For the Glory of God

One of my daily routines is to do my best to remind the person I look at in the mirror every morning and say, “you don’t deserve to do what you get to do.” I don’t think that is some sort of pseudo-humility or depraved lack of self-worth – but the result of understanding the power of grace.

For a number of years I taught a class at Point titled “Life and Literature of Paul.” It was a survey of sorts of both the great apostle’s life and his epistles. I enjoyed teaching that class and decided somewhere along the way I wanted to figure out what made Paul the person he was.

I don’t know that I fully figured all of that out, but clearly his personality contributed to the intensity of his faith and mission. He no doubt benefited from two great educational experiences – in Tarsus as a Roman citizen and in Jerusalem with Gamaliel. But I don’t think either of those ideas fully explain Paul. What I think really added to creating the person we meet in the New Testament is that Paul knew he actually deserved to go to hell – but by the grace of God he wasn’t. From that he was determined to tell every person he met about Jesus and the good news.

It was that reality that led him to be willing to go to jail for the sake of Gentiles (Ephesians 3:1) or to sit down with a group of God-worshipping Gentile women alongside a river outside the city gates of Philippi and have a conversation about Jesus that led to a kingdom outpost being established. (Acts 16:11-15). Such stories can be found all over the place in Acts and Paul’s epistles.

All of that makes me think that the modus operandi for his life might have been something like what he says in Romans 15:7. “Therefore welcome one another as Christ has welcomed you, for the glory of God.” (ESV) The word welcome in this verse was often used in the sense of to receive someone into your home or circle of acquaintance. 

I say all of this to make this point – the tension in our culture right now is powerful testimony of our desperate need for the good news of Jesus that calls us to welcome one another as Christ has welcomed us. The world into which those words were first spoken made nearly absolute judgments about others based on gender, group, or geography. Paul’s words (see Galatians 3:28 for example) and his actions (go back to Acts 16) declare that in Christ, we set aside gender, group, and geography as identifiers of one’s worth and welcome each other.

What we saw last weekend in Charlottesville is paradigmatic of our desperate circumstances. Instead of “welcoming another as Christ has welcomed us” we have decided to play a game of “they did it to me so I get to do it to them.” That, with an unhealthy dose of “my way or the high way” is a recipe for cultural meltdown. 

Without the reconciling power of the gospel we are stuck in a conundrum of pushing and shoving; violent behavior; inept explanations; demands for personal preferences; and who knows what else that will always end in more of the same. 

In Martin Luther King, Jr.’s Letter from Birmingham Jail, he prophetically reminds the church of the consequences of doing nothing. “So here we are moving toward the exit of the twentieth century with a religious community largely adjusted to the status quo, standing as a taillight behind other community agencies rather than a headlight leading men to higher levels of justice.” 

I know the Charlottesville tragedy is complicated and involves multiple levels of failure. The same can be said for the president’s remarks since that time. The idea of superiority based on race is so antithetical to biblical testimony that it causes me to wonder how people totally miss the testimony of creation and Scripture. (Ps. 19) No wonder the “words of their mouths and meditations of their hearts” are so far from “acceptable to God.” 

Paul wasn’t able to sit down with a bunch of Gentile women and have a conversation about Jesus because he attended a Dale Carnegie seminar on winning friends or thought it was time for Jews and Gentiles to start getting along better.

That happened because of the reconciling power of the Gospel of Jesus Christ and he knew if that gospel had power to change him, the whole world could be changed.

By the way – Paul is very comfortable with letting the government do its job. (Romans 13) But he doesn’t think the government can do the gospel’s job. In King’s language – he thought the church ought to be headlights not tail lights. We should pray that our government will do its job, but dare not think it can actually genuinely fix the problem. 

It is worth noting that he ends that Romans 15:7 verse with this phrase “for the glory of God.” When, through the reconciling power of the gospel the church creates welcoming communities of believers all over the place – God is glorified. God made us to be “one.” Because we couldn’t on our own, He sent Jesus. When we tell that story and it happens, God is glorified. 

Headlights.

Not taillights. 

 

It’s time to decide which we will be!

Grace Is Not For The Timid

I’ve recently been studying Isaiah 55. In bringing together much of what the great prophet has been saying, Isaiah reminds us that “everyone” can come to the party God has been planning since Adam and Eve first left Eden. At this party, you can “buy” milk, wine, and water without a dime to your name. Yet, Isaiah seems compelled to remind us of the danger of “spending your money for that which is not bread, and your labor for that which does not satisfy.” (55:2)

Those words remind me of what Paul says in Colossians 2. “If with Christ you died to the elemental spirits of the world, why, as if you were still alive in the world, do you submit to regulations – ‘Do not handle, Do not taste, Do not touch’ (referring t things that all perish as they are used) – according to human precepts and teachings? These have indeed an appearance of wisdom in promoting self-made religion and asceticism and severity to the body, but they are of no value in stopping the indulgence of the flesh.” (Colossians 2:20-23, ESV)

For many years, one of my personal convictions has been “rules can only monitor behavior; principles can transform character.”  I’m pretty sure the first time I said that was in a chapel sermon at what was then Atlanta Christian College in the early 1980s. The point was not that you don’t sometimes need rules – but that to the extent you depend on rules, you are just marking time, not transforming the world for Christ. 

Yet, what I sometimes refer to as “the civic Jesus” and “the civic church” seem determined to depend on rules to change our culture. As Isaiah warned, there is great danger in “spending your money for that which is not bread, and your labor for that which does not satisfy.” Paul would call what I call the civic Jesus and his civic church “self-made religion and asceticism and severity to the body.” But he would remind us that such approaches “are of no value” – or as Isaiah warned, make us guilty investing in that which ultimately cannot satisfy.

