Upside Down Commands

Like other elements of society, the Church follows trends, even fads. They might show themselves in worship styles or catch phrases (how many times have I heard a preacher “unpack” a passage of Scripture? ) Those are certainly harmless. Less so, however, are the shifting points of emphasis which seem to change with the winds of preference.

One such shift has been toward creating “seeker friendly” (also a catch phrase) churches, which, in my opinion, seem to miss the point of believers assembling themselves together weekly. Then too, of late there’s been a noticeable increase in the attention churches are giving to service. No longer do we want to sit on the sidelines, but we are admonished to “be the hands and feet of Jesus” in our community.

And we don’t stop with admonishing individuals. We are organizing programs and partnering with para-church organizations to feed children, care for orphans, tutor those struggling with literacy, provide clothes for the needy, beds for the homeless, medical and dental care for the poor.

In short, we’ve left the comfortable pews behind and have made a determined effort to charge out into the highways and byways to reach the unreached through our good deeds.

“About time,” some say. The church in America has been trying for far too long to create a safe, wholesome place where our needs are met and our sensibilities aren’t offended. We’re overdue for a little boat rocking. In fact, the whole thing needs to be turned upside down.

There’s a lot of truth in that position, which, I’m discovering, is the place where a lot of error starts. Just as in every other area, we must look at Scripture and take our lead from God, not from what sounds good, and certainly not from what is currently trendy in the church.

So what does God think about caring for the poor and orphaned and widows? He’s all for it!

Problem solved? Not so fast.

There’s something He’s even more all for. He’s all for us loving Him. That’s the first commandment, the greatest one, according to Jesus. We are to love the Lord our God with all our heart, soul, mind, and strength.

Then and only then are we to love our neighbor as ourselves. It seems to me we are in the process of flipping the order of the two commands, as if doing for others is more important than loving God.

Over and over the people of Israel were admonished to love God or fear Him, then to obey and serve.

Now, Israel, what does the LORD your God require from you, but to fear the LORD your God, to walk in all His ways and love Him, and to serve the LORD your God with all your heart and with all your soul (Deut. 10:12).

So here’s the critical point. It is in loving God that we will genuinely be concerned for serving others. It won’t be a passing fancy or a program that we’ll swap out for another one later on down the road.

No, if we love God with our whole being, we will want what He wants, go where He sends, do what He says. Loving Him seems like the only sure way we will end up loving our neighbor self-sacrificially. After all, these are the people the One we love passionately came to save. Why wouldn’t we in turn love them too? Isn’t that the way it works when two people love each other—they take on each other’s interests and passions. They pay attention to what they had never cared about before.

So, sure, it’s time the church in America became less self-satisfied and self-centered. It’s time we stopped loving ourselves more than we love God. But the answer isn’t to try to make ourselves love other people more than we love ourselves. That might be an admirable goal, but it has the commands Jesus enumerated upside down. Unless we do the first, we won’t be doing the second either—not the way we could or should. We’ll simply be trending.

Reposted from Nov. 2011

Perfect People Aren’t Saved

Along with an erroneous view of the Bible, some people also have misconceptions about salvation. One of the most common is that it’s the good people that come to Christ–the people who like church and gospel music, who think a good time means going to a prayer meeting. Those are the people that become Christians.

Wrong.

For one thing, there are no “good people.” If someone is devoted to religious expression but has not believed the claims of Jesus Christ, he’s using his religion to get something he wants. In other words, religious expression can be an evidence of our selfishness, our desire to manipulate–either other people or even God Himself.

Good people aren’t saved. Sinners are saved. The lost are found, the broken are healed, those at the bottom of the pit are rescued. Jesus Himself said, “It is not those who are healthy who need a physician, but those who are sick” (Matt 9:12b). In context it’s clear he was referring to messed up people–”tax collectors and sinners.”

Even today, I think some Christians have the idea that a person needs to clean up a bit before coming to Christ. Jesus seems to say the opposite. He first encountered people where they were at, and knowing Him then brought about change. In some instances, such as His conversation with the woman caught in adultery, He told her to sin no more. In other instances, such as with Zaccheus, the sinner himself volunteered to clean up his act after his encounter with Jesus.

