First, a summary of what I said: if we get love wrong by attempting to "balance" God's ultimate revelation in Christ with other supposed revelations, divine characteristics or things that seem to compete with it (wrath, judgment and so on), then the gospel will become an evaluative tool, a framework for critical evaluation, a line of demarcation, a moral code or a list of “do’s” and “don’ts”. The gospel will become a line separating the “ins” from the “outs”. The glorious gift will become an impossible standard for self-evaluation, a sadistic means by which we assess whether we’re doing it right or doing it wrong, and we’ll judge everyone else by the same criteria. I said that, as you Pastor, if that's what you're getting out of your bible, then I'm taking your bible away from you because you're missing the point of it, and actually doing more harm than good.
The point of confusion was, since I'd also used passages FROM THE BIBLE in support of my assertion that Jesus is the face of God, the place where all the fullness of deity dwells, the divine Word of God and the revelation that supercedes all previous revelations, how would the person who's missing the point know to think anything differently? It's a good point. I caught myself in a rhetorical catch-22. So, for the sake of clarity, I'd never actually demand that you turn in your bible. What I'm saying is, you might be missing the point of it. Here's why:
Consider the Nile River. Though we usually think about it as an Egyptian body of water, it actually winds its way through nine countries, covering about 4,200 miles from its headwaters at Lake Victoria. The Nile has been one of the centers of civilization since the dawn of recorded history, the life-source of literally billions and billions of people and animals over the last 16,000 years or so. Now, let's say you take a billion tons of arsenic and dump it into Lake Victoria. It stands to reason that absolutely everything downriver, all the way to the Nile Delta in the Mediterranean Sea will probably die. In other words, if you poison the headwaters, everything else is screwed up.
I'm not saying that God is a fluffy marshmallow of love, who cares nothing for us except that we be "happy", whatever that means. I'm not saying that God's reaction to anything and everything we do is approval and joyous acceptance. That would not be love in any meaningful sense of the word; it would be the opposite, actually: apathy. God cannot be said to "love" us while caring nothing for our character or well-being. Conversely we cannot claim to love him while at the same time taking not the slightest notice of anything he says. Please...let's not get stuck on extremes here.
What I am saying is that we musn't follow rules and think that it's the same as loving God. It absolutely isn't. One can follow every single rule in the bible and never actually know or love God for a second (Matthew 25). On the other hand, we musn't engage in a lebertarian free-for-all while calling it "freedom" either. They are not the same thing at all. Don't unecessarily polarize the issue. Don't make it about "heaven" or "hell". Make it about God and what he has actually done in the finished work of the cross. When divinity wants to solve the issue of rebellion it looks like love. When God, who could do anything any way he wanted, wants to address the problem of sin it looks like forgiveness. When there is an infinit price to pay, our God, who has all the resources available in the universe, pays it on our behalf.
What overcomes a multitude of sins? LOVE. (1 Peter 4:8).
What casts out fear of judgment? PERFECT LOVE (1 John 4:18).
Why do have a hope that will never disappoint? Because God has poured LOVE into our hearts (Romans 5:5).
What does it mean to be "prefect" as God is perfect? LOVING COMPREHENSIVELY like he does (Matthew 5:43-48).
What triumphs over judgment? MERCY (James 2:13).
What are we to be rooted and established in? LOVE (Ephesians 3:17b).
What did God do when we were his enemies? He LOVED us in Christ (Romans 5:8).
How do we know that we've passed from life to death? We LOVE one another (1 John 4:14).
Why would God suffer for us? Because he LOVES everything he's created (John 3:16).
What is the ONE ingredient that makes spiritual gifts worth anything? LOVE (1 Corinthians 13).
What is Jesus commandment to us, equated with loving God? LOVING ONE ANOTHER (John 15:17, Matthew 22:37-39).
Love is the headwater from which flows everything else. Wrath, judgment, mercy and justice are all rivers fed by love. We pollute the headwater of love by trying to "balance" it with those other things (as though those things were anything other than expressions of love). Mercy without love becomes and arrogant and condescending "reaching down" instead of "reaching out". Justice is self-serving sectarianism without love. Wrath and judgment divorced from love are evil in the extreme. Trying to follow God without being rooted and established in love, which is the revelation of Christ in our hearts, is an exercise of empty rule-keeping and cruel, critical evaluation of self and others. It's as far removed from the point of the gospel as could possibly be.
I'll retract part of what I said yesterday. Don't put your bibles down...yet. Think about what you're doing with them though. Don't for a moment think that the enemy can't get at you from the pages of your bible. If when you read your bible you come away feeling like you're doing everything wrong, STOP. You don't have the LOVE part right yet. You don't understand yet the way God loves you, that everything he has done, is doing now and will do is motivated by love that can never stop while God remains God. Reconciliation, repentance, regeneration and restoration are all the result of drowning yourself in the headwaters of LOVE.
My job as your Pastor may be to hold your head under the water a little longer.
No comments:
Post a Comment