On the day that I stood up in front of a group of believers and confessed Jesus as Christ and Lord, I made a covenant with God that I would allow the Jesus story to be the structural focus of my life. This is the real Jesus, mind you, not the civic one. It is the Jesus who declared that if I could figure out what it means to love God and to love my neighbor, I would have kept the whole law! That’s what covenants do. 

I was an immature young boy at that point, and I’m confident my parents had some “rules” that I had to follow – though I don’t remember much of a list. But what I do remember growing up, from my parents and other extended family members, is watching people whose lives had been transformed by the Jesus story. The fact that I probably had a rule or two about when to go to bed, what vegetables you have to at least taste if not eat, etc. was never as important as the Christ-like principles I saw in life on a daily basis.

When the church is comfortable substituting “monitoring behavior” for “transforming character” it has become what the churches in Galatia must have become that prompted the rather intense epistle we call Galatians. Civic Jesus is never a valid substitute for the real One!

I’m not suggesting, by the way, that the gospel is a kind of anarchist faith. In one way or the other, I’ve been involved in the lives of college students most of my adult life. I have spent weeks in Christian camps. I’ve been married to the same person almost 44 years and together we have raised two daughters who turned out pretty well according to anyone who knows them. Sometimes you have to monitor behavior before you can get to the transformation of character. 

Beyond those sorts of things, I drive nearly 60 miles to work and 60 miles back almost every day. There are some “rules of the road” that are important. Georgia has rules about who can and cannot buy alcohol and tobacco. There are all sorts of rules about drugs in Georgia. Doctors and lawyers, bankers and insurance agents, hair stylists and manicurists, - any “profession” actually – has to be licensed in Georgia and that means “following some rules.” 

But, if the only reason you trust the doctor who takes care of your health issues is because Georgia has rules he or she must follow, you might want to think about getting a new doctor!

Paul makes it pretty clear in Romans 13 that the state gets to do its job. So I’m fine with the state doing its job – though its tendencies to over-do its job is more than obvious in most circumstances. But he also encourages his readers in Romans “to stay under the radar” of the government’s interest. Respect the role of government and pay your taxes. 

But the church is a different story! As followers of Jesus, we have made a covenant with Him to tell a counter-intuitive narrative in our culture in ways that can transform a world without hope into hope-filled kingdom outposts where King Jesus rules and simply asks us to love God and love our neighbor. We tell that story sometimes in words, but all the time in modeling the principles that have transformed our lives. 

Growing spiritually is a process, not an event, and that means that there were times in our lives – for some maybe now – when we needed some rules to help shape us. However we can’t be content to simply bask in the glory of “there’s a rule against that” or “we’re protecting the gospel with this” and think that means we are reaching maturity.

The point of all of this is simple: grace is not for the timid!

Sojourners

My “task reminder” on my Smart Phone reminds me at 9:00 a.m. that I have an appointment to read Scripture. Most days, by the time it pops up on my screen, I’ve already read that day’s Scripture. Right now I am reading Deuteronomy, and will soon finish reading the Torah – something I try to do at least once every year.

One of the things I’ve learned over many years of disciplined Bible reading is that if you don’t want your approach to life challenged, don’t read the Bible. I would be quick to add that is true for the Old Testament as well as the New – while recognizing the distinction between the two covenants. But the character of God is embedded all over the Hebrew scripture, and I’m pretty sure the character of God is unchanging!

Very early this morning, before the sun was even up, I did my reading for today. (If it helps, “today” is Wednesday, 26 July 2017.) I have also discovered that the earlier I do my Bible reading, the more impact it tends to have on my behavior! 

Sometimes we are far too quick to assume that love and law are mutually exclusive of each other. In that spirit it is easy to develop an approach to life where we define love and that definition seldom if ever challenges our preferences. If that is true of you, reading Deuteronomy is going to be discomforting.

In chapters ten and eleven, Moses is reminding Israel that the blessing of being the chosen people of God to whom the Law was given carries with it huge responsibilities.   None of his words in these chapters seem more relevant to me than what he says in 10:18, 19: “He (God) executes justice for the fatherless and the widow, and loves the sojourner, giving him food and clothing. Love the sojourner, therefore, for you were sojourners in the land of Egypt.” (ESV)

What stuns me about those words is that they were said to Israel at a time in the history of God’s relationship with humankind that the idea of separation was pretty important. The moral code of the law combined with an ethic focused on loving God and loving neighbor simply makes it impossible for even Israel, the chosen of God, to not care about the sojourners. Their history reminds them that too were sojourners.

We live in a world of sojourners. Some have described the Syrian refugee crisis as the most serious refugee crisis since World War II. By the way, some of you reading this might remember that in the earliest days of the EES ministry in Tuebingen, Earl and OttieMearl Stuckenbruck took care of lots of sojourners in the aftermath of  WWII coming to an end in Germany.

Earlier this week, the news was filled with stories about sojourners left in a trailer in San Antonio, Texas where outdoor temperatures were above 100. When they were finally discovered, ten were dead, twenty taken to hospitals in critical condition, and no one knows for sure how many simply ran away from the tragedy. 

Several years ago two of the Lost Boys of the Sudan became students at Point University. Both graduated and are serving God in significant ways today. Talk about sojourners!

The world if filled with sojourners. 

Moses gives some great advice to Israel on behalf of God. To summarize in my own words, it might sound something like “Don’t use the Law as an excuse for not living in the character of God.” 

In a world filled with sojourners and where some of the loudest anti-sojourner voices seem to come from people who call themselves followers of Jesus, we might do well to read Deuteronomy!