The Courage of the Creator

“Christianity is the only religion on earth that has felt that omnipotence made God incomplete. Christianity alone has felt that God, to be wholly God, must have been a rebel as well as a king. Alone of all creeds, Christianity has added courage to the virtues of the Creator. For the only courage worth calling courage must necessarily mean that the soul passes a breaking point and does not break.” – G.K. Chesterton, Orthodoxy (“The Romance of Orthodoxy”)

If we could look from the perspective of heaven, perhaps it would not be very surprising that when God visited His people He would be regarded as a troublemaker and a rebel. He had warned them for centuries that He was not on their side. Either they were on His side, or they were against Him. Looking frankly at the history of Israel, most of the time they were opposed to Him. He had spoken to them in judgment, in deliverance, in blessing and in cursing, and still they persisted in their own way.

So He came to them as a subversive. He began to put the world right by turning it inside out and upside down. The poor are rich, the persecuted are joyful, suffering is pleasure (2 Cor 12:10), and death by crucifixion is glory. And what is highly exalted among people is an abomination to God (Lk 16:15). The age to come will vindicate those who side with God, no matter how foolish they look now.

We have been invited into the Grand Conspiracy to fix the world by turning it on its head. But we immediately run into our own fear. Turning the world upside down and making pretty much everybody mad is scary stuff. We’d be a lot more comfortable if we could preach moderation. Or if we could pick a side and make sure “the good guys” win. But we don’t get to do that. Our King took no one’s side except His Father’s, received no honor from human beings (Jn 5:41), and was utterly fearless. We learn what courage looks like by looking at Jesus. There’s never been a Man more brave.

Jesus didn't call us to comfort

In the news today, another well-known Christian singer has come out as a homosexual. I found what Jennifer Knapp had to say about her story to be interesting:

The Signal - Christian singer Jennifer Knapp comes out as a lesbian
“I still consider my hope to be a whole human being, to be a person of love and grace. So it’s difficult for me to say that I’ve struggled within myself, because I haven’t. I’ve struggled with other people. I’ve struggled with what that means in my own faith. I have struggled with how that perception of me will affect the way I feel about myself.”

I will not attempt to say that I fully understand what she has experienced in the tension between sexual attraction to her own gender and what the Bible says. I have no first-hand experience of same-sex attraction, so I will frankly say that I don't "get it." But I do have first-hand experience of powerful and overwhelming urges to do things which our society considers normal, but which the Bible condemns as sin. In fact, for a large part of my life, I have felt trapped in a habit (or even an addiction) which I cannot seem to escape, despite trying virtually everything that has been recommended to me. Over and over again, I have felt how much easier it would be to give up the struggle, quit fighting it, and simply live the way it seems most Americans do.

But when I look at the Bible, I find that rather than "being a whole human being" who is free from internal struggle, what the New Testament urges is much closer to my experience of constant internal battle.

The writer of Hebrews described this life as a footrace, and suggested that we should do whatever it takes to be free of encumbrance so that we can run this race to the finish line. (Heb 12:1-2) The finish line, it is clear from the context, is the end of this life. (Heb 11:39) So the Christian life can be compared to running a marathon which lasts your entire life. There may be glory in a marathon, but it not comfortable or easy.

Peter and Paul both take comparison up a notch and equate this life to a war. Peter urges Christians to abstain from the lusts of our flesh, because they wage war against our souls. (1 Peter 2:11) Paul encourages Timothy to "share in suffering as a good soldier of Christ Jesus" (2 Tim 2:3-4), and writes to the Ephesians that they are to put on a full suit of spiritual armor to withstand every attack of demonic forces against them. (Eph 6:10-20)

Most disturbingly of all, from the very lips of the Master Himself, we are told that this life is a voluntary process of self-execution. He calls us to live in such a way that it is like giving ourselves up to humiliation, torture, and a slow, agonizing death by one of the most horrific means of execution ever devised. That is what "Take up your cross" means, after all. And of all the great leaders in history, this Man is the only One who can with absolute unquestionable authority call us to that voluntary self-destruction.  He is not asking us to do anything He did not do first! (Mt 16:24-25, Lk 9:23-24, Mk 8:34-35)

Today we are constantly hearing that it is too hard and too unkind for Christians to insist that those with same-sex attraction resist it just because the Bible says so.  In light of the strong – and even ruthless – words we have just surveyed from the Founder and the fathers of our faith, such arguments seem anemic and pathetic.

