A Rejection of Mediocrity

Dear Jess,

Thank you so much for asking me those questions. I will do my best to answer, but I know that my best cannot be quite good enough unless God helps me. I ask Him to help me explain this to you, and I ask Him to help you understand. James 1 says, “If any of you lacks wisdom, let him ask God, who gives generously to all without reproach, and it will be given.” We know that God will give us wisdom when we need it.

Your question has a very simple answer: yes. Jesus forgives all our sin. But He doesn’t just forgive because He forgets that we sinned or pretends it isn’t a big deal. He forgives because He already paid for every one of our sins.

When Jesus died, He was paying for every time that you and I have ever lied or gotten angry or disobeyed. He suffered more than anyone else in history, because our sins were so, so bad.

Some people say that we are all really good, but that the little sins we do make us sinners. That isn’t true at all. We aren’t good. We are sinners, and we sin because of who we are.

Because we are so selfish and sinful, we deserve to have God throw us out. God does not need us. God cannot use sinful selfish people. Our selfishness makes us angry with God for no reason; we don’t want to do anything for God. God should really just get rid of us.

But the good news is wonderful! God is “rich” in mercy. Just like a rich person has enough money to do anything they want to do, God has enough mercy to do whatever He wants to do. And God is very, very rich in mercy.

We were so selfish and sinful that we could do nothing at all to impress God. We were like dead men. But God has enough love and mercy to do anything He wants to do. When we were weak and helpless, Jesus died for us. That is why God’s mercy is so perfect. Instead of forgetting about our sins, He took our sins away from us and put them on Jesus. Instead of the Father punishing us for our sins, He punished Jesus for them.

That takes a lot of mercy. But God’s mercy is even bigger than all of our sins. God does not want to save us from our sins and then let us continue being sinful. His mercy is big enough to come inside of us and change our hearts from the inside out. He kills our selfishness and sin and replaces it with a desire to love and please Him. This way, everyone sees how powerful and merciful He is, because He made terrible sinners into obedient children.

“All of us used to follow the desires of our sinful nature. We were objects of wrath because of who we were. But because of His great love for us, God, who is rich in mercy, made us alive with Christ even though we were dead. God did this so that for all eternity He shows how rich His grace is, because we will all see His kindness to us in Christ Jesus. We are God’s projects, given life because of Jesus, so that we can do good works that will glorify God.”

Because God saved us from punishment and saved us from continuing in sin, we love Him! “We love Him because He first loved us.” Because of how much we love Him, we don’t want to do anything that makes Him unhappy. We know that every sin we commit was paid for by Jesus, but we don’t want to sin because it does not please God.

God has already shown how rich His mercy is! Now, it is our job to show the world how powerful His love is. We have to show the whole world that His love is powerful enough to save us from our selfishness. We want to do good works that glorify God!

But it is not easy. While we are still alive on this earth, the sin that is still part of our bodies will keep on making us sin. But now, we have a desire to love God even though our bodies are still wicked. The Bible and the Holy Spirit help us to love God even though our bodies only want to sin.

As long as we are alive in these bodies, we will keep doing things that displease God. But we will do them less and less, because we desire more and more to please God.

“Thank God, that even though you were once slaves of sin, you have been set free, and have become slaves to righteousness! For just as you used to desire impurity and lawlessness, making you sin more and more, now you desire righteousness, which glorifies God! Those shameful things only would have led to death before. But now you have been set free from sin. This righteousness leads to eternal life! For the result of sin is death, but the free gift of God is eternal life in Christ Jesus our Lord.”

I have been saved for a while now, but I still do things that don’t please God. But I hate it! Even though sin feels good to my body, I don’t want to hurt God’s heart! I don’t understand my own actions. Instead of always pleasing God, I do the things I know God hates! But it is not my heart that sins; it is just the sin that is still present inside me. I want to do everything that pleases God, but I’m just not strong enough.

We are pitiful! But God uses the Bible and the Holy Spirit to deliver us little by little from our sinning. And even though we will continue to sin here and there, His mercy is strong enough to save us every single time.

