Simply Church: Dad, Jesus, and Sin

Rather than continuing in sin, our church families and individuals within the family, should be moving out of sin. Our goal is to become like dad and to be a successful church we should be moving toward that goal. If our families are not, in large part, departing from sin, our families aren’t functioning the way that they should be. There’s so much to talk about here. I’m going to try to keep this series from getting too out of control so I’ll try to focus on some of the ways the family metaphor can shape our perspective on this.*

Our Father is Love. Our Father is defined by love. It takes great prayer and imagination to begin to grasp how high, wide, and deep the Father’s love for us is. Nothing can separate us from His love. Where everything else fails, love remains and conquers. Because of this great Love, because our dad is the Great Love, dealing with sin has to always begin with, be empowered by, and end with love.

God’s first response to our sin is conviction and guilt. God’s first response to our confession is a loving embrace. Like any good Father, our Dad doesn’t want us to live in shame and guilt because we’re imperfect. He wants us to know that there is nothing we can do to make Him love us less. After his embrace, our good Father may provide discipline, but this is not something to be avoid; rather, it should be embraced for it wonderful that Dad is working in our lives to teach us to be more strong, beautiful, delightful, joyful, and lifeful.

It’s near impossible to embrace the greatness of our Dad’s love for us while engaging in behaviors that break His heart. I believe that one of the most important elements in departing from sin is to bask in the unshakeable love God has for us. When we embrace this love, we love back. When we love, we want to please. We want to honor. We want to treat with dignity. We want to express that love through our words, actions, and life.

Our older brother has shown us how to live in the way of our Father. Sometimes it’s hard to figure out what Dad would do if He were in our circumstances. He’s a lot older and although we know what he is like as a Dad, we don’t know what he’s like as a son or daughter. We have an older brother who is everything that our Dad is, but who is also everything that we are. Jesus provides a clear representation of what it looks like to be a child of YHWH in a way that brings glory to YHWH because it reflects YHWH.

Jesus, who is everything Dad is, lived a life much like us. He intimately understands the trials, difficulties, pains, wounds, temptations, confusion, and complexities of living as a son. Jesus took pity on us, who all at one time had cut ourselves off from the family because of our messed up hearts. Jesus saw what was wrong, went before his Dad on our behalf, and figured our how, at great cost to himself, we could become a part of the family again. We broke YHWH’s heart by rejecting His love, running from home, distorting His image in us, destroying His image in others, and joining a new family. Jesus told Dad, “It’s all on me,” and both of them went to great lengths so that our rebellion would not keep us from being adopted back into God’s family.

Now that our Father and Brother have dealt with our sin, we are adopted sons and daughters. This is not like a normal adoption where a person legally becomes the child of a new set of parents. Our belonging to our Father is certainly legal, but YHWH does more. He recreates us. Through His Son, He makes us a new creation. He renews His breath in us; His spirit in us. We are given a new spiritual genetic makeup that reflects the Father. We are given the Spirit of God in us, that we might live in that same breath, glorifying Dad by imitating Him. The exchange of our rebellious hearts for new hearts is what makes it possible for us to put Dad on display through us.

One of the most wonderful things about this recreation is there is no longer such thing as being stuck in sin. We may feel stuck in sin. We might feel like there is no way out and we just can’t change. The truth is we are already changed. We have been changed. We have been made new and have a renewing of the Holy Breath of God in us which empowers us to reflect Dad. We’re free. The sense of stuckness is merely paradigms of our past masquerading as present reality, but they only have the power we allow them to have. We are new. We are children of the living God in every way. Embrace love and live in it.

*The extensive talking about concepts in light of the family is fresh for me, so I’m going to stick with it, hoping it’s fresh for you as well. In the process, there will be a lot of pertinent Scriptures that I’m going to be leaving out throughout this series. Forgive me in advance.

Simply Church: Making A Practice of Sin

Sin is always a part of the gathering of believers. But sin doesn’t belong in the gathering of believers. Sin doesn’t make sense in the gathering of believers. Individuals in the gathering can not believe that it is okay to make a practice of sin while claiming Jesus as Lord. Living this way is an indication of not belonging to the the family.