The reason that anemic and pathetic arguments carry so much weight today, however, is because the contemporary American Church is by and large anemic and pathetic. Gay activists are very nearly right in saying that Jesus never talked about homosexuality (though note His restatement of God's intention for male and female in Mt 19:3-9 and parallels). The issues to which He did apply His call to violent holiness have a much broader application:

• We have to die to religious pride. (Lk 18:9-14, Mt 7:1-4)
  
• We have to die to love of money. (Lk 16:10-15)
  
• We have to die to idle and unprofitable speech. (Mt 12:36-37)
  
• We have to die to our right to be angry. (Mt 5:21-26)
  
• We have to die to even looking lustfully at another human being (of either gender). (Mt 5:27-30)
  
• We have to die to getting what is due to us. (Mt 5:38-42)
  
• We may well have to suffer persecution and even die physically. (Mt 5:10-12, Rev 2:10)

Internal struggle - even internal warfare unto continual death to self - is what Jesus calls us to. Let us forget our ignorant dream of being comfortable and happy in this life and instead do whatever it takes to be holy. What we will find is that there is a better joy, a better peace, and a better comfort - a comfort beyond imagination - coming in the age to come for those who refuse to give up. 

And even in this age there is a downpayment of that joy to be had. People really do find freedom from all kinds of besetting sins, including same-sex attraction.  People really can, by the power of the Holy Spirit, live with an increasing measure of holiness in this life. I really do have hope that in this life I will have consistent and lasting victory over sinful habits.

But victory only comes to those who fight.

Finney: Why the Church needs revival

After hearing Lou Engle speak at IHOPU chapel last night I started reading Charles Finney’s Lectures on Revivals of Religion.  There is a lot of wisdom rooted in experience in Finney’s talks.  I was particularly struck by two points in the first talk:

1. Many Christians – and I think Christian leaders in particular – would rather see the Church make progress steadily and grow over time instead of going through all the confusion and disruption – and excess and error – that comes with revival.  Finney answers the argument squarely.  If the Church were who she is supposed to be most of the time, revival would not be necessary.  But in this age, with the deceitfulness of sin and the influence of the world which is “under the sway of the wicked one,” (1 Jn 5:19), we need revival.  The Church continually backslides without regular injections of God’s power in revival.
2. Revival, when it is the real thing, is so clearly the work of God and beyond what human beings could work up, that people often conclude that it is entirely a work of God’s sovereignty and human beings have nothing to do with it.  In fact, the history of revival shows the opposite.  It is the praying Church, consecrated and committed to seeing God’s will done on earth as in heaven, that opens the door for God’s power to be manifested.

Lectures on Revivals of Religion by Charles Finney
There is so little principle in the church, so little firmness and stability of purpose, that unless the religious feelings are awakened and kept excited, counter worldly feeling and excitement will prevail, and men will not obey God. They have so little knowledge, and their principles are so weak, that unless they are excited, they will go back from the path of duty, and do nothing to promote the glory of God. The state of the world is still such, and probably will be till the millennium is fully come, that religion must be mainly promoted by means of revivals. How long and how often has the experiment been tried, to bring the church to act steadily for God, without these periodical excitements. Many good men have supposed, and still suppose, that the best way to promote religion, is to go along uniformly, and gather in the ungodly gradually, and without excitement. But however sound such reasoning 11may appear in the abstract, facts demonstrate its futility. If the church were far enough advanced in knowledge, and had stability of principle enough to keep awake, such a course would do; but the church is so little enlightened, and there are so many counteracting causes, that she will not go steadily to work without a special interest being awakened.
....
I wish this idea to be impressed on all your minds, for there has long been an idea prevalent that promoting religion has something very peculiar in it, not to be judged of by the ordinary rules of cause and effect; in short, that there is no connection of the means with the result, and no tendency in the means to produce the effect. No doctrine is more dangerous than this to the prosperity of the church, and nothing more absurd.