If we say that we are following Jesus but do not desire to please Him, we are lying. If we desire to please God because we see how much He loves us, then He has promised to forgive us and make us clean from sin. Every single time. God is rich in mercy.

I pray that God makes this easy for you to understand! I love you!

Your big brother David

Working in a fast-paces restaurant half the week and living at a secular university invites a good deal of foul language. At times, it’s rubbed off on me. I’ve had to watch my language at times; now and then I let expletives slip under my breath. It’s one of many things I’ve been convicted about, and one of many things God is working on in my life.

I still use exclamations that make some people uncomfortable. “Gosh” is technically a euphemism derived from “God”, but it’s developed enough of an identity of its own that I don’t equate it with blasphemy.

“Gosh, these hot wings are amazing.”

But every now and then, so-called “minced oaths” are really inadequate. Particularly when I’m really glad at something God’s done. Things that He does deserve an exclamation of surprise more illustrative of awe. “Gosh, I’m blessed” is almost blasphemous in its disconcern.

Would it be less blasphemous (or altogether profitable) to use God’s name as an expression of the scale of awe and gratitude you feel for what He’s done?

“God, I’m thankful for grace.”

It’s one thing to use God’s name in place of a four-letter word. But reverse blasphemy poses an interesting question, I think.

David

Christians love to read clever anecdotes about how to overcome a particular besetting sin or thwart the schemes of the devil. Why wouldn’t we? This isn’t necessarily a method of doing that….but hopefully it will bring you a little comfort anyway.

The flesh — it’s a constant battle, isn’t it? We fool ourselves into thinking that our own strength will keep us righteous, but sin overtakes us nonetheless. We cry out with the Apostle Paul, “Oh, wretched man that I am! Who will deliver me from this body of death?”

Our answer should be the same as his.

“Thanks be to God through Jesus Christ our Lord! ….there is therefore now no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus. For the law of the Spirit of life has set you free in Christ Jesus from the law of sin and death. For God has done what the law, weakened by the flesh, could not do.”

I was reading through part of Psalms when I recalled these words. King David wrote Psalm 18 as a celebration of God’s strength and the victory he’d been given over Saul and the rest of his enemies. Here’s an excerpt:

I love you, O LORD, my strength.
The LORD is my Rock and my Fortress and my Deliverer, my God, my Rock, in whom I take refuge, my Shield, and the horn of my salvation, my Stronghold.
I call upon the LORD, Who is worthy to be praised, and I am saved from my enemies.
The cords of death encompassed me; the torrents of destruction assailed me; the cords of Sheol entangled me; the snares of death confronted me.
In my distress I called upon the Lord; to my God I cried for help. From His temple He heard my voice, and my cry to Him reached His ears.
He rescued me from my strong enemy and from those who hated me, for they were too mighty for me.
They confronted me in the day of my calamity, but the Lord was my support.”

I don’t know about you. But I was never really able to identify very much with King David in passages like these. I’d never had to fight against people who wanted me dead. Usually, when I was in a bitter dispute with someone, I had been the one at fault. I didn’t ever have a time that I “pursued my enemies and overtook them, and did not turn back till they were consumed.”

But even so, the passage really resonated with me today. So I read it over again a few times. Re-reading scripture is a really good idea.

Then I saw the parallel.

“The cords of death encompassed me; the torrents of destruction assailed me; the cords of Sheol entangled me; the snares of death confronted me.”

“Oh, wretched man that I am? Who shall deliver me from this body of sin?”

The parallel continues.

“You have given me the shield of Your salvation, and Your right hand supported me, and Your gentleness made me great. You gave a wide place for my steps under me, and my feet did not slip.”

“There is therefore now no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus. For the law of the Spirit of life has set you free in Christ Jesus from the law of sin and death.”

What peace and what blessing! “If God is for us, who can be against us?” The battle against the flesh isn’t a battle we must fight alone, or even a battle that we can fight alone; the battle is and always will be the Lord’s. And He is more than capable of defeating sin.