When one who calls Jesus “Lord” continues in sin, that person has communicated that Jesus isn’t Lord. Their confession of His Lordship is nullified by their lives. Their confession of Jesus’ Lordship becomes just words, not an acknowledgement of what is true. John, who is very clear that everyone sins, talks about this continuing in sin quite a bit:

“Whoever says, ‘I know him’ but does not keep his commandments is a liar, and the truth is not in him…” (1 Jn 2:4)

“No one who abides in him keeps on sinning; no one who keeps on sinning has either seen him or known him.” (1 Jn 3:6)

“Whoever makes a practice of sinning is of the devil, for the devil has been sinning from the beginning. The reason the Son of God appeared was to destroy the works of the devil.” (1 Jn 3:8)

Those who claim Jesus as brother and YHWH as Father, yet live life in a continuing practice of sin are not a part of God’s family. And we are to treat them as if they are out of the family,* because they are claiming to represent our Father while living like they represent the devil. They are continuing to work against the family by doing the exact opposite of what the family is supposed to do, accurately make known what our God looks like.

In some of Paul’s letters to different manifestations of the body of Jesus, he discusses what to do with those who are living in this way. Paul is most clear about this concept in 1 Corinthians:

“I wrote to you in my letter not to associate with sexually immoral people– not at all meaning the sexually immoral of this world, or the greedy and swindlers, or idolaters, since then you would need to go out of the world. But now I am writing to you not to associate with anyone who bears the name of the brother if he is guilty of sexual immorality or greed, or is an idolater, revile, drunkard, or swindler– not even to eat with such a one.”

We are to reject those as family who claim to be family and live without love for the Father or our older brother who made the relationship with the Father possible. We are to be clear in our words and actions toward them that they are not family. Frequently in his letters, Paul mentions names of people who have been put out of the family because they claim to be a part of the family and are constantly working to destroy the family. Like most people from my culture, this idea makes me uncomfortable.

Why? Why can’t someone continue in sin and still be a part of the family? Why would our family throw someone on the streets? What kind of love is that? Isn’t grace enough?

It is not that the grace from the Father and brothers and sisters in the family isn’t enough, it’s that by stubbornly continuing in sin grace has been rejected. They reject grace while thinking that they have accepted it because they misunderstand what grace means for their lives. The purpose of the grace includes forgiveness, but it isn’t a free pass to sin without ceasing, it’s a free pass to cease from sin. Letting this misunderstanding of grace continue not only severely damages the family, but it is a death sentence to the one who continues in their misunderstanding. It would be unloving to allow them to continue in their sin and continue claiming YHWH as their Father.

With that, I also need to be clear that I believe there is a distinction between someone who is stuck in sin and someone who is continuing in sin. I know a lot of people stuck in sin. At various points in my life I have been stuck in sin. I have some things to say for people stuck in sin. Someone who continues in sin is not contrite about what they’ve done, not are they intending on turning toward Jesus and away from sin in their lives. Someone who is stuck in sin is contrite, turns toward God and away from their sin, and needs to figure out how to stop turning away from Jesus and back to their sin. These people need compassion, encouragement, forgiveness, mercy, teaching, prayer, and strong admonition, but they are siblings – as long as their repentance is sincere.
*I say all this with a lot of heavy sighing.

Simply Church: Sin

Admittedly, this aspect of church is kind of a weird one to talk about. We all know that people we are in Jesus community with have sin in their lives, but it doesn’t seem like we should be sinful. There is a difficult tension in our churches: sin should not be present in the lives of those who have been saved from sin by Jesus Messiah and sin is present in the lives of those who have been saved from sin by Jesus Messiah. This tension has always existed in our churches.

James, when writing to believers, says, “we all stumble in many ways” (3.2).

John says, “If we say we have no sin, we deceive ourselves, and the truth is not in us” (1 Jn 1.8)

Peter, writing to those who are already Jesus followers, exhorts them to “put away all malice and all deceit and hypocrisy and envy and all slander” (1 Pt 2.1). Peter implies that these things are present and need to be put away.