Either way, Jesus saves sinners, not because they get rid of sin but because they can’t get rid of sin and they know it. They repent but it is Jesus who takes away the sin of the world. It is His Spirit that gives each sinner the desire to live in newness of life.

By our nature, none of us wants to worship God and serve Him. We want to worship ourselves and serve ourselves. We do unto others so that they will do unto us. In other words, we largely look at relationships as trade-offs. I’ll scratch your back if you scratch mine. And woe to the person who doesn’t follow through on his promise. Revenge awaits! Justified revenge, because people are supposed to come through for me (even though I don’t always come through for them).

The interesting thing is, those who think they are good don’t see any need for God. Why would they? They don’t think they need saving.

So it’s ironic that people falsely think good people come to Christ. People good in their own eyes are too busy with their perfectionistic ways to pay attention to what Christ is all about. They are making sure that they recycle, give to the charity of the month, teach their children to be tolerant of all lifestyles, and do their fifty percent of what it takes to have a good marriage (thank you Dr. Phil).

Don’t get me wrong. When a person comes to Christ, he changes. A thief like Zaccheus doesn’t want to keep stealing. Just the opposite. He has a passion for making right the wrongs he’s done. But his new life is a result of his relationship with Christ, not a cause of it.

He doesn’t come to Christ because he stopped stealing. He stops stealing because he came to Christ.

We Christians don’t really understand this new life we experience. We’d like all the old desires to be gone and for some people, they are. For others, it’s a fight to the death, or so it seems. The old desires seem to raise their ugly heads at the least opportune times. Some people experience gradual and constant improvement. What they used to do, they hardly do any more. What they want to do to please Jesus, they find delights them now, too.

The process, we’re told, is sanctification–growing up into our salvation, becoming like Jesus through the supernatural transformation of His Spirit. Most of us think it’s a long process that doesn’t show a lot of results to most of those who are close enough to us to see our warts.

And because we fall down so often, because lots of people think only the good come to Jesus, we give Christ’s name a bad reputation–because clearly, Christians sin. When we think about it, it grieves our hearts because we’re dragging Jesus’s name into the mud. We’re letting people think poorly of our Savior because we wallow in the sins we say He saved us from.

Christians aren’t good people. We’re saved people, and it’s important that we let others see who we are: a people who have received mercy, who have been pardoned, redeemed, cleansed, forgiven, and who one day, when we see Jesus face to face, will be like Him. It’s just that we’re not there yet.

Jews And Jesus

Some months before the release of Mel Gibson’s The Passion Of The Christ, I began to hear that the Jewish community had serious concerns about the film. It seems they feared it would spark a new era of anti-Semitism.

I was astounded. I had no idea that “Christians” had been credited with instigating hate against Jews. After all, I grew up in a Judeo-Christian culture. I only knew of shared values and a determined stand against the Holocaust.

I learned that some “Christians” justified hating Jews because they had killed Jesus. It’s such an ignorant idea, I thought it had to be someone’s sick joke. But no, apparently this idea has a basis in history: some people waving the banner of Christianity turned against Jews because of the crucifixion.

In some ways, of course, the Jewish religious leaders responsible for convicting Jesus brought the accusation on their people when they told Pilate, who literally washed his hands of Jesus, that His blood would be on their heads and on their children’s heads (Matthew 27:25). But I always assumed that was either verbiage or calling down God’s judgment. I never imagined it to be an acknowledgment that would justify throughout history, profound racial persecution.

The idea of holding the entire Jewish race responsible for Christ’s crucifixion is ludicrous, and anyone following Him in truth would know this. First, Jesus Himself is Jewish. Not only was His mother a Jew, but He Himself said He was the fulfillment of the Law. That would be the Jewish law, given to Jews by God who chose the Jews to be His people–”the apple of His eye.”

Second, all the first Christians were Jews! Peter was a Jew, and so was Mary Magdalene, Salome, Stephen, Martha, Paul, Barnabas, Euodia, James, Jude, Synteca, Matthew, and countless others. A corollary to this point is that the vast majority of people in the Old Testament are also Jews.

