'Jesus came to undo what Adam so disastrously did...'

Grace. John Newton called it amazing. He was right. But sometimes I forget why. What makes it amazing? It is almost like good health: I don’t, with awareness, appreciate it all the time, but when I finally get over that cold or the flu finally breaks THEN I see how great my good health is.

Saved from what? This is a book title but also a great question. Sin is deteriorating our world like time rots an apple. I realized yesterday that I forgot how bad, gross, grotesque, wrong, deadly, dark, painful, hurtful and harmful, haunting and horrifying, sick and unsavory sin is. One sin. Just one sin and the entire universe was thrown off kilter and everything suddenly had an expiration date. When I was younger I often thought of how many shin-kicks Adam would receive in Heaven: ‘I made it to Heaven, no thanks to your efforts, Adam’ Whack! Think of this. Each individual sins–goes against God’s way he ordered things or commanded them to be–many times in one day; each ‘little’ sin has the power to kill the universe; no wonder we are a mess!

All of society and humanity is not one big happy Brady bunch family chillin on earth like some continuous beach vacation. We are killing each other. Sin affects everyone and everything around you. You think you are keeping it to yourself; you think you are containing it so it only affects you? That’s like what I use to do when I was three: if I close my eyes no one can see me. Sorry, but you trying to be sovereign over your own sin isn’t working. It isn’t working for me either. We all see it. Adam and Eve tried hiding behind some trees after they sinned; they tried containing and running away from their disobedience, avoiding it like it didn’t happen. But sin literally killed everything.

Funerals are so hard because death, though normal, is unnatural. Sin did that. It made something beautiful into something gross. It pained what once was jubilant and happy; it distorted good; it high-jacks righteousness. We think, like many characters in the Lord of the Rings trilogy, that we can control sin like they thought they could control the ring. But it always ends up controlling us. We become ITS slave and sin OUR master.

What’s so amazing about grace? It saved us from all of this. We are no longer under that realm; there is something more real than that: Jesus Christ. From all of this he saved us to walk with him eternally in what the Garden of Eden was supposed to become. Only in Jesus can the consequence of sin be unplugged and powerless.


‘[Jesus] came to undo what Adam so disastrously did, and lead us back through the jungle to the garden. He crossed the ravine, the unbridgeable gulf between sinful man and holy God.’ [[Sinclair Ferguson]]

Being Bound

At first I was bound.
Like a hound to the sound
of his breakfast hitting the bowl.
Invisible chains restrained,
a harness to foil my refrain.
I made the locks,
clamped the stocks,
threw the rocks,
for from me and through me and to me I made up God.
God who was not there,
who was nowhere anywhere.
I formed him from my own,
clay from experience and what I’d been shown.
I made him strong and full of might,
so I dare not transgress what he called right.
I made him know all there was inside,
so he could find the inklings of my shallowest pride.
I made him deep and very wide,
so I could stretch and grow my mind.
I made him crasy and made him wild,
so I’d not be too close and trust his smile.
I made him fire, too good for me,
so in my failure I could feel his heat.
I made him to figure my fixes,
to riddle my tricks and
make me better.
I made him for me;
to achieve;
to believe
in something.
I finally felt the chains,
the scars from whips which I had made,
the hopeless burrow I had caved.
This God, this other than I
was a dying hole which
I dug deeper to try.
The sting of my pain
realized my gain:
I was nothing.
I had failed.
I was bound and knew it now,
for what we call good is what I sought.
The goodness of lessons and sayings,
of contorting so others will clap.
It deepened the distance between truth and fact.

At last I was bound.
Bound to God.
The one of existence, not of mind or mud.
The God who lives,
and willingly loves.
Under no obligation,
promise or fee;
through tribulation
tears and . . .
Me.

I am bound to forgiveness and bound to his grace.
I am bound for eternity, face to face

Monday is for Morons: 10-31-2011

Jesus was just beaten to a bloody and disgusting mess. He was being called names and maligned. After the long nails went through his hands and he was stapled down to the cross. They, without concern of smoothness or being ginger, flopped the cross upright in the hole in the ground. The joking and final flop of the cross into the hole further ripped skin and stretched tendons. There Jesus hung. A picture of poverty portrayed, paradoxically to save.

Then the guy next to him and an 'ahah!' moment. Maybe he saw Jesus earlier in his life; as he was walking around the city heard of Jesus' claims, saw a miracle or two. Or maybe he had never met him before but,picking up on the jeers, discerned who Jesus was. Regardless, here he is suffocating along side the Son of God. 'Jesus,' he whispers out between breaths 'remember me in paradise.' Can you believe it?! I mean this guy was feeling sorry for himself, for at his 'death bed' he realized what an idiot he had been his whole life. I mean people steal because they don't work, right? Sure, live your whole life like you want then at the end whine like a baby and seek repentance, what a moron!

But wait. The disfigured face of Jesus clearly claws out a sentence, 'Today, you will be with me in paradise.' WHAT!?!

The truth of it all is that Jesus' mercy and grace and love and compassion and patience are far greater, far more shocking and scandalous than we could ever have imagined. It does not take a life-time of good deeds and bible reading to enter to bliss of Christ's presence forever. It takes the realization that all your friends already know, you're a rotten to the core sinner. But Heaven is stock full of rotten apples like you! What's one more? There is no sin too large that God, like Gallagher, won't obliterate to bits! Smashing it to that it covers the earth as they life at the sin's triviality.