Hebrews tells believers to “lay aside… sin which clings so closely” (12.1).

Paul says, “Put to death therefore what is earthly in you: sexual immorality, impurity, passion, evil desire, and covetousness, which is idolatry” (Col 3:5).

That is a small sampling from a number of different Biblical letter writings who are writing to different groups of believers. The New Testament descriptions of the churches and instructions to the churches are full of evidence that even under the New Covenant, everyone sins. Because of this and constant admonition to flee from sin, I think that the presence of sin in our churches needs to be both unsurprising and unacceptable. However, in this family the sinner who knows his need is always received with grace.

Accepting that sin is present in the community of believers (while also making sure it isn’t welcome there) has a number of implications for our relationships with one another. It shouldn’t be surprising when a brother or sister hurts us or sins against us. Siblings hurt each other. It’s terrible. It’s sad. It’s unacceptable. It’s going to happen. We’re going to hurt each other. Even without knowing it sometimes, it’s going to happen. If it doesn’t, then we’re probably not being open with one another. The hope is this, that our sin against one another will be an opportunity to be more like our father, in whom, despite our sin against Him, grace always abounds and, even as the one sinned against, he is the first actor in our reconciliation. His grace is enough to restore any relationship.

With the acknowledgement of the presence of sin should come also an understanding of different perspectives. We can’t even do the good we want to do all the time or stop doing what we hate to do. How is it that we expect to know the complete truth about things far beyond our understanding? I believe in discussions over disagreements. I believe in trying to get things right about Scripture. But let’s not have deep familial divisions because of differing thoughts on baptism, women in leadership, the mechanism God used to create, and the like. It does make sense to spend more time with siblings whose perspective is most similar to yours, but no more telling people they don’t belong in the family because they don’t think the same way that you do on some trivial issue.

I think that a group acknowledgement that sin is present in the community at large, in specific brothers and sisters, and in our own lives helps us to deal with it. One of our primary goals together is to help each other become more like dad. A good starting place for this can be to talk to each other about the things in our life that look the opposite of dad and helping each other change that. Accepting that sin is present in us and in others is the first step to an open dialogue about this. Let’s not be on of those families that pretends to love each other because they pretend that nothing is wrong in the family. Rather, let’s be a family of open people who share what is wrong with us and, just like dad, let our first act in response to sin confession be to extend grace to our siblings.

You’re Not Hosea In This Story

One of the most powerful images of God’s love in Scripture is found in the story of the prophet Hosea. For me, it is one of the most emotionally poignant concepts in Scripture. It strikes my soul. It has transformed and continues to form the way I conceptualize reality. Perhaps telling you why will tenderize you the way it softens my stony heart.

Hosea was stupidly faithful (stupid in a good way). YHWH told Hosea that he was to marry a woman that God knew would be unfaithful to him. God knew that this woman sold her body and would continue to do so even while she was married. Hosea married her. She cheated on him repeatedly and consistently. She even had kids that Hosea named as his own, but would really have no idea whether those kids were his or some dudes that she had an affair with. People Hosea knew talked to him about the sexual relationship they had with his wife. Hosea was betrayed over and over and over by his unfaithful wife and yet He took her back and loved her again and again and again. Why did God want Hosea to do this? He wanted to demonstrate how Hosea’s relationship with his wife was a microcosm of God’s relationship with His people.

I get this, it connects with me. This story hurts me. I feel Hosea’s pain. I think that all people, even if they haven’t directly felt the pain of having a significant other cheat on them, have some understanding of how it feels to be betrayed by someone close to them. I think all of us have some experience of what it is like to feel someone relationally significant to you treat your trust and the relationship flippantly. Betrayal is the second worst feeling in the world.