Third, Jesus Himself called on God to forgive those who crucified Him. Did He mean only the Roman soldiers? There’s nothing to indicate Jesus intended such a limited understanding.

The greatest reason might be that the Christian understands he has been forgiven because of Jesus’s death on the cross. Without that sacrifice, we’d still be in our sins. If anything, we could see those responsible for His crucifixion as doing us a favor.

But the fact is, Jesus rose from the dead! He is alive today. So what’s the point of carrying a grudge against people, even if we did think they were responsible, when the act has been “undone”?

Besides, Jesus Himself said that no one was taking His life. He was laying it down. How can a people group be held accountable for that?

Finally, Scripture clearly indicates that Christ bridges racial divides. For example, Paul said in Colossians “there is no distinction between Greek and Jew, circumcised and uncircumcised, barbarian, Scythian, slave and freeman, but Christ is all, and in all” (3:11). His Church–His family–consists of people from every tribe and tongue, including Jews.

The idea that Christians are against Jews as a people group is laughable. That some people want to lay that charge at the feet of Christians shows two things.

First, there are people calling themselves Christians who are lying. They aren’t following Christ, don’t believe in Him, and aren’t part of His Church. They are the proverbial wolves in sheep’s clothing. They are the weeds Jesus talked about in one of His parables, allowed to grow up alongside the wheat, that will be sorted out and burned up at the harvest.

In conjunction with these pretenders are those outside the Church who accuse Christians of hating Jews. They are speaking in ignorance of the facts, perhaps because they’ve listened to the pretenders instead of the historical record.

Have there been Christian bigots?

Sadly, yes. Like any other sin, Christians are susceptible to disobedience of God’s law and we are subject to our own lack of understanding. Hence, as hard as it is for me to understand, a Christian might wrongly accuse the entire Jewish race of killing Jesus, and he might even disobey God’s command to love enemies. But it’s a leap to say that Christians as a people hate Jews. In fact, such a leap is just as heinous as the one a pretender makes in arriving at the idea that Jews are responsible for Christ’s death.

The real problem is the generalization. Did some Jews falsely accuse Jesus and condemn Him? Yes. Does that mean that all Jews are guilty of a heinous crime and deserving of punishment? Not at all. Do some Christians act out of prejudice? I wish it weren’t true, but yes. Does that mean all Christians endorse such and share the responsibility for those acts? Not at all.

How is it that we have come to paint people groups as if they believe and act in concert, or as if they ought to? One of the beautiful things about the Church is God’s clear instruction that we are not all the same and yet that we are all important. My role, my gift given for the building up of the Church, is different from someone else’s. Scripture makes the analogy with the body. I may not be a foot, but that’s OK. What would the body be like if we were all feet?

Sin, of course, is a different matter. If a person in the church is a bigot, he ought to receive Church discipline–something that has been seriously watered down over the years. But that’s another whole blog post.

A Christian Is . . .

Some people are understandably confused about what defines a Christian. And why wouldn’t they be? After all, there are more and more people claiming to be Christians while holding views that have little to do with what Christ actually said and did. There have been various visitors here at A Christian Worldview of Fiction who claim to be Christians but who say all manner of things inconsistent with what Jesus said.

What I’ve recently learned, however, is that this situation is not unique to Christians. I had occasion to ask someone in a different faith community if they ever encountered atheists, and the response was, yes, within our faith community.

Say what?

The individual went on to explain that there are people in the community purely because of the culture, the tradition, but there is no actual faith.

That answer sounded all too familiar. Any number of people in the US identify as “Christian” and yet they believe very little when it comes to the essentials of Christianity. Others treat Christianity as pot luck–pick what you like best, and leave the rest.

What are the essentials that actually define a Christian, and how can they be determined since so many people who believe widely diverse ideas put themselves in the category of Christ follower?

