something far more interior: faith expressed in love

There is much in the book of Galatians but the paramount issue is what the Gospel of Jesus Christ is and isn’t. Paul is furious in the letter and a big part of his wide-eyed name calling is that some scum bags were trying to be extra spiritual and say you weren’t a Christian if you didn’t follow their lead. Pious Christians can easily read this now and be appalled at those who demanded circumcision as part of salvation... yet we do the same thing all the time. There is always the, ‘If I had Jesus plus ____’ then I’d know I’m REALLY saved; or the, ‘She does [or doesn’t do] _______ so she MUST not be saved.’ We like outward indicators. All of us do, no exception.

But Paul says in Galatians 5 that the Gospel has something to do with a far more interior issue: faith working through love: the issue of the heart. (I hear you mumbling your counter arguments of citing James and Micah 6.8 and so on, hold your britches and listen). The Message puts a section of Galatians 6 very clearly: ‘[Those who would try and add to the Gospel] want an easy way to look good before others, lacking the courage to live by a faith that shares Christ's suffering and death. All their talk about the law is gas. They themselves don't keep the law! And they are highly selective in the laws they do observe. They only want you to be circumcised so they can boast of their success in recruiting you to their side. That is contemptible’

No need to cut things off. Jesus is enough. There is not some secret spiritual key that if you do God has to love you more (remember that whole Jesus dying for you and raising from the dead thing?). No more hoops to jump through. Jesus did it for you. You want to memorize Romans? Okay. You can’t use it to leverage against God though (and this should free you that if you sputter and forget about it for a week or year you can start up again, no condemnation [chapter 8]).

I think it is easier for us to control our outward actions and appearance and so we make those things the standard for salvation or justification or sanctification or our standing with God (or someone else’s); outward actions are easy to compare and I like comparing myself–wrongly–to other people so I can make sure I’m okay with God. A lot of the Pharisees and these bozos in the Galatia region and our own hearts are living in fear when we attempt to lower God’s standard of perfection into a few simple rules. We are terrified that Jesus isn’t enough. But he is.

What seems most wild and elusive, like trying to ride and untamed stallion, is our own heart. Yet this is where the magic happens, this is where God brings the change. We are told that God exchanges the old heart and gives a new one that actually wants to follow his way.

People were always asking Jesus if he was the One and as proof they always wanted signs. Jesus was usually pretty ticked at the interrogation. Salvation is here. It comes through what Jesus did. See it. Bask in it. Don’t you dare water it down with your rules either, for if you steal a Christian’s joy by confusing the Gospel with your rules God will crush you.

I’m a Gentile. How Ya Doin?

Last night I taught a few willing listeners about some of the things the Apostle Paul is talking about in his letter to the Saints in Ephesus, specifically the second chapter, verses 11 through the end.

There is a lot going on in this passage and I’m not starting it all up. One point, however, stuck out to me, it glared and glistened as it dribbled out of my mouth last night: I’m doubly undeserving of God’s grace.

The Jews, as Paul talks about in Romans 3, were some privileged dudes. They had all the oracles and promises of God; they had the Temple; they had–for good and bad–the whole history; they had Abraham and Isaac and Jacob; they had their promised land and their circumcision (yikes!). The Gentiles (this includes myself and probably most of you), by contrast, had nature... boom! Yea. That is about it. Paul talks in Romans 1 that the Greeks had nature to reveal to them the God of the Universe and even that truth we all suppressed....umm....I think with their divine inspiration the Israelites had a leg-up in this case.

So thinking about the fact that no human being had the right to be called God’s children (first part of Ephesians 2), we can throw some more impossible into this cake and say that Gentiles (non-Jews) were not even a consideration for this dance.... we weren’t even a name that had been crossed-out, we were not even written down in the first place!.... or so it seems.

In Romans 9 and onward Paul discusses how Gentiles were the most unlikliest of unliklies to receive the blessing and mercy and grace of God’s salvation. No one deserves God’s mercy. But if anyone did it was the Jews. And here I am, as Gentile as a pork sandwich on Passover Day, receiving daily the full benefits of Jesus’ sacrifice on the Cross and the glory of his resurrection. This is amazing! Now go ponder how great you are in light of that (pour me some sarcasm, please!)

God owes us . . . nothing

I'm recently discovering (or rediscovering) the fact that God owes us, needs to give us, is obligated to provide . . . well nothing.

What do I mean when I say nothing?

God does not owe us:

1. Life: Here is the reality: we are not promised one more breath, one more heartbeat, one more blink of the eye. We are not promised that our cancer will miraculously (or by science) go away, that we will be saved from car wrecks, that we won't be the one who has that 'freak' accident in the safety of our own home. Just because you believe in God and follow Jesus--or not--does not make you invincible nor exempt from the reality of life, which is that people die a lot.

2. Laughter: No one is promised a 'good life.' It is hard for me, as an American, to get my head around this because I've assumed I am somehow due a good life, but find that in the Bible for me then I'll change my mind. What does this mean for day-to-day life? It means no one is promised good feelings . . . ever. No one is promised that we will laugh when something funny happens, that we will cry for joy, that we will get that job (let alone any job), that we can sing songs, that we will have a spouse and kids, that we will enjoy fine meals, that we can be wowed and refreshed by being outdoors, that anything will go 'right' or the way we wanted and planned, that praying will accomplish anything, that following the rules will get you anywhere, that breaking rules will summon excitement, that following your heart will work out, that following whatever 10-steps will accomplish their aim, that doing what people say will have its hoped for affect, that doing anything will illicit any kind of reaction in your soul. No one is promised anything of the sort.