The worst is feeling the pain that comes from realizing that you have betrayed someone you love and treated the relationship flippantly. You know who wants to feel that? No one. I’ve avoided it myself and watched so many others do the same. Listen to how most people talk about their sin. People talk about it like it’s bad, but not a huge deal because God has forgiven them for it. Or they talk about how it’s human to sin and everyone sins and that’s why we need God’s grace. Maybe they mostly talk about the sin of others and do this sick comparison thing where they perceive others are worse than them so that they can feel better about themselves. People tend to treat sin as inconsequential because it just plain sucks to acknowledge you are the betrayer.

But sin is not inconsequential. It is as destructive to our relationship with God as an act of infidelity is to a marriage. Our sin is absolutely disgusting and it destroys intimacy with God. Our choices of sin are acts of betrayal and infidelity and they hurt God in the way that a husband who catches his wife cheating on him with another man is hurt. We are violating God’s trust, abusing his forgiveness, and showing with our actions how meaningless our relationship with God is to us. Our sin is disgusting and destructive.

It is only when we realize how terrifically horrifying our sins are that we understand and appreciate God’s mercy. It is only then that we can be intimate. If a husband offers forgiveness but an unfaithful wife thinks that what she did was an insignificant act that isn’t really a big deal, how close to you think that couple will be? The wife has to admit that what she has done is terribly destructive, have an appreciation for the forgiveness of her husband, and rebuild trust with her husband through a life of faithfulness or else there is no hope for the relationship. There will be little intimacy for those who make excuses for their destructive behavior. There is no way that you will ever see God’s love for what it is if you do not first see you for what you are.

You are the whore. God has taken you as his bride. You have whored yourself to people that matter little. God has reaffirmed his love for you. You display your shameful infidelity with pride. God shouts his love for you from the rooftops. You have broken all your promises. In His faithfulness, God’s wants to renew his vows. Your heinous acts have destroyed your most important relationship. God wants to restore Himself to you. Your prostitution has left your life in ruins. God wants to rebuild it with you. You have run from him into the arms of many other men. God waits for your return with open arms. You are a dirty, betraying whore. God loves you and wants to make you pure and reconcile with you.

Addendum: It has been brought to my attention that all of the yous and generalized way of speaking about the text disconnects me from the story and it feels like I’m talking from a place of authority to a reader. I just wanted to say that most of this is me trying to make the story hit you in a way similar to how it has hit me. Let me be clear about this: I’m the whore too. We have all been the whore. That’s what’s so amazing about God’s love and infinite mercy. Let’s live to reflect and honor both.

Sin – The Burden Must Be Born

Oh sin, you dirty little thing.  It’s so messy.  It’s so painful.  It so shameful.  It’s such a burden.  It always has a negative effect.  It always divides relationships.  It often destroys them.  It doesn’t just disintegrate over time, but it sticks around in full force until it is destroyed.  It requires some sort of payment.  It requires justice.  It requires death to the one who committed it.  Or… it requires an innocent person who was hurt by it to bear the weight of it, the pain of it, the shame of it, and the burden of it in order to free the one that committed it.  If the one sinned against does not take on the burden of the sin, the relationship is destroyed.  Lord, may what I’m saying become clear as I write and may you give me the words to articulate my thoughts, and may this be used to provide us perspective on what you did and how we should respond accordingly.

Let’s start with a human relationship.  For brevity, simplicity, and clarity we will act as if this relationship is purely horizontal between two people and there is no element of a vertical God relationships.  Although, to be clear, I do believe that in real life situations, even among atheists, the YHWH relationship is always a factor.  Imagine a husband-wife relationship in which the wife has had an affair with another man. Imagine that we are the husband. You’ve been deeply wronged. There are quite a few options here for the husband.

They all involve what we (as the husband) do with the guilt of the sin. He can keep the weight of sin on his wife, a sensible and just decision given it is her action, her fault, and her choice – the burden should be with her. This often looks like coldness toward the wife, biting words, biting gossip, a vengeful divorce, sinning against the wife in an equally painful way, and various other attempts to create justice by punishing the wife. Another option is ignorance, pretending she never had an affair or that it wasn’t a big deal, and going on with the marriage pretending the burden of sin isn’t there at all. This option will destroy the relationship, drive the husband to clinical insanity, and the wife will constantly feel her guilt, concerned about when the topic will come up.