The easiest answer is to look at the historical creeds, or sets of beliefs, ascribed to by the church from early on. In his first letter to the church in Corinth, the Apostle Paul wrote the most basic list of things he called “of first importance”:

For I delivered to you as of first importance what I also received, that Christ died for our sins according to the Scriptures, and that He was buried, and that He was raised on the third day according to the Scriptures (1 Cor 15:3-4).

From this, it’s clear the Scriptures are the touchstone of truth, Christ died for our sins, and He was buried and raised the third day, which means He is alive.

Two specific extra-biblical creeds come to mind that add to this list of basics—the Nicene Creed and the Apostles’ Creed. The former came out of a council held at Nicaena by Christian leaders in 325. The latter also dates from the fourth century and is traditionally associated with the twelve apostles. These two statements enumerate the core beliefs of anyone who is a Christian.

Other documents have come to the forefront adding to these basics, especially after the Protestant Reformation. Some of these, such as the Westminster Confession of Faith and the Baptist Confession of Faith, written in the seventeenth century by Puritan leaders, include things not widely believed today. Yet key points covered in these confessions represent essentials for Protestants—specifically sola scriptura and sola fide.

The first of these, Scripture alone, communicates the idea that the Bible contains all knowledge necessary for salvation and holiness. The second, by faith alone, declares God’s work of justification, which pays for sin, to be a free gift, in no way earned by works but simply believed by faith.

Christians disagree on a lot of things, and some of those seem important to us, but they don’t change the fact that we are saved by God’s grace, not by our own works. That’s still at the core of the Christian faith. We know this, as Paul said, by what has been written for our benefit. For Paul that meant the Prophets recorded in what we now refer to as the Old Testament. But as early as the first century, Peter equated Paul’s words with Scripture:

just as also our beloved brother Paul, according to the wisdom given him, wrote to you, as also in all his letters, speaking in them of these things, in which are some things hard to understand, which the untaught and unstable distort, as they do also the rest of the Scriptures, to their own destruction. (2 Peter 3:15-16 – emphasis mine)

From that verse, and from what Jude said and various passages Paul wrote, it’s clear that false teaching grew up right along side the truth. From the beginning of Christianity, then, there’s been a need to discern what is truth and what is error.

Lots of people have claimed to have a newer version of the truth or a sure word from God. However there are a couple things that make it easy to identify those as false: first, they contradict something in the Scriptures Paul and Peter referred to. Second, they elevate something or someone to a position above God’s Word.

For example, the Mormons claim Joseph Smith received a later revelation from God. Never mind all the problems associated with his claims, we know the work is false because it elevates itself above Scripture and in places its content contradicts Scripture.

No surprise, then, that the Bible itself has been under heavy attack for the last century or so. No wonder there’s growing confusion about who a Christian actually is.

Are Christians Not Very Bright?

I understand when political types attack their opponents by stating or implying they aren’t very bright. It’s a way of undermining public confidence in the person, a la Vice President Dan Quayle and Alaska Governor Sarah Palin. Hence, as a presidential candidate President Bush was vilified because he earned a C in college, or maybe had a C average at one point–I don’t recall the precise details. Never mind that the college happened to be Yale and most of the people in the US couldn’t even get into that school, never mind pass a single course.

The troubling thing is, that strategy seems to be spreading from politicians to evangelical Christians. And worse, evangelical Christians seem to be agreeing with the idea that evangelical Christians aren’t very bright. (Which begs the question: should we believe someone who isn’t very bright when he says he isn’t very bright? ) For example, in “Lots of Stupid Christians,” Dr. Coyle Neal says, “The example of Fundamentalism shows us one possible reason there are so few evangelical intellectuals.”

The distressing thing here is that “so few evangelical intellectuals” is treated as a given. But where are the data supporting such a statement?

And who defines “intellectual”? Are only PhD’s in philosophy considered intellectual?

What’s particularly galling to me is the complete dismissal of theologians as part of the intellectual community. I suspect atheists such as Richard Dawkins, Stephen Hawking, and the late Christopher Hitchens would be included on a list of intellectuals, but why not men like William Craig Lane, Ravi Zacharias, and Alister McGrath who debate those atheists?