Suppose a man were to go and preach this doctrine among farmers, about their sowing grain. Let him tell them that God is a sovereign, and will give them a crop only when it pleases him, and that for them to plow and plant and labor as if they expected to raise a crop is very wrong, and taking the work out of the hands of God, that it interferes with his sovereignty, and is going on in their own strength: and that 14there is no connection between the means and the result on which they can depend. And now, suppose the farmers should believe such doctrine. Why, they would starve the world to death.

Just such results will follow from the church’s being persuaded that promoting religion is somehow so mysteriously a subject of Divine sovereignty, that there is no natural connection between the means and the end. What are the results? Why, generation after generation has gone down to hell. No doubt more than five thousand millions have gone down to hell, while the church has been dreaming, and waiting for God to save them without the use of means. It has been the devil’s most successful means of destroying souls. The connection is as clear in religion as it is when the farmer sows his grain. (pp 12-14)

Balthasar: The Complete Man

A quote on the uniqueness of Jesus of Nazareth, even when He is considered simply as a Man:

Here is a man with an utterly free interior life under the most restricted and oppressive conditions, simply through prayer, as we see from the sovereign self-consciousness he displays in dialogue with his disciples and, even more, with his enemies.  Here is a man whose love is perfect, although he often makes of others the same inflexible demands he makes of himself.  Here is the complete man; not a man who fits in with all and sundry, but a strong and distinctive personality, utterly unforgettable, whose words an deeds are unique and inimitable, whose influence on history is supreme.  The perfect friend, the perfect leader, whose energy, however concentrated, never distorted his character, who always remained fresh and even childlike, with no false sophistication, loving children (a sure sign!) and commending their outlook on life to those who liked to think themselves "adult".  He never reacts in a banal, predictable way; all that he does is original and creative.  Indeed, the gospels and the whole New Testament pulsate with "spirit", in the literary sense as well as the philosophical and religious sense.  How empty and relatively poor in imagination, by contrast, are such writings as the Koran or the Speeches of Buddha - once one has the "feel" of them, one can make them up oneself!

-Hans Urs Von Balthasar, Prayer, pp 171-172

While fully embracing Jesus' fully divine nature, and even emphasizing it (e.g. It was God that went to the wedding and turned water into wine...), Balthasar urges his readers to meditate on Jesus' full humanity as well:

True holiness in the Church, with its influence on history, has always been connected with the straightforward endeavor to take the humanity of Christ seriously, and all the kitsch to be found in Christian life and Christian art arises from the failure to take it seriously. (pg 172)

The Beholding-Becoming Principle

Psalm 27:4
One thing I have desired of the Lord,
That will I seek:
That I may dwell in the house of the LORD
All the days of my life,
To behold the beauty of the LORD,
And to inquire in His temple.

What does it mean to "behold the beauty of the LORD?"  Phrases similar to this occur in several places in the scriptures - "Behold your God!" (Isaiah 40:9); "Behold the Lamb of God!" (John 1:36), etc.  But Psalm 27:4 is notable because King David - easily Israel's most powerful and successful king, and arguably one of the greatest political leaders in history - said that this was the only thing he wanted from God.

So what is it?  What did it mean to David to behold the beauty of the God of Israel, and why was it such a big deal to him?

 

Beholding God is Meditation on God

As usual, the Bible explains itself if we keep reading.  The rest of the Psalms give us an example of what this "one thing" that David wanted above all else was. 

Psalm 18:2
The LORD is my rock and my fortress and my deliverer;
My God, my strength, in whom I will trust;

Psalm 23:1
The LORD is my shepherd; I shall not want.

Psalm 24:1
The earth is the LORD's, and all its fullness,
The world and those who dwell therein.

Psalm 25:8-9
⁸ Good and upright is the LORD;
Therefore He teaches sinners in the way.
⁹ The humble He guides in justice,
And the humble He teaches His way.

God is a Rock.  God is a Fortress.  God is a Deliverer.  God is a Shepherd.  God owns everything and is rich beyond measure.  God is good and upright.  God is a teacher.  And so on.  David filled his psalms with meditations on the attributes and personality of God.

Meditation should not be a scary word to Christians.  It is a profoundly Biblical concept, and in most translations the word is used frequently.  Psalm 1 says that the righteous man meditates in the Word of God day and night.  Psalm 119 repeats the word 8 times, always in reference to either the words or the works of God.  Paul tells the Philippians to meditate on "whatever is true, noble, just, pure, lovely, or of good report," and Timothy to meditate on the Word and doctrine, giving himself entirely to them.

