. Then we begin to see more clearly the depths and pains of His sacrifice. He wants us to learn about His forgiving nature by having us forgive. He disciplines us to teach us, removes our security to show us what trust is, gives us pain sometimes to turn us around, puts food on the table to show us His provision, grants us loved ones to train us to love, and sends us difficult people to show us how we look to Him. He desires not merely intellectual understanding but obedience, and obedience requires everyday life. No one knows God who has not applied the Bible to life. Life gives depth and dimension to our knowledge of God. God will not allow us to know Him in theory. We shall have to live Him in life. In doing so, we shall know Him more thoroughly. But this takes time. We cannot know all about God’s love by taking a one-semester course. In truth, someone as advanced in the Lord as Corrie Ten Boom was still learning the depths of God’s love up to the time she died.

To write the same things to you is no trouble to me and is safe for you. (Ph 3:1)

Lord, remind me of the simple truths of the Cross and Atonement, of the Resurrection and my redemption, of your Spirit in my soul, that I may never forget your glorious love, your justice and mercy, and the power of your might. Repeat these things in my soul that I may grow in your sovereign grace day by day.

When we walk with Christ, our knowledge of God grows. This growth is a process so that God gives us more advanced lessons as we obey the simple ones. But this doesn’t mean that we are done with the simple ones. God likes to constantly speak in our souls the simple truths because we need to hear them again and again. It’s like a marriage. A husband may tell his wife that he loves her, but she needs to hear it day after day. The information is not new. But a wife who hasn’t heard in ten years that her husband loves her will begin to forget what he told her so long ago. The repetition is important. It is necessary for refilling the tank, and refilling the tank is part of the process of a healthy marriage. It is also part of the process of walking with God. We need to hear over and over the simple truths of the Cross and the love of Christ, of the Resurrection and our victory over sin and death. The repetition is part of the process of learning about God. The more we hear the simple truths, the deeper they become embedded in us. And knowledge of God deals as much with depth as it does with breadth. No. More so.

 

For though by this time you ought to be teachers, you need someone to teach you again the basic principles of the oracles of God.  You need milk, not solid food, for everyone who lives on milk is unskilled in the word of righteousness, since he is a child.  But solid food is for the mature, for those who have their powers of discernment trained by constant practice to distinguish good from evil.  Therefore let us leave the elementary doctrine of Christ and go on to maturity …  (Hebrews 5:11-6:1)

Lord, grow me in Your grace, that I may know You more.  Let me never stop progressing in the kingdom of God.

I used to teach high school English. One time I gave my first vocabulary test for the year. Most of the students in my class had taken me previously, but a few were new and didn’t know anything about Mr. Demchsak. The students who had taken me before studied and were well prepared for the test, but one new student was shocked. “You mean I have to study the words?”

Steve, who had taken me before, said, “Sorry, Mr. D. I should have warned him about your test. But he’ll know from now on.”

I had a reputation for being a tough teacher, and I discovered that especially my freshmen were different people at the end of the year than they had been on the first day of class. Not all of course, but many of them had learned that they had to work and to take responsibility for what they did. They were beginning to grow into men and women. They now knew something about responsibility that they had not known before. And hopefully they learned some English as well.

The reality is that a man knows more than a 4th grader, and a 4^th grader knows more than a 1^st grader, and a 1^st grader knows more than a 2-year-old, and a 2-year-old knows more than a newborn. We learn as we grow.

It is this way with knowing God. Sometimes much of what we do not know of God we do not know because we are spiritual newborns … or 4^th graders. We could be sixty but a babe in Christ. Sometimes we want our spiritual understanding to match our earthly understanding, but that’s not how the kingdom of God works. Getting to know God is a process of the heart.

If a woman has a genuine heart and faith, she will know God, but her knowledge will not all come tomorrow. God does not dump the whole load on us at once. Many things that we wonder about today we may understand in ten years.

Knowledge of God builds upon itself. No one teaches calculus to a five year old. He would not be ready. In the same way, God reserves His advanced lessons for people who are spiritually ready for them. The process never ends. Sometimes our confusion about God is nothing more than a three year old being confused about physics.

If you want to learn about God, your heart must grow. But sometimes a heart never grows. Stagnant hearts bring stagnant knowledge of God, and a person can stagnate at any stage of maturity. A 70-year-old woman may know less of God than a six-year-old girl because the heart of the six-year-old may be spiritually more mature. Heart maturity and age are not necessarily related. Good hearts will progress. Bad ones won’t.

I have calmed and quieted my soul, like a weaned child with its mother; like a weaned child is my soul within me.  (Ps 131:2)

Lord, still my soul, and let me focus on Christ. 

Mazda’s slogan captures well 21^st century western culture: zoom, zoom.   Mazda uses the slogan to market its cars, but the marketing works because it strikes at a value within western culture. We are a high tech, fast paced, information-bombarded people. We are here and there and hardly have time to breathe before we are back here again. We are a sensual people, perhaps more so than any other time in history. The pursuit of earthly pleasure is our specialty. We have at our fingertips more entertainment, information, convenience, and speed than any other period of history.  We have everything the world could want … except contentment.

We are too busy for God. We have so much, but we don’t seem to have time.  God says, “Be still and know that I am God.” David said that he stilled and quieted his soul. It was the custom of Jesus to be alone with God and pray. He spent 40 days in the desert with God, Moses 40 days on the mount, Daniel three weeks in prayer. All of this is foreign to us. We struggle to get twenty minutes in the morning. We are afraid to be still. Sometimes we cannot go more than a half hour without looking at our phone or turning on the news or the radio. Our culture has trained us to have stimulus, but constant stimulus diverts our attention from God. We are like a teenager who cannot hear her father because the music is so loud or because she is texting on her phone. We are like a husband who doesn’t know his wife because, well, he doesn’t have time for her. He has other things to do. One day God will say to us, “You had other things to do.”

We are proud of our technology, our knowledge, our pace, our ways. People often talk about how busy they are in a way that suggests that they are doing something important because they are busy. But sometimes all of our “important” busyness merely prevents us from the real importance of knowing God. We don’t know Him … partly because we are too busy. We have the equipment for knowing much more of God than we do but choose instead to listen to earth. We often cannot hear God through the babble of life. God will not shout; and if we refuse to turn down the noise, we will never hear Him. This is a great problem in our ability to know God.