Why not John Piper or R.C. Sproul, Kevin DeYoung or Francis Chan who study Scripture and look at culture through the lens of theology? Why wasn’t the late Professor Howard Hendricks or Dr. Clyde Cook considered an “intellectual”? Because they spent their time in seminaries and Christian universities?

And what about the likes of John MacArthur or Charles Swindoll, men who influenced evangelical Christianity a great deal these past forty years–are they not intellectual enough to be counted as intellectuals?

Then there are all the people living in towns and villages in Asia or Africa, speaking multiple languages, often translating from one to the other, understanding multiple cultures, and bringing a global view of God’s word to their work–are they not intellectuals because they don’t hob-nob with the rich and famous, they don’t lunch with politicians and media types?

If intellectuals must publish in a set of elite journals and expound on irrelevant arguments which the Apostle Paul saw as worthless, then sure, I’ll agree, there aren’t very many evangelical intellectuals. But really, if we’re talking about people who can speak to the cosmic issues of life, who know and understand how to frame an apologetic for the Christian faith, then thankfully, all these naysayers are wrong. The evangelical Christian intelligentsia is alive and well, thank you very much.

The Prevalence of the Christian Worldview

Some in the US would say the heart of the nation was broken in Sandy Hook when a gunman opened fire on a classroom of kindergartners. That response is only one instance of many that shows the values of our society.

Here in SoCal, the public rose with one voice to demand justice for a homeless man, mentally challenged, who was beaten to death by police officers. Despite the fact that our definitions have become far too murky, we stand against “cruel and unusual punishment.” We decry gang members gunning down a beloved grandmother or the drunk driver who cripples the little old man on his way home. Hospitals pledge never to turn away a sick child, and donors make that promise good. Our government has passed laws to provide the disabled with access to the same venues as everyone else.

Why? Why would we care about the poor, the sick, the weak, the needy? Because we have a Christian worldview.

By “we” I mean Western culture—the places in the world where Christianity took hold for hundreds of years. Most certainly, we can’t claim to have done Church right. The Dark Ages were called “dark” for a reason. The Reformation happened because there was a need in the Church for reform. People continued to miss what Jesus was about and tried to set up His kingdom on earth using human resources and schemes.

In addition, we are now living in the post-Christian era of Western society. I won’t say “a post-Christian world,” because as it happens, Christianity is spreading rapidly in places where it once was little more than an afterthought.

What, then, am I going on about?

The message of Jesus Christ changed who we in the West are as a people, as a society, as a culture. Love your enemy, forgive those who misuse you, becomes a creed about how to treat prisoners of war, and policy about not discriminating. Give a cup of cold water to the thirsty becomes a Salvation Army of people on a Rescue Mission to provide for the hungry and hurting and hopeless.

And not just Christians do these things, to the degree that some believe the Government should actually step in to insure that no one in America goes hungry or lacks health care or grows old with no means of support. We believe in what Jesus taught, even though many, if not most, have stopped believing in Jesus.

The sad thing is, the Western world seems oblivious to the fact that our core values have come from what Jesus Christ said. And because we’ve lost the basis for these values, it’s only a matter of time before our culture starts looking more and more like the rest of the world (unless, of course, the rest of the world becomes more and more infused with a Christian worldview).

Tolerance slips to tolerance of only those who think like us. Health care applies only to those who don’t inconvenience the rest of us. Forgiveness is supplanted by revenge.

But for now, when those who care little for God rally to provide for widows of police officers slain in the line of duty or work to stop human trafficking or give to a project to stop AIDS in Africa, we’re witnessing the effects of living in a country shaped by a Christian worldview.

Because the nations in the West are unique.

The way we look at the world is still marked by the revolutionary way Jesus lived and by the Power that inflamed His followers, enabling them to go and do likewise.

A Look At The “Nicer Than God” Position

Atheists are eager to dismantle the framework of Christianity and to deconstruct the Bible. Sadly, it seems some in the self-styled “Progressive Christians” crowd aren’t far behind.

One point in particular has come through in various on-line discussions by those who don’t believe in God as He revealed Himself in the Bible–the God of the Old Testament is too wrathful, too vengeful to really be God. My God wouldn’t do that or say that, is a statement I’ve seen more than once.