So now that you're all glum and sporting a frowny-face, what does this mean? It means that when God--yes it is HIM--provides us the capacity and gift of pleasant things and the ability to feel rightly about these gifts.... enjoy the heck out of them. Cry when your baby is born. Laugh when your friend does something stupid. Eat that delicious dessert with happiness. Go celebrate when you get your job. It is SO good to have gifts and we should take them and embrace them . . . as gifts.

And whether we get this or that is not based on our good or bad behavior.

We are promised God. For those who follow him, we are told that we will always have God. We should not say, 'in his presence is fullness of joy so that means we should be happy all the time.' No, joy is not happiness. Joy is not feelings. Joy is a faith-based sense and belief and understanding that though we may never smile one more time, and we may spend the rest of our days in tears of sorrow God is still real, we are still his children, and Heaven will be full of the most explosive happiness and joy and good times we literally cannot fathom it.

Life is hard. Life is unbearable sometimes. Life can be too much. But often it is when we have everything but don't have the feeling we hoped for, it is then that we finally see we need God. Thankfully, for most, God is very kind in his provision and gift giving and occurrences in our life and we should thank him so much! But our belief in God and HIS GOODNESS should not be dependent upon what he provides day in and day out but on what he said and the now-unseen-reality he says is true.

The book of Job points this out and Job got it right when he said that God is truly good when he provides all kinds of great things or provides all of life to cease and die and be ripped away. Naomi was right she told her friends to stop calling her 'pleasant' but to call her 'bitter' because God killed her husband and two sons; she was a broken mess who still had a glimmer of hope in God.

It is crazy to understand that goodness is known in the darkest hour of your soul. That pain can walk beside God's favor. Joy accompanies stomach wrenching agony and confusion and frustration. The reality is that though he seems to not care one bit about you, God is not far off ever and he is always loving his children when it seems like he is ruining them. Love is peculiar and when we figure out what Paul proclaims in Romans 9-11--God does whatever he wants and he is always good in whatever he does because he IS wise and IS loving more than we can understand--we believe a scary and hard truth. Love is different than we think.

It May Cost You Your Neck: Romans 16.3,4

The Apostle Paul authored the New Testament (NT) book of Romans. He wrote this book to those who were gathered as a community to help one another follow Jesus Christ. Many reasons exist as to why Paul wrote this letter, but chiefly he wanted to encourage the people to whom he was writing and to refresh them to the extent that they would, as it were, get wind in their sails and find new vigor to continue following Christ—or remember why they do.

In the final chapter as Paul, in the fashion of his time, was making his shout outs, we come across his words ‘[Prisca and Aquila] risked their necks for my life.’ In the NT book of Acts we are given some accounts of these two helpers of Paul’s but we are not entirely sure as to what Paul is specifically referring to here. We cannot, however, assume that this is some exaggeration by Paul as he embellishes some of his buddy’s work. Paul talks often of his own physical hardships—getting beat up, getting lost at sea, having physical ailments. So I think it is safe to conclude that these two were put or put themselves in legitimate, physical danger.

Why does Paul mention this? I believe he slyly inserts this mainly so we can be reminded of Jesus’ words that all who desire to follow him will have a rough time of it. When one follows Christ it is a joyful, hopeful road, but one with many robbers and murderers lurking. To follow Christ is to invite physical harm. This is not to discourage a Christian but to make him aware of the risks he is taking in making such a stance. It is easy to forget, especially for those living in the US of A, that it is normal for a believer in Christ Jesus to meet hard times—emotionally and physically. And therefore it is easy to forget that the same belief is worth the trouble it incurs.

Treasuring Christ above all else will make you feel that all else is always against you.

A missionary in Iraq during the time of the recent US invasion was killed, not because she was an American but specifically because she was a Christian. She had written a letter to her pastor back in the States only to be opened upon her death; the conclusion contained these words:

‘To obey was my objective
To suffer was expected
His glory, my reward.’

Titus 1.8: a companion of good

Paul instructed his fellow-worker Titus to find in Crete some men who could be elders for the churches on the island. Doing so is not a whimsical venture. So Paul lays out some things for Titus to look for to determine and gauge what these guys’ character should display. One trait he highlights is being a ‘lover of good.’

This seems simple enough, but what does it mean to be a lover of good? It is easy for me—and maybe you—to say, ‘Yes, I love good.’ But when I thought more and delved into the devotion of my own intentions, I became worried. For when I initially thought of if I love good I thought of something positive and then looked at the associated feeling or desire. Correct thinking soon followed: just because I like something when I think of it does not mean that I love it. I soon found that I root for good a lot, but it is often like cheering on your stock as it climbs higher and higher: the results are going to positively affect my bank account. But rooting for is nowhere in the vicinity of loving; unless I have some sad affection for money, I do not actually LOVE my stocks in the stock market; I do desire them to do well so I can have a good investment so I can earn more money so I can do more things with money, but I don’t love stocks or money; they are necessary and helpful. (This is when, in my thinking, my tranquil complexion started to grow into a frown.)

What does it mean to LOVE good? If we look at what love entails through the logic of the Bible—a good place to look since that is where the question arose—we have a helpful guide. To love something Biblically means everything. When Jesus talked about loving our enemies he talked about laying aside all our desires of self-promotion and vengeance for the sake of aiding their soul and even at times their ventures. When Jesus talked about the greatest love one could have for another he talked about the laying down of ones life: willingly giving up yourself totally for another. When Jesus talks about a husband and wife he talks about forbearance, patience, seeking the good of the other, humility, sacrifice, actions and inactions that positively promote the character and life of the other, intentions, dipping into every area and aspect of what it means to live.

So, do I, do you have this particular proclivity for good? Does your life wreak of promoting—for goodness’ sake—good?