You have a sack full for God to smash? That's okay, he has both the time and the power for it. 'But these are some really big ones!' you reply. He has it covered, he'll just bring out a bigger hammer. Hurry, find your forgiveness in Jesus' work, go now, before you feel so guilty again that you think he could never forgive you.

So What Is Sin?

Someone once explained sin to me as ‘doing the don’ts and not doing the dos (not to be confused for the Spanish word meaning ‘two’).’ This is a wildly simplistic and unhelpful definition for a few reasons.

First, sin is an offense against God. As a Christian I understand God to be the Creator of everything—from a piece of dirt to every galaxy—and One who is still actively involved IN all of life, watching over and orchestrating the events of all life. In sum, He is both alive and powerful therefore to give some cheapish definition of the things which offend Him is not only a poor practice but a deadly one, and, to a degree, an enslaving one.

Second, not everything we are instructed to do in the Bible, if ignored or rejected, is considered an offense against God--sin. Take for example the one which the book of Proverbs calls the sluggard. The sluggard, in the English Standard Translation, is mentioned 12 times in Proverbs: he is called a fool, a disappointment and pain to his master, he is warned that poverty will be his companion. I do not want to be a sluggard and I think it unwise for anyone else to be such. God, in his kindness, inspired these true words for us to give us guidance and to help us prosper on earth, but I do not think that enjoying sleep too much nor working too little is SIN--something which incurs the eternal wrath of God. To clarify AGAIN, it is extremely unwise for an individual to practice such things for many reasons and the absolute extreme of these things can become sinful, but the sluggard is not to be deemed unfit for the kingdom of heaven only based on the fact that he does not want to get out of bed.

I hear some of you saying, ‘Yea, but Jesus instructed his followers to be wise as serpents and innocent as doves.’ That he did, as I would tell anyone the same for their own good; as I hope everyone would tell anyone! Just because it came out of the inspiration or mouth of the Almighty does not mean neglecting it equals sin. Some things, for example the sacrifices in the Old Testament Law are obsolete now. God said them at one point, we are not doing them today, are we sinning by not offering them today? No. And we see that other things God gives as general wisdom for all of mankind—it is always helpful and profitable and good to do this or that; certainly though there are certain instructions that if rebelled against ARE sin.

So what IS considered by GOD—that’s essentially what we only care about here—to be sin? Glad you asked. The blanket answer is anything that is contrary to his nature. Where in the world could we figure out God’s nature? The Bible. The Bible, in its entirety brings us sharp images of God’s character. One big and obvious one is that He is life. In general then, killing of other soul-filled human beings is sin, take the even of Cain killing his brother Abel.

Not only is rebelling against God’s character sin, also rebelling or disobeying His commandments. This part sometimes does not seem to immediately flow from God’s character but most of the time does: In the book of Hosea God tells the prophet to go marry a prostitute, which is something in Leviticus God clearly instructs the people not to do. But at the end we see that Hosea, being a prophet, followed God’s instruction and in so doing became a picture for the entire nation of Israel of God’s love for them in that though Israel, like the prostitute, was continually unfaithful to God; God, though, would not leave them or break His promise and covenant with them. God was showing His love and grace in His faithfulness even when Israel was overtly UNfaithful.

There is more and many objections abound and caveats overflow but I think generally WE CAN DEFINE SIN AS: REBELLION AGAINST THE NATURE AND CHARACTER OF GOD, AND DISOBEYING HIS DIRECT COMMANDS TO US.

Making the definition of sin too broad is wrong and bad, for how can we call evil which God Himself does not? No need to add burdens to our conscience, for Jesus said his instructions are easy, his burden is light.

01.04.11

Thank you for my mutability;
the insecurity of sin.
Once dead; not now.
Sleeping asunder; sharp as thunder.
Thank you that I'm unstable;
able to cut away at the label.
I can conform to your contours.

Jesus Was Sick

I had the flu the week prior to Christmas. Having the flu or being in a sick state is no good. We often say while in a sick state that we are not our normal self; Why do we say that? We say this, obviously, because we cannot reason, think, speak, act with the capacity we regularly are able. But I might argue that we are, in some ways, MORE ourselves when we are sick or incapacitated. When we are ill we are unable to use our normal filters, our societal or self-governed restraints. I found saying things and thinking things that normally would not surface at all. When we are sick we are weakened and more prone to failure and sin. It was a startling thing to observe.

But what about Jesus? Jesus was not somehow free from all normal human sickness. He was born a screaming, slimy baby just like all of us; AND like all of us he got the sniffles, a headache, stubbed his toe, and, it was even possible, that Jesus Christ got the flu! Philippians 2 tells us that Jesus came to earth and when he did so he set aside his Godness, he willfully subjected himself to all the aspects of being human, this includes sickness. So Jesus must have felt like crap physically at times, but when his societal filters were dropped sin did not come out of him. When Jesus was sick he did not sin against his mom or sibling who bugged him or his friends who were being jerks. When Jesus was sick he was not self-fish. Jesus did not sin when he was sick because he wanted to do the will of the Father ALL the time; he was governed by the will of the Father not his own will.

So this is a small reflection from one being sick reflecting on Jesus' perfection even in his weakness. I have no proof Jesus was ever sick, but I know he may have been. I do have historical evidence that he was tortured, betrayed, went without sleep, and gruesomely murdered and he still NEVER, not once, sinned.