Often a verse in Psalm 137 gets pulled out as evidence that God is too horrible to worship or that the Bible is inconsistent and can’t possibly be taken at face value or that God had to have repented of such a heinous attitude because it isn’t in line with how He showed Himself through Jesus in the New Testament.

In all honesty, the verse is horrible. Writing about the Babylonians who took Judah into captivity and razed the temple and the walls of Jerusalem and its homes and businesses, the psalmist said

O daughter of Babylon, you devastated one,
How blessed will be the one who repays you
With the recompense with which you have repaid us.
How blessed will be the one who seizes and dashes your little ones
Against the rock. (Psalm 137:8-9)

Shocking!

That last verse in particular seems out of place in a book centered on God’s work of reconciliation and forgiveness achieved through Jesus.

As I’ve pondered this Psalm and particularly verse nine, a couple things have come to mind. First, I am reminded of some of the heinous things that came to light after 9/11–people parading through the streets of cities in the Middle East, cheering the deaths of several thousand people they considered the enemy; beheadings; hundreds upon hundreds of people unassociated with fighting, blown up as they went about living life; rulers firing upon their own people; hundreds of bodies discovered in mass graves.

All these rather gruesome modern day events make it clear that nothing has changed in the law of revenge in the Middle East from the time of the Old Testament.

Back then, God initiated the “eye for an eye” principle–one capable of stopping blood feuds before they got started. Particularly, God said sons weren’t to die to pay for the sins of their father. Such laws were necessary because people held grudges and sought to get even when they’d been wronged.

Today, nearly seventy years after the Jewish state came into being, certain countries in the Middle East have the stated objective of wiping out that nation. Simply put, they want revenge on their enemy.

To put this into perspective, a comparable situation would be England determined to wipe out the fledgling United States seventy years after the Revolutionary War–somewhere around 1850 when the US and England were becoming key trading partners. Or Mexico, seventy years after the end of the Mexican-American War–right around World War I–determining to retake the land they had ceded in the peace treaty.

My point? The Middle Eastern worldview is different from the worldview in the West.

Couple that fact with this: the Bible was written by people, inspired by God. However, God’s authorship does not mean He condoned everything recorded in those pages.

Jacob’s son Judah slept with his daughter-in-law, thinking she was a prostitute. The men in a city of the tribe of Benjamin gang raped a woman, killing her, and this led to war with the other eleven tribes. Samson, a judge of Israel, picked a Philistine to be his wife. David, the man after God’s own heart, committed adultery and murder.

The Bible records all these events and more, not as a list of things God’s children today are supposed to emulate, but as part of the grand scheme, the big picture, the overarching story showing us who God is, why we have a broken relationship with Him, and how He went about fixing it.

Psalm 137:9 is no more a statement of God’s desires than the verses that tell about Eve’s deception and Adam’s disobedience.

Let me pull some threads together. The Middle East had a culture of revenge, and in fact, much of what’s happened in the last ten-plus years would indicate that this worldview is still in place. The psalmist who wrote Psalm 137:9 wrote from that worldview. As such, the verse is not an indication that God condoned the get-even mentality.

Here in the West we have a different worldview, informed by two thousand years of Biblical teaching to love our enemies, pray for those who misuse and abuse us, refrain from vengeance, refuse to curse but give a blessing instead.

Those “nicer than God” proponents, then, are simply reflecting a Biblical worldview, whether they recognize it and embrace it, or not.

They claim God is someone he is not based on a verse or verses taken out of context, and they claim for themselves teaching He brought into the world, normalized through centuries of Church influence, so that today even atheists believe loving our neighbor is a good thing, that mistreating the weakest and most vulnerable in society is wrong, and that enemies ought to be given trials and treated humanely rather than tortured.

Surprise, atheists and progressives! You’ve embraced a Biblical worldview–the one which has shaped Western thought. You just didn’t know it. You thought you were nicer than God, but who enabled you to learn what “nice” meant? God Himself in the instruction that shaped the philosophical underpinnings of Western society for generations.