There is another way to deal with the guilt of sin. The third option is forgiveness. This is the hardest option for the husband, make no mistake about it. As free beings made in the image of a good God, we have  a natural desire for justice, and the husband has to give this up in order to forgive. Forgiveness, in one sense, is an act of injustice. In another sense, it is completely just because the husband who has been wronged and has every right to justice chooses to give up that right and clear the record of the sins of the wife against him. By giving up his right to justice, the husband takes on the burden of guilt. He has removed it from the wife because he, being the one sinned against, has a right to. But, still, an injustice has been done to him and if he does not seek out justice, then he bears the burden of the injustice. We have to take upon ourselves the pain, the humiliation, the shame, the wound, the scar, and taking on the weight of her guilt, erase her guilt by putting to death our right to justice – so experiencing the full weight of her sin.

Forgiveness is hard and incredibly painful, but it is the only way for the husband to have a real relationship with his wife again. Revenge, even equal revenge that equalizes injustices, might in one sense satisfy the husband, but it will destroy their relationship, not enable it. Pretending the sin isn’t there will allow for a pretend relationship, but that’s it. In order for the couple to be intimate again, the husband (us) has to absorb the injustice by exercising his right to remove her guilt and take it upon himself. It’s the hardest way and the only way to restore a relationship.

This action does require a particular response from the wife. If she chooses to be proud and refuses to give her guilt because she doesn’t deserve to have it removed, the act of forgiveness cannot be completed. We can only forgive and offer restoration, but he cannot force the wife to be humble and accept the gracious gift he has offered. If she doesn’t want forgiveness, the act can’t be done. The wife can also be proud by arrogantly expecting forgiveness almost demanding it because of her sense of entitlement to it. She then is trying to place her guilt on the husband, but it’s impossible – her guilt lies with her unless he chooses to take it from her, and in the proud act of trying to force the husband into taking on the injustice she is committing another injustice. Her goal is to acquire whatever she can from the relationship, and because of this, even if the husband (unhealthily) offers his forgiveness to a taking wife, the purpose of forgiveness is never accomplished because there can be no intimacy in a relationship of taking. What the wife must do if the act of forgiveness is to be completed is to, without a sense of entitlement but with a humble heart, undeservingly request and accept the forgiveness of the husband. In turn, the husband rightfully requests that the wife end her adulterous behavior.

In our imaginations we can feel what it’s like to be the husband, but in reality, we are the adulterous wife. God, may it be clear to us what You have done.

All sin, even things like murder and adultery, is primarily a sin against YHWH. It is the innocent party that is the most sinned against, and as humans, we’re never ultimately innocent.  Perhaps in one area we have innocence, but ultimately we are all guilty and deserve punishment. Sin is always against God because God is the only innocent in the world, both as a perfectly good Creator and as a human. Jesus’ death on the cross is the ultimate example of God’s choice to take on the injustice that we have done to him and destroying the guilt, freeing us to be intimate with him. It is, in addition to being a powerful act in itself with deep spiritual consequences, a representation of what God does by choosing to be in a relationship with us. He takes on the pain, the wounds, the scars, the shame, the humiliation, and the injustice and erases our record of wrongs. We can respond to this either with pride or with humility. What he asks of us is to simply stop having the affair because it’s impossible to be intimate with the one we keep knowingly and deliberately hurting.  The freedom we have that comes from God’s forgiveness is not a license to sin against God, He will not be mocked in this way. To go on sinning, continuing in our love affair, while expecting intimacy with God, what we are trying to do is putting our guilt on Jesus and making him die for it. The problem is that it is not our right to put our bloodguilt on Jesus or expect Jesus to take it, it is God’s right alone to take up our iniquities and erase them. It’s His choice alone. And he chooses to take on the burden of sin for us adulterers who will undeservingly bow ourselves before him to request and accept his forgiveness.