Richard Foster has an excellent discussion of the difference between Christian meditation and eastern meditation in his book Celebration of Discipline.  In a nutshell, the difference is that the Christian focuses his mind on the things of God, while in eastern meditation, the practitioner seeks to empty his mind and thus opens himself up to whatever spiritual influences are available.  The two practices are diametrical opposites.

So to behold the beauty of God is to mediate on God - His character, His works, His word.

 

Knowing God is Crucial

If you ask the average Church-goer today what he thinks about the attributes of God, you're likely to get either a blank look or a pat answer gleaned from a popular worship song.  "Theology Proper," as it's technically called - meaning the study of God Himself - takes a back seat in most churches today.  We love the fact that God is forgiving and loving and has a wonderful plan for our lives...  But for the most part, what we really care about is precisely that: our lives. 

What we like to hear about in church is what God can do for us.  We are big on salvation... fixing relationships... getting out of debt... dealing with emotional problems... healing... etc.  All of these things are good and Biblical.  But they cannot be central, because human beings cannot be central.  A theology that puts human beings in the center will rapidly drift away from the teaching of the Bible.  With humanity in the center, we can find a use for a God of love, a God who wants to improve our lives, and even a God who laid down His life for us (as long as we don't think too hard about why He did that). 

But what do we do with a God who is jealous?  A God who has fiery wrath towards sin?  A God who threatens - and delivers - horrific judgment to unrepentant sinners?

David knew God - not just the parts of His nature that were comfortable, but all of Him, as He really is.  He knew God as a tender Shepherd (Psalm 23), but he also knew that God is a just judge who is angry every day (Psalm 7).

This is a crucial.  It really is the "one thing" that matters for us to know God as He actually is.  There is a terrible verse in Matthew in which Jesus warns us that it is possible to think you are a Christian, and even be active in ministry, and yet never actually know Him at all. (Matthew 7:22-23)

 

As We Behold God We are Transformed

As if it were not enough for us to come into genuine encounter with the Creator of the universe - who loves us with fiery, jealous, dangerous passion - there is more.  Another reason that David's "one thing" was to behold God's beauty was that he found that as He did so, he himself was transformed:

Psalm 17:15
¹⁵ As for me, I will see Your face in righteousness;
I shall be satisfied when I awake in Your likeness.

As David meditated on God, he found that his own character was being changed into the likeness of God.  Not into the likeness of God's deity: we will never be omnipotent, infinite, omniscient, or omnipresent (though we are eternal right now!)  But our character can become like His.  We can become gracious, full of compassion, slow to anger, and great in mercy (Psalm 145:8).  We can love righteousness and hate wickedness (Psalm 45:7). We can learn to humble ourselves (Psalm 113:6).

Paul said the same thing this way:

2 Corinthians 3:18
^18 But we all, with unveiled face, beholding as in a mirror the glory of the Lord, are being transformed into the same image from glory to glory, just as by the Spirit of the Lord.

This is precisely the same thought, but with a specifically Trinitarian understanding. 

It is not just "God" that we behold in his glory to become transformed, but specifically the Lord Jesus Christ.  God incarnate.  The "express image of His Person" (Hebrews 1:3).  The Word made flesh and dwelling among us (John 1:14).  Jesus said of Himself that whatever we saw Him do or heard Him say was precisely what the Father was doing or saying (John 14:9-11, 5:19-30).

Also, it is not just a general principle that by beholding the Lord Jesus we become like Him - it is the operation of the Holy Spirit in our lives that transforms us.  In fact, this process of meditating on the life, words, and works - especially the Cross - of the Lord Jesus is a significant part of what it means to "walk in the Spirit," to which is attached the stunning promise that "you shall not fulfill the lust of the flesh." (Galatians 5:16)

 

So let us make a beginning!  This is the one thing that matters in this life.  Getting to know Jesus through His Word and becoming like Him through His Spirit.  Let's set aside an hour a day, open up the Gospels, and read through the story of Jesus again with prayer on our lips.  Jesus, I want to know You!  Jesus, let me become like You!