The Separateness of Holiness

The Tabernacle

God’s plan for Israel was that they should be a God-fearing nation in order to point all other nations to Him. As a result, after the Exodus, He gave them a place to worship, priests to mediate between Him and them, and sacrifices to perform for their cleansing.

When Jesus came, He perfected each of those roles in Himself. He spoke of His body as the temple to be destroyed and rebuilt in three days. He took the role of the High Priest. And He became the sacrifice, once for all.

When He ascended to the right hand of the Father, He gave believers the same three roles, not to redo what He had done but, because we are in Christ, to act as an extension of Him:

And coming to Him as to living stones, you also are being built up as a spiritual house for a royal priesthood to offer up spiritual sacrifices to God through Jesus Christ. (1 Peter 2:5)

Israel was to be separate and holy, to point the nations to God.

Jesus was separate and holy, providing the way of reconciliation to God.

Believers now are to be separate and holy, to point all other peoples to God.

We are not to be separate and holy in order to be reconciled to God–Jesus accomplished that for us. But in understanding that we humans cannot atone for our own sins, that we in fact need a Savior, it seems some have concluded that the separate and holy issues aren’t for today.

Yet the New Testament writers make it clear. Peter specifically quoted from the Old Testament law in his first letter as support for his call to be holy:

but like the Holy One who called you, be holy yourselves also in all your behavior; because it is written, “You shall be holy, for I am holy.” (1:15-16)

Paul spoke about separateness:

And do not be conformed to this world, but be transformed by the renewing of your mind, so that you may prove what the will of God is, that which is good and acceptable and perfect. (Romans 12:2 – emphasis mine)

Jesus prayed for His followers specifically about being in the world and yet being set apart:

I do not ask You to take them out of the world, but to keep them from the evil one. They are not of the world, even as I am not of the world. Sanctify them in the truth; Your word is truth. As You sent Me into the world, I also have sent them into the world. For their sakes I sanctify Myself, that they themselves also may be sanctified in truth. (John 17:15-19 – emphasis mine)

No list of things to do or things to stay away from. Yet Paul is quite clear that our lives are to be different from those who don’t believe:

Therefore I, the prisoner of the Lord, implore you to walk in a manner worthy of the calling with which you have been called . . . So this I say, and affirm together with the Lord, that you walk no longer just as the Gentiles also walk, in the futility of their mind, being darkened in their understanding, excluded from the life of God because of the ignorance that is in them, because of the hardness of their heart; and they, having become callous, have given themselves over to sensuality for the practice of every kind of impurity with greediness. But you did not learn Christ in this way, if indeed you have heard Him and have been taught in Him, just as truth is in Jesus, that, in reference to your former manner of life, you lay aside the old self, which is being corrupted in accordance with the lusts of deceit, and that you be renewed in the spirit of your mind, and put on the new self, which in the likeness of God has been created in righteousness and holiness of the truth. (Ephesians 4:1, 17-24 – emphasis mine)

Why, I wonder, do we hear so little about living a holy life? Some Christians speak as if holiness equates with legalism, but certainly the Bible doesn’t call us to be legalists. Rather than standing apart from the world, it seems many Christians make it their goal to fit in. How we handle our money, the entertainment we choose, our treatment of the homeless, how we dress, what we write–in so many ways, it’s hard to say Christians are not conformed to the world.

And wasn’t that Israel’s problem? Didn’t they want to be like the nations around them rather than to be holy like God, so they could represent Him to the lost peoples?

Compromise

Is compromise a virtue or a vice?

Once upon a time, here in the US, there was a statesman (not a politician), Henry Clay, known as the Great Compromiser. OK, he actually was a politician and even ran for the Presidency in 1824, then again in 1832 and 1844. His fame, such as it is, came, not from failed political campaigns, however, but for successful compromises. He was instrumental in formulating the Missouri Compromise of 1820 and the Compromise of 1850, both tiptoeing around the issue of slavery.

Some might point to those compromises as means by which slavery was propped up for four more decades. Others might say they kept the union together until the North was strong enough to oppose a seceded South.