For me, it’s just an awfully beautiful sight to imagine:

“The Lord also thundered in the heavens, and the Most High uttered His voice, hailstones and coals of fire. And He sent out His arrows and scattered them; He flashed forth lightnings and routed them. Then the channels of the sea were seen, and the foundations of the world were laid bare at Your rebuke, O Lord, at the blast of the breath of Your nostrils.”

Don’t you see? This is what God does to our flesh and our sin when we give Him the reins of our life! Is there any conceivable way that we’ll be defeated by our own selfish lusts when the Lord of the universe is fighting for us?

“For You equipped me with strength for the battle; You made those who rise against me sink under me. You made my enemies turn their backs to me, and those who hated me I destroyed.”

Dear Christian: trust in the Lord, and lean not on your own understanding. Seek Him first and He will bear you up.

David

What does He know that we don’t
What grand design is this
To break apart hearts
Dashing our dreams
Making the precious obscene

In Him, our promise is true
In Him, all things are new
In Him, we can see
In Him, we’ll be
In Him forever secure

God gave the Jews two signs to tell whether an animal was kosher, and therefore fit for food. There was an internal sign: kosher animals must chew their cud. There was an external sign: kosher animals must have split hooves. It is the presence of both signs that rendered the animal kosher.

Just as animals are either kosher or not, so men are either marked by the signs of redemption or they are not. In speaking of Jews themselves, Rabbi Moskowitz says:

“…a kosher Jew is marked by two signs. The internal: faith…[and]…prayer…. The external: the actual fulfillment of [God's requirements]. It is not enough to have one sign alone. The camel, which chews its cud but doesn’t have split hooves, represents those with internal signs while the [pig], which has split hooves but doesn’t chew its cud, symbolizes those that have only the external signs.”

This mirrors very closely the comparison of faith and works spoken of by Paul and by James under the new covenant:

What good is it, my brothers, if someone says he has faith but does not have works? Can that faith save him?” -James

“For by works of the law no human being will be justified in His sight…But now the righteousness of God has been manifested apart from the law: the righteousness of God through faith in Jesus Christ for all who believe. For there is no distinction: for all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God, and are justified by his grace as a gift, through the redemption that is in Christ Jesus, whom God put forward as a propitiation by his blood, to be received by faith.” -Paul

We know that a man who has been born again will have both enduring faith and visible fruit. In the new covenant, again, we’re given two signs whereby we can tell a “kosher” Christian: their faith in Christ and the fruit of the work of grace in their life.

I thought that the analogy can carry a little further. A pig – with the external sign of split hooves – is like a man who takes pride in his works, trusting them to save him. A camel – with the internal sign of chewing the cud – is like a man who simulates a relationship with Christ by his own efforts but has no lasting fruit.

And just as it would take a miracle to change a pig or a camel into a sheep, so it takes the miracle of grace and imputed righteousness and salvation to change human “pigs” and human “camels” into sheep. Sheep that hear the Shepherd’s voice and follow.

There’s no continuum between split hooves and un-split hooves. There’s no “halfway point” between chewing the cud and not chewing the cud. And there’s nothing that an unclean animal can do to change itself into a kosher one.

If you’ve been born again, then thank God that He has miraculously changed you and given you faith to trust Him and the Holy Spirit to produce fruit in your life. Seek to display the fruit of your salvation however you can.

And if you are one who, like a camel, has all the right words and beliefs but no externally changed life to accompany it…or, like a pig, has the external show of good deeds but a heart that doesn’t yearn for the things of God…then seek the Lord while He may be found.

May God bless you this year.

David

Rebooting

“When, in the course of human events….”

Well, it’s been a while. Blogging has changed, and so has my life. There’s not much that’s really the same.

I know God more intimately. I know the intricacies of love and pain and trials more acutely. I have Twitter. I don’t have Facebook (at least not at present). I’m more libertarian, less easily irritated, and slightly less concerned about how many Congressman it takes to screw in a lightbulb.

I’m quite a bit older – they say that wisdom comes with age, but I suppose the truth of that is still in question. I like new kinds of music and new kinds of food. I occasionally write poetry.

Some things are still the same, though. This blog will be about both: the things that are the same, and the things that are different.

David