I hope that something of what was in my mind was communicated well. My thoughts have been clarifying and transforming for me, and I hope some of the same for the reader of this attempt at articulation. A few exhortations… Appreciate all acts of forgiveness offered you.  They are powerful and selfless. Let your heart be sombered, humbled, and enlifened as you reflect on the injustice God took on and got rid of for you. Take full advantage of every opportunity to be intimate with God as it is the most precious and costly gift ever offered. Forgive as Christ forgave you.

Calling, Crying, and Cleaving

I was reading through 2 Kings and something interesting struck me at 2 Kings 22:8.  The verse says, Hilkiah the high priest said to Shaphan the secretary, ‘I have found the Book of the Law in the temple of the Lord.’ He gave it to Shaphan, who read it. This finding was during the reign of king Josiah, who began his reign at 8 years old.  He then repented for all the sins of his fathers because the way that they lived was so opposite of what the Word of YHWH said.

Although Josiah was not the one that had begun the moral, ethical, and spiritual decline of the Israelites, he tore his robes (2 Kings 22:11), humbled [himself], inquired of the Lord (verse 13), and wept in [YHWH's] presence (verse 19).  He recognized that God had been displeased.  The resurfacing of the Scriptures made it clear that the actions of the Israelites were disdainful and angering to God.  The very people God chose to worship Him and show the rest of the world who their marvelous and powerful God was were the people that were actively putting up temples and high places dedicated to new, more trendy, more physiologically pleasing gods.  The anger of YHWH and His actions of destruction is merely God being faithful to His side of the covenant – which is to bless obedience and punish disobedience, that Israel might not be ruined forever by her sin, but might repent and again live in the love of her Creator.  Josiah saw the promises of God in Scripture.  He heard and understood the covenantal relationship God chose to begin with the sons and daughters of Abraham.  It seems that it was clear to Josiah that the only natural response  of this good, just, loving, wonderful God to the sin of his sons was to remove his hand of blessing from Judah and allow destruction to come upon them.

Josiah’s response is telling of what he believes about reality and YHWH.  It shows us that he believes the Lord to be holy to the utmost degree, demonstrated by his unbridled humility and mourning.  He believes that God is keeping His covenant even when the Israelites.  He believes sin is damaging to both the generation of those that sinned and  to subsequent generations.  Most importantly, Josiah believed in a God that was forgiving and in a dynamic relationship with us.  Josiah believed that God might choose to stay his forthcoming wrath if Josiah made it clear that he was sorry for the sins of his forefathers and was repentant in both heart and action for his own continuing propagation of the sins of his father.  I think this belief in YHWH’s variability in responses toward us is key for any act of genuine repentance, pleading with sincerity, acts of humility.  I’ll probably have to write another blog post about that in the near future.

I think our hearts should break over the sins our fathers perpetrated and perpetuated through us.  I think our hearts should be broken over our own ignorance as we discover a new what living in obedience to God should look like and how our predecessors have handed down patterns of living that are oppositional to the way of Christ.   My soul aches over the ways the ancestors of our church have handed down theologies and ways of living that result in the formation of exclusivist groups that are about keeping people out instead of inviting people in.  I cry over the judgmentalism, hypocrisy, pride, consumeris, exclusivism, politicism, and selfishness that has been deeply rooted in the American church.  My familial predecessors have left a legacy of alcoholism, gossip, abuse, emotional ineptitude, arrogance, and soul concealment.  These sins that those before us have committed are worth weeping over because of the way they have dishonored our communal covenant with God.  The sin is worth repenting over because of the way it now manifests itself in us – in me.  As we come into more truth about who God is and how we are to respond, our ignorance of those that went before us begins to evaporate and we see their actions more clearly.  As we see our forefathers and mothers in a more clear light, our own souls are elucidated and we see that those things we might once have called personality traits or just the way we do things are actually sinful behaviors, attitudes, and mindsets passed onto us.

Let us repentantly correct the sinful legacy of those that went before us, careful to pass on to those that come after us a legacy of holy love.

Coming Up Next: A Review of Max Lucado’s Cast of Characters