Others have been touted as statesmen for their ability to bring two opposing sides together. Neither ends up with everything they hoped for and both give in on things they stand against.

The way the US government was set up required compromise. Small states had equal voting power in the Senate, so large states couldn’t overlook their needs or ignore their voice. The President had to look to Congress to generate the legislation he wished to see enacted, requiring a fair amount of give and take on both their parts.

On the other hand, in the early history of the US, there wasn’t much compromise when it came to religious things. In part this intransigence explains the large number of Protestant denominations. When a group became convinced of the rightness of their theology, they weren’t about to hedge or make concessions with someone who saw things differently.

In this arena, too, people see the lack of compromise as both good and bad. It kept Christians opposed to one another, separated from each other, suspicious of others–pretty much the opposite of what Paul says in Colossians 3–”So, as those who have been chosen of God, holy and beloved, put on a heart of compassion, kindness, humility, gentleness and patience; bearing with one another and forgiving each other whoever has a complaint against anyone” (3:12-13).

On the other hand, a lack of compromise works against false teaching and the kind of slide into sin we see in the nation of Israel throughout the Old Testament.

What strikes me in thinking about compromise and the general overview of it in the history of the US, is the fact that today we seem to be approaching compromise in exactly the opposite way it was used in the first half of the 1800s. Then politicians who compromised were statesmen and professing Christians who compromised were heretics. Today, politicians who compromise are sell-outs, and people of religion who compromise are tolerant.

So what’s your take on compromise? Are there things, similar to Israel’s neglect of the Sabbath or care for widows and orphans or involvement in idol worship, that the Church (not people who say they are Christians because they were born in the US or because they go to a Christmas church service or because their parents identified as Christians) is compromising on today, and should not? Are there things the Church is holding on to, similar to the Amish horse and buggy or 18th century dress, that ought to be compromised?

What’s Love Got To Do With It?

Christianity and love–what do the two have to do with each other? Everything! When someone asked Jesus about the greatest command, He gave a two-part answer: a) love God, b) love others.

The greatest commands!

But like most things that matter, we need to define our terms. First, who is God? The Jews thought they knew God because they were His people, but Jesus told them they were of their father the devil. Later He told His disciples that He came to show them the Father and that no one comes to the Father except through Jesus.

To love God, then, means to love Jesus. But what did He say about loving Him?

“If you love Me, you will keep My commandments . . .
He who has My commandments and keeps them is the one who loves Me; and he who loves Me will be loved by My Father, and I will love him and will disclose Myself to him.” (John 14:15. 21)

Loving God, then, is not some kind of transcendent, ephemeral experience. It involves listening to what God says and then putting it into practice.

Listening to what God says isn’t some kind of mysterious, secret communication with Him either. He has made plain what He desires of us in His Word–things like confessing sins, believing on the Lord Jesus Christ, taking up our cross, and following Him.

No warm fuzzies. Loving God means dying to self. It means counting all my righteousness as nothing but filthy rags. It means trusting Him, putting all my faith in His character, His plan of redemption, His goodness and power, His forgiveness and grace.

Loving God is not possible apart from Jesus. It is He who is the Way. Because of His perfect life as God incarnate, He was the blameless and spotless lamb who could shed His blood to redeem those who believe from the futility of our sin natures.

But that’s the next part. Loving God isn’t possible without belief in Jesus. He is more than a good role model, a great example for us to follow, though He is that. If we only believed in Jesus as a good teacher, we could not enter into a relationship with God. Our sins would still separate us from Him. To love God we must first have that barrier between us and Him smashed. Jesus is the only one who can accomplish this.

He did it at the cross and we have but to accept His finished work, by faith. It is a free gift, not something we can earn, not something we do to try and win God over or please Him enough that He’ll extend His pardon. There frankly aren’t enough good deeds we can do. All the good is like paying the interest on a loan, which never puts a dent in the principle. Jesus, who owed nothing, is the only one qualified to pay off the debt.

Loving God, then, starts with believing in Jesus–that He is the Savior who took the penalty for my sins on Himself; that Jesus is the Way, Truth, and Life